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Matthew Saroff, Mechanical Engineer, Owings Mills, Maryland, US

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A member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and a fan of Bernie who thinks Neoliberal (DLC/New Dem) trickle down conomics sucks.

Mechanical Engineer with a background in defense, electronics packaging, medical & food equipment, transportation, and manufacturing.

In my spare time (Hah!), I am the developer of the Firefox addon, bbCode for Web Extensions (bbCodeWebEx).



I have two cats, a black cat, and a gray and white long hair cat, who keep me on my toes. (Because he keeps attacking my feet)



I am a Jew and a Zionist, who is married to a woman with exquisitely bad taste in men, and I have two remarkable children with her.
  

  

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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...
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Monday, 25 January 2016 14:05:46 (GMT+3) | Kolkata

India s Ministry of Steel is seeking collaboration between government-owned and private sector steel plants to set up a string of pilot plant to develop domestic cold rolled grain oriented (CRGO) production capabilities, a ministry official said on Monday, January 25.

The official said that the government will also be willing to partially fund the costs of such pilot plants if Indian government-owned and private sector steel companies collaborate to develop domestic CRGO making capabilities. The Ministry of Steel is considering creating a fund of $22 million for the development of indigenous CRGO technology and the government will be willing to increase this funding if public-private participation for the development of technology gains pace.

The ministry official stated that state-owned steel producers like Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) drew up plans for CRGO steel making facilities, but these has not made much headway as the few international steel companies which have the technology are not willing to transfer it to steel companies in India
Friday, 22 January 2016 09:31:02 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Demand for Turkish wire rod in the export markets is still weak. With the declines seen in import scrap prices in Turkey , Turkish wire rod exporters have reduced their offers to the export markets by $10/mt week on week to $340-350/mt FOB, but the new offers have also failed to gain acceptanceIn the US, Turkey 's most important wire rod export market, increases seen in domestic wire rod prices are considered to be unrealistic by US buyers. As a result, the buyers are unwilling to conclude any new deals for locally produced or imported wire rod at present. Additionally, Ukrainian and Brazilian wire rod offers to the US are very competitive despite the reductions seen in Turkish wire rod offers.
Edison Agrosciences, a tech startup based in Durham, N.C., will move to the Helix Center in Creve Coeur, the companys chief executive said Monday.

The company focuses on research on how to coax sunflowers to produce more natural rubber.

Tom Christensen said his company would move in the first half of this year. He said Edison Agrosciences examined biotech centers in several cities but chose the Helix Center because of the progressive and aggressive efforts by state and St. Louis-area officials to recruit agriculture-related startups.

Edison Agrosciences will benefit from $800,000 in investments by the state-run Missouri Technology Corp., BioGenerator, a St. Louis fund that invests in early-stage life sciences firms, and private investors, officials said.

On its website, Edison Agrosciences says the rubber-producing sunflower plant represents the most attractive candidate to lead to a broad-acreage rubber crop in the United States.

The Missouri Department of Economic Development said Edison Agrosciences would create at least a half-dozen new jobs. Christensen said the company will hire two employees within weeks and more later.

The Helix Center, at 1100 Corporate Square Drive, is owned and operated by the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.

Edison will use the new investments to establish operations at the Helix Center, analyze the rubber content of sunflower samples collected over multiple growing seasons and devise further improvements.
Chris Correa, the former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director who hacked the Houston Astros, used consumer software and a password based on the name of a scrawny player to achieve the hack, according to a court transcript released Saturday.

The transcript also explains how prosecutors and Correas attorney arrived at the $1.7 million loss to the Astros that will earn Correa extra time in prison.

Most of the details of Correas Jan. 8 guilty plea to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer emerged in statements by prosecutors and team and MLB officials after the hearing.

In court, he admitted accessing accounts of three Astros employees and viewing emails and volumes of information about aspiring major leaguers.

But because he waived indictment and pleaded guilty, the hearing was not listed on public schedules and few media were present to report the details.

In court, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes questioned Correa closely about the details of the plea, and whether he knew the ramifications of admitting to the crimes.

Near the beginning of the hearing, Hughes asks Correa to explain about the Astros proprietary database of draft information  dubbed Ground Control. Correa does.

Hughes then asks, And do I correctly understand that you, while working for the Cardinals, went to the Astros cloud and got their data so you could see what they were interested in and what they were planning to do with players and draft picks current or past or whatever?

Correa admits that he trespassed repeatedly, but then says that it wasnt his original intention.

He said he originally trespassed ... based on suspicions that they had misappropriated proprietary work from myself and my colleagues.

So you broke in their house to find out if they were stealing your stuff? Hughes asked.

Stupid, I know, Correa responded.

Correa also referenced unspecified colleagues later, when he said he told them about finding information he claimed belonged to the Cardinals.

His attorney, David Adler, then pointed out, He did not go to the FBI, which is obviously what he should have done. Nor did he write a memo, he told Hughes.

Houston and its general manager, Jeff Luhnow, formerly of the Cardinals, have repeatedly denied any suggestion that the Astros were in possession of proprietary Cardinals information.

After Correas plea, Astros lawyer Giles Kibbe told reporters that the Cardinals had never raised any concerns about what Correa claimed to have seen in the Astros database.

Cardinals officials have denied Correas claims.

And Matthew Schelp, an attorney for four Cardinals employees who worked with Correa, said that he was not aware of any such information being shared with ... the Cardinals employees I represent.

During the discussion of the loss amount, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Chu, who handled the hearing, listed the formula used to arrive at $1.7 million.

But since much of the data that we looked at focused on the 2013 draft, what we did was we took the number of players that he looked at by 200 and we divided that by the number of players that were eligible to be drafted that year, and we multiplied that times the scouting budget of the Astros that year. That comes to $1.7 million, he said.

Hughes then asked a series of questions, culminating with his question about whether $1.7 million represented how much they spent working up their own profiles of these players and their abilities and cost and that sort of thing?

Chu agreed.

In federal court, where Correa will be sentenced April 11, financial loss is one of the factors driving the recommended prison time  an expected three to four years. In Correas case, the size of the loss made years of prison time much more likely.

Correa was able to hack the database because an Astros employee used a password there that was similar to what hed used when he worked for the Cardinals. Correa gained access to that employees laptop when he turned it in, court documents show.

It was based on the name of a player who was scrawny and who would not have been thought to succeed in the major leagues, but through effort and determination he succeeded anyway, Chu said. The Astros employee just liked that name, so he just kept on using that name over the years.

Correa has been released on $20,000 bail.
ST. LOUIS  Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said Monday she will retry Reginald Clemons, whose first-degree murder conviction and death sentence in the killing of two young sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge were voided by the Missouri Supreme Court in November.

Joyce said she would seek the death penalty again.

Clemons had been fighting his death sentence for the murders in 1991 of Julie Kerry, 20, and Robin Kerry, 19. In a 4-3 decision written by Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge, the states high court in November sent the case back to circuit court, giving Joyce 60 days to refile charges.

Joyce filed charges of first-degree murder, rape and robbery.

Its our belief that Mr. Clemons was a participant in these murders and rapes and robbery, she said in an interview. So its our job to proceed if we have the evidence, and we believe we do.

She said modern DNA testing has corroborated the states cases against Clemons and two other men convicted of murder in the case, Marlin Gray and Antonio Richardson.

The testing was completed in 2011 as part of the examination of the case by a special master appointed by the state Supreme Court. DNA consistent with the Kerry sisters was found on a condom discarded at the scene. And DNA consistent with the Kerrys, Gray and Clemons was found on Grays pants.

Joyce said two counts of rape had been filed against Clemons along with the original murder charges, but at the time the law prohibited prosecutors from trying him for both capital murder and rape.

The original suspect had been the Kerry sisters cousin, Thomas Cummins, then 19, of Maryland, who was visiting their family in Spanish Lake and had made the nighttime visit to the abandoned Mississippi River span with them. He confessed during a police interrogation but later said his statement was coerced. In 1995, Cummins received a $150,000 settlement from St. Louis police on his claims that a false confession was beaten out of him.

Joyce said the DNA analysis did not find Cummins DNA on any of the evidence. After the women were raped, they and their cousin were forced to jump from the bridge. Only Cummins survived.

A flashlight at the scene led investigators to Antonio Richardson, who incriminated Gray, Clemons and Daniel Winfrey. Winfrey testified in exchange for a 30-year term and has been paroled. The others were sentenced to death.

Gray was executed; Richardsons penalty was later changed to life without parole. Clemons was weeks from being executed in June 2009 when the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals blocked it. The Missouri Supreme Court then agreed to consider the case.

After his arrest, Clemons confessed to raping one of the sisters, but, as with Cummins, later claimed his confession had been coerced.

Ginny Kerry, the mother of the victims, said in an interview that prosecutors were doing what we want them to do.

We all met with the Circuit Attorneys Office weeks ago, and we want the new trial to go on, she said. Why would we want him being set free for killing my kids? Hes guilty, hes always been guilty, and he knows hes guilty.

Clemons attorney, Joshua Levine, with the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm in New York, said, Were disappointed that the circuit attorney has decided to pursue a retrial, but we have no further comment at this time.

The Supreme Courts decision to throw out the murder conviction cited the findings of Michael Manners, a retired judge appointed by the states highest court as special master to review the case.

Manners found that Clemons had failed to prove his innocence, but concluded that St. Louis prosecutors wrongly suppressed evidence. He also found that detectives had beaten Clemons into confessing to the crimes.

Manners said in his report that the jury might never have been allowed to hear Clemons taped confession had officials disclosed a probation officers statement that he saw injuries to Clemons face after an interrogation,.

The probation officer also claimed that one of his supervisors and the lead prosecutor in the case attempted to convince him to change his written report of the injury. He refused, but the report was altered anyway to remove any reference of it.

Clemons remains in prison on a 15-year sentence for his conviction in 2007 of assaulting a Department of Corrections employee.
ST. LOUIS  Former city police Officer Jason Flanery was charged Friday with drunken driving in the crash of a squad car.

The charges came just days after Flanery was accused in a civil lawsuit of wrongful death in the fatal shooting of a man in 2014 while Flanery was working as a security guard.

Flanery was cleared in that shooting by authorities and was still on the force, but off duty, when he crashed his official vehicle into a parked car and left the scene about 6:15 a.m. Dec. 19, authorities say. Investigating officers found him later, at home.

Charges accuse him of driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident.

Court documents show Flannery, 33, had a blood-alcohol content of .117 when tested later in the day after the accident. The legal limit in Missouri is .08.

The mother of the woman who owned the car saw the police vehicle strike the parked car, according to the documents. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.

After the crash, the owner of the damaged car surveyed the damage to her vehicle, and the police vehicle was gone, according to the documents.

Police later found the police cruiser a short distance away from the crash scene, in front of Flanerys house in the 6900 block of Lansdowne Avenue, according to the documents. It had damage consistent with striking the parked vehicle, according to the documents.

Officers said he smelled of alcohol and was unsteady and wobbly on his feet, having difficulty standing without support, according to the documents.

Flanery refused to take an alcohol breath test, police said, so the department obtained a search warrant for a blood test later that day. He was arrested and released pending application for warrants. Flanery resigned from the force.

The department and a separate investigation by Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyces office had cleared him of criminal wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of VonDerrit Myers Jr. on Oct. 8, 2014. Officials said evidence supported his claim that Myers fired shots at him during a confrontation in the Shaw neighborhood while Flanery was working an off-duty secondary job for a private security company. The shots Myers fired at Flanery missed, authorities said.

The killing of Myers, only about two months after a police shooting in Ferguson had ignited sometimes-violent reactions there, led to weeks of demonstrations.

On Wednesday, Myers parents and the mother of his child filed a wrongful-death suit in St. Louis Circuit Court against Flanery, GCI Security and the Flora Place Community Improvement District, which hired the company. The suit claims Flanery killed Myers without provocation.

Flanery had returned to duty after being cleared in the shooting. He had worked until 2 a.m. on Dec. 19, the morning of the crash, officials said.
News, descriptions, comments, opinions about Carrington (Foster County), North Dakota and surrounding areas. This blog was created to supplement CarringtonNews.Com and to give local residents an outlet to express their opinions regarding the attractions, events, sports, politics of the area.
Berkeley Mayor Ted Hoskins and his wife, Councilwoman Lee Etta Hoskins, have agreed to a consent order with the state Ethics Commission after it was discovered they both voted to reimburse Ted Hoskins for legal expenses incurred when the city investigated him in 2014.

The city initially investigated Ted Hoskins for violating the city's "councilmanic interference" ordinance. After new council members were elected in April 2015, the city had not reached a conclusion, though Hoskins said he was no longer being actively investigated. "It was dead," he said, adding that he didn't remember the details of the allegation.

In a closed city council meeting on July 20, 2015, Ted Hoskins made a motion to approve a reimbursement for the $3,400 he paid in attorney fees. Both he and Lee Etta Hoskins voted for the measure, leading the ethics commission to conclude there was "probable cause" to believe they violated a city conflict-of-interest ordinance.

"Hindsight, I probably should have (abstained)," he said.

"I just thought that it was an expense brought on by the council," Hoskins said, "and since they didn't continue (with the investigation), I brought it back up to be reimbursed."

The current city manager, Abdul-Kaba Abdullah, said he didn't know why Hoskins was investigated by the city, which he said would have occurred before he was hired in 2014.

As part of the consent order, Hoskins and his wife have agreed to return the money to the city.
JEFFERSON CITY  A third lawsuit has been filed against Travis Maurer, a Kirkwood native who has pushed marijuana reform efforts in both Oregon and Missouri.

The suit was filed Wednesday in Multnomah County, Ore., circuit court by Whitsett Rice. It alleges that Maurer has failed to make payments on a $158,400 settlement agreement the two made in 2014 after a business dispute.

The lawsuit says that Maurer and his company, STM Leasing LLC, had repaid $33,000, but otherwise "defaulted on and breached their obligations" by failing to make monthly payments. The lawsuit says Maurer had made payments until August, but then the money stopped coming in.

Rice is asking for the remaining principal amount of the loan, interest, attorney fees and court costs.

Legal problems are piling up for Maurer and his wife Leah Maurer. Both are active in marijuana reform efforts. Travis Maurer was even called the "mastermind" behind Oregon's successful push for legal marijuana last year by the Oregonian newspaper in Portland.

Despite living in Oregon, the couple remained active in a Missouri group's push to reform marijuana laws. In June, New Approach Missouri, a group trying to put medical marijuana to a statewide vote this year, recorded a $26,000 check from MQH LLC, another venture the Maurers were involved in.

But the co-owner of MQH, Randy Quast, said that while he supports New Approach Missouri, he was initially unaware of the $26,000 commitment from company funds. He said he found out later the money was to be used for an internal poll.

I think by the time of the board meetings, people were probably thinking highly of me because I had agreed to fund the poll with Travis, but I didnt know that at all, Quast said in an interview.

Maurer said he didnt know why Quast thought he was misled about the New Approach check.

Randy was a part of the process and saw the presentation, Maurer said in a text message. I cant answer why he wouldnt remember that.

The Post-Dispatch reported on Jan. 15 that Quast sued Maurer in Oregon court for breach of contract, libel, slander and fraud.

The lawsuit says that in early 2015 the Maurers had convinced Quast to go into business with them. Quast eventually invested $696,000 in what he thought would become a legal marijuana dispensary and grow operation. As collateral, the Maurers would transfer to Quast their interests in three other ventures. But that never happened, the lawsuit alleges.

Quast also made about $156,000 in personal loans to the Maurers, the lawsuit says. He is seeking damages up to $1 million.

In a third lawsuit filed in December in Oregon, the plaintiffs are two owners of The Weed Blog, an online publication focused on marijuana issues. They say they joined forces with Maurer in November 2012, and Maurer became part owner and chief financial manager of the blog.

The lawsuit claims that since November of that year, Maurer had "intentionally and maliciously transferred TWB (The Weed Blog) funds from TWB bank accounts to Maurer's various personal accounts and/or paid personally incurred debts with TWB funds."

The plaintiffs, Jeffrey White and Christopher Young, accuse Maurer in the lawsuit of failing to file tax returns, respond timely to advertising requests and pay bills. They are seeking $51,000 in damages plus court costs.

Maurer has denied White and Young's claims and said he is trying to solve the suit amicably. He said Saturday that he couldn't comment on the other two lawsuits, but is planning a response this week.

New Approach Missouri said in a statement when Quast's lawsuit was filed that Maurer is a "committed reform advocate" but that "he is not on the New Approach Missouri board or staff, nor does he have any day-to-day involvement in our campaign."
JEFFERSON CITY  The recently-installed head of the Missouri State NAACP on Monday announced a slate of executive committee members to set policy and governance guidelines as the organization sets out under new leadership for the first time in 30 years.

President Nimrod "Rod" Chapel Jr. named six St. Louis area representatives to the 17-member committee.

The St. Louis appointees include local attorney and KMOX radio host Jane Dueker, believed to be the first white female to serve on the governing board in the 107 year history of the Missouri chapter.

The other committee members with St. Louis ties are:

Jennings School Board member Rose Mary Johnson, tabbed by Chapel to serve as second vice president.

Mark Esters, the president of the St. Louis Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

St. Louis County NAACP official John Gaskin III.

Former Missouri State Rep.Esther Haywood, chair and president of the St. Louis County chapter.

St. Louis attorney Pamela Meanes, a partner with the Thompson Coburn law firm and president of the St. Louis chapter of the National Bar Association.

Celeste Metcalf, former director of the equal opportunity with the Missouri office of administration.

The Missouri chapter earlier this month chose Chapel, a Jefferson City trial lawyer, to replace Mary Ratliff, the statewide president since 1985.

Ratliff remains as a member of the executive board.

Chapel appointed the new committee members, composed of state officers and at-large members, to two-year terms.
ST. LOUIS  A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday has offered a chance of freedom to thousands of juvenile offenders nationwide who are serving life sentences for murder.

The justices voted 6-3 on a broader application of a 2012 ruling that struck down automatic life terms for young killers. Now, even those who had exhausted their appeals on decades-old convictions will get a chance at parole or a new sentence.

The impact here could be big.

Missouri is one of just nine states, including Illinois, that account for 82 percent of juvenile sentences of life without parole, according to a recent study by the Phillips Black Project, a public interest law firm that represents inmates facing severe sentences.

Of about 1,300 to 2,300 cases hanging in the balance nationally, at least 81 cases are in Missouri.

And the city of St. Louis, according to the study, has the fifth-highest concentration of juveniles serving life sentences in the country, with as many as 41 cases.

Mondays ruling will affect inmates such as Ralph McElroy, who at 17 was convicted in the fatal shooting in 1987 of a north St. Louis man, Johnnie Fleming. Fleming was reportedly trying to break up a fight in the West End when he exchanged words with McElroy, a bystander. Officials said McElroy left the scene, returned with a sawed-off rifle and shot Fleming.

Hes not an angry young boy anymore; hes a grown, mature man, said his mother, Margo McElroy, in a phone interview Monday. I think my son deserves a second chance. He can contribute to society.

McElroy, of St. Louis, said they were thrilled to hear of the courts ruling, which they had been anxiously awaiting.

Im really sorry about Mr. Fleming, but regardless of whether my son spends the rest of his life in jail or not, its not going to bring Mr. Fleming back, she said. She said her son, now 46, has paid with all of his adult life.

The Supreme Court has over the past decade moved away from the harshest sentences for youths, recognizing the undeveloped state of a young criminals mind and the opportunities for rehabilitation. In 2005, Roper v. Simmons eliminated the death penalty for juveniles. In 2010, Graham v. Florida did away with life sentences for youths convicted of non-homicides.

Then in 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the court outlawed mandatory life sentences for young killers, too. The ruling did not outright ban life sentences for youth but said that they could no longer be automatic and that certain individualized factors relative to an offenders age must be considered.

The ruling left open several thorny issues. One of them: whether Miller should apply just to future cases or to old ones, too.

Mondays ruling was in the case of Henry Montgomery, who at 17 was sentenced to life for the killing in 1963 of an East Baton Rouge, La., police officer.

Authoring the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the Louisiana Supreme Court was incorrect in refusing to apply Miller retroactively.

Kennedy pointed to a 1989 ruling that considered the issue of retroactivity in federal habeas proceedings. In a summary of the ruling, the court held that while new constitutional rules of criminal procedure are generally not retroactive, it recognized that courts must give retroactive effect to new watershed procedural rules and to substantive rules of constitutional law.

The court determined here that Miller addressed a substantive rule of constitutional law and thus applied to old cases.

Substantive rules set forth categorical constitutional guarantees that place certain criminal laws and punishments altogether beyond the States power to impose, the summary read. It follows that when a State enforces a proscription or penalty barred by the Constitution, the resulting conviction or sentence is, by definition, unlawful.

Up until now, states had taken a range of approaches in applying Miller  and some, like Missouri, had balked.

Missouris courts granted new sentencing hearings to a handful of defendants who had appeals pending at the time of the ruling. But the states top court had yet to take up the issue of retroactivity in cases where appeals were exhausted.

And a legislative fix has repeatedly floundered. The law still says the penalty for first-degree murder must be either death or life in prison without parole.

Last year, the state Senate passed a bill to allow a killer under 16 to receive a sentence of at least 35 years, or life without parole; and someone 16 or 17 to be sentenced to 50 years, or life without parole. A House version offered an alternative sentence of 25 to 40 years for murderers under 18, but it never reached the floor for debate. The differences were never reconciled.

Illinois is farther ahead on the issue. The Illinois Supreme Court decided in 2014 that Miller applied not just to pending cases, and in 2015, the Legislature eliminated mandatory life without parole for juveniles.

Missouri prosecutors had feared a decision in Montgomery would catch the state flat-footed  with no statutory solution to guide what should happen with the new cases, let alone the old.

On Monday, their predictions came true.

I appreciate the opinion that came down today, but unfortunately for Missouri, it didnt give us a clear path of where we need to be, said Beth Orwick, chief trial assistant for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce.

In the ruling, the justices proposed a solution to address Montgomery, without creating too much burden on the system or disturbing the original conviction: offer parole eligibility.

The court noted it would afford someone like Montgomery, who submits that he has evolved from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community, the opportunity to demonstrate the truth of Millers central intuition  that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

But, Orwick noted, there has to be a mechanism in each state to do that, and unfortunately in Missouri there is no mechanism yet.

Its frustrating, because right now we really need a legislative solution for this, she said.

Karen Kraft, a division director with the state public defenders office, praised the courts decision as the right ruling and the only one that makes sense.

If you are using the rationale that there shouldnt be life without parole for juveniles because of their diminished capacity, the same would be true of someone who was convicted in 1985, she said.

But she agreed it was too early to tell how the ruling would be addressed locally. She anticipated a wave of new appeals on older cases, filed by lawyers who had been waiting to see what would be decided in Montgomery.

Margo McElroy, whose son may benefit, has trouble understanding the confusion.

The question should have never come up, she said. They have to at least get a chance. Were talking about children.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed some information from the summary of the court decision.
In Britain the Royal Navy has a shortage of experience sailors essential to operating some of its warships. The need is most acute in technical fields. That is sailors with the skills and experience to make repairs at sea. The shortage arose because over the last few years the Royal Navy suffered such heavy budget cuts that they could not afford to new recruits needed to replace the experienced sailors retiring. So in an increasingly common move Britain asked the United States for help, offering to pay all costs and expenses to entice American sailors to serve on Royal Navy ships. The U.S. Coast Guard stepped up and found 36 sailors who had the qualifications and were willing to move to Britain with their families for a few years and serve on Type 23 frigates.

This sort of thing is nothing new, especially among English speaking countries. Back in 2010, noting that Britain was downsizing its armed forces, and cutting loose a lot of experienced personnel, the Australian Navy sent recruiting officers to Britain to see if there would be interest among some of these former (or soon-to-be former) British sailors in joining the Australian Navy. The Australians were particularly interested in obtaining personnel with technical skills. Years of low unemployment in Australia (partly because China was buying so many raw materials) caused a shortage of engineering and technical specialists in the navy. The mining companies were luring away a lot of technical personnel with higher pay and better working conditions. As a result, for example, the navy only has crews for three of its six submarines.

Australia has long been recruiting foreigners who possess needed technical skills and speak English. Australia is a nation of immigrants and the navy points out that recruiting a foreigner is cheaper than training an Australian to do these tasks. But sending recruiters to foreign countries was a new angle. Australia also offered navy jobs to sailors from Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. All four foreign nations share a common language and, in general, culture with Australia. Moreover, sailors from these foreign nations have gone through similar security vetting. The recruiting offers were sweetened with quick granting of Australian citizenship after less than a year of service.

Australia is not the only nation seeking foreigners for its military. Russia, for example, has a fundamental problem with few Russian men willing to join, even at good pay rates. Efforts to recruit women and foreigners have not made up for this. The Russian military has an image problem that just won't go away. This resulted in the period of service for conscripts being lowered to one year (from two) in 2008. That was partly to placate the growing number of parents who were encouraging, and assisting, their kids in avoiding military service.

Nevertheless, Russia kept making it easier for foreigners to join. Recruits still must be able to speak Russian, have no criminal record, and meet physical and educational standards but other than that, anyone is welcome to sign up for five years as a contract (non-conscript) soldier. This didn't bring in a lot of new people but every little bit helps. The navy and air force are particularly short of technically qualified personnel and don't care if the new guys speak with an accent. At its peak this program had less than a thousand foreigners serving, most from countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union. But there were also a few from Germany and Israel (where a lot of Russians had immigrated to in the past 30 years).

Before the U.S. military began downsizing in 2012 they had about 50,000 non-citizens in service (out of some 2.2 million active duty and reserve troops). The navy, not the army, usually has the largest number (nearly half). That's something of a navy tradition, as hiring foreigners to serve on U.S. warships is a custom that goes back over a century. Currently, the proportion of foreigners (about two percent) in the U.S. military is historically low. It's been much higher in the past, often reaching 25 percent or more. This caused alarm, then as now, but there were never a lot of problems with uncertain loyalties.

After 2001 senior American officers urged more efforts to recruit foreigners. Not just non-citizens with green cards but foreigners who were not residents of the United States. This brought forth protests from those opposed to, well, whatever. Historically, the American military has usually had more foreigners in the ranks than it does now. During the American Civil War about twenty percent of the Union Army was foreign born troops. There were entire divisions of Irish, Germans, or Scandinavians. For the rest of the 20th century, the all-volunteer military continued to have a higher (than today) percentage of foreigners. Recruiting foreigners would enable the army to get more highly capable recruits and ones with needed foreign language and cultural awareness skills. Naturally, they would have to speak acceptable English, just as resident foreigners in the United States or citizens from Puerto Rico must. While American military pay and benefits are competitive with U.S. civilian occupations to most foreigners these pay levels are astronomical. The risk is low, as only about one in a thousand foreign born volunteers died in Iraq or Afghanistan. All that and you get to become a citizen of the United States after your four year enlistment is up. The only question was which line would be longer at American embassies, the one for visas, or the one for military recruiting?

And then there is Britain. In the early 19th century Gurkhas were first recruited into the British Indian army, not the British army. After India became independent in 1947 they too recruited Gurkhas for Indian infantry units. But service in the British army was considered a better deal. Britain has long recruited foreigners into its army and navy because there has always been a shortage of British citizens willing to serve.

Then there is the French Foreign Legion, which is supposed to be nothing but foreigners (except for the officers). But many French join, claiming to be from the French speaking parts of Belgium. No matter, if otherwise qualified, the "Belgians" are signed up. In Italy, the Vatican (a small part of Rome that is an independent country controlled by the Roman Catholic Church) gets most of its security forces from Catholic areas of Switzerland. This is the Swiss Guard. While the French Foreign Legion dates from the 19th century, Swiss have been serving as foreign mercenaries since the 15th century. But these contingents disappeared as better economic opportunities developed in Switzerland and mercenaries became less popular.
The U.S. military has, since the 1990, been a major and increasing user of communications satellites. Not only military owned but also leased bandwidth (data transmission demand) from commercial satellites. In 2010 the military feared that there might not be enough commercial bandwidth to lease to handle heavy wartime loads. That turned out to be less of a problem than predicted because of the rapidly growing number of commercial users for high bandwidth services (like streaming video). Now the military sees wartime shortages as less likely because during a national emergency commercial satellite owners can be compelled to lease bandwidth to the military and that commercial bandwidth is growing so fast that there will be at least twelve times more of it at the end of the decade than there is now.

Meanwhile the U.S. Department of Defense is trying to get more money for its own communications satellites. In 2013 the Department of Defense launched its sixth WGS (Wideband Global SATCOM) communications satellite and a seventh is on the way. The WGS is a six ton satellite with a traffic handling capacity of 3.6 gigabits. The first WGS went up in 2007, but that was six years after that was supposed to happen.

WGS birds are optimized for military use and are more effective than equivalent civilian comm satellites. WGS originally stood for "Wideband Gapfiller Satellite" and they are actually modified versions of the Boeing 702 communications satellite. Boeing has built or has orders for over 36 of the commercial 702s, which are built on the earlier, and very successful, 600 series communications satellites. Using the 702 as a model for WGS seemed like a slam-dunk initially, basing needed military commo birds on a solid civilian model. A few tweaks and additions to deal with military security needs, and off we go. The Department of Defense wants to build six WGS birds, at a cost of some $220 million each. The WGS has ten times the throughput (3.6 gigabits) of the earlier DSCS III commo satellites. The first WGS bird in orbit more than doubled the transmission capacity of the Department of Defense satellite system.

There is a growing need for more commo birds. Between 2000 and 2002, Department of Defense satellite bandwidth doubled, and more than doubled every 18 months after that. Back in 2000, some 60 percent of Department of Defense satellite capacity had to be leased from commercial firms. While the Department of Defense had its own communications satellite network (MILSAT), it underestimated the growth of demand. Greater use of the internet and reconnaissance aircraft and UAVs using video cameras quickly used up MILSAT's capacity and forced the military to lease capacity on commercial satellites. This was done on the "spot market," meaning the Department of Defense had to pay whatever the market would bear at that moment. Since the military needed more capacity because of combat operations, the media was also in the market for more capacity to cover the war. The Department of Defense paid more than ten times as much as it would have if it had leased (for one to fifteen years) satellite capacity earlier. The situation was made worse by the fact that it was an emergency situation, so every heavy user of satellite communications was making their own deals. This resulted in some users (air force, or, say, the Atlantic Fleet) having some extra capacity when someone else, like Army Special Forces, was still short.

It was only in 1990 that the U.S. armed forces moved to satellite communications in a big way. This made sense, especially where troops often have to set up shop in out of the way places and need a reliable way to keep in touch with nearby forces on land and sea as well as bases and headquarters back in the United States. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, there was enough satellite military communications capacity (commonly known as "bandwidth") in the Persian Gulf for about 1,300 simultaneous phone calls. Or, 12 megabits per second. But while the military has a lot more satellite capacity now (the exact amount is a secret), demand has increased even faster. UAV reconnaissance aircraft use enormous amounts of satellite capacity. The Global Hawk needed 500 megabits per second, and Predators and Reapers about half as much. The major consumer of bandwidth is the live video. Thus data transmission capability (bandwidth) has gone from 46 megabits (million bytes) per second in late 2001, just for troops in CENTCOM (the Middle East and Afghanistan), to nearly ten giga (billion) bits per in 2007. Thus the rush to get those WGS birds up.

Attempts to get capacity from civilian satellites was complicated by the fact that there was a shortage there as well. This was created by the tremendous overbuilding of fiber optic cable networks on the ground (and under oceans) in the late 1990s. This provided cheaper bandwidth for civilian uses and has meant fewer communications satellites being put up. In fact, the fiber optic glut reduced planned satellite launches by some 60 percent for the first few years of this decade.

The solution was the WGS birds, with the first supposed to launch in 2004. But there were design problems, manufacturing problems, and scheduling problems getting an American launcher (having a Russian or Chinese rocket put these birds into orbit was not an option, for security reasons.) These problems have been solved and while that provided more capacity it was never enough.
Dirty Little Secrets

DLS for 2001 | DLS for 2002 | DLS for 2003

DLS for 2004 | DLS for 2005 | DLS for 2006

DLS for 2007 | DLS for 2008

Another Iranian Headache

by James Dunnigan

January 24, 2016 In early December 2015 the Israeli Arrow 3 anti-missile missile was successful in its first test of its new ability to hit an incoming missile using decoys. Success in this test overcomes the doubts created when Arrow 3 failed a similar test in late 2014. It took over a year to figure out what went wrong there and come up with a fix. In early 2014 there was a successful test of Arrow 3 and it was believed that this would result in Arrow 3 entering service in 2015. That did not happen because of the failure later in 2014. Getting Arrow 3 into service is important because it can destroy missiles at higher altitudes (over 100 kilometers) and farther away. Thatas what it failed to do in late 2014 but succeeded at in 2015. It was only in February 2013 that Israel conducted the first tests of Arrow 3. That followed the successful testing of the then new Block 4 version of its Arrow 2 in 2012. After a few more tweaks version 4.1 was in service by late 2013. The 2013 Arrow tests also confirmed the effectiveness of new detection capabilities of the Green Pine radar. The improved Green Pine radar entered service in 2012 and the Block 4 version provided greater accuracy and the ability to intercept missiles farther away. Block 4 was in development since at least 2007. The Arrow system has been in service since 2000 and has racked up an impressive string of successes in test launches. Designed to deal with short and medium range ballistic missiles, it was built to protect Israel from Syrian and Iranian attack. Israel now has three Arrow batteries in service. An Arrow battery has 4-8 launchers and each launcher carries six missiles in containers. The two ton Arrow 1 has been replaced with the 1.3 ton Arrow 2, which can shoot down ballistic missiles fired from Iran and these are being augmented with Arrow 3s. The United States has long shared the expense of developing Arrow and this includes contributing over a hundred million dollars for work on the Arrow 3. More than half of the nearly three billion dollar cost of developing and building Arrow has come from the Americans. In addition, U.S. firms have done some of the development work or contributed technology. The U.S. has also provided Israel with a mobile X-band radar that enables it to detect incoming ballistic missiles farther away. Initially the Israeli Green Pine radar can only detect a ballistic missile fired from Iran when the missile warhead is about two minutes from hitting a target in Israel. The X-band radar allows the Iranian missile to be spotted when it is 5-6 minutes away, enabling the Israeli missile to hit the Iranian warhead farther away and with greater certainty. The Arrow 3 is expected to need something like the X-band radar to take advantage of the longer missile range. The Arrow 3 could also use satellite or UAV warnings of distant ballistic missile launches. Arrow 3 weighs about half as much as Arrow 2 and costs about a third less. In 2010, Israel began increasing the production of its Arrow missiles. Costing over three million dollars each, and partly constructed in the United States (by Boeing), the Arrow missiles are one of the few proven anti-missile systems available. Since Arrow entered service several hundred missiles have been built or ordered. Currently Israel has nearly 200 Arrow missiles available and would like to double that that by the end of the decade. For the moment the ballistic missile threat from Syria is gone and that makes life even more difficult for Iran. The existence of Arrow means that the only way Iran could successfully hit Israel with a nuke via missile would be to simultaneously (or nearly so) launch several dozen missiles each equipped with a nuclear warhead. Most of these would be shot down by Arrow but at least one would probably land in Israel and detonate. This would be foolhardy because Israel has over a hundred nukes that can be delivered to Iran by ballistic missile, aircraft and submarine launched cruise missile. The Iranians tend to be sensible, but the rhetoric coming from senior Iranian leaders is anything but when it comes to attacking Israel with nukes. In the 1930s the world thought the Germans were sensible people, and Jews everywhere still remember how that turned out. So Israel is ready to defend itself and retaliate.


In the 21st century more nations began trying to persuade their citizens to stop the practice of firing rifles and pistols into the air during celebrations. Stopping this form of celebration is a worldwide trend because of the growing number of people injured or killed during celebrations and especially national holidays like Christmas Day (plus Moslem holidays) and New Years Eve. Such injuries have increased as wealth grew late in the 20 th century and weapons got cheaper. These bullets (called "joy bullets" in Arabic) falling back to earth are actually an old problem made more noticeable as rural people, who used to do it in thinly populated areas, move into urban areas and keep celebrating by shooting .

One reason by more people have weapons is because the end of the Cold War in 1991 unleased over ten million cheap AK-47s and billions of round of cheap ammo. These came from former communist states emptying the warehouses of such weapons stockpiled during the Cold War. Thus a lot of people now had these weapons and didnt mind shooting off $5-10 worth of ammo to enhance holiday celebrations. Worse yet, while for most of the 20th century joy bullets were fired from bolt-action rifles and pistols, an AK-47 is an automatic weapon and fire off thirty round in a few seconds. Meanwhile many people still use hunting rifles or even some World War II era weapons that are still working.

Not surprisingly fireworks actually cause 5 to 10 times more casualties, including fatalities than falling bullets. But firearms, while harder to obtain and much more expensive than fireworks are a danger year round, especially since so many of them are unregistered and illegal. You cannot easily kill someone deliberately with fireworks but that is what firearms were designed for.

While fireworks have been around for centuries, guns and firing them into the air during celebrations is more recent. Even more recent is this practice causing many casualties. Thats because in the last century more people were concentrated into urban areas where a lot of them were out and about during these celebrations, providing more targets for the increased number of falling bullets. Most people dont realize that bullets fired into the air can fall back to earth with enough velocity to injure or even kill.

Firing weapons into the air is a traditional form of celebration in many parts of the world. Usually it happens at weddings and other joyful gatherings. Major celebrations bring out even more guns. When the victim of a joy bullet is a child that usually prompts calls for the security forces to halt this practice. That wont be easy, as has been discovered in many other nations. Meanwhile parents in countries where joy bullets are common now know to get the kids inside when this kind of shooting starts.

Such use of joy bullets has become quite widespread. While such behavior is generally banned (and the ban enforced) in Europe, in the rest of the world many injuries still result from falling bullets because the cops dont bother with this sort of misbehavior. Even some cities in America have a problem with this, quite illegal, practice. In some parts of Latin America there are even more guns and fewer police available to try and halt the joy bullets. Because there are relatively few injuries from joy bullets (compared to fireworks) the dangers from falling bullets tends to be given little publicity. That is changing but slowly.

What probably made more people aware of this problem was the heavy losses from these falling objects during World War II. This was because for the first time a lot of anti-aircraft guns were used around densely populated urban areas in Europe and Asia. The result was thousands of casualties from what were, at first, mysterious metal objects falling silently from the sky. The British later estimated that some 25 percent of civilian casualties from German World War II bombing attacks on their cities were from this sort of friendly fire. That is, British anti-aircraft shells eventually fell to earth and caused property damage and casualties.

Americans had a similar experience. Most of the civilian casualties from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were from American anti-aircraft shells and bullets falling back to earth. A lot of the anti-aircraft guns used to defend Pearl Harbor were .50 caliber (12.7mm) machine-guns and these 50 gram (nearly two ounces) bullets will kill you if they drop on your head and injure you if they hit any other body part. The 12.7mm projectiles are much heavier than rifle bullets, which will also kill or injure you if one drops on your head and hits the right spot. Kids are more vulnerable to this sort of thing. Shell fragments often weigh a kilogram (several pounds) and have sharp edges as well.

In Iraq, during the 1990s, there were instances of anti-aircraft missiles falling back to earth intact inside cities or towns. Since these things weigh several tons, they hit like a bomb. Normally the missiles are supposed to self-destruct (explode) if they don't find a target, but even if they do that there are still thousands of fragments that fall back to earth. Some of these missile fragments weigh five kilograms (11 pounds) or more. Get hit by one of these and you are dead. Large objects coming down will damage buildings and vehicles. Most explosions, be they roadside bombs, smart bombs, artillery shells, or missiles, toss heavy objects into the air. This stuff comes down somewhere and if someone is in the way they become a casualty.

Its not just the falling bullets that are a health threat. In some parts of the world a massive use of fireworks in a short period of time can cause another problem: black powder smog. These huge clouds of unhealthy explosives residue suspended in the air can be so bad that in some cases local airport operations have been suspended for a while. In some areas, the manufacture of fireworks is unregulated (not by design) and some of the amateur rockets and such contain a kilogram (2.2 pounds) or more of black powder. Fortunately, black powder is a slow burning and not-very-powerful explosive, so terrorists generally avoid it. Industrial and military explosives are much more effective at killing people. But, in a pinch, some of that fireworks grade black powder will do. Meanwhile, what goes up must come down, often with calamitous effect.
The government has become less insistent about not needing foreign troops in Iraq. This is because of the increasingly aggressive and autonomous behavior of the Iran-backed Shia militias that are assisting the army in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). The Shia militias are also taking control of territory in urban and rural areas, displacing the police and local government. Now the Iraq government sees the American troops as saviors. At the end of 2015 there were several thousand American troops already in Iraq and more (most of them Special Forces) on the way. The government has apparently made it clear to Iran (which is very hostile to U.S. forces in Iraq) that some American troops are essential. The presence of American troops also makes it less likely that Iran will attempt anything too ambitious (like invading or backing a takeover by Shia militias) and everyone knows that. Most Iraqis are more concerned with Iranian meddling than anything the Americans might do. At the same time Iraqis are wary of the other Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia. For example the Saudi ambassador to Iraq recently commented that the Iran backed Shia militias in Iraq should stand aside and let the Iraqi Army deal with ISIL. That comment was widely condemned by Iraqi Shia clerics and politicians.

In Iraq over a thousand Western troops, many of them special operations (Special Forces, SEALs and other commandos), are providing training and advisory assistance to Iraqi forces. To get the most out of this, especially when special ops forces are involved, the effort is directed towards the best local troops. Experience has shown the Kurds and Iraqi Arab special operations troops benefit the most from this training and do so more quickly than less trained and experienced troops. This comes with some risks, mainly because this training is often done in a combat zone and the advisory aspect is often done in combat. In both these cases there are many instances where the trainers themselves come under fire. While the trainers are not there to fight they are armed and allowed to defend themselves when necessary. Unofficially the trainers are allowed to get involved in situations where their trainees are in great danger and the intervention of the trainers would be useful, and much appreciated by the trainees. This is allowed unofficially because there is risk of trainers being killed or wounded. This causes political problems back home where politicians have pledged to provide combat trainers but no combat troops. While some trainers have been killed or wounded during front line training there is always the risk of there are too many casualties among the foreign trainers politicians and media back home would make an issue out of it. Same with Iraqi politicians and media, who are insistent that there be no foreign combat troops in Iraq. Armed trainers are tolerated, but not if they regularly engage in combat.

Meanwhile American officials talk of driving ISIL out of Mosul and Raqqa soon, as in by mid-2016, while some senior Iraqi officials openly doubt that Mosul will be liberated this year at all. A lot of Iraqis still doubt the capabilities of their armed forces and are more afraid of the Iran-backed Shia militias that openly call for a religious dictatorship in Iraq. So while the Kurds report that they have surrounded Mosul from the north and are ready for the final battle the Iraqi government forces south of the city are pointing out that they have to keep an eye on ISIL as well as their allies the Iran-backed Shia militias.

At the end of 2015 Iraq declared Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province (which is most of western Iraq) back under government control. Despite that declaration Iraqi troops are still slowly moving through parts of the city where ISIL planted lots of booby-traps and landmines. These explosive devices were meant to punish the disloyal (to ISIL) population of the city and cause maximum losses to advancing troops and Shia militia. The militias are letting the soldiers use their training and special equipment to find and clear the explosives. Meanwhile Iraqi troops have moved past Ramadi and are advancing deeper into territory controlled by ISIL for a year or more. So far ISIL counterattacks have slowed but not stopped this advance. ISIL has to stop this advance or it will find its Iraq and Syrian territories cut off from each other. This would be a major problem for ISIL and make the Islamic terrorists easier to defeat. Many ISIL members are sensing this danger and desertions are up while veteran troops in contact with ISIL find the enemy less effective and apparently demoralized. ISIL is depending more and more on suicide bombings to demoralize and dissuade the Iraqi troops and militias. This is not working as the troops and militias have learned to be more vigilant and decisive about detecting and halting (by killing the terrorist) these attacks.

The continued operations in Ramadi have not delayed the efforts to drive ISIL out of Mosul. ISIL has controlled the city since June 2014 and most (all but about 800,000) of the original three million inhabitants have fled. Nearly all those still in Mosul are openly hostile to ISIL, which is suffering from increasingly frequent and accurate air attacks. This is apparently the result of a more effective informant network in the city. Government forces south of the city and Kurdish troops (and non-Moslem militias) north of the city are preparing for the final attack, which is now supposed to take place in a few months. ISIL is most concerned with the Kurdish advance from the north because the Kurds have long had American air support. As more U.S. aircraft have arrived in the region, along with more American Special Forces to work with the Kurds, the Kurdish forces have become ever more deadly. In the last week ISIL made an attempt to slow the Kurdish advance and failed, suffering nearly a thousand casualties (most of them dead) in the process. The Kurds are more vulnerable when they advance but because so many of the Kurds have years of combat experience and lots of U.S. training it is difficult to kill or wound enough Kurds to stop these movements. The Kurds are concerned about keeping their casualties low. This is good for morale, preserves the experienced fighters and recognizes the fact the Kurds have limited (compared to the Iraqi Army and Shia militias) manpower and want to conserve it.

A side benefit of the recent ISIL attacks on the Kurds was the capture of many wounded (and unwounded) ISIL fighters. Many of these men, once they realize that their wounds will be tended and they wont be executed or tortured, talk freely to Kurdish and American interrogators. They report that ISIL is having more problems with desertions in Mosul and has been carrying out more public executions of ISIL fighters caught trying to leave. Some of the recent executions included mid-level ISIL leaders who sought to flee what many consider a hopeless situation.

The advance on Mosul will find two types of American support critical for making the operation a success and keeping Iraqi casualties down. Reporters were not surprised to hear that Iraqi officers were glad to see the return of American air support, and in a big way. Many of these battalion and brigade commanders had started their careers after 2003 when American air support was common and greatly missed it after Iraqi politicians refused to let the American continue providing it after 2011. But to the surprise of foreign journalists Iraqi commanders also praised the return of American electronic warfare aircraft, especially those with the ability to selectively listen in on enemy wireless communications and, if needed, quickly jam it. With this capability Iraqi intel officers and commanders could listen to the enemy communications in real-time and at any point ask for it to be jammed. This made the enemy vulnerable because the army was listening in no matter what wireless communications was used and could quickly jam it if that seemed more advantageous for the army. To ensure that Iraqi forces make the most of the U.S. air support several hundred additional American trainers are on the way to make sure commanders and key subordinates know how to best use the air support.

The Iranian Menace

Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the head of the Iran backed Shia militias in Iraq has said publicly that if Iran ordered him to overthrow the Iraqi government he would do so. This confirms what Iraqi leaders have long feared. The Shia militias are supposed to be under the control of the Iraqi government, if only because the militia members are paid by the government. Yet the Shia militias often refuse orders from the government and are demanding more money while refusing to account for how they spend it. Abu Mahdi al Muhandis is also very vocal about his belief that ISIL is the invention of the United States and secretly supported by the Americans as a way to weaken Islam. Supporters of the ISIL is American theory point to the way Ramadi was largely destroyed during the battle to retake it and it was found that there were only about 600 ISIL defenders killed. Most of the damage was done by American aerial bombs. Fighting continues in some parts of Ramadi where a dozen or more small (ten or so men) groups of ISIL fighters continue to fight. Iraqi police have been questioning civilians still in Ramadi and have compiled a list of the locals who collaborated with ISIL. Nearly 200 of these suspects have been found and arrested so far.

The U.S. also has a problem with the terror tactics used by the Iran backed Shia militias because they have a take no prisoners policy and will even execute (often by beheading) ISIL leaders (including women) they capture. The U.S. feels that it would be better to interrogate all ISIL prisoners and Iraqi military intelligence officials agree. So do some Iranian military advisors. But the Iran backed Iraqi militias depend on enthusiasm and fierce hatred of ISIL to make up for lack of military training and experience. This inexperience and lack of discipline can be dangerous for nearby Iraqi Army troops. Sunni politicians complain that the Shia militias freely murder any Sunnis they perceive as a threat to Shia domination of Iraq. These victims include Sunni clerics who have nothing to do with Islamic terrorists but are simply popular. Most Sunni politicians are also targets.

ISIL Works On Plan B

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. 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 valuable as Libya.

One reason ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is still active and in control of large chunks of Iraq and Syria after two years is because they have paid attention to logistics (getting supplies) and finance (finding ways to pay for the supplies.) ISIL succeeded because they had plenty of qualified and experienced administrators willing to get the job done. This came about because for centuries the Sunni minority in what is now Iraq ran the largely Shia area. For most of the last four centuries the area was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Sunni Turks had taken what is now modern Iraq from Shia Iran and did not trust the Shia Arabs to run things. The Sunni Arab minority in the area was another matter as this group was always better educated and more prosperous than the Shias and tended to run Baghdad and areas to the south no matter what empire was in charge. So the Turks had these Sunni Arabs administer this part of their empire. When the Ottoman Empire fell in 1918 the British took over, looked around and decided to leave the Sunni Arabs in charge. In 1932 Iraq became independent as a constitutional monarchy but the king, most army officers and senior officials were Sunni Arabs and largely controlled the new Iraq. But after destroying the constitutional monarch in 1958 and ruling Iraq as a Sunni Arab dictatorship until 2003 the Iraqi Sunnis are desperately trying to get their power back. They are betting everything on ISIL and a growing number of Iraqi Sunni Arabs see that as a bad bet.

The Wisdom Of The Ancient Kings

Jordan believes that ISIL can be defeated militarily rather quickly. Although Jordan is poor (no oil and only 6.5 million people) its leadership has always been the most bi-cultural (comfortable with the West as well as with Islamic culture) Arab government in the region. Jordan was one of the first Arab states to establish good relations with Israel. While a monarchy, its current king is Western educated but still able to handle the tribal politics and religious conservatives he rules over. Jordan has some of the best Arab soldiers in the region. Jordanian F-16s provided air support in Anbar and Syria. After ISIL burned to death a Jordanian pilot in early 2015 the Jordanians greatly increased the number of bombing missions their air force carries out and expanded those operations into Iraq. Some of the pro-government (or just anti-ISIL) Sunni tribes in Western Iraq have kinsmen in Jordan so providing air support is something of a tribal obligation. Jordan also warns that defeating ISIL in battle is easy but eliminating the tradition of Islamic terrorism is much more difficult. The Jordanian king comes from an ancient (descended from the prophet) and distinguished family that has had centuries of experience dealing with the violent religious conservatism that regularly erupts into widespread death and destruction. The king, and many Jordanians, would like this to end, but knows that it wont be easy or soon.

January 12, 2016: Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) boasted that the IRGC was responsible for training (and often recruiting, arming and paying) 200,000 fighters in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. At least a quarter of these are in Syria, followed by Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Pakistan and Afghanistan were not happy with the IRGC publicly admitting that Iran has sponsored local (and often illegal) Shia militias. Iran had to do some diplomatic fence mending over that. Jafaris comments confirmed Iraqi suspicions that Iran was indeed serious about gaining more control in Iraq in any way it can.

In northern Iraq four Turkish F-16s and two helicopter gunships destroyed three PKK camps discovered by Turkish UAVs that now patrol the area regularly. Turks have also noted that ISIL is something of an ally in the fighting against Kurdish nationalists. Thus the recent ISIL attacks inside Turkey tend to be against foreign tourists, Turkish Kurds or refugees from Syria. Given that ISIL leadership is dominated by Iraqis who once served in the Saddam government, this strategy makes sense. Many Iraqi families had served the Turkish Empire for centuries and know how the Turks think. Nevertheless most Turks also realize that ISIL was founded to build a new Arab Empire that would rule the Turks, not be ruled by them. There is agreement on one subject; the Kurds in the region must not be allowed to units and create a Kurdish state.

Two U.S. Navy coastal patrol boats and ten sailors manning them were seized by armed Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf in an area between Iraq and Iran. The Americans were accused of being in Iranian territorial waters. The American boats and sailors were released a day later but the U.S. Navy has not yet explained how this improbable event actually took place. The Iranian supreme leader (the unelected cleric who has the final say in everything) later publically praised the Iranian troops who seized the U.S. boats and declared the incident a great victory for Iran.

January 11, 2016: In Baghdad three American contractors (two men and a woman) were apparently kidnapped from a club that served alcohol. Three were American citizens. The two men were originally from Iraq and the woman from Egypt. The government concluded that the three were taken by criminals who would ransom them or sell them to Islamic terrorists. So far there has been no known ransom demand. Many locals believe Shia militias were responsible.

January 10, 2016: In Mosul American warplanes used two 908 kg smart bombs to destroy a bank used by ISIL to store cash and pay its staff. Video of the strike showed thousands of bits of paper (most of it cash) in the air after the explosions. The U.S. later reported that ISIL lost several million dollars of cash in this one attack and that there have been similar strikes elsewhere. ISIL deserters have been reporting a growing number of ISIL fighters, especially the foreigners, have been deserting because of pay cuts or long delays in getting paid.

January 9, 2016: Iraq repeated its demand that Turkey withdraw all its troops from a base north of Mosul. Turkey insists out that their soldiers were there to help Iraqi regain control over a quarter of their territory they do not control (because of ISIL). The Turks have had a training camp there to train Kurdish and Sunni Arab militiamen but only had permission from the autonomous Kurdish government in the north. Like much of what the Kurds up there do, the Iraqi government just ignores it. In early December Turkey sent more troops to this camp along with several armored vehicles. Iraqi media chose to depict this as a Turkish invasion and the government joined on condemning the Turks even though this was all about increasing security against possible ISIL attack. The Turks also point out that the day before Turkish troops in the Mosul camp defeated an ISIL attack and killed 18 of the Islamic terrorists. The Iraqi government doesnt care about that. It wants the Turks out but is not able to force the issue and that is part of the problem here.

January 6, 2016: American officials announced that they believe air strikes in Syria and Iraq killed at least 2,500 ISIL members in December. The growing number of ISIL deserters provides more inside information on what it happening in ISIL controlled territory and the deserters confirm that the increasingly effective air strikes, which are apparently because of more local informants and relaxed ROE (Rules of Engagement that now ignore the use of human shields). The aerial bombings have caused a lot more ISIL casualties. That and the reduced pay (or no pay at all) and use of public executions for deserters who are caught (or ISIL simply suspected of planning to leave) is driving more ISIL fighters and support personnel away. That is a major reason why ISIL has lost, so far, 40 percent of the territory it seized in 2014. Over a third of ISIL oil production had been destroyed and other ISIL income sources were also under attack in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. French officials believe that over 22,000 Islamic terrorists (mostly ISIL) have been killed in Syria and Iraq since mid-2014. Despite that the French believe that ISIL still have over 30,000 active personnel in Iraq and Syria. Most of these, however, are tied up with security (and an increasingly troublesome resistance) and support functions (supplies, finance and other essentials that even Islamic terrorists have to deal with). Overall there were 69,000 dead (down 24 percent from 91,000in 2014) for the Iraq and Syria in 2015, mainly because of ISIL.
Wellesbourne Airfield

In Shakespeare Speaks, BBC Learning English, has joined forces with The Open University, to bring the language of William Shakespeare to life for English language learners and for anyone who wants to know more about Shakespeares life, times and his words.

The series is part of a pan-BBC festival marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death. A wide range of celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon are also planned.

Each episode focuses on a specific phrase to tell a story, with the characters developing and their lives intertwining over the 20weeks. Real-life examples of the phrases in modern and popular use give additional context to learners.

The series started on Friday 22nd January and each new episode will go live every Friday for 20 weeks and will be available on demand and via podcasts.
Wellesbourne Airfield

Stars of screen and the page are stepping up to make the ninth Stratford Literary Festival the biggest ever.

As the eyes of the world are turned on Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare 400 celebrations in April, the Literary Festival is putting on a packed programme that confirms Stratford as the most significant cultural towns in the world.

The Herald was given an exclusive peek at the programme ahead of tickets going on sale on Monday, 1 February.

Heading a line up of over 100 events this year will be the naturalist and Springwatch presenter, Chris Packham, launching his new autobiography; multi-million selling writer Julia Donaldson performing her favourite stories; Masterchefs John Torode and champion of the high street, Mary Portas; Coast presenter Alice Roberts will be exploring the Celts, one of the most mysterious ancient civilisations, and music broadcaster Paul Gambuccini will describe the traumas of being under suspicion in Operation Yewtree. Veteran writer Hunter Davies will share memories of growing up in Cumbria, and journalist and broadcaster, John McCarthy will be giving his personal view of events in the Middle East 25 years after his release as a hostage.

The programme includes an extensive selection of fiction with Costa First Novel winner Andrew Hurley, Pulitzer prize-winner Rod Norland, former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis with her first novel, and Man Booker Prize Winning author, Howard Jacobson.

See Thursdays arts pages for more news about the line-up and activities taking place at during the festival, which runs from 24th April to 1st May.
Magee attracted interest from Manchester United and Aston Villa as a youngster, but a string of bad injuries saw him opt for a move abroad in a bid to prove himself.

After a prolific three years at Rockhurst University in Missouri, Magee headed to Iceland where he played for UMF Tindastoll before he was snapped up by professional top-flight side Fjolnir.

It is a surprising move from Town and one that has come about thanks to midfielder Jack Roberts, who is a close friend of Magees.

Hes coming in out of the blue, said Town boss Carl Adams.

Hes looked very good in training. He will work hard for us and run the channels.

We certainly need the bodies and the door is open for him.

Adams is likely to hand Magee his debut at Histon on Saturday.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Opdivo (nivolumab) in combination with Yervoy (ipilimumab) for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type and BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma.1 This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival (PFS).1 Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.1 This approval expands the original indication for the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma to include patients, regardless of BRAF mutational status, based on data from the Phase 3 CheckMate -067 trial, in which PFS and overall survival (OS) were co-primary endpoints.1,2

Opdivo is associated with immune-mediated: pneumonitis, colitis, hepatitis, endocrinopathies, nephritis and renal dysfunction, rash, encephalitis, other adverse reactions; infusion reactions; and embryofetal toxicity.1 Please see the Important Safety Information section below, including Boxed WARNING for Yervoy regarding immune-mediated adverse reactions.

For nearly a decade, our researchers have worked tirelessly to find treatment options that could improve outcomes for patients with late-stage melanoma, a particularly aggressive cancer, and we are incredibly proud of todays approval to expand the use of the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen to include patients with BRAF mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma. CheckMate -067 is the first Phase 3 study to observe the efficacy and safety of both Opdivo as a single-agent as well as in combination with Yervoy versus Yervoy alone, said Chris Boerner, Head of U.S. Commercial, Bristol-Myers Squibb. To make this treatment option available to more patients is truly a milestone in the fight against this deadly disease.

The FDA also expanded the use of Opdivo as a single-agent to include previously untreated BRAF mutation-positive advanced melanoma patients.1 The use of Opdivo as a single-agent in patients with BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival.1 Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.1 Opdivo was approved by the FDA in November 2015, for use in previously untreated patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma.1

Patients with metastatic melanoma historically have a very challenging disease. Recent advances in our understanding of the immune response to cancer has yielded therapies which provide meaningful responses and hope. The combination of two Immuno-Oncology treatments, nivolumab and ipilimumab, has been shown to provide these patients with a much needed improvement in progression-free survival and response rates, said Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, Chief, Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics Service, Department of Medicine and Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. This expanded approval for the nivolumab and ipilimumab regimen provides more advanced melanoma patients with an Immuno-Oncology combination treatment, and the potential for improved outcomes.

Expanded Approval Based on Efficacy Demonstrated in a Phase 3 Trial

CheckMate -067 is a Phase 3, double-blind, randomized study that evaluated the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen or Opdivo monotherapy vs. Yervoy monotherapy in patients with previously untreated advanced melanoma.1, 2 The trial evaluated previously untreated patients, including both BRAF V600 mutant and wild-type advanced melanoma, and enrolled 945 patients who were randomized to receive the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen (Opdivo 1 mg/kg plus Yervoy 3 mg/kg every 3 weeks for 4 doses followed by Opdivo 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks thereafter; n=314), Opdivo monotherapy (Opdivo 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks; n=316) or Yervoy monotherapy (Yervoy 3 mg/kg every 3 weeks for 4 doses followed by placebo every 2 weeks; n=315).1 Patients were treated until progression or unacceptable toxic effects.1 The median duration of exposure was 2.8 months (range: 1 day to 18.8 months) for patients in the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen arm with a median of four doses (range: 1 to 39 for Opdivo; 1 to 4 for Yervoy), and 6.6 months (range: 1 day to 17.3 months) duration for the Opdivo monotherapy arm with a median of 15 doses (range: 1 to 38).1,2 The co-primary endpoints were PFS and OS; the study is ongoing and patients continue to be followed for OS.2

Results from the trial demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in PFS in patients with advanced melanoma treated with the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen (p<0.0001) and with Opdivo as a single-agent (p<0.0001) vs. Yervoy monotherapy.1 Median PFS was 11.5 months (95% CI: 8.9-16.7) for the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen and 6.9 months (95% CI: 4.3-9.5) for Opdivo monotherapy, vs. 2.9 months (95% CI: 2.8-3.4) for Yervoy monotherapy.1 The Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen demonstrated a 58% reduction in the risk of disease progression vs. Yervoy (HR: 0.42; 95% CI: 0.34-0.51; p<0.0001), while Opdivo monotherapy demonstrated a 43% risk reduction vs. Yervoy monotherapy (HR: 0.57; 95% CI: 0.47-0.69; p<0.0001).1

In addition, the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen and Opdivo monotherapy demonstrated higher confirmed objective response rates (ORR; 50% and 40%; p<0.0001, respectively) vs. Yervoy monotherapy (14%).1 The percentage of patients with a complete response was 8.9%, 8.5% and 1.9%, favoring the Regimen and Opdivo monotherapy over Yervoy monotherapy.1 Partial responses were seen in 41% of patients treated with the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen, 31% of patients treated with Opdivo monotherapy, and 12% of patients treated with Yervoy monotherapy. The Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen delivered durable responses, with three of four (76%) patients experiencing an ongoing response of at least six months (range: 1.2+ to 15.8+).1 Of patients in the Opdivo monotherapy and Yervoy monotherapy arms, 74% and 63% experienced an ongoing response of at least six months, respectively (ranges: 1.3+ to 14.6+; 1.0+ to 13.8+).1

The melanoma community is excited to see the ongoing developments in research from the pharmaceutical industry, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, who made the first approved combination of two Immuno-Oncology treatments available to more patients fighting this disease, said Tim Turnham, Executive Director, Melanoma Research Foundation. Todays expanded approvals continue to bring new treatment options to patients, and demonstrate the ongoing impact of Immuno-Oncology research.

In CheckMate -067, serious adverse reactions (73% and 37%), adverse reactions leading to discontinuation (43% and 14%), or to dosing delays (55% and 28%), and Grade 3 or 4 adverse reactions (72% and 44%) all occurred more frequently in the Opdivo + Yervoy arm relative to the Opdivo arm.1 No overall differences in safety or efficacy were reported between elderly and younger patients.1 The most common adverse reactions leading to discontinuation of the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen relative to Opdivo as a single-agent were diarrhea (8% and 1.9%), colitis (8% and 0.6%), increased ALT (4.8% and 1.3%), increased AST (4.5% and. 0.6%), and pneumonitis (1.9% and 0.3%).1 The most frequent (10%) serious adverse reactions in the Opdivo + Yervoy arm and the Opdivo arm, respectively, were diarrhea (13% and 2.6%), colitis (10% and 1.6%) and pyrexia (10% and 0.6%).1 The most common adverse reactions (20%) reported in patients receiving the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen relative to Opdivo as a single-agent were fatigue (59% and 53%), rash (53% and 40%), diarrhea (52% and 31%), and nausea (40% and 28%).1 Pyrexia (37%), vomiting (28%) and dyspnea (20%) were also reported in 20% of patients receiving the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen.1

About the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen

The scientific rationale for targeting the immune system via dual immune checkpoint inhibition in cancer has formed the basis of a novel approach to the treatment of metastatic melanoma.2

Cancer cells may exploit regulatory pathways, such as checkpoint pathways, to hide from the immune system and shield the tumor from immune attack.2 Opdivo and Yervoy are immune checkpoint inhibitors that target separate, distinct and complementary checkpoint pathways (PD-1 and CTLA-4).1 The mechanism of action involves dual immune checkpoint inhibition resulting in increased anti-tumor activity.1 Yervoy blockade of CTLA-4 has been shown to augment T-cell activation and proliferation, while Opdivo restores the active T-cell response directed at the tumor.1,3 This may affect healthy cells and result in immune-mediated adverse reactions, which can be severe and potentially fatal.1

Bristol-Myers Squibb has a broad, global development program to study the combination of Opdivo and Yervoy consisting of more than 14 trials in which more than 2,000 patients have been enrolled worldwide through September 2015.

About Opdivo

Cancer cells may exploit regulatory pathways, such as checkpoint pathways, to hide from the immune system and shield the tumor from immune attack.3 Opdivos broad global development program is based on Bristol-Myers Squibbs understanding of the biology behind Immuno-Oncology. This scientific expertise serves as the basis for the Opdivo development program, which includes a broad range of Phase 3 clinical trials across a variety of tumor types. To date, the Opdivo clinical development program has enrolled more than 18,000 patients.

Opdivo was the first PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibitor to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world in July 2014, and currently has regulatory approval in 46 countries including the United States, Japan, and in the European Union.

About Metastatic Melanoma

Melanoma is a form of skin cancer characterized by the uncontrolled growth of pigment-producing cells (melanocytes) located in the skin.3 Metastatic melanoma is the deadliest form of the disease, and occurs when cancer spreads beyond the surface of the skin to other organs.3 The incidence of melanoma has been increasing for at least 30 years.3 Approximately 73,870 melanoma cases were estimated to be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2015.3 Melanoma is mostly curable when treated in its early stages.3 However, in its late stages, 5-year and 10-year survival rates in the U.S. average 15-20% and 10-15%, respectively.3

About Bristol-Myers Squibbs Patient Support Programs

Bristol-Myers Squibb remains committed to helping patients through treatment with our medicines. For support and assistance, patients and physicians may call 1-855-OPDIVO-1. This number offers one-stop access to a range of support services for patients and healthcare professionals alike.

About Bristol-Myers Squibbs Access Support

Bristol-Myers Squibb is committed to helping patients access the Opdivo + Yervoy Regimen and offers BMS Access Support to support patients and providers in gaining access. BMS Access Support, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Reimbursement Services program, is designed to support access to BMS medicines and expedite time to therapy through reimbursement support including Benefit Investigations, Prior Authorization Facilitation, Appeals Assistance, and assistance for patient out-of-pocket costs. BMS Access Support assists patients and providers throughout the treatment journey  whether it is at initial diagnosis or in support of transition from a clinical trial. More information about our reimbursement support services can be obtained by calling 1-800-861-0048 or by visiting www.bmsaccesssupport.com. For healthcare providers seeking specific reimbursement information, please visit the BMS Access Support Product section by visiting www.bmsaccesssupportopdivo.com.

INDICATIONS

OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 wild-type unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

OPDIVO (nivolumab) as a single agent is indicated for the treatment of patients with BRAF V600 mutation-positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon demonstration of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

OPDIVO (nivolumab), in combination with YERVOY (ipilimumab), is indicated for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on progression-free survival. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon demonstration of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. Patients with EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations should have disease progression on FDA-approved therapy for these aberrations prior to receiving OPDIVO.

OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who have received prior anti-angiogenic therapy.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

WARNING: IMMUNE-MEDIATED ADVERSE REACTIONS

YERVOY can result in severe and fatal immune-mediated adverse reactions. These immune-mediated reactions may involve any organ system; however, the most common severe immune-mediated adverse reactions are enterocolitis, hepatitis, dermatitis (including toxic epidermal necrolysis), neuropathy, and endocrinopathy. The majority of these immune-mediated reactions initially manifested during treatment; however, a minority occurred weeks to months after discontinuation of YERVOY.

Assess patients for signs and symptoms of enterocolitis, dermatitis, neuropathy, and endocrinopathy and evaluate clinical chemistries including liver function tests (LFTs), adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) level, and thyroid function tests at baseline and before each dose.

Permanently discontinue YERVOY and initiate systemic high-dose corticosteroid therapy for severe immune-mediated reactions.

Immune-Mediated Pneumonitis

Immune-mediated pneumonitis, including fatal cases, occurred with OPDIVO treatment. Across the clinical trial experience with solid tumors, fatal immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred with OPDIVO. In addition, in Checkmate 069, there were six patients who died without resolution of abnormal respiratory findings. Monitor patients for signs with radiographic imaging and symptoms of pneumonitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater pneumonitis. Permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 and withhold until resolution for Grade 2. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 6% (25/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Fatal (n=1), Grade 3 (n=6), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 1.8% (14/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2) and Grade 2 (n=12). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 3.4% (10/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=3). In Checkmate 025, pneumonitis, including interstitial lung disease, occurred in 5% (21/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 18% (73/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 4.4% (18/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=1).

Immune-Mediated Colitis

Immune-mediated colitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of colitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 (of more than 5 days duration), 3, or 4 colitis. As a single agent, withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 or recurrent colitis upon restarting OPDIVO. When administered with YERVOY, withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 or recurrent colitis upon restarting OPDIVO. In Checkmate 069 and 067, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 56% (228/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 26% (107/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=2), Grade 3 (n=60), Grade 2 (n=32), and Grade 1 (n=13). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 31% (242/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 4.1% (32/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=20), Grade 2 (n=10), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 17% (50/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated colitis occurred in 2.4% (7/287) of patients: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, diarrhea or colitis occurred in 25% (100/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 32% (126/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated diarrhea or colitis occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=1).

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal (diarrhea of 7 stools above baseline, fever, ileus, peritoneal signs; Grade 3-5) immune-mediated enterocolitis occurred in 34 (7%) patients. Across all YERVOY-treated patients in that study (n=511), 5 (1%) developed intestinal perforation, 4 (0.8%) died as a result of complications, and 26 (5%) were hospitalized for severe enterocolitis.

Immune-Mediated Hepatitis

Immune-mediated hepatitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for abnormal liver tests prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater transaminase elevations. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 13% (51/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 4 (n=8), Grade 3 (n=37), Grade 2 (n=5), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 2.3% (18/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 4 (n=3), Grade 3 (n=11), and Grade 2 (n=4). In Checkmate 057, one patient (0.3%) developed immune-mediated hepatitis. In Checkmate 025, there was an increased incidence of liver test abnormalities compared to baseline in AST (33% vs 39%), alkaline phosphatase (32% vs 32%), ALT (22% vs 31%), and total bilirubin (9% vs 3.5%) in the OPDIVO and everolimus arms, respectively. Immune-mediated hepatitis requiring systemic immunosuppression occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=5) and Grade 2 (n=1).

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal hepatotoxicity (AST or ALT elevations >5x the ULN or total bilirubin elevations >3x the ULN; Grade 3-5) occurred in 8 (2%) patients, with fatal hepatic failure in 0.2% and hospitalization in 0.4%.

Immune-Mediated Dermatitis

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe, life-threatening, or fatal immune-mediated dermatitis (eg, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, or rash complicated by full thickness dermal ulceration, or necrotic, bullous, or hemorrhagic manifestations; Grade 3-5) occurred in 13 (2.5%) patients. 1 (0.2%) patient died as a result of toxic epidermal necrolysis. 1 additional patient required hospitalization for severe dermatitis.

Immune-Mediated Neuropathies

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, 1 case of fatal Guillain-Barre syndrome and 1 case of severe (Grade 3) peripheral motor neuropathy were reported.

Immune-Mediated Endocrinopathies

Hypophysitis, adrenal insufficiency, thyroid disorders, and type 1 diabetes mellitus can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of hypophysitis, signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency during and after treatment, thyroid function prior to and periodically during treatment, and hyperglycemia. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater hypophysitis. Withhold for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hypophysitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Administer hormone-replacement therapy for hypothyroidism. Initiate medical management for control of hyperthyroidism. Administer insulin for type 1 diabetes. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hyperglycemia.

In Checkmate 069 and 067, hypophysitis occurred in 9% (36/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=8), Grade 2 (n=25), and Grade 1 (n=3). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypophysitis occurred in 0.9% (7/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 025, hypophysitis occurred in 0.5% (2/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1) and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 069 and 067, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 5% (21/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=7), Grade 2 (n=11), and Grade 1 (n=2). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 1% (8/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=5), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 057, 0.3% (1/287) of OPDIVO-treated patients developed adrenal insufficiency. In Checkmate 025, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 2.0% (8/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=4), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 069 and 067, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis occurred in 22% (89/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=6), Grade 2 (n=47), and Grade 1 (n=36). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 8% (34/407) of patients: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=13). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis occurred in 9% (73/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=37), Grade 1 (n=35). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 4.4% (35/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=12), and Grade 1 (n=22). In Checkmate 057, Grade 1 or 2 hypothyroidism, including thyroiditis, occurred in 7% (20/287) and elevated thyroid stimulating hormone occurred in 17% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 1 or 2 hyperthyroidism occurred in 1.4% (4/287) of patients. In Checkmate 025, thyroid disease occurred in 11% (43/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO, including one Grade 3 event, and in 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Hypothyroidism/thyroiditis occurred in 8% (33/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=17), and Grade 1 (n=14). Hyperthyroidism occurred in 2.5% (10/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 2 (n=5) and Grade 1 (n=5). In Checkmate 069 and 067, diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 1.5% (6/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=3), Grade 3 (n=1), Grade 2 (n=1), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=3), and Grade 1 (n=1). In Checkmate 025, hyperglycemic adverse events occurred in 9% (37/406) patients. Diabetes mellitus or diabetic ketoacidosis occurred in 1.5% (6/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=3), Grade 2 (n=2), and Grade 1 (n=1).

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, severe to life-threatening immune-mediated endocrinopathies (requiring hospitalization, urgent medical intervention, or interfering with activities of daily living; Grade 3-4) occurred in 9 (1.8%) patients. All 9 patients had hypopituitarism, and some had additional concomitant endocrinopathies such as adrenal insufficiency, hypogonadism, and hypothyroidism. 6 of the 9 patients were hospitalized for severe endocrinopathies.

Immune-Mediated Nephritis and Renal Dysfunction

Immune-mediated nephritis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Monitor patients for elevated serum creatinine prior to and periodically during treatment. For Grade 2 or 3 increased serum creatinine, withhold and administer corticosteroids; if worsening or no improvement occurs, permanently discontinue. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 4 serum creatinine elevation and permanently discontinue. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 2.2% (9/407) of patients: Grade 4 (n=4), Grade 3 (n=3), and Grade 2 (n=2). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, nephritis and renal dysfunction of any grade occurred in 5% (40/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 0.8% (6/787) of patients: Grade 3 (n=4) and Grade 2 (n=2). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 immune-mediated renal dysfunction occurred in 0.3% (1/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, renal injury occurred in 7% (27/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 3.0% (12/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 3.2% (13/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 5 (n=1), Grade 4 (n=1), Grade 3 (n=5), and Grade 2 (n=6).

Immune-Mediated Rash

Immune-mediated rash can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Severe rash (including rare cases of fatal toxic epidermal necrolysis) occurred in the clinical program of OPDIVO. Monitor patients for rash. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 rash. Withhold for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4. In Checkmate 069 and 067, immune-mediated rash occurred in 22.6% (92/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 3 (n=15), Grade 2 (n=31), and Grade 1 (n=46). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, immune-mediated rash occurred in 9% (72/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=7), Grade 2 (n=15), and Grade 1 (n=50). In Checkmate 057, immune-mediated rash occurred in 6% (17/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO including four Grade 3 cases. In Checkmate 025, rash occurred in 28% (112/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 36% (143/397) of patients receiving everolimus. Immune-mediated rash, defined as a rash treated with systemic or topical corticosteroids, occurred in 7% (30/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=4), Grade 2 (n=7), and Grade 1 (n=19).

Immune-Mediated Encephalitis

Immune-mediated encephalitis can occur with OPDIVO treatment. Withhold OPDIVO in patients with new-onset moderate to severe neurologic signs or symptoms and evaluate to rule out other causes. If other etiologies are ruled out, administer corticosteroids and permanently discontinue OPDIVO for immune-mediated encephalitis. In Checkmate 067, encephalitis was identified in one patient (0.2%) receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY. In Checkmate 057, fatal limbic encephalitis occurred in one patient (0.3%) receiving OPDIVO.

Other Immune-Mediated Adverse Reactions

Based on the severity of adverse reaction, permanently discontinue or withhold treatment, administer high-dose corticosteroids, and, if appropriate, initiate hormone-replacement therapy. In < 1.0% of patients receiving OPDIVO, the following clinically significant, immune-mediated adverse reactions occurred: uveitis, pancreatitis, facial and abducens nerve paresis, demyelination, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune neuropathy, Guillain-Barre syndrome, hypopituitarism, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, gastritis, duodenitis, and sarcoidosis. Across clinical trials of OPDIVO as a single agent administered at doses of 3 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg, additional clinically significant, immune-mediated adverse reactions were identified: motor dysfunction, vasculitis, and myasthenic syndrome.

Infusion Reactions

Severe infusion reactions have been reported in <1.0% of patients in clinical trials of OPDIVO. Discontinue OPDIVO in patients with Grade 3 or 4 infusion reactions. Interrupt or slow the rate of infusion in patients with Grade 1 or 2. In Checkmate 069 and 067, infusion- related reactions occurred in 2.5% (10/407) of patients receiving OPDIVO with YERVOY: Grade 2 (n=6) and Grade 1 (n=4). In Checkmate 037, 066, and 067, Grade 2 infusion related reactions occurred in 2.7% (21/787) of patients receiving OPDIVO: Grade 3 (n=2), Grade 2 (n=8), and Grade 1 (n=11). In Checkmate 057, Grade 2 infusion reactions requiring corticosteroids occurred in 1.0% (3/287) of patients receiving OPDIVO. In Checkmate 025, hypersensitivity/infusion-related reactions occurred in 6% (25/406) of patients receiving OPDIVO and 1.0% (4/397) of patients receiving everolimus.

Embryo-fetal Toxicity

Based on their mechanisms of action, OPDIVO and YERVOY can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with an OPDIVO- or YERVOY- containing regimen and for at least 5 months after the last dose of OPDIVO.

Lactation

It is not known whether OPDIVO or YERVOY is present in human milk. Because many drugs, including antibodies, are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from an OPDIVO-containing regimen, advise women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment. Advise women to discontinue nursing during treatment with YERVOY and for 3 months following the final dose.

Serious Adverse Reactions

In Checkmate 067, serious adverse reactions (73% and 37%), adverse reactions leading to permanent discontinuation (43% and 14%) or to dosing delays (55% and 28%), and Grade 3 or 4 adverse reactions (72% and 44%) all occurred more frequently in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm relative to the OPDIVO arm. The most frequent (10%) serious adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm and the OPDIVO arm, respectively, were diarrhea (13% and 2.6%), colitis (10% and 1.6%), and pyrexia (10% and 0.6%). In Checkmate 037, serious adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 42% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse drug reactions reported in 2% to <5% of patients receiving OPDIVO were abdominal pain, hyponatremia, increased aspartate aminotransferase, and increased lipase. In Checkmate 066, serious adverse reactions occurred in 36% of patients receiving OPDIVO. Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions occurred in 41% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent Grade 3 and 4 adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients receiving OPDIVO were gamma-glutamyltransferase increase (3.9%) and diarrhea (3.4%). In Checkmate 057, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients were pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, dyspnea, pleural effusion, and respiratory failure. In Checkmate 025, serious adverse reactions occurred in 47% of patients receiving OPDIVO. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in 2% of patients were acute kidney injury, pleural effusion, pneumonia, diarrhea, and hypercalcemia.

Common Adverse Reactions

In Checkmate 067, the most common (20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO plus YERVOY arm were fatigue (59%), rash (53%), diarrhea (52%), nausea (40%), pyrexia (37%), vomiting (28%), and dyspnea (20%). The most common (20%) adverse reactions in the OPDIVO arm were fatigue (53%), rash (40%), diarrhea (31%), and nausea (28%). In Checkmate 037, the most common adverse reaction (20%) reported with OPDIVO was rash (21%). In Checkmate 066, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported with OPDIVO vs dacarbazine were fatigue (49% vs 39%), musculoskeletal pain (32% vs 25%), rash (28% vs 12%), and pruritus (23% vs 12%). In Checkmate 057, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported with OPDIVO were fatigue (49%), musculoskeletal pain (36%), cough (30%), decreased appetite (29%), and constipation (23%). In Checkmate 025, the most common adverse reactions (20%) reported in patients receiving OPDIVO vs everolimus were asthenic conditions (56% vs 57%), cough (34% vs 38%), nausea (28% vs 29%), rash (28% vs 36%), dyspnea (27% vs 31%), diarrhea (25% vs 32%), constipation (23% vs 18%), decreased appetite (23% vs 30%), back pain (21% vs 16%), and arthralgia (20% vs 14%).

In a separate Phase 3 study of YERVOY 3 mg/kg, the most common adverse reactions (5%) in patients who received YERVOY at 3 mg/kg were fatigue (41%), diarrhea (32%), pruritus (31%), rash (29%), and colitis (8%).

Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information, including Boxed WARNING regarding immune-mediated adverse reactions for YERVOY.

Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information for OPDIVO.

About the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical Collaboration

In 2011, through a collaboration agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb expanded its territorial rights to develop and commercialize Opdivo globally except in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where Ono had retained all rights to the compound at the time. On July 23, 2014, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical further expanded the companies strategic collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies  as single agents and combination regimens  for patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

About Bristol-Myers Squibb

Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb, visit www.bms.com, or follow us on our social channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bmsnews

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bristol-myers-squibb

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjFf4oKibYrHae2NZ_GPS6g

Bristol-Myers Squibb Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect Bristol-Myers Squibb's business, particularly those identified in the cautionary factors discussion in Bristol-Myers Squibb's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014 in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. Bristol-Myers Squibb undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

References

1. Opdivo Prescribing Information. Opdivo U.S. Product Information. Last updated: January 23, 2016. Princeton, NJ: Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.2. Larkin J, Chiarion-Sileni V, Gonzalez R, et al. Combined nivolumab and ipilimumab or monotherapy in untreated melanoma. N Engl J Med. 2015;373(1):23-34.3. American Cancer Society. Melanoma Skin Cancer. http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003120-pdf.pdf. Updated November 10, 2015. Accessed January 20, 2016.

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Bristol-Myers Squibb Company



Media:



Jaisy Wagner Styles, 609-897-3958



Cell: 610-291-5168



[email protected]



or



Investors:



Ranya Dajani, 609-252-5330



[email protected]



Bill Szablewski, 609-252-5894



[email protected]

Source: Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
U.S. Geothermal Inc. (NYSE: HTM) announced today that it has signed a new purchase agreement (the "Purchase Agreement") with Lincoln Park Capital Fund, LLC ("LPC"), a Chicago-based institutional investor. It may provide up to $10 million of equity capital over the agreement's 30-month term.

Following the year-end, management determined it would be prudent to enter into a new LPC facility. The Company's first Purchase Agreement with LPC, was entered into on May 21, 2012 and expired in 2015. Under the new Purchase Agreement, at the company's sole discretion, the Company has the right to sell and LPC has the obligation to purchase up to $10 million of equity capital over a 30 month period subject to the conditions in the Purchase Agreement. The agreement provides for an initial sale of $650,000 of shares of common stock upon closing. Net proceeds from LPC's investments will be used to cover a portion of the cost of the recent acquisition of the Goldman Sachs ownership interest of the Raft River project, development of our geothermal projects and for general corporate purposes.

"The LPC facility will enable us to raise capital, at market prices, on an as needed basis, which further enhances our liquidity," stated Dennis Gilles, Chief Executive Officer of U.S. Geothermal Inc.

During the 30 month term of the Purchase Agreement, the Company, at its sole discretion, has the right to sell to LPC up to $10 million of its common stock, in amounts as described in the Purchase Agreement and subject to certain conditions. Under the Purchase Agreement, there are no upper limits to the price LPC may pay to purchase the Company's common stock. LPC has no right to require any sales by U.S. Geothermal, but is obligated under the agreement to purchase the Company's common stock, as U.S. Geothermal directs in its sole discretion as provided in the agreement. The purchase price of the Company shares related to any future investments will be based on the prevailing market prices of the Company's shares immediately preceding the notice of sale to LPC. LPC has agreed not to cause or engage in any manner whatsoever, any direct or indirect short selling or hedging of the Company's shares of common stock. In consideration for entering into the Purchase Agreement, the Company has issued shares of common stock to LPC as a commitment fee. The Purchase Agreement may be terminated by the Company at any time, at its sole discretion, without any cost or penalty.

A more detailed description of the purchase agreement is set forth in the Company's Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC on January 25, 2016, which the Company encourages you to carefully review.

The financing is being conducted pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement filed with the SEC. A prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus describing the terms of the financing have been filed with the SEC. Electronic copies of the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or by request from the Company at (208) 424-1027.
Europes Schengen rules are likely to be revised; Climate ripe for return to piracy in Gulf of Aden

FRANKFURT, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of critical information and insight, today announced findings from the annual top risk environments report.

The report, produced by IHS Country Risk, explores 10 of the major risk environments of 2016, with their likely impact and key indicators for change.

Four of the 10 risk hot spots for 2016 are in the Middle East, said Keerti Rajan, head of political risk analysis at IHS Country Risk. The new cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the rising threat from the Islamic State, the potential for more protests in Egypt and contract risks in Iran are all risks for businesses operating in the region.

Short summaries of the major risk environments of 2016 follow.

Iran:

In addition to a sustained risk of the US unilaterally imposing non-nuclear-related sanctions (for instance, terrorism-related), divergence among Irans political factions on the scope and pace of FDI presents high risk of contracts becoming politicised and consequently subject to review and renegotiation.

The Gulf:

The emergence of Islamic State in Saudi Arabia and a revived terrorist campaign there poses risks of the country being used as a launching pad to expand the groups activities and recruitment elsewhere in the region, especially in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Syria, Iraq:

The proxy conflicts in Iraq, Yemen and Syria are drawing Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia into more direct and overt involvement, raising the risk of limited direct confrontations between these sponsors. With the Saudi air force bombing the Iranian-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, Iran sending IRGC combat units into Iraq and Syria to fight against Turkish and Saudi militia proxies, and Russia bombing Saudi and Turkish Sunni insurgent proxies in Syria, the proxy war in the Middle East is significantly expanding.

Egypt:

Egypts military-backed government is consolidating its own power and suppressing political opposition, but ongoing failures to meet security and economic challenges would heighten the risk of protests re-emerging. At the same time, Egypts jihadist insurgency poses risks to economic recovery.

Somalia:

The onshore and maritime security environment that has contributed to a reduction in Somali-based piracy since 2012 is changing, with indicators of an increasing risk of piracy in 2016. The pirates that thrived in Somalia between 2005 and 2012 were reliant on the support of regional political leaders who were willing to provide safe havens for hijacked ships to be stored during lengthy ransom negotiations. The two conditions that led regional politicians to provide that support, namely a lack of alternative economic opportunities and a threat to their control of their territory, are currently being recreated in the Galmudug region of central Somalia.

About 60 percent of commercial shipping travelling through this historic piracy zone no longer carry privately contracted armed security personnel (PCASP) on-board due to the costs involved and perception that piracy is not a significant risk. This means that Somali pirates, who still have the technical capabilities, manpower, weaponry and financing networks to organise deep-water hijacks, may soon regain the secure ship-storage locations required to resume operations.

Argentina:

Newly elected president Mauricio Macri faces significant challenges through the first half of 2016, despite expectations of a swift improvement in the business operating environment.

Europe:

The record-high influx of refugees continues to place the EU under significant strain, with protests, inter-EU political disputes and a revision of Schengen likely in 2016. A heightened risk of terrorist attacks will add to Europes challenging outlook. Disruption to ground, rail, and marine cargo in the EU and its neighbouring countries as a direct result of the refugee crisis is likely to continue in 2016, causing delays to cargo and disruption to supply chains.

Nigeria:

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari faces a daunting series of security and economic challenges in 2016 to match some of the high expectations of him since assuming office in May 2015. Despite President Buhari giving his new security chiefs until December 2015 to finish off Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group has continued to stage regular suicide bombing attacks aimed at causing mass casualties, and the faction, led by Abubakar Shekau, is likely to receive increased support from the Islamic State. The collapse in the oil price means Buhari has greatly reduced resources at his disposal as he attempts to boost fading GDP growth

Myanmar:

The landslide victory by opposition pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) in the November 2015 election has placed Myanmar on an unchartered path towards democratic rule, but political stability depends on Suu Kyis ability to negotiate her partys co-existence with the military and the outgoing Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Russia:

As public grievances about the governments inability to maintain public services mount, Russias elites will strive to scapegoat prominent policymakers, leading to changes in key influencers and contract reviews and corruption investigations in construction, real estate, and transport among the provinces.

About IHS (www.ihs.com)

IHS (NYSE: IHS) is the leading source of insight, analytics and expertise in critical areas that shape todays business landscape. Businesses and governments in more than 140 countries around the globe rely on the comprehensive content, expert independent analysis and flexible delivery methods of IHS to make high-impact decisions and develop strategies with speed and confidence. IHS has been in business since 1959 and became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005. Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, USA, IHS is committed to sustainable, profitable growth and employs approximately 8,600 people in 32 countries around the world.

IHS is a registered trademark of IHS Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.  2016 IHS Inc. All rights reserved.

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IHS Inc.

Amanda Russo, +44 208 276 4727

+44 781 460 3420

[email protected]

Press Team, +1 303 305 8021

[email protected]

Source: IHS Inc.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Jumeirah Group, the global hotel company and a member of Dubai Holding, has signed an agreement with Select Group to manage 508 properties within Marina Gate, their flagship residential development at the gateway to Dubai Marina.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005662/en/

From Left to Right: Aboudi Asali, Gerald Lawless, Rahail Aslam, Khalid Deemas Al Suwaidi, Nasser Almur Al Zaabi (Photo: ME NewsWire)

Jumeirah Group will bring its luxury hospitality experience to the third and final tower within the Marina Gate development under its Jumeirah Living brand. The design-led luxurious living destination will include 104 serviced apartments, 389 branded residences and 15 villas and will offer an exclusive range of facilities and amenities including a temperature controlled infinity pool, a dual-level gymnasium, residents lounge and business centre.

Prominently positioned, Marina Gate residents will benefit from excellent transportation network links, being within walking distance to the tram, metro and water taxis.

Gerald Lawless, President and Group CEO, Jumeirah Group, said: We are delighted to bring our Jumeirah Living hospitality to the prestigious Marina Gate community. The Jumeirah name is synonymous with quality and service excellence, and Jumeirah Living delivers that promise in the branded residences market. Marina Gate will appeal to residents looking for a truly distinctive lifestyle and is a fantastic addition to our global hospitality portfolio.

Select Group is one of the largest privately held real estate development and investment companies in the GCC, having delivered over 3,000 homes in the last 5 years. The Marina Gate development is a timely addition to Dubai in the run-up to Expo 2020 and will be a stunning addition to the Marina skyline.

Rahail Aslam, Chief Executive Officer, Select Group, said: Jumeirah Living perfectly complements our Marina Gate development by providing residents with an unmatched opportunity for a curated lifestyle within Dubai Marina. With its unparalleled combination of location, luxury and lifestyle, this development is set to become a landmark in the vibrant Marina community.

The Jumeirah Group currently operates 22 properties worldwide, including the Grosvenor House Apartments by Jumeirah Living in London and Jumeirah Living World Trade Centre Residence in Dubai. Jumeirah Living is an outstanding hospitality experience, which combines the privacy and comfort of home with the refined services of a luxury hotel.

Jumeirah Living Marina Gate is under construction and scheduled to open in Q4 2019.

Notes to Editors:

For photos of Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts, please visit our extensive online photo library: http://media.jumeirah.com

About Jumeirah Group:

Jumeirah Group, the global luxury hotel company and a member of Dubai Holding, operates a world-class portfolio of hotels and resorts including the flagship Burj Al Arab Jumeirah. Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts manages properties in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Kuwait in the Middle East; Baku, Bodrum, Frankfurt, Istanbul, London, Mallorca (Spain) and Rome in Europe; the Maldives and Shanghai in Asia. Jumeirah Group also runs the luxury serviced residences brand Jumeirah LivingTM with properties in London and Dubai; the new contemporary lifestyle hotel brand VenuTM; the wellness brand TaliseTM; Jumeirah Restaurant Group DubaiTM; Wild Wadi WaterparkTM; The Emirates Academy of Hospitality ManagementTM; and SiriusTM, its global loyalty programme. Future openings include luxury and lifestyle hotels in China, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Oman, Russia and the UAE. www.jumeirah.com

About Select Group

Select Group has forged a solid reputation, as one of the Middle Easts most credible and respectable real estate development & investment companies, having successfully delivered in excess of 3,000 homes since inception. With over 5.5 million square feet delivered and a pipeline of 6.5 million square feet currently under construction, the Group has established itself as a multi-disciplinary, award winning property business with interests ranging from the United Arab Emirates to Europe and beyond. www.Select-Group.ae

*Source: ME NewsWire

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Select Group

Afaf Burki, +971-4-368-3355

Senior Manager, Marketing

Fax: +971-4-368-3344

E-mail: [email protected]

Visit us at www.Select-Group.ae

or

Jumeirah Group

Piers Schreiber, +971-4-364-7955

Vice President Corporate Communications & Public Affairs

Fax: +971-4-301-6655

E-mail: [email protected]

Visit us at www.jumeirah.com

Source: Select Group
The Show-Me State plays key role in National School Choice Week, the largest celebration of educational opportunity in US history.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- National School Choice Week begins today in Missouri and across the country. There are 278 events planned in the Show-Me State to raise awareness about K-12 school choice, and 16,140 events nationwide.

The events in Missouri, which are independently planned and independently funded, include everything from information sessions and open houses at schools to rallies, policy discussions, and movie screenings organized by community groups.

The mayors of Kansas City, OFallon, Ozark, Saint Joseph, Saint Charles, Saint Louis, and county leaders from Jackson and Jefferson counties have issued official proclamations recognizing January 24-30, 2016 as School Choice Week.

School Choice Week provides families in Missouri with the opportunity to research and evaluate the K-12 school choices available for their children in time for the 2016-2017 school year, said Andrew R. Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. The Week also raises awareness of the importance of providing every child with effective education options.

With a goal of raising public awareness of effective education options for children, National School Choice Week will be the largest celebration of education options in US history.

SCHOOL CHOICE OPTIONS AVAILABLE FOR MISSOURI FAMILIES

According to National School Choice Weeks organizers, families in Missouri can use the Week to look for K-12 schools for the 2016-2017 school year. Parents in the Show-Me State can choose from the following education options for their children: traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. In some parts of the state, open enrollment policies allow parents to select the best traditional public school, regardless of where the school is located.

ABOUT NATIONAL SCHOOL CHOICE WEEK

National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort spotlighting effective education options for children, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. The Week runs from January 24-30, 2016. For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005540/en/

National School Choice Week

Shelby Tankersley, 202-480-2927 ext. 820

External Relations and Communications Manager

[email protected]

Source: National School Choice Week
LONDON, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Five weeks to vote in Europe's Premier Business Awards

VOTE NOW AT http://www.businessawardseurope.com

EUROPE's biggest business competition today urges the public to get voting and choose the 'National Public Champion' for their country as the online public vote gets underway in this year's European Business Awards, sponsored by RSM.

Over 400 businesses from 32 countries have posted a video on the European Business Awards website http://www.businessawardseurope.com showcasing their success, which the public can view and vote for from now until 26 February 2016. The National Public Champion for each country will be the company that receives the highest number of votes, and will be announced on 7 March.

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards said: "Last year over 170,000 votes were cast, almost double the number from the year before, which is great recognition for all the successful companies involved. This year we would like to beat that number - so we encourage everyone to go to the web site and choose their champion!"

Jean Stephens, CEO of RSM, the seventh largest global network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, said: "The public voting stage provides a great opportunity for these exceptional companies to showcase the story of their success to a wider audience. The videos provide a fascinating insight into some of Europe's most innovative and inspiring businesses and I would encourage everyone to show their support and cast their vote. Good luck to everyone in this round of the competition."

The second public vote will see all of the 32 National Public Champions compete against each other to become the overall European Public Champion. The voting for this takes place between 7 March and

26 April 2016, and the result will be announced at the European Business Awards Gala event in June 2016.

Separately, the independent judging panel for the European Business Awards will review and score all the video entries plus written entries and select a final top 110 - the Ruban D'Honneur recipients. The overall winner from each category will then be announced at the same time as the European Public Champion at the Gala Event in June.

The European Business Awards was created to recognise and promote business success and support the development of a stronger business community throughout Europe. Additional sponsors and partners of the Awards include ELITE, the UKTI and PR Newswire.

In the 2014/15 competition, all EU member markets were represented plus Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Their combined revenue exceeded 1.5 trillion, and together they generated profits of over 60 billion Euros.

For further information about the European Business Awards and RSM please go to: http://www.businessawardseurope.com or 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 of the citizens of Europe, our 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.

In September 2014, RSM was awarded the prestigious Network of the Year 2014 award at the International Accounting Bulletin annual awards. The award recognises networks that have demonstrated strong growth and operational excellence over the past 12 months.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base. http://www.rsm.global

About UK Trade & Investment:

UKTI works with UK based businesses to ensure their success in international markets through exports and encourages and supports overseas companies to look at the UK as the best place to set up or expand their business.http://www.gov.uk/ukti

About ELITE:

ELITE is an integrated service designed to help SMEs prepare and structure for the next stage of growth through access to long term financing opportunities.

ELITE targets SMEs with a sound business model, clear growth strategy and a desire to obtain funding in the near future.

ELITE offers an innovative approach, including a training programme, a working zone supported by a tutorship model and direct access to the financial community through dedicated digital community facilities. It is "capital neutral" to any financing opportunity, providing access to Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds, debt products, etc. ELITE was successfully launched in Italy in 2012 and in the UK in 2014. It now accounts for more than 200 companies of different sizes and sectors, more than 150 partners and more than 70 long term investors. It is a European platform deeply rooted in each domestic market, through partnership with local institutions combined with the opportunity to access international support and advice.

It will be a community of excellence: companies, advisors, investors and stakeholders with an interest in supporting SMEs. The larger the community, the wider the range of business and growth opportunities offered to ELITE members.

About PR Newswire

PR Newswire is the leading global provider of PR and corporate communications tools that enable clients to distribute news and rich content. We distribute our client's content across traditional, digital and social media channels in real time with fully actionable reporting and monitoring.

Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimisation network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in Europe, Middle East, Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

For more information on PR Newswire please visit http://www.prnewswire.co.uk

SOURCE European Business Awards
A woman and a boy look out of a balcony as election banners of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) hang outside in Diyarbakir, Turkey in this October 31, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

By Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said on Sunday it would take part in a parliamentary commission charged with drafting a new constitution and would challenge the ruling AK Party's plans for a strong executive presidency.

The AK Party has broad cross-party support for overhauling Turkey's constitution, which dates back to an era of military coups, but there are wide divergences over what a new charter should look like.

President Tayyip Erdogan and the AK Party he founded more than a decade ago want the head of state, who currently has a largely ceremonial role, to wield much greater political powers.

But the opposition parties want to focus on improving minority rights and democratic freedoms and fear Erdogan is becoming too authoritarian, a charge he rejects.

Turkey's Parliamentary Speaker Ismail Kahraman of the AK Party has invited the opposition parties in parliament to join the commission but the HDP had not previously said whether it would attend. Deeply suspicious of Erdogan and the government, some HDP lawmakers had called for a boycott.

"We will be on the constitutional reconciliation commission. But we have serious differences with the AK Party in many fields such as freedom, equality and justice," HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas told a party congress to loud cheers.

"Despite these differences we will meet them without any prejudice and will seek reconciliation for peace," he told delegates, including representatives of European socialist parties, at the congress, held under tight security.

Relations between the AK Party government and the HDP have soured considerably since a surge in violent clashes between Turkish security forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

The HDP wants any new Turkish constitution to decentralize power away from Ankara to the regions.

"We will present our proposal for the constitution in which local authorities are more powerful," HDP Izmir Deputy Ertugrul Kurkcu told Reuters. "We will never discuss a 'one man administration' because we want a parliamentarian republican system based upon powerful local authorities."

The Islamist-rooted AK Party lost its single-party majority in an election last June but, after coalition talks failed, it swept back to power in a snap poll, capturing nearly 50 percent of the vote.

However, the ruling party still needs the support of 14 opposition lawmakers to be able to put a new constitution to a popular referendum and it needs 50 more votes to push a final deal through a bitterly polarized parliament.

(Writing by Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Waitangi park was ablaze with Lavalava's, laughter and music on Monday for the annual Wellington Pasifika Festival.

The event, organised by Wellington City Council, was expected to draw about 10,000 people throughout the afternoon.

Event organiser Suzanne Tamakisaid the festival had a very laid-back feel, with people often coming and going as they pleased.

Cameron Burnell/Fairfax NZ 25012016 News. CAMERON BURNELL/FAIRFAX NZ. Che Fu performs at the pacifica festival at Waitangi park

"A lot people come for the food and just disappear, they go home for a lie-down," she said.

Tamaki said the festival took six months to organise with more than 20 performance groups and about 20 food stalls to co-ordinate.

The performances consisted of schools, community groups and churches with some more seasoned acts, like Che Fu and the Laughing Samoans also taking part.

Despite the hard work preparing Tamaki said nothing was set in stone on the day.

"You can plan as much as you want, but everything changes. They say they are going to bring a guitar, next thing they bring a drum, a guitar, and their Uncle is singing. You have to be really flexible and enjoy yourself."

"Once on stage they have 8 minutes to wow the crowd," she said.

Karl Moresi who had gone along to the festival with this family said it made him proud to be Samoan.

"Wellington recognising and celebrating its people and the cultures of the Pacific is great."

"Also, being able to share and educate others about the cultures of the Pacific, whether it be through song and dance, cuisine or merchandise stalls is important," he said.

"The food is good too, there isn't food better than Island food."
"Just about whatever's there is amazing" said Jeremy Tizard of the subantarctic Auckland Islands. A royal albatross is pictured flying over his head.

Walking on uninhabited islands at 4am and coming face-to-face with boisterous sea lions are part of daily life on the subantarctic Auckland Islands, a Hamilton science teacher has discovered.

Jeremy Tizard spent two weeks in the Auckland Islands in November, helping with a Department of Conservation yellow-eyed penguin monitoring project.

The Auckland Islands are New Zealand's largest group of subantarctic islands, situated about 460km south of Fiordland.

The Hamilton Boys' High School teacher spent mornings watching for and counting the penguins through binoculars.

READ MORE:

* Wellington students to voyage to the Auckland Islands

* Treasure hunters solve 180-year-old mystery

* Little wonder subantarctic islands uninhabited

* Sweltering heat in Otago impacts yellow-eyed penguins

His first encounter with some of the local wildlife came when he helped unload gear for some passengers who were staying on the islands.

IAN TURNBULL/SUPPLIED A yellow-eyed penguin came within 1m of Hamilton teacher Jeremy Tizard while he was monitoring them on the Auckland Islands.

"I hear someone say, oh, there's a cheeky one, talking about a sea lion," Tizard said.

"Straight away these things are in your face, they're coming right up to you - like a young teenager with attitude that wants to have a tussle, sort of thing.

"You're not supposed to look at them because that's like a challenge. But it's quite a big animal coming pretty close."

JEREMY TIZARD/SUPPLIED Sea lions in the Auckland Islands were "like a young teenager with attitude wanting a tussle", said teacher Jeremy Tizard.

Tizard said it was an "incredible place" for an adventure.

"For me it filled up the tank again and again and again, and just with inspiration and education and all the rest," he said.

The trip started with a thorough quarantine check in Invercargill where boots were sterilised and "everybody's gear got checked for any seeds in your socks or anything like that".

The group then took the yacht Evohe to the islands, a 31-hour trip.

Tizard spent much of his time at the islands watching for yellow-eyed penguins, which he described as cute but cautious.

"They're just cute. They're hilarious little things... You might watch [the penguins] for hours just standing on the edge or working their way down a rock shelf. They might look for half an hour or they might look for a lot longer," he said.

Yellow-eyed penguins are among the rarest penguins in the world and can grow up to 65cm, he said, and he got within a metre of one of the birds on watch.

"You go on a wonderful adventure, hopping in a zodiac [boat] to head out to start your morning count on whatever island, or sometimes counting from the boat. Strong winds and you could see snow sprinkled on the hilltops around you at times."

Tizard's biggest penguin count in a single session was 11 birds, on Enderby Island.

Counts there tended to be higher because cats, pigs and mice had been eradicated, unlike on Auckland Island, Tizard said.

Some days he might see just three penguins between 5.30am and 9am - after which he would head back to the Evohe for a hot chocolate.

Seeing four types of albatross up close fascinated Tizard, as he remembered seeing one in a museum as a child.

On the islands he got close enough to see the feather patterns of a royal albatross through binoculars and witnessed the courtship of the light-mantled sooty albatross, which was "like stunt gliding".

Tizard also picked up knowledge from two geologists on the trip, and hopes to share his experiences with students in 2016.
Police and an ambulance were called to Kings Swim School after a young boy nearly drowned.

The near drowning of a 4-year-old boy at a pool party in Christchurch was a "tragic accident".

Kings Swim School director Todd Mason said he had spoken to the boy's father, who said he was "making good progress".

A Canterbury District Health Board spokeswoman said the boy was now stable in a paediatric ward.

READ MORE:

* Boy critically injured in Christchurch pool during 'private function'

* Boy critically injured in Christchurch pool incident

* 'He was smiling, I had no idea he was drowning'



The boy was found under water about 2.30pm on Saturday. Mason said he had never met the boy, who was a guest at the private pool party.

"For us, it's been harrowing, it's been horrible. I can't imagine what his parents are going through."

A WorkSafe New Zealand investigation into the incident began on Monday.

Mason said he was helping provide WorkSafe with any assistance it needed.

"It was just a tragic accident  we don't know what happened, how it happened, but we are just thankful he's making progress."

His general advice to parents was that they should not ever think their children were safe around water "because they're not, even teenagers".

"We're so into water safety and keeping kids safe, it's a major part of our programme and I just don't get people that don't understand the dangers of water."

He said staff who were working at the pool were finding the incident hard to deal with.

"It's just gutting. The young person involved is just like myself and my wife, we are just trying to figure out how do deal with this.

"We just can't get across how close this came to being a horrible, horrible ending."
An interactive website, Itchy Burny Bits, was designed to help decrease the transmission of sexually transmitted infections.

A health campaign aimed at decreasing the spread of sexually transmitted infections in the Midlands region was recognised as one of the best in the world.

The interactive website, Itchy Burny Bits, was created by Hamilton-based agency PANmedia for Midlands Health, which covers the Waikato, Lakes (Rotorua and Taupo), Tairawhiti (Gisborne) and Taranaki areas.

The site is confidential and allows users to assume an animated character. The character then encounters scenarios which may affect their sexual health.

Midlands Health Network chief executive John Macaskill-Smith said the goal was to get people thinking about the risks involved with sex.

READ MORE:

*Waikato rates of sexually transmitted infections on the decrease

*Young Kiwis are contracting sexually transmitted infections

*Parents urged to talk about contraception after children diagnosed with chlamydia

"The idea for the campaign came about a few years ago when Hamilton was claiming the highest numbers for [sexually transmitted infections]," he said.

"So Jane Morgan (clinical manager of Hamilton Sexual Health) and I had a social conversation about what we could do to appeal to youth to think about their sexual health.

"She attended a conference in Melbourne and they had a similar model, so we applied it here."

Macaskill-Smith said the campaign was a finalist in the Global Awards, an international healthcare and wellness advertising awards.

One of 152 entrants, PANmedia was shortlisted in the Advertising to the Consumer Consumer/Patient: Health Institutions and Services category, and then nominated as a finalist. It is the only agency in the Southern Hemisphere to achieve this acknowledgement.

The campaign has been successful so far, said Macaskill-Smith.

"We had a surge over the Christmas holiday period so we had [staff] handing out condoms in the regions at some of the big festivals and events, including Rhythm and Vines [in Gisborne] and in Whangamata and the Coromandel."

Morgan said the Waikato District Health Board and primary health organisations across the Midlands region had made sexual health a priority.

"We've worked away over the past several years to raise awareness. We have to, because it's not a national or government priority."
Chiefs player Brodie Retallick visted Cambridge along with the 40 member squad as part of their summer roadie.

The Gallagher Chiefs Summer Roadie kicked off earlier today, with Cambridge as its first stop.

Their action-packed itinerary will see them stop off at 19 towns within the Waikato/Bay of Plenty region, in a move to visit their fans from smaller areas.

About 50 people turned up to play tug-o-war with the rugby stars and get various flags and books signed.

EMMA JAMES/FAIRFAX MEDIA Children from Cambridge huffed and puffed and pulled with Chiefs players during the big game of tug-o-war.

Head coach Dave Rennie said the week ahead has a conditioning and team building focus, but it was also about connecting with communities.

"Over the past four years we have placed a massive emphasis on meaningful engagement right across our region and our boys enjoy the interaction.

"We are more than just a Hamilton-based team and it's a great chance to understand who we are and what we represent," he said.

EMMA JAMES/FAIRFAX MEDIA Young Cambridge rugby fan Sarah Bassham was excited to get flag signed by Chiefs player Sam Vaka.

Chiefs marketing manager Vanessa Parker, a Cambridge woman, said the tour was part of the team's pre-season training.

She said their tight training schedule meant time with the communities was limited.

"But we want to keep in touch with all of the communities that are part of our big geographical area.

EMMA JAMES/FAIRFAX MEDIA Although the players didn't have much time on their sleeves, they tried to take as many fan photos as possible.

"It's really hard for us to get to everyoine but we certainly believe that our genuine fans are why we exist."

The squad has 40 players this year, including their "supersub member" Austin Manning, a young Tauranga boy with cerebal palsy.

The Chiefs are helping Austin raise money for a trip to America to have life-altering surgery and extensive rehabilitation.

Player Brodie Retallick said it was good to get to the small towns because people are always excited to see them.

"It's not something we get to do a whole lot, maybe once a year at this time of the year.

"It's the excitement on their faces that makes it what it is," he said.

His advice to the young Chiefs fans was to have fun in any sport, no matter what sport it is.

"That's what it's all about."

From Cambridge the players will be heading to Putaruru, Tokoroa, Murupara, Reporoa and Kawerau on Monday.

On Tuesday (Jan 26) they will visit Opotiki and Whakatane.

On Wednesday they will be in Whakatane, Te Puke, Mt Maunganui and Baypark.

Then on Thursday they will be in Paeroa, Te Aroha and Morrinsville.
Inge & Marcel Vercammen's Van Dyck fine Foods has been held up as the type of value added brand Taranaki food producers should be establishing,

OPINION: Try this. Take an average size shopping bag and go looking for branded food products that can be clearly linked to Taranaki.

The organiser of last Friday's Food Futures Taranaki event, Eve Kawana-Brown, did exactly that. The aim was to put together a suitable gift for each of the speakers.

For me, the result provided the take home message for the event because the bag was, as everyone agreed, disappointingly small. Surprising, because Taranaki is a leading food producing region of New Zealand.

Of course, most of that food comes in the form of milk that soon disappears into the vats of one of the milk companies. Once that happens no one knows if it comes from Taranaki or another region.

READ MORE:

* Why Van Dyck Fine Foods pancakes rule them all

* Van Dyck Fine Foods crowned top Taranaki business

* Taranaki's future cheesemakers could be blessed

* Taranaki man's rotten corn dish passes the taste test

Taranaki produces more than milk. The highly successful Van Dyck Fine Foods were represented at the event. There was mention of poultry, pork and honey.

But, when it came to locally produced branded products that told the story of a food producing region, it was a challenge to fill the shopping bag.

There is an opportunity here. As a nation New Zealand has been waking up to the fact that prosperity in the 21st century will be tied up with shifting from producing agricultural commodities to meeting the food needs of discerning consumers around the world.

This shift means entrepreneurs identifying what those needs are and establishing a business in New Zealand to do the work.

Instead of relying on farming alone to produce wealth, the food value-chain must grow longer, involve more people and when it reaches the consumer, bring a greater return.

If we want a model of how this can happen we need to look no further than the Netherlands  a country much the same size as Waikato yet it produces around seven times more value than New Zealand from its food.

Yes it has the massive market of Europe on its doorstep. But New Zealand has Asia just across the street. New Zealand and Taranaki can make much more than it does from food.

The signs are becoming very positive. Each year at the New Zealand Food Awards in Association with Massey University hundreds of innovative products are on display. All of these are proud New Zealand products and more often than not they stress that they originate from a specific region of the country. In this way they trade not only on the image of New Zealand but also on the characteristics of a region.

Taranaki can and must do the same. It can because the "bones" of the food industry are already present. It must because, yet again, the region has learned the lesson that relying on milk and oil for long term prosperity has many risks.

The main risk is that the price of these commodities is trending downward. Yes there are fluctuations in price and there are good times, but they are predictably followed by the not so good. In fact, given the oversupply of oil and the shift away from fossil fuels it is difficult to see the good times returning.

There is another driver of change. Taranaki, like most other New Zealand regions is in a battle with Auckland to attract young people. That battle can only be won if a diverse well-paid range of jobs are on offer. Building a food industry employing people from one end of a very long value-chain to another will meet this goal. Remember, a food industry is as much about IT, science, marketing and finance as it is about farming, distribution, processing and packing.

The Future Foods Taranaki event finished on a high note. There is enormous optimism about the possibilities food offers. But there are some key steps that need to be undertaken.

The first is that the conversation about food needs to be spread around the region. In particular, young Taranaki residents need to hear about the conversation and get the idea that they can make an exciting future for themselves at home.

The second is for the people of the region to get serious about food. Local food needs to be produced, celebrated and consumed in the region. The local tourist industry should be at the forefront of demanding local products for restaurants, hotels, and shops.

The third is a clear simple workable strategy aimed at supporting entrepreneurs develop and scale up a national or international business must be put together. Note  avoid a slow process involving consultants providing advice everyone already knows.

Fourth, and this is the most important ingredient, there must be enthusiastic entrepreneurs who see a place for themselves somewhere in the food value-chain. Events that will get people thinking about ideas that can lead to businesses should be happening soon.

The time is right for making the change. Food Futures needs to be followed soon by action that will drive forward the four steps outlined above. A simple test of success should be established. Each year someone should go shopping and the bag of locally produced branded goods they can find should get bigger.

Steve Maharey is the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University
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FCID probe on tainted oil hedging deal completed View(s):

The Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) of the Police has completed an investigation on the corruption-filled oil hedging deal which caused losses totalling millions of dollars to the Sri Lankan Government, the Business Times reliably understands. The probe came on a complaint filed by Tennekone Rusiripala, a retired senior banker and social activist. Several former officials of the Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), the bank that figured prominently in the deal that cost the country huge losses, were among those whose statements were recorded. Two senior bankers, working at the time in senior management at the Peoples Bank, and now heading two local banks, were also asked to make statements in the probe.

The FCID is now awaiting instructions from the Attorney Generals Department to proceed with the next move. In the meantime, Mr. Rusiripala, asked to comment on the matter, said that while he was digging into old files pertaining to the oil hedging fiasco which was first exposed by the Sunday Times eight years ago, had discovered another case where the SCB allegedly owes the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) a total of over Rs. 2 billion in taxes from debit taxes between 2004 and 2009. The dispute has been going on since 2010 with the bank contesting the amount. On August 2011, the bank filed a writ of certiorari and prohibition in the Supreme Court restraining the IRD from collecting the amount as claimed by the IRD. The case is pending. The government should recover the money fast as state revenues are very low at the moment, Mr. Rusiripala said.
FCID chiefs email hacked; questions over delay in VIP arrests View(s):

Since being set up almost one year ago, the Police Departments Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) has probed a multitude of cases, some high profile while others are of lesser importance. Senior DIG Ravi Waidyalankara, the man who directs those investigations, did not perhaps envisage that he would have to oversee a probe that concerned him.

The reason  someone had hacked into his private e-mail account. To make matters worse, an e-mail directed to his contacts said the following though not in good English:

Hello how was your end? sorry to stress you about my unannounced trip to Philippines i had to be here for business which went well but unfortunately on my way back to the hotel were i check in got attack by some gang of robbers who made away with my valuable thing, wondering if can get a helping hands from you to sort my bills will refunds once am back awaiting your response soon..

SDIG Waidyalankara never made a trip to the Philippines either on official business or for private reasons. A Police source said the idea behind the e-mail was to cause him embarrassment.

The incident came in a week where both the FCID and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) were to make what is being described as significant arrests. According to a Government source, these were on cases where probes had been completed many weeks before. The source said they were advised to wait till the Governments budget in November was over. Thereafter, they were told to wait until President Sirisena makes his statement to Parliament on January 9, the source pointed out.

Mr. Sirisena was asked at a recent meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers about when those linked to high profile cases would be dealt with. The query was raised by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. He replied that things would move by late January. Sections of the Government now ask whether there would be another postponement.

Canadian Tamil Congress raises Canadian $ 110,000 for Sampur war widows

With Governments reconciliation efforts being stepped up, the London-based Global Tamil Forum (GTF) has also intensified its campaign to lobby foreign governments.

Last Saturday the GTF was present in force at a Thai Pongal dinner hosted by the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) where Foreign Minister Stephane Dion was chief guest. It was held at the Hilton in the Toronto suburb of Markham. Also present was Gary Anandasangaree, MP. He is the son of one time Sri Lankan Parliamentarian and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) leader V. Anandasangaree.

The CTC raised Canadian dollars 110,000 for housing facilities for 41 war widowed families at Sampur in Trincomalee.

Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera has invited a GTF delegation to also visit Sri Lanka after it was was de-listed from banned organisations.

Jaffna convocation: What is the message from this pandal?

For university students in any part of the world, graduation is a landmark event. It is celebrated in many ways. Those passing out throw their hats in the air after the convocation to express their joy. Parents and loved one take delight in the event.

Last weeks Jaffna University convocation, besides being a moment of happiness for students, families and well-wishers, was also thought provoking.

An Arts Faculty student had designed a novel pandal at the entrance to the University. It depicted a huge pipeline emerging from the earth and spewing out hundreds of headgear worn by graduates. Thought provoking, indeed.

Was the pandal trying to suggest that those becoming graduates by the hundreds were part of an automated process in a university that was a factory and they were falling down to earth thereafter? Or was it a reminder that ordeals for those who wear those headgear are just beginning. Either way, this was a talking point among those who came for the convocation.

Embassies abroad: Foreign Ministry studies Singapore model

The Foreign Ministry is trying rather unsuccessfully to break away from its notorious past when most appointments to key missions overseas- from ambassadors to drivers  were political paybacks for services rendered either to the ruling party or to ruling politicians. As the saying goes, history has a way of repeating itself first as tragedy  and then as comedy.

When Mangala Samaraweera took over as Foreign Minister, he pledged that 70 percent of Sri Lankas missions abroad would be headed by career diplomats. But as we pointed out last year, that ministry fell far short of the target. Now, the ministry is planning to make a radical transformation  using Singapore as a model, including the idea of non-resident ambassadors and inspectors to check the work performed by our overseas missions. There are plans for a team to visit Singapore to study how efficiently its ministry functions.

As part of the proposed re-organisation, the United States is to be taken out of the West Division and be made an integral part of the UN Division at the Ministry. But the changes are apparently taking place at the highest levels  with little or no consultations in-house. Many professionals at the level of Director  and above  feel they are inconsequential in decision-making.

For the first time, the Sri Lanka Foreign Service Association is considering countering sinister attacks against the service. This is through its own media statements. The foreign service cannot remain silent any longer, one ex-ambassador told the Sunday Times. The proposed re-structuring is bizarre, he said.

The post of Foreign Secretary has apparently been offered to an efficient ex- Sri Lankan ambassador currently on loan to a UN agency in Europe. She has turned down the offer but been given a further extension of her leave to continue with the UN agency.

SriLankans shares in the air

SriLankan Airlines shareholders this week asked for Rs. 5,000 a share but the Treasury representative has offered Rs. 50 a share, one-hundredth of the amount, when the national carrier held its Annual General Meeting on Thursday in Colombo.

These shares had been offered free of charge to some of the early employees of the airline. Emirates, the Dubai based airline with which the national carrier entered into a partnership had bought some of these shares at the rate of Rs. 235 a share.

The shareholders had asked SriLankan Airlines Chairman Ajith Dias to arrange a meeting with President Maithripala Sirisena, but Treasury officials had said they will refer the matter to Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake for an early resolution.

Mr. Dias was questioned by shareholders about the financial health of the airline now running into massive losses amounting to Rs. 80 billion.

He said the airline had launched an ambitious restructuring plan in February last year and that 80% of the plan had been implemented. Only 20% of the plan had to be put into operation. He, however, did not divulge details of the plan to shareholders who complained that they had not been paid dividends for the past several years due to accumulating losses.

Meanwhile, the report of an investigation into the airline  conducted soon after the January 8 elections last year  is gathering dust with no action to punish those who mismanaged the airline during the management of the earlier board.

Instead, the airlines then chairman Nishantha Wickramasinghe is being summoned for investigation over some issues relating to the airlines catering services.
When a law prof breaks his silence View(s):

My dear GL,

I thought I must write to you because you are in the news once again, telling us what we should do and what we should not to do in making constitutions, just when we had heaved a sigh of relief thinking that we had seen the last of you, after you didnt make it to Parliament at the last election.

Of course, even after 20 years in politics, you still believe that using big words and long sentences will impress people, so you continue in your own inimitable style forgetting that your audience is the average citizen  and not a class at the law faculty of a university. Still, we can live with that.

I am sure you must be wondering why we find your latest explanations amusing, if not annoying. After all, you are a professor of law trying to educate the ignorant masses and they should be listening to you, shouldnt they? But that hasnt quite happened, so please let me try and explain why.

When you first entered politics, it was at the invitation of Satellite when she asked two professionals who were also two Lakshmans to join her team, the other being that lovely gentleman who went to earn a name for himself as the countrys best foreign minister, before being killed by the Tigers.

During that time, Satellite promised to abolish the executive presidency, which she called JRs bahubootha viyavasthaawa within six months, but she didnt do that, did she? And, if memory serves me right, we didnt hear you shouting from the rooftops and complaining, did we, GL?

Then, the Greens won an election although Satellite was still the boss but by that time you had done a somersault that would have made Thondaman blush. You remained in office as the Green Mans right hand man and advisor on all things important  and the Green Man fell for your academic charms.

He asked you to draft a ceasefire agreement with the Tigers which you did. For the next two years, we heard you singing its praises and telling us how wonderful the Tigers were. By the time the ceasefire fell apart and we were back at war, the Green Man had been labelled a traitor by Mahinda maama.

But, by then, you had done another somersault, joined Mahinda maamas team and were telling us why we should discard the ceasefire and defeat the Tigers on the battlefields. And sure enough, when Mahinda maama won, you were by his side too, holding on to another top ministerial job!

The real test of your integrity came after Mahinda maama won the war against the Tigers and then, on the strength of that, won the elections in a landslide. That is when he amended the constitution to do away with the independent commissions and also allowed him to run for the top job any number of times.

GL, you are now screaming that the proper procedure is not being followed in changing the constitution, but we didnt hear you complaining then, did we? Mahinda maama begged, borrowed and stole MPs to get a two-thirds majority to do so, but not a word of protest did we hear from you!

And why is it that we didnt hear any of this talk about proper procedure when the Field Marshall who was then a General was summarily court martialled or worse still, when the Chief Justice who was you protege at your university was impeached because she wanted to do her job properly?

Instead of protesting, GL, you were busy gallivanting to the United Nations in Geneva year after year, trying to salvage what was left of our countrys reputation after being accused of war crimes. You didnt do a good job of that either, so much so that people began calling you Geneva Losing!

It is also very funny, GL, that you of all people should be telling us now that the proposed new constitution will threaten the unitary nature of our country when you proposed a union of regions in one of your draft constitutions. Trying to fool all the people all the time doesnt always work, GL.

I am not sure whether you remember this, GL, but even Mahinda maama promised to abolish the presidency. Maithri did the same and he seems to be the only one who is actually trying to get it done, so let us all give that a try. Until then maybe you, being a professor, should take a sabbatical!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Those who expected yahapaalanaya to deliver instant results are now complaining that not much is being done but they can at least be happy that you have not crawled in to that camp to advise Maithri. As they say, those with the lean and hungry look, they think too much and they are dangerous, arent they?
Loud pre-dawn tremor shakes Achchuveli View(s):

A minor tremor was felt at Achchuveli in the Nawakiri areas of Jaffna yesterday morning, leaving cracks in lands, houses and wells, residents and officials said. Residents said that they experienced a vibration with a loud noise around 2 a.m. National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) Research and Risk Management Division head R.M.S Bandara told the Sunday Times that this could be a minor tremor and the NBRO was carrying out investigations to identify the cause.

We are focusing on the possibility of extraction of a huge volume of water from underground sources. An industrial zone and an agriculture zone are located in this area, he said. Explaining that the underground soil consisting of limestone could break down due to its dryness, Mr. Bandara said there could be a sudden drop of soil mass and this might have led to the tremor.

Following the tremor, Disaster Management Centre (DMC) officials in Jaffna alerted the head office with photos and Google maps to assist in their investigations. NBRO and DMC officials were in the area yesterday for a full probe.

Area resident Subramaniam Tharmasekaram said he felt the land shaking and heard a loud noise. After dawn, he noticed cracks in his house and surrounding land. He said that when he first saw the crack in the morning, it was not big, but after six hours it widened to about five inches.
Sri Lankan attorneys letters not credible: British HC View(s):

An officer of the British High Commission in Colombo has written to the Home Office in Britain, claiming that a vast majority of endorsement documents provided by Sri Lankan attorneys in support of local asylum seekers were not credible.

This conclusion has been drawn after the migration division of the British High Commission in Colombo checked 80 asylum cases referred to it by the Asylum Casework Directorate and Appeals and Litigation in Britain. Thirty of the cases included attorney endorsement documents, either in the form of letters or credentials (qualifications or membership documents).

Of these 30 cases, the vast majority (86.7%) of letters provided by Sri Lankan attorneys that we have verified are not credible, states the communication to the Home Office by Second Secretary (Migration) of the British High Commission in Colombo. This includes 23% attorney letters, 20% of attorney credentials, 30% other documents submitted though attorneys were not contactable and 13% of attorney letters were suspicious.

The Sunday Times has seen a copy of the letter. We asked the British High Commission why a relatively small sample was used to make a blanket assertion on all Sri Lankan attorneys. A spokesperson replied: The context of the letter is very clear. This is about a very specific issue. It is in no way a statement about the assertions of all Sri Lankan lawyers, and the preceding text makes that readily apparent.

The text referred to is a breakdown of investigated cases. There were seven cases where the attorney confirmed they had written the letter stating that there was a live court case or arrest warrant. But when verified separately with the police stations or courts that purportedly issued these warrants, they were found to be false, the officer writes to the Home Office. These documents included six arrest warrants and one receipt of arrest.In four cases, attorneys confirmed the letters had been written by them, but there were no other documents provided to verify. In these cases, the credibility of the attorney is questionable, as we found several discrepancies in a copy he produced compared with the original letter submitted in the UK, the officer states.

There were six cases where the attorneys credentials were found to be false (four Attorneys-at-Law certificates and two Bar Association memberships). Eleven attorneys were not contactable, despite repeated attempts to verify the letters saying that there were live court cases or arrest warrants for their clients. In one of these cases, there was no other documentation submitted.

In nine of these cases, the other documents submitted (court documents or arrest warrants) were verified as false through direct checks with the courts or police stations that purportedly issued them. In only one of the 11 cases were the supporting court or police documents genuine.

In just two of the cases, the attorney confirmed the letters were not issued by him, the officer observes. The British High Commission in Colombo did not provide details of the lawyers, such as names, despite a request for them. It also did not answer who these asylum seekers were and from where.

Questions were met with standard replies from the Home Office such as: The United Kingdom has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need our protection, and all claims are carefully considered on their individual merits.

It also said all asylum decision-making staff receive basic training in forgery and handling documents; that document examination forms part of the standard security checks in all cases; and that any evidence of forgery will be considered when deciding asylum claims.
A helping hand for bone cancer sufferer View(s):

Nineteen-year-old Chathuranga Dilshan Silva who has just completed his Advanced Level examination from D.S. Senanayake Vidyalaya, Colombo, is suffering from severe bone cancer, osteosarcoma, and needs an urgent knee operation as well chemotherapy.

The cost of both is estimated to be Rs. 8,000,000 and his father who works in a private company is desperately attempting to raise this money to save the life of his son.

He is requesting the public to lend a helping hand by sending in their contributions to Account No. 121854955280 at the Sampath Banks Borella Super Branch in the name of S.H.A.N. Silva. Chathurangas father is contactable on Mobile: 0773074999.
Goddess of storytelling shares her vision and wisdom Indian educator Geeta Ramanujam, is one of the star attractions at the Fairway Galle Literary Festival in Jaffna today View(s): View(s):

When the Fairway Galle Literay Festival is held in Jaffna today, Indian storyteller Geeta Ramanujam is likely to be one of the big draws. Hailed as the Goddess of storytelling, she is a renowned storyteller, educator, academician and administrator, and the Executive Director of Kathalaya Trust.

Geeta uses storytelling as an effective educational and cultural tool in many leading educational institutions in India and abroad. Founder of the Kathalaya and an Ashoka Fellow, she also established the Academy of Storytelling; the only globally recognised Academy for Storytelling in the World.

She has had performances of storytelling at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, UK, International festival at Brazil, Storywood festival at Sweden, World Tales Festival Poland, the International Storytelling Centre USA and many other festivals.

She is also the Indian Coordinator for the International Storytelling Network RIC besides being the Indian coordinator of the Indian Storytelling Network.

Geeta uses storytelling to train parents, teachers, NGOs and corporate sectors both in India and abroad. Over 70,000 people have undergone her training programmes.

The Fairway Galle Literary Festival has partnered with MAS Holdings to present a comprehensive community outreach programme in Galle, Kandy and Jaffna throughout January 2016.

Coordinated by Serendipity Trust (Guarantee) Ltd, The MAS Schools Days in Kandy and Jaffna will offer hundreds of students from selected schools the chance to participate in a variety of storytelling sessions and interactive workshops run by world renowned authors and artisans.

In each Outreach location these events will involve over 250 primary and secondary students as well as 50+ teachers. Special provisions have been made to ensure the inclusion of children from marginalised communities.

For children, the delight of a story, even the simplest one is akin to an adventure. Storytelling enables teachers to introduce the world and its concepts to the younger generation. The MAS Outreach Programme also brings teacher training opportunities to primary and secondary teachers in Galle, Jaffna and Kandy.

Teachers will learn how to spin a yarn in specialised training sessions led by Geeta Ramanujam and her colleagues of Kathalaya.

On Thursday January 14, Geeta ran a Story Telling Workshop for over 100 student teachers from the Amarasuriya Teacher Training College, Unawatuna.

Geeta will also work with over 50 teachers in Jaffna for a 2 day residential teacher training programme. The British Council will also lead Teacher Training for teachers in Kandy and Jaffna on The Art of Storytelling.
Recognising casualties of battle and war veterans By Colonel (Retd) W.M.R Wijesundara RWP, RSP,PgD.CPS(uni.cbo), psc (Pakistan) View(s): View(s):

Introduction

Having been an infantry officer, who commanded soldiers in battle, I very often come across retired serviceman known to me from all three services, those who have fallen sick a few years subsequent to their retirement. Majority of them suffer from renal ailments, heart disorders, orthopedic ailments, eye problems and post traumatic stress disorders. Unfortunately, they are neither recognised as casualties of battle nor indirect casualties of battle. Hence, expensive medical treatment such as dialysis, bypass surgeries, knee and hip replacements and pace makers are beyond their capacity. A majority of these ailments commenced whilst they served in their respective services, due to difficult living conditions, physical and mental stress, unhygienic food and water consumed in the field. These conditions aggravate and escalate a few years after their retirement. There are a number of ex serviceman suffering from renal impairment and they spend about Rs. 24,000 a week for dialysis because the government hospitals have a limited number of dialysis machines. Likewise, these poor ex-servicemen suffer from different ailments without access to proper medical treatment. Those who are closer to Colombo have the consolation of getting limited treatment from the Military Hospital.

The Ranaviru Seva Authority is established to look after disabled serviceman, families of serviceman killed in action, wounded in action and missing in action. Unfortunately there is no government sponsored organization to recognise the indirect casualties of battle/ex-servicemen and war veterans.

War veterans

A war veteran is a person who has served in a military force, especially one who has fought in a war. War veterans often receive special treatment in their respective countries due to the sacrifices they made during wars. Different countries handle this differently.

Considerations to categorise as an indirect casualty of battle

Those who have developed chronic illnesses prior to leaving the service and aggravated the condition subsequent to their retirement and those who have developed serious illnesses within a reasonable period of time after retirement could be categorised as indirect casualties of battle.

A government medical board comprising specialists must confirm that the illness is attributed to previous military service.

They should be given a reasonable monthly disability allowance.

Since these ex-servicemen are considered civilians, it is suggested to produce them before a medical board comprising civil doctors.

Considerations to

categorise as a war veteran

Those who have served in the infantry, a supporting arm or a teeth arm in classified operational areas during the period of Eelam war from 23rd July 1983 -19th May 2009 ( Eelam war 1,2,3 and 4) to be recognised as war veterans.

Special recognition to be given to those who have been decorated for bravery in the face of the enemy, by the president, with any two of the following decorations. They could be classified as Distinguished war veterans.

PWV (Parama Weera Vibushanaya)

WV (Weerodara Vibushanaya)

WWV (Weera Wickrama Vibushanaya)

RWP (Rana Wickrama Padakkama)

RSP (Rana Sura Padakkama)

Proposals

1. A war veterans allowance of Rs.7,500 to be added to the pension of those who have any one of the following decorations; PWV or WV.

2. A war veterans allowance of Rs.6,500 to be added to the pension of those who have any of the following decorations; WWV or RWP

3. A war veterans allowance of Rs.4,000 to be added to the pension of those who have only the RSP. (Eligibility for the allowance is only the highest medal)

Or:

4. A war veterans allowance of Rs. 5,000 to be added to the pension of all those who are decorated with one or more decorations without any reservation. (As the President predicts, in future, there will not be another war in this country. Hence in the future, none will be decorated.)

5. A special allowance of Rs.2,500 to be added to the pension of Distinguished war veterans.

6. War veterans identity card to be issued with due recognition.

7. Preference to be given to war veterans/ex-serviceman in government institutions and hospitals. Priority to be given to war veterans for bypass surgeries, kidney transplants and dialysis in government hospitals and at least six dialysis machines to be made available exclusively for ex-serviceman in the military hospital.

8. Their children to be given preference in admission to schools and universities.

9. A standard 15% annual interest (Payable monthly interest) to be paid on their fixed deposits with state banks and private banks, irrespective of the amount deposited.

10.Land to be given to war veterans who do not have a house and also agricultural land to be given to those who are willing to make a living from agriculture on a long term lease. This will prevent them getting involved in crimes and being insulted while employed in security work in the private sector.

11.Attention to be paid to establish something similar to the Govi Hamudawa or farmers corps. This will have long term benefit to the country and the soldiers who have left the services prematurely or purchased their discharge. Abandoned government farms could be utilised for this.

12.Establishment of a War Veterans Authority, exclusively to look after the welfare, HR development and development of skills and gainful employment of war veterans.

13.A war veterans club similar to a hotel with accommodation, to be established in Colombo, exclusively to be patronized by the war veterans and guests accompanied by them. (This was planned sometime ago but never materialized. Today the procedure adopted to entertain ex-servicemens guests in an officers mess is too complicated and uncertain.)

14.Reasonable discounts (about 35%-50%) for war veterans at any of the 4/5/6 star hotels, for wedding receptions of their children. This privilege could be utilised once a year for up to three children.

15.A reasonable allowance to be paid to indirect casualties of battle, depending on their degree of disability.

Conclusion

There are about 300,000 war veterans and the ex-serviceman in the country. This is a formidable force which could be utilised for development, agriculture and food production if used properly.
Why are Indias Dalit students taking their lives? By Soutik Biswas View(s): View(s):

My birth is my fatal accident I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. Thats pathetic. And thats why I am doing this.

These are excerpts from the last letter  this kind of letter for the first time  that Rohith Vemula, a PhD student at Hyderabad Central University wrote before he killed himself on Sunday.

It is, at once, an eloquent and chilling suicide note: a young man who loved science, stars, nature and people, and aspired to become a science writer like Carl Sagan, ended up defeated and crushed by discrimination and apathy.

Steadily isolated

Mr. Vemula, 26, was one of five Dalit  formerly known as untouchable  students who were protesting against their expulsion from the universitys housing facility. Indias 180 million Dalits are among its most wretched citizens, because of an unforgiving and cruel caste hierarchy that condemns them to the bottom of the heap.

Mr. Vemula and the four other students faced allegations last August that they attacked a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)  the student wing of the governing Hindu nationalist BJP  on the campus. Some reports say an investigation had found no conclusive evidence of the assault.

Last year the students had also protested against the execution of Yakub Memon, the man convicted of financing the deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings and the right-wing ABVPs stalling of a documentary film on the Muzaffarnagar riots in Delhi University.

One newspaper said the sequence of events leading to Mr. Vemulas death shows how he was steadily isolated by campus authorities and his appeals went largely unheard.

The university stopped paying his monthly stipend of 25,000 rupees allegedly because he raised issues under the campuss Dalit-led students union. It also began an investigation into his  and his friends  conduct. In August federal minister Bandaru Dattatreya, a BJP junior minister, wrote a letter to the federal education ministry complaining that the university had become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics.

In September, Mr. Vemula and four other students were suspended  although the minister denies this was linked to his missive, which he says was not about the Dalit students, but a general comment on the restive campus.

Mr Vemulas death has sparked off a firestorm of protest across India.

Poet and writer Meena Kandasamy says the students suicide was not just an individual exit strategy, it is a shaming of society that has failed him or her. She wrote education has now become a disciplining enterprise working against Dalit students: they are constantly under threat of rustication, expulsion, defamation, discontinuation.

Mr Vemulas is not an exceptional story of caste discrimination on Indias campuses. One report said eight Dalit students had taken their lives unable to cope with caste politics at Hyderabad University in the past decade. Between 2007 and 2011 alone, 18 Dalit students ended their lives in some of Indias premier educational institutes, according to another estimate.

Shocking abuse

Some eight years ago, Apoorvanand, who teaches at Delhi University, had gone to Delhis All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indias leading medical school, to investigate a case of discrimination against a Dalit student.

He says he found vile abuses written on the doors and walls of hostel rooms where Dalit students lived. (There was no name calling, because direct abuse would lead to prosecution under tough anti-discrimination laws.) When he went to the director of the institute to lodge a complaint, the latter flatly denied that there was caste discrimination on the campus.

This is a school which produces Indias best doctors. This is also the school where a federal investigation into complaints of caste-based harassment and discrimination against Dalit and tribal students uncovered a shocking picture of abuse.

The probe found most of the Dalit and tribal students complaining that they did not receive the kind of support other students received from their teachers. Examiners asked about their caste backgrounds. The students said teachers did not give them the marks they deserved in exams, and their papers were not evaluated properly. More than 90% of the students said they were routinely humiliated by examiners in practical and oral examinations.

There is systemic persecution of Dalit students in Indian universities. They are often failed by their teachers deliberately, Apoorvanand told me. Many Dalit students who get into colleges and universities through affirmative action quotas  restorative justice for centuries of historical wrongs against the community  come to campuses with deficiencies in education, including a feeble command over the English language. Most of them are first generation graduates, come from poor families  like Mr Vemula, born of a father who works as a security guard and a mother whos a tailor  and often struggle to fit in.

Indias colleges and universities are theatres of fierce competition and confrontation: only a privileged few manage to get a limited number of seats through fiercely contested exams.

Upper caste students, say many, have a natural hatred and antagonism for the Dalits and tribespeople who take up seats reserved for their communities. There is a lot of anger against affirmative action and their beneficiaries, but then there is little the upper castes can do about it because the quotas are constitutionally mandated, says Apoorvanand.

So the students are shamed and mocked at as quota students, and their abilities mocked. In absence of effective student support groups or university structures, warning meltdown signals among suffering students are ignored. Fed up with the way things were going, Mr Vemula wrote to the university authorities in December to allow him to die and even spoke about how they could help him and his Dalit friends end his life. The authorities apparently did nothing.

Politicians are accused of not confronting this appalling discrimination with the zeal it deserves. Instead, Dalit and tribals have also become pawns in Indias hideous vote bank politics. In modern-day India, the segregation of Dalits begins early: they are separated by markers and coloured wrist bands in classrooms; and forced to clean school toilets. Upper caste school children routinely boycott school lunches cooked by Dalit cooks.

Mr Vemula is just the latest victim of Indias scourge of untouchability. - Courtesy BBC
However, there was still a way for the prosecution to use statements of the accused ... for example section 113(4)...

The investigating officer also threatened to separate my baby from my wife, and banish my wife from Malaysia and to be forced into prostitution in Cambodia, added the detainee, who is identified only as OKT 3.

An NGO has released letters purportedly written by detainees held under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma), who have alleged torture during their detention.Among others, one detainee claimed that he was forced to kiss the foot of his investigating officer, forced to masturbate while they watched, forced to watch pornographic videos with the officers, and forced to make a pronouncement of divorce upon his wife (This is in addition to beatings and other degrading acts he suffered, he said.Suaram coordinator Amir Abd Hadi claimed that OKT 3's wife has also complained of sexual harassment from an investigating officer.Suaram said it has letters from seven detainees in total, which the detainees have passed to Suaram's lawyers.The letters detail the threats and torture the detainees allegedly faced in the early phases of a Sosma case, where police can detain suspects for up to 28 days for investigation before they are brought to court.However, the group is only releasing six of the letters today, as one of them has now become a matter pending in court.The six handwritten letters were partially redacted and are 19 pages in total.Copies of the letters were distributed to members of the media during Suaram's press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.Suaram lawyer Farida Mohammad said all seven detainees have since been charged in court, and are now awaiting trial at Sungai Buloh Prison.To a question, Amir said Suaram has lodged a complaint to the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) several weeks ago, which in turn had made visits to the detainees.Following the visits, the next of kin of the detainees have also lodged police reports regarding the allegations of torture.For three of the detainees, the police have already recorded their statements regarding the police reports, but since then there has been no progress.For one detainee who was quite severely tortured, a police report was made but the police have yet to come and record his statement, Farida added.The group will be making another complaint to Suhakam on Friday afternoon.Meanwhile, another lawyer Wong Kar Fai stressed that Suaram is not out to undermine the government's anti-terrorism efforts.However, he said the use of torture, as well as Sosma's "lopsided" trial procedures, must end.In combating terrorism, you have to look to other factors. This is time-tested  any trials in the court [] must be fair. You must understand that these detainees have since been charged, but not yet proven (guilty).These cases that have been reported have not been brought to court for trial even for one day. So, you cannot treat someone who has been accused as a terrorist suspect as somebody who has already done it, he said.He added that the police should focus their efforts on counter-intelligence and investigation, rather than resorting to torture.Meanwhile, Suaram director Sevan Doraisamy condemned today the alleged torture and called for Suhakam and the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) to investigate.He also urged Malaysia to form a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations, and called for the abolition of several laws that he claims have given room for torture to take place.Suaram believes that the use of torture can only take place if there is no judicial oversight and transparent investigation procedures," he said in a statement.To stop torture, laws such as Sosma, Prevention of Crime Act 1959, Prevention of Terrorism Act 2015, Dangerous Drugs (Special Prevention Measures) Act 1985, that give room for torture to take place must be abolished, he said.Each of the four laws allows lengthy detentions without trial.Sevan also urged the government to sign the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), to prove that it does not condone any violence that is against basic human rights.Some other details in the six letters include, among others:Allegedly beaten and kicked after being handcuffed and arrested in public despite not resisting arrest; beaten again while being taken to Bukit Aman police headquarters, after arriving there, and while detained at a police remand centre.He also alleged to have been beaten in the head and abdomen several times by a large group of investigating officers when he refused to admit to acts that he did not commit, in a dimmed room at the police remand centre. This resulted in pain for several days.Slapped and punched at a police station before being brought to the Sentul police remand centre.There, he was forced to make a painful 'half-stand' while his statement was being recorded, and he would be scolded and threatened with more beatings if he tried to adjust his stance, and he was beaten when his statements did not match the investigating officers' theory of what transpired.He also alleged that he was forced to kiss other detainees while the officers laughed at them.Forced to strip, crawl around "like a dog", and pick up a piece of rubber thrown on a dirty floor with his mouth.His head was repeatedly stomped upon, and his head had been slapped and smacked with a foot. He was also allegedly forced to kiss an investigating officer's foot, masturbate while they watched, and watch pornographic videos on the police's officer's handphone.In addition, he claimed that he had been forced to make a pronouncement of divorce upon his wife, and threatened to harm his infant child and his wife.Was beaten, and smacked in the head, as well as being forced to make statements that he wasn't sure of.He was purportedly told that no lawyer is willing to take up his case when he asked for legal representation.(Not for publication)Could not bear being separated from her husband and three children, whom were all arrested with her while they were about to go on vacation in Istanbul, Turkey.She claimed that as a result, she lost her appetite, could not sleep, and was constantly crying while in custody, while Special Branch officers shouted at her and slammed the table, and refused to believe her that they were merely going on holiday.She said after eight or nine days of being under pressure, she eventually decided to agree with whatever the Special Branch officers want in hopes of seeing her family again, not realising at the time that this could land her in jail.Was beaten, threatened to be shot in the head, and threatened with more severe beatings if he told anyone about the beatings.He claimed that the police also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife and the rest of his family, close his company, and confiscate his house, and was forced to follow the police's version of events in his statements. - Malaysiakini, 18/1/2016
Police are asking for any information about two Chilean nationals who are wanted in relation to a series of bag thefts from overseas tourists at Auckland International Airport.

The two men are travelling in a rented White Suzuki Swift registration HFB865 and are likely to be staying in short term accommodation, says a post by police on Facebook.
Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Whitehead says the man was arrested in relation to last Wednesdays robbery of the ASB bank on Te Awamutus George St about 4.14pm.

Were also interested in any links to the robbery of the Hardware and Lotto shop on Rotoruas Te Ngae Rd about 3.15pm on Tuesday, January 19, and the robbery of Cambridges Turf Bar on Commerce St about 09:30am on Wednesday, December 30.

Mike says a key part of his teams investigation is establishing the movements of a black 1997 BMW 328i coupe, registration number WH6241.

This car has a distinctive rear spoiler and Euro Plate surrounds on the number plates and we believe it was used during the commission of both the Te Awamutu and Rotorua robberies and possibly the one in Cambridge as well.

Were also not ruling out if the offender had an accomplice who acted as a getaway driver during the robberies and Police want to hear about any sightings of this vehicle, particularly sightings of it on the days of these robberies.

Mike says the black BMW may also have been used in the days prior to the robberies by the offenders as they cased the targeted addresses before committing their crimes.

It is likely the car would have been parked nearby during these robberies. Its also possible peoples attention may have been drawn to the manner of the offenders driving as they fled the scenes. If you have seen this vehicle we ask that you contact Te Awamutu Police on 07 872 0100.

Alternatively, information can be left anonymously via the Crimestoppers 0800 555 111 line.
Five Bay of Plenty Justices of the Peace have been recognised for their long services to the community today.

If you were to combine JPs Amy Steele, Christopher Stocker, Arthur Thomas, Jim Wilson and Margaret Wilsons voluntary service to the community it would add up to a total of 194 years.
Police officers spent a hot day in rugged terrain seeking a potentially armed gang member in the Coromandel today.

Waikato District Command Centre Juliet Burgess says the arrest of a 37-year-old man this afternoon was due to a combination of good police work and assistance from the public.

Officers assisted by the Armed Offenders Squad executed a search warrant at a Hikuai property this morning.

Information had been received in relation to the man being in possession of a firearm, says Julie.

However, the man had fled shortly before Police arrived and officers began searching the greater Coromandel for him and his black Ford Falcon car.

Its believed the man crashed his vehicle after police fielded numerous calls from the public describing a person with a large cut to his head matching the fugitives description on State Highway 25.

He was seen emerging from a creek bed wearing a blue singlet and shorts, carrying a back pack over his shoulder by a member of the public who gave him a ride back to Hikuai shortly before noon.

Later in the afternoon, police identified where they thought the man might be and again established a number of cordons, says Julie.

The man offender was located after another car leaving the area was stopped by armed police and he was taken into custody.

An aerial search is currently underway by the Auckland based Police Eagle helicopter to try and locate the mans black Ford Falcon that Police suspect was crashed earlier in the day.

Julie says police would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by local residents which played a big part in successfully locating the offender.
It is with great pleasure that I encourage your vote for my dear friend, Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz. I have known Tom for over 20 years, first meeting him at UTC as fellow student and as time has passed, as a loyal friend.

I first met Tom at UTC in the 1990s. He was living on his own and struggling to put himself through undergraduate studies. But he had many friends who supported and encouraged him as his dream was to be a lawyer, following in the footsteps of his father who had passed several years previous. After spending 20 minutes talking to Tom, you knew he would work to make that dream come true.

He worked hard and graduated with honors from UTC with a degree in political science; no easy feat while working to put himself through school. He stayed here in Tennessee and graduated with highest honors from the University of Tennessee College of Law; again, no easy feat while juggling Law Review and studying full time. Summers are a time for relaxing and catching up with family and friends, but Tom worked every summer studying criminal law with local lawyer Jerry Summers, continuing to further his knowledge, and would study and research far into the hours of the night.

After Tom graduated from law school, he married his wife, Kathy, and they settled in Ooltewah. Tom worked for three years as a law clerk to Justice Muecke Barker on the Tennessee Supreme Court before he went into private practice, initially with Jerry Summers and later with Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel.

In between working full time and raising two children, Tom and Kathy are both involved with the community and various organizations such as Chambliss Center for Children, Orange Grove, the United Way, and their childrens school, giving back to the Chattanooga community that is their home.

Tom is a dedicated husband and father, who is also dedicated to the law. He is honest, fair, and has never lost sight of where he came from and the hard lessons he learned growing up. He is a fine man who never lost sight of his goals, and I am proud to call him a friend. Governor Haslam made an excellent choice in choosing Tom to serve as our Criminal Court judge. I ask you to join me in voting to keep this trustworthy man.

Amanda Mills

* * *

I have been privileged to know Tom Greenholtz for over 20 years. Toms the very definition of a true American success story.

After Toms dad died when he was 15-years-old, he was faced with the choice of hard work to succeed or live as a victim of his circumstances as a homeless kid with no support. He made the right choices then and now influences lives of others every day as judge in Criminal Court to make similar choices that may be tough but the right ones.

Tom and his wife Kathy are not strangers to serving others and have been busy doing just that with the Chambliss Center for Children and the Orange Grove Center. To Tom, serving as judge is more than a job.

Among his peers and legal colleagues, Tom is held in high esteem for his legal experience and abilities. He is truly committed to excellence.

I am able to personally guarantee that there is no better fit for Hamilton County Criminal Court judge than Tom Greenholtz. Vote for the right choice.

William T. Elliott

Coalmont

* * *

For the past 10 years I have known, and worked on a daily basis with Judge Tom Greenholtz of the Hamilton County Criminal Court. Based upon my experience with Judge Greenholtz, and with the state courts, no one is better qualified for this position than Tom. Of the candidates contending for the position, Judge Greenholtz not only possesses the legal skill as an excellent lawyer with proven ethics, but also the necessary temperament to serve best as judge.



Hamilton County is very fortunate to have Judges Barry Steelman and Don Poole serving in the other Criminal Court positions. Judge Greenholtz is both personally and professionally equipped to sit alongside each of them. Tom has the character and integrity to be a firm and fair judge. And he has shown these traits already in his time on the bench.



Tom is a rare talent. I encourage you to vote in the upcoming Republican primary to keep Judge Tom Greenholtz as our Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge. Tom is the right choice.



Hugh Moore
Nick Wiltgen, The Weather Channel

Nick Wiltgen was a senior digital meteorologist for The Weather Channel.

(YouTube video still)

The Weather Channel meteorologist Nick Wiltgen is dead at 39 after a weekend of covering the East Coast blizzard the network had dubbed Winter Storm Jonas.

The New York Daily News reports a Volkswagen convertible driven by Wiltgen crashed through the wall of a parking garage at the Colony Square Mall, near the intersection of Peachtree and 14th streets in Altanta around 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Officials said the car hit a worker on the other side of the wall, causing non-life threatening injuries; Wiltgen was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Weather Company notified staff of Wiltgen's death in an email, praising him for 15 years of work with TWC. He spent 11 years as an on-air radio forecaster before being named senior digital meteorologist in 2012.

"At The Weather Channel, there are a lot of people who love weather," Cameron Clayton, president of product and technology at the Weather Company, wrote. "And Nick was certainly one of those, but Nick really loved this job because he cared about people. No one took the mission of keeping people safe from big storms more to heart than Nick."

Wiltgen reportedly finished a roundup of snowstorm news published online Sunday morning, hours before his death.

"Thoughts and prayers to Nick Wiltgen's family," SUNY Oswego alumnus and colleague Al Roker tweeted. "Such a part of @weatherchannel. His smile, expertise and camaraderie will be missed."

According to the Daily News, an investigation is underway as to how the crash happened. Police said his car was "traveling at a high rate of speed before it hit the wall."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports police told a local TV station that Wiltgen had a heart attack, but the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office said that has not been confirmed.
Update with details: Neulander lawyer: Old lawyer 'woefully deficient,' DA committed 'egregious misconduct'

Syracuse, NY -- Robert Neulander, the former DeWitt doctor convicted of killing his wife, is attempting again to have the jury's guilty verdict thrown out.

Neulander's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, of New York City, filed a new motion Friday seeking to overturn the verdict that led to Neulander's 20 years-to-life prison sentence.

The 54-page motion seeks to have Neulander's conviction overturned for ineffective assistance of counsel. In other words, noted defense lawyer Edward Z. Menkin didn't do enough to defend Neulander at trial.

Neulander was convicted of killing his wife, Leslie, on Sept. 19, 2012 in their DeWitt mansion, then trying to make it look like a slip and fall in the shower.

Neulander first attempted to get the verdict thrown out last summer due to problems with the jury. But County Court Judge Thomas J. Miller said the juror in question, while "imperfect" in actions, was not biased.

Neulander agreed to give up his doctor's license after the conviction. He has been held at the Elmira prison.



Check back to Syracuse.com for more information as it becomes available.
William Reddick2.jpg

William Reddick was charged with eight counts of burglary in the third degree, Syracuse police say.

(Syracuse police photo)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- William H. Reddick was charged in a string of downtown Syracuse burglaries, Syracuse police said.

Reddick, 45, was charged with eight counts of burglary in the third degree, criminal mischief in the fourth degree and petit larceny, police said. Reddick is currently being held in the Onondaga County Justice Center on a parole violation, police said. Police believe Reddick was homeless.

The string of burglaries were reported in the downtown area between Nov. 28 and Dec. 26. Officers were dispatched to eight separate burglaries in the same general area during that time frame, police said.

Reddick is suspected of breaking into Leihs and Steigerwalds twice, Otro Cinco twice, NY Optrometrics twice, Downtown dental and the University Building, police said.

Three of the businesses were broken into on two separate occasions. In all of these burglaries, the suspects' actions and descriptions were similar to the other reported incidents. Many of the businesses had security cameras, which provided valuable information for detectives, police said.

The investigation is continuing, and Syracuse police ask anyone with information to call 442-5222. All calls will be kept confidential.

Sarah Moses covers the northern suburbs of Onondaga County and Oswego County. Contact Sarah at smoses@syracuse.com or 470-2298. Follow @SarahMoses315
mosley crop.jpg

Farod Mosley with his lawyer, Charles Keller, appear before County Court Judge Anthony Aloi.

(Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com)

Onondaga County Court Judge Anthony Aloi.

Syracuse, NY -- New state rules supposedly allow cameras in courtrooms "to the fullest extent permissible by law."

But in reality, in Syracuse it still comes down to a spin of the wheel. That's how cases are assigned to the top four criminal judges in Onondaga County. It's called the "rotation."

Today, accused Syracuse murderer Farod Mosley, 17, appeared before Judge Anthony Aloi. Prosecutors wanted Mosley's DNA sample for the investigation, something Mosley consented to.

Aloi is the only judge who almost always allows cameras in his courtroom.

That meant that two television cameras and a Syracuse.com reporter were present to take the first public photos of Mosley, who was accused last week in the Jan. 4 death of Jada Dame, 18.

Related: Teen charged with stabbing 18-year-old to death in Syracuse

Go a courtroom down from Aloi's, and state Supreme Court Justice John Brunetti would not have allowed photos. He believes it's only appropriate after someone has been convicted -- at sentencing.

Two doors down, Judge Thomas J. Miller leaves it up to the lawyers. In reality, the defense lawyer nearly always objects to having a client photographed during court. Miller only overrules that objection at sentencing, making his rule, in practice, much like Brunetti's. (That became an issue during the Robert Neulander murder trial in 2015.)

Until Dec. 31, retired Judge Joseph Fahey never allowed cameras in court, except in rare circumstances as approved on a case-by-case basis. His replacement, Judge Walter Hafner Jr., has not yet stated his stance on cameras during proceedings.

In Mosley's case, his lawyer took the initiative to try to convince Aloi not to allow cameras today. Charles Keller argued that the case relied on witness identifying his client, a process that could be tainted by pictures in media. Mosley maintains his total innocence, the lawyer said.

But Aloi wasn't swayed. "No, I'm going to allow them," he said of cameras.

Why does each judge get to make his own rules? Because the state law, while promoting openness, still leaves the ultimate decision up to each judge's discretion.

That's despite the state's top retired judge, Jonathan Lippman, encouraging judges to allow cameras when possible. He told syracuse.com that judges and lawyers have an "irrational view" of cameras prejudicing judicial proceedings.

Both announced candidates for county judge in this year's election have told syracuse.com they would allow cameras in courts, with exceptions.

Current City Court Judge Stephen Dougherty, a Democrat, said cameras should be allowed unless it involves a child or some other specific concern. And current Chief Assistant District Attorney Matthew Doran, a Republican, said cameras would shine a spotlight on the good work lawyers do on a daily basis.

Dougherty and Doran are vying for two open spots next year now occupied by Aloi and Hafner. Aloi is retiring and Hafner is just assigned to fill in Fahey's spot this year until another judge is elected.
When Local 315 Brewing Co. in Camillus received its shiny new "crowler" machine last fall, head brewer Josh Mersfelder immediately called his boss, brewery owner Dan Mathews.

"I said 'You've got to come down and check this out,' " Mersfelder said. "So he did and then we had fun that day just filling them with water. It was cool."

What's a crowler, you ask?

It's the newest trend in draft beer-to go packaging: It's a can, in this case 32 ounces (one quart), filled at breweries or bars from their taps, then sealed with a lid that includes a pop top.

It's similar to the growler, which is usually a glass jug at 64 or 32 ounces, that is filled and sealed with a cap. Growlers have been popular at craft breweries and better beer bars for decades.

The crowler concept is just a few years old, developed by Oskar Blues Brewery in Colorado working with Ball Co., the container and can maker. Oskar Blues began selling the machines to other breweries in 2014.

It's just now making it to Central New York. Local 315 has the only machine in Onondaga County, but Upstate breweries like Prison City Brewing in Auburn, Wagner Valley Brewing in Lodi overlooking Seneca Lake, Resurgence Brewing in Buffalo and the Genesee Brew House in Rochester have one, as does the Rochester beer bar Tap & Mallet.

Good Nature Brewing Co. in Hamilton is considering installing one when it completes its relocation and expansion this summer.

The crowler has several advantages over the glass growler, advocates say. The cans are lighter than glass. They don't break. They store and stack more easily. The original seal is more airtight. Light, which can damage beer, can't get through.

"You can take them on hikes, picnics, to parks that don't allow glass," Mersfelder said. "They really can be taken almost anywhere."

That's why Good Nature, which is also installing a canning machine for its retail packaging, is thinking about the crowler, brewer/owner Matt Whalen said.

"The idea that you can take it into a state park, for example, is great," Whalen said. "The key is it would give us another option."

Brent Wojnowski, head brewer at Wagner Valley Brewing in Lodi, also likes the convenience factor. Wagner has been filling crowlers since the fall, and they have become quite popular with customers. Some of the crowlers' advantages, Wojnowski admits, are matched by stainless stell growlers, which Wagner also sells.

"I think the crowlers also work well because of the size -- it's 2 even pints," Wojnowski said. "For a lot of beers, people may not want a full growler, so this size makes it easier."

While standard growlers remain popular, Local 315 has sold about 600 crowlers since it opened in September, Mersfelder said. It's novel enough that customers like to watch the machine in action.

"People ask the (servers) to move so they can see how it works," Mersfelder said. It takes Mersfelder less than a minute to fill a crowler with beer, set the lid on top and let the machine spin it around and seal it. Most filled crowlers at Local 315 are $10.

Oskar Blues devised the machine by modifying a soup-canning machine, said Jason Dan, the Longmont, Colo. brewery's crowler expert. "I'm called the Crowler Dude,'' he said.

It makes sense that Oskar Blues invented the concept, since it also pioneered the use of cans for retail craft beer with its brands like Dale's Pale Ale and Old Chubb Scotch Ale.

If there is one drawback to a crowler versus a growler, it's that the cans are not reusable like the glass jugs. But the aluminum is recyclable.

Most people, Mersfelder said, like the convenience.

"I sold ten of the them to a guy from Texas one day," he said. ""He said they were easier to take home."

Don Cazentre writes about food, beverages, restaurants and bars for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact him by email, on Twitter, at Google+ or via Facebook.
A couple has been charged in East Ridge after a man said he went to a motel for a massage and wound up getting robbed and beaten up.

Kane Jacques Malone, 21, and Sandra Jacqueline Henderson, 27, are facing multiple charges.

In the incident on Jan. 9, Emmett Martz said he went to room 152 at America's Best Value Inn on Camp Jordan Road to meet with a female about a massage.

He said after Ms. Henderson answered the door and he went inside that Malone stepped out holding a pistol. He took $100, a debit card and a cellphone from the victim.

Ms. Henderson took his keys and began to search his car for more valuables, while Malone held him in the room. Martz said when he tried to bolt from the room that Malone hit him multiple times in the head. He was finally able to escape.



Police said the debit card was used at several stores at Hamilton Place Mall following the robbery. Video of the suspects was obtained and identifications were made, leading to their arrest.

The initial court date is Tuesday. Their bonds are at $35,000 each.
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park invites the public to attend a 45-minute talk at Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District on Saturday, Feb. 6, at 2 p.m. Program parking will be at the Gateway Site off Hamm Road (10 Hamm Road). Special Event signs will also be posted along Manufacturers and Hamm roads to help guide visitors to event parking.

Participants will learn about the "harrowing" journey taken by Colonel John Donelson and a group of settlers making their way to French Salt Lick Springs (present-day Nashville) in 1780. The trip went well until they came to Moccasin Bend, where a group of Chickamauga Cherokee attacked the party of settlers. What had been a fairly mundane and boring trip became a race for their lives along the banks of the Tennessee River.

Although an event that can be viewed as just a footnote in the struggle for westward expansion, this story ultimately impacts better known tales such as the Trail of Tears and the rise of Andrew Jackson to national prominence, said officials.

A blanket or folding chair is recommended for those attending this program and dress accordingly for weather conditions.

For more information about upcoming programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, contact the Lookout Mountain Visitor Center at 821-7786, the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706.866-9241, or visit the parks website at www.nps.gov/chch.






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Federal Judge Sandy Mattice on Monday afternoon delayed action on acceptance of the federal portion of a complicated plea deal for the man charged with shooting a Chattanooga Police officer on March 13, 2013.

Judge Mattice, saying he wanted as much information as possible before setting his part of the sentence, said, "Why should I go first?"

Prosecutor Chris Poole and defense attorney Amanda Dunn said the arrangement was for Celvin "Squaky" Houston to get 84 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He then was set to go before Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman on Feb. 3 to get 15 years on a plea to attempted first-degree murder.

The prosecutor and defense attorney said they believed that Judge Steelman would be required by law to make the attempted murder plea consecutive to the federal time.

Judge Steelman said he had no assurances that the case would be ordered consecutive in Criminal Court. He said had he gotten the case based on just the facts before him he would likely have ordered the maximum 120 months. He said, "After all, this is the attempted murder of a Chattanooga Police officer."



Judge Mattice said he would delay his sentencing until after the appearance on Feb. 3 before Judge Steelman. He said he would notify attorneys of the exact date the case would come back up in Federal Court.

Judge Mattice recommended that a "global settlement" be worked out in the case.

Attorney Dunn said, "I think that is what we have done, your honor."

Prosecutor Poole said he had met with attorney Dunn and District Attorney Neal Pinkston on the arrangement.



Attorney Dunn said she had been working a year to get the case to this point.

Officer William McMillan was shot multiple times in the thigh, buttock and groin areas at East Lake Courts.

Houston was arrested without incident and charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and unlawful possession of a firearm. He had two additional warrants from a prior incident for attempted murder and aggravated robbery.

Houston has a lengthy criminal record, including a conviction in 2012 in state court for being in possession of a handgun with felony convictions. He got a two-year suspended sentence.

He got another two-year suspended sentence in 2004 when he was charged with unlawfully possessing a weapon.

A report said Officer McMillan was responding to a call from an anonymous caller saying there were 30 people hanging out in the East Lake Housing area and they wanted them checked out.

As the officer walked up to the group, one of them pulled out a gun and began shooting at the officer, the report says.

During the investigation, officers learned that "Squeaky" was the person who shot the officer. Investigators found his cellphone at the scene.

They identified "Squeaky" as Celvin Houston and began to look for his associates, Alisha Houston and Moniek Johnson. They were brought to police headquarters.

Both said they had spoken with Houston and he told them that he "messed up" by shooting an officer.


Woman who headed nursing school in Vero Beach charged with fraud

She is accused of maintaining a fake nursing school for a year, including a graduation ceremony to give worthless diplomas to its defrauded graduates
Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, before the start of a joint session with the Florida Senate and Florida House of Representatives on Jan. 12 at the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee during the 2016 Florida legislative session. (LEAH VOSS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

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By Isadora Rangel of TCPalm

TALLAHASSEE  A bill that would allow more than 46,000 Treasure Coast residents to openly carry their guns could put lives in danger, including those of law enforcement officers, local sheriffs said.

Concealing a weapon gives carriers a "tactical advantage," said Sheriffs William Snyder of Martin County and Ken Mascara of St. Lucie County. Openly carrying a gun puts them at risk of having it snatched if not safely holstered, and makes them a target of criminals in situations such as a bank robbery.

While a bill to allow guns on college campuses was declared dead Thursday, legislation to allow people with concealed weapons permits to openly carry is moving in the capital.

Snyder and Mascara support an amendment to that bill, which the Florida Sheriffs Association proposed, that would protect from persecution people with permits who have their guns inadvertently exposed  for example, by the wind lifting their shirt  but doesn't go as far as allowing complete open carry.

"If (the gun) is exposed to the exterior, that is going to cause alarm to some people," Mascara said. "It's going to be up to our deputy to walk a very careful line in approaching a person who has an exposed firearm to make sure that person does have a permit to carry it and knows how to use it."

Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar didn't return requests for comment.

NEGRON SUPPORT

Not all lawmakers agree with the sheriffs.

Senate President-elect Joe Negron, R-Stuart, said he's open to the amendment but doesn't see the same problems with allowing people with a concealed weapons permit to openly carry. Florida is one of five states, along with the District of Columbia, that prohibits open carry, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Most states allow open carry without a license or permit, though some prohibit it in certain public places and require the weapon to be unloaded.

"If you look at other states that have a similar law in effect, the horror stories that opponents claimed simply haven't happened," Negron said. "If a law-abiding citizen has a concealed weapons permit and is lawfully in possession of a weapon, I support the (bill)."

NEXT STEPS

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Miguel Diaz de Portilla, R-Miami, said he will hear the open-carry bill, SB 300, possibly within the next two weeks.

He is open to changing it, however, as it "raises concerns" about the "potential visual impact" of exposed guns and could be detrimental to tourism, he said.

In the meantime, the case of Dale Norman, a Fort Pierce man convicted of openly carrying a firearm on a sidewalk, is pending before the Florida Supreme Court, which will determine whether the conviction violates the Constitution.

GUNS ON CAMPUS

Negron, who represents parts of all Treasure Coast counties, also supports legislation to allow people with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun on college campuses. More gun control doesn't necessarily mean less gun violence, Negron said.

College and university presidents, including Ed Massey of Indian River State College, opposed SB 68 and companion HB 4001.

The measure received a deadly blow Thursday when Diaz de Portilla said he won't schedule a hearing on the bill. That means it cannot progress to the next Senate committee or full Senate.

The bill's sponsors could try to work its language into other bills dealing with the same subject as a last-ditch effort to get it passed.

Mascara and Snyder shared different opinions about guns on campuses. Mascara opposes it, citing Massey's argument that students often get in conflict with professors over grades and attendance, and a gun "might lead to more serious consequences." Snyder, a former Republican House member, said: "I personally don't think it poses a challenge if it's concealed."

Follow Isadora Rangel, Arek Sarkissian and Tampa news partner Jeff Schweers for updates on all the legislative action.

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Ann Geismar, President of Oasis Senior Advisors  Treasure Coast, custom fits area seniors with the ideal housing for their specific needs.

'I love working with seniors and their families, helping them navigate through the maze of senior living options and resources that are available to them,' said Geismar, a Florida Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

'Changing homes  at any stage in life  is difficult. For seniors, this process is further complicated by the never-ending choices and costs of assisted living options.'

Even if a senior can't afford to hire an advisor, Geismar will assist them with her wealth of knowledge and lifetime of experience. That's how much she cares about the residents of this community and the senior population.

Geismar began her career as a Medical and Psychiatric Social Worker for a large hospital system in Broward County before opening Geriatric Care Management, serving a tri-county area.

Later, she worked as a Marketing Specialist for a senior health insurance company, covering the Treasure Coast, Brevard County and Southwest Florida. She also holds a Florida 215 Health Insurance License and is a Nationally Certified Senior Advisor.

'I have spent my whole career working in the senior health industry,' said Geismar, the mother of three children  two adult sons and a daughter still in middle school. 'My parents and my grandparents were giving, loving and altruistic. They prioritized 'family first.' They are the inspiration for my love of seniors and the desire to help others.'

In addition to running the Stuart franchise of Oasis Senior Advisors, serving the elderly population from Vero Beach to Jupiter, Geismar supports numerous nonprofit organizations along the Treasure Coast.

Those most close to her heart include: Alzheimer's Community Care, Alzheimer's Association, Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure , Council on Aging of Martin County, Council on Aging of St. Lucie County, and Social Work Leaders in Health Care.

Her nonprofit involvement is another example of Geismar's understanding of the needs of seniors and her passion for healthy living.

'Anyone who has witnessed the effects of Alzheimer's on a loved one and their families knows how important it is to find a cure for this disease,' said Geismar, whose expertise in senior housing accommodates a wide range of specialized circumstances, including those for patients and their caregivers.

The reason she supports organizations that provide assistance is because 'many of my clients and their families rely on these resources.'

Helping people retain their health and happiness while living with dignity is what Ann Geismar is all about.

That's why she has been a longtime supporter of the Council on Aging in Martin County and applauds the efforts to celebrate the accomplishments of local seniors.

'This year's inaugural Sage Awards is just a beautiful outpouring of reverence for the community's elders,' she said.

The Council on Aging, located in the charming Kane Center, offers a myriad of programs for all seniors, including a state-of-the-art adult day program for seniors with mobility issues, Alzheimer's and various levels/types of dementia.

The Council also provides programs for active seniors, home delivered meals, in-home assistance, care management, caregiver support and primary medical care through the Kane Clinic. 'Some senior communities have onsite medical, nursing and therapy services,' explains Geismar.

'But for those seniors who opt to remain in their own homes, the homes of family members or within communities that do not have any kind of medical staff, what a blessing the Council on Aging's clinic is in their lives  providing quality, one-on-one time with each patient.'

Spending quality time to assess the needs of each of her clients  regardless of their ability to pay  helps Geismar determine the best suited living situation for each individual.

'We use proprietary software technology to help match a senior to the right retirement, assisted, memory care or residential community,' she said about Oasis Senior Advisors. 'We are HIPPA compliant, so discretion is assured.'

She even accompanies her clients and their families on tours of each recommended residential community, patiently pointing out the benefits and attractions, ensuring each person has the opportunity to live with health, happiness and honor.

Oasis Senior Advisors also provides value to hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursing homes by evaluating and pairing patients with the right community, helping reduce length of stay and unnecessary readmission .

'My goal is for Oasis Senior Advisors to be known as a trusted, professional and personalized local resource to help seniors and their families find the best match for their senior housing needs,' she said.

For a listing of licensed assisted living communities and for licensing and regulation status , go to AHCA.myflorida.com.

To learn more or schedule an appointment, please contact Ann Geismar at 772-600-8204 or ageismar@youroasisadvisor.com, or visit TreasureCoast.OasisSeniorAdvisors.com.
SHARE cover Photo by Bob Dobens Karen Ripper, President and CEO of the Council on Aging; Charles W. Kane, Honorary Chair of the Sage Awards; and Gertrude Rodgers, Board Chair of the Council on Aging

By Denise Belizar

On the Treasure Coast, we are fortunate to have a remarkable senior population that gives back to our community.

Whether they are full-time residents or snowbirds, our area's seniors contribute tremendously to bettering this corner of the world and beyond  through their expertise, philanthropy, volunteer commitment and caring.

Yet up to now there has never been any local recognition that formally honors the positive impact of our elders and their example of humanitarianism for future generations.

That will change on Feb. 27 when the Council on Aging of Martin County debuts the Sage Awards at the Kane Center in Stuart.

The Sage Awards honor standout seniors who live purposeful lives by offering their experiences, professional skills and compassionate hearts to their communities.

Winners will be recognized for their contributions in one of seven categories: the Arts; Faith-Based Community; Healthcare/Medicine; Military/Veterans Support; Professional/Business Community; Social or Political Advocacy; and Volunteerism.

The Sage Awards is the first and only awards ceremony to focus solely on recognizing the contributions of seniors on the Treasure Coast.

It is the 2016 signature fundraiser for the Council on Aging of Martin County.

Proceeds will help underwrite the council's many programs, including Meals on Wheels, an adult day program, senior-focused primary medical care, care management, caregiver support and in-home services.

The inaugural event begins by rolling out the red carpet to welcome guests to the Kane Town Center, followed by a festive cocktail reception.

A full-course dinner in the Frances Langford Theatre and Auditorium precedes the Sage awards ceremony.

Actor/comedian Dean Napolitano is the evening's emcee honoring the Sage winners and recognizing all the nominees.

Stuart resident Charles W. Kane is the Honorary Chair of the Sage Awards.

"Mr. Kane exemplifies the exceptional qualities of the seniors we are honoring with this event," says Karen Ripper, President and CEO of the Council on Aging of Martin County.

"After retiring from a distinguished career with the Central Intelligence Agency, he moved to Martin County and dedicated his next 35 years to becoming a voice for seniors on local, state and national levels. The Kane Center is fittingly named in his honor."

The Sage Awards are sponsored by: The Nearing Management Group of Merrill Lynch; Joe and Ann Day; the Kane Clinic; Martin Health System; the Susan R. & John W. Sullivan Foundation, Inc.; The Stuart News/TCPalm; the Arati Hammond Real Estate Team at ReMax of Stuart; The Saelzer/Atlas Wealth Management Group of Raymond James; N. Schoonover & Associates, Inc.; Champion Home Health Care; Crary Buchanan; McCarthy, Summers, Bobko, Wood, Norman, Bass & Melby, P.A.; Patrick Exterminating, Inc.; Sandhill Cove Retirement Living; Stuart Lodge Assisted Living; The Feiertag Financial Group of Janney Montgomery Scott, LLC; Peggy's Natural Foods; The Karp Law Firm; and VIP America, LLC.

Tickets for the semiformal event are $100, and select sponsorships are still available.

For ticket, sponsorship and event information, please call 772-223-7846, or visit KaneCenter.org.
SHARE James Barsalou at Project Space 1785, studies art from Boite en Valise/Ready to Go: An Exhibition Traveling in a Box. James Barsalou, Michael Henson and the colorful Coppertone banner. 12 Bundles of Balloons

By L. L. Angell

Artist and businessman James Barsalou brings a fresh energy to everything he does.

So when he and his wife Natall, and their two children left the Los Angeles area and moved to Vero Beach in 2013, it's only natural they were looking for something different.

"We'd visited Vero Beach before and were impressed with how welcoming everyone was," says Natall Barsalou. "So many accomplished individuals wanted to share their expertise with us. That's really what brought us back."

His first artistic endeavor in his new home came in December 2014, while working in community relations for Indian River Charter High School. Barsalou, 30, co-founded Project Space 1785 with Vero Beach native Jared M. Thomas and Aric Attas in collaboration with the building's owner, Neli Santamarina.

The small bare-bones space on Old Dixie Highway is a multi-disciplinary arts venue "seeking to provide an accessible space for the community to view and participate in various forms of creative and artistic expression," says its website.

Attas and Thomas are both photographers and visual artists like Barsalou. The three men wanted to create a space where artists could step out of the box.

"We want to encourage artists to try new media. We're a place where an artist who works in oils can show his sculpture," Barsalou says. "We offer a place where an artist can take risks  and they appreciate that."

Project Space 1785 gets its name from its address  1785 Old Dixie Hwy. There's nothing else like it in Vero Beach.

"A local artist, Taylor Beatty, did a two-part exhibition here. We did a mass emailing and posted on FaceBook inviting people to come have their portraits taken. Part one was Taylor taking the portraits. Then she selected which ones and part two was the exhibition of photos," Barsalou says.

Impromptu art

Primarily a visual artist and photographer, Barsalou was involved in numerous impromptu art projects in the Los Angeles area. He wants to bring that spirit of spontaneity married with creativity to the artistic community here.

"In a gallery space, work must sell. That limits the artist, preventing him or her from trying new things" he says. "I like to do the opposite here. Work may be for sale, but ultimately this is a place for artists to experiment. We're looking to collaborate with other artists and would love performance art, interdisciplinary work combining multiple art forms and installation pieces among other things."

Their first show, last January, "Immediate Delay," attracted many more people than they'd expected.

"We'd anticipated a handful and were shocked when nearly 200 people came," says Barsalou.

Portable museum

Their most recent show, "Boite en Valise/Ready to Go: An Exhibition Traveling in a Box" was on display this past December. The concept of a "portable museum" comes from artist Marcel's Duchamp's "The Box in a Valise," which contained his life's work in a box that traveled with him.

This exhibition's version featured works by 13 artists, most from California who typically produce enormous pieces. That was the challenge. For this exhibition, their work had to fit into a carry-on suitcase measuring approximately 11-inches by 7-inches by 17-inches.

Organized by Project Space 1785, the exhibition was curated by Jennifer Frias and Joanna Roche from the University of California at Riverside.

There are Rosemary Tesoro's delicate graphite drawings on clay boards.

Tesoro has made meticulous drawings of solitary objects including a payphone on a wall, a glass perfume bottle with decorative black poodle, and an opened gopher matchbook.

Compare that with Sapira Cheuk's curling strips of a cut-up painting attached to the wall and draped down to the floor like long ponytails.

The most comical or perhaps gruesome piece is Phil Davis' mold of a huge human nose, nostrils and all.

"We pinned the nose to the wall at eye level so visitors were face-to-face with it," says Barsalou.

Barsalou often finds himself explaining the art to visitors and admits that some isn't very accessible.

"I enjoy it that the art is being created. People see it and take what they choose," Barsalou says.

His next work will be outside and takes its inspiration from our local skies.

"I've acquired some large wall mirrors and will create a freestanding room in a rural area here. Florida has such beautiful cloud formations, constantly changing," Barsalou says. "Instead of looking up at the sky, this installation lets us look down at the sky reflected in the mirrors."

Barsalou is currently exploring several rural locations and hopes to mount the show this spring.

Perfect fit

Now, Barsalou has found the perfect fit for his artistic sensibilities in the business world. He left Charter High School and last August, along with his wife, bought Morning Star Personalized Apparel on Old Dixie Highway and Second Lane.

The company makes an impressive range of customized clothing with an emphasis on T-shirts.

You may have already seen his work and not known it.

For instance, he created the Navy Seal Museum's Raven T-shirt it features a close up of the multi-purpose canine Raven, a German Shepherd, with the Stars and Stripes waving behind him.

Then there's this year's colorful Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival T-shirt with its big green frogs cooking on a bed of coals

Florida native and self-described beach bum, Buddy Brown founded Morning Star 26 years ago in his garage. Today, the retired Brown, 57, enjoys surfing and sailing. And he's returned to his first love  painting. He sells giclees of his newest works on the website Etsy.

Delayed retirement

Brown says he always planned to retire at 50, grooming one of his employees to step into his shoes. But, when he hit 55, it wasn't happening. He had many fine employees but no one fit what he was looking for.

"I wanted someone who would keep the business on an even keel, while carrying it forward  someone with new energy for the sake of my customers and my employees," Brown says. "That's James and Natall."

Morning Star is a good fit for James' expertise in the visual arts and for Natall who has a degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in downtown Los Angeles.

Brown says Morning Star's success depends on being current with the latest fashion trends. The Barsalous are all about that.

"James and Natall come in and take down my old hippie-surfer stuff and put up sleek, computer graphics," says Brown.

New thinking

He notes that in the old days, the ink used in screen-printing was thicker and the colors were brighter. Even the T-shirts themselves were a thicker material.

"Now people want more subtle colors and thinner material. James gets that. He wants to move forward with water-based inks that give a softer, more fashionable print. He's willing to work harder and create what's only available in urban areas now," Brown says.

Another person keeping everything cutting edge is graphic designer, Darryl Greene who's designed for Warner Brothers, Levis and made a coup when he designed denim clothing for Fred and Barney of the Flintstones cartoon. Today, Green is creating edgy, geometric designs for customized surfboards.

"What good is knowledge if you don't share it?" asks Greene who brings 30 years of experience to Morning Star.

"We cater to surfboard shapers working with Hawaii and both coasts, as well as Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Business comes via word-of-mouth. Our handmade product has higher opacity than designs created digitally," Barsalou says.

Innovators

But, he doesn't rule out digital printing for the future.

"We want to be innovators. As the industry changes we're looking at digital printing. It offers less opacity but more affordable options for full color design," says Barsalou.

And Barsalou has a strong team beside him. In the production area Michael Henson applies decals to a vintage surfboard and makes numerous banners such as a vintage Coppertone model.

"This Coppertone banner has 10 colors. We print one color a day because the ink needs 24-hours to dry," says Henson. "It's quite the craft and I love looking at it. I made it and I feel like an artist."

Joe Endres, the automatic press operator since 2000 and Lance Waldruff print custom-designed T-shirts, setting every color by hand. The eight-head automatic press can print up to eight colors.

"We can also create artwork that mixes colors to create additional colors," says Barsalou.

Nearby, Olivier Coq, runs quality control, checking that each t-shirt's colors are correct and holding properly. Across the way, Kirsty Wagner, Barsalou's sister-in-law, visiting from outside Denver for the past six weeks, organizes t-shirts in the proper bin for pick up.

Save the Chimps

At the end of the day, Natall returns from a consultation with Morning Star's newest customer, Save the Chimps.

"It's very exciting there and they took me around to see some of the chimps," says Natall. "We have so many design options for them to consider."

Project Space 1785 is located at 1785 Old Dixie Highway. To learn more, see projectspace1785.tumblr.com and www.projectspace1785.com. Morningstar Personalized Apparel is located at 621 2nd Lane. Visit www.morningstartshirts.com or call 772-569-8412.
SHARE Photo provided Sylvester McIntosh as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps in 1967. He will be receiving a Silver Star for his heroism during the Vietnam War at a Jan. 30 ceremony at Memorial Island. Sylvester McIntosh stands in front of his home in Wabasso

By Paige Van Antwerp

Sylvester McIntosh was right out of Gifford High School in 1966 -- 18-years-old and "didn't have (his) head screwed on straight." So he passed up a scholarship to Florida A&M and joined the Marine Corps.

Not even two years later, but thousands of miles from the dirt roads of his Wabasso home, he became a Vietnam War hero among the ranks of the Walking Dead. On Jan. 30, after years of frustrating delays, McIntosh will finally be awarded a Silver Star for his actions under heavy enemy fire.

During the Vietnam War his unit, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, had the longest sustained combat and suffered the highest killed in action rate in Marine Corps history.

But that's not how they got their name, McIntosh says. It wasn't about losses  it was about resilience.

"Ho Chi Min named that outfit the Walking Dead," he said. "His son was a colonel in the North Vietnamese Army and they had overrun the Marines. He thought they had killed them all because they disappeared. But what happened is that they went down in trenches. And when the North Vietnamese got close enough, we'd pop back up."

McIntosh's commanding officer Lt. Col. Albert Slater remembers May 13, 1967, as "the worst of all the many, many firefights we were in."

Master Sgt. Dennis Lee agrees.

"I'll go to my grave remembering too much about it. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong that day. It was Murphy's Law, all the way  absolute chaos," he said. "Horrible, horrible things."

Ambushed

They had been ambushed by the North Vietnamese Army, which was "big, strong and dug in with mortars," said Slater.

"The fighting was fierce. And I look up and there's one of my squad leaders (McIntosh) going into the kill zone to get his buddies out. He came out carrying one, then went back twice more for other guys.

"We were under such heavy fire, I thought surely he was a dead man."

What nobody knew as they watched McIntosh returning again and again, was that he had been shot in the chest when he went in the first time. His flak jacket had fallen open when he bent over to pick up his comrade, allowing an opening for the bullet.

"But he just wouldn't stop," said Lee. "He was covering up the wounded to protect them with his own body. When he came in with the third guy, he said 'Doc, I just can't do any more,' and collapsed. We didn't even know he'd been shot."

When they took off his flak jacket to treat him, it was torn up from all the artillery that had hit him and not gotten through.

'I am that man'

The medical corpsman "Doc," who saw McIntosh collapse and treated him, was Steven T. Rudolph.

"We looked for each other for 25 years after Vietnam  and he was living in Cocoa," said McIntosh. "Doc was the one who really pushed for my Silver Star."

Slater and Lee remembered the young man's heroics, too. But for many years, they weren't even aware that McIntosh was still alive. It was during a round of reunion storytelling in Rudolph's driveway where all that changed  and the impetus for his medal began.

Lee had flown in to attend a veterans ceremony in Melbourne, and Rudolph invited service friends back to his house afterwards for a barbecue. Lee had started talking about that terrible day in 1967 and "the guy who kept going back into the gully with a bullet in his chest to save his fellow Marines."

He was just finishing up his story about "Mac" when one of the guys walked up to him, opened up his shirt to show his scar and said, "I'm the man you're talking about."

Shortly thereafter, at Lee and Rudolph's urging, Slater made an application for McIntosh to get the Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor and one level higher than the Silver Star. But after waiting for two years, Slater found out the paperwork had been lost. Rudolph urged him to reapply. And after another two year wait, McIntosh got his Silver Star.

Driven

In one of the cruelest twists in this tale filed with tragedy, Rudolph died last year before he got to see his friend receive the award he had pushed so hard for.

"But I took care of him when he moved to Melbourne and was sick with cancer," said McIntosh. "Whenever he needed me, I was there."

That's what has always driven McIntosh. He never pushed to get an award because he'd achieved something that meant far more to him, back when he was a squad leader.

"I was there to make sure I got the job done and protect the men who were under me. That was one of my prayers. I said 'God, whatever you want me to do, please do not let me lose one man.' And I did not lose one man.

"I always felt like, if I lost a man, I'd lose my mind."

However, when he was in the hospital getting his wound dressed, a member of his squad was brought in with a serious injury. He told McIntosh several of his friends and fellow squad members had been wiped out after he was shot.

"They were overrun that night," McIntosh said, quietly.

When he got out of the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, McIntosh headed home to finish recuperating. A false rumor had made him the Walking Dead in Florida, too.

"I was standing beside the road at the bus station in Vero and one of my classmates passed by me in his car," McIntosh remembers. "He turned around in the middle of U.S. 1  with cars coming both ways  and came back to say, 'You're dead!'

"So I asked him, 'How can I be dead and standing here?" Then he told me to get in the car  'I'm taking you to Wabasso.' So he brought me home."

Walking disaster

By his own admission, McIntosh was a "walking disaster," when he finished his time in the Corp, a year later.

"We all had PTSD," Lee said. "We all did."

But according to McIntosh, "God changed all that for me when he called me to the ministry."

He spent decades preaching  in Jensen Beach, Riviera Beach and Fort Pierce. Now he's home in Wabasso. He also earned a doctorate in religious education, that helps him to train young men and women around the state to enter the clergy.

He told no one about his time in Vietnam. Not even Slater knew about an earlier incident of McIntosh's bravery that was equally medal worthy.

It was even written up in "Star & Stripes" when he threw himself on a hand grenade to save one of his buddies. McIntosh said that was one of three times he did so.

"It was not a concern of my own," said McIntosh, about risking his life, time and again. "It was for the safety of my friends."

Close to home

When Slater called McIntosh with the news that his award had finally been approved, he gave him two options for the ceremony: one with pomp, circumstance and a parade at Parris Island or a smaller simpler affair, close to his friends and family. Without hesitation, McIntosh chose home.

But nobody here knew about his heroics, either.

"I knew that he had been shot," said a member of his extended family Sheila Smith. "Because when I was a little kid he showed us the scar and I ran."

Of course, that wasn't the worst reception McIntosh and other Vietnam Vets received on their return. So as they dealt with their traumas in an unwelcoming country, many withdrew.

"My daughter had never heard me talk about it," said McIntosh. "When she attended President Obama's first inauguration, she went to the Marine Corps Museum and saw what we'd gone through. She came home and said, 'Dad, I always wondered why you went off by yourself. I couldn't understand but now I see. Thank you.' And she cried.

"Many of us do not like talking about it."

Long overdue

For Slater, McIntosh's award is an overdue recognition of one of the many young men who served under him, thrust into unimaginable circumstances way too young.

Many of those soldiers will never get their due, in part because most of the officers who could have written them up for medal consideration weren't there to witness their heroics.

It was rare to lose officers in Vietnam, said Lee. But not for us.

My entire staff was dead, said Slater.

As a result, junior enlisted men  many of them teenagers, like McIntosh  assumed roles of leadership and distinguished themselves in obscurity.

"If you looked at them, back there  we'd robbed them of their youth. They had tired eyes, ripped and rotten clothes, dirty, shot up, wounded and exhausted. I'd call my commanding officer and say 'I don't think they can fight anymore.' But they did."

Slater and Lee and several other members of 1/9 will be flying in from all over the country to participate in and attend McIntosh's ceremony.

"I call them my survivors," said Slater. "It's a warm, warm feeling being with your combat members  a healing feeling."

But Slater is even more impressed by McIntosh's heroics off the battlefield. "He emotionally survived and he does so much good through the church."

Up front

McIntosh has, indeed, gotten far enough past his physical and emotional scars to focus on the same principle that made him a hero in war. "I always put myself up front," he said, of those days. "That way, the first man to be killed would have been me.

"That was my mindset."

And once all the killing was done  "There are 780 names from our battalion on the wall in Washington," said Lee  McIntosh uses that selflessness to turn lives around.

"It pushed me to love people more," said McIntosh. "I care about people. My wife and kids always tease me "Daddy, you'd give our house away." And I say to them, 'Only if God tells me to.'"

"Mac is a special person," said Slater. An original.

"He's more than a combat hero  he's an American hero."

Sylvester McIntosh's Silver Star will be awarded on Jan. 30 at 1 p.m. at Memorial Island Sanctuary in Vero Beach. The public is invited to the ceremony.
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By Laura Zorc

Indian River County Council PTA will be hosting an Education Forum with 2016 State House 54 Candidates Erin Grall, Dale Glading and Lange Sykes on Jan. 28 at Sebastian River High School.

The Education Forum will follow a brief County Council General PTA meeting at 7 p.m.

The purpose of the forum is to bring together stakeholders in the community to discuss current education policy and proposed legislation with House of Representative candidates.

The Indian River County Council PTA Legislative Committee has invited Beachland Elementary PTA President and Parent Pat Blackburn; Indian River County School Board Member Charles Searcy; Indian River County Education Association President Liz Cannon; Indian River Charter Alliance Member Deborah Seeley; The Learning Alliance Board Chairman Ray Oglethorpe; Florida Coalition of School Boards Member Shawn Frost; and Sebastian River High School Principal Todd Racine to present questions to the candidates.

Moderating will be Laura Zorc the Indian River County Council PTA President and time keeper will be Juli White, Glendale Elementary and IRCC PTA Secretary.

Non PTA members are asked for a suggested donation of $5 per family or individual at the door.

The money collected will be applied to a scholarship for one Parent Teacher Student Association senior from each of the current participating PTSA high schools, which are Sebastian River High School and Vero Beach High School.

Laura Zorc says, "With nearly 200 education bills filed this legislative session and with 58 percent of the Florida budget ($49.96 Billion out of $78.7 Billion) going to education it is critical that parents be cognizant of our candidates education positions not just on the local level but also on the state level."
In case you needed a reminder to secure your IP security cameras with a strong password, a new feature of the Shodan IoT search engine should do the trick.

By typing has_screenshot: true port 554 while logged into the search engine, users can now see screenshots from vulnerable webcams around the world. Ars Technica reports that the new search filter was first spotted by security researcher Dan Tentler, who often tweets links to cameras and other insecure IoT devices surfaced by Shodan.

For vulnerable webcams, the problem lies in the use of the Real Time Streaming Protocol on an open port with no password protection. When Shodan finds one of these cameras, it indexes the IP address, camera details, and other information, along with a screenshot. A quick look through the search results shows plenty of images that clearly should be private, including living rooms, offices, and bars. (A one-time $49 charge provides access to a running image feed at images.shodan.io.)

Shodan itself has been around since late 2009, indexing details on all kinds of Internet-connected devices that are beyond the purview of a traditional search engine such as Google. Its pitched mainly as a security research tool and a way for businesses to monitor connected device usage, but it has also exposed controls to utilities, heating and cooling units, and traffic systems. We reported on the vulnerabilities it can expose back in 2014.

Why this matters: Shodans new webcam-snooping feature raises more questions about who is responsible for keeping IoT devices secure. Some of the blame lies with consumers, who are often overconfident about the security of their connected devices. But as Ars points out, vendors arent doing much to help with that problem, as they race to the bottom on price, neglect security, and gloss over the risks of using their products. If nothing changes, we may see government regulators clamp down on insecure devices; maybe theyll be able to use Shodan as an enforcement tool.
City Councilman Larry Grohn said Monday that a large section near the thriving downtown "remains so decayed and so dysfunctional."

He told members of the Pachyderm Club that sections that include East Chattanooga, Dalewood and Alton Park, have unemployment as high as 46 percent. He said, "Probably 60 percent of the households have single black mothers."



He said switching to a council form of city government with at least three minority districts out of nine did not help.

And he said it does not appear that the city's Violence Reduction Initiative is working. He said he has tried to get information about the program without avail, including filing several open records requests.

Councilman Grohn said the city says it is doing much more business with minority firms. He said when he asked for more details, he was referred to a state list of the 34 minority firms the city is giving business to. He said he found that only six have black ownership, while 28 are female owned. He said there is no information given on the race of the 28 females.

Telling the group that it is to everyone's benefit to seek to help improve the inner city districts, he said he has started a foundation called Chattanooga Works. He said among its efforts will be helping with programs by the Alton Park Development Corporation at the old Piney Woods School.

Noting the high cost of incarcerating prisoners and other expenses associated with poverty, he said, "I may be speaking to a group of WASPs, but this issue directly affects your pocketbooks. You need to be concerned about this."



The councilman said he believes that Richard Bennett, who was initially working with the city to help in crime reduction, was set up for arrest. He said he was called out late at night to aid a woman. He said the man who was initially with the woman quickly left, leaving Mr. Bennett alone with her. He said there was no 911 call, but an officer showed up at the scene.

He said, "It took a year for Mr. Bennett to be cleared of all the charges" and, in the meantime, his city contract was taken from him.

Councilman Grohn said Mr. Bennett is again involved in projects to try to help the disadvantaged sections. He said Peter McFarland, owner of the Chatt Inn, has set aside a section of rooms for use in that program.

In other matters, the speaker said it was "a huge mistake" to approve rezoning to allow a seven-story apartment complex on Cowart Street.

He said, "That will be a major disaster for Councilman (Chris) Anderson to deal with in his next election. He totally disrespected the wishes of the residents of places like Jefferson Heights and Fort Negley, and they are super upset with him."

Councilman Grohn said he does not expect the city to carry out any more bicycle lane projects like the ones on Broad Street and North Market Street "after all the blow back they have gotten."

He said many citizens "are vehemently against" those type projects.

The speaker said the city striped some bike lanes along roads in his district "where no parent or grandparent" would want their loved one riding.

He expressed skepticism about the effort to revive light rail service in Chattanooga.

He said the cost per mile is huge, with the least amount he has seen being over $20 million per mile in Denver. He said city officials are saying it can be done here for $4 million per mile with just $1 million per mile coming from city residents.

He stated, "I do not think it is very practical to do it on existing rails."

Councilman Grohn said the city spent millions on the Harriet Tubman project "and when have you heard anything about that?"

He said recent heavy rains have pushed back the timetable on the expensive project to fix the "hard edge" at the 21st Century Waterfront by months. He said it may be September, October or later before the work is done.

Councilman Grohn said the growth continues to be dramatic in his district, but he said city infrastructure is not keeping up with the surge.

He said the city should stop applying for TIGER grants to replace the Wilcox Tunnel, saying that is not going to ever be funded.

The speaker said he expects the planned Central Avenue Extension to Amnicola Highway to be finished. He said it will pass by a new apartment complex near Amnicola and give it a connection with UTC.



In the current election, he said he is supporting Sterling Jetton for assessor.

He said there are "three great candidates" for Criminal Court judge, but he is endorsing Judge Tom Greenholtz.


The rise of autonomous war machines is outpacing policies and technological countermeasures, weapons and robotics experts warned last week at theWorld Economic Forum.

Autonomous weaponry potentially is a US$20 billion industry that has taken root in 40 countries, saidBAE Systems Chairman Roger Carr.

He was one of four panelists at the session titled What If: Robots Go to War? The other panelists were Angela Kane, senior fellow at theVienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation; robot ethics expert Alan Winfield; and Stuart Russell, a computer science professor atUC Berkeley.

Lethal autonomous robotics, or LARs, have no emotion or sense of mercy, Carr said.

The panel stressed the need for human operators to oversee LARs, which cant fully comply with laws limiting all-out war.

The next 18 months or so will be critical, warned Kane, because some actors will use the technology irresponsibly and possibly even maliciously.

The First Autonomous Weapon

Whilekiller robots very well may be an existential threat to humanity, autonomous weapons already have been used on a large scale.

The U.S. is believed to be the first country to have launched an autonomous weapon, according to Richard Stiennon, chief research analystIT-Harvest. That weaponized artificial intelligence, Stuxnet, was designed to take down power plants and other large-scale industrial sites.

The only reason we havent seen this yet in the private cybercrimes space is that traditional attacks, such as spearfishing and man in the middle,  are a lot less expensive and take a lot less work, he told TechNewsWorld.

States actively researching or testing autonomous weapons include China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the U.S., according to theCampaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Nation-State Involvement

The sophistication of cyberattacks seems to be moving at warp speeds, said Brian Arellanes, CEO ofITSourceTek.

One of the things weve realized, in sitting on different panels and engaging the community, is that there are nation-states that are heavily funding these hacker organizations, he told TechNewsWorld. So its not just one individual operating as a lone wolf anymore, though there remains that threat.

Nation-states increasingly have been turning to hacker collectives to wage war and play spy games.

Its becoming a much more complex landscape, so it makes it harder, especially for private sector companies, to fight these cyberterrorists, said Arellanes.

Its imperative to highlight the potential for bad actors to hack and control LARs and other military equipment.

I cant help but think of William Gibsons novel Neuromancer  where he described all of this in graphic detail, IT-Harvests Stiennon said. its quite amazing that someone who is not a technologist has the imagination to see this coming.
New Delhi, India, January 25, 2016: Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, one of Indias leading IT Services and Solutions provider, partnered with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise as its channel partner for HPE Converged Systems. Under the partnership, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic will be responsible for marketing and penetration for the product.

Speaking on the launch as well as the association, Rajan Bhandari, President Sales, Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic, commented, Today, IT infrastructure the world over is undergoing a phase of rapid evolution and legacy environments using traditional IT infrastructure are fast getting outdated. As such, there is an urgent requirement for businesses to adopt new-age software-driven IT solutions that grant them business agility and operational flexibility. HPEs Converged Systems, with its software-centric architecture and tight integration of technologies, has emerged as one of the most agile and trusted hyperconverged IT infrastructures in the world today. We are delighted to be associated with the product as its channel partner and are confident the solution will help businesses big and small in achieving scale and size.

HPE Converged Systems is a package of pre-configured IT components that integrates into systems to lower the cost of ownership and grant greater flexibility to meet more business demand. The product, which was introduced today in an event in Gurgaon, attracted the attention of major industry players such as KPMG, Shopclues, Apollo Tyres, Jaquar, Blackberry, Daikin, Bata India, Marposs International etc and is expected to bring in a business of around $2 million.

Technuter.com News Service
Yahoo has continued to rebuff investor calls that are seeking to explore a potential sale of the company's core Internet business, with sources familiar with the matter stating that Yahoo will be deciding on what to do next only after the release of its quarterly earnings on Feb. 2.

Three sources have said that Yahoo has brushed off several possible buyers for the company's core Internet business, with some of the buyers being private equity firms. The sources wished to remain anonymous as the discussions are confidential.

Yahoo refused to issue a comment on the matter, but one of the sources said that the company will first want to see how shareholders will react once it reveals its strategic vision at the company's upcoming earnings call.

Last month, Yahoo revealed its decision to hold on to its $31 billion stake in Alibaba, and opted instead to move forward with a tax-free spinoff of the company's core Internet assets. The spinoff, which could take as much time as at least one year, would provide more transparency on the value of the business of Yahoo and could save stakeholders taxes worth billions of dollars.

Investors, however, are pushing for an outright sale of Yahoo's core Internet business as opposed to a spinoff. This is due to concerns that the business, which covers the sale of search and display advertisements on Yahoo's websites and email service, could see more losses in value amid competition with Alphabet's Google and Facebook.

The resistance of Yahoo to an outright sale primes the company for conflict against Starboard Value LP, an activist investor that earlier in January reinforced its call for Yahoo to auction off its core Internet assets.

The last time that Yahoo gauged the interest for its core Internet business was last month, before the board meeting that decided upon the spinoff of assets, according to one source. During the time, Yahoo requested for possible buyers to submit preliminary signs of interest and reveal their price for Yahoo's Internet business. However, there was no formal sale process that was launched.

Yahoo could find it difficult to resist the overtures of shareholders, but as investors including Mason Capital and Canyon Capital Advisors, on top of Starboard, are calling for an outright sale.

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El Salvador has urged its citizens to hold off on getting pregnant for two years, fearing newborns could contract the growth-stunting virus that has been plaguing the region over the last few months.

Until last year, Zika virus hadn't been detected in the Americas. The mosquito-borne virus was first documented in Africa in 1947.

The newly landed virus has been ravaging countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. With more than a million reported cases, Brazil has been hit hardest by the virus.

Close to 4,000 of Brazil's reported cases of Zika virus included the development of microcephaly in babies. Microcephaly is a condition that stunts the growth of the head, hindering the development of the brain as a result.

In El Salvador, the number of Zika virus cases reported was just south of 5,400 near the start of the new year. Ninety-six pregnant women in the Central American country are believed to have contracted the virus, though there haven't been any confirmed cases of microcephaly.

Despite the absence of evidence of microcephaly in the country, El Salvador has called for the boldest measure of any of the embattled countries. While Columbia and other countries have called for a stay on pregnancies for about six months or so, El Salvador has urged prospective moms to hold off until 2018 before trying for offspring.

"If we don't make any recommendations to the population, we could have a high incidence of microcephaly," said Eduardo Antonio Espinoza Fiallos, the vice minister of health. "Of those children, 99 percent will survive, but with limitations in their mental faculties."

El Salvador's call for planned pregnancies could be at odds with the country's religious population, which is predominantly Catholic.

Morality mandates that people shouldn't have that degree of control over procreation, stated Hector Figueroa, a priest in charge of health issues in the San Salvador archdiocese.

"But the church also isn't going to say something that runs contrary to life and health," said Figueroa. "This is a very delicate issue."

The presence of the Zika virus has been reported in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname and Venezuela, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

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Reports of Apple's new 4-inch iPhone 5se continue to make headlines. The latest is a leaked image of the smartphone next to an iPhone 5 and shows a design very similar to that of the iPhone 6s.

February and March appear to be busy months for some of the biggest smartphone makers. LG and Samsung have both scheduled press events on Feb. 21 in order to launch their 2016 flagship smartphones, while Apple and HTC are expected to unveil new handsets in March.

Samsung is expected to take the wraps off of the 5.1-inch Galaxy S7 and 5.5-inch Galaxy S7 Edge, which will replace the current Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge as the company's top of the line smartphones.

LG will reportedly unveil its Galaxy S7 rival in the form of the LG G5. The upcoming LG phone is rumored to have familiar specs, but will have a removable battery, which was a feature Samsung abandoned when it launched the S6 last year, reportedly due to its metal and glass design.

HTC will hold a press event in March to launch the HTC One M10, which is expected to use either Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 820 processor or a MediaTek chip, depending on region. Apple is also supposedly planning a media event in late March, where it will launch again a new 4-inch iPhone, since the iPhone 5s went on sale in 2013.

While some reports have referred to the new 4-inch iPhone as iPhone 6c, others claim it will actually be called iPhone 5se. It will also feature specs that are at par with previous generation iPhone 6 in order to maintain the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus' flagship status.

An image of what is rumored to be the new iPhone shows the 4-inch smartphone with a nearly identical design to that of the iPhone 6/6s, complete with curved glass edges, a power button on the right side, and Touch ID home button. The handset was photographed beside an iPhone 5 to show how its design compares with a previous 4-inch iPhone.

The jury is still out on what the official name of the new 4-inch iPhone will ultimately be, but you can bet this won't be the last time you're hearing about the device leading up to its March launch. We'll keep you posted on any new details, as they become available.

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Onlookers and rescuers found three baby sperm whales dead on a beach near Skegness in East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. Experts say the whales may have gotten lost.

One of the whales was discovered at around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, while the two others were found just a few miles south at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Scientists from the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) will perform the postmortem examination of the whales.

The three whales are believed to be part of the same pod, or group of whales, as the the other sperm whale that was discovered on Friday at Hunstanton. The said whale was about 45 feet long and weighed approximately 30 tons. Workers went out to rescue the whale but unfortunately, it did not survive.

"This large animal was unable to make for deeper water. As the tide was dropping away, nothing more could be done," says Geoff Needham, a spokesman for the Hunstanton Lifeboat Station.

The CSIP obtained samples of the whale's skin, blood, teeth and blubber.

Meanwhile, the location of the rest of the pod is still unknown.

Sperm whales are deep-sea species that cannot survive in shallow waters for long. The animals are said to become disoriented easily in such areas.

Sea Watch Foundation director Peter Evans says the whales found in Skegness are probably adolescents that encountered a squid and fed on it. The whales may have lacked food thereafter, causing them to swim farther down south to the shallow waters of Norfolk.

"The general consensus is that it's a pod that has got lost and they've become unstuck through stress meaning that, unfortunately, they have beached themselves," notes Sam Rees of Skegness Aquarium.

CSIP program organizer Rob Deauville says the incident is unusual. The group documents and investigates marine animal strandings all over the UK. As per their data, sperm whale strandings are not typical.

"Every year we get 600 strandings of cetaceans in the UK and a handful, about five or six a year, are sperm whales," he says.

CSIP also notes that the number of marine animal strandings in the UK has risen over the last 25 years. The data are consistent with reports from other countries, including the United States. In 2010, 33 pilot whales were found dead on an island off the Donegal coast in Ireland.

Experts say climate change due to the utilization of underwater sonar is among the practices that international studies have identified as a causative factor.

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Mystery and misfortune had enshrouded the death and life of King Tutankhamun -- the Egyptian pharaoh whose nearly intact tomb was discovered in 1922 -- and it appears as if it still does now.

Colloquially known as King Tut, the pharaoh had sparked a worldwide and renewed public interest in ancient Egypt since its first press coverage. The artifacts from the pharaoh's tomb have been toured all over the world.

One of these artifacts is King Tut's mask, which remains the most popular symbol for the pharaoh. The 3,300-year-old mask is under the care of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Unfortunately, though, the museum is currently at the forefront of an untimely situation. Eight of the museum's employees are now facing trial for reportedly damaging King Tut's mask. They have been charged with gross negligence and were referred to disciplinary action.

What Happened?

According to allegations, "clumsy" curators accidentally knocked over King Tut's solid gold mask in 2014, dislodging and scratching the blue-and-gold beard from the ancient artifact.

Somehow, the beard was stuck back to the face with glue. Employees supposed that this transpired during routine maintenance of the showcase where the mask was kept.

"What happened is that one night they wanted to fix the lighting in the showcase, and when they did that they held the mask in the wrong way and broke the beard," claimed one museum official.

The museum official said the curators tried to fix the broken mask overnight with the wrong material. It still wasn't fixed in the right way. The next day, the curators tried to fix the mask again.

"The problem was that they tried to fix it in half an hour and it should have taken them days," the museum official added.

Prosecutors who opened an investigation in 2015 said the curators haphazardly used epoxy to glue the piece back together.

"In an attempt to cover up the damage they inflicted, they used sharp instruments such as scalpels and metal tools to remove traces of adhesive on the mask, causing damage and scratches that remain," said the prosecutors.

Perhaps The Beard Might Be Close To Falling Off?

In January last year, former Egyptian Museum director Mahmoud el-Halwagy and the museum's conservation department head Elham Abdelrahman had denied the allegations.

Halwagy said the mask's beard never fell off, and that there is no doubt that nothing has happened to the mask since he was appointed director in October 2014.

Halwagy and Abdelrahman said the true issue is that well before the new museum director was appointed, conservators were already concerned that at some point in the future, the beard might become loose.

So they applied an adhesive that was sanctioned and provided by the antiquities ministry which unfortunately, turned out to be conspicuous.

"This is the problem. It's too visible," said Halwagy.

The museum had hired an expert committee led by Christian Eckmann to fix the mask in October 2015. Unfortunately, the epoxy resin that the team used was not effective.

Eight employees will be charged and are now referred for dismissal. Prosecutors said the employees did not stick to proper protocol when they attempted to restore the mask.

"The officials dealt recklessly with a piece of an artifact that is 3,300 years old, produced by one of the oldest civilizations in the world," said the prosecution.

The date of the trial is still unknown.

Photo : Mark Fischer | Flickr

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Twitter is undergoing a major restructure of its business, as several top product executives of the company will be leaving while new board members will be taking their seats.

The departures will be the first significant ones since Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of the social media platform who returned to lead the company as its CEO

It can be remembered that one of the first actions of Dorsey, upon his return to Twitter's top position, was to enforce layoffs on almost all of the departments of the company. Dorsey fired a total of 336 employees in October, which was equivalent to about 8.2 percent of the social network's 4,100 global employees, with most of the layoffs in the engineering and product function divisions of the company.

Dorsey, apparently, was not finished with the layoffs, as the restructuring would reach even the highest levels of leadership in Twitter.

The social network's top ranks will be undergoing a major overhaul over the coming few weeks, the New York Times reported, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The report claimed that Twitter will be announcing its two new members of the board soon, though who the two people are were not revealed. According to the sources, however, one of the new board members of Twitter is a high-profile personality in the media industry.

The company has actually been looking for additional board members since the appointment of Omid Kordestani, a former executive of Google, as Twitter's executive chairman in October of last year.

Twitter will also be appointing a new chief marketing officer, as several executives will be vacating their positions.

Twitter senior VP of engineering, Alex Roetter, is one of the executives that will soon leave the company, along with senior VP of product Kevin Weil and VP of global media Katie Jacobs Stanton. Vine General Manager Jason Toff, which saw Twitter acquire the social video app back in 2012, will also be exiting the company and will look to rejoin Google as a member of its virtual reality initiatives.

Dorsey, in a tweet, clarified press rumors and stated that the executives are the ones that decided to leave the company,

The overhaul of the social network is driven by the fact that the value of its stock has decreased by half over the past year, with Twitter failing to implement improvements and upgrades fast enough to turn around the social media platform's dwindling user growth.

Dorsey's plan to reverse the fortunes of Twitter and take it out of its current user growth slump is to enhance the product, with the social media platform targeted to be made easier to use and less intimidating for new users. Dorsey even mentioned that no feature in Twitter is sacred, which has led to experiments on the social networking service such as reversing the chronological timeline of tweets and possibly breaking the longstanding 140-character limit of the platform.

"Twitter will become the first thing everyone in the world checks to start their day and the first thing people turn to when they want to share ideas, commentary or simply what's happening," Dorsey said on his vision on what he wants for Twitter.

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Parents let their children spend time in parks because this fosters learning and fun. A new study, however, showed that paint in playground equipment contains 40 times the recommended levels of lead, making play places not so safe at all.

Researchers from Plymouth University examined the level of toxic chemicals found in paint used in 50 playgrounds across the south of England. They specifically looked into the amounts of lead, cadmium and antimony in swings, slides and climbing frames among others. Lead and Cadmium are included in the list of top 10 chemicals of concern by the World Health Organization.

The rule set by Europe in 1977 states that playground paint should not contain more than 0.25 percent lead. In one of the latest investigated parks built in 2009, the researchers discovered a 10 percent lead presence.

If the general consensus established by the United States and most European nations would be referenced, then that playground contains 1,000 times higher than the recommended. This is because the agreed-upon percentage of lead in playground paint equipment is about 0.009 percent only.

An old playground, which may seem less risky because of faded paint, still contains dangerous levels of lead, capable of causing detrimental health consequences.

"You'd expect the older playgrounds to be more dangerous as people have become more aware of the dangers of lead, but our findings suggest that this isn't the case," says study author Dr. Andrew Turner.

Turner explained that play equipment is relatively safe if the paint is still intact. However, when the coating starts to crack and flake due to exposure to UV light and moisture, the little metal substances get distributed around the entire area.

The investigation looked into playgrounds located in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Hampshire. Turner says he does not expect highly different findings in other parts of the UK.

In the U.S., Tulane University Professor Howard Mielke was baffled when his daughter was found to have high levels of blood lead during a routine test prior to an eye surgery.

Mielke was determined to find the cause so he followed his child all day and took samples from play areas. It turns out the child care center playground was a hazardous site.

The message now is to encourage parents to be vigilant. Turner says some kids explore the world by putting things in their mouth so it is important to be cautious. He also advises parents to let children wash their hands after playing.

Turner also recommended the implementation of stricter rules to domestic and imported paints and to pre-painted equipment.

The study was published in the Science of the Total Environment journal.

Photo: Mike Cattell | Flickr

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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed that they took over the operations of the biggest child pornographic website during a sting operation.

The U.S. Justice Department agreed in court filings that the FBI operated a website called Playpen for two weeks in early 2015. During the sting operation, the FBI found that the website had over 215,000 registered users. The website also had links to over 23,000 sexually explicit videos and images of children that includes around 9,000 files, which could be directly downloaded from the federal agency.

The details of the operation stay largely secret but this was the third operation when FBI took control of child porn websites and left it operational to catch people who accessed the content. FBI used a software in the latest operation that could identify users who would use security tools to hide their identity.

In the past, the government did not allow FBI agents to use child pornographic images online to catch those who viewed them. The Justice Department says that children in the images are harmed each time someone views their explicit image. Moreover, the FBI has no control to stop these images from being copied or re-copied and circulated on the Internet.

FBI agents acknowledge the associated risks; however, they say that there are no other way to identify those who accessed these websites.

"We had a window of opportunity to get into one of the darkest places on Earth, and not a lot of other options except to not do it," says Ron Hosko, a former senior FBI official who was involved in planning one of the agency's first efforts to take over a child porn site.

"There was no other way we could identify as many players."

The FBI revealed that they noticed Playpen soon after it became operational in August 2014. The website was hidden in the "dark web," which is a part of the Internet accessible to the public only via Tor - network software that bounces users' Internet traffic from one system to another so that it is not easily traceable.

FBI suggests that by March 2015, Playpen had become the largest known child pornographic service available in the world. The FBI has tracked that the website's servers were tracked to North Carolina and the agency secretly moved the computer servers at its own facility in Newington to start the sting operation.

FBI agents say that shutting the website immediately after it was found would have not enabled law enforcement officers to identify offenders and rescue victims from abuse.

Photo: Lisa Williams | Flickr

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Three new cases of mosquito-borne Zika virus (ZIKV) emerged in the United Kingdom, health officials said. Public Health England (PHE) confirmed that three UK travelers got infected when they visited Central America countries and were diagnosed when they arrived home.

The agency did not provide further details about the new cases but said that the Zika virus does not occur naturally in the UK. The virus is usually seen in countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The United States confirmed cases in Florida and Illinois.

"ZIKV does not occur naturally in the UK. As of 18 January 2016, three cases associated with travel to Colombia, Suriname and Guyana have been diagnosed in UK travellers," PHE posted on its website.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned pregnant women against travelling to countries with confirmed cases of Zika virus. The virus cause serious health defects such as microcephaly.

CDC issued an Alert 2 Travel Health Notices for people who plan to travel to Zika-stricken countries. This means that enhanced precaution needs to be practiced especially among pregnant women.

People who get infected with the virus usually develop low-grade fever, joint pains, rash, red eyes or conjunctivitis, headache, eye pain and muscle pain. Though the symptoms are similar to that of dengue fever and chikungunya, Zika virus may appear less severe because it goes away on its own. The effects on pregnant women, however, are another facet of the disease.

Brazil, the country that first reported the case of Zika virus in 2015, recorded an increased number of babies born with health defects. Microcephaly is a complication that is irreversible and is likely to result in developmental probelms for the baby. It is characterized by a small head, resulting in the brain not properly and completely developing.

The virus can be transmitted through mosquito bites and health officials urge travelers to take extra precaution to protect against being bitten. If traveling is unavoidable or they live in areas where Zika virus infections have been reported, pregnant women are advised to take dependable and meticulous measures to prevent mosquito bites.

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Microsoft Surface Pro 3 users have complained of the blue screen of death (BSOD) after installing the latest update. However, there is a possible fix to address the issue.

Microsoft rolled out a firmware update dated Jan. 19, for the Surface 3 and the Surface Pro 3 tablets, which promises to bring a number of performance enhancements and bug fixes.

However, several customers have complained of instability and BSOD - one of the worst types of errors in computers.

"I updated SP3 firmware yesterday, 24/01/16... and from 5.42 pm every 10 minutes I got what seems a blue-screen and restart until the battery died at 2.37 am," complained a Surface tablet user on Reddit.

"I think I have the exact same issue. Is it only when you are on battery?" complained another Redditor.

Microsoft is yet to officially determine the issue but some users have found a temporary fix. Some users suggest that the issue has been caused by the Surface Pen driver and rolling back the Surface Pen driver is a fix.

"Rolling back the Surface Pen Settings Driver fixed all the issues for me (black screen on reboot, random BSOD, random wakes from sleep) so thanks for that," says a Surface Pro 3 user.

"Since rolled back the SurfacePenDriver Settings back to March 2015, no BSOD anymore," says another Surface Pro 3 user.

While the fix has worked for some people, others have reported that their tablet remains unusable after the January software update.

Microsoft has rolled out the January update for the Surface 3 as well as the Surface Pro 3 but it seems that the problem was prevalent only in the Surface Pro 3.

Customers who are facing problems after downloading the January update on their Surface Pro 3 tablet can fix the issue by right-clicking on the Start Menu > Choose Device Manager > Select Human Interface Devices > Open Surface Pen Settings > Navigate to the Driver tab and then select Rollback driver.

Microsoft will be taking notes regarding the issue and the temporary fix found by users. However, the owners of the tablet will hope that the company will issue a fix sooner than later to resolve the problem.

The sales of the Surface Pro 3 has been impacted by the release of its successor - the Surface Pro 4 - but the tablet remains one of the popular Windows 10 tablets in the market. The starting price tag of the Surface Pro 3 is $699 and all models include the Surface Pen.

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Zebras are distinct because of their black and white striped coats. What's fascinating about these striped coats is that they come in different patterns that are unique to each zebra.

Scientists have thought that these animals' black and white stripes are helpful in camouflage, or in mate selection, as Charles Darwin argued.

However, a study conducted at the University of California, Davis found that these concepts may be inaccurate as we have been looking at zebra stripes the wrong way.

How Predators See Zebra Stripes

It has something to do with the way predators such as cheetahs and lions see zebra stripes in certain lighting conditions, researchers said.

For instance, during moonless nights, zebra stripes are only visible to predators at 29 feet. At twilight, the stripes are visible within 98 feet. In short distances, predators can distinguish zebras through their sense of smell and hearing. Thus, this renders camouflage as ineffective.

Additionally, in long distances, zebras themselves cannot tell the difference between solid and stripe patterns. Researchers said this indicates that their unique stripe coats don't serve as a social function either.

What Are Zebra Stripes For, Then?

It is important to note that camouflage involves blending in the environment. So this means that zebras don't really blend in to protect themselves from predators. Still, their black and white stripes are not without function.

1. Cooling Effect

According to a 2015 study issued in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the black and white stripes of zebras may have evolved to help these animals cool off under the heat of the midday sun.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles examined how 29 different environments can influence the stripe styles of plains zebras in south to central Africa.

The team found that the stripes along the back of a zebra are closely linked with temperature and precipitation in the environment. This means that stripes in the animals' torso do more to help zebras regulate their body temperature than to camouflage themselves.

Biologist Brenda Larison, co-author of the study, said zebras benefit from the extra cooling system because they digest food less efficiently than other grazers.

These black and white striped animals need to spend more time out in the heat of the midday sun and eat more food.

"Zebra have a need to keep foraging throughout the day, which keeps them out in the open more of the time than other animals," said Larison. "An additional cooling mechanism could be very useful under these circumstances."

2. Fending Off insects

Another idea is that the black and white stripes help zebras fend off disease-carrying insects.

Biologist Tim Caro of the UC Davis and his colleagues support this theory.

In a 2014 study featured in the journal Nature Communications, Caro and his team found that striping patterns are linked to repelling insects.

"Again and again, there was greater striping on areas of the body in those parts of the world where there was more annoyance from biting flies," said Caro.

Referring to the study conducted by Larison's team, Caro said they found a lot of similarities in their findings.

"A lot of people in the public think that stripes have to do with confusing predators," he said. "This is the kiss of death for that particular idea."

Photo : Filip Lachowski | Flickr

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A Samsung employee disclosed more details regarding the much-rumored and highly anticipated Galaxy S7, revealing a hybrid dual SIM slot and a waterproof design, to name a few.

First things first, a slew of rumors have been making rounds on the Internet for quite a while now, suggesting that the upcoming Samsung flagship will have a microSD slot and will house the impressive home-built Exynos 8890.

This time, the news came about courtesy of Naver (translated), an Internet content service provider based in South Korea, which the aforementioned employee reportedly informed regarding the upcoming Samsung flagship.

Here's a short list of what the Samsung employee divulged:

Design

To sport a premium look, all variations of the Galaxy S7 are said to use a black chassis. According to Naver, it's apparently marketed as All Black.

Dust And Waterproof

A quick history about the Galaxy S series: The dust- and water-resistant design started with the Galaxy S5, and it had an IP67 certification, making it capable of withstanding sweat, sand and dust. When the S6 came along, the idea was dropped, notably along with the removable battery and microSD slot.

Now, it looks like Samsung is taking things up a notch, as the Galaxy S7 is allegedly going to be dust and waterproof.

Camera

The camera on the Galaxy S7 is purportedly going to be downsized from 16 MP to 12 MP with an f/1.7 aperture, where Samsung appears to be focusing on sensor size and capacity instead of cramming in as much megapixels as possible.

Also, it seems that the smartphone maker is using the slogan "On the Night" to appeal to potential customers, suggesting that the S7 will be able to take clear and vivid photos even at night or in low-light conditions.

Similar to Canon DSLR cameras, it will be fitted with a dual-pixel AF function, which can considerably improve the colors of photos and reduce noise. To top them all off, the camera hump will be bidding adieu.

Hybrid Dual SIM Slot

It seems that the rumors about a microSD slot just got another layer to back up their claims, but it's in the form of a hybrid dual SIM slot. As mentioned earlier, Samsung removed expandable storage support from the S6 and other models in the same range, so this is definitely big news to a lot of Samsung flagship owners.

Battery

The Samsung employee didn't go into details regarding the battery, but there's a pretty good chance that it will have a longer-lasting pack. It's said to be a bit thicker and heavier compared to the S6, but the weight difference will be unnoticeable.

Color Availability

The smartphone will be available in black, silver, white or gold, and the informant notes that more colors could possibly roll out in the future.

The Internet is starting to become a trove of Samsung Galaxy S7 rumors. Some even suggest that it will come in 5.1-inch, 5.5-inch and 6-inch flat and curved variants. At any rate, these are all rumors, and what do we do with them? We take them with the proverbial grain of salt.

Photo: Maurizio Pesce | Flickr

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Is warfare innate in humans? The remains of what appears as a brutal war of ancient hunter-gatherers  found near a Kenyan lake in Africa  may hold a clue to the elusive, much-debated matter.

Picture the scene of the ancient grave site: 10,000-year-old remains of 27 people, with some skulls crushed and others struck with arrows in the heads and necks. Even a pregnant woman's hands and feet were bound.

The Nataruk massacre finds, studied in research published in the journal Nature, might as well be the oldest proof of warfare taking place between humans.

The findings fuel the belief that human warfare, after all, might be as old as humans are, according to the University of Cambridge researchers.

"These human remains... provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers," explained study lead author Dr. Marta Mirazon Lahr in a statement.

She added that the Nataruk massacre may have rooted from attempts to seize resources, which operates on the same underlying principle of violent attacks on settlements in agricultural societies.

However, it is unclear whether the dwellers on the land around the lake at the time of the bloody encounter were already forming a society where violent clashes were fairly commonplace.

A separate study argued that a violent past may have a hand in the evolution of human faces, which it proposed was a result of the need to adapt to or survive punches during physical fights.

University of Utah biologist and co-author David Carrier said that the anatomical features that distinguish humans from other primates seemed to improve fighting ability  supporting the hypothesis that early ancestors were indeed aggressive.

"[M]any of the anatomical characters of great apes and our ancestors, the early hominins (such as bipedal posture, the proportions of our hands and the shape of our faces) do, in fact, improve fighting performance," Carrier explained.

Many philosophers and evolution experts long argued that violence and war indeed have deep roots in human biology - a theory championed by the likes of Thomas Hobbes yet countered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said it was only civilization that corrupted humans and made us more violent.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama has weighed in on the matter, expressing in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that war "in one form or another, appeared with the first man."

The Nataruk massacre, however, seems to not offer an outright conclusion, only an enriching take on the discussion.

But for co-author and Cambridge professor Robert Foley, aggressive and lethal tendencies could be embedded in human DNA as much as being "deeply caring and loving" is.

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Among hundreds of beetle specimens on display across Australian museums, many are still unidentified. Scientists recently discovered 24 new species of beetles belonging to the weevil genus Trigonopterus.

In the study published online in the journal ZooKeys, German museum scientists Alexander Riedel and Rene Tanzler added the new species discovered from Australian rain forests to the weevil genus.

"Usually a delay of decades or even centuries occurs between the encounter of a new species in the field and its thorough scientific study and formal naming," Riedel of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe said.

He added that there are only a few experts focusing on discovering new species and there are millions of unidentified insect species across museums around the globe. Only a small number of people are trained to identify these species.

Most of the specimens were collected in the '80s and '90s and were kept in museums until the two scientists had the opportunity to study them. The scientists discovered that the newly described weevils are limited to small areas of rain forests in northern Queensland, Australia.

They added that the reason why these species were not able to spread is perhaps their lack of wings. This prohibited the beetles from travelling and spreading. The beetles dwell mostly in the leaf litter, which makes them easily overlooked.

"There are millions of species on our planet with whom we co-exist," Riedel said.

"What's most exciting for me is to make a few of these new forms of life visible to others as well. And, of course, this has practical implications for national parks and so on, because if you realize that there are lots of species endemic to the region, then there is special value in protecting it," he added.

The researchers suggest that a dense sampling of specimens with molecular data covering the east coast of Queensland and the northern part of New South Wales will help delineate species boundaries.

"Thus, a solution of these taxonomic problems mainly depends on freshly collected material suitable for DNA sequencing," the researchers said.

"The geographical ranges and ecologies of these 'difficult species' will become sufficiently clear with such a study, hopefully allowing the safe identification of all the unnamed specimens stored in museum collections," they added.

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Doctor Who fans got a rude awakening over the weekend when Doctor Who lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat announced that he would leave the series in 2017.

That announcement came with even more bad news for Doctor Who fans, unfortunately. Although, technically, viewers should get two more Moffat-led seasons of Doctor Who, now they're only getting one additional season with Moffat as showrunner, plus a Christmas episode. That's right, there won't be any new episodes of Doctor Who this year because the BBC decided to push Moffat's last season back until 2017.

So the only new Doctor Who fans get this year is a Christmas episode.

The announcement came with some good news: the BBC has already lined up Moffat's replacement. Chris Chibnall is taking over the show's reins.

But who is Chibnall? What credentials does he have that makes him worthy of helming one of the world's longest-running science fiction television shows?

For those in the U.K. and Anglophiles in the U.S., Chibnall is known mostly as the writer for Broadchurch, a crime drama starring former Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Broadchurch is popular worldwide and has won many awards, with a third season currently in the works. There was an American remake, too, also starring Tennant, called Gracepoint, but it only lasted 10 episodes (let's face it, generally, U.S. adaptations of U.K. series don't do well).

Broadchurch, though, isn't the only BAFTA-winning series Chibnall has worked on: his award-winning credits also include The Great Train Robbery, United, Law & Order: U.K. and Life on Mars.

Chibnall also served as head writer for the first two seasons of Torchwood, the more adult spin-off of Doctor Who. Of course, he's also already got experience working on Who, too: Chibnall wrote the eerie episode "42," a tense adventure story that had the Doctor and Martha Jones trying to save a spaceship from crashing into a burning star.

Chibnall also introduced classic Who aliens the Silurians to a new audience by writing the two-part "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood" for Matt Smith's run as the Doctor. He also wrote several other episodes for Smith, including the fun "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship." The last episode he wrote for the series was "The Power of Three," which asked the question: what would happen if a bunch of alien cubes landed on Earth and did absolutely nothing?

If those credits don't impress, Chibnall was also personally chosen by the BBC to take on Doctor Who.

"Chris Chibnall is the perfect successor to take over the reins of this incredible show, so I am delighted that his love for Doctor Who has made it impossible for him to resist!" said Polly Hill, BBC controller of drama commissioning. "Chris is an incredible writer and his vision and passion for Doctor Who gives it an exciting future and promises to be a real treat for Doctor Who fans across the world."

Moffat also believes that Chibnall is a worthy successor.

"While Chris is doing his last run of Broadchurch, I'll be finishing up on the best job in the universe and keeping the TARDIS warm for him," said Moffat. "It took a lot of gin and tonic to talk him into this, but I am beyond delighted that one of the true stars of British television drama will be taking the Time Lord even further into the future."

However, fans won't know how Chibnall fares as the head of Doctor Who for some time: he won't become showrunner until 2018. Until then, there's this year's Christmas special and next year's new season to look forward to: that gives fans plenty of time to wish Moffat goodbye as he parts ways with the Doctor.

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Enough is enough already.

With the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) having rejected Volkswagen's proposed fix for an estimated 580,000 vehicles affected in the country by its emissions scandal, the automaker's second-largest shareholder is giving the company three months to come clean about the origins of its diesel vehicles' manipulation.

"There is a very legitimate concern on the part of U.S. authorities, the public and the company itself for a comprehensive investigation," Stephan Weil, VW's supervisory board member and Lower Saxony's prime minister, said in an interview, as reported by Bloomberg. "It's in the interest of VW to provide a complete clarification."

The deadline would see to it that VW makes good on its promise of reporting its emissions scandal's roots during the company's annual shareholders' meeting on April 21. To prepare for that revelation, United States law firm Jones Day was hired by the automaker last year to independently get to the bottom of how VW cheated.

In addition, the automaker followed that in December by commissioning Ken Feinberg, who oversaw funds restitution programs for General Motors' defective ignition switches and BP's oil spill, to guide a similar refund program for affected owners of manipulated vehicles in the United States.

This deadline comes days after the company publicly stood by CEO Matthias Mueller, refuting rumored reports that it would be letting him go.

Will all those things add up to finally unearthing the roots of VW's emissions crisis?

It better, because Forbes is reporting that the Department of Justice's federal lawsuit against VW for disregarding the Clean Air Act can result in regulatory fines up to $18 billion in the U.S. alone.

The embattled automaker coming clean would probably ensure that the projected sum of fines doesn't get worse.

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Could graphene someday be more effective than a Brita water filtration system?

It could happen. Baoxia Mi, who joined the University of California, Berkeley's faculty last summer, is pioneering research in finding new methods to purify water and wastewater.

According to an article on Berkeley's engineering website, Mi is developing a new type of membrane that could outperform the current water filtration technology used today, while using less energy. How? Well, her design is made from graphene oxide, the same material used in pencils.

Made from a thin layer of carbon, this graphene membrane material can effectively remove wastewater contaminants, ranging from pharmaceuticals, pathogens and endocrine disruptors, according to Berkeley's article. Mi adds that graphene could be used toward wastewater reuse, treating storm water and the desalinization of water.

"Graphitic oxide is a large particle containing numerous layers of carbon, so the resulting membrane is thick, with a very low water filtration rate," Mi says in the Berkeley article.

She adds that the graphene membrane material could be especially significant during droughts because of its ability to be more energy efficient in filtrating water.

"It's very flexible, compact and low maintenance," Mi says. "We're working really hard right now to make them work for desalination."

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Ukrainian Hacker Pleads Guilty In Credit Card Data Theft, Botnet Conspiracy

A Ukrainian hacker accused of trying to frame a well-known U.S. cybersecurity expert, Brian Krebs for heroin possession has pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in Newark, New Jersey for using more than 13,000 computers to steal log-in and credit card data, federal prosecutors said.

Sergey Vovnenko, 29, of Naples, Italy, 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. He was part of an international conspiracy to hack into computers belonging to individuals and companies between September 2010 and August 2012.

U.S. prosecutors said on January 20 that Vovnenko faces a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison and may face additional prison time, plus a fine for conspiracy, at his May 2 sentencing.

Vovnenko admitted to operating a botnet that used more than 13,000 computers that had been infected with malware to gain unauthorized access, reportedly as part of an international conspiracy to launch cyberattacks on both individuals and companies. The group then used malware known as Zeus to steal banking information from and record keystrokes of people using infected computers.

Vovnenko fought extradition after he was detained by Italian authorities in June 2014. Around the time of his extradition, cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, who runs the cybersecurity blog Krebs on Security, accused Vovnenko to have been behind a 2013 plot to have heroin sent to Krebs Virginia home, and then tell police when the drugs arrived.

However, Krebs was able to foil the plot and alert the police due to his ability to track online activities of Vovnenko.

In short, the antics didnt end when I foiled his plot to get me arrested for drug possession, and those antics likely contributed to his arrest and to this guilty plea, Krebs wrote in a recent blog post. The aggravated ID theft charge to which Vovnenko pleaded guilty carries a mandatory two-year sentence. The other charges he copped to will lengthen his sentence and include fines.
Buyers looking for space to spread out in the heart of the Fulton Market neighborhood and its burgeoning restaurant and tech scene may need to look no further than this handsome, freshly listed two-bedroom, two-bathroom industrial loft at 312 N. May Street. While the unit naturally ticks the standard list of timber loft features such as hardwood floors, high ceilings, exposed brick, and an open floor plan, the white painted overhead support beams are a nice touch and offer a crisp, complimentary contrast between new and old. An abundance of large windows and upgraded track lighting gives this 2,400-square-foot space and open and airy atmosphere.

It is obvious that the previous owner wasn't afraid of color based on the orange foyer and two bright yellow bathrooms featuring equally colorful shower curtains. While the open kitchen features such perks as stone countertops and stainless appliances, the stepped layout and color of the dark wooden cabinetry feels slightly less contemporary and more suited to when the building was converted to condos back in 2000. The six-story former warehouse features a shared rooftop deck with stunning views of downtown. While records show that this particular unit last sold for $375,000 in 2003, the current asking price of $560,000 is a function of the Fulton Market/West Loop neighborhood's meteoric rise to prominence over the past decade and also reflects the scarcity of condos throughout the area.

312 N May St APT 2A [Zillow]

Previous Loft coverage [Curbed Chicago]
Another newly built downtown apartment property has changed hands at a near-record per-unit price as Convexity Properties has sold the 398 apartments within its Streeterville tower for $240.4 million. According to Crain's, the Chicago development firm unloaded its North Water Apartments to Atlanta-based investment management giant Ivesco earlier this month. The glassy 49-story, Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed tower at 340 E. North Water Street is also home to a 400-room hotel that was sold to New York's Loews Hotel Group for $171.7 million in February of 2015, bringing the total gross sale price of the building to $412 million. The high sale price of $604,000 per unit is not far off the $661,000 rate that Related Midwest fetched for its record-shattering sale of OneEleven in 2014. Monthly rents at the amenity-rich North Water Apartments range from $1,799 for the lowest priced studio up to $14,899 for highest priced three-bedroom unit.

Owned by trader-turned-developer Don Wilson, Convexity Properties has been busy with a number of high profile projects across Chicago. The group is responsible for the acclaimed Restoration Hardware flagship store conversion in the Three Arts Club building as well as a new Gold Coast luxury condo project opening soon at 4 E. Elm. Convexity is also working to build the new Viceroy Hotel behind the historic facade of the Cedar Hotel and is bringing Brooklyn Bowl to the Fulton Market neighborhood. The company's sale of the North Water Apartments shows that large institutional investors are still willing to shell out vast sums of money for new downtown housing stock. However, with thousands of new units still on the way, it will be interesting to see how the market reacts when supply finally catches -- and quite possibly exceeds -- demand for downtown apartments.

Brand-new Streeterville apartments sell for $240 million [Crain's]

First Look at Streeterville's New North Water Apartments [Curbed Chicago]

Previous Streeterville coverage [Curbed Chicago]
A Requiem For Molecular Gastronomy Pioneer Moto, Closing In February

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jan 25, 2016 3:06PM



(Photo via Moto's Facebook Page)

Last Friday afternoon at 4:16 p.m., in what was either a perfect example of taking out the trash day or a total coincidence, a release went out announcing that Moto, the famed pioneering molecular gastronomy restaurant, would soon be no more. The space will be sold to the Alinea restaurant group, and the restaurant will close on Feb. 14. Not included in the release (but sent to me by a tipster) is the information that Berrista, the progressive coffee shop also controlled by the Moto folks, now has a for lease sign in its window.

This sad turn of events comes as no real surprise, since the owner and driving force behind Moto (and Berrista), Chef Homaro Cantu, died last April. But whenever a restaurant of this stature disappears into the annals of food history, its worth a moment of reflection.

Moto, in its heyday, was a restaurant unlike any other in Chicago. One-third restaurant, one-third performance art piece and one-third science lab, Moto wowed and confused diners at every turn. What Chicago foodie could forget being taken into the basement kitchen, told to don goggles and watch as a course of their meal was incinerated by an industrial laser before their eyes?

There are few restaurants where every single meal is memorable, but Moto was one of them. Note that I did not say where every single meal is good Moto had its ups and downs. For every memorably blow-your-mind dish (like the perfect replica of a Cuban cigar crafted out of bread, collard greens and black pepper), there was another that was totally disastrous. I have a strong memory of a particular revolting concoction involving liquefied lettuce combined with tomato that almost made me want to get up from the table and leave. But still, I went back again and again.

Why? Well, in addition to the always-memorable food, Moto was a great place to catch a glimpse of what might be (but probably wasnt) coming next, a sort of EPCOT of future food. Would diners necessarily be eating every meal off of anti-griddles, like the servers promised? Would menus really be edible in the future? Probably not, but if they happened to be right, you wanted to say that you saw it first. How many restaurants worked with NASA, had an indoor farm in the basement and had a chef that boasted a long string of patents? None, really. While Alinea, which Moto was inevitably compared to, is an exercise in quiet perfection (with a backdrop of experimentation), Moto was a mad scientist's wacky playroom.

Innovations abounded at Moto. It was one of the first restaurants in the city to swap chefs and servers, to rotate employees through different jobs. Its the first place I remember having really creative drink pairings that didnt begin and end with wine. The restaurant had a fancy computer control system, similar to one found at a fast food restaurant. The chef did a TED talk! And the service was inevitably some of the best in the city, which I have to believe led to their Michelin star almost as much as the food.

A date and I who regularly dined at Moto would play a game every time we went: Could we get up from our seat, pass the curtained hallway to the kitchen (where the servers hid between courses) and make it across the room to the bathroom, without someone popping out from nowhere to courteously hold open the door for us? Over a three hour meal, there were plenty of opportunities for games like this (if you drop a napkin, how long will it take for them to notice?) but the servers inevitably won.

Ive already written extensively about Homaro Cantu himself and his visions, sometimes magical and sometimes crazy. Its rare for an innovative enterprise centered on a charismatic founder to survive the founders death. And besides the love felt for Cantu by many in the food scene, its especially sad because he had big plans for the restaurant in the future. He told me (in secret, but its a bit late for that now), of plans to sell the original space to the Alinea folks, to move Moto to the old Charlie Trotters building, to turn Trotters famed TV studio into a combination research lab and broadcast center, to employ a whole staff of food scientists. Smaller innovations were in his brain too, like a plan to allow diners to control the lighting at each individual seat to get perfect photographs. While the sale of the spot to Kokonas and Achatz happened, it looks like the rest of these ideas died with Cantu.

There were notable flops that came from this group as well. Every time Cantu tried to open another spot and capture the magic again, it didnt quite work; note the failed Otom, Ing and Berrista. I always believed that failure came because the magic was not really in the wacky food, but in the entire experienceespecially the experience of talented people who were allowed to try just about anything. In the fine dining fairyland of Moto, the whole thing worked, but anywhere else, it didnt. In the end, the first restaurant was also the last restaurant, and Moto will be the one we all remember.

If you want to get one more taste of the restaurant, theyre open for another few weeks. I prefer to reminisce on my many memorable meals at this important place (and my many memorable encounters with its patriarch) and remember that, occasionally, hyperbole aside, there comes a dining establishment that really does change the way you think about food and its possibilities.
Pregnant women will be advised to avoid popular holiday destinations like Florida or Queensland in Australia if the dangerous Zika virus spreads.

Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Oxford University warned that Zika was likely to spread to the same places as dengue virus because both are carried by the same mosquito.

Many southern states in the US now have dengue and there as particularly virulent outbreak in the Florida Keys last May. Queensland has also had problems with the disease.

The first cases have been reported in Puerto Rico, where transmission of mosquito-borne viruses is widespread, as well as a case that was just diagnosed in Houston, Texas.

Already pregnant women have been warned not to travel to the Olympics in Brazil this summer.

The Pan American Health Organisation said it was likely that Zika would spread throughout the Americas and the government has warned pregnant women not to travel to wherever the disease is present.

There is currently no vaccine or drug to prevent an infection and symptoms include joint pain, a rash, eye pain, headache and muscle pain - similar to dengue fever.

However pregnant women are most at risk as it can lead to their children being born severely malformed. Since the outbreak began, nearly 4,000 babies have been born with abnormally smaller heads, a condition doctors call microcephaly, which often causes brain damage.
The poet also wrote songs and is said to have been able to play the stock-and-horn, the violin and the guitar.

However Burns was much more interested in women and soon became somewhat of a ladies man: while involved with Jean Armour, his affair with his mother's servant Elizabeth Paton resulted in his first child in 1784; the next year Armour gave birth to his twins.

Around the same time, Burns also became involved with Mary Campbell - who inspired the poems "The Highland Lassie O", "To Mary in Heaven" and "Highland Mary".

Struggling for money, Burns made plans to move to Jamaica to work as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation, a role he may have struggled with, considering the forward-thinking, abolitionist views he expressed in his song "The Slave's Lament".

To pay for his voyage, Burns published his poems in a book known as the Kilmarnock Volume. The works became an immediate success and the published poet put aside his plans for Jamaica, instead setting off for Edinburgh where he found literary acclaim.

After protestations from her father, Armour and Burns eventually married in 1788. Over their life together she gave birth to nine children, although only three survived. Over the years he continued to publish poems, working on farms and as an excise officer to support his family financially.

However Burns only lived until the age of 37. A lifetime of poor health due to his weak heart and frequent drinking resulted in his early death on July 21 1796, from rheumatic fever.

Born into poverty, he never escaped financial strife: when his tailor found out he was dying, he presented him with a bill on his deathbed.

The poet's funeral took place four days later, on the day Armour bore his first son, Maxwell. By the time of his death, Burns had borne 12 children by four different women.

How is Burns night celebrated and what are the traditional activities?

Whether or not Burns would have worn a kilt is still disputed, with some arguing that as a lowlander he would not have worn them  although he was a champion of the right to wear traditional dress.

The full ritual of the night involves whisky, haggis and poetry readings. Those who partake are piped in and then The Selkirk Grace  the prayer of thanks attributed to Burns  is said before dinner.

The prayer goes:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it;

But we hae meat, and we can eat

Sae let the Lord be thankit.

A traditional Burns Supper starts with soup, often a Scotch broth. The haggis is then served with turnips and potatoes  known as neeps and tatties if you're a true Scot. The haggis, typically carried on a silver salver, is also piped in by the diners with a standing slow clap.

It is the "Great chieftain o the puddin-race" according to the "Address to the haggis". During the Address (also written by Burns) the speaker draws a knife and at the line An cut you up wi ready slicht, cuts the dish open. Once all the fanfare is over, the guests toast the haggis and tuck in.

The meal is followed by the Immortal Memory toast, in which a guest gives a speech in honour of the great poet. Then a Toast to the Lassies, once a chance to thank the women cooking the meal, it is now the humorous highlight to the evening. A male diner offers an amusing but complimentary take on the role of women in general life, taking in quotes from Burns' works and referring to women in the group.

Any man making the toast should tread with care, since it is followed by a reply from the women.

The rest of the night is filled with a vote of thanks and guests performing works by Burns, ending with the Auld Lang Syne. The group stand and holds hands to sing it.

This year, however, many Burns Night celebrations have been cancelled due to the latest Covid-19 restrictions. On Jan 4, Scotland was placed into lockdown to help tackle the rising spread of the latest coronavirus variant. In an address to the Scottish Parliament on Jan 19, Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that the restrictions will remain in place until at least the middle of February, adding that any relaxation of rules while cases remain high could "quickly send the situation into reverse".

Could haggis actually be English?

While the dish might be a Scottish favourite, it might actually have English roots. A 1430 cookbook called Liber Cure Cocorum from Lancashire contains the earliest known recipe for haggis.

The meal is a savoury pudding, made from a mixture of sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, oatmeal, onion, suet and stock. While for centuries it was served in the animal's stomach, that tradition has (fortunately) died out.

Leading food historian Catherine Brown believes that Scottish nationalists may have appropriated haggis as a symbol of their nationhood in the decades following the Act of Union with England in 1707.

"It seems to be that there's an identity thing there. We'd lost our monarchy, we'd lost our parliament and we gained our haggis," she said.

"There was a latching onto everything that was distinctive about Scotland, and Burns had identified the dish in such an evocative way."

She added Burns claimed the pudding as Scottish with his poem "Address to a Haggis" in 1787, because it was a thrifty contrast to the elaborate and pretentious French cuisine popular in Edinburgh at the time.

Things you didn't know about haggis

Despite the $1000 fine for anyone caught smuggling haggis into America, there's allegedly a multimillion dollar haggis smuggling ring dedicated to getting Scottish expats their haggis. The dish was banned in America in 1971, with officials stating it was unfit for human consumption. Haggis hurling is a thing. Really. In June 2011, Lorne Coltart set the record, hurling his haggis an impressive 217 feet. An ancient version of haggis is mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, "a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly". The world's biggest haggis was made by Halls of Scotland and weighs 2,226 lb 10 oz  that's as much as a small car.

Recipes for a Burns Night supper

From traditional haggis to delicious cranachan, here are the best recipes for a Burns Night supper.

A perfect starter for your Burns Night festivities is cock-a-leekie soup. Rich and warming, this version simply uses three ingredients  chickens, leeks and prunes  and is easy to whip up.
The 'Making A Murderer' Prosecutor Says He's Writing A Book

By Kate Shepherd in News on Jan 25, 2016 7:55PM

"Making a Murderer" has become a national obsession.

Now Ken Kratz, the Wisconsin prosecutor featured in the Netflix series, is set to write a book about the controversial case, in order to give murder victim Teresa Halbach a voice, he told Green Bay's WBAY.

"Finally grateful to tell the whole story," he told the station. Kratz also sat down with our sister site Gothamist to discuss the series last week.

The documentary series chronicles the conviction of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey for Halbach's 2005 murder. It argues that Avery was framed for the killing because of a $36 million civil lawsuit he filed against Calumet County.

It's ignited a national debate about Avery's guilt or innocence. Headline News' Nancy Grace and other experts like ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams are still convinced Avery murdered the 25-year-old photographer.

Kratz has called the documentary one-sided.

"I've been vilified, certainly insulted and threatened and things like that," he told WBAY in December.

Avery and Dassey are both serving life sentences in prison. Some viewers, including Abrams, believe Avery is guilty but Dassey might be innocent.

Avery, who was released from prison in 2003 after DNA exonerated him in a rape case, recently proclaimed his innocence in a letter he sent to a Milwaukee reporter.

"The real killer is still out there," he wrote, according to ABC News. "Who is he stalking now? I am really innocent of this case and that is the truth!!! The truth will set me free!!!!!!!"

[H/T Sun-Times]
Rauner's Wife Hires New Chief Of Staff For $100K Amid State Social Service Cuts

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 25, 2016 6:06PM



Photo credit: John Gress/Getty Images

On Friday, Lutheran Social Services, which provides housing, behavioral health, addiction childcare, homecare and services to seniors, announced it would close 30 of its programs that serve some 4,700 people, eliminating 750 jobs. The agency, which has been in business since 1867 and provided services to 73,000 people last year, cited the states budget impasse for the cutbacks.

Currently, we are owed more than $6 million by the state for services delivered, said LSSI President and CEO Mark Stutrud in a press release. After seven months, we can no longer provide services for which we arent being paid."

Affected programs include drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health counseling, respite services for veterans, re-entry services for prisoners and more. The programs seeing the largest cuts are those for senior citizens.

Over the weekend, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart and the National Alliance on Mental Illness denounced the governor for the cutbacks. In a joint statement given to the Daily Herald, Dart and NAMI said:

For the governor to allow these programs to wither away is simply deplorable. Without Lutheran's diversion programs, my Cook County Jail population will rise, costing taxpayers significantly more in both the short-term and long-term."

Predictably, Rauner put the blame on state democrats for not passing his Turnaround agenda, which would significantly weaken labor in the state and give big business more power.

Tom Dart knows very well that groups like Lutheran Social Services could be fully funded tomorrow if he and Mike Madigan placed a higher priority on social services than defending the out-of-control, job-killing power of special interests, Dart spokesperson Catherine Kelly said in a statement.

But while Rauner seems to believe only state democrats are at fault for not putting a high priority on social services, it seems those also take a back seat to some of his interests. CBS reported on Friday that the state has chosen Emily Bastedo to replace Sara Wojcicki Jimenez as Diana Rauners Chief of Staff, at a $100,000 a year salary. That the governors wife has a chief of staff at $100,000 a year was controversial last year, when she initially created the position around the time Rauner began talking about massive budget cuts. According to Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois, due to Diana Rauners lack of public appearances, its not clear why the position is needed. Im not sure a $100,000 Chief of Staff without a clear presence or a clear policy role is justified, Redfield told CBS.

What is very clear though, is just how much Rauner is willing to spend to justify his actions this past year in the coming election cycle. According to the Tribune, the governors political campaign just cut a $900,000 check to the Illinois Republican Party, which brings the total amount of money hes passed to the state GOP to nearly $9 million since he took the 2014 primary election. Rauner hinted that the money would be used to call out state democrats for supporting Speaker Michael Madigan.


Superstar Jackie Chan has unveiled more details about his dubbing role in 'Kung Fu Panda 3', as this 3D animated film is ready to land on the mainland on next Friday.

Jackie Chan [Photo: mtime.com]

The Kung Fu icon says it was an interesting and challenging experience as dubbing for two different roles in three editions of the film.

"I did my recording in the United States, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. They asked me to do the recording when they had finished almost all the preparations, as I had a busy schedule to film in various places around the world. So I'd do some recording while I was in the United States. They were all very earnest."

Jackie Chan voices for Master Monkey and Panda Po's biological father in English, Mandarin and Cantonese in the latest installment of the 'Kung Fu Panda' franchise.

The 61-year-old actor says whenever entering the recording studio, he immersed himself in the role.

"My role would have a steamed bun in mouth sometimes. So I put three fingers in my mouth while dubbing. Those details can help enliven the cartoon character. It's very cool."

DreamWorks' CEO has earlier announced the Mandarin customized version of 'Kung Fu Panda 3' is not simply a dubbed version, but a redesign and rewrite of the script.

It also adds some dialect elements, in order to help Chinese audiences' get punchlines.

'Kungfu Panda 3' is set for release in China and US on January 29th.
What has Cupid got to do with it?

Cupid, also known in Latin as Amor ("Love"), is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is frequently portrayed as the war god Mars, as well as the son of the love goddess Venus.

His Greek counterpart is Eros and he is just one of the ancient symbols associated with St Valentines Day, along with the shape of a heart, doves, and the colours red and pink.

Today, he is typically portrayed as a small winged figure with a bow and arrow which he uses to strike the hearts of people. People who fall in love are said to be "struck by Cupids arrow".

Why is the heart associated with love?

The heart was once associated with knowledge as well as feelings: Egyptians believed that the heart was the source of our memories, as well as our emotions. They placed so much value on the organ that they left it in people's bodies during mummification, while throwing all other organs, including the brain, away. And they weren't the only ones - Aristotle also believed that the heart was an organ of intellect.

This idea was widely accepted until Galen, a Roman physician, said the heart was more likely to be responsible for emotions than reason - apart from love, which was found in the liver.

As the influence of Christianity grew in the Middle Ages, so did the religion's pairing of the heart with love. 'Courtly love', where knights wooed women, became popular in the eleventh century and was tied to spiritual attainment.

It became popularised in lyric poems written by troubadours, such as William of Aquitaine, one of the first troubadour poets. Some say he was likely influenced by similar views on love in the Islamic world, which he came into contact with during the First Crusade.

In 1184, poet Andreas Capallenus referred to the organ as one of affection, writing the pure love which binds together the hearts of two lovers with every feeling of delight.

Around the same time, members of European families began to insist their hearts were buried separately from the rest of their bodies, in places that were special to them. In 1199, King Richard I of England had his heart buried in Rouen in Normandy and his body in Anjou, where his father was buried.

Over the centuries, the idea that the heart is linked to emotion has persisted and the two are now intrinsically linked.

When did Valentine's Day become so commercial?

It was during the middle of the 18th century that Valentine's Day started to take off in England, with lovers sending sweets and cards adorned with flowers, ribbons and images of cupids and birds.

Eventually huge numbers of printed cards replaced hand-written ones. In 1913, Hallmark Cards of Kansas City began mass producing Valentine's Day cards.

Now about a billion Valentine's Day cards are exchanged every year and it's the second largest seasonal card sending time of the year.

However, not all the cards are intended to be read: every year, thousands of letters addressed to Juliet are sent to Verona, where Shakespeare's fictional Romeo and Juliet lived.

Why do some people leave anonymous Valentine's cards?

This trend was started by the Victorians, who thought it was bad luck to sign Valentine's cards with their names.

The Victorians also started the rose-giving trend. They were the favourite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, and have come to indicate passion and romance.

Nowadays, around 50 million roses are received on Valentine's Day each year. But, there will of course be some people who do not receive any cards, flowers or gifts on Valentine's Day. In 2016, one teenager solved this problem by buying 900 carnations and giving them out to all the girls at his school.

If you want to break from tradition and pass on red roses, opt for a delicious Valentine's Day treat instead...

How to woo your love interest on Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day, sometimes a bunch of flowers won't do - you need a grand romantic gesture, writes Helen O'Hara. For inspiration, here are some of the best ever captured on film:

His Girl Friday (1940) - The plan-within-a-plan

A real contender for the title of greatest rom-com ever, and certainly the quickest witted, the climax here sees star reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) realise that her editor and ex-husband Walter Burns (Cary Grant) has engineered their quest for a scoop so that it also sabotages her plans to marry again. Instead of raging at such temerity, she falls gratefully into his arms. Its a beautifully executed little twist, making it clear that the pair are in cahoots even when theyre apparently working against each other.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999) - The Shakespearean-ish sonnet

Heath Ledgers grandstanding performance of I Love You Baby gets mentioned a lot in relation to romantic gestures in this film  but thats a lark thats relatively easy to laugh off. In terms of putting yourself out there for your other half, Julia Stiles Kat takes the bigger risks. First, she flashes a teacher to give Ledgers Patrick the chance to escape detention. Then she reads a sonnet, no less, revealing her feelings for him to her entire class. The guts required are almost unthinkable.

Beauty and the Beast (1991) - The library

Belle (Paige OHara) isnt particularly materialistic in this Oscar-nominated animation, but shes as susceptible as the next bookworm to the gift of an entire, enormous library. This one comes with a convenient sofa by the fire and sweeping baroque staircases to shelves that stretch about 200ft in the air. The fact that the Beast (Robbie Benson)  previously bad-tempered and hostile  presents his revelation with a charming degree of shyness and hope just makes it all the sweeter. He was originally cursed for his selfishness, so the thought counts all the more here.

How Valentine's Day is celebrated around the world

While Britons tend to think of red roses, corny cards and chocolates when it comes to Valentine's Day, some countries around the world celebrate love differently and have their own traditions.

In Denmark, couples exchange pressed white flowers called snowdrops while in the Philippines, weddings and vow renewal ceremonies significantly increase on the romantic day, with couples gathering at shopping centres and other public places to tie the knot.

In South Africa, women wear their hearts on their sleeves on Valentine's Day, quite literally, by pinning the names of their love interests to their shirts.

China celebrates its own version of Valentine's Day called Qiki, during which young women prepare offerings of fruit to Zhinu, a heavenly king's daughter, in the hope of finding their perfect match.

In Brazil, they celebrate Dia dos Namorados, translating as "Lovers' Day", on June 12, with music festivals and performances, while in Argentina, they celebrate love for an entire week during July, in what is called "Sweetness Week".

Single on Valentine's Day and looking for love?

If you're single and looking for love, look no further than online dating. Any stigma which may have surrounded searching for love online has been banished, and meeting for a mid-week Tinder date, is no longer something people feel they have to lie about.

But given how much choice is out there, how can you separate the wheat from the chaff? We've selected the top 20 dating apps to help you find your perfect match.

This article has been updated with the latest advice for Valentine's Day 2022.
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
Global insurance firms are circling Iran for business opportunities following the lifting of sanctions  and the first test of their appetite could come in March when some Iranian companies seek new cover.

Insurers, the reinsurers that share their risk and the brokers that forge deals are exploring ways to tap a market worth US$7.4 billion in premiums after a nuclear accord between world powers and Tehran led to the removal of curbs on financial dealings with Iran this month.

Allianz, Zurich Insurance, Hannover Re and RSA said in recent days that they would evaluate potential opportunities in the country.

Insurance and reinsurance specialists regard the marine and energy sectors as among those offering the best opportunities in oil-producing Iran. Life insurance is also a potential growth area as it represents less than a tenth of overall Iranian premiums, compared with more than half globally.

At first international companies are likely to link up with Iranian firms to capitalize on their local knowledge and to reinsure local insurance in the global market, according to industry experts, with international brokers helping foreign firms get that business.

American insurers are still banned from doing business in Iran due to separate US sanctions that are in place.

The insurance contracts of some Iranian companies expire when the Persian calendar year ends in late March and they will be looking to strike new deals.
By Russell Butcher, Broadcast and Media Systems Development Director, Altered Images

London-based independent production company, Knickerbockerglory TV, was first commissioned to produce the fly on the wall series GPs: Behind Closed Doors for Channel 5 in 2014; one of the first fixed rig multi-cam series produced for the UK broadcaster. The series success led to a second, longer running series and in 2015, Channel 5 returned to Knickerbockerglory for an even bigger 50 episode Series 3 (5060). Filmed over a 35 week period at Londons Balham Park Surgery, it provides a behind the scenes insight into what goes on in a doctors consulting room.

The longer series meant substantial hours of shooting and an increase in footage to process, so Knickerbockerglory made the decision to take all the post production, facilities and shooting rigs in-house.

Knickerbockerglory TV has a long-running relationship with facility company Zigcam Film and Television and approached them to commission and manage the installation and upkeep of the shooting rig across the 35 week filming period. Zigcams Facility Manager Emily Rosen-Rawlings had worked with Altered Images in the past and was aware that the previous series of GPs: Behind Closed Doors had used a Quadrus multi-channel Ingest Machine provided by Altered Images. That was also used for on the fly creation of basic EDLs via Quadrus Live Cut feature. Given its expertise with Avid storage, workflow consultancy and wide range of solutions, it was a natural step for Zigcam to take on Altered Images as the main technology provider for the project. Onsite, remote and telephone support was also a key factor in winning the project.

Altered Images was contracted to supply and install the onsite camera rig, production gallery as well as supply and install equipment for Knickerbockerglorys refurbished post facilities.

For the onsite camera rig, Altered Images supplied and installed over 36 Panasonic cameras, a control room and live capture facilities at the Balham Park Surgery. Everything had to be as unobtrusive as possible, allowing doctors, staff and patients to carry on as close to normal as possible. The Altered Images team had to work closely with Zigcam in order to handle the sheer amount of logistics and pre-production organisation required.

Samantha Stewart, Head of Production at Knickerbockerglory said, Altered Images were chosen by our production partners Zigcam not only because they knew of its strong reputation in the industry, but also for its ability to deliver the full package of equipment supply, technical expertise and support. On a project of this nature and complexity, it was important to have a technical provider that could meet the specific requirements of the project and give us the degree of flexibility to adjust things as the show progressed.

The 36 plus fixed Panasonic AW-HE40SWEJPTZ cameras were installed around the surgery. Remote control facilities were enabled over cat-5 cable, allowing the camera operator to frame each shot precisely and capture scenes in as much detail as possible. Ceiling tiles were replaced with acoustic ones and daylight bulbs installed throughout the surgery.

Altered Images created a complete portable production studio and fitted it out with equipment from manufacturers, including  but not limited to  Axon, Evertz, BlackMagic, Lynx Technik.

A complete audio rig included Behringer audio desks and Sony radio mics. LTO tape based back up and archive solution from StorageDNA were also provided.

Two Quadrus four-channel ingest stations were supplied and installed. These were used to capture any 4 of up to 36 simultaneous camera feeds, which were chosen live in the control room as the stories developed. Further multi-cam edits could be made from the 4 available channels in the offline edit suite. The PC-based Quadrus system was fully configured on two (main and failover) HP Z820 workstation. The solution removes the need for individual decks to record each camera output, an approach that requires regularly swapping out recording media and the drawn-out process of manually ingesting and logging files from each card.

With Quadrus, each channel is captured as 50Mbps XDCAM.MXF files and recorded to a central storage silo, with production management software able to manage every asset during the shoot. This not only saved time, but also valuable space in the production studio.

As with Series 2, the Live Cut feature within the Quadrus systems was used to create a basic EDL on the fly, which could then be read by the NLE. The Quadrus enabled clips to be viewed quickly and easily and camera feeds to be dynamically selected and recoded in order to capture scenes of most interest.

With the key aim of keeping disruption to the surgery to a minimum throughout, there was a limited window to install equipment. This meant that the team had to work out of hours during the install and set up stages of the project. All the kit had to be installed without damaging the surgery interior. The portable production unit had to provide all the support a programme of this nature requires, but still be operated by a small crew.

Emily Rosen-Rawlings of Zigcam added, Throughout the shoot, the whole crew needs to be focused on their job while remaining as unobtrusive as possible. Working with Altered Images meant the technical side was in safe hands, allowing the crew to focus on getting the footage we needed with minimal disruption to the doctors, staff and patients.

Altered Images was also chosen to supply and install kit for the build and refurbishing of Knickerbockerglory TVs brand new Hammersmith HQ, including offline editing facilities for GPs Behind Closed Doors, Series 3.

Altered Images delivered all the kit and installed seven cutting rooms, put in 10GB networking throughout the building and added a new central MCR area. In addition, six new Avid Media Composer suites, plus upgrades to three existing suites, were carried out. Also supplied and installed were six new AKA Edit Desks, 48TB EditShare XStream storage, StorageDNA for archiving and a fully installed equipment rack.



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Iran said yesterday it will buy 114 Airbus planes to revitalise its ageing fleet, in the first major commercial deal announced since the lifting of sanctions under its nuclear agreement.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said a deal on the purchase would be signed between national carrier Iran Air and Airbus during a visit to Paris this week by President Hassan Rouhani.

Rouhani will travel to Italy and France from today to Wednesday, on his first visit to Europe since the implementation of the deal curbing Tehrans nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions.

Rouhani has hailed the agreement as a new chapter for Iran as its economy returns to global markets.

Modernizing the countrys air fleet and infrastructure is a top priority, with Akhoundi saying yesterday that only 150 of the countrys 250 planes are operational.

We have been negotiating for 10 months for the purchase of planes but there was no way to pay for them because of banking sanctions, Iranian state media quoted Akhoundi as saying.

We need 400 long- and mid-range and 100 short-range planes, he said.

He said the first batch of new planes would arrive in Iran by March 19 but provided no financial details of the deal with Airbus.

An Airbus spokesman declined to comment.

Iran, with a population 79 million, has a good road network but still needs major transport upgrades, which Tehran hopes will boost tourism and trade.

Irans airports also need US$250 million worth of upgrades in navigation systems, Akhoundi said. Only nine of Irans 67 airports are currently operational.

Iran has suffered several air crashes in recent years blamed on ageing planes, poor maintenance and a shortage of new parts.

News of the Airbus deal came as aviation industry representatives from 85 companies met in Tehran yesterday to assess opportunities in the country after sanctions were removed.

Its a really exciting time, theres never been a situation like this, said Peter Harbison, the head of the CAPA consultancy which organized the conference.

A whole array of different aviation services and new jobs obviously are going to be created, Harbison said.

Aviation is one of those industries that creates massive economic flow-on benefits, so tourism will expand, so youll need more infrastructure growth in hotels and right across the board.
Actress Kalpana Dies

Well known actress Kalpana Ranjani who is known for her role as Leelavathi in Sati leelavathi movie died in Hyderabad on Monday. Kalpana is just 50 years old and she is sister of actress Urvashi. She has credit of doing in many super hit Malayalam films.She is also acting in Nagarjuna and Karthi starrer Oopiri. Her performance in Sati Leelavathi as Kamal's wife got her close to several Telugu movie lovers.



She had made her debut in the film industry as a child artiste in 1983. Since then, she grew along with the South Indian film industry to become a leading actress. As per reports she has died due to cardiac arrest. Kalpana was found lying unconscious in her hotel room and was immediately rushed to the Appollo hospital where she breathed her last.



The Malyalam actress has been one of the pioneer women in comic roles. Film fraternity is shocked over her death and condoling the bereaving family.















News Posted: 25 January, 2016








BJP workers stops Revanth Reddy's campaign

Hyderabad, Jan 25 (INN): Telangana TDP Working President A. Revanth Reddy faced a piquant situation on Monday when a group of BJP workers stopped his convoy preventing him from participating in election campaign in Ameerpet ward.



The BJP workers were upset over the seat-sharing agreement between the BJP and TDP for GHMC elections. The angry BJP workers raised slogans against Revanth Reddy which was countered by Revanth Reddy's supporters. The local police immediately intervened and dispersed both the groups thus avoiding a clash between them.









News Posted: 25 January, 2016








GHMC Polls: Over 1.84 Cr seized

Hyderabad, Jan 25 (INN): GHMC Commissioner & Election Authority Dr. B. Janardhan Reddy on Monday informed that so far 1.73 lakh unauthorized hoardings, cutouts, flexies, posters and banners have been removed.



Around Rs. 1,84,02,850/- have been seized by FS Teams, SS Teams and other police authorities. Further, an amount of Rs. 12 lakh, which was seized on Sunday by Maredpally police, was returned after verification. An amount of Rs. 3 lakh was seized by Rajendranagar police in Cyberabad limits and it was handed over to the Treasury Department.



The Election Authority said that FS Teams, SS Teams and other police authorities have seized liquor worth of Rs. 49,370/-









News Posted: 25 January, 2016








This picture taken on November 14, 2014 shows men working at a private steel workshop which produces steel rods for construction from scrap iron in the Dong Anh district on the outskirts of Hanoi.

Nguyen Hieu, chief executive of a Hanoi construction company, last year was turned down by several banks for a $800,000 loan for a project the company had won and had already invested nearly half a million dollars.

"Its very difficult for small, private companies like us to get bank lending," said Hieu, whose company employs a few dozen. "They prefer to lend to big businesses and state-owned companies. Weve had to trim down operations due to a lack of capital."

Vietnams ruling Communist Party says it recognizes the challenges companies like Hieus face and is setting a stronger tone to support private businesses over the next five years, as frustration grows over the slow reforms at state companies. The nation is set to be one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, yet local firms have struggled to benefit while foreign manufacturers reap the export boom.

In his opening address January 21 at the most important Communist Party conclave that occurs every five years, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said the "private sector is an important engine of the economy and urged for policies to support it. An online draft of the partys five-year economic plan, which the 1,510 delegates are expected to approve this week, calls for private businesses to get equal access to credit, land and other resources--the level playing field companies have been seeking for years.

Cautiously hopeful

While many are skeptical the words will translate into policy change soon, other business leaders say theyre cautiously hopeful.

Its good they recognize the importance of the private sector but implementation is the key thing, said Hieu. We still dont know how much of that idea will be translated into policies and regulation to really help private businesses.

Along with a new slate of leaders, the party congress also sets the tone for economic reform and growth. The proposed socioeconomic plan through 2020 shows the nation will target as much as 7 percent average annual expansion and gross domestic product per capita at $3,200 to $3,500 by 2020 from the current International Monetary Fund estimate of about $2,170. If Vietnam hits these goals, it will be one of the fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the IMF.

Vietnams stock market has attracted foreign investors, with overseas investors net buyers for the 10th consecutive year in 2015. The benchmark VN Index has lost 7.8 percent so far this year, as emerging-market stocks face a rout on Chinas slowing economy and dropping oil prices.

Favorable conditions

The 2016-2020 economic blueprint calls for the creation of favorable conditions" to support private companies. The plan also lays out accelerating the privatization of state enterprises, resolving bad debt and improving the nations competitiveness. Several leaders, including Trong, have stressed that Vietnam is at risk of falling behind regional peers. Average growth in 2011 through 2015 was 5.9 percent, lower than the 6.5 percent-to-7 percent target that the countrys leaders had set.

Delegates at the conference also registered a different tone from the previous five-year plan. "The idea of promoting the private sector is expressed more clearly and deeply this time with more details to support it," said delegate Nguyen Thanh Ngoc, vice-chairman of Tay Ninh province. "The document will pave the way for the government to enact more policies and regulations later to support private businesses."

State-owned companies use almost 50 percent of Vietnams public investment and tap 60 percent of the countrys bank loans, while contributing to just a third of GDP, according to government data. The economy is forecast to expand 6.7 percent this year, the same pace as in 2015, according to Bloomberg surveys.

"The party has to maintain economic growth and they are increasingly aware that state-owned companies arent providing that," said Tony Foster, the Hanoi-based managing partner in Vietnam for the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP. "In order to maintain satisfaction among the population and their own power, they have to make sure the private sector gets more and more support."
In freezing weather on Sunday morning, Wei Guojian began his journey home for a Spring Festival family reunion.

A procession of bikers hits the road on Sunday in Foshan, Guangdong province, to travel home in time for Spring Festival. [Photo / China Daily]

It will take him nearly 24 hours to travel from Foshan in Guangdong province, where he has worked as a truck driver for eight years, to his hometown in Guizhou province.

"It was really difficult to buy a train ticket," Wei said.

The journey by motorcycle would normally cost Wei, who is traveling with his wife, about 300 yuan ($45) in fuel and road tolls for a one-way trip.

In contrast, it would cost double this amount to travel by high-speed train.

To provide motorcyclists with safe and warm homeward journeys, Sinopec Guangdong Oil Products has teamed up with the Guangdong Youth Volunteers Committee to offer free gas and other packages to the first 10,000 riders.

A total of 218 gas stations in Guangdong and Hunan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region will provide the service for riders, the company said.

It is the fourth year that Sinopec has operated the free service. This year, it has been extended to include 1,000 minivan drivers, according to Chen Chengmin, general manager of Sinopec's Guangdong branch.

Wei is well used to motorcycle travel. In previous years, he has made the trip home with most of his friends from Guizhou.

"You not only need to beat the cold weather, but also the waiting time if you want to buy train tickets," he said.

Several high-speed rail lines have been opened to connect most interior areas with Guangdong, which has attracted millions of migrant workers over the years to its manufacturing industry.

"But there is still a shortage of train tickets. Many of my friends would rather ride home than line up to buy tickets," Wei said.

He was among thousands of people  most of them migrant workers  who opted for motorcycle travel during the national Spring Festival travel rush, which began on Sunday.

According to the transportation authority in Guangdong, more than 500,000 migrant workers travel home by motorcycle to neighboring provinces and regions during the annual festival rush.

Thousands of migrant workers and students in the Pearl River Delta, a major economic hub in South China, began their homeward journeys by rail on Sunday.

Guangzhou Railway Group said about 134,000 people traveled by train, with most heading for their hometowns in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Sichuan provinces.

The company will arrange for more temporary services to operate during the travel rush.

More than 2.26 million trips by train will be made from stations in Guangzhou before Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 8, the company said.

The Ministry of Transport expects about 2.91 billion trips to be made during the 40-day Spring Festival travel period that will end on March 3.
Professor Gordian Fulde, the longest-serving head of an emergency department in Australia, is the Senior Australian of the Year.

His three decades in charge at St Vincent's and Sydney Hospital count for more than that, considering the inner-city hospital is on the front line of Sydney's sometimes infamous nightlife and treats more than its fair share of bashing victims, drug addicts and homeless.

Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital Director of Emergency, Professor Gordian Fulde, is Senior Australian of the Year for 2016. Credit:Jessica Hromas

"As a young person would say, 'OMG'," Professor Fulde said, accepting the award.

"But ... it's really not about me. What it is about is us as a community."
An underwater sonar vehicle being used to search for the missing MH370 plane has hit an underwater volcano and sunk to the sea floor in a setback for the long-running mission.

In a brief statement, the search team said the $1 million "towfish", which was being towed underwater by the search ship the Fugro Discovery, struck a mud volcano that rose about 2200 meters above the sea floor in the southern Indian Ocean.

"The towfish and 4500 metres of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor," the statement from the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has urged efforts to deepen human-centered urbanization as it can improve people's livelihoods and boost economy.

"China's greatest development potential lies in urbanization," according to a statement issued on Sunday after an executive meeting of the State Council held on Friday.

As a project that has a significant bearing on the improvement of people's livelihoods, urbanization is also conducive to promote effective investment and consumption, which enables a coordinated development between cities and the countryside, the statement said.

The government will make it easier for people from the countryside to become officially recognized urbanites. With the exception of a very few mega cities, restrictions on Hukou, or registered permanent residence, in cities will be fully liberalized for university graduates, skilled workers and returned overseas students.

A regulation that upgrades "residence permit" management, announced by the State Council in December last year and effective from this month, will ensure city dwellers that have not yet acquired Hukou have access to basic public services including education, employment, medical care and legal assistance, according to the statement.

The government will speed up renovation of shantytowns and dilapidated buildings. Supportive policies on shantytown renovations will be expanded to cover major towns across the nation. Private capital is encouraged to contribute to the construction of roads and underground pipelines.
The Alice Miller School is not your usual independent secondary college.

Classes start at 10.30am and year 8 students are encouraged to enrol in VCE subjects. They also have to mop floors.

Model pupils: At the new Alice Miller School in Macedon, students will start at 10.30. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The arts-based secondary school is the brainchild of bestselling children's author John Marsden, who believes there is no point opening a new school if it replicates what is already out there.

"I just wanted a place where kids with an artistic passion would have a chance to develop," he said.
Canberra streets would be designated for trials of self-driving cars as part of a new plan being proposed by the opposition.

Liberal transport spokesman Alistair Coe will release new exposure draft legislation on Monday, allowing for new technology autonomous vehicles to be tested in capital, similar to existing schemes in South Australia, Britain and some American states.

New plan: Liberal transport spokesman Alistair Coe. Credit:Jay Cronan

Mr Coe believes Canberra's dispersed population and reputation for science and technology development makes the city an ideal place to test autonomous vehicles and said the research and development funding could benefit the economy. The plan comes after the ACT government met representatives of Tesla Motors in the US in 2015, urging the company to establish a research presence in Canberra for their electric cars and battery power technology.

The plan could help see Canberra develop as an "autonomous vehicle hub".
Last month, amid great fanfare and excessive self-congratulations, the representatives of 200 nations at UN-sponsored climate change talks in Paris hailed a general agreement to curb carbon emissions. The covenant, which takes effect in 2020, is intended to limit the potential rise in average global temperatures to "well below 2 degrees" and, ideally, to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The obvious, but unanswered, question is how this will be done in practice, especially here in Australia, where there is neither a carbon emissions trading scheme (a market-based system) nor a punitive system for taxing big polluters.

The issue is urgent. Data published last week  by NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and by Britain's Met Office in conjunction with the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit  confirmed the average surface temperature is already 1 degree above the average temperatures recorded in the second half of the 19th century.

Last year, the average global temperature was the highest ever recorded, being 0.75 to 1 degree above the long-term average (deemed the period from 1961 to 1990) and surpassing scientists' most pessimistic forecasts of 0.52 to 0.76 degrees higher.

The Age applauds NASA's comments on this: policymakers must take note. Now is the time to act on climate change. There can be no more pretending, and no more playing base political games.
On this Australia Day, those of us who support replacing a British monarch with an Australian head of state have some good news: all state and territory premiers and chief ministers, with the exception of the republican Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett, have signed an unprecedented joint letter calling for an Australian republic. Barnett presumably didn't sign the letter because his state has a large number of English migrants and it's an election year in the West.

But having political consensus on the need for Australia to finally untie the knot to Buckingham Palace is one thing. Translating that into a reality of a successful constitutional referendum outcome, which requires four of the six states and the national vote to be in favour of a change, is another thing altogether. There needs to be a mechanism for a genuine, transparent community-driven consensus on how we become a republic, and what it looks like, if the failure of the 1999 Republic Referendum is not to be repeated.

ARM leader Malcolm Turnbull in 1999.

The 1999 referendum, which saw a nationwide 45 per cent support for an Australian head of state (with Victoria closest to gaining 50 per cent plus 1 of voter support), and the lead-up to it, had some valuable lessons and we need to take careful note of them in planning for a successful push this time around.
Search engine Google has been commended for weighing in on the controversy surrounding the Australia Day holiday, publishing a doodle depicting the stolen generation to mark the divisive day.

The artwork, called "Stolen Dreamtime", was drawn by Canberra Year 10 student Ineka Voigt and depicts an Aboriginal woman mourning her stolen children "and a life that never was".

Google's Australia Day artwork. Credit:Google

The Google 'doodle' reflects the raging national debate over the holiday which celebrates the the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Harbour in 1788.
Last year Malthouse Theatre trialled an unusual initiative which paired writers and directors for a series of workshops and a three-month development period during which the duos collaborated on a new work.



So successful was the initiative  called Co.Lab  is will become a regular fixture at Malthouse, and joins a suite of other initiatives the company has announced as a result of ongoing philanthropic support.

"The four pairs we've recently been working with are all people that I would never have thought of putting together and they all self-selected and they're really eclectic," Malthouse artistic director Matthew Lutton (pictured) says.

Malthouse Theatre artistic director Mattew Lutton. Credit:Simon Schluter

"That's really thrilling. They all push each other and it shows that if you throw out initiatives to the sector what you get back is quite special."

Other programs include the Tower residencies, which will allow established artists to develop work in the Tower Theatre with stipends and salaries, and the Besen Family Artist Program, which offers five paid mentorships for independent artists to work within the company.
Nationals MPs are in the dark about Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss's future as party leader, and the uncertainty is delaying Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's plans for a mini-reshuffle.

As the Prime Minister weighs up changes to his ministerial line-up, conservative Coalition MPs have welcomed Tony Abbott's decision to stand again in Warringah, with some arguing he should return to the frontbench too.

Late last year, Mr Truss was widely tipped to announce his retirement before Parliament resumed for 2016 but with six days until the first sitting week, it is unclear what the Nationals' veteran plans to do.

Fairfax Media spoke to ten Nationals MPs, senators and party operatives on Tuesday and all of them admitted uncertainty about what the long-serving leader would do, suggesting only his wife Lyn would be aware of his plans.
The late John Wolfe St Albans, of Adelaide, started his amazing collection, which is more like a private museum, in the 1970s. He was working as an opal miner at Andamooka, in the South Australian outback, at the time.

St Albans was also an inventor and one of his ideas, relating to building construction, made him a lot of money. With financial success he organised buying trips to China at a time when Asian antiquities were cheap by today's standards. Part of his Chinese collection was later donated to the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo, Victoria.

A large Cloisonne Heavenly Lion, or Fu Dog, from the Qing Dynasty in China. Estimated auction price $30,000-50,000.

He also donated an extremely rare, eight-metre long, opalised plesiosaur dinosaur to the South Australian Museum, which is now on permanent display. He discovered this in 1983.

When Theodore Bruce Auctions was appointed by the executors to sell his private collection, their specialist, Jim Elmslie, spent 10 days digging through a mound of material under the St Albans mansion in the Adelaide suburb of Golden Grove, separating the treasures from the trash. There was enough of the former to fill a shipping container. The task was made more difficult because St Albans kept no documentation.
Restrictions on who can apply for permanent residency in cities are to be relaxed for selected workers, including those from the countryside, to encourage a new form of urbanization, the State Council said over the weekend.

In a statement released after a meeting on Friday, the nation's highest executive body said revisions to the registration system, known as hukou, would further encourage the integration of migrant workers in cities, as well as drive investment and domestic consumption.

The State Council said it will relax the rules on permanent residency in most cities for university graduates, skilled technicians and those returning after receiving an education overseas, as well as the restrictions on rural workers.

The executive body also called on provincial authorities to fully implement a new residency permit that became available on Jan 1. The permit, which runs alongside hukou, entitles holders to free education, healthcare, employment and legal services in the city in which they live.

In addition, the government will provide more policy support for improving shantytown dwellings and dangerous homes, and expand policy coverage to more townships, the statement said.

The State Council also encouraged the investment of more social capital into constructing city facilities, such as underground pipelines, and for urban areas to adopt the national Internet Plus strategy to build smart cities.

Trials for new urbanization practices will be expanded to more cities, while the government will also improve land and housing policies, and encourage local authorities to set up urbanization development funds with social and financial capital, the statement said.

During the meeting, officials also stressed the State Council's goal in tackling overcapacity in the iron, steel and coal industries. China plans to cut 100 million to 150 million metric tons of crude steel production and has said it will strictly control new industrial capacity.

Xu Hongcai, director of economic research at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said the measures announced over the weekend will help stimulate effective investment of social capital in cities.

"This new type of urbanization put the focus on the people instead of industrialization or real estate investment. Encouraging a larger migrant population to settle in cities will be a driving force for economic development, as it will encourage more social capital in public services and infrastructure," he said, adding that it will also encourage domestic consumption.
Even if every woman nominated for an Order of Australia award this Australia Day had been successful, women would still have taken home only 40 per cent of awards, figures from the Governor-General's office show.

Women are more likely than ever to succeed when they are nominated, but they remain no more likely to be nominated than a decade ago, according to historical data.

NSW chief scientist and engineer Mary O'Kane, awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia. Credit:AFR

This year, 75 per cent of women nominated in the general division of the Order of Australia Award made the Honours List, compared with 72 per cent of women nominated in the five years to 2016 and 59 per cent in the five years to 2006.
Centrelink clients have vented their fury over the welfare agency's customer service performance in the wake of revelations it let 22 million phone calls go unanswered in the past financial year.

Fairfax has been overwhelmed with the response to the story, with furious Centrelink users telling of spending 33 hours on hold, making hundreds of fruitless attempts to get the agency to pick up the phone and of repeated failures of the much-vaunted online customer service options.

Centrelink users tell of spending 33 hours on hold and making hundreds of fruitless attempts to get the agency to pick up the phone.

Others have told how they tried to front-up to Centrelink shopfronts only to be chased away by public servants tasked with "greeting" clients or directed to banks of telephones in the corner of the of the office where their tele-ordeal would begin again.
The reverberations of the Field Day music festival were still being heard in Sydney's Downing Centre court as a magistrate handed almost a dozen attendees criminal records for drug possession.

Magistrate John Favretto took the harsh course of action against 11 of the 184 people who were arrested on drug offences at the Sydney festival, which was held at The Domain on New Year's Day.

The Field Day festival

Most of those before Magistrate Favretto were first-time offenders but he rejected their pleas for leniency.

"These offences are too serious as people keep dying. It's got to stop," he said, as he convicted Cameron Dwyer, 20, and fined him $660. Dwyer was found by police to have four pills inside a condom in his underpants.
A robot math whiz breezes through a Rubik's Cube, using metal hands to twist and turn the colorful toy. A panda robot uses sensors to detect when people are laughing, and joins in. A dentistry student peers into the mouth of a new patient _ a humanoid practice robot with a complete set of pearly white teeth.

Japan showed off its cutting-edge robots Wednesday at the country's largest robotics convention, a dazzling display of the technologies that make it a world leader in both service and industrial robotics.

The dental training robot, dubbed Simroid for "simulator humanoid," has realistic skin, eyes, and a mouth fitted with replica teeth that students practice drilling on. A sensor fitted where the nerve endings would be raises the alert when they drill too close _ triggering a yelp from the robot.

"Ow, that hurt!" a female robot squeaked, narrowing her eyes as a young dentist drilled on her replica teeth. "Now, I'm OK," she said as the dentist eased off.

"Our aim is to train dentists to worry about whether patients are comfortable, and not just focus on technical expertise," said Dr. Naotake Shibui of the Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, who collaborated with technicians at Kokoro Co. to develop the robot.
Investigators failed to probe key points about the death of a young man who had tried to board a moving Metro train at a Melbourne station, a court has heard.

Following the death of Mitchell Callaghan at Heyington Station, in Toorak, police and a Metro Trains investigator did not test doors on the train to see what would happen if they were obstructed, Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Monday.

Train driver Russell Dickson. Credit:Eddie Jim

Mr Callaghan, 18, died after he fell through the gap between the train and the platform late on the night of February 22, 2014, as his friends held open the train doors. They were headed to Melbourne to attend the White Night festival.

Train driver Russell Dickson is accused of moving the train knowing its doors were being held open, and has been charged with recklessly engaging in conduct that placed people in danger of death and placed people in danger of serious injury.
Melburnians are waking to a smoke haze this morning - all the way from Tasmania.

The smoke - from the 68,000 hectare fires in remote areas of Tasmania's west and north - came through Gippsland on Monday afternoon.

Fires in Tasmania's north-west have been burning for a fortnight. Credit:Grant Wells, The Examiner

Scott Williams from the Bureau of Meteorology said the smoke was already starting to clear in Melbourne.

"If you're up in the north, up in Kilmore or towards Gisborne, those areas could be a bit a bit worse up on the Calder Highway than what we've seen around town," he told radio station 3AW.
Melbourne musician Karl von Bamberger has been found dead, prompting an outpouring of tributes on social media.

Karl  an active member of Melbourne's music and creative arts scene  was last seen leaving a friend's home in High Street, Coburg about 6.30pm last Wednesday.

Karl von Bamberger Credit:Facebook

It is believed his body was found at Merri Creek in North Fitzroy on Monday afternoon.

In a statement on Tuesday, police said the body, which was discovered near Holden Street, was believed to be that of the missing 37-year-old.
Washington: Two people are dead and two others injured following a shootout at a Mississippi gun shop that appears to have erupted when a dispute over a $US25 ($36) fee escalated, authorities say.

Pearl River County Deputy Coroner Albert Lee told the Gulfport, Mississippi-based Sun Herald that Jason McLemore and Jacob Edward McLemore died in the Saturday afternoon shooting at McLemore Gun Shop.

The Sun Herald reports that Jason McLemore, 44, owned the store where the shooting took place; 17-year-old Jacob was his son.

Another father and son  52-year-old Audy McCool and 29-year-old Michael McCool  were sent to hospital after the shooting, reports indicate.
From a single plant grown in Chatsworth House, a stately home in Derbyshire in the English Midlands in the 1830s, it has spread to become the ubiquitous variety of banana on our supermarket shelves.

But now the Cavendish banana is facing extinction from a deadly fungus - and may have to be genetically engineered into a new variant if the popular fruit is not to be wiped out altogether, experts say.

The vast majority of bananas consumed in the West are thought to be descended from one plant imported to England from Mauritius in 1830 and grown in the hothouse at Chatsworth House in the Peak District.

Missionaries later exported the Cavendish banana to Samoa, the Pacific and the Canary Islands, starting new banana industries.
In recent years the ADF has been at the forefront of conservative attempts to undo key sections of US President Barack Obama's signature healthcare laws.

ADF lawyers have argued in a string of legal challenges that religious employers  such as universities, hospitals and schools  should not be made to facilitate their employees' access to health insurance that includes coverage for contraception and or abortion.

An article by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which tracks hate groups in America, says that since it was founded by 30 religious leaders in 1994 the ADF has grown to an organisation with an annual budget of $US30 million ($43 million) with 44 in-house staff and a network of 2200 allied lawyers who work to further their Christian ideology through the law.

"Their work is fanning the flames of anti-gay hatred that already exists in many of the countries where they are injecting themselves. As in Uganda, American groups have been propagandising about the 'recruitment' of young schoolchildren, the allegedly depraved and diseased lives of LGBT people, the paedophilia that is supposedly common among gay men, and the destruction of Christianity and the institution of marriage that they seem certain ending anti-LGBT laws will lead to," writes the Southern Poverty Law Centre.

"This vicious propaganda, born and bred by American ideologues, has found fertile soil across the globe."
More than 54,000 Chinese officials were investigated by prosecutors for bribery, dereliction of duty and other duty-related crimes in 2015, anti-graft chief Wang Qishan said in a work report published on Sunday.

More than 20,000 cases were concluded by courts nationwide, including 16,000 cases involving bribery and embezzlement, and 4,300 cases of dereliction of duty, according to the work report made by Wang, chief of the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), at the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC CCDI on Jan. 12.

Tallying up anti-corruption efforts in the past year, Wang said disciplinary authorities received more than 2.8 million tip-offs, and punished about 336,000 discipline violators in 2015.

Investigations into 90 centrally-administered officials for discipline violations were launched or finished in 2015, said the report, adding 42 of them have been transferred to judicial organs for criminal investigation.

Graft busters also probed 49,000 officials for suspected violation of the eight point anti-extravagance rules, 34,00 of them were published according to the disciplinary rules.

The discipline inspection agencies have been firm in dealing with its corrupt elements. A total of 2,479 discipline inspectors nationwide were punished in 2015, according to the report.

An initiative called "Sky Net" unveiled by Chinese government saw 1,023 fugitives being returned from overseas in 2015, recovering 3 billion yuan (461.5 million U.S. dollars) in criminal proceeds.
The playwright may not be the God of the theater, but he certainly wields an inordinate amount of power over the fate of a production. Such is the case with The Burial at Thebes, the late Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone. It is now receiving its first major New York City production with Irish Repertory Theatre at the DR2 Theatre (the play officially debuted in the city during a brief 2006 off-off-Broadway run with the now-defunct Handcart Ensemble). While the Irish Rep's take eschews the half-face masks of that earlier production, it feels no less cold and distant, strongly suggesting that this tone comes baked into the text.

The play begins at the end of the Theban civil war. The two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles, and Polyneices have killed each other in combat, leaving their uncle, Creon (Paul O'Brien), in command of the city. He has decreed that Eteocles (who defended the city from attack) get a hero's burial, but that Polyneices (the attacker) be left to rot in the Mediterranean sun. He further rules that anyone who defies this order be put to death. Surviving sister Antigone (Rebekah Brockman) disobeys Creon anyway so that Polyneices can pass to the underworld in peace. Creon angrily enforces his law, entombing Antigone alive. This is a particularly fraught decision since she is betrothed to his only son, Haemon (Ciaran Bowling). Blind prophet Tiresias (the eerie and sage-like Robert Langdon Lloyd) cautions that this course of action can only anger the Gods, but Creon remains unmoved. He hurtles toward the play's tragic conclusion with an overpowering hubris, that most classical of fatal flaws.

Creon (Paul O'Brien) and the Guard (Colin Lane) listen as Tiresias (Robert Langdon Lloyd, center) delivers a prophecy of impending doom.

( Carol Rosegg)

Although written in 2004, the play generally proceeds in a manner consistent with an ancient Greek drama: There are extended monologues about the exciting things happening offstage, moralistic proclamations from the chorus, and oodles of self-pity from the principal players. It's hard to see what new revelations Heaney has brought to Antigone. While the Nobel laureate has an immense talent for imagery (particularly when it comes to the subject of bird droppings, described several times in vivid detail), it feels like pretty window dressing on an old house. In lieu of offering a deeper understanding, Heaney has taken Sophocles' 2,500-year-old family-versus-state drama and turned it into a polemic against the George W. Bush administration, which, in the process, saps it of all nuance.

Heaney was clear about the fact that one of his motivations in adapting this well-worn play was the parallel between Creon's obstinacy and President Bush's with-us-or-against-us approach to the Iraq War. No matter how wrong Creon is he continues to double-down on his bad decisions until it is too late. "Modern audiences are more sympathetic to Antigone's defiant embrace of the law of the gods," Heaney confidently wrote in 2004, a time when international opposition to the war was at an all-time high. Yet it's hard to see how contemporary theatergoers could have much compassion for a character that is essentially a highborn religious fanatic.

Katie Fabel plays Ismene and Rebekah Brockman plays Antigone in Seamus Heaney's 'The Burial at Thebes''.

( Carol Rosegg)

Brockman's wild-eyed portrayal of Antigone (the one thing keeping this play from being entirely one-sided) smacks of an American-born ISIS bride. She's whiny and entitled (as one would expect from a princess), coloring her royal privilege with a deep shade of martyrdom. "There's nothing, sister, nothing / Zeus hasn't put us through / Just because we are who we are  / The daughters of Oedipus," she tells her sister Ismene (Katie Fabel), shaking with indignation. Later, she practically salivates at the thought of joining the righteous in the underworld. This Antigone is a tragic heroine that only an incipient suicide bomber could love.

That's not to say that we reactively join Team Creon. O'Brien (who valiantly ascended the throne when the previously announced kings, John Cullum and Larry Bryggman, abdicated in quick succession) easily captures the theatrical bluster and hasty resolve of "the decider." His paternal machismo fits perfectly with Heaney's blunter lines: "Son, you're pathetic. You give in to a woman," he tells Haemon with a scoff after the son pleads for Antigone's life.

Ciaran Bowling plays Haemon and Paul O'Brien plays Creon in Seamus Heaney's 'The Burial at Thebes''.

( Carol Rosegg)

Unfortunately, that's as hot-blooded as the exchanges ever get. Not that she has much to work with, but Charlotte Moore directs the piece with a startling lethargy. Her blocking on the cozy DR2 stage suggests claustrophobia. Late in the play, Haemon casually moseys onstage, looking nothing like a man whose fiancee is about to die of forced starvation. Other characters stand to the side and stare out at the audience, like lesser runway models making way for Naomi Campbell.

Costume designer Linda Fisher outfits the cast in Greek-y robes. The women wear flowing white dresses with gold clasps, looking like they're ready for a night out at Studio 54 circa 1978. But instead of doing the hustle, they lounge on Tony Walton's bafflingly inactive set: a few raised obsidian platforms garnished by synthetic black bed skirts. Frayed ropes extend from the rafters like beams of light from heaven. They are never utilized or acknowledged by the actors.

Despite the impracticality of his set, Walton does give us the one lasting image of the production: A painted backdrop of pale and sunken proletarian faces (looking very much like the work of Edvard Munch) keeps vigilant watch on the stage. These are the commoners who have to live with the consequences of the power struggle between an entrenched aristocracy and a bull-headed strongman. In this election year, it's a painfully astute scene, far more compelling than the sleepy drama in Heaney's text.
The Montreal Auto Show Proves To Be A Dream Maker Hosting 196,829 Car Enthusiasts! +VIDEO







MONTREAL - January 24, 2016: The 48th edition of the Montreal International Auto Show (MIAS), presented by Desjardins Insurance, in collaboration with The Gazette, has just closed its doors, and we are very pleased to announce that 196 829 attendees lived the unique Auto Show experience over its 10 day duration (January 15 to 24, 2016).

Michel Gaudette, MIAS President, is thrilled with the results. "Quebecers have once again proven to be exceptional car enthusiasts and the attendee numbers are a testament of this success. The manufacturers presented several novelties for the public to admire and enjoy. The positive feedback received via our web platforms and social media are a witness of their appreciation and we are very delighted with the results".

The organisation is proud to have met the challenge by presenting a multitude of special features such as;

The Pagani Huayra, headliner of the event, was a shining star;

2 North American premieres and more than 48 Canadian premieres;

Close to 1100 test drives of the 2016 Top Favourites vehicles;

More than 1200 CAA-Quebec electric vehicle test drives;

40 Jaw dropping modified cars in the Scion Performance Zone;

An ever-popular Kia childcare centre for families;

An exceptional Charity Preview where a record amount of $702,181 was reached in a single evening ;

A sold-out comedy show, with more than 2,200 people attending the "100 rires a l'heure" gala, hosted by Rachid Badouri ;

And, the final touch to the closing of the Show, the draw of a Mustang Fastback EcoBoost Premium offered by Ford Canada.

We're already looking forward to next year's event, which will take place from January 20 to 29, 2017.

Desjardins Insurance presented the Montreal International Auto Show, a production of the Montreal Automobile Dealers Corporation, in collaboration with The Gazette!

SOURCE MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL AUTO SHOW

CONTACT: Source: Tamar Kantarjian, Director, Communications and Marketing, Montreal International Auto Show, t.kantarjian@ccam.qc.ca / #myautoshow, 514-331-6571 (239); Information: Isabelle Fafard, isabellefafard@bell.net, 514-865-8157

RELATED LINKShttp://www.ccam.qc.ca/fr/accueil/
MILWAUKEE and CORK, Ireland, Jan. 25, 2016 -- Johnson Controls and Tyco today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Johnson Controls, a global multi-industrial company, will combine with Tyco, a global fire and security provider, to create the leader in building products and technology, integrated solutions and energy storage.

Under the terms of the agreement, which has been unanimously approved by both companies' Boards of Directors, Johnson Controls shareholders will own approximately 56 percent of the equity of the combined company and receive aggregate cash consideration of approximately $3.9 billion. Current Tyco shareholders will own approximately 44 percent of the equity of the combined company.

"The proposed combination of Johnson Controls and Tyco represents the next phase of our transformation to become a leading global multi-industrial company," stated Alex Molinaroli, chairman and chief executive officer, Johnson Controls. "With its world-class fire and security businesses, Tyco aligns with and enhances the Johnson Controls buildings platform and further positions all of our businesses for global growth. Through this transaction, we will also expand our ability to further invest globally, develop new innovative solutions for customers and return capital to shareholders."

"The combination of Tyco and Johnson Controls is a highly strategic, value-enhancing step that brings together the unique strengths of two great companies to deliver best-in-class building technologies and services to customers around the world," said George R. Oliver, chief executive officer, Tyco. "We believe this transaction will allow us to better capture opportunities created by increased connectivity in homes, buildings and cities. Joining forces with Johnson Controls pairs our leading established businesses with robust innovation pipelines and extensive global footprints to deliver greater value to customers, shareholders and employees of both companies."

Under the terms of the proposed transaction, the businesses of Johnson Controls and Tyco will be combined under Tyco International plc, which will be renamed "Johnson Controls plc." The companies expect that shares of the combined company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade under the "JCI" ticker. Upon the closing of the transaction, the combined company is expected to maintain Tyco's Irish legal domicile and global headquarters in Cork, Ireland. The primary operational headquarters in North America for the combined company will be in Milwaukee, where Johnson Controls has been based.

Strategic Rationale

The combined company brings together best-in-class product, technology and service capabilities across controls, fire, security, HVAC, power solutions and energy storage, to serve various end-markets including large institutions, commercial buildings, retail, industrial, small business and residential. The combination of the Tyco and Johnson Controls buildings platforms creates immediate opportunities for near-term growth through cross-selling, complementary branch and channel networks, and expanded global reach for established businesses.

The new company will also benefit by combining innovation capabilities and pipelines involving new products, advanced solutions for smart buildings and cities, value-added services driven by advanced data and analytics and connectivity between buildings and energy storage through infrastructure integration. As a result, the new company will be able to better partner with its customers to help improve their overall performance and operations, enhancing the experience for their own customers in areas such as comfort, safety and accessibility. In addition, the combined company will have one of the largest energy storage platforms with capabilities including traditional lead acid as well as advanced lithium ion battery technology serving the global energy storage market.

Johnson Controls is in the midst of a strategic transformation to become a top-quartile multi-industrial company with leadership in attractive spaces connected to core growth platforms in buildings and energy storage. This focus has resulted in significant portfolio changes over the past few years including the divestiture of its Automotive Electronics and Interiors and Global Workplace Solutions businesses, as well as the acquisition of Air Distribution Technologies and the formation of Johnson Controls - Hitachi joint venture. The company announced in July 2015 that it is planning to spin off Adient at the beginning of fiscal year 2017.

Tyco has transformed from a diversified holding company to a streamlined operating company with a focused and leading portfolio in fire and security that will complement Johnson Controls' buildings platform. Tyco combines best-in-class products with a world-class installation and service capability delivered across a global network of branches. The company's core strengths include security and fire systems integration, commercial security monitoring, as well as fire, security and life-safety products.

Value Creation For Both Companies' Shareholders

Pro forma for the transaction and separation of Adient, Johnson Controls is expected to have approximately $32 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2016 and $4.5 billion of EBITDA before synergies. Adient is expected to have approximately $16.6 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2016 and $1.6 billion of EBITDA. In addition, Adient is expected to distribute between $2.5 to $3.5 billion to Johnson Controls in conjunction with the spin-off.

The new company expects to deliver at least $500 million in operational synergies over the first three years after closing. These annual cost synergies are expected to be achieved by increasing efficiencies, eliminating redundancies, integrating the global branch networks, and leveraging the combined scale of an over $20 billion buildings business platform. In addition, the transaction is expected to create at least $150 million in annual tax synergies.

Johnson Controls shareholders will own approximately 56 percent of the equity of the combined company and receive aggregate cash consideration of approximately $3.9 billion. Tyco shareholders will own approximately 44 percent of the equity of the combined company. The exchange ratio represents a 13 percent premium to Tyco shareholders based on 30-day volume-weighted average prices and an 11 percent premium based on share prices as of the close of market on Jan. 22, 2016, assuming that each share of the combined company has a value equal to one Johnson Controls share. Given their ownership of the combined company, both Tyco and Johnson Controls shareholders will participate in the substantial value-creation opportunities presented by $650 million in synergies, plus incremental upside from revenue growth acceleration.

Post-transaction, the combined company expects to maintain a strong investment grade credit rating and continue to pursue a balanced capital allocation program including a strong and growing dividend, consistent return of capital, and value-creating investment.

Both Johnson Controls and Tyco shareholders will receive shares of Adient (Johnson Controls Automotive Experience) which will be distributed after the merger. The Adient spin-off is expected to occur at the beginning of fiscal 2017.

Transaction Details

Immediately prior to the merger, Tyco will effect a reverse stock split so that Tyco shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.9550 shares for each of their existing Tyco shares.

Johnson Controls shareholders may elect to receive either one share of the combined company for each of their Johnson Controls shares or cash equal to $34.88 per share, which represents Johnson Controls' five-day volume-weighted average share price. Elections by Johnson Controls shareholders are subject to proration such that an aggregate of approximately $3.9 billion cash is paid in the merger.

The combination will be tax-free to Tyco shareholders, and taxable to Johnson Controls shareholders.

Tyco has secured a committed $4.0 billion bank facility to finance the cash consideration of the transaction.

The completion of the transaction, which is expected by the end of fiscal year 2016, is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and approval by both Johnson Controls and Tyco shareholders.

Governance and Leadership

Following closing of the transaction, the board of directors of the combined company is expected to have 11 directors, consisting of six directors from Johnson Controls and five directors from Tyco. Alex Molinaroli will be the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the combined company. George Oliver will serve as president and chief operating officer and serve as a director on the new board, with responsibility for the operating businesses and leading the integration.

Mr. Molinaroli will serve as chairman and CEO for a term of 18 months after the closing. At that time, Mr. Oliver will become CEO and Mr. Molinaroli will become executive chair for one year, after which Mr. Oliver will become chairman and CEO.

Centerview Partners is serving as Johnson Controls' lead financial advisor. Barclays is serving as financial advisor for Johnson Controls. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and A&L Goodbody are acting as its legal advisors.

Lazard is serving as Tyco's lead financial advisor. Citi is providing the committed financing for the transaction and Goldman Sachs is serving as financial advisor for Tyco. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Arthur Cox are acting as its legal advisors.

Fiscal Q1 Earnings Update:

As part of today's announcement, both companies provided preliminary 2016 first fiscal quarter earnings results. Johnson Controls said its adjusted earnings per share for the first fiscal quarter is expected to be $0.82, compared with guidance of $0.80 - $0.83. Tyco's earnings per share before special items is expected to be $0.42 versus guidance of $0.40.

Johnson Controls will report earnings on Jan. 28, 2016. Tyco will report on Jan. 29, 2016.

The two companies will hold a call for financial analysts on Monday, Jan. 25, 2016 at 8:45 a.m. Eastern time. The call will be webcast and available at www.jci.com and www.tyco.com, and also can be accessed in the following ways:

Live via webcast  through the Investor Relations section of Tyco's website at http://investors.tyco.com, or directly at http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/b6mwu2kx

Live via telephone (for "listen-only" participants and those who would like to ask a question)  by dialing 800-857-9797 (in the United States ) or 517-308-9029 (outside the United States ), passcode "12516",

) or 517-308-9029 (outside ), passcode "12516", Replay via telephone  by dialing 800-839-9316 (in the United States ) or 402-998-1696 (outside the United States ), passcode 6497, from 10:45 a.m. (ET) on January 25, 2016 , until 11:59 p.m. (ET) on February 25, 2016 , and

) or 402-998-1696 (outside ), passcode 6497, from on , until on , and Replay via webcast  through the "Presentations & Webcasts" link on the Investor Relations section of Tyco's website: http://investors.tyco.com.

About Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls is a global diversified technology and industrial leader serving customers in more than 150 countries. Our 130,000 employees create quality products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings; lead-acid automotive batteries and advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles; and seating components and systems for automobiles. Our commitment to sustainability dates back to our roots in 1885, with the invention of the first electric room thermostat. Through our growth strategies and by increasing market share we are committed to delivering value to shareholders and making our customers successful. In 2015, Corporate Responsibility Magazine recognized Johnson Controls as the #14 company in its annual "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list. For additional information, please visit http://www.johnsoncontrols.com. Follow Johnson Controls Investor Relations on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JCI_IR.

About Tyco

Tyco is the world's largest pure-play fire protection and security company. Tyco provides more than three million customers around the globe with the latest fire protection and security products and services. Tyco has over 57,000 employees in more than 900 locations across 50 countries serving various end markets, including commercial, institutional, governmental, retail, industrial, energy, residential and small business. For more information, visit www.tyco.com.
What should I do if my vehicle is included in this recall? >If your vehicle is included in this recall, it is very important that you get it fixed as soon as possible given the potential danger to you and your passengers if it is not addressed. You should receive a separate letter in the mail from the vehicle manufacturer, notifying you of the recall and explaining when the remedy will be available, whom to contact to repair your vehicle or equipment, and to remind you that the repair will be done at no charge to you. If you believe your vehicle is included in the recall, but you do not receive a letter in the mail from the vehicle manufacturer, please call NHTSA's Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236, or contact your vehicle manufacturer or dealership.

What is a recall? When a manufacturer or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) determines that a car or item of motor vehicle equipment creates an unreasonable risk to safety or fails to meet minimum safety standards, the manufacturer is required to fix that car or equipment at no cost to the consumer. That can be done by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund (for equipment) or, in rare cases, repurchasing the car.

The following may apply to one or more of your vehicles if your vehicle is listed below. Click on the NHTSA Campaign ID number below to read more about the safety issue and the reason for the recall.

Your vehicle MAY be involved in a safety recall and MAY create a safety risk for you or your passengers. If left unrepaired, a potential safety defect could lead to injury or even death. Safety defects must be repaired by a dealer at no cost to you.

Introduction

In 2009, approximately 30,000 lives were lost on our Nations highways Although 30,000 reflect a 28% decrease in traffic fatalities since 2006, much can still be done to address this issue on our Nation's highways Traffic crashes are the primary cause of debilitating injuries in the United States and the number one killer of Americans under the age of 34 In addition to staggering emotional costs, the annual economic loss to society because of these crashes, in terms of worker productivity, medical costs, insurance costs, etc , is estimated at more than $230 billion Clearly, there is a need for dramatic improvement in motor vehicle safety Getting unsafe vehicles off the road is integral to improving safety and saving lives.

The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (originally enacted in 1966 and now recodified as 49 U.S.C. Chapter 301) gives the Department of Transportations National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards. Since then, more than 390 million cars, trucks, buses, recreational vehicles, motorcycles, and mopeds, as well as 46 million tires, 66 million pieces of motor vehicle equipment, and 42 million child safety seats have been recalled to correct safety defects.

Manufacturers voluntarily initiate many of these recalls, while others are either influenced by NHTSA investigations or ordered by NHTSA via the courts. If a safety defect is discovered, the manufacturer must notify NHTSA, as well as vehicle or equipment owners, dealers, and distributors. The manufacturer is then required to remedy the problem at no charge to the owner. NHTSA is responsible for monitoring the manufacturers corrective action to ensure successful completion of the recall campaign.

Purpose

The purpose of this Motor Vehicle Safety Defects and Recalls Booklet is to answer the most commonly asked questions about how and why recall campaigns are initiated, and to inform consumers of their rights and responsibilities when a vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment is recalled. In these pages, youll discover how to report a safety-related problem to NHTSA, as well as how participation by citizens like you helps to keep motor vehicles as safe as possible. See the following section for comprehensive answers to some of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) NHTSA receives on recalls.



Frequently Asked Questions

When is a recall necessary?

When a motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment (including tires) does not comply with a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.

When there is a safety-related defect in the vehicle or equipment.

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards set minimum performance requirements for those parts of the vehicle that most affect its safe operation (brakes, tires, lighting) or that protect drivers and passengers from death or serious injury in the event of a crash (air bags, safety belts, child restraints, energy absorbing steering columns, motorcycle helmets). These Federal Standards are applicable to all vehicles and vehicle-related equipment manufactured or imported for sale in the United States (including U.S. territories) and certified for use on public roads and highways.

What Is a safety-related defect?

The United States Code for Motor Vehicle Safety (Title 49, Chapter 301) defines motor vehicle safety as the performance of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment in a way that protects the public against unreasonable risk of accidents occurring because of the design, construction, or performance of a motor vehicle, and against unreasonable risk of death or injury in an accident, and includes nonoperational safety of a motor vehicle. A defect includes any defect in performance, construction, a component, or material of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment. Generally, a safety defect is defined as a problem that exists in a motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment that:

poses an risk to motor vehicle safety, and

may exist in a group of vehicles of the same design or manufacture, or items of equipment of the same type and manufacture.

Examples of defects considered safety-related

Steering components that break suddenly causing partial or complete loss of vehicle control.

Problems with fuel system components, particularly in their susceptibility to crash damage, that result in leakage of fuel and possibly cause vehicle fires.

Accelerator controls that may break or stick.

Wheels that crack or break, resulting in loss of vehicle control.

Engine cooling fan blades that break unexpectedly causing injury to persons working on a vehicle.

Windshield wiper assemblies that fail to operate properly.

Seats and/or seat backs that fail unexpectedly during normal use.

Critical vehicle components that break, fall apart, or separate from the vehicle, causing potential loss of vehicle control or injury to persons inside or outside the vehicle.

Wiring system problems that result in a fire or loss of lighting.

Car ramps or jacks that may collapse and cause injury to someone working on a vehicle.

Air bags that deploy under conditions for which they are not intended to deploy.

Child safety seats that contain defective safety belts, buckles, or components that create a risk of injury, not only in a vehicle crash but also in non-operational safety of a motor vehicle.

Examples of defects NOT considered safety-related:

Air conditioners and radios that do not operate properly.

Ordinary wear of equipment that has to be inspected, maintained and replaced periodically. Such equipment includes shock absorbers, batteries, brake pads and shoes, and exhaust systems.

Nonstructural or body panel rust.

Quality of paint or cosmetic blemishes.

Excessive oil consumption.

How can I report a safety problem to NHTSA?

If you think your vehicle or equipment may have a safety defect, reporting it to NHTSA is an important first step to take to get the situation remedied and make our roads safer. If the agency receives similar reports from a number of people about the same product, this could indicate that a safety-related defect may exist that would warrant the opening of an investigation. In order to make it convenient for consumers to report any suspected safety defects to NHTSA, the agency offers three ways to file such complaints.

Vehicle Safety Hotline

NHTSA operates the U.S. Department of Transportations (DOT) Vehicle Safety Hotline telephone service to collect accurate and timely information from consumers on vehicle safety problems. You can call 1-888-327-4236 or 1-800-424-9393 toll free from anywhere in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands to register complaints or receive recall information about a vehicle. The Hotline also has Spanish-speaking representatives and offers a dedicated number, 1-800-424-9153, for use by persons with hearing impairments.

When you call the Hotline to report a vehicle-related safety issue, you will be asked to provide certain critical information that agency technical staff needs to evaluate the problem. The information you provide is filed on a Vehicle Owners Questionnaire (VOQ), entered into the agencys consumer-complaint database, and forwarded to NHTSA technical staff for evaluation.

VOQs filed through the Hotline will be mailed to you for verification of data. In addition, you will receive an explanation of how your report will be used, as well as a request for written authorization allowing NHTSA to provide your personal identifiers (e.g., name, address and telephone number) to the manufacturer of the alleged defective product you own. Note that you are not required to provide such authorization. However, sometimes sharing this information with the manufacturer can help facilitate the recall process.

Safercar.gov

You can also report a vehicle safety issue to NHTSA online at our vehicle safety Web site: www.safercar.gov. Select File a Complaint within the Defects and Recalls section of the home page. The information you submit via the Web site is recorded in VOQ format, entered into our consumer complaint database, and provided to our technical staff for evaluation.

When you fill out a VOQ online, you will be given the option of checking a box to authorize or not authorize the release of your personal identifiers to the manufacturer of the alleged defective product you own. Again, while you are not required to provide such authorization, doing so can sometimes help facilitate the recall process.

U.S. Mail

To report a safety complaint to NHTSA by mail, send your letter to:

U.S. Department of Transportation

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Office of Defects Investigation (NVS-210)

1200 New Jersey Avenue SE

Washington, DC 20590



How will my report be used?

Information you provide on the questionnaire is entered into the NHTSA consumer complaint automated database, and catalogued according to vehicle make, model, model year, manufacturer, and the affected part, assembly, or system. These reports, with the consumers personal identifiers removed, are listed on www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/complaints and updated weekly. Citizen and consumer reports help NHTSA and manufacturers to determine if a safety recall is warranted, and also provide motorists with valuable information about potential safety problems currently under review.

Will I be contacted?

In some cases, an investigator from the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) may call to clarify or verify information from your report. Unfortunately, the large volume of reports received by the agency does not permit a return call for each report filed. Questions about whether your concern involves an investigation or recall are best answered by contacting the DOT Vehicle Safety Hotline or by viewing our Web site.

NHTSA technical staff conducts a continuous analysis of these reports to determine whether an unusual number of complaints of potential safety-related problems have been received on any specific line of vehicles, tires, or equipment (e.g., child safety seats, jacks, trailer hitches, etc.). The number of reported complaints and the severity of the consequences are carefully reviewed by technical staff and measured against the number of vehicles (or items of equipment) manufactured, and how many years the vehicles or equipment have been in service.

This ongoing evaluation process allows NHTSA technical staff to determine whether complaints represent isolated reports or a trend. If a trend is suspected and a problem has a potential for causing a risk to safety, the agency will open an investigation for more detailed analysis of the problem.



How many reports must be filed before NHTSA investigates an issue?

There is no established number. Agency technical experts review each and every call, letter, and online report of an alleged safety problem filed with NHTSA. Although NHTSA has no jurisdiction over defects that are not safety-related, it does review each report that suggests a potential safety defect involving groups of motor vehicles or vehicle equipment.

How does NHTSA conduct an investigation?

The agency's Office of Defects Investigation investigative process consists of four parts:

Screening -- A preliminary review of consumer complaints and other information related to alleged defects to decide whether to open an investigation Petition Analysis -- An analysis of any petitions calling for defect investigations and/or reviews of safety-related recalls Investigation -- The investigation of alleged safety defects Recall Management -- Investigation of the effectiveness of safety recalls.

1. Screening:

Under the screening process, available information  including but not limited to Vehicle Owners Questionnaires (submitted through the Vehicle Safety Hotline, Internet or U.S. Mail), e-mail, additional letters, anonymous reports, and manufacturer-submitted information  is reviewed by the Defects Assessment Division (DAD). DAD also reviews incoming service bulletins and other documents prepared by the manufacturers to identify foreign safety recalls, customer satisfaction campaigns, consumer advisories, and similar campaigns that should have been conducted as safety recalls in the United States. If DAD determines the available information indicates a safety-related trend or that a catastrophic failure is developing, this information is presented to a panel of ODI staff for a recommendation on whether to open a safety defect investigation.

2. Petition Analyses:

Any person may submit a petition requesting NHTSA to open an investigation into an alleged safety defect. After conducting a technical analysis of such a petition, ODI informs the petitioner whether it has been granted or denied. If the petition is granted, a defect investigation is opened. If the petition is denied, the reasons for the denial are published in the Federal Register. Similarly, a person may submit a petition requesting NHTSA to hold a hearing on whether a manufacturer has reasonably met its obligation to notify and/or remedy a safety defect or noncompliance with a Federal motor vehicle safety standard. If the petition is granted, a hearing is held to assess the matter and decide what corrective action should be taken. If the petition is denied, the reasons for the denial are published in the Federal Register.

3. Investigations:

Investigations are conducted in two phases: the Preliminary Evaluation and the Engineering Analysis.

Most PEs are opened on the basis of information submitted by DAD, but they may be opened on the basis of other information as well. During the PE phase, ODI obtains information from the manufacturer (including, but not limited to, data on complaints, crashes, injuries, warranty claims, modifications, and part sales) and determines whether further analysis is warranted. At this stage, the manufacturer has an opportunity to present its views regarding the alleged defect. PEs are generally resolved within four months from the date they are opened. They are either closed on the basis that further investigation is not warranted, or because the manufacturer has decided to conduct a recall. In the event that ODI believes further analysis is warranted, the PE is upgraded to an Engineering Analysis.

During an EA, ODI conducts a more detailed and complete analysis of the character and scope of the alleged defect. The EA builds on information collected during the PE and supplements it with appropriate inspections, tests, surveys, and additional information obtained from the manufacturer and suppliers. ODI attempts to resolve all EAs within one year from the date they are opened, but some complex investigations require more time. At the conclusion of the EA, the investigation may be closed if the manufacturer has notified the agency that it will conduct a safety recall or if the agency has not identified a safety-related defect. However, if ODI believes that the data developed indicates that a safety-related defect exists, the ODI investigator prepares a briefing to be presented to a panel of experts from throughout the agency for peer review. If the agency panel concurs with ODIs recommendation that a recall should be conducted, ODI notifies the manufacturer of the panels concurrence and may, if appropriate, provide a final opportunity for the manufacturer to present new analysis or data. ODI then sends a Recall Request Letter to the manufacturer.

4. Recall Management:

The Recall Management Division (RMD) maintains the administrative records for all safety recalls, and monitors these recalls to ensure that the scope is appropriate, and that the recall completion rate and remedy are adequate. NHTSAs monitoring of recall performance may lead to the opening of a recall investigation if the facts appear to indicate a problem with the recall adequacy or execution. A recall investigation can result in expanding the scope of previously announced recalls, or in the adjustment of existing recall remedies.

What happens when NHTSA determines a safety defect exists?

If the manufacturer declines to conduct a recall in response to the Recall Request Letter, the Associate Administrator for Enforcement may issue an Initial Decision that a safety-related defect exists. An Initial Decision will be followed by a Public Meeting, at which the manufacturer and interested members of the public can present information and arguments on the issue. Prior to the Public Meeting, the manufacturer is sent copies of all information on which the Governments decision is based. A copy of the file is also made available for public inspection in the agencys Technical Information Services (TIS) Office.

During the meeting itself, the manufacturer may attempt to refute the Governments evidence in addition to presenting new information. Public interest groups, other manufacturers, trade associations, and consumers may also present information that will be considered and evaluated by NHTSAs Administrator in making a final decision on whether a safety-related defect exists. The entire investigative record is then presented to NHTSAs Administrator, who may issue a Final Decision that a safety defect exists and order the manufacturer to conduct a recall.

If NHTSA makes a final decision, can the manufacturer challenge that decision?

Yes. Once the agency has made a final decision of a safety-related defect and ordered a manufacturer to recall, the manufacturer may challenge that order in a Federal District Court.

The agency can also go to court to compel a manufacturer to comply with its order. Once a case is in court, the burden of proof lies with the agency. In other words, the agencys evidence that a defect exists and that it is safety-related must be sufficient in the opinion of the court to outweigh evidence to the contrary presented by the manufacturer.

While the case is in the courts, however, the manufacturer may be required to notify consumers by letter that the agency did make a final decision of a safety defect, but that the manufacturer is contesting the decision.

Do manufacturers ever initiate recalls without a government order?

Yes. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA. Through their own tests, inspection procedures, and information-gathering systems, manufacturers often discover that a safety defect exists or that the requirements of a Federal safety standard have not been met. The manufacturer is obligated to report such findings to the Government and take appropriate action to correct the problem. However, as vehicles age with use, certain design and performance problems may occur that prompt vehicle owners to file complaints with NHTSA. The many reports received by the public form the basis for NHTSAs defect investigations, which often result in significant safety recalls.

How will I be notified if a recall is ordered or initiated?

Within a reasonable time after the determination of a safety defect or noncompliance, manufacturers must notify, by first-class mail, all registered owners and purchasers of the affected vehicles of the existence of the problem and give an evaluation of its risk to motor vehicle safety. The manufacturer must explain to consumers the potential safety hazards presented by the problem. Names of vehicle owners are obtained from State motor vehicle offices. The letter must also instruct consumers on how to get the problem corrected, remind them that corrections are to be made at no charge, inform them when the remedy will be available, how long the remedy will take to perform, and whom to contact if there is a problem in obtaining the free recall work. If you do not receive a letter of notification from the vehicle manufacturer but think that your vehicle might be involved in a recall campaign, call the Vehicle Safety Hotline at 888-327-4236 or 800-424-9393, visit the NHTSA www.safercar.gov Web site, or contact the manufacturer or your dealer.

Manufacturers of motor vehicle equipment, particularly tires and child safety seats, maintain lists of owners who have registered their products with the manufacturer. When product or equipment recalls are initiated, the manufacturer uses these lists to directly notify owners. Product and equipment manufacturers may also be required to notify the public of recalls through a variety of additional methods (e.g., advertisements, point-of-purchase posters, etc.) to ensure that as many owners as possible are aware of the recalls. If you are unsure whether your tire or child safety seats is the subject of a recall, you may contact the manufacturer, call the Vehicle Safety Hotline, or log onto www.safercar.gov and click on Check for Recalls."

How are problems with recalled vehicles or equipment remedied?

Once a safety-defect determination is made, the law gives the manufacturer three options for correcting the defect  repair, replacement, or refund. In the case of a vehicle recall, the manufacturer may choose to repair the vehicle at no charge; replace the vehicle with an identical or similar vehicle; or refund the purchase price in full, minus a reasonable allowance for depreciation. In the case of equipment, including tires and child safety seats, the manufacturer may either repair or replace the affected equipment at no charge to the consumer.

If I pay for needed repairs before a recall is ordered, am I entitled to reimbursement?

Yes, under certain conditions. Manufacturers are required to provide reimbursement for certain costs incurred by owners to remedy safety defect conditions prior to a recall. Vehicle manufacturers are required to reimburse owners for costs incurred to remedy a defect based on either (1) the date NHTSA opens its Engineering Analysis, or (2) one year prior to the manufacturers notification of a defect to NHTSA, whichever is earlier. The closing date of eligibility for reimbursement of repair of a motor vehicle is 10 days after the manufacturer mails the last of the owner notices informing owners of a safety defect recall and cost-free remedy. For replacement of equipment, the closing date is either the same as for motor vehicles or 30 days after the manufacturers closing of its efforts to provide public notice of the existence of a defect, whichever is later. Documentation of the costs is required for reimbursement. While the current reimbursement policy is a relatively new requirement, manufacturers have in the past often voluntarily agreed to absorb such costs, provided customers could prove the pre-recall repairs remedied the defect in question.

Are there any limitations on my right to have a recalled vehicle remedied at no charge?

Yes. There is a limitation based on the age of the vehicle. In order to be eligible for a free remedy, the vehicle cannot be more than 10 years old on the date the defect or noncompliance is determined. Under the law, the age of the vehicle is calculated from the date of sale to the first purchaser. For example, if a defect is found in 2003 and a recall ordered, manufacturers are required to make the correction available at no charge only for vehicles purchased new in 1994 through 2003. However, consumers should realize that even though manufacturers are not obligated to remedy safety defects in older cars, a safety problem might still exist. If you receive notification of a defect on a vehicle older than 10 years, take the responsibility to have your car repaired at your own expense  and eliminate unnecessary safety risks.

Also, if the manufacturer challenges the agencys final decision of a safety defect, there is no obligation for the manufacturer to remedy the defect while the case is in court. If you decide to have your vehicle remedied at your own expense while the case is pending and the court upholds NHTSAs final decision, you may be entitled to reimbursement. (Be sure to save all receipts and paperwork so that you can prove the repairs were made.) However, if the court ultimately rules the defect is not safety related, Federal law does not require that the manufacturer reimburse you for the repair work



What about tire recalls?

The law requires tire manufacturers to repair or replace at no cost to the consumer only those tires purchased within five years of the defect or noncompliance determination. Furthermore, in order to obtain free replacement or repair of a recalled tire, consumers must bring the tire to the dealer within 60 days of receiving the recall notification letter from the manufacturer. If replacements are not available when you present your recalled tires, obtain a written acknowledgment from the dealer, and keep it until the dealer notifies you that there are more tires in stock.

What if I'm denied the right to have a recalled vehicle remedied at no charge?

If a dealer refuses to repair your vehicle in accordance with the recall letter you received from the manufacturer, you should immediately notify the manufacturer. In most cases, contractual agreements between a manufacturer and its dealers require all dealers to honor the recall and remedy defects at no extra charge  regardless of where the vehicle or equipment was originally purchased.

Under the law, if a vehicle recall has been initiated, consumers are entitled to the remedy without charge and within a reasonable time. In most cases, there will be a time lag between the date of the manufacturers decision that a recall is warranted or the agencys final decision, and the date the remedy is available to consumers.

This time is provided to allow manufacturers to identify owners of vehicles or equipment included in the recall, develop remedial procedures, instruct dealers on how to repair the defect, distribute the parts necessary for repair or replacement to the dealerships, and send letters to consumers informing them how the recall campaign will be conducted. A dealer is not required by law to remedy a defect in a vehicle brought in for repair before this date.

Although consumers demanding immediate correction may feel they are not receiving satisfactory resolution of the problem, there is no legal recourse available at this stage  patience is the only alternative. In instances where a manufacturer needs extended time to develop a remedy, the agency may require the manufacturer to send an interim notice to consumers that contains any short-term actions that the consumer may take to lessen the likelihood that the defect will occur.

Once a recall is initiated, can I take independent legal action for injuries I may have suffered?

Yes. The law specifically states that the recall remedies are in addition to other available legal remedies. To determine specific State law remedies, you should consult a lawyer, your State attorney general, or your local district attorneys office.

Where can I find additional resources on recalls and other vehicle safety issues?

Both the Hotline and the agencys www.safercar.gov Web site are designed to make it faster and easier for you to file a safety-related complaint with NHTSA. However, both also serve as important sources of information about recalled vehicles, recalled equipment such as child safety seats, and ongoing safety defect investigations. In addition, the Hotline and www.safercar.gov can provide you with updated NHTSA 5-star crash test results for both new and used vehicles, information about safety bulletins, advice about which new vehicles are equipped with side air bags and/or electronic stability control, and a variety of other vehicle safety information.
KODA Produces 18 Millionth Car







Superb Estate is SKODAs 18 millionth car produced since 1905.

Kvasiny production facility undergoing extensive investment and expansion.

Production capacity will increase to 280,000 vehicles annually and create up to 1,300 new jobs.

MORE INFO The Best Car Research and Buyer's Guide

MILTON KEYNES, UK -- January 25, 2016: SKODA AUTO has manufactured its 18 millionth vehicle since the company first started building cars in 1905.

The car  a SKODA Superb Estate in Candy-White  rolled off the production line at the firms Kvasiny plant in the Czech Republic. SKODA CEO Bernhard Maier, SKODA Board Member for Production Michael Oeljeklaus and the Chairman of the Trade Union KOVO, Jaroslav Povsik were there for the occasion.

Visiting the facility for the first time since his appointment in November 2015, Maier said; Kvasiny is a production site with a great tradition and an outstanding team. You immediately sense the enthusiasm with which people carry out their tasks here. This is where automobile construction is lived, and implemented to an exemplary quality and efficiency. Today we have 18 million reasons to be proud of our employees performance. Without them, the success of the SKODA brand would be unimaginable.

Producing 18 million vehicles is an enormously high number, said Jaroslav Povsik. This milestone is an impressive demonstration of the skill our colleagues at SKODA have in car construction, and their great dedication to the companys success over the past 120 years.

The Kvasiny plant is currently undergoing extensive modernisation and expansion, and in future the production capacity of the facility will increase to 280,000 vehicles annually, creating up to 1,300 new jobs in the process.

Michael Oeljeklaus said Over the last five years, we have significantly increased the number of high-quality vehicles produced worldwide. The SKODA plants in the Czech Republic have made a significant contribution to this. This is the heart of our international production network. Since 1991, we have invested more than 300 billion crowns into modernizing and expanding our production facilities in the Czech Republic.

A new pilot hall was opened during the visit to Kvasiny and 50 SKODA employees started work there that same day. Here the local team receives the first technical information some three years before series production of a SKODA model begins and analyses and evaluates that data to optimise processes before production starts.

Kvasiny is one of SKODAs three production sites in the Czech Republic. In addition to the SKODA Yeti, the Superb and Superb Estate currently run off the production lines there. The production of SKODAs SUV models will also play an important role at the location in the future.

Around 150,000 SKODA vehicles were produced at the Kvasiny plant in 2015 and 4,500 people are currently employed at the site, making it one of the largest industrial employers in the Hradec Kralove region. In 1895, Mlada Boleslav became the foundation for SKODAs success story and 52 years later the Kvasiny plant was established as a second important production site in former Czechoslovakia.

Selected milestones in SKODA AUTOs manufacturing history:
An ordinary person might want to go to Antarctica to experience extreme cold, witness the midnight sun or get close to quirky penguins.

Two researchers from the Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping conduct a leveling survey near China's Zhongshan Station in Antarctica. [Photo/China Daily]

But something else is more important, though may not seem sexy. That's surveying and mapping the vast frozen continent.

It is actually a critical job for researchers.

"Surveying and mapping comes first for research in polar regions, both south and north," said Li Fei, director of the Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping at Wuhan University in Hubei province.

The center is one of the leading Chinese institutions on surveying and mapping in polar regions.

Li, who is also a vice-president of the university, visited the South Pole once and the North Pole twice. The experience may be rare for leaders of Chinese universities, but it's quite ordinary for researchers at the center, Li said.

Founded in 1991, the center has sent more than 100 people to participate in China's polar research efforts - 32 in Antarctica and 12 in the Arctic region.

Wang Zemin, deputy director of the center, has taken part in polar research expeditions eight times - four for each pole.

"As surveying and mapping staff, we are there mainly for two tasks," Wang said.

"One is to measure geographic positions and draw maps, which is the foundation for all further scientific research. The other is to observe and get to know more about the polar regions, in order to monitor environmental or climate changes across the globe."

People often say that global warming will lead to the melting of snow and ice in polar regions, which will result in a rising sea level and make an already bad global environment even worse, Wang said.

"But we don't totally buy such causes and consequences, because although the snow and ice of some places is melting, in other places it is accumulating."

The current research focus of the center is to figure out whether there are any cause-effect relationships in various phenomena, said Li, the director. "This is a major research angle for us in the following five years."

It is well known that polar researchers are likely to encounter multiple difficulties and dangers in their work.

Apart from the lonely life and the not-so-tasty food, researchers may also face such risks as falling into crevasses or being blown away by the strong polar wind. Their lives can be at risk, Wang said.

Yang Yuande, 34, an associate professor at the center, nearly died after falling into an ice crack when he was working in Antarctica in late 2012. Fortunately, he said, he was able to grab the edge of the crack and climb out with the help of colleagues, keeping China's death record at zero for polar region research.

But the difficulties and dangers have not stopped more members of the center, male and female, from heading to the poles.

Zhou Chunxia, 39, was the first female member the center sent to Antarctica. In late 2000, when she was a doctoral student at the center, she stepped onto the South Pole and spent a summer in the region.

"It wasn't that scary for me to work in Antarctica because I spent most of my time working at the Changcheng Station," Zhou said, referring to what has been dubbed the Great Wall Station, China's first research station in Antarctica. "But that doesn't mean working there is easy or relaxing. You have to work hard, and you also have lots of obstacles to overcome - like homesickness."

Zhou is now a professor of remote sensing technology and applications at the center.

The good news is that research conditions in the polar regions have improved greatly in recent years and have met many of the researchers' diverse needs, said deputy director Wang, adding that a good example is the improvement of the communication system.

"In the past, our polar researchers could contact their families only using a maritime satellite phone, which costs several dollars a minute," Wang said.

"Now the Internet is accessible there, allowing researchers to keep in touch with their families and friends through QQ, an instant messaging service - although the speed is not very good," he said.

The use of fixed-wing aircraft has also added convenience to surveying and research in polar regions, said Zhang Shengkai, an associate professor at the center who took part in China's measurements of Dome A, the highest ice feature of Antarctica at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, in 2004 and 2005.

Zhang said previous polar region research used helicopters, which could carry only a dozen people and fly a few hundred kilometers.

"Now fixed-wing aircraft can carry more people and equipment and fly longer distances. Such aircraft can be used to take aerial photos and to conduct a series of measurements and surveys, which will definitely improve China's ability in polar region research," Zhang said.

Recently, China's research team was reported to have achieved three breakthroughs in Antarctic research.

"We are all looking forward to generating more high-level scientific achievements," Zhang said.
Healthcare business agrees "significant collaboration" with Leeds General Infirmary

LIFE sciences group Avacta has made solid progress after establishing a research partnership with Leeds General Infirmary and made appointments to complete its senior management team.

The AIM-listed business is commercialising affimers, which are engineered alternative to antibodies, and were originally developed in Cambridge and then in laboratories at the University of Leeds.

Avacta raised 21m last August to support in-house drug development.

It has begun a significant research collaboration with Dr Ramzi Ajjan at the Leeds General Infirmary, which is a two year pre-clinical study to look at the effects of certain Affimer reagents on clot formation and breakdown

Dr Alastair Smith, Avactas chief executive, said he was pleased with progress as customers and partners evaluated its technology, creating potential licensing and commercial relationships.

He added: During the coming months, we will update the market in detail on the progress of our two principal in-house therapeutic development programmes that are focused on immune checkpoint inhibitors for cancer therapies and on modulators of blood clotting.

We also expect to establish new facilities in Cambridge for the expanding therapeutic development activity under Dr Amrik Basran, and later in the year to move into larger premises in Wetherby to support the Affimer reagents development and manufacturing operations.

It has today announced the appointment of Dr Philippe Cotrel as chief commercial officer while Tony Gardiner started work as its chief financial officer earlier this month.
In response to this new GAO report on board gender diversity, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) sent a letter to SEC Chair White earlier this month urging amendments to the proxy statement rules to require that companies disclose each board nominees gender, race, and ethnicity  as was proposed by nine large public pension funds in a March 2015 petition to the SEC.

That petition seeks this amendment to Item 407(c)(2)(v) of Regulation S-K (proposed new text underlined): Describe any specific minimum qualifications that the nominating committee believes must be met by a nominating committee-recommended nominee for a position on the registrants board of directors, and describe any specific qualities or skills that the nominating committee believes are necessary for one or more of the registrants directors to possess. When the disclosure for this paragraph is presented in a proxy or information statement relating to the election of directors, these qualities, along with the nominees gender, race, and ethnicity should be presented in a chart or matrix form.

The petitioners describe the current diversity disclosure requirement (Item 407(c)(2)(vi)) of Regulation S-X) as inadequate to determine racial and ethnic and even gender diversity in certain cases, but view it as complementary to their suggested approach.

Here are the key findings of the GAO study, which was prompted by Rep. Maloneys request in May 2014: In 2014, women comprised about 16% of board seats in the S&P 1500  up from 8% in 1997

Even if equal proportions of women and men joined boards each year beginning in 2015, it could take more than four decades for womens representation on boards to be on par with that of mens.

Even if every future board vacancy were filled by a woman, the GAO estimated that it would take until 2024 for women to approach parity with men in the boardroom.

The GAO identified various factors that may hinder womens increased representation among directors. These include boards not prioritizing recruiting diverse candidates; few women in the traditional pipeline to board servicewith CEO or board experience; and low turnover of board seats

Most stakeholders interviewed supported improving SEC disclosure requirements on board diversity.

The U.S. lags behind other industrialized nations, including Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany and Norway  where serious, concerted efforts have been made to address discrimination against women in the board room.

Among the potential strategies identified in the report for increasing board gender diversity in addition to expanded disclosure requirements are:

 Requiring a diverse slate of candidates to include at least one woman

 Setting voluntary diversity targets

 Expanding board searches beyond the traditional pool of CEO candidates

 Expanding board size to include more women

 Adopting term or age limits to address low turnover

 Conducting board performance evaluations

Rep. Maloney is a senior member of both the House Financial Services Committee (where she serves as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Ranking House member of the Joint Economic Committee.

See the GAOs Report Highlights, these Bloomberg and Washington Post articles, and this Canadian Business article: How to Make Corporate Boards More Diverse.

Webcast: Pat McGurns Forecast for 2016 Proxy Season

Tune in tomorrow for the webcast  Pat McGurns Forecast for 2016 Proxy Season  when Davis Polks Ning Chiu and Gunsters Bob Lamm join Pat McGurn of ISS to recap what transpired during the 2015 proxy season and what to expect for 2016. Please print this deck in advance

The SEC is closed today due to the weekend snow storm. See Brocs earlier blog for the filings impact.

Fortune 1000 Companies Increase Board Gender Diversity

Board gender diversity improved among Fortune 1000 companies on the 2020 Women on Boards recently released 2015 Gender Diversity Index. The GDIs 842 companies consist of the Fortune 1000 companies that remain active since the organizations tracking began in 2011 based on the 2010 Fortune 1000 list.

Key findings of this years report include: Women now hold 18.8% of board seats  an increase from 17.7% in 2014 and 14.6% in 2011. This compares to 17.9% of board seats on the 2015 Fortune 1000 list  a lower percentage than the GDI Index due to the fact that the majority of new companies are smaller and smaller companies have less gender diverse boards, as well as the fact that companies that drop off the GDI (due to, e.g., M&A, bankruptcy) tend to have one or no women.

Women gained 75 board seats in 2015  an increase from 52 board seats gained in 2014.

Number of Winning W Companies (greater than 20%) has increased to 45%, compared with 40% last year. The number of Zero Z Companies (no women) continues to decline, to 9% this year, compared with 11% in 2014.

Percentage of women on boards has increased in all sectors, but five sectors have increased to over 20%: Consumer Defensive, Financial Services, Healthcare, Technology, and Utilities.

See also this infographic, and oodles of additional benchmarking and other resources in our Board Diversity Practice Area.

More on The Mentor Blog

We continue to post new items daily on our blog  The Mentor Blog  for TheCorporateCounsel.net members. Members can sign up to get that blog pushed out to them via email whenever there is a new entry by simply inputting their email address on the left side of that blog. Here are some of the latest entries:

 Director Exit Interviews

 Data Breach Derivative Suit Protection: Action Items

 How to Calmly Effect Emergency Succession

 Non-GAAP Disclosure Compliance Tips

 Redefining the Boards Role in Strategic Planning

 by Randi Val Morrison
Youve read the headlines and seen thegulppictures. So. Many. Pictures. And now, riding a tidal wave of spin, from the left and right, as it were, the documentary Weiner has been thrust upon us. Its perhaps the most anticipated film of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, an appropriately titled curio chronicling Democrat Anthony Weiners disastrous 2013 mayoral campaign. The receipts are the stuff of legend: sexting, crotch shots, and the fabulous screen name Carlos Danger. But this 90-minute documentary by Josh Kriegman (Weiners former chief of staff) and Elyse Steinberg promised to take us behind the curtain, providing an all-access look at what happened behind the scenes of this colossal train wreck.

Its Hillary Clintons connection to the doc that has, of course, given it an extra layer of intrigue.

Weiners wife is Huma Abedin, Clintons longtime adviser and confidant; a woman so close to the former secretary of stateand current presidential candidatethat Clinton once referred to her as her second daughter. And prior to Weiners Park City premiere, a flurry of reports surfaced claiming that Weiner and Abedin werent allowed to screen it (not true, according to sources connected with the filmmakers), and that the filmmakers allegedly trimmed scenes that were unflattering to Team Clinton.Multiple parties who viewed early cuts of the documentary say Clintons team is seen trying to pressure Abedin to immediately cut ties with Weiner, fearing the scandal will hurt the secretary of states bid for the White House, reported The Hollywood Reporter.

While the film contains precious few direct references to Hillary Clinton, there are some Clinton-related sequences in the latter part of the film that may catch GOP spin doctors eyes.When the wheels begin to fall off of Weiners 2013 mayoral campaign in the wake of yet another sexting scandal (full frontal this time, ugh), Abedin is capturedthrough a series of surreptitious phone callstaking orders from Hillary Clintons right-hand man (and ex-deputy assistant secretary of state), Philippe Reines.

In one scene, shortly after the scandals hit the news, Weiner and Abedin are huddled together in their makeshift campaign office. Weiner is adamant that Abedin join him on the campaign trail, but she resists, claiming she has a phone call with Philippe that she has to take.Act like a normal campaign candidates wife, Weiner insists. You dont know anything, mutters Abedin, before rolling her eyes off-camera.

In another, Abedin refuses to join Weiner and their young sonwho is grossly used as a prop, crying when the cameras flash in his faceas he casts his vote on the doomed Election Day, telling him simply, Philippe said dont.

Whether or not the Clinton footage-trimming conspiracy holds water, the documentary is a thoroughly engrossing tale of one of New York Citys great political farcesin other words, the very thing Ted Cruz was referring to when he criticized New York values. It is a tale of an idiot, full of scandal and intrigue, signifying the sorry state of American politics.

Weiner opens with a fitting quote from the late, great Marshall McLuhan: The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. This is doubly true for Weiner, the Brooklyn-born politician whose legacy may very well be that unfortunate crotch shot (Kriegman and Steinbergs film could very well be retitled The Battle of the Bulge).

I guess the punch line is true about me, says Weiner during the opening scenes. I did the things. But I did a lot of other things, too.

Hes not wrong.

Weiner was, at one point, on the path to political greatness. A a member of Congress representing New Yorks 9th District, he became a Democratic star in 2010 after lashing out against Republicans for opposing the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Acta bill providing funds for the health care of 9/11 first responders that finally passed in December 2015. Video of Weiners passionate speech went viral, elevating the already popular politician who, at 27, had become the youngest City Council member in Big Apple history. On top of that, he was married to Abedin, who, thanks to her Clinton connections, possessed plenty of political clout. Bill Clinton even officiated their wedding ceremony (in a poetic moment, hed later officiate Bill de Blasios swearing-in as mayor of New York City).

It all came crashing down in 2011, when it was revealed that Weiner had been sexting and exchanging NSFW photos with a gaggle of women online. Adding insult to injury, Weiner lied about it to the public for weeksand to his poor wife. I lied to her, too, Weiner admits in the film.

It would not be the first time.

The filmmakers of Weiner really lucked out here, tagging along for one of the most spectacular political campaign implosions in recent memory. At one point, while capturing a very intimate and intense post-scandal moment between Weiner and Abedin, Kriegman asks, Why are you letting me film this? The answer, at least according to the film, is that Weiner is a relentless narcissist; a man whos never met a camera he didnt like. And its this desire to be likedby the media, by the filmmakers, by his constituents, by his bevy of sexting partnersthat seems to drive Weiner, both politically and personally. He admits as much.

And there are many crazy moments in Weiner. The wackiest is undoubtedly a sequence when Pineapplethe Weiner campaigns code name for his sexting partner turned porn star Sydney Leathersshows up at Weiners concession speech/shindig on Election Day.

Im not going to face the indignity of being accosted by that woman, Abedin tells Weiner behind closed doors.

So Weiners campaign adviser devises a plan for the couple to cut through a McDonalds into the venue as Leatherscameras in towscampers after them.

While Leathers is undoubtedly painted as the films outright villain, its Abedin who plays the role of tragic hero, braving each and every outrageous blowand worrying about the media fallout every step of the way. The film often cuts to her during the chaos to capture the look of shock on her face, tears welling in her eyes as her husbands political future comes crashing down.

The morning after Scandal No. 2 hits, Abedin is captured standing in her kitchen. Its one of the only times in the film that she speaks directly to the camera. As she makes her morning coffee and takes her vitamins, Kriegman asks her how shes faring.

Its like living a nightmare, she says, flashing a pained smile.

Throughout Weiner, viewers will ask themselves why this brilliant, beautiful, and calculating woman has chosen to keep living this nightmare.The question remains unanswered.
Wild snow leopards have been captured on camera in Tibet, close to Mount Everest, suggesting that the endangered species might be living on the world's highest peak, researchers said on Friday.

Lhapa Tsering, an official with the Administration Bureau of the Qomolangma reserve said the population density of endangered cats in Dingri and Gyirong counties on the north face of the mountain was surveyed between October and November last year.

The research was conducted by the Mount Qomolangma Snow Leopard Conservation Center and the Wildlife Institute of Beijing Forestry University, he said.

Qomolangma is the local name for Everest.

Clear images of the snow leopards were provided by seven infrared cameras placed at an altitude of 4,000 meters, the official said, though the number of actual animals has yet to be decided.

More data will be collected from the 113 other cameras sited in the area, he said, adding that this should be done over the coming days.

Gao Yufang, executive director of the conservation center, said that scientists hope the information from the cameras will tell them more about the snow leopards' prey and habitat, which will then provide the basis for their ongoing protection efforts.

Snow leopards, which have Class A protected status in China, are usually found in the Himalayas in central and south Asia at altitudes of between 3,000 and 5,500 meters.

The animal has rarely been seen in the wild over the past century due to loss of habitat and poaching.

There are an estimated 3,500 to 7,000 of the big cats living in the wild, of which about 2,500 to 3,500 are in China.
When our grandchildren write the history of the climate movement, theyll save a few pages for the trials of 2016.

First, theyll focus on Snohomish County, Washington, where, last Friday, Seattle-area jurors found the so-called Delta 5 not guilty of obstruction for blockading a regional oil facility in 2014. The protest and the acquittal were notable as part of a growing wave of anti-oil-gas-and-coal citizen actions that has swept the country in the past few years, and the courtroom in Snohomish County was treated to a master class on why principled lawbreaking is just the tonic needed to cure our governments woeful inaction on warming.

But what law students of the future will learn about the Delta 5 trial is something a bit more arcane, if no less momentous. For the first time in the United States, a jury heard testimony that defendants criminal actions were justified by climate necessitythat is, the argument that its better to break the law while getting in a few punches at the fossil fuel system than to sit back and lawfully watch the world burn. Its a defense thats been tried a handful of times, but in the U.S. has never made it past the judges bench slap. (One group of protesters used it successfully in England in 2008.)

Next, on to Cortlandt, New York, where the Montrose 9 are facing trial for disorderly conduct, after having shut down a construction site along the Algonquin gas pipeline in Westchester County in November 2015. Like their brethren across the continent, these activists have not only broken the rules to save the climate, theyve done it loudly and proudly. If all goes well at their next court hearing, on Feb. 3, their trial will be the second everin less than two weeksto air the climate-necessity defense in open court.

This is much more than just legal la-di-da. By slipping into otherwise mundane criminal proceedings a heavy dose of serious discussion regarding the ineptitude of our environmental caretakers and reams of nuanced scientific analysis of the crude-oil catastrophe brewing in the Northwestjust one of many causes of consternation for climate activists who understand that the time to abandon carbon-intensive energy is yesterdaythe Delta 5 (and their legal team and armies of supporters) are helping to sound the death knell for the business as usual of the fossil fuel era. The Montrose 9 are issuing a similar rallying cry to defeat the pipeline pox currently plaguing the Northeast. Admitting that theyve broken the letter of the law because the government has whiffed on the biggest crisis of our age, these defendants send a powerful signal that the casual destruction of the climate will no longer be met with complacence and silence.

In a last minute letdown in the Delta 5 case, the Snohomish County district judge barred the jury from actually considering the necessity defense. The cat was already out of the bag by then, though, and having at least heard the first American climate-necessity defense, the jury acquitted on the obstruction charge and convicted on trespassing. The defendants are appealing that conviction as well as the judges denial of their defense. In this case as in others that came before it, the judge decided that there were lots of things one should do to fight climate change besides engaging in civil disobedienceat least until the courthouse is underwater, presumably.

The activists arent buying it. As a pre-trial brief in support of the Washington protesters climate-necessity defense put it: The expert witnesses, in conjunction with the testimony of the defendants, will  speak directly to the question of whether any reasonable legal alternative [to civil disobedience] existed, with the resounding answer being that no, it did not.

No reasonable legal alternative to erecting a tripod over oil train tracks or blocking the authorized construction of a gas pipeline? Its a radical argument, but its one thats gaining steam in the climate movement. The ambitious rhetoric of the Paris climate talks and Obamas coal plan notwithstanding, were still well on our way to an unrecognizably unstable planet, even as state and federal agencies continue to approve and lavishly fund oil, gas, and coal projects. (Shocking statistic #1: Since 2001, weve had 15 of the 16 warmest years on record. 2015s at the top of the list). The very fact that the Delta 5 got away with arguing climate necessity for most of their trial, and that the Montrose 9 might do the same, suggests that their movement has shifted its political vision from polite lobbying and consciousness-raising to deliberate and eloquent disobediencea shift of moral emphasis that puts climate dissidents in line with principled lawbreakers of the past.

Besides tracking the rapid evolution of the climate movement, the Delta 5 and Montrose 9 trials also serve as proof that the public at large is breaking with its government and corporate masters over climate politics. The defendants in these cases have wagered that its smarter to break the law first and ask for permission laterand they think that the American people will back them up. (Shocking statistic #2: According to the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, one in eight Americans are willing to commit civil disobedience to fight global warming).

So far the bet looks good. Staging dramatic, formalized clashes between the climate values embodied by the law (fossil fuel extraction is a right, a healthy climate aint) and the climate values of the public (rapidly headed in the opposite direction), climate disobedients have already translated into legal terms a moral argument that would have been unimaginable 15 years ago. In Washington State, that legal argument half-worked at trial (necessity defense denied but obstruction charge tossed out) and theres still the high drama of the appeal ahead. The first successful climate necessity defense might come next month in New Yorkand if not there, then somewhere else, and sometime soon. Suffice it to say that the tide is shifting.

As is so often the case with highly-touted legal battles and their small casts of adversaries, what goes down in the courtroom is just a synecdoche for much broader but harder-to-grasp conflicts in society at large. Climate necessity defendants are convinced that saving the climate requires drastic political reform, but that such reform is impossible without shattering the illusion of government accountability.

Take the Delta 5. A motley crew made up of a business climate consultant, teachers assistant, coffee house owner, retired music teacher, and house painter, theyd already petitioned legislators, submitted reports to their state Department of Ecology, and even written the president before blocking the BNSF rail yard. Ignored on all fronts, they decided that their only remaining option was to raise the temperature of political debate. So they set up a tripod over the railroad, locked their bodies to it, and got arrested for trespassing and obstruction. Then they took the battle to court and took advantage of the judicial branchs stubborn attachment to notions like justice, fairness, and necessity. The basic idea: Turn the climate crisis into a moral and social crisis.

Courts are practically the only place left where this sort of righteous appeal to the masses is possible. It doesnt take an atmospheric scientist to count the number of major climate change bills passed by Congress (hint: fewer than one), and one need only consider the ongoing Oregon militia showdown to get an idea of how aggressively our government agencies protect environmental resources.

(Incidentally, the effort by those anti-federal activists to set up a sort of shadow government based on citizen grand juries parallels the approach of the climate necessity defendants: return environmental power to the people through the democracy of the courthouse. The difference? The two groups see this path leading to directly opposite endpoints: a Lockean fantasy of unprotected pasture, on the one hand, or a post-carbon community of careful stewards, on the other. Recent national reactions to these two Northwestern environmental showdowns suggest that the latter visions got the greater pull).

Time to turn, then, to the law, where theres at least a glimmer of hope. Courts have tended to treat global warming like the paradigm-shattering, institution-shaking phenomenon that it is, and have prudently absolved themselves of responsibility. As the Supreme Court wrote in 2010 in AEP v. Connecticut, a major, multi-state lawsuit against carbon polluters: Federal judges lack the scientific, economic, and technological resources an agency can utilize in coping with issues of this order.

On the administrative law front, environmental lawyers knees are shaking as they anticipate the high courts ruling on the legality of Obamas Clean Power Plan. Post-Paris, theres some optimism that our esteemed justices will grasp the depth of the warming problem and the shallowness of Congress ability to deal with it, and give the stamp of approval. But an admonitory comment from Justice Scalia in a major 2014 climate case dealing with the EPAs ability to regulate greenhouses gasesWhen an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticismsuggests that we might not see our global warming woes solved with the snap of a judicial finger anytime soon.

So attorneys are trying new tactics. For example, a group of young plaintiffs recently sued the federal government for violating various alleged rights to a healthy climate, including the right to have the government hold the atmosphere in trust for the people. But perhaps the most promising routeat least in terms of inspiring new waves of activists, and of presenting the case for climate justice in the most basic, most irresistible terms availablelies with the climate-necessity defense.

Necessity defenses have workedin the sense of getting acquittals and getting publicityfor numerous social causes in the past. Antebellum New England juries routinely acquitted fugitive slaves and their protectors. Abbie Hoffman and Jimmy Carters daughter, Amy, successfully argued political necessity after disrupting CIA recruitment at the University of Massachusetts in 1987. As a New York City judge wrote in 1991 in acquitting activists who had blocked the Queensboro Bridge to protest air pollution: The defense does not legalize lawlessness; rather it permits courts to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary illegal acts in order to provide an essential safety valve to law enforcement in a democratic society.

Abby Brockway, one of the Delta 5 defendants, echoed those sentiments a few days after her own trial, describing how Washington state agencies have failed to do their job with regard to climate change and crude oil: Theyre just trying to figure out how to approve the permit  These agencies are originally designed to protect the people and represent the people, but theyre notthe industry has taken them. The solution? We dont have enough time to actually change these systemsso we have to create our own.

Its a pretty astute strategy. Tension-making as political praxis has a long domestic pedigree. A basic move of the early American patriots was to stage confrontations with the British authorities to foment anti-royalist fervor (think Boston Tea Party) and the civil rights organizers of the 50s and 60s carefully wove together moments of dramatic disobedience to present situations of racial crisis that could be grasped by the complacent American majority (think lunch counter sit-ins). In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way:

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

Climate activists blocking fossil fuel expansion and singing about a brighter future are nothing if not nonviolent gadflies. With our political system at a historical nadir of democratic accountability, there are few options for dealing with our addiction to fossil fuelsbut one of them involves marching straight into the courthouse and giving the law a chance to self-correct.

An acquittal in a protest case doesnt directly translate into emissions caps and carbon taxes, of course. But when juries waive punishment for illegal interference with the oil and gas industries, that means that our corrupt, climate-destructive power structure is starting to corrode. Since we cant make change without changing policymakers, thats a very good start.

The years just begun. Many more anti-fossil fuel actions are in the pipeline. With such an auspicious start already, theres a good chance that this chapter of the history of the climate movementthe tale of resistance and rallying, of lawbreaking and liberationwill have a happy ending.

Ted Hamilton is a student at Harvard Law School and a freelance writer. He has worked on the climate-necessity defense as an intern at the Civil Liberties Defense Center and the Climate Disobedience Center and is a co-founder of the Climate Defense Project. He contributed legal research to the Delta 5 defense.
Rachel Bloom is an American treasure in the making. When I ask to meet the now Golden Globe-winning star of The CWs musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, she humbly suggests pizza, specifically Johns of Bleecker Street, a casual brick-oven establishment in the West Village. She arrives dressed to the nines anyway, fresh off a fancier appointment, apologizing for how nice she looks and talking as fast as Katharine Hepburn on cocaine. We order a large cheese pizza. It doesnt survive the interview.

Blooms story is a digital-age American dream. Six years ago, she was writing and producing comedy songs on YouTube. Her first viral hit was an explicit tribute to the author of Fahrenheit 451 entitled Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury. A few years later, Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna clicked on one of her videos, looked her up, co-wrote a pilot with her, and the rest was history, albeit a tortuous one that involved pitching their show to several networks, landing a Showtime deal that fell through, and weathering gloomy ratings at The CW despite widespread critical acclaim.

Now, with a brand new Golden Globe in hand, Blooms future is looking bright.

Her television debut is untraditional, but it is quintessentially American, too. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend follows high-powered but depressed New York lawyer Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) on an ill-advised quest to win back her old summer camp flame Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III) in West Covina, California. It is a musical comedy not in the Glee sense, but in the authentic and, as Bloom notes, patriotic sense: In true Astaire-and-Rogers style, the characters break out into original song-and-dance numbers when words alone will no longer do. Sure, that genre has roots across the pond but it was perfected on celluloid here before being all but banished back to Broadway.

During our sit-down, which was condensed and edited for space, Bloom waxes passionate about bringing the musical back to the screen, however small, and about so many other things: Her fans, onscreen diversity, the possibility of a second season and, of course, the pizza.

In your acceptance speech, you talked about the rejection you faced shopping Crazy-Ex around to different networks. Was it frustrating to have something so unique and weird on your hands but to have trouble selling it?

It was really frustrating because we knew we had created something good and all of the rejections were different. Some places just say, Its not for us, which, at the end of the day, networks have their own agendas, so it has nothing to do with you. But one place said, Oh, we thought itd be edgier. Now, in the original pilot I give Greg [Santino Fontana] a hand job, I wax my asshole. I dont know what you mean by fucking edgier.

And I think what they meant was that its ultimately an optimistic show [leans over my voice recorder]Oh, wow! A huge pizza just came, just so you remember while youre listening to this recording. Oh, yes! Oh my God. Give me just one second to bask in the glow of this pizza. Oh, its really hot, Ill let it cool offso it was frustrating, especially when you hear that its not edgy enough or, Oh, we wish you were younger.

Younger? Arent you 28?

Thats the other thing. I talked about rejection but Im the most fortunate fucking person in the world. I have my own show at 28 and a Golden Globe. So, yes, I face rejection but Ive also been very fortunate and understand how fortunate I am.

Many creators of TV musical comedies find a way to repurpose their old material but none of your YouTube songs have shown up in Crazy Ex so far. When did you decide to go all new?

Always. Weve tried to occasionally repurpose stuff and that rarely works. Were doing a musical television showits the kind of thing Ive always wanted to dowhere the music is both funny but also really does further the plot and comes from character. The definition of a musical is that the emotion is so strong that you cant talk anymore, you have to sing. The emotion isnt strong enough when youre just like, Lets take a second to sing about lamps!

It has to come from the emotion for our show because Rebeccas emotional state is so heightened, and theres so much juicy emotional stuff to mine. It would have to be such an aside. If you were to try it with Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury, the whole story would have to be about wanting to meet Ray Bradbury.

That being said, do you feel pressure given the way television is promoted online to produce songs that work both in the narrative and as standalone viral videos?

A hundred percent. You know what? That hasnt worked. Sexy Getting Ready Song has gone viral but, short of that, no other song from our show has gone viral. I think our songs are awesome and some of the videos are successful but you cant really control what goes viral. All I can do is make videos that are funny, and that can also be poignant, but if the goal is to go viral, youll go crazy.

You seem to have a really deep commitment to the genre of the musical

I love musical theater so much. When done right, I think comedy songs can be the most efficient form of joke delivery. Songs can be the most efficient and the best forms of conveying emotion. Music is universal. Its worldwide.

And a lot of people forget, or dont know, that the modern musical is an American art form. It started as operetta in Europe butGershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Rodgers and Hammersteinits an American art form and if you support musical theater its patriotic.

If I had time to say that in the [Golden Globes] speech, I would have said, The American musical is alive and well. One of the places it lives is network television. I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.

The first musical you ever saw?

Guys and Dolls. I saw it when I was 5 in a community theater production. It was amazing.

The thing that strikes me the most about you as a performer is how much energy you have, whether its on the show itself or backstage singing an impromptu tune about tweeting at Tony Shalhoub. Where do you get it?

A lot of it stems from fear of death and fear of failure and fear of looking back and being like, I could have tweeted more. I could have done this more. Im having the time of my life. I get to make a musical television show. But ultimately, its fear of not using every opportunity, not carpe-ing that diem, not taking advantage of the moment. I also love it. Im having so much fun. And Im also devouring this pizza and Im having so much fun devouring it.

And you have a Golden Globe

That still hasnt really hit me.

Did it cross your mind that it could win? You were a favorite to win.

So it was like [shrugs] Eh and then, a couple days before, I thought I might win. It crossed my mind. I wrote a speech that I promptly threw away when I actually won. And then Rolling Stone said I was the frontrunner. Thats when my co-creator was like, Rachel, you might win. Whats your speech about? And then I started to become the frontrunner at all these other publications literally two days before. That was when I was like, Oh, fuck. I might, like, fucking win this thing.

You spent your entire speech thanking people, which is something youre always doing with fans on social media. Now that youve got the Globe, when are you going to start acting untouchable?

When were a ratings hit. [laughs] Im so grateful to fans. I owe my career to fans. Its hurtful to be making a show that is critically acclaimed but, because we happen to be on a broadcast network, our ratings are under so much scrutiny. You know, its hurtful to go on TV By The Numbers and see Likely To Be Canceled. I know thats based on numbers but, like, fuck off. Thats not how The CW makes us feel but when youre on a network, the ratings are so important. So anyone I meet who says, I love your show, Im like, Oh my gosh! Thank you! I get starstruck when I meet fans.

Im checking those same sites with my fingers crossed

Heres the thing: I think this Globe win means our second season. Id be shocked if we didnt get a second season.

Theres a huge conversation about diversity and feminism around your show, especially with Josh being Filipino-American. Watching it, though, it just feels real. How much of the conversation around diversity on television is actually about representing

 things as they are? Josh Chan [Rodriguez III] was always going to be an Asian bro. Always. The reason we picked that wasnt because Oh, Asians need to be represented more on TV! How do we help that? That was a plus! We were thinking What hasnt been done before? Whats a new story we can tell? Whats a new type of character? Weve seen the Bro. We havent seen an Asian Bro.

I really think diversity is simultaneous with telling new stories because, I dont know, White People Hanging Out in a Coffee Shop has been done. Diversity is just more artistically interesting to me because youre in new territory and the whole purpose of making art, in my head, is to explore topics that havent been explored.

I have never seen a show that took place in Southern California and portrayed people the way it is in Southern California. The prom king in my high school was Chinese and the prom queen was Japanese. We just didnt think about it. It was like, Oh, yeah, George and Mika? Theyre the prom king and queen. It wasnt until I realized that every other show is set in some nebulous town on the East Coast or Midwest where everyone is white and Protestant How boring is that? And thats not truth. Thats not my truth.

I remember as a kid living in Southern California and every TV show was set in that typical East Coast high school. And I remember seeing a high school near me that looked like that and thinking, Oh, a real high school! Thats not feeling marginalized. Now, if I thought about the way my school looked, imagine being a Filipino person whos like Im not a real American because Im not on TV. Were a nation of immigrants. Thats what being an American is.

One of the diverse stories youre telling is about your characters struggles with mental illness, which seems like a difficult topic for a comedy to approach

which is so funny because every comedian I know is on antidepressants and has a very dark sense of humor. It always takes a while, I think, for TV and film to catch up with whats already being done in the alternative comedy world. Every friend I know, we all have dark senses of humor about our depression, our anxiety, our family issues. I guess whats groundbreaking is doing it on network television. But to me, Ive been joking with my friends about this shit for years. And I think that what it is [new] is truth and its honesty and its not labeling it as an Other.

It makes for tricky viewing, though, because you want Rebecca to grow as a person but if you relate to her, you also want her to get what she wants, even when its not right for her.

Its funny you say that because its the struggle that we have. Look, ultimately, when Rebeccas cured as a person, the shows over. The shows about someone in crisis and if shes learning, shes learning very slowly. And if we get a second season shell be learning veeeeery slowly, if at all. So its that struggle between happiness that can last versus happiness that can go away.

You share initials with Rebecca Bunch. How much of the character is you?

Her life is, on the surface, very different from mine. I would say that its emotionally autobiographical, like 70 percent. As far as the actual details of her life: 20 percent. Its like me if I never pursued theater or artId be miserable.
The conventional wisdom says that Mike Bloomberg, whose presidential dreams were revealed Saturday by The New York Times, will in all likelihood not run against Hillary Clinton. The conventional wisdom is probably right in this case. Its hard to imagine that against Clinton, Bloomberg would be anything but a Naderesque spoiler, which he would know and not want to be; against Bernie Sanders on one side and Crump (either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump) on the other, however, I think Bloomberg becomes a candidateand a real player.

Unfortunately for Bloomberg, the chances of Sanders winning the Democratic nomination are quite slim, as he surely knows. So the rubber-hitting-road question is: Is there any chance hed run against Clinton? I mean, if nothing else, this is presumably his last shot at glory, as hes a few weeks shy of 74 (whats with all these septuagenarians, anyway?).

There was a hint in that Times article that suggested he might consider doing thatthat at a dinner party at the home of a prominent Clinton backer last fall, Bloomberg offered a piquant assessment (those Times euphemisms!) of Clintons weaknesses, built around questions about her honesty and the email mess.

I can back this up. On Saturday, I spoke with a longtime New Yorker I know who heard Bloomberg inveigh similarly last year at another such event, as Bloomberg delivered a blistering critique of the email controversy and even suggestedwell, piquantly!that Clinton deserved to be in very serious legal trouble. This person was shocked by how little he seemed to think of her.

A source in Bloomberg world says this is nonsense; this person claims to have heard the ex-mayor limn Clinton in adulatory tones numerous times, saying, in this persons words, that she was practically alone among the candidates in being able to take care of businesssimply to run the government and country responsibly and prudently. From the technocratic Bloomberg, praise doesnt come higher.

Both these things can be true, of course. Lets assume that Bloomberg was aghast at the email situation last year, but that its faded, and hes now decided hed be fine with a Clinton presidency even as he explores a bid of his own. OK. But even this brings us to another thoughtthat maybe Bloomberg thinks theres some chance Clinton might be indicted sometime soon.

If you were shocked to read that sentence, youre clearly not reading enough conservative websites. Let me say up front here that while I have no idea of the status of the ongoing FBI investigation into the email business, I would be really surprised to see this happen. Righties have been predicting her imminent indictment ever since Bill Safires ignominious 1996 column, but as far as is known publicly, Clinton is not under investigation. It was last summer when the FBI started looking into the matter, and officials announced then that Clinton wasnt a target.

But that was months ago, so who knows, really? This Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general who keeps retroactively stamping classified on emails Clinton read or wrote when she was secretary, and who originally notified the executive branch last July that classified information might exist on Clintons server, sure seems to be an aggressive sort.

I think its a farfetched scenario myself. An ex-prosecutor friend tells me that a crime would require criminal intent. Then theres the question of the timing. Somebodys going to bring serious charges against one of the two major parties leading presidential hopeful in an election year? Conservatives whose carotid veins are popping after reading that sentence would do well to remember a time when they excoriated a prosecutor who brought suspiciously timed indictments of Republicans. Google Lawrence Walsh.

But mostly it seems farfetched to me because I just consider it pretty unlikely that any secretary of state, any American in that position, would knowingly compromise U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts.

If you talk to plugged-in liberals, they say forget it, ridiculous. If you talk to plugged-in conservatives, they, well, they at least hope its going to happen, think it clearly ought to happen, and maybe this week, i.e., before Democrats start casting votes. If nothing else, a non-indictment gives them all a chance to caterwaul for another few months (or years) about how the Clintons keep getting away with things and go raise money off that.

And what if these conservatives happen to be right? Well, when Ive discussed this with liberals, most people think Joe Biden is the automatic Plan B. John Kerry gets a few mentions, on the grounds that he tried it once before, but that strikes me as a minus, not a plus. In any case, Democrats Ive discussed this with all assume they rally behind a new establishment-type candidate rather than throwing in their eggs with Bernie. Or maybe they could rally to a Bloomberg bid, since many, many Democrats represent districts where a Sanders endorsement could hurt them. And dont forget, the above scenario seems to assume that Clinton under such circumstances would just stop in her tracks. Not sure we can assume that.

I hope, and believe, all this will remain hypothetical. I just bet its rattling around in Bloombergs cage somewhere.
In this deeply weird presidential cycle, the possibility that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders could be their partys nominees leaves the center-lane wide open for an independent candidate.

Inside the Beltway, where cynicism often passes for wisdom, the notion is dismissed out of hand as a fools errand. Theres no question there are high barriers to entry for an independent presidential campaign. But they are surmountable for a self-funded candidate with executive government experience. Which is why former three-term New York City Mayor Mike Bloombergs look at an independent presidential run is worth taking seriouslyand why he can afford to wait a few months to see whether Bernie and Trump are the nominees.

Bloombergs explored this option before. Back in 2008, he backed a study about the viability of a third-party run. But when McCain and Obama locked up their nominations with post-partisan appeals against the establishment of their two parties, the centrist space looked locked up. Instead, the work was discretely repacked into a useful 2008 book, Declaring Independence by Doug Schoen, which laid out the history of third-party candidates, analyzed the ideological divide and offered strategy to overcome ballot access blocks.

The ballot access is perhaps the most serious obstacle and aides have told Bloomberg he needs to decide by March. But if the key question is whether Bernie and Trump will be their partys nominees amid a drawn out delegate fight the final answer might not be available until April.

Luckily, the state deadlines for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot are further out in the calendar than the deadlines for a new presidential party. According to data put together by Richard Winger at Ballot Access News, a new partys deadline for ballot access begins in March, but for an independent presidential candidate, the ballot access deadlines dont start kicking in until May (Texas) and 36 states have deadlines in August or September. Thats why Bloomberg could wait until later than March to make a final decision.

Its still a logistical hurdle, and even if he makes the ballot hell have to fight to qualify for the debates. All of which is why a credible candidate with the ability to self-fund is essential. And Bloomberg is apparently willing to put a billion dollars of his estimated $37 billion on the table, to the delight of consultants and consternation of citizens concerned about the influence of big money in politics.

But Bloomberg basically invented Donald Trumps riff about wealth making him independent of lobbyists and any associated corruption. New York Billionaire overlap aside (I said this was an especially weird year), Bloombergs politics fit the center much better than The Donalds anti-immigrant demagoguery. And the argument for a Bloomberg run remains strong if Ted Cruz is the nominee.

Broadly speaking, Bloomberg is fiscally conservative and socially liberaland thats the still unmet sweet spot in American politics.

Yes, that opens him to attacks from the right that hes too anti-gun and pro-public health, aka the nanny state. There will also be attacks from the left that hes too close to Wall Street and an advocate of stop-and-frisk.

But there is clearly a constituency for a candidate with effective executive government experience, who is tough on crime and excessive debt but believes in the right to choose and the virtue of immigration, whether Mexican or Muslim. Its no wonder that Trump faces a 26 percent negative deficit among independent voters.

Beltway insiders and partisan pundits will go blue in the face trying to dismiss the idea that there is any constituency for independent candidates, but a couple of macro-facts offer a reality check.

Forty-four percent of Americans now identify as Independent voters, compared to 29 percent Democrat and 26 percent Republicanthats up from rough parity a decade ago and almost double the number of independents when Ross Perot ran in 1992during a time in which the two parties have flat-lined.

There are now 12 states where registered independentsor non-affiliated votersoutnumber Democrats or Republicans. This includes the first caucus state of Iowa and the first primary state of New Hampshire and the ultimate swing state of Florida. The fact that this has happened as the two parties have become more polarized is not a coincidence.

Finally, nearly 60 percent of Americans say theyd like to see a third-party option on the ballot.

The point is not that Mike Bloomberg is the perfect independent presidential candidatehes absent anything resembling a populist streakbut hes the most experienced possible candidate with the ability to self-fund. This is also his last possible rodeohell be 74 in February. At the outset of this cycle, he might have assumed that Hillary and Jeb or Christie would be sucking up all the oxygen in the centrist space. But the GOP seems to have murdered its center-right. And while a recent Morning Consult poll showed Bloomberg playing a spoiler role against Trump and Clinton, (which makes sense given Bloombergs broad overlap with Hillarys political profile), the poll notably left Bernie off the three-way match-up.

Bottom line: In the unlikely event that Sanders and Trump are the nominees after a drawn-out delegate fight, an independent Bloomberg campaign would be a form of civic service for the moderate majority of Americans.
Late last September, NBC announced that Taran Killam would be taking on the role of Donald Trump for the shows 41st season. Entering his fifth year as a cast member, Killam was poised to become a leading player in the vein of Will Ferrell or Bill Hader before him.

That first cold open, with Cecily Strong by Killams side as Melania Trump, went well enough but was quickly forgotten after Hillary Clinton made an attention-grabbing cameo with her SNL impersonator, Kate McKinnon. Killam definitely had Trumps bottom lip curl down, but beyond that it just felt like something was missing.

At the time NBC confirmed the casting news, they also mentioned that Darrell Hammond, the former SNL cast member who recently stepped in for the departed Don Pardo as the shows announcer, would be reviving his Bill Clinton impression this election season. But the network made no mention of Hammond playing Trump, as he had throughout the record-breaking 14 years he spent at Studio 8H.

Then, like Jay Leno coming back to steal the Tonight Show away from Conan OBrien, the changing of the guard was officially reversed. Not counting one Christmas-themed episode, Hammond took over the reins after appearing alongside Killam and the real Trump in November. His grand return culminated in this past weeks cold open featuring another former cast member: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

During the final episode of 2015, Hammonds Trump re-entered the fold out of what appeared to be necessity during a GOP debate sketch that also featured Killam as Ted Cruz, whom he has been playing on the show for the past few years. By the first episode of 2016, Trump and Cruz were the two frontrunners in the Republican race, which meant Hammond and Killam faced off once more, this time over the meaning of New York values.

Producers clearly felt Killam wasnt ready to pull double-duty as both Trump and Cruz, replicating the feat Dana Carvey pulled off during the 1992 election when he played both George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in the same sketch. At that point in SNLs history, Phil Hartman was feeling Americas pain as Bill Clinton.

(Fun fact: David Spade was told by the show he would be playing Perot and even perfected his impression, but later discovered he would only be used in wide shots to make it look like there were three people on the debate stage.)

I wasnt planning on being in any sketches, Hammond told Esquire magazine last spring after he first re-appeared as former President Clinton during Season 40. I like the announcer thing because you can do it from New Orleans, or you can just come to New York for two weeks and then go back. But then [when I learned] that Kate McKinnon was gonna be Hillary, then I went, OK. I have to do it. I mean, this kid is a virtuoso. You dont even know what this girl can do, how good she is. Shes out of this world.

But those comments do not fully explain why Hammond decided to start playing Trump on what has become a weekly basis. If he needed convincing to essentially rejoin the cast, it has paid off for both the show and viewers.

Trump has become such a larger-than-life figure in the American political conversation that he needs to be played by a comedian who can imitate the gravitas the candidate himself claims to possess. Just as only Tina Fey can be Sarah Palin in the public imagination, Darrell Hammond is our one and only Donald Trump.

The same goes for another of this election cycles most indelible characters: Bernie Sanders. Im sure Kyle Mooney or Beck Bennett could pull off a decent enough Sanders impression, but the world wanted to see Larry David as the Vermont socialist and SNL has delivered that dream casting now on multiple occasions. The show has already tapped David to host on Feb. 6, which just happens to be the first show to air following the Iowa Caucus. Expect multiple Bernie Sanders sketches in that episode.

Trump, Hillary, Cruz, and Bernie are the four biggest players in the 2016 election so far, but only two of them are being played by full-time cast members. And only Kate McKinnons Clinton rises to the iconic level of performances like Ferrell as George W. Bush, who also came out of retirement this year to remind us how much we miss him on SNL.

Imagine that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the general election nomineesnot an unlikely scenario as each candidate is leading in their respective national polls. That would leave Hammond portraying both the Republican contender and the aspiring First Gentleman during what would surely be the most heavily watched SNL episodes of 2016.

At 60 years old, Hammond is at least twice the age of nearly every other SNL cast member currently on the show (aside from Leslie Jones who, at 47, became the oldest actor ever hired by Lorne Michaels last year). From the beginning, Saturday Night Live has always been a young persons game. But more than two decades after he first joined the cast, Hammond is suddenly SNLs MVP.
Millions of Americans are preparing to dig out of snow-packed cities and towns after a mammoth blizzard sacked the East Coast.

Pedestrians walk across the street in snow in Manhattan of New York City, the United States, Jan. 23, 2016. The New York metropolitan region is being pummeled by a massive blizzard, forcing Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue a travel ban that impacts roads and railways. [Photo / Xinhua]

Two major airports in the D.C. metropolitan area, Reagan National and Washington Dulles International, were completely closed on Sunday with all flights canceled.

Clean up efforts were at full force with workers clearing not just the runway but the different areas needed in order to operate the airport.

Chris Paolino is the spokesperson for Reagan International and Dulles International airports.

"No we have no flights at Reagan National or a Dulles International today. We're going to continue to work to clear the runways we'll re-evaluate the conditions both of the runways and the rest of the roadways and parking lots as the day goes on and hopefully be able to make a determination as to when we can get flights back in and out in the very near future."

In New York, a travel ban was lifted but city and state officials are urging residents to stay indoors for safety.

City workers were seen plowing and moving snow in a relatively empty Times Square.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city's emergency services were working hard to ensure public transport was up and running on Monday morning.

De Blasio praised the city's transportation authority for restoring services on Sunday.

"So, MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) has done a great job, I commend the governor and the state and the MTA. They've got their service back. Of course, they kept the underground service going the whole way through, which was pivotal. Seven am bus service started to get restored, 9 am, some of the above ground subways started to get restored. Now we know this is going to take well into the day for service to get back more to normal, and of course it's weekend service."

He added that schools would also be open as normal on Monday morning.

In Philadelphia, residents were forced to dig out cars and lend a hand to neighbors after waking up to un-plowed streets.

"I think it's, well it's god it's nature but I wish it didn't come, it's a lot. I have two cars to dig out so it's a lot."

"I love it, but it's an inconvenience for everybody trying to get around, trying to dig their cars and stuff out but other than that, I'm enjoying it."

"I'm just helping them out, they help other people, they help us, so we got to help them. One hand washes the other hand sometimes."

Residents also helped to shovel out ambulances as they were stuck while responding to area emergencies.

The storm developed along the Gulf Coast, dropping snow over Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky on Friday.

On the East Coast, warm, moist air from the Atlantic Ocean collided with cold air to form the massive winter system.

The storm is forecast to move offshore near southern New England early this week.
Summary

Michael Haley was sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing a calculator from a Texas Wal-Mart even though the maximum was two years under state law. Haley later challenged his imprisonment, arguing that his original lawyer should have objected to the lengthy sentence. After lower courts found that Haley waited too long to object to the error, Haley appealed to the Supreme Court.

How Cruz did

Cruzs second trip to the Supreme Court was once again defending a position that the majority of justices found preposterous. Though he acknowledged prosecutors had erred, Cruz argued that freeing Haley would set a precedent that could undermine the convictions of others who were unquestionably guilty.



It became apparent at the oral argument that there were not five votes to keep Mr. Haley incarcerated, Cruz recalled in 2012.



Cruz quickly switched strategies. Instead of asking the court to back Texas position, he urged justices to send Haleys case back to a lower court.

Outcome

While the Justices rejected Cruzs original argument, he has said he still viewed the ruling as a significant victory. In a 6-3 decision, the court sent the case back to a lower court, where Haley, who had been released earlier, was later resentenced to time already served. For Texas, that outcome was preferable to the justices potentially upending dozens of other cases. Cruz would later use his handling of the case as a teaching tool in a class on Supreme Court litigation he taught at the University of Texas at Austins School of Law. I would regularly talk to my students about the Haley case as a good example of how an advocate can rescue victory from the jaws of defeat, Cruz said in 2012.

Medellin v. Dretke March 28, 2005 Medellin v. Texas Oct. 10, 2007
More right-wing climate change deniers backing Brexit

These articles come at the same time as Ridley and Paterson announced they had joined the group Business for Britain which launched a campaign on 6 January in north east England for the UK's exit from the EU.

These aren't the first climate deniers to launch a Brexit campaign however. They join Lord Lawson, ex-chancellor and head of the climate denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), who announced in October that he would lead the Conservative campaign to leave the EU.

It's not just climate deniers though but also their funders who support a British exit from the EU. Last November the Financial Times reported Michael Hintze, a known funder of the GWPF, was "close to donating a large sum to the EU Out camp".

And don't forget UKIP's Nigel Farage - famous for saying he has "no idea" about climate change - who has also given his support to the Grassroots Out campaign group, which plans to target 'ordinary' voters in the lead up to the referendum. But this isn't surprising given UKIP's raison d'etre: fighting for UK independence. UKIP is also the only party to wholesale reject the idea that humans are impacting the climate.

"It's very counterproductive for the Out Campaign to have so many prominent climate deniers signing up to them because actually the majority of people in the UK are not climate deniers and it damages the [campaign] to have such prominent climate deniers in the anti-Europe camp", argues Mabey.

"Most people in the UK believe that climate change is happening and it needs to be solved, and they think it's more important than Europe if you look at the polling. So, in a sense, if I was running the Out Campaign I would be trying to persuade these people not to speak out because they poison the swing groups they need to capture to win the debate."

"It's not exactly an endorsement of whether you can trust the facts that they come [up] with on Europe."

Understanding climate-sceptic psychology

So how does this connection between climate deniers and Euroscepticism work on a psychological level?

As Kris De Meyer from the Department of Informatics at King's College London explained: "The majority of policy solutions under discussion to tackle climate change - international treaties or top-down government interventions - and the types of policies that appear to come from the EU - top-down regulations - have this in common: they can be perceived as threatening values of individual freedom, economic (market) freedom, or the sovereignty of national governments."

This can be seen for example in Delingpole's article when he "plays the card of national sovereignty under threat to reject both climate change and the European Union", says De Meyer. As Delingpole puts it in his article, "Far easier to blame 'climate change' than our unelected masters in Brussels."

This view is also expressed in a Newcastle Chronicle article by Ridley in which he writes: "Unelected EU judges have far too much power over our daily lives. If we vote to leave we can end the supremacy of EU law."

"People's prior opinions and values colour how we make decisions and evaluate new information", De Meyer said. "When new information jars with our opinions and values, it's as if we ask ourselves 'Must I believe this?'"

"This means that we are often too unquestioning in accepting arguments that support our worldview, and that we try hard to find fault with arguments when they don't support our worldview. Over a longer time, this process of evaluating information differently can strongly polarise public and political debates.

"Ridley, Paterson, Delingpole, and Lawson will be, to different degrees, driven by a perception of threats to these values of individual/market/national liberty, and hence make different but sometimes overlapping arguments for rejecting both [climate change and the EU]."

UK climate policy on the line



There is, however, another lingering question: is this just ideological, or would the climate-Eurosceptics see the bonus of a weakening in UK environmental policy if we left the EU?

Many argue that the impact of Brexit on UK climate policy would be a negative one. "The first thing is it would massively reduce UK influence on the world to determine climate change", said Mabey. "Politically it would generate huge pressure to water down the UK's role, and basically move more to a completely free-riding position."

For example, Mabey anticipates that Brexit would lead to a battle over the Climate Change Act. The Act doesn't require the UK to be part of Europe to exist however many would argue that on the grounds of competitive-ness, the targets within the Climate Change Act should be weakened.

This is something the Institute of Economic Affairs has long been arguing. (The free market think tank has been instrumental in building up British climate denial.) And, shortly after the Paris climate conference Benny Peiser, director of the GWPF, wrote an op-ed arguing this same point.

Of course, it's likely that Europe would insist the UK adopt EU environmental laws anyway in order to ensure future trade access agreements into the European markets he added. But, being outside the EU would mean the UK wouldn't have the ability to influence these regulations anymore.

And, while leaving the EU would in theory give the UK freedom to set its own standards and regulations, and in doing so could choose strong targets - say for fisheries or setting a carbon tax - the question remains whether this would work in practice.

Remember, the UK used to be known as the 'dirty man of Europe' - those in power at the time were not strong on environmental issues and it was the EU that pushed the UK to step up.

As Friends of the Earth Director Craig Bennett writes on The Ecologist today, "if the UK were to leave the EU all the indications from the early actions of the new Conservative Government are that it's our environment that would take a battering."

Kyla Mandel is Deputy Editor of DeSmog UK. She tweets @kylamandel.

This article was originally published by DeSmog.uk. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

Also on The Ecologist: 'Outside the EU, the UK could again be the dirty man of Europe'.
Border police in South China seized 70 frozen wild Siamese crocodiles and 88 crocodile tails, local authorities said Saturday.

The Siamese crocodiles were seized from a seafood freight truck at 3 pm Tuesday at the China-Vietnam border city of Fangchenggang checkpoint after police realized that the amount of goods was different from that on the list provided by the driver.

The crocodiles were sealed in 16 foam boxes. Each one measured about one meter long with a weight of 10 kilograms, while the 88 tails were each about 0.7 meters long.

According to police, the driver said that he was unaware of the crocodiles in his truck and was told to transport a seafood shipment from the border city of Dongxing to Fangchenggang.

Further investigation is under way.

Siamese crocodiles are a critically endangered species native to Southeast Asia. Their skin is used as raw material for luxury leather products on the international market. It is illegal, in China, to raise them without a license or to trade and traffic the species.
It's no fun wading knee-deep through sewage when paddling at the beach. Neither is seeing forests across Europe dying as a result of the acid-rain pollution belching from the UK's coal-fired power stations.

This was the reality before the EU stepped in and made successive UK governments clean-up our act.

The debate on Europe is heating up. Just last week, Chris Grayling MP described the EU as "disastrous" for Britain.

But if the UK were to leave the EU all the indications from the early actions of the new Conservative Government are yet again that it is our environment that would take a battering.

A threat to our air and wildlife

We could probably kiss goodbye to laws that protect our most precious wildlife sites. George Osborne is on record saying, wrongly, that he thinks EU nature laws place a ridiculous burden on business.

It's only legally binding EU renewable energy targets that give us any hope that clean energy has much of a future in the UK, especially within the context of the UK government slashing subsidies for solar power and acting as cheer-leader in chief for the fracking industry.

Even the air we breathe is safer in EU hands. After failing to achieve legally-binding limits for the reduction of nitrogen dioxide by 2010, the UK's Supreme Court has told the government they must draw-up plans to meet EU standards.

While some would argue that UK politicians would have prioritised an increase in environmental protections irrespective of EU membership, the evidence suggests otherwise.

For much of the 20th century most of our sewage was left to flow untreated into the sea. It was only following the EU's 1976 Bathing Water Directive and successful legal action by the European Commission that the UK has cleaned up its act. And it wasn't easy going.

Despite such action being clearly in the public interest, the UK fought tooth and nail to maintain the right to continue polluting. Successive UK governments exploited whatever loophole they could find, and continued to pump untreated sewage into our ocean until 1998, longer than any other European country.

With much of the Brexit camp promising victory parties lit by bonfires of so called 'red tape', it leaves me fearful that leaving the EU risks the UK becoming the 'dirty man of Europe' once more.
Elected in October 2015, Poland's new Law and Justice government is responding to a campaign to relax the repressive food and hygiene regulations that have dogged the Country's small and medium sized farmers.

Recent governments since Poland joined the EU in 2004 have outlawed the sale of on-farm processed foods unless farmers establish their operations as a separate business and in separate hygienically sanitised buildings.

That's competely unaffordable to the great majority of small farmers whose holdings typically range from between 3 and 10 hectares.

In response the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC, of which I am chairman) has been campaigning to give the country's 1.3 million small family farms the freedom to produce foods without needless, burdensome regulations, and to sell their produce locally.

Now the government is responding positively to the campaign and adopting key elements of its agenda. It appears ready to recognise food sovereignty as a fundamental citizen's right. There are also signs that it might develop policies to raise Poland's 'food security' - based on targets of national self-sufficiency in food production and consumption.

This reflects the aims of the ICPPC's 'Charter for Real Food' (see below) which outlines the key factors essential to maintaining food security and food sovereignty in Poland. The Charter has already been signed by a numerous farmers, organizatons and individuals and has been sent to parliamentarians and to the Minister of Agriculture and The Environment.

A new Food Act to guarantee farmer and consumer rights

At the same time we are working with farmers and parliamentarians from the Kukiz'15 movement which attracted 12% of the vote in the recent (October 2015) elections. We are currently drafting a new Food Act that will spell out farmer friendly' supply and demand conditions that are critical to the survival of family farming traditions in Poland.

Writing the new act ourselves, in close consultation with other farmers, has enabled us to set the situation in its true context. In this, we have been fortunate to have the support of Jaroslaw Sachajko, the new Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, and a prominent member of Kukiz'15 in the Seime (Polish parliament).

It is noteworthy that the government is open for such a 'citizen led' initiative. Hammering out the exact wording among a group farmers and supportive consumers is a tough undertaking - but one which ICPPC Founder Jadwiga Lopata has taken on with determination. Working closely with Sachajko has also enabled us to form the wording of the new act into the necessary legal terminology to be presented to parliament.

One of the difficulties surrounds the question of how one defines 'small farms'. It is a perennial problem which I have come up against during decades of lobbying on behalf of small and medium sized famers in the UK.
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 last 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 on Jan. 22. 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.
Del. Charles Poindexter, R-Franklin County, has filed a resolution commending the achievements of Snow Creek Elementary School.

HJR 95 recognizes the school as a National Title I Distinguished School for 2015-16 for exceeding all federal benchmarks and increasing achievement in reading and mathematics for two consecutive years.

The goal of Title I is to increase the achievement of students who have been identified as being at risk of academic failure. The act also requires states to set goals for schools for increasing student achievement on statewide tests.

Snow Creek Elementary earned full state accreditation for two consecutive years, and the students also performed well on state assessments in reading and mathematics during the 2014 - 2015 school year, the resolution states.

The students and staff at Snow Creek Elementary continue to set high standards for themselves, and are proud of their accomplishments. The tireless work of the teachers and the strong support of the community also contributed to the schools success.

Snow Creek Elementary was also honored as a 2015 National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education -- one of the highest honors that a school can receive for its students academic achievement.

The Clerk of the House of Delegates will prepare a copy of the resolution for presentation to Ken Grindstaff, principal of Snow Creek Elementary, as an expression of the General Assemblys congratulations and admiration for the schools hard work and outstanding achievement.
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By Gleaner Staff

Vision Henderson will host a Community Arts Conversation event Tuesday afternoon.

The event will be led by Emily Moses of the Kentucky Arts Council and will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Professional Development Center at the Thelma B. Johnson Early Learning Center, 631 N. Green St.

The intention of the "conversation" is to "drill down" into the arts section of the completed Vision Plan with the help of the KAC and explore the ideas outlined in the plan that concerning.

"Our goal is to leave the session with a plan for moving those 'big ideas' forward," said Kyle Hittner, Henderson County Tourist Commission executive director and former executive director of Henderson Area Arts Alliance.

"In order for the arts to grow and thrive in our community, we have to work together," she added. "This is your opportunity to share your thoughts and ideas to get involved in the future of our community."

For more information, go to visionhenderson.org.
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India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Sunday re-elected Amit Shah as its president for a second term.

A supporter congratulates Amit Shah (R) during the felicitation ceremony after he was re-elected as president of Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a second term, at BJP head office in New Delhi, India, Jan. 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Shah was elected unopposed.

"Amit Shah has been unanimously elected as the president of party and will hold the post for the next three years," Indian home minister and senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh told media. "Only one candidate has filed nomination paper and that is Amit Shah."

Shah is considered to be a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has served as home minister of western state of Gujarat when Modi was its chief minister.

He took charge as BJP president in July 2014, midway from Singh who joined Modi's cabinet as India's home minister.

Following the announcement celebrations broke out at the BJP headquarters with supporters beating drums and playing the tune of conchshells near the dice.

BJP leaders credit Shah with the party's spectacular performance in several states and assuming power in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Indian-controlled Kashmir.

However, BJP suffered badly in New Delhi and recently held Bihar elections.

BJP will soon plunge into its election campaign for polls in five states later this year.

Senior BJP veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were conspicuously missing during Shah's nomination.
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WASHINGTON -- First lady Melania Trump.

If that prospect evokes no clear image, that's no accident. Donald Trump's wife has said little in the campaign about the type of first lady she'd like to be should her husband win the Republican nomination and the presidency. The distance, she's said, is intentional so she can focus on the couple's 9-year-old son, Barron.

But should he become the GOP candidate for the fall, the Slovenian-born model, mother and multilingual speaker would face big decisions about her family, her life and her potential position in American history. The presidential voting starts when Iowans caucus Feb. 1.

For now, Melania Trump is her husband's top supporter at events, a striking brunette swathed in couture, frequently seen but seldom heard. Her first campaign turn came in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in November, as the candidate called his family on stage during a rally. Turning to Melania, his third wife, Trump asked if she'd like to say something.

She stepped to the microphone and cocked a manicured thumb over an elegant shoulder.

"Isn't he the best?" Mrs. Trump, 45, asked the crowd in heavily accented English. "He will be the best president ever. We love you!" Like her husband, she is not given to understatement.

As his supporters roared, Donald Trump gave her a kiss and could be heard saying: "Thank you, honey. Very nice."

It was the barest of glimpses into the life of a couple who celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary Friday. Their relationship began at least six years earlier, dating back to the 1998 party in Manhattan when the newly separated Trump asked then-model Melania Knauss, 24 years his junior, for her telephone number. She rebuffed him because he was with a date that night, she has said.

By the next year, they were a couple. Trump was seeking the Reform Party nomination in the 2000 presidential election. His girlfriend was asked how she viewed herself if ever she became first lady.

"I would be very traditional," she told The New York Times. "Like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy."

Neither woman was all that traditional of course: Betty Ford, wife of Gerald, championed the Equal Rights Amendment.

Jackie Kennedy, wife of Jack, let Americans into the first family's life in White House through television.

Now in the age of social media, would Melania Trump stay as far above the political fray as the couple's triplex overlooking Central Park?

That's largely up to the Trumps, but they're in no hurry to decide.

Through a spokeswoman, Mrs. Trump declined an interview request from The Associated Press.

A sketch of what we know:

WHAT'S

UNPRECEDENTED

In many ways, Melania Trump would be a first in American history: She'd be the only first lady who is the third wife of a president, and the first to be born and raised in a communist nation, according to Carl Anthony, historian at the National First Ladies' Library. She almost certainly has shown more skin than any other U.S. first lady -- that was her in 2006, very pregnant, in a gold bikini on the steps of her husband's private jet in Vogue magazine.

WHAT'S NOT

By 2016, Melania Trump has gotten married, had a child and adopted a much more traditional posture as a candidate's spouse. She wouldn't be the first president's wife to be born in another country -- that would be Louisa Adams, born in England. Nor would she be the first first lady to have married a divorced man -- hello, Nancy Reagan. And she'd be the third first lady to have worked as a professional model, after Pat Nixon and Betty Ford.

MELANIA'S ROLE

Experts on first ladies said Melania Trump is being smart by laying low now, especially if she is not comfortable talking about politics and policy.

But eventually, they said, she'd be wise to build on what she knows. Melania Trump studied design and architecture at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia -- so perhaps advocating for historical preservation would suit her. Maybe she'd expand her charity work. Even her model-perfect poise and ability to speak multiple languages could be an asset to her English-only husband during state dinners and other White House social events.

"It's best when they draw from their experience, and marry that up with the overall focus of their husbands' administration," said Anita McBride , who was chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush.

Anthony said: "I think she is a great emotional support to him or a ballast for him."

DELEGATING DUTIES

Donald Trump has signaled that his daughter, Ivanka, might be unusually prominent for a president's daughter. He volunteers Ivanka's name when asked whose advice he values. It was she, not Melania, who introduced her father when he announced his campaign. During breaks in Republican debates, it was Ivanka, one of Donald Trump's five children, with whom he huddled.

NOT ARM CANDY

For all of her public discretion, Melania Trump has been consistently public about one thing: She's more than an accessory. "I have my own mind," she told Harper's Bazaar in an interview published this month. "I am my own person, and I think my husband likes that about me."

Note to Washington power snobs: Don't expect Melania Trump to put up with condescension.

On a visit to the Trump triplex above Manhattan, one of the contestants on his show, "The Apprentice," says to Melania: "You're very, very lucky."

"Thank you," Melania, holding a glass of champagne, says with a glittering smile. "And he's not lucky?"
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NORWALK -- Thanks to adequate severe-weather warnings and emergency preparation, Norwalk and surrounding communities have emerged largely unscathed from Saturday's blizzard that dumped over a foot of snow on Fairfield County and set records up and down the East Coast.

According to local police departments, traffic accidents during the storm were fewer than expected, and Eversource Energy reported the same for power outages. A spokesperson for Metro-North said that although the volume of snow exceeded the transit authority's expectations, it was able to clear the tracks and resume train service with a minimal suspension of service.

In Norwalk, a minor traffic accident on the Merritt Parkway was the only one reported Saturday, according to Norwalk Police Department.

Norwalk Police Sgt. Paul Dinho said this low number of accidents was unusual for a storm of this magnitude and attributed the near-absence of collisions to drivers heeding warnings from Mayor Rilling and Governor Malloy.

"Drivers in those communities most impacted by the weather conditions are urged to avoid unnecessary travel at this time," said a release from the governor's office in advance of the storm.

Wilton Police also reported just one accident Saturday, and it occurred at 7 a.m., prior to the onset of heavy snow.

Officer Frank Razzaia of Wilton Police also said the lack of accidents was probably due to drivers avoiding the roads altogether.

"I think everybody just stayed in," Razzaia told The Hour.

A spokesperson for Westport Police told The Hour that Westport, too, had "very few accidents during the storm period."

Statewide, Connecticut State Police responded to a total of 162 motor vehicle crashes between 5 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. Saturday, in which one person sustained severe injuries, according to State Trooper Kelly Grant.

Grant added that her department has not compared this volume to numbers from past years.

Frank Poirot, a spokesman for Eversource Energy, said that 14 customers mostly along the coast reported outages during the storm, to whom power has since been restored.

"I was surprised it was that low," Poirot told The Hour. "We were bracing for something a little bit more than what we saw."

Poirot added that the low number of outages were due to Eversource's four-year-old "storm hardening" effort that involves cutting back trees as well as adding hardier power lines and support structures to the grid.

"Because we were so vigilant about cutting back not just limbs but entire trees ... we're seeing a dividend from that now," Poirot said. "It's been a big initiative that we've been working on very hard for the past (four years)."

Metro-North spokesperson Meredith Daniels said that although the storm dumped more snow and lasted longer than expected, Metro-North was able to resume service from New Haven at 12:46 p.m. Sunday after suspending service for 21 hours.

"I think we can fairly say that it was more snow than we thought," Daniels told The Hour. "Ending service at four o'clock yesterday certainly helped us clean up a bit."

Daniels added that Metro-North was hit hardest in the Bronx, where a Mott Haven railroad interlocking proved difficult to clear of snow.

"For the most part we were able to get on top of the snow," Daniels concluded. "Our biggest problems were really in the Bronx, (where) we had a couple of disabled trains, but nothing too terrible."

Sunday's collision of an empty Metro-North patrol train with a snow plow truck in Stamford did not cause injuries to the truck driver or the train's engineer, nor was it snow-related, Daniels said.

Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling had lifted the snow emergency as of noon Sunday, reminding Norwalkers to continue following safety measures like clearing snow and ice from their cars, keeping snow away from fire hydrants and checking on neighbors.

"The Blizzard of 2016 is now behind us," Rilling told Norwalkers in a prerecorded phone message. "Thank you for your cooperation during this very difficult storm."

The storm, named Winter Storm Jonas by the Weather Channel, was comparatively mild in Connecticut and points north of New York City, said Gary Lessor of the Western Connecticut State University Weather Center.

Though the blizzard set a single-day snowfall record in Bridgeport for the date of Jan. 23, it fell far short of breaking all-time records as it did in New York City.

"It isn't even the most snow (southern Connecticut has) had recently," Lessor told The Hour, adding that in the blizzard of February 2013, Bridgeport got 30 inches of snow.

"(Jonas) was a substantial storm, but it was more a mid-Atlantic storm than it was a Connecticut storm," Lessor said. "As you work your way north to Hartford or points in Massachusetts, places got two inches or less."

In New York, the National Weather Service reported that the 26.6 inches of snow that fell in Central Park on Saturday set a one-day record for New York City, and the overall accumulation -- 26.8 inches -- is the second-most for a single storm in city history.

By contrast, Fairfield County received an average of about 15 inches of snow, Lessor said.

Connecticut will now begin to see a warming trend with El Nino sending warm air across the northern United States, Lessor added, although the warmth doesn't lessen the chances of severe weather.

"With El Nino you end up having a very active subtropical jet stream, (which) gives the potential for very significant storms," Lessor told The Hour. "They can just as well be rain as they can snow, depending on how much cold air" is present at the time.

Although another storm is approaching the East Coast which could potentially bring more snow on Friday, Lessor predicted it will be much less severe than Saturday's storm.

"It's not going to be nearly as intense as this past one," Lessor said. "We should start to see the colder air abate as we go through the latter portion of January and into the beginning of February."
To the Editor:

It seems as if Governor Malloy and Bob Duff, realizing they have made a series of colossal arrogant mistakes in imposing their will on Connecticut instead of working for the betterment of its residents, have now put the spin doctors to work. Tuesday's letter from a "reference librarian from the New Britain Public Library" seems to be from a Democratic Party operative. Jason Villani, actually a Wallingford Democrat, has tried to place his opinion piece in journals across Connecticut to execute a snow job the likes of which we have not seen yet this winter.

Any reasonable reader will note that his outrageous personal attacks on Senator Toni Boucher, complete with accusations that her factual, well thought out, opinion can only be the result of bias hate speech that is without fact, reason intelligence or logic.

Mr. Villani seems to be foisting an ill-informed view that Connecticut doesn't have high taxes, does! n't have an anti-business climate, and that its governor isn't an ardent supporter of crony capitalismdoling out hundreds of millions to save a handful of his friends' and supporters jobs, while allowing a major employer to slip away. Our governor made sure to get his buddy, the unqualified Andres Ayala a high level job that he failed at, but couldn't make much of an effort to keep GE.

The evidence is blindingly obvious. GE left because of the destructive taxes and regulations laid on by Dan Malloy, Martin Looney, Bob Duff and their confederates. That GE only had to step over the border to Massachusetts is not surprising. The company still needs proximity to Northeast talent and the New York markets, etc., but those are the reasons it chose to go to Boston, not the reasons it made the extremely disruptive choice to move in the first place.

Mr. Villani goes way overboard and vilifies GE as being guilty of "war profiteering" which is a huge stretch, and on! e that was ignored by every Democrat in the country when GE supported Obamacare's implementation, a move it now regrets.

Mr. Villani's remote attempt to distort the issues here in Norwalk won't work, and this letter may be unnecessary, because we experience the high taxes of Connecticut every day. We laugh when we read about GE "extorting" the statewhich is the opposite of what they did. GE objected once it had reached its breaking point, made clear its objections, and then acted on them.

Yes, corporations make decisions to minimize the taxes they pay, as any normal individual does. Yes, let's look at GE like a person as Mr. Villani asks. GE is like a person, who, stuck in a state that is criminally mismanaged, and facing the taxes that are a result of that mismanagement, has decided to move. Yes, they are moving, as are tens of thousands of other individuals, leaving those of us who remain to foot the bill for the corporate giveaways and state worker p! ensions. Such a financial system works right up until you run out of "other peoples money".

Martin Tagliaferro

Norwalk
Anyone interested in Connecticut's future should be deeply concerned about the way Democratic legislative leaders handled the GE fiasco as opposed to their all-out effort to preserve Connecticut's casino industry by expanding casino gambling in the state.

Despite strong evidence to the contrary, House and Senate leaders did their best to deny that the state's poor business climate, massive tax increases, yawning deficits, and uncertain budgeting process influenced GE's decision to move its headquarters to Boston. As the Hartford Courant pointed out, they were actually "dismissive, even disdainful, of GE's concerns." They did next to nothing to encourage the kind of full-court diplomatic and economic press Boston put on to snag the company, and in the end expressed a sense of fatalism that it was simply impossible to stop GE from leaving given its desire to be in a higher tech and urban environment.

That may or may not be true. But the extent to which Connecticut's political leadership lost touch with GE and didn't put up a more vigorous fight to keep it represents a monumental failure. GE is not just another corporation. It is one of the world's largest and most innovative companies, with leading positions in industries of the future, including alternative energy, medical equipment, and transportation.

Contrast the legislative leadership's response to the GE situation with the way it has rushed to help Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun defend themselves against mounting competition and the loss of casino revenue and jobs. Legislative leaders have met repeatedly with the casinos' tribal owners to discuss their needs, ease regulation, and coordinate strategy. In what Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie describes as "a sweet special deal," they are strongly supporting the tribes' efforts to open a casino in the Hartford area to try to counter the MGM casino being built in Springfield.

The contrast is all the greater considering the fact that, unlike GE, casinos are a declining business in Connecticut because of growing regional oversaturation. The combined revenue for the state's two casinos is down 40 percent from its peak. They've eliminated over 8,000 casino jobs and have been replacing full-time jobs with part-time jobs to reduce wage costs and eliminate medical benefits. Foxwoods is mired in debt.

The story is similar elsewhere, with growing competition cutting into casino profits in more and more states. Delaware has had to put millions of dollars toward bailing out its three casinos. New Jersey has spent hundreds of millions trying to prop up its casinos, only to see a third of them close in the last two years and revenues plummet by 50 percent from their high. Casinos in Maine and Pennsylvania are seeking tax relief because of disappointing earnings, while casino revenue in Maryland, Ohio, and even at Massachusetts' brand new Plainridge slots casino are some 40 percent below projections.

Moreover, Connecticut's casino boom was fueled primarily by out-of-state customers who brought new money into the state. But with out-of-staters increasingly gambling at new casinos in their own states, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are becoming increasingly dependent on the gambling losses of Connecticut residents, which economists point out merely transfers money within the state without creating any net new economic growth. The proposed Hartford area "convenience" casino would do nothing to bring disappearing out-of-state gamblers back, but would encourage many current Connecticut gamblers to gamble more frequently and attract local people who do not currently gamble to do so.

Finally, unlike GE and other businesses that contribute to economic growth, casinos leave a tangle of serious and costly social problems in their wake, including addiction, debt, broken families, and crime. The New York Times recently described casinos as "instruments of blight blighted neighborhoods, the blighted lives of problem gamblers and the blighted politics of elected officials who can't, or won't, find a better path to economic development."

It's time our state government begins to get serious about making the structural changes necessary to attract and keep productive business and begins to look at instruments other than gambling for moving Connecticut forward.

Robert Steele of Essex was a Republican U.S. representative from eastern Connecticut from 1970 to 1974 and is the author of "The Curse: Big-Time Gambling's Seduction of a small New England Town." State Senator Tony Hwang (R-Fairfield) is an Assistant Senate Minority Leader.
WESTPORT -- A New Haven man and a juvenile are in police custody following an early morning pursuit in which one suspect allegedly attempted to sideswipe and ram a police cruiser while driving a stolen car.

Police said that at approximately 1:14 a.m. on Jan. 25, a homeowner on St. John's Place in Westport reported three suspicious vehicles on his street and a male attempting get into his vehicle which was parked in his driveway.

The homeowner provided a description of the suspect vehicles as two dark colored SUV's and a dark colored sedan. Officers observed three vehicles matching the description leaving the area approaching Route 15. Officers attempted to stop the suspect vehicles, and said all three fled at a high rate of speed.

Officers pursued one of the vehicles north on Weston Road. The vehicle was described as a black Ford Edge with California license plates. The pursuit was terminated due to high speeds and icy road conditions. Approximately 10 minutes after the pursuit was terminated, officers located a juvenile male walking in the area of Weston Road and Route 15, where the pursuit began. Police said the juvenile was detained and found to be involved with the criminal activity of the parties involved in the pursuit.

While officers were on scene with the juvenile, they observed the same Ford Edge with California license plates from the earlier pursuit drive by them on Weston Road. Police then pursued the same vehicle again onto Route 15 northbound where the suspect vehicle allegedly attempted to sideswipe and ram the pursuing officers. The suspect vehicle eventually stopped on Route 15 near the North Avenue overpass in Westport, where one suspect was taken into custody. Police said it was determined that the Ford Edge was reported stolen out of East Haven.

Police said that there was a vehicle stolen out of Colonial Road in Westport overnight. This vehicle was involved in a pursuit with the New Haven and East Haven Police Departments and 1 juvenile was taken into custody there.

The Westport Police Department is working closely with the New Haven and East Haven Police Departments to determine if these incidents are related.

The juvenile was charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree larceny and was transferred to the Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center.

Jerrell Brodie, 18 of New Haven was charged with: First-degree Criminal attempt assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree larceny, interfering with an officer, two counts of reckless operation of a motor vehicle, two counts of engaging in pursuit, operating a motor vehicle without a license, and traveling too fast for conditions.

Brodie was held on a $75,000 bond.
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Observers have expressed high hopes for China's role in helping Iran reinvigorate its economy, which has been weakened by three decades of international sanctions.

President Xi Jinping and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, agreed to upgrade their countries' two-way relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during talks in Teheran on Saturday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (right, front) shakes hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran, Iran, Jan 23, 2016. [Photo /Xinhua]

Iran was the final stop on Xi's three-nation Middle East trip, with the president arriving back in Beijing on Sunday. It was the first visit to the country by a Chinese leader for 14 years.

The talks on Saturday were followed by the signing of a memorandum of understanding on production capacity, minerals and investment cooperation, as well as an agreement to jointly build the Belt and Road Initiative, a trans-Eurasia strategy to boost trade and connectivity.

Other aspects covered by the documents include finance, communications, culture, science and technology, and climate change.

Xi said the nations had enjoyed friendly exchanges and sincere cooperation for as many as 2,000 years thanks to the Silk Road. He said China hopes the Iran nuclear deal  the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action  can be implemented smoothly.

Rouhani said the Chinese president was the first foreign leader to visit his country after the action plan was secured, which "mirrors the level" of the friendly ties. "Iran values China's role in international affairs, and we remember China's longtime support and help," he said.

After the lifting of the sanctions on Iran, Wu Bingbing, a professor of Middle East studies at Peking University, has predicted "there will be a surge of economic demand". He said: "Iran now needs all-out, full-flung infrastructure construction, and it needs to restore its crude oil production capacity. There is a lack of investment in its energy sectors, including the gas sector."

The agreements signed in Teheran will "help rebuild the energy sector infrastructure and further boost Iran's exports", Wu said.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
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Egypt's judicial committee said Sunday that leading figures from the Muslim Brotherhood group had schemed against state affairs during former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi's one-year rule.

Ezzat Khamis (C), chief of the judicial committee that is tasked with appraising the Muslim Brotherhood's funds and assets speaks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 24, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

"The Brotherhood's guidance office, the presidency, the government and the group's Freedom and Justice Party ran the state's affairs at that time," said Ezzat Khamis, chief of the judicial committee that is tasked with appraising the Muslim Brotherhood's funds and assets.

The four entities were four faces of the same coin with no separation of powers between the presidency, the party, the guidance office nor the government, Khamis added.

The accusations come a day before the fifth anniversary of the 2011 protests which ended former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

"The documents also indicate that confidential papers related to national security were leaked from the presidency," Khamis added.

The committee revealed a number of proposals discovered at the Freedom and Justice Party premises, including one concerning the Brotherhood's hostile stance towards the Supreme Constitutional Court and the judiciary in general.

The groups drafted several laws to amend a number of articles in the judicial authority, including a proposal to appoint the prosecutor general via a presidential decree and to reduce judges' retirement age to 60, according to Khamis

He also referred to a document which included a Brotherhood plan to control the state's judicial system, and cancel the Supreme Constitutional Court and relocate its tasks to the Court of Cassation.

Morsi, the Brotherhood's group member who became Egypt's first elected president, was deposed in 2013 by the army as a response to mass protests against his rule. The Muslim Brotherhood was later designated a terrorist organization in 2013 by Egyptian authorities.

A number of its members and leaders, including the group's supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, were sentenced to death, but the sentences have not yet been carried out and may still be appealed.

Brotherhood leaders, including Morsi, are imprisoned awaiting to be tried for charges related to inciting violence, conspiring with foreign powers to undermine Egypt, and the killing of protestors. Some charges carry the death penalty.
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Linkedin Erika Anindita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

The fate of Aburizal Bakrie's chairmanship of Golkar will soon be determined as members of the party's factions organize an extraordinary national meeting and plenary meeting to be held on the third day of the party's national leaders meeting on Monday.

'Decisions taken in the plenary meeting will determine the direction of the Golkar Party in the future. The risks are heavy but if you choose to reject the extraordinary national meeting, I will be at the forefront to fight it,' said Aburizal on Monday on the sidelines of the national leaders meeting, currently being held at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) in Senayan, Central Jakarta.

The organizing of an extraordinary national meeting, or Munaslub, was discussed by Commission A, the commission tasked with tackling organizational matters and led by Nurdin Halid, the deputy chairman of the Aburizal-led Golkar leadership.

Commission A is one of three commissions. Commission B handles programs and Commission C tackles political statements. These commissions were established at the national leaders meeting (Rapimnas).

On Sunday, 34 provincial executive boards and 10 Golkar-affiliated organizations conveyed their position on the organizing of an extraordinary national meeting to select a new party chairman.

13 parties voted in favor of the organizing of a Munaslub, 16 parties rejected a Munaslub, seven parties left the matter to the Golkar Party's central executive board, three parties left it to Aburizal as the party chairman and five parties decided follow any decision taken in the Rapimnas.

The provincial executive boards that voted in favor of a Munaslub included those from Banten, Central Kalimantan, Central Java, East Kalimantan, Gorontalo, North Maluku, South Sulawesi, West Kalimantan, West Papua, West Sumatra and Yogyakarta. Meanwhile, some Golkar-affiliated organizations that supported the Munaslub were the Golkar working women's group Himpunan Wanita Karya (HWK) and the Central Organization for Indonesian Employees (SOKSI), one of the Golkar Party's oldest affiliated organizations.

Meanwhile, the provincial executive boards that rejected the Munaslub were from Aceh, Bali, Bengkulu, Central Sulawesi, Jakarta, Jambi, Lampung, North Sumatra, Papua, Southeast Sulawesi and West Java. Meanwhile, Golkar-affiliated organizations that rejected the Munaslub included the Golkar Party youth wing Indonesian Reform Youth Force (AMPI), Kosgoro 1957, the Golkar Party's ulema wing Satkar Ulama and the Golkar Party Youth Generation (AMPG).

Secretary-general for the Aburizal-led Golkar Party Idrus Marham said the different stances of the provincial executive boards and the Golkar-affiliated organizations would be taken into consideration in the plenary meeting.

"These statements are aspirations. These statements will be discussed by the commission [dealing with the organization of the Munaslub] before they are further discussed in the plenary meeting," he said on Monday morning. (ebf)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama is considered by Jakartans to be performing well as governor, and is the frontrunner for the next gubernatorial elections, according to a survey revealed on Monday.

The poll by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) suggests that 94 percent of Jakarta residents are familiar with Ahok and 45 percent will vote for him in next year's election.

The CSIS conducted the survey on 400 respondents between Jan. 5 and 9.

"It will be hard to compete against Ahok," CSIS researcher Arya Fernandes said in a press conference on Monday.

Ahok's performance is seen largely in a good light, with 67 percent of residents expressing satisfaction with him. This was a decent result for the governor, Arya said, given he had been in office for only a year.

Then deputy governor Ahok took up the governorship on Nov. 19, 2014, replacing Joko "Joko" Jokowi, who had been elected President.

According to the survey, a majority believe that Ahok has brought about positive change in the capital city, especially in health care, infrastructure and the bureaucracy.

Ahok was deemed successful in realizing the promises of his and Jokowi's election campaign, fought under the slogan "New Jakarta".

The survey also notes that 42.5 percent of respondents appreciate Ahok's straightforward manner and trademark bluntness.

With nearly 45 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him, possible rivals Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini and Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil are decidedly lagging behind the incumbent.

Still, Risma and Ridwan score better in likability, with first (85.54%) and second position (85.02%), respectively, while Ahok follows with 71.39 percent.

The results of the survey suggest that political parties should announce their potential candidates for next year's election before Ahok, who has said he will run as an independent, cements his lead further.

"It is important for political parties to announce their candidates as soon as possible so the public can evaluate them the year before the election," said CSIS executive director Philips J. Vermonte.

Independent candidate

Most of the respondents said they preferred independent candidates to those supported by political parties, with Arya stressing that the result showed the depth of public distrust of political parties.

'In gubernatorial elections, the public worries about transactional politics and political 'dowries',' he said.

In September 2014, former East Belitung regent Ahok resigned from the Gerindra Party, which supported him in the 2012 gubernatorial election.

Independent candidacies are permitted after the Constitutional Court issued a verdict in September allowing independent candidates to run in regional elections provided they are backed by at least 7.5 percent of the people on the final voter list (DPT) of the previous general election.

With 7,096,168 Jakartans listed on the DPT from the 2014 general election, an independent contender needs at least 532,000 declarations of support.

Teman Ahok, a group that works to gather support for Ahok to run as an independent candidate, had collected around 630,000 IDs belonging to Jakartans, group spokesperson Amalia Ayuningtyas said on Monday as reported by kompas.com.

While the number of IDs had surpassed that required by the Constitutional Court, Amalia said the group aimed for another 370,000 IDs to reach a totemic 1 million pledges of support. (rin)
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Linkedin Grace D. Amianti and Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Seven members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have agreed to liberalize cross-border sales of investment products by financial services professionals in the region.



Finance officials and regulators from seven APEC economies, namely Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, signed on Jan. 18 in Singapore a memorandum of cooperation on the content of the Asia Region Funds Passport.



The seven APEC members are pioneer participants in the Asia Region Funds Passport, an agreement that aims to make it easier for financial services professionals in a participating APEC economy to sell investment products, such as mutual funds, to retail customers in other participating APEC economies. The agreement hopes to eventually promote job creation and growth in the region.



Securities regulators from these seven economies are expected to sign a further memorandum early in 2016, according to an official statement. The Asia Region Funds Passport is on track for commencement by 2017.



Activation for the Asia Region Funds Passports will take place as soon as two or more participating economies sign the memorandum and implement its arrangements, the statement said.



Commenting on the initiative, Financial Services Authority (OJK) chairman Muliaman D. Hadad told The Jakarta Post that the agency had yet to receive any official information from APEC, but would prepare for any aspect under its supervision that could be affected by foreign agreements.



'I don't know about the details yet, but basically we should first thoroughly review the agreement to see whether it will benefit us,' he said recently.



Muliaman said the financial regulator would actively study all cross-border agreements, including financial sector liberalization in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) set to commence in 2020.



'We always emphasize that agreements on financial sectors should be mutually beneficial and uphold the principles of reciprocity between the members,' he said.



Meanwhile, Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) president director Tito Sulistio said he was convinced that such liberalization in cross-border sales of investment products would positively raise the competitiveness level of sales agents in the domestic capital market.



According to Tito, direct competition with foreign professionals would increase the quality of service and efficiency in local companies, saying 'Pak Jokowi [President Joko Widodo] has said that Pertamina [the state-run oil and gas firm] had bad service quality, which would be improved after it entered into open competition with foreign companies.'



'This competition will benefit local investors. I am convinced that local investors in the capital market will be happy with a larger variety of products, including those from overseas,' he said, adding that Indonesia's capital market was relatively liberalized toward foreign investments.



The APEC Policy Support Unit found in its study that once fully launched, Asia Region Funds Passport could save the region investment to the tune of US$20 billion annually in fund management costs and could, furthermore, offer higher investment returns with the same or with a lower degree of risk.



The group also said the initiative would encourage a pool of local funds that could create 170,000 jobs in APEC economies within five years.



'The Asia Region Funds Passport aims to cut down on incompatible or overlapping regulation that may hinder the marketing of managed funds between participating APEC economies,' said Trudie Wykes, chair of the informal group leading its development.



'The initiative is a win-win idea for financial services professionals and retail investors with potentially significant benefits for employment and economic growth,' Wykes said.



The Asia Region Funds Passport was included in APEC's services sector program as one of the themes in the 2015 APEC Economic Leaders' Week held in Manila, the Philippines, in November last year, attended by 21 member countries, including Indonesia.
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The push to make Australia a republic has gathered pace after all but one of Australia's state and territory leaders signed a historic declaration calling for an Australian head of state.

Western Australia state Premier Colin Barnett was the only leader not to sign the declaration which states: "We, the undersigned premiers and chief ministers of Australia, believe that Australians should have an Australian as our head of state."

Australian Republican Movement chair Peter FitzSimons said on Monday that Australia becoming a republic was a "no brainer" and the support of the nation's political leaders, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, was no less than a "declaration of desired independence".

Though Australia was granted autonomy in 1901 and is free to self-govern, it is not a republic and remains a Commonwealth state under a quasi-rule by the British Monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II is Australia's official head of state.

"Australia can do better than to find our heads of state from one family of unelected English people living in a palace in England," FitzSimons told Australia's Nine Network after being asked if the nation should wait until she passes away.

"Have the Queen come when she is young enough and instead of bowing and curtseying, the nation rises as one in a standing ovation and says thank you your majesty, we will take it from here."

FitzSimons said the declaration by all but one state and territory leader was timed for the annual Australia Day celebration - an annual celebration marking the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson - while coinciding with an online petition that has so far gathered 4,500 signatures, out of 16 million eligible voters.

The Australian Monarchist League however said despite the moves from the political leaders, there is no widespread public support for replacing the monarchy and that the nation's constitution is "based on the Crown which always represents the people".

"This petition is calling for a republic which will be based on the will of politicians, which is evidenced by so many premiers and politicians supporting it," the league's national chair Philip Benwell said.

Australian Minister for Communication and the Arts, Mitch Fifield told local media despite his desire for a republic, the debate is not a priority for the sitting government and that there's no point discussing a proposition without any chance of success.

"My view is that this proposition won't seriously be re-examined for so long as the queen is on the throne," Fifield said.

"Until that time, what we see today is the annual pre-Australia Day republic story."

Fifield's view has echoed Turnbull's who led the failed republican referendum in 1999. The prime minister has stated there were more important issues than the question of a republic.

"The next occasion for the republic referendum to come up is going to be after the Queen's reign," Turnbull said last year.

The Australian Republican Movement is calling for a plebiscite to the held by the year 2020, which would then be followed up by a congress of political and community leaders to decided the preferred model for a republic.

On Jan. 26, the nation celebrates Australia day marking the arrival of the First Fleet, with the leaders presenting a number of community awards in honour of a person's serve to the nation while more contemporary members of society party to a countdown of the top 100 songs played over Australian radio in 2015.

However, other members of Australia consider the celebration to be affront to the nation's indigenous, or first peoples that were readily hunted, killed or made to assimilate into a British lifestyle during colonial and post-colonial rule.
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Linkedin Erika Anindita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

The Golkar Party leadership led by Aburizal Bakrie, formed during a national meeting (Munas) in Bali in November 2014, is set to announce its official support for the government at the closing ceremony of its three-day-national leaders meeting (Rapimnas), due to end on Monday.

'Having been engaged in a long dispute, we have now agreed to support the government, in that, along with the government, we are committed to developing this country without any reserve,' Nurdin Halid, the deputy chairman of the Bakrie-led Golkar central executive board, told the press on the sidelines of the Rapimnas, held at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) on Monday afternoon.

Nurdin said that the decision had been made by one of three commissions set up in the meeting during the first session of the Rapimnas. He said that Commission A, assigned to discuss organization-related matters, had managed to decide on a stance towards the government but had not yet made a decision on several other things, such as its stance on the amendment of the 1945 Constitution.

It was also Commission A that had discussed the party's stance on the organizing of an extraordinary national meeting (Munaslub) before it was later taken to a plenary meeting, Nurdin said. As of 8:30 p.m., the plenary meeting was still running, having started at 7.30 p.m.

Nurdin said that the Golkar Party would declare its official support for the government during the closing ceremony, after it concluded the final meeting on Monday evening.

'Insya Allah [God's willing], the government will come to accept our official declaration of support,' he said.

Nurdin claimed that there had been signs regarding the attendance of government representatives at the ceremony but he refused to give more details.

On Sunday, the provincial executive boards of the Golkar Party leadership, also formed during Munas Bali, announced their pledge to support the President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla administration. (ebf)
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, January 25, 2016

The Jakarta administration is set to make available around 2,400 new low cost rental apartments (rusunawa) situated at nine locations across the city this year.



Jakarta Housing and Government Buildings Agency head Ika Lestari Aji said that the 2,400 apartments were those whose construction had commenced last year. The 2,400 apartments would be located in Rawa Buaya in West Jakarta, Rawa Bebek, Jl. Bekasi Raya II, Jatinegara Barat, Pinus Elok, Cakung Barat and Jatinegara Kaum in East Jakarta and Semper and Marunda in North Jakarta.



'The new rusunawa can be occupied soon after completion,' Ika told reporters at City Hall recently.



She went on to say that the city administration was confronting a low-income housing backlog and was currently attempting to fulfill housing needs in Jakarta.



Last year, Ika said that the city administration had evicted 12,000 families from their homes. However, not all were placed in a rusunawa right away due to a lack of empty units. Many evictees were instead told to find a temporary home and were given letters to guarantee that they would be placed in an apartment when one was made available.



'There is a housing backlog that we must catch up on. We lack of up to 500,000 spaces,' Ika said.



Ika further said that the city administration would also get a total of 17,000 new rusunawa next year in 30 locations across five municipalities in the capital.



'This year, construction of 17,000 rusunawa will commence. The apartments will be completed next year,' she said, adding that the Housing and Government Buildings Agency would be assisted by private developers, who are set to fund and construct low-cost rental apartments in return for receiving permits to construct commercial buildings in the capital.



The developers include, among others, Agung Podomoro Land as well as city-owned PT Jakarta Propertindo.



The apartments, Ika went on to say, would be located at various locations across the city including in Penjaringan, Nagrak, Cilincing and Rorotan in North Jakarta and in Pulogebang in East Jakarta.



Separately, Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said that evictees and riverbank dwellers would be prioritized for the new low-cost rental apartments. This year, more residents are set to be evicted as the city expands its river normalization project for flood mitigation.



He went on to say that the rusunawa would be equipped with various facilities, such as kiosks, where residents could open businesses, as most evictees had previously worked as food and goods vendors. Furthermore, the buildings would also be equipped with health clinics, mosques, playgrounds and early childhood education centers.



'We hope that the rusunawa can be a sort of incubator for poor residents so that although they enter the rusunawa as a lower-class resident, they can improve their lives and leave the rusunawa in a better financial condition,' Ahok said.
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Linkedin Hoang Anh Tuan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

The world enters 2016 with the obligation to confront numerous worrying challenges, from the sudden outbreak of confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia to North Korea's H-bomb test, as well as terrorist attacks in Turkey, Burkina Faso, Indonesia and Pakistan.



Adding to these security concerns is China's unprecedented actions in the South China Sea, which present the potential for serious uncertainties in one of the most crucial and geo-strategically important areas in the world.



Having completed the construction and installation phase of developing artificial islands over the reefs and rocks it had illegally occupied in the Spratlys, on Jan. 1 China began conducting test flights of civilian aircraft on Vietnam's Chu Thap (Fiery Cross) Reef, underscoring Beijing's intention to continue its occupation and domination of an area critical to Southeast Asian commerce and world trade, as well as navigation of the high seas.



More seriously, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, China flight plans were conducted in the Ho Chi Minh City Flight Information Region (FIR) managed and controlled by Vietnam; the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) made no effort to notify its Vietnamese counterpart of its plans and intentions, thus suggesting that Beijing has no intention of playing by the rules and routines of normal overflight.



From Jan. 1 to 8, China conducted 46 flights in the FIR managed by Vietnam. This violates not only Vietnam's sovereignty, but also regulations such as the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and its annexes concerning rules of the air, especially Annex 2 and Annex 11, thus threatening the safety of international flights over this area, and driving home the extent to which China is prepared to turn its back on such international agreements.



Clearly, China's actions contravene its statement that the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea does not affect the freedom and safety of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and that peace and stability in the area is still guaranteed. Just imagine the consequences of an air collision in the South China Sea and the impact of such an event on safety, commerce and security.



Worse still, while China's violations of the Ho Chi Minh City FIR continue, beginning on Jan. 16, China moved the oil rig Hai Yang Shi You 981 to the area between the continental shelf in the central part of Vietnam and China's Hainan Island.

_______________________________________



China needs to stop all construction work aimed at creating artificial islands.



This is reminiscent of China's insertion of the HD 981 rigs in the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam in the period from May 1 to July 15, 2014, which caused significant complications in the Vietnam'China relationship and introduced security uncertainties for the entire region.



China's recent activities in the South China Sea show Beijing's willingness to expand the scale of its activities in the areas, and to take increasingly dangerous steps that fly in the face of its claims to desire a peaceable, rational and negotiated solution to these matters.



China has long acknowledged Hainan as the southernmost point of China's territory.



Meanwhile, Vietnam has asserted its sovereignty over the Paracels and the Spratlys from at least the 17th century. At the San Francisco Conference in September 1951, 50 out of 51 participating countries did not protest when prime minister Tran Van Huu of the State of Vietnam affirmed Vietnam's sovereignty over the Paracels and the Spratlys.



At the same time, China's claims regarding these two islands were met with outright rejection from 46 out of 51 participating countries. In addition to that, the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 never mentioned a word of China's administration of these two islands.



During the Vietnam War in 1957-1974, China attacked and then occupied the western and then the eastern part of the Paracels.



China waged a brief war to take over Da Gac Ma or Johnson Reef and some other rocks and islets from Vietnam in 1988.



Since then China has continued to assert its presence and sustained its occupation of both the Paracels and the Spratly Islands in an attempt to dominate the entire South China Sea. It is difficult for China to disavow that it is pursuing an approach in the South China Sea that amounts to maritime colonialism.



China's construction and reinforcement of the artificial islands in the Spratlys goes against the spirit of the Joint Statement DOC, which focuses on maintaining the status quo and discouraging acts that might further complicate the situation.



Moreover, these Chinese actions explain why the negotiations between ASEAN and China on the Code of Conduct (COC) have taken so much time and yielded no substantive progress toward an agreement on the COC.



Given Chinese behavior, there is every reason to believe that Beijing will continue the construction of the artificial islands in the South China Sea and when it finally signs a COC with ASEAN, China will be in a much strengthened position that will enable it to tell ASEAN to take it or leave it, without substantially compromising Beijing's advantage, and without the need to accommodate ASEAN's primary interests.



China's actions in the South China Sea are contrary to the Agreement on the Basic Principles Guiding the Settlement of the Sea Issues between the two countries and the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.



After the visit to Vietnam by the Chinese president in November, and following the visit to China by the chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam in December, China agreed to refrain from further complicating the situation.



China's current activities in the South China Sea are unarguably contrary to those promises.



What China's ambassador to ASEAN, Xu Bu, wrote in The Jakarta Post of Jan. 14, in an article entitled 'Maintaining Peace and Stability in the South China Sea', underscores the extent to which the region needs to resolve this problem goes beyond words. Concrete deeds will help untangle the challenges that the South China Sea represents to peace and stability in ASEAN.



In particular, China needs to stop all construction work aimed at creating artificial islands and China must cease acts that alter the status quo and militarize the South China Sea.



China should commit to the maintenance of the status quo, and quickly terminate the construction of an airport on Fiery Cross Reef, since this threatens the sovereignty of Vietnam, peace and stability in the region and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea.



China should fully implement the DOC, reach an agreement with ASEAN on the COC at the earliest opportunity in a constructive manner and commit to resolving disputes on the basis of international law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.



These are three initial but essential steps that will go a long way toward assuring peace, stability and security for the Southeast Asian region, which of course would serve the long-term interests of China as well.

__________________________________



The writer is Ambassador of Vietnam to Indonesia.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Mon, January 25, 2016

Around 1,500 members of the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) and their family members are being sent home from Mempawah, West Kalimantan, to their diverse hometowns, mainly in Java. The Indonesian Military assisted in the departures with navy warships, following Tuesday's attack by 'thousands of people', and the burning of vehicles, homes and crops of the movement's members.



The movement said it was established in 2012 to uphold the state ideology of Pancasila, but had dissolved itself last year. Authorities and religious leaders have accused it of blasphemy, since it reportedly succeeded a 'deviant' organization, the Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah, founded by Ahmad Mussadeq, who claimed to be a prophet and was sentenced in 2008 for blasphemy. The disappearance of a number of individuals believed to have joined Gafatar added to suspicion against the group.



Hundreds of Gafatar members reportedly moved to Mempawah since last October, a few hours from the provincial capital of Pontianak, to engage in farming. Now, with their forced eviction ' coinciding with almost a decade since Ahmadis in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, were driven out from their homes in 2006, followed by Shiites displaced from Madura, East Java in 2013 ' they will expect compensation for their land.



The government says it is hunting for 'masterminds' of the Tuesday attack, just days after a consensus was reached with Gafatar members reportedly agreeing to voluntarily leave the area. Residents had expressed anxiety to local leaders over alleged attempts by the movement 'to influence' others with their beliefs. Regent Ria Norsan said she could only cry when flames engulfed the homes of the community's members.



Police have yet to announce the arrest of any of the attackers. Officials said Gafatar adherents were not banned from activities as a farming community. But when thousands descended to attack them and set fire to their property, officials failed to prevent the assault. Intelligence may have been grossly lacking, but the police should soon announce the arrest of suspected perpetrators.



More importantly, the results of the investigation into the incident must be known. For instance, are Gafatar members suspected terrorists? And with a deadly conflict a decade ago in West and Central Kalimantan that killed hundreds and pitted 'locals' and 'migrants' against each other, attempts to reduce 'social conflict', as stated in a 2012 law on the issue, must involve 'mapping' of the conflict area.



We fear continued impunity of vigilantes ' murderers of three Ahmadi followers in Banten in 2011 were handed sentences of only three to six months jail. The National Police merely warned people against violence: 'The burning [of Gafatar property] reflected a public perception of Gafatar being deviant,' police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Charliyan said. 'I am grateful for public rejection of movements linked to terrorism and radicalism, but not with violent methods,' he was quoted as saying.



With such a soft stance by the police, and with the 1965 Blasphemy Law, the power to brand anyone deviant has too often proved dangerously easy, with the support of readily available mobs.
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Linkedin Ashok Sarma (The Jakarta Post) New Delhi  Mon, January 25, 2016

French President Francois Hollande began a three-day visit to India on Sunday that could push a multibillion-dollar deal for combat airplanes and closer cooperation on counterterrorism and clean energy.



Hollande landed in the northern city of Chandigarh where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined him at official engagements and lauded France's decision to invest $1 billion every year in India in various sectors.



Chandigarh was designed in the 1950s by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier and is one of three places France has pledged to help develop as so-called "smart cities" - with clean water supplies, efficient sewage disposal and public transportation.



Hollande and French business leaders met with their Indian counterparts to boost bilateral trade, which in 2014 was $8.6 billion. New Delhi is also trying to encourage French companies to tap into India's economic boom.



Modi in his speech said India was looking forward to French expertise in defense production, developing railways and waterways, and fighting global warming and terrorism.



Hollande is accompanied by the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, economy and culture and dozens of top corporate leaders.



On Sunday, Airbus Helicopters and India's Mahindra Defense, a private company, signed a "statement of intent" in the presence of the two leaders to produce military helicopters in India as a joint venture.



"Mahindra India and Airbus Helicopters have agreed on a blueprint that can put India on the world map for military helicopter manufacturing," said Pierre de Bausset, president of the Airbus Group India. Details were not immediately known.



Hollande will hold talks with Indian leaders in New Delhi on Monday and be a guest of honor on Tuesday at India's Republic Day parade, celebrating 66 years since the country adopted its constitution.



High on the agenda is India's desire to purchase 36 Rafale combat planes for its air force, which Modi had announced during a visit to Paris in April, touching off several rounds of negotiations over pricing, offsets and servicing.



In an interview with the Press Trust of India news agency, Hollande hinted it might take some more time to sign the deal.



"Agreeing on the technicalities of this arrangement obviously takes time, but we are on the right track," PTI quoted Hollande as saying.



France has also promised support for India's clean-energy quest, including a solar energy alliance launched last month during the global climate talks held in Paris.



"Our bilateral relationship with France is very comprehensive. It covers a number of sectors such as defense, civil nuclear cooperation, railways, smart cities, science and research, space and culture.



In all these areas we expect some forward progress during the French president's visit," Vikas Swarup, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesman, said last week.



The two sides are also expected to touch on anti-terrorism efforts including speeding up extradition requests and cracking down on money laundering used to fund militant activities.



Swarup noted that both countries had been hit by militants recently, with 130 people killed across Paris on Nov. 13 and a four-day siege against the north Indian air force base of Pathankot earlier this month in which seven Indian soldiers were killed. (ags)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Bank Indonesia (BI) has supported the finance minister's decision to deliver general allocation funds (DAU) and revenue sharing funds (DBH) through a non-cash instrument, namely treasury notes starting this year, in the hope that it will reduce idle money in the nation's banks.



"Regional governments that recorded slow spending will receive the funds in the form of treasury notes. This will lead to a more efficient allocation as they will not deposit idle cash in regional banks anymore," BI Governor Agus Martowardoyo said on Jan. 22 in Jakarta.



The former cash distribution mechanism created problems as regional governments used to put the funds, which were mostly idle, in regional banks. Even the newly launched Dana Desa (Village Funds) allegedly sat idle in various regional banks.



Creco Consulting economist Raden Pardede said there was around Rp 280 trillion (US$20.23 billion) in funds sitting idle in the regional banks. 'It seems like the regional governments do not know what to do with the money and the easiest thing to do is put it in regional banks," he told thejakartapost.com.



As a result, the Finance Ministry announced that non-cash instrument transfers would be applied started from Jan. 13. Under the new regulation, the non-tradable notes can be cashed in at the end of the three first quarters of the year.



"It will be applied only for regional governments that have idle cash exceeding three months allocation," Finance Ministry general director Budiarso Teguh Widodo said. (ags)(+)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Depok  Mon, January 25, 2016

Envoys from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the country's university representatives have asked University of Indonesia (UI) to open a class named after North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un.



'The North Korean government, including their universities, and UI have agreed to form a partnership. The partnership was made after their visits to UI,' said Nesti 'Ines' Rahayu, staff of UI's International Office.



'The demand for a special Kim Joung-un class is part of the agreement between the country's university and UI to carry out exchanges of students, staff and lecturers,' she went on.



Ines stated that currently UI is reviewing the agreement ' including the request for Kim Jong-un class.



'We will examine all of their requests,' Ines said, further emphasizing that UI hopes to develop a partnership that could satisfy both parties.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

A suspicious package found in the early hours of Sunday in a newspaper cart on Jl. Damai in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, turned out to be a set of amplifiers and a dynamo coil, according to the police.



Comr. Purwanta, spokesman for the South Jakarta Police, said the Jakarta Police's bomb squad examined the package and determined it did not pose a threat.



He said the package was discovered by a man who saw four men on two motorcycles stop near the cart and place the package inside.



'The witness [the man] approached the four men and asked them 'what are you placing?' The four men fled [instead],' he explained, adding that the witness tried to catch them but failed to do so.



'The witness returned to the scene to check the package and saw cables inside,' he said.



Upon receiving a report on the suspicious package, the Jakarta Police deployed 10 bomb squad officers to clear the area and examine the package, which they later determined to be a set of amplifiers and a dynamo coil.



The Kebayoran Baru Police are currently looking into possible reasons for why the package was placed at the location, said Purwanta.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Former President BJ Habibie has urged the young generation of Golkar leaders to run for the party chairmanship, saying that the future of the nation lies in the hands of the young.



The senior Golkar member made the statement on his remarks at the party's three-day-national leadership meeting at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, Central Jakarta, which will end on Monday.



'The future of any nation anywhere in this world rests in the hands of its young,' he said as quoted by kompas.com.



Habibie made the comments at the conference's opening ceremony on Saturday evening, after a long absence from any Golkar Party activities.



The third Indonesian president is one of several senior Golkar figures who have formed a transition team to facilitate reconciliation between the party's two competing factions, namely the Aburizal Bakrie and Agung Laksono camps. Habibie has been assigned as the patron of the transition team.



Seemingly rebuking the desire for power of the two senior Golkar members currently competing for the party chairmanship, Habibie firmly said that Golkar must be led by a young leader.



'While you are still alive, please open the door. Give the party chairmanship to those who are aged between 40 to 60 years. You must do it. If not you, who else will? You have to build a culture of regeneration in this party,' said Habibie.



During the conference, Aburizal signaled that he would not run for the party chairmanship again. Separately, the Agung camp also made similar announcements. A number of young Golkar figures have been touted as possible candidates to replace Aburizal.



From the Aburizal camp, which was formed at a national meeting in Bali in November 2014, People's Consultative Assembly deputy speaker, Mahyudin, has said he was ready to run for the Golkar Party chairmanship.



'I've heard that there are several other candidates. There is Pak Idrus [Idrus Marham], Pak Nurdin [Nurdin Halid], Pak Akom [Ade Komarudin] and Pak Aziz [Aziz Syamsuddin],' said Mahyudin.



From the Agung-led faction, which was formed at the Ancol national meeting in December 2014, a number of names of young figures have been reportedly proposed as chairman candidates.



'There is Ade Komarudin, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, Agun Gunanjar Sudarsa, Airlangga Hartarto, Mahyudin, Hajriyanto Thohari, Idrus Marham, Priyo Budi Santoso, Zainudin Amali and many more. They are young leaders with the potential to take the leadership of the Golkar Party,' said Ace Hasan Syadzily from the Agung camp.



Habibie's presence in the national conversation about leadership succession in the Golkar Party has strengthened the role he might be able to play in ensuring that the succession proceeds smoothly.



Ahead of the presidential election in 2014, it was Habibie who first made statements about the need for new leadership, saying that it was time for Indonesia to be led by a young leader. It was Habibie who looked favorably on Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, who ran for the President against Prabowo Subianto, who was dubbed a representative of the 'old generation'.



Although Habibie has broken his silence on the Golkar Party internal conflict, questions still remain about which young leader has the capability to unite the party and save it from plunging further into the depths of destruction. (ebf)(+)
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Linkedin Matthew Lee (The Jakarta Post) Vientiane  Mon, January 25, 2016

US Secretary of State John Kerry is pressing for peaceful resolutions to increasingly tense maritime disputes in Asia and urging China to take a firmer stand on North Korea's nuclear program after its recent bomb test.

Kerry arrived in the Laotian capital Sunday, with later stops planned for Cambodia and China, extending an around-the-world diplomatic mission that began with a heavy emphasis on the Middle East, particularly Iran and efforts to bring an end to Syria's civil war.

This year, Laos will take the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose members are becoming more vocal in complaints about China's growing assertiveness over competing claims in the South China Sea.

Next month, President Barack Obama will host the ASEAN leaders in California.

Before that summit, US officials say, Kerry will make the case to the leader of the 10-nation bloc to present a unified stance in dealing with China on the disputes. They have intensified as China steps up construction of man-made islands and airstrips in contested areas.

The United States and governments with rival claims with China in the disputed region, including the Philippines and Vietnam, have expressed alarm over the Chinese construction. They say it raises tensions and threatens regional stability and could violate freedom of navigation and overflight.

But ASEAN unity has not always been possible because China wields great influence among some of its smaller neighbors, such as Cambodia. Cambodia held the ASEAN leadership spot in 2012, blocked the group from reaching consensus on the South China Sea issue and frequently has sided with China on the matter.

A senior US State Department official accompanying Kerry in Asia said the US had heard from regional leaders that problems related to Cambodia's chairmanship "left a black mark on ASEAN and are not to be repeated." The official said the US believed that Laos would do a better job in balancing ASEAN interests with China.

Recent developments, including China's movement of an oil rig into a disputed zone and warnings against overflight of what it claims to be its territory, have raised levels of concern in the region to a point where the official said it would be very difficult for an external power like China to manipulate individual ASEAN countries in a way that paralyzes the broader group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of Kerry's visit publicly.

Kerry is only the second secretary of state to visit Laos since 1955; Hillary Clinton visited in 2012.

Obama will become the first US president to visit the landlocked nation later this year. Laos has moved away from a communist system in the past two decades, but like its close ally Vietnam, it retains a one-party political system and its government has been criticized for being intolerant of dissent.

Laos was targeted heavily by US bombing during the Vietnam War and still has large amounts of unexploded ordnance littering its countryside. The US has stepped up efforts to help clear Laos of those bombs and Kerry is expected to commit to expanding and upgrading such programs with details to be announced when Obama visits later in 2016, the US official said.

In Cambodia, Kerry is expected to note the country's strong economic growth but also raise concerns with longtime authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen about human rights and political freedoms. Kerry plans to meet representatives of Cambodia's opposition, led by a man who has been in self-imposed exile since November, when an order for his arrest was issued on an old conviction for defaming Cambodia's foreign minister.

Kerry will wrap up his Asia tour in Beijing, where he will renew concerns about China's aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and call for Chinese leaders to take more steps to press North Korea on its nuclear program.

Since North Korea's nuclear test earlier this month, US officials have urged China to use its leverage to demand that the North Korean leadership end its nuclear weapons program and testing and return to six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

The senior US official said the US believes that the pressure China has exerted on North Korea so far has not been enough to change the calculus of North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, and that it is important for China to join the US, South Korea and Japan in presenting a united front.
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Two Chinese nationals were killed and another injured in a suspected bomb attack in Xaysomboun province of Laos on Sunday.

The Chinese embassy confirmed the incident, saying it took place at 8:00 a.m. local time when the victims, one of whom was an employee of a mining company from China's Yunnan province, were on board of a vehicle.

Laos military personnel rushed to the scene and the injured, surnamed Zhou, has been shifted to a hospital in capital Vientiane for treatment.

The Chinese embassy officials visited the injured person and required for prompt investigation into the attack.
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, January 25, 2016

Members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) groups in Indonesia are facing discrimination and stereotyping in media coverage, say activists who are calling on journalists to uphold their rights.



Concerned over the poor quality of media coverage on the LGBT, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia held a series of intensive workshops over the weekend.



'There was also a tendency for journalists to stigmatize the group,' the head of Women and Marginalized Groups of AJI Indonesia, Yekthi Hesthi Murthi, told thejakartpost.com.



Research indicates violations of ethics often occur when Indonesian journalists are covering controversial issues concerning the LGBT in this, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, she asserted.



She added the press could be in a position to give a voice to those who are voiceless and allow them to stand up for their rights as citizens of this country.



Citing research conducted by the alliance in 2015, local media had a predilection to write news stories in a sensationalized and bombastic manner, Hesthi explained.



Hesthi expressed disappointment on finding that news stories stating facts of the group's marginalization and neglected rights were seldom reported. She also said that there were instances of symbolic violence depicted by the choice of diction used within the written articles.



According to the research, LGBT issues received only a very minor portion among the wide array of news coverage across the majority of local and national media.



Hesthi believed such issues should receive more special attention because of the conditions that the group faces on a daily basis in which their existence tends to be ignored by the government and their rights are neglected.



She cited the example of a case in which students at the University of Lampung (Unila) who had gained confidence about revealing their sexual orientations subsequently became social pariahs while getting a stern warning from university officials that homosexuals were not welcomed at the university.



'The right to an education is a basic human right,' Hesthi said.



On a wider scope, the government's objection to dealing with LGBT issues is not uncommon.



Most recently, Technology, Research and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir said that LGBT people should be barred from university campuses, pointing to the educational institution as a moral safeguard while branding the community members as degenerates who risk corrupting the nation's moral values.



The minister was responding to information that an organization at the University of Indonesia (UI) named the Support Group and Research Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) offered counseling to LGBT students through their Peer Support Network program.



The controversy of the SGRC's activities at UI exploded into public attention after the group came into the media spotlight, which highlighted the group's support for the LGBT community.



The SGRC in turn received heavy criticism from the public and fellow students because of being depicted as being an established university entity that supported a growing LGBT population.



The fact that the LGBT community existed quite comfortably and openly on campus was not met well by several students who in turn voiced their disdain through the media.



SGRC co-founder Firmansyah published a statement on the group's official website, www.sgrcui.wordpress.com, that reiterated their mission statement as an organization that moves in the scope of the study of sexuality, reproduction and sexual orientation.



The Peer Support Network was only one of the wide ranging issues of concern within the group's organization.



Via its website, Firmansyah also said the reason to provide counselling for LGBT people was to respond to a study that found the LGBT group to be more susceptible to violence, while teens were more prone to suicide as a result of the rejection and discrimination they received from society.



Sexual diversity



'Vulnerable groups in this country still do not have a place,' Press Council (Dewan Pers) member Yosep Stanley Adi Prasetyo said during the workshop.



Stanley, who is also a former commissioner at the National Commission on Human Rights (KomnasHAM), observed the government's tendency to avoid the acknowledgement of the LGBT community despite its responsibility to uphold citizens' rights.



Stanley pointed to the lack of an official government census of LGBT people as an example of their ignorance. However, he said such refusal does not make them go away.



The government has not put enough importance on the Yogyakarta Principles, a set of international human rights principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity, he added.



On further comments, Stanley argued that the identity card (KTP) could also be viewed as a 'tool of discrimination' in situations where transsexuals do not have access to an ID of their own and therefore cannot vote nor benefit from the national health insurance provided by the Social Security Management Agency (BPJS).



From the public side, Stanley said there is a growing new perspective pointing toward progress on viewing LGBT, which has begun to understand sexual and gender identification through a more scientific pair of lenses.



RR Sri Agustine, director of the lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization called the Ardhanary Institute, a research and and advocacy group, said Indonesia is still very much behind in recognizing the 'highly complex and broad definitions of sexuality'.



Additionally, she found the media's lack of research and use of the wrong terminologies as disconcerting and as potentially fueling the narrow-mindedness that could develop among memebers of the public, which in turn shapes widespread misconceptions and discrimination.



Aside from the rising number of countries legalizing same-sex marriage, Agustine pointed out that there are also seven countries who have legally recognized a third gender, including Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand and Pakistan. In Cuba, the government will even facilitate qualifying citizens to have free sex reassignment surgery, she added.



The reality is, Agustine continued, the landscape of marriage, and thus the formations of family units, are diversifying along with the explorations of sexuality and gender identities.



A heterosexual family could be a marriage between a transgender man and a cis female or a trans man and a trans woman. Meanwhile, a gay couple could encompass a relationship between two transsexual men, Agustine said.



She urged journalists and the media in general to pay close attention to societal developments and report in truth to objectively bring up the issues to the public's awareness. (dan)(+)
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Linkedin Jusuf Wanandi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent think tank in Indonesia, underwent a leadership change on Jan. 12. The former executive director of CSIS, Rizal Sukma, has been appointed ambassador to London by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo. This appointment signifies the President's appreciation and respect for Rizal, who has advised the President on issues relating to foreign affairs and foreign policy.



This is the first formal change of leadership at CSIS. As an institution, CSIS has been more akin to a small brotherly community, where leadership positions were taken by turns automatically among its founders. But this year, it was done by a decree from the CSIS Foundation, and formally celebrated at a reception attended by CSIS friends, supporters and network partners.



Not only does this represent a generational change, but also the future of CSIS as a mature institution. With such a transparent change of leadership, the relationship among its members has also become more institutionalized and credible, although the organization still maintains its traditional atmosphere of collegiality and flexibility.



CSIS was founded by a group of scholars with the support of the Gen. Ali Moertopo and Soedjono Hoemardani to conduct research and analysis on issues related to national development for the Soeharto government. In the beginning, president Soeharto invited CSIS to become a presidential advisory board. However, the institute politely refused, because such an institution could only be effective and trustworthy if it stayed outside of the government. Soon afterward, CSIS was not only advising the Soeharto government but also making contributions outside of the government.



There are a number of reasons for this.



First, CSIS conferences welcomed people who were persona non grata in the eyes of the government with the intention of hearing and understanding their thoughts and arguments. Second, since the 1970s, CSIS has published a quarterly journal in English and a bi-monthly in Indonesian to reach out to a wider community. And third, we opened our library, which at the time was considered to have the best facilities and the finest collection, especially on matters related to international relations, to the public, including students.



As one of its prominent scholars, Rizal expanded the CSIS network to other groups that were previously unreachable, such as Muslim religious groups and NGOs. He also moved CSIS closer to a number of scholars from his generation and who have now become this era's best scholars.



Rizal was specifically instrumental in bringing CSIS close to Muhammadiyah. Now, CSIS and Muhammadiyah enjoy close cooperation on various issues related to the betterment of Indonesian society and the international community. Furthermore, CSIS' relationship with Nahdatul Ulama through Abdurrahman 'Gus Dur' Wahid has made CSIS much more appreciative to issues relating to religion and pluralism in Indonesia.



Rizal is one of this country's best minds on strategic issues, both national and international. His achievements have made CSIS better-known as a think tank and one with a more prominent understanding of Indonesian society. Under his guidance, CSIS will be an institution with an even stronger role in the future.



The new executive director, Philips Vermonte, entered CSIS one generation after Rizal and has imbued Indonesia's political sciences with new thinking in methodology and the technical sciences. For instance, he was instrumental in orchestrating surveys conducted by CSIS on Indonesian political matters. Both unassuming and respected among their colleagues, Rizal and Philips were able to bring CSIS to a new era. Prior to his appointment, Philips led CSIS' department of politics and international relations.



Medelina Hendytio, who was deputy executive director to Rizal, has been asked by the foundation to continue in her position, and to be responsible for administrative and organizational matters.



With this first official change of leadership, CSIS has entered a new era, which on the one hand, is more formal, but on the other hand, is more transparent and open. We are going to see how this combination works in the future.

_______________________________



The author is vice chair, board of trustees, CSIS Foundation.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Mon, January 25, 2016

Jan. 21, 2016



The government must take a real step toward settling unresolved human rights abuses by first issuing a national apology to the victims and their families in a bid to move forward as a nation, a non-governmental organization has said.



The International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) called on President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo to issue a government regulation arranging settlement of the past human rights violations that still shadow Indonesia as a country.



'President Jokowi should apologize to the victims and their families since they have been victims of past government policies, as well as to Indonesia in an acknowledgement of past wrongdoings so that we can all move on as a nation,' INFID senior program officer for Human Rights and Democracy Mugiyanto told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.



Your comments:



By murdering people? During the Soeharto years, Oct. 1 was set aside as a day to mark the 'sanctity' of the state ideology Pancasila against a communist takeover attempt.



Those who chose the date did not seem to see the irony that the second of the five principles of Pancasila is 'humanitarianism'. There was nothing humane about the mass killing of fellow citizens.



Since the killing was never officially documented, no one knows exactly how many people died during the carnage in 1965 and 1966. Estimates ranged from a conservative 500,000 to 2 or 3 million people. Many historians regard this as the worst genocide since the Nazi Holocaust.



The main difference is, in the case of Indonesia the deniers ruled and they still do. Force and violence today are still used to settle differences or to bully people into submission.



Although the military has stepped out of politics and national security is now the domain of the police, the political culture it left behind is still widely felt and, from time to time, rears its ugly head.



One problem is society's prevailing attitude toward the massacre, ranging from a complete denial to a justification that it was an inevitable and necessary killing.



Even when they recognize that the massacre of communists took place, the old guard claims it was a necessary killing. They believed then and still do today that the communists would have killed them if they had not acted first. So long as such attitudes take hold, those who expect an apology from the state will have to continue to wait.



Willo1246



The US Congress made an apology to Native Americans in 2009.



Does that make it Indonesia's turn to apologize?



RDT



US President Barack Obama signed the Native American apology resolution in 2009.



So now perhaps, it is time for Indonesia to apologize. Please, no more excuses. Especially not ones with no logical connection to the subject at hand.



Randomthought
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Linkedin Matthew Lee (The Jakarta Post) Vientiane  Mon, January 25, 2016

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday dismissed Syrian government claims and opposition complaints as posturing ahead of UN-led peace talks that are supposed to begin this week.

Kerry, in Laos after discussing the negotiations with officials in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia last week, said he expected there would be clarity soon about when the talks would start.

Monday's scheduled start in Geneva has been pushed back due to disagreements over which groups can represent the opposition.

Kerry said that during his short stay in Laos, he had spoken to the UN special envoy for Syria and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey. The goal is to reach a consensus on how the talks will be run and a planned cease-fire would proceed.

"We're going to have the meeting and [the talks] are going to start," Kerry told reporters. "But what we are trying to do is to make absolutely certain that when they start everyone is clear about roles and what's happening so you don't go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure. You don't want to start Day One by not being able to make progress."

He said his conversations with colleagues were mainly about how the cease-fire and confidence-building measures, such as opening up areas for humanitarian access, would work.

Kerry declined to elaborate, but said any disagreements arising in the Geneva talks would be addressed by another meeting of the 20-odd member International Syria Support Group that is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 11.

Syrian officials have said they will make no concessions at the negotiating table. Opposition figures have complained that they are being forced into the talks.

Kerry said those recent statements reflect only "tensions" and "rumors." He dismissed suggestions of disunity among countries that back the opposition and said US support for foes of Syrian President Bashar Assad remains solid.

"I think these are just tensions. These are things you hear as people are worried," he said.

Over the weekend, a senior official in Assad's ruling Baath party said the government would not make any new concessions in the peace talks at a time when the Syrian army with the help of Russia is making progress in different parts of the country.

"We are not going to give today what we did not give over the past five years," Hilal al-Hilal said late Saturday, during a visit to troops in areas they recently captured from insurgents outside the capital, Damascus.

Kerry said that claim was inconsistent with the positions of Russia and Iran. Assad's main backers have agreed to a UN-supported political transition process that is to form a new government over the next 18 months.

"That doesn't make sense," Kerry said. "If that's their attitude, the war does not end. That is not the Russian attitude. The Russians say [the Syrians] are going to go and they are going to negotiate."

He added, however, that nothing was certain. "We are going to know very quickly, in a month or two or three, whether these guys are serious."

Kerry, who met with the chief opposition negotiator in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, also addressed complaints from Assad foes who say the US and others are giving in to demands from the government and its supporters.

"The position of the United States is and hasn't changed. We are still supporting the opposition, politically, financially and militarily," he said, adding later: "We completely empowered them. I don't know where this is coming from."

The opposition demands that Assad have no role in Syria's future, even during a transitional period. Russia, Iran and Syrian the government say that is to be determined by the Syrian people.

While maintaining that Assad cannot be part of the long-term future, the US and others have dropped demands for his immediate removal and have agreed that the negotiations should decide his fate.

"It's up to the Syrians to decide what happens to Assad," Kerry said. "They are the negotiators and they will decide the future."

Kerry said he had explained to the opposition that the composition of a transitional government would have to be agreed by "mutual consent" from the two sides.

"I told them you have a veto, and so does he and so you're going to have to decide how to move forward," he said.

"I just don't buy into this public back and forth. It doesn't serve any purpose," he said. "We have to get to the negotiations without preconditions and get into the discussion of a cease-fire and humanitarian access ... and lay down the road ahead for the transition discussion itself and put to test whether they are serious. Or, if they aren't serious, war will continue."

"It's up to them," he said.
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Linkedin Grant Peck (The Jakarta Post) Bangkok  Mon, January 25, 2016

A large chunk of metal that could be from an aircraft washed ashore in southern Thailand, but Malaysian authorities have cautioned against speculation of a link to a Malaysia Airlines flight missing almost two years.



The location on the eastern side of Thailand where the debris was found also means it is highly unlikely that the material is from the missing plane.



Flight MH370 lost communications and made a sharp turn away from its Beijing destination before disappearing in March 2014. It is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, and only one piece of debris has been identified as coming from the plane, a slab of wing that washed ashore on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean last July.



Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said he instructed Malaysian civil aviation officials to contact Thailand about the newly found wreckage, a curved piece of metal measuring about 2 meters by 3 meters (6 A feet by 10 feet) with electrical wires hanging from it and numbers stamped on it in several places.



"I urge the media and the public not to speculate because it will give undue pressure to the loved ones of the victims of MH370," he said.



Thailand's Transportation Ministry said four Malaysian officials and two Thai experts will visit the site Monday.



Liow said the search for the missing jet, which carried 239 people, is ongoing in the southern Indian Ocean and that its second phase is expected to be completed by June. Australia has led a multinational search that has so far cost more than $120 million.



Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman Dan O'Malley said the agency was awaiting results of an official examination of the debris.



The debris was found on the eastern coast of southern Thailand's Nakkon Si Thammarat province, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand.



While debris can drift thousands of miles (kilometers) on ocean currents, that location would be a surprise based on the data from Flight MH370. The presumed crash site in the Indian Ocean and the fact the wing piece was found on Reunion Island mean it would be highly unlikely any current could have carried a piece of the missing plane to Thailand's eastern coast.



The plane was tracked by radar flying over the South China Sea then making a sharp turn west for unknown reasons. It crossed the Malay Peninsula and Straits of Malacca, which would put it off Thailand's west coast.



Radar contact was lost shortly after the plane entered the airspace over the Indian Ocean. Analysis of exchanges between its engine and a satellite determined the plane flew south on a straight path for hours, leading authorities to believe it flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the water. (kes)(+)



___



Associated Press writers Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Evi Mariani and Aldrin Rocky Sampeliling (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta/Depok  Mon, January 25, 2016

Several public officials issued statements on the weekend opposing the presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students on university campuses following the cancelation of an event at the University of Indonesia (UI).



Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister M. Nasir said that LGBT communities could taint the nation's morality if 'the guardians of morality [do not] promote decency and the noble values of Indonesia', as quoted by Antara news agency.



Lawmaker from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Muhammad Nasir Djamil, also commented. 'LGBT groups cannot be allowed to thrive and be given space. Especially considering that they have entered campuses through academic discussion,' lawmaker Nasir said.



Sociologist and gay-rights activist Dede Oetomo told The Jakarta Post on Sunday that he would be generous and forgiving in his response, calling the statements of both Nasirs demonstrative of 'limited knowledge in general, in particular on sexuality and human rights'.



'We have to understand that even the international world and the United Nations have recognized the rights of LGBT [communities] only recently,' he said. Therefore, he would not be offended by the statements. 'They simply never learn anything new,' he went on.



He said, however, that he had concerns about the welfare of LGBT communities on campuses after the weekend witch-hunt for the minority group.



Conservative Islamic newspaper Republika ran the headline 'LGBT poses serious threat', on its front page. The article quoted sources that slammed LGBT people for 'tainting the nation's morality', citing links between LGBT communities and promiscuity. Some other media outlets also presented LGBT issues as a threat, using terms such as 'deviant sexual behavior'.



The statements were made in response to the Support Group and Resource Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) at UI coming under the spotlight due to its 'appropriation' of UI's name and logo.



An unofficial poster for the LGBT Peer Support Network, a counseling service provided by SGRC-UI in cooperation with melela.org, a website that provides a platform for LGBT people to share their stories and experiences as a way of improving the public's understanding of these minority groups, went viral on social media last week, triggering controversy among social media users.



Many social media users posted comments on #dukungSGRCUI voicing their support for the community's activities. Meanwhile, a number of messages circulated encouraging people to initiate anti-LGBT movements on UI's campus.



The controversy prompted UI authorities to issue a statement saying that the university was not responsible for the organization's activities because the organization had not registered as a university student society and had not obtained a permit from the university to carry out its activities.



The university has asked SGRC-UI to remove the university's name and symbol from the its logo.



'It's important to note that SGRC is not a campus organization and UI has never given any permit to the community [to use UI's name and logo],' said Rifelly Dewi Astuti, UI's head of public relations and public information.



SGRC-UI is a community comprised of UI graduates, students and lecturers. The group focuses on gender and sexuality studies. The group was founded on May 17, 2014, by three UI graduates: Ferena Debineva, Arief Rahadian and Nadya Karima Melati. The organization often conducts activities on UI's campus in Depok.



Nadya said they had never had any problems with UI before, despite having conducted LGBT-related events previously. 'UI never addressed our past activities, and they even published information on our seminars on their website uiupdate.ui.ac.id,' she said.



She added that the university had only reacted strongly when the unofficial poster suddenly appeared online.



She said that the group's organizers were still discussing the project when the poster was published online.



'We are a study group that focuses on gender and sexuality issues. We firmly reject the notion that our broad scope of study is in fact small and limited because SGRC-UI is an LGBT community,' a press release from the community stated.

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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community should be barred from university campuses, a minister has argued.

'There are standards of values and morals to uphold. A university is a moral safeguard,' Technology, Research and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir said on Sunday as quoted by Antara news agency.

According to Nasir, the LGBT community corrupts the morals of the nation, while a university should be able to uphold moral values and the values of the ancestors of Indonesia.

He was commenting on an organization at the University of Indonesia (UI) named the Support Group and Resource Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC), which offers counseling for LGBT students.

Nasir said he had contacted the rector of UI to clarify the situation and was informed that the SGRC group had no official permit to exist as an entity under the banner of UI.

Recently, pamphlets distributed by LGBT groups around the campus sparked outrage from some students, who accused the university of letting the seeds of LGBT grow unchecked.

The situation also invited criticism from the government, with legislator and Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Nasir Djamil stating that the LGBT community was a serious threat to the nation.

'The LGBT community should not be allowed to grow or be given room to conduct its activities. Even more serious is those LGBT members who go into universities with scientific studies, or hold discussion groups,' he said. (liz/dan)
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Linkedin Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

State-owned weapons producer PT Pindad is preparing to produce its latest type of light-armored vehicle, called a Badak, for the Indonesian Army.



'Vice President Jusuf Kalla has ordered 50 units of Badak for the Army, and we are preparing to start production,' Pindad president director Silmy Karim told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.



Kalla visited Pindad in Bandung last week and ordered 50 units of Badak. Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu and Industry Minister Saleh Husin accompanied Kalla during the visit.



President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has also encouraged the military to purchase Badaks as part of the modernization of its weaponry systems.



Jokowi conveyed his interest when he visited an exhibition during the Indonesian Military (TNI) executive meeting in Jakarta last December.



The Badak, which means rhinoceros in Indonesian, is a modification of Pindad's previous light-armored vehicle, the Anoa, which was also named after a native species from Sulawesi.



The product is a joint venture between Pindad and the Belgium-based Cockerill Maintenance & Ingenierie SA Defence (CMI). The Badaks will be fitted with a locally-built Cockerill 90P turret (90 millimeter) developed by CMI. Pindad has sent several employees to Belgium to learn the technology.



The vehicle was shown to the public for the first time in November 2014 during the Indo Defense exhibition. Currently, the Badak has passed several required tests and is now ready for purchase.



Silmy said that the price for a Badak would be Rp 30 billion per unit, which was cheaper than a South Korean-made light-armored vehicle named Tarantula, previously purchased by Indonesia for Rp 35 billion per unit.



'Even though it is cheaper, we guarantee our product can compete with other vehicles in its class,' Silmy said.



Besides preparing the Badak for the Army, Pindad is also busy producing other kinds of light-armored vehicles, namely the Anoa and Komodo, as well as ammunitions and weapons needed by TNI.



'We produce Anoa and Komodo regularly,' Silmy said.



He acknowledged that the company had gained more purchasing orders from TNI.



'It means the government and the military have prioritized the national industry to meet their needs,' Silmy said.



He added that several countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia were also interested in buying Anoa vehicles.



'We will seal the contract soon,' Silmy said, refusing to give the specific names of the countries.
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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Police observers have called on the Jakarta Police to more closely monitor officers in the wake of a report pointing to a steep rise in the number of city police officers implicated in criminal cases.



At the end of last year, the force released its annual report, which revealed the involvement of 112 police officers in various criminal cases. The statistic represented a serious jump from the previous year, when the annual report listed just 26 officers as having been implicated in crimes.



According to University of Indonesia police observer Bambang Widodo Umar, the report indicates that the Jakarta Police are failing to properly monitor their field officers.



'It shows that the Jakarta Police, through their internal affairs division, do not have in place a rigorous system to monitor officers, so that in the field, officers do whatever they want ' leading, in some cases, to abuses of power,' Bambang said.



Bambang recommended that the internal affairs division not only step up its monitoring of officers, but also reveal to the public the processes used to enforce the law against police officers.



According to Bambang, the public are skeptical about the sincerity of prosecutions of police officers, especially the chances of a final punishment.



Meanwhile, he added, the public, if made aware of monitoring and sanctioning processes, would be able to play a part in them, in turn encouraging officers not to engage in criminal activity or abuse of power.



He emphasized that the force would in doing so not tarnish its reputation, but would instead gain greater public trust.



Bambang added that the police should also overhaul its recruitment system and tighten screenings to weed out those officers likely to abuse their power.



Concurring with Bambang was the National Police Commission's Edi Saputra Hasibuan, who separately said that the city police, through the internal affairs division, should improve the monitoring system.



'Officers found to have committed crimes should not be protected,' Edi said.



The force, he added, should also hold seminars and training programs for its officers to discourage them from engaging in crime.



He suggested that the institution also establish a rewards system to promote professionalism among police personnel.



At the same time, Edi applauded the Jakarta Police's progress under recently appointed chief Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian.



Unlike Bambang, Edi said that the sharp rise in the number of officers implicated in crimes was indicative not of a rise in criminality, but of a greater will to apply the law to officers, rather than covering up police involvement in crime.



Last year, a number of cases involving city police officers made headlines.



In January last year, the Jakarta Police's narcotics directorate arrested five officers ' including one member of the narcotics directorate ' in a series of raids targeting drug possession.



From the suspects, officers confiscated 717 grams of methamphetamine, 7,457 ecstasy pills, electronic scales, a glass pipe and a bong.



In November, meanwhile, a policeman identified as Brig. Dedi Aleksander Sinaga, along with three companions, was detained by the Taman Sari Police on suspicion of defrauding and sexually assaulting a woman at a hotel in West Jakarta.
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Linkedin Duncan Graham (The Jakarta Post) Malang, East Java  Mon, January 25, 2016

Moral panic is a ghastly phenomenon ' and no culture seems immune.



Moral panic happens when a bizarre but unproven story is fed by wild rumors which result in persecution.



The Massachusetts Salem witch trials of the late 17th century in the US are among the most famous; more recent examples include the 1980 Lindy Chamberlain dingo-baby case in Australia.



In 1998, the sickness struck villages around East Java town Banyuwangi, notoriously known as the 'warehouse of sorcery', when around 100 people, including five women, died.



They were slaughtered at night, usually with sickening brutality and their corpses sometimes mutilated, by mobs inflamed by claims the victims were casting spells and causing harm.



The killers, often preman [criminal thugs] among the outraged locals, were said to have wrapped sarongs around their heads as disguise. At the time, American comics featuring similarly dressed fictitious Ninja Turtles were popular, so the murderers were dubbed Ninjas. But there was nothing amusing about these characters.



There were as many explanations as victims, but the most popular was the conspiracy theory, with a wide range of masterminds from the army through to 'mysterious forces'.



Australian academic Dr Nicholas Herriman will not buy these notions as shown in his book, Witch-hunt and Conspiracy, even though they had credibility among some of his colleagues. Understandable because: 'in Indonesia conspiracies generally lie beneath unusual social, economic, political and, especially violent phenomena'.



He found no evidence of tension between religions; nor does he accept that local economic crises were at fault. Another idea that Muslim preachers, who were often large landowners, were targeted is also dismissed.



For Herriman, a chance confluence of disparate factors created an environment where weird rumors gained credibility and spawned other fantasies. These led to the breakdown of the moral principles that normally sustain communities. Dark matter indeed.



How can otherwise civilized people living in harmony lose their humanity and turn into frenzied beasts?



In faraway Jakarta, president Soeharto had been dethroned; the political world was in turmoil. This fear and uncertainty tilled fertile ground for accusations of sorcery to take root. The collapse of the New Order government undermined law and order. This created opportunities for grudge holders to take revenge against neighbors with reduced chances of retribution.



Reports Herriman: 'While I often sensed that people feared a local 'sorcerer', through all my interviews I did not obtain data that equated this fear with the 'terror' that is the 'human condition'. Informants seemed to evince a sense of relief following the removal of the 'sorcerer'.'



Reformasi also liberated the media long shackled by an authoritarian regime. Not all reporters swallowed their essential scepticism pills before venturing into the field to check Ninja stories.



Unfettered tabloid journalism fed well on the killings and in turn enriched the paranoia in isolated communities with limited access to wider views and little trust in modern medicine.



Rational explanations for illness ' frequently a distended stomach ' or sudden deaths of livestock or people were discarded in favor of supernatural causes. As the gossip spread so did panic, with villagers setting up roadblocks to catch ninjas.



Individual and community ills were projected onto the victims. Some were mentally sick; others just different from the norm in small communities by being lucky or successful and so arousing jealousy. The excuse of 'community justice' was often used.



When tales about neighbors dancing naked in cemeteries were whispered, it seems no-one was prepared to ridicule the reports. If they did, they became suspects. Ancient rituals were revived, like the 'shrouded oath' where the Koran is chanted over a person wrapped in a winding sheet who swears never to ensorcel again ' 'or let me die like this'.



Just as medieval European witch-ducking 'proved' survivors were evil and so had to be killed while the innocent drowned anyway, the same twisted reasoning applied in Banyuwangi. One victim was stabbed but didn't die, saved by his 'magical powers'. These demonstrated that he was a sorcerer.



If an accused heard they'd been marked for murder and fled, this showed absence of innocence. If they stayed it meant they accepted their guilt.



For foreigners the Ninja killings indicated that Indonesian rural society hadn't shifted much beyond the primitive beliefs of the European Middle Ages.



But those who've lived long in the archipelago know better than to apply Western logic to chance happenings, even without having their brains curdled by watching sinetron TV soap opera plots that often feature demon doings.



Beliefs in the paranormal lie close to the surface even among the well-educated. During the 2009 election, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the Antara news agency: 'Many are practising black magic. Indeed my family and I can feel it.'



At times it seems that almost everyone knows an unfortunate friend-of-a-friend suffering after being cursed by a colleague they've offended.



Herriman's accounts and analysis of the events were undertaken for a doctoral thesis. He lived in the community and interviewed around 150 people; these included men jailed for taking part in the killings [most got light sentences], relatives of the victims, religious heads and community leaders.



'I became conscious of, unwittingly involved and almost carried away in this world of fear and suspicion.'



The author began his research believing that a 'conspiracy of some kind' lay behind the killings and set about searching for the evidence. He didn't find it. He consulted a dukun [shaman] about his future career ' would it be in the US, Japan or Australia? He was told the first two. He now teaches anthropology in Melbourne.



The killings abruptly stopped when the police and Army, prompted by the media, intervened. Only three of the 250 men charged were acquitted.



That should be the end of the story, but like vampires who rise from their crypt with the full moon for their next draught of haemoglobins, so the Banyuwangi ninjas will live on so long as ancient irrational fears trump common sense.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry disembarks from a plane at Phnom Penh International Airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan. 25, 2016. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Phnom Penh on Monday evening for a two-day visit to boost bilateral ties and cooperation. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

The United States Secretary of State John Kerry will visit China from Jan. 26 to 27, at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the announcement at a regular press conference on Monday.

The two countries will exchange ideas on bilateral relations and other issues of common concern, Hua said.

"We hope that through this visit the two sides could strengthen cooperation in various areas and promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral ties," she added.
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Linkedin Sammi Taylor (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Jakarta's young creatives are putting a new spin on an old art form, as the popularity of spoken-word poetry grows in the capital city.

Spoken word poetry is a form of performance art; a unique blend of storytelling, rhythm, rhyme and theater. Popularized by Youtube videos over the past 5 years, it's become a new and exciting way for young Jakartans to express themselves.



One of the organizations helping young people to do that is Unmasked, a triannual open-mic poetry night held at various venues across Jakarta. Founders Ayu Meutia, Putri Minangsari and Pangeran Siahaan are poets and poetry lovers themselves, with one mission: to awaken the sleeping giant that is Jakarta's spoken-word poetry scene.



At the moment, this scene is still small. But spoken word poetry is quickly gaining traction in Indonesia, and co-founder Putri Minangsari is confident that the community will grow significantly in 2016.



'Spoken word poetry is a considerably new thing for Indonesians. We believe the more we hold free and open poetry events like what we do at Unmasked, the more poetry enthusiasts will learn from each other and develop the skill of 'performing' their poems in a spoken-word manner instead of simply reading them,' Putri said.



'Jakarta's spoken-word scene is undoubtedly exciting, as much as it is in an early phase, and could definitely grow to a wider field in Jakarta.'

It's clear that local talent is burgeoning in Jakarta ' Putri Minangsari says that many attendees of past Unmasked shows have returned to future events to write and perform their own original works, after gaining inspiration from the poets before them.



'Local talent in Jakarta, I must say, is wow-inducing. The poems that they make and read ['] some of them are absolutely mind-blowing. There are some serious talents in Jakarta and it's such an honor to be able to give them a space to finally show what they've got,' Putri said.



'Our oldest readers are in their 50s and the youngest is 14 years old. We wish to introduce and popularize spoken-word poetry to not only young people, but anyone. And I think so far we have made progress.'



On Saturday a spoken-word event was held at the Goethe-Institut in Menteng, Central Jakarta, in collaboration with Unmasked and American education organization Project Voice. The night showcased a selection of local and international talent to an audience of over 200 people, arguably one of the biggest crowds Jakarta's poetry community has ever seen.



One performer was Unmasked co-founder Ayu Meutia, an advertising consultant and copywriter from Jakarta. She was asked just an hour before the crowds arrived to open for American headlining poets Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, and she leapt at the chance.



'There was doubt in me about whether I could deliver a great performance without a full rehearsal ['] my first thought was that I was pretty scared, but then, it was an honor to be there, so I took the chance,' Ayu said.



'The crowds were great and lively. Despite the terror that hit Jakarta on Thursday, most of our attendees checked-in [online] and came to the show. It is the kind of story I will remember for life. I hope the audience felt the same excitement and the inspiration to write their own poems.'



The audience was impressed, with roaring applause following every poem and even a standing ovation for Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye at the end of their performance.



Toni Benson-Rogan, a student from Australia and a newcomer to Jakarta's poetry scene attended Saturday's event. She said she would definitely attend similar events again.



'The room was bursting with energy and excitement. The entire night shattered my perceptions of poetry. To see Jakarta through the eyes of a poet was really inspiring and I will definitely visit anywhere that [allows] locals to share their amazing pieces,' she said.

Spoken-word poetry offers a platform for young Jakartans to express themselves and their emotions in a myriad of ways. Speaking poetry aloud puts a new, theatrical spin on a traditional art form, and Putri Minangsari says the options are endless when it comes to the themes of poems.



'I think a young mind with angst as well as an abundance of creativity and imagination suits the art of poetry making very much. Young people ' especially those who have the advantage of better schooling where they are encouraged to read, write and come up with ideas on their own ' often naturally find comfort in poetry.'



So what's next for Unmasked?



Putri would love to see an anthology of local poets' works published. But in the meantime, Unmasked have their sights set on a collaborative open mic event this Valentine's Day ' to talk love, heartbreak and everything in between.



'After all, a good dose of melancholy is needed in poetry,' she said.



The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Fund manager PT CIMB-Principal Asset Management (CPAM) expects to see better market conditions in the second half of 2016, having set sights on construction, telecommunications and selected consumer goods (FMCG) companies to spur growth on the local stock market this year.



CPAM director and chief investment officer Cholis Baidowi said that faster government spending, lower energy costs and especially the recent Bank Indonesia (BI) rate cut, had encouraged the fund manager to become 'overweight' in those sectors.



'The BI's policy is more accommodating,' he said over the weekend. 'Sectors that will benefit from the cut are banking, construction and eventually property.'



Cholis said that his firm would remain upbeat about a market rebound as it was currently on a low base.



'We hope a stronger recovery will occur in the second half and last until year-end,' he added.



The global stock market so far this year has seen volatility derived from China's slowing economy and plunging oil prices, with emerging stocks touching a six-year low recently with US$2.5 trillion wiped off the value of equities in 2016, Bloomberg reported.



But now that the market's over-expectation surrounding the newly-elected government last year had toned down, and with the global market's recovery, a supportive macro economy and companies' improving financial reports would support the index, Cholis added.



After losing 13.3 percent last year, CPAM projected the benchmark stock index, the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI), would gain 9.8 percent and move to around 5,400 this year.



CPAM, which is owned by CIMB-Principal Asset Management Berhad Malaysia, a joint venture company between Malaysia-based CIMB Group and US-based Principal Financial Group, also described as 'slightly overweight' the banking, property, media, retail and automotive sectors.



It remains 'neutral' toward shares in plantations, cement, toll roads and poultry companies and labels as 'underweight' stocks in coal, metals and oil and gas firms amid plunging global commodity prices.



BI reduced its key rate by 25 basis points (bps) to 7.25 percent earlier this month after keeping the rate steady for about a year. The central bank also lowered both deposit and lending facilities by 25 bps to 5.25 percent and 7.75 percent, respectively. Such moves are expected to spur demand for bank loans and stoke growth in Southeast Asia's largest economy.



Cholis said that fuel prices, which had the potential to decrease further amid plunging global crude oil prices, would boost the public's purchasing power and demand on FMCG.



State-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina announced earlier this month that the price of diesel would fall from Rp 6,700 (48 US cents) per liter to Rp 5,650 and the price of Premium-branded gasoline would be cut from Rp 7,400 per liter to Rp 7,050 across Java and Bali.



Meanwhile, CPAM president director Fajar R. Hidayat said that equity mutual funds would remain the focus of his firm this year.



'We will cap our fixed income and money market allocation at a maximum of 40 percent [of total funds],' he said.



CPAM expects to see its assets under management (AUM) expand by 42 percent this year to Rp 7.5 trillion from Rp 5.32 trillion last year. The firm booked Rp 3.81 trillion in AUM in 2014.



Cholis projected that the returns of equity mutual funds would reach around 17 percent by the end of this year, higher than that of bonds, which was predicted to be at 13 percent.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Former president BJ Habibie's advice that the Golkar Party should be led by a younger figure has continued to draw support from party cadres.

Supporters of Aburizal Bakrie, who took over the leadership of the party after a national meeting in Bali in November 2014, and the party's splinter faction led by Agung Laksono, that was formed in a national meeting in Ancol, Jakarta, in December 2014, have both voiced their support for a younger politician taking over the party chairmanship.

The initiator of the party's youth wing, the Golkar Party Young Generation, Melki Laka Lana, from the Agung Laksono faction, expressed support for the former president's statement.

'We agree with Pak Habibie that there should be a revitalization of the position of party chair, and that he or she should be aged in between 40 to 60 years,' Melki said as quoted by kompas.com on Sunday evening.

Aburizal is 69 years old while Agung Laksono is 66 years old.

Melki added that Golkar cadres who were eligible to be nominated for party chair included Ade Komarudin, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, Airlangga Hartarto, Aziz Syamsudin, Indra Bambang Utoyo, Idrus Marham, Priyo Budi Santoso and Setya Novanto, all of whom were inside the aforementioned age bracket.

However, he said that there should be a national meeting to seek reconciliation between the two factions before the party moved to nominate chairperson candidates. Open communication between the two factions would hopefully lead the way for international reconciliation to resolve conflicts within the party, he added.

'Alongside the decision of the Golkar Party's internal tribunal, there should be a national reconciliation meeting that involves two bickering camps so we can be sure that the transition team [established by the internal tribunal] will run well,' said Melki.

Meanwhile, Aburizal camp politician Mahyuddin said he was ready to run for the party chairmanship.

'If there is an extraordinary national meeting, I'm ready to run for the Golkar Party chairmanship. Moreover, Pak Habibie has said the next Golkar Party chairman should be a young cadre,' he said on the sidelines of a national leadership meeting held by the Aburizal camp at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Sunday.

Mahyuddin said several other names had also been mentioned as possible candidates for the party chair.

'I've heard that there are several other candidates. There is Pak Idrus [Idrus Marham], Pak Nurdin [Nurdin Halid], Pak Akom [Ade Komarudin] and Pak Aziz [Aziz Syamsuddin]. There is also Pak Agus Gumiwang and Pak Priyo Budi,' said Mahyuddin.

Aburizal has encouraged the holding of an extraordinary national meeting and stated that he would not run again for the leadership.

However, Aburizal's announcement drew protest from the party's provincial executive boards that said that they did not want an extraordinary national meeting. The decision about whether to hold the extraordinary conference is set to be decided at the leadership conference later today.

Separately, the splinter faction has also announced that Agung would not run to the top seat again if Aburizal also did not take part. 'Pak Agung will not run again for the party chairmanship if Pak Ical [Aburizal] does the same thing,' said Melki. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Turning a childhood plaything into a menacing character has became a common storyline in horror movies and Brahms, the main character in The Boy, joins Chucky from the Child's Play series and Annabelle from The Conjuring and its spin-off Annabelle as a doll that comes to life.



The movie starts with a young American woman who goes to England to escape from her abusive boyfriend. The woman, Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead TV series), landed a job as a nanny to Brahms, the 8-year-old son of a rich old couple, the Heelshires (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle), who live in a gothic mansion in an isolated village.



When Evans arrived at the mansion, she learned that Brahms was actually a porcelain boy-sized doll with a white face, black hair and wide brown eyes. The doll represents the couple's grief as they lost their real boy 20 years earlier.



Desperately needing a vacation, the couple leaves Greta alone at the mansion with warnings that she must obey some rules, including to never leave Brahms alone, read him bedtime stories, play loud music and kiss him good night.



"Be good to him, he will be good to you. Be bad to him...." says Mr. Heelshire prior to leaving the mansion, before being cut off by his wife.



Then, the thrills slowly begin.



Alone at the mansion, except for an occasional visit from the grocery deliveryman, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), strange things begin to happen as items suddenly disappear or mysteriously move. The doll also reappears in different places and positions every time she breaks the rules. After Malcolm shares terrible details about the Heelshires' disturbing past, Greta realizes why she was chosen to take care of Brahms.



As a psychological thriller, the first hour of The Boy is a bit sluggish, but moviegoers should get ready to be surprised by an abrupt turn at the end of the movie.



There are a number of horror movies with good twist endings, such as M. Night Shyamalan's The Village and The Sixth Sense, as well as Alejandro Amenabar's The Others. Unfortunately, The Boy's version feels more like an anticlimax.



Cohan, who never played a role in a horror movie and this time acted as a heroine struggling to save her own life and Malcolm's, offered a quite convincing performance, although she probably could have explored her role more deeply.



However, The Boy features a clever cinematography that suits well with the film's vaguely melancholic set. Acknowledgement should also be given to the writer Stacey Menear and the director William Brent Bell for trying hard to get out of using horror clichAs. (kes)(+)
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Linkedin Rendi A. Witular (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Unlike his contemporaries, cleric and terrorist convict Aman Abdurrahman has never seen war. He never fights along his fellow jihadists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria or in any domestic sectarian conflict.



But Aman's preaching is so contagious that Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the elder statesman of the regional terrorism network, has succumbed to his doctrine and authority.



Aman's notoriety was recently extended with the alleged involvement of his followers in an attack targeting police and foreigners in a Central Jakarta district packed with shopping centers, embassies, the UN headquarters and government offices on Jan. 14. The attack killed four civilians and four perpetrators.



Bahrun Naim, who is suspected by the police to have orchestrated the attack and has been in Raqqa, Syria, with the Islamic State (IS) movement since early 2015, was a member of Aman's prayer community before leaving Indonesia.



Afif, also known as Sunakim, identified on the day of the attack wearing a DJ Tiesto shirt, shared Aman's ideology as he joined Aman's terrorist training camp in Aceh in 2010, as well as his prayer community.



'The perpetrators shared a similar doctrine that has been widely preached by Aman,' National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Charliyan said recently.



While the police have not uncovered any evidence to suggest that Aman orchestrated the attack, many in the intelligence community have pointed to Aman's proliferating doctrine and his ability to win over many influential figures in the terror network as invigorating for the terrorism movement.



It was not until the establishment of IS in 2013 that Aman and his takfiri doctrine (an offshoot of fundamentalist Salafism that accuses other Muslims of apostasy, and therefore liable to be killed) gained ground in the domestic violent jihad community long dominated by al-Qaeda's Salafism doctrine.



Takfiri is the prime doctrine of IS, a terrorist organization that has occupied territory in Syria and Iraq in its quest to repeat the glory of the Islamic caliphates.



Introduced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2001, takfiri is represented by his group Tawhid wal-Jihad, and was quickly adopted by Aman for distribution in Indonesia through Aman's version of Tawhid wal-Jihad.



Unlike Ba'asyir's al-Qaeda splinter, Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), which focused its attacks primarily on Western interests, Aman and his followers have declared war on anyone, including fellow Muslims, who refuse to follow their doctrine.



However, Aman's track record during Ba'asyir's heyday between 2000 and 2011 was not as impressive as his JI fellows.



Aman was sentenced in 2004 to seven years in prison for a failed terror plot. The bomb, prepared by his group, was prematurely detonated in the terrorists' hiding spot in Cimanggis, Depok, West Java.



During his time in prison, Aman met with Ba'asyir, who spent time in prison for terrorism between 2005 and 2006. In 2008, Aman was released after receiving remissions for good behavior.



Soon after his release, Aman collaborated with Ba'asyir to form a joint terrorism training camp in Aceh in 2010 that united the different factions of terrorism groups. Due to the Aceh camp incident, Aman and Ba'asyir received nine and 15 years in prison, respectively, and are now detained in a supposedly maximum-security prison on Nusakambangan, an island off the shores of Cilacap, Central Java.



But while Aman is kept behind bars, the police have accused his followers of involvement in several terror plots, including a suicide bombing at a mosque inside a police headquarters in Cirebon, West Java, that only claimed the life of the perpetrator in 2011.



His doctrine is also blamed for a string of attacks that killed several police officers, including one in Pamulang, South Tangerang, Banten, in 2013.



When IS was declared in 2013, Aman used his flare to lure others into joining his group, particularly JI hard-liners who longed for action at a time when Ba'asyir's influence was waning.



Encouraged by Aman, Ba'asyir agreed to pledge his allegiance to IS in mid-2014, enraging his own family and loyalists who had long provided support to al-Qaeda splinter faction Jabhat al-Nusra in its fight against Syrian government forces.



'Aman is IS' master ideologue in Indonesia. He has long preached the takfiri doctrine, and IS has served his cause,' former National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chairman Ansyaad Mbai said recently.



'He can easily lure people into his influence through his eloquence in preaching. Many extremists have high respect for Aman for his extensive knowledge of the religion as his fluency in Arabic is unrivaled by his peers,' he said.



After the merger of many terrorist factions into Tawhid wal-Jihad, Aman renamed his organization Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) to propagate IS ideology and recruitment in Indonesia.



Through his group, Aman manages his followers, conducts recruitment for IS and spreads IS propaganda behind bars.



Aman, also known as Oman Rochman, is among the few individuals in Indonesia trusted by the IS hierarchy, with their recommendations and schemes considered sufficient without additional references from IS headquarters, according to research by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC).



According to the National Police, Aman's JAD has produced four prominent figures: Santoso, a former JI member who leads the Eastern Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) in an insurgency movement in Poso, Central Sulawesi; Bachrumsyah, commander of the Western Indonesia Mujahidin (MIB), who has joined IS in Syria but still has pools of followers in Greater Jakarta; Bahrum Naim, the recent attack orchestrator; and Salim Mubarak At Tamimi, known also as Abu Jandal, who has also joined IS in Syria.



The police suspect Bachrumsyah, Bahrum and Abu Jandal of collaborating from Syria to direct more attacks in Indonesia through their followers.



Bachrumsyah, a dropout communications student from the State Islamic University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah in South Tangerang, Banten, is among Aman's staunchest disciples recruited through his prayer community in Pamulang.



In July 2014, Bachrumsyah uploaded a video to YouTube inciting Indonesians to join IS.



Similar to Bachrumsyah, Bahrum was also recruited by Aman through his prayer community in Bandung, West Java, between 2008 and 2010. According to the National Police, Bahrum often visited Aman in Nusakambangan to hear him preach.



Born in Sumedang, West Java, on Jan. 5, 1972, Aman was mostly educated in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren). He earned a Bachelor's degree from the Islamic and Arabic College of Indonesia (LIPIA) in Jakarta after seven years of study.



The college is a branch of the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.



After graduating, he served as a lecturer and preacher at the campus and at other education institutions in Jakarta, Bogor and Bandung, West Java. However, he was dismissed in early 2000 for his radical adoption of the takfiri doctrine.



With Aman's doctrine proven to be contagious and detrimental, as evidenced by the Jan. 14 attack, the prison authority has finally confined Aman into an isolation cell on Nusakambangan.



Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian recently acknowledged the extent of threat that the takfiri doctrine will pose in encouraging future attacks, and the need for the public to become more aware of such teachings.



'The movement is more dangerous than those inspired by al-Qaeda. The takfiri doctrine means that everyone is permitted to be killed whereas, al-Qaeda prioritizes attacks on Western symbols,' said Tito, who has been handling Aman's cases since 2003.

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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Mon, January 25, 2016

Environmental activists have expressed their opposition to the government's plan to build a Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail link, arguing that the project has proceeded without a proper environmental assessment and has put thousands of people on the verge of eviction.



Speaking to The Jakarta Post over the weekend, Indonesian Forum for the Environment's (Walhi) West Java chapter director Dadan Ramdan emphasized the project's massive and negative impact on the environment.



'Rice fields, farms and human settlements will be lost. The rivers passed by the railway line will also be prone to damage and pollution,' Dadan said.



The ambitious rail project, for which the groundbreaking ceremony was led by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo last week, will connect the country's capital with West Java's provincial capital via a 142.3-kilometer railway line that will serve four other stations ' Halim in East Jakarta and Karawang, Walini and Tegalluar in West Java.



From the project's Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) documents, a copy of which is kept by Walhi, the Post learned that the US$5.5 billion project, primarily financed by the China Development Bank (CDB), will need to evict more than 2,300 houses and buildings in nine regions to make way for the railway.



According to the documents, the Greater Bandung area ' which includes Bandung municipality, Bandung regency, West Bandung regency and Cimahi municipality ' will be the most affected area with 1,224 houses located in the project's construction zone.



Based on the project's feasibility studies, meanwhile, a total of 637.6 hectares of land, including 240 ha of agricultural land, will need to be acquired, partly to build supporting infrastructure for the railway such as roads and railway stations.



The Amdal documents also show that farmland acquisition will deprive 728 farming households of their livelihood.



Walhi activist Meiki W. Paedong, who represented the organization in the project's Amdal commission meeting in Jakarta on Jan. 19, said uncertainty over the project's location had been one of the crucial points of debate during the session, which was led by the Environment and Forestry Ministry's director general of planology, San Afri Awang.



In the meeting, Meiki said he had outlined numerous irregularities regarding the formulation of the Amdal documents.



'The Amdal formulating team also did not involve geologists despite the fact that the railway line passes through unstable soil around Walini,' Meiki said.



Considering such irregularities, Dadan said the central government should cancel the project and revoke Presidential Regulation No. 107/2015 on the acceleration of infrastructure for the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project, recently issued to expedite the process.



The government allegedly bypassed existing regulations as it rushed to complete the permits for the project. The railway route permits were issued earlier this month and the Amdal documents were approved just one day before the groundbreaking ceremony.



Separately, Awang acknowledged that spatial plan adjustments by nine regencies and cities affected by the high-speed rail projects were still ongoing.



The ministry, however, does not consider these formal adjustments to be a crucial issue, as Presidential Regulation No. 107/2015 stipulates that regional administrations must prioritize the rail project in their respective spatial plans.



'The regulation has ordered [regional administrations] to immediately adjust their respective spatial plans to make way for the project,' he said.
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Mon, January 25, 2016

Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University (UGM) awarded on Friday Dato' Sri Prof. Dr. Tahir the academic title of doctor honoris causa for his contributions to improving public health and education.



UGM rector Dwikorita Karnawati said that Tahir was the 23rd recipient of the degree, bestowed upon him at a ceremony to honor the businessman's philanthropic acts.



Other honorary recipients include founding fathers Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, leading education figure Ki Hajar Dewantara, Yogyakarta Governor Hamengkubuwono and renowned poet WS Rendra.



According to Dwikorita, Tahir embodies many of the university's own values, especially social entrepreneurship, which UGM adopted as one of its tenets last year.



'[Tahir's] talent of assessing risk and opportunity, as well as his courage and willingness to take chances, are what have shaped him into a pioneer for development, something we wish our own students will one day become,' she said during the ceremony at the UGM senate hall.



Tahir is ranked 10th on the Forbes list of the richest men in Indonesia, with an estimated net worth of US$2 billion. He owns the Mayapada Group, which has portfolios in property, banking and the medical sector.



Hardyanto Soebono, the chairman of the panel for the honorary nomination, said that Tahir had earned the degree for his role in funding the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, all of which were costly, high-priority items in health research circles.



He also supports the government's family planning scheme, and even pays for the treatment of poor cancer patients under 12 years of age, the UGM professor added.



Hardyanto further said Tahir's achievements were also evidenced by the many academic titles and positions he had received at both the national and international level.



During his acceptance speech, Tahir lamented Indonesia's lack of philanthropic practice, despite the potential in the health and education sectors.



Tahir expressed his gratitude for the award, saying it was a luxury considering his humble beginnings in Surabaya, East Java.



The philanthropist suggested that part of the reason why it was still hard to break into the philanthropy scene and find willing partners was due to politics and the inability to find sustainable methods of practice.



'Managing philanthropic acts is different from the sporadic urges of the Good Samaritan. It requires a sustained effort,' Tahir said on Friday.



Former president BJ Habibie, who was present at the ceremony, lent his voice to Tahir's cause in philanthropy, underlining the importance of high quality human resources.



'The future of a country relies on the quality, productivity, effectiveness and professionalism of its people. It is in our best interests to foster [excellence], whether in health, engineering or whatnot,' Habibie said on Friday.



In his speech, Habibie also lauded Tahir for the his modest upbringing. 'There is no one in this world who suddenly becomes a titan or a leader. The communities they live in are what shape the person,' he said.
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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, January 25, 2016

The Coalition for Broadcasting Reform has lambasted the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) for what it sees as the KPI's tardiness in responding to complaints from the public and weakness in enforcing broadcasting regulations.



In 2015, television watchdog Remotivi, through its application Rapotivi, recorded 853 verified complaints from the public regarding television programs deemed in violation of broadcasting regulations. Around 120 complaints related to frequent advertisements for the United Indonesia Party (Perindo) on several TV stations belonging to the Media Nusantara Citra group controlled by media mogul and politician Hary Tanoesoedibjo.



According to Remotivi director Muhamad Heychael, the adverts violated the commission's 2012 broadcasting guidelines on program standards, which stipulate that no TV program may promote private or political interests over the public interest.



'We submitted the complaint reports to the KPI every week last year, but the commission has followed up only 10 percent of them so far. It hasn't even published the number of public complaints it received over the course of the year,' Heychael said.



TIFA Foundation researcher R. Kristiawan said that Indonesia had adequate broadcasting regulations, but responsible institutions were weak in implementing them.



'It would be perfect if the KPI could work optimally. It has power and authority, but seems to be under the sway of certain players within the broadcasting industry,' Kristiawan said.



The coalition also criticized the commission for its lack of transparency in dealing with broadcasting licensing and for not publishing reports on station performance.



The group called on the House of the Representatives to immediately evaluate the KPI's performance and to be transparent in the selection of new KPI commissioners, which is scheduled for June this year.



In response, KPI deputy chairman Idy Muzayyad said that his commission regularly sanctioned TV stations proven to have violated regulations, and had issued recommendations to the Communication and Information Ministry to revoke the broadcasting licenses of two stations for their excessive coverage of political candidates and parties during 2014 general elections.



Idy acknowledged that repeated party political broadcasts constituted a violation, unless a multitude of parties were given equal airtime.



'The KPI has no authority to revoke licenses. We can only give recommendations to the ministry. Our power and authority are very limited,' he said.



He claimed that the KPI had issued warnings to and recommended sanctions on several stations, but noted that stations were understandably loathe to publicize the reprimands.



Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker TB Hasanuddin from House Commission I overseeing information, defense and foreign affairs urged people not to blame the KPI alone and praised the commission for its work to date.



'People should be told that the KPI has the authority to issue warnings and reprimands, but that TV stations mostly ignore them,' Hasanuddin said.






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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Mon, January 25, 2016

The government and the general public, especially younger generations, must take a leading role in the fight against illegal primate trading, a business that has reached alarming levels in Indonesia, a wildlife protection NGO has declared.



ProFauna Indonesia's West Java campaigner Rinda Aunillah Sirait said the demand for exotic primates such as lutung (tailed leaf monkeys) and kukang (slow lorises), for use as pets, continued to increase despite the shrinking populations of the species in the wild.



The organization's media monitors identified 67 cases of illegal primate trading reported in the mass media last year, slightly lower than the 74 cases recorded in 2014.



Last year, the highest number of cases took place in East Java, with 16, followed by seven cases in West Java and five in Bali.



'The actual number of cases, however, is probably much higher if you consider all those that went unexposed,' she said, adding that some reported cases had used social media, like Facebook, as a trading platform.



There are currently 600 primate species in the world, with 40 of them found in Indonesia. Some 70 percent of the primate species in Indonesia, according to ProFauna, are now vulnerable to extinction due to extensive deforestation and illegal poaching.



Apart from law enforcement, Rinda said, a campaign to protect rare primates must also involve young people, where demand for primates as exotic pets mostly comes from.



'These young people, for example, must know that to obtain a baby lutung, the poachers must kill its mother first,' she said.



The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) previously listed the Javan lutung, one of many lutung species, as endangered but in 2008 later updated its status to vulnerable.



The organization has also listed the Javan kukang and the Bornean kukang as critically endangered and vulnerable species, respectively.



According to the 1990 law on biological resources and ecosystem conservation, a person who buys or sells a protected species can be punished with a maximum five years' imprisonment and a maximum fine of Rp 100 million (US$7,240).



West Java Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) technical division head Munarto, however, thinks that the law fails to create a significant deterrent effect.



'So far, the highest punishment for such cases has been two-and-a-half years' imprisonment. Meanwhile, the amount of money earned through the illegal trade remains tempting,' he said.


Friday night at The Cookie. Teenagers huddle with glitter on their faces whilst large groups of adults glug back wine like its water.

The crowd are in the party mood as the room fills to welcome opener, Declan McKenna.

The young emerging talent from down south is joined by his live band. Together, they look like the clique at school that would accidentally ditch class because they were too busy scratching lyrics into a wall.

Debuting new tracks Why Do You Feel So Down?, Bethlehem and Isombard, the multi-instrumentalist has an endearing live performance. Echoed electronics and guitar reverb fill the room, brash and loud. Though on stage he and his band reflect awkward eccentricity. Timid between tracks, the music is what gives Declan his confidence.

Hes bashing the shit outta that guitar! the guy behind me comments in appreciation. The raucous energy on stage is undeniable, together the band infuse techno and psychedelia and inject alt rock with synth. Backed up by glittered bass and kicking, unapologetic drums; Declans vocals can howl or yearn and feel honest. Giving Paracetamol a solemn reception.

If youre going to know any of these songs, its probably this one McKenna introduces internet hit Brazil. Cue phones coming out to record. The charismatic track goes down a treat, just like its giant hook. A solid performance of sonic pop music.

Headliners, Lisbon, storm on stage. The Newcastle lads launch into their rapid live set, tornados of energy. Vocals are clear and bright, oozing exuberance. Theres no need for a warm up. These guys know how theyre working their set.

Their tropical indie sound means that every track is a crowd pleaser. Opener Liberty City sets the energetic pace, as Lisbon are unleashed with no intention to stay still. They throw some questionable shapes. Come to the front so I can see you all dancing! demands the front-man with a smile and excitement. Its Friday night, Leicester!

Game of Thrones inspired Khaleesi grooves with tribal like drums and nifty riffs. Previous single, jangly I Dont Know crashes pulsing drums and enigmatic guitar. Lisbons live set is all about the punchy instrumentals and bold vocals that work their way into high impact chants. It encourages you to shout.

Debuting new track Shark, its heavier but still captures the alt pop breeze. Melodic, the crowd nailed the lyrics in no time. Unreleased track Come Down Easy is sleek and juicy with bass. Theyre flirty with confidence.

Lisbon are the pioneers of euphoric undertones, fuelling their set with adrenaline and a burning passion for their own songs.

If Lisbon were to gate crash a house party, theyd swagger their way into the living room, plug in their instruments and have no filter on the volume. Somebody would end up spewing vibrant colours all over the posh rug.
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City hill roads close as Phuket honours founding father

PHUKET: Roads leading to the top of Rang Hill (Khao Rang) closed today (Jan 25) ahead of Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada officiating the opening of a memorial to Khaw Sim Bee, one of the founding fathers of Phuket.

cultureChinese

By Saroj Kueprasertkij

Monday 25 January 2016, 04:57PM

The memorial building market the centennial anniversary of the death of Khaw Sim Bee will be officially opened by Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada todfay (Jan 25). Photo: PR Dept

Executive members of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organisation (PPAO) lay wreaths at the Khaw Sim Bee statue on Rang Hill in 2013 to mark 100 years since the passing of one of Phukets founding fathers. Photo: PPAO

Two roads, one from Samkong and the other from the base of the hill on Mae Luan Rd, closed at about 4pm for the opening ceremony to the memorial to be held, marking the great achievements of Khaw Sim Bee, who died 103 years ago today.

The recently completed memorial building to be officially opened today itself is named in honour of centennial of his passing.

The roads will remain closed until 9pm.

Khaw Sim Bee was the Governor of Trang in 1890 and became the governor of Phuket in 1902, a position he held until his death in 1913.

He was also known as Phraya Rassada, a title that was bestowed upon him by King Rama V. Among the people of Thailand, he was also known as the father of Thailands rubber industry, as he introduced rubber cultivation in Trang in the 20th century. (See story here.)

His family name survives as the Na Ranong family today and he his remembered with a statue located at the top of Rang Hill.
Motorists warned of lane changes at Bang Khu underpass site

PHUKET: Motorists passing the construction site of the Bang Khu Underpass have been urged to exercise caution as traffic-flow changes have resulted in drivers needing to use different lanes while driving through the area.



By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Monday 25 January 2016, 06:09PM

Motorists travelling northbound (left to right) on Thepkrasatree Rd must use the one dedicated lane on the east side (lower) - for now.

Motorists travelling northbound on Thepkrasattri Rd, from Phuket Town to Phuket International Airport, now must use one lane on the right hand side of the tunnel site, explained Project Engineer Somkiet Yimpong, of contractor Italian-Thai Development Co Ltd (Ital-Thai).

When they reach the junction itself, they must still turn left onto the bypass road then make a u-turn in front of the Premium Outlet Mall so they can continue their journey north, he added.

Motorists travelling northbound must be very careful as they will be in the one lane heading north against two lanes heading south, all on the east side of the tunnel works, he explained.

Previously, traffic on Thepkrasattri Rd northbound had the safe privilege of a dedicated lane to the left of the tunnel works, making the left-hand turn onto the bypass road safer.

Southbound traffic remains unchanged by the new traffic flow, Mr Somkiet stressed.

Further lane changes are expected next month, when the project enters Phase 2, he told The Phuket News.

We expect to announce by February 15 that the northbound traffic (on Thepkrasattri Rd) can once again travel safely on dedicated northbound lanes on the west side of the tunnel works, Mr Somkiet said.

Construction of the entire project is nearly 30 per cent complete, which is well ahead of schedule. Phase I is complete and we are about to enter Phase 2.

I am confident that the Bang Khu Underpass will be finished before the contract deadline, on September 14, 2017, he added.
One crewman dies when cargo ship catches fire off Phuket

PHUKET: One crew member of a cargo boat carrying supplies from Phuket to Koh Phi Phi Don died today (Jan 25) when his vessel caught fire off Dok Mai Island in Phang Nga Bay.

accidentsdeathmarine

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 25 January 2016, 06:18PM

Smoke can be seen coming from the burning cargo ship. Photo: Phuket marine Police

Lt Col Panya Chaichana of the Phuket Marine Police said, We received an SOS call at 1:20pm today about a fire on a cargo boadt heading to Phi Phi Island. It was reported that there were two crew on board the vessel. Another cargo ship, named Sepsin, was close by, so they went to help. They managed to save the two crew members from the blazing vessel. However, one crew member, 59-year-old Eicha Sawangwit, died while they were returning to Jian Vanich Pier in Phuket Town. The other injured crew member, Sommat Phetrat, 42, was immediately taken to Vachira Hospital, he added.
Royal Thai Air Force to inspect jet debris found off Nakhon Sri Thammarat

NAKHON SRI THAMMARAT: The Royal Thai Air Force yesterday (Jan 24) said it would bring a piece of suspected aircraft debris found off the Nakhon Sri Thammarat coast to Bangkok, with the primary thought that it could have something to do with missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

transportaccidents

By Bangkok Post

Monday 25 January 2016, 09:51AM

Local people inspect the metal debris hauled onto the Nakhon Sri Thammarat province beach by fishermen on Saturday (Jan 25). (Photo by Nutcharee Rakrun)

Thai aviation experts who had inspected the plane wreckage confirmed yesterday that serial numbers found on its bolt parts belong to the Boeing 777 model.

The metal panel measures two by three metres. It was found by fishermen in the Gulf of Thailand just off the provincial coast on Saturday (Jan 23).

It was encrusted by barnacles, and fishermen said this meant it has been in the water for about a year.

Thai army aviation experts have already inspected the debris and agreed it was likely to be from an aircraft, although more tests are needed for confirmation.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, with 239 people on board, vanished late at night on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing .

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said he instructed Malaysian civil aviation officials to contact Thailand about the newly found wreckage, a curved piece of metal measuring about 2 metres by 3 metres with electrical wires hanging from it and numbers stamped on it in several places.

I urge the media and the public not to speculate because it will give undue pressure to the loved ones of the victims of MH370, he said.

Thailands Transportation Ministry said four Malaysian officials and two Thai experts will visit the site today (Jan 25).

Mr Liow said the search for the missing jet is ongoing thousands of kilometres away in the southern Indian Ocean and that its second phase is expected to be completed by June. Australia has led a multinational search that has so far cost more than $120 million.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman Dan OMalley said the agency was awaiting results of an official examination of the debris.

A specialist Thai team of more than 10 aviation experts led by Air Vice Marshal Sorrakrit Mungsing, head of the Office of Royal Thai Air Forces Safety Centre, will go to Pak Phanang district today to collect the panel.

It will be brought to Bangkok for further study as it needs special equipment to investigate what kind of aircraft it came from, said Royal Thai Air Force spokesman, Air Vice Marshal Pongsak Semachai.

It does not belong to a Thai air force aircraft, he added.

Tha Phraya village chief Pramote Ruangdit ordered a ban on villagers observing the debris until the experts inspection. The area was cordoned off to stop people getting near it.

Mr Pramote said villagers thwarted an effort by police to move the debris, after they were notified of the discovery.

Reuters quoted aviation experts as saying the panel unlikely to belong to the MH370 aircraft.

They agreed that while powerful currents sweeping the Indian Ocean could deposit debris thousands of kilometres away, wreckage was extremely unlikely to have drifted across the equator into the northern hemisphere.

The location of the debris in Thailand would appear to be inconsistent with the drift models that appeared when MH370s flaperon was discovered in Reunion last July, said Greg Waldron, Asia Managing Editor at Flightglobal, an industry publication.

The markings, engineering, and tooling apparent in this debris strongly suggest that it is aerospace related, he said. It will need to be carefully examined, however, to determine its exact origin.

Other possible sources of aerospace debris included the launching of space rockets by India eastwards over the Bay of Bengal, according to Mr Waldron.

Thanyarat Phatikongphan, district chief of Pak Phanang, speculated the piece belonged to an aircrafts nose... because there are electronic wires, insulators on it.

Numbers on the panel should help identification, he added.

Although there was no firm confirmation the piece was part of an aircraft, media swiftly speculated that it may have come from flight MH370.

In July of last year a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The island is several thousand kilometres south-west of Thailand.

Experts traced the wing part to the ill-fated MH370, the first firm evidence that it met a tragic end.

Unlike Reunion, the Gulf of Thailand is not in the path of ocean currents from the remote area of the Indian Ocean where it is believed the plane went down.

Nothing has been found since the Reunion discovery, despite a search which has so far covered more than 80,000 square kilometres (30,888 square miles) of the seabed.

Read original story here.
Sweet Sensation in Old Town: Street art lures sweethearts to 'House number 100'

PHUKET:Heading into Phuket Old Town along Phang Nga Rd, you might have noticed something out of the ordinary  a fresh and vibrant, artistic addition to the iconic historical streetside scene.



By The Phuket News

Monday 25 January 2016, 07:00AM

In stark contrast to the ordinary and dull, colonial style buildings, House Number 100 now screams at motorists and pedestrians to stop, turn their heads, pull over and have a closer look. But don't stare too long, take a photo  it will last much longer, so the saying goes. As part of a creative 100 of Arts youth art project, the historical building was given a trendy, new exterior face-lift, featuring iconic street-art depictions of sweets and treats.

On January 18, Phuket artists and students came together to collaborate on the project near the corner of Phang Nga and Yaowarat roads, in the Old Town sector of Talad Yai sub district. The theme: Street Art Sweets. The concept: decorate the historic facade with colourful street art so as to entice aspiring photographers and selfie smiley models to come and pose for pictures, which so far has proved to be a huge hit in Phuket's art savvy social media circles.

The project was the brainchild of Ms Boontita Boonsusakul, 18, who is a relative of the house owner, and is an aspiring artist herself.

Speaking to The Phuket News, Ms Boontita explained the concept of the House 100 project.

I wanted to open up the opportunity for friends to demonstrate their artistic abilities. This house is in a prime historical and cultural area and we wanted to create something new and exciting, she said.

The Old Town sector is mostly known for its Sino-portuguese architecture and traditional Phuket food, which attract tourists from every corner of the world, and so I wanted to create a new and interesting attraction, not only for foreign tourists, but locals as well, she said.

Aspiring social media selfie models should not wait too long to get their smartphone and professional portraits taken at House Number 100, because the house owner may soon have second thoughts, considering all the hoards of visitors she's received since the launch of the project.
Tiger Temple trafficking allegations mount

KANCHANABURI: A new report alleging that the famous Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi has been involved in the illegal wildlife trade for more than a decade is expected to increase pressure on Thai authorities to intervene.

animals

By Bangkok Post

Monday 25 January 2016, 10:58AM

An official from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation examines a microchip implanted in a tiger at Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yanasampanno in Kanchanaburi in April last year. (Bangkok Post file photo)

Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yanasampanno in Sai Yok district has been the focus of inquiries since three of its 147 captive tigers reportedly disappeared in late 2014. However, police investigations have made little progress and wildlife protection officials have conceded that the case is very sensitive.

The Tiger Temple is estimated to generate about B100 million a year from tourists who visit by the bus-load to pet and feed tiger cubs, walk tigers on leashes and take selfies with the animals, according to National Geographic magazine, which this week released details of the new trafficking allegations.

All of the tigers at the temple are supposed to have microchips implanted in them. However, it was revealed last year that the microchips had been cut out of the three adult males that disappeared in December 2014.

The temples longtime veterinarian, Somchai Visasmongkolchai, made the revelation after resigning his post and turning over the microchips to officials of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

Department officials conducted follow-up inspections at the temple in April last year and confirmed that the tigers were missing. They also discovered that 13 other tigers lacked microchips and found the carcass of a tiger in a freezer.

Now the Australian activist group Cee4life (Conservation and Environmental Education for Life) says it has new information indicating that tigers have been taken illegally to and from the temple since at least 2004.

The groups Tiger Temple Report was given simultaneously to Thai officials and National Geographic last month and was released publicly this week.

The information presented in this report provides undisputable evidence that the Tiger Temple is a commercial breeding and illegal international wildlife trading venue, said the report.

The report also alleges that an unprecedented number of deaths of tigers (and other protected species housed within the grounds) has occurred and severe abuse and neglect have been reported and documented.

Yet the Tiger Temple continues to operate with immunity, arguably protected because it is a Buddhist monastery, it said.

The report includes what the group says are veterinary records from 1999 and 2000 indicating that four of the temples original tigers were wild caught and a 2004 document stating that a female tiger named Nanfa had been imported from Laos.

A 2005 contract signed by the temples abbot and provided to National Geographic details the swap of a male from the temple with a female from a commercial tiger-breeding operation in Laos. An audiotape acquired from an unnamed temple adviser records a conversation between the abbot and Mr Somchai, the former veterinarian, about the three missing tigers.

Allegations of tiger smuggling at the temple were first made in 2008, when National Geographic reported on a study by the British wildlife group Care for the Wild. Around the same time, a group known as the International Tiger Coalition said the temple had made no contribution whatsoever to wild tiger conservation.

Sybelle Foxcroft, an Australian wildlife management expert, provided much of the impetus for the latest report by Cee4life. She first visited the temple in 2007 to study captive-tiger management for her masters thesis, and was able to take photographs and shoot video of the activities there.

While staying at the temple, she witnessed the abduction of two four-month-old tiger cubs, and began to notice a pattern involving tigers being removed from the temple and new ones being brought in. She observed monks carrying walkie-talkies while these operations took place.

Since 2008, she said, between six and 20 tiger cubs were needed every three months for tourists to cuddle. When they get older, they become too dangerous.

The only way to meet this demand, she explained, was speed breeding: removing newborn cubs from their mothers. That puts females in heat again, and they can bear at least two litters a year  instead of one litter about every two years, as in the wild.

Ms Foxcroft has compiled a list that identifies 281 tigers that passed through the temple from 1999 to 2015. She said the difference between 281 and the 147 tigers known to be at the temple is too great to be accounted for by deaths alone. Tigers in captivity normally live from 16 to 22 years.

So if you do the math, she told National Geographic, where are all those tigers?

Meanwhile, the Tiger Temple has been split into three separate entities: the monastery, a corporation that will handle a new tiger enterprise, and a foundation.

Former Kanchanaburi police colonel Supitpong Pakjarung, now vice-president of the foundation, told National Geographic that a new safari-style tiger sanctuary was being planned. Another area would allow hands-on contact with tigers, and the cats would be allowed to breed freely. In December the foundation submitted an application for a zoo licence.

The Department of National Parks has been trying to confiscate the temples 147 tigers since April 2015, on grounds that they are state property, which makes it illegal to earn tourist money from them.

Adisorn Nuchdumrong, the departments deputy director-general, conceded that removing animals from a temple was difficult, and that the impact on local employment was also a consideration. Its a very sensitive issue, he told National Geographic.

Last week, the magazine reported, department officials were prevented from removing the first batch of tigers, and two uniformed men now guard the temples front gate. Mr Adisorn said he would seek a court order if necessary and arrange for the tigers to be distributed among nine government wildlife facilities.

As for the zoo licence, he said: If we have evidence that theyre involved with illegal wildlife traffic, we will not grant it.

More online:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160121-tiger-temple-thailand-trafficking-laos0/

http://cee4life.org/tiger-temple-report/

Read original story here.
Pierre, Tea Area lives up to hype and more from HS football week nine
HALIFAXIt is either crazy stupid folly or quixotically brave to hit the bricks outside a daily newspaper these days.

Journalist jobs, especially in print media, are precarious  though Im nowhere near as skeptical and doom-gloomy as many industry analysts, the Cassandras endlessly predicting that papers are dinosaurs lumbering towards extinction and bleeding out ad revenue splatter all over the place.

In any event, risking the jobs that remain by calling a strike  one nanosecond before management would have imposed an untenable contract or triggered a lockout  requires nerves of steel and a firm backbone. Pink-slip dread, sweeping restructure of staff, the jackboot march from print to digital: all have combined to sap newsrooms of pushback marrow, especially via emasculated unions.

The Halifax Chronicle Herald, Canadas largest independent daily newspaper, is going for broke.

At 12:01 Saturday, after last-ditch negotiations proved futile, the Halifax Typographical Union  representing 61 editorial employees  walked out on the venerable old broad. Even before that happened, private security with dogs on leashes had surrounded the building. (Bite me.) And four-month contracts had been offered to freelance writers and J-students from Kings College for scab labour, despite union warnings that future careers might never recover for those who accepted their 30 pieces of silver.

What future careers? What newspapers of the future? cynics might ask. (Bite me.)

By Saturday afternoon, 18 layoff notices (since suspended, it seems) had been delivered to photographers, layout and design editors and support staff.

Earlier last week, reporters had withheld bylines, a common practice during short-stroke showdowns. One day later, it was management that pulled bylines and photo credits indefinitely, producing editions filled almost front-to-back with anonymous stories and wire copy  except for the CP files and columns seized from other papers, including the Star, as per standing syndication agreement. Dismayed writers with no dog in this fight found their names suddenly appearing in the Chronicle. The paper has also struck a deal with Brunswick News, which will make available stories for publication if they pertain to Nova Scotia.

Management is girded for war. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to understand that media companies are struggling, VP of administration Nancy Cook said in a statement released early Saturday. Just look at the layoffs at Postmedia this week or the Toronto Star last week.

It pains me that the Star  13 job cuts announced, 10 from the short-term tablet team, three from the digital desk  is being cited by journo bushwhackers.

The Herald union had offered a five per cent wage cut, no raises for two years, 25 per cent reduction in starting salaries for new reporters and photographers, a cap on severance, and reducing vacation allotments and mileage allowances. Not meaningful, Cook retorted. The company wants to further reduce wages, lengthen working hours from 35 to 40 a week, alter future pension benefits and lay off up to 18 editorial staff. Workers had overwhelmingly  98.3 per cent  given their union a strike mandate.

It wont end well, not for anybody but especially for the unionized employees. They will be crushed. Newspaper unions have no power anymore. (I will state here my own objection to unionized editorial. I dont think unions belong in newsrooms, which are always undemocratic domains. But other departments: yes.)

Turmoil in newspapers that once enjoyed freewheeling thump can be traced, firstly, to the emergence of online classified ad sites such as Craigslist which drained away money. Industry revenues, according to the Newspaper Association of America, declined by more than a third between 2005 and 2013. A survey by the American Society of News Editors found that the number of newsroom employees dropped by 40 per cent between 2006 and 2014. Fortune Magazine ranks newspaper reporter among the 10 most dead-end career paths in the next decade  along with the likes of mail carriers and meter readers.

If I had a gun (actually I do), I would shoot you, Craig.

Most significantly, the public just reads differently these days, gets its news from alternate sources, even as Legacy journalism  thats us, newspapers  scrambles to catch up and diversify, devoting ever larger chunks of precious operating capital to the digital side of things, the tablet and smartphone eyeballs.

Layoffs and mergers have led to growing media monopolies, less competition, fewer reporters chasing important stories and original source content. We certainly saw this in Canada last year when Postmedia closed its deal to buy 175 newspapers and digital platforms from Quebecor Inc. Most worrisomely, Postmedia scooped the Suns outside Quebec that publish in cities serviced by rival papers already owned by the chain. CEO Paul Godfrey, who should never be believed about anything, promised the newsrooms would be kept apart; thered be no merging and job reduction. The Competition Bureau did Postmedia a solid by concluding the sale of Quebecors English-language papers was unlikely to result in a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in any relevant market.

Tell that to the 90 employees who were just jettisoned across the Postmedia empire-with-no-clothes (money). Tell that to the two general assignment reporters left at the Ottawa Sun after the axe fell. Tell that to the previously rival and now bizarrely yoked newsrooms where anodyne stories will be shared  but spun by respective rewrite desks to reflect their un-likeness. So  you couldnt make this up  therell be some mook in the slot putting copy through the roller so that it comes out sounding more distinctly Sun-ny. (Spelling errors inserted? Torturous columnist syntax?)

Godfrey should be ashamed of himself.

Voices are growing louder for government to step in with legislation or robust regulation to limit the concentration of media ownership. Some are advocating for government to subsidize newspapers, which is intrinsically wrong. That would make government our master and how can you speak truth to power while sucking on Ottawas teat? Another option is turning papers into non-profits as some already are endowed by foundations.

The bitter joke around One Yonge is that the Globe and Mail doesnt seriously have to worry about seas of red ink debt. The Thomson family can just sell off a painting or two from their stunning art collection.

In truth, the Globe has been just as cost-cutting manic as its competition, both slashing staff and outsourcing its printing operation. The Star also recently announced that its selling its printing plant and contracting for presses from the same commercial printing behemoth that services the Globe  just 25 years after we snipped the ribbon at Vaughan, with its state-of-the-art presses. Now apparently obsolete.

I dont know who to believe and whos blowing smoke.

So, dont ask me: whither the Star, whither newspapers? No genius ideas here. I know only what I wouldnt do.

But the Star isnt my dynastic legacy to gamble with.

Think Ill go join some shivering colleagues on the picket line now  dead reporters walking.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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Const. James Forcillo was found guilty of attempted murder  but not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter  in the 2013 shooting death of Sammy Yatim. Confused? Read this.

Happy Robbie Burns Day! Heres four whiskies to try.

According to a new book called The Obesity Code, insulin makes you fat and fasting makes you thin. Dr. Jason Fung argues that our eat all the time mentality is wrong. In 1977, we were eating white bread and jam  which raises insulin levels  but we werent snacking all the time. Now, the number of times we eat in a day has gotten substantially higher. Weve gone from three meals a day to six: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. We are stimulating insulin all the time.

A Tim Hortons owner is reaching out to newly unemployed Goodwill workers. So far, four people have contacted Wafer at mwafer@xplornet.com and two have made appointments for job interviews this week. His outlets currently employ 250 people and 46 staff members who have disabilities. The reason I reached out to these former (Goodwill) employees is because I know many of them have disabilities, Wafer said. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities in Canada today is dismal at about 70 per cent. The participation rate is only about 18 per cent.

British graffiti artist Banksy is tackling the refugee crisis once again, with a new mural criticizing the use of tear gas against migrants in The Jungle camp in France. Banksy depicts a young girl from the play Les Miserables with tears in her eyes as tear gas rises up. When you hold your phones over a QR code beneath the image, youre directed to a YouTube video of a nighttime raid on the Calais camp.

Co-owners of Toronto Family Doulas are rolling out placenta encapsulation as a major service starting March 1, partially thanks to rising demand. However, some are concerned: When you deliver, there are a lot of body fluids close together. You might have a bowel movement and it might touch the placenta. We cant promise its not contaminated, says Dr. Amanda Selk, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Womens College Hospital.

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The last Beaton to feel the soft leather of the helmet was Ed, floating through the dark sky over occupied France beneath his parachute in June 1944, a burst of flames in the distance from the Halifax bomber he had just escaped.

The next Beaton came to the helmet in peacetime, leaving his Regina home in the early morning to fly to Ottawa, driving past the snow covered birch trees to the War Museum, to reclaim a piece of his fathers youth, on a crisp Saturday afternoon 71 years later.

I did the easy part, Gerald Beaton, 55, said.

In November 2015, the Star told the story of a Canadian helmet that Dominique Lemaire had inherited from his father Henri, who was a member of the French Resistance. Lemaire, who lives in Northern France, was told that the helmet belonged to one of the five Canadians who died when a bomber was shot down in his fathers village after D-Day. He wanted to return it to the right Canadian family. With the help of historians at the Canadian War Museum, the Star discovered that two men had survived the crash, and all the clues on the helmet, including the faint letters of a last name, pointed to Beaton. Ed Beaton died in 2003.

Lemaire sent the helmet to Ottawa with Gilles Prilaux, an archeologist with Frances National Institute for Preventive Archeological Research. Prilaux was at the museum to talk about the buried fortress of humanity and weapons that remain beneath France from the Great War  so many millions of shells that it will take eight centuries to depollute the sector near Arras, Lens and Vimy.

After his talk on Saturday, Prilaux presented Beaton with the helmet as a small crowd gathered in the atrium.

Merci beaucoup, Beaton said, marvelling at the object he didnt know was missing until last year, the letters much clearer in person than the photo he had seen in an email. He gave Prilaux a photo of his fathers crew to pass along to Lemaire.

And then, Prilaux, Beaton, and Second World War historian Jeff Noakes knelt around the helmet like a group of kids excited by a found treasure, while Beaton asked about the helmets care, the mystery, and Lemaire.

Noakes passed along an interview that Ed Beaton gave to officials that he found as part of his research.

Did you bail out? If so, state yes, Beaton read aloud from the form, followed by his fathers answer: Yes.

Yeah, hes a man of few words, he said, smiling.

Ed Beaton loved reading and writing, but didnt like making a fuss.

He would say Oh yeah, thats my helmet,  understated as so many of these veterans are, his son said when first contacted about the helmet in 2015.  Why did I survive and all these other good men did not? I think that was a part of it.

He knows his dad would shake his head about the cost of flying to Ottawa, but Beaton thought it was important to be here. He said as much to his 90-year-old mom  Dad wouldnt be happy.

She said, No, he sure wouldnt be. 

Sitting in his rental car afterward, Beaton said this story is really about the fathers.

Theyre the ones that had the experiences, and well never really know what they were in any sort of detail, he said.

In an email, Lemaire said his father would have been happy with this ending.

I believe that it is through these kinds of actions that we give meaning to the commemorations for people today, for the memory of our parents, he wrote in French.

I knew we would get there despite kilometres and miles between us, he added.

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Re: Blitz - and educate, Editorial Jan. 21

Blitz - and educate, Editorial Jan. 21

While your editorial on the widespread abuse of labour standards revealed through Ministry of Labour inspections aptly describes the poor working conditions faced by many workers, the emphasis you place on the need for education for employers is misplaced.

G4S Security, for example, is the largest private security company in the world, with 700,000 employees in 125 countries. To suggest that they require education to uphold basic labour standards is ludicrous in the context that the company probably has a set of lawyers and human resource managers larger than Ontarios entire employment standards branch.

The companys evasion of labour laws is well documented in sociologist James McCallums account of the workings of G4S in multiple countries. Indeed, suggesting the educational approach for employers masks the fact that because of strong employer lobbies, we do not have a universal set of minimum rights for workers.

Instead, the law is peppered with a large number of exceptions where the government has traded in workers well-being for business interests. Some examples: employers of road construction workers have different rules around hours of work and breaks. Employers of homecare workers have special rules relating to wages or hours. As evident on the Ministry of Labours aptly titled Special Rule Tool, the exceptions are almost as extensive as the laws. This has led to a complex set of rules that employers can easily claim confuses them.

In this context, instead of employer education, we need strategies that will ensure all workers in Ontario can be assured of a set of minimum standards. This can either be achieved through widespread proactive inspections, so that employers know that their chances of evading the law are low, or through high penalties for failing to meet minimum standards. At the moment, we have neither, leading to a situation where employers take the risk of getting caught, and pay small penalties if they do.

For large employers such as G4S, evasion strategies are a routine business practice. Few and infrequent inspections, in conjunction with a cumbersome complaints process for workers who take action themselves, leads to a continually falling floor of working conditions for Ontario workers.

Kiran Mirchandani, professor, Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, OISE

Thanks for publicizing the results of a recent Ministry of Labour blitz on Employment Standards Act violations. The fact that 78 per cent of employers were found to have violated the act shows the urgent need for labour law reform in Ontario.

The ministry will soon release an interim report into such reform. Many, including Unifor, have made submissions about the needed changes. Reforms must address the stark reality reflected in your story.

It is clear that the current system of complaint-based enforcement doesnt work. Requiring workers to first go to their employer with a complaint is totally divorced from workplace realities.

Ontario needs proactive inspections and independent worker advocacy centres funded in part by fines for employers who violate the laws. With 52 per cent of GTA/Hamilton jobs now precarious, workers need protection.

We must make the most of the opportunity we have now to fix this problem.

Katha Fortier, Ontario regional director, Unifor

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The words in a song, like the words in a history book, can take us back to a different time. During World War II, we sat in front of our radio or hand cranked RCA Victor record player listening to song lyrics depicting love, valor, patriotism and the hope for a peaceful tomorrow.

The following song verses are taken from four of the hundreds of songs that were written and sung during World War II:

Pearl Harbor: Lets remember Pearl Harbor as we did the Alamo/We will always remember how they died for liberty/Lets remember Pearl Harbor as we go on to victory.

Roger Young: Caught in ambush lay a company rifleman/til this one of twenty riflemen/volunteered, volunteered to meet his doom/so a company of men might live to fight. On the Island of New Georgia in the Solomons/stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell/that beneath the silent coral of the Solomons/sleeps the man, sleeps the man we hail tonight./ Roger Young, Roger Young, fought and died for the men he marched among.

Star Spangled Banner: In this war with its mad schemes of destruction/cant the U.S. use a mountain boy like me? God gave me the right to be a free American, and for that precious right Id gladly die./While I realize Im crippled that is true sir/please dont judge my courage by my twisted leg./Let me show my Uncle Sam what I can do sir/let me help to bring the Axis down a peg/If I do some brave deed I will be hero and a hero brave is what I want be./Theres a Star Spangled Banner waving somewhere, in a distant land so many miles away/only Uncle Sams great heroes get to go there, that is where I want to live when I die/Id see Lincoln, Custer, Washington and Perry, Nathan Hale and Colin Kelly, too.

Captain Colin Kelly piloted a Bl 7 bomber in an attack on Japanese naval vessels in the Pacific. While returning to his home base, the Bl 7 was attacked by a squadron of Japanese Zeros. Captain Kelly and his co-pilot kept the burning plane aloft long enough for all of the crew members to parachute to safety. The plane exploded, throwing both pilots from the cockpit. The co-pilot managed to open his chute and landed safely on the ground. Captain Colin Kelly became the first American aviator to lose his life during World War II.

Lilly Marlene: Standing beneath the lamppost by the Barrack gate, standing all alone every night youll see her wait/she waits for a boy who marched away, and though hes gone, she hears him say/fare thee well Lily Marlene, be true, till I return to you.

I later learned that the song Lilly Marlene was an American rendition of a song that had first gained popularity among German soldiers during World War I.

Dont sit under the apple tree (with anyone else but me), like Lilly Marlene, was a song about faithfulness between a serviceman and his sweetheart.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B gained fame during the movie Buck Private starring Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. Dont sit under the Apple Tree and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of B are among the many songs that were beautifully sung by the Andrew Sisters during World War II.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition: And well all stay free/Yes, the sky pilot (Chaplain) said it, you gotta give him credit, for a son of a gun of a gunner was he, shouting Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition and well all stay free.

White Cliffs of Dover: Who can forget the beautiful voice of Kate Smith singing, Therell be Bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover/tomorrow just you wait and see/the valley will bloom again/the shepherds will tend their flocks and Jonny will go to sleep in his own little room again/therell be love and laughter and peace ever after/tomorrow just you wait and see.

Like World War I, thought to be the war to end all wars, the horror of war was soon forgotten, leaving us once again to wonder when and if, the promise of love and laughter and peace ever after will come to be.

In church people sing Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. What a novel idea for our politicians and world leaders to embrace.
The weekend's East Coast blizzard brought up to 30 inches of snow, gale-force winds, travel chaos, coastal flooding, and 19 deaths.

Another likely victim: the U.S. economy.

Massive storms invariably clobber business and consumer activity, such as retail and auto sales, hourly worker income, factory production, construction and deliveries of supplies. Notably, during the frigid "polar vortex" snow storms experienced in the first quarter of 2014, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 2.1%, after rising by 2.6% in the preceding quarter.

As Wall Street digs out this week, traders will digest the economic consequences of Winter Storm Jonas, as well as a raft of earnings and economic reports.

Leading the earnings report parade will be financial services, a sector that money guru Warren Buffett continues to embrace with bullish expectations.

Our forecast for the coming week: more wild intraday swings, as investors weigh worsening turmoil overseas and a mixed bag of portents at home.

In the negative column: geopolitical uncertainty, especially in China and Russia, where leaders continue to grapple with weakening currencies, teetering financial sectors and sharply slowing economic growth.

In Russia, economic dislocation has gotten so bad, average citizens are actually taking to the streets in protest, always a dicey proposition in Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime. Also this week, several fourth-quarter earnings reports are expected to register year-over-year declines.

In the plus column: optimism last week about global central banks opening the monetary spigots, especially in Europe, and rising oil prices. A bearish week ended on Friday with a global stock rally that appears to have assuaged investor anxiety for now. U.S. stocks closed sharply higher on Friday, for their first positive week in four weeks.

On the roster this week will be the first glimpse of fourth-quarter GDP growth in the U.S., new pronouncements from Janet Yellen and her cohorts at the Federal Reserve, and a flurry of major earnings reports. Analysts expect fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies to fall on average about 4%, the third quarter in a row of earnings declines for the index.

Banks will bear extra scrutiny, as bellwethers of overall growth in 2016. Last week, Wells Fargo (WFC) and M&T Bank (MTB) both topped Wall Street's projections for earnings, further justifying Warren Buffett's decision to add these stocks to Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A) portfolio. The latest buying decisions of Buffett are worth watching now, as 2016 gets off to an extraordinarily volatile start.

Let's take a quick look at the major events in the week ahead:

Earnings Reports

Monday, January 25: Halliburton (HAL) , Kimberly-Clark (KMB) , McDonald's (MCD) , PetMed Express (PETS) , BancorpSouthundefined , BBCN Bancorpundefined , FCB Financial (FCB) , and Bancorp (NBTB) .

Tuesday, January 26: Apple (AAPL) , AT&T (T) , 3M (MMM) , DuPont (DD) , First Midwest Banc (FMBI) , Flagstar Bancorp (FBC) , Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) , Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) , Lockheed Martin (LMT) , Peabody Energy (BTU) , Procter & Gamble (PG) , S&T Bancorp (STBA) , Sprint (S) , and U.S. Steel (X) .

Wednesday, January 27: Anthem undefined , Biogen (BIIB) , Discover Financial Services (DFS) , Facebook (FB) , EverBank Financial (EVER) , Fiat Chrysler (FCAU) , General Dynamics (GD) , Hess (HES) , Illinois Tool Works (ITW) , Norfolk Southern (NSC) , Novartis (NVS) , Texas Instruments (TXN) , Textron (TXT) , United Technologies (UTX) .

Thursday, January 28: Abbott Laboratories (ABT) , Alibaba (BABA) , Amazon (AMZN) , Baker Hughes (BHI) , Blackstone (BX) , Bristol-Meyers (BMY) , Caterpillar (CAT) , Eli Lilly (LLY) , First Bancorp (FBP) , First Financial (FFIN) , Fitbit (FIT) , Ford Motor (F) , Harley-Davidson (HOG) , HCA (HCA) , Microsoft (MSFT) , National Bank (NBHC) , Northrop Grumman (NOC) , Nucor (NUE) , Raytheon (RTN) , Stanley Black & Decker (SWK) , Time Warner Cable (TWC) , Valero Energy (VLO) , and Visa (V) .

Friday, January 29: AbbVie (ABBV) , Aetna (AET) , American Airlines (AAL) , Anadarko Petroleum (APC) , Banco Santander (BSAC) , Chevron (CVX) , Colgate-Palmolive (CL) , Honda Motor (HMC) , Honeywell (HON) , MasterCard (MA) , Mattel (MAT) , Phillips 66 (PSX) , Sonyundefined , Whirlpool (WHR) , and Xerox (XRX) .

Economic Calendar

Tuesday January 26

U.S. Federal Reserve's FOMC Meeting Begins

FHFA House Price Index

S&P Case-Shiller HPI



Wednesday, January 27

MBA Mortgage Applications

New Home Sales

EIA Petroleum Status Report

FOMC Meeting Announcement

Thursday, January 28

Durable Goods Orders

Jobless Claims

EIA Natural Gas Report

Friday, January 29

U.S. GDP

Consumer Sentiment

Baker-Hughes Rig Count

As 2016 gets off to a very rocky start, it pays to follow the investment decisions of Warren Buffett, the financial genius who has amassed a personal net worth of $62 billion. Click here to learn more about the stocks that Buffett is now buying and selling. Buy these fast-growing stocks and watch your portfolio beat the market year after year, just like the Oracle of Omaha himself. For clues into Berkshire Hathaway's strategy for 2016, download your free report now.

John Persinos is editorial manager and investment analyst at Investing Daily. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
2015 saw a steep decline in oil and gas prices and oil stocks took a huge hit. But in November 2015, the International Energy Agency forecasted that Brent Crude will rebound to an average of $80 per barrel by 2020. Given that oil is hovering around $30 a barrel right now, when oil prices will reach the bottom and when they will start rising again?

If you're banking on oil prices going up any time soon, you might be out of luck.

In 2016, two countries have restarted exporting oil: Iran and the United States. Iran has 150 billion barrels of reserves and is planning to increase its production to 2.5 million barrels per day, up from 1 million right now by the end of the year. The Islamic country intends to export most of its output but, in order to access an already saturated market, it will have to offer lower prices than its competition. The main buyers of Iranian oil will be India and European counties due to their proximity to the Middle East.

The United States, since the oil export ban was lifted, will try to export part of its output, too. However, American companies will find it difficult to compete with foreign producers because Brent Crude is trading almost at the same price as the West Texas Intermediate, and OPEC Basket price is just $22, making U.S. oil more expensive than Middle Eastern oil. The initial buyers of American crude will be Latin American countries and Japan, due to their proximity to Texas and Alaska respectively, where important shale plays are located (Eagle Ford and Permian Basin in Texas, North Slope in Alaska).

Therefore, this year will be characterized by an oversupply of crude oil, which will likely drive prices down further. Such market conditions are not expected to improve until the end of 2017. By then, the Chinese economy should have recovered and the oil glut should have been absorbed by an increased global demand.

A potential game changer will be the Russian presidential elections in March 2018. Russia is the country whose stability is most affected by low oil prices. A leadership change in Russia, which is the world's third-largest oil producer, could induce the country to cut its oil output and push prices up.

Unlike the eighties, when the oil glut was caused by a contraction of demand, the 2016 oil glut is caused by an excess of supply. In fact, this year, global demand has only slightly decreased as a result of the Chinese and Brazilian economic slowdowns.

OPEC member economies, including Saudi Arabia, cannot sustain low oil prices in the long term. They are forced to shrink their budgets and utilize the financial reserves they accumulated in the years of high oil prices. In a couple of years, Saudi Arabia will need to cut production and induce prices to rise to avert an economic crisis that could destabilize its political leadership. In the meanwhile, Saudi Aramco will have already signed several long-term supply contracts with buyers to secure its market position for a few years.

Another important factor in energy economics is oil-well-depletion. The production rate of oil wells declines dramatically after the first year. After the first 12 months, well production decreases by 70% on average. If new wells are not drilled, global production will quickly decrease. Low oil prices have caused crude production to become unprofitable and have forced producers to cut on investment in new wells. Current oil production is not sufficient to replace well depletion in the United States. By 2018, the oil glut will likely be followed by an oil shortage that will affect several countries, especially the United States.

As a result, the oil glut will peak between 2016 and 2017 and oil prices will start to rise by 2018.

Francesco Stipo is an American author and expert in international affairs. He is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee and was formerly the president of the U.S. Association of the Club of Rome, a global think tank.
EAU CLAIRE  Eau Claire Memorial guidance counselor Travis Hedtke shakes his head when he thinks about senior Meiyi Chen.

At times I have to kind of tell her, Hey, dont get yourself overloaded, he said.

Her response is always the same.

Ive got it, she says with confidence.

Chen wasnt always as sure of herself. She was 8 years old when her family moved her to the United States from China to join her aunt in the family restaurant business.

American culture was as foreign as the English language. Life as she knew it had changed, and she would have to change along with it if she wanted to be successful.

Chen has always been intelligent, but the language gap stunted her learning early on. She qualified for special-education classes and began to learn at a quicker rate once she received the individual attention she required.

At the time, no one knew how long Chen would have to stay in separate classes from her peers.

But as Chen picked up on the language and built her confidence, it became apparent she had the potential to do great things. She took her last special-education class as a sophomore and has begun taking advanced placement courses.

Her zest for learning has led her to understanding her tremendous potential, and she plans to attend college to become a neurologist.

Chen is Eau Claire Memorials recipient of the Chippewa Valley Newspapers 2016 Extra Effort award.

A different world

Chen was born in southern China, a few hours from Guangzhou, in a metropolitan area that serves as home to more than 23 million people.

She still remembers her neighborhood, as well as her school. Even though shes lived in the United States longer than she did in China, her memory of her homeland is vivid and impossible to forget.

Every once in a while I think back and how different it must be now, she said. I hear from my relatives how everything has changed. There used to be plots of land near my school where people grew veggies. Now its all buildings and houses.

Chen recalls taking English classes as a child. She laughs when she admits that not much of it stuck.

I remember orange, she said. Thats the only color I remember because it was the same as the fruit. Thats the only association I got out of it.

She now speaks English with great clarity and serves as translator for her parents, who still struggle with the language.

Chen doesnt mind serving as her familys translator. She and her brother required one when they were first learning the language, and she remembers how lost she would have been without someone helping to bridge the gap.

That definitely helped, she said. Otherwise I wouldnt have understood anything that was going on.

Getting stronger

It frustrated Chen when she was separated from her peers and their normal classes while she received special attention. But she understood the reason. She needed help if she was to catch up to the rest of her class.

Some subjects were easier than others. She favored math and science over reading and writing until her teachers found the best way to help her with the latter.

A program called Read 180 designed to stimulate struggling readers did exactly that for Chen.

Its more like a game, she said. Im really competitive, so we would compete as classmates. I really wanted to improve myself. There were spelling components and reading components to it; listening to phrases and typing them out.

She had made great progress by the time she hit high school. Thats where Hedtke noticed the work ethic of a girl who refuses to accept limitations.

When I met her as a freshman, she still did need some of those services, Hedtke said. But I saw a kid that was really driven to take on so much and wanting to take on very challenging courses even though she had some needs. That was pretty cool to see.

By the time she was a sophomore, she was on track with the rest of her classmates. Shes even taken some advanced placement classes.

Im overwhelmed about the accomplishments and where I am now with academics, Chen said. I wouldnt have been able to do all that without help from other people.

Pay it forward

Chen remembers every person who has helped her along the way, and there are so many.

Their influence is what drives her to help others whenever she can.

When she isnt at school, work or studying, Chen donates her time to a number of causes. Shes been a consistent volunteer at the Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Club and has worked in numerous capacities with local hospitals, among other endeavors.

So many people have helped me in the past, she said. Thats kind of engraved in me. I always wanted to help people. Then I started volunteering around the community and I really enjoyed that.

Her love of others also drives her career goals. She plans to attend medical school to become a neurologist, noting that shes fascinated with the functions of the brain.

What she may not understand is just how easy she made it for others to help her along her path. Chens motivation has always been curiosity and a constant desire to learn more about everything.

Simply put, she has been a teachers dream.

Its hard to put into words really how appreciative she is, Hedtke said. She really doesnt expect us to do the things that we do for her. Shes so easy to do them for because of how polite she is and how appreciative she is. She makes my job pretty easy because shes a great kid and she does everything she needs to.

Its because of her calm and curious demeanor that Hedtke knows shell succeed. Its also the reason hell do whatever he can to get her there.

Ill bend over backwards to do what I can to help her, he said. Shes going to go on to help so many other people.
Erratic capital markets undercut the ability for companies in many industries to go public but those in the biopharma sector aren't sweating at all.

In fact, 2016 is anticipated to remain favorable for the public debuts of biopharma companies after a rapid fundraising cycle left venture capital firms with an appetite to continue betting on the promise of innovative new drugs.

There's already been a wave of biopharma initial public offering filings in the first few weeks of the year. Gene therapy companies Audentes Therapeutics and AveXis and cancer treatment providers Corvus Pharmaceuticals and Syndax Pharmaceuticals are just a small handful of those joining the race to the public markets.

This year is likely to see about seven to eight IPOs in the biopharma industry each quarter, or 28 to 32 over the course of the year, predicts Jonathan Norris, managing director for the healthcare practice at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Silicon Valley Bank.

Those figures pale next to 2015's 43 biopharma IPO filings and 2014's 66, but they roughly match 2013's 32, according to SVB data.

While 2015 saw a fewer number of IPOs than the previous year, those that debuted on the public markets raised more money at better pre-money valuations, SVB data shows. Meanwhile, venture investments in healthcare were projected to reach $9.4 billion in 2015, $7 billion of which was injected into the biopharma space, the highest level since 2000, according to SVB.

"It's hard to hold a candle to what happened over the last two years," Norris said in an interview during the 34th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

"From my perspective it's a healthy decline. We're at the apex of a really good upcycle."

The biopharma IPO market is likely to see more selectivity among the investor community in 2016, and the companies with near-term milestones or further along in product development are those most likely to go public, added Danielle Carbone, a partner in the Corporate & Transactional Advisory Group at Reed Smith.

(That wasn't necessarily the case in 2014 and 2015, when pre-clinical and phase 1 companies accounted for about 40% of biopharma IPOs, Norris said.)

"While we're seeing a slowdown in the number of IPO filings and deal pricing, I don't think it's an indication that the window is closing," said Carbone, who represents healthcare companies and underwriters in financing transactions, including IPOs.



Indeed, a large number of companies that had "crossover investments" in private fundraising rounds have yet to go public. Seven of the top 15 crossovers have had a roughly 50% hit rate among the companies invested in since 2013, meaning about half of the companies invested in have yet to go public, according to SVB's Norris.

Crossover investors are non-venture capital firms, including mutual funds and hedge funds, that are "crossing over" to bet on opportunities in the private market. Among the most active crossover investors in the biopharma sector are RA Capital, Rock Springs Capital, Deerfield Management, Fidelity Investments and Foresite Capital.

Crossovers gain a foothold in private companies by participating in pre-IPO financing rounds, with the ultimate goal of becoming long-term investors once the company joins the public market.

This type of of financing "sends a really strong signal to the general investors that are also going to take part in the IPO, but haven't taken part in any previous rounds," Norris said.

The third quarter of 2015 marked a peak for crossover investments in healthcare, with the top 15 crossover firms executing a total of 69 transactions over the three-month period. But momentum never built. In the fourth quarter, there were just 25 transactions, SVB data shows.

Still, even if crossovers were to opt out of biopharma in the coming year, companies remain well-positioned.

Potential distributions to investors exceeded north of $55 billion over the last three years, SVB estimates, and Norris explained that such success has fueled newly created VC funds with fresh capital to invest.

"We've sort of refilled the coffers and we're going after it again," Norris stated.

So what's with all the filings this year so far?

For one thing, industry sources noted that investors and companies tend to feed off each other at the J.P. Morgan conference, the largest healthcare industry get-together in the world held in early January at The Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

Also, the timing is good because companies are rushing to file for IPOs before their audited financials go stale.

With most biopharma companies having a fiscal year that ends Dec. 31, the Securities and Exchange Commission will require an audit before declaring a filer's S-1 registration statement effective if the deal is set to price after Feb. 16.

Those conditions just may cause some deals in the pipeline that have been delayed because of market volatility in the IPO market to be further put off while the filing company prepares updated audited financial statements, Reed Smith's Carbone explained.

Other factors, including drug pricing pressure, an election year, repercussions from China's slowdown and a tendency to worry that the IPO window could close, are other reasons companies may hurry to file in the first quarter, industry sources said.

But should the IPO market for biopharma companies disappear, M&A in the sector remains strong, thanks to Big Pharma and biotechnology firms shutting down their early-stage research efforts because of high costs. As a result, new drug development has essentially been outsourced to the venture capital community, according to Norris.

"You have to have a pipeline of drugs in development in order for people to see your future value as an organization," Norris said, asserting the option to do an IPO for early-stage companies will continue to fuel more acquisitions of them at strong valuations.

"Clearly, when you look at Big Pharma, they have lots of money to continue to spend on acquisition targets," added Carbone. "An IPO is just one exit strategy as companies continue to look at ways to provide liquidity."
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...
The $20 billion merger of Johnson Controls (JCI) and Tyco International (TYC) could create repercussions for the global automotive seating and interiors business, possibly resulting in another merger of major auto parts manufacturers.

Investor focus will turn to two large and prominent public automotive interiors manufacturers, Lear (LEA) , based in Southfield, Mich., and the French seatmaker, Faurecia.

Last week in Detroit, Johnson Controls announced that in October its seat-making operations would become a publicly traded company called Adient.

Can Adient survive long as an independent operator? Investors will decide, as will automakers, which make key long-term decisions about which companies will supply future vehicle projects.

Johnson Controls already sold a big chunk of its interiors business to China's Yanfeng Automotive Interiors in 2014. Johnson Controls kept a 30% stake in that venture, which will be transferred to Adient.

CEO Alex Molinaroli offered two reasons for divesting from seating and interiors: the automobile business's cyclical nature, and the need to invest large amounts of capital to modernize the product.

Molinaroli, who will run the combined Johnson Controls-Tyco, could have mentioned that profit margins in the automotive parts industry vary -- extremely thin for commodities like oil filters and electrical harnesses, to sizable for software and sophisticated electronic components. Delphi Automotive (DLPH) -- a descendant of General Motors' former parts operation, which filed for bankruptcy in 2005 -- is an example of a parts maker that has achieved strong share price appreciation by steadily divesting of low margin businesses and replacing them with bigger moneymakers.

At the peak of an automotive cycle, when vehicles are selling briskly, parts manufacturers appear more attractive to investors. With U.S. consumer demand for new vehicles now appearing to run out of steam after six years of growth -- a view held by more than a few analysts and executives -- auto parts shares may suffer. By the time of the Adient initial public offering in October, a clearer direction for the U.S. new-vehicle market might influence Adient's market capitalization and, therefore, its attractiveness as a potential acquisition for Lear, Faurecia or maybe an up-and-coming player such as Yanfeng.

The merger of Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls and Tyco likely was set in motion last July when Johnson Controls said it intended to spin off its low-margin seating business, a precursor to the joining of the two companies into a $50 billion company, based in Ireland, that makes heating, cooling, industrial refrigeration and fire security systems.

The approaching conclusion of a long run of healthy sales for automotive manufacturers could be a sign of further moves by parts manufacturers beyond seats and interiors.

Doron Levin is the host of "In the Driver Seat," broadcast on SiriusXM Insight 121, Saturday at noon, encore Sunday at 9 a.m.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders will get one more chance to make their case in prime time on national television to Iowa voters in a town hall Monday evening hosted by CNN. And with just a week to caucus day and the race increasingly tightened, the stakes are high.

Over the weekend, Clinton landed important endorsements from The Des Moines Register (Iowa) and The Concord Monitor (New Hampshire) as well as from The Boston Globe. The New York Timesreported former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is contemplating making an independent run for the White House, most likely in the event that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz land the GOP nomination and Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee.

Even President Obama weighed in, giving his take on the Democratic Party election and candidates in a candid interview with Politico published Monday.

"Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose," he said. "I think Hillary came in with the both privilege -- and burden -- of being perceived as the front-runner.... You're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven't seen before -- that's a disadvantage to her."

Tonight will be the Democratic candidates' last chance to sway Iowa voters before they head to the polls next week. Here are three things to pay attention to at tonight's town hall, which airs starting at 9:00 p.m. EST.

1. The Format

The Democrats have already met in four of the six planned presidential primary debates this election season, and in many ways, Monday's event appears to be a sort of debate add-in. In style, it will be different from showdowns past.

Each candidate will be given 30 minutes on stage at Drake University's Sheslow Auditorium to face questions from audience members as well as moderator Chris Cuomo. Sanders will appear first, followed by O'Malley and finally Clinton. They won't actually have a chance to engage with one another, so look for how they talk about one another.

Both Sanders and Clinton, who were initially reluctant to attack, have been sharpening their knives on the campaign trail. The former secretary of state has ramped up her jabs at the Vermont senator, saying she is not interested in ideas that will "never make it in the real world" in reaction to his proposal for a single-payer health care system and knocking his foreign policy credentials. Sanders, on the other hand, has said Clinton is running a "desperate" campaign and focused much of his offensive on her ties to Wall Street.

Monday's format will make interplay among the candidates a more complex task and force them to strike a balance between outlining their own ideas and contrasting themselves with the others.

2. The Electability Issue

Once considered a long-shot, Senator Sanders has proven himself a formidable opponent for Clinton. Still, many continue to question whether the self-described democratic socialist is an electable candidate and wouldn't just guarantee a victory for the GOP.

Donald Trump has said he wants to run against Sanders, who he has characterized as a "little puppy." Ohio Governor John Kasich essentially wrote Sanders off at the January 14 Republican debate. "We're going to win every state if Bernie Sanders is the nominee," he said. "That's not even an issue. And I know Bernie. And I can promise you he won't be President of the United States."

"Republicans would much rather run against Bernie Sanders and have a chance to define him from the get-go as extreme and out of touch," said Republican strategist Kevin Madden Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

On Monday, he'll have to make the case that he can, in fact, win.

Sanders has laid out his electability argument on the campaign trail, invoking his poll numbers as proof that his candidacy is legitimate. Over the weekend, his camp tweeted an infographic showing hypothetical matchups against GOP contenders that show him faring better than Clinton.

3.The O'Malley 'Factor'

Given his continually low poll numbers, it is pretty safe to assume that the chances of Governor O'Malley landing the Democratic nomination are slim-to-none. That doesn't mean he can't influence the election.

What happens to O'Malley supporters if and when he drops out of the race is most certainly on the minds of both Clinton and Sanders. According to a RealClearPolitics average of polls, the former governor boasts 2.2% support nationally and 5.8% in Iowa. While that may not be a lot, in a tight race, it can make a difference.

"The most coveted person in Iowa politics is an undecided person or the O'Malley nonviable folks," said Kevin Geiken, a Democratic strategist in Iowa, in an interview with The New York Times.

In the debate cycle, O'Malley has taking swings at both Clinton and Sanders, focusing on the former's ties to Wall Street and the latter's record on guns. In interview with Timepublished Saturday, he critiqued both of his opponents:

I think Senator Sanders would have a very hard time of working with Congress if he ever were to be elected president. I see the same sort of obstructionism, self-defeating politics for another four years. And I think as you saw in the Benghazi hearings, I think Secretary Clinton, were she president, would give license to that same behavior. I believe what's needed is someone who hasn't been part of that divided Washington.

On Monday, might he give us a clue as to which of the two he might be willing to support?
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Oasis Petroleum (OAS) are declining by 7.97% to $5.08 in mid-morning trading on Monday, as some energy and related stocks tumble due to the retreat in the price of oil.

The commodity is trading in the red as the global oversupply continues. Iraq announced today that it has been producing record amounts of the oversupplied product into the market.

Oil is reversing gains seen last week.

Crude oil (WTI) is falling by 3.26% to $31.14 per barrel this morning and Brent crude is down by 2.8% to $31.28 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index.

Iraq's oil output in December was a much as 4.13 million barrels per day, a record, Reuters reports.

"The news that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment," Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro, told Reuters.

"The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low, and on the other hand short positions are in excessive territory," van Cleef continued.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings has set a "hold" rating and grade of C- on Oasis Petroleum 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 reasonable valuation levels and expanding profit margins. But as a counter to these strengths, TheStreet Ratings also find weaknesses including generally higher debt management risk, disappointing return on equity and weak operating cash flow.

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: OAS

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NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Continental Resources (CLR) are down by 6.62% to $18.20 on Monday morning, as oil prices trade in the red today.

Crude oil (WTI) is diving by 4.38% to $30.78 per barrel this morning and Brent crude is falling by 3.92% to $30.92 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index.

The price of the commodity reversed last week's gains as the global glut continues, Reuters reports.

Iraq said today that it has been producing record-high amounts of oil into an already oversupplied market. The country's output in December was as much as 4.13 million barrels a day, Reuters added.

Additionally, a senior Iraqi official said the country may raise production even more this year.

"The news that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment," Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro, told Reuters. "The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low, and on the other hand short positions are in excessive territory."

Continental Resources is an Oklahoma City-based independent crude oil and natural gas exploration and production company.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D+.

This is driven by several weaknesses, which the team 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 it 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

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In this Dec. 9, 2015 file photo, Mark Wahlberg poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film "Daddy's Home" in London. A bottled water company owned by Sean "Diddy" Combs and Wahlberg is pledging to donate 1 million bottles of water to the residents of Flint, Mich. Aquahydrate said Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, it was sending 5,000 cases of water to Flint and would continue to provide bottles to residents until the town's water problems are solved. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP, File)
Morning commuters pass plowed snow on Wall Street in front of Federal Hall in New York's Financial District, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard face fresh challenges as the workweek begins: slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalk entrances. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry holds 7-month-old Zaiden Azar, whose mother is a foreign service officer, while surrounded by children of Embassy staff during his visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sunday. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
Mumbra is often in the news for wrong reasonscommunal tension, collapsing buildings, massive land encroachments, illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. This suburb of Thane with a sizeable Muslim population has been electing a Hindu legislator, Nationalist Congress Party's Jitendra Awhad, for more than a decade now. A few years ago, Awhad decided to build a memorial for Manish Pitambare, who died in a gun battle in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. Something which will instil secularism and nationalism in people, said Awhad. And he did something unusual. He obtained an old Vijayanta battle tank, painted it and installed it right outside the Mumbra railway station.

Why did Awhad choose a tank? His explanation cites nationalism, bravery and the sacrifice of our soldiers. Still, a tank? There is something impressive about them, he said. They are motivating and menacing at the same time. From a commoner's point of view the two adjectives capture everything that a battle tank stands for. For them, it is a symbol of military might and sheer power.

The tank was invented to break the stalemate on the western front in World War I by crossing trenches and penetrating enemy lines. The earliest example of a vehicle which had a similar function could perhaps be chariots and the Roman siege engineswheeled wooden towers which were used to destroy enemy fortifications. The origins of the tank, however, should not be traced back to siege engines or a chariot. If there was anything that performed a role similar to the modern-day tanks, it was the knight in shining armour. His armour protected him, his horse moved him swiftly and his sword provided the firepower.

These are exactly what make a battle tank uniqueit is a perfect combination of mobility, armour and firepower. In fact, two geniuses had envisioned a combat vehicle quite similar to a battle tankLeonardo da Vinci designed a wooden combat vehicle, and H.G. Wells wrote a story in The Strand Magazine in 1903 prophesying the birth of a combat vehicle.

A century before Awhad made his tank memorial in Mumbra, an Australian engineer named Lancelot de Mole submitted an idea of a tracked armoured vehicle to the British war office. It was rejected outright. Around the same time, Gunther Burstyn, an Austrian army officer, designed what he called Motorgeschutz (motor gun) using American farm tractors. It had a swivelling turret and was lightly armoured. Burstyn's prototype, however, was rejected by the Austro-Hungarian empire citing lack of funds.

The credit for invention of the tank does not go to one person. According to a New York Times report published on October 7, 1919, the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors had investigated claims of 11 inventors (12 persons, as two of them were a team) of making battle tanks. One of these 12 men was Lancelot De Mole. He, however, did not receive any award. But the commission acknowledged that his design was superior and his ideas were ahead of the times.

First among the award winners, whose claim to have invented the tank was upheld, was major-general Ernest Swinton, a Bangalore-born British army officer. He was awarded 1,000 pounds for advocating the overall concept, setting the design and overseeing the project which resulted in production of Little Willie, the first battle tank, in 1915.

Graphics: N.V. Jose

Winston Churchill, who was the first lord of admiralty during World War I, was firm in his belief that no one person could be credited with invention of the tank. Churchill was right. The tank was an idea born out of sheer necessityresulting from carnage in trench warfare on the western front in World War I, and nobody knew it better than Churchill.

WHERE THE CONNECTING trench joined in, an unfortunate fellow was stretched out, decapitated by a shell, just as if he had been guillotined. Beside him, another was frightfully mutilated... I saw, as if hallucinating, a pile of corpses... they had started to bury in the trench itself... 'There is no one here but the dead', I exclaimed.

These lines are from Poilu, written by corporal Louis Barthas, who served in the French army. He maintained a notebook while serving in the Great War and that notebook became Poilu, one of the best works to emerge from the war. The book captures horrifying life in trenches across the western front.

Trench warfare could blunt any offensive. The outcome was deadlock, particularly on the western front in France, with neither side being able to break through other's defences by the traditional massed infantry attacks, writes military historian Richard Ogorkiewicz in his book, Tank: 100 Years of Evolution. The immediate problem became that of finding a way that would enable infantry to continue to attack in the face of machine guns and barbed wires. In response to this came the proposals for armoured assault vehicles that could pave the way for infantry by attacking enemy machine guns and by crushing the barbed wires.

When these proposals were mooted, tanks were envisioned in a supporting roleto bridge trenches, crush barbed wires and neutralise machine gun nests so that the infantry could launch large-scale attacks. The generals conducting the war wanted the tank, but they wanted it to play second fiddle to the infantry.

Tanks entered the battlefield on September 15, 1916, at the Battle of Somme. Of 49 tanks introduced, only 36 saw action and just nine succeeded in crossing the 'no man's land' to attack German lines. The first tank ever to fire on enemy positions was commanded by a British Jew named Basil Henriques. His machine reached the frontline 20 minutes earlier than expected and he just kept going, writes Patrick Wright in Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine, a brilliant work on military and cultural history of tank as weapon of war and dominance.

ON THE DAY the British tanks first appeared on the battlefield, the psychological impact they made was immense. The German infantry was simply stunned. It was the German heavy artillery which reacted by pounding these new machines.

The Battle of Cambrai saw the first ever mass use of tanks. German general Erich Ludendorff described August 8, 1918, after an immensely successful tank attack by the enemies, as a black day in the history of Germany. It was a clear pointer to which way the tanks turned the war.

In the 1920s, military establishments in Britain and France, two nations that effectively deployed tanks against Germany in World War I, were reluctant to accept that the sun had risen on armoured warfare. A handful of men, like Major-General J.F.C Fuller, Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, General Jean Eugene Estienne, tried their best to convince the top brass of the British and French defence establishments that the future wars would be decided by tanks and mechanised forces.

Germany and Soviet Russia, on the other hand, had slowly woken up to the opportunities that tank forces could open up in the battlefield. With the Treaty of Versailles (which ended the war between Germany and the Allied Powers) depriving Germany of having access to tanks, the Reichswehr (military organisation) of the Weimar Republic (which replaced the German empire) relied on the Soviets, and a secret tank warfare school was jointly opened at Kazan in the USSR in 1926. Young German officers who showed interest in mechanised and mobile warfare were trained here.

A wave of reformation was secretly under way in the German Army at this time. It was initiated by its visionary chief Hans von Seeckt, who believed that Germany's tiny Reichswehra force of one lakh soldiersmust be open to embrace every possible modern military thought. Born out of this was officers like General Oswald Lutz and Heinz Guderian who creatively used their postings in motorised transport supply units to create dummy tanks. When Adolf Hitler first saw Guderian's real tanks at a parade in 1934, so impressed was the Fuehrer that he kept saying, This is what I want, this is what I will have.

It was in World War II that tanks became barons of battlefield. If the innovative sloping armour and the 76mm gun made the Soviet T-34 the best practical tank on the eastern front, the 88mm gun and 100mm thick armour made the German Tiger the mightiest.

Tanks clashed in the battles of France, Tobruk, El Alamein, Raseinai, Dubno-Brody, Stalingrad, Kharkov and Kursk-Prokhorovka. At the beginning of their attack on France in May 1940, Germans moved panzer divisions through Ardennes forest. Forests are a hostile terrain for tanks, but the persisting Germans reached the English Channel coastline of France and defeated the French. Interestingly, 18th Cavalry, an Indian armoured regiment, was at the vanguard defending Tobruk in north Africa against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's onslaught in 1942.

Graphics: Binesh Sreedharan

Six years later, India did something astonishing to defend its territory against Pakistani aggression. On November 1, 1948, M5 Stuart light tanks from the 7th Cavalry regiment were dismantled and airlifted to Zoji La pass in the Himalayas11,000 feet above sea levelby General K.S. Thimayya. He led the battle from a lead tank and recaptured the crucial pass from Pakistani infiltrators. The greatest Indian strategic success by employment of tanks was the recapture of the otherwise impregnable, 11,578 feet high, Zoji La pass, which enabled them to relieve Leh and recapture vast bulk of Ladakh. These areas, without Zoji La, were for all purposes lost to Indians. Today, the Pakistani army is still paying the price for loss of Zoji La with approximately three infantry brigades committed in Pakistan-held Kashmir opposite Indian-held Ladakh, writes Agha Humayun Amin, a former Pakistan army tank corps major, in his book Handling of Tanks in Indo-Pak Wars.

RECAPTURE OF ZOJI La with the help of tanks was flashed across newspapers in India. This, perhaps, was the moment when a battle tank as a symbol of valour entered Indian imagination and consciousness. The use of tanks at Zoji La, use of tanks of Central India Horse in recapture of Jhangar and Rajouri in 1948, positioning of AMX 13 tanks of 8th Cavalry at Changu and Nathu La and airlifting tanks of 20 Lancers to Chushul in 1962 were bold moves that paid handsome dividends to the Army. These examples have won accolades all over the world and speak volumes of the brilliant planning and audaciousness of our commanders, said Lt-Gen (retired) Anil Malik, a veteran of the armoured corps.

Every society has, and needs, such symbols of valour. Rana Pratap's famed horse, Chetak, and Tipu Sultan's mechanical toy of a tiger slaying a British soldier, are classic examples of animals and machines becoming symbols of valour. With the recapture of Zoji La, the tank became the latest symbol of valour for the newly-born Indian nation.

Lt-Col Ardeshir Tarapore became another symbol of courage and leadership after the 1965 war with Pakistan. Tarapore, who died in the war, was awarded ParamVir Chakra. He led his regiment, the Poona Horse, from the front, and the cupola of his Centurion tank, named Kooshab, was always open, as he would be standing in it. Tarapore was hit by shrapnel in the initial days of the war. He bandaged it and went back into action. A few days later, he was hit by a shell while standing outside his tank.

Another famed armoured regiment, 3rd Cavalry, knocked out 103 Pakistani Patton tanks in the Battle of Asal Uttar in the 1965 war. Bhikiwind village in Punjab had so many conked-out Pattons that it was called Patton Nagar.

In the 1971 war, Second Lieutenant Arun Khetrapal from the Poona Horse lost his life battling Pakistani tanks in the Battle of Basantar. Barely 22, Khetrapal is the youngest recipient of Param Vir Chakra. Lt-Col Hanut Singh, who commanded the Poona Horse at that time, received Maha Vir Chakra.

Khetrapal had been asked to leave for a training course at Armoured Corps Centre and School in Ahmednagar just before the war started. But he told Hanut Singh about his desire to fight the war along with the regiment. The commandant conducted a course similar to the training course for Khetrapal in the regiment. Khetrapal passed the course with flying colours and Hanut Singh let him command troops in the battlefield.

According to Malik, the Pakistani armour was quantitively and qualitatively superior to the Indian armour in the 1965 war, yet the Indian armour could hold its own. The reasons can best be attributed to three major factors: leadership, good training and high level of motivation. Superior training, competence in handling the equipment and high level of motivation of the soldiers are hallmarks which the Indian Army takes pride in and are paramount factors in the success achieved in 1965, said Malik, who was commandant of Armoured Corps Centre and School.

Another major factor, said Malik, was the imaginative employment of the armoured force. At Khemkaran [in Punjab], the Indian Army flooded the sugarcane fields and thus managed to lure the Pakistani tanks inside a horseshoe-like deployment and was able to decimate them. Most Pakistani tanks were slowed down and got caught in the muddy slush, he said.

The 1960s also witnessed a race to design a universal tank or what is now called a main battle tank (MBT). The tanks of World War II were divided into three categorieslight, medium and heavy. While the light tanks became obsolete by the 1960s, the heavy ones turned out to be costly and difficult to move around. So, it was the medium tank that eventually evolved into an MBT.

India had been producing Vijayanta MBTs since the mid-1960s, based on a licensed design of British Vickers Mk I at Heavy Vehicles Factory in Avadi near Chennai. After the 1971 war, a programme was launched to make an indigenous MBT. The project suffered long delays and cost escalation, and the first batch of Arjun MBT was handed over to the Army's 43rd Armoured Regiment in 2004. The latest regiment to be equipped with the Arjun is the 75th Armoured Regiment.

The Arjun is a promising piece of equipment. We, however, need an affordable MBT which can be moved and deployed without difficulty and restriction across the board, said a retired lieutenant-general.

Major General (retired) Rajan Aney, who was additional director general (combat vehicles) for the Arjun project, said Arjun had a lot of good points. "But it is too big and too unwieldy for our requirement. The big question is its tactical mobility. I think it was more of a political commitment than the Army's requirement. Since a lot of funds had been channeled into the project, it was decided to induct 124 Arjun tanks in two regiments, he said.

NO OTHER ARMY has used battle tanks as effectively as Israel's. Its tactics in the Six-Day War of 1967 and Yom Kippur War of 1973 are taught in military academies across the world. One of the fine examples of battlefield deception was destruction of the Egyptian armoured division in a night raidIsraeli commanders knocked off Egyptian T-62 tanks by recognising a peculiar sound from their engines. Israel's own Merkava is one of the best MBTs.

Even as battle tanks were being hailed as symbols of valour in India and Israel, in Europe they had transformed into symbols of terror. German panzers were flag-bearers of the Nazi regime and intimidation. Later, the Soviets crushed civilian unrest in Czechoslovakia in 1968 by fielding tank units on the streets of Prague. A defining image of tanks as monstrosity against civilians was captured when Wang Weilin stood in front of a column of 18 Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Never before did the giant machine look so ineffective and the state so helpless.
While there is outrage among Hebron residents and supporters following the erev Shabbos eviction of residents of the newly-acquired buildings in the community, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given his total backing to Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who ordered the eviction.

While Hebron community leaders insist the building was legally purchased as a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Prime Minister and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon insist the legality of the purchase and transfer of ownership have not yet been settled. Mr. Netanyahu added that while he supports continued settlement, he added we all must respect the law and in this case he explained, the Jewish community did not obtain all the necessary permits to permit their entry into the building.

Security forces moved in on erev Shabbos 12 Shevat and removed about 200 residents who moved into the two buildings that were recently purchased.

Deputy Minister (Likud) Ayoub Kara, MK (Likud) Oren Hazan and MK (Bayit Yehudi) Betzalel Smotrich have announced that until such time the Jews are permitted to return to the buildings which have been acquired legally, they will not follow coalition discipline and this will be evident in Knesset votes. In addition, there is mounting pressure on Bayit Yehudi leader Minister Naftali Bennett, calling on him to abstain from participating in any and all votes in the coalition until the Jews are permitted to return to the buildings.

Absorption Minister Zeev Elkin condemned the eviction, calling for an urgent meeting of the Security Cabinet to discuss the eviction.

Despite the mounting pressure from coalition partners, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon insists he is simply enforcing the law, nothing more. He explains the persons evicted failed to obtain the necessary permits to enter the structures in question.

In an effort to allay fears among right-wing politicians, the Prime Minister at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, 14 Shevat, added that once all of the paperwork is in order, he will permit the evicted persons to return to the newly-acquired building. Mr. Netanyahu stated, The government supports settlement at any time, especially now when it is under terrorist assault and is taking a courageous and determined stand in the face of terrorist attacks. With the same breath, we are a nation of law and we must respect the law. As soon as the procedures regarding the purchase are approved, we will allow the two homes in Hebron to be populated, as indeed occurred in similar instances in the past. The process of checking is starting today; we will do it as quickly as possible. If, in any case, it is not completed within a week, I will see to it that the cabinet receives a status report.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
17:04: A stabbing attack occurred in Beit Choron a short time ago. According to EMS personnel operating on the scene, two persons have been wounded.

The attack reportedly occurred inside a grocery store in the yishuv. A male and female are wounded. At least one of the wounded is reported in moderate-to-serious condition.

Beit Choron is on Highway 443 not far from Givat Zeev. At present it is reported the attacker has fled and a chase is underway.

Channel 2 correspondent Moshe Nussbaum states with caution that the stabbing may have been the result of a dispute, not necessarily a terror attack. EMS personnel on the scene report both victims are conscious and alert.

17:15: The following update is provided by a Shai Police spokesman: The preliminary probe of the stabbing reveals two attackers entered the grocery store and began stabbing a woman and fled. They stabbed a second person too. A security officials neutralized them outside the store. The woman appears to be in moderate condition with stab wounds to her upper body. The male sustained light wounds.

17:20: MDA UPDATE: One victim is a female about 40 who is now unconscious and listed in serious condition. The second victim, about 58, is in moderate condition.

Channel 2 correspondent Moshe Nussbaum reporting both terrorists have been shot dead.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photos: Media Resource Group)
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Even prosecutors agree that rookie New York police officer Peter Liang didnt mean to shoot and kill Akai Gurley in a pitch black stairwell in 2014.

But Liang will go on trial this week for manslaughter anyway in a prosecution that stands in contrast to other cases around the country in which officers intentionally used deadly force against other unarmed black men but escaped criminal charges. Opening statements are set for Monday in state court in Brooklyn, where Liang is expected to take the witness stand and claim he fired his weapon by accident.

Defense attorney Robert Brown has called the shooting a terrible tragedy  not a crime.

But advocates for stricter police accountability see the second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and other charges brought by Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson as justified. They say the case offers a counterpoint to decisions by grand juries declining to indict white police officers in other killings, including those of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

The case is a good sign the DAs office is moving in the right direction, said Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, senior community organization for the NAACPs Legal Defense and Educational Fund. But we have a long way to go.

Added Gurleys aunt, Hertencia Peterson: This is for everyone who has not yet gotten justice.

Chinese-American supporters, however, say Liang has been made a scapegoat for past injustices.

He just happens to be a very convenient person to go after, said Phil Gim, whos helped organize rallies supporting Liang.

Liang had been an officer for 18 months on the night of Nov. 20, 2014, when he and a partner were patrolling a Brooklyn housing project amid reports of a spike in violent crime.

Liang had his gun drawn as they descended onto an eighth-floor landing in a stairwell where the lights had burned out, prosecutors said. At the same time, the 28-year-old Gurley and a friend he was visiting entered the door into the seventh-floor landing. Liang  his gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right  fired a shot. The bullet ricocheted and struck Gurley in the chest, who made it down two flights of stairs before collapsing.

According to grand jury testimony by Liangs partner, Liang repeatedly told him, It went off by accident and fretted that he would be fired. The two then bickered for at least two minutes about which one should call a supervisor to report the discharge.

Prosecutors allege Liang acted recklessly in his handling of his weapon and that he and his partner did nothing to help Gurley, even after they knew he had been shot. Court papers describe the pair walking around the dying victim and down a flight of stairs as the weeping friend tried to give him CPR.

Prosecutors also have accused Liang of violating New York Police Department policies instructing officers who draw their guns to keep their finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.

We dont believe that Officer Liang intended to kill Mr. Gurley, Thompson said last year while announcing the charges. But he had his finger on the trigger and he fired the gun.

Liang shot his weapon, he added, when there was no threat.

The defense has suggested that Liangs gun was defective and contends that he was too distraught to help Gurley. A supervisor who arrived at the scene has described the officer as being pale, unsteady on his feet and incoherent.

The slaying recalled two others by officers patrolling Brooklyn housing projects  the shootings of 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury on a rooftop in 2004 and of 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. while carrying a toy gun. Neither officer was charged.

Gurleys family has brought a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of his estate and his young daughter.

He had planned to move the child and her mother with him to Florida, where his own mother lives, before his life was cut short, his aunt said.

Its how Akai was killed thats impossible to accept, Peterson said. Were still in shock.

(AP)
In a disturbing turn of events Jonathan Pollard was not able to speak to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to deliver his first speech in 30 years. He was unable to present his address at this historic event because of his Draconian parole conditions. Following a leak to the Forward prior to this private, off the record meeting, Jonathans attorneys cautioned him that he is not a free person at this time and that anything he may say at the event will be leaked and could be used against him, no matter how inaccurate it is, or how distorted.

Jonathan was introduced as the keynote speaker this morning but made only brief remarks of thanks and introduction, explaining that the leak to the Forward had forced him to stand down. He then handed his notes to his wife Esther and stood at her side as she delivered what would have been his points. A new confidential document (a letter which was hand-delivered to President Obama by Israeli President Ruby Rivlin) was revealed during her speech and used to flesh out the current situation in which Pollard is not only prevented from working and from exercising his religious rights, but also effectively prevents him from ever reintegrating into society.

Participants of the Conference were deeply dismayed to learn that even if all of the severe Parole restrictions were removed Pollard still has 15 years (the balance of a 45 year life sentence) hanging over his head, and he will always be at risk of being thrown back into prison, for any reason, including political ones regarding Israel. In Esther Pollards presentation, Jonathan Pollards parole conditions and the unjust restrictions were fully explained and a lot of myths were exploded including the media buzz claiming that Jonathan has a new Shabbat observant GPS device. This is simply not true.

Participants were cautioned not to take photographs at this private meeting. The attached photo of the Pollards was taken during a coffee break. It is the property of Justice4JP and may be freely reprinted with photo credit.

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
Shareholders in Britains grocers have had a rough ride over the past few years.

Fierce competition from discounters Aldi and Lidl and changing shopping habits in favour of convenience stores and home deliveries have squeezed profits and sent shares tumbling.

Investors have been waiting for the sector to bottom out so they can pile in and enjoy the rebound.

Research suggests Morrisons, the UKs fourth largest supermarket chain, may have turned a corner. Its shares have sunk 40pc over the past five years, rival Tesco has fallen 61 per cent and Sainsburys has slipped 38 per cent in comparison.

But analysts at broker Shore Capital reckon there is a potentially exciting outlook and a sea change in prospects at Morrisons.

Hard times: But research suggests Morrisons, the UK's fourth largest supermarket chain, may have turned a corner

It says a new management team has had early success with improved trading, and the firm has a strong financial position as well as owning farms and abattoirs giving it more control over the products its sells.

However, shares, in the supermarket giant fell 1.2p to 160p yesterday as it was dragged down by problems engulfing market leader Tesco. Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald suggested Tesco is about to be implicated in a criminal fraud investigation that could mean huge fines.

This sent shares in Tesco down 3 per cent or 4.85p to 155.7p. Sainsburys was also down, falling 2p to 231.6p

But it is a different story at Morrisons where it is moving beyond past troubles.

Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, said initiatives aimed at turning the business around seem to be gaining traction.

He said: The last 12 months have been one of considerable frustration, heavy lifting but also achievement to our minds. There is a clear focus upon Morrisons customers and what the business can control in making that experience better.

The key has been to improve the experience for shoppers within its main chain of supermarkets, and that has meant dropping prices, sprucing up tired stores and setting itself apart from rivals.

This is being done through what it calls Market Street  its army of butchers, bakers and fishmongers who work with the fresh produce that come from suppliers as well as its own goods.

Morrisons is also the only grocer who sources and processes much of the fresh foods found on its shelves.

On a financial level the grocer is also different to rivals in owning a higher proportion of the freehold of its stores which means it has valuable property which underpins the financial position of the business.

It has sold its M-Local convenience business and also closed around 5 per cent of under performing shops.

This is the heavy lifting to which Black refers and it is this, combined with sales that have responded to improvements on the shop floor, that point to the beginnings of a turn around.

However, investing in the grocery sector is for the brave. Morrisons also comes with its own unique problems. It does not have much of a presence in the fast growing convenience sector and is behind its rivals in selling groceries online. It does not have much of a clothing offer and has no stores abroad.

On the broader market it was a fall in metals prices that hit the mining stocks while the banks were hit by renewed concerns over regulatory fines. This caused the FTSE 100 index of leading stocks to close down 23.01 points at 5877.

Brent Crude also fell, down by more than a dollar to $30.88 as Opec, the oil cartel, called for broader co-operation to help prices rise.

Germanys Dax and the Cac 40 in France were both slightly lower.

It was over supply in the commodities markets that hurt miners. BHP Billiton fell 9.1p to 639.8p, Antofagasta was down 9p to 363.2p, and Rio Tinto dropped 44.5p to 1609p.

The banks were lower over fears they would have to put aside billions of pounds more to cover more mis-selling of payment protection insurance.

Lloyds Banking Group was 3.72p lower at 63.14p, after JP Morgan cut its target price for the stock, Barclays was down 8.9p to 181.5p, Royal Bank of Scotland fell 10.8p to 251.3p and HSBC fell 6.1p to 473.5p.

The biggest faller on the FTSE was another retailer, B&Q-owner Kingfisher, whose plan to revamp the business was poorly received by the market.

The firm, which also owns Castorama in France, has different own brands in each of the chains its runs and wants to unify this. It also faces competition from Australian firm Wesfarmers who bought UK rival Homebase recently. Kingfisher lost more than 6pc, closing at 323.9p.

The biggest risers in the FTSE 100 were Glencore, up 2.27p at 80.85p, Sage, up 13.5p at 568p, Berkeley Group, up 82p at 3547p, and Persimmon up 37p at 1948p.

Shares in technology recruiter Interquest Group rose 1p to 82.5p following a positive trading update in which it said it was on course to meet full-year targets.
Investors have reason to be impatient with Britains pharmaceutical champion GlaxoSmithKline. In spite of the boast that it has the best pipeline of new drugs of any of the big global pharma groups, it has struggled in recent times.

Earnings per share have been uneven. But after two better quarters it is forecasting a stronger 2016. Share price performance has been, however, unimpressive and it still has to lift the cloud of a probe by the Serious Fraud Office over historic bribery allegations.

Under-performance has attracted the attention of the UKs most garlanded investment guru Neil Woodford.

Key sector: Pharmaceuticals is one of the few areas where Britains competitive edge in global markets is well established and GSK and AstraZeneca are flagships for British based R&D

It has also aroused the unwanted attentions of an American activist investor Och-Ziff which, with a 0.5 per cent stake, scrapes into the top 40 shareholders. Both argue GSK is too complicated and would be better broken down.

Woodford wants to see four separate enterprises: consumer health care, vaccines, HIV treatments and ethical drugs and the R&D which goes with it.

There is also a secondary plot. It is argued that chief executive Sir Andrew Witty has made a Horlicks of management and new chairman Sir Philip Hampton (fresh from RBS) may have to exercise his right to displace him and finance director Simon Dingemans formerly a Goldman Sachs alumnus.

It is almost a decade since Witty took the helm and it is my understanding that succession planning is already under way.

All of this is fair game and activist investors are often good at identifying underlying problems as we have seen at firms as different as fund manager Alliance Trust and Rolls-Royce.

But it should be noted that the big beast GSK investors are BlackRock and Legal & General and they will be among the final arbiters of GSKs future.

From the vantage point of UKplc nothing could be more damaging than a full scale break-up of GSK.

Pharmaceuticals is one of the few areas where Britains competitive edge in global markets is well established and GSK and AstraZeneca are flagships for British based R&D.

They have also become significant investors in bio-tech ensuring the UK has a foothold in new medical breakthroughs.

The only obvious split might be a sell-off of GSKs Horlicks-to-Panadol consumer products division.

Even that has a useful purpose in that it evens out some of the cyclicality that comes with the development of new medicines.

One only has to look back at the fate of Cadbury Schweppes to see the danger of break-up. Initially it was persuaded by activist investor Nelson Peltz to float Schweppes in 2008.

It became a sitting duck two years later for Kraft to buy the rest. Britains last large-scale chocolatier, Cadbury ended up in Kraft offshoot Mondelez which has been upsetting consumers ever since with its whimsical changes to chocolate eggs and Dairy Milk.

Broken into several pieces, GSK would be a plaything for investment banks which would end up merging the parts into Merck, Pfizer, Reckitt or anyone else they could entice into a deal.

It would be case of immediate gratification for investors (and executives who would see options vest) and a longer-term setback for R&D and the countrys ability to turn its investment in science based universities and R&D grants into economic gain for the nation.

GSK needs a big balance sheet and strong cash flow to remain cutting edge so as not to end up a bit player in a foreign owned, non-tax paying health sciences conglomerate.

Staying put

HSBCs review of its future domicile has paid off handsomely. In spite of the damaging disclosures of bad goings-on at its Geneva private bank it has been hugely successful in squeezing concessions out of the Treasury.

The super tax on bank assets was abolished so as to free HSBCs overseas assets from the net. More recently an investigation into Geneva was vanished.

All this is very helpful, but was it really ever going to move? The US authorities were unlikely to have rolled out the red carpet after the banks culpability for money laundering and sanctions busting.

A return to its native Hong Kong would mean swapping the UK enforcers for the Beijing thought police who have disappeared booksellers, brokers and journalists.

It is not clear that such a complex bank would be welcome in Canada. France might be an option for the EU regulatory passport. But would be an unlikely choice for tax reasons.

That leaves good old Blighty and the benign interference of the Bank of England as the most likely choice.

Opening Gates

George Osbornes proposal to partner with Bill Gates and spend 500million a year over the next five years to combat malaria in Africa is an excellent way of spending the foreign aid budget.

But it is not new. Similar joint initiatives with Gates, with less cash on the table, were launched by Gordon Brown as chancellor in 2004 and again as prime minister in 2008.
A group of 121 MPs last weekend called for telecoms regulator Ofcom to make BT Group split off its Openreach business to address the 'dire' state of broadband in the UK.

The 'Broadbad' report by the British Infrastructure Group of MPs claimed that consumers and businesses suffer from Openreach's failure to invest in broadband services, leaving millions with slow connections.

The report of the group, led by ex-Tory party chairman Grant Shapps, added that despite receiving 1.7billion in government money, BT's Openreach service had only partially extended superfast broadband.

Underperformer: BT's Openreach service has only partially extended superfast broadband in the UK. It is believed that 400,000 small and medium-sized companies still do not have access to superfast broadband

Mr Shapps said the under-investment stemming from the 'natural monopoly' of BT and Openreach was holding the UK back and costing the economy 11billion a year.

It is believed that 400,000 small and medium-sized companies still do not have access to superfast broadband and that more than five million people were receiving unacceptable download speeds.

The MPs said 'little' would change unless BT and Openreach were formally separated, as at present Openreach 'makes vast profits and finds little reason to invest in the network, install new lines or even fix faults in a properly timely manner'.

They added: 'We believe that Britain should be leading the world in digital innovation. Yet instead we have a monopoly company clinging to outdated copper technology with no proper long-term plan for the future.'

Openreach, a subsidiary of BT - which is currently returning to the mobile telecoms world with the purchase of operator EE - owns the copper and fibre networks that serve rivals like Sky and TalkTalk as well as BT's own residential and business customers.

Warning: MP Grant Shapps said the under-investment stemming from the 'natural monopoly' of BT and Openreach was holding the UK back and costing the economy 11billion a year

Gavin Pattison, BT's chief executive, has said over 90 per cent of UK premises could access superfast broadband.

He added that selling off Openreach would 'create huge uncertainty and create a weaker company that ultimately could be vulnerable to takeover.'

He said that copper cables were not an outdated technology, with Openreach now testing internet speeds of 500 megabits per second using copper.

A spokeswoman for the government division responsible for broadband speeds added that the report was 'entirely misleading' and said the superfast broadband rollout would cover 95 per cent of the country by 2017.

Next month Ofcom is expected to make its official recommendation on whether to break BT's fibre dominance by recommending a formal separation of Openreach.
GlaxoSmithKline has kicked off the search for a chief executive to succeed embattled Sir Andrew Witty.

With the drugs giant facing pressure from powerful shareholders, it is understood the board has started succession planning.

Witty, who was paid 3.9million in 2014, joined Glaxo in 1985 and took over as chief executive in May 2008 after Jean-Pierre Garnier retired.

Under pressure: GlaxoSmithKline boss is looking for a new boss to replace Sir Andrew Witty (pictured)

His future is in the hands of chairman Sir Philip Hampton, the former Royal Bank of Scotland chairman who took the helm in May.

The London arm of Och-Ziff Capital Management, the activist hedge fund headquartered in New York, has urged Hampton to shake up the board since building a 0.5 per cent stake in Glaxo.

Och-Ziff is said to believe it is when, not if Wittys tenure comes to an end and wants a plan, or road map, put in place in the coming months.

The pressure from Och-Ziff follows calls from Neil Woodford, one of Britains most influential investors, to break up Glaxo.

Woodford, a top 20 shareholder in Glaxo through Woodford Investment Management, this month said it should be split into four separate companies.

Glaxo shares, up 8.5p to 1400p yesterday, are down nearly 7 per cent in the last 12 months but up 22 per cent since Witty took over nearly eight years ago.

The firm has struggled in recent years amid the decline of its asthma drug, Advair.

There are tentative signs, however, that a turnaround is under way and earnings will bounce back this year.

Management is pinning its hopes on the companys lung drugs Breo, Anoro and Incruse as well as from its HIV business, a star performer thanks in part to Tivicay, a new antiretroviral.
Tesco is set to be hit with 500million of fines as bosses face being named and shamed today over an accounting scandal that has rocked the supermarket.

The first of three investigations into Tesco is due to report this morning. Regulator the Groceries Code Adjudicator will reveal how the grocer mistreated its suppliers.

The probes, which include others by the Serious Fraud Office and the accountancy watchdog Financial Reporting Council, relate to a 326million accounting black hole that plunged the group into crisis last year. In April Tesco reported a staggering 6.4billion loss.

Probes: Tesco has been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, the Groceries Code Adjudicator and the Financial Reporting Council over a 326million accounting black hole that plunged the group into crisis last year

Investigators have been looking into claims that payments made by suppliers to the chain were used to prop up profits and to what extent senior management at the firmm may have cooked the books.

It is alleged suppliers would make payments to secure better positioning of their products on promotion within the supermarkets shops and that the timing of these payments was manipulated to inflate Tescos profits.

A second investigation by the Serious Fraud Office is also expected to report back. This could see senior bosses at Tesco charged.

Last night City experts were predicting huge fines from the investigations could total as much as 500million.

Yesterday a retail expert at broker Cantor Fitzgerald warned Tesco investors that the grocer could be fined 1 per cent or more of its UK grocery sales or 350million on 35billionn of sales.

Individual prosecutions of directors of the company involved and punitive fines by the SFO could mean the total could be as much as 500million.

Tescos shares fell more than 3 per cent to 155.7p on the news yesterday.

In a note entitled A Question of Gross Misconduct, Cantors Mike Dennis said the scope of the fraud is far greater and we believe covers more categories than first suggested.

He estimates supplier cash payments grew by 1.7billion over the last five years to 2.4billion by February 2014 and accounted for 30 per cent of Tescos total cash profit.

Dennis warned the outcomes of the probes will help the case for a shareholder group that is seeking compensation from the share price collapse of Tesco.

Tesco Shareholder Claims Limited (TSC) launched proceedings last March, claiming for between 50p and 70p per share due to the collapse in its share price.

If they were successful the claim could run into billions.

The case is supported by the leading litigation firm Scott + Scott, which brought a similar case against Tesco in the US. In terms of legal costs the members of the TSC will not have to contribute unless the claim is successful.

The grocery adjudicator Christine Tacon began her investigation into the grocer in June 2013, when the GCA was created.

Last year Tacon said she had formed a reasonable suspicion that the retailer had breached the Groceries Supply Code of Practice.

It the most serious cases it can name and shame bosses at fault, and impose fines. The SFO probe was launched in October 2014 and is due to report back soon.

The SFO would need to launch a criminal trial, which could lead to prison terms for anyone convicted of fraud.
Washington State and southern Brtish Columbia have experienced a very wet fall so far, with the atmospheric river of last weekend causing su...
Cap cut: Chancellor George Osborne

Drastically lower limits on pension savings are being considered by the Government.

Treasury officials are examining cutting the lifetime allowance to 750,000 and reducing the amount that can be put away each year.

The taskforce has been charged with bringing down the 34billion annual cost of pension perks.

On the table are plans to restrict annual contributions to just 10,000  compared with 40,000 now.

Experts warn that such a 'terrifying' move would hit millions of prudent workers on modest salaries. Those who break the new limits would be hit with a tax charge of 55 per cent.

Malcolm McLean, of actuaries Barnett Waddingham, said: 'The Government says these changes are all about simplifying the system but in fact it is about bringing in more money. If this is introduced it will hit many more workers  some of them on ordinary salaries.

'People don't know where they are when it comes to putting money away into a pension any more. I don't understand the need to penalise them for saving for their old age.'

The Government has launched a wide-ranging consultation into cutting pension tax relief. Last week Money Mail launched a major campaign, Save our Pensions, to get the Chancellor to think again.

Civil servants are examining a range of radical options, including a flat rate of tax relief of between 20 per cent and 33 per cent. This would mean every 1 paid into a pension costs a higher rate tax payer more than a basic rate tax payer. Another option involves scrapping the current system altogether and replacing pensions with something like an Isa, where contributions are paid from taxed income but money in retirement is tax free.

The Mail can reveal that the Treasury is also considering a dramatic two-pronged approach that could snare millions of middle-class workers.

Insiders say up to eight million people with final salary pensions would have the amount they could put away over a lifetime reduced from 1million to anything between 750,000 and 800,000.

Such a cut could hit workers on modest salaries who have already made hefty contributions into a pension, such as junior doctors, senior nurses and teachers.

It could also hit the two million private sector employees in the last remaining open final salary company schemes.

These workers are able to build up a substantial pension pot quickly because their employers contribute generous sums and payouts are not hit by stock market swings.

Warnings: Experts warn that the proposed moves would hit millions of prudent workers on modest salaries

According to Tilney BestInvest, a 40-year-old earning 40,000, with an existing final salary pension pot of 130,000 would hit a 750,000 limit by the time they hit retirement. This is if they and their employer contribute 15 per cent of salary between them and their pension received 5 per cent annual investment returns.

It is understood that the Treasury is also considering creating a separate system for workers in private stock market-linked schemes.

These will no longer have curbs on the amount that can put into a pension over a lifetime. But there could be onerous restrictions on the amount that can be contributed to a nest egg in a single year.

This figure is currently 40,000 but insiders say the Treasury is considering slashing the annual limit to 20,000 and potentially as low as 10,000. Experts say such a shake-up would hit self-employed workers who pay in large amounts when their profits increase. In addition it would penalise middle-aged savers who have previously been unable to afford to pay large amounts into a pension because of responsibilities, such as a family or a mortgage.

They would effectively be barred from making up shortfalls.

Gary Smith, of Tilney BestInvest, said: 'If the Government was to proceed with these reductions it would be terrifying. It would make it very difficult for individuals to generate the level of fund values required to provide a worthwhile income in retirement.'

Chancellor George Osborne is cutting the lifetime pensions cap to 1million from April.

Back in 2012, the allowance stood at 1.8million. Officials insist only the wealthiest have been affected by the change.

A Treasury spokesman said: 'The Government launched a wide-ranging consultation on the system of pensions tax relief last summer.


Sir,



Alas, alas, and ooh alas! Inyandza leyo nine bakaNgwane! May the Swazi nation finally raise their alarm to His Majesty the King though it may be said it was not done in our Swazi culture and customs but we finally have no other option. If one is in a burning house one is not only obliged to only exit through the door but is bound to exit through any opening with no one to question as to how one got out. Really when will it ever stop, who shall finally come to the rescue of Swazis from the looting of their scarce and diminishing resources to a few elite.



Surely I take it that Swazis have been taken as the worst fools. Really where are these circulars taking the Swazi nation to?

Which other prime minister ever lived lavishly with circulars as this one?

But why this greed and not to want anyone to nibble even one fig?



We surely are proud for every Swazi who has invested their wealth correctly but not at the expense of the Swazi nation.

We say down with white collar corruption down.



My last word is, one may hoard and amass all the riches there are in this world but the demeaning factor is that you will never carry it to your graves. Looking at the circulars that have been created, how much could have been used to enhance the pittance and lives of the elderly and disabled.



To this day it has become a pie beyond the skies as to where to make a circular that can enhance the elderly and disabled pittances. All that is earthly will be left on this earth.

The riches you are hoarding today and not willing a single poor person, elderly, disabled and destitute to nibble a bit will finally be left above your bones and may be eaten by the very same people while you toss and turn (not resting) in your tomb and finally have to answer before your Lord your God who will tell you I was hungry and I was never fed, I was destitute and never got shelter, I worked hard and was deprived of my wages.



May the Swazi nation cry out loud inyandza leyo Wena Waphakati for there is no one else to take us out of this quagmire of white collar looting; otherwise it will turn out to be the stones that will finally cry out.

I would be the most hurt if this one may not be published for the sake of the suffering Swazis.



I surely am prepared for any eventuality that could happen to me for I know what type of mettle the person I am dealing with is made of.



Joecking M. Dlamini
MBABANE  The senior manager at FINCORP who was accused of having demanded sexual intercourse and intimate hugs from a junior officer has been found guilty of sexual harassment.



Bhekumusa Nxumalo was found guilty after the conclusion of his disciplinary hearing, which had dragged for over a year.

The verdict wherein Nxumalo was found guilty was delivered on Friday.



Nxumalo is the Branch Administrator at First Finance, which is one of the business entities under FINCORP. FINCORP is the Swaziland Development Finance Corporation.

The junior staffer was once accused of having exaggerated the sexual harassment claims but the independent chairman found that Nxumalo was guilty of same.



The alleged sexual harassment by the senior manager on junior staffer is alleged to have started around 2011. He is alleged to have on several occasions sexually harassed one Cindy Dlamini, who is employed as a Data Capture Officer.

It was reported that Nxumalo did not only sexually harass Dlamini at the workplace but also went to the extent of visiting her at her place of abode, where he allegedly made sexual advances.

Amidst reporting the grievance, Dlamini, who was based in Mbabane, was transferred to Nhlaangano.



Dlamini alleged that Nxumalo would time and again exhibit his failure to toe the line in so far as employer/employee relations were concerned, by forcing himself upon her in the following manner: demanded intimate hugs and that she kiss him in the office.

Giving a brief background of the matter, Dlamini stated that on or about 2012, she approached Nxumalo with a view to realise her statutory leave, which he allegedly flatly refused to endorse.



He went to lay cynical ground rules and/or prerequisites for me to have my leave endorsed for future purposes. These were that; I furnish him with details of where I would be spending such leaves days, with whom I would spend such leave days, why and whether I would be reachable (both psychically and telephonically), alleged Dlamini in her affidavit.



These are allegations contained in an affidavit whose veracity is still to be tested in court. She further disclosed that regardless of her negating stance, Nxumalo would persistently come to her apartment after working hours unannounced and imposed himself as a friend.



This he continued to do for quite some time and until such time that he started to sing a different tune, expressly and loudly claiming that he had observed that I did not have a man in my life and, therefore, wanted an intimate liaison with me, reads part of the affidavit filed by Dlamini.
PIGGS PEAK  Police had to fire gunshots to restrain an epileptic man who was heavily assaulting a law enforcer.



The police officer was hit all over his body by the aggressive man using a hoe handle. The assaulted police officer is said to be a member of the Operations Support Services Unit (OSSU)

Two police officers are said to have responded to an emergency call at a Dlamini homestead near Mshingishingini. It is not the first time police officers have responded to a call from the said homestead as such an incident happened several months ago.

Even then, gunshots were also fired before Benele Dlamini, a 27-year-old epileptic man, was finally restrained.



However, last Thursday, the situation nearly became fatal as a police officer was assaulted while the other tried in vain to scare the attacker using gunfire.

The police were called when Benele became violent and began to damage property at the homestead. When the police arrived to apprehend him, several other members of the homestead were also present. This, however is only said to have agitated him further and he attacked the police officer with what appeared to be a hoe handle.



He hit the police officer on the head, back as well as arm. Benele was eventually apprehended when a second police officer eventually fired gunshots though he was not hit. By the time Benele was restrained, the police officer had been seriously injured. He was later rushed to the Piggs Peak hospital where he was hosptitalised while undergoing treatment. Benele was taken to the Manzini Psychiatric Centre last Friday night.

Meanwhile, the Royal Swaziland Police (RSP) have critisised residents who watched without assisting the police officers when one of them was being attacked. Assistant Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said it was strange that about 30 residents watched while the police officer was being assaulted.



This should stop, said Vilakati. She said it appeared to be a norm for residents to watch while police officers were being assaulted by members of the public. Vilakati said every person who was 18 years or older had an obligation to assist during such instances.

He said one could be arrested for watching without assisting when a police officer was being attacked.
MBABANE  The DPMs Office is facing a crisis as pupils that have applied for school fees from the OVCs Fund this year has doubled to about 150 000 overnight.



The figure for which government paid for pupils classified as orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) stood at 78 000 last year, according to Moses Dlamini, who is Director of Social Welfare in the Deputy Prime Ministers (DPM) Office.

Almost the same number has been added this year due to the addition of Grade VII pupils who benefitted from the Free Primary Education (FPE) programme. They are supposed to start Form I tomorrow. The OVC Fund caters for high school education with only about E2 000 spent on each pupil.



He, in an interview, said the number of applicants for funding exceeded their expectations, and would certainly strain available financial resources. The OVC Fund budget is E338 million but it is also shared with elderly grants.

He revealed that almost 90 per cent of those who completed Grade VII in 2015 applied for funding. The Social Welfare Department has been left astonished and overwhelmed by this because they will not be able to screen every applicant to verify their OVC status.



We did expect a high number of applicants for funding, but not this one. It seems that there is a general expectation that free education is to continue through high school. But, on the other hand, I think the push factor to the OVC Fund is poverty. It is rife in Swaziland and though some people have jobs, they cannot afford to pay school fees, explained Dlamini.



He said bona fide OVC pupils would be difficult to classify, more so because social workers were few and, therefore, would be overstretched as they do the job. The director pointed out that some schools predominantly had OVC pupils. He made an example of Cana High School, which, he said, had 100 per cent OVC enrolment, 700 to be precise.



We even went to this school to verify their status and what we found was that they were all bona-fide. When we enquired why there werent any non-OVC pupils, the answer was that they had been rejected by other schools. I must emphasise that head teachers need to desist from discriminating against orphans, he said.



Asked whether the attention of DPM Paul Dlamini had been drawn over this crisis, he responded to the affirmative and expressed belief that it would now be discussed at Cabinet level.

The director assured that payment of one third of fees for the first term of school this year was in order. The last instalment of two thirds is expected sometime in the second term. Schools officially reopen tomorrow.

Government has, in the past two years struggled to meet its financial obligation on time, which led to some schools on the brink of shutting down. Many have failed to consistently pay their support staff, and many are in debt with suppliers.
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By Gabriel Rom

Following the closure of several illegal massage parlors in Glendale and Middle Village, state Assemblyman Mike Miller (D-Woodhaven) and state Sen. Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr. (D-Howard Beach) have introduced a package of legislation meant to deter and regulate these unlicensed businesses.

The expansive legislation comes after a substantial increase in the number of illicit massage parlors operating in Central Queens and a concerted effort from police at the 104th precinct to shut them down.

In December, police announced a new tactic which involved stationing a uniformed police officer outside of suspected locations.

The bills would do the following: expand the definition of massage therapist and require licensees to be on premises at all times; impose a duty on the landlords to verify the license of a massage therapist tenant prior to entering into a lease agreement; prevent a massage parlor from obstructing the view of their lobby area; and impose a duty on landlords to terminate a tenancy at a massage therapist location found guilty of promoting prostitution within 60 days of notification to the landlord by a city or state agency.

We dont want to arrest these women, Miller said last week at a Woodhaven Residents Block Association meeting, referring to the many undocumented workers who are employed at the parlors. Many of them are slaves.

I have introduced this package of bills in an attempt to shut these illegal parlors down, Miller added in a written statement. These bills would increase regulation on unlicensed massage parlors by allowing the Department of Consumer Affairs the authority to enforce the law and it also expands the definition of massage therapist to require these illegal parlors to be licensed as opposed to just opening up another massage parlor wherever possible.

The latest illegal massage parlor to shut down is Dream Spa, located at 65-18 Myrtle Ave. in Glendale. The closure is one of many over the past three months due to increased police enforcement

We only have so much enforcement powers the Police Department can do, but I need help. I need legislative help. I need the laws to be changed, Wachter said at a 104th Precinct community meeting last month.

One of the bills would also grant the city Department of Consumer Affairs the authority to enforce the imposition of fines relating to the practice of massage therapy.

While identifying these facilities is the first step toward shutting them down, enforcement has been the downfall due to current regulations that tie the hands of law enforcement officials behind their backs, Addabbo said. This package of bills will help remedy that and show those who operate these illegal facilities that they will not get away with breaking the law.
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By Kevin Zimmerman

Jacklyn Collier and Russell Daniels met the day they became roommates.

The two Astoria-based actors had been accepted into the University of Houstons graduate theater program, but had communicated only by e-mail before that face-to-face meeting five years ago.

Quickly, however, the duo realized this would be one of those fast friendships that rivals those decades-long ones.

We really support each other and have fun, Daniels said. We find joy in a lot of things.

It is the kind of joy they hope to share with others with the launch of their web series, This Is My Roommate, Feb. 1.

The pilot, currently available at www.thisi smyro ommat e.com , introduces the pair as they begin their search for a third member to join their Astoria household, which may have the dankest residential bathroom in all of Greater New York City.

We are tapping into the honest things we experience as New Yorkers, Daniels said.

And as young 30-something city dwellers there is plenty to dig into.

In the first scene the two are seated at a neighborhood bar and appear not to know each other.

Daniels strikes up a conversation and asks if Collier has been to this particular establishment before. He then tells her she has the wrapper from a feminine hygiene product stuck to her shoe. She does not, but the mood is shattered and Collier berates Daniels for not being a gentleman.

Clearly these two know each other  very well  and really like one another.

Our relationship seemed like something interesting to explore, Collier said. We are two friends, who are more than friends, but not really more than friends.

Their friendship is not easy to define to others.

They are not romantically involved. But they are much more than just two people sharing the same living space.

That is one of the reasons they started to introduce each with the phrase, this is my roommate.

And because actors have to act, the idea of a show based on their relationship began to form.

After creating an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign  which raised an amount well above their initial goal  the two hired a director and sat down to write the first seasons eight scripts.

A lot of it is based on truth, Daniels said. And a lot of it is a version of the truth.

Most of the action in the pilot revolves around the two finding a third roommate.

They agree this new person must be an alpha dog, who will come in, take charge and get things done. Mostly because, as Collier quips, were not going to do it.

Any potential roommate must also love Louie the cat. Simply tolerating the apartment feline is not an option.

Daniels also insists they not allow anyone with a record player to move in.

People with record players, or vinyl if you will, have a standard of living that we are going to constantly disappoint them, he said.

So with their wish list set, they begin the interviewing process.

The parade of potential roomies is filled with plenty of definite nos, including the guy who cant talk about eggs without crying, the girl with the uncomfortable nervous laugh and the guy who says nothing after introducing himself.

Salvation appears in the form of Chantel Maurice, a young lawyer looking to save on rent in order to pay back a mountain of student loan debt.

Collier is quick to point out that Maurice will be more than the shows straight man.

It is not just going to be Chantel reacting to us, Collier said. She is going to have her own story line, which is quirky and charming in its own way.

The pair have also sketched out what they would like to see happen to the show after the first season wraps up in late March. They envision a four-season series that is funded through a production company, and not another fund-raising campaign.

We want to hire a director and an executive producer who see the show and want to be a part of it, Collier said.

But they are both clear that cynics need not apply.

There is enough cynicism in the world, Daniels said. Id rather explore two people who care about each other. I want to try to present that truth, which is close to us.

This Is My Roommate is not, however, a documentary, and dramatic license will clearly be taken. Case in point, these two now maintain separate addresses.

Were not roommates anymore, Collier said, but we share custody of the cat.

You can watch the pilot for This Is My Roommate at www.thisi smyro ommat e.com . The shows first season begins Feb. 1.
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By Madina Toure

Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged the city should have done a better job in some parts of Queens as residents complained about the borough being ignored during the snowstorm.

Some areas of Queens, strong, others less so. I was out yesterday in Flushing, South Jamaica, Long Island City and Astoria, de Blasio said at a news conference Monday morning in Manhattan. I saw good results even on the tertiary streets. I didnt see the kind of results I wanted in Sunnyside, Woodside, Elmhurst, Corona.

The mayor said he visited Corona and Woodside Monday and saw some improvement.

At a news conference in Queens Sunday, de Blasio said more work needs to be done in Ridgewood, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona, Sunnyside and Woodside.

About 60 pieces of equipment were transferred from city Department of Sanitation garages and 850 plows were sent to Queens, he said.

I will say I want to see more in Queens in particular, and Im certainly not satisfied with the condition of some of the roads in some of our neighborhoods in Queens, de Blasio said.

As of Sunday, New York City received 26.8 inches of snow in Central Park, the second largest snowstorm since 1869. The largest snowstorm took place in 2006, with 26.9 inches.

Five people died during the snowstorm, according to the mayor.

As of Monday afternoon, the Long Island Rail Road was still without service on the Port Washington, West Hempstead, Far Rockaway, Hempstead and Long Beach branches.

All express and local buses resumed service at 7 a.m. Monday, though buses were running with delays. Alternate side parking will be suspended until Feb. 1.

Queens residents said they were dissatisfied with the citys handling of the snowstorm in the borough, complaining that many areas were not plowed.

We in Woodhaven are extremely disappointed by the citys performance during and after the blizzard, the Woodhaven Residents Block Association said in a statement released Monday morning. Even now54 hours after the snow started to falldozens of blocks in Woodhaven still have not been plowed once.

State Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) said his rough morning commute made him question the decision to keep schools open.

In my home neighborhood of Ozone Park, school buses were seen getting stuck while trying to navigate unplowed streets near PS 64, Addabbo said. As I took my girls to school Monday morning, I witnessed both road and school rage. It is my hope that in the event of another major winter storm, our Mayor makes the more educated and safer decision of closing public schools while cleanup continues.

City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Glendale) and City Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) said the citys Snowplow tracker reported streets plowed that had not been touched.

We need thorough investigation how snowplow tracker is so wrong so often, and its impact on resource allocation, Lancman tweeted Monday morning.

Corona resident David Valdez, 31, who was waiting for the Q12 bus at the bus stop on Roosevelt Avenue Monday morning, said he was frustrated by the long wait time.

Now its 35 minutes, Valdez said.
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By Gabriel Rom

Almost half of the citys snow-plowing equipment has been diverted to Queens according to the Mayors office, even as some streets in the borough remained unplowed as of Monday afternoon.

Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) held a press conference Monday at 4 p.m. to let the rest of the city know the truth about how this mayor failed to provide services to my district, according to a post on Ulrichs Facebook page.

Ulrich is part of a growing chorus of Queens lawmakers, civic leaders and residents who say their streets, especially in central Queens, have been neglected by city services after a record-setting blizzard blanketed New York with 26.8 inches of snow.

At a press conference Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio reiterated that the clean-up effort in Queens could have been better.

Some areas of Queens strong, others less so. I was out yesterday in Flushing, South Jamaica, Long Island City and Astoria, de Blasio said at the Manhattan news conference.

I saw good results even on the tertiary streets. I didnt see the kind of results I wanted in Sunnyside, Woodside, Elmhurst, Corona.

There are currently more than 2,000 pieces of snow clearing equipment being used in Queens, de Blasio added.

As of yesterday, Queens had a total of 850 plows while today they have 920, more than in any other borough, according to Amy Spitalnik, a spokeswoman for de Blasio.

de Blasio, along with DSNY Commissioner Kathryn Garcia requested more snow laborers.

This was one of the worst storms to ever hit New York City, and we need all hands on deck to dig us out, de Blasio said. As Sanitations uniformed workers continue to focus their Herculean efforts on clearing our citys streets, snow laborers will be critical in shoveling out other key locations, like crosswalks, hydrants, bus stops and more.

Yet, over the past 36 hours, complaints over unplowed streets and unsafe conditions in Queens, particularly in the neighborhoods of Woodhaven, Glendale, Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood, have flooded social media.

John Meritt, a Glendale resident, posted a picture on Facebook of an impassible 68th Street at around 4 p.m. Sunday. In the comments under his photo, dozens of residents chimed in with similar reports:

Where are the plows for goodness sake? one said, done with hearing all the excuses.

The complaints quickly reached the ears of Queens lawmakers.

Too many streets in Ozone Park and Woodhaven remain unplowed, Ulrich posted on Facebook Sunday night. I will be giving the mayors office an earful. This is a disgrace!

Ulrich added that he believed schools should be closed Monday due to the storm.

Early Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio also said that city had not done a good job plowing streets in Queens.

Im not going to be happy this morning, Im not going to be satisfied this morning, de Blasio said during a press conference at the citys Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn Sunday morning.

There were specific areas in Queens that got over 30 inches and needed even further resources, Spitalnick said in an e-mail. Given the rapid storm intensification and up to 3 inches per hour snowfall, which stranded some plows. As the mayor said, that wasnt acceptable, so as soon as they heard about the need for more plows, the mayor and commissioner immediately moved to send more in, Spitalnick added.

To the chagrin of some in central Queens, the mayor only mentioned the neighborhoods of Woodside, Sunnyside, Ridgewood, Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona in his Sunday announcement. His Monday conference did little to allay frustration.

We in Woodhaven are extremely disappointed by the citys performance during and after the blizzard, the Woodhaven Residents Block Association said in a statement released Monday morning. Even now  54 hours after the snow started to fall  dozens of blocks in Woodhaven still have not been plowed once.

Snow plows were reportedly stuck across the borough and both Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Glendale) and Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) took issue with data from the citys Snowplow tracker, which they said reported streets plowed that hadnt been touched.

We need thorough investigation how Snowplow tracker is so wrong so often, and its impact on resource allocation, Lancman tweeted Monday morning.

Freelance photographer Robert Stridiron posted a picture of a plow that made it only halfway down 85th Street, and seemed to have crashed into a parked car, damaging it.

As the morning continued, more borough lawmakers vented their anger.

I join my constituents in feeling extremely frustrated with the lack of a quick and appropriate storm response seen in Queens, particularly in my district, State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, Jr. (D-Howard Beach) said in a statement Monday morning. Many residents in neighborhoods such as Woodhaven and Maspeth have yet to see a plow on their streets, more than two days after the storm hit.

Addabbo said that a nightmarish Monday morning commute had convinced him that keeping schools open was ill-advised

In my home neighborhood of Ozone Park, school buses were seen getting stuck while trying to navigate unplowed streets near PS 64. As I took my girls to school Monday morning, I witnessed both road and school rage. It is my hope that in the event of another major winter storm, our mayor makes the more educated and safer decision of closing public schools while cleanup continues.

Amid the chaos, there were stories of residents banding together to help one another. Numerous videos posted on social media showed Queens pedestrians helping cars stuck in snow to get free.
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Gail Thornton, Jr. MD passed away January 23, 2016 in Wichita Falls.

The hallmark of his life was love: love for his God, love for his family, love for his country and love for his community.

Gail was born on January 10, 1927 in Dallas. His family moved briefly to San Antonio, and then settled in Temple. As a young man, Gail committed his life to his Lord at First Baptist Church there, and for the rest of his life shared the joy of his faith with others on a daily basis. Gail was a proud Eagle Scout, as are his son John and grandson Josh, and all three achieved Order of the Arrow. Upon high school graduation, he served in the military police during the Korean War, and on his return attended Temple Junior College and Baylor University on the GI bill. Fulfilling his early desires to be a physician, Gail graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in Galveston.

During the last years of medical college, Gail met the love of his life, Lillian Bohls, who was serving as a nursing instructor at the time. Lillian accompanied Gail to Fort Worth where he completed his internship at John Peter Smith County Hospital. Lillian and Gail were married July 11, 1953 in Pflugerville, and moved to Wichita Falls to start Gail's general medical practice, with Lillian serving as nurse and office manager. Gail and Lillian joined Trinity Lutheran Church, where they were both faithful and active members for the rest of their lives. During the 44 years of his medical practice, in his words Gail "had the privilege" to care for and minister to hundreds of men, women and children, and care for multiple generations of many families. He estimated that he was at the birth of 1,000 babies, and he was at the deathbed of a large number of his patients. The love he had for each of his patients was returned to him multiplied, as they called him not only "Doc" but friend.

His family and leisure time was marked by a love of nature and the outdoors. Just as his father did, Gail could mimic the call of many birds in the area, and they would answer. Gail also loved hunting and fishing, and passed on his love for the land and the outdoors to his children and grandchildren. He raised Black Angus cattle on his ranch in Ringgold. Gail is survived by his four children, Sue and her husband Nick Zackoff of Tow; Kay Thomas and the late C.A. Thomas; Dr. John Thornton and his wife Yvonne; and Patti Gail Thornton, all of Wichita Falls; and his grandchildren Lindsay Casey and her husband Lance of San Francisco, and Joshua Thornton and his wife Kallen of Lubbock; and his great grandson Abel Thornton of Lubbock. In addition, he is survived by his sister, Cary Roberts and her husband Kenneth of Houston, and their children and grandchildren. Also surviving are members of Lillian's family, whom he dearly loved: Clarence and Leah Bohls of Pflugerville, Otto and Jean Bohls of Austin, and Anita and John Lacy of Houston; and eight nieces, nephews and their spouses, who were his delight. Gail was preceded in death by his beloved wife Lillian in 2012, and his son-in-law C.A. Thomas in 2015.

A Graveside service will be held at 3 p.m., Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at Crestview Memorial Park with Vicar Jeremiah Heydt officiating. Arrangements are under the direction of Lunn's Colonial Funeral Home.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Trinity Lutheran Church, 3505 Kemp Street, Wichita Falls 76308; or Hospice of Wichita Falls, 4909 Johnson Road, Wichita Falls 76310. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life." John 3:16. Condolences may be sent to the family at www.lunnscolonial.com
Broadway turned the stage lights back on, rail service was expected to resume in New York and Washington, D.C., and emergency travel bans were lifted Sunday following an historic snowstorm that dumped 2 feet or more in some areas. A portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike where more than 500 cars, trucks and buses had been stranded also had reopened by late afternoon. Tens of millions of people, meanwhile, have watched a video of one of the Smithsonian National Zoo's four pandas enjoying the snow. A look at the storm's impact by state:

Delaware

Gov. Jack Markell lifted a driving ban at 10 a.m. Sunday, but Markell said a state of emergency remains in effect. He urged residents to stay off the road unless they have a compelling reason to drive, so that snow plows could continue working without interference.

Georgia

Northeast Georgia got blanketed with 8 inches of snow and 945 customers were still without power Sunday. Crews have restored power to more than 125,000 customers statewide.

Maryland

Baltimore received more than 29 inches of snow. A travel ban has been lifted, but officials still urged residents to not venture out onto the roads if not necessary. Interstate 270 and I-70 from I-81 in Washington County to the Baltimore Beltway had reopened as of 7 a.m. Sunday.

New Jersey

Most major highways in New Jersey had been cleared by early Sunday. Nonetheless, reduced speed limits were in place on most of those roadways, and drivers were being urged to use extra caution and to avoid travel if possible. Officials say roads should be in good shape for the Monday morning commute. Residents in southern New Jersey's coastal towns continue to deal with flooding. Minor to moderate flooding occurred during Sunday morning's high tides, mostly in Atlantic and Cape May counties. Officials said the waters were starting to recede by late Sunday morning. No major damage from the flooding was reported, and only some residents were displaced.

North Carolina

About 30,000 customers in North Carolina remained without power Sunday afternoon. Nearly two-thirds of the affected customers were in the county surrounding Raleigh.

Pennsylvania

A section of Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh where hundreds of vehicles were stranded reopened in both directions on Sunday afternoon. More than 500 cars, trucks and buses got stuck in a miles-long backup on Friday night.

In suburban Philadelphia, the roof of a church caved in during Saturday's blizzard, causing more than $1 million in damage.

Virginia

Firefighters evacuated tenants from 24 apartments in two northern Virginia apartment buildings after one partially collapsed and the other showed signs of weakening early Sunday under the weight of 28 inches of snow. One firefighter suffered a cut to the face. Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler died Friday while shoveling snow outside his new house in Daleville. On Saturday, the state medical examiner's office confirmed three other storm deaths. Snow, ice and gusting winds made the roof collapse at Donk's Theater, an historic venue near the Chesapeake Bay. The theater opened in 1947 and was known as Home of Virginia's Lil' Ole Opry.

Washington, D.C.

The cleanup from some two feet of snow has prompted the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to close federal offices in the area on Monday. Metro officials, meanwhile, said in a statement Sunday that they plan to resume limited rail and bus service on Monday morning and that rides will be free. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city's public schools, attended by nearly 49,000 students, would be closed Monday. She said officials were still assessing whether city government offices would open. The federal government closed its offices at noon Friday, and it wasn't immediately clear what the plans were for Monday. President Barack Obama, hunkered down at the White House, was one of many who stayed home. But a video of one of the Smithsonian National Zoo's four pandas enjoying the snow there was a bright spot amid the storm clouds, drawing tens of millions of views on Facebook as of Sunday.

West Virginia

The massive blizzard that dumped several feet of snow in parts of West Virginia has been a blessing for the state's ski industry. Nearly 90 percent of the trails are open at three ski areas, with a snow base ranging from 2 feet to more than 3 feet. The resorts were reporting strong business.
Long before she became the future queen, the Duchess of Cambridge was just a regular girl growing up in England.

Take a look through the gallery above for a look into her life before she became the Duchess of Cambridge.
ALBANY - It's the last week of January and so far the region has gotten just under 6 inches of snow.

In an average year, the region by now would have already gotten 30 inches of snow. At 5.5 inches, we lag way behind.
THE ISSUE:

The governor offers some good and some not-so-good changes on freedom of information laws

THE STAKES:

The public's right to know should be the guiding principle.Let's start with the not-at-all-outrageous premise that government exists to serve the public, and that the government's business is the public's business.

More Information To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com or at http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion See More Collapse

It stands to reason, then, that citizens have a right to know what their government is up to. Barring some limited exceptions  such as a threat to public safety, an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, or the disclosure of trade secrets  they should be able to obtain the information their government keeps, and which in most cases their tax dollars pay to produce and maintain. This is the essence of freedom of information laws.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing some changes to New York's Freedom of Information Law  some of which would significantly expand the public's right to know. Others, unfortunately, appear cosmetic at best.

The big change, one that's long overdue, would broaden FOIL to include the Legislature, which has conveniently exempted itself from the law. The proposed rules would shed light on things that the public doesn't always get to see, such as records on discussions of policy and other matters that affect the public, and the terms of public employee union contracts before they're approved  and at least as soon as union members get to read them.

Where Mr. Cuomo's proposal falls short, however, is where it affects the executive side of government. In what sounds like a positive development, he suggests that courts "shall" award reasonable legal fees to plaintiffs who prevail in lawsuits against government over wrongful denials of information. Current law says only that the courts "may" do this if there was no reasonable basis for the denial, or if the agency missed statutory deadlines.

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But the changes go on to put two conditions on these presumably mandatory awards, both of which must be met: first, that the agency clearly disregarded the law, and second, that there was no reasonable basis for denying access to the information.

That's a pretty high bar for citizens to reach  and for stonewalling, secretive government officials to easily walk under. It isn't hard to concoct an excuse, however broad, vague or thin, for why information might be exempt from disclosure; just ask anyone who has tried to obtain potentially politically embarrassing information from any level of government. Nor is it easy to prove willful disregard.

Put both these conditions together, and Mr. Cuomo's seemingly mandatory court awards would likely be exceedingly rare, making it as difficult as ever to get uncooperative governments and public officials to follow the law.

That's easily remedied; why not require citizens have their legal costs reimbursed when governments wrongly withhold information, period? Such a provision in the law would be a much stronger statement by the governor and the Legislature  that there really is no excuse for withholding information to which the public is entitled. That's the tone FOIL should set.
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A serious discussion will be needed within the community if any sort of historic preservatio
[January 24, 2016] 2016 IAB Annual Leadership Meeting Themed 'The Next $50 Billion' Brings Top Names in Digital Media & Marketing Executives Together in Palm Desert, CA

Amid a historic snowstorm that shut down large swathes of the United States, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) 2016 Annual Leadership Meeting commenced in Palm Desert, CA (News - Alert), bringing together leading digital media and marketing executives to discuss shifts in the media and marketing landscape. Interactive advertising is now a $50 billion dollar industry, and this year's program will explore how technology, creativity, and consumer insights will need to synthesize in order to reach the next $50 billion. "Digital marketing has seen immense growth, but changes in its evolution are inevitable and we must be prepared," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. "This year's IAB Annual Leadership Meeting will bring together the biggest names in the industry to share best practices and the latest innovations, and they will also highlight potential obstacles and opportunities on the horizon." One of the industry's most celebrated business leaders, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists, Larry Ellison (News - Alert) - Oracle's Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer - will keynote the conference. In addition, Emily Bazelon, The New York Times Magazie staff writer and political commentator with Slate's Political Gabfest, will interview David Axelrod, Director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and Senior Political Commentator of CNN, to explore digital's impact on the upcoming Presidential election.



This year's star-studded roster of speakers features a variety of prominent leaders from across the brand marketing, media agency, technology, creative, and publishing arenas. They include: Jeffrey Cole, Director, Center for the Digital Future, USC Annenberg

Dionne Colvin-Lovely, National Media Director, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A.

John Costello, President, Global Marketing and Innovation, Dunkin' Brands

Scott Cunningham, Senior Vice President Technology and Ad Operations, IAB, and General Manager, IAB Technology Laboratory

Steve Hasker, Global President and COO, Nielsen

Scott Meyer, CEO, Ghostery

Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce, Google (News - Alert)

Michael Rubenstein, President, AppNexus

Tom Shields, Senior Vice President, Publisher Strategy, AppNexus and Co-Founder, Yieldex

Marisa Thalberg, Chief Marketing Officer, Taco Bell

Lisa Utzschneider, Global Revenue Chief, Yahoo

Jimmy Wales (News - Alert), Founder and Board Member, Wikia

Doug Weaver, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Upstream Group, Inc. IAB will post highlight videos from the event's presentations for those who are unable to attend. For more information, visit iab.com/alm.

About IAB The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) empowers the media and marketing industries to thrive in the digital economy. It is comprised of more than 650 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling, delivering, and optimizing digital advertising or marketing campaigns. Together, they account for 86 percent of online advertising in the United States. Working with its member companies, the IAB develops technical standards and best practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising, while also educating brands, agencies, and the wider business community on the importance of digital marketing. The organization is committed to professional development and elevating the knowledge, skills, expertise, and diversity of the workforce across the industry. Through the work of its public policy office in Washington, D.C., the IAB advocates for its members and promotes the value of the interactive advertising industry to legislators and policymakers. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City and has a West Coast office in San Francisco. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160124005033/en/

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[January 25, 2016] Cellcom Israel Announces a Labor Dispute

NETANYA, Israel, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE: CEL) (TASE: CEL) (hereinafter: the "Company") announced today the receipt of a labor dispute announcement by the Histadrut, the union representing the Company's employees. Under the announcement, the Company's employees would be entitled to take organizational steps (including a strike), as of February 7, 2016. The Company rejects the claims made as a basis for the announcement. At this preliminary stage, the company is unable to assess the effects of this announcement. For additional details see the Company's most recent annual report for the year ended December 31, 2014 on Form 20-F, filed on March 16, 2015, under "Item 3. Key Information - D. Risk Factors - Risks Related to our Business - The unionizing of our employees may impede necessary organizational and personnel changes, result in increased costs or disruption to our operation" and "Item 6. Directors, senior management and employees - D. Employees." About Cellcom Israel September 30, 2015) with a broad range of value added services including cellular and landline telephony, roaming services for tourists in Israel and for its subscribers abroad, additional services in the areas of music, video, mobile office etc. and most recently - also television over the internet service in Israel , based on Cellcom Israel's technologically advanced infrastructure. The Company operates an LTE 4 Generation and HSPA 3.5 Generation networks enabling advanced high speed broadband multimedia services, in addition to GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks. Cellcom Israel offers Israel's broadest and largest customer service infrastructure including telephone customer service centers, retail stores, and service and sale centers, distributed nationwide. Cellcom Israel further provides through its wholly owned subsidiaries internet connectivity services and international calling services, as well as landline telephone communication services, in addition to data communication services. Cellcom Israel's shares are traded both on the New York Stock Exchange (CEL) and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (CEL). For additional information please visit the Company's website http://www.cellcom.co.il



Company Contact Shlomi Fruhling

Chief Financial Officer

[email protected]

Tel: +972-52-998-9755

Investor Relations Contact Ehud Helft

GK Investor & Public Relations in partnership with LHA

[email protected]

Tel: +1-617-418-3096 SOURCE Cellcom Israel Ltd.

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[January 25, 2016] Heal Brings On-Demand Doctor House Calls To All Of San Diego

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Seeing a doctor is about to get a whole lot easier for the 3.3 million residents of San Diego. Heal, the app for on-demand doctor house calls, announced today the expansion of its coverage to its fifth market, San Diego. According to a recent survey, 80 percent of Americans delay getting preventative healthcare, or forgo it altogether, citing work responsibility as the top reason. Heal also helps address the broken system where Americans rely on the Emergency Room (ER) for basic medical needs. In San Diego alone, average wait times are nearly 2  hours, and can often end up being twice that. Heal provides ease and accessibility to quality medical care for more than 20 million people across California by eliminating the friction associated with traditional doctor office visits. A visit with a Heal doctor is available for a fixed fee of $99 or an in-network co-pay that can range from $20 - $30 with some services, such as an annual physical, having no out-of-pocket costs. Heal is in-network with Anthem Blue Cross of California, Blue Shield of California and Cigna, under select insurance plans. "Going to the doctor has become more of a hassle than a necessity for many, as long wait times, work obligations and busy lifestyles trump people' willingness to seek out needed healthcare," said Dr. Renee Dua, co-founder, Heal. "Heal intimately understands this reality, and was designed to make quality healthcare easy for everyone to access, and delivered at a convenient time and place for the consumer."



More than just an urgent-care-on-wheels or a triage hotline, Heal is a true partner in wellness for the entire family by making healthy happen at home or at the office. Heal users can schedule an appointment for a child or an adult of any age on-demand or in advance. Its intuitive, device-agnostic app allows consumers to book a doctor in under a minute. A qualified licensed physician will then come directly to the user, wherever they are, fully equipped and enabled to treat more than just the issue at hand. Heal provides total transparency, allowing the patient to know upfront what the visit will cost before the doctor arrives. "Average wait times at hospital emergency rooms across San Diego county are soaring as more people go to the ER for non-critical medical treatment," said Dr. Andrew Eads, Heal Doctor. "Additionally, the price tag for these unwarranted visits is significantly more expensive than a regular doctor visit. Heal offers an practical solution for this massive problem by creating access to qualified doctors at night and on weekends."

On-demand healthcare is surging in popularity as people continually seek out immediate services that move away from the current factory style clinics and doctor offices. In under a minute, San Diego residents can request a doctor and receive high-quality medical or preventative care in the comfort of their own home or in their office, on-demand. At the click of a button, licensed physicians are available seven days a week any time from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., for anything a patient might require during a traditional office visit. In addition to servicing San Diego, the healthcare pioneer also helps patients in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Heal plans to expand to an additional 10-15 major metro markets this year. About Heal The pioneer in on-demand primary health services, Heal provides patients with affordable access to world-class physicians in the comfort of their home or office. Heal connects patients with fully vetted and licensed pediatricians and family practice doctors who arrive in under two hours and can see any member of the family for only $99 or an in-network co-pay. Visit www.getheal.com or download the app from the iTunes App Store and Google Play store. Media Contact:

Tracey Koblick

JCUTLER media group

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325080LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/heal-brings-on-demand-doctor-house-calls-to-all-of-san-diego-300208655.html SOURCE Heal

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[January 25, 2016] RetraceHealth Announces Close of Early Stage Investment Funding

RetraceHealth, a startup company that provides full-service primary care through in-home and video visits, announced today that it has closed an early-stage investment funding round with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (Blue Cross), HealthEast Care System (Minnesota), and McKesson Ventures. The funding will enable RetraceHealth to continue to expand its reach in an effort to provide even more people with access to meaningful, long-term, relationship-based care. "Everything RetraceHealth does is focused on creating a system where care makes sense for the patient," says Thompson Aderinkomi, founder and CEO of RetraceHealth. "Our ultimate goal is to change how primary care is financed and delivered to make it more affordable, personal, and accessible to all." The vision expressed by Thompson is shared by RetraceHealth's investors, who are well aware of the challenges facing healthcare today, and who look to RetraceHealth as a potential opportunity for their own businesses. "RetraceHealth has become a trusted partner, and we are excited about the opportunity to offer its technology-based, accessible care options," said Kathryn Correia, president and CEO of HealthEast. "We believe RetraceHealth will work closely with our own primary care clinicians to provide seamless care for our employees and their families." John Uribe, vice president of business development at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota sees benefits as well. "By offering primary care in a convenient setting, RetraceHealh seeks to improve the overall patient experience and remove barriers that prevent people from seeking regular, timely care. We are proud to provide growth funding to such an innovative company and are excited about our plans to bring RetraceHealth into our provider network later this year."



Looking to the future Thompson Aderinkomi founded RetraceHealth in October 2013 after a frustrating and costly healthcare experience with his own family. His goal was to remove the confusing and overly complex aspects of primary care that he faced, leaving only a pure patient-focused experience behind - an approach that has struck a chord with many notable MN-based companies.

Over the past year, RetraceHealth has seen steady growth in both the number of employer clients and area of service (now reaching nearly all of Minnesota). And with a number of new contracts set to take effect in 2016 coupled with impending in-network status with a few major insurers, patient growth is set to accelerate in 2016. RetraceHealth will use the funds raised to bring their relationship-based care experience to both their growing number of patients in Minnesota as well as to new geographic areas outside the state. "RetraceHealth's model is not only scalable and comprehensive, but it also addresses essential consumer issues that plague the healthcare system - by providing lower cost and better, more personal care," said Tom Rodgers, senior vice president and managing director of McKesson Ventures. "RetraceHealth offers consumers the primary care convenience they want and is evolving into a truly comprehensive suite of services." New investors joining previous RetraceHealth angel investors include: Julie Causey, executive committee and audit committee chair of the HealthEast Care System; Abir Sen, founder of Definity; RedBrickHealth; BloomHealth; and Gravie; and Jeff Smedsrud, co-founder and CEO of Healthcare.com. RetraceHealth's Board of Directors includes Linda Hall, former CEO of MinuteClinic; Kyle Rolfing, founder of Definity and RedBrickHealth; and Doug Davenport, senior vice president and chief financial officer of HealthEast. About RetraceHealth RetraceHealth has re-imagined primary care by blending modern technological advancements with the old-world charm and convenience of a house call. The result is an extraordinary care experience in which patients get direct access to clinical professionals they know and trust. It is full-service primary care when and where the patient wants it. About HealthEast HealthEast (healtheast.org) is the leading health care provider in the Twin (News - Alert) Cities East Metro area. From prevention to cure, HealthEast meets the needs of the community with family health and specialty programs that span four hospitals - Bethesda Hospital, St. John's Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital and Woodwinds Health Campus - plus 14 clinics, home care and medical transportation. HealthEast has nearly 7,500 employees and nearly 850 physicians on staff. Its focus is optimal health and well-being for its patients, communities and employees. About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, with headquarters in the St. Paul suburb of Eagan, was chartered in 1933 as Minnesota's first health plan and continues to carry out its charter mission today: to promote a wider, more economical and timely availability of health services for the people of Minnesota. A nonprofit, taxable organization, Blue Cross is the largest health plan based in Minnesota, covering 2.6 million members in Minnesota and nationally through its health plans or plans administered by its affiliated companies. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, headquartered in Chicago. Go to bluecrossmn.com to learn more. About McKesson Ventures McKesson Ventures is the venture capital arm of McKesson Corporation specializing in early and growth stage companies. McKesson Ventures targets companies that both catalyze and benefit from the key changes taking place in the U.S. health care landscape. McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 11th on the FORTUNE 500, is a health care services and information technology company dedicated to making the business of health care run better. We work with payers, hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, and others across the spectrum of care to build healthier organizations that help deliver better care to patients in every setting. Visit www.mckessonventures.com to learn more. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005058/en/

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[January 25, 2016] Studio in a School Creates National Studio Institute to Expand New York City Visual Arts Programs

Studio in a School (SIAS), New York City's premier program enlisting professional artists to teach visual arts to public school students, announced that it will expand its mission and scope by creating a Studio Institute to replicate the New York City program on a national level. SIAS President and CEO Thomas Cahill will serve as Director of the new Studio Institute. Christopher Wisniewski, who for the past 11 years has led the education department at Museum of the Moving Image and currently holds the title of Deputy Director for Education and Visitor Experience, has been named Executive Director of the SIAS NYC Schools Programs. Agnes Gund, SIAS founder and chairman, said, "For nearly 40 years, working closely with New York City educators, Studio has effectively demonstrated the important role that quality arts education can play in the life of an urban public school student. "We are excited to expand this winning approach nationally, under Tom's wise and experienced leadership. At the same time, we are thrilled to recruit an individual with Christopher's arts and education experience and unbridled enthusiasm to head our New York City Programs." As Director of the Studio Institute, Mr. Cahill, who since 1978 has built the New York City Programs, will be charged with disseminating the Studio approach to other cities and audiences interested in linking the visual arts to primary education. The Studio Institute will offer out-of-school visual arts programs to teens and college students, document learnings, research best practices, create new models and pilot new products to enhance the quality and creativity of its program offerings and professional development efforts.



Mr. Cahill said, "The Studio in a School partnership with the New York City Department of Education has never been stronger. This is the right time to expand and share the successful concepts and programs that we have initiated in New York City, especially at a time when early childhood education is prominent on the national agenda." As the new Executive Director of Studio's New York City Programs, Mr. Wisniewski will lead an organization that since its inception has brought over 650 professional visual artists into classrooms as teaching artists and creative role models for more than 800,000 New York City school children, 90 percent of whom are from low-income families.

Mr. Wisniewski, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and an M.A. graduate of New York University, was responsible for all aspects of Museum of the Moving Image's education programs. He has spoken nationally and internationally on media education, museum education, and digital media and learning. He also served on the steering committee to develop the New York City Department of Education's Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Moving Image. Mr. Wisniewski said, "As a great fan of and periodic partner with Studio in a School over the past decade, I am thrilled by the opportunity to profit from Tom's great experience and continue to develop and expand this wonderful program that does so much to build the critical thinking skills and confidence of the children of New York City." **************** About Studio in a School Studio in a School was founded in 1976 by New York philanthropist, art patron, and collector Agnes Gund, in response to drastic budget cuts in the arts programs in New York City Schools. Over four decades, Studio has brought professional artists into classrooms as teachers and creative role models for more than 800,000 New York City school children, 90 percent of whom are from low-income families. Since 2009, Studio, in association with Metis Associates consulting firm, has studied the impact of integrating visual arts training into the core curricula of high-poverty urban elementary schools. Data indicate that such arts education correlates with improvement among students in state literacy and math tests, greater job satisfaction from teachers, and more awareness from principals about art's capacity to engage parents in their children's academic development. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005109/en/

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[January 25, 2016] THIS WEEK: 1,204 Events in Texas to Raise Awareness About School Choice

National School Choice Week begins today in Texas and across the country. There are 1,204 events planned in the The Lone Star State to raise awareness about K-12 school choice, and 16,140 events nationwide. The events in Texas, which are independently planned and independently funded, include everything from information sessions and open houses at schools to rallies, policy discussions, and movie screenings organized by community groups. On Friday, January 29, more than two thousand supporters will rally at the capitol for school choice. Governor Greg Abbott, the mayors of Allen, Amarillo, Arlington, Denton, Irving, Killeen, League City, Lewisville, Midland, Pharr, Richardson (News - Alert), and Wichita Falls, and county leaders from Fort Bend and Smith counties have issued official proclamations recognizing January 24-30, 2016 as "School Choice Week." "School choice continues to be an important issue for Texas families and Texas leaders," said Andrew R. Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. "National School Choice Week willshine a positive spotlight on the education options available to children and families in the Lone Star State, while also raising awarenes of the importance of providing even more families with educational opportunity."



With a goal of raising public awareness of effective education options for children, National School Choice Week will be the largest celebration of education options in US history. SCHOOL CHOICE OPTIONS AVAILABLE FOR TEXAS FAMILIES

According to National School Choice Week's organizers, families in Texas can use the Week to look for K-12 schools for the 2016-2017 school year. Parents in the Lone Star State can choose from the following education options for their children: traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, online academies, private schools, and homeschooling. In some parts of the state, open enrollment policies allow parents to select the best traditional public school, regardless of where the school is located. ABOUT NATIONAL SCHOOL CHOICE WEEK National School Choice Week is an independent public awareness effort spotlighting effective education options for children, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. The Week runs from January 24-30, 2016. For more information, visit www.schoolchoiceweek.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005587/en/

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[January 25, 2016] U.S. Bank Repositions Brand, Launches "The Power of Possible"

U.S. Bank (NYSE: USB), the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States, today unveils "the Power of Possible," a new brand position, marking a modernized customer brand refresh stretching across the entire organization. The positioning reaffirms the bank's dedication to helping consumers and businesses achieve their financial goals and objectives. It will be brought to life through an integrated marketing campaign, kicking off in Denver and Cincinnati and an unprecedented volunteer relay tour in 25 cities across the country. "From 19th century pioneers to 21st century entrepreneurs, U.S. Bank has always focused on helping customers achieve financial success and security," said Richard Davis (News - Alert), chairman and chief executive officer of U.S. Bancorp. "Since the day we opened our doors, our employees have been passionately making possible happen for our customers, communities, and each other. Today we are formalizing it by introducing the Power of Possible." The campaign includes unique and evocative imagery, including 30- and 60-second television spots in Denver and Cincinnati that use a cinematic, storytelling approach to demonstrate U.S. Bank's investment in its customers' vision and possibilities - from starting a small business to building their dream home. Elements of the brand campaign can be found at: www.usbank.com under the "About U.S. Bank" section. "The Power of Possible" Brand Campaign Over te past year, U.S. Bank has conducted extensive market research to develop the new brand position that speaks directly to its customers and their values, bringing together the financial strength and stability of the bank's business, its strong ethical framework, and its customer-centric philosophy.



"Our new positioning is a declaration of our purpose and putting our customers at the center of everything we do," said Andy Cecere, president and chief operating officer of U.S. Bancorp. "It unifies how we communicate and meet the changing needs of our customers, deliver our products and services, and engage with our communities. It also demonstrates how we are working to help our customers build healthy, prosperous, and successful financial futures." The integrated advertising campaign includes television and radio advertising, out-of-home, print, digital, and social, with a consistent look, feel and message that will thread through every customer experience. Customers will also experience the new brand reflected at more than 3,000 U.S. Bank branches in 2016 in a variety of ways. The campaign is supplemented by various consumer activations in local markets and across social media that emphasize the Power of Possible.

Nationwide Community Possible Relay As part of this initiative, U.S. Bank has also redefined its corporate giving program to strengthen its collective impact under the new name Community Possible. Community Possible has three central themes: Work, Home and Play. Later this year, U.S. Bank will launch a first-of-its-kind volunteer relay and revitalization tour for the organization called the Community Possible Relay, complete with a mobile, moving "baton" stopping in cities across America. The program includes special teams of U.S. Bank employees and volunteers who will work together to make an impact on their community before passing a baton to the next team. "Community Possible makes a big statement about the role banks play in building stronger and more vibrant communities," said Kate Quinn, executive vice president, chief strategy and reputation officer of U.S. Bank. "The Community Possible Relay will provide us with a tangible opportunity to engage the communities where we do business and mobilize them to help us make a lasting impact in the areas of Work, Home and Play." About U.S. Bank

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp ("USB"), with $422 billion in assets as of December 31, 2015, is the parent company of U.S. Bank National Association, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States. The Company operates 3,133 banking offices in 25 states and 4,936 ATMs and provides a comprehensive line of banking, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. Visit U.S. Bancorp on the web at www.usbank.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125005872/en/

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[January 24, 2016] J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC to Acquire Chi-X Australia, Chi-X Japan and Chi-Tech

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chi-X Global Holdings LLC today announced that J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC has entered into an agreement to acquire Chi-X Australia, Chi-X Japan and Chi-Tech Hong Kong. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 2016, pending regulatory clearances. Tal Cohen, CEO of Chi-X Global, said: "We are pleased to announce that J.C. Flowers & Co. has agreed to acquire Chi-X Australia, Chi-X Japan and Chi-Tech. Over the past five years, Chi-X has established itself as an integral part of the financial markets in Asia Pacific through our commitment to competition and innovation." "J.C. Flowers & Co. has a deep appreciation for these markets and shares our vision of leveraging technology to develop innovative market-level solutions that enhance investor performance," said Mr. Cohen. "We believe that Chi-X will continue to deliver greater choice and cost-effective solutions to investors and issuers as J.C. Flowers & Co. builds on the Chi-X brand." "The Chi-X businesses have established themselves as successful and innovative alternatives to primary exchanges," said Thierry Porte, Managing Director, J.C. Flowers & Co. "Their superior technology, service and trade execution performance will continue to drive positive change and improve markets where they operate. We hope to accelerate this growth through continued enhancements to the platform, including new investment products and markets, and by leveraging our strong relationships throughout the Asia Pacifi region."



J.C. Flowers & Co. is exclusively focused on investments in the global financial services sector and has been an active investor in the Asia Pacific region for nearly two decades. The Firm's current investments include Shinsei Bank of Japan; KT Capital Corporation, a Korean non-bank finance company; and SICOM Ltd., a provider of financial solutions and advisory services in India. About Chi-X Australia

A subsidiary of global market operator Chi-X Global Holdings LLC, Chi-X Australia offers a valuable alternative for trading ASX securities using its low latency, high performance, proven trading system. Its launch introduced to the Australian market innovative new orders types, the potential for lower costs and a more efficient way to trade. About Chi-X Japan Chi-X Japan provides investors with a more efficient market alternative through its innovative pricing model, advanced order types, risk management tools and colocation services. As a registered PTS (Proprietary Trading System), Chi-X Japan aims to attract new investors, in turn increasing overall Japanese market volumes, reducing transaction costs and improving investment performance. About Chi-X Global Holdings LLC Owned by a consortium of major financial institutions, Chi-X Global operates market centers in Australia, Canada and Japan. Chi-Tech, the technology services unit of Chi-X Global, provides technology to its business lines and the Chi-FX. About J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC J.C. Flowers & Co. is a leading private investment firm dedicated to investing globally in the financial services industry. Founded in 1998, the firm has invested more than $10 billion of capital in 42 portfolio companies in 15 countries. In addition, J.C. Flowers & Co. has generated more than $4 billion of co-investment opportunities since inception. J.C. Flowers & Co. invests across a range of deal types and industry sectors including banking, insurance and reinsurance, securities, services and asset management, and specialty finance. With approximately $8 billion of assets under management, J.C. Flowers & Co. has offices in New York and London. For more information visit jcfco.com/. 2016 Chi-X Global Holdings LLC. All rights reserved. CHI-X is a registered trademark in jurisdictions around the world. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jc-flowers--co-llc-to-acquire-chi-x-australia-chi-x-japan-and-chi-tech-300208834.html SOURCE Chi-X Global Holdings LLC

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[January 25, 2016] Skava Rated as a Leader in Mobile Commerce and Engagement Platforms by Forrester

BANGALORE, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Skava, an Infosys company, has been rated as a leader in The Forrester Wave: Mobile Commerce And Engagement Platforms, Q1 2016 report. It scored among the highest points in strategy, innovation, and customer feedback criteria. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162)

The report highlights Skava's strengths: Deep experience developing in-store clienteling solutions for its clients as well as desktop-based micro sites, product configurators, and social tools

The experience management platform, Skava Studio, offers marketers the flexibility to develop new desktop touchpoint experiences landing pages, micro sites, etc.) without the need for investing in an enterprise Web content management (WCM) platform

Responded to retailer demand for offering mobile everywhere experiences, and provides retailers with both customer-and associate-facing solutions for the in-store environment

Acquisition by Infosys in 2015 has allowed Skava to leverage that relationship by expanding its market reach, move into new verticals, and improving its consultative- type services

Clients have deemed Skava as a mobile agency with a platform that serves as a strategic partner rather than being a solution provider - accommodating new ideas and willingness to develop custom solutions outside the capabilities of the core platform



About Infosys Ltd Infosys is a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services. We enable clients, in more than 50 countries, to stay a step ahead of emerging business trends and outperform the competition. We help them transform and thrive in a changing world by co-creating breakthrough solutions that combine strategic insights and execution excellence.

Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with US$ 9.2 billion in LTM revenues and 193,000+ employees, is helping enterprises renew themselves while also creating new avenues to generate value. SOURCE Infosys

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[January 25, 2016] Energy Storage Pioneer SimpliPhi Power Taps Prominent Solar Exec as new Chief Operations Officer

OJAI, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SimpliPhi Power continues to execute on its rapid expansion plans with the recent addition of Chris Beitel as chief operations officer. Beitel joins the SimpliPhi executive team after a noteworthy stay at SolarCity and prior to that, Applied Materials. Beitel will apply his extensive business commercialization expertise to scaling SimpliPhi's storage technology worldwide. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160121/324780 "SimpliPhi has established our technology in the market, serving the military, film, residential and commercial on and off-grid markets over the past decade with non-toxic, highly efficient lithium ferrous phosphate energy storage solutions," said Catherine Von Burg, CEO of SimpliPhi Power. "As the solar industry matures and awareness grows, the opportunities for energy storage deployment are ripening. Chris has made a name for himself scaling up differentiated technologies over his career in emerging markets such as ours, and his expertise will be valuable in growing our manufacturing footprint and customer pipeline. We are thrilled to welcome Chris to the SimpliPhi team." Chris Beitel was most recently executive vice president of global operations and planning at Silevo, a wholly owned subsidiary of SolarCity, where he was responsible for global operations, supply chain, sales and marketing, product strategy and key partner networks to enable industry leading solar system installation cost and performance with the company. Beitel played a key role in the $350M acquisition of Silevo by SolarCity. He also was the principal executive who negotiated a $750M subsidy package from the State of New York to attract Silevo and SolarCity to set up manufacturing operations in the Unied States. Prior to Silevo, Beitel grew multiple products at Applied Materials, Inc., into billion dollar product lines.



"I am drawn to business environments where my charter is to take emerging, truly differentiated technologies and scale the business," said Beitel. "SimpliPhi has the right combination of perfected technology and a capital efficient business model that is already benefiting from the increasing interest in energy storage. And as we grow, the value proposition for SimpliPhi only gets better thanks to economies of scale. I look forward to bringing this impressive technology to full commercialization across the world." Founded in 2002, SimpliPhi Power battery technology utilizes lithium ferrous phosphate chemistry with proprietary architecture and power electronics to deliver energy storage solutions that are non-toxic, lightweight and do not require costly and bulky heat mitigation. In addition to offering seamless integration with all industry standard inverter charge controllers, SimpliPhi Power solutions are modular and scalable with a lightweight form factor - all backed by a 10-year warranty.

For more from new SimpliPhi COO Chris Beitel, see his Q&A on the SimpliPhi blog here: http://simpliphipower.com/energy-storage-qa-with-new-coo-chris-beitel. Attendees of Cleantech Forum San Francisco can also hear him discussing the biggest trends in energy storage on the panel, More Storage, Less Hassle: Exploring New Models in Energy Storage, happening on Tuesday, January 26th at 11am. About SimpliPhi Power SimpliPhi Power designs and manufactures clean energy storage and management systems that utilize lithium ferrous phosphate chemistry. Founded in 2002 as LibertyPak/Optimized Energy Storage, California-based SimpliPhi combines non-toxic lithium ferrous phosphate chemistry with proprietary cell and battery architecture to create the most safe, reliable, durable and scalable on-demand power solutions available for the residential, commercial, military and film industries. Integral to all SimpliPhi solutions is a management system that further optimizes the lifetime performance and durability of its batteries. SimpliPhi Power storage system components are UL certified, and have been rigorously tested and deployed by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. For more information, please visit SimpliPhipower.com and follow us on Twitter @SimpliPhiPower or on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media Contact Technica Communications for SimpliPhi Power

Lisa Ann Pinkerton

408-806-9626

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/energy-storage-pioneer-simpliphi-power-taps-prominent-solar-exec-as-new-chief-operations-officer-300208215.html SOURCE SimpliPhi Power

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[January 25, 2016] CLEAResult Names Aziz Virani CEO

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CLEAResult, a leader in designing and implementing technology-enabled energy efficiency programs for utilities, today announced Aziz Virani as the company's new president and chief executive officer. CLEAResult co-founder and interim CEO Jim Stimmel will return to his executive vice president position and will continue serving on the company's Board of Directors. "Aziz was hand-picked for his innovative vision, deep professional services background and his proven ability to help companies and their customers successfully realize business transformations in highly dynamic environments," said Stimmel. "He has a very client-centric mindset and approach to how he handles business, and we are certain he will create great value for our clients and the entire CLEAResult team." Virani joins CLEAResult from Avanade, a leading technology consultancy, where he most recently served as president of the North American division. In that role, he was responsible for all aspects of the business ranging from strategy developmet to day-to-day operations. Prior to Avanade, Virani was a partner at Accenture, where he spent more than 23 years holding management, consulting and leadership positions around the globe.



"CLEAResult encompasses the same values I have in regard to providing unequaled service and innovation designed around a shared commitment to our clients' success," said Virani. "There's a rich history at CLEAResult, and I'm looking forward to using my experience to help CLEAResult's employees and clients take full advantage of the opportunities created by our continued growth." Virani's more than three decades of experience leading consultative organizations includes helping clients navigate the challenges and identify opportunities presented by changing market conditions. His extensive technology acumen, coupled with his deep background in business strategy, will offer new opportunities for CLEAResult clients.

About CLEAResult CLEAResult is the largest provider of energy efficiency programs and services in North America. Through proven strategies tailored to clients' unique needs and market dynamics, the combined strength of experienced energy experts and technology-enabled service offerings help CLEAResult change the way people use energy for hundreds of utility and business partners. Founded in 2003, CLEAResult is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has close to 3,000 employees in more than 70 cities across the U.S. and Canada. CLEAResult is a portfolio company of General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm. For more information, visit clearesult.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clearesult-names-aziz-virani-ceo-300208700.html SOURCE CLEAResult

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[January 25, 2016] Dark Reading Online Event Offers a Unique Look at the Business Impact of Cyber Breaches and Threats

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM Americas' Dark Reading cyber security news and community site is pleased to announce an online event, Cyber Security: The Business View, taking place January 26, 2016, which will gather some of cyber security's most widely-recognized researchers and experts for keynotes and sessions throughout the day. The virtual event will start with a keynote at 11 am Eastern Time with Verizon Business' Bryan Sartin, who will discuss real-life investigations of major cyber breaches  including their causes and effects on well-known enterprises. Jason Straight, one of the industry's foremost legal experts on cyber security, will then discuss how the loss of customer data and intellectual property might affect a company's legal standing  and whether cyber insurance can offset risk. "The goal of this event  as with other Dark Reading events and content  is to go beyond the headlines and help businesses see the complete cyber security picture," said Tim Wilson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Dark Reading. "In this full-day summit, we're bringing business executives and security professionals together sothat both groups can see how the right security decisions can benefit the whole enterprise  and how the wrong decisions can have a devastating effect."



The online event will provide an executive-level view of security issues in an applicable way for both for CXOs and IT professionals. Additional sessions and panels will cover: How to measure risk and costs of IT security programs, building a plan for reacting to major data breaches, and an insider look at the goals of cyber-attacks and the methods that hackers use to select and infiltrate targeted companies. Attendees can also download white papers, industry reports and surveys including the Dark Reading/InformationWeek Strategic Security Survey. Sponsors of Cyber Security: A Business View include:

Diamond: ThreatStream, Certes Networks.

Platinum: Bit9 + Carbon Black, SurfWatch Labs, ThreatConnect.

Onyx: SecureAuth, Gigamon, Symantec. UBM Americas' online communities, including Dark Reading, provide community members with news, information, and content that include webinars, online events, white papers, and newsletters. An upcoming InformationWeek virtual event is slated for February 25, 2016 on Practical Ideas for Optimizing Your DevOps Strategy and is sponsored by CA Technologies. To register and attend Dark Reading's Cyber Security: A Business View go to: http://ubm.io/1Jm3zux Contact

Amanda O'Brien

Director of Content and Product Marketing, Client Services & Delivery, UBM Americas

[email protected]

+1 (310) 445-3753 About Dark Reading

Dark Reading is the cyber security industry's top destination for news and insight. The site gives cyber security professionals an editorially supported environment to connect with peers through moderated discussions, blogs and social media. Cyber security professionals visit Dark Reading to learn about cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and technology trends. It's where they discuss potential defenses against the latest attacks, and key technologies and practices that may help protect their most sensitive data in the future. It's where they come to engage with one another and with Dark Reading editors to embrace new (and big) ideas, find answers to their IT security questions and solve their most pressing problems. For more information, go to http://www.darkreading.com. Dark Reading is organized by UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc (UBM.L), an Events First marketing and communications services business. For more information, visit ubmamericas.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dark-reading-online-event-offers-a-unique-look-at-the-business-impact-of-cyber-breaches-and-threats-300208642.html SOURCE UBM Americas

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[January 25, 2016] Performance Designed Products is the #1 Third-Party Accessories Manufacturer in 2015

BURBANK, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NPD numbers issued late last week confirm that Performance Designed Products LLC (PDP) is the #1 third-party accessories manufacturer in total dollar and unit sales in 2015. According to NPD, PDP sold over one-third of third-party gaming accessories* compatible with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo gaming systems, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U, as well as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo and PlayStation Vita portable hardware. (NPD Group/U.S./Retail Tracking Service/Jan. 2015  Dec. 2015) PDP led the video game controller accessory subcategory, accounting for nearly 70 percent of units sold in the third-party group. Top selling products include the vibrant and colorful Afterglow Prismatic Wired Controller for Xbox One, and the Rock Candy line, reaching across current and previous generation systems. In the headset subcategory, PDP continues to grow at an astounding pace, gaining seven percent in units and five percent in dollar sales, among third-party manufacturers, over the same period in 2014. The new Afterglow audio products, including the Afterglow AG 9 Premium Wireless Headset and the Afterglow LVL Headset series were strong contributors in the 2015 line expansion. In the video game charging subcategory, PDP continues to grow among third-party manufacturers, thanks to the power of the Energizer brand. The Energizer Xbox One Charge System is the number one selling third-party charger for the platform, with Energizer licensed chargers continuing to perform well for both current and last gen platforms. PDP has also stepped ahead in the Canadian market, leading all third-party manufacturers for gaming accessories in 015. PDP's presence in Canada grew in 2015 to represent fourteen percent of units sold in the category, up four points from 2014. PDP also leads the Canadian revenue share, at 10 percent, up 3 points from 2014. (NPD Group/Canada/Retail Tracking Service/Jan. 2015  Dec. 2015)



"The outstanding PDP product lineup connects with gamers, and we're focusing on quality for every player," said Chris Richards, CEO of PDP. "With products like the Afterglow Prismatic Controller for Xbox One, the Afterglow AG 9, and our collection of licensed products, we were able to further develop our strengths in 2015. Looking forward to 2016, we are excited about our new products including the recently announced PDP Super Charger." All the above products are now available for purchase online at pdp.com and at major retailers. Super Charger launch date and price will be announced at a later date.

For press inquiries regarding PDP, please contact [email protected]. *Combined Video Game Accessories, not including the "Interactive Gaming Toys" subcategory (amiibos, Disney Infinity figures, Lego: Dimensions play sets, Skylanders figures, etc.) About Performance Designed Products LLC As the #1 gaming accessories manufacturer, Performance Designed Products LLC (PDP) designs high-quality products under a number of well-known brands, such as Afterglow, Rock Candy, and a growing portfolio of licenses. Headquartered in Burbank, CA, with offices in San Diego, France, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and China, PDP's products can be found in major retailers across the world. PDP and the PDP logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Performance Designed Products LLC. All Rights Reserved. About Patriarch Partners Patriarch Partners, LLC, is a private equity firm and holding company managing 75 companies across 14 industry sectors with revenues in excess of $8 billion. Founded by Lynn Tilton in 2000, Patriarch was built upon a proprietary patented financial model designed to manage and monetize the distressed portfolios of financial institutions. For more information, please visit www.patriarchpartners.com. For more information on the latest product from Performance Designed Products please visit www.pdp.com and follow PDPGaming on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325161

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325162

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325163 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/performance-designed-products-is-the-1-third-party-accessories-manufacturer-in-2015-300208759.html SOURCE Performance Designed Products

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[January 25, 2016] Alma Is #8 On Ad Age's 2016 A-List

MIAMI, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alma is once again part of Advertising Age's Agency A-List, this time as the #8 agency in the U.S. Alma has been on the prestigious A-List with back-to-back Multicultural Agency of the Year wins in 2014 & 2015 and named on the top 10 A-List in 2010 & 2012. Advertising Age evaluated agencies based on creativity, innovation, New Business wins, their ability to positively impact a client's business and the challenges they have met. "For anyone debating whether it's creativity or business strategy that puts an ad agency over the top, the answer has become clear: It's both," said Ad Age Editor Ken Wheaton. 2015 was a rock star year for the Alma business, with a 15% revenue increase growing the agency to its largest size ever and adding 50 new hires. In fact, that's 3 straight years of record-breaking growth for Alma and no account losses in 2015. The agency also won a competitive pitch for the Sprint business  the largest U.S. Hispanic account up for grabs this year  in addition to announcing new partnerships with American Cancer Society and CVS. Creatively, Alma rose to the #1 spot on the Adlatina "Crema" ranking, the most important list for U.S. Hispanic which is calculated by winning the most awards in Cannes, Clio, FIAP, El Sol, One Show, D&AD, Wave, El Ojo and USH Ideas. "We all like and want to win awards, but we won't obsessover them," commented Alvar Sunol, Chief Creative Officer and Co-president of Alma. "We think they should be the result of a daily commitment to and passion for finding the best solutions for our brands. Awards are not the reason we search for the best creative ideas, but a consequence of succeeding in it."



The Coconut Grove based shop is comprised of 150 employees hailing from over 31 nationalities  a fact that has strengthened the culture and clearly contributed to its success in multicultural marketing. "The real soul of Alma is our people," says Creative Chairman and CEO, Luis Miguel Messianu. "We couldn't do any of this without the talent and dedication our team puts forth day in and day out on behalf of great clients who give us their trust and support." Currently the team is geared up to conquer even more ground by developing the strategy for the next 5 years.

"Being recognized by Ad Age for the 5th time since 2010 demonstrates we are on the right path to our vision of being the most influential multicultural agency in the country," reflects Isaac Mizrahi, Co-president and Chief Operating Officer at Alma. "It energizes us to continue improving our skills and capabilities to better serve our clients' needs for the next 5 years." To keep up with the agency and view their work, visit AlmaAgency.com. You can also follow them on Twitter @AlmaAgency and enjoy their brand page on Facebook. About Alma

Founded in 1994, Alma is today the 7th largest Hispanic Agency (based on Ad Age's Hispanic Fact Pack.) Advertising Age included the agency on its "A-List" in 2016, 2012 and 2010 and also highlighted Alma as the 2014 & 2015 Multicultural Agency of the Year. Last year Creative Chairman & CEO Luis Miguel Messianu was named Legend Honoree by Ad Color for his career achievements in diversity and was also named Diversity Trendsetter at the AAF Diversity Achievement Awards in 2013. The agency has won top industry awards including: Cannes Lions, Effies, Clios, D&AD, FIAP, Art Director's Club, and El Sol. Long-standing clients include McDonald's, State Farm, Clorox, and Tobacco Free Florida, among others. For more information, visit www.almaad.com. About the Advertising Age Agency A-List

The Advertising Age Agency A-List has been celebrating the best agencies in the advertising and marketing business since the mid-1970s. Ad Age editors make their selections based on elements including creativity, financial performance, innovation and the ability to build clients' businesses. The franchise expanded in recent years to honor a broader range of shops and reflect changes in the marketing and media business. Media Contact: Tatiana Seijas

Phone: 305-662-3151

[email protected] Video - http://youtu.be/ChrqQ4HNsVo

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325338

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150126/171190LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alma-is-8-on-ad-ages-2016-a-list-300208968.html SOURCE Alma

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[January 25, 2016] Atomic Data Opens Dallas Private Cloud and Colocation Facility

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Atomic Data, ranked as one of Minnesota's fastest growing private companies1, today announced the expansion of its private cloud and colocation offerings into The Lone Star State. Housed in the former Dallas Federal Reserve building, the Dallas, Texas colocation and cloud facility extends The Atomic Cloud footprint and also provides modern enterprises with the connectivity, redundancy, and geographic separation necessary to safeguard against unforeseen risks to business operations. The Dallas location, Atomic Data's fifth in the U.S., is ideally suited for those Midwest businesses in need of an off-premise disaster recovery site to complement their existing colocated or on-premise production site. Designed as a Carrier-Hotel, the facility's highly available network with more than 30 top-tier carriers provides the connectivity required to reliably replicate massive amounts of data from production sites. Plus, with the added benefits of 900+ miles of geographic separation from Minnesota and complete independence from the U.S. Eastern and Western Interconnections, the Dallas site is a vital piece of today's business continuity plans. For Software as a Service companies like Fortress Medical (http://www.fortressmedical.com), maintaining a separate disaster recovery site s crucial to ensuring continual operations of their Clindex Clinical Trial Software. "By replicating our data to an an isolated facility in a warm-site configuration, we're not only enabling rapid recovery through The Atomic Cloud, but also adding another layer of application redundancy. Combined with the custom disaster recovery playbook and Atomic Data's DR expertise, our business continuity plan is stronger than ever," said Mark Jones, CEO, Fortress Medical.



Dallas Facility Highlights: Business-friendly location in vibrant downtown Dallas

Secured and audited cages and racks with 24x7 remote and on-site security and monitoring

Meet-Me-Room and DWDM ring provides access to 90+ top-tier carriers and network providers

28.8 MW of redundant power, fed by diverse, high-priority substations on the same grid as Dallas City Operations and Dallas 911

911 Fully redundant UPS and on-site power generation with reserve fuel for 24 hours of operation

Dual-loop cooling system, backed by on-site water storage to safeguard against utility interruptions

Double-interlock, pre-action, dry-pipe fire suppression delivery system for zoned dispersal Download the data center spec sheet at http://www.atomicdata.com/dallas

About Atomic Data

Atomic Data delivers sophisticated, custom tailored IT solutions to companies large and small, single site or multinational, in-house or in the cloud. Atomic Data works with your IT department or acts as your IT department to design, equip, and maintain the solutions for today's challenging IT environments. Atomic Data's areas of expertise include: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, The Atomic Cloud private virtualization, data center colocation, disaster recovery consulting, private connectivity, 24x7 network monitoring and Service Desk support, on-site support, custom software development, voice solutions and web hosting. For more information, please visit http://www.atomicdata.com/. SAFE. SIMPLE. SMART 1 'Fast 50 2015', Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, October 2015

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/print-edition/2015/10/23/fast-50-no-42-atomic-data.html Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130509/MM11539LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/atomic-data-opens-dallas-private-cloud-and-colocation-facility-300208666.html SOURCE Atomic Data

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[January 25, 2016] Notorious Pro-Bernie Sanders PAC Strikes Back with Political Satire Comic Series in New York Times Square

Americans Socially United Director Cary Lee Peterson talks with PoliWatch about 2016 PAC activities leading to Primary Election WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Hands down Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders is leading in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, which may have Hillary Clinton's team on the edge of their seat. Nonetheless, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) remains abundant with support from a political committee Americans Socially United that started this time a year ago before he announced his official candidacy for the presidential race. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325428) The pro-Sanders PAC had scrutiny for its stance in September from a political journalist, which led to a convoluted state of opinion about the PAC and why it chose to support Bernie Sanders' run for presidency. They've since restructured and are aiming back at the media with a political satire comic placed on a digital billboard in New York Times Square, a secondary jab since their first media billboard blitz in New York Times Square last April.



Americans Socially United chief director Cary Lee Peterson comments, "We were there this time a year ago. We're still here now. You don't like it, go start your own PAC or join a campaign committee of another candidate; we're here and going nowhere." The billboard ad displays a character that portrays Bernie Sanders as a super hero flying into the scene amongst other 2016 presidential candidates with a caption that says 'I see through you'. Ironically this billboard ad holds a handful of hidden messages that only the creators can describe.

PoliWatch spoke with pro-Bernie Sanders billboard comic artist Harrison Wood (41), currently a Las Vegas radio personality and freelancer of independent comic book series Thunder Frogs, who stated "I like what he [Bernie Sanders] stands for and I am happy to contribute to the 2016 presidential election campaigns. Every candidate out there deserves an opportunity to prove themselves and I'm glad I can use my talent to be involved in some way." ASU director Cary Peterson tells PoliWatch that the comic billboard ad is only the beginning of a series of political satire stokes at 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. At the end of the day the art of the pen is mightier than the sword. Article by: Jason Vasquez SOURCE Politician Watch Association

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[January 25, 2016] Information Commissioners call on governments to create a duty to document

GATINEAU, QC, Jan. 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Canada's Information Commissioners have called on their respective governments to create a legislated duty requiring public entities to document matters related to their deliberations, actions and decisions. In a joint resolution, information commissioners expressed concerns about the trend towards no records responses to access to information requests. This lack of records weakens Canadians' right of access and the accountability framework that is the basis of Canada's access to information laws. Without adequate records, public entities also compromise their ability to make evidence based decisions, fulfill legal obligations, and preserve the historical record. Canada's information commissioners have urged governments to create a positive duty for public servants and officials to create full and accurate records of their business activities. This duty must be accompanied by effective oversight and enforcement that ensures Canadians' right of access to public records remains meaningful and effective. The resolution is available on the websites of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada (www.oic-ci.gc.ca) and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (www.oipc.bc.ca). Backgrounder on A Duty to Document Why a duty to document? Access to information rights depend on public agencies documenting their key activities and decisions. Every year, information commissioners across Canada investigate complaints where requested records do not exist because they were never created. An emerging culture of oral decision making undermines public accountability, the historical record, and citizens' trust. Records management in the 21st century is challenged by new communications technologies, the volume and variability of records, and developments such as bring-your-own-device arrangements. These developments make document retention and accessibility more complicated. A duty to document addresses these concerns by establishing a positive duty for public servants and officials to create a full, accurate and complete record of important business activities. Records should be properly preserved so that they remain authentic, reliable, and easily retrievable when subject to access to information requests. By creating records that explain the 'what' and 'why' of public agency decision making, a duty to document promotes accountability, transparency, good governance and public trust. Canadians care about a duty to document A 2014 national poll commissioned by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression found that 75% of respondents either agree or somewhat agree that "Federal employees should be required by law to create a permanent, retrievable record of their deliberations and decision-making at work, even when these take place using non-written forms of communication."1 During the 2015 federal election, a coalition of 22 civil society groups issued a joint statement calling on Canada's major federal parties to commit to reforming Canada's access to information system. One of their main recommendations was the adoption of a requirement for "publc officials to document and preserve all records of their decision-making."2



What would a duty to document look like? A duty to document should be a legislated requirement to create records, not just a policy. This legal requirement could be incorporated into existing information management laws or access to information and privacy statutes.

A duty to document does not need to be onerous. The focus is not on the creation of more records, but rather on the creation and retention of the right records. The documents to be created will depend on the business needs of public agencies and community expectations. In order to be effective, the duty to document must be accompanied by strong records management practices and standards, and independent oversight with sanctions for non-compliance. Canadians can turn to a number of tested, international models of duty to document legislation, including the United States, New Zealand and some Australian states.3 Are there examples of a duty to document in Canada? Some Canadian laws include requirements to create records in specific circumstances. For example, Ontario's Municipal Act requires municipalities, local boards and committees to record resolutions, decisions and other proceedings.[4] And the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has a policy directive requiring deputy heads to ensure, "that decisions and decision-making processes are documented to account for and support the continuity of departmental operations, permit the reconstruction of the evolution of policies and programs, and allow for independent evaluation, audit, and review".5 However, there are no legal obligations to document in any federal, provincial or territorial access to information or information management laws. This is why Information Commissioners are recommending a comprehensive and codified duty to document that includes oversight and enforcement. The role of Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioners in promoting a duty to document Federal information commissioners have recommended a legislated duty to document since the early 1990s in annual reports, reviews of the Access to Information Act, and presentations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Provincial and territorial commissioners have made similar recommendations. In 2013, Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioners issued a joint resolution that urged governments to create a legislated duty requiring all public entities to document matters related to deliberations, actions and decisions.6 Calls for reform continue to come from experts across the country. In 2015, the committee reviewing Newfoundland and Labrador's access and privacy legislation called on that government to impose a duty to document.7 In British Columbia, the Commissioner has urged government to adopt a duty to document in several reports and in her submission to the Special Committee reviewing the province's access and privacy legislation in 2015.8 And in Quebec, la Commission d'acces a l'information has called for a duty to document as part of the modernization of that province's public sector access to information law.

1 Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. "Do Canadians Care About Free Expression" CJFE Review 2014, at: http://www.cjfe.org/poll_what_do_canadians_think_about_free_expression 2 Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. "Joint Statement: Fix Canada's Broken Access to Information System" at: http://www.cjfe.org/joint_statement_fix_canada_s_broken_access_to_information_system 3 44 United States Code 3101

Section 17 of the New Zealand Public Records Act 2005, at: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2005/0040/latest/DLM345729.html

Section 12 of the New South Wales State Records Act 1998, at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/sra1998156/.

Section 7 of the Queensland Public Records Act 2002, at:

https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/P/PublicRecA02.pdf

Section 12 of the State of Victoria Public Records Act 1973, at:

http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/LTObject_Store/LTObjSt3.nsf/DDE300B846EED9C7CA257616000A3571/BD40624FF1104271CA257761002AAA5C/$FILE/73-8418a035.pdf 4 Section 239(7) of the Municipal Act, 2001, at: http://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/01m25#BK306 5 Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. "Policy on Information Management", at: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=12742ion=HTML 6 Resolution of Canada's Information and Privacy Commissioners and Ombudspersons. "Modernizing Access and Privacy Laws for the 21st Century" at: https://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2013/res_131009_e.asp 7 Letto, Doug, Jennifer Stoddart, and Clyde Wells. "Report of the 2014 Statutory Review: Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act Newfoundland and Labrador", March 2015 at, http://www.parcnl.ca/news/committeereport 8 OIPC BC, "Submission to the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act", November 18, 2015, at, https://www.oipc.bc.ca/special-reports/1884 SOURCE Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

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[January 25, 2016] Bernstein Liebhard LLP Announces That A Suit Has Been Filed Against Tower Semiconductor Ltd.

NEW YORK, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bernstein Liebhard LLP today announced that a securities class action has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of a class (the "Class") consisting of all persons or entities who purchased the securities of Tower Semiconductor Ltd. ("Tower" or the "Company") (TSEM) from April 30, 2012 through January 13, 2016 (the "Class Period"). The complaint charges Tower and certain of its officers with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Plaintiffs allege that, throughout the Class Period, Defendants issued false and misleading statements to investors and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the value of net tangible assets of the acquisition of a fabrication facility from Micron Technology Inc. ("Micron") was artificially inflated; (2) the value of net tangible assets of the acquisition of 51% of TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co., Ltd. from Panasonic Corporation ("Panasonic") was artificially inflated; (3) Tower's Series F Debentures (the "Debentures") were incorrectly accounted for to understate debt; and (4) as a result, Defendants' statements about Tower's business, operations and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. On January 14, 2016, analyst firm Spruce Point Capital Management issued a report about theCompany claiming that the value of the net tangible assets of the acquisitions from Micron and Panasonic were artificially inflated, and that Tower understated its debt due to improper accounting relating to the Debentures. After this news, Tower stock fell approximately 10%.



Plaintiffs seek to recover damages on behalf of all Class members who invested in Tower securities during the Class Period. If you invested in Tower securities as described above, and lost money on the transactions, you may wish to join in this action to serve as lead plaintiff. In order to do so, you must meet certain requirements set forth in the applicable law and file appropriate papers no later than March 22, 2016. A "lead plaintiff" is a representative party that acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. In order to be appointed lead plaintiff, the court must determine that the class member's claim is typical of the claims of other class members, and that the class member will adequately represent the class. Under certain circumstances, one or more class members may together serve as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery is not, however, affected by the decision whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff. You may retain Bernstein Liebhard LLP, or other counsel of your choice, to serve as your counsel in this action.

If you are interested in discussing your rights as a Tower investor and/or have information relating to the matter, please contact Joseph R. Seidman, Jr. at (877) 779-1414 or [email protected]. Bernstein Liebhard LLP has pursued hundreds of securities, consumer and shareholder rights cases and recovered over $3.5 billion for its clients. The National Law Journal has recognized Bernstein Liebhard for twelve consecutive years as one of the top plaintiffs' firms in the country. You can obtain a copy of the complaint from the clerk of the court for the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Bernstein Liebhard LLP

10 East 40th Street

New York, New York 10016

(877) 779-1414

www.bernlieb.com ATTORNEY ADVERTISING.  2016 Bernstein Liebhard LLP. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Bernstein Liebhard LLP, 10 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016, (212) 779-1414. The lawyer responsible for this advertisement in the State of Connecticut is Michael S. Bigin. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. Contact Information

Joseph R. Seidman, Jr.

Bernstein Liebhard LLP

http://www.bernlieb.com

(212) 779-1414

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120202/MM47134LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bernstein-liebhard-llp-announces-that-a-suit-has-been-filed-against-tower-semiconductor-ltd-300209307.html SOURCE Bernstein Liebhard LLP

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[January 25, 2016] Find X With Thought Leaders, Visionaries & Innovators at TEDxBerkeley on Feb 6

BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Do you find yourself wondering what Finding X means? This year's TEDxBerkeley, which will be held at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley CA on February 6, will look to solutions to our world's imperfections. Sixteen riveting speakers will address how we identify these problems and make sense of them in the larger systems where they belong. Whether it be voyaging into uncharted technological or scientific territory, reconciling our diverse perspectives of the human condition, or unearthing the parts of ourselves that give our lives direction and meaning, we all hope to make an impact on this world by Finding X. Now in its 7th year, this prestigious TEDx event will bring together thought leaders, visionaries, innovators and 54 performers who will enlighten and inspire more than 2,000 attendees across core disciplines impacting the world, from medicine and education to technology and diversity. TEDxBerkeley strives to curate an outstanding group of inventive and provocative speakers who can shift global conversations in a way that makes the world a better place, central and core to TED's mission. The goal is to get us all to re-think conventional ideas and the status quo so that we can all make a positive difference in our own communities. Tickets for TEDxBerkeley 2016 are on sale through Friday, February 5 or until they sell out. Attendees or those viewing via Live Stream at http://www.tedxberkeley.org starting at 10 am PST/1 pm EST, can also participate in the conversation on social media by using #TEDxBerkeley on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social networks. This year's line-up includes: Christopher Ategeka: Award-Winning Social Entrepreneur & Nano-Technology Inventor that identifies early detection and monitoring of chronic diseases.

[email protected]: a cellist quartet made up of undergraduate and graduate students united by the passion to express the uniquely rich possibilities of the cello.

Kathy Calvin : As President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, Kathy works to connect people, ideas, and resources to the United Nations to help solve global problems.

: As President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, Kathy works to connect people, ideas, and resources to the United Nations to help solve global problems. Jacob Corn : Scientific Director of the Innovative Genomics Initiative & on faculty at UC Berkeley in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, Jacob focuses on neurobiology, infectious disease, and oncology.

: Scientific Director of the Innovative Genomics Initiative & on faculty at UC Berkeley in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department, Jacob focuses on neurobiology, infectious disease, and oncology. Stephanie Freid : An International Conflicts Journalist, TV correspondent for CCTV ( China ) and Turkish TV International networks, Stephanie reports from some of the world's toughest conflict and war zones.

: An International Conflicts Journalist, TV correspondent for CCTV ( ) and Turkish TV International networks, Stephanie reports from some of the world's toughest conflict and war zones. Rose Gelfand , Molly Gardne & Isa Ansari : this trio from Oakland School for the Arts, Literary Arts Department, are performance artists who specialize in the spoken word and poetry on stage.

, & : this trio from Oakland School for the Arts, Literary Arts Department, are performance artists who specialize in the spoken word and poetry on stage. Rob Hotchkiss : Grammy Award-winning Musician for the Best Rock Song for five-time nominated "Drops of Jupiter", and was the musical force behind hits such as Meet Virginia , Free, I Am and Get To Me .

: Grammy Award-winning Musician for the Best Rock Song for five-time nominated "Drops of Jupiter", and was the musical force behind hits such as , and . Naveen Jain : An Entrepreneur & Philanthropist, Naveen is the founder of Moon Express, World Innovation Institute, inome, Talent Wise, Intelius, and InfoSpace.

: An Entrepreneur & Philanthropist, Naveen is the founder of Moon Express, World Innovation Institute, inome, Talent Wise, Intelius, and InfoSpace. Jeromy Johnson : An EMF Expert, Jeromy is dedicated to mitigating the negative impacts of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure, helping to implement solutions that reduce and eliminate EMF pollution around the globe.

: An EMF Expert, Jeromy is dedicated to mitigating the negative impacts of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure, helping to implement solutions that reduce and eliminate EMF pollution around the globe. Reverend Deborah L. Johnson : Minister, Author & Diversity Expert, Deborah teaches practical applications of Universal Spiritual Principles and is founder of The Motivational Institute, which specializes in diversity.

: Minister, Author & Diversity Expert, Deborah teaches practical applications of Universal Spiritual Principles and is founder of The Motivational Institute, which specializes in diversity. Aran Khanna : As Computer Scientist & Security Researcher on personal privacy, he builds tools that empower users to discover the consequences of the digital footprint they're leaving.

: As Computer Scientist & Security Researcher on personal privacy, he builds tools that empower users to discover the consequences of the digital footprint they're leaving. John Koenig : Creator & Author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which fills gaps in language with new terms for emotions, some of which ('sonder') have entered the language outright.

: Creator & Author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which fills gaps in language with new terms for emotions, some of which ('sonder') have entered the language outright. Ellen Leanse : As Apple's first User Evangelist, she brought Apple online in 1985 and has since helped more than 40 companies and policy makers increase their innovation and impact.

: As Apple's first User Evangelist, she brought Apple online in 1985 and has since helped more than 40 companies and policy makers increase their innovation and impact. Dr. Susan Lim : As both Surgeon and Entrepreneur, Susan broke through the gender glass ceiling in transplantation surgery by becoming the first in Asia , and the second woman in the world to have performed a successful liver transplant.

: As both Surgeon and Entrepreneur, Susan broke through the gender glass ceiling in transplantation surgery by becoming the first in , and the second woman in the world to have performed a successful liver transplant. OSA Chamber Choir: the largest audition-only high school Vocal ensemble at the Oakland School for the Arts, this ensemble has performed for Governor Jerry Brown's inauguration, Obama's campaign tour and many other notable events.

inauguration, Obama's campaign tour and many other notable events. Sonia Rao : A BMI Spotlight artist, Sonia is a singer and songwriter whose latest album Meet Them at the Door is a collection of heart-felt pop songs with a classic vibe that showcase her piano skills and soulful voice.

: A BMI Spotlight artist, Sonia is a singer and songwriter whose latest album Meet Them at the Door is a collection of heart-felt pop songs with a classic vibe that showcase her piano skills and soulful voice. Amandine Roche : A Human Rights Expert, Amandine's focus is on civic education, democratization, gender and youth empowerment.

: A Human Rights Expert, Amandine's focus is on civic education, democratization, gender and youth empowerment. Dr. Sriram Shamasunder : Sriram aims to deliver comprehensive healthcare in resource poor areas of the world through his work at UCSF and as co-founder of the HEAL initiative.

: Sriram aims to deliver comprehensive healthcare in resource poor areas of the world through his work at UCSF and as co-founder of the HEAL initiative. Dr. Andrew Siemon : Andrew is an Astrophysicist, Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research & lead scientist for the "Breakthrough Listen Initiative", a $100 million effort that is conducting one of the most sensitive searches for advanced extraterrestrial life in history.

: Andrew is an Astrophysicist, Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research & lead scientist for the "Breakthrough Listen Initiative", a effort that is conducting one of the most sensitive searches for advanced extraterrestrial life in history. Joshua Toch : After being bullied because of Cerebral Palsy, Joshua founded Mind Before Mouth, which equips students to better deal with social aspects of life and get through times of hardship.

: After being bullied because of Cerebral Palsy, Joshua founded Mind Before Mouth, which equips students to better deal with social aspects of life and get through times of hardship. UC Berkeley Azaad: UCB Azaad is a competitive Hindi Film Dance team which motivates audiences to connect with Bollywood culture.



Behind The Scenes:

Chris Lew is TEDxBerkeley's 2016 curator and a UC Berkeley student of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Public Health, R. Jennifer Barr is co-curator & digital marketing and strategy consultant for technology companies and Renee Blodgett is co-curator & founder of Magic Sauce Media , a marketing consultancy for tech & lifestyle brands and We Blog the World, a site dedicated to transformative travel. About TED and TEDx: TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is an annual event where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about across subject areas that are collectively shaping our future. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program, independent from TED, of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience and TEDxBerkeley, a 501c3, is now in its sixth year. For more information, visit: www.tedxberkeley.org and on Twitter @tedxberkeley. Media Contact: Renee Blodgett | Magic Sauce Media

617.620.9664

renee at magicsaucemedia dot com

@magicsaucemedia To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/find-x-with-thought-leaders-visionaries--innovators-at-tedxberkeley-on-feb-6-300209351.html SOURCE TEDxBerkeley

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The Obama administration has released one of al Qaedas most skilled explosives experts, a man personally praised by Osama bin Laden and who created the shoe-bomb design that was used unsuccessfully to bring down an airliner in 2001.

The Pentagon said Thursday that Egyptian Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed al Sawah, who may have known of the original Sept. 11 plot, was transferred to the government of Bosnia. Al Sawah fought with the Bosnian army in the early 1990s and eventually made his way to Afghanistan in 2000.

Like other members of al Qaeda, al Sawah began his terrorism career as a member of the secretive Muslim Brotherhood, which is present in the U.S.





Al Sawahs Guantanamo file reveals a number of chronic medical problems in 2008, when a secret profile was created by Task Force Guantanamo. Now 58, he was listed as morbidly obese, and at the time suffered from diabetes, fatty liver disease and chronic pain from spinal cord compression. Prison doctors urged him to get more exercise.

In his terrorism career, he was close to bin Laden and taught classes in explosives at the al Qaeda leaders Tarnak Farms training camp.

In Afghanistan al Sawah developed a mine to sink U.S. ships and the shoe-bomb prototype that Richard Reid attempted to ignite while on a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.





Detainee also associated with the planners and perpetrators of international terrorist attacks and other senior al-Qaida members, and may have had advanced knowledge of the 11 September 2001 attacks, states his secret file, which was published by Wikileaks along with hundreds of other Gitmo dossiers. Detainee participated in hostilities against U.S. and Coalition forces, and is a veteran extremist combatant.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo judged al Sawah to be a medium risk to U.S. troops and recommended him for transfer.

The publicized file may prove a problem for al Sawah on the outside. He became an exceptional intelligence source, his file says, which could cause terrorists to seek revenge.

He has been compliant over the last four years, the file says. He continues to be a highly prolific source and has provided invaluable intelligence regarding explosives, al-Qaida, affiliated entities and their activities. If released, detainee will possibly reestablish extremist associations, but is unlikely to do so as his cooperation with the U.S. government may serve to identify detainee as a target for revenge by those associates.

His release brings the prison population, once at more than 700, to 92, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

President Obama plans to close the prison and bring whoever is left at Gitmo to an American prison.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, says Mr. Obama would be violating federal law, which prohibits the action.

Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported that a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who protested his indefinite confinement with a lengthy hunger strike has taken the unusual step of turning down a chance to finally leave the U.S. base in Cuba, rejecting an offer to be resettled in an unfamiliar new country.

Muhammad Bawazir, a 35-year-old from Yemen, refused to board a plane as two other prisoners were being flown out for resettlement in the Balkans, his lawyer, John Chandler, said Thursday. Since returning to his homeland was not an option, he insisted on being sent to a country where he has family.

Mr. Chandler said he spent months trying to persuade Bawazir to accept the resettlement in another country he declined to name. But the prisoner, who was 21 when captured in Afghanistan , apparently decided at the last minute he couldnt do it.

Its a country Id go to in a heartbeat, the Atlanta-based attorney said. I cant help you with the logic of his position. Its just a very emotional reaction from a man who has been locked up for 14 years.

 This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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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.
FLIGHTS could be cancelled and airports blockaded due to action by strikers tomorrow.

Two air traffic control unions, SNCTA and Usac-CGT, have called for a national strike by members over salaries and jobs.

While a source in the tourism industry predicts 40-50% of flights in and out of the country could be cancelled by airlines, little information is currently available.

Flights crossing the country could also be affected.

A national strike by taxi drivers on the same day could also compound the problem of getting to the airport, with the possibility of drivers organising go-slows to affect traffic on main routes or organising blockades in and around cities.

They are protesting against increased competition from firms such as Uber.

Three key unions have called for strikes in the civil service which could affect hospitals and schools.

Colleges and primaires are like to be the worst affected as teacher unions have also called for walkouts over education reforms.

Local authorities should have minimum service measures in place to look after children during the disruption.

Photo:Gregoire Lannoy
Melbourne production duo and burger connoisseurs Leisure Suite are today unleashing their brand new clip for their dreamy gem Heavy Head. Clocking in at just under five minutes, the clip is a hazy retro trip into the minds of director James J Robinson and artist Nick Keays.

Brought together by a mutual love of fried food and J Dilla, Leisure Suite have been busy playing shows and working on their upcoming second EP set for realise next month. Currently being pressed to 12 vinyl the new EP Lay Low, will be celebrated with a show at The Curtin on Friday March 4th.

Ahead of their upcoming show, the duo will be supporting Alpine February 19th at Estonian House with Dorsal Fins, for those who cant wait til March.

Check out the clip below and if you like what youre hearing pop by Leisure Suites Facebook for more info on the upcoming show and release.
Victoria Police have appealed to the public in their search for 37-year-old Karl Von-Bamberger, a local Melbourne musician who was last seen leaving a residence in High Street, Coburg at about 6.30pm on Wednesday, 20th January.

A media release from Victoria Police says Von-Bambergers family are concerned about his welfare, as the musician is known to suffer from an undisclosed medical condition and his disappearance is reportedly out of character.

According to the Australian Missing Persons Register, Around 6:30pm [Karl] left a friends house and to return home, and rang his best friend who he regulary visits to inform him he would be on his way over by tram and foot from Coburg to Fitzroy. (His bike was damaged).

He anticipated to be there after this 8:07pm conversation but never arrived. His friend and others tried to call him later than evening wondering what had happened as this was totally out of character.

Other friends, unaware of his disappearance also tried to call him and his phone was switched off/flat/in airplane mode  not receiving calls. There has been no contact since the 8:07pm call.

Von-Bamberger, who has played in Eli and Bev, Mad Nanna, Horse Mania, A Band Called Life, Secret Valley, Kind Winds, and other Melbourne bands, is known to frequent the Coburg and Brunswick areas.

Von-Bamberger is described as Caucasian, 170cm tall, with dark hair, a solid build, and fair complexion. Police say he was last seen wearing a red checker shirt, black jeans, black jacket, silver-framed glasses and carrying a grey backpack.

A Facebook group has been set up to try and locate Von-Bamberger, with admins saying the muso may have been wearing a grey long-sleeved button-up collared shirt, a black t-shirt underneath with the Nike swoosh and sportswear written under it when he was last seen, as well as red and black Puma sneakers.

Anyone with any information in relation to Karl Von-Bambergers whereabouts is urged to contact Brunswick Police Station on 8378 6000 or Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.
For our first edition of How To for 2016 we caught up with the very experienced and passionate Tim Dalton, a senior lecture in audio at SAE Melbournes campus and a partner at Dalton Koss HQ.

Tim has over 36 years of international experience as an audio engineer and record producer. Originally from the UK, hes worked internationally with David Bowie, Sir Paul McCartney, Simple Minds, Elvis Costello, Faith No More, The Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Transvision Vamp, Primus, De La Soul, and Atomic Kitten.

Tim will be hosting a question and answer session at SAEs open day on Saturday 30th January 10:00am to 2:00pm.

As a partner at Dalton Koss HQ (DKHQ) and in my role as a senior lecture in audio at SAE Institute Melbourne I regularly visit various educational institutions around the world where I give master classes and lectures on careers in the audio, music and creative industries.

Over the last 36 years Ive earned my living as a live sound engineer, tour manager, studio engineer, record producer, artist manager, A&R consultant, rehearsal studio owner, record label executive and more recently educator.

Discussions with early career professionals nearly always focus on how I got started on my 36-year career in the music industry. What was my personal journey? The second question that I am normally asked is, how do I become an audio engineer? Its an interesting question as there is no standard route into the profession and its highly unlikely that youll ever see a mainstream advertisement in the jobs pages of a newspaper for an audio engineer.

I maintain that a working in the audio production/music industry is not a job or even a career but its actually a lifestyle, which requires a huge amount of personal commitment. If you are looking for high pay, hedonism and fame then a career in music and audio production definitely wont be for you.

The music industry does an incredibly clever smoke and mirrors trick where it tries to make its self appear all revolutionary and anti-establishment. In reality the music industry is probably the worlds most compliant, conservative and least revolutionary art form on the planet. If you want to be creatively cutting edge and revolutionary then try fine art, fashion or architecture as an art form.

[include_post id=468847]To help re-align perceptions of both employers and students in my role as a partner at DKHQ I have organised a number of speed dating with industry events in the UK, USA and Australia. At these very popular events students get to meet music industry managers and owners and speak to them one-to-one. Results are always positive from both sides of the table.

Students start to realize that the product may be music, but ultimately, they will experience a very similar working life to everyone else. The job description may include activities that might seem like social occasions e.g. going to shows, visits to the studio, riding on a tour bus, but being involved in these activities from a work perspective is very different from hanging out with your mates.

The music industry is first and foremost a business and a very serious financially focused one at that. Whether you end up working in the independent music world or for a major international music label, you will be expected to work very long hours in a highly competitive work environment to achieve measurable successes often under difficult circumstances.

You may get to wear skinny black jeans and Converse to work, but this doesnt mean that you are working any less then your friends who have to wear a suit and tie to work in their office. Theyll have long hours, with the potential for advancement if they perform well, the potential for dismissal if you dont, good bosses, bad bosses, troublesome clients, all the standard workplace related experiences.

There will definitely be some cool perks, but trust my 36 years of experience, theyll few and far between and theyll definitely be earned. Anyone who is hard working, creative, passionate and motivated will fair very well in a music industry career.

Here is my eight-step guide to become an audio engineer:

Start working with sound equipment

Audio equipment has never been so cheap and much of it these days is software based. Get your hands on as much equipment as possible and practice your skills. If you believe Malcolm Gladwells theory (I do) then 10,000 hours is the magic number. Start clocking up those hours now.

Audition microphones, recorders, effects, plug-ins work out what they do and how they can be used. Spend all day mucking about with audio equipment, discuss audio equipment with like-minded folk when youre not mucking about with audio equipment and then when you go to sleep dream about audio equipment  its a lifestyle remember?

Enrol on an appropriate audio degree

There are lots of different degree options out there so find the one that suits you. The role of audio engineer is a diverse one e.g. live audio, post-production, programming, maintenance, design installation, broadcast, mastering, music production, etc.

Go and visit the different institutions, thats what open days are for, and see what they have to offer in terms of degrees/diplomas structure, equipment, exit qualification and consider how experienced are their teaching staff.

Ideally the educationally institution that you choose will have lots and lots of project work (remember that 10,00 hour rule?) so youll get lots and lots of hands on time. A degree in audio production on its own will not be enough to secure you some work so in addition go to a recording studio, music venue or local theatre and try to make friends with the sound crew. Tell them youre interested in what they do, and ask if you can hang out and watch them work. Find out about the job and then work out what you want to do and start doing it.

Read some books

[include_post id=434000]There are lots of books (Im currently writing my third one), magazines and web sites out there. Read as much as possible about audio engineering, music production, mastering, equipment and everything connected to audio and music production.

Audio engineering is a very complex industry but the information is out there but it will require you to actively research the industry. By reading youll understand the history and context of the industry and that will make you a better engineer.

Become familiar with different kinds of sound equipment; do lots of research on the Internet, check out the websites of sound companies, studios, record companies, producers, etc.

Learn to use different audio software

You probably already have a favourite piece of software, which you love to use. As a professional you need to be confident in using all of the tools available so find out about the other software packages available that you dont use including ProTools, Cubase, Reason, Cakewalk, Sibelius, Digital Performer, Live, Ableton or Logic.Most of the manufacturers of these products have free demos available on the Internet. Go on the different forums and speak to the audio gurus about issues that you are having. Watch lots of Youtube videos that show you the shortcuts and hacks.

Get familiar with lots of different types of music

As a music industry professional youll be working with music that may not be of you own liking so its vital you critically listen to as many different types of music as possible.

No one is asking you to like this music but you do need to understand how if operates and what makes it what it is. Spend lots of time critically analysing different musical genres that you wouldnt normally listen too.

This is the most important thing you should know about and a good educational institution will have critical listening as part of their program. When learning how to mix and edit music you should also know about the wide variety of music available in the world.

Listen to different types of songs.

Analyse different types of sounds.

Try to catch each and every beat.

Think how did they do that?

Learn to create your favourite music and music that you dont like

Be honest with your weaknesses and commit to improve yourself

After you have completed a project look back and reflect upon what went well and what didnt. Critically discuss with your peers, employers, and teachers about what you have created and work out how you can make it better.

Commit to being better next time by adjusting your workflow or being better prepared. Where necessary, make amends with the parties at the receiving end of your mistake (e.g. a missed cue on stage or in the mix).

Expose yourself to the ever-changing audio technologies

Chances are, theres a better way or better tools to get your job done today than there were six months ago. However, whatever technology you are considering to use needs to be thought through in the context of what your project actually needs.

[include_post id=356945]Technology should always serve what you are trying to achieve in the project, not the other way around. Think of technology as the tools of the trade but do not become technology obsessed because it should be about the music and not the tech.

If you apply a piece of tech to a project ask yourself is it helping the artists express whatever it is they are trying to express? If the answer is NO then you probably dont need that side chained, frequency sensitive plug-in gate ducking the room microphone in the mix.

Be entrepreneurial and become the CEO of you own brand

Just like Bonds sells upmarket underwear and JB HiFi sells electronics, you sell something that is unique  YOU. This includes your identity, personality, work ethic, goals, aspirations, fears and more.

Think of yourself as a brand, as your own public relations, sales and marketing department all in one, and you need to be the CEO of that brand. In the creative industries self employment working on short term contracts is the norm so know how to sell the best version of yourself and position your image that will be favourable to all.

Your digital footprint (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) may be a huge factor in you getting that vital paying gig so actively manage your brand.
Crime lurks in every part of the metro and right now Kansas City's most prolific anti-crime activist offers anbehind the scenes look at his efforts . . .Recently,Like it or not, whileor complain, KC's most prolific activist is working to help solve crimes.
Which caption best describes this photo?

We're working a lot of other stuff this morning (including a wicked x-box session) so for right now we wanted to let a reader have his say. Here's a nice note from a member of our blog community:##########Developing . . .
The reality is that the majority of the Mayor's efforts have been focused among startup hipsters in the Crossroads and high tech firms. However, this write-up give him credit for just about all things Internets in Kansas City. Checkit: Connecting Small Businesses and Closing the Digital Divide Face-to-Face
Hillary Clinton praised Greece for all it does to tackle the refugee crisis, despite the huge financial turmoil the country is in

Prominent Greek Americans from New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington DC participated in the first fundraising for Hillary 2016 in the tri-state area. Wealthy businessman Dennis Mehiel, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor and a close supporter of every Hillary Clinton campaign, was coordinating the $2,700 per plate event, greeknewsonline.com reports.

Although there was no announcement yet of a Greek Americans for Hillary Clinton Committee, the chairman of her national presidential campaign is John Podesta, former Chief of Staff to president Bill Clinton and senior advisor to Barack Obama. John Podesta, a Greek American with roots in Arcadia, Peloponnese, has spoken at the fundraising.

Andy Manatos, president of the Coordinated Effort of Hellenes, a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the administration of President Jimmy Carter and a personal friend to the Clintons, introduced Hillary Clinton to the gathering. Greek News was told that Andy Manatos praised the role President Bill Clinton played in opening the way to Cyprus entrance to the EU. For that, he said, Greek American community is so indebted to him, even if Hillary doesnt do anything for Greece and Cyprus in the future.

Hillary praises Greece

Hillary Clinton in her remarks praised the Greek American community and touched on some of their concerns.

She praised Greece for all it does to tackle the refugee crisis, despite the huge financial turmoil the country is in.

Hillary Clinton expressed concern on the situation in Turkey and the policies followed by Tagip Erdogan. She said that he has changed a lot since she has met him for the first time as Istanbul Mayor at a Conference for Religious Freedom.

The Democratic frontrunner also touched on Cyprus, pointing out the importance of its acceptance by the EU. She told the audience that Cyprus will remain and important challenge and one that she will take seriously.

Its fair to say that centering Cyprus within the EU is creating support that will be difficult to overlook. It is something that has kept the status quo. Because the status quo is not adequate and we have to try to as best we can to reach a final settlement that will mean the end of Turkish troops and that the communities will have once again to live in their respective areas, but actually work together where is possible. Something they actually did for many  many years before. So Cyprus will remain and important challenge and one that I will take seriously, Hillary Clinton added.

Source: www.greeknewsonline.com

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The Patras Carnival is composed of a series of events that include balls, parades, street parties, a childrens carnival, and more. This event has a long history, with the construction of floats and the presentation of parades appearing around 187

The Patras Carnival was officially launched on Saturday by the city's mayor Costas Peletidis who urged the young people not to compromise and to claim what belongs to them.

The opening ceremony of the carnival was a voyage of voices, songs and traditional music where Greece joined with Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba and Italy and concluded with the group of percussion instruments of Athens 2004 Olympic Games and fireworks that gave special colour to the city's sky.

Events and history

The Patras Carnival is composed of a series of events that include balls, parades, street parties, a childrens carnival, and more. This event has a long history, with the construction of floats and the presentation of parades appearing around 1870.

As the years continued, the Carnival established itself in the early 19th century, as the master of carnival celebrations in Greece, and is now one of the biggest in Europe!

This annual event begins on January 17, with the climax occurring on the last weekend of Carnival where visitors can see elaborate floats in huge parades, in Patras, Greece.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The regulations for the operation of the Cyprus casino resort had been submitted to the European Commission

The government will, by February have the short list of bids for the creation of a casino resort in Cyprus, MPs heard according to cyprus-mail.com.

Cypriot permanent secretary of the commerce ministry Stelios Himonas told a joint session of the House finance and trade committees: We have started the evaluation of applications. We will be ready in a month to proceed with the proposal for the three.

During the first phase of the process eight bids were submitted, Himonas said.

Regulations submitted

He said the regulations for the operation of the casino resort had been submitted to the European Commission, which had come back with two questions concerning the protection of personal data and on restrictions on free movement of gaming equipment. These questions would be answered in cooperation with consultants from the ministry, he said. He urged deputies to speed things up on their end.

According to Himonas, the regulations govern various matters, including the individual functions of a supervisory authority and control of the authority by the auditor-general.

The chairman of the finance committee, DIKO leader Nicolas Papadopoulos, wondered whether there were adequate guarantees that the investor to be chosen would have the funding to implement the massive project.

Himonas responded: Based on the information we have, the three to be selected will be invited to present evidence on the elements of funding.

Three most likely bidders

The chairman of the trade committee, Zacharias Zacharias said deputies would take two weeks to study the regulations and seek clarifications or submit observations during the next meeting on the subject. The aim he said, would be for the House to adopt the regulations in February.

While the names of the bidders have not officially been announced, it has been widely reported in the local press that three companies were the frontrunners in the race.

As it was previously reported in the media, the three most likely bidders are: Hard Rock, an international hotel operator with casinos in Hollywood, Tampa Florida, Biloxi, Las Vegas, Northfield Sun International, a resort hotel and casino chain with extensive interests in South Africa; and Bouygues, a French company specialising in online gaming.

Bids evaluation

Malaysian giant Genting Group was the name at the top of the list but withdrew its interest.

The Ministry clarified that the names of the companies will not be made public. The statement said that the bids will be evaluated based on financial capability, experience in developing casino resorts, understanding of the Cyprus market, and their vision for the casino resort.

The plan is to issue the licence within 2016 and then build the casino resort in approximately two years time.

Source: http://cyprus-mail.com/

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Israeli Ambassador to Greece, Irit Ben-Abba expressed her belief that during Tsipras visit to Israel he will express his will to encourage the Israeli business sector to come and do business in Greece

The partnership between Greece and Israel is very crucial and we are happy that the Greek governments see the value as well, the Israeli Ambassador to Greece, Irit Ben-Abba, said in an exclusive interview with Capital.gr.

She notes that Israel wants to cooperate with Greece and Cyprus and hopefully with other eastern Mediterranean countries; like-minded countries that share the same ideas on what this part of the world should look like.

I believe that during Tsipras visit to Israel he will express his will to encourage the Israeli business sector to come and do business in Greece, she said adding that the Israeli business sector is waiting to hear something like this.

Read full interview text here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
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Doha Bank expects 2016 to be a tough year as global economic conditions impact on its performance, the chief executive said on Sunday, after Qatar's fourth-largest lender by assets reported a 6.1 per cent rise in fourth-quarter net profit.



Global markets have experienced a turbulent start to 2016, with oil prices -- a major factor in Gulf economies -- hitting a 12-year low on fears of a continuing glut in the commodity.



Gulf banks' profitability has remained fairly resilient so far in the latest earnings season, with Qatar National Bank and a number of Saudi lenders reporting higher earnings, although there have been pressures on liquidity in the latter half of last year as governments withdrew cash from the banking system to help plug gaps in their budgets.



The impact is expected to be more pronounced in this year's earnings, according to R. Seetharaman, chief executive of Doha Bank.



"We have grown 20-30 per cent in the past but this year is not going to be exponential, no way," he told reporters at a press conference to announce its 2015 results.



"With the current set of challenges, commodities falling, currencies bottoming out, it's going to be tough."



Seetharaman added that the bank was still planning to raise its capital this year, following on from a December announcement about the move, although the timing had not been decided.



PROFIT GAIN



Doha Bank earned a net profit of QR232 million ($63.7 million) in the three months to Dec. 31 compared with QR218.7 million in the same period of the previous year. Reuters calculated the increase in quarterly profit as the bank only gave full-year results for 2015, without a quarterly breakdown.



Four analysts polled by Reuters had forecast on average the bank would make a quarterly net profit of QR258.7 millions.



Doha Bank made a profit of QR1.374 billion in 2015, according to a statement, up from QR1.359 billion in the previous year.



The bank's statement added that its board was recommending a cash dividend of QR3 per share for 2015, below the QR4 per share payout for 2014.  Reuters
Bahrain government has awarded contracts worth $1.1 billion for the construction of a brand new terminal at the kingdom's airport, which on completion will be able to handle nearly 14 million passengers, said a report.



These include five agreements signed as part of the airport modernisation programme (AMP) on the sidelines of Bahrain International Air Show (BIAS) 2016 at Sakhir Airbase on Saturday, reported the Bahrain News Agency (BNA).



Announcing the deal, Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications (MTT), said the project for the construction of the new passenger terminal building, the main services building and aircraft bay has been awarded to a joint venture between UAE builder Arabtec and TAV Construction from Turkey.



The contract for the passenger airbridges has been awarded to Chinese group CIMC, while the deal for the baggage handling system was clinched by Dutch specialist Vanderlande, stated the minister in a joint press conference with Mohammed AlBinfalah, CEO of Bahrain Airport Company.



The other key awards include the contract with US-based L3 Communications for supply of security screening equipment and Finnish group Kone for its horizontal and vertical transfer systems, he added.



Besides this, the government also signed a contract with Setec from France for the design of an MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) facility which, when built, will contribute to massive job creation for Bahrainis, the minister was quoted as saying in the BNA report.



On the AMP, Mohammed said it was one of the most important strategic projects for Bahrain, as the airport serves all economic sectors and is a gateway for the kingdom to the rest of the world.

"Once completed, it will increase the airports capacity to 14 million passengers annually. I would like to thank His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister, and HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, for the continued support and follow up for this important project," he added.



Albinfalah pointed out that the record contracts signed at BIAS 2016 were a historical milestone in the progress of the AMP and signifies an important step in maintaining Bahrains strong position in the civil aviation sector.



According to him, the AMP is the largest infrastructure project for the Bahrain International Airport in over 30 years and is being executed in line with the highest standards of safety, security, technology and environmental standards.



"In order to keep up with the rapid pace of progress in the aviation industry, MTT in co-operation with BAC has put in place this ambitious programme which will be implemented in phases in order to enhance the infrastructure and services in the sector," stated Albinfalah.



"We aim to complete the project in 2019, and are expecting a three-fold increase in direct flights and numbers of airline using the new passenger terminal building as a result," he added.
Thailand today confirmed Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV) disease in a traveller, the second such case in the country in the last seven months, as WHO cautioned other member states in its South-East Asia Region against the continuing risks and the need to remain vigilant.



The new case of MERS CoV is a reminder of the continued risk of importation of the disease from countries where it still persists. All countries need to further enhance surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections, focus on early diagnosis, and step up infection prevention and control procedures in health-care facilities to rapidly detect any case of importation and effectively prevent its spread, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said.



A 71-year-old national from Oman, who arrived in Bangkok, Thailand for treatment on January 22, and was admitted to a private hospital, tested positive for MERS CoV. He has since been transferred to the Bamrasnaradura Infectious Disease Institute. Measures are being taken to trace all those who could have been in his contact during his journey to Thailand, and within Bangkok.



This is the second MERS CoV case in Thailand and in the WHO South-East Asia Region. Earlier, on June 18, 2015 another Omani national who arrived in Bangkok for treatment, was tested positive for MERS CoV.



In the recent past, countries in the WHO South-East Asia Region have been reviewing and strengthening preparedness to respond to MERS CoV.



WHO has been strongly advocating for strengthening health systems and ensuring strict infection control measures are in place in countries to respond to infectious diseases such as MERS CoV.



In the Region, WHO is supporting Ministries of Health to build capacities and strengthen preparedness as required under the International Health Regulations (2005) to effectively detect and respond to outbreaks and other hazards.



MERS CoV is caused by a virus. Typical symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath. Pneumonia is common, but not always present. Gastrointestinal symptoms, including diarrhoea, have also been reported.  TradeArabia News Service
India signed an inter-governmental pact on Monday to buy 36 French-built Rafale fighter planes, but the leaders of both countries said there was still work to do to finalise financial terms after months of talks.



The deal, worth an estimated $9 billion, was to have been the centrepiece of a visit to India by French President Francois Hollande, invited as guest of honour for Tuesday's Republic Day parade.



But Hollande and his host, Narendra Modi, both said further talks were needed to finalise the terms of the deal, which the Indian prime minister had announced when he visited France last spring.



Hollande described the deal on Rafale as "a decisive step", adding: "There remain financial issues which will be sorted out in a couple of days."



However, Dassault Aviation, the aircraft-maker, said in a statement it expected a complete agreement on the planes in four weeks' time.



Both leaders played up their interest in cooperating in the fight against international militant groups, with Hollande saying France and its allies would strike "again and again" against Islamic State.



"ISIS is provoking us in the worst possible way," Hollande said, using an acronym for Islamic State, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, and was behind several attacks on Paris in November that killed 130 people.



ARMS DEAL



Hollande and Modi stepped into the Rafale deal last year, ordering government-to-government talks after commercial negotiations with Dassault had collapsed.



The leaders agreed to scale back the original plan for 126 Rafale planes to just 36 in flyaway condition, to meet the Indian Air Force's urgent needs, as it faces an assertive China and long-time foe Pakistan.



The fighter deal is part of a $150-billion military overhaul India has launched, drawing global arms makers into one of the world's biggest markets.



"France is a special friend. Eighteen years ago, France was the first country we signed a strategic partnership with. We are now here to take it higher," Modi told a joint news conference after his talks with Hollande.



In other business, France's Alstom signed a pact with Indian Railways to make 800 locomotives in India, a boost for Modi's drive to build a domestic industrial base and provide jobs to a growing workforce.



Hollande said an agreement for France's Areva to build six nuclear reactors in India should be concluded within a year. The two sides have been wrangling over the price of power from these units for more than a year.



Hollande and Modi have agreed to hasten the nuclear talks and aim for construction to begin in early 2017, they said in a joint statement.



"From nuclear cooperation to railway locomotives, we are sowing the seeds of an ever-tightening web of cooperation between our two countries, " Modi said.



French companies will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said earlier in New Delhi. - Reuters
Iran's oil minister said on Friday any emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) would hurt the crude oil market if it made no decision to shore up falling prices.



Venezuela has been calling for an emergency meeting to discuss steps to prop up prices, which are at their lowest since 2003. But Iran and Gulf members of the Opec have been rebuffing Venezuela's push for a special meeting.



"There should be an intention to make a firm decision in such a meeting; otherwise, the meeting will have a negative impacts on world oil markets," Iran's Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the news agency Shana.



"The important thing is that there must be an intention for change, but we have not yet received such a signal," he said.



Iran ordered an increase in crude output of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) last week, to take advantage of the lifting of international sanctions imposed to halt Iran's nuclear research. The sanctions had cut its oil exports by about 2 million bpd.



Opec was already pumping oil at close to record levels, before any extra Iranian crude reached the market.



The next scheduled Opec meeting is not until June. The last extraordinary meeting to discuss a price slump, in 2008, led to Opec's largest-ever production cut. Prices doubled within a year after that cut.  Reuters
Iran will start work on the second nuclear power plant at Bushehr this March followed by its third power unit in the next two years at a total investment of $11 billion, said a report.



The capacity of each new Bushehr power unit will stand at 1,050 MW, reported the Irinn TV channel, citing a senior industry official.



The first Bushehr nuclear power plant was built by Russian organisations in accordance with the 1995 contract with Iran.

The power plant was put into operation in 2011 and connected to Iranian power networks in the next two years, stated the report citing Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Atomic Energy Organisation.



The second and third power units at the Bushehr NPP will be constructed together with Russias Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation in accordance with the contract signed in Moscow in November 2014, said Salehi.



"In 8-10 years they will be connected to common power systems," he added.
Iran unveiled an expanded shopping list for more than 160 European planes - including 8 superjumbos - and dangled another big order in front of Boeing at Tehran's first major post-sanctions business gathering on Sunday.



In a sign of Tehran's determination to compete with established carriers across the Gulf, Transport Minister Abbas Akhoondi said Iran's emergence from isolation would restore a "natural balance" in the region and urged foreigners to invest.



"I hold your hands in friendship," he told an audience of 300 airlines, suppliers, lessors and bankers at an aviation conference in Tehran.



World powers last week lifted crippling sanctions against Iran in return for Tehran complying with a deal to curb its nuclear ambitions.



The deal also released billions of dollars worth of frozen Iranian assets and opened the door for global companies that have been barred from doing business in Iran.



Akhoondi vowed to banish the middlemen who many say have profited from helping Iran evade sanctions by buying parts, and even whole aircraft, on the black market.



He told investors that anyone who approached them claiming to represent the government in negotiations would be "lying".



A stampede of investors at the CAPA Iran Aviation Summit illustrated the potential for suppliers to Iran at a time when the industry faces concerns over the global economy.



It also paved the way for a potential battle between domestic and foreign carriers to serve Iran's markets, bolstered by tourists and investors touting for business.



Akhoondi told Reuters in an interview that Iran did not fear competition from foreign carriers and enjoyed competitive advantages because of its geography.



"I think it is a very natural position for Iran," he said.



Iran said it would give priority to developing flag carrier Iranair, but would also support private carriers.



GROWING LIST



The number of potential plane orders rose during the first day of the conference, with a senior official telling delegates that Iran was closing on a deal for 127 jets from Airbus, compared with earlier estimates of 114 aircraft.



Added to the growing list were 40 European ATR turboprops.



Deputy Transport Minister Asghar Fakhrieh Kashan told Reuters that Iran had provisionally agreed to buy eight Airbus A380 superjumbos, to be delivered from 2019.



It also intends to buy 16 A350s, Europe's newest long-distance jetliner, he said.



Another Iranian official said the talks, which appear to have accelerated as President Hassan Rouhani prepares to visit Europe this week, included about 45 short-haul A320s and as many as 40 of its A330 wide-body jets.



If confirmed, a deal on that scale would be worth more than $20 billion at list prices, though Iran is sure to receive hefty discounts since its purchase includes a mixture of new jets and end-of-the-run models available for bargains, financiers said.



Due to long waiting times for new jets, Iran is also looking at buying four out-of-production long-haul A340s on the second-hand market, which can be placed into service without delay.



Airbus said it was ready to hold negotiations in compliance with international laws and declined further comment.



CALLING BOEING



Delegates said Sunday's barrage of announcements appeared designed not only to underscore Iran's economic potential but also to encourage US planemaker Boeing, whose executives were absent from the Tehran conference, to enter formal negotiations.



Kashan told Reuters that Iran was ready to buy at least 100 jets from the world's largest planemaker.



Boeing said it was assessing the steps needed to deal with Iran, which remains subject to a number of US restrictions.



Industry observers have said Boeing and other US suppliers are partly worried about how to handle opposition to the Iran nuclear deal in Congress and from US allies in the Gulf.



Tehran has long said it will need to revamp an ageing fleet, hit by a shortage of parts because of trade bans imposed by Washington and other Western powers.



But the sheer volume of commercial, technical and legal detail took some of the foreign delegates by surprise.



"Things are going faster than we expected," said Bertrand Grabowski, a managing director at Germany's DVB Bank, adding Iran had set out a regulatory regime comparable to Europe's.



Several airline bosses, however, warned that the growth plans depended on building new infrastructure and boosting training. Akhoondi said Tehran plans to award a contract soon for the expansion of Tehran's international airport.  Reuters
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Mena Trading, a division of Bahrain-based Mena Aerospace, has strengthened its products and services offering with the signing of two international agreements.



Mena Trading has extended its agreement with Costar Technology as the sole international sales representation for CohuHD Costar in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.



The CohuHD Costars 4260HD camera positioning system, unveiled at the BIAS over the weekend, combines crystal clear HD image quality, bandwidth efficient H.264 compression, smooth variable speed positioning and IP66/IP67 protection delivering CohuHD quality and performance.



Awarded the 2015 Airport Seaport Border Security Award for best long-range and day-night surveillance, CohuHD Coaster also received the Homeland Security Award for best specialised CCTV Lens Technology with high-definition imagining and defog capability in 2013.



Mena Aerospace also announced its international agreement with Tempest Aviation Group, an independent helicopter service provider with capabilities ranging from dynamic component exchanges to airframe rebuilds, becoming the exclusive representative in Bahrain and Saudi

Arabia.



Commenting on these agreements, Dr Mohamed Juman, Mena Aerospace managing director, said: Signing these two international agreements with Costar Technology and Tempest Aviation Group strengthens our portfolio of services and products available in the Middle East, primarily

Bahrain and Saudi.



The Bahrain Airshow this weekend was a great platform for us to introduce the new partnerships and gives us the chance to discuss opportunities with potential clients. Coupled with the recent launch of our new division Mena Technics and the growth of IJM Mena, 2016 has started strong.  TradeArabia News Service
The United States visa waiver program has recently implemented changes where Australians who have recently visited some countries in the Middle East will no longer be able to enter the country under the program.

Those who have travelled to Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria on or after March 1, 2011 won't be able to enter the country under the program due to changes introduced overnight under the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act 2015.

The new rule is also applicable to nationals of those countries except to limited exceptions such as those who travelled for military or diplomatic purposes. It means those travelling to the U.S. who also hold a passport from any of the four countries named will have to apply for a visa through the regular process at an embassy or consulate. Those who already have valid Electronic System for Travel Authorizations (ESTA) will have them revoked.

The change is one of the United States' response to concerns over terrorism and the rise of the Islamic State. These new rules were included in a bill passed by the U.S. congress last month. It will affect citizens of 38 countries, mostly in Europe, who are eligible to use the visa waiver system and a new, more detailed, ESTA questionnaire will be released in February 2016.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the government has updated the Smartraveller website to advise of the changes.

'Further updates will be made to Smartraveller over coming weeks in line with any additional advice provided by the United States government. We recommend that all travellers subscribe to this advice to stay informed,' he said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said certain travellers may be eligible for a waiver under the new rules including journalists, aid workers or those travelling for business purposes.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Everyone has their unique travel ritual. Some pray before the plane takes off, wear the same clothes or keep a lucky charm in their bag. Many are terrified of Friday the 13th and avoid travelling on that day.

Just like every country has its own traditions, it also has its own unique, sometimes crazy superstitions when travelling. Here are the craziest ones that we can find with reports from Yahoo Travel.

Nepal

After one of their airplanes had a series of mechanical issues, Nepal Airlines sacrificed two goats to help solve the problem. The Boeing 757-200 had some electrical issues, and in addition to making the physical repairs, the airline also sacrificed the farm animals to honour Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection. That's what we call covering all of the bases.

Serbia

Here's a thing about Serbians -- they rejoice over spilled water. According to Serbian custom, spilling water behind a person going to a trip or a job interview will bring them luck and ensure that everything will end in a happy note.

United States

Americans are terrified of the number 13. From scary movies to bedtime stories, the harmless number had horrible PR. For this reason, most U.S. hotels don't have a 13th floor. According to a USA Today article, 13 percent of Gallup Poll respondents said that they would be bothered by a 13th floor room assignment.

China

If the U.S. is terrified of the number 13, China dislikes number four. For the Chinese, the word four sounds eerily similar to the word for death. So if you're boarding on a Chinese airline, expect to find row four missing.

Norway

If in America, people say 'break a leg' to wish people good luck before a show, in Norway, the use of the phrase 'Tvi Tvi.' Technically, the phrase puts a curse on the person before they embark on a journey. The belief is that no evil spirits will approach them because they are already cursed.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Air service had ground to a halt across much of East Coast on Saturday morning as a noteworthy winter storm brought snow, ice and blizzard conditions to zones from the Carolinas to New England.

As of 9:15 a.m. ET Saturday, almost 8,500 U.S. flights had been cancelled from Friday through Sunday according to flight-following service FlightAware. On Friday, there were 3,100 cancellations and the greater part was made by airlines a day ahead of time.

Highlighting the harshness of the storm, all flights had been stopped Saturday at four of the nation's busiest airports: Philadelphia, Washington Dulles, Washington Reagan National and Baltimore/Washington International.

A major snowstorm hit the East Coast throughout the weekend, breaking records and causing flooding along the Mid-Atlantic region. But real issues were widespread influencing many East Coast airplane terminals. That incorporated the three major airplane terminals serving New York City, where a large portion of Saturday's schedule had been crossed out at Newark Liberty, JFK and LaGuardia airports.

A fast restart likewise seemed impossible for the storm-battered airplane terminals in Washington, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia where it could take until Monday before typical operations returned.

Almost 50 flights or around 10 percent of the day's schedule had been grounded in the Mexico's tropical shoreline destination of Cancun, as per FlightAware's number. Large portions of those cancellations were Saturday flights on U.S. carriers like Delta, American, United, Southwest and JetBlue that had been booked to travel to urban communities such as Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

All airlines with operations in the storm's path have been cancelling flights and proposing ticketed fliers' refunds or waiving change fees that permit them to fly another day. The waiver policies differ by airline, but they usually let customers to make one change to their routes with some restrictions at no additional cost.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.  Eoin McNamee This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.  Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann OBrien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.  Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 The funniest book of the year.  Sunday Independent Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.  Liz Nugent Burkes exuberant prose takes centre stage  He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.  Totally Dublin A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.  Irish Times Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.  Sunday Times A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann OBrien  The Lammisters is very clever indeed.  The Guardian
Via STAT, Helen Branswell writes: As Zika virus spreads, WHO faces calls to take action faster. Excerpt:

As concern mounts about the Zika virus epidemic sweeping through Latin America and the Caribbean, some global health experts are questioning why the World Health Organization is not responding more urgently to the outbreak and convening experts to consider emergency measures.

A number of global health experts are now calling on the Geneva-based WHO to reach for a powerful tool that would help it guide the worlds response to the virus  feared to be causing an increase in cases of a syndrome that triggers paralysis in some people and serious birth defects in infants born to some women infected during pregnancy.

Under the International Health Regulations  a treaty governing all WHO member countries  Director General Dr. Margaret Chan could establish a panel of experts, known as an emergency committee, to advise her on how the world should react to the epidemic.

A spokesman for the WHO told STAT there so far has been no discussion of convening an emergency committee in the case of Zika. Some experts say thats a mistake.

I believe that it is past due for the WHO DG to convene an emergency committee for Zika, said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown Universitys ONeill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Convening an emergency committee and issuing detailed guidance on national preparedness, travel advisories, and punitive measures is now urgent.

Preben Aavitsland, one of the drafters of the revised International Health Regulations, which came into force in June 2007, agreed the Zika situation warrants using the IHR tool, in part because of concerns that the virus is causing a spike in cases of microcephaly, a condition in which newborns have abnormally small heads.

My personal opinion is definitely, yes, an emergency committee should be convened, said Aavitsland, Norways former state epidemiologist. It may discuss the evidence for a causal link between Zika virus infections and microcephaly, the options for prevention, the research needs, whether the situation constitutes a PHEIC, and if so, what recommendations should WHO give to prevent spread.

A PHEIC  pronounced, unfortunately, as fake  is a public health emergency of international concern.
WHO has published WHO Director-General addresses the Executive Board. Excerpt from Dr. Margaret Chan's speech:

On 14 January, WHO declared that the outbreak in Liberia, the last country reporting cases, was over, but warned that the risk of further flare-ups would persist. The warning was well-founded. The next day, Sierra Leone confirmed its first new case since September of last year.

Let me put this setback in perspective.

First, these countries promptly report new cases. Vigilance is intense. Our view of the situation is sharp and transparent.

Second, these countries have the worlds largest pool of expertise in responding to Ebola. They know exactly what to do.

Third, I still have more than 1000 staff in West Africa to assist in detecting and responding to flare-ups like this one. I thank them for their skill and dedication.

Finally, thanks to a WHO-led clinical trial, we have a vaccine that can be used to confer a back-up ring of protection.

The Ebola virus is stubborn. I have no doubt that further flare-ups will occur. I have no doubt that all will be quickly contained.

The outbreak lingers in a second sense as well. Well over 10,000 survivors face persistent health problems together with continuing stigmatization. They need care.

Ebola delivered an extremely severe and shattering blow to societies and economies. Recovery will take some time.

While the job is by no means finished, no one anticipates that the situation will return to what we were seeing 15 months ago.

The determination is fierce. International solidarity has been extraordinary. The many steps taken at national and international levels have had a decisive impact.

No one will let this virus take off and run away again.

In the wake of Ebola, health officials are more alert to alarming signals coming from the microbial world.

Last years MERS outbreak in the Republic of Korea showed the devastation a new disease can cause, even in a country with an advanced health system.

The explosive spread of Zika virus to new geographical areas, with little population immunity, is another cause for concern, especially given the possible link between infection during pregnancy and babies born with small heads.

Although a causal link between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly has not been established, the circumstantial evidence is suggestive and extremely worrisome. An increased occurrence of neurological syndromes, noted in some countries coincident with arrival of the virus, adds to the concern.

I thank all newly affected countries for detecting the virus quickly, and promptly and transparently notifying WHO in line with the International Health Regulations.

I have asked Dr Carissa Etienne to brief the Board later this week on the current Zika situation and our response.

Yet another alarming signal was Chinas detection last year, in animal and human samples, of a mechanism of drug resistance, involving the mcr-1 gene, that is easily transferred from one bacterial strain to others, including some with epidemic potential.

That finding, which raised the spectre of bacteria that are resistant to nearly all antibiotics, has since been replicated in several other countries.
Thanks to Greg Folkers for tweeting the link to this 2014 report in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene: First Case of Zika Virus Infection in a Returning Canadian Traveler. The case was contracted in 2013. The abstract:

A woman who recently traveled to Thailand came to a local emergency department with a fever and papular rash. She was tested for measles, malaria, and dengue.

Positive finding for IgM antibody against dengue and a failure to seroconvert for IgG against dengue for multiple blood samples suggested an alternate flavivirus etiology. Amplification of a conserved region of the non-structural protein 5 gene of the genus Flavivirus yielded a polymerase chain reaction product with a matching sequence of 99% identity with Zika virus. A urine sample and a nasopharygeal swab specimen obtained for the measles investigation were also positive for this virus by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Subsequently, the urine sample yielded a Zika virus isolate in cell culture.

This case report describes a number of novel clinical and laboratory findings, the first documentation of this virus in Canada, and the second documentation from this region in Thailand.
Via The World Post, a report by old Haiti hand Georgianne Nienaber: Haiti's Martelly and His Henchman Set the Stage for Tragedy. Excerpt and then a comment:

Let's think about the evil absurdity of the crisis playing out in Haiti, and the complicity of international forces that set the stage for this looming tragedy five years ago.

President Michel Martelly of Haiti is refusing to leave office on February 7 when his term is up. The former musician was installed by voter fraud perpetrated by the U.S. in late 2010. The fraud was condoned and executed by a "core group" of U.S. and other foreign observers who engaged in creative manipulating of vote tallies to ensure that Martelly was in the run-off.

Pierre-Louis Opont, the president of Haiti's Election Commission (CEP), admitted as much in July 2015 when he confirmed the accusations of Former OAS Ambassador Ricardo Seitenfus about vote fixing. Last July Opont accused the OAS, the United States, and specifically Cheryl Mills, the Chief of State for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the fraud. Opont says he gave the official vote count to the group of OAS international observers and the group then gave results different than what were passed to them.

In an interview with Radio Television Caraibes this week Seitenfus was blunt. "Since Mrs. Clinton was well involved in the 2010-2011 decisions, if we started badly, we must end well. That is to say, February 7 President Michel Martelly must leave, and (Haiti) should have a new president," he said.

Martelly has such a strong-hold on the country that the current election process was co-opted by real and perceived voter fraud, causing candidate Jude Celestin to refuse to participate in a runoff against Martelly's hand picked successor, the Banana Man, Jovenel Moise. Celestin is standing firm and is encouraging civil society, including business and church leaders, to conclude a vote postponement is in the best interests of Haiti. The Senate also supported a non-binding motion to postpone.

Martelly's henchman and right hand guy, Guy Philippe, a Haitian Senate candidate whose runoff was also delayed, is calling for an uprising if Martelly is forced out. Elections are in chaos and Haiti stands on the brink of civil war.

Nienaber goes on to point out that Guy Philippe is a fugitive wanted by the US Drug Enforcement Agency for conspiracy to import cocaine (among other things), and among the leaders of the 2004 coup that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The public health consequences of more civil strife in Haiti, much less an all-out civil war, would be catastrophic. In addition to all the sicknesses inflicted by poverty and international meddling, Haitians are also coping with cholera, dengue, chikungunya, and now Zika. Enough is enough.
Secret Compass expedition team prepares to plunge into Panama's notorious Darien Gap jungles to explore one of the world's finest rainforests while searching for 5,000-year-old petroglyphs. Final team spots remain for intrepid adventurers to join them.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - January 25th, 2016 - In six weeks, a Secret Compass expedition team will plunge into Panamas notorious Darien Gap jungles, aiming to join the few to have crossed one of the worlds finest rainforests and final adventure frontiers on foot.

Panamas mountainous Darien Gap is the only break in the 30,600km Pan-American Highway which connects Circle (Alaska) with Puerto Montt (Chile). This 150km of unfinished business is described as the last roadless place by Lonely Planet and was a Sunday Times Top 10 Wildest Trips of the Year.

Kerry ONeill, marketing director with Secret Compass, said, The Parc Nacional Darien is the most ecologically diverse land-based park in Central America, whose rewards are sadly often over-shadowed by the regions shifting security situation. As expedition professionals, we use only the best in-country experts and our contingency plans have contingency plans in case called upon.

Lonelyplanet.com states that crossing the Gap on foot is so-risky-as-to-be-insane, mentioning the narco-traffickers, guerillas and anti-drug agents who do on occasion operate in the Darien region.

Interviewed by Lonely Planet, leading local naturalist and Secret Compasss in-country guide, Rick Morales, said, When youre out in the Darien forests trying to spot something, hone into a slight sound or movement [and you might see] a rare bird, a troop of monkeys or a herd of peccaries.

Morales, who has many first-crossing trekking successes under his own belt and is familiar to working in challenging regions like the Darien, added, We carry binoculars instead of firearms.

Highlights of Darien Gap expedition

 Discover the 150km gap in the 30,600km Pan-American highway

 Explore the ecological diversity of Central Americas mountainous rainforest

 Travel alongside the Embera Indians on foot and in dug-out canoes

 See 5,000-year-old Petroglyphs, remnants of an ancient culture

Though mired in political indecision and tempered by environmental concerns, there are rumours that a road connection, the Interamericana, might one day be built due to increased trade benefits.

ONeill continued, For now, the Dariens undisturbed wilds remain filled with endemic flora, fauna, cultures and ancient petroglyphs. This makes it prime expedition territory for our pioneering team.

To discover the hidden histories and raw adventures this pivotal Central American region and its rainforests have to offer before roads encroach into it, ambitious adventurers seeking their next challenge are invited to apply to join Marchs Darien Gap expedition team today, concluded ONeill.

Expeditions for 2016 and 2017

Tom Bodkin, director of Secret Compass, added, Through our pioneering expeditions to often misunderstood regions, our team-mates return home to share their positive stories through blogs, articles and social media. Its a key reason were passionate about this type of exploration.

Upcoming adventurous travel destinations for Secret Compass include Afghanistan, Armenia, Burma, Ethiopia, Gabon, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Kamchatka, Siberias Arctic Circle, the DRC, Chad and southern Sinai.

Expedition styles range from mixed-terrain trekking and minimalist desert traverses to mountain-biking, rafting and horseback expeditions. Secret Compass welcomes applications from anyone with a good level of fitness whos keen to achieve the extraordinary in the worlds wildest places.

------- ends -------

NOTES TO EDITORS





Secret Compass Expeditions

Secret Compass redefines what is possible by creating pioneering projects in the world's wildest places. Its built around a team of trusted experts who combine a passion for exploration with industry-leading professionalism. Secret Compass reignites your primal need for adventure, providing the catalyst for you to come alive and achieve the extraordinary.

Secret Compass TV

Secret Compass TV provides expert pre-production and in-country location management services to the TV and film industries. Clients to date include the BBC, Nat Geo, Discovery, Animal Planet and Channel 4, in countries including Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, South Sudan and

###
Via The Nation: Lassa fever kills one in Akwa Ibom.

The Akwa Ibom State government on Monday convened an emergency meeting on how to curtail the spread of Lassa fever following reports that three persons had contracted the disease with one already confirmed dead.

With Mondays confirmation, Akwa Ibom has become the 18th state in the country to be affected by Lassa fever.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Dominic Ukpong, who broke the news at the meeting, said the victims were diagnosed with the virus at different locations in the state.

He warned residents on the imminent health danger posed by Lassa fever in the state and urged the people to take precautionary measures against further spread of the disease.

Ukpong disclosed that the dead victim, a 53 year- old woman, succumbed to Lassa fever shortly after she was diagnosed and advised the public to rush to the hospital on suspecting any ailment.
The Nigerian Ministry of Health still hasn't updated its Lassa case count, but this analysis in yesterday's Punch makes some good points: 63 deaths in six months: How Lassa fever exposed Nigerias poor primary health care. Excerpt:

Some have described it as a dreaded viral assassin.

Within a space of about 10 weeks, it has spread from remote areas in a few states to more than half of Nigerias 36 states, as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and left a trail of death and suspicion in its wake.

The cold, death tracks left by the Lassa fever virus late last year in remote villages in Niger, Bauchi and Kano states has since snowballed into a national emergency.

Lassa fever has reportedly killed about 63 people out of 212 suspected cases in 62 local government areas across 17 states in the country since its outbreak in August last year.

At an emergency National Council of Health meeting on the outbreak of the disease, which held last Tuesday in Abuja, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, had listed the affected states as Niger, Bauchi, Kano, Taraba, Rivers, Ondo, Oyo, Edo, Lagos, Plateau, Gombe, Delta, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Kogi and Zamfara, and the Federal Capital Territory.

Rats, garri spreading deadly virus

According to the World Health Organisation, Lassa fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic illness caused by Lassa virus, which is transmitted to humans from contact with food or household items contaminated with the excreta or urine of infected multimammate rats.

This species of rat is a common sight in both rural and urban areas in Nigeria. In some parts of the country, it is a culinary delight.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lassa fever was first discovered in 1969 in Lassa village in Borno State, Nigeria, where two missionary nurses had died. The number of Lassa virus infections per year in West Africa is estimated at 100,000 to 300,000, with approximately 5,000 deaths.

WHO noted that person-to-person infections and laboratory transmission can also occur, particularly in the hospital environment when there is absence of adequate infection control measures.

Because the disease is endemic in the rodent population, people living in rural areas, especially in communities with poor sanitation or crowded living conditions, are at greatest risk.

Like in Fuka, a remote village in Muyan Local Government Area of Niger State, where the recent cases of Lassa fever were first reported. By the time it was discovered, 16 people had already died from the virus.

Locals in the village of about a few thousand people are mainly yam and rice farmers. It also boasts of thriving market days where market women especially, sell food items like garri, which is made from processed cassava tubers. In a bid to determine their quality, it is common for buyers to taste it first before buying.

As food, garri could be soaked in water and eaten with any protein combination, or cooked with hot water and eaten with soup.

In Fuka, as well as in other rural and urban areas in Nigeria, it is common for residents to leave food items in the open in the market place, exposing it to the urine and faeces of infected rats that might crawl over them.

Experts say such practices expose food items, such as garri, a popular staple for millions of Nigerians to Lassa virus.
PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 25

The Panama boat tragedy has once again brought forth the problem of fake travel agents who are fleecing the vulnerable youth searching for greener pastures abroad. Also the fact that these 'travel agents' ply their trade in an illegal manner as usual.

In order to rein in such unscrupulous travel agents, last year the Punjab government had asked all deputy commissioners in the state to get travel agents, ticketing agents and consultancy firms registered with them. However, only a few travel agents complied with the orders.

According to information, so far only 11 travel agents are registered with the district administration while 110 cases are pending with it.

Concerned over the unabated instances of fleecing of innocent youths by fake travel agents a number of times, the Punjab government introduced the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act. The main aim of the Act was to rein in travel agents besides imposing hefty penalties, award reasonable compensation to the aggrieved persons and punish the culprits. But a huge number of persons continue to indulge in unethical practices and keep defrauding vulnerable youths, searching for greener pastures.

In a recent incident, hundreds of youths from all over Punjab were defrauded of lakhs of rupees by a fake travel agency. The owner of the agency fled leaving the shutters of his office open in the market. The youths approached the police and after two weeks of the incident, the police registered a case in this connection. The victims had handed over the pictures of the female staff to the police who used to deal with the victims. The police was yet to make any significant breakthrough or even identify the real culprits in the case.

Officialspeak

"The administration is very serious over the issue. The reason behind the long pending list was due to procedural delays. We asked for and verified the details from the police as well as the SDMs concerned to ascertain the credential of the applicant. People who want to go abroad should ask for government authorization from the agency which they are approaching. This would ensure the genuineness of the agency. He said the district administration would also try to educate the people as much as it can about this.

--Ravi Bhagat, Deputy Commissioner
PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 24

Its official now. Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal would not be coming to the city owing to his ill health and advisory by doctors. The state-level function would now be held at Mohali.

Punjab Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia would preside over the district-level Republic Day celebrations at the Guru Nanak Stadium here, confirmed Deputy Commissioner Ravi Bhagat.

The official information came late last evening. With the state-level function proposed to be held in the city is shifted to Mohali, Haryana police personnel who were part of the state-level function also moved to Mohali.

Security arrangements at the venue has further tightened by the police.

Police Commissioner Jatinder Singh Aulakh, along with other senior police officials, visited the venue, which has virtually turned into a fortress. Heavy police force has been deputed at the venue in the wake of terror threats.

Aulakh said elaborate arrangements had been made in and around the venue while vital installations in the city had also been secured in coordination with various agencies concerned. Earlier, the police had held a meeting with the Army and Air Force station authorities here in order to secure sensitive areas and thwart any untoward incident.

While the BSF authorities have also gone overboard and tightened the security at the border fence by increasing the man force, besides taking the help of modern gadgets.
Tribune New Service

Amritsar, January 25

Punjab Youth Congress president Amarpreet Singh Lally has mocked the ironical situation wherein Punjab Local Bodies Minister Anil Joshi described Republic Day as Independence Day.

In a major faux pass, the minister in an interview given to the electronic media had described celebrations of January 26 as Independence Day. The video has gone viral on social media.

In a statement issued here today, Lally said the minister was repeatedly calling January 26 as Independence Day. Joshi was seen talking about sacrifices laid by freedom fighters whereas he should be talking about the implementation of the Constitution of India, which is the reason that the nation celebrates Republic Day.

While condemning the ignorant attitude of the minister, he said: It is sad that on one side the ruling partys minister does not even know the relevance of the nations historical days, and on the other he keeps on making tall claims of development of the state. He should have no right to hoist the Tricolour tomorrow.
Bathinda, January 25

Members of the District Congress Committee today staged a protest against the Union Government and burnt the effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani. Accusing the leaders of abetting suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula of Hyderbad Central University, the Congress workers demanded resignation of both the leaders.

Protesting under the leadership of District Congress Committee president Mohan Lal Jhumba, the workers first took out a march from Congress Bhawan and walked through Dhobi Bazaar and Sadbhawna Chowk before assembling at Fire Brigade Chowk and burning effigies of the leaders.  TNS
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, January 25

District Election Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner Dr Basant Garg today urged all above 18 years of age to exercise their right to vote to make sure that their representatives, at all levels, are chosen through the democratic system. He said this while addressing students and staff members of Government Rajindra College during celebration of 6th National Voters Day.

Exhorting the youth to become an active part of the democratic set-up of the country, the DC said the voters must know the importance of their votes as every single vote counts during the elections. He also asked everyone to exercise their vote without any influence or favouring any candidate on the basis of the candidates gender, caste, creed, region or religion in order to choose representatives who are best suited for the job.

The DC also made the members of the audience take an oath that they will exercise their right to vote. He also started a signature campaign on the occasion. To mark the celebration, students of the college participated in debate, declamation, essay writing, painting, skit, rangoli making, poster making and group song competitions.

Students who bagged the top three positions in the competitions were felicitated by the DC. Also present during the function were additional district election officer-cum-additional deputy commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma, SDM Anmol Singh Dhaliwal, District Education Officer (secondary) Dr Amarjit Kaur Kotfatta, Sukhdev Singh, principal of the college Dr Sukhraj Singh, assistant director Youth Services department Raghubir Singh Mann and coordinator of Nehru Yuva Kendra Jagjit Mann.

Meanwhile, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, celebrated National Voters Day under the leadership of Prof RK Kohli, the Vice Chancellor, Prof P Ramarao, dean, academic affairs presided over the function and introduced the participants to the method of strengthening the roots of democracy on the Indian soil.

Stating the figures, he informed the participants that India is a nation which is considered to be youngest in its demographics. More than 200 million youth in the nation have been registered as voters in the country. The participation of the youth is indispensable to the efficiency of the democratic institutions and turning India into a vibrant democracy. He encouraged the youth to respond to the clarion call of future generation for providing them good and effective governance.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Tarun Arora told the participants with the theme of inclusive and qualitative participation. He said the purpose of democracy was to give opportunity to every single voice providing none as left out from participating in the process of governance.

He further added that democracy was not just right to vote, it is also right to live with dignity. Right to vote must be used judiciously while keeping in view the interests of future generation instead of looking at short term benefits. Referring the philosophy of Lincoln, Joseph De Mastire, Dr BR Ambedkar and Constitutional Philosophers, he emphasised upon educating and sensitizing the people to choose their representatives wisely.

While Dr Bawa Singh, assistant professor, Centre for South and Asian Studies shared his view that the best method of transformation is to adhere to ballot. There are many instances in India when ballot has overshadowed bullet. He expressed his concern over the mindset of the present generation as turn out in first general election of 1952 was 61 per cent and literacy rate was mere 10-12 per cent. Presently, the literacy rate has increased manifold nonetheless, the turn out in general election, 2014 was mere 59 per cent which is not justified on the part of largest democracy of the world. Young minds are free from polluted ideas and have bubbling energy with innovating ideas. Therefore, they should join politics to ensure their contribution towards their country. Otherwise the inferior people with less potential will rule their superior.

Dr Sukhwinder Kaur, assistant professor, Law also shared her views on criminalisation of politics, qualification and disqualification of voters. Dr Deepak Kumar Chauhan rendered the vote of thanks with appeal to the students to ensure their registration as voter. Dr HR Arora opined that democratic system cannot run without the support of the people. The programme ended with a pledge administrated by Prof P Ramarao, dean, academic affairs.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 24

With the arrest of an accused, Amit Kumar, the North District police today said that it had recovered a large number of arms and worked out three cases of attempt to murder and one case of Arms Act.

The police recovered cartridges and bayonet of AK-47 rifle from his possession. Besides, a countrymade revolver, 'khukhri' knives and a sword were recovered.

The police said that a quarrel between the driver of Gramin Sewa, Azad and Amit Kumar took place after a minor accident. During the quarrel, Amit injured the Gramin Sewa driver on his head and ran away from the spot. Accordingly, a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder was registered.

During the course of investigation, a team was constituted and search of the accused done at his house. He tried to escape, but the police nabbed him. On search of his house, the police team recovered the arms and ammunition.

Further investigation is in progress and efforts are being made to know the source of ammunition recovered from his possession.

Amit Kumar is a permanent resident of village Ahulana, district Sonipat in Haryana. He is doing his MBA from Ghaziabad. He runs a gym, Muscle Master in Burari. He is short-tempered and it seems he has become a hardcore criminal, the police said.
Via The Guardian, an opinion piece by Bill McKibben: The Zika virus foreshadows our dystopian climate future. Excerpt:

Ive spent much of my life chronicling the ongoing tragedies stemming from global warming: the floods and droughts and storms, the failed harvests and forced migrations. But no single item on the list seems any more horrible than the emerging news from South America about the newly prominent Zika disease.

Spread by mosquitoes whose range inexorably expands as the climate warms, Zika causes mild flu-like symptoms. But pregnant women bitten by the wrong mosquito are liable to give birth to babies with shrunken heads. Brazil last year recorded 4,000 cases of this microcephaly. As of today, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant.

Think about that. Women should avoid the most essential and beautiful of human tasks. It is unthinkable. Or rather, it is something out of a science fiction story, the absolute core of a dystopian future.

It is recommended that women postpone  to the extent possible  the decision to become pregnant until the country can move out of the epidemic phase of the Zika virus, the Colombian health authorities said, adding that those living in low altitude areas should move higher if possible, out of the easy range of mosquitoes.

Now think about the women who are already pregnant, and who will spend the next months in a quiet panic about whether their lives will be turned upside down. Try to imagine what that feels like  the anger, the guilt, the pervasive anxiety at the moment when you most want to be calm and serene.

And now think about the larger, less intimate consequences: this is one more step in the division of the world into relative safe and dangerous zones, an emerging epidemiological apartheid. The CDC has already told those Americans thinking of becoming pregnant to avoid travel to 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Eventually, of course, the disease will reach these shores  at least 10 Americans have come back from overseas with the infection, and one microcephalic baby has already been born in Hawaii to a mother exposed in Brazil early in her pregnancy. But America is rich enough to avoid the worst of the mess its fossil fuel habits have helped create.

As usual, its the most poor and most vulnerable who bear the brunt. In Brazil army troops are going door to door draining puddles and flowerpots of stagnant water where mosquitoes might breed; in Jamaica the minister of health said plaintively Im going to be very frank, we dont have enough fogging machines to fog every single community in Jamaica with the pesticides that might help control the outbreak.

And so the residents of the rich world will, inevitably, travel less frequently to the places just beginning to emerge from poverty. The links that speed development will start to wither; even the Olympics, theoretically our showcase of international solidarity, is likely to be a fearful fortnight in Rio this August.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 25

Pointing out the problems created by the lack of educated class in politics and their habit of abstaining from voting, Harsahib Singh, a student of SCD Government College, said the reasons behind the inefficiency of democracy in India is that 40 per cent Indians, most of whom are educated, choose not to cast their vote. And a large majority of people who vote do it on the basis of caste, parties or influenced by the lavish rallies, political road shows, and campaigns instead of the actual performance and credentials of the candidates.

The students were speaking while participating in a declamation contest organised by district administration as part celebration of National Voters Day at Government College for Girls (GCG).

Other students also expressed similar thoughts and stated that Indian democracy was marred not as much by the ruckus of the evil people, but because of the silence of good people. A student said the reason of minimising the age for casting vote 21 to 18 by the government was to increase the participation of educated youths in the democratic process.

Additional Deputy Commissioner, Khanna, JK Jain, chief guest on the occasion, said all eligible voters must vote. He said the process of applying for voter card has been made online and all of them must get their voter IDs and exercise their right to vote.

While motivating students, Dr Mohinder Kaur Grewal, GCG, said, We must exercise our voting right for the success of the democracy in India.

Harjot Kaur, SDM, Payal, was honoured on the occasion as the best electoral registration officer. Dr Mohinder Kaur Grewal, principal, Government College for Girls was honoured as the best nodal officer. Gurmail Singh, Government Primary School, Chakar, was honoured as best block level officer (BLO).
Mohit Khanna

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 24

Security has been beefed up across the city as there has been no clue to the two suspects who were spotted near the Dholewal cantonment area on Friday night. Heavy police force was deployed in the cantonment area and at major locations of the city.

Meanwhile, the police, terming the two persons as thieves, denied associating the trespassing attempt on a house near the Dholewal Military complex as an act of terror.

However, high alert has been sounded and a massive combing operation started in and around the city.

Commissioner of Police Paramraj Singh Umranangal said: We have taken proactive measures to deal with any eventuality. The police will be deployed on all crucial locations till Republic Day. Adequate security alteration will be made after January 26.

A high alert was sounded in the military complex in the Dholewal area last night after two persons carrying backpacks were spotted on Street No. 1 of at Bhagwan Nagar.

As the house was located close to the Dholewal Army cantonment area, certain residents informed the police about their movement. Soon, a joint combing operation by the local police and Army personnel was launched.

The two suspects were caught on a close circuit television (CCTV) camera while escaping from the place. However, their faces were not recognisable due the poor quality of footage. Technical assistance is being taken to identify them.
Hyderabad, January 25

Protests escalated on Monday at Hyderabad Central University with several students from other universities joining the protests over the suicide of a student.

Students from other universities such as Calicut University in Kerala, Pondicherry University, Osmania University and Maulana Azad National Urdu University responded to the 'Chalo HCU' call by the Joint Action Committee spearheading the stir.

"Students and others have come in from different parts of the country. There are more than a thousand gathered here.

"Situation is under control," HCU chief security officer TV Rao said.

Security was stepped up around the campus. Joint Commissioner of Police Cyberabad T V Shashidhar Reddy said: "We are verifying all those who are entering the HCU campus. There is no such restriction on the 'Chalo HCU' programme."

Earlier, some students and their supporters had complained that the police were not allowing them to enter the campus.

Their demands include dismissal of vice-chancellor P Appa Rao, who has proceeded on leave, and passing a Rohith Act to prevent suicide of ST, SC, BC and minority students in universities.

Students and SC/ST faculty and officers forums have objected to senior professor Vipin Srivastava taking over as interim vice-chancellor accusing him of having headed the executive council sub-committee that decided to suspend five students that eventually led to 26-year-old Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemulas death and also have been responsible to another Dalit students suicide.

Meanwhile, BR Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar visited the campus and interacted with protesters, adding to the growing number of political visits to the campus since the protest began last week.

Students marched from HCU shopping complex area  the hub of the protest  to the main gate and administrative building and back.

Seven students continued their indefinite fast. The students replaced seven others who were shifted to the hospital on Saturday.

The students will undergo a medical check later in the day, Dr Ravindra Kumar, said a senior doctor at the health centre in the University, said.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika Vemula was admitted to a private hospital on Monday after she complained of chest pain, Kumar said, adding, she has been kept under observation in the ICU.

The university announced on Sunday that vice-chancellor P Appa Rao had taken a leave of absence as protests heightened on campus, although it did not mention how long he would be away.

Rohith Vemula was among the five students suspended by the varsity for six months for allegedly being involved in assaulting Sushil Kumar, a leader of the right-wing student group Akhil Bharatiya Vidayarthi Parishad (ABVP), in August 2015. Last month, university restricted the students access classrooms and workshops on campus, which meant they could not go the universitys hostels.

The suspended students had formed Joint Action Committee and began to have sit-in protest at a makeshift tent on campus against the university campus. Rohith was part of the protest until he died. His death triggered massive protests at the university

Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Rao, BJP MLC Ramachandra Rao and two others were named in an FIR for abetting the suicide and also under some provisions under Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act on January 18.  PTI
Hyderabad, January 25

An indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch seven students over suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula continued in the Hyderabad Central University here for the second day even as agitators called for a 'Chalo HCU' protest march to press their demands.

The stir resumed yesterday after the previous group of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday following deterioration in their health condition after three days of hunger strike.

A health check will be conducted for the fasting students today, Dr Ravindra Kumar, a senior doctor at the health centre in the University said.

The agitating students have called for a 'Chalo HCU' today and students from different universities in the country would gather in the campus here, their representative LS Biakani said.

The main demands include removal of Vice-Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has gone on indefinite leave, and passing a "Rohith Act" to prevent suicides of ST, SC, BC and minority students in universities, he said.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital yesterday after she complained of chest pain, Ravindra Kumar said.

She has been kept under observation in the ICU.

Yesterday, the university put a notice on its website saying the Vice-Chancellor will be on leave and that Vipin Srivastava, the senior most Professor, shall perform the duties of the Vice-Chancellor. It did not mention the period of leave.

However, the SC/ST Faculty Forum and SC/ST Officers Forum expressed "shock" over the decision to appoint Srivastava as officiating Vice-Chancellor and alleged that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student, Senthil, in 2008.

Meanwhile, a large number of policemen were deployed around the HCU campus.

Joint Commissioner of Police Cyberabad T V Sashidhar Reddy told PTI, "we are verifying all those who are entering the HCU campus. There is no such restriction on the 'Chalo HCU' programme."

However, some students and others complained that the police were not allowing them to enter the campus.  PTI
New Delhi, January 25

India and France on Monday inked an MoU on the sale of 36 French fighter jets, Rafale, but were unable to seal the deal due to ongoing negotiations on price.

This MoU was among the 14 pacts signed after wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande, which focused on ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible, Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Terming the signing of the IGA as a decisive step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in a couple of days.

The two countries are in negotiation for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly-away condition since the deal was announced by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price. The deal is estimated to cost about Rs 59,000 crore.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said, What was signed today was an MoU and, when the financial part of it is settled, then obviously the IGA in its entirety will be concluded.

Top government sources said an IGA will be signed once the prices have been finalized, which they hoped would take another four weeks.

Sources said the price for 36 Rafales, as per the UPA tender, keeping the cost escalation and dollar rate in mind, comes to a little over Rs 65,000 crore. This includes the cost involved in making changes India has sought in the aircraft, including Israeli helmet mounted display and some specific weaponry, among others.

The effort is to bring down the price to less than Euros 8 billion (Rs 59,000 crore), the sources said, adding the actual price negotiations only started from January 21.

Another point under discussion is the payment of advance which India will have to make.

At least 50 per cent advance will have to be made, including 15 per cent immediate payment, the sources said, adding the French government will stand guarantee.

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism efforts in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said.

The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

The two leaders inaugurated the International Solar Alliance's secretariat in Gurgaon.

Daesh has attacked us. The ISIS is provoking us but we are determined to take the right decision. We will strike them time and again those who kill our children. I would like to thank you for the support in dire circumstances. France will never forget. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation against terror," Hollande said, using other names for the Islamic State.

The two sides resolved to step up efforts to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts," the joint statement said.

The two leaders also condemned the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India.

The two leaders also discussed cooperation in developing infrastructure and civil nuclear technology in the country.

Hollande said: There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology" and hoped that the issues pertaining to the six reactors at Jaitapur nuclear plant will be settled in one year.

The two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur the statement said.

The negotiations will consider cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accord with Government of India's "Make in India" initiative.

"France acknowledged the need for India to have lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants, as stated in the 2008 bilateral IGA on nuclear cooperation.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017.

"Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection," it said.

France and India underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France reaffirmed its strong and long standing support for India's candidacy to the international export control regimes, particularly to the NSG and welcomed India's decision to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the statement said.

Describing his visit as "outstanding and exceptional", Hollande said it was an honour for France and him to be chief guest at the Republic Day.

"I commend the action of Modi at the climate change conference. I am aware Modi had potential reluctance at the COP 21. He wanted the innovation technology for developing countries to be spread. We owe it to, including Modi for what was achieved at the climate conference, the French President added.

Apart from inking IGA for purchase of Rafale jets, the two countries signed 13 agreements cutting across a wide variety of sectors including railways, culture, space, science and technology.  PTI
Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 25

With no single NRI body or enforcement agency in the state having been given the authority to take up issues specifically related to illegal migrants from the state, the issue is currently in no-mans-land much like the illegal migrants themselves.

As illegally trafficked migrants are not non-residential Indians (NRIs), the three nodal agencies running for NRIs in Punjab  the NRI Commission, NRI Sabha and the NRI wing of the police  cannot directly take up the issue. Both the NRI Sabha and Commission can make suggestions and have recommendatory powers over NRI issues, but these are not implementing authorities nor do these have the power to order direct enquiries into illegal migration cases.

The result is that while cases pile up, the government lacks a database of illegal migrant youths who went missing. The police cases also languish in local police stations due to the lack of a nodal body.

Additionally, while the 15 NRI police stations  running directly under the polices NRI wing  are specifically meant to take up NRI matters, illegal migration, again, isnt under their direct ambit.

Just the Turkish boat tragedy and the Mali missing youths (2004) collectively comprise over 60 youths missing from the state. The total number of missing youths in overseas tragedies is much larger.

But as these are not properly recorded, there is no ready record with the government to ascertain the scale of the menace. Nor is there a list of already indicted agents or the action being taken against them. Additionally, at least 83 recorded (with Singh and Kaur surnames) persons were languishing in US jails in 2014 alone.

Dr NS Kang, Sarpanch of Khassan village in Kapurthala who has also represented Punjab at the overseas ministry on illegal immigration, said, In my village, there must be over 90 unauthorised agents. While there is no record of youths missing previously, more cases are steadily piling up. Unless a database or nodal department is created, we run the risk of repeating tragedies like Malta and Panama.

IGP NRI Wing, Punjab, Ishwar Singh said, We deal only with NRI matters. Hence, illegal migrant issues are not directly under our domain. In the case of complaints regarding illegal migration, we can only get a case registered through the district police. We might act as a coordinating agency where need be, but not as a statutory body.

State NRI Commission chairman Rakesh Garg said, As there is no specific provision or jurisdiction with us to investigate human trafficking cases, we cant directly take up these cases and can only make recommendations.

Former president, state NRI Sabha, Jasvir Singh Gill said, Victims of illegal migration will be facilitated if the NRI Sabha is given powers to take decisions on the issue. I am planning to take this up with the NRI affairs minister in a couple of days. While the sabha can directly pass on its NRI cases to the 15 NRI wing police stations, it doesnt have a say over illegal migrants, he said.

Principal Secretaries of Home Affairs and NRI Affairs couldnt be contacted despite repeated attempts.
Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 25

Industries that modernised themselves to survive in this era of globalisation are facing an acute shortage of skilled labour in the state.

Industries in textile, hosiery, engineering goods and other sectors are facing a crisis. Shawl exporter PL Seth said the state needed to modernise its ITIs and polytechnics to cater to the high demand for skilled labour.

He said the state government could not overlook the demands of these valuable industries that export about 6,521 varieties of articles around the world.

The border district exports merchandise such as basmati rice, shawls, chess, etc., worth over Rs 2,200 crore, he said. However, their pleas to modernise the ITIs have fallen on deaf ears.

For instance, highly labour intensive textile industries in the state were modernised from previous power loom with Jacquard to shuttle-less loom with electronic Jacquard. The productivity of the machines rose 20 times. Expensive new machines costing about Rs 60 lakh each were imported from Italy, Belgium and China. The old machines cost Rs 20,000 each.

Seth said the industries offered to pay a fresher between Rs 10,000-12,000 per month, but couldn't find trained people.

Industrialist Raman Gupta said the state government unveiled a project to start 20 small centres for skill development under the National Skill Development Corporation about two years ago.

However, these institutes neither have the type of machines being used in the industrial units in the region, nor the expertise to train the students.

Meanwhile, labour unions alleged the youth were not attracted to the industry as the wages were low and working conditions poor.
Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 25

As the extradition case of Paramjit Singh Pamma comes up before a Lisbon court tomorrow, the state government team that has gone to Portugal is hoping to get the Sikh activist back here to face trial.

Now, his extradition is being sought only in a case of murder registered at Tripri police station in Patiala in 2009.

Top officials in the state government have told The Tribune that in order to make a watertight case for seeking Pammas extradition, they are citing the case of murder of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat chief Rulda Singh that has been registered against Pamma.

It was in this case that the state government had managed to extradite two accused  Jagtar Singh Tara from Thailand in January 2015 and Ramandeep Singh Goldy from Malaysia in November 2014.

Sources say that though Pamma, who is a British national, is accused in another case of bomb blasts in Patiala and Ambala, the extradition is being sought in the murder case of Rulda Singh.

It is expected that Pammas defence counsel will be taking a plea that both cases against him have fallen flat in court. But officials in the state government maintain that they have a watertight case against him.

Only five accused have been acquitted. Tara was arrested last year and the hearing against him is still on. India had earlier written to the UK Government about the involvement of some British Sikhs in the murder of Rulda Singh, following which some British Sikhs, including Pamma, were rounded up. A team of the UK police had also visited Punjab and met one of the accused in Nabha jail, said the officer.

Since death sentence is not given to persons arrested in Portugal (Pamma was arrested by the Portugal police in December last year following a red-corner notice issued against him by Interpol), the case file prepared by the Punjab Government carries an assurance that he would not be awarded the death penalty if found guilty or incarcerated in prison for more than 25 years.

The file quotes provisions from Section 161 of the Constitution of India, specifying who has the powers to grant pardon to a person extradited from another country. It also quotes the relevant Sections of the Extradition Act and the Punjab Government Rules of Business which say that after the file for converting the death sentence to life imprisonment is cleared by the state Chief Minister, the final authority for the same rests with the Governor of Punjab.

Officials in the state Home Department have said that all these legal formalities have already been fulfilled.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, January 25

Governor KK Paul today appealed to the people of the country to have faith and confidence in the democratic system.

He was addressing the gathering at a programme held here today to mark the sixth National Voters Day.

Paul said every person had right to vote and elect a healthy, impartial and progressive government.

He said it was the responsibility of voters to strengthen the democratic system by voting fearlessly and impartially without considering factors like religion, caste, community or language. Only then will society and the nation progress, he added.

The Governor spoke about the historic journey of the Election Commission that was constituted in 1950 and faced several challenges from the very first election held in 1952.

The Governor distributed voter identity cards to 10 youngsters. He also unveiled the election calendar.

Chief Election Officer Radha Raturi, in her welcome address, threw light on the great democratic tradition of the country and the role of voters in it.

State Election Commissioner Subardhan spoke about the democracy in India as well as in some other countries. Chief Secretary Shatrughan Singh said this years theme of inclusive and qualitative participation was a great challenge for the country, which had so much of diversity.

Meanwhile, National Voters Day was also celebrated at ICFAI University. Students were educated about the voting process.

Awareness rally in Haridwar

Haridwar: Awareness camps, march, skits and discussions were held in the district on Monday to sensitise voters to their rights.

In Devpura at Pt Gobind Ballabh Pant Park, District Magistrate Harbans Singh Chugh, along with Chief Development Officer Sonika, flagged off an awareness march taken out by NSS and Scouts Guide students of Shiv Dale Public School, Bhall Inter College, Anand Mayi Sewa Sadan, Government Inter College, Jwalapur, and Mata Vaishno Devi School.

The DM directed officials to hold camps to address the grievances of people, regarding voter identity cards and names missing in voter list.

Anganwari workers also carried out an awareness campaign in rural areas of the district.
Via WHO's Southeast Asia Regional Office: Thailand confirms MERS CoV in traveler, WHO cautions against continued risk of importation. Excerpt:

Thailand today confirmed Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV) disease in a traveler, the second such case in the country in the last seven months, as WHO cautioned other member states in its South-East Asia Region against the continuing risks and the need to remain vigilant.

The new case of MERS CoV is a reminder of the continued risk of importation of the disease from countries where it still persists. All countries need to further enhance surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections, focus on early diagnosis, and step up infection prevention and control procedures in health-care facilities to rapidly detect any case of importation and effectively prevent its spread, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said.

A 71-year -old national from Oman, who arrived in Bangkok, Thailand for treatment on 22 January, and was admitted to a private hospital, tested positive for MERS CoV. He has since been transferred to the Bamrasnaradura Infectious Disease Institute. Measures are being taken to trace all those who could have been in his contact during his journey to Thailand, and within Bangkok.

This is the second MERS CoV case in Thailand and in the WHO South-East Asia Region. Earlier, on 18 June 2015 another Omani national who arrived in Bangkok for treatment, was tested positive for MERS CoV.
Yaounde, January 25

At least 26 persons were killed today in three suicide attacks in the far north of Cameroon, a region often targeted by Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamist group, according to a police toll.

The attacks targeted the local market in Bodo, near the frontier with Nigeria in one of the deadliest incidents to hit the region.

"An initial toll shows 29 dead and around 30 injured," a police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP, saying the toll included the three suicide bombers.

Since 2013, nearly 1,200 people have died in Boko Haram attacks in Cameroon's far north, according to a toll given this month by Communications Minister Issa Chiroma Bakary.

Up until then, when Cameroon bolstered its military presence along the border with Nigeria, Boko Haram fighters had slipped back and forth across the frontier, often using the remote north of Cameroon as a rear base and acquiring arms, vehicles and supplies there.

Cameroon since has ordered its army to go on the offensive, joining troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Benin in a regional coalition against Boko Haram.

The region was attacked just last week, when four worshippers were killed in a suicide bombing at a village mosque.

Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria have all contributed troops to a regional offensive devoted to driving back Boko Haram, and the United States has contributed military supplies and troops for assistance.  AFP
Yaounde (Cameroon), January 25

Local officials say that four suicide bombers attacked a town in Cameroons Far North region near the border with Nigeria, killing at least 28 persons and wounding 65 others.

Governor Midjiyawa Bakari said on Monday that two attackers detonated explosives at a market and two others blew themselves up in the town of Bodo. Bakari said that the wounded are in the hospital. He said the attackers came from Nigeria.

A Cameroon troop commander, Gen. Jacob Kodji, confirmed the attack and said Nigerias Islamic extremist group Boko Haram are suspected. He said soldiers have been deployed to the area.

The Islamic militants, who have killed thousands in a 6-year insurgency, began stepping up attacks early last year on neighboring Cameroon and other countries contributing in efforts to crush Boko Haram.  AP
Vientiane (Laos), January 25

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday dismissed Syrian government claims and Opposition complaints as posturing ahead of UN-led peace talks that are supposed to begin this week.

Kerry, in Laos after discussing the negotiations with officials in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia last week, said he expected there would be clarity soon about when the talks would start.

Todays scheduled start in Geneva has been pushed back due to disagreements over which groups can represent the opposition.

Kerry said that during his short stay in Laos, he had spoken to the UN special envoy for Syria and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey.

The goal is to reach a consensus on how the talks will be run and a planned cease-fire would proceed.

Were going to have the meeting and (the talks) are going to start, Kerry told reporters. But what we are trying to do is to make absolutely certain that when they start everyone is clear about roles and whats happening so you dont go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure.

You dont want to start Day One by not being able to make progress.

He said his conversations with colleagues were mainly about how the cease-fire and confidence-building measures, such as opening up areas for humanitarian access, would work.

Kerry declined to elaborate, but said any disagreements arising in the Geneva talks would be addressed by another meeting of the 20-odd member International Syria Support Group that is tentatively scheduled for February 11.

Syrian officials have said they will make no concessions at the negotiating table. Opposition figures have complained that they are being forced into the talks.

Kerry said those recent statements reflect only tensions and rumors. He dismissed suggestions of disunity among countries that back the opposition and said US support for foes of Syrian President Bashar Assad remains solid.

I think these are just tensions. These are things you hear as people are worried, he said.

Over the weekend, a senior official in Assads ruling Baath party said the government would not make any new concessions in the peace talks at a time when the Syrian army with the help of Russia is making progress in different parts of the country.

We are not going to give today what we did not give over the past five years, Hilal al-Hilal said late Saturday, during a visit to troops in areas they recently captured from insurgents outside the capital, Damascus.  AP
Islamabad, January 25

Amid tight security, a prestigious university in northwestern Pakistan was reopened today, days after it was attacked by the Taliban in which 21 people, mostly students, were killed.

Police said that Bacha Khan University (BKU) was reopened and additional security personnel have been deployed to take care of the university's security.

Classes would start today with special prayers for the victims. Other educational institutions in Charsadda, which closed in the wake of the attack, also reopened.

Several people held a peace march in Charsadda in the memory of the victims and to express the resolve not to be cowed down by the militants.

On Wednesday, four heavily-armed terrorists attacked BKU named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province which is located about 50 kilometres from Peshawar.

Authorities have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan city. They had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan via the Torkhum border.

However, the main facilitator, "terrorist A", who received and made arrangements for the attackers at Torkhum border checkpost is still at large.

Officials have said that the attack on BKU was planned and controlled from Afghanistan as the phone call of commander Omer Mansoor, who later claimed responsibility, was made from Afghanistan.

The BKU assault came about a year after terrorists attacked an army-run school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 people, most of them students.

The Pakistani military intensified an ongoing offensive, named operation Zarb-e-Azb, against extremists in the tribal areas after the 2014 attack.  PTI
Peshawar, January 25

Amid tight security and special prayers, a prestigious university in northwestern Pakistan reopened today, days after it was attacked by the Taliban, killing 21 people, mostly students.

Police said that Bacha Khan University (BKU) was reopened and additional security personnel have been deployed to take care of the university's security.

Classes would start today with special prayers for the victims. Other educational institutions in Charsadda, which closed in the wake of the attack, also reopened.

Several people held a peace march in Charsadda in the memory of the victims and to express the resolve not to be cowed down by the militants.

On Wednesday, four heavily-armed terrorists attacked BKU named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province which is located about 50 kilometres from Peshawar.

Authorities have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan city. They had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan via the Torkhum border.

However, the main facilitator, "terrorist A", who received and made arrangements for the attackers at Torkhum border checkpost is still at large.  PTI
Dubai, January 25

A Bahraini court sentenced 57 men to 15-year jail terms on Monday for rioting in a prison outside the capital Manama last March, the public prosecutors office said.

Bahraini security forces tear-gassed and beat inmates at Jaw prison on March 8 while trying to quell clashes that erupted during family visits, local human rights group Bahrain Youth Society for Human rights said at the time.

Bahrains public prosecutor said in a statement that the convicts had unleashed acts of chaos, riots and rebellion inside (prison) buildings.

Jaw prison is the main facility for hundreds of people jailed over participation in anti-government protests, political violence, or involvement in armed attacks on security forces or civilians.

Bahrain, a small island state linked to Saudi Arabia by a 25 km (15 mile) causeway, is strategically important to the West as it hosts the US Fifth Fleet.

Tensions have flared in the kingdom since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings led to protests in which Bahrains Shiite majority demanded more rights from the Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabias Sunni Muslim rulers also accuse Irans Shiite leadership of trying to stir unrest.

Charges in the prison riot included damaging public property, attacking police, arson and resisting authorities.

Pictures posted on social media of the prison had shown a person with a bandaged head and a man with a bleeding arm. Other photos showed young men standing in a room with overturned furniture or strewn with plastic bags.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the photographs, or where they were taken.

Mohammed al-Tajer, the lawyer, lamented the outcome and said that alleged violence against the inmates was ignored.

We raised a complaint that our clients were beaten during the unrest in Jaw prison, but the court sentenced them at the end of the day, ignoring these complaints.  Reuters
A string of social science snapshots, remarks, observations, data from the South Caucasus.
Photo courtesy of District of Columbia.

More than 2 feet of snow fell along the East Coast and middle Atlantic regions over the weekend, leading transportation agencies to work around the clock to clear snow and ice, while closing highways and streets in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia.

During the historic snow storm, hundreds of commercial drivers were stranded in their trucks, a Kentucky transportation worker died when his plow truck slid off the road, and a District of Columbia worker abandoned his stuck plow on a residential street.

As many as 200 tractor-trailers were stranded Friday overnight on Interstate 77 north of Charleston in West Virginia. Hundreds of vehicles, including commercial drivers, were stranded on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh. In Maryland, the I-270 and I-70 from I-81 in Washington County to the Baltimore Beltway had reopened as of 7 a.m. Sunday, reports the Boston Globe.

The City of Philadelphia lifted its snow emergency at 10 p.m. Sunday, allowing vehicle parking along snow emergency routes. The city canceled trash collection Monday after using the sanitation trucks to clear streets. The city deployed 600 street and fleet employees and 400 plow drivers, reports the Inquirer.

A Kentucky Transportation Cabinet worker was found dead in his snow plow truck just before 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, reports WDRB. Christopher Adams, 44, had been plowing roads when he ran off the side of Highway 115, reports WKU Public Radio.

A D.C. worker abandoned his snow plow after it became stuck in a residential neighborhood on 33rd Street NW around 6 p.m. Saturday. Residents decorated the truck with holiday lights, reports the Washington Post.

Originally posted on Automotive Fleet
CHIOS, Greece  In the inky nighttime blackness, a small red dot appears on the radar screen, moving fast.

Thats a smuggler, the captain of the coast guards lifeboat says, swinging the vessel around and opening up the throttle, the boat cutting through the water on a frigid January night.

But the lifeboat, designed for search-and-rescue operations rather than high-speed chases, is no match for the smugglers speedboat. The smuggler ignores the searchlight, the shouts and the warning shots fired by the Greek coast guard, deftly navigating his small white vessel onto a tiny patch of beach among rocks.

There he disgorges his human cargo  men, women and children risking their lives in a quest for safety and a better future in Europe. They use ropes to scramble up a cliff, heading toward a lighthouse on an island they are soon to discover is deserted save for an army outpost. They will spend a cold, wet, uncomfortable night there until the coast guard can send boats in the morning.

Hour after hour, by night and by day, Greek coast guard patrols and lifeboats, reinforced by vessels from the European Unions border agency Frontex, ply the waters of the eastern Aegean Sea along the frontier with Turkey. They are on the lookout for people being smuggled onto the shores of Greek islands  the front line of Europes massive refugee crisis.

Although smugglers are often arrested, the task is mainly a search-and-rescue role. Hours spent on patrol show the near impossibility of sealing Europes sea borders as some have demanded of Greece, whose islands so near to Turkey are the most popular gateway into Europe.

Some European countries  notably Hungary and Slovakia  have blasted Greece for being unable to secure its border, which also forms part of the external limits of Europes borderless Schengen area.We have been saying all along that if the Greeks are unable to protect the borders of their country, we should jointly go down south and protect them, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in November, with his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico echoing the thought.

But such calls ignore the realities at sea.

No matter how many patrol boats are out in Greek waters, attempting to force a vessel of asylum-seekers back into Turkish waters is both illegal and dangerous, even in calm seas. So unless a Turkish patrol stops a migrant boat and returns it to Turkey, there is little Greek or Frontex patrols can do once it has entered Greek territorial waters but arrest the smugglers and pick up the passengers or escort the vessel safely to land.

Greece is guarding the national and European borders, Greek Alternate Foreign Minister Nikos Xydakis said in a statement Sunday. What it cannot do and will not do ... is to sink boats and drown women and children, because international and European treaties and the values of our culture forbid it.

The sheer numbers have been overwhelming.

More than 850,000 people, most fleeing conflict in Syria and Afghanistan, entered Greece by sea in 2015, according to the UNHCR. Already in 2016, 35,455 people have arrived despite plunging winter temperatures and days of stormy weather.

The Greek island of Chios, second in the number of arrivals after the island of Lesbos, has three coast guard vessels and Frontex reinforcements.

But when you have 50 or 60 (migrant) boats daily, you understand that these vessels cant cope, said Chios coast guard deputy head Commander Christos Fragias. Both the crews and the vessels are strained from the overwork.

Those reaching Chios have been lucky. The island has seen few deaths  about four or five, Fragias said, out of 118,000 arrivals in 2015.

Others have not fared so well. Two smuggling boats sank Friday off the tiny Greek islets of Kalolimnos and Farmakonissi, drowning at least 42 people, including 17 children. In all, more than 700 people have died or gone missing in the Aegean Sea, in both Greek and Turkish territorial waters, since the start of 2015.

The crew of Chios lifeboat has performed dozens of rescues.

We make superhuman efforts. The five of us pick up 50, 60 people in 10 minutes, says its captain. Last year, they rescued nearly 3,000 people, he said. Coast guard crews cannot be cited by name as they are not authorized to speak on the record.

Racing across choppy seas to check on a dinghy sighting as the weather turns for the worse, the captain of one of the islands patrol boats described dramatic scenes of plucking struggling refugees out of stormy seas, where waves can hide victims from sight and maneuvering a pitching vessel in a sea full of people becomes precarious.

Its very difficult to save people in bad weather, he said. If there are incidents at sea, we only have a limited capacity, so we have to prioritize which boats are in danger.

The dinghy he was called on to check arrived safely on a beach on southern Chios, so the captain turned the patrol boat north, heading to the deserted island that the smuggler was ferrying passengers to the previous night. By morning, 283 people, including dozens of children, a disabled elderly woman and an amputee await rescue. They will be transported to Chios, which will have received 1,026 people by the end of the day.

The patrol vessel and a Dutch Frontex speedboat take turns ferrying people in batches of about 25 to the nearby island of Oinousses, from where a large privately owned tug converted into a rescue boat will take them to Chios.

Among the new arrivals was Faysal, a middle-aged man from Damascus who would only give his first name after fleeing Syria following kidnapping threats.

It was a horrible, horrible trip, he said of the boat ride from Turkey, crouching on the patrol boats deck, his hood pulled up to ward off the rain. They told us it would take 15 minutes, but it took 2  hours.

The smuggler waited at sea for an hour to evade a coast guard boat, Faysal said. We have no sea in Damascus, we are not used to this. We were all sick, and the boat was full of water.

Once on land they lit fires, burning their lifejackets to keep warm. Next to him, tears of pain trickled down the soot-blackened face of a woman who had hurt her leg on the rocks getting off the smugglers boat.

Faysal ran a successful heating business in Damascus, but said he no longer had the option of staying.

There is no safety. I left everything behind; my business, my home, he said.

He hopes to reach Holland, where his sister lives. But the onward journey will have to wait a day or two.

We have no strength to go on tonight, he says. We have to have some rest.
DENVER  The death of a 112-pound jail inmate who choked on his own vomit and suffocated after Denver sheriffs deputies restrained him during a psychotic episode is drawing new attention to the way he was subdued: face-down on his stomach with five deputies holding him to the floor.

Experts warn the common but risky police tactic of restraining someone in a prone position can be lethal, especially on those with medical problems and the mentally ill, whose distress is sometimes confused with resistance.

While the method has been linked to several deaths nationwide, some in law enforcement say it remains one of the most effective ways to stay safe while controlling a combative person.

Denver officials on Friday released surveillance footage of deputies encounter with Michael Marshall, 50, a homeless man who had been jailed for trespassing and died because of complications of positional asphyxia, according to the medical examiner.

District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said he wouldnt file criminal charges against the six deputies involved, saying multiple factors, including lung and heart disease, also contributed to the death. The deputies use of force was necessary against the struggling inmate, Morrissey said.

He didnt try to hurt anyone. He wasnt threatening, his niece, Natalia Marshall, said. And for them to forcefully restrain him the way they did and brutally murder him just because of the fact that he was trespassing? Is beyond my thoughts.

The case, which prompted calls for a federal investigation, recalled the similar death of Marvin Booker, a homeless street preacher in 2010 after Denver deputies shocked him with a Taser while he was handcuffed, put him in a sleeper hold and lay on top of him.

The medical examiner said he died of cardiorespiratory arrest during restraint.The Justice Department has long warned officers about the dangers of positional asphyxia, or death because someones position complicates their ability to breathe. As soon as a suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach, the DOJ wrote in a 1995 bulletin.

Problems arise when a person is held prone for prolonged periods, experts said.

No agency collects data showing how many people suffocate as a result of being restrained face-down nationally, so its impossible to say whether use of the tactic has increased.

However, the technique has been cited in several high-profile deaths, including that of Robert Ethan Saylor, an overweight man with Down syndrome who died after a struggle with deputies in a Maryland movie theater; Tanisha Anderson, a mentally ill woman held on her stomach after she tried to escape the back seat of a Cleveland police patrol car; and Robert Minjarez, a cocaine user held down by Louisiana officers as he cried in an increasingly muffled voice, I cant breathe.

Eric Garner, the New York City man whose chokehold death in 2014 became a flashpoint for protesters decrying the killings of unarmed black men by police, was also held down on his face. In addition to the chokehold, the medical examiner cited prone positioning during physical restraint as a cause of his death.

When the maneuver turns deadly, its often because a suspect is disobeying commands or resisting, which can cause officers to apply even more pressure, said Harvey Hedden, executive director of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association.

In cases where people comply, there are other options, he said.

But often prone restraint is used on mentally ill or sick suspects whose duress is mistaken for resistance, escalating the problem, said Jamie Fellner, senior adviser for Human Rights Watch, which has studied use of force against mentally ill inmates.

If you have somebody who is psychotic and you, the officer, are trying to get handcuffs on him and push him into a cell, in that persons mind you are his demons come real, Fellner said.

The risks associated with the maneuver are well-documented, but in many jails, deputies lack the training of mental health care workers, who might try to calm someone down by other means than force, such as talking to them, she said.

Weak policies and lack of accountability in many facilities perpetuates the problem.

Those risks have prompted some agencies to limit or prohibit prone resistant. The Ohio prisons department, for example, prohibits the practice, but allows officers to briefly hold inmates face down to get control of them.

Some school districts bar educators from using it against unruly students, and mental health institutions have moved away from the practice.

When used correctly, the tactic is safe and effective, said Pittsburgh police Officer David Wright, the departments use-of-force instructor, who trains officers to control a persons limbs rather than put weight on their back.

The longer the struggle plays out, the greater the concern, Wright said.
MILWAUKEE  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will stop supporting the use of ultralight aircraft to help young whooping cranes migrate from Wisconsin to Florida each fall.

Officials announced Friday that this seasons ultralight-guided flights to the birds winter home will be the last, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Operation Migration, the Canadian-based nonprofit group that has led the migrations for 15 years, has opposed the end of ultralights, saying the program has helped cranes survive. But Fish and Wildlife officials say the birds havent been successful in producing chicks and raising them in the wild.

The effort has spent more than $20 million to establish the flock thats distinct from a larger flock of whooping cranes migrating between the Texas Gulf Coast and northern Canada.

The final decision to end the public-private effort was made in Baraboo during a meeting of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, according to Pete Fasbender, a Minnesota-based field office supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The real short answer is that we felt that this was in the best interest of the birds, Fasbender said.

Nearly 250 whooping cranes have been released in Wisconsin since 2001. Fish and Wildlife officials say about 93 are currently alive, but only 10 chicks have survived to fledge.

Experts in crane biology have concluded that the use of aircraft and other human interaction are having a negative impact. Since 2005, the chicks that fledged and were born in the wild came from only five pairs of adults, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Why arent the others getting it? asked Fasbender. The common thread is this lack of parenting skills.

The partnership includes Operation Migration and staff from the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, the largest crane conservation organization in the world. Barry Hartup, director of veterinary service, said the crane foundation agrees with the changes, which include limiting human interaction with chicks and minimizing a practice where costumed humans help care for chicks.

We have to find ways to reduce the element of artificiality, Hartup said.

The decision is a setback for Operation Migration, which has staff in northern Florida, just short of the final destination of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The ultralight migration this year has lasted more than 100 days.

Joe Duff, chief executive officer of Operation Migration, posted a comment Saturday on the groups website that said: It is sad to see the end of aircraft led migration. There will be many people who will be disappointed, and even a few who will celebrate. But those reactions are all about people and our mantra has always been, its about the birds.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska  A magnitude-7.1 quake knocked items off shelves and walls in Alaska early Sunday morning, jolting the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. There were no reports of injuries, but four homes were lost to explosions or fire following the quake.

Alaskas state seismologist, Michael West, called it the strongest earthquake in the states south-central region in decades. Alaska often has larger or more powerful earthquakes, such as a 7.9 last year in the remote Aleutian Islands.

However, last nights earthquake is significant because it was close enough to Alaskas population centers, West said, adding that aftershocks could continue for weeks.

The earthquake was widely felt by Anchorage residents. But the Anchorage and Valdez police departments said they hadnt received any reports of injury or significant damage.

The earthquake struck at about 1:30 a.m. Alaska time and was centered 53 miles west of Anchor Point in the Kenai Peninsula, about 160 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Vincent Nusunginya, 34, of Kenai said he was at his girlfriends house when the quake hit.

It started out as a shaking and it seemed very much like a normal earthquake. But then it started to feel like a normal swaying, like a very smooth side-to-side swaying, said Nusunginya, director of audience at the Peninsula Clarion newspaper. It was unsettling. Some things got knocked over, but there was no damage.

Two homes in Kenai were destroyed in gas leak explosions and the other two were fully engulfed before firefighters determined it was safe enough from gas for them to enter the homes, Kenai battalion chief Tony Prior said. He said firefighters focused on keeping the flames from those homes from spreading to nearby houses.

No injuries. Thank God, he said. The second one was a major explosion. Were fortunate that no one was hurt.

About 30 homes were evacuated, and some people took shelter at the Kenai National Guard Armory.

Workers with the gas utility were examining the remaining homes Sunday afternoon with the goal of getting displaced residents back in their homes later in the day.

The USGS initially reported the quake as a magnitude-7.1, but downgraded shortly afterward to magnitude-6.8 before raising it back to 7.1.

Some earthquakes have challenges associated with them, they are unusual or hard to monitor, West said. This is neither of them. Southern Alaska is well instrumented, and this earthquake is of the style and type that we would expect in this area.

The biggest aftershock Sunday was 4.7, and West said a magnitude-5 or magnitude-6 aftershock is possible.

There were reports of scattered power outages from the Matanuska Electric Association and Chugach Electric in the Anchorage area. The Homer Electric Association reported on its website that about 4,800 customers were without power early Sunday in the Kenai Peninsula.

The Alaska Department of Transportation reported on its Facebook page that there was road damage near the community of Kasilof, on the Kenai Peninsula.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker said in a statement Sunday that he was relieved there wasnt more damage. He urged all Alaskans to have a response plan for when a major natural disaster takes place.

The hashtag #akquake trended early Sunday on Twitter as people shared their experiences and posted photos of items that had fallen off walls and shelves.

Andrea Conter, 50, of Anchorage, said she was surprised by the quakes strength.

This was a wild one, the former Southern California resident said. I looked at the closed-circuit cameras at work and it lasted over 50 seconds and that is considerable for an earthquake.

When I bought my house in Anchorage I had a geological map that shows what are the sturdiest parts of town and there were a few where I said, If theres an earthquake, that house is toast, Conter said. Thats how I chose my house. Literally. Drove my real estate agent nuts. But, I didnt have one thing fall in my house. It was kind of clutch.

Andrew Sayers, 26, of Kasilof was watching television when the quake struck.

The house started to shake violently. The TV we were watching fell over, stuff fell off the walls, he said. Dishes were crashing, and we sprinted toward the doorway.

Later, he was driving to his mothers home when he came across a stretch of road that was damaged in the quake.

We launched over this crack in the road. Its a miracle we didnt bust our tires on it, he said.

After reaching his mothers house, Sayers checked on his grandparents, who live about a mile away.

No damage, except their Christmas tree fell over, he said.
WASHINGTON  Four of Americas wealthiest businessmen laid the foundation for Ted Cruzs now-surging Republican presidential campaign and have redefined the role of political donors.

With just over a week until voters get their first say, the 45-year-old Texas senator known as a conservative warrior has been ascendant. The $36 million committed last year by these donor families is now going toward broadcast and online advertisements, direct mailings and get-out-the-vote efforts in early primary states.

The donors super political action committees sponsored two weekend rallies in Iowa featuring Cruz and conservative personality Glenn Beck. The state holds the leadoff caucuses on Feb. 1.

The long-believing benefactors are New York hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, Texas natural gas billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, and private-equity partner Toby Neugebauer. They honed their plan to help Cruz before he began his steady rise in polls  before he even announced his presidential bid in March.

No one wants to lose, Neugebauer told The Associated Press when asked why he and others bet big on Cruz. We didnt miss that an outsider would win. I think weve nailed it.

The groundwork laid by Neugebauer and other major donors began roughly two years ago, first in a casual conversation with Cruz at a donors home in Palm Beach, Florida, then in a more formal way over the 2014 Labor Day weekend at Neugebauers ranch in East Texas.

That October, big-data firm Cambridge Analytica  in which Mercer is an investor  began working to identify potential Cruz voters and develop messages that would motivate them. Alexander Nix, the companys chief executive officer, said the importance of this early work cannot be overstated. He credits Cruz for understanding this.

Money never buys you time, Nix said, drawing from his experiences with campaigns worldwide. Too often clients will come to you just before an election and expect you to work miracles. But you cannot roll back the clock.

Key donors soon came up with a novel arrangement: Each family would control its own super PAC, but the groups would work together as a single entity called Keep the Promise. They keep in touch through weekly strategy phone calls.

Thats not how super PACs usually work. More typically, multiple donors turn over their money and leave the political decisions to professional strategists. For example, Jeb Bushs super PAC counts more than two dozen million-dollar donors.

For Cruz, the pool of really big donors is far more concentrated: Mercer gave $11 million, Neugebauer gave $10 million, and the Wilks brothers and their wives together gave $15 million.

That level of support has opened Cruz to criticism that donors are influencing his policies, whether on abortion, energy or the gold standard.

Ethanol advocates point to his oil and gas donors as the reason he wants to discontinue that government subsidy for the corn-based fuel. Cruz and the donors have dismissed that as nonsense. His campaign cites as evidence Cruzs desire to end handouts to all parts of the energy industry.

Neugebauer, whose private equity investment firm has investments in shale, moved to Puerto Rico in 2014. He said he relocated for his childrens education, but there are tax breaks as well.

Mercer is a former computer programmer and co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, one of the countrys largest hedge funds. The Wilks brothers are relative newcomers to the world of political donations, having made billions in 2011 by selling their company, which manufactures equipment for the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas.

Although these donors set aside their millions for Cruz 10 months ago, its only now that the money is making its way to the 2016 race in a major way.

Since mid-December, the Keep the Promise super PACs have documented about $4 million in independent expenditures to help Cruz or attack other candidates  most often Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, federal election records show.

The super PACs have been identifying and connecting with Cruz voters through digital ads and door-knocking, and recently began a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign. A Keep the Promise van tailed the Cruz campaign bus as it made its way through Iowa last week. Super PAC workers handed out thousands of Choose Cruz yard signs.For the biggest donors, its no surprise that Cruz seems to be well-positioned heading into the primaries. In mid-July, Keep the Promise posted on its website a slide-show presentation called Can He Win? The document predicted it would be very difficult for Establishment to destroy the conservative challenger.
Two bucks buys you a gallon of gas in many parts of the country these days. But if you think thats a bargain, check out the deals on energy stocks.

Collapsing crude prices have vaporized energy-company profits, pushing down stocks in the sector by 12 percent in the past year. But the sell-off may have gone too far. Even if the price of crude oil doesnt recover, some energy companies can fare well.

ExxonMobil: (symbol XOM, $82, yield 3.6 percent). Exxon, the supertanker of energy stocks, earns money from both oil-and-gas production, known as the upstream part of an energy company, and such downstream businesses as refining and gas stations. By the time the books are closed on 2015, revenues are expected to have tumbled by 38 percent, to an estimated $255 billion. But Exxon is getting leaner, slashing operating costs and trimming its budget for new projects to help shore up profits. Exxon is also one of only three publicly traded companies with a higher credit rating than Uncle Sam (though Standard & Poors says it may trim the firms triple-A rating within the next two years).

The companys financial strength gives it flexibility to buy distressed companies with assets that could boost its bottom line. It also pays investors to wait for a rebound with a dividend thats sacrosanct. Even with profits expected to plunge 46 percent in 2015, the company hiked its payout by 5.8 percent in April, pushing its streak of annual dividend increases to 33 years.

Chevron: (CVX, $91, 4.7 percent) Chevron, another colossus, made some massive bets in recent years, plowing more than $107 billion into projects ranging from a liquefied natural gas plant in Australia to oil wells off the coast of West Africa. With several of those projects now up and running, the payoff to investors should be on the way. Chevron expects to boost oil-and-gas production by 13 percent to 15 percent in 2016 and in 2017, propelling earnings from an estimated $3.32 per share in 2015 to $6.04 in 2017.

In the near term, Chevron isnt making enough money to fully cover its dividend. To bridge the funding gap, the company is scaling back on natural-gas drilling in the U.S. and on other projects, and its cutting its budget for oil-and-gas development from an estimated $35 billion in 2015 to no more than $28 billion in 2016. Those moves should help shore up its finances until 2017, when Chevron expects free cash flow to cover its dividend. Chevrons strength remains its steady plan to engage in projects with high profit margins, says Deutsche Bank, which rates the stock a buy.
Once upon a time an old soldier told Paul D. Brunton not to volunteer.

He didnt listen to the University of Oklahoma college professor, and in the mid-1960s he joined the U.S. Army Special Forces.

That volunteering meant service in Vietnam, and Brunton is glad he served.

Fast forward to 2016, and Brunton again ignored that advice not to volunteer because is serving as the 2016 vice president of the Oklahoma Bar Association.

Garvin Isaacs, OBA president, asked me to serve and we go back a long way, Brunton said. One of our big jobs this year is to deal with the Oklahoma lawmakers as they again try to get rid of the Judicial Nominating Commission.

Detractors claim the 15-member commission that appoints appellate judges is dominated by lawyers  something that is not true.

Only six lawyers serve on the commission and  like all members  have only one vote.

There also has been some mention, but apparently is not on the current legislative agenda, to make membership in the OBA voluntary instead of mandatory, he said. That is not a good idea because members can be disciplined by the association for wrongdoing.

Brunton is familiar with the legislature, having served three terms as a Republican lawmaker at a time when Democrats dominated the House of Representatives.

Garvin (Isaacs) and I go back a long way, he said. Isaacs was the attorney who defended Gene Leroy Hart charged with the Girl Scout murders in 1977.

Hart was acquitted of the murders, but died in prison in 1979 while serving a 308-year sentence after being convicted of kidnapping and raping two pregnant women as well as four counts of first degree burglary.

Brunton took an oath Jan. 15 to serve as the 2016 vice president of the Oklahoma Bar Associations board of governors.

He was among nine attorneys sworn in to serve on the OBAs 17-member board during a ceremony at the state Capitol.

Bruntons practice focuses on criminal defense in city, state and federal court.

He was admitted to the OBA and to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and 10th U.S. Court of Appeals in 1971. He received his J.D. from the TU College of Law in 1971 and his LL.M. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1982.

Brunton is a member of the Tulsa County Bar Association, Tulsa County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Legal Committee), Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

He has also has spoken at various continuing legal education seminars and bar meetings on the topic of Criminal Law and Trial Tactics.

He is the recipient of the TCBA Golden Rule Award, TCBA Presidents Award, OBA Earl Sneed Award and the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Lord Erskine Award.

Also taking oaths Friday were Garvin A. Isaacs of Oklahoma City, 2016 OBA president; Linda S. Thomas of Bartlesville, president-elect; and Norman lawyer David A. Poarch, who served as OBA president in 2015 and remains on the OBA Board of Governors for one year as immediate past president.

Sworn in to the OBA board of governors to represent their respective Supreme Court judicial districts are John W. Coyle III, Oklahoma City; James L. Kee, Duncan; and Kaleb K. Hennigh, Enid.

They will serve three-year terms.

Alissa Hutter of Norman is also serving a three-year term as member-at-large, and Bryon Will of Oklahoma City was sworn in to a one-year term as OBA Young Lawyers Division chairperson.

OBA leadership roles are voluntary positions in which lawyers serve while continuing to practice law. The board meets monthly.
Dianna Phillips, a local educator and community leader, announced her candidacy for State Representative in House District 66.

I want to bring the concerns, hopes, and energies of this district to the State Capitol, Phillips said. Oklahoma should be a place where families can grow and thrive, and I believe I have the experience and work ethic to be a strong voice for our community.

Diannas interest in public service began in the 1980s, when she started her career as a researcher for the Oklahoma House of Representatives and the Oklahoma Municipal League. She went on to work as a Contract Coordinator for the City of Tulsa, retiring in 2006 after 20 years of service. Today she works as an adjunct professor at Tulsa Community College and a substitute teacher at Page Academy.

We need new leadership and an independent voice that will put common-sense solutions ahead of partisan politics, Phillips said. Ive been talking to teachers and parents across this community, and they are worried about our underfunded schools, our crumbling roads, and our states budget shortfall. We need real solutions, not more irresponsible tax-cuts and band-aid fixes.

Dianna lives in Sand Springs with her husband Michael and their son Walter. The family remains active in the community  Dianna has served on the Sand Springs Museum Board of Trustees and Michael is currently serving his fourth term as City Councilor for Ward 1.
BROKEN ARROW  An engineering design firm has recommended an estimated $1.1 million repair to a retaining wall at Tiger Hill.

The City Council approved the plan Tuesday night after discussion with a representative from Olsson Associates, an engineering design firm from Olathe, Kansas.

City staff recommended an evaluation of the retaining wall on the north side of Tiger Hill after the Flight Safety-owned retaining wall on the east side of the hill partially gave way in late May.

While the wall on the east side of Tiger Hill is owned and maintained by Flight Safety, the same engineer also designed the north-side retaining wall, which the city owns.

The municipality is considering building another wall that would be roughly half as high as the existing wall (10 feet) and 7 to 20 feet in front of it.

This option is the most palatable to City Staff, despite the fact that it will absorb additional real estate available for retail and commercial development, city spokeswoman Krista Flasch said Thursday in an email.

The city last year paid Olsson $3,000 for a geotechnical evaluation and $19,480 for development of a remedial plan, documents show.

Olsson engineer James Landrum said at the meeting Tuesday that the option the firm recommended was the most cost-effective, economical solution.

 Keep in mind, we were not around when that wall was initially built, but based on our analysis, no, I would not expect you to have any additional problems with that wall, he said.

Richard Carter is Broken Arrows vice-mayor.

One thing to keep in mind is that if we dont do something really good that will show people and companies that its safe up there, were not going to have any economic development at all, Carter said at the meeting. If we lose a little bit of space and then have a good wall there that can be counted on, thats worthwhile.

Construction on the city-owned retaining wall started in May 2012 and was completed nine months later. The cost was $1,023,014.
If improving the health of our fellow citizens isnt enough reason to reconsider the states refusal to accept Affordable Care Act money, the Tulsa Regional Chamber has presented another one.

Its good business.

A chamber health summit this week emphasized the economic arguments for accepting funds from the Affordable Care Act  Obamacare  to reduce the number of Oklahomans who dont have health insurance.

Here are a few:

 The health-care industry in Oklahoma, the states largest private industry, is in a crisis. Federal health-care funding is premised on the assumption that the state will accept Affordable Care Act funding. If states refuse that money, their hospitals starve.

 Oklahomans already are paying all the taxes to support those Affordable Care Act services in other states. We simply refuse to allow them here.

 Oklahoma companies (and companies considering bringing jobs here) need able-bodied workers. The states labor force participation rate is 65 percent. Thats far too low, and its that way, at least in part, because of uninsured, unhealthy working-age people.

 Improving health-care finances would increase the number of tax-paying health-care workers, as in doctors, who tend to congregate at the upper end of the tax brackets. More high-end taxpayers means less tax pressure on those who pay taxes now.

 Expansion of health-care coverage is relatively cheap. The Affordable Care Act offered to pay 100 percent of the cost of newly eligible patients through 2016. After that, a small portion shifts to the states, capping at 10 percent in 2020.

 Accepting federal funds to expand coverage would bring $8.5 billion into the state over 10 years, according to the Oklahoma Hospital Association. That kind of money would ripple through the economy, creating thousands of jobs.

 The money can be pushed through well-established private sector mechanisms instead of being handed out as a traditional entitlement. In Arkansas, federal officials signed off on using the money to purchase private insurance for eligible people.

The Arkansas plan has resulted in an $83 million positive impact on the states budget. Oklahoma already has a similar program ready to do the job, Insure Oklahoma.

The business case for accepting Affordable Care Act money to expand health-care coverage for some of the states poorest citizens is solid.

The need is undeniable: The state ranks fifth in the nation in the number of uninsured residents, with nearly 600,000.

There is a lot to be said against the Affordable Care Act, and weve said it. It was ill-conceived, ill-written and ill-implemented.

But its the law, and were paying for it. An Arkansas-style private-public partnership to make Oklahomas working population healthier makes all the sense in the world.

With a pro-growth, pro-business group like the Tulsa Regional Chamber behind the movement, we say its time for the state to reconsider its choices.
This country's cyclists will come up against the region next month when T&T hosts the Ca
9:55 a.m., Jan. 25, 2016--On Oct. 4, 1957, the United States was taken by surprise when the Soviet Union launched a satellite the size of a beach ball into orbit around the Earth.

The following year, the U.S. government established the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create and prevent strategic surprises like Sputnik.

We realized that the simplest way to prevent surprise is to create your own surprise, said Stefanie Tompkins, director of DARPAs Defense Sciences Office, in an open seminar at the University of Delaware on Wednesday, Jan. 21.

Hosted by the Center for Composite Materials (CCM), the talk attracted about 75 faculty members, scientists and engineers interested in learning more about how they can work with DARPA to secure funding for their research.

Tompkins emphasized that DARPA operates differently from agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health but is part of a healthy research ecosystem along with those other funding sources.

DARPA is a very flexible organization with a high tolerance for risk, she said. Were looking for ideas in science and technology that will change the world.

In addition to responding to open-office and program-specific Broad Agency Announcements (known as BAAs), researchers can propose their ideas to DARPA by simply approaching a program manager through a phone call, email, or brief written document.

The agency even provides very short-term support through seedlings funding for small studies that are aimed at taking your concepts from disbelief to doubt on the path to accelerate breakthrough discoveries and enabling technologies through multi-year, multidisciplinary programs, Tompkins said.

During Dr. Tompkins visit, we had the opportunity to showcase our capabilities in composites through interactions with our affiliated faculty, research staff, and students on interactive laboratory tours, said CCM Director John W. Gillespie Jr., who is also the Donald C. Phillips Professor.

In addition, Dr. Tompkins engaged faculty from three of UDs colleges in small-group meetings to discuss ideas and make connections with the key DARPA program managers. We really appreciated her enthusiasm and insights.

One of six technical offices within the agency, the Defense Sciences Office identifies and pursues high-risk/high-payoff fundamental research initiatives across a broad spectrum of science and engineering disciplines including materials science, computing and autonomy, engineering design and manufacturing, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and social science.

DSOs current strategy is to accelerate discovery and development; enable rapid, customized production of (nearly) everything; and harness complexity through modeling and design.

Article by Diane Kukich

Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson
The Ukrainian delegation will discuss economy and trade at the Europe-Ukraine Forum that is held in Poland.

Deputy minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine Natalia Mykolska wrote on Facebook.

"The opening of the Europe-Ukraine Forum in Lodz: we will be talking about the projected data for 2016, tomorrow we will discuss economy and trade. It was symbolical for us to be on the first trip abroad [this year] to Poland. We need to cooperate more with our neighbors," wrote Mykolska.

The deputy minister also noted that she will meet with Vice Minister of the Republic of Poland Mr. Kwiecinski.

Earlier, Ukrinform reported that IX Forum Europe-Ukraine titled Reforms strategy and modernization  did we have a breakthrough? began on Sunday in Lodz, central Poland. The participants consider a wide range of issues relating to the political, social, economic and security situation in Ukraine and the region.
Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko has met with the senior executives of the EBRD office and noted the importance of further reforms of city management and the introduction of high technologies.

This is reported by the press service of the Mayor.

"Last year, the city managed to increase revenues by 30% and stabilize the financial activities of the city due to debt restructuring. So now we have a unique opportunity for focusing our resources on the implementation of the projects important for Kyiv," Klitschko said.

During the meeting, the parties discussed further coordination of efforts to implement the strategic projects in the capital as well as to raise financial support and invite the bank experts for the implementation.

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Representatives of the European Commission headed by Augusto Gonzalez , advisor to the European Commission Directorate-General, and Ukraines State Space Agency have held a meeting, during which the sides discussed Ukraines participation in such global EU projects as satellite navigation system EGNOS-Galileo, remote sensing Copernicus, as well as researches and innovations Horizon 2020, the State Space Agency reports.

After the meeting, the sides confirmed their intentions to intensify cooperation in the space industry and hold regular sittings, which will enable consolidating the efforts of partners in the space industry, as well as becoming an efficient tool for Ukraine and the EU, the Space Agency reports.

The purpose of the meeting was hodling of another sitting of a Working Group on Ukraine-EU cooperation in the space sphere, aimed at stepping up collaboration and establishing a regular dialog on exploring space, information exchange on Earth remote sensing, navigation and joint use of advanced space technologies.

In addition, the European side confirmed its firm support for independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and noted its readiness to strengthen cooperation in the space sphere.

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Volodymyr Ariyev has been elected Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Committee on Culture, Science and Media.

Iryna Heraschenko, a member of delegation, wrote on her Facebook page.

Head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Volodymyr Aryev, has been elected Chairman of the PACE Committee on Culture, Science and Media. Our congratulations! she wrote.

As a reminder, Spanish MEP Pedro Agramunt was elected new PACE President.

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UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partners on Monday called on donor nations for more than half-a-billion dollars this year to help hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee conflicts in Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR) and the host communities providing them with shelter and other basic services.

The two Regional Refugee Response Plans (RRRP), presented at a donor briefing in Yaounde, Cameroon, include US$198.76 million for 230,000 Nigerian refugees and some 284,300 members of host communities in Niger, Chad and Cameroon as well as US$345.7 million for 476,300 CAR refugees and some 289,000 people hosting them in Chad, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Republic of Congo.

Both RRRPs cover needs in sectors such as protection, education, food security, health and nutrition, livelihoods, shelter, basic aid and water, hygiene and sanitation. The CAR appeal is being made by 25 organizations, including UNHCR and other UN agencies as well as NGOs. The Nigeria appeal is made by 28 organizations. UNHCR alone is seeking US$189.54 million under the Central African Republic RRRP and US$62.33 million for the Nigeria one.

"These two humanitarian crises must not be forgotten; they are not going away. The suffering is great and the needs acute among both the displaced and host communities," said Liz Ahua, UNHCR's Regional Refugee Coordinator for the CAR and Nigeria situations. "Violence occurs on almost a daily basis in north-east Nigeria and CAR, generating fear and new displacement in the region," she said, citing suicide attacks, kidnapping, indiscriminate killings and massive human rights abuses.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we won't see it unless there is a much stronger commitment from African governments and the international community to help re-establish stability and peace," Ahua said, urging donors to give more generously. In 2015, the Nigerian RRRP received 52 per cent of its financial requirements whilst the Central African Republic RRRP received just 27 per cent.

Despite important steps towards restoring peace in both north-east Nigeria and CAR, there were also reverses and continuing significant population displacement in 2015. In Nigeria, the government rolled back Boko Haram gains, but the insurgent group turned to terror tactics that spread into neighbouring countries.

In CAR, relative peace was punctuated by waves of violence that triggered flight within the country and into the DRC, but the first round of the presidential election passed peacefully in late December with the participation of tens of thousands of refugees in Chad, Republic of Congo and Cameroon. The second round is due in February.

The crises in Nigeria and CAR will continue to provide major challenges throughout 2016 in countries such as Cameroon, which provides sanctuary and assistance to refugees from both Nigeria and CAR. For just this country, the appeals seek US$130.8 million to help 234,500 CAR refugees and almost 216,700 host community members and US$56.36 million for 100,000 Nigerian refugees and 20,000 hosts in Cameroon.

Highlighting some of the needs, Ahua said: "We need funding to prevent malnutrition among children; to run schools, build up proper sanitation systems and provide clean water; and to make sure that families have shelter over their heads."

The Nigeria and CAR regional response plans are part of the wider 2016 humanitarian appeal, asking for US$20.1 billion to reach 87 million people around the world, launched last December.

To read the Nigeria RRRP, go to http://www.unhcr.org/56a2351b9.html

To read the Central African Republic RRRP, go to http://www.unhcr.org/56a235c79.html

Media contacts :
Young Nigerian refugees happily chase after visitors after attending a day of classes in northern Cameroon's Minawao camp.  UNHCR/L. Dobbs

YAOUNDE, Cameroon, Jan 25 (UNHCR) - The UN Refugee Agency and its partners on Monday called on donor nations for more than half-a-billion US dollars this year to help hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee conflicts in Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR) and the host communities providing them with shelter and other basic services.

The two Regional Refugee Response Plans (RRRP), presented at a donor briefing in Yaounde, Cameroon, include US$198.76 million for 230,000 Nigerian refugees and some 284,300 members of host communities in Niger, Chad and Cameroon as well as US$345.7 million for 476,300 CAR refugees and some 289,000 people hosting them in Chad, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Republic of Congo.

Both RRRPs cover needs in sectors such as protection, education, food security, health and nutrition, livelihoods, shelter, basic aid and water, hygiene and sanitation. The CAR appeal is being made by 25 organizations, including UNHCR and other UN agencies as well as NGOs.

The Nigeria appeal is made by 28 organizations. UNHCR alone is seeking US$189.54 million under the Central African Republic RRRP and US$62.33 million for the Nigeria one.

"These two humanitarian crises must not be forgotten; they are not going away. The suffering is great and the needs acute among both the displaced and host communities," said Liz Ahua, UNHCR's Regional Refugee Coordinator for the CAR and Nigeria situations.

Ahua said violence occurs on almost a daily basis in north-east Nigeria and CAR, generating fear and new displacement in the region, citing as examples suicide attacks, kidnapping, indiscriminate killings and massive human rights abuses.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we won't see it unless there is a much stronger commitment from African governments and the international community to help re-establish stability and peace," Ahua said, urging donors to give more generously. In 2015, the Nigerian RRRP received 52 per cent of its financial requirements whilst the Central African Republic RRRP received just 27 per cent.

Despite important steps towards restoring peace in both north-east Nigeria and CAR, there were also reverses and continuing significant population displacement in 2015. In Nigeria, the government rolled back Boko Haram gains, but the insurgent group turned to terror tactics that spread into neighbouring countries.

In CAR, relative peace was punctuated by waves of violence that triggered flight within the country and into the DRC, but the first round of the presidential election passed peacefully in late December with the participation of tens of thousands of refugees in Chad, Republic of Congo and Cameroon. The second round is due in February.

The crises in Nigeria and CAR will continue to provide major challenges throughout 2016 in countries such as Cameroon, which provides sanctuary and assistance to refugees from both Nigeria and CAR. For just this country, the appeals seek US$130.8 million to help 234,500 CAR refugees and almost 216,700 host community members and US$56.36 million for 100,000 Nigerian refugees and 20,000 hosts in Cameroon.

Highlighting some of the needs, Ahua said: "We need funding to prevent malnutrition among children; to run schools, build up proper sanitation systems and provide clean water; and to make sure that families have shelter over their heads."

The Nigeria and CAR regional response plans are part of the wider 2016 humanitarian appeal, asking for US$20.1 billion to reach 87 million people around the world, launched last December.

You can read the Nigeria RRRP here and the Central African Republic RRRP here.
While 7-year-old Tara Garman is busy making Valentines for the upcoming holiday, her mother Lisa takes time to slip away from her daughters hospital room to explain the effect of a devastating disease and the toll its taken on the family of five.

After suffering from vision problems, Tara was diagnosed last May with Juvenile Batten disease, a rare genetic disorder. It was a diagnosis that left the family reeling and desperately seeking answers. Little has been the same since.

The disease is an inherited disorder that strikes only one in 100,000. Vision impairment is usually the first sign of the illness, which is followed by a host of other issues from intellectual decline, to loss of motor skills, progressively worsening seizures and subsequent heart problems, to name just a few.

Lisa Garman learned that the condition is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern. My husband and I are both carriers, which, of course, we didnt know. Her quest for information led her to a Facebook group for those affected by the illness.

One of the members of the group steered Garman to Duke Childrens Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, where Tara is undergoing treatment. Very few places do pediatric bone marrow and stem cell transplants. Duke is doing experimental transplants on certain neurodegenerative illnesses. Juvenile Batten is one, Garman said.

Since being admitted on Nov. 30, Tara has undergone many procedures.

She was put on a chemo conditioning regimen where they destroyed her bone marrow so that she had no immune system, Garman explained. They then infused most of her stem cells through an IV and then later a lumbar puncture in the hope that the new cells will fix her DNA anomaly to stop the progression of the Batten.

Garman said the diagnosis hit the family hard, both emotionally and financially.

Its taken its toll as we watch her lose her ability to do things that normal kids do, she said. Those with the disease often battle dementia and paranoia, so they lose their sense of self. They experience violent seizures and progress until they cant move, eat, or sleep. Many only live to their late teens or early 20s.

The financial aspect is another issue altogether. Im a nurse and am now on FMLA. I havent received a paycheck since we came here. I used up all my leave during a complicated pregnancy last year.

Her husband, Jeff, has chosen to stay behind to run the familys dairy farm and look after Taras 4-year-old sister and 1-year-old brother. Much to the couples relief, neither of the two children has the disease. We had to undergo testing, Lisa Garman said.

Fundraiser

Megan Orris, a family friend, stepped forward, along with Garmans great aunt, to help with fundraisers for the transplant that can cost close to $1 million.

Our medical insurance will cover a portion of it, but were unsure how much at this point, Garman said.

There has been a bank account established at Members 1st Federal Credit Union, Orris said. If anyone is interested in donating, they just need to walk into any Members 1st branch to contribute. The account is under Taras Fight for Batten Disease.

A GoFundMe account has also been created and can be found under Taras Stem Cell Transplant by Megan Orris.

Orris has also enlisted the help of two-time world national power lifting champion Chris Colondrillo of the Carlisle area.

When I read about Tara I wanted to do something to help, he said. What better way to do it then to steer my power lifting towards a positive goal? Any money I win, or collect, will go towards her medical bills. I have sponsorships who will donate, along with local businesses who will help get the word out. My motivation is to create awareness of the disease. The more we know, the better off we are.

Garman said she is greatly appreciative of the outpouring of support and is looking forward to a time when life returns to some semblance of normalcy.

Tara has done remarkably well throughout the transplant, considering the potential for complications, she said. We are so thankful for that. Shes so tough, its incredible. All the children here are so amazing and strong. They put whining over a common cold to shame.

On Monday, Tara was transferred to the nearby Ronald McDonald House so that she can visit the hospital for outpatient treatment two-four hours a day. In May, she hopes to be released.

Every day were here brings us another day closer to home, and well look back and it will all be a memory, Garman said.
UW Staff Members Honored for Communications Excellence

UWyo Magazine was judged the top publication at last weekends Wyoming Press Association's annual associates' group communications contest. Judges said of UWs flagship publication: 80 pages of quality stories, ads, photos and layout. Well written statement to describe publication. Am sure UW grads look forward to getting this in their mailboxes. (UW Photo)

University of Wyoming communications and marketing specialists received eight awards during the Jan. 21-23 Wyoming Press Association's (WPA) annual associates' group communications contest.

Winners were announced at the WPA's annual winter meeting in Casper. The convention attracts Wyoming's newspaper professionals and the WPA's associate members for two days of workshops, seminars and speakers.

Approximately 200 WPA and associate members attended the convention, which culminated with the awards banquet where the top newspapers in three divisions (daily, Casper Star-Tribune; large weekly, Powell Tribune; and small weekly, Lovell Chronicle) were named. Individual award winners also were announced in several categories.

UW staff members won three first-place awards in the associates' contest, one second place, one third place and three honorable mentions. This years contest drew a high number of entries from communications specialists from around the state.

Associate members, including those from UW, attended three workshops last Friday, which included presenters from the UW College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and UW Institutional Communications.

UW Extension Communications and Technology Manager Tana Stith and Tanya Engle, graphic artist, presented an InDesign workshop, and Extension videographer David Keto led a video-making workshop for associate members. UW Institutional Communications Specialist Milton Ontiveroz presented a workshop on how media relations personnel can put together a plan for media visits.

Listed are UW communications specialists with their individual awards, contest categories in which they won and titles of their entries:

-- Jim Kearns, Institutional Communications specialist, honorable mention news release, Evanston Train Wreck Inspired Renowned Surgeon Brent Eastman; and honorable mention news feature, UW Election Survey Results.

-- Micaela Myers, Institutional Marketing editor, first place publications, UWyo Magazine; first place magazine writing, Groundbreaking Research.

-- Milton Ontiveroz, Institutional Communications specialist, second place news feature, Casper Student Wins $30K Entrepreneur Competition; and third place three features on one topic, Wyoming Teachers Take Part in STEM Guitar-Building Workshop.

-- Ron Podell, Institutional Communications specialist, first place news release, UWs Prather Receives NSF CAREER Award.

-- Tana Stith and Steve Miller, UW Extension, honorable mention publications, Barnyards and Backyards.
Welcome Back Bingo Night for UW Students Jan. 29

Friday Night Fever will host a free welcome back bingo night for all UW students Friday, Jan. 29, at 9 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. (Friday Night Fever Photo)

A welcome back bingo night to kick off the spring semester for University of Wyoming students will be held Friday, Jan. 29, at 9 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. Friday Night Fever hosts the free event, and prizes will be awarded throughout the evening.

Students have the opportunity to win a Samsung 32-inch smart television; a bicycle, courtesy of All Terrain Sports; an Xbox One Play Station 4; an iPad; and a Keurig coffeemaker. Prizes also include a variety of movies, a UW prize pack and a Night in Laramie fun package.

Friday Night Fever is looking for UW student volunteers. If interested, contact fnf@uwyo.edu. Friday Night Fever meetings are Mondays at 4 p.m. in the Campus Activities Center, located in Room 012 of the Wyoming Union.

For more information about Friday Night Fever, visit www.uwyo.edu/fnf, like the Wyoming Union on Facebook, or follow the Campus Activities Center on Twitter and Instagram @UWYOCAC.

To receive information about future events, text CAC to 71441.

Individuals needing assistance to attend events should contact the Campus Activities Center at (307) 766-6340.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker has a new book out: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Its mostly about those old devils the Koch brothers.

Charles and David Koch are billionaires. They own a very big company. They also are very prominent philanthropists, giving hundreds of millions to cancer research, concert halls and other worthy causes. But what makes them hated and feared by progressives such as Mayer is their political work. They help fund some organizations and foundations, some purely educational, some partisan.

To listen to the left, they are the closest thing we have to real-world James Bond villains. So what is their agenda? Is it to retreat to their orbiting harems, populated with fertile females, as they wipe out humanity below so that they can return to repopulate the planet? Or is to dupe the Russians and Americans into a nuclear squabble so that the Kochs can rule the ashes?

Well, heres Mayers explanation of their dark and sinister ambitions.

What people need to understand is the Kochs have been playing a very long game, she told NPRs Steve Inskeep. And its not just about elections. It started four decades ago with a plan to change how America thinks and votes. So while some elections they win and some elections they lose, what theyre aiming at is changing the conversation in the country.

Dear God, its worse than I thought! They want to change the conversation! They want to persuade Americans to vote differently! The horror, the horror.

You might be forgiven for thinking that this is pretty much exactly what democracy is about. But no. For you see, only Hollywood, college professors and administrators, the ACLU, People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, Emilys List, the Ford Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Steven Spielberg and, of course, publications such as The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation and Mayers own New Yorker are allowed to try to change conversations and argue for people to vote differently.

Ah, but those voices are open and honest  and progressive!  about it, while the Kochs are secretive, sinister denizens of the stygian underworld of dark money and the radical right.

Except for the fact that the Kochs have been out in the open for nearly a half-century. David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980, which you might argue is a brilliant way to hide in plain sight, given how little attention the Libertarian Party gets.

Which brings me to that term the radical right. When racist idiots do idiotically racist things, were told thats the radical right in action. When Christian conservatives say Christian things, were told thats the radical right in action. When Donald Trump says he wants to ban Muslims from entering the country or build a giant wall, that earns him the radical right label. When Ted Cruz says he wants to carpet-bomb the Islamic State, he ... well, you get the point.

I have myriad problems with those usages of radical right, but lets just stipulate for the sake of argument that this is the correct term in such circumstances. How, then, are the Kochs members of the radical right? They are pro-gay marriage. They favor liberal immigration policies. They are passionate non-interventionists when it comes to foreign policy. They are against the drug war and are spending a bundle on dismantling so-called mass incarceration policies. Theyve never seized a national park at gunpoint.

They are members of the radical right for the simple reason that they dont like big government and spend money to make that case. Full disclosure: Ive given paid speeches to some Koch-backed groups, despite the fact that I have my disagreements with the Kochs. They havent changed my mind, and I havent changed theirs. But the conversation continues.

And thats their great sin. Liberals are constantly talking about how we need an honest conversation about race or guns or this or that. But what they invariably mean is, they want everyone who disagrees to shut up. (Thats why they hate Fox News, too.)

The best working definition of right wing today has almost nothing to do with the ideological content of what right-wingers say or do. A right-winger is someone who disagrees with the liberal narrative, has the temerity to say so and dares to actually try to change the conversation.

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. You can email him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com.
S3 Ventures announced on Thursday to close the Series B funding for Datical, an Austin-based data management company. The $8 million funding will be used for expanding Datical's platform and extending sales in the global market.

Datical is a leader in solution for database change automation. It provides a commercial service for an open source Liquibase, a set of libraries for tracking, managing and applying changes in database schema. Automation for database changes is an essential needs in agile software development methodology.

Datical expand the open-souce Liquibase into its own Datical DB, a database with Liquibase core system. The company adds its automation system to simplify the deployment by bridging the gap between development and operations or devops. With its schema, Datical DB can provide a rapid deployment required for enterprise system to implement Continuous Delivery application development.

Derek Hutson, Datical CEO told The PE Hub Network regarding its product, "Whether our customers are using cloud or on-premise databases, we enable them to increase the speed, accuracy and security of database change."

He also explained about partnership with S3 Ventures, "As the market turns to Datical to solve this problem, partnering with S3 enables even greater investment in our technology and provides our current and future customers with ever-increasing value."

Last Thursday, the company announced it has received $8 million in Series B funding. The fund was led by S3 Ventures with participation from existing investors Mercury Fund and Austin Ventures. The additional fund accumulate a total $14.91 million Datical has raised since 2011 in six funding rounds.

Previously in late 2014, as Austin Business Jornal reported, Datical reported completing a $4.4 million financing involving 18 investors.

Datical will use the recent funding to expand its already widely-used database automation system. Currently, Datical DB and its solutions has been delivered to the list of big enterprises. Big companies such as Bank of America, eBay, Fidelity, GE Transportation and McKesson have been listed as Datical's client.

Its new approach to database management has been recognized by enterprises to suit their needs of constant changes that challenges the traditional database management system. Julie Craig, research director at Enterprise Management Associates explained the changes in enterprise database system to Business Wire, "The role of the DBA has always been as the protector of the database. However, accelerated speed and constant change are the new reality, as organizations adopt DevOps and continuous delivery practices to remain competitive."

Craig then praised Datical solution, "Datical rounds out the continuous delivery automation story with an integrated approach to the packaging, validation and deployment of database changes."

Its top-of-the-line database solution and list of prominent enterprise customers making Datical a trusted name in current data management platform. The latest $8 million Series B funding will be used to expand its platform and extend its global sales.
Tor is the acronym of The Onion Router, a computer network created by United States Naval Research Laboratory in 1995 to protect online communications of U.S. intelligence. The project is now trying to reduce dependency on U.S. government by launching crowdfunding campaign. The campaign has successfully raised $200,000.

The name Onion routing is a technology which encapsulated message in multiple layers of encryption analogous to layers of onion. The encrypted data is transmitted to a series of nodes called onion routers which peeling away the layers, revealing the next data destination. When final layer is peeled, the message has reached its destination.

Onion routing made the sender remains anonymous because each nodes only know the preceding and following nodes. This principle was developed by mathematician Paul Syverson and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag in the U.S. Naval Research Lab. Soon after, Office of Naval research and DARPA took over the project, funded and developed the onion routing for military purpose in 1997.

Based on his onion routing principle, Paul Syverson, Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson created Tor project in September 2002. Two years later, U.S. Navy release the source code of onion routing as an open source and handed over the project to Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit foundation.

Tor now is a volunteer-based project to provide anonymity in the Internet and prevent network surveillance or traffic analysis for its users. The project relied heavily on U.S. government funding. According to its last IRS form 990, a financial document all non-profit organizations must submit to IRS, grant from federal government accounted 75% of its $2.5 million revenue in 2014.

United States States Department is listed as one of the federal government institutions that provided grant to Tor project in 2014. Shari Steele, executive director of Tor project told Ars Technica, "I can't deny that there are lots of people within the Tor community and lots of people who either are users of Tor or would be users of Tor who are concerned about the fact that so much of the moneyor any of the moneyis coming from US government sources."

In order to reduce its dependency on U.S. government funding, Tor project diversified its source fund by launching its crowdfunding. According to Tech Crunch, Tor Project began its first crowdfunding campaign back in November.

At first, according to its official blog as quoted by PC Magazine, Tor project is not sure abot the outcome of the crowdfunding, but it has to be done to diversify its source of fund.

On Friday, January 22, Tor Project announced the end of its crowdfunding campaign. The crowdfunding generates $205,874 fund from 5,265 donors over the six week period since November.
Queen's University's own venture capital club is hosting a student's startup competition. The Canadian university is seeking the best Canadian student startup of the year through the event, where the winner would get prizes from the sponsors, as well as an interview with FounderFuel, an accelerator for startups.



Queen's Venture Capital Club's website listed that the competition will be carried out in two rounds. To join in the first round, applicants is asked to simply complete the application form provided in the website, which would include personal information of startup founders, as well as the startup itself. The deadline to this first round is February 19th. All applications will be evaluated with help from Real Ventures, one of Canada's largest seed venture fund.



The second round will take place in Kingston, Ontario. Only five teams will be qualified to participate in the second round, where the startups can meet sponsors, judges, and top-tier delegates. In this round, student participants will be required to present a 15 minutes pitch. The judges will then ask questions in the next 5 minutes after the pitch. After that, the winner will be decided.



According to BetaKit, all students in Canada are welcome to join this competition. The judges will consist of venture capitalists and accelerators. Judges will evaluate the applications and the pitches based on the viability of the business plans. The event will also be attended by top Canadian venture capitals, such as KJ Singh, as well as representations from iGan Partners and BDC Capital.



President and founder of the Queen's Venture Capital Club, Mark Skinner, stated, "We've noticed that the student startup ecosystem is decentralized, with competitions not bringing fruition to many successes." He also noted that it's not easy for students to pursue entrepreneurship, especially not without a strong support system. "It's hard to start a company when you have tons of student debt or don't know where to go for support. That's why we started this club to begin this new support system and help students know the professionals they can reach out to in their community," Skinner added.



According to The Globe and Mail, Canada has a great foundation of entrepreneurialism. In fact, Canadians create new firms at a higher per capita rate than Americans. The source also recommended that Canada prioritizes its innovation sector and improve this as a key economic driver.



The Queen's University Venture Capital Club makes its mission to find the best Canadian student startups. The attending venture capitals feel that this competition would help student getting to know the resources available to help the entrepreneurship. Applications can be filled on the club's website.
Abingworth, the life-sciences international investment firm, announced last Thursday that they have raised a new $105 million Abingworth Clinical Co-Development Fund (ACCF) - the result of an investment made by the European Investment Fund and others. The fund is designed to support late-stage clinical therapies through co-development companies.

The 11th life sciences fund had an initial target of $100 million but ran an oversubscription. The ACCF will now back co-development companies to finance the Phase III clinical trials and own all regulatory risks and losses. However, they will receive a pre-negotiated return once the drug gets the green light from the government.

Abingworth has been an investor to two such portfolio companies - San Francisco-based SFJ Pharmaceuticals and the London-based Avillion. Till date, Abingworth had not raised a new fund but had been investing out of current stashes, while reserving 25-30% for future endeavors.

According to Fierce Biotech, Tim Haines, managing partner of Abingworth's London headquarters, said, "This is the first dedicated co-development fund. It's the kind of fund that attracts a different kind of limited partner into the fold; someone who may be drawn to the straightforward prospect of gambling on a specific set of late-stage studies, where Phase II or even related Phase III data can be on hand to assess the risk involved."

However, Haines is no stranger to the fact that a single Phase III trial run can cost almost $150-200 million and easily outrun the much-talked-about $105 newly set-up fund.

Through SFJ, Abingworth has made valuable contributions in helping Eisai Co. Ltd.'s late-stage trials for a thyroid cancer treatment called lenvatinib. The resultant end-product LENVIMATM was approved in the US, Europe, and Japan and meant a "high-quality exit" for Abingworth, as per PR Newswire.

"Abingworth has pioneered the clinical co-development approach," said Haines in a Thursday statement, as stated in Law360. "In addition to the attraction of novel financing mechanisms, pharma and biotech companies appreciate the fast execution and high-quality clinical data that co-development companies provide."

With over $1 billion, Abingworth has already made investments in 138 life sciences firms, which led to 60 initial public offerings and 40 mergers and acquisitions.

A US Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed that ACCF was eventually set up in 2015 under the management of the London Abingworth headquarters. This venture capital fund, as described in the regulatory filing, made investments in almost 32 US states. Currently its biggest investor, EIF said it is "is "keen to support innovative investment models."

Piyush Unalkat, an investor officer in this EU-backed set-up, spoke about how the fund is aiding the small and medium-sized entities. "This fund addresses an acute need for alternative sources of financing for the late-stage development of therapeutics and contributes towards providing a vital continuum of funding in the life sciences venture capital investment chain."

ACCF is now ready to make its first investment in SFJ Pharmaceuticals IX, an SFJ entity. No further details were provided for this move to back the San Francisco-based company in the late-stage clinical co-development business.
Doctors at Nicklaus Children's hospital in Miami have used a toy like 'Google Cardboard', worth less than $20 in online stores, to save a baby's life. Earlier, the doctors have given up all hopes for her survival and asked parents Chad and Cassidy couple, for taking the baby home to die.

The child has been reported to born with only half a heart and one lung in August. However, Dr Redmond Burke, chief of cardiovascular surgery at the Miami hospital has decided to provide Teegan, a four month old baby, a shot through saving life, according to a report published in Mirror.

Four weeks after the surgery, baby Teegan has been removed from ventilation. She is now breathing her own and doctors expect her to go home within the next two weeks making a full recovery, reports CNN.

Google Cardboard looks alike a set of big square goggles. Sticking into an iPhone and with the appropriate app, three dimensional virtual reality (VR) images may be seen. Doctors at the Miami Children's' hospital have used the device to map out the surgery using the 3D image rendered by Google's recently invented Cardboard.
It was confirmed that four of Twitter's executive is leaving the company as a part of a major long-planned company restructuring. The restructuring was carried out partly to reassure investors and the general public that the company has improved since Jack Dorsey took the CEO position in October 2015.



The four executives are head of media Katie Stanton, head of product Kevin Weil, head of engineering Alex Roetter, and head of Vine Jason Toff. The four executives are believed to be allies of former CEO Disk Costolo who stepped down last year. The position was later taken by Jack Dorsey.



The New York Times reported that the layoffs were just a prelude to a bigger plan. In the next few weeks, the social networking company is expected to undergo a major overhaul of its top ranks. Ever since Jack Dorsey returned as CEO for Twitter, the company has layoff as many as 336 employees, which is up to 8 percent of the workforce.



Besides the executives that were asked to step down, there are also some other executives departing under pressure who decided to leave on their own. According to Mashable, in place of the executives that was asked to step down, it's rumored that Twitter will add a high profile media personality to its board. The name is yet to be confirmed.



The change is seen as important to Twitter because the social media has reportedly failed to attract new users. That has led the company's stock to drop this year, reaching new lows with every period. The company's shares have plunged up to 55 percent in the last year, and the trading is now below its IPO price.



Jack Dorsey as the new appointed CEO then determines to solve the company's issues and change the condition for the better. Dorsey has yet to reveal the details of the plan regarding the change he wishes to apply in the company. But he did say last year that he seeks for the company to have a greater clarity of its purpose and its objectives.



According to Reuters, Dorsey has played an increasingly large role in product department, especially since the company shuffled through three product heads since 2014. Dorsey is also the CEO of a financial services technology company Square and is reported to have lost its billionaire status partly because the issues Twitter are suffering.



The current move to lay off four of its executives is considered the biggest leadership changes since Dorsey returned as chief executive. However, we should anticipate more changes and restructuring in the future because it's just a beginning to a bigger plan of restructuring to save the company and improve its conditions.
Google, the global search engine provider, has agreed a deal with the Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (UK) (HMRC), Britain's revenue service, to pay 130 million in back taxes. The tech giant has also pledged for bearing greater tax burden in future. The deal paves the way to pay more taxes in many countries including the US accusing it with other multinationals for aggressive tax avoidance.

Past underpayment of tax in the UK, enduring over a decade has been covered with the agreement. The deal appears after a multiyear audit by HMRC aimed to unearth Google's tax dodging through allocating profit to Ireland, its European Operations Headquarter, reports CNBC.

Google has paid only 20.5 million in tax during 2013 to UK, its largest market outside the US, based on attributed profits despite posting sales revenue of $ 5.6 billion. The tax structure has apparently led former chair of the UK parliamentary public accounts, Margaret Hodge to accuse it for 'immortal' activities.
United Nations said in its World Economic Situation and Prospects (UN-ESCAP) 2016 report that India will be the fastest-growing big economy in the world in 2016. The report estimated the growth to be at 7.3 percent in 2016, and to be improving even further to 7.5 percent in 2017.



As for last year, India already managed to maintain a 7.5 percent GDP growth in the year's first quarter, compared to China's 7 percent. India's economy also accounts for over 70 percent of South Asia's GDP last year.



Not only India, South Asia is also expected to be the world's fastest growing region in 2016 and 2017 despite challenging global conditions. The report says that the majority of South Asia countries will experience accelerated growth over the next two years. The main driver of the growth would be strong private consumption, offsetting relatively tight fiscal policies and slow-moving exports, according to Economic Times.



Economist and Head of UN-ESCAP South and South-West Asia, Nagesh Kumar, stated that fiscal policy can help speed up investment in education and infrastructure. The investments will not only boost economic growth rate but will also accommodate growth for the future.



Kumar also noted the importance of spending in social sectors to help support economic growth. "Spending on infrastructure, health and education are very low compared to other nations such as China in the region. So there is room to expand. And for that, you need fiscal space and you need to look at how to increase revenues. So this is the time for India to recheck fiscal efforts and raise revenues and do more spending on some of the social sectors," he said.



According to Times of India, the sharp decline in the prices of oil, metals and food contributes to the improvement of the macroeconomic environment in India. Consumers, as well as investors, also take confidence in the country's economic growth despite the fact that the government faces difficulties and obstacles in implementing its reform agenda and some economic indicators.



India Today summed up India's current economic growth situation. It's reported that India's annual per capita income has increased from $900 in 2000 to $2,800 in 2015. According to total individual wealth, India is the 10th richest country in the world, with the capital Delhi hosting more than 1,350 multi-millionaires in 2015, compared to 430 multi-millionaires in 2004. The growth is not seen only in the capital because apparently seven out of 20 super-rich cities in Asia Pacific are in India.



The report has infused more optimism to India's people, government, also investors and consumers. The report also said that the economic growth could be sustained for the years to come, establishing India as the fastest growing economy in 2016.
Mosquito-borne Zika virus creates panic over birth defects in Latin America

Published: January 23, 2016

Mosquito-borne Zika virus has created a panic over thousands birth defects in the Latin America countries.

New case of child born with the virus has been reported in these countries. However, Brazil is experiencing the largest known outbreak of Zika with most cases in the north-east region.

In this region, babies have been born a with abnormal condition called microcephaly i.e. with abnormally smaller heads which can cause brain damage.

To avoid the spread of Zika virus some Latin American countries viz. Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica have warned women to avoid getting pregnant.

The virus also has been reported in the United States (US) after three cases were detected in Florida in people who had recently travelled to Latin America.

About Zika virus

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes .

. Virus family: Flaviviridae.

Flaviviridae. Genus: Flavivirus.

Flavivirus. The virus was first identified in 1947 in Uganda and its name has been derived from Zika Forest.

Transmission: Zika virus is not contagious but it is mainly transmitted by daytime-active Aedes aegypti mosquitoes after it bites someone infected with the virus and transmit it by biting another human.

Zika virus is not contagious but it is mainly transmitted by daytime-active Aedes aegypti mosquitoes after it bites someone infected with the virus and transmit it by biting another human. Most common symptoms: Headache, muscle and joint pain, mild fever, rash, pinkeye and inflammation of the underside of the eyelid.

Headache, muscle and joint pain, mild fever, rash, pinkeye and inflammation of the underside of the eyelid. Treatment and Prevention: There is no specific treatment or vaccine currently available. The best form of prevention is protection against mosquito bites and clearing stagnant water where mosquitoes breed.

Special Note: Aedes aegypti mosquitoes also transmit 3 other vector-borne diseases Chikungunya, dengue and yellow fever.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2016

Topics: Brazil  Current Affairs 2016  Diseases  Latin America  Public health  Zika virus

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Amazon India, online market, announced a six-fold leap in sales to Rs1, 022 crores for the year ending March 31, 2015. The online retailer's net loss climbed to Rs1, 723.6 crores during the year 2015. This financial result highlights the company's quick expansion and its high spending on advertising, logistics and discounts.

Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd, the Indian division, had announced sales of Rs168.9 crore and a net loss of Rs321.3 crore for the year 2014, Livemint said. Amazon India breeds revenues in three different ways, offering marketing services to various companies controlled by Amazon; through wholesale of Kindle e-book readers and by gathering commissions from third-party traders.

Amazon India along with its rival firms like Snapdeal and Flipkart Ltd is involved in a posh battle for the nation's e-commerce sales and are anticipated to cross over $50 billion by 2020, Livemint said quoting a report by the financial service company UBS.

The e-commerce companies are providing high discounts throughout the year, hiring staffs to gain customers and setting huge warehouses to win the battle for high market share. Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd and Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd reported a combined net loss of around Rs2,000 crore for the year 2015, which is an increase from the net loss of Rs715 crore last year. Sales at these two entities powered by Flipkart amounted to Rs10, 390 crores, Livemint said citing documents filed with the Registrar of Companies.

Snapdeal, another peer in the industry, noted a loss of Rs1.328.01 crore for 2015, compared with a loss of Rs264.6 crore last year.

The Economic Times said that Amazon India joined fresh products in the range of 40,000 per day previous year. Moreover, 90 percent of Amazon India's traders utilize its warehousing and logistics service. Amazon India's portal was the frequently visited website in the nation and had the speedy growing shopping app among other e-commerce firms in 2015, reports quoted a spokesperson of Amazon India.

In October, senior VP for international business, Diego Piacentini told The Economic Times that the company anticipates India to overwhelm the UK, Germany, and Japan to become the largest foreign market.

The Techportal said that Flipkart recently appointed Binny Bansal as the Chief Executive Officer and Sachin Bansal as the Executive Chairman. In addition, Snapdeal stepped into the logistics business by purchasing stakes in GoJavas to fasten order deliveries.

The reports also said that Amazon has injected $250 million into its Indian division in its effort to fight rival firms Snapdeal and Flipkart for the local market. Amazon has applied various strategies, since its period of inception in India, like low price, speedy delivery, and huge product selection to win the popularity among sellers.
The largest newspaper in New England, The Boston Globe has given its endorsement to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential nomination.

The newspaper posted a headline "Hillary Clinton deserves Democratic nomination" on Sunday night through its website. It is said that Mrs. Clinton can continue what Obama has successfully achieved, and she can improve the fields he has failed, such as the immigration reform and gun control.

The New York Times has mentioned that the editorial is "often glowing, but at times combative." It states as many criticisms to Mrs. Clinton's chief rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as the praises addressed to her.

Emphasizing on the gun control issue, Mrs. Clinton is praised for her aggressive record toward the issue, while severely notes Mr. Sanders as "not a convincing champion of gun control" in regards to his record for voting against the Brady background check bill. Furthermore, Mr. Sanders is also criticized for his plan to conduct a single-payer health care system.

The endorsement arrived only one day after another endorsement Mrs. Clinton obtained from The Des Moines Register, the largest newspaper in Iowa.

The Boston Globe has stated, "The best reason to support Hillary Clinton isn't the weaknesses of her opponents; it's her demonstrated strengths and experience."

The newspaper has cited the transformations, which Barack Obama has brought, before proceeding to praise Mrs. Clinton. It has mentioned, "The economy has come out of free fall, the military has left the quagmire of the Iraq war, barriers to equality have toppled, and universal access to health care has become a reality."

Mrs. Clinton makes a promise that she will not give any chances for murderers like Dylann Roof to get guns. She will give more restraints on federally funded research into gun violence. She is said to be more convincing on what become most Americans' concern, which is related to a life and death issue.

Another emphasis, which Mr. Obama is regarded not to give much attention, is in the Immigration reform. Illegal immigrants work without sufficient legalization and citizenship. It is intolerable that 11 million Americans "are working in the shadows."

The circulation of the Boston Globe is around the many voters in New Hampshire, according to the International Business Times. The endorsement timing is an essential asset as it is two weeks before the first in the nation primary.

Besides the Boston Globe and The Des Moines Register, Mrs. Clinton has earlier gained another crucial endorsement from the New Hampshire Concord Monitor, mentioning her foreign policy hack among the other experience.

This has pushed more efforts from Mr. Sanders' side, who has to prove his competence in handling terrorism and national security to his supporters.
Aramco, the Saudi Arabian state owned oil company, may offer a potential share to international investors. The kingdom also confirms that its oil reserves are not for selling.

The World's ever known largest oil business is still considering all options in any future public offering including the sale of shares internationally. The company isn't considering for selling its oil reserves.

The economic value of Saudi Aramco will be offered in the IPO and not its oil reserve. The oil reserve belongs to the state and hence only the ability of the company to produce economic resources from those reserves, reports Bloomberg quoting Khalid Al- Falih, Chairman of Aramco while addressing an interview in Davos, Switzerland aired on Al Arabiya television.

Aramco pumps all of Saudi crude oil production which is 10.25 MMbpd (Million Barrels of oil per day). Saudi Aramco's share will be offered to the local and international investors in two ways. One route is full initial public offering while another is to list some of its subsidiaries, reports World Oil citing an Aramco statement as the source.
Takata Corp, the air-bag provider, is reportedly planning to meet its major clients in order to discuss its business forecasts. The main purpose of the meeting is to dismiss scandals as well as to measure the attitude of automakers to the circumstance that the company would ask for financial backup, according to reports.

Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. received an invitation from. Takata for a meeting on Friday, Bloomberg said citing a person with knowledge of the matter. The US transport authorities announced a fresh recall of about 5 million vehicles subsequent to the recent death caused by the Japanese firm's airbag inflators that could burst with over force and spring metal cartridge inside the vehicles.

Shares of the Japanese firm leapt to its lowest on Monday trading, following a statement by the US regulator that the recent death would count another 5 million airbag inflators to the 23 million already expelled, Bloomberg noted. The recent recalls comprise vehicles by Honda, Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, Saab AB, Daimler AG, BMW AG and Mazda Motor Corp.

In December, a driver of the 2006 model Ford Ranger died when the truck veered off a South Carolina road and clashed with a hindrance. The Japanese firm's airbag exploded and contributed to the death, Gordon Trowbridge, a spokesperson of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told Bloomberg.

Masahiko Hirokaw, a spokesman of Daicel, said that Takata is in discourse with its competitor Daicel Corp in order to assure a balanced supply of airbag inflators and that no compromise has been made regarding whether the airbag manufacturers would invest in a joint venture.

The WCVB said that shares of the Japanese auto components maker plunged nearly 10% on Monday in Tokyo after the announcement of additional airbags recall. Last year, the Japanese auto parts maker, was ordered to pay millions in regulatory fines that pushed the company into deep sorrow.

The company reported a net loss of 5.5 billion yen for the first six-month of 2016 and also broadened its annual forecast to a loss of 30 billion yen.

Analysts have expected that the airbag maker could face billions as charges related to airbags recall, The Wall Street Journal said. Three different probes are seeking into the cause of the defective airbags. The first one is headed by a research institute in Germany and Takata, the second by Honda and the third by a group of automakers who recalled their vehicles over the defective Takata's airbags.

Anthony Foxx, Transportation Secretary, said that the Japanese firm constructed and marketed defective airbags and failed to give full details to customers. However, the company said it is working together with the officials to fasten actions to promote vehicle safety. "Our heartfelt condolences go out to the driver's family," the company said in a statement.
SHARE Luskin is the interim chancellor of the Ventura County Community College District.

By Jean Moore of the Ventura County Star

The district that oversees Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura colleges could have an interim chancellor for another 18 months  until June 30, 2017.

The Ventura County Community College District board is considering extending Bernie Luskin's contract and boosting his annual pay to $250,146. The 10 percent raise, calculated by the district's lawyer, is based on 5 percent increases that other administrators received recently, along with pay that the former chancellor declined, officials said.

Under the updated contract, Luskin would get another raise in July, bringing his salary to the average paid to the states' chancellors of multi-college districts. That average was $272,302 in 2014, according to the Association of California Community College Administrators.

Trustees want to extend Luskin's contract for 18 months to provide stability in the district, which has had significant turnover in the past two years, said board President Larry Kennedy. The district also is up for reaccreditation in 2017.

"We feel that stability for another year is better than trying to bring in someone by July of 2017," Kennedy said. "We're two-thirds of the way through accreditation. ... Another year isn't unreasonable to look for the best quality chancellor we can find."

The board's original agenda did not include the contract, which was added Friday. The board decided to postpone the vote because some issues, including salary, arose, said Trustee Dianne McKay.

"I don't think there was agreement on the board with the salary discussion," McKay said. "Also, it didn't go through all the committees."

Alex Kolesnik, president of the Academic Senate at Ventura College, also had concerns about the process the district went through in proposing to extend Luskin's contract.

"We did not know this was forthcoming," Kolesnik said. "It seems like there should have been a more transparent discussion of that."

Luskin has been serving as interim chancellor since July, after the board did not renew former Chancellor Jamillah Moore's contract. At the time, Luskin was interim president at Moorpark College.

The board has not yet hired a search firm to recruit a permanent chancellor, although it has requested applications. That delay also concerns faculty, particularly because the board named Luskin interim chancellor with no committee input, Kolesnik said.

"I think everybody's concerned about why it's taking so long," he said. "To go two years with somebody that nobody had any voice in naming  there's concern there."

The board plans to start interviewing search firms soon, after narrowing down the initial group of applicants, Kennedy said.

This week, the board also agreed to buy property in Camarillo, where it will relocate district headquarters. The district will pay $5.1 million for the property, along with $2.4 million for closing costs and improvements. The office building, which is nearly 40,000 square feet, is at 730 Paseo Camarillo. The site is 3.5 acres.

The district will pay for the building primarily with reserves, which it plans to replenish by selling property it owns at the Camarillo Airport, at Las Posas and Pleasant Valley roads.

"It made economic sense to be centralized," Kennedy said. "Why pay rent when we can own? We're not going to regret being situated in the middle of the county."

The district now leases an office building from the Ventura Unified School District, paying $33,645 in rent each month. That lease runs through Jan. 31, 2017. The district could extend that lease month by month if it needs more time to move. Kennedy expects the district would move in the next two years, giving itself time to renovate its new building.

The board's next regular meeting is scheduled for Feb. 16, with the open session starting at 7 p.m. The board will meet at district headquarters, 225 W. Stanley Ave., Suite 150, Ventura.
FILE PHOTO A mango smoothie

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By Staff Reports

Several Santa Paula schools will use a $22,282 grant to offer students smoothies for breakfast.

The first campuses to offer the smoothies will be Santa Paula High School and Isbell Middle School. Smoothies will later be served at Renaissance High School.

The Santa Paula Unified School District received the one-year grant from the California Department of Education. The district will use the money to buy blenders and portable refrigerators.

Before offering the smoothies, the district plans to give students samples twice a month over three months to see what they like. The district will also ask students to submit their own smoothie recipes.

Santa Paula was the only Ventura County district to receive the grant, officials said.
photos by KRISTIE AKIN/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Searching for a hidden wedding ring, brides-to-be Virginia Delgado (from left), of Oxnard, Lupita Uribe, of Bakersfield, Cheyenne Savoie, of Newbury Park, and Emily So, of Hacienda Heights, tear apart a four-tiered wedding cake during the Spanish Hills Country Club Bridal Show in Camarillo on Sunday. TOP: Delgado finds the hidden ring on a string.

SHARE Maid of honor Chantelle Savoie (left) hugs her sister and bride-to-be Cheyenne Savoie after her name was chosen. KRISTIE AKIN/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Bride-to-be Virginia Delgado, of Oxnard, models the ring she won during the cake dive at the Spanish Hills Country Club Bridal Show in Camarillo on Sunday. KRISTIE AKIN/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Bride-to-be Virginia Delgado, of Oxnard, finds the hidden ring on a string, during the cake dive at the Spanish Hills Country Club Bridal Show in Camarillo on Sunday.

By Staff Report

Four brides-to-be took a dive into a four-tiered wedding cake on Sunday in hopes of finding a diamond ring inside. Coming up with it was Virginia Delgado, of Oxnard.

The cake dive came at the end of the Spanish Hills Country Club Bridal Show, which featured 37 vendors offering information on everything from bridal fashions to honeymoon spots. Brides-to-be entered a raffle to see which four could take part in the cake dive. The other three raffle winners were Lupita Uribe, of Bakersfield, Cheyenne Savoie, of Newbury Park and Emily So, of Hacienda Heights.

The .80 carat diamond ring from Nerces Fine Jewelry was hidden in the cake baked by Frost It Cakery.
STAR FILE PHOTO Medi-Cal enrollment in the Gold Coast Health Plan has rocketed to 202,360 people.

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By Staff Reports

Employees at a Ventura County Medi-Cal plan will be asked about workplace environment, leadership and diversity in an electronic survey this week.

Gold Coast is the publicly funded system that administers Medi-Cal health insurance for more than 200,000 people in Ventura County. The plan has been criticized in the past for its work environment, including an incident involving posters in a Camarillo office that civil rights advocates characterized as racially inflammatory.

Plan leaders are implementing a new diversity program that includes a hotline, training and the hiring of a chief diversity officer.

Several plan employees have defended the workplace, praising its diversity and saying the system has been unfairly vilified.

Results of the survey are expected by the end of February.

The commission that governs the plan will meet at 3 p.m. Monday at the Ventura County Government Center's administration building, in the multipurpose room. The center is at 800 S. Victoria Ave., Ventura.

Gold Coast officials also announced Monday that Ralph Oyaga had been hired to serve as executive director for government, regulatory and external relations.

Oyaga has more than 25 years of executive planning, administration and litigation experience in health care. He has served in leadership positions with L.A. Care Health Plan, City of Hope Medical Foundation and Pacific Clinics in Arcadia.


Before facing his Lightweight opponent Makdessi on Saturday night, UFC fighter and ABBI stock contractor Donald Cowboy Cerrone stopped by the MGM Resorts Village on Wednesday to weigh in against Percolator  a bucking bull competing in the PBRs Last Cowboy Standing.

He was joined by the number two bull rider in the world Matt Triplett and rider Bonner Bolton,PBR and UFC teams, alongside Andrew Sedlock and Adam Anderson from Patti, Sgro, Lewis & Roger looked on as Cowboy went face to face with the animal athlete.


Las Vegass hottest couple, Comedy Magician Murray SawChuck and his lovely wife, FANTASY dancer Chloe Crawford, surprised 13-yr old singing sensation Jackie Evancho backstage last night at The Smith Center during her intermission.

Murray and Jackie havent seen each other since 2010 when they went head-to -ead competing for $1 Million dollars on Americas Got Talent.

Neither of them won that year but Murray will be celebrating his 1-year anniversary headlining at The Tropicana Las Vegas in the Laugh Factory Theatre on May 1, while Jackie has become an international sensation around the world since her appearance on AGT.

Jackies father invited them backstage as a surprise to Jackie, and since Murrays show is at 4pm and Chloes show at FANTASY is at 10:30pm they had enough time to buzz out the backdoor of the Tropicana and head to the Smith Center to see her show. After their visit, Chloe headed off to work at FANTASY at Luxor.

Murray said to a few people backstage, I remember clear as yesterday when the 12 acts where being lined up to perform the night it was airing live to 22 million people. This was the episode where I was vanishing the 1918 Steam Train for my father and I was thinking, whatever the producers do, dont make me close the show OR go AFTER Jackie Evancho. She was 10-years old and had a voice of an angel. Well, thank God I was the 4th act before the end of the show, and Jackie was right after me. I was like THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU as how do you follow someone as talented as that with such a GIFT!!! Not even vanishing a TRAIN can top her voice!

Visit Jackie Evanchos official web site at JackieEvancho.com
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Deputy PM, FM Pham Binh Minh

Deputy PM, FM Pham Binh Minh affirmed the point in his speech delivered at the ongoing12th National Party Congress on Saturday morning.

He said that the diplomatic achievements over the past five years affirmed the rightness of the diplomacy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development, diversification and multi-lateralization of external relations, proactive and active international integration.

Deputy PM, FM Minh also stressed that the global situation keeps changing fast, increasingly complicated and unexpectedly over the next five years. Meanwhile, Viet Nam has to fully realize commitments to the ASEAN Community , the World Trade Organization (WTO), and deploy new-generation free trade agreements.

Further international integration means the country has to take advantage of international commitments to expand market, reallocate and increase the effectiveness of resources and the competitiveness of the economy and businesses.

The country also needs to enhance the self-reliance of the economy, establish a higher status in the global and regional production and supply chain and strengthen the resilience of the economy.

To deepen international economic integration, the country needs to effectively employ rules and laws of international organizations to protect the legitimate rights of the State, businesses and Vietnamese nationals in external relations.

He took the occasion to put forward for central tasks for the coming years

Firstly, the diplomatic orientations, which will be approved at the 12th National Party Congress, will be synchronously deployed through enhancing the leadership of the Party on the international integration process and improving the effectiveness of the coordination among stakeholders, including localities.

Secondly, it is necessary to accelerate and deepen the partnership relations, especially strategic partnership, comprehensive partnership, ensure a peaceful and stable environment, and beef up relations in politics, economy, trade, investment, science and technology to facilitate national development and international integration process.

Thirdly, Viet Nam needs to strengthen the dissemination of signed international commitments so that all stakeholders will be deeply aware of challenges and opportunities of the international integration process in a bid to encourage their active engagement.

Fourthly, he also underlined the importance of improving the capacity of institutions and human resources for the international integration process, striving to raise the countrys degree of international integration to the high level of ASEAN countries.
The run attracted around 7,000 people. After two successful years, the contests goodwill and reputation has been resonating in the community, contributing to the dynamic portrait of the Vietnamese.

The Taiwan Excellence campaign, introducing the best and finest products of Taiwan, was established by the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) of Taiwan. This campaign has been implemented annually by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) since 1990. 2016 marks the 7th consecutive year of Taiwan Excellence in Vietnam.

According to Tang Ming Hui, director of the Taiwan Trade Center, Representative Office in Ho Chi Minh City, by September 2015, Taiwan had invested in 2,476 projects in Vietnam with the total capital of $29.4 billion, ranking Taiwan fourth out of 105 countries and territories which currently have investment projects in Vietnam.

This is the most convincing figure proving that Taiwanese organisations are committed to the development of Vietnam, especially the Taiwan Excellence campaign. There is a great expectation of Taiwan Excellence to continue the success of this campaign for many more years, and deliver more excellent quality made-in-Taiwan products. There is tremendous demand for Taiwanese products by Vietnamese consumers, Hui said.
Residents of a Bonne Terre apartment building were awakened by an early morning fire Sunday.

According to Bonne Terre Fire Chief Matt Barton the call came in at 7:05 a.m. for a commercial fire at 105 Division Street.

I already had my truck started and was getting ready to go to a ballgame in Hillsboro, Barton said.

The chief arrived on the scene first and went into the smoke filled building just as the first few residents were coming out. He alerted the remaining residents.

There were four occupants still in the building, Barton said.

There were no injuries and everyone made it out safely.

The couple in the apartment (where the fire started) called 911, Barton added.

I located one working fire extinguisher on my way (to the apartment where the fire began) and used it in the kitchen area of that apartment, Barton said.

Firefightrers remained on the scene for a while to ensure there were no hot spots remaining.

A portion of the building's units were uninhabited and being remodeled. The unit where the fire began was heavily damaged while the others sustained heavy smoke damage.

The Bonne Terre Fire Department was assisted by personnel from Big River, Farmington, Festus, Desloge, Desoto, Leadwood, Lake Timberline, Park Hills and Terre Du Lac.

Both Ameren U.E. and Missouri Natural Gas disconnected the utilities to the building as a temporary precaution.


New reforms will help the country grow sustainably-Photo: Le Toan

The 11th Party Central Committees political report, presented by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the opening of the congress in Hanoi last week, pointed out that during the last five years, Vietnam obtained great, historic accomplishments on the path to socialism and national protection.

Six important missions of the 12th Party Central Committee during 2016-2020: -To enhance and consolidate Party building and reorganisation; to prevent and fight against the degradation of political ideology, morality, lifestyle, and signs of self-changing and self-transforming; to focus on building a contingent of capable, prestigious, and reliable officials, especially strategic officials who can perform their tasks well; -To organise a political system with lean, efficient, and effective apparatus; and bolster the fight against corruption, wastefulness, and bureaucracy; -To improve growth quality, labour productivity, and the competitiveness of the economy; to effectively implement three strategic breakthroughs; to comprehensively restructure the economy in association with growth model transformation; to accelerate national industrialisation and modernisation, especially in agriculture and rural development; to effectively restructure state-owned enterprises and state budget; to resolve bad debts and control public debts; -To resolutely and consistently struggle to firmly safeguard the national independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity; to firmly maintain a peaceful and stable environment for national development; to expand and deepen external relations; to fruitfully implement international integration in the new context, continuing to improve the countrys position and prestige in the international arena; -To mobilise and bring into play all resources and the creativity of the people; to improve the peoples material and spiritual life, effectively settling urgent issues; to strengthen social management and development, ensuring social and human security, social welfare improvement and sustainable poverty reduction; to promote the peoples right to mastery and the strength of national great solidarity; -To utilise human resources in all areas; to focus on human development in terms of morality, personality, lifestyle, intelligence, and working capacity; and to develop a healthy cultural environment.

However, there remain a number of complex issues along with flaws that must be dealt with to develop the nation rapidly and sustainably, Trong said. The reform will require more comprehensive and synchronous development in terms of politics, economics, culture, society, defense, security, and diplomacy.

Three main pillars of sustainable economic growth with better competitiveness, labour productivity, and environmental protection, ensuring social equality, and improved performance of the Party and the government, will be urgently pushed forward in the new period of Vietnams reform.

Looking towards 2025, Vietnams abundant, competitive-cost labour force and rich natural resources will no longer be advantages. In addition, the countrys wider global integration will result in fiercer rivalry, thus urging the need for our economy to become more competitive, said Minister of Planning and Investment Bui Quang Vinh at the congress. Unless Vietnams reform is sharpened and those pillars are cemented, the country will be left behind.

Official figures show that Vietnams GDP per capita has reached $2,052, a fifth of the global average and a third of Thailands. Calculations reveal that only if Vienams GDP growth reached 8 per cent per annum would the countrys GDP per capita reach $15,000-18,000 in 2035.

We will have no choice other than to vigorously improve our labour productivity to reach that goal. In addition, a new wave of private business startups should be strongly promoted with the governments incentives and venture funds playing a key role, Vinh suggested.

The 12th National Party Congress, under the theme of intensifying efforts to build a strong and pure Party, gathered 1,510 delegates who represent more than 4.5 million Party members nationwide. Promoting the strength of the populace and the socialist democracy, stepping up reforms comprehensively and synchronously, firmly safeguarding the nation and maintaining a peaceful and stable environment, as well as striving to soon turn Vietnam into a modern industrialised country are among the themes of the congress, which takes place every five years.

The 12th National Party Congress is a congress of solidarity, democracy, discipline, and renovation, reflecting the strong will and resolution of the nation as a whole to build Vietnam into a strong country with prosperous people, and a democratic, fair, and civilised society, advancing firmly to socialism, President Truong Tan Sang said.

The eight-day event will run until January 28 and is focusing on reviewing the implementation of the 11th National Party Congress resolutions and the outcomes of the 30-year reform, which was a milestone of the 6th National Party Congress in December 1986.

The delegates will also discuss and approve important documents, including the 11th Party Central Committees political report, a report reviewing the implementation of socio-economic development goals during 2011-2015 and putting forth directions and goals for 2016-2020. For the next five years, Vietnam will strive for an annual GDP growth of 6.5-7 per cent per annum and GDP per capita will reach $3,200-$3,500 by 2020.

On January 27, the new Central Party Committee will convene its first plenary meeting within the framework of the congress, during which the members will elect the Politburo, General Secretary, Secretariat, and Central Inspection Commission and its chairman.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Congress, Vu Trong Kim  an 11th Party Central Committee member and Vice President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee  said the personnel for the next tenure was thoroughly prepared during the 12th, 13th and 14th meetings of the 11th Party Central Committee.

Particularly, the 14th meeting geared up personnel for the four key leading positions. The Politburo reported that it talked out each case and reached high consensus. Some nominees withdrew proactively.

At the 14th meeting, the 11th Party Central Committee discussed three options, cast secret ballots and finally agreed to nominate the incumbent Party General Secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, to be re-elected to this position in the next tenure.



Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong at the Congress

Such preparations for key positions were thorough and democratic, he said, adding that the Party Central Committee  the supreme leading body between two congresses  fulfilled its responsibility toward the Congress.

In his closing speech at the 14th meeting, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong stressed that the meeting was very successful  a good message on personnel preparations to the entire people, Kim noted.

Secretary of the Nghe An Party Committee Ho Duc Phoc, who is also a delegate to the Congress, said the files on candidates for positions in the 12th Party Central Committee were carefully prepared through a strict process by the 11th Party Central Committee.

Delegate Trieu Tai Vinh  an 11th Party Central Committee member and Secretary of the Ha Giang Party Committee  highlighted renovations at the 12th Congress such as in personnel preparations, discussion methods and documents relating to the nominees.

Meanwhile, delegate Cao Duc Phat  member of the 11th Party Central Committee and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development  said that through a strict process, the 11th Party Central Committee selected and nominated people with sufficient qualifications and virtue to fulfill their roles in the countrys new phase of development.

The carefully prepared files on the candidates serve as a basis for the Congresss delegates to consider and select the most capable and prestigious people for the 12th Party Central Committee.


State-owned Vinalines has been asked to divest from several major ports and operating companies-Photo: Le Toan

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently issued Document No.67/TTg-DMDN, agreeing to reduce the states chartered capital holdings in Saigon port and Haiphong port from the previously rates of 50-75 per cent to 20 per cent. These majority stakes are currently held by Vinalines, the countrys state-owned shipping company.

Vinalines was also requested to divest all stakes from other seaports including Khuyen Luong, Danang, Vinalines-Dinh Vu, Cam Ranh, Nam Can, Nghe Tinh, Can Tho, and Cai Lan.

The latest decision showed Vietnams strong determination to divest state holdings from seaports in line with Document No.2342/TTg-DMDN, which was issued in late 2014. This document permitted Vinalines to lower its chartered capital ownership in Haiphong port to 65-75 per cent; in Saigon, Can Tho, Nghe Tinh, Cam Ranh, Nam Can, and Danang ports to 50-65 per cent; and in Khuyen Luong port 49 per cent. However, this divestment drive proved less effective than expected.

The new move is expected to make the industry more attractive to investors who are seeking controlling stakes in these ports.

This is a golden chance for foreign investors to buy stakes in joint venture ports from state-run port operators, while earning the right to make important decisions with regard to the ports operations, Ho Kim Lan, general secretary of the Vietnam Ports Association (VPA) told VIR.

Additionally, most national ports have large areas of land close to rivers, and of course some sea frontage, which are very valuable for developing real estate projects. These areas are being leased at cheaper prices than other ones on the market. So, this is a good chance for investors who have plans to invest in realty, he added.

The VPA, however, complained that business conditions for seaport operators remain problematic and will need a long time to change. The problems include inconsistent planning and development, unfavourable transportation between seaports and a persistent ask-give mechanism.

Vietnam needs to have a specific management mechanism for seaports, as many countries have done over past decades. While waiting for this, risks for investors remain a matter of special concern, while the international competitiveness of local ports remains limited, Lan suggested.

Vietnam is now home to 31 seaports with a total designed capacity of 470-500 million tonnes of goods per year. With the growth of goods volume hitting 9.1 per cent annually in the 2010-2014 period, and 14 per cent in 2014, the industry has attracted many domestic and foreign investors, including the US SSA Port, Singapores PSA, Denmarks APM Terminals, and Hong Kongs SSA Holdings.

Recently, Vietnam-Oman Investment JSC (VOI), belonging to Omans State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), has been seeking approval to buy part of Vinalines stake in Haiphong port, the largest seaport in the north.

T&T Group, a company operating in multiple sectors, has finished the acquisition procedures for Quang Ninh port. Meanwhile, the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank of Industry and Trade and Vietnam Prosperity Bank were also in the race to become strategic investors in Saigon port.
Workers at Simone Viet Nam TG Limited Company in Tan Huong Industrial Zone in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang make bags for export. Small- and medium-sized enterprises will enjoy many benefits from the TPP and Viet Nam-EU Free Trade Agreement. - VNA/VNS Photo Vu Sinh

Lan told a conference on TPP and EVFTA held in Ha Noi yesterday that SMEs would be facilitated in trade liberalisation and connection in the region while expanding their global value chain as well as maximising competitive advantages.

Tariff barriers relating to export items will be removed, resulting in lower import costs and more diversified supply. In addition, Vietnamese enterprises will have a fair playing field both inside and outside the country, which could help protect investors.

According to the Viet Nam Trade Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the TPP will have clear impacts on the economy as the country's GDP, which could increase by 11 per cent while exports could be 28 per cent higher. Export turnover of key products such as garment and textile, leather shoes and seafood could surge in the next 10 years.

After EVFTA comes into effect, 99 export tariffs from Viet Nam to the markets of 500 million people would be removed in the next 7 to 10 years. The agreement is expected to grow Viet Nam's annual export turnover by four to six per cent.

Howver, the TPP and EVFTA would also pose challenges for businesses. The tariff cuts could make imported goods flood Viet Nam with cheaper prices.

This could make local enterprises face with fierce competition. On the other hand, goods exports would have to meet strict requirements for certificate of origin (C/O), anti-dumping issues, subsidiaries and trade defence tools, the agency said.

Claudio Dordi, the technical assistance team leader of the European Trade Policy and Investment Support Project (EU-MUTRAP) pointed out that Vietnamese enterprises should focus on C/O principles for garment and textile products, thus increasing added-value. The businesses should also improve the quality and safety of their products, following international hygiene, especially those from EU.

He proposed that the Government should provide clear information to companies on deadlines and detail of the EVFTA as well as other trade pacts.

In addition, Viet Nam should have a clear strategy at the national and local levels to promote quality management and building brand names.

Big firms optimistic too

The annual report on Viet Nam's economy 2016 released by Viet Nam Report Company showed that big local companies are optimistic about the impact of the TPP.

The survey collected ideas from more than 1,000 big companies nationwide.

With the expected economic growth rate of 6.7 per cent and CPI of less than five per cent, nearly a half of surveyed firms felt optimistic about their business in the first quarter of 2016 and the next five years.
Snow began flurrying in the beloved resort town around 12:30 am on Sunday, and fell intermittently and even thickened during the previous night.

Vehicles, vegetation and roofs in the area were coated with blankets of snow.

Temperatures kept plummeting and plunged to as low as minus two degrees Celsius at certain points.

Delighted youths and tourists stayed awake all night to behold the whiteout and frolic in the snow.

A snow wave also hit Sa Pa in late December 2013, when the temperature there fell to two degrees Celsius in O Quy Ho and zero degree in the Nui Xe mountain area.

Icy mountain peak

Meanwhile, residents in Hanoi and other northern provinces have experienced freezing temperatures since Saturday morning as the northern and north-central regions were hit by the coldest spell of the winter-spring season the same day.

Temperatures dropped to minus 2.5 degrees Celsius atop Mau Son Mountain in Lang Son Province, which is typically the first locality in Vietnam to experience the weather ice phenomenon.

Many visitors from Hanoi and elsewhere scrambled on treacherous winding paths leading to the mountain peak for a taste and snapshots of the ice.

The influxes left all bungalows and hotels atop Mau Son which are normally deserted operating to their full capacity on Saturday.

Chung Hung, a local trekker, revealed that he was heading to O Quy Ho, one of the four most spectacular passes in the countrys northwest and northeast region, for the ice.



Sunday (January 24) is forecast to be the coldest day in the northern region due to the ongoing cold front.

Weather forecasts showed that temperatures decreased to 1.6, 1.5 and 2.6 degrees Celsius in the UNESCO-recognized Dong Van Karst Plateau, Tam Dao, a scenic spot in Vinh Phuc Province, and Pha Din Pass in Dien Bien Province, respectively, as of 7:00 pm on Saturday.

Red Delta localities, including Hanoi, also had seen falling temperatures range from 7.2 to 9.8 degrees Celsius as of 7:00 pm on Saturday.

The northern region is entirely embedded in the cold front on Sunday, with freezing temperatures to drop to below zero degree Celsius and ice and frost forecast to persist, weather forecasters said.

Ly Gio Co, an official in Y Ty Commune, Bat Xat District, Lao Cai Province, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters that this cold spell is predicted to be the chilliest since last year.

Mong ethnic minority families in Sa Pa have taken measures to cushion their cattle and crops from damage possibly caused by the cold snap.

Temperatures are forecast to plummet to minus one degree Celsius in Sa Pa on Sunday night, with more ice to appear the following morning.

The ongoing cold snap has also triggered strong sea gusts, posing serious hazards to boats.

The Tonkin Gulf and sea off central and southern provinces, the entire East Vietnam Sea, including the waters around Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagoes have packed winds of levels six to eight and seen rough seas.

The cold snap, forecast to last until Wednesday (January 27), has also greatly affected localities in the central region, causing temperatures to drop to 10.4 and 12.4 degrees Celsius in Vinh City, the heart of Nghe An Province, and Ha Tinh Province, respectively.

The cold front moving from the northern region may also reduce temperatures in Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring provinces to as low as 17-18 degrees Celsius this weekend and early next week, according to Le Thi Xuan Lan, a hydrometeorologist.
Hoa Loi Residential Zone serves growing demand in Ben Cat Town in Binh Duong Province, one of the most crowded areas for workers in Viet Nam. - VNA/VNS Photo Quach Lam

Experts said it was important to improve the living environment and conveniences as urban spaces were becoming narrower.

Tran Dinh Thien, director of the Viet Nam Institute of Economics under the Viet Nam Academy of Social Sciences, said that measures should be initiated to prevent an urban boom from becoming opportunities for property market speculation.

In recent years, urbanisation has been rapid not only in major cities such as Ha Noi and HCM City, but also in other provinces and cities such as Bac Ninh, Thai Nguyen, Quang Ninh, and Dong Nai, apart from Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

Statistics showed that in 1997, only 20 per cent of the country's population lived in urban areas and real estate deals were conducted largely without bank loans. However, things have changed today when the percentage of urban residents has risen to 34 per cent of the population and bank loans have become more popular for real estate transactions.

With an anticipated population of 51 per cent in 2016 with the trend of smaller households, housing demand in urban areas would keep rising, especially the demand for social housing projects.

A senior expert of the Noruma Research Institution was quoted by the Vietnam Finance newspaper that the support policies for social housing development in Viet Nam remained ineffective as only a few people were lucky enough to be able to get access to preferential loans.

The newspaper cited statistics that 67 per cent of surveyed people aged between 25 and 40 did not own homes, and 60 per cent of them demanded one. Roughly 75 per cent said that they wanted a house but could not as they were financially incapable.

Experts said at a recent conference about housing issues in Viet Nam that the country needed long-term financial policies for social housing development as the government's VND30 trillion (US$1.34 billion) support package would end in June this year.

Viet Nam was urged to raise policies to support young people aged around 30, with medium incomes, to buy houses as those were in high demand.

Hidenori Hashimoto, a representative from the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Viet Nam, was quoted by the Voice of Viet Nam news website that Japan wanted to invest in social housing development for the youth in Viet Nam through official development assistance.

Accordingly, Japan and the banks might provide loan supports to those who were capable of paying back debts in five to 15 years.
Photo by Bob Levey

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Harden, left, is escorted by a U.S. marshal from the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse on Jan. 8 in Houston.
Shawn Eugene Barnes, 44, of Fredericktown, has been charged with the class B felony of distribution, delivery, manufacture, produce or attempt to or possession with the intent to distribute, deliver, manufacture, or produce a controlled substance.

Barnes was subsequently charged with two counts of Driving While Revoked/Suspended1st Offense, in November of 2015. These charges stem from traffic stops by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Madison County Sheriffs Department.

According to a Fredericktown Police Department report, during a traffic stop, officers detected the odor of cannabis. A subsequent vehicle search turned up baggies filled with a total of seven grams of marijuana.

All of the baggies containing the marijuana were labeled from the state of Colorado. A search warrant and subsequent search of the residence of Shawn Barnes yielded more of the drug. The total weight of all of the cannabis recovered by the Fredericktown Police Department was reported to be 29.1 grams.

Barnes was also found to be driving with a felony suspension on his drivers license. A drivers license check revealed the suspension during the traffic stop.

Barnes is scheduled to appear Jan. 21 in the Madison County Courthouse.

Brian E. Henson, 29, of Fredericktown, was charged with the class C felonies of endangering the welfare of a child, creating a substantial risk-first degree  first offense  no sexual contact; and possession of a controlled substance, except 35 grams or less of marijuana. Henson was also charged with the D felony of unlawful use of a weapon  subsection 11  possessing a weapon and a felony controlled substance.

According to Madison County Sheriffs Department reports, on or between, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, 2016, Henson unknowingly allowed his four-year-old child to leave the residence while he was asleep. Deputies entered the residence on a search warrant. The child was found at another residence not appropriately dressed for cold weather, earlier that evening. When the deputies contacted Henson, he was unaware of the childs location.

The report states the search of the residence inhabited by Henson revealed: a .357 Magnum (placed in close proximity to the marijuana); a .45 caliber black powder pistol; a .22 magnum rifle with scope; 1 knife (with drug residue on the blade); 4 plastic bags containing approximately 36.5 grams of a green leafy substance; and several pieces of drug paraphernalia. The green leafy substance yielded a positive result after it was tested with a Nark II field test kit.

A trial date of 1 p.m., Jan. 28 has been set for Henson in Madison County.

David S. White, 29, of Fredericktown has been charged with two Class C felony counts of second degree domestic assault.

According to a Madison County Sheriffs Dept. report, deputies were called to the scene of a domestic assault on or between Jan. 3, 2016.

The report says the assault was in progress at Whites residence where he was observed by deputies attacking a female relative. This female relative was observed in an active attempt to shield herself from White. When the female victim stood up, she was attacked again by White. A male relative attempted to stop Whites assault of the female and White attacked the male. White caused the other male to fall on the ground.

The report says White forcefully resisted officers during his arrest.

A case review is scheduled for Jan. 28 in Madison County Court.
Cambodian development organizations hope to discuss Cambodias backslides in human rights and environmental protections during talks this week with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry is expected to meet with Prime Minister Hun Sen, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, as well as members of the opposition and civil society.

His visit comes as the opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, is in exile abroad, facing a prison sentence on criminal defamation charges brought by Hor Namhong. Rising political tensions and continued environmental degradation are also pressing concerns, development workers say.

We wish to take this opportunity to call upon the US to make any strengthening of bilateral relations with Cambodia contingent on the governments significant progress in the promotion of democratic reforms and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, civil society organizations said in an open letter to Kerry, issued Sunday. We urge you to demand an immediate end to the governments acts of intimidation, judicial harassment, and violence against opposition officials and the immediate and unconditional release of all 17 opposition members and supporters who are currently detained or imprisoned.

Ou Virak, head of the think tank Future Forum, said he hoped Kerry would discuss the significant role of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party and of NGOs in his talks with Cambodias leadership.

Am Sam Ath, senior technical coordinator for the rights group Licadho, said he requested to meet with Kerry to discuss a host of issues, ranging from human rights, the culture of impunity, political issues and freedom of expression.

Rescue Party spokesman Yim Sovann said the partys vice president, Kem Sokha, will meet with Kerry on Tuesday to discuss the current political situation.
The U.S. is stepping up efforts to help Laos deal with problems including hunger, unexploded ordinances and technology access for the lower Mekong.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the initiatives during a Monday visit to Vientiane. He also talked about challenges outside of Asia, including the planned Syria peace talks.

He commented, to reporters, after meeting with officials, including Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong and Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith.

The talks laid the groundwork for a special ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit, next month in California that will be hosted by President Barack Obama.

School meals

Kerry said the U.S. was launching a $6 million program to help provide meals in schools across Laos, to combat the effects of hunger, which has stunted the growth of children in Laos.

Kerry thanked the prime minister for help in addressing issues related to the Vietnam War, including tons of unexploded bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes on Laos.

An estimated 30 percent of the ordnance failed to detonate, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the years since.

Kerry said the U.S. was considering if it could further increase its current $19.5 million in funding to help Laos with de-mining. He said while the number of people hurt or killed by unexploded ordinances had dropped significantly, it remains a problem in the country.

Technology

He also said the U.S. is working with Laos on technology that could help increase the capacity of the lower Mekong, one of the longest rivers in Asia that runs through China, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

"This is such an enormously important river, one of the great rivers of the world," he said.

The secretary said he raised concerns about human rights and freedom of expression during his talks with officials, but did not provide specifics.

"Secretary Kerry's visit to Laos, one of the most rights repressing governments in ASEAN, should be the start of a strong and sustained U.S. push to demand that the Lao government reveal where is missing NGO leader Sombath Somphone and end their intensified intimidation of civil society," said Phil Robertson, the Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.

Laos is the first leg of a three-nation tour of Asia for Kerry, that will include stops in Cambodia and China.

Syria peace talks

Kerry said in addition to discussing issues of regional concern, he also spoke by phone to his counterparts from countries including France and Turkey, on the planned talks for a political transition in Syria.

The U.N.-led talks between the Syrian government and the opposition were initially set to begin on Monday, in Geneva. But disagreements over the make-up of the opposition have delayed the process.

Kerry, who said he also spoke to U.N. special Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, said he expected there would be progress on when the talks would start within the next two days.

"What we are trying to do is make sure that we are absolutely certain that when they [the talks] start, everybody is clear about roles and what's happening, so that you don't go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure."

He also said the International Syria Support Group, which has been backing the U.N.-effort, had tentatively planned to meet again on February 11.

Before his visit with Thammavong, Kerry visited the That Luang Stupa shrine, the most important Buddhist monument in Laos, which is believed to enshrine a breast bone of the Buddha.

Laos has just taken over as chairman of ASEAN. The upcoming U.S.-hosted ASEAN summit will also be a focal point for Kerry at his next stop, Cambodia, another ASEAN country.

Also, later this year, Obama travels to Laos, for an ASEAN summit, becoming the first U.S. president to do so.

North Korea a focal point

Kerry will also visit Beijing during this trip, which comes after North Korea drew international condemnation, this month, for testing what it said was a nuclear device, for the fourth time since 2006.

"In an odd way, every time North Korea does a nuclear test that's a moment of opportunity for the United States to try to convince China to cooperate more closely in punishing North Korea," said Scott Snyder, a Korean studies analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The U.S. has been pressing China, an economic lifeline to North Korea, to use its leverage to urge Pyongyang to stop what world leaders view as provocative action. Also, the U.N. Security Council, which includes China, is considering imposing additional penalties on North Korea.

Kerry said he looked forward to having a "solid," "serious" conversation with his Chinese counterparts on the issue.

"One of the most serious issues on the planet today, which is a clearly reckless and dangerous evolving security threat in the hands of somebody who is questionable in terms of judgment."

The U.S. has also been urging China and its neighbors to seek a peaceful resolution to a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.

Earlier this month, regional tensions flared when China tested a runway on one of its artificial islands in the region. China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

Asia is the second leg of a five-nation tour for Kerry that also included stops in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is being pressed to ensure that democratic reforms and human rights are at the top of the agenda when he meets with Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, leader of the ruling Cambodia People's Party, in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.

With opposition leader Sam Rainsy in self-imposed exile to avoid what is widely considered to be politically motivated charges and 17 opposition members and activists in prison, rights groups say any improved diplomatic ties must be accompanied with Cambodian guarantees for reform.

However, through its refusal to speak up with several of its fellow ASEAN members over territorial claims in the South China Sea, Cambodia finds itself in a position of increasing political leverage in the US-China race for influence in the region.

"Cambodia is actually one of the small countries that shouldn't have as much of an influence on that kind of political power play, but because Cambodia is a part of ASEAN that is why Cambodia is becoming a key country," said Ou Virak, a political analyst and founder of the Future Forum think tank.

"But also because Cambodia is so close to China and has been somewhat of a Chinese pawn in the sense of an ASEAN unity, Cambodia has now become a key small country for the U.S. real pivot to Asia."

Kerry will visit Phnom Penh to discuss bi-lateral trade and strengthening ties with the Cambodian government ahead of a summit with ASEAN leaders and President Obama in California next month.

Since the early 1990s, aided by favorable tax preferences on exports to the U.S and the EU, Cambodia's garment industry has grown from close to one per cent of GDP to close to 10 per cent of GDP today. In the first six months of 2015, the sectors exports were valued at more than $3 billion and employing more than 600,000 workers.

This is the greatest economic contribution from the U.S. to Cambodia, said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

But he added that it comes with conditions, which include promoting human rights and democratic reforms in the country.

China, on the other hand, doesn't apply the same conditions to their loans for much needed infrastructure - like roads and hydro dams to keep up with the rapid growth in one of Asia's fastest growing countries, he said.

"We understand from the west it is sustainability that we wish and we respect that, and from China we don't mind what way they rule the country, but we want a good partner in the economy's survival."

Siphan defended the government against allegations of rights abuses, saying the U.S needs to change its "one size fits all policy" and have a deeper understanding of diversity in ASEAN.

"We are educated from the United States and we understand that, but you cannot force everyone to eat hamburgers," he said, adding that Cambodia remains constitutionally neutral in its relationships with Beijing and Washington.

Unsurprisingly, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party sees things differently.

According to opposition lawmaker Son Chhay, the Hun Sen government views U.S. foreign policy as encroaching on its sovereignty, which has led the ruling party to lean towards China, who he said has done little to support economic development in Cambodia.

"China's interest is exploiting the country resources, they are not interested in democracy or human rights, or fair trade, they see Cambodia as a country that they can exploit for whatever they need for the Chinese economy," he said.

Chhay agreed that Cambodia needs to remain neutral, but said his party's values more closely align with that of the U.S., who he said has an obligation to uphold in Cambodia.

"You can not use Cambodia and try to be nice and look the other way when it comes to the interest of the United States over this Chinese issue," he added.

Meanwhile, following a narrow victory for the ruling party in the highly-contested 2013 elections analysts say that Prime Minister Hun Sen will be seeking a public relations coup with his trip to California next month.

"I think that close relationships with Washington offer him prestige and legitimacy and his visit to California next month for the US-ASEAN summit is interpreted within the Cambodian government as a victory," said Sebastian Strangio, Phnom Penh based journalist and author of Hun Sen's Cambodia.

Political analyst Ou Virak said the U.S. will expect some concessions from Hun Sen in return for that legitimacy, something the PM has already planned for well in advance with charges leveled at the opposition.

"The question is can Kerry get the commitment of Hun Sen and the CPP in a way that is concrete enough, in a way that is going to last long enough and is going to be significant enough in shaping the future of regional security," he said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cambodia Monday evening on an official visit, to discuss with Prime Minister Hun Sen and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on the ongoing economic relationship between the two countries and an impending US-Asean meeting in California next month, State Department officials said.

A senior State Department official told reporters Sunday that US officials meanwhile have concerns about political developments in Cambodia, including the fraught relationship between the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, so Kerry will meet with opposition officials.

Hell also meet with members of civil society to underscore both US support for democracy in Cambodia but also, importantly, US support for human rights, for civil rights, and for political space, the official said.

Hor Namhong told reporters last week ahead of Kerrys visit that talks would aim at boosting ties, strengthening cooperation, and taking the relationship of the two nations to another level.

Analysts say the visit is in part to address Chinas growing influence in the region, and the contentious issue of the South China Sea. Kerry arrives from Laos, the acting president of Asean, four members of which have overlapping claims with China in the South China Sea.

Pou Sovachana, deputy executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said Kerrys visit will help strengthen ties between the two countries, even as the South China Sea issue becomes increasingly pressing. Kerry will want to know whether Cambodia sides with China or its Asean neighbors, he said.

This is an important issue, because the US is against the setting up of airbases by China in the South China Sea, he said. Their stance is clear, and that is to abide by international maritime law and to curb Chinese influence in the region. Thus it is mandatory to see about Cambodias stance.

In order to counter Chinese influence here, the US must strengthen its cultural ties with Cambodia, alongside its economic endeavors, he said.

Kem Ley, an independent political analyst, said Kerrys visit could signal a key moment for Cambodia and a tough choice. While the constitution calls for Cambodia to remain neutral in foreign affairs, Cambodia has stronger ties with China than it does with the US, due in part to Chinas no-strings aid and investment in recent years.

That will make it difficult for Kerry to convince Cambodias leaders to support US policies, he said. The diplomatic tie is a binding tie with China, and its difficult to turn back, he said. Even though other nations provide a lot of benefits, it is still impossible for our diplomacy to turn back.

Cambodia has had complicated ties with both the US and China. The US backed the ouster of former King Norodom Sihanouk, during its war in Vietnam, and China backed the Khmer Rouge as it subsequently rose to power. The US has played a major role in Cambodias post-war development, as has China. But US aid has come with a push for improved human rights and democracy, unlike Chinese aid, which comes without overt conditions.

Neak Chandarith, director of international studies at the Institute of Foreign Languages at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, said Kerrys visit will unlikely lead to heated discussions or political tension. Talks will be to boost economic ties, a priority for Cambodia, he said. The important thing is to develop the nation to relieve poverty through US aid and bilateral trade. Cambodia will benefit from these two points.

Cambodia should consider becoming a member of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, he said. The TPP would provide many benefits for Cambodia, especially in its efforts to increase rice and garment exports and to diversify its industrial sector.

Pou Sovachana said the US should not forget the issues of human rights, freedom of expression and good governance, particularly the recent restrictions on opposition members and attacks on two opposition lawmakersone of whom is a US citizen. A major power like the US can support freedom of expression, the value of democracy, and the rule of law for the people and the nations best interest, he said. Moreover, the US can push for good governance.
China's top court last week upheld an earlier ruling to impose a record-high penalty of 160 million yuan (US$26 million) on six companies from the city of Taizhou in eastern Jiangsu province for discharging waste acids into two rivers.

Although the courts decision set an unprecedented example for businesses in China to better manage industrial waste, it only marks the beginning of the countrys uphill battle against its massive water pollution crisis, analysts say.

This is not gonna improve overnight. Theres been a lot of mechanism and rules that have been building over the past decade, said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environmental Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

The water pollution action plan, announced by the State Council in April 2014, "gives the political green light" for enforcement by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, she added.

Verdict upheld

The Supreme Court upheld the case's initial verdict, arguing that all six defendants remained responsible after they sold more than 25,000 metric tons of waste acid in 2014 to a leather company, which didnt have the authority to discharge the waste into the rivers.

The case drew the highest compensation fine ever imposed in China arising from a public interest case, and showcased the judicial systems role in environmental protection, analysts said.

"This case has a powerful deterrence effect on polluting businesses. That is, polluters have to now take their environmental cost into consideration," said Maple Ge, director of the law and policy department at Friends of Nature, a registered environmental nongovernmental organization.

Calculating costs

But given that compliance and law enforcement are expensive and evasion is still the cheapest route, it remains to be seen whether all businesses will get in line or will adopt a bust-me-if-you-can attitude, said Wang Jin, a law professor of Peking University.

Nevertheless, Wang said the ruling was significant because it reaffirmed the long-lasting impact of pollution on the environment even if no immediate damage is in sight.

The court determined the penalty by using a simulation model to calculate the cost of cleaning up the rivers, Wang said.

In spite of the record penalty, the lawsuit only exposes the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the water pollution crisis facing China. Many environmentalists have warned that dirty water is a bigger headache than China's notoriously dirty air.

Dirty water

Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based NGO Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, once said that Chinas wastewater discharge has far exceeded the capacity the environment can handle and that water pollution poses a bigger health threat to about 300 million people living in rural areas.

The latest available official data also shows that 60 percent of groundwater and 36 percent of rivers were ranked as poor or very poor in 2014.

Estimates by the Wilson Center show the water quality crisis in China may be even worse than suggested by the official data.

"Its hard to know exactly, cause data is often a little bit sketchy in China in terms of pollution. But we estimate something like 35 percent of Chinas water is so polluted, it should not come in contact with humans," Turner said. She added that China is the only country threatened by water pollution-induced scarcity.

According to the center, agricultural runoff is the biggest source of lake pollution in China, as a result of overused pesticides and fertilizers. Up to 80 percent of the nations meat factories have failed to treat their animal wastewater.

Hopeful signs

Encouraging signs have emerged since mid-2015, after authorities stepped up efforts to tackle the water crisis. But the recent economic slowdown has some wondering if local governments will follow through with toughened measures to clean up messes left behind by decades of unregulated rapid growth.

"With a slowing economy, we are not sure how local governments or divisions in charge of economic affairs weigh the importance of environmental protection, and this has a direct impact on the strength of the law enforcement," said Wang.
A Chinese national has agreed to be extradited to the United States from Hong Kong to face charges of murdering his two nephews.

Shi Deyun denied the allegations during a court appearance in the Chinese territory Monday. Police, acting on a request from their U.S. counterparts, arrested the 44-year-old Shi Saturday after he arrived in Hong Kong from Los Angeles.

Authorities in California say Shi killed the teenaged boys last week at their home in Arcadia, located near Los Angeles, after learning his wife had filed for divorce.Investigators say Shi had already assaulted his wife, who is the sister of the dead boys' father.The mother discovered her sons' bodies Friday after returning home.

It is believed Shi was attempting to flee into mainland China, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.

The judge denied Shi's request for bail during Monday's hearing.The case has been adjourned until February 11.
Monday marks the fifth anniversary of Egyptians launching protests against longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in a revolt that helped spark a wave of uprisings across the Middle East.

Over the course of nearly three weeks, Mubarak fought back with security forces cracking down on protesters, particularly in the capital, Cairo, but ultimately he stepped down after 30 years in power.

Current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi praised the 2011 revolution Sunday, saying it brought a "new Egypt."

Banned group

He accused others of using it for personal gains, in reference to the banned Muslim Brotherhood that won elections to take over the government following Mubarak's ouster.

Sissi led a 2013 effort to push President Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood member, from power after a year, then oversaw the creation of a new constitution and new elections that made him president.

Rights groups have sharply criticized Sissi's Egypt, saying it is reminiscent of life under the strongman Mubarak.

They cite a strong crackdown on democracy advocates and others who oppose Sissi, particularly the Brotherhood, which has seen Morsi and many other top leaders arrested and put on trial.

People detained

Authorities in recent days have detained people who planned protests for Monday.

A Brotherhood website urged Egyptians to gather in "liberty squares across Egypt" and chant for "freedom, social justice, human dignity."

The focal point for the 2011 uprising was Cairo's Tahrir Square, where dramatic television images sent across the world showed protesters gathering day and night to call for Mubarak's resignation.

They persisted through deadly assaults by security forces and eventually hundreds of thousands of people celebrated in the square when Mubarak stepped down.
Oscar-nominated actor and environmentalist Matt Damon has called on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to resign, following revelations that his administration sought for months to minimize the water contamination crisis in the city of Flint.

Damon, a co-founder of a global non-profit water rights organization, told the Daily Beast that "at the very least he should resign." He went on to say that "everyone is entitled to a fair trial in the United States... [and] that man should get one, and soon."

Damon's criticisms, echoing those of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, came just days after newly released emails from the governor's office showed state officials belittling contaminated drinking water claims from Flint residents.

Snyder has issued a public apology to the city, and last week said he had replaced some state officials. He also rejected earlier calls to resign, insisting that he will instead work to restore Flint's critically damaged water system and boost public confidence in state government.

River as water source

Flint's crisis began in 2014, when the cash strapped city sought to save money by drawing water from a local river rather than nearby Detroit's water system.

It was later found that officials did not properly treat the corrosive Flint River water to prevent lead leaching from old pipes. Additionally, Flint residents were not informed about their tainted drinking water supply for a year and a half. Estimates to replace the city's water pipes run as high as $1.5 billion.

In a separate development Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush defended Governor Snyder against growing criticism of his handling of the crisis.

Bush, in comments to ABC television's This Week, blamed the crisis on water quality regulations that he said are too complex. He said those regulations have led to "regional, local and county governments...all pointing fingers at one another" as the crisis grew.

Some words of praise

Bush then praised the embattled governor for having "taken responsibility" for the crisis and "for rolling up his sleeves and trying to deal with it."

Last week, U.S. civil rights activists descended on Flint, a largely African-American city where 40 percent of the community's 100,000 residents live in poverty.

Longtime civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson described the city as "a crime scene," while firebrand filmmaker Michael Moore called the situation in the city "a racial crisis. It's a poverty crisis... that's what created this," he said.

Community leaders are expected to turn out in force Tuesday for a crisis meeting led by Cornell Brooks, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP.
Guns play a role in roughly 33,000 U.S. deaths every year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  a number thats substantially higher than in any other developed country.

Americas gun homicide rate is almost four times higher than Switzerlands  the nearest contender  and roughly 16 times that of Germany, the Vox news site reported, using data from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Firearms also are cited in many thousands of injuries each year, chronicled by the Gun Violence Archives. Congress yanked the CDC's funding explicitly for gun research in the mid-1990s.

Almost two-thirds of U.S. gun deaths are suicides. The presidents executive actions, announced in January, would add $500 million in spending on mental health treatment  and on reporting related firearms prohibitions to background check systems.

Gun rights backers have criticized mandatory reporting regulations that would require people with mental illness to give up possession of their firearms.

Others share that concern. The director of a psychiatric facility in Connecticut, which requires such reporting, told PBS NewsHour he feared it could deter people from seeking treatment.

Mental illness often is blamed in mass shootings  incidents with four or more victims, excluding the perpetrator. In cases in which the shooter dies, it can be difficult to prove without a previous diagnosis. But most people with mental illness pose no threat to others and are far more likely to be victims than aggressors, said Beth McGinty, a health policy assistant professor on the faculty of Johns Hopkins Universitys Center for Gun Policy Research.

She told VOA that epidemiological evidence shows 3 to 5 percent of interpersonal gun violence is directly related to mental illness.

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center, which reviewed numerous studies, is more blunt about risk: "Where there are more guns, there is more homicide," its website says, citing "a broad array of evidence."
As unrest in Haiti continues over a presidential runoff vote, the United States says it expects anyone responsible for election violence and intimidation in Haiti to be held accountable under the law.

"Electoral intimidation, destruction of property, and violence are unacceptable and run counter to Haiti's democratic principles and laws," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Sunday. "The United States, along with the international community in Haiti, urges the government of Haiti... to reject violence and take all steps necessary to pave the way for a peaceful election for a new president and remaining parliamentary seats."

Officials Friday unexpectedly canceled Sunday's presidential runoff because of what they called security concerns. A new date has not been set.

Under Haiti's constitution, a new president must be in office on February 7, when current president Michel Martelly's term ends.

Opposition candidate Jude Celestin has promised to boycott the runoff, alleging that the first round of voting in October was rigged in favor of the ruling party candidate, Jovenel Moise.

The government denies all allegations of election fraud. Demonstrations on both sides have turned violent with rock throwing, street barricades, and fires.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. It is still struggling to put together a lasting, stable democracy 30 years after the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship.

Without political certainty and stability, Haiti has a difficult time attracting badly-needed foreign investment.

Haiti is also still trying to recover from a 2010 earthquake that left parts of the capital in ruins.
India has signed an agreement with France to buy 36 Rafale combat jets, but a final deal has yet to be reached as they work on the financial details.



Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement on Monday after holding talks with French President Francois Hollande, who is on a three-day visit to New Delhi.



With the exception of some financial aspects, both sides have signed an intergovernmental deal.Both of us have also agreed to sort out the financial aspect of the deal quickly, said Modi.



Hollande described the deal as a decisive step.



France has been pushing hard for years to wrap up one of the worlds biggest defense deals. India initially planned to take 126 of the jets, but scaled this back last year to 36. Although the price has yet to be finalized, defense analysts estimate it could be in the range of $9 billion.



India wants the combat aircraft to modernize its air force.





The French leader will be the chief guest at Indias Republic Day on Tuesday  when India celebrates its constitution with a military parade full of pomp and pageantry in the heart of New Delhi.



Hollandes visit is seen as a signal of growing political and strategic ties between the two countries. Calling France a special friend, Modi said at a joint press conference with Hollande, Eighteen years ago, France was the first country we signed a strategic partnership with.We are now here to take it higher.

Counterterrorism



Both countries, which have been victims of recent terrorist attacks, signed a joint statement on fighting terrorism and vowed to step up cooperation in counterterrorism.



Hollande said that a new Islamic State video which threatens countries of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the terror group would only strengthen France's resolve to combat terrorism.

They are provoking us in the worst possible manner, but this can only make us more determined, including myself," he said. "We shall also be extremely determined to strike time and again against ISIS, that organization which is threatening us and killing our children.

The video is reported to show jihadists involved in last November's terror attacks in Paris.

The terror strikes in the French capital killed 130 people, while suspected Islamist militants attacked an Indian air base earlier this month.



Supporting the quest by developing countries for affordable and clean energy was also high on the agenda of the two leaders.



Hollande rode the metro along with Modi to Gurgaon, on New Delhis outskirts, where they laid the foundation stone of the headquarters of the International Solar Alliance, launched last month during the climate summit in Paris. The alliance aims to boost solar energy in developing countries that have ample sunshine.

Investments



Both countries also pushed commercial ties with France, eyeing investments in Indias fast-growing economy and New Delhi seeking much-needed investments.



Frances finance minister, Michel Spein, who is also in the Indian capital, said French companies will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, mostly in the industrial sector.



The two countries signed 14 agreements spanning areas such as defense, civil nuclear cooperation, railways, smart cities, science and research, space and culture.
After almost two months of clashes between Oromo protesters and security forces in Ethiopia, authorities have scrapped a "master plan" that would have expanded the boundaries of Addis Ababa and, according to protesters, would have displaced Oromo farmers.

However, observers are divided on the significance of the move by Ethiopia and whether it truly represents a change of policy or just a reaction to negative publicity.

Dr. Awol Allo, a fellow in human rights at the London School of Economics, said he believes the government will find other ways to seize land it deems useful.

"I don't actually believe that the practices of displacement and the eviction and the plunder would cease," Allo told VOA. "Remember, the expansion of Addis began a very long time ago and it has intensified over the course of the last 10 years because of the influx of investment into the city, both foreign and domestic."

Compiled by activists

Allo pointed to figures compiled by jailed Oromo activist and opposition leader Bekele Gerba, who said 150,000 Oromo farmers have had their land taken by the government over the past 10 years.

"The practices would continue. They just don't call them a master plan," Allo said. "The master plan was basically intended to sort of basically formalize and legalize the processes of annexation and expansion. It may not have that kind of name that gives it a broader mandate, sort of legitimacy and authority, but the practice would nevertheless continue."

Earlier this week, the European Parliament adopted a 19-point resolution urging Ethiopia to respect the rights of peaceful protesters as well as to cease intimidation and imprisonment of journalists. During a recent visit to Ethiopia, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power urged the government to engage in dialogue with protesters.

Approximately 140 people were killed during the protests, according to activists interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

"What we are urging is that the international community should not turn a blind eye to these gross violations of human rights that have taken place in Ethiopia," said Mandeep Tiwana, head of policy and research at CIVICUS, a group that works to strengthen civil society and civilian participation in politics.

"They should diplomatically engage with Ethiopia, institute external inquiry into this matter and also bring to court those responsible for excessive force. And it appears that security forces have used excessive force against peaceful protesters, and, in fact, there are reports that even children as young as 12 have been killed," Tiwana said.

Confirmed deaths

The government has confirmed that 13 security forces died in the clashes. VOA made repeated requests for comment from the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C., but has not yet received an official statement.

The protests come at a particularly difficult time for Ethiopia, as the worst drought to hit the area in 30 years has caused a famine that is particularly affecting the northeast region.

The aid group Save the Children says as many as 10 million people need food aid. It calls this one of the two worst humanitarian crises in the world, following only Syria.

But observers hope the international community's desire to aid those affected by the drought will not prevent it from insisting that Ethiopia respect human rights as it pertains to the Oromo protests.

Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International's regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, said her organization and others are calling for three additional measures following the master plan's cancellation.

Release, investigation

First, they want the unconditional release of the people arrested during the protests. They also want an independent investigation of police conduct, and they are calling for a national dialogue about policing and demonstrations and what is appropriate during protests.

"It is a sign of good faith that the government canceled these immediate plans," Wanyeki said. "I think the pressure from the community and from all of the people that put aid into Ethiopia's much-wanted development progress need to insist on standards around projects like this."

Under Ethiopian law, all land belongs to the government, and people who are relocated are entitled to compensation.

However, the constitution specifically protects the rights of pastoralists and their right not to be displaced from their land.

Allo said proper compensation and due process have not occurred in the Oromo region around Addis Ababa.

People's "entire livelihood is inextricably tied to the land and land means everything," he said. "Their property is a way of living for them, so to deprive them of that possibility  that prospect of leaving the land that they have known, in the ecologies that they have known, without proper consultation, without appropriate compensation  I think that is a huge injustice."
The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria said the delayed intra-Syrian peace talks will start at the end of the week, on January 29, and invitations will be sent out Tuesday.

Government backers of different opposition groups have stalemated the talks so far because of their opinions as to who should and who should not be allowed to come to Geneva.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said he wants to get the negotiations off on the right foot, so he will not divulge the names of the people on the invitation list.

But, de Mistura noted the Security Council considers the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra as terrorist organizations, so they will not be invited.

Otherwise, he said the invitations will be broadly based on the principle of inclusiveness. He said women and civil society members, who have been largely absent from previous Syrian peace negotiations, will be present in large numbers.

Agenda

De Mistrua said the agenda will include discussions of new governance, a new constitution and new elections. But, he added the first priority of the talks will be to achieve a broad cease-fire and to stop the threat posed by IS, also known as ISIL.

The suspension of fighting regarding ISIL in particular and Al Nusra is not on the table. But, there is plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place, he said.

De Mistura said the talks will begin without preconditions. He said the parties will not be meeting face to face, so he is aiming for proximity talks. He also expects to be involved in a lot of shuttling among the different delegations until direct talks can begin.

He said the negotiations will go on for six months in what he calls a staggered, chronological, proximity approach.

That will be the way we try to make it different from the past. This is not Geneva three. This is leading to what we hope will be a Geneva success story, if we are able to push it forward, de Mistura said.

The U.N. mediator said the first round of talks will last between two and three weeks. He said he expects the process to be an uphill battle, with a lot of posturing and many walk-ins and walk-outs by the participants.

He said the main obstacles to achieving a peace agreement are lack of trust and lack of political will.

Speaking during a visit to Laos Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it is better to wait a few days to open talks and properly set up the process rather than have it fall apart on the first day.

"What we are trying to do is make sure that we are absolutely certain that when they [the talks] start, everybody is clear about roles and what's happening, so that you don't go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure," Kerry said.

Opposition groups

He reiterated U.S. support for the opposition, following comments from opposition officials who said they felt like they were being pressured into the talks.

"The position of the United States is and hasn't changed," Kerry said. "We are still supporting the opposition, politically, financially and militarily."

He also said it is ultimately up to the Syrian parties to decide the future of their country, including the role of President Bashar al-Assad.

"I told them you have a veto, and so does he and so you're going to have to decide how to move forward," he said.

Kerry also downplayed comments from the Syrian government indicating it would not bend on its positions heading into the talks.

The U.N. has twice before tried to broker an agreement for Syria, but that attempt at peace ended two years ago with little progress.
Curved metallic debris found on a Thai beach is almost certainly from a Japanese rocket, not from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has become one of aviation history's biggest mysteries.

"It is very likely that the debris which has been discovered in Thailand is part of a rocket which MHI launched from Japan in the past," said Kengo Tatsukawa, public relations manager for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) after VOA notified the Japanese company of the find.

The 2-by-3-meter barnacle-encrusted chunk, weighing about 100 kilograms, was discovered Saturday by fishermen after it washed up at Pak Phanang in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, about 800 kilometers south of Bangkok.

The site faces the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

Debris to be collected

A Thai aviation team led by an air force vice marshal, as well as Malaysian officials, headed to the province on Monday to inspect and collect the item, according to local news reports.

The placement of bolts and numbers etched on it resemble the honeycomb launch fairing of a Japanese H-2 rocket series, a liquid-fueled launch system used to transport satellites and space probes.

Also, "the construction and placement of ports seem to match" the rocket, said Nathan J. Hunt, an independent aerospace and defense blogger in the United States.

Aerospace consultants also said the overall shape and design are that of an H-2A or H-2B interstage, the part that fills in the gaps between the stages of a rocket rather than being a part of an airplane.

'Should be able to be traced'

"There are part numbers and serial numbers on every piece of a rocket so it should be able to be traced back to a particular launch," said Lance Gatling, president of Nexial Research, an an aerospace and defense consultancy based in Tokyo.

Further investigation would be necessary to confirm precise details, such as matching it to a specific launch vehicle, but no such plans have yet been made, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Tatsukawa, in Tokyo, told VOA.

MHI has yet to be contacted by authorities in either Thailand or Japan about the item, the spokesman noted.

The H-2A first flew in 2001 and the H-2B's first flight, from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center, was in 2009.

The condition of the item found on the Thai beach, which also has insulated red and white electronic wires on it, indicates it had been in the ocean for a year or more, according to specialists who have viewed video and pictures of it posted online.

Rocket stages

"The species of barnacle could give a hint where this drifted from and how long it has been in the water from the distribution of barnacles on the debris," Hunt told VOA.

The H-2 rocket stages are designed to drop off and fall back to Earth as they separate after launch on a trajectory that takes them over waters far south of Japan and east of Philippines.

"It could not have re-entered anywhere near Thailand," Gatling told VOA.

Malaysia transport minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that the Department of Civil Aviation had been instructed to contact their Thai counterpart for verification amid speculation that the part could have been from the MH370, which disappeared nearly two years ago en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The search for the missing jetliner has focused on an arc of the southern Indian Ocean, off western Australia and thousands of kilometers away from Thailand.

The only evidence that has been found was a 2-meter-long flaperon wing part, which washed ashore in July of last year on a beach of Reunion island in the Indian Ocean.

Spherical objects

The find in Thailand follows the discovery of four large spherical objects found in Tuyen Quang province, Vietnam this month.

Those objects are debris from an 8-ton stage of a Russian- Zenit rocket which re-entered over Southeast Asia, according to the Spaceflight101.

The rocket, carrying a weather satellite, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 11 last year with the second stage re-entering the atmosphere and breaking up over Thailand early on January 2.

Last November, an approximately one-meter piece of debris plunged into the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka and also speculatively linked initially to MH370 has been identified as most likely that of a rocket motor which propelled the NASA Lunar Prospector probe in 1998, according to asteroid tracker Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Libya's internationally recognized government on Monday rejected the U.N.-assembled unity government with rival Islamists.

Eight-nine of the 104 lawmakers who took part in Monday's parliamentary session in Tobruk voted to reject the U.N. peace plan, demanding a new proposal within 10 days.

At least one member of parliament said the Cabinet is too large, but lawmakers would consider a smaller body.

They also objected to an article allowing the unity government to fire top military leaders. They said they fear this could lead to the dismissal of military chief Khalifa Hifter, who has made no secret of his contempt for Islamists.



The U.N.-mediated peace deal, signed last month, called for a new unity government with members from both the internationally-recognized government in Tobruk and the Islamist-backed body in Tripoli.



The pact came out of multiple rounds of negotiations between the rival governments.

U.N. officials who negotiated the unity government say they will continue consultations with both sides and "let the process play out."

The United States and others are worried that the political limbo will leave room for the Islamic State and other extremist groups to become an even greater threat.

Libya has been in chaos since longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said his country's new anti-terrorism laws are a necessary weapon against what he said are "very real" threats by the Islamic State group.

Najib offered the defense Monday in Kuala Lumpur at the start of a two-day international conference on violent extremism.

The new laws have come under fire from human rights activists over the return of a decades-old practice that allows police to detain suspects without trial.

Najib said he understood the need to maintain civil liberties, but pointed out that "there are no civil liberties under Daesh," using an alternative name for IS. "The best way to uphold civil liberties is to ensure the safety of the nation."

IS video

A video surfaced Sunday from a group professing allegiance with IS, warning that it would carry out attacks in Malaysia if police continued its crackdown on IS supporters.

Police arrested seven suspected terrorists authorities say belonged to an IS cell that was planning terrorist attacks across Malaysia. The men were carrying bullets, books on jihad, and Islamic State paraphernalia.

A suspected militant believed to be planning an attack on Kuala Lumpur was arrested on January 15,

It is illegal in Malaysia to support IS, or for its citizens to go overseas for military training.
A report commissioned by the World Health Organization calls for governments, educators and the food industry to combat childhood obesity.

The independent Commission for Ending Childhood Obesity says there are 41 million children under five years of age who are obese, an increase of 10 million from 1990.The developing world has seen obesity rates double since 1990.

These dramatic increases were called an exploding nightmare in the report released Monday.

It said driving the rise are biological factors, lack of healthy food, a more sedentary lifestyle and the marketing of fattening foods.

The commission suggests steps to combat rising obesity include an "effective taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages'' as well as better education to promote healthy eating and exercise.

"It is not the kids' fault, said commission co-chair Peter Gluckman.You can not blame a two-year-old child for being fat and lazy and eating too much.''

If left unchecked, obesity has the potential to negate many of the health benefits that have contributed to the increased longevity observed in the world," according to the report.

"To date, progress in tackling childhood obesity has been slow and inconsistent," write the reports authors.
Michigan's attorney general named a special prosecutor Monday to probe the contaminated water crisis in the city of Flint, to determine whether laws were broken during a months-long period when officials failed to notify residents of dangerous lead content in the city's drinking water.

The appointment comes as Gov. Rick Snyder scrambles to address the crisis, which was triggered in 2014 when the cash-strapped Flint government sought to save money by drawing water from a local river rather than nearby Detroit's water system.

It was later found that engineers did not properly treat the corrosive Flint River water to prevent lead leaching from old pipes. It was also learned that Flint residents were not informed about their tainted drinking water supply for a year and a half.

Current estimates to replace the city's water pipes run as high as $1.5 billion.

Attorney General Bill Schuette tapped former Wayne County assistant prosecutor Todd Flood to lead the probe, to avoid any potential conflict of interest between the Flint investigation and Schuette's role in defending the state against water-related lawsuits.

Schuette also identified Flood's lead investigator as former FBI agent Andy Arena, who once headed the bureau's Detroit field office.

Toxins decreasing

In a separate development Monday, the Detroit Free Press said independent environmental test results obtained by the newspaper show that the level of toxins in Flint's drinking water appears to be falling since the city switched back to Detroit's water system in October.

The report said eight percent of 853 water samples drawn from Flint homes between late September and January 15 exceeded safe levels for lead. It also quotes the scientist leading the independent study as saying the current numbers appear lower than those recorded in August, before the switch back to Detroit's water system.

But Virginia Tech university professor Marc Edwards said residents should continue using bottled water and filters until the crisis is resolved.

High-profile activists, political heat

The water crisis has spawned widespread anger and fear in Flint, a largely African-American city where 40 percent of the community's nearly 100,000 residents live in poverty.

It has also drawn sharp reactions from U.S. presidential candidates, with Democrats highly critical of the Republican governor's belated response to the crisis and Republicans lauding Snyder for his public apology to the city and his promise to make things right.

Civil rights activists have blasted the state for its slow response and for current conditions in the city. Last week, longtime civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson called the city "a crime scene," while firebrand filmmaker Michael Moore described the situation in Flint as "a racial crisis."

Flint community leaders and concerned citizens are expected to pack a crisis meeting Tuesday led by Cornell Brooks, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP.
Thousands of demonstrators converged on the Moldovan capital Sunday to protest the newly appointed government and prime minister in Europe's poorest nation.

Chanting "We Are the People" and "We Want our Country Back" in both Romanian and Russian, protesters in Chisinau braved temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius to demand snap elections.

The latest crisis erupted last week, when parliament appointed Pavel Filipe as prime minister in hopes of ending months of political gridlock. That stalemate was sparked by a no-confidence vote in October against the previous government over its alleged ties to a $1 billion banking scandal.

Instead, the Filipe appointment sparked an opposition backlash and days of protests from residents angered by Filipe's close personal ties to influential oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc.

Critics describe Plahotniuc as part of the country's ruling elite, which has been targeted for its poor governance during the banking fraud, which saw a full one-eighth of Moldova's gross domestic product vanish overseas.

Filipe's appointment follows the rise and fall of two prime ministers in the past year. One of them, Chiril Gaburici, quit in June over controversy sparked by claims he falsified his academic credentials. His successor, Valeriu Strelat, was ousted in the October no-confidence vote.

On Sunday, opposition leader Andre Nastase demanded that the government set a date by Thursday for early elections or face public acts of disobedience.

There was no official government response to that demand by early Monday.
The medical aid charity Doctors Without Borders is calling for guarantees from Yemens warring parties that medical activities will be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.



In a statement Monday, the medical charity, also known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said the conflict is being waged with total disregard for the rules of war.



It is causing enormous suffering for people trapped in conflict zones, said Raquel Ayora, MSF director of operations.



Public places are being bombed and shelled on a massive scale. Not even hospitals are being spared, even though medical facilities are explicitly protected by international humanitarian law.



Humanitarian crisis



MSF says that since October, its medical facilities in Yemen have been bombed four times, with two hospitals, a clinic and an ambulance coming under fire.

The charity says it has asked the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to conduct an independent investigation into the attack of one of its hospitals.



Increasingly, we are seeing attacks on medical facilities being minimized as mistakes, Ayora said, as the charity has yet to receive an official explanation for any of the incidents.



MSF says the first attack took place October 26, when airstrikes, reportedly by the Saudi-led coalition, hit an MSF-supported hospital in Saada Governorate.



The Saudis deny that its forces carried out that attack.



The latest bombing occurred January 21, when a series of airstrikes in Saada Governorate struck an ambulance from an MSF-supported hospital in the area, killing six people, including the driver.



The Saudi-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes in Yemen since late March, targeting Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels who forced President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi to flee the country.



The fighting has thrown the Arab worlds poorest nation into a deep humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations reporting that 80 percent of the population  some 21 million people  require assistance.
President Barack Obama walked a fine line in an apparent attempt to remain neutral in the race for the White House during a 40-minute interview in which he both praised and critiqued the top Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Just as the historic blizzard began to set in over the nations capital, the president spoke from the Oval Office for Politico magazines Off Message podcast, broadcast on Monday, one week before the key Iowa caucus.It is the nations first major electoral event as parties seek to nominate their candidate for U.S. president.

Obama expressed implicit support for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, his former secretary of state and toughest opponent during Obamas 2008 campaign for president.

Praise for Clinton



According to Off Message, he "repeatedly praised Clinton without reservation during the wide-ranging conversation, although he also spoke about some of her vulnerabilities, like her speaking style.

The president offered more tempered support for her opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whom he sees more as a principled outsider than someone capable of dealing with the fierce demands of the presidency.

[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you dont have the luxury of just focusing on one thing, said Obama, described by interviewer Glenn Thrush as very relaxed, his eyes often drawn to the falling snow outside.

Relay race



Obamas successor to the White House may be critical to his legacy. The top Republican candidates in the Iowa caucus, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, have promised to roll back some of his key accomplishments, including the Affordable Care Act. Obama, who has been touting his accomplishments after his final State of the Union address earlier this month, has described the presidency as a relay race and whoever takes over the Oval Office can carry on his work or unravel some of it.

During debates and campaign appearances, Clinton has highly praised Obama while Sanders has said Obama has not done enough to prosecute Wall Street executives.

Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose, he said. I think Hillary came in with the both privilege and burden of being perceived as the frontrunner Youre always looking at the bright, shiny object that people havent seen before  that's a disadvantage to her, Obama said.

Reminiscing about 2008



Obama also recalled his own time in Iowa during his first run for president.It was then that his 2008 campaign surged on his message of hope and change.He described it as the most satisfying political period in my career.

He hinted that his message then may still work well for candidates now.My bet is that the candidate who can project hope still is the candidate who the American people, over the long term, will gravitate towards, he said.
Pakistan military chief General Raheel Sharif has dismissed "speculations as baseless" in local media that he intends to seek an extension in his term, expiring later this year.

In a statement on Twitter Monday, a military spokesman quoted Sharif as saying, "[The] Pakistan Army is a great institution. I don't believe in extension and will retire on the due date."

The army chief said counterterrorism efforts will continue "with full vigor and resolve."

"Pakistan's national interest is supreme and will be safeguarded at all costs," Sharif added.

Under the leadership of Sharif, Pakistan's military launched a major ground and air offensive against local as well as foreign terrorist groups in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in June, 2014.

Counter-militancy campaign

The counter-militancy campaign has led to significant reduction in terrorism incidents around the country, killing more than 3,500 suspected militants.

General Sharif has also personally led the efforts to help neighboring Afghanistan establish peace in the war-shattered nation.

The military's deep involvement in the foreign policy matters and putting pressure on the civilian leadership to deliver a matching response to the army-led efforts is improving security across Pakistan.

The military's apparent dominating role in domestic and foreign affairs led to speculation in local media that Sharif might be seeking an extension in his tenure to carry forward the counterterrorism campaign and would want Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to extend his tenure.

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan has suffered three military coups allowing the powerful institution to rule the nation for half of its existence.
Former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, freed from jail last week to seek medical care in Britain, called on Monday for sanctions against Maldivian government figures as his lawyer warned a militant attack on tourists was highly likely.

Nasheed, the Maldives' first democratically elected president, was jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges last March after a rapid trial that drew international condemnation.

He was granted permission to leave the Indian Ocean island for 30 days to travel to London for treatment for his back. In his first comments since being released, he indicated he would not return before that deadline and called on the international community to impose sanctions against those responsible for human rights abuses in the Maldives.

"Sanctions imposed can easily be rolled back. But unless they are imposed, President [Abdullah] Yameen will have no incentive to take further action," Nasheed told reporters in London.

Nasheed was ousted in disputed circumstances in 2012 for ordering the arrest of a judge. The United Nations, the United States and human rights groups have said Yameen's government failed to follow due process and that the case was politically motivated.

Nasheed's lawyer Amal Clooney said only the threat of action led to the former president's release, while Ben Emmerson, another member of Nasheed's legal team, said the Maldives had now become a "hotbed of fundamentalism and terrorism."

He said it was estimated that more than 200 people from the Maldives had joined the Islamic State militant group, the highest number per capita of any state in the world.

"It is only a question of time before the Maldives witnesses an incident comparable to the tragedy that occurred on the beaches of Tunisia last year," he said, referring to an attack on a beach hotel last July claimed by Islamic State in which 38 tourists, mainly British, were killed.

The Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon said Nasheed had exploited his release and had been "disingenuous at best, and misleading at worst" about his medical condition.

"It is now clear his primary goal was to court publicity in the United Kingdom. This is not medical leave, but media leave," he said in a statement.

Nasheed said his medical condition was serious and he had suffered from a chronic back problem since being tortured when in his 20s.

He said the date of his return was a "fluid situation" and suggested he might seek to exert influence from India or Sri Lanka or could return to jail.

"I will definitely go to the Maldives. But only the question is how and when," he said.
At a traditional robe shop in a market in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, 28-year-old sales clerk Zachariah said he didnt plan to come to Saudi Arabia when he fled the war in Yemen two months ago.



But with al-Qaida overrunning his neighborhood, he said he didnt have time to apply for a visa to the United States or Sweden. He winced when asked if he missed Aden, his home city nestled among virgin beaches and rocky hills. But where there is security, life is good, he explained.



Security in Saudi Arabia, however, is not just about ensuring physical safety, according to analysts. With continued low oil prices and the apparent waning of the need for Saudi oil, economic security requires both reducing the nations dependence on oil sales and its dependence on foreign workers, according to Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist.



As long as we are not only dependent, but we are addicted to foreign labor, we cannot fix the job markets, said Khashoggi. The over-dependency on foreign labor doesnt only take the jobs of the Saudis.It takes their chance to acquire skills.



For decades, large immigrant populations have supplied Saudi Arabia with the low-cost and skilled workers it needs, while offering people a chance to escape wars, poverty or both.



But as concerns about Saudi Arabias future economy intensify, foreign workers say competition for jobs is harder than ever, as companies increasingly favor local hires.



Nearly 35 percent of Saudi Arabias work force is from outside the country, compared to about 17 percent in the United States. Workers come from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, the Philippines - and the list goes on.



'Lower class' jobs

Many people in Saudi Arabia didnt want the jobs held by foreign workers, said Khashoggi. Saudis often didnt want to work as taxi drivers or auto mechanics or in other jobs considered "lower class," he said.



These jobs are often stigmatized, not because they didnt require skills, he explained, but because foreign workers who took a fraction of a Saudi salary occupied them.



As a result, he said, Saudi Arabia was increasingly a country that didnt know how to do things like fix cars.If you had a cameraman, he said to me as I set up a tripod and fiddle with microphones, "how long would it be before you forgot how to do that?



The government is working to bring more Saudis into the labor force, but a fundamental shift like this will not be quick, according to Hamdan Al-Shehri, an adviser at Saudi Arabias foreign affairs ministry. Saudi people will not suddenly want different jobs, and foreign workers still need to work.



Maybe with 10 or 15 years, he said. Im not sure its going to be changed, lets say, in five years.



Diversifying



More than 70 percent of the Saudi economy comes from oil, according to John Sfakianakis, who has advised the Saudi government and serves as chief economist for several Saudi banks.



However, the loss of income from low oil prices, according to Sfakianakis, is an opportunity and not really a curse, because it compels the government to make changes, like cutting subsidies formerly considered untouchable, and expanding further into different industries, like religious tourism, minerals and transportation.



I think that they were never pressured in these fundamental ways to think of what is Saudi Arabias future, after oil is less wanted by the world, he said. Or if oil run outs.



But moving forward, if Saudi Arabia did diversify its economy, he added, Saudi people also would need to diversify their skill sets to make the economy more self-sufficient.



If you go around Saudi Arabia, bakers and barbers are not Saudi, he explained. So imagine if bakers decided to go from Saudi Arabia? You would not have any bread.



But foreign workers in Saudi Arabia argue they have no plans to go anywhere because the economies in many of their home countries are reeling from wars, terrorism, economic collapse and poverty.

Finding work



At a glossy shopping mall in Riyadh Monday, Fetin Ashry, an Egyptian accountant in Saudi Arabia, said it was nearly impossible to get a job keeping books at a school.



I nodded, applying stereotypes and assuming that Ashry, a fully veiled woman, was blocked by her conservative family and stymied by employers lack of enthusiasm for hiring females.



But that was not the issue she grappled with. The Saudis priority is to give jobs to their own citizens, she explained. Especially now, as the economy of the world is going down.
The U.S. is stepping up efforts to help Laos deal with problems including hunger, unexploded ordnances and technology access for the lower Mekong.



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the initiatives during a Monday visit to this capital city. He also talked about challenges outside of Asia, including the planned Syria peace talks.



He spoke with reporters after meeting with officials, including Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong and Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith.



The talks laid the groundwork for next month's special summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in California, which will be hosted by President Barack Obama.

School meals

Kerry said the U.S. was launching a $6 million program to help provide meals in schools across Laos to combat the effects of hunger, which has stunted children's growth.



Kerry thanked the prime minister for help in addressing issues related to the Vietnam War, including tons of unexploded bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes on Laos.

An estimated 30 percent of the ordnance failed to detonate, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the years since.



Kerry said the U.S. was considering if it could further increase its current $19.5 million in funding to help Laos with de-mining. Kerry said while the number of people hurt or killed by unexploded ordnances had dropped significantly, it remains a problem in the country.

Technology

He also said the U.S. is working with Laos on technology that could help increase the capacity of the lower Mekong, one of Asia's longest rivers, which runs through China, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.



"This is such an enormously important river, one of the great rivers of the world," Kerry said.



The secretary said he raised concerns about human rights and freedom of expression during his talks with officials, but did not provide specifics.



"Secretary Kerrys visit to Laos, one of the most rights-repressing governments in ASEAN, should be the start of a strong and sustained U.S. push to demand that the Lao government reveal where is missing NGO leader Sombath Somphone and end [its] intensified intimidation of civil society," said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

Sombath, a civil society reformer who led the Participatory Development Training Center in Laos, was seized at a police checkpoint in December 2012. He was taken by men in plainclothes and has not been seen since then.



Laos is the first leg of a three-nation tour of Asia for Kerry that will include stops in Cambodia and China.

Syria peace talks

Kerry said that, in addition to discussing issues of regional concern, he also spoke by phone to his counterparts from countries including France and Turkey, on the planned talks for a political transition in Syria.



The U.N.-led talks between the Syrian government and the opposition were initially set to begin Monday in Geneva. But disagreements over the makeup of the opposition have delayed the process.



Kerry said he also spoke to U.N. special Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura. He said he expected progress within the next two days on when the talks would start. The goal of these preliminary conversations is to ensure that, when the talks start, "everybody is clear about roles and whats happening, so that you dont go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure," he said.



He also said the International Syria Support Group, which has been backing the U.N.-effort, had tentatively planned to meet again on February 11.



Before his visit with Thammavong, Kerry visited the That Luang Stupa shrine, the most important Buddhist monument in Laos, which is believed to enshrine a breast bone of the Buddha.



Laos has just taken over the chairmanship of ASEAN. The upcoming U.S.-hosted ASEAN summit will also be a focal point for Kerry at his next stop, Cambodia, another ASEAN country.

Later this year, Obama is scheduled to travel to Laos for an ASEAN summit, becoming the first U.S. president to do so.

North Korea a focal point

Kerry will also visit Beijing during this trip, which comes after North Korea drew international condemnation, this month, for testing what it said was a nuclear device, for the fourth time since 2006.

"In an odd way, every time North Korea does a nuclear test that's a moment of opportunity for the United States to try to convince China to cooperate more closely in punishing North Korea," said Scott Snyder, a Korean studies analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The U.S. has been pressing China, an economic lifeline to North Korea, to use its leverage to urge Pyongyang to stop what world leaders view as provocative action. Also, the U.N. Security Council, which includes China, is considering imposing additional penalties on North Korea.

Kerry said he looked forward to having a "solid," "serious" conversation with his Chinese counterparts on the issue.

"One of the most serious issues on the planet today ... is a clearly reckless and dangerous evolving security threat in the hands of somebody who is questionable in terms of judgment," he said.

The U.S. has also been urging China and its neighbors to seek a peaceful resolution to a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.

Earlier this month, regional tensions flared when China tested a runway on one of its artificial islands in the region. China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.
Former South Sudan Vice President and current rebel leader Riek Machar said he will ask Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to tell President Salva Kiir to scrap his decision to create 28 states because it is hindering implementation of the peace agreement.

The Ugandan leader is an influential member of the East African regional bloc Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which played a key role in mediating last August's peace agreement.

Machar is scheduled to meet with Museveni Monday.

The meeting comes after both sides missed Saturday's deadline to form a national unity government as mandated in the agreement.

Amend constitution

Machar says the rebels first want to amend the current transitional constitution to incorporate last August's agreement, which recognizes only 10 states. But he said the South Sudan government wants to enshrine Kiir's 28 states in the new constitution.

"You know that even if you want to establish a company, you must have rules for establishing such a company. So the same for establishing a government, you need to have a constitution. In this case we need to amend the current transitional constitution so that it incorporates the agreement. The disagreement is that the government insists that the 28 states which they established 39 days after the agreement was signed, they insist that these 28 states be enshrined in the constitution. But the agreement says 10 states only," Machar said.

Ugandan troops are in South Sudan to prop up the South Sudanese government. President Museveni was influential in getting President Kiir to sign last August's peace agreement, after the South Sudanese leader had originally refused to sign the deal.

"I think it is time for President Yoweri Museveni to exercise his influence on President Kiir so that President Kiir drops the 28 states and we go forward and forge a constitution, and the transitional national assembly, then a government can be established," Machar said.

Reaction

South Sudan's information minister said Kiir's creation of 28 states does not hinder implementation of last August's peace agreement. Instead, Michael Makuei said the 28 states creation is an improvement of the peace deal because it benefits the rebels.

"If you go to the agreement you will find that whatever we have done is not a violation; it is an improvement, and it is an improvement to their interest because they will have six governors instead of having two; they will have 40 percent in 10 states instead of 40 percent in three," he said.

In addition, Makuei said the 28 states idea is popular with South Sudanese, and if the rebels want, the government is willing to provide funding to put the idea to a national referendum.
Multiple suicide bombers attacked a town in far northern Cameroon on Monday, killing at least 25 people and wounding others.

Local officials say up to four bombers blew themselves up in the town of Bodo on the Nigeria-Cameroon border. The town is in an area frequently targeted by Boko Haram militants.

The Reuters news agency cites an official as saying two bombers hit the towns central market, while others blew themselves up at the towns main entrance and exit points.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram.

The group has carried out numerous deadly attacks in northern Cameroon since 2013, when the government began cracking down on militants using the region as a base to launch attacks in Nigeria.

Earlier this month, two female suicide bombers attacked a mosque in the town of Kolofata, killing at least 10 other people. Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in Bodo last month but killed only themselves.

Cameroon is one of five countries taking part in a regional task force set up to fight Boko Haram. The militant group has killed an estimated 20,000 people and forced more than 2 million to flee their homes since launching its insurgency in 2009.

The group says it is fighting to establish a strict Islamic state in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria.
Republican Donald Trump is surging in Iowa with a week to go before the first votes are cast in the 2016 U.S. presidential election process.

A Fox News poll shows Trump moving into a big lead over Texas Senator Ted Cruz by a margin of 34 to 23 percent, with Florida Senator Marco Rubio in third place with 12 percent.

A new CBS News Battleground Tracker online poll shows Trump with a smaller lead over Cruz at 39 to 34 percent, with Rubio trailing at 13 percent.

These latest surveys show Trump gaining support with less than a week to go before the February 1 Iowa caucuses, the first official voting test of the 2016 campaign.

'I want to win Iowa'

Trump told supporters in Muscatine, Iowa, that he is making an all-out effort in Iowa. I want to win Iowa, I want to really win it, he said.

Trump's poll surge comes after Cruz was put on the defensive when Trump raised questions about his eligibility to be president because Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother.

The latest polls also show Trump holding a big lead in New Hampshire, which follows Iowa with the first in the nation presidential primary on February 9.

The latest Fox News poll shows Trump with 31 percent in New Hampshire followed by Cruz with 14 percent and Rubio at 13. Ohio Governor John Kasich received 9 percent support in New Hampshire followed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, both at 7 percent.

The polling news for Trump is also encouraging in South Carolina, which votes later in February.

The CBS News on-line poll has Trump ahead with 40 percent support from Republican primary voters, followed by Cruz at 21 percent and Rubio at 13 percent. The top Republican contenders meet for one more debate Thursday in Des Moines, their last before next Monday's caucuses.

Tight democratic race

Democrat Hillary Clinton and her main challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, remain locked in a very tight race in Iowa, according to the latest polls.

The CBS News Battleground Tracker online poll shows Sanders with a 1-point lead over Clinton, 47 to 46 percent, with a week to go until the caucuses.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is well back at 5 percent.

Sanders has also built a large lead in New Hampshire, according to the CBS poll, and now leads Clinton 57 to 38 percent, no doubt helped by the fact he is from neighboring Vermont.

Clinton, however, leads Sanders in South Carolina by a large margin, 60 to 38 percent.

Clinton supporters have long maintained their candidate will have an advantage in Southern states that vote later in the primary schedule and that could counterbalance success by Sanders in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

WATCH: A related video

Clinton has stepped up her attacks on Sanders in recent weeks, questioning his experience on foreign policy and accusing him of flip-flopping on the issue of gun control.

"I believe I have the experience, the judgment and the vision to get us back moving, further than we got with President [Barack] Obama,'' she told supporters in Iowa.

Sanders has been aggressive in responding not only to Clinton but to her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has also questioned whether Sanders could win the general election.

He told The Washington Post, Our campaign is not going to simply sit back and accept all of these attacks. We are going to win this thing.

Obama weighs in

Obama, who remains neutral in the Democratic race, also weighed in on the primary battle between Clinton and Sanders in an interview with Politico.

He described Clinton as wicked smart, but also said Clinton's experience in government has lead to her campaigning more in prose than poetry. He said Clinton came into the race with both the privilege and burden of being the perceived front-runner.

Obama contrasted Clinton's situation with Sanders' more idealistic approach and said Sanders has been able to tap into what he called a running thread in Democratic Party politics that encourages people to be full-throated in our progressivism.

He also said he understands why that view has appeal to Democratic voters.

Obama said that Republicans Trump and Cruz were exploiting anger and frustration within the Republican Party and expressed the hope that voters will settle down when they consider who do we want actually sitting behind the [Oval Office] desk.

Eight years ago, Obama rocked the political world with his first-place finish in Iowa over challengers John Edwards and Clinton.

The Democratic primary battle in 2008 went on for months, but Obama was able to hold his lead after his initial victory in Iowa.

Obama told Politico that his time campaigning in Iowa and his eventual win there was the most satisfying political period in my career.
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In Malawi, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund or UNICEF is carrying out a mass screening exercise for malnutrition in children under 5 years of age, in 25 of the country's 28 districts.

The exercise is in response to a recent vulnerability assessment report, which revealed that 2.8 million people in Malawi are facing food shortages.

Early one morning, the Chamba screening center in Malawi's old capital, Zomba, is jam-packed with mothers who want their babies screened for malnutrition.

Little food or work

Eliza Kadeya's 3-year-old child was diagnosed as malnourished.

The resident of Chiwanganya village told VOA she was not surprised.

"We don't have food and it is becoming difficult even to find piecework to earn money for buying some food. And, for example, most of the babies you hear crying here is because of hunger," Kadeya said.

Malawi is currently facing the worst food shortage in a decade, largely because of flooding and drought that hit the country last year.

Recent reports from communities and villages indicate an increasing food shortage and hunger problem.

Health screenings

The government has been implementing its malnutrition screening and treatment program since 2002 in more than 90 percent of the county's districts.

But statistics show that 50 percent of children are being seen and treated, largely because of a lack of medical supplies in public health facilities.

UNICEF said its screening exercise, supported by Britain's Department for International Development, seeks to ensure that almost all malnourished children across the country are being taken care of.





In Zomba alone, UNICEF seeks to screen about 6,000 children through its Community Management of Acute Malnutrition program.

Gilbert Dachi, UNICEF's nutrition specialist, said, "We can take care of these children through supplementary feeding programs meant for children with moderate acute malnutrition. We can also take care of them through an outpatient therapeutic program where we give them therapeutic feeds.

"The other aspect is when we get children with severe acute malnutrition, we still refer them for care at any nutrition rehabilitation center," Dachi said.

Affects development

Medics say if left unattended, malnutrition can be retrogressive to development.



Maggie Chiwaula, nutrition specialist in Malawi's Ministry of Health, said, "When children are malnourished, it means the caretakers will be busy taking them to hospitals for medical help. And when the child is sick [he or she] cannot understand at school. And also parents cannot even have time to go out in the fields and maybe do business when a child is sick."

Authorities said malnutrition cases can drastically decrease in Malawi if farmers are encouraged to switch from dependency on rain-fed agriculture to irrigation farming, a move they say would let them have food throughout the year.

However, national malnutrition figures have in the past few years stabilized at 60 percent, except in flood-hit districts of Chikwawa, Phalombe and Nsanje.
The United Nations refugee agency and its partners are appealing for more than half a billion dollars to provide life-saving aid to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflicts in Nigeria and the Central African Republic. The funding would also assist the communities hosting the refugees.

While all eyes are trained on Syrias refugee crisis, the world has seemingly forgotten the conflicts playing out in Nigeria and Central African Republic  two of Africa's biggest humanitarian crises.

The United Nations reports nearly a quarter-million Nigerians have fled to neighboring countries to escape the brutal and murderous attacks of Boko Haram militants. And, it says ongoing instability and violence in the CAR has forced almost a half-million people to flee across borders.

The new U.N. appeal aims to help these refugees as well as the communities sheltering them in Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo.

Refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told tells the appeal will provide protection for the refugees as well as basic life-saving needs. These include food, health care, nutrition, shelter, water, hygiene and sanitation.

Also to looking at issues that normally do not get much public attention, such as education and livelihoods," he said. "When you have refugees displaced into neighboring countries, children lose their education. Families cannot make a decent living sometimes. They have difficulties with livelihoods. And, these elements are really, really important that you address them.

Edwards said these two humanitarian crises must not be forgotten, as the victims of the conflicts are still suffering. Unfortunately, he said, Nigeria and CAR have been out of the international headlines for a long time.

He said the international community is fooling itself if it believes these conflicts can be dismissed as localized problems.

These are regional problems because they are generating refugees into surrounding countries," he said. "Countries like Cameroon, for example, are seeing both Nigerian refugees and Central African Republic refugees on the one hand. And, this arc of crises and problems on the one hand extends further down toward South Sudan itself. Down toward DRC and other areas.



Edwards said these crises require comprehensive approaches if they are going to be properly resolved.
Three U.N. special investigators who visited three displaced persons camps in war-torn Borno State say Nigeria must do more to help its people, particularly its women and children.

Boko Haram's nearly seven-year quest to impose strict Islamic law across the country's northeast has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced more than two million others.

While some have fled to neighboring Chad, Cameroon or Niger, many have gone to displaced persons camps elsewhere in Nigeria.

The visiting investigators commended Nigeria's government for setting up institutions and laws to handle the reintegration of women and children displaced by the conflict, but said it wasnt enough.

Maud DeBoer Buquicchio, special investigator on the sale of children, child pornography and child prostitution, called for vocational training to help people subjected to violence get back on their feet. The insurgency has destroyed homes and livelihoods across Nigeria's northeast.

"We felt that there ... were insufficient measures taken to really empower the women and girls, to prepare them for a future full integration into society," Buquicchio said.

In recent months, Nigerian troops have rescued large groups of people taken captive by the militants; most were women and children. But former captives face stigma as they try to rebuild their lives.

"They are rejected sometimes by their families, Buquicchio said. They are rejected by the communities, and we believe that major effort should go into the clarification of these issues."

Urmilla Bhoola, special investigator on contemporary forms of slavery, spoke about the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the insurgents from the northeastern town of Chibok in 2014.

"We urge the government to increase efforts to locate these girls, or at the very least to provide feedback to their families and to their communities as to their well-being," Bhoola said.

The Chibok girls have been missing for 651 days.
A senior U.S. Treasury official is accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of corruption, saying the Kremlin leader uses his position to enrich friends and allies at the expense of others.

Adam Szubin, who oversees U.S. Treasury sanctions, makes the accusation in a BBC documentary scheduled for broadcast Monday evening. In the broadcast, Szubin says the U.S. government has known of Putins corruption for many, many years.

Other U.S. officials have made similar comments to reporters in private, but seldom in a public forum. The United States is seeking Russian assistance on Syria and other pressing issues.

In the BBC program, Panorama, Szubin says the United States has seen Putin enriching his friends, his close allies, and marginalizing those who he doesn't view as friends using state assets. Whether that's Russia's energy wealth, whether it's other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don't. To me, that is a picture of corruption."

A spokesman for Putin rejects the charges out of hand, according to the BBC. It quotes the Kremlin spokesman saying, none of these questions or issues needs to be answered, as they are pure fiction.
For months, the candidates who want to be the next U.S. president have been campaigning and debating as they try to convince voters that no one is better suited for the job. A week from Monday, voters in Iowa will finally get the first chance to give a tangible result to the race.

The February 1 Iowa caucuses kick off a process in which each state will vote, leading to the Democratic and Republican parties naming their candidate at conventions in July.

The latest polls indicate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is just about tied with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in Iowa. Former Maryland Governor Martin OMalley is far behind.

On the Republican side, billionaire Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are far ahead of the rest of the field of 12. Polls from the last week give Trump the edge.

There have been concerns among Republicans that if Trump is not chosen as the partys nominee, he might run an independent campaign and take a chunk of Republican voters with him.

Independent run

But it is Democrats who are potentially facing that scenario, with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg saying last week he is considering an independent bid in the November election.

The Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent has liberal views on such issues as gun control, abortion rights and immigration, putting him in line with Democrats.



Clinton appeared unconcerned about a Bloomberg run as she appeared on NBC television's Meet the Press.

"The way I read what he said is if I didn't get the nomination, he might consider (running). Well, I'm going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn't have to, Clinton said.



Sanders expressed displeasure about the possibility of another wealthy presidential contender.



Bloomberg, like Trump, is a billionaire, having earned his fortune in the media.



"This is not what, to my view, American democracy is supposed to be about, a contest between billionaires. If that takes place, I am confident that we will win it," Sanders said on ABC's This Week program.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is being pressed to ensure that democratic reforms and human rights are at the top of the agenda when he meets here Tuesday with Cambodias Prime Minister Hun Sen, leader of the ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP).

With opposition leader Sam Rainsy in self-imposed exile to avoid what is widely considered to be politically motivated defamation charges and 17 opposition members and activists in prison, rights groups say any improved diplomatic ties must be accompanied with Cambodian guarantees for reform.

Cambodia, by refusing to speak up with several other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations over territorial claims in the South China Sea, finds itself in a position of increasing political leverage in the U.S.-China race for influence in the region.

"Cambodia is actually one of the small countries that shouldnt have as much of an influence on that kind of political power play," said Ou Virak, a political analyst and founder of the Future Forum think tank. But with its membership in the 10-nation ASEAN, its "becoming a key country."

"But also because Cambodia is so close to China and has been somewhat of a Chinese pawn in the sense of an ASEAN unity," he said, "Cambodia has now become a key small country for the U.S. real pivot to Asia."

Bilateral trade, stronger ties on agenda

Kerry will visit Phnom Penh to discuss bilateral trade and strengthening ties with the Cambodian government ahead of a summit with ASEAN leaders and President Barack Obama in California next month.

Since the early 1990s, aided by favorable tax preferences on exports to the United States and European Union, Cambodias garment industry has grown from close to 1 percent of GDP to close to 10 percent. In the first six months of 2015, the sector employed more than 600,000 workers and produced exports valued at more than $3 billion.

This is the greatest economic contribution from the U.S. to Cambodia, said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

But he added that it comes with conditions, which include promoting human rights and democratic reforms in the country.

China, on the other hand, doesnt apply the same conditions when making loans for much-needed infrastructure  such as roads and hydro dams  in one of Asias fastest-growing countries, Siphan said.

"We understand from the West it is sustainability that we wish and we respect that, and from China we dont mind what way they rule the country," he added, "but we want a good partner in the economys survival."

Siphan defended the government against allegations of rights abuses, saying the U.S needs to change its "one size fits all policy" and have a deeper understanding of diversity in ASEAN.

"We are educated from the United States and we understand that, but you cannot force everyone to eat hamburgers," he said, adding that Cambodia remains constitutionally neutral in its relationships with Beijing and Washington.

Alternate view

Unsurprisingly, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party sees things differently.

According to opposition lawmaker Son Chhay, the Hun Sen government views U.S. foreign policy as encroaching on its sovereignty, which has led the ruling party to lean toward China. He said that country has done little to support economic development in Cambodia.

"Chinas interest is exploiting the country resources," he said. Its "not interested in democracy or human rights or fair trade. They see Cambodia as a country that they can exploit for whatever they need for the Chinese economy."

Chhay agreed that Cambodia needs to remain neutral. But he said his partys values more closely align with those of the United States, which he said is obliged to uphold them in Cambodia.

"You cannot use Cambodia and try to be nice and look the other way when it comes to the interest of the United States over this Chinese issue," he added.

ASEAN summit in California

Meanwhile, following a narrow victory for the ruling party in the highly contested 2013 elections, analysts say the prime minister will seek a public relations coup with his trip to California for the ASEAN summit February 15 and 16.

"I think that close relationships with Washington offer him prestige and legitimacy, and his visit to California next month for the US-ASEAN summit is interpreted within the Cambodian government as a victory," said Sebastian Strangio, Phnom Penh-based journalist and author of "Hun Sen's Cambodia."

Political analyst Ou Virak said the United States would expect some concessions from Hun Sen in return for that legitimacy, something the prime minister and his ruling CPP have planned for well in advance with charges leveled at the opposition.

"The question is, can Kerry get the commitment of Hun Sen and the CPP in a way that is concrete enough, in a way that is going to last long enough and is going to be significant enough in shaping the future of regional security?" he asked.
The director-general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, is calling for rapid action to tackle the growing threat of emerging diseases. At the opening of the agencys week-long Executive Committee session, the WHO chief warned some major global health threats will demand urgent, collaborative action in the months ahead.

Chan appeared chastened when she told some 1,000 delegates attending the meeting that hard lessons have been learned from the Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

WHO was slow off the mark in addressing this unprecedented outbreak, causing the deadly virus to wreak havoc in West Africa and cause panic around the world before measures to contain the disease were fully implemented.

Reform



After a lot of soul searching and advice from experts, WHO has begun a reform process. Dr. Chan said she is determined to change the way the WHO responds to outbreaks and emergencies.

Ebola taught the world that an outbreak in any part of the world can have global repercussionsIn a profoundly interconnected world, there is no such thing as a local outbreak and there is no such thing as a faraway war. As some assessments of the Ebola response have concluded, having strong public health infrastructures and capabilities in place in vulnerable countries is the first line of defense against the infectious disease threat, said Dr. Chan.

In the wake of Ebola, Chan said health officials are more alert to alarming signals coming from the microbial world. She cited the devastation caused by last years MERS outbreak in Korea, a country with an advanced health system.

Tackling emerging diseases



She said tackling emerging diseases becomes even more problematic in developing and emerging economies. She warns of the explosive spread of Zika virus to new geographical areas, with little population immunity. Zika is a mosquito-borne disease that is believed to cause neurological problems in newly born babies.

Chan flagged antimicrobial resistance as a danger of the utmost urgency. She said more must be done to counter the growing threat from non-communicable diseases.

She cautioned the world to be on alert to the emerging health consequences from climate change. She said programs must be sharpened for dealing with more outbreaks of cholera and dengue. Chan said more people will suffer from indoor and outdoor pollution and be vulnerable to health problems resulting from extreme weather events.
China's official Xinhua news agency said two Chinese nationals have been killed and a third wounded in a bomb attack in neighboring Laos.

The incident happened Sunday as the trio was traveling in a vehicle in the remote mountainous province of Xaysomboun. Xinhua said one of the victims is an employee of a Chinese mining company.

Officials from China's Embassy in Vientiane visited the survivor in the hospital, and are demanding a swift investigation.

Beijing has become a major diplomatic and economic investor in Laos in recent years, pouring huge sums of money in Laos' abundant natural resources sector. Xinhua said a special envoy of President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit this week.

Sunday's incident occurred as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Laos on the first stop of a three-nation visit to Asia.
Some illegal vendors are back on the streets of Harare, a few months after they were forcibly removed in what the government claimed were moves designed to clean up cities and towns that were hosting millions of Zimbabweans seeking a decent way of making money.

Most cities and towns in Zimbabwe removed illegal vendors from streets in July last year following an order by Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who threatened to fire local authority officials that did not heed his directive.

Kasukuwere said the illegal vendors had turned most urban centers into an eyesore as they were selling different wares harpharzadly and carpeting streets with litter.

The local authorities descended on the vendors with an iron fist as they confiscated their wares and forced them to desert undesignated selling bays.

But this has not deterred them from going back to where they were forcibly evicted by municipal security officials and the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

Some of the dejected illegal vendors say they have decided to come back and sell their wares in the city center as they cant make ends meets in designated council vending sites, which are far away from good vending points.

Studio 7 caught up with some of them in the Harare central business district where it had become a no-go area for such merchants.

One of them is Tafadzwa Tirivavi, a vendor who sells his wares along First Sreet. He said he will not abandon his business even if the local authority and the police confiscate his wares.

 As vendors we will not move out of the streets until we have been allocated proper vending sites. Currently the vending sites council availed are too far away from the customers and not enough for all of us. Even if they take our wares we will continue coming back to the streets.

His colleagues echoed the same views, saying they have no alternative means of making a living as most companies have either stopped operating or scaled down production due to the current harsh economic situation in Zimbabwe.

Samuel Wadzanai, director of the Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation, said illegal vendors will stay put as long as the Harare City Council does not provide adequate vending cites.

You have seen that we have reappeared in the streets despite the force they tried to use to remove us from the streets. The issue is not about just removing us but it's about providing an alternative and unless there are alternatives, vendors will continue to come back into the streets to enable us to look after families under these difficult economic conditions.

We are back in the streets with full force and the harassment is continuing but we are not going to go back and die at home. We will continue to look after our families from the streets.

Wadzanai said the collapsing structures that had been put at the designated places are a sign that some resources were allegedly looted by some council officials.

This was a clear waste of resources. The reason why we have these shaky structures is because somebody is looting from the arrangement. They will put a budget of thousands of dollars yet they have only used $100,000 to erect the tents. We urge them to be serious and use national resources in a serious manner.

UNSUITABLE VENDING SITES

Promise Mkwananzi, director of Zimbabwe Informal Sector Organisation, concurred adding that the designated new vending sites were not suitable for business.

It is unfortunate that we had a total waste of the minimum resources. We had to build structures in areas that aren't strategic for the market for the vendors. Council goes on to build infrastructure that is not durable because of corruption taking place. People built cheap things and pocketed the money for themselves rather than building sustainable development facilities for the country.

Mkwananzi warned council that without consultations they will not win the war against vendors.

Some of the vendors had moved who got places but the vending sites are too far away from the market and they are moving back but more importantly the vending sites were few. The chasing away of vendors is not going to work. It is not the solution. What needs to happen is a dialogue. Identify strategic areas where we can put vending sites and ensure the vending sites are were their business will thrive.

Meanwhile, the 16 vendors that were arrested last year during skirmishes with local authority municipal security officials and the Zimbabwe Republic Police when they resisted being pushed out of the central business district, currently facing trial.

They are facing charges of resisting a lawful order, among other issues. Wadzanayi said the case has been postponed several times. The trial continues on January 28.
Teacher unions and the general public are up in arms with the government over a proposal by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa to slash teachers salaries if they dont achieve a pass rate of more than 50 percent at their schools.

Chinamasa made the proposal when he announced his national budget last year.

According to the proposal, teachers at schools that dont achieve a 50 percent pass rate will forego their April, August and December salaries.

The move, according to Chinamasa, is expected to cut the civil service wage bill. Indications are that as from next year teachers would have to earn according to the results they produce throughout the year.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that most schools in Matabeleland do not record the proposed 50 percent pass rate, some even go as low as zero percent.

Former Education Minister David Coltart told Studio 7 the proposal is not fair, especially in schools where there are no books and other education infrastructure.

Im deeply concerned by this news, I think its going to undermine education and the teaching profession in Zimbabwe and I think its going to discriminate against rural teachers in particular, he said.

Coltart said although he is a person, who believes in incentives, this move is going to paint all teachers with one brush.

His sentiments were echoed by Progressive Teachers Union Zimbabwe representative for Bulawayo, Vusumuzi Mahlangu, who added that it is a very unfortunate decision.

We all know as educators that there are many factors that contribute to someones performance, for instance theres the issue of textbooks, the resources, the learning environment, he said.

He further noted that if there was a precedent to be set then government has to start from the ministries going down.
Zimbabwe says it will soon introduce strict water conservation measures as the El Nino weather phenomenon is causing havoc in the country.

Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri told journalists in Harare on Monday this move has been necessitated by low water levels in national dams.

Muchinguri Kashiri said most local dams are less than 50 percent full, a situation which is raising alarm as they are usually full at this time of the year.

She said, Our current dam levels are lower than expected when compared to the same period last year and most of these dams do not have water to last us until the next season. This paints a very bleak situation as some towns and cities will have to resort to strict water management strategies.

As I speak some of the dams in Zimbabwe are drying up. For example in Manicaland, Osborne Dam used for irrigation stands at 33% full, Chesa Mazowe Dams in Mashonaland Central used for water supply and irrigation are 33% full 

She said this would force Zimbabwe to come up with strict water utilization measures meant to conserve the precious liquid.

Rains have been scarce in the country due to the El Nino weather system, which is affecting millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Meanwhile, some villagers in Manicaland province are now selling cattle for as low as $10 a beast due to the current dry spell that has killed thousands of livestock in Zimbabwes drought-prone regions
The second episode of Showtimes Billions is even more confident than the first, with sharper dialogue and a focused structure. As the writers get more accustomed to these characters and the actors get more comfortable playing them, theres reason to believe this show will only get stronger.

Naming Rights opens just like the premiere episode, with a man in his underwear. This time, its Bobby Axe Axelrod (Damian Lewis), putting on a stylish outfit. (I bet he wears a new suit every day.) Hes talking to his right-hand man Mike (David Costabile), who isnt too happy about the publicity backlash from Axes mansion purchase. Its already backfiring, in fact: One of their biggest investment groups is threatening to take their $1.5 billion and walk. As Axe heads to the helicopter on his front lawn, Mike advises him to keep it low-key. He might be the least low-key person on television.

Director Neil Burger makes a clever cut from opulence to Chinese takeout, as U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) eats dinner with his right-hand man, Bryan (Toby Leonard Moore). They have a relatively funny chitchat  maybe, they joke, Rhoades will become the namesake of a dish called General Chucks  but they soon get serious, discussing how they plan to keep Axe under a microscope. They need to watch all of his trades and keep an eye on all of his investors; he wont stay quiet for long. To underscore Axes inability to lay low, this scene is intercut with another, in which Axe attends a fundraiser at the Ellis Eads Symphony Hall  then suddenly decides he wants the building.

While Chuck chows down on General Tsos chicken, we meet Tara Mohr (Annapurna Sriram), who works in the U.S. Attorneys office. Shes introduced half-naked, having sex with another woman and snorting cocaine off her bare chest. (Soon after, we learn that her sexual partner is videotaping the encounter.) Mid-bacchanal, Tara is interrupted by a phone call; someone from the Financial Journal wants a quote about Steven Birch (Jerry OConnell) and Arcadian Railroad. Tara calls Chuck and Bryan, who are taken off-guard. How could the paper have known about an insider-trading scandal before them?

Back at the symphony hall, Axes head attorney echoes Mikes advice to pull back on the showy displays of wealth. (He even suggests a makeover of Axe Capitals culture.) Axe makes it clear that hell never settle, and then, the Penn Jillettehosted fundraiser begins. The host asks anybody willing to donate $1 million to stand up  and many do. This is how the one percent spends its Saturday nights. Mike gets a text about the Financial Journal scoop, as does everyone else in the room. Birch sits down, nervously.

In the episodes most fascinating scene, were privy to a brainstorming investment session at Axe Capital. Pay careful attention to the vocabulary and tone of this meeting; its like a fraternity pep rally. Everyone is trying to show off to each other, quoting Goodfellas, referencing The Matrix, joking about bestiality and nuts. When a meek Donnie Caan (David Cromer) mentions the bland appeal of Apple, Mike practically punches him in the face. Axe plays Good Cop, for now.

As the meeting ends, SEC compliance officers show up, expecting full cooperation. We get a montage of interview meetings between the officers and Axe Capital employees. Several of them mention tips and insider information; others have gaps in their records; one just says lawyer. They even check Wendys (Maggie Siff) access, although she argues confidentiality. As the ordeal ends, Axe reveals that it was a lifeboat drill  and they all sank. If it was a real SEC raid, theyd be in jail. In fact, the fake SEC officers are the firms new compliance department. An employee named Victor (Louis Cancelmi) calls out the mean trick, then gets even angrier at the implication that he wont really be able to do his job. Axe fires him in front of everyone. Is it a good idea to fire a disgruntled employee with insider information? Wendy senses this risk immediately, telling Axe that he shouldnt have done it. (Also, she tells him, he should have kept her in the loop about the drill.) He asks her to fix the Victor situation.

Sticking with Axe again  he gets a lot more screen time than Rhoades  we see him meet with the man in charge of naming the symphony hall. They own the building for perpetuity, but everything is for sale. Axe offers $100 million to the symphony, plus $25 million to the Eads family, who he knows need the money. There is one condition, though.

Cut to Axes muscle, Hall (Terry Kinney), in Taras apartment. Hes her newest and bestest, or else the sex-and-drugs tape goes viral. Hes even got her hair as blackmail collateral. The rules are simple: If she wants to keep her job, shell tell him everything that goes down in Rhoadess office. Youre gonna watch, listen and report, Hall orders.

The next two scenes with Chuck further define this increasingly interesting character. Hes a man who needs to be seen as unbreakably tough, but sometimes questions his purpose. First, he ambushes Michael Dimonda (Sam Gilroy), the reporter who asked him about Axe Capital last episode, knowing that he wrote the Financial Journal article under a false byline. Mike doesnt fall for Chucks intimidation tactic, however, and basically threatens him. Later, Chuck goes to buy donuts from a food vendor and runs into a man who he helped send to prison. Chuck foolishly offers to buy the mans food, not realizing that his act of charity would backfire. This scene is about the human cost of prosecution, and Chuck clearly has some doubts. Why should a single mistake separate this man from his family for four years?

Meanwhile, Wendy is in damage-control mode with Victor. At his palatial estate, shes typically tough, telling him the story of a guy who made the mistake of badmouthing Bobby Axelrod and couldnt get a job again. Now? Hes got a blog. On the other hand, Axe will take care of Victor if he acts like a gentleman. Siff continues to impress in Naming Rights, as she believably captures the steel-eyed determination that makes Wendy an equal to both Axe and her husband. She knows when to be tough with the former and when to be soft with the latter, which leads her to deliver the episodes best line to Chuck: Being 100 percent good at your job and 100 percent good  if you figure that one out, lets both quit and write that book.

After a massage-parlor conference with Mike doesnt do enough to keep major money on the hook, Axe interrupts a dinner between Ken (Dennis Boutsikaris), a more conservative financial manager, and their shared client. Axe pulls a brash alpha-male move, pointing out how he makes 32 percent for his client, while Ken only makes two percent. The client steps aside to talk with Axe, then tells him that he wants solid investments, not edginess. Sometimes thats important.

More importantly, Chuck figures out that Birch was just a riderless horse  borrowing a line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, its a ruse that distracts from the posses real target  and decides to offer him a settlement. Chuck wants to get back to hunting the real villain. Birch takes the settlement, if only to avoid 11 years in prison, while Tara lurks in the hall to pass the news back to Hall.

Finally, we get to the meeting about the symphony halls naming rights. Axe arrives wearing a Master of Puppets Metallica T-shirt, both showing his disdain for old money and revealing a title hed probably give himself if he could. (Also, reminding me I should listen to Battery again.) Chad Eads (Alex Cranmer) doesnt remember him, but it turns out Axe caddied for the Eads family when he was a kid  until Chads grandfather fired him. Sure, he only made $16 a round, but he needed that money. Thats why he slashes $16 million from the $25 million he brought to the meeting. Consider it a vengeance payment. Axe never forgets.

Other Notes:
Clea Duvall (back row, middle) in a shot from The Intervention. Photo: Burn Later Productions

Being a first-time filmmaker with a movie at Sundance is a nerve-racking, exhausting endeavor. Even worse? Also being one of the leads. As Clea Duvall, the writer/director/star of The Intervention, revealed during the Vulture-moderated Women in Film panel and celebration in Park City, I woke up every day not knowing how we were going to get done what we needed to get done.

The Women in Film event, now in its tenth year, was a discussion between female directors who had films in the festival, and Duvall was sitting alongside fellow panelists Meera Menon (Equity), Sian Heder (Tallulah), Maggie Greenwald (Sophie and the Rising Sun), and Sheena Joyce (A Hug From Paul Ryan) as she discussed her experiences working on The Intervention. Despite having a number of credits to her name, including Girl, Interrupted, Argo, American Horror Story, and Better Call Saul, Duvall admitted that starring in her own movie lent itself to a special kind of anxiety.

I was by far the worst actor in the movie, she said, eliciting laughs from the crowd. Directors are your safety net. They are looking out for you and want you to succeed. They see you in a way that you cant see yourself. None of us have the skill to perceive ourselves the way others do. So trusting myself in a whole new way was really scary.

The conversation also inevitably touched on pay equity in Hollywood, the struggle for women directors to get hired, and the often-painful dilemma of when and whether to have children. Heder, a veteran writer-producer on Orange Is the New Black, said she was pregnant with her second child before and during production on the Ellen Page vehicle Tallulah  and she dreaded telling her financiers for fear they would pull out of the project.

I even ate an oyster at a dinner meeting to play it off like nothing was going on, said Heder, who joined with Joyce  also with a child in tow at the festival  in voicing frustration that the festival doesnt offer child care for filmmakers traveling with their families.

It would be a huge help, but its hard regardless, said Heder. I mean, I was across the street pumping before the panel started.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend returns from its winter hiatus Monday night, and one of its new musical numbers stars Valencia in a send-up of Lilith Fairinspired female-empowerment songs, Women Gotta Stick Together. Josh Chans girlfriend, played by Gabrielle Ruiz, opens wearing suede boots and an uncharacteristically bright smile before singing, Women have the power, the power to make a change. Like this girl should pluck her eyebrows, and those jeans should be exchanged. What, you thought Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would do a straightforward female-empowerment song?

What we were trying to get at comedically was the ways in which women express competition in their own way, which is through an intense passive aggression, said Aline Brosh McKenna, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator and executive producer with Rachel Bloom. Its an ode to passive-aggressive compliment-insults. Complisults. We should coin that. During the episode, Rebecca tries to become a part of Joshs crew as another way of inching closer to her crush. Of course, Valencia sees through her but decides to invite her along on their weekend beach trip, hoping that when spending time with them, Rebeccas true motivations will be exposed.

Valencia is in some ways Rebeccas nemesis, but what were trying to do with the song is show that shes someone whos been socialized to see women as rivals. As much as shes an antagonist, in this case, shes kind of right. Shes not wrong that someones trying to sneak up on her man, said McKenna. If you look at the story from Valencias perspective, this loon showed up in town and started chasing her boyfriend and denying that shes doing so. I think she has a completely legit point of view, dont you?

The ensuing fantasy song is a crystallization of Valencias worldview, in which shes helping other women in the only way she knows how: by insulting them. If you stopped and asked her, she thinks that shes saying nice things because shes so internalized a kind of passive-aggressive mean-girl voice that she doesnt quite realize that shes insulting these women, said McKenna. Call it girl negging.

Girl negging is a really specific thing, said McKenna. I had a friend in the seventh grade confide to me very helpfully that if I didnt deal with my unibrow, I would never get a boyfriend. She for sure thought she was being helpful. I think one of the things with women is that their aggression is couched in helpfulness. She continued, Once the women have been told they smell like sausages, shes emancipated them to do something about it. You cant fix a problem until someone points it out!

Watch an exclusive clip of Valencia negging every girl in sight above.
In light of the news that Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat would be leaving the show after the 2017 season, to be replaced by Broadchurchs Chris Chibnall, Matt Smith, the 11th Doctor, chimed in on his friends departure. Im sad hes leaving Doctor Who, the actor said during a press junket for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Hes done so much for it and so much for me. He went on: He pretty much is Doctor Who, but the show will always endure and theres a wonderful writer coming in and as always, its about regeneration and reinvention of things. But he has done so much for the show and I feel very privileged that I got to work with what I think is the greatest writer. Current Doctor Peter Capaldi also recently hinted that he might depart the show, citing the insular world and unerring dedication it requires to portray the iconic time traveler.
Photo: Brian Burgoyne DP

One of the joys of Sundance is watching sweet, low-budget movies that bring together nice people whom you might never have thought to pair up. Such is the case with Molly Shannon and Jesse Plemons, who play dying mother and gay son in Saturday Night Live writer Chris Kellys first feature, Other People, an oftentimes funny look at a family dealing with cancer that earned the festivals prestigious opening-night slot.

The movie opens with Shannon having just died at home, with her family, including Plemons, Bradley Whitford as her husband, and Maude Apatow and Madisen Beaty as her daughters, weeping on the bed, when a friend calls the answering machine to check in  while ordering fast food at a drive-in. From there it rewinds nearly a year, to the moment when Plemonss character, David, a comedy writer fresh out of work who has just broken up with his longtime boyfriend (Zach Woods), moved home to Sacramento from New York to take care of his mother. Kelly has an eye and ear for little absurdities and human moments, like the hamburger-shop employee David spots masturbating on Grindr, the flamboyant friends kid whos obsessed with fake-marble interior decorating (a sensational J.J. Totah, a.k.a. the 14-year-old Who Won Sundance), the sad sex you have with your ex right before finally accepting your relationship is over, and the simple joys of lying in bed with your mom, who has cancer, when she lets loose a silent-but-deadly and you both have what may be your last good laugh.

We spoke with the delightful duo about farting, Plemonss dashed Star Wars dreams, and the funny things about death.

You guys had such a good rapport, especially in the farting scene.

Molly Shannon: Oh my God, that was so funny.

Jesse Plemons: So much fun. We got lucky. I think Chris maybe just figured that we would be a good pair.

MS: We were cracking up because we had the most intimate scene in bed the first day.

JP: Day one. The farting scene!

MS: We had only had one long lunch together, coffee, and then we jumped into that scene, but it was like, it was so easy and beautiful. I love that scene.

These feel like parts both of you might never have been offered before. Jesse, youre playing a very three-dimensional gay character, which you dont always seen onscreen.

JP: Im happy you think so, because I was nervous at times. I knew very well the pressure of taking that on.

MS: I felt that way, too. I felt like Ive never had a role like this. It was just so great to have Chris [Kelly] right there. Its a fictional film based on his family and experiences, so it was just so great having him right there guiding me, saying, Maybe do it like this. I talked to his moms best friend a lot about what she was like as a person, just to get a sense of her essence and her values and what she thought about cancer. Not that Chris wanted us to do impressions, but it really helped to get a sense of her heart and what was important to her.

Correct me if Im wrong, Jesse, but wasnt your scene with Zach Woods was your first male-on-male sex scene?

JP: Yeah.

My co-worker is gay, and he was like, I never knew that Gabe from The Office and Landry from Friday Night Lights making out was something that Id always wanted to see!

JP: [Claps and laughs.] Thats really funny.

MS: I had a friend who came to the premiere and he said, Ive never seen such a real gay character onscreen before, and the dialogue was so real. He just really loved it.

JP: Aside from even gay characters, it was such a specific moment in both of their lives, and theres this sort of underlying sadness, where you know its not going to work out but you still love the person, and youre going through a lot. Can we just please shut everything out and, like, get down for a second?

I feel like its something that people can relate to because the sex wasnt that good either.

JP: No, but it helped a little bit. The cuddling at the end probably helped more than anything else.

Was it the shirtlessness of it all intimidating for you?

JP: Ive been pretty close to being completely naked a few other times, so I wasnt that intimidated by that. I just really wanted to make sure that people bought it and bought that relationship, too. I was more nervous about that than making people see my gut.

For Fargo, you had to be a beefy guy, and then a lot of this movie is people making fun of your weight. Were you going into this movie carrying weight from some other project, and just had to go with it?

JP: Chris told me early on that he wanted a little bit of a gut, but I came in with a little more of a gut, which he was okay with. Honestly, it started with Black Mass. I got offered this crazy part that Id never done before, and the guy was a brick house, he was huge. So, it was like, If you can gain the weight, I want you to play this part. Then [Fargo creator] Noah [Hawley] wanted me to keep the weight. So I had no idea that it was going to be like a two-year-long heavy gut

But it kind of works for believing hes a comedy writer who sits around all the time.

JP: Oh, it totally does.

Have either of you had an experience of going back home and being stuck in your old life?

JP: Not for that long. I feel like everyone when they go home  theres a mix of its really nice and theres something odd about it. You see how things have either changed or not changed at all, and also how much youve changed since youve been back.

MS: I havent had that, really, but I loved the scene at the party where all the relatives know hes a comedy writer, so theyre like, I have a funny skit for you. You should put that in your show! I felt that way when I did Saturday Night Live and I would go home and youd have everyone telling you they had a funny idea. But then I also had the experience when I first went to New York City and was trying to be an actress, and struggling and working at restaurants as a waitress, and I remember going back home to Cleveland, and so many people gave up on what they really wanted to do. They went to school, but then moved back home, and I felt like, Actually, this is great. At least Im going for what I really want. I felt like even if I died trying, at least Im going for what I want and living a meaningful life.

What about the experience of being back in a small pond where everyone knows your business? In this movie, they all know that David is writing this ABC spec script, and then it doesnt happen. Didnt that happen to you recently, Jesse, where people knew you were up for a job and you didnt get it? Whats that like living that out in public?

JP: Oh, the Star Wars thing!

MS: I dont even know about this.

JP: Even after the movie was filmed, I would get calls from people like, Heard about Star Wars, congratulations! Its like, You heard some different information 

MS: Thats so funny, I dont even know anything about this. Ill ask you later.

JP: I had gone in and read, and then I was going to meet J.J. Abrams, and then, all of a sudden, it was released that I was going to do it.

MS: Whoa!

JP: Id only auditioned once, and I hadnt even met him yet. So that was bizarre because I heard from everyone. Im like, No. No, no, no. Stop it.

What was the experience for you after it didnt happen and that was out there?

JP: Its supportive. But the thing is, I was never a huge Star Wars fan. I watched them, but not religiously, like a lot of people do. And you dont get a full script, you get a couple pages of sides with no context. The first two or three days, I just couldnt get over the image of me holding a lightsaber. I just cracked up every time I thought about it.

That kid J.J. Totah is amazing. Has he taught you anything about interior decorating or twerking?

JP: Definitely twerking.

MS: The part was originally a little bit different, but then he came in to read for the part, and in real life, for the audition, he was like, Im so sorry Im late. Im marbelizing my and he talked all about what he was decorating. And Chris, being the amazing comedy writer that he is from SNL, was like, Ooh, Im going to write that into the script. So he wrote to his real personality and how he really was.

David has adventures on Grindr and OKCupid. Have either of you done online dating?

MS: Ive never done that.

JP: Ive taken a little spin on my friends before, but then I just end up feeling, Ugh.

This might be a downer way to end an interview, but have you learned anything interesting about death from doing this?

JP: I dont know if Id say I learned anything, but I feel like the whole time, we were just trying to make peace with it. There was that scene where were all gathered around Molly on her deathbed, when she cracked up. After we did it again, there was something sort of therapeutic, or cathartic. There was kind of a release almost, which was really interesting. But I dont know what you can learn about it other than its inevitable and it sucks.

MS: There are always funny things, too. Like, you think its so serious and sad, but in families there are really funny things that happen, fights that break out. When my dad was dying, he was giving his last bits of advice, and he was like [wheezes], giving my sister and I advice, but we could barely hear him. So, we were like, What? And he had to say something to me, and he was talking about show business, and he was like [wheezes], Small parts. We were like, [leaning in, listening and nodding intently] Small parts.

JP: [Laughs.]

MS: Oh, I have to set it up. I had just done a small part in this movie, Analyze This, and my dad really liked that. So, he was like, Small parts, and we were like, Small parts, and he was like [wheezes], in movies  And we were like, In movies. And he was like [wheezes], like Analyze This. We were like, Like Analyze This! And then he died. [Falls back on couch and pretends to be dead.] That was his last piece of advice: Dont ever underestimate an excellent small part in a movie. Isnt that great?

JP: Wow! Thats an amazing!

MS: And there was a woman in the room who brought up an ex-boyfriend of mine, and she was like, Who was that boyfriend you had? And my dad was dead, but then heard it and then woke up, put his hand up in the air like the end of Carrie, like, Arrrggggh! Like, Curse this guy! And then died.

This is a true story?

MS: Its a true story! Leave it to the Irish!
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The nonprofit group formerly known as the Waco Downtown Development Corp. is moving into 2016 with a more streamlined name intended to better describe what the agency does.

The new name, City Center Waco, reflects the nonprofit groups mission to represent an expansive area in Wacos historic core, executive director Megan Henderson said.

One thing we continue to raise awareness about is that our target area is not just the central business district or Austin Avenue, Henderson said.

The city of Waco helped launch the Waco Downtown Development Corp. in 2011 to implement the Imagine Waco Plan and is paying $239,000 this year to support it.

The area defined in the Imagine Waco Plan as Greater Downtown, now called City Center, stretches from Baylor University to Cameron Park and from North 25th Street to East Waco.

What were hopeful of is that in time people will perceive the city center independently of us, so neighborhoods and business districts will think of themselves as city center neighborhoods and business districts, Henderson said. Its not about us. Were about it.

Board members of the agency have been considering a name change for more than a year.

The legal entity known as Downtown Development Corp. actually dissolved last year in a merger with the nonprofit Heart of Texas Business Resource Center. By then, board members were ready to jettison the original name anyway, said Willard Still, past president of the board.

Its long and cumbersome, he said. And really, we dont develop anything. We play a support role, but were not a developer. . . . I really like the (City Center) name. I cant wait to see the logo.

The name change arrives just after the agency moved into a newly renovated space at 801 Elm Ave., formerly the offices of the Business Resource Center. Still said he thinks the combination of a name change and a move will elevate the profile of City Center Waco.

The building is outstanding, Still said. Now we have a place where we can receive important people who come to Waco who are wanting our assistance.

Mayor Malcolm Duncan Jr., who sits on the City Center Waco board, said he thinks the organization is living up to its promise.

I think anyone on the board would tell you there was a lot of skepticism first about how it would work, Duncan said.

He said the agency has brought together neighborhood groups, business people and community leaders to work together on a common vision for the central city.

I think its that unity of mission and purpose, Duncan said.
Considering that federal judges are increasingly under attack by conservatives as judicial activists with lifetime appointments who are accountable to no one, the Judicial Council of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals powder-puff reprimand of U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith for alleged sexual harassment, deceit, conflict of interest and failure to even realize the gravity of his misdeeds is stunning.

When the reprimand came down last month, some Trib readers reacted with slack-jawed astonishment: Among other things, the 75-year-old Waco-based federal judge was prohibited from taking any new cases for a year but was allowed to keep making more than $200,000 in annual salary. Which raises a legitimate question from John Q. Public: Is this punishment or a court-ordered vacation? Does the Judicial Council of the New Orleans-based appellate court grasp the message this sends to a skeptical public?

The council found that Judge Smith had indeed made inappropriate and unwanted physical and non-physical sexual advances toward a court employee in his chambers in Waco in 1998. It found he allowed false factual assertions to be made in response to the complaint, filed in 2014. And, through the lateness of his admissions, he helped drag out the court inquiry and heaped more taxpayer expense on it.

When we pressed the council to detail how much taxpayer expense Judge Smith added through deceit and delayed admission, it declined to release that figure to us. However, one can draw his own conclusion in the councils decision to even cite this aspect.

If thats not enough, the special committee assembled through the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Judge Smith did not follow appropriate procedures regarding recusal from cases in which his counsel in this matter was representing parties in his court. Thats an extremely grave offense in most legal circles.

And if all thats not enough, the council found Smith, faced with details regarding his sexual harassment of a court clerk (including kissing and groping), does not understand the gravity of such inappropriate behavior and the serious effect that it has on the operations of the courts. Thus, it recommended sensitivity training. Our question: Has this judge even a sense of right and wrong?

Its hard not to sympathize with New York-based attorney Ty Clevenger, formerly of Dallas, who found the council reprimand outrageous. He has appealed the decision to a higher judicial council in Washington, D.C.: At both the time of the incident and the time of my complaint, such an unwelcome assault would have been classified as a felony. Yet the Judicial Council imposed only a reprimand, a reduction in workload and sensitivity training.

Some will accurately note that Clevenger and Smith have a history of conflict that explains the formers crusade against the latter. Point well acknowledged. That still doesnt justify Judge Smiths actions, as determined by the judicial council, of sexually harassing a court clerk, impeding a judicial inquiry and confounding justice.

Because federal judges are appointed for life, standards of conduct must be higher than for other officials, including lawmakers and the president, where voters can clean house in time (assuming they value integrity). Were proud that Republican Congressman Bill Flores recognizes the need to pursue this matter to the point of impeachment if necessary. The findings in our view are that serious.

Its one thing for the public and politicians to rail on about the abuse of federal judicial power. And we have backed the federal judiciary in these battles. But when the judicial community itself ignores ethical misdeeds by its very own practitioners, it feeds the narrative that something is horribly amiss. And something is amiss here.
So many Filipinos are visiting Japan lately. I know so because my facebook feeds are filled with friends Japan holiday photos, as Im sure yours too. And my blog post on How to Apply for Japan Visa in the Philippines is getting a lot of hits. I myself have been to Japan 3x this year. And why not? With multiple entry Japan visa, weak Japanese Yen, and frequent Cebu Pacific sale, traveling to Japan is easier than ever for Filipinos.

You dont have to stop at Tokyo. More direct flights from Manila to other regions in Japan are becoming available with Cebu Pacific. For example, Cebu Pacific has direct flights to Nagoya 4x a week. So you should check out Nagoya this 2016.

Whats in Nagoya, Japan

Nagoya is probably most famous for its port (Port of Nagoya), the biggest and busiest port in Japan, responsible of 10% of its trade. It is also known for Toyota City, where the famous Toyota car brand was born. Shopping is also one of its known attraction. Nagoya is also one of the 4 cities in Japan where you can watch SUMO Wrestling, other cities would be Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka.

Also, because of its location, flying to Nagoya gives you the opportunity to explore nearby cities around Aichi prefecture such as Gamagori and the neighboring Gifu prefecture (Takayama and ShirakawaGo). Last October I had the chance to do just that.

Heres a list of things you can do and visit around Aichi and Gifu prefectures. You can easily visit these all in 4 days if youre the amazing race type or pace them out in a few more days. Some of these are worthy of more time.

1. Nagoya Castle

Whats a trip to Japan without a proper visit to an amazing castle? Nagoya Castle was built in 1610 during the Edo period, a cool time period in Japan history when the Shogunate ruled the country.

Nagoya Castle is one of the grandest castle ever built in Japan but was unfortunately bombed during the World War 2. Restoration has recently been completed and is today a main tourist attraction in Nagoya.

Nagoya Castle is in a huge complex with several structures, shrines, and park. The castle itself is a museum that houses artefacts from the Edo period. Also an attraction here is a group of actors dressed as Samurai Warrior. Theyre called the Nagoya Omotenashi Bushotai. They roam the castle and perform for guests.

On special occasions, theyd perform an elaborate historical skit that draws huge crowd. We were lucky to witness one during our visit however as the skit was in Japanese, I understood nothing but enjoyed the screaming and fight.

At the end of the show, we went to line up to have photo taken with our favorite Samurai. Because I didnt understand anything to know who was the most noble character, I only have looks to go with and my choice was Toshiie Maeda. haha . The Samurai Group also tours other cities and abroad to promote Nagoya Tourism.

2. Toyota City, Motomachi Plant Tour

Motomachi Plant Tour in Toyota City one of the most interesting thing you can do in Japans Aichi region. From an overhead bridge way, you can see how step by step how parts are assembled into a complete car. Observing from above, you cant help but be impressed how efficient the assembly line is.

Anyone who appreciates efficiency and zen should definitely visit this place. The tour will impart a lot of mission, mantra, and all good zen stuff that you can apply to your life. Entrance is free but have to be booked in advance. Tour is offered in English and Japanese. For more info on Toyota City Motomachi Plant Tour, click link to visit its website.

3. Gamagori Orange Park

Gamagori Orange Park is a huge citrus farm where visitors can enjoy fruit picking all year round. It is strange to be called the Orange Park because oranges are only available from October to November. Other fruits available for picking on different season of the year are strawberries, grapes, and melon.

Fruit picking is free as long as you eat it in the park. If you want to bring home fruits, youll have to pay 500JPY per basket.

The park has a big souvenir shop and restaurant that offers seasonal set menus. The souvenir shop sells different food produced in that region: Ebisenbei and Chikuwa Republic.

4. Laguna Ten Bosch

Laguna Ten Bosch is a huge marine complex situated in the Mikawa Bay. The complex consists of Festival Market shopping mall; Lagunasia: an ocean theme park; and restaurants. It was during weekday so we had the theme park to ourselves! We rode crazy roller coasters and ferris wheel. At night, we watched 3D Light Mapping (see video).

This is the birthplace of the famous One Piece Japanimation and in here, you can cruise on a life size Thousand Sunny Ship.





Continue to



Ready to go to Japan? Got your visa yet? If not, click photo for a simple guide to apply for your Japan visa.


The Australian of the Year Awards ceremony on the eve of Australia Day is celebrated by nominees, friends and family at an exclusive party on the lawns of Parliament House.

Events manager Julia Franklin has been tasked with organising the annual VIP gathering of Australia's leading citizens and role models for 12 years.

David Thatcher gives the stage a coat of paint. Credit:Graham Tidy

The event and cocktail party for 750-odd guests is not the biggest she has worked on, but she says its outdoor location makes it the most challenging.

"Because as you know, it's grass and a bit of road and a dusty old bus shelter, and we have to make it look absolutely gorgeous just for the day."
Australian political parties operate within a framework that encourages older men to dominate their membership, ACT Labor Party secretary Matt Byrne says.

He believes his party is doing enough to boost women in leadership positions, but that parties in general can do more.

There is a "lot of more work to be done" to achieve gender equality in politics. Credit:Rob Homer

"Fundamentally though political parties are still structured in such a way that benefits people who are time-rich, and that is usually older men," Mr Byrne said.

"I think that affirmative action has worked well and the endeavour to expand these principles throughout the ALP should be supported."
A storm passes over Australian of the Year ceremony. Credit:Andrew Meares

Emergency services received close to 480 calls for help in the capital after a hail storm and heavy rain battered the territory.

Two Tuggeranong women were hospitalised after a severe thunderstorm pelted Canberra on Monday night.

Intensive care paramedics were called to a home in Richardson after a woman fell off a ladder and broke her arm during the storm.

The 42-year-old was stabilised at the scene and taken to Canberra Hospital in a stable condition.

In a separate incident, an elderly woman sustained suspected spinal damage after a fall in Isabella Plains.

Paramedics also transported her to Canberra Hospital in a stable condition.
Camp Taji, Iraq: Camp Sosi is a maze of grey "T-walls", the concrete, blast-proof slabs that became a defining image of Iraq's slide into chaos after 2003.

Working with the canvas available to him, hospital emergency room head, newly minted grandfather and self-described "very amateur" painter Major Adrian Sweatman has created an Anzac mural on a T-wall outside the hospital at Camp Sosi where Australian and New Zealand forces are stationed.

He did it in between seeing 15 to 20 patients a day, most of them for gastric problems and diarrhoea, which are a virtual inevitability despite the rigid hygiene rules on the base.

"We like to call it coughs, colds and sore holes," Major Sweatman said.
A key Tony Abbott ally has welcomed the former prime minister's decision to stay in politics, dismissing suggestions the dumped ex-Liberal leader will seek to destabilise the government like Kevin Rudd did.

Senator Eric Abetz, a former cabinet minister and leader of the government in the Senate, said Mr Abbott had many "good years of service" left in him.

"Tony Abbott is absolutely no Kevin Rudd and therefore, I believe those sorts of analogies are not appropriate in any way, shape or form," he told ABC radio.
Bill does not forward chain emails. He does not take duck-faced selfies or click into schemes from Nigerian princes. He certainly doesn't play Candy Crush, Instagram his lattes or post vague, passive-aggressive Facebook statuses.

What Bill does do is instruct an audience of millions on some of the blunt details of social media etiquette: how to "share" and "connect" without alienating half your friends.

Since January 7, his stick-figured visage has attracted an audience of more than 1 million on an English-language Facebook fanpage, as well as fellow audiences in Spanish, Italian, Malaysian and Arabic. Whatever the language, the message is the same: "This is Bill. Bill does (blank). Be like him."

Be Like Bill.

"It's hard to put a finger on what exactly makes a good meme," said Debabrata Nath, one of two men behind Bill's most popular English-language Facebook page. "(But) we feel it has to be something that doesn't take itself too seriously, is simple to understand and at the same time can make people relate."
The state's anti-corruption commission will pursue two Ballarat police officers accused of excessive force against vulnerable women in their custody despite Victoria Police internal investigators finding no evidence of criminal conduct.

The two officers, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have had their suspensions lifted after a review of the allegations by the police Professional Standards Command.

IBAC is investigating claims of excessive force by Ballarat police officers. Credit:Rob Gunstone

The force watchdog found in December that the alleged conduct of the officers, a man and a woman, was not criminal.

The finding may put Victoria Police at odds with the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission, which says its investigation into the allegations is ongoing.
An 11-year-old boy has faced court over a two-day spree of alleged rapes and sex assaults in Perth's southern suburbs.

In Perth's Children's court today it was claimed that between March 9 and 10, the child raped two women and molested three others, including a woman aged 67.

The boy was the youngest of four boys charged with sexual offences against six women in total, who were aged between 16 and 67.

The boy, who was out on bail, had his bail conditions tightened after the state prosecutor successfully argued he was one of the worst offenders of the group.

In court today he appeared small and nervous sitting next to the older boys, while his mother sat at the back of the room with tears in her eyes.
Kalgoorlie has narrowly beaten four Pilbara mining towns to claim the unenviable title as the most expensive West Australian destination to fly to.

Statistics released by the Pilbara Regional Council for the week to January 20 show the average Qantas return fare to the Goldfields town cost $606, or $0.55 per kilometre of travel.

Qantas' domestic capacity growth will be up to 1.5 per cent lower. Credit:Glenn Hunt

The figure is more than three times the cost to travel from Perth to Melbourne at $0.16 per kilometre while a return Perth to London flight cost $0.07 per kilometre.

Newman [$0.39], Paraburdoo [$0.38], Port Hedland [$0.36] and Karratha [$0.29] rounded out the top five most expensive WA Qantas flights per kilometre, according to the PRC statistics.
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.
He has been cited by Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, featured at Real Clear Politics and Lucianne.com and interviewed on radio, TV and in social media.





Inducted into the Philadelphia Public Relations Hall of Fame, for many years he served as a Lecturer in Corporate Communication at Penn State University. A former President of the Philadelphia Public Relations Association (PPRA) he has lectured at Rowan University, Temple University, The College of New Jersey and Arcadia University. He has conducted workshops on public relations for thousands of participants throughout the nation and has taught countless others the art of public speaking. He has also advised numerous lawyers, judges, public officials and political candidates.





Cirucci is a prolific writer and his op-ed pieces have appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier-Post and other publications.



A native of Camden NJ, Cirucci is a former President of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. Cirucci served as Associate Executive Director of the Philadelphia Bar Association for nearly 30 years. He served as Chair of Penn State University's Professional Advisory Board for the Corporate Communication major at Penn State Abington and on the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Judicial Selection Commission.



He received his MA degree from Rowan University and his BA from Villanova University. He has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rowan's public relations program and received the E. A. "Wally" Richter Leadership Award, the highest honor from the National Association of Bar Executives' Communications Section. He has also been honored by numerous other local, state and national groups.









Cirucci's passions include politics, the popular culture, books and authors, art, communication, music, theatre, movies, dining and travel. In his hometown of Camden, Cirucci taught fifth grade at the Ulysses Wiggins Elementary School named for the founder of the Camden NAACP. There he was one of the first teachers in the country to teach African-American history to inner city students. He later served as editor of a local weekly newspaper, as Assistant to the Township Manager of Cherry Hill Township and as Associate Director of Communications at the New Jersey State Bar Association.

He's Dan Cirucci, the founder and editor-in chief of the Dan Cirucci Blog, Matt Rooney's sidekick on Save Jersey's videocasts and one of the most widely honored public relations professionals in his field. He's also been a public relations consultant to numerous organizations and individuals and hosted The Advocates on RVN-TV.
Kentucky State Police are looking for a missing Monticello woman last seen in Hopkinsville
By Joe Jackson Jan. 24, 2016 | 08:41 PM | MAYFIELD, KY

A wreck Saturday afternoon in Graves County left one man injured and another man charged.

According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, the crash happened around 4:50pm at KY 58 East and Airport Road. Deputies said 28-year-old Andrew Weston of Arkansas was pulling his vehicle and trailer onto Airport Road when he got stuck in the snow and ice. Weston told deputies he started flagging traffic because his trailer was still in the westbound lane of KY 58.

Deputies said 58-year-old Teddy Sharpe was traveling westbound on KY 58 East when he struck Westons trailer causing the trailer to strike Weston. Weston was transported by Mayfield/Graves County EMS to Jackson Purchase Medical Center for treatment of his injuries.

Sharpe was arrested and charged with DUI. He was lodged in the Graves County Detention Center.
By The Associated Press

By The Associated Press Jan. 23, 2016 | 07:21 PM | TORONTO, CANADA

Police say a 17-year-old has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting at a school and home in western Canada.

Police said Saturday the male suspect can't be named under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police say nine people were shot in the school, two fatally. Seven people wounded in Friday's shooting at the school are hospitalized.

Police say two brothers, 17-year-old Dayne Fountaine and 13-year-old Drayden, were shot dead in a home before the gunman headed to the La Loche Community School.

The suspect was arrested outside the school on Friday afternoon.

The school is in the remote Dene aboriginal community of La Loche in Saskatchewan Province.
By Jim Waters Jan. 24, 2016 | 10:01 PM | LEXINGTON, KY

By Jim Waters

Like churches and politicians, no legislation is perfect.

It, like all of us in fact, is flawed because it's written by sinners, some of whom have taken the necessary steps to find redemption.

Of course, in the eyes of God, sin is sin. Period.

Sin enjoys no sliding scale or grading on the curve with the Almighty.

There's no such thing as Class C Idolatry or Third Degree Adultery as sub-categories of the Ten Commandments.

However, the Mosaic law's criminal-justice system's punishments fit the crimes and no more. Wisdom dictates we make attempts  imperfect though they may be  to return to that approach.

An effort led by Reps. Darryl Owens, D-Louisville, and David Floyd, R-Bardstown, to offer Kentuckians who have committed low-level, nonviolent, nonsexual or non-abusive crimes and fully served their sentences the opportunity of expunging their records has cleared the state House each of the past few years  including House Bill 40 this year  by overwhelming bipartisan margins.

While Gov. Bevin supports an expungement policy, the Kentucky Senate has drug its proverbial feet.

The most vocal of a handful of legislators opposing this proposal is talented attorney Rep. Robert Benvenuti III, R-Lexington, who encouraged legislators to "not look at this in broad brushes" and to "make thoughtful decisions based on the facts because you can expunge somebody's record, but you can't expunge facts.

You can't expunge behavior. That's the reality."

True. So let's give Benvenuti the opportunity to expunge from his alternate reality that this bill is loose, dangerous and lacking a thoughtful approach.

It may not be perfect, but it's certainly not a get-out-of-jail-free policy.

Rather, it requires those who have committed low-level, nonviolent felons to complete jail sentences, pay all court-ordered fines and restitution and wait five years, during which time they must live squeaky clean, before petitioning the court  all to get a single low-level felony offense removed from their criminal record.

Common sense dictates that if someone's avoided trouble and navigated that long maze, the risk of them backsliding criminally is negligible.

"Remember, we're talking about people who have committed a low-level nonviolent felony offense once in their life," Owens said. "If you've got two or three, this bill doesn't help you."

We should, however, help single mothers like Rebecca Collett, who  like too many in their younger years  became, in her words, ensnared before she "ever heard the word addiction" and "started making partying a priority and everything else was placed on the back burner."

It landed her a 22-month stint in Hardin County Detention Center's substance abuse program.

While the facility did a stellar job of providing Collett with the tools needed to overcome her addiction, it could do nothing about relieving the additional "time" she's been forced to serve since her release.

"Once I was out of jail, I was reunited with my children; I was eager to begin our journey together," she said. "But what I didn't know was that my sentence was far from over."

Collett couldn't catch a break. "At every interview I was turned down  even at fast-food restaurants," because she had to admit being a felon. "I finally got a job at a local McDonald's, but it wasn't near enough to support my family."

Even as she started seeking to further her education, "I was still plagued with the wreckage of my past."

Collett's determined persistence has kept her drug-free for seven years and will in May land her a Master's Degree in Science and Social Work from the University of Louisville.

"I'm committed to supporting others on their path to recovery," she said. "I strive to be the best parent I can be to my amazingly beautiful and wonderful children. I am by no means perfect, but I know I deserve a second chance."

She and 94,644 of her fellow Kentuckians.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky's free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.
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The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn have announced plans for an ambitious capital project which will update and transform the venue's auditorium and front of house spaces.

Work is scheduled to begin this summer and plans are to complete in 2017.

Arts Council England have contributed 3.1 million to the scheme and a public campaign to raise additional funds is yet to be announced.

The project should increase the size of the Tricycle's auditorium by 25 per cent and quadruple the number of wheelchair accessible seats in the auditorium from two to eight.

There will be a new cafe on Kilburn High Street which the theatre is hoping will become a hub for the Kilburn community.

Artistic director of the Tricycle Indhu Rubasingham said: "This vital upgrade will help us to secure The Tricycle's future and enable us to realise our ambitious vision by ensuring our venue is truly accessible and open to all."

Actor Adrian Lester has pledged his support for the campaign, saying: "Under the leadership of Indhu Rubasingham, the Tricycle has blossomed as a venue in and for the community whilst proving itself as an incredible production powerhouse which rivals any UK theatre venue."

Architects Greg Chapman from Chapman Waterworth will be overseeing the redevelopment. The company have previously worked on projects for Hampstead Theatre.
The old chestnut that pornography empowers women without degrading them is given a new twist (as in "getting one's knickers in a twist") in this dispiritingly bad play by Milly Thomas, which condones the decision "to exploit oneself without shame" while reserving the right to bring out the worst in everyone else.

It all starts with a pious speech about feminism delivered by one of three sisters who start a family business of sex booths  where you can create your own sex tapes; coming and camming as you please  designed as a capitalisation of the amateur porn market.

The speaker is one Nicola Barker (Georgia Groome), a middle-class airhead with attitude, who is brutally turning a holiday misdemeanour on Ibiza to her own grubby advantage. She does so with the assistance of her equally fatuous siblings, elder Gina (Amy Dunn), a receptionist of some sort, and younger Chloe (Alice Hewkin), an obnoxious schoolgirl.

The lack of any moral compass in their lives means that their rise to the top of the dung heap  their uniform is one of girlie pyjamas and pink silver wigs, making them resemble the Beverley Sisters, or three versions of Little Bo Peep-Show  is stated more than demonstrated, while Nicola's weedy boyfriend Adam (Barney White) bleats occasionally about losing touch and feel with old Nic.

At least the attempt to show that pornography can thrive without any link to prostitution proves a non-starter, but any kind of thoughtful comment on the "Protest" movement (that's what the sisterhood have the nerve to call their business) is confined to the squealy jabberings of a chorus of internet trolls in face masks. And who cares what they say about anything?

It's well over a century ago since Shaw wrote Widowers' Houses, his great comedy of capitalism and self-betterment underpinned by the sex industry, and Holly Race Roughan's production, for all its superficial "trending," frank talk of masturbation and flip internet jargon, doesn't even begin to compare.

How, for a start, have the sisters acquired public licensing for their booths around London? And the play further junks any campaign to be serious in showing the sisters going merely from bad to utterly stupid as they hammer down on a couple of clients (both played by Emma D'Arcy) who regret the unwitting signing of a "sharing" clause on their sex booth experiences of full-on lesbian labials and drunken heterosexual rape.

Needless to say, the whole dismal experience is as sexually engaging and informative as a wet Tuesday afternoon in Tewkesbury, though perhaps we should be a little more wary of those sinister pop-up toilet booths that land unbidden on our public pavements.

Clickbait runs at Theatre503 until 13 February 2016.
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This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A father and son from West St. Paul who died in a snowmobile collision over the weekend had been celebrating a relatives birthday at their family cabin before they crashed into each other on a remote lake.

Gary Schellenberg, 49, and his 14-year-old son Evan were killed in a head-on snowmobile crash on English Lake early Sunday northeast of Manigotagan, about 185 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. A female snowmobile passenger was taken to hospital in stable condition.

The family had been on their way back to the cabin from a birthday bonfire in the bush for Garys daughter Saturday night. Around midnight, Evan and Gary were each driving a snowmobile across the frozen English Lake, along a path theyd driven many times before, when they collided head-on.

www.gofundme.com Gary Schellenberg in a family photo.

They waited on the lake for many hours before help could get there, said Karen Schellenberg, Garys sister-in-law, adding family and friends tried to revive the father and son. They tried everything. Theyre all traumatized and in shock.

A light in our family

RCMP got the call around 1:20 a.m. Sunday, and officers from the Lac du Bonnet and Powerview detachments travelled to the scene on English Lake by snowmobile because there was no road access to the area. Gary and Evan were already dead by the time RCMP arrived. An RCMP spokesman said Monday police are still investigating the crash.

As we are in the early stages of this tragedy, investigators are still trying to establish exactly the actions of both riders prior to the collision, Manitoba RCMP spokesman Sgt. Bert Paquet wrote in an email.

The family, including Garys wife, Linda, their daughter, two older sons and two young foster children, loved being at the cabin and had just spent Christmas there, Karen Schellenberg said.

Thats where they spent a lot of time. And they fished and they swam, and they snowmobiled and they just loved it. They just absolutely loved it. The whole family was always there together, and Evan loved it so much. Gary was just such a light in our family, she said, her voice breaking.

Gary was a wonderful father. His kids and family were always his priority. He made sure that they had a wonderful life. They werent rich  Gary was the sole breadwinner in the family, but he worked hard, Karen said, remembering her brother-in-law as the kind of man the family could rely on, someone who often collected and delivered Christmas gifts for needy kids to the Salvation Army.

A Go Fund Me page set up to benefit the family is collecting donations toward funeral costs.

Its just absolutely devastating. To lose two people, you just cant hardly wrap your head around it, but it is what it is and were going to have to live through it. But that family definitely needs help, Karen said.

Snowmobile driving legal for young teens

Students at West Kildonan Collegiate, where Evan attended Grade 9, will be offered access to counsellors in response to the deaths, the school said in a letter sent home with students Monday.

We will continue to support this family but are respecting their need for privacy during this time, the letter said.

Google Maps The snowmobile crash happened on English Lake, more than 185 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

Provincial rules dictate 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds can drive snowmobiles while unsupervised, except on roadways or sidewalks. Children under 14 can only drive a snowmobile with adult supervision, and those over 16 years old can operate the snowmobile anywhere without supervision as long as theyre following the rules in the Off-Road Vehicles Act.

tragic timing

Yvonne Rideout, executive director of the Snowmobilers of Manitoba (Snoman, Inc.) said this crash is the first instance of a head-on snowmobile collision shes ever heard of in Manitoba. Its timing, during International Snowmobile Safety Week, is even more tragic.

The Schellenbergs werent members of the club, but Rideout said Manitobas snowmobiling community is like a big family and feels for Schellenbergs.

Were quite concerned. We send our condolences to the family, she said.

The club doesnt groom trails in the English Lake area, and Rideout said she didnt know how the crash happened, but she advised snowmobilers to take safety precautions.

Its important that you always let people know where youre going, what time youll be home; always ride with a friend is our best policy. And when youre riding at that time of night, its very important that you have all the safety features, she said.

A Go Fund Me page set up to benefit the family is collecting donations toward funeral costs.
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This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The business community is mobilizing to help find work for incoming Syrian refugees, the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce says.

Im blown away by the response, said chamber president David Angus.

One company, IBEX Payroll, is providing settlement supplies to families, fundraising to bring more families here, as well as looking to provide job opportunities.

Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press One of the first families to arrive into Winnipeg from Syria leave Richardson Airport with smiles on their faces Saturday.

Another company, AccuRoot Financial Solutions, has pledged 1,000 hours of free consulting to help any refugees start a business or trade.

The offer includes setting up contacts and providing bookkeeping services. Businesses need to network but thats tough in a new country, said AccuRoot managing director Rafiq Punjani.

I know people from Palestine who want to set up a restaurant, and they are passionate about it, he said. But they dont know where to start. His company can help.

Punjani is originally from Pakistan. He called his pledge of 1,000 hours of community service giving back. He arrived in Winnipeg and started his business three years ago. I could not do that by myself, he said.

Were seeing that time and time again, Angus said, about the responses from IBEX Payroll and Accuroot. Its Winnipeg.

Mondays forum, titled Welcome to Winnipeg: Understanding and Embracing Syrian Refugees, included 20 booths of various agencies involved in immigration settlement and employment. The gathering at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights connected agencies assisting refugee settlement with potential employers.

The biggest barrier to employment will be the English language skills of refugees. Agencies can help the business community with English language training, and assessing a newcomers work skills, Angus said. It can also help inform employers on what to expect.

We have such a diverse economy and such a diverse need for skill sets, Angus said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former MP and lieutenant-governor John Harvard was remembered Monday for his strong opinions, his occasionally flowery language, his commitment to social justice and his love of ice cream sandwiches.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press In centre, former lieutenant-governor Philip S. Lee at the service to celebrate the life of the late former lieutenant-governor and federal MP John Harvard at the Victoria Inn. About 500 people gathered at the Victoria Inn for a funeral service for the former broadcaster and politician who died earlier this month from cancer.

I got to know a man who was engaging and thoughtful and whose infectious laugh always had me laughing along, said John Alho, who worked for Harvard in his constituency office and later in Ottawa. He had no airs or subtleties about him, and whether he was speaking with a grain farmer in Glenboro or a royal visitor in Ottawa, he made people feel welcome and at ease.

Alho, one of several to offer eulogies Monday, said Harvard instilled in his young staff a commitment to social justice. Former MP and friend Anita Neville called Harvard an uncompromising ally and a renaissance member of Parliament with wide interests and big opinions. When, as a rookie MP, she first met Harvard, she knew him as an outspoken and somewhat intimidating broadcaster.

What I did not (yet) appreciate was his humour, his wisdom and his extraordinary kindness, said Neville.

Neville, Alho and several family members paid tribute to Harvards commitment to equality for gay and lesbian couples, to his interest in solutions to poverty such as a living wage and his colourful, occasionally highly ornamented language. Several quoted Harvards favourite saying  we are all better off when we are all better off.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press Friends and family gathered Monday afternoon to celebrate the life of the late former lieutenant-governor and federal MP John Harvard at the Victoria Inn.

Among those gathered at the Victoria Inn for Harvards funeral were Lt. Gov. Janice Filmon, Premier Greg Selinger, MPs of all stripes and even Winnipeg musicians Christine Fellows and John K. Samson, who performed a song. Samson was a lifelong friend of Harvard and his family.

Harvard died Jan. 9 at age 77. He was a broadcaster for CBC Manitoba and 680 CJOB until leaving journalism to run for the Liberals in what was then called Charleswood-St.James-Assiniboia. He was an MP for 16 years, until 2004 when he was appointed lieutenant governor.

Neville said Harvard missed political life when his term as lieutenant governor was over, and asked to volunteer in her constituency office, answering calls, writing memos and kibitzing with staff. And, until shortly before his death, he was the maestro of a monthly breakfast gathering of politicians and academics who debated policy issues, shared gossip and dissected the issues of the day.

As all of you know, John Harvard had an opinion on anything and just about everything, said Dwight MacAuley, the provinces chief of protocol and the MC of Mondays funeral. MacAuley said he became good friends with Harvard when Harvard served a term as lieutenant governor, the two often holding hotdog summits at lunch along Broadway.

Friends and family also remembered some of Harvards quirks. He hated flight delays. He was a stickler for grammar. He loved cribbage and was very competitive. His vice was ice cream sandwiches.

Brother-in-law Bill Glover paid tribute to Harvards love of debate, his commitment for some form of a guaranteed income for the poor and his wide-ranging interests, noting the table beside Harvards chair was always piled with books.

Glover admonished those gathered to remember Harvard by being advocates for social justice.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 24/01/2016 (2461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nostril-stinging odours in St. Boniface have long had residents complaining to each other in coffee shops and over backyard fences. Now, theres a website for that.

St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard established stbsmell.ca to chronicle complaints, and the sites online form has garnered more than 200 responses since it was set up in the summer.

The top stinkers? The Loveday mushroom plant and the Darling International (formerly Rothsay) animal rendering plant.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press The Loveday mushroom plant and the Darling International (formerly Rothsay) animal rendering plant in St. Boniface are the top sources of odour complaints from neighbourhood residents.

The forms are an easier way for residents to complain to Manitoba Conservation. Previously, they had to print a form and mail it to the department.

When Manitoba Conservation gets five complaints about one incident, they will investigate  a requirement of environmental licences given to industrial facilities.

Its certainly a valuable tool for my office, as well as Manitoba Conservation, because they now have new data that they were not getting before, Allard said.

Allard made dealing with the odour problem part of his municipal-election campaign platform last year. Its been well-received by residents for whom the smell can be a nuisance some days.

For some residents, it is very unpleasant, it causes them to not spend as much time outside, not be able to keep their windows open, and our main concern is just to make sure the province is aware of this issue, and its being looked into, said Nicolas Audette, president of the Old St. Boniface Residents Association, who has lived in the area for more than four years.

For example, last summer I was out at the park with some friends, and I guess depending on the direction of the wind, you can smell (the odour) pretty straight up. Not just a small odour, but a really strong odour. I am from the country originally, and we all grew up with that smell of manure from the fields; you recognize that odour.

Ive had to explain to friends from other neighbourhoods that, Oh thats normal here. We get that smell every once in a while.

Eugene Martel has lived for 28 years on Notre Dame Street in St. Boniface, close to nearby industrial facilities. Hes dealt with a persistent odour problem in the neighbourhood throughout that time, but says things are changing.

It got better. They did a lot of improvements  six or seven years ago, they spent a couple million dollars in improving the smell, he said, referring to facilities such as the Loveday mushroom plant nearby. Still, he says, the smell affects the sinus quite a bit usually when it is raining, when we get a southeast wind and when its humid.

Odour control is chiefly done through a complaints-based process, according to the province. Five complaints would constitute an odour nuisance and trigger a written investigation, said Don Labossiere, director of environmental compliance and enforcement at Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship.

I think a number of citizens who resided in the area were probably unaware of how those concerns and complaints could be expressed and where they were supposed to go, Labossiere said.

So thats kind of been one of the beneficial aspects of this (website), is that its a lot easier for us to become aware of particular times or circumstances or even the magnitude from our perspective as regulators.

Its certainly a valuable tool for my office, as well as Manitoba Conservation, because they now have new data that they were not getting before  St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard

Labossiere said the province has been aware of the smell problem for a while, and they had a rough idea of where it was coming from. However, the large number of complaints has provided a rich source of information to confirm their suspicions.

The information weve collected from the complaints has greatly validated our beliefs on the sources of the odours, and it has kind of helped us find patterns as to specific days or times of day that the odours may be more prevalent, Labossiere said.

Figuring out how to mitigate the odours depends on the type of facility, and the province has been taking different approaches with the Loveday and Darling plants. At Loveday, the smell comes mostly from the composting operations for the mushrooms. Meanwhile, Darling, which does animal rendering, must focus on keeping its facility self-contained and make sure loading bays and the like are not left open.

Both facilities have been responsive to the provinces investigations, and Labossiere said things seem to be moving in the right direction.

In a written statement, Darling International said staff at the St. Boniface facility monitor odour-abatement equipment on an hourly basis, and the equipment undergoes regular maintenance. When we learn of a potential odour issue, we actively investigate it to determine the source, determine how to address it and take the necessary corrective actions, the statement said.

We also recently conducted a study to discover and evaluate additional odour-reducing measures. The study identified a more effective control, which we are implementing at our Winnipeg facility. We are also installing new equipment that will improve the odour-destruction capability of our system by eliminating surges to the system.

There has to be an end game with these issues. So at some point, there has to be a significant reduction in the odours that are impacting the community, both residential and industrial, or even the people whore just driving through, Labossiere said.

So obviously, both companies right now are working fairly diligently to try and mitigate the issue. There will come a time where theyre going to have to almost fully have the issue either resolved or strongly mitigated.

inayat.singh@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 24/01/2016 (2461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every year for the last three years, Bernadette Smith and her family have put up posters on Selkirk Avenue at King Street for her 21-year-old sister, Claudette Osborne-Tyo, who has been missing since 2008.

The family believes seeing Osborne-Tyos face every day is making someone remember her.

Now they just need that someone  whether it be someone with a guilty conscience or someone who may have just heard something  to step up with information on where Osborne-Tyo is or what happened to her.

John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press Family and friends of missing woman Claudette Osborne-Tyo gather for a vigil Sunday on Selkirk Avenue at King Street, where Osborne-Tyo made a payphone call before she disappeared in 2008.

For the last three years, weve been putting up posters on this tree and that tree and every year, they get taken down. Were hoping they dont get taken down this year, Smith said.

We think somebody is taking them down because they have to see that every day. Seven-and-a-half years without knowing is a long time. Her kids are growing up without her. My stepmom has not had her daughter home. A piece of our heart is missing, a piece of our family. We want someone to come forward with information.

On Sunday night, about 30 people, including Smith, Osborne-Tyos mother Brenda Osborne, one of Osborne-Tyos children and her fiance, Matt Bushby, gathered at Selkirk and King on the snow-covered sidewalk and boulevard for a candlelight vigil.

Its the last place Osborne-Tyo, the mother of four children  Dayton, Layla, Iziah and Patience  was heard from before she disappeared on July 24, 2008. Police traced her phone card and found it had been used at a pay phone at the Selkirk and King location. The pay phone, which is no longer there, was outside a building that used to be a bingo hall but is now a church.

Today, its seven-and-a-half years since my sister Claudette went missing and we didnt know for at least two years that this is the last known place that she was, said Smith. We know she made phone calls all the way from the Lincoln Motor Hotel (now called the Four Crowns Inn) all the way down Selkirk at most of the pay phones. We want people to know that we know that she was last here. We know that people know something. Nobody goes and just disappears without anybody knowing something.

Five people drummed and sang a traditional honour song. Smith, Nahanni Fontaine, Manitobas special advisor on aboriginal womens issues, Althea Guiboche, the provincial Liberal candidate for Point Douglas, and Bushby each spoke passionately about missing and murdered indigenous women and Osborne-Tyo.

Bushby, the father of Osborne-Tyos daughter Patience and son Iziah, made an emotional plea for anyone with information to come forward.

If somehow, we could get the people who know whats going on with the missing women and murdered women, to come forward or their friends to come forward, to just relieve us of this horrendous burden of not knowing, Bushby said, his voice breaking with emotion.

Handout photo Claudette Osborne

Our kids need answers. Claudettes kids, my kids, they need to know what happened to their mom.

On Osborne-Tyos posters, the phone number 1-888-673-3316 appears for Project Devote, a joint task force of officers from the Winnipeg Police Service and the RCMP, RCMP civilian analysts, RCMP data analysts and an RCMP administrative staff member. Formed in 2012, Project Devote is investigating 28 cases of missing or murdered people who were considered at risk before their disappearance.

On Friday, I got a call from Project Devote, just checking in and letting us know theyre still there, theyre still working on the case. Theres no new news, as all the months before, but at least theres that communication which wasnt there years before (Project Devote started), Bushby said. Its been a really long seven-and-a-half years, wondering.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada has welcomed 10,000 Syrian refugees, and I would hesitate to say with 100 per cent confidence there is no risk to Canadian security associated with this.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asserted: This is about welcoming people who are fleeing terrorism, not bringing terrorism with them. A political statement, if any.

Three recent events shed a new light on the wrong belief that refugees would not represent a threat to Canadians.

In Cologne and Hamburg, Germany, hundreds of women were sexually assaulted during public gatherings on New Years Eve. The perpetrators were mostly refugees and immigrants. As the New York Times put it, the police failed to anticipate the new realities of a Germany that is now host to up to a million asylum-seekers, most from war-torn Muslim countries unfamiliar with its culture.

On Jan. 7, a man tried to attack a police station in Paris. According to German investigators, the man had lived in an asylum-seekers shelter in Germany where he posed with an Islamic State flag.

Five days later, a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Istanbul. It has been proved he entered Turkey as a refugee.

Some argue Canada has welcomed refugees for decades without issue. Fair enough. But looking at the past does not always give clarity in foreseeing the future  particularly because Syrian refugees are coming from a country in which there are terrorists, and where they experienced war, violence and hard conditions.

This is not the case for all refugees, fortunately. However, to avoid this risk of unwittingly allowing a terrorist to enter Canada  unanimously recognized as a risk  the federal government decided to welcome families, women and children, but not single males.

Focusing on single, adult males, however, overlooks a subtler long-term risk.

It would be constructive to ask if children who experienced war and violence would not eventually represent a threat. It is not insane to think some Syrian children will not face strong psychological disorders due to the situation they lived through in their home country. Trained soldiers face post-traumatic disorder after having experienced war; there is no reason to believe untrained youth would not. It is crucial communities recognize this mental-health risk and intervene where necessary.

But even if mental health were not an issue, looking at recent incidents in France, Belgium, Germany and Turkey, it is not absurd to consider these uprooted youth  sent to an alien country with a different language, culture and values  will not all adjust to their new environment. Some will be disconnected from Canadian values and fail to identify with this country.

Furthermore, looking at the French case, there is no doubt some of these detached youth will be a target of choice for terrorist recruitment. This is an easy bet and a risk Canadians are not talking about, but must.

There is no easy solution to be expected. However, haste and wrong self-evident facts are not helping. Emotions are not good advisers. A rational assessment of the situation and an inquiry about the real and objective risks related to the welcoming of refugees must be conducted.

Checking the background of all refugees is not sufficient, especially since these checks are far from reliable. They will need to be monitored closely to be sure any behavioural change would be detected. It is paramount to facilitate their integration and, obviously, limit risks to the bare minimum.

It is understandable statesmen face a strong moral dilemma in choosing between nationalism (which is not synonymous to racism or xenophobia) and cosmopolitanism. But I would argue their first duty is to take care of their people.

If the federal government accepts refugees without taking the proper precautions, both in the short term (background checks) and long term (such as ensuring the new residents embrace Canadian-ness and do not become exploitable targets for extremist groups) the government failed in its first duty: protect its people.

If the government cannot do this, welcoming 25,000 refugees from Syria is not a good idea.

Emmanuel R. Goffi is a captain in the French air force and a research fellow at the University of Manitobas Centre for Defence and Security Studies.
Opinion

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This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its good to see Montreal-area mayors oppose the Energy East oil pipeline, because environmental risks such as spills that threaten drinking water are too great and the economic benefits to the city too few.

In 2010, residents along a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan learned the hard way just how awful a spill of bitumen from Albertas oilsands can be. The putrid stench was so strong and the presence of benzene in the air so persistent officials urged residents near the river to abandon their homes. Benzene can damage immune systems and cause anemia and leukemia.

Furthermore, conventional oil floats and can be cleaned up relatively quickly. But the bitumen sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River, which was closed to public for two years.

TransCanadas Energy East oil pipeline will carry lots of Alberta bitumen. Thats its purpose.

Environmental concerns about Energy East go much deeper than the threat of bitumen spills. Its proposed capacity of 1.1 million barrels a day, making it the most capacious oil pipeline in North America, is so great it could single-handedly allow oilsands expansion of more than 40 per cent.

If the Montreal mayors want allies within and outside Quebec to join them in stopping Energy East, they should look to the powerful indigenous and settler environmental movements in Canada and the United States that are stopping all the other oilsands-exporting lines.

U.S. President Barack Obama killed the Keystone XL oil pipeline after 1,000 protesters were arrested outside the White House; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau effectively killed the Northern Gateway line by banning oil tankers from the treacherous waters off B.C.s northern coast after many in the public declared it will not proceed; and B.C. Premier Christy Clarks government opposed the expansion of Kinder Morgans existing oil pipeline to the Vancouver area after resistance grew so strong.

The politicians moved only after opposition grew large and insistent.

Why are pipelines being approved and built in the U.S., but not in Canada? Because the pipelines here will enable Albertas oilsands to expand. That will prevent Canada from meeting its laudable and ambitious commitments at the Paris climate talks to help keep the world below a 2 C rise.

Albertas oilsands are the fastest-growing source of Canadas greenhouse gas pollution. Canada cannot cut its GHG emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050  its G8 commitment  if oilsands emissions grow by 43 per cent. Thats how much Albertas latest climate action plan permits.

Oilsands output will grow that much only if it has an outlet to a coast. Energy East is the last bitumen-exporting pipeline still standing. It needs to be bowled over. Albertas oilsands cant be greened  they must be phased out. So must oil and natural gas exports.

Its the production of oil and natural gas, not in their use in transportation in Canada (cars and trucks), that is this countrys biggest source of greenhouse gases.

Canada has just enough conventional, non-fracked, non-oilsands oil to supply all Canadians and give them energy security, but not to continue oil exports.

Our countrys emissions will plummet when Canada phases them out.

Why run a pipeline 4,600 kilometres to New Brunswick when Newfoundland has enough conventional oil to supply all East Coasters? Most live on or near a coast. Why pipe it when it can be shipped?

That would avoid incursions on First Nations lands. Oil tankers could be phased out as East Coasters oil use falls, whereas a pipeline would need three decades of shipping at full volume to amortize its building costs.

The Montreal-area mayors have spoken at the right moment  just before Trudeau and the premiers are scheduled to meet to fashion a plan to transition Canada to a low-carbon future. They should nix Energy East.

Gordon Laxer is author of After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians and is the founding director of Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/01/2016 (2461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dont look now, but federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is about to have his Greg Selinger moment.

Fresh off a crushing defeat in the recent federal election, in which Mulcairs NDP started the campaign at the top of pre-vote polls but ended up once again as the third party in the House of Commons, Mulcair is engaged in a desperate bid to save his job as leader.

That process kicked off last week as the NDP held a caucus retreat in Quebec, followed by a meeting of senior party executive. It continued with a pair of open conference calls where members were encouraged to talk directly with party president Rebecca Blaikie. More than 1,000 of the party faithful participated in the calls, where there was plenty of anxiety and anger about the federal election result.

Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS Files NDP Leader Tom Mulcair may not have the right stuff to lead the party forward.

Mulcairs efforts to save his job will culminate in April at the partys federal convention in Edmonton where a leadership review vote will take place. Mulcair has been open about the fact he expects to hear some in the party call for him to step down. However, Mulcair has said that he expects to retain enough support that he can continue to lead.

Theoretically, all you need is more than 50 per cent of the people there to say they dont want a leadership race, Mulcair told reporters at a news conference last week. But of course, Im expecting a lot more than that.

He may get a lot more than 50 per cent support in the review, but that wont erase the fact that he did not do well in the election. The NDP was on the precipice of a historic breakthrough; a win was there for the taking.

Ultimately, a bad campaign and a shaky performance by Mulcair dispatched all the early optimism. The NDP was thrashed in the final result, reduced to just 44 seats from 103 in the 2011 election.

As he works his way toward April, its clear Mulcair is about to be confronted by a dilemma faced by many political leaders  like Manitoba Premier and NDP Leader Greg Selinger.

Over the past 18 months, Selinger has had to face up to the fact he has lost the confidence of a good portion of his caucus, his party and the Manitoba public. With a fixed date election on the horizon in April 19, Selinger was urged internally to step down so the party could reorganize and rebrand. He declined.

That internal dissent became public when five cabinet ministers broke ranks and call for Selingers resignation. That act of mutiny triggered a leadership convention that Selinger ultimately won. However, the ordeal of having key opinion leaders from your own party, including some of the premiers closest staff, call for your resignation has left a lasting stain on Selingers record as premier.

As Mulcair contemplates his own future, he would be well advised to look closely at Selingers experience  in particular, the arguments Selinger made to keep his job.

Selinger repeatedly asserted he would not step down just because a group of his cabinet ministers had broken ranks and gone public with their concerns. That decision, Selinger and his supporters argued, was an immoral bid to bully the premier out of his job.

It is true there was a blush of injustice to the actions of the dissident ministers. They were easily portrayed in some NDP circles as impetuous and immature whiners who were willing to do and say anything to get their way.

However, that is only part of the story. The dissidents would ultimately reveal they worked for months internally to get Selinger to read the writing on the wall, which showed the premier had lost the support of Manitobans. The dissidents argued that a real political leader would put their party before themselves, and step down to give everyone a chance to rebrand in time for the April 2016 election.

And that is ultimately the biggest question facing Mulcair now: is my leadership a net benefit or a net liability going forward?

Take away all arguments about the fairness of process and the motivation of detractors, and focus on the needs of your party. That is the only way a political leader can determine the best course of action.

This is the focus that will tell you when its time to dig in. And make no mistake, there are times when a leader has a good argument for staying on even when the party has failed an electoral test.

In Manitoba, the Progressive Conservatives jettisoned Stuart Murray after just one election loss despite the fact it was essentially unwinnable. There were strong cases to be made for Murray to hang in for at least one more election, to see if his personal brand could rise to a point where he was more competitive.

That was essentially the path former NDP premier Gary Doer followed. He took on the leadership in the early days of an election he was never destined to win. He remained leader for 11 years, increasing his share of the vote and seat totals in each subsequent election. When he finally became premier in 1999, he was an indomitable force in Manitoba politics.

As Mulcair goes forward, he should indeed take a long, hard look at Selinger, a leader who won a critical showdown at a leadership convention but seems poised to lose this springs election. Selinger focused primarily on himself, and the inherent unfairness of the actions of those who tried to force him out. Say what you will about how unfairly he was treated, but the governing NDP in Manitoba is at its lowest level in pre-election polls in years, led by a premier who has even less support than that.

Political leaders should never be bullied out of their jobs. And losing an election is not necessarily automatic justification for a resignation.

However, you need more than majority support in a vote among party members to justify remaining as leader.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has been my great pleasure to write for The Metro for the last three years.

Now that I have moved away from the West End and out of Winnipeg, I will no longer be writing for the Community Forum.

I want to thank all those who took time to read my articles for their interest in what I had to say and I also wish you all a most peaceful and prosperous new year!

Supplied photo New Years Eve in Reykjavik, Iceland, is something to behold. Now that Arny Hjaltadottir has moved outside the city she has begun to celebrate a new, Icelandic-inspired New Years Eve tradition.

Speaking of the new year, Id like to share with you a tradition that I grew up with in Iceland  burning the new and the old years together, while celebrating the good things that happened through the year that is leaving and looking forward to all the good things coming in the new year.

Months before the years end, my siblings and I would start to gather wood scraps, old tires and anything that could be burned on the highest hill on the farm I lived on.

There was a competition between the farms to have the biggest and brightest new years bonfire. So everyone worked hard at finding anything that could be used for the fire.

I come from a family of nine siblings, so there were a few of us to do the work. Right at midnight on New Years Eve the bonfire was lit, along with quite a few fireworks. It was a sight to behold and we would dance around the fire singing traditional songs about elves and trolls.

Our fables tell of elves, trolls and spirits that move on New Years Eve, so people dress in costumes to represent those beings of the elements. As a child I heard and read many stories of these beings. They were magical. You havent seen a good display of fireworks until youve visited the capital city of Iceland, Reykjavik, on New Years Eve. The whole sky is lit up at midnight. Everyone buys fireworks and shoots them from their balconies and backyards. There are bonfires at designated places throughout the city and people gather around them dressed in costumes, dancing around the fires. People come from all corners of the wold to see the display in Reykjavik. It is a special treat to be there.

Now that I have moved to the countryside in Manitoba, me, my daughter and her family have started our own Icelandic-Canadian tradition of having a bonfire on New Years Eve.

Once again, thank you for reading, and farewell.

Arny Hjaltadottir has been a community correspondent for the West End for the past three years.
All families are invited to file an enrollment application for WAPS district-wide elementary options during the application window, open Jan. 25 to Feb. 12. Applications must be received during this time.

Applications can be filed for the Jefferson Elementary STEM School for students entering grades K-4, and the Spanish Language Immersion Program (SLIP) at Madison will be accepting applications for incoming kindergartners. Parents may call Madison School at 507-494-2200 to discuss possible options for students entering grades 1-3 in the fall. Busing is provided for students to both schools at no cost.

If applications for the STEM school exceed class sizes, a lottery will be held on Feb. 19. Letters will be mailed for both the STEM school and the SLIP program regarding acceptance or waiting list status.

Applications can be filed online at winona.k12.mn.us/page/3455. If you prefer a hard copy of the applications, please visit or contact the schools.
Indonesia's attorney general insists that death penalties must be maintained in the country's judicial system as a shock therapy against serious crime.





"I'm confident that the death penalty is a kind of therapy. It is an unpleasant action, but we must do it," said Attorney General HM Prasetyo in a working meeting with the House Commission III overseeing law and human rights, on Wednesday evening.





The statement came in response to a question raised by a Commission III member from the Democratic Party, Ruhut Sitompul, who asked about the spirit behind the death penalty in Indonesia.





In November 2015, the government suspended executions of death row convicts amid an economic slowdown.





At that time, the government wanted to focus on improving the economy, which was expanding at a slow pace of 4.73 percent in the third quarter of 2015.





"The death penalty has no connection with the economy," Prasetyo said, adding that the reactions of foreign countries about the issue are excessive.





Foreign countries and human rights groups have slammed Indonesia for implementing capital punishment against convicts, as stipulated in the Criminal Code (KUHP). President Joko Jokowi Widodo had two groups of convicts, totaling 14 people, executed in January and April 2015.





Two of the convicts were Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were executed in April 2015, causing bilateral tension and leading to Australia recalling its ambassador from Indonesia.





"We need a similar policy to fight drug crimes," Prasetyo said, adding that Commission III should issue a statement to put to death some convicts who already on death row.




CONVICTED

Michael M. Harms, 22, of Wabasha, Minn., was placed on probation for two years for felony possession of methamphetamine. He was sentenced to 40 days in county jail with credit for 37 days already served.Charges of violating a foreign protection order and possession of drug paraphernalia were read into Harms court record and dismissed.

Jacob A. Kronebusch, 28, of Fountain City, pleaded guilty to restricting or obstructing a police officer and was sentenced to five days in jail. He was sentenced to 15 additional days in jail and fined $1,429 for second-offense operating while intoxicated. His drivers license was revoked for 12 months. A charge alleging possession of drug paraphernalia was dismissed.

CHARGED

Mark A. Ronnenberg, 55, of Winona, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge accusing him of 10th offense operating while intoxicated. A sheriffs deputy arrested Ronnenberg in Buffalo County on Nov. 27. Ronnenberg also pleaded not guilty to a traffic citation alleging unsafe lane deviation. A hearing was set for March 4.

Daniel P. Kotek, 43, of New Brighton, Minn., had a plea and sentencing hearing re-scheduled to March 4 on charges of fifth-offense operating with restricted controlled substance, driving without a license and possession of methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Kameron B. Vizenor, 20, of Wabasha, Minn., is scheduled to have a plea and sentencing hearing March 24 on a felony charge accusing him of repeated sexual assault of a girl when she was 14 and 15 years old. A police report said the girl had dated Vizenor. Vizenor has pleaded not guilty.

Jonathan Gonzales, 20, of rural Arcadia, had a hearing adjourned to Feb. 3r on charges accusing him of battery, maintaining a drug trafficking place and manufacture or delivery of more than 200 grams of marijuana.

Curtis D. Johnson, 50, of Stockholm, had a hearing adjourned to Jan. 29 on charges accusing him of domestic abuse strangulation and suffocation, battery and disorderly conduct.

Nicholas M. Lafreniere, 26, of Plum City, had a hearing adjourned to Feb. 3 on misdemeanor charges accusing him of illegally carrying a concealed weapon and possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Todd F. Oreskovich, 31, of Buffalo City, had a hearing adjourned to Feb. 3 on charges accusing him of third-offense operating while intoxicated and driving with a revoked license.

Dustin L. Jahnke, 26, of Wabasha, Minn., pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of battery and disorderly conduct.

Samantha Jo Kraudy, 25, of Ellendale, Minn., has a hearing scheduled Feb. 3 on a felony charge accusing her of possessing methamphetamine.
Rising health care costs pose a serious challenge to Minnesota, especially to those living in the southeast region of the state.

State Sen. Matt Schmit, a Democrat, recently discussed this challenge on these pages (Daily News, Jan. 13) and highlighted how higher and higher health insurance premiums crowd out household investments in education, new purchases, and savings for retirement. He also highlighted how higher costs present a competitive disadvantage to businesses across the southeast region.

All of this is true and it speaks to how critical it is to contain health care costs.

For solutions, Sen. Schmit put hope in the Health Care Financing Task Force, a task force formed by the Minnesota Legislature and Governor Dayton in 2015.

I served as a member of that task force and, unfortunately, I can now report we did not offer any meaningful solutions to contain health care costs. Instead, the recommendations closely hew to a partisan Democrat agenda to expand Minnesotas already generous public health care programs.

Among the more expensive program expansions, the task force proposed expanding MinnesotaCarethe states health program for low-income householdsto people with incomes up to 275 percent of the federal poverty guideline; giving health coverage to undocumented immigrants at the same cost and benefit level as citizens; and providing 12-month continuous coverage to people on public health care programs regardless of income changes.

These expansions would burden the state budget with higher spending and, something very few recognize, increase the cost of private health insurance premiums. Public health care programs never pay the full cost of care. Providers would go bankrupt if everyone paid the same low rates paid by Medicaid and MinnesotaCare. To cover losses from pubic programs, providers must charge higher rates to people who are privately insured. Milliman, the actuaries contracted to model the financial impacts of the task force recommendations, estimates privately insured rates are 50 percent higher than public rates.

This is like giving low-income households both an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card and a coupon for 33 percent off everything they buy at the grocery store with their free EBT card. Every additional person with an EBT card paying $2 for a $3 gallon of milk would mean higher milk prices for everyone else if the grocer wants to stay in business. Because this is exactly how public health care programs are financed, expanding these programs will raise private insurance premiums.

To the extent the task force addressed costs, it simply recommended enhancing government-driven payment reforms that hope to contain costs. To date, these reforms have not proven themselves.

This partisan result is not too surprising.

The task force was stacked with people appointed by Democrats. The Governor chose eleven and Democrats in the Senate and House chose seven. Republicans in the Senate and House only got to choose seven, rounding out the twenty-nine member task force.

Considering this lopsided membership, the partisan task force recommendations are exactly the reforms people should expect from Democrats in the legislature in 2016.

Setting partisanship aside, there are limits to what Minnesota can do to contain costs because so many cost drivers are fueled by federal policiessuch as tax incentives and Medicare pricing rules. But there are still levers the state can pull.

Looking to the 2016 session, an easy place to start is giving insurers flexibility to offer a more affordable level of benefits. Minnesota has long mandated more benefits than nearly every state and the state should have flexibility to reduce those mandates to match the benefits mandated in other states.

The harder but necessary path to cost containment requires introducing reforms that increase competition among providers and insurers. Southeast Minnesota now knows all too well what it means to have just one major hospital system and only two insurers.

To that end, its time to start identifying and removing those barriers that stop potential competitors from entering the market. Not only is this path necessary, it also happens to offer the most potential for gaining bipartisan support as it does not necessarily stir the same level of controversy as reducing benefits or expanding public programs.
Minnesota House DFL leaders unveiled an agenda Monday for the coming legislative session, concentrating on rural and agricultural needs.

The Greater Minnesota for All agenda splits into four sections, dealing with job growth, education investment, rural property tax relief and support for senior citizens.

House DFL leader Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said in a conference call with reporters Monday that their proposals hope to take advantage of a large budget surplus, but shouldnt come as a surprise.

Many of these proposals are not anything new for the House DFL, Thissen said.

Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, said in an interview that the agenda is an extension of what House DFLers had been working on in the 2013-14 sessions and want to finish.

Pelowski mentioned specifically the transportation package and local government aid pieces with significant impact on Winona County, which consistently needs money to fund road and bridge projects, and the city, which has a large part of its budget made up by state aid.

Pelowski said that the reductions in local government aid, which the DFL would like to return to 2002 levels, have lead to tax increases and cuts to services.

That has a direct reflection on property taxes in the Winona area, Pelowski said, particularly in the city.

The budget surplus is around $1.2 billion. Thissen estimated the cost of the proposals would be $125 to $150 million.

Thats minus a proposed transportation section, which they hope will be part of a comprehensive transportation package. The agenda referred to the lack of a comprehensive package as one of the biggest failures last session for greater Minnesota.

The DFL agenda supports increased transportation funding for infrastructure and improvements in rural communities and small cities.

Other investments they hope will increase jobs and economic growth include rural workforce housing tax credits and broadband expansion funding for rural areas.

House DFL deputy leader Paul Marquart said that joining Gov. Mark Dayton in asking for $100 million for broadband funding would be a reasonable level of investment for its benefits and need.

This is a huge economic equalizer for rural Minnesota, Marquart said.

Other rural investments include a proposed increase in local government aid, which advocacy groups including the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities has also called for, property tax relief for farmers, and train crossing safety improvements.

The property tax relief for farmers would be in the form of Agricultural School Building Bond Credit, which Marquart said can adversely affect farmers because of their acreage. The state would pay into school building projects at higher levels to allow for similar financing while reducing their tax impact on farmers.

Theres a real sense of unfairness, Marquart said.

The railroad crossing would focus on around 80 crossings that the Minnesota Department of Transportation had recommended improvements to in their 2014 report and concentrates on the at-grade crossings, which could involve better lighting, signs and other improvements.

Lastly the plan includes steps to assist senior citizens, particularly with a direct property tax relief program using the homestead and renters property-tax credits.
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 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.
JUNEAU | Two dozen Dodgeland students, faculty and community members will weather a winter night outside- in little more than cardboard boxes  during the first Dodge County Shantytown event.

The National Honor Society group at Dodgeland has chosen Habitat for Humanity of Washington and Dodge Counties as a partner for its service project.

Shantytowns goals are community awareness, youth empowerment and fundraising. Participants will spend a night in cardboard boxes or similar structures common to real life shantytowns around the world.

Shantytown events will occur each month throughout 2016 in efforts to grow Dodge County support and involvement with Habitat for Humanity. Future groups and dates will be announced soon.

Anyone interested in participating in a Shantytown event as an individual or group, supporting an event, or who wants more information on how to be involved with Habitat for Humanity should contact event coordinators Laura & Gabie Goral at shantytown@hfhwashco.org.
MADISON (AP) | Republican legislators are pushing a bill aimed at preventing drone operators from flying contraband into Wisconsin prisons like they have in other states.

Under the bill, anyone who flies a drone over a state correctional institution would face a $5,000 fine. The bill would also allow municipalities and counties to establish areas where drones cannot be flown. Local governments could impose fines up to $2,500.

The bill follows a series of cases across the country in which smugglers flew drugs, pornography or other contraband over prison walls. In August, a drone dropped a package of marijuana, tobacco and heroin into a prison yard in Ohio, sparking a fight among inmates. In October, a drone carrying drugs, blades and other contraband crashed into an Oklahoma prison yard. Other cases have surfaced in Georgia, Maryland and South Carolina.

Wisconsin has not yet reported similar issues with smuggling, but a drone that lost contact with its operator did land inside the walls of a state prison in Waupun in late December.

This is really going after people and as a deterrent for people who want to commit crimes using drones, said Shawn Smith, a staff member in the office of the bills author, Sen. Richard Gudex, R-Fond du Lac. Gudex was not available to comment Friday.

Assembly sponsor Rep. Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, and Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joy Staab did not return calls for comment Friday.

Besides a fine, the bill would let police seize any pictures or video taken by a drone and turn it over to the Department of Corrections.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been developing regulations for drones, or unmanned aircraft systems. Almost 300,000 drone owners have registered with the FAA since it started requiring registration on Dec. 21.

But some local and state lawmakers across the country believe the federal rules are too lax and have been stepping in to regulate drones themselves. In 2015, approximately 45 states considered restrictions on unmanned aircraft systems, according to an FAA fact sheet. The FAA warns it could lead to a patchwork quilt of regulations and stipulates that local and state regulations must fit with federal rules.

The FAA has been coming out with the rules slowly but surely, Smith said. We dont know what theyre going to come out with, so we wanted to give the local authorities the ability to do so.

Under current Wisconsin law, there is no express authority granted to municipalities or counties to establish no-fly zones, though Green Bay passed a ban on drone use at special events in August.

This bill expressly grants that permission and includes a provision that no political subdivision may enact an ordinance inconsistent with federal law, in order to fit with FAA regulations.

The bill has a public hearing in the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety Wednesday.
Rep. Mark Pocan said he gets why Congress' approval rating is less than 15 percent.

The Democrat from Black Earth lamented in a TV interview broadcast Sunday how labeling political candidates matters only in Washington and not to voters.

"Inside the Beltway in Washington, we talk about all kinds of stupid things," he said, "and that's why people hate Congress in general."

And Pocan said that's a fair assessment.

"They should. I hate Congress," Pocan said in an interview on "UpFront with Mike Gousha."

"Well, what do we get done right now? People should be mad at us. Since 2010, we haven't done a budget process at all like it's supposed to happen. We don't do the appropriation bills like we should. We don't have full debates like we should so that public action can have scrutiny.

"Instead, I get an omnibus bill to look at with 48 hours notice that's full of everything, plus what you can't imagine is also in there. it's not even related to the subject matter. And I'm supposed to vote on it intelligently in 48 hours? People should be mad at us. We're not addressing the concerns of people when they sit at that kitchen table and are worried about their futures."

Pocan, who's in his second term in Congress from Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district, was initially responding to a question about whether Bernie Sanders could be elected president after having labeled himself a socialist.

"I think those labels, real people get beyond what the political class likes to talk about," Pocan said. "They don't worry so much about a label, but they worry about what are you going to do for them so that they can finally see that bump in their paychecks, so they can take care of their family? That's what real people care about."

Pocan said he hasn't endorsed anyone for the Democratic nomination but will by the time the Wisconsin primary comes around on April 5.

He said he understands the voter anger that is lifting Sanders in some polls on the Democratic side and Donald Trump on the Republican side.

"It's that outsider message that's appealing to people," Pocan said. "If you look at it, people's wages have remained flat while the economy has largely come back. Most of the spoils have gone to the top 1 or 2 percent, and people feel it. And if you're feeling it in your pocketbook and you're worried about sending your kid to college or paying for that vacation, you're going to have that angst. And I think both of them are benefiting from that."

Pocan also addressed the challenges Paul Ryan faces as House Speaker, saying his fellow Wisconsinite needs to stand up to the tea party faction of the Republican majority in the House to be able to move forward.

And he somewhat played down the nature of a December meeting he and five other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had with Iran's U.N. ambassador, which the Huffington Post reported on last week.

Pocan said the meeting wasn't secret as the story's headline claimed, but he did discuss the issue of Americans then being detained by Iran.

"A lot of people in the Progressive Caucus were very strongly behind the Iranian deal we had so that we can make sure there aren't going to be nuclear weapons coming out of that country," Pocan said. "So the conversation was just that: Look, a lot of us really helped to make sure we have this deal. We feel like there are are hopefully warming relations between our countries. But we can't have a lot of these conversations when we still have Americans who are being held hostage.

"So it was just part of a conversation  let's admit it, if we're going to be active like we are in the Middle East, we probably have to at some point look at Iran as a potential partner in fighting ISIS. This is just how diplomacy has to work, and since we are at this opportunity right now with them, we need to take advantage of that."
A very long life came to a peaceful end as Lorene (Lindsay) Knutson of Portage passed from this life on Jan. 22, 2016, at Heritage House in Portage.

She was born the second daughter of Mathias (Lindso) and Blanche (Sauby) Lindsay on July 28, 1921, at the family farm in Rosholt, South Dakota. She attended the proverbial one-room school house in Harmon Township, Roberts County, South Dakota, where her mother had taught years before. After graduating from Browns Valley, Minnesota, High School in 1939 she enrolled at Northern State Teachers College in Aberdeen, South Dakota, to follow in her mothers footsteps. After one year she received her certificate to teach in rural schools and followed that career path for several years. She was known as a capable and strict teacher who remained friends with her students for decades, in some instances.

On June 28, 1944, she was united in marriage with Arne Knutson at Trondhjem Lutheran Church, Rosholt, South Dakota. The young couple farmed in the area for a number of years while she continued teaching. After her husbands career path took them into the farm machinery business, she worked at the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company. A career move for Arne led to Canby, Minnesota, where she worked in the local physicians office. When a job transfer led to Sioux Falls, the couple was able to complete their family with the adoption of two beloved children, Mark and Kristi. Another transfer to Minnetonka was where the children spent their younger years before a final move to Portage in 1972.

Through the many moves, Lorene remained close to the large extended families of her and her husband, hosting meals and get-togethers whenever possible. She always felt she had achieved the best career possible, wife and mother. She was able to accompany her mother and sister to Norway in 1974 and met cousins throughout that country. This may have been the inspiration for her channeling her artistic talents into rosemaling, knitting and Hardanger work, which she shared widely with friends and relatives. The small pen and ink drawing she produced on frequent notes to her mother have been retained and cherished by many. After her husbands sudden death in 1991 she remained in her Portage home until moving to Heritage House in 2013. Her life revolved around church, art, handiwork, bridge clubs, creating a pleasant home and most of all, friends and family. She treasured special friendships within Sons of Norway, Wauona Trails Womens Club and several bridge groups.

She was preceded in death by her husband Arne; parents; siblings, Virginia Lehrke, Emerald Tasa and Arwin Lindsay. Lorene is survived by her son, Mark; daughter-in-law, Kate; grandchildren, Ashley (Matt) Ingraham and Zachary; siblings, Marilyn Meyer, Byron (Elinor) Lindsay and Marlys (Gene) Nelson; sister-in-law, Esther Knutson; and brother-in-law, Harvey Marxhausen; and her daughter, Kristi.

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Portage, with the Rev. Julie Krahn officiating, burial will follow in Silver Lake Cemetery. Visitation will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday at the Pflanz Mantey Mendrala Funeral Home (www.pmmfh.com) in Portage and from noon to 1 p.m. Saturday at the church.

Special thanks to the staff at Heritage House for their help and support.
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.
Public executions in Saudi Arabia (file photo) A protester who was under 18 at the time of the alleged offenses for which he was convicted was among the 47 people executed in a single day in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, research by international human rights organization Reprieve has found. A protester who was under 18 at the time of the alleged offenses for which he was convicted was among the 47 people executed in a single day in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, research by international human rights organization Reprieve has found.





Ali al Ribh was arrested while at school on February 12th, 2012 due to his involvement in activities calling for reform between February and October 2011  when he was just 17 years old.





Ali  whose date of birth was December 2nd, 1993  should therefore have been treated as a juvenile by the Saudi legal system. His execution on January 2nd this year was a breach of the absolute prohibition on the execution of juvenile offenders, and illegal under international law. The Saudi authorities did not inform his family of the execution and are keeping the location of his burial secret.





Alis execution will raise concerns about the position of other juveniles convicted for protest-related offences in the Kingdom. Dawoud al Mahroon, Ali al Nimr and Abdullah al Zaher remain under sentence of death for alleged offences which took place when they were aged 17, 17 and 15, respectively.





The British Government has said that it has raised their cases with the Saudi authorities and does not expect them to be executed. However, Reprieve is calling for renewed action in light of the fact that the Saudi authorities have executed at least one juvenile protester already this year.





Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve said: "Ali al Ribh's tragic case shows that the Saudi authorities are quite happy to execute juvenile protesters if they think no one is looking. Ali was seized by police at his school and subsequently executed, even though he was a child when the alleged protest offences were committed.





"Abdullah al Zaher, Ali al Nimr and Dawoud al Marhoon - all of whom were sentenced to death as children - remain imprisoned and could be executed at any time, without warning. Until the Saudi Government officially commutes their sentences, the sword will continue to hang over their heads. Britain must redouble its efforts to convince the Saudi Government to commute Abdullah, Ali and Dawoud's sentences  and those of any other juveniles facing execution  before it is too late."





Source: Reprieve, January 24, 2016




Boko Haram has stepped up attacks outside Nigeria over the past year, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, threatening regional security. (Photo: AP)

Cameroon: Four suicide bombers killed about 25 people in a village in Cameroon's Far North region on Monday, a local official said, the most deadly in a string of recent attacks in an area beset by violence connected to Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Two bombers struck the Bodo central market while others hit the town's main entrance and exit points, the official said.

"There was a quadruple suicide bombing in the village of Bodo this morning. There are around 25 deaths and several wounded," he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Cameroonian troops form part of an 8,700-strong regional force created to defeat Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign to carve out a separate state in northeastern Nigeria.

Boko Haram has stepped up attacks outside Nigeria over the past year, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, threatening regional security.

Monday's bombing was not the first time the town of Bodo has been targeted. At the end of December, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at the town's entrance.

Officials said at the time that the bombers were trying to access the market but were stopped by local residents. No others were injured in that bombing.

On Jan. 13, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one other in an attack on a mosque in Kouyape in northern Cameroon.

Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria have all contributed troops to a regional offensive devoted to driving back Boko Haram, and the United States has contributed military supplies and troops for assistance.




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Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia's leader on Monday defended the country's strict security laws, saying they are needed to fight terrorism as the Islamic State group warned of revenge over a crackdown on its members.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said the terrorism threat is "very real" and that the laws are crucial to ensure Malaysia is not open to infiltration. Opening a two-day international counter-terrorism conference, Najib said he will not apologise for taking steps to preserve national security.

"There are no civil liberties under Daesh and there are no shields against those who are set on committing acts of terrorism. The best way to uphold civil liberties is to ensure the safety of the nation," Najib said.

Daesh is the term used by some to refer to the Islamic State group.

Human rights activists have slammed a law implemented last year that revives detention without trial. Critics also voiced fears that another law approved last month that gives sweeping powers to a council led by the prime minister could be a step toward dictatorship.

Police earlier said the Islamic State group had posted a video that warns of attacks over the arrest of its members. Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, who heads the national police counter-terrorism unit, said on the sidelines of the conference that the video carried the Islamic State group logo and featured two Malaysians based in Syria. He said there were previous videos with similar warnings, but this was the first video with a logo of the militant group.

"They threaten to carry out attacks in Malaysia" if their members are not released and more are arrested, said Ayob, vowing that police will step up their operations.

On Sunday, police said they had detained seven men suspected of being an Islamic State militant cell that was plotting attacks. The seven Malaysians were detained in several states over three days after the Jan. 15 detention of a man police said was planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur. Police also seized bullets, jihad books and Islamic State group flags and videos.

Malaysia raised its security alert level following the Jan. 14 attacks in neighboring Indonesia that left seven people dead. Earlier at the conference, Australia and Indonesian officials said their governments plan to bolster their anti-terrorism laws.
Jaitapur agreement due by year-end

25 January 2016

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A deal between France and India for the construction of six EPR nuclear power reactors at Jaitapur in India's Maharashtra state is now set to be finalized by the end of this year, the countries' leaders have said.

Indian prime minister Modi and French president Hollande (Image: Indian Prime Minister's Office)

A joint statement from French president Francois Hollande and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi - issued today during a state visit by Hollande to India - said: "The two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016". They called for "due consideration to cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localization of manufacturing in India for large and critical components."

The two leaders, the statement said, have agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur project in 2016. "Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017," it added.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate on the construction of the Jaitapur plant, including lifetime fuel supply for the units, was signed by Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Areva in February 2009. This was followed by the signing of a general framework agreement between the two companies in December 2010, under which Areva is to supply nuclear islands and associated services for the first two EPRs planned for the Jaitapur site.

However, plans for the Jaitapur plant, as well as other proposed plants featuring imported reactor designs, were put on hold when India subsequently brought in an unusual liability regime.

Last April, Areva signed a pre-engineering agreement with NPCIL. This agreement prepares for the licensing of the EPR reactor design in India enabling it to be deployed at Jaitapur. At the same time, Areva signed an MOU with engineering company Larsen and Toubro (L&T) for cooperation to maximize localization for the Jaitapur project.

In their statement, Hollande and Modi "noted with satisfaction the ongoing time-bound implementation of cooperation" between Areva and L&T under that MOU. They also noted good progress in pre-engineering studies for the project being carried out by Areva and NPCIL. The leaders also welcomed the initialling of a revised MOU between EDF and NPCIL for the six EPRs at Jaitapur.

The statement also said France acknowledges the need for India to have a "lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants".

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Romania expresses support for China's role at Cernavoda

25 January 2016

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The Romanian government has written to China General Nuclear Power (CGN) expressing its support for the Cernavoda nuclear power plant project. CGN announced its receipt of the letter - which was presented by energy minister Victor Vlad Grigorescu and signed by prime minister Dacian Julien Ciolos - on its website last week.

The partially-built units 3 and 4 at Cernavoda (Image: Nuclearelectrica)

CGN said on 21 January that the letter "outlines the major areas of support and commitment associated with the project in terms of electricity market reform, electricity tariff mechanisms, electricity sales, state guarantees, financial incentive policies, and continuity of policies, etc."

Nuclearelectrica signed a memorandum of understanding with CGN in November last year for the development, construction, operation and decommissioning of units 3 and 4 of the Cernavoda plant. The Romanian national nuclear company said a joint venture project company is to be established, with CGN owning at least 51% of the share capital. That company will oversee construction of the units, which will be 700 MWe Candu 6 reactors. Two Candu units already operate at the Cernavoda site.

Zhang Qibo, General Manager of CGN Romania, said in the 21 January statement, "CGN and its Romanian counterpart are in negotiations on a potential agreement to establish a joint venture company, with CGN as the holding company. Once established, the joint venture will be the sole platform to take forward the development, construction and operation of the Cernavoda Project in the future."

CGN has 16 reactor units with an installed capacity of 17.09 GWe, which account for about 59.8% of mainland China's installed nuclear power capacity in operation. It has 14.65 GWe of reactor units under construction, which is half of mainland China's total figure and one-fifth of the global total.

Located in Constanta County, Romania, the Cernavoda plant was initially planned as the site for five Candu 6 reactors. Units 1 and 2 started operations in 1996 and 2007, respectively. Units 3 and 4 will feature identical reactors of no less than 720 MWe each involving a total investment of about 7.2 billion ($7.8 billion), according to CGN.

Romania and China signed a letter of intent in November 2013 during a visit to Bucharest by Chinese premier Li Keqiang. During his visit, the two countries signed numerous bilateral agreements, including an MOU on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

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by World Nuclear News

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Thai power company buys into Fangchenggang II

25 January 2016

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Thailand's Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding (Ratch) has agreed to take a stake in the two Hualong One reactors being built as Phase II of the Fangchenggang nuclear power plant in China's Guangxi province.

The signing of the equity joint venture contract (Image: CGN)

The company - Thailand's largest private power company - announced on 22 January that it had earlier signed the equity joint venture contract with China General Nuclear (CGN) and Guangxi Investment Group for establishing Guangxi Fangchenggang Nuclear Power (II) Company Limited. The joint venture will develop, construct and operate Phase II (units 3 and 4) of the Fangchenggang plant.

Under the agreement, signed on 23 December, Ratch - through its Ratch China Power Limited subsidiary - will take a 10% stake in the project. Currently, CGN holds 61% of the project with Guangxi Investment holding the remaining 39%.

The project is valued at CNY40 billion ($6 billion), according to Ratch. The company said it will invest THB7.5 billion ($208 million) in the project over the next five years under a 30-year power purchase contract.

Ratch CEO Rum Herabat: "CGN's world-class expertise and experience in nuclear power, with an integrated range of nuclear power services, is a major factor in Ratch's investment decision making." He added, "Additionally, Ratch takes into an account the social and environmental benefits that support our decision making."

Herabat noted, "It is an opportunity for Thai technical personnel in developing and enhancing their skills and experience by sharing nuclear-related knowledge and techniques with CGN, which has more than 30 years of expertise in this field. CGN's achievements and experience in low-carbon environment management is another area for learning because it is important for dealing with the climate change issue."

Ratch is an independent power producer with the state-owned Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand as its majority stakeholder.

Thailand's National Energy Policy Council commissioned a feasibility study for a nuclear power plant in the country and in 2007 approved a Power Development Plan for 2007-2021, including the construction of 4000 MWe of nuclear generating capacity, starting up in 2020-21. In the new Power Development Plan 2010-30, which was approved in 2010, there is 5000 MWe envisaged, with 1000 MWe units starting up over 2020-28.

Construction of the first two units at the Fangchenggang plant began in July 2010. Unit 1 was connected to the electricity grid on 25 October and met commercial operating conditions earlier this month. Fangchenggang 2 is scheduled to begin operating later this year.

A total of six reactors are planned to operate there. Units 1 and 2 are both CPR-1000s, units 3 and 4 are planned to be based on Hualong One reactors, and units 5 and 6 are to be AP1000s. All of these are models of large pressurized water reactors.

First concrete for Fangchenggang 3 was poured on 24 December, with construction of unit 4 scheduled to begin later this year. The two units will be the reference plant for the proposed Bradwell B plant in the UK.

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by World Nuclear News

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SRK is a recipient of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award, whereas Aishwarya is a recipient of 'Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters', the second highest French civilian honour.

New Delhi: Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and filmmaker Aditya Chopra have been invited for a luncheon with French President Francois Hollande here to discuss films.

The private event is being hosted by the ambassador of France, Francois Richier tomorrow and French-origin actress Kalki Koechlin is also one of the invitees.

"The Bollywood celebrities have been invited to have lunch with the President. It is a private event. They will discuss films," French government sources said.

Shah Rukh, 50, has been accorded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award by the French government for his "exceptional career" in 2007, In 2014, he was conferred the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian award.

Aishwarya, a former beauty queen has been a frequent visitor to the Cannes Festival in France for over a decade.

She is also a recipient of 'Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters', the second highest French civilian honour. Hollande is on a three-day visit to India and the French President will be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations here tomorrow.
Two Florida conjoined twins have been successfully separated and one of them is finally getting to go home.

Two Florida boys born in December 2014 as conjoined twins have spent their entire lives in the hospital  now, after a series of successful surgeries and a long recovery, one of the boys is finally heading home.

According to ABC News, the boys  Conner and Carter  were born conjoined along the abdomen and shared small intestine and fused livers. They had, up until now, spent their entire lives in various Florida hospitals.

In order to even survive, the boys had to go through multiple surgeries, including the surgery that resulted in their separation in May.

Now, however, things are finally getting better. Connor has undergone a complete recovery and has been allowed to leave the hospital. Before his release, he had never spent a full day at home with his family.

Conners father, Bryan Mirabal, displayed his eagerness in a news conference last Wednesday.

Thats the fun part, getting to be a dad, he said.

Until his release, Connor and Carter had spent their entire lives at the hospital. Over 200 health care professionals have worked with the boys.

Leaving the hospital, however, meant that Connor would have to say good-bye to Carter for the first time in their lives. Carter has not reached a the stage in his recovery where it would be safe for him to leave the hospital.

The doctors, while excited the operation was completed successfully, expressed their sadness over Connors leaving.

Its going to be difficult for us to give him up but hes going to where he needs to be with his mother and father, said Dr. Daniel Robie, one of the numerous surgeons who worked with Connor.
Company to open new data center in late 2017 or early 2018.

Facebook officially announced the planned opening of a second European data center, this one located in Clonee, Ireland, according to an article on techcrunch.com. The companys other data center on the continent is located in Luela, Sweedn, and opened in 2013.

The new facility, located right outside of Dublin, will be the sixth data center overall, with construction planned to begin soon, and a goal of going live in late 2017 or early 2018. Facebook plans to use only 100-percent renewable energy to power the plant, as it does at the Sweden facility. The company has a goal to convert to powering 50 percent of its infrastructure with renewable energy by the end of 2018.

In both operations, the data center is cooled by the outside air, but since the Ireland locations air contains a good deal more salt, the incoming air will have to be more intensely filtered for use.

The new data center will be completely powered by hardware and software from Facebooks own Open Compute Project, according to the article.

In making the announcement, Tom Furlong, Facebooks VP for site operations, said in a statement, Clonee will be packed full of cutting-edge technology, making it one of the most advanced, efficient, and sustainable data centers in the world. All the racks, servers, and other components have been designed and built from scratch as part of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide coalition of companies dedicated to creating energy- and cost-efficient infrastructure solutions and sharing them as open source.

The company said it was looking to locate a data center in Ireland last June, but the new announcement made it official.

Facebook is not the only company locating in Ireland, as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have a presence there also, and Apple plans to open a data center in the country by 2017. Facebook has had its international headquarters in Ireland since 2009.
Dominoas Pizza store location (illustration)

By: Wayne Morin

Customers of Dominoas Pizza in the United Kingdom, were surprised to be greeted by a sex doll that was placed on top of a counter.

The doll was placed in the Dominoas store located in Shoreham.

The doll was holding the menu of the store in its hands.

Many customers filed complaints with management, saying that the doll was not appropriate for a family friendly restaurant.

Now, Dominoas Pizza apologized, saying that the doll was part of a misguided marketing scheme.

A spokesperson for Dominos Pizza Group said: We apologize to Shoreham residents for any offense caused by our marketing team.

aThe doll was removed and our team member has been reprimanded. While some residents were puzzled others said the doll was crude, disrespectful and unacceptable.a
Travis D. Willis

By: Mahesh Sarin

A man was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure after allegedly pleasuring himself while staring at a woman who was breastfeeding her child in a gym parking lot, police in Florida said.

Boca Raton police said that they have arrested 30-year-old Travis D. Willis, after being accused of pleasuring himself next to the woman in a L.A. Fitness parking lot.

Willis was charged with one count of indecent exposure. He was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail, and his bail was set at $1,000.

Police said that Willis has been accused by three other women of pleasuring himself next to them.

According to the police investigation, the woman who was breastfeeding her 3-month-old child, called police to report that Willis was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the gym located at 4950 Technology Way, and was pleasuring himself.

Willis was sitting in his car, and at some point he rolled down his window to get a better view of the woman. When he realized that the woman called the police, he quickly drove away.

The woman managed to take down his license plate number, and police located Willis.
Justin Anderson

By: Feng Qian

(Scroll down for video) A disabled Army veteran in Nebraska, was seen using his wheelchair to clear the snow of sidewalks in his neighborhood.

Justin Anderson of Bellevue, said that he his happy to help his neighbors as they help him a lot due to his disability.

Anderson bought a plow and connected it to his motorized wheelchair. Every time it snows, Anderson goes out in the street and clears the snow piling on the sidewalks.

Anderson, who fought in Iraq, wants to ensure that pedestrians and students on their way to and from schools, can walk around the neighborhood safely.

He said that he is happy to help clear the snow because his community has been very supportive of him as he struggles with medical issues.

Anderson lost his leg while battling brain cancer.
Although India achieved Independence on August 15, 1947, it was not until we promulgated our own Constitution on January 26, 1950, that we became fully and formally free with self-governing institutions. Republic Day is when we shed the leftovers of Western colonialism and set out in pursuit of true self-determination.

The pomp and glory in celebrating Republic Day are meant to commemorate a momentous historic shift, when we as a people collectively negated the arch-imperialist Winston Churchills statement that Indians are not fit to rule, they are fit to be ruled. Our republic became a pioneer and a beacon for other developing countries by not only adopting the worlds longest written Constitution that was highly progressive and inclusive, but also by showing how systemic transition from colony to sovereign state can be done maturely and legitimately.

The roughly two-and-a-half years between Independence Day and Republic Day comprised an intermediate period when India was technically a dominion of the British Empire. We did have our own Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, with his Cabinet of Indian ministers, but he was only the head of government. The head of state was the British King George VI and he appointed governor-generals (Lord Mountbatten and C. Rajagopalachari), who represented London in New Delhi. Even Indias military Commanders-in-Chief (Sir Claude Auchinleck and General Roy Bucher) in that era were British.

All these high offices were abolished or transferred after Republic Day to Indians chosen by Indians, starting with the newly-elected President of India, Rajendra Prasad. By turning into a republic, we kicked out the final vestiges of the British monarchy and embarked on a new journey of moralistic and nationalistic aspirations.

B.R. Ambedkar, the founding father of our Constitution, captured the great responsibilities coming onto our shoulders on Indias first Republic Day by remarking, We have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves.

The decision of Indias Constituent Assembly to rid the nation of hereditary British monarchy and install an elected head of state was unique for that time of global decolonisation. We were the first so-called Commonwealth realm among developing nations to move, by 1950, to the ranks of a parliamentary republic with top public offices being elected rather than inherited. Our example of a republican order was later followed by Pakistan (1956), Ghana (1960), Tanzania (1962), Uganda and Nigeria (1963), Kenya (1964), Guyana (1970), Sri Lanka (1972) among others.

From Africa and the Caribbean to Asia, it was the Indian case that reverberated whenever nations broke free of colonial rule and moved towards republican form of government. If the Indian struggle for Independence was a torch that electrified fellow developing nations locked in liberation struggles against Western masters, the Indian Constitution and the manner in which it has guided a stable, democratic and liberal political system have been lighthouses for post-colonial state building.

The worldwide appeal of the Indian republic is especially strong because our Constitution rests on what the American scholar Granville Austin termed as its indigenous nature and an Indian rather than a parochial  a Madrasi or Bihari  consciousness. It is true that our Constitution drafters borrowed features from the United States, France, Canada, Australia and Ireland, but they were also driven by core Indian nationalism.

The greatness of our own ancient republics (known as gana sanghas) like Kalinga, Licchavi, Panchala, Malla, Kamboja, Vajji and Madra were also reminders to our Constitution-drafters that they were not imitating the trends set by the Western models of Greek and Roman republics. The wisdom of participatory politics and dialogue-based policymaking through assemblies, voting and committees of citizens, which our ancient republics already practised, was not lost on the makers of our Constitution.

For instance, Ambedkars stress on social justice and equity in the Indian republic derived from principles of the Buddhist gana sanghas. Even the procedural conduct of the Constituent Assembly sessions and the extensive feedback they solicited from the general public were landmarks in democratic consultation that harked back to our mini-republics of yore.

Indians reached back to their partly imagined and partly reconstructed golden age of the past to enact the modern republic, thereby cementing the Constitution in our own ethos. For every fellow African or Asian country that followed India on the paths to Independence and republican systems, it was necessary to perform similar introspection of their respective pre-colonial heritages and then build their contemporary republics. India enabled their self-discovery processes.

The other reason why Indias republic is a benchmark for the global south is because we have scrupulously adhered to the bedrock values of our Constitution. The periodic elections through which we choose our governments and the civil liberties most of us enjoy are the envy of the world, where many developing countries to this day are yoked under authoritarian and arbitrary rule.

Today, it is commonplace to feel cynical about Indians being incorrigibly dishonest and habitual rule-breakers. But we have rarely broken the macro rule underpinning stability in our country  contestation for power through the ballot box and smooth transfer of power based on the peoples will.

Despite flaws, we have largely respected the basic structure of the Constitution as defined by various court decisions, including concepts like fundamental rights, federalism, equality before law, freedom and dignity of the person, unity and integrity of the nation, independence of judiciary and separation of powers. Even where we fail to uphold these core pillars, the aspiration is there and no one in India questions the essential Constitutional tenets or proposes any better alternative to them.

Unlike many developing countries, we have retained one big tent Constitution that has not been overthrown or replaced. This continuity of the state under a predictable set of laws and rules is extraordinary in the global south and gives meaning to our claim to be the worlds largest democracy.

On Republic Day, we must not lose sight of all the deficiencies that plague India. Ambedkar would have cringed at the myriad injustices and iniquities that still hold us back. But if India has endured as a symbol and a reference point for the world, it is thanks to our priceless republic.
Extremism is a difficult issue to deal with. And yet everyone thinks they have a solution. More so, if you are the PM of Britain. Of course, it has to be a whole host of measures which will eventually come together, and some might be more effective than the others. But could the language you speak actually turn you into a terrorist?

In one of the most controversial statements of recent times, the normally sure-footed David Cameron stumbled rather badly when he told Radio 4 that if youre not able to speak English, not able to integrate, you may find therefore you have challenges understanding what your identity is and therefore you could be more susceptible to the extremist message coming from Daesh. Oh dear.

Among his critics is the erstwhile co-chair of the Conservatives, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who felt that whilst language skills were of great use in getting a job, they had no direct link to terrorism.

Speaking of minority communities, how many of us genuinely believe that the UK is a White country? Certainly, some of its areas are, especially in the Midlands. But London is now more or less completely taken over by us, the migrants. Balle, balle! All of us, together, now have crossed 50 per cent of the population. I remember when my mother had come to London she had been astonished at the lack of Whites on the streets.

Could they really be called the majority community? According to government statistics, the percentage of White Britishers in London has halved in the last 40 years! It has dropped sharply from 86 per cent to 45 per cent. That is an astonishing statistic  and it only goes to give the British National Party another reason to shout about. But what is even more surprising is that London has more than half a million illegal migrants. Is this what happens when a country has been ruling half the world for centuries? All the chickens seem to have, literally, come home to roost!

My only worry now is what will happen to all those authors who write about the Asian migrant angst in UK? Or will the White Brits now begin to write books about being a minority?

So, obviously, migrants are now the heart and soul of London. And given the fact that the Syrian refugee crisis is far from over, there are going to be more and more foreign nationals arriving on this small island, and heading undoubtedly for London. Calls are coming from leaders of many parties to be more humanitarian and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, has been insisting that children who have arrived unaccompanied by their parents in Europe should be given safe harbour in the UK.

As one had written in the last column, there is a fear that the immigrant population, especially the adults, bring certain behaviour patterns, particularly towards women. And this has led, quite quaintly, to the Austrian authorities issuing cartoons, to be placed in public spaces, which they believe will stop the migrants from misbehaving.

One of the cartoons depicts a man with his hand raised, towering over a woman, obviously ready to beat her. This has a large cross over it, in bold red, indicating it is forbidden. Another cartoon shows gay lovers kissing each other, and has been marked with a green tick, i.e. acceptable behaviour. The problem with such simple signage is that it can be misinterpreted. Cant there be better means to communicate?

It might be better, for instance, to reverse Mr Camerons suggested language policy. Instead of migrants learning the English language, the resident community could learn theirs. It might give the host country a chance to appreciate some parts of the migrant culture  and help migrants learn about the country they have entered.

And last but not the least, UK has been mourning the death of one of its best homegrown talent: David Bowie, a multi-talented iconic musician. Those shoes, those clothes, that music! The music might live on though, as news has come in that he had prepared records to be released after his death.


Negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel continue amid growing resistance from workers to austerity nationwide, including teachers in Detroit. In the face of this, the president of the CTU Karen Lewis insisted last week that teachers understand that they will have to make sacrifices.

A statewide budget crisis is being used to push cuts in virtually every quarter. Budget negotiations have been deadlocked in the state government for more than six months and state workers and Chicago teachers have been without contracts since the fiscal year ended on June 30.

Last Wednesday, Illinois Republicans announced plans for legislation allowing for the city of Chicago and its school district to declare bankruptcy. In making public his support for the provocative legislation, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner targeted teachers directly, declaring, I believe if we get involved we can take on the teachers union. But the threat of bankruptcy is only one of many weapons being used to attack workers right and living standards across Illinois.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has reported an estimated $1 billion deficit and an operating budget shortfall of $480 million. Last Friday, CPS announced it laid off 227 administrative workers in its central office, including its chief financial officer and head of media relations, and cut 180 vacant positions for a reported savings of $45 million. No teacher layoffs were announced at that time.

In 2015, more than 1,400 teachers and other school workers were laid off as the city shaved $200 million from its school budget. Democratic mayor and former Obama administration chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has in the course of negotiations with the CTU demanded that teachers agree to a pay freeze, pay all of their own pension contributionsamounting to a pay cut of about seven percentand accept increased costs for health care.

In displaying their willingness to push through the cuts, CTU leaders have echoed the bipartisan claims about the severity of the budget crisis and boasted of their new rapport with Emanuel since his election victory against CTU-backed Democrat Jesus Chuy Garcia in an April runoff.

CTU President Lewis said last week that negotiations with the Emanuel administration were going well, because teacherswho have been under relentless attack for more than 10 years under both Presidents Bush and Obamaunderstand that the budget crisis requires their sacrifice!

We're doing fairly well. Both sides understand that concessions have to be made.

I think people understand what dire straits CPS [is in]. We're going to lose certain things in this contract. Even pension pickup, she said, referring to the citys demand that teachers shoulder the entire cost of their pensions.

The CTU and its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), are doing everything they can to suppress opposition from teachers, who are increasingly frustrated and angry with the conditions they are forced to work in, and to keep them under the political control and influence of the Democratic Party.

Two weeks ago, AFT President Randi Weingarten praised Lewis for leading a successful strike and knowing who our enemies are, referring to the Republican Party, at a January 14 meeting of angry Detroit teachers. This was aimed at corralling a wave of sick-outs organized by rank-and-file teachers independently of the union to oppose deplorable school conditions and years of wage and benefit concessions backed by the AFTs Detroit affiliate. Meanwhile, AFT officials met with representatives of the Obama administration, in hopes of crushing the protests before the president visited Detroit on January 20. Instead, teachers shut down nearly the entire school system in the largest sick-out yet.

Far from leading a successful strike, Lewis and CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, a leading member of the pseudo-left International Socialist Organization, shut down the 2012 strike by Chicago teachers before it escalated into a full scale confrontation with the Obama administration, which has spearheaded the attack on public education in the name of corporate-backed school reform. The betrayal of the strike opened the door for Emanuel to shut down 50 schools, layoff thousands of teachers and vastly expand charter schools. As a reward for their complicity, the CTU and the AFT were granted access to organize, i.e., collect dues from low-paid charter teachers.

School privatization has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades, and the Democratic-controlled Illinois state government is the author of the debt crisis, which has funneled vast public resources to major financial institutions collecting high-interest payments on the debts.

Attacks on state workers have been portrayed by union leaders as solely a Republican initiative after hedge fund billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner was elected in November 2014. Before him, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn claimed his commitment to cutting pensions was why he was put on this earth, reforms which were later judged by the Illinois Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

As advancing attacks on the working class are planned by both parties, the role of the trade union leaders and the so-called lefts in these organizations has been to present austerity as only a Republican conspiracy, to promote racial politics to keep workers divided, and maintain the domination of the Democrats over teachers and the working class more broadly.

There is immense opportunity for a united struggle of all sections of the working class in Illinois. Teachers in Chicago should follow the lead of teachers in Detroit, who are starting to take matters into their own hands and act independently of the teachers union. The defense of public education requires a unified struggle of the working class against both big business parties and the profit system they defend.

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Democrats and unions scramble to contain teacher protests

[18 January 2016]
A major new report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has laid out detailed plans for the Pentagons preparations for war in Asia. The report, entitled Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025: Capabilities, Presence, and Partnerships, examines the range of threats to US dominance in Asia, but there is no doubt that its chief preoccupation and target is China.

The CSIS document, released last week, has a semi-official status. It was commissioned by the US Department of Defence at the instigation of Congress under the 2015 National Defence Authorisation Act. The report is a follow-up to a similar CSIS study conducted for the Pentagon in 2012 following President Obamas formal announcement of the pivot or rebalance to Asia in November 2011.

Since 2012, last weeks report declares, the international security environment has become significantly more complicated. China has accelerated the frequency of its coercive activities and the pace of its island building in the East and South China Seas. After noting that US military interventions in Eastern Europe against Russia and in the Middle East have competed with the Asia Pacific for attention and resources, it stresses the importance of countering China. Militarily, the Pacific Command has fully embraced the rebalance, but the [Chinese] anti-access challenge is worsening and Chinas tolerance for risk has exceeded most expectations, it states.

The very terms used in the report are designed to present China as an aggressive, expansionist power and obscure the dramatic US military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific over the past three years as part of the pivot. The phrase Chinas tolerance of risk really means Chinas failure to bow to sustained US pressure and provocations in the region and accept Washingtons demands.

The Pentagons overall strategy for war against China, known as AirSea Battle, involves massive air and missile strikes on the Chinese mainland aimed at destroying key military assets, bases and infrastructure, as well as disrupting the countrys communications, economy and political leadership. It also involves an economic blockade of the country by cutting off shipping lanes, particularly those bringing vital supplies of energy and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa via the Indian Ocean and South East Asia.

These operations are premised on US control of the air and seas near the Chinese mainland from US military bases in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia, as well as the ability to launch strikes from aircraft carriers and submarines. The reports summary of the current US force posture in the Asia-Pacific underscores these aims:

Current US capabilities resident or routinely deployed in the Asia-Pacific include power projection from carrier strike groups, strategic bombers, and guided-missile submarines; ballistic missile defence from a network of installations and platforms in Japan, Korea, Guam, and forward-deployed Aegis-equipped navy ships; anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability resident in ships, submarines, and patrol aircraft operating throughout the Asia-Pacific theatre; air superiority from fourth- and fifth-generation fighters deployed to Japan and Korea; and ISR [Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capabilities from space-based to tactical systems to provide early warning and support to warfighters.

If China were to forward-deploy military forces on this scale permanently to waters off the Californian coast and openly discuss plans to annihilate forces on the American mainland, it is not difficult to imagine the belligerent and aggressive US response. Yet that is exactly what Washington is doing in the Western Pacific and more broadly in Asia.

Not surprisingly, Beijing is seeking the means to counter the US threat through what is referred to as anti-access/area denial or A2/ADthat is, the military capacity to restrict or deny access to US naval and air forces to sensitive waters off the Chinese mainland and to attack US bases, particularly in South Korea and Japan. The CSIS report reflects concerns in the Pentagon that China might be able to disrupt US plans to devastate Chinese bases and cities and at the current rate of US capability development, the balance of military power in the region is shifting against the United States.

After assessing the potential threats, primarily from China, as well as Russia and North Korea, the report bluntly declares: We reject the option of withdrawal from the Western Pacific because of these new challenges. Such a withdrawal would lead to rapid deterioration of the security environment and render operations more difficult rather than easier.

The 275-page CSIS study is devoted to a detailed and comprehensive analysis of what is required to speed up the US military build-up in Asia, to ensure maximum military support from regional allies and strategic partners, and to research and build new weapons systems to neutralise Chinese defence capacities.

The report is nothing less than a master plan for an accelerating arms race in Asia in preparation for a conflict that would inevitably draw in the entire region and the world. It is critical of the Obama administration for failing to articulate a clear, coherent or consistent strategy for the region, particularly when it comes to managing Chinas rise, and for making cuts to the defence budget that have limited the Defence Departments ability to pursue the rebalance.

One element of the CSISs solution to the budgetary difficulties is to place new demands on other countries. The study examines in detail and in turn the role that each of the US allies and partners would be required to play, as well as the necessary expansion of their military forces and facilities. While focusing considerable attention on Japan, South Korea and Australia, it appraises a long list of countries, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as the potential for political resistance and opposition to US plans. Its recommendations include mechanisms to ensure the interoperability and integration of the various military forces into a US-led conflict against China.

At the same time, the CSIS study foreshadows a huge expansion of US military spending, involving trillions of dollars, to fund its recommendations. These recommendations include:

* Restructuring and consolidating US military forces in Japan and South Korea, including the completion of new bases, a major extension of military facilities on Guam, and the expansion of the American Marine, air and naval presence in Australia.

* Stationing a second aircraft carrier strike group to complement one already permanently stationed in Japan, as well as additional surface force presence, such as Littoral Combat Ships, four of which are due to be stationed in Singapore.

* Improving undersea capacity, such as the near-term stationing of two additional nuclear attack submarines in Guam and the future basing of advanced Virginia class nuclear submarines elsewhere in the region, including at Stirling naval base in Western Australia and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia.

* Expanding and reorganising the US Marine and Army forces throughout the region.

* Diversifying air bases to counter potential Chinese attacks, including to the Philippines, Australia and others.

* Boosting anti-missile systems throughout the region to neutralise Chinas ability to respond to a US attacknuclear or non-nuclear.

* Stockpiling critical precision munitions in secure locations to ensure the US militarys ability to engage in large-scale and high-intensity conflicts.

* Undertaking major research aimed at countering any potential Chinese military response to US attack, such as a new generation of advanced, long range anti-ship, anti-surface and anti-air missiles, and the development of new weapons, including three promising optionsrailgun, directed-energy and upgraded conventional guns. Other projects include a new long range strike bomber, greater payload capacity for nuclear submarines, and augmented space, cyber and electronic warfare capabilities.

The Pentagons watchword is that US forces must have the ability to fight tonight. In other words, the military must be able to launch a major war against China within hours and sustain it for whatever time is necessary.

The massive expansion of the military budget required for this arms race will necessarily take place at the expense of the working class. This means the gutting of what remains of social programs and infrastructure and the further impoverishment of the working class. Both in the US and in each of its allies and partners, the turn to militarism will only intensify the class struggle. While the CSIS study makes no mention of the political consequences of its proposals, the boosting of the military abroad takes place alongside the build-up of the police-military apparatus, and police-state measures at home aimed against the eruption of social unrest.
On Monday morning, 23 Detroit Public School (DPS) teachers will appear at the Michigan Court of Claims for a show cause hearing related to the mass sickouts that have called the nations attention to the deplorable conditions in Detroit schools.

The DPS issued a statement on Sunday saying it looked forward to the opportunity to inform the court of the serious effects that these continued sick-outs are having, urging the court to issue an injunction against the sickouts.

The hypocrisy of the DPS emergency manager Darnell Earleywho in his prior position was responsible for the mass poisoning of Flints childrenaccusing teachers of hurting their students is staggering.

The complaint was filed by the district last Wednesday. On Thursday the court denied the DPSs motion for a temporary restraining order. However, all parties were ordered to appear on Monday for deliberation on the preliminary injunction.

The courageous stand by rank and file teachers, in the face of opposition from union leaders, the media and both Democratic and Republican politicians, has won massive public support. Workers and young people across the country are outraged at the degraded conditions Detroit schoolchildren face and have solidarized themselves with the teachers demands for decent pay and working conditions. Students told the media they planned to rally on Monday in defense of the teachers and against the injunction.

In response, state and local politiciansenraged that teachers dared to speak up about intolerable conditionshave launched a vindictive multi-pronged legal counteroffensive. The request for an injunction, issued by Democrat EM Earley, was followed Thursday by a series of punitive legislative bills proposed by state Republicans in the Michigan Senate.

The three bills would further attack the democratic rights of teachers in several ways. They would require expedited hearings by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) on public employee strikes, grant MERC broad powers to fine striking workers, and would require the State Superintendent to suspend or revoke teaching certificates of anyone found to have participated in an illegal strike. Further, an additional bill would punish any school district that failed to deduct MERC-imposed fines from teachers paychecks.

Among the senators sponsoring these draconian bills designed to criminalize the teachers fight is Geoff Hansen (R-Hart) who is also the lead sponsor on the two bills pending in the legislature to dissolve the DPS and create a new Detroit Community School district.

Throughout the escalating protests, union leaders, including AFT President Randi Weingarten; politicians, all the way up to the Obama administration; and the media have all combined to attempt to quash the determination of teachers.

On a parallel track, politicians of both big business political parties are intent on pushing through a reorganization of the district. The district has said its ballooning debts will cause it to run out of money in April. The aim of the reorganization is to clear the way for a huge growth of charter schools and other edubusinesses, and further attacks on pensions and educators incomes.

Indicative of the whole thrust of his plans for Detroit schools and his general assault on public education, Governor Snyderthe architect of the pending reorganizationhas proclaimed January 24-30 School Choice Week.

In fact, big business interests in the media have now escalated the drumbeat for the complete dissolution of the Detroit Public Schools and the charterization of the district. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published a called for radical reform modeled on New Orleans, which converted nearly all of its schools to charters after Hurricane Katrina. These comments were followed by a column on Saturday by Tim Kelly, Michigan state representative, in the Detroit Free Press calling for aggressive reforms like Education Savings Accounts and vouchers or the expansion of choice and public charter schools to absorb the students of the former DPS.

It is becoming very clear that the issue at stake in the current struggle is the fate of public education.

Teachers spoke to the WSWS about the significance of their struggle, the legal attacks and why they are determined to fight. This injunction is meant to intimidate, stated a Cass Technical High School teacher. Its a scare tactic. Divide and conquer.

The DFT used to be strong. When I grew up there were strikes all the time. My mom worked at DPS. We loved that they were fighting. But [former president] Keith Johnson actually signed our contract allowing 60 students in a class. That classroom didnt get bigger. Gym classes sometimes do have 60 or more. How is that legal?.

Its not just the governor. There are a lot people behind closed doors mismanaging funds, the Treasurer, the legislators. They want to shut down the DPS and just have Teach for America types that lack experience, experimentally playing school with our kids. My pay with a Masters degree has gone down 10 percent plus higher insurance deductibles. We loaned the district almost $9,000 that you only receive upon retirement or separation from the district. They aren't making it attractive to stay. They want us to quit to break up the union.

Teachers are mad about the money. Where is it? I am wondering, are we the last people with pensions left?

Its scary whats happening all overChicago, Detroitits a new world order. In 10 years they may have privatized education. They are changing society, period.

Another longtime teacher said, The State of Michigan is threatening to take our teaching certificates awayfor us asserting our first amendment rights! Both of my parents were teachers and this is disgusting to me. Democracy is being taken away in the State of Michigan. Rick Snyder is denying 250 years of American history.

I saw Rick Snyders spielGo back, youre hurting the kids. Hes hurting the kids and has done so for years and years. Weve had enough, said another veteran educator with DPS. The injunction cherry-picked teachers, any names they could get. Many were not significant players. These people are just trying to carry on and teach. Its a lot of stress to put them underdemanding they attend a hearing on Monday. It is just wrong.

I am disheartened that teachers are so disrespected. I have worked for 29 years with the Detroit Public Schools. I feel dedicated; I had chances to leave, but Im invested in this. Its a calling. As they say, Im not in it for the income, Im in it for the outcome.

Im an art teacher. For 15-20 years I went in and painted classrooms, the library, bathrooms. I believe we must create an inviting space. I need to create an environment where my children feel valued. Each year I have 500-700 children, over the years this is some 15,000-18,000 children. Ive seen the conditions they have had to go to school in.

People cant buy cars, homes and food for their families. All of us are working poor. We see parents come in every day, struggling to raise their children. Both mom and dad are working two jobs.

We have nothing to lose. I have three kids in college. They didnt tell me Id never get another raise, that Id have an $18,000 pay cut. We promised our children wed help them, like our parents did. But we are denied that ability because the governor rides roughshod over us. We mortgage our houses to get masters degrees and get pay cuts.

Pensions are gone. New teachers get defined benefits. No one goes into teaching. We are treated like the dregs of society. Who wants to get a job starting at $35,000 a year with $100,000 in student loan debt?

They have no right to tell us what to do with our personal days, said another teacher, referring to the threatened injunction against sickouts. We were tired of rolling over. The district took 10 percent in TIP [Termination Incentive Pay] and the state took three percent for the health trust, thats $2,500-$3,500 each, plus interest. Rick Snyder took this and held it in escrow. Other state workers have gotten it back, but were on our third appeal to get it back! Its unconstitutional.

Why didnt the DFT ask for them to release these funds? The DFT has shut down democracy in our union. We lost confidence in them.

They have the workers all segregatedif youre a blue collar worker, you should make so muchor a white collar worker, this much. We need to fight more and be more angry. We need to fight for all working conditions, for an increase in incomes. No ones income has gone upwhere has all the money gone? It is an oligarchy.

I went to Flint and marched for three hours in the cold. Thats [the poisoning of the citys water supply] the same business. Its a basic civil right. Apparently the Michigan commission said water wasnt a civil right. Lies! If water isnt a civil right, what is?

All the urban school districts should go out togetherPhiladelphia, Chicagothat would turn the nation on its head. One day. The system is not working for the majority of us. They just dont want to pay for public schools anymore.
Emails released by the office of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder further demonstrate the involvement of state and federal officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties in the poisoning of Flint residents and the subsequent cover-up.

Health professionals have warned that the tainted water has caused irreparable neurological damage to thousands of small children in the former center of General Motors manufacturing. It has also been linked to a spike in the respiratory ailment Legionnaires disease, which has resulted in the deaths of least 10 residents.

While the Republican governor played a leading role in this crime, he was not alone. According to one email, former Democratic State Treasurer Andy Dillon made the ultimate decision to permit the city of Flint to leave the Detroit water system and begin drawing from the polluted Flint River. This proved to be a catastrophe for the citys residents, with the corrosive river water causing lead to leach from the citys antiquated pipes, poisoning the citys residents, including highly vulnerable children.

In a comment last week to the Detroit News, Dillon claimed that he originally opposed letting Flint switch its water source and assumed it wouldnt save Flint money. Flints then-emergency manager Ed Kurtz had calculated that the city would save money by switching its water source to the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), then under construction, in the meantime using the Flint River as a water source.

After briefing, I was satisfied there was no construction risk to Flint and learned after input from (the state Department of Environmental Quality) that KWA water would in fact be cheaper for Flint residents, Dillon wrote in an email to the News .

Dillon claimed that he thought the city would sign a short-term contract with Detroit to continue supplying water until a new pipeline from Flint to Lake Huron was completed during the next 18 months. I assumed they would work something out with Detroit, Dillon said. They could have just stayed with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) until the pipeline was in service.

While denying responsibility, as treasury secretary Dillon was charged with supervising Flints emergency manager and had to sign off on all contracts of more than $50,000. This means he would have had to approve Kurtzs April 2013 decision to reject the DWSD offer and end Flints half-century practice of buying water from Detroit. It also suggests he approved the implementation of the plan by newly appointed EM Darnell Earley in April 2014, which included the switch to the Flint River.

I dont recall that decision coming to me; it may have occurred after I left Treasury, Dillon, who stepped down as treasurer in October 2013, claimed in a recent comment to the Detroit News. However, Snyders former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, told the News, I think the Flint River was always part of the KWA plan as far as I know, but that wasnt what Dillon was signing off on.

In a September 25, 2015 email, Muchmore told Snyder that Flints water issue continues to be a challenging topic and said the switch to use the citys river water has spurred most of the controversy and contention. Facing a firestorm of opposition, the state officials were most concerned about concealing their role, not addressing the public health disaster. The email accused some in Flint for trying to shift responsibility to the state, but Muchmore wrote, I cant figure out why the state is responsible except that Dillon did make the ultimate decision so were not able to avoid the subject.

Before Snyder selected him for secretary of treasury in 2011, Dillon was a leading figure in the state Democratic Party and the speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. A former investment banker, he served as president of Detroit Steel (formerly McLouth Steel) and vice president of GE Capitals Commercial Financial Group. He was also a managing director of private equity firm Wynnchurch Capital Partners, a company notorious for buying up struggling businesses, imposing massive job cuts and pay cuts on workers, and then selling the stripped-down companies for a profit.

With close connections to various turnaround firms, Dillon played a key role in the conspiracy orchestrated by the Snyder administration, banks and wealthy bondholders to throw Detroit into bankruptcy. This included the installation of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who threw the city into bankruptcy on July 18, 2013. The bankruptcy was used to obtain an unprecedented federal court ruling stripping Detroit retirees of their constitutional protection against pension cuts and to slash city worker health benefits and sell off public assets.

As a result of the restructuring, Detroits Department of Water and Sewerage sharply increased rates both for customers and other municipalities in order to pay off the big bondholders that controlled the city and water departments debt. This resulted in a wave of water shutoffs for tens of thousands of households behind on their exorbitant bills, and a sharp increase in the price of water pumped from Detroit to Flint. At the time, US bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes declared that city residents had no fundamental right to water service.

Dillon was not the only Democratic politician involved in the poisoning of Flint residents. Both the mayor of Flint and members of the City Council were Democrats. They gave their political support to the decision to switch to Flint River water. They joined with state officials in stonewalling the bitter complaints of city residents over discolored, foul-tasting water.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), staffed by Obama administration appointees, also played a key role in the cover-up of lead poisoning.

As early as June 2015 a lower ranking EPA official, Miguel del Toral, warned superiors of high levels of lead in Flints drinking water. He noted that in one home that was tested there were 13,200 parts per billion (ppb) of lead in the water. The federal level that triggers action by the EPA is 15 ppb.

Del Toral warned EPA officials that the city of Flint lacked corrosion control measures that would prevent the leaching of lead into the citys water system. The EPAs top administrator in Michigan, Susan Hedman, who resigned last week, refused to either act on del Torals findings or make them public. Instead of ringing the alarm bell, Hedman claims that she quietly fought the states Department of Environmental Quality for months behind the scenes over the corrosion question.

As for the EPAs top official, Gina McCarthy, she defended the agencys role, claiming the EPA did its job. Despite this defense of the agencys criminal actions in abetting the poisoning of Flints population, Obama has not sought McCarthys resignation or accepted any responsibility for the crisis. Instead he and other Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have attempted to shift all blame onto the shoulders of the Republican governor.

The response of the Obama administration to the crisis illustrates the hostility and indifference of all sections of the ruling elite to the dire conditions facing workers in Flint and around the world. In the face of the poisoning of tens of thousands of children and adults that has resulted in brain and genetic damage that will span generations, the White House has only offered federal aid of $80 million, less than half the cost on just one F-35 fighter jet. The cost of repairing Flints water system alone is estimated at as much as $1.5 billion.
With Syria peace talks ostensibly set to begin in Geneva today, Washington has ratcheted up threats of US military escalation throughout the region. In the past few days, top US civilian and military officials have declared that they are prepared to seek a military solution in Syria, put boots on the ground in Iraq and launch another US-NATO war in Libya.

The talks themselves, which are being convened under the auspices of the United Nations, are not expected to begin as scheduled because of continuing sharp differences over what forces will be invited to attend and how the proposed agenda for a political transition will affect the future of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.

The US and its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are insisting that the delegation representing the Syrian opposition be limited to a so-called High Negotiations Committee, an alliance dominated by Islamist militias that was formed under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy.

Russia has opposed the participation in the talks of Salafist militias linked to Al Qaeda, which Washington and its allies have attempted to pass off as moderate rebels. It has also backed the participation of the Kurdish YPG militia that has seized substantial territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which all sides claim to be fighting.

Meanwhile, Turkey has indicated that it will boycott the talks if the Kurds are allowed to participate.

Underlying the bitter disputes over who will attend the so-called peace talks are the sharply divergent interests of the US, which, together with its regional allies, has backed the Islamist militias with arms and funding in a bid to topple the Assad government, and Russia, which counts this government as its principal ally in the Middle East. For its part, Turkey, while claiming to oppose ISIS, is principally concerned with overthrowing Assad and quelling the rise of a Kurdish territory on its southern border.

The Obama administration is determined to use the talks as an instrument for furthering its goal of regime change in Syria and, more broadly, the assertion of US imperialist hegemony throughout the Middle East. It insists that any political transition must include the speedy removal of Assad.

It faces being thwarted in these efforts, however, by Russias military intervention. The bombing campaign initiated by Moscow has begun to produce significant military gains by the Syrian army and allied militias against the Islamist forces backed by the US and its allies.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian government troops and local militias Sunday took back the strategic city of Rabia in western Latakia province, which had been under control of so-called rebels, including the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaedas Syrian affiliate, since 2012. The Syrian army has been making major gains as well in the north of Latakia, near the Turkish border, where Turkey staged its shoot-down of a Russian warplane. These advances threaten to cut off a principal supply route for the Western-backed Islamists.

The US has responded to the events in Syria with a flurry of visits to its closest regional allies and key sponsors of the Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria, along with a steady drumbeat of threats.

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Riyadh over the weekend, barely three weeks after the Saudi monarchy sparked international outrage and revulsion with the mass beheadings of 47 prisoners, including Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabias oppressed Shiite minority. Uttering not a word of criticism of the savagely repressive and viciously sectarian absolute monarchy, Kerry declared that the US maintained as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had.

Vice President Joseph Biden, meanwhile, visited Turkey where he solidarized himself with the brutal crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the countrys Kurdish minority that has seen tanks firing on neighborhoods and has cost the lives of hundreds of civilians.

Biden declared that Washington and Ankara were engaged in a shared mission on the extermination of ISIS. In reality, the Turkish government has been one of the main pillars of support for ISIS and other Islamist militias. It has directed its fire principally at Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria, the same forces that the US has employed as proxy ground troops in its air war.

Biden said that Washington was determined to press ahead with the talks in Geneva, adding, But we are prepared if that is not possible to having a military solution to this operation.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated that the Pentagon is also preparing an escalation of its military intervention in Iraq, declaring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that the US is looking for opportunities to do more, and there will be boots on the groundI want to be clear about thatbut its a strategic question, whether you are enabling local forces to take the hold, rather than trying to substitute for them.

The Obama administration had repeatedly foresworn US boots on the ground in the region, referring to the deployment of large numbers of combat troops. Now it is deliberately employing the same phrase to justify the steady escalation of the deployment of advisers and trainers who are becoming ever more directly involved in combat operations.

At the same time, the US military is preparing to invoke the spread of ISIS as the pretext for intervening for the second time in less than five years in Libya.

Its fair to say that were looking to take decisive military action against ISIL in conjunction with the political process in Libya, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. The president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.

In other words, President Barack Obama, has, without a word of warning to the American people, handed the Pentagon brass authorization to launch decisive military action, i.e., yet another war, whenever it sees fit.

The growth of ISIS in Libya, as in Iraq and Syria, is a direct product of US imperialist interventions in the region that have claimed over a million lives and turned millions more into refugees.

The US-NATO war in Libya toppled and murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, smashed the countrys governmental and social infrastructure, and triggered a protracted civil war between the various Islamist militiasincluding those now affiliated to ISISthat the US used as proxy forces in the 2011 war.

These same Libyan Islamist elements were funneled, together with large Libyan arms stockpiles, into Syria to wage the US-orchestrated war for regime change in that country. Now many of them have returned, bringing with them thousands of so-called foreign fighters.

Another war by the US and the European powers in Libya will not be aimed at smashing ISIS, any more than the last one was directed at defending human rights and democracy. Its principal objective will be the imposition of a puppet regime that will place the countrys huge oil reserves firmly under Western control.

Behind this region-wide eruption of American militarism there exist sharp differences within the US ruling establishment and Washingtons sprawling military-intelligence apparatus. The conflict is between those demanding a major new escalation in the Middle East and those opposing a large commitment of troops and materiel, insisting instead on a pivot to confront US imperialisms major strategic rivals, principally China and Russia.

In the end, however, American imperialism is driven by its crisis to attempt to assert its control over the entire planet, and the so-called war against ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa becomes indissolubly linked with the buildup toward war with Russia and China. The increasingly frenetic interventions in Syria, Iraq and Libya could provide the spark for a global conflagration.
Five years after the eruption of mass revolutionary struggles in Egypt that led to the ouster of long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, the counterrevolutionary military junta headed by General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi fears another social explosion.

In the lead-up to todays anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, the regime intensified its brutal crackdown against workers and youth. According to the Associated Press, police raided 5,000 apartments in downtown Cairo in recent days as a precautionary measure to ensure that Egyptians do not return to the streets. Throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of heavily armed security officers, police and soldiers will be deployed.

In a rare show of political insight, the New York Times pointed to the underlying social conditions that once again threaten to drive the Egyptian masses into struggle. The sense of panic has been attributed to concerns that the public is losing patience with the government amid high unemployment, rising prices and a persistent militant insurgency that, among other things, has devastated Egypts tourism industry, the newspaper wrote.

It added: But those factors alone were not sufficient to explain the overheated response From the perspective of the security services, the dateJan. 25was itself a danger, as a reminder of their catastrophic, if momentary, loss of control.

Al-Sisi, a US-trained general and former head of Mubaraks military intelligence service, has ruled Egypt with an iron fist since he took power in a bloody coup against the elected president, Mohamed Mursi, and the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013. On Saturday, he delivered a threatening speech at the police academy in Cairo. Marking Egypts National Police Day, al-Sisi hailed the security forces that have been killing and torturing people by the thousands, and asked all Egyptians, for the sake of the martyrs and the blood, to take care of their country.

Obviously shaken by the events in Tunisia, where renewed mass protests erupted last week and a nationwide state of emergency was declared on Friday, al-Sisi issued the very same threat to the Tunisian masses, who had toppled Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali only weeks before Mubaraks ouster in February of 2011. I do not mean to interfere in the internal affairs of our neighbouring country Tunisia, he declared, but I call on all Tunisians to take care of their country.

According to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, the dictator also warned that the economic situation all over the world is deteriorating and that no nation could endure any more unrest.

Al-Sisi and his bloody regime are terrorizing all opposition and seeking to rewrite the history of the Egyptian revolution. The Egyptian state media are portraying the revolution as a foreign plot aimed at undermining and destabilizing the great Egyptian nation. Nevertheless, the memory of the historic 18-day uprising that inspired workers and youth all over the world will not be erased so easily.

The Egyptian Revolution, following the mass upheaval in Tunisia, represented without question the resurgence of revolutionary struggle. It was a harbinger of growing struggles by the working class internationally. In its immediate aftermath, workers and youth around the worldincluding workers in Wisconsin who carried signs with the slogan Walk Like an Egyptian in protests against the hated governor Scott Hosni Walkerwere stirred by the monumental struggles in Egypt.

On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands for the first time took to the streets in Cairo and other important cities such as Suez. Despite ruthless repression by the US-backed dictatorship, even more turned out on January 28, the so-called Friday of Anger, to engage in pitched battles against Mubaraks notorious antiriot police. In the ensuing days, millions took to streets all over Egypt. Cairos Tahrir Square was occupied and became the symbol of the Egyptian Revolution.

As always in a revolution, the efforts of the besieged regime to intimidate protesters only sparked greater resistance. Following the infamous Battle of the Camels on February 2, when Mubaraks thugs attacked workers and youth on Tahrir Square, ever greater numbers of people entered the square to defy the dictator, whom the imperialist powers sought to defend till the last.

As dramatic as the events on Tahrir Square were, even more important was the intervention of the working class, which dealt the final blow to Mubarak on February 11. The wave of strikes and occupations sweeping factories all across Egypt both before and after Mubaraks ouster had been prepared over many years by the Egyptian working class.

Especially after 2005, strikes and protests had increased dramatically. What began on January 25 was in many respects the culmination of a long period of anger and resistance building up among Egyptian workers against social cuts, privatizations and the looting of state funds by a criminal and corrupt ruling elite.

In the wake of Mubaraks ouster, the working class emerged even more powerfully as the decisive revolutionary force. In the days immediately following the fall of the dictator, there were between 40 and 60 strikes per day, and in February 2011 alone there were as many strikes as during all of 2010.

Strike action continued to escalate in the ensuing years despite the repressive measures adopted by the regime. According to a report by the Egyptian Centre for Social and Economic Rights (ECESR), 3,817 strikes and social protests took place in 2012, a higher figure than all the protests recorded by the ECESR between 2000 and 2010. From January to May 2013, the Egyptian Centre for International Development counted 5,544 strikes and social protests.

After 30 years of the Washington-backed Mubarak dictatorship, this represented an immensely significant upsurge of the working class with vast international repercussions. However, from the start of the revolution, the basic problem of the Egyptian working class was and remained the absence of political leadership.

The day before Mubaraks ouster, the chairman of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, David North, warned in a Perspective column that the greatest danger confronting Egyptian workers is that, after providing the essential social force to wrest power from the hands of an aging dictator, nothing of political substance will change except the names and faces of some of the leading personnel.

The article continued: In other words, the capitalist state will remain intact. Political power and control over economic life will remain in the hands of the Egyptian capitalists, backed by the military, and their imperialist overlords in Europe and North America. Promises of democracy and social reform will be repudiated at the first opportunity, and a new regime of savage repression will be instituted.

These dangers are not exaggerated. The entire history of revolutionary struggle in the Twentieth Century proves that the struggle for democracy and for the liberation of countries oppressed by imperialism can be achieved, as Leon Trotsky insisted in his theory of permanent revolution, only by the conquest of power by the working class on the basis of an internationalist and socialist program.

The basic problem of the Egyptian Revolution was to establish the political independence of the working class from all of the different bourgeois forces. That meant overcoming illusions in the supposedly progressive character of the military led by Mubaraks generals and rejecting any adaptation to the bourgeois Muslim Brotherhood or so-called liberal bourgeois movements such as Mohamed El Baradeis National Association for Change.

In this situation, the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left played a sinister and thoroughly reactionary role. It is beyond the scope of this commentary to analyse in detail all the twists and turns in the policies of the Revolutionary Socialists (RS) grouping and similar outfits, which never represented anything more than the outlook of reactionary and affluent middle-class layers and the machinations of the US State Department.

Initially, the RS claimed that the SCAF military junta led by Tantawi, which replaced Mubarak, would grant social and democratic reforms to the Egyptian workers. Then, as working class opposition to the military mounted throughout 2011, the RS promoted the Muslim Brotherhood as the right wing of the revolution, and in 2012 hailed Mursis election as a victory for the revolution.

When working-class opposition to Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood rose in 2013, the RS promoted the pro-military Tamarod campaign as a road to complete the revolution. It thus helped pave the way for the July 3, 2013 military coup (which the RS initially welcomed as a second revolution) and the counterrevolutionary terror that has gripped Egypt ever since. Now, driven by the fear that the juntas repression could spark a new revolutionary explosion in the working class, the RS is seeking to renew its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.

With the emergence of new stirrings of working-class opposition both in Egypt and internationally, basic lessons have to be learned. The fundamental question is the building of a revolutionary party on the basis of Trotskys theory of permanent revolution. Only on this basis can the unequivocal political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie and its allies in the middle class be established and an internationalist socialist program elaborated. The International Committee of the Fourth International sees as one of its fundamental tasks in the coming period the construction of such a party, as a section of the international movement, in Egypt.
A strong winter storm system (named Winter Storm Jonas) moved through the eastern United States over the weekend, burying major cities and towns from the Carolinas to New York under record-setting amounts of snow. So far, 27 people have been confirmed dead from car crashes, hypothermia and other tragedies that would have been prevented had there been fully funded safety response programs and a safe transportation infrastructure.

As in Flint, Michigan with its lead-poisoned water, people are killed because the social needs of the population are entirely subordinated to the corporate drive for profit.

Eighty million people were impacted by the storm, roughly one quarter of the population of the US. The mid-Atlantic and southern Appalachian states of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland were hit the hardest, with some areas reporting three feet or more of snow. The coastlines in New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia were battered by hurricane-force winds, causing significant flooding and power outages. In New Jersey and the Carolinas, over 190,000 homes reported power outages. Thousands remained without electricity on Sunday. Tens of thousands of flights were canceled and thousands of car crashes were reported from state to state.

Governors in 11 states declared states of emergency, while major highway closures and travel bans were put in place. Preparations were largely limited to police measures as practically all transit was brought to a halt. In New York City, police officials warned motorists to Stay off the road We dont want to have to arrest you. Similar warnings were given in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. In Virginia, Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe ordered the mobilization of 700 members of the US National Guard.

In a country that is supposedly the most advanced in the world, the ability of storms to bring life to a standstill for a vast portion of the country is an indictment of an economic system devoid of any rational planning. Despite the fact that storms are common features of life (increasingly so today due to climate change), the ruling class has neglected basic infrastructure and disaster planning to such a degree that dozens of preventable deaths occur each time a major storm hits.

Many of those who were killed in the most recent storm were workers attempting to drive to or from work. One Kentucky transportation worker was found keeled over in his snowplow after likely freezing to death while seeking to clear the roads.

A Greenville South Carolina couple died in their homes after suffocating from carbon monoxide. The couple, 87-year-old Robert Bell and his 86-year-old wife Ruby, lived through the Great Depression and World War Two but died after losing power during the storm. They had set up a generator in the garage, and although they left the door open to protect themselves, the door closed during the night likely due to wind or snow.

A 23-year-old New Jersey mother and her one-year-old son died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a car they had left running to stay warm. The tailpipe became blocked with snow, and when the car was discovered by the womans husband, he found that only his 3-year-old daughter was alive. She remains in very critical condition.

The death toll likely does not take into consideration unaccounted-for homeless people, despite efforts by charities to shield the homeless from the storm. In New York City, more than 3,300 of the citys homeless population of 60,000 are not able to find spots in the citys shelters. In Philadelphia, there are roughly 4,000 homeless people on a given night, only some of whom are able to find spaces in shelters. Homelessness in the state of Massachusetts rose 40 percent between 2007 and 2014, while funding for homeless families fell by 6 percent in the same period.

For the most part, the wealthy do not suffer from these catastrophes, though they were inconvenienced by the most recent storm. The New York Times published an article yesterday lamenting how theatergoers were disappointed because the storm prevented them from seeing a $1,000-a-ticket Broadway show.

For the 2,600 people who had tickets to the Saturday matinee and evening performances of Hamilton, the cancellations were a particularly low blow, the Times wrote. The investment website Bloomberg reported pleasantly that stock, bond, and commodities markets in New York are planning to operate on regular schedules Monday.

Though storms may be natural phenomena, the death tolls are almost entirely manmade. In the United States, a neglected, crumbling infrastructure is to blame. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the US a D+ in infrastructure in its 2013 report card.

1,836 people died in Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and another 195 were killed during Hurricane Ike three years later. 285 perished in Hurricane Sandy, which passed through the East Coast in 2012. Blizzards are also commonly deadly in North America. In 2010, the North American Blizzard left 41 dead28 in Mexico and 13 in the US. The Storm of the Century led to the deaths of over 350 in the Eastern United States in 1993, with the Blizzard of 1996 killing over 150 people in the same part of the country.

Yet despite the regular occurrence of storms, nothing is done to prepare major American cities for their inevitable impact.

In October, the US House passed a bill that would slash $20 million from the Federal Transit Administration. In particular, the bill targeted transportation funding to public transit in high density states across the mid-Atlantic. From 2010 to 2012, Congress slashed funding for Federal Emergency Management Agency preparedness grants in halffrom $3.05 billion to $1.35 billion. From 2003 to 2014, spending on transportation and water infrastructure has decreased by 4 percent as a share of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Spending by the federal government on transportation and water infrastructure declined by 19 percent over the same period.

State governments have also slashed their funding for transportation as well. Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose administration slashed $175 million from his states transportation budget in Fiscal Year 2015, sought to transform the blizzard into an election promotion, declaring What you see in New Jersey today are results And thats why the people of the United States should strongly consider supporting me for president of the United States, because when the chips are down, I deliver.

The ruling classs funding priorities reveal their parasitic social character. Earlier this month, the US Navy announced that over $80 billion would be spent upgrading its nuclear submarine fleet.
Four young people have killed themselves in the small town of Anadarko, Oklahoma in the past two months. Ranging in age from 22 to just 11 years old, all took their lives with guns.

It has brought us to our knees, Anadarko Police Chief Jason Smith told the media. Theyve been violent and theyve really shook the community to the core.

The first was Jaidon DuBois, a 16-year-old sophomore at Anadarko High School. His father, who spoke to local television station News 9, said his son was being treated for depression and was meeting with a counselor, but suffered from an inner depression that he just could not overcome.

The suicides of a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old followed. On January 19, an 11-year-old boy killed himself.

On January 20, police took a child into custody at the school because staff thought he was trying to harm himself.

Its been difficult for my police department and my firefighters who are the ones who have to arrive on the scene, Anadarko city manager Kenneth Corn told news station Fox 25. To see an 11-year-old is very difficult.

There are no obvious connections between the tragedies. If we could put it under a category, like bullying, wed put our resources toward addressing bullying, Smith said. Thats the problem right now. There are so many causes. Suicide is a feeling of helplessness and that theres nothing you feel you can do about it.

Smith added that while the police were investigating the spate of suicides, its not so easy to put a finger on it and say this person was bullied. It is just not that easy.

Town officials have sought to prevent further suicides, opening training centers and care stations with assistance from the states Department of Mental Health. City manager Corn told the media that many young people grew up in the area suffering a sense of hopelessness. We have a lot of young people here who feel they dont have any hope. We need to make sure that they know were here and we care about them and we want to help them.

I knew every single one of them, former educator and pastor Lynn Bellamy told the media. I taught every single one of them or I was their principal and all of them are loved and they didnt have to choose the course.

Just seems to be like its spreading and kids are feeling like this is a way to make it better, Bellamy said. You have young people who are hurt and they feel hopeless, helpless, but there are people who love them.

What is the social context of these tragedies?

Anadarko is a town of 6,700 about an hour south of Oklahoma City. Half the population is American Indian, according to the Census Bureau, and more than one in three residents live in poverty. Per capita income for 2014 stood at $14,500.

In many respects, Anadarko is a typical town in rural America. Unemployment, drug addiction, poor health and lack of medical careand all other manner of isolation and brutality are rife. Good-paying jobs are scarce, and working families struggle to survive.

Young people have few economic or social options. In small towns and rural areas across the country, the population is aging as youth leave to pursue educational and job opportunities in urban centers.

All of America is beset with the impact of a deep social inequality and decades of attacks on the living conditions of the working class.

In fact, a leading factor in suicides internationally is the economic crisis, and particularly lack of job prospects and unemployment. From New Zealand, to China, to Italy, suicides express a sickness of the social order, which considers huge numbers of people unnecessary and expendable to the capitalist system. Young people just entering the job market or education are forced into desperate, alienating situations, and the most vulnerable sometimes see no way out but through death.

In the United States, the political establishment has long declared a state of economic recovery. Meanwhile, living conditions have worsened precipitously, especially for youth. An individuals educational opportunities are predicated on tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. Basic medical care is out of reach, and mental health care resources are woefully scarce. Millions of people are living one car breakdown or medical emergency away from financial ruin. Youth unemployment is pervasive and long-term, resulting in a growing section of the population that is socially unattached.

Ignorance, crime, addiction, mental illness, homelessness, disease, hunger  all are inevitable consequences of such a state of affairs. Among young people, drug overdoses have driven a drastic rise in mortality rates, particularly in the period of the so-called recovery after 2010.

Like these other indices of social breakdown, youth suicides have also risen dramatically in the past decade and a half. For young whites, the suicide rate has risen from 15 per 100,000 in 1999 to 19.5 in 2014.

Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US. In 2013, 41,149 Americans took their own lives.

The Centers for Disease Control keeps no complete count of suicide attempts, but CDC-aggregated hospital data indicates that Americans made a staggering 836,000 visits to a hospital emergency room for injuries due to self-harm behavior. This suggests that for every suicide in the US, 19 other people may be considering taking their own lives.
The United States last week gave Pacific Island nations notice that it plans to withdraw from the 27-year-old South Pacific Tuna Treaty, its most important commercial, aid and trade pact within the region.

Washington had agreed to pay $US89 million for its 2016 fishing rights and then reneged on the deal. Unless it is renegotiated, the treaty will expire in 12 months, with devastating economic and social consequences for jobs and livelihoods, as well as government revenues, in many small Pacific states.

The treaty governs US access to the worlds biggest fishing grounds, within the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of 17 mostly small Pacific Island states, many dispersed over vast areas of ocean. The State Department negotiates access on behalf of the US fishing companies, which operate the largest fleet in the Pacific.

The State Departments move was signalled last month when the US government asked the Forum Fishing Agency (FFA), based in Papua New Guinea, to take back 2,000 fishing days that the US had initially demanded during negotiations last August as part of a package that covered over 6,000 days. The FFA refused, saying it was a signed agreement.

After pushing the Pacific nations to increase its quota during the negotiations, the US tuna industry was hit by sharply declining fish prices. From a record high of $US2,350 per tonne in mid-2013, prices for skipjack tuna on the world market plummeted to $1,000 by December 2015, accentuated by an oversupply of fish to Thai and other canneries.

Last month, several US-flagged fishing companies claimed they were in economic dire straits and could not or would not pay their portion of the $17 million quarterly payment due on January 1. As a result, the FFA refused to issue licenses for 37 US vessels, which are either anchored in port or fishing in other regions.

The US responded by declaring the treaty was no longer viable for the US fleet. In a letter to the FFA, the State Departments director of marine conservation, William Gibbons-Fly, bluntly declared: Rather than serving as a means of facilitating opportunities for the US fleet to fish in the region, the treaty itself prevents the fleet from doing so.

The move is another sign that the US is using its economic muscle to assert its geo-strategic interests across the Pacific region. Washingtons commercial arrangements are inseparable from its overall strategic and military objectives. The Obama administrations pivot to Asia aims to push back Chinas influence in a range of trade, aid and military arenas. Tensions have risen as some Pacific states, resentful over their current and historical treatment by US imperialism and its allies, Australia and New Zealand, have strengthened economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing.

In November 2010, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Canberra to sharply express Washingtons concerns that the management of the South West Pacific by their Australian and New Zealand counterparts was allowing increased Chinese influence.

Washingtons threat to cancel the Tuna Treaty is a sharp warning to the tiny Pacific states that they must do business on its terms, and buckle under on more fundamental strategic issues, or suffer the consequences. The treaty is an instrument through which the US also delivers economic aid to the region, and in return receives broader rights, such as maritime surveillance. It includes an Economic Assistance Agreement that commits the US to pay $21 million annually into an economic development fund administered by the FFA.

The 17 Pacific parties to the treaty are Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, United States and Vanuatu.

According to a report on Australias ABC Radio on January 19, the move will have a frightening impact on the economies of Pacific nations, which are among the worlds most impoverished. Tokelau (a NZ territory) fisheries director, Mika Perez, said US withdrawal from the treaty could starve his country of much-needed income. More than 90 percent of Tokelau government revenue in recent years has come from offshore fisheries. Niue faces a similar predicament, while processing American-caught tuna accounts for thousands of jobs in the US Pacific territory of American Samoa.

The FFAs deputy director general, Wez Norris, said the Pacific nations would suffer immensely. Theres a lot of revenue thats supposed to flow through to governments that pays for hospitals and schools, Norris declared.

Immediately, the State Departments move appears to be an attempt to restructure the treaty more favourably for US companies. Norris criticised the US of resorting to an extreme measuredumping the treatyrather than sitting down and trying to fix the issues.

The harsh US action could backfire. For a start, the US risks its own boats being shut out from thousands of square kilometres of ocean as other global fishing countries, including China, use the opportunity to gain more access. Already, China has reportedly increased its tuna fishing fleet in the Pacific by more than 100 boats between 2012 and 2015.

It is unclear how the treaty will operate over the coming 12 months. Some US fishing companies that are able to pay their 2016 allocation have indicated they may seek to negotiate their own deals on commercial terms. American Samoan processing company Tri Marine International told the Samoa News that it will look for other opportunities to source tuna supply for its Pago Pago cannery from other fleets.

The FFA has issued a tender to test the market for selling days unused by the US fleet. The FFA fears it may be difficult to sell the days at the levelover $11,000 per daythat the US had agreed to pay. Under conditions of a sharp global downturn in commodity prices, of which the price of tuna is a part, a competitive fire sale of fishing days could emerge.

The FFA is attempting to pull together an emergency consultation with its members in early February to address the issue. It has urged its members to consider the worst case scenariono payment and no fishing by the US fleetwhen reviewing possible options in negotiation with the US.
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago

25 years ago: Mass protests against Iraq war erupt as US experiences first casualties

On January 26, 1991, nine days after the launching of an aerial assault on Iraq, more than 150,000 people marched in Washington, DC in opposition to the US war in the Persian Gulf. The mass demonstration was virtually ignored by the capitalist media, which had been engaged in a nonstop effort to promote the conflict over the previous months.

A simultaneous demonstration in San Francisco brought out 120,000 anti-war demonstrators.

On January 31, the first major ground battle of the US war against Iraq punctured the pretense of imperialist invincibility spread by the Bush administration and the Pentagon. A few hours of fighting at Khafji and other locations on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border resulted in 12 dead Marines and an unreported number of Saudi and Qatari casualties, after an Iraqi attack that caught the US-led coalition forces by surprise.

For months, the American people were bombarded with lies from the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the media, aimed at concealing the war aims of US imperialism and the horrendous cost of the impending war, both in lives and in attacks at home on jobs, living standards and democratic rights.

The real goals of the massive US military intervention in the Persian Gulfseizing the oil fields, conquering Iraq and reasserting the dominant world position of American imperialismwere concealed behind the rhetoric about restoring the independence of tiny Kuwait.

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50 years ago: Johnson resumes Rolling Thunder bombing of North Vietnam

On January 31, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam following a 37-day pause. The move followed by three days the January 28 launch of Operation Masher, the largest search and destroy campaign of the Vietnam Warwhich was carried out in South Vietnams Binh Dinh provinceand Operation Double Eagle, the wars largest amphibious landing, which took place in neighboring Quang Ngai province.

The bombing halt had begun on December 24 and was accompanied by a worldwide diplomatic offensive to bring the US allies behind plans for a larger American troop buildup in Vietnam.

The new round of lethal bombing was endorsed by the most Democrats in both houses of Congress, including leading liberals such as Sen. Mike Mansfield (Montana), who offered Johnson full support for the difficult decision. Differences within the ruling class were reflected in the decision of a group of Democrats in the Senate to oppose an immediate resumption of bombing. Several senators expressed fear that the air attacks would not defeat the Vietnamese national liberation forces and would force Johnson into an all-out land war that would prove disastrous for the administration.

Meanwhile, Sen. J. William Fulbright, Democrat from Arkansas and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, announced that he favored hearings on US policy in Vietnam. A former supporter of the war, Fulbright had been a sponsor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which paved the way for American military aggression.

In a further diplomatic move aimed at defusing opposition to US intervention, Johnson instructed United Nations Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg to call on the Security Council to help bring about a meeting with the leaders of North Vietnam. Unlike during the Korean War, the United States had to this point avoided seeking the cover of the imperialist-controlled UN for its aggression in Vietnam.

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75 years ago: Romanian fascist revolt dissolves

On January 25, 1941 the London Times reported that the Romanian military under the leadership of right-wing dictator General Ion Antonescu had wrested back control of Bucharest from the fascist Iron Guard (also known as the Legionnaires, or Greenshirts). The latter carried out a savage pogrom against Bucharests Jewish population between January 21 and January 23, 1941.

Throughout the pogrom and revolt, both Antonescu and the Iron Guard strenuously claimed to be upholding the alliance with Nazi Germany. Having reasserted himself in power, Antonescu reaffirmed Romania's loyalty to Hitler. Romania will continue to march side by side, the General stated, the great Fuhrer and Duce [Benito Mussolini]. Antonescu pressed home his advantage by issuing a decree that all firearms and ammunition had to be surrendered, and by banning all political meetings involving three or more people.

The Iron Guard rebelled against the government, of which they had been an integral part, because Antonescu had rolled back the organizations privileges, and because of differences over the ongoing expropriation of the countrys Jewish population. Antonescu was not opposed to the Romanian Jews complete ruination, or even expunging Romanias entire Jewish populationas his complicity with Nazi Germany in the Romanian Holocaust would later make clear but he differed with the Iron Guard over how such operations should be conducted.

In the weeks leading up to the January 21 rebellion the Iron Guard created a poisonous anti-Semitic atmosphere in Romania, and hatched a plot to remove Antonescu from power. They published propaganda that highlighted the Jewish status of Antonescus ex mother-in-law. On the eve of the pogrom and revolt, the Iron Guard called upon the Romanian people to rise up against the Freemasons and Jews.

What became known as the Bucharest Pogrom signaled the beginning of the revolt. During a barbarous rampage, unopposed by government forces, synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses, workshops and homes were burnt to the ground. Some Jews were taken to the Bucharest abattoir, lhung from meat hooks, mutilated and labeled with signs reading kosher. A total of 125 Jews were killed during the pogrom, with a further 200 seriously injured.

As the revolt was put down, Iron Guard leader Horia Sima was arrested and awaited court martial. Other conspirators, including Prince Ghica and former government minister Constantin Petrovicescu, were also picked up and held by security forces. Sima was allowed to leave for Germany, while Petroviescu was placed under house arrest.

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100 years ago: Zeppelin raids in Britain

On January 31, 1916, six German dirigibles attacked East Anglia and the Midlands in Britain, killing 70 people and injuring a further 113. Dirigibles, also known as Zeppelins, were used by the German army and navy during the First World War for both reconnaissance and strategic bombing.

A dirigible is a cigar-shaped airship, with gas balloons held within a rigid frame. Powered by multiple engines, unlike a balloon, the vessels could be flown in specified directions. Germany had two manufacturers of dirigibles, Luftschiffbau Schutte-Lanz and the better known firm headed by Ferdinand von Zeppelin. The airships designed by Zeppelin had proven capable of flying to Britain and back even before the war started.

At the beginning of the conflict, the German forces had seven dirigibles, and they were used experimentally to bomb Liege and Antwerp in Belgium in 1914, using artillery shells that were not designed for an aerial attack. During 1915, the airships were used in strategic bombing, although due to the difficulties in navigation at night and targeting, many of the raids did no damage to their intended targets.

The main target of these attacks was Britain. Cities in France, including Paris, were also bombed by dirigibles, but since this involved flying longer distances over enemy territory, it was therefore considered more dangerous. Several dirigibles were also used in bombing attacks on the Eastern Front, including in Salonika in Greece and Bucharest in Romania in 1916.

During the early part of the war, many dirigibles were brought down by anti-aircraft fire, leading to the development of larger dirigibles that were capable of flying higher than both the reach of ground based anti-aircraft fire and the altitude ceiling of smaller airplanes.

Although the attacks by dirigibles in Britain had almost no military impact, the psychological impact on the population was significant, as there were numbers of civilian deaths from the raids. The British government used the air raids by the dirigibles, dubbed baby killers, extensively in propaganda and its recruiting material.

Later in 1916 anti-aircraft defenses in Britain became more successful with the development of explosive and incendiary ammunition that exploited the dirigibles vulnerabilities. A total of 84 dirigibles were built by Germany during the course of the war and over 60 were lost, about half of the losses due to accidents and the rest through enemy action.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) -- Winter weather that's battering the east coast is cancelling an Opening Nights performance.

World-renowned cellist Maya Beiser, who has graced the state at Carnegie Hall, was scheduled to perform in the Capital City on Monday and Tuesday.

But Beiser is unable to get to Tallahassee because of the winter storm that's hitting the east coast.

Organizers tell us they are working to reschedule her shows for later in the spring.

Ticket holders will be notified when new dates are confirmed. Tickets will be transferable.

Concerned patrons should email openingnights@fsu.edu or call (850) 644-7670. For more information, call (850) 644-7670 or click here.

Besier was raised in the Galilee Mountains in Israel. She came to the United States to attend school at Yale University.

She's made a name for herself by reinventing classic cello performances in new, modern and often unexpected ways.

"Maya Beiser defies categories; passionately forging a career path through uncharted territories, she has captivated audiences worldwide with her virtuosity, eclectic repertoire, and relentless quest to redefine her instruments boundaries," said Opening Nights organizers.

She has eight solo albums under her belt, plus several other studio recordings and film collaborations.

Beiser has been a featured performer on the worlds most prestigious stages  including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. She's also a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Prosecutors have dropped sexual battery charges against one of three men arrested in April in connection with an alleged gang rape behind a waterfront Panama City Beach night club.

The Panama City News Herald reports that charges against 22-year-old George Davon Kennedy Jr., a student at Middle Tennessee State University, were dropped because prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to prove their case against him.

Two other men, Delonte Martistee of Bainbridge, Georiga, and Ryan Calhoun, still face felony assault battery charges. continue to face felony charges of sexual battery by multiple perpetrators.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for February 18.

Investigators charged the three men after a video surfaced of them appearing to have sex with an incapacitated woman on a beach crowded with rowdy spring breakers.
New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Monday directed the CBI to supply it and the AAP government with photocopies of the documents seized by the agency during raids at the office of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar on December 15 last.

The court said the documents were required as it wanted to examine their relevancy to establish whether the original papers can be retained by the CBI or not.

The court ordered the documents to be supplied within two days and listed the matter for hearing on January 29.

"Whatever documents you (CBI) have seized, you have to give one set of photocopy of all those to the court and the counsel for Delhi government," Justice P S Teji said.

The judge said the agency may keep the originals with it so that the court "can look into it at any point during the arguments".

The judge wanted to see the documents to know whether they were important or not.

"I am not aware of the contents of the documents. You get me one set of documents," the judge said.

The high court's direction came on CBI's plea seeking stay on a trial court order asking it to release the seized documents to the Delhi government, saying it needed them as the investigation was on.

A Special Court on January 20 had directed the CBI to return certain documents seized by it during the December 15 raids at Kumar's office, while disposing of an application filed by the Delhi government seeking their release.

Challenging the decision today, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Tushar Mehta, appearing for the agency, asserted that the decision to raid Kumar's office was not influenced by any political party and "the colour given by AAP government is unwarranted."

He also contended that "the judge failed in observing that the present application was filed by the Delhi government which has absolutely no locus standi in the present case. The present regular case was filed against Rajendra Kumar for criminal misconduct by government officials and has nothing to do with the Delhi government".

The ASG claimed the trial court judge had failed to appreciate that the right of investigation was the inherent right of the probe agency which cannot be curtailed by passing such orders.

ASG, assisted by CBI standing counsel Sonia Mathur, further contended that the probe was at a crucial stage and the documents seized were important for the investigation of the case to prove the involvement of the accused persons.

He said the documents seized from the office of Rajendra Kumar "prima facie reflect criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct and abuse of official position by accused persons".

Defending the seizure of documents during the raid, the agency had said proper procedure for search was followed and they were not opposing supply of the documents to the accused.

ASG Mehta further said "the judge has erroneously observed that 'upon that this is not a fair investigation but CBI has arbitrarily abused its authority during the search'."

To this, Judge Teji said the observation may be for the purpose of order, so it hardly matters.

Meanwhile, advocate D P Singh, appearing for Kumar, told the court that his client's name should be deleted from the list of respondents in the present challenge petition, as he was not contesting the findings of the trial court nor questioning the CBI investigation at this stage.

Hearing this, the court allowed Kumar's oral request and deleted his name as respondent in the plea filed by CBI.
GADSDEN Co., FL (WTXL) - Gadsden County Schools are looking into threats made against the district, according to Deputies.

The Gadsden County Sheriff's Office says the social media threats are believed to be "rollover" from threats made against Leon County Schools (LCS).

LCS first addressed the threat to it's schools Sunday evening on Facebook, saying they were in contact with the Sheriff's Department and that schools would be open Monday morning.

Gadsden County Deputies say as of Monday morning there is no indication that there is a legitimate threat against any Gadsden County schools.
MADISON CO., Fla. (WTXL) - A former drug dealer has been re-sentenced to 10 years in prison, after violating probation, according to deputies.

According to the Madison County Sheriff's Office, Robert Turner Phillips was originally charged in December of 2014 after an investigation by the Madison County drug task force.

Phillips was charged in July of 2015 for possessing and manufacturing methamphetamine and other drug paraphernalia. He was also charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.

Originally, Phillips was sentence to serve 10 years at the Florida Department of Corrections, however he was given the option to serve 15 years of probation instead.

In November of 2015, Phillips violated his probation and, after evading police, was apprehended and re-sentenced to spend 10 years at the Florida Department of Corrections.
New Delhi: Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpurwill be developed as 'Smart Cities' with the help of France which on Monday affirmed its commitment to India's ambitious plans for clean and sustainable development.

In this regard, French Development Agency has signed memoranda of understanding with the Union Territory of Chandigarh, Union Territory of Puducherry and the Maharashtra government (for Nagpur).

A Joint Statement issued here today after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande said "the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to cooperate towards clean and sustainable development and reaffirmed their valuable partnership in India's ambitious plans to develop Smart Cities.

In this spirit, the two leaders welcomed the three MoUs signed and the proposed collaboration between AFD (French Agency for Development) and the government of India for financing projects related to urban water and sanitation in Puducherry.

They also welcomed the partnerships between Engineering Projects India Limited (EPI) and nine French companies which will be able to contribute to major infrastructures projects in India, the Joint Statement said.

According to Smart City Mission, a mega scheme of the the Modi government, 100 cities across the country will be developed as Smart Cities.

Improved basic amenities, environment-friendly transportation system, e-governance are some of the essential features of the Smarty City to be developed by the states with central help.

While 20 cities will be selected this month, 40 each will be get the nod in the next two years.

The two leadrers also expressed satisfaction on the progress of a number of initiatives undertaken by Indian and French institutes to promote and preserve cultural heritage and enhance cultural cooperation between the two countries.
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Chennai: Strange are the ways time moves in the digital age. The past could as much be a window to the future as the present in recreating trust.

Just when the Maithripala Sirisena-Ranil Wickramesinghe current dispensation in Sri Lanka has taken the first steps for drawing up a new Constitution, raising hopes for a lasting peace to the long-suffering and embattled Sri Lankan Tamils, Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher and a great find of the European Enlightenment age, may hold the key to that happy peace, even if popular perceptions have often dismissed him as being conservative and obscure.

It is partly because it is not fashionable these days to discuss Kants political philosophy. But, equally, not many may have come across the fact that the ideas articulated in a seminal article, Towards Perpetual Peace, this humble son of a harness maker of Konigsberg had written in 1795, had substantially influenced the people who wrote the United Nations charter after World War-II had ended.

Throwing light on this aspect of Kants thinking, Dr Lucas Thorpe, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, at an interaction here recently at the Philosophy Department of Madras Christian College and its Centre for Peace Studies, said in trying to understand the roots of conflict between men and societies, Kant saw that often competing ostensibly moral positions was the mischief-maker, more so in relations between states.

As you can have conflicts where both parties are in the right, recognising the justice of the other side, was in Kants view, the first step to resolving conflicts, explained Dr Lucas. So this oft-touted justification of going to war to achieve peace  as trumpeted during the U.S.s invasion of Iraq  would have been straight rejected by Kant.

The idea of a single World government was also rejected by Kant, as religious and linguistic differences would make such a World State impossible, said Dr Lucas. Peace is possible only through a Federation of Nations.

For Kant, individual, personal morality should not be mixed up with the demands of a state and the best road to perpetual and lasting peace was creating specific institutions that created the conditions for peace, as Dr Lucas elucidated. Kants insight was that establishing such specific institutions (internationally), going beyond personal moral / cultural barriers, logically create conditions for peace. This is one reason why rule-bound International trade is crucial for world peace.

India is one of the most culturally pluralist country I have been to, said Dr Lucas, who finds in Kant a moral pluralist. This reading of Kant surprises many scholars, he said in a conversation with Deccan Chronicle later. In man trying to get out of the state of nature, do you use violence to resolve conflicts or through Law? Kant there was more influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau and preferred the social contract way to achieve Justice, a humane outlook that later influenced great contemporary philosophers like John Rawls and Amartya Sen.

Landing here from Turkey, where a civil war has re-started rudely setting aside a two-year peace process that had raised hopes for the Kurdish minorities, after the spillover from the Syrian conflict, Dr Lucas said the signs of normalcy in Sri Lanka looked a lot better situation than what was happening in Turkey now, though each intra-state conflict situation has its own history and specific features.

From a Kantian perspective, the biggest challenge is, to establish peace, is to establish trust, he stressed. When asked about its relevance to resolving the Tamils ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, he said a key strand of the Kantian approach was that the parties in conflict must recognise the justice of the other side, if linguistic/cultural pride was not to degenerate into despotism.

To make peace, you must assume the other person is good, willing and also incorporate the happiness of others, noted Dr Lucas. In the modern world, when there are multiple identities, if you believe in culture pride, you should also be aware of culture shame, the mistakes a culture may have made, the candid philosopher from Istanbul mused.

Equally important is to appreciate that pride of ones culture does not entail a rigid view of other cultures, he said.

I am British by birth, but my wife is Turkish and learning to respect the others culture is very important, Dr Lucas said, smilingly turning to his better half, Zubeyde Karadag Thorpe.

The notion of a strong, unitary state posed problems in different parts of the world, particularly vis-a-vis group rights of ethnic/religious minorities.

Even in Sri Lanka, as it rewrites its Constitution, a federal political settlement and granting more autonomy could be the only long-term solution, he said. But this has to be achieved step by step, by a gradualism that Kant believed in.

This syndrome of creating heaven on earth in one stroke has to go, to avoid the dangers of being a racist or a nationalist, Dr Thorpe reasoned. Hope Colombo is listening too.
The Israeli government authorized a four-year program for ensuring better quality employment for Israelis of Ethiopian origin.

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The plan, coordinated by the Ministry of Economy and Industry, was approved on Tuesday, January 19 and will be allocated a budget of NIS 55 million ($14 million) intended to stimulate an increase in salary and employment rates among thousands of Ethiopians.

Ethiopian Israelis protesting against police violence and inequality (Photo: John-Michel Kibrick)

The initiative was created following a government resolution in February 2014 designed to extract from the government a new policy for advancing integration of Israeli citizens of Ethiopian descent.

In July 2015, the government adopted an additional resolution which authorized the acceptance of the programs cornerstones. These include guidance for better employment, providing vouchers for vocational training, the launch of a dedicated enterprise fund and tracking for job placements for academics.

Employers will also be encouraged to employ those of Ethiopian origin with higher salary packages which will be subsidized by 1 percent. Overall, the initiative aims to integrate 3,600 Ethiopians into the workforce over four years.

A spokesperson at the Ministry of Economy and Industry told Tazpit Press Service (TPS) that the plan stemmed from governments need to implement a wide scale mission to facilitate the maximum integration of Ethiopians into the Israeli society.

It is a model which encourages employment of weaker populations that are not in the workforce or in specific areas of national preference, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the model was intended to act as a bridge for the employment of Ethiopians and getting job candidates into quality employment. The salary will be comparatively high and as a result it will encourage employers to employ Ethiopians in professions needed in the market.

The spokesperson highlighted that the plan was largely coordinated with the Ethiopian community.

According to the Senior Director for Strategy and Policy Planning at the Ministry of Economy, Michal Fink, the participation rate in the workforce among Ethiopians is similar to that of the general population.

However, their unemployment rate is higher (8.8 percent versus 5.9 percent among the general population). Additionally, the salary gap between Ethiopians and the general population, irrespective of education, stands at 40 percent.

Riki Tegave, manager of the NGO Hiyot which dedicated to assisting the Ethiopian community in Israel, agreed that measures need to be undertaken to improve the lives of Ethiopians, but she expressed her reservations that it would yield significant results.

Many times decisions have been taken at a governmental level but we do not always see them being implemented. For example the plan to help young Ethiopians with housing remained promises, she told TPS.

I sincerely hope that this decision will be comprehensive and that indeed the money will reach the purpose for which it is intended. I hope that we will see the integration of the whole community of Ethiopians in employment. Time will tell.
US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro regrets the timing of his statement that the government has two legal standards, one for Palestinians and one for Israelis, he told Army Radio on Monday. Shapiro made the comment at the Institute for National Security Studies conference last week, which was held on the same day that terror victim Dafna Meir was laid to rest.

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"I understand the timing was not ideal," said the ambassador. "I began with condemnations of the terror attacks in Otniel and Tekoa. There were only one or two controversial sentences, and if it hurt the Meir family or those mourning her, of course I regret that."

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Regarding his claims about legal standards for Israelis and Palestinians, Shapiro said that he had praised Israeli authorities for making arrests and convictions in the case of the Duma case, in which three members of a Palestinian family were killed when their house was set on fire. "We encourage Israel to continue all investigations of different violent incidents, because it's very important to show commitment to the rule of law."

Of the American position on the peace process, Shapiro acknowledged that "we are in a period when there may not be negotiations in the near future, so we are trying to find steps on both sides to advance peace and security for Israel and Palestinians alike, and to preserve the possibility of two states."
According to a survey conducted by the Sampling, Consultation and Research Center, a majority of Israelis endorse the idea of offering new immigrants more economic and employment benefits, even at the expense of native Israelis, in light of the alarming wave of anti-Semitism that has stricken Europe. Yaakov Hagoel, Deputy Chairman of the World Zionist Organization was scheduled to reveal the results of the survey at todays cabinet meeting.

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In light of the concern for the safety of the Jews of Europe, we have established a committee to deal with immigration barriers and we asked to check the position of the Israeli public in this regard, explained Deputy Chairman of the World Zionist Organization, Yaakov Hagoel.

Welcome party for 220 Canadian immigrants at Ben Gurion International Airport (Photo: Itay Blumenthal)

The survey reveals that approximately two thirds of Israelis are concerned for the safety of Jews living in the Diaspora. Thirty-nine percent of Israelis believe that European Jews should escape the growing anti-Semitism in Europe by immigrating to the Jewish homeland. At the same time, 46 percent of Israelis recognize that many of their Jewish brethren in Europe continue to live on the continent for social and economic reasons.

Of noteworthy mention was the percentage of Israelis who supported granting more special benefits to new immigrants. A whopping majority of 83 percent of Israelis in the survey expressed their belief that the State of Israel should take actions in the labor market that would grant special privileges to new immigrants.

French immigrant couple at Ben Gurion International Aiport (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Fifty-three percent of the surveys respondents suggested that Israel provide financial benefits to employers who hire new immigrants. Thirty percent recommended even requiring public agencies and large private business to set a floor benchmark of employment positions for new immigrants, even though such a policy would come at the expense of the native Israeli labor force.

The results are surprising, even to us, commented Hagoel. Despite the difficult economic situation in Israel, the Jews are brothers to each other in every place in the world.

Hagoel is expected to address the need to reduce and remove the many barriers that new immigrants often experience in the employment sector. Many of the new immigrants arrive in Israel as educated professionals with experience and potential to contribute to Israel but encounter bureaucratic hurdles. They are very often not recognized in their professional field. For example, professionals such as lawyers and doctors with certifications from abroad are not automatically recognized in Israel but must instead go through a convoluted process to get certified in Israel.

Hagoel will reportedly present the establishment of a unique group of staff members in the World Zionist Organization that would aim to eliminate the unnecessary barriers faced by new immigrants.

The Israelis are prepared to do everything-to give up jobs for the sake of their brethren in exile, noted Hagoel.

There is no day more fitting than International Holocaust Memorial Day to raise this important issue to the cabinet.
Hamas' popular television channel Al Aqsa, which broadcasts to every home in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has been devoting nearly all of its air time over the past four months to encouraging attacks and keeping the flame of the current terror wave burning.

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Interviews with relatives of terrorists are a daily occurrence. "I am the mother of the heroic martyr Muataz Qasim, who was killed in an heroic act near the village of Jaba," the mother of one terrorist told the channel. "Muataz was a kind, young, handsome man, who never hurt anyone and always loved the al-Aqsa Mosque. In fact, his favorite thing in the world was the al-Aqsa Mosque."

To complete the picture, the heads of the station, based in the Gaza Strip, set up a new studio decorated with burning tires, barbed wire and a wall of graffiti showing Palestinians holding knives and stones. The station's hosts wear black and white keffiyehs to show solidarity with Palestinians who confront the IDF.

Hamas's Al Aqsa TV studio

Al-Aqsa TV's programming is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the incitement raging in Palestinian media in general and in recent months in particular. Channels such as Palestine al-Yom and al-Quds carry daily broadcasts with short interludes that unequivocally encourage attacks against Israelis.

One clip shows the bodies of all female Palestinian terrorists that were killed while attempting stabbing attacks. It ended with the caption: "We swear to take revenge for Raqiya Abu Eid" (the girl who attempted to carry out a stabbing attack last Saturday at Anathoth and was shot and killed). Alongside the caption was an image of a bloody knife.

Inciting graffiti

Another video incorporates the funerals of terrorists while in the background there is a song praising them. There are, of course, endless clips dedicated to specific terrorists that are presented as almost superhuman heroes. Moreover, the news of every attack is carried live with songs of joy and praise to the martyrs.

And then there are videos designed to sow hatred of IDF soldiers and settlers. The videos usually show staged situations in which actors play settlers or soldiers abusing, humiliating or shooting innocent Palestinians at checkpoints, markets or in the street.

At the beginning of the terror wave, official Palestinian television broadcasted inflammatory programs, but a direct order given by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a few week ago led to a decrease in the level of on-air incitement.
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Monday approved for second and third readings the so-called Frisking Bill, which would allow police to search a suspect's person if there is reasonable suspicion of an imminent violent act. The proposal is expected to be put up for a vote in a Knesset plenum later Monday. Seven MKs supported the bill, while six opposed it.

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Passing the bill would entail a significant expansion of the police's authority to conduct a body search of anyone suspected of imminently committing a violent act. It has drawn fire from the opposition, which argued that it would endanger human rights and permit harassment of particular groups because of their appearance, regardless of whether there is any suggestion that they have violent intent.

Police officer searches Palestinian next to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (Photo: EPA)

"There is a near-total consensus regarding prevention of terrorist acts," said MK Yael German (Yesh Atid), "and there is resistance to the police's ability to search teenagers and youths based on the accepted custom that we have seen for years. There will be racial profiling and they'll harass Arabs, Ethiopians, those who appear Mizrahi, and then Russians."

In contrast, committee chairman MK Nissan Slomiansky (Bayit Yehudi) said he was satisfied when the committee approved the bill. "We succeeded in expanding the police's ability to conduct a search and thus dramatically changed its ability to act." He noted that the original version of the bill had not called for any probable cause and that the "reasonable suspicion" requirement was an addition addressing concerns raised by opponents of the bill.

"We found a compromise according to which one the one hand, we are giving the police power to fight violence, and on the other hand, we are protecting human dignity and there will therefore be no search unless there is suspicion of carrying weapons," said MK Smoliansky. The requirement of a "reasonable suspicion" was added in order to address human rights concerns, he said.
The Shin Bet, in cooperation with the IDF, recently arrested 18-year-old Palestinian twin sisters Diana and Nadia Hawilah, it was cleared for publication Monday.

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The arrests of the sisters, residents of Shuwika near Tulkarm, followed a search of their house that revealed weapons including pipe bombs, fertilizers used for making explosives, as well as a knife and Hamas headbands.

According to the Shin Bet investigation, Diana bought the chemicals found in her home independently, used online video tutorials to learn how to build explosive devices, and intended to use them against Israelis.

Her sister, Nadia, allegedly helped to conceal the weapons at the house where they both lived.

Weapons and materials found in the sisters' home

The Shin Bet said that Diana was exposed via the internet to radical Islamic preaching encouraging women to take part in acts of terror against Israel and Jews, and this reinforced her decision to act as she did.

Indictments against the two women were issued to a military court in the West Bank in recent days. The indictment against Diana charges her with manufacturing explosives and trafficking in military equipment. Nadia's indictment alleges that she also trafficked in military equipment.

"This investigation shows yet again the motivation that exists to commit terrorism, including those who don't belong to terror organizations, and among them are women, as well," the Shin Bet said in a statement announcing the arrests. "In addition, it can be seen that the internet is increasingly used to make weapons with the goal of committing terror attacks and spreading incitement."
Four suicide bombers killed about 25 people in a village in Cameroon's Far North region on Monday, a local official said, the most deadly in a string of recent attacks in an area beset by violence connected to Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Two bombers struck the Bodo central market while others hit the town's main entrance and exit points, the official said.

"There was a quadruple suicide bombing in the village of Bodo this morning. There are around 25 deaths and several wounded," he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
ROME - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrived Monday in Rome on the first state visit to Europe by an Iranian president in almost two decades, eager for foreign investments after the lifting of international sanctions.

The four-day visit to Italy and France is part of efforts by Iran to reach out to its old partners following the implementation of a landmark deal on curbing Iran's nuclear activities. The trip was originally planned for November but postponed by the attacks in Paris.

Europe was Iran's largest trading partner before the sanctions, and a range of business and trade deals is expected, including with Airbus for the purchase of new aircraft. The trip is also aimed at expanding tourism as Rouhani's administration is planning to diversify its revenue sources.

Rouhani met first with Italian President Sergio Matterella, and was scheduled to meet later with the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and on Wednesday with Pope Francis. In France, he is to be welcomed by President Francois Hollande.
Hyderabad: The agitation at Hyderabad Central University over the suicide of dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula further escalated on Monday with students rejecting the appointment of Vipin Srivastava as interim Vice-Chancellor and calling for a nationwide university strike on January 27.

On a day when students from different universities converged on the campus here to pledge support to the stir, the Joint Action Committee (JAC) also said a bandh will be called in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh if their demands are not met.

Read: Hyderabad: Tension soars as students across India join Chalo HCU stir

The students are demanding ouster of Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has proceeded on leave, and enactment of a legislation called "Rohith Act" aimed at preventing suicide of ST, SC, BC and minority students in universities.

"We are discussing with JACs of other universities to form a nation-wide JAC to take forward the agitation until justice is delivered to Rohit. The JAC also calls for a strike in Universities across the country on January 27," a spokesperson of JAC for Social Justice (HCU) said.

Read: Hyderabad scholar death: Badgered Vice-Chancellor goes on leave

On his part, Srivastava appealed to the students to withdraw their hunger strike, saying the deadlock could be resolved only through dialogue and that the administration should be allowed to function.

"We have been telling them for the last three days not to go on hunger strike. The main problem at this time is, today is 25th of January, students' scholarships, fellowships... There is a procedure to be followed. Somebody has to sign the cheques", Srivastava said.

Read: HCU Suicide: 7 more UoH students go on indefinite protest fast

The students and SC/ST faculty and officers forums had objected to the choice of Srivastava to perform the duties of the VC alleging that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student Senthil Kumar in 2008.

However, Srivastava said the reasons behind the student taking his own life in 2008 were not clear. "He was going through pre-PhD course work and for reasons which are still not clear, he committed suicide," he added.

Read: Hyderabad varsity VC Appa Rao says he took leave to facilitate talks

Srivastava said he met some faculty members last night, and has sent an email to his colleagues "if they can come down to my residence and we can talk".

"Only through talks we can arrive at a solution. I reiterate the administration should be allowed to function and laboratories should be opened so that the students do not experience any irreparable damage," he added.

Security was beefed up with a large number of police personnel being deployed around the campus with the police "verifying" all those who are entering the campus.

As the indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch of seven students over suicide of Rohith entered the second day, hundreds of students from institutions like Pondicherry University, Andhra University, IIT Bombay, Osmania University, Maulana Azad National Urdu University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences converged on the campus pledging support.

Read: Solution possible through talks, ready to discuss the issue, says HCU interim V-C

The hunger fast was resumed on the campus yesterday after the previous batch of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday after their health deteriorated.

According to HCU chief security officer TV Rao, over a thousand students and others have come in from different parts of the country.

They marched from HCU shopping complex area, the hub of the protest, to the main gate and administrative building and back.

Vowing to deepen and broaden the stir, JAC said moves are also afoot to form a nation-wide JAC to take forward the agitation.

B R Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar visited the campus and interacted with the students.

The HCU today told the Hyderabad High Court that it has revoked suspension of four students, against whom action had been initiated along with Rohith.

However, the counsel of the four students contended that they were not served with the order copy in this regard, following which the HC directed the HCU to file before it the documents of the circular/order on revocation of suspension along with the counter affidavit to be filed on the petition challenging their suspension.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital yesterday after she complained of chest pain, Dr Ravindra Kumar, said a senior doctor at the health centre in the University, adding, she has been kept under observation in the ICU.

Rohit was found hanging in a hostel room on the HCU campus on January 17, sparking strong reactions on the campus and across the country.
Indian officials and the French delegation, including the country's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, were seen accompanying them.

New Delhi: French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday took an "eco friendly" metro ride to Gurgaon to inaugurate the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

The two leaders boarded the metro shortly after 3 PM. Indian officials and the French delegation, including the country's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, were seen accompanying them.

On board the Metro, headed to Gurgaon. pic.twitter.com/jwYm7Q2gnn  PMO India (@PMOIndia) January 25, 2016

Official twitter handles, @Elysee and @PMOIndia, posted pictures of the journey. In one of the pictures, Modi and Hollande are seen standing at the platform of the Race Course station.

"An eco friendly ride! PM @narendramodi and Prez @fhollande travel on Delhi metro on way to Gurgaon," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

Hollande, who arrived in India yesterday, will also lay the foundation stone of the headquarters of ISA, which is aimed at increasing utilisation and promotion of solar energy in solar-rich nations.

The event will be held at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon.

There was some disruption on Line 2, also known as Yellow Line, that stretches from Samaypur Badli to Gurgaon's Huda City Centre, owing to the high profile ride that lasted around 30 minutes.

"Due to security considerations and a directive from Delhi Police, services had to be regulated for a brief period," a helpline staff of DMRC said.

DMRC chief Mangu Singh accompanied the dignitaries and was seen briefing Hollande and Modi during the journey.
According to the results of a survey of 2,000 homeowners by law Firm Slater and Gordon, 78% of respondents believe their home has increased in value in over the past year.

Not surprisingly, Sydney was home to the greatest proportion of respondents who believe their home is worth more now than it was a year ago, with 94% saying yes.

The survey shows that 89% of homeowners believe the value of their home has increased, while &85 of homeowners in Adelaide and 76% in Brisbane have a positive view of their situation.

In Perth, 57% of homeowners believe they have seen an increase in value.

Across the country, 31% of homeowners said they would consider selling in order to cash in on the growth they have seen in the past year.

More homeowners in Sydney (38%) said they would consider selling compared other location.

Thirty-six percent of Melbourne homeowners said they would consider selling, while 35% of homeowners in Brisbane, 26% in Perth and 24% in Adelaide said they would consider putting their home on the market.

But homeowners looking to cash in have been warned to make sure they are prepared for the sale process.

If you want to cash in the increased value of your property, youll need to be familiar with both the legal aspects of selling your house, as well as the processes around buying a new home to live in, Slater and Gordon conveyancing works lawyer Robert Kern said.

If there are any issues with the transfer or you make a mistake on the application, it can result in the settlement being delayed or the sale not going through, Kern said.

Kern said even a small mistake could be costly for those looking to sell.

As the value of a home increases, the financial impact of complications also increases, he said.

For example, issues with an undisclosed easement could see the value of your home drop by 10 per cent, thats a $100,000 loss if the home worth has increased to $1 million.
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with French President Francois Hollande before their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: India and France, having suffered repeated terror strikes, decided to step up their anti-terror cooperation including intelligence sharing and called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of Pathankot to justice.

During their extensive talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

Read: Agreement signed to Rafale jets, will sort out financial aspects soon, says Modi

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, the two sides resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counter-terrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, a joint statement said.

Read: Need for collective fight against terror: Narendra Modi

It further said that India and France will cooperate to disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cyber security experts," it said.

Read: Hollande, Modi take 'eco friendly' metro ride to Gurgaon

They also stressed that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed.

"Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future," the statement said.

Read: India, France to explore avenues to check offshore tax evasion

The two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders pose a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan.

In this regard, they emphasized the need to address this challenge by dismantling terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens and disrupting all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals.
There is no denying that scientists and engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA are one of the best people in their field. However like everyone, these industry insiders sometimes need a little help from people outside the agency.

In 2014, NASA has outsourced the development of a device that would better locate destructive rocks set to impact the planet. Last year, the government agency asked the help of the general public in constructing a possible human habitat in mars. Ultimately SEArch consortium and Clouds AI received the $25000 prize for their winning idea, the Mars Ice House. Interestingly just two weeks ago, NASA has yet again asked assistance for a project from the curious public.

In partnership with Freelancer.com, the agency has posted a contest on the crowdsourcing website last January 14, 2016. NASA is seeking assistance for "Astrobee," a flying robot that helps astronauts accomplish routine tasks aboard the International Space Station. Currently astronauts aboard the ISS use Spheres robot which has been utilized 2006. The "Astrobee" robot is intended to be hauled to the station by 2017 when the Sphere is due to be retired. NASA needs help in perfecting the robotic arm for "Astrobee" that would be used to handle small objects.

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"We are asking for your help in exploring the multiple ways to approach creating a decomposed architecture of a complex system. Help us by providing system architecture options for a robotic attachment mechanism (robotic arm) attached to a free flying robot that will fly aboard the International Space Station (ISS)" read NASA's post on Freelancer.com.

A $10 payment would be awarded to each of the thirty individuals whose ideas are selected from the registration survey. Subsequently, a $100 fee would be paid to individuals selected from the registration who managed to provide all the deliverables in the task.
Chennai: Following heavy rains the city is having surplus water supply, but residents of tenements in Kannagi Nagar still face water shortage.

Usually we get water on alternate days, today it has not come from the morning.

There is no fixed time of water supply, said S. Jayanthi on Sunday evening, who looked distressed about the scarcity of water in block 43, where she resides. She is not alone. Another resident complained: I havent been able to take a bath today as we had stored water in buckets. That would not have been sufficient to use for other chores as well as bathing.

Some residents have another tale to tell. They claimed that they had been receiving water daily but now water comes once in three days. While residents complained about the shortage of water, officials from Metro Water and Slum Clearance Board made contradictory claims on the matter.

The requirement for the 22,500 families in Slum Board houses is around 60 lakh litres per day but for the past ten days we have been receiving around 30 - 35 lakh litres. This is the reason behind the shortage. One of the desalination plants that supplies water to Metro water is not functioning, but we will pick up the supply soon, said an executive engineer from the TN Slum Clearance Board.

Metro Water supplies the required amount of water, 55 lakh litres per day, to the underground tank for Kannagi Nagar. We have been supplying the assured amount but the internal distribution is managed by Slum Clearance Board which manages the daily supply, said an official in Metro Water when told about the issue.
Perhaps it is difficult to express pain through humour. And if you are a Dalit, it is almost impossible to do it. But, Dr Siddalingaiah, poet, thinker and currently Director, Dr BR Ambedkar Study and Research Centre at Bangalore University, knows how to do this.

When he portrays pain and harsh social reality through anecdotes and humour, one certainly feels the pain. As head of the Institute, he is engaged in a lot of activity even getting non-Dalit scholars to address students on Dr Ambedkar.

A former disciple of Communist veteran E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who was later associated with former CM Ramakrishna Hegde, he spoke about Dalits on college campuses and outside in the context of the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad. Here are excerpts from the interview.

What is the plight of Dalits in Karnataka?

Though I am an Ambedkarite, I did not become a Dalit castiest because I was groomed in Communism. There is a major trend among Dalits these days. Just like RSS, we have seen fundamentalists among Dalits too.

Their agenda is to hate others. They do not understand that there are economically weaker people in other communities too. Economic disparity is a major issue in society. A person drawing a salary of Rs 2 lakh has a neighbour who gets Rs 4,000- Rs 5,000 per month.

According to a study, if in a society, the disparity hovers around 1:10, it is natural and acceptable. In this case, the disparity is in the range of 1:480, 1:500 or 1:1000. This is unacceptable. It may lead to a bloodbath.

Can you be more specific in the context of Rohith Vemulas suicide?

In the wake of the Hyderabad development, I feel Dalits and non-Dalits can come together at one point. There is one section among non-Dalits who are exploited.

Non-Dalits see elites among Dalits who may be around five per cent and presume the SCs have come of age and do not need help anymore. The fact is 95 per cent of SCs have not got benefits.

Non-Dalits think Dalits are getting scholarships and other benefits from the taxes they pay. Unfortunately, funds released by the governments are going into the hands of middlemen. It is not reaching the people in remote areas.

Compared to the Seventies and Eighties which witnessed active Dalit movements in Karnataka, do you see any change in Dalit consciousness and their condition?

Dalits are extremely conscious of their plight compared to the Seventies. But there is a problem with Dalit consciousness. I feel it is not positive or intended to change the entire society. Dalits should be conscious of their goal: creating a casteless and classless society.

To realise the dreams of Ambedkar, Gandhiji, Jyotiba Phule you have to do one thing: Dalits have genuine sympathisers in other castes. Take them along and move forward.

There was a time when many upper caste people would dedicate themselves to the Dalit cause. Arent there any more leaders of this kind?

Very few. Gandhijis influence was very strong then, so was Ambedkars fight. Naturally, many people from the upper castes became Ambedkar supporters. But I do not find people with such spirit now.

Many Dalits who became educated, have become self-centred and selfish. The other reason: Many educated Dalits live hiding their caste in cities. Nearly 80 per cent, I guess, live like this. If they reveal their real identity, they will not get houses on rent.

There was a time when Dalits sleeping in parks (who have no permanent residence) were called and given jobs. There wasnt much unemployment then. Earlier, non-Dalits would never take their economic backwardness seriously. Economic backwardness was taken in a spiritual way.

Even the poor could live a dignified life, perhaps because of the influence of Bhakti movement. But things have changed now. We are in a market economy where disparity has deepened so, no one comes forward to fight for this cause.

Moving on, there is a new trend emerging. If a Dalit MLA is caught taking bribe, he defends his act saying, You are targeting me because I am a Dalit. Do you think growing corrupt practices defeat the Dalit cause?

I do not think corruption will defeat the Dalit cause. Dalits in government offices may indulge in corruption. But they are still afraid of being caught because majority of Dalit officers have no godfathers.

The problem is misuse of the Atrocity Act. In case, a Dalit officer is found drunk during office hours and is pulled up by his boss, the subordinate will file an atrocity case and ensure his boss goes behind bars. This is worrisome.

How safe are Dalit children on University campuses in Karnataka?

Compared to other states, Karnataka is better. We give lot of benefits. Minor skirmishes happen on campuses because they are backed by some leaders.

There is another issue, discrimination among Dalits. Touchables who are popularly called Rights do not even have marital relations with Lefts who are untouchables.

This was started 20 years back by politicians. Holeya and Madigas who are not acceptable come under Left. We have 101 communities in the SC bloc. The idea of creating a SC bloc means untouchables should be there.

But for political reasons, many touchable castes were included in the SC bloc. Now politicians are trying to bring all the communities together for electoral benefits.

Parties do not give tickets to the Left candidate because if an untouchable is elected, he may come to a voters house and many don't want to face such a situation. So, what these parties cleverly do is give tickets to only touchable SC candidates. Now the trend is changing.

There are two challenges: Dalit empowerment and ensuring genuine harmony among Dalits. What is the way forward?

I think Dalits have to fight for the cause of non-Dalit poor too. I feel, non-Dalit poor should also get reservation. A new type of solidarity should happen, social untouchability should encompass economic untouchability too.

There is a large section of non-Dalits who are sympathetic towards non-Dalits. They should be brought in.

At a time when violent behaviour is preferred by sections in the upper castes and Dalits as well, do you think your advice will be heeded?

We have to make an honest effort. When leaders have credibility, I think, people will heed them. People like me and Devanuru Mahadev should try to train youngsters on these lines.
Our nations beloved Bapu is in the news again, thanks to Joseph Lelyveld's controversial book about him and Anna Hazares fight against corruption in a true Gandhian style. While the latter refers to Satyagraha and non-violence, the former raises some questions about Bapus personal life and alludes to some of his controversial views. <br><br> Since two-thirds of our countrys population is under 35 years and hence the future of our country, it merits discussion to understand what the Gen Y, as they are popularly called, thinks about the Mahatma? Or perhaps, do they even bother to think about the man who led our country to freedom? <br><br> For the Gen Y, the name Gandhi is more associated with Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi than Mahatma Gandhi. Not because the third Gandhi is not great but, because the first two are more relevant to this age. Most of the young people must have heard about Mahatma Gandhi through their grandparents or read about him in History books. But, the major recall value is likely to come thanks to the Bollywood blockbuster, Lage Raho Munnabhai. <br><br> It is safe to assume that almost everybody in India would be aware of Mahatma Gandhi. And, many would not know much about him except for the fact that he was a great freedom fighter who believed in non-violence. What was his value system, what were his principles, what were his other achievements etc would not be known to many. If this seems like an exaggeration, one can watch any youth based reality show to understand the level of general awareness of many of our urban teenagers or people in their early twenties. If many from amongst the urban youth, who have access to the best of education, are not fully aware of Indian history, then one can imagine the levels of awareness of the urban poor or rural youth. <br><br> It is the duty of the senior members of our society, especially the politicians to ensure that the future generations know about the great contributions of our freedom fighters and other leaders. So, what do they do to ensure this? Ban a book that talks about some controversial issues related to Mahatma Gandhi? Is this the right thing to do? <br><br> First, by banning the book, the politicians have curbed the very freedom of speech or expression that Bapu himself propagated. Second, they have increased the probability of people reading the book. How many people in India would have read yet another book about Gandhiji when hundreds of other books have low levels of readership? By banning the book, the politicians have provided free publicity to the book. Moreover, even if one does not read the book, everybody who reads news would read about those very controversial issues that the politicians wanted to hide. In an effort to score brownie points, the politicians have done more disservice to Bapu than Joseph Lelyvelds book could have possibly done. <br><br> Now that certain controversial issues have come to the fore, it is worth discussing them. First, there are some references to his personal life. Irrespective of whether they are true or not, it is nobodys business. What matters is what Bapu did for our country and what his teachings were. <br><br> Second, there are some discussions about him being a racist, more so from the critics of the book. There are only two possibilities. Either they are true, or false. If false, then there is no issue. But if true then one should praise Bapu even more for having overcome his regressive ideas as is evident by his later life. To err is human and if Gandhiji did something like this in his early life, then it is no great sin. In the times that he lived in, to have such racist ideas is no surprise. Plus, a youth is a reflection of his society. It is only when one matures that one realizes the true self. If Gandhiji overcame this trait of his, then it is even more commendable. <br><br> Veteran social activist Anna Hazare is doing some great service to Gandhiji at a time when his integrity is being questioned by some. He is spreading word about non-violence and Satyagraha as propagated by Gandhiji. The same great service was done by the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai. This is what matters to Gen Y and this is what they remember about him. This generation, unlike their predecessors, believes in live and let live. What Gandhiji did in his personal life is of no concern to them and rightly so. <br><br> There is a history in everybodys life but the purpose of history is to learn from it to help us guide through perilous times. Gandhiji has been labelled as the father of our nation for much bigger reasons than what he did in his personal life. This is precisely what the Gen Y should learn from. <br><br> Gandhiji had once said, A nations culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. Thus, what the generations that shall lead our country in future think about Gandhiji, is very crucial.
Chandigarh: On the eve of Republic Day, the Haryana Government has granted special remission of 15 to 60 days in sentence to prisoners in the state.

The convicts who have been sentenced for a period of 10 years and above have been granted remission of 60 days and those sentenced for five years or more but less than 10 years have been granted remission of 45 days, an official release said here on Monday.

Similarly, the convicts who have been sentenced for two years or more, but less than five years have been granted remission of 30 days and those who have been sentenced for less than two years have been granted remission of 15 days, it said.

The remission will also be granted to all convicts who are on parole or furlough from the jail on Republic Day, that is January 26, 2015, subject to the condition that they surrender at the respective jails on the due date after the expiry of their parole or furlough period for undergoing the un-expired portion of their sentence.

The remission will not be granted to convicts who are on bail on the day it is granted. Besides, it (remission) will not exceed one-fourth of the total period of sentence.

However, in case of persons convicted and sentenced for life, the special remission granted by the state government will be in addition to the remission granted as per Jail manual, the release said.

The sentence of imprisonment imposed in default of payment of fine would not be treated as substantive for the purpose of grant of this remission. All prisoners convicted by the courts of criminal jurisdiction in Haryana but undergoing their sentences in jails outside the state shall also be entitled to get this remission.

The remission will not be granted to prisoners convicted for offences like abduction and murder of a child below the age of 14 years, rape with murder, dacoity or robbery, under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987, Official Secrets Act 1923, Foreigners Act 1948, Passport Act 1967, Section 2 and 3 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1961, Section 121 to 130 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Similarly, the remission will not be admissible to detenues of any class, Pakistan nationals, the persons imprisoned for failing to give security for keeping peace for their good behaviour under sections 107 or 109 or 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. It will also not be admissible Convicts who had committed any major jail offence during last two years and were punished for the same under the relevant provisions of Punjab Jail Manual or any other Act or Rules as applicable on that day.
New Delhi: An intense cold wave swept North India on Monday, claiming four lives while dense fog engulfed the region where Jammu experience its "coldest night" in 70 years.

West Bengal has also reported four deaths due to chill weather conditions prevailing for the last three days.

Four homeless persons succumbed to chilling cold in Purulia district of West Bengal in the last three days, SP Rakesh Kumar said.

In Uttar Pradesh, two people died due to intense cold in Mahoba district and as many were killed in two separate fog-related incidents in Badaun and Saharanpur, respectively, since yesterday.

Cold wave tightened its grip on different parts of the state with mercury slipping to 2.4 degrees Celsius in Nazibabad.

Khemchand (55) of Kulphard and Ajay (28) of Chandua village in Mahoba died of severe cold, R P Mishra, a doctor at the district hospital said.

A 45-year-old man, Yusuf, was today killed and five others were injured when two trucks collided due to fog in Musajhag area in Badaun, police said, adding the injured were admitted to a hospital where their condition was stated to be stable.

In Saharanpur, a 32-year-old man was killed when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a bus in heavy fog near Kameshpur village.

Sun shone down on the national capital where maximum was 18.7 degrees Celsius after mercury in the morning dropped to 6.7 degrees Celsius while 30 trains were cancelled and 75 delayed due to fog.

However, flight operations remained normal at the Delhi Airport. Visibility was 400 metres at 8.30 AM, a marked improvement from yesterday when it was zero. It was recorded 1000 meters at 11.30 AM.

In Jammu and Kashmir, Jammu recorded its "coldest night" in the last 70 years at 0.05 degrees Celsius though there was an improvement in the minimum temperature at most places in Kashmir division.

"Jammu recorded a minimum temperature of 0.05 degrees Celsius last night making it the coldest night in the last 70 years. Prior to this, the minimum temperature was 0.06 which was recorded on January 11, 1945," Sonam Lotus, Director, J&K Meteorological Department said.

"The coldest night was due to dense fog hovering over Jammu skyline. We are expecting snowfall in mountainous belts of J&K from January 29-30 and rains in plains of Jammu region in the same period," Lotus said.
New Delhi: A medical emergency onboard a Mumbai-bound Air India aircraft from London forced the aviation authorities to divert the flight to Baku airport in

Azerbaijan.

Air India flight AI 130 with 229 people on board made an emergency landing at Baku's Heyder Aliyev International Airport, a source said.

The Boeing Dreamliner (B787-800) aircraft was on its way to Mumbai when the pilot sought diversion of the aircraft from Air Traffic Control to provide medical assistance to a sick

patient on board, the source said.

The flight had departed from London's Heathrow Airport yesterday at 1900 hours and was scheduled to arrive at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at 0400

hours this morning.

It will now reach Mumbai by 1300 hours.
Kolkata: Grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Chandra Kumar Bose, joined the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday.

Chandra Bose took membership of the BJP at a rally attended by BJP president Amit Shah in Kolkata today.

Joining a political party is a personal matter but I feel your principle and ideology matter. The BJP believes in the ideology of Subhas Chandra Bose, he said.

Lately, Chandra Bose has been heaping praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government.

On January 23 when Modi government declassified 100 files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, he had said, The country is waiting to see how the NDA Government will transform a government of suppression and deceit" to a government of transparency and openness."

You see what I like about Mr Narendra Modi's attitude, was, he said that we must do this jointly. I have not seen the files personally, but it is a national demand, people are raising it. I clearly told him that this is not a family issue at all. Some members of the family might have initiated the move but I think the people of India would demand, to know, what happened to Subhash Bose after 18th August 1945, they would like to know," Chandra Kumar Bose had said.
New Delhi: Congress on Monday announced that the party will file a petition before Supreme Court against the Centre's decision to impose President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

Accusing the Modi government of trying to destabilize a state bordering China, the Congress said that the party will challenge in apex court the Cabinet decision if it gets presidential assent.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired an unscheduled meeting on the political crisis of the border state, after which it was recommended that President's rule be imposed in Arunachal Pradesh.

The proposal was sent to President Pranab Muherjee late Sunday, which was signed by him. The imposition of President's rule came into effect from Monday.

Also, President Pranab has sought an explanation from Home Ministry over the need behind imposition of President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. Home Minister Rajnath Singh is likely to brief Pranab on the matter at 2 pm today.

Meanwhile, Arunachal Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, who will be reaching New Delhi today, accused political vendetta by NDA government behind the political crisis in the state.

Tuki quoted that BJP party along with Governor J P Rajkhowa are engineering a plot to topple his government in the state. According to reports, Tuki will meet Congress chief Sonia Gandhi today. Congress delegation is likely to meet President Pranab today evening.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 of BJP and two independents to 'impeach' Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue, in a move branded as "illegal and unconstitutional" by the Speaker.
New Delhi: Keeping in view of the Republic Day celebrations and the presence of French President Francois Hollande who is the chief guest at the Republic Day parade, the Delhi police on Sunday put up posters of 'wanted terrorists' across the national capital.

Following the attack on the Pathankot Air Force Base, security has been beefed up in Delhi.

Earlier, the Delhi Police had sent out an advisory alerting about a white Alto taxi that was hired from Pathankot by three unknown people and whose driver was found dead on January 20 in Kangada.

Meanwhile, in a massive crackdown on terrorists and terror suspects, 14 ISIS sympathisers have been arrested for allegedly plotting to launch attacks during Republic Day celebrations.

Delhi will remain on high alert till the Republic Day as the Delhi Police has been told to be alert to foil any attempt by terrorists to carry out attacks.
New Delhi: Taking forward the strategic relationship between the two countries to the next level, India will build a satellite tracking and imaging centre in southern Vietnam.

The new high-tech centre will provide Vietnam access to pictures from Indian earth observation satellites that have a footprint over the region, including China and the South China Sea.

While the images from the satellites primarily have agricultural, scientific and environmental applications, experts hold the view that the imaging technology could also be used for military purposes.

That is significant as both India and China have long standing disputes with China.

The centre will be set up by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The new centre in Ho Chi Minh City will also help ISRO monitor its satellite launches.

India currently has ground stations in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Brunei, Indonesia and Mauritius to track its satellites in the initial stages of flight.
Chennai: The suicide of three college students on Friday night has snowballed into a political controversy ahead of Assembly polls. Opposition leaders including PMK founder S. Ramadoss, CPI (M) state secretary G. Ramakrishnan and MDMK general secretary Vaiko on Sunday demanded a judicial probe into the alleged suicide of three students of a naturopathy college in Villupuram district and sought strict action against a private college administration.

The three girl students allegedly committed suicide by jumping into a well, owing to the exorbitant college fees collected from them. Expressing shock and grief over the triple deaths, PMK founder S. Ramadoss said the college students have been protesting against lack of basic facilities for a long time. He said despite a complaint to the district collector, no action was taken and some students attempted suicide earlier.

The tragic incident could have been prevented if action was taken against the college in the right time. At least now, the government should take action on those responsible behind the suicides, he said, urging the state government to pay a compensation of Rs 25 lakh to the families of the three students and admit the other students in a government-run college.

CPI (M) state secretary G. Ramakrishnan demanded a judicial probe into the issue and sought dismissal of the state health minister from the cabinet.

He also sought action against the officials who had given approval for the medical college without any required infrastructure.

The students studying in the college should be shifted to other government approved colleges immediately, he said.

In a statement here, Vaiko said that students lodged complaints with the Villupuram district collector and police against the SVS Yoga Medical College alleging that proper facilities were not provided to them.

Following this, the collector had instructed the college to give back the fees and certificates to students. But the management ignored it, he said.
New Delhi: A day after the three medical students were found dead inside a well adjacent to their college in Viluppuram , the college campus witnessed massive protests from the parents and locals. The protesters demanded action against the college Chairman and other who were responsible for forcing the girls to take the step.

It has come to light from the suicide note of the three medical students - V Priyanka, E Saranya, T Monisha of the SSV College of Naturopathy and Yoga Sciences were subjected to mental torture by abusive language from the college Chairman. The girls also complained about lack of basic facilities in the college even after extorting huge fee from their parents.

It is believed that the girls were upset about their future even if they managed to clear the exams and get a certificate from this college which lacked basic facilities like an operation theatre, morgue, labs and any practical exposure.

In their suicide note, the girls said, "This college is collecting enormous fees. They did not even give us receipt for the payments. There are no classes and studies as compared to the amount of fee they are charging us. We have no teachers to teach us."

The girls also accused their college chairman Vasuki Subramanian of humiliating them by using foul language against them.

"Out families are under huge stress since we joined this college. College chairman Vasuki (Subramanian) always abuse us calling us criminals. We have been suffering here in this college," said the suicide note.

The three student of the SSV College of Naturopathy and Yoga Sciences at Viluppuram in Tamil Nadu were found dead inside a well outside their college building on Sunday morning. The suicide note recovered near the well alleged the college authorities for forcing the girls to take the extreme step.
New Delhi: French President Francois Hollande vowed Monday not to weaken his resolve against terrorism as he held talks with India's leader on security cooperation and a long-delayed defence deal.

Hollande said he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to step up cooperation on counter-terrorism after deadly attacks on Paris in November that recalled the 2008 assault on Mumbai.

But they failed to reach a final agreement on India's long-delayed purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from the French company Dassault.

The French president said a new video which threatens countries of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group would only strengthen France`s resolve, which was tested by November`s deadly attacks in Paris.

"These odious provocations only serve to further increase the resolve that we have, that I have, to protect French people through the decisions that I have taken... but also to hit, and hit again, this organisation that threatens us and kills our children," he said.

Hollande made the comments after talks with Modi that focused on security cooperation following the Paris attacks.

Modi also spoke of the two leaders` joint resolve to increase security cooperation, recalling a deadly raid earlier this month on an Indian military base near the Pakistan border.

"President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies," he said.

Modi was speaking alongside the French president, whose visit had raised fresh expectations that the Rafale deal would be finalised after years of tortuous negotiations.

A joint statement said the leaders welcomed the conclusion of an intergovernmental agreement on the purchase, but that "some financial issues" remained outstanding.

A senior French official told reporters on Sunday the two sides were still haggling over the price, which experts say could reach around five billion euros ($5.6 billion).

One sticking point is Delhi`s insistence that arms makers invest a percentage of the value of any major deal in India.

Manufacturer Dassault Aviation hailed the accord Monday, saying in a statement it "actively supports the French authorities in finalising a full accord within four weeks".Hollande will be chief guest at Tuesday`s Republic Day parade in New Delhi, an invitation Modi extended to show solidarity after the assault on the French capital which killed 130 people.

Earlier, he said the extremist threat weighed as heavily on France as on India, recently hit by the deadly attack on a military base near the border with Pakistan.

The 17-minute video put out by the IS group describes the Paris attackers as "lions" who "brought France to its knees" and urges Muslims in France to rise up against the country`s leaders.

It features the heads of Hollande, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and British Prime Minister David Cameron with targets superimposed on them, and purports to show nine jihadists involved in November`s slaughter.

"Nothing will deter us, no threat will make France waver in the fight against terrorism," Hollande told reporters.

"These images only serve to discredit the perpetrators of this crime."

Hollande and Modi will sit together at the annual parade, a pomp-filled spectacle of military might which includes columns of Soviet-era tanks.

On Monday the atmosphere was distinctly more down-to-earth as the two leaders took the metro for their journey to the satellite city of Gurgaon.

There, they were set to lay the foundation stone at the new headquarters of the International Solar Alliance, a 121-nation group launched by Modi at the recent Paris climate conference to expand affordable solar power.

Hollande has expressed hope that some of the French businesses travelling with him will be at the forefront of the solar energy push.

The leaders are expected to announce a pact between France`s CNES and India`s ISRO space agencies for a joint satellite dedicated to climate change research.
New Delhi: A high-level security meet is underway at Home Ministry in view of security measures to be taken on Republic Day.

Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief, chief of Research and Analysis Wing (RWA), National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and other senior officials from the Home Ministry are said to be present in the meeting to discuss the security situation ahead of Republic Day celebration at Red Fort tomorrow.

French President Francois Hollande has been invited to India as a chief guest for Republic Day this year. It will be a three-day visit for Hollande, which started on Sunday, January 24.

Keeping in mind the recent Pathankot terror attack and arrest of dozen terror suspects from across the country. At least 1,000 snipers along with 49,000 paramilitary personnel under the close watch of 15,000 CCTV cameras will guard the capital on the Republic Day to ensure a safe visit of the chief guest French President Francois Hollande.

Police said the 49,000 security personnel -- around 15,000 from the paramilitary forces and 34,000 from Delhi Police -- will be deployed on the streets of the capital starting at 5 a.m. on January 26.

A seven-layer security ring will guard the enclosure that would be used by Hollande, Mukherjee and Modi.

India Gate and Rajpath have already been shut to people and the area is under constant guard by security personnel.

The airspace over the capital will be monitored by special radars, the officials added.

Traffic on some major arterial roads in New Delhi like Rafi Marg, Janpath, Man Singh Road will be stopped from 11 p.m. on Monday till the end of the parade.
Kolkata: With the Narendra Modi government declassifying a set of secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, descendants of the revolutionary leader on Monday exuded confidence about the Russian government too making public similar files claimed to be crucial in unravelling his disappearance.

Netaji family spokesperson Chandra Kumar Bose also described January 23 -- when the Centre made public 100 classified Bose files -- as the day when independent India's first transparent government was established.

"We had a talk with Prime Minister Modi about his visit to Russia. He said that President Vladimir Putin, with whom he personally spoke about the issue, has assured of cooperating with the Indian government.

"So, the process is on and we are hopeful that the Russian files which are very crucial, will be declassified," Chandra Kumar, who on Monday joined the BJP, told IANS here.

Chandra Kumar said the Centre was also in talks with the governments of Japan, Germany and Britain over getting public classified information on Netaji.

"We have also urged Modi to write to the Chinese government because they too have some files on Netaji," said Chandra Kumar, who along with many family members was present when Modi put in public domain the 100 secret Netaji files.

Ascribing to claims that Netaji had faked his death in the alleged plane crash of 1945 and escaped to erstwhile Soviet Union, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has recently been demanding the Modi government to raise the issue with its Russian counterpart to solve the "Russian mystery" surrounding Netaji.

Chandra Kumar, who doesn't subscribe to the air crash theory, claimed that the declassified files contain evidence proving that even Jawaharlal Nehru did not believe Netaji had died in the plane crash.

"There are several documents indicating how successive Congress governments have suppressed facts to ensure the air crash theory is not debunked.

"We have got a 1962 letter in which Nehru had written to Netaji's brother Suresh Chandra Bose, wherein he clearly stated that there was no clinching evidence to establish the air crash but only circumstantial evidence," claimed Bose.

A member of the Shah Nawaz Committee that concluded that Bose had died in the plane crash in Taihoku on August 18, 1945, Suresh Chandra, had declined to sign the final report giving a dissenting note on the findings.
Gurgaon: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande on Monday laid the foundation stone for an interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), an initiative by the two countries to harness solar energy in over 100 nations.

Speaking at the event here, Hollande said France wants to build the Post-Paris Agreement world with India, as he called the ISA as "India's gift" to the world in combating climate change. He also pledged 300 million Euros to develop solar energy in next five years.

Unveiling the plaque, Modi said although the ISA will be headquartered in India, it will function as a global and independent institution meant to benefit entire mankind.

"While ISA is headquartered in Gurgaon, this will be not be an institution of India alone. This will be an global institution and will function independently.

"Like United Nations and WHO, it also belongs to the whole world," Modi said, adding that people from different countries will discharge various responsibilities for this initiative to give some sort of a "heritage" to the world.

Modi who travelled with Hollande from Delhi to Gurgaon, a satellite city of the national capital, in a Metro train said that the move is also aimed at sending a message that such environment friendly steps could also be ways to fight global warming.

Modi emphasised that India and France share much in common about their goal to resolve the issue of global warming.

Stressing that developing countries had their developmental needs, Modi said this cannot be done without the use of energy and hence the dilemma before the world is how to protect the environment while meeting the developmental needs of such nations.

"Energy has become an integral part of a nation's development journey. For the past one year, the world has been deliberating on how to combat global warming. This alliance ensures the world gets more energy and there is also a focus on innovation," he said.

French President Hollande said that a "new chapter" opens for nations to utilise the power of the sun.

ISA, an initiative of Modi, is an alliance of 121 solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

India offered to host ISA at the premises of NISE and has offered a 5-acre land. Three floors of the Surya Bhawan of NISE have been offered for starting the interim Secretariat.
Rampur: Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan on Sunday took a swipe at Rahul Gandhi, saying the Congress vice president is still a kid and nobody takes him seriously.

When asked about Gandhi's recent trip to Bundelkhand, Khan said the Congress vice president must be tired of visiting here and there. He should take some toffees along, have them, and distribute them among other kids too,said IBN7 quoted Khan as saying.

On Saturday, Gandhi undertook a 'padyatra' (foot march) in drought-hit Bundelkhand.

Addressing villagers during his nearly seven-km-long march, he demanded that some of the money saved by the government due to big drop in crude oil prices be diverted to the region.
Hyderabad: Rohit Vemula's mother, Radhika Vemula was on Sunday night shifted to a hospital in view of her deteriorating health condition.

Rohith, a Dalit scholar in Hyderabad University, committed suicide on the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) campus on January 17 after he, along with four others Dalit students, was suspended last year in connection with an attack on an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) leader.

Rohith's brother Raja confirmed the news and said that Radhika Vemula complained of chest and heart pain and thus was shifted to a private hosital. She is currently in ICU.

Meanwhile, the students of Hyderabad University are all set to intensify their protest against the death of the Dalit scholar on Monday.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice, an umbrella of student groups has vowed to continue the protest till justice is done to Rohith's family.

The JAC has also called for 'Chalo HCU' (Hyderabad Central University) on Monday to intensify the protest. It has called upon students from across the country to reach the campus for protest.
Kolkata: The security in and around the city as well as in the various districts of West Bengal has been beefed up in view of the Republic Day celebration on Tuesday.

With the Intelligence Bureau's alert of possible suicide bomb attacks by a Bangladesh-based terror group in 23 cities, including Kolkata between January 23-26, the security has been tightened to avoid any untoward incident, a senior officer of Kolkata Police told PTI.

"Since January 20, security in and around the city has been beefed up. We are not taking any chances and have plugged all loopholes regarding security arrangements," the IPS officer said.

The security has been increased at Victoria Memorial, Kalighat temple , Indian Museum, several other iconic structures as well as the buildings housing government and non-governmental offices, shopping malls, Metro stations. The Kolkata Police have also increased patrolling and vigorous checking at entry and exit points of the city, he said.

Around 93 extra police pickets would be there at several junctures of the city besides 13 Quick Response Teams (QRTs) of nearly 10,000 police personnel, he said.

"Security have been increased at entry and exit points of the city. There will be 93 police pickets all over Kolkata and 13 QRTs at strategic locations for fast response," the officer said.

Leaves of all senior officers have been "canceled" and they would be on duty during this period and would continue till this weekend.

Officials at Kolkata Police headquarters at Lalbazar said that following the January 13 Red Road hit-and-run mishap where an Air Force officer was killed by a speeding car during a Republic Day parade rehearsal, "strict" instructions from state secretariat 'Nabanna' have reached the HQ.
Mumbai: A magistrate court on Monday extended the judicial custody of former media baron Pater Mukerjea till February 8 in Shenna Bora murder case.

Peter Mukerjea, husband of prime accused Indrani Mukerjea was taken into custody on November 19 after police suspected him of hiding crucial information in the case.

Peter has also been suspected of being part of criminal conspiracy and misleading his son Rahul Mukerjea by telling him that Sheena has shifted to United States. Rahul and Sheena were engaged and were in a live-in relationship.

Peter is currently kept at the high-security Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai, where other two accused in the case are also lodged.

Sheena Bora, daughter of Indrani Mukerjea from her previous relationship, was murdered in April 2012 and her body was recovered few days later from a forest in Raigad district.
Jamshedpur: Two al Qaeda operatives, believed to be members of its sleeper cell and motivating youths to join the terror group, were arrested from the steel city on Monday on the eve of Republic Day.

East Singhbhum district police arrested Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu from Dhatkidih, while Nasim Akhtar alias Raju was nabbed from Road No 6, Zakirnagar, Old Purulia Road, Senior Superintendent of Police Anoop T Mathew told newsmen here.

The two are members of al Qaeda's sleeper cell and motivate youths of the steel city as well as other parts of Jharkhand to join and expand the organisation, he said.

The police picked up 35-year-old Masood following inputs provided by Jamshedpur-based Abdul Sami, who was arrested by Delhi Police special cell from Mewat in Haryana last week.

Masood confessed that he had been linked with the terrorist group since 2003 after he was motivated to join it by Abdul Rehman Katki, who had been arrested by Delhi Police from Cuttack in December last year.

He told the police that he had first met Rehman, a frequent visitor to the steel city, at the Jama Masjid at Sakchi in 2003 and was influenced by him to join the terrorist organisation.

Masood had visited Saudi Arab in 2011 and met Sami on his return and convinced him (Sami) to join the group. He also played a crucial role in sending Sami to Pakistan for terrorist training, Mathew said.

Masood, he said, had also confessed to the police that he had one more operative in his cell but claimed knew him only by face and that he too had received terrorist training in Pakistan.

Search is on for the operative, Mathew added.
Girls said in their suicide note that the college had no facilities and that the administration never bothered to give receipts for the money they had paid in the past.

Chennai: The three girl students who committed suicide by jumping into a well in SVS Naturopathy & yoga medical college near Villupuram on Saturday said in their suicide note that the college had no facilities and that the administration never bothered to give receipts for the money they had paid in the past. The college is run by Vasuki Subramanian, wife of a homeopathy doctor.

The plight of these students was by no means an isolated case. Parents and students had been complaining for a few years now that the institution lacks both faculty and facilities.

I dont know how the MGR medical university has been giving recognition to SVS naturopathy & yoga medical college since 2008.

Only after joining the college did we come to know that the college has no facilities and had violated all the norms. It took a three-year struggle to get the transfer certificate for my daughter, said father of a student from Chennai who had studied there for three years before shifting to another college this year.

The college never had a cadaver for students to study; nor was there adequate faculty or facilities. The administration basically used the students as workers, was a complaint often heard.

The well in which the bodies of the three girls were found too was dig violating norms. Such a big well is not supposed to be in the close vicinity of the building, pointed out another parent.

Parents and students are reeling out agonising stories on how they were forced to spend lakhs of rupees without getting the promised medical education.

Even they gobbled up the amount of Rs 25,000 given to my daughter by government as scholarship.

The government usually distributes the scholarship amount through the institutions in which students are studying. When the cheque given to my daughter from the college was presented to the bank it bounced, the father of a Dalit student said.
Thane: A 27-year-old man was lynched by a mob allegedly after he was caught stealing inside a residential complex in Mumbra town here.

The incident took place at Rashid Compound in the wee hours yesterday when the watchman of the building caught two men stealing something from the bikes parked inside the complex, police said today.

As soon as he raised an alarm, the duo tried to escape. However, residents managed to apprehend one of them and assaulted him, police said.

Firoz Khan was soon taken to the local Civic Chhatrapati Shivaji Hospital where he was pronounced dead, they said.

Mumbra police has registered z case under section 302 rw 34 of the IPC. One person has been arrested in connection with the crime and the hunt is on for eight others, police said.

According to police, the victim engaged in odd jobs in the locality and was a habitual offender.

In a similar incident, a 23-year-old man was yesterday allegedly tied to a pole and beaten to death by some truck drivers and workers at a gowdown in Bhalswa Dairy area of northwest Delhi after he allegedly robbed one of the assailants earlier.
Agartala: The central government has alerted the northeastern states over possible terror attacks ahead of the Republic Day on Tuesday, a police official said on Monday.

"The home ministry has alerted the northeastern states to maintain strict vigil in the run up to the Republic Day," Tripura Police spokesman Uttam Bhowmik told IANS.

The Border Security Force (BSF) has also been told to further strengthen vigilance along the India-Bangladesh border to prevent trans-border movement of militants," he said.

Security forces have been searching airports, hotels, bus and railway terminals as well as major markets across the region for possible hidden bombs.

Four northeastern states - Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam - share an 1,880-km border with Bangladesh. India and Bhutan share a 643-km unfenced border.

Four states - Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh - also have a 1,640-km unfenced border with Myanmar. And Arunachal Pradesh has an 1,080-km unfenced border with China.

Several separatist outfits have called for a 24-hour general strike from January 25 midnight and a boycott of the Republic Day celebrations.

The Northeast Frontier Railway has taken up security measures regarding rail traffic in southern Assam and elsewhere in the northeast.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said entry of people, except passengers, into airports across the northeast had been barred. The restrictions would continue till January 29.
Islamabad: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah, also known as Mullah Radio, was reportedly killed after being seriously hit in a drone strike in the Nangarhar region of Afghanistan, Pakistani media reported on late Monday evening.

Unconfirmed reports state that a drone strike was conducted on Fazlullah's house in Afghanistan in which he was neutralised.

However, there have been several reports of Fazlullah being killed in a drone strike in the past but they all turned to be false.

Last year in March, reports emerged that Fazlullah could be among those killed in an air raid and ground raids in parts of Khyber Agency's Tirah Valley.

But TTP dismissed the reports saying that their chief was still alive.

Fazlullah was the leader of the Taliban in Swat Valley and became the Taliban chief in November 2013 after the killing of Hakimullah in a US drone attack.

Hakimullah's predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was also killed in a US drone attack in August 2009.
Hyderabad: Despite the fact that University of Hyderabad Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao has gone on leave, students are set to intensify their protest on Monday.

Notably, Rao is in the eye of the storm over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice, an umbrella of student groups, has vowed to continue the protest till justice is done to Rohith's family.

The JAC has also called for 'Chalo HCU' (Hyderabad Central University) on Monday to intensify the protest. It has called upon students from across the country to reach the campus for protest.

The JAC is demanding arrest of central ministers Smirit Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, BJP legislator Ramchandra Rao and the vice chancellor, blaming them for Rohith's suicide and social boycott of Dalit students.

The protestors also alleged that Telangana Police was shielding the culprits. "Arrests have to be made under SC/ST Atrocities Act immediately as it is a cognizable/non-bailable offence," the JAC said.

Vipin Srivastava, the seniormost professor, will perform the duties of the vice chancellor, the university announced on Sunday.

(With IANS inputs)
Athens: Greece lashed out on Monday at what it called "lies" by its EU partners following calls for Athens to be suspended from the Schengen passport-free zone if it fails to staunch the flow of migrants into Europe.

At a tense meeting of European Union interior ministers in Amsterdam, Austria and Germany urged Athens to do more to deal with the continent`s biggest crisis of its kind since World War II.

But Greece`s interior minister for migration Yiannis Mouzalas insisted his country -- already buffeted by a debt crisis that almost drove it out of the euro last year -- was doing its best in difficult circumstances.

"We are tired to listen that we cannot secure our borders," Mouzalas told reporters in Amsterdam. "We are told that we don`t want coastguards, it`s a lie -- we want more coastguards."

The short sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands accounted for most of the one million migrants and refugees who arrived in Europe last year, but Mouzalas said it would be inhumane and illegal to push back migrants from Greek waters.

"According to international law, to the law of the sea, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the European, to the Greek law, the only way to act on the sea border is to make rescue," he said.The rest of the EU is however turning up the pressure on Athens.

Last week Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner warned Athens could face "temporary exclusion" from Schengen, the 26-country zone of mainly EU countries that embodies the European dream of free movement.

But in Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud insisted on Monday that there was no plan to suspend Greece.

"We have never discussed either a suspension or exclusion. The possibility does not exist," she said.

Austria, Germany and several other Schengen member states have already reintroduced temporary checks at their internal borders, raising fears the passport-free system could collapse.

During a press conference after Monday`s talks, Dutch State Secretary for Security and Justice Klaas Dijkhoff suggested the border checks could go beyond the current limit of six months because of the exceptional migratory pressures.

"Member states invited the commission to prepare the legal and practical basis for the continuance of temporary border measures," he said.

Austria and Germany urged Greece to tighten its external EU borders.

"Greece has to reinforce its (border) resources and accept help," Mikl-Leitner told reporters in Amsterdam on Monday, adding that it was a "myth" that the Turkish sea border could not be secured.German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere -- whose country`s decision last year to open its doors to one million asylum seekers sparked anger in transit countries -- urged Greece to "do its duty."

"We want to save Schengen, we want common European solutions, but the clock is ticking," said de Maiziere, adding that a deal with Turkey to staunch the influx is the key to solving the crisis.

The deal signed last year involves Brussels paying Ankara EUR three billion (USD 3.2 billion) in aid for Syrian refugees and speeding up its EU membership process, in return for Turkey tackling people smugglers and improving conditions for refugees.

The payment has been held up by concerns that Turkey is not complying, but EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said during a visit to Ankara on Monday that she was confident Turkey would get the three billion "in reasonable time".

Brussels is also exploring other ways of stemming the flow of migrants, particularly through the Western Balkans.

The European Commission confirmed on Monday that it had sent a mission to non-EU Macedonia to discuss how it could help staunch the large numbers passing over the border from Greece.

It said commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker had replied to a letter from Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar, who last week called for Macedonia to effectively seal off its border with Greece and staunch the flow through the Balkans.

Dijkhoff said the member states asked the commission to "explore the possibilities" for the EU border agency Frontex to "provide assistance at the border".
Kano: Gunmen suspected to be ethnic Fulani herders have killed a policeman and 19 civilians in attacks on four farming communities in Nigeria`s northeastern Adamawa state, the police said Monday.

"We lost a DPO (Divisional Police Officer) and 19 civilians in his area of jurisdiction when they came under attack by Fulani herdsmen in Girei district," police spokesman Othman Abubakar told AFP.

The senior police officer with his team were "responding to a distress call from the communities under attack to restore calm following an invasion by the armed herdsmen", he said.

Local media reports gave a much higher death toll of 30 including the police officer following the raids on Sunday morning.

The herders raided Demsare, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo farming villages in reprisals following an earlier feud between some herders and farmers over destruction of farm crops, Abubakar said.

The villages are in Girei municipality, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from state capital Yola.
Iowa: Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Sunday urged Iowa voters still "shopping" for a candidate to choose her, saying she is better equipped than her rival Bernie Sanders to tackle Wall Street reform.

"I know some of you are still shopping. I`d like to shop too. I hope during the course of this afternoon to convince some of you," Clinton told about 600 people packed into a school gym in the town of North Liberty.

On February 1, voters in Iowa, in the US heartland, will cast the first ballots in the US presidential nominations process -- a long road to Election Day on November 8.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Sanders, a senator from Vermont, are running neck-and-neck in some opinion polls, though Clinton enjoys a wide advantage on a nationwide basis.

"As secretary of state, she stared down some of the toughest dictators in the world, and so I have no doubt that she can take on the Tea Party, and the gun lobby," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, the influential US women`s health care provider.

"She never blinks, she never waivers."

The message Clinton and her team sought to drive home was that her proposals are more realistic than those of Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who has put taking down the financial elite and Wall Street at the heart of his campaign.

He has repeatedly attacked Clinton over what he says are her close ties to some big banks, and has chastised her for giving paid speeches to Wall Street firms.

But Clinton fought back Sunday.

"I have taken on Wall Street for years!" she said. "I have a better plan to do it."

"No bank is too big to fail, and no executive is too big to jail," she added.

She also insisted on her foreign policy bona fides and the "very specific steps" she would take to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group.

Clinton devoted a long section of her stump speech to her role in the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, which several of President Barack Obama`s aides considered to be too dangerous and risky. She said she encouraged Obama to go ahead with it.

"The person who sits in that (White House) situation room has to be able to weigh intelligence and evidence to be able to really dig deep in these details, and I offer you my experience and my judgment," she said.

"We need to chart a steady course," she concluded -- suggesting that a Sanders administration would lack such stability.

But some Democrats have been persuaded by Sanders`s idealism.

"I see a lot of people being swayed by Bernie Sanders," said Dixie Ecklund, herself a Clinton supporter. Her husband, seated near her, has put a Sanders sign in front of their house, near her Clinton sign.
London: World's most evil dictator Adolf Hitler did not die in a bunker as earlier believed but he went on to live up to the ripe age of 95 at a small town in Brazil with his black girlfriend, claims a report.

Adolf Hitler fled to Paraguay, via Argentina, before settling down in the Brazilian town of Mato Grosso, skynews.com reported quoting the book Hitler in Brazil - His Life and His Death by Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias.

To prove his point, Dias even used a photo of the dictator in his book that shows Hitler with his black girlfriend Cutinga. The photo was reportedly taken two years before his death in 1984.

Hitler had used the assumed name of Adolf Leipzig in Brazil and he was known among the locals as the old German, the report claimed.

Citing Dias, the report claimed that Hitler was in the area to hunt for a buried treasure using a map given to him by friends in the Vatican.

Dias rejected the theory that Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30 1945. She has demanded that Leipzig's remains be exhumed for a DNA test.

The report said that Dias' suspicions about Adolf Leipzig grew after she photoshopped a moustache onto the grainy picture she obtained of him and compared it to photos of the Nazi leader.

Conspiracy theorists have long argued that Hitler had fled to South America. Academics in Brazil have rubbished the theory that Hitler lived and died in the country even as the mystery over his death continued.
Kuala Lumpur: Islamic State (IS) terror group has threatened Malaysia and Indonesia with new attacks over the arrests of its members in these multi-ethnic but Muslim- majority countries, days after the Indonesian capital was hit by bombings that killed eight people.

In a strongly defiant video posted in Makay language, the Malaysian-Indonesian unit of IS, called the Katibah Nusantara, warned that its numbers would only increase with the arrests

of its members.

"If you catch us, we will only increase in number but if you let us be, we will be closer to our goal of bringing back the rule of the Khalifah (caliph).

"We will never bow down to the democratic system of governance as we will only follow Allah's rules," the video reportedly said according to The Star newspaper. The video was reportedly posted on an IS website, signifying Katibah's increasing recognition within the terror group.

Malaysia Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division head Ayob Khan said the threat and direct challenge to the government reflected Katibah's brazen stance.

"It further proves that IS, especially the Katibah group, views our country as secular, and as such makes the Government and the people as its targets. This is no doubt in retaliation against our security forces' actions against them," he said.

He said the counter terrorism division would be more vigilant as attacks could occur at anytime.

"Prior to this, we only saw videos posted on Facebook or other social media sites but this particular video is a clear indication that Katibah is among the major foreign factions in IS," said Ayob Khan.

Katibah first came under the radar of intelligence agencies two years ago when it was called Majmu'ah al Arkhabiliy.

The warning comes just days after Indonesian capital Jakarta was hit by bombings and gunfights, claimed by IS, that killed eight people and injured dozens other on January 14. Both Malaysia and Indonesia are Muslim-majority countries, with diverse populations of ethnic Malay, Indians and Chinese.
Vientiane: US Secretary of State John Kerry sat down Monday to discuss the deadly legacy of unexploded American bombs in Laos and China`s influence in Southeast Asia during a high-profile visit to the reclusive communist state.

The trip to Vientiane also paves the way for a summit hosted next month by President Barack Obama in California with the ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Laos has assumed this year`s chairmanship of the regional bloc and will see a flurry of diplomatic activity culminating in an autumn visit by President Obama -- the first by a sitting US leader to the resource-rich but impoverished nation.

Kerry`s trip is only the third since 1955 by a US Secretary of State to a country carpet-bombed by America during the Vietnam War.

Welcoming America`s top diplomat in a cavernous room at his Soviet-era offices, Laos` Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong said the visit was a "landmark in... bilateral relations".

Kerry, fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia, hailed growing economic and security ties, as well as Laos` chairmanship of ASEAN, as the "defining" issues of a new friendship.

Earlier, Kerry told reporters he would also discuss the removal of ordnance.

"We have been working on this project of clearing mines and undoing effects of war for a long time and it continues," he said.

The US diplomat, who is due in Cambodia later Monday, arrives days after the five-yearly congress of the Laos` Communist Party, which chose 78-year-old vice-president Bounnhang Vorachith as its next leader.

The Communist Party has ruled since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, tightly controlling the country of around six million.

Unexploded bombs across the region are the result of the massive US bombing campaign aimed at disrupting North Vietnamese supply routes through landlocked Laos.

It is "a problem, of course, that resulted from our actions in the Vietnam War in the `70s", the US State Department official conceded.

Those actions turned Laos into the most bombed nation in the world per capita, with more than 250 million bombs dumped on the country.

Around 30 percent failed to explode, including cluster munitions.

Around 50,000 people have been killed by leftover ordnance since the end of the war, with tens of thousands of others maimed, including children.

That grim legacy carries a particular resonance for Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran wounded during combat.

In the intervening years relations between the two countries have often been hostile, with American support for ethnic Hmong anti-communist insurgents still raw in the memory of the Laos` leadership.
Congress also accused Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa of trying to topple the Nabam Tuki government.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday decided to hear on January 27 a plea challenging the Union Cabinet's recommendation to impose President's Rule in crisis-hit Arunachal Pradesh moved by the Congress, which alleged that "illegal" attempts have been made by the Centre and the Governor to topple the Nabam Tuki government there.

The petition seeking urgent hearing was mentioned before Chief Justice T S Thakur, at his residence, who directed the matter to be listed for hearing on Wednesday.

Read: Cong asks SC to quash Cabinet's nod for President Rule in Arunachal

"The matter was placed before the CJI. He has listed for hearing on January 27," Virendra Kumar, Deputy Registrar told PTI.

He said listing branch of Registry would allocate the matter before an appropriate bench.

Already, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice J S Khehar is examining the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor under constitution, vis-a-vis the authority to convene assembly session with or without the aid and advise of the Chief Minister and his council of ministers.

Read: President's Rule? Arunachal CM slams Centre, calls it 'vendetta politics'

The fresh plea, filed by Rajesh Tacho, Chief Whip of Congress Legislature party, alleged that "illegal and unlawful" attempts have been made by the Centre and Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa to topple the Nabam Tuki government.

The Governor's recommendation in the present case is to promote "political interests of party in power at the Centre," the Congress petition finally settled by noted jurist Fali S Nariman said.

After the Union Cabinet yesterday decided to recommend imposition of central rule in the state, a battery of senior lawyers including Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha swung into action to challenge the recommendation in the apex court.

Since the apex court is closed tomorrow due to Republic Day, the petition through the Deputy Registrar was placed at 1800 hours before the CJI, who preferred to get it listed on Wednesday.

Read: Constitutional crisis in Arunachal led to President's rule recommendation: BJP

The Congress has sought a direction for the Centre and the Governor to furnish records pertaining to his recommendation for President's Rule in the state.

"There is absolutely no material justifying the action under Article 356 of the Constitution of India except the personal ipse dixit (unsupported assertion) of the Respondent No.2 (Rajkhowa) who has abused the Office of the Governor by acting as an agent and the mouth piece of the Central Government," it said.

It has sought restoration of the Nabam Tuki government along with his Council of Ministers to office by "reviving and reactivating" the 6th Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
Rome/Paris: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani flew to Italy on Monday at the start of his first official visit to Europe, looking to sign multi-billion dollar contracts to help to modernise Iran`s economy after years of crippling financial sanctions.

Heading a 120-strong delegation of Iranian business leaders and ministers, Rouhani will spend two days in Rome before flying to France on Wednesday, hoping to burnish Tehran`s international credentials at a time of turmoil across the Middle East.

While diplomacy will figure high on his agenda, trade ties are likely to dominate the headlines, with Iran announcing plans to buy more than 160 European planes, mainly from Airbus , on the eve of Rouhani`s departure.

Officials in Rome said Italian firms were set to sign deals worth up to 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) over the next two days, including in the energy, infrastructure and steel sectors.

The deals will give a boost to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is struggling to revive Italy`s underperforming economy.

A pragmatist elected in 2013, Rouhani championed a deal with world powers last year under which Iran curbed its disputed nuclear programme in return for the end of U.N., EU and some U.S. sanctions this month.

Other U.S. sanctions remain in place, however, and some Western companies such as banks are expected to take a cautious line towards deal-making with Iran in order to avoid falling foul of Washington.

Rouhani is anxious to prove to Iranians that the nuclear accord, contested by many hardliners, was worth it and will help ease their prolonged economic hardships. He also wants to promote Iran`s position as a major regional player and key to any solution to the long-running conflict in Syria.

During his visit to Italy, he will meet Renzi, Pope Francis and local business leaders. He is set to meet French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Thursday.

Rouhani had been expected in both countries last November, but cancelled the trips following an attack by Islamic State militants in Paris that killed 130 people.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella said at Rouhani`s first official engagement in Rome that the battle against Islamic State and fundamentalist extremists was "the number one threat facing the international community".

Greeted by an honour guard at the president`s Quirinale Palace, Rouhani smiled broadly for photographers before heading into a series of meetings.

Building trust

Europe was Iran`s largest trading partner before sanctions, with Italy and France seen as particularly close to Tehran. Both countries sent large trade delegations to Iran last year in the wake of the nuclear accord, laying the groundwork for tie-ups.

Among the deals being readied for Italy was a pipeline contract worth between $4 billion and $5 billion for oil services group Saipem , a source with knowledge of the matter said. Saipem was not immediately available for comment.

In addition, Italian steel firm Danieli will sign commercial agreements worth up to 5.7 billion euros with Iran, a company spokesman said. Infrastructure firm Condotte d`Acqua said it would sign deals worth up to 4 billion euros.

Italian business leaders, including the heads of oil firm Eni and carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles , are due to attend a dinner for Rouhani on Monday, hosted by Renzi. At the request of the Iranians, no wine will be served. France refused the same request so there will be no state dinner in Paris.

While Italy was not involved in the nuclear talks, France was, and it took a hard line towards Tehran in the negotiations. It has also been outspoken in its condemnation of Iran`s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and sceptical of the country`s other Middle East interventions.

"Trust needs to be built. It`s like love. It is only the proof of love that counts," said a senior French diplomat.

"On the nuclear accord the relationship is relaxed, but not on the other subjects. There is no change on the Iranian position for now on a number of regional issues ... so the idea (of the visit) is to open a new page," the diplomat said.

The boss of oil group Total , Patrick Pouyanne, is among top French executives who are expected to hold one-on-one meetings with Rouhani.

The trip to Europe comes as global diplomats are trying to arrange the first peace talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war. Shi`ite Muslim Iran is Assad`s strongest ally, while European countries back his mainly Sunni Muslim opponents.
Damascus: At least 11 Islamist fighters and five civilians were killed as a ballistic missile struck a building in northwest Syria during a meeting between rebel groups, a monitor said Monday.

"Eleven fighters from (Al-Qaeda affiliate) Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist groups were killed on Sunday, along with five civilians, when a ballistic missile hit a police station being used as a court in Salqin" in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitoring group said it was unclear if the missile was fired by Russian or Syrian forces.

The monitor said the toll could rise further because a number of people had been seriously wounded in the strike.

The missile struck during a reconciliation meeting between members of Al-Nusra and the conservative Islamist militant group Ahrar al-Sham, who had exchanged fire in the town earlier the same day.

The two groups are leading members of the Army of Conquest alliance, a powerful coalition that took control of Idlib province last year.

Staunch regime ally Russia began an aerial campaign in Syria last September after a string of government losses, including in Idlib, and has since helped reverse some opposition momentum.

Moscow says its strikes target the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and other "terrorists," but activists and opposition forces accuse it of targeting other rebels and often killing civilians.

Earlier in January, Russian raids in Idlib province, which borders Turkey, killed at least 81 people, including 23 Al-Nusra fighters but also 52 civilians and prisoners.

According to the Observatory, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Russian strikes since they were launched on September 30.

The raids have also killed nearly 900 IS fighters, and more than 1,100 militants from other opposition groups, including Al-Nusra.

Moscow has dismissed claims of civilians deaths in its operations as "absurd".

Overall, more than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria`s war which began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Tuntou: Carefully steadying the gleaming red lantern between her knees, a worker applied the Chinese character for "wealth" in golden glitter -- one of the millions that will illuminate the forthcoming Lunar New Year.

A high wooden arch at the entrance to the snowy village of Tuntou, in Hebei province southwest of Beijing, proclaims it the "lantern capital" of the People`s Republic.

Bai Liwei, the village`s Communist Party leader, told AFP proudly: "80 to 90 percent of the lanterns used in China come from here."

For the past two months, the town has been churning out the pumpkin-shaped lamps in preparation for the biggest holiday of the year in the world`s most populous country.

Known as the "Spring Festival" in China, the holiday, which falls on February 8 on this occasion, compares in importance to Christmas in the West, and marks a time when for far-flung family members return home for merriment and meals -- according to tradition, they must be back by midnight on the eve of the new year.

Tuntou village has specialised in artisanal lantern-making for nearly 40 years. It is not the site of enormous factories, instead the industry is driven by a number of private workshops in which families concentrate on the production of a single lantern element -- their spindly metal frames, the exterior "skin" of fabric or silk, the decorative inscriptions.

At the back of one assembly unit, high piles of nearly completed lanterns awaited processing, while workers wielded wooden canes to lift others high off the ground to dangle delicately from the ceiling.

The colour red symbolises luck and happiness in Chinese culture, and the lanterns are omnipresent throughout towns and countryside, trotted out at most important occasions: marriages, business openings, and most of all the Lunar New Year, which generally falls in late January or early to mid February.

"Outside of the peak holiday season, we also receive special requests: giant models, for example, or orders to decorate the Forbidden City in Beijing," explained Bai.

"Tens of millions of lanterns are produced each year and all or almost all of them are sold. A portion is exported to Southeast Asia, the US or Japan. It`s become an economic pillar for the village."
Rome: Pope Francis asked Protestants and other Christian Churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Speaking at an annual vespers service in St. Paul`s Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked "forgiveness for the un-gospel like behaviour by Catholics towards Christians of other Churches". He also asked Catholics to forgive those who had persecuted them.

The Vatican announced that on Oct. 31 Francis would go to the southern Swedish city of Lund, where the Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947, for a joint service with Lutherans to launch Reformation commemorations that will continue throughout the world next year.

Martin Luther, a German, is credited with starting the Protestant Reformation in 1517 with writing 95 theses - said to have been nailed to a church door in Wittenberg - criticising the Catholic Church for selling forgiveness from sins for money.

It led to a violent, often political schism throughout Europe and Christianity, prompting among other things the 30 Years` War, the destruction of English monasteries, and the burning of numerous "heretics" on both sides.

Catholic traditionalists have accused Francis of making too many concessions to Lutherans, particularly in a "common prayer" that both religions will use during the 2017 commemorations.

They say the prayer, which will be used during the pope`s visit to Lund, excessively praises Luther, who was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated.

Francis, however, has made dialogue with other religions one of the hallmarks of his papacy.

He has already visited the Lutheran church of Rome, the Waldensian protestant community in northern Italy, and Rome`s synagogue. This year he is due to become the first pope to visit the Italian capital`s mosque.

While his predecessors have visited Protestant churches, Francis has come under criticism from traditionalists who accuse him of sending confusing signals about inter-faith relations.

They have also contested guidelines issued this month for the "common prayer".

"The Reformation and Martin Luther are repeatedly extolled, while the Counter-Reformation and the Popes and Saints of the 16th century are passed over in total silence," the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli said.

Theological dialogue between Roman Catholic and Lutherans began in the late 1960s after the Second Vatican Council. But Catholics and Lutherans are still officially not allowed to take communion at each other`s services.

When he visited Rome`s Lutheran church last year, traditionalists attacked Francis for suggesting in answer to a question that a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man could decide for herself if she could take communion in her husband`s church.
Beijing: Two Chinese nationals were killed and another wounded in a suspected bomb blast in Laos, Chinese state media said on Monday, the latest incident in which Chinese citizens have been killed abroad as the country`s economic footprint grows.

China`s embassy in Laos confirmed the blast, which occurred on Sunday morning. The victims had been travelling in a vehicle on the mountain roads of Xaysomboun province, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Laos military personnel rushed to the scene and the injured, surnamed Zhou, has been shifted to a hospital in the capital, Vientiane, for treatment," Xinhua said.

Chinese embassy officials visited the injured person and demanded a prompt investigation into the "suspected bomb attack," Xinhua reported.

At least one of the Chinese victims was an employee of a mining company from southern China`s Yunnan province, it said.

Xinhua did not give further details and it is unclear if the individuals were targeted.

The remote Xaysomboun region has been plagued by sporadic conflict between the government and ethnic Hmong militants for years.
Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday criticised Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, accusing him of placing a "time bomb" under the state, and sharply denouncing brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government.

The harsh criticism of Lenin, who is still revered by communists and many others in Russia, is unusual for Putin, who in the past carefully weighed his comments about the nation's history to avoid alienating some voters.

At the same time, he signaled that the government has no intention of taking Lenin's body out of his Red Square tomb, warning against "any steps that would divide the society."

Putin's assessment of Lenin's role in Russian history during Monday's meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in the southern city of Stavropol was markedly more negative than in the past.

Putin denounced Lenin and his government for brutally executing Russia's last czar along with all his family and servants, killing thousands of priests and placing a "time bomb" under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines.

As an example of Lenin's destructive legacy, Putin pointed at Donbass, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russia separatist rebellion flared up weeks after Russia's March 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2014, and clashes have continued despite a February 2015 peace deal. He said that Lenin and his government whimsically drew borders between parts of the USSR, placing Donbass under the Ukrainian jurisdiction in order to "increase the percentage of proletariat" in a move Putin called "delirious."

Putin's criticism of Lenin could be part of his attempts to justify Moscow's policy in the Ukrainian crisis, but it also may reflect the Kremlin's concern about possible separatist sentiments in some Russian provinces. Putin was particularly critical of Lenin's concept of a federative state with its entities having the right to secede, saying it heavily contributed to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

"It was a time bomb under our state," he said, adding that Lenin's was wrong in a dispute with Josef Stalin who advocated a unitary state model. In the past, Putin has denounced Stalin for massive purges that killed millions, but noted his role in defeating the Nazis in WW II.

In today's comments, Putin also blasted the Bolsheviks for making Russia lose World War I in their quest for power, making Russia suffer defeat by Germany and cede large chunks of territory just months before it lost World War I.

"We lost to the losing party, a unique case in history," Putin said. Putin said he sincerely believed in Communist ideology when he served in the KGB, adding that while promises of a fair and just society in the Communist ideology "resembled the Bible quite a lot" but the reality was different. "Our country didn't look like the City of the Sun," envisaged by socialist utopians, he said.
By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union will monitor rather than regulate "hyped" virtual currencies for now, because too little is known to justify new rules beyond reining in specific risks like money-laundering, the body's executive said on Monday. The world's 600 virtual currencies are tiny, with bitcoin alone accounting for 90 percent of the $7 billion sector, compared with daily turnover of about $5 trillion on global foreign exchange markets. Virtual currencies are traded online and not backed by a central bank. The collapse of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox two years ago raised concerns about consumer protection in a largely self-regulated, experimental sector. After the attacks in Paris last November, policymakers also want to ensure that virtual currencies are not used to finance terrorism. The EU's European Commission has powers to propose bloc-wide rules, but one of its senior financial services officials, Olivier Salles, said his focus was on monitoring rather than proposing new rules. "It's easy to fail when you regulate, you can be too early and too late. From the European Commission's perspective, we are more on the monitoring side," Salles told a hearing on virtual currencies in the European Parliament. "We want to understand better what is happening," Salles said. The EU executive is examining options to prevent activities like money laundering, but "we are not in a hurry" to regulate financial products linked to virtual currencies, he added. Sean Ennis, an economist at the OECD club of rich nations, said the EU could learn lessons from how Britain has maintained lower regulatory requirements for peer-to-peer lending, enabling the fledgling sector to innovate and grow much faster than in the rest of Europe. "I am very modest about the potential for regulation," Ennis said, echoing the International Monetary Fund's first paper on virtual currencies published last week. It said regulatory responses should be in line with risks and not stifle innovation. Policymakers are turning their attention to the technology underlying the currencies, known as blockchain, which has the potential to shake up the payments system. Jakob von Weizsaecker, a German center member of the European Parliament, said regulators needed to understand blockchain better before it became more commonly used. He is compiling a report on virtual currencies, which the commission will study, and said that precautionary monitoring rather than immediate regulation was probably best. Bitcoin transactions are dominated by about 20 companies, said Jeremy Millar of technology consultants Magister Advisors. "They are putting in regulatory capital, they are already registered with the regulators, by and large. If the companies and the activities are already regulated, I don't know what it means to regulate the technology," Millar said. The European Union is due to unveil measures next month to tackle terrorism financing. (Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Katharine Houreld)
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is getting another chance to make a splash before major international audiences at two upcoming air shows in the United Kingdom

The U.S. Marine Corps will send a pair of its F-35 variant to the annual Royal International Air Tattoo and the Farnborough International Airshow outside London, the worlds largest air show, according to Reuters. The Marines version of the F-35 can fly from warships and maneuver like a helicopter.

Related: Why the UK Is Going All In with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

"The U.S. Marine Corps is looking forward to demonstrating the capabilities of the F-35B Lightning II in the skies over the United Kingdom this July," Deputy Commandant for Aviation Lieutenant General Jon Davis told the wire service in a statement.

The worlds most expensive aircraft was supposed to have its international coming-out party at the Royal International Air Tattoo two years ago but an engine fire erupted aboard a jet as it prepared to take off from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida shortly before the event, grounding the Pentagons fleet until the cause was identified and resolved.

Mondays news will no doubt buoy the programs defenders, many of whom serve in Congress. Supporters were embarrassed when the festivities were scrapped and feel their patience with the troubled program is finally being rewarded.

Related: Heres Why 'President Trump' Might Dump the F-35

The appearance of a U.S.-built F-35 from Lockheed Martin would be an important milestone for the fighter program, which has cost roughly $400 billion so far.

Last year the Marine Corps was the first military service to declare that its F-35 variant had achieved initial operational capability, meaning it could be deployed anywhere around the globe.

An international debut would show the platform still has the confidence of the Pentagon after years of cost overruns and technical hiccups.

Related: Israel Gets a Glimpse of Its New F-35 Fighter, the AS-1

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It would also give a boost to the United Kingdom, one of a team of countries  including Norway, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands -- working to develop the F-35. The U.K. recently affirmed its commitment to the program and accelerated its plans to buy more aircraft.

Israel, Japan and South Korea have also placed orders for the next-generation jet.

Besides the Marine Corps version of the F-35, the U.S. Air Force might send a copy or two of its own variant to appear at this summers shows. Together, the branches plan to order around 2,200 of the three F-35 fighter variants.

That figure could increase next month when the Pentagon rolls out is fiscal year 2017 budget request. Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent the Secretary of the Navy a strongly-worded letter last month telling him to scale back plans for the services problem-plagued Littoral Combat Ship and invest in other munitions and equipment, including the F-35.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Hyderabad: Students from colleges across India gathered at the University of Hyderabad on Monday in response to a Chalo-HCU call given by the joint action committee of student bodies protesting Dalit scholar Rohith Vemulas suicide.

The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, University of Hyderabad, planned a huge rally Chalo HCU  Justice for Rohith Vemula, comprising students from Central Universities across India. The rally is part of JACs decision to intensify students agitation to pile pressure on the Centre to accept their five-point charter of demands, mainly removal of Prof Appa Rao from UoH vice-chancellors post and punish culprits booked under SC/ST Atrocities Act Including Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya.

Read: Hyderabad scholar death: Badgered Vice-Chancellor goes on leave

Students from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, Punjab, Haryana and a few other states expressed their rage and solidarity to the students movement for social justice.

High tension prevailed at varsity as protest marches are underway inside the campus and students from other states who tried to barge in have been stopped at the university gate by the police.

Addressing the gathering at the university gate, JAC members Prabhakar, Prashanth, Venkatesh Chouhan and others demanded police should go back. Police should not be allowed to enter autonomous institutions, JAC members said.

Read: HCU Suicide: 7 more UoH students go on indefinite protest fast

Earlier, a fresh set of seven students started an indefinite hunger strike after the earlier group of seven students was admitted to hospital after three days of their protest fast on Saturday.

The seven students who began the indefinite hunger strike are Agnes Amala T. of PhD human rights; K.P. Pramila of PhD gender studies; Devi Prasad of PhD sociology, Mubasheer Hameed of MA sociology, Hari Krishna of MA economics, Prathik Bovmi of MA English and Kiran Kumar Gowd of MPhil political science.

Read: Rohith's mother Radhika Vemula sent to ICU

On Saturday, the police had shifted seven students after health deteriorated after three days fast. Two of them were hospitalised while five others were treated at the UoH health centre.

Cyberabad police deployed four platoons of armed forces outside the university. About 150 law and order police including one DCP, one additional DCP, three ACPs, 15 inspectors and 15 sub-inspectors were deployed inside the campus. Water cannons and fire tenders were also placed in the campus.

Madhapur ACP, M Ramana Kumar, told DC that they are allowing all the students to enter the campus, no student is being stopped at the gate.

Read: Hyderabad varsity VC Appa Rao says he took leave to facilitate talks

The body of Rohith Vemula was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room on January 18, which sparked massive protests across the country.

The Hyderabad University had suspended Rohith and four other students after they allegedly assaulted an ABVP leader in August last year.
A Newfoundland actor who fought her own battle with booze says she is proud of MP Seamus O'Regan for getting sober, but Mary Walsh says she is still worried for him.

"Because it's only 40 days," said Walsh. "One part of me is really proud of Seamus. It's really wonderful that he did that, that he came out and another part of me is just a little bit worried because it's such a short period of time."

Walsh, who also struggled with addiction and alcohol abuse, said being in the public eye can make things more difficult.

"You don't need the pressure of anyone looking at you and thinking you're the spokesperson for clean and sober living," said Walsh. "He needs to be very gentle with himself and take care of himself."

Walsh told CBC Radio's Crosstalk that drinking was always part of her social scene, and was always to excess.

"My drinking was very off the rails right from the beginning. The very first time I ever drank I blacked out. I was still on my feet but I could remember nothing of it, and my drinking went on like that all the time.

Walsh, who has been an advocate for better mental health care, said she tried counselling and therapy, but continued to drink.

"Alcohol is the most common drug used by Canadians right, but one of the things about being an addict is you don't look at yourself very clearly. You are in denial constantly about the facts of your life, about life itself."

Her motivation to quit was her son, but she said giving up the bottle was very difficult.

"It made me very sad. I must have cried for about two years  that I was going to have to quit drinking, my pal, my friend  which was of course killing me and making my life unlivable," said Walsh.

"Alcohol is a depressant, It makes life quite gloomy and dark and as soon as you stop you kind of notice that things are much cheerier...after you get over the initial crying."

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Walsh said addiction is a disease, and talking about it can help others as well as the addict.

"If you say 'Do I have a problem, am I drinking too much?' that might be an indication [that you need help]," she said.

Treatment options

"It takes a lot of courage to come forward, to reach out for help," said therapist Agatha Corcoran, who operates Atlantic Counselling Services in Paradise.

She said people need more information on where to get treatment.

"Timing is everything. A person may feel motivated to get some help, get some support, but that may quickly pass," Corcoran told CBC TV's Here and Now.

She advised people to check their insurance coverage and determine if employee assistance programs will pay for addiction treatment.

Services are also offered through Eastern Health, which has a 24-hour mental health crisis centre, and she said family doctors should screen their patients for mental health problems..

"It's the first point of contact, a family doctor, and we always encourage people to reach out to their family doctor,," said Corcoran.

She said addiction problems often go hand-in-hand with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety or trauma so the first step would be to assess the root cause.

"It's very hard for us to stop something if it's really negative, if we don't know why we're doing it in the first place."

The waiting list for a 21-day program at the provincially-run residential treatment program at Humberwood Centre in Corner Brook is also an issue.

"Typically... it's around eight to 10 weeks," said Corcoran. "Being able to avail of that program sooner rather than later would make all the difference, I believe."

When things move along quickly, she said, people feel hope.

"If they relapse while waiting for treatment, it's difficult for that person to get motivated again."

Corcoran said follow up is important as well, and most people will stay sober if they have support from Alcoholics Anonymous and family, or get individual counselling.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg 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 that optimism. Thirty people were killed when gunmen struck a restaurant and hotel in the capital Ouagadougou on Friday, exposing a days-old government to a critical security challenge that risks derailing its pledge to transform the economy of one of the poorest nations on earth. Mass protests in October 2014 drove out former President Blaise Compaore, who had ruled for nearly three decades after taking power in a 1987 coup. Following a year of transition, Roch Marc Christian Kabore won an election to become leader. Kabore promised to improve access to water, healthcare and education and signalled a break from the past last week by naming a cabinet packed with ministers with no ties to Compaore. But those ministers had not even been sworn in when the al Qaeda fighters killed citizens of several countries including six Canadians at the Cappuccino cafe and Splendid Hotel, two Ouagadougou establishments popular with foreigners. "The timing is not random," said Cynthia Ohayon, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. "We are at a moment of political fragility because the country is coming out of a transition after 27 years and the new government is just starting to get to work." Compaore's departure has left Burkina's security apparatus in disarray. Having taken power in a coup himself, Compaore sought to prevent his own overthrow by pouring resources into the elite presidential guard. However the unit, the best equipped and trained in the army, was disbanded last year after it mounted an unsuccessful coup against the transitional government in September. Compaore's fall also disrupted discreet links his security officials had established with militant and rebel groups in the region that could perhaps have served to warn the authorities of the attack or even prevent it, according to Ohayon. While neighbouring Mali has been subject to a growing campaign of militant assaults in the past year including one on a hotel in the capital in November, until last week Burkina Faso had been spared a major attack. HIGH STAKES President Kabore and his ministers have taken to the airwaves to reassure the public, investors and potential tourists that the government can face down the threat facing Burkina Faso, one of a belt of French-speaking countries in the Sahel, south of the Sahara. "All security measures have been taken to make Burkina Faso peaceful," Foreign Minister Alpha Barry told ambassadors on Tuesday at a specially-convened meeting. Security Minister Simon Compaore was even more direct: "We want to reassure everyone who lives on Burkinabe soil that foreigners can continue to come to our country, to invest in our country and live here." In the days to come, France is set to play an important security role both in terms of investigating the attack and using its intelligence network to track potential threats. Burkina's former colonial master has around 200 special forces based in Ouagadougou as part of a regional operation against Islamist insurgents. Some of them participated in the counter-attack that killed three of Friday's attackers. "Everything depends on the effort by the government after this attack to reassure our international partners and the friends of the country to continue to come here," said Idrissa Nassa, chief executive of Coris Bank, a leading lender in Burkina Faso. "If the government can limit it to just one attack then I think the climate of fear will dissipate quite quickly and things will go back to normal," he added. The stakes are high. Kabore campaigned on promises to revive the economic and social fortunes of a landlocked country that produces gold and cotton but remains impoverished. Political uncertainty has slowed an economy already hurt by a fall in global gold prices, but one senior security official said the attack would put security at the top of the public agenda. Former President Thomas Sankara, who was murdered in the 1987 coup that brought Compaore to power, remains a hero in the country that he named Burkina Faso - meaning "The land of the upstanding people" - and his image is plastered on walls around Ouagadougou. Sankara himself took power in a coup in 1983 and pursued a philosophy of Marxism and pan-Africanism that led him to be called "Africa's Che Guevara". Many African intellectuals view him as a visionary. Adama Ouedraogo, who teaches philosophy at a high school in the capital, said Sankara's revolutionary spirit was shown in the 2014 uprising and would now help the country overcome the militant threat. "The Burkinabe people are proud to be able to give their contribution to the government," he said. "I think the Burkinabe people are prepared to contribute to develop their country." (Additional reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou and Nadoun Coulibaly; Editing by Joe Bavier and Pravin Char)
Rumble

Introducing the recipe for seafood Chijimi (Korean pan cake) made with Nira (garlic chives) and squid. Adding carrots adds a gentle sweetness and the indescribably enchanting texture of fluffy, chewy pancake is almost addictive. Thinly cooked with the flavor of sesame oil and dipped in the authentic homemade sauce, this dish is a delicious dinner or finger food. The recipe can easily be modified for restricted diets, substituting the squid for thinly sliced pork, or even subbing all animal based products with vegetarian ones (roasted vegetables instead of meat - vegetable broth instead of chicken, etc). =============================================================  YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDvC...  Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/hungrycooki... ============================================================= 00:38 Prepping Ingredients 01:25 How to Gut a Squid 03:43 How To Make Chijimi Dipping Sauce 05:28 Putting Together the Chijimi 06:43 How to Cook Chijimi  Ingredients (for one chijimi) Weak (Cake) flour... 1/3 cup Potato starch ... 2 tbsp Water... 1/3 cup Garlic chives ... 1/3 bunch Carrots ... 1/8 (about 5cm) Squid ... 1/2~1 Salt Torigara (chicken bone) soup stock base (or Hondashi)  1 tsp  Olive oil  Sesame oil Sauce Soy sauce... 2 tablespoons Vinegar... 2 tablespoons Kochijang... 2 tsp Ichimi chili pepper Sesame oil... 1 tablespoon La-Yu (chili oil) Sesame  Cooking Recipe  Slice the Garlic Chives into 3~5cm pieces and julienne the carrots.  Gut, wash, and prep the squid into about 3-5cm strips.  This is a good time to prepare the sauce, so mix the sauce ingredients together to create the dipping sauce for the pancakes.  Add cake flour and potato starch, mixing loosely. Add water, salt, and torigara (chicken bone broth concentrate) or a different stock base like Hondashi, and stir until smooth. Lastly, add prepped vegetables and squid into the bowl and mix to incorporate.  Place the a pan over high heat and when hot, pour in sesame oil and olive oil. Add the batter made in step 4 into the pan, shape, and cook for 1~1.5 minutes on one side. When solid and lightly browned, flip the pancake and cook the other side through, pressing down with a spatula as needed.  Before completely cooked through, pour sesame oil along the rim of the pan and cook for 1~1.5 minutes more until browned. Reduce heat to medium and cook until both sides are both sides are fragrant and of good color.  After removing from the pan when fully cooked, cut into bite sized pieces and serve with prepared dipping sauce.  Cooking tips Thinly sliced pork is a delicious alternative to squid. This recipe can also be made vegetarian by subbing meats with roasted eggplant or other hearty vegetables, and broth subbed with vegetable broth concentrate. If you like a sweeter dipping sauce, add a pinch sugar when putting the sauce together. If you add an egg the taste will be much richer. However, add more flour to the batter as too small of an amount will result in a heavier, less crispy pancake. A recommended ratio will be about 1 cup of flour to 1 egg. When cutting pancakes, the chives are a little hard to cut and tend to lose their shape so cut them carefully. The pancake is easier to cut if you have a pizza cutter on hand.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim lawmakers on Sunday accused the new Saudi ambassador of meddling in domestic affairs after he said the presence of Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in the fight against Islamic State was exacerbating sectarian tensions in Iraq. Enmity between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in the Middle East is at its worst in years as regional conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen deepen long-standing rifts. Saudi Arabia, a conservative Sunni kingdom, executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric this month, infuriating Shi'ites around the region and arch foe Iran. In an interview with Iraq's al-Sumaria TV on Saturday, Saudi Ambassador Thamer al-Sabhan said the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mostly Iranian-backed Shi'ite paramilitary groups set up in 2014 to fight Islamic State, should leave the fight against the militants to Iraq's army and official security forces in order to avoid aggravating sectarian tensions. The reopening in December of the Saudi embassy in Baghdad, closed in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait, was seen as heralding closer cooperation in the fight against Islamic State, which controls territory in Iraq and in Syria and has claimed bombings in Saudi Arabia. At least 40 people were killed earlier this month and nine Sunni mosques firebombed in the eastern Iraqi town of Muqdadiya in apparent retaliation for two blasts there targeting Shi'ite militia fighters, which left 23 people dead. "Interference in the Hashid Shaabi, speaking about Muqdadiya, and other issues - it's not his business... he must respect diplomatic customs," said Khalid al-Assadi, a member of parliament's foreign affairs panel. The rise of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents of Islamic State has worsened sectarian conflict in Iraq, which is majority Shi'ite. Assadi said he had asked the foreign ministry to summon Sabhan to express lawmakers' objections. There was no immediate response from the ministry. "If such interference is repeated there will be calls to announce the ambassador persona non grata and demand the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia replace him," Assadi said by phone. Local media published similar comments from other Shi'ite MPs. "He should be expelled immediately or else he could meet dire consequences," Awatef Nemah from the ruling Shi'ite bloc told al-Sumaria, without elaborating. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Stephen Kalin; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Being stuck in a traffic jam is one of lifes biggest annoyances - but the sight of this smiling sloth is more than enough to calm any angry driver down.

The adorable animal caused traffic chaos after he was spotted clinging onto a motorway barrier in Quevedo, Ecuador.

Seemingly clinging on for dear life, the sloth nevertheless gave everyone a beaming smile as traffic was stopped to make sure it was OK.

Traffic stopper: The sloth was hanging on to a motorway barrier (Facebook/Comision de Transito del Ecuador)

Police officers at the scene tried to pull him off - but he was having none of it.

Thankfully the mammal was finally coaxed off the barrier and returned safely to the wild.

The picture of the sloth quickly went viral, with over 36,000 people liking the post.

Government organisation Comision de Transito del Ecuador wrote on Facebook: We are grateful to all for your concern.

Unharmed: The animal was returned safely to the wild (Facebook/Comision de Transito del Ecuador)

"Be advised, the sloth bear rescued by our unis was reviewed by a veterinarian, the same one that determined that it was in optimal conditions to be returning to their habitat.

"We are grateful to all those people who were interested in the health of the animal.

We will continue to support this kind of cases along with the collaboration of citizenship. Greetings to all.

We would gladly be held up in traffic for this little guy.

Top pic: Facebook/Comision de Transito del Ecuador
Peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups are to start on Friday, the United Nations special envoy on Syria announced Monday.

Staffan de Mistura told reporters he would be sending out invitations to the talks in Geneva on Tuesday. The talks are expected to take six months and the sides will not talk directly to each other to begin with.

De Mistura said the priorities would be creating a broad ceasefire, stopping the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, and clearing the way for humanitarian aid.

"We want to make sure that when and if we start, to start at least on the right foot," he said. "It will be uphill anyway."

Separately, Turkey's foreign minister warned that any participation of Kurdish forces in the Geneva talks would be dangerous and would spell the end of the initiative seeking to end the nearly five-year conflict.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces "terrorists," accusing them of co-operating with Kurdish rebels who are banned in Turkey. He says they have no place among the opposition at the Geneva talks.

Geopolitical tensions between countries including Turkey, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia have weighed heavily on efforts by negotiators. The initiative has run into delays and disputes notably over the invitation list. Fierce, ongoing tensions have also led negotiators to decide that the opposing sides won't initially meet face-to-face  a sign that even minimal progress is far from certain.

Ambitious resolution

The Geneva talks are the first since discussions collapsed two years ago.

Russia has called for the inclusion of Kurdish representatives, and the U.S. and others have supported the Kurds in the fight against the extremist Islamic State group in Syria. But Turkey is strongly opposed.

"There are efforts among some countries to water down the opposition. We oppose this," said Cavusoglu. "To insist that terror groups such as the YPG (the main Kurdish militia) are included within the opposition would lead to the failure of the process. We have to insist that this is extremely dangerous."

Story continues

But European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who spoke to reporters alongside Cavusoglu, said that, "from the European perspective, we attach an extremely high value on the fact that the process in Geneva will be inclusive."

The UN Security Council passed an ambition resolution on the Syria crisis that set a target for the peace talks to start this month. That resolution also aims to produce credible governance and a schedule for drafting a new Syrian constitution. But airstrikes by Russia  a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad  against rebels have altered the military situation on the ground.

The extremist Islamic State  considered a terrorist group  has not been invited to attend the talks in Geneva.
Chennai: The trade unions in Tangedco are questioning the decision to suspend generation in the Ennore Thermal Power Plant citing less power demand while continuing to purchase power at high cost.

All the trade unions except AIADMK affiliated Anna Thozhir Sangam Peravai will hold a demonstration outside ETPS on January 27 condemning the managements decision to not to operate three units  two 110-MW unit and a 60 MW unit  even though they are available for generation. The trade unions have put up a banner outside the ETPS in this regard.

The ETPS, which is the oldest thermal power station in the state, has a total installed capacity of 450 MW comprising of two 60 MW units and three 110 MW units.

A 60 MW unit I and 110 MW units III and IV which are available for generation have been kept off the grid citing low demand, said a trade union leader in ETPS on condition of anonymity.

The unit III and IV with a capacity of 110 MW each has been kept in standby mode since January 19 and 14 respectively citing low demand, the union leader said, adding that the generation in the 60 MW unit I which is not in operation from November 13 last year was not resumed due to shortage of operators.

Tamil Nadu Electricity Board Engineers Association, in a letter to Tangedcos CMD, said that the three units together could generate around 130 MW and they are capable of delivering around 90 million units per month at a low cost

It is learnt that high cost of generation for the month of December 2015 is the main key factor to keep the units in standby condition. But it is a matter of fact that oil consumption in all thermal stations will be considerably high due to wet coal during the rainy season, the letter said, adding that keeping healthy units under idle conditions would accelerate the deterioration of the parts and the asset would remain unutilised.

The TNEBA said that since the ETPS is located close to the city, there is very little line loss.

Purchase of private power by abandoning this station may escalate the quantum of line losses, it said, urging the CMD to consider resuming generation and not to take any hasty decision to close down the station.

A senior Tangedco official dismissed the trade union's charge of the units has been kept in standby condition to purchase power from private companies. The boiler licences of unit III and IV have expired. Without the renewal of licence, the generation cannot be resumed in these two units, the official said, adding that the cost of generation in the ETPS is Rs 5.5 per unit which is higher than cost of power purchased.
By Martin Petty HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam's progressive prime minister was among preliminary nominations for the Communist Party's central committee on Sunday, an official said, maintaining the possibility of him contesting the party leadership to be decided this week. The political future of Nguyen Tan Dung remains uncertain, however, after he was not among leadership candidates agreed by top decision-makers at a recent meeting, a surprise twist that saw the five-yearly congress of the secretive party open on Thursday under a cloud of controversy. His committee nomination at an early stage of the internal election process means he technically could still launch a bid to become party chief. Dung, 66, has not spoken publicly about his future and his absence from Sunday's preliminary nominations would have ruled him out. Dung was until recently tipped by diplomats and analysts to become the next party boss, which could have strengthened the hand of his progressive faction. He is widely seen as a modernizer and credited with driving recent economic reforms. Vu Ngoc Hoang, a senior Central Propaganda Department official, confirmed that Dung and several other politburo members were among those nominated. "But that's only a list," he told reporters. "Every person introduced gets on to the list," he said, stressing the nominations were preliminary. Dung's inclusion is likely to add to excitement and social media speculation about the possibility of a leadership showdown at what is normally considered a stale, procedural affair. To stand a chance, Dung would have to decline his preliminary nomination to the central committee. The 1,510 congress delegates could then vote to reject his withdrawal, thus keeping him in contention for further stages of the internal election. Vu Trong Kim, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, earlier on Sunday confirmed leaked reports that prior to the congress incumbent General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, was nominated to extend his tenure and Dung had withdrawn from the contest when the politburo was deciding its candidates. CREDIT TO COMRADES In rare comments about internal politburo procedures, Kim, a member of the outgoing central committee, praised Dung and said there was 100 percent politburo support for Trong. "I very much welcome comrade Nguyen Tan Dung and some other comrades in the politburo who voluntarily withdrew from being nominees to gather credit for comrade Nguyen Phu Trong," Kim said told some local media. An audio recording of Kim's interview was heard by Reuters. Kim confirmed the agreed nominations, besides Trong, were Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang for president, Dung's deputy, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, for premier and legislative vice-chairwoman, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, to head the National Assembly. Analysts and diplomats say Dung's chances of a fightback are slim, but possible, if he calls on support he has cultivated among the wider party. Dung's office did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment. Experts say Dung is an ambitious, decisive figure and his exclusion from leadership nominations suggests concerns among the party's old guard that he could test Vietnam's traditional consensus leadership model. Edmund Malesky, an expert on Vietnamese politics at Duke University, said the congress was not scripted and key to any outcome was a central committee "way more powerful" than those of other communist states. "The question is whether Dung wants it... He's not going to come out and say it in an obvious way," he said. "He himself has benefited from the influence of the central committee, and we know that he's capable of mobilizing votes ... if he decides he wants it, then this is a real possibility." (Reporting by Martin Petty; Additional reporting by Mai Nguyen; Editing by Andrew Bolton)
Mobile Learning

Lynn U Deploys iPad Pro

Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL, is upgrading its iPad initiative by providing all undergraduate day students and faculty with an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard.

The university launched its iPad program in 2013. Following a pilot project, it provided 750 students, primarily freshmen, with iPad minis in August 2013. Based on the success of the first year, the university then expanded the initiative by providing 1,800 iPad minis to all day undergraduate students, new MBA students and doctoral students in August 2014. "Our introduction of iPad-powered learning in 2013 has supported rises in retention and prospective student inquiries, as well as improved student outcomes," said Kevin Ross, president of Lynn U, in a press release.

The university is now upgrading to the iPad Pro, introducing 1,800 of the devices, along with the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard, for all undergraduate day students and faculty. The reasons for the switch include improved device performance and support for multitasking. The university also introduced the full-size Smart Keyboard because it "makes it easier for students to draft essays, complete tests and build complex spreadsheets from anywhere," and the "Apple Pencil expands the power of Multi-Touch and supports creative learners by providing them with a new way to capture ideas as notes, sketches or diagrams," according to the university's Web site.

The university's iPad initiative has reduced costs for students. They no longer need to purchase a personal computer, and the university has replaced traditional textbooks with custom e-textbooks created by faculty members, "saving students up to 90 percent on core curriculum textbook costs," according to a press release from the university.

More information about the iPad program is available on Lynn University's site.
Library Services

U California, Berkeley Adopts New Discovery Service To Improve Search Results

The University of California, Berkeley has chosen a new discovery service in an attempt to provide library users with better results.

The university selected EBSCO Discovery Service, a tool that "creates a unified, customized index of an institution's information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box," according to a news release.

"EBSCO Discovery Service is an important part of our effort to support continuous improvement in library service and is helping students, faculty and staff find scholarly information as quickly and effectively as possible," said Erik Mitchell, associate university librarian for digital initiatives and collaborative services and associate CIO for the UC Berkeley Libraries, in a prepared statement.
By Alastair Macdonald and Noah Barkin BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Is this how "Europe" ends? The Germans, founders and funders of the postwar union, shut their borders to refugees in a bid for political survival by the chancellor who let in a million migrants. And then -- why not? -- they decide to revive the Deutschmark while they're at it. That is not the fantasy of diehard Eurosceptics but a real fear articulated at the highest levels in Berlin and Brussels. Chancellor Angela Merkel, her ratings hit by crimes blamed on asylum seekers at New Year parties in Cologne, and EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker both said as much last week. Juncker echoed Merkel in warning that the central economic achievements of the common market and the euro are at risk from incoherent, nationalistic reactions to migration and other crises. He renewed warnings that Europe is on its "last chance", even if he still hoped it was not "at the beginning of the end". Merkel, facing trouble among her conservative supporters as much as from opponents, called Europe "vulnerable" and the fate of the euro "directly linked" to resolving the migration crisis -- highlighting the risk of at the very least serious economic turbulence if not a formal dismantling of EU institutions. Some see that as mere scare tactics aimed at fellow Europeans by leaders with too much to lose from an EU collapse -- Greeks and Italians have been seen to be dragging their feet over controlling the bloc's Mediterranean frontier and eastern Europeans who benefit from German subsidies and manufacturing supply chain jobs have led hostility to demands that they help take in refugees. Germans are also getting little help from EU co-founder France, whose leaders fear a rising anti-immigrant National Front, or the bloc's third power, Britain, consumed with its own debate on whether to just quit the European club altogether. So, empty threat or no, with efforts to engage Turkey's help showing little sign yet of preventing migrants reaching Greek beaches, German and EU officials are warning that without a sharp drop in arrivals or a change of heart in other EU states to relieve Berlin of the lonely task of housing refugees, Germany could shut its doors, sparking wider crisis this spring. GERMAN WARNINGS With Merkel's conservative allies in the southern frontier state of Bavaria demanding she halt the mainly Muslim asylum seekers ahead of tricky regional elections in March, her veteran finance minister delivered one of his trademark veiled threats to EU counterparts of what that could mean for them. "Many think this is a German problem," Wolfgang Schaeuble said in meetings with fellow EU finance ministers in Brussels. "But if Germany does what everyone expects, then we'll see that it's not a German problem -- but a European one." Senior Merkel allies are working hard to stifle the kind of parliamentary party rebellion that threatened to derail bailouts which kept Greece in the euro zone last year. But pressure is mounting for national measures, such as border fences, which as a child of East Germany Merkel has said she cannot countenance. "If you build a fence, it's the end of Europe as we know it," one senior conservative said. "We need to be patient." A senior German official noted that time is running out, however. "The chancellor has been asking her party for more time," he said. "But ... that narrative ... is losing the persuasiveness it may have had in October or November. If you add in the debate about Cologne, she faces an increasingly difficult situation." He noted that arrivals had not fallen sharply over the winter months as had been expected. "You can only imagine what happens when the weather improves," he said. SCHENGEN FEARS Merkel and Juncker explicitly linked new national frontier controls across Europe's passport-free Schengen zone to a collapse of the single market at the core of the bloc, and of the euro. Both would ravage jobs and the economy. "Without Schengen ... the euro has no point," Juncker told a New Year news conference on Friday. Historic national resentments were re-emerging, he added, accusing his generation of EU leaders of squandering the legacy of the union's founders, survivors of World War Two. Merkel has not suggested -- yet -- that Berlin could follow neighbors like Austria and Denmark in further tightening border checks to deny entry to irregular migrants. But she has made clear how Europe might suffer. "No one can pretend that you can have a common currency without being able to cross borders relatively easily," she said at a business event last week. In private, German officials are more explicit. "We have until March, the summer maybe, for a European solution," said a second German official. "Then Schengen goes down the drain." A senior EU official was equally blunt: "There is a big risk that Germany closes. From that, no Schengen ... There is a risk that the February summit could start a countdown to the end." The next summit of EU leaders one month from now follows meetings last year that were marked by agreement on a migration strategy as well as rows over failures to implement it. Of the 160,000 asylum seekers EU leaders agreed in September to distribute among member states, fewer than 300 have been moved. Berlin and Brussels continue to press for more distribution across Europe. But few place much hope in that -- one senior German official calls it "flogging a dead horse". TURKISH KEY EU leaders' hope is for help from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a man many of them see as an embryonic dictator. Berlin is pressing for more EU cash for Ankara, beyond an agreed 3 billion euros, which Italy is blocking. Some Germans suggest simply using German funds to stem the flow from Turkey. EU officials say it is too early to panic. Arrivals have fallen this month. U.N. data show them running in January at half the 3,500 daily rate of December. Progress includes a move to let some of the 2.1 million Syrian refugees in Turkey take jobs. The EU will fund more schools for refugee children. Yet EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who travels to Berlin on Monday, told the European Parliament last week: "The situation is getting worse." The refugee crisis was jeopardizing "the very core of the European Union", he said, offering no grounds to be optimistic other than that "optimism is our last line of our defense". (Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Paul Taylor and Tom Koerkemeier in Brussels; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
New Delhi: The Union Cabinet has made a strong case for Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh after 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 BJP MLAs and two Independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia in December.

The following are details of the confidential Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowas report to the Ministry of Home Affairs on the crisis in the state which was shared with President Pranab Mukherjee.

The report says: Taking cognisance of the constitutional breakdown that has taken place in the State of Arunachal Pradesh as reported by the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, the Union Cabinet in its meeting held on 24th January 2016 had decided to recommend to the President of India to issue a Proclamation under article 356(1) of the Constitution, imposing Presidents Rule in relation to the State of Arunachal Pradesh and keeping the Legislative Assembly of the State in suspended animation.

As per various reports received from the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh the constitutional breakdown has taken place on various fronts which interalia include,

(i) The law and order situation has severely deteriorated; even the Raj Bhavan was gheraoed and access to it was blocked,

(ii) There has been flouting of the provisions of Article 167(b) of the Constitution as letters of the Governor concerning issues of public importance were not being responded to

(iii) Indiscipline, lawlessness, politicking by government officials by inciting, provoking and funding certain groups to publicly organise demonstrations/ rallies for recall/removal/resignation of incumbent Governor taking place. Members of the Government are playing communal politics by inciting, provoking and funding certain student groups and other communal organisations against other tribes and even the Governor, referring to his Assamese roots.

(iiii) The Speaker of the Assembly, using the state machinery, prevented the session of the Legislative Assembly being held in the Assembly Premises, even though the session had been summoned by the Governor, by locking of the Assembly premises and issuing orders preventing entry of even the members of the Legislative Assembly. Speakers order to not allow the Legislature to even visit the Assembly, what to talk of having a session of the Assembly, is a grave act in the democratic set up of our Constitution. The functioning of the Legislature through a premises which is the Assembly is sacrosanct and symbolises the democratic willpower of the people. Locking of the Assembly is no less than locking of the Constitution of India itself.

(v) The Governor, who is the nominee of the President of India, is being publicly insulted and humiliated and the state administration is behaving as a silent spectator. Gherao and blockading of the Governor and the Raj Bhavan who is the nominee of the President of India amounts to constitutional breakdown in the State.

(vi) As per Article 174 of the Constitution, six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of the Legislative Assembly in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session. According to one interpretation the next session of the assembly should therefore have taken place latest by 21st January, 2016 as by that time six months elapsed. On the other hand, the other interpretation is that an Assembly session was indeed held albeit in premises outside the Assembly Building (where majority of the members had voted) as access to the main Assembly Building was prevented. It is worth mentioning that the assembly session which took place on 16th December 2015 has been disputed by Shri Nabam Tuki & his supporters. Whether this assembly session is valid or not is under litigation in the Supreme Court. In the eventuality, the Supreme Court rules in favour of the interpretation that this assembly session was not valid then in any case there will be constitutional breakdown because the requirement of Article 174(1) would have been breached. On the other hand, if the Supreme Court holds that the December 16 session was valid, then it is clear that the current Government is in a minority, and is not allowing the testing of the majority. Therefore in either case, the state is heading for a constitutional crisis.
New Delhi: Despite hectic last-minute negotiations during French President Francois Hollandes ongoing visit, India and France on Monday failed to agree on the cost of the 36 Rafale fighters. The two sides expressed optimism that cost issues will be resolved soon and an MoU signed on the inter-governnmental agreement for the purchase of the jets.

The IGA will be concluded in its entirety once the cost issues are agreed upon, foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said.

Speculation is rife that France wants to sell 36 Rafales including weapon systems for about 11.5 billion euros, while India wants the price lowered to around eight billion euros (Rs 59,000 crore).

In another development on the civil nuclear energy front, India and France decided on the construction of six nuclear power reactors at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, instead of the two units agreed earlier. France also wants to build on the Post-Paris Agreement world with India.

India and France signed 14 agreements in different areas. (Photo: DC)

India-France ink 14 pacts

India and France on Monday signed 14 agreements in different areas, from defence and space to culture. France will also take part in Isros next mission to Mars.

The agreements followed hour-long talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande.

A joint statement said Prime Minister Modi and President Hollande welcomed the conclusion of the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the acquisition of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft in flyaway condition, except for some financial issues... which they agreed must be resolved as soon as possible.

Referring to this later, Mr Modi said: It is a matter of joy that except for the financial aspects, the IGA was concluded. There is a consensus that the financial aspects will be resolved. French President Hollande was quoted by news agencies as saying the signing of the IGA was a decisive step and that the financial issues will be sorted out in a couple of days.
HCU fine arts students paint their faces to stage a play in the university campus about the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula.

Hyderabad: Addressing the gathering JAC leaders demanded that the police go back from the university or allow students inside to participate in the massive protest.

They demanded the arrest of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, VC Prof. Appa Rao Podile and blamed them for the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula. After receiving an assurance from the police that the students from other institutions who carried ID cards would be allowed inside, the JAC withdrew the protest at the main gate.

Balanagar traffic ACP, P. Ashok, on duty at the main dais, promised students that they would allow all students and if necessary, they would inform the OU police to allow OU students to march towards UoH.

Meanwhile, the university administration told the media that there was no permission for the protests and rallies in the campus, which led to another protest at the administrative building by JAC leaders. The JAC has also condemned the appointment of Dr Srivastava as VC.

Cyberabad police deployed about four platoons apart from law and order and AR units from Madhapur zone outside the university.

About 150 law and order police including a DCP, one additional DCP, three ACPs, 15 inspectors and 15 SIs were deployed inside the campus.

Officials also deployed a water tender and fire tenders to prevent untoward incidents. Apart from this, four platoons of armed forces were also deployed near Ganti Mohana Chandra Balayogi Stadium as reserve.

Carry on, change policies: Thorat

The chairman of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research, Mr Sukhdeo Thorat, has sent a clear message to University of Hyderabad students.

Addressing the students Mr Thorat said, Do not allow the sacrifice of Rohith Vemula go waste. Mr Thorat, who came out with a report on discrimination against SC/ST students at the AIIMS in New Delhi in 2011 told the students to carry on their movement and ensure that it ends in a change in policy in the country.

He told the students that never before has a Dalit student movement attracted the nations attention like the one at UoH even though there were 23 suicides by Dalit, Muslim and Other Backward Community students due to discrimination in higher education institutions in India.

He told the students to form a national network for achieving an inclusive education policy. Mr Thorat suggested a set of points to the students while pressing for policy change.

He said the students must ask the Union Human Resources Development minister to set up a panel at the national level and at the UoH to probe discrimination in educational institutions which will help in bringing in reforms in curriculum to make it friendly for students from rural areas and marginalised sections.

Mr Sukhdeo Thorat called for a law against discrimination on campuses which would make it criminal. He said that even though the SC/ST Atrocities Act exists it speaks very less on discrimination in educational institutions.

Mr Sukhdeo also called for a regulation by the UGC on best administrative practices to check discrimination.

Mr Sukhdeo Thorat said that law alone cannot bring about change and gave the example of how between 1999-2013 2,50,000 cases of atrocities were booked.

He said that teaching and the curriculum are elitist in Indian universities and that a remedial programme should be started for strengthening the communication skills and subject knowledge of rural students.

Mr Thorat also wanted Dalits in all administrative bodies of the university.
Iran's Interior Ministry, which will supervise the ballot, said efforts by President Hassan Rouhani's government led to previously barred reformists, moderates and conservatives being approved (AFP Photo/HO)

Tehran (AFP) - Iran will probably sign contracts with automakers Peugeot and Renault, President Hassan Rouhani said Monday as he headed to Europe seeking to capitalise on Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

"Important contracts will probably be signed on this trip including with Peugeot and Renault," Rouhani told reporters at Mehrabad Airport before leaving Tehran, according to state television's website.

The Monday-Wednesday tour takes place just over a week after the nuclear deal came into force, allowing the United States and the European Union to lift economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear activities.

A large delegation of 100 political and economic leaders, including the ministers of oil, transport, industry and health will accompany the president.

"We need to modernise our aviation fleet and buy locomotives," the Iranian president said.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said on Sunday Iran would buy 114 Airbus planes during the president's visit to Paris.

"This trip takes place ... at a historic moment" and "we should make best use of the post-nuclear- deal atmosphere for growth, development and youth employment," Rouhani added.

Iran needs annual foreign investment of $30-$50 billion to reach an eight percent growth target and cash in on sanctions relief, the president said last week.

In Italy on Monday and Tuesday, Rouhani will meet Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

After meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, he will be in France on Wednesday to meet President Francois Hollande.

On the European tour, Iran is to "review and agree on two important documents" that will act as "roadmaps" for mid- and long-term relations with Italy and France, Rouhani said.

"We have had friendly relations with Italy and France in the past, and we want to continue our good relations with them," he said.
Albany, NY, Jan. 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a research report added to the repository of ResearchMoz.us, the global wind turbine rotor blade market is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 17% during the period between 2015 and 2019. The report, titled Global Wind Turbine Rotor Blade Market 2015-2019, offers a comprehensive study of the global wind turbine motor blade market and assesses the growth and valuation of the market during the forecast horizon. The report calculates the size of the market, considering the revenue generated through the sale of wind turbine rotor blade. The report studies the global wind turbine rotor blade market across key regions and profiles some of the key players in the market.

In a wind turbine, the rotor forms the central part and has multiple rotor blades attached to a hub. Rotor blades serve as a motor in the turbine by virtue of extracting energy from the wind. The most common rotor consists of a horizontal axis attached to three blades with a diameter in the range of 37m-128m. As conventional power generation leads to environmental pollution, the demand for renewable energy such as wind and solar energy has increased. The report points out that the growing demand for wind energy has propelled the global wind turbine motor blade market. However, the high cost of offshore wind installations will restrain the growth of the market during the forecast horizon. The overall market is expected to be significantly benefitted by the government incentives on wind turbine installations.



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The report analyzes the cost of various components of wind turbine and describes the manufacturing process of wind turbine rotor blades. The report further analyzes the impact of Porters five forces on the growth of the global wind turbine motor blade market. On the basis of application, the report segments the global wind turbine motor blade market into offshore and onshore. As offshore wind is more powerful and consistent, offshore wind energy turbine installations are more in demand and are driving the market.



On the basis of blade size, the report segments the global wind turbine rotor blade market into 37-60m, 61-75m, 76-90m, and 90+ m. The demand for the 37-60m blade size is the highest. The report studies the global wind turbine rotor blade market across three key regions: APAC, EMEA, and Americas. The APAC region dominates the overall market and accounts for 45% market share.



Browse Report description and TOC:



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Describing the competitive landscape, the report profiles some of the key players in the global wind turbine rotor blade market such as Gamesa, Enercon, Goldwind, MFG, Nordex, TPI, Vestas, LM Windpower, Suzlon Energy, Sinoi, KM, Inox Wind, Dewind, Flexsys, Guodian United Power Technology, Aeroblade, Acciona, Powerblades, Siemens Wind Power, Sinomatech Wind Power Blade, Wuxi Turbine Blade, and ZhonghangHuiTengWindpowerEquipment. The report provides insightful information about the key players including their product portfolio, global presence, and revenue.



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New Delhi: India and France on Monday pledged to explore new avenues for cooperation to strengthen exchange of information to prevent offshore tax evasion.

"Recognising the shared commitment of India and France to cooperate in preventing off-shore tax evasion and the steps taken by both countries to strengthen exchange of information in recent years, the two leaders agreed to explore further avenues for joint co-operation, especially in capacity building and sharing of best practices, in line with G20 commitments," said the joint statement.

India-France joint statement was issued on the occasion of the state visit of French President Francois Hollande here. India has been spearheading the campaign at international for a for automatic exchange of information with a view to check tax evasion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hollande expressed their commitment to carry forward the dialogue on the EU-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA). Recently, the chief negotiators of India and EU took stock of the outstanding issues, including duty cut on automobiles and movement of professionals, that have held up talks on the proposed pact.

"France and India are committed to bring about a resumption of the negotiations as soon as possible," it said. The statement also underlined the need for increasing bilateral economic engagement.

The two leaders welcomed the conclusion of a MoU on cooperation in urban development between Telangana and the Bordeaux Metropole. The two leaders emphasised that more such initiatives should be taken to enhance the economic ties.

Recalling the commitments made in the Indo-French Joint Statement issued in April 2015 for closer economic engagement, the leaders noted with satisfaction, the involvement of French companies in several new and ongoing projects in India in keeping with the 'Make in India' initiative.

They highlighted the attractiveness of France for Indian investors, especially in terms of leveraging French technological expertise and competencies. Reaffirming their commitment to facilitating a conducive environment for enhancing bilateral trade and investment, the two countries appreciated the convening of a dialogue on economic and financial issues at a higher level on cooperation in economy and finance.

"This framework will be the forum to discuss, on an annual basis, global and financial governance issues as well as bilateral economic and financial matters, to promote exchanges and cross investments between our two countries and address any hurdles between French and Indian businesses and industries," it said.

Further, both the sides called for increasing investments in preventive healthcare, research and exchange of technical knowledge in the field of food safety.
Kalpana had made her debut in M.T. Vasudevan Nair's film Manj in 1983 and went on to star in over 300 films.

Thiruvananthapuram: National award-winning actress Kalpana, who appeared in 300 films including recent superhit 'Charlie', died this morning in Hyderabad due to heart attack. She was 51.

Kalpana Ranjani was in Hyderabad for shooting a Telugu film and was scheduled to leave for Kerala later today. She was declared brought dead at a hospital around 7 am, sources told PTI.

The actress' body is expected to be brought to Kerala later today. She is survived by her daughter.

Malayalam actors K P A C Lalitha, Kaviyoor Ponnamma and Innocent, MP, expressed shock at the demise of the actress, who was best known for her comic roles in South Indian films.

Kalpana had received National award in the best supporting actress for her performance in 'Thanichala Njan' (2012).

Sister of actor Urvashi and Kalaranjini, Kalpana forayed into the Malayalam films as a child actor in 'Vidarunne Mottukul' in 1977. Among her other Malayalam hits are 'Ennum Eppuzhum', 'Karnavar', 'Dolfins', 'Bangalore Days' and 'Spirit'.

'Kakki Sattai', 'Idhaya Thiruda', 'Sathi Leelavathi' and 'Chinna Veedu' are among her Tamil films.
Dubai (AFP) - A court in Bahrain on Monday added 15-year jail terms to the sentences of 57 Shiite inmates involved in a prison mutiny, a judicial source said.

The inmates were convicted of rioting and mutiny following unrest last March at Jaw prison south of the capital Manama, the source said.

The charges included "disobeying orders and forcing guards out of the prisoners' buildings" and then "destroying furniture, air conditioners and security cameras", the source said.

Security forces finally stormed the buildings and clashed with the rioting prisoners, resulting in casualties among police and inmates, the source added.

Al-Wasat newspaper said the defendants were also fined a total of 508,187 dinars ($1.35 million).

It was not clear what caused the riot in Bahrain's largest prison that is used for Shiites convicted over anti-government protests.

Human Rights Watch called last May for an independent investigation into allegations that security forces used "excessive force" to quell the unrest at the jail and later mistreated prisoners.

Bahrain's Sunni authorities crushed Shiite-led protests a month after they erupted on February 14, 2011.

The strategic Shiite-majority, Sunni-ruled kingdom lies across the Gulf from Shiite Iran and is home to the US Fifth Fleet.
Ottawa (AFP) - A high-school student was formally accused Monday over the murder of two teenage brothers and two teachers in a remote Indian community in Canada plagued by poverty and boredom and a growing loss of cultural identity.

During a brief court appearance the 17 year old, who cannot be identified under Canadian law, was indicted on four counts of first degree, or premeditated, murder and seven counts of attempted murder, as well as a weapons charge.

He is scheduled to return to court on February 22.

Friday's gun attack traumatized the 3,000 inhabitants of the small lakeside village of La Loche, in the western prairie province of Saskatchewan.

Shock also spread across the nation, which is not used to this sort of violence. Unlike in the United States, mass shootings are rare in Canada, where firearms are more regulated than south of the border.

The suspect killed two brothers -- Drayden and Dayne Fontaine, aged 13 and 17 -- at their home before going to a nearby school.

There, he allegedly opened fire again and shot dead two teachers, 21-year-old Marie Janvier and 35-year-old Adam Wood, while also critically injuring seven other people, according to police.

He was taken into custody after police received an emergency call about "a person discharging a weapon in the community," RCMP superintendent Maureen Levy said.

On Sunday, hundreds attended a church service in memory of the victims, while leaders expressed their grief.

Town mayor Kevin Janvier and local member of parliament Georgina Jolibois suggested tearing down the school where the shooting took place.

"I want that school to be rebuilt. Torn down, rebuilt... because of the trauma," Janvier said after meeting officials, including Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Canada's Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale.

"We are hurting and we will be for months to come," he said. This "drama is now known around the world."

La Loche is no stranger to violence, having long struggled with high rates of addiction, suicide and poverty.

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In a region that boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates (5.5 percent versus 7.1 percent Canada-wide) in the country, in La Loche almost one in two adults is unemployed.

There is little to do for most young people, who after graduating must consider leaving the community to find work.

- Three times more suicides -

Government House leader Dominic LeBlanc drew attention to the bleak living conditions in La Loche.

"The government has to look at a whole series of measures to improve community safety," said LeBlanc.

Social conditions in the aboriginal community on the edge of the Arctic Circle, deep in the boreal forest and 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the provincial capital Regina, are worrying.

The life expectancy of Chipewyan (or Dene) people of the region is lower than the Canadian average, the crime rate is double the national average, especially for homicides and sexual assaults, according to official statistics.

In La Loche, the suicide rate -- which provides a glimpse of wider social ills -- is three times higher than in the rest of the province.

Disparities between First Nations aboriginal people and the rest of Canada are rooted in decades of discrimination and bad policies.

Last July the UN Human Rights Committee in a report blamed Ottawa for many of the inequalities affecting indigenous people and urged the government to do more to support natives.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to ratify a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada and three other countries -- Australia, the United States and New Zealand -- were the only nations to vote against the UN indigenous text in 2007.

As part of an ongoing rapprochement between the federal government and Canada's more than 600 indigenous tribes, Trudeau also announced last month an inquiry into why 1,200 indigenous women were murdered or have gone missing over the past three decades, something long demanded by aboriginal leaders and activists.
By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, head of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was ordered on Monday to appear in court to answer the charge of sedition, a move her supporters said was driven by politics. The case comes amid rising concerns over the growth of Islamist militancy in the Muslim-majority South Asian nation, which saw a string of deadly attacks on secular writers, minorities and foreigners last year. It was filed by Momtaz Uddin Ahmad Mehdi, a lawyer with the Bangladesh Supreme Court and a supporter of the ruling Awami League. He said that remarks Khaleda made last month about the 1971 war of independence were seditious. She had said there were "controversies" over the numbers who were killed. He said the comment hurt him "as a patriot" and that as a citizen, he had a right to file the case. Politics in poverty-stricken Bangladesh has for decades been marred by violent protests, nationwide strikes and bickering between supporters of Khaleda and current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who have taken it in turns to lead the country. An affiliate BNP group called for a countrywide protest for Tuesday. It was not immediately clear what chance the prosecution had of success in the case. Khaleda was ordered to appear in court on March 3. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, acting secretary general of the BNP, dismissed the case as politically motivated. "This is nothing but a mockery and its aim is to deter Khaleda from politics," he told reporters. "The intent of the government is to continue its repression of the opposition by police, making confrontational politics." He said 17,000 opposition activists had been arrested since 2014 and 3,000 were still in jail. East Pakistan broke away to become independent Bangladesh in 1971 after a war between India and Pakistan. About three million people were killed, according to official accounts. Hasina opened an inquiry into crimes committed during the war in 2010, paving the way for prosecutions by a war crimes tribunal that Islamists have denounced as part of a campaign aimed at weakening the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of the BNP. Four opposition politicians, including three leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, have been convicted and executed since late 2013. The executions have come amidst a rise in Islamist militant violence, with militant groups claiming the murder of two foreigners and four secular writers and a publisher last year. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
Amsterdam (AFP) - Greece lashed out on Monday at what it called "lies" by its EU partners following calls for Athens to be suspended from the Schengen passport-free zone if it fails to staunch the flow of migrants into Europe.

At a tense meeting of EU interior ministers in Amsterdam, Austria and Germany urged Greece -- the European gateway for thousands of migrants each day -- to do more to tackle the continent's worst migration crisis since World War II.

But Greece's interior minister for migration Yiannis Mouzalas insisted his country -- already buffeted by a debt crisis that almost drove it out of the euro last year -- is doing its best in difficult circumstances.

"We are tired to listen that we cannot secure our borders," Mouzalas told reporters in Amsterdam. "We are told that we don't want coastguards, it's a lie -- we want more coastguards."

The short sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands accounted for most of the one million migrants and refugees who arrived in Europe last year, but Mouzalas said it would be illegal under international law to push them back.

Ewa Moncure, spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex, also stressed the illegality of turning asylum seekers away from Greek waters.

"Under international law, every person who crosses a European border can claim asylum," she told AFP.

She added that Greece's geography, with its scattered islands and long coasts, made it practically impossible to stop the arrival of flimsy boats carrying people fleeing conflict and misery in the Middle East and elsewhere.

- Schengen under pressure -

The rest of the EU is, however, turning up the pressure on Athens.

Last week Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner warned Athens could face "temporary exclusion" from Schengen, the 26-country zone of mainly EU countries that embodies the European dream of free movement.

But in Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud insisted on Monday that there was no plan to suspend Greece.

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"We have never discussed either a suspension or exclusion. The possibility does not exist," she said.

Austria, Germany and several other Schengen member states have already reintroduced temporary checks at their internal borders, raising fears the passport-free system could collapse.

During a press conference after Monday's talks, Dutch State Secretary for Security and Justice Klaas Dijkhoff suggested the border checks could go beyond the current limit of six months because of the exceptional pressure.

"Member states invited the commission to prepare the legal and practical basis for the continuance of temporary border measures," he said.

Austria and Germany urged Greece to tighten its external EU borders.

"Greece has to reinforce its (border) resources and accept help," Mikl-Leitner told reporters in Amsterdam on Monday, adding that it was a "myth" that the Turkish sea border could not be secured.

- 'The clock is ticking' -

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere -- whose country's decision last year to open its doors to one million asylum seekers sparked anger in transit countries -- urged Greece to "do its duty."

"We want to save Schengen, we want common European solutions, but the clock is ticking," said de Maiziere, adding that a deal with Turkey to staunch the influx is the key to solving the crisis.

Signed last year, the deal involves Brussels paying Ankara three billion euros ($3.2 billion) in aid for Syrian refugees and speeding up its EU membership process, in return for Turkey tackling people smugglers and improving conditions for refugees.

The payment has been held up by concerns that Turkey is not complying, but EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said during a visit to Ankara on Monday that she was confident Turkey would get the three billion "in reasonable time".

Brussels is also exploring other ways of stemming the flow of migrants, particularly through the Western Balkans.

The European Commission confirmed on Monday that it had sent a mission to non-EU Macedonia to discuss how it could help staunch the large numbers passing over the border from Greece.

It said commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker had replied to a letter from Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar, who last week called for Macedonia to effectively seal off its border with Greece and staunch the flow through the Balkans.

Dijkhoff said the member states asked the commission to "explore the possibilities" for Frontex to "provide assistance at the border".
By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine Corps on Monday said it would send a pair of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets to two air shows in Britain this summer, a key milestone for the $391 billion weapons program after its thwarted international debut in 2014.

Some U.S. Air Force F-35 jets will also take part in the events, according to sources familiar with the plans. Air Force officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

A fleetwide F-35 grounding ordered after an engine fire in 2014 prevented what would have been the jets' international premiere at the annual Royal International Air Tattoo and an appearance at the world's biggest air show in Farnborough, outside London, both that year.

Since then, an F-35 jet assembled in Italy has made its inaugural flight there, but this year's appearance at RIAT will be the first by the stealthy, supersonic new warplane at an international air show.

"The U.S. Marine Corps is looking forward to demonstrating the capabilities of the F-35B Lightning II in the skies over the United Kingdom this July," Deputy Commandant for Aviation Lieutenant General Jon Davis said in statement to Reuters.

Davis said a joint U.S. Marine Corps and UK detachment would use the flights to validate overseas deployment activities and prove program interoperability. The Pentagon's F-35 program office and Lockheed would support the work, he said.

The British defense ministry had no immediate comment.

One of the sources said Britain planned to send at least one of the four F-35 jets it has already received to the air shows. The British jets are currently training in the United States.

Lockheed is developing three models of the jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, or Lightning II, with key suppliers Northrop Grumman Corp and Britain's BAE Systems Plc. Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, builds the engines.

Besides Britain, seven other countries helped fund development of the jets: Norway, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands. All but Canada and Denmark have since ordered jets, as have Israel, Japan and South Korea.

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The F-35 program, the Pentagon's single largest weapons project, ran into technical problems and cost overruns for years, but U.S. officials say it has improved and that costs have fallen for the past five years.

The Marine Corp's F-35B model can take off from warships and aircraft carriers and land like a helicopter. The service branch plans to buy a total of 420 F-35B-model and C-model jets, which can fly onto and take off from aircraft carriers.

The Air Force plans to buy 1,763 A-model jets, which take off and land on conventional runways.

Davis said lessons identified from the deployment would help the Marines as they set up a second F-35 fighter attack squadron this summer and prepare for the first one to move to Iwakuni, Japan, in 2017.

The Marine Corps in July announced an initial squadron of 10 F-35 jets ready for combat, and the Air Force is due to follow suit this summer.

(Additional reporting by Sarah Young in London; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Lisa Von Ahn and Alistair Bell)
By Ayman al-Warfalli BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Libya's internationally recognized parliament voted on Monday to reject a unity government proposed under a United Nations-backed plan to resolve the country's political crisis and armed conflict. Though not a surprise, the rejection was a setback in efforts to heal Libya's deep divides. Of 104 members who attended the session in the eastern city of Tobruk, 89 voted against an administration nominated last week, demanding a new proposal within 10 days. Since 2014, Libya has had two competing parliaments and governments, one based in Tripoli and the other in the east. Both are backed by loose alliances of armed groups and former rebels who helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Western powers hope a unity government will deliver stability and be able to tackle a growing threat from Islamic State militants. One member of the Tobruk parliament, Mohamed al-Abani, said the proposed administration did not represent the interests of the Libyan people but had been formed "according to the demands of militia leaders". Lawmakers from the parliament, known as the House of Representatives, also said the proposed 32-member government was rejected because it included too many posts. They called on the Tunis-based Presidential Council to put forward a shorter list of ministers. One of those to vote against the unity government, Omar Tantoush, said he did so because it did not "respond to current challenges". "They did not use the correct criteria in choosing ministers and the size of the government, especially now that the economy is collapsing in Libya," he said. In a separate vote, 97 members of the Tobruk parliament backed the U.N.-mediated agreement that sets out a political transition for Libya and under which the Presidential Council operates. They rejected a clause, however, that transfers power over military appointments to the new government. U.N. Libya envoy Martin Kobler welcomed the "endorsement in principle" of the political agreement, while taking note of the objection to the article covering senior military and security posts. "We will continue consultations with all parties to find consensual solution to all outstanding issues," he said in a statement. The armed forces allied to the eastern government are led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a former Gaddafi ally. He has also fought Islamist militants in the eastern city of Benghazi and has become one of Libya's most divisive figures, enjoying strong support in the east but despised by forces allied to the government in Tripoli. Representatives from both sides of Libya's political divide signed the U.N.-backed plan in Morocco in December, but the agreement has faced stiff opposition from many members of the two parliaments and from factions on the ground. Two of the Presidential Council's nine members also refused to put their names to the proposed government when it was announced after a 48-hour delay last week. (Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Dominic Evans and Grant McCool)
London: Mohammed Emwazi, the terrorist known as Jihadi John who was killed by a drone strike last year, had warned his brother not to follow in his footsteps before leaving for Syria. Emwazi told his younger sibling Omar, 22, that his own encounters with the British security services had wrecked his life in Britain and had ended his plans for marriage and work in his homeland of Kuwait, Independent reported.

In an interview last year before his brothers death in November, Omar described Emwazis turmoil while he was under surveillance by MI5 and Scotland Yard between 2009 and 2012. Omar recalled: He wasnt the type of guy to complain... but he would say: Dont be like me. He was always saying: Learn from other peoples mistakes. He would basically say: Look where I am. I cant get married and I cant get a proper job. I cant travel and I cant go nowhere.

Omar says his brother had made several attempts to return to Kuwait but was blocked each time by the security services. But in late 2012 Emwazi did finally manage to find a way of escaping Britain, leaving via the port of Dover. He entered Syria through Turkey before joining a group of foreign fighters allied to al-Qaeda.

ISIS releases new video, shows paris attackers:

The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group has released a strongly defiant new beheading video, showing the nine Paris attackers and threatening an attack on the UK  displaying footage of major London sites. The 17-minute video, dubbed Paris Has Collapsed, features the final words of the killers behind the Paris attacks last November and shows footage of the Big Ben, Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square as well as British PM David Cameron and House of Commons Speaker John Bercow.

The UK-related images are shown towards the end of the clip, which predominantly focuses on the Paris attackers. Among those who carry out beheadings in the video is Bilal Hadfi, who was killed during the Paris attacks."You destroy our homes and kill our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our mothers and our children," he says into the camera during the footage.

The video also features Abu Qital al-Faransi who is believed to have been one of the gunmen who opened fire in the Bataclan theatre of the French capital. As Cameron addresses the Commons in the clip, a message reads Whoever stands in the ranks of Kufr (non-believers) will be a target for our swords and will fall in humiliation.

A spokesperson for the UK government said: "We are currently examining this latest Daesh (ISIS) propaganda video  another desperate move from an appalling terrorist group that is clearly in decline." The video seemingly aims to show that the Paris attackers, some of whom had French and Belgian passports, had trained in ISIS-held territory before killing 130 people in France.

It features all nine attackers one by one in locations with similar topography to previous propaganda videos filmed near Raqqa, Syria, according to British media reports. The video ends with an encrypted massage dated November 16, 2015, which couls hold clues to the location of their next attack. The message uses PGP (Pretty Great Privacy) data encryption and decryption computer programme, often used by ISIS for encrypting and decrypting texts, emails and data files. The video follows a film-style poster of the Paris attackers, also released by the group's propaganda arm.
Yaounde (AFP) - Thirty-two people were killed when at least three suicide bombers blew themselves up at a market in northern Cameroon, a region often targeted by Nigeria's Boko Haram, officials said.

Police said the assailants hit a local market in Bodo village near the frontier with Nigeria in one of the deadliest attacks in the Far North region since 2013.

"The initial toll reported 32 dead and 86 wounded," said regional governor Midjiyawa Bakari.

An earlier report mentioned three suicide bombers but a local source said there were four young girl bombers.

Nearly 1,200 people have been killed since 2013 when Boko Haram began attacking Cameroon's Far North, an area that borders the Islamist group's stronghold in northeastern Nigeria.

"In total, 1,098 civilians, 67 of our soldiers and three police officials have been killed in these barbaric attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group," Communications Minister Issa Chiroma Bakary said earlier this month.

In that time, officials say there have been more than 30 suicide attacks blamed on Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

This year, there have been attacks on an almost daily basis, some of which have been backed by incursions.

Last week, four worshippers were killed in a suicide bombing at a mosque in the northern village of Nguetchewe, just days after a similar attack on another mosque in the Far North killed 12.

- Increasing cross-border attacks -

In recent years, Boko Haram fighters have slipped back and forth across the frontier, often using Cameroon's remote north as a rear base, acquiring arms, vehicles and supplies there.

But since late November, the Cameroon army has carried out operations in several border areas aimed at weakening Nigerian jihadists active in the region, with sources saying the raids have significantly weakened Boko Haram's capabilities.

As a result, the insurgents have turned away from direct confrontation with the military in favour of suicide attacks, increasingly staged by women and girls.

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The Nigeria-based jihadists have killed at least 17,000 people and made more than 2.6 million others homeless since their six-year campaign began.

Boko Haram, facing the heat of a military onslaught back home, has in the past year stepped up cross-border attacks in Niger, Chad and Cameroon while continuing shooting and suicide assaults on markets, mosques and other mostly civilian targets within Nigeria itself.

The group has increasingly targeted imams and traditional chiefs for their opposition to the Islamists.

Cameroon has meanwhile banned the Islamic veil in a bid to pre-empt suicide bombings staged by attackers wearing the full-face veil.

Along with Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Benin, Cameroon is part of a regional military force fighting the jihadists.

Despite the offensives launched by the regional force, the group maintains strongholds in areas that are difficult to access, such as the Sambisa forest, the Mandara mountains and the numerous islands of Lake Chad.
Two junior employees of one of China's biggest banks stole financial instruments worth 3.9 billion yuan ($593 million) in a failed attempt to make a fortune on the stock market, the bank admitted. The two staffer, who worked in a Beijing branch of the Agricultural Bank of China, replaced bills of exchange -- promissory notes issued as part of normal business -- which were stored in a safe with newspapers, and sold the purloined items, respected business magazine Caixin on Monday cited an insider as saying. The pair, described as young and relatively new, invested the proceeds in China's then-booming stock market in hopes of making an enormous profit and replacing the missing funds before the theft was noticed, Caixin said. But the scheme went awry when China's bourses imploded in mid-2015. The potential losses could be as high as 3.9 billion yuan, the Agricultural Bank of China, the country's third-biggest lender, said late Friday in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange where it is listed. Police were investigating and the bank was co-operating, it added, in an effort to "safeguard the security of funds to the greatest extent". The huge size of the losses prompted the case to be reported to the State Council, China's cabinet, the Caixin report said. No information was given on the timing of the theft or how it was discovered. Several bank departments could deal with bills of exchange, a staffer told Caixin, so that the case "obviously involves more than two people". In December the bank's president resigned for "personal reasons" amid reports that he had been questioned in connection with a corruption investigation. Authorities have launched a series of investigations into the financial sector after a debt-fuelled stock market bubble -- encouraged by authorities -- burst in the summer in a rout that wiped out trillions of dollars of market capitalisations. The Agricultural Bank of China already held the record for suffering the largest bank robbery in Chinese history, when two vault managers stole 51 million yuan in 2007 and spent most of it on lottery tickets and gambling. The perpetrators were executed.
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistani army said on Saturday the four gunmen who attacked a university in northwest Pakistan were trained in Afghanistan and the assault was controlled by a Pakistani Taliban militant from a location inside Afghanistan. In a briefing to reporters from the city of Peshawar, military spokesman General Asim Bajwa said the militants who stormed Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people, received training in Afghanistan and crossed over into Pakistan from the Torkham border between the two countries. Bajwa said the attack was masterminded by Umar Mansoor, a Pakistani Taliban militant based in Afghanistan who is also held responsible for the December 2014 massacre of 134 children in the city of Peshawar - the deadliest militant attack in Pakistan's history. A deputy of Mansoor helped the attackers reach the Torkham border from where they crossed over into Pakistan, the spokesman said. The army's claims once more highlight the need for improved relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan which would prevent militants from carrying out cross-border terrorism which have undermined peace efforts in the region. Pakistani officials say the Pakistan Taliban chief known as Mullah Fazlullah has been orchestrating raids on Pakistan from Afghanistan, where he fled several years ago after a Pakistani army offensive against his stronghold in the Swat Valley. Afghan officials see Pakistan's suggestion that Afghans are supporting cross-border attacks as an attempt to distract attention from what they say is Pakistan's long history of supporting Afghanistan's Taliban movement and other insurgent factions. "The attackers were prepared in Afghanistan," army spokesman Bajwa said. "We have come to the conclusion that terrorism cannot be fought when there are accomplices and facilitators." Providing details of the planning of the attack, the military spokesman said the gunmen used public transportation from the Afghan border to reach Mardan city, about 30 kilometres from Charsadda, where they were received by four Pakistani men, now in army custody. "After entering Mardan, the terrorists were received by Adil and Riaz," Bajwa said, identifying two of the suspected accomplices who he said put up the militants in two houses in Mardan. "Adil is a labourer and just a few days ago he did some masonry work in the university, and made a map of the university which he shared with the militants," said the military spokesman. "Adil is the one who helped the attackers carry out reconnaissance of the area around the university." Another accomplice, identified as Noorullah, bought an auto-rickshaw and transported the attackers from Mardan to the sugarcane fields next to Bacha Khan University, which they crossed through to finally scale the walls of the campus and carry out the assault. On Friday, Umar Mansoor, the mastermind identified by the Pakistan military, released video footage of the fighters he said carried out Wednesday's deadly assault and vowed more attacks on schools and universities in the future. Pakistan has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched after the December 2014 school attack, which is seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its border with Afghanistan. (Editing by Clelia Oziel)
Learning Management Systems

Blackboard Expands Learn SaaS Line

The world's largest vendor of learning management systems has increased its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Blackboard announced two new flavors of SaaS packaging for Learn, its flagship LMS. The company's first SaaS release for Learn formally launched in fall 2014. Now that edition has been labeled "standard" to distinguish from the new "plus" and "advantage" versions, or "tiers." These join the on-premise and managed hosting editions of Learn that Blackboard also sells.

In a press release the company said the new tiers would give its customers "the ability to scale, customize and configure Blackboard Learn for their specific and individual needs." The primary differences involve control over deployment of new features and fixes and varying levels of support for commercial and custom-built integrations.

In a blog article about the new releases Blackboard's Senior Product Marketing Manager Vivek Ramgopal emphasized that security updates and maintenances fixes would still occur on a continuous delivery cycle; but other changes to the platform could be "deferred and applied either once or twice per year (rather than as part of the continuous delivery cycle)."

The plus and advantage editions will also enable schools to continue using their custom-built or commercially developed Building Blocks, Blackboard's term for plug-ins that extend the operations of the LMS. The SaaS standard version will only work with a pre-installed set of blocks.

The SaaS Plus and SaaS Advantage deployment offerings are currently available only to school customers in North America. The company said it would release information about availability in other countries in the future.

A chart on the Blackboard site lays out the basic differences among the three tiers of SaaS deployments.
Distance Learning

Bush Library To Host Reading Discovery Program

The George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, will host its ninth annual Reading Discovery Program this week. It is the second year in a row that the university is partnering with Discovery Education for the event, which will be available for livestreaming to classrooms around the world.

The event will feature Former First Lady Barbara Bush, live via video feed, speaking about the program's theme  freedom's importance  and "a 'new breeze of freedom' that began during her husbands presidency with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which symbolized the end of the Cold War," according to information released by the school.

The videoconference will also feature a question and answer session for students in the United States and Germany featuring Annett Kresser, a former resident of East Germany who escaped during the Cold War, and Discovery Education's Hall Davidson.

The event will also mark the formal launch of a new educational game from the library, Cold War Dare. The strategy game will be available for free from the Apple Store, Google Play and the Bush Presidential Library. Students can act as the United States president themselves and make decisions based on real events in history, specifically during the period before and when the Berlin Wall fell.

Augmented reality technology will allow students to overlay information, such as videos, audio and graphics, on an image that is viewed through almost any device.

Students from the College Station and Houston independent school districts have created content with images and text concerning the Cold War and the Berlin Wall using augmented reality that will be incorporated into the app.

"Dynamic digital content, professional development and resources give us the chance to reach every kind of reader and every kind of learner," Davidson said. "Educational technology has the power to bring excitement and discovery to the traditional printed word."
STEM

mISSion imaginaTIon Challenges Students To Solve Space Travel Problems

The National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) and Texas Instruments are asking middle and high school students in the United States for help with space-related challenges.

mISSion imaginaTIon is a contest in which student teams will be asked to solve challenges that NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko currently face as they participate in their year-long mission aboard the International Space Station.

"If anything shows students how exciting STEM subjects can be, it's astronauts spending a year in a space station, doing science experiments and demonstrating cutting-edge technology," said Donald James, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Education. "The yearlong mission is an excellent opportunity to capture students' attention and set them on a course to become the next generation of explorers."

The challenge begins with an online quiz that students can take to determine how ready they might be to live in space. For example, the quiz asks them for the acceleration of the Earth's gravity. Once prepared, they will be asked to come up with solutions for one of four challenges that involve long-term space travel. Examples of design challenges include designing a plan to feed astronauts who are on the space station for long periods of time and creating an effective waste-management system.

The deadline for submitting challenge solutions will be May 2 and the winner will receive a video chat with a NASA expert, a Texas Instruments graphing calculator and a number of other prizes.

The mISSion imaginaTIon challenge is the first initiative of a four-year partnership between NASA and Texas Instruments that is intended to promote interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers and teach students more about the space station.
By Joseph Guyler Delva and Frank Jack Daniel PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Stone-throwing protesters stoked Haiti's political crisis on Saturday, a day after they forced the Caribbean nation to call off a presidential election and despite calls for consensus from global powers. Haiti was due to choose a replacement for President Michel Martelly in a runoff vote on Sunday, but the two-man race was postponed indefinitely after opposition candidate Jude Celestin refused to participate on alleged fraud that spread anti-government protests and violence nationally. Martelly says the fraud claims are unfounded but critics believe he unfairly favoured his chosen successor, banana exporter Jovenel Moise, and some are demanding that Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, start its $100 million election again from scratch. Striking a defiant note, Moise criticized the election council for postponing a vote he was confident of winning, and said he was ready to stand whenever a new date was set. The United Nations joined the United States and other major powers that had supported the election in denouncing the violence and calling for a negotiated solution that leads to a new vote. About a thousand protesters snaked through capital Port-au-Prince's downtown, a district still largely in ruins after a devastating 2010 earthquake. Some flung rocks and burnt tires, others beat a man alleged to be a thief. Soldiers from Haiti's U.N. peacekeeping mission patrolled the streets in white armoured vehicles at sundown. Martelly is due to leave office in two weeks and Haiti may need an interim body to see the country through to the next election, but he and different opposition leaders will struggle to agree on the contours of such an administration. Haiti has been unable to build a stable democracy since the overthrow of the 1957-1986 dictatorship of the Duvalier family and ensuing military coups and election fraud. Drawn from the capital's poorest neighbourhoods, the protesters deeply oppose Martelly's business-friendly reign, which they say was artificially propped-up by foreign powers. They believe that with him out the way, there will be a better chance of electing a president who will champion the poor. "We demand the departure of Martelly before Feb. 7," said Volcy Assad, a protest leader and an aide of Moise Jean-Charles, the third-place candidate in the October round who believes he was cheated of victory. "We want a transitional government to set up an investigation commission that will determine the sincerity of the elections," Assad said. Assad's Platform Pitit Dessalines party and others with links to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's left-wing movement are prepared to see both rounds of the election annulled, giving themselves another shot at the presidency. Second-place Celestin, on the other hand, is likely to want to maintain his advantage and quickly organise a clean runoff vote. "We are very encouraged by the decision to postpone the election. We hope that everything will be put in place to have credible elections as soon as possible," campaign manager Gerald Germain told Reuters. Opposition leaders of all stripes said the protests would continue. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned this weeks' violence and was concerned by the delay to the election. His comments were echoed by the U.S. government, which has supported the fraught election to the tune of $30 million. "The United States supports all efforts aimed at finding consensual and constructive solutions that will conclude the electoral process with an outcome that reflects the will of the people," a State Department spokeswoman said. (Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel in Haiti and Louis Charbonneau in the United Nations.; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Sandra Maler)
By Sanjeev Miglani and Greg Torode NEW DELHI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - India will set up a satellite tracking and imaging centre in southern Vietnam that will give Hanoi access to pictures from Indian earth observation satellites that cover the region, including China and the South China Sea, Indian officials said. The move, which could irritate Beijing, deepens ties between India and Vietnam, who both have long-running territorial disputes with China. While billed as a civilian facility - earth observation satellites have agricultural, scientific and environmental applications - security experts said improved imaging technology meant the pictures could also be used for military purposes. Hanoi especially has been looking for advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies as tensions rise with China over the disputed South China Sea, they said. "In military terms, this move could be quite significant," said Collin Koh, a marine security expert at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. "It looks like a win-win for both sides, filling significant holes for the Vietnamese and expanding the range for the Indians." The state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will fund and set up the satellite tracking and data reception centre in Ho Chi Minh City to monitor Indian satellite launches, the Indian officials said. Indian media put the cost at around $23 million. India, whose 54-year-old space programme is accelerating, with one satellite launch scheduled every month, has ground stations in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Brunei, Biak in eastern Indonesia and Mauritius that track its satellites in the initial stages of flight. The Vietnam facility will bolster those capabilities, said Deviprasad Karnik, an ISRO spokesman. QUID PRO QUO But unlike the other overseas stations, the facility will also be equipped to receive images from India's earth observation satellites that Vietnam can use in return for granting India the tracking site, said an Indian government official connected with the space programme. "This is a sort of quid pro quo which will enable Vietnam to receive IRS (Indian remote sensing) pictures directly, that is, without asking India," said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media. "Obviously it will include parts of China of interest to Vietnam." Chinese coastal naval bases, the operations of its coastguard and navy and its new man-made islands in the disputed Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea would be targets of Vietnamese interest, security experts said. Another Indian official said New Delhi would also have access to the imagery. India has 11 earth observation satellites in orbit, offering pictures with differing resolutions and areas, the ISRO said. Indian officials had no timeframe for when the centre would be operational. "This is at the beginning stages, we are still in dialogue with Vietnamese authorities," said Karnik. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry confirmed the project, but provided few other details. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing that Beijing hoped the facility "will be able to make a positive contribution to pushing forward relevant cooperation in the region". China's Defence Ministry said the proposed tracking station wasn't a military issue. Vietnam launched its first earth observation satellite in 2013, but Koh said it was not thought to produce particularly high resolution images. BLURRED LINES Security experts said Vietnam would likely seek real-time access to images from the Indian satellites as well as training in imagery analysis, a specialised intelligence field. "The advance of technology means the lines are blurring between civilian and military satellites," said Trevor Hollingsbee, a retired naval intelligence analyst with Britain's Defence Ministry. "In some cases, the imagery from a modern civilian satellite is good enough for military use." Sophisticated military reconnaissance satellites can be used to capture military signals and communications, as well as detailed photographs of objects on land, capturing detail to less than a metre, Koh and other experts said. The tracking station will be the first such foreign facility in Vietnam and follows other agreements between Hanoi and New Delhi that have cemented security ties. India has extended a $100 million credit line for Hanoi to buy patrol boats and is training Vietnamese submariners in India while Hanoi has granted oil exploration blocks to India in waters off Vietnam that are disputed with China. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has shown a greater willingness to step up security ties with countries such as Vietnam, overriding concerns this would upset China, military officials said. "You want to engage Vietnam in every sphere. The reason is obvious - China," said retired Indian Air Force group captain Ajay Lele at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Both India and Vietnam are also modernising their militaries in the face of Beijing's growing assertiveness, having separately fought wars with China in past decades. Australian-based scholar Carl Thayer, who has studied Vietnam's military since the late 1960s, said the satellite tracking facility showed both nations wanted to enhance security ties. "Their interests are converging over China and the South China Sea," he said. (Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing and Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi; Editing by Dean Yates)
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian police said on Sunday seven members of an Islamic State (IS) cell had been arrested in a three-day operation carried out across the Southeast Asian country. The operation was launched in four states on Jan. 22, ahead of Monday's International Conference on Deradicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism that Malaysia is hosting. Police said the suspects had received instructions to carry out attacks in Malaysia by Syrian-based IS members, including Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant named as the mastermind of Jan. 14 suicide attacks in Jakarta which killed seven people. "All of the suspects are members of the same cell, who are responsible for planning terror attacks in strategic locations throughout Malaysia," Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said in a statement. He said the suspects were also given orders by Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jedi, a known Malaysian IS recruiter who had previously been linked to a beheading video in Syria. The arrests were made following the Jan. 15 capture of a suspected militant who had confessed to planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur, according to Khalid. One of the suspects was believed to be responsible for collecting and channelling funds to Malaysian citizens looking to join up with IS in Syria. The funds were also to be used to fund a terrorist operation in Malaysia, Khalid said. All seven suspects were Malaysian men aged between 26 and 50 years old. Among the items seized in the operation were bullets, books on jihad, Islamic State flags and propaganda videos. (Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Julien Toyer and Blanca Rodriguez MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, deferred on Friday a decision on whether to seek a confidence vote to form a government, forcing a new round of talks on resolving the country's political deadlock. The unexpected move came in response to an announcement earlier in the day that the Socialists and anti-austerity party Podemos would, after meeting King Felipe, seek a deal to form a left-wing coalition. Discussions on the next government with all groups with parliamentary representation would resume on Wednesday, the palace said in a statement. Spain's political landscape was fragmented as never before in national elections on Dec. 20, leading to an unbroken two-month stalemate. Rajoy, whose conservative People's Party came first in the ballot, albeit well short of a majority, had said until now he would take the first shot at trying to win a majority. But most parties have already said they would reject a second administration under his leadership. "I am still candidate but I can't present myself now because I don't have the support that is needed," he told a news conference late on Friday after meeting with the king. "I am not giving up anything." He did not say if he would leave the floor to the socialists or simply seek more time to secure his own alliance. The Spanish constitution sets no deadline for a prime ministerial investiture vote to take place, but once a candidate seeks the confidence of parliament a two-month deadline for the formation of a government comes into effect. A failure to reach a deal within this limit would lead to a new national election, potentially in May or later. "PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT"? Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said earlier on Friday his party still rejected a German-style right/left 'grand coalition' under Rajoy and would instead try to form a "progressive" government with Podemos and other leftist groups, including the former communists of Izquierda Unida. Such a combination remains uncertain but, after five days of talks between the King and political leaders, it still appears a better bet than Rajoy's proposal. "We made an serious offer for a government and Rajoy has taken a step back. Change is possible. I hope the socialists will rise to the challenge," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said on his twitter feed in reaction to Rajoy's decision. The Socialists, Podemos and Izquierda Unida have a combined 161 seats. That puts their coalition some way short of a majority in the 350-seat legislature, meaning they would also need backing from regional parties from the Basque Country and Catalonia to form a stable administration. A major sticking point so far has been Podemos's promise to allow an independence referendum to go ahead in Catalonia, which the Socialist leader rejects. On Friday, however, the two parties softened their respective stances on that issue and insisted they rather wanted to focus on economic and social questions, with Iglesias stopping short of calling again for a plebiscite. The PP and the Socialists, who have alternated in power over the last 40 years, came first and second in December's election with greatly reduced support while Podemos and a second newcomer party, centrist Ciudadanos, attracted significant support underpinned by a new generation of voters disillusioned with the old elite. A majority of Spanish voters oppose holding another election and want parties to agree on a coalition government, a survey showed on Sunday. (Editing by Angus MacSwan and John Stonestreet)
By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A winter storm that could bury parts of the U.S. Middle Atlantic region under 3 feet (90 cm) of snow slammed into Washington on Friday, threatening the nation's capital with record accumulations as it barrelled up the East Coast. The blizzard started to blanket the Washington area during the early afternoon. Six people had died in car crashes as a wintry mix spread across Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. The storm could dump 2 to 3 feet of snow on Baltimore and the capital and bring winds of 30 to 50 miles per hour (48 to 80 km per hour) before winding down on Saturday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Philadelphia and New York were expected to get 12 to 18 inches (30 to 46 cm) of snow before the storm abates. In Falls Church, Virginia, about 8 miles (13 km) west of the capital, a thick curtain of snow was already piling up on deserted streets on Friday evening, creating a peaceful tableau that disguised dangerous driving conditions. "I want to be very clear with everybody. This is a major storm," Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said as the city braced for what could turn out to be one of the worst storms in its history. "This has life-and-death implications and all the residents of the District of Columbia should treat it that way." The Weather Channel said more than 85 million people in at least 20 states were covered by a winter weather warning, watch or advisory and residents up and down the East Coast scrambled to stock up on supplies. Airlines cancelled more than 7,100 flights in the U.S. for Friday and Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com. An additional 7,000 flights were delayed on Friday alone, reverberating to airports across the country. Washington's snowfall could eclipse the "Snowmageddon" storm of 2010 that dropped 17.8 inches (45.2 cm), AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. If forecasts prove accurate, the storm could rival the 1922 Knickerbocker storm, which dumped a record 28 inches (71 cm) on the city. 'IT'S GOING TO BE A NIGHTMARE' "I think its going to be a nightmare, the rates of snow were talking about," said Marisa Kritikson, 27, a George Washington University nursing student who bought a snow shovel to dig out from her basement apartment. Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, was expecting 10 to 18 inches (25 to 46 cm) The approaching storm led New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to return home from New Hampshire, where he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. Christie declared a state of emergency as well. "The smartest thing for you all to do is stay home, stay where you are," Christie told an evening press conference. New Jersey Transit said all bus, rail and light rail service would be shut down at 2 a.m. local time on Saturday. Service would be restored as "conditions permit," the agency said. Residents along New Jersey's coast prepared for potential flooding during high tides on Saturday and Sunday. In Ocean City, emergency management officials warned of forecasts calling for the highest flood levels since Superstorm Sandy brought heavy damage in 2012. High winds and a full moon could combine to create a high tide of nearly 8 feet (2.4 meters) in Atlantic City, officials said, still shy of the 10 feet (3 meters) Sandy caused in Ocean City. In New York City, the National Weather Service issued coastal flood warnings for the boroughs of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. Officials prepared for possible evacuations from low-lying areas. Post-Sandy reconstruction has put the area in a stronger position to face the storm, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said. The storm arrived in the Washington area, home to about 6 million people, after dropping 5 inches (13 cm) of snow in Arkansas and spreading a wintry mess of snow, sleet and freezing rain in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky. Duke Energy reported that more than 112,000 people were without power in North and South Carolina on Friday evening. In addition to snow, the Charlotte, North Carolina, area could get up to a half inch (1.3 cm) of ice, making roads dangerous. Federal offices in the Washington area closed at noon to allow employees to get home ahead of the storm. "I have nine cases of wine, half and half and coffee, firewood and all my devices are charged. All I need now is a wing and a prayer, said Liz Scherer, 54, of Silver Spring, Maryland. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which includes the second-busiest U.S. subway system, took the rare step of suspending operations from late Friday through Sunday. The forecast prompted the Virginia National Guard to ready 400 troops to deal with emergencies. In New York, 600 National Guard personnel were on standby. (Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Barbara Goldberg and Joseph Ax in New York, Susan Heavey in Washington; Lacey Johnson in Silver Spring, Maryland; Steve Barnes in Little Rock, Arkansas; Harriet McLeod in Charleston, South Carolina and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Diane Craft, James Dalgleish, David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker)
By Martin Petty HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam's progressive prime minister was among preliminary nominations for the Communist Party's central committee on Sunday, an official said, maintaining the possibility of him contesting the party leadership to be decided this week. The political future of Nguyen Tan Dung remains uncertain, however, after he was not among leadership candidates agreed by top decision-makers at a recent meeting, a surprise twist that saw the five-yearly congress of the secretive party open on Thursday under a cloud of controversy. His committee nomination at an early stage of the internal election process means he technically could still launch a bid to become party chief. Dung, 66, has not spoken publicly about his future and his absence from Sunday's preliminary nominations would have ruled him out. Dung was until recently tipped by diplomats and analysts to become the next party boss, which could have strengthened the hand of his progressive faction. He is widely seen as a moderniser and credited with driving recent economic reforms. Vu Ngoc Hoang, a senior Central Propaganda Department official, confirmed that Dung and several other politburo members were among those nominated. "But that's only a list," he told reporters. "Every person introduced gets on to the list," he said, stressing the nominations were preliminary. Dung's inclusion is likely to add to excitement and social media speculation about the possibility of a leadership showdown at what is normally considered a stale, procedural affair. To stand a chance, Dung would have to decline his preliminary nomination to the central committee. The 1,510 congress delegates could then vote to reject his withdrawal, thus keeping him in contention for further stages of the internal election. Vu Trong Kim, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, earlier on Sunday confirmed leaked reports that prior to the congress incumbent General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, was nominated to extend his tenure and Dung had withdrawn from the contest when the politburo was deciding its candidates. CREDIT TO COMRADES In rare comments about internal politburo procedures, Kim, a member of the outgoing central committee, praised Dung and said there was 100 percent politburo support for Trong. "I very much welcome comrade Nguyen Tan Dung and some other comrades in the politburo who voluntarily withdrew from being nominees to gather credit for comrade Nguyen Phu Trong," Kim said told some local media. An audio recording of Kim's interview was heard by Reuters. Kim confirmed the agreed nominations, besides Trong, were Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang for president, Dung's deputy, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, for premier and legislative vice-chairwoman, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, to head the National Assembly. Analysts and diplomats say Dung's chances of a fightback are slim, but possible, if he calls on support he has cultivated among the wider party. Dung's office did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment. Experts say Dung is an ambitious, decisive figure and his exclusion from leadership nominations suggests concerns among the party's old guard that he could test Vietnam's traditional consensus leadership model. Edmund Malesky, an expert on Vietnamese politics at Duke University, said the congress was not scripted and key to any outcome was a central committee "way more powerful" than those of other communist states. "The question is whether Dung wants it... He's not going to come out and say it in an obvious way," he said. "He himself has benefited from the influence of the central committee, and we know that he's capable of mobilizing votes ... if he decides he wants it, then this is a real possibility." (Reporting by Martin Petty; Additional reporting by Mai Nguyen; Editing by Andrew Bolton)
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.
A Shropshire farmer was airlifted to hospital at the weekend after being seriously injured by a bull.

The farmer suffered injuries to his back and pelvis following the incident at a farm in Hinstock, near Market Drayton, at about 9am on Saturday (23 January).

Farmer attacked by bull Rural Shropshire back inj/pelvis Pain relief splint &scoop, Flown to MTC @UHNM_NHS in 5mins pic.twitter.com/GUKnTDzPYm  MAAHMED03 (@MAAHMED03) January 23, 2016

He was flown to hospital by air ambulance for further treatment. His injuries, although serious, were not believed to be life-threatening.

See also: Read the latest farm health and safety news and features

Emergency services said the farmer had been attacked by the bull, was found in serious pain and given painkillers.

A spokesman for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: Crews arrived to find the man with suspected back and pelvic injuries. The farmer was in considerable pain after being injured by the bull.

He received emergency treatment at the scene by medics including pain relief.

Following treatment the man was airlifted to Royal Stoke University Hospital for further emergency treatment.
French farmers blocked a national motorway with a pile of smouldering tyres in a protest over low prices.

The RN12 national motorway between Saint-Brieuc and Rennes came to a standstill after furious farmers blocked the road with concrete barriers and burning tyres.

According to local reports, more than 100 farmers used 30 tractors to block the route in the western region of Brittany on 20 January.

See also: French farmers spray straw on cars in prices protest

The protest was organised by Frances leading national farmers union, the FDSEA.

French newspaper Le Monde reported on Friday (22 January) that the roadblock was still in place on Friday evening on the RN12, near Guingamp. A second blockade had been set up on the N164 at Mur-de-Bretagne.

For several months, French farmers have been staging sporadic protests about the low prices they are receiving for milk, meat  especially pork products  and some vegetables, which are well below the cost of production.

In July, the French government announced a 600m (422m) package of emergency help to placate farmers. But farmers are demanding more from government, saying they cannot afford to pay their bills.

Further similar protests, led by FDSEA and including young farmers groups (les Jeunes agriculteurs) were expected to take place in the western region of France on Monday (25 January).

Meanwhile, the NFU has warned that a ruthless price war is decimating UK dairy farms.

Arla is the latest milk buyer to drop its price  members will see their price drop by 0.75p/litre from 1 February. This comes on the back of increasing UK and EU milk supplies and a stagnant, if not depressed, global market.

NFU dairy board chairman Rob Harrison said: With no sign of a market upturn in coming months, we will inevitably see a large number of dairy farmers leave the industry. No-one can continue to produce milk at a loss.

It is a bloodbath and those suffering the most are our hardworking dairy farmers.

I would urge every dairy farmer out there to seriously look at his or her own business and question whether it can survive another period of low milk prices.

And milk buyers. We want confirmation you are not taking advantage of the current market downturn and doing all you can to add value to every litre of British milk.
Gordon Parks: Higher Ground

Date:

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Time:

5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Event Type:

Concert/Show

Organizer/Author:

Jenkins Johnson Gallery

Location Details:

Jenkins Johnson Gallery

464 Sutter Street

San Francisco, CA 94108

Opening February 4, 5:30 - 7:30; Exhibition February 5 - April 2, 10am - 6pm.



Higher Ground, an exhibition of over 60 photographs by the most important black photojournalist commemorating his Life magazine photo essays on the Civil Rights Movement.



As the first black photojournalist to work at Life magazine, from 1948 to 1972, Parks documented the stories of those he photographed, personalizing his assignments to tell the broader story of the African American experience. By gaining their trust unlike any other photojournalist, Parks' empathy & charisma enabled him to gain access into his subject's world. The show will include works from the essays for Life magazine, Invisible Man, 1952; Segregation Story, 1956; Duke Ellington, 1960 The March on Washington, 1963; The Nation of Islam, 1963; Muhammad Ali, 1970; & The Black Panthers, 1970.



In 2013, the gallery presented Gordon Parks: Centennial, an exhibition of works spanning six decades. Higher Ground presents lifetime silver gelatin prints & color pigment prints that cover a period of strife and turmoil in American History. This show coincides with the anniversaries of many historic events, including: 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War; the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give her bus seat to a white passenger; & the 50th anniversaries of the assassination of Malcolm X & the founding of the Black Panthers. The exhibition also documents milestones including Ralph Ellison's groundbreaking 1952 National Book Award novel Invisible Man, the 1963 March on Washington, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, & the 1965 Voting Rights Act.



Gordon Parks documented a time in American history that brought about the attention of the nation & acted as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. He exposed wrongs & highlighted the humanity in people, not with broad strokes but with the telling detail of intimate moments. Gordon Parks, an iconic photographer, writer, composer, & filmmaker, truly a Renaissance man, inspired storytellers & image-makers.



Free
Official statements by Chicago police officers do not agree with videos of the Laquan McDonald shooting. If something comes back that they lied or purposely misrepresented what happened on reports, the superintendent wants to make it clear that he will seek their termination, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Friday. (dashcam video attached)

CHICAGO (24jan16) 2 police officers who likely lied about the murder of Laquan McDonald may be fired, says Chicago's Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante. Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) declared the shooting justified, but we now know that police reports do not tell the same story as videos that were released 13 months later.

The videos might never have seen the light of day but for a request by Brandon Smith via FOIA. When the deadline for his request past, he filed suit and fought for the release of the video and related reports. Murder charges were filed against officer Van Dyke the day before the video was released to the public."Officer Jason Van Dyke fired 16 rounds at McDonald in about 14 seconds and was reloading when another officer told him to hold his fire, prosecutors told Judge Donald Panarese at bond court." reported The Chicago Tribune on November 24. 2015.

Smith tells his story at The Guardian.

According to DNAinfo.com, "Detective David Marsh and Officer Joseph Walsh, were placed on desk duty shortly after Escalante received a Dec. 18 memo from city Inspector General Joe Ferguson recommending the move.Walsh was the partner of Officer Jason Van Dyke, who faces first-degree murder charges for shooting Laquan 16 times in 2014."

Van Dyke claims McDonald "shot (sic) a knife at him", and Walsh agreed in a written statement. Detective Marsh signed off on the report.

If something comes back that they lied or purposely misrepresented what happened on reports, the superintendent wants to make it clear that he will seek their termination, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Friday.

Chicago's Police Board will have the final say if Superintendent Escalante recommends any firings. Walsh has never been reprimanded in his 17 year career, though he's been accused of misconduct 29 times. The Invisible Institute found that 2 of these ocurred after the Laquan McDonald shooting. They keep a database of records related to police misconduct, with a wealth of information that has only recently been made available:

"Last March, in Kalven v. Chicago, the Illinois Appellate Court held that documents bearing on allegations of police abuse are public information. Following the decision, the Emanuel administration adopted a new transparency policy that opened the police department to the people in historic ways. The Kalven decision is limited to closed police misconduct cases; it doesnt cover ongoing investigations. Yet the public interest in the City's investigation into a police shooting is far more intense at the time of the shooting than one or two years later when the case is closed and public attention has turned elsewhere."

Jamie Kalven, The Invisible Institute -

David Roknich,

INDYRADIO The future of radio belongs to us. Stream more IndyRadio playlists at http://ch0.us and http://rd0.org
"Eleven fighters from (Al-Qaeda affiliate) Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist groups were killed on Sunday, along with five civilians, when a ballistic missile hit a police station being used as a court in Salqin" in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Photo: AFP)

Beirut: At least 11 Islamist fighters and five civilians were killed as a ballistic missile struck a building in northwest Syria during a meeting between rebel groups, a monitor said on Monday.

"Eleven fighters from (Al-Qaeda affiliate) Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist groups were killed on Sunday, along with five civilians, when a ballistic missile hit a police station being used as a court in Salqin" in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitoring group said it was unclear if the missile was fired by Russian or Syrian forces.

The monitor said the toll could rise further because a number of people had been seriously wounded in the strike.

The missile struck during a reconciliation meeting between members of Al-Nusra and the conservative Islamist militant group Ahrar al-Sham, who had exchanged fire in the town earlier the same day.

The two groups are leading members of the Army of Conquest alliance, a powerful coalition that took control of Idlib province last year.

Staunch regime ally Russia began an aerial campaign in Syria last September after a string of government losses, including in Idlib, and has since helped reverse some opposition momentum.

Moscow says its strikes target the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and other "terrorists," but activists and opposition forces accuse it of targeting other rebels and often killing civilians.

Earlier in January, Russian raids in Idlib province, which borders Turkey, killed at least 81 people, including 23 Al-Nusra fighters but also 52 civilians and prisoners.

According to the Observatory, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Russian strikes since they were launched on September 30.

The raids have also killed nearly 900 IS fighters, and more than 1,100 militants from other opposition groups, including Al-Nusra.

Moscow has dismissed claims of civilians deaths in its operations as "absurd".

Overall, more than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria's war which began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Walking Vagina Reaps Shock and Awe from "Walk for Life" Marchers in San Francisco by R. Stevens

"Walk for Life" marchers are told to keep eyes forward and not engage with their adversaries, but some members of the anti-abortion rights folk giggled, pointed and stared when they witnessed a counter-demonstrator dressed as a vagina on the sidewalk.

Stop Patriarchy led a raucous rally at Powell and Market at the same time that anti-abortion activists, made up primarily of members of evangelical and Catholic groups, marched through the streets of San Francisco on January 23.



Pro-rights protesters greeted speakers, including medical doctors and people who lived during the time when the only abortion in the US was an illegal one, with enthusiastic cheers. The Raging Grannies were among those who said they knew what it was like before Roe v Wade; the Grannies sang pro women's rights songs and waved a hanger and knitting needle saying, "don't let this extreme measure of the past once again be in our future".



After the rally pro-choice activists faced off with the crowd of thousands of anti-choicers when they came marching down the middle of Market. Lines of riot police stood between the two sides. "Walk for Life" marchers are told to keep eyes forward and not engage with their adversaries, but some members of the anti-abortion folk giggled, pointed and stared when they witnessed a counter-demonstrator dressed as a vagina on the sidewalk.
Whether inequality harms or benefits was disputed for a long while. It could motivate individuals to more effort and stimulate growth, one side believed. It takes the chances for education and development from those whoa re poorer, the other said. Perhaps the truth in the theory lies somewhere in between. Then inequality would be motivating as long as the difference was not insurmountably great... Money buys power.

OXFAM STUDY: SIX REASONS TO BE OUTRAGEDThe chasm between poor and rich is scandalously great. This is a very practical problem, not a moral problem. Why inequality harms everyone. A commentary by Alexandra Endres[This article published on January 18, 2016 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.zeit.de .]These numbers describe an obscenity. The richest 62 persons on the planet altogether have a wealth of $1.76 trillion  as much as the poorer half of humanity, around 3.5 billion persons. And the inequality is growing very quickly. A report released by the development organization Oxfam shows this.Such a distribution of wealth is a scandal. Being indignant about this has nothing to do with envy. The great concentration of riches is harmful for all of us. Here are six reasons.1. FREEDOM, EQUALITY AND BROTHERLINESSStriving for human rights may be full of pathos. Still we must remember: All persons are born free and equal in dignity and rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims, Article One, Paragraph One. Western societies appeal to these central values.But no one can be free with an empty stomach. In its recent study, Oxfam estimates more people could escape extreme poverty if the inequality were not so great. Equality obviously does not mean the state has to guarantee the same living conditions to everyone. However everyone must have the chance of developing and taking his or her life in hand. Something is very wrong when the economic system and the hierarchy of power in politics prevent this and the accumulation of tremendous wealth is possible for a tiny part of the world.2. EXCESSIVE INEQUALITY BRAKES GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENTThe functional economic perspective is for everyone who is helpless with pathos. For a long while, whether inequality damages or benefits was disputed. Inequality could motivate individuals to more effort and stimulate growth, one side believed. It takes chances for education and development from those who are poorer, the other said. Perhaps the truth in the theory lies somewhere in between. Then inequality would be motivating as long as the difference was not insurmountably great.But that seems to be happening in practice. One-and-a-half years ago Janet Yellen, the chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, warned of an inequality that destroys promotion prospects. The OECD organization of industrial countries sees economic growth and social peace in danger. The International Monetary Fund comes to a similar conclusion. These institutions are not suspected of any socialist machines. Their expertise must be taken seriously.3. HARD WORK DOESNT MAKE PEOPLE RICHBig achievers earn their wealth. Is that true? That is the meritocratic defense of inequality. But it does not function any more because the chasm between the incomes has become so excessive. According to Oxfam, the head of Indias largest IT-firm receives 416-times as much as one of his typical employees. In the US, the salaries of corporate CEOs rose 90-times faster than their average co-workers since the end of the 1970s. Presumably this has much more to do with the development of stock prices in the past decades than with their achievements.A glance at the latest Forbes list shows: many super-rich made their money with technology (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg), in the financial branch (Warren Buffet, George Soros) or with consumer goods or cheap fashions (Amancio Ortega von Zara, Stefan Persson from H & M). Many of them probably worked hard. But they simply had the happiness or stroke of good luck to be in a lucrative branch. Many workers slaved away to exhaustion and received a pittance. The seamstresses in Myammar cited by Oxfam are only one example. If you ask the migrant workers in German slaughterhouses (abattours), they would agree: hard work doesnt automatically make people rich.4. MONEY IS MISSING ELSEWHEREAccording to Oxfam, the wealthy of the world have parked $7.6 trillion in tax havens like Switzerland, Luxemburg or Singapore. The richest businesses and private persons employ a huge crown of investment advisors and lawyers to secure their wealth from tax authorities. The taxes that they do not pay are then missing in the public treasuries: for education, investments, health insurance and income support.Money Buys PowerThis is not only true for the industrial states. The rich elite from threshold countries also use tax loopholes. The economist Gabriel Zucman calculated that $190 billion in tax revenue is missing every year from the governments of the world. That is more than the whole global aid to developing countries.There were other reasons than tax optimization for the extreme riches of the 62. Some of the causes lie in the national policies of their countries of origin and can hardly be influenced by international initiatives. But should the struggle against tax havens be abandoned?Certainly, the additional tax money would not automatically be used sensibly. Corruption and waste or extravagance would not disappear only through better tax laws. But with them governments would at least have a chance of forming a better politics  and in the ideal case would be controlled by their citizens.5. INEQUALITY HARMS DEMOCRACYDemocratic control is a good keyword. The philanthropic foundations of Bill Gates and others do much good. But they set their priorities without the input and influence of citizens for whose well-being they are engaged. How would it be if businesses paid their due taxes instead of shifting wealth abroad?Much more dangerously, money buys power in the US for example. Nearly half of the 62 super-rich from the Forbes list  used as a basis for Oxfams report  come from the US. The well-to-do between New England and California finance the candidates of both parties in the election campaigns and obviously expect a return favor  for example in the form of tax loopholes as the New York Times recently reported in detail.In many other countries, the political and economic elite are warmly connected. The closer their relations, the harder it is for outsiders to climb to their circle (see 2nd point). In some states where the inequality is very great, the rich feel closer to their class compatriots abroad than to the poor at home. They have their place of residence in the North and send their children to school there. Their life-perspectives are elsewhere. Why should they be anxious about better conditions at home? So democracy erodes through the enormous inequality.6. WE CANNOT SCREEN OURSELVESEurope has long lived like a gated community. But that works less and less in a globalized world, as the refugee crisis shows. Seen globally, the inhabitants of industrial countries are the rich. When the growing inequality leads the poor at home to see every fewer perspectives for themselves, then they will come to us.That alone should be enough reason to strive for more equal conditions. Whether the elite meeting place Davos is the right place, as Oxfam claims, can be left undcecided. Little will change without public pressure.RELATED LINKSAlexandra Endres, Arbitration Courts: A Dirty Gold Rush, January 2016 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/01/19/18782020.php Thomas Palley and Gustav Horn, Restoring Shared Prosperity, December 2013, 211 pp
2016 Kentucky Derby Top 10: Reiniers Picks Picking the best Kentucky Derby 142 candidate seems like a tough task. The Breeders Cup Juvenile (GI) champion looks suspect on paper for longer distances and few other horses stand out in terms of experience and talent. Speed figures help though and this author relies on TimeformUS numbers for the most part, which makes Mohaymen No. 1.

1. Mohaymen (Tapit  Justwhistledixie, by Dixie Union)

Mohaymen earned a 116 TimeformUS Speed Figure for his Remsen Stakes (GII) win and 110 for the Nashua Stakes (GII), both at Aqueduct last November. While Remsen winners tend to flame out during the spring, the pattern will end at some point. The runner-up in each of those wins, Flexibility, went on to capture the Jerome Stakes (GII) this month. Look for Mohaymen to continue his win streak in the Holy Bull Stakes (GII) on Saturday at Gulfstream Park.

2. Flexibility (Bluegrass Cat  Santa Vindi, by Vindication)

Staying in New York may give Flexibilitys form a boost this winter and spring. He won the Jerome at Aqueduct, but with most stables sending their top horses to Gulfstream Park, what kind of competition did Flexibility defeat? Still, his efforts against Mohaymen last fall are solid. He earned a 115 TimeformUS Speed Figure in the Remsen. Flexibility recently worked in 48.14 seconds for four furlongs at Belmont Park in preparation for the Withers (GIII) this weekend.

3. Nyquist (Uncle Mo  Seeking Gabrielle, by Forestry)

The reigning champion 2-year-old colt and Breeders Cup Juvenile winner lacks impressive speed figures to back up his accomplishments. In addition, his pedigree hints at distance limitations, at least on the dam side. But, he deserves respect given his record. Uncle Mo, while presumed a sprinter sire, must be given the benefit of the doubt. Look for Nyquist to return in the San Vicente (GII) at Santa Anita Park before shipping east for the Florida Derby (GI) in March.

4. Airoforce (Colonel John  Chocolate Pop, by Cuvee)

This Colonel John colt needed to prove his dirt ability in the Kentucky Jockey Club (GII) at Churchill Downs, and triumphed on a sloppy track. He earned a 110 TimeformUS Speed Figure. Runner-up Mor Spirit returned to win the Los Alamitos Futurity (GI) and third-place finisher Mo Tom recently took the Lecomte (GIII) at Fair Grounds. According to an article on Lexington Herald-Leader, trainer Mark Casse hopes to start Airoforce in the Sam F. Davis (GIII) at Tampa Bay Downs.

5. Mor Spirit (Eskendereya  Im a Dixie Girl, by Dixie Union)

Trained by Bob Baffert, Mor Spirit lacks the sizzle most fans expect from his barn. He likes to grind out his victories and should enjoy longer races. Mor Spirit lost to Airoforce at Churchill Downs, but ran equally by TimeformUS numbers with the same 110 figure. In his next start, he mowed down sprinter Toews On Ice at Los Alamitos. His 2016 debut will come soon in the Robert B. Lewis (GIII) at Santa Anita.

6. Cherry Wine (Paddy OPrado  C.S. Royce, by Unbridleds Song)

Out of six starts, this colt only owns two wins. They each stand out, as he broke his maiden in the slop at Churchill Downs by nine, then won at Gulfstream closing from last in an optional claimer. The wins give him two victories in two-turn routes. Cherry Wine needs to prove himself versus established horses, of course. Will he show up to face Mohaymen in the Holy Bull? He faces a tall order for his possible graded stakes debut.

7. Gift Box (Twirling Candy  Special Me, by Unbridleds Song)

The third-place finisher in the Remsen ran well, as the 113 TimeformUS Speed Figure suggests. He took a while in returning to the worktab and only showed up with a four-furlong spin in 48.85 seconds on Jan. 19. Perhaps the previous race took something out of him? His new work came at Palm Meadows Training Center, so expect Gift Box to show up during the Gulfstream meet.

8. Mo Tom (Uncle Mo  Caroni, by Rubiano)

Like Mor Spirit, Mo Tom lacks a bit of spark. He ran late for third in the Kentucky Jockey Club. This Uncle Mo colt might benefit from a quick pace in the Kentucky Derby. As mentioned, give Uncle Mo time to establish whether longer-distance runners are up his alley. Look for Mo Tom in the Risen Star (GII) at Fair Grounds next month.

9. Discreetness (Discreet Cat  Fondness, by Elusive Quality)

Trainer William Fires colt deserves credit for taking the Smarty Jones at Oaklawn Park, although it must be noted Mo Tom easily defeated Discreetness at Churchill Downs back in November. Young horses change form quickly and maybe Discreetness required time to grow. His Horse Racing Nation page suggests the Southwest Stakes (GIII) as the next stop.

10. Zulu (Bernardini  Temporada, by Summer Squall)

Ah, a sharp, well-bred Todd Pletcher-trained horse based at Gulfstream stirs up conversation on online forums. He owns a maiden and optional claiming win so far, and both wins came on wet dirt which Bernardini progeny love. Even if he destroys the Fountain of Youth (GII) field next month, will he make the Derby? The same scenario happens frequently with this barn.

Related Links:

Few Wrong Paths to Kentucky Derby 142
Editors note: Countless Nigerians have suffered at the hands of secret cult groups that in most cases shape up in Nigerian institutions of higher learning. Writing for Legit.ng, Eustace Dunn says cultism, if not curbed, can and will grow into a large-scale menace, much like terrorism has.

If the incessant media reports on cult activities are anything to go by, the recent beastly attacks and killings in Ashaka community located at Ndokwa East local government area of Delta state is one of such cataclysms that should attract condemnation by all and sundry.

They call the community "London" in Delta state, a peaceful community and the land of great people who had progressed in oneness and absolute hospitality over the years, until most tragic news filtered in like a mocking thunder on Saturday, January 2.

In my own small world, I could sense the fear which has enveloped the small community popularly known for its serenity following the killing of four promising young men in a cult clash. The question that continually begged for an answer the moment I got a wind of the tragedy was, how big is Ashaka to warrant the activities of cult members, not to talk of leading to a clash among rival cult groups?

For so many years that I've been in my little journey into journalism, I have always tried not to write about cultists mostly in the days of university studies. Unapologetically this time, I defy that avoidance on the basis that these guys are the real menace Nigeria faces.

You must agree with me that with the existence of these cult groups in any part of the society, things will definitely be no longer at ease, and its pathetic. Universities have tried for years to place out this particular problem plaguing the school environment, yet, it has been to no avail owing to the transfer of cult activities to various suburbs.

To make matters worse, people of forms, including the ones supposedly brought up by most revered moralistic men of God, are the proponents of these secret cults. Those who lack moral background and school dropouts are some of the members who inflict pains and fear upon the members of the society.

None of these guys can ever think of how to better the lots of the society. Some of the members are still roaming the streets with no job looking for who to extort from. How many got a job from the cult groups? How many can freely walk on the streets or go back freely to their alma mater?

Instead of teaming together, not as cultists but to confront that politician who diverts the money meant for the ordinary people, they turn themselves into tools for societal destruction. Come to think of it, would some of these politicians have been able to pass a job interview supposing they were not politicians? These are the people that young graduates waste their lives for in the name of being "a tough guy". Later on, they cry foul that they have no job while the political thief cannot grant them one. It's a shame.

Secondary school pupils are recruited

To make the matters worse, secondary school chaps are now at the top of their game in cult activities. You might want to ask how they got into this. Its simple: those so-called university undergraduates who drop out as a result of cultism and unseriousness in school go back home, lure little children into their various groups and take cash from them.

The ones who mostly fall victim are the ones being bullied in schools. They join the "tough guys" in order to reign revenge and instill fear into those who had bullied them.

In those days, what was known was that cultists were all over in the universities. The first piece of advice parents would ring into ears was Beware of cultists, don't join them!" and that went on into heads, especially for those who listened and were conscious of their homes. In truth, the road to cultism is a road to self-destruction and the land of no return. When one comes up some day to denounce participation, they are lying. Once a cultist, always a cultist. They would always feel the inclination to get involved in this sort of activities once more.

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Why I think Wole Soyinka is wrong

I read recently an interview of the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, with Zero Tolerance, a periodic publication by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), where Soyinka was explaining the difference between a confraternity and a cult. He said that belonging to confraternities is a normal culture in colleges and not an evil cult, as wrongly portrayed by ignorant persons in Nigeria.

With due respect to the prof who co-founded the Seadog Confraternity, popularly known as Pyrates in Nigeria, I disagree with the submission that there is a difference. True, there may be a difference in the meaning of both words, but they are never different in ideologies and activities. As far as their purposes and activities are clandestine in nature, they are the same set of people. There is no such thing as an evil cult and a non-evil cult.

Although the prof and his six other friends may have founded Pirates, which was the nation's first campus fraternity with the motto of anti-tribalism, anti-elitism, non-conformism, chivalry upon an uncommon mission as it were, there were still some elements of rivalry and violence among its members as time went on.

No doubt, this same Pirates confraternity is said to be existing in villages and secondary schools in Nigeria. The members carry out violence. Based on this violent and secret nature, I would not be convinced that there is a difference between a confraternity and a cult. Confraternities are still secret cults and they are evil. I only blame parents and teachers for inadequate orientation where students are cautioned. This is why a junior secondary school student would brag among his friends that he is "a strongman".

Where cultists existed majorly and may still exist

If you did not know, at a point in time past, Enugu, Awka, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Nekede etc. became a hub for cultists. Universities became hostages to this evil. Government officials gave the propelling force to the very existence of cult groups. Cultism heated up in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital, during the governorship administration of Chief Peter Odili.

At Nnamdi Azikiwe University, for instance, I remember how tough it was before and during the tenure of Professor Ilochi Okafor who was the then-vice chancellor. The school was said to have devised a means to quell the pronounced activities by allegedly paying the heads and other members of the various cult members, although an anti-cult group was set up to combat the perpetrators of evil in the school environment.

These people of various cult groups, or call it confraternities, fight over supremacy on campuses. They establish competitive reigns of terror, engage in activities that occasionally spill over into the towns. They extort, rape, kill rivals, employ acid to disfigure women who have spurned them, and serve as enforcers and thugs to politicians. At the moment, it is no longer only those cities or universities, it is now villages.

One of the reasons why most parents now make a resolve to send their children to secondary schools and universities owned and managed by religious organisations is to evade cultism. They believe that in such environment, their children are taught morals and religious steps where the parents had lacked.

In a nutshell, you will not disagree with me on the fact that cultism is gradually becoming a major concern, like terrorism has become. The attention of various security agents and the parents in particular is needed to help curb this current school, social and community terrorism to avoid its escalation and to help save people from failing to actualize their ambitions and dreams in schools. Efforts to stem the tide of cultism should be totally collaborative. Adopting the most proactive measures to prevent any possible infiltration would definitely go a long way to make the society a better place to live in.

Eustace Dunn is a public relations professional with a major focus on print and new media.

This article expresses the authors opinion only. The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Legit.ng or its editors.

Your own opinion articles, feedback, suggestions, complaints or compliments are welcome at info@naij.com.

Were ready to trade your news for our money: submit news and photo reports from your area using our Naij Report app. We are also available on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp +234 814 650 9067.

Source: Legit.ng
Many Lagos citizens might have fallen to the antic of this beggar who disguised as a sick patient and armed with fake drug prescription paper begged his way into six-figure.

The suspected drug addicts

Kehinde Olatubosun, 56, who is from Ibadan, Oyo state disclosed that he earned N300, 000 monthly. Amount most graduates can only dream of earning, that is what this beggar cum drug addict earned per month from his trade.

However, he ran out of luck on Saturday night, January 23, when he along 18 other drug addicts was arrested by the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) of the Lagos Police Command at a joint in Ipodo area of Ikeja.

READ ALSO: Criminal Elements Will Be Weeded Out Of Custom - NCS Chief

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Olatubosun confessed that he made over N300, 000 monthly from begging in Ikeja.

According to Premium Times report, the RRS had on Monday night traced a stolen phone to the joint, leading to the arrest of a three-man gang of mobile phone thieves, three hard drug peddlers and 13 drug addicts.

The suspect disclosed that he made over N10,000 daily begging at the Mobolaji Bank Anthony Roundabout; beside the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital; Toyin street.

Olatubosun said: All days of the week, Im always in Mobolaji Bank Anthony Roundabout, Toyin Street roundabout and Opebi. At times, I collaborate with beggars. Whatever we make, we share but I get a larger share, said the suspect.

What I do is that, I get LASUTH drug prescription papers. I get it from their waste bin. With this in my hand, I convince motorists, passengers and passersby that I have a relative who is in dire need of money to buy drugs and I show them the prescription papers.

This is what I have been doing since I was deported from Germany in 2004. Before the deportation, I was working as Electrical Engineer in Bauhusa, Colon, Germany. I was in Germany for 12 years before I was deported.

The suspect further stated that he was deported from Germany after he was caught in possession of hard drugs.

I have four children. Two are in Germany with my wife. One is in Texas, United States and another in Nigeria, he said.

READ ALSO: 7 Signs You Have An Addiction

Unfortunately, all the money I make from this begging goes into drugs. Day after day, I am always there, seven days a week. I make more money on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I make more than N10,000:00 on weekends.

As I speak to you, Im not on drugs but I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms, that is, the effect of not taking drugs for sometimes, he said.

He explained that he was arrested at the Ipodo drug joint when the RRS men raided the place adding that it was the first time he would be arrested.

Source: Legit.ng
Mollywood stars recall their association with the versatile actress, Kalpana who took her last breath today at the age of 51. (Photo: PTI)

Mollywood stars recall their association with the versatile actress, Kalpana.

Her potential was yet to be unleashed fully- Manoj K. Jayan

Manoj K. Jayan may be estranged from his former wife Urvashi, but he has always maintained a cordial relationship with her sister Kalpana. The actor was in Bengaluru for a function, but cancelled it and returned to Kochi to attend the funeral with his daughter. My daughter and Kalpanas daughter are thick friends, he says.

He remembers her as person who always spoke the truth and always had love for him. In the beginning of my career, when I did small roles, she always encouraged me with nice words about my performance. She has told many people that she always saw me as a younger brother and used to call me aniyan, he says.

He goes on to add that Kalpana was yet to realise her true potential as an actor. Actually, she was just beginning to get good characters. It is a disservice to call her a comedian because she was so versatile. We shouldnt forget that a director like Aravindan drafted her in for Pokkuveyil. On the other hand, it is true that she was very good in comic roles and in fact ranks among the three or four actresses who could handle humour, including KPAC Lalitha and Sukumari.

Manoj says that he knew she was suffering from illnesses and used to take medicines but did not know exactly what the ailments were.

Queen Mary looked tired- Jomon T John

Though he has worked with Kalpana for just two films, she was more than like a sister for cinematographer Jomon T John. It was when getting the call from his wife Ann Augustine, Jomon came to know about the demise of the actress, who mesmerised the audience in the role of Queen Mary in Charlie, for which he cranked the camera.

Last day I was in Chennai and Ann was in Hyderabad to attend the IIFA award function. She was in the same flight on which Kalpana chechi was going to Hyderabad. It is really shocking news for me, says Jomon.

It was in last November that he met Kalpana for the last time, during the shoot of Charlie. Her major portions in the film were shot at sea. Usually, people who go to the sea for the first time experience severe sea sickness. Even I was not that much comfortable. But she had no issues and she enacted the scene very well, he says, adding that she was very tired when she came to act in the film.

I dont know whether she was not well or not, but she was very tired, says the cinematographer, who is great fan of the actress, who made him laugh with her comic roles.

We met just a day before- Neeraj

Neeraj Madhav is still in the shock of the news on the demise of Kalpana, whom he had met on the previous day while travelling to Hyderabad. Kalpana chechi was with us on the same flight on which we were travelling to Hyderabad. A fraction of film fraternity was also in the flight as we were on the way to attend the IIFA award function, but she was coming to join the sets of her new Telugu film, says the actor.

Though he knew Kalpana from past few years, they had not acted together. But last day, she shared some good moments with all of us in the flight. She was in such a jovial mood. Her demise is a big loss for our industry, says Neeraj, who stays back at Hyderabad after he heard about her death.

A good friend she was- Praveena

Actress Praveena was seen with Kalpana in the hit movie Banglore Days says she has too many fond memories of the late actress. I have worked with her in three or four movies, including Bangalore Days. More than a colleague, she was a very good friend to me. She was always full of energy and was always positive about everything in life. Kalpana chechi was one of those few people in the industry who used to call me Veena. She always used to encourage me to take up new movies. I am basically a lazy person and she would always tell me to keep on acting. I was not at all a bold girl during my initial days in the industry Kalpana chechi used to advice me to be bold always. She is a woman who immensely loved acting and used to say she cannot live without it."

We were like sisters- Manju Pillai

Actress Manju Pillai, who is one amongst the few actresses who juggles comedy and character roles successfully just like Kalpana, says, I grew up seeing Kalpana chechi. She is the first person to suggest me to give comic roles a try. She used to fondly call me Manjuamma and tell me, At least you take up comedy roles; there should be someone to take over after my time. She pauses to compose herself and reminisces, We were like sisters; I am still not able to come to terms with the news.
Islamabad: Pakistan's powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif on Monday said he will retire as scheduled in November this year, dismissing as "baseless" reports that he may seek an extension due to the ongoing counter-terror offensive.

General Raheel, 59, will complete his three-year term in November and it was being speculated that like his predecessor Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he may seek another term, especially as the counter-terrorism operation 'Zarb-e-Azb', started under Raheel's command in June 2014, is in a crucial phase.

Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa tweeted quoting the army chief that speculation about extension in service are "baseless".

"I don't believe in extension and will retire on the due date," General Raheel said, adding that "efforts to rout out terrorism will continue with full vigour and resolve."

General Raheel, Pakistan's 15th Chief of Army Staff, further said that "Pakistan's national interest is supreme and will be safe guarded at all costs."

Earlier General Pervez Musharraf had also given extensions to himself from 2001 to 2008, when he was also serving as the country's President. Together with General Kayani, who got a three-year extension, the two shared the office of Chief of Army Staff between them for almost 16 years.

The operation 'Zarb-e-Azb' against militants has so far killed around 3,500 terrorists and has destroyed nearly 1,000 hideouts, according to the Pakistan Army.

Many commentators were supporting an extension for General Raheel citing the crucial stage the operation is going through.

Local media reports had claimed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was also supportive of an extension to the Army Chief.
The trial of Olisa Metuh, national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), continues today, January 25.

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At the beginning of the hearing PDPs spokesperson has been docked at the Federal High Court this morning.

He was again brought to the court in handcuffs.

Metuh before the court

Metuh requested for a variation of his bail conditions

Meanwhile, because the prosecution was just served, the trial judge deferred hearing on the issue to January 27.

He, however, declined to adjourn the trial, asking the first prosecution witness to testify.

Metuh handcuffed again. Photo: Sahara Reporters

Meantime, a court has adjourned hearing on the case of infringement of the fundamental human right filed by Metuh, till February 10 for hearing on the matter.

Metuh in court. Photo: Sahara Reporters

The case by Justice O.E. Abang was last heard on January 19 when he was granted N400 million bail, which he is yet to meet, was on allegation that the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) received N400 million from former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki.

READ ALSO: Metuh Gets Bail For Tearing Statement

This amount was supposed to be part of the $2.1 billion arms purchase scandal under Goodluck Jonathan government.

Metuh arraigned over corruption allegations

Also former governors of Imo and Jigawa states, Ikedi Ohakim and Sule Lamido correspondingly are expected to appear in court on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday January 26, 27 and 28 for further hearing on their corruption cases with the EFCC.

Olisa Metuh was also granted another bail in the sum N300m and two sureties in like sum for shredding his statement.

Source: Legit.ng
The Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) requirement came to be like an unplanned child. In the early 2000s, the Indian Air Force decided that the logical answer to its problems of obsolescence, attrition and declining fleet strength was to induct additional numbers of the single engined Mirage-2000. This aircraft had an excellent safety and serviceability record and played a decisive role in the Kargil conflict.

With a few changes and upgrades, Vayu Bhavan felt that it could become the future multi-role aircraft; not only bridging the gap between the heavy-weight Sukhoi Su-30 and the light-weight Tejas, but also compensating for the eventual de-induction of MiG-21s. However, there was a fly in the ointment.

French manufacturer Dassault Aviation was now producing a more advanced variant, the Mirage 2000-5. Dassault was also on the verge of closing down the entire Mirage-2000 production line, unless it had some orders. The joint secretaries in the ministry of defence however refused to treat the IAF proposal as merely a repeat order on a past supplier as envisaged in the Fast Track Procedure of Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2006.

They insisted that as the Mirage 2000-5 was an entirely new aircraft, the IAF should follow the standard process of drawing up an Air Staff Requirement (ASR) and then floating a request for proposal (RFP). The irony is that if the IAF was willing to settle for the older Mirage 2000 instead of the Mirage 2000-5, it could have got the fighters under existing rules. But that is like wanting to buy a discontinued motorcar model when the latest is already in the market.

The Mirage 2000 acquisition too has a bit of a history. When the original deal was signed, the Intention to Proceed contract was for an initial order of 40 aircraft for outright purchase in fly-away condition and an option to produce another 110 aircraft at Hindustan Aeronautics Limiteds (HAL) facility in Bengaluru with total technology transfer. If this plan were carried forward, the IAF would not have needed the MiG-29.

But in 1984, the then defence minister, R. Venkatraman, visited Moscow and shortly after his return stated in Parliament that India was going to select a futuristic aircraft to meet the challenge posed by the presence of the F-16 in a neighbouring country. The inference was clearly with regard to the MiG-29. The other irony of this was that the justification for the Mirage 2000 acquisition was also because of the United States decision to give Pakistan the latest F-16 fighters.

How the Mirage 2000 came to be is also an interesting story. In the mid 1970s, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) was finalising a future fighter. The competition was between the Dassault Mirage F-1 and the US General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. The F-16 got the order. Dassault then developed the more versatile Mirage 2000 to beat the F-16 at its own game.

The first Mirage 2000 flew in 1982, and the first lot of IAF Mirage 2000s landed in Gwalior in 1984. Incidentally, Rajiv Gandhi, then a newly elected MP and Congress general secretary, saw it put through its paces at the Paris Airshow. He was very impressed. He sat in on the official meeting in the ministry of defence that decided to acquire Mirage 2000. Gandhi had just become a qualified Boeing 737 pilot and this was presumably considered expertise enough.

Nevertheless, the deal to make 110 more Mirage 2000s in Bengaluru made eminent sense, both for the IAF and the economy. But it was dropped no sooner than when the first lot of 40 fighters in a fly-away condition were delivered. Why this deal was terminated is a mystery. But one reason was certainly the price. The MiG-29 was available to India at Rs 5 crore a unit, while Mirage 2000 came at double the price.

The Indian Air Force will soon retire several squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27 jets at the end of their life cycle. Replacing these aged fighters will be the latest Su-30MKI, a 4+generation long endurance, air dominance fighter, now being assembled by HAL. The MiG-21 is a short endurance, lightweight and high-speed interceptor with limited ground attack capability. The Russians describe it as a frontal aviation aircraft. The Sukhoi being an air dominance fighter can perform both these roles, as well as undertake deep penetration strikes. The Su-30 is a Mercedes Benz SUV compared to the MIG-21s Maruti 800.

Now lets say the IAF wants to intercept a Pakistan Air Force or Peoples Liberation Army Air Force JF-17. The IAFs fighter of choice for this is likely to be a MiG-21bis rather than the Su-30MKI. While the Sukhoi can do the job effectively, sending a 4+generation aircraft weighing over 18 tonnes against a much older and cheaper JF-17 weighing less than 6.5 tonnes would not only be an overkill but also very cost ineffective.

The MiG-27 is a mid-sized, variable geometry, ground attack aircraft developed to support mechanised infantry and armoured columns. Its swing-wing configuration allows it to swiftly reach the target area and then swoop in at a much-reduced speed to effectively attack enemy ground forces. But what would be just another day in the office for the MiG-27 could prove expensive with the much bigger and heavier Su-30. Since ground attacks are often done by flying low and slow, a bigger aircraft is more vulnerable to ground fire.

The IAF learned this in 1971 with the Su-7. Besides, risking a Su-30MKI costing about Rs 400 crore each against relatively low-cost ground targets doesnt sound sensible. What the IAF needs for its interceptor and ground attack roles are smaller fighters and attack helicopters. Clearly, the IAF needs a permanent solution, not a high-cost fix like the Su-30MKI. The Rafale too, then, becomes another, yet more expensive, interim fix.

Hence, the IAF needs to shed its reluctance and urgently induct the Tejas light combat aircraft and push for newer and more powerful versions. At about Rs 200 crore each and with a huge local value addition component, the Tejas offers a huge cost-benefit advantage over Dassault Rafale multi-role fighter aircraft, as well as a huge economic multiplier. A few hundred Tejas jets of varying configurations can not only handle what the enemy can throw at us, but also contribute hugely to the national economy. After all, isnt this is the underlying notion behind Make in India?

So why do we want to buy the Dassault Rafale? It is somewhat closer to the Su-30MKI in class but almost four times more expensive. It is eight times more expensive than Tejas. In 2007, the government assessed the MMRCA deal for 126 fighters to be about $12 billion. By 2014, the cost of 126 Rafale fighters had swelled to an estimated $22 billion. In 2015, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited France, the reworked deal of buying 36 fighters outright with the option for more was worked out to be $7.5 billion.

Now, even French President Francois Hollande is mentioning a figure of $9 billion. Clearly, the costs are spinning out of control. It reminds me of a quip made by a Russian diplomat about the Su-30MKI, who said it was a very good fighter, but its wings were a bit heavy now. When I asked him what he meant, he cryptically remarked, the deal happened through four regime changes since 1994, meaning each regime change saddled it with more costs. It seems the Rafales wings too are getting heavier.
Four suicide bombers affiliated with the Boko Haram sect attacked a village in Cameroon's Far North region on Monday, January 25, killing at least 25 people.

The Boko Haram sect has stepped up attacks outside Nigeria, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, threatening regional security.

According to a local official, it is the most deadly attack carried out by the Islamist militant group in the area in recent times.

Reuters reports that two suicide bombers struck the Bodo central market while others hit the town's main entrance and exit points.

"There was a quadruple suicide bombing in the village of Bodo this morning. There are around 25 deaths and several wounded," the official said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the recent attacks yet.

READ ALSO: How Military Foiled Another Suicide Attack In Maiduguri

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Monday's bombing was not the first time when the town of Bodo has been targeted.

In December, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at the town's entrance. Officials said that the terrorists were trying to enter the market but were stopped by local residents. No others were injured in that incident.

Last week, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one in an attack on a mosque in Kouyape in northern Cameroon.

On January 18, a suspected member the Boko Haram sect detonated a bomb at a mosque in the village of Nguetchewe, killing four worshipers in the process.

Source: Legit.ng
A distant relative of my family, an ardent supporter of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), would often tell us that every time he heard the incantation Bharat Mata Ki Jai he was overcome by a rush of emotion so strong that he would do anything to prove his love for the country. If listeners looked askance, he would ask rather ingenuously, What is wrong with being patriotic and saying India is Hindu? It was a question that defied any answer.

It was only recently that he admitted that his adrenaline rush of nationalism came from being a regular at the daily shakha (branch) meetings of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in his youth and childhood. Bharat Mata was apotheosised as a crowned goddess holding a trident in one hand and a flag in the other in his imagination. She had to be protected at all costs by men of stern principles and undying loyalty to the nation. But for decades there was a reticence in talking about the shakha, possibly because the RSS had been banned several times  for its role in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi and in communal flare-ups across the country.

There is nothing furtive about the RSS or its 40 affiliates anymore. It flexes its political muscle as easily as it has co-opted Gandhi and other iconic leaders who it once reviled. In a careful image makeover it is modifying its rhetoric to recruit todays youth and appear conciliatory to the religious minorities and the majority liberal Indians who view the organisation with deep distrust. As foot soldiers of the Hindu rashtra, gather for their trademark meetings in full public gaze these days, it appears the formula is working.

Hindutva, or the Hindu supremacist ideology, is attracting followers in rising number. A little over 158,000 turned up early in January, all of them from just a handful of western districts of Maharashtra, to reaffirm their devotion to nation and holy land.

The numbers are cause for awe  and envy. No political party in India can count on the kind of supporters that the RSS can muster when its saffron flag is raised. Dressed in old-fashioned flared khaki shorts, white shirts with rolled-up sleeves and black caps, their lathis at the ready, they presented an incongruous sight on the outskirts of Punes high-tech city where global software and electronics companies operate.

There were drills, a marching band and a quaint salute reminiscent of the one used in oaths of allegiance, along with speeches about the need to build character to make the country powerful. Israel was held up as the role model since the world respects only powerful nations.

It would be naive to dismiss such gatherings as a quaint, Hindu version of the Boy Scouts. Founded in 1925 to form a nationalist Hindu character during British colonial rule, the Sangh sets much store by respect for authority and discipline, its creed shaped by Nazi ideology and its admiration for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. RSS instils an intense nationalism based on religion in its followers based on indoctrination that starts with children as young as five to eight much like the madrasas do.

The Sangh may call itself a cultural organisation dedicated to protecting Indias Hindu culture but it is widely seen as a fascistic outfit that is antagonistic to people of other faiths (Muslims and Christians) and intent on browbeating them as it pursues a Hindu first policy. The RSS logic is simple: while India may be the homeland for Christians and Muslims, their holy lands lie elsewhere.

The congregation in Maharashtra was clearly a show of strength, a celebration of the RSS resurgence in the wake of the BJPs sweeping win in 2014. It is said to have around six million activists, a number that the saffron outfit considers too small for its ambitions; it is aiming for at least 30 million and a presence in every village.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a former RSS worker, is of course the overarching inspiration for the resurgence in the RSS which is said to have witnessed a 20 per cent spike in attendance at the shakhas over the past year. And its star is clearly in the ascendant. In the 20 months, since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, the revolving door between the mother organisation and the BJP has been swinging open pretty regularly.

RSS officials now hold high-profile positions in the BJP and have become trusted spokesmen for the party, while sympathisers have been pushed into prestigious (and undeserved) posts at the Indian Council of Historical Research and the Securities and Exchange Board of India. These were just rewards for its mobilisation that brought Mr Modi to power.

The political gains have been far greater. RSS workers have been appointed governors of and chief ministers in several states. Many Cabinet ministers in

Mr Modis government have an RSS background even though some have erased it from their official profiles. Even the urbane lawyer Arun Jaitley who now serves as finance minister cut his political teeth in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS which most people mistake for the BJPs youth wing.

The political consciousness  and the rhetoric  of a great many in government has been shaped by RSS thinking Today, the Sangh is no longer coy about its desire to shape government policies or to share the gravy trough of office. Mohan Bhagwat, RSS supremo, is unabashedly the most political leader the organisation has had. US academic Walter Andersen, who has been studying the RSS since the 1970s admitted in a recent interview that the Sangh is becoming increasingly political. When he wrote the landmark Brotherhood in Saffron in 1987, the RSS was suspicious of politics as a vocation but this is clearly not the case anymore. The high praise that

Mr Bhagwat is now showering on the Modi regime is RSS realpolitik devoid of ideology. Mr Bhagwat is making amends for his remarks on the caste policy which are widely believed to have resulted in the BJPs poll debacle in Bihar. While liberals worry about the increasing hold of the saffron brigade on the levers of power in the country, old-style RSS members like my distant relative are also upset. He fears Bharat Mata is in danger from her avowed soldiers.
Fifty-seven Shiites have been sentenced to 15-years imprisonment, following the involvements in a prison mutiny.

The verdict on the 57 Shiite inmates s was passed by a court in Bahrain on Monday, January 25. The term is to be added to the current terms they are serving.

READ ALSO: Zaria Massacre: Obama Was Stoned, Jonathan Was Pelted  Shiites Charge (PHOTOS)

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Sources say the inmates were convicted of rioting and mutiny following unrest last March at Jaw prison, south of the capital Manama.

The charges included disobeying orders and forcing guards out of the prisoners buildings and then destroying furniture, air conditioners and security cameras,  the source said.

Al-Wasat newspaper reports that security officials stormed the buildings and clashed with the rioting prisoners, resulting in casualties among police and inmates.

The defendants were also fined a total of N268717500. It was not clear what caused the riot in Bahrains largest prison that is used for Shiites convicted over anti-government protests.

There have been calls by the Human Rights Watch for an independent investigation into allegations that security forces used excessive force to quell the unrest at the jail and later mistreated prisoners.

Bahrains Sunni authorities crushed Shiite-led protests a month after they erupted on February 14, 2011.

Meanwhile, there are several speculation regarding the whereabouts of Shiites leader in Nigeria, Sheikh El'Zakzaky.

Sources inform that the embattled leader who has been in military custody since the sect had a bloody encounter with the Nigerian army in 2015; has been flown abroad due to certain complications from injuries he sustained during the brutal clash in Zaria.

Source: Legit.ng
Sonia Gandhi will lead a Congress delegation to meet President Pranab Mukherjee over the Arunachal issue.

New Delhi: Congress on Monday filed a petition in Supreme Court to quash Union Cabinet's recommendation for President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

"We have filed the petition before the apex court registry," Congress leader and senior advocate Vivek Tankha told PTI. He said the petition has been filed by the state Congress Chief whip Bamang Felix and an urgent hearing has been sought.

"We are waiting to hear from the Deputy Registrar who will place the petition before the Chief Justice of India," another lawyer said.

In the event, the recommendation of the cabinet is affirmed and accented to, by the president, well challege the imposition of Presidents rule and well say that this is in fact trying to bypass a matter which is a subjudice and trying to take advantage by using their constitutional power to destabilise a state, which needs stability, said senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal had said at a press conference.

Read: President's Rule? Arunachal CM slams Centre, calls it 'vendetta politics'

Senior leaders of the party lashed out at the Modi-led government and accused it for trying to 'de-stabilise governments' in non-BJP states.

Modi Govt's decision to impose President's Rule in Arunachal reflects travesty of Constitutional mandate & trampling of democracy  INC India (@INCIndia) January 24, 2016

A Congress delegation led by party chief Sonia Gandhi will meet President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Monday evening in the backdrop to discuss the issue.

The Congress delegation is expected to meet President Mukherjee at around 5 p.m.

BJP's desperation to grab power in the NE exposed with #ArunachalPradesh . Murder of democracy  RPN Singh (@SinghRPN) January 25, 2016

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Sunday recommended imposition of President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh, which is rocked by political turmoil that broke out last month.

The recommendation has been sent to President Mukherjee for his approval.

The government has justified its position, saying there is a constitutional crisis and the people of the state have been suffering for too long.

Read: Constitutional crisis in Arunachal led to President's rule recommendation: BJP

The Congress has, however, dubbed the government's move as 'unconstitutional' and alleged that it exposed the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Modi.

The crisis began on December 16 last year when 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 BJP and two independent members to impeach Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue.

In the 60-member assembly, 26 MLAs including Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, boycotted the session calling it illegal and unconstitutional. A day later, the rebels and opposition legislators gathered at a community hall and voted out the Chief Minister.

Both sides then approached the Gauhati High Court and later the Supreme Court. The matter is now before the constitution bench.
Bilfinger Real Estate has further expanded its capital markets team by recruiting two experienced investment experts for the Hamburg and Dusseldorf real estate markets. Stefan Hellwig MRICS, 42, has assumed the role of Associate Director Capital Markets with responsibility for the regional investment consulting business at the company's location in

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The international student housing network Network Cum Laude (NCL) has two new partners: the Turkish provider for high-quality student accommodation Republika and the Belgian student housing operator Upgrade Estate. With these new additions, Network Cum Laude already has five members in five countries comprising almost 50,000 student apartments under management

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Rockspring Property Investment Managers LLP announces that in 2015 it completed 850 million of transactions in the German market. Acquisitions accounted for 700 million across 40 assets, with 10 disposals amounting to 150 million.

Notable highlights within the period include:



 The 3...

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Codenamed Mahindra W601, next-gen XUV500 is expected to be launched in early 2021

The eagerly anticipated second generation Mahindra XUV500 will not arrive this year. In a recent media interaction, the companys managing director Dr. Pawan Goenka confirmed that the new gen premium crossover will hit the market in fourth quarter of this financial year (sometime between January to March 2021).

Till then, the existing XUV500 will continue to solider on with BS6-compliant powertrain. The top official also confirmed that the next gen Scorpio will be ready only by May 2021. This means, the only the next generation Mahindra Thar is coming this year. The off-roader is slated to be introduced in the coming weeks with completely overhauled hardware and styling.

The 2021 Mahindra XUV500 pre-production prototypes have been testing extensively across the country for the past several months now, giving an impression that the launch is set sometime in 2020. The test mules are fully camouflaged and employ makeshift headlamps and taillights but the decided shift in styling language is apparent.

The new Mahindra XUV500 will be adopting Mahindras new design philosophy which was previewed by the open-top Funster EV concept. The trademark seven-slot front grille will get narrower and will be complemented by sleek LED headlamps. The DRL design would be similar to the one seen on the XUV300.

If the prototypes are anything to go by, the 2021 XUV500s silhouette is also quite different compared to its predecessor. The vehicle appears to be considerably longer, which means the third row passengers are likely to benefit from additional leg room.

It is safe to assume that the crossover will receive a fresh interior, complete with all-new dashboard. We expect the build and material qualities to go up by a few notches. Mahindra is sure to pack its popular SUV with with a loads of technology and equipment.

To be underpinned by a new monocoque platform, the 2021 Mahindra XUV500 will be powered by a new 2.0-liter diesel engine. It is being reported that the new motor will be significantly more powerful than the existing 2.2-liter unit which is good for 155 hp.

There will also be a 2.0-liter turbocharged petrol engine on offer. The SUV will be available with both manual and automatic transmission options. The fully-loaded variant will also boast all-wheel-drive system.

The new Mahindra XUV500 will lock horns with the likes of Tata Gravitas (Harrier 7-seater) and MG Hector 7-seater. Going by Mahindras track record, one can expect the new model to be priced very competitively.
Through Merc from Home, Mercedes-Benz customers can make a booking, purchase a new car and get it delivered at their doorstep

Almost overnight, the coronavirus pandemic has initiated a work from home economy. Millions across the world are now forced to work remotely. This new style of working amid the present state of affairs is likely to become permanent even once the pandemic is behind us. With almost all automotive dealerships in lockdown mode, German automaker Mercedes-Benz has launched a new campaign called, Merc from Home.

Under this initiative, the company embarks on a digital sales project to deliver vehicles at the buyers doorsteps. Mercedes-Benz Indias new online sales platform lets customers explore, select and make online payments for products and services at the comfort of their homes.

The platform on the company website, shop.mercedes-benz.co.in, enables potential customers to check out almost the entire range from the three-pointed star. This starts from the C-Class sedan and goes up to various Mercedes-AMG performance models. The vehicles will be delivered to the customer at the earliest opportunity under the local lockdown rules and regulations. The online sales platform was started in January as a hub for used Mercedes-Benz products. Now, the company has improved the website by listing brand-new models.

Martin Schwenk, CEO and MD of Mercedes-Benz India stated that the online sales platform was readied through a partnership with Roadster Inc. The company expects its worldwide initiative to take off, to an extent that 25 per cent of global passenger car sales would be made completely online by the year 2025. COVID-19 has expanded its damage beyond human health by affecting several global businesses. The automotive industry, in particular, has been struggling for the past couple of months.

From 4 May 2020, Mercedes-Benz will also launch its Live Mercedes-Benz Video Consultation Studio for customised and interactive demonstrations of its products. For the first time, Mercedes-Benz India has also introduced an online sales concierge, operational from 10AM until midnight. Other initiatives include a one-stop solution for smart finance for a new or old Mercedes-Benz vehicle, alongside Value Added Services, product information and live demonstration.

This makes Mercedes-Benz one of the first luxury car makers in India to go ahead with online sales while brands such as Audi and Jaguar Land Rover could soon follow suit. BMW India has already launched its new Contactless Experience platform. Further down the price segment, brands such as Honda Cars India and Volkswagen have also initiated online sales via dedicated portals.
Renault Kwid based electric small car has made its debut at the Auto Expo 2020.

Already launched in China, the new Renault Kwid electric hatchback is expected to be launched in India later this year. It has now been showcased at the 2020 Auto Expo to gauge customer interest. Once launched, Kwid electric will be the perfect rival to the upcoming Maruti WagonR electric.

Compared to the regular Kwid, the electric Kwid gets a new bumper design and full LED headlamps. It also receives a new grille, new LED tail lamps and redesigned rear bumper while front air intake and rear air outlets are just for design with no real function since it gets an EV powertrain.

In terms of charging, Renault is expected to offer the Kwid EV with multiple charging options, making charging possible via both domestic and public chargers. Charging updates will be seen on the instrument clustering indicating remaining battery charge, distance to empty and the nearest charging station.

The electric motor is developed in association with DongFeng of China and will have a driving range of 250 kms in the NEDC cycle. In compliance with new safety regulations, the Renault Kwid EV will also get more airbags, 4 disc brakes, a sun roof and rear parking sensors.

Renault India also awaits the Government policy on electric vehicle charging in India ahead of official launch of the Kwid EV in the country. The launch of this new electric vehicle in India follows electric vehicles being tested by other automakers.

The Maruti Suzuki WagonR EV is currently under test along with the electric version of the Mahindra KUV100. Tata is also expected to launch Tiago electric in the future, which is a potential rival to the Kwid EV.

At the moment, there is no word from Renault about a potential launch date for the EV in India. However, considering the recent developments and the increasing push from government to move towards EVs, it is safe to presume that the car will be in launched sooner than expected.
As miserable as this dog's job was guarding a property in Cairo, he took it seriously. So when people got too close to the property he was guarding, he did what he was supposed to do - what all dogs do. "He barked and they cut his nose off," Lauren Connelly of Special Needs Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation (SNARR), told The Dodo. SNARR

For the dog, who would eventually be named Anubis, after the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, that spelled unemployment. And so for years, he haunted city streets, often seen curled up under a car, living in silent agony. SNARR

But others would become his voice. First, it was a local organization, the Animal Protection Foundation, an organization that cares for thousands of downtrodden animals in the country. Then it was SNARR''s turn. "We've taken dozens of animals from them and brought them to the States, animals who otherwise would be in agony in a country that cannot care for them," Connelly, a foster coordinator at the U.S.-based group, said. SNARR

Dodo Shows Odd Couples Dog And Wild Dolphin Play Whenever They See Each Other

Finally, it was a virtual army of volunteers, who formed a relay of drivers from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Olney, Maryland, where Anubis spent a week before being driven through stops in Tennessee, then Fort Worth, Texas. Andrea Dawson LaHaye / SNARR

For Anubis, it might have felt like his own journey to the underworld. Except there was love at every stop. SNARR

And food, of course. Lots of food. SNARR

"He kind of of eats upside down to compensate," Connelly explains. And his final destination, a long-term foster family in El Paso, Texas, is something closer to heaven. SNARR

Anubis will be living with his foster family for as many as six months. But Connelly says they are so "head over heels for him," there's a good chance they will become his forever family. Besides, he's already smitten with his new sister, another rescued dog, who just happens to be blind. SNARR

After living for so many years under cars on bustling, dangerous streets, Anubis is no longer a dog of the underworld. But a god of the couch. SNARR
PCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy and leader of Opposition in council, Mohd. Ali Shabbir release the manifesto of the Congress for the GHMC elections.

Hyderabad: Claiming credit for all the development of Hyderabad, the main Opposition Congress on Sunday came out with its election manifesto that promises to implement 28 new schemes under various sectors.

It, among other things, promised to provide free drinking water and piped cooking gas to every household in city. The manifesto promised to prohibit use of word settler, equal opportunity to all without discrimination and a separate budget for minorities in the GHMC.

Releasing the partys GHMC manifesto at Gandhi Bhavan, TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, along with the Leader of Opposition in the Council Shabbir Ali, said the Congress alone could take the credit for developing the historic Hyderabad City since 1956. Its governments were responsible for bringing several developmental schemes besides effecting improvements in the citys water supply and public transport systems.

The TPCC chief said the 19-month-old TRS government did not initiate even a single new project for betterment of the city, and it instead wasted precious time by making tall promises.

TRS leaders somehow wanted to win the GHMC polls by making false promises and holding aloft ideas of un-implementable schemes.

The Congress governments and Hyderabad city development were synonymous with each other, he said, adding the TRS was only interested in dividing people on the basis of caste, creed and region.

Highlights of the Congress Manifesto are: Safe, protected and free water supply to each household; free drinking water supply system at select points across the GHMC area for the homeless, migrant labour and construction workers; piped cooking gas to every household; modernisation of the sewerage system with world-class technology; and a pollution-free Hussainsagar lake and River Musi.

The other promises: Pothole-free main roads to ensure free traffic

flow; foot over-bridges equipped with escalators; multi-layered

parking lots; junctions and traffic signal improvements; sensitization

of vehicle drivers, students and others on traffic and road etiquette;

and regulation of permissions to malls, multiplexes and educational

institutions so as to ensure that traffic is not congested.

The manifesto also promises to ensure auto-rickshaws and taxis charge

only as per meter-reading. Other promises include improving the share

of public transport by increasing the fleet of buses, introducing more

of dedicated bus corridors, bus bays and terminals, and extension of

Metro Rail network covering areas like Patancheru, Hayatnagar,

Shamshabad, Ghatkesar and Shamirpet.

Also, the existing power cable and transmission system will be

replaced by underground cables. Hassle-free and 24-hour uninterrupted

power supply would be ensured.

A subsidized roof-top solar system would be provided to the extent 100 per cent subsidy for slum dwellers and 50 per cent for the middle class. Two-bedroom houses for all eligible families for a dignified living are promised as also new building permissions within 72 hours of application submission.

The manifesto also promises free primary health centres, and free

education for the needy by opening schools in each division with all

free facilities. A separate cell will be created to address the issues

of students seeking studies abroad.

Other promises are as follows: Creation of a Hyderabad Haat similar to

Delhi Haat to promote culture and art; Ravindra Bharathi model of

theatres in each of the 18 GHMC circles; and development of

Madina-Charminar Road with Travelatora-moving side walkway.

Another promise is to take measures to tackle stray animals menace

around GHMC and setting up of a pet animal clinic to take care of

animals.

Small zoological parks shall be set up, one in each circle, to promote environment and recreation.

The manifesto also promises to promote eco-friendly materials to replace plastic bags, and implementation of court orders as regards display of flexis and posters.
<p>Jessie Kunz</p>

Bear Witness had quite the lineage. He was the grandson of legendary racehorse Secretariat and the son of Lady's Secret. Yet he was found on July 24, 2015, at a horse auction in Tennessee, suffering "many obvious signs of neglect, abuse and starvation," by a woman named Jessie Kunz, who has since created a Facebook page in his honor.

It took a month for Kunz to gain the horse's trust. "I couldn't even touch his face he was so terrified," she said. "He had a big, bloody open wound on his back leg," Kunz said. "He hadn't been fed in a month and his hooves had not been maintained - they had not been cleaned out, shoes checked, kept moist. He could barely stand or walk." Originally from Germany, Kunz says she had never been to a horse and tack auction, where various farm animals and gear are sold, in Tennessee before. What she saw there horrified her. Bear was covered in rain rot, a bacterial infection of the skin that causes scabbing and hair loss, from head to tail. "He was down from 1,400 to 500 pounds," Kunz said. "People were shocked at the cruelty. I just couldn't stand it. I went to [Bear's owner at the time]. He took $250 and I took Bear home." A month after being moved to Kunz's care, Bear slowly started gaining weight and trusting people again.

Dodo Shows Foster Diaries This Pregnant Pittie Foster Story Is The Happiest Thing Ever

"He must have been very scared," said Kunz. "It was, for me, a wonder that he even still liked being around humans. His body was covered in scars, as was his face. He had a bad hoof abscess, which we treated. He needed a lot of groceries and vet care." While the precise chain of custody and responsibility is not yet known, there is one thing of which Kunz is sure: "I think the world should know how mean humans can be." Bear may have suffered this fate, according to Kunz, because he had the misfortune of being born from a line of champions, but never himself "finishing in the money," or placing in the top three in a horse race, which guarantees the winner a share of the prize money.

Initially, Kunz set up a GoFundMe campaign to try and raise money for his care. Sadly for Bear, help may have come too late - he died in October. While many believe the horse racing industry is on its last legs in many places thanks to increased awareness of the issues facing racehorses, many of them are still being born and bred only to spiral down into an existence of neglect, starvation, suffering and eventual slaughter. Bear Witness was born into this system of abuse on April of 2000, despite the good intentions of his trainers. He was bred by John and Kim Glenney, who were opposed to the industry abuses they witnessed. Seeing what happened to horses on various race circuits is what eventually led them to quit the business, they told The Dodo. Bear Witness with John GlenneyKim Glenney

Bear Witness with John Glenney | Kim Glenney

The Glenneys were among those trainers who treated their horses more like family than win-at-any-cost possessions, according to those they hired to help them care for Bear and over 100 other horses over the years. Unlike his sire, the male parent of a horse, Bear was not a big winner. He raced 16 times, with his best finish in fourth place, just shy of ever taking home any winnings. Like many racehorses who are not focused on the win, at some point, he was gelded - castrated. "When they have their testicles, they tend to want to mount the fillies [young female horses] and not concentrate on the races," Gail Matthews of Winning Hands, who treated Bear while he was owned by the Glenney family, told The Dodo. "Like all of the Glenney's horses, Bear got the best treatments, the best care possible. He was like family." "Horses are like people," John Glenney told The Dodo. "If racing isn't their thing, and we gave all our horses chances to show that it was, then they are retired and in many cases retrained to do something they will enjoy more, like dressage [skilled riding] or being a horse for children who need therapy that involves working with horses." Bear had more than just motivation issues. He had been a long-time sufferer of a parasite known colloquially in the industry as EPM, which causes disease in approximately one percent of exposed horses, according to the American Association of Equine Practitioners. He was given numerous treatments while in his family's care, including acupuncture and equine massage by Matthews and others, said Glenney. Bear WitnessJessie Kunz

Bear Witness | Jessie Kunz

For these reasons, the Glenneys, who have since been out of the horse racing game for over a decade, retired Bear. He was suffering from a bout with EPM and had to spend months getting costly EPM medication and treatment before he was healthy enough to be given away to a new home, Glenney explained. "We always gave our horses away to trusted vets, trainers and people we interviewed and thought they would give them the right kind of home," Glenney said. "We interviewed the people we gave [our horses] to." In Bear's case, and in the cases of many other former racehorses, what began as a well-intentioned adoption went horribly wrong. Additionally, the circumstances of Bear's life between his retirement from the Glenney's care and his rescue by Kunz are quite murky. In an email acquired by Kunz, sent on July 10, 2013, by Kim Glenney to an unknown person creating a memorial for Bear's mother, Lady's Secret, Glenney wrote that Bear Witness had died of EPM. However, Bear was found by Kunz at auction on July 24, 2015. "I had heard that one of our horses had died of EPM at some point and I just assumed it was Bear because he'd suffered from it for so long," Kim Glenney told The Dodo. "When I learned the truth, recently, I just can't even think about what he must have gone through. It breaks my heart." "If I had known what was happening to him, I would have given [Kunz] any money she needed for his comfort," she said. "Bear Witness had suffered from EPM for years and we treated him off and on, but when my wife sent that email she didn't really have any firsthand knowledge of his death," said John Glenney, who is a biologist. "After he retired, we kept treating him and when he was sound and healthy, we found a good home for him. These were not just horses we bought and sold, they were members of the family with names and personalities." Bear Witness as a babyKim Glenney

Bear Witness as a baby | Kim Glenney

"I'm distressed to hear what happened to him," John Glenney said. "We left the horse game and we've rescued some of our own horses that ended up in lower-level races or weren't being provided for, and we've paid to have them shipped back, even from California." "Like our other racehorses, we didn't sell him, we gave him away to someone we trusted would take the best care of him in his retirement," John Glenney said. "I don't know how many hands he went through after that." The post-race career horrors are not news to Glenney, however. "I know of some of the awful things that happen to retired horses and that's why we've tried to find them good homes," he said. "Even with the best intentions, as they pass from one person to another to another. We have pursued this a number of times." "We had one horse who had fallen down the ranks, and we tried to find him so we could buy him back. But by the time we found him, within a month or two, he ended up at the slaughterhouse," he said. "It was too late. We know what goes on and have tried to stop it. I've told every person I ever gave one of my horses to that if there was any reason it wasn't working out, I'd take the horse back. I'd pay to fly him back." "I believe the people who did this should be exposed," he said. Bear WitnessKim Glenney

Bear Witness | Kim Glenney

Kunz said the National Sheriff's' Association was finally able to trace Bear by his lip tattoo - used by the Jockey Club (a breed registry for thoroughbred horses in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico) for identification and registration purposes - and match his DNA to prove that, at age 15, this broken shell-of-an-animal was once a glistening, healthy horse. Kim Glenney said she spent many hours sifting through boxes of Bear Witness' baby pictures, after she was contacted by The Dodo for comment, "from his first sonogram at 18-days in utero, to when he was a fuzzy brown foal nuzzling against his mother, Lady's Secret." Bear Witness with his mother, Lady's SecretKim Glenney

Bear Witness with his mother, Lady's Secret | Kim Glenney

"I've spent this wintery day sitting on the floor of my basement surrounded by pictures and memories," she said. "I'm sorry for the reason I opened these boxes, but it's been wonderful to see all these buried treasures again." Kim Glenney and Kunz have since connected by phone, shared photos and memories and vowed that they will both bear the burden of knowing that, while Bear's suffering has come to an end, countless other former racehorses remain in purgatory. Bear WitnessKim Glenney

Bear Witness | Kim Glenney
Elvis has a little bit of a different family than other black rhinos in the land. Elvis the black rhino stops by to get a drink with his former keeper, Kamara.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis the black rhino stops by to get a drink with his former keeper, Kamara. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis's mother, Mawingo, was blind. Years ago, when Elvis was born in the wild expanses of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, this rare black rhino baby was destined to be lost just like the other children his disabled mother had birthed. "Unfortunately, all of Mawingo's previous calves, before Elvis, were predated on as a result of her blindness," Wanjiku Kinuthia, of Lewa, told The Dodo. "We made the decision to hand raise Elvis to ensure his survival. Black rhinos remain critically endangered, and every individual counts in saving the species from extinction." Elvis getting a check-up.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

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Elvis getting a check-up. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

And the people at Lewa know just how to step in to help. Elvis wandering around the offices.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis wandering around the offices. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis spent years being hand raised by the people at Lewa until he was finally reintroduced to the wild. "Elvis was cared for by humans till he was four years old (and able to care for himself)," Kinuthia said. "We then reintroduced him to the wild, and we are delighted to see that he is thriving out there as a wild rhino, how they should all live." Elvis greeting the rangers around the office grounds.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis greeting the rangers around the office grounds. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

But Elvis, though self-sufficient, often comes back to visit. Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

He wanders the grounds among his bipedal friends. He even sticks his head in through the windows of houses, to see what's cooking in the kitchen.

Elvis might be one of the rarest and most majestic animals on earth - but he's also just one of the family. Elvis with his former keeper Kamara and ranger Ian.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis with his former keeper Kamara and ranger Ian. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Click here to help Lewa Wildlife Conservancy care for majestic animals like Elvis. Elvis in the wild.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

Elvis in the wild. | Lewa Wildlife Conservancy
Dodo Shows Soulmates Growling Little Kitten Becomes Her Mom's Best Friend

"People cut off their ears, kick them," resident Norma Salomon told Reuters back in 2009. "There is a new rule that you are not supposed to touch the bulls but after so many 'toritos' it's hard to control." It's common for bulls to die during the festivities, frequently drowning during the climactic riverboat ride that drags the animals through the water. And, occasionally, a stray dog is even tied to the maddened bull. Dennis Moody / YouTube

This browser does not support the video tag. Dennis Moody / YouTube

If they survive the festival, traumatized animals are rounded up and let out to pasture. Not much has changed since 2009, despite a growing chorus of protests from animal lovers worldwide. So far, more than 160,000 people have signed one of several online petitions. "This is another example of man's inhumanity to animals, which I simply can't get my head around," Dominic Dyer of Care for the Wild International said in a release. "Fiestas like this take place particularly in Spain and Mexico with the sole purpose seemingly for people to get their kicks by torturing and killing defenceless animals." At last year's festival, a bull, as shown by a video posted to YouTube, "got even," knocking over what looks like a concession stand. It doesn't seem like much of a "get-even" for an animal who is obviously in a state of terror, surrounded and provoked constantly by revelers. Another video posted to YouTube depicts the chaos of last year's event: A bull is dragged down a slope, tumbling into the water where he thrashes helplessly. MrApocalypseplease / YouTube

This browser does not support the video tag. MrApocalypseplease / YouTube
As the closing credits rolled for Other People during its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, a familiar sound could be heard around the theater: the barely audible sniffles of people trying to conceal their crying. Interestingly, the woman to trigger so much weeping was Molly Shannon, the gangly Saturday Night Live alum who made us laugh while kicking, stretching and kicking as Sally OMalley and channeled superstar Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Sundance seems to be the place to debut such a transformation. This is the festival where Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader first demonstrated their Serious Thespian Skills in the family drama The Skeleton Twins. And last year, Sarah Silverman showed off some major acting chops playing an addict and mother of two in I Smile Back.

In the case of Other People, Shannon isnt entirely to blame (or celebrate) for the blubbering. The movie used the old cancer trick, a pretty surefire way to guarantee waterworks. Nevertheless, Shannons moving performance made the movie even more profoundly tragic. She plays Joanne, the mother of three kids who, over the course of a year, battles a rare form of cancer. The dramedy is told from the point of view of her oldest child, David (Jesse Plemons), a comedy writer who has just relocated from New York to help take care of his mom.

The movie starts at the end of the story, so its not a spoiler to say that Joanne doesnt make it. In the beginning, she is effervescent, and Shannon uses her huge, contagious smile for maximum heartwarming effect. But before you know it, she can barely move without vomiting and cant speak above a whisper.

Incidentally, Shannon also starred in a cancer dramedy, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, at last years Sundance. But this is more of a breakout role, and the actress makes an impact.

Other People is the autobiographical feature debut of SNL writer Chris Kelly, and his other job explains the movies great strength: its comedy. Shannon is obviously a natural in that department, but Plemons also shows some acting muscles he hasnt flexed before. The actor, known for dramas (Friday Night Lights, Black Mass), has spot-on comic timing. And all the absurd and buoyant moments make the touching ones that much more poignant. So when Shannon stops cracking jokes long enough to say, All I ever wanted was to be a mom, and I got to do it three times  well, good luck trying to hide the tears.

Sundances oddest movie

Theres always some stiff competition for Weirdest Movie of Sundance, and 2016 has some solid contenders.

Theres The Lobster, a satire in which singletons who fail to couple up are hunted down, tranquilized and turned into an animal of their choosing.

But that movie has nothing on Swiss Army Man. The dark, surreal comedy stars Paul Dano as Hank, a man stranded on a desert island who discovers a corpse washed up on the beach. The body is played by Daniel Radcliffe, and if his mostly nude performance in the play Equus didnt distance the actor from Harry Potter, this certainly will.

Hank quickly learns that this isnt your typical dead body. It has special powers, one of which is gas so powerful that it can transport the marooned man back to civilization.

Eventually, the body partially comes back to life. He cant really move, but he can speak. His name is Manny, and he remembers nothing of his past or human existence in general, leaving Hank to explain what life is all about. Its all very Michel Gondry-esque (think Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep) as Hank uses shadow puppets and rudimentary dolls made of sticks and leaves to explain everything from commuting by bus to sadness to the glory of Jurassic Park to sex.

This educational period supplies plenty of laughs as Manny grapples with the bizarre truths of humanity and social constructs. Why on earth would people hide their farts from one another, the corpse wonders. Why are humans so afraid of appearing weird? And who would want to live in such a world?

All the while, Hank continues to explore Mannys many talents. He can be used as a gun because he can shoot objects out of his mouth; he can chop a log in half with his spring-powered limbs; his body collects water, so Hank can use him as a well; and, when Manny gets, well, excited, he can point Hank back to civilization with a phallic compass.

The feature debut from writer-director duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert only gets more unpredictable as Manny and Hanks relationship deepens. Giving away much more would be too spoilery, but lets just say that the movie marks a funny accomplishment for Radcliffe, who has now locked lips on screen with both Dano and Danos real-life girlfriend, Zoe Kazan. Radcliffe and Kazan played love interests in another festival-circuit movie, the romantic comedy What If. Thats an odd factoid, but hardly the weirdest footnote in the story of Swiss Army Man. Sometimes fiction really is stranger.
Why does Abraham Lincoln possess us so? Poet, philosopher, father, husband and president, he was a man who made himself remarkable in a remarkable time. He was, as Emily Dickinson called him, the still Man, who looms larger and larger as our most modern, melancholic and politically vibrant president. We have a multitude of books devoted to Lincoln  his language, his roots, his tumultuous marriage, his politics and his presidency  but Stephen Harrigan, in his sixth novel, A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, offers us an acute and original portrait of Lincoln in the 1830s and 1840s, when our 16th president was still a young backwoods lawyer whose hair was like a clump of crow feathers.

But Lincoln isnt the central concern of the novel. Harrigans hero is a fictitious poet, Cage Weatherby, the Lord Byron of Illinois, who becomes one of Lincolns trusted companions in Springfield, Ill. Cage rescues Lincoln from his depressive fits, helps him scrape off excess baggage from his speeches, saves him from a pointless duel and warns him against the embrigglement of marriage to Mary Todd.

[A look back at the 10 best books of 2015]

He, though, is caged within his own psyche, a zero at the base of his soul. Cage wants to be the poet of the unfinished, to celebrate the raw beginnings of prairie towns, yet he cannot even finish his own tale. The poets father was a prosperous Massachusetts man, the owner of a pencil factory who believed in his sons talents and sent him off to wander Europe for a year. But Cages father fell into ruin and killed himself, leaving his son adrift. Cage finally settled in Springfield, the owner of a tiny boardinghouse, and continued to scribble poems. He wasnt tentative about the music of his lines. He realized that music itself was not a human invention but a code buried in the suspirating rhythms of the world.

He falls in love with a beautiful, young prostitute, Ellie, becomes her silent partner in a millinery shop and lets her live at the Palatine, his little hotel, where she can no longer entertain her special customers. Trying to entrap her, he traps himself. He is now her one and only customer, visiting her several times a week behind the doors of her shop, but she is still ungraspable as a ghost. We, as readers, recognize her dilemma. She did not want to become Cages chattel, or his secret bride.

Hes much less of a fool when it comes to Lincoln and Mary Todd. Keenly aware of Marys sexual musk, he observes the silver necklace fastened to her throat: It was as if she had put it there only to signal that it should be removed, that everything she wore was only for the purpose of making you understand that there was bare skin beneath it. And Lincoln, the bumpkin lawyer, is ambivalent about landing in her web. They say happiness can slow a man down, he confides to Cage, and I dont have time for that.

We grasp Lincolns largeness, his burning ambition to break out of his backwoods bearskin. Im like a character from Shakespeare, he says. Yet he doesnt envision himself as Hamlet, or Lear, or Prince Hal, but rather Richard III, the conniving, sweet-tongued, murderous king. And its to Harrigans credit that he reveals the calculating, almost evil side of Lincoln, who can talk about Cages talents, his ability to transcribe the thoughts of angels, and then allow him to drift in the wind, abandoning him out of some legal nicety. If theres honor in you, Cage says, I no longer see it. He senses that Lincoln has found in Mary a perfect fit for his endless ambition. The two of them . . . could be dangerous together.

Still, the best part of the novel isnt about Lincolns ambitions or Marys vengeful ways. The book finds its own proper music when Harrigan writes about Lincoln as a circuit rider. Twice a year, he joins a caravan of lawyers as it crosses the prairie to deal with legal matters in the small towns of Illinois, having to endure red scabrous bumps of bedbug bites as the circuit riders sleep three in a bed. No one really slept . . . because they were all deliriously happy to be away from wives and offices, eager to retell tales of court cases involving castration by pocketknife and similar horrors.

Even if Harrigan clips a bit off the wings of Lincolns better angels, he also offers us a powerful glimpse into what the great man liked to call his real life. In doing so, he provides us with a rumbling, rambunctious novel, full of its own raw life.

Jerome Charyn is the author, most recently, of I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War and Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories. His new book, A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, will be published in March.
Theres the thrill that comes in discovering a terrific new mystery writer, and then theres the thrill that comes in discovering a terrific new  and different  mystery novel written by an already acknowledged master.

Reed Farrel Coleman has been a big macher on the mean streets of hard-boiled detective fiction for a couple of decades now. He has created standalone novels and several series, foremost among them the acclaimed Moe Prager books featuring a Jewish ex-cop in 1980s New York, whose cases have led him into the shadow side of Coney Island and the Catskills. Most recently, Coleman has tackled the tricky assignment of continuing the late Robert B. Parkers Jesse Stone series. Heretical though it may be, I think Coleman has not only captured Parkers worldview and terse rhythms but has given that series a much needed boost by complicating Stones (already neurotic) character and coming up with more intricate cases for him to solve.

[Looking back at the best thrillers and mysteries of 2015]

Coleman is a busy guy, but like many of the best mystery and suspense writers (Grisham, Scottoline, Silva, Connelly, to name but a few) he seems to thrive on deadlines rather than downtime. Which leads us to his superb new novel, Where It Hurts, the first in what promises to be another standout series.

Where It Hurts sticks close to the hard-boiled formula, yet in Colemans hands, all the standard elements seem as radiant and new as a freshly peroxided blonde. The main character, Gus Murphy, is yet another middle-aged ex-cop whos been chewed up and spat out by life. When his teenage son dies suddenly, Guss marriage falls apart and he sinks into depression. Seeking numbness as a survival strategy, Gus lands a job at the Paragon Hotel (a paragon of nothing so much as proximity, proximity to Long Island MacArthur Airport) where, in exchange for a paycheck and a room, he drives the courtesy van and works security at the dreary joint. The Paragon wasnt the kind of place with bridal or presidential suites. It wasnt the kind of place with suites at all, Gus says. No one came here to be pampered or to have free wine at five or complimentary continental breakfast in the morning. People came here to leave.

Author Reed Farrel Coleman (Adam Martin)

Perhaps not since F. Scott Fitzgerald surveyed the Valley of Ashes has a writer so evocatively nailed the peculiar deadness of certain stretches of Long Island that fortunate commuters pass through on the way to better places.

Early one morning, Gus is roused from his room at the Paragon by a phone call from the lobby: A man is waiting for him in the hotels airplane-themed Runway coffee shop. The mystery caller turns out to be Tommy Delcamino, Tommy D.  a small-time drug dealer and thief whom Gus, in his days on the force, arrested many times. A few months earlier, Tommys son, T.J., was murdered  his body burned and then dumped in a garbage-strewn vacant lot. In their meeting, Tommy D. offers Gus a roll of cash to ask around and find out why T.J.s murder is such low priority for the police.

Gus responds by exploding in white-hot rage. He suspects Tommy D. of trying to manipulate him because theyre both grieving fathers. But, as days pass, Gus finds that he cant forget the image of Tommy Ds wrecked face  a mirror image of his own. Soon enough, Gus is driving all over the Island, seeking out cops and criminals who might know something about T.J.s murder. Among other Long Island waste places, Gus snoops around a salvage yard run by the mob, a second-rate catering hall done up to resemble a Tuscan villa, and a losers bar presided over by a bartender covered with so many tattoos, he looked like a 70s subway car. Along the way, Gus not only stirs up more violence, but also stirs himself back to life.

Where It Hurts is one of those evocative mysteries that readers will remember as much for its charged sense of place as for any of its other considerable virtues. The apparently tireless Coleman  who himself lives on Long Island  draws on loads of flashy local color. After all, as Gus tells us: Outsiders dont get Long Island, most New Yorkers dont understand it. They cant see past the beaches and the sound, the Hamptons and the Gold Coast, the country clubs and the marinas. . . . What off-islanders see is the 24-karat gilding along the edges where the money flows, not the fools gold in the middle.

Maureen Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is book critic for the NPR program Fresh Air.
(All times Eastern).

Kung Fu Panda actor Jack Black narrates the two-hour special Panda Republic (Animal Planet at 8 p.m.), which highlights the issues facing giant pandas worldwide and two Chinese centers dedicated to protecting the species.

On New Girl (Fox at 8), Nick lists the loft on Airbnb to help pay for Schmidts upcoming bachelor party, while Jess is sequestered at jury duty (read: no Zooey Deschanel in this weeks episode). Fred Armisen guest-stars.

Peggys investigation into Zero Matter puts her at odds with her superiors on Marvels Agent Carter (ABC at 9).

Amy and Jake take a cruise on Brooklyn Nine Nine (Fox at 9), but their perfect vacation takes an unexpected turn when they discover that an old nemesis is on board the same ship.

The documentary American Experience: The Mine Wars (WETA at 9) explores the history of coal miner labor protests at the beginning of the 20th century.

Eobard Thawne (perhaps better known as Reverse Flash) returns on The Flash (CW at 8), to the surprise of Barry and the team.

On Pretty Little Liars (Freeform at 8), the Liars once again find themselves at the center of an investigation by the Rosewood police department. Spencer, desperate to protect her mothers campaign, asks Lucas for help in crafting an alibi. Meanwhile, Emily finally reveals whats happened to her over the past five years, and Aria tries to keep her boss interested in Ezras second novel.

[Read: PLL recaps]

The drama Outsiders (WGN America at 9) follows a tight-knit Appalachian clan fighting to defend their off-the-grid way of life from the town below their rugged mountaintop.

A still-feuding Dean and Stewart find themselves on opposing sides of a divorce case on The Grinder (Fox at 9:30). At home, Deans absence has an effect on Lizzie and Ethan.

Celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels has a rough few days on Just Jillian (E! at 10) when a family emergency distracts her from work. After multiple mistakes, Jillian suspects her assistant might be in over her head.

Actors Laurence Fishburne and Sarah Paulson will be on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS at 11:35). Woke performs.

Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at 11:35) hosts actors Jack Black and Lauren Cohan. Lanita Smith is the musical guest.

Actor Josh Brolin and SNLs Kate McKinnon stop by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC at 11:35), along with musical guest Billy Ocean.
Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Sunday urged the citizens to give a chance to the TRS contesting the GHMC polls for the first time, so that it would be able to speed up development of the city that was thoroughly neglected by the previous TD and Congress governments.

Addressing campaign meetings for his party candidates in Vivekanand Nagar Colony, Moosapet and Ayyappa Society Colony, Rama Rao refuted allegations by the Congress and TD-BJP parties against vacillation by TRS government in the matter of city development in the last 19 months of its rule.

How could it be possible for a government to set right in 19 months the things that were messed up for the past six decades, he asked.

TRS cannot be blamed for everything. If at all we have to address all issues afresh, yes, I am asking the Opposition, what have you done for the past six decades? Why have you suffocated the city by failing to implement promised projects, Mr Rama Rao asked.

The IT minister told the people that a vote for the Opposition would be a waste since those parties would not be in a position to take up any development in the city.

Rama Rao said that under Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao's

initiatives, the government took up several development projects to

change the face of the historic city.

The people of the city had earlier given power to Telugu Desam, BJP and Congress, and they held the reins for several years.Now, they should give a chance to TRS to rule the city.
MARYLAND

Man, 24, is arrested

in fatal stabbing

A Hyattsville man has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of another Hyattsville man, authorities said.

Gregorio Davidson, 24, was charged with first- and second-degree murder in the slaying of Kendal Joseph, 27, of Hyattsville, Prince Georges County police said Monday.

One man was shot and three men were injured in an incident about 4:30 p.m. Friday in the 4900 block of Whitfield Chapel Road, police said. All were taken to hospitals; Joseph was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Davidson and Joseph had an argument, which led to the stabbing, police said. No further details were available.

Davidson is hospitalized and in the custody of the county Department of Corrections.

 Lynh Bui

Five are injured

in Pr. Georges fire

Five people suffered minor injuries in an early-morning house fire Monday in Prince Georges County, rescuers said.

The injured were taken to a hospital. Few details were immediately available.

The fire broke out in a home in the 6900 block of 23rd Place in Chillum. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Authorities said five people were in the home at the time of the fire. All had injuries that were not life-threatening, officials said. One of those injured was an infant, fire officials said.

Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince Georges County Fire/EMS Department, said the home had no working smoke alarms.

The damage is estimated at $100,000.

 Dana Hedgpeth

Virginia

Passenger robbed in high-rise elevator

As a way of avoiding crime, citizens are advised to be aware of their surroundings. But it was not clear how awareness might have prevented a robbery in Alexandria on Monday night.

The robbery occurred in an elevator in a high-rise apartment building in the 5800 block of Quantrell Avenue, Alexandria police said.

Four people snatched the victims cellphone and apparently fled the elevator, police said. Police were investigating the incident. The building is near the citys western edge.

 Martin Weil
The District

Suspect is arrested

in fatal stabbing

D.C. police have arrested a suspect in connection with a fatal stabbing that occurred Saturday morning in Southeast Washington, according to a department statement.

Tammy Lawrence, 41, of Southeast, was arrested several hours after the stabbing and was charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police identified the victim as Ricardo Dasilva, 30, of Southeast.

D.C. police said the stabbing occurred about 8 a.m. Saturday inside a residence in the 2800 block of Douglass Place SE. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene. It was the Districts sixth homicide of 2016.

 Peter Hermann

Masked gunman

shoots man in park

A man was shot shortly before noon on Sunday near Sherman Circle Park in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police.

The victim was reported to be conscious and breathing and was taken to a hospital, said Officer Sean Hickman, a police spokesman.

Police said the shooting occurred on the street about 11:45 a.m. in the 4700 block of Kansas Avenue NW, just south of the Brightwood neighborhood. Police said they do not yet know a motive.

A police official said investigators were looking for two people, both wearing ski masks.

VIRGINIA

Case is settled on

mortgage securities

A group of 11 banks agreed to pay more than $63 million to settle allegations that they misled the commonwealth of Virginia and its retirement system about residential mortgage-backed securities, Attorney General Mark R. Herring said Friday.

The banks, which include two Bank of America units, Morgan Stanley and a unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, defrauded the states retirement fund by selling it shoddy mortgage bonds in the run-up to the financial crisis, Virginias attorney general said in a 2014 lawsuit.

None of banks admitted liability in the settlement, Herring said.

The $63 million pact is the largest non-health-care-related sum obtained in a suit brought under a Virginia law aimed at curbing fraud against the commonwealths taxpayers, Herring said in a statement.

In the lawsuit, Herring said an analysis showed nearly 40 percent of the mortgages that backed 220 securities purchased by Virginias retirement fund were fraudulently represented as posing a lower risk of default than they actually did.

 Associated Press

House in Loudoun

is destroyed by fire

A large house on an unplowed road in Loudoun County was destroyed by fire Sunday, authorities said. No one was injured.

The 5,000-square-foot house was in the Waterford area in a rural subdivision not connected to a municipal water supply, said Laura Rinehart, a county fire department spokeswoman.

She said an automatic alarm alerted firefighters about noon to the fire in the 41000 block of Cotter Court. The first floor was in flames when they arrived and the blaze spread rapidly, Rinehart said.

She said the blaze presented a major challenge, a result of road conditions and a need to stretch hoses more than 800 feet to reach the house. The structure was about 10 miles north of Leesburg. The specific extent to which the snow contributed to the damage was not clear.

Two adults and two children were displaced by the blaze, Rinehart said.

She said the cause was determined to be accidental.

 Martin Weil

THE REGION

Gas prices down, still above U.S. average

AAA Mid-Atlantic said Sunday in a statement that the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in the Washington area is $1.87, down from $1.89 a week ago. The price is 4 cents above the national average of $1.83. The price is 27 cents lower than this time a year ago, when the price was $2.14.

The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in the District of Columbia alone is $2.06, down a penny from a week ago.

 Associated Press
Gonnie Jordan, 6, gets a free lunch at Bell Multicultural High School in Washingtons Columbia Heights neighborhood Monday. D.C. Public Schools provided free emergency breakfast and lunches at 10 schools across the city. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

The Jordan family  two parents and five children ages 3,6,8,9 and 10  streamed into the cafeteria at the Columbia Heights Education Campus and made a beeline for the chicken nuggets sitting under heat lamps.

This is good, said Gonnie Jordan, 6, who gave two thumbs up between bites of nuggets, a biscuit, corn and broccoli. His wide grin revealed a missing lower tooth.

District of Columbia Public Schools were officially closed on Monday in the wake of the weekends blizzard, but the cafeterias in 10 schools around the city were open for business, ready to feed breakfast and lunch to any hungry child.

DCPS opens food centers in schools during the summer to help children who rely on schools for federally subsidized meals, but Monday marked the first time the school district offered free meals during a weather-related closure. School officials and teachers in neighboring school districts were similarly concerned about what the snow days would mean for students from low-income families, but none of them offer a similar program.

The Loudoun County school district regularly distributes bags of food to children from qualifying families on Fridays to ensure children have enough to eat over the weekend; spokesman Wayde Byard said some schools distributed the food Thursday ahead of the blizzard.

[Expecting to enjoy a lazy snow day? Teachers urge parents, students to think again.]

Montgomery and Prince Georges schools will be closed again Tuesday and Arlington schools will remain shuttered through at least Wednesday while crews clear as much as two feet of snow from area roads. D.C. schools also will be closed Tuesday; officials say they plan to reopen the meal centers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

[See weather closures in the D.C. area for Tuesday, Jan. 26]

It comes in handy, said Rahnell Jordan, 32, whose family is homeless and has been placed temporarily in a Silver Spring hotel equipped with a small refrigerator and microwave but no stove or oven. Since the blizzard hit, the family has been subsisting on food from the nearby 7-Eleven, he said: Mostly noodles.

Jordan learned about the DCPS feeding centers on television Monday morning. He and his wife, Crystal, bundled up their five children and took Metro to Columbia Heights. The children usually eat free breakfast and lunch at their D.C. elementary school.

Both parents work; he in the kitchen at an elementary school in Prince Georges County and she in the kitchen at the National Zoo.

We know that many of our families are heavily reliant on us to provide adequate nutrition for their kids, said Nathaniel Beers, chief operating officer at DCPS, where an estimated 75 percent to 80 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals.

As school and city officials were contemplating school closures for Monday, they realized students would be without school-provided meals for four days in a row, since school had been canceled Friday.

In a matter of hours, they pulled together a plan to open 10 schools in neighborhoods with high need, and which students and staff could reach with minimal difficulty, Beers said.

An estimated 502 breakfasts and lunches were served in the 10 schools, he said. Volume ranged from 20 meals at Brookland Middle School to 168 meals served at Anacostia High School.

At Columbia Heights Education Campus, three breakfasts and 42 lunches were served to about a dozen students along with several homeless people, a man from Anacostia who had traveled with a shovel to look for impromptu shoveling jobs in Columbia Heights, and some school employees. Volunteers from the neighborhood, who showed up to help serve the meals, outnumbered diners.

I wonder if the word just hasnt gotten out, said Maria Tukeva, the schools principal. I think word of mouth would definitely get more people in here.

A 15-year-old sophomore at Columbia Heights Education Campus came in for lunch after his teacher sent him a text to let him know about the free meals. The student said there was no food in the nearby apartment he shares with his mother and that since the storm, she has not been able to get to work cleaning offices and has not been earning money.

We have to wait a few days until my mother gets some money and then she can buy groceries, said the student, who didnt know what he would eat for dinner.

After an hour or so, the Jordan family packed up boxes of extra chicken nuggets to take back to their hotel, thanked the staff and headed back outside to the slushy sidewalk.

Beers said officials were learning from Mondays experiment and will discuss ways to improve , including better communication to the public and whether there is a more effective way to deliver meals, such as giving students bags of food to take home ahead of weather that probably will shutter schools.

We got people onsite to make meals and did something important for the community and the city and for the kids that we were able to serve, he said. We need to think about whether or not this is the best way to get food out during this kind of storm or whether there is a better mechanism.

The feeding centers that will be open are:

Anacostia High School, 1601 16th Street, SE

Ballou High School, 3401 4th Street, SE

Brookland Middle School, 1150 Michigan Avenue, NE

Cardozo Education Campus, 1200 Clifton Street, NW

Columbia Heights Education Campus, 3101 16th Street, NW

Coolidge High School, 6315, 5th Street, NW

Eastern High School, 1700 East Capital Street, NE

Jefferson Middle School Academy, 801 7th Street, SW

McKinley Technology High School, 151 T Street, NE

H.D. Woodson High School, 540 55th Street, NE

Moriah Balingit and Donna St. George contributed to this report.
Jason Kamras, a previous National Teacher of the Year, designed the Districts teacher evaluation system and is the school systems chief of human capital. (Ben Tankersley)

Education experts have long viewed teacher turnover as a negative factor that erodes student achievement and contributes to an unstable school environment. But a new study of IMPACT  the controversial D.C. Public Schools teacher evaluation system that has been accused of contributing to the citys higher-than-average turnover  suggests that not all turnover is created equal.

The departure of teachers who score poorly on IMPACT is actually a good thing because student scores on math and reading tests tend to improve substantially after such teachers depart, according to a working paper to be published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In contrast, student scores tend to drop slightly when high-performing teachers leave their assignment for another school or district, presumably because it is difficult to find replacements who are as effective.

On the whole, because of the strong positive effect of exiting low-performing teachers, turnover under IMPACT led to an improvement in average student achievement, the study found.

Jason Kamras, chief of human capital for D.C. Public Schools, said the findings are exciting because they are the first independent evidence that our districtwide effort to increase teacher quality has led to big increases in student learning when weak teachers leave.

To see that effect  particularly to see it play out in high-poverty schools, where its needed the most  I think its really powerful, Kamras said.

Still, the results do not fit neatly into any of education reforms warring camps.

The study lends credence to the idea that using student test scores to identify and remove poor teachers, as IMPACT does, is an effective strategy for improving the quality of the teaching force. But the results also bolster critic complaints that  to the extent that IMPACT creates a stressful working environment that drives good teachers away  it could undermine the goal of improving teacher quality.

The high stakes associated with IMPACT have been controversial, both within the District of Columbia, as well as in broader discussions of education policy, the four authors, researchers at the University of Virginia and Stanford, wrote. There are elements of both sides of this debate in our estimates.

[IMPACT is shaping D.C. schools workforce, study finds]

The study examined the departures of teachers after the 2009-2010 through 2011-2012 school years, the first three years that IMPACT was in use.

Introduced in 2009 by then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee, IMPACT was among the first evaluation systems in the nation to judge teachers in part according to their students progress on tests. It also was one of the first, and is still one of the few, to reward teachers who do well (with substantial bonuses) and punish those who do poorly (with termination or the threat of it).

D.C. Public Schools officials, along with some education observers nationally, credit that approach with helping city schools make relatively rapid progress on national math and reading exams, as compared with other big cities.

But other education experts, and some D.C. teachers, say IMPACT unfairly penalizes teachers who work in the most challenging high-poverty schools. And they say hooking a teachers pay and livelihood to student test scores and surprise classroom observations can make the job so stressful and unpleasant that excellent teachers decide to leave.

We must be careful that IMPACT is not forcing good teachers out of our lowest-performing schools, Michelle Lee, a math teacher at Cardozo Education Campus, told D.C. Council members in December 2013, not long after the time period examined by the new study. The stress and paranoia I feel on a daily basis . . . is frankly too much.

[D.C. teachers offer wide range of views on city policies]

DCPS surveys of exiting high performers show that they most often leave for personal reasons, Kamras said, such as a spouse getting a new job or a family member falling ill. IMPACT isnt even among the top 10 reasons they depart, he said.

The departure of teachers who were rated ineffective or minimally effective on IMPACT had a significant positive effect on student achievement, according to the study, equivalent to an additional one-third to two-thirds of a year of student learning in math and somewhat less in reading.

Thats four months of learning in reading and math, Kamras said. There are few educational interventions that have had that kind of impact on student learning.

The effect of losing effective and highly effective teachers was negative but far less dramatic. Researchers said it was not statistically significant. But these high performers comprised nearly two-thirds of all D.C. teachers who departed in any given year: 13 percent of them left each year, on average.

Low-performing teachers in the District were three times more likely to leave: 46 percent left in any given year.

Losing 13 percent of the best teachers each year places strong demands on teacher recruitment to prevent a reduction in achievement in those classrooms, the study said. However, exiting 46 percent of low-performing teachers creates substantial opportunity to improve achievement in the classrooms of low-performing teachers.

The Districts overall teacher turnover during the period of study was 18 percent, higher than the average of 13 percent in large urban school districts, according to another recent study.

Since the period of the study, the D.C. school system has tried to reduce the stress that IMPACT causes, giving less weight to test scores and cutting back on classroom observations of highly rated teachers.
Polar explorer Donald B. MacMillan, dressed in the furs and animals skins that kept him warm in the Arctic. ( Bain Collection/ Courtesy of Library of Congress)

The weekend blizzard transformed Washington into a harsh, frozen wasteland with endless vistas of snow and ice. Robert Peary would have felt right at home.

Peary was, of course, the famed Arctic explorer who, when he wasnt gallivanting around, looking for the North Pole, lived in Washington. He moved here after college to work at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey before joining the Navy. His wife, Josephine Diebitsch, worked at the Smithsonian as a linguist. His assistant, Matthew Hensen, was from Charles County, Md.

Peary may have been the most famous American to be gripped by polar fever, but he was hardly alone. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it seemed as though you couldnt swing a dead arctic fox without hitting some ruddy-skinned adventurer smelling of pemmican and seal blubber. This was especially true in Washington. The capitals hotels were full of polar explorers who had traveled here to give lectures or beg money from the government or from private sources such as the National Geographic Society.

In 1901, a Washington Post reporter sat down for lunch at the Shoreham Hotel with Evelyn B. Baldwin, who was planning to sail north soon from Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean in search of the pole. Just try a pinch of this, Baldwin said as he proffered the contents of a small envelope holding short lengths of what looked like white string.

Spaghetti? the reporter asked.

In 1897 a play called Under the Polar Star  an attempt to capitalize on Arctic mania  came to Washington. The Post panned it, calling it an unintentional comedy. (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

Oh, no, the explorer responded. It is desiccated potatoes, with which I am experimenting. . . . These are some belated samples that were sent me. I think the desiccated potatoes will make very valuable food in the arctic regions, and shall carry a lot of them with me.

The Post writer found them not disagreeable to taste.

A year later, The Post interviewed Rear Adm. George W. Melville, a survivor of the ill-fated Jeannette polar expedition of 1879. What were Baldwins odds? Melville said he had no idea, remarking that the primary challenge of any polar expedition was keeping itself supplied along the way.

The vast ice sheet covering the pole was in constant motion, Melville said, and a cache of provisions left on the ice would, in a weeks time, be drifted a hundred miles distant from the point where the explorer left it.

Something to keep in mind if your street has yet to be plowed.

The National Geographic sponsored most of the talks, by explorers who are still relatively familiar names (Roald Amundsen) and those who arent (Anthony Fiala, Donald B. MacMillan, Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink).

In 1899, society members filled First Congregational Church of Washington to hear Walter Wellman describe his upcoming expedition. Wellman was a journalist who wrote up his exploits for the Chicago Herald. He explained that he would be looking for S.A. Andree, the Swedish explorer who had gone missing in 1897 trying to pilot a balloon over the North Pole. (Arctic explorers spent much of their time searching for previous arctic explorers, no doubt with the expectation that someone might soon be searching for them.)

At the time, Peary was on one of his expeditions, though Wellman didnt rate his chances very highly. After all, Peary had lost seven toes to frostbite on a previous expedition, and though he is known to be a resolute man, it is questioned by all men of arctic experience if it is possible for him, thus handicapped, to endure the tortures of a severe sledging campaign.

There was a lot of trash talk in the polar field.

In February 1896, Prof. Henry A. Hazen of the U.S. Weather Bureau gave a lecture at Western Presbyterian Church in the District, titled Trip to the North Pole. Hazen hadnt been there himself  no one had yet  but he sketched the history of polar exploration and pointed out a member of the audience: Gen. Adolphus Greely.

Fifteen years earlier, Greely had led 25 men to the arctic. Only seven returned. There were rumors of cannibalism.

A few months after Hazens lecture, Greely addressed the National Geographic Society. He focused on the recent voyage of Fritdjof Nansen, a hardy Norwegian.

Two years later, in 1898, it was Nansens turn to lecture in Washington. At the Convention Hall, he gave a talk titled First Crossing of Greenland and Eskimo Life. A reporter from The Post noted: He spoke to a large audience, who were attentive, although the hall was very chilly and many persons had to leave on this account before the lecture was finished.

You have to wonder if Nansen had ordered the temperature turned down to give the audience a taste of life in the Arctic Circle.

In the afternoon, Nansen lectured at the Grand Opera House, 15th and E streets NW.

The audience was mesmerized. The Post reported: His word pictures of the long days and nights in the arctic circle, the beauty of the sky and heavenly bodies, and the phenomenon of the aurora borealis, are wonderfully graphic and pleasing, carrying his hearers with him, until one can almost imagine himself in the silent north, and see the fiery serpent of the northern lights, with its flashing colors of ruby, gold, and silver, until it dies out and leaves the arctic moon in its full glory shining upon the snowy surface and transforming the scene into a picture from dreamland.

Close your eyes and imagine that as you scrape the ice off your windshield.

Twitter: @johnkelly

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
BLOOD DONATIONS

BLOOD DRIVES Saturday 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Loudoun County Rescue Company 13, 143 Catoctin Cir., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Feb. 5, 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Loudoun County Fire and Rescue Department, 801 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Feb. 10, 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Douglass School, 401 E. Market St., Leesburg, 866-256-6372; Feb. 8, 2-7:30 p.m., Village at Leesburg, 1603 Village Market Blvd., Suite 100, Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Feb. 13, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Leesburg Public Safety Center, 65 Plaza St., Leesburg, 800-733-2767; Feb. 11, 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Stone Bridge High School gym, 43100 Hay Rd., Ashburn, 866-256-6372.

INOVA BLOOD DONOR CENTER Mondays noon-8 p.m., Tuesdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Fridays 6 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays noon-4 p.m. Dulles Town Center, 45745 Nokes Blvd., Sterling. 866-256-6372 or inova.org/donateblood.

FIRST AID

FIRST AID/ADULT, INFANT AND CHILD CPR/AED Fauquier Hospital Medical Office Building, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. Call for schedule. Registration required.

HEARING

DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTER Technical assistance through the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and presentations to businesses, civic groups and schools. Third Tuesdays 2-5 p.m., Workplace, 205 Keith St., Warrenton. Call for an appointment, 800-648-6324; TDD, 540-373-5890. Free.

FREE HEARING TESTS Age 18 and older. Mondays-Thursdays 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. 703-858-7620. Registration required.

HEARING LOSS, TINNITUS AND MENIERES SYNDROME SUPPORT For all ages, including parents of children with hearing loss. First Fridays 2 p.m., Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2906.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING Age 18 and older, second Tuesdays 10 a.m., Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400.

HEARING LOSS OUTREACH Free referrals. Fourth Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Loudoun County Workforce Center, 102 Heritage Way, Leesburg; third Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Free appointments: 703-430-2906 or nvrcloudoun@aol.com.

MENTAL HEALTH

COUNSELING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE SURVIVORS Provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice. 703-771-9020.

CRISISLINK Suicide and crisis intervention. The organization provides community education, has a volunteer crisis response team and offers CareRing, a daily telephone outreach program for the elderly and disabled. 703-527-6016, volunteer@crisislink.org or crisislink.org.

PIEDMONT CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS Serves Fauquier, Orange, Madison and Rappahannock counties. Support group, education classes and events for people living with mental illness, plus their family members. First Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. Fauquier Hospital, 500 Hospital Dr., Sycamore Room A, Warrenton. 571-426-8213.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS A support group, classes and programs for people living with mental illness and their family members. For information, go to naminorthernvirginia.org.

PREGNANCY, PARENTING

ADOPTIVE FAMILY PRESERVATION Adoptive families discuss common experiences; registration required. Third Tuesdays 12:30-2 p.m. Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd. 703-941-9008, Ext. 23, or email jmellerio@umfs.org.

BIRTHRIGHT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY Free pregnancy tests, baby clothing, transportation and support throughout pregnancy, 823 S. King St., Leesburg. 703-777-7272.

BOND BETWEEN US Nonprofit group offers support to birth parents when children have been placed for adoption. Fourth Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 703-771-7844.

BREAST-FEEDING SUPPORT Thursdays 9:30-10:30 a.m., Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588.

DAD SUPPORT New and expectant fathers share ideas. First Tuesdays 7 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6360.

FOR THE CHILDRENS SAKE A group for separating or divorcing parents to share advice. Four-hour session weekly. Information: 703-391-8599 or fitsfoundation.org.

LA LECHE LEAGUE Mother-to-mother support and breast-feeding information. 10 a.m. second Wednesdays in Warrenton, 540-351-6103. Third Fridays 10:15-11:45 a.m., call for location, 703-444-7386. Fourth Mondays 10 a.m. Healthworks of Northern Virginia, 163 Fort Evans Rd., Leesburg, 703-728-9282; Second Fridays 10:15 a.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., 703-431-3852; Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Panera Bread, 43670 Greenway Corp. Dr., Ashburn, email lllashburn@gmail.com. Third Fridays 10:15 a.m., Christ the Redeemer Church, 46833 Harry F. Byrd. Hwy., Sterling, 540-338-4637.

LOUDOUN FATHERHOOD PROGRAM Fathers discuss the joys and challenges of being a parent. Meets every other Saturday for two hours for four months; sponsored by Northern Virginia Family Service. 571-748-2796. Free.

LOUDOUN NURTURING PARENTING PROGRAM Positive parenting techniques; parents and children attend together. Registration required. 703-771-3973, Ext. 27 or email nurturingprogram@lcsj.org . Free.

MOTHERNET/HEALTHY FAMILIES LOUDOUN Program links first-time parents with medical, social and educational resources to give children a socially and physically healthy start in life. Family support workers meet with participants in homes. English-Spanish translation provided. 703-444-4477, Ext. 217, or inmed.org .

NEW MOTHERS SUPPORT Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 a.m. Inova Loudoun Medical Pavilion, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg, main entrance. Babies welcome. 703-858-6360.

YOUNG PARENT SERVICES Support for teenage parents. Loudoun County Department of Family Social Services, 52 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg. Call for times. 703-771-5375.

ONLINE CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION PROGRAM Inova Loudoun Hospitals Web-based program uses animation, videos and interactive activities to guide users through the basics of childbirth, breast-feeding and caring for newborns. 703-858-6360. thebirthinginn.org/classes.

PARENTING ALONE GROUP For parents of school-age children who have lost a spouse or partner to cancer. Second Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-698-2536 or email jennifer.eckert@inova.org .

PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH SUPPORT Childbirth Solutions Resource Center, 8393 W. Main St., Marshall. 571-344-0438.

SENIORS

EXERCISE EQUIPMENT Weights, treadmills, bikes and a cardio-glide. Instruction provided. Age 55 and older. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

EYE CARE LensCrafters staff members will clean glasses and make minor repairs. Second Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2397. Free.

FITNESS FOR PEOPLE 55 AND OLDER Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 1-1:45 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. $36, 12-visit card.

INOVA LOUDOUN MOBILE VAN Blood pressure checks. Second and fourth Tuesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling, 571-258-3280; first Wednesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

LAUGHING YOGA FOR SENIORS Improve flexibility and balance. Thursdays 9:30-10 :30 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

LOUDOUN ADULT DAY CENTERS For seniors with physical limitations or memory loss, a safe and social environment, therapeutic activities, individualized care and respite for caregivers. Limited transportation. Sliding-scale fees. Weekdays in Leesburg, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 703-771-5334; Purcellville, 571-258-3402; and Ashburn-Sterling, 571-258-3232.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Senior Center at Cascades. First and third Wednesdays 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Sign up in the Leesburg Senior Center lobby. Second and fourth Thursdays 11 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Carver Center. First and third Mondays, 12:30-5 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 703-737-8741. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS: For people 55 and older who are learning Zumba for the first time, or those who prefer a lower-impact version. The fitness program combines Latin and international music with dance.Thursdays 11 a.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. $12.

TAI CHI Stretching and strengthening movements. Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS Age 55 and older. Wear rubber-soled shoes and comfortable clothing; bring water and a towel. Tuesdays 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 p.m. Senior Center of Leesburg, 102 North St. NW, Leesburg. 703-737-8039. $24 per month.

SUPPORT GROUPS

AL-ANON SERVICE CENTER OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA A volunteer is available 24 hours with information for spouses, family members and friends of problem drinkers. 703-534-4357 or 877-339-8350. Mondays 8 p.m. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 125 W. Washington St., Middleburg, 540-554-2747; Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 877-339-8350; Fridays 8:30 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, 6507 Main St., The Plains, 800-344-2666; Tuesdays 12:15 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, Route 29 N., 540-347-7448; Tuesdays 7 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 p.m. Warrenton Presbyterian Church, 91 Main St., 800-344-2666.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Various meeting times and locations in Loudoun County. 800-208-8649 or 703-876-6166. nvintergroup.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT For those who care for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Fourth Wednesdays 4-5:30 p.m. The Villa at Suffield Meadows, 6735 Suffield Lane, Warrenton. 540-316-3800.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Tuesdays 10-11 a.m. Spring Arbor Assisted Living, 237 Fairview St. NW, Leesburg. 540-338-6520.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVERS SUPPORT For those caring for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Second Mondays 7-8:30 p.m. Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-430-9229. galileeumc.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT Emotional, educational and social support for family members and friends of people with the disease. Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. Call 703-771-5407 or email lesley.katz@loudoun.gov.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Wednesdays 4 p.m. Leesburg Adult Day Center, 16501 Meadowview Ct., Leesburg. 703-771-5334.

TALK ABOUT CURING AUTISM A nonprofit organization educating and supporting families affected by autism. tacanow.org .

BEREAVED PARENT SUPPORT One-on-one counseling is available. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

AUTOIMMUNE SUPPORT Last Thursdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jackson Building, 209 Gibson St., Leesburg. Email autoimmunesupport@hotmail.com .

BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT For those experiencing loss because of the death of a loved one. Age 18 and older. Third Mondays 1 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-957-1800.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT Fourth Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Tower, Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-0588.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those with new diagnoses or starting treatment. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those who have finished treatment, have had a recurrence or metastatic breast cancer. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Free.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT ASSISTANCE FUND Loudoun County residents who have received a diagnosis or have undergone treatment in the past 12 months are eligible to apply for financial assistance. Areas included are wigs, bras, puffs and prostheses, mammograms and medical bills, food and help with utilities, rent or mortgage, and transportation costs. The Pink Assistance Fund has been established by the Loudoun Breast Health Network. lbhn.org.

CANCER SUPPORT Oncology nurses, social workers and spiritual care providers offer education and support to patients, families and caregivers. Second Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2273.

CANCER SUPPORT For patients, family members and friends. Second Thursdays 7 p.m. Ashburn Presbyterian Church, Room 202, 20962 Ashburn Rd. 703-729-2012. ashburnpresbyterian.org.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT GROUP Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. 703-771-5407. alz.org/nca.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT AND RESOURCE GROUP Wednesdays 10:30 a.m.-noon (no meeting first Wednesdays), Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

CARING FOR AGING PARENTS Support group. Confidential. Fourth Wednesdays 7:30 p.m., Family Focus Counseling Service, 20-B John Marshall St., Warrenton. 540-349-4537.

CHADD PARENTS SUPPORT For parents of children with ADD/ADHD. Fourth Sundays 3 p.m. KinderCare, 44051 Ashburn Village Shopping Plaza. chadd.nova loudoun@gmail. com .

CHRONIC ILLNESS SUPPORT Tuesdays 10:30-11:30 a.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814 or scsm.tv.

COFFEE AND CONVERSATION: Support for those discouraged because of illness, bereavement, caregiving or a loved one in the military. Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS For parents who have experienced the death of a child. First Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg. 540-882-9707.

CREATING AND CONNECTING Two-hour art therapy and relaxation workshop for cancer patients. Every other month, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-858-8850.

DEPRESSION BIPOLAR SUPPORT ALLIANCE OF WESTERN LOUDOUN Saturdays 3 p.m. Purcellville Library, 220 E. Main St., Carruthers Room. Call 703-431-7160 or email kathy@dbsanca.org.

DROP-IN GRIEF SUPPORT For those coping with a death. Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. St. Davids Episcopal Church, 43600 Russell Branch Pkwy., Ashburn. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-597-1781.

GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH AND PARENT SUPPORT A group in partnership with Metro DC PFLAG. Fourth Sundays 4-6 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Church, 22135 Davis Dr., Sterling . 703-328-6518.

GRIEFSHARE Open to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Tue sdays from 7-8:30 p.m. Purcellville Baptist Church, 601 Yaxley Dr., Purcellville. Call 540-338-0918 or email caring@purbap.org. Workbook, $15.

GRIEFSHARE Nondenominational seminar and support group. Tuesdays 7:30-9 p.m., and Wednesdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free.

GRIEF SUPPORT Sponsored by Hospice Support of Fauquier County. Individual counseling available. First and third Thursdays 3:30-5 p.m. Hospice Support Office, 42 N. Fifth St., Warrenton. Registration required. Call 540-347-5922 or email hospicesupport@verizon.net.

GRIEF SUPPORT Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon, Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

HOSPICE SUPPORT Free medical-equipment loan facility for Fauquier County residents. Especially needed are donations of wheelchairs, bedside commodes, rolling walkers, electric hospital beds, shower benches and chairs, adult diapers, lift chairs, Ensure and hospital bed mattresses. 540-347-5922.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL BETTER For women undergoing or emerging from cancer treatment. Every other month, 6:45 to 9 p.m. ,Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-776-2820. Free.

LOUDOUN CHADD SUPPORT Led by Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Leesburg Town Hall, lower-level conference room, 25 W. Market St. 703-669-2445.

LOUDOUN INTERGROUP OF OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS Fellowship and support. For locations and times, call 571-420-2012. oa.org.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Fourth Sundays 2-4 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Conference Room A and B, Leesburg. Go to natcaplyme.org or email loudounlymeadvocates@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com. Free.

MADD LOUDOUN VICTIM SUPPORT For those who have been affected by drunken driving. Third Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. 210 Wirt St., Leesburg. 540-338-6491.

MAN-TO-MAN CANCER SUPPORT Sponsored by Loudoun Cancer Care Center, for prostate cancer patients and their families. Second Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Call 703-858-8857 or email karen.archer@inova.org.

MENOPAUSE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 6:30-9 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (second floor, Patient Education Room). 703-858-8060.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Saturdays 10:30 a.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-2826.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Last Sundays 2-4 p.m. Cascades Library, 21030 Whitfield Pl., Potomac Falls. 703-771-4256.

NAR-ANON FAMILY SUPPORT For those affected by loved ones with addiction. Meaningful Mondays, 7-8 p.m., Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-203-9792; Wisdom Wednesdays 7-8 p.m., St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 37730 St. Francis Ct., Purcellville, 703-606-7125; Serenity Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Leesburg Presbyterian Church, 207 W. Market St., Leesburg, 703-606-7125.

PARKINSON'S SUPPORT Open to anyone with Parkinson's disease, family members and caregivers. First Tuesdays 1:30-3 p.m. Call for Ashburn location. 571-442-8851.

POST-PARTUM SUPPORT Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Cornwall Campus, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. 703-909-9877. Email lamckeough@gmail.com. Registration required.

REACH TO RECOVERY Home visit program for mastectomy and lumpectomy patients. Temporary prostheses, exercise instruction and encouragement. 703-938-5550.

SEXUAL ASSAULT AND INCEST SURVIVORS GROUP COUNSELING Services provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice and the Loudoun Abused Womens Shelter are free and confidential. 703-771-9020.

SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS EMPOWERMENT SUPPORT Sponsored by Sexual Assault Victims Volunteer Initiative. Child care available with 48-hours notice. Mondays; call for times and locations. 540-349-7720.

SPIRITUAL SUPPORT GROUP For cancer patients, family members and friends. Third Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8850.

STROKE SURVIVORS AND CAREGIVERS SUPPORT Second Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon, Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second floor, Patient Education Room. 703-858-6667 or robyn.thomson@inova.org.

SUICIDE COUNSELING Third Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Leesburg Town Office, Conference Room 2, lower level, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg. 703-587-1618 or survivorsofsuicidelossleesburg@gmail.com.

WOMENS SUPPORT Sponsored by Services to Abused Families. Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Confidential location. 540-825-8876.

WIDOW AND WIDOWER SUPPORT Third Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

WOMENS CANCER SUPPORT Woman to Woman, first Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Registration required. 703-858-8850.

MISCELLANEOUS

BRAIN TRAUMA SURVIVORS BROWN BAG LUNCH For survivors and caregivers, first Tuesdays, noon-1:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second-floor Patient Education Room. Call 703-737-3150 or email jberg@braininjurysvcs.org. Free.

CHILD DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENINGS For ages 2-5. Children may not be kindergarten-age-eligible. Sponsored by the Loudoun County public schools Child Find Center. 571-252 - 2180.

CHOLESTEROL SCREENINGS Weekdays 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Fauquier Health LIFE Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2640. Registration required. $35.

EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES Loudoun residents who are in need can receive a free three-day supply of groceries. Supplies are distributed Mondays through Saturdays by Loudoun Interfaith Relief. 703-777-5911. interfaithrelief.org.

FAUQUIER FREE WALK-IN MEDICAL CLINIC Patients must call Thursdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. to register for the clinic, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Patients are also seen by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fauquier and Rappahannock residents only. Bring proof of address for the first visit. Patients cannot have Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance. Information: 540-347-0394 Tuesdays or Thursdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

FAUQUIER HOSPITAL BISTRO SENIOR SUPPER CLUB Nutritious meals and fellowship for people 55 and older. Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro on the Hill, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $5.47.

GAMERS UNION FOR TEENS WITH ASPERGERS Youths 12 to 21 interact through gaming; their caregivers meet for networking. Second Tuesdays 6 p.m. Rust Library, 380 Old Waterford Rd., Leesburg. 703-777-0323. Free.

HEROES (Hometown Enabling Relationships, Opportunities and Empowerment through Support) is a program for military families. A trained volunteer provides support to military members and their families, from pre-deployment up to two years post-deployment. Assistance includes financial help, job placement, family care and mental health services. heroesca re.org or email caring@purbap.org .

INOVA LOUDOUN HOSPITAL MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES BLOOD PRESSURE SCREENINGS Monday 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Levis Hill House, 1000 W. Washington St., Middleburg; Tuesday 9 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling; Wednesday 10 a.m.-noon, Lansdowne Woods, 19375 Magnolia Grove Sq., Lansdowne; Thursday 10 a.m.-noon, Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. Information: 703-858-8818 or inova.org/mobilehealth. Free.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA ONG-TERM CARE OMBUDSMAN Call for help in resolving complaints related to long-term-care facilities. 703-324-5861.

MOTOR SKILL SCREENINGS Birth to 21 months. First Thursdays, Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. Call for an appointment. 703-858-7620. Free.

ROAD TO RECOVERY, for cancer patients who need rides to appointments. 410-781-6909. Email jen.burdette@cancer.org. Free.

SEVEN LOAVES FOOD PANTRY Individuals and families can receive a three-day supply of food, distributed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m.-noon. 540-687-3489 or sevenloavesmiddleburg.org.

TREE OF LIFE FOOD PANTRY Serving western Loudoun County. Food is delivered Wednesdays and Saturdays. 703-554-3595.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck

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Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar
Scholarships for students who live near Potomac Mills

Simon Youth Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that provides educational opportunities for at-risk high school students, is accepting applications for college scholarships.

Graduating seniors who live within 50 miles of Potomac Mills mall, a Simon property, may apply for up to $1,500 in scholarship money to attend a college, university, vocational or technical school. Recipients will be notified in May.

For information or to apply, visit syf.org/scholarships.

NOVEC taking applications for summer youth tour

Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative is accepting applications from high school and home-school students who receive electric service from NOVEC for the annual National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Youth Tour, scheduled for June 12 to 16. The deadline to apply is Feb. 24.

Five high school sophomore and junior students who are interested in government and history will be selected to join more than 1,500 students nationwide in the all-expense-paid tour. They will visit Capitol Hill, museums, memorials and historic landmarks.

In February 2017, the selected students will spend a day at the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond. They will meet with their local legislators and attend committee hearings and sessions in the House of Delegates and Senate.

Students will be chosen based on their grades, a written essay and a short interview.

For information or an application, visit novec.com/youthtour or email a request to youthtour@novec.com.

Tony Dawood is new utilities director for Manassas

Tony Dawood was recently named utilities director for Manassas. He will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the water, sewer, electric, customer service and utilities finance functions for the city.

Dawood, who has more than 30 years of experience working for public sector water and sewer utilities in Virginia and Florida, joined the city as deputy director of water and sewer in 2010. He has been the acting utilities director for several months.
ACTS food pantry needs volunteers to stock shelves, prepare food bags and make grocery store pickups either on a regular schedule (flexible) or on an on-call basis. To complete an online application, visit actspwc.org.

ACTS Helpline needs volunteers to answer the suicide-prevention hotline. 703-221-1144.

American Association for the Advancement of Science needs scientists, engineers, mathematicians and physicians to assist K-12 STEM teachers. Victor Crawford, 703-732-9004. vicris51@verizon.net.

American Cancer Societys Road to Recovery needs drivers to take patients to appointments. 410-781-6909. jen.burdette@cancer.org.

Beacon for Adult Literacy trains people to help adults with literacy and English-speaking skills. 703-368-7491. beaconliteracy.org.

BEAT Cancer Coalition needs drivers 55 and older to take patients to appointments. Retired and Senior Volunteer program, Colleen, 703-369-5292.

Birmingham Green needs volunteers who speak Vietnamese. 703-257-6252.

Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington-Manassas needs volunteers. bgcgw.org/prince-william.

Catholic Charities Hogar Immigrant Services needs teachers for its English as a Second Language and citizenship classes. Training provided. 571-208-1572. volunteer.hogar@ccda.net, hogarimmigrantservices.org.

ESL and Immigrant Ministries trains volunteers to teach English to adults. 703-841-0292. office@eslim.org, eslim.org.

Friends of Feral Cats of PWC needs volunteers and donations of cat food. Nancy, 571-719-0657.

Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind needs volunteers to raise and train puppies. 866-282-8046. guidedog.org.

Habitat for Humanity needs help with projects, ReStore and providing lunch to volunteers. 703-369-6708. volunteer@ habitatpwc.org.

Historic Dumfries needs docents for the Weems-Botts Museum to help with events and research projects, gather and transcribe local oral histories and other projects. 703-221-2218.

Keep Prince William Beautiful needs help with its storm drain program and educational outreach. 571-285-3772. kpwb.org.

Literacy Volunteers of Prince William needs adults to help adult students improve their literacy skills. Training provided. 703-670-5702. www.lvapw.org.

Mutt Love Rescue needs foster homes for rescued dogs. 703-577-0106. adopt@muttloverescue.org, muttloverescue.org.

Northern Virginia Family Service is seeking foster parents. 571-748-2500.

Prince William Area Free Clinic needs volunteers for the Unified Health Center. pwafc.org .

Prince William Cooperative Extension Program needs facilitators for the Parent Education Programs Systematic Training for Effective Parenting groups. Training provided. Janice Brody, 703-792-4678. jbrody@pwcgov.org.

Prince William County Historic Preservation Division needs tour guides and assistance with special events, educational programs and gardening. 703-792-4754. historicpreservation@pwcgov.org.

Prince William Health District needs community health worker volunteers from 8 a.m.-noon Tuesdays at the Manassas Park Community Center clinic. Candidates must complete a background check and have a valid drivers license. Training provided. 703-792-6755. valda.wisdombrown@vdh.virginia.gov.

Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition needs volunteers to help build and maintain trails in the county. pwtsc.org.

Project Mend-a-House needs help for home-safety repairs. 703-792-7663. kristen@pmahweb.org.

ReSET seeks volunteers to lead elementary and preschool students in science and math learning. John Meagher, 703-250-0236. reset@resetonline.org , www.resetonline.org .

SERVE needs drivers for the food distribution center. Jan Hawkins, 571-748-2621.

St. Paul United Methodist Church needs bus drivers Thursdays to transport people to and from a community dinner. Drivers must have a class C license withP endorsement. 703-494-2445.

The Wildlife Rescue League needs hotline volunteers, wildlife transporters and rehabilitators. Training provided. 703-391-8625. volcoord@wildliferescueleague.org.

 Compiled by Sarah Lane

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The Democratic pro-abortion rights group Emilys List is endorsing LuAnn Bennetts campaign for Congress against Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.).

Comstock was elected to her seat in 2014 by a wide margin, but Democrats hope that the presidential race will make her exurban Virginia district more competitive. Her opponent in that race, Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, focused heavily on womens issues. But his message was blunted after he told supporters Comstock had never held a real job, a comment she repeatedly criticized as sexist.

[A congresswoman already on the run]

Bennett, who runs a D.C.-based real estate business, is running for office for the first time.

LuAnn Bennett ... overcame tough challenges when she lost her husband to leukemia, leaving her a single mother of three young boys with a business to run, Emilys List President Stephanie Schriock said in a statement.

Bennett entered the race in December; by the end of the year she had raised $281,000 for her bid. The ex-wife of former Rep. James P. Moran (D) and herself a prominent political donor, she has longstanding ties to political networks. Emilys List can likely further expand her reach  the group bundled millions of dollars for candidates in 2014.

Comstock raised $527,000 in the last three months of the year.
Madurai: Clearing the air on speculation over who will be the Chief Minister in the event of DMK winning the election in 2016, party treasurer M.K. Stalin said that it would be none other than his dad M. Karunanidhi.

The first signature the DMK leader Karunanidhi would append as CM would be the Lokayukta bill to install corrupt free governance and transparency in the administration, said Stalin to roaring applause from DMK cadres.

Addressing the DMK state level advocate conference cum election fund contribution meeting at Madurai on Sunday, Stalin that there was wrong impression prevailing among the people that DMK havent taken steps to prevent corruption in the administration. You all need to understand that Kalaingar had introduced a law similar to Lokayukta way back in 1973 itself when he was CM to prevent all forms of corruption, he said adding that later it was rescinded by MGR.

Stalin also assured that Karunanidhi would introduce total prohibition and prevent the interference of politicians in the functioning of law and order machinery. We will ensure no political interference in functioning of police department, he said.

As more number of people and advocates would be visiting the police stations on a regular basis, Stalin assured that the party would take steps to bring in friendly atmosphere in the police stations.

Referring to huge pile up of cases in the Madras HC and subordinate court, Stalin assured that the DMK will take steps for the speedy disposal of the pending cases and for smooth functioning of judiciary in TN.
Republican leaders in Virginias General Assembly have been asked to wait a year before putting several proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot, amid concerns that the GOP-backed measures could lead to longer wait times at the polls during the 2016 presidential election.

Registrars from across the state have asked Republicans in both chambers for the delay. No decisions have been made, and some Republicans have raised questions about the feasibility of waiting a year. But a liberal group that opposes two of the proposed amendments  one would promote charter schools, the other aims to curb the power of unions  contends the issue is not just alive but being driven by politics instead of concern about voting lines.

The proposed amendments could have a better shot at passing in 2017, even with a race for governor that year, political observers note, given that Democratic turnout is expected to be higher in November.

Indeed, Democratic turnout tends to swell in presidential years: Thirty-nine percent of the Virginia voters who turned out for the past two presidential elections called themselves Democrats, while the figure for Republicans was 32 and 33 percent. But the electorates Republican-Democratic split was within five percentage points in the 2009 and 2013 governors races, according to exit polls conducted at the time for The Washington Post.

Anna Scholl, executive director of ProgressVA, criticized what she called Republicans absurd attempts to manipulate the amendment process for purely partisan political goals.

We see Republicans johnny-come-lately concern about voting lines for what it really is: crocodile tears, she said in an email to The Post. If Republicans were serious about making our elections more accessible and tackling long lines at the polls, they could have supported any one of the dozens of proposals to address the problem that weve brought before them in the past 3 years.

Matthew Moran, a spokesman for House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), was dismissive of Scholls criticism, saying, Ms. Scholl never met a trite attack on Republicans she didnt like.

Moran confirmed that the registrars concerns were on the radars of Howell and others, including Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Spotsylvania), chairman of the House Privileges and Elections Committee.

The Speaker, House leaders and Chairman Cole are aware of the concerns brought by the registrars, Moran said. They have not made any final decisions on how to proceed with the constitutional amendments.

But Moran also noted that House Republicans plan to hold a news conference to draw attention to the charter school proposal.

Sen. Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier), chairwoman of the Senate Privileges and Elections committee, agreed that having amendments on the ballot in a presidential year could amount to a real hardship for elections officials.

But she also said a delay is not something she or her committee could grant on their own. Legislators sponsoring the proposed amendments would have to withdraw bills they have already spent years pushing.

We understand their concerns, but as a practical matter, I dont believe I have the authority to go to Senate patrons to strike something from the docket, she said.

Political observers said it wouldnt be unusual for the GOP to take advantage of changes in electorial behavior.

Politicians know full well that an electorate can be different from one year to the next and they plan accordingly, said Stephen Farnsworth, a University of Mary Washington political scientist.

To change Virginias constitution, a proposed amendment must pass the General Assembly in two consecutive years, with an election in between. It then needs approval from voters in a referendum.

The constitution requires that the referendum not take place any sooner than 90 days after the legislature approves it for the second time. It does not state that it must be on the ballot for the soonest possible Election Day, although that has been the practice. It was unclear if a referendum had ever been put off for one or more election cycles.

A.E. Dick Howard, a University of Virginia legal scholar who was chief draftsman of the state constitution when it was revamped in 1971, said he thinks the legislature has the authority to hold the referendum as long as it wants.

The constitution is silent on . . . how long they can wait after 90 days, he said. Where its silent, typically the legislature calls the shots.

Three proposed amendments that won approval from the GOP-controlled General Assembly last year and appear to be on track to do so again this year, meaning the could be on the ballot in November. The proposed amendments do not go to the governor, so Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) would have no opportunity to veto any that he might oppose.

One of the proposals would grant the state Board of Education the authority to establish charter schools within local school districts across the state. That power currently rests with local school boards, which have been resistant to them in Virginia.

Another amendment, known as a right-to-work measure, would ensure that employees are not forced to join a union as a condition of employment. State law prohibits that practice, but the amendment would enshrine that in the constitution.

Scholls group opposes both of those proposed amendments. It takes no position on the third, which would grant a real estate tax exemption to the spouse of police officers or other emergency responders killed in the line of duty.

In a letter to Cole, the president of the Voter Registrars Association of Virginia expressed concern about having the proposed amendments on the ballot in a presidential election year. Seventy-five percent of registered voters turned out in 2008 to send President Obama to the White House, and 72 percent came out in 2012 to give him a second term. Turnout dropped to 40 percent in 2009, when Republican Robert F. McDonnell won the governors race in a landslide. It was 43 percent in 2013, when McAuliffe narrowly beat then-attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II (R).

In his letter, VRAV President Tracy D. Howard expressed grave concern about putting those questions on the ballot in 2016, while also stressing that the organization takes no position on the merits of the proposals. He asked that they be put off until November 2017.

The presidential election has the largest turnout of any election during a four-year election cycle and without an incumbent the turnout soars, he wrote. When voters are asked to vote on constitutional amendments at a presidential election, this causes serious delays in voting.

Randy Wertz, a former president of the group and the general registrar for Montgomery County, said that voters who have bombarded with ads for presidential candidates are often stumped when they encounter relatively obscure ballot questions. He said they tend to stand at the voting machine for a long time, puzzling over the language, trying to do their civic duty.

Theyll know everything there is to know about the candidates by November, he said, but they wont know a thing about the amendments.
Alaska

Earthquake blamed

in destruction of homes

A magnitude-7.1 earthquake knocked items off shelves and walls in Alaska early Sunday, jolting the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. But there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Alaskas state seismologist, Michael West, called it the strongest earthquake in the states south-central region in decades. Alaska often has larger or more powerful earthquakes, such as a 7.9 last year in the remote Aleutian Islands.

However, last nights earthquake is significant because it was close enough to Alaskas population centers, West said, adding that aftershocks could continue for weeks.

The earthquake was widely felt by residents of Anchorage. But the Anchorage and Valdez police departments said they have not received any reports of injury or significant damage.

The earthquake struck about 1:30 a.m. Alaska time and was centered 53 miles west of Anchor Point in the Kenai Peninsula, which is about 160 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Four homes were destroyed in natural-gas explosions or by fire after the quake.

 Associated Press

Man dead after Colo. home invasion: One man is dead after a Colorado homeowner selling an item on Craigslist was tied up during a home invasion, got free, grabbed a gun and shot a suspect. The Jefferson County Sheriffs Office said two men went to the home Sunday in response to the ad, overpowered the homeowner and tied him up. Sheriffs spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said that one of the suspects stole the mans car and that the homeowner opened fire, killing the suspect. According to KMGH-TV, deputies are searching for a man in another vehicle.

2 slain, 2 injured at Miss. gun shop: A gun-shop owner and his teenage son died in a shootout over a $25 service charge, and another man and his 29-year-old son are hospitalized, Mississippi authorities said. Investigators dont know whether the customers or the owners started the shooting Saturday afternoon at McLemore Gun Shop near Picayune, and want to figure out what happened before filing charges, Pearl River County Sheriff David Allison told the Sun Herald. He identified the owner and his son as Jason McLemore, 44, and Jacob McLemore, 17, WLOX-TV reported Sunday. Michael McCool, 29, allegedly shot both with a .40-caliber pistol, Allison told the station. He said McCool was in intensive care at University Hospital in New Orleans, and his father, Andy McCool, 52, was at Forrest General Hospital in Mississippi.

 Associated Press
A lifetime of wear and tear on your hips and knees makes joint pain almost inevitable. One in 2 adults will eventually develop achy knees caused by osteoarthritis, a condition marked by the gradual loss of the cartilage that cushions the ends of bones. One in 4 will develop hip pain from the condition.

Also inevitable: the quest to ease discomfort. Stores are full of over-the-counter drugs and supplements that manufacturers claim will provide relief. Doctors often recommend steroid injections or other shots, and hospitals tout the benefits of joint replacement surgery.

Many of those measures can help, but some dont. Some people rush to surgical options when simpler solutions would do the trick, while others put up with pain and disability far longer than necessary. Here is a guide to safely easing discomfort.

For mild pain: OTC drugs

When to consider: Anyone with joint pain should start with low-impact activities such as walking and swimming, combined with exercises to stretch and strengthen the legs.

But youll probably need a pain reliever, too. Consider acetaminophen (Tylenol and generic) first. When taken in recommended doses, its safer than other over-the-counter pain relievers such as ibuprofen (Advil or generic) and naproxen (Aleve and generic). Reserve those drugs, which ease pain and reduce inflammation, for flare-ups. Another option: OTC creams containing capsaicin or methyl salicylate. Both stimulate nerves near the joint, creating a sensation that distracts you from the pain.

Stay-safe steps: The long-term use of acetaminophen can damage the liver, and frequent use of anti-inflammatories can cause stomach bleeding and increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. People who drink a lot of alcohol and those who have liver disease should avoid acetaminophen; those with heart disease should use anti-inflammatories sparingly.

For lingering pain: Injections

When to consider: If you have pain or disability despite taking OTC drugs, ask your doctor about injections with steroids (which ease inflammation) or hyaluronic acid (which lubricate the joint).

Stay-safe steps: Hyaluronic acid provides only modest relief, according to a review in the New England Journal of Medicine, and up to 3 percent of people getting the shots have side effects such as worsened inflammation of the knee. So use it only if you dont improve with other options but arent ready for surgery.

For severe pain: Joint surgery

When to consider: About a million Americans get a knee or hip replaced each year, and most say it helps a lot. Still, both are major surgeries that, like all operations, pose risks of serious complications, and recovery can take months. So make sure that you have tried other solutions, that you understand the risks and recovery needed, and that you choose your surgeon and hospital carefully.

Stay-safe steps: Look for a surgeon who does at least 50 of the surgeries per year, preferably 100. Ask about his or her complication and infection rates, and do some research. Two options: healthgrades.com and ProPublicas surgeon tool (projects.propublica.org/surgeons). Subscribers to Consumer Reports website can compare hospitals on complication rates for hip and knee surgery and infections by going to consumerreports.org/hospitalratings.

Be wary of supplements

Despite the popularity of glucosamine and chondroitin, theres little evidence that these supplements ease arthritis pain or improve joint function. Thats why the American College of Rheumatology says people should skip them. In addition, supplements arent regulated as carefully as drugs, so you cant be sure that whats on the label is whats in the bottle.

If you want to give them a try anyway, stop after a few months if you dont feel better. Avoid them entirely if you take the blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin and generic) because the supplements can intensify the effect of the drug.

Copyright 2015. Consumers Union of United States Inc.
A mans skull found at the site of massacre in Kenya 10,000 years ago shows damage that may have been caused by a club. (Marta Mirazon Lahr/Cambridge University via Reuters)

Mans inhumanity to man, as 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, is no recent development.

In fact, scientists said last week that they had found evidence of a massacre 10,000 years ago: fossils of a band of people killed by attackers with weapons including arrows, clubs and stone blades on the shores of a lagoon in Kenya. The find, reported in the journal Nature, represents the oldest evidence of human warfare.

The remains of 27 people from a Stone Age hunter-gatherer culture were unearthed at a site called Nataruk roughly 20 miles west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

One mans 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 from a club, that crushed 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 counterattack, 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 said.

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. 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.

Lahr, right, and Justus Edung talk at the excavation site of the skeleton of a woman found in the sediments of a lagoon 30 kilometers west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. (Robert Foley/Cambridge University via Reuters)

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.
Patient advocate Dan Polk holds Travis Smith at Boston Childrens Hospital, where Polk advised the boys parents on their sons medical condition and treatment options. (Courtesy of Stan and XuXia Smith)

Stan and XuXia Smith learned from an ultrasound midway through the pregnancy that their son would be born with an often-fatal congenital heart defect. In the first week of the babys life, they got more bad news: Some major organs were incorrectly formed and mislocated inside Traviss tiny body. They faced a long journey.

I felt like Id been hit by a tidal wave. I couldnt process the information I was being given fast enough, and I knew wed need someone to help us translate and evaluate the enormous amount of information we were being bombarded with, said Stan Smith.

The Chicago couple hired Dan Polk, a patient advocate and retired neonatologist whose specialty is working with sick babies and their families. Polk helped the Smiths understand the complexity of their sons condition while building an experienced health-care delivery team, and he has guided them through the intricacies of Traviss treatment. More than two years after his birth, he still has medical issues that require Polks counsel.

I was trained to take care of patients but found myself spending too much time away from the bedside, said Polk, who took up patient advocacy in 2013 after 35 years in practice. Being an advocate for babies and parents has allowed me to do what I was trained to do: take care of patients.

Patient advocates for hire number perhaps 250 to 300 in the United States, according to Trisha Torrey, founder of the Alliance of Professional Health Advocates. Some of these advocates, such as Polk, have clinical backgrounds and know how to navigate the health-care system. They may accompany patients to appointments and facilitate doctor-patient conversations in patient-friendly language. They may also handle tasks such as prepping for medical appointments, finding the right doctors and even deciphering medical bills and health insurance plans.

Smith on an examination table at Boston Children's Hospital in December. (Courtesy of Stan and XuXia Smith)

Advocates arent cheap  their rates can start at $100 an hour or more, depending on experience and credentials  and insurance doesnt cover them.

Stan Smith, 69, runs an economic and financial consulting firm. His wife, 41, takes care of Travis and their 5-year-old daughter, Blake Sarai TeiTei Smith. They have the resources to pay for a top-notch advocate. Polks standard hourly fee is $300, but his rates depend on the client and the situation. When he travels for out-of-town consultations and treatments, as he sometimes does with the Smiths, his daily rate is $1,500 plus expenses.

Smith said advocates can sometimes help a client avoid unnecessary expenses that they might incur by going it alone.

Without Dan, the doctors in Boston and Chicago never would have imagined that wed be able to understand the level of complex information we asked for, he said. But with Dan, we could not only travel at their speed and understand what was going on, we could collaborate in coming up with better solutions and pathways for care.

Physicians sometimes say complicated things, Polk said. Just because their words are heard doesnt mean they are understood. In the Smiths case, he noted, 15-minute conversations with doctors often led to three-hour discussions with Polk to talk over what they meant.

[When patients press the record button]

Working with the Smiths, Polk constructed plans to address Traviss medical issues.

Preparations for repairing Traviss heart were among the most technically and emotionally challenging. The first step was to help the Smiths understand what was wrong and the solutions that might keep Travis alive. Then the parents had to decide who should perform the procedure and where. And for the surgery at Boston Childrens Hospital, Polk accompanied the parents to explain the operation as it unfolded.

A good advocate must have the ability to evaluate complex medical situations, formulate a plan to address them, and implement it, Polk said.

Thats not all. One lesson Polk learned is that theres a time to talk and a time to listen.

Initially, listening is probably more important to understand the entirety of a situation, but at some point, you have to start to act, he said.

Polk helped the family avoid pitfalls. Once a doctor recommended that Travis get immediate surgery on an intestinal abnormality. Polk suggested the Smiths get another opinion. A second doctor suggested they wait and see. A third physician agreed, and so did Polk and the Smiths. An immediate operation could have led to scar tissue that might have caused an intestinal blockage. We cant say what would have been the result of a trip or fall, but we do know that many families who we met on the same journey have lost their children, Smith said.

Physicians also see value in patient advocates. Pedro del Nido, who operated on Traviss heart, praised Polk for applying his medical knowledge and communication skills to present information clearly and in a way that allowed for rational, thoughtful decisions.

Most doctors welcome advocates, said Sima Kahn, a patient advocate who is also an obstetrician and gynecologist in Seattle. Doctors are so overworked that they . . . seem thrilled to discover that people who do what I do exist and that I am part of a team that can take pressure off them.

When Keith Cotton was diagnosed with Stage 2 brain cancer two years ago, he and his wife hired Kahn. She helped them find the best specialists, discover options and ask the questions that they didnt know to ask themselves.

After Cotton had a tumor removed, he wasnt sure he wanted chemotherapy and radiation, but Kahn helped him to see the benefits. I realize now that not having the treatment would have been a bad idea, said Cotton, 39, whose wife, Megan, gave birth to their first child, Grace, in June.

Finding advocates such as Polk and Kahn isnt always easy. Teri Dreher, the founder of North Shore Patient Advocates in Chicago, recommends weighing an advocates educational and practical experience. Someone with complicated health issues might benefit from an advocate with a medical or nursing background. And advocates who lack clinical backgrounds may have personal experiences that make them excellent choices.

Advocates can help patients make better decisions, said Torrey of the Alliance of Professional Health Advocates.

When you dont know what you dont know, you dont know what questions to ask, and thats when a patient advocate can be indispensable, she said.

The Smiths celebrated Traviss improving health and the new year at Disney World. Stan Smith says his sons neurologist has told them that Travis should be back on track in his mental and physical development next year.

This article was produced through a collaboration between The Post and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service that is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Srinagar: It was anguish and bereavement at Fairview, the official residence of former Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, until a week ago when hordes of his party men, supporters and admirers would turn up all day to share the grief of the family.

Though, in contrast, relative quiet prevails at the villa in the lap of Zabarwan hill overlooking the Dal Lake, the death of the patriarch carries a greater reality that life will not be the same for the family without him. Particularly his daughter Mehbooba Mufti has yet to come to terms with the most poignant loss and, in fact, continues to be in a deep and inconsolable grief, the sources said.

Tassaduq Hussain, Mufti Sayeeds cinematographer son and the only male in four siblings, has since returned to Mumbai to complete an assignment left mid-way after his fathers death on January 7. But he has promised his sister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Ms. Mufti that he would be back in Srinagar soon to supplement her effort to carry their fathers mission forward.

The 44-year-old Hussain, an American Film Institute graduate who lensed Bollywood blockbusters like Omkara and Kaminey, is likely to be assigned immense responsibility and given important party work in the PDP as well after he announces his joining active politics formally which may be done sooner than later. Several senior party leaders too have gone down to winter capital Jammu or relocated to Delhi, mainly to escape the Valleys subzero temperatures. But they too have assured her that they would be around when needed or called.

Meanwhile, Ms. Mufti has convened a meeting of senior party leaders and district and zonal heads at her residence on January 31, necessarily to receive feedback on important issues including government formation. In spite of not being emotionally ready to take up the issues the way she used to during Mufti Sahibs lifetime, she has had consultations with senior party colleagues on party matters and government formation, said a senior PDP leader adding the January 31 meeting would be a broader spectrum of activity.

One such one-on-one meeting she has held was with Tariq Hameed Karra, the alienated PDP Lok Sabha member from Srinagar who has repeatedly said that its tie-up with ideologically-divergent BJP has only proved detrimental to its (PDPs) interests and halted its growth, particularly in Kashmir Valley, and that the BJP has not respected the Agenda of the Alliance, the common minimum programme reached between the two sides for the government formation last year.

Similar views have been expressed by some other PDP leaders and lawmakers during internal party discussions and, in fact, there is strong line of thinking in the rank and file that it should look for alternatives regarding government formation.

However, as already reported Ms. Mufti has been authorised by the party to take the final call on the crucial question of continuing with its alliance with the BJP or call it off. In fact, following a meeting of its extended core group held here on January 17, the party dropped enough hints that it might form new government with its alliance partner BJP only. Were working on how to move ahead on Agenda of Alliance, senior PDP leader and former education minister, Naeem Akhtar, had said after the meeting. Elaborating on Agenda of the Alliance, he had said it was the holy scripture for PDP and many things have happened under late Mr Sayeed as chief minister.

The party sources said that Ms. Mufti is waiting for certain clear-cut assurances from the BJP leadership and the government at the highest level on the future relationship between the two sides and also on the Centre-State dealings, mainly on economic front, before moving forward on the issue of government formation. As already reported, the PDP wants liberal funding from the Centre to ensure revolutionary development of Jammu and Kashmir and, as first step towards this direction, an inclusive package for the rehabilitation of the sufferers of the September 2014 floods.

It also has asked for return of the power projects presently under National Hydel Power Corporation (NHPC). It is quite unhappy over the Centres unilaterally trimming from the Prime Ministers development package the equity assured to the state for buying back two power projects from the NHPC that had received clearance from the PMO. It has also said that the lakhs of acres of land under illegal occupation of Army and other security forces would be taken back or would be asked to pay compensation for it as per the market rate.

On political front, it wants an assurance from the BJP that the Sangh Parivar will no more use proxies to fiddle with the States special status, guaranteed under Article 370 of the Constitution, nor will be the contentious issues like State Flag raised by it as such pastime only causes embarrassment to the PDP in its bastion-Kashmir Valley.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that it will stop supporting the use of ultralight aircraft to help young whooping cranes migrate from Wisconsin to Florida each fall.

Officials announced recently that this seasons ultralight-guided flights to the birds winter home will be the last, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Operation Migration, the Canadian-based nonprofit group that has led the migrations for 15 years, has opposed the end of ultralights, saying the program has helped cranes survive. But Fish and Wildlife officials say the birds havent been successful producing chicks and raising them in the wild.

The program has spent more than $20 million to establish the flock that is distinct from a larger flock of whooping cranes migrating between the Texas Gulf Coast and northern Canada.

The decision to end the public-private effort was made in Baraboo, Wis., during a meeting of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, said Pete Fasbender, a Minnesota-based field office supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The real short answer is that we felt that this was in the best interest of the birds, he said.

Nearly 250 whooping cranes have been released in Wisconsin since 2001. Fish and Wildlife officials said that about 93 are alive, but that only 10 chicks have survived to develop feathers necessary for flying.

Experts in crane biology have concluded that the use of aircraft and other human interaction are having a negative impact. Since 2005, the chicks that fledged and were born in the wild came from only five pairs of adults, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Why arent the others getting it? Fasbender asked. The common thread is this lack of parenting skills.

The partnership includes Operation Migration and staff from the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, the largest crane conservation organization in the world. Barry Hartup, director of veterinary services, said the crane foundation agrees with the changes, which include limiting human interaction with chicks and minimizing a practice in which costumed humans help care for chicks.

We have to find ways to reduce the element of artificiality, Hartup said.

The decision is a setback for Operation Migration, which has staff in northern Florida, just short of the final destination of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The ultralight migration this year has lasted more than 100 days.

Joe Duff, chief executive of Operation Migration, posted a comment Saturday on the groups website: It is sad to see the end of aircraft led migration. There will be many people who will be disappointed, and even a few who will celebrate. But those reactions are all about people and our mantra has always been, its about the birds.
ISRAEL

Peres hospitalized over chest pains

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres was rushed to a hospital after experiencing chest pains, just a week after suffering a mild heart attack, his spokeswoman said Sunday night.

The 92-year-old statesman had been discharged from a hospital last Tuesday.

Medics treated Peres at his home and detected an irregular heartbeat after conducting a test, spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch said. She said he was taken to the hospital for observation and testing.

Later Sunday, Peress personal physician, Rafi Walden, said that to be on the safe side we took him to the hospital, where we diagnosed a slight disturbance in the rhythm of the heart.

He said that it was very slight and it passed simultaneously without even need for treatment, so he is feeling perfectly well now.

Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, after the signing of the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

He completed his seven-year term as president in 2014 and remains in the public eye.

 Associated Press

MOLDOVA

Thousands protest, seek early elections

More than 15,000 people held an anti-government protest on Sunday in the Moldovan capital to demand an early election in the impoverished Eastern European nation.

Protesters in Chisinau shouted We want the country back! and Unity, citizens! and blocked a main road out of the capital as temperatures fell to minus-10 Celsius (14 Fahrenheit). The rally was organized by two pro-Russian parties and the civic group Dignity and Truth.

Protesters earlier marched toward the Constitutional Court, and the leader of the Socialist Party, Igor Dodon, urged them to block one of the main entrances to the city. Dignity and Truth leader Andrei Nastase called on the government to announce by Thursday that it would hold an early election or face acts of civil disobedience.

The demonstrators are angry about falling living standards that have left the average monthly salary is just 220 euros ($240). They say pro-European parties, in power since 2009, have failed to carry out reforms and want Parliament dissolved. They are also calling for a full inquiry into the disappearance of up to $1.5 billion from three banks in Moldova before parliamentary elections in 2014.

Last week, demonstrators stormed Parliament as lawmakers approved a new pro-European government. Anti-government demonstrations have been held for three straight days.

 Associated Press

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban reaffirms role of its Qatar office

The Afghan Taliban said Sunday that its political office in Qatar is the only entity authorized to carry out negotiations on its behalf, reinforcing the authority of the man who took control of the group amid a power struggle after the death of longtime leader Mohammad Omar.

The Taliban made the declaration in a summary emailed by a spokesman of a statement it made during unofficial, closed-door talks taking place in the Qatari capital, Doha.

The group, calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, also laid out demands, including the release of an unspecified number of prisoners and the removal of senior members from a U.N. blacklist. It described the demands as preliminary steps needed for peace.

The talks in Qatar are organized by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning group focused on resolving conflict.

The discussions are separate from official peace efforts involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States. Those negotiations, which do not include the Taliban but aim to pave the way for talks between the militants and the Kabul government, are expected to resume in Pakistan on Feb. 6.

Members of the Talibans unofficial Qatar office are thought to be tied to Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who assumed the leadership position after Omars death was announced last year.

 Associated Press

Police charge Canadian teen in fatal shootings: A 17-year-old boy was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting at a school and a home in a remote aboriginal community in western Canada, officials said. A gunman killed two brothers in a home before heading to a school and shooting several others, killing two people.

Malaysia detains 7 suspected of plotting attacks: Malaysian police detained seven men suspected of being members of an Islamic State militant cell that was plotting attacks, authorities said. The seven Malaysians were detained over the past three days in a follow-up operation after the Jan. 15 detention of a man planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said.

Iran announces 100 arrests over attacks on Saudi assets: A spokesman for Irans judiciary said that about 100 suspects were arrested, with some later released, over an attack on Saudi Arabias embassy in Tehran. Protesters set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and attacked the Saudi Consulate in another city in response to the kingdoms execution of a prominent Shiite cleric on Jan 2. The protests prompted Saudi Arabia to cut diplomatic ties with Iran.

 From news services
Home Minister is expected to apprise President about decision of Union Cabinet to recommend imposition of central rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will call on President Pranab Mukherjee this afternoon and is expected to apprise him about the decision of the Union Cabinet to recommend imposition of central rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

Official sources said Singh would discuss the rationale behind the decision of the Cabinet.

The Cabinet had sent the decision to the President for his nod on Sunday, a move that has been criticised by the opposition Congress.

In a related development, Congress President Sonia Gandhi is likely to lead a delegation to the President requesting him not to give his assent to the Cabinet decision.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 of BJP and two independents to 'impeach' Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue, in a move branded as "illegal and unconstitutional" by the Speaker.

The matter is at present also pending before the Supreme Court which has referred a batch of petitions on the Arunachal Pradesh crisis to a Constitution Bench.
LIBYA

U.N.-backed cabinet meets with rejection

Libyas internationally recognized parliament on Monday rejected a U.N.-sponsored unity government with rival authorities based in Tripoli, dealing a blow to months of efforts aimed at bridging a political divide that has undermined the fight against Islamist militants.

Lawmaker Abu Bakr Beira said 89 out of 104 members who attended Mondays session rejected the cabinet formed by the U.N.-sponsored unity Presidential Council. He said the council would be dissolved if it failed to meet a 10-day deadline to form a new, smaller cabinet.

The parliament endorsed the political agreement underpinning the new government but objected to an article that would dismiss Khalifa Hifter, a divisive figure who was appointed military chief by the internationally recognized government.

That left the fate of the peace deal uncertain, as the United Nations has said repeatedly that there will be no changes.

The international community has been pushing the two sides to unite against the rising threat of Islamist militants.

Libya has fallen into chaos since the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Since 2014, an internationally recognized government has convened in the eastern city of Tobruk and an Islamist-dominated parliament sits in the capital.

 Associated Press

EGYPT

Heavy security marks anniversary of revolt

Amid heavy security on Monday, Egypt marked the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, with activists taking to social media  but not the streets  to express frustration that their demands for freedom and democracy have not been realized.

Many activists posted photos from 2011 of Cairos Tahrir Square  the epicenter of the protests  filled with tens of thousands of demonstrators during the 18-day uprising. Next to them, they posted photos of the square on Monday, showing it empty except for several dozen supporters of President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.

Since 2011, when Mubarak fell, Egypt has experienced much upheaval: the rise of President Mohamed Morsi and his once-banned Muslim Brotherhood; the ouster of Morsi by Sissi, a general at the time; and Sissis crackdown on both Islamist and pro-democracy activists.

Despite the significant police presence Monday, Brotherhood supporters held at least two small demonstrations in Cairos twin city of Giza.

In the port city of Alexandria, police dismantled two bombs and arrested 15 people when dispersing small protests by Brotherhood loyalists, according to the official Middle East News Agency.

In a suburb of Cairo, police killed two suspected militants in a raid. Explosives and firearms were found in the raided apartment, MENA reported. Later, in Bani Suef province south of Cairo, police fatally shot a suspected militant when he tried to storm a checkpoint.

Sissis government is accused of curbing freedoms and allowing the police force to return to some of its Mubarak-era practices, including torture, random arrests and forced disappearances.

 Associated Press

CAMEROON

Boko Haram blamed for attacks that kill 28

Four suicide bombers struck Monday in Cameroons Far North region near the border with Nigeria, killing at least 28 people and wounding 65, officials said.

Two attackers targeted a market in Bodo and two others detonated explosives elsewhere in the town, said the regions governor.

We have information the four bombers came from Nigeria, Midjiyawa Bakari said.

A Cameroon troop commander confirmed the attack and said Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist extremist group, is suspected.

Suicide bombers are suspected to be crossing the border from Nigeria to stage attacks, killing dozens in the region in the past month, officials said.

Boko Haram militants began stepping up attacks early last year on neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, countries contributing to regional efforts to crush the group.

 Associated Press

Thailand quarantines 32 over MERS concerns: Thailand has quarantined 32 people as it seeks to prevent the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome after a second case of the virus was detected last week, a Health Ministry official said. The virus was found in a 71-year-old Omani man traveling to Bangkok. MERS was first identified in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and the majority of cases have been in the Middle East.

 From news services
In her Jan. 17 column, Shame on Carly Fiorina, Ruth Marcus oppugned Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina for claiming to actually love spending time with [her] husband, denouncing the candidates overt dig at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as calculatedly outrageous in its rampant and reprehensible sexism.

But Ms. Clinton has imposed the same gendered double standards on female rivals of her own. Consider how she slut-shamed and stereotyped 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky as a narcissistic loony toon, casting Bill Clinton as the victim of sexual predation from an unstable admirer. Or how Ms. Clinton degraded other betrayed wives, mocking the pathetic, proverbial little woman standing by [her] man like Tammy Wynette.

Ms. Clinton is guilty of invoking and thus exacerbating existing gendered prejudices to discredit female competitors. So shame on Ms. Clinton.

Lisa Linnea Schoch, Bethesda

The writer is communications director at Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives.
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael Pregent is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

President Obama, fresh off the implementation of the nuclear accord and a prisoner swap, may want to believe that Iran is, as he suggested to NPR a year ago while discussing what it would take to get a deal done, now on its way to becoming a very successful regional power that will abide by international norms and international rules. This flies in the face of Irans long record of making war on Americans, using the same tactics time after time.

On Jan. 20, 2007, a dozen or so Iraqi militants wearing military uniforms and driving black GMC Suburbans drove into the Karbala provincial government headquarters in a brazen attempt to kidnap U.S. soldiers. One U.S. soldier died in a gun battle. Four others were seized by the attackers and murdered during the course of a pursuit by U.S. forces.

Coalition forces subsequently captured two leaders of an Iranian-backed terrorist group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH, or League of the Righteous), the brothers Qais Khazali and Laith Khazali, who under interrogation revealed direct involvement by Irans Quds Force in planning the attack. A Lebanese Hezbollah operative closely linked to the Quds Force, Ali Musa Daqduq, was subsequently captured and linked to the attack as well in spite of his attempts to pretend that he was deaf and mute.

Two years after the Karbala attack , in 2009, Laith Khazali was freed as part of a prisoner exchange with Iranian-backed Shiite militants who had kidnapped five British men in Iraq and killed four of them. Qais Khazali was freed in 2010 and Daqduq in 2012.

Today the Khazali brothers are back running AAH, which is more powerful than ever and appears to be back to its old tricks. On Jan. 16, a group of militants driving SUVs and wearing military uniforms kidnapped three Americans in Baghdad. At least two of the men were apparently working as trainers for the Counter Terrorism Service, Iraqs elite special operations unit, which is not only the most effective part of its military (it led the recent assault on Ramadi) but also virtually the only part of it not infiltrated by Shiite militias. Various media outlets are reporting that the Americans were taken to Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold, and that AAH is most likely responsible, possibly in coordination with another Iranian-backed militia, Saraya al-Salam.

AAH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Irans Quds Force. It is inconceivable that it could kidnap and hold Americans  a course of action with significant international repercussions  without at least the acquiescence, and probably the active support, of Tehran. Yet the Obama administration is doing all it can to obfuscate that reality. Reuters cited U.S. government sources in reporting that 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.

Why would Iran need to bring the hostages to its own territory when it already controls much of Iraq? And what kind of evidence would U.S. officials accept as proof of Iranian involvement? Presumably nothing less than intercepts of Iranian officials talking to the kidnappers, but our enemies have gotten cannier about communications security since Edward Snowdens revelations about U.S. wiretapping capabilities, so such proof may never be forthcoming.

If another news report is to be believed, the administration is pretty sure who is responsible for the kidnapping but just wont say so in public. CBS News reports: Officials in Washington had hoped the Iranian government would tell the militia group to hold off because of all the negotiations surrounding the prisoner swap that saw the release of five Americans. The State Department source said the fear was that one of the groups might have gone off the reservation. 

If accurate, this is an incredible revelation: It suggests that the U.S. government had some advance warning of the danger of Americans being kidnapped in Iraq but chose to ignore it in the hopes that Iran would restrain its proxies. The notion that AAH has gone off the reservation represents, of course, nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of an administration that is deeply committed to a policy of rapprochement with Iran.

The United States has become dependent on Iran not just in carrying out the nuclear deal that will form the core of Obamas foreign policy legacy. It is also dependent on Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq for fighting the Islamic State. While the United States insisted that Shiite militias stay off the front lines in the battle of Ramadi, whose population is entirely Sunni, it has generally preferred to turn a blind eye to the growing power of the militias.

The cost of this cavalier attitude has already been considerable. As Reuters notes: In allowing the Shiite militias to run amok against their Sunni foes, Washington has fueled the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide that is tearing Iraq apart. Indeed, the power of the Shiite militias leads many Sunnis to embrace the Islamic State as the lesser evil.

Now we are seeing another possible ramification of Washingtons acquiescence to the Iranian power grab. It will make the U.S. military far less likely to try to rescue the three U.S. hostages even if it can develop actionable intelligence on their location, because any rescue attempt would put U.S. troops into direct conflict with Iranian proxies. That would endanger the safety of all U.S. personnel in Iraq and risk collapsing Obamas entire strategy of outreach to Iran.

Instead of a rescue attempt, expect the administration to attempt another deal like the one that led this month to the release of five American hostages in return for seven Iranians convicted of acquiring sensitive military technology. The problem with such deals is that they only encourage more hostage-taking  as the kidnapping in Baghdad, on the very day when the nuclear deal was being implemented, should make clear.
It has never been easy to be Hillary Clinton.

Evidence for that proposition is already in the minds of many who are reading this: What do you mean she hasnt had it easy? Would she even be in this race if she hadnt been married to Bill Clinton? Would she have been elected to the Senate from New York? Would she have received all those speaking fees?

See what I mean? Many of her critics will never be persuaded, and the past is always with her no matter how hard she works to transcend it.

Few people, for example, are as assiduous as she in learning lessons from past failures. In 2008, her staff was a jumble of conflicts. So for this campaign, she has put together a relatively harmonious operation. The last time around, she was outmaneuvered by a Barack Obama campaign that understood the delegate selection rules cold. So Clinton hired on many Obama 08 veterans and is as hip to the small things as to the big things.

And if you like policy, she sure as heck is giving you a lot of it. Her proposals on issue after issue are detailed, plausible and progressive. Its said that she has moved left in response to the challenge from Bernie Sanders. Of course she knew where the danger to her would come from in the primaries. But because everything she does is assumed to be about politics  and not in the best sense of that word  the actual substance of what shes saying is usually swept aside.

At the Jan. 17 Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton went out of her way to stress her ties to President Obama. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

If you gather from this that I have a more favorable view of her than the current conventional wisdom prescribes, youd be right. As a friend said recently, there is the Methodist-youth-group side of Hillary Clinton that people dont pay much attention to, the moralist who was moved by Christian social justice concerns away from the conservatism of her family. (I may empathize with her conversion because a similar thing happened to me as a Catholic.) Her earliest work was on behalf of poor kids and migrant workers.

Yes, she eventually wanted to make some money and, yes, that desire caused her a variety of public embarrassments (see: cattle futures and speaking fees). But all this seems to be held against her far more than it is against other politicians who did very similar things. The big upside to being named Clinton has a steep downside: Everything she does arouses automatic suspicion and controversy.

And in Sanders, she has an opponent whom every progressive (myself included) instinctively likes. Sanderss willingness to declare himself a democratic socialist helps him more than it hurts him among Democrats: His boldness plays well against Clintons reputation for political calculation. Hearing Sanders, you just know that he means exactly what he says.

The first two states to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire, are demographically well set up for him, and his strength in both is entirely predictable. (For what its worth, I said last October  and it took no genius to see this  that he could win both.)

Moreover, after seven years in which Democrats felt constantly on the defensive against waves of Republican attacks, Sanderss Here I stand, I can do no other approach is a tonic.

Its the Obama Paradox. The president has a 91 percent favorable rating among Iowa Democrats (which is why Clinton is hugging him so closely). But many Democrats who admire him still wish he had been more aggressive in sticking it to the GOP. They identify with the Sanders who told me (and anyone else whod listen) back in 2010: While Obama and the Democrats have a large number of achievements, it was not enough. We needed to be bolder. Most Democrats want to be bolder now.

My hunch is that Clintons stock is being undersold. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the contest moves to ground far more favorable to her. Her standing in most national polls of Democrats remains strong, and large numbers of Sanderss sympathizers also have a positive view of her.

As Hillary Clinton's lead in the polls continues to fall, her attacks on Bernie Sanders have stepped up. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But Sanderss new ad built around Simon and Garfunkels song America is a warning to Clinton: It brilliantly captures how his campaign, like Obamas, feels like a movement. It is a cathartic expression of Democratic frustration with prudent pragmatism in the face of Republican intransigence.

The quietly rational Methodist who observed in 2008 that the celestial choirs rarely sing in politics and that she is under no illusions about how hard this will be was quite right about governing these days. But someone for whom nothing will ever be easy still needs to find her own brand of inspiration.

Read more from E.J. Dionnes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Coal ash pond D at Possum Point Power Station in Dumfries, Va. on June 26, 2015. Dominion Resources is moving all of the existing coal ash at Possum Point Power Stationto this pond because it is the only one that is lined. (Kate Patterson /The Washington Post)

Regarding the Jan. 21 Business article The new mayor of Flint talks of broken trust:

Over the years, the public has learned of many cases of lead getting into drinking supplies, Flint being the latest. We may have a similar instance occurring within 30 miles of our capital.

On Jan. 14, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality gave Dominion Power permission to release 3.7 million cubic yards of treated toxic coal ash waste into Quantico Creek from the Possum Point facility. The creek flows directly into the Potomac River.

Dominion and the Department of Environmental Quality have said the waste will be properly treated before it is released. It is now a question as to how much of the toxic materials will be removed and how much oversight will be in place. The ponds already leaked untreated waste into groundwater.

The departments record is not unblemished. In September 2014, it failed to notify several counties that it issued permits to Synagro Technical to spread sludge on more than 10,000 acres of Virginia farmland.

In April 2003, Dominion settled with the Justice Department for $1.2 billion for a possible violation of the Clean Air Act.

Who is looking out for the health of the Potomac River? Maybe the Environmental Protection Agency should assume oversight of this situation.

Earle Mitchell, Springfield
FOR FOUR DAYS last fall, along one of the most heavily trafficked corridors in the mid-Atlantic, Virginia state police did something novel: They enforced the law.

They cracked down on Northern Virginia scofflaws driving at rush hour without passengers inside the Beltway on I-66, Northern Virginias most critical east-west artery. Since the road opened more than 30 years ago, rush-hour drivers on that segment have been required to carry at least one passenger or be subject to ticket with fines up to $1,000.

The law is widely ignored; at least 20 percent to 30 percent of rush-hour drivers on I-66 are alone in their cars, choosing the (usually slight) risk of a ticket over the hassle of carpooling. After four days of enforcement, the tally was nearly 250 tickets. That sounds like a lot, but it could have been three or four or 10 times as many; police say its dangerous to do more on a highway as clogged as I-66.

Those traffic-clogging scofflaws also happen to be voters, which is why politicians in Northern Virginia are afraid of them. So afraid that some state lawmakers would rather protect their right to continue breaking the law rather than embrace a balanced, long-term financing plan to alleviate congestion along the corridor.

The problem with Gov. Terry McAuliffes plan, in the lawmakers view, is that it includes tolls on the inside-the-Beltway segment of I-66. The tolls would apply only at rush hour, and only to solo drivers  the current scofflaws  not to law-abiding carpoolers. But no matter: Some drivers from western Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties feel so entitled to hog lane space, gratis, that they have bullied legislators into taking their side.

A bill sponsored by Del. James M. LeMunyon (R-Fairfax), and similar bills from other area lawmakers, would ban tolls on I-66. Mr. LeMunyon argues that the better solution lies in building more lanes inside and outside the Beltway. Thats true in the long term. The problem is that by eliminating the tolls, the legislation would deprive the state of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in projected revenue that would pay for the very widening the opponents of tolls say they want. It would also kill funding for an array of other transit improvements designed to divert traffic by enhancing commuters options: more buses, parking lots, facilities for carpoolers, etc.

The toll opponents got a dose of reality the other day from state Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne Jr. He told lawmakers that if the tolls are scrapped, I-66 could still be widened, outside the Beltway, but only by raiding funds earmarked for other, lower-priority road projects in Northern Virginia and elsewhere across the state. That gave downstate lawmakers pause. (Widening I-66 by more than a lane inside the Beltway is another story, with a price tag that would run into the billions of dollars.)

Mr. LeMunyon himself sponsored a bill a few years ago requiring that transportation projects be ranked according to how much they would reduce traffic. Widening I-66 outside the Beltway was the states No. 1-rated project. Now Mr. LeMunyon and other Northern Virginia legislators are subverting the funding formula that underpins that project.

If Northern Virginia lawmakers kill the tolls, Mr. McAuliffe may simply acquiesce. If they wont fund a fix for their own regions traffic mess, why should the governor go to war?
Capitalism has always been an epic struggle between risk and reward, and the easiest way to understand the present turmoil in world stock markets is to recognize that the two have reversed. Risk has gone up, and reward has come down. Investors have reacted by selling. Fear triumphs over greed. This, of course, increases risk and selling. Its an old story.

It may also be misleading. Despite the sell-offs severity (in 2016, U.S. stocks have dropped 7.4 percent and lost $1.8 trillion in value, says Wilshire Associates), many economists doubt it heralds a recession. Market turmoil [is] not justified by economic reality, Capital Economics, a consulting firm, told clients. Economists at Nomura, in a January report, rated the chances of a U.S. recession this year at 21 percent. The International Monetary Fund has the U.S. and global economies avoiding a downturn in 2016.

Consumer fundamentals remain strong, Nomura says of the United States. Significant pent-up demand for housing is likely to sustain above-trend growth in residential construction. . . . The banking system is well capitalized. (This last observation refers to large losses suffered by banks in the Great Recession that caused many of them to cut lending.)

Similarly, Chinas outlook is hardly a recession. The IMF forecasts the countrys growth in 2016 at 6.3 percent, which  though much less than recent rates of 10 percent  still exceeds most other countries. Chinas economy is set to slow, but not collapse, writes economist Paul Sheard of Standard & Poors.

But there is a less reassuring interpretation: The global stock sell-off may reflect gloomy prospects for emerging-market economies. These are middle-income countries: China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, India and the like. Together, they represent nearly half the world economy and, until recently, were expected to power global growth. Now, many (not just China) are struggling with stubborn problems. With hindsight, their previous rapid growth depended heavily on a fleeting commodities boom and unsustainable borrowing.

If this theory is correct, then the worldwide sell-off of stocks represents a logical response to reduced economic prospects. (In theory at least, stock prices reflect todays value of future profits.) Unfortunately, two bits of evidence support this theory.

One is oil. Since mid-2014, its price has dived from more than $100 a barrel to about $30. Traditionally, lower prices have been seen as a boon. Consumers savings at the pump can bolster other spending. But this time, lower prices are also blamed for spreading distress and dragging stock markets down. Why is this?

Part of the explanation is that prices are so low that dozens of new exploration and development projects were rendered uneconomic. Oil companies have canceled $1.6 trillion worth of projects through 2019, estimates the consulting company IHS. The loss of these projects (and jobs) represents a drag on the global economy and, to some extent, justifies lower stock prices. But that may not be the end of the story.

Oil is a symptom, says Roger Diwan of IHS. Its a symptom of disappointing emerging-market economies. Low oil prices dont just reflect oversupply. They also result from soft demand. Because increased demand comes heavily from emerging-market nations, they may be weaker than assumed. Oil may be the canary in the mine.

The other bit of evidence involves capital flows  movements of money in and out of countries. For years, emerging-market countries attracted billions of inflows, based on appealing profit opportunities. But in 2014 and 2015, emerging-market countries experienced $846 billion of net outflows, estimates the Institute of International Finance (IIF), an industry group. This capital flight has many complex causes, but one is worry over emerging markets growth performance and corporate indebtedness, says the IIF.

Investors are fleeing emerging-market stocks and bonds for fear that stocks will fall and bonds wont be repaid. Already, their stocks are depressed. From previous peaks, stocks are down about 80 percent in Brazil and Russia, 50 percent in China and 40 percent in India and Mexico, according to data from the IIF.

None of this is conclusive. It may be (as many economists believe) that the global stock sell-off is just another instance of irrational herd behavior, disconnected from satisfactory  though not spectacular  economic performance around the world. But there is a reasonable case that the sell-off is the markets way of downgrading the prospects for emerging markets and reducing expectations of future growth.

When the stock market goes down, people saving for retirement are quick to worry about their investments. Here's why 401ks and IRAs are better left alone. (Jayne Orenstein,Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

The stock slump could be self-fulfilling. The Great Recession was a traumatizing event. Because it was so deep and unexpected, it made both consumers and business managers more risk-averse. With risks now rising and rewards falling, firms and households might cut their spending just a bit  and cause the very slump theyre trying to avoid.

Read more from Robert Samuelsons archive.
THE ANTI-ILLEGAL immigrant rancor and outright nativism afoot in the Republican primary field give rise to the impression that illegal immigration has soared to unprecedented levels and that the border is no more than a line in the sand, scarcely monitored and easily crossed. The truth diverges wildly from that rhetoric, as a pair of recent studies demonstrate.

Notwithstanding the demagoguery of Donald Trump and some of his GOP rivals, the number of illegal immigrants in this country, which has declined each year since 2008, is now at its lowest level since 2003, and the percentage of undocumented immigrants likewise is at its lowest point since the turn of the century.

A report from the Pew Research Center shows a decline of nearly a million unauthorized immigrants, to 11.3 million, from 2007 to 2014. An even more recent survey, from the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank, indicates that the number of illegal immigrants has now fallen to 10.9 million, a precipitous drop driven largely by declining arrivals from Mexico. In fact, according to Pew, for the first time since the 1940s, Mexican migrants have been leaving the United States at a greater rate than they have entered.

Those numbers underscore what demographers have known for several years: that the great wave of Mexican immigration that began in the mid-1960s crested a few years ago and has been tailing off. Some 11.7 million Mexican-born immigrants, roughly half of them undocumented, are now in this country, down from 12.8 million in 2007 . Most of those who have left have done so of their own accord; comparatively few were deported.

That Mr. Trump has leveraged fact-free rhetoric for political advantage is not news. Still, it is noteworthy that so much of the GOP-primary oxygen, at least until the terrorist attacks in Paris, was consumed by alarmist rhetoric about border security, when in fact the border is more tightly patrolled than ever, and apprehensions at the southwestern border, a rough measure of illegal crossings, have been cut by about two-thirds since Sept. 11, 2001.

The dwindling Mexican immigration since the Great Recession reflects a number of factors, including, on the pull side, balky economic recovery and tougher border enforcement in the United States and, on the push side, improving economic conditions and a falling birthrate in Mexico. The result, according to Pew, is that in the five years ending in 2014, more than 1 million Mexicans (including 100,000 children born in the United States with dual citizenship) returned from the United States to live in Mexico, while 870,000 Mexicans entered the United States, many or most of them illegally.

Republican rhetoric on immigration has not caught up to those numbers, nor to the reality that the U.S. economy, like other Western economies, cannot function without low-wage, low-skill labor, which Mexico has supplied. An estimate 7 million-plus undocumented immigrants, most of them Mexicans, are employed in this country. Mr. Trumps fantasies of mass deportation notwithstanding, they will not be replaced by native-born Americans. At some point, Republicans will need to grapple with that reality.
A man works to clear snow on Jan. 24 in front of the Supreme Court . (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that those sentenced as teenagers to mandatory life imprisonment for murder must have a chance to argue that they should be released from prison.

The ruling expanded the courts 2012 decision that struck down mandatory life terms without parole for juveniles and said it must be applied retroactively to what juvenile advocates estimate are 1,200 to 1,500 cases.

More than 1,100 inmates are concentrated in three states  Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Michigan  where officials had decided the 2012 ruling was not retroactive.

They should have a chance to be resentenced or argue for parole, said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the new 6-to-3 decision.

[Supreme Court says juveniles may not be sentenced to mandatory life without parole]

Kennedy has been the courts champion in a line of cases that declare that juveniles convicted of even the most heinous crimes must be treated differently than adults. The court in 2005 ruled out capital punishment for juveniles and later said they could not be locked away for life for crimes other than murder.

The 2012 case ruled out mandatory life imprisonment without parole, which was the situation facing Henry Montgomery of Louisiana, who brought Mondays case. In 1963, when he was 17, Montgomery shot and killed Charles Hurt, a sheriffs deputy.

Montgomery is now 69 and says his rehabilitation in prison should make him eligible to be considered for parole. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected his plea, saying the U.S. Supreme Courts 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama was not retroactive.

The six-member majority, which in addition to Kennedy included Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the courts liberals, said on Monday that it was.

Prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored, Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy acknowledged that the courts 2012 Miller decision recognized that a judge might encounter the rare juvenile offender who exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible and life without parole is justified.

But he said the rulings overarching lesson was that childrens diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change cast doubt on mandatory sentences, and that this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.

In a dissent that described Kennedys ruling as astonishing and sleight of hand, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majoritys goal was abolishing life imprisonment without parole for juveniles.

There are two pending cases asking the court to do that. And Christopher Slobogin, a juvenile-justice expert at Vanderbilt Law School, wondered what the next step might be for a court majority that thinks the immaturity and impetuous behavior of juveniles, as well as their potential for reform, makes them different from adults.

The next step might be no mandatory sentences for children at all, he said.

[Supreme Court says juveniles different in Miranda warnings]

Many states that previously allowed life imprisonment without parole for juvenile offenders had already agreed that those sentenced under the old codes could have their sentences reviewed. Others, such as Arkansas and Texas, have enacted mandatory sentences  40 years, for instance  before parole can be considered.

But seven, including Louisiana, had said the courts ruling was not retroactive. Most changes in criminal law do not apply to settled cases.

But Kennedy said the Miller ruling was a substantive change in the law that must be applied to earlier sentences.

A penalty imposed pursuant to an unconstitutional law is no less void because the prisoners sentence became final before the law was held unconstitutional, Kennedy wrote. There is no grandfather clause that permits states to enforce punishments the Constitution forbids.

Scalia retorted: There most certainly is a grandfather clause  one we have called finality  which says that the Constitution does not require states to revise punishments that were lawful when they were imposed.

Kennedy acknowledged the difficulty of determining decades later whether a judge was correct to have justified sentencing a youth to life imprisonment because of irretrievable depravity.

But he said the situation could be remedied by giving the offender a parole hearing.

Those prisoners who have shown an inability to reform will continue to serve life sentences, Kennedy wrote. The opportunity for release will be afforded to those who demonstrate the truth of Millers central intuition  that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

Scalia said that was a power play that showed the majoritys true goal of getting rid of life imprisonment for juveniles.

In Godfather fashion, the majority makes state legislatures an offer they cant refuse: Avoid all the utterly impossible nonsense we have prescribed by simply permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole,  Scalia wrote. Mission accomplished.

Scalia was joined in dissent by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Kennedy said Montgomery will still have to prove his case but that he had a good case to make.

Henry Montgomery has spent each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison, Kennedy wrote, but added that Montgomery has discussed in his submissions to this court his evolution from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community.

Those inmates affected by the courts decision will probably have to bring individual claims or requests for parole, juvenile-justice experts said.

Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center said there could be special proceedings to deal with those inmates. For instance, of about 500 serving life sentences without parole in Pennsylvania, she said, about 300 are from one county, Philadelphia.

The Supreme Courts decisions on juvenile sentencing have featured sharp debates between Kennedy and Scalia, and Mondays was no different.

This whole exercise, Scalia wrote, is just a devious way of eliminating life without parole for juvenile offenders. But, without mentioning Kennedy by name, Scalia said such a straightforward acknowledgment would have been an embarrassment.

One of the justifications the court gave in Roper v. Simmons for ending the death penalty for juvenile murderers was that life without parole was a severe enough punishment, Scalia said.

How could the majority  in an opinion written by the very author of Roper  now say that punishment is also unconstitutional? Scalia asked. Since it couldnt, he answered, they made it a practical impossibility.

The case is Montgomery v. Louisiana.
The study is published in the 'Archives of Sexual Behavior' journal.

London: Once your relationship hits the one year mark, there is a drop in the level of sexual satisfaction you feel, as per a recent study.

Researchers at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University assessed data from the German Family Panel study involving 3,000 people, focusing on heterosexual people in committed relationships aged between 25 and 41.

The study found that sexual satisfaction rises in the first year of a relationship, but then declines from this point onwards, The Telegraph reported.

However, the evidence did not suggest that marriage and cohabitation affect sexual satisfaction and found that children also did not seem to have an effect.

Instead, arguments and domestic disagreements were the root cause, with a decline in sexual satisfaction showing links with a rise spats.

Study author Claudia Schmiedeberg said, "We did not find that having children played a major role in a couple's sexual satisfaction, which is remarkable as research has shown that sexual frequency is heavily influenced by the existence and age of children."

The study is published in the 'Archives of Sexual Behavior' journal.
In a speech in Switzerland in 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unusually strong statement in defense of gay rights, saying they are equal to women's rights and racial equality and should be universal human rights. (Anja Niedringhaus/AP)

Three years into Hillary Clintons tenure as secretary of state, her chief of staff passed along a copy of an article sharply critical of President Obama for being too cautious in his embrace of same-sex marriage.

Until now, the presidents position has been based on political expediency, lawyer and gay rights advocate Richard Socarides wrote of Obama in the New Yorker in late 2011. He has tried to have it both ways.

The email was typical for Clinton, who read or sent a striking number of messages focused on the issue of gay marriage during her time as secretary of state, according to a trove of Clinton messages released by the State Department in recent months. The issue had little or no connection to Clintons diplomatic role at the time  but would be of keen interest to a once and future Democratic presidential candidate.

The pattern of the email traffic, and interviews with some of her correspondents from that time, strongly suggests that she had already made up her mind to support same-sex marriage after opposing it as a 2008 candidate. The emails also indicate the issue was a matter of some frustration  and perhaps lingering political competition  with Obama, who remained publicly opposed to gay marriage at the time.

It was in the news, and I knew that she was interested in this and had been for many years, Socarides recalled in an interview, noting that Hillary Clinton had attended gay rights briefings he led for White House staff when he worked for Bill Clinton.

1 of 46 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Clinton rallies support on the campaign trail View Photos Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton campaigns in key states in her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president. Caption The former secretary of state, senator and first lady is the Democratic nominee for president. July 31, 2016 Hillary Clinton is seen aboard the campaign bus in Cleveland on the third day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Of course I also knew that if she did decide to run for president this would be an issue for her to address, Socarides said.

Now as a candidate, Clinton has reaped the benefits of her long ties with gay rights groups by receiving a rare primary endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign, the nations largest gay rights organization. The endorsement, which she formally accepted Sunday in Iowa, culminates a long wooing and lobbying relationship on both sides, the emails show.

Between the time of Clintons 2008 primary contest with Obama and his inauguration, a shift in the legal landscape and public opinion surrounding gay marriage was already underway. Once considered a far-fetched idea, full marriage rights became a rallying point for gay rights advocates that reached its peak during Obamas first term. The issue was a political tightrope for many Democrats, Obama and Clinton included, as it moved through state legislatures and state and federal courts.

Clinton endorsed same-sex marriage in 2013, a few weeks after she left the State Department, in a video produced by the Human Rights Campaign.

On the campaign trail, Clinton frequently highlights actions she took on behalf of gay diplomats and their partners, as well as a landmark 2011 speech in which she declared thatgay rights are human rights and pledged to make other nations treatment of gay people a factor in U.S. engagement.

Clinton was also keeping tabs on the state-by-state legal battles over marriage throughout her tenure, as evidenced by the regular stream of articles and commentary forwarded her way.

As a Cabinet official, Clinton was duty-bound not to get ahead of the Democrat who had defeated her for the 2008 nomination. Obama did not fully endorse same-sex marriage until May 2012, six months before he stood for reelection.

But in the years before that, Clintons aides regularly sent along news articles and commentary  some of it withering  about what prominent gay rights activists saw as Obamas slow pace on their agenda.

I knew and respected the fact that she was a member of the Cabinet and had a number of constraints that prevented her from speaking out personally while her boss had not spoken out yet, Socarides said.

Clinton took her own stop-and-start path toward full support for same-sex marriage, generally shifting her position as public opinion changed. She had, at times, said she defined marriage as a union solely between men and women, supported civil unions as an alternative to legal marriage, and embraced gay unions as a crowning achievement of human and civil rights.

In many cases, activists and Clinton political allies from years past sent material to Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills with hopes it would then be given to Clinton. What is not clear from the emails is whether Clinton also discussed the same issues widely or solicited any of the communication by means other than email.

Socarides sent a few of his New Yorker pieces to Mills, including the December 2011 piece in which he correctly predicted both Obamas pre-2012-election statement of support for marriage equality and the eventual legal victory for same-sex marriage.

The same week that piece appeared, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)had announced his shift in favor of same-sex marriage in an op-ed published in the Newark Star-Ledger. Mills sent the piece to Clinton after getting a copy from Winnie Stachelberg, a senior official at the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress, then headed by longtime Clinton insider John Podesta. Podesta now chairs Clintons campaign.

In 2011, Stachelberg had sent along CAPs statement on the announcement that Obama would support legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. In 2012, she sought to tip off Clintons office about a forthcoming Obama interview in which he would declare his support for same-sex marriage.

In January 2013, as Obama prepared to begin his second term, longtime Clinton friend Burns Strider passed along an article about essayist Wendell Berrys support for same-sex marriage. Strider tells Clinton he has also sent the article to Jon and the gang, presumably meaning White House speechwriter Jon Favreau.

Clintons political interest in gay and lesbian issues is evident almost from the start of her tenure at the State Department. In June 2009, Clinton aide Nora Toiv sent Mills and two other senior aides, foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan and image adviser Philippe Reines, a Politico article headlined, Gay Groups Grow Impatient with Obama.

The article, which Mills sent on to Clinton, outlined frustration with the pace of Obamas gay rights agenda. Obama had not yet fulfilled a promise to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or the Pentagons ban on openly gay military service, the story noted. The piece quoted gay activists, pollsters and politicians as saying Obama was behind the times for Democrats politically by failing to endorse same-sex marriage and had angered gay groups by appearing to joke about the issue.

In February 2012, the emails show that Clinton was asked to help lobby a Democratic delegate in Maryland, Sam Arora, who was wavering on whether to vote in favor of same-sex marriage. Georgetown University law professor and Clinton friend Peter Edelman appealed to Mills for Clintons help.

The people who are working the gay marriage bill in the Maryland legislature think it would be helpful if someone could find an appropriate way to let Mr. Arora know on Hillarys behalf that it would be great if he could vote for the bill, Edelman wrote.

There is no indication that Clinton became directly engaged in the matter, and Edelman said in an interview that he did not have any sense of her overall thinking when he reached out.

Please let him know Bill called  unsuccessfully, Clinton wrote to Mills, presumably referring to her husband.

In any event, the push didnt work: Arora ended up voting no.
In the final minutes of a campaign rally here, after an hour-long speech full of his signature bluster and bomb-throwing, Republican front-runner Donald Trump made his closing pitch to Iowa voters.

I think Ill get along great with a lot of people, Trump told a crowd of 1,500 at a Christian college in northwest Iowa. Before I was doing this, I got along with the Democrats, with the Republicans, with the liberals, with the conservatives. I get along with people.

With a week left until the Iowa caucuses, Trump is seeking to close the deal by portraying himself as a great uniter who can bring Washington together, healing ideological rifts with the sheer force of his personality. Its a branding effort that seems at odds with the often-angry tone of Trumps campaign, whose critics frequently carry signs that read, A vote for Trump is a vote for hate.

Yet his message is resonating with a number of Republican voters who believe that Trump is the only candidate capable of bringing together not only various factions of the Republican Party  especially the establishment types and the tea party faithful  but also Democrats, corporate chief executives and foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He seems to have a lot of experience to be able to make a deal or make deals, and he has had to work with people that are conservative and people that are liberal and people that are progressive, said Matt Mousel, 43, who lives in Rock Valley, Iowa, works as a safety specialist for a cheese manufacturer and identifies as politically independent. And maybe right now thats what we need  a businessman-type philosophy in the presidential role because theres a lot of gridlock right now between Congress and the president.

Mousel, who was at Trumps Saturday rally here in Sioux Center, said he plans to caucus on Feb. 1 and is trying to decide between Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whose efforts to work across the aisle on immigration he admires. He has ruled out Cruz, at least for now, because the senator refused to work with his colleagues or compromise.

Trump is trying to say: I can get elected by not being politically correct and still be able to bring people together to do whats right for the country, said Mousel, who said he nearly always votes for Republicans. Will he be able to do it? I dont know. I mean, I dont.

Mousels 19-year-old son, Zac Mousel, said he likes that Trump was once a Democrat.

Hes not so Republican that hes a closed door, and I think thats what every politician needs to be, said Mousel, who is studying architectural engineering at a tech college and plans to vote for Trump. They need to be interested in looking out for the betterment of the country, not just the betterment of your party.

This theme of unity has been in Trumps rally speeches for months but is often overshadowed by his headline-grabbing attacks, insults and controversial proposals.

Trump has said he expects to win not only the votes of white working-class people who appear to make up his core base, but also African Americans and Latino voters attracted to his economic promises of more jobs and better pay. He has chastised President Obama for not being a cheerleader for the country and instead allowing Americans to become divided, especially over racial issues. When protesters turn up at his rallies, Trump often tells the crowd  after the protesters are escorted out  that he could win them over if they would just give him the chance.

Critics of the Republican front-runner are often baffled by such statements, pointing to his insulting comments about Mexican immigrants and his calls to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on Jan. 24 in Muscatine, Iowa. (Jim Young/Reuters)

But as the race has mostly narrowed to Trump and Cruz, Trump has benefited from flattering contrasts to the Texas senator, who has developed a reputation for stoking collegial divisions in his short three years in the Senate. A hard-line ideological conservative, Cruz prides himself on his unwillingness to compromise.

Trump has seen the GOP establishment warm to the idea of him being their nominee. Rather than being the disruption candidate, Trump is now positioning himself to be the one who can simultaneously appeal to the establishment and the tea party, a role that Rubio had once seemed poised to fill.

Cruz has shifted his tone toward Trump in recent weeks, telling his supporters that Trump has gone from being an outsider candidate to an establishment one, and Trump hasnt fought the label. At one campaign event last week, Trump marveled at the serious establishment types who have been calling his campaign, offering their help and wanting to get involved.

Maybe thats a bad thing, he told reporters during a campaign stop in Winterset, Iowa. That could be a bad sign. Im not sure Im happy about it. But weve been complimented by so many people, and weve been contacted by the establishment types.

Another sign of Trumps thawing relationship with Republican leaders in Washington came Saturday during a campaign event in Pella, where longtime Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) gave Trump a warm introduction. Grassley did not endorse Trump  and his staff says he will appear alongside other candidates in the coming week  but such support from a prominent Washington voice would have been unimaginable just months ago, when the GOP remained deeply torn about what Trumps rise meant for the party.

We have an opportunity once again to make America great again, Grassley said, echoing Trumps campaign slogan.

Trump thanked Grassley for his support when he took the stage, asking the crowd to cheer for the well-known Iowan and calling him a great guy.

As Cruz has accused Trump of only lately becoming a conservative, and only for political reasons, Trump has said that many people evolve in their political beliefs, including Ronald Reagan. Trump has also gone after Cruz for failing to nurture strong relationships with his Senate colleagues, calling his strident opposition to compromise a major weakness that would lead to further gridlock in Washington.

At a campaign rally in Las Vegas last Thursday, Trump pointed out that Reagan, a Republican, would work closely with Democratic House speaker Tip ONeill to make great deals for everybody.

And you know what, theres a point at which, lets get to be a little bit establishment, because we gotta get things done, folks, okay? Trump told the crowd in Vegas, who clapped intermittently. Believe me, dont worry, were gonna get such great deals, but at a certain point, you cant be so strident, you cant not get along, we gotta get along with people.

He has been careful to balance such overtures with gestures aimed at the activist wing of the party. He argues that his high-profile endorsement last week by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a tea party favorite, is evidence that he will not capitulate to the political class in Washington.

During her endorsement event, Palin ripped into the establishment for having gotten us into the troubles that were in and touted Trump as someone who could blow things up, not bring people with different ideologies together.

The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and thats why you see that the borders are kept open  for them, for their cheap labor that they want to come in, Palin said. Thats why theyve been bloating budgets  its for crony capitalists to be able to suck off of em. Its why we see these lousy trade deals that gut our industry for special interests elsewhere. We need someone new who has the power and is in the position to bust up that establishment, to make things great again.

Is it possible to do both? Some voters think so. They think Trump is in campaign mode now and, if elected president, would shift his tone.

A lot of what he has written about in his books and in articles focused on the theme of unifying people  and I think thats still true, said Mike McInerney, 25, who attended the Trump rally in Pella on Saturday and is deciding between Trump and Cruz. Right now hes using fire to fight fire, hes using this as a technique to get the attention he needs to win.

DelReal reported from Pella, Iowa.
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, has attacked front-runner Donald Trump for favoring use of eminent domain to acquire property for real estate projects. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

In a Republican primary that has been dominated by sound bites, a complicated legal issue has found its way to the fore of the campaign: eminent domain.

The procedure allowing governments to seize land for public projects has been the focus of an ongoing dispute between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and front-runner Donald Trump. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also has weighed in on the issue, issuing yard signs boasting that he stands against eminent domain abuse.

The topic could resonate in the first voting states of New Hampshire and Iowa, where companies have run into stiff opposition after floating the idea of using eminent domain for pipelines or other projects. Eminent domain is a particularly hot issue for many conservative and libertarian-leaning voters, who want to limit the power of government to encroach on personal property.

Its not a major issue for most voters because it doesnt come up and impact most voters, said Andrew E. Smith, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. But when it does raise its head . . . it all of a sudden becomes a very important thing.

Eminent domain is the process under which governments can take private property for public use. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that a local government can force the sale of property if it thinks the transaction would foster economic development and help the public.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has said the government needs eminent domain for roads and other infrastructure. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

In recent days, Cruz released an attack ad detailing how Trump and the local government tried to use eminent domain to force an Atlantic City widow out of the home she owned for decades so that he could use the land for a casino parking lot.

[The time Donald Trumps empire took on a stubborn widow  and lost]

Eminent domain, Cruzs ad states, is a fancy term for politicians seizing private property to enroll the fat cats who bankroll them. Like Trump. Then it cuts to a clip of Trump saying that eminent domain is wonderful.

Trump defended the practice Sunday, saying on NBCs Meet the Press that eminent domain is necessary to build infrastructure.

If you didnt have eminent domain, you wouldnt have highways, Trump said. You wouldnt have roads, you wouldnt have schools, hospitals. I mean, I dont love eminent domain, but you need eminent domain, or you dont have a country.

On Saturday, Trump also talked about how eminent domain was necessary in Pella, Iowa, where many landowners strongly oppose the prospect of the government taking land for a new regional airport.

Eminent domain is a contentious issue in other parts of Iowa as well. Last year, Gov. Terry Branstad (R) said he supported the use of eminent domain for some pipeline projects. One proposal would carry 570,000 barrels of crude oil per day from North Dakota, cutting across 18 Iowa counties. A $2 million transmission line to send wind energy from Iowa to Illinois also included the use of eminent domain; last year, the project was put on hold while the company behind it figures out how to move forward.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.) has criticized the use of eminent domain by governments. (Matt Rourke/AP)

According to a 2014 Des Moines Register poll, 57 percent of Iowans favor the pipeline, but only 19 percent said eminent domain should be used to construct pipelines or power lines.

Paul has seized on the issue in Iowa, telling voters in Oskaloosa earlier this month that he opposes the practice.

I will not let the government take any of your property through eminent domain and give it to somebody else, Paul said.

On the side of Interstate 35, north of Des Moines, someone painted on a truck in red letters, Stop eminent domain abuse.

Cruz unveiled his first eminent domain attacks in Whitefield, N.H., a tiny town nestled in the White Mountains, an area of the state with a strong libertarian, anti-government streak.

New Hampshire has a long history of resisting eminent domain. In 2006, voters amended the state constitution to prohibit the state from taking land from one private owner and giving it to another. In the southern part of the state, homeowners are concerned that their land could be taken by energy giant Kinder Morgan, which has plans for a gas pipeline.

In 2012, former governor John Lynch (D) signed a law blocking utility companies from using eminent domain for certain projects, a law aimed at the contentious Northern Pass project, which seeks to string power lines from Quebec through New Hampshire, connecting a Canadian hydroelectric plant to New Englands power grid.

A 2012 poll from the University of New Hampshires Survey Center  paid for by a rival of the Northern Pass project  showed that 74 percent of surveyed independent voters, New Hampshires largest bloc, opposed eminent domain, as did 67 percent of Republicans.

After the Supreme Court decision giving local governments more power to take private property by eminent domain, a group of people tried to seize the New Hampshire farmhouse of former justice David Souter, who was the swing vote in the case. The group wanted to turn his rural Weare, N.H., home into a hotel.

The issue looks like it will continue to simmer on the campaign trail. On Saturday, Trump said eminent domain is necessary for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Alberta to Nebraska  a project that Cruz supports.

Ramesh Ponnuru, a conservative columnist and senior editor at National Review, said eminent domain has been an issue that got a lot of attention from conservatives and libertarians, especially following the Supreme Court case.

But its never been a top-tier issue, Ponnuru added. Its not an issue one would normally place in the top ranks of things to determine a presidential vote.
Take a look inside Camp Cruz, a one-of-a-kind dormitory that houses volunteers from around the country as they come to Des Moines to help canvas before Iowas caucus. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

Take a look inside Camp Cruz, a one-of-a-kind dormitory that houses volunteers from around the country as they come to Des Moines to help canvas before Iowas caucus. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

When Teresa Mihaylov first set foot in the temporary housing provided here to volunteers for Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential campaign, I really did feel like, Oh, my goodness, this does remind me of a dorm. 

Thats because it is one. Mihaylov is bunking at what is known as Camp Cruz, a decommissioned college dormitory where volunteers have been living while canvassing and making calls to bolster Cruzs campaign across the nations first voting state. Its like MTVs Real World, rebooted for a presidential campaign: a lot less drinking and drama, and a lot more door-knocking and dialing the telephone.

It has been decades since Mihaylov lived in a dorm with a roommate. But, at age 56, she agreed to travel back in time a little bit  leaving her job, home and friends in Texas for a few weeks to pitch in for Cruz.

I would give it a half a star, maybe a whole star, she said of her accommodations, which were previously home to students of the AIB College of Business.

The brick and beige aluminum-sided dorm may not be luxurious, but it is an efficient way to house those among Cruzs more than 9,000 volunteers who have descended upon Iowa from elsewhere  some from more than 1,000 miles away.

Cruz volunteers decorate their dorm rooms with signs of support for their chosen candidate. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

The volunteers dont seem to mind. They are all there for the same purpose  to fight the crucial ground war that historically determines the winner of the states caucuses. And they are, for the most part, focused on that task, said Ken Brolin, a 64-year-old who came to Iowa from Long Island and runs the dorm.

Weve had only a few times where we said, Ladies and gentlemen, who are we representing here? Oh, yes, Senator Cruz. Very, very good,  Brolin said. And then everybody stops after their second drink.

The tradition is not a new one. In 2004, former Vermont governor Howard Dean brought in nonIowans to campaign for him, outfitting them in bright orange knit hats and purple wristbands and sending them to knock on doors. The Iowa Perfect Storm: Grassroots for Dean, the hats read.

But in Deans case, the ploy backfired; instead of unifying the 3,500 volunteers, the hats signaled that they were not from Iowa and didnt know much about caucusing.

[A brief and incomplete list of the dumbest things presidential campaigns have ever spent money on]

About 60 Cruz volunteers are living in the three-story dorm, Brolin said, and the campaign has plans to open another, with 48 beds, in the building next door. Cruz has also opened dorms in New Hampshire and South Carolina, states with voting after Iowa.

People sleep two or sometimes three to a room, with someone on an inflatable mattress. The beige carpets and sofas are well-worn. Campaign paraphernalia gives the place an added college feel; doors and hallways are decorated with U.S. and Texas flags and signs that read Fight with Cruz or Cruz Country.

Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential campaign rented out a decommissioned business school dormitory to house out-of- state volunteers in Des Moines. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

The schedule is brutal  and the weather is cold. The volunteers gather each morning for an optional prayer at 7:45 a.m. and are briefed on their day at 7:50. There is a meeting for new arrivals at 7 each night.

On a recent Thursday morning, a group of volunteers huddled in one of the dorms stairwells; a feather boa in red, white and blue was draped around a doorway. Brolin looked up at the group and explained todays task: knocking on the doors of undecided voters and persuading them to caucus for Cruz.

Iowans absolutely love to stay undecided until the last minute they walk in the door, he said. We need to pray about that tomorrow.

[Seven things I learned covering Ted Cruz campaign events]

The volunteers then made their way to a dorm room where they were matched with their walking partners for the day. Jerry Dunleavy of Columbus, Ohio, stood with a whiteboard that broke down each group, their names and where they would be walking on a morning when the temperature hovered around 23 degrees. The groups were to be dispatched to Dallas and Boone counties, about 30 and 60 miles away.

It felt like campus orientation.

Hi, Duane, Im Teresa, Mihaylov said to one of her partners this day, shaking his hand. Some trail mix and a copy of the book Unbroken sat on a nearby table.

Volunteers are equipped with tablets or given a program to download onto their phone to guide them on where to go and whom to talk to. Cruzs campaign employs a sophisticated system that uses psychological data and analytics to target and profile potential voters.

When we send people out in the cold we dont want to say, Heres a list of Republicans; go knock on their door and see what they have to say,  said Bryan English, Cruzs Iowa state director. We want to make sure that they go to houses that either have somebody whos leaning our direction or very likely to lean in our direction if we could talk to them.

[Cruz campaign credits psychological data and analytics, for its rising success]

Canvassers use the campaign data to know who lives at the home. When a person answers the door, English said, the canvasser hits his or her name and a script pops up that is targeted to their interests. English urges canvassers to answer specific policy questions but to otherwise stay on message.

We just periodically remind folks . . . there are other campaigns that would like to see us fail, and so they will throw narratives into the mix that are intended to get us off message, he said. Dont take the bait.

Coleman Griffin, 19, a volunteer from Georgia, said he has been asked by many voters about Cruzs stance on ethanol; Cruz does not support subsidies, and Iowas governor has said he should not win the caucuses because of it.

[A Ted Cruz win in Iowa could kill the ethanol mandate]

For Iowas notoriously icy winters, Griffin packed the few winter clothes he owns. Mihaylov said she brought several items purchased for an Alaska cruise that she never thought shed use again, including a fake fur coat, lined leather gloves and a fuzzy wrap for her ears. They are coming in handy, she said  as is her new pair of snow boots with good traction for the ice.

Volunteers are responsible for their own meals and transportation to and from Camp Cruz  from their homes and for canvassing each day. The dorm rooms have kitchens, but typically, the volunteers eat out. Mihaylov said most folks just snack to get through the day since they have to pay for their own food.

Beth Avery of Gambrills, Md., drove to Iowa over two days. She now ferries people to and from canvassing locations. Bundled up in a puffy, maroon coat and a knitted scarf with an American flag pattern, Avery, a 32-year-old who works at an engineering services company, said many in the dorm have become fast friends; someone made her biscuits and gravy for breakfast. She said she is exhausted at the end of the day and in bed no later than 11.

Were here for a common purpose, she said.

Brolin said his room is a common area, and hes basically the resident assistant, usually kicking everyone out at 10 p.m.

But life outside inevitably intrudes. On New Years Eve, Brolin sneaked out from a dorm bowling night to have dinner with his girlfriend  and to propose marriage to her.

She accepted.
U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura announced a new start date and format for the Syrian talks at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva on Monday. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/AP)

The United Nations on Monday set a new target date of Jan. 29 for the launch of a downgraded version of the Syrian peace talks that have been delayed by squabbles over the guest list and the ultimate goal of the negotiations.

The talks had been due to begin in Geneva on Monday and were intended to bring President Bashar al-Assads government and his opponents together to discuss ways to end the bloodshed in Syria and reforms that would lead to a new system of governance.

Instead, the launch date has been postponed until Friday and the rival factions will not meet face to face, the U.N.s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva.

Rather, he plans to host what he called proximity talks, in which the factions will sit in different rooms at the U.N.s headquarters in Geneva, and he will shuttle between them.

The new format and the delayed start underscore the huge challenge of bringing together the parties to the Syrian war, which is believed to have killed more than 250,000 people, displaced nearly 12 million, sent a surge of refugees flooding into Europe and given rise to the expansion of the Islamic State.

[Is it too late to solved the mess in the Middle East?]

De Mistura said there is still no consensus over who should be invited, and he will not issue the invitations until Tuesday, leaving a question mark over who will attend  and whether the talks will be able to begin at all on Friday.

But he also said it wasnt necessary for everyone to show up by Friday. There will be no opening ceremony, he said, and the talks are expected to continue for six months  considerably longer than the three to five months that diplomats had estimated, pointing to the steadily dwindling expectations for their success.

What matters is starting the talks with some kind of minimum understanding, de Mistura said.

The United States, Russia and regional powers had seemingly united behind the call for peace talks to be based on a formula drawn up in Geneva nearly four years ago and endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution in December.

But as the date approached, fierce disagreements erupted over the composition of the guest list and, notably, who should be part of the opposition delegation. Russia objected to the inclusion of the Islamist Jaish al-Islam rebel faction, which it labels a terrorist group. Moscow also insisted on the inclusion of other individuals and groups, such as the Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party that is fighting a separate war in northeastern Syria.

Turkey said it would withdraw its support if the Kurds were included, while the opposition demanded that there should first be progress toward confidence-building measures outlined in the U.N. resolution, such as a halt to attacks on civilians and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged towns where people have been starving to death.

[Death by siege in Syrias civil war: Hundreds of thousands at risk]

The fighting in Syria has only intensified as the talks have drawn closer, with gains by government forces against the rebels in several parts of the country calling into question whether Assad will feel under any pressure to make concessions at the negotiating table.

A further snag developed Sunday after reports from unnamed members of the opposition suggested that Secretary of State John F. Kerry had warned the Syrian opposition delegation during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the United States was reneging on its commitment to press for an outcome that would lead to Assads departure.

Kerry on Monday told reporters that he did not make those comments. Its just not what was said, he told reporters during a visit to the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

The position of the United States is and hasnt changed, that we are still supporting the opposition politically, financially and militarily, he said.

Kerry added that he also told the opposition that its up to the Syrians to decide what happens to Assad. Thats in the U.N. resolution. And they are the negotiators, so they will decide the future.

The last time peace talks were held in Geneva two years ago they collapsed within weeks after it became clear the government was not willing to offer any concessions to opposition demands for an end to Assads rule.

This time around, de Mistura said, he wants to be sure not to launch peace talks prematurely.

Ive been very much aware of the danger of what happened in Geneva 2, he said, referring to the earlier talks. Thats why we are being careful and extremely thorough in wanting to make sure that when and if we start, we start on the right foot.

It will be uphill anyway, he added.

Carol Morello in Vientiane, Laos, and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Jan. 14, 2016 Participants and volunteers assemble plastic bricks during a group activity at the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment in Muju County, South Korea. Jun Michael Park/For The Washington Post

Since he arrived at the camp, Yoon Yong-won had experienced recurrent nightmares. He was playing a game on his phone, and the image of the phone in his hands was so vivid. But then he woke up with a fright and stared at his hands: empty.

Yoon was in day six of a 27-day camp aimed at teenagers like him: state-certified Internet addicts.

The first day he arrived and had to turn over his devices was a day of despair. I thought, My future is pitch-black,  he said over a lunch of spaghetti Bolognese and kimchi on a recent day. Im so frustrated. I feel like Im being held captive.

South Korea is the most wired country on the planet, a country where its entirely unremarkable for elementary school students to carry smartphones, where the cell network is so good that people livestream TV on the subway. The flip side: South Korea is grappling with a growing number of digital natives who dont know how to live an analog life.

The government has been promoting I.T. and these kinds of devices, so the government helped create this problem, said Shim Yong-chool, the director of the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment camp at a converted school near Muju, in the center of the country. Now, the governments trying to help solve it.

Surveys have suggested that about 10 percent of Korean teenagers are Internet addicts, and the government has tried to counter this through measures such as the Cinderella law, which denies access after midnight to gamers younger than 16, although many have figured out ways to get around it.

Then there are camps such as this one, offering three- or four-week courses of stress-reduction classes and wholesome activities that include hiking, rock-climbing and learning to play guitar.

[North Korea tells Egyptian company: Thanks for the cellphones. Well take the company, too.]

Almost 5,000 teenagers came through the camp last year, the first full year it was open. All were sent here by their parents or their teachers and were assessed for Internet addiction before arriving. Checklists include statements such as I lie about the number of hours I spend online and I find it more fun to be on my phone than to be with family and friends.

Most of the teenagers here measure in the danger zone, where they are obsessive about using the Internet, often cutting class as a result, and have trouble interacting with people offline. Many also become withdrawn or feel lonely, or they show aggressiveness and impulsiveness.

We consider Internet addiction the same as other material addictions like alcohol, Shim said in the common space of the center. A strong smell of liniment hung in the air, olfactory evidence of young muscles not used to physical activity.

Going cold turkey isnt easy. Some teenagers have been busted for having a secret phone in their belongings, while others have attempted to break out of the camp, trying to walk or hitch-hike to the nearest town, three miles away, in search of an Internet cafe.

Yoon, an 18-year-old high school student from Pocheon, north of Seoul, ended up at this camp during his winter break because of what he did during his summer holidays: He played computer games for at least 14 hours a day. Even during the semester, he was spending more than 12 hours a day playing games or using chatting apps.

He thought it was fine. I wasnt getting headaches or anything, he said. His parents, however, did not. They applied to send him to the camp during his winter break.

On day six of the camp, one group of boys  and this intake was all boys, there are separate camps for girls  was coloring pictures of animals that were meant to represent their family members. Yoon, wearing a blond curly wig reminiscent of Christina Aguilera, ate a lollipop and talked to his friends about online gaming strategies the entire time.

Families not only cause you stress, but they can help you deal with stress, too, said Kim Tae-joon, the instructor, as the boys characterized their parents as scorpions, gorillas or snakes.

[Seoul seeks hacker troops to fend off North Korean cyberattacks]

Down the hall, another group was trying to build towers with dry spaghetti and marshmallows. Use your heads, said the teacher, Sun Jin-sook, as peppy Korean pop music played  ironically through her laptop computer. Even though it takes time, dont give up.

Some of the boys worked on their towers, while others just ate the marshmallows.

On the walls of the classrooms were forms the boys had filled out on their first day. Programmer was often listed as their desired profession, and many answered the question of why they were here with variations of I was forced.

My mom told me to come here, and I dont even get any reward for it, said Yoon Suk-ho, a 14-year-old middle school student from Daegu. He acknowledged, however, that he might need help.

I was actually kind of thinking that I might have a problem with my smartphone, he said, adding that he played games on it nonstop. When I came here and they made me hand it in, I was thinking, How am I going to live without it? 

But somehow, they were surviving. During breaks, the boys went out to play in the snow or sat on the warm floor playing board games such as Rummikub or card games  without a screen in sight. On the shelves were box sets of Harry Potter books and comic books on old-fashioned paper.

On their last day of the course, the campers will be assessed for addiction again. After that, they will receive periodic visits from school counselors to check up on them.

Numbers on recidivism are hard to come by  because the camp is too new, said Shim, the director.

At least while theyre here, some boys found that they could live without technology. Its better than I thought it would be, said Kim Sung-min, a 14-year-old. At home, I just used to play games. But here, we talk to each other.

Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

Read more

What do we know about Kim Jong Un? Very little. That makes this guy an expert.

S. Korean leader urges China to ensure North will feel pain over nuclear test

After nuclear test, South Korea ready to resume anti-North broadcasts

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Television actors are celebrating the spirit of Republic Day by indulging in some Gandhigiri. The day will see lot of actors initiate a noble cause. Lets take a look at how they are attempting to make a difference in their own little way.

Ritvik Dhanjani: This was the day when the rights and freedom was granted to Indians. Hence, I would like to take up the cause of promoting freedom of speech and strongly recommend to the whole of India to start speaking freely. No one should be able to bind anybody from speaking his or her mind. People should stop getting offended by this basic human right.

Rashami Desai: Republic Day reminds me of our soldiers who relentlessly sacrifice their lives to keep the people and the country safe. So on Republic Day, I will distribute flags to everyone I meet to pay homage to martyrs who laid their lives fighting for the safety of our country. In addition to this, I will also distribute sweets to children at the signal near my home and celebrate the day with them.

Aishwarya Sakuja: Republic Day means a lot to me because it brings back lot of childhood memories. Ours is one of the most developing countries in the world now and hence its become more important that we keep it clean. This Republic Day, I would like to participate in and promote the Swatch Bharat Abhiyaan. Cleanliness drives should get regular. Besides this, I would also like to help the needy.

Shivin Narang: 26th January reminds me of the Republic Day parade at India Gate. I used to wake up early to watch it. Since the jawans risk their lives to keep us safe, this Republic Day, I would like to distribute clothes to the Army children as gifts.

Vishal Singh: Republic Day is a time to celebrate the rich culture of India and acknowledge people who have put their lives to good use for others sake. So, I am celebrating the day at an old age home.

Rishina Kandhari: The best way to celebrate Republic Day will be lighting up the faces of those deprived of basic eminities. Since Mumbai is experiencing a cold wave, I would like to donate blankets to the street children so they feel warm and cozy.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry tours the That Luang Stupa  is the most important national symbol  on Monday with Phouvieng Phothisane, acting director of the Vientiane Museums, left, and Tata Keovilay center, of the U.S.Embassy. (Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images)

John F. Kerry was in Laos as secretary of state, to meet the prime minister, and Bill Gadoury was here as a Defense Department civilian employee nearing retirement, but on Monday they were just two Vietnam War vets sitting around hashing over unfinished business.

Gadoury went to Kerrys hotel to brief him on successful efforts to identify and return the remains of 271 airmen downed over Laos in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the United States was trying to stop traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

They already shared a history. The two men last crossed paths 24 years ago, when Kerry was co-chairing a Senate committee investigating the POW/MIA issue. They met when Kerry went to Laos on a fact-finding mission, and Gadoury accompanied him to triple-canopy jungle sites where planes that had smashed into the earth were being excavated in the hunt for traces of human remains. Kerry ended up calling Gadoury to testify.

An additional 302 airmen are unaccounted for, and Gadoury is still at it a quarter-century later.

[U.S. looks to increase aid to Laos to help clear unexploded bombs]

Secretary of State John Kerry makes an offering of flowers during a Jan. 25 tour of the That Luang Stupa or "Pha Tha Luang," in Vientiane, Laos. (Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images)

I cannot believe the work youve done for our country, and keeping the faith, Kerry said Monday as he and Gadoury settled into identical taupe leather couches in a large, ornate conference room overlooking a bend in the Mekong River.

Its been an honor to be part of the team all these years, Gadoury replied, demurring when Kerry called him amazing.

I always tell people, Im as proud of this as anything Ive been engaged in, Kerry told him of the search for those who died in a war that ended four decades ago. Weve put together the largest, most comprehensive, most enduring examination of what happened to people in war, in the history of warfare. No country has ever done what we did. I dont know of any other nation in the world that goes to the lengths we go in active-duty military people digging at active sites, pulling up the remains of a C-130, or helicopter, or something, in order to complete the mission.

In three years as secretary of state, Kerry has traveled almost 1 million miles and visited 77 countries, some for only a few hours. Rarely does his work get as intensely personal as it did during his conversation with Gadoury.

We landed, remember, the valley, the valley, Kerry said.

It was a rice paddy, Gadoury interjected.

A rice paddy, Kerry repeated, his memory jogged. It was both beautiful and haunting. It was weird. You could sort of feel a firefight around the corner.

[A new finding about the impact of having a dad who was drafted to Vietnam]

Gadoury, who was based in Thailand for the Air Force during the Vietnam War, went back in time with Kerry, saying: It gives you the sense of the terrain that we had to deal with back during the war, and what we were up against. And its the same terrain that were still up against now as were going back to try to locate and recover people.

They sat silently for a few seconds, neither saying a word before they continued.

At one point, after a series of anecdotes involving Kerry climbing down deep craters where planes were being excavated and the two of them taking a teeth-chattering ride on a Russian helicopter, Kerry brought the conversation back to the modern day.

Well, listen, man, he said to Gadoury. Memory lane is one thing. Where do you think we are? What do we need to do?

Gadoury explained how all the easy sites had been reached, while far more treacherous locations remained unsearched. Their work was hampered by weather and terrain, he said.

He told Kerry of solid leads on the location of about half the 302 remaining cases, including 75 that are slated for excavation.

And then we hope, we expect well find more, he said. Right now, approximately half of that, we may be able to work through in the next 10 to 15 years. Obviously well keep trying and well try to find as many as we can before we run out of leads.

[Long-separated sweethearts reunited in Vietnam]

Kerry mentioned an upcoming summit at the Sunnylands resort in Palm Springs, Calif., where President Obama will host the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Laos, which holds the chair this year, will attend.

If you want to, I mean, obviously, if you have a plan or a concept, this is the time, when the folks come to Sunnylands, he said. If youve got requests, Ill put em to them.

Daniel Clune, the U.S. ambassador to Laos, who had been listening quietly, said that the communist government, while cooperative, imposes limits on the size of search teams. There are 58 people in Laos looking for American MIAs. The work could proceed faster with larger teams, he said. Like Kerry, he is an ardent admirer of Gadoury.

Nobodys indispensable, Mr. Secretary, but Bills close to it, he said.

I know that, Kerry replied, I knew that back then. Which is why he testified before the committee so effectively. He was our link to possibilities and to realities.

Gadoury, deflecting the compliments, cautioned that the remains of some Americans killed in Laos may never be found.

There are no witnesses or whatever, he said. But well do our best, like weve been trying so hard to do over the years.

Gadoury said that after trying for 32 years, he may retire soon. He repeated the word may.

Be nice to come to a conclusion at some point, he added.

Itll decide for itself, when its ready, Kerry said before an aide called him out to answer a phone call from the Laotian prime minister.
David Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to mishandling classified information; he had given his biographer, who was also his mistress, sensitive material. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Inside a secure conference room on the sixth floor of the Justice Department in early 2014, top federal law enforcement officials gathered to hear what criminal charges prosecutors were contemplating against David H. Petraeus, the storied wartime general and former CIA director whose public career had ended about 15 months earlier over an extramarital affair.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run-through of the governments case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeuss lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea.

The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison.

They were also considering bringing the same charges against Petraeuss biographer and former mistress, Paula Broadwell.

The government would never file those charges. Not everyone at Justice shared the prosecutors confidence, and lawyers for Petraeus and Broadwell separately pushed back hard, saying they would fight and beat the charges being considered. Moreover, with its mix of sex and government secrets, a trial promised to be an uncomfortably tawdry affair, one some in the government  as well as defense lawyers  preferred to avoid.

In his first public testimony since resigning as CIA director, former Army Gen. David H. Petraeus apologized to the Senate Armed Services Committee for his extramarital affair. (AP)

Petraeus, in the end, pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material. No charges were brought against Broadwell.

[Petraeus pleads guilty, will face probation]

The Justice Department has never discussed how it reached its decision to accept a plea on the lesser charge. But six current and former U.S. officials, as well as others familiar with the case, provided the first detailed look at the internal debates and wrangling with Petraeuss lawyers that took place before the retired four-star general entered his guilty plea in federal court in Charlotte. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private legal deliberations.

As part of the agreement, Petraeus admitted that he improperly removed and retained highly sensitive information in eight personal notebooks that he gave to Broadwell. The Justice Department said the information, if disclosed, could have caused exceptionally grave damage. Officials said the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.

The plea agreement left some in the Justice Department angry, particularly at the FBI, and some agents have argued privately that it will hamper future efforts to secure prison terms in leak cases. But others in the government defended the deal as the only viable conclusion to a case in which a successful prosecution on the more serious charges was far from certain.

Nobody was going to be happy with the outcome, a former Justice Department official said. There was nothing about this case that was typical.

The plea agreement, while helping Petraeus avoid the prospect of prison, probably has ended whatever ambition he had to become president. It also does not protect him from further punishment  such as stripping him of a star  by the military. The Army recently recommended that Petraeus not face further punishment, but the final decision rests with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who is considering how to rule, according to Pentagon officials.

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I have turned the page on these matters, I am looking forward, and I will have no further comment. I resigned as CIA Director, publicly apologized for my conduct, and formally accepted responsibility, Petraeus, 63, said in a statement. I served my country for over 38 years, including five combat commands during my final decade in uniform. I will leave it to the public and to history to judge that record. Beyond that, I will always regret the mistakes I made, and I will always be grateful to those who have supported me.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Following an email trail

In October 2012, Sean Joyce, the deputy director of the FBI, informed Petraeus, then CIA director, that a pair of FBI agents out of Tampa needed to come to agency headquarters to talk to him. They were investigating a cyber-stalking case.

The FBI had discovered that Broadwell had sent anonymous emails to a Tampa socialite named Jill Kelley and her husband months earlier. Kelley, who described the emails as harassing, contacted a friend who was an agent in the FBIs Tampa field office.

The FBI became interested because the emails contained information about Petraeuss schedule, raising concerns about a possible threat to the CIA director. As the investigation widened and Broadwell, now 43, was identified, the bureau discovered that she had also sent anonymous emails to military officials  and appeared to be involved in a romantic relationship with Petraeus.

[Review: Paula Broadwells book on Petraeus]

On Oct. 26, the Tampa agents arrived at the CIA and began an interview in the directors office on the seventh floor. The agents wanted to talk to him about Broadwell and Kelley.

Petraeus admitted the affair with Broadwell and told the agents he had lost his moral compass. He said the relationship began after he left the military.

In the interview at Langley, the FBI agents also asked the CIA director about secret PowerPoint briefings on the Afghan war that were in Broadwells possession. They also asked if he had provided classified information to Broadwell or facilitated her obtaining it. He denied ever doing that  a statement that later led some in the Justice Department to argue that he should be charged with lying to the FBI when it emerged that she had more sensitive material.

The interview ended after about an hour, with Petraeus realizing that his career was in jeopardy because of the affair.

He spoke with Joyce and asked if there was any way to quietly resolve the issue and avoid a scandal, according to former and current U.S. officials.

The FBIs position was clear: The agents were going to follow the facts.

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, learned about the investigation. Petraeus offered his resignation but said he hoped there was a way he could remain CIA director.

On Nov. 9, 2012, he stepped down.

An expanding investigation

What had first appeared to be a cyber-stalking case was rapidly expanding into a national security leak investigation as FBI agents copied the hard drive of Broadwells computer and found secret documents. On Nov. 12, with her consent, agents searched Broadwells house.

In addition, investigators discovered more than 100 photographs she had taken of highly classified information from eight bound notebooks Petraeus had kept while commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

They also found other classified material in her possession linked to a period in 2003 when she served on a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver.

It eventually became clear to the FBI that Petraeus had given those journals to Broadwell as part of her research for her book; the FBI seized the journals in April 2013 after searching Petraeuss house in Virginia.

Broadwell also recorded a conversation in which Petraeus told her that the journals contained classified information, a statement the FBI would attempt to use against him.

But there was disagreement inside the Justice Department and the FBI about whether Broadwell should be charged, with some arguing that she enjoyed protection as a journalist.

In June 2013, following harsh criticism of leak investigations targeting the news media, Holder said he would not indict any journalists for doing their jobs. Broadwell had media credentials while researching in Afghanistan, and she had written stories and op-eds in newspapers and policy journals.

Her lawyers, including Robert F. Muse, met with prosecutors in May 2014.

We established that Paula Broadwell was a fully credentialed member of the media and entitled to all the protections under the First Amendment and DOJ policy, Muse said. Ultimately the governments decision is consistent with what the attorney general told Congress and what President Obama stated: Namely, members of the media would not be prosecuted for doing their job.

He said he had no further comment on the case.

Former and current Justice Department officials said prosecutors did give her media status.

The cyber-stalking investigation that began in Tampa was closed at the end of 2012, but prosecutors in Charlotte, where Broadwell lived, continued to examine whether Petraeus had leaked classified information and whether he had lied to the FBI.

In July 2013, Petraeuss lawyers met with prosecutors in North Carolina who told them that there was an issue in the case involving classified information and that they would need security clearances before it could be fully discussed. Also in attendance at that meeting in Charlotte was Richard Scott, a lawyer in the counterespionage section of the Justice Departments national security division in Washington  and Petraeuss lawyers regarded his presence as an ominous sign.

Months of silence ensued, however, until February 2014, when the lawyers were invited back to Charlotte for a meeting with prosecutors, who planned to lay out their case  the same presentation Holder and Comey had listened to.

The prosecutors emphasized that they were pursuing felonies, not misdemeanors, including a conspiracy charge. The presentation focused in particular on the contents of the eight notebooks. Lawyers for the general learned for the first time that the Justice Department was threatening to charge Petraeus with three felonies, including gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act.

A conviction could have sent Petraeus to prison and cost him his pension.

[Petraeus: The Islamic State isnt our biggest problem in Iraq]

Slowly reaching a deal

In late April, at a meeting in Washington with prosecutors, Petraeus himself listened to the same presentation of the governments case.

His legal team later rejected any possibility of pleading guilty to felony offenses. In July 2014 in Charlotte, Petraeuss lawyers told prosecutors they couldnt show that he intended to disclose classified information and pointed to Broadwells book, which contained none and had been personally vetted by the general. And they brought up an array of classified material that had appeared in other books and articles, including some written by Cabinet members, and had not led to prosecutions. That showed, they said, that some of the material Broadwell had obtained from Petraeus was already in the public domain.

They also said his statements to the FBI werent material to the investigation and didnt impede it. And the lawyers pointed to Justice Department guidelines, which say it is not policy to charge in situations in which a suspect, during an investigation, merely denies guilt in response to questioning by the government.

In early February 2015, lawyers for Petraeus and the government met once again at the Bicentennial Building in the District. James Melendres, a prosecutor with the national security division, offered a deal.

For this to go away, he said, Petraeus would have to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and mishandling classified information, a misdemeanor. In the statement of facts that would accompany the plea agreement, prosecutors also said they would want to reference a message Petraeus sent to the CIA workforce in 2012 after John Kiriakou, a former agency officer, was convicted of leaking classified information.

Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy, Petraeus had said.

Petraeuss lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment. But another person familiar with the meeting said he described the lying charge as a nonstarter. The Kiriakou reference was also off the table, he said.

Scott, the national security division prosecutor, threatened to call off the talks if Kendall insisted on a no-contest plea. On this, Kendall relented.

The end came about a week later when the sides hammered out the agreement on a misdemeanor guilty plea. Petraeus, in a statement of facts, would admit that his statements to the FBI were false. The agreed fine was $40,000, and he accepted probation for two years.

[The statement of facts in the Petraeus case]

On April 23, 2015, Petraeus pleaded guilty in Charlotte. The judge upped the fine to $100,000.

A former senior Justice Department official said it was the cleanest possible outcome for both sides.

Holder, who was planning to step down and didnt want to leave the case for the next attorney general, approved the settlement. He declined to comment. But he offered this explanation for his decision at a media event last year, when asked if there was a double standard that allowed Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor when his department had zealously pursued others for similar alleged crimes.

There were factors that made the resolution of the case appropriate, Holder said. There were some unique things that existed in that case that would have made the prosecution at the felony level and a conviction at the felony level very, very, very problematic.

Julie Tate, Craig Whitlock and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

Read more:

David Petraeus apologizes again for affair, lays out vision for Iraq and Syria

Petraeus: The Islamic State isnt our biggest problem in Iraq

Petraeus pleads guilty, will face probation

Gen. David Petraeus: From hero to zero
The most powerful and popular man in Pakistan, Gen. Raheel Sharif, announced Monday that he will step down as army chief when his term expires in November, a positive step for the countrys historically unstable democracy but one that creates new uncertainty about the battle against Islamist militants.

Sharif, who pushed the country onto a war footing against the Pakistani Taliban and is credited for a steep decline in terrorist attacks, made his announcement on Twitter. I dont believe in extensions and will retire on due date, Sharif said through his chief spokesman, Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa. He added that the fight against terrorism will continue with full vigor and resolve.

[Taliban rifts exposed by campus attack]

Sharifs announcement could have major implications for Pakistans posture toward Islamist extremist groups as well as efforts to encourage peace talks between Afghanistans government and the Taliban insurgency. Sharif is widely considered to be a dominant voice in Pakistans efforts to nudge the Afghan Taliban into formal talks with Kabul.

Under Pakistans constitution, army chiefs hold the post for three years but are eligible for extensions. Sharifs predecessor, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, served for six years. But Kayanis extension was controversial in a country that has been under military rule for about half of its 68-year history.

Thank you Raheel Sharif, one of Pakistans most prominent and progressive columnists, Cyril Almeida, tweeted after Sharif announced his plans to retire.

Still, the departure of the popular army chief could usher in a new period of unease. Although Pakistan completed its first transfer of power from one democratically elected government to another in 2013, many Pakistanis still look to the army for stability and security.

After Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif passed over more-senior military leaders to promote Gen. Sharif in 2013  the two are not related  the new army chief pressured the government into supporting a major military operation against the Pakistani Taliban.

[New Afghan Taliban leader faces test over peace talk bid]

Coupled with the evacuation of more than 1 million civilians from North Waziristan in Pakistans tribal belt, the army sent 250,000 soldiers into the area in June 2014, driving Islamist militants from most of their safe havens near the Afghan border, according to assessments from Western officials.

Sharif also coordinated an operation against Islamist militants and criminal gangs in unruly Karachi, Pakistans largest city.

General Sharif rightly conceived that the war on terror needed to be fought from the front, said Nazir Mohmand, a retired Pakistani army brigadier.

Over the past year, those operations are credited with a major decline in violence. Deaths from terrorist attacks dropped by nearly 50 percent, and 2015 was the safest year in Pakistan since 2006, according to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

With Pakistans economy also improving as security concerns have eased, Gen. Sharifs popularity soared. He had an 83 percent approval rating in a poll issued in October by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. But there have been moments of tension and controversy during his tenure.

[Afghan leader stirs backlash over outreach to Pakistan]

In his first year as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif called for rapprochement with Pakistans archenemy, India. Many analysts suspect that call unsettled the Pakistani military, causing it to fan anti-government demonstrations in Islamabad in 2014.

Amid speculation that a coup was imminent, Gen. Sharif visited the prime minister. According to an account of that meeting by the Reuters news agency, he told the prime minister there would be no coup so long as the military kept full control over Pakistans foreign policy. Since then, both Sharifs have worked to play down any tension between the military and the civilian government.

Gen. Sharif also appeared to have good relations with the Obama administration as well as U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan. Western officials have said they generally viewed him as a more honest and determined partner than some past Pakistani military rulers, including Kayani.

[Numbers say Pakistan safer, but attitudes more skeptical]

But his departure comes at a critical time. Last week, the Pakistani Taliban killed 20 students and two teachers when it attacked a college near Peshawar. The United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan are in talks about reviving the Afghan peace process. Some U.S. officials have become encouraged that the Pakistani army doesnt intend to stand in the way of planned talks between Islamabad and New Delhi.

Mohmand said Gen. Sharif is mindful of how the public and international image of both Kayani and ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who led the country for nine years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, seemed to deteriorate the longer they held power. By deciding himself not to take extension, he is saying that the institutions are bigger than the individuals, and the state is bigger than the institutions, Mohmand said.

Gen. Zubair Mahmood Hayat, Pakistans army chief of general staff, is most often mentioned as a likely successor.

Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

Read more:

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
A former coup leader who is wanted by the United States for allegedly smuggling cocaine called on his supporters Sunday to resist anarchists who forced a presidential election to be postponed, a sign of deep polarization in Haiti that could lead to more unrest.

Guy Philippe called for counterprotests and said he would not recognize any transitional government put in place when outgoing President Michel Martelly leaves office Feb. 7 unless it was representative of the provinces. We are ready for war, Philippe said. We will divide the country.

It was not clear how much support Philippe can muster, but he remains popular in his southern stronghold of Grande-Anse.

The tone of his remarks points to the depth of polarization over the political crisis.

Haiti was to choose Martellys replacement Sunday, but the two-man race was postponed indefinitely after opposition candidate Jude Celestin declined to participate because of alleged fraud that sparked anti-government protests and violence.

In a statement Sunday, the U.S. State Department called for accountability for any violence related to the delayed election, saying electoral intimidation and destruction of property were unacceptable.

Given the short timeline, some form of interim government is likely to be formed to oversee the election process.

Martelly said the fraud claims were unfounded, but critics think he unfairly favored his chosen successor, banana exporter Jovenel Moise, who finished first in the initial round of voting in October.

On Sunday, supporters of Moise protested for the first time. Pushing for the vote to be completed, they used trucks to block a northern highway that is a major trade route with the neighboring Dominican Republic, regional police chief Charles Nazaire Noel said.

Meanwhile, anti-government protesters gathered in a downtown area of Port-au-Prince that is still largely ruined from an earthquake six years ago. They sang and danced around a bonfire in the street to the thump of a sound system before setting out for the fifth mass march of recent days.

Martelly believes the country is for himself and his family. We want him to go, said a man named Dorval, 40, who is unemployed.

Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, has been unable to build a stable democracy since the overthrow of the 1957-1986 dictatorship of the Duvalier family. A series of military coups and questionable elections have ensued.

A former police officer who has been accused by Human Rights Watch of overseeing extrajudicial killings, Philippe in 2004 led bands of former soldiers to the capital, Port-au-Prince, and overthrew the chaotic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has a long-standing arrest warrant against Philippe for alleged cocaine trafficking and money laundering. The DEA has tried to capture him twice.

 Reuters

Read more:

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Talking about his new role, Murali says, I will have bigger responsibilities; I will also focus on increasing the number of chapters. Now Telugus have two states and with that there are lot more opportunities. May be we can have chapters in Warangal, Vizag, Karimnagar, etc.

After his role as the president of TiE Hyderabad in the past, Murali Bukkapatnam is ready to play a bigger role as one of the trustees (and the only one from AP and Telangana) of TiE Global.

Murali, who hails from Ananthapur, moved to the US to do his Masters in Computer Science and has been associated with TiE since 1992, initially as a volunteer.

He moved to India in 2008 to focus on a company in the hospitality sector which he had invested in. He then went on to become the president of the TiE Hyderabad.

Between 2013 and 2014, I gave away around 800 hours of mentorship. I built the organisation as my own start-up. This year, I have the opportunity to play a bigger role as the TiE Global trustee, says Murali, who runs getdomestichelp.com.

We work with the Ministry of Rural Development and the National Skill Development Corporation. Be it drivers, housekeepers, carpenters, etc., we teach them the required skills, give them a certification and provide them employment. My aim is to create employment opportunities for 1 lakh people.

Talking about his new role, Murali says, I will have bigger responsibilities; I will also focus on increasing the number of chapters. Now Telugus have two states and with that there are lot more opportunities. May be we can have chapters in Warangal, Vizag, Karimnagar, etc.

TiE has also been an integral part of working on the policies of Startup India, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently. These policies can make a difference. We can bring capital directly from the US to invest in the start-ups here and this will be announced during the upcoming budget session. NaMo has announced the initiative, now it is up to the entrepreneurs to take it ahead. Modi has sold the idea of a start-up not only to the entrepreneurs, but to the commoners  to our parents and neighbours. He has removed the entry barrier. I am hoping that there would be a few more relaxations during the budget from the investment point of view. Murali also stresses on how the Telangana Government, too, has been a great support. We are one of the major partners for T-Hub. K. T. Rama Rao has enormous energy and ideas on how to make Hyderabad a start-up capital.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that the United States is considering increasing financial aid to help Laos clear its countryside of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War more than four decades ago.

Speaking with reporters at the end of a one-day stop in the impoverished, Communist-run country, Kerry said that no final figure has been determined but that discussions are underway to increase funding.

The United States has been helping find and clear unexploded ordnance for more than half a decade, starting with $5 million a year and gradually increasing to $15 million last year and $19.5 million this year. The efforts have resulted in a significant decline in the number of Laotians killed and seriously wounded by leftover ordnance. Laos had averaged 300 such deaths a year.

Were now down to about 50 a year, Kerry said, adding, And 50 a year is still too many.

The top U.S. diplomat said he expected a final aid package to be completed by the time President Obama comes to Laos this summer to attend a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Kerry said the United States will continue or set up a number of programs, including one focusing on child nutrition and another to strengthen dams along the Mekong River, a vital tributary that runs through six countries.

[Angry and upbeat at the same time: Obamas whiplash tour of Asia]

Kerry arrived Sunday night in Laos, a country he first visited as a senator in the 1990s, when he helicoptered to jungle sites trying to locate the remains of POWs or MIAs from the Vietnam War. During the war, he patrolled the Mekong in a Swift boat.

His visit to this tiny nation that rarely makes international news is a rare one for a U.S. diplomat. He is only the third secretary of state to visit Laos, after John Foster Dulles in 1955 and Hillary Clinton in 2012.

Relations have been standoffish for decades between Washington and the Communist rulers of Lao, who only last week chose a new leader for the single-party government. But in recent years, the two countries have worked to improve ties. Kerry laid a bouquet of closed lotus blossoms at a third-century Buddhist monument, where the Communist red flag with a hammer and sickle flew from roofs alongside the national flag.

Kerry came to Vientiane to lay the groundwork for a summit Obama will host next month for the 10 ASEAN members, a group that Laos chairs this year. Obamas attendance at the summer meeting in Vientiane will mark the first visit by a U.S. president to the landlocked country.

The high-level visits to Laos are part of the administrations efforts to pay more attention to Asia, an area expected to be the engine for future economic growth. Kerry goes on Tuesday to Cambodia, one of Asias fastest-growing economies. Both Laos and Cambodia do most of their trade with China, which is aggressively courting Laos with loans and investments. Kerry is trying to help the United States make more inroads.

While in Laos, Kerry said, he spoke by phone with the foreign ministers of Russia, France, Turkey and Saudi Arabia about preparations for Syria peace talks in Geneva, expected to start next week. He said he also talked with U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, whose job it is to issue invitations to the U.N.-sponsored negotiations between government officials and opposition groups.

The talks are expected to roll out slowly, with the participants meeting in separate rooms and de Mistura shuttling between them, because so many issues still divide the negotiating parties and the 20-nation support group that proposed the dialogue. Among the major undecided issues are the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the composition of the opposition negotiating team.

Kerry said the first two or three days may be consumed with conversations about humanitarian access and confidence-building measures, but he expressed confidence that the talks would officially begin next week.

Were going to have meetings, he said. And theyre going to start. What were trying to do is make certain when they start, everybody is clear about their roles and whats happening, so you dont go there and wind up with a question mark.

The first round will be followed by another meeting of foreign ministers from the countries that helped birth this third attempt to negotiate an end to the Syrian civil war. Kerry said it has tentatively been scheduled for Feb. 11.

The warring participants in the talks are staking out their positions, with the Syrian government saying it need not capitulate and some with the opposition complaining that the Geneva talks are being rammed down their throats.

If thats their attitude, the war doesnt end, Kerry said.

I have said from Day One, we are going to know very quickly in a month or two or three whether these guys are serious, he added.

Kerrys final stop on his eight-day trip is in Beijing. U.S. officials have increasingly spoken out about their desire for China, which supports Pyongyang, to apply more pressure on North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons. Pyongyang announced a nuclear test on Jan. 6, and U.S. officials said that proved Beijing has not used its considerable economic leverage to rein in its ally.

Kerry declined to preview the message he intends to deliver in China, saying he wants the conversations to remain private.

The only thing Im going to say about China is, I look forward to having solid conversations, serious conversations about one of the most serious issues on the planet today, which is a clearly reckless and dangerous evolving security threat in the hands of somebody who is questionable in terms of judgment and has proven thus to China, he said, referring to Kim Jong Un, the quixotic supreme leader of North Korea.

Read more:

Obama turns on personal appeal while trying to bolster his pivot to Asia

Reported North Korean nuclear test signals snub of China, fraying ties
In his frankest comments on the 2016 Democratic race to date, President Obama said in a podcast interview published Monday that Hillary Clinton has the skills necessary to govern and that the grassroots enthusiasm surrounding Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders does not remind him of the excitement that propelled his historic 2008 presidential campaign.

Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose, Obama told Politico. I think Hillary came in with the both privilege  and burden  of being perceived as the frontrunner and she has been in the public eye for a long time and in a culture in which new is always better. Youre always looking at the bright, shiny object that people havent seen before  thats a disadvantage to her.

Obamas remarks were the closest he has come in public to endorsing his former secretary of state  while distancing himself from the Vermont senator.

The president suggested Sanders will have to broaden his message if he wants to make the transition from a long shot for the White House to a legitimate one.

One thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you dont have the luxury of just focusing on one thing, the president said. As youll recall, I was sitting at my desk there just a little over a week ago  writing my State of the Union speech, and somebody walks in and says, A couple of our sailors wandered into Iranian waters  Thats maybe a dramatic example, but not an unusual example of the job.

When asked if Sanders rise reminded him of himself in 2008, Obama replied: I dont think thats true.

Obamas comments on the Democratic race come at a critical time for both candidates as they battle for position ahead of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. And for an administration that has publicly affected a nonendorsement strategy, they amount to a tacit endorsement of Clinton, who leads in national polls but finds herself locked in a dead heat in Iowa and trailing Sanders in New Hampshire.

Story continues

The truth is, in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff, I think, got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising, Obama said. And there were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out.

Obama said Clinton had a tougher job throughout 2008 primary than he did.

She had to do everything that I had to do, except, like Ginger Rogers, backwards in heels, he said. She had to wake up earlier than I did because she had to get her hair done. She had to, you know, handle all the expectations that were placed on her.

He added: Had things gone a little bit different in some states or if the sequence of primaries and caucuses been a little different, she could have easily won.





(Cover tile photo:Carlos Barria/Reuters)
On this topic, it is appropriate to know the connection of our President, the Obumerrhoid, who is already a PROVEN MONUMENTAL FRAUD, LIAR, and a WANNABE COMMIS/MUZZIE.



Do we really know the extent of this wonderful chap's involvement with the Whackjob Islam ?



By googling: "Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and Obama", one gets a mountainous amount of info about the Obumerrhoid and his connection to wonderful Islam. One of the links there provides the following startling info: "1987 Bill Ayers solicited Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (a.k.a. Donald Warden) to raise money for Obamas Harvard Law School education. al-Mansour is an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an outspoken enemy of Israel, and mentor to Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and his cohort, Bobby Seale. At the time al-Mansour associate Percy Sutton was raising money for Obamas education, al-Mansour was the top financial advisor to mega-billionaire Prince Alwaleed (Alwalid) bin Talal of the Saudi royal family. Obumsky is beholden to Black Panther's most outrageous TERRORISTS, and is beholden to Al Mansour a TRUE Muslim and an OUTSPOKEN ENEMY OF ISRAEL !!!



I suggest that you and the other readers of this post google "Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and Obama" and you'll get startling information on the Obumerrhoid which will go a long way to proving that the Obumerrhoid is a MONUMENTAL FRAUD, LIAR and a WANNABE COMMIE/MUZZIE.



It will further connect the Obumerrhoid to that BLACK RACIST PSYCHO Rev Jeremiah "******* AMERICA" Wright's Cathedral of Hate to Islamic Terrorism.



So, waddaya think of them apples ?
Faced With A Russian Onslaught, Syrian Rebels Are Calling for Help From All Muslims



Russian and Iranian intervention has turned the military balance in Syria's civil war, and rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime are struggling to cope. Facing an overwhelming Russian assault from the air and an offensive on multiple fronts by the Syrian military and its allied foreign militia, some rebels have decided they urgently need more men  Syrian or not.





As a consequence, the most powerful rebel coalition in northern Syria and an association of mostly jihadist religious scholars have both issued calls to arms not just to able-bodied Syrians, but to the entire Muslim world.



...On December 26, the military council of Jaysh al-Fatah, a rebel coalition whose name translates to "Army of Conquest," announced on social media a "general call to arms" for Muslims around the world, urging the Islamic nation's scholars to rally Muslim youth to stand against what it called an Iranian expansionist design.



Jaysh al-Fatah includes a number of factions, chief among them Salafist brigade Ahrar al-Sham and Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. Ahrar al-Sham put out its own call for general mobilization in November.



...An association of mostly jihadist clerics and Islamic scholars called the "League of Scholars in Syria" followed the call from rebel groups with a fatwa, or religious ruling, that declared it obligatory for every able-bodied Muslim to enlist in the Syrian jihad. The fatwa's 38 signatories include independent scholars, religious officials from Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, and others. While these scholars signed in an individual capacity, they carry weight in their respective organizations and brigades.



...Jihadist evangelist and fundraiser Abdullah al-Muheisini, a Saudi currently based in northwest Syria, seems to be at the center of this recruitment campaign. Muheisini is the Army of Conquest's chief judge and he is also among the League of Scholars' most prominent members....
Sure you did. You, the OP, and everyone who brought up the recall elections have tried to project that the recall elections were a mandate by the voters of Colorado against any type of gun legislation. When you lost those seats back to the Democrats the very next year, that completely destroyed the narrative, and ended up being a total waste of time, money, and effort, especially from the outside groups that came into the state to influence those elections.



That my friend is total, epic fail, anyway you want to try to parse it.



You didn't have then, don't have now, and never will have a mandate on the issue of gun laws, and the current mood of the country as a whole is in no way, shape, or form, pro guns. The current stand off in Oregon, by the gang that couldn't shoot straight, isn't helping your cause either.



It is no wonder that Bloomberg smells blood in the water.
Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media  main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.




Lebanon police arrested a man on elude and stolen car charges on Sunday afternoon after a vehicle pursuit and foot chase, according to a press release.

Ronnie Junior Magnus, 22, of Salem, was Tasered while being taken into custody in the Walmart parking lot.

He faces charges of felony attempt to elude, misdemeanor attempt to elude, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, reckless driving, resisting arrest and presenting false information to a police officer. Magnus also had an Oregon State Parole Board warrant.

At about 2:07 p.m. on Sunday, authorities received a report of a reckless driver headed toward Lebanon on Highway 20. The vehicle was moving in and out of traffic and passing dangerously, said a 9-1-1 caller.

A Lebanon officer located the car headed south on the Santiam Highway near Airport Road, and the 2000 Subaru Outback was still being operated in a reckless manner, the news release states.

The officer tried to pull the vehicle over, but the driver attempted to flee, continuing south and going into the Walmart parking lot.

The car came back as stolen out of Bend on Jan. 21.

No injuries were reported to Magnus or officers as a result of the incident.
This is a comment toward Douglas Bauer's letter (Mailbag, Jan. 19) scolding Mr. Crompton's letter about British PM Neville Chamberlain's agreement with Hitler to essentially stay out of Nazi Germany's European theater activities, with the foolish belief the Nazis would not end up taking over all of Europe.

Mr. Bauer, that negotiation led to the collapse of Europe until only England remained. The end result was total collapse. Mr. Crompton was spot on.

And then to bring up the U.S. Lend Lease to aid Britain as if it could have prevented WWII is also of no consequence toward Mr. Crompton's view that we are presently nearing a crisis point again.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Bauer's letters passed along, Senator Wyden, in Albany at his town hall meeting, was not even asked about the refugee immigration crisis nor the ISIS threat, or Hillary Clinton's ignoring of rules!

Doesn't anyone get it, we are approaching a dangerous tipping point in history and again we are exhibiting a position of weakness.

Looking like a bunch of morons in this dangerous world is not being missed by our enemies. We need to be making careful and strong decisions regarding the direction of our country.

Gary Hartman

Lebanon (Jan. 19)
Below is a painstakingly detailed timeline surrounding the events and the people involved in the gun-walking program which leaves this author with absolutely no doubt that the purpose of the Operation was to justify a so-called assault weapons ban.

In the wake of the revelation that Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was in possession of a .50-caliber rifle (that can take down a helicopter), a reminder is in order about the true nature of Operation Fast and Furious.

I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.  ATF agent John Dodson

These guns went to ruthless criminals.  Carlos Canino, ATF Acting Attache to Mexico

Im not going to comment on the current investigationAs soon as the investigation is complete, appropriate action will be taken.  President Obama

In the wake of a court order demanding that the Department of Justice release documents previously withheld regarding the Operation Fast and Furious scandal to Judicial Watch by Oct. 22, Attorney General Eric Holders resignation is suspiciously-timed, to say the least.



Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (left) hugs Josephine Terry, the mother of fallen U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry (Photo by Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic) Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (left) hugs Josephine Terry, the mother of fallen U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry (Photo by Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic)

ABC news reported that Holder has been discussing his plans with President Obama for months, it is somewhat revealing that a potential replacement has not yet been announced, adding to speculation that Holder is high-tailing it out of the Obama Administration before damning information is revealed.

White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said,

The president will make the case that the work of the attorney general is so important that the United States Senate should act promptly and in bipartisan fashion to confirm his nominee

It will not be difficult to push through a new nominee, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took away the voice of the minority in the Senate in November when he flip-flopped from his 2005 position on the nuclear option (Reid previously said that invoking the nuclear option would ruin our country.)

Eric Holder, who has been with the Justice Department for 26 years, is the only attorney general in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress.

For those who have not paid much attention to Operation Fast and Furious, a tutorial is in order. It should be noted that without the vigilance of the New Media, there is little doubt that Americans would never have been informed of this scandal, like so many others under President Obama. In fact, without the diligent work of National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea, it is likely that the scandal would never have received Congressional attention.

The ill-conceived Operation Fast and Furious  conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)  resulted in the loss of about 2,000 guns that ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. One of those guns was used to kill border patrol agent Brian Terry, Immigration and Customs agent Jaime Zapata (from yet another gunwalking operation), and gravely wounding his partner Victor Avila. Former Mexican attorney general Victor Humberto Benitez Trevino estimated that 300 Mexicans were killed by these weapons in 2011, and certainly many more since, such as here, here and here.

It is still unknown who authorized Operation Fast and Furious.

Watch President Obama in 2009:

Timeline (not all inclusive)

Watch Todd Jones statement here:

August 2012 : William Hoover, former deputy director left the agency in the wake of the fallout from the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. William Hoover was no longer employed at the agency as of Aug, 1, 2012, according to an ATF spokesman. Officials declined to comment further, citing the Privacy Act.

: William Hoover, former deputy director left the agency in the wake of the fallout from the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. William Hoover was no longer employed at the agency as of Aug, 1, 2012, according to an ATF spokesman. Officials declined to comment further, citing the Privacy Act. September 2012 : House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley sent a letter to Kevin OReillys attorney threatening to subpoena him if he does not willingly testify before the committee. We have been trying to arrange to speak with your client, Kevin OReilly, for nearly a year now, Issa and Grassley wrote.

: House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley sent a letter to Kevin OReillys attorney threatening to subpoena him if he does not willingly testify before the committee. We have been trying to arrange to speak with your client, Kevin OReilly, for nearly a year now, Issa and Grassley wrote. September 2012: Inspector Generals report released. A resulting hearing can be viewed here. Hearing document here. Of note, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz implicates Criminal Division Deputy Jason Weinstein as trying to downplay the devastating impact of the guns being walked and found at Brian Terrys crime scene. Horowitz also testified that he was also unable to access Kevin OReilly. As we noted in the report  and, as you know, Congressman, we did not get internal communications from the White House  and Mr. [Kevin] OReillys unwillingness to speak to us made it impossible for us to pursue that angle of the case and the question that had been raised, Horowitz said. The report found that numerous red flags should have informed leadership of the failed operation.

Watch the hearing:

September 2012 : Criminal Division Deputy Jason Weinstein resigns, disagrees with findings of IG report.

: Criminal Division Deputy Jason Weinstein resigns, disagrees with findings of IG report. September 2012 : Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley requests an investigation into Avilas and Zapatas case.

: Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley requests an investigation into Avilas and Zapatas case. September 2012 : ABC News reported that according to court documents, another gun-running operation was responsible for the weapons that ended up in the hands of the drug cartel that murdered Jaime Zapata and gravely wounded Victor Avila.

: ABC News reported that according to court documents, another gun-running operation was responsible for the weapons that ended up in the hands of the drug cartel that murdered Jaime Zapata and gravely wounded Victor Avila. October 2012 : Breitbart reports that ICE special Agent Victor Avila speaks out about the night his partner Jaime Zapata was murdered. The last time Agent Avila was seen in public was at Agent Zapatas funeral. He does not sleep, has nightmares, lost all his hair. His family said he is a different person.

: Breitbart reports that ICE special Agent Victor Avila speaks out about the night his partner Jaime Zapata was murdered. The last time Agent Avila was seen in public was at Agent Zapatas funeral. He does not sleep, has nightmares, lost all his hair. His family said he is a different person. October 2012 : Katie Pavlich reports about the undeniable collaboration between the Soros funded left-wing smear machine Media Matters and DOJ Spokeswoman/Director of Public Affairs Tracy Schmaler in attacking journalists.

: Katie Pavlich reports about the undeniable collaboration between the Soros funded left-wing smear machine Media Matters and DOJ Spokeswoman/Director of Public Affairs Tracy Schmaler in attacking journalists. January 11 2o13 : Forbes reports that the Obama administration filed a motion on January 11th to indefinitely stop a lawsuit by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch demanding enforcement of a June 22, 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

: Forbes reports that the Obama administration filed a motion on January 11th to indefinitely stop a lawsuit by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch demanding enforcement of a June 22, 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. February 2013 : Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News reported that the Texas family of fallen Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata sued the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the former head of the ATF and others they blame in Zapatas death.

: Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News reported that the Texas family of fallen Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata sued the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the former head of the ATF and others they blame in Zapatas death. February 2013 : Eric Holder was interviewed by ABC News about being held in contempt. But I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, Id have to have respect for the people who voted in that way, Holder said. And I didnt, so it didnt have that huge an impact on me. Issa responds here.

: Eric Holder was interviewed by ABC News about being held in contempt. But I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, Id have to have respect for the people who voted in that way, Holder said. And I didnt, so it didnt have that huge an impact on me. Issa responds here. May 2013 : Office of Inspector Generals report shows the Justice Department sought to undermine a key Fast and Furious whistleblowers credibility, Sen. Chuck Grassley, as reported by David Codrea.

: Office of Inspector Generals report shows the Justice Department sought to undermine a key Fast and Furious whistleblowers credibility, Sen. Chuck Grassley, as reported by David Codrea. May 2013 : Julian Zapata Espinoza, 32, pleads guilty in the murder of ICE Special Agent Jaime J. Zapata and the attempted murder of fellow agent Victor Avila. In addition, Ruben Dario Venegas Rivera, 25, also known as Catracho, and Jose Ismael Nava Villagran, 30, also known as Cacho, pleaded guilty on Aug. 1, 2011, and Jan. 4, 2012, respectively, to one count each to federal charges concerning the murder and attempted murder of agents Zapata and Avila. In addition, Francisco Carbajal Flores, 38, also known as Dalmata, entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity and to being an accessory after the fact to the murder and attempted murder of the agents.'

: Julian Zapata Espinoza, 32, pleads guilty in the murder of ICE Special Agent Jaime J. Zapata and the attempted murder of fellow agent Victor Avila. In addition, Ruben Dario Venegas Rivera, 25, also known as Catracho, and Jose Ismael Nava Villagran, 30, also known as Cacho, pleaded guilty on Aug. 1, 2011, and Jan. 4, 2012, respectively, to one count each to federal charges concerning the murder and attempted murder of agents Zapata and Avila. In addition, Francisco Carbajal Flores, 38, also known as Dalmata, entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity and to being an accessory after the fact to the murder and attempted murder of the agents.' July 2013 : Senator Chuck Grassley sends a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder reminding him that the Department of Justice has an obligation to inform Congress when Operation Fast and Furious weapons are found at crime scenes. Despite numerous cases of weapons found at crime scenes, the oversight committee found out about these instances from news reports  not the DOJ. The inquiry came after news broke that a Mexican police chief was killed with Fast and Furious weapons, according to Katie Pavlich.

: Senator Chuck Grassley sends a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder reminding him that the Department of Justice has an obligation to inform Congress when Operation Fast and Furious weapons are found at crime scenes. Despite numerous cases of weapons found at crime scenes, the oversight committee found out about these instances from news reports  not the DOJ. The inquiry came after news broke that a Mexican police chief was killed with Fast and Furious weapons, according to Katie Pavlich. September 30 2013 : U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman turned down Holders Justice Department request to dismiss a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawsuit seeking Operation Fast and Furious gun-running scandal documents.

: U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman turned down Holders Justice Department request to dismiss a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawsuit seeking Operation Fast and Furious gun-running scandal documents. November 2013 : The Terry family lawsuit dismissed over a technicality.

: The Terry family lawsuit dismissed over a technicality. January 2014 : The Federal government seeks to dismiss the Zapata family lawsuit.

: The Federal government seeks to dismiss the Zapata family lawsuit. February 2014 : The Terry family appeals the a ruling that dismissed federal employees from the familys lawsuit over the botched Fast and Furious gun-smuggling investigation.

: The Terry family appeals the a ruling that dismissed federal employees from the familys lawsuit over the botched Fast and Furious gun-smuggling investigation. February 2014 : Manuel Osorio-Arellanes sentenced to thirty years in prison for the murder of Brian Terry. We are not celebrating, Terrys family said in a statement. Today we recognized justice has been served and we believe the 30 year sentence imposed on this particular defendant is an appropriate sentence We remain hopeful that all suspects in this murder will be brought to justice.

: Manuel Osorio-Arellanes sentenced to thirty years in prison for the murder of Brian Terry. We are not celebrating, Terrys family said in a statement. Today we recognized justice has been served and we believe the 30 year sentence imposed on this particular defendant is an appropriate sentence We remain hopeful that all suspects in this murder will be brought to justice. March 28 2014 : Monty Wilkinson appointed by Eric Holder as the new Director for Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

: April 2014 : The Zapata lawsuit, which also represents wounded ICE Special Agent Victor Avila was sent back to the district court in Brownsville. The families say they have been denied all information about the case for three years. The Terry family echoes the sentiment, as revealed in this letter by Brian Terrys mother  also in April of this year.

: The Zapata lawsuit, which also represents wounded ICE Special Agent Victor Avila was sent back to the district court in Brownsville. The families say they have been denied all information about the case for three years. The Terry family echoes the sentiment, as revealed in this letter by Brian Terrys mother  also in April of this year. June 2014 : Judicial Watch files FOIA lawsuit on behalf of ATF Special Agent John Dodson, who was subjected to a Obama appointee-orchestrated smear campaign designed to destroy his reputation, as reported at Breitbart.

: Judicial Watch files FOIA lawsuit on behalf of ATF Special Agent John Dodson, who was subjected to a Obama appointee-orchestrated smear campaign designed to destroy his reputation, as reported at Breitbart. September 25 2014: Judicial Watch wins key battle in federal court against the administration on the Fast and Furious documents President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over to hide them from the American people and Congress. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton says timing of Holder resignation is no coincidence.

Aside from the New Media, little coverage was given to the operation  as illustrated in a report from the Media Research Center. The only time the Fast and Furious scandal was grudgingly reported was when President Obama invoked executive privilege. As an aside, Obama criticized George Bush for hiding behind executive privilege.

In an interview on CNN in 2007, he said,

You know, theres been a tendency on the part of this [Bush] administration to  to try to hide behind executive privilege every time theres something a little shaky thats taking place.

After countless hours of research, this author can see no way that the Obama administration can get around the undeniable truth about this operation: It had nothing to do with stemming violence (in fact, violence seems to have been expected), and everything to do with ultimately justifying an assault weapons ban. Please excuse the commentary, but there is one very easy way to all but halt gun smuggling, as well as the stem the flow of drugs into the United States: Seal the border. It should also be noted that Mexico has extreme gun control and a very high murder rate. Few of those murders are solved.

If Mexican citizens were given the tools to protect themselves, this author has a feeling that the drug cartels would lose much of their impact. But for activist groups, such as Amnesty International and many others, the effort is back in swing to convince Mexicans that the solution is an assault weapons ban in the United States, as illustrated by an initiative described here (in Spanish) that was advertised by the hashtag #AdiosALasArmas. As translated from Spanish, this sentence from the petition manages to vilify the United States and call for gun control in America at the same time:

More than 60,000 people have been killed since 2006 in Mexico, most of them died from wounds caused by weapons obtained in the United States. The lack of control of weapons sold in the United States in Mexico deaths and cause pain.

An excellent timeline with additional information, as well as comprehensive information about media coverage on Operation Fast and Furious, can be found here. Big takeaway? If not for the New Media, this scandal would have likely faded into the background.

For revealing insight into the government mentality just before Operation Fast and Furious began, watch this Judicial hearing from March, 2009 (transcript here):
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RELIGION, NATION, MARRIAGE: THE LOYALTIES OF MEN

PRAY, WORK, STUDY, PROTECT: THE DUTIES OF MEN




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.
This is the Republican Party 2016



A week from tomorrow the first votes in the 2016 presidential election get cast as Iowans go out to caucus. Polling released yesterday shows Herr Trumpf beating back the Cruz threat in Iowa and across the country to the point where Cruz is looking more like he'll go to Cleveland as a Texas favorite son candidate-- the way Rand Paul will go as a Kentucky favorite son candidate-- rather than as an actual contender for the nomination, or even as someone able to deadlock the convention and stop Herr Trumpf's nomination. This morning's endorsement of Cruz by former Texas Governor Rick Perry isn't worth a single delegate. And yesterday one of Cruz's SuperPACs-- the Courageous Conservatives PAC-- attacked Iowa's Republican governor Terry Branstad in a statewide radio ad, not a good idea. Something tells me Iowa Republicans are not going to appreciate hearing this: "America wants a leader who walks tall and stands up against the lobbyist thugs and the politicians they own. Branstad and Trump. Branstad values; Trump values. Cruz cant be bought and they hate him for it."





The CBS/YouGov polling for Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Florida indicates Trumpf will be the Republican nominee... in a walk. He has substantial leads in every state but Texas, where Cruz leads 45-30% and in Iowa, where Trumpf is ahead 39-34%. Rubio is in third place but not really a threat and Kasich's surge in New Hampshire, 4th place with 10%, leaves him twiddling his thumbs and with nowhere to go but back to Columbus. Trumpf's best state is Florida (41%), where he crushes unfavorite sons Rubio (18%) and Jeb (4%). When will Jeb stop humiliating himself and trashing the family brand?





In Iowa Herr Trumpf reversed the Cruz momentum with a relentless full on attack and Cruz's 40-31% lead in December is now a Trumpf 39-34% lead. Rubio's at 13% there and the Des Moines Register endorsement isn't going to do much for him. Jeb, Fiorina, Santorum and Kasich are all bunched up at 1%, beating Huckabee at ZERO, who has already announced that if he doesn't win in Iowa, he's quitting the race. (He's also at ZERO in New Hampshire and in Florida; it's just not his year.) It's worth mentioning that 63% of Iowa Republicans say they could never consider voting for Trumpf, while only 33% and 36% say they same thing about, respectively, Cruz and Rubio.





After Cruz loses Iowa, he'll face Trumpf in New Hampshire where Trumpf leads 34-16%, with Rubio on his ass with 14% and Kasich coming up with 10%. Christie with his Union-Leader endorsement has managed it tie Jeb with his millions and millions of dollars in annoying and ineffective TV and radio ads, at 7% for 5th place. (Christie is at 2% in Iowa and a fifth place finish in New Hampshire should send him back to Trenton to try to make amends with his own constituents who hate him and are unlikely to even give him favorite son status.





For the Southerners who though Cruz could slay Herr Trumpf down in the Old Confederacy, South Carolina shows him with about half of Trumpf's support, 40-21%, Cruz with negative momentum. And in Georgia, Trumpf is kicking his butt 39-29%. Lindsey Graham's endorsement of Jeb seems to have been worth 1 point in South Carolina and Jeb is now at 8% (5th place), while Trey Gowdy's endorsement of Rubio was also worth a point, Rubio now at 13% instead of December's 12%.





At this point, people will be wondering more and more frequently what Trumpf is going too be looking for in a running mate. There seems too much bad blood to shore things up with the far right by picking Cruz. I guess he could pick a Jefferson Beauregard Sessions if he wanted to go that route or a Mike Lee. Or will he be looking more towards the general anyway and go in the earliest direction he spoke about-- a candidate like Oprah Winfrey? Or at least a mainstream type candidate-- if he could even find one who would want to run with him. Would Kasich? I can't imagine it. I have a feeling he'll give very strong consideration to a non-politician, possibly a woman. Lots of time to speculate on that though. Trumpf should have the primary wrapped up by the middle of March unless Rubio can pull off some kind of miracles in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio on March 15. It's over on that day if Trumpf wins the five states, or even if he wins any three of them.
Dedicated to the propogation of the Gospel, the entries on this blog are the understanding and experience of Jesus Christ by the authors. Whilst we make every effort to ensure there's nothing heretical in here, it should be noted that the writers are human and subject to correction! Please feel free to leave comments or contact me directly and we can engage about what's been written.
"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your

mattress,/

And you shall sleep restful nights"
The Commission has confirmed today the members of the Industry Advisory Group (IAG), linked to the EU Energy Platform.
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - A Bosnian tycoon and head of a party in the ruling coalition was arrested on Monday on suspicion of obstructing justice in a move likely to shake politics, weeks before the Balkan country is expected formally to apply for European Union membership.

Fahrudin Radoncic is a former owner of Bosnia's largest newspaper, Dnevni Avaz, and leader of the co-ruling Union for Better Future (SBB) party. His arrest follows that of two other SBB officials this month on suspicion of intimidating a witness in the high-profile trial in Kosovo of accused Balkan drug lord Naser Kelmendi.

Radoncic had criticised the arrests.

It was unclear what ramifications his arrest might have for the ruling coalition, which is just weeks away from applying for Bosnian membership of the European Union, two decades after the end of a 1992-95 war.

The police and the state prosecutor's office said in separate statements that Radoncic was arrested on suspicion of interfering in the work of the judiciary.

Police said he was taken into custody in the town of Hadzici near the capital Sarajevo, and that it raided several other locations for evidence. Bosnian media reported that the Dnevni Avaz offices were also raided.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
The United States is deeply alarmed by reports, including those from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, of serious human rights violations and abuses in Burundi, including eyewitness reports of mass graves, a sharp increase in alleged enforced disappearances and torture, and reports of sexual violence by security forces.

U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner, said these and other reports further underscore the urgent need for the Government of Burundi to allow for the immediate full deployment and unimpeded access of African Union human rights observers to investigate these allegations. It is imperative that the Government of Burundi remove all bureaucratic and practical roadblocks it has used to prevent the AU human rights and military observers from fulfilling their mandate for the past six months to investigate reports of violence committed by any side in the conflict.

The United States, said Mr. Toner, calls upon the Government of Burundi to permit an immediate, impartial investigation into these recent allegations and to hold accountable all those found responsible for crimes. The United States remains concerned about Burundis ongoing political and humanitarian crisis and the resulting suffering it has brought to the people of Burundi. We once again call on all parties to reject unlawful violence, and reiterate that the only way to resolve the crisis gripping the country is for all parties to agree promptly to engage in internationally-mediated, inclusive dialogue without preconditions.
In recognition of the deepening partnership between the United States and the Lao PDR, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel R. Russel visited the Lao PDR on December 17 and 18.

Addressing the Institute of Foreign Affairs, Assistant Secretary Russel told a capacity audience that, Were writing a new chapter in relations between Laos and the U.S., between our governments and our people.

This partnership on issues vital to both of our nations spans inclusive economic growth, health, education, and environmental protection. He pointed to visits, planned for later this year, of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry as opportunities to push the relationship to a higher level. Weve revitalized our relations with the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, culminating in President Obamas visit, less than a year away.

Assistant Secretary Russel also met with Deputy Prime Minister H.E. Dr. Thongloun Sisoulith to discuss the growing bilateral relationship and U.S. support for the Lao PDR in preparation for the ASEAN meetings in 2016, including the ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit.

In addition, Assistant Secretary Russel met with Minister of Health H.E. Dr. Eksavang Vongvichit to further advance our cooperation and assistance to the Lao health sector. He also met with Vice Foreign Ministers Mr. Alounkeo Kittikoun and Sengphet Houngboungnuang, as well as Chair of Party External Relations Committee, Dr. Sounthone Xayachak.

To conclude his visit, Assistant Secretary of State Russel participated in a traditional baci ceremony in honor of the recent graduates of the U.S. governments English Access Program, which provides two years of free English classes and life skills training to disadvantaged youth in Vientiane. Through his interactions with the students, he observed firsthand the impact of English education.

The Lao PDR and the United States have recently increased the number of high-level visits between their respective leaders, and Assistant Secretary Russels visit builds on this trend.

The United States is proud to work with its partner Laos to strengthen ties that benefit both nations, the Asia  Pacific region, and the world.
ELKO  Nevada Humanities and the Western Folklife Center, in conjunction with the Great Basin College ACE Committee, will host Humanities Speakers Nicholas Vrooman and Dan Flores on Thursday.

Both presentations are free and open to the public.

Vrooman will be hosted by a GBC oral communications class from 11 a.m. -12:15 p.m. in the High Tech Center, room 123.

Vrooman was the first State Folklorist of North Dakota and the second State Folklorist of Montana. Currently, Vrooman directs Northern Plains Folklife Resources, based in Helena, Montana.

Vrooman is contracted by the Native American Rights Fund to help write for the Little Shell Tribe of Montana their petition for federal recognition to the Department of the Interior.

Vrooman wrote and produced the Little Shell Tribes official history book, The Whole Country was One Robe: The Little Shell Tribes America, funded by the State of Montana.

The North American West has multiple narratives of who we are and from where we come, some of which are concealed, says Vrooman. Finding a voice for some of these little known stories brings to light narrative threads that flesh out and enhance a deeper meaning for life in the American West.

Flores is a cultural and environmental historian of the American West. The author of 10 books, Flores work focuses on a longue duree approach.

According to the Western Folklife Centers website, Floress work encompasses both history and the present so that todays westerners can strive to make decisions that promote the long-term health of the land.

Flores has written widely about western animals, including bison and wild horses, and has two forthcoming books to be released in 2016, titled American Serengenti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, and Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History.

Flores, who is also a keynote speaker for this years National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, will speak to Jonathan Fosters History 102 class from 2:303:45 p.m. Thursday in the High Tech Center, room 123.

During his presentation, Flores plans to speak about Coyote America.

[It] is a biography of the animal from its evolutionary origins in the American Southwest five million years ago, its role in inspiring the principal deity of many western Indian tribes, to its 21st century spread across North America and colonization of Americas largest cities, said Flores.

Along the way Ill try to explain how its evolutionary adaptations, so similar to ours, has coyotes mirroring our own successes, one of the reasons it continues as an animal avatar for us in modern culture.

For information, visit www.gbcnv.edu or call 753-2202.
When a couple ranchers face the death penalty for accidentally burning 140 acres of public land, but federal bureaucrats burn thousands of acres of public -- and even private land -- without consequence, something is terribly wrong.

A few weeks ago, several hundred citizens marched in protest to the ranchers conviction in the rural town of Burns, Oregon. Afterwards, about 15 protesters went to a nearby wildlife refuge to occupy the remote federal outpost. This act of civil disobedience, led by cowboys and backed by well-armed military veterans, has attracted worldwide media attention.

The protesters say they simply want the ranchers released from prison, and control of the federally managed public lands turned over to local authorities.

According to court records, the two ranchers (Dwight and Steven Hammond) lit grass fires to create a fuel break, or backburn, on their own ranch to stop summer lightning fires headed in their direction. Years before, they had ignited a prescribed burn in autumn, also on their own land, to improve range health.

Although the Hammond family ranch fires worked perfectly to improve and protect the range, the fires did encroach slightly onto adjacent federally controlled public land. The Hammonds openly acknowledged having lit the fires, a common range management practice. They also put the fire out when it wandered off of their property.

But because a portion of land under federal control was burned, the father and son duo faced a minimum penalty of 5 years in prison and a maximum sentence of death under the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996," a law enacted by Congress in response to the horrendous Oklahoma City bombing.

When the judge recognized the charges were not at all conducive to the stiff sentencing under the terrorism law, he issued a much lighter sentence. But federal bureaucrats in charge of the public lands persisted until the ranchers were resentenced under the harsh federal terrorism law. And that is what caused the uprising in Oregon.

Under local control, it is unlikely this controversy would have happened. The situation would have been resolved under state law by local juries, judges, and officials accountable to their local communities. The conflict would have been resolved in harmony with the will of the people, which is the way American government was designed to operate.

Its hard to disagree with Nicole Kuchenbuch, the Farm Bureau President who said its outrageous and hypocritical of our federal government to bring terrorism charges against the two Oregon ranchers when the federal government itself uses the same practices.

Last summer Kuchenbuch fought a fire alongside firefighters at her family ranch and instructed them not to backburn 1,000 acres of her familys private land. But the federal agency did it anyway, destroying the private ranchs timber, family cabin, corrals, and several miles of fencing. We were told afterward that there is no restitution for our losses, Kuchenbuch said.

Over twenty ranches have been lost as a result of wildfire in Okanogan County, Washington these past two summers. According to County Commissioner Jim DeTro, one-third of the acres lost in the fires of 2015 were caused by federal agency backburning. Several ranches lost private timber, grazing grounds, hay, barns and equipment to agency backburning.

In 2013 a U.S. Forest Service prescribed burn near Lemmon, South Dakota accidentally consumed 11,000 acres of public and private land. When locals sued for damages, the federal government responded, Our review of the claim discloses no liability on the part of the United States. Therefore, your Federal Tort Claims Act claim is denied.

Conflict with federal land policies is nothing new, but the Oregon protest brings new light to the widespread problems of having a distant federal bureaucracy in control of local land management decisions. As the Chair of Montana's Study of Federal Land Management I can attest the problems are severe and numerous throughout western America.

I understand the frustrations, but pray the situation in Oregon is decided peacefully. There is little reason to expect that serious conflicts with federal land management will cease until a more reasonable, locally driven approach to public land governance is instituted. This is why I strongly support real, lawful solutions advocated by www.americanlandscouncil.org to #FreeTheLands.
Ian Gibson inside his Madrid home. Bernardo Perez

Life with Federico Garcia Lorca is a pilgrimage that involves carrying the load of injustice on your back.

It has its moments of satisfaction, says scholar Ian Gibson, but also its sorrows  such as realizing that some people in Spain still prefer ignorance over knowledge of what happened on the day a firing squad ended the writers life at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.

Ever since he was a young 18-year-old student in Dublin, Gibson has spent most of his time unraveling the mysteries that surround the Spanish author of Blood Wedding and Poet in New York. His complete works on the subject are to be reprinted this year, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of Lorcas murder on August 19, 1936.

He is the most famous missing person in the world, says Gibson, alluding to the fact that Lorcas body has still not been found despite several high-profile attempts.

Sitting inside a bar in Lavapies, the Madrid neighborhood where he lives, Gibson explains how Lorca became the focal point of his career. It could have been Baudelaire, he admits. But it was Federico who dazzled me.

At age 76, he still doesnt quite know why. It was a very intimate, very profound thing that his poetry revealed to me. It had to do with the atavistic, with something primitive and instinctive. He was an eminently telluric poet.

It could have been Baudelaire. But it was Federico who dazzled me

His first reading of El romancero gitano (translated as Gypsy Ballads) left a mark for life. Later, piqued by clues offered by Gerald Brenan in his 1950 book The Face of Spain, Gibson decided to investigate Lorcas killing.

The result was his book The Death of Lorca, which addressed a taboo subject in 1970s Spain, then still under the yoke of Francoism.

Later came his main work, the 1998 biography Vida, pasion y muerte de Federico Garcia Lorca, and offshoots such as 2009s Lorca y el mundo gay and the more recent Poeta en Granada (2015).

People think Im obsessed, he says, before admitting that maybe it is no wonder. He is everything to me.

Whether he likes it or not, Lorca is the central element that has enabled Gibson to approach other areas of research. It was Lorca who led him to Salvador Dali, Antonio Machado and Ruben Dario, whose biographies he ended up writing as well.

Federico Garcia Lorca in a picture taken by French writer Marcelle Auclair. Marcelle Auclair

Gibson also played a role in the efforts to exhume Lorcas body after putting forward a possible location of the mass grave in which he is thought to lie, together with a schoolmaster and two bullfighter assistants. That attempt proved fruitless, as did the others.

I have gone over the notes, the recordings. I still think he is buried very near the memorial park in Alfacar, but I have no problem with people investigating other possibilities, like the researchers Miguel Caballero, Javier Navarro and their people are doing, he says. All leads must be followed, no doubt. All I am interested in are the scientific results.

But Gibson is not just attracted to the shadows surrounding the writers death. He is also intrigued and moved by certain episodes in his life.

He had this sense of abandonment during his childhood years. Perhaps there was a wet nurse. His love trauma must have come from some very deep place. Like he used to say: every abandoned child is a story that got erased.

But there was a lot of light in his life as well: there was joy, there was music, and a passionate determination to follow up on what he called his inclinations. Nobody can be left indifferent after getting to know Federico. To study Lorca is to study inner prisons and how to escape from them.

Gibson had found a soulmate. He taught me both to detect and to wish to free myself of the puritanical environment I experienced as a child in a Protestant family surrounded by a Catholic country, he notes.

If I live in Lavapies, its because of him, because this is where I came searching for his trail, he adds. I never dreamed I would end up living here.

Ultimately, he even applied for dual citizenship. This has been a source of joy and sadness, as Gibson cannot understand why his adoptive country sometimes seems unwilling to get to the bottom of the Lorca issue.

Not that he hadnt been forewarned by a great observer of this country, Richard Ford, he says about the 19th-century travel writer who wrote the influential A Handbook for Travellers in Spain.

In one of the passages he comes up with a dazzling definition of this country, says Gibson: Unamalgamating Spain.

English version by Susana Urra.
Pablo Iglesias (c) and other Podemos politicians present their plans in Congress on Friday. Bernardo Perez (EL PAIS)

Spain came no closer to seeing a government formed this weekend, after acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Friday declined the formal offer from King Felipe VI to stand as prime ministerial candidate at the first investiture session in Congress.

The move leaves the ball in the court of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos, who have the potential to reach an agreement to form a government. However, the leaders of these two left-leaning parties, Pedro Sanchez (PSOE) and Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), failed on Sunday to agree on the time frame for reaching such a deal.

Six out of 10 voters believe negotiations would be easier if the PPs candidate for prime minister were not Rajoy

Speaking after his meeting with the king on Friday evening, Rajoy thanked the monarch for the gesture and the offer to stand at the first investiture session as prime ministerial candidate. But he declined the deference, saying that he did not currently have the votes needed to be successful.

I have told the king that I will keep working to secure a sufficient majority, he told reporters.

Rajoy went on to say that he did not want to see Spain have to hold new elections, but that neither was he willing to withdraw his candidacy, nor step down as leader of the Popular Party. He would, he explained, offer Sanchez and Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera a government of consensus in order to achieve basic reforms.

Rajoys decision followed another surprise announcement earlier in the day, when Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told the king and then shortly after the assembled press of his desire to form a government in partnership with the Socialists, in which he would take on the role of deputy prime minister.

Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez in Congress on Friday. Bernardo Perez

The move took many  in particular the Socialists  by complete surprise, and, combined with Rajoys refusal to stand in the investiture session, leaves the ball very much in the court of the left-leaning parties.

In a telephone conversation on Sunday, Sanchez and Iglesias disagreed over the time frame for beginning negotiations. In a 20-minute call, Sanchez admonished Iglesias for the surprise announcement made on Friday, while the Podemos leader insisted on the need to begin talks. Sanchez, reportedly, would rather wait. The pair are due to talk again this week.

Until the king finishes the second round of meetings with political leaders, Sanchez wants to engage in dialogue but not negotiate pacts, and as such is unwilling to respond to Iglesiass offer of government. First we will deal with the what, sources from the PSOE have said, and then well deal with the how.

A Metroscopia poll released on Sunday by EL PAIS reveals that the majority of voters reject the slow pace with which their political leaders are dealing with the formation of a new government. Six out of 10 voters believe that the negotiations would be easier if the Popular Partys candidate for prime minister were not Mariano Rajoy. Meanwhile, half consider that the negotiations would be more successful if the PSOE were not led by Pedro Sanchez.

The inconclusive general election of December 20 yielded a hung parliament with 123 seats going to the incumbent Popular Party (PP), 90 to the PSOE and 69 to Podemos (although the latters congressional group now has 65 deputies after four regional associates decided to go it alone). IU has two seats.

Since then, parties have been scrambling to forge allegiances for a congressional majority of 176 seats.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Jean-Claude Junker (l) with acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (c), in a file photo from October. Uly Martin

In the wake of Spains inconclusive December 20 general election, Brussels is calling for stability in the country. The European Commission has kept its distance from the Spanish political scene since the polls, at which no party managed to secure a majority of seats, leaving an uncertain outlook. But its forthcoming Spain 2016 report, due to be made public in February, analyzes the serious imbalances in the economy, and contains a stark warning about the political risks in the country.

The difficulties in forming a government could slow down the agenda of reforms and cause a lack of confidence and a deterioration of market sentiment, says the draft version of the text, to which EL PAIS has had access.

The report underlines the huge imbalances that persist, in particular the high levels of debt

Vulnerability is the key word in the report. Brussels states in the text that the Spanish economy is recovering, is once again creating jobs, and that its numerous weak points are improving. But it underlines the huge imbalances that persist, in particular the high levels of debt  public, private and foreign  and the unemployment rate.

The country is vulnerable to market volatility, explains the document, whose principal message is that the Spanish economy is beginning to heal the wounds after the bailout of the banking system in mid-2012, but that it remains at risk if a new crisis unfolds.

This is the first time that the executive branch of the EU has had something to say about Spanish politics since the December 20 polls. The inconclusive general election yielded a hung parliament with 123 seats going to the incumbent Popular Party (PP), 90 to the PSOE and 69 to Podemos (although the latters congressional group now has 65 deputies after four regional associates decided to go it alone). The United Left (IU) has two seats. Since then, parties have been scrambling  unsuccessfully  to forge allegiances for a congressional majority of 176 seats.

If ECB measures and the falling price of oil take effect, Spain will be vulnerable to a new turbulent episode

Spain needs political stability, the commission chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, said just a few days ago. I hope it is up to the task.

The report, meanwhile, goes even further, and analyzes the risks to short-term growth. If European Central Bank measures and the falling price of oil take effect, Spain will be vulnerable to a new turbulent episode, it states.

The draft report  90 pages on the progress of the Spanish economy  is subject to last-minute changes and the inclusion of the most recent data, according to EU sources. It includes an in-depth study into the economic imbalances identified in Spain, as well as an evaluation of the ECs recommendations. But beyond the economy, Brussels has gone further, conveying an explicit message: political instability is a bad sign for the confidence of the markets.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Mexican actress Kate del Castillo. Reed Saxon (AP)

Mexican actress Kate del Castillo is expected to testify before prosecutors later Monday about her alleged business relationship with notorious drug trafficker Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

The interview is reportedly scheduled to take place at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, where the soap actress lives.

In her first public statement since it was revealed she maintained a close friendship with the Sinaloa cartel leader and put him in contact with actor Sean Penn, Del Castillo said the Mexican government was out to destroy me.

I dont have anything to say to the press, she said in a message sent to the US Spanish-language television network Univision over the weekend.

My lawyers have advised me not to give any statements because the government is out to destroy me, she said.

Mexican authorities have released scores of text messages between Del Castillo, Guzman and his lawyer

Guzman, the most wanted drug fugitive in the world, is being held under tight security at the El Altiplano prison outside Mexico City following his capture on January 8.

After his arrest, it was revealed that Del Castillo had helped introduced Penn to El Chapo last October. The Hollywood actor and film director wrote a first-hand account of his meeting for Rolling Stone magazine.

Mexican authorities were able to trace El Chapos whereabouts after they monitored prior communications between the drug lords men and the actors.

Del Castillo was trying to produce a movie about Guzmans life and had reportedly asked him to participate in a tequila business with her.

On Saturday, the Hollywood gossip website TMZ located Del Castillo while she was dining at the El Coyote restaurant in Los Angeles, but she declined an interview.

Her representatives have also denied an EL PAIS request for an interview.

Since El Chapos arrest, Mexican authorities have released scores of text messages between Del Castillo, Guzman and his lawyer Andres Granados.

When he escaped on July 11 from Altiplano through a tunnel dug underneath his cell, Del Castillo told Guzmans lawyer that she was going to celebrate.

Mexicos Attorney General Arely Gomez said the actress is being investigated over whether she received any money from El Chapo for her tequila project

The actress, who played a female drug trafficker in the popular soap opera La reina del sur (The queen of the south), has lived in Los Angeles for many years.

Her father had said that she would testify at the Mexican Consulate, which was confirmed by prosecution sources consulted by Mexican daily La Jornada.

But other sources have declined to confirm whether the meeting will take place on Monday.

Del Castillo is being called in as a witness in the case.

But Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said the actress was also being investigated over whether she received any money from El Chapo for her tequila project.

Gomez added that at this time there were only indications that Del Castillo may have been involved in money-laundering activities.

English version by Martin Delfin.
Local police on Corn Island, Nicaragua help recover the bodies of Saturday's boating accident. STR (AFP)

More information La temeridad del capitan y el viento causaron el naufragio fatal en el Caribe

Thirteen of 32 passengers on a tourist outing near a small Nicaraguan island perished on Saturday when their boat capsized after they were hit by strong winds and waves, authorities said.

The Nicaraguan Navy had prohibited the craft from sailing due to the adverse weather conditions, but the captain believed that he could cope with the gusts and set course for a nearby island. He was later arrested on criminal charges.

The boat sank some 12 kilometers off Little Corn Island, a popular destination for scuba diving and snorkeling.

All of the victims were Costa Ricans.

The Nicaraguan Navy prohibited the boat to sail because of the weather conditions, but the captain believed that he could cope with the gusts

The Reina del Caribe was taking the 32 passengers from Little Corn to Big Corn island after a day at the beach.

Rescue teams were only able to save 19 people, including the captain, Hilario Fermin Blandon, who now faces charges of negligent homicide and endangering peoples lives, said Nicaraguan National Police deputy chief Francisco Diaz.

Extreme weather conditions brought on waves of up to two meters high. The group  25 Costa Ricans, four US citizens and one Nicaraguan  wanted to return to Little Corn after three hours when the rough waters began slamming into the boat, according to authorities.

The weather turned very bad and the sea was rough. The wind gusts were incredible and the boat capsized. Thats when the nightmare began, said Roger Nunez, a lifeguard who was initially part of the group of tourists but refused to go on board.

Nunez told the local press that his sister-in-law was among the victims. He witnessed authorities hauling in bodies at the port of Big Corn Island, while the captain and his assistant were placed under arrest.

Boat captain faces charges of negligent homicide and endangering peoples lives

This occurs because of negligence and recklessness of boat owners who know that a sail warning has been issued but they still insist on making these trips and putting people at risk, said Nicaragua navy chief Marvin Corrales.

According to Diego Bosque, who made the trip last July with his girlfriend, the adverse weather conditions are very common in the area.

You cant imagine the conditions until you are out in the middle of the water and no one has warned you about the strong waves. It is definitely a risk going by boat, he said.

The tragedy has moved both the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan governments to set aside for now their differences about a border dispute and the Cuban refugee crisis. Both countries are working together to help the survivors and the victims loved ones.

The survivors arrived in Managua on Sunday, where they awaited a plane to take them home.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega ordered that the victims bodies also be returned to Costa Rica.

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis declared a day national mourning for Monday.

English version by Martin Delfin.
Madrid city environment chief Ines Sabanes in her office in the Palacio de Cibeles. SAMUEL SANCHEZ

Madrid City Hall is looking to ban polluting diesel cars from the city center from 2020, leftist Mayor Manuela Carmenas environment chief has revealed to EL PAIS.

We will have to take some time with this and explain it properly, said Ines Sabanes. There are currently measures to deal with high pollution levels and access restrictions in the city center, but there will come a time when polluting cars will not be able to circulate and restrictive measures will have to be taken in the entire downtown area.

Paris has already announced it will ban all diesel vehicles in 2020

The decision by the Ahora Madrid administration follows similar moves in other European capitals. Paris has already announced it will ban all diesel vehicles in 2020, while London is opting to charge diesel cars a further 12 on top of the 14 all vehicles already have to pay to enter the city center.

Spains economic crisis has seen the average age of vehicles almost double in Madrid  from 5.7 years in 2008 to 9.3 in 2013  while almost 70% of the citys 4.2 million cars run on diesel.

At the same time the Industry Ministry has yet to deliver its planned vehicle categorization system for nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) emissions. Under the proposed system, cars registered prior to 2001 would receive a red label and diesel vehicles made before 2007 would receive an orange rating.

In 2008 Berlin closed its city center off to all red-labeled cars  around 100,000 vehicles. Former Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, of the conservative Popular Party (PP), had announced he would limit the circulation of vehicles that failed to receive even a red rating from 2010, but the plan never came into force.

Madrid has been exceeding the NO 2 threshold set by the European Union since the creation of the monitoring system in 2010. Besides the serious health issues raised, the city could also face a hefty fine from Brussels if it fails to address the problem.

Cars subject to the 70km/h speed restrictions on a Madrid highway ALVARO GARCIA

In the interview, Sabanes also announced that City Hall was considering plans to extend public bike rental schemes in the city beyond the current BiciMad service, which she said was coming up short, as well as introducing parking meters to areas outside the M-30 beltway.

Plans are also afoot to pedestrianize more parts of the city center, she said. By 2017 only vehicles belonging to local residents will be able to enter secondary roads in the heart of the capital with the Sol, Palacio, Chueca and Malasana neighborhoods set to join the Cortes, Las Letras and Embajadores districts in being closed off to traffic.

The city recently approved stringent new anti-pollution rules, set to go into force on February 1, that could see all vehicles banned from entering the downtown area on days of persisting and acute air pollution.

Residents of the Spanish capital are already familiar with the effects of the air-improvement plan after drivers were instructed to observe 70km/h speed limits on the M-30 and other access roads on several occasions last fall. Additionally, parking in downtown metered areas was banned altogether for a couple of days  with exceptions made for delivery trucks, ambulances, taxis and local residents with parking permits.

English version by Nick Funnell.
Saudi soldiers fire artillery at the Saudi border with Yemen in this file photo from April 2015. Hasan Jamali (AP)

Spain has broken a new record in terms of its military arms trade with Saudi Arabia by selling some 447.6 million in weapons to Riyadh during the first quarter of last year, the Cadena SER radio network reported on Monday.

This figure represents 26% of all Spanish arms exports during the same period.

Overall, Spain sold some 1.727 billion in military weapons during the first quarter of 2015  up by 25.3% from the previous year  according to a report prepared by the Secretary of State for Commerce.

Major purchases made by the government in Riyadh included two Airbus A330-200 MRTT in-flight refueling jets. But Saudi Arabia also bought spare parts for its transport jets, fighter jet engines, light munitions, and a remote control station for its weapons.

The Riyadh government purchased two Airbus A330-200 MRTT in-flight refueling jets

The official figures also include sales to the Iraqi army of artillery munition and bombs for 37.5 million. Some 300 Spanish soldiers are currently training security forces in Iraq.

Spain also sold four transport planes, spare parts and engines to Egypt for 100 million, and made a 13.1 million sale to Venezuela for a naval artillery system and other military maritime equipment.

The Spanish government has come under fire in recent years from groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Oxam for its increased sales to countries involved in conflicts in the Middle East.

English version by Martin Delfin.
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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
Francois Hollande: Nothing will make France waver in the fight against terrorism

President Francois Hollande vowed not to let threats deter France from its fight against terrorism on Monday, the second day of an official visit to India focused on security and trade. Hollande was responding to a new video released by the Islamic State group that threatens countries of the US-led coalition that have been fighting IS and purports to show nine jihadists involved in Novembers deadly Paris attacks.

The so-called Islamic State has posted a video apparently showing nine of the suspected Paris gunmen before they carried out the 13 November attack.

The footage shows some of the men beheading prisoners and conducting military training in the Middle East. It also shows locations that were attacked in the French capital, leaving 130 people dead. The video ends with images of UK MPs backing air strikes against IS in Syria. The footage was released through the media channel of IS, Site monitoring group said. "Nothing will deter us, no threat will make France waver in the fight," he told reporters in Delhi during an official visit to India. The president said that the attacks were planned in Syria but prepared and organised in Belgium. Site said the video was filmed in Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS, before the Paris attacks. One of the images shows a man closely resembling Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the attacks. Abaaoud, a Belgian national, died in a police raid on a flat in Saint-Denis, near Paris, days after the attacks. Nine suspected attackers died on 13 November or in the days after, and two more are on the run. It is not clear why the video - which describes the attackers as "lions" who "brought France to its knees" - has been released more than two months after the attack, BBC reports.
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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

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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

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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

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The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

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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
Protest in front of UK embassy in Yerevan: Deputy Ambassador refuses to take caviar (video)

Two jars of caviar and one letter Members of the For Law organization held a protest in front of the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Armenia on January 25. They demanded to cancel the debate on the two anti-Armenian resolutions included in the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that will be put to the vote on January 26. Since 2004, Azerbaijan has been pursuing a caviar policy by bestowing gifts of caviar on PACE delegates. We have come here to express our indignation at Britain for the shameful anti-Armenian reports, said Arman Ghukaysan, a member of the movement. After waiting for 10 minutes in front of the Embassy, the group had a meeting with the deputy ambassador, who took the letter but returned the jars of caviar. I cannot accept it, he said. Two anti-Armenian reports  Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan by British MP Robert Walter and Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water by MP Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) - are included on the agenda of the PACE session this January. The resolutions will be put to the vote on Tuesday, January 26.
In Azerbaijan, OSCE PA leaders meet President Aliyev and senior officials

OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Vice-President George Tsereteli (MP, Georgia) today led a high-level parliamentary delegation to Baku for meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov, Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and other leaders on a wide range of domestic and regional issues. The delegation also included OSCE PA Vice-President Kent Harstedt (MP, Sweden), Deputy Head of the Bulgarian Delegation to the OSCE PA Kristian Vigenin and OSCE PA Secretary General Roberto Montella. We held constructive and productive meetings with the President, ministers and parliamentary leaders, during which we discussed the importance of promoting peace in the region, pursuing reforms and continuing closer co-operation between the OSCE and its Parliamentary Assembly and the government and parliament of Azerbaijan, Vice-President Tsereteli said. Conflicts in this region are high on our agenda. The OSCE PA has consistently supported the work of the Minsk Group and shares its concern about increasing violence. A new level of political will is the key to progress. There is no alternative to a political settlement of the conflict, which will benefit both Azerbaijan and Armenia and their people, as well as the wider region, Tsereteli said after the meetings. It is our hope that this visit will revitalize our relations, enabling closer work on a wide range of issues of relevance to Azerbaijan and to the OSCE. The delegation also met with the newly appointed Azerbaijani Delegation to the OSCE PA, led by Deputy Parliament Speaker Bahar Muradova. Delegation members emphasized that parliamentarians from Azerbaijan and Armenia can play an important role in reducing tensions, including through the OSCE PAs platform for dialogue and interaction. Vice-President Harstedt said: We also discussed the Assemblys support for reforms in the political, social and economic spheres. The OSCE PA shows its respect for Azerbaijan by advocating continued work on democratic standards and political freedoms in the country. We stand ready to further engage with the countrys leaders, parliamentarians and civil society to promote OSCE principles and implementation of commitments, including in the sphere of elections. OSCE parliamentarian Vigenin reiterated the Assemblys request that an OSCE field presence be re-opened in Baku to support Azerbaijan in its implementation of OSCE commitments. The delegation is also scheduled to meet with members of Azerbaijani civil society. OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva (MP, Finland), who was scheduled visit Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia this week, was forced to cancel his participation due to illness.
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
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has said that during his visit to Davos he agreed with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde the matters relating Ukraine's getting the next tranche of the loan.

"I'm really proud of the way Lagarde characterized our work. She said that Ukraine had surprised the world," Poroshenko said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels aired on Sunday evening.

According to the president, Ukraine expects to get a tranche of $1.7 billion from IMF soon.

"Ukraine's foreign exchange reserves will soon receive $1.7 billion. And that's not all," the head of state said.

He recalled his meeting with the president of Switzerland, during which they agreed that Switzerland will grant Ukraine a loan of $200 million, which also will go to replenish the forex reserves. "And this will mean the exchange rate, and the stability of the financial system, the national currency," Poroshenko said.

The president also said it was he who asked to remove from the pension reform the clause about the increase of the retirement age.

"I can say that I asked to take out of the pension reform the requirement about raising the retirement age and, given the complex social situation in which Ukraine has found itself, we reached these compromises," Poroshenko said.
State-owned Oschadbank (Kyiv) meets the capital adequacy requirements after stress tests conducted as part of diagnostics of the largest 20 banks of the country by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the bank has reported.

"According to the recent data submitted to the NBU of January 11, 2016, Oschadbank's capital adequacy meets the requirements of the stress test," the bank said.

The bank said that the quality of its credit portfolio continues worsening, which results in the increase of reserves for possible losses on credits issued.

Additionally, due to the continuous worsening of the internal economic conditions and crisis in eastern Ukraine the bank anticipates the further worsening of its credit portfolio.

The bank said that it is looking for ways of improving the quality of the credit portfolio and the possibility of discussing the mutually beneficial conditions for servicing debts and payment schedules with borrowers.

Oschadbank was founded in 1991. It is wholly owned by the state.

Oschadbank ranked second among 123 operating banks in the country on October 1, 2015 by total assets (UAH 156.596 billion), according to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).
World's interest in Ukraine falling, necessary to step up reforms, fight against corruption to maintain it - Pinchuk

Ukraine has not fully used international attention to the country a year and a year and a half ago, it is necessary to step up reforms and fight against corruption to save the world's support, without which it will be difficult to achieve success, businessman Victor Pinchuk has stated.

"We cannot be successful without this attention, without this interest, without understanding that the world will know that Ukraine is very important, because we need their political support, their finances, their investments," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Ukrainian lunch, organized by his charitable foundation in Davos (Switzerland).

According to Pinchuk, the issues of Syria, ISIL, refugees now worry the world more than Ukraine.

"Therefore we must prove that we are on the radar, that they can deal with us. Our inner struggle, as I say, a battle for the water tower, should not interfere with the solving of the major problems: that they can deal with us, we can negotiate, there are the leaders with whom they can work," the businessman said.

He believes that Ukraine's partners won't make compromises with "the old bad habits" without the accelerating of reforms and fight against corruption.
Ukraine has to tackle corruption so that not to lose credit  Barroso

Tackling of corruption has to be the top priority task for the Ukrainian authorities, otherwise credit of international partners will be lost, said former European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso during Davos Ukrainian Breakfast on January 22.

Barroso, who was the EU Commission president in 2004-2014, told representatives of the Ukrainian authorities that if the problem of corruption is not resolved, then the international community, the EU, and the U.S. won't accept Ukrainian success.

With this regard Barroso said he shares opinion of Ukrainian population that there were very few changes in combating corruption.

Barroso also said that global investors' credibility was still to be earned, thus, the government's work could overall be assessed not higher than 'four with minus', despite high marks of certain ministers, in particular, finance and economic development ministers.

Barroso has added that he believes the point of no return hasn't yet been reached.

According to the ex-EU Commission's president, Ukraine needed to fight in order to reserve attention to itself. Barroso said that these days Europe thought more of migrants and terrorists and Ukrainian issue would go down on the list of priorities of the international community.

Talking about the key tasks, Barroso pointed to the reform of the civil service in general and namely the State Fiscal Service; to the return of retired assets, transfer pricing, further reforms in the energy sector.

In his view, fully enforced Association Agreement and the free trade zone with the EU were among the additional instruments to fight against corruption.

At the same time, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson said during the breakfast that investors' interest to Ukraine had increased. He said that he personally was much more optimistic than a year or two ago, adding that Virgin Group invested in Vodafone last year.

According to Branson, Ukraine had recently made a huge leap and it was difficult to expect that the country would move even faster than it was already moving; it was necessary to give it a bit more time.

Branson added that a further deterrent for the arrival of investors was the remaining war risk.

Davos Ukrainian Lunch is a traditional private event organized by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk calls for holding a referendum on making changes into the country's constitution.

"The time has come for the Ukrainian people to have their say on what a new Ukrainian constitution in a new European Ukraine should be. No one except for the Ukrainian people has the right to determine what the fundamental law will be," Yatseniuk said on the '10 minutes with the prime minister' program on Sunday evening.

The head of government said that the a constitutional referendum is "a direct popular rule in a free and democratic country, for which we were fighting on the Maidan two years ago and are now protecting with arms in hands."

"A new constitution is a new social contract between citizens and the power which they have elected. An accord on the distribution of rights and responsibility inside the very power - between the president, government and parliament. An accord on relations between the center and regions. An accord on establishing a new honest and just court, but not reappointing the current one. An accord on a Ukrainian accurate geopolitical aim to become a member of the European Union and NATO," he said.

"I am convinced that the head of state has the same principles," Yatseniuk also said.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that the Constitutional amendments on decentralization have a direct relation to the Minsk peace plan.

"It occurred that Constitutional amendments over decentralization are one of the key elements of the peace plan of Ukraine  Minsk Agreements. Each of 13 items of the Minsk Agreements is on how to bring peace to Ukraine," he said delivering a speech during the meeting of the Association of Ukrainian Cities in Kyiv on Saturday.

"I won't let anybody to destabilize situation: to return Ukraine into the open armed confrontation with offensives, to provide escalation of the conflict and to give a cause to blame Ukraine of all this," the head of state stressed.
No Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the anti-terrorist army operation area in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, but two have been injured, the Ukrainian presidential administration's spokesman for ATO Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said.

"Not a single Ukrainian serviceman has been killed as a result of fighting in the past 24 hours, but two have been injured," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Sunday.

The situation in Luhansk region has been quiet, but low-intensity fighting has been under way in the Donetsk region, he said.

"The heaviest shelling has been recorded in the Donetsk airport area. The adversary has not used heavy weapons," Motuzianyk said.
The United States support Kyiv's position that Ukraine's sovereignty over Donbas should be reinstated in 2016, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"I stressed at a press conference on January 14 that the task I have put before myself and Ukraine, which we are coordinating with our partners, is that Ukraine's sovereignty should be reinstated in Donbas in 2016. The only way to do this is to implement the Minsk agreements," the president said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels broadcast on Sunday evening.

He recalled that he held talks with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. "This position was backed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. We had very long negotiations in Davos. A meeting with Biden, which was expected to last 25 minutes, went on for more than four 4 hours," Poroshenko said.

According to him, the parties worked out in detail all the steps for cooperation in this area. "For the first time, we went into details of each clause of the Minsk agreements: what the political settlement means, what the security component is, how we coordinate our actions with our European partners," the head of state said.

Also, he said they discussed reforms in Ukraine and their support by the United States. "There was a statement by the U.S. secretary of state that they hope that as the result of the full implementation of the Minsk agreements, the sanctions against Russia may be loosened," Poroshenko said.
The health of Nadiya Savchenko, who went on hunger strike over a month ago, is satisfactory, her lawyer Mark Feygin said.

"My client is not eating any solid food. Nadia is getting glucose injections. She is also taking an organic mixture, which keeps her energy up. The same measures were taken the last time she went on hunger strike," Feygin told Interfax on Monday.

Feygin said Savchenko received broader medical assistance during her previous hunger strike in Moscow.

"She was given fully-fledged assistance in Moscow because there was a hospital there. But medical assistance is acceptable here, too. However, the measures that have been taken are temporary. They can't sustain a person for ever," Feygin said.

Savchenko has been held in Russian custody since July 2014 over her alleged role in the murder of Russian journalists in the east of Ukraine. She denies all the charges.

Savchenko went on hunger strike during a hearing in the Donetsk City Court on December 17. She said she was going on hunger strike until the end of the trial of her case. Her lawyers believe the sentence could be handed down in February.
Within the next two weeks, Ukraine will submit lawsuits to international courts in connection with the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"Within the next two weeks you'll see a number of legal initiatives that Ukraine and the enterprises, to which we will provide our legal backing, will ensure the legal defense of the state interests of Ukraine in line with many conventions, which we will submit to various international courts," the president said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels aired on Sunday evening.

According to him, Crimea should remain top of the agenda of the partner countries of Ukraine. "And we have made several major breakthroughs in this matter in the past few days. We expect a PACE mission to arrive in Crimea to verify the observance of human rights there, including in respect to representatives of the Crimean Tatar people," Poroshenko said.

He said that Ukraine has stated its clear proposals for the discussion of the Crimean issue. The EU, the United States, and the guarantor countries of the Budapest Memorandum should be engaged in this process, Poroshenko added. "We can call this format 'Geneva plus' and immediately start the consultations on the organization of this process," the president said.

According to Poroshenko, the focus should be on the release of illegally detained people, the observance of the rights of Crimean Tatars and the roadmap for the de-occupation of Crimea, which will envisage a great number of steps, starting from the maintenance of international pressure, the action plan on the sanctions, and ending with litigations.
The Council of Europe sends its delegation to Crimea on Monday to assess the human right situation on the peninsula, the organization reported on its website.

Swiss diplomat Gerarg Stoudmann will head the delegation, in which he will be assisted by three members of the Council of Europe secretariat.

"More than 2.5 million people live in Crimea, they are all covered by the European Convention on Human Rights and should be able to benefit from it," the Council of Europe's press service quoted the secretary general of the organization, Thorbjorn Jagland, as saying.

However, for more than a year, no delegation from an international organization has been able to go there, he explained.

"The mission will be conducted with full independence and will not deal with any issue related to the territorial status of Crimea," Jagland stressed.

The mission's mandate covers all major human rights issues including freedom of expression and media freedom; freedom of association and of assembly; minority rights; local and self-government; fight against corruption and prison conditions.

The mission will conclude with a report and recommendations submitted to the Secretary General in late February or March, the report reads.
The Ukrainian military have suffered no losses in the area of the special operation in Donbas over the past day, speaker of the Ukrainian presidential administration Andriy Lysenko said.

"No Ukrainian servicemen have been killed or wounded in the hostilities over the past day," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

Lysenko said that it has mainly been unquiet in the direction of Donetsk, that the enemy has opened fire in the area of the Opytne and Pisky villages, but without the use of heavy weaponry.

The ceasefire has been breached in the Mariupol direction of the Maryinka area, where anti-aircraft missile launchers and grenade launchers have been fired. Five sniper shooting incidents have taken place against the Ukrainian army positions over the past day. Three flights of the enemy's unmanned aerial vehicle have been spotted in the area of Mariupol, Sartana and the Sea of Azov area, Lysenko also said.
The leader of Batkivschyna parliamentary faction Yulia Tymoshenko insists on an immediate general meeting of the ruling coalition to discuss the full resignation of the government among other issues.

"I ask you, I publicly address the chairman of Verkhovna Rada, all the leaders of the coalition's factions to immediately convene a general meeting of the coalition," she said at a Monday meeting of the conciliatory council of the heads of parliamentary factions, committees and groups in Kyiv.

She said that the coalition meeting attended by all of the deputies belonging to the factions of the coalition should discuss the complete replacement of the Cabinet. "No face-lifting or cosmetics," she added.

She explained that as a consequence of the resignation of the government, the coalition will break up and "courage will have to be mustered" to go for early parliamentary elections.

The Petro Poroshenko Bloc supported the initiative from Batkivschyna on the convocation of a general meeting of the coalition, first deputy chairman of the bloc Ihor Kononenko said later.

"The coalition council should work out the agenda. If the agenda is worked out, we will hold the meeting. We support this initiative from Batkivschyna," he told journalists.

The parliamentary coalition in Ukraine, in addition to the Petro Poroshenko Block and Batkivschyna, includes the People's Front, and Samopomich. The Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko left the coalition last autumn.

Meanwhile, Verkhovna Rada speaker Volodymyr Groysman after Tymoshenko's call stressed that it was her turn now to be the coordinator of the coalition. "Therefore, it would be right, if you initiate the meeting. I will give you full assistance in organizing," Hroisman said.

Tymoshenko responded by saying that she refuses to be the coordinator of the coalition.
Govt support still needed to meet

China will end subsidies for new-energy vehicles (NEVs) after 2020, but analysts said on Sunday that government support for the sector is still needed.

In a post on the website of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) on Saturday, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei was quoted as saying that China plans to gradually phase out subsidies for NEVs and pursue market-based policies to support the development of the sector.

Some NEV manufacturers rely too much on government subsidies, which means that they lack the motivation to make technological breakthroughs, said Lou.

The MOF plans to cut the subsidies progressively, by 20 percent from 2016 levels during the 2017-18 period, and by 40 percent between 2019 and 2020. The subsidies will be eliminated altogether after 2021.

Su Hui, a senior analyst at the China Automobile Dealers Association, told the Global Times on Sunday that the authorities also want to crack down on subsidy-related fraud in the country's NEV industry.

According to media reports, some Chinese NEV producers fake sales figures in order to get subsidies. A report by The Economic Observer on January 16 citing an unnamed industry insider said that about 50,000 of the NEV sales in China in the first 10 months of 2015 were faked and the cars were not actually bought.

Four ministries including the MOF, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology are conducting a joint investigation into misuse of NEV subsidies, according to a statement from the MOF.

They have asked local authorities to look into it and submit the results before February 5.

"Subsidy-related fraud is not that common. And with the increasingly strict supervision, such practices will be eradicated," Su said.

But Su did not believe that the subsidies for NEVs will be completely phased out in the next five years. In fact, the central government may have to increase its support for the NEV industry in the coming years to fulfill its ambitious sales target of 5 million NEVs by 2020, Su noted.

In 2015, China produced 340,471 NEVs and sold 331,092 units, up 330 percent and 340 percent respectively year-on-year, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. But to stay on track to meet the sales target for 2020, Su noted that over 1 million NEVs will have to be sold by the end of 2016, which will be a challenge.

Market-based support

Feng Shiming, a senior industry analyst with Shanghai-based Menutor Consulting, also said that government support for the sector will be increased.

"Beyond government subsidies, the introduction of a market-based mechanism could help the NEV industry develop more sustainably," Feng told the Global Times on Sunday.

In order to secure consistent support for China's NEV industry after the disappearance of subsidies, the MOF said a more market-based system for sales will be established.

Lou praised the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) policy and credit trading system applied in California, which requires automakers to meet ZEV requirements via options such as producing low-emission vehicles and trading ZEV credits.

Between 2015 and 2017, for automakers with annual sales of more than 60,000 vehicles in the US, at least 14 percent of the production must meet ZEV requirements, according to the US Department of Energy. And those who fail to meet the target will face fines or sales restrictions.

Credit trading allows the market to determine the direction of NEV development and also help channel money to NEV producers for their R&D, decreasing their dependence on government subsidies, said Feng.

US premium electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc is one of the biggest beneficiaries from California's ZEV policy, as it has been able to sell credits generated from its ZEVs to other companies in the past few years. In the third quarter of 2015, the company generated $39 million in revenue from selling ZEV credits, accounting for 4.2 percent of its total revenue.

In addition to support for NEV manufacturers, both Feng and Su called for further policy support for NEV battery producers and construction of electric car charging stations.

"Charging station infrastructure should be more open to private capital, in order to speed up the development of the NEV industry," said Feng.
BEIJING, Jan. 24 -- Liu Qibao, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has called on China's think tanks to strengthen professionalism to serve the country's reform and development.

Liu, who is also head of the publicity department of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while meeting with representatives from the national council of Chinese think tanks on Friday.

Liu said think tanks must carry out research in line with the principles advocated by the central authorities and provide constructive suggestions to top decision makers.

China's think tanks should put the needs of the country and the people first and yield results for national development, Liu said.

Liu also urged China's think tanks to deepen research cooperation with international established counterparts and promote mutual understanding and trust.

China's think tanks should be of high quality and competent in the world arena, Liu said, adding they should play a bigger role in increasing China's say in international issues.
The dream of flying from New York to London in just one hour has come a step closer to reality.

Orbital ATK has successfully tested a 3D printed hypersonic engine combustor at Nasa Langley Research Centre in Virginia.

The breakthrough could lead to planes that can travel 3,425mph (5,500km/h) - 4.5 times the speed of sound.

The dream of flying from New York to London in just one hour has come a step closer to reality. Orbital ATK has tested a 3D printed hypersonic engine combustor at Nasa Langley Research Centre in Virginia. Pictured is an image of a concept hypersonic plane shown in design software that models its aerodynamics.

The combustor was created through a manufacturing process known as powder bed fusion (PBF).

In this, a layer of metal alloy powder is printed and a laser fuses areas of together based on the pattern fed into the machine by a software program.

As each layer is fused, a second is printed until the final product is complete. Any additional powder is removed and the product is polished.

The combustor was successfully put through a range of hypersonic flight conditions over the course of 20 days, including one of the longest duration propulsion wind tunnel tests ever recorded.

Orbital says one of the most challenging parts of the propulsion system, a scramjet combustion. This houses and maintains stable combustion within an extremely volatile environment. It would be used in future supersonic planes such as Nasa's future versions of X-43, an unmanned experimental hypersonic aircraft.

Orbital says one of the most challenging parts of the propulsion system, a scramjet combustion.

This houses and maintains stable combustion within an extremely volatile environment.

The tests were, in part, to ensure that the PBF-produced part would be robust enough to be used in an aircraft.

'Additive manufacturing opens up new possibilities for our designers and engineers,' said Pat Nolan, Vice President and General Manager of Orbital ATK's Missile Products division of the Defense Systems Group.

'This combustor is a great example of a component that was impossible to build just a few years ago.

The tests, at Nasa Langley Research Centre in Virginia. could lead to planes that can travel 3,425mph (5,500km/h) - 4.5 times the speed of sound.

'This successful test will encourage our engineers to continue to explore new designs and use these innovative tools to lower costs and decrease manufacturing time.'

The test at Langley was an important opportunity to challenge Orbital ATK's new combustor design, made possible only through 3D printing.

Complex geometries that once required multiple components can be simplified to a single, more cost-effective assembly.

But, since the components are built one layer at a time, it is now possible to design features and integrated components that could not be easily cast or otherwise machined.

The company could also someday used this technique on rocket parts.

Earlier this month, ATK was awarded a $47 million contract from the US Air Force to develop a solid rocket propulsion system prototype to support the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program.

The first ever object to be 3D printed from 'alien' material has been unveiled at CES. Planetary Resources and 3D Systems today showcased a model of part of a spacecraft from meteorite metals found in Argentina. Eventually, they want to be able to use the technology in space to build future colonies on Mars.

Orbital isn't the only one making breakthroughs in 3D printed structures for aerospace.

At CES earlier this month, tThe first ever object to be 3D printed from 'alien' material was unveiled.

Planetary Resources and 3D Systems today showcased a model of part of a spacecraft from meteorite metals found in Argentina.

Eventually, they want to be able to use the technology in space to build future colonies on Mars from material found on the surface.

They also hope to someday move industrial processes to other planets to reduce pollution and save space on Earth.

This spacecraft prototype was 3D printed from an asteroid that was pulverised, powdered and processed on 3D Systems' ProX DMP 320 metals 3D printer.

The meteorite used for the print materials was sourced from the Campo Del Cielo, and is made up of iron, nickel and cobalt  similar materials to refinery grade steel.

'We literally cute the meteorite in half and found it was a very dense metal field,' Cathy Lewis, chief marketing officer at 3D Systems told DailyMail.com.

'We took the top half of it and had it pulverised it. Then we 3D printed a model in the machine using this metal product. It really is out of this world.'

The process involves using plasma to turn the meteorite into a cloud of vapour. This then creates metallic powder that can be extracted in a vacuum.

The ProX DMP 320 metals 3D printer, which is commercially available, was then used to lay down this metal 'ink' in layers to eventually build up a model.

The result was a small 3D-printed model of a part of a spacecraft that resembles the Arkyd spacecraft currently being tested by Planetary Resources is testing.
Observers have expressed high hopes for China's role in helping Iran reinvigorate its economy, which has been weakened by three decades of international sanctions.

President Xi Jinping and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, agreed to upgrade their countries' two-way relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during talks in Teheran on Saturday.

Iran was the final stop on Xi's three-nation Middle East trip, with the president arriving back in Beijing on Sunday. It was the first visit to the country by a Chinese leader for 14 years.

The talks on Saturday were followed by the signing of a memorandum of understanding on production capacity, minerals and investment cooperation, as well as an agreement to jointly build the Belt and Road Initiative, a trans-Eurasia strategy to boost trade and connectivity.

Other aspects covered by the documents include finance, communications, culture, science and technology, and climate change.

Xi said the nations had enjoyed friendly exchanges and sincere cooperation for as many as 2,000 years thanks to the Silk Road. He said China hopes the Iran nuclear deal  the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action  can be implemented smoothly.

Rouhani said the Chinese president was the first foreign leader to visit his country after the action plan was secured, which "mirrors the level" of the friendly ties. "Iran values China's role in international affairs, and we remember China's longtime support and help," he said.

After the lifting of the sanctions on Iran, Wu Bingbing, a professor of Middle East studies at Peking University, has predicted "there will be a surge of economic demand". He said: "Iran now needs all-out, full-flung infrastructure construction, and it needs to restore its crude oil production capacity. There is a lack of investment in its energy sectors, including the gas sector."

The agreements signed in Teheran will "help rebuild the energy sector infrastructure and further boost Iran's exports", Wu said.

A joint statement issued after the presidential talks in Teheran said China and Iran had agreed to set up an annual meeting mechanism for their foreign ministers.

The statement also said China supports Iran's application for full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is one of six observer nations of the SCO, which was founded in 2001. The six full members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Pang Sen, the Chinese ambassador to Iran, said Iran is an important hub along the Belt and Road routes because it is close to the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping channel, and the port at Bandar Abbas, one of the largest in the Gulf region.

Hua Liming, a former Chinese ambassador to Iran and now a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said Iran "made a great, proactive response" to the Chinese-proposed initiative and that the nations' friendship "has survived tests" since diplomatic relations were established in 1971.

Many Chinese enterprises "have for a long time been investing and operating in Iran", which has laid a foundation for collaboration, he said.

China has been Iran's largest trading partner for seven consecutive years and is Iran's largest crude oil market. Annual bilateral trade reached a record $51.8 billion in 2014.
Export of indigenous technologies and 10% share in domestic energy mix are future goals

Last year's big-ticket developments in China's nuclear power industry signify two key themes: the country's inexorable shift towards clean energy, in line with its commitment to be a responsible, climate-conscious economic giant, and its determination to be a leading global nuclear player in the decades to come.

As many as six nuclear reactors went online in 2015. The authorities concerned gave permits for the construction of eight more domestic reactors.

As for exports of nuclear technology, in November the country signed a $6-billion deal with Argentina to build a nuclear plant, the South American country's fourth. In United Kingdom, three nuclear power plants are likely to be built with possible Chinese nuclear technologies.

Last week China signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop home-grown fourth-generation nuclear technology in the Middle East country.

But what helps China to stand out from the nuclear crowd is its stress on innovation, safety and popularization of its technologies, experts said.

Nuclear power is firmly etched into China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). According to the National Energy Administration, China's 28 nuclear reactors in operation have an installed capacity of about 25.5 gigawatts. The nuclear plants now under construction and those approved for construction would collectively generate an additional 30 gW in future.

Xu Yuming, deputy director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, said the current program would see the country emerging as the largest market for nuclear power plants. But, the priority is safe development of nuclear power and increase in the percentage of homegrown nuclear technology in the global market.

"Speed (of executing nuclear power projects) is not the goal. We should put safety above everything, and improve our ability to innovate and develop our own technologies for use domestically, while at the same time paving the way for their export, as per the new five-year plan," Xu said.

The safety-first principle became paramount after China suspended approvals for new reactors in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, and went in for a review of safety standards at existing nuclear facilities.

In March last year, the government okayed construction of units 5 and 6 of Hongyan River nuclear power plant in northeastern Liaoning province, the first such project to receive approvals in four years.

From then, China started to ramp up electricity generation at its nuclear power plants, which gained currency as clean, abundant sources of energy with potential to fuel a high-growth economy.

Starting from May 2015, the government issued construction permits to units 5 and 6 of Fuqing nuclear power plant in southeastern Fujian province, units 3 and 4 of Fangchenggang nuclear project in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and units 5 and 6 of Tianwan nuclear power plant in eastern Jiangsu province.

Experts said China's pledge to the international community that it will reduce carbon emissions and generate 20 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2030, will push the country to use more nuclear power in the coming decades.

Xu said China, the world's largest energy consumer, is likely to add five or six nuclear reactors every year from 2016 to 2030, according to estimates in the draft 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

"By then, nuclear power will account for 8 to 10 percent of the total energy mix," he said. Its current share is about 2 percent.
JAKARTA, Jan. 24 ---- Chinese navy's Fleet 152 on Sunday arrived in Jakarta, starting a five--day visit which is the final stop of its trip around the globe.

Those present at the welcome ceremony included Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Xie Feng, Chinese Ambassador to ASEANXu Bu and Eko Wahyono, Deputy Commander of the Main Naval Base III of Indonesia Navy.

Some 300 people including representatives of Chinese institutions also attended the ceremony, held at Tanjung Priok Port in Jakarta.

In his speech, Eko said Fleet 152's visit was a great event for Indonesia, as it will promote and strengthen the friendship between the two navies.

Wang Jianxun, commander of the Chinese navy fleet, said the visit will further boost the traditional friendship between the two countries, promoting the cooperation between the two militaries, especially the ties between the two navies.

After the ceremony, Fleet 152, composed of a missile--equipped destroyer Ji Nan, a missile--equipped frigate Yi Yang and an integrated supply ship Qian Daohu, was open to public for visit.

During the fleet's stay in Jakarta, the officers and soldiers will visit a local orphanage. Fleet commander Wang Jianxun will also meet with Indonesia's western fleet commander and Jakarta's governor.
Five young men ran naked in Wuhan for more than ten minutes in the early morning of Jan. 24, to commemorate their youth and cleanse their souls, the local newspaper Wuhan Evening News reported on Sunday.

They laughed all the way and ran for some two kilometers in just over 10 minutes in the snowy city, as cold air brought snow to Whuan, the provincial capital of central China's Hubei. They believe streaking in the snow can cleanse their souls.

Sina Weibo user "Feiwuyu" posted the whole event online, which attracted wide concern.

However, it turned out that "Feiwuyu", whose real name is Liu Jiusi, was the initiator of the naked run. The 30-year old has appeared on a dating game show Fei Cheng Wu Rao, known in English as If You Are the One, on March 31, 2012. He and another four men ran from Nanhu Avenue to a gate of Huazhong Agricultural University at 3 a.m., Jan. 24.

"Two cars followed us during the run, so that in case there were any women in the street, we would jump into the cars to avoid them," said Liu Jiusi, "We don't want to be indecent".

Liu said he ran naked as a 20-year-old college student. He has hoped to do so again at the age of 30 as a dedication to his youth. Liu also said he wants to do it again when he is 40 years old.

The other four men were Liu's friends.
55-year-old German Holger Perner is a PhD in ecology and a top orchidaceae research scientist. In 2001, he gave up the job at German Academy of Sciences, and went to Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan with his Chinese wife, where he came up with the idea of growing blueberry, blackberry, and Paris polyphylla to increase local farmers income.

In 1997 when Dr. Perner was 37 years old, he and several Japanese experts went to Sichuan for the first time. Love changed his course of life. He always says that if it hadn't been for Chengdu girl Gan Wenqing, who is now his wife, he would have returned Germany long before. After 20 years, Ngawa has become an indispensable part of his life.

Ecological protection and poverty relief are the two things Dr. Perner has been working on in Ngawa. He first helped the local farmers transform their traditional ways of using resources from the nature and taught them how to protect the environment.

After Dr. Perner found that it is very suitable and economical to grow blueberry in the alpine areas, he began to help local farmers grow blueberries in 2007. To move blueberries to Ngawa highland, Dr. Perner used the technology of plant clone. Compared to 700 to 800 yuan income the farmers get from growing one mu (667 square meters) of potatoes or corns, farmers can earn over 10,000 yuan growing one mu of blueberries.
(Photo/Xinhua)

During the office of former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and the U.S. forces worked out a four-phase operation plan for Diaoyu Islands in 2012, according to a report by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun on Sunday.

According to the report, the two countries reached consensus that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan can be applied to the Diaoyu Islands during the Defense Chiefs' meeting in September 2012. Meanwhile, both of the two countries started to work out an operation plan for the islands. The plan was worked out by the Defense Ministry of Japan and officers from the Headquarters U.S. Forces Japan. The plan did not directly mention China and the Diaoyu islands but used marks that are both used by the U.S. and Japan.

The operation plan assumed that armed forces dressed up as fishermen land on and capture the Diaoyu Islands and then the U.S. and Japan fight together for the islands in four phases: firstly, in order to prevent enemy getting on the islands, the two countries will enhance alert by deploying ships and planes; secondly, after small group of the enemy armed forces land on the islands, the two countries will prevent reinforcements from getting close and cut all reinforces; thirdly, the two countries will launch general offensive to the enemies on the islands by gunfire and air attack and fourth, the two countries will get on the islands and regain it. According to the treaty, JSDF will take main action while the U.S. Forces will assist Japanese forces.

The report said that this plan had been signed by the top leaders of both JSDF and the U.S. Forces and had been reported to Japanese Prime Minister by Defense Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Japanese government has not disclosed this plan as it remains the top secret in Japan. However, the plan did not take effect as the Democratic Party lost its power in 2012.

Both Defense Chiefs in Japan and the U.S. began to work out a joint operation plan after meetings in November 2015. The Japanese newspaper cited an official from Defense Ministry that the 2012 operation plan is the basis of the one for 2015. The official also said that the new operation plan is set for Chinese attacks.

China has reiterated that the Diaoyu Islands and its adjacent islets have been an inherent part of Chinese territory since ancient times.
NEW DELHI, Jan. 25 -- A Jet Airways passenger plane bound for Kathmandu was held up Monday by security officers at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here due to the warning of a suspicious object, local media reported.

The plane with about 110 people on board grounded after a threat call was received by security officials at noon, warning of a "gift box" under a seat in the aircraft, said Indian Express online.

The Flight 9W-260 was to take off from the IGI Airport in New Delhi at 13:25 p.m. local time. Seven crew members and about 104 guests were disembarked and searched.

India has been on terror alert ahead of its Republican Day celebrations on Tuesday, in which French President Francois Hollande is the state guest of honor.
Illustration: Shen Lan/GT

The first meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US was held in Islamabad, Pakistan on January 11. The four parties agreed to dedicate themselves to an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process and pushed to restart direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. On January 18, the QCG held their second meeting in Kabul, during which they discussed the roadmap for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The emergence of the QCG is attributed to the situation in Afghanistan. Since the Afghan government of unity was established, President Ashraf Ghani has been advancing the peace process in the country and made some progress. But due to global economic shrinkage and domestic political instability, the unity government met enormous challenges in 2015.

In December, the UN's Human Development Office ranked Afghanistan 171, out of 188 countries, in the human development index. It is the least developed country in Asia with high unemployment of 40 percent.

Meanwhile, domestic security is still tough. According to a recent Pentagon report, about 16,000 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded in 2015, a 28 percent increase compared with 2014. Official Afghan figures show that about 110 people were kidnapped by armed groups in 2015 and 21 of them have been killed. The peace process encountered a deadlock in 2015 and needs a new coordination system.

Therefore without a helping hand from the international community, the unity government led by Ghani is not capable of tackling these challenges.

Then why can the QCG push forward the peace process in Afghanistan? First, reconciliation in Afghanistan serves the fundamental interests of all parties involved. In the joint statement released after the first meeting, all countries underscored the importance of bringing an end to the conflict and emphasized their determination to push forward efforts.

Second, any international institutions can form a certain form of common power and the key is whether the power has binding power. Such binding power can be imposed by big powers. The participation of China and the US can exert some influence on the common power of the QCG. Third, the QCG provides a platform for the Afghan government and the Taliban to talk. Currently, the Afghan Taliban controls the wide rural area of southeastern and southern Afghanistan. The country's peace process cannot live without the participation of the Taliban.

There are a number of highlights in the first meeting of the QCG, one of which is China's active involvement. It has been 60 years since China and Afghanistan established diplomatic ties and the two have become strategic partners. China plays a constructive role in Afghanistan's peace-building process. In late 2014, China pledged to give Afghanistan $327 million in aid through 2017.

As a friendly neighbor of Afghanistan and a responsible power, China is obliged to advance Afghanistan's reconciliation process. China's participation in the QCG can help both China and the US utilize their own diplomatic resources and mobilize countries such as Pakistan and India to play more roles.

It can also help improve relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and enhance mutual trust between the two, paving a favorable environment for the peace process. Besides, the development of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which can be achieved through China's Silk Road economic belt proposal, will accelerate reconciliation.

However, uncertainties remain. Can the QCG maintain a solid and sustainable basis for cooperation? Can the four parties solve the problems in time? Can the consensus be implemented? The proper function of the QCG requires joint efforts.
Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will make their first visit to the Philippines from January 26 to 30. On islands that were occupied and ravaged by the Japanese army during WWII, the emperor seems to want to demonstrate his remorse for the war and anticipation for peace on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

When receiving visiting Philippine President Benigno Aquino III in June, the emperor said that the war between Japan and the US on Philippine soil took many Filipino lives and Japanese must long remember this with a profound sense of remorse.

He was right. Despite their short occupation of the Philippines, the Japanese army produced many tragedies. In the Philippine National Museum, there was an exhibition themed around the atrocities of Japanese troops, which includes the Bataan Death March that took more than 15,000 lives.

But the historical barbarity and cruelty stay more in museums than the minds of kind-hearted and tolerant Filipinos. It is expected that Filipinos will offer loud applause for Emperor Akihito upon his arrival, especially when he conveys his respects to the war dead, remorse for the war and anticipation of peace.

But as a researcher of international politics, I understand the upcoming trip that is nominally dedicated to history actually eyes reality. As the ceremonial head of state of Japan's constitutional monarchy system, the emperor has to execute the foreign policy of the current Japanese government.

Right now Tokyo and Manila need each other. Japan wants the Philippines to be a key pivot in countering China, particularly diverting China's attention from the Diaoyu Islands to the South China Sea. In the meantime, Manila needs Tokyo's economic support and help in improving its military capabilities.

In this sense, the imperial couple's visit will "help deepen the two countries' close friendship and goodwill," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a statement. Edwin Lacierda, Philippine presidential spokesman, also said that the visit is expected to "deepen and expand bilateral relations." The emperor is unlikely to ink any substantive agreement with the Philippines, but his visit will help bring the two countries closer.

Developing the relationship between two countries naturally leaves no room for others to gossip if it's not targeted at a third country, but apparently the Japan-Philippine ties don't belong to this league. An important step in the Philippine diplomacy is to woo other powers like the US and Japan to counterbalance China. In mid-January, the Philippine defense and foreign ministers held a meeting with their US counterparts in Washington over the possibilities of further military cooperation in the South China Sea.

With the interference of powers outside the region, the regional situation may be marked by greater tensions or even conflicts.

Due to the power conflict between the existing power and the rising power and territorial disputes, sufficient trust hasn't been established between China, the US and Japan. When Manila tries to lure these powers into the South China Sea dispute, it actually hooks its destiny and the dispute up with China's games with the US and Japan.

But this brings more harm than good to Manila. Given the serious consequences, powers involved will carefully manage the conflicts. But smaller countries involved will not be so lucky. When two elephants circle around each other cautiously, they may suffer no injury, but the grasslands will be tramped terribly.

Many may have noticed that China has apparently stepped up its policy efforts on the South China Sea in recent years. But this is more a countermeasure to the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific than to the Philippines. When the US wasn't involved much in the South China Sea during the time of Aquino's predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, China was committed to dealing with the dispute in a friendly manner.

The current situation in the South China Sea needs good interactions between claimants rather than the involvement of countries outside the region. Through the emperor's visit, the Japanese government should express remorse for the country's wartime actions and highlight peace, instead of driving more wedges in the South China Sea.
A man runs past a homeless person near Beijing South Railway Station on January 22, one of the coldest days this winter. Photo: Li Hao/GT

As large swathes of China shiver through a harsh winter, even provinces in South China have received snowfall, an extremely rare sight in the normally balmy region.

However, as people hide in their homes and share pictures of the cold snap, life is especially harsh for the homeless.

Over the weekend, Beijing recorded its lowest temperatures in three decades. On Saturday, Beijing's urban area dipped to -17.4 degrees Celsius, while the suburban Yanqing district recorded an extreme 29.8 degrees below zero. The highest temperature during the day was -13 degrees. Gushes of strong winds lashed everything in the streets, making outdoor activities unbearable for most people.

During such extreme weather, there are still people that have nowhere to stay and must brave the cold and try to survive outdoors. The Global Times reporter saw a number of people huddling under road bridges or beside walls in the capital.

Many of them are long-time petitioners from around the country who try to appeal to the central authorities to help with their grievances back home. Taoranting bridge and bridges near Beijing South Railway Station are popular places for petitioners to sleep due to their proximity to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls. Many petitioners have been in Beijing for years and even decades trying to get their problems addressed.

Beijing police usually send homeless people to rescue stations where they can temporarily receive food and accommodation. However, as the stations will then send them back to where they are originally from, petitioners often avoid being "rescued" and stay out in the cold.

A security guard sleeps in a pedestrian tunnel in Taoranting to watch out for the homeless. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A petitioner displays his grievance written on a piece of cloth. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A homeless man prepares to sleep under Yongdingmen bridge. Photo: Li Hao/GT

A man tries to get to sleep under Yongdingmen bridge. Photo: Li Hao/GT
BEIJING, Jan. 23 -- The Belt and Road Initiative is conducive to promoting connectivity and expanding trade cooperation between China and Middle East countries, experts have said.

The Belt and Road Initiative was a hot topic during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran from Jan. 19 to 23.

Proposed by Xi in 2013, the initiative comprises both the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, with visions to connect Asian, European and African countries more closely and promote mutually beneficial cooperation.

The Belt and Road routes run through the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, connecting the vibrant East Asia economic circle at one end and developed European economic circle at the other.

INFRASTRUCTURE IS PRIORITY

"Connectivity is the artery of the thousand-mile land and maritime silk roads. To build connectivity with Middle East countries, China should start with transportation infrastructure," said Zhang Shuyu, a researcher with the University of International Business and Economics.

Zhang highlighted both the necessity and compatibility of cooperation between China and the Middle East in transportation infrastructure, noting that trade cannot be smooth without convenient transportation.

China has a strong competitive edge in areas such as railways, electricity, telecommunications, mechanical engineering, metallurgy and construction materials, which are needed by the Middle East.

China committed 40 billion U.S. dollars to establishing a Silk Road Fund in 2014 to support cooperation projects in countries along the Belt and Road.

Infrastructure construction is important, but it is only part of the larger "1+2+3" cooperation framework, a cooperation plan proposed by Xi in 2014 at a ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing.

In the framework, "one" refers to energy cooperation as the main axis; "two" stands for infrastructure construction and trade and investment facilitation; "three" refers to breakthroughs that need to be made in the high-tech areas of nuclear energy, aerospace satellites and new energy.

Six Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, have inked agreements with China under the framework.

China Railway Group Limited announced Friday in a statement that the company, jointly with China's AVIC International, sealed a 1.5-billion-U.S. dollar contract on railway construction with Egypt.

Majidreza Hariri, vice president of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce and Industries, said Chinese companies are welcome to participate in the development of Iran's infrastructure damaged during war times.

HUGE TRADE POTENTIAL

"With the construction and development of infrastructure, ... the two nations (China and Iran) have paved the way for greater links along the Silk Road Economic Belt," said Sadegh Akbari, general director of the Organization for Investment Economic and Technical Assistance of Iran, in an article on China Daily on Saturday.

China promised to encourage its companies to import more non-petroleum products from Middle East nations to improve the trade mix and raise the two-way trade volume from 240 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to 600 billion U.S. dollars in the coming decade.

So far, China has remained Iran's biggest trading partner for six years in a row and is the second largest trade partner of Saudi Arabia.

Though the plunge in oil prices dragged down China's trade with Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2015, growth potential remains to be exploited, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shen Danyang said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia is the top source of crude oil for China. Iran, also a big oil exporter, contributed 8 percent of China's total crude oil imports in the first 11 months of last year.

China's trade with Egypt remained strong in 2015. In the first 11 months, exports to Egypt rose 12.2 percent to 10.75 billion U.S dollars, while total trade volume grew 10.4 percent to 11.64 billion.

China also encouraged its companies to invest in such fields as energy, petrochemicals, agriculture, manufacturing and services of Middle East countries.

Hariri said that the oil, gas and petrochemical industries are the first that come to mind for investment and economic cooperation between China and Iran.
BEIJING, Jan. 23 -- With the further dovetailing of development strategies of China and the Middle East, enormous cooperation potential will be unleashed, thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping's ongoing trip.

Xi's three-nation tour, which has taken him to Saudi Arabia, Egyptand Iran, has helped further link China's westward opening strategy and its Middle East partners' looking-east policy, in a move that has lifted bilateral ties to a new high and brought vitality to their interaction.

As the two sides are attuning their needs when integrating their development blueprints, a pattern that promotes cooperation in such areas as energy, production capacity and new and high technology is taking shape.

ENERGY COOPERATION BIGGER THAN JUST OIL

Accounting for around one third of the current global oil output, the Middle East has played a key role in the international energy supply.

Recent years have seen a vigorous implementation of China's economic adjustment and the Middle East's endeavor to build new engines for its energy sector.

The strong complementarity of China and the Middle East in economy and trade has enabled the world's second-largest economy and the oil-rich region to forge stable ties in their strategic energy cooperation.

During Xi's Tuesday meeting with Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani, secretary-general of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), the Chinese leader said China is willing to carry out comprehensive energy cooperation with the GCC countries and offer a long-term, stable and reliable energy market for the six-member bloc.

Strengthening energy cooperation will promote the development of both China and the Middle East and diversify their economic exchanges, said Wang Qiong, a research fellow with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

So far, the two sides have set up multiple multilateral frameworks, including the China-Arab Energy Cooperation Conference and the China-GCC Strategic Dialogue.

Those mechanisms are aimed at facilitating cooperation, which have given priority to boosting interconnectivity between China and the Middle East and propped up efforts to build a cross-regional corridor featuring joint energy development and a network of oil and gas pipelines.

The two sides have been increasingly connected to each other in the energy sector, said Li Shaoxian, director of the China-Arab Research Institute at Ningxia University.

As the global oil prices continue to plummet, a production-supply chain jointly created by China and the Middle East is bound to pull the region out of its slump.

It will allow the region to have a bigger say over the international energy landscape, ensuring a stable environment in the long term for the Middle East to build its own energy development mechanism.

By expanding its chain of the energy industry and upgrading its processing and refining techniques, the Middle East will be able to realize the sustainable development in its energy sector, Wang said.

"BELT AND ROAD" INSPIRES PRODUCTION CAPACITY COOPERATION

Spanning the Eurasian continent, the modern land and maritime Silk Roads reach the Middle East, in which all of the three host nations of Xi's visit, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran, are among the important cooperation partners that have actively participated in the China-proposed strategic vision.

Amid various economic and social problems, these countries have been drafting their own economic development plans to speed up the industrialization process, opening the window for production capacity cooperation with China, former Chinese Ambassador to Turkey Yao Kuangyi said.

The Middle East countries, Yao said, have shown great interest in China's development model and its financial and technological support in light of the Asian giant's rapid economic growth, embarking on a looking-east strategy.

In Saudi Arabia, the oil giant's production capacity cooperation with the world's leading developing economy has already seen early win-win results.

Figures showed that up to 160 Chinese businesses have made investment in Saudi Arabia, covering a slew of areas including railways, housing construction, ports, power stations and telecommunications.

China's strength in production capacity could complement the Middle East in that regard, said Xue Qingguo, director of the Arabic language department at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Their cooperation in production capacity, the professor said, will significantly contribute to industrial development, job creation and the improvement of people's well-being in the Middle East.

With China-Middle East joint efforts in promoting the region's infrastructure development, new sources of economic growth and job creation are expected, along with enhanced internal growth-driving forces and risk-resistant capabilities.

Cooperation with China under the Belt and Road Initiative will benefit all Arab countries, Nabil Elaraby, secretary-general of the League of Arab States, told reporters.

"The Arab countries stand ready to establish strategic cooperative ties with China," the official said.

NEW HIGHLIGHTS EXPECTED

Broad prospects lie ahead for China-Middle East cooperation in the new and high technology field.

Egypt has initiated the construction of the high technology-centered "New Suez Canal Economic Corridor" program following its expansion of the world-renowned canal.

The grand project is designed to turn the 190-kilometer-long river bank into a global economic zone with a series of industrial parks, serving as a bridge to connect Asia and Africa as well as China's "Belt and Roads."

No doubt, China will become one of Egypt's most important partners in the economic corridor, said Fakhry al-Fiky, an Egyptian economic analyst and former assistant to the executive director of the International Monetary Fund.

He looked forward to the combination of the Gulf states' financial resources and China's technological advantages so as to push forward Egypt's cooperation with both China and its own neighbors.

Standing at the juncture of the two initiatives is the 1.34-square-kilometer China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone.

Since its construction started in 2008, the China-funded project has brought together cutting-edge joint ventures in new materials and high-end manufacturing, among others.

With the construction of a 6-square-kilometer expansion area already underway, the investment zone will house more industrial leaders, such as China Glass and Yingli Solar, poised to evolve into a stellar example of China-Egypt win-win cooperation.

China's advanced technology and managerial expertise will strongly promote Egypt's economic development, Muhammad Hassan, an Egyptian supervisor of the expansion project, told media.

For Iran, almost a decade of Western sanctions over its nuclear program has taken a heavy toll on the Islamic Republic. But its industrial system, actually the most complete one in the Middle East, could lay a solid foundation for its cooperation with other countries.

The removal of sanctions could greatly boost Iran's economy, He Wenping, a CASS researcher, observed.

Notably, Xi's visit came only days after concerned parties began the implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal, in which China acted as a key mediator.

Optimistic about Beijing-Tehran cooperation in the post-sanctions era, analysts predicted the two sides would tap their cooperation potential in high-speed railways, aviation, telecommunications, power generation, and industrial and technological parks.

Chinese businesses should seize these opportunities by accelerating cooperation with their Iranian counterparts in major projects, including the Tehran-Isfahan high-speed railway and the China-Iran Industrial Park, Yao said.
At the invitation of Iran President Hassan Rouhani, Chinese President Xi Jinping pays a state visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran on January 22-23.

Xi will deepen a traditional friendship that can be traced back to more than 2000 years ago, and both sides anticipate even better future exchanges ahead.

Historically, the ancient Silk Road had traversed through Iran, by land and by sea, which created prosperity for the nation.

China on the other side of the ancient Silk Road had also enjoyed social prosperity through two-way materials and spiritual exchanges. Both nations have embarked on the path of independent development, starting from the second half of the 20th century.

Iran had chosen to become an Islamic Republic, while China began its reform and opening up. Bilateral political, economic and cultural exchanges have gotten increasingly closer.

The two sides hold similar views on many regional and international issues.

Both sides advocate for non-interference in international affairs, oppose hegemony and terrorism, and seek to resolve differences between states through political dialogues.

Economically, both countries offer complementary advantages.

They have extensive cooperation in the fields of energy, automotive, transportation, water conservancy projects, mining, mobile communication and agricultural science and technology.

Bilateral trade volume had risen rapidly, from US$118 million in 1978 to US$51.85 billion, last year.

Beijing has provided strong support to Iran's economy in its difficult development process. Tehran also provided stable energy security for China's economic development.

The two countries have renewed their appreciation for each other's history and culture; recognizing the diverse richness of human cultures. In 2013, Xi proposed the "Belt and Road" initiative that would help economies at home and abroad.

Iranian President Rouhani had proposed the "Silk Road Revival" development mode. International sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear issue have been repealed, creating more win-win cooperation for both countries.

Xi's visit is the second time for Chinese top leaders to come to the country in 14 years, which holds landmark significance for long-term bilateral relations.

Meanwhile, it will have a far-reaching impact on the Middle East and the world. The visit will upgrade relations to a strategic cooperative level, while they expect to boost trade and financial ties.

They will deepen cooperation in petroleum and natural gas fields. They will sign agreements on industry, railways, ports, science and technology. The projects would promote economic development in the Middle East.

Xi hopes to impress Iranians. Iran could have a better understanding of contemporary China. Xi will encourage stability and development in the region. The Middle East remains in a period of upheaval.

In recent years, terrorism, extremism, political and sectarian conflicts have intensified. The regional development outlook does not appear promising.

Xi's ongoing Middle East visit would consolidate relationships between China and major Middle east nations for mutual benefits and win-win purposes. Beijing advocates resolving disputes through dialogue in new historical situations.

Overcoming difficulties with common development, playing a positive role in international affairs, allows Beijing to inject new vigor to achieve its "Belt and Road" vision for the common progress of all countries.
Photo taken on Jan. 19 shows the pier and cable crane tower of the Nu River Bridge. (Photo/Xinhua)

Photo taken on Jan. 19 shows the pier and cable crane tower of the Nu River Bridge. (Photo/Xinhua)

Construction begins on the Nu River Bridge, a project along the Sino-Myanmar Railway, on Jan. 24. It will be the steel truss railroad bridge with the longest span in the world.

Located at the junction of the Shidian county and Longling county in southwest China's Yunnan Province, the Nu River Bridge will have a total length of 1,024 meters. The height of the bridge above the river will be 211 meters. The bridge will mainly use steel truss arch beams with a span of 490 meters.

Yan Shuxin, a director from the constructors, China Railway 18 Bureau Group, said that due to restrictions arising from the special topography of the Nu River and Gaoligong mountains, the railway station will be built upon a deck. The width of the deck will reach 24.9 meters, which will be the widest among the same type of railway bridges in China. The construction of the Nu River Bridge will use over 46,000 tons of steel. It will require rare precision in the manufacturing of the steel trusses, and pose high risks in terms of assembling steel trusses at high-altitude.

The Sino-Myanmar Railway linking China's Kunming and Myanmar's Yangon covers a total length of 1,920 kilometers, among which, a 690-km-long section is in the territory of China. A 350-km-long railway from Kunming to Dali in China has been built. With the Nu River Railway Bridge, the 340-km-long railway linking Dali and Ruili will help to reduce the current travel time of 7 hours to about 2 hours by train.
Mihaela Noroc, 30, is a photographer from Romania. She quit her job and took her backpack and camera three years ago and began to travel around the globe, photographing hundreds of beautiful women in different countries and cultures for her project called "The Atlas of Beauty".

She travels on a very low budget, so far through 45 countries, and captures portraits of women. A photo of a Chinese beauty taken on a "bright night in Chengdu" has attracted attention of netizens all over the world.

The photographer, now in Egypt, told Chengdu Business News, "We often see people waging war because of cultural or ethnic differences through the media. I think we need an 'Atlas of Beauty' to show the world that diversity is a beautiful thing, instead of the reason for conflicts."

Mihaela said her project could reduce or eliminate the fallacy of people of different races. People are proud of their own culture, but at the same time respect and appreciate other great cultures.

On April 27 last year, she launched a crowd funding project online. Up to now, she has raised $43,000 from a total of 698 people who support her project. In return, she committed to provide an e-book or postcard of The Atlas of Beauty to people who helped her.

Mihaela speaks five languages, but not Chinese. When she arrived in China last August, besides Chengdu, Sichuan province, she also visited Beijing, Guangzhou and Gansu. "I do not speak Chinese, but some of the women I photographed spoke English. Sometimes, I used WeChat Translation for communication with Chinese people."

"To me, China is a very great country. Chinese people are nice and honest. I like them very much," she added.

After Mihaela Noroc posted the photo of the young woman in Sichuan on Facebook, a web user named Andrea Kore wrote, "I never understood why Chinese women try to change their looks with plastic surgery to be close to the so called western standard, they are very beautiful as they are, different, that is true, but from that difference comes the beauty. Anyway this is a very beautiful young woman and I hope she knows this."

The young woman in the photo named Zhang Ran, 27 runs a clothing store in Leshan, Sichuan province. "Meeting with the female photographer is kind of fate," she said. Zhang met with Mihaela at the end of September last year when she was in Chengdu for purchasing goods.

Zhang Ran remembered that Michaela smiled and took a few glances of her when she passed by. "I smiled at her out of politeness. I did not expect that she would come back to me," said Zhang. Michaela expressed her intention of taking a photo of her in English but Zhang refused at first. Then Michaela showed her magazines with photos she has taken. "Maybe she wanted to tell me that she is not a liar. I said yes then," Said Zhang.
According to statistics recently released by the Japan National Tourism Organization, the number of Chinese tourists as well as their expenditure ranked top among all foreign tourists visiting Japan.

Haunted by the data, the Japanese Government has already taken some measures to solve its strong reliance on Chinese tourists by adding seven more resident offices in countries like the Philippines and Italy.

Japans Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei, Japanese Business News) published an editorial on Jan. 22 noting there were 19.73 million foreign tourist visits to Japan in 2015, hitting a new historical record.

However, the number of tourists from Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea made up 72 percent of the total, tourists from Southeast Asia and India only 11 percent, and 13 percent are from Europe, America, and Australia.

The editorial pointed out that a shadow has risen on Chinese tourists' strong demand for shopping due to Chinas economic slowdown. In addition to that, the trend of purchasing Japanese goods online has been increasing. Hence any tourism relying on Chinese tourists and their shopping needs faces a potential risk in the future.

The Nikkei claimed that Japan should be more actively attracting tourists from Southeast Asia, Europe and America since these tourists pay more attention to the unique experience Japan has to offer rather than purely shopping, so they are more likely to become return tourists.

Besides the additional resident offices in seven foreign countries, Japan is also planning to make satellite TV programs for these countries about traveling to Japanese. In the meantime, Japan is also considering how to keep encouraging and increasing the number of Chinese tourists coming to Japan.
A 33-year-old Chinese woman who fell into a vegetative state nine years ago recently awakened thanks to her parents elaborate care, Chengdu Commercial Daily reported Monday.

The woman, named Yang Fengxia from Chongqing, southwest China, was robbed and hit on head on her way home in May 2006. She fell in coma and was diagnosed with persist vegetative state.

In the following nine years, her parents did their best to wake her up. Though the old couple was saddled with heavy debt due to their daughters treatment, they did not give up. To cover the medical expanse, Yangs father even did two jobs at the same time.

Even after Yangs mother passed away in 2012, her father, though living a hard life, never gave up. Their friends also offered a helping hand to them.

Thanks to their efforts, a miracle finally occurred. One night in May 2015, when the father talked with his daughter, he heard her laughter, and Yang could also shake her hands gently, which implied that she will wake up.

Since then, Yang has got better. Now she could slowly chew food, move hands and even understand some simple words like coffee.

The doctor said that Yang may finally recover since her consciousness had been partially restored. Yangs father said that his only hope is that her daughter could recover completely.
Chinese traditional spring festival scrolls hang at Zhonghua Gate of Nanjing city, east China's Jiangsu province on Jan 24. 2016. (CNS/Ge Yong)

To celebrate the Year of the Monkey, red Chinese traditional spring festival scrolls were hung by the Zhonghua Gate of Nanjing's city walls in east China's Jiangsu province on Jan 24. 2016. They also gave impetus for applying for listing as World Cultural Heritage.

On the occasion of the 650th anniversary of Nanjing's ancient city walls, the management center prepared lanterns and spring festival scrolls to pray for peace, safety and good luck for the residents.

"Spring festival scrolls are the combination of China's traditional culture, customs and calligraphy. Through hanging them at the Zhonghua Gate of Nanjing, the first gate of ancient city, we let them get close to people's lives," said Yan Gongda, the writer of these spring festival scrolls and deputy director of the Chinese Calligraphers Association.

Chinese traditional spring festival scrolls hang at Zhonghua Gate of Nanjing city, east China's Jiangsu province on Jan 24. 2016. (CNS/Ge Yong)

This was the first time spring festival scrolls have been hung on Nanjing's ancient city walls. Nine couplets will decorate eight city gates including the Zhonghua, Xuanwu, Wuding, Taiping and Jiqing gates. Since Jan 5 2016, nearly 4,000 couplets have been collected from all over the world.

The ancient wall of Nanjing city was proposed as a tentative listing of World Cultural Heritage in November of 2012.
Credit: Vijat MohindraThe 1975 will be making their Saturday Night Live debut next month. Matty Healy and company will perform on the February 6 edition of the show, which will be hosted by Curb Your Enthusiasm actor Larry David.

"Very [honored] and excited to be part of the next episode of Saturday Night Live @nbcsnl," writes Healy on his Twitter. "What on earth am I going to wear?"

The 1975 will likely be playing a cut or two from their forthcoming album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, which will be released February 26. The band has already released the album's lead single, "Love Me," plus the songs "UGH!" and "The Sound."

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Azerbaijan Railways CJSC will launch the electric train service in the direction of Baku-Yalama starting from February 1, 2016, head of the company's press service Nadir Azmammadov told Trend Jan. 25.

He also said that the train No. 6803/6804 will stop running on the Baku-Khachmaz-Keshla line.

"The Baku-Yalama-Baku electric train will be leaving Baku passenger station daily at 8 p.m. (GMT + 4 hours) and arriving at the Yalama station (Khachmaz district) at 1:10 a.m.," Azmammadov said. "The train will be departing from the Yalama station at 3:30 a.m. and arriving in Baku at 9:15 a.m."

Azerbaijan Railways CJSC has bought five trains of four cars each in Riga to launch the train service in this direction.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

Trend:

At the 11th conference of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Member States (PUIC) adopted a resolution calling to punish the Khojaly massacre's organizers, said the message of the press service of the OIC Youth Forum Jan. 25.

During the 11th Conference of PUIC, a resolution on Cooperation between the OIC Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation and the PUIC, which contains the ways of cooperation, aimed at the recognition of the Khojaly massacre, was adopted.

The relevant article of the resolution, which was adopted unanimously by the parliament representatives of 54 countries of the OIC, expresses support for the international information campaign "Justice for Khojaly" initiated by Leyla Aliyeva - Chief Coordinator of the OIC Youth Forum for Intercultural Dialogue. At the same time it [the article] recognizes Khojaly tragedy as "act of genocide" and "crime against humanity".

The document calls the parliaments of the OIC countries to take necessary measures to punish the organizers of this crime.

On February 25-26, 1992, the Armenian military, together with the 366th infantry regiment of Soviet troops stationed in Khankendi, committed genocide against the population of the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly. Among those 613 killed in the massacre, there were 63 children, 106 women and 70 old people.

Eight families were totally exterminated, 130 children lost one parent and 25 children lost both. A total of 487 civilians became disabled as a result of the onslaught. Some 1,275 innocent residents were taken hostage, while the fate of 150 people still remains unknown.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

Trend:

A regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has started in Strasbourg Jan. 25.

Two reports on Azerbaijan will be discussed during the session.

January 26, participants of the session will discuss the report on "Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" prepared by MP Robert Walter (UK), and the report by MP Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water".

In addition, President of Bulgaria Rosen Plevneliev is expected to give speech at the session.

The MPs will also discuss the issue of migration crisis in Europe, strengthening of role and protection of human rights in Council of Europe member countries.

Election to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will take place at the PACE session.

The session will end on January 29.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25



By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:



Bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Latvia are at a very high level, Juris Maklakovs, the Latvian ambassador to Azerbaijan, said in an interview with Trend.



"A successful political dialogue is underway," he said. "The economic cooperation is being developed."



Maklakovs said that the Latvian and Azerbaijani presidents have always had friendly relations.



"The frequent high-level visits confirm good relations between the sides," he said. "Dana Reizniece-Ozola, the Latvian Minister of Economics, and Uldis Augulis, the Welfare Minister, visited Azerbaijan in 2015."



"Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Valdis Zatlers, two Latvian ex-presidents will arrive in Azerbaijan in early March," he said. "We are preparing the visit of the speaker of the Latvian parliament."



The ambassador said that he intends to contribute to the expansion of economic relations between the two countries.



"Azerbaijan and Latvia could have intensified the cooperation in the fields of information technologies and agriculture," he said. "All the possibilities of enhancing the economic cooperation will be discussed during the next meeting of the Azerbaijan-Latvia intergovernmental commission, to be held in Riga this spring."



"Azerbaijan can be proud of its agricultural products," he said. "If the production is adjusted in a volume necessary for the import of products to Latvia, they would be in a very high demand."



Maklakovs said that Latvia could invest in the sphere of medicine and pharmacy in Azerbaijan.



"The Latvian pharmaceutical companies would like to expand their presence on the Azerbaijani market," he said. "Latvia is also interested in the development of such an area as medical tourism."



"Medicine is at a rather high level in Latvia," he said. "The representatives of the entire consortium of Latvian various medical institutions will pay a visit to Azerbaijan in the first half of February. They will hold a number of meetings, as well as with the minister of health."



Speaking about the countries' cooperation in transit field, the ambassador called it a great opportunity for the deepening of economic relations between the parties.



"Azerbaijan, as well as China and the Central Asian republics, positions itself as a country through which once the "Great Silk Road" passed and which has potential for transit to Europe," he said. "Latvia also sees itself as a transit country because it has very well-developed transit infrastructure. We have a good airport, which realizes flights on 80 destinations to different countries."



The work on a direct flight Riga-Baku is carried out, which will be realized throughout the year, he added.



The diplomat considers that this flight could help to increase the tourist flow from both countries. In addition, Azerbaijani citizens could use it for transit purposes.



"Baku is a beautiful city; there are many historical places here. If we are talking about increasing the tourist flow to Riga, it is also needed to advertise Azerbaijan for tourists from Latvia," said Maklakovs. "For me personally, Azerbaijan has become a new discovery."



The diplomat also touched upon the topic of education, calling Latvia a promising direction for Azerbaijani students.



Today high schools of Latvia have about 170 Azerbaijani students, he said.



"Latvian education is competitive in Europe and provides employment opportunities not only in Latvia, but also in other EU countries," Maklakovs said. "Private higher education institutions of Latvia also provide an opportunity to study in Russian. Suitable faculties and courses can be found both in English and Latvian languages at public universities."



In conclusion, the ambassador congratulated Azerbaijani people with the come of 2016, wishing them prosperity, good health, wealth and peace, in spite of all adversities.



"I have been six months in Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani people's kindness and openness touched my heart. For half a year I made here a lot of friends and acquaintances, who are trying in every way to help me in my work in order to contribute in our countries' rapprochement," Maklakovs noted.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

The OSCE is concerned over the escalation of tensions on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, OSCE PA Vice-President George Tsereteli told reporters in Baku Jan. 25.

He said that the only way to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is through peace negotiations under the OSCE Minsk Group mandate.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

Issues of cooperation between the parties will be discussed during the visit of the OSCE PA vice-president to Azerbaijan, which began on Jan. 25.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Azerbaijan is of great importance for Europe, vice-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly George Tsereteli told reporters in Baku Jan. 25.

He said that Azerbaijan and the OSCE have fruitful cooperation, and the issues of its further development will be discussed during the current visit.

It is scheduled to hold meetings in the parliament and the government of Azerbaijan during the visit.

The settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will also be discussed during the talks.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

It's necessary to find a solution over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Anne Brasseur, president of the PACE said.

She made the remarks speaking at the regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Brasseur said it's necessary to find a solution in order to advance in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, because it has been going on for so many years and there is no step forward. She added that the debates during the session will contribute to the settlement of the conflict.

She noted that the PACE doesn't take somebody's side in this conflict.

It is necessary to find a solution to the conflict and ensure the rights of both sides, Brasseur said.

The solution won't be found as long as mutual accusations are made, she said, adding that casualties on both sides are also unacceptable.

Two reports on Azerbaijan will be discussed during the OSCE PA Winter Session.

January 26, participants of the session will discuss the report on "Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" prepared by MP Robert Walter (UK), and the report by MP Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water".

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed Jan. 25 a decree on appointment of Natig Amirov his aide on economic reforms.

Prior to this appointment, Amirov was the first deputy minister of taxes of Azerbaijan.

Natig Amirov was born in Azerbaijan's Shabran district in 1967. He graduated as an economist from Leningrad Institute of Finance and Economy named after N.A.Voznesenskiy (in 1990), and as a lawyer from the Science-and-Education Center of Tefekkur University in 1998.

In 1990-1991, he worked as senior budget economist in the Financial Department in Sumgayit city, in 1991-1993 - as state tax inspector in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, Department on the Involvement of Citizens to Taxes.

In 1993-1994, he was chief tax inspector in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, Department for Taxation of Profits (Incomes) of State Entities, Organizations and Associations and Other Incomes.

In 1994-1997, he was head of the Department on Monitoring Compliance with Tax Legislation and State Price Control in Non-Governmental Entities of Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate.

In 1997-2000, Amirov worked as deputy head in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, and in 2000-2001 - as deputy head in Baku city Sabail District Tax Department.

In 2001-2003, he worked as deputy head in Department of Work with Large Taxpayers of Ministry of Taxes. In 2003-2005, he was head of Department of Economic Analysis and Organization of Registration of Ministry of Taxes.

On August 16, 2005, Amirov was appointed deputy minister of taxes by the Order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On March 4, 2009, he was appointed the first deputy minister of taxes by the Order of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Amirov is married and has three children.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Air India aircraft, which had to make an emergency landing at Baku's Heydar Aliyev International Airport on Jan. 24 evening, has left for Mumbai Jan. 25 morning, the press service of Azerbaijan Airlines CJSC told Trend.

"The aircraft with passengers on board took off to Mumbai from the Baku airport at 7 a.m. (GMT + 4 hours) on Jan. 25," said the press service.

Air India flight AI 130 with 246 passengers and 11 crew members on board made an emergency landing at Baku's Heydar Aliyev International Airport.

The Boeing Dreamliner (B787-800) aircraft was on its way from London to Mumbai when the pilot requested an emergency landing, as one of the passengers felt bad and needed medical assistance, said the source.

The press service said that the 72-year-old passenger, a UK citizen, died on board of the aircraft before it landed.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25



Trend:

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree Jan. 25 on allocation of 20 million Azerbaijani manats to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.

The funds to be transferred from the Presidential Reserve Fund will be spent to increase the amount that is envisaged in the 2016 state budget for financing the targeted state social assistance.

The decree was signed to strengthen the social protection for low-income families who need the targeted state social assistance.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection was tasked to ensure financing, while the Cabinet of Ministers was entrusted to solve other issues arising from the decree.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan. 25

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Uzbekistan signed contracts and agreements for export of fruits, vegetables and textile products worth more than $91.2 million to the European countries, the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade said Jan. 25.

The contracts were signed as part of "Green Week 2016" agricultural fair, held in Berlin.

An Uzbek delegation was headed by Elyor Ganiev, the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade. The country was represented by the Association of the Food Industry Enterprises, Uzvinprom Holding, some foreign trade companies and representatives of the Council of Farmers.

Uzbekistan's exposition has demonstrated a wide range of fresh fruits, vegetables, melons and gourds, dried fruits, wine, spices, canned products and textile goods.

'Green Week' annual international fair is the largest platform to demonstrate the achievements of agriculture, livestock, horticulture. It was held in the German capital from January 15-24. More than 1,700 companies and farms from 68 countries attended the fair in 2016.

Uzbekistan signed agreements worth more than $ 130 million at the "Green Week" fair in 2015.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Jan. 25

By Huseyn Hasanov- Trend:

Turkmenistan and the World Bank (WB) are interested in the development of cooperation in the spheres of energy, transport and environmental protection, the Turkmen government said Jan. 25.

The negotiations were held at the Turkmen foreign ministry with a WB delegation headed by WB regional director for Central Asia Saroj Kumar Jha.

The further interaction by extending the joint legal framework and the preparation of a new strategy of partnership between Turkmenistan and the WB were discussed at the meeting, the statement said.

Stressing the importance of strengthening the regional cooperation potential, Saroj Kumar Jha said that the WB Group is ready to fully support Turkmenistan's initiatives in different directions.

According to BP's report, Turkmenistan's gas reserves rank fourth in the world. At present, the country is able to export gas to China and Iran. The project of transporting Turkmen gas to Europe is being considered. The construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline started in December 2015.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

Trend:

Beijing supports Kiev's proposal to create the Trans-Caspian transport route from China to Europe through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, which would bypass Russia, in addition to existing transit routes, TASS news agency quoted Hua Chunying, Chinese foreign ministry's spokesperson, as saying.

Chunying made the statement during a press briefing Jan. 25.

"As for the proposal by the Ukrainian side and other countries about laying a new transport route, China too supports it," Chunying said.

She also stressed the importance of the existing rail freight routes from China to Europe for developing the Silk Road Economic Belt, on the basis of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the new Eurasian transcontinental bridge.

Ukraine previously said it started working through an export route that would bypass Russia.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol in Baku on Jan. 14 with regard to setting preferential tariffs for cargo transportation via the Trans-Caspian international transport route.

The parties plan to agree by mid-February on a common tariff policy.

Ukraine launched the first experimental train from Illichivsk on Jan. 15 to China, which was to run through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

According to Kiev's plans, the new route will run from the Izov station on Ukraine's border with Poland to the Dostyk station on the border of Kazakhstan and China, and will include ferry transportation across the Black and Caspian seas.
Iran and Italy have signed multi-billion dollar contracts covering various sectors including health, transportation, agriculture and energy, Press TV reported.

The contracts, worth up to 17 billion euros (USD 18.4 billion), were signed in a ceremony attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella in Rome on Monday night.

Prior to the ceremony, Reuters reported that a pipeline contract worth between 3.6-4.6 billion euros (USD 4-5 billion) for Italian oil services group Saipem was among the deals.

Moreover, Italian steel firm Danieli said it would sign commercial agreements worth up to 5.7 billion euros (USD 6.1 billion) with Iran. Infrastructure firm Condotte d'Acqua was also scheduled to sign deals worth up to four billion euros (USD 4.3 billion).

The Iranian president arrived in Italy on Monday on the first leg of his trip to three European destinations following the implementation of a nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries.

Rouhani left Tehran at the head of a high-ranking delegation, which includes government officials, Iranian entrepreneurs and businessmen. He was initially greeted by Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni at the international Rome Ciampino Airport and then officially welcomed by President Mattarella.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic is optimistic to see Caspian gas in Europe well before 2020.

With regard to the development of the Southern Gas Corridor Sefcovic said in an interview with EurActiv that each and every country that passes through, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Albania and Italy has very similar challenges, routing, i.e expropriation of land or regulatory and environmental issues.

"Therefore, we organized an advisory council to address the problems when they arise," he said.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for the EU. It envisages the transportation of gas from the Caspian Sea region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey.

At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25



By Aygun Badalova - Trend:



It is vital the oil market addresses the issue of the stock overhang, and once this overhang starts falling then prices start to rise, OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri said at Chatham House's 'MENA Energy' conference in London.



"Given how this developed, it should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together," al-Badri said.



"Yes, OPEC provided some of the additional supply last year, but the majority of this has come from Non-OPEC countries," he added.



He stressed that it is crucial that all major producers sit down to come up with a solution to this.



" The market needs to see inventories come down to levels that allow prices to recover and investments to return," he said.



"This is not only crucial for producers, but consumers too. The world desires more oil, and this means more investment," he added.



Al-Badri said that in 2015 oil production growth was observed both in OPEC and non-OPEC countries. Non-OPEC grew by slightly over 1.2 million barrels a day, and OPEC at around 1 million barrels a day, according to al-Badri.



"It is important to recall that the previous high oil-price cycle was the outcome of a lack of investment in more supply. And the low oil-price environment we find ourselves in today is the result of too much investment in high-cost production during that previous period," al-Badri said.



He stressed the confidence that the industry will come through this current cycle. Market forces, as well as cooperation among producers, will eventually lead to the return of stability, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Trade Promotion Organization of Iran has issued a statement denying reports suggesting that the USA is against Tehran's plan to become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The statement says given the recent developments in Iran's ties with the world and the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the reports regarding the USA's opposition to Iran's plan to join the WTO are false, TASNIM news agency reported Jan. 24.

Earlier in December 2015, Iranian minister of Industry, Mining and Trade, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh described Iran's joining the World Trade Organization as a win-win agreement and an important step towards creation of a real global organization.

Saying that Iran is ready to join the World Trade Organization, he expressed hope that Tehran would be capable of joining the WTO after the removal of sanctions.

WTO members were urged at the opening session of the WTO's Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi on 15 December to crown a successful year of multilateral diplomacy by delivering on a package of trade deals that would benefit the world's poorest and spur global economic growth.

In a joint statement on Jan. 16, the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA aka nuclear deal) and the removal of economic sanctions on Iran.

According to the statement, EU confirmed that legal framework, providing for lifting of its nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, is effective.
Switzerland freed up money from Iran that was frozen in Swiss bank accounts after sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic were lifted, Irna reported.



A sum of $11.8 million had been stopped from leaving Switzerland after being frozen between 2007 and 2012, as part of a sanctions programme against Iran to attempt to force the country not to develop and build an atomic bomb.



After decades of negotiation, many United Nations (UN) sanctions were eased in January 2016 after a milestone nuclear deal was reached in 2015, meaning the money could be released, Swissinfo reported.



A spokesperson for the State Secretariat for Economic affairs (Seco) confirmed on Sunday that the money had been unfrozen. It belonged to either individuals, companies or government-owned institutions.



The nuclear deal also opened up Iran to new international business opportunities, some Swiss firms are hoping it could lead to a fresh market outlet.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 24

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

For the first time after the removal of international sanctions on Tehran, a Japanese tanker is scheduled to load oil at Iran's Kharg oil terminal on Jan. 26.

According to IRNA news agency, Japanese companies which had proper cooperation with Iranian oil industry during the sanction-era will be first to carry Tehran's oil after the removal of sanctions.

Meanwhile, in a separate report on the same day, Mehr news agency reported that the Chinese tankers are also expected to resume carrying Iran's oil shipments as off 26 January after Japanese vessels.

Saying that Japan imported about 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Iran over the sanctions era, IRNA added that Japanese insurers provided the tankers in the mentioned period with the required insurance services.

So far, a number of Japanese refineries have extended their contracts with Iran and they are expected to increase the volume of their imports in April, IRNA said.

Currently Iran exports about 110,000 barrels of oil per day to Japan which is expected to exceed 250,000 barrels with the removal of international sanctions.

According to the Japanese sources, despite the removal of sanctions on Tehran, the Japanese insurers will continue to provide services to the compatriot tankers that carry Iran's oil.

After imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, the international protection and indemnity (P&I) insurance clubs stopped providing service to those tankers that carry Iran's oil.

However, given the fact that the sanctions have already been lifted, the Islamic Republic's ships are not anymore subject to any restrictions to sail in the European and international waters under the flag of Iran.

Earlier in June 2015, CEO of Iran's Oil Terminals Company Piruz Mousavi said the company is conducting preparatory measures to boost the maritime operation capabilities at Kharg Oil Terminal in order to enhance the export of oil for the post sanction-era.

In a joint statement on Jan. 16, the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA aka nuclear deal) and the removal of economic sanctions on Iran.

According to the statement, EU confirmed that legal framework, providing for lifting of its nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, is effective.
Tehran, Iran, January 25

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

New grounds are being prepared which will lead to a boost of export from Iran to Russia, Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Sanaei said in a meeting with a trade delegation from Iran's Trade Development Organization.

He said the two countries ties are strengthening at a fast pace, noting numerous exchange of trade delegations in the past months, IRNA news agency reported January 25.

Iran has just been freed of economic sanctions under a deal with the group P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany) that came into force January 16. Russia played a key role as Iran's supporter in bringing the deal home.

But Moscow recently found itself in a row with Turkey which used to be its big trade partner. Following the downing of a Russia fighter in Syria by Turkey, Russian President Vladimir Putin banned the imports of agricultural products from Turkey.

With the Moscow-Ankara developments, Iran and Russia signed important contracts on agricultural, aquatics, and dairy products export.

According to Sanaei, a banking problem that used to afflict trade transactions between Iran and Russia has also been eased to a great extent and is expected to be fully lifted in near future as Iran is now free of international sanctions.

Regarding the issue of tariffs which has been hampering Iran export to Russia, the official expressed hope that the problem will soon be obviated by using the Russian Federal Custom Service's green channel (aka green corridor).

Moscow has given the go-ahead to four Iranian agribusiness exporters to start supplying Russia with milk dairy products and is ready to set up a 'green corridor' for agricultural supplies from Iran, its Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev said January 19.

"We need to establish modern logistics [for the transportation] of Iranian goods to Russia, to create a 'green corridor' on the Russian border for Iranian goods and to ease customs formalities to speed up clearance of Iranian cargoes," he explained after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Hojjati.

"We have inspected [some] Iranian dairy companies that will start exporting their products to Russia in the near future... A reliable mechanism of settlements in national currencies should also be established," he added.



According to Sanaei, Iran is also going to use Eurasian Customs Union privileges to reduce the burden of tariffs on its tradesmen dealing with Russian counterparts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

The UK's Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) has told Trend that it didn't sign any deal with Iran.

Earlier, Mehr news agency reported that Iran's Power Generation and Transmission Company (TAVANIR) and the SSTL signed a contract to build a solar power plant in the Islamic Republic.



Farhad Shabihi, an official with TAVANIR, said that under a $1 million contract, the SSTL is committed to design, construct and launch a 50-megawatt (MW) solar power plant.



Meanwhile, Joelle Sykes, communications manager at SSTL, told Trend on Jan. 25 that the SSTL is an aerospace company and has no connection to solar power management or supply, adding the company hasn't signed any agreement in Iran.

Earlier, speaking on the SSTL agreement, Shabihi said it is the first time that a UK company is going to build a solar power plant in Iran, adding that the SSTL is expected to complete the project by September.



However, Shabihi didn't provide further details about the location of the power plant.



He said TAVANIR considers several more projects to construct more solar power plants in the provinces of Hamedan, Lorestan and Markazi.



Shabihi also said that generating 100 MW power in solar power plants enables the country to save 100 liters of liquid fuel per year.



Earlier in 2015 and before the removal of international sanctions against Iran, the country's ministry of energy announced plans to attract European investors to contribute to the development of Iran's renewable energy sector.



Iran's power generation capacity currently stands at around 74,000 MW, of that some 12,000 MW is generated by hydroelectric power plants, 1,000 MW by a nuclear power plant in Bushehr City, and the remaining is produced by thermal power plants.



According to a latest annual report, Iran's capacity to produce renewable energy stands at 232 megawatts, 0.31 percent of the country's total power generation capacity.



Iranians consumed about 219 billion kilowatt hour of power between March 2014 and March 2015.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani left Tehran for Rome early Jan. 25 morning as the first leg of his European tour.

President Rouhani's visit takes place at the invitation of his Italian and French counterparts, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran's president travels to Europe for a four-day visit arriving first in Rome and then heads to Paris. This will be his first state visit to Europe where he is scheduled to meet with top officials from both countries.

The first stop is Italy, where Rouhani will meet with Italian president Sergio Mattarella.

Rouhani will then head to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. It's been more than a decade since an Iranian president has visited any European Union nation. Iranian and Italian officials say they hope this visit will help improve economic and trade ties. Analysts expect an investment boom, with Italy reinvesting in Iran's car industry in the near future.

The next stop is Paris. Rouhani is expected to meet with French President Francois Hollande. With sanctions lifted, Iran can now access billions of dollars in frozen assets and pursue new trade opportunities.
Tehran, Iran, January 25

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The US has requested from Iran to help find three Americans who went missing in Iraq, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said.

If Iran is able to help, it will do so, the spokesman stated in a weekly press conference in Tehran, Trend correspondent reported January 25.

Previously, the US Secretary of State John Kerry requested Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to assist with the issue of missing Americans.

Unknown gunmen seized the three on January 15 from a private residence in the southeastern Dora district of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. They are the first Americans to be abducted in Iraq since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011.

The three men had been employed by a small company that is doing work for General Dynamics Corp (GD.N), under a larger contract with the US Army, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Early reports accused Iran of being behind the kidnapping, including Reuters which claimed so by quoting "two Iraqi intelligence and two U.S. government sources".

However, Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the Americans were abducted by "criminal gangs", expressing doubt that any political motivation was behind the abduction.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said if Iran provides help, it would be on humanitarian grounds, "which was there in the recent prisoner swap [with the US] as well."

Recently Iran released four Iranian-American prisoners, namely Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor; Amir Hekmati, a former US Marine, and another inmate named Nosratollah Khosravi.

Simultaneously, the US freed seven Iranian prisoners most of whom had been arrested on sanctions-related charges.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Spanish lawmaker Pedro Agramunt has replaced incumbent Anne Brasseur as the president of PACE.

Agramunt was a member of the Spanish delegation in the European Security and Defence Assembly/Assembly of WEU (Western European Union) since 2000, pertaining to its Committee of Presidents, the Defence Committee and the Political Committee, which was Chairman. Moreover, he was the president of the Federated Group of Christian Democrats and European Democrats. Agramunt has worked as co-rapporteur of PACE Monitoring Committee on Azerbaijan.

A regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has started in Strasbourg Jan. 25.

Two reports on Azerbaijan will be discussed during the session.

January 26, participants of the session will discuss the report on "Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" prepared by MP Robert Walter (UK), and the report by MP Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water".

In addition, President of Bulgaria Rosen Plevneliev is expected to give speech at the session.

The MPs will also discuss the issue of migration crisis in Europe, strengthening of role and protection of human rights in Council of Europe member countries.

Election to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will take place at the PACE session.

The session will end on January 29.
Irish authorities found no explosive devices on board of Turkish Airlines flight TK34, which was forced to make an emergency landing in Ireland due to a bomb threat, Sputnik reported with the reference to the local media reported Sunday.



Earlier in the day, the Boeing 777-300 en route from Houston (Texas) to the biggest Turkish city of Istanbul landed in Shannon Airport after the crew members had found a writing note with the word "bomb" on it.



During the search of the aircraft in Shannon nothing suspicious was detected, The Irish Times newspaper reported, citing a spokesman of the airline.

The newspaper added that all the passengers and crew members had been disembarked and investigation into the incident was underway.



It is not the first time a hoax bomb threat forced Turkish planes to make an emergency landing. The most recent incident took place in November 2015, when a Turkish Airlines flight from New York City to Istanbul safely diverted to Halifax, Canada.




Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Ten militants of the terrorist group "Islamic State" (aka IS, ISIS or ISIL) were detained in Istanbul, the Anadolu Agency reported Jan. 25.

The detainees are suspected in recruiting Turkish citizens for their involvement in illegal armed groups in Syria.

As many as 68 people were detained during anti-terrorist operations in seven provinces of Turkey on Jan. 13.

Earlier, it was reported that 450 Turkish citizens joined the terrorist group IS in Syria during 2015.

Turkey's intelligence service said it had information that Turkish citizens, who underwent training with the IS militants, intend to return to the country to stage terrorist attacks there.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Rufiz Khafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey is an important player in the region, said the head of EU diplomacy Federica Mogherini at a press conference in Ankara, the Turkish TRT Haber TV channel reported Jan. 25.

Mogherini said that the relations between Turkey and the EU are increasingly developing.

Ankara applied for the EU membership in 1987, and negotiations on Turkey's accession started in 2005.

Since then, the parties have agreed on 14 out of 35 technical points that Ankara must fulfill to achieve the standards required for EU membership.

In January 2015, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his country is no longer interested in the EU accession.

The same year only 20 percent of Turkish population wanted the country to join the EU compared to 75 percent previously.

At the moment, the EU and Turkey are negotiating on a common action plan, which envisages the EU's financial assistance in the amount of 3 billion euros, the intensification of negotiations on Turkey's accession to the EU and the intensification of the visa abolition process for Turkish citizens.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 25

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

It is necessary to resolve the Syrian crisis through political means, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, TRT Haber TV channel reported Jan. 25.

Turkey, as always, supports the early resolution of the crisis in Syria, he said.

Speaking about the possible dialog between the opposition and government in Syria, Cavusoglu noted that the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) is a terrorist organization and is not related to the Syrian opposition.

Iran's support for the Syrian regime promotes the growth in the number of victims among the civilians in Syria, the minister said.

Turkey and Iran have close political and economic relations, but there are differences, in particular, on the settlement of the Syrian crisis.

Ankara considers the Syrian leadership main culprit of the protracted conflict in the country, as a result of which over 200,000 people were killed, while Iran supports the Syrian authorities.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Foxconn has offered $5.3 billion to acquire troubled Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp. (Photo : Reuters)

The Taiwanese corporation that assembles most of iPhones in the world, Foxconn, has offered $5.3 billion to acquire troubled Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp.



Sharp, which has been bailed out several times by banks, is preparing to review a competing offer from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, a governmental investment fund.



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Those familiar with the issue said that the fund was weighing a bid of approximately 300 billion yen as reported earlier by the Nikkei newspaper, according to China Technology News. It was unclear whether the INCJ bid would need concessions from main creditors of Sharp.



Officials from Japan are concerned about Sharp ending up under foreign control, citing the company's technology in display panels. INCJ already has a majority share in Japan Display Inc., another key display maker. Reportedly, the two Japanese panel makers share expertise in next-generation panel technology and mass production.



According to The Wall Street Journal, industry minister Motoo Hayashi said, "Japan's technology is leading the rest of the world and we would like to help make it even more competitive."



While INCJ is preferable because it will keep Sharp under Japanese control, Foxconn is offering a better deal and it is ready to shoulder all debts of the company. Such conditions serve as an incentive for Sharp's creditors to make a decision based on the economics of the deal, as opposed to political considerations.



Standard & Poor's revealed that Sharp has a March due date to repay a sum of 510 billion yen in borrowings. Sharp has said that its main creditors are Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. The company owes these two banks between 500 billion yen and 600 billion yen.



The Taiwanese company does not intend to replace Sharp's top management, a move meant to reassure Japanese officials worried about a foreign takeover. Reports indicate that Sharp and its creditors hope to make a decision by Feb. 4, when Sharp is slated to announce its latest quarterly results.



However, there is no official statement from Foxconn, Sharp and INCJ representatives.


Intel Corporation has formed a unique chip venture with two partners in China. (Photo : Reuters)

Intel Corporation has formed a unique chip venture with two partners in China to help address security issues of imported technology.



Chinese officials called for a reduction in the country's reliance on foreign-made semiconductor, especially those used in systems vulnerable to spies. As a result, there was an arrangement between Tsinghua University and Montage Technology Global Holdings Ltd., aided by over $100 million in research funding from Intel Corp.



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According to a statement from Intel, TU will develop a programmable chip placed in a plastic module together with one of its Xeon microprocessors, the most widely utilized calculating engine in corporate and government data centers, China Technology News reported.



The extra chip, a reconfigurable computing processor or RCP, and associated software developed by the university would add capabilities that deal with specific local requirements.



While Intel did not discuss what those requirements might be, Martin Reynolds, a Gartner Inc. analyst briefed on the ventures, pointed out the likelihood that the RCP would help ensure that the Intel chip has no malicious activity.



In 2014, Intel announced its plan to invest $1.5 billion for a 20-percent share in a holding company under the ownership of Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd. that is owned by the university. The company owns two Chinese chip developers.



Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that Montage, a subsidiary of one of the largest state-owned tech corporations in China, CEC, will commercialize the modules having the two chips from 2017.



Raj Hazra, a vice president in Intel's data-center group, wrote in a blog post, "We believe this new collaboration is a win-win as it enables TU and Montage to innovate alongside standard Intel Xeon processors to create new and compelling indigenous products while preserving the respective intellectual-property ownership of all parties."



Announcement of the venture took place in a ceremony in Beijing. It is now three decades since Intel started operations in China. It has one chip-fabrication facility, which Intel said in Oct. 2015 that it would adapt to commence making memory chips at $5.5 billion.



The Santa Clara, Calif, corporation's most recent statement comes amid increasing concerns about the health of the Chinese economy. Intel echoed the concerns in a forecast released a week ago for the 2016 Q1 that resulted into a sharp decline in its stock price.



However, most analysts hold that any slowdown in the technology purchase of China is likely to impact on personal computers. It is unlikely to have a slowdown in local purchases to expand the capacity of the country's data centers.


Chinas Baidu likely to release self-driving cars in the market by 2019; Will not be like Googles driver-free car?

China is likely to beat any other country by releasing self-driving cars in the next three years. (Photo : Reuters)

China is likely to beat any other country by releasing self-driving cars in the next three years. Baidu, a Chinese web service company headquartered in Beijing, often referred to as China's Google, has been working on self-driving cars for many years.



Speaking to Chinese media, Baidu's chief scientist Andrew Ng mentioned that self- driving cars could be ready for sale in next three years. Tech in Asia cites Andrew Ng as saying that self-driving technology shall be introduced within public transport initially. However, Ng is not sure whether a self-driving sedan would be capable of navigating through China's busy highways.



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American companies like Google and Tesla are also involved in research and developing self-driving cars. In its Self-Driving Project, Google mentions that its cars would be driver-free and will allow everyone to travel in a car at push of a button.



Guardian reported that unlike Google, Baidu intends to introduce cars that would assist drivers rather than replace them. Baidu had tied up with BMW and announced its self-driving research project in April 2014. Additionally, Baidu has its own data-mapping service and has undertaken thorough research into artificial intelligence which gives them an edge in self-driving car segment.



In Sept. 12, 2015, it is reported that Baidu made an announcement. According to the announcement, its self-driving car - a BMW 3 modified model - had driven around 18.3 miles of complicated route in Beijing successfully.



Tech in Asia also reported that Baidu has also entered into an agreement with Bejing town of Yizhuang. According to this agreement, Baidu shall use the town's roads for testing its self-driving public buses.



The primary difficulty in releasing self-driving vehicles, however, lies in getting procedural and legislative approval for same.



According to a reliable source, issues of liability, safety requirements, protocol to be followed during emergency will have to be sorted out before self-driving cars are allowed to hit the roads.


Phone scammers often pose as mainland Chinese officials, including police officers. (Photo : Reuters)

Telecom fraud has become an increasing crime in China to the extent that police have handled 16,708 cases, apprehended 5,825 suspects, and busted 927 gangs since the campaign targeting new forms of telecom fraud started on Oct. 30, 2015.



Meng Jianzhu, China's security chief, called for collective responsibility among agencies and other nations to crack down on telecom fraud, according to the Global Times. Meng said this during a conference on Thursday, Jan. 21.



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It is unbelievable to think that Li Shufang (pseudonym), aged 27 and a mother of three, had a different identity: a beautiful, rich, and slender woman. Through her soft voice, Li has seduced a number of men in an attempt to swindle money from them via the phone. The police arrested her for defrauding people pretending to be a beautiful, wealthy woman ready to pay a man to impregnate her, a common telecom scam.



Li only needed a cell phone that can change a caller's voice, a script, and a credit card.



Talking to China Newsweek, she said, "All these only cost 200 yuan ($30)."



Apparently, Li learned about this fraud through an advertisement she saw posted in her village looking for apprentices. She called the number on the ad and a young man quickly delivered all tools.



At first, Li spent 500 yuan to deliver texts to thousands of phones, which read: "I am a 30-year-old 165 centimeter-tall woman. I am pale, beautiful, and attractive. After marrying a rich businessman in Hong Kong who is infertile, I am seeking a considerate, healthy, and honorable man to get me pregnant. Please call me. If I am satisfied, I will first give you 300,000 yuan. If I get pregnant, I will give you another 1.5 million yuan."



Li was nervous at first, but she gained courage and skill after talking to a number of people. She would first test the sincerity of men by ask for 300 yuan from them, and then ask for more money needed to buy jewelry, clothes, cover legal fees, and pay rent. She pretended to be a lawyer to convince her victims.



Li said: "They believed me when I said a bunch of words. [They fell into her trap] because they are too greedy."



Li defrauded about 200,000 yuan from victims in Anhui, Jiangsu and Yunnan Provinces between Jan. and Nov. 2015, according to the police report.



There is a complete chain of such fraud business formed in Shixi. While some were responsible for posting advertisements, others dealt with making phone calls and others deposited money.



More than 360 people in Shixi and nearby villages have been arrested for telecom fraud since 2010 and the victims came from over 20 provinces and regions.


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The station is located in the cradle of the Egyptian uprising that toppled the long-standing autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011

Sadat metro station, located in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, will close its doors to commuters on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the 25 January uprising, a Metro Authority spokesman told Ahram Online on Sunday.

The station will reopen when the metro authorities get "another notification," spokesman Ahmed Abdel-Hady added.

The station is located in the cradle of the Egyptian uprising that toppled the long-standing autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

It has been frequently closed "due to security reasons" but critics said the reason was to prevent masses from reaching Tahrir Square and protesting.

The station was closed from August 2013 to June 2015 -- over 650 days -- to prevent the supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi from setting up a camp in Tahrir Square.

The reopening of the station in June was a relief to passengers who commuted for longer periods of times and had to pay extra fees.

In anticipation of the fifth anniversary of the uprising, Egyptian police, aided by army personnel, have upped security in the face of possible protests.

No established political groups or movements have endorsed calls for protests on 25 January.

On Sunday, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi delivered a speech commemorating the anniversary of 25 January 2011.

We celebrate today the anniversary of the Egyptian peoples revolution where the countrys best youth paid with their lives to push for new blood in Egypt, El-Sisi said.

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Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is holding talks in the United Arab Emirates with Arab counterparts as part of a consultation meeting that will focus on bolstering ties between Arab states and battling terrorism in the region.

The two-day meeting, which runs until Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, is aimed to address "improved Arab interrelationships, means to tackle crises in the Arab World and combating terrorism," a statement by foreign ministry spokesman, Ahmed Abu Zeid, said.

The talks will take place between a number of the region's foreign ministers, looking at ways to boost communication with "neighbouring states."

Shoukry arrived in Abu Dhabi on Sunday from Jordan where he held days-long talks with government leaders in the kingdom.

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Security forces dispersed limited pro-Morsi protests on Monday morning in Egypt's second largest city of Alexandria on the fifth anniversary of the 25 January uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Tens of Morsi supporters, mainly women, chanted against the police and army in four different districts; Al-Raml, Al-Amereya, Borg Al-Arab, and Al-Montazah. They also demanded the release of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, as well as other members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, who are standing trial on various criminal charges.

The rest of Alexandrias streets remained calm and mostly empty as many stayed home after authorities warned for days that the 25 January anniversary may witness violent protests.

Meanwhile back in the capital Cairo, a small crowd of government supporters celebrated National Police Day, which falls on the same day as the outbreak of the uprising against Mubarak five years ago.

Government supporters chanted pro-police and army slogans, and handed flowers to police personnel stationed in the Square.

Elsewhere around Egypt, small pro-Morsi protests, as well as small pro-government crowds took to the streets in some cities, but the situation remains calm by-and-large.

In recent weeks authorities have said they feared the outbreak of violent protests on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the uprising, deploying tens of thousands of security personnel to secure vital institutions across the country.

On 25 January 2011, which was the countrys national Police Day, Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to protest the polices oppressive policies and brutality under Mubaraks rule, in what developed into a mass movement within days, bringing down the long-time autocrat 18 days later.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been banned and labeled a terrorist organisation following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

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Two members of a terrorist group were killed in an exchange of fire with police in 6 October city on the outskirts of Cairo on Monday, a security source told MENA.

The security source said that the pair possessed weapons and ammunition inside their apartment.

On Thursday, ten people, including seven policemen and three civilians, were killed in an explosion in Marioutiya on the outskirts of Cairo on Thursday when security forces attempted to raid a suspected militant hideout. An eighth policemen later died of his injuries.

In recent months, Egyptian security forces have carried out several raids on apartments where suspected or fugitive Islamists militants were reportedly either hiding or preparing for terrorist operations.

These raids have often ended with suspects killed by police, who say they are often met with gunfire upon arrival at the hideouts.

Police have also recently carried out random searches of apartments in downtown Cairo, according to reports by residents.

Security forces intensified their presence at key facilities on Monday, which marks the fifth anniversary of the January 25 Revolution.

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Russia is interested in resuming in full its relations with Egypt in tourism and in civil aviation flights, Russian news agencies quoted Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of the Russian

lower house of parliament, as saying on Monday.

Naryshkin said he did not rule out talks on the resumption of flights between the two countries during his visit to Egypt this week.

"But this will be possible only in case the safety of our citizens is fully guaranteed," Interfax quoted him as saying.

Russia stopped all civilian flights to Egypt, a popular destination of Russian holiday-makers, after a Russian airplane crashed over the Sinai peninsula on Oct. 31, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board.

A Russian investigation claimed that a bomb on board was the cause of the crash. However, Egypt has yet to conclude its own official inquiry or release a final report.

*This Story has been edited by Ahram Online

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This year's anniversary of Egypt's 25 January revolution did not see any significant unrest, though police dispersed a number of small anti-government marches in Cairo, Alexandria and Kafr El-Sheikh.

Egypts police and army have tightened security across the country to deal with any possible protests or outbreak of violence.

In Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 25 January 2011 uprising, police anti-riot vehicles and army tanks could be seen since the early morning hours, manning the exits and entrances of the iconic square.

Pro-Morsi Marches

Despite the heightened security measures, four pro-ousted president Mohamed Morsi demonstrations took place in Alexandria.

The marches started in the early hours of Monday in Al-Raml, Al-Amereya, Borg Al-Arab, and Al-Montazah districts.

Dozens of protesters, mostly women, chanted against the army and police and called for the release of Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood members.

The marches were quickly dispersed by the police.

While in Matariya district, pro-Morsi marchers attempted to block traffic in Masala Square. But security forces quickly dispersed them, according to Ahram Arabic news website.

Attempts at demonstrations in Gizas Haram district were quickly broken up by the police.

In Kafr El-Sheikh governorate, men, women, and children reportedly protested on the International Coastal Road, attempting to block it.

The marchers reportedly left as police arrived on the scene.

Celebrating Police Day

Meanwhile in Alexandrias Qaed Ibrahim Square, dozens of citizens organised a march to celebrate national Police Day, which falls on the anniversary of the revolution.

Those attending chanted pro-police and army slogans and gave out flowers to the security personnel.

Similarly, in Cairos Tahrir Square, tens of pro-police individulas also celebrated Police Day.

Most streets remain empty midday, as citizens have been warned on this national holiday and uprising anniversary that violent protests may take place.

The anniversary has also witnessed rain and colder temperatures in Cairo and other parts of the country.

Government kills terrorists

On Monday morning, police killed a man in Beni Suef governorate after he allegedly attacked a security checkpoint, according to the health ministry.

Meanwhile, in 6 October City, a satellite district west of Cairo, two terrorists were killed in an exchange of fire with security personnel.

According to security sources, the suspects stored weapons and ammunitions inside their apartment.

On Sunday night, security forces had also killed an alleged militant in a raid-turned-shootout in his home in Kerdasa.

The interior ministry said they confiscated bombs in the Kerdasa house resembled a bomb that exploded last week in a raid in an apartment hideout in Haram district. That raid left eight policemen and three civilians dead.

The central operations room at the Cabinet's Information Centre (CIC) said it has not received any reports of clashes, violence, or explosions.

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Egyptian police said on Monday that explosives found during a Sunday raid on an apartment in Giza's Kerdasa were the same type used in a bomb that killed eight policemen and three civilians during another raid in Haram on Thursday.

The interior ministry said the Kerdasa raid was conducted after authorities received a tip that the apartment was being used to store explosives.

Mohamed Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Aziz, who authorities say was a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, was killed during the raid in a shootout with police, who say they were met with gunfire upon their arrival.

"The interior ministry will continue to chase the members of the [Muslim Brotherhood] terrorist movement and dry up the logistic support given to its memberswithout upsetting stability and security in the country," the ministry said.

On Friday, two militant groups  the ISIS-affiliated Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and a group called Revolutionary Punishment  each claimed responsibility for the Haram bombing, which took place days before the fifth anniversary of the 25 January revolution.

Authorities have not commented on the identity of those behind the Haram bombing.

In 2013, fierce clashes between security forces and Islamists took place in Kerdasa in the aftermath of the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

In recent months, security forces have carried out dozens of raids on apartments where they say suspected or fugitive Islamists militants were either hiding or preparing for terrorist operations.

These raids have often ended with suspects being killed by police, who say they were met with gunfire upon arrival at the hideouts.

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Even though the 2011 revolution that toppled Egypt's long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak was not commemorated in public spaces, its fifth anniversary saw reflections on those still imprisoned and a focus on what has not yet been achieved since the uprising.

Although it is known for robustly supporting the incumbent regime, privately-owned Youm7 newspaper in its banner headline questioned, "how many revolutions does Egypt need?" listing schools, hospitals, corruption, and bureaucracy as sources of grievances that may foment revolt.

The paper dedicated several pages to look at why a revolution in state institutions has stumbled.

Meanwhile, privately-owned daily Al-Masry Al-Youm earmarked 10 pages for the revolution's anniversary, interviewing political activists and a slew of families of some of those imprisoned.

In an interview from inside his prison cell, one of Egypt's most prominent activists, Alaa Abdel Fattah told the paper that "no hope has been left in him" five years after the popular revolt.

The activist, who was sentenced to five years in jail in February for violating a protest law, said he regrets staying in Egypt after his name was removed from a travel ban list in 2013.

Abdel Fattah said he wants to "leave the country and the region to a place void of conflicts" when he is freed, stressing though that he is not expecting this to happen any time soon.

In another interview with the family of imprisoned activist Ahmed Maher, his brother Mostafa talked about unlawful treatment by prison authorities, including restrictions on access to books and food.

Maher is currently serving a three-year jail term for protesting without permit and assaulting the police..

Few demonstrations occurred on Monday's five-year anniversary, which is also the national Police Day. This is in stark contrast to mammoth demonstrations that poured into the iconic Tahrir Square on the same day in past years.

The absence of protests comes against the backdrop of El-Sisis speech last month in which he warned against any demonstrations marking the anniversary. The interior ministry, the body responsible for police, has also promised a firm response to any non-sanctioned protests.

Mixed emotions on social media

Egyptian security forces have arrested administrators of Facebook pages organising protests and raided or shut down cultural spaces in recent weeks to prevent possible gatherings as the anniversary approaches.

However, the hashtag #jan25 was trending on Twitter Monday, with many users expressing nostalgia and sharing photos of the 18-day revolution.

Some have mocked the lack of protests on the day despite perceived disillusionment amongst many.

@khaled_B3eet tweeted a couple of images of empty streets in downtown Cairo and around Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the revolution, jokingly captioning them: "the calm before nothing."

Ahmed M. Tuni tweeted "that feeling when you're lying under the blanket but your ideology is making authorities sleep in the streets," in reference to heightened security presence in the capital Cairo and other governorates on Monday in anticipation of protests.

Several key figures during the popular revolt have written about clinging to the same ideals of the uprising.

"To anyone who took part or sacrificed for freedom and human dignity...be sure the revolution will win because you're the future and no force is above that of the right," Mohamed El-Baredei, Egypt's leading opposition leader and former interim vice president wrote on his Twitter feed.

"We will continue to dream, and its destined that our dreams will become your nightmares, Wael Ghonim, prominent youth activist who was a key player in the uprising, wrote on Monday.

Frustration amid revolutionary political forces

Some of Egypt's revolutionary political forces issued statements on the fifth anniversary of Egypt's 25 January uprising insisting that pre-revolutionary state practices continue in Egypt.

The Strong Egypt Party, founded by 2012 presidential candidate and ex-Muslim Brotherhood figure Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, said in a statement that "five years have passed and the 25 January revolution has not achieved its goals, as the stolen dignity [and rights] of Egyptians have not been reclaimed, but [the revolution] will remain alive in hearts and minds."

"We, the Strong Egypt Party, do not consider today a celebration," the statement added. "It reminds us of the martyrs we lost in this uprising and of our consolidation against one enemy which steals our dreams and freedom."

Strong Egypt supported the 30 June 2013 demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood rule, but criticised the ouster of Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July, calling it a "coup." The party decided to boycott all electoral and political activities in the transitional period which followed Morsi's ouster, including the 2014 constitution referendum and the presidential elections.

The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, founded a few months after the 25 January uprising, said in a statement on Monday that the revolution's goals were "still out of reach."

"We are living in a state of constriction of the public domain and civil society organisations, as social justice principles have not been achieved," the statement read. "We believe that things are worse than they were before the revolution because of the practices of the security apparatus, and because of the unconstitutional legislations which were issued over the past years."

The party called for amending the controversial protest law, releasing all those jailed without charge, and addressing the issue of forced disappearances, which some say involves the secret arrest of individuals by government agencies, an allegation authorities have strongly denied.

The now-banned 6 April movement also issued a statement quoting its political bureau member Khaled Ismail, who said that "the movement will continue its efforts in reuniting the revolution's political factions to reclaim its goals, especially since the ruling regime has showed its suppressive practices against the people."

The 6 April Youth Movement was founded in 2008 to support protesting workers in the Nile Delta's Mahalla, soon developing into one of the leading opposition movements during the Mubarak era.

After the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, the movement continued to play a role in the political scene. However, a Egyptian court order banned all activities of the group in 2014.

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Since last year's killing of Copts until this past Sunday, 125,656 Egyptians have returned from Libya via the Salloum border crossing, Egyptian authorities said on Monday.

On 15 February last year, ISIS militants in Libya released a video showing the beheading of 20 abducted Egyptian Christians, and one Ghanaian Christian. The men had been working in Libya in the construction industry before they were kidnapped.

Since then, Cairo has issued several warnings to its citizens to avoid traveling to the war-torn country, and called on those already there to return.

A total of 352 Egyptians who were working in Libya crossed through Salloum to Egypt on Sunday, authorities said.

Egyptians and people of other nationalities have continued to attempt to cross into Libya, despite government warnings, in some cases in search of employment and in others in an attempt to migrate to Europe via boats leaving from the county's coast.

Egypt's border control on Monday stopped 74 people, including four Sudanese citizens, from illegally crossing through the desert into Libya near Salloum.

The Egyptian migrants came from the governorates of Kafr El-Sheikh, Minya, Assiut, Beheira, Fayoum, Assiut, Daqahliya, Sohag, Beni Suef, Cairo, Damietta, Gharbiya and Giza.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that between 330,000 and 1.5 million Egyptians worked in Libya until the 2011 Libyan revolution.

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The 21-year-old Sanaa Seif stood in Tahrir while wearing a shirt with the words 'It is still the January revolution'

A prominent Egyptian activist garnered attention Monday by staging a single-person demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square for the fifth anniversary of the 25 January 2011 revolution.

The 21-year-old Sanaa Seif, who hails from a family known for leftist activism, stood in Tahrir while wearing a shirt with the words "It is still the January revolution."

"Since 2011, I have walked in a rally from Mostafa Mahmoud Square to Tahrir Square on 25 January," she said on her Facebook account. "The last time I did it was in 2014, and despite the security crackdown this year I decided to stick to my routine and do it again."

"I am alone but I am sure that next year thousands will return to walk again from Mostafa Mahmoud to Tahrir Square," she said.

Egypt's major non-Islamist political parties and movements declared they would not organise any street activity to commemorate the revolution this year over security concerns.

However, a few dozen supporters of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi organised a small protest in Tahrir Square to salute the Egyptian police, which celebrates its national day on 25 January.

Seif was sentenced to three years in jail for illegal protest in 2014 but was released in September 2015 after receiving a presidential pardon.

She is the younger sister of prominent activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who is currently serving a five-year sentence for illegal protesting.

In its special coverage for the anniversary of the revolution, Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper published a series of interviews with members of the Seif family, including one with Abdel-Fattah from prison.

Abdel-Fattah said in the interview, conducted via mail, that he has lost hope and intends to leave Egypt after his release.

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EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini on Monday called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated region where the Turkish army is waging a relentless campaign against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.

"We call for an immediate ceasefire in the southeast and strongly condemn all kinds of terrorism," Mogherini told a joint press conference with Turkish ministers in Ankara.

"We are ready to contribute with regards to the Kurdish peace process. We have an imminent interest on that because it can affect the security in the region, and in the broader sense, the EU," added European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.

After a more than two-year ceasefire, fighting resumed last summer between Turkish security forces and the PKK, dashing hopes of ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.

But Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir vowed no let-up in the campaign against the PKK, which has since staged a string of attacks against security forces.

"As a sovereign state, Turkey will continue its struggle against all terrorist organisations, including the PKK, which are threatening its national security," he said.

"In doing so, we try to protect the rights of our citizens."

Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks enforced curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians.

Prosecutors have launched a vast investigation into over 1,200 academics for engaging in "terrorist propaganda" by signing a petition urging Ankara to halt "its deliberate massacres" in the Kurdish-majority region.

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President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has taken control of Algeria's security and intelligence services by forming a new leadership for the entire sector, newspapers reported Monday.

The reports said a DSS agency has been set up to replace the powerful DRS intelligence agency, which is being dissolved.

Retired general Athman Tartag, an ex-security advisor to the president, is to head the DSS, newspapers reported.

He was named in September as successor to longtime DRS chief General Mohamed Mediene -- better known as General Toufik -- head of a shadowy intelligence service that many viewed as a "state within a state" in the North African country.

Bouteflika has established the DSS under a decree which has not been made public, according to the government daily EL-Messa.

There was no official confirmation of the reports.

Algeria's ailing 78-year-old leader thus places the entire security services under his direct control, with Tartag reporting back to him on the activities of all the country's intelligence services.

Since his election to a fourth term in April 2014, Bouteflika and his aides have pushed through major changes in Algeria's shadowy intelligence and security apparatus.

In November, former counterterrorism chief Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi, better known as General Hassan, was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of destroying documents and disobeying military orders.

Bouteflika's public engagements have become rare and he appears on local television only when foreign dignitaries visit.

Opponents, including his rival in the 2014 presidential polls, Ali Benflis, have spoken of a "power vacuum" in Algeria.

In December, Bouteflika underwent two days of medical tests at a cardiology unit in France. After a stroke in 2013, Bouteflika spent 88 days in Paris.

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Libya's internationally recognised parliament voted Monday to reject a UN-backed unity government, in a major blow to international efforts to end the country's unrest.

The United Nations and Western diplomats have urged Libyans to back the unity government formed last week as a step toward ending the political chaos that has gripped the country since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Libya currently has two rival administrations and parliaments, with the internationally recognised authorities based in the east and a militia-backed authority holding power in Tripoli.

A national unity government headed by businessman Fayez al-Sarraj and comprising 32 ministers was formed last week, but the recognised parliament needs to approve it for it to start working.

"We voted against endorsing the government and ask... to be presented with another government," parliamentarian Ali al-Gaydi said.

Of the 104 lawmakers in attendance for the vote in eastern city Tobruk, 89 rejected the new government, he said.

Parliament member Al-Saliheen Abdelnabbi said the government had been rejected because its cabinet was too large.

He called for "a smaller government without this high number of ministries".

The unity government was formed under a UN-sponsored peace deal signed last month by less than half of the members of Libya's competing legislatures.

The accord must also be approved by the parliament but on Monday lawmakers voted for the removal of an article giving the unity government the power to approve top security and military positions.

The parliament would hold a vote on ratifying the deal on Tuesday if the UN mission to Libya -- which has been working on the deal for more than a year -- scrapped the article, Gaydi said.

Parliamentarian Fahmy Tuwaty said many lawmakers are opposed to the deal over the article, which they fear will lead to powerful army chief General Khalifa Haftar losing his post.

The parliament's head Aguila Saleh and Haftar have criticised the UN-backed accord, which calls for a two-year transition period to end with parliamentary elections.

The head and members of the rival Tripoli-based General National Congress also oppose the deal.

While their support is not necessary for the unity government to start operating, they could prevent it from working out of the capital.

Prime minister-designate Sarraj, who has so far been operating out of Tunisia, arrived in Algeria for a visit on Monday as he continues to seek support from regional governments.

There was no immediate reaction from his government to the rejection.

Libya has been divided since a militia alliance including Islamists overran Tripoli in August 2014, causing the recognised administration to flee east.

The Islamic State militant group has taken advantage of the turmoil to expand its influence in the country.

In recent weeks it launched attacks from its stronghold in the city of Sirte on facilities in the "oil crescent" along the country's northern coast.

Fears the jihadists are establishing a new bastion on Europe's doorstep have added urgency to diplomatic efforts to bring together Libya's warring factions.

European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini earlier this month pledged to give Libya 100 million euros ($108 million) to battle ISIS as soon as the unity government came to power.

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Russia's defence ministry on Monday denied reports that it is building a new military base in Syria, where it has pursued a bombing campaign for the past four months.

"There are no new airbases or additional aerodromes for Russian warplanes in the Syrian Arab Republic, and no plans to create any," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

Western media outlets have reported that both Moscow and Washington are establishing covert military bases near Syria's border with Turkey.

The reports followed a claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that up to 200 Russian soldiers were working on a runway at an airbase in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on the Turkish border.

Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights alleged that Russia had sent a number of engineers to the border town to strengthen the runway and increase the capacity of the airport there.

But Konashenkov on Monday said only "absolute morons" could seriously discuss alleged Russian activity in Qamishli, saying the reports were an attempt to "cover up the build-up of a large Turkish military force" at the Syrian border.

Reports of Russia's alleged move into Qamishli came as Ankara and Moscow locked horns in their worst diplomatic crisis in years after Turkey shot down a Russian war plane on November 24.

Russia officially operates a naval facility in the Syrian port city of Tartus, as well as an airbase on the outskirts of the coastal city of Latakia.

Moscow launched a bombing campaign in war-torn Syria at the request of long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad on September 30.

The Russian defence ministry says its strikes are targeting the Islamic State group and other extremist organisations, but the West has accused Moscow of targeting more moderate groups that oppose the Assad regime.

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Israeli occupation forces shot dead two Palestinians after stabbing two Israeli women on Monday in the occupied West Bank, police said.

One of the women was in critical condition and the other sustained moderate wounds after the attack in Beit Horon, a settlement on a highway that links Jerusalem and coastal Tel Aviv and cuts through the foothills of the West Bank.

"The two terrorists were killed by security forces," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, adding that two explosive devices were found at the scene.

It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of violence that has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

It followed three stabbings last week inside settlements carried out by Palestinian teenagers, according to Israeli authorities.

Since the start of October, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 160 Palestinians. Almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by frustrated and unarmed Palestinians have killed 25 Israelis and a US citizen.

The current wave of protests by Palestinians and repression by Israeli occupation forces started in late July when toddler Ali Dawabsha was burned to death and three other Palestinians were severely injured after their house in the occupied West Bank was set on fire by Israeli settlers.

Palestinian protests were also triggered by an increase in Jewish visitors to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is considered the third holiest site in Islam. Palestinians fear that Israel is preparing to allow Jewish prayers in the mosque, which are not currently allowed.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, as well as daily clashes and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque, have been Palestinians' daily routine.

The anger of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem has increased in the last three years after the Israeli authorities allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to storm the Al-Aqsa mosque.

The surge in violence has been fuelled by Palestinians' frustration over Israel's 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state, and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinian leaders say a younger generation sees no hope for the future living under Israeli security restrictions and with a stifled economy. The latest round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

*The story has been edited by Ahram Online.

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The 26.8 inches (68 centimeters) of snow that fell in New York's Central Park was the second-highest accumulation since records began in 1869

The eastern United States emerged wearily from a massive blizzard that dumped huge amounts of snow and killed at least 25 people, but Washington was still reeling, with government offices and schools to remain closed Monday.

The storm -- dubbed "Snowzilla" -- walloped a dozen states from Friday into early Sunday, affecting an estimated 85 million residents who were told to stay indoors and off the roads for their own safety.

The 26.8 inches (68 centimeters) of snow that fell in New York's Central Park was the second-highest accumulation since records began in 1869, and more than 22 inches paralyzed the capital Washington.

Near-record-breaking snowfall was recorded in other cities up and down the East Coast, with Philadelphia and Baltimore also on the receiving end of some of the worst that Mother Nature could fling at them.

But as the storm ended and temperatures rose, New York emerged from total shutdown and lifted a sweeping travel ban. Roads were reopened throughout the city, on Long Island and in New Jersey.

Thousands of people flocked to parks, tobogganing, organizing snowball fights and strapping on cross-country skis, as children delighted in a winter wonderland under glorious sunshine.

Broadway resumed shows, which were canceled on Saturday, and museums reopened, as snow plows quickly cleared the main avenues and temperatures hovered at about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero Celsius).

Jessica Edwards, a filmmaker from Canada, joined in the fun, pulling four-year-old daughter Hazel down a hill on a sled in a New York park.

"Oh my God, she's so excited -- we left the house this morning and we packed a bunch of stuff to make a snowman," she told AFP.

But as the storm-related death toll rose, authorities advised caution despite the picture postcard scenes outside.

"We urge all New Yorkers not to travel on our roads except when necessary, and to be extremely careful when driving," Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference.

"Our tireless sanitation workers are out in full force and we must give them space to clear the roads. If you go outside, use caution and stay alert for ice and cold temperatures," he added.

In the nation's capital, which is not as adept at handling winter weather as the Big Apple, authorities struggled to get the city back up and running.

Major roads were clear downtown, but side streets were still piled high with snow. Public schools were to remain closed and only limited public transportation was to resume Monday.

Metro fares were to be waived as trains would begin running only every 20-25 minutes, and only at underground stations on three of the city's six lines. Only a few key bus lines were to be in operation Monday from 12-5 pm.

Limited flight operations were to resume from Washington's Reagan National and Dulles International airports on Monday, a day after officials battled in New York to get some aircraft off the ground.

Among those whose travel was disrupted by the blizzard was Vice President Joe Biden, whose airplane made an unscheduled detour to warm and sunny Miami as he traveled from meetings in Turkey early Sunday, unable to land in snowed-under Washington.

The White House says Biden will now depart Miami Monday for his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

The House of Representatives meanwhile, has opted to remain out of session for the coming week due to the severity of the winter storm and related travel woes -- with no votes set until February 1.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said while there had been "a lot of progress" Sunday, there would be no trash collection on Monday and Tuesday, and urged people to keep vehicles off the roads for at least another 24 hours.

"We expect that with the temperature dropping tonight and for every night this week, that we will see continued slick and dangerous roadways," she told a news conference.

"We want to have tomorrow to continue to keep cars off the road so that we can clear those major arteries and also clear the places where many people who come to our downtown would normally park."

Beyond the Big Apple and the US capital, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia were the hardest-hit areas. A few locations surpassed one-day and two-day snow records, said the National Weather Service.

The fatalities occurred in Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia.

In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, a Republican presidential contender who left the campaign trail to oversee the emergency response in his state, asked people to take care.

"This is very heavy snow so I ask that they please be careful as they clean up their own property today or their businesses," he said.

Many of the storm-related deaths were people who suffered heart attacks while shoveling.

Hundreds of thousands were left without power at the height of the storm, including nearly 150,000 outages in North Carolina alone, emergency officials said.

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Gunmen suspected to be ethnic Fulani herders have killed a policeman and 19 civilians in attacks on four farming communities in Nigeria's northeastern Adamawa state, the police said Monday.

"We lost a DPO (Divisional Police Officer) and 19 civilians in his area of jurisdiction when they came under attack by Fulani herdsmen in Girei district," police spokesman Othman Abubakar told AFP.

The senior police officer with his team were "responding to a distress call from the communities under attack to restore calm following an invasion by the armed herdsmen", he said.

Local media reports gave a much higher death toll of 30 including the police officer following the raids on Sunday morning.

The herders raided Demsare, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo farming villages in reprisals following an earlier feud between some herders and farmers over destruction of farm crops, Abubakar said.

The villages are in Girei municipality, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from state capital Yola.e

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US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday hinted Washington may boost the $15 million fund it provides to tackle the deadly legacy of unexploded American bombs in Laos, during a rare visit to the reclusive communist state.

The trip paves the way for a summit hosted next month by President Barack Obama in California with the ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Laos has assumed this year's chairmanship of the regional bloc and will see a flurry of diplomatic activity culminating later in the year in a visit by Obama -- the first by a sitting US leader to the resource-rich but impoverished nation.

Kerry's visit is only the third since 1955 by a US Secretary of State to a country carpet-bombed by America during the Vietnam War.

Unexploded bombs across the region are the result of the massive US bombing campaign aimed at disrupting North Vietnamese supply routes through landlocked Laos.

That grim legacy carries a particular resonance for Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran wounded during combat, who said the US is "deeply engaged in trying to de-mine and deal with the unexploded ordnance issue."

Laos was the most bombed nation in the world per capita, with more than two million tonnes of explosive dumped on the country.

Around 30 percent of the bombs failed to explode, including cluster munitions.

Around 50,000 people have been killed by leftover ordnance since the end of the war, with tens of thousands of others maimed, including children.

The US has gradually lifted its funding to tackle the scourge from $5 million to $15 million this year, Kerry said.

"I know that we're looking at whether or not that could be plussed up even more," he said, suggesting Obama may bring a new pledge of funds when he visits.

After talks with Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, Kerry also hailed improving ties between the two nations after decades of tension.

"While we don't agree on everything, obviously... we also do agree on a lot of things and on the way the world is changing. And it's changing here too," Kerry said of the nation which has been run by the secretive Communist Party since 1975.

Fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kerry hailed growing economic, environmental and security co-operation, as well as Laos' chairmanship of ASEAN, as the "defining" issues of a new friendship.

The US diplomat, who is due in Cambodia later Monday, was in Laos days after the five-yearly congress of the Communist Party, which chose 78-year-old vice-president Bounnhang Vorachith as its next leader.

Relations between the US and Laos two have often been hostile, with American support for ethnic Hmong anti-communist insurgents still raw in the memory of the Laos' leadership.

Laos' poor human rights record is also a sticking point, embodied by the 2012 disappearance of prominent activist Sombath Somphone, who was last seen on CCTV footage at a police checkpoint in Vientiane.

The Obama administration has made ties with Asia a diplomatic priority, in particular bolstering ASEAN as a counterpoint to Chinese regional power.

The diplomat said he was encouraged by the Laos premier's commitment to a keeping "unified front" in the face of the big issues facing ASEAN.

"He wants maritime rights protected and he wants to avoid militarisation and avoid the conflict. And that will develop as we are going to Sunnylands," he said referencing the mid-February leaders' summit in the US.

Several ASEAN states are embroiled in an increasingly bitter spat with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea.

The US says it takes no position on ownership of the various reefs and islets under dispute, but insists freedom of navigation in the vital shipping lane must be maintained.

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China has released a Swedish man taken into custody earlier this month suspected of acts detrimental to the country's national security, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

But the foreign ministry said it remained concerned about naturalised Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based bookseller who had vanished in October in Thailand. He appeared on Chinese state television earlier this month, saying he had surrendered to authorities over a fatal drink-driving offence more than a decade ago

Peter Dahlin, 35-year-old co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, an organisation that worked with Chinese human rights lawyers, was taken into custody three weeks ago.

Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement she had been informed by Chinese authorities that Dahlin had been released and that she welcomed his release.

"Meanwhile, I am greatly concerned over the detained Swedish citizen Gui Minhai," Wallstrom said, adding Sweden was working to get clarity on his situation and the opportunity to visit him.

China's leaders have launched a crackdown on rights lawyers that has triggered international condemnation.

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A Russian delegation headed by minister of trade and industry is scheduled to meet Egyptian counterparts next week to sign number of MoUs between both countries, including a deal to build a Russian industrial zone in Egypts Suez Gulf area, Egyptian ministry of trade and industry stated on Sunday.

The Russian delegation will include representatives of 60 major companies.

The meeting marks the 10th session of the Egypt-Russia intergovernmental economic committee.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is also expected to agree with Egyptian banks to finance future projects to be carried out by private sector in the two states.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has stressed that he "looks forward to taking the first steps towards a Russian industrial zone in the Suez Canal area."

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In celebration of the many achievements of Egyptian and Arab women over the years, Ahram Online republishes this article as part of a nine-day special series of gratitude and pride for women's achievements  from 8 March, which is International Womens day, to 16 March, which is Egyptian Womens Day.



The series aims to refresh the collective memory of our nation of the many, and often forgotten, women who excelled against all odds.



While Egyptian women in the 21st century are still lobbying for basic human rights, these republished stories serve as a reminder to society that Egyptian and Arab women fought for and enjoyed similar rights as men across many decades.



From the first woman doctor in the world, to the first woman to fly in Egypt and the Middle East, these women's stories are interweaved, and all deserve to be shared with a younger generation that needs to learn the truth about the accomplishments of their grandmothers and great grandmothers.

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Last week marked one year since Egypt bid farewell to one of her dearest daughters; Aziza Hussein, who was commemorated at the premises of the Higher Institute of Culture at the Cairo Opera House.

Organised by one of Aziza's closest friends, Nada Haidar, the head of the Transcendental Meditation Egypt office, in collaboration with Hussein's family and friends, the memorial gathered people who were touched and inspired by this woman's view on life and her impact on Egypt's civil society.

The hall was packed with her friends, family and grateful students bringing along an air of love and warmth; remembering a woman that was very much present to greet them with her reassuring smile in a big black and white photo at the centre the room.

Literary figures, cultural icons, gurus of social work and a lot of TMers (from the transcendental meditation group) with all their variations united to tell warm stories and life lessons of their inspirational friend that always kept her smile while subtly moving mountains of social taboos regarding women and civil society.

"I remember first seeing her wearing the kaki overall and helping to relieve the pain of people during Suez War in 1956," remembered Abdel-Malak El-Zeini, head of the General Scouts Federation.

Born to a renowned upper-middle class family, Hussein was the first born to a prominent gynaecologist, who was more of a Hakim (wise man, a title affiliated with physicians at the beginning of the 20th century) than a doctor, as she explains in her memoires A Pilgrim Soul (2013).

Due to her mother's illness, her father played the role of both parents in her life, while she on the other hand took good care of her siblings. Her father always believed in women's rights, and was influenced by liberal thinkers Qassem Amin and Sheikh Mohamed Abdou.

He was her main supporter in attaining a college degree, and believed in her right to choose her own husband. When asked "what if she falls in love with a Christian boy from college," he simply answered, "I have educated my daughters to be free and responsible; if nevertheless one of them decides to marry a Christian, I shall go with her to church," (A Pilgrim Soul, P38).

She attended the American University in Cairo, where she did her BA dissertation on 'The Prophet Mohamed's Role in Legal Reform,' read her memoires.

"Dr Shoukry was my greatest gift from God. He and my husband were two great men in my life, therefore I could never join a feminist movement that proposed to consider men as adversaries," (Pilgrim Soul, P.9).

"Ever since I saw her give the graduation speech at my wife's graduation, I was taken by her grace," explained Samir Elish, head of the Central Organisation for Family Planning. "She was the one who first introduced me to the realm of civil society and since then I was never able to leave.

The way she perceived the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community, how she focused on population and women's causes made her the best manifestation of 'people's diplomacy'."

Hussein's first mark on civil society was the establishment of a nursery, or a day care centre, in the village of Sandyoun in 1955. It was the first of its kind in an Egyptian village.

She was a member of the Cairo Women's Club, which allowed members to develop their community service ideas for projects outside the premises of the club. And so the village's first nursery was a big hit, for it proved that the children attending the nursery were healthier and developed more skills than their peers.

"The nursery, as well as the family planning project... granted the Club the first prize from the General Federation of Women's club in Kansas City, Missouri in 1955," read her memoires. That was the start of a very rich career that highlighted the power of civil society and its impact on social change.

"Everybody here has a story to tell about Aziza Hussein," remembered Saad El-Din Ibrahim, head of the Ibn Khaldoun NGO. "I remember hearing of her before seeing her. When I was in Washington, all I could hear was 'have you met Aziza Hussein?' And when I did, I told her you must be Queen Aziza, and she smiled at my joke."

Hoda Badran, head of the Egyptian Women Federation, also reminisced on the first time she met Aziza.

"I remember when I first came to Washington for my scholarship I was introduced to Aziza Hussein as part of the diplomatic procedures, for she was the wife of the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States at the time.

She became my role model since then. Her booklet on women's status in Egypt at the time was the only reference I could find on the topic. On the First International Woman Conference in 1975 she gave me her post, a fresh grad working at the UNICEF, out of her solidarity to younger generation."

She chaired numerous NGOs and her name always brought to mind serious, sustainable community work that subtly changes community taboos through reason and communication. Needless to say, success and admiration followed her path.

Journalist Aziza Sami, Hussein's niece and namesake, said at the commemoration, "My aunt was an exceptional woman, and in the near future we aim to publish the Arabic version of her memoirs, one that she wrote herself in Arabic, as well as re-launch the association bearing her name and maintaining her social work."

Hussein's friend and meditation guru Nada Haidar described Aziza as "a woman who was always present, providing and helping, and the founder of the Egyptian Society for the Development of Consciousness and Human Potential, which introduced transcendental meditation to Egypt.

Till the last minute of her life, she was keen on hosting the group meditations at her house. I remembering coming for a short visit from Lebanon and ending up living for 17 years at Aziza Hussein's house."

"My Advice for Egyptian women is to have more confidence, for they have great powers that they are unaware of, powers of compassion and humanity," Hussein in a TV interview, a clip from which was played the night of the commemoration. "They should learn to trust more in other people because through collaborative work they can achieve a lot."

Photos Courtesy of Publication handed out in her honour titled: Celebrating the life of an Outstanding Lady: Aziza Shoukry Hussein

*This story was first published on 25 January, 2016.

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Cast members going over lines in one corner, others going over blocking in another, while the costume designer calls the actors in one by one for their fittings. The air is electric and energy is booming across the room as we all wait in anticipation for the general rehearsal to begin.

All my life Ive had this obsession to do theatre I think a movement director thinks of the theatre from a different perspective  and thats whats happening with this Hamlet, director and choreographer Monadel Antar tells Ahram Online.

Antar is close to placing the final touches on his latest project, an interesting take on a theatrical performance of William Shakespeares timeless tragedy Hamlet, in which he integrates movement and dance with the text. The performance will be staged on 28 and 29 January at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

After winning a theatre grant  specifically to do Shakespeare  from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Antar spent quite some time deciding on which of the Bards plays to produce.

Im quite a dark person... so the two works that I felt closest to were Macbeth and Hamlet, he said.

Antar eventually found himself drawn more towards the tragedies of the prince of Denmark. "[Hamlet] has a lot of universal questions I found, after I was done reading both Hamlet and Macbeth, that I related to Hamlet more," said Antar, "I like working on projects that have a personal meaning to me."

Mainly known for his movement-based performance pieces and choreography (Mawlana, The Blue Elephant), Antar chose to nose-dive into directing not only what would be one of his first full-fledged theatrical productions, but also one of the most famous and most performed pieces of theatre in the world.

It comes as no surprise, however, that he would choose to combine his main area of expertise (dance, movement) into his interpretation.

Travelling through time and culture

Hamlet has had a stage performance history of about 400 years, yet it was only around 1893 when it was first performed in Egypt. Even still, it undoubtedly left a mark as Hamlet is probably the most performed Shakespearean play in Egyptian theatre history.

Hamlet, however, not only left a mark in Egypt, but also the rest of the Arab world. So much so that American scholar Margaret Litvin wrote her doctoral dissertation about Hamlet's presence in Arab culture, entitled Hamlet's Arab Journey: Adventures in Political Culture and Drama.

The beginning of the 20th century already saw various translations of Shakespeares texts in the Arab world. With that grew a list of notable Egyptian actors throughout history who coveted, most especially, the complex and challenging role of Hamlet.

Youssef Wahbi performed Hamlet in the 1920s, Mahmoud Yassin also gave a memorable performance in the 1970s, while many actors to this day still talk about Mohamed Sobhys rendition of the tragic prince in the 1978 theatrical production of Hamlet.

This strong presence of Hamlet is omnipresent across time and culture. Throughout the history of theatre, and to this day, it is almost a fact that every director wants to direct Hamlet, and every actor wants to play Hamlet.



Having said that, it is no wonder that throughout centuries of analysis and dissections of the text and characters, theatre-makers always try to find new ways to present Hamlet to audiences  causing layer upon layer to be added to this already multi-layered tragedy.

Hamlet is who we see him to be

Plainly and essentially, Hamlet is whoever the director makes him out to be.

For Antar, something that clearly stood out to him  and what he is basing his entire production on  is that Hamlet has Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Antar, more specifically, identifies two personalities to Hamlet.

I dealt with Hamlet from the perspective of psychologists, and how they view him, Antar explained, I noticed how Hamlet plays on the role of insanity  he says things that have double meaning. So, when I analyzed him more, I realized  from my perspective, at least  that Hamlet could have a split personality. So that was my direction I have two Hamlets.

Having established that he would need two different actors to play the role of Hamlet, Antar decided on 30-year-old actor Taha Khalifa and 14-year-old Karim Raafat.

According to Khalifa, the age difference between the two Hamlets acts upon the idea that the older Hamlet is more mature, he is more philosophical, constantly thinking and asking the bigger, universal questions such as what the point would be if Hamlet actually killed Claudius.

The younger Hamlet, on the other hand, is more emotional and is driven by the need to avenge his father.

Although Antars interpretation is undoubtedly an interesting one, it is not the first time someone has reached the conclusion that Hamlet had MPD.

Just last year, director Ahmed El-Dessouki showcased his theatrical production of Hamlet at the Om Kolthoum Theatre at Al Mansouras Cultural Centre, in which his Hamlet was split into three different personalities, and therefore played by three different actors.

Hamlet, Prince of Egypt

"I have an obsession with Muslim and African culture so, I always think of global or international works from that perspective, said Antar proudly as he explained how he usually approaches his work. I think, What if Hamlet was Egyptian? so the whole idea, to me, is how I could bring it closer and have it relate to [Egyptian] audiences," he continued.

After reading various Arabic translations and versions of Hamlet, one particularly stood out to Antar. "The piece that I liked the most was Afkar Magnoona men Daftar Yawmeyat Hamlet (Crazy Thoughts from Hamlets Diary) by Naguib Sorour  I read it more than five times," Antar said.

He therefore decided to include both parts of that text as well as the original in his production, in attempts to have this production relate to the audience to the best of his abilities.

Watching the rehearsal, it was also particularly interesting to note the sudden shifts between dialects. The actors would sometimes be in the middle of reciting a part of the text in Modern Standard Arabic, and then suddenly shift into a more colloquial form of Arabic, causing them to jump in and out of thought.

The rehearsal also revealed how particular areas of text or particular characters were somewhat altered and tailored to suit Egyptian audiences, such as the use of the famous Egyptian proverb Man Tazawg Omi Yasbah Ami (Whoever Marries my Mother, Becomes my Uncle).

Suiting the Words to the Action, and the Action to the Words It would have been easier to make the whole thing purely theatrical without dance, but I dont think about it that way theres a scene, for example, in which Hamlet and Ophelia are together and he holds her and they dont say a word  thats movement, theres no need to say anything verbally in such a case, the movement is more important, explained Antar when asked on how he plans to combine the use of dance and movement with the text.

In fact, there are a number of noteworthy scenes, such as the play within the play and when Ophelia goes mad, that Antar chose to depict through dance. Antar feels as though such scenes or events that unfold on stage can be communicated a lot more effectively through body movement rather than spoken word.

Surely, the idea of knowing your body and knowing how to move on stage is vital for any actor. Certain gestures when performed on stage can speak multitudes about who a character is or a certain characters intentions.

"From my perspective, the movement of the body could be a lot stronger than spoken word, said Khalifa, "We're trying to introduce this new idea in (Egyptian) theatre  the idea of an actor as a dancer and this is the norm, its not an extraordinary idea."

While it is certainly an asset to have actors who can dance and who are aware of their bodies taking part in theatrical productions on stage, it was quite clear while watching the general rehearsal, that some of the performers stood out as better actors than dancers, while others were better dancers than actors.

However, this comes as no surprise seeing as how Antar knowingly cast dancers who have never acted before (such as Ophelia) and actors who may have little experience dancing, in the production. Be it as it may, it is still interesting to watch the performers feed off each others knowledge or expertise.

In his ambitious production, Antar brings to the table some of the novel ideas, including some interesting techniques to be used in the set alongside his long-time collaborator and scenographer Amr al Ashraf who could possibly shed light on his interpretation.

Not to mention that the beautiful relationships and comradery, as well as mutual passion for the project, that is evident amongst the cast and crew, could be what lifts this production of its legs.

Monadel Antars Hamlet will be performed on 28 and 29 January at the Bibliotheca Alexandrinas Arts Center in Alexandria, at 7pm.

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

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A Banksy mural highlighting the use of tear gas by French police against migrants was quickly covered over on Monday after it appeared on a building opposite the French embassy in London.



The mural features the character Cosette from French author Victor Hugo's classic novel "Les Miserables", holding a French flag and crying as tear gas billows out of a canister below her.



A code which can be scanned with a smartphone appears at the bottom of the work, linking to a video of police using tear gas earlier this month in a migrant camp in the northern French port city of Calais which is home to some 4,500 migrants.



The famous British street artist, who has retained his anonymity, has created three works in Calais including one inside the "Jungle" camp showing Apple's late founder Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant to the United States, as a migrant.



His latest work was drawn on a board in the window of a shop which is being redeveloped in the London's upscale Knightsbridge area.



Earlier on Monday, builders tried to remove the work using crowbars as onlookers gathered round.



They later attached another large wooden board on top of it, using drills.



The property developer responsible for the building site said it was "protecting" the mural after the police said there had been an attempt to steal it overnight.



Banksy's works can be worth hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars).

It's not the street artist's first criticism of France. Last month, he tried to underscore the potential of migrants by depicting the late Steve Jobs  whose biological father was from Syria  carrying a black garbage bag and an early model of the Macintosh computer.

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

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In a talk at Cairo's French Institute, Robert Sole discussed his new novel, conspiracy theories in Egypt, and the problems surrounding integration of migrants in Europe

Franco-Egyptian writer Robert Sole left Egypt at the age of 18 for France in order to study journalism.

The Jewish and French communities in Egypt no longer felt welcome at that time, in the 1950s, and Sole felt the urge to turn the page and leave the country.

Speaking in Cairo last week, Sole said he went on to find fulfilment in his early passion for writing, later joining the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde.

Twenty years later, the writer decided to return to Egypt, to revisit what he described as "a beautiful childhood," in Cairo's Heliopolis, which he said had begun to haunt him.

This drive created a need in the writer for a new kind of writing, one that didn't depend completely on facts and stories that he can't control, as in journalism, he needed another type of writing, where his imagination can be free.

"I wanted to write pages and pages about Egypt, about myself and those who are like me," said Sole. "I looked into the archives and met a family that looked like mine, and wrote their story in Le Tarbouche," he explained.

That novel was published in1992, and Sole has gone on to write six novels since then, as well as the non-fiction The Egypt Lovers Dictionary.

Sole came to Egypt last week to launch his latest novel, Hotel Mahrajane, at the French Institute in Cairo, and to speak about his experience with different kinds of writing.

Hotel Mahrajane

"Although this is my sixth novel, I consider it the first, for two reasons; the first is that I started writing its first pages at the age of 19 and never finished it or came back to it until 15 years later.

"The second reason is that all of my other novels were about Egypt, where I mixed fiction with facts and reality, but in this one I let my imagination work free from any facts or realities; it is pure fiction," Sole said.

"The city where the hotel is located is called Nari. Don't look for it on the map, warned Sole, who said the setting of his novel was a mixture of Heliopolis and Alexandria.

The protagonist of Sole's novel is a young man who dreams of entering the private beach of a hotel that overlooks the ocean. The novel takes place for the most part between 1956 and 1970, although there are some later events.

Expulsion of Jews and French

For 20 years Sole didn't want to come back to Egypt, not wanting to besmirch the memories of his treasured childhood.

"It was so good and I didn't want to remember it. Heliopolis was a small city in the middle of the desert. It was different than it is now. I was 10 in 1956, when the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt began, but that wasn't what affected me."

What affected Sole more than the expulsion of the Jews was that of many French living in Egypt at the time.

"I studied at a French Lycee school and all the teachers were expelled. Expelling the Jews was a tragedy to a lot of people who suffered it. Some people didn't know where to go. But for me, I suddenly didn't find my teachers at school."

The Jewish community, according to Sole, owned most of the big shops in Egypt but not all were wealthy; the Jewish community included people of all classes.

2011 revolution and its aftermath

Egyptians love conspiracy theories, and are keen to explain political events as the result of conspiracies, Sole asserted while discussing the 2011 revolution.

"The whole world followed what happened in Egypt, unlike any other revolution, because of Tahrir Square, where all the television channels were based," he said.

"People in Egypt say there is a conspiracy, but we don't work this way, our media don't work this way, we write and say what we see; we don't meet and agree to write bad stuff about Egypt," Sole said.

But the media loves simple things, he argued. For instance, the Western media didn't want to see the bad things about the revolution.

"The media in the West reported the burning of churches in 2013 and broadcast the images of the millions who took to the streets, but what happened in Rabaa Square changed everything," Sole argued.

The experienced journalist said that comparing Egypt to a European country isnt possible and the comparison was not a fair one. "The French police make mistakes but we don't torture people in police stations. I don't think we can compare Egypt to France or any other country."

Speaking about the current situation, Sole said he sees two key problems  the lack of security and the struggling economy.

"It is unfortunate that there are no tourists and I feel like everything is being done to keep them out of Egypt and to remind them not to come to Egypt," he said.

"The kids in Egypt are happy and this is the power that Egypt has and should be reinforced, but religion has more presence in public life here than it should," he also commented. "Religiosity is good but we have to have critical thinking."

France's integration problem

One audience member drew parallels between Sole's experience as an immigrant to France six decades ago, and the experience of the second and third generation Arab immigrants to the country who have been in the spotlight in the light of the recent attacks in Paris.

"I'm a first generation immigrant; my culture was French and it was my first language in Egypt too, and for this reason it wasn't hard for me to integrate into French society, he said, saying that he hadn't suffered from any xenophobia.

"I can't compare myself to those who are living in the suburbs, who are having a hard time integrating into French society," he said.

"I'm an immigrant but they were born and raised there, some of them couldn't completely integrate and they went for jihad, but there are millions of Muslims and people from Arab origins who do live and are able to integrate."

"Not every person there who fails to integrate carries a Kalashnikov; only a few were brainwashed and went to Syria, and we have to look at the reasons for that," he concluded.

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The highlighted headline on the mock front page of the Yangjiang Daily saying "the city government will introduce a two-wife policy"

(Beijing)  Legal experts say police in one southern city overstepped their bounds when they detained a man for spoofing a local newspaper by creating a fake front page that said officials were preparing a "two-wife policy."

The website of Yangjiang Daily reported on January 22 that police in Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, detained a man for "spreading rumors" because he created a mock front page of the state-run newspaper.

The Communist Party-run paper cited police as saying that an office worker admitted he made a copy of the front of the newspaper's January 14 edition and replaced an article about the agenda for an annual session of the city's government political advisory body with one about a purported plan by city officials to introduce a two-wife policy.

The man sent the fake front page to friends on the popular instant messaging service WeChat, and it began to spread to other social media platforms.

The newspaper put copies of the original front page and the man's version on its official account on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, on January 19, and said it had reported the incident to police.

Police said they took the office worker into custody on January 22. They did not say what other punishment he might face.

It is unclear what prompted the man to create with the fake page, but many in the public are disillusioned about the behavior of government officials. About one-fifth of the 214 top officials that were the subject of corruption investigations from December 2012 to August 2014 kept a mistress or had relationships with women other than their wives, the Beijing Times has reported.

The office worker's detention has triggered an online uproar, with many Net users saying the police overreacted. Two legal experts have also said police went too far by detaining the man.

Zhang Qingsong, a lawyer at Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, said police should not have acted unless they had proof the fake news led to widespread confusion and serious disruption of society.

"Anyone with a sense of humor would not take it seriously as it was obviously a prank," he said.

Zhan Jiang, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University's School of International Journalism and Communication, said the "two-wife" joke was in poor taste, but did not break the law. The newspaper could have handled the matter by telling its readers the fake front page spreading online was a prank.

(Rewritten by Li Rongde)
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is weighing a late entry into the 2016 U.S. presidential contest as an independent candidate.

The 73-year-old Bloomberg served three terms as the mayor of the biggest U.S. city and, since leaving office two years ago, has unsuccessfully sought to win support for tighter gun control laws in the U.S.

Bloomberg, with a net worth of more than $40 billion, is one of the wealthiest of Americans, his fortune in part stemming from the widespread use of what many in high finance and media circles know as the "Bloomberg machine," a vast and costly collection of financial data about companies and economies from across the globe.
Meteorologists for the Washington Post rank the storm in the area's top five biggest ever, by snowfall total.

The Washington area's two main airports, Dulles International and Reagan National, will remain closed on Sunday as crews work to remove snow from the runways.

Relentless snow and whiteout conditions dissipated overnight, leaving people in Washington, D.C. struggling to return to normalcy amid massive snow drifts that covered vehicles and shuttered public transportation since late Friday.

Shovels in hand, residents from Georgia to New York are spending Sunday digging their homes and cars out of more than half a meter of snow after a record storm blasted the region for two days. More northern cities like Boston are bracing for the blizzard that has killed at least 17 people.

Further up the coast, the National Weather Service said New York City's Central Park recorded at least 64 centimeters of snow. Authorities there lifted a travel ban early Sunday morning that had limited the movement of the areas 8.4 million residents since Saturday. All public transportation was suspended as Broadway canceled performances, museums closed and shops were shuttered.

Coastal areas from Virginia to New Jersey also experienced flooding from the storm.

Up to 85 million people were in the storm's path, and hundreds of thousands were without power while thousands more were stranded after the storm paralyzed street, rail and airline traffic along the U.S. East Coast.

Weather services predicted the storm could bring snowfall to rival the biggest blizzards on record. Residents were warned to stay indoors as winds intensified to 80 kilometers per hour, and higher, creating near whiteout conditions and making travel even more hazardous.

At least 17 people have already died from Georgia to New England. States of emergency were declared in at least 10 states. In Kentucky, authorities opened emergency shelters along a major interstate highway, where motorists had been stranded for at least 10 hours.

High tides from the Atlantic washed through the streets of towns along the New Jersey Shore, mixing with snow and pooling in driveways Saturday, though a bigger concern was snowfall at a rate of 7 centimeters an hour in some places and very low visibility, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said

Some southern areas of the state saw significant flooding. Christie said 90,000 power outages had been reported, but there were shelters for people affected. He urged residents to say inside.
Thailand has confirmed its second case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS.

The Public Health Ministry said Sunday the disease has been detected in a 71-year-old Omani man who arrived in Bangkok Friday.

Authorities are monitoring a number of people who came in contact with the man, including his son.

Thailand's first MERS case was another man from Oman last year who survived the disease.

MERS is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered China's deadly 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

MERS was first identified in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012.The majority of cases have been in the Middle East.
About a dozen countries have canceled plans to open diplomatic missions in Pyongyang after North Korea's nuclear test on Jan. 6 or canceled high-level visits.

A government official here on Sunday said North "is being isolated fast in the international community."

Thailand was among the countries the North invited to open a diplomatic mission in Pyongyang, but talks have ground to a halt.

The organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week also disinvited North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong, and the UN Secretariat has indefinitely postponed a disarmament fellowship program for North Korean diplomats.

"Since the latest North Korean nuclear test, international public opinion seems to be that the North is not worth engaging with," a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said. "Ri achieved some diplomatic progress last year, but now that's all being undone."

Last year, the North made efforts to restore diplomatic relations with countries in Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America, asking for various kinds of assistance.


reflections, updates and homilies from Deacon Mike Talbot inspired by the following words from my ordination: Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe and practice what you teach...
Washington shuts down government, New York rebounds after blizzard

2016-01-25 09:48

A boy crashes his sled on a hill at the US Capitol after a major winter storm swept over Washington January 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - Washington shut down US federal government offices on Monday, while New York prepared for a normal workday following the worst snowstorm in decades to ravage the US East Coast, as residents of both cities frolicked in the freak snowfall.

Midtown Manhattan came back to life on a bright and sunny Sunday as residents and tourists rejoiced in the warming sunlight, digging out buried cars, heading to Broadway shows and cavorting in massive drifts left by New York City's second-biggest snowstorm in history.

In Washington, where a traffic ban was still in effect, the recovery got off to a slower start, with the entire transit system closed through Sunday. The Office of Personnel Management said federal government offices in the Washington area will be closed on Monday, along with local government offices and schools.

Even so, many people were out in the street. Some skied and snowboarded down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial until security officials moved them on.

The entire region seemed to breathe a sigh of relief after the historic storm that left at least 20 dead in several states.

"For us, snow is like a normal winter," said Viola Rogacka, 21, a fashion model from Poland, walking with a friend through New York's Times Square. "It's how it should look like."

Theater shows reopened on Broadway after the blizzard forced them to go dark on Saturday on the recommendation of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"We still have some areas that we have to do a lot more work on. But we've come through it pretty well," de Blasio said on ABC's "This Week." "I think tomorrow is going to be pretty good.

We think we'll be broadly up and running again at the city tomorrow."
China Voice: Chinese wisdom for Middle East problems

2016-01-25 07:25

CAIRO, Jan. 21, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese vision for the Middle East unveiled by President Xi Jinping in his three-nation tour offers a fresh approach to the conflict-torn region's thorny issues by highlighting dialogue and development as the core solution.

The Middle East has been haunted by persistent turbulence and bloodshed that have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced many others.

Addressing an audience at the Cairo-based Arab League headquarters, Xi said the key to resolving differences in the Middle East is to enhance dialogue, while the key to overcoming difficulties is to promote development, and the key to choosing the right path is ensuring it suits the national conditions.

The roots of the problems in the Middle East are complicated, with prolonged sectarian rifts, national contradictions, weak development and Western intervention all playing a part and dragging the region into crisis.

A study of history shows that force is never the right solution to problems, and zero-sum or winner-takes-all logic is inconsistent with the call of the times.

The surest way to find maximum overlap among the interests of different parties is to seek consensus and be understanding and accommodating.

China advocates resolving regional conflict through political dialogue rather than confrontation. The country has played a unique and constructive role by actively mediating between parties on regional topics such as the Iran nuclear issue.

The Chinese leader is trying to convey to the Mideast the Chinese experience of resolving issues through development.

During his trip, Xi said China supports the Arab world to solve its problems on its own through development and dialogue, adding that the process of dialogue might be long but will yield the most sustainable results.

This has been proved by China's successful experience over the past 30 years, while Western interventions in the region based on selfish agendas have provided counterevidence.

Having achieved rapid economic and social development along an independent path with Chinese characteristics, China knows the importance of stability and a suitable path to fast growth, which are two elements critical to the development of the Middle East.

Middle Eastern countries, which are currently undergoing reform and change, urgently need guaranteed political stability and dynamic economic growth.

Identifying development as the core solution to the Middle East turmoil, Xi showed that China is a supportive and cooperative partner with the announcement of several moves to promote development in the region.

They include cooperation projects in industrial capacity, infrastructure and energy with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran under the Belt and Road Initiative framework, and hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in assistance to people in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen who are suffering conflict and war.

Meanwhile, the Chinese leader made it clear that his country is not looking for proxies or trying to fill any "vacuum" in the Middle East, but aspiring to build "a network of mutually beneficial partnerships."

It is hopeful that the wisdom of China, which is trusted by Middle Eastern countries as a non-interfering country, could serve as an effective remedy for problems and herald a brighter future for the region.

Related:

Spotlight: Xi's fruitful Middle East tour highlights China's commitment to building new type of int'l relations

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping returned home Sunday after wrapping up a historic trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran with a broad consensus and 52 cooperation agreements set to deepen Beijing's constructive engagement with the struggling yet promising region.

The fruitful five-day Middle East tour, which filled up Xi's global footprint, has once again testified to the Asian giant's commitment to promoting peace and development around the world and building a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation. Full Story

Spotlight: Xi concludes Middle East trip with promoted ties, cooperation

TEHRAN, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday concluded a two-day state visit to Iran, the last leg of his three-nation visit to the Middle East to upgrade ties and boost cooperation.

Xi discussed cooperation with leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and unveiled cooperation projects in fields including industrial capacity, infrastructure and energy. Full Story
China and Qatar launch a series of cultural events

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-01-25 09:28

The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 is launched in Doha on Sunday. The yearlong event will feature artists and performing troupes from both countries, including Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh (left) and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (right). [Photo provided to China Daily]

A series of events will be held in China and Qatar through the year to mark the China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016, the Ministry of Culture and the Qatari embassy in Beijing recently announced.

Chinese and Qatari artists performed in an opening ceremony on Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, followed by 17 cultural events from China and 10 from the Middle Eastern country. Music, dance, films, exhibitions, literature and food will lace the yearlong program.

What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, an exhibition to showcase the works of more than a dozen Chinese artists and curated by the New York-based artist Cai Guoqiang, will be held at Doha's QM Gallery Al Riwaq from March 12 to Aug 12.

Another displaySilks from the Silk Roadwill be presented at Doha's QM Gallery Katara on March 23.

Sultan Mansouri, the Qatari ambassador to China, says in return his country will bring Pearls, an exhibition on Qatar's rich history of the precious material, to Beijing's National Museum of China in July.

London and Istanbul witnessed the same display earlier.

Yu Jianhong, vice-president of the Beijing Film Academy, says a part of Yi Lu Kuang Biao (Racing Ahead), a film being produced by his institute, will be shot in Doha in the spring. Directed by Chen Bin and written by scriptwriter Yue Xiaojun, the comedy will focus on a group of Chinese people's adventures in Doha, with focus on camel racing, a top sport in Qatar.

In addition, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra will debut in China in October. Under the baton of well-known Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh, the orchestra will play Arabic music, featuring works including Marcel Khalife's Symphony of Return, Jean Charles Gandrille's Violin Concerto and Houtaf Khoury's Angel of Light Piano Concerto.

Cai Shang, general executive manager of Hermark Culture, a Beijing-based company that is managing and promoting Qatar Philharmonic's China tour, says his company is also interested in taking the Suzhou Ballet Troupe to Qatar.

Photographers from both countries will hold exhibitions on landscapes and the cultural experiences of people.

The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 emerged from agreements signed by President Xi Jinping and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani in November 2014. The leaders then announced the two countries' plans to build a strategic partnership and promote mutual cooperation.

Qatar and China established diplomatic relations in 1988.

"It was an important hub on the ancient Silk Road and is also a key country in realizing the Belt and Road Initiative. We hope such cultural events will help further exchanges and promote greater understanding between the two countries," Lu Yanfei, an official of China's Ministry of Culture, told reporters in Beijing on Jan 15.

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Ancient nations to share cultures

Chinese lanterns light up Luxor Temple
The High Court had earlier expunged the remarks by the Kozhikode sessions court that the attire of the survivor at the time of the alleged assault was sexually provocative.
Base policies on reality, not deceit By Paul Driessen

Dangerous manmade global cooling, global warming, climate change and extreme weather claims continue to justify what has become a $1.5-trillion-per-year industry: tens of billions spent annually on one-sided research and hundreds of billions sent to crony corporatists to subsidize replacing dependable, affordable carbon-based fuels with unreliable, expensive "renewable" energy. Some 50 million acres of US crop and habitat land (equal to Wyoming) have been turned into corn-for-ethanol farms, biofuel plantations, and wind and solar installations. American forests are being converted to fuel for British power plants. Towering turbines butcher birds and bats, while Big Wind is exempted from endangered species rules that would cost fossil fuel companies billions in fines and send their execs to jail for such carnage. (But if you're saving the planet, what's a few million birds and bats a year?) Climate chaos is likewise the foundation for endless, punitive government policies and regulations intended to keep oil, gas and coal "in the ground." Crony politicians pass laws and unelected bureaucrats impose rules that transfer taxpayer and consumer wealth, decide which companies, industries and workers win or lose, and control people's lives, livelihoods, liberties and living standards. Research and ruling classes benefit, while poor, minority and blue-collar families suffer  and Africans are told they must be content with wind and solar energy because, as President Obama put it, "if everybody has got a car" and air conditioning and a big house, "the planet will boil over." Climate Crisis, Inc. jealously guards this power and money train. The IPCC, EPA and NOAA spend billions in tax dollars to publish horror stories about runaway temperatures and looming disasters. Mike Mann sues anyone who disparages him or his work. Sheldon Whitehouse and Jagedish Shukla demand that anyone who disputes manmade disaster claims be prosecuted for "climate denial." Now a new Paris climate treaty says the "ultimate goal" is to stabilize atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations at levels that will "prevent dangerous [human] interference with the climate system"  under the assumption that CO2 now drives climate change and weather events. The Paris accord stipulates that developed nations must reduce their emissions, regardless of impacts on economies, employment or families. This means they must de-carbonize, de-industrialize and de-develop  while they give trillions of dollars in cash and free technology to developing countries like Brazil, China, India and Indonesia, for climate "reparation" and "mitigation." Developing countries need try to reach their voluntary goals only if now-wealthy nations make those wealth transfers  and if reducing their emissions will not interfere with their "first and overriding priorities" of eradicating poverty, malnutrition and disease, and improving living standards and life spans. This means fossil fuel use and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb  and US, EU, Canadian and Australian sacrifices will have no effect on stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels, much less controlling Earth's ever-changing climate or weather, again assuming CO2 does determine climate. But what if this dynasty is built on a foundation of errors, miscalculations and exaggerations  or worse: on manipulation, fabrication and fraud? The house of cards would tumble down, the catechism of climate cataclysm would go the way of other vanished religions, and the power and money train would derail. Before his untimely death January 19, Dr. Robert M. Carter, former director of James Cook University's Marine Geophysical Laboratory and expert on historic and prehistoric climate change, offered succinct analyses of climate forces, fears and realities, underscoring how fragile the climate chaos claims are. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, he always emphasized. It is a plant-fertilizing trace gas (400 ppm or 0.04% of the atmosphere), essential for photosynthesis and life on Earth. Rising CO2 levels are increasing crop, forest and grassland growth, improving ecosystems and wildlife, and feeding more people. In fact, the 50 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 between 1981 and 2010 fertilized an 11% boost in plant cover worldwide. Moreover, current carbon dioxide levels are quite low relative to their levels across geological time, meaning terrestrial, fresh water and oceanic plant life is currently starved for CO2 by comparison. The real scientific debate, Professor Carter noted in his book Climate: the Counter Consensus and other works, is about the direction and magnitude of global human effects, and their likely significance in the context of natural climate change  which has been occurring ever since Earth developed its oceans, atmosphere and climate. Indeed, modern temperatures are not unusually warm, compared to many previous periods in the historic and geologic record. My friend's other insights are equally important. * The primary temperature records relied on by the IPCC and EPA are far too short to be a useful tool for policy making and are inadequately corrected for the urban heat island effect and other errors. One analysis of these records found errors of 1-5 degrees C (1.8-9.0 F) for 1969 data in certain regions, when the claimed warming for the entire twentieth century was only 0.7 deg C (1.3 F); errors for records in the early century are likely even greater. Reliance on these records is thus misplaced * Recent warming trends in Greenland and the Arctic are not alarming in rate or magnitude compared to other similar and totally natural warming periods over the past 250 to 10,000 years, as recorded in explorers' log books and geological evidence. * When we consider those climate records, the positive feedback effects of rising carbon dioxide levels (such as enhanced water vapor in the atmosphere), negative feedback effects (more low level heat-reflecting clouds, for instance), significant natural sources of more atmospheric CO2, and the declining "greenhouse" effect of each additional CO2 molecule, it is unlikely that conceivable human carbon dioxide emissions will cause "dangerous" warming or other climate changes in the future. * The rate and magnitude of the reported 1979-2000 warming are not outside normal natural variability, nor are they unusual compared to earlier periods in Earth and human history. There is likewise no unambiguous evidence that humans have caused adverse changes such as melting ice, rising sea levels, rainfall or droughts, or "extreme weather" over the past 50 years. * Moderate warming will reduce human mortality, whereas colder weather will increase suffering and deaths, especially if energy and climate policies make heating homes less affordable. * IPCC computer climate models have thus far not been able to predict warming or other climate changes accurately for even short 10-year periods. It is therefore highly unlikely that they can do so for 100 years in the future. Therefore, they should not be used as the basis for energy and economic policies. * The IPCC does not even study climate change in its entirety, or all the complex, interrelated forces that cause periodic warming, cooling and other changes. It analyzes only variations allegedly caused by humans, and assumes that all recent and future changes are human-caused and dangerous. Its analyses, conclusions and recommendations therefore do not form a credible basis for public policies. Carter's ultimate policy recommendation was that climate hazards are overwhelmingly natural problems, and should be dealt with by preparing for them in advance, and adapting to them when they occur. Whether the threats are short-term (hurricanes, floods and blizzards), intermediate (droughts) or long-term (warm or cool eras), preparation must be specific and regional in scale, for the perils vary widely by geographic location and a nation's state of technological advancement. If governments prepare properly for natural hazards, their countries and communities will also be ready for human-caused climate disruptions, should they ever occur. Professor Carter's jovial Aussie persona will be sorely missed, but his insights and legacy will live on. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.  January 2016 Home
Record breaking sailor, Dame Ellen MacArthur has seen more of the world's oceans than most.

That's why when she comes out with a prediction about the oceans having more plastic in them than fish in less than 40 years time, people take notice.

The Ellen MacArthur foundation published a report at the World Economic Forum last week, argues that every year at least 8m tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean  which is equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. If no action is taken, this is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050."

MacArthur, who broke the record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005, says fundamental reform is needed. She envisions a new plastics economy in which the industry, governments and citizens work together to ensure that plastics never become waste and cut the leakage into natural systems.

One part of the solution is to rethink the way goods are packaged, cutting the demand for plastic. Water-soluble film, for example, could be used to wrap small items. Hard-to-recycle plastics such as PVC could be phased out.

While a solution to the problem would require a radical change in mentality towards the use of plastics across the globe, the grim alternative will hopefully be enough to motivate reform.

Via The Guardian
China completes renovation of historical courier station Updated: 2016-01-24 14:38 (Xinhua)

The renovation of an 800-year-old courier station has been finished in North China's Hebei province, a local official said Friday.

Liu Zhimin, an official with the provincial cultural relics department, said repairs to the station's 22 ancient temples, shops and residential homes have been completed recently in the 2022 Winter Olympics co-host city of Zhangjiakou.

Jiming dak, over 100 kilometers from Beijing, originally served for letter carriers to change horses and rest when carrying imperial decrees from Beijing's Forbidden City to northwestern regions. It later developed into a town now known as Jimingyi, home to more than 1,000 residents.

The repair of the town wall was finished in 2011. Renovation work started in 2009 with an expected cost of 500 million yuan (around $81 million).

Jiming Courier Station was built in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and continued to function until 1913, when the then government abandoned all courier stations in favor of modern post offices.

"The station represents Zhangjiakou's role as a traffic hub in the past, and the renovation will bring more tourists to the city," said Wu Zhengshan, 70, a local tourist guide.

The station was put on the country's national relics protection list in 2001.
New wave of startups fish users with apps Updated: 2015-02-06 07:41 By Deng Zhangyu(China Daily Europe)

Young entrepreneurs are challenging traditional Internet moguls by using apps to lure a booming generation of mobile Web users

After having failed in starting a web business twice in the past 10 years, 34-year-old Wang Liang dipped his toes into the mobile Internet business. This time, he hit pay dirt. Within two years, Wang's Yhouse, a Shanghai-based app that targets China's middle class, offering them luxury-lifestyle experiences, has attracted about 2.8 million users. It achieved a revenue of nearly 100 million yuan ($16 million; 14 million euros) in 2014, since its launch the previous year. "If I had moved into the field earlier or later, I wouldn't have made it. It's the right time to be in the mobile Web business," says Wang.

Wang is one of countless young startup innovators who have poured into the mobile Web business in recent years as China sees a booming generation of mobile Web users. Young entrepreneurs in their early 20s or 30s are taking their chances in challenging the traditional Internet moguls to help users solve dailylife problems with new apps.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2014, China had 632 million Web users, among whom 527 million were mobile Internet users. Smartphone users make up 91.9 percent of mobile phone netizens.

Hugo Shong, partner of IDG's Capital venture fund, says that computer and Internet technology has dominated China's startups for a long time and made legendary entrepreneurs like Ding Lei (founder of NetEase) and Zhang Chaoyang (founder of Sohu). Now as the mobile Web industry has arrived, young people are rushing to catch up.

Wang Liang says the mobile Web attracts the rich segment of the population who used to stay away from the Internet because of their busy schedules. Using his app, they can arrange for a customized trip, make a reservation for a fine wine party or take part in an equestrian club activity, for example, with just an easy click on their smartphones.

Wang's Yhouse provides luxury experiences for the newly rich, who haven't yet learned how to enjoy life, and aims to offer an exclusive social network for the upper-class. In addition to setting up teams in the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guanzghou, Wang has also opened nine more branches in second-tier cities like Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi'an and Xiamen in the past year.

Wang was pleasantly surprised that users in second-tier cities are more interested in experiencing the luxury lifestyle, like going to parties where the rich and famous mingle and taking a test drive of the Tesla.

"Active users of our app are also very young. They were mainly born in the 1980s and 90s," Wang points out.

Before setting up his mobile Internet business, Wang tried establishing a dating website for college students in 2004 and then an online booking service for car maintenance in 2008. Both of the startups failed.

Wang says when he was setting up the dating website, Jack Ma's Alibaba, which has become one of the biggest online shopping platforms, was still in its infancy. Web portal moguls like NetEase's Ding Lei were wooed by private ventures. Now these Internet giants and other private ventures are chasing mobile Web startups.

Wang's Yhouse has just finished its second round of funding from a US company and he is waiting ambitiously for new funding this year because "lots of investment companies are interested in my app". The app company of about 100 employees is planning to expand its team to 300 later this year.

"Mobile Web startups are crazier than their Web counterparts. Because China has such a huge base of mobile users, a good idea can attract lots of users in a short time," says Wang.

Guo Lie's app Lian Meng, which literally means "cute face", was a perfect example last year when it suddenly swept across China's social networks in one month.

The app allows users to turn their pictures into cartoons on social networking apps. It saw an unbelievable increase of about 6 million users within a single day in June last year. The craze lasted for a month, with dozens of millions of users, but it has slowed down gradually. Still, Guo's app lingers on the list of China's top-50 apps.

The 26-year-old's team has no more than 10 employees. All of them are aged 26 or younger. Before he launched his startup, Guo worked for China's Internet giant Tencent for one year.

Like Guo, young entrepreneurs with fresh ideas that aim to make a fortune from mobile Web have been springing up across China. They design social network apps that target different demographics, from MOMO, a Tinder-like app for strangers, and wumi (no secret), a social network in anonymity, to service-oriented apps like taxi-hailing app Didi and Kuaidi, the Chinese version of Uber.

While mobile Web business is growing, a new wave of apps that provides online to offline (O2O) services is also taking shape.

Pu Qiantong is the first to take the offline market of traditional Chinese massage service into the mobile Web. With her app Huatuo Jiadao (Huatuo's Coming - Huatuo is well-known as a great physician in ancient China), mobile users can order house calls from a traditional Chinese medicine therapist, instead of having to arrange an appointment to visit a massage club in person.

A user can see from the app a therapist's previous work experience, the distance the therapist has to travel to his or her apartment and the assessment of the therapist's skills by others who have used his or her services.

Pu says her company has signed up about 100 therapists to provide home massage service in Beijing and Shanghai. Launched at the end of last December, the app had more than 5,000 mobile customers within one month.

The one-month-old app has just received a 10 million yuan investment. The company plans to attract users in 10 more cities in China this year.

"Online to offline service in the mobile Web market is definitely hot and popular. I expect more startups to come up this year," says Pu.

Pu, 30, leads a team of about 30. She is confident of the success of her app since Chinese people, especially those living in big cities, have a habit of going to a therapist for body or neck massage.

Pu's confidence may also come from the good performance of another O2O app, Helijia, which allows users to order home manicure service.

The app gets an average of 6,000 orders daily from its users after its launch last March. Its founder Meng Xin had succeeded in running a brand of essential oil on a website and a restaurant using social networks, before setting up the nail beauty app.

Experts say the rise of O2O services in mobile Web can be attributed to the switch of Chinese consumers' payment habit from using money to making electronic payment.

"The next five to 10 years will be a good time for Chinese app companies, especially for those who are overturning the traditional industry with mobile Web," says Wang Liang.

"China's advantage is its large population of mobile Web users. You can't imagine an app giant coming out of a country like New Zealand. But there'll be a lot of them in China and the US," he says.

dengzhangyu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 02/06/2015 page24)
2 Chinese nationals killed, 1 injured in suspected bomb attack in Laos Updated: 2016-01-25 00:30 (Xinhua)

VIENTIANE -- Two Chinese nationals were killed and another injured in a suspected bomb attack in Xaysomboun province of Laos on Sunday.

The Chinese embassy confirmed the incident, saying it took place at 8:00 a.m. local time when the victims, one of whom was an employee of a mining company from China's Yunnan province, were on board of a vehicle.

Laos military personnel rushed to the scene and the injured, surnamed Zhou, has been shifted to a hospital in capital Vientiane for treatment.

The Chinese embassy officials visited the injured person and required for prompt investigation into the attack.
Harrington & Richardson 676 .22 Revolver Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:50:27 | Mouse Guns Years ago I was given an old H&R 9-shot revolver by my father. The timing was perhaps off a little bit, and sometimes the cartridges wouldn't fire. The cylinder had a dent in one edge, too. So, I traded it away at a gun store for some .380 ammo. That was the only revolver I ever owned until just recently. I've had many models, makes and calibers of semi-auto pistols, but never another revolver.

Review of the Kimber Team Match II .45 ACP Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:48:21 | Mouse Guns It was my good fortune to receive a Kimber Team Match II in .45 caliber last month as an early birthday present (everyone, please send more guns ), and so I have the privilege of sharing my experiences about this fine firearm. This Kimber is my first 1911 pistol, so I am learning as I go along. I took it apart, cleaned and oiled it (it didn't need much cleaning), put it back together again, and took some photos during the process. The Team Match II .

What Percentage Of Gun Deaths Are Gang Related? Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:46:23 | Gun Laws Someone stopped by searching for what percentage of gun deaths are gang related. Well, it would help if someone would hang a placard on murder victims saying gang related and not gang related. But joking aside, one third of murders are never solved by arrest, so an exact count is not possible. We do know that a very high percentage of murders are a result of disagreements between partners or rivals in some criminal enterprise.

How Much Does A Gun Cost On The Street? Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:43:28 | Gun Laws The price for stolen street corner guns has not changed in the last 24 months. If you are selling, a handgun gun will bring three to five rocks of crack. Long guns are harder to conceal and a prized Parker double or a prewar Mauser sporter may only bring two rocks. That is subject to your street cred, of course.

Suggested Loads For The TC Triumph Muzzleloader Wed, 05 Oct 2022 10:12:03 | Thompson Center Triumph The following charts show recommended charges using Black Powder or a Pyrodex equivalent as the propellant for Thompson Center Triumph muzzleloading rifles. Charges are listed by caliber, powder charge and type of projectile. Note that in each instance a series of charges are listed. More than one charge is shown in each category to clearly illustrate the appropriate powder charge range for that particular caliber, gun model and projectile.

Counter Ambush By Rob Pincus My Book report Wed, 19 Oct 2022 04:46:17 | Firearms News In case you have lived under a rock some where in a third world country or on Mars, you probably know who Rob Pincus is. the industry being what it is and the flood of so called expert trainers being what it is, I will give a bit of an introduction of the Author. Mr. Pincus has been a trainer in the industry for a while now. If you watch anything on TV about shooting and training to save your life or saving the lives of other people as part of your job, you have seen Rob.

Bonnie & Clyde Guns And Items Wed, 19 Oct 2022 01:26:59 | Firearms News I saw a news story yesterday talking about some Bonnie and Clyde items being auctioned off, In this auction is a shotgun used by the duo. The pump-action shotgun was recovered by police following a gun fight with the outlaws in 1933 in which two officers were killed and is now tipped to sell for 60,000.The collection, expected to make a total of 120,000, also includes a gold wristwatch recovered from Clyde's body following his death a year later in another shoot-out.

Internal Splines Of The Lower And Upper Sliding Sleeve In The M242 Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:34:14 | M242 Automatic 25mm Worm shaft gear and bevel gear are parts of a serialized, matched set. Both gears must be replaced if either part is defective. Index drive shaft and index drive assembly are parts of a serialized, matched set. Both parts must be replaced if either part is defective. 1. INSPECT WORM SHAFT ASSEMBLY COMPONENTS. a. Visually inspect worm shaft 1 and bevel gear 2 for wear, cracks, broken teeth, and stripped threads. If any of these conditions are found, replace defective part. b. Visually inspect...

Adjusting the trigger Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:09:05 | Sako TRG 22 42 Bolt - The second stage trigger pull weight will increase by turning the screw with a 2.5 mm hexagonal key clockwise Fig. 1 . - The first stage trigger pull weight will increase by turning the screw with a 1.5 mm hexagonal key clockwise Fig. 2 . - The trigger is adjustable in length and horizontal or vertical pitch by slackening of the screw with a 2.5 mm hexagonal key Fig. 3 .

Car Penetration Test Part Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:42:33 | Firearms News We used the same car as the 5.56 test and shot the target from the same angles and through the same amounts of barrier. Those being one door, two doors and through both sides of the rear trunk area. I did not bother trying to shot through the engine block because it will stop just about anything you can carry and fire not crew served. The first up was the 9mm round. The round was a NATO ball round. The caveat is , it was from a Colt 9mm carbine.

What To Remember While Holding Your Breath Today Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:41:00 | Firearms News Much of the world is holding its breath, waiting for the outcome of tomorrow's US election. And even though I see politics as the sad relic of the Bronze Age, this election may have some serious consequences , and so I think it's worth a few brief comments. My first concern is simply that all my readers stay safe. In all likelihood there will be violence following this one. If Mr. Trump wins, the street troops of the left will do what they've been doing this year, and perhaps more so.

ATF Top. Men. Raid P80 Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:39:30 | Firearms News Federal agents on Thursday raided one of the nation's largest manufacturers of ghost-gun parts, a sign that federal law enforcement is cracking down on kits that allow people to make weapons at home.The raid target, Nevada-based Polymer80, is suspected of illegally manufacturing and distributing firearms, failing to pay taxes, shipping guns across state lines and failing to conduct background investigations, according to an application for a search warrant unsealed Thursday after the raid took...

Make Up or Share a New Gun Myth Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:37:58 | Firearms News There is a really fun thread going on over at B-ARFCOM right now. The idea being to make up a new gun myth. A selected few below. The M-16 was developed during WWI. Proof 1911 was developed in 1911. The 1903 was developed in 1903. The AK 47 was developed in 1947. Therefor the M-16 was developed in 1916. The more Stuff' lights, scopes, lasers, night vision, forward grips, etc. you hand on your go-to rifle, the more dangerous it is, and they all enhance your accuracy .

DSG Duty Grade 8 Upper Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:33:31 | Firearms News There are two things that really annoy me, and I must confess that I did both of them in regards to this upper. I really dislike it when some reviewer reviews some product, but modifies it first. I think it make it not a true review. I also strongly recommend against people customizing their guns until AFTER they function check them. When you make modifications, even little ones, you might void your warranty or make it much harder to get help from the manufacturer.

Infantry Weapons And Usage In Korea Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:31:58 | Firearms News In the first part of the series, I quoted from the study on infantry weapons in the Korean war and some of the lessons learned and other points of interest. Leaving off at the point of the rifleman holding his fire until the enemy was within a range the rifleman felt he could hit the target due to either lack of confidence in his marksmanship skills, enemy exposure or weapons type. This will pick up from there.

Najaf Roof Firefight Video An Oldie But A Goodie Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:30:24 | Firearms News The press release from Blackwater got me thinking about this video. Filmed by another Blackwater employee in Iraq, we get to see Travis Haley shooting up insurgents or commies or whatever it was from the top of a building with a scoped AR15. Many moons ago when TH was active on Barfcom, I recall him saying that he used MK 262 ammo in his AR15. The gun was a 20 inch Bushmaster with an ARMS railed handguard provided by Blackwater to their contractors.

Kalashnikov USA KR-9 Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:28:55 | Firearms News Kalashnikov USA has put out a neat little AK in 9mm. A friend just picked one up and we are waiting on his Brace to come in. I looked it over today and I got to admit, unlike the usual AKs, this one is made pretty well. It doesn't have a cheap finish that rubs off by thumbnail and a lot of attention has been paid to details. The top cover has a length of rail for easy mounting of optics.

Christensen Arms The Ranger Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:23:30 | Firearms News What is it with this sudden boost in the 22 long rifle lately I get it, they are fun but man there is a lot of rimfire stuff coming out this year. I can imagine the cost of this rifle will be equal to a precision centerfire precision bolt gun. GUNNISON, Utah Christensen Arms has announced a new rimfire rifle option for competition shooters and small game hunters alike. The Ranger 22 is an advanced .22 caliber firearm built for top-tier performance and offered at a retail price of 795.

Good News From Florida Carry Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:22:02 | Firearms News FLORIDA CARRY WINS LAWSUIT AGAINST BROWARD COUNTY FOR BLATANT VIOLATIONS OF FLORIDA'S LAW THAT PREEMPTS LOCAL GUN CONTROLTallahassee, FL Florida Carry, Inc. has emerged victorious in their lawsuit against Broward County and County Administrator Bertha Henry in which they sought a permanent injunction to protect the rights of law abiding gun owners from the county's multiple illegal ordinances that burden nearly all aspects of firearms ownership, use, transfer, and possession.

The Convergence Of Marx, Kafka, Orwell, & Huxley Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:35:28 | Firearms News The global crisis is not merely economic it is the result of profound financial, sociological and political trends described by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley. The unfolding global crisis is best understood as the convergence of the dynamics described by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley.

70th Anniversary of Korean War: The Guns They Carried Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:35:12 | Firearms News Marines South of Hagaru-ri, Korea, December 6, 1950 while Marine and naval air are working over enemy positions with napalm. (Photo USMC Archives) Some 70 years ago this month, the first U.S. combat troops were rushed to the aid of embattled South Korea, beginning what is often referred to as the Forgotten War.

New Otte Gear Products Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:34:37 | Firearms News I have bought some products from them this past year like the tiger stripe Aloha Now shirt you may recall. OTTE Gear is proud to launch a collection of durable, comfortable, and innovative insulated jackets and everyday pants built for wherever daily life takes you down range, work and out to dinner with the missus. We used premium Primaloft Gold insulation, Patriot Lite fabric, MultiCam patterns, Cordura and the best trims out there.

When Guns Are Outlawed Only Water Buffaloes Will Be Outlaws Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:33:39 | Firearms News Just look at it. It appears to be a docile beast of burden, used for hundreds of years in Vietnam to work rice paddies while Vietnamese children ride on their backs. Don't let those eyes fool you. It's as dangerous as a cocked gun. A 57-year-old man has died and two people have been injured following a water buffalo attack in Wales, police have said. Too many times we've had to report on these murderous creatures on one of their many rampages.

Vietnam War Presentation AK Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:32:12 | Firearms News It was captured from a PAVN soldier in VN at some point, then presented to an Army officer by an ARVN officer and brought home. It was then found many years later in an old home some one bought. The rest of the story is that it was found in the home, the ATF was called and they supposedly took it to a local gunsmith who demilled it for them. The home owner then sold the demilled AK to a Vietnam war collector. I don't believe that story myself.

US Lake City Produced 7.6239 Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:30:47 | Firearms News At the end of 1954, Soviet weapons began to be available in large numbers in the USA for testing thanks to various spy and subversion operations. Unfortunately the weapons arrived with little or no ammo. The amount of ammo needed for the Aberdeen Proving Ground was far beyond what was available. A contract was awarded in 1955 to the HP White Laboratory to produce a set of 500 7.62 39 M1943 rounds for the assessment of the recently made AK47 rifle.

VA Lawmakers ban guns at the Capitol Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:29:20 | Firearms News Virginia lawmakers voted Friday to ban firearms at the state Capitol, the first in what's expected to be many contentious gun votes in coming weeks. Newly empowered Democrats in the General Assembly voted to ban guns at the Capitol and a legislative office building, saying the move was needed to protect public safety. Public officials have expressed concerns about planned Jan. 20 rallies that are set to draw huge crowds of pro-gun and gun-control advocates.

Colt Cobra Review Part Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:27:52 | Firearms News The Cobra arrived from Colt last week and now that it is in my hot little hands, the long promised review can start. The Cobra came out over a year ago and made some noise as Colt's noteworthy return to double action revolvers. A lot of people who want Pythons have griped about it because it is not the Python they have been demanding in recent years .

Glock 43X/48 4 Magazine Extension By Tyrant Designs Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:25:59 | Firearms News CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Tyrant Designs is proud to debut our NEW Glock 43X 48 +4 Magazine Extension Utilizing our magazine extension technology, the Glock 43X 48 Magazine Extension is the FASTEST and EASIEST installing magazine extension ever Add 4 Additional Rounds to your factory Glock magazine AND it includes a 10 Power Spring.

George Farr And His Famous 70 At The 1921 National Matches Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:16:27 | Firearms News One of long range shooting's greatest feats by a civilian shooter took place during the 1921 National Matches at Camp Perry. Ohio. Two men would ultimately be pitted against each other in a shoot-off during the 1000 yard Wimbledon Cup Match. The winner of the match oddly enough fell into virtual obscurity, The man who came in second would go on to be remembered even to this day. The trophy ended up being named after him and for his accomplishment that day. Friday Septemeber9, 1921.

Red Arrow Weapons RAW15 300 Blackout Pistol Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:14:46 | Firearms News Perhaps one of the most versatile firearms in the Red Arrow Weapons lineup, the 300 Blackout Pistol is ready for just about any challenge you can throw at it. Available in RAW's two staple color packages, midnight bronze and black with red accents, the RAW15 300 AAC pistol is as sexy as it is accurate. Forged 7075 T6 Aluminum upper and lower receivers complimented with a Tailhook Mod 2 brace and slew of other performance parts complete this serious Turn Em Red pistol package.

Gunshot Wounds Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:13:19 | Firearms News This is a thread that has been around for a while and I have meant to talk about it a dozen times but always get going on something else and forget. The link takes you to a thread on a website that has many high quality images of gun shot wounds from a variety of distance and positions on the body. They are GRAPHIC. If you can't stand the sight of carnage it's best if you skip it. Another thing, I have seen some people say the site triggers their computer's virus alert.

Top Man watch. Illinois Edition Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:24:22 | Firearms News COLLINSVILLE, Ill. (WAND) An Illinois State Police Trooper tasked with enforcing the law has been arrested by fellow officers. According to Illinois State Police, Trooper Nolan Morgan, 40, of Greenville, was arrested for possession and manufacture of a controlled substance. State Police say the investigation began after investigators received internal information that Morgan was involved in the possession and manufacturing of drugs at his home.

When Guns Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Thumbs Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:19:05 | Firearms News Say you have a neighbor and that neighbor has a rooster. Those roosters can get pretty annoying. Especially early in the morning when you're trying to sleep off that hangover. So what are you to do about it Well, if you live in the butthole of WV, you put the thumbs to the neighbors eyes PRINCETON, W.Va. A West Virginia man accused of gouging out his neighbor's eyes over a loud rooster has been charged with murder, authorities said.

Bangalore Torpedoes Detonating Cables Demolition Hoses and Demolition Snakes These Tue, 18 Oct 2022 03:45:12 | Explosives Are long demolition devices which are intended chiefly for clearing mine fields and for blasting passages through wire entanglements. There are also some other uses indicated below Bangalore torpedoes exist in several modifications. The std US device, M1A2 which was used successfully during WWII, consists of 10 loading assemblies, 10 connecting sleeves and 1 nose sleeve. The loading assembly consists of a steel tube 5 ft long and 2 1 8 in diam, filled with 7.61bs of 80 20 amatol or other solid...

Trigger Adjustment Tue, 18 Oct 2022 03:36:43 | Browning A-Bolt Action V The A-Bolt's trigger is preset at the factory. The trigger pull can be adjusted within a range of approximately 3 to 6 pounds. To adjust the trigger pull, first MAKE CERTAIN THAT THE RIFLE IS UNLOADED. Next lower the floorplate and carefully remove the trigger guard screw See figure 11 . Lift the trigger guard out of the stock See figure 12 . The trigger pull adjustment screw is located at the rear of the trigger assembly See figure 13 . To decrease the weight of the trigger pull, turn the...

Roth Steyr pistol Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:45:08 | Firearms identification Roth-Steyr military pistol was based on patents taken out during the years 1898 to 1900 by Georg Roth, G. Krnka, and K. Krnka, well known Austrian firearms designers. The ancestry of this pistol may be said to go back to a pistol developed by Karel Krnka in 1895, as certain features present in that pistol also appear in the Roth-Steyr Fig. 235 . Though brought out in 1904 it was not adopted officially by the Austrian military forces, particularly for use by the cavalry, until 1907....

Frommer Hungarian series Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:45:08 | Firearms identification Rudolph Frommer of Budapest, Hungary, made important contributions in firearms inventions, some of them very ingenious. In the period 1899 to 1912 he originated two basic designs, both of which, in a number of variant forms, were made by Fegyver es Gepgyar R szv nytarsasag The Small Arms and Machine Factory, Ltd. of Budapest. Mod. 1901-The first pistol, design patents for which were obtained in the period 1899-1901, is characterized by having a small-diameter, tubular jacket with recoil spring...

Rigarmi Brescia Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:45:08 | Firearms identification Erma Target Pistol Erma Waffenfabrik Erfurt, Germany No. 6126 No. 20 .22 cal. Erma Target Pistol Erma Waffenfabrik Erfurt, Germany No. 6126 11111111 i i ' i' i' i111 m i' 111' t lt 111111 i n ij i n 11 n ii 11111 U 11 .22 cal. Frommer Type M-29 Mod. M-29 converted to .22 cal. for a practice arm Fegyvergyar, Budapest, Hungary No. 3558 t iTliiuli i t i gt ii i i i M litiln iTli mil i ITIIIIIIUM liiitliTMlinilii iTlim h mli tiiti tiilii'Tliii t IIMTIII iffii'taPifflywwBMiiiiMii i...

Pistola Famae 6.35 Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:45:08 | Firearms identification I i ' i ' I I ' I I i ' I I I I t 1 I I I I I I i I I , , , . i i i ' I i i I I i I i 1 I i I 'j M ' M ' M111 y 11111111 ' 111 ' i y 11111111111111 y 1111111 111111 y 11111 .11 _______ _w lt ' J, .-. I, , ,t i . in . ft . Ui . No. 118 6.35 mm. E.A. Possibly Eulogio Arostegui Eibar, Spain No. 1126 6.35 mm. Automatique EBAC Sold by E.B.A.C. Made by Mre. d'Armes des Pyr n es Hendaye, France No. 189038 ' 111 'J1111 ' 111 ' i ' I ' i y M11 ' i ' 1111111 y 111 111111111 n 111 gt 11111 M 111111111...

The Patented Lock Out Momentary Tail Cap Mon, 17 Oct 2022 23:46:56 | Surefire Illumination actical usage of the combat light in a low-light environment requires one attribute above all others a momentary on-off switch in a fumble-proof position. That's why all of our lights, from the mighty mite Ele Executive to the robust M6 Magnum, have the same tail-cap switch. The tail-cap is the best place for a switch it's easy to locate in the dark, requires no orientation of the light and is totally ambidextrous. Additionally, a momentary tail-cap is the best tactical solution to low light...

Barnett Wildcat C6 Review Mon, 17 Oct 2022 22:57:23 | Crossbows Newbie archers who want to get a sturdy crossbow without having to spend top dollar, the Barnett Wildcat C6 is a great investment for you. If you would like to get an informative perspective before committing to the model, we've outlined some of the features incorporated into its design in our in-depth review below. What it lacks in power and velocity, the Barnett Wildcat C6 makes up with great noise suppression and durability.

Tips On How To Purchase A Rifle Scope Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:46:22 | Pro Gun Whenever you are looking for a rifle scope to purchase you will discover there are numerous options that are available to select from. The large selection can make it difficult to narrow down from all of the available choices in order to choose the best rifle scope to meet your needs. As everyone knows, all brands claim they are the best and offer the best rifle scopes that you could possibly want.

Smith & Wesson Is Becoming American Outdoors Brand Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:44:51 | Pro Gun Smith & Wesson Performance Center Is Smith & Wesson ashamed of being a gunmaker Read the story and let me know. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) What's in a name For Smith & Wesson, a whole lot of corporate strategy. The gun maker is changing its company name to American Outdoors Brand after 164 years of business, according to an SEC filing released Monday. The move comes as a surprise given Smith & Wesson has become a household brand. And it's not as though its bottom line is struggling.

Six Lies from Michael Bloomberg Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:43:24 | Pro Gun If Satan is the Father of Lies, Bloomberg is giving his daddy a run for his money. John Lott writes In Get the Facts About Gun Violence in the United States from Bloomberg's Moms Demand Action, the very first link goes to a report from the Violence Policy Center entitled Concealed Carry Killers. As I pointed out in April, the report double and triple counts cases, many of which should be classified as defensive gun uses and thus not counted.

Scheffler's Straight Shooters opens Crooksville, IL Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:41:55 | Pro Gun This is what I like about small-town newspapers, they report news that would not be news in other places. ZANESVILLE As a child, while his friends were off at basketball camps, Justin Scheffler was in his grandfather's South Zanesville gun shop rebuilding antique military guns. It was there, at Maysville Discount Guns, that Scheffler's lifelong appreciation of firearms was born.

Regarding Pro-Gun Liberals. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:40:25 | Pro Gun Not inclusive enough ) The mainstream media attacks against extremists and calls for moderation is beginning to affect some well-intentioned gun owners. This was my response to a blog about plastic guns One could argue that liberals are anti-science. What if the military wants to develop plastic guns If the libs want to improve metal detectors, they can do that, but if the future includes plastic guns, laser guns, etc, I welcome that.

Pro-Gun Newtown Family Defends 2nd Amendment. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:37:28 | Pro Gun I'm surprised Newstimes printed this article, sure, there's some liberal bias with the sentence The rifle that killed their stepdaughter and sister was the same kind of military-style rifle the family had shot together that Thanksgiving Day, but overall it's a pretty good article. Here are some excerpts. BETHLEHEM, Conn. (AP) The Paradis and D'Avino family knows guns. They've owned them and enjoyed hunting and target shooting.

Don't Open Carry in Michigan Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:23:14 | Pro Gun In Michigan it's legal to open carry, but the cops haven't gotten the memo. An encounter between a gun-carrying civilian and a police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 3 has culminated in a federal lawsuit. Johann Deffert, 28, was walking along Michigan Street NE with a gun holstered and visible on his hip . In Michigan, it is legal to carry a weapon, provided that it is clearly displayed and is carried with lawful intent.

AR-15 Humor. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:17:50 | Pro Gun * The inventor of the AR-15 was Satan, though his patent has since expired. * Scientists have confirmed the deadly effects of an AR-15 by giving it to a chimpanzee who then murdered them. * Scientists agree that each year the AR-15 will grow more deadly until it kills everyone in the entire world. * Some believe that Hitler was in fact an AR-15 in a rubber mask.

2018 NRA Endorsements Florida Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:12:01 | Pro Gun Floridian NRA members like me get the 2018 NRA Political Victory Fund Candidate Endorsements guide.It's a real eye opener, I have highlighted all Republican candidates with a rating of C or lower. I have also highlighted candidates because if they refused to answer the NRA's candidate questionnaire, it often indicates indifference, if not outright hostility to gun owners.

Homemade Gun Plans Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:48:34 | Homemade M-16 9mm coirverMon iin l mounted on corntneftitil receiver 9mm coirverMon iin l mounted on corntneftitil receiver Same unit on shop made lower receiver Same unit on shop made lower receiver Finally, after the local market was satisfied I dccidcd to advertise the upper rrr.rivcrr assemblies along with a ma a inc adaptor and magazine in .several national publications. A couple of Run magazines ave them favorable mention, and it wasn't long before a steady market was created. About this time, though,...

What happened after guns got banned in Venezuela Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:50:29 | Pro Gun Some interesting pictures from Venezuela, the country where Hugo Chavez banned guns. The following is what The Guardian wrote when they reported the gun ban Venezuela has brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition. Until now, anyone with a gun permit could buy arms from a private company.

Weapons Laws in Ancient Rome. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:48:59 | Pro Gun I'm a huge fan of the Starz' Spartacus series, which was extremely well-researched. Here's a few things we can learn about Spartacus and the Gladiators slaves who fought in the arena, and the Roman laws covering weapons possession. Arena by the way is Latin for sand. 1. They did practice with wooden swords. Steel was only allowed in the arena and for exhibition fights at the will of the Lanista (the master of the Ludus, were gladiators train) 2.

USCIS doesn't include the 2nd Amendment as an American Right Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:47:28 | Pro Gun I have a friend who's becoming a U.S. Citizen and he sent me this information from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities Below you will find several rights and responsibilities that all citizens should exercise and respect. Some of these responsibilities are legally required of every citizen, but all are important to ensuring that America remains a free and prosperous nation. Rights Responsibilities Freedom to express yourself.

Raw Story's Pro-Gun Story Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:38:34 | Pro Gun Uber-liberal Rawstory.com rarely has anything positive to say about guns, Christopher Columbus, or anything right-of-center, so this story was quite a surprise A Pennsylvania legislator exchanged gunfire with a would-be robber who tried to mug him and another lawmaker near the statehouse, and four teenagers were arrested on Wednesday and charged with attempted homicide and other offenses.

Gun License A Breeze In The Philippines Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:35:43 | Pro Gun The headline Securing gun license now a breeze caught my attention, but the devil is in the details Dela Rosa said an applicant need only to submit the results of a neuro-psychiatric screening and drug test, a police clearance, and the RTC MTC or NBI clearance. If the application was filed by 11 a.m., the commitment slip will state that the license will be ready by 5 p.m. of the same day. If the application was filed after 11 a.m.

Liberals vs. Liberal: Protestors shout down Ray Kelly's Speech. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:32:53 | Pro Gun Ray Kelly is no friend of the Second Amendment, and liberal protestors are no friends of Stop and frisk PROVIDENCE, R.I. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was shouted down by protesters at Brown University, forcing administrators at the Ivy League school to call off his lecture on Proactive Policing in America's Biggest City. More than 100 students and social justice activists turned out Tuesday to protest the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy and its surveillance of Muslims.

John Stewart Bodyguards Meme Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:28:37 | Pro Gun John Stewart makes a good living as a comedian , 25 million a year. Jon Stewart went after Sarah Palin and the NRA on Tuesday night for projecting incredible paranoia about a supposed war against them by the rest of the country, responding not with a desire for more electable candidates but with lock and load, motherfuckers Read If I'm paranoid why does he have three armed bodyguards What are you afraid of, John Stalkers Home invaders Muggers Clearly you're not paying your armed guards money...

JFK was Pro-Gun. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:27:10 | Pro Gun Kennedy to promote gun control, Breitbart reported the truth. According to the Washington Post , JFK was one of eight U.S. presidents to have been lifetime members of the NRA . The others were Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Kennedy stands out as the only Democrat on that list.

Hardin and White Counties #1 in Concealed Carry Applications Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:24:20 | Pro Gun Looks like Democrats running those counties are gonna have to watch what they say about our 2nd Amendment PEORIA, Ill. Two southeastern Illinois counties have the highest per capita number of concealed carry applications, according to a newspaper analysis. Hardin and White counties topped the state for the most permit requests based on their population a rate of 12.5 applications per 1,000 residents , The (Peoria) Journal Star (http bit.ly 1hPFWWW ) reported.

Democrat Shoots TV In Political Ad Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:21:27 | Pro Gun It's not easy running for office when you're a Democrat in Montana, and if you see this ad, you won't know Rob Quist is a Democrat. Nice ad, but there's one little problem The millionaire is Greg Gianforte, Quist's Republican opponent, who settled in Bozeman 24 years ago but who Democrats have portrayed as an out-of-touch interloper. (This was effective in 2016, when Gianforte lost a bid for governor.)Source Another little problem is that the NRA endorsed the so-called interloper. Mr.

Armed in Israel. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:18:56 | Pro Gun While there are some gun control laws in Israel that are ridiculously draconian, and according to the link, no concealed carry, it's also true that in Israel guns are ubiquitous. Here's an interesting story In 1984, three terrorists opened fire on a Jerusalem crowd with machine guns. Half a dozen shopkeepers and pedestrians drew weapons and returned fire. One terrorist was shot dead by a jewelry store proprietor. The other two fled and were later captured.

Annals of Internal Medicine publishes anti-gun lies Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:15:59 | Pro Gun The enemy is once again using junk science to attack our 2nd Amendment rights. A new meta-analysis of gun research the first systematic review of its kind from the University of California, San Francisco, published in Annals of Internal Medicine today, has seemingly put an end to the debate over safety, at least in terms of suicide and homicide. Pooling results from 15 investigations, researchers found that a person with access to a gun is unequivocally less safe in terms of intentional death.

AdAge Reviews NRA-ILA Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:14:33 | Pro Gun Advertising Age isn't known for being gun-friendly, so this article about how the NRA mobilizes the base was pretty interesting. Here's a quote As lawmakers return to Washington this week under pressure to act on guns, the NRA is directing members' activism at the audience that matters most Congress. Republican congressional leaders have had little to say the NRA hasn't sponsored marches or rallies.

12 New Year's Resolutions for Gun Owners. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 21:10:13 | Pro Gun Shoot more often 3. Buy ammo in bulk 4. Take someone new to the range 5. Get a concealed carry licenseif you haven't got one 6. Buy a gun safe (new guns are great,protecting your investment is better) 7. Email your elected officials 8. Raise hell on Facebook wheneversomeone attacks our gun rights 9. Practice gun safety and encouragethose around you to do the same 10. If you live in an anti-gun state,consider moving 11.

Ammonpulver AP Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:07:08 | Expedient Weapons AP was developed in the late 1880s as a replacement for black powder. It is an intimate mixture of 85 percent ammonium nitrate and 15 percent charcoal. It was used by Germany and Austria as an artillery propellant until nitroceliulose-based powders became commonly available. It was extremely powerful, being on a par with double-based powders containing 30 percent nitroglycerine, and was virtually smokeless and flashless. Unfortunately. AP had two drawbacks that made it undesirable as a...

Four Terrible Excuses For Not Owning a Gun Safe Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:03:08 | Pro Gun Here's an interesting point of view from Four Terrible Excuses For Not Owning a Gun Safe If you have a gun or multiple guns, you can help prevent these accidental deaths and injuries by securing your guns properly in a gun safe. Some roll their eyes at the thought of owning a gun safe and claim that if their firearms are stored safely there's is no need for an actual safe. In addition to keeping the household safe, gun safes can prevent robbery as well.

Grand Cayman is not Gun-Friendly Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:01:40 | Pro Gun If you're going to the Cayman Islands, leave your ammo at home. Honeymooner fined 3,000 for bulletsAmerican visitor had 50 9mm bullets in his luggage Honeymooner Joshua Onkka, 27, will leave the Cayman Islands Friday after being fined 3,000 for importing and possessing unlicensed firearms.

Bill Maher calls us ammosexuals Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:00:08 | Pro Gun Big shot Bill Maher has a beef with gun owners, the supporter of gay rights is not down with gun rights The thing about gun culture, Real Time host Bill Maher said on Friday, is that there's not much actual culture it's really about the guns, and their owners' unhealthy attachment to them. You guys aren't just firearm enthusiasts, Maher said. You're ammosexuals.

Operation Of The Safety Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:43:17 | Springfield M1A Rifle When the hammer is cocked the gun may be placed on SAFE. To do this press firmly on the safety lever until it snaps rearward into the trigger guard to put the safety ON see figure 1 . When the safety is ON the trigger cannot be depressed because the trigger is blocked and the hammer is locked in place. Always wear eye and ear protection when using any firearm. Safety and instruction manuals are available from Springfield, Inc. Always wear eye and ear protection when using any firearm. Safety...

Walmart and Friendly Firearms Sued Over White Supremacist Buying Guns Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:38:02 | Pro Gun This lawsuit is insane, OVERLAND PARK, Kan. The family of one of the victims of the shooting at the Jewish Community wants to send a message with a lawsuit Keep guns out of the hands of felons. Jim LaManno and his children are suing Wal-Mart and a gun dealer, among others, accusing them of negligence.

Do Not Alter Any Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:29:11 | SIG 556 Semi Automatic GENERAL SAFETY INFORMATION AND MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS The safety warnings in this manual are important. By understanding the dangers inherent in the use of any firearm, and by taking the precautions described herein, you can enjoy complete safety in the use of your rifle. Failure to heed any of these warnings may result in serious injury to you or others, as well as severe damage to the firearm or other property. SIGARMS, Inc. shall not be responsible in any manner whatsoever for...

Location And Discription Of Major Components Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:38:36 | Machine Gun M240 A BARREL ASSEMBLY - Houses cartridge for firing and directs projectile. B BUFFER ASSEMBLY - Absorbs recoil of bolt and operating rod assembly at the end of recoil movement. C DRIVING SPRING ROD ASSEMBLY - Provides energy for returning bolt and operating rod assembly to firing position. D BOLT AND OPERATING ROD ASSEMBLY - Provides feeding, stripping, chambering, firing, extraction, and ejection of cartridges using the projectile propelling gas for power. E TRIGGER HOUSING ASSEMBLY - Controls the...

Bloomberg's Banners Run Ads Excoriation President Trump Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:32:33 | Gun Laws This is another of those sites that block would be readers with a full page banner ad, this one for Register for free. There is nothing said about the price that will be demanded at the end of the month, so thanks but no thanks. please forgive any lack of details, or a link, as a result. Anyway The Observer says a Bloomberg funded gun control ban group is taking out ads against President Donald J. Trump.

Lauren Boebert Wins Primary, Trump Congratulates Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:32:33 | Gun Laws FOX News rep orts Lauren Boebert has won n e her Colorado Primary, and President Donald J. Trump has called to congratulate And who is Lauren Boebert and why is the name not familiar. If you watch the news you almost certainly saw a young woman shut down Beto O'Rourke shortly before O'Rourke pulled the plug on his campaign. Lauren Boebert was that woman. The lady is a Colorado Businesswoman, and defeated Rep. Scott Tipton, a five term veteran Congressman.

Report: Trump Intends To Declare Opioid Crisis Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:32:33 | Gun Laws One of the reports in the gun control searh I use is that President Donald J. Trump intends to declare an opioid crisis. Q. So why do we have an opioid crisis A. The FDA appears to be trying to ban the most effective painkillers such as morphine, and the others thgat make life bearable for those with chronic pain.

Will To Overthrow The United States Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:32:33 | Firearms News On May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a police officer, Derek Chauvin, who already had 18 complaints lodged against him, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Angry protests in Minneapolis quickly turned into riots that ravaged the city. The police did not intervene the mayor had ordered them to withdraw and do nothing. More protests soon broke out in major cities throughout the country and rapidly led to widespread disorder.

The Attempt To Overthrow America Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:32:33 | Firearms News The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 might appear, looking back, as a pretext for mayhem. His reported killing by a white police officer was immediately followed by a wave of riots during which neighborhoods in several major cities were devastated. Stores were looted, buildings were burned and people were murdered as mayors and other local public officials chose to let the rioters run wild, whip up racial conflict and protect the criminals rather than the citizens being...

4 Steps to Fixing a Tight Leather Holster Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:20:14 | Pro Gun When you carry, you tend to accumulate them. One of my holsters is the all-leather Tagua. It's cool looking and comfortable to wear, but it has one serious drawback. It's tight. It isn't just a little tight, either. It's rack-the-slide tight. And, as you might imagine, it's just as tight coming back out when you you draw it. It was pretty close to being a useless holster-shaped piece of leather. So, I tossed it in the holster drawer and forgot about it.

Wicked Ridge Invader G3 Review Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:52:15 | Crossbows Detailed Review Power The velocity of the 400 grain bolts fired from the G3 is around 330 fps with kinetic energy of approximately 90 FPKE. This means that any animal the size of a deer and smaller can be taken out with ease. It uses the T2 trigger that is usually present on many expensive models and that features a sharp release weighing 3.5lb and which ensures the arrows accuracy.

Excalibur Matrix Mega 405 Review Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:50:41 | Crossbows The Excalibur Matrix Mega 405 was the first of its kind crossbow to incorporate the compact recursive design. Before this ingenious invention it would have been unheard of to carry a recursive crossbow into the bush for a hunting mission. It makes the ultimate combination of power and stability in a maneuverable package that was previously thought impossible.

Barnett Ghost 410 CRT Review Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:49:03 | Crossbows Superb power & speed Impressive accuracy Light and compact No front heaviness Smooth trigger mechanism Extraordinary scope The Barnett Ghost 410 has for a long time been considered the king of all crossbows. It is a top-of-the-range performer offering unmatched power and performance. But what exactly makes this crossbow so efficient Let us take a close look at the major features that define it and set it in a class of its own.

Utah bill redefines open carry Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:37:24 | Pro Gun SALT LAKE CITY A state lawmaker says a man who carried a rifle into a J.C. Penney in Riverdale a year ago could have been charged with disorderly conduct under a bill he plans to introduce. The proposal by Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clinton, would define when someone could be charged with disorderly conduct if they're openly carrying a gun in the state. Ray said the measure would require handguns to be holstered and bar firearms from being openly displayed in a person's hands or on their body.

New York Times Hearts Dick Metcalf. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:25:52 | Pro Gun Before Dick Metcalf betrayed gun owners starting a dialogue about gun control with the readers of Guns & Ammo, the New York Time didn't give a crap about him. It's the same reason every week that old gray bitch (she ain't no lady) publishes a list of gun crimes, never self-defense, never positive stories about guns. Well, look how things change.

McCarthy's Attacks Carrying a Gun as a Gateway Crime. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:21:32 | Pro Gun Are spoons the gateway to obesity Is marijuana the gateway to crack Are miniskirts the gateway to rape Obviously not. I guess that means that carrying matches is the gateway crime to starting forest fires. Via CBS News Chicago police said they have seized more than 6,500 illegal guns this year. That's 130 illegal weapons each week. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says that's more than any major city and he says if you can reduce weapons you will reduce crime.

Law-Abiding Criminal Meme. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:18:42 | Pro Gun Ironically, some of the gun control laws they like to pass might turn us into criminals without even knowing it. Here's an interesting letter to the editor on the subject SAFE Act makes criminals out of law-abiding citizens The NY SAFE Act should be called the SAFE Criminals Act, for only criminals are safe from prosecution of the major components of this law. The 1968 U.S. Supreme Court case Haynes v.

Horse Control: DeBlasio goes after Carriages. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:17:15 | Pro Gun This is what working people get when they elect a Marxist, when they're not coming after your guns, they're coming after your livelihood. New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has vowed to move quickly to outlaw the horse-drawn carriages that pull tourists around the city's famous Central Park. We are going to get rid of the horse carriages. Period, de Blasio, who takes office New Year's Day, said at a news conference Monday. They are not humane, they are not appropriate for the year 2014.

Gun-Hating Sheriff tells people to call 911 if they see a man open carry Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:11:28 | Pro Gun It's not easy to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights in Michigan. HUDSONVILLE, MI Call the police if someone open-carries a gun into a public building That's the advice the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office is giving to Hudsonville city staff during trainings this month. It's just to be on the safe side and to observe the person, said Sgt. Mike Bagladi, who heads the sheriff's Hudsonville unit. Will we in any way threaten or intimidate them Absolutely not.

Don't Test a Bulletproof Vest On Yourself Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:04:07 | Pro Gun File this under, do not try this at home. FAIR OAKS, Calif. (KXTV) A man has been arrested in connection to a deadly shooting Friday night on the American River Bike Trail near Bannister Park in Fair Oaks. According to the victim's brother, the shooting resulted from the victim and his friends playing around with a bulletproof vest and a gun.

Daniel Craig/007 Hates Guns. Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:01:09 | Pro Gun Colion Noir always finds the good stuff, or in this case, the not so good stuff I hate handguns. Handguns are used to shoot people, and as long as they are around, people will shoot each other. That's a simple fact. I've seen a bullet wound and it was a mess. It was on a shoot and it scared me. Bullets have a nasty habit of finding their target and that's what's scary about them. Daniel Craig.

Cop shoots himself in the leg in gun shop Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:59:43 | Pro Gun This is the second incident I've heard this year of a gun getting entangled with clothing. CONNERSVILLE, IND. Shooting himself in the leg is not the way Connersville Police Chief David Counceller planned to promote his candidacy for Fayette County sheriff. Counceller's 40-caliber Glock handgun accidentally discharged Saturday afternoon while he was at Wullf's Gun Shop. Counceller, who was off-duty at the time, said he'd been examining a handgun similar to the one he carries.
In a 2010 letter to PETA, Agri Star's owner, Hershey Friedman, says it can't install 24/6 video monitoring of the animal handling areas of the plant and its grounds or of the slaughter floor area because the Postville plant's rabbis thought having cameras looking over their shoulders would hinder their jobs.

Above: Hershey Friedman

I asked PETA today if it was able to confirm the changes cited in this letter from Agri Star's owner, Hershey Friedman, were actually made.

"We were not able to confirm that these changes were implemented (or maintained)," PETA responded.

And that again raises the key issue with Agri Star  obsessive secrecy, in this case based on an arguably crazy pretext, that its supervising rabbis did not want 24/6 live streaming video footage aired on the Internet because they were self-conscious about working that way.

That means the rabbis who presided over Agriprocessors' horrific abuse of animals and then when caught claimed that abuse did not render the animals non-kosher, are the people who allegedly heavily contributed to the decision not to be fully transparent now.

Here is the email exchange I had last week with Erika Voogd, the consultant mentioned in this letter. She declined to answer questions because of client (i.e., Agri Star) confidentiality. Should her largely unsupported claims be trusted? I don't think so, not with that plant's history of abuse and corruption.

If you need to eat meat and care that animals are well treated from before slaughter until they are actually dead, buy any of the various free range grass-fed humane slaughter-assured non-kosher brands because you simply cannot trust non-transparent companies and non-transparent kosher supervisions. If you insist on keeping kosher as it is defined rabbinically today and must eat meat, then eat poultry from good smaller producers like David Elliot (despite its Chabad hechsher) or, in a pinch, the far larger Empire. Don't eat red meat. Don't eat "chassidishe shechita" or "heimishe shechita." And if you can, don't eat any meat at all.

Please click to enlarge:





Related Posts:

Is Agri Star's Kosher Slaughter Really Humane?

The Rubashkin/Agriprocessors/Postville Scandal.
Above: Shabbatai Tzvi

Ha'aretz reports:

During the Middle Ages, this defunct tax day [Tu Bshvat] began to be perceived as a semi-holiday, probably because the Mishnah gave it a festive-sounding name, Rosh Hashanah of Trees (New Year of Trees).

In Ashkenazi communities it became customary to drop the Tachanun supplication from the daily prayer on Tu Bishvat, as is done on actual Jewish holidays, which further cemented the transition of the tax day to a holiday. There is some evidence that in Jewish communities in Israel, special prayers for abundant yields from trees were added to the daily prayers, at least for a time, on that day.

But the holiday traditions only began to take shape when Rabbi Isaac Luria moved from Cairo to Safed, in the second half of the 16th century, and revolutionized the Jewish religion, before dying of an epidemic two years after arriving in the Galilee town.

The goal of a Jewish life is to release bits of divinity that he called sparks from the lower planes of reality back to the Godhead. These sparks, Luria explained, had become entangled in reality during the act of creation. Once all these sparks were returned - and most already had been creation would really be complete and the Messianic Age would commence. Sparks are released from the lower levels of creation through corrections, a variety of actions encoded in scripture and reality.

One example of these so-called corrections that Luria found in the Talmud is eating and blessing fruit on Tu Bishvat. Thus it became a tradition to eat fruit (often dried fruit) on that day.

Lurias interpretation engendered expectations that the coming of the Messiah was imminent, and in the mid-17th century, a charismatic young Jew from Izmir in the Ottoman Empire, proclaimed that he was just that. Influenced by the teachings of Luria, the probably insane but evidently charismatic Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676) gained a large following.

World Jewry became excited, thinking that the End of Days was nigh. But in 1666, Turkish authorities arrested Sabbatai Zevi on the grounds of disturbing the peace, and gave him the choice of converting to Islam or execution. Learning that he chose to convert, most Jews realized he was a false messiah. Some of his more ardent believers remained faithful to his message even after his death a few years later at age 50.

His persevering believers developed a number of special customs. One was to celebrate Tu Bishvat as Sabbatai Zevi Day, mainly because he was often called the tree of life by his followers. A ceremonial holiday meal, modeled on the Passover seder, was created by one of his followers, the anonymous writer of Hemdat Yamim (first published in 1731). This meal included eating 30 fruits, drinking four cups of wine and reading a variety of texts having to do with trees.

Although that rabbis knew this was a Sabbatean book, it was adopted into Orthodox circles, and thus the "Tu Bishvat seder" made its way into Judaism, mostly in Sephardic communities.
Zach Latta

By the time he was 16, Zach Latta had already tested out of his Los Angeles, California public high school and was working at Yo  a one-word messaging app that came to prominence in 2014  as an engineer and lead backend developer.

Now, at 18, Latta is living in San Francisco and working on his rapidly expanding coding organization called Hack Club.

"I've always found myself able to learn the most when I can completely throw myself at something," Latta told Business Insider.

Latta has certainly thrown himself intensely into his work as co-founder and executive director of Hack Club. Just one year after founding the organization, it's grown to 62 schools across 16 states and six countries.

Hack Club is a nonprofit organization with four full-time employees including Latta, and is funded by grants and individual supporters.

Latta is also a 2015 Thiel Fellow, becoming one of 20 people chosen to receive $100,000 and mentorship, provided they forgo or drop out of college for two years. Latta was awarded the fellowship last June when he was 17 and had no plans of attending college.

The idea behind Hack Club is simple, even if the coding behind it is not. While a few high schools may offer coding classes or clubs, they usually teach students dated coding standards. In reality, coders working in the industry use software written within the past six months, according to Latta.

Hack Club works with high school students to start and lead programming clubs at their schools using up-to-date standards. It provides baseline coding curriculum, software tools, and community-building training.

Hack Club

The innovation and success of Hack Club earned Latta, and his co-founder Jonathan Leung, 25, a spot on Forbes' 2016 30 under 30 list in the education category. Latta was one of the youngest honorees on the list.

"Our whole philosophy is that what's cool about coding is that it lets you do what you want to do and it lets you build real things," Latta said. "You don't have to have a college degree, you don't have to have years of training. As long as you have internet access you can do whatever you want to.

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Many of the websites or apps that members of Hack Clubs have built are on display on its site.

Hack Club

There's Kenko, for example, that describes itself as "shazam for food," where you take a photo of any food and receive health insights. Kenko's site also says that it is sponsored by Goldman Sachs.

Though not all of the coding at Hack Club involves "hacking" per se, it certainly seems aimed at challenging the status quo.

Latta mentioned that one group of students in one of his clubs is working to "kill Slack" and build a better app for workplace communications. Slack is a real-time messaging service that many companies, Business Insider included, use to communicate around their offices.

Some of that "establishment-killing attitude" is inherent in hacking subculture, with its documented distaste for authority. But some of that ethos within Hack Club is likely a byproduct of Latta's own attitudes about coding.

"Before I started focusing on programming, I felt really stuck," he said. "I thought the way the world was put together is the way the world was put together, and it's always going to be that way. Programming really changed that mindset for me."

Zach Latta

Latta began coding in middle school. By the time he got to high school, his interest had flourished into a love of programming. He didn't know anyone at school he could write code with, though, so he started a coding club with about 15 students.

"It wasn't the greatest club, but just having anything at all made such a profound impact on what I got out of high school," he said.

Latta began focusing on testing out of school early so he could devote all of his time to programming. He built his own home-schooling program sophomore year and tested out that same year.

While he was excited for the opportunity to pursue programming, his parents, both social workers, were less sure of his decision, especially since he had decided to forgo college and jump right into the industry.

But their reluctance gave way to support when they saw the success he was finding in the workforce.

He says when he started working at Yo, he was a 16-year-old without a college degree making market rate as an engineer. Latta didn't specify how much Yo paid him, but a search of Glassdoor showed that software engineers in San Francisco make an average salary of $103,000.

"I think to them at the time that was a ridiculous concept," Latta said.

Hack Club

He believes a college degree simply isn't essential to employers anymore, thanks in part to the internet.

"I think the fundamental idea is that a college degree is a 'vote,' and so many other things can provide the same value as that vote can," Latta said.

As for his plans with Hack Club, he plans to focus on expansion during the upcoming year. There are currently clubs in the US, Canada, Australia, Estonia, Zimbabwe, and India. He plans to broaden his reach domestically and internationally.

But his motivation, at its root, is to continue to empower students through coding.

"The reason why programming is so special to me is that I think programming shows you that you have power, and that you can do things, that you are your own person," he said.

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US shale-oil producers can claim a big chunk of responsibility for the oil crash.

Their drilling method of using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to tap oil from shale formations has boomed over the last several months.

And the primary reason is because fracking is cheaper and more flexible than traditional methods of drilling for oil.

Said another way, it is an ideal business for speculation.

As a result, largely US-based fracking players have brought abundant new supply into the market after taking aggressive steps to unlock oil in US shale formations, ultimately creating the glut that has sent oil prices down 70% in the last year and a half.

shale map

In a report from The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard published Sunday, Evans-Pritchard cited commentary from Daniel Yergin, an energy expert and founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, who spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. And two sentences from Yergin succinctly tell the whole story of how shale came to dominate the oil market.

"It takes $10 [billion] and five to ten years to launch a deep-water project. It takes $10 [million] and just 20 days to drill for shale," Yergin said.

And so even though shale producers have been hit hard with the crash in prices  and start to get hit harder still by bankruptcies, layoffs, and the like  the fact that they can drill so quickly and cheaply puts them at a huge advantage to producers that use other costlier methods (notably OPEC members).

fredgraph (10)

And America has an abundance of shale formations.

Yergin added that private-equity firms and hedge funds are on standby with a $60 billion chest of cash to buy up bankrupt shale drillers' assets. Such investments would be a significant bailout for the industry and could mean that production surges even higher if oil prices recover at all.

Right now, the Energy Information Administration is forecasting a decline by 700,000 barrels per day in US oil production for 2016, and 300,000 in 2017.

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Some analysts think this shortfall is the only thing that can drive oil prices higher. This weekend, we noted comment from Citi arguing that with OPEC bent on maintaining production levels, falling shale production is the only thing that can correct the imbalance between oil supply and demand.

However, Yergin's reminder of just how nimble shale technology shows how fracking's ability to seize market opportunity in the face of either falling or rising prices shows how the frackers took control of the market.

Head over to The Telegraph for the full story 

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BAKU, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A 20 percent tax imposed on foreign currency exports from Azerbaijan will not apply to foreign investors, Azeri Finance Minister Samir Sharifov said.

"This duty does not apply to foreign investors," Sharifov told an Azeri television channel in an interview shown on Sunday evening.

Azerbaijan's parliament, aiming to support the ailing manat currency, approved a package of measures last week, imposing some limits on foreign currency outflows, removing the insurance limit on deposits held in local banks, and abolishing a 10 percent tax on interest paid on retail deposits.

(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova; writing by Dmitry Solovvyov; editing by Polina Devitt)
BRUSSELS, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A new draft plan to introduce a financial transactions tax (FTT) in euro zone states is likely to be rejected by Belgium, the country's finance minister said on Monday, adding to doubts about a project already mired in division.

A European FTT was first proposed in 2012 during the euro zone debt crisis and the number of countries backing it has shrunk to ten out of Europe's 28 states.

Belgium, one of the remaining supporters, was not going to leave the FTT negotiations immediately "but it cannot be denied that the present drafts are unacceptable", Belgian Finance Minister, Johan Van Overtveldt, said in a statement.

He made clear that the supporting countries remained divided over the project. "From the discussion with the other member states we can conclude that there is no consensus," he said.

Van Overtveldt said the latest version of the tax might hurt its financial sector and is also likely to have negative consequences on companies and the country's borrowing costs.

Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain are still interested in the FTT and Estonia may join the project although it has refused to sign a joint commitment to reach a deal on the issue by mid-2016.

"We have not been notified in any way that Belgium might withdraw from the FTT. Belgium has been a very supportive presence throughout the negotiation process," a European Commission spokeswoman said on Monday.

The EU commissioner for economic and tax issues, Pierre Moscovici, was among the proponents of the FTT when he was France's finance minister.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Louise Ireland)
China is deepening economic engagements with Iran just a week after international sanctions were lifted against the country but the closer ties risk infuriating Saudi Arabia , the mainland's largest oil supplier in the Middle East , analysts say.

Chinese President Xi Jinping , the first international leader to head to Iran after the trade restrictions were removed, capped his visit to Tehran with 17 agreements for cooperation in areas including energy, trade, and industry, reported Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency.

During Xi's visit, the two countries also agreed to increase bilateral trade more than 10-fold to $600 billion in the next decade as China pursues its One Belt One Road project, an ambitious network of road, rail and port routes that will connect China to Central Asia, South Asia , the Middle East, and Europe .

With Iran at the end of the Asian road before it heads into Turkey and Europe , China is likely targeting to build numerous infrastructure facilities in Iran, said Jean-Francois Seznec, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

But the warmer ties will irritate oil giant Saudi Arabia whose already fraught relationship with Iran has worsened after Saudi Arabia executed a well-known Shiite cleric earlier this month. Xi visited Riyadh and Egyp t before heading to Tehran.

"China loves Saudi Arabia as far as the oil is concerned because they love (state-owned oil producing company) Saudi Aramaco as a very reliable supplier, but otherwise from a political standpoint, Iran is going to be the favorite child of China in that region," added Seznec.

With Iran not a U.S. ally, China will secure energy security with the country as the Asian country is dependent upon the Middle East for its oil imports.



"It's the only country in the region that is not allied with the United States for the most parts," said Michael Singh, managing director of think tank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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James Dorsey, a senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies noted that Iran is also majority Shia rather than Sunni-dominated, as is the case with Saudi Arabia and China's troubled Xinjiang region in the northwest, home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic group. Chinese authorities have blamed separatist Uighurs for terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of people in recent years.



As for Iran, various factions in the country are likely to be more united in accepting China over the U.S. or Europe as a partner, said Seznec.



Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Xi on Saturday where he expressed the country's distrust of the United States and Europe.

"The government and nation of Iran have always been and [still] are looking for the expansion of relations with independent and reliable countries like China and on this basis, the agreement between the presidents of Iran and China for [promotion of] 25-year strategic relations is totally correct and endowed with wisdom," Ali Khamenei 's website quoted him saying.

"The Western [governments] have never been able to win the Iranian nation's trust."

China is already Iran's largest trade partner with bilateral trade surpassing US$50 billion in 2014  up 31.5 per cent from the year before.

While China traditionally maintained a stance on non-interference in domestic politics, harmony and economic corporation, this would likely change in the future as the Middle East regards China as a superpower and expects the country "to step up to the plate", said Dorsey.

"China has huge interest in the Middle East. It has huge investments; it has large number of Chinese nationals here and it will have to protect them," he added.

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 25, 2016) - Copper Fox Metals Inc. ("Copper Fox" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:CUU) (OTC PINK:CPFXF) and its wholly owned subsidiary, Desert Fox Copper Inc. ("Desert Fox") are pleased to announce that it has developed a new exploration stage porphyry copper project located in the Mineral Mountain area of central Arizona.

Location:

The Laramide porphyry copper province in Arizona is one of the most prolific copper mineralized districts in the world. The Globe-Miami, Resolution, Florence and Casa Grande copper districts are located in Central Arizona and occur along a northeast trend; essentially in a straight line (see table below). The Mineral Mountain copper project is located on this trend between the Florence copper deposit and the Resolution copper deposit. Public information on the copper resources in each of the above listed districts is set out below:

District tonnes copper (%) contained copper (lb) Globe-Miami 1,594,000,000 0.64 22,484,326,400 Resolution 1,624,000,000 1.47 52,615,651,200 Florence* 490,000,000 0.33 3,234,000,000 Casa Grande* 740,000,000 0.90 14,678,640,000

In-Situ Leach ("ISL") project. Only oxide portion* of the deposit.

The porphyry copper deposits in the Globe-Miami and Resolution deposits are reported to contain significant concentrations of molybdenum.

Elmer B. Stewart, President and CEO of Copper Fox stated, "The discovery of new porphyry copper districts in geopolitical stable areas is fundamental to the future of the copper industry. The discovery of new porphyry copper deposits in jurisdictions such as Arizona requires an integrated more scientific approach including deep exploration such as the Resolution copper deposit. The Mineral Mountain project exhibits the surface characteristics of a buried porphyry copper deposit and provides Copper Fox considerable exposure to copper exploration in the Laramide porphyry copper province of Arizona in an easily accessible location".

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Mineral Mountain Project:

The Mineral Mountain copper project consists of 209 mineral lode claims covering the interpreted surface expression of a buried porphyry copper system. This interpretation is based on published geology and geochemical data collected by Copper Fox.

The initial focus on the Mineral Mountain area was primarily due to several factors being;

it was a former gold-silver mining district with numerous small underground mines and numerous occurrences of copper mineralization in outcrop.

The published geology for the area showed that the majority of the known mineralized fissures, veins etc. are exposed over an area that measures approximately 3 kilometres by 3 kilometres.

The Mineral Mountain area is underlain by Precambrian rocks that include Pinal schist, diabase and granite that have been intruded by Laramide age quartz monzonite, granodiorite and hornblende dacite dikes. Laramide age intrusive rocks and their associated country rocks are the host to the porphyry copper deposits in Arizona. The center of the property is cut by a prominent northwest trending system of faults along which the Laramide age quartz monzonite and granodiorite have intruded. North of this structural feature the area is primarily underlain by Precambrian rocks.

A preliminary geochemical stream sediment sampling survey completed by Copper Fox returned trace to abundant copper oxide mineralization with a suite of pathfinder minerals typically indicative of a porphyry copper environment (epidote, rutile, tourmaline, and pyrite) over an area that measured approximately 7 kilometres by 15 kilometres.

A follow-up systematic outcrop sampling program within the area outlined by the stream sediment sampling delineated three separate, stacked copper-molybdenum-gold-silver-tungsten geochemical anomalies within a maximum area of approximately 6 kilometres long and 3.0 kilometres wide. Metal values greater than copper 100 ppm, gold 10 ppb, silver 2 ppm, molybdenum 2ppm and tungsten 5ppm are considered anomalous. The range of values and Median Value for each element are set out below.

Element Minimum Maximum Median Value Copper 6 90,570 50 Molybdenum 0.7 345 2 Gold 2.5 7,030 10 Silver 0.1 169 3 Tungsten 0.2 444 1

Note: All values expressed in parts per million ("ppm") except gold which is expressed in parts per billion ("ppb").

The first zone shows more gold-silver enrichment and is underlain by Precambrian age Pinal Schist. The second zone is copper-molybdenum dominant and is underlain primarily by Laramide age quartz monzonite and granodiorite. The third zone is copper-molybdenum dominated and is underlain by Laramide age quartz monzonite and Precambrian granite and diabase. The project covers all three zones.

Alteration Assemblages:

The crude alteration assemblages observed in outcrop suggests a porphyry environment and consists of a central core of sericite that show good correlation with zones 2 and 3. Epidote alteration was observed on the periphery of zones 2 and 3. Specularite hematite and fluorite exhibits a correlation with zone 1.

A considerable number of vein assemblages typical of a porphyry environment were also observed during the field work. Sheeted biotite, epidote-quartz-hematite, quartz-hematite, quartz with sericite and albite selvages, chlorite, epidote-chlorite, quartz-magnetite, quartz-pyrite-jarosite, siderite-barite, fluorite-quartz with sericite selvages, quartz-tourmaline, hematite-quartz with potassic selvages and D veins were noted to occur in bedrock.

Supergene Mineralogy:

Supergene copper minerals consisting of malachite, chryscolla, chalcocite, melaconite and aurichalcite occur primarily in quartz veinlets hosted in the Precambrian rocks and Laramide intrusive rocks.

Analytical and Sampling Procedures:

A total of 171 outcrop samples were collected during the field work. Approximately one kilogram of selected rock chips was collected from mineralized outcropping material on a rough 400 meter by 400 meter grid to characterize the metals present in veins and other mineralized structures. Significant mine workings that did not fall near a grid sample site were also sampled. The samples were transported to Skyline Laboratories in Tucson, Arizona and delivered in person.

Samples were crushed to plus 75% -10 mesh, split and pulverized with standard steel to plus 95% -150 mesh. Pulps were subjected to a multi-acid digest (HNO 3 , HF, HClO 4 ) followed by analysis by ICP/OES. Gold was analyzed on a 30-gram charge by fire assay with an atomic absorption finish. Fluorine was analyzed by an ion-selective electrode.

Quality Control

The first sample of each batch was a field blank. One certified standard pulp was inserted into the sample stream for each laboratory batch of twenty samples. A total of 13 blanks and standards were inserted with the sample batches for analysis. All standards were certified for copper, silver, and molybdenum, and one standard was certified for gold. All analytical results of standard pulps were within 5% of accepted values.

Elmer B. Stewart, P. Geo., M.Sc., President of Copper Fox, is the Company's non-independent nominated Qualified Person, pursuant to National Instrument 43-101 Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects, and has approved the scientific and technical information disclosed in this news release.

About Copper Fox

Copper Fox is a Tier 1 Canadian resource company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE:CUU) focused on copper exploration and development in Canada and the United States. Copper Fox and its wholly owned Canadian and United States subsidiaries, being Desert Fox Copper Inc. and Northern Fox Copper Inc., hold the assets listed below:

Copper Fox has four primary assets with associated resources and reserves as noted below:

25% interest in the Schaft Creek Joint Venture with Teck Resources Limited on the Schaft Creek copper-gold-molybdenum-silver project located in northwestern British Columbia. 100% ownership of the Van Dyke oxide copper project located in Miami, Arizona. 65.4% of the shares of Carmax Mining Corp. who in turn own 100% of the Eaglehead copper-molybdenum-gold project located in northern British Columbia. 100% ownership of the Sombrero Butte copper project located east of Mammoth, Arizona.

Mineral Reserves Reserve Estimate Data Copper Fox Share Metal Holdings Project Reserve Category Tonnes (Mt) Cu (%) Mo (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (Mlb) Mo (Mlb) Au (Moz) Ag (Moz) Schaft Creek (1) Proven 135.40 0.31 0.018 0.25 1.81 231.28 13.43 0.27 1.97 Probable 805.41 0.27 0.018 0.19 1.70 1,176.00 79.88 1.24 11.01 P & P* 940.81 0.27 0.018 0.19 1.72 1,407.28 93.31 1.51 12.98 Mineral Resources Resource Estimate Data Copper Fox Share Metal Holdings Project Resource Category Tonnes (Mt) Cu (%) Mo (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (Mlb) Mo (Mlb) Au (Moz) Ag (Moz) Schaft Creek (2) Measured 146.62 0.31 0.017 0.24 1.78 250.43 13.73 0.29 2.10 Indicated 1,081.94 0.26 0.017 0.18 1.68 1,526.14 101.35 1.56 14.58 M & I** 1,228.56 0.26 0.017 0.19 1.69 1,776.57 115.08 1.85 16.68 Schaft Creek (2) Inferred 597.19 0.22 0.02 0.17 1.65 717.18 50.73 0.84 7.90 Van Dyke (3) Inferred 261.68 0.25 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,441.87 0.00 0.00 0.00 Eaglehead (4) Inferred 102.50 0.29 0.01 0.08 0.00 428.46 14.77 0.17 0.00 Total Inferred 961.37 2,587.51 65.50 1.01 7.90

* Proven & Probable ** Measured & Indicated Copper in billions of pounds, molybdenum in millions of pounds, gold and silver in millions of ounces. Numbers rounded to reflect best practise principles. (1) & (2) Technical Report "Feasibility Study on the Schaft Creek Project, BC, Canada", dated January 23, 2013, prepared by Tetra Tech, A. Farah, P. Eng.; et al as Qualified Persons; at 0.15% CuEq cut-off. Reserves reported at $6.60/tonne net smelter return (NSR) cut-off. (3) "Technical Report and Resource Estimation for the Van Dyke Copper Project", dated January 30, 2015 prepared by Moose Mountain Technical Services, S. Bird, P.Eng and R. Lane, P. Geo as Qualified Persons; at 0.05% TCu cut-off. (4) "Technical Report on the Eaglehead Cu-Mo-Au Project, British Columbia, Canada", dated June 29, 2012, prepared by Roscoe Postle Associates Inc., B. Donough, P.Geo and D. Rennie, P.Eng as Qualified Persons; at 0.16% CuEq cut-off. Note: Above stated Proven and Probable reserves are included in the Measured and Indicated resources reported for the Schaft Creek Project. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Elmer B. Stewart, President and Chief Executive Officer

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 Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and forward-looking information within the meaning of the Canadian securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking information"). Forward-looking information in this news release includes statements about porphyry copper deposits in the Globe-Miami and Resolution deposits containing significant concentrations of molybdenum; the size, layout, and composition of the buried porphyry copper system at the Mineral Mountain copper project.

In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, Copper Fox and its subsidiaries have made numerous assumptions regarding, among other things: the geological, financial and economic advice that Copper Fox has received is reliable and is based upon practices and methodologies which are consistent with industry standards and the stability of economic and market conditions. While Copper Fox considers these assumptions to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies.

Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause Copper Fox's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Known risk factors include, among others: location of the mineral claims, the alteration, the vein assemblages and the pathfinder minerals may not be indicative of a buried porphyry copper system; exploration of the project may not find copper mineralization is significant quantities or at all; the Company may require additional working capital sooner than predicted; the overall economy may deteriorate; uncertainty as to the availability and terms of future financing; copper prices and demand may fluctuate; currency exchange rates may fluctuate; conditions in the financial markets may deteriorate; and uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals.

A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing Copper Fox is disclosed in Copper Fox's continuous disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedar.com. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and Copper Fox disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law.
We can together make the world a better and safe place to live in

We need to be honest with our souls' conscience and strive hard to always do the right things. Make good laws and respect them!!
QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador supports a proposal for an emergency OPEC meeting in the face of slumping oil prices, Oil Minister Carlos Pareja told Reuters on Monday.

"We want a new meeting to see if we can make a decision together, but it has to be a decision made by all of us," Pareja said.

Senior OPEC and Russian oil industry officials stepped up vague talk on Monday of joint action to remedy one of the worst supply gluts in decades, while Saudi Arabia signaled its resolve to allow the market to balance itself.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
How 2015 Panned Out for Europe-Focused Mutual Funds

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation

The Vanguard European Stock Index Fund  Investor Shares (VEURX) fell 2.4% in December 2015 from the previous month. In the three-month period ended December 31, the fund rose 2.2%. In the six-month period, the fund fell by 2.2%. In the one-year period, the fund has returned -2.0%, making it the only fund in this review to have posted negative returns in 2015. Meanwhile, from the end of December until January 22, the fund has fallen 7.7%.

The fund was the worst performer for 2015 among the ten funds in this review. Lets see what hurt the fund in 2015.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

The VEURX is one of the older funds in this review. It was launched in June 1990. According to its latest geographical disclosure, companies from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and France, in that order, have the most exposure in the funds portfolio. Switzerland replaced France in the second spot last month.

Unlike any of the other nine funds in this review, this product is not actively managed. Its sectoral performance can give you an idea of the performance of the European stock market in general and its underlying benchmark, the FTSE Developed Europe All Cap Index, in particular. Thus, this can serve as a broad benchmark to all of the other funds performances.

Consumer staples contributed the most to the funds returns in 2015. Among the funds holdings from the sector, Nestle (NSRGF), Imperial Tobacco Group (ITYBY), and Anheuser-Busch (BUD) contributed the most. Tesco (TSCDY) led the decliners, but their negative returns were quite low and did not drag the sectors contribution down by much.

Healthcare was the second highest positive contributor to the funds returns. The B shares of Novo Nordisk (NVO) nearly singlehandedly brought the sector up. Like staples, the negative contributors did not drag much on the sector.

However, energy, materials, and financials not only undid the positive contribution by the other sectors, they pulled the returns of the fund into negative territory. Both A (RDS.A) and B shares (RDS.B) of Royal Dutch Shell were the primary detractors for energy stocks. Materials were driven down by Glencore (GLNCY) with negative contributions coming from Anglo American (AAUKY), BHP Billiton (BHP), and Rio Tinto (RIO) as well. Banco Santander (SAN) not only hurt the financial sector, it was among the biggest individual negative contributors among all holdings.

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Reasons for performance

Due to the fund being passively managed, fund management has no research role to play. Thus, stock picking and sectoral allocation play no role in its composition or performance.

Financials, the funds largest component, hurt its returns, apart from energy and materials. The latter two contributed more to dragging the returns of the fund down than financials did, but the large portion of financials ensured that any negative contribution from the sector will pretty much ensure a poor showing by the fund. Since the composition of the fund has changed recently, it would be interesting to see how the fund fares in 2016, its first full year after changing its benchmark.

Lets move on to the last Europe-focused mutual fund under review in this series: the Virtus Greater European Opportunities Fund  Class A (VGEAX).

Continue to Next Part

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(Adds details on British jets)

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine Corps on Monday said it would send a pair of Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets to two air shows in Britain this summer, a key milestone for the $391 billion weapons program after its thwarted international debut in 2014.

Some U.S. Air Force F-35 jets will also take part in the events, according to sources familiar with the plans. Air Force officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

A fleetwide F-35 grounding ordered after an engine fire in 2014 prevented what would have been the jets' international premiere at the annual Royal International Air Tattoo and an appearance at the world's biggest air show in Farnborough, outside London, both that year.

Since then, an F-35 jet assembled in Italy has made its inaugural flight there, but this year's appearance at RIAT will be the first by the stealthy, supersonic new warplane at an international air show.

"The U.S. Marine Corps is looking forward to demonstrating the capabilities of the F-35B Lightning II in the skies over the United Kingdom this July," Deputy Commandant for Aviation Lieutenant General Jon Davis said in statement to Reuters.

Davis said a joint U.S. Marine Corps and UK detachment would use the flights to validate overseas deployment activities and prove program interoperability. The Pentagon's F-35 program office and Lockheed would support the work, he said.

The British defense ministry had no immediate comment.

One of the sources said Britain planned to send at least one of the four F-35 jets it has already received to the air shows. The British jets are currently training in the United States.

Lockheed is developing three models of the jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, or Lightning II, with key suppliers Northrop Grumman Corp and Britain's BAE Systems Plc . Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp , builds the engines.

Besides Britain, seven other countries helped fund development of the jets: Norway, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands. All but Canada and Denmark have since ordered jets, as have Israel, Japan and South Korea.

Story continues

The F-35 program, the Pentagon's single largest weapons project, ran into technical problems and cost overruns for years, but U.S. officials say it has improved and that costs have fallen for the past five years.

The Marine Corp's F-35B model can take off from warships and aircraft carriers and land like a helicopter. The service branch plans to buy a total of 420 F-35B-model and C-model jets, which can fly onto and take off from aircraft carriers.

The Air Force plans to buy 1,763 A-model jets, which take off and land on conventional runways.

Davis said lessons identified from the deployment would help the Marines as they set up a second F-35 fighter attack squadron this summer and prepare for the first one to move to Iwakuni, Japan, in 2017.

The Marine Corps in July announced an initial squadron of 10 F-35 jets ready for combat, and the Air Force is due to follow suit this summer.

(Additional reporting by Sarah Young in London; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Lisa Von Ahn and Alistair Bell)
(Repeats story unchanged)

* Refugees report government forces, opposition clashes

* Around 3,500 Mozambicans refugees in Malawi camp

* Security experts concerned violence could worsen

* Unrest could deter investment in potential gas hub

By Joe Brock

KAPISE, Malawi, Jan 22 (Reuters) - When Mozambican troops hunting opposition fighters attacked his village this week, 10-year-old Wit Messenger turned and ran, leaving behind parents he may never see again.

Messenger is among thousands of Mozambicans who have fled across the border to refugee camps in Malawi in the last month, saying Frelimo government forces are burning homes and killing civilians in a campaign against Renamo guerrillas in an escalation of a simmering conflict between old civil war foes.

Spokesmen for both Frelimo and Renamo each told Reuters that the other side was responsible for attacks on their members in various parts of the country but would not give details about the violence that prompted the refugee exodus.

The first Mozambicans arrived in the Malawian village of Kapise in June last year but the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) says the flow of migrants has rapidly increased this month and predicts the number could rise from 3,500 now to 5,000 in coming days, more than it can currently handle.

More than half the refugees are children who walked for days from villages in Mozambique's western Tete province with just the clothes they were wearing.

"I could see the houses burning up ahead, then I heard the gunshots and I ran," said Wit, waiting with hundreds of other children to be given food in a sprawling hilltop camp of makeshift tarpaulin tents.

"I don't know if my parents are alive or dead. I'm scared I will never see them again," said Wit -- tearful, barefoot and wearing only a torn vest and ragged shorts.

Security sources say Renamo fighters have been attacking police outposts in recent weeks near the Malawi border, where they have public support, while Frelimo forces retaliate by torching villages where they believe rebels are hiding.

Story continues

MEMORIES OF WAR

Renamo started out as a guerrilla force backed by neighbouring powers -- the white-minority government in what was then Rhodesia and later by apartheid South Africa -- to counter the communist Frelimo movement.

The latest violence has stirred memories of a civil war fought between Renamo and Frelimo from 1976 to 1992 in which a million people died and a further million fled to Malawi.

Some of the Mozambicans in Kapise told Reuters that they had hidden Renamo fighters because they felt they had no choice.

"Government were asking where we were hiding Renamo," said Agness Chifundo, who walked for two days with her seven children to reach Kapise. "When they couldn't find them they were burning houses and shooting. I saw five dead bodies and a woman was raped in front of me."

Tete province has large coal reserves but projects by companies such as Brazil's Vale and mining giant Rio Tinto have failed in recent years due to low prices, poor infrastructure and outbreaks of unrest.

Although the latest violence is far from the vast offshore gas reserves being developed off northern Mozambique by Eni and Anadarko, the violence is likely to worry investors already spooked by a global slowdown.

Though the full details of the clashes in Tete remain unclear and are likely to be disputed, there have been clear signs of growing unrest between Frelimo and Renamo.

Renamo's leader, Afonso Dhlakama, 63, has said he will in March seize control of six northern provinces, declaring autonomy in areas where his party won majorities in 2014's national election. He has not explained how this would be done but experts believe it would be unconstitutional.

Frelimo won 57 percent of the 2014 vote against 37 percent for Renamo. Renamo disputes the result and says Frelimo is to blame for the violence. Both sides say they are democrats but also resort to violence which they are unwilling to acknowledge.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Dhlakama has been in hiding since October last year following an assassination attempt he says was ordered by Frelimo, although the ruling party denies this.

Renamo's secretary general Manuel Bissopo was shot and wounded on Wednesday, hours after he accused security forces of killing members of his party. Frelimo says it was not behind the attack, in which Bissopo's bodyguard was killed.

The police presence in the capital Maputo has increased in recent days with officers occasionally stationed outside Renamo's office there.

President Filipe Nyusi, 56, says he wants to engage in peaceful negotiations with Renamo but Dhlakama has said this is disingenuous considering attacks on his members.

Few think Renamo has the capacity or desire to begin another all-out conflict but there is a high risk of more violence, security experts say.

"We've got a security problem brewing," one Maputo-based Western diplomat told Reuters. "We're seeing hits on senior officials and from what we're hearing the situation in Tete is bad. These refugees didn't up and leave for no reason."

The refugee influx is putting strain on Malawi's stretched resources at a time when one of the worst droughts in its history means 2.8 million people are expected to go hungry.

Malawi has allocated Mozambicans some land in Kapise but it will not be enough. The UNHCR say the camps are already facing sanitation problems and there are fears of a possible cholera outbreak.

"We don't want to live like this but we cannot go back," Mozambican maize farmer Robert Keness told Reuters, pointing to pit latrines near tents packed with small children.

"We fear war at home." (Additional reporting by Manuel Mucari in Maputo and Mabvuto Banda in Lilongwe; editing by Giles Elgood)
(The following statement was released by the rating agency) Link to Fitch Ratings' Report: Viewpoint 4Q15: APAC Corporates www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=876700">https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=876700 SINGAPORE/SYDNEY, January 25 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has published a compendium of 53 thematic research pieces written by our corporate analysts in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) during 4Q15. "Viewpoint" is a quarterly compilation of thematic research from our corporate analysts in APAC. It provides a single source of all non-rating action commentary for investors interested in the current themes and market activity surrounding rated entities in APAC. In this edition, China once again accounted for more than half of the research output. Highlights include our views on renminbi (yuan) internationalisation, Chinese corporates favouring onshore bonds and the liberalisation of the process for companies issuing offshore debt. In our hypothetical China Slowdown Scenario we identified the key sectors in APAC that would suffer the greatest impact should China's GDP growth slow to around 2%. Other key topics included the likely peaking of China's steel production capacity in 2016, strong demand for Chinese SUVs, and how weak demand is having a negative impact on Chinese thermal independent power producers' margins. From Hong Kong, we discussed Noble's liquidity levels, while in India we commented on Oil India's new subsidy sharing scheme and how real estate should benefit from a new FDI policy. In Indonesia we said that easing property rules are unlikely to boost demand in the short term; in Thailand we commented that a new entrant in the telecom market is likely to mean increased competition for the existing operators; and in Australia we examined Fortescue's ability to cut costs and therefore keep its leverage down. Corporates in APAC continue to expand and develop rapidly, presenting both challenges and opportunities for investors and ratings agencies. "Viewpoint 4Q15: APAC Corporates" is available from www.fitchresearch.com or by clicking on the link in this media release. Contact: Matt Jamieson Head of APAC Research +61 2 8256 0366 Fitch Australia Pty Ltd. Level 15, 77 King Street Sydney NSW 2000 Andrew Steel Regional Managing Director Head of Asia Pacific Corporate Ratings Group +65 6796 7231 Media Relations: Bindu Menon, Mumbai, Tel: +91 22 4000 1727, Email: bindu.menon@fitchratings.com; Leslie Tan, Singapore, Tel: +65 67 96 7234, Email: leslie.tan@fitchratings.com; Leni Vu, Sydney, Tel: +61 2 8256 0304, Email: leni.vu@fitchratings.com; Wai-Lun Wan, Hong Kong, Tel: +852 2263 9935, Email: wailun.wan@fitchratings.com. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com 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.
The logo of French low-cost telecoms provider Iliad is pictured during the company 2013 annual results presentation in Paris March 10, 2014. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

(Reuters) - French billionaire Xavier Niel's telecoms group Iliad has approached British telecoms regulator Ofcom to express "preliminary" interest in entering the UK mobile market, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Iliad's interest to enter the market and create a new network operator would depend on the acquisition of telecoms infrastructure as a result of the 10.5 billion pounds ($14.96 billion) O2-Three merger, the FT said. (http://on.ft.com/1UmycR6)

A spokesman for Ofcom said it "does not discuss whether it had or had not held meetings with companies".

Iliad could not be reached for comment outside regular business hours.

The merged company formed by the O2-Three deal would own half of Britain's most attractive mobile spectrum in the so-called low-frequency bands, which allow operators to cover long distances more cost-effectively, according to Moody's. It would also own 37 percent of the spectrum in high-frequency bands above 1800 megahertz.

It is expected that European Commission antitrust regulators would require the merged entity of Telefonica's O2 and Three, owned by Hutchison, to shed some of its parts, in order to create a new competitor, or guarantee access of its network to rivals, as the British market consolidates from four to three operators, the FT reported.

However, EU regulators have been of the view that consolidation in the telecoms sector was not necessarily the answer.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager scuppered a deal between TeliaSonera and Telenor in Denmark last year over concerns it would lead to higher prices for consumers, the first time such a deal had been blocked since telecoms companies began an M&A spree in 2013.

A similar deal acquisition between Orange SA and Bougyues Telecom is expected to be vetted in France, sources told Reuters last week.

France's largest telecom company Orange has already started informal talks with rivals Numericable-SFR and Iliad on possible asset sales to satisfy competition concerns.

(Reporting by Ankush Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by David Evans and Alison Williams)
Google Gets Tango and Bebop to Keep Pace, Offset Search Business

(Continued from Prior Part)

Integrating AI and chatbot

Google could be ready to recapture the lost territory in mobile messaging services. Those services are considered the most active mobile messaging apps (applications). Google is reportedly building a new mobile messaging app that incorporates a combination of AI (artificial intelligence) and chatbot technology to catch up with its rivals Facebook and WeChat.

Googles new messaging service will allow users to text friends or chatbot. The chatbot feature will be capable of answering search queries raised by users inside the messaging app. In the past, Google tried to incorporate additional messaging features such as phone calls, SMS (Short Message Service), messaging, and video conferencing into Google Hangouts. But over the past several years, Google has failed to attract users, who seem more inclined to use WhatsApp, WeChat, and other messaging services.

Facebook dominates the market

According to recent figures, around 900 million people are using WhatsApp, which Facebook (FB) acquired in 2014 for $19 billion. Its in-house-built Facebook Messenger also has around 700 million active users. Tencents WeChat, the popular messaging app in China, has 650 million active users. Viber, Skype, and Snapchat have recently passed 600 million, 300 million, and 100 million daily active users, respectively.

A few mobile messaging apps also include features that allow users to perform other tasks in addition to exchanging messages. For instance, WeChat allows users to pay bills and book appointments. Facebook Messenger is capable of integrating with third-party tools such as Uber.

The iShares US Technology ETF (IYW) is a portfolio of 150 stocks. Its top four stocks are Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB), and Alphabet (GOOG), which make up 18.0%, 11.6%, 6.7%, and 6.0% of the fund, respectively.

Continue to Next Part

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(Updates prices, adds comment)

By Marius Zaharia

LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Greek short-dated government bond yields fell on Monday after Standard and Poor's raised the country's rating by one notch to B minus, praising its compliance with the terms of its third bailout.

Greece is still debating its politically sensitive pension reform, a precondition for completing the first bailout review and starting talks on debt restructuring but has prompted a wave of strikes. But the ratings agency expected a compromise to be reached in the coming months.

If successful, the review could potentially lead to the inclusion of Greek bonds in the European Central Bank's 60 billion euro a month asset purchase programme.

It could also pave the way to debt relief talks with its euro zone partners, which some bondholders would see as a positive development. Although some uncertainty remains, they generally do not expect the talks to include the private sector, which has already taken losses in a 2012 restructuring.

At the market open at 0830 GMT, Greek 10-year bond yields fell 10 basis points to as low as 9.44 percent, having traded above 10 percent at the end of last week.

Prices were extremely volatile, however, in one of the world's most illiquid debt markets. They were last 2 basis points higher at 9.57 percent.

"The rating upgrade - I don't think it was fully priced in by the market, although it's hard to draw any conclusion about the illiquid Greek bonds," said KBC rate strategist Mathias van der Jeugt.

Only 35 million euros worth of Greek bonds had traded in the first two weeks of the year on the HDAT platform, according to central bank data.

The trading volumes did not look on track to match December's 134 million euros, but they were higher than in the whole April-September period of last year, when worries that Greece could crash out of the euro zone reached a climax.

The Athens bourse was up 1.2 percent, with an index of banking stocks rising 2.0 percent, while other European stock markets were in the red.

Story continues

"STILL VULNERABLE"

Analysts say Greece remains a market mainly for specialised distressed debt investors, although mainstream names such as PIMCO, BlackRock and Carmignac Gestion have also dipped into that market.

Rating upgrades can improve the market sentiment, but normally trigger forced buying from rating-sensitive investors only when a country moves from "junk" to investment grade, which Greece was still far away from.

Two-year yields were down 9 basis points at 13.48 percent, while five-year yields were 11 bps lower at 11.12 percent. The inverted yield curve in which short-term yields trade higher than longer-term ones is a sign bondholders are still worried that Greece may not be able to repay its debt in full when it comes due.

Greek CDS prices suggested the market saw a default probability of 57 percent, according to Markit data. The Greek 10-year bond trades at 64.2 cents in the euro.

"The upgrade is good news, but Greece remains vulnerable," BNP Paribas rate strategist Patrick Jacq said.

Most other euro zone bonds were flat, with little reaction seen to centre-right Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa winning Portugal's presidential election on Sunday.

Southern European bonds were given a lift last week by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, who flagged more monetary policy easing for March. But domestic problems could still stand in the way to narrower yield spreads.

"The re-tightening in peripheral spreads has further to go but beware of bumps from the dynamics towards a left-wing government in Spain, further chatter about the setup of the bad bank in Italy, noise about a delay of the next bailout tranche for Greece or the budget plan in Portugal," said Commerzbank rate strategist Rainer Guntermann.

German 10-year Bund yields were down 1 basis point at 0.40 percent.

(Reporting by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Tom Heneghan/Hugh Lawson)
south sudan iran

Earlier this month, the Sudan News Agency reported that the country's National Dialogue Conference endorsed "normal and conditioned" diplomatic relations with Israel.

Khartoum has already switched sides in the unfolding Saudi-Iranian cold war, cutting off diplomatic ties with its former partners in Tehran at the behest of its now even closer Saudi allies.

But diplomatic relations with Israel would be an even more stunning development.

Sudan is one of over 30 countries that does not recognize Israel, and it is a party to the Arab League's official boycott of the country.

Sudan has also been a staging area for Iranian weapons trafficking to armed groups in the Gaza Strip, including Hamas.

Israel is suspected of carrying out attacks on weapons smugglers inside Sudan several times in recent y ears, bombing a smuggling convoy in 2009 and carrying out an attack on Iranian-linked military facility in Khartoum in 2012.

An actively (or at least until recently) hostile state would be opening relations with Israel without any apparent precipitating event  a virtually unknown development in the seven-decade history of Israeli-Arab relations.

Sudanese relations with Israel could be beneficial for both countries. Israel will have effectively "turned" a former Iranian ally that its air has bombed repeatedly since 2009.

sudan map skitch

Perhaps more importantly from an Israeli perspective, ties with Sudan would have shown that improved relations with once-hostile Arab states isn't necessarily contingent on a resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Relations with Sudan  now a notable member of the Saudi anti-Iran coalition  would de-link regional diplomacy from the peace process with the Palestinians, potentially enabling more open relations with countries like Saudi Arabia and creating a precedent for future cooperation with Arab states.

Story continues

At the same time, such a development might also give Israel less of an incentive to take steps towards making peace with the Palestinians.

People walk to fill water containers at the Zamzam IDP camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), near El Fasher in North Darfur February 4, 2015. REUTERS/ Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

For Sudan's National Congress Party regime, the nominally Islamist dictatorship that has ruled Sudan since 1989 and once hosted Osama bin Laden, a surprise detente with Israel would serve as shortcut to the government's most coveted foreign policy goal: normalized relations with the US, which considers Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism and has sanctioned the government over its human rights record in Darfur and elsewhere.

Diplomatic relations with Israel could the draw the US closer  without forcing Khartoum to dial back its brutal military campaigns in Darfur, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan.

Under an optimistic scenario, Sudan could turn into yet another pillar of the US-sponsored regional order, receiving the same kind of military aid, diplomatic cover, and economic incentives Egypt and Jordan enjoy in return for maintaining their peace agreements with Israel and aiding Western security objectives in the broader Middle East.

But would such a diplomatic break though plausibly happen?

Screen Shot 2016 01 22 at 5.46.00 PM

An Israel thaw carries some big internal risks for the NCP, which took power in 1989 and was known as the National Islamic Front until the late 1990s.

"There is no domestic appetite for normalization with Israel," Sudan commentator Ahmed Kodouda told Business Insider. He suggested that news of the discussion of open ties was meant to give the impression that Sudan's political environment is more open than the regime's critics claim: "The government wants to give an ostensible sense that there is so much freedom that it is letting people discuss such a taboo subject," Kodouda says, "when in reality, any such normalization would be a hard sell. "

Alberto Fernandez, current Vice President at the Middle East Media Research Institute and the Charge d'Affaires at the US embassy in Khartoum from 2007 to 2009, agrees that the NCP risks internal blowback if it upgraded relations. "It gains something with the West but it loses domestically," Fernandez told Business Insider, adding that relations with Israel would then "become one more issue that cna cause more turbulence internally."

The NCP has no shortage of those. Sudan is internationally isolated. The government is dependent on revenue from oil that is extracted in now-independent South Sudan but which travels through pipelines in the Republic of Sudan.

Sudan

Oil is down to under $30 a barrel, and in the 5 years since South Sudan seceded the two countries have yet to come to any kind of a stable agreement on how the oil money should be split. Khartoum is still contending with insurgencies in both Darfur in the west and the Nuba Mountains region in the south.

Close ties with Israel might give an exhausted Sudanese populace yet another grievance against an oppressive government. And at the same time, it would highlight the NCP's evolution from an ideologically Islamist regime to a run-of-the-mill autocracy concerned with little more than its own survival.

That doesn't mean that closer relations wouldn't be tempting for Khartoum. According to Koduda, establishing ties with Israel is a topic of "semi-recurring debate among the Sudanese elite." There's plenty of circumstantial evidence that Sudan's government isn't implacably anti-Israel.

A 2009 US embassy cable published by WikiLeaks quotes Sudanese intelligence chief Salah Ghosh as telling US diplomats that he would like to see a halt to the use of Sudanese territory for weapons trafficking. "The Sudanese regime is not seeking a confrontation with Israel," Ghosh reportedly said.

Weapons smuggling across Sudan into Egypt and the Gaza Strip has effectively halted in recent years, to the reported satisfaction of Israeli officials. And the NCP might just be pragmatic enough to open relations  or at least to give the impression that its' considering opening relations  if it saw a benefit in doing so.

"It's a regime which has been hugely successful in one thing, which is remaining in power," says Fernandez. "While they are Islamists, they're also creative and they're looking for ways to stick around."

Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir

If Sudan opted for full ties, it would become the 3rd Arab League country to recognize Israel and the first since Mauritania, in 1995. Israel maintains limited or covert diplomatic relations with a number of Arab countries, and opened a diplomatic office at the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi in 2015.

Fernandez says it remains unlikely that Sudan would take such a bold diplomatic move unless it occurred in concert with understandings bout enhanced relations with the US. Given the domestic risks, he believes the gain to the NCP would be "negligible" if Sudan went ahead and established ties.

And it if happened, it would show the degree to which a formerly anti-western government has now come to believe that its survival depends on closer ties with the United States.

"They're ideological, they're Islamists and they continue to be," says Fernandez. "But they're not blind."

NOW WATCH: Jeff Sachs: Here's why the Middle East is going to get a lot worse





More From Business Insider


If you wanted to, you can become a millionaire in under five years.

I was able to do it sooner than that, but it wasn't that easy. There have been many sacrifices to make and obstacles to overcome, but I was determined to make it happen. Dealing with adversity was my greatest teacher and it allowed me to build the type of resilience that helped me walk through the fire.

Dealing with People

Eventually, I became fireproof. In the process of reaching the seven-figure mark, I've learned dealing with people is the most important attribute. No one can become a millionaire without knowing how to deal with people assertively. You must be prepared when your best friends turn on you or your family betrays you. Sometimes, it will happen at the most unpredictable times.

Forgiving People

I had to let old friends and family members know that I was moving on in my life. One time, I pulled a cousin over to the side at a family gathering and told him the truth about how I felt. Strangely enough, he unexpectedly died the next week. If I had not forgiven him for his transgressions, it would have haunted me for years.

Forgiveness is the best revenge. - Unknown

Handling Finances

In my first year of business, I barely scraped by financially. That same year, I faced dozens of overdraft fees and late charges on almost every bill. I had to sell my car to keep moving forward. I learned I still had to keeping show up and handle my business, despite the failures and discouragement. Soon enough, I began to prosper and my income skyrocketed 10 times in the next year.

Making Sacrifices

Those experiences were hard. The night before I received a payment of $10,000 to speak to a large audience in Delaware, I had to sleep in the car in the freezing cold by myself! At the time, my account was severely overdrawn by over $200 and I couldn't afford a hotel. It's a good thing I had a wool suit that night!

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. - Oscar Wilde

Story continues

Dealing with Embarrassment

Another time, I was stuck at the grocery line with nearly $100 of goods. When I swiped my card, it was declined. After fumbling with other credit cards, I looked behind me and there were at least 10 carts behind me. I had to go home and eat tuna that day--with no bread or mayonnaise. My water was shut off that night, too, so I washed the food down with a few teaspoons of rain water!

Asking for Help

At a certain point in my business, I couldn't grow any further until I hired a few key people. Asking for help wasn't my forte, but I had to make it happen. Within months I had a lawyer, editor, personal trainer, part-time chef, and other personnel. It cost me a fortune at first, but eventually helped push me into the million-dollar mark. Most people won't ask for help because their ego is in the way.

Overcoming Fears

I failed English class three times in high school. One college professor told me that I shouldn't even bother writing and failed me in her class. For years, I believed that my gift of writing could never come to fruition, even though I had so many ideas. However, once I started writing books and articles, it changed my confidence. Today, I reach millions of people with my words.

Your gift will make room for you. - Ancient Proverb

Fixing My Attitude

Creating excuses was one of my greatest obstacles. I used to blame my environment and upbringing. I allowed my circumstance to dictate my life, instead of taking control of my life. Eventually, I had to let go of these excuses and limitations. Many times, I had to submit myself into the "attitude shop," where I would sit in my study to renew my mind and change my perspective.

Trusting Others

When I became emotional, I'd have to check in with my confidants, telling them the brutal truth about my situations. In the process of making myself vulnerable, I was able to gain freedom, releasing myself from false pressures and anxiety. By sharing myself with others, I was able to maximize my efforts and make major breakthroughs in my life.

Taking Risks

Before reaching the seven-figure mark, you must take many risks. Taking risks requires much faith in yourself and others, but it must be done. Faith is knowing that what you want will eventually happen as long as you believe it. You'll have to take major leaps in your life, sometimes not even knowing where it will lead. However, it will pay off once you get to the other side, even if you burn a bridge or two in the process.

Showing Up (On Time)

If I showed up, I would come in "fashionably late." However, I realized I had to stop this behavior once I missed an international flight. That day, I sat in the airport and looked at my watch: I was only 2 minutes late. After facing that great disappointment, I vowed to be early for the rest of my life. I've kept true to that promise.

Becoming Professional

There's a great difference between an amateur and a professional. In my amateur days, I would design my own websites, cut my own hair, and change my own oil in my car. All of this would take up valuable time and effort, causing major frustration in the process.

Nowadays, I leave these duties to the professionals since that's what they do best. This way, I maximize all of my talents, which allows me to reach my highest potential. Today, I only keep the best people around me. It costs a little bit more, but I've learned the value in "paying the price." That's what professionals do.

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. - Jim Rohn

Studying Relentlessly

Each year, I faithfully read more than 100 books. I also skim dozens every month. In order to become an expert, I've learned that amassing knowledge in my field requires at least four hours per day. Along with this, I learn from everyone I meet, studying their intent and purposes, doing my best to understand human nature.

Acquiring Skills

You need the skills to pay the bills. I'm always practicing my keynote. I'm writing a minimum of 3,000 words per day. I'm sending out hundreds of emails each week and making at least a dozen calls on my busiest days. Do my skills increase? Substantially. That's why I'm continually adding more value to more people in less time.

Embracing Opportunities

Early on, I would travel for hours to make a "free" appearance. Time after time, this was worth it since I was learning about the world of business, shaking hands with people from all over the world. Some of my greatest opportunities came from philanthropic endeavors when I expected nothing from those I visited.

Declining Opportunities

With hundreds of inquiries every week, I need to constantly keep track of which ones are most important. I cannot afford to take $10,000 opportunities when $1,000,000 opportunities are available. By using great discernment, I must turn down parties, movies, award shows, speeches, and deals of all different kinds. Does it bother me? Not at all. I just pass along to those who need these opportunities.

Think Bigger

One of the greatest decisions I ever made was switching from consumer to producer. Here's the difference: consumers eat the pizza, producers make the pizza; consumers watch the videos, producers make the videos. You get the point. Instead of selfishly pleasing my own desires, I sought out ways to help those who were in need.

Give Relentlessly

As a teenager, I naturally scoffed at people who volunteered in my community. By my early 20's I became the biggest volunteer in town! My life was changed once I learned the value of giving my time, energy, money, and creativity to others. When you give, you get far more in return. I discovered that the richest people give the most, that's why they get the most! The secret of living is giving.

From what we get, we can make a living. What we give, however, makes a life. - Arthur Ashe

Set Big, Juicy Goals

You must also set goals that scare you. You must become ultra-specific when you set your big, juicy goals. In my first year of business, I shed blood, sweat, and tears to achieve these goals. I had many sleepless nights, doing whatever it took to get the job done. Today, I've achieve far more than I would have imagined for myself.

Following Your Purpose

I was deeply enlightened when I learned this fact: when you become bigger than your purpose, you can't do anything. However, when your purpose becomes bigger than you, anything is possible. This means that if you take part in a purpose greater than yourself, you can achieve every goal you put your mind to!

Let me simplify how you can become a millionaire in under five years: be true to yourself. Only take opportunities that allow you the greatest chance to promote explosive growth in your life. Usually, it's by taking a sales position or starting your own business. If you have the desire and potential to make it happen, you can become a millionaire before you know it!
MUMBAI, Jan 25 (Reuters) - India's Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) expects to reach a deal to sell its mobile phone masts business to a group of companies led by buyout firm TPG Capital Management LP in the next two weeks, its chief executive said on Monday.

RCom last month signed a non-binding pact to sell the business to TPG and Tillman Global Holdings LLC, a U.S. firm that invests in telecoms and energy infrastructure businesses.

Sources had told Reuters RCom expected an enterprise value of about 230 billion rupees ($3.5 billion) for the unit, which has a portfolio of about 45,000 masts.

The asset sale is part of RCom's efforts to pare some of its 404.79 billion rupees ($5.97 billion) as of end-December in debt on its books, as India's fourth-biggest wireless mobile phone carrier looks at deploying cash towards improving its network.

RCom, controlled by billionaire Chairman Anil Ambani, on Friday posted a 14.9 percent drop in its quarterly net profit, as cut-throat competition for customers in a crowded mobile phone market squeezed margins.

India is the world's second-biggest market for mobile phone users but tough competition has led to low margins for voice services, and telecom providers are banking on more lucrative data services to lift earnings in the coming years.

RCom Chief Executive Vinod Sawhny said on Monday the company had increased its capital expenditure outlook for this fiscal year that ends on March 31 by 10 billion rupees to 40 billion rupees to expand its 3G coverage in the country.

($1 = 67.7775 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Himank Sharma; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
(Repeats Jan. 22 story with no changes to text)

* More illiquid markets less likely to sell off

* Managers seeking names insulated from oil price, China

* GRAPHIC-Toxic Trio bond performance:

* http://link.reuters.com/fac26w

By Marc Jones and Claire Milhench

LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The volatility across mainstream emerging assets is driving bond fund managers to seek safety in even riskier markets such as Pakistan, Jamaica, Argentina, Honduras and Venezuela.

These countries may have looked unappealing two or three years ago, but the fact that they have a low correlation with global asset price swings and tend to be too illiquid for people to sell out of, is making them increasingly attractive.

"The six best performing bonds in the world last year were credits that most people wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and it will probably be the same this year," said Jan Dehn at emerging market fund manager Ashmore.

"We are in an environment of extreme risk aversion but the bottom line is that this is how you make money."

Among these so-called frontier markets, there are some little known reform stories - notably in serial defaulters such as Pakistan, where an IMF programme is going far more smoothly than usual, and Argentina, where hopes are building it may be finally turning a corner.

Brazil, whose bonds and real currency took a hammering last year, is one of the few countries where bonds have made money in 2016.

The backdrop is pretty dire - emerging markets broadly have suffered their worst start to a year, with yield spreads over U.S. Treasuries widening by some 70 basis points, the fastest deterioration since 2009, says Zsolt Papp at JPMorgan Asset Management.

Pressures are mounting, with $2.3 billion of outflows from EM debt funds in the last week, the highest in 20 weeks.

So fund managers are being forced to consider frontier names, like Pakistan, which returned 8 percent in dollar terms in 2015 and seems to be a top pick this year too.

Story continues

"Pakistan is probably one of the best frontier market stories out there. They are doing everything the IMF is asking of them, well at least by their standards," said Edwin Gutierrez, head of emerging market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Asset Management. "And they are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the low oil price."

Claudia Calich, manager of the M&G Emerging Markets Bond fund, likes Pakistan too. "The economy doesn't rely on tourism, unlike Egypt or Tunisia, so the economic impact from additional (terror) attacks is quite different," she said.

MASSIVE REMITTANCES

Some investors are also putting their money into smaller names in Central America and the Caribbean, such as the Dominican Republic, Honduras and even recent defaulter Jamaica.

As oil importers, they benefit from low crude prices, and, unlike Chile or Peru, they are not dependent on China continuing to consume large quantities of copper and iron ore.

They also stand to benefit from higher U.S. economic growth due to remittances from overseas workers. For the Dominican Republic, these are worth around 7 percent of GDP, whilst for Honduras they make up 17 percent according to official data.

"They tend to live more off tourism rather than commodity exports and their massive remittances help the balance of payments," said Henry Stipp, manager of the Columbia Threadneedle Emerging Market Bond Fund.

This has also tempted some managers to overweight Jamaica, which restructured its debt in 2010 and 2013. The country is now under an IMF programme, with structural reforms progressing broadly on schedule.

"Fiscally they have to be very careful," said Sailesh Lad, senior EM portfolio manager for the AXA WF Global Emerging Markets Bond Fund. "People will say it looks like a risky credit - things are not as clean and plain sailing as some of the other countries - but it's priced accordingly."

Jamaica returned 9.5 percent in dollar terms last year and in the first few weeks of the year its dollar-bond spreads over U.S. Treasuries have widened by roughly 30 basis points to 496 bps, less than half that of oil producer Russia, which has ballooned by 70 bps to 360 bps.

"No one's talking about panic-selling in any of these names," Lad said. He wants to add to some of his overweight Central America and Caribbean positions but tellingly, no one has bonds to offer.

"You'd think in this market downturn it would be easy to buy bonds but we're struggling. It's frustrating," he said.

Some fund managers are also trying to decide whether Venezuela offers a decent risk/reward trade off. Given that it needs an oil price of closer to $100 a barrel to avoid a default this is an option for the brave - but some of its juicy interest bonds are due to pay out in just five weeks' time.

"Venezuela is very tricky, with oil down here, but we've been buying the February bonds," said Aberdeen's Edwin Gutierrez. "We don't think they are going to default by then." (Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Shake on it.

On Saturday (Jan. 23) Chinese president Xi Jinping was in Tehran signing deals with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. International sanctions on Iran were recently lifted after it agreed to narrow the scope of its nuclear activities, and Xi is one of the first world leaders to pay a visit since then.

The leaders signed 17 agreements on economic and technological cooperation, including one on nuclear energy. Rouhani said Tehran plans to boots trade with China from $52 billion in 2014 to $600 billion in the next 10 years.

The nations confirmed they will cooperate on Xis One Belt, One Road initiative, which envisions a vast land network connecting China, Europe, the Middle East, west Asia, and Southeast Asia. This will include China undertaking development of a high-speed railway in Iran linking Tehran to Mashhad in Irans northeast (the nations second-largest city). China agreed to give financial aid for the rail project.

China is already Irans largest trade partner, and the biggest buyer of its oil. Even before the sanctions were lifted, it had been at work on other projects in the country, including a new freeway linking Tehran to cities along the Caspian Sea.

Xi also met with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who criticized the US as not honest in its fight against terrorism in the Middle East, and said China was a more natural ally for Iran. Iranians never trusted the West Thats why Tehran seeks cooperation with more independent countries (like China), the Ayatollah said.



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(Repeats to fix typo in headline)

* President Rouhani visiting Italy and France this week

* Business and regional diplomacy set to dominate talks

* Italian oil, steel firms line up for major contracts

By Antonella Cinelli and Crispian Balmer

ROME, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Italy and Iran signed billions of dollars of business deals on Monday at the start of a visit to Europe by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani aimed at rebuilding his nation's ties with the West after years of economic sanctions.

Heading a 120-strong delegation of business leaders and ministers, Rouhani will spend two days in Rome before flying to France on Wednesday, looking to polish Tehran's diplomatic credentials at a time of turmoil in the Middle East.

An Italian government source said the Iranians would sign up to 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) worth of deals in sectors from energy to infrastructure and from steel to shipbuilding.

"This is just the beginning of a journey. There are sectors where we must work closer together," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said, standing alongside Rouhani.

"I am sure this visit will be a fundamental part of our ability to overcome together the challenge of fighting terrorism, atrocity and evil that we all have to confront together," Renzi added, referring specifically to Islamic State militants, who oppose Iran and the West in equal measure.

Rouhani had originally been due to visit Europe in November but cancelled the trip after an Islamic State attack on Paris, which killed 130 people.

"We have always been in the front line against terrorism ... we have to continue (cooperating with Italy) to secure a genuine peace in Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Libya," the Iranian president said, speaking through a translator.

Many Western nations have accused Iran of funding various militant groups, and despite a landmark nuclear deal between world powers and Tehran last year, the United States is keeping some of its financial sanctions in place because of the alleged links and human rights abuses.

Story continues

This will complicate Iran's full return to international markets, but judging by the Italian and French businesses lining up to clinch deals there is an enormous appetite in Europe to revive old trade ties and boost the sluggish economy.

ECONOMIC HARDSHIPS

A pragmatist elected in 2013, Rouhani championed the 2015 accord under which Iran curbed its nuclear programme in return for the end of U.N., EU and some U.S. sanctions this month.

He is anxious to bring Western knowhow and products back home to prove to Iranians that the accord, contested by many hardliners, will help ease their prolonged economic hardships.

Iran announced plans at the weekend to buy more than 160 European planes, mainly from Airbus.

Among the deals struck on Monday were a pipeline contract worth between $4 billion and $5 billion for oil services group Saipem, up to 5.7 billion euros in contracts for Italian steel firm Danieli and up to 4 billion euros of business for infrastructure firm Condotte d'Acqua.

Italian business leaders, including the heads of oil firm Eni and carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, attended a dinner for Rouhani on Monday. At the request of the Iranians, no wine was to be served. France refused the same request so there will be no state dinner for Rouhani in Paris.

While Italy was not involved in the prolonged nuclear talks, France was, and it took a hard line towards Tehran in the negotiations. It has also been outspoken in its condemnation of Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and sceptical of the country's other Middle East interventions.

This is likely to make Rouhani's visit to France later this week more prickly than his stay in Italy.

"Trust needs to be built. It's like love. It is only the proof of love that counts," said a senior French diplomat.

The boss of oil group Total, Patrick Pouyanne, is among top French executives who are expected to hold one-on-one meetings with Rouhani.

The Iranian leader is due to address up to 500 Italian business leaders on Tuesday before meeting Pope Francis, who is likely to discuss peace prospects for the Middle East and raise the question of human rights in Iran. ($1 = 0.9223 euro) (Writing by Crispian Balmer; additional reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Stephen Jewkes, Isla Binnie, John Irish and Bate Felix; editing by Alison Williams)
ROME, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Italian companies will sign commercial agreements with Iran worth between 15 billion and 17 billion euros ($16.2 and $18.4 billion) during President Hassan Rouhani's visit in Rome this week, an Italian government source said on Monday.

Rouhani arrived in the Italian capital on Monday morning and will leave for Paris on Wednesday. It is the Iranian leader's first visit to Europe since financial sanctions were lifted this month.

($1 = 0.9242 euros) (Reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
(Adds confirmation and details from Danieli)

ROME, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Italian steel firm Danieli will sign about $5.7 billion in commercial agreements with Iran during President Hassan Rouhani's visit in Rome this week, a company spokesman confirmed on Monday.

A government source told Reuters earlier that the contracts were worth about $4 billion euros, but a company spokesman later said the total value of the agreements was higher and included a joint venture with other international investors, including Iranians.

The joint venture, worth $2 billion, will be called Persian Metallics, said the Danieli spokesman, giving no further details.

Danieli will directly sign contracts with several Iranian companies for machines and equipment to produce steel and aluminum for a total of $3.7 billion, the company said.

Rouhani arrived in the Italian capital on Monday morning and will leave for Paris on Wednesday.

He is leading a 120-strong delegation that includes Iranian entrepreneurs as well as the oil and gas minister and other government officials. He will meet Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi later on Monday and Pope Francis on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
Irish eyes are smiling in the world of mergers and acquisitions, with Milwaukees Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) becoming the latest U.S. company to capitalize on Irelands welcoming tax rates.

Johnson Controls, which makes automotive parts such as batteries and HVAC equipment, announced on Monday that it will acquire Ireland-based Tyco International (NYSE:TYC) in a $16.5 billion merger. The deal will establish a new tax home for Johnson Controls in Ireland, a corporate tax inversion that allows Johnson Controls to benefit from lower rates.

Ireland is a popular destination for American companies seeking a tax break overseas. The U.S. has a federal tax rate of 35%, the highest of any developed country. Meanwhile, Ireland offers a much lower rate of 12.5%, and the country just slashed its corporate taxes to 6.25% for earnings derived from research and development projects.

One should not forget that Ireland, notwithstanding their economic malaise of recent years, is called the Celtic Tiger for a reason, said Anthony Michael Sabino, a law professor at St. Johns Universitys Tobin College of Business. Celtic Tiger was a nickname for the Irish boom of the late 1990s. Ireland has a highly educated workforce, speaks the English language and the cherry on top is their low tax rates.

U.S. firms also see Ireland as a gateway to the rest of Europe, and Silicon Valley has been a big investor in Ireland.

Under U.S. rules, tax inversions are allowed if the American companys shareholders will own less than 80% of the combined business, and certain restrictions kick in if ownership exceeds a 60% threshold set by the Treasury Department. Johnson Controls said its shareholders will hold approximately 56% of the new company, Johnson Controls Plc, upon completion of the merger.

Tax Inversions Gain Steam

The largest inversion deal on record was orchestrated by pharmaceutical titan Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), which announced in November that it would acquire Irish drug maker Allergan for $160 billion. Through the merger, Pfizer will move its primary headquarters from New York to Dublin. Burger King (NYSE:BKW) made headlines when it purchased Tim Hortons of Canada, which also has lower taxes than the U.S. Last summer, medical device maker Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) finalized its takeover of Irish rival Covidien, a former subsidiary of Tyco.

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Tyco itself is familiar with tax inversions. Just last week, Tyco agreed to a settlement with the IRS in connection to the companys 1997 inversion that established a tax domicile in Bermuda. Tyco has also split into three companies on two separate occasions over the last decade, spinning off businesses including ADT (NYSE:ADT). The slimmed-down Tyco moved its global headquarters to Ireland in 2014. Its U.S. base is located in Princeton, N.J.

Tycos history is important here. Decades ago, they were one of biggest conglomerates in the country with business lines in hundreds of different sectors. They were one of the leaders in using a non-U.S. address for tax advantages, Sabino said.

Pressure from D.C.

Inversions have drawn fire from Capitol Hill and the campaign trail. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed to create an exit tax to discourage the practice. President Barack Obama has called tax inversions unpatriotic, and the Treasury Department altered its rules that eliminated some of the tax benefits of corporate inversions. But since the rules were announced 16 months ago, a dozen inversion deals have been consummated.

Republicans are said to be working on legislation that would deal with tax inversions, but many lawmakers on the GOP side have argued that inversions are a product of a burdensome U.S. corporate tax structure.

Donald Trump, who leads the GOP field in the latest Fox News national poll, wants to lower the nations main corporate tax rate to 10%, thereby making inversions unnecessary. In the FOX Business debate earlier this month, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the $2 trillion that U.S. firms are holding overseas should be taxed at 8.75%, while the corporate tax rate should be lowered to 25%.

More than Just Taxes

Sabino believes some level of concern over regulatory or legislative action always exists, but companies consider that risk before even considering a deal. Bankers will take into account how much changes to tax rules may cost in the long run. Meanwhile, analysts at J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) estimate that Johnson Controls currently pays roughly 19% in taxes, which is already well below the top U.S. rate.

Anyone who does a deal solely for tax purposes is a fool, he said, adding that Johnson Controls and Tyco appear to be a natural fit based on their product lines.

Johnson Controls and Tyco lauded other benefits of their combination aside from the tax break, saying only that they expect at least $150 million in annual tax synergies. On a conference call with analysts, executives said not much overlap exists between Johnson Controls and Tyco, which provides security and fire-protection systems for commercial buildings.

Johnson Controls, a $23 billion company, was already seeking ways to expand beyond the automotive business. A plan to spin off the firms automotive unit, which makes seats and other interior parts, remains on track to be completed early in the first fiscal quarter of 2017.

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President Barack Obama said in a new interview that Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vermont) presidential campaign is not directly comparable his own 2008 White House bid.

Sanders has been surging in the race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Obama also waged an insurgent campaign against in the 2008 contest.

Politico correspondent Glenn Thrush asked Obama whether he bought into the notion that Sanders was an "analog" for his own candidacy against Clinton eight years ago.

"I don't think that's true," the president replied in the interview, which was published Monday morning.

Obama then heaped praise on both candidates.

"I think they're both passionate about kids having a great education," he said. "I think they want to make sure everybody has healthcare. I think that they both believe in a tax system that is fair and not tilted towards, you know, the folks at the very top. But, you know, they  I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete longshot and just letting loose."

He added: "I think Hillary came in with the  both privilege and burden of being perceived as the front-runner."

Obama did concede, however, that Sanders had "tapped into a running thread in Democratic politics that says: Why are we still constrained by the terms of the debate that were set by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago?"

"Why is it that we should be scared to challenge conventional wisdom and talk bluntly about inequality and, you know, be full-throated in our progressivism?" Obama said. "And, you know, that has an appeal and I understand that."

Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton

Obama said Clinton, in contrast, had adopted a more pragmatic message. Clinton served in Obama's administration for four years after losing to him in the 2008 primary.

"I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives," he told Thrush. "I don't want to exaggerate those differences, though, because Hillary is really idealistic and progressive."

Story continues

The Iowa caucus is just a week away, and the various polls  which have been all over the map, showing both Sanders and Clinton with strong, single-digit leads  suggest a close race there. Obama predicted that if Sanders were to win Iowa and then New Hampshire, the second voting state, the Vermont senator would start facing serious scrutiny of his campaign proposals.

"I think that if Bernie won Iowa or won New Hampshire, then you guys are going to do your jobs and, you know, you're going to dig into his proposals and how much they cost and what does it mean, and, you know, how does his tax policy work and he's subjected, then, to a rigor that hasn't happened yet, but that Hillary is very well familiar with," Obama said.

The president later suggested Sanders' candidacy was something like a "bright, shiny object" to voters looking for something new.

"I've gotten to know Hillary really well, and she is a good, smart, tough person who cares deeply about this country, and she has been in the public eye for a long time and in a culture in which new is always better," he said. "And, you know, you're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people don't, haven't seen before. That's a disadvantage to her."

Obama continued: "Bernie is somebody who  although I don't know as well because he wasn't, obviously, in my administration, has the virtue of saying exactly what he believes, and great authenticity, great passion, and is fearless. His attitude is, 'I got nothing to lose.'"

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A lot of attention in the US is paid to the economic impact the crash in oil prices has had on states like Texas, North Dakota, and Oklahoma.

But Alaska, the largest state in the US by land mass, is also feeling the pain from oil prices that have collapsed in the last 18 months.

In a note on Monday, Morgan Stanley's municipal bond team looked at the revenue shortfall facing Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas as a result of lower oil prices and lower business activity.

And while Texas is often the headline state we talk about when we talk about bad news for US oil companies, no state has a larger percent of GDP  or is facing a bigger decline in tax revenue  than Alaska.

Screen Shot 2016 01 25 at 8.22.24 AM

Morgan Stanley notes that the situation in Alaska has led its governor to call for an income for the first time in state history.

Employment in the oil and gas sector in Alaska has started to roll over as well, falling 6% from a year ago in November with total employment as of November about equal to where it was at the start of 2014.

fredgraph (9)

Alaska, along with Louisiana, has also called special legislative sessions to address the problem, Morgan Stanley notes. Oklahoma has also imposed budget cuts.

And of course the problem for all these states is the assumptions they'd made on where oil prices would be over the next three years. Each of these states  as almost every company and country did, too  way overestimated where prices would when making forecasts in 2014. These states then overshot again in budget assumptions made last November.

And the latest collapse in oil prices means these numbers will have to come down once more.

Screen Shot 2016 01 25 at 8.26.42 AM

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* WTI's premium to DME Oman at more than 5-year high

* Koch may ship Oman crude to U.S. Gulf Coast - traders

* U.S. last imported Omani crude in 2013 - EIA

By Florence Tan

SINGAPORE, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The United States could receive its first Oman cargo in three years after a brief opening of the arbitrage window earlier this month when U.S. crude prices strengthened against Omani oil futures, traders said on Monday.

The arbitrage shipment would add to a wave of crude from Africa and Europe making its way across the Atlantic to the world's largest oil consumer. The move comes just weeks after the U.S. government repealed a decades-old law banning oil exports.

"The lifting of the export ban has ironically incentivised imports into the U.S.," Energy Aspects analyst Virendra Chauhan said.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose this month to its highest premium against DME Oman futures in more than five years. U.S. prices have rallied relative to other benchmarks after the oil export ban and the prospect of slowing shale oil supply growth as drillers shut rigs.

Middle East crude prices, on the other hand, have been depressed by expectations of a rise in Iranian oil exports after world powers lifted sanctions on the OPEC producer.

Traders also cited falling freight rates as a factor in enabling the arbitrage flow. Freight rates for Very Large Crude Carriers that send Middle East crude to the U.S. Gulf (TD-RTA-LOP) have dropped 39 percent since mid-December, according to Reuters data.

Several oil-trading sources have said that U.S. refiner Koch may have fixed a tanker to ship 2 million barrels of Omani crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The company declined to comment.

The shipment would be the United States' first crude imports from Oman since 2013, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

"Maybe Koch can take it into its own system, but refiners there are not too keen on the grade. Basrah Heavy is much better," said Adi Imsirovic, a member of the Surrey University Energy Economics Centre, referring to the Iraqi grade.

Story continues

The United States is drawing about 500,000 barrels per day of imports from producers including Norway and Nigeria, in a surprisingly rapid revival of flows that had dwindled to nearly nothing in 2014-2015, after the U.S. shale oil revolution got in full swing.

Russian Urals will also be heading to the U.S. Gulf Coast after a four-year hiatus.

"Iranian barrels coming into Europe may well push more Urals into U.S. Gulf," Imsirovic said.

(Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Its now nearly a year since waves of migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia began pounding European shores. Apart from the appalling human tragedies unfolding daily, it looks as if the greatest casualty of all may be Europe itself.

On Friday, 40-odd migrants, including 17 children, drowned off the Turkish coast as they headed for the Greek islands. If you barely noticed, youre among many who have grown inured to such relentlessly grim reports from the Mediterranean.

Related: End of Europe? Berlin, Brussels' Shock Tactic on Migrants

Each incident is sadder than the last for one simple reason: Europe has yet to come up with a coherent policy providing for (1) safe passage into the European Union, (2) orderly settlement of those who make it, and (3) measures to reduce the flow, if not eliminate it.

George Soros, the politically minded billionaire investor, brought the emerging reality home in an interview with a German business journal earlier this month. The E.U. is on the verge of collapse, Soros observed.

Soros had a lot on his mindthe aftereffects of the Greek crisis, the politics of austerity and its opponents, the threat of a British exit from the E.U., Ukraine and tensions with Russiabut it was the migration flow that produced his pithiest judgment. We dont have a European asylum policy, he said. It has transformed this past years growing influx of refugees from a manageable problem into an acute political crisis. (The New York Review of Books just published an edited version of the interview.)

Related: European Economy Would Suffer If Free-Travel Zone Collapses

The core of the problem lies in the divergent interests of E.U. members. Some, notably but not only in eastern and southeastern Europe, are more concerned with saving national borders than with saving livesto say nothing of the humanitarian principles that are supposed to bind European culture into one.

In consequence, E.U. leaders flail in their search for a solution at this point. The day of the latest tragedy at sea, the Financial Times reported from Brussels that they are privately considering ring-fencing Greece at its northern border to block the flow of migrants into Macedonia and onward into Western Europe.

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This is desperation. It would trap tens of thousands of migrantsturning Greece into a black box, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras put it last weekend. Although Macedonia isnt an E.U. member, the move would also deal a huge blow to the unions open-borders principle as embodied in its Schengen policy.

The threats to Europe can now be divided into two, one among its ranks and the other on its eastern flank. The first is more formidable, but its a marginal call: Theyre both huge and serious.

Related: Arrests, Security Fears Dampen New Year Spirit in Europe

A current of xenophobia and rightwing nationalism has gathered strength across Europe for many months. Its most notable manifestation came last September, when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban presented a radical six-point plan to fortify Europes borders in defense of Christian culture.

Now comes a bigger threat. Following the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Years weekend, conservative MPs in Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union are breaking into open revolt against the German chancellors courageously humanitarian policy on the migrant question.

Despite domestic resistance, more than a million migrants passed through Merkels open door last year. If she is forced to accede to the demands of CDU rebelsfull border controls, almost all refugees barredSchengen will be curtains and the E.U. will lose its wisest leader on the migrant crisis and probably its direction.

Europes other problem, ever more evident, is Turkey. Its now plain that its effort to recruit the Ankara government as a lynchpin ally in stanching the flow of migrants into Europe has been completely ineffective.

Related: Fear and Few Answers as Turkish Police Round Up Syrian Refugees

This is the reality behind the nonsensical talk last week of fortifying Greeces border with Macedonia. In effect, such a policy would move the front line in the migrant crisis from Turkeys coast westward to Greeces northern frontier.

Its an admission of failure: Recip Tayyid Erdogan, Turkeys president, has proven more or less a deadbeat since the Europeans, in a pact signed last November, committed to giving Turkey $3.3 billion in refugee-related assistance.

After the injury comes the insult. Over the weekend, Turkish Premier

Ahmet Davutoglu announced on arriving in Berlin for talks with Merkel that the Erdogan government now insists on yet more money.

Related: No Drop in Asylum Seekers Reaching Germany, Berlin Says

The 3 billion is just to show the political will to share the burden, Davutoglu said in an interview with DPA, the German press agency. We will review it again and again and we are not begging for money from the E.U. But if there is a serious will to share the burden, than we will have to sit and talk about all of the details of the crisis.

One could call this a shakedown in broad daylight, but thats not polite. Lets just say (1) it isnt an accurate account of what was agreed in November, (2) it is highly doubtful the E.U. spent 3 billion just to show political will, and (3) Merkel is possessed of an awesome patience.

As background here, there is formidable evidence that members of the Erdogan government may be profiting from the Islamic States illicit oil trade. My sources in Europe and Turkey tell me there are indications Turkish officials may also be taking a cut from migrant traffickers.

These reports bear investigation. If theres a question of serious will at issue, as Davutoglu suggested, its more likely to lie with Turkey than the E.U.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
kwame kilpatrick

The family of imprisoned and disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) posted a lengthy Facebook message attributed to him detailing how he and other officials were aware of problems with Flint's water supply more than a decade ago.

He said that, in addition to himself, members of the Michigan Legislature and former Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) were also aware of problems with Flint's water supply.

However, his statement loses credibility after he said that he and others tried to get a deal together to have Flint on Detroit's water supply in 2006. Flint was already connected to Detroit's water system in 2006 and had been for years prior before switching over to the Flint River in April 2014, MLive.com reported.

Kilpatrick took shots at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) for his handling of the public health disaster.

"When the current Governor of Michigan says that he 'only recently was made aware of this issue,' he is being misleading at best," Kilpatrick wrote. "But more than likely, he is being viciously, aggressively, and deliberately untruthful. I pray that the truth comes out. That's what everyone in Michigan wants right? The Truth! Well, my prayer is that you all will have an opportunity to warm yourselves at the fire of Truth."

He also wrote that "99% of Detroiters have NO idea why" he's in prison.

"I am here in prison, with a 28-year sentence, for a case where there is NO EMBEZZLEMENT, NO MISUSE OF PUBLIC FUNDS, NO BRIBERY, NO STEALING OF ANY MONEY, as a matter of fact, NO PUBLIC MONEY AT ALL," he wrote. "And NO CHARGES THEREOF! 99% of Detroiters have NO idea why I'm here. They don't know the charges, nor what I'm sentenced for. They sure do know the rumors."

Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison after he was convicted in 2013 of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, conspiracy, extortion, attempted extortion and bribery, per MLive. He served as mayor of Detroit from 2002 through 2008.

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At the time, Assistant US Attorney Mark Chutkow called the case one of the most significant instances of public corruption in the US, according to USA Today.

I just humbly and respectfully ask for a fair sentence  I respect the jurys verdict," he said at his sentencing hearing in 2013. "I think your honor knows I have disagreed in terms of the specific things I was found guilty on, but I respect the verdict and I also respect the American justice system."

Flint's water supply first became contaminated in April 2014, when the city was controlled by a state-appointed emergency manager, per the Free Press. Months of warnings from residents about the lead-infused water went mostly ignored by state and local officials. A recent release of emails by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) showed that his office was aware of complaints from residents from the moment the water source was switched, roughly a year and a half before the state took major actions last October.

"I wonder how much time you get for knowingly & actually delivering unsafe, dangerous, and poisonous drinking water to the people you represent?" Kilpatrick said. "Which in-turn causes deaths, permanent illnesses, and disabilities. Can you actually be hated, hurt, and imprisoned for ridiculous rumors about murder ... and not be for actually killing people?"

Here's the full letter posted to Facebook by Kilpatrick's family via Detroit TV station WXYZ:

"FYI

Just so you all know. We (The Detroit Water and Sewage Department) were talking about the problems of the Flint Water Department (financial management, ability to perform, cleanliness of water, elimination of contaminants, mercury levels, lead levels) back in 2004. We knew (our folks in Detroit, SEMCOG, Genesee County Officials, some members of the State Legislature, and the Governor at that time) new that there were significant issues with all of those items.

In 2006 we attempted to craft a deal to put them on our water system. We were in negotiations, led by Victor Mercado, for months, and I wanted to make it work. I attended one meeting, and was on a conference call for another, expressing my willingness to make this work. SEMCOG and Judge Fiekens was also aware of this. SEMCOG was against the Agreement! BUT, the people in Genesee County, at the table during that time (the County Drain Commissioner & his staff, a State Senator, and a State House Member all from Genesee County) wanted to keep control of the system. Also, former Michigan Governor, Jennifer Granholm, was well aware of the issues with the Flint Water Department, and their inability to produce contaminant free water moving forward, nor afford the equipment & technology to do so.

When the current Governor of Michigan says that he "only recently was made aware of this issue", he is being misleading at best. But more than likely, he is being viciously, aggressively, and deliberately untruthful. I pray that the truth comes out. That's what everyone in Michigan wants right? The Truth! Well, my prayer is that you all will have an opportunity to warm yourselves at the fire of Truth. I am here in prison, with a 28-year sentence, for a case where there is NO EMBEZZLEMENT, NO MISUSE OF PUBLIC FUNDS, NO BRIBERY, NO STEALING OF ANY MONEY, as a matter of fact, NO PUBLIC MONEY AT ALL. And NO CHARGES THEREOF! 99% of Detroiters have NO idea why I'm here. They don't know the charges, nor what I'm sentenced for. They sure do know the rumors. I wonder how much time you get for knowingly & actually delivering unsafe, dangerous, and poisonous drinking water to the people you represent? Which in-turn causes deaths, permanent illnesses, and disabilities. Can you actually be hated, hurt, and imprisoned for ridiculous rumors about murder...and not be for actually killing people? I pray for justice for the people of Flint! And I also pray that God will give to all of you in Michigan the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. That you all may have your eyes opened with understanding. The blindness is hurting lots of people. Its even killing some. OPEN YOUR EYES! KMK"





More From Business Insider


Mohammed Khalid, 7, eats roasted corn at a beach as the sun sets in Mumbai, May 27, 2012. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash/Files

HAMBURG (Reuters) - Indian state-run trading company PEC has made a purchase of 225,500 tonnes of yellow corn likely to be sourced from Ukraine in an international tender which closed earlier in January, European traders said on Monday.

The corn was bought from South Korean trading house Daewoo International for January/February shipment, they said.

Indian officials had said on Friday that PEC was likely to award the contract in the tender to purchase and import up to 250,000 tonnes of corn without genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) to Daewoo.

Traders said the purchase comprised 80,500 tonnes bought at $191.99 a tonne c&f, of which 40,000 tonnes was for shipment on Jan. 27 to Feb. 17 and 40,500 tonnes on Feb. 8-27.

A further 65,000 tonnes was purchased at $193.49 a tonne c&f for shipment between Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, they said.

The remaining volume was purchased at $192.99 a tonne c&f with 45,000 tonnes for shipment on Feb. 1-20 and 35,000 tonnes between Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, they said.

Sources said on Dec. 31 the Indian government would ask state-run traders to import half a million tonnes of duty-free corn after a second drought in the country cut crops in what would be the country's first overseas purchase in 16 years.

India is traditionally a major corn exporter to South East Asia, but higher local prices due to the first repeat drought in nearly three decades and domestic demand have hampered exports.

Indian government sources said on Jan. 13 that PEC would issue a new tender for 200,000 tonnes of corn in the coming week but no tender has yet been issued.

Traders said they now expect a new tender to be issued by PEC in the first week of February.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by David Evans)
J. Michael Pearson, Chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., speaks during their annual general meeting in Laval, Quebec May 20, 2014. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

(Reuters) - Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc's (VRX.TO) (VRX.N) ailing chief executive, Michael Pearson, said he was on the road to recovery but was uncertain about when he would return from medical leave.

Pearson, who joined Valeant as CEO in 2010 after a 23-year career at consultancy McKinsey & Co, was hospitalized with severe pneumonia in late December.

"As you know, I unexpectedly entered the hospital in late December to receive treatment for severe pneumonia and some unexpected complications resulted in a longer hospital stay than anticipated," Pearson said in a memo to employees on Monday.

"...I look forward to being back at work when able," he said.

Pearson's illness capped a tumultuous year for Valeant as investors turn up the pressure for the Canadian drugmaker to provide a more detailed plan on how it will increase profits in 2016.

Valeant has faced concerns and criticism over steep price increases on some drugs and close ties to a specialty pharmacy that used aggressive methods to overcome insurer barriers to reimbursing its medicines.

The Laval, Quebec-based company has since cut ties with the pharmacy and reached a deal to distribute its drugs through leading pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA.O).

Valeant in January named its former chief financial officer and Pearson's long-time lieutenant, Howard Schiller, as interim chief executive.

The move to appoint Schiller came after Valeant said that a group of company executives would take over for Pearson until he returned, an unusual arrangement that sent shares diving.

During most of the years Pearson led the company, Schiller worked alongside him. The two employed a rapid growth strategy based on a constant stream of acquisitions and drug price increases.

Valeant's shares have taken a battering in the last five months and tumbled more than 66 percent from its August high of $263.70. They were up 0.6 percent at $89.10 in premarket trading.

(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Shounak Dasgupta)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) labor leader has rejected a push by management for a big rise in productivity at the core autos division and said planned structural changes were causing "unease" among workers, according to an interview published on Monday.

A goal from Volkswagen (VW) brand chief executive Herbert Diess to increase productivity by 10 percent this year is "unrealistic" and may result in job cuts among salaried employees, works council chief Bernd Osterloh said in an interview with online platform IG Metall bei Volkswagen.

"We will not support a further drive towards performance," Osterloh said. "We principally view productivity in a positive way ... But we expect that VW at the same time guarantees the security of employment."

Europe's largest automaker, faced with multi-billion euros of costs from its emissions-cheating scandal involving up to about 11 million cars, is in the midst of overhauling its troubled namesake brand where profit margins are languishing amid high labor outlays and costly in-house production of engines, transmissions and other components.

Diess, a former BMW (BMWG.DE) executive, is pushing a strategic overhaul at VW's biggest division by sales, including steps to give more power to regional operations and streamline decision-making.

"The 12 point plan of Mr Diess is causing unease" among workers already disturbed by the fallout from the emissions crisis, said Osterloh. "At the moment there are more questions than answers. That is bad."

(Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Mark Potter)
How 2015 Panned Out for Europe-Focused Mutual Funds

(Continued from Prior Part)

Performance evaluation

The T. Rowe Price European Stock Fund (PRESX) fell 1.1% in December 2015 from the previous month. In the three-month period ending December 31, the fund rose 1.8%. In the six-month period, the fund fell by 4.9%. In the one-year period, the fund has returned just 0.6%. Meanwhile, from the end of December until January 22, the fund has fallen 7.5%.

The fund did not have a good 2015. It ranked eighth for the year among the ten funds in this review. Lets look at what has contributed to this poor performance.

Portfolio composition and contribution to returns

The PRESX has the second-longest track record among the ten funds in this review. The fund began in February 1990. According to its latest geographical disclosure, companies from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Germany are the funds top three geographies, in that order.

The latest complete portfolio available for the fund is as of September 2015. Thus, we will take that portfolio as our base and consider valuation changes as they stand at the end of December 2015 for our analysis. All portfolio percentages mentioned from here on refer to their weights as per changes in valuation from September to December.

The information technology sector, which forms 7% of the assets, emerged as the biggest positive contributor to the funds returns in 2015. Denmark-based SimCorp was the main reason the sector was able to contribute the most to the funds returns. Further, all stock picks from the sector contributed positively.

The consumer discretionary sector, which makes up a fifth of the funds assets, emerged as a distant second to information technology. Howden Joinery Group, along with a few others, powered the sector ahead. However, Burberry Group (BURBY) and other negative contributors had a substantial impact on the sectors overall contribution.

The positive contributions from Intesa Sanpaolo (IITSF) and UBS Group (UBS) for the financial sector were nearly undone by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) and a few others.

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Energy and materials emerged as sizable negative contributors, further hurting the funds returns. The energy sector was led down by Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) while materials were led down by Johnson Matthey and BHP Billiton (BHP).

Reasons for poor performance

Detractors across sectors were primarily responsible for the poor performance of the fund in 2015. They led to financials and consumer discretionary sectors contributing far lower than they would have otherwise. Negative contributions by energy and materials just worsened things for PRESX. Had it not been for the flawless performance from components of the information technology sector, the fund would have fared far worse than it did in 2015.

Well look at the Franklin Mutual European Fund  Class A (TEMIX) in the next article.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
* Mosquito-borne virus linked to birth defects in Brazil

* Brazil's Butantan Institute aims to develop vaccine

* GSK and Sanofi reviewing vaccine possibilities

* More research needed into potential sexual transmission (Adds comment from GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, graphic link)

By Tom Miles and Ben Hirschler

GENEVA/LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

Zika transmission has not yet been reported in the continental United States, although a woman who fell ill with the virus in Brazil later gave birth to a brain-damaged baby in Hawaii.

Brazil's Health Ministry said in November that Zika was linked to a foetal deformation known as microcephaly, in which infants are born with smaller-than-usual brains.

Brazil has reported 3,893 suspected cases of microcephaly, the WHO said last Friday, over 30 times more than in any year since 2010 and equivalent to 1-2 percent of all newborns in the state of Pernambuco, one of the worst-hit areas.

The Zika outbreak comes hard on the heels of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, demonstrating once again how little-understood diseases can rapidly emerge as global threats.

"We've got no drugs and we've got no vaccines. It's a case of deja vu because that's exactly what we were saying with Ebola," said Trudie Lang, a professor of global health at the University of Oxford. "It's really important to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible."

Large drugmakers' investment in tropical disease vaccines with uncertain commercial prospects has so far been patchy, prompting health experts to call for a new system of incentives following the Ebola experience.

"We need to have some kind of a plan that makes (companies) feel there is a sustainable solution and not just a one-shot deal over and over again," Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said last week.

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The Sao Paulo-based Butantan Institute is currently leading the research charge on Zika and said last week it planned to develop a vaccine "in record time", although its director warned this was still likely to take three to five years.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said on Monday it was studying the feasibility of using its vaccine technology on Zika, while France's Sanofi said it was reviewing possibilities.

RIO CONCERNS

The virus was first found in a monkey in the Zika forest near Lake Victoria, Uganda, in 1947, and has historically occurred in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. But there is little scientific data on it and it is unclear why it might be causing microcephaly in Brazil.

Laura Rodrigues of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said it was possible the disease could be evolving.

If the epidemic was still going on in August, when Brazil is due to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, then pregnant women should either stay away or be obsessive about covering up against mosquito bites, she said.

The WHO advised pregnant women planning to travel to areas where Zika is circulating to consult a healthcare provider before travelling and on return.

The clinical symptoms of Zika are usually mild and often similar to dengue, a fever which is transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito, leading to fears that Zika will spread into all parts of the world where dengue is commonplace.

More than one-third of the world's population lives in areas at risk of dengue infection, in a band stretching through Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Zika's rapid spread, to 21 countries and territories in the Americas since May 2015, is due to the prevalence of Aedes aegypti and a lack of immunity among the population, the WHO said in a statement.

RISK TO GIRLS

Like rubella, which also causes mild symptoms but can lead to birth defects, health experts believe a vaccine is needed to protect girls before they reach child-bearing age.

Evidence about other transmission routes, apart from mosquito bites, is limited.

"Zika has been isolated in human semen, and one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission has been described. However, more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission," the WHO said.

While a causal link between Zika and microcephaly has not yet been definitively proven, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the circumstantial evidence was "suggestive and extremely worrisome".

In addition to finding a vaccine and potential drugs to fight Zika, some scientists are also planning to take the fight to the mosquitoes that carry the disease.

Oxitec, the UK subsidiary of U.S. synthetic biology company Intrexon, hopes to deploy a self-limiting genetically modified strain of insects to compete with normal Aedes aegypti.

Oxitec says its proprietary OX513A mosquito succeeded in reducing wild larvae of the Aedes mosquito by 82 percent in an area of Brazil where 25 million of the transgenic insects were released between April and November. Authorities reported a big drop in dengue cases in the area.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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PLATTSMOUTH  Cass County District Court officials spent more than two hours Monday morning working through cases that contained plea agreements.

* One of the first cases involved Plattsmouth resident Jacob J. Bond, 19. Bond pled guilty to a Class I misdemeanor charge of theft by receiving-$201 to $499. There was no agreement regarding sentencing.

Deputy County Attorney Steven Sunde told the court a Plattsmouth resident reported his motorized scooter was stolen at approximately 8:30 a.m. on May 25, 2015. The resident said the scooter was somewhat rare and had specific markings on it.

Sunde said a neighbor saw Bond riding the scooter in the same area of town the following day. The neighbor notified police soon after.

Bond remains free on bond. A sentencing hearing will take place March 15.

* Omaha resident Ameretta M. Trusler, 23, pled guilty to a pair of Class I misdemeanors during her court appearance. Trusler entered pleas to one count of theft by receiving-$500 to $1,500 and one count of resisting arrest. She also agreed to pay $1,069.76 in restitution to the victim.

Deputy County Attorney Colin Palm told the court Omaha police were notified of a stolen vehicle Aug. 21. The stolen vehicles description and identification information were logged into a statewide law enforcement database.

A Nebraska State Patrol trooper noticed a disabled vehicle on the shoulder of a section of Interstate 80 located in Cass County Sept. 25. The trooper pulled over to assist the driver and a passenger. Trusler was one of the people in the car.

Palm said the trooper attempted to arrest Trusler after he learned the car had been stolen from Omaha. Palm said Trusler did not comply with his request and attempted to walk away from him. The trooper was eventually able to place Trusler under arrest.

Trusler remains in Cass County Jail. Sentencing will take place March 15.

* Plattsmouth resident Kyle W. Jordan, 25, pled guilty to a Class IIIA felony of violation of sexual offender registration-failure to report. The state and defense both agreed to recommend a sentence of one year in the Nebraska Department of Corrections. A new state statute requires that Jordan would then serve between nine and 12 months on post-release supervision.

Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox told the court Jordan violated several requirements of the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry. He said Jordan had been staying at a Plattsmouth home but moved away from that address without telling authorities. Cox said Jordan also left his place of work in Plattsmouth early one day and never returned. Jordan also failed to attend required meetings with Cass County Sheriffs Office authorities.

Jordan was placed in Cass County Jail in December for failing to abide by several terms of a pre-trial release program. The court set a sentencing date of Feb. 29.

* Plattsmouth resident Brandi R. Jorgensen, 21, pled guilty to a Class IV felony charge of criminal impersonation. The state agreed to dismiss a possession of methamphetamine charge in exchange for the guilty plea. Jorgensen also agreed to plead guilty to three charges of theft in Cass County Court.

Sunde told the court a Cass County Sheriffs Office deputy made a routine traffic stop of a vehicle on Highway 75 Dec. 16. Jorgensen was a passenger in the car. She gave an incorrect name to the trooper when she was asked to identify herself.

Sunde said Jorgensen used a family members name because she did not want to be arrested. She had avoided an arrest earlier in the year after she had used the same inaccurate name at another traffic stop.

Sentencing will take place Feb. 29. Jorgensen is currently serving a one-year sentence in Cass County Jail on a separate charge. She was convicted of attempted possession of controlled substance-methamphetamine last year.

* Omaha resident Jesse E. Smith, 24, pled guilty to a Class IV felony of possession of controlled substance-methamphetamine. There was no agreement regarding sentencing.

Deputy County Attorney Richard Fedde told the court a Cass County Sheriffs Office deputy stopped Smiths car for expired license plates June 20. The deputy learned Smith was carrying a glass pipe with residue. A chemical test later revealed the pipe contained 0.3 grams of meth.

Smith remains free on bond. Sentencing will take place March 28.

* Havana, Ill., resident Chevon A. Rogers, 35, pled guilty to a Class IV felony of possession of controlled substance-methamphetamine. The state agreed to dismiss a shoplifting charge in exchange for the guilty plea. The state also agreed to not pursue any possible charges stemming from a search warrant carried out Oct. 9.

Fedde told the court Plattsmouth police were called to a store near downtown Plattsmouth July 7 for a shoplifting complaint. Police located Rogers at another area store and questioned her. She allowed police to search her bag for the stolen items.

Police found a silver spoon with white residue on it. Fedde said a chemical test later confirmed the substance was meth. Rogers remains free on bond. Sentencing will take place March 28.

* Cass County resident Daniel W. Lang, 48, pled guilty to a pair of Class I misdemeanor counts. Lange entered pleas to one count of attempted possession of controlled substance-methamphetamine and theft by receiving-$201 to $499. There was no agreement regarding sentencing.

Fedde told the court Lang had been living in a trailer in Avoca last spring. The property owner called authorities after she discovered a rocket propane heater and multiple plumbing tools inside the trailer.

Cass County Sheriffs Office deputies executed a search warrant at the property soon after. Deputies found multiple tools bearing the name of an Otoe County plumbing business. They also discovered a syringe and pipe that contained methamphetamine residue.

Lang is currently taking part in a pre-trial release program. Fedde asked the court to change Langs bond in that program. He said Lang had missed three scheduled drug tests with local authorities. The most recent violation occurred Jan. 19.

Defense attorney Julie Bear told the court there were valid reasons for the absences. She provided a written letter from Langs employer as an explanation for one of the absences. She said he was unable to secure transportation from his new address in western Cass County on one of the other dates.

Judge Jeffrey Funke required Lang to take a drug test by the end of the week. Funke said he needed to know if Lang was currently using drugs. He said he would use that information to determine if Lang was a suitable candidate for probation.
PLATTSMOUTH  A Plattsmouth man confessed to multiple criminal charges Monday morning during an appearance in Cass County District Court.

Garrett M. Munday, 18, pled guilty to two Class I misdemeanor counts at the beginning of his plea hearing. Munday pled guilty to one count of attempted terroristic threats and one count of domestic assault-third degree.

Munday also agreed to plead guilty to four charges at a future Cass County Court hearing in February. Deputy County Attorney Steven Sunde said Munday would plead guilty to disturbing the peace, violation of domestic abuse protection order, false reporting and possession of marijuana-less than one ounce.

The state agreed to dismiss a felony charge of robbery in exchange for guilty pleas on the other counts in district and county courts. There was no agreement regarding sentencing in the district court case.

Sunde told the court Munday had been in a relationship with a female in Plattsmouth. He said the relationship had become strained by the time of the incident on Oct. 10.

Sunde said Munday drove to the womans Plattsmouth residence and began banging on the front door. Munday pushed aside a family member and walked into the house when the family member opened the door.

Sunde said Munday went into the womans bedroom and began removing some of his clothes from a closet. He then threw the woman to the cement floor hard enough for her head to bounce. Sunde said Munday then threw the woman into a nearby wall and made threatening statements to the family member. He then stomped on the womans right foot as he was leaving the house.

Munday was arrested soon after the incident took place. He remains in Cass County Jail.
An area archive which houses a large assortment of Danish documents and photographs is helping to bring an international bestselling author to Nebraska.

The Danish American Archive and Library in Blair is co-sponsoring an event featuring Sara Blaedel of Copenhagen, author of the No. 1 international bestselling series featuring Detective Louise Rick.

Blaedel will speak at 1 p.m. Feb. 6 at the University of Nebraska at Omahas Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library. The public is invited to the free event.

Those who attend can learn more about Blaedel, author of nine bestselling crime fiction novels published in 23 countries and translated into more than 13 languages.

In 2014, Blaedel was voted Denmarks most popular novelist for the fourth time in 2014.

Her latest crime fiction novel, The Killing Forest, includes details of ancient Nordic religions. In the book, readers take a journey with the detective as she reconnects with a longtime close friend and navigates a small towns network of deadly connections.

Blaedel is a former journalist and books-in-translation publisher. She is visiting Omaha on her United States tour of The Killing Forest.

Blaedels talk is co-sponsored by the Danish American Archive & Library, which collaborates with UNO on different projects. The first collaboration in 2011 was a large photo exhibit called, Danish Children Growing Up American, said Sandra Wigdahl, archive board member.

Wigdahl said the Danish archive originally was formed at Dana College in Blair. After the college closed in July 2010, thousands of documents and books were transferred to a building at 1738 Washington St., in Blair.

The books include anything pertaining to Danes or Danish Americans, Wigdahl said.

Different than a museum, the archive has a collection of documents such as letters, postcards, diaries, business and medical records  anything thats paper.

It portrays the lives of these Danish American immigrants and it shows how they lived day to day, Wigdahl said.

The documents range in date from the mid to late 1800s to the present day.

Were still collecting documents to this day, Wigdahl said.

Books include Danish bibles from 1500s.

Recently, the archive received a large collection from the estate of the late operatic tenor Lauritz Melchior. The Danish and later American opera singer appeared in movie musicals, radio and television and made many recordings.

Dana College formerly displayed Melchoir memorabilia.

Area residents are encouraged to attend Blaedels talk in February. Parking is free on the UNO campus on Saturdays. Light refreshments will be served at the event.
The Nebraska State Bar Association has announced its new online resource for the public, the Nebraska Find-A-Lawyer website.

The new website, www.nefindalawyer.com, allows members of the public to search for a licensed attorney by area of practice and/or area of the state. The search functions also allow clients to identify lawyers who suit other needs, such as attorneys who are bilingual or who are licensed in multiple states.

Search results present a randomized list of licensed attorneys who fit the requested criteria. By clicking on the attorneys name, the public can learn more about the attorneys practice area, expertise, and experience.

All attorneys listed in the Nebraska Find-A-Lawyer website have an active law license in good standing and are covered by professional liability insurance.
Political science PhD specializing in delegate selection rules, presidential campaigns and elections. Founder of FHQ Strategies LLC
Situated on a 64 acre private parkland estate overlooking the stunning Gulf of Thailand, the Royal Cliff Hotels Group has been honored with multiple awards and recognition from organizations of national and international repute.

The latest addition of these awards is the 2016 TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award For Top Luxury Hotel given to The Royal Wing Suites & Spa.

Receiving the TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award is a true source of pride for our entire team at the Royal Wing Suites & Spa. Mr. Vitanart Vathanakul, Executive Director of the Royal Cliff Hotels Group said. This prestigious accolade based on guest reviews is a remarkable vote of confidence to our services and excellence in hospitality. I am truly grateful to our valued guests who took the time to cast positive comments and recommendations towards our property on TripAdvisor and who greatly appreciate our continued commitment to service quality and guest satisfaction.

Thailand and specifically Pattaya is one of the most sought after travel destinations for tourists. Staying in the right hotel can guarantee a luxurious experience filled with facilities, amenities and adventures. The Royal Cliff Hotels Group operates four award-winning hotels providing tourists from home and abroad with the ultimate experience. The success has created a new high point for the Group, which has so far won over 195 national and international awards.
ICS  International Conference Services in Denmark wins another large Association Management Contract.

ICS has just signed a contract with EACTA - European Association of Cardiothoracic Anaesthesiology for 4 years. ICS will organise the two Annual Congresses as well as handle the Memberships, the Secretariat and the online training. Per Ankaer, Managing Director of ICS says: We are very proud, that EACTA has chosen to work with ICS for the coming years. ICS has in recent years increased the number of permanent clients and EACTA was looking for a boutique Conference and Association Management Company with a large international network and a lot of experience.

President of EACTA, Peter MJ Rosseel, MD, Amphia Hospital Breda, The Netherlands says, After a carefully conducted process comparing different international AMC players we agreed with International Conference Services from Copenhagen as our new AMC & PCO partner. The EACTA Board believes that with ICS we have found a partner that matches the size and goals of EACTA. We are looking forward to a lasting relationship aimed at further supporting the broad EACTA community.
Turkish Airlines will introduce Batmans Gotham City and Supermans Metropolis as newest U.S. Destinations via sponsorship.

Turkish Airlines today announced its partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures on the highly anticipated action adventure film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In the movie, a pivotal scene unfolds aboard a 777 Turkish Airlines plane.

Turkish Airlines is unveiling innovative movie-themed experiences that give fans around the world an inside look into the world of the iconic Super Heroes facing off for the first time on the big screen when the film comes to cinemas worldwide beginning March 25, 2016.

We are delighted to be partnering with Turkish Airlines to take Batman and Superman into the skies and to fans everywhere, said Gene Garlock, Warner Bros. Pictures Executive Vice President, Worldwide Promotional Partnerships. What made Turkish Airlines such an inspiring partner was their aspiration to dream up something more than just a promotional program but an experience that would be as original and epic as the film.

Drawing inspiration from the film, Turkish Airlines has created an array of experiences, beginning with an invitation for travelers to book flights to two new U.S. destinations  Gotham City and Metropolis. Turkish Airlines currently flies to 113 countries, more than any other airline, with flights to 284 destinations  now including the home cities of Batman and Superman.

Showcasing Gotham City and Metropolis as our newest U.S. destinations reinforces our commitment to grow Turkish Airlines visibility in the U.S., an important and growing market for the airline, said M. Ilker Ayc, Turkish Airlines' Board Chairman.

Beginning February 8th through Mid March 2016, Turkish Airlines is inviting fans and newcomers alike to visit turkishairlines.com/flytogotham or turkishairlines.com/flytometropolis to reserve flights and begin their journey into the world of Gotham City and Metropolis. In doing so, participants will get an exclusive virtual view into the life of each city, including the activities, culture, nightlife and more.

With the Gotham City and Metropolis virtual experience as the centerpiece of its partnership with Warner Bros., Turkish Airlines is also sponsoring the movies premieres and will offer eight lucky fans the opportunity to attend one of these gala events. Further, beginning today, Turkish Airlines will start unveiling its movie-themed activations, including:

An exclusive 777 Turkish Airlines wrapped in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justiceimagery;

Limited edition movie-themed in-flight amenity kits for adults, which includes an eye mask and slippers;

Limited edition movie-themed in-flight amenity kits for children, including headphones, slippers, and a watch;

Movie-themed in-flight menu items, such as branded cookies and cupcakes;

A Time Out travel guide featuring content focusing on Gotham City and Metropolis, which will be distributed to moviegoers, passengers and at select venues;

A special edition frequent flyer Miles & Smiles card.

Fans can also join the online conversation around the movie using the hashtags #flytogotham and #flytometropolis.
Shopping is a highly relevant component for travelers when choosing and preparing their trip said Yolanda Perdomo, Director of the Affiliate Members Programme at UNWTO.

Shopping Tourism was on the UNWTO agenda at a conference organized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) on the occasion of the Spanish Tourism Fair (FITUR) (22 January 2016).

UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai said, Shopping is becoming an increasingly relevant component of the tourism value chain. Shopping has converted into a determinant factor affecting destination choice, an important component of the overall travel experience and, in some cases the prime travel motivation. Destinations have thus an immense opportunity to leverage this new market trend by developing authentic and unique shopping experiences that add value to their touristic offer while reinforcing, and even, defining their tourism brand and positioning.

More importantly, shopping is one of the major categories of tourists expenditure, representing a significant source of income for national economies both directly and through the many linkages to other sectors in the economy.

Maria Jose Perez, from 'Madrid 7 stars', an initiative that engages 300 brands, commented that 80% of Chinese tourists who travel to Madrid position shopping as a major motivation.

Jorn Gieschen, Researcher at the Instituto de Empresa (IE) and the MasterCard Observatory on Premium Markets and Prestige Products underlined that shopping tourism is intimately related to city travel which constitutes 58% of the total.

"There is an additional concept about shopping tourism: that of small and local shopping experiences which according to our research is much more attractive for travelers than the big global brands" he added. One of the trends shared was the so-called Bleisure - the combination of Business and Leisure. 58% of business travelers add a day or even a weekend to their business trip he said.

Eva Ruiz Cendon, Director of Marketing at Mastercard indicated that "despite the fact that 80% of payments worldwide are done in cash, electronic and mobile payments offer excellent opportunities for businesses. She also shared the companys Priceless Cities Programme, that engages cities such as Madrid and New York. The initiative facilitates leisure activities in relevant destinations in cooperation with brands and shops.

One of the most awaited interventions of the 2nd Conference on Shopping Tourism was Michel Durrieu, Director of Tourism at the Ministry of Foreign affairs and International Development in France, who introduced the issue of sustainability linked to shopping tourism, mentioning a recent innovation: the digital certificate. Diversity, price and quality, opening hours, customer orientation in shops, handicrafts and souvenirs quality were mentioned by the Director of Tourism in France, as key aspects to advance in shopping tourism.

For more details about the subject, read UNWTO Global Report on Shopping Tourism
The Sturgis Fellowship in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest of the prestigious fellowships at the University of Arkansas. The award was established at the University of Arkansas in 1985 through the generous philanthropy of Dallas-based Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable and Educational Trust with an endowment of $2 million. The programs success led to additional gifts in 1992 and 1998, bringing the total program endowment to $10 million.

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Conservative thoughts on the issues of today
France is going to assist in lifting sanctions imposed by the West on Russia by summer this year, Emmanuel Macron, Frances Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, has announced.

"The objective we all share is to provide the lifting of sanctions by the summer, as far as the [peace] process [in southeastern Ukraine] is respected," the French senior official said on Sunday while addressing French businessmen in Moscow, as cited by AFP.

Read more

Macron was referring to the situation in southeastern Ukraine, which saw the US and a number of European countries, including France, imposing restrictions on Russia. To solve the Ukrainian crisis, contact groups have met several times in Minsk, Belarus capital, with the participation of French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin, resulting in the so-called Minsk agreements.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has also pointed out that the sanctions are to be removed when the package of Minsk peace deal measures is fulfilled. "It is possible in these next months to find those Minsk agreements implemented," Kerry said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss city of Davos.

The French economy minister is now in Moscow heading a French delegation attending a session of the French-Russian council on economy, finance, commerce and trade matters, which will take place on Monday, for the first time since 2013. The French embassy in Russia has said that the realization of a number of joint projects in energy, space, transport and other spheres is still to be discussed, RIA Novosti reported. The cooperation of small businesses and medium-sized enterprises is also on the table.




This is the site for news and resources for the course 'Global Energy and the American Dream,' aka GEAD, taught in the department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.









I'll be posting relevant information and news. I'll also post (and sometimes editorialize) on issues of local, national and global import.





I take notes here. They are just notes, often full of typos. Some parts of the site need to be updated, but I'm short on time. Be patient.





I embrace and defend academic freedom and the pursuit of climate truth. The standard disclaimer applies: I speak for myself. Not the university, not the department, not the students.





#divest #keepitintheground #renewables




MUSCATINE  A huge crowd, including some from outside of Iowa, packed the Muscatine High School gymnasium Sunday afternoon to see and hear from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In a one-hour address, Trump challenged his fellow GOP rivals, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush; two of the three Democrats running for president, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders; and President Obama.

Were going to win again. Were going to win a lot. We are going to make our country great again. Were going to be very proud of these days. But you have to go out. You have to caucus, Trump said.

He chastised Iowa Republicans for not picking the eventual Republican nominee in the last 16 years.

You have not had a winner in so long. I give you my word: Youre going to have a winner (in me), he said. The large crowed erupted into cheers and chants of Trump, Trump, Trump.

He vowed to use his skills as a negotiator in business to help advance the Untied States.

Ill be the greatest jobs president that God ever created, he said.

Trump pledged to lower taxes on corporations and businesses, turning the U.S. from having one of the highest tax rates in the world to one of the lowest.

He supports the Keystone pipeline with the provision that the United States receive 25 percent of the profits.

I want a piece of the deal. Doesnt that make sense?

He called on constitutional scholars to determine if Ted Cruz is eligible to run for president, having been born in Canada to American citizens. A line about Cruz being able to run for U.S. president and prime minister of Canada got big cheers from the crowd.

Continuing to attack his Republican rivals, Trump called out Jeb Bush for a series of negative ads running in Iowa.

Its time to give up, Jeb.

Many in the crowd were waving signs with the message, The Silent Majority stands with Trump. Some sported Trump hats. Others wore Trump T-shirts.

He saved some political venom for the Democrats seeking their partys nomination.

Trump said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders sounded like a communist. On Clinton, he said she supported many policies of President Obama as a way of staying out of prison.

Trump was introduced by Iowa State Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann of Wilton.

Donald Trump has brought some energy into this party, Kaufmann said.

Kaufmann promised the full backing of the Iowa Republican Party regardless of which candidate wins the nomination

Jim Switzer, Williamsport, Indiana, drove four hours to see Trump.

He fulfilled everything I wanted to hear. You kind of got to go along with some of it that you dont like. But thats part of it and its for the cameras, Switzer said.

Switzer said hadnt planned to vote in 2016 and Trump has restored his faith in the political process.

Wearing a white Trump hat, Rick Levandowski, Independence, Wisconsin, is a military contractor who works overseas.

Ive been watching him for a long time and one of the biggest things that strike me is hes not beholden to anyone. I am a libertarian. Here I am, Levandowski said.

Two Illinois sisters traveled to Muscatine to see Trump.

I wish he had talked more about the issues, said Victoria Menconi, of Bartlett, Illinois. I would have liked to hear more of substance.

Menconi is leaning toward Trump but not sure who she will vote for.

Zach Jirak, of Muscatine, a student at Western Illinois University, brought a classmate, Matthew Hutchison, of St. Louis, Missouri, to the rally. Jirak is a criminal justice major.

I completely agree when he says cops are the most misunderstood people out there, Jirak said.

Hutchison also supports Trump.

I really wanted to see him give a speech because I am really behind what he says, Hutchison said.
MASON CITY | An Illinois man recently arrested in Mason City faces federal drug charges.

Mark Hurn, 43, was indicted last week on charges of felony conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

He's accused of conspiring to distribute 280 grams or more of a drug with a cocaine base from October 2015 to Jan. 13, according to the indictment.

Hurn was arrested on Jan. 13 on a state charge of delivery of crack cocaine.

The state charge has since been dismissed.

Hurn remained held without bond on Monday at the Cerro Gordo County Jail in Mason City.

-- Molly Montag
Deerfield Beach, FL, Jan. 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zion Research has published a new report titled Cyclopentanone Market for Pharmaceuticals, Biological, Perfumes & Aromas, Rubber Chemicals, Insecticides and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2014  2020. According to the report, global demand for cyclopentanone was valued at USD 100.0 million in 2014, and is expected to reach USD 130.0 million in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 4.5% between 2015 and 2020.

Cyclopentanone is a cyclic ketone that is a colourless liquid having strong odor. It is also known as cyclopentanone, ketocyclopentane. It is derived from adipic acid at very high temperature in the existence of barium hydroxide. It is highly flammable liquid that is soluble with water and it is heavier than air. Cyclopentanone is an important intermediate chemical used in the production of rubber chemicals, insecticides, biological and pharmaceuticals.

Browse the full "Cyclopentanone Market for Pharmaceuticals, Biological, Perfumes & Aromas, Rubber Chemicals, Insecticides and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020" report at http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/cyclopentanone-market-z41366

The major driving factor for cyclopentanone market is expanding pharmaceuticals industry on global scale. Increasing demand for cyclopentanone for the manufacturing of various chemicals is expected to drive demand for cyclopentanone in the years to come. Furthermore, cyclopentanone is likely to provide numerous opportunities in flexible electronic displays, pharmaceutical formulations in emerging economies.

Different application segments of the cyclopentanone market include pharmaceuticals, biological, perfumes & aromas, rubber chemicals, insecticides and other including electronic solvent, paints and varnish remover, and oil extraction. Perfumes and aromas was one of the largest application markets for cyclopentanone in 2014. However, pharmaceutical is also expected to exhibit rapid growth in demand during the forecast period. Rubber chemicals and insecticides segment are also important end markets for cyclopentanone and expected to witness strong growth in the near future.

Browse 13 Market Tables and 20 Figures spread through 70 Pages and an in-depth TOC on Cyclopentanone Market - Global Size, Shares, Trends, Segment & Forecast to 2020

Get Sample Research Report at http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/cyclopentanone-market-z41366#RequestSample

The global cyclopentanone market was dominated by Asia Pacific with largest share in total volume consumption in 2014. Demand for cyclopentanone in the region is primarily driven by strong demand from China. North America is another leading regional market for cyclopentanone due to increase in end-use applications in the region in 2014. Moreover, Europe and North America are also further expected to have significant growth during the estimated years between 2015 and 2020 owing to roust demand for fragrance versatility across the globe.

The key players for the cyclopentanone market include Solvay, BASF, ZEON CHEMICALS, Zhejiang NHU Co., Ltd, Xinyi Dongsheng Chemical Co., Ltd, Shandong Guorun Chemical Co., Ltd, Company eight, Pearlk Chemical Materials (Qidong) Co., Ltd, Zhonggung Group, Liaoning Jiazhi Chemicals, Caffaro and WanXiang International.

Related Published Reports:

Potassium Chloride Market: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/potassium-chloride-market-for-fertilizers-pharmaceuticals-industrial-and-z37212

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/potassium-chloride-market-for-fertilizers-pharmaceuticals-industrial-and-z37212 Succinic Acid Market: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/succinic-acid-market-for-14-bdo-resin-coatings-dyes-z38310

http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/succinic-acid-market-for-14-bdo-resin-coatings-dyes-z38310 Water Soluble Fertilizers Market: http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-water-soluble-fertilizers-market-z37352

The report segments the global cyclopentanone market as:

Cyclopentanone Market: Application Segment Analysis

Pharmaceuticals

Biological

Perfumes and aromas

Rubber chemicals

Insecticides

Other (Including electronic solvents, paints and varnish removers, oil extraction)

Cyclopentanone Market: Regional Segment Analysis

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Middle East and Africa

Browse Cyclopentanone Market Press Release at http://www.marketresearchstore.com/news/global-cyclopentanone-market-144

About Us

Market Research Store is a market intelligence company providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. MRSs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.

Each MRS syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.

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FULLERTON, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- To support autism charities and special education, Bourbon Street Bar and Grills seventh annual FREE family carnival benefit, Mardi Gras for Autism will be held outside Bourbon Street Bar and Grill in the adjacent Fullerton Train Depot parking lot located at 110 E. Commonwealth Ave. in Fullerton on Saturday, April 16, 2016, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Says Larry Houser, the co-owner of Bourbon Street Bar and Grill and founder of Fullerton Cares, This is a special celebration for all people of all abilities in our community in support of special education programs Houser became involved with autism after his son Boyd, age 7, was diagnosed with autism at age 2.

The family-friendly, all abilities, free event is designed to encourage families to enjoy the fun of Mardi Gras while raising money for Fullerton special education programs, featuring many activities appropriate for children of all ages and abilities.

Public information: info@fullertoncares.com. This event is proudly supported by media sponsors including Jack FM, Autism Live and OC Mom Magazine.

ABOUT MARDI GRAS FOR AUTISM: Mardi Gras for Autism festival raises funds benefitting the Fullerton School Districts autism programs. http://fullertoncares.com/autism-events/mardi-gras-for-autism/ https://www.facebook.com/mardigras.forautism?fref=ts Video: http://youtu.be/udmycp_pXd4

ABOUT FULLERTON CARES: Awareness, acceptance and action are the pillars of Fullerton Cares, which spreads autism awareness throughout North Orange County and was founded by Lawrence Houser, after being inspired by his son, Boyd, with autism. Raising funds for autism charities and programs in Fullerton schools through organized events, Fullerton Cares was founded in 2010 and has raised over $75,000 for autism initiatives. http://fullertoncares.com/ https://www.facebook.com/FullertonCaresAutismFoundation

ABOUT BOURBON STREET: Established in 2007, Bourbon Street offers California Cajun cuisine in the heart of historic downtown Fullerton with a menu made entirely from scratch featuring farm fresh, locally sourced ingredients. In addition to a world-class selection of slow-aged bourbons and whiskies, Bourbon Street features a wide array of bottled and draught beer, as well as a comprehensive wine list. Bourbon Street is located at 110 E. Commonwealth Ave, Fullerton, CA 92832 with 800 adjacent parking stalls. Reservations can be made at 714-626-0050. http://bourbonstreetfullerton.com

ABOUT AUTISM: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), autism now affects about 1 in every 68 American children, including 1 in 42 boys. Autism is a complex condition that affects a persons ability to communicate and develop social relationships, and is often accompanied by behavioral challenges.




CHICAGO, Jan. 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For two years in a row, adjunct professors from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago have been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois Judges Association.



Retired Judge Raymond McKoski recently was honored with the Illinois Judges Association Lifetime Achievement Award at the Illinois State Bar Association luncheon. Retired Judge Sheila Murphy, co-director of John Marshall's Restorative Justice Project, received the honor in 2014.



The Lifetime Achievement Award is given as a token of appreciation for the time and valuable contributions recipients give to the Illinois Judges Association. Winners of the award are selected based on their many years of service and for promoting a strong and independent judiciary.



Judge McKoski was first appointed to the bench in 1985. In his more than 25 years as a judge, he served as an Associate Judge, Circuit Judge and was later unanimously elected Chief Judge of the Illinois 19th Judicial Circuit. He is renowned for his expertise in judicial ethics and lectures to lawyers and judges in the U.S. and the U.K. He recently was the keynote speaker at the joint meeting of the Illinois Judges Association and Illinois State Bar Association. Judge McKoski has been an adjunct professor at John Marshall since 2010 and teaches Client Interviewing and Counseling, Professional Responsibility and Jury Selection.



Judge Sheila Murphy is a retired judge from the Circuit Court of Cook County. Judge Murphy presided over the Sixth District Court in Markham, which encompassed 37 towns and more than one million people. She supervised 23 judges and was a pioneer in starting community treatment courts. After exonerating Verneal Jimerson  a man wrongly convicted of rape and murder  from death row in 1996, Judge Murphy retired and worked tirelessly to abolish the death penalty in Illinois. She has been an adjunct professor at John Marshall since 2001, as well as the co-director of the law school's Restorative Justice Program. Judge Murphy recently co-edited the book Restorative Justice in Practice: A Holistic Approach with John Marshall Restorative Justice Project Co-Director Michael Seng.



About The John Marshall Law School



The John Marshall Law School, founded in 1899, is an independent law school located in the heart of Chicago's legal, financial and commercial districts. The 2016 U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools ranks John Marshall's Lawyering Skills Program fifth, its Trial Advocacy Program 16th and its Intellectual Property Law Program 17th in the nation. Since its inception, John Marshall has been a pioneer in legal education and has been guided by a tradition of diversity, innovation, access and opportunity.



For more information, contact Christine Kraly at 312-427-2737 ext. 171 or ckraly@jmls.edu.
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft / Key word(s): Change in Forecast 25.01.2016 18:23 Dissemination of an Ad hoc announcement according to  15 WpHG, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Munich, January 25, 2016 Ad-hoc Announcement according to  15 WpHG (Securities Trading Act) Siemens raises EPS guidance for FY 2016 After a strong start into the fiscal year 2016, the Managing Board of Siemens AG decided to raise the previous expectation for basic EPS from net income in the range of EUR5.90 to EUR6.20 to the range of EUR6.00 to EUR6.40. Disclaimer This document contains statements related to our future business and financial performance and future events or developments involving Siemens that may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by words such as "expect," "look forward to," "anticipate" "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek," "estimate," "will," "project" or words of similar meaning. We may also make forward-looking statements in other reports, in presentations, in material delivered to shareholders and in press releases. In addition, our representatives may from time to time make oral forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the current expectations and certain assumptions of Siemens' management, of which many are beyond Siemens' control. These are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and factors, including, but not limited to those described in disclosures, in particular in the chapter Risks in the Annual Report. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying expectations not occur or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results, performance or achievements of Siemens may (negatively or positively) vary materially from those described explicitly or implicitly in the relevant forward-looking statement. Siemens neither intends, nor assumes any obligation, to update or revise these forward-looking statements in light of developments which differ from those anticipated. This document includes - in IFRS not clearly defined - supplemental financial measures that are or may be non-GAAP financial measures. These supplemental financial measures should not be viewed in isolation or as alternatives to measures of Siemens' net assets and financial positions or results of operations as presented in accordance with IFRS in its Consolidated Financial Statements. Other companies that report or describe similarly titled financial measures may calculate them differently. Due to rounding, numbers presented throughout this and other documents may not add up precisely to the totals provided and percentages may not precisely reflect the absolute figures. Contact: Siemens Investor Relations Wittelsbacherplatz 2 80333 Munchen +49 (0) 89-636-32474 investorrelations@siemens.com 25.01.2016 The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language: English Company: Siemens Aktiengesellschaft Wittelsbacherplatz 2 80333 Munchen Germany Phone: +49 (0)89 636-00 Fax: E-mail: investorrelations@siemens.com Internet: www.siemens.com ISIN: DE0007236101 WKN: 723610 Indices: DAX, EURO STOXX 50 Listed: Regulated Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt (Prime Standard), Hamburg, Hanover, Munich, Stuttgart End of Announcement DGAP News-Service ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
WESTMINSTER, Colo., Jan. 25, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GeneThera Inc. (OTC: GTHR) announced today that it has secured a new laboratory facility. Dr. Tony Milici, CEO of GeneThera, stated; "This is an important step towards expanding our molecular robotics and DNA therapeutic vaccine platforms". The 8,000 square feet facility will be a fully integrated molecular robotics laboratory, which will house GeneThera IRSA robotic equipment to test milk products. It will also test Chron's disease to detect Mycobacterium Para tuberculosis in a highly sensitive way. In addition, we will have a "state-of-the-art" DNA vaccine laboratory fully dedicated to the development of Johne's and Chron's disease therapeutic vaccines." GeneThera is planning to move to the new laboratory facility once space renovation is completed. The projected moving date is presently scheduled for March 31st 2016.

Mycobacterium Avium Para tuberculosis (MAP) is the causative agent of Johne's disease also known as Para tuberculosis. Johne's disease (JD) is a globally devastating incurable chronic inflammatory intestinal disease of dairy cow, sheep, and goats. It has been estimated that over 70% of the dairy cowherd in the US alone are infected with MAP. A large number of studies have shown a relation between JD and Crohn's disease; a severe and possibly, lethal chronic inflammatory disease of the human intestine. MAP is resistant to standard pasteurization procedures. Recent studies have also shown baby formula samples were positive for MAP infection.

About GeneThera, Inc.

GeneThera, Inc. is a molecular biotechnology company located in Denver, Colorado. The Company's proprietary diagnostic solution is based on a genetic expression assay, GES and Johne's disease management system, HERDCHECK, designed to function on a highly automated molecular robotics platform. This platform enables GeneThera to offer tests that are presently not available from other technologies. The GES and HERDCHECK systems are designed for a host of individual diseases, the current priority being Johne's disease.

http://www.genethera.net

This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the Safe-Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "intends," "believes," and similar expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the timely development and market acceptance of products and technologies, the ability to secure additional sources of finance, the ability to reduce operating expenses, and other factors described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The actual results that the Company achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statement due to such risks and uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
Sat, 10/15 (12pm ET): Getting into Stanford GSB with GMAT 770 - How David Made it Possible in 6 Months
Sean Bianca, aka, "GOP GIRL", is a lifelong Republican who after strongly supporting former President Donald Trump, voted for now President Joe Biden. Sean Bianca had never voted for a Democrat in her life, until... Trump. Sean Bianca at present is disenchanted with the GOP as it continues to defend and support Donald Trump. Follow Sean's political journey as she struggles with her political affiliation and shares her passion for politics and her country.
Snowmageddon 2016 has come and gone, and though you've thus far managed to survive off wine and oatmeal packets, scurvy is beginning to kick in. It's time to eat real food before you kill and cook your roommates. Here's where to feast this week:

Head to Chomp Chomp in the West Village on Monday for an eight-dish Singaporean hawker feast, hosted by the Tasting Collective. Chomp Chomp chef Simpson Wong will cook up some of his signature dishes, including Hainanese Chicken Rice, Char Kway Teow and Hah Zheung Gai, with beverages available for purchase. The dinner kicks off at 8:30 p.m. and costs $50 a head; purchase your ticket online.

On Tuesday, Burke & Wills on the Upper West Side is throwing an Australia Day celebration and offering a prix-fixe menu of special Aussie dishes. Offerings include Kangaroo Loin, Whole Roasted Barramundi, and Rack Of Australian Lamb; you can get five courses of your choosing for $60-per-person, or you can opt for a $95 menu paired with Australian wines. Dinner service begins at 5:30.

Also on Tuesday, Strip House Midtown will host a four-course winemaker dinner, with wine offerings from Chateau Cos dEstournel. The dinner kicks off at 6:30 p.m. and costs $250 to attend; make a reservation through the restaurant.
John Antoine was cooking soup in his Brooklyn home last October when an NYPD error almost ended his life. The 86-year-old man was tased twice in his Bergen Street apartment by officers who had originally been tasked with finding a 23-year-old man thought to be suicidal. But communication gaffes resulted in Antoine's wrongful tasering, and now the octogenarian plans to sue the police for $5 million.

Antoine described the October 14th incident in detail during an interview with the Daily News, stressing that it was his granddaughter's boyfriend "who was said to be acting emotionally disturbed after he ran out of his meds." Thinking the young couple was returning from the pharmacy, Antoine buzzed police officers into the building. Officers entered through his open apartment door, found him chopping onions with a knife, and ordered him to drop it.

"I said, Why are you coming in my apartment? What do you want?  the elderly man told the tabloid. Police allegedly refused to answer and tased Antoine in the neck as he turned to set down the knife. "I felt like I was dead," he said.

Antoine's family health insurance provider had originally placed the call to police, but mistakenly called the 63rd Precinct, rather than the 77th. A 63rd precinct cop then placed a 911 call and gave dispatcher information on the 23-year-old boyfriend. According to an investigation by the Daily news, "the botched confrontation was the result of lapses in information provided to patrol cops."

After being treated at two hospitals, Antoine was given a clean bill of mental health; police charged him with harassment for refusing to put down the knife.

Antoine's lawyer, Scott Rynecki, plans to file a $5 million lawsuit against the NYPD, stressing that the elderly man "was the victim of excessive force and was falsely charged with harassment."

A police spokesperson told the Daily News that the officers who tased Antoine acted in "appropriate fashion" and even commended them for refraining from the use of deadly force.

However, tasers can and do kill. Last summer, a Bronx man was fatally tased in his own apartment. Police claimed the man was emotionally disturbed and "brandishing scissors," despite his family's claims to the contrary. In 2008, a naked man fell to his death from Bed-Stuy balcony after the NYPD tased him. Across the country, one person each week on average.

Nick Berardini, director of the TASER documentary Killing Them Safely, argues that the weapon that NYPD officers used on Antoine encourages "a shoot first, ask later mentality. And instead of relying on de-escalation, police believe that the effects of tasers are inconsequential. It's a mentality that's really dangerous."

Berardini stressed that some of the blame for what happened to Antoine and other taser victims must be placed on TASER International, the monopolizing company that manufactures for and sells to police departments worldwide. "De-escalation is bad for the company's business," he said during a phone interview this morning. "But this will be anther case where the taser is responsible for damages. TASER International likes to talk about how they save departments from liabilityand that's just not true."


The first time I met Max Stark was the first time he came to the door to collect the rent, around 13 years before his brutal murder in early 2014. The urgent dingdingding knockknockknock dingdingding knockknockknock became known quickly among the residents of 315 Seigel Street as the Landlord Knock, the bell depressed so quickly that it didn't have time to ring so much as wheeze percussively. It was imitated widely.

Max arrived with his partner Sam, and for the first while I wasn't sure which bearded Hasid was which. They looked like a comedy team of sorts, an Orthodox Laurel and Hardy, Sam tall and bearded, Max short and bearded. They played off each other.

With his Yiddish accent, I was never sure if he knew my name or if he was calling me Jason. We all developed imitations of Max's particular type of matter-of-fact friendly landlordism. "Jesse/Jason!" goes mine, with a friendly palm-up wave of both hands. "How are you?"

When Max was abducted from a Williamsburg street during a snowstorm in January 2014, his body found burned in a dumpster and his business dealings reported in the New York tabloids, I learned that Sam was Israel Perlmutter, that Max was actually Menachem, and that many considered them slumlords. "Who didn't want him dead?" the Post asked on the cover.

One answer to that question: Me and my friends, who were Maxs tenants in a three-story loft building at 315 Seigel directly upstairs from the Morgan Avenue L stop. Most of us moved in when the A.M. Knitwear Corporation moved out, during the early summer of 2001, and lived there for the next decade. I don't doubt a single one of the accusations leveled against Max, except the one that he was heartless.

It'd be wrong to call Max "beloved," but he could border on endearing. He was just the landlord, and a pretty tolerable one at that. Max was a daily presence in our lives during those years, as the Morgan Avenue stop transformed around us from the East Williamsburg Industrial Park into an extreme model of Brooklyn gentrification, complete with a world-renowned pizza and greenhouse complex at Roberta's and a 24-hour quasi-organic grocery.

The proper Bushwick border was (and is) four blocks to the south, at Flushing Avenue. The building was technically on the far rim of eastern Williamsburg, but it didn't feel like that. My second floor room in the back was higher than just about anything in the landscape, a sea of low warehouses and garages extending towards a glimpse of the Midtown skyline. The building didn't get a proper certificate of occupancy until a few years after we arrived.

"Those were the buildings for the new or for the broke or for the new and broke," recalls a former real estate broker who occasionally worked with Max on buildings in others parts of Williamsburg.

"Seasoned New Yorkers were not calling me to move into those places, adults did not want those places But [Max] was also the first to really take the chance on converting the industrial buildings, had the foresight to buy them when they were cheap, and understood what the kind of people renting those units really wanted in terms of space and finish. He also went into areas where people thought he was crazy."

The ex-broker continues, "The amount of times people showed up at a building when the unit still wasn't finisheddespite me and the tenant calling to check that it would bewas shameful. It killed me, someone drove here with a U-Haul from Ohio and there's still no toilet in their unit. And the toilet was there, they just hadn't done it because no one had complained. Or no mailboxes, or locks, or leaks in the lobbythe list is just endless."

I'd been able to visit again, thankfully, to confirm the toilet had been finished. I don't think we had a refrigerator for the first few weeks. Or maybe it was hot water? The building certainly wasn't done, but it was summer in New York and I was 22 and what did I care?



The Zoolander-like indoor skateboard ramp (courtesy Mark Suppes)

At least in the experience of myself and most of the dozen or so former neighbors I remain in touch with, Max wasn't a slumlord. He was an opportunistic real estate investor from Williamsburg. If something was going wrong in the building, he was always easy to get on the phone.

From what I can discern, 315 was one of his earliest buildings, and perhaps he treated it (and us) with some fondness because of it. I'm not sure what else he owned at the time, but it couldn't have been much. Seigel Street was the bottom of the barrel in terms of loft space. Subdividing our room, my friends I eventually got our individual monthly rents as low as an idyllic $500 or even just below, but that didn't last terribly long.

By the time he was killed, Max was working on $6,000-per-month dwellings, like the recently evacuated luxury construction at 120 South Fourth Street, and rent at 315 is well past the $3,000 line by now. But in 2001, we were Max's lab.

The first few years, cars were constantly on fire out back, presumably for the insurance money. "They even burned a stretch limo once," remembers Mark Suppes, a freelance programmer working jobs for Gucci and others. He'd moved to Brooklyn a year out of college and built a recording studio in his corner loft at Seigel Street. Mark interacted with Max often.

"He was a pretty funny guy," Mark says. "There was something about his demeanor that was almost comical, and I almost felt like he was in on the joke, too. We discovered at some point that he was basically our age, and we were all shocked, because we assumed he must've been much older than us."

One semi-adult who did move in (and stay) was Joey Anuff, an early Wired employee and co-founder of pioneering internet snark dispensary Suck.com. Anuff found himself jobless after the first dot-com bust and living in a way-too-expensive place in the West Village. Through a broker, he found 315 Seigel Street.

"I think I paid $1,600 or $1,650," he remembers. "I was not the first Puerto Rican to live in Bushwick, but I was probably the first Puerto Rican to be paying $1,650 for a place in Bushwick," he says.

While Max benevolently looked the other way, 315 Seigel Street became an incubator for the new Brooklyn.



Recording studio and office with sleep loft. (courtesy Mark Suppes)

"He was like the Y Combinator dude for the East Coast," Joey says. "The unheralded Orthodox Jewish Paul Graham of Bushwick, but more rock and roll. Every third tenant had a band. That was half the reason that people got places there. There was no conceivable way that a neighbor of anybody on the block would complain about something being too loud."

The three-story loft at 315 Seigel Street was a constant sitcom co-starring Max Stark as the beleaguered, bemused landlord. The place smelled like a bongwater swamp from the moment you stepped through the front door, which I'd always (not illogically) attributed to sheer volume of weed smoke.

After I moved out, I found out that my side of the second floor alone contained two pot growing operations. And that's not to mention the dealers, of which there were at least two on each floor. There were start-ups. There were biker-hipsters who arrived just before the 2004 Republican National Convention and, in building lore, are the ones to blame when the bedbugs arrived. (They never made it to my room, thankfully.)

There were musicians and artists, of course. There was a glass-blower and students and teachers and environmentalists and freelancers (like myself) and carpenters and house painters and a music business accountant and more.

The building even had its own male model, who (just like in Zoolander) outfitted his room with a half-pipe for him and his skate-boarding buddies. His face appeared on billboards and in magazines constantly. Mark recently spotted him on a billboard in Thailand.

When Joey landed a new job at VH1, our hall had its own TV producer. A family with a kid moved in upstairs. Briefly. Recalls one friend, "I remember doing mushrooms with some friends who came to visit and we took a kettle of mine and were throwing it down the hall like it was a bowling ball." For all intents and purposes, the building was lawless.

The old canard that New York is always cooler before you moved here might be true, but the 10 years I got at Seigel Street gave me exactly what I expected and wanted out of New York: chaos. And it was Max Stark who made that possible. In that way, the building became one of an infinite amount of pivot points between the crazy old New York and its more buffed-up post-9/11 reiteration. I met a few good friends on the morning of 9/11, when we'd all gone up to the roof to peer at the columns of black smoke to the west where the World Trade Center used to be.

The DIY architecture sprouted quickly. "The way it stayed cheap as possible was the subdivision of spaces into cubbies," says Joey. "If you watched a show like Girls or any show that aspires to depict the day-to-day of hipster living, that's an element that's missing: the no-window cubby, the little fortress room."



Hallway marker board belonging to in-house food delivery start-up ZipMenu. (courtesy Mark Suppes)

Some rooms, like one upstairs with undulating plastic bedroom capsules, were inspired. Other rooms looked like tree forts. My friend Derek went through two iterations of his, landing on a version that included something like a bridge and a fire pole. But more often (as in my gradually evolving room) the results were rough experiments in beams, boards, and drywall.

At first, Max hired a super who turned out to be a crackhead that stole people's mail.

"My recollection of [him] centers around the silver moon boots that he wore which, upon reflection, were probably both unsellable and unstealable," Joey says. "Only in deep retrospect can you see that as the insanely fashionable L-train style move that it really was."

Eventually, Max hired a very nice and far more competent man for the job, who is perhaps still on duty. Max and the real estate company did try to improve the building. They got vending machines for the basement with $1 Busch (and Busch Lite) and other beverages. The scary industrial washers and dryers caught fire a few times, only once (that I recall) requiring a full visit from the fire department.

But after a while Max and his partners started to get the hang of it, and after that I remember them being on a constant mission to upgrade the property. They added faux-marble floors in the hallways, anda few years instarted pushing the rent up, which seemed inevitable from the moment the organic grocery opened on the corner.

By then, Max and Sam and SYC Realty (at least, that's who I wrote my checks to) had started buying up other property in the neighborhood and upgrading them the way they did 315 Seigel Street. As I noticed when I made friends with residents or ended up at parties in those buildings, each was slightly more upscale than the previous. Though residents at Seigel Street got justifiably pissed at Max and withheld rent with some frequency, nobody expected him to be a perfect landlord or for everything in the building to constantly work, like (say) the unpredictable but endlessly handy freight elevator.



A visit from the fire department, details unknown (courtesy Mark Suppes)

Sometimes, though, things broke down totally and completely, such as the fabled River of Shit. Mark Suppes had gone upstairs to see a friend during the debacle to discover Max standing in the open doorway with his friend, a professional furniture designer. In the background, a snaked hose had poked a hole through the tenant's toilet and was spraying the walls of the immaculate bathroom with feces. "Max is trying to calm him down," says Mark. "'Is no problem! Is no problem!'"

Like others who speak Eastern European languages, Max would often drop the article from his sentences, though I sometimes wondered if he was doing it deliberately.

"Is Max!" he would announce on voicemails, and this eventually became the hook of a song recorded by building resident Lawrence Becker, now a professional animator.

Various hacks could be used to avoid the Landlord Knock. One piece of shared knowledge was that Max was absolutely terrified of dogs. I once saw him literally turn heel and sprint in the opposite direction when he saw a dog coming from the far end of the hall. Many residents relished Saturdays, the one day our Hasidic landlords were guaranteed not to come knocking.

But besides the River of Shit (and the occasional building-saving FDNY hosedown), all the chaos more or less seemed part of the lease when moving into a loft in East Williamsburg. I often gave Max guff for the constant upgrades and told him I moved there because it no frills and cheap. He laughed. We generally got along, because I paid my rent on time relative to some neighbors, which is to say I usually only paid three or four weeks late.

"The real side of Max that nobody hears about is the landlord side," Joey Anuff says. "He was dealing with a group of people that might legitimately have been the worst tenants in America at that time. The least dependable, least bankable white people in all of New York. I almost felt bad for paying him on time. Paying rent, I felt like I was being gotten over on, compared to my other neighbors. 'You paid Max?! Wow!'"

One neighbor went a whole year without paying Max once. The building had received its certificate of occupancy by then and Max could have evicted him, but didn't. He did, however, make my broke friend's life a living hell, showing up early nearly each morning to do the Landlord Knock, and haranguing him endlessly.



Beautiful DIY architecture on the 3rd floor (courtesy Mark Suppes)

Others remember Max playing the good cop. "There were times when we were months behind, owing them thousands of dollars, and [the woman] at the office was threatening eviction, moving forward with filing papers," remembers Derek Dickinson, who got a spot in the building as a student and remained afterwards as he became a contractor. "Max would be the one who was cool to me. He'd call me and say, 'You're killing me, I had to leave the office to talk to you. [They] just want you out.' He was our advocate."

"He was a softy," recalls Emily Dean, a solar energy consultant, who moved into the building a few years later after spending time there. "We would have really cordial dealings, but I gave Max a lot of flak because he wouldn't shake my hand."

Mark Suppes pushed it to the limit. Quitting his freelance programming gigs, Suppes launched ZipMenu, a web-based food delivery start-up that started-up about a half-decade too early. He would eventually sell out to Delivery.com. But not before ZipMenu crashed and burned. Once one of Max's more reliable tenants, Suppes fell far behind with Max, who could be relentless in hunting late rent and often just seemed to enjoy the chase.

"After the damage had been done, I was pretty hard up," Suppes says. "My utilities got cut off. No electric, no hot water, the refrigerator stops working, no heat. But I'm also trying to run a start-up the best I can and I've got a pretty huge computer rig to power up, so I just ran an extension cord out the door and put an adapter into a light fixture. At one point, Max came by to collect the rent, which I didn't have, and saw that there was an extension cord running up to the ceiling, plugged into his power, and he looks at me and goes, [deadpan, in Yiddish accent] 'Mark, why you do this to me?'"

"I don't think it made him mad," Suppes says, recalling some amusement in Max's tone. "I think mostly he was just looking for another way to rib me."

Joey Anuff had landed a job in programming at VH1 and remained in Max's good graces. "Max had a genuine curiosity about his tenants," Joey says. "I'd talk to him about making television. He was really curious about television. He didn't own a television, but he thought it was a really interesting concept. He was definitely not the only person I met in Bushwick who didn't own a television and who told me that, but he was definitely the least judgmental about it."

"I think it challenged all he knew about reality to know that there were people as bad with money as his tenants," Joey says. "In the end, though, it seems like he was that worst of all, but that just makes you wonder if anybody can be good with money. If not Max, then who? If he didn't have his shit together, then the whole world is probably a sham!"



A brief vogue for tiny bike rides in the second floor hallway (courtesy Mark Suppes)

By the end of my tenancy at 315 Seigel Street, my share of the rent had risen to nearly $800. I still saw Max, but he stopped coming around to collect. Instead, he started sending the super, who would simply hand me a cell phone that had an unamused representative from the real estate office on the other end, demanding money immediately.

When I moved out, it happened to be near Max's developments on South 4th Street and I ran into him in the neighborhood frequently. I can't actually recall if I gave him shit about trying to price me out of my new neighborhood, too, but I think I did. I certainly intended to. Now, two years after his death, I'm sad he can't create any more chaos. Max Stark deserves a Coen brothers script or, as Joey Anuff suggests, a season of Serial.

My last concrete memory of Max is coming home one day to find him talking to my current landlord in front of my new place, both with smiles on their faces. Max greeted me warmly, as usual "Jason/Jesse!"

"Max has nothing but nice things to say about you," my new landlord said. "He says you always paid your rent on time." It's possible Max actually winked.

Jesse Jarnow (@bourgwick) is the author of Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock (Gotham, 2012) and Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America (out March 29th, Da Capo).
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This powerful 2 min video shows a family who was not eating organic due to cost. They switched as part of a study to see what would hap...
A recent Independent Record article discussed ways to prevent clergy sex crimes and cover ups in the Catholic church (Attorneys, author, bishop weigh in on how to prevent sex abuse by clergy). But one obvious and crucial step was not mentioned.

How about defrocking, demoting or disciplining church staff who ignore or conceal known or suspected child sex crimes? In our view, thats the quickest and easiest way to catch predator priests after victim one or two, instead of after victim 22 or 33.

This virtually never happens. Catholic officials admit that more than 6,200 US priests have been publicly accused of sexually assaulting kids. (See bishopaccountability.org) But virtually never has a Catholic employee lost a promotion or a days pay for hiding these crimes. (Three U.S. bishops have voluntarily resigned their posts for their reckless, callous or deceitful actions in clergy sex scandals. But again, no one in the church hierarchy has been really punished.)

Nothing will deter such complicity like firing those who enable such horror. But it hasnt happened. And sadly, theres no real sign that Pope Francis is willing to do this either.

David Clohessy is the executive director of SNAP, survivors network of those abused by priests. He lives in St. Louis.
The Lewis and Clark County Commission set aside a $228,000 proposal for use of the countys open space bond fund until it has more information.

A representative of the Prickly Pear Land Trust didnt object and said additional funding needed to complete the purchase of a conservation easement had not been obtained.

The land trust had hoped to receive $224,000 from the Montana Fish & Wildlife Conservation fund to use along with the open space bond money for the easement on nearly 125 acres along York Road.

The application for conservation trust funds for the project will be part of the organizations funding cycle for 2016.

The application will be part of the typical annual process where it is ranked against others, said John Hagengruber in December. Hagengruber is the chairman of the joint state-federal board, which is one of two boards that consider funding requests made to the conservation trust.

The citizen board, which is the other board that manages the trust, will meet in April and assign scores to all of the funding requests.

These projects with their rankings are then forwarded to the state-federal board that makes decisions in late April or early May, Hagengruber had explained.

Awards are made after a 30-day public comment period.

A county staff report noted that the applicant and sponsor wanted to close by the end of January 2016.

The land trust is the sponsoring organization for the request for open space bond funds.

A title report on the land had not been received when the commission opened a public hearing Tuesday on use of the bond funds, and the countys legal staff recommended against approving the request.

Concern was also voiced with what information had been provided, and the commission was advised to wait until an updated title report had been obtained.

Applicants for the conservation easement are Marty Welch and Susan Shellabarger, and Tia Nelson and Derek Brown. Brown and Nelson are seeking to buy the land, and the conservation easement makes their purchase more affordable.

The Welch property is about 25 miles from Helena and just before the Vigilante Campground. It is said to be the largest tract of private property in the Trout Creek valley.

Because public money from the open space bond is being sought for the easement, Brown said in December when the proposal was first considered, a parking lot will be developed and access provided for fishing and wildlife viewing. About 1 1/2 miles of the creek flow through the property.

The public needs to get something more out of it, more than just driving down the road and being able to see it, said Brown, who is a former Lewis and Clark County commissioner.

No hunting will be allowed on the property, as there is significant hunting opportunity on surrounding Helena National Forest land, nor will dogs be allowed because of livestock, a county staff report stated.
"Big Horn Basin" never looked so dirty.

Darkened amber-colored buildup fouls the snowcaps.

Unsightly white stains sully the flatlands below.

There are long hairs embedded in the once-clear blue sky, and a tear in the canvas fabric of the mountainside.

Nathan Terre, a Missoula-based art conservation and restoration expert, will bring this 1912 landscape painting back to its former glory.

The canvas, a sprawling 4 1/2 feet tall and 6 feet wide not including its original frame, is owned by the Masonic Temple Association of Butte.

The association hired Terre to apply his half-century of experience to fix up the piece by John Fery, who painted the basin and other scenes from Glacier National Park for the Great Northern Railway.

"It will be quite, quite different when it's finished," Terre said, while evaluating the repairs ahead.

"As you can see, it sags toward the bottom because the canvas is stretched," he said.

He'll remove it from the frame, and flatten and re-stretch it.

Then there's the missing pieces of oil paint from the tear, which are called "lacunae," Terre said.

He'll use exact tones to fill the gaps, but with an eye toward future owners' wishes.

"Everything that I do is removable, so the pieces I put back in aren't necessarily even oil," he said. "The pieces that I put in can be removed in the future, in case someone wants to restore it in a different manner."

Removing old varnish

The original frame, which is weathered and cracking, also will be repaired.

He'll have to clean it from side to side, front to back.

"And this old varnish that was slapped on there will be taken off, so that it has its brightness again," Terre said.

That varnish left the discoloration across the skies and mountainsides, and it's what has kept those hairs stuck to the canvas.

Whoever applied it just slapped the varnish on and left the debris, he said.

"Whether they're authentic or not, they'll be removed," Terre said.

There are several different kinds of varnish, and Terre needs to know which one he's dealing with.

"Part of my time will be three or four days of just testing what kind of varnish it is," he said.

Once he's determined that, he'll use the appropriate solvent to remove it.

"The solvents have the property of being able to dissolve and remove varnishes -- and all the dirt is in the varnish -- without removing the paint underneath," he said.

That will also restore to their former brilliant white the snowcaps, which were rendered in broad swathes of color.

"He's almost Impressionistic in his fast stroke," Terre said.

Fery, an Austrian-born, European-trained artist, moved to Minnesota and was hired on commission for Great Northern, which would display paintings in its stations around the country.

"These went up on walls a dozen feet up or so, so they're meant to read at a distance," Terre said.

"They gave him a place to live in Minneapolis, a railroad pass, free lodging up at Glacier and paid him almost nothing for his paintings. The average price for his paintings was about $35 a painting," he said, about $500 in today's money.

He painted some 360 of these, Terre said. Many are still on display in the park, and others like this one were acquired by other parties over the years.

Lover of antique technology

Terre named his Westside shop Atelier Boheme, French for "bohemian workshop."

"Do you like museums?" he asked before inviting a reporter over to see the painting.

Artwork from posters and album covers decorates the entryway, pieces he made in 1960s Haight-Ashbury when he managed a short-lived but influential band called The Charlatans.

In addition to paintings, he restores antiques, including Tiffany lamps that have been valued at $25,000 after he was done, and he works with Tim Gordon of "Antiques Roadshow." He once restored a Rudy Autio ceramic piece that was shattered into 15 some pieces in a downtown Bozeman explosion.

He loves antique film and audio technology, which are neatly arranged on the shelves of his shop.

He has 1909 45-mm movie camera, a 16-mm editing machine and a focal-plane shutter camera. It's the kind Jacques Henri Lartigue used to produce famous images of race cars in the 1910s. Due to a quirk of the camera's mechanics, the wheels are elliptical in shape, which spawned a tradition that lives to this day.

"It's very famous because after this, all cartoonists would draw speeding automobiles with 'oval-ated' wheels to show forward motion," Terre said.

He just acquired an Edison phonograph.

"A piece of junk," he said, "But it's an example of what music technology was at the time." Its rotating cylinders were soon disrupted by side-cut vinyl phonographs.

Terre has an early model of one of those that doesn't require external power. He cranked it up and played a French record.

Just as he loves older forms of technology, he despises some newer ones.

Terre thinks television has hindered people's ability to see what's in front of them. He points to a garage sale find of his: four framed Sacagawea dollar pieces someone was selling for 50 cents.

In another instance, a client brought him a painting of a man they assumed was George Washington, simply because it was a man in a powdered wig. It didn't resemble Washington, but it turned out to be a previously unknown work by John Trumbull, famous for his paintings during the Civil War.

Terre initially opened the Missoula shop as a film studio, but soon gave up on the idea, finding it to be too obscure.

So he focuses on antiques and painting restoration, including work for local outfits such as the Dana Gallery.

He held a First Friday opening for the Fery, and will likely host another one to show people what it looks like when it's done.

It should take about a month, he figures. Like many of his gadgets, hobbies and professions, it requires patience and intuition to cultivate something of value.

And that takes time.
KALISPELL -- Its a story that is certainly part mystery, perhaps part miracle, and had its start more than a century ago.

Maybe it would be best, however, to pick it up at the most recent turn of a century.

Thats when Leanne Goldhahn and her husband, Alan, were cleaning out a garage in Billings after Leannes father had passed away.

As the Goldhahns sorted through boxes and emptied shelves, they came across a large, dust-covered roll of canvases.

If you could have seen where they had been stored, youd be amazed, Leanne says.

Unsure what they had found, they carried the canvases out to the driveway and began unrolling them.

It was obviously something wonderful, Leanne says. There were so many of them, and they were so big.

As the Goldhahns unfurled the canvases on that driveway in Billings, a family story Leanne remembers hearing at some point came rushing back.

These were, she realized, some of the lost, and almost-lost, murals from Glacier Park Lodge.

Remodeling

Lets back up another half century or so.

Leannes grandparents, Robert and Leona Brown, had owned a grocery store in East Glacier called Brownies.

The story has it that in the 1950s, the massive Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier underwent extensive remodeling, maybe after frozen pipes had burst and damaged the building. The lobby of the hotel, built in 1913 by railroad tycoon Louis Hill, was modeled after the Forestry Building at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon.

Hill had micromanaged the design and construction of Glacier Park Lodge, just as he later would with Lake McDonald Lodge and Many Glacier Hotel. He commissioned an artist to paint murals of various Glacier Park scenes to fit in specific spaces above the wainscoting -- wooden paneling that lines the lower part of walls of a room -- in the hotel.

Whatever remodeling was going on 40-some years later, it apparently didnt make allowances for most of what a 1939 hotel inventory had put at 51 such murals commissioned by Hill.

And so, in the 1950s, workers cut the murals out of their built-in frames and tossed them onto the lawn outside the lodge with other scrap from the work.

Pulled off the trash heap

Whether her grandparents knew this was going on and set out to rescue some of the murals, or whether they simply happened upon them, Leanne Goldhahn doesnt know.

But the Browns saved 15 original murals otherwise destined to be hauled off to the dump. Many more may have been thrown out, or maybe other people in East Glacier grabbed them -- no one knows. But only a small number of the 51 -- ones deemed to provide needed color accents -- apparently survived the remodel and remain in the lodge.

There wasnt much more the Browns could do than rescue the paintings. Some of the 4-foot-deep murals are as wide as 13 feet, so its not like they could have hung a bunch of them in their living room.

The 15 canvases, rescued from a trash heap, were rolled up and stored away in the Browns garage in East Glacier.

And years later, when Robert and Leona Brown sold Brownies, retired and moved to Kalispell, they took the murals with them. The large paintings found a new home, in a new garage.

After her grandparents died, Leanne Goldhahn says her father cleaned out the garage in Kalispell and obviously discovered the long-forgotten murals. He took them home to Laurel, and put them in his garage.

When her parents moved to Billings, the murals made another trip to another garage.

Finally, in 2000, another garage cleaning revealed them to another generation of the family.

By then, Leanne says, the paintings were in pretty bad shape. They were dirty and had water damage. But I knew I couldnt throw them away. I took them home to Bozeman, but I didnt really know what to do with them either.

Tracing their origins

Eventually, Leanne turned to Jim Brown, owner of Old Main Gallery and Framing in Bozeman.

When she first called, she asked if we had experience framing large paintings, Brown says. I told her we did, and she said she was going to bring some things by.

Brown says the 15 murals included three or four that were in pretty good condition, given their history, and all, in his opinion, were good, quality pieces.

But who painted them? Not a one contained an artists signature. The only writing was on the backs of the murals, which were numbered and contained their intended display spots in Glacier Park Lodge, such as dining room.

So Jim Brown set about looking for people who might help him untangle the mystery. It wasnt long before someone suggested the artist might have been John Fery, a well-known painter who Hill had hired to capture countless scenes from inside the park.

They would have been worth a small fortune if theyd been done by Fery, Brown says.

They werent, but still, the collection -- even in the condition it was in -- was probably worth something in the neighborhood of $50,000. Browns research eventually led him to a 2010 article in Montana: The Magazine of Western History.

Titled The Miraculous Survival of the Art of Glacier National Park, it was written by University of Montana art professor H. Rafael Chacon.

Brown contacted the professor.

Sharing with the public

From his description of the murals -- and, later, photographs Brown took of all 15 -- Chacon was able to verify that all had once graced the walls of Glacier Park Lodge. He matched them up with historic photographs taken of the hotels interior prior to the 1950s-era remodeling.

There was even evidence Fery had once intended to paint the murals -- he had drawn up preliminary sketches of some of the scenes -- but apparently Fery had so much other Glacier work on his plate, that Hill turned to a different artist to expedite the process.

Who that was, has been lost to the ages.

They may have been done in New York City, by someone with a studio, and painted from photographs taken in the park, Brown says.

The Goldhahns had initially been interested in framing one mountain scene for themselves and selling the rest, but the more they learned about the history of the murals, the more they wanted to keep the collection together -- and make them available to the public for the first time in more than half a century.

Brown and Chacon helped them find a new home for the lost murals of Glacier Park Lodge.

Make that homes. Leanne Goldhahn, who donated them to the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, loves the plan the museum came up with for the paintings her grandparents saved from a trash pile decades ago.

Restoring the pieces

Once the Goldhahns decided they wanted to donate the murals in memory of Leannes grandparents, Brown helped find them a suitable place.

They first, Brown says, contacted the park itself, which has a museum program that was very interested in the murals -- but no budget for restoring the large artwork.

That led them to the Hockaday, whose mission in part is to preserve the artistic legacy of Glacier National Park.

The Goldhahns donated 14 of the 15 murals to the Kalispell museum in 2012. The other -- the mountain scene Leanne had picked out for herself -- will eventually return to the collection through the Goldhahns will.

The Hockaday, communications director Brian Eklund says, is restoring the murals as money specifically for that purpose is raised. The cost is running from $3,000 to $5,000 per painting.

So far, six of the 14 have been restored by art conservator Joe Abbrescia Jr. of Kalispell, owner of Abbrescia Gallery and Fine Art Restoration Studio.

Abbrescias own father was an acclaimed painter of Glacier Park scenes.

They do look like they were all possibly done by the same hands, and they were done well, Abbrescia says. They are composed nicely. Somebody knew what they were doing. But the only markings are on the backs of the murals, where they say things like Dining Room No. 42 or Dining Room No. 27. 

The murals, done in a water-based medium, are in various conditions, he says, ranging from really bad to not so bad.

Being rolled up, they got creases and scuff marks, Abbrescia says. Theres also water damage and decades worth of dirt and grime to deal with. Abbrescia is restoring, mounting and framing the murals under plexiglass to protect them from here on out.

Around the state

The first four that have been restored are on permanent display at the Hockaday, and include scenes from Lake McDonald and Grinnell Lake.

Short of adding a wing, however, theres really no way for the museum to display all the murals. Eklund says the museum wasnt interested in simply storing the rest of the collection, given that its already been hidden away in garages spread far and wide across Montana for decades.

So after the BNSF Foundation funded the restoration of the fifth and sixth murals -- another Lake McDonald scene, and one depicting high-country glaciers -- the Hockaday recently installed them at the OShaughnessy Center in Whitefish.

Thats the plan: to find public places across the region where people can enjoy the artwork that once decorated the walls of Glacier Park Lodge. Eklund says the museums board of directors will consider proposals from as far away as Missoula and Great Falls to display one or more of the murals in public places as money comes in to restore the paintings.

It could be courthouses, city halls, theaters, colleges. The challenge, Eklund says, will be in finding places with big and prominent spaces to accommodate one of the murals.

Theyre so big, they need a special place, Leanne Goldhahn says. The Hockaday could have put them in storage, but theyre really making the effort to put them back where the public can see them. I applaud what theyre doing.

The mystery of the murals -- who painted them? -- may never be solved.

But the miracle of the murals is now nearly complete. The paintings have gone from a lawn just steps away from Glacier National Park, to garages in East Glacier, Kalispell, Laurel, Billings and Bozeman.

At any point, they easily could have been thrown out, Leanne Goldhahn says.

Instead, the rescue mission her grandparents started in the 1950s is now in its final phases.
DECATUR  Julius Bailey, a former visiting professor at Millikin University and one-time administrator of Main Street Church of the Living God, thinks of himself as a philosopher.

Fresh off presenting to middle schoolers at Garfield Montessori School, where his daughter Heather is a third-grader, and reflecting on the second consecutive year of all-white acting nominations announced the day before by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Bailey was feeling philosophical.

Sure, weve made progress, but the historical resistance to recognizing the excellence of black films is still there, Bailey said.

That racism endures, showing itself most graphically in the deaths of black bodies at the hands of white police officers, is the motivation for his fourth book, Racial Realities and Post-Racial Dreams: The Age of Obama and Beyond.

His previous works are Jay-Z: Essays on Hip Hops Philosopher King, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West and Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form.

One difference is over the 190 pages of my new book, the word 'hip hop' doesnt appear one time, Bailey said with a grin.

On a more serious note, the Chicago native intends Racial Realities to be the moral call to action that Race Matters, written by his mentor Cornel West, was in 1994.

There seems to be a widespread belief among conservative pundits and politicians that legal safeguards against de jure racism have run their course  (that) those clinging onto the bottom rung of the social or economic ladder have simply not applied themselves, Bailey writes in the introduction. Yet racial demographics placed side by side with economic ones continue to tell us that Black Americans make up a disproportionate number of this countrys poorest citizens and a minuscule portion of its wealthiest ones.

Bailey concludes the arrival of a so-called post-racial America is a myth after exploring the problems of poverty, militaristic police departments, Barack Obamas presidency and Americas xenophobia.

Holding a PhD in philosophy and education from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Bailey has taught since 2008 at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where he is a professor of philosophy.

He is 43.

At this point in my life, I am ready to give my two cents worth on how a social conscious, Christian academic can love American and be critical at the same time, he said.
BLOOMINGTON  Illinois Wesleyan University physics professor Linda French has hiked to the top of all 48 peaks above 4,000 feet in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and along paths nearly 200 years old in England, but she also finds beauty right here in Central Illinois.

My current favorite is Clinton Lake State Recreation Area's North Fork Trail, French said at a recent Lunch and Learn lecture at the McLean County Museum of History. I recommend this highly.

The 9.3-mile trail is rated primitive and difficult, with many steep ups and downs in and out of ravines.

French said the trail is particularly beautiful in spring when wildflowers bloom in the woods. Parts of the trail also pass through prairie areas.

She uses the trail to train for her more ambitious goals, such as hiking to the top of all 67 peaks higher than 4,000 feet in New England. For those training hikes, French usually carries a fully loaded pack, wears supportive hiking shoes and uses trekking poles.

I have come to love my poles, she said.

But hiking doesn't need to be complex or require much special equipment.

What I love about hiking is you don't need a lot of specific skills. You just walk, French said. There are no rules.

And as much as she likes the challenge of peak bagging and wild trails, French said, We are very blessed here to have access to Constitution Trail.

Other favorite places she recommends are Moraine View State Recreation Area, near LeRoy, particularly its Tall Timber Backpacking Trail, and Starved Rock State Park.

French said she turned to hiking as a student when I got burned out and needed a break, and it's something she expects to continue doing. She's not alone: She quotes figures from statista.com indicating that 36 million Americans went hiking in 2014.

She emphasized the importance of preserving and appreciating wild areas, quoting Henry David Thoreau's essay Walking, in which he wrote, In wildness is the preservation of the world.

The Lunch and Learn series is presented by Illinois Wesleyan, the museum and the Collaborative Solutions Institute.
Embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, grappling with a police shooting that could destroy his mayoralty, has lamented the "code of silence" around police brutality.

But now the famously outspoken Emanuel seems to be adopting his own code of silence.

The former congressman and top official in the Obama and Clinton administrations was listed as a featured panelist at the opening plenary luncheon of the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting. The topic: "Reducing Violence and Strengthening Police/Community Trust."

This took some guts: Emanuel was, before a national audience, going to address head-on the crisis that has engulfed him since the release almost 60 days ago of video showing a Chicago policeman shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times as McDonald appeared to be walking away. Emanuel's administration had resisted having the video of the killing released, and emails show involvement of the mayor's office in how to deal with the PR problem. Now there are accusations of a cover-up and calls for his resignation.

But "Laquan McDonald" didn't cross Emanuel's lips at the Police/Community Trust forum. He didn't even mention the incident directly, instead proffering a variety of facts and figures indicating everything is awesome in Chicago.

"Chicago is at a record-high, near-70 percent graduation rate. Our sophomore class is on track, according to the University of Chicago, to get 84 percent."

"We now have 26,000 kids in summer jobs. ... Four years ago we were at 14,000."

"The overall crime over four years is down about 35 percent."

"We now have the largest re-entry second-chance program in the United States."

"We doubled the amount; we're now up to 400 police officers on bicycles."

During the entire 45-minute session, incredibly, the elephant in the ballroom went unacknowledged.

The Chicago Sun-Times previewed Emanuel's appearance at the forum with the headline, "Emanuel to confront political demons head-on at national panel on policing."

Instead, he ducked his demons. An aide pointed out that he wasn't asked specifically about McDonald, and it's true that his fellow panelists weren't in positions to prosecute him: Baltimore Mayor and panel moderator Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose city saw rioting after the Freddie Gray death in police custody; New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and former Mayor Marc Morial, whose city was found by the Justice Department to have had widespread police misconduct; and the police chief of St. Louis, who had a close view of the Ferguson affair.

Asked for an update on crime in Chicago and "the biggest problems you currently face," Emanuel said nothing about Topic A. "Guns and gangs," he answered.

After Landrieu raised the civil liberties problems for police, Emanuel asked for another turn with the microphone ... and mentioned high school dropout rates.

Morial spoke about the need for mayors to know how many civil rights complaints there are against the police, to "avoid being bit, surprised by something."

Emanuel addressed Morial: "I've got nothing to add, but I'm going to be a Jewish mother. You've got to move that microphone up."

Landrieu talked about the need to have a "transparent inquiry" after a police shooting; an implicit rebuke of Emanuel.

Emanuel spoke about the need to target the most violent members of gangs and the gun dealers who sell most of the guns used to commit violence.

A mayor from New Jersey had a question about personal responsibility, providing another opening for Emanuel to admit failings in the McDonald case.

"We're not going to answer until you tell us what exit you are on the highway," Emanuel quipped.

"Turnpike," Rawlings-Blake corrected.

Emanuel, in his answer, spoke more about summer jobs, and the role of parents in teaching right and wrong. Still, nothing about Laquan McDonald.

Finally, in her last question, Rawlings-Blake made a halfhearted grasp at the elephant, asking the others to talk about the panel's advertised theme: the trust between police and communities.

"The trust factor is not just a goal; it's a key ingredient to effective community policing," Emanuel said, then got as close as he would to the matter that threatens his tenure. "The public has to know there's legitimate oversight, it's certain and it's not biased, and the truth is we're working at that  our city, other cities  because there's been a lot of judgment that the oversight has been lax and there's not an accounting system."

And that was it. The once fearless Emanuel closed with an anecdote about a woman thanking him for the fine job the police do. The code held.
I love poetic justice. This wild and wacky Republican presidential campaign deserved Sarah Palin, and now it's got her.

Palin's endorsement of front-runner Donald Trump at an Iowa rally last week was a master class in surrealist poetry. Geniuses of the Dada movement would have been humbled by her deconstruction of the language and her obliteration of the bourgeois concept we call logic.

The GOP candidates have been competing to see who can spew the most nonsense, but they'll never top Palin. Not when she offers gems such as this: "Believe me on this. And the proof of this? Look what's happening today. Our own GOP machine, the establishment, they who would assemble the political landscape, they're attacking their own front-runner. ... They are so busted, the way that this thing works."

Or this further excoriation of the party leadership: "And now, some of them even whispering, they're ready to throw in for Hillary (Clinton) over Trump because they can't afford to see the status quo go. Otherwise, they won't be able to be slurping off the gravy train that's been feeding them all these years."

Actually, I think the wailing from Republican grandees is more of a wordless primal scream. Palin claimed that "media heads are spinning" at her decision to campaign for Trump, but it would be more accurate to say that "media feet are dancing" at having such a rich source of new material.

I could quote Palin all day, but there are two substantive points about her dazzling intervention that I feel duty-bound to make. The first is political: Someday we might look back and say she was the one who pushed Trump over the top to win the nomination.

That's not a promise, just a possibility. But Trump's campaign draws strength from its own momentum. If he can somehow manage to sweep the early primary states, "outsider" support may coalesce behind him, and the establishment candidates may be too shell-shocked to effectively respond.

Polls show Trump holding big leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina. But first comes Iowa, where he's running neck-and-neck with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Given his overall strength, Trump could finish second in the Iowa caucuses and still capture the nomination. A win there, however, could boost his support in the subsequent contests and make it much harder for anyone to stop him.

Enter Palin. Republicans whom she appalls or embarrasses are not likely to vote for Trump anyway. But some tea party supporters who are leaning toward Cruz might be swayed by a clarion call from their movement's Evita. All Trump needs to do is shave a few points off Cruz's vote to win a narrow victory, which could be enough to propel the populist billionaire to triumph in New Hampshire and beyond.

The other substantive point I have to make about Palin has to do with a campaign speech she gave in Oklahoma for Trump the day after her endorsement. She was talking about the arrest of her son, Track, on domestic abuse charges after he allegedly fought with his girlfriend and threatened suicide by holding an assault rifle to his head.

"My son, a combat veteran ... was fighting for you all, America, in the war zone," Palin said. "My son, like so many others, came back a bit different, they come back hardened."

Palin said not enough was done to treat the "woundedness" of returning veterans and charged that this failing "comes from our own president (Obama)."

Never mind that Track Palin served in Iraq and came home while George W. Bush was president. His mother was speaking for the large segment of the GOP base that brays against high taxes and big government, yet demands more services and opposes cuts in entitlements, which doesn't add up.

I've said it before: With years of foolish rhetoric, the Republican establishment got itself into this mess. There may be no way out.
Dear Dr. Roach: I am a 75-year-old woman of Thai descent. I have been on a Fosamax regimen for over eight years. I suffered a femur fracture in a fall approximately two years ago. About the first thing the attending orthopedic surgeon asked me was, "Are you taking Fosamax?" I received no explanation about a possible connection.

No physician has told me to discontinue it, but my dentist commented that he didn't think the drug should be continued for more than four years. Do you have an opinion about the correct length of time to use this medication? Should I switch to another osteoporosis product?

 N.Y.

A: Women of Asian descent are at higher risk for development of osteoporosis and fractures. Fosamax (alendronate) and other members of the class of anti-osteoporosis drugs called bisphosphonates improve bone mineral density by reducing the activity of osteoclasts, the cells that break down bone. Many studies have confirmed that the use of these drugs in appropriate people reduces fracture risk. What isn't clear is how long to use these medications. One study from 2006 showed that stopping alendronate after five years only slightly increased fracture risk, and the authors concluded that in lower-risk women, it is reasonable to consider stopping, but high-risk women likely would benefit from taking it beyond five years.

It may be just that the orthopedic surgeon wanted to be sure you were taking appropriate medicine to prevent fracture. However, I think your orthopedic surgeon may have been concerned about an unusual side effect called an atypical femur fracture. On X-ray, these are described as "subtrochanteric" or "femoral shaft" fractures. It seems that these are more likely in women who have been on medicines like Fosamax for more than five years. The hypothesis is that if osteoclasts are suppressed too much, then the bone can't repair small cracks that might lead to the bone becoming brittle. However, I want to emphasize that these atypical fractures are unusual and that overall, more women get benefit from avoiding a typical fracture than are harmed by getting an atypical fracture from long-term use. Similarly, your dentist is worried about a condition called osteonecrosis of the jaw, which is extremely rare with Fosamax.

You need to find out whether the fall you had two years ago was typical or atypical.

I suspect that we soon will enter an era where it will be possible to reliably see if medications are working at the optimal level. Some physicians already use blood or urine tests to evaluate bone metabolism, but it isn't yet a standard recommendation.

Finally, you should be sure that your vitamin D level is appropriate and that you are getting enough calcium, preferably from diet.

The osteoporosis pamphlet furnishes details on how to prevent this universal condition. Readers can obtain a copy by writing: Dr. Roach Book No. 1104, 628 Virginia Dr., Orlando, FL 32803. Enclose a check or money order (no cash) for $4.75 with the recipient's printed name address. Please allow four weeks for delivery.

Prostate and vitamin D

Dear Dr. Roach: I'm a 70-year-old male with an enlarged prostate. About two years ago, my doctor discovered that I had a very low level of vitamin D and prescribed 50,000 units of vitamin D-2 twice a week. After a couple of weeks of taking this high dose, I began having to get up more at night to urinate. The problem worsened to having to urinate every half-hour to 45 minutes. I stopped the high dosage, and within another week, my nightly urination diminished to an average of twice a night. I don't know if that reaction is rare, but I just wanted to relate my experience.

 Anon.

A: I haven't seen that, but I very rarely use the 50,000 dosage regimen. I prefer 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D-3, as it does not need to be activated by sunlight, which is a problem with the D-2 formulation, especially in winter. I appreciate your writing.
LOS ANGELES  As tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Without enough beds to house the young arrivals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lowered its safety standards during border surges in the last three years to swiftly move children out of government shelters and into sponsors' homes. The procedures were increasingly relaxed as the number of young refugees rose in response to spiraling gang and drug violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to emails, agency memos and operations manuals obtained by AP, some under the Freedom of Information Act.

First, the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children. In April 2014, the agency stopped requiring original copies of birth certificates to prove most sponsors' identities. The next month, it decided not to complete forms that request sponsors' personal and identifying information before sending many of the children to sponsors' homes. Then, it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.

Since the rule changes, the AP has identified more than two dozen children who were placed with sponsors who subjected them to sexual abuse, labor trafficking or severe abuse and neglect.

"This is clearly the tip of the iceberg," said Jacqueline Bhabha, research director at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

Advocates say it is hard to gauge the number of children exposed to dangerous conditions among the more than 89,000 placed with sponsors since October 2013 because many of the migrants designated for follow-up were nowhere to be found when social workers tried to reach them.

Federal officials won't disclose details of how the agency was stretched so thin, but say they are strengthening the procedures as the number of young migrants once again is on the rise, and recently signed a contract to open new shelters.

"We are not taking shortcuts," HHS spokesman Mark Weber said. "The program does an amazing job overall."

Young victims

One of the cases reviewed by the AP involved a then-14-year-old from Guatemala who arrived in the U.S. in September 2014 and was sent to a sponsor's tiny apartment in Los Angeles, where he was held for three weeks. Marvin Velasco said his sponsor, a distant relative who he had never met, deprived him of food, which left him weak and praying for his salvation.

"He told authorities that he was going to take me to school and help me with food and clothing, but it wasn't like that at all," said Velasco, who since has been granted special legal status for young immigrants.

Velasco's perilous journey from Guatemala included crossing a river, even though he doesn't swim, and getting lost at night in a frigid desert. Once in the U.S., he turned himself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents in Reynosa, Texas, and was sent to a shelter run by HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Unlike the extensive screenings required in the U.S. foster care system, the ORR had stopped requiring that social workers complete extensive background checks or fingerprint most sponsors when they placed Velasco with his brother-in-law's father. Social workers did not visit the sponsor's one-bedroom apartment before he arrived or check up on him afterward, said Gina Manciati, the boy's attorney.

The sponsor told Velasco he would be punished if he left the apartment, and demanded rent payments. When Velasco told the sponsor he wanted to study, the man called the boy's parents in Guatemala, threatening to kick him out if they didn't pay. Then the sponsor started withholding food, Velasco said.

With help from the sponsor's son, Velasco escaped and sought sanctuary in a nearby church, where he met a parishioner who took him in and became his legal guardian. Now 15 and living with a Guatemalan immigrant family that is raising him as their son, he is thriving in school.

Other accounts uncovered by the AP include:

 A 14-year-old Honduran girl whose stepfather forced her to work over a period of several months at cantinas in central Florida where women drink, dance and sometimes have sex with patrons.

 A 17-year-old from Honduras sent to live with an aunt in Texas, who forced her to work in a restaurant at night and clean houses on weekends, and often locked her in the home.

 A 17-year-old Guatemalan placed with a friend's brother in Alabama who vowed to help him attend school, but instead was made to work in a restaurant for 12 hours a day to earn rent.

Experts who work with refugee children, including a psychologist and an attorney, cited cases in which unaccompanied children were raped by relatives or other people associated with their sponsors.

Weber said the ORR has added more home visits and background checks since July, when federal prosecutors charged sponsors and associates with running a trafficking ring in rural Ohio that forced six unaccompanied minors to work on egg farms. Lured north with the promise of an education, the teens instead were forced to work under threats of death for up to 12 hours a day.

How the problem evolved

Contractors and advocates say that, starting in 2012, they repeatedly warned HHS about the steady increase in children arriving at the border. The agency itself warned case management staff in 2013 that "fraudulent sponsors" in Colorado, Iowa and Minnesota had sought to claim multiple, unrelated minors. By the summer of 2014, the challenge of dealing with a sea of unaccompanied minors had become a full-blown crisis.

"So many kids were piling up at the Border Patrol stations that the agency had to start emptying their shelter beds," said Jennifer Podkul, senior program officer at the nonprofit Women's Refugee Commission.

By law, child migrants traveling alone must be sent to an ORR facility within three days of being detained. The agency then is responsible for the children's care until they are united with a relative or sponsor in the community they can live with while awaiting immigration court hearings. Sponsors can be parents, grandparents, distant relatives or unrelated adults, such as family friends, and all are expected to enroll the children in school, help them get health care and attend court.

In 2012, caseworkers followed a stringent process before releasing children to sponsors, including background checks, fingerprints, 60-day home studies and signed agreements that the children would appear in immigration court. But in November 2013, overburdened by a sudden influx of unaccompanied children, the agency took the first of what would be a series of steps to lower its standards, stating in a manual that most parents and legal guardians would not be fingerprinted.

ORR said the relaxed rules on the front end were compensated on the back end by more children getting social services attention after being released into the community. Even now, though, most young refugees rarely see child welfare workers after landing at sponsors' homes.

Only a small group of at-risk children who the government believes need extra protection are visited by social workers contracted by ORR, and the services cease when the children turn 18. But sometimes, those vulnerable children vanish before social workers reach them.

Last year, a social worker visited an apartment complex in Fort Meyers, Fla., to see if it was suitable for a new placement. The government had sent more than a dozen other children to live there, but the social worker found nothing but an empty apartment, said Hilary Chester, associate director of anti-trafficking programs at U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops.

ORR bars releasing children to people who have been convicted of child abuse or neglect or violent felonies such as homicide and rape. But in November, a whistleblower told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that federal authorities had placed unaccompanied children with convicted criminals. The whistleblower alleged that 3,400 sponsors listed in a government database had criminal histories including homicide, child molestation, sexual assault and human trafficking, according to Grassley's office.

Weber, the HHS spokesman, said the agency's inspector general is reviewing the claim.

New wave arrives

As crime and violence deepen in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador  fueled in part by the cocaine trade and political instability  contractors worry that the latest wave of child migrants could approach the 2014 levels that spurred President Barack Obama to declare an "urgent humanitarian situation."

Federal immigration agents' recent controversial efforts to round up Central American families for possible deportation have further complicated the situation, creating a climate of fear and instability in communities that are welcoming children, and putting some minors who lack attorneys at risk of deportation, advocates said.

Weber said HHS is better prepared to accommodate the new child migrants, including preparing to add 2,200 shelter beds where children can stay while awaiting placement. A national call center where children and sponsors can report problems has been established, but Weber said children also should contact local authorities if they feel unsafe.

Last month, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell warned Congress the agency needed an additional $400 million to be able to provide shelter and referral services to the young migrants, but the request was denied.

After that, the agency directed contractors to speed up home visits to get children out of detention and into families' homes more quickly.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who chairs the Senate's bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he will hold a hearing on the agency's child placement program Thursday because he is concerned that the failures revealed in the egg farm case are systemic.

"We think reforms are necessary and urgently required because there are kids right now who are coming in over the border," Portman said. "This is a problem that has to be addressed."
When it comes to aviation, 2015 was a unique year for Armeniain a bad sense.

It was the first since independence when not one Armenia-based company flew any flights. None had the rights to do so.

On October 23, 2013, the Armenian government adopted the Open Sky program designed to open the aviation sector to competition. The ambitious agenda envisaged the following benefits in the 3-4 years to follow:

0.3-.0.4 billion dollars in additional GDP revenue

18,000  23,000 new jobs, mostly in the aviation and tourism sectors

20% - 25% increase in passenger traffic

10% average drop in plane fares. Greater savings were envisaged on certain flights conditioned on the increase in competition.

Here, we will only talk about passenger transfers that have a direct link to and impact on other criteria and on their formation. The data below is periodically published by Armenias General Civil Aviation Department.

In 2013, when Armavia was still flying in Armenia (including March), and Air Armenia started to fly in October, a total of 1,691,710 passengers embarked and disembarked at Zvartnots International Airport. A total of 10,361 tons of cargo entered and left the airport. There were 8,721 takeoffs and landings.

These figures improved in 2014. Passenger turnover rose to 2,045,058  an increase of 353,348. Cargo tonnage slipped slightly to 10,345 tons. The number of takeoffs and landings rose to 10,459.

Air Armenia continued its passenger service for a year; until October 2014.

While the figures for Gyumris Shirak International Airport are several times less than Zvartnots, 2013 was a more successful year for the smaller airport.

So what happened in 2015? By all accounts, Zvartnots registered losses and Shirak, gains. Passenger turnover dropped 7.9% from the previous year to 1,918,995. Cargo tonnage slipped 1.65% to 10,174 tons. Takeoffs and landings dropped 13.2% to 9,164.

The graphs below depict the picture of aviation in Armenia for the past three years combining figures from Zvartnots and Shirak airports.

If current trends continue, the Armenian aviation market will be at the mercy of foreign companies, mostly Russian. They can, at any time based on their interests, suspend commercial and non-commercial flights. More importantly, they can also dictate flight fares.

We can only wait until the end of 2016 to see if the negative numbers outlined above will change or not.
Four or five new hotels are set to open In Armenia this year according to the tourism department at the ministry of economics.

Four hotels opened for business last year: Opera Suite (Yerevan), Hyatt Place (Jermouk), Double Tree by Hilton (Yerevan), Gayane (Haghpat). Eight hotels opened in 2014.

This signifies that there is a demand for hotel beds in Armenia and that investors are cashing on the opportunity. Simply put, there are profits to be made in the sector.

Currently, there are 337 hotels operating in Armenia: 122 (36%) in Yerevan and the rest throughout the country. (The term hotel encompasses a variety of establishments  hotels, motels, guesthouses, pensions, hostels, vacation camps, etc.) In total, these establishments provide 20,235 sleeping accommodations.

In 2000, a year when tourism data started to be collected, there were just 3-4 hotels; all in Yerevan.

In addition to the above-mentioned establishments there are over 200 bed and breakfasts (B&B) operating, mostly outside Yerevan.

Today, there are 42 hotels operating in Sevan, 37 in Tzaghkadzor, 17 in Jermouk, 15 in Dilijan, and 9 in Aghveran.

Despite the increase in hotel numbers, most tourists visiting Armenia continue staying with relatives and in rented apartments. Apartment owners make more money by renting their apartments on a daily basis to tourists when compared to renting to locals on a monthly basis.

According to the latest data from the National Statistical Service (NSS), more than 443,000 tourists visited Armenia in the 3rd quarter of 2015. Only 55,400 (12%) of them are said to have stayed at hotel-like establishments. The rest stayed with relatives or rented apartments.

The NSS reports that in the 3rd quarter of 2015 19% of tourists came from CIS countries, 28.8% from EU member states, and 52% from other countries.

A majority of those staying at hotels in Armenia are in fact domestic tourists; residents of Armenia.

According to the NSS, 781,714 residents of Armenia stayed at local hotels from January-September of 2015. 69.2% were on vacation, 17.6% travelled for business/practical reasons, 7.8% for medical matters, and 5.4% for other reasons.
Armenias Civil Appeals Court on January 21rejected an appeal filed by Skizb Media Kentron seeking to overturn a decision handed down by the Kentron and Nor Nork Court of Jurisdicton.

The latter had partially decided in favor of writer and commentator Arpi Voskanyan (photo) who had taken Skizp Media to court over copyright issues.

The case dates back to 2012 when the 1.in.am website (a branch of Skizb Media) republished a poem of Voskanyans that appeared in the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper website without her consent or knowledge.

Voskanyan then demanded that the website remove the poem or pay her a fee to use it. These demands were never met. The website argued that it had the right to use the poem given that a live link had been provided to the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper.

The lower court found that 1in.am had not violated Voskanyans copyright by making certain changes to the poem and using her photo. However, the court found that 1in.am had indeed violated Voskanyans copyright by using the poem to announce a song competition.

In its decision, the court partially found in favor of Voskanyan and ordered 1in.am to pay her 100,000 AMD in damages.

Skizb Media then filed its appeal, arguing that the lower court had made a technical error and that Voskanyans poem couldnt be considered news material.

The Administrative Appeals Court, in rejecting the appeal by Skizb Media, found that the lower court had made no mistakes in formulating its decision.
The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance (ADAA) is proud to announce the Honorary Jury for the 2016 cycle of the biennial Saroyan/Paul $10,000 Human Rights Prize in Playwriting.

ADAA has been running this competition since 2008.

The judges are: Rob Drummer, Associate Dramaturg and Director from the Bush Theatre in London; Neil McPherson, Artistic Director of the Finborough Theatre in London; Simon Levy, Artistic Director of The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles.

All three judges will preside over the three finalist scripts in 2016.

Preliminary evaluation of scripts has begun, as synopses have been pouring in from around the globe. The synopsis submission period for the contest has been extended to February 7, 2016. Playwrights whose submitted synopses meet ADAAs guideline specifications will be chosen by the selection committee to submit their full scripts between March 1 and April 24.

Scores will be awarded to each script based on excellence of writing and in furthering the theme of "human rights/social justice."

In addition, to further its mission to support Armenian story writing, the ADAA is pleased to also host a special $2,500 prize - The Kondazian Playwriting Award for Armenian Stories

It will be awarded to an outstanding play focusing on an Armenian theme.

The Saroyan Prize is made possible by a donation from The William Saroyan Foundation, which inaugurated the award at ADAA in 2007, and has been joined by The Lillian and Varnum Paul Fund, a longtime supporter of ADAAs Paul Screenwriting Award.

For more information, please visit ADAA's newly redesigned website, http://www.armeniandrama.org or email [email protected].
About 300 employees of the Azerbaijan International Mineral Resources Operating Company Ltd. (AIMROC) protested outside Parliament in Baku Monday saying they have not been paid for 21 months.

The daughters of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are part-owners of AIMROC, according to records in the offshore tax haven of Panama.

The protesting workers were all from Chovdar village, located in a mineral-rich region that the Azeri Ministry of Environment says contains 44 tons of gold and 164 tons of silver worth more than US$ 2.5 billion.

Officials from Parliament have told the workers, We cant do anything, we can only advise you to go to court.

The workers initially marched across the capital to the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population before arriving at Parliament. They then moved on to the Presidential Administration, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

In 2006, AIMROC was formed by a presidential decree from four offshore corporations. One of those corporations, UK-based Globex International LLP, has an 11 percent stake in AIMROC, worth about US$ 200 million. OCCRP reporters found that Globex is actually owned by three Panamanian companies: Hising Management SA, Lynden Management Group, Inc., and Arblos Management Corp.

Panamanian registration records at the time indicated the three Globex companies were managed by the presidents two daughters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, and by Olivier Mestelan, a Swiss businessman close to the ruling family. It is unclear who is behind the other companies.

"We can't find anybody from AIMROC, mine worker Mehman Ismayilov told RFE/RL. Their office [is] closed. We couldn't get our documents to petition a court. And we cannot get any help from the Ministry [of Labor] or Parliament All of them say its not their responsibility.

Cumshud Asgerli, another protesting worker, said that they only want their unpaid salary, "but there is nobody who can help us."

The demonstrators also went to the Ministry of the Ecology and Natural Resources. Jumshud Asgerli said that a spokesman from the ministry told them that since July 2014 AIMROC affiliate Londex Resources, S.A., another of the four offshores, has wanted to sell its shares, but has not yet succeeded. According to the spokesman, Maybe after selling, all the problems could be fixed.

Londex Resources S.A. is a geological company, according to the companys LinkedIn page.

Photo: Leyla Aliyeva

occrp.org
A porridge of history as it relates to current events in the news - history can let us into the back door and see why things are the way they are.
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The Dalai Lama, show here speaking to the Wisconsin Legislature in 2013, emphasized the importance of love, kindness and compassion for reducing violence during a discussion Wednesday in Madison.
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 get 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.
MALVERN, Ark. (AP)  The self-styled Brick Capital of the World would seem an unlikely spot to encounter The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

But a colorful poster for that 1954 cult classic gets prominent display at the Hot Spring County Museum. It's here because one of the 3-D movie's stars, Julia Adams, had lived in Malvern while staying with an aunt and uncle during her high school years. She changed her professional name to Julie Adams in 1955.

As the exhibit relates, Adams returned to the Hot Spring county seat in September at age 88 for a signing of her memoir, The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections From the Black Lagoon. She then sent the museum the poster, which she jauntily autographed: "Stay out of dark water. Best wishes."

Near the end of the movie, Adams' character is abducted by the scaly monster and taken to his murky cavern lair before being rescued by two companions who finally riddle the creature with bullets.

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/1NnFhuN ) reports that Adams, who later played a recurring role as a flirtatious real estate agent in television's Murder, She Wrote, is probably the second best-known actor with ties to Malvern. Outranking her these days is Billy Bob Thornton, a graduate of Malvern High School.

This city of 10,000 has been known since the 1890s as a prime manufacturer of bricks, thanks to abundant clay deposits in the county. So it may be surprising that so little attention is given to that venerable local industry in the abundantly stocked museum, housed in a handsome two-story frame home dating to 1891.

The only exhibit focused on the product that led officials to proclaim Malvern as Brick Capital of the World several decades ago is relegated to a far corner of one room on the second floor. And hardly a mention is made of the Malvern Brickfest, a big local event to be celebrated for the 36th year on the last weekend in June and featuring a Brick Toss competition.

There's a heartwarming aspect to one of the museum's most novel exhibits, explained in a posting headed "A World War II Love Story."

It seems that George Weaver was a veteran from Hot Spring County who served in the Air Force in the Pacific Theater. Back home for Christmas 1945, he was among returning servicemen hosted by Malvern women at a holiday party. There he met Hannah Sue Duffie.

Before George and Hannah married in 1948, he gave her a Japanese silk parachute that he'd brought back from the war. A friend of Hannah made the gossamer material into a negligee. The floor-length nightgown, still silken to the touch, is a demure treasure.

Glass-front cabinets showcase a stylish collection of one-of-a-kind dolls portraying all U.S. presidents' wives from Martha Washington to Rosalyn Carter in their inaugural gowns. Befitting Arkansas' Civil War legacy, there's also a doll dressed as Confederate first lady Varina Banks Howell Davis.

The museum's objects are as varied as Caddo Indian pottery, an antique pump organ and a 1930s refrigerator with its motor perched on top. One oddity is a so-called "company chair," deliberately designed to be uncomfortable enough that visitors wouldn't want to overstay their welcome.

Enriching the museum experience is genial commentary by the staff, who may relate that one object no longer occupies an alcove devoted to armed service veterans of Hot Spring County. An 88 mm artillery shell of World War II vintage, it was taken away on the advice of a military expert to make sure it would no longer detonate.

After arrival at a demolition site, the shell was lowered into a hole for testing. It did explode. Nobody was hurt.

___

Information from: Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.nwaonline.com
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Dream" speech asked that society judge others not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. The Science Museum of Minnesota is tackling that issue from a scientific standpoint with an exhibit called "RACE: Are we so different?"

The exhibit answers that question using a 10-minute play, maps and graphics and plenty of hands on, interactive components.

In one corner of the race exhibit, there are two rows of photographic portraits. They're shots of people's faces from the neck up, on a white background.

The photos show people with multiple ethnic heritages, and underneath their portraits, in their own handwriting, they describe how they view themselves. In small, light gray print at the bottom, there is a list of their ethnic makeup.

The display made Sally Cameron do a double-take.

"I came back. I was totally fascinated not only to read their words, but to see what their heritage was underneath," she told Minnesota Public Radio News (http://bit.ly/1KrJM7T ).

The exhibit explores race in three major ways  through science, history and social systems.

The central theme of the exhibit is this: The difference in genetic makeup between races is minuscule.

Dwayne Billups brought a group of Boy Scouts from the historic Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul to the exhibit on Jan. 16. Billups says he wants the boys to understand the bottom line about race.

"They need to know that there is no race, there's only one race, there's the human race," he said. "And color has very little to do with it with the exception of how they are perceived in America and there are limits that are placed upon them and we just wanted to bring them down here to show them that those limits and those barriers can be overcome."

Billups said one way to make that point is to introduce the young men to the dozens of African-American scientists who were presenting exhibits Jan. 16. Billups and the Scouts spent hours exploring the museum. And one of the Scouts explained what he learned on the field trip.

"My name is Dameer, Dameer White. I am 9 years old. I just wanted to say, you don't have to treat people like they're different, everybody's exactly the same."

The Science Museum's Joanne Jones-Rizzi helped create the exhibit. She says it doesn't look to scold people, but offers a science-based view of the history of race in America.

"Here's something that is so much a part of our lives in so much that we think exists," she said. "And so how historically has this invention been embedded in all of our lives?"

The exhibit touches on segregation, racial inequities in the U.S., and personal histories.

Jones-Rizzi says the exhibit was first introduced by the museum in 2007 and has traveled the country since. She says it doesn't deal with current events, but she hopes it might help facilitate more discussion about them.

"This exhibit can be a catalyst for a discussion about those current events, and can provide a kind of touchpoint for people to begin those conversations."

And she's seen that happening, even between complete strangers. She's also seen people coming in and taking notes  a rare sight in her 30 years of working in museums.

"You know the things the things you write down are the things you want to remember and the things that you might want to think about more. So, for me that was very rewarding," she said.

Ra Kour brought her teenage son to see a movie in the Omnitheater about natural disasters. But it was sold out. So they went to the race exhibit instead. She's been a member of the museum since 1993 and she says the race exhibit is the greatest exhibit she's seen at the museum.

"It exposed something that a lot of people can freely talk about because of shame, humiliation or whatever we feel," she said.

She was especially moved by a video display which has people speaking about their experiences dealing with race in the United States.

"And as a minority person myself, I appreciate it very much. Now my story was seen some place here so I can show my sons that that's what mommy goes through, too, those experiences."

The exhibit has a home in the museum for at least the next two years.
Madison police engaged in a nearly nine-hour standoff on the citys East Side with a 35-year-old man they later found inside the home, the victim of an apparent overdose.

The man, whom police spokesman Joel DeSpain identified as Eric J. Day, 35, began firing shots inside and outside a home on the 3500 block of Ridgeway Avenue just before 10:30 a.m. Sunday, police Lt. Timothy Strassman said. The home is near Schmedeman Avenue off East Washington Avenue.

Police used a SWAT team along with the departments armored vehicle to resolve the situation. The vehicle is a former military surplus vehicle converted for civilian use starting in May 2014.

Chief Mike Koval estimated that Day fired at least six shots, inside and outside the house.

In a Sunday afternoon news briefing, Koval said officers were having trouble making contact with the man.

When officers arrived, shots were still being fired  it appears at random  out of the house from a sawed-off shotgun, he said. About 45 minutes after police arrived, the mans girlfriend safely left the house, and about 90 minutes later, a male neighbor left from the other side of the small duplex, Koval said.

At 7:45 p.m. Sunday, DeSpain confirmed the standoff was over and that there was no further threat to the neighborhood.

Day was removed from the home by officers, and he was being treated by Madison Fire Department paramedics for an apparent overdose, DeSpain said. His condition was unavailable.

Were very happy that we were able to resolve the situation peacefully, with no officers injured and with no injury caused by officers to this individual, DeSpain said, promising more details about the operation would be released Monday.

At the afternoon press briefing, Koval said police believed the man was working through some despondent feelings.

When you are despondent or depressed, its difficult to understand what your options are and that there are options, Koval said.

Police tried phone numbers they had for the man, but the calls went right to voice mail.

Koval said the plan was to use the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team to get a phone to the mans front steps using a small avatar or robot, which makes such a mission less dangerous for police.

Another plan was to get a negotiator as close as possible with the armored vehicle and use a megaphone to communicate with the man.

Its crude, but the bottom line is that we want to start to explain to the subject inside that nothing is so dire, nothing is so complex or sophisticated, that we cant come to some terms to make this work, and he can come out without incident, Koval said.

Koval confirmed the residence as 3570 Ridgeway Ave., which online court records show as Days address.

In September, Day was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, records show. In 2004, Day was involved in a standoff with police in nearby Oregon while armed with a shotgun. The incident began as a domestic disturbance call. In 2009, Day threatened an officer after a traffic crash.

In the afternoon, Koval stressed there was no sense of urgency in resolving Sundays standoff, noting police wanted to let the man know they did not intend to hurt him.

Our experience has been that when you take the time and make the effort and show nothing that is going to be threatening to the person, that hopefully, calmer, clearer heads can prevail, he said.

[Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect a correction. In the original, the second reference to the police department's armored rescue vehicle was inaccurate. It is a "vehicle."]
Courts would be forced to stop giving special weight to the expertise of state agencies when individuals claimed in lawsuits that their property rights had been restricted, under a provision added last week to a bill moving quickly through the Wisconsin Legislature.

Republicans said they want to bolster private property rights, but critics maintained the change would upend decades of legal precedent and unleash a snarl of lawsuits challenging state decisions on everything from pollution permits to power line placement to dentist licenses.

This is a major shift in decades of legal precedent in Wisconsin, said Christa Westerberg, a Madison attorney who specializes in land use law representing clients appealing state agency decisions.

Federal courts and other state courts also observe the concept of deference to agency decisions, Westerberg said.

I havent heard of any other jurisdiction obliterating that precedent in favor of private property rights, however that term is construed ... (and) it will probably take a lot of court cases to sort that out.

Its a gift to trial attorneys, said Susan Crawford, a Madison attorney who worked in the Department of Justice and as legal counsel to former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat who was in office until Republicans took over state government in 2011. I think the impact of this would be to increase litigation.

Rep. Adam Jarchow, the author of Assembly Bill 582, said concerns about the proposal and his amendment forbidding judges from giving deference to agencies over private property rights were unfounded.

All we are talking about is allowing a court to take a fresh look at the law and determine that the agency applied the law correctly, said Jarchow, R-Balsam Lake. I think thats only fair when you are talking about peoples private property rights.

But Crawford, Westerberg and others noted that the bill, if enacted, would deliver an advantage to private property owners fighting state decisions, but not to groups fighting state decisions they view as restricting the rights of the public to clean air and water.

It is very discriminatory, said George Meyer, a former state Department of Natural Resources secretary who is now executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

A property owner would gain an advantage in court when challenging a DNR decision halting construction that would harm fish habitat, Meyer said.

If DNR grants the permit, the local fishermen who will lose the valuable fish habitat do not receive the same benefit, Meyer said. That is not equal treatment under the law and arguably (is) contrary to the equal protection and due process provisions of the Constitution.

Government agencies often mediate conflicts between various property owners and interest groups, and this law would reduce government authority to do that, said Brian Ohm, an attorney who researches and teaches planning at UW-Madison.

Federal and state courts have chosen to give deference to state decisions on how the law should be interpreted, recognizing that the expertise and technical knowledge of agency officials who work with regulations every day is naturally much deeper than that of judges, who must be generalists, Ohm said.

A law telling courts not to give deference to state agencies may raise concerns that the Legislature is overstepping its role under the Constitutional principle of separation of powers, Ohm said.

Jarchow said the real separation-of-powers problem was state agencies that write, interpret and enforce the laws in a system under which the courts then rubberstamp decisions.

For all state agencies

AB 582 is one of a raft of pending bills Republicans are pushing to roll back DNR and local government authority to regulate private development decisions that can affect the environment, especially in shoreline development filling wetlands.

Last week, in response to complaints from local governments, Jarchow offered an amendment that made several changes, including removal of a provision placing new limits on local authority to enact regulations on business developments, such as frac sand mines, after developers have applied for certain permits.

In place of that provision, Jarchow said, he added the new section to the bill changing how the courts handle challenges to state decisions. It applies to all state agencies.

The amended bill was approved Thursday on a 4-2 party-line vote by the Assembly Committee on Housing and Real Estate. An identical amendment has been offered by Sen. Frank Lasee, R-DePere, to the Senate version of the bill, SB 464.

Both bills were given public hearings before the amendments were offered.

Larry Konopacki, a principal lawyer for the nonpartisan Legislative Council, noted that if the bills are enacted, courts would still base decisions on the facts gathered by state agencies. They just wouldnt give special weight to the states legal interpretations.

Jarchow said he was inspired by a 2006 opinion written by state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser in a case in which Prosser reluctantly agreed with the court majority that a DNR decision could not be overturned under the law.

This case epitomizes the growth of agency power, the decline of judicial power, and the tenuous state of property rights in the 21st Century, Prosser wrote in Hilton v. the DNR. These standards of review frequently put reviewing courts in a straitjacket ...

First, the supreme court is the states preeminent law-developing court. When the supreme court grants great weight deference to an agencys interpretation of law, however, it ceases to be preeminent.

Prosser wrote that he hoped his commentary would generate discussion of current law.
Gov. Scott Walkers presidential campaign has reimbursed the state $135,000 for the governors taxpayer-funded security detail during his presidential run last year, the Department of Administration said Monday.

That brings the total recovered by the state for his political travel-related security last year to nearly $260,000, which Walker and his administration say represents the total amount the state has billed to his campaign.

The $135,000 repaid by his presidential campaign includes mileage reimbursement, political travel-related security expenses such as hotel and airfare and half of the Internet expenses incurred at the Governors Mansion during the campaign period.

DOA spokesman Jim Dick noted none of those reimbursements is required by state law.

Walker campaign spokesman Joe Fadness said the reimbursement will be reflected in the next filing with the Federal Election Commission, due on Jan. 31.

As of December, Walkers campaign and political nonprofit group, Our American Revival, had previously paid about $125,000 to the state for airfare, hotels and other travel-related expenses incurred by his security team.

His political nonprofit said in April that it would reimburse the state for those costs.

It is not repaying the state for any salary or benefits because the security team provides protection 24 hours a day regardless of where Walker travels.

Last year, the state paid the security team more than $570,000 in overtime back pay.

The U.S. Labor Department found the state had not been properly compensating the nine members of the dignitary protection unit for routinely working 50, 60 and sometimes more than 70 hours in a week.

The investigation covered a period from May 2013 to May 2015, which included a time when Walker was traveling extensively to explore a potential presidential run.

The campaign itself lasted 71 days beginning in July.

When the campaign ended on Sept. 21, Walker reportedly still had more than $1 million in campaign debt to retire.
The point person in the United States for a country dealing firsthand with a refugee crisis, an oil crisis, global warming, rebuilding Afghanistan and a growing border conflict with Russia leaned forward in a comfy chair in a nondescript Madison building on Monday and quietly showed his diplomatic chops.

Kare R. Aas, a career diplomat who is the Norwegian ambassador to the U.S., was on a goodwill tour of the Midwest, successfully avoiding the blizzard in Washington for the relatively calm weather of Iowa and Wisconsin.

Here he visited Livsreise, the new Norwegian heritage center in Stoughton, and the Norwegian American Genealogical Center & Naeseth Library, 415 W. Main St.

In an interview, he touched on concerns that Norway shares with the United States, the most pressing on a daily basis being questions about the handling of migrants from Syria. Uniquely, Norway is dealing with a tense dispute with Russia at its northernmost border, where refugees have been arriving regularly after traveling through Russia.

Its important for Norway to explain what is going on with a continuous dialogue with the United States, said Aas, adding that the refugee problem is a global issue that requires a global solution. Aas sees a meeting Feb. 4 in London as a potential avenue for a solution.

Having served as ambassador to Afghanistan during two turbulent years (2008-10), and having led the Foreign Ministrys security division for five years, Aas has participated in serious issues at the highest level.

In the U.S., Norway has spent its pension funds oil money investing in 2,000 of Americas largest companies. Its climate research in the north is considered the gold standard, and its efforts at world peace seem perpetual.

But here is the ambassador driving around Madison with honorary consul Anne Lindblom, of Verona, stopping in at a genealogical center to chat.

Its important (for me to be here) because the Norwegian-American community of 6 million plays a significant role in the bilateral activities of our two countries, he said.

And culturally, the (Norwegian-Americans) today have a better understanding of what happened with the immigration than do the Norwegians.

Aas dodged what has become the most controversial issue for those Norwegian-Americans: the failure of Congress to approve President Barack Obamas appointment of Minnesota lawyer Samuel Heins to be the U.S. ambassador to Norway.

Heins, an Obama fundraiser and human rights advocate, was nominated last spring but the position has been open since September 2013.

We ask a lot of Norway, yet the Senate does not have the decency to send the personal representative of the president to his post in Oslo, Sun Prairie native Tom Loftus recently wrote.

Loftus, a longtime Wisconsin politician, was U.S. ambassador to Norway from 1993 to 1998. It is common to describe the Senate as dysfunctional, and this has become nothing but a kind way to describe collective arrogance. Our allies dont understand.

Aas was more diplomatic: It is of benefit to both countries, not just Norway, for the United States to have an ambassador there, said Aas, adding that Norwegian ambassadors are career diplomats appointed by the government.
Whether you jump off a cliff or drive off a cliff, youre still off a cliff. Thats how Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, lamented the Republican Partys choice between front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

The same adage could serve just as well for the dilemma voters may be presented in November by the two major parties. Each seems willing to try defying gravity, heedless of the risk of being smashed on the rocks below.

The polls are impossible to ignore. Trump leads the GOP race in Iowa, New Hampshire and the nation, followed by Ted Cruz  while more mainstream candidates such as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio straggle far behind. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders has opened up a big lead in New Hampshire and leads some Iowa polls, creating the real possibility that the once-inevitable Hillary Clinton will be trounced in the first two nominating season contests.

Over the weekend came news that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is looking at running as an independent.

Wise heads in both parties are verging on panic. If either Trump or Cruz wins the Republican nomination, Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, told Politico, Wed be hard-pressed to elect a Republican dogcatcher north of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Mississippi. What if self-declared democratic socialist Sanders is the Democratic winner? It would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, assured The New York Times.

Republicans seem eager to relive 1964, when Barry Goldwater got 38 percent of the vote and carried a meager six states. Democrats apparently are pining for 1972, when George McGovern fared even worse.

Trump has done his best to alienate Latinos, blacks, Muslims, women and anyone with an aversion to Sarah Palin. Cruz is widely despised by fellow Republican senators, and his over-the-top rhetoric (such as vowing to carpet-bomb Islamic State) is music only to the GOPs right wing. Sanders brandishes a label that, a Gallup poll found, would automatically make him unacceptable to nearly half the public.

But the sort of people who turn out for party caucuses and primaries dont seem to care. Sanders is flying high in Iowa partly because, according to a new Selzer & Co. poll, 43 percent of likely Democratic caucus participants consider themselves socialists  compared with 38 percent who admit to being capitalists.

Iowas Republican caucusgoers are not exactly representative of their party, much less the nation: In 2012, nearly half identified themselves as very conservative, and 58 percent were evangelical Christians, double the roughly 27 percent of all Americans.
Whether or not you believe Making a Murderer documents an actual criminal frame-up, the Netflix series has attracted millions of viewers and brought widespread attention to questions about flawed justice in Wisconsin.

But theres a notable gap. While the series presents a real-life courtroom drama to a mass audience, the debate it has fostered about criminal justice is grossly incomplete because it overlooks the enormous impact of judicial elections.

What if the filmmakers behind Making a Murderer were to examine Wisconsins system for electing jurists? Would Wisconsins money- and politics-soaked system for choosing the men and women who wear the black robes survive the same level of scrutiny?

As Wisconsin starts another high-spending election contest for its highest court with a primary vote next month, activists and policy-makers must consider judicial elections when they contemplate fixing criminal justice. Theres growing evidence that when states elect their judges, they poison the well of criminal justice.

Wisconsin is among 39 states that elect judges at some level.

Today, the most popular campaign platform in judicial elections nationwide consists of candidates and their supporters touting themselves as tough on crime or disparaging opponents as soft on crime, themes featured in more than half of all state Supreme Court election TV advertising in the last election cycle, 2013-2014.

Wisconsin knows this first-hand. In 2011  the year the state Supreme Court declined to review Steven Averys conviction  an ad accused Justice David Prosser of covering up molestation by a priest while Prosser was district attorney. Prosser called the ad, sponsored by a labor-friendly group, sleazy and false. He won re-election after a recount.

The ad against Prosser was cited by Emory University law professors in an eye-opening 2014 study that concluded: The more TV ads aired during state supreme court judicial elections in a state, the less likely justices are to vote in favor of criminal defendants.

These scholars also found an explosion of attack ad spending in judicial races following Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that permitted unlimited independent expenditures in elections.

After special interests opened their checkbooks for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2011, Wisconsin saw its judicial election spending rank second in the nation for the entire 2011-2012 cycle.

The following year, Brendan Dassey lost his request for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to grant him a new trial. Also in 2013, a law-and-order ad by a pro-business group praised high court candidate Patience Roggensack, an incumbent, for closing a loophole that would have let a sexual predator back on the street.

Judges are human, and they can be vulnerable to political pressures. Another study has shown that the more competitive a judicial race becomes, the more closely incumbent judges align decisions with voter preferences.

Perhaps most concerning, a recent report by Reuters shows that in states with capital punishment, state Supreme Court justices who face election are significantly more likely to uphold death sentences on appeal.

Since Making a Murderer came out, hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition asking President Obama to pardon Avery and Dassey. (The White House replied that a president can only pardon those convicted of federal crimes.)

Yet among those passionate for reform, calls for change must target the toxic mix of hardball politics and tough on crime ad campaigns that have come to characterize judicial elections.

The solution is clear: merit-based, nonpartisan, appointive systems for choosing judges.

Any serious conversation about criminal justice reform must include eliminating judicial elections.
Cyprus PIO: Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review, 16-01-25 Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office Server at <http://www.pio.gov.cy/> TURKISH CYPRIOT AND TURKISH MEDIA REVIEW No. 15/16 23-25.01.2016 [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Akinci: "We participated in Davos having a state and without paying any cost" [02] Akinci: "I felt the international support in Davos. It is the first time that a Turkish Cypriot president comes here" [03] Akinci: "Even if the International community does not recognize the TRNC it recognizes the existence of Turkish Cypriots" [04] Akinci evaluated his contacts in Davos to TRT; He met with Cameron [05] Akinci met with CHP foreign relations committee [06] Siber addressed the 11th Conference of PUOICM [07] Delegation of the so-called assembly carries out contacts in Brussels [08] Biden appreciates Turkey's critical role on the Cyprus issue [09] Davutoglu on the Cyprus problem [10] Commentary: Political resolve fuels hope over Cyprus [11] Turkish Cypriot columnist: "Great progress has been achieved on the property, the chapter will be closed within a month" [12] Izcan described the meetings at Davos as an important development for the solution of the Cyprus problem [13] Turkey's MFA press release regarding Greek Defence Minister's statements [14] Seventeen thousand foreigners bought property in the breakaway regime during the last sixteen years [15] Serdar Denktas called the Turkish Cypriots to evaluated well the text of the agreement to be for the solution of the Cyprus problem [16] Ozersay started visiting occupied villages in the breakaway regime spreading his political views [17] Caglar due to Strasburg for PACE's meeting [18] Colak met with the Vice President of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities [19] Legal action may be taken against academicians in the occupied area of Cyprus who signed the "Academics for Peace" initiative [20] CHP delegation to pay an illegal visit to the occupied area of Cyprus as peace deal on the horizon [21] Omer Nasit the new chairman of DEV-IS trade union [22] Biden highlights the need for freedom of speech in Turkey; Erdogan: "Terror propaganda beyond limits of free speech" [23] Demirtas and Yuksekdag re-elected as HDP co-chairs [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Akinci: "We participated in Davos having a state and without paying any cost" Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (25.01.16) reports that Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci has alleged that they have participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos having a state and without paying any price for this. In statements at the illegal Tymbou airport last night after his return from Davos, Akinci noted that they had the opportunity to convey the Turkish Cypriot community's "peaceful, modern and rational messages" at an international platform in Davos. "The few days we have spent there were useful for the Turkish Cypriot people and Cyprus", he argued. Noting that he had heart some evaluations regarding Davos, Akinci claimed: "That place is not a place where you go by paying a price, by paying a cost. We have participated there having a state. We did not go by paying any cost". Pointing out that participating in the Economic Forum in Davos was an "important experience", he added that "value and respect' was shown towards him and the Turkish Cypriot "people". He said: "I do not perceive it as a personal matter. In my self the Turkish Cypriot people and their elected leader were valued and respected". Arguing that in all the platforms they have participated they had the opportunity to once more express the Turkish Cypriot "people's" pro-peace identity and determination for a solution, Akinci said: "The will for a solution which we have exhibited in the negotiating process by protecting our legitimate rights is known and appreciated in the world. I beg for evaluating the invitation to Davos within this framework". Recalling that they had a tripartite meeting with the UN Secretary-General and evaluated the situation in the negotiating process, Akinci noted that "we have tried to make a plan for the future". Noting that this tripartite meeting was something in which he was participating for the first time, Akinci added: "Going to Davos in the name of the Turkish Cypriot people was something that happened for the first time [?]" Akinci also said that he met with the US Vice President Joe Biden and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron and participated in a meeting under the title "The expectations from 2016". Akinci was asked whether he had met with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. He replied that he had the opportunity to talk on foot with the Greek Prime Minister and added that this meeting was not like the other meetings. He added: "We shook hands, we saluted each other, he said he wished for the Cyprus problem to be solved and we wished for Greece to overcome its problems". Asked about the issue of the guarantees and his meeting with the British Prime Minister, Aknci said that they conveyed to Cameron the situation in which the negotiating process is and expressed their views on the issue. (I/Ts.) [02] Akinci: "I felt the international support in Davos. It is the first time that a Turkish Cypriot president comes here" Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (24.01.16) reports that Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci has said that the interest exhibited in Cyprus during the Economic Forum in Davos was remarkable. In statements to Kibris' correspondent to the Forum, Akinci noted that in his meetings with many heads of state and CEO's of leading world companies he felt "effort and support" for a solution to the Cyprus problem. Akinci said that in a possible solution the support of the IMF and the World Bank will be needed and added that he met with the Heads of these organizations and both gave him positive replies. Akinci argued that 2016 is a year during which all sides will come face to face with the reality and added that they are exerting efforts for the process to end positively. Wishing for the Cyprus problem to be concluded in the first half of 2016, Akinci argued that because of the parliamentary elections and the election campaign in the government-controlled area of the Republic of Cyprus, the process will come to a "sensitive point". "If a solution cannot be found in May, it is not the end of the world", he said adding that after the parliamentary elections in the government-controlled area of the Republic they could continue from the point they were left and end this journey within 2016. He noted: "We are tired of disappointments. All Cypriots, both in the south and the north, are tired of hoping every time and of these hopes not being materialized. We have to secure that these are left behind. This is what is expected from us by the young generations". Noting that he does not expect the world to create the solution in Cyprus and that the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots are those who will create the solution, Akinci said: "We are the main actors in the country. We will create the solution". Referring to his meetings in Davos, he argued: "The contacts in Davos were positive from the point of view of some things happening for the first time. It is the first time that a Turkish Cypriot president came here. Even though the world has not recognized the TRNC, the Turkish Cypriot people are an entity. Everyone realizes this. Everyone knows that no result could be achieved in Cyprus without the contribution of the leader elected by the Turkish Cypriot people and without the contribution of the people. Whether is recognized or not, these people have been represented here. It is something happening for the first time from this point of view". Referring to the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, Akinci said that Eide is a member of the Administrative Council of the World Economic Forum and Head of Geopolitical Relations. He described as an advantage for Cyprus the fact that such a person is the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser. (I/Ts.) [03] Akinci: "Even if the International community does not recognize the TRNC it recognizes the existence of Turkish Cypriots" Turkish daily Milliyet newspaper (24.01.16) reports that the Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci stated that the international community has seen that without the contribution of the Turkish Cypriots and their leaders, the Cyprus problem cannot be solved. He also stated that the International community may not recognize the "TRNC", but recognizes the existence of the Turkish Cypriots. Akinci made these statements to Milliyet upon his return from Davos. "This is the first time that a president of the Turkish Cypriots came here. Even if the international community does not recognize the TRNC, it recognizes the existence of the Turkish Cypriots. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows that without the contribution of the Turkish Cypriot people and the leader they have elected, the Cyprus problem cannot be solved", Akinci argued. He went on and said that both the international community and the two communities in Cyprus got tired of the Cyprus problem and added that it must be solved in 2016. He also said that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would be as happy as the Cypriots in case the problem is solved and added that because of the non-solution of the Cyprus problem the young people of Cyprus have been induced to behave negatively. "All these must stay in the past. This is what young people expect from us. This was one of the main issues of my candidacy. We must safeguard the youth from the uncertainty of the future, he stated. (CS) [04] Akinci evaluated his contacts in Davos to TRT; He met with Cameron According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 23.01.16), Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci has reiterated the importance of technical and financial support for a settlement in Cyprus. Speaking in an interview to Turkish State Television-TRT in Davos, Akinci said that the world which is rigged with conflicts and wars needs a good example which the settlement of the Cyprus problem can provide. Highlighting the importance of his participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Akinci said that he found the valuable opportunity at the summit to meet with heads of state and governments to convey the Turkish Cypriots' strong determination and will for a settlement on the island. Touching upon the issue of hydrocarbons, Akinci reiterated that transporting the natural gas discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean through a pipeline from Turkey to Europe via Cyprus is a serious alternative that should be considered. He also said that there is an alternative energy project planned to bring electricity from Israel to Cyprus through an underwater cable. On the issue of the water pumped to the occupied area of Cyprus from Turkey, Ak?nc? said that the project can be expanded to supply water to the whole island. Stating that the Turkish Cypriot side continues to remain committed and determined in reaching a settlement on the island, Akinci hoped that the Greek Cypriot side too will continue to remain committed to achieving that goal. Pointing out that it is their aim to transform Cyprus into an island of peace in 2016; Akinci underlined the importance of reaching a viable and sustainable settlement. Responding to a question as to whether or not a referendum is in sight for June this year, Akinci said that he does not know if that will be possible. However he said that the goal is to reach a settlement as soon as possible. "The upcoming elections in South Cyprus (editor's note: as he refers to the Republic of Cyprus) as well as the current Greek Cypriot negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis' candidacy for the chairman of the UN General Assembly could impact the process. That is why we were wishing for an early solution", he said. Stating that there still remain obstacles in the talks that need to be overcome, Akinci said that it will be wrong to say that everything is picture perfect in the negotiations process. "Nevertheless we are cautiously optimistic" he said. Meanwhile, Akinci met with the British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday within the framework of the Davos World Economic Forum Congress. Although no statement was released after the meeting, Akinci, who spoke to the press later, said that the meeting was conducted in a friendly atmosphere and they had exchanged views with regards to the negotiation process. He added that the British Prime Minister extended the UK's support to the talks. [05] Akinci met with CHP foreign relations committee According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 25.01.16), the Turkish Republican People's Party (CHP) has expressed support to Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci in the Cyprus negotiations process. A delegation from the CHP's foreign relations committee, which is currently in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus for a series of contacts, met today with Akinci. The chairman of the committee Ozturk Yilmaz, who is leading the delegation, presented Akinci with a letter from the CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu conveying his best wishes. Yilmaz said that they are in the "TRNC" to personally see the level of progress in the ongoing negotiations process. Stating that the Cyprus issue is a national cause for his party, Yilmaz expressed the CHP's support to Akinci in the ongoing talks. Akinci, for his part, stated that Kilicdaroglu in his letter had reiterated his support for a settlement in Cyprus which safeguarded the freedom, political equality and security of the Turkish Cypriot "people". "We hope that all parties within the Turkish Grand National Assembly express the same kind of support. The time for a solution in Cyprus has come", said Akinci, claiming that the Turkish Cypriots had laid the foundations of a bi-communal and bi-zonal federation in Cyprus in 1974. He however pointed out although the physical boundaries of such a settlement have been created, the legal basis and its international acceptance have not been achieved. Stating that important progress has been achieved in the talks, Akinci expressed the hope that 2016 will be the year a settlement will be reached on the island. Expressing the wish that Turkey too will benefit from a settlement on the island, Akinci said that Turkey is the most important country in the region and that any settlement to be reached on the island will reshape the Eastern Mediterranean's energy policies. Akinci also said that he is happy to see that the Cyprus problem ceased to be exploited for domestic politics in Turkey. [06] Siber addressed the 11th Conference of PUOICM According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 25.01.16), the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus is being represented at the 11th Conference of the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUOICM). The self-styled speaker of the parliament Sibel Siber and an accompanying delegation from the "parliament" are attending the meetings in Bagdad. The "TRNC parliamentary delegation" headed by Siber and which consists of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) "deputy" Huseyin Ercal, the Democrat Party National Forces (DP) "deputy" Fikri Ataoglu and the Social Democratic Party (TDP) "deputy" Huseyin Angolemli travelled to Bagdad together with the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Ismail Kahraman and a delegation from the Turkish Parliament. As part of her contacts, Siber delivered a speech at the conference today. The delegation, who attends the PUOICM meetings as an observer, will also hold meetings with the Speakers of Parliament of the participating countries. [07] Delegation of the so-called assembly carries out contacts in Brussels According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 25.01.16), a delegation from the so-called assembly of the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus is in Brussels for a series of contacts with EU officials. The delegation is made up of Republican Turkish Party-United Forces (CTP-BG) "deputy" Armagan Candan, the National Unity Party (UBP) "deputy" Ergun Serdaroglu, the Democrat Party-National Forces (DP-UG) "deputy" Hasan Tacoy and the Social Democratic Party (TDP "deputy" Zeki Celer. The delegation, which will be holding contacts at the European Parliament and Commission, will be meeting with representatives and MEPs from the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and Democrats, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists, the Liberals, the Freedom and Direct Democracy and the Greens groups. The delegation is expected to take up issues such as the ongoing Cyprus negotiations process, the EU's financial and technical contributions to a settlement in Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriots' harmonization process to the EU. Efforts to make Turkish an official EU language in line with an initiative launched by the Greek Cypriot side is also expected to be discussed during the meetings. Candan will also be participating a meeting of the Socialist Democrats as an observer. [08] Biden appreciates Turkey's critical role on the Cyprus issue According to Ankara Anatolia news agency (23.01.16), U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, during a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul on Saturday, commenting also on the Cyprus problem, said: "How much I appreciate your commitment to try to end years of deadlock, conflict in Cyprus". Biden said that he had separate meetings in Davos this past week with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiades. He added that both parties are heading toward a negotiation agreement and appreciated Turkey's "critical role". Biden also thanked Davutoglu for his strong support for the solution of the Cyprus problem, adding that the solution of the Cyprus problem will strengthen the energy security of Europe. Turkish daily Sabah (online, 23.01.16) reported that Davutoglu, for his part, thanked Biden for visiting Cyprus, adding that the United States will have an important role in the Cyprus peace talks. He also said: "We hope to reach a permanent solution in Cyprus in the following days, weeks or months. I thank the US Vice President Joe Biden and his team for their fruitful meetings". Biden also met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting was closed to the press. Meanwhile, Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (online, 25.01.16) reports that Turkey and the United States are singing the same tune on a number of key regional issues including a Turkish military camp on Iraqi soil and the total closure of a key stretch of the Turkish border with Syria, but they remain in disagreement over the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria, following Biden's official visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to Turkey. Washington recognized the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey was as much of a threat to Ankara as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Biden said. [09] Davutoglu on the Cyprus problem According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 23.01.16), the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who has reiterated his country's desire to join the European Union, said that Ankara is fully aware of the obstacle the Cyprus problem poses in achieving that goal. Speaking in an interview to the German Press Agency, Davutoglu said that becoming a full member to the European Union is a strategic objective for Turkey. "Yes. This is not only a desire. This is a strategic objective for us. Of course, we know the difficulties like the Cyprus question. There will be a positive development in the Cyprus question to find a final resolution. There has been a very positive momentum in EU-Turkish relations in the last three months. And at the end of all these improvements, I am sure, Turkey, one day, will be a member of the EU", he added. [10] Commentary: Political resolve fuels hope over Cyprus Columnist Selin Naci, writing in Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (online, 25.01.16), reports in her following commentary that 2016 marks a critical year for Cyprus: "Turkey has made a diplomatic jumpstart to 2016. The settlement of dormant conflicts gained momentum with the Nov. 24, 2015, downing of a Russian jet as Turkey felt the urge to enhance its security ties with NATO and reinvigorate negotiations for EU membership while seeking ways to mend the broken ties with countries such as Israel and Egypt in order to diversify its economic markets and energy resources. In this context, the Cyprus issue, which continues to loom over Ankara's potential EU membership, has regained importance. The settlement of the Cyprus conflict is crucial in terms of maintaining security in the Mediterranean during such a tumultuous period. It will also provide a healthier ground for energy cooperation between Turkey and Israel and thus contribute to Europe's energy security. Will peace find a chance? Long-stalled peace talks have been reinvigorated following Mustafa Akinci's election as northern Cypriot president (editor's note: Turkish Cypriot leader) last April. Akinci's goodwill and faith in the reunification of Cyprus found resonance with his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Nikos Anastasiades. The synergy between the two has even enabled them to set a timeline for the resolution of the Cyprus conflict by March. Indeed, as a result of intense negotiations, the parties have reached a common understanding on the main issues ? even if they are still short of full agreement. In this respect, the declarations made by Akinci and Anastasiades at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week were encouraging. (?) Amid the good news from Davos, Turkey hosted last week U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is known for his close ties with the Greek lobby and his efforts for the resolution of Cyprus. During a joint press meeting, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu thanked Biden for visiting Cyprus in 2014 and said the U.S. would play an important role in Cyprus peace talks. Indeed, with the wind at his back following the Iranian nuclear deal, the settlement of the Cyprus issue presents an opportunity for U.S. President Barack Obama to build on his legacy before he leaves office. Just as diplomatic efforts over Cyprus are accelerating, Istanbul Kultur University's Global Political Trends Centre organized a roundtable meeting last week hosting Andros Kyprianou, general-secretary of the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL), who was scheduled to have a meeting with both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Ministry the next day. When asked about the current state of the peace talks, Kyprianou said he remained hopeful, while underlining three focal points requiring settlement: power sharing, property rights and security. According to Kyprianou, the sides have largely reached a consensus on how to share executive power. However, little progress has been made regarding the property rights of refugees. The people who lost their homes have three options ahead ? return, resettlement or compensation. Kyprianou said the amounts of compensation proffered by the leaders are an exaggeration, and claims that without knowing the number of people who would apply for the compensation option; it is not possible to determine the exact amount to be paid as compensation. Since neither the Greek nor the Turkish side are able to undertake the financial burden of compensation, they have both turned to third parties such as the EU and the U.S. for financial assistance ? something that Kyprianou describes as the cost of peace in Cyprus. As for the most troubling part of the negotiations, security, Kyprianou particularly emphasizes the future positions of the guarantor states. Despite the sincere commitment of the parties, it would seem unlikely that a settlement will be reached before the Greek Cypriot parliamentary elections in May. However, shared economic and security interests in the region create a strong incentive for all parties to benefit from the resolution of the Cyprus issue. Particularly, diplomatic resolve of the parties presents an unprecedented window of opportunity that shouldn't go wasted. Thus, 2016 marks a critical year for Cyprus." [11] Turkish Cypriot columnist: "Great progress has been achieved on the property, the chapter will be closed within a month" Writing in her column in Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (25.01.16), columnist Esra Aygin reports that great progress has been achieved in the property chapter during the negotiations for finding a solution to the Cyprus problem and that "it seems that this chapter has come to the point of being completed within a month the most". Under the title "The last level in the negotiations", the columnist writes, inter alia, the following: "[?] The sides, which started the negotiations in the property chapter with positions very different from each other, are in a consensus now on how the property problem should be solved. In the negotiations, in parallel to criteria such as that the property should be vacant in order for being included in the properties to be returned and that no development should have been made on it, the criterion that the person who demands the return should have an emotional bond with the property has been decided, that is, he should have considered this property as 'home' for a period. The experts agree that the number of the Greek Cypriots who will gain the right of return within the framework of the emotional bond [criterion] does not exceed the few thousands. The day when Property Commission to be established with the solution solves all the property applications on the basis of the criteria set by the sides, it has become definite with the conditions of the agreement that the majority of population in the Turkish Cypriot founding state will belong to the Turkish Cypriots. The fact that majority of property in the Turkish Cypriot founding state will belong to the Turkish Cypriots is guaranteed by leaving the power of regulating the rules of acquiring a property to the founding states. [?] Meanwhile, in case of a solution, Turkey will be treated before federal Cyprus as an EU member state, but in case of granting citizenship it is noted that the 4 to 1 Greek-Turkish balance will be protected. [?] It is noted that one month period is mostly needed for the property chapter coming to the point of being closed. [?] How the process will advance from now on depends very closely on the signal which the Greek Cypriot side will take from Turkey on the issue of guarantees. [?] Actually, neither the Turkish Cypriot side nor the Greek Cypriot side are expecting for the issue of guarantees to endanger the negotiations. The continuation without a change of the 1960 guarantees' structure is not realistic, when it is taken into consideration the fact that the political equality of the Turkish Cypriots is guaranteed and reference is made to a Turkish Cypriot entity that will be much stronger and equal in the new federal Cyprus, and will possess the one of the two federal states of a federation which is member of the EU. However, the Turkish Cypriot side is not expected to totally abandon Turkey's guarantees. Among the formulas which could be found are alternatives such as guarantee structures which do not have armies and include sanctions and embargoes or temporary unilateral guarantee structures. [?]" (I/Ts.) [12] Izcan described the meetings at Davos as an important development for the solution of the Cyprus problem Turkish Cypriot daily Yeni Duzen newspaper (25.01.16) reports that Izzet Izcan, chairman of the United Cyprus Party (BKP), evaluated in a written statement the results of the Davos summit and said that important steps were taken at Davos for the peace in Cyprus. According to Izcan, in the framework of the efforts exerted for "2016 to become the year of peace in Cyprus", very important steps were taken at Davos and at the same time a lot of important meetings towards the Cyprus problem had taken place. "Our duty is to evaluate the opportunities arisen in front of us", said Izcan and added that his party will continue supporting all the steps towards the peace and solution. Evaluating as a very important development for the solution of the Cyprus problem all the meetings that took place at Davos between the two leaders, as well as with the UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Izcan said: "An early solution would be for the benefit and interest of the other side as well". Referring to the issue of the natural gas, Izcan stressed the need for the revenues of the natural gas to be used for the economic development of Cyprus to be after the solution and not for military purposes. Stating that they are pleased from the fact that a remarkable progress has been achieved on the 4 out of the 6 chapters of the Cyprus problem at the negotiation talks, Izcan stressed the need for the two leaders to continue the negotiation progress with the same decisiveness and good will, in order as he said, to be able to achieve progress at the remaining chapters. (AK) [13] Turkey's MFA press release regarding Greek Defence Minister's statements According to the official website of Turkey's MFA (http://www.mfa.gov.tr), the following press release was issued on January 23. 2016 regarding the statements of the Greek Defence Minister Kammenos: "We regret the statements of Mr Kammenos, Minister of National Defence of Greece, at a press conference held on 18 January 2016, following his meeting with the Minister of Defence of the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus (editor's note: as they refer to the Cyprus Defence Minister), who visited Athens. We condemn his baseless and unethical expressions uttered after the meeting concerning our country and the Cyprus issue. At a time when a positive atmosphere prevails in Turkish-Greek relations and in Cyprus towards a comprehensive settlement, the improper statements of the Minister of National Defence of Greece at the press conference, give the impression that he is uncomfortable with this positive atmosphere. We strongly reject his ill-considered statements constituting a paradigm of irresponsibility. We expect the Greek authorities to act with a befitting sense of governmental responsibility and refrain from statements that may damage the atmosphere of collaboration that we are trying to cultivate between our countries." [14] Seventeen thousand foreigners bought property in the breakaway regime during the last sixteen years Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (25.01.16) reports that according to information by the "ministry of interior", the immovable property sold to foreigners in the breakaway regime has been increased in the last 16 years and notes that between 2000-2015, almost 20,000 Turkish and foreign citizens have applied to buy property in the occupied area of Cyprus and property was sold to 17,000 foreigners. According to the paper, there was an extreme rise in selling properties to foreigners especially after 2003-2004. In the period 1974-2002 only 1,859 foreigners applied for buying property in the breakaway regime, while the applications between 2003 and October 2015 rose to 16,453. The paper writes that the total number of foreign buyers is 16,927 and adds that they prefer to buy are apartments, building plots and fields. (CS) [15] Serdar Denktas called the Turkish Cypriots to evaluated well the text of the agreement to be for the solution of the Cyprus problem Turkish Cypriot daily Democrat Bakis newspaper (25.01.15) reports that Serdar Denktas, chairman of the Democratic Party-National Forces (DP-UG), in statements during a visit he paid in the occupied villages of Limnitis and Potamos tou Kambou, evaluated the latest developments on the Cyprus problem and called all the "Turkish Cypriot citizens" to evaluate very well the text (plan) of the final agreement to be for the solution of the Cyprus problem and then decide whether to say "yes" or "no" to the referendum. Reminding of the fact that the whole international community respected the "no" vote of the Greek Cypriot side at the referendum for the Annan plan, Denktas stressed the need for the decision of the Turkish Cypriots in a possible new plan to be respected as well. Reiterating that the "TRNC citizens" would reject any solution which would not envisage the existence of Turkey's effective and active guarantees, Denktas argued that the principle of the "political equality" and "sovereignty" are not protected well at the negotiating table. On the property issue, Denktas alleged that those who will lose their properties will become poor. Also, on the territory issue, Denktas said that the approach that the Turkish Cypriots would become refugees again should be abolished. "All these are sensitive issues for our people. Nobody should expect from the Turkish Cypriots that they would approve a solution which would not take into consideration their sensitivities", Denktas added. (AK) [16] Ozersay started visiting occupied villages in the breakaway regime spreading his political views Turkish Cypriot daily Vatan newspaper (25.01.16) reports that Kudret Ozersay, the chairman of the newly established People's Party (HP) heading a delegation started visited various villages in the occupied area of Cyprus informing the inhabitants about the party's positions in various issues. The delegation launched its visits in the occupied villages of Zodia and Potamos and the persons who live in the villages asked Ozersay what will happen to the villages in case a solution is reached and the area would be under Greek Cypriot administration and the inhabitants would have to abandon the area, as it is said. "We must come to a decision. This area is a part of our country and we without taking a stance against the solution we should try to create the structure of its development", he stated and added that people should not listen to speculations and work to improve their lives and the area. (CS) [17] Caglar due to Strasburg for PACE's meeting Turkish Cypriot daily Star Kibris newspaper (25.01.16) reports that Mehmet Caglar, "deputy" with the Republican Turkish Party-United Forces (CTP-BG), has departed for Strasburg in order to attend the winter session meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The meeting with take place between January 25-29. Caglar is expected to return to the occupied area of Cyprus on January 30 after completing his contacts in France. (AK) [18] Colak met with the Vice President of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris (23.01.16) reported that self-styled foreign minister Emine Colak met with the Vice President of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities Gaye Doganoglu and her accompanying delegation. "The President of the Turkish Cypriot association of municipalities (KTBB)", so-called mayors of the occupied village of Gunyeli mayor Ahmet Y. Benli and occupied Morphou mayor Mahmut Ozcinar were also present at the meeting. In her speech during the reception, Doganoglu expressed her pleasure for being in the "TRNC" and also stated that the status of delegation and representation was given back to "KTBB" last year at the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, adding that this is a welcoming development. Colak, for her part, referring to the return of the status back to "KTBB" last year at the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, said that this will provide more active participation of the "Turkish Cypriot local administrators" in the meetings and added that this is a gratifying development. [19] Legal action may be taken against academicians in the occupied area of Cyprus who signed the "Academics for Peace" initiative Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika newspaper (24.01.16) reported that legal action may be taken for academicians in the occupied area of Cyprus and signed a petition of the "Academics for Peace" initiative. Legal action against the Turkish academicians who signed the petition was taken in Turkey. The petition was signed by more than 1,000 Turkish and international academics calling on the Turkish government to end the security operations being committed in southeastern Anatolia and to return to table for talks to resolve the Kurdish issue. Afrika noted that the academicians in Turkey lost their jobs anf faced criminal accusations and wonders what actions will be taken for the Turkish Cypriot intellectuals, academicians, writers and artists who also signed the petition. (CS) [20] CHP delegation to pay an illegal visit to the occupied area of Cyprus as peace deal on the horizon According to Turkish daily Today's Zaman (online, 24.01.16), a delegation of the main opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP) is to have talks at the start of the week with leading political figures in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus as expectations for a deal between the Turkish and Greek Cyprus sides on the divided island are on the rise. Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, self-styled parliament speaker Sibel Siber, self-styled prime minister Omer Soyer Kalyoncu and former Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu are among the figures the delegation will meet with during their illegal visit, which is to start early on Monday. Both the Turkish and Greek Cypriots have spoken positively about the ongoing peace talks that restarted several weeks after Akinci was elected "president", in April last year. The main opposition party delegation, composed of the party's members on the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission, will be headed by Ozturk Yilmaz, Turkey's former Consul General in Mosul. Ahmet Ak?n, Mevlut Dudu, Serkan Topal, Eren Erdem and Oguz Kaan Salici are other CHP Deputies who are part of the delegation for the two-day visit. Y?lmaz, who was held captive for more than three months in 2014 by the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) when it captured Mosul, is the only person who had a diplomatic career among the CHP Deputies in the Foreign Affairs Commission. The delegation is to return to Turkey on Tuesday evening. [21] Omer Nasit the new chairman of DEV-IS trade union Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (24.01.16) reported that DEV-IS trade union in the occupied area of Cyprus held its 18th ordinary general congress during the week-end. According to the paper, Omer Nasit has been elected as the new chairman of the union. (AK) [22] Biden highlights the need for freedom of speech in Turkey; Erdogan: "Terror propaganda beyond limits of free speech" Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (online, 23.01.16) reports that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the need for freedom of speech and press in his address in Turkey to NGOs and reporters on Jan. 22, as he also backed a group academics who are under fire after a petition. "Two of the most important basic rights we Americans believe and your Constitution says are basic, fundamental rights," Biden said. "If you don't have an ability to express your opinion, to criticize a policy, to offer competing ideas without fear of intimidation or retribution, the country is robbed of opportunity and the country is being robbed of possibilities," he said. Biden said that free expression and a strong Turkish democracy matter "not only to Turks but to America as well". During his speech, Biden mentioned Turkey's occasional moves to restrict social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. "When internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites like YouTube or Twitter are shut down and more than 1,000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition, that's not the kind of example that needs to be set in the region," he said. On the same issue, HDN (online, 24.01.16) reported that conducting terrorist propaganda is beyond the limits of free speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed during a meeting with Biden, a day after the latter emphasized the need for freedom of speech and press in Turkey in an address to NGOs and reporters. During their 2.5-hour meeting in Istanbul, Erdogan reportedly called for more "sensitivity" from ally countries in Turkey's "fight against terror", and asked that they avoid statements in support of groups that "try to undermine" Turkey's efforts. [23] Demirtas and Yuksekdag re-elected as HDP co-chairs According to Ankara Anatolia news agency (24.01.16), Selahatin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag have been re-elected as co-chairs of opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) during the party's general congress held on Sunday in Ankara. Yuksekdag and Demirtas managed to secure the votes of 624 delegates out of the 626 who voted. There are a total of 1049 HDP delegates. The election also saw 76 members of the 100-seat party council replaced. Founded in 2012, the HDP has 59 Deputies in the 550-seat Turkish parliament. Meanwhile, Turkish daily Sabah (online, 23.01.16) reported that Demirtas, speaking at the sixth Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK), said on Saturday that he is "proud to be a traitor", amid ongoing criticism against him and his party for failing to put distance between themselves and the PKK terrorist organization. "We would be proud to be regarded as traitors in such a fascist state," Demirtas told the audience. Moreover, Turkish daily Today's Zaman (online, 24.01.16) reported that Demirtas said that the HDP will be part of a commission that will be set up with the participation of the political parties represented in Parliament for talks to reform the current Constitution. Speaking at his party's second ordinary congress on Sunday, Demirtas emphasized that despite the fact that the HDP has radically different ideas from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) about the principles to be included in the new Constitution, such as the definition of equality and justice, his political party will take its place in the planned commission. TURKISH AFFAIRS SECTION http://www.moi.gov.cy/pio (DPs/ AM) Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-25

From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PM Tsipras to meet representatives of lawyers, doctors, engineers [02] A total of 1,481 refugees arrive at Piraeus port on Monday

[01] PM Tsipras to meet representatives of lawyers, doctors, engineers

The meeting will take place at 12:00, at Maximos Mansion.

[02] A total of 1,481 refugees arrive at Piraeus port on Monday

More specifically, "Nisos Mykonos" and "Nisos Rhodos" carried 1,127 people from Chios and Mytilene and "tera jet" another 354 from Chios.
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-25 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Farmers to block Tempi valley on Monday [02] New investment law to offer guaranteed 7-year stable tax system to foreign investments [03] Clashes at Idomeni; one dead, two injured [04] Greece is the guardian of the European civilization, Alternate FM Xydakis says [05] Seaplanes to fly over the Ionian Sea in the summer [01] Farmers to block Tempi valley on Monday Farmers will place their tractors on the Athens-Thessaloniki motorway blocking the traffic at Tempi Valley from 12.00-14:00 and from 19:00-21:00 on Monday. The farmers are protesting against the government reforms in the social security and in taxation. Farmers from all over Greece will meet on Tuesday in Thessaloniki to decide on the future of their mobilisations. [02] New investment law to offer guaranteed 7-year stable tax system to foreign investments A new investment law to be tabled to Parliament soon will focus on tax-exemptions, preserving direct support to special investment categories and offering incentives to relocation to less-developed regions, Economy ministry sources told ANA-MPA on Monday. The guidelines of the new legislation will be: supporting existing and creating new export-orientated, innovative enterprises, boosting employment and particularly skilled personnel, strengthening cooperation through supporting cooperative groups, social economy enterprises, mergers and clusters, and supporting regions with lower development dynamism. The new law will emphasize on tax-exemptions and subsidizing leasing. The new investment legislation is currently finalized and will be tabled to Parliament within the next few days. [03] Clashes at Idomeni; one dead, two injured One died and two were injured when clashes among refugees broke out while waiting on Greece-FYROM buffer zone at Idomeni. Police is expected to make announcements shortly. [04] Greece is the guardian of the European civilization, Alternate FM Xydakis says Greece guards the national and European borders and is not going to sink boats with children, Alternate Foreign Minister responsible for European Affairs Nikos Xydakis said in a statement on refugees. Greece is a guardian of the European civilisation, he underlined adding that this applies to all EU member states that stand by the refugees, such as Germany, Austria, Sweden and others. He noted that Greece has rescued 104,000 children and adults so far in the Aegean Sea. As regards the identification centres, the so-called hotspots, he said that despite the delays, they will have been completed within some days. Xydakis stressed the need for Europe to quickly implement the co-decided with the European Council relocation program of 160,000 refugees and implement the EU agreement with Turkey, the so-called Joint Action Plan. [05] Seaplanes to fly over the Ionian Sea in the summer The Infrastructure, Transport and Networks Ministry and the Shipping and Island Policy Ministry in cooperation with the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund ((HRADF) are planning to grant licences for the construction of waterways on the islands of Paxoi, Zakynthos, Cephalonia and Lefkada as well as in Patras with the view to creating the first network of waterways in Greece. The first waterway in Greece will operate at the port of Corfu. Procedures for the licencing of another 50 waterways are underway. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-25 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] 'We have to find solutions for the weakest ones,' PM Tsipras says [02] The Common European asylum system is a 2016 challenge, says UN Assistant High Commissioner Turk [01] 'We have to find solutions for the weakest ones,' PM Tsipras says "We have to find solutions for the weakest ones," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday said in a meeting with representatives of the scientific community, at Maximos Mansion. "It is true that when you take measures for the sustainability of the system, they are usually horizontal. But this is a wrong practice," he said and stressed the need for finding ways to support the middle and low incomers and new scientists. [02] The Common European asylum system is a 2016 challenge, says UN Assistant High Commissioner Turk "The greatest challenge for this year is to have a really common European asylum system and just sharing of responsibility system in the EU member-states, UN Assistant High Commissioner for Protection and Director of the Division of International Protection Volker Turk stated in an interview to ANA-MPA adding however that "we need to work hard in order to reach that point." Turk visited the Greece-Fyrom buffer zone at Idomeni, Athens and Lesvos where he had the opportunity to meet with refugees and migrants and discuss with members of the Greek government. Idomeni was Turk's first stop on the day that Fyrom authorities allowed the entrance only to refugees with Austria and Germany as the final destination. "It is a country's sovereign right to control its borders, but at the same time when we deal with people who need protection, we must safeguard that they will have access to this protection," said Turk. "In Europe there is a huge issue because in one hand we have the countries with EU's external borders (Italy and Greece) and in the other hand we have some countries as Germany, Austria and Sweden that have been widely affected by the refugees issue. But what we really need is a collective response from the European Union in order a fair share of responsibilities to exist and we are not at the point yet," said Turk. UN Assistant High Commissioner said he is impressed by the Greek Coast Guard's efforts to save lives. "It is obvious that saving lives is the top priority of the government and the officers are doing a very good job as well as the police, the local authorities and the asylum service staff, but this does not mean that problems do not exist taking into account the huge number of refugees that arrive to the Greek islands." Turk left Greece on Sunday and he visits Turkey where he will meet with members of the Turkish government. Before Greece the UN Commissioner had visited FYROM. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
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Established in 1990, in response to the media coverage of conditions in Romania following the Revolution, Humanity at Heart started by sending out lorry loads of aid to the orphanages. Subsequently our focus has changed to long term community based projects.



We provide funding for Romanian-led initiatives in the community, thereby fostering and supporting an ethos of self-help. We fund a voluntary project helping the elderly in Petrila, and provide significant funding for a therapy centre for children on the autistic spectrum, a day centre in Arad for poor families and street children, a day centre helping a poor Roma community, as well as project which provides a small home for 6 youngsters with special needs in Birlad.

























Humanity at Heart (Reg. Charity No. 1042937) is a small, independent charity, based in a village called Hassocks in West Sussex, England, where we have a charity shop.
All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
Vandersand pointed to Davis' vote on the Omnibus budget bill, which has led to conservative political action committee Family Federal PAC from endorsing Davis in the GOP primary.

It's the second election in a row that Davis has been challenged by a candidate saying Davis is not as conservative in his voting as he leads his 13th CD constituents to believe. In 2014, former Miss America Erika Harold led a charge to unseat Davis.

JERSEYVILLE - Congressman Rodney Davis has failed to keep his promises to be a fiscal conservative, and that's why 37 year old pharmacist and small business owner Ethan Vandersand , is challenging Davis in the March 15th GOP primary.

A great example of the Davis rhetoric not matching the Davis record was his inexcusable vote for the Obama backed Ominbus bloated budget bill last month. By voting to increase government spending by $130 billion, Mr. Davis forgot his promise to the voters who elected him to keep federal spending in check," Vandersand said in a statement Monday.

"That bill increased funding for Planned Parenthood. It provided no restrictions on Sanctuary Cities, which allows illegal immigrants to live in America and tap into all of her benefits without legal status. No restrictions on EPA regulatory control of every pooling of water in America, all the way down to a drainage ditch. This cripples farmers and small businesses.

Three key D.C. conservative groups gave Davis a poor score on the last legislative session:

---Heritage Action for America, scores Davis at 34% www.heritageactionscorecard.com

---The American Conservative Union, one of Americas oldest conservative organizations, gives Congressman Davis a lifetime 53% conservative score. www.acuratings.conservative.org

---Conservative Review rated Congressman Davis with a low F grade of 31%. They do a comprehensive scoring of 50 key Congressional votes. www.conservativereview.com

Vandersand said there's no excuse for supporting the budget bill.

"It shows that Congressman Davis was more concerned about pleasing Speaker Ryan and President Obama than doing right by the taxpayers or our district, state, and country. I would have joined conservative Illinois Congressmen Randy Hultgren and Darin LaHood in voting NO on this bill," Vandersand said. "Rodney Davis is a Congressman who makes promises in downstate Illinois but votes to bust the budget caps and increase the debt burden on our children and grandchildren.
Spare Part Solutions started providing printing machine parts in 2003 from a 3000 square foot shop. Two years later, they moved into a 7000 square foot building, took over another printing parts business in Chicago and moved into another 3000 square foot facility while starting to make parts for Tier 1 and Tier 2 government suppliers.

ROCKFORD  Doug Sosnowski started Spare Part Solutions twelve years ago, and today his Rockford-based business has 22 team members. Among other machinery needs, Spare Part Solutions specializes in replacement parts for printing equipment.

In 2007, Spare Part Solutions branched into roll handling equipment and launched a fabricating division. Then last year, they moved into a 13.5 thousand square foot facility to include an extensive inventory of printing machine parts.

Sosnowski devotes a substantial section of Spare Parts facility to house inventory because he says hes established ongoing relationships with his customers, and can anticipate what they will need.

Spare Part Solutions houses an extensive inventory of Enkel parts allowing us to decrease crucial parts delivery lead time, protecting our customers from expensive downtime, he told TMA during a recent visit.

While things are going well for his business these days, Sosnowski says getting where he is hasnt been easy. Hes learned a lot about working machines and running businesses over the years  the hard way.

Sosnowski first started working at a machine shop right out of high school, where, like many others, he learned about machinery on the job.

I did everything from setups to programming, from the mills to the lathes, and began doing the tougher stuff, he said. I was making decent money at a place that had about 20 people and doing almost everything. The owners said at one time they might want to sell it to me, but nothing came of it.

Then an ISL Certification trainer suggested to Sosnowski that the two of them start a business together. The venture lasted less than four years.

We started a business that didnt work out very well. We ended up closing the business in 2000, he said. What it took was a lot of capital and debt. We had 24 guys working for us when one of our major customers went south.

Things were tough and future looked dim for Sosnowski, when out of the blue, a man looking for a specific machine part noticed a jacket Doug was wearing with his closed companys logo on the back.

Do you own a machine shop? he asked Sosnowski. The conversation led to work and the eventual purchase of a Bridgeport machine to fill the mans order.

I worked with him for a year. After that he asked me if I was interested in buying his business that made parts for printers, and, Sosnowski said, before long, he was back in business making parts again.

But the economy hit rough times, a considerable amount of work went overseas for a while, causing another business setback. It wasnt until 2003 that Spare Part Solutions came into being. Before that, it was tough to keep at the work, Sosnowski said.

I didnt give up, but it was difficult, he said. You feel like a failure, like you got sideswiped.

But some of the most successful people in the world hit rough patches at one time or another, and despite multiple efforts, things finally worked out.

My older brother said, Doug, you just keep getting up and trying again, and those words encouraged Sosnowski, he said. Quitting just wasnt an option.

Sosnowski says these days few experienced successful business owners are around to help mentor those just starting their businesses, and thats a shame.

Ive been in business 12 years. It took me 11 years to put together a good banking, legal and accounting team, he said. Counsel from someone who has been through it before would have been valuable and welcomed.

Doug credits that team hes pulled together along with his team members at Spare Part Solutions with his success.

Ive got quality people around me that make up our team  including my assistant and Spare Parts engineer, he said. He also points to those on the shop floor that keep things running smoothly and keep orders shipping out on time.

Its hard to find good people, and the people that weve brought in with medium to low skills, weve developed and trained, Sosnowski said.

Some were refugees, and some were down and out, he said. Weve worked with them to learn the needed skills.

Spare Part Solutions has begun reaching out beyond making printing parts to other technology fields, such as aerospace, and are in the process of expanding outreach beyond.

Sosnowskis approach to getting and keeping customers is different, he says.

We try to go for repeated customers. Well stock inventory because we know theyll need it again because of wear and tear, he said. If we make one part and have a feeling theyll need it again, we make an extra one and keep it in inventory.

Sosnowski says back in the old days, businesses like his were about relationships with companies and vendors. And while times have changed, those customer relationships still matter.

We know what our customers are buying and were ready for them, he said.

Spare Part Solutions is located at 7480 Forest Hills Road in Loves Park, IL 61111 or on the web at www.sparepartsolutions.com

____

First published by Technology & Manufacturing Association. Used by permission.
Disclaimer

"The Information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely our opinions. Inappropriate comments will be deleted at the author's discretion. All code samples provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied including but not limited to implied warranties or merchantability and or fitness for a particular purpose. Also this blog is for my own personal ideas, views and purposes."






MORE ABOUT ME:









I'm an author with The Story Factory. My literary and film agent is Shane Salerno.









I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for 7 years working in bars, bookstores, building sites. In 2001 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction. I lived in Oz for 10 years from 2008 - 2018 in the beautiful suburb of St Kilda. In 2019 I moved back to NYC.





My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, was optioned by Universal Pictures and appeared on several best of the year lists.



I'm probably best known for my Sean Duffy series of detective novel set in Belfast during the Troubles. Those books have won the Edgar Award, Ned Kelly Award, Barry Award, Anthony Award, Audie Award etc.





I have a new standalone coming out in 2019 called The Chain...
Honda is the latest automaker to bring a small number of hydrogen powered vehicles to market amid increasing zero emission vehicle mandates from California and other US states.

The Japanese automaker made the announcement at the Washington auto show, saying the next-generation Honda Clarity Fuel Cell model will cost around $60,000 (Rs 40.62 lakh). (Picture for representational purpose only)

By Reuters: Honda Motor Co said on Thursday it will start selling its new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in California by year's end.

Honda is the latest automaker to bring a small number of hydrogen powered vehicles to market amid increasing zero emission vehicle mandates from California and other US states.

The Japanese automaker made the announcement at the Washington auto show, saying the next-generation Honda Clarity Fuel Cell model will cost around $60,000 (Rs 40.62 lakh) with a targeted monthly lease under $500. Honda declined to say how many it planned to sell.

ALSO READ: Honda Two Wheelers previews its exciting line-up for Auto Expo 2016

The vehicle will go on sale in Japan in a few months and in the United States by end of the year. It will initially only be leased.

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The vehicle's platform, or basic underpinnings, will also be used for a new plug-in hybrid electric car due by 2018. Honda said it expects by 2020 that 20 per cent of its US vehicle sales will be hybrids. It will sell its 2017 Accord hybrid later this year.

One big issue for fuel cell vehicles is that there are only a handful of hydrogen refuelling stations.

Sales will begin at some dealerships in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. Honda did not offer details about planned sales elsewhere in the United States.

Toyota Motor Corp began offering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in October in California. Hyundai Motor Co has also leased fuel cell vehicles to about 100 US customers. Both offer leases of fuel cell vehicles for $499 a month.

ALSO READ: Honda Cars India introduces new grade in Honda City

Toyota has plans to sell 30,000 fuel cell vehicles globally by 2020, ramping up from an expected 2,000 in 2016. Fuel cell vehicles are a major component of the company's plans to curb polluting emissions to nearly zero by 2050.
Honda Two Wheelers will be introducing 10 new models which includes 6 Indian launches and 4 concept models at the Auto Expo 2016.

Honda showcases its latest global concept models for the first time globally after Tokyo Motor Show, 2015.

By India Today Web Desk: Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. (HMSI) on January 23 announced the overview of its much anticipated line-up at the upcoming 13th Auto Expo, 2016.

Extending the "Fun DNA" of global Honda to new highs will be 10 new models which includes 6 Indian launches and 4 concept models.

ALSO READ: UM Motorcycles to unveil Renegade cruiser bikes at Auto Expo 2016

For Honda, motorsport is a "lab on wheels" where superior technology developed and tested at the rigors of racetrack gets filtered in Honda's production motorcycles running on roads.

Communicating this philosophy is Honda's booth concept of "Race Track to Road". This Auto Expo with its revolutionary products, Honda is all set to redefine the future of mobility in India.

Honda EV-Cub Concept

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On January 1, 2016, Honda wished the nation 'Happy NAVI year' and promised that we are "Here to change the way India plays with two wheels". So get ready for the show-stopper of Auto Expo 2016 - Honda's much-awaited NAVI.

With the development concept of 'New Additional Value for India', the NAVI is set to excite the young trendsetter of India and create a new segment in Indian 2wheeler landscape.

ALSO READ: General Motors India to showcase MPV Spin, 2 new concept vehicles at Auto Expo 2016

At the Expo, get ready to witness the future of mobility as Honda showcases its latest global concept models for the first time globally after Tokyo Motor Show, 2015.

Witness the attractive EV-Cub Concept (a short-distance environmentally friendly personal commuter) and NEOWING (a three wheeled hybrid wonder which expresses the new endeavours of Honda).

The excitement doesn't end here. Honda 2wheelers India will also showcase 2 new concept mystery models.

The magnet for all racing buffs will be the RC 213V. For the first time, Indian biking enthusiasts will get the chance to mount & experience the thrill of Marquez's ultimate race weapon.

Honda NEOWING

There's something for everyone at the Honda 2 Wheeler pavilion. Honda's brand ambassadors Akshay Kumar & Taapsee Pannu will create ripples with their presence. For kids and families, Honda's favourite animation superstar 'Chhota Bheem' will promote road safety and awareness in a fun way.

With road safety at its heart, Honda will promote road safety at its outdoor area through both theory (road safety education to spread healthy road sense) and practical approach.

ALSO READ: Volkswagen compact sedan named AMEO, to be unveiled at Auto Expo 2016

There is an opportunity for all ages - CRF 50 and first aid training for kids, riding stimulator training for new riders and an exclusive safe riding activity for females.
A culture of collective secrecy prevailed within the department, where the installation of the defeat software that would cause the carmaker's biggest ever corporate crisis was openly discussed as long ago as 2006.

A whistleblower, who was himself involved in the deception and has been giving evidence to investigators hired by Volkswagen, alerted a senior manager outside the department in 2011.

By Reuters: Volkswagen's development of software to cheat diesel-emissions tests was an open secret in its engine development department, Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said on Friday, citing results from VW's internal investigation.

Many managers and staff dealing with emissions problems in the department knew of or were involved in developing the "defeat devices", said the newspaper, which researched the matter with regional broadcasters NDR and WDR.

A culture of collective secrecy prevailed within the department, where the installation of the defeat software that would cause the carmaker's biggest ever corporate crisis was openly discussed as long ago as 2006, Sueddeutsche said.

ALSO READ: Volkswagen faces shareholder claims over emissions scandal

But it said there were exceptions: a whistleblower, who was himself involved in the deception and has been giving evidence to investigators hired by Volkswagen, alerted a senior manager outside the department in 2011.

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This manager, however, did not react, the newspaper said.

Staff members in engine development felt pressure from the management board to find a cost effective solution to develop clean diesel engines for the US market.

Rather than telling Volkswagen's management board the rules could not be adhered to, staff members in engine development decided to push ahead with manipulation, Sueddeutsche reported.

ALSO READ: VW CEO plans to submit emissions fixes to EPA chief

"Within the company there was a culture of 'we can do everything', so to say something cannot be done, was not acceptable," Sueddeutsche Zeitung said, quoting the VW internal report which included testimony from a staff member who took part in the fraud.

"Instead of coming clean to the management board that it cannot be done, it was decided to commit fraud," Sueddeutsche reported in its Saturday edition.

Staff in engine development took comfort from the fact that regulators would not be able to detect the fraud using conventional examination techniques, the paper further said.

Engine management software delivered by Bosch was then manipulated in Wolfsburg, where Volkswagen has its headquarters, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.

Manipulation started in November 2006, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.

ALSO READ: Volkswagen CEO understands 'impatience' on emissions fix

Volkswagen has said that to the best of its knowledge only a small circle of people knew about the manipulation, which Europe's biggest carmaker admitted to US environmental authorities in September last year.

It has said it is not aware of any involvement by top management or supervisory board members in the affair, which toppled its chief executive last year and is likely to cost billions of dollars for recalls, technical fixes and lawsuits.

A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment on Friday on what he called "speculation", saying the investigation - for which Volkswagen has hired US law firm Jones Day - was continuing.

Contacted by Reuters late on Friday, Jones Day in Munich said its spokespeople had left for the day.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the whistleblower was being investigated by prosecutors in Braunschweig.

Braunschweig prosecutors did not immediately return calls from Reuters late on Friday.

Volkswagen initiated an amnesty program last year for witnesses who could shed light on the scandal, promising not to fire employees who came forward with information by Nov. 30.

ALSO READ: VW CEO says 6.7 billion euro provisions enough to cover repairs

The carmaker plans to give the first public results of its investigation at the annual shareholders' meeting in April.
By India Today Web Desk: Hollywood movies have subjected us to the discovery of dinosaur fossils only in the western world. They have been proven wrong again.

A team of geologists and paleontologists have found a 135-million year old dinosaur fossil in Kutch, Gujarat. Pieces of bones of the hip and two legs that have been found are around two feet long, suggesting that the dinosaur was at least 10 to 15 metre in length.



Here are some points you must know:

1. The dinosaur fossil is at least 135 million years old, which makes it the oldest dinosaur fossil found in this century.

2. The specimen of the fossil suggests that the dinosaur was a herbivore and belonged to the Jurassic era, which started 240 million years ago and ended around 135 million years ago.

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3. During this period, India, Sri Lanka and Madagascar were part of one huge land mass and the Himalayas were yet to be formed.

4. The species of the dinosaur has not been confirmed yet, however, Dhiraj Kumar Pandey, palaeontologist at the University of Jaipur and a member of the team of discoverers, suggested that it might belong to the Camarasaurus family.

5. The specimen will be sent to the paleontology institute in Munich to confirm the genus and species of the fossil.

6. Students and professors from the Department of Geology at the Krantiguru Shyamji Krishna Verma Kutch University (SKVKU) were a part of the team.

7. German experts Franz T. Fuersich and his wife Valsamma were also a part of the team. In fact, they were the first ones to find the fossil bones.

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Celebrating the birth anniversary of Virginia Woolf with her famous quotes which will help you come out as a strong woman.

By India Today Web Desk: The admired English writer and a pioneer of modernism Virginia Woolf was born on January 25 in 1882. Born as Adeline Virginia Stephen, Woolf became a prominent personality in the English literary spectrum in the years between the two World Wars.

One of the foremost individuals who had brought in the wave of modernism in English literature, Woolf was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her mental illness clearly glared in her lifestyle.

Woolf wrote English classics such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She also wrote a book-essay called A Room of One's Own in 1929 that depicts how a female author should approach her own work. The essay contains the famous dictum ---

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

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After completing her last novel Between the Acts, which was posthumously published, Woolf committed suicide on March 28, 1941.

On her birth anniversary, we bring you some of the famous quotes by Virginia Woolf:

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To get more updates on Current Affairs, send in your query by mail to education.intoday@gmail.com.
Amid the forecast of heavy rainfall in parts of Karnataka for the next few days, heavy downpours battered the IT capital, Bengaluru, on Wednesday evening, flooding several areas in the east, south and central parts of the city. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), a yellow alert, indicative of heavy rain, has been issued as rainfall will continue for the next three days.
12 terror suspects arrested from different parts of the country have been sent to police custody till February 5 by a special NIA court.

By India Today Web Desk: In a crackdown ahead of Republic Day, 12 terror suspects arrested from different parts of the country have been sent to police custody till February 5 by a special NIA court today.

In the remand application the NIA said that the suspects were in contact with some active Islamic State (IS) members through apps like Trillian and Skype, sources said.

The arrests were made following simultaneous searches and raids conducted at 12 locations in six cities - Bangalore, Tumkur, Mangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Lucknow on Saturday with the support of local police forces.

Circuits for detonating explosives were recovered during the searches. The NIA said that certain incriminating articles, including but not limited to mobile phones, laptops, unaccounted cash, jihadi literature and videos and certain material for preparation of bombs were recovered from these places.

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According to sources, the arrested people were part of a group named 'Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind' (Army of Caliph of India), a terror group which has almost similar ideologies that of ISIS.

They said the suspects had been under surveillance for quite sometime and the decision to arrest them was taken as the group received 'instructions' for carrying out 'some sensational' attacks in the country.

ALSO READ

After 14, now, five more suspected ISIS terrorists apprehended



Terror attack foiled ahead of Republic Day in Jammu and Kashmir
By India Today Web Desk: A fan of desi crackers in all probabilities a Kuwait citizen was found carrying 25 kg of crackers in his baggage during the security check at Karippur International Airport.

The couple had been on a holiday to Kerala. They landed at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport on January 12, 2016. The 29-year-old Ali Ismail Sayyed Ahmed and his wife didn't know crackers were not allowed in planes it seems.

They were supposed to fly back to Kuwait by an Air India Express flight yesterday, but were stopped at the security check after seeing various explosives packed into different suitcases. They couldn't take the flight yesterday.

The police allowed Ali to return from the airport with the crackers. Ali, who bought the crackers from some store in Ernakulam, can return it or dispose it, and take a flight to Kuwait from Cochin International Airport or Karippur International Airport, said the police.



--- ENDS ---
The six girls had come to Jamakhandi in Bagalkote district in search of livelihood. A local prostitution gang then sent the girls to work in a resort near the Deobagh beach in Karwar.

By Mail Today: At least six girls, who were forced into prostitution at a private resort in Karwar, a beach town in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, were rescued by the police on Sunday night.

The six girls had come to Jamakhandi in Bagalkote district in search of livelihood. A local prostitution gang then sent the girls to work in a resort near the Deobagh beach in Karwar. The gang-members then forced the girls to entertain the resort guests. The resort owner however claimed innocence contending that he wasn't involved.

The police nabbed 8 members of the gang while two are absconding. The girls, who have been taken into custody, are being questioned by the police. The police are also contacting their families in Hyderabad.

Also read:

Karnataka: Prostitution racket busted, 11 arrested

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By Mail Today: The Bengaluru police arrested a youth for allegedly posting a derogatory remark on the Internet against Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

According to the police, Roshan, who works for a private sector company, was upset on hearing that Siddaramaiah had allegedly slapped a government servant by mistake in Ballari last week. On his social media account, Roshnan posted, "Dear LTTE, ISIS, al-Qaeda or anyone else listening. Please do us a favour and assassinate our?." His post was brought to the notice of the police, who managed to arrest Roshan on the basis of his IP address.

The police booked cases under IPC Sections 503 and 504 against Roshan. He later managed to secure a bail from the court. A detailed probe is currently on.

--- ENDS ---
By Rahul Kanwal: Did India win Independence because of the non-violent movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru or was it the impact of Subhash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army that made the British panic and leave India? The declassification of the Netaji files has sparked a massive debate on the need to rewrite modern Indian history.

A yet to be published book by Netaji scholar General GD Bakshi has published conversations with Clement Attlee. In these conversations the then British Prime Minister apparently said that the role played by Netaji's army was paramount in India being granted independence, while the role played by the non-violent movement was dismissed as minimal. India Today has secured an advance copy of - Bose: An Indian Samurai.

Most Indian history text books about the freedom struggle are dominated by the role played by the non-violent movement of Mahatma Gandhi. Ahinsa and Satyagraha are the shining ideals that are central to the idea of how India won its hard fought freedom. But was India's freedom gained entirely by the non-violent struggle of Mahatma Gandhi and was there no contribution of the use of force?

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A controversial new book written by military historian General G D Bakshi seeks to over turn the traditional idea of how won India its freedom.

India Today has been able to exclusively access an advance copy of a Knowledge World Publication, Bose: An Indian Samurai. In this book General GD Bakshi quotes from a conversation between former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the then Governor of West Bengal Justice PB Chakraborthy. In 1956, Clement Attlee had come to India and stayed in Kolkata as a guest of the then governor. Remember, Clement Richard Attlee was the man, who as leader of the Labour Party and British Prime Minister between 1945 and 1951, signed off on the decision to grant Independence to India.

PB Chakraborthy was at that time the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and was also serving as the acting Governor of West Bengal. He wrote a letter to the publisher of RC Majumdar's book, A History of Bengal. In this letter, the Chief Justice wrote, "When I was acting Governor, Lord Attlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor's palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India."

Chakraborthy adds, "My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi's Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they had to leave?"

"In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji," Justice Chakraborthy says.

That's not all. Chakraborthy adds, "Toward the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Attlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, m-i-n-i-m-a-l!"

This startling conversation was first published by the Institute of Historical Review by author Ranjan Borra in 1982, in his piece on Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army and the war of India's liberation.

To understand the significance of Attlee's assertion, we have to go back in time to 1945. The Second World War had ended. The allied powers led by Britain and the United States had won. The axis powers led by Hitler's Germany had been vanquished. The victors wanted to impose justice on the defeated armies. In India, officers of Netaji Bose's Indian National Army were put on trial for treason, torture, murder. This series of court martials, came to be known as the Red Fort Trials.

Indians serving in the British armed forces were inflamed by the Red Fort Trials. In February 1946, almost 20,000 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy serving on 78 ships mutinied against the Empire. They went around Mumbai with portraits of Netaji and forced the British to shout Jai Hind and other INA slogans. The rebels brought down the Union Jack on their ships and refused to obey their British masters. This mutiny was followed by similar rebellions in the Royal Indian Air Force and also in the British Indian Army units in Jabalpur. The British were terrified. After the Second World War, 2.5 million Indian soldiers were being de-commissioned from the British Army.

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Military intelligence reports in 1946 indicated that the Indian soldiers were inflamed and could not be relied upon to obey their British officers. There were only 40,000 British troops in India at the time. Most were eager to go home and in no mood to fight the 2.5 million battle hardened Indian soldiers who were being demobilised. It is under these circumstances that the British decided to grant independence to India.

The idea behind putting these documents in the public domain, is not to in any way undermine the significant contribution of Mahatma Gandhi or Pandit Nehru. But to spark a debate about the real significance of the role played by Netaji's Indian National Army. School textbooks are dominated by the role played by the non-violent movement. While the role of the INA is dismissed in a few cursory paragraphs. The time has come to revisit modern Indian history and acknowledge the immense contribution of Netaji in helping India win its freedom.

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Also Read

What is the truth behind Subhas Chandra Bose air crash story?



Netaji's declassified files trigger 'War Criminal' row, show Nehru in bad light

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: A glimpse into the hero's personal life

PM Modi declassifies 100 secret Netaji files, family members welcome move




By Srijani Ganguly/Mail Today: Author Amish Tripathi gave out a clear message on the caste system. He said, "Judge me as Amish, not as a Tripathi." The author said one of the reasons why he only uses his first name on the book covers is because he doesn't believe in the caste system.



"The caste system that exists today is a disgusting corruption of what existed in the ancient times," he said. "In the ancient times, it was based on your karma. The four varnas were created on the basis of your guna (attributes) and your karma (deeds). Birth wasn't mentioned anywhere. In ancient India, there were many great rishis and many great Brahmins who weren't born Brahmins."



Also Read : Jaipur Lit Fest day 04: Words and anecdotes by Gulzar and Akhtar mesmerise audience



The author also talked about his upcoming work - the Ram Chandra Series. He said, "We are supposed to look at our Gods as role models, we are supposed to learn the benefits of their way of life and learn from their challenges. We are supposed to question and learn from our Gods, that Author Amish Tripathi is the Indian way. And that's what we are supposed to learn from Lord Ram."



Also Read: Jaipur Lit Fest: Not good with dragons, can't write fantasy, says Margaret Atwood



Later, in an interview after the session, the author laid out his literary plan. He said, "I have many story ideas in my mind, enough to keep me busy for the next 20-25 years. I'll write on Lord Krishana, and the Mahabharata after some time, Lord Parshuram 12-13 years later, Lord Rudra and Lady Mohini 15-16 years later, Lord Manu 18-19 years later and Lord Brahma 21-22 years later." Throughout his books, he says, he has left out hints for the books he plans to write. "I've left clues for most of the stories I will write, in the Shiva trilogy. Once you read the Ram Chandra Series, you can go back to the Shiva trilogy and look at those clues."

--- ENDS ---
Potato, potato, everywhere....but hey, hands off this one, because this one's worth a million dollars!

By India Today Web Desk: This weirdly bewildering shot of a spud which was taken in 2010 by acclaimed Irish photographer Kevin Bosch was sold to an unnamed European businessman for a whopping one million US dollars!



Yes, you heard it right!

Kevin Boschs' claim to fame is brilliant portraits of some the most sought after personalities like Johnny Depp, Malala Yousafzai, Steven Spielberg, Michael Palin, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, to name a few.

Portraits of Johnny Depp and Malala Yousafzai Courtesy: Kevin Bosch

All the portraits of Abosch costs nothing less than 200,000 pounds.

The organic Irish potato portrait taken by Kevin Abosch has three versions. One belongs to his private collections, another was given away to an art museumin in Serbia and he recently confirmed the third one was sold to the European businessman.

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In an interview to the Sundaytimes, Kevin Bosch stated the price paid for a simple picture of potato might seem absurd and mentioned, "It's not the first time that someone has bought the art right off my wall."

Kevin Bosch who is known for his trademark black background portraits is a favourite among the rich and the famous. He has also been invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos.


Men with beards, rejoice! Now you can not only look sexy but as it turns out, that facial fuzz could also be good for your health.

By India Today Web Desk: Hipster beards are no longer confined to the streets of NY or Brooklyn. The beard has to be the most accepted male accessory of 2015 as it finds its way into the mainstream courtesy actors, politicians, athletes and so many more men who have made it hip to not shave.



And, in what should provide men a boost, a new study says beards may contain bacteria which could potentially be used to develop new antibiotics.



via GIPHY

Yes! The study was conducted by the Journal of Hospital Infection, and researchers swabbed the faces of 408 hospital staff with and without facial hair.

It was said that those without beards were more likely to be carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a staph bacteria that causes skin and respiratory infections, and food poisoning on their cheeks.



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Researchers suggest this may be due to micro-abrasions, caused by shaving, in the skin, "which may support bacterial colonisation and proliferation".

Do note that bearded men also had colonies of Staphylococcus aureus on their faces.

It has been long debated whether it's healthy to have a beard or not. In a disturbing study in 2015 it was found that "facial hair could be dirtier than a toilet bowl," as the New York Post put it.

Picture courtesy: Twitter

In an investigation led by the BBC's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor it was found that beards might contain potential microbes that can kill bacteria. And thus the swabs were sent to microbiologist John Golobic.

But after swabbing a series of beards and analyzing their bacteria content, John Golobic concluded that some of the bacteria were "the kind of things that you find in feces, E.coli."

Let's agree guys, beards aren't always the most hygienic thing on your body.

But Golobic also found that among the bacteria was a microbe that appeared to be killing bacteria including E.coli.

'When you get a competitive environment like a beard where there are many different bacteria, they fight for food resources and space, so they produce things like antibiotics,' he said.

Also read: STUDY: Mothers must refrain from discussing weight loss issues with daughters



Also read: Now passive smoking could lead to infertility and early menopause


Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today said that an intergovernmental agreement has been signed to buy 36 Rafale combat jets from France.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today said that an intergovernmental agreement has been signed to buy 36 Rafale combat jets from France. However, some "financial issues" regarding deal are yet to be sorted between both the countries. Modi said things will be sorted out soon.

Modi had, during his visit to Paris last year, announced India's intention to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by the French aerospace major Dassault. The deal is valued at around Rs 60,000 crore.

HIGHLIGHTS

Although headquartered in India, the ISA is a global institution meant for the benefit of mankind: PM Narendra Modi.

Our ancestors have taught us to love nature, we see god in a plant, this is our tradition: PM Modi

We are the people who taught the world how to love Nature, we were taught that God resides in a plants: PM Modi.



US, France and India took a joint initiative @COP21 to promote innovation that is sustainable, affordable and accessible: PM Modi.

Energy has become and integral part of a nation's development journey: PM Modi.



World has been discussing global warming for the last one year and how to mitigate it: PM Narendra Modi.

PM Narendra Modi speaks at interim Secretariat of International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gurgaon.



Today, a new chapter opens for nations to utilize the power of the sun: French President Francois Hollande in Gurgaon.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande took a metro to Gurgaon, where they inaugurated the headquarters of the 102-nation International Solar Alliance. Sunrise for the Solar Alliance! PM and President unveil the plaque for foundation of ISA HQ pic.twitter.com/qbcjHu9uVR& Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) January 25, 2016 An eco friendly ride! PM @narendramodi and Prez @fhollande travel on Delhi metro on way to Gurgaon pic.twitter.com/f6WK7g4Lad& Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) January 25, 2016

Thanks to the leadership of President Francois Hollande at COP-21, the world witnessed the emergence of a new climate framework, says PM Modi.



Smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power - These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership, says PM Modi.

France would be one such country whose military troop will be marching tomorrow along with our troops, shoulder to shoulder, says PM Modi.

President Francois Hollande is a very close friend of India, says PM Narendra Modi.



We are very happy that we have formed an agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale aircrafts with France, says PM Modi.



France and India have a strategic partnership of 18 years. We have a partnership branching out to various fields, says PM Modi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosts a working lunch for French President Francois Hollande.

French President Francois Hollande meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House in New Delhi.

French President Francois Hollande meets External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"Honoured to be the Chief Guest at India's Republic Day parade. Strengthening India-French cooperation against terrorism is priority. Cooperation in economic relations, agriculture and space important for us. PM Modi played a very important role in the success of COP-21," said French President after getting ceremonial accord at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

France will not be deterred by the threat of ISIS. Our full effort is to eradicate them, says French President Francois Hollande.

French President Francois Hollande given ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

French President Francois Hollande plants a tree in Rajghat.

French President Francois Hollande pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat.

"They are progressing (Rafale deal talks)," says French President Francois Hollande.

"Will together further intensify exchanges, participate in inter-service cooperation and act to reinforce our military equipment," says French President Francois Hollande.

"The contract itself can only be signed after the inter-governmental agreement, it will be discussed," says French President Francois Hollande.

"When PM Modi came to Paris, he himself announced order for 36 aircrafts, but with conditions that were to be specified," says French President Francois Hollande.

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French President Francois Hollande and PM Narendra Modi addressed CEOs of French and Indian companies at a business summit in Chandigarh on Sunday.

Addressing the India-France Business Summit, Modi said India and France had huge potential to work together in various fields.

Modi pitched for investment in India by French companies, saying India had a lot to offer in terms of skilled workforce and as a market for French products.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also praised France's action against terrorism. "France has shown the way of combating terrorism without deviating from its principles and journey of progress. The day Paris was hit by terror, I decided that our Republic Day parade guest must be France as our people are united against the enemies of humanity," the PM said in his speech.

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ALSO READ



India will stand shoulder to shoulder with France in battle against terrorism, says PM Modi



Rafale jet deal on right track, however unlikely to be signed in current trip, says French President Francois Hollande

India's Rafael punch: Deal with France on January 25

Ahead of Francois Hollande's visit to India, French Consulate in Bengaluru gets threat letter


India has signed a deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. The Rs 60,000 crore agreement to purchase 36 combat jets was inked between the two countries today.

By India Today Web Desk: India has signed a deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. The estimated cost of purchasing 36 fighter jets is Rs 60,000 crore.

"We are very happy that we have formed an agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale aircrafts with France," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said. He, however, said that financial details of the agreement are yet to be finalised.

"Only financial aspects of the Rafale deal is left. The inter-governmental agreement has been finalised. It will be done soon," Modi said in his statement after delegation-level talks with French President Francois Hollande in New Delhi.

Hollande in his statement said,"We signed an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) on Rafale deal. It is a decisive step for India to purchase the fighter jets and also for France to make them available to a great country like India."

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Francois Hollande, who is currently in India as chief guest for Republic Day celebrations, had told media that negotiations over the sale of Rafale jets are on the right track.

During his visit to Paris last year, Modi had announced India's intention to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by the French aerospace major Dassault.

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies," Modi said

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," he added.

India and France reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, in two French citizens were also killed, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future.

Also Read

India-France sign deal for purchase of 36 Rafale jets



Rafale jet deal on right track, however unlikely to be signed in current trip, says French President Francois Hollande



#NamasteHollande: India and France vow to fight terror together




Ranragini Bhumata Brigade and the local administration are at loggerheads over the gender barrier at the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar.

By Ajay Kumar: With just one day to go for Republic Day, activists of the Ranragini Bhumata Brigade and Maharashtra's local administration are at loggerheads over the gender barrier at the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar.

The group, headed by activist Trupti Desai, has decided to stage an extravagant procession by offering worship to Lord Shani at the sacred platform which has been out of bounds for women as per centuries-old tradition.

According to the plan, Desai will alight from a helicopter to offer worship at the prohibited inner sanctum.

"We have sought permission to use a helicopter. Barricades will be constructed on the ground, but they can't stop us on air," Desai said.

Talking to India Today TV, Desai said that they have been touring through western Maharashtra to garner support from different social as well as political organisations.

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"The Joint charity commissioner office in Pune today gave us a a notice not to storm inside the Lord Shani Shinganapur temple on January 26 at Shinganapur in Ahmednaga district. But we have never said that we will storm inside the temple. All of the 400 or more women will walk in a single line and worship lord Shani Devata," she said.

Trupti Desai further added that they have planned a peaceful event and they don't intent to indulge in any violence.

"We will march inside the temple even if they make human chains to stop us. We will present them with flowers and follow the path of non-violence," she said.

ALSO READ

Housewife creates history, heads Shani Shingnapur temple trust



Women group demanding equal rights barred from protesting at Shani temple
Donald Trump's rallies have turned into a hot-bed for people to protest against the Republican presidential candidate's anti-Muslim commentary.

By India Today Web Desk: A turbaned Sikh protester was escorted out of a Donald Trump rally held in Muscatine High School, Iowa on Sunday.

The incident took place right after he displayed a banner which read 'Stop Hate', in the light of a statement made by the GOP front runner last month, saying temporary ban will be imposed on Muslim's entering the US.

Protesters escorted out of @realDonaldTrump rally "He wasn't wearing one of those hats was he?" Trump asks crowd pic.twitter.com/Aow23SHZAN Josh Haskell (@joshbhaskell) January 24, 2016

Whilst displaying the banner, Sikh man tried to interrupt Trump's speech.

As the man was taken out of the rally, Trump pointed towards him and said, "He wasn't wearing one of those hats was he? And he never will, and that's OK because we got to do something folks because it's not working,"

"He wasn't wearing one of those hats, was he?" Trump asks after men, one in a turban, interrupt rally https://t.co/2NJWSyGUhm MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 24, 2016

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In another incident which took place just a couple of days ago, a Muslim woman wearing Hijab was thrown out of another rally by Trump at South Carolina. Rose Hamid, a flight attendant, stood up against Trump statement that the Syrian refugees fleeing war were affiliated to the ISIS.


By Shwweta Punj : They say there's always a sobering moment after the initial euphoria. On January 16, some 1,500 New Age entrepreneurs turned up in New Delhi for the 'Startup India' meet, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's current pet projects. Inside Vigyan Bhawan, the excitement was palpable, the jam-packed audience hanging on to every word the prime minister uttered. "If the government doesn't do anything, so much will happen. We have done a lot for 70 years. Where have we reached? Please tell us what not to do. If we decide not to do anything, they (entrepreneurs) will take us places," the PM said, his less-regulation-is-good comments greeted by massive applause.

For the new growth kings of the Indian economy, it was the ultimate recognition. Aditi Balbir, co-founder of V Resorts, a chain of offbeat, boutique resorts, was one of the two women in a team of 10 that went and met minister of state for finance, Jayant Sinha, in the run-up to the event and was also one of the first to reach Vigyan Bhawan. The story goes that Mr Amitabh Kant (secretary at the department of industrial policy and promotion) actually announced that the event was for entrepreneurs and that government officials should give up their seats. "People actually got up so that we could sit in the front. It was truly amazing. It's the first time we felt like the government was listening," she says.

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Sairee Chahal, founder of Sheroes, a platform for women returning to the workforce, says, "It's the message that counts...that we want to build an ecosystem for start-ups." Evidently, from a sentiment perspective, the government had scored an A-plus.

Almost no one can doubt the intentions of this government, but like for all things so far, there are obstacles aplenty fazing the nascent industry (this is when the administration is keen to 'unobstacle', a word devised by the Indian government itself). Angel investors and venture capitalists say they are happy the government has finally recognised the community but the fact that there's little to show on the ground is disappointing. And that started from the 'Start Up India' event itself. Originally slated for mid-December, it was pushed back by almost a month as there was little concrete progress to show. Over 3-4 months, there were many meetings between the start-up community and officials to flesh out issues like raising funds and expanding but it yielded little.

Of course, there have been positives such as the ease of registering and closing of a company, self-certification for labour and environment laws (a boon for firms like V Resorts that have to maintain compliance departments disproportionately larger than the size of their firms), no inspection for three years, funding for patents and incubation centres, changing of procurement norms removing turnover and track record conditions etc.

But most of these are a rehash of what has been announced earlier or, as a mentor explained, like "lipstick on a pig." The Rs 10,000 crore fund, for instance, was announced in the first Modi government budget (since then, only about Rs 2,000 crore has been utilised). It is also a fact that six of the eight 'unicorns' have now redomiciled outside India. The success stories of India have actually shifted either to Singapore or United States.

Some 75 per cent of India's top start-ups left the country in 2015, primarily to avoid India's cumbersome taxation policies and forex regulations. For instance, the Indian tax code does not have a definition for digital goods, so those selling digital goods or services-as the case may be-have to pay service tax and excise. "The appetite to change the framework is simply missing," says a venture capitalist and mentor on condition of anonymity. The start-up plan has so far done little to tackle either the fundamental problems or stop the exodus.

The issue of allowing convertible notes-which allows a start-up to raise funds from an investor on the condition that the debt will be converted into equity at a later stage has remained unresolved (even as the RBI governor admits that some FEMA regulations are outdated). Unfortunately, this change would require about 15-16 changes in the FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act) law. The issue was brought before the relevant authorities in August last year. "Since the money coming in will mandatorily convert to equity, it's clear that it will not go out of the country which was a concern earlier," says Sharad Sharma, co-founder and CEO, Brand Sigma.

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Moreover, for a start-up to avail the benefits announced in the plan, it will have to get an approval from a government inter-ministerial board which will decide if the company qualifies as one. There is a worry that this will add another layer of bureaucracy in a country like India which is yet to implement its second round of administrative reforms, unlike China which implements administrative reforms every two years. "The government should also not be meddling in valuations," was the grouse of T.V. Mohandas Pai, former Infosys CFO and chairman, Aarin Capital Partners.

According to an analysis by iSPIRIT, a non-profit think-tank on start-ups, there are 34 issues that need to be resolved to arrest the exodus-eight of these have been addressed either through resolution or clarification. Of the 10 issues pending with the Reserve Bank of India related to foreign capital, only one has been resolved.

Clearly, a beginning has been made, policymakers are receptive to ideas and suggestions, and there is recognition of the fact that India needs to ride the entrepreneurial wave. As Pai puts it, "For the first time, they are beginning to trust Indians." The various departments such as the DIPP, department of revenue, ministry of corporate affairs, the Reserve Bank of India have all been positive (the department of revenue agreeing to do away with capital gains tax on start-ups is even cited as a striking example of increased understanding). A measure of things getting serious is that the Securities and Exchange Board of India has now created a listing structure for start-ups. And most importantly, there is a prime minister who wants India to be the land of entrepreneurs. Of course, as always, the clincher lies in walking the talk.

Follow the writer on Twitter @shwetapunj

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Security forces claim to have foiled a major terror bid in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of Republic Day, after two operations led to the arrest of 6 militants in the past 3 days.

By India Today Web Desk: Security forces claim to have foiled a major terror bid in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of Republic Day, after two operations led to the arrest of 6 militants in the past 3 days.

A search operation in Qasermulla village of Chadoora in Budgam district on January 24 evening led to the capture of a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, who the police said was planning strikes around Republic Day.

The man, who was carrying a bag, was challenged by security forces and he fled, and upon his apprehension, his bag was searched and an AK 47 Rifle with two magazines, 60 rounds and a grenade were recovered.

He was later identified as Basharat Ahmad Shah alias Furkan hailing from Niklora village of Pulwama district.

Earlier the Sopore Police also busted an HuM module and arrested 5 militants. Police said they were also planning to launch terror attacks around January 26.

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Also Read:

NIA cracks down on ISIS sympathisers, nabs 14 from 6 cities


BJP chief Amit Shah is set to steer the BJP for the next three years after he was unanimously elected for the post of president on Sunday.

By Kumar Vikram: Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah, who is credited with taking the party's membership to a new high and leading it to power in four states, is set to steer the BJP for the next three years after he was elected unopposed for the post of president on Sunday.

Though party veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, who in past expressed their unhappiness with Shah's stewardship, were conspicuous by their absence at the party headquarters, Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with his Cabinet colleagues Rajnath Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari besides BJP chief ministers proposed Shah's name during the nomination process in which no other leader joined the fray.

According to party insiders, the election of Shah was merely a formality after it became clear that Prime Minister Modi and other party bigwigs, besides RSS, which has always had a say in the nomination for the top job, preferred his continuance.

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Sources said that Shah's reelection for the post was almost decided as the Central leadership and the RSS felt that he should continue for the upcoming state polls.

Shah was handed the party's top post in 2014 when Rajnath Singh joined the Narendra Modi Cabinet after the Lok Sabha elections.

Modi, who was not present during the exercise due to official engagements, will attend the parliamentary board meeting likely to be held on January 28 to greet Shah in his new innings. Modi congratulated Shah on his re-election and voiced confi-Celebrations outside BJP headquarters after Amit Shah's re-election as party chief on Sunday. Advani and Joshi stay away from party headquarters as Amit Shah dence that the party will scale newer heights under his leadership.

Congratulations to Shri @AmitShah on being elected BJP president. I am confident the Party will scale newer heights under his leadership," Modi tweeted. "Amit Bhai combines grassroot-level work & rich organisational experience which will benefit the Party immensely," Modi said in another post.

Altogether, 17 nominations were filed proposing the Gujarat leader's name during the three-hour nomination exercise, party vice president Avinash Rai Khanna, who was the chief electoral officer, said as he announced his unopposed election.

All BJP chief ministers, barring Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar who was busy in an official engagement, were present during the nomination reflecting the virtually total support to Shah as party chief.

Subsequently, Shah personally made it a point to meet Advani after being elected. Sources said that he met Advani late in the evening on Sunday while his meeting with Joshi is scheduled for Tuesday after his return from West Bengal where he will be on a day-long trip.

Party affairs Several party veterans, including Advani and Joshi, have been upset with the party's functioning ever since they were made members of 'Margdarshak Mandal', which is seen by many as an indication that they have been rendered irrelevant in the party's affairs.

This will be the first full threeyear term for the Gujarat leader, seen to have full backing of Modi, as he had taken over as the party chief in May 2014 after his predecessor Rajnath Singh joined the government.

Seen as a close confidante of Modi, Shah pushed BJP's primary membership to beyond 11 crore from the earlier less than three crore, according to official party figures, and led its emergence as the biggest political force in Maharashtra and Haryana for the first time. Shah also led the party to victory in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir but some of the sheen of his leadership wore off after it suffered crushing defeats in Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections, sparking some rumblings within.

However, his aides have argued that he remains the best bet for the party as it faces elections in five states this year and the crucial Uttar Pradesh polls next year.

Also Read: Amit Shah elected BJP chief for the second time


Politics over beef is not over yet. Member of Parliament from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi today raked up the issue while addressing a public gathering ahead of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election.

By India Today Web Desk: The politics over beef is not over yet. Member of Parliament from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi today raked up the issue while addressing a public gathering ahead of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief asked people to vote for his party's candidates if they want to continue eating beef.

"If MIM is defeated in the election, I am telling you - the members of minority community will have to forget about eating beef," Owaisi said.

He also accused the BJP-led government in Maharashtra of targeting poor Muslims and Dalits through its decision to ban beef.

"They have banned beef in Maharashtra. But since Modi took over as Prime Minister, the quantity of beef exported from India has gone up. And if my sources are right, beef export has gone up by 17 per cent. What is Modi doing about it," Owaisi had said after the Maharashtra government banned beef in March, 2015.

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Owaisi has been using the beef ban issue during his election campaign speeches in Hyderabad. He's also been mimicking Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing people.

The leader has often been seen using the word "mitro" (friends) similar to Modi whenever he starts his speech. "Mitro may work anywhere but not in Hyderabad, 'bada' (beef) alone will work in Hyderabad," Owaisi had said last week while addressing a rally.


The declassification of Netaji files on Saturday has not resolved the mystery surrounding his death. While some are convinced the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in an air crash in Taipei in 18 August, 1945, others are adamant that the crash never happened.

To The Point with Karan Thapar

By India Today Web Desk: The declassification of Netaji files on Saturday has not resolved the mystery surrounding his death. While some are convinced the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in an air crash in Taipei in 18 August, 1945, others are adamant that the crash never happened.

Now, a new controversy has erupted over Jawaharlal Nehru's letter to the then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee calling Bose a war criminal. Many are doubting the credibility of the letter.

Netaji's grand nephew Swagata Bose, however, believes that Subhas Chandra Bose indeed died in the air crash.

"I went around the National Archives and tried to read as much as possible and the weight of evidence suggests that there is corroboration that he died in the air crash," Swagata told Karan Thapar on the show To The Point.

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Top questions:

Do declassified files confirm crash theory? Is the alleged letter by Nehru authentic? Did Nehru call Netaji a 'war criminal'? DNA test a viable option to solve death mystery? Politics of declassification saga? Is the political division out in the open?

Noted author Rudrangshu Mukherjee also agreed with Swagata Bose's views over Netaji's death.

"As historical evidences stand as distinct from speculation, Bose did die that aircrash," Mukherjee said.

Historian Mridula Mukherjee underlined that there are "overwhelming" evidences which suggest that Netaji certainly died in the fatal air crash on 18 August, 1945.

"In an interview Anita Bose (Netaji's daughter) gave to historian Sucheta Mahajan... she herself talked about her intractions with people who were eyewitnesses of the air crash and how she was completely convinced the fact of the air crash and the subsequent death of Netaji due to burn injuries," Mridula added.

Netaji conspiracy theories:

1. Netaji lived as a sadhu in ashram in Shoulmari, West Bengal.

2. He was in Russia after 1945.

3. A sadhu in Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh called Gumnami Baba was Netaji.

4. Netaji was killed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

But author Anuj Dhar maintains that Bose did not die in the air crash. Dhar said there was no crash at all.

"The aircrash never happened. I have a letter which I received in 2003 from the Taiwan government...its part of official record. The Taiwan government formerly informed me that there was no aircrash," Dhar claimed.

Also Read

Netaji's declassified files trigger 'War Criminal' row, show Nehru in bad light

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: A glimpse into the hero's personal life

PM Modi declassifies 100 secret Netaji files, family members welcome move




Muslims to invade Europe, new form of energy on Venus, what else has this Bulgarian mystic predicted?

By India Today Web Desk: A blind Bulgarian mystic had previously predicted the World War II, Tsunami in 2004, the twin towers attack and now, she has something for 2016!

Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova predicted "Muslims will invade Europe".

She had also prophesied that in 2018, China will become the first super power and a space probe will discover 'a new form of energy' on Venus.

In 1989, while prophesying the attack on America's twin towers, Vangelia had said, "Horror, Horror, The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing."

The World Trade Centre towers were dubbed as 'twins'. The terrorists who drove passenger planes as 'steel birds'.

"A big wave will cover a large coast with people and villages where everything disappears under water," said the Tsunami related prophecy.

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It was in 1930s, in Bulgaria, that she predicted the beginning of World War II. She was even visited by King Boris III and Adolf Hitler.

Vangelia was swept away by a mighty tornado during which she lost her sight. She started making predictions at the age of 16.

Here are some of the prophecies she made:

2016- Muslims invade Europe. 2023- The Earth's orbit would change due to which the poles will melt and set fire in the Middle East. She had also anticipated that the "great Islamic war" would begin in Syria culminating in complete control of Rome, in 2043. 2025- The population of Europe will disappear as a result of wars. 2028- There will be an attempt to travel to other planets like Venus, with the hope of finding other sources of energy to Earth. 2033- Water levels rise due to the melting of the poles.








are your toes cold? because mine are freezing.it got down to 3 degrees celsius this weekend in Taipei. I could see SNOW on the mountains from my neighborhood. and while I realize the eastern US also had their own snowpocalypse, please bear in mind I live in a sub-tropical climate zone where most homes [mine included] do not have central heating. I do, however, have 20-foot ceilings and a wall of windows with no insulation. right now I'm wearing 4 layers and a winter hat, fuzzy socks and boots. inside my apartment.so it seemed like a good day to look back at photos and pretend like I was roasting in the sun with a cool drink in my hand. [rather than contemplating how well I would be able to type this while wearing gloves.] let's take a little trip to someplace warmer, shall we?Kenting is known for being Taiwan's beachy vacation town. there's a national park, a legendary night market, and of course: the ocean. situated on the island's southern tip, it's not the easiest to get to. but for years people have been telling me I should go.last fall, a friend finally talked me and a few other girls into spending a long weekend in Kenting. looking back at these photos, I'm not sure why I needed convincing.we started off early by hopping the high speed rail in Taipei and heading south. by the time we arrived - the last leg by cab instead of bus or shuttle [oops] - it was nearing sunset. so we quickly changed and walked off in the direction of the water.we ended up on the eastern end of Kenting Beach. it was only a little crowded, decently clean, not far at all from town, and a lovely first introduction to Kenting. we splashed around a bit and I did an awesome beached whale impression. the sun went down and the cameras came out. a storm approaching from the east made the color of the water deeper and the sky full of crazy pastels.I have to take a moment to show you this - the complete opposite vibe of the last few photos. what seems to be the most popular Kenting beach is actually down in Hengchung Township, known as the South Bay Recreation Area. we ventured that way for a stunning meal at Piccolo Polpo - definitely worth the trip - but took one look at the crowded beachfront and decided to spend our swim and sun time elsewhere.clean sand, blue water, volcanic rock formations, and only a handful of people. these are just a few of the reasons why Little Bay or Xiaowan Beach was our favorite spot in Kenting. it's a short walk from the eastern end of the main strip in town. 300NT [or $10 US] will get you a small table with an umbrella and chairs, for as long as you choose to linger. there's even a little beach bar where you can order snacks and drinks.I'm closing my eyes right now and trying to imagine up the warmth of this sunshine...this beach was totally heart-eye-emoji worthy. I was so shocked that I was still in Taiwan. not New Zealand, not Thailand, not Hawaii. still on my own island and just a few hours travel from Taipei. even after nearly 4 years here Taiwan can still surprise me. clearly - this beach was a gorgeous hidden gem and I highly recommend it over the other areas near town.I don't know that I would come to Taiwan just for the beaches, but if you're here and exploring the island, Kenting is definitely worth a stop for some sun and relaxation. they are experiencing a bit of this cold snap right now as well, but will be back up near 80F by midweek.hope you all are keeping warm, wherever you are! [if not - just close your eyes and think of Kenting.]
Few moments in history are as riveting as the Nazi period during the first half of the Twentieth Century; this, combined with the wor...
Welcome to H&C,,, where I aggregate news of interest. Primary topics include abuse with "the church", LGBTQI+ issues, cults - including anti-vaxxers, and the Dominionist and Theocratic movements. Also of concern is the anti-science movement with interest in those that promote garbage like homeopathy, chiropractic and the like. I am an atheist and anti-theist who believes religious mythos must be die and a strong supporter of SOCAS.
When are we going to learn? After 30 years of searching the mullahs regime for fictitious moderates, its time to look outside of the regime for Irans true moderates, writes Blackwell, and rightly so.

In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, reaching out to moderates among the ayatollahs inner circles has been a constant dream of American officials for the past 30 years. The Obama administration has then created moderators where there are none, in what can only be described as political hallucinations.

He even compares the logic of looking for moderates in Iran to misguided negotiations with the former Soviet Union before the Cold War. The trouble is that the concept of a moderate is relative. In dealing with the former Soviet Union we heard the term Politburo moderates over and over. He goes on to say that, Reaching out to this fabricated species was an excuse for being nice to despicable governments. The comparison with the former Soviet Union is very apt, and the US must realize it is just repeating it past diplomatic mistakes.

Hassan Rouhani can only be a moderate if he actually takes moderate stances on the mass executions and human rights abuses that have happen in Iran under his watch. He should thus announce a moratorium on executions, end capital punishment for juvenile offenders, release of all political prisoners, make a public commitment to protecting freedom of speech, association, religion and political opinion, end discrimination against women, reject Irans massive backing of the Assad dictatorship as well as slogans calling for death to America, and stop supporting terrorist organizations, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Shiite militias destabilizing Iraq. But none of this will come to pass. Yet the US is hell bent on having faith in Irans moderate side.

The illusion of moderation is just that, an illusion, writes Blackwell. The real moderates in Iran are imprisoned for fighting for democratic change. Blackwell comes out in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iranian (NCRI) who will be demonstrating in Paris on January 28 as Rouhani arrives there. They are supporters of NCRI President Maryam Rajavis 10-point plan for the future of Iran, which describes a secular, democratic, pluralistic state built on the principles of true moderation.

No matter how hard we try to forget his past, or how much hope we have for the present, Rouhani is who he is: the president of a ruthless theocracy, loathed by Iranian people, and spreading terror and instability throughout the region, writes Balckwell.
A guide to the best and sometimes off the beaten track historical ruins around Ireland and how to get there.
What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.



1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.



2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.



3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.



4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.



5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.



6) "Pallywood."



7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.



8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.



9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."



10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.



11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.



12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.



This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.
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.
proxima

Lectores matutinos de AJN/Iton Gadol. Estos son los titulares de la manana en Israel
Itongadol.- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called on individual EU states to pressure the European Commission to change its double standard toward Israel.

Netanyahu\s call came during a meeting with visiting Estonian Foreign Minister Marina Kaljurand.

European states need to pressure the European Commission to change its attitude toward Israel, Netanyahu told Kaljurand, who served as Estonia\s ambassador to Israel from 2004-2006.

According to a statement issued by the PMO, Netanyahu protested the EU\s formal positions on Israel, and accused Brussels of employing a double standard toward Israel.

The European Commission is the EU\s executive body responsible for implementing decision and running the EU\s day-to-day business. It is based in Brussels and Luxembourg.

Since the EU adopted the policy of labeling products from the settlements last November, Netanyahu has ramped up his public criticism of the EU, carefully drawing a distinction between Israel\s good relationship with most individual EU states, and its poor relationship with the Commission in Brussels. He repeated that position during his meeting with Kaljurand.

Estonia is one of the 28 states that makes up the EU, and considered among the more supportive states toward Israel inside the EU institutions. When, as they often do, EU countries split their vote on Israel-related matters in international forums, Estonia generally votes with the bloc that will either vote for Israel or abstain, rather than vote against Jerusalem.

For example, Estonia was one of five EU countries, along with the US, that voted against a UNESCO Executive Board resolution in October that condemned Israeli aggression on the Temple Mount. Four other EU countries  Spain, Italy, France and Austria  only abstained.

And in the resolution to raise the Palestinian flag at the UN that passed last September, Estonia was among the group of 18 EU countries that abstained, while France, Belgium, Ireland Spain and Sweden were among the 10 EU countries that voted for it.

Last week the EU\s foreign ministers, making up the Foreign Affairs Council, issued conclusions on the Middle East that were highly critical of Israel. However, the intervention inside the EU of countries such as Greece and Cyprus, states with whom Israel has developed much closer ties over the last number of years, prevented the adoption of language that would have been even more critical.

In a related matter, Greece\s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, along with a number of his ministers, will arrive in Jerusalem on Wednesday for a government to government meeting, and then Tsipras and Netanyahu will travel to Cyprus the following day for a tripartite meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
MATTOON -- When Donna Mayer's son was diagnosed with mental illness several years ago, the Mattoon resident could not find a local support group for herself and other caregivers.

Consequently, Mayer said she sought support from the Champaign County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a mental health organization focused on improving the lives of those affected by mental illness. She said NAMI helped her navigate through the privacy regulations of mental health care and understand what her son is going through.

"They know what I feel like. They know how difficult it is," Mayer said of being a caregiver of someone with mental illness.

Mayer soon transitioned from being a support group participant to being an active volunteer with NAMI. Now, she and other area volunteers with NAMI plan to expand the organization's support services into Coles County.

NAMI plans to offer a free Family-to-Family course in Mattoon for families, partners and friends of those with mental illness. The course will be held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. every Wednesday, starting on Feb. 24, at the Salvation Army building. Mayer said the course will be funded by a local family who lost a son to mental illness.

Douglas County resident Diane Zell, vice president of the Champaign affiliate, said this in-depth course will give an overview of brain disorders and other medical background information about mental illness. She said the presenters also will share tips on finding a good psychiatrist, preparing a crisis plan, and more.

"They come away with a huge amount of information and resources," Zell said. She is an executive board member and past president of NAMI Illinois.

NAMI of Effingham County was founded in June 2014 and has offered Family-to-Family classes there. The affiliate's leadership includes Harold and Sue Heth, who are the president and vice president, respectively.

Harold Heth said one of the classroom exercises involves participants trying to carry out a task while someone behind them is continually talking. He said this exercise demonstrates how those who hear voices in their heads due to schizophrenia or other mental illness can be easily distracted.

"We help them to understand their loves ones and help them deal more effectively with their behaviors," Sue Heth said. "Just understanding that is a great support for the person suffering from mental health issues."

Sue Heth and Mayer both said they hope to establish a regular NAMI support group for caregivers in Mattoon after the initial Family-to-Family course has concluded.

Mayer, who is now a Family-to-Family teacher with NAMI, said her goal is to educate the community about mental illness. She said there are a lot of myths about the origins of mental illness

It is an illness of the brain. Your brain is an organ too and it can get sick, Mayer said. That is what people dont understand. It is an illness."

Zell said NAMI does not offer the services that mental health professionals provide. She said the organization is there to help caregivers access medication and treatment for their loves ones and to provide support services for them.

More information about NAMI support services in Coles and Effingham counties is available by calling Mayer at 217-234-7616 or emailing namieffingham@gmail.com. More information about NAMI in Douglas County is available by calling Zell at 217-253-2413.
Picture use

Unless otherwise stated all photos on this site are copyrighted  Jim Budd. They should not be used without authorisation and due credit. Please contact me on budmac@btinternet.com for all use. There will usually be a charge for use in commercial publications  papers, magazines, websites etc. and for other commercial uses. Photos that are used for commercial use without permission will be charged double  the fee for the use of photo and for breach of copyright. Commercial organisations asking to use photos for no payment may not always receive a polite response.




Job Description

Organization: Sante Medical College is a private higher education institution established to conduct teaching-learning programs in general medicine, dental medicine and public health after obtaining accreditation from the Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA).

Position: Community-Based Education (CBE) Coordinator

Overview of the Position: To help students benefit from effective teaching learning, processes both theoretically and practically and to assist them in making health occupation and life plans that hold promise for their personal fulfillment as mature, compassionate and responsible health professionals always ready to solve community health problems.

Position Required: 2

The job description includes:

1) Participating in teaching-learning processes

2) Facilitating learning environment in the college and outside the college

3) Coordinating clinical attachment programs and processes

4) Demonstrating practical skills to students in the school activities and during CBE

5) Taking part in research activities

6) Participating in exam invigilation,

7) Working as an assistant in the dissection room (DR)

Reports to: The Public Health Department Head

Minimum Qualification: Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in public health (PHO)

Salary: Negotiable

Preference: previous experience in Community-Based Education (CBE)

Closing date: Jan 26, 2016









Your rating: none



Rating: 0  0 votes



How to Apply

Submit a professional resume to Sante Medical College Programmes Coordinator Office Telephone: 0113727434 or santemedical.sante@gmail.com

Note; Only short-listed will be contacted

Closing date: January 26, 2016



Please do not apply online if other application instructions are stated.



Please do not accept payment requests at any of the recruitment phases!

51 total views, 51 today
Brief description:

Maastricht University High Potential scholarships are made available by the Maastricht University Scholarship Fund in order to encourage talented students from outside the EU/EEA to follow a Masters programme at Maastricht University.

Host Institution(s):

Maastricht University, Netherlands

Field of study:

Any UM masters programme or graduate programme for professionals offered at the Universityexcept for programmes under the School of Business and Economics.

Number of Awards:

Not specified.

Target group:

International students from a country outside the EU/EEA.

Scholarship value/inclusions:

The scholarship covers living expenses (10,500), insurance ( 520), visa costs ( 304), and tuition fee ( 13.000 or  17.500).

The High Potential scholarship is awarded for the duration of the Masters programme with a maximum of 12 months. In case of a two-year Masters programme the Scholarship Committee will award the scholarship for a maximum of 24 months.

Eligibility:

You must be admissible for a UM masters programme or graduate programme for professionals and may be no older than 35 years at the start of the academic year.

You must have obtained excellent results in their previous studies. This must be shown in the application file by including, for example, grade lists or reference letters. In case of equivalent qualification, preference will be given to applications which show that the applicant is among the top 5%.

You must come from a country outside the EU/EEA and meet the requirements for obtaining an entry visa and residence permit for the Netherlands.
Program Background: CHAI Ethiopia carries out a wide range of programs to support the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia in improving the health status of the country by ensuring access and quality of health services. We are committed to increasing our effectiveness through an innovative programming approach that optimizes quality, impact and scale. Being the largest CHAI field office worldwide, we currently employ over 150 staff working in the following 08 programs: The Ethiopian Hospital Management Initiative (EHMI), Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH), Access to Medicine, Lab Services, Vaccines Introduction, Nutrition, Child survival, and Global Health Financing. With government partner, CHAI Ethiopia is currently in process of starting up a program to address key drivers of child mortality with focus on improving access to live saving commodities. The program is positioned to address the challenges based on priority services delivery areas of Child health through optimization of procurement supply chain management in collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia with focus on pneumonia and diarrhea. As such, reducing pneumonia and diarrhea morbidity and mortality in under- 5 children in Ethiopia through sustained availability of life saving commodities will be the key focus with this CHAI program.

JOB SUMNMARY: The Regional coordinators are key personnel and will work towards this end by ensuring the effective roll out of the project in close collaboration with PFSA hubs, Regional Health Bureaus, Zonal Health Departments, and Woreda Health Offices in multiple regions and ensure the implementation of national child health related demand and supply related guidelines, tools and standards.

REPORTS To: Program Manager

Duty Station: In respective regions with frequent travel to health facilities

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:




Job Description



The Strengthening Ethiopias Urban Health Program (SEUHP) is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to improve the health status of the urban population in Ethiopia by reducing HIV/Tuberculosis (TB)-related and maternal, neonatal and child mortality and morbidity, plus the impact of communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This will be achieved by supporting the Government of Ethiopias Urban Health Extension Program (UHEP) through improving the quality of communitylevel health services, strengthening referral linkages, building the institutional and technical capacity of Regional Health Bureaus (RHBs) and promoting inter-sectoral collaboration and public-private partnerships (PPPs) to address unique urban health challenges.The SEUHP is follow-on to JSI implemented United States Agency for International Development/Urban Health Extension Program (USAID/UHEP) program.

One key activity planned in FY16 to realized increased demand for facility based health service is the development of a job aid to be distributed to UHE-ps. This job aid will be prepared in the form of a flip chart to make it handy during their inter-personal engagement with clients.

The assignment is for the translation of a14 page job aid in to Tigrigna and Oromiffa,

Reviewing the document to be translated;



Translate the document in to formal but simplified Tigrigna/Oromiffa

Job Requirements



The translator should have relevant professional qualified to undertake this activity and also the experience in translating print materials in to Tigrigna and Oromiffa languages.

Closing date: Feb 18, 2016









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How to Apply

John Snow, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer committed to workplace diversity. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all qualified applicants and employees without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, creed, religion, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, sexual preference, genetic information, political affiliation, or military status (special disabled veterans or veteran status) in any employment decisions. M/F/V/D.

Due to the urgent nature of the recruitment, screening of applications will be done immediately.

All applicants must apply online on ethiojobs.net only

JSI reserves the right to reject any application for any reason.

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Job Description



Start of Contract & Duration: Now for 6 months with possibility of extension (Subject to fund availability)

Number of positions: three

Line management: WASH Engineer

Posting date: January 25, 2016

Background

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has been providing relief and development services in the Horn of Africa since 1997. DRC has mainly focused on Somalis and South sudanes who are displaced by conflict. The regional Office is based in Nairobi, Kenya and we have other offices and operations in Somalia, Puntland, Somaliland, Kenya and Yemen.

In Ethiopia, DRC, has signed an MOU with UNHCR and The Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA) for the refugee projects and BOFED for the regional host projects,to support Refugees and host communities in Ethiopia. A programme is just being established in the Somali region of Ethiopia and Gambela region, promoting an initiative around the Development Assistance for Refugees framework, (DAR), in Refugee Affected Areas this includes addressing issues in the hosting area around the refugee camps as well as addressing durable solutions for the refugee population.

Purpose

To carry out the day to day WASH activities in Jijiga,Gursum and Babile woreda

To manage and facilitate DRC Jijiga WASH interventions in Somali Region and the outreach progress areas included in this project.

Empower the communities to be able to manage their issues by themselves and have the ability to sustain WASH projects

Facilitate relations between DRC and the local communities.

Represent DRC in all WASH cluster meetings and other relevant discussion at their capacity with a close coordination to WASH engineer and are Manager in Jijiga

Key Responsibilities:

Wash specific

Responsible for all WASH interventions for DRC in Jijiga



Ensure that DRCs objectives are disseminated and raise awareness of DRCs approach ensuring all implementation follows DRC policies and procedures



Provide technical advice, backstopping and training on CLTS and H methodology.



Facilitate communities, community based organisations and community leaders in identifying target groups for DRC WASH activities in and around target woreda.

Help empower the communities to enable them to manage their issues by themselves and be able to sustain projects



Ensure equal participation by all segments of the community, taking into consideration issues regarding gender, age, disability and clan affiliation



Regularly monitor and evaluate the projects performance and provide timely inputs, feedback and impact of the DRC WASH interventions



Play an important role in realization of project outputs and outcomes through timely implementation of activities in a well planned, organized and coordinated manner



Develop and implement surveys and needs assessment in targeted woerada

Programme management

Together with WASH Engineer, responsible for preparing and implementing of annual and quarterly work plans



Organize and implement training for communities as per identified needs.



Report monitoring details back to DRC management



Regular monthly, quarterly and annual reporting to as per agreed format.

Supervisory Responsibility

Monitor team performance and activity



Collate monthly reports from other team members and send the reports to the WASH Engineer



Participate meetings every Monday ensuring that appropriate brainstorming, problem solving and project planning techniques are used



Manage team conflicts to ensure that problems are resolved constructively with direction from the Line manager.



Facilitate ongoing self evaluation of the teams effectiveness



Ensure that plans are entered into the standardized format and are updated on a monthly basis

Representation and coordination

To ensure that DRC maintains excellent and productive relations with all key stakeholders, especially beneficiaries, local authorities, partners and donors. Tasks include: a) representing DRC at relevant forums/ meetings, b) ensuring other staff are appropriately representing DRC at relevant forums/ meetings, c) maintaining agreed profile of DRC at Woreda/project level, d) conducting regular stakeholder analyses to ensure that DRC has good understanding of dynamics/ relationships, e) ensuring that all staff maintain beneficiaries and communities at the centre of DRCs stakeholder list, f) engaging in coordination processes amongst key stakeholders.





Personal Specifications

Essential:

Degree/Diploma /Certificate of public health or related field



Minimum three years experience of working in community development, and/or community mobilization.



Experience of implementing WASH in communities



Experience of working with Non-Governmental organisations



Good in spoken and written English especially reporting



Good communication skills and ability to conduct training



Understanding of gender, protection and human rights



Computer skills



Good organizational and people management skills



Ability to represent the organization and influence people

Preferable:

Somali language skills a definite advantage



Engineering skills or knowledge

Experience of construction management

Closing date: Feb 05, 2016











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How to Apply

Interested candidates should send a CV and cover letter in English WASH Officer.

The applicants cover letter should state the reasons for applying for this particular position and not be generic. The cover letter should also include the applicants salary requirements. Please do not send additional materials other than a CV and cover letter, they will not be reviewed.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis before the deadline, and interviews will be held as suitable candidates present themselves. Deadline for applications is 5 February 2015 .

We encourage all qualified candidates to apply. DRC considers all applicants based on merit. It is DRC policy to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals, as well as administer any and all personnel actions, without regard to gender, race, national, clan or tribal origin, religion, age, sex, origin or ancestry, marital status, social status, sexual orientation, or status as a qualified disabled individual.

23 total views, 23 today
Monday, January 25, 2016 Another Bear Raid With More Layoffs Strikes The Metro And Energy Fields, Plus: Smith And Ingle; Can They Hold Off The Radical R's? And: Gay Makes Susana Sad With 3rd Grade Reversal



The Bear is back yet again, signaling that 2016 will be another turbulent and troubled year for the state economy.



The Bear just didn't conduct a raid on the pantry in Rio Rancho, it trashed the entire kitchen, with Sprint



Sprint was a morale breaker, coming as it did on the heels of the news that in November the state had



UNPRECEDENTED



One of our readers said our use of the term "unprecedented" in describing the state's loss of population in our post WWII history needs to be amended because way back in 1980 the state lost population for a year. Okay, but now



While the Bear continues its ravaging ways, don't look to Santa Fe for any comfort. They're playing cops and robbers up there for 30 days, seemingly oblivious to the ongoing downsizing of the economy and the subsequent lower quality of life for many of their constituents.



Hey, maybe the state's economic development planners will offer incentives to U-Haul and Bekins so they can lower the rates for all the folks who want to get the hell out of here.



SO POLARIZED



Ingle & Smith The state of this state's polarized, drifting and going nowhere politics is no better symbolized than by the never-ending squabble over driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. Here you have the spectacle of two of the most respected guys around the Roundhouse--GOP State Senator Stuart Ingle and Dem Senator John Arthur "Dr. No" Smith--treated like ants at a picnic by the radical House Republicans and their misguided acolytes in the business community.



Their compromise



The radical R's say Smith-Ingle does not comply with what the Feds want but the Feds have said no such thing.



There was hope that low-energy but seemingly reasonable House Speaker Don Tripp and his politically astute wife and GOP National Committeewoman Rosie Tripp--could tear themselves away from the skirts of the machine and grease the skids for that Senate compromise. But the Tripps seem more ready for the rocking chair than for a rumble.



Still, Smith and Ingle labor on:



Stu and I are talking, and were going to try to get something through, Smith said.



Forge on, fellas. The only advice we can offer you as this Governor continues to stymie compromise comes from an



Look somewhere above her

Pretend you don't love her

Pretend you don't see her at all



GAY'S GOT GAME



Sen. Kernan GOP State Senator



Maybe the Governor will agree with Gay and thank her for that? Or maybe Gay will find out her license plate has been run through NCIC, her dating habits from college examined and the school she used to work at terrorized with budget cuts.



Yeah, Gay, it can get creepy fast when you take on this bunch.



NOISE FROM NORA



GOP Roswell State Rep.



(Reader) John sends a petition for Nora Espinoza who is seeking signatures to be placed on the ballot for Secretary of State. John writes, "If you are so inclined [to gather signatures] -- filing deadline is 2 February -- and if you have Republican friends, please get their signatures as well. Nora is a sitting State Representative from Chavez County, a naturalized (Panamian born) US citizen, successful business woman."



Nora has great hats but when it comes to her getting elected SOS it's all hat and no cattle. Probable Dem nominee Magie Toulouse Oliver should have no problem lassoing her.



Often imitated but never duplicated. . .



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here.



( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2016 Hold on to your Monday hats. Here comes the state's real deal business coverage plus the most insightful coverage of the shennanigans in Santa Fe. In other words, the stuff you won't get anywhere else. . .The Bear is back yet again, signaling that 2016 will be another turbulent and troubled year for the state economy.The Bear just didn't conduct a raid on the pantry in Rio Rancho, it trashed the entire kitchen, with Sprint laying off its entire call center work force of nearly 400. For some perspective, that's nearly one percent of the city's entire 42,000 workforce gone with one strike of the paw. And with continued downsizing at computer chip maker Intel expected in the months ahead, the City of Vision's economic black eye could get even darker.Sprint was a morale breaker, coming as it did on the heels of the news that in November the state had the highest unemployment in the USA. It followed the more predictable bear raids on the state's energy fields, with oil giant Schlumberger announcing an unspecified number of layoffs in Hobbs. Then there was word out of Carlsbad that the commodities depression is hammering the potash industry causing 35 layoffs there.One of our readers said our use of the term "unprecedented" in describing the state's loss of population in our post WWII history needs to be amended because way back in 1980 the state lost population for a year. Okay, but now we have two years of losing population and we may be headed for a third. As we've said the economic transformation going on around here is unprecedented.While the Bear continues its ravaging ways, don't look to Santa Fe for any comfort. They're playing cops and robbers up there for 30 days, seemingly oblivious to the ongoing downsizing of the economy and the subsequent lower quality of life for many of their constituents.Hey, maybe the state's economic development planners will offer incentives to U-Haul and Bekins so they can lower the rates for all the folks who want to get the hell out of here.The state of this state's polarized, drifting and going nowhere politics is no better symbolized than by the never-ending squabble over driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. Here you have the spectacle of two of the most respected guys around the Roundhouse--GOP State Senator Stuart Ingle and Dem Senator John Arthur "Dr. No" Smith--treated like ants at a picnic by the radical House Republicans and their misguided acolytes in the business community.Their compromise Smith-Ingle bill offering a two-tiered license plan to comply with federal Real ID rules passed the Senate last year with solid bipartisan support only to founder in a House that is under the thumb of the Governor's political machine. It again seems determined to not solve the problem but use it for political advantage at the November election.The radical R's say Smith-Ingle does not comply with what the Feds want but the Feds have said no such thing.There was hope that low-energy but seemingly reasonable House Speaker Don Tripp and his politically astute wife and GOP National Committeewoman Rosie Tripp--could tear themselves away from the skirts of the machine and grease the skids for that Senate compromise. But the Tripps seem more ready for the rocking chair than for a rumble.Still, Smith and Ingle labor on:Forge on, fellas. The only advice we can offer you as this Governor continues to stymie compromise comes from an an old love song GOP State Senator Gay Kernan is sure not seeing Martinez at all. In yet another sign of this Governor's increasing weakness in the post-pizza party era, Kernan is dropping her longtime sponsorship of the bill to hold back third graders who don't meet certain reading standers. Kernan, a retired teacher, says the facts from other states where retention has been adopted dispute its effectiveness.Maybe the Governor will agree with Gay and thank her for that? Or maybe Gay will find out her license plate has been run through NCIC, her dating habits from college examined and the school she used to work at terrorized with budget cuts.Yeah, Gay, it can get creepy fast when you take on this bunch.GOP Roswell State Rep. Nora Espinoza appears to be readying an exit from the Roundhouse and a run for secretary of state. A conservative newsletter reports:Nora has great hats but when it comes to her getting elected SOS it's all hat and no cattle. Probable Dem nominee Magie Toulouse Oliver should have no problem lassoing her.Often imitated but never duplicated. . .This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)
If you are walking - slow down.....if you are running, run faster.
Nebraska Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialists is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Tovah Buikema to the practice. As a maternal fetal medicine specialist, she helps moms navigate high-risk pregnancies.

Buikema earned her medical degree at Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine at Midwestern University in Downers Grove, Illinois. She completed her residency in OB/GYN at St. James Olympia Fields in Chicago, and her fellowship in maternal fetal medicine at Michigan State University in Pontiac, Mich.

Buikema is joining Dr. Chao Li at Nebraska Maternal Fetal Medicine, located at 575 South 70th, Suite 405 in the St. Elizabeth Medical Plaza. She is accepting new patients. Schedule an appointment by calling 402-219-8005. Nebraska Maternal Fetal Medicine is part of The Physician Network, an organization formed to strategically support the health care ministries of Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals in Nebraska, including CHI Health St. Elizabeth.

CHI Health St. Elizabeth offers a high-risk perinatal center that includes a Level 3 NICU admitting over 350 infants annually. The Joint Commission awarded St. Elizabeth two Gold Seals of Approval for Pre-Term Labor and Prematurity. The hospital is one of only four hospitals in the nation to receive this award for Pre-Term Labor and one of six hospitals to receive the award for Prematurity.
Speedway Properties and Nelnet, having teamed up to develop the Telegraph District at 21st and L streets, are proposing a new joint development in the south Haymarket.

The two companies' joint proposal to bring apartments and a long-awaited downtown grocery store to Canopy and N streets, just south of the Harris Overpass, is one of two the city received last week.

The other is from Anant Enterprises, an Omaha-based company of which Lincoln heart surgeon Deepak Gangahar is a partner. Its proposal includes a hotel, apartments and retail space on the city block that is home to the Lumberworks parking garage.

The city asked for new proposals after an earlier plan for the site fell through. That nearly $20 million project called for an eight-story senior housing complex that would have included about 8,000 square feet of first-floor retail space.

Speedway had partnered on that project with Argent Group of Chicago, which built the Latitude Living student apartment complex at 10th and M streets.

When those plans were dropped, an Argent official said a study showed that the Lincoln senior housing market was overbuilt, especially for independent-living units.

The new Speedway/Nelnet proposal, named Lumberworks Lofts, calls for three buildings that combined would have 48 apartments, about 8,000 square feet of office space and about 15,000 square feet of retail space, including a potential 8,500-square-foot grocery store.

In their bid materials, Speedway and Nelnet said the project's proximity to the new Hudl headquarters building, which they are working on with other developers, "will help ensure the project's overall success by creating local demand for walk-to-work and bike-to-work housing, plus complementary neighborhood services, including a possible grocery store."

In the development agreement with the city, Hudl said it expects to hire 300 new employees within three years with $60,000-a-year average compensation packages.

The Lumberworks site is located near the center of several new housing projects, including the Arena Lofts and Canopy Lofts in the Haymarket, as well as Latitude and the 8N Lofts currently under construction to the south and east.

Work is also underway to transform the Schwarz Paper building at 747 O St. into residential and commercial space.

Mike Tavlin, chief financial officer for Speedway, said in an interview that the proposed grocery store is "particularly intriguing and hopefully compelling" to city officials.

Tavlin said Speedway and Nelnet already have a "strong commitment and expression of interest" from a company that has a "successful track record" of operating similar-size stores in Nebraska. He declined to name the company.

The Anant proposal also calls for three buildings to wrap the Lumberworks garage. Included in the proposal is a 100-room "upper-end limited service hotel," 40 apartments and retail space. The name of the hotel was not included, but the five hotels Anant has previously developed, three of which are in Lincoln, all carry the Holiday Inn brand name.

Anant officials could not be reached for comment. In their bid, they tout the project as one that will bring 75 permanent jobs and 150 temporary construction jobs to the area.

Both projects are seeking tax-increment funding, a mechanism that lets private developers draw from future property tax revenue to pay for improvements that will benefit the public.

David Landis, the city's Urban Development director, said an advisory committee consisting mostly of city officials has been chosen to evaluate the proposals. That committee will make a recommendation to the mayor, who will ultimately choose which group gets the opportunity to develop the site.

Because TIF would be involved, the winning bidder would have to negotiate a redevelopment agreement with the city and go through hearings before the Planning Commission and City Council.

Still, both developers said they could start construction before the end of the year. Anant said it expected its project to take 18 months; Speedway and Nelnet did not provide a timeline.

Landis said both projects, in his opinion, fit with both the city's Comprehensive Plan for land use and the Downtown Master Plan.

"I think these are two logical uses of the land," he said.
Universal Pasteurization has named a food industry veteran as its new chief executive officer.

The Lincoln-based company on Monday announced the appointment of Mark Duffy as CEO. Duffy has more than 30 years of experience in the food industry, including stints at industry giants ConAgra and Nestle.

Duffy will be based out of Universal's facility in Villa Rica, Georgia.

We are very excited to have Mark join the Universal team," Jeff Barnard, Universal's president, said in a news release. "He brings passion, focus and great perspective to Universal. Marks experience in food safety, technology, and product development will help Universal continue to deliver unparalleled service levels to our customers.

Universal, which got its start in 2001 as Universal Cold Storage, is one of the largest providers of high-pressure pasteurization services in the country. Since being bought by Graham Partners of Philadelphia in 2012, the company has expanded to Villa Rica, Coppell, Texas, and Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Margaret J. (Whitehead) Nannen peacefully passed away on January 23, 2016, at the age of 83. She died in her home in Syracuse surrounded by family. She was born to Harvey and Meda (Guenthe) Whitehead on January 8, 1933. She attended District 10 Country School and graduated from Syracuse High School in 1951.

After High School, she married Raymond G. "Bob" Nannen and the two had five children. Margaret was a life long member of the United Methodist Church in Syracuse.

Margaret is survived by her children, grandchildren, step-grandchildren, great-grandchildren, sister, brothers-in-law, and many nieces & nephews.

Visitation will be held from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. with family greeting friends from 5-7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26, at Fusselman Allen Harvey Funeral Home in Syracuse. The funeral service will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 27, at St. John's United Church of Christ in Syracuse.

Margaret asked that memorials go to the Syracuse United Methodist Church Building fund. Arrangements by Fusselman Allen Harvey Funeral Home, Syracuse, NE; 402-269-2441. Condolences to fusselmanallenharvey.com
Sheriff's deputies found more than 500 pounds of pot in a pickup truck traveling through Lancaster County Thursday afternoon.

A Lancaster County Sheriff's deputy spotted the truck headed east on Interstate 80 but was unable to stop it, Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said Monday.

Bliemeister wouldn't say why the deputy wanted to stop the 2014 Dodge Ram on the interstate, but said deputies later found the vehicle in a business parking lot near Northwest 48th and West O streets.

A sheriff's drug dog indicated the presence of drugs coming from the truck.

Deputies found the driver, Steven McElmury, 68, of Cedaredge, Colorado, inside the business and searched the truck, Bliemeister said.

They found four U-Haul boxes, four large duffel bags and a large blue tote in the bed of the truck. Each contained individually heat-sealed pound bags of marijuana, weighing a combined 515 pounds with an estimated resale value of more than $2.5 million, Bliemeister said.

Deputies also found marijuana, drug paraphernalia and $4,441 inside the cab.

They arrested McElmury on suspicion of possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver and drug paraphernalia.

Investigators are looking into the source of the marijuana and its intended destination.

Last week, deputies found 1,517 pounds of marijuana in a RV that was stopped for following another vehicle too closely on U.S. 77 near West Van Dorn Street. The pot was worth an estimated $7.5 million and three people were cited in connection with distributing it.
A judge sent a 35-year-old Lincoln man to prison Monday for threatening his girlfriend's friends with a butcher knife when they were helping her move out more than a year ago.

Titus Williams, who pleaded no contest to terroristic threats, denied having a knife or threatening to kill anyone on Nov. 2, 2014.

He admitted to Lincoln police that day that he had threatened to throw the woman and two men over the balcony if they didn't leave.

Williams said Monday he should have kept his mouth closed. He's already served 226 days in jail and said he's lost everything.

"You brandished a knife and you threatened these people," Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson said before giving him 20 months to five years in prison.
COLUMBUS -- A federal program at Central Community College in Columbus is helping low-income, first-generation or disabled students stay in school.

TRIO is run through the U.S. Department of Education and is designed to identify and help students from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve their educational and career goals. TRIO students take a free course designed to help them adapt to college life and teach them academic and life skills.

Rosie Heinisch, the TRIO director at the college, said the program ultimately leads to self-confidence.

"We found when we interviewed some students who were eligible they said they wanted to go to a school that was closer to home  they didn't feel like they were ready for the four-year experience," said Heinisch.

Madelin Calderon, who moved to Nebraska after graduating from high school in Guatemala, said the TRIO program helped her adjust to life at her new school.

"TRIO helped me to understand life in college here because in Guatemala it is totally different," she said. "You feel more comfortable and ready for college."

The Columbus campus was the first in the Central Community College to start the TRIO program in 2001. The program is now at all of the college's campuses. The school has received a five-year grant that will partially fund the program.

Some of the program's initiatives have been tweaked to serve the college's general population. Teachers report on students' progress throughout the semester. If students are having trouble, their advisers will try to help find solutions.

"It's time-consuming, but we think it's an important intervention," said assistant dean of students Beth Pryzmus. "Community college students in particular have a lot of barriers, so we know we have to be proactive."
Jodi Benker Clay wanted to start the new year with a new house.

At 39, she had just bought a home for the first time, along with her husband, Justin.

She knew the colors she wanted the walls to be and the way she wanted to arrange the furniture and how she wanted to remodel the bathroom. It was her dream come true.

But on Jan. 7 -- just 17 days after they bought the house -- she had a heart attack, bringing her dream to a halt.

She was hospitalized for 11 days. But on Jan. 22, she was back in the hospital. Now, the doctors are certain that she has a rare heart disease, but they arent sure what it is.

I feel pretty helpless when Im at the hospital, Justin said. I keep her awake and just worry.

But when Justins not at the hospital, hes doing everything he can to pull together his wife's dream house, even though its something we were very much looking forward to together.

Jodis sister, Jennifer Arthur, took leave from work to help. Arthur spends her days sitting with Jodi at the hospital.

I couldnt imagine not being here for her through this, Arthur said. And she never complains. Its quite amazing.

Jodi has battled health problems all her life. She was born with a heart defect and had open heart surgery at 7 months old. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Now, doctors say she needs to see a vascular specialist, according to her friend, Andrea Settje. Theyre looking at the Cleveland Clinic or Mayo Clinic, but theyre not sure which facility they should go to.

Shortly after Jodi went to the hospital, Settje started a GoFundMe campaign for Jodi. Settje wanted to help the family raise money so they could build a bathroom on the first floor of their new house because Jodi has limited mobility.

Friends from high school and college donated. So did people she met during her 17-years of living in California.

It was insane, Justin said. We couldnt believe it. We love helping people, but we never ask for help. I guess this is karma paying it back a little bit.

With all the traveling theyll be doing to find the right specialist for her condition, Settje said every bit of the money will be put to good use.

Her friends and family arent worried about the disease getting the best of Jodi. Justin said shes too stubborn to let that happen.

In fact, this will make her go harder, Justin said. Shes not scared.

Hes just looking forward to the day when they can finally live in their dream house together.
For seven years, Ive lived in Franklin. When I watch my neighbors kids walk to school and play outside in the summer, I know weve got it good in Nebraska. I trust our lawmakers in Lincoln to pass and enforce common-sense measures to keep Nebraskans safe. And I trust my mayor, City Council, and police department to protect and serve me, my neighbors, and our community to the best of their abilities.

But our safety in Nebraska might be in jeopardy. Outside special interest groups are working in Lincoln to make Nebraska more dangerous. Its possible that by the end of this week, the NRA will be more powerful in Nebraska than our local mayors and law enforcement officers. If the legislature passes LB 289, the NRA  and other gun lobby groups  will have the power to sue Nebraska cities and villages that have local public safety laws and firearm ordinances on the books.

The bill would strip mayors and law enforcement of the ability to protect their own communities from gun violence. I trust my mayor and local police chief to know whats best to protect my hometown, but this bill would stop them from using their experience and knowledge of our community to protect my neighbors and me.

I support the Second Amendment, but I also know that with it comes responsibility. LB 289 would make Nebraska a more dangerous place to live by jeopardizing common-sense local firearms laws, and allowing guns in more places where Nebraskans dont want them.

Lincoln, for example, has a law prohibiting convicted stalkers from possessing guns, and another keeping guns out of domestic violence shelters and drug treatment facilities. In Omaha, guns are not allowed on public playgrounds. In Alliance, guns are not permitted inside the Alliance Learning Center, which includes a childrens library. If LB 289 passes, all of these cities will have to quickly repeal those laws, or risk being sued by NRA lawyers.

Whats more, the bill would line the pockets of the gun lobby at the expense of hard working Nebraskans: under LB 289, cities will have to pay four times the cost of the NRAs attorneys fees when they try to protect our local laws and lose. Taxpayers  like me, my family, and my friends and neighbors  would end up footing the NRAs legal bills. And polling shows little support among Nebraskans for legislation like LB 289  because we dont want to pay the NRA to force guns onto our playgrounds against the will of Nebraska families.

Other states have enacted bills that allow the gun lobby to take cities and local governments to court, and the consequences are clear. In Pennsylvania, which enacted a similar law last year, four cities have been sued, threatening to eliminate local laws that keep citizens safe and running up a huge bill for Pennsylvanians. And one of the groups that filed suit against a Pennsylvania city was a gun lobby group based in Texas.

For decades, the gun lobby has run rampant in statehouses across the country, pushing bad bills like these that put public safety at risk. Now the gun lobby, fueled by outside money, is using its connections in the Nebraska statehouse to stop common-sense public safety measures at the local level.

What works for the citizens of Omaha may not work for me here in Franklin, and I take comfort in knowing that my mayor and Franklin law enforcement officials have the tools they need to keep my community safe. Thats why Ive joined Nebraskas chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, to make sure the gun lobby agenda no longer goes unchecked, and why we are asking our lawmakers to oppose these bills. We have met with over 40 senate offices, emailed our members, and driven hundreds of calls into lawmaker offices to vocalize our strong opposition to this bill.

Im proud to be a Nebraskan because this is a safe place to live and raise a family. Now more than ever, its time to stand up for the way of life we believe in by stopping LB 289 and getting the gun lobby out of Nebraska.
CONTOOCOOK, N.H. -- In the year of the angry candidate and the even angrier voter, John Kasich stands out as the self-proclaimed "prince of light and hope."

As Kasich instructed voters at a town hall meeting here -- his second in this town, population 1,444 -- "If you want to just yell and scream at the other side, you should not vote for me. ... Don't vote for me."

Little about Kasich's message is standard political operating procedure. He is more apt to mention God on the campaign trail than he is his Democratic opponents, much less his Republican ones.

"This is not a political speech -- this is a life talk," Kasich told workers at a warehouse in the town of Bow, observing that "the Lord has put his hand on me for some reason. But he's got his hand on everybody in this room if you let him." Then he wondered, "What do you think? Am I out of my mind here telling you this stuff?"

His style is folksy and meandering, bordering at times on goofy. One minute he's talking about streamlining government regulations, the next he's musing about parking. "You ever notice, you're at a crowded mall and somebody's getting ready to back out. And you're waiting there? Did you ever notice how long it takes them to leave that space? Huh?"

Kasich has a reputation for prickliness, yet he seems the happiest warrior on the 2016 campaign trail, with a message that is distinctly populist and bipartisan. The Kasich stump speech invariably begins with his roots: his mailman father, his coal-miner grandfather who died of black lung, his grandmother who could barely speak English.

"I come from a blue-collar Democrat town, and all the people I grew up with, most of them are doing exactly what you're doing," Kasich told the workers in Bow. "So ... who do you think I respond to? You, or rich people?"

If elected, "My job is to make sure that the lives of people just like you get better," Kasich said. "I happen to be a Republican, but so what? The Republican party is my vehicle, not my master."

If any state is made for Kasich, it is New Hampshire, where independent voters make up the biggest chunk of likely voters -- more than 40 percent -- and are free to vote in either primary. In addition, even in this angry year, this is not a particularly angry state; unemployment is down to 3.1 percent.

All this presents a potential opening for Kasich, one that may be bearing fruit. He is running second in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in the state, although far behind Trump and closely bunched with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

One measure of his tenuous new stature: Right to Rise, the super PAC backing Jeb Bush, just launched a television ad attacking Kasich as "wrong on New Hampshire issues." The harder challenge, if Kasich were to do well here, lies ahead, but that's a headache Kasich would be delighted to suffer. The theory of the Kasich case is to do well enough to pick up delegates along the Southern coast, concentrate on Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont and Tennessee among Super Tuesday states, and aim to score big in Michigan the following week.

Kasich is only a moderate, rhetorically and politically, in the acid context of the current Republican Party. As Ohio's governor, he tried to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights and signed a law banning abortion after 20 weeks -- but also accepted the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.

Asked in Contoocook about his approach to health care, Kasich spent four minutes discussing methods of paying doctors and hospitals for above-average performance -- without mentioning Obamacare, much less denouncing it. (For the record, as he hastened to say when I noted this to him afterward, he's against it.)

At a senior citizen center in Concord, a voter lamented the presence of "millions of illegals" in the country, asking, "What is your plan to deport them?"

Kasich didn't try to soften the blow of disagreement. "I wouldn't," he said. "It's never going to happen. ... There is no practical way to go searching neighborhoods, grabbing people out of their homes."

If he fails to produce a strong showing in the primary here Feb. 9, Kasich acknowledged, "I'm pretty well done -- I am done." Still, he said, "We've raised the bar in this election. I've talked about hope and the future and positive things and a can-do attitude. ... So whatever you do, even if you don't love me, I love you. How's that?"

Pretty refreshing, actually.
Just when you think that the presidential campaign couldn't get any slimier, in rides Sarah Palin and her endorsement for Donald Trump. She then goes on to blame President Obama for her son's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and his slugging his girlfriend while walking around Wasilla with a rifle. She conveniently forgets George W. Bush dragged us into this mess and effectively played a role in the rise of ISIS. Perhaps our legislators should meet to discuss banning Gov. Palin from entering Nebraska the way the British Parliament discussed banning Trump from their shores. One is reminded of Joseph Welch at the McCarthy hearings and we should ask Ms. Palin "Have you no sense of decency, madam?"
Under way - Quilt Exhibition by Lincoln Modern Quilt Guild continues through Feb. 23 at Bernina Sewing Studio Gallery, 1265 S. Cotner Blvd., during regular store hours. More details: see article in this issue and/or email info.lincolnmqg@gmail.com

Under way - Fiber Works exhibition Expressions in Fiber at The Landing at Williamsburg Village, 3500 Faulkner Dr. Public reception 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21. Exhibition runs through March 25.

Tuesday - Lincoln Business Women's Association luncheon meeting 11:30 a.m. at The Eatery, 48th & Van Dorn, Van Dorn Plaza. Program: discussion on reorganizing. Send reservations to DiamondVicki1700@cs.com

Tuesday - "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts, 301 N. 12th St., the final lecture in the 2015-16 E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues. Guest speaker: Sheryl WuDunn, a bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner. Marcee Metzger, executive director of Lincoln-based Voices of Hope, presents pre-talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Lied's Steinhart Room. Free tickets at the Lied Center available weekdays during business hours.

Wednesday - Saint Paul United Methodist Women monthly meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. in the church dining room, 1144 M St. Program: Hayley Fischer discusses her experience at the Great Plains Conference Mission Education Tour, sponsored by UMW for teens. Lunch follows meeting. Reservations due Monday; call the church office, (402) 477-6951.

Thursday  GYN cancer support group monthly meeting 6:30 p.m. at Gere Branch Library, 56th & Normal Blvd. Info.: call Carolyn, (402) 483-0890.

Friday - Church Women United to meet at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 5200 Francis St., beginning at 9:30 a.m. for coffee and fellowship, followed by Bible study led by Connie Karges. Program: information about Ireland and the surrounding areas, led by Pastor Steven Pointon. Offering to the local unit. All women welcome. Info: call Ruby at (402) 488-4815.

Friday  Deborah Avery chapter of DAR (Daughters of American Revolution) monthly program 1 p.m. in Fireside Room of Legacy Estates, 7200 Van Dorn St. Program: The Importance of International Studies, by Christopher Banks, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Union College. Light refreshments served. Info.: call Sharon Savidge, (402) 440-2925.

Coming soon - Women's Welcome Club of Lincoln meeting 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9 at the Country Club of Lincoln, 3200 S. 24th St. Program: the Innovation Campus. (Club sponsors a variety of social activities for members including Book Clubs, Couples Group, and several card games.) Reservations required by Thursday Feb. 4. Cost: $13. New women interested in attending may call Karen at 402-488-5364. More info. at womenswelcomecluboflincoln.org.

Coming soon - Bethany Womens Club, a city-wide service group, hosts monthly meeting 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9 in Fellowship Hall of Bethany Christian Church, 1645 N, Cotner Blvd. Program: Growing up in Afghanistan, by Farida Ebahim. Please join us for this enlightening program and an afternoon of fellowship and refreshments. Guests welcome. Annual membership dues: $5. Mark your calendar: Spring Luncheon & Fashion Show April 12. Details to follow.

Coming soon - Women in Sales and Business (WISB) meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10 at Hillcrest Country Club, 9401 O St. Guest speaker: Diane Siefkes, consultant at dkSolutions. Topic: "Top 10 LinkedIn Tips. Lunch ($18) and networking at 11:30 a.m., business meeting 11:55 a.m. to 1 p.m. Register at www.wisblincoln.org or email wisblincoln@gmail.com to RSVP.

Coming soon  100s of Lincoln Women Who Care event 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11 at the Country Club of Lincoln, 3200 S. 24th St., sponsored by Smith Hayes and Cline Williams.

Coming soon  CHI Health St. Elizabeth Auxiliarys annual Valentine Day sale 7 a.m.to 4 p.m. Feb. 11-12 at CHI Health St. Elizabeth, 555 S. 70th St., on first level near Admissions. Wide variety of handcrafted items. Proceeds to benefit the Mobility Fund at St. Elizabeth.
RACINE COUNTY  Some judges and defense lawyers say changes coming down the pike  barring lawyers from talking with jail inmates in holding cells behind criminal courtrooms  may delay justice for victims, make defendants sit in jail longer and clog judges calendars.

After a plan was developed last summer by the Racine County Circuit Courts Court Security Committee and the Racine County Sheriffs Office that would bar defense lawyers from talking with their jailed clients in those holding cells  which is common practice in Racine Countys criminal courts  defense lawyers voiced outrage as well as concerns about that kind of ban. That new procedure was to take effect this past summer, but then it was yanked back as judges, defense lawyers and sheriffs officials met to try to modify the plan.

A new version was unveiled during the Jan. 12 Racine County judges meeting, and drew swift reaction from judges and defense lawyers there. It still barred defense lawyers from meeting with inmates in holding cells behind the courtrooms.

And it meant defense lawyers would have to leave the Law Enforcement Center, walk around the block to the jail, go through a security checkpoint in the jail, and wait until their client was brought back to the jail and down to a room to meet. That would lead to lengthy delays instead of meeting for a handful of minutes to answer any last-minute questions in the holding area, defense lawyers and some judges say.

Justice delayed?

Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz said instead of resuming a hearing promptly, he likely would have to abort the proceeding and reschedule it.

Itll be pushed off for another two months, he said. This hurts those who are confined and cant post bond. They get to suffer more than somebody who can post a bond. How is that due process equality?

And those delays affect crime victims and their families, as well, he said.

A victim wants to see these things come to fruition in some (timely) fashion, too, Gasiorkiewicz said.

The move is meant to improve efficiency and expedite cases through the system, said Circuit Judge John Jude, who chairs the Court Security Committee, while also improving safety and security for lawyers, deputies and jail staff, the defendants and other inmates.

Jail procedures

Adrienne Moore, who heads the state Public Defenders trial office in Racine, said the change would affect every criminal defense lawyer significantly.

Moore said defense lawyers have limited hours to visit clients in the Racine County Jail, whereas some other area jails do not have similar limitations.

Lawyers may visit in person with clients in the jail from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week, according to Racine County Sheriffs Office policy.

Moore said depending on where an inmate is housed, lawyers might meet them in one of two conference rooms or sitting at a table by the elevator, the latter of which is not a private meeting space for attorney-client-privileged conversations.

Everybody can hear you, she said. They (jail staff) dont look kindly on you telling them you need a client brought of the floor (housing unit) to a conference room. You could wait half an hour. I have waited 45 minutes for that to occur, she said.

Just as some inmates family members and friends may sign up for video chats with them, so, too, may defense lawyers. These video chats may only be scheduled during visitation hours, the policy states.

Lawyers can go to the public-access portion of the jail, just as inmates loved ones do, for free video visits. They must sign up 24 hours in advance, though. If they want to video-chat from the office or their homes, there is a fee of $7.50 for a 20-minute conversation or a flat $20 monthly fee for unlimited monthly use, according to the policy.

Jude said fees will be waived for defense lawyers working for the State Public Defenders Office.

Moore said she appreciates that fee waiver, but the Public Defenders Office isnt yet equipped with wifi, although that is scheduled to be in place by March 31.

A modified plan in the works

Court and sheriffs officials now are working to modify the plan by converting storage rooms near some criminal courtrooms into shared storage and lawyer-client meeting rooms. Deputies may monitor these rooms, however.

That new system still will pose problems, Moore contends.

Defendants have the right to a private, confidential conversation with a lawyer, she said. Its the law. But its only confidential if no one else is in that room with the pair  including no law enforcement or other defendants and their attorneys.

If they can modify this room and theres not gong to be a physical presence of an officer in that room  then Im OK with it, Gasiorkiewicz added.

The change wont affect the average person, said Racine County Circuit Judge Allen Pat Torhorst, who serves as chief judge of the Second Judicial District, which encompasses Racine, Kenosha and Walworth counties.

The issue was continued to the Feb. 23 Racine County judges meeting. It had been set to take effect on Feb. 1, but backlash from some judges and defense lawyers pushed back that timeline.

However, Torhorst said the new policy might kick in before the Feb. 23 meeting.

This is nothing that has to be approved by anybody but me, he said. Well resolve it to everybodys benefit as soon as we can.

Gasiorkiewicz said the two sides must cooperate and reach an agreement.

They have rights. Theyre human beings, he said of defendants.
RACINE COUNTY  Despite no major breaches in security, defense lawyers practices of meeting jailed clients in holding cell areas behind Racine County criminal courtrooms are about a undergo a major change.

It was in 2010 to 2011 that Racine County officials brought in the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security to conduct security assessments, said Circuit Judge John Jude, who chairs the Court Security Committee.

Jude said he couldnt detail specifics about security shortfalls, but said the Racine County Sheriffs Office has a strong commitment to beefing up security when inmates are brought to court from the connected jail complex. That includes no more meetings between lawyers and inmates in those holding areas behind the criminal courtrooms.

There should be no member of the public in an area where an inmate is being transferred or housed, he said. No member of the public, including an attorney, should be in a position where they are at risk.

Sheriff Chris Schmaling stated in an email that the door in question, which is an extension of the Racine County Jail, is propped open in the courts and allows carte-blanche access to whomever. This area houses inmates awaiting to see the judge for court proceedings. In short, although the cell doors are locked, we simply dont leave the front door of the jail propped open because its more convenient for our visitors.

Schmaling stated this practice is extremely unsafe and I refuse to wait for an escape attempt or someone getting seriously injured or killed before I close the door. He stated deputies have discovered contraband on inmates in that area, such as cellphones and pens  items that could easily be used to facilitate an escape and/or seriously injuring or killing someone.

Jude cited an issue with a defense lawyer a handful of years ago who was found passing letters for an inmate client.

Also, about 25 years ago, (now-retired Judge (Stephen) Simaneks court reporter was stabbed by a pencil, Jude said.

As we all are aware, the times we live in today have drastically changed from the past, and we are fortunate that we have not experienced a major security breach with this unsafe practice, Schmaling stated. The notion that we should keep the door propped open because thats the way its been and nothing has happened in the last 20 years is unacceptable. The door will be closed and locked, and I am confident that the courts will run even more efficiently.

Schmaling stated the holding cell area never was intended as a meeting space for inmates and their attorneys, despite becoming routine practice here.

My staff toured other county criminal justice centers, and we quickly learned that we are the only county with this unsafe practice, he stated.

Jude said there always is some initial resistance to change, and its just about changing some habits that have developed. And some are bad habits.
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WATERFORD  An assessment firm hired by Waterford officials has agreed to take another look at some properties it appraised last year as part of a villagewide re-evaluation, and to do interior inspections of homes it was unable to complete as part of that re-evaluation work.

The agreement was reached earlier this month after dozens of local taxpayers were caught off guard by higher tax bills  bills that many blamed on what they felt were unfair or incomplete evaluations of their properties because assessors were either rushed or did not enter their homes.

According to Village President Tom Roanhouse, officials believe some of the issues with the assessments and resulting tax bills have to do with the fact that villages assessment firm  Associated Appraisal Consultants, Inc.  didnt get into all of the homes to do interior inspections.

The long and the short of it is the Village Board contracted to have a full evaluation  meaning going into every dwelling except for the ones that, by law, they could not (because) property owners (declined to let them enter). And, for whatever reason ... they ran out of time, and they only went into 56 percent of the homes, Roanhouse said.

The failure of the firm to do interior inspections of all dwellings, coupled with a perception that assessors rushed to complete other assessments in order to get done in time to get tax bills out, led to complaints from both property owners and village trustees, he said.

I have probably spoken with between 40 and 100 taxpayers and they tell me stories. And they cant all be fabricated, Roanhouse said.

Complaints ran the gamut, he said. One taxpayer called concerned that his tax bill was different from someone down the street who essentially had the same house.

We had a meeting with them (Associated) on Jan. 11. They agreed they are going to do (interior inspections of) the 44 percent (of the dwellings) that they didnt go into, he said.

In addition to agreeing to go into the homes they werent able to do interior inspections of in 2015, the firm will reinspect the homes of people who thought their evaluation was somehow rushed, Roanhouse said. The Appleton-based firm, which contracts with more than 250 municipalities in the state, has also agreed hold office hours in Waterford in coming weeks to personally address property owners concerns, he added.

Asked about the situation and resulting agreement, Dean Peters, director of project management for Associated Appraisal, said that when the firm signed on to do the villagewide re-evaluation it told village officials that assessors that it expected to view most of the interiors of the homes, which is standard practice on a re-evaluation, but the timetable got pushed back to some extent.

We did view every single property, but we didnt get to view the interiors of as many as we had hoped, Peters said.
WATERFORD  The Wisconsin Department of Revenue recommends municipalities do municipality-wide re-evaluations every 10 years, but it is not required.

Most municipalities do villagewide re-evaluations on a seven-to-10 year cycle, said Dean Peters, director of project management for Associated Appraisal Consultants Inc. In all other years most of those municipalities do what they call maintenance assessment work, in which the assessor maintains the property values that are already on the assessment rolls, he said. Properties arent re-assessed during those years unless there physical changes to properties or the land, or unless an owner requests a review.

Whether an assessor goes into homes to their re-evaluation depends on whether the assessor is doing a full re-evaluation or an exterior re-evaluation, explained Peters. The Department of Revenue does recommend, however, that a full re-evaluation  which includes going into homes  be done once every 10 years, he said.

That state requirement was one of the reasons the Village of Waterford opted to do its first ever full re-evaluation in 2015, Village President Tom Roanhouse said.
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Former Bangladesh prime minster Khaleda Zia [BNP profile] was ordered to appear in court following charges of sedition on Monday. The suit against Zia was filed [Reuters report] by Momtaz Uddin Ahmad Mehdi, a lawyer with the Bangladesh Supreme Court [official website] and a supporter of the ruling Awami League. He said that the comment Zia made concerning the controversy over number of those killed during the war of 1971 was seditious. He commented that her words hurt him as a patriot and that he was obligated as a citizen to bring the suit. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir [profile], acting secretary general of the BNP, dismissed the case as politically motivated.

Khaleda was granted bail in April after surrendering to the court in Dhaka. The leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) [official website], Khaleda had been voluntarily confined [BBC report] to her office since January 5. She faces charges of embezzling money stemming from two corruption cases between 2001 and 2006. The trial began in 2014 [JURIST report], and an arrest warrant [JURIST report] was issued in February when she failed to appear in court. In May 2008 Bangladeshs Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) [official website] filed [JURIST report] formal charges against Khaleda for an alleged kickback scheme that awarded lucrative gas contracts to Canadian oil company Niko Resources Ltd [corporate website]. The ACC charged Khaledas eldest son [JURIST report] with corruption in July 2010 for allegedly laundering USD $3 million through bank accounts in Singapore. In March 2014 the former prime minister and other members of the BNP were indicted [JURIST report] on two corruption charges, accused of embezzling funds from a charitable trust named after Khaledas deceased husband. Bangladeshs High Court ruled Khaleda must stand trial [JURIST report] on corruption charges last April. In February, an arrest warrant was issued [JURIST report] for Khaleda again when she and 55 other people were charged for instigating an arson attack on a bus.
[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [official website] on Sunday released a report [text] outlining serious flaws in the Iranian electoral system which they say are damaging prospects for free and fair parliamentary elections on February 26th. The report states that this is due to Iranian authorities not allowing the majority of candidates to run due to discriminatory and arbitrary criteria, as well as the fact that many political activists and journalists remain in prison for exercising their rights. In order to become a candidate in Iran, a person must be approved first by the Ministry of the Interior [official website, in Persian] executive boards and then by the Guardian Council [BBC backgrounder]. Although the executive boards have initially approved of approximately 90 percent of the potential candidates, the Guardian Council has only approved of 40 percent of them. The report points to various arbitrary powers of the Guardian Council that allow it to disqualify candidates that have opposing political views or associations with certain political groups. The report also notes that prominent political activists who remain in prison for exercising their rights are effectively barred from running because of their incarceration.

Elections continue to present issues to governments and lawmakers around the world. In December the Armenian Electoral Commission announced [JURIST report] that Armenias constitution will be amended, even though opposition MPs and independent European observers have alleged serious irregularities in the voting process. In November Guineas Constitutional Court validated the reelection [JURIST report] of President Alpha Conde amid allegations of fraud and rigging. In October the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil banned [JURIST report] corporate entities from providing funding to political candidates in the future. The court found that the large role corporations played in campaign funding was unconstitutional and compromised the legitimacy of the elections. In July Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza was elected to a third term [JURIST report], leading to public protest and international criticism. Although the election resulted in Nkurunziza receiving 69 percent of the vote, the Constitution of Burundi states that presidents shall be universally elected into office for a term of five years and can renew the term only once. Prior to the vote, Nkurunzizas opponents boycotted the election [JURIST report] claiming it is unconstitutional for a president to seek a third term.
[JURIST] Thousands of people in Poland on Saturday protested the governments planned changes to a certain law that would increase its surveillance over Polish citizens. The proposed change to the law, initiated by the ruling Law and Justice Party, would expand [PressTV report] the governments rights to access digital data and loosen restrictions of using surveillance in law enforcement. Those opposed to the law argue that the law will have serious implications on privacy rights. The Law and Justice Party has been making moves [Reuters report] to gain more control over the judiciary since it took office in November. The European Union (EU) [official website] has even taken notice, launching an investigation into allegations that the Polish government is undermining democratic principles. If Poland were to be found guilty of these allegations, the country would lose voting rights in the EU for a specified period of time.

Surveillance and data collection have been worldwide topics of discussion, particularly after Edward Snowden leaked top-secret [JURIST report] US National Security Agency (NSA) documents in 2013. Earlier this month US-based tech companies Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo submitted evidence [JURIST report] of possible conflicts that may arise from the UK governments proposed Investigatory Powers Bill, noting that the bulk data collections required by the bill will have an international impact. In December China passed a new anti-terrorism law [JURIST report] that requires technology companies to provide information to the government obtained from their products and make information systems secure and controllable. In October the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied [JURIST report] a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union to halt the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA. The court ruled that Congress intended for the agency to continue its data collection over the transition period, and the new legislation was to take effect November 29. In August the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed [JURIST report] a ruling that had blocked the NSA from obtaining call detail records from US citizens.
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Bereaved families left in lurch

The bereaved families of the three persons who were killed in police firing at Rangeli and Dayaniya in Morang on Thursday have been left in the lurch.
Not the right person to answer questions on border obstruction: Indian envoy Rae

Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae has said that India supports steps taken by government to resolve the ongoing Madhes crisis through dialogue
Kin of Doramba massacre victims hopeful of justice

Family members of the 2003 Doramba massacre have expressed hope that the government will investigate into the incident and take action against the perpetrators.
Land acquisition to begin in mid-February: Officials

Land acquisition for the construction of 1,200MW Budhi Gandaki Hydropower Project is set to begin from mid-February, government officials have said.
Laos 'bomb attack' kills two Chinese

Two Chinese citizens have been killed and another wounded in a suspected bomb attack in Laos, say Chinese state media.
Naya Shakti forms 35-member Interim Council

Baburam Bhattarai on Sunday unveiled a preliminary structure of his proposed party highlighting its key features.
Nepal-India relations getting warmer: DPM Thapa

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Miniser Kamal Thapa has said that the government is striving to improve the Nepal-India relations.
Protests continue in Janakpur

Saying that the constitution amendment did not address the concerns of Madhesi people, the Madhes-centric alliances continued their protests in Janakpur on Monday as well.
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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

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Mike Dunleavy the governor of the US state of Alaska is intending to introduce legislation that will repeal the two state boards which regu...
The NRM candidate and incumbent President Yoweri Museveni has promised a hospital and various infrastructural projects to people of Buliisa district.

Addressing a rally this afternoon, Museveni said government will take over Buliisa hospital that was built by Tullow oil under the oil companys corporate social responsibility programme.

He said the hospital lacks adequate staff and medicine. He also promised more health centres in the new subcounties that do not have government-aided health center IIIs.

The president had earlier addressed a rally in Kakumiro town in Kibaale district.

Earlier, government watered down independent presidential candidate Amama Mbabazis advanced sub-county model for development.

The model proposes a sub-county as a center for development and service delivery with cooperative society offices as well as a community silo to empower people against poverty.

However while addressing the media at the Uganda Media Center on Monday, Trade, Industry and Cooperatives minister, Amelia Kyambadde has rubbished this as a total lie to Ugandans, saying such policy is not practical.

Story By Moses Kyeyune
The police in Kanungu district are investigating allegations that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda rebel group based in DR Congo is abducting Ugandans and demanding a ransom.

According to the police spokesperson Fred Enanga, these rebels usually abduct Ugandans who cross to the Democratic Republic of Congo for business and farming.

He added that those abducted must also refrain from engaging in underhand dealings with the rebels before informing police.

Story By Samuel Ssebuliba
Court has dismissed a petition challenging the academic qualification of the Jinja Municipality East Constituency NRM flag bearer Nathan Igeme Nabeta.

The case was filed last year by the incumbent MP and FDC flag bearer Paul Mwiru.

Nabeta was jointly sued with the National Council for Higher Education(NCHE) and Uganda national Examination Board(UNEB).

The National Council for Higher Education and UNEB are said to have issued the equivalent of an advanced level certificate to Nabeta after presenting certificates and Bachelor of Science in international business he obtained from Oklahoma University in California -USA.

In his petition, Mwiru wanted court to compel the council and UNEB to cancel the certificate issued to Nabeta and also order Electoral Commission to nullify his nomination.

However the Jinja High Court Resident Judge Patricia Basaza said court had no powers to reject documents approved by the line bodies.

Story By Abubaker Kirunda
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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
Part-time workers in South Korea saw their income grow at a much slower pace in 2015 than the previous year due to a prolonged economic slump, data showed Monday.



The average monthly profit of part-time workers stood at 653,391 won (US$544.95) last year, up 2.7 percent from 635,996 won a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the job search portal Alba.co.kr.



Last year's growth hovered far below the 8.2 percent on-year rise posted in 2014, the data added. The survey was conducted on 17,829 local workers who made profits through part-time jobs every month.



"Demand for part-time workers waned last year due to the economic slump, which left consumer spending anemic and increased the number of one-man operations going out of business," Alba.co.kr said.



The gender income gap also worsened last year.



Male part-time workers earned 756,700 won per month, while female counterparts made 579,900 won, leading to an income gap of 176,800 won. The disparity stood at 159,634 won in 2014.



By sector, consulting and sales-related jobs boasted the highest monthly average wage of 887,962 won, trailed by information technology and design careers with 879,941 won and accounting positions with 868,142 won, according to the data.



(Yonhap)




South Korea plans to survey surviving families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War for the first time in five years to better prepare for family reunions, government officials said Monday.

In March, the government will launch a three-month research project on 65,000 separated family members to ask whether they are willing to meet their relatives living in North Korea, according to the Unification Ministry.

There are about 130,000 separated family members on a waiting list for family reunions. About half of them have passed away.

Under relevant laws, the government should conduct a survey of separated families every five years to check whether they are alive and intend to meet their kin in the North.

The two Koreas held reunions for about 100 separated family members from each side at Mount Kumgang in the North in late October, the first event since February 2014.

Seoul has been pushing for holding such family reunions on a regular basis, to which the North has shown a lukewarm response. The North's latest nuclear test is dimming the outlook for additional family events, analysts say.

South Korea's Red Cross made video messages of about 10,000 separated family members to possibly be delivered to their relatives in North Korea late last year. But whether they can be delivered remains uncertain due to the strained inter-Korean ties. (Yonhap)
South Koreans frequently visiting the United Kingdom with entry visa will be able to use the quick immigration checkpoint at British airports, the South Korean Embassy here said Monday.

The new system is effective from Monday as the British government included South Koreans in its registered travelers system.

Registered foreigners including South Koreans entering the country through international airports will now be able to use either ePassport gates or immigration checkpoints for local Britons/EU nationals.

Immigration procedures will take up to 10 minutes from the usual one hour if the travelers are newly registered in the system, according to the embassy.

A 70 pound ($100) registration fee is required for those eligible Korean travelers to use the quick service.

Requirements for the service are limited to those who have visited Britain at least four times in the past year for business, academic, education, sightseeing or medical treatment purposes.

Those Koreans who possess permanent residence or entry visas are also eligible for quick service through the registration system.

The South Korean embassy said the British government appears to have judged South Koreans as being safe from a security perspective.

Approximately 300,000 South Koreans visit Britain annually, of them some 30,000 for business purposes, the embassy said. (Yonhap)
South Korea should make efforts to improve North Korea's dismal human rights situation even if Seoul's move to have better inter-Korean relations hit a snag, a government official said Monday.



The National Assembly is set to pass a pending bill aimed at enhancing the North's human rights record later this week. The bill, first introduced in August 2005, has been languishing in the parliament, apparently out of concern its passage could have a negative impact on inter-Korean relations.



The bill calls for efforts to improve the North's human rights situation and setting up a center tasked with investigating the North's human rights situation and relevant archives.



"Even if South Korea's efforts to improve inter-Korean ties and bring peace to the peninsula hit a snag, Seoul should separately make efforts to enhance the North's human rights situation," said an official at the Unification Ministry.



Pyongyang has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The communist regime does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.



In December last year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution for the second consecutive year that calls for referring the North to the International Criminal Court for human rights violations. (Yonhap)




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A conservative advocacy group is standing by its claim that former Sen. Russ Feingold was warned of problems at the Tomah VA Medical Center and failed to respond, which Feingold  and the author of a memo central to the claim  are disputing.

The group, Wisconsin Alliance for Reform, featured the claim in an ad in the Green Bay Press-Gazette this week and hasnt ruled out running more such ads.

Feingold responded a day later, flatly saying the attack ad is not true.

The Tomah VA center has been in the headlines since an investigation by the VAs Inspector General found deficiencies in care at the facility contributed to the 2014 death of a U.S. Marine from Stevens Point, Jason Simcakoski. The facilitys director and chief of staff were fired last year after those findings were disclosed.

Other lawmakers such as U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, have faced blowback about their offices handling of the matter.

Now comes the anti-Feingold ad, based on a memo written in 2009 by a union official at the Tomah VA facility and marked hand-delivered to Feingold  then a U.S. senator  and U.S. Reps. Ron Kind and Dave Obey. The memo warned that veterans were being over-prescribed narcotics at Tomah.

But the author of the memo  Lin Ellinghuysen, president of AFGE Local 0007, the local union representing most workers at the Tomah VA  changed course last year, saying the document never was delivered to Feingold or his staff.

Feingold noted that in his rebuttal to the ad, adding that his office searched for the memo and had no record of receiving it.

Ellinghuysen told the Wisconsin State Journal this week that she wrote the 2009 memo to a union official at the VA medical center in Iron Mountain, Mich., after the official told her he would testify to a congressional panel about problems at his facility. Before he testified, Ellinghuysen said she told Balkum about her plans to write the memo and that Feingold and Kind represented the Tomah area in Congress. On that basis, Ellinghuysen said she mistakenly assumed Balkum would deliver the memo to them while in Washington, D.C., and wrote that on the document.

Last year, when a reporter contacted Ellinghuysen to inquire about the memo, she said she contacted Balkum to ask if he hand-delivered it, and he said he did not.

Attempts to reach Balkum on Friday were not successful.

The memo became a public document after Ellinghuysen provided it to police when they were investigating the suicide of a former psychologist at the Tomah VA, Christopher Kirkpatrick.

I made a bad assumption, Ellinghuysen said. Russ Feingold did not receive my memo addressed to Ben Balkum.

A spokesman for Wisconsin Alliance for Reform, Chris Martin, asked in a statement why Ellinghuysen changed her story.

Im more inclined to believe what someone wrote down at the time and submitted in an official police report than what they are now saying five years later under immense political pressure, Martin said.

AFL-CIO, which is affiliated with AFGE, has contributed significantly to Feingolds past campaigns.

When asked by the State Journal if anyone urged her to change her story about the memo, Ellinghuysen said no.

Feingolds opponent in the November election, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, has faced questions of his own regarding his response to the Tomah VA scandal.

Johnson, who succeeded Feingold in 2011, was criticized after it was reported that his office failed to act on whistleblower tips about problems at the Tomah VA. Johnson later acknowledged his office could have done more to respond.
One of downtown La Crosses anchor storefronts will have a new tenant in June when Duluth Trading Co. opens a clothing store in the Doerflinger Building.

The Belleville, Wis., based clothier announced Monday it plans to open a 10,500-square-foot retail outlet in the historic building at Fourth and Main streets.

Its going to be a very strong anchor for downtown, said Robin Moses, executive director of Downtown Mainstreet Inc., who helped court the rapidly-growing retailer whose lifestyle clothing and quirky marketing campaigns have built a cult following.

Moses said customers travel more than 100 miles to visit other Duluth Trading Co. stores, which she anticipates will be a boon for other downtown businesses.

The store will occupy the buildings first floor, including the primary space previously occupied by Three Rivers Outdoors, a locally-owned outdoor outfitter that closed in November after 15 years in the renovated department store.

It will be the companys 10th retail store and its fifth in Wisconsin. The company also maintains stores in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota.

This is going to be a game changer, said building owner Mike Keil. An absolute game changer to have all these people coming to downtown that dont normally come to La Crosse.

The move will displace Studio Fit, which Keil said will move next month to East Ward, the former CenturyTel building he co-owns on East Avenue. Two other retailers, Weddings By Nancy and Angies Skin Care, will remain in the Doerflinger, along with Michaels Energy and Authenticom, a data management company that occupies the buildings upper floors.

The store will employ two salaried and up to six full-time employees plus as many as 28 part-time workers, said district store manager Mark Pickart.

This will be our fifth downtown store, Pickart said. The Doerflinger is a gorgeous building and it should be a great fit for our brand.

Keil did not disclose the terms of the lease but said Duluth Trading would be making a significant investment in the build-out and staffing.

Founded in 1989 in Duluth, Minn., Duluth Trading Co. is rapidly expanding from a mail-order model, and said in a news release that it had sought to establish a storefront in western Wisconsin, a place where many hardworking men and women call home.

Parent company Duluth Holdings Inc. went public in November, raising $83.7 million. The company posted third quarter net income of $1.5 million on $55.3 million in sales.

Its plans call for accelerating retail expansion as well as growing its sales to women.

Built in 1904 to replace an earlier site destroyed by fire, the four-story building at Fourth and Main was home to Doerflingers, the citys premier department store, for eight decades before Valley View Mall began drawing shoppers to Hwy. 16.

Keil purchased it in 2004 after previous efforts to renovate the landmark had failed.
TOMAH  Tomah Memorial Hospital answered a code blue at the Gundersen Tomah Clinic to help it recover from extensive internal injuries after frozen sprinkler pipes burst and flooded the clinic, forcing it to close for at least a month.

Left in critical condition Jan. 15 with collapsed ceiling tiles, ruined flooring and partially drenched walls, the 22,000-square foot clinic is swirling with construction workers repairing the damage, while medical staffers have shifted to Tomah Memorial facilities and its own Gundersen Sparta Clinic to care for patients.

The first thing is to take care of our patients and make sure that our staff remains gainfully employed, Gundersen Health System official Mark Platt said during an interview Friday.

Tomah Memorial CEO Phil Stuart echoed that assessment, saying, The first priority was to get patients cared for, which is what were all about.

Obviously, I feel for them having to deal with this, and were glad to help, he said.

Phil Stuart has been terrific. We are grateful for his friendship and partnership, said Platt, senior vice president of Gundersens business services.

Were also grateful to the Tomah Fire Department for getting the water turned off, he said.

Tomah Memorial administrators mobilized Jan. 16, even though it was a Saturday, after Dr. Jill McMullen, the Gundersen clinics medical director called Stuart to ask whether TMH might be able to help.

We put together a shortlist of their needs to care for patients. Patients cant be canceled  they need to be seen, Stuart said.

By Monday morning, Tomah Memorial had set aside a room for Gundersen staffers to meet, stocked with muffins, coffee and fruit, he said.

Tomah Memorial and Gundersen worked out a rental agreement  federal law requires that rather than just giving space gratis  in which Gundersen uses three exam rooms at the hospital and two exam rooms at the Tomah Memorial Walk-in Clinic in nearby Warrens, Stuart said.

Their triage efforts also pinpointed supplies that Tomah Memorial had on hand to meet immediate needs and determined other provisions and specialized materials Gundersen would supply on its own.

Gundersen doctors, nurses and other staffers are tending to the Gundersen patients at the hospital and the Warrens clinic, although TMH staffers are available if needed in a pinch, Stuart said.

While original expectations were that the clinic, which serves about 100 patients daily and has about 50 employees, would be repaired in two weeks, Platt announced Friday that the reconstruction is more complicated and now is expected to take at least a month.

Virtually all of the flooring is being replaced, as is at least the bottom 2 feet of drywall throughout the 25-year-old building.

All of the medical equipment must be checked for damage and/or recalibrated, but much of it and the furniture are salvageable. Those items are being stored in trucks outside, Platt said.

Exactly when the pipes burst cant be determined, although the clinic closes at 5 p.m., Platt said. A crew from ServiceMaster, which Gundersen contracts with for cleaning services at the clinic, discovered the flooding upon arrival about 6:45, he said.

The amount of water that gushed into the clinic also has not been determined, Platt said, although he noted that sprinklers are pressurized. Much of the clinic had several inches of water, and desks were nearly covered in some areas.

It is estimated that each inch of water spread over the 22,000 square feet amounts to 12,000 to 13,000 gallons of water  compared with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys estimate that the average American family of four uses 400 gallons a day.

Insurance is expected to cover the damage, Platt said. One of the priorities in the aftermath is to determine what happened so the same thing doesnt happen in any of Gundersens 61 other clinics in the 19-county area it serves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, he said.

The irony isnt lost on Stuart that his hospital of 270 employees is helping the big dawg among hospitals and clinics in the Coulee Region, with Gundersens payroll of about 6,000 employees.

Quite frankly, in a lot of ways, Gundersen is our competitor, he said, adding that rivalry takes a backseat when a crisis hits.

Its like being a good neighbor. If something happens to your neighbor and help, Stuart said. This is Wisconsin, and we help each other.

Obviously, I feel for them having to deal with this, and were glad to help. Phil Stuart, Tomah Memorial CEO
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  An hourslong standoff at a Madison duplex has ended with the suspect taken into custody and treated for an apparent overdose.

Police were called to the residence on the city's east side around 10 a.m. Sunday after someone fired shots.

Madison Police Chief Mike Koval told reporters the man's girlfriend and a neighbor had safely left the duplex. Koval said the man has mental health issues and a history with police.

Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said Sunday evening that the standoff was over and there was no further threat to the neighborhood. He says officers took the 35-year-old man from the home and paramedics were treating him for an apparent overdose. His condition wasn't immediately clear.

Some residents were asked to evacuate during the standoff.
MILWAUKEE  A former suburban Milwaukee police officer pleaded guilty to killing an Oregon woman and ditching her body in a suitcase along a highway on Monday, the same day his trial was set to begin.

Steven Zelich pleaded guilty in the death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, whose body was found along a Wisconsin highway in August 2012. Zelich also is accused of killing a woman from Minnesota whose body also was found in a suitcase along the same Wisconsin highway.

Zelich pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon and hiding a corpse in the Gamez case, which was filed in Kenosha County, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee.

The former West Allis police officer also is charged with killing 37-year-old Laura Simonson the following year. Authorities allege she died in Minnesota, so charges in her death were filed there.

According to court records and testimony, Zelich met Gamez online and invited her to Wisconsin. He picked her up at the Milwaukee airport and they drove to a Kenosha hotel, where they spent several days. Zelich told investigators they played a sexual game in which he would choke Gamez. On the last day, he lost control and choked Gamez until she died, according to the criminal complaint.

Zelich told investigators that he put Gamez in her suitcase and took it to his West Allis apartment, and then stashed her body in his refrigerator.

Simonson, of Farmington, Minnesota, died in similar circumstances in November 2013. According to court documents, Zelich said he met her online and killed her while playing the same choking game at a hotel in Rochester, Minnesota.

He drove home to Wisconsin with her body and later put both bodies in suitcases in his car's trunk. When they began to smell, he dumped them on the roadside, where highway workers mowing grass found them in June 2014, according to investigators.

Zelich's attorney, Jonathan Smith, had declined to discuss his trial strategy.

"It's been maintained that this was a non-intentional act," he said ahead of the Monday hearing.
At the moment, the Republican establishment is relevant to the presidential-nomination battle only as an epithet.

Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucus, the fight for the Republican nomination isnt so much a vicious brawl between the grassroots and the establishment as it is a bitter struggle between traditional conservatism and populism that few could have foreseen.

Conservatism has always had a populist element, encapsulated by the oft-quoted William F. Buckley Jr. line that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But the populism was tethered to, and in the service of, an ideology of limited-government constitutionalism.

The fight between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is over whether that connection will continue to exist, and whether the conservatism (as represented by Cruz) or the populism (as represented by Trump) will be ascendant. Cruz did all he could as long as possible to accommodate Trump, but now that the fight between them is out in the open, the differences are particularly stark.

Cruz is a rigorous constitutionalist. Hes devoted much of his career to defending the Constitution and has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court. Trump has certainly heard of the Constitution, but he may know even less about it than he knows about the Bible.

Cruz is an advocate of limited government who is staking everything in Iowa on a principled opposition to the ethanol mandate. As a quasi-mercantilist and crony capitalist, Trump isnt particularly bothered by the size of government and is happily touting his support for a bigger ethanol mandate.

Although Cruz is more flexible than his reputation suggests, he has the long baseline of consistency that you would expect from a genuine believer in a political philosophy. Trump has a few long-running themes and bugaboos, but has been all over the map on almost everything and sometimes will meander from one position to another within the same answer, in keeping with his lack of ideological anchor (and limited knowledge of policy).

The two have completely different political styles. Trump is instinctual and has a roguish charm, whereas Cruz is earnest and tightly disciplined. If almost everything about Trump is unconventional, Cruz is outwardly a very traditional politician.

Truth be told, the Texan is a prodigal son of the establishment. If you just looked at Cruzs CV and had no idea about the mutual hatred between him and his partys leadership, youd figure he was the archetypical upwardly mobile Republican politician.

The irony of Cruzs position now is that, despite all his outsider branding, he is not getting savaged by the establishment. Sure, fellow senators are looking for ways to shiv him, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad wants him to lose, but they arent his biggest worry.

It is Trump who calls him a hypocrite and a liar. It is Trump who is hitting him on his belated disclosure of a Goldman Sachs loan. It is Trump who says hes a nasty guy and a maniac with a temperament problem. And it is Trump, of course, who constantly raises doubts about his eligibility to serve as president.

If you guessed a key event in the nomination fight would be the othering of the most potent tea-party conservative in the country by a billionaire businessman with a long trail of liberal positions and a history of praising President Barack Obama  well, then, you forecast the GOP race perfectly.

In short, Cruz is under assault from a segment of the anti-establishment, although Cruz takes every opportunity to portray himself as the victim of the machinations of dastardly political insiders. The reality is that the establishment is sitting on its hands, agonizing over whom it loathes least, Trump or Cruz, while the fight between populism and conservatism rages.

The battle for the soul of the GOP is now a battle for the soul of the right.
The open enrollment period for students wishing to enroll at Ridgeway Community School for the 2016-17 school year is going on now through Jan. 31. New students who register during the open enrollment period will be given equal opportunity to fill remaining spaces available in each of the kindergarten through fifth-grade classes.

The schools kindergarten roundup open house will be from 6 to 7 p.m. today (Thursday) Jan. 28. As a free public charter school, there is no charge to attend Ridgeway Community School. Ridgeway follows the charter school enrollment procedures dictated by Minnesota state law. According to the state charter school law, enrollment priority will be given to siblings of students currently enrolled at the charter school and to children of charter school staff.

Ridgeway Community School is also enrolling preschool-aged students in its 2016-17 preschool-aged enrichment programs on a first-come, first-served basis until all the spaces in the programs are filled. The open house for the preschool-aged enrichment programs, which are fee-based, will be from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, March 3. To register for the kindergarten or preschool open houses, make arrangements to visit the school, or to receive an enrollment application or see a list of additional special event and dates, contact the school office at 507-454-9566 or office@ridgewayschool.org or go to the schools website: www.ridgewayschool.org.
a website dedicated to express views on topical legal issues, thereby generating a cross current of ideas on emerging matters
Monday, January 25, 2016

A few days ago, a redditor named pdxkat posted a pretty interesting entry on the Undisclosed Subreddit about Dr. William Rodriguez. Dr. Rodriguez was the Forensic Anthropologist and Chief Deputy Medical Examiner for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology who supervised the disinterment of Hae Min Lee's body from Leakin Park. Among other things, pdxkat's post references a case in which (1) the victim was strangled; (2) her killer buried her in a very shallow grave in a wooded area in Baltimore City; (3) Dr. Rodriguez supervised the disinterment; and (4) Dr. Margarita Korell performed the autopsy. So, why did Dr. Rodriguez act so differently in that case than he did in Adnan's case?

The case at issue is Metheny v. State, 755 A.2d 1088 (Md. 2000). It involves infamous serial killer Joe Roy Metheny, who apparently has confessed to killing 10 women in the Baltimore area. The victim in the case at issue was Catherine Magaziner. Metheny buried her in a very shallow grave in a wooded area near the 3200 Block of James Street in Baltimore City. Some familiar faces were involved in the case, including Emmanuel Obot, Daniel Van Gelder, and Dr. Rodriguez. After Metheny told authorities about the location of Magaziner's body,

William C. Rodriguez, III, Ph.D., and the assembled excavation team conducted an excavation in the area that Metheny pointed out. The team used standard excavation techniques to carefully unearth the remains. [ ] It is notable that at the excavation site, Dr. Rodriguez discovered that the cranium was missing. The skeletal remains of Catherine Magaziner were recovered from a very shallow grave and transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Dr. William C. Rodriguez is an expert in forensic anthropology. In his report dated February 10, 1997,* he indicated the following: [ ] the absence of the cranium, and position of the mandible and right humerus is indicative of the remains having been disturbed prior to this excavation. In Dr. Rodriguez's expert opinion, the morphology exhibited by the mandible and the postcranial skeleton is consistent with that of an adult female, and a craniometric analysis indicated that the race is consistent with a Caucasoid. Ms. Magaziner was a Caucasian adult female. Furthermore, he concluded (A)dvanced environmental weathering exhibited by the remains are suggestive of a postmortem interval of approximately two to three years. Dr. Rodriguez's excavation did not reveal any remnants of clothing. According to Dr. Rodriguez, the deterioration of clothing depends largely on the type of clothing, i.e. whether it is cotton or synthetic, as well as the soil composition. Clothing items such as rivets, zippers, seams of jeans, and elastic bands have a longer life span. He would have expected to find such clothing items as previously listed if clothing had been buried with the Victim. (emphases added)

So, Dr. Rodriguez seemingly wrote a fairly detailed report after disinterment, and with good reason. Magaziner's body was disinterred on December 18, 1996, and Metheny said that he (1) strangled and buried her in July 1994; and (2) returned six months later to dig up and remove her skull.

The day after Magaziner's body was disinterred, December 19, 1996,

Dr. Margarita Korell,...an Assistant Medical Examiner in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner....performed a postmortem examination of the skeletal remains of Catherine Magaziner. [ ] As an expert in forensic pathology, Dr. Korell concluded that the autopsy findings and circumstances surrounding the victim's death as related to her by Detective Pennington indicate that she most probably died of asphyxia.

Of course, Dr. Korell also performed an autopsy on Hae Min Lee the day after she was disinterred from a very shallow grave in a wooded area in Baltimore City. Her behavior in the Metheny case was thus similar to her behavior in Adnan's case.**

But Dr. Rodriguez's behavior was markedly different. Unlike in Metheny, Dr. Rodriguez not only didn't create a report; he also apparently didn't take any notes. Instead, here is all we have, third-hand, from Dr. Rodriguez before he testified:

I could read this two ways:

(1) Assistant State's Attorney Vickie Wash interviewed Dr. Rodriguez on February 11, 1999 and took notes; and (2) the above document is Assistant State's Attorney Kathleen Murphy's summary of those notes on July 31, 1999; or (2) ASA Wash interviewed Dr. Rodriguez on February 11, 1999, either recording the interview or taking notes; (2) ASA Murphy thereafter took notes from that interview; and (3) the above document is Murphy's summary of her own notes.

I'm assuming that (1) is correct, which makes you wonder why (a) Wash told Dr. Rodriguez not to take his own notes or create a report; or (b) Dr. Rodriguez made the independent decision not to take his own notes or create a report. It should have been abundantly clear on February 9th and 10th that such a report could have been helpful for a few reasons:

(1) the State did not know when Hae was killed between January 13th and February 9th, and time of death could have been important; (2) the State didn't know when Hae was buried between January 13th and February 9th, and time of burial could have been important; (3) Dr. Rodriguez himself indicated at trial that he was unsure whether Hae's "grave" was dug out or a natural depression; (4) Dr. Korell was not present for the disinterment; and (5) Hae's lividity did not match her burial position.

Of course, in Metheny, Dr. Rodriguez did not create his report until nearly two months after Magaziner's body was disinterred. If we similarly extend the timeline in Adnan's case, there would have been additional reasons for him to create a report, including

(1) trying to establish that Hae could have been buried in the 7:00 hour; and (2) trying to make sense of Jay's varying stories of what tools were used in the burial.

Instead, there is no report by Dr. Rodriguez, and there are no notes. Maybe as important is something else we're missing: ASA Wash's documentation of her February 11th interview with Dr. Rodriguez. I think we'd all agree that this documentation, created two days after disinterment, is more reliable than ASA Murphy's secondhand summary, created over five and a half months later. I think that we'd also agree that Wash's documentation was more extensive, which is why Murphy's above document is titled "Summary of Notes."

So, where is that documentation? What information does it contain beyond the information in Murphy's summary of notes? Why was it never turned over in 1999/2000 or in response to numerous MPIA requests, including a recent one sent to the Baltimore County Police Department?

This takes us to an interesting issue under Maryland law. On the podcast, we discussed, Jencks/Carr, which requires Maryland prosecutors to turn over prior statements by State witnesses to the defense. Jencks/Carr clearly applies to things written by a witness and recordings/transcriptions of statements by a witness. But what about notes taken by a State agent while interviewing a witness? Well, in Jones v. State, 530 A.2d 743 (Md. 1987), the Court of Appeals of Maryland essentially created a dichotomy: When a State agent takes notes while interviewing a prosecution witness, those notes need to be turned over under Jencks/Carr if the witness "signed," "adopted," or "approved" the notes; if he didn't, the State doesn't need to turn over the notes.

This makes me wonder whether Wash didn't not get such approval from Dr. Rodriguez to insulate the notes from discovery*** or whether she did get such approval, meaning that there was a violation of Jencks/Carr. Of course, Brady trumps Jencks/Carr, so there was a Constitutional violation if Wash's notes contained material exculpatory evidence, regardless of whether they were adopted by Dr. Rodriguez.

_________________________

*This was two years to the day before Hae's autopsy.

**I don't know, however, whether she was present for the disinterment of Magaziner.

***In the process making the notes much less reliable.

-CM

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2016/01/a-few-days-ago-a-redditor-named-pdxkat-posted-a-pretty-interesting-entry-on-the-undisclosed-subredditabout-dr-william-rodri.html
Monday, January 25, 2016

As part of this semesters introduction to Environmental Law, I asked my students what Environmental Law means to them. The first answer was government interference with private property rights.

Because any resource protection or allocation regime must work in place, I spend a lot of time in all of my classes discussing the hows and whysand benefitsof natural resource regulation in Idaho. One aspect of this discussion is always about the role of free market principles in managing the natural environment. But this aspect of the conversation seems to trend toward the abstract, without context that is meaningful for students who might have grown up in the farming, ranching, timber, and mining towns that are still home to many Idaho residents.

The first two weeks of January (both this year and last), I co-taught a course on international aspects of water resource conflicts in the Bio Bio river basin in Chile. Two things tend to surprise our students. First, new dams (including this approved project on the Rio Cuervo in northern Patagonia) are a significant part of Chiles water resource planning, for a variety of both simple and complex reasons. And second, Chile has chosen to privatize water rights and rely on a market approach to allocating water use.

Despite being thousands of miles from home in a country most of them know very little about, this second element of Chiles water resource regime provides context useful for my Idaho law students, many of whom innately distrust government and prefer market-based natural resource regulation.

After the Pinochet military coup in 1973, the new military dictatorship relied on a group of largely U.S.-trained economists knows as the Chicago Boys to implement a water code that relied almost entirely on privatization and freely-tradable water rights. Carl Bauers book Siren Song (and his related articles) contains an excellent overview of Chiles water code, with Silvia Borzutzky and Elisabeth Madden (Markets Awash: The privatization of Chilean water markets, 25 J. Int. Dev. 251 (2013)) providing an update on changes since Siren Song was published in 2004.

Why is the Chile story useful for my Idaho students? Because, as you might imagine, the system hasnt worked out as hoped. In practice, Chiles water markets work relatively well in watersheds without competing types of uses (i.e., little or no hydropower v. irrigation conflict). And not surprisingly, the markets work relatively well when sufficient water is available for all users.

But when there is conflict, both with respect to the type of use or amount of water available, the system struggles. Part of the difficulty is due to a system that encouraged speculation, that doesnt seem to honor priority in time, that failed to precisely define rights to water, or that made an unrealistic distinction between consumptive and non-consumptive uses. On that last point, the Chilean Supreme Court determined that a dam operator, with a non-consumptive right, could freely alter water flows even if the altered flows harm preexisting downstream consumptive rights holders.

This is only a simplified, incomplete introduction. But for anyone interested in property, water, or natural resources management, Chiles story is fascinating. I recommend considering it. It relies on private property rights without adequately protecting them. It characterizes water as a public good, while allowing (until recently) private speculation and hoarding. It adopted an American understanding of the role of the market to a greater extent than weve ever considered. And it provides a great case study to help think about water resource conflicts in the western United States, and the appropriate balance of market mechanisms and government regulation.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/property/2016/01/private-property-markets-and-natural-resources-lessons-from-chiles-water-code.html


U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday called for major new international efforts to help refugees.

His speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland came on the same day that many migrants drowned in the Aegean Sea. The Greek Coast Guard said at least 42 people, including 17 children, died. Seventy people were rescued, but it is unknown how many remain missing.

Greece is the main destination for people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.

Kerry, the top diplomat in the United States, said that President Barack Obama will host a summit on the refugee crisis. It will take place at the United Nations in New York later this year. The goal of the summit is to increase the number of nations willing to help resettle refugees.

He added governments and private groups, including religious groups, will need to work together. He said, they must integrate refugees into host communities socially, academically, and through access to employment.

The United States has announced plans to admit 85,000 refugees by November and another 100,000 next year. This week, Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill that would have barred new refugees from Syria and Iraq.

Republican presidential candidates have criticized the Obama plans to bring in more refugees from Syria and Iraq. They said it is a security risk.

However, Kerry said, I know we know how to do this in a way that protects the security of our countries."

I'm Anna Matteo.

Pamela Dockins reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bruce Alpert adapted this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments or share your views on our Facebook Page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

drown  v. to die by being underwater too long and unable to breathe

summit  n. a meeting or series of meetings between the leaders of two or more governments

protect  v. to keep from being harmed

integrate  v. to include, or make part of a larger group or organization

academically  adv. relating to schools and education

access  n. a way of getting near, at, or to something or someone

corruption  n. dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people


The U.S. State Department is deeply alarmed about reports of torture, killings and gang rapes of women by government security forces in Burundi.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement Tuesday calling on the government in Burundi to permit an investigation. He also called on Burundi to allow African Union human rights observers to check for human rights infractions.

The government refused an offer by the African Union last month. The offer asked to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi to halt violence. The government also refused to take part in talks with the political opposition.

Burundi was thrown into crisis last April when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would seek a third term. That started street protests that led to violence between protesters and security forces.

Hundreds of people have died in the violence. Thousands of citizens of Burundi have fled their homeland.

Im Marsha James.

The VOA news staff reported on this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted this 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

gang rape  n. a crime in which one woman is raped by several men one after another

alarm  v. to cause someone to feel a sense of danger : to worry or frighten someone

infraction  n. an act that breaks a rule or law


About 200 refugees attacked the French port of Calais on Saturday, and about 50 got on a passenger ferry.

A spokeswoman for the ships operator confirmed the refugees gained entry to an outer area of the Spirit of Britain ferry. But they did not get inside the ship because ferry workers had secured the doors.

The spokeswoman said some refugees agreed to leave the ship. The rest were removed or arrested, according to CNN television.

Passenger service was delayed by a few hours.

Another ferry company tweeted that the Calais port had been closed because of a "migrant invasion."

Thousands of refugees and migrants have lived in tents near Calais for 12 months. The area, called the Jungle, is a place where poor people live and the buildings are in poor condition.

Many of the refugees and migrants have fled war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. They hope to cross the English Channel to Britain in search of a better life.

The incident on Saturday happened after about 2,000 people in Calais gathered to show support for the migrants and refugees.

A French member of the European Parliament said the conditions were unacceptable.

"It's like an open-air prison. It's a question of dignity, we can't allow this," Green Party politician and MEP Karima Delli told reporters.

CNN reported that French officials have moved some people into shelters made of metal shipping containers. Those shelters have heat and electricity.

In related news, about 2,000 refugees and migrants enter Germany each day. But Germanys interior minister said Sunday that his country is denying entry to 200 others daily.

Germany accepted a record 1.1 million refugees and migrants last year. That has stretched resources and created angry political debate.

"People who are fleeing war and persecution are offered security and protection in Germany," said the minister, Thomas de Maiziere. "But that also means  anyone who doesn't want to apply for political asylum in Germany and wants to illegally enter Germany has no right to be here."

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag published his comments.

Im Mario Ritter.

VOANews.com reported on this story. Kathleen Struck adapted the story for Learning English. Additional information came from CNN. George Grow was the editor.

Do you have a suggestion that would help the migrants, refugees and governments dealing with them? Leave us a Comment below and post on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

ferry  n. a ship that transports people or goods

migrant  n. a person who goes from one place to another, usually for economic reasons

English Channel  n. body of water that separates France and the British Islands of Great Britain

dignity  n. a way of behaving that suggests seriousness and self-control

persecution  n. the act or condition of threatening others, especially those from other religious or social groups


Around 2000 years ago, the Romans moved into Europe.

They built public latrines, or toilets, with many seats and washing areas. And they built sewerage systems, brought in drinking water from aqueducts, and heated public baths for washing.

They even had laws to keep the towns free of human waste and trash.

But new archeological research shows that baths and public toilets with washing areas did not get rid of intestinal parasites.

In fact, parasites like whipworm, roundworm, and Entamoeba histolytica dysentery slowly increased, compared to the Iron Age before the Romans ruled Europe.

Dr. Piers Mitchell conducted the research. He is from the Archaeology and Anthropology Department of Cambridge University in England.

His research suggests that Roman toilets, sewers and sanitation laws had no clear benefit to public health, he said. Roman baths surprisingly gave no clear health benefit, either."

Intestinal parasites and ectoparasites -- such as lice  were widespread, he said.

The study used samples from ancient Roman times to assess the health consequences of conquering an empire.

Mitchell gathered evidence of parasites in ancient latrines, human burials and coprolites  or fossilized feces. He also examined combs and cloth from different Roman Period excavations, or historical sites, across the Roman Empire.

Although the Romans were known for regular bathing, Mitchell found lice and fleas were just as widespread as in earlier times. The Vikings and medieval people did not have the same culture of bathing as the Romans.

He found evidence of special combs for removing lice from hair. Getting rid of lice could have been something many people did every day in the Roman Empire.

Mitchell said modern research shows that toilets, clean drinking water and removing feces from the streets all decrease risk of infectious disease and parasites.

So, why did parasites such as whipworm and roundworm increase even when cleaner methods were introduced by Romans?

He said it may have been the warm waters of the bathhouses that people shared. The waters were not changed often, and scum, or a layer of human dirt and cosmetics, would float on the top of the bathing water.

Clearly, not all Roman baths were as clean as they might have been, Mitchell said.

Another possibility from the study: Romans used human waste to fertilize crops. Now, in modern times, we know the waste must not be used for many months before adding it to fields. Otherwise, it can spread parasite eggs that survive in plants.

"It is possible that sanitation laws requiring the removal of feces from the streets actually led to reinfection of the population as the waste was often used to fertilize crops planted in farms surrounding the towns," Mitchell said.

The study also found that fish tapeworm eggs were widespread in the Roman Period, compared to earlier times in Europe. Mitchell said this might be because the Romans loved a sauce called garum.

It was used both for eating and as medicine. Garum was made from pieces of fish, herbs, salt and other flavors. It was not cooked, but left out in the sun to ferment. It was traded across the empire, so it may have transported the fish tapeworm along with the sauce, Mitchell said.

"The manufacture of fish sauce and its trade across the empire in sealed jars would have allowed the spread of the fish tapeworm  to people all across the empire.

This appears to be a good example of the negative health consequences of conquering an empire," he said.

There is an upside, Mitchell added: "It seems likely that while Roman sanitation may not have made people any healthier, they would probably have smelt (smelled) better."

The findings are published in the journal Parasitology.

Im Anne Ball.

Anne Ball wrote this story. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

Tell us what you think! Write us a comment below and on our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

vanquish v. to defeat someone completely in war

sanitation n. the process of keeping places free from dirt, infection, disease, etc., by removing waste, trash and garbage, by cleaning streets, etc.

intestinal parasite n. an animal or plant that lives in another animals intestine and gets food or protection from it

dysentery n. a serious disease that causes severe diarrhea and blood loss

sewerage n. a system or process used for carrying water and sewage

aqueducts n. a structure that looks like a bridge and carries water, or pipe or channel used to carry water

trash n. waste

fossilized feces n. human waste that is was from ancient times and that you can see in some rocks

ferment v. go through a chemical change that results in alcohol production


The red-and-white logo for Coca-Cola is quickly recognized by people around the world.

It uses those colors in advertising and promotional messages.

Heres a message about Back to the Future Day in October 2015. It uses those iconic colors and logo.

Heres another promotion around Daylight Saving Time.

So when Coca-Cola posted a message to VKontakte, Russias most popular social network, it included a map of Russia. And it was only expecting good will.

But the map did not include the contested Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. It also did not include two islands.

And Coca-Colas social media followers let the company know.

Russia says the Crimean peninsula belongs to it. Russians complained that the map was not accurate.

So Coca-Cola re-drew the map, including the missing islands and peninsula. The company wrote The map has been corrected! We hope you will understand, along with an apology.

But then people from Ukraine got upset. Ukraine says the Crimean peninsula belongs to it. Ukrainians wrote posts on social media with the hashtag #BanCocaCola.

So many people were upset about this, that the Ukraine embassy in Washington discussed the map with Coca-Cola and the State Department.

The conversation elicited an official apology letter from Coca-Colas chief public affairs officer.

We clearly missed the mark with this holiday greeting, it said.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. His report was based on stories in The New York Times and The Guardian. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

contest  v. to challenge, question, push back, disagree

elicit  v. to get a response

peninsula  n. a piece of land that is almost entirely surrounded by water and is attached to a larger land area

complain  v. to say or write that you are unhappy, sick, uncomfortable, etc., or that you do not like something

iconic  adj. something widely known

logo  n. a symbol that is used to identify a company and that appears on its products
Dick Olsen has been a part of Albany city government for 50 years. It all started with his house and neighborhood, he said.




Special Action Force members and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III admitted that he is unhappy with the slow progress of the nation's justice system. He, however, vowed justice for the slain SAF members who were killed during an encounter against Moro rebels. Aquino called on the Congress to look into the PNP Law and determine the provisions preventing the immediate imposition of sanctions for leaders who fail in their duties. - A year has passed since the brutal Mamasapano clash that killed 44 of the PNPmembers and Philippine President Benigno Aquino III admitted that he is unhappy with the slow progress of the nation's justice system. He, however, vowed justice for the slain SAF members who were killed during an encounter against Moro rebels. Aquino called on the Congress to look into the PNP Law and determine the provisions preventing the immediate imposition of sanctions for leaders who fail in their duties.





Bangsamoro Basic Law before Congress adjourns for the electoral campaign. - The top officials of the House of Representatives had their fingers crossed as they only got two weeks to vote on the proposedbefore Congress adjourns for the electoral campaign.





East Coast of the United States. The blizzard occurred last weekend and some areas have seen over one meter of snow. Residents of New York City found themselves beneath 68 centimeters of snow. It's the second-most recorded since 1869. - 29 people are killed in one of the most historic snowfalls ever to hit theof the United States. The blizzard occurred last weekend and some areas have seen over one meter of snow. Residents of New York City found themselves beneath 68 centimeters of snow. It's the second-most recorded since 1869.





Zika virus infection among travelers who returned from South America where the infection is spreading. They were diagnosed with the mosquito-borne diseases on Sunday after visiting Colombia, Suriname, and Guyana. The Central and South American countries last year saw an outbreak. Symptoms include fever, headaches, and muscle-aches that last up to a week and according to Brazilian health authorities, about an estimated 1.5 million people have been infected. - Great Britain has reported three cases ofinfection among travelers who returned from South America where the infection is spreading. They were diagnosed with the mosquito-borne diseases on Sunday after visiting Colombia, Suriname, and Guyana. The Central and South American countries last year saw an outbreak. Symptoms include fever, headaches, and muscle-aches that last up to a week and according to Brazilian health authorities, about an estimated 1.5 million people have been infected.





Islamic State released video messages that the group claims its terrorists made before the Paris attacks last November 2015. In this video, there are images from last year's attacks that killed 130 people followed by the so-called final messages of the nine militants, most speak in French or Arabic. - Thereleased video messages that the group claims its terrorists made before the Paris attacks last November 2015. In this video, there are images from last year's attacks that killed 130 people followed by the so-called final messages of the nine militants, most speak in French or Arabic.





Kuala Lumpur on Monday. Ministers and officials from 18 nations, especially from ASEAN, Japan, and the US, are discussing ways to counter the Islamic State militants, among other measures. - The international meeting aimed for counter-terrorism opened in the Malaysian capital city ofon Monday. Ministers and officials from 18 nations, especially from ASEAN, Japan, and the US, are discussing ways to counter the Islamic State militants, among other measures.





Top Gear is returning to History Channel soon with a special episode where the presenters; namely Tanner Foust, Adam Ferrera, and Rutledge Wood, landed on Cuba on their first ever road trip ever since the US lifted the sanctions against Cuba. - After years of waiting, the American version of the hit motoring TV showis returning to History Channel soon with a special episode where the presenters; namely Tanner Foust, Adam Ferrera, and Rutledge Wood, landed on Cuba on their first ever road trip ever since the US lifted the sanctions against Cuba.





Morgan plans to offer a full range of hybrid vehicles by 2020 following a consortium formed with other British automotive engineering consultancies experienced in developing high-performance electric powertrains and a grant from the British government's Advanced Propulsion Centre. - Independent British car companyplans to offer a full range of hybrid vehicles by 2020 following a consortium formed with other British automotive engineering consultancies experienced in developing high-performance electric powertrains and a grant from the British government's Advanced Propulsion Centre.





Eat Bulaga kalyeserye, one entry of Lola Nidora's diary takes us back to 1945 (sadly, it's a diary way out of its time presumably) where she talked about her first true love of her life named Anselmo and why did her Mama Ariana Miley got furious about her love affair with Anselmo. Betcha didn't know that even in post-war era, Dubsmash was invented every time when someone hears a transistor playing music.



- While Star Wars fans are still reeling from last year's successful "The Force Awakens" film, Disney announced that the next Star Wars film is due in the 2017 Holiday Season while an anthology film, tentatively titled Rogue One, is slated for this year's holiday season. - In case you missed the recent, one entry of Lola Nidora's diary takes us back to 1945 (sadly, it's a diary way out of its time presumably) where she talked about her first true love of her life named Anselmo and why did her Mama Ariana Miley got furious about her love affair with Anselmo. Betcha didn't know that even in post-war era, Dubsmash was invented every time when someone hears a transistor playing music.- Whilefans are still reeling from last year's successful "The Force Awakens" film, Disney announced that the next Star Wars film is due in the 2017 Holiday Season while an anthology film, tentatively titled Rogue One, is slated for this year's holiday season.





TTFN!!!
OVERTON,Neb.  Overton High School FCCLA students didnt shy away from difficult topics this year with their STAR projects.

One student is drawing awareness to depression and other students are fundraising and raising awareness about multiple sclerosis, known as MS.

FCCLA stands for Family, Career and Community Leaders of America. FCCLA is a non-profit national career and technical student organization for young men and women in Family and Consumer Sciences education. More than 200,000 students participate nationally in FCCLA through 5,500 chapters, as noted in FCCLAs web site.

STAR events stand for (Students Taking Action with Recognition), they are competitive events in which members are recognized for proficiency and achievement in chapter and individual projects, leadership skills, and career preparation.

Overton High School Sophomore Jordan Bidwell chose to raise understanding about depression for her STAR event because she knew family members and others who suffered from the illness.

A lot of people dont know much about it, they think its an excuse to not do something about it. Some think its a mood, Bidwell said.

To prepare for her presentation for her STAR, which requires her to make a display and give a speech, she said she talked to counselors and did quite a bit a research on depression.

Bidwell also is making four posters with main points from her speech to post in different areas. She also wrote up part of her speech into a news story, which was posted on to Overton Schools newsletter and on the school web site.

Prior to giving her speech at the district FCCLA meet, Bidwell will give her speech three times. She will present to parents during Overton FCCLAs parents night, to a group from the community and also give a presentation to students.

Throughout the course of working on her project, Bidwell said she has been able to broaden her perspective on the issue of depression.

I found a lot more ways to word this to people. Ive learned to find different views. I want more people to step out for it and become strong enough to speak out about it, she said.

District STAR will be held Jan. 27 in Maxwell. Participants will present speeches about projects they have completed on informative topics that have to do with some aspect of Family and Consumer Sciences. Each participant is awarded a gold, silver or bronze medal based off their overall score. Top gold medals advance to the state competition, which will be held in early April in Lincoln.

Our FCCLA Chapter has 8 students currently working on STAR projects. FCCLA has over 20 different categories you can choose from and their are both junior high and senior high divisions in most events, said Angie Ehlers, FCCLA advisor and Family and Consumer Sciences Teacher at Overton. Listed below are the Overton students participating in STAR projects, the category of their STAR and their project topic.

 Taylor Kizer and Sidney Enochs, Illustrated Talk, Sr. "Take the Shot for Multiple Sclerosis"

 Ashley Carlson, Chapter Service Display, Sr. "Block Out Cancer- OHS Pink Out"

 Jordan Bidwell, Health and Wellness, Sr. "Life Under Water- The Dark Side of Depression"

 Kamryn Harms and Candelaria Bueno, Health and Wellness, Jr. "Secret Addiction- Self Harm"

 Hannah Smith, Family Challenges and Issues, Jr. "Brotherly Love? The Challenges of Sibling Rivalry"

 Donald Anderson- Job Interview Sr. "Camp Counselor"

Overton students Taylor Kizer and Sidney Enochs hosted a Take a Shot for Multiple Sclerosis fundraiser on Tuesday Jan. 19 at Overton School. The pair wrote about their STAR project, as did other students, in the February 2016 Overton School newsletter.

Kizer and Enouchs wrote this about MS in this months school newsletter: You know that feeling you get when your legs or feet fall asleep or when you sometimes feel dizzy when you stand up too quickly? Now imagine those feelings never going away. Numbness, tingling, dizziness are just some of the signs and symptoms those with multiple sclerosis might face. Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain.

Seventh Grader Hannah Smith, the focus of her STAR project was how sibling rivalry starts and how she could handle things better in the future.

This topic was a suggestion from my advisor but it really worked for me because I have two older brothers. It has taught me to persevere in what I do, and it has pushed me to do things out of my comfort zone, Smith said.

Smith continued, It has also taught me I should do things I want to do and put my best effort into it and not to look at it as a competition to get something but as if I have already won because I got to share my findings with other people so they can do something about it before it is too late.

Freshmen Students Candelaria Bueno and Kamryn Harms said they chose the topic of self-harm because both had to deal with it before and wanted to prevent it happening to others.

To prepare for their project, the pair said they had to read lots of stories and articles and did research based on this topic. Bueno and Harms will be giving a lesson and talking to students at their school to inform them about the cases and different types of self-harm and what can be done to help someone suffering from it.

Both students said working on the STAR project has helped them grow and gain more empathy for others.

Working on STAR has helped me become more understanding of self-harm and hard work, Bueno said.

Our STAR project view changed by informing us about the different types and that there are many people who self-harm and we just want to lend a helping hand to those in need. The STAR project pushed me to become better and to be aware of the people around you and to always be kind and ways on how to help. Also I enjoyed informing others based on this topic as well, Harms said.

Ehlers said participating in FCCLA and the STAR project has given her students an opportunity to gain confidence and grow as leaders and as a person.

I have seen all of these students take 100% ownership of their projects, which has been pretty amazing. This is my first year as a teacher and adviser in Overton so I wasn't really sure what to expect but these kids have done a great job and they have learned so much throughout this process; from how to research information, how to organize information into a speech, time management (they are all involved in so much) and finally how to step outside their comfort zones and present to a group of people or talk to others about their projects, Ehler said.

Ehlers continued, A couple of kids have had big projects that have definitely made an impact on our community as well, so they've been able to learn how to network and reach out to others outside the school as well.
This website is inclusive of tolerant people of all faiths, without exception. Neither anti-Semitism nor Islamophobia nor homophobia should ever be acceptable to anyone. We must all strive to live in peace and harmony with each other, regardless of religious affiliations, or none. Intolerance is the mother of strife and conflict.   Mark Alexander

We Britons are Europeans!Wir Briten sind Europaer! Nous, les Britanniques, sommes europeens !  Mark AlexanderEmail me at:markalexander.librabunda@gmail.com
The 11th edition of IIT Bombays Entrepreneurship Cell will hold its annual summit on 30 and 31, January. The theme for this years summit celebrates the spirit that exists beyond geographical boundaries and is about learning from each other. Titled A Global Melange, participants and speakers from more than seven countries will be attending the business fest on 30th and 31st January.

The two-day event will have eminent speakers such as Harsh Mariwala, Founder-Marico, Kanwal Rekhi, Managing Director - Inventus Cap, start-up success leaders such as Sachin Bansal, Founder- Flipkart, Kunar Shah, Founder & CEO - Freecharge, and many others.

Ten Minute Million: The highlight of the event is The Ten minute million where 10 shortlisted start-ups will get a chance to pitch for 10 minutes in front of a panel of 12 of Indias best angel investors, which will be followed by an on-the-spot decision on financial backing. All the 10 start-ups have a chance to secure a backing of Rs 15 lakh each. Last year, one start-up raised Rs 63 lakhs.

Innovation Conclave: Top innovators of India will showcase their success stories, strategies and products at the Innovation Conclave in 15-minute long interactions. Anil Gupta, Founder, National Innovation Foundation and Ramesh Raskar, Head - MIT Media Labs, with over 50 patents in his name, are among those who will be talking about their ideas and how they made it happen.

Teen Tycoons: There is a pitching platform for teenagers and school students aimed at encouraging start-up ideas from all age-groups. After all, Zuckerberg was 19 when FB started!

Business Conclave: There will be meet-ups in four sectors: HR, Marketing, Tech and Finance, which will have talks by pioneers in each field, followed by closed networking sessions.

Workshops will be held for people, be it enthusiasts and idea personalities to established start-up founders. A competition will be held to bring out the best business skills to after-night start-up comedy shows and musical performances. Other attractions include the Job and Internship Fair which would be open to all college students, Start-up Expo and Lean Start-up workshops.

The summit will showcase various entrepreneurship ecosystems, their unique features and their success stories.The finals of Asias largest Business Model competition will take place on Day One of the E-Summit. This year, Eureka! received over 7,428 entries, competing for prizes worth Rs 50 lakh.

A range of competitions designed to test skills needed to be successful entrepreneurs will be tested at E-Summit. These include Crowd Pitch, Ideablaze, national BizQuiz, Investors Hat, Pitch Please, IPL Auction, Apocalypse Management, Case Study, Investors Portfolio, M&A, Hackathon. The total prizes for the competitions is over Rs 4.5 lakh. If you are interested to go for the event, register on ecell.in/esummit
Smack on the heels of the grand launch of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Start-Up India campaign, the Government of India today conferred Padma Vibhushan, one of the highest civilian awards, on the late Dhirubhai Ambani, the man behind Indias biggest ever start-up story  Reliance Industries (RIL). Dhirubhai began his business empire as a start-up and built it to Indias largest private sector company with an annual turn-over of Rs 3.88 lakh crore

Reliance Industries welcomed the honour and said they see it as a Padma Vibhushan for all start-ups in India.

We salute our founder Sh Dhirubhai Ambani and see this PadmaVibhushan as #PadmaVibhushanForAllStartUps  Jai Hind pic.twitter.com/LdV0JWcxZc  Flame of Truth (@flameoftruth) January 25, 2016

The governments Start-Up India campaign, unveiled on January 16, consists of the biggest-ever action plan for small entrepreneurs by setting up a conducive ecosystem of tax incentives, a Rs 10,000 crore fund and exemption from inspections for three years. The government has also promised relaxation in the processes with respect to registration and patents for young entrepreneurs.

Born in December, 1932, Dhirubhai first began his business as a small textile unit, in partnership with Champaklal Damani, his second cousin, to import polyester yarn and export spices to Yemen. The first office of the Reliance Commercial Corporation, as it was known then, was set up at Narsinatha Street in Masjid Bunder in a 500 sq ft room with a telephone, one table and three chairs. Initially, the office had two assistants to help them with their business.

Within Dhirubhais life time itself, he died in July 2002, this small start-up grew into one of Indias largest industrial conglomerates and is now the largest private sector company by turnover. Over the years, RIL grew into a multi-billion conglomerate with interests in petrochemicals, textiles, oil and gas, retail and telecommunications among others. RIL, which was listed in 1977, has a market capitalisation of Rs 3.25 lakh crore today. In the initial public offer, RIL issue was oversubscribed seven times, kicking off an era unprecedented share-holder wealth creation.

Today, the RIL group contributes 15 per cent to the total exports from the country and has a share of 15 per cent in the total investments in domestic market. The group has embarked upon the largest single location project at Jamnagar with over one lakh workers and is on the verge of launching the countrys biggest digital initiative under the Reliance Jio brand.

Superstar Rajinikanth, Yamini Krishnamurthi, Girija Devi, Ramoji Rao, Art of Living guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Viswanathan Shanta were also conferred the award along with Dhirubhai on Monday.

(Disclosure: Firstpost is part of Network18 Media & Investment Limited which is owned by Reliance Industries Limited.)
At Davos, Switzerland, RBI governor Raghuram Rajans battle cry on politically connected crony capitalists, who have taken Indian banks for a ride for long, was precise on the target.

If you flaunt your birthday bashes even while owing the system a lot of money, it does seem to suggest to the public that you don't care. I think that is the wrong message to send, Rajan said in an interview to a TV channel on the sidelines of the just concluded World Economic Forum.

His words, an obvious reference to Indias flamboyant liquor baron, Vijay Mallya, defied the winter chills of Davos and found their way back to the home land, where a clutch of 17 Indian banks is nearing the end of a losing a battle to Mallya to recover not less than Rs 7,000 crore (plus interest overdue) of their dues lent to the now defunct Kingfisher airlines.

Since 2012, banks have been trying out all possible options from court battles to friendly persuasions to tagging Mallya as wilful defaulter to get back their money but without luck. It is very unlikely that they ever will.

But Rajan seems to be fighting a lonely battle as he repeated his warnings to Mallya. If you are in trouble, you should be cutting down your expenses". The system has been geared to favouring those who have the ability to work the courts. The policy that you (large businessmen) follow is that during good times you take the upside but in bad times you go to banks and ask how much of a haircut are you going to take, Rajan said.

Not too long ago, in his New Year message to his colleagues at RBI, the economist turned central banker, had expressed his displeasure at the RBIs and banking systems inability to take on large corporate defaulters and sought a difference in their attitude. No one wants to go after the rich and well-connected wrongdoer, which means they get away with even more. If we are to have strong sustainable growth, this culture of impunity should stop, Rajan had said.

King of good (and bad) times

Mallya has been flaunting his wealth and lavish lifestyle as if openly challenging the banking system. His Rs 7,000 crore loan is a non-performing asset (NPA) on the books of banks since January 2012. He has dragged banks to courtrooms shielding himself with an army of top corporate lawyers. Mallya is not someone who is not repaying banks because he is a penniless pauper. He is still one of the richest men in India.

Mallyas 60th birthday party was celebrated at Kingfisher Villa in Candolim in Goa on December 18 with fireworks, celebrity shows and almost converting the villa to a palace with around 500-600 guests all coordinated by an event management agency.

This is when some of his Kingfisher employees have still unpaid dues, the shareholders have lost most of their wealth invested in Kingfisher shares, 17 large banks of the country, tax authorities and investigating sleuths are chasing him for non-repayment of funds and alleged irregularities in the end use of the money borrowed from banks.

Mallya managed to use the legal system to his advantage to such extent that one of the lenders in the consortium  United Bank of India  had to reverse its decision to classify Mallya as a wilful defaulter in late 2014 just two months after it classified him with that tag. After a prolonged legal battle, the State Bank of India (SBI) in November 2015 tagged him wilful defaulter.

A wilful defaulter is typically ostracized from the financial system with no power to borrow money from elsewhere. Such promoters cannot be part of any of the listed companies. But, Mallya and his holding company United Breweries have moved court challenging this decision on the grounds of violation of natural justice.

What is worth to note here is that whether Mallya is a wilful defaulter or not, banks have failed to recover even a fraction of the Rs 7,000 crore due to them, nor put the man in Jail despite this being one of the top corporate defaults in the country. It is to be remembered that Mallyas personal wealth and real estate holdings sprawl across multiple countries.

There are many cases such as Kingfisher, where banks are running from pillar to post to get their dues. According to the RBI data, standard assets among large borrowers declined from 86.2 percent of total gross advances as of March 2015 to 84.5 percent as of September 2015. This constitutes a large part of the Rs 3.5 lakh crore gross NPAs of Indian banking system. Rajan has reasons to get worried.



Not just Rajans battle

More than Rajan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be worried about the mounting bad loans of Indian banking system (of which over 90 percent is on the books of state-run banks). This is because it can potentially derail the fiscal arithmetic of his government, which is walking a tight rope to fulfil its commitment of fiscal consolidation.

Bad loans have significantly increased the capital burden of banks since they need to set aside more money to cover their doubtful assets. Indian banks would require Rs 2.5 lakh core funds to meet their Basel-III norms (which is a moving target depending on multiple factors), while the government has so far committed only Rs 70,000 crore (with a promise to increase it in the budget).

The government wants banks to fend for themselves with respect to the remaining amount but this will be difficult since there wont be enough investor-interest for these banks in the market. The NDA government hasnt so far performed poorly on handling the baking sector. It is going to be even bigger challenge now.

The sad truth is beyond venting his anger on cronies through public interactions, Rajan clearly lacks the power to tackle wily corporate defaulters. The RBI arguably delivered its most powerful salvo to take on cronies when it allowed banks to use wilful defaulter tag on crony promoters.

But, as seen in the Mallya episode, this powerful weapon has turned out to be no more effective than kid gloves in big battles. A change can happen only if the Modi government throws its weight behind the banking system to deal with large corporate defaulters such as Mallya, which is absent until now.

True, the proposed bankruptcy code could make banks lives better to deal with future cases of default. But there is a large, ticking time bomb of existing bad loans in the countrys banking system. The government could do more than being a mute spectator in RBIs battle with crony promoters.



Data contributed by Kishor Kadam
New Delhi: A bomb threat call on Monday forced Jet Airways to ground its Kathmandu-bound flight carrying 104 passengers just before it was to take off from the IGI Airport in New Delhi.

Officials said the plane has been taken to the isolation bay at the IGIA and all passengers de-boarded for a through anti-sabotage check.

According to CNN-IBN an anonymous caller said that there's a gift box on seat 18 of the plane. The caller ended the call by saying happy Republic Day. The Times Now reported that seven passengers were detained.

The call was received at the airport terminal just before the scheduled departure time of the flight 9W260 at 1325

hours, they said.

The Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) has been activated, they said, and a final clearance for the flight is

awaited.

There were 104 passengers and seven crew members on the flight.

https://twitter.com/jetairways/status/691560297341915136

Security is at an all-time high in view of the Republic Day celebrations on Tuesday.

PTI
In a joint address before the media in Delhi on Monday, French President Francois Hollande focused extensively on terrorism, saying that both countries 'know the forces that hit them  Daesh (Islamic State).'

"(Islamic State) is provoking us in the worst manner possible. But they can only make us more determined," Hollande said at Hyderabad House in Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, made a strong reference to terrorism, saying that terror attacks have been seen recently in Paris, as well as in Pathankot. "Terrorism is the enemy of human values and humanity. The world must unite against this threat," Modi said.

At the joint media briefing, India and France announced that 13 pacts were inked between the two countries. Also, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed for the purchase of 36 Rafale jets. The French President said that there are 'some financial issues present', but assured that they would be ironed out in time. Hollande also pointed out that these jets are being used during operations against the Islamic State in Syria.

At the beginning of his address, Modi extended a welcome to French President Hollande, calling him a 'strong leader of a great nation'.

'Relations between India and France have stood every test of time," Modi said, adding that the two countries have agreed to co-operate in a number of areas including smart cities, solar energy and nuclear power. Hollande, on his part said that France 'will put our expertise and skills on this great idea of smart cities'.

PM @narendramodi: India and France are committed to be partners for a greener, safer, more secure and more prosperous future.  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) January 25, 2016
New Delhi: The idea of Atithi Devo Bhava, which underlines the significance India attaches to its guests, explains why French soldiers, who are one of the major attractions of this year's Republic Day parade, get a prime slot in the ceremony. French President Francois Hollande is the chief guest at the ceremony.

The group of 130 soldiers from the French army (Armee de Terre) along with their band, rehearsed for a week to get in sync with Indian soldiers. Now they will be second in line at the parade.

"Indian troopers march a little faster than us. After rigorous practice for over a week, we have tried our best to synchronise," Lieutenant Colonel P Bury, commanding officer of the 35th Infantry Regiment of the French Army, who is leading the troops, told Firstpost.

The French forces comprise soldiers from the 7th Armoured Brigade and 35th Infantry Regiment.

Asked how they felt about participating in an event where their president is the chief guest, he said, "We are excited. We are extremely happy and honoured to know that France is the first country to take part in this prestigious ceremony. We are very impressed by the parade. We are very proud to represent France and to be the first foreign unit to be invited to parade at Rajpath," he said.

On 14 July, 2009, Indian troops had participated in the Bastille Day celebrations in France. The three wings of the Indian defence forces - the Army, the Navy and the Air Force - marched down the Champs Elysees in Paris along with the French Army. The event also witnessed participation of the Maratha light infantry, which is one of the oldest regiments of the Indian Army.

The French will not march the full 12.5-km route up to Red Fort for security reasons. Their march will end at Man Singh Road.

Asked whether they learnt any Hindi from Indian soldiers, he replied, "Not much...only a few like saavdhan (attention)." On what he liked the most in this country, he added, "India's cultural diversity that is also evident in the forces here and tableau set to be demonstrated on 26 January."

Other attractions of the 67th Republic Day parade

First all-women stunt contingent: So far, extreme motorcycle stunts performed by men of Indian Army Corps of Signals or Army Daredevils used to be the centre of attraction at the Republic Day parade. Sources reveal that in a departure from norm, an all-women contingent of the Central Reserve Police Force will enthral the audience with their dangerous riding skills.

"We have been preparing for the last two years to make a debut in the Republic Day parade. Finally, we got the chance to prove that women are not lagging behind in any walk of life, be it stunts or fighting for the nation," said one of the soldiers of the Women Daredevils CRPF contingent. The unit comprises 120 troops.

Army dog squad: Thirty-six German Shepherds and Labradors of the Army, trained in explosive detection, mine detection, tracking, guarding and assault will march down the Rajpath after a gap of 26 years.

The Army dogs belonging to the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC) have won one Shourya Chakra, six Sena Medals, 142 COAS Commendation Cards, six VCOAS Commendation Cards and 448 GOC-in-C Commendation Cards. The motto of the Corps is 'Pashu Seva Ashmakam Dharm'.

According to Major General Rajesh Sahai, chief of staff, Delhi area, the participation of the dog squad is a form of "recognition of the work done by the animal and its handler in counter-insurgency". "Dogs have done a fantastic job in counter-insurgency tasks," he added.
Chennai/ Villupuram: Days after three girl students allegedly committed suicide, the head of their college on Monday surrendered in a court in the state capital and was arrested along with two others, including its principal. Vasuki Subramanian, head of the Kallakurichi-based naturopahty and yoga college, surrendered before a court here and was remanded to judicial custody, police said.

Three students of SVS Yoga Medical College at Kallakurichi near Villupuram in Tamil Nadu committed suicide Saturday evening accusing the administration of charging excess fees and torture, and blaming college chairman Vasuki Subramanian for their death.

After questioning, we have arrested Kalanidhi (college principal) and Suvagur Varma, (adminstrator and son of Vasuki Subramanian) and they were produced before a court which remanded them to judicial custody, a senior police official told reporters. He said the probe was still on and they were on the look out for some more persons in connection with the case.

The father of one of the girls, Tamilarasan, moved a petition on Monday in the Madras High Court, seeking a CB-CID inquiry and post-mortem in a state-run hospital in Chennai. He had also requested that a doctor of his choice be present during autopsy.

Meanwhile, the Registrar of the TN Dr MGR Medical University, Dr P Arumugam told reporters, we have not given affilation to the BNYS and BHMS courses of the Kallakurichi-based college for 2015-16 till date.

On Saturday, three second-year girl students committed suicide alleging exorbitant fees and harassment by their college. The triple suicide snowballed into a major issue with political parties demanding tough action. The college was sealed on Sunday. Expressing suspicion on the manner of their deaths, the girls parents had filed complaints claiming that their daughters were murdered.

In the Madras High Court, meanwhile, Justice M M Sunderesh before whom Tamilarasans, (Monishas father) petition came up for hearing today, directed the registry to post it before another court dealing with petitions of a similar nature. DMDK chief and leader of Opposition, Vijayakanth, demanded a CBI inquriy into the matter.

The college has only courses which are BNYS (Bachelor of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences) and BHMS (Bachelor of Homoeopathic Medicine and Surgery).

Madras HC issues notice to TN govt

The Madras High Court on Monday issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government and ordered the preservation till January 27 of the body of T. Monisha, one of the three girl students who allegedly committed suicide.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa expressed grief over the suicides and announced a solatium of Rs.1 lakh to each of the bereaved families.

While police registered a case of suicide in the death of T. Monisha, A. Saranya and V. Priyanka, their parents alleged the students were murdered for protesting against the lack of basic facilities in the college.

The bodies were taken out of a well in a farm near the college on Saturday evening. Villupuram is around 170 km from Chennai.

"Without Tamilarasan's consent and despite his demand for a post-mortem in a hospital in Chennai, the police conducted the autopsy in Villupuram," his counsel R. Sankarasubbu told IANS.

He said the petition demanded the transfer of investigations from the Villupuram police to the CB-CID wing of Tamil Nadu Police and a second autopsy in a Chennai hospital.

"Our contention is that the district administration is helping the college management in the case," Sankarasubbu alleged.

Meanwhile, Dr M.G.R. Medical University vice chancellor S. Geethalakshmi told reporters that the college was not affiliated to the varsity. She said the college's recognition was cancelled a couple of years back.

Nearly four months ago, a few students of the college had allegedly attempted suicide in front of the Villupuram collectorate.

PTI & IANS

Links: Villupuram students' suicide letter
President Pranab Mukherjee's address to the nation ahead of the 67th Republic Day was marked by a strongly-worded condemnation of terrorism, a detailed reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet initiatives and a pitch for economic reforms. Quoting a verse by Rabindranath Tagore, the President said, "The generational change has happened. Youth have moved centre-stage to take charge." Here are the key takeaways from Pranab Mukherjee's fourth speech on the eve of Republic Day-

-In an otherwise subtly-worded address, President Mukherjee was uncharacteristically forthright in his criticism of terrorism. Even as the fate of talks between India and Pakistan hangs in balance, Mukherjee remarked that 'we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets.' Reiterating that there is no good or bad terrorism, Mukherjee said that it 'is inspired by insane objectives, motivated by bottomless depths of hatred, instigated by puppeteers who have invested heavily in havoc through the mass murder of innocents.' The President's speech made a note of terrorism in areas around the world, including in Paris and Jakarta. "No corner can now consider itself safe from this savage monster," he said.

-The recent winter session of Parliament, which was repeatedly disrupted due to chaos and sloganeering, found an echo in President Mukherjee's speech. Even as the contentious GST Bill continues to languish in the Parliament, President Mukherjee emphasised the need for reforms and progressive legislation. "It is the bounden duty of the law makers to ensure that such legislation is enacted after due discussion and debate...Delays in decision-making and implementation can only harm the process of development." This could be a message to the Congress to give up their agitprop politics and allow Parliament to function.

-Eight years after a major recession hit world markets, the financial crisis still found a prominent mention in the President's address. "The global economy remained subdued. Unpredictability ruled the commodity markets...In such troubled environment, no one nation could be an oasis of growth," he said. Even as several regions, including Marathwada and Telangana, reeled under drought, Tamil Nadu saw unprecedented rainfall and floods. The President made a prominent mention of the continuing agrarian crisis, saying, "In 2015, we were also denied the bounty of nature...Unusual weather conditions impacted our agricultural production. Rural employment and income levels suffered."

-With pollution in the capital hitting the national headlines, the issue did not escape the attention of President Mukherjee, who noted that for change to take place, there had to be a change in the mindset of people-an idea which was behind the Delhi government's odd-even road rationing scheme. It would seem that publicity surrounding the scheme has at least succeeded in making pollution a part of the national agenda. The President said, "Multiple strategies and action at various levels is necessary. Innovative solutions of urban planning, use of clean energy and changing the mindsets of the people call for active participation of all stakeholders."

You can read the full text of the President's address here:

Republic Day 2016 Speech
Barely 24 hours after the Union Cabinet recommended Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, President Pranab Mukherjee asked Home Minister Rajnath Singh to clarify why the Centre wants President's rule in Arunachal even as the Congress challenged the Centres move in Supreme Court and pushed for the President to weigh in.

Rajnath Singh met Mukherjee to explain that the situation in the state had deteriorated to a point where President's rule must kick in, reports The Indian Express.

Angry over the move to clamp Presidents rule in party-ruled Arunachal Pradesh, Congress today approached President Pranab Mukherjee, the Supreme Court and sought to rally round non-BJP Chief Ministers, declaring an all-out war against the trampling of the Constitution by the Modi government. Congress chief whip Bamang Felix filed the petition in Supreme Court.

The Constitution is being trampled upon. Just a day before the Republic day, the Union Cabinet is taking such a decision. We will fight an all-out war. We will fight in Parliament, in court and along with people. Will tell them how democracy is being endangered, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters.

Speaking to The Hindu, Rajya Sabha member and senior advocate K.T.S. Tulsi said the Centre is on a collision course with the Supreme Court.

Now there is no doubt that the political conspiracy in Arunachal was hatched in Delhi. By making the recommendation, the Centre wants to present the Supreme Court with a fait accompli and make the entire judicial process infructuous.

Noted Constitutional expert Soli Sorabjee, however, takes the view that rushing in with opinion is not relevant until the President takes a call on the recommendation.

Presidents rule has not been imposed as yet. The recommendation is only a ministerial advice to the President. It is pre-mature to file any writ petition or debate the legality of Presidents rule at this point.

After meeting the President along with a party delegation, Ghulam Nabi Azad contended that destabilizing the sensitive state bordering China was fraught with dangerous consequences for all non-BJP states which could be made unstable through Governors.

Azad said that the party would seek to rally round all non-BJP parties on the issue in the coming budget session of Parliament noting that they had backed Congress when such attempts had been made in Arunachal Pradesh in the last session.

Congress lawyer and former Union minister Kapil Sibal said the Modi government is the "fountainhead of political intolerance," reports The Times of India.

The Indian Express reports that Sibal alleged that a dissident MLA sought a businessmans support to topple the government and claimed he had the support of the BJP and RSS.

"We will challenge... in the event the recommendation of the Cabinet is affirmed and assented to by the President. We'll challenge, saying this is trying to bypass a matter which is sub-judice and trying to take advantage by using their constitutional power to destabilise a state, which needs stability," Sibal said.

Rahul Gandhi called the move to impose Presidents rule a blatant bid to topple a duly-elected government and Congress will fight the attack on the Constiution.

Imposing Presidents rule in Arunachal is a blatant bid to topple a duly-elected Govt. Modiji, you talk about federalism but murder democracy. You talk about cooperation but use every means to coerce. The Congress Party will fight this attack on our constitution, on our democracy, on the peoples mandate, Rahul said in a series of tweets.

Party leader Kapil Sibal, a noted lawyer, said it was shocking that the Arunachal Governor had recommended Presidents rule in the state in spite of an assurance by his lawyer in the Supreme Court that no precipitate action would be taken.

It is an act to mislead the apex court. We will seek justice, Sibal, a former Law Minister, said adding that a petition has already been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the governments recommendation to impose Presidents rule.

In a memorandum, the party told the President that this is the first time since independence that such a recommendation has been made to impose Presidents rule in the midst of a court hearing.. It also enclosed a summary of events detailing the disquieting events leading to the Governors illegal actions.

Expressing confidence that he would do justice in the matter, the Congress leaders requested the President to reflect upon what is stated in the summary of events and take that into account while dealing with the memorandum.

Besides Arunachal Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and PCC Chief Padi Richo, the memorandum is signed by Azad, Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, Mallikarun Kharge, Sibal and AICC General Secretary V Narainsamy.

In his first Republic Day address after being elected a second time, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday slammed the Modi government's decision to recommend Presidents rule in Arunachal Pradesh as unconstitutional and said Delhi was the Centres next target.

The government has been suspended in Arunachal Pradesh and Presidents rule recommended. Nowhere is it written in the Constitution that if the state is ruled by parties other than the one at the Centre, Presidents rule should be proposed. Just two days before Republic Day, the Constitution has been murdered, he said.

He added, Some journalists called me yesterday. They told me Delhi is the Centres next target. I said it must be a rumour as we are running a good government. Odd-even has been successful We are doing good (work) when it comes to education, we have reduced electricity rates, given water for free and compensation to the farmers.

Kejriwal said the Centre is like an elder brother to states. Centre should behave like Ram, who took care of his younger brothers, instead of ordering CBI (raids) and imposing Presidents Rule.

Strongly condemn Centre's move to impose Prez rule in Arunachal Pradesh, while the matter is still pending before SC's Constitutional Bench.  Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) January 24, 2016

Cong has lost majority in Arunachal. Refused to hold asbly session on Jan 20 as suggested by Supreme Court. A mini Sonia Gandhi '272 bluff'.  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) January 25, 2016

Imposing President's rule in Arunachal is a blatant bid to topple a duly elected Govt(2/3)  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) January 25, 2016

Union Cab recommending Prez rule in Arunachal shocking. Murder of Consti on Rep D eve. BJP lost elections.Now acquiring power thro back door  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 24, 2016

With PTI
By putting up the secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in public domain and promising to unveil more every month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has performed two different tasks.

One, he has set in motion a much-needed process of transparency. As researchers and some Bose family members have pointed out, declassification is just the first but an important step in the right direction. Indians deserve to know what really happened to their national heroes.

Second, he has raised a simple political question that has left Congress party squirming in discomfort. Why didn't India's Grand Old Party declassify the files if it had nothing to hide?

Ever since the documents were unveiled at the National Archives of India on Saturday, Congress's reaction has been unsure and needlessly aggressive.

It should have welcomed the government's step. Over seven decades and many commissions later, we still don't have clarity on the freedom fighter who raised an army to fight the British.

If declassification eventually leads to a confirmation of Congress's assertion that Bose indeed died in a plane crash in 1945, that should end all 'conspiracy theories' and result in a moral victory for the party.

But by opposing vehemently Modi's move, it has subjected the action of its past leaders to even more speculation.

Reflexive criticism and what it tells us

Congress's reflexive criticism is actually an indication of its frustration. For decades, it cooked history books and hoped the controversy over India's war hero will die a natural death. That hasnt happened.

Instead, the declassification has proved that the legacy of Netaji still endures and is strong enough to ignite passionate discussion in a billion-strong nation.

Caught with a sense of panic that decades of manipulating history is now coming back to bite it, Congress high command and heavyweight ministers have suddenly started heaping fulsome praise on Bose.

On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi has described him as a man of extraordinary courage, a patriot and a charismatic leader.

His mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said: "Bose will always live in the hearts of all Indians for his patriotic fervour and dedication to the Indian Republic."

She is right. Bose has no choice but to "live in the hearts of all Indians" because the Congress has surgically obliterated his name and contribution to the national cause from school syllabus.

And not just Bose, the Congress has used the state machinery to induce a systematic memory-cleansing, wiping out the contributions of many of our freedom fighters to promote some of its choice. Nary an alarm has been raised by the media or the party's pet historians.

Manipulation of history

An RTI application has once again brought to light Congress's brazen sleight of hand.

A report in Times of India says the Central Information Commission (CIC) has blasted NCERT for chopping out content on national leaders like Bose from text books and directed it to suo motu disclose the reasons behind such decisions.

It elaborates how the CIC asked NCERT "in a terse order" to explain why content on Swami Vivekananda was reduced from 1250 to 37 words in Class XII history books and completely removed from Class VIII books.

Jaipur-based Suryapratap Singh Rajawat, who filed the RTI application and a series of public grievance notifications which led to the CIC's intervention, pointed out how Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's name is "totally missing" from Class VIII history books. Also missing are names of 36 national leaders and revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Batukeshwar Dutt, Ram Prasad Bismil among others.

The RTI merely confirms what many, including Netaji's only child daughter Anita Bose Pfaff have repeatedly stated, that the legacy of her father and other leaders of prominence was ignored by the Congress to promote the dynasty.

"I believe that if anything is a national shame it is the fact that my father's and the INA's contribution to India's independence has been downplayed consistently from official sources and in history books. The argument about his death is by comparison unimportant."

On why the files have not been declassified earlier, the Congress still doesn't have a coherent answer. Amid deafening silence from the high command and top netas, one leader said on condition of anonymity: Probably there was an apprehension that it would convert into a major law and order problem, besides relations between India and other nations (mentioned in the files) might get tarnished. No one was aware about the content of the files. Those days India also had friendly ties with the erstwhile USSR.

Since the first tranche of 100 documents were released on Saturday, there has not been a single instance of "law and order problem". The claim that relationship with other nations will be affected also appears to be baseless. We have not become privy to some earth-shattering state secret that may trigger off a war between nations.

Some strange facts and inconsistencies

The files do, however, point to certain strange facts and inconsistencies which have so far escaped public scrutiny.

Among the over 17,000 digitised papers now saved in National Archives is one letter written by Sir RF Mudie, Home Member of the Clement Attlee government's India Office, which he sent to Sir Evan Jenkins, Home Secretary and the last Governor of Punjab.

In that letter, the top British Raj official is seen weighing the pros and cons of "trying" Netaji as a "war criminal" full five days after Bose was reported to have been killed in the aircrash near the Taihoku aerodrome in Taipei on 18 August 1945.

"In many ways the easiest course would be to leave him (Netaji) where he is and not ask for his release. He might, of course, in certain circumstances be welcomed by the Russians. This course would raise fewest immediate political difficulties, but the security authorities consider that in certain circumstances his presence in Russia would be so dangerous as to rule it out altogether," wrote Mudie, according to a NDTV report.

Another file brings to light how the Indian government in 1967 refrained from setting up an Indo-Japanese joint probe team to investigate Bose's death, as requested by retired Japanese army officer General Iwaichi Fujiwara.

Fujiwara, a former liaison officer between the Indian National Army (INA) and Imperial Japanese Army in east Asia, arrived in Kolkata (then Calcutta) to hand over Netaji's sword to the Netaji Museum in the city on 19 March 1967.

Also revealed is the fact that for the past six decades, several communications have gone from Ministry of External Affairs to Britain to ascertain, whether the UK had declared Bose as a war criminal. The documents revealed that the UK never gave a specific answer to India's unending quest on Netaji.

The government though, must guard against using declassification of files as a political tool. Congress may be wriggling in anxiety for now but opening up the self-defeating secrets of history has a much larger purpose than just scoring political points over rivals. A point the Prime Minister and his party must remember.
It is easy to understand the tearing hurry of Jawaharlal Nehru's ideological and political critics to gleefully jump at anything that gives them an opportunity to malign India's first Prime Minister.

But what makes others  especially those who are trained to be cautious, circumspect and sceptical  to insult their own common sense while attacking Nehru?

On Saturday, soon after the Central government declassified 100 files related to Subhas Chandra Bose, many newspapers and websites worked up a quick storm, citing a letter "written by Nehru" calling Netaji a war criminal.

The impugned letter was purportedly written by Nehru in November 1945 to the then 'PM of England Clement Attle'. In the letter, Nehru complains to Attle that 'Suhas Chandra Bose', his (Britain's) 'war criminal' has been allowed to enter Russian territory, an ally of his (Attle's) and US government. Nehru then allegedly asks Attle to look into it and do something about it. (You can find all the letters here)

Fact: Clement Attlee (not Attle) was the PM of Britain, not England. The official residence of the British PM is 10, Downing Street (not Down Street, as mentioned in one of the many versions of the letter). Joseph Stalin was the leader of USSR (not just Russia or Russ, as the letter claims). And in 1945 the USSR was not an ally of the British or the Americans.

Common sense dictates the letter should have raised the antennae of sceptics because of its terrible grammar, poor spelling, glaring errors and geographical and historical inconsistencies. It would have been wise to ponder, how could a man of Nehru's erudition and impeccable grasp of history, geography and the written word have written a letter that seems to be the work of a mal-educated, semi-literate upstart with the gall of writing to an English PM?

Then there were the other questions: In what capacity could Nehru have written to the British PM in 1945? He was, after all, just a leader of a political party in a country colonised by the British. And even if he did, assigning to himself the role of India's PM two years before Independence, why would he call Bose a war criminal when the British had never declared Netaji one. And, still assuming he did write it, how did it make its way from the office of the 'PM of England' to India?

Even if all this could have been somehow overlooked, who on earth would consider an unsigned letter  yes, the alleged missive didn't have a signature, all it bore as evidence of the late PM's work was his misspelt name at the end  authentic?

But, some in the media did. In a bid to argue that Nehru 'hated and feared' Bose so much that he was angry that the 'war criminal' had escaped to 'Russia' almost a year after his (Netaji's) rumoured death in a plane crash, they believed something that sounded fictitious.

The media perhaps jumped the gun because the existence of such a letter has been speculated for long. In 1971, when the Khosla Commission had probed Netaji's disappearance, it had looked at the deposition of Shyam Lal Jain, Nehru's stenographer.

According to India Today, Jain's deposition finds mention in the declassified file 'Disappearance/Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose 915/11/C/6/96-Pol' from the Prime Minister's Office. This file encloses a 10-page explanatory note on Netaji by author Pradip Bose, in which the reproduces Jain's recollection of the letter that Nehru purportedly wrote to Atlee. "I understand from a reliable source that Subhas Chandra Bose, your war criminal, has been allowed to enter Russian territory by Stalin. This is clear treachery and a betrayal of faith by the Russians. As Russia has been an ally of the British-Americans, it should not have been done. Please take note of it and do as you consider proper and fit."

Notice the chain of events: An author writes about what Nehru's stenographer had told him about a letter that the Congress leader had written to Attlee. A perfect game of Chinese whispers!

Just as someone we know had heard from someone that his friend had somehow made Ganesha's idol

sip milk, right?

If the media, including some of its well-known faces and top editors, can fall for a story that would have aroused the suspicion of an ordinary primary school student, India has become inconceivably credulous. (You can check out names of the naive among us here).

In an intelligent democracy, the media's role is to question, cross-examine and challenge everything in a bid to separate fact from fiction, truth from propaganda; its responsibility is cut through the maze of lies, deceit, mischief and spin to empower people with credible information. It is a tragedy when it, instead, ends up helping those intent on making myths, spreading canards and assassinating characters.

Nehru isn't the first victim of the media's failure, though. It often becomes an unsuspecting ally

of those peddling lies and half-truths, which then get established as irrefutable truth and gospel.

For instance, we still believe that former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had called Indira Gandhi an avatar of Durga (he hadn't, someone else had said this in his presence but it got attributed to the BJP leader). For almost two decades, the media contributed to the myth of Kiran Bedi being the IPS officer who had towed away Indira Gandhi's car (a myth that was busted by Firstpost in 2015 ).

In 1998-99, during a press conference, home minister LK Advani advocated a pro-active approach while dealing with cross-border terrorism. "You mean hot pursuit?" somebody asked. Advani replied by saying words should not be put in his mouth. And the exact opposite happened.

Next day, the media first claimed that Advani was in favour of hot pursuit of terrorists from across the border and then dissected the pros and cons of his policy. Even today he is referred to as one of the proponents of hot pursuit.

In the 90s, Lalu Prasad Yadav was repeatedly pilloried for saying "Bhura baal (Bhumihar, Rajput, Brahmin) saaf karo." Even today the Yadav leader denies coining or using that slogan.

Around the same time, Mulayam Singh Yadav's "Yahan (Ayodhya) parinda bhi par nahin mar sakta" boast was used as a red-rag to kar sevaks. The other Netaji has always denied using such provocative words.

Not so long ago, the media had debated ad nauseam how: a) Polonium-10, a radioactive substance, had been used to poison Sunanda Pushkar; b) AAP leader Kumar Vishwas had been caught by his wife in a compromising position; c) two Rohtak girls had made the nation proud by beating two boys on camera in a moving bus; d) Modi had swept floors, sold tea and fought with crocodiles before becoming the PM and e) Rahul Gandhi had accepted British citizenship and betrayed India.

From Nehru to his fourth generation, from one PM to the other, very little seems to have changed.
Editor's note: This article was first published on 25 January, 2016 in the wake of the political storm raised by the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a University of Hyderabad student. All political parties made a beeline to the university in a bid to appropriate Rohith Vemula's Dalit legacy without quite caring for what Ambedkarites such as Rohith stand and fight for. On Ambedkar's 126th birth anniversary, this article bears recalling for another important reason. Kanshi Ram, the founder of Bahujan Samaj Party is the most successful political strategist in the Dalits-rights space. He seemed poised to become a pan-Indian Dalit leader. But made one critical mistake. He thought he had become bigger than Ambekdar. Read on.

Stop talking rubbish about Ambedkar.

It was late 1994 when Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party, received this angry and stern telegram from his party cadre in Hyderabad.

Those were heady days for Kanshi Ram. Just the previous year, he had tested his social-engineering model in the electoral crucible of Uttar Pradesh and changed Indias politics forever. With a whopping 67 seats in the assembly, the third largest party after the BJP and SP, he formed the government in Uttar Pradesh with Mulayam Singhs Samajwadi Party (109 seats) as the senior coalition partner and chief minister. For the first time in the countrys political history, a party of the Dalits was sharing power in a state government.

Kanshi Ram was being spoken about as the tallest Dalit leader after Ambedkar and, understandably, had set his sights on taking BSP national. He wanted to make forays across the Vindhyas, particularly in Southern India. With Andhra Pradesh heading for elections in December that year (1994), he saw an immediately opportunity. The state also seemed to have a ready' cadre of radicalised Ambekarites, people who had severed their ideological mooring with the left wing extremists (Maoists).

Kanshi Ram was quite thrilled about this political experiment. Let them (Mulayam) handle Uttar Pradesh. I will concentrate on South India, he would tell me during the many interactions I had with him on his frequent trips to Lucknow. But that terse telegram from Hyderabad made it clear to Kanshi Ram that he was dealing with a very different strand of Dalits, quite unlike the tame and mellowed down BSP cadre of UP.

What happened was simple. In a moment of hubris after winning the Uttar Pradesh election, Kanshi Ram described himself as the practical and only mass leader of the scheduled castes and Ambedkar as a theoretician confined to being a leader of Mahars.

This comparison, which left nobody in doubt about who he thought was the bigger leader of the Dalits, evoked apathy in North India but met with severe hostility from Andhra Pradesh. Kanshi Ram was at his wits end to explain this ill-timed boast. He sought to explain it away by saying that he did not mean to belittle the stature of Ambedkar and even accused me, for reporting the interview, of carrying out an upper caste conspiracy to undermine his movement.

But that did not wash. What seemed like a big build-up for the BSP in the run-up to the election  emboldening Kanshi Ram to field no less than 235 candidates (out of 294 constituencies)  died a very quick death. Not only did the BSP not win a single seat, it lost its deposit in all seats but one and more importantly, Kanshi Rams dream of raising the BSP flag across the Vindhyas died a very premature death.

This background to Kanshi Rams aborted raid on Andhra politics bears a recall in view of the raging controversy over the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a research scholar of Hyderabad Central University.

Rohith was a member of Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) which largely draws its cadres from Dalit students initially enamoured with radical Marxist ideology that advocates violence as a tool to annihilating class enemies and agnosticism. Even Rohith became an Ambedkarite after he was disillusioned with the radical left. (See this article by Jashwanth Jessie, Rohiths friend.)

This cadre of alienated radical Marxists, carry the ideological and emotional baggage when they join Dalit associations inspired by Ambedkars annihilation of castes theory. Though Ambedkar never promoted violence as a tool for political objective, the Ambedkarites of Andhra Pradesh are seen as a cleverly camouflaged extension of the ultra-left.

As a result, in the campus politics of Andhra Pradesh, the ASA has always had an antagonistic relationship with the BJP-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Congress-sponsored National Students Union of India (NSUI). That is why for this group in Hyderabad Central University, Rahul Gandhis emotional outpouring for Rohith would be seen as being as hypocritical as Prime Minister Narendra Modis lament for mother India having lost a son. The sympathy for Rohith is more an expression of hypocrisy than solidarity with the cause he stood for.



There is hardly any meeting ground between Ambedkarites of Andhra Pradesh and mainstream political parties of all hues. The traditional Marxists are looked with as much disdain by Ambedkarites as the BJP or the Congress. Unlike the Ambedkarites of Hindi heart land or Maharashtra who are amenable to mainstream political ideologies, the Ambedkarites of Andhra Pradesh are known for standing their ground even though they have still not evolved as a coherent political group like the BSP in Uttar Pradesh.

There is no doubt that Rohiths suicide has engendered a powerful symbolism which can only be ignored at a significant political cost. The Sangh Parivar which has been desperately co-opting Dalits to its fold for decades is steadfastly averse to any radicalisation of Dalit politics not in consonance with its Hindu unity. They (the Sangh Parivar) would be strongly opposed to the politics that Rohith propounded but would love to co-opt the symbolism here represents after his death. Since he emerged as a representative of a numerically powerful under-privileged class, aspiring to rise on his own against all odds, his untimely death creates a fascinating story for political leaders to empathise with. The narrative around Rohiths suicide is glamorous and full of symbolism, something that the routine deaths of other Dalits, say sewage cleaners getting asphyxiated in gutters all over India, do not arouse.

It is unlikely that Rohiths suicide will bring about a radical change in the approach of the mainstream political parties towards Ambedkarites of Andhra Pradesh. So long as they hold onto their own beliefs ideologically similar to the ultra-left, they will face resistance not only from the BJP or the Congress but also from the regional parties and traditional left. But the scope for their gradual assimilation through alliances is an electoral attraction that is at the centre of driving political parties crazy in trying to out-do each other to revel in Rohiths symobolism.

Its all very well to make Hyderabad Central University a political picnic spot, but it is unlikely that the Ambedkarites of Andhra, who so firmly shut out Kanshi Ram for one boastful indescretion, are going to be swayed with the lavish attention they are getting from all quarters. Kanshi Rams unfinished agenda of 1994, it seems, will yet remain so.
Baghdad: Iraq summoned the new Saudi ambassador on Sunday after he suggested Iranian-backed Shite militias were exacerbating sectarian tensions and should leave the fight against Islamic State to the Iraqi army and official security forces.

Baghdad's move underscores the depth of enmity between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim powers as sectarian conflicts rage in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Riyadh only reopened its embassy in Baghdad last month, shut down since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

In an interview with Iraq's al-Sumaria TV on Saturday, Saudi envoy Thamer al-Sabhan criticised the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mostly Iranian-backed Shi'ite paramilitary groups seen as a bulwark against the Sunni militants of Islamic State whose rise has inflamed sectarian tensions in Shi'ite-majority Iraq.

"The refusal by the Kurds and (the Sunni province of) Anbar to let the Hashid Shaabi come to their regions shows that the Hashid is not accepted by Iraqi society," Sabhan said.

Iraq's foreign ministry called the remarks "a break of diplomatic protocol and based on inaccurate information".

"The Hashid Shaabi are fighting terrorism and defending the country's sovereignty and acting under the umbrella and command of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces," it said in a statement.

Earlier Iraqi Shiite lawmakers accused Sabhan of meddling in domestic affairs, including recent violence in eastern Diyala province where Sunni mosques and residents were attacked in apparent retaliation for blasts targeting Shiite militia fighters claimed by Islamic State.

"If such interference is repeated, there will be calls to declare the ambassador persona non grata and demand that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia replace him," Khalid al-Assadi, a member of parliament's foreign affairs panel, said by phone.

Local media published similar comments from other Shi'ite lawmakers.

"He should be expelled immediately or else he could meet dire consequences," Awatef Nemah from the ruling Shi'ite bloc told al-Sumaria, without elaborating.

The reopening of the Saudi embassy in Baghdad has been seen as heralding closer cooperation in the fight against Islamic State militants, who control swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and have claimed bombings in Saudi Arabia.

But it has also coincided with a fresh escalation of tensions between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, longtime regional rivals, after Riyadh executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric this month.

Reuters
As French President Francois Hollande began his three-day visit to India that could push through the multibillion-dollar deal for Rafale combat airplanes, the French media said that India might have to be a bit patient with the Rafale deal.

In an interview with PTI, Hollande hinted it might take some more time to sign the deal.

"Agreeing on the technicalities of this arrangement obviously takes time, but we are on the right track," PTI quoted Hollande as saying.

While an article on Le Huffington Post said that Hollande's visit to India was "a rare honour for a Western leader and (a) brand of good relations between Paris and New Delhi (is) just waiting to grow," it also said that patience was "the key word" with respect to the Rafale deal, in light of Hollande saying that it might take some time to sign the deal.

The report also said that because of "obsolescence that threatens the (Indian) Air Force" and the growing demand for the Rafale planes after its sale in Egypt and Qatar, the policymakers in India were keen to diversify India's weapon sources.

"The geopolitical context of the Indian subcontinent is another argument in favor of an early conclusion of negotiations," said the report, further saying that India's tense relations with Pakistan and "the repeated intrusions of China, strategic ally of Islamabad" were also important reasons for the deal to be concluded early.

Focussing on the economic impact of Hollande's visit, French daily Le Figaro stressed on the fact that French companies will be involved int he development of Chandigarh, Nagpur and Pondicherry. "The Indian Prime Minister has made himself the champion of 'Make in India' (Manufacturing in India) to attract investors and rebalance the fundamentals of an economy where services are carving the lion's share (52 percent) compared to industry (30 percent)," said the report.

It also said that Hollande remembered that Modi had played a "decisive and central" role in the international climate conference in Paris.

Modi had first announced India's desire to buy 36 Rafale combat planes for its air force back in April last year during his visit to Paris.

Hollande had landed in the northern city of Chandigarh, where Modi joined him at official engagements and lauded France's decision to invest $1 billion every year in India in various sectors.

Chandigarh was designed in the 1950s by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier and is one of three places France has pledged to help develop as so-called "smart cities"  with clean water supplies, efficient sewage disposal and public transportation.

Hollande and French business leaders met with their Indian counterparts to boost bilateral trade, which in 2014 was $8.6 billion. New Delhi is also trying to encourage French companies to tap into India's economic boom.

Modi, in his speech, said India was looking forward to French expertise in defense production, developing railways and waterways, and fighting global warming and terrorism.

Hollande is accompanied by the ministers of defence, foreign affairs, economy and culture and dozens of top corporate leaders.

With inputs from AP
By Seema Guha

As the Sunni-Shia conflict in West Asia escalates and threatens to engulf the energy rich region, India and many other countries are caught in a bind over which side to support. Some have made their choice clear. France and most Western democracies back the Sunni states: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordon. US, a friend of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, had backed the Sunnis. But with the recent nuclear agreement with Iran, and the opening it offers to American business and industry is now making the US much more circumspect.

Pakistan, a Sunni state with close links with Saudi Arabia, angered Riyadh by refusing to join the coalition in the war against Shias in Yemen. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif particularly has a huge debt to repay to Saudi Arabia. During the bloodless coup in 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf ousted the then PM from power and sent him to jail, it was the Saudis who got the general to agree to let Sharif live in exile.

India has maintained good relations with both, Iran and the Arab world and also has the deftness to move through this maze with clever diplomacy. It has done so over the years with Palestine and Israel and hopes to continue being friends with both the Arab world and Iran and pursue its own national interests.

What has helped India in its balancing act has been its policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of these countries. It has always kept a safe distance from the sectarian groups, preferring to do business with those in power.

"Indias policy in the region remains rooted in our traditional long-standing ties with the region and is non-prescriptive and non-judgmental. Despite ever changing political environment, our bilateral relations with virtually all countries of the region have been progressing structurally and we have managed to insulate our core interests from the negative fall-out of regional developments, Anil Wadhwa, Secretary East, in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said in a recent speech at the IDSA.

He also explained that while India acknowledged that popular aspirations has to be determined by the people without any interference from outside. He also took on those who have criticized India for its "old order neutrality" saying this cannot be seen as absence of policy. In the last couple of years both the UPA government as well as the new NDA coalition is paying much attention to the region. New Delhi has been seeking for investments and business from the oil and gas rich nations here and pushing for closer economic and political ties with West Asia.

It has been hoping to attract the massive sovereign funds that many of these nations have for funds required to build Indias creaking infrastructure: ports, railways, roads. Indias economic engagement with West Asia stands at USD189 billion per annum, according to the 2013-2014 figures.

Political engagements have also helped India in getting back wanted terrorists from the Gulf countries, something which was not possible a decade ago. But today with the rise of Islamic State, co-operation and intelligence sharing with countries in the region is vital. Though funds and arms from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni powers went to fuel opposition against Syrias Bashar Al Asad, who is backed by Iran, has indirectly helped create the monster called Islamic State, it has now turned to bite the hands of those who once supported it.

Today, the Sunni rulers are as opposed to Islamic State as the rest of the world and are bent to fight the menace. The fact that external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj travelled to Bahrain for a meeting of the Arab India Cooperation Forum speaks volumes of the progress ties with the region has made. Counter terror co-operation is high on Swarajs agenda, "Our meeting here today represents a real turning point in our ties with the Arab world. Today we seek to give new shape, direction and energy to our centuries old relations. Today we have the opportunity of translating the vision of India-Arab solidarity into concrete avenues of cooperation, she said at the first ministerial meeting of the group held in Manama on Sunday  an event attended by 22 Arab countries. "Ever since our government assumed office in May 2014, we have paid special attention to our ties with the Arab world, she added.

But it is not just the Arab world that India is wooing; on 28 December, the 18th India-Iran Joint Commission meeting was held in Delhi. Ali Tayebina, Irans Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance co-chaired the session with Swaraj. With sanctions against Iran lifted, following the agreement between Tehran and Washington opportunities will be opening up in that country. India is well aware of that and will push for deals. India is already engaged with Iran to build the Chabahar port, which will be a gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The progress of the project has been extremely slow mainly because Iran was under the sanctions regime. India is also hoping that both its private and public sector companies can get an opening in the Chabahar port and free trade zone that Iran has been planning.

Delhi is also committed to build the railway link between Chabahar-Zahedan-Mashhad. All these projects will get fillip with the lifting of sanctions. Iran-India and Russia had in the past worked closely together in Afghanistan and Chabahar was a result of that collaboration. India got in because Pakistan had refused to give access to Indian goods through its territory. New Delhi hopes to pick up on what had to be left undone because of the sanctions and will have to be prepared for much more competition from major players. Chinese President Xi Jinping this week was in West Asia, visiting Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. Xi is hoping to ramp up business in the region.

India has the same hope. Delhi is hoping that it does not get singed by the Sunni-Shia conflict in West Asia and continue to have fruitful relations with both sides.
In the republic debate, Australia is not truly debating its independence from Britain. It's not an argument we're having over the influence of the once-mighty master; it's a struggle over our own identity.

The debate about the extent of Australia's alliance commitments with the US, however, is about Australia's sovereignty.

Australian leaders have had some trouble getting the right degree of closeness with the great and powerful friend. John Howard was too deferential in accepting the US misjudgment to invade Iraq; Mark Latham was too angry in rejecting it.

Howard didn't turn Australia into America's "deputy sheriff," but to most of the world it certainly looked like it. Mark Latham's proposal to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq was not mad, but when he described the Howard government as a "conga line of suck holes" he certainly sounded mad.
A defiant Tony Abbott has resisted calls for him to quit politics and will recontest his seat of Warringah at the next federal election.

The decision, announced on Sunday evening on his personal website, means the former prime minister will look to extend his 22 years in politics and potentially creates a political headache for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The move had been widely expected within the Liberal Party and ends months of speculation which was approaching fever pitch after preselections opened for the NSW branch of the Liberal Party last week.

The decision comes after he lost the leadership last September, and after a summer spent consulting with his family and political confidantes about his future.
Former Greens leader Bob Brown has been released on bail after being arrested during a community protest over logging in northwest Tasmania.

Dr Brown was arrested on Monday at the site of a Forestry Tasmania logging project in Lapoinya and taken to Burnie police station.

"I didn't go with the intention of being arrested, but when I saw the destruction, I had to take a stand," he said after his release.

He has been charged with failing to comply with a direction to leave a business access area, and has been banned from going back to the Lapoinya logging area under the terms of his bail conditions.
A man has suffered serious injuries after falling from a balcony in Sydney's CBD in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The cause of the fall is not yet known.

Police say they arrived at an apartment block on Quay Street in Haymarket about 3am after receiving reports a man had fallen. It is understood he plunged about 10 metres, or four storeys.

"Emergency services had to climb over a wall in the complex to reach the injured man," police said in a statement.
French distiller Remy Cointreau SA reported third-quarter sales that beat estimates as appetite for cognac grew in the U.S. and rebounded in China.

Sales rose 3.2 percent on an organic basis in the three months through December after a first-half decline, the Paris-based company said in a statement Thursday. Analysts expected a 2.3 percent increase, according to the median of 16 estimates. The stock rose as much as 5.4 percent in Paris, the biggest gain in the stock in more than three months.

Mainland China is driving the return to growth in the region, while Hong Kong and Macau remain in decline, Chief Financial Officer Luca Marotta said on a call with investors. The timing of the Chinese New Year, which is 11 days earlier in 2016 than in 2015, also probably boosted sales ahead of the holiday, according to Hermine de Bentzmann, an analyst at Raymond James.

Overall good numbers from Remy and the positive commentary on China is very welcome given the recent market concerns, wrote Jonathan Fyfe, an analyst at Mirabaud.

The maker of Remy Martin cognac has changed distributors in China amid a government crackdown on graft that has dented sales of high-end spirits. Its also been trying to shore up growth of its partner brands after losing a distribution contract for Piper and Charles Heidsieck champagnes in the U.S. Remy Martin continued an excellent performance in the Americas and Europe, helped by a new marketing campaign.

The company reiterated it expects a return to growth in full-

year adjusted operating profit, excluding currency shifts.

Total revenue reached 298 million euros (USD325 million), compared with the estimate of 294 million euros. Remy Cointreau said last year that it intends to become the global leader in spirits sold for $50 a bottle or more  an $18 billion market which is growing at more than twice the pace of lower-priced alcohol. Thomas Buckley, Bloomberg
Hundreds of Pearl Horizon pre-sale buyers braved the cold and once again took to the streets yesterday, demanding that the Pearl Horizon project should be finished in 2018. A representative of the buyers said that delays to the Pearl Horizon project may affect thousands of people, which is why members of civil society should be concerned about the issue. While protesters claim that 1,000 people marched yesterday, the Public Security Police Force reported 600. The 25-year term of land-use for the high-end Pearl Horizon expired in December. Polytex  the company responsible for the project  failed to complete the projects during the term of their land-use agreement. The government refused to renew the contract.

Transmac maintains fares in agreement with the government

Following a contract signed with the government, Transmac will maintain the current price of bus fares for the next three years, TDM reported. The vice-manager of Transmac, Guan Rong Jian, said that maintaining the current prices will put pressure on Transmac, but the stress is believed to be bearable. Mr Guan has expressed his belief that the company is now facing a potential human resource crisis: the average age of their current drivers is 53, with 15 percent of the drivers aged between 60 and 65. He believes that the number of staff retiring will peak in 2017. Transmac has already increased wages of drivers by 4.5 percent since the beginning of this year.

Tang Dynasty colored porcelain offered for auction

A historic colored porcelain item from the Tang dynasty was put up for sale by a Japanese collector at an auction that took place yesterday at the Macau Tower. The porcelain pan offered for auction is 4.1cm high, with a 16cm wide opening and a 15.5cm diameter base. It has been claimed that the pan was sent to Japan more than one hundred years ago, because the origin of the gold used to repair cracks in the artifact.
The Secretary for Security warned of the increasing sophistication of high-tech and computer crime and the difficulty of laws to keep pace with it. At the end of 2014, Wong Sio Chak took responsibility for law and order as security chief in the SAR, nearly 16 years after joining the police force.

The criminals want a big dinner, he said in a recent interview with Exmoo News. They have put away their knives and guns for violent crime. Hackers have entered the accounts departments of the casinos and the personal computers of people to steal individual information and use false credit cards.

There are the huge under-the-table gambling syndicates controlled by remote phones. There are others who help mainland customers to withdraw money at POS (point-of-sale) machines.

He and his colleagues are fighting many kinds of knowledge-

based crime  such as bank card fraud, telephone scams and withdrawing money from ATMs with false identities. There will be more and more kinds of computer crime and they are harder and harder to prevent, he said.

He said that, in the face of all these different forms of IT crime, the police had set up an Internet Security Centre to guarantee the safety of information of Macau citizens and companies. We also have two weapons  a computer certification unit and IT investigation team. In addition, the economic and finance division has a finance intelligence office and is planning a special team to attack money-laundering and all kinds of IT crime.

It will co-ordinate with government departments, companies, the police, customs, banks, real estate, finance and major gambling firms. Its scope will be very wide. Nothing of this scale existed before 1999, he said.

Wong said that the legal system had difficulty keeping pace with the increasing sophistication of these new criminals. Before the handover, there were no regulations on computer crime. Drafting of the law only began in 2001 and it was passed in 2009. But computer technology advances too fast. Even after revisions of the laws, it is still lagging behind the new criminal situation.

Most serious is the case of those who come from outside to commit crimes in Macau. Whether or not to use to summary litigation procedure is not up to the police to decide. It is the prosecutor or judge who decides. There are conditions  a sentence of less than three years, the person over 18 and with adequate evidence and the decision must be made within 48 hours. If not, the person could just be expelled from the SAR. But the complexity of some cases is such that the prosecutor basically cannot collect sufficient evidence in 48 hours. If the evidence is not enough, we cannot use this procedure, he said.

Wong was invited to join the police in June 1998 by then police chief Antonio Marques Baptista. One month earlier, Baptista had survived a bomb attack, when his dog sniffed explosives in a car he was about to enter. Wong took up his post in November 1998.

That was the most difficult period, Wong said. The situation in the force was very complicated. The social situation was also complicated and difficult  most important was that the citizens did not have confidence in the police! In 1999, there were 65 kidnappings and 47 homicides, of which 20 were related to Triads.

He has two daughters, one studying law and the other at primary school. Each day he takes the younger one to school. I do not have high demands of them. MDT/Macaubub/Exmoo
CHINA Eight people died and five were injured after a fire broke out at a residential township in Beijing, Xinhua news agency reported, citing emergency services.

The blaze broke out early yesterday in a bungalow in the Sunhe Townships Chaoyang District in east Beijing, according to Xinhua.

THAILAND A large chunk of metal that could be from an aircraft washed ashore in southern Thailand, but Malaysian authorities yesterday cautioned against speculation of a link to a Malaysia Airlines flight missing for almost two years.

USA Officials say the 26.8 inches of snow that fell in New York Citys Central Park is the second-most recorded in the city since 1869. That narrowly misses tying the previous record of 26.9 inches from February 2006. Officials began keeping records on snowfall totals in 1869.

N KOREA A China-based travel agency said Saturday an American university student recently detained by North Korea is being held over an unspecified incident at his hotel before he was scheduled to board a flight for Beijing.

ITALIAN comic Beppe Grillo is returning to the stage with a new show next month, but will continue his involvement in politics with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement that he founded.

IRELAND A Turkish Airlines jet flying from Houston to Istanbul has landed safely in Ireland after a security scare. A handwritten threat was discovered on board Turkish Airlines Flight 34 as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean overnight, according to the BBC and the Guardian newspaper.

MOLDOVA More than 15,000 people gathered in the Moldovan capital yesterday to protest against the government and demand early elections in the impoverished East European nation.

SOUTH AFRICA A mayor has awarded college scholarships to 16 young women for remaining virgins to encourage others to be pure and focus on school, her spokesman said yesterday.

BRAZIL Organizers say venues used in this years Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will be inspected daily during game times in a bid to prevent the spread of a mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to a rare birth defect and also a condition that can cause paralysis.
Vietnams pro-business prime minister has effectively withdrawn from a contest to become the Communist Party chief, clearing the way for his rival to keep the post in what appears to be a compromise to present a united front to the nation, delegates at a party congress said yesterday.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung had mounted a last-minute challenge during the congress after being excluded from an official list of candidates for positions in a key party panel. Had he continued his challenge, he could have become part of the Central Committee, and subsequently could have been in contention for party general secretary.

The path is now clear for Nguyen Phu Trong to stay as general secretary, the de facto top position in Vietnams collective leadership.

Several delegates at the congress said Dung decided on Sunday to abide by party rules that obliged him to refuse the nomination for a Central Committee slot proposed by his supporters. The congress then voted yesterday to accept his refusal, completing a formality. The Central Committee, one of two pillars of the ruling establishment, will be chosen today.

Trong has been trying unsuccessfully for years to sideline Dung, and while contests for the top post are not unheard of, they are usually settled well before the party congress, which takes place once every five years to choose new leaders.

This year, the rivalry between Dung and Trong has gone down to the wire in the party congress, which began last Thursday and ends this Thursday. But regardless of who is in power the fundamental makeup of the government and its policies will not change radically, according to analysts.

Dung has built a reputation for promoting economic reforms, and being bold enough to confront Chinas territorial assertiveness in the South China Sea. But even though Trong, a stolid party apparatchik with closer leanings toward China, is now set to take the top job, it doesnt mean the economic reforms will stall or Vietnam will capitulate to Chinese assertiveness in Vietnamese-claimed waters, according to observers.

Ideologically, there isnt a yawning gap between Trong and Dung, although most people believe that the pace of economic reform might slow a bit if Trong remains at the helm and Dung is ousted, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asian expert based in Washington, DC.

Dung, who rose through the ranks of the party and held senior positions, is a two-term prime minister. His economic reforms have helped Vietnam attract a flood of foreign investment and helped triple the per capita GDP to $2,100 over the past 10 years.

Trongs camp accuses Dung of economic mismanagement, including the spectacular collapse of state-owned shipping company Vinashin; failing to control massive public debt; allowing corruption; and not dealing adequately with the non-preforming loans of state-owned banks.

Today, the delegates will be presented with 222 candidates in an election for the 180-member Central Committee. After that, they will elect at least 16 members of the all-powerful Politburo, which handles the day-to-day governance of Vietnam. It is possible that the Politburo will be expanded to 18 members this year.

Of the Politburo members, one will be chosen general secretary. Three others will be chosen, in respective order of seniority, the prime minister, the president and the chairman of the National Assembly.

Vietnam is one of the last remaining communist nations in the world, with a party membership of 4.5 million out of its 93 million people. But like its ideological ally China, the government believes in a quasi-free market economy alongside strictly controlled politics and society. Yves Dam Van, Hanoi, AP
Chinese-Japanese brand Miniso has come under fire over recent weeks after Internet users widely questioned the brands origins. Although the companys design philosophy is attributed to Japanese designer, Miyake Junya, its business head is 38-year-old Ye Guo Fu from China.

Rumors have been fueled by the brands lack of popularity in Japan. According to the Straits Times, Miniso has just four stores in Japan, while it has more than 1,100 in China. Many of these stores are located in Guangdong  where the companys Chinese headquarters are based  and also in Macau and Hong Kong.

The contention led some to claim that the products are better described as made in China to look Japanese.

And the brands logo closely resembles some of its competitors in Japan, evoking other Chinese copy-cat brands on the mainland, where copyright legislation is negligible. Critics have drawn comparisons with other Japanese high-end dollar stores, Muji and Uniqlo, both of which share similarities in design with Miniso.

The Times interviewed 24-year-old Ocean Qiao, the general manager of the Miniso store on Avenida da Praia Grande, who explained that the brands lack of popularity in Japan was not the result of inauthenticity, but a result of the reputation of better-established competitors, like the 100-yen store Daiso.

People in Japan prefer to go to Daiso. Its the same with MacDonalds and KFC in the U.S. People just prefer one over the other, said Qiao, before adding, Minoso is the KFC [in the analogy].

However despite the manager alluding to the fact that Miniso might be regarded as a second-

rate alternative, his comments did not account for all of the concerns relating to lack of authenticity.

Reports from Internet users suggest that the packaging used for the products contains an odd mix of characters from the various Japanese writing systems leading media website, The Beijinger, to claim that it makes for an interesting but incoherent bastardization of the Japanese language.

Upon being asked why Miniso seems to have surged in popularity in China, Qiao  who is Chinese himself  says people here like Japanese products because they regard them as being of a high quality.

Meanwhile, chief designer, Miyake Junya, told The Straits Times that it was funny that the high performance of Miniso in China has overshadowed the business in Japan.

I do wish to see Miniso become more successful in Japan, but I find it even more exciting to share the Japanese design philosophy with people around the world, he added.

The store on Avenida da Praia Grande, is the second largest of the four stores operating in Macau, yet according to Qiao, it is the busiest. The largest store is located near the border gate in the northern district.

70 percent of the stores customers are Macanese residents, 10 percent are Filipino or Vietnamese living in Macau, and 20 percent are tourists, the Minisos director of marketing said.

Ocean Qiao told the Times that since December, business has been exceptionally busy due to the Christmas and New Year period and in preparation for the Chinese New Year holidays. He speculated that many Filipinos are buying products as gifts to take back to the Philippines.

The Filipinos love the cars [toys] and the Bluetooth sets.

Staff reporter
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is pressing for peaceful resolutions to increasingly tense maritime disputes in Asia and urging China to take a firmer stand on North Koreas nuclear program after its recent bomb test.

Kerry arrived in the Laotian capital yesterday, with later stops planned for Cambodia and China, extending an around-the-world diplomatic mission that began with a heavy emphasis on the Middle East, particularly Iran and efforts to bring an end to Syrias civil war.

Laos is the current head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose members are becoming more vocal in complaints about Chinas growing assertiveness over competing claims in the South China Sea.

Next month, President Barack Obama will host the ASEAN leaders in California.

Before that summit, U.S. officials say, Kerry will make the case to the leader of the 10-nation bloc to present a unified stance in dealing with China on the disputes. They have intensified as China steps up construction of man-made islands and airstrips in contested areas.

The United States and governments with rival claims with China in the disputed region, including the Philippines and Vietnam, have expressed alarm over the Chinese construction. They say it raises tensions and threatens regional stability and could violate freedom of navigation and over flight.

But ASEAN unity has not always been possible because China wields great influence among some of its smaller neighbors, such as Cambodia. Cambodia held the ASEAN leadership spot in 2012, blocked the group from reaching consensus on the South China Sea issue and frequently has sided with China on the matter.

A senior U.S. State Department official accompanying Kerry in Asia said the U.S. had heard from regional leaders that problems related to Cambodias chairmanship left a black mark on ASEAN and are not to be repeated. The official said the U.S. believed that Laos would do a better job in balancing ASEAN interests with China.

Recent developments, including Chinas movement of an oil rig into a disputed zone and warnings against over flight of what it claims to be its territory, have raised levels of concern in the region to a point where the official said it would be very difficult for an external power like China to manipulate individual ASEAN countries in a way that paralyzes the broader group. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of Kerrys visit publicly.

Kerry is only the second secretary of state to visit Laos since 1955; Hillary Clinton visited in 2012.

Obama will become the first U.S. president to visit the landlocked nation later this year. Laos has moved away from a communist system in the past two decades, but like its close ally Vietnam, it retains a one-

party political system and its government has been criticized for being intolerant of dissent.

Laos was targeted heavily by U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War and still has large amounts of unexploded ordnance littering its countryside. The U.S. has stepped up efforts to help clear Laos of those bombs and Kerry is expected to commit to expanding and upgrading such programs with details to be announced when Obama visits later in 2016, the U.S. official said.

In Cambodia, Kerry is expected to note the countrys strong economic growth but also raise concerns with longtime authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen about human rights and political freedoms. Kerry plans to meet representatives of Cambodias opposition, led by a man who has been in self-imposed exile since November, when an order for his arrest was issued on an old conviction for defaming Cambodias foreign minister.

Kerry will wrap up his Asia tour in Beijing, where he will renew concerns about Chinas aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and call for Chinese leaders to take more steps to press North Korea on its nuclear program.

Since North Koreas nuclear test earlier this month, U.S. officials have urged China to use its leverage to demand that the North Korean leadership end its nuclear weapons program and testing and return to six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

The senior U.S. official said the U.S. believes that the pressure China has exerted on North Korea so far has not been enough to change the calculus of North Koreas young leader, Kim Jun Un, and that it is important for China to join the U.S., South Korea and Japan in presenting a united front. Matthew Lee, Vientiane, AP
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Saturday he hopes to open a new chapter in relations with Iran after the lifting of international sanctions under a historic nuclear deal, as he paid the first visit by a Chinese leader to the Islamic Republic in 14 years.

In cooperation with the Iranian side and by benefiting from the current favorable conditions, China is ready to upgrade the level of bilateral relations and cooperation so that a new chapter will start in bilateral relations, Xi said after meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, according to Iranian state TV.

Trade between the two countries stood at some USD52 billion in 2014, but that figure dropped last year due to plunging oil prices. China is Irans biggest trade partner, and continued purchasing oil from Iran after nuclear-related sanctions were tightened in 2012, despite U.S. pressure.

China has always stood by the side of the Iranian nation during hard days, Rouhani said, in comments posted on his official website.

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, told Jinping later Saturday that Iran will continue its policy of bolstering ties with the East. He praised Chinas independent stance in global issues, saying it helps deepen strategic ties with Tehran.

Westerners have never obtained the trust of the Iranian nation, he said. The government and nation of Iran have always sought expanding relations with independent and trustful countries like China.

Khamenei said Iran wont forget Chinas support at the time of sanctions.

The Islamic Republic will never forget Chinas cooperation during the sanctions era, state TV quoted Khamenei as saying.

Officials from the two countries signed 17 documents and letters of intent to broaden bilateral cooperation in industry, transportation, railways, ports, new technology, tourism, the environment and energy.

China is one of six world powers  along with the U.S., Germany, France, Britain and Russia  that reached a landmark agreement with Iran last summer to lift international sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear program. The deal was implemented a week ago after the U.N. nuclear watchdog certified that Iran had fulfilled all its commitments. Ali Akbar Dareini, Tehran, AP
Stephen Lee may have dispelled rumors that he would bring a healthy dose of Hong Kong-style political activism to his new role as the Bishop of Macau on Saturday at a ceremony marking his installation in the post.

Upon assuming office of his new role, Bishop Lee reminded the congregation of the importance of unity with God, unity with the Pope, unity with the city of Macau and unity with China.

And above all, live with unity within the Diocese of Macau, he added.

In a ceremony marking the resignation of former Macau-born bishop, Jose Lai, and coinciding with the 440th anniversary of the Diocese of Macau, Stephen Lee stressed the importance of unity and pledged to strengthen Pope Francis message of overcoming indifference.

Im expecting the Catholics to be united, to live [charitably ] with all others [and] to overcome the indifference, as Pope Francis reminded us at the beginning of the year, he told TDM reporters outside the Cathedral.

[We must] overcome indifference and produce peace, he added, peace is so important for each one of us.

Meanwhile, former bishop Jose Lai, who is stepping down due to health reasons, told a congregation of hundreds of Catholics that he was grateful for having served in the post.

We also want to thank Pope Francis for accepting my resignation and also [for] the nomination [of] our Stephen Lee, bishop from Hong Kong, to come to Macau to help our Diocese, Lai said. Thank you God and thank you very much.

Jose Lai will now become the citys Bishop Emeritus; a prestigious title reserved for those who retire from the service of the Diocese.

The Chief Executive, Chui Sai On, met on Friday at the governments headquarters with the new Bishop of the Macau Diocese to welcome him ahead of his inauguration.

Also present at the meeting was Jose Lai, who Chui thanked for his work and contributions to the MSAR.

The CE took the opportunity to reiterate that the government will continue to respect the freedom of religious beliefs consecrated in the Basic Law, as well as promising to maintain close ties with the Diocese in order to continue serving local people.

According to Chui, the Macau Diocese is a historical institution that has greatly contributed to the progress of the territory in areas such as social welfare and education, as well as at a humanitarian level. Staff reporter
The New Macau Association (ANM) issued a statement last week saying that they are disappointed by the Legislative Assemblys (AL) neglect of public opinion concerning the defeat of the proposed law to criminalize sexual harassment.

The bill, which opposed indecent assault, officially known as Amendment to the Criminal Code, was presented to the AL by lawmakers Ng Kuok Cheong and Au Kam San in October after a draft was delivered to the two former ANM legislators earlier in the year.

According to lawmaker Ng, the proposed bill aimed to put an end to impunity for acts of sexual harassment that may not be regarded as sexual assault. Such incidents are treated as cases of injury, where victims must engage their own lawyers.

The proposals outlined in the bill sought to revise the chapter on sex crimes in the criminal code by criminalizing the offence. However, this proposed revision was defeated last week in the Legislative Assembly (see box).

Jason Chao of ANM wrote in a statement that the failure to pass the bill will condemn victims of sexual harassment to inadequate legal protection against the [sexual] predators for months, perhaps years, to come.

The number of reports of incidents of sexual harassment have been on the rise in Macau over the past few years. In February last year, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture announced his shock over the number of sexual harassment cases that allegedly involved faculty members at the University of Macau.

The president of the ANM, Chao, said that the bills defeat in spite of overwhelming public support as articulated at a public consultation meeting in March 2015 represented a deliberate disregard for public opinion.

al defeats bill

Lawmakers defeated a bill submitted by lawmakers Ng and Au to criminalize sexual harassment, with eight votes in favor, five abstentions, and 16 votes against. Several lawmakers voted against the bill on the basis that the government is already pending a public consultation to review the entire criminal code.
MGM Macau will offer a romantic Valentines Day celebratory meal featuring scrumptious dishes at Aux Beaux Arts, Rossio and Pastry Bar.

Imagine a Valentines Day celebration with a distinctly Parisian ambience, surrounded by the warm glistening lights of Grande Praca or nestled amidst the cozy haven of luxury inside the restaurant. Chef de Cuisine, Elie Khalife and his team at Aux Beaux Arts will create a truly romantic affair with an exceptional five-course dinner menu designed for Him and Her, a press release issued by MGM reads.

The menu begins with the magnificently crafted Aphrodisiac Experience, consisting of French oysters served with mojito foam, cucumber, kiwi and a beef cigar for Him. As for Her, pink champagne foam, mild lemon, rose and a prawn cigar will be served along with a fresh French oyster. The menu concludes with desserts with a touch of raspberry snow, symbolizing lasting romance and love. Rossio is also featuring a Valentines Day dinner buffet with menus filled with love-

inspired delicacies, desserts and cocktails to warm the night.

A two-hour Sweet Valentine spa package is also available throughout February. MGM suggests that the romance on Valentines Day cant end without a nightcap cocktail served at Lions Bar.
A Chinese journalist who said he was fed up with a life as a government informant and fled China last year has been missing from Thailand since Jan. 11, his wife said Friday, raising concerns he might have been abducted by Chinese agents.

He Fangmei said she last spoke to her husband, Li Xin, when he was riding a train from Bangkok to Nong Khai in northeastern Thailand. She said she fears the journalist was taken back to China.

Li, formerly a website editor for a Chinese media group, fled last October to India, where he told The Associated Press that he could no longer bear working as a secret informant for the Chinese government. He later traveled to Thailand.

Lis wife said he was planning to seek asylum before he went missing.

The journalists vanishing is the latest in a string of disappearances of China-related activists in Southeast Asia that have raised suspicions of Chinese government involvement.

Last October, Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai suddenly disappeared from his apartment in Pattaya, a Thai beach resort. Gui reappeared this week on Chinese state TV, where he said he returned to China to turn himself in for an old crime. His friends insist Gui was forcibly taken away.

Four other people connected to the same Hong Kong publishing company, which sells books banned in China about Chinese politics and politicians, have disappeared.

One of them, Lee Bo, said he returned voluntarily to mainland China in notes to his wife, but supporters believe he was kidnapped and smuggled to the mainland.

Beijing also took back the teenage son of a detained rights lawyer after he fled from China to Myanmar.

After arriving in India, Li, 37, revealed that he was an informant for the government. He said he was coerced into gathering information about fellow activists and journalists after the government detained him for sharing information with the rival Taiwanese government and threatened to imprison him.

Li began his activism when he set up a website devoted to building civil society in 2007. The next year, he signed the 08 Charter, a pro-democracy

document written by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. The document landed Liu an 11-year prison sentence on a conviction of inciting to overturn the state, and many signees went on the governments blacklist.

An active member of Chinas circle of activists, Li worked as an opinion editor for the website of the influential newspaper Southern Metropolis.

Compelled by a desire to change China, Li said he fed information to the Taiwanese government about Chinas control of the Internet, although Taiwans foreign ministry declined to verify Lis claim.

Li said he attracted the attention of state security, who asked him to be an informant. After he provided no useful information, Li said he was detained in June 2013 for involvement with Taiwan and had to cave in or risk going to jail.

But he said he was still reluctant to report on other activists and journalists.

I was very fearful. They could drag me back [to jail] anytime, Li said in an interview in New Delhi. I did not want to work for them, but I felt I had no choice.

I believe there are many people like me who are working on behalf of the authoritarian government. But I cannot be one of them, Li said.

Untold numbers of informants help Chinas government keep tabs on anyone who may pose a threat to the regime, a task authorities have pursued more intensely under President Xi Jinping than they have in decades.

Last year, six Canadian citizens who are members of the Chinese ethnic Uighur Muslim minority told the Globe and Mail newspaper that they were detained while visiting China, blackmailed and bribed by Chinese authorities to spy on activists sympathetic to the Uighur cause in Canada. Uighurs in China have long complained of discrimination and suppression of their religion and culture. Didi Tang, Beijing, AP
Saint Pauls School celebrated its 45th anniversary at an event held yesterday morning.

As part of celebrations, 82 teachers and staff members received awards in recognition of having served the institution for 20 years.

The ceremony began with an opening video, through which 2016 was predicted to be a year of innovative change.

Fr Alejandro Salcedo, principal of the school, expressed his gratitude to all 117 teachers and staff members who are currently serving at the institution. The new Bishop of the Diocese of Macau, Stephen Lee, also delivered a speech in which he acknowledged the dedicated work of the educators, as well as other staff members.

Ng Sai Muih, a staff member who received an award for having worked at the school for the last 21 years, was asked how she felt about working for such a long time at the school. I have been enjoying the time with the students. I have listened to them pray every morning. My son graduated from here. I am happy about that, she told the Times. Staff reporter
A Chinese fugitive arrested in Hong Kong in connection with the slayings of his teenage nephews in California told a court yesterday he wont fight extradition to the United States.

Shi Deyun told a magistrate several times that he was willing to be sent back to the United States as soon as possible, adding that the allegations against him werent true.

Shi arrived Saturday afternoon in Hong Kong on a flight from Los Angeles. Police, acting on a request from U.S. officials, apprehended him at the airport. He was taken to a hospital and then formally arrested early Sunday.

U.S. investigators believe Shi killed the 15- and 16-year-old boys before fleeing. The two were found with head trauma in their Arcadia, California, home after police responded to a 911 call. Investigators say he assaulted his wife, who is the sister of the dead teens father, on Thursday after learning she wanted a divorce.

Shi declined the services of a duty lawyer and planned to represent himself. He was wearing a grey blazer over a black shirt and had a scratch on his right cheek.

When the judge asked if he agreed to extradition, Shi said through a Mandarin interpreter, I consent as soon as possible.

Shi also applied for bail, saying he could offer a high amount of bail money because he had assets in mainland China and the United States.

The details of the allegations against me are not true, Shi said. But Im not inclined to go into the details and give a rebuttal here. I believe I will restore the truth in the U.S. with supporting facts.

He said he was in poor health and had a history of cardio disease and poor mental health.

However, Chief Magistrate Clement Lee refused his application and he was remanded into custody.

The case was adjourned until Feb. 11. AP
Fifteen films were selected for the 2016 competition of the prestigious 66th Berlin International Film Festival. Among those distinguished choices is Letters from War, directed by local resident Ivo Ferreira. The movie portrays historical events from the Portuguese colonial war, with the story told through letters written from writer Antonio Lobo Antunes to his pregnant wife Maria Jose between 1971 and 1973. These were originally published in the book Deste Viver Aqui Neste Papel Descripto. The Times spoke with Ivo Ferreira about the significance of being honored in one of the worlds most prominent film festivals.

Macau Daily Times  What inspired you to do this particular movie? Why this topic now?

Ivo Ferreira  Well, the main point was the fact that I wanted to pick up those letters and use them to tell a story. The story is one of people whose lives were being amputated as a result of an absurd political situation that was interrupting peoples lives, as we know. But above all, and since the beginning, I have seen in this a huge love story based on a historical and biographical document, which was also of great quality in literary terms.

MDT  Who will be seen at this world premiere of the movie in the Berlinale? What does that represent for you and for the movie?

IF  This represents a level of visibility that is absolutely fantastic and completely unique. We are talking about people participating in the contest who are the best movie directors in the world, some of whom I have been following since I was young. And then we have the other side  of having, for example, my wife [Margarida Vila-Nova] competing for Best Actress with names like Nicole Kidman and Juliette Binoche. It is really reaching a step that has never been reached before. Above all, this, for sure, will give the movie a great promotional opportunity; its a movie that will have premieres all over the world, and a commercial distribution process that will reach many places. It is getting away from the simple niche markets and joining something big.

MDT Do you think the movies setting will easily reach parts of the public that are not as well informed about the Portuguese colonial war? How do you think the public will react?

IF  I cannot really predict the future [laughs], but I think that the fact the committee has expressed early interest in the movie, and that all plans for commercial distribution of the film have been handled even before this news, says something about its potential. All the major distributors, especially in Europe, showed interest in distributing this movie, and there has even been some interest from several countries to co-produce the final stages of the movie.

Besides, I think there is a universal appeal to the movie that supersedes historical facts or authorship. I am sure there will be some locations where drawing crowds to screenings will be more difficult than others, depending on the local cultures, but I think that sometimes the more unique and peculiar the movie, the better they can communicate with the public.

MDT  Besides this movie, are there any other ongoing projects you would like to tell us about?

IF  Yes, I do have another ongoing project that I am currently preparing to film in Macau over 2016. We are beginning work on this. Surprisingly, Macau has proven to be a place where it is very difficult to find financing, and where there is an apparent lack of interest in doing something serious.

The only way to film in Macau seems to involve resorting to Asian co-productions. And honestly I am a bit upset with this idea of Macau liking to play this role of Ugly Duckling, and, from another perspective, the lack of sensitivity from people in Macau about how much it costs to produce a serious movie.

Some time ago, I read in a newspaper a person saying that with 150,000 euros we can make a perfectly good movie. This kind of comment is not positive for the industry, because it reveals that these people have no idea what they are talking about  they are not from this metier.

Of course, we can even make a movie with our smartphone and that can be great, but that is not what we are talking about when we mention quality cinema that we can export. It makes no sense to me to produce things that are still 

born and fated to be watched in a single session attended by 20 people.

We pass that phase of life in the early stages, but then we need to move forward.

MDT  Is the local government giving enough support to promote a local film industry?

IF  Although the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) has been making some effort to support the industry over the last couple of years, it is clearly still falling short. This is especially because it seems like the chops [support] of IC do not appear to be well valued when you try to approach other ways of financing. But it seems like it works the other way around, with many important institutions not supporting projects if they are, for instance, already being supported in some way by others.

For me, it is definitely important for Macau to be known outside its borders and to define its own identity. This can only be achieved by having local people thinking about their own reality, their streets and their lives. That is the way I see it, at least. That is the way to be stronger and to earn more respect from others.

It is very important that people start to look at this art in a different way. We need to have quality products, and to have quality, we need to spend some money. Then we need to export these. The internal market is a drop in an ocean; no amount of [filmmaking] money can be financed just by the ticket booths of Macau, even if the whole population each paid for a ticket to watch the film. This has to become an export product from a new, quality professional sector.
A large chunk of metal that could be from an aircraft washed ashore in southern Thailand, but Malaysian authorities yesterday cautioned against speculation of a link to a Malaysia Airlines flight missing almost two years.

Flight MH370 lost communications and made a sharp turn away from its Beijing destination before disappearing in March 2014. It is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, and only one piece of debris has been identified as coming from the plane, a slab of wing that washed ashore on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean last July.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said he instructed Malaysian civil aviation officials to contact Thailand about the newly found wreckage, a curved piece of metal measuring about 2 meters by 3 meters (6  feet by 10 feet) with electrical wires hanging from it and numbers stamped on it in several places.

I urge the media and the public not to speculate because it will give undue pressure to the loved ones of the victims of MH370, he said.

Thailands Transportation Ministry said four Malaysian officials and two Thai experts will visit the site today.

Liow said the search for the missing jet, which carried 239 people, is ongoing in the southern Indian Ocean and that its second phase is expected to be completed by June. Australia has led a multinational search that has so far cost more than USD120 million.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman Dan OMalley said the agency was awaiting results of an official examination of the debris.

The debris was found on the eastern coast of southern Thailands Nakkon Si Thammarat province, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand.

While debris can drift thousands of miles (kilometers) on ocean currents, that location would be a surprise based on the data from Flight MH370.

The plane was tracked by radar flying over the South China Sea then making a sharp turn west for unknown reasons. It crossed the Malay Peninsula and Straits of Malacca, which would put it off Thailands west coast.

Radar contact was lost shortly after the plane entered the airspace over the Indian Ocean. Analysis of exchanges between its engine and a satellite determined the plane flew south on a straight path for hours, leading authorities to believe it flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the water. Grant Peck, Bangkok, AP
A 27-year-old local resident was arrested on charges of theft from two supermarkets, with the first case dating back to October last year.

The Judiciary Police (PJ) announced yesterday that the suspect is accused of stealing alcoholic drinks, collectively worth about MOP140,000, from two different supermarkets and on two different occasions.

Although the cases occurred with an interval of about two months, the modus operandi was the same in both cases.

The alleged thief entered the supermarket at a time when the shop was crowded, hid in a secluded corner and waited for the rest of the day until the shop closed. He then emerged from his hideout and stole the goods. After this, he returned to his hideout where he waited for the shop to reopen and to become crowded on the next day in order to flee with the stolen goods without being spotted.

Despite the clever plan and remarkable patience, he was spotted and was eventually caught on January 23 while walking along a street in the central district.

The suspect then admitted to the crimes to the police and revealed that he had taken the 14 bottles of liquor with a high alcohol content to mainland China, one by one, where he sold them.

The suspect was presented to the Public Prosecutors Office where he was accused of aggravated theft. RM
The wife of a missing chief editor of a publisher specializing in books banned in mainland China has told police she has been able to visit him on the mainland, Hong Kong police said yesterday.

It is the latest twist in the disappearances of British citizen Lee Bo and four of his colleagues that have intensified fears that Beijing is clamping down on Hong Kongs freedom of speech. Lee has previously written that he returned voluntarily to mainland China in letters to his wife, but his supporters believe he was kidnapped and smuggled to the mainland.

Hong Kong police said in a statement yesterday that Lees wife had told them she had met him on Saturday afternoon at a guesthouse on the mainland. She said he was healthy and in good spirits, and that he was assisting in an investigation as a witness. She gave no further details regarding the location of the meeting or the nature of the investigation.

She also handed over a letter from Lee addressed to Hong Kong police. The police statement said its content was similar to his previous letters.

The latest development raises more questions than it answers. It is still unclear where Lee and the other four men linked to Hong Kong publishing company Mighty Current and its Causeway Bay Bookshop are exactly, what the investigation involves, and whether Lee is detained or there voluntarily, as he has purportedly said in his letters.

Hong Kong police said they are continuing to investigate Lees case and had again asked police in Guangdong province, over the mainland border, to assist in arranging a meeting with Lee.

The circumstances of Lees case have led many to suspect Chinese security agents crossed into Hong Kong to abduct him, in breach of the one country, two systems principle Beijing promised to uphold after taking control of the city from Britain in 1997. According to local news reports, he was last seen at his companys warehouse on Dec. 30 and didnt have his mainland travel permit, but days after he went missing he called his wife to say he was in Guangdong.

The other four men have disappeared since October from mainland China or Thailand.

Mighty Current specialized in racy but thinly sourced titles on Chinese political intrigue and scandals and other topics Beijing deemed off limits for mainland Chinese publishers. AP
The reigning Miss Universe has her eyes set on her next big dream: being a Bond girl. Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach returned home to the Philippines for the first time since her crowning  and that awkward moment when host Steve Harvey mistakenly announced Miss Colombia as the winner instead of her. She said yesterday shes using the intense attention she got after that controversy to focus on her causes like fighting HIV and AIDS.

Im using the attention to talk about my causes. Now, I have everybodys attention, she said.

She told a news conference that she plans to be tested for HIV publicly in New York to encourage other people to be tested, including in the Philippines, where HIV cases have risen alarmingly in recent years.

Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez Arevalo was briefly crowned Miss Universe at the pageant in Las Vegas last month before Harvey returned to center stage to apologize and announced he misread the card, which had Miss Philippines as the winner and Colombia as the first runner-up.

Asked about her plans after her reign, Wurtzbach said she would consider possible job offers in the United States, adding: I might be the next Bond girl, who knows? So, well see, thats the next dream.

Many international actresses have been cast alongside actors playing British agent James Bond and are popularly known as Bond girls.

Wurtzbach, 26, has worked as an actress and model in the Philippines before winning the crown. The Miss Universe pageant is a big deal in the Philippines, where two other women have brought home the crown before her, with the last one winning in 1973.

On Monday, Wurtzbach will meet President Benigno Aquino III, a bachelor who is rumored to have gone on a date with her before. Shell receive a citation from the Senate for her victory then join a motorcade around Manila that will end with a fireworks show.

Wurtzbach told reporters she was so overwhelmed with her triumph that she constantly checked on her crown in the initial days and even took a nap beside it but decided not to do that again because she might break it.

God forbid that would happen, the Filipinos are gonna kill me. I havent even done my homecoming yet, she said, repeatedly touching the diamond-studded crown. AP
According to weather monitoring stations in Taipa, yesterday was the coldest day since 1949  and possibly earlier  with one monitoring unit recording a low of 1.6 degrees Celsius at Big Taipa Hill.

Today the temperature is expected to drop even further, with estimates last night suggesting a drop to between 1 and 7 degrees Celsius. In response to this drop, the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau issued a warning last night, urging primary, kindergarten and special education schools close for the day.

The Macau Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG) issued an Orange (cold) alert for yesterday and today, adding that both days will be subjected to Force 4 to 6 northerly winds with gusts.

Other unconfirmed reports last night suggested that there was light snowfall yesterday in Taipa and Coloane. According to some sources, the air temperature was low enough in other areas to partially freeze the rain, thereby resulting in sleet even in urban areas.

In addition, according to TDM, the Social Welfare Bureaus temporary winter shelter in Ilha Verde has been opened for homeless citizens and people in need of temporary accommodation. It can provide shelter and hot meals for up to 120 people.

The bureau encouraged social services to pay extra attention to vulnerable groups such as the elderly and the sick.

According to the bureau, temperatures are expected to return to normal toward the end of the week, and will be accompanied by a corresponding increase in humidity.

On the other hand, rain is likely to persist until the weekend.

These temperatures are part of a cold snap sweeping across the southern and eastern parts of China. Some locations are observing record-low temperatures as has been the case in Macau, with some claiming it is the worst winter in over 30 years  especially in more north-eastern parts of China, that have recently registered lows of minus 30.

The accounts are striking in contrast with last weeks report, which claimed that, according to most authorities, 2015 held the record for the warmest year.

The SMG told the Times last week that on average, only eight days in a given year see temperatures dip below 12 degrees. Staff reporter

public hospital reports hypothermia cases

The Health Bureau (SSM) reported that three cases of hypothermia were reported. All of the cases involved senior residents. Since low temperatures are expected to continue over the next few days, the director of the Health Bureau (SSM), Lei Chin Ion, called on all residents  particularly the elderly and those suffering from chronic illnesses 

to adopt special measures to protect themselves against the cold weather. SSM has also made an appeal for caretakers of senior citizens, children and the chronically unwell to take appropriate measures.

below zero temperatures in hk

Hong Kong has been subjected to the same bitterly cold temperatures as those in Macau, recording single digits even in urban areas. In areas of high elevation and the New Territories, the temperature dipped even lower than those in the urban areas. According to a report on TVB Pearl, temperatures in Tai Mo Shan dropped to minus 2 degrees yesterday, and a frost warning was issued. Authorities also encouraged elderly residents and other vulnerable groups to take extra precautions in the cold weather. There were more than 40 cases of hypothermia treated in the neighboring region yesterday.
Idahoans are almost evenly split on presidential candidate Donald Trumps call to ban Muslims temporarily from entering the United States, according to the latest poll released by Idaho Politics Weekly.

It found 47 percent of Idahoans agree with Trump on putting a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, 50 percent dont, and the other 3 percent were undecided. The poll of 604 adults was taken by the Salt Lake City-based firm Dan Jones and Associates from Dec. 17 through 29 and has a 4 percent margin of error.

A majority of Republicans  65 percent  agree with Trump, and 32 percent disagree. Independents and Democrats disagree with Trump more strongly, by 54-43 and 86-13 respectively.

The pollsters found that those who describe themselves as very conservative support the idea 73-26. Those in the 18-24 age group oppose it 65-29, those in the 50-59 age group oppose it 56-41, while those 70 and older support the idea 56-42.

Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the country in early December, after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., by an American-born Muslim and his immigrant wife. Trump doubled down on the idea in his campaigns first TV ad.

Trump has made other controversial statements about Muslims, including his insistence that thousands of Muslims in northern New Jersey celebrated the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Independent fact checkers have found little evidence this ever happened.

Dan Jones Idaho poll also found an overwhelming majority of Idahoans  78-15  dont think President Barack Obamas plan to defeat the Islamic State is strong enough to succeed. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they worry about terrorist attacks happening in Idaho, but 60 percent said they havent changed their daily habits or activities because of terrorism. Seventy-five percent do not believe public officials are overreacting by taking precautions.
Twin Falls  When dairy producers look forward to the coming year, low milk prices are the least of their worries.

We see third party lawsuits and courts as the greatest risk for producers, Rick Naerebout told bankers and producers during the University of Idaho Agriculture Outlook Conference last month.

A case in Washington in which five dairies were sued under the federal hazardous waste disposal law has been an eye-opener for dairy producers across the nation. Especially since the dairies lost the case.

Idahos dairymen responded by reviewing the states regulatory framework and seeking input from hydrologists, regulators, legal counsel and researchers. That feedback shaped suggested revisions to Idahos Dairy Environmental Control Act that will be introduced during the 2016 Legislature.

The industry also formed IDA Consulting Services and hired Stephanie Kulesza to provide nutrient management consulting and public water systems regulation support.

In addition to hiring Kulesza, IDA also held a series of district workshops focusing on environmental issues for dairy producers. This will be followed by nutrient management workshops in March.

Megan Larson explained the nuances of the states drinking water program. Dairies with more than 25 employees must comply with this program. About 60 dairies in the state are expected to fall under the new requirement.

Naerebout anticipates it will be a three-year process to get all those dairies in the system. United Dairymen of Idaho board members will be the first to go through the process.

Qualifying dairies must go through an initial inspection. Follow up inspections will be done every three to five years, Larson said. She is a drinking water program analyst for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. Dairies will also have ongoing monitoring requirements for nitrate, bacteria and other contaminants.

Inspectors will follow the source of water used by employees from the well to the faucet in a bathroom, kitchen or drinking fountain. Lines from the same well that are used for processing should include a backflow device to prevent the well from being contaminated.

Larson said the point isnt too give dairies other regulations to worry about but to protect employee health and safety. But she conceded that a dairy owner cant stop an employee from using a cattle trough to cool off in on a hot summer day.

The Washington case has also led to questions by dairy producers about how to respond if the federal Environmental Protection Agency shows up to do an inspection. Nick Peak, with the EPA Region 10 office in Boise, reminded dairy producers that not a single dairy in Idaho has a NPDES permit meaning that none are discharging into waters of the United States. In contrast, Oregon has 560 permitted dairies.

Idaho is one of a handful of states that has not yet been given permitting authority by EPA, but Peak is hopeful the state will gain authorization in the next five years.

While Peak recognizes dairies are fearful of having an EPA inspector  or someone posing as a federal inspector  show up at the farm gate, he tried to demystify the process. All EPA inspectors carry credentials and business cards. While a member of the general public cant make a copy of those credentials, you should ask for a business card and also the contact information for the inspectors supervisor.

If the inspector cant give a dairy that information, the dairy has the right to refuse entry, Peak said. He also encouraged dairies to follow the inspector and to take photos wherever the inspector does. Dairies can also request that any samples taken be split and sent to another lab.

One of the most important, yet overlooked, aspects of an inspection is the exit interview, Peak said. The inspector wont be able to make a compliance determination in the field but can note areas of concern that a dairy may want to address.
TWIN FALLS  Dairy producers have to know feed rations, marketing strategies and health protocols. Now they are also being asked to know about public drinking water standards and soil health.

Its a lot of information to keep track of.

Thats why the Idaho Dairymens Association has hired a consultant to help dairies with their questions about county planning and zoning regulations, nutrient management plans and water quality.

Stephanie Kulesza has been on the job since mid-October. Events like the district dairy environmental meetings held across southern Idaho in mid-January are helping introduce her to dairy producers.

Today was great, we had a really good turnout, Kulesza said of the meeting held in Twin Falls. Weve had really good discussions about the topics.

Kulesza, who grew up in rural Arkansas, has always loved to hunt and fish which led her to major in environmental soil and water sciences at the University of Arkansas.

Shed never thought much about soil before taking the required soil science classes and discovered a complex ecosystem she had never known before.

Everything is built, grown or buried in soil, she said. I had no idea soil was so complex. I was just fascinated by it.

That fascination led her to Virginia Tech where she earned a doctorate in crop and soil environmental sciences. A connection between her advisor and a scientist at the Agricultural Research Service in Kimberly opened a door to the brand new opportunity in Idaho.

I am impressed by the Idaho Dairymens Association and how proactive the industry is, Kulesza explained. They are good stewards but they want to do better.

She is beginning to work with dairies to work on nutrient management plans and help them with their record keeping. She will also work with the 60-or-so dairies that must comply with the states public drinking water standards.

But most importantly, Kulesza sees her role as helping Idahos dairy producers interpret data from various studies and research new technology and management practices. She sees her role as primarily educational but hopes she can also serve as a liaison between producers and agency personnel.

Thats the interesting thing about this job. I can reach to the regulatory side and to the the industry side, and try to bring them together on common footing, she explained.

Rick Naerebout, director of operations for the IDA, said having Kulesza on staff has already yielded unforeseen benefits for the organization like when he needs to know how many pounds of nitrate or phosphorus a corn crop takes up. Before hed have to look it up, now he can just ask Kulesza.

We know theres a need for dairy producers to know about nitrates, soil health, water quality. These are all primary issues, Naerebout said. Having an expert on staff helps meet that need.
RENO, Nev.  As troubadours, fiddlers and scribes head to northeast Nevada for a national gathering to celebrate cowboy poetry and culture, the topic of the sometimes tenuous relationship between the Old West and the realities of the New West will be more than campfire conversation.

The 32nd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering opens Monday in Elko, a rural community halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City that is similar in its turbulent history to the place about 200 miles away in Oregon where a national wildlife refuge has been seized by armed men protesting federal ownership of land.

The weeklong festival features a slate of speeches and discussion panels about many of the wide-open spaces where conservation is a good word, but environmentalism sometimes is not; where patriotism is revered, but the U.S. government is often despised.

The keynote speech will be given Thursday by a world-renowned cultural and environmental historian who thinks government ownership of land can be a good thing, and it may be the only way to save some of the last great wild places where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains.

Dan Flores latest book, American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, examines the similarity between the wildlife that still exists in the African grasslands and the American bison, antelope, wolves and grizzly bears that roamed the great expanse from the Missouri River to the Rockies when American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark entered the wilderness in the early 1800s.

Until we destroyed it, there was this other historic version of the Serengeti on the plains, Flores says in remarks prepared for the Elko gathering. Between 1820 and 1920, in the largest destruction of animal life discoverable anywhere in the world history, we almost entirely wiped the Great Plains clear of its wildlife. The 19th century Great Plains was a slaughterhouse.

Flores said he isnt sure what to expect in Elko after talking with event organizers who requested he leave the politics at the door as you go in.

They engaged me in a conference call that, as I read it, was kind of a warning about the audience and about what you can say, and what is going to be controversial , said Flores, who was the chairman of Western History at the University of Montana from 1992 to 2014 and now lives outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. The truth is, given the politics of modern America, almost everything you say about the West is controversial. I may be occupied by the militia by the end of the event, but I guess well find out.

Dave Roche, executive director of the Western Folklife Center in charge of the event, said they wanted a keynote speaker who could offer a cultural, social and environmental perspective on the Northern Plains and the American West.

We dont take a political side, but at the same time, we dont step away from the real issues that are working their way in one way or another through the community, and the Western community in general, Roche said.

The ongoing standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, was organized by the sons of Cliven Bundy, a southern Nevada rancher who staged a similar show of force in 2014 at his ranch where he continues to graze cattle on federal land without a permit. They urged Oregon ranchers to renounce U.S. ownership of public land at a ceremony over the weekend and plan to open up the 300-square-mile refuge for cattle this spring.

Such conflict is nothing new to the people of Elko County, or as the leaders of the Shovel Brigade called it nearly two decades ago, the Republic of Elko. In January 2000, the same week as the 16th annual Cowboy Poetry gathering, more than 1,000 people marched through town with parade floats and pickups filled with 10,000 shovels in a protest against the Forest Service in a battle over who should control a remote grave road in a national forest  a legal fight that continues 16 years later in federal court in Reno.

Charlie Seemann, who directed the folklife center for 16 years before he retired in 2014, said at the time the shovel thing put him in an awkward position, but that he understood the frustrations of cowboys, miners and others who work the land.

Just living in this open space, doing the job they do, they have to be self-reliant, he said back then. They dont like to be told what to do.

Seemann doesnt anticipate any tension at this years gathering as a result of the Oregon occupation situation.

There will probably be private conversations among folks, he said, but the gathering is a place that is so much about camaraderie and friendship that it tends to defuse these things.
CALDWELL  One by one, 3,700 milking cows at Beranna Dairy marched into stalls on a slowly turning rotary parlor, forming a spinning circle of cow butts. Workers cleaned the teats, clamped mechanized milking devices to udders and completed pumping milk from each cow in the 10 minutes before the rotary completed one rotation. Once milked, the cows ambled back to the snowy yard.

Idaho dairies recorded near-record-high revenues and profits in 2014, but collapsing milk prices have cut profits by 60 percent at Beranna, a family-owned dairy about 14 miles south of Caldwell, owner Bernie Teunissen said. Dairy revenues across the state have fallen by 27 percent. If prices remain low  and experts predict milk profits will keep falling, perhaps another 20 percent from todays level  dairies could fall into the red, said Derek Teunissen, operating partner and son of Bernie Teunissen.

Wed be looking at paper-thin margins at best, he said.

DAIRIES DRIVE AG

Idaho is the nations third-largest milk producer after California and Wisconsin, with 934 dairies in 2012, according to the U.S. Census.

In 2014, Idaho farms earned nearly $2 billion in profits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearing a record high set in 2013. (The USDA had earlier reported that 2014 was Idahos best year before revising its numbers to reflect revenue drops late in the year.)

The strong year was due to milk prices, said Garth Taylor, University of Idaho agriculture economist. Milk brought in nearly $3.2 billion in revenue in 2014, or 37 percent of all of the states agriculture receipts. Potatoes, the states largest crop, brought in 10 percent.

So when milk prices plunged in 2015, the losses to dairy rendered negligible the gains in barley (up 7 percent in revenues) and sugar beets (19 percent) and losses in crops such as potatoes (down 3 percent) and hay (12 percent).

Consumers are benefiting. Nationwide, the average price for a gallon of whole milk fell from $3.82 at the end of 2014 to $3.33 in November 2015, the last month tabulated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average cost of a gallon in Boise in January was $2.10, according to the data aggregator website Numbeo.com.

Our license plates should read, Famous milk, not Famous potatoes,  Taylor said. Weve changed from a crop state to a livestock state.

As a result, Idaho agriculture revenues fell 9 percent in 2015, returning the state to 2012 levels, he said.

CAUTION BEHOOVES DAIRIES

The Beranna Dairy has been in the Teunnisen family for three generations and has operated in Canyon County since 2000. Its name, said Derek Teunnisen, 26, came in a fit of creativity by joining the names of his parents, Bernie and Anna Teunissen.

Bernie Teunissen, 55, said dairy veterans expect volatile prices. The family invested 2014 profits into equipment, buying three tractors and a dump truck. He bought the equipment outright so he would not be saddled with payments when profits inevitably fall.

We invested in the future knowing leaner times will come again, he said. The first thing you do in down times is cut back on repairs and maintenance. Instead of an overhaul, you might do a Band-Aid fix to get through the narrow times.

The Teunissens declined to disclose revenues.

The downturn is probably not costing workers jobs. Agriculture employment holds steady during downturns, including at dairies, Bernie Teunissen said.

Some buisnesses can shut down, like oil fields, he said. We cant do that. Everything is in a consistent, day-by-day-routine.

Taylor said dairies are much better situated than in 2009, when falling prices and revenues drove about half of Idaho dairies into bank oversight.

Were not approaching that now, Taylor said. Bankers are still pushing money on farmers, saying, Please borrow from us. 

Derek Teunissen said established dairies such as Beranna have the equity to weather downturns like the 2009 crisis, when the family borrowed money to keep the rotary parlor turning. Dairymen paying off expansions struggled or failed, he said. Today, younger dairies heavily in debt could be at risk of folding if prices remain low. Prices are now around the break-even point now and are expected to rise only slightly into the black in the second and third quarters of 2016.

(2009) was definitely a wake-up call to tighten management, he said.  At this point, were less exposed. Were better prepared to handle it.

OVERSEAS PROBLEMS HIT HOME

Economic and political turmoil overseas are driving down prices for Idaho farm commodities, including milk, Taylor said. The value of Idaho farm exports fell by a quarter in 2015 after nearly doubling since 2006.

Trade embargoes designed to punish Russia for invading Crimea are causing an oversupply of milk and other products, Taylor said. The U.S. didnt trade much with Russia, but the European Union nations that did are now competing with U.S. exporters elsewhere on the globe.

The world is awash in farm products, Taylor said. Weve had record-high grain productions, and we have huge stocks overhanging the market.

U.S. agriculture exports are still trying to catch up after a labor dispute at West Coast ports slowed shipping to a trickle during late 2014 before being resolved early last year, said Laura Johnson, bureau chief of the Idaho Department of Labors Market Development Division.

Unable to receive farm products before they spoiled, some overseas buyers turned away from the U.S. and did not return when the port dispute ended, Johnson said. She does not expect exports to increase in 2016.

Its difficult to get those customers back, Johnson said. In the case of hay, when buyers turned somewhere else, they created a glut of product here.

Most Idaho milk goes to cheese, and the global cheese market has 20 percent more inventory than a year ago, said Brent Olmstead, executive director of Milk Producers of Idaho. That oversupply coupled with a strengthening U.S. dollar and a big production year from competitors New Zealand and Australia combined to help depress U.S. milk prices.

New Zealand and Australia are much closer to the Asian markets than we are, and they are having a good year Olmstead said. In agriculture, your success depends on somebody elses failure.

OFFSETTING COMMODITIES

But record-high beef prices have buoyed Idaho dairies, Bernie Teunissen said. Male calves and old milk cows are sold to ranchers and meat processors. Cattlemen in Texas and Oklahoma trimmed their herds when prolonged droughts drove up feed prices, creating a beef shortage and driving up prices.

Cattle and calves were one of Idahos few bright spots for 2015, bringing in $2.2 billion in sales, an 8 percent growth over 2014. But cattle and calf prices have fallen or leveled since November, cutting rancher profits.

Beef prices were holding things together, Bernie Teunissen said. Not only were slaughter cows helping pay the bills, but day-old calf prices helped as well. That collapsed. Were looking at red figures now.

A bad year for grain and hay farmers helps dairies cut feed costs. Many hay farmers have a two-and-a-half-year supply, a glut that drove revenues for Idahos third-largest cash crop down 12 percent in 2015, Taylor said. Hay problems could become potato problems next year, he says.

Farmers are breaking off alfalfa land to put in spuds because its the only crop that will make money, Taylor said. That spells disaster for prices.

The Idaho economy can take consolation in the fact that the poor agriculture year doesnt hurt agriculture employment or the industries supporting farming, such as food processing, Taylor said.

Volatility doesnt transfer to volatility in farm communities, he said. Regardless of the price of milk, the cows still have to be fed and milked. No matter the price of spuds, they still have to be planted, watered and harvested.

Bernie Teunissen doesnt expect prices to fall to 2009 lows, but if they do, he said Beranna is ready.

Dairymen are tough people, he said Weve been through ups and downs before.
HANSEN  Two women who stashed guns and methamphetamine in a hotel safe were arrested in the South Hills after a chase and 40-minute standoff early Monday, police said.

The driver, 22-year-old Sinthia Ramirez, of Kimberly is being held without bond in Twin Falls County Jail. Prosecutors are expected to charge her with felony eluding Tuesday. Her passenger, 26-year-old Brooke Elena Gee, of Pocatello, was released after posting $300 bond.

But both are likely facing more serious charges in Jerome County after deputies there found nearly three pounds of methamphetamine and two guns in a hotel room where the women stayed over the weekend, Jerome County Sheriffs Lt. Dan Kennedy said.

Deputies were called to the Days Inn, 1200 Centennial Spur, about noon Sunday for a disturbance, Jerome County Sheriff Doug McFall said. The women were staying in a room registered to a man who was not there and became angry with hotel staff when the workers wouldnt let the women access the rooms safe.

The staff didnt feel comfortable letting them in because they didnt know the code, Kennedy said.

A hotel employee called the sheriffs department, and while the deputy was following up with hotel staff, the women slipped out, McFall said.

Hotel employees cleaning the room later Sunday called the sheriffs office again after they found the drugs and guns in the safe.

Deputies learned one of the guns was reported stolen in a Twin Falls burglary. Jerome deputies alerted nearby agencies to be on the lookout for the car the women were driving, a red Dodge Charger with a black hood.

A Twin Falls County Sheriffs deputy spotted the Charger about 2:30 a.m. at Kimberly Road and Trade Street, said Lori Stewart, a spokeswoman for the Twin Falls County Sheriffs Office. Instead of stopping, Ramirez turned right on Eastland Drive and led deputies and a Kimberly police officer on a chase southeast through the county toward the South Hills.

The Charger slid on an icy patch and landed in a snowbank on Rock Creek Road about a mile south of Third Fork Campground, Stewart said. For 40 minutes, the women refused deputies commands to get out of the car.

Ramirez eventually rolled down her window, stuck her hands outside and got out about 3:45 a.m., court documents said. Gee got out through the drivers door because the passenger door was blocked by snow.

Deputies found two large, flat-screen TVs inside the car along with other electronics, court documents said. They also learned the car had different license plates on the front and back.

Ramirez was arraigned Monday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on a misdemeanor charge of driving without privileges. Paperwork for the felony count of eluding was not prepared in time for a Monday arraignment.

Charges for possession of the drugs and guns are pending in Jerome County, McFall said.
This appeared in Sundays Washington Post.

By all accounts, Alexander Litvinenko was a bit of a gadfly in London. He once served in the Soviet KGB and later in the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, but after blowing the whistle on some shadowy practices, he fled Russia, fearing for his safety, to London, where he became a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of the FSB that Putin once headed. Litvinenko dabbled in private security work in London while also serving variously on the payroll of the British security service and the self-exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

Litvinenkos criticism of Putin and the FSB rankled some powerful people. Litvinenko was warned that his life might be in danger.

At a meeting with two visiting Russians at the Pine Bar in the Millenium Hotel on Nov. 1, 2006, Litvenenko took a few gulps of cold tea from a pot that had been sitting on the table. The tea was laced with a radioactive isotope, polonium 210. Litvenenko fell ill that night at home and died of acute radiation syndrome Nov. 23 at University College Hospital in London. In his last statement, he pointed a finger at Putin.

Now Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination. Owen concludes that the two Russians who met Litvinenko at the bar, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, deliberately poisoned him, and also tried to do so earlier, on Oct. 16. Moreover, Owen found Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB in an operation to kill Litvinenko  one that was probably approved by the director of the FSB and by Putin.

This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Putin as if he is just another head of state? The British report does not prove that Putin ordered the murder. But at a minimum, he has built a state that operates on the premise that his personal enemies can be wiped out anywhere. The brave journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead weeks before Litvinenko was poisoned; last year, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down near the Kremlin walls.

This is not how normal states behave, and the rest of the world should no longer treat Russia as a normal state. Engagement at working levels has to continue, but the criminality of the Putin regime should disqualify him from the normal interactions of global affairs. He is an outlier in behavior; he should be treated as an outcast.
Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
Tehran and Riyadh do not seem ready to heal their ties any time soon, as reports emerged that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. who once headed the Kingdoms intelligence service, Prince Turki al-Faisal, had a tense exchange during a secret meeting held in Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF.) Zarif denied that such a meeting took place with the Saudi Prince and stressed that there wont be any secret meeting.

The so-called secret meeting is reported to have been centered on ending the Syrian war and was attended by UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa of Egypt, the foreign ministers of Italy and Austria and officials from Turkey and several other Western nations. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are implicated in the war and support different warring parties.

Participants at the meeting said De Mistura deplored that this is the third year we are talking about Syria and not getting anywhere as support is divided between Assad and the rebels. A participant described the meeting as a dialogue of the deaf with Zarif and Turki attacking the policies of each others government.

At a press conference, Zarif criticized Riyadh for promoting sectarian differences in the region between Sunnis and Shias before urging Saudi authorities to come to their senses after they panicked following the attack of their embassy.

Prince Turki questioned Zarifs intentions saying I really like what you say but when I look at what you do, I wonder alleging that Iran has more than 10,000 combatants in Syria fighting for Assad.

In another development, Saudi foreign minister denied a Pakistani mediation between Riyadh and Tehran.
Saudi Arabias ambassador to Iraq, Thamir Sabhan, told Iraqi-based Al-Sumaria TV in an interview that Shia fighters combatting the militants of the Islamic State should lay down their arms because they are not accepted by the sons of Iraqi society.

Sabhan singled out Hashed Shaabi, a coalition of mostly Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq, as one of the groups that should reconsider its participation in the fight against the extremist group because their actions are increasing sectarian tensions in the country.

His comments triggered angry reactions from Iraqi authorities and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the diplomat Sunday to officially protest against what it called an interference in Iraqs domestic affairs and a deviation from the contexts of diplomatic representation.

Also, the Foreign Ministry released a statement hailing Hashed Al Shaabi for fighting terrorism, defending Iraqs sovereignty and working under the umbrella of the State.

Sunnis and Shia are divided over the comments of Ambassador Sabhan with the largest Sunni bloc supporting him.

Member of the parliaments foreign affairs committee Khalid al-Assadi underlined that Sabhan must respect diplomatic customs and stop talking about Hashed Shaabi because its not his business. He warned that they will request that he be declared a persona non grata and be replaced if such interference is repeated.

Khalaf Abdulsamad, head of the Dawa parliamentary list, deemed the Saudi ambassadors remarks a blatant interference and a major insult and called for his expulsion.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Forces Coalition said they are surprised by this political campaign against the Saudi ambassador because his comments, it said, are very natural and carried good intentions towards all their fellow Iraqis without discrimination on caste, race.

The coalition said Saudi Arabia is facing security threats since it decided to resume relations with Iraq and open an embassy in Baghdad.
Egyptian authorities on Sunday said they have seized at least $34 million in assets of the Muslim Brotherhood members since 2013.

The States committee, which is tasked with managing the banned organizations funds, said at a press conference in Cairo that the seized funds include bank deposits of 1370 members worth 154.7 million Egyptian pounds, $2 million, 435,000, 1.3 million Saudi riyals, 9,000 and 16,480 Swiss francs.

The assets also include 105 schools, 43 hospitals nationwide, acres of land and hundreds of cars, the committee said.

According to the committee, all confiscated assets are now being managed by government bodies.

When it comes to the fate of this money, as you all know, when it comes to the issue of seizure, confiscation, according to the Egyptian constitution, confiscation can only happen through judicial decisions, and until now no verdict has been issued to seize this money, and its fate is tied to the verdicts that will be issued in the cases of the Muslim Brotherhood members that are being tried, Ezzat Khamis, the head of the committee told reporters.

In September 2013, an Egyptian court banned the activities of the decades-old Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which ousted President Mohamed Morsi hails.

The court had also ordered the groups dissolution and the confiscation of its offices and funds.

In December 2013, the government declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, blaming it for a spate of deadly attacks on security personnel.

The crackdown against Morsi supporters has been internationally denounced as politically motivated.
The members of the investiture commission of the Republic of Congos ruling party are expected to propose a presidential candidate for the March presidential election on Monday.

Denis Sassou Nguesso has been tipped favourite by many within the party who will consider failure to choose him as a big surprise.

Sassou-Nguesso, 71, led the country from 1979 to 1992 and then returned to power at the end of a civil war in 1997. He was elected in 2002 and 2009 in elections whose results were disputed by the opposition.

He has the chance to stand this years election after amending the countrys constitution through a referendum in October 2015.

The opposition called for a boycott of the poll and one of its leaders described the official results as a fraud.

In late September, thousands of people demonstrated in a rare protest in Brazzaville.

Slogans such as Sassou out! echoed through Brazzavilles central Boulevard as some protesters carried banners reading Sassoufit, a word game that means thats enough in French, the nations official language.

Despite criticisms, the referendum received crucial support from former colonial master France, whose President, Francois Hollande, spoke of President Sassou-Nguessos right to consult the people. President Macky Sall of Senegal also supported the referendum.
The electoral campaign has started in Comoros on Sunday ahead of the countrys presidential election to be held next-month.

Twenty-five candidates out of 28 have been cleared to run in the first round of the presidential elections in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The first round of voting will take place on February 21, with the top three candidates to face off in a second round on April 18.

Former president Azali Assoumani, who launched his presidential campaign in Moroni, reminded citizens that electoral fraud has caused untold suffering in many countries across Africa.

He called on all competent authorities to ensure that transparency reigns during this election. The choice of the next president should not be contested in any way, he said.

The three islands of Anjouan, Grand Comore and Moheli have a total population of just under 800,000 people. About 160,000 are eligible to vote.

Since it gained independence from France in 1975, the impoverished archipelago has witnessed more than 20 attempted coups, four of which were successful, but it has enjoyed relative stability in recent years.
TB infected lung. Credit: ATS

New research finds that the most commonly used test for tuberculosis fails to accurately diagnose TB in up to 50 percent of pregnant women who are HIV+. The research published early online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine is believed to be the first study to compare the accuracy of two TB tests - the Quantiferon Gold In Tube blood test and the more commonly used TST or tuberculin skin testin this population. The study "Quantitative IFN-?, IL-2 Response and Latent Tuberculosis Test Discordance in HIV-infected Pregnant Women" is also the first study to examine pregnancy's effect on the body's response to TB.

The researchers' aim in this study was two-fold: (1) to assess the accuracy of TB tests in diagnosing a highly contagious and world-wide public health scourge in patients who are doubly at risk and (2) to find a method to identify which women carrying latent TB infection are most likely to develop active TB. In latent TB the individual is infected but does not show any symptoms. Some individuals with latent TB go on to develop active TBthe form of the disease that causes symptoms in the carrier and transmission to others. While a healthy, functioning immune system can keep the infection in check, pregnancy and HIV infection, which compromise the immune system, increase the chances of developing active TB. Therefore, there is a critical need to improve diagnosis.

"The World Health Organization and many governments endorse the TST because it is a cheap and ubiquitous test," said lead study author Jyoti Mathad, MD, MSc, Instructor of Medicine in the Center for Global Health at Weill Cornell Medical College. "However, our over-reliance on this single test means that we are failing to detect and treat a potentially life-threatening infection in tens of millions of high-risk women."

"We found that QGIT positivity was almost three times higher than the more widely used TST at every time point tested," noted the authors.

Dr. Mathad and her colleagues enrolled 252 women who were in their second or third trimester and receiving care at a public teaching hospital in India. The women received TB testing at enrollment during pregnancy or at delivery. An additional 39 women participated in a longitudinal study to assess how the TB tests were affected by changes in different stages of pregnancy. They were tested at delivery and three months postpartum. The researchers also collected blood samples to assess for levels of infection-fighting proteins.

"Our blood data suggests that pregnant women produce lower levels of the immune chemicals that many TB diagnostics look for. This finding has implications beyond diagnostics," said Dr. Mathad. "For example, not all pregnant women lose immune control of TB infection. But, currently we have no way of predicting which women are most likely to get sick from the disease. Our findings about these immune chemicals provide a starting point for developing a test that will tell us who in this already high-risk population is at greatest risk of disease and death and is in most need of treatment." She added that this insight about indicators of risk would also benefit other high-risk groups such as the elderly, young children and all people who are HIV positive.

In terms of the broader significance of their findings, the researchers would welcome a greater effort to include pregnant women in future medical studies. "...pregnant women have been excluded from all 40 trials of new TB drugs that are ongoing today," said Dr. Mathad. "Some of the caution is justified, but, oftentimes, it is simply the path of least resistance. This habit - and habit is all that it is in many cases- exacts a toll on women worldwide. Pregnant women often get stuck taking longer regimens of outdated drugs due to a lack of research."

Explore further Foreign-born students in US have higher case rate of TB
PPH Butterfly in a folded position. Credit: University of Liverpool

Professor of International Maternal Health Andrew Weeks from the Institute of Translational medicine has been awarded 850,000 to further develop an award-winning device that could save the lives of women all over the world.

Postpartum Haemorrhage (PPH) is often defined as the loss of more than 500 ml or 1,000 ml of blood within the first 24 hours following childbirth. PHH is a common maternity emergency affecting 40,000 British women each year and which can lead to long lasting complications. Globally, it remains a major cause of death and is responsible for around 25% of the 289,000 maternal deaths annually. Although common, its management has changed little over the last 40 years.

Professor Weeks and his team have worked in collaboration with the University of Liverpool Department of Clinical Engineering, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Universities Hospital NHS Trust, Liverpool Business Gateway units, Protolabs, Plastribution, and Pelican Feminine Health Care to develop a device, the PPH Butterfly, which not only stops the bleeding immediately, but also helps to diagnose its source.

The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) fund have awarded Professor Weeks 850,000 to take his research forward and to test the device's safe use in the management of PPH in women experiencing a PPH.

PPH Butterfly in folded out position. Credit: University of Liverpool

Of the award Professor Weeks, who is also a consultant obstetrician at the Liverpool Women's Hospital, said: "The award is a tribute to strong partnership working with the University, the NHS and Industry partners. Whilst as a clinician I could see a clinical need, it took many collaborators to produce the final product and my thanks go to them for their contributions.

"This funding is fantastic news for the project, and will really help us to undertake further design work, develop a training package for those who will use it, and to test the device on women experiencing PPH."

Professor Weeks and his team were also recently awarded the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network Award for Innovation for the device.

A video about the device can be seen here:

Explore further Preventing postpartum hemorrhage
Larry DeWerd, a professor of medical physics at UWMadison, directs the University of Wisconsin Radiation Calibration Laboratory, which tests and calibrates radiation-measurement devices from around the nation and beyond. Credit: David Tenenbaum

As radiation sources used to map disease and attack cancer grow in number and complexity, a University of WisconsinMadison center continues to offer the last word on accurate radiation doses.

From its headquarters in the basement of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, the University of Wisconsin Radiation Calibration Laboratory fine-tunes instruments used by clinics to measure radiation doses from X-ray machines, CAT scanners and medical linear accelerators used to treat cancer.

"We are one of three institutions in the United States that base our accuracy on devices verified by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology)," says director Larry DeWerd, a UWMadison professor of medical physics. "And we provide calibration to approximately 60 percent of the U.S. medical physics market."

By measuring an unknown instrument against a known one, the process of calibration creates a correction factor that clinics can use to ensure safety and accuracy of the dose, says DeWerd.

DeWerd, who received his doctorate from UWMadison and has worked at the lab since its inauguration in 1981, credits John Cameron, founder of the world's largest department of medical physics at UWMadison, with help in the startup. "I was talking with him about a calibration lab, and he thought it was a great idea."

The lab has a full set of equipment, such as radiation sources and calibration devices, 10 employees and 15 graduate students. "Our students get a hands-on opportunity to do research and work in the lab," says DeWerd. "We provide education to users as well as calibrate their devices. We do charge fees for our calibration services, and most of the graduate student research is supported by fee income."

As radiation sources evolve, "we need to ask questions so these new devices can be used safely and effectively," DeWerd says. "The organizations and clinics that buy calibrations from us are funding necessary research while they get a service that's only available from two other sources in the nation."

The high-energy photons created by X-ray machines, CAT scanners, medical linear accelerators and radioactive decay are called ionizing radiation because they can strip away electrons to ionize atoms. Medical radiation is measured by sophisticated ionization chambers that create an electrical current when exposed to the ionizing radiation. This electrical current is read out by an electric meter that can provide the radiation dose.

To begin a calibration study, the lab measures a beam of radiation using a chamber that has been calibrated at NIST and is accurate to within 0.5 percent. Then clinical medical physicists place chambers owned by clinics, hospitals or cancer centers in the beam.

"We first measure with our chamber, which has been tested at NIST, and then measure their chamber in the exact same beam," says DeWerd. "If our chamber measures 100 units, and their chamber measures 105, that establishes the correction factor they must use to obtain an accurate measurement from their chamber."

After being returned to its owner, a calibrated chamber may be used for two years before recalibration is needed.

Half a century or so ago, the dosage from X-ray machines and accelerators could vary significantly, DeWerd says. Although calibration has changed all that, innovations in medical systems continue to overturn the field. One significant advance comes from steerable radiation treatment machines like the TomoTherapy machine. This device, invented at UWMadison and still manufactured in Madison, "shapes" a beam and "shoots" it at multiple angles. Both measures are intended to reduce damage to healthy tissue while tumors are irradiated.

External radiation beams are not the only sources needing calibration. Lab researchers have also been calibrating an innovative sheet radiation source designed to treat multiple cancer sites. Continual advances in "brachytherapy"the placement of small, contained sources of radioactive isotopes inside the body to treat canceralso raise research questions.

Beyond servicing radiation oncology and radiology clinics around the nation and far beyond, the lab calibrates for some of the UWMadison spinoffs that sell calibration devices to industry. These businesses, like the lab itself, trace their roots back to John Cameron.

"Our emphasis is standards; making measurements and tracing them back to the primary numbers from NIST," DeWerd says. "We also work closely with NIST. Sometimes we do original research and pass it on to them. Or they do the research, and we put their results to work for us."

Explore further NIST PET phantoms bring new accuracy to medical scans
Demyelination by MS. The CD68 colored tissue shows several macrophages in the area of the lesion. Original scale 1:100. Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Marvin 101/Wikipedia

Treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory diseases may benefit by new findings from a study that identified potential therapeutic targets for a devastating disease striking some 2.3 million people worldwide.

Inflammation is an important part of body's response against infections and tissue damage, but unresolved inflammation contributes to the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases and promotes cancer development.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, described a protein regulator known as Trabid as an important piece of the puzzle that leads to autoimmune inflammation of the central nervous systems in MS patients.

Study results were published in the Jan. 25 online issue of Nature Immunology.

"Our findings highlight an epigenetic mechanism for the regulation of the cytokine genes, IL-12 and IL-23, and established Trabid as an immunological regulator of inflammatory T-cell responses," said Shao-Cong Sun, Ph.D., professor of Immunology. "Trabid appeared to regulate histone modifications by controlling the fate of a histone demethylase called Jmjd2d."

Cytokines are small proteins important for cell signaling, and IL-12 and IL-23 are mediators of inflammation and associated with inflammatory diseases. Sun believes that Trabid and Jmjd2d may be potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of inflammatory diseases such as MS.

"Since chronic inflammation is a major risk of cancer, future studies will examine whether Trabid and Jmjd2d also have a role in cancer development," said Sun.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL-12 and IL-23 connect innate responses and immune responses and are also involved in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, said the researchers. The innate immune system, also known as the nonspecific immune system, is an important subsystem of the overall immune system that comprises the cells and mechanisms that defend the host from infection by other organisms.

"Cells of the innate immune system including dendritic cells and macrophages, have an important role in regulating the nature and magnitude of adaptive immune responses," said Sun. "They recognize microbial components including various receptors that trigger intracellular signaling events that impact the function of those cells. Deregulated production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by cells of the innate immune system also contributes to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases."

Sun's team found that deletion of a protein-coding gene known as Zranb1, which encodes Trabid, in dendritic cells inhibited expression of IL-12 and IL-23, impairing differentiation of inflammatory T-cells. The process protected study mice from autoimmune inflammation.

More information: Epigenetic regulation of Il12 and Il23 gene expression and autoimmune inflammation by the deubiquitinase Trabid, Journal information: Nature Immunology Epigenetic regulation of Il12 and Il23 gene expression and autoimmune inflammation by the deubiquitinase Trabid, DOI: 10.1038/ni.3347
This image shows the coding region in a segment of eukaryotic DNA. Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute

An international coalition of researchers led by Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientist Swapan Nath, Ph.D., has identified 10 new genes associated with the autoimmune disease lupus. The findings were published in the Jan. 25, 2016 issue of Nature Genetics.

Nath and his colleagues analyzed more than17,000 human DNA samples collected from blood gathered from volunteers in four countries: South Korea, China, Malaysia and Japan. Of those samples, nearly 4,500 had confirmed cases of lupus, while the rest served as healthy controls for the research.

From that analysis, the researchers identified 10 distinct DNA sequence variants linked to lupus, a debilitating chronic autoimmune disease where the body's immune system becomes unbalanced and attacks its own tissues. It can result in damage to many different body systems, including the joints, skin, kidneys, heart and lungs. More than 16,000 people are diagnosed with lupus in the U.S. each year, and it affects as many as 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people worldwide, according to the Lupus Foundation of America.

"We know lupus has a strong genetic basis, but in order to better treat the disease we have to identify those genes," said Nath, a member of OMRF's Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program. "Large-scale studies of this magnitude are becoming the gold standard for locating genes associated with autoimmune diseases like lupus."

Thirty-seven researchers from 23 institutes, hospitals and universities in the United States, Malaysia, Korea, China and Japan took part in Nath's study.

"These findings mark a significant advance in our knowledge base for lupus genes," said Judith James, M.D., Ph.D., director of OMRF's Autoimmune Disease Institute and Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program chair. "For every gene we identify, it brings us closer to uncovering the trigger for this puzzling disease. It's good news for researchers and patients alike."

In the study, one gene in particular, known as GTF2I, showed a high likelihood of being involved in the development of lupus. "GTF2I seems to be one of the key players in lupus susceptibility," said Nath. "Its genetic effect appears to be higher than previously known lupus genes discovered from Asians, and we surmise that it now may be the predominant gene involved in lupus."

With these new genes identified, Nath and his colleagues can try to pinpoint where defects occur and whether those mutations contribute to the onset of lupus pathogenesis. Nath said that understanding where and how the defects arise will allow scientists to develop more effective therapies specifically targeting those genes.

The ultimate goal, said Nath, is to understand the disease better and develop personalized intervention therapies for patients based on their genetic makeup. "We are a long way from that point, but huge collaborative efforts like this help to get things going."

Explore further Low vitamin D levels linked to lupus

More information: High-density genotyping of immune-related loci identifies new SLE risk variants in individuals with Asian ancestry, Journal information: Nature Genetics High-density genotyping of immune-related loci identifies new SLE risk variants in individuals with Asian ancestry, DOI: 10.1038/ng.3496

Provided by Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
Ellen Volpe, assistant professor in the UB School of Nursing. Credit: Douglas Levere

For teenagers from low-income households, trauma from bullying, parental abuse and dating violence often goes untreated, since many families can't afford traditional therapy.

In search of a less expensive, yet effective, form of therapy, a new study led by University at Buffalo behavioral health researcher Ellen Volpe will investigate the effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy (NET) at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse among adolescents who have experienced multiple traumas.

The pilot study, "The Effectiveness of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) for Diverse Populations Experiencing Multiple Traumas," is funded by the Mentored Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health's Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program.

"Trauma is like a book on a shelf full of memories that a person has no control over in terms of when or how it is experienced," says Volpe, PhD, assistant professor in the UB School of Nursing. "Narrative exposure therapy helps reestablish the link between memories that were destroyed by trauma, allowing people to have more control over the book."

These links, says Volpe, are what holds together cold, or contextual, memory, such as people, places and events, and hot, or sensory, memory, which includes smells, images, sounds and more. The destruction of this link can cause people to relive a traumatic experience after being triggered by a specific sense, such as a war veteran experiencing PTSD symptoms after hearing exploding fireworks.

NET is a cognitive behavioral therapy that helps participants reconstruct fragmented, traumatic memories into a clear, personalized story. The brief therapy, which can be completed in 12-16 sessions, helps rebuild the memory by asking participants to recall details such as their age during the experience, the timeline of events, their hopes or fears and notable sounds, smells or other senses.

The therapy has proven effective in treating trauma in foreign countries affected by natural disasters or war. Volpe will work with Buffalo and Rochester community agencies to lead the first investigation testing the therapy with American adolescents ages 16-21 who are affected by interpersonal violence.

"Across the board, the big difference between recoveries from trauma among adolescents is access to care, whether due to cost, transportation or competing demands," says Volpe. "Often, these kids are victims of multiple forms or episodes of violence, creating a snowball effect on their mental health."

Nearly 70 percent of urban, low-income, minority youth reported undergoing violent trauma in some form, whether it be bullying or abuse, says Volpe. And although not every person who experiences trauma develops PTSD, the experiences place teenagers at risk for depression, substance abuse, high-risk sexual behavior, abuse in future relationships and involvement in the criminal justice system.

If proven effective, Volpe believes NET will provide a cost-effective therapy to offer in low-income, community settings.

Volpe will complete her research under the mentorship of Margarita Dubocovich, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB; Rina Das Eiden, PhD, senior research scientist in the UB Research Institute on Addictions; and Alan Hutson, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Jennifer Read, PhD, professor in the Department of Psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, is an additional investigator.

Explore further Researchers study virtual reality exposure therapy to treat military sexual trauma-related PTSD
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Soldiers of Odin running wild in Finland

Panu Hoglund

The breaking news from Finland is that the country is alive with self-appointed protection guards who call themselves the Soldiers of Odin. Yes, you understood it correctly: the name of the organisation is in English, and it refers to Odin, one of the gods in old Scandinavian paganism.

Even though Finland is usually understood to be one of the Scandinavian countries, it should be remembered that we have our own language and mythology that has little in common with the old Nordic gods. It would be equally ridiculous if a gang of street fighters in Ireland would call themselves Les Poilus de El Cid Campeador. Now you are probably wondering what the hell French soldiers and a Spanish national hero have in common with Irish identity. Absolutely nothing, of course  as little as Soldiers of Odin have with Finnish identity.

It seems that the Soldiers of Odin were somehow inspired by the so-called Finnish Resistance Movement, a violent right-wing gang which is basically just the Finnish chapter of what is called the Swedish Resistance Movement. This is a movement hellbent on converting the Nordic countries into one Fascist state  which would leave the Finnish language in a minority position with the rest of the country conversing in their own languages, which are no more different from each other than Irish and Scots Gaelic. Everybody knows what will happen to a minority language in a Fascist country. However, the people of the above-mentioned movement have the sheer cheek to insist that they are protecting the culture of Finland.

Youd think that there were no need for such clowns to come and teach our culture to us. For in days of yore, newspapers and magazines in this country were staffed with columnists arguing back and forth about Finnish identity. In fact it was a standing joke in Finland how obsessed we were about views regarding our identity. Everybody had their opinion, especially historians, and the telly was filled to the brim with documentaries about this.

Since then, though, things have changed. Right-wing radicals have put an end to this kind of small talk by terrorising the press and columnists to keep mum about Finnish identity. They think they are the only ones who can define it  although they are so ignorant of that identity that when they are looking for a name for their fisticuffs guards, they can only think in English, and only think of a Scandinavian pagan god.

Many Anglophile Irishmen are of the opinion that, for instance, the 100-year jubilee of the Easter Rising should not be celebrated, because its only a celebration of violence. I must say that I dont agree with them at all. There might indeed be aspects of the Rising that can be criticised, but when all is said and done it is part of Irish history  the key event that started modern Irish history.

Moreover, the struggle for Irish decolonisation inspired many Irish nationalists to compare Irelands plight with that of the Third World, and to express solidarity with the people of the Third World. Thus, the best part of Irish nationalism is a shield of protection against racism. Forgetting that nationalism, Irish people would only open the gates to a much more racist, much more brutal understanding of nationalism  that represented by the Soldiers of Odin and similar gangs.

Panu Hoglund is a Finnish writer of Irish expression.
School uniforms and identity in multi-ethnic Ireland

Fidele Mutwarasibo

The first sociology essay that I wrote shortly after my arrival in Ireland, just over 20 years ago, took on the subject of school uniforms in post-colonial Africa. In the essay, I reflected upon the wearing of blazers in places where the temperature at times exceed 35C. I also discussed the positive aspects of school uniform in terms of setting aside issues like socio-economic status by virtue of their egalitarian nature.

In my primary school years, the uniform was compulsory  and a tool for exclusion of those who could not afford it. Countless people I knew dropped out of school because they did not have a uniform. In my secondary school days it was different: in theory there was a school uniform, but there was no strict enforcement and I hardly ever wore it.

My views on school uniforms are ambivalent and have not paid too much attention to them for the last 20 years except when the uniform debate arises in a family context or in the media in the context of religious symbols.

In a wider context, in my sociological research and practice endeavours, I have been interested in looking at symbols of power and authority, status, identity, citizenship and so forth. As such, the school uniform has to be seen in a wider context beyond its mundane perception. Indeed the recent debate on laicite  the absence of religious influence  in French schools brought to the fore the essence of the school uniform as a significant symbol in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies.

Dramatically changed

At a recent event in Dublin, a young person of migrant background narrated her experience of the move to university as an awakening. While her identity had not been questioned when she was wearing the school uniform, her experience changed dramatically when she started getting compliments in relation to her English, and conversely, being told to return home.

Dublin is her home and she considers herself to be a Dubliner. Furthermore, it has been a while since she lived in her parents country of origin and hence has little attachment to the country. She said she was unable to comprehend how the change in peoples attitudes towards her as a person dramatically changed once she no longer wore her school uniform.

She even went further and jokingly said that if she had known this was going to happen, or indeed if she had been warned by her career advisor, she would have pursued a career in banking to continue her life in uniform. Its truly a sad state of affairs when one contemplates hiding their identity under a uniform in a multi-ethnic society such as 21st-century Ireland.

Imagined community

I have been reflecting on her experience since and decided to share this story with others in order to stimulate a debate and contribute to discussions on what Irishness means today. This experience reminded me of the work of Benedict Anderson on imagined community, and how often the whats imagined is not in line with the actual community.

To simplify things, the imagined community refers to how members of the inner group sometimes called indigenous society perceive themselves. The definition of imagined community comes about when the inner group contrasts itself with an outer group; in this context, the outer groups are migrant communities.

We are all aware of how representation and mass communication can challenge or indeed reinforce the imagined community, and in extreme cases alienate those who dont feel that their identity is reflected in the imagined community. Yet culture and indeed identity are not static but dynamic.

Ireland is lucky to be one of the latest countries of immigration. And we can maximise the learning from Irish emigrants experiences in other countries; the learning from missionaries and development workers who have served overseas; and the experiences of countries with the history of immigration.

Challenge our attitudes

As a society, we will have to develop our own pathway. This is especially the case in terms of learning from other places with an immigration history. The traditional models of guest workers, assimilation and multiculturalism have shown their limitations. Ireland has already outgrown the recommendations of publications such as Integration: a Two Way Process in 1999, the National Action Plan Against Racism in 2005 and Migration Nation in 2008, and will undoubtedly advocate interculturalism in the forthcoming Integration Strategy.

Interculturalism is underpinned by interactions between members the inner groups and migrants. Encouraging interactions between all members of society will help in building intercultural competences  all groups learning to understand and respect each other  and challenge our attitudes towards members of various communities that are now part of the pluralistic Irish community. This will in turn help us in seeing and engaging with individuals as people, whether or not they are wearing a uniform or any other symbols.

Having said that, the diversity messages will only sink in when all members of society are able to identify themselves in the politicians we elect, the media we consume, the civil service that serves the community, the teams that represent the nation, the gardai who police our communities, or our immigration officers who welcome us at the port of entry. As the adage goes: a lot done, more to do.

Dr Fidele Mutwarasibo is principal consultant at Dileas Consulting and a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.
Dublin City Council and Forum Polonia recently gave Polish nationals the opportunity to learn more about setting up and expanding a business in Ireland.

The consultation meeting, held on Thursday 12 February at Dublin City Councils Civic Offices on Wood Quay, was aimed at providing a better connection between immigrant entrepreneurs and the resources available to them.

It attracted a wide range of people from both established businesses and recent arrivals, with some Poles visiting from as far as Cork to seek information.

The Polish Embassy Trade and Investment Section and other focal points for the Polish community in Ireland have recently noted an increase in queries regarding the setting up of businesses both in Ireland and in Poland.

Marcin Klinkosz  the owner of a company providing publishing, graphic and web design services  said: Many Poles who consider having a business in Ireland lack the most basic information about how to get started and how to operate in the Irish economy.

Most of these people have funds to invest and, considering the current economic climate, would prefer to invest their savings rather then having to borrow.

Dublin City Council invited US Fulbright scholar Prof Jack Pinkowski to conduct research and draft recommendations for polices and plans that may contribute to greater success of immigrant entrepreneurs.

He said: I have found that there is a good deal of resources already established by various authorities in the regional and State Government levels, however people from immigrant communities dont know about them. It could be due to the language or to trust in the Government.

Involving new communities in business, job creation and community activities requires bridging the gap between available services and immigrants access to them, he added, explaining that more understanding of how immigrants engage and how they negotiate the circumstances of living in a new country is necessary to bring their full potential into play.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns Meet The Boss, Viktor Posudnevsky speaks to Maija Bernat, owner of the Studio M tailoring business in Dublin city

In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns Meet The Boss, Viktor Posudnevsky speaks to Maija Bernat, owner of the Studio M tailoring business in Dublin city



Its hard to find a good jacket for your dog



With her business booming, professional dressmaker Maija Bernat is turning to new forms of tailoring  like making clothes for canines. Dogs are the best clients, laughs Bernat, originally from Lithuania. They never complain.

Bernat spotted a gap in the market and now has three regular canine customers. She takes their measurements at her shop in central Dublin and makes various garments for them. Its quite hard to find a good jeans jacket or a good leather jacket for your dog in Dublin, she observes. It can be a real problem for pet lovers.

Bernat started her own tailoring and alterations company, Studio M, in March this year, and says that trade is going well, especially during this Christmas season. The lively Lithuanian first came to Ireland three years ago without any experience in running a business. She was, however, a very experienced dressmaker, and this was enough to land her a job in a Dublin tailoring shop.

The owners were very nice to me, she says. I had no English at the time, but they believed in me and after a while I could speak the language and was friendly with a lot of customers.

After two years at the shop, Bernat started dreaming of running her own tailoring company. I saw that it was a good business and I wanted to give myself a try, she says. Her bosses supported her and helped set up what is now Studio M.

One can see how people quickly take to Bernat  she has a warm, bubbly personality and seems to really appreciate her customers, some of whom pop in and out as she talks to Metro Eireann at her shop.

When she started out, Bernat says she only catered for Lithuanian and Russian-speaking customers due to her location in the same building as Kazak, a popular eastern European shop. But now up to half her clientele is Irish. How was she able to attract such a large Irish following  something most immigrant-run businesses are struggling to achieve?

Its all word-of-mouth publicity, she replies. I think its the best form of advertising in Ireland. You do a good job for somebody and then they return to you and tell their friends about you.

Bernat has also engaged in more proactive promotional campaigns, which have yet to prove fruitful. She says large department stores like Marks & Spencer and Clerys usually employ small independent dressmakers like herself to make alterations to their clothes to suit their customers figures  and a contract with any of these stores would mean a great business boost for Bernat. However, despite her many attempts she has so far been unable to secure an agreement.

They dont tell me no, but they dont give me work either, she says. I think there is a bit of mistrust on their part and theyre just waiting to see if Im still around in a years time.

She is determined to keep trying, but in any case, this Christmas she finds herself inundated with work. Bernat have even had to employ an additional tailor to cope with all the orders.

She presently does not feel the onset of recession, although many of her friends and acquaintances do, and believes her services can actually help people save money.

A lot of women are now buying very cheap dresses at Christmas sales and then they take them to me, she says. I tailor the dresses to suit their figures and add a few titbits if they ask me to. For them it turns out much cheaper than buying a readymade dress. Increasing numbers of customers are coming to her to mend their old clothes.

Bernat believes Ireland is a good country for doing business and often compares it to her native Lithuania. Its much harder to start in Lithuania, she says. You have to pay a lot of taxes and duties. Here you only have to pay 20 to register and then you dont have to worry about taxes until youve finished a year in business.

According to her, the main problem for immigrant entrepreneurs is the lack of information on the various support structures in existence. She would also like to get to know more people who work in the dressmaking business.

I believe in Ireland personal contact is vital if you want to grow you business. But where can I find those personal contacts?



Would you like to have your business profiled? E-mail news@metroeireann.com
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Jennylynd James of Caribbean Enterprises, bringing Caribbean food to Ireland.

A weekend at the Electric Picnic is going to use up plenty of energy  even more so if youre working there, as Jennylynd James was two weekends ago.

Im still exhausted from the experience but it was worth it, says James, who was on site as part of the festival farmers market, selling her Taste of the Caribbean food range.

Trading at events for the past three years has given James the know-how to run her own show effectively, but it still means pre-dawn starts from home in Waterford to bring fresh produce each morning. But since her food usually proves a big hit  Jamess potato pies and vegetable patties sold out every day, keeping the festival-goers, well, going  shes happy to put in the hours.

James, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago and holds a PhD in food science, came to Ireland after six years in California, where she built up her background in food science.

I was working in the technology, research and development end of the food industry as a technical manager for a while, she says. But I wanted some European experience, and was considering the UK when I applied for a job with an Irish company and got the position.

James is an industry expert in food safety and has written extensively on the subject, including peer-reviewed articles on food biochemistry and tropical fruit operations in Latin America. Her most recent scientific publication is the book Hazard Identification in Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.

With her experience in quality assurance and food development, James knew she could make a go of it on her own when she decided that she actually didnt like the concept of being employed. Her business, Caribbean Enterprises, started small and has grown gradually. I import spices, herbs, some sauces and teas straight from the Caribbean; Saint Lucia and Jamaica, James explains. Some of the items I get from London. I organise air freight of coffee and chocolate and other cocoa bean products from suppliers in Trinidad.

However, rising transport costs are causing her to make some changes to her business. As freight is getting more expensive, I have decided to concentrate more on developing my own brand, made here in Ireland, she says.

The response to her products has been phenomenal. The Taste of the Caribbean range (www.caribbeanireland.com) now includes outlets at Dun Laoghaire Farmers Market, specialty food shops around Ireland and at events nationwide, which are well worth the early starts. You get to know the organisers of these events, and thats the way you get your name around for doing other things, says James of her networking skills.

Based in Waterford, James also has the use of a dedicated industrial kitchen space at one of the Dublin City Enterprise Boards (DCEB) units in the capital. Her latest product sauces include Rasta Pasta, Jamaican Jerk and Bad Boy Pepper sauce. The latter is the hottest chilli sauce you will probably ever taste, says James.

It was a challenge thrown down to me by my Irish customers who wanted something really spicy and I developed it especially for them. It really should come with a health warning! Most of her clients are Irish, with some from the Caribbean and Jamaica. Everyone is pleasantly surprised to find a Caribbean food stand at an Irish farmers market, she laughs.

James also promotes her products at trade fairs, the next being Shop Expo at the RDS at the end of this month. Such exhibitions can be prohibitively expensive for small start-ups. But I have been lucky to get involved with the DCEB, says James, and I am exhibiting as a participant of theirs on a reduced rate.

She also reaps the benefits of being a member of the DCEB Women in Business network, finding their advice and mentoring a great help. Getting training at lower rates has been brilliant. I knew my science, but have had to learn the accounting and marketing side of business. James praises the value of making contacts in this network, and has already employed members to build her website and manage her accounts.

Some might ask why women entering business are afforded special treatment. According to James it is because they face particular obstacles and need the encouragement. Men still dominate in business, women rear the family and then need the extra help if they then choose to go into business, she says.

She agrees that many women are not motivated by profit alone. Although it is necessary to turn a profit, women want the freedom and flexibility that running their own businesses gives them.

Having sold some property in California before her move to Ireland, James was able to self-finance her own start-up, and she says that the best piece of business advice she ever got was to avoid pensions and buy property. Im doing what I want, and thats the bottom line for me.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Mikolaj Grzeskowiak, baker/co-owner of cakes4u in Dungarvan, Co Waterford.

Mikolaj Grzeskowiak was a pharmacy student in Poland when he decided he was on the wrong career path. He had always felt drawn to another type of chemistry, the type that happens with yeast and heat and sugar. So, following his instincts, he embarked a career in baking, learning his craft in Poland and getting qualified with a Masters in craft confectionery.

Soon he was running his own business in Poland, before relocating to Germany and Cyprus to pick up more skills in the industry. I loved working in Cyprus, plenty of relaxing in the sun too, says Grzeskowiak, whose itchy feet brought him across Europe in 2004 to Youghal, Co Cork, where he met his partner Juta Latvena from Latvia. The couple realised they could open their own bakery, and in 2007 they started looking for premises and equipment after moving to Dungarvan, Co Waterford.

Sourcing most equipment second- hand saved some money, as the couple used their own savings for capital, without taking out a loan. I got stuff from eBay and Buy and Sell, says Grzeskowiak. Neither did the pair get any help from enterprise organisations as they just did not think to ask, recalls Grzeskowiak.

There was, however, invaluable help from the local health officer, who advised on proper facilities for the premises. Grzeskowiak says that this advice on health and safety was presented in a very helpful and productive manner. This advice was very important, especially for the food preparation. The couples hard work and sacrifice has paid off, and their bakery and cafe, cakes4u, is now in full production of yeast buns, biscuits, cream buns, cheesecakes and birthday cakes, among many other treats.

According to Grzeskowiak, they produce about 70 different products each day, mostly confectionery, but we do also breads and rolls along with coffees and teas. Grzeskowiak and his partner feel that their combined experiences bring a touch of German, Cypriot, Latvian, French and Polish tastes to the bakery. The business is a very handson enterprise: baking, selling, serving and deliveries are all done by the couple themselves.

The shop is steadily building up its customer base with commissions for specialty cakes, as well as the supply of freshly baked produce to other outlets in Waterford. The only thing is that this is not the best location, says Grzeskowiak. We are a little bit too far from the main shopping area, and I need to think of ways of bringing more business to us as we do not have as much passing trade as I would like.

He admits that finding the perfect location is an art, and that it can be difficult to get the right space in a town centre. I am considering another location but it must have the space for preparation, storage, staff, customer tables, toilets and the display area. With the economic situation looking leaner, does Grzeskowiak feel that he could be in an advantageous position to negotiate with landlords? Maybe, we will see, he says.

Another cloud on their horizon is that costs are rising daily. We do not want to up our prices and lose customers either, but it can be hard with our costs also rising, says Grzeskowiak. I was surprised at the fact that it is a very quiet period here during the summer. We have some schools near to us and it will get busier when they go back to school. We will be busy in the run up to Christmas, too.

Despite these issues, Grzeskowiak is proud to be still in business, which is difficult. His advice to anyone else thinking of running their own bakery is to get premises in a large town, and to choose the location well. You know, we are not in this just for the money, he says. I enjoy what I do; we can decide something and then make it happen, it can be fun. We may not have big financial success yet, but I dont really want a fat Mercedes anyway.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Satish Desigar of Celtic Cuisine, providing desserts to Irelands restaurants.

Whose childhood dreams did not revolve around a career in a sweet factory  or better yet, designing fabulous cakes? Satish Desigar is one man who is living that dream, producing some of the most tempting confections you are likely to find on your dessert plate anywhere in Ireland.



A member of the Association Culinaire Francaise and the Academy of Culinary Arts, Desigar trained at the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in Mumbai, India. In the first few years after getting his degree, Desigar literally went around the world.



I worked as chef and head chef in hotels in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt, St Petersburg in Russia, France and the UK, says Desigar who was born in India but is British. It was while living in the UK that he met his Irish wife, Kate. We lived many years in the UK before moving to Canada, he adds.



Desigars wife worked in human resources at the Four Seasons hotel in Toronto. The exclusive chain was about to establish itself in Ireland and wanted some Irish staff to relocate for the opening, so the couple decided to make the move. It was tough at first, as Desigar could not find work when the couple returned at the beginning of 2000. With all of my years of experience around the globe I could not get anything, he says.



It was timing more than anything as there wasnt much happening at the level I was looking, he explains.



A friend and colleague working as a head chef at Jurys called on him as a consultant, but Desigar was looking for something different. He knew that in Ireland, many top hotels would not retain their own pastry chefs but were starting to look for higher quality desserts, the type that might be more labour-intensive and easier to produce offsite.



I knew that I could supply a five-star standard of desserts, says Desigar, and I created a niche to do this.



After locating and equipping a premises, Celtic Cuisine was up and running, starting to bring sweetness to the tables of millions of diners in Ireland.



To get the business and contracts necessary, Desigar went to meet chefs at their hotels and discuss their menus. These guys knew that I knew my stuff. We create desserts to exclusively suit their needs and they know that as a chef I will deliver the standard required.



Irish people love their chocolate, says Desigar. Chocolate desserts are the most popular. We do dark chocolate truffles, white chocolate and raspberry, chocolate and chilli, pralines. But fruity desserts are also big  we do mango, coconut, passion fruits, strawberries, blackcurrants.



Celtic Cuisine, however, is only half of the business. Desigar and his wife have since expanded into Paddy Raj, an oriental catering company. Using family recipes, handmade curries, satays, spring rolls and Indian snacks all properly made are supplied to corporate clients and functions.



And then there is their latest venture of Tarte Tatin delicatessens in Dun Laoghaire and Cabinteely, where customers can bring home fresh cakes, quiches, pies and tarts. The shops are proving popular, with rave reviews. But its not all sweetness and light.



I find that there is an immense amount of paperwork involved in running a business in Ireland, says Desigar, who feels that there is very little encouragement if you are an entrepreneur here.



The biggest backbone of the Irish economy is the small to medium-sized business, he says, adding that there are too many regulations and heavy penalties for missing a form or being late with a VAT return by a day.



I want to expand this business, but as a small business there is a typical crunch time where cash flow can be an issue. He cites the period of credit that he must extend to his buyers as a problem for all small to medium- sized businesses. In Ireland this is a very long period and can be very hard on small businesses.



Celtic Cuisine currently employs 10 people, but there is little safety net for self- employed people. The Government benefits from people like us financially but gives very little support. Desigar is looking to expand his staff and his customer base: A business gets to a point where it needs to jump but that requires investment. The real satisfaction, according to Desigar, comes from making things happen. If I want to buy a piece of equipment or if I have an idea, then I can act immediately on that. Working for someone else would involve having meetings about it and then going from A to B to C before it could happen. I love doing what I do.



Would you like to have your business profiled? E-mail news@metroeireann.com
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Isam Khalaf, the founder of Kinzna Technology Partners, based in north Dub.

Being headhunted sounds an ominous proposition, but it in reality it offers opportunities to the hunted that may otherwise not have come their way. Isam Khalaf was working in Jordan for a company that represented international firms in the local IT market when he was headhunted to work for software solutions company CR2 in Ireland.

He came for an initial two-week training period in 1999 to see what it was like  and decided to stay. The company soon put him in charge of the market in the Middle East region, which involved some travel back to the Gulf, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Khalaf had studied computer science in the US and was now spearheading the internet banking market. A period with a telecoms company followed, where Khalaf learned the mobile business and saw the huge potential for banking services online via mobile phones. But even with a successful career in internet banking systems and development, Khalaf always felt that there was more I could do and that I could do it better.

With more trust being placed in internet banking and with mobile phones proving even more secure, banks were looking to transition their business to the mobile market. Khalaf was perfectly placed to deliver solutions to the industry, and he decided to strike out on his own. His company, Kinzna Technology Partners, is structured on an organic and progressive style of management. Workers are treated with a partnership approach. People work with us in different capacities, says Khalaf, but the key people have a share in the company.

These stakeholders have an influence in all decisions, we sit and discuss things. One of those decisions was to not have a traditional structure. We decided that there is no need for us to establish an organisation of sales, management and support all over the world. We do not sell our service to banks; we sell to those who sell to banks and we provide the providers. These providers are the companies that sell the likes of ATM services to banks, and Kinzna targets these companies to take on its product. There are only five of these companies in the world, says Khalaf. We started talking to them; they are our gateway to the market. The internet banking process itself cannot be patented, but the service that Kinzna provides is to streamline and adapt to banks specific requirements.

Mobile internet costs are also coming down, and Khalaf says that there are some Irish companies offering broadband on your mobile for as little as 4.50 per week with plenty of speed and storage. He defends the size of mobile phone screens for banking purposes, and says it is not really an issue as layouts are designed specifically for that size (not to mention that phones with much larger screens are available in growing numbers).

Further education is still on the agenda for Khalaf, who holds an MBA from the Michael Smurfit School of Business and a newly acquired Masters degree from Dublin Institute of Technology in new business development. Yet he does not believe in putting many letters after his name. You know what you know and thats it. In business you can think that you know it, but you dont, you must always be learning, he says.

Problems and their solutions must be looked at from many perspectives, he explains, adding that one of the lasting lessons he learned during his MBA was to get the full picture.

The only regret Khalaf has about starting his own business is that he did not do more things in parallel. With his next venture he says that he will be talking to more people all at the same time, to speed things up. He also admits that being an entrepreneur can be a lonely occupation, with its ups and downs. Confirming that technology is changing fast, Khalaf says it behoves a company to always move, change and look forward. So what is his next big thing? I cannot tell you that at the moment, he smiles.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Felicia Omari Ochelle Olima, founder of Citas College in Dublins city centre...

One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching is the ability to change the direction of peoples lives and to make a real difference. Felicia Omari Ochelle Olima founded Citas College, on Dublins Middle Abbey Street, for precisely this reason.

It was an Irish school principal at the Holy Rosary convent school in Gboko, in Nigerias Benue State, who recommended Olima come to Dublin to further her studies back in the 1970s. I studied for my degree in marketing at the College of Marketing and Design when it was on Parnell Square, and then completed my Bachelor of Science and MA at Trinity College, she explains.

Work experience with Guinness at St Jamess Gate turned into a permanent post, and eventually her professional membership of the Marketing Institute of Ireland. It was a great company to work for then, says Olima of the brewery. I still use some of those experiences in running my business now, including flexible working time for my staff.

Olimas husband was at the National University of Ireland in Galway at this time, studying medicine, and the couple also had four children, which was tough, there was a lot of running around between nursery and schools. I could only attend to my own studies when they were all fed, homework done and gone to bed.

Olima transferred her skills back to Nigeria for a time and worked with the Benue Brewery. She returned to Ireland with a new outlook and embarked on further study in computers and information technology. When I started looking for work it was hard, she recalls. I sent out 300 applications, but to my dismay I did not get anything. At the time in the 1980s I was probably one of the first black women on the jobs market and that was certainly a factor in not getting work. I started working for free for some companies just to get experience. Olima was training people in computing for free at a Fas community project when she was advised to start charging for her service  it was then she knew that she could run her own business.

The Dublin Business Innovation Centre assisted her by renting her desk space, and with two computers on loan, she began trading in January 1996. The centre also put her on a business start-up training programme. After one year, Olina moved on to premises at Middle Abbey Street, where she has traded since as Citas College. The college offers IT training to various levels and accreditations, including the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), Microsoft Office Specialist, City and Guilds, and the Further Education and Training Awards Council (Fetac). Courses run throughout the year, with no term-time as such, though summer is a popular time as the universities are closed and we get many students during this time, it makes good business sense. Citas College is now on four floors and employs 12 trainers, English teachers and five administrative staff.

The college attracts its students by word of mouth and through the internet. Many courses are aimed at mature students returning to work and international students. I love to see the change in a person when they learn some new skill, says Olima. It is very rewarding to know that their life will change because of this new skill. I love to do the hands-on teaching, she adds, but there is so much more paperwork to attend to for the international students that I get to do less teaching.

The industry is well regulated, and rightly so, but when it comes to dealing with the different sections within Government departments, I need two full-time staff just to handle non-academic paperwork  things like attendance records, travel permissions and time sheets for each student. Olima says that if she retires tomorrow, it will be because of the paperwork for immigration purposes. It is too much, she sighs. There must be another way to make the process more streamlined.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Noemi Beres, who operates the car hire agency ReservaCar Dublin Airport.

Noemi Beres came to Ireland from Hungary four years ago with a background in language studies. I am a Danish-Swedish linguist and when I finished university, myself and my husband wanted to travel and try something different. I got the first job that I applied for, which was in Ireland, so we came here, she says. That job was with an international call centre support service in Dundalk that needed Danish speakers. At the same time, the lack of a Hungarian community in Ireland prompted Beres and her husband to find a more international circle of friends, which has also helped with their English.

You really need to have some level of English to make a start here, says Beres. You dont have to be perfect, but as we learn a British type of English in school, understanding the Irish way of talking is a new experience. As a linguist, Beres suggests that watching television and listening to the radio are good ways to learn a language. And to find out what is going on locally too. Having settled into life here, Beres decided she wanted to set up her own business. I saw that starting a business in Ireland could be more straightforward here, she explains. Back in Hungary there are more restrictions, and I wanted to take the opportunity here. Beres went to a franchise exhibition to explore what was on offer, and did some market research on the internet. She soon found an ideal niche in the car rental business.

I knew nothing about car rental up until that point, now I know plenty! she says. The franchise deal offered Beres full training and a package which included marketing tools, a website and contacts. It is an online company, says Beres. This enables people to get the best deal while booking car rental. Beres business, ReservaCar Dublin Airport (reservacardublinairport. com), acts as an intermediary between various car rental companies and customers for both airport and holiday car hire worldwide. We are able to offer good deals on rental because, for example, we are affiliated with insurance for hire companies in the UK, so we would be buying bulk insurance, she says.

There are some things that Beres had to learn herself, such as local knowledge and legislation. Although the franchiser helps a lot in the beginning, now we have to market ourselves, find clients, get ourselves known in the marketplace. Her language skills are invaluable at this stage, as Beres can advise clients on deals, explain driving rules in different countries and sell her own service in a couple of languages. My call centre experience is very handy now for dealing with people by phone and explaining things to them like why they cannot have a left hand drive car here, she says.

The main piece of advice Beres has for anyone looking at a possible franchise opportunity is to read everything. Go through all contracts with your solicitor, she emphasises. Be prepared for all eventualities. Beres feels that many women do not take the plunge into starting their own business as they fear failure. But not starting a business for that reason is a failure in itself. Just because something does not work first time around, that is not a failure.

She finds that the business community in Ireland provides a very supportive atmosphere. Im part of the Irish Business Womens forum online and they are good for advice and help. Its one of the things I like about Ireland, the support I receive.
SANDY HAZEL speaks to Asheesh Dewan, founder of the Jaipur chain of Indian-influenced restaurants...

Asheesh Dewan moved to Ireland for the love of a woman. Her name is Rupa, and I came here because of her, he says. The couple met in India, where he had completed his Masters in hotel management and was training as a chef. After my studies I decided that this was definitely for me, he remembers. I loved it, particularly the Italian and French cuisine. With a few years of experience under his belt, Dewan opened one of the first Italian restaurants in India at a Hyatt Regency hotel. That was in the early 90s, says Dewan. The hotels in India usually had an Indian restaurant to keep the tourists happy, but more of them were bringing in French and Italian too, which the Indians were starting to enjoy. There was also a big influence from Chinese cooking, and Indonesian cooking in India became truly international around then. Dewans experience made him the perfect candidate for the expansion of Indian cuisine into Hyatts hotels abroad. I was travelling a lot, all over the world, planning and setting up restaurants for Hyatt in their hotels. It also involved recruitment and training of staff. It was during this period that Dewan could see for himself how the world was changing. 

The world of catering, cooking and cuisine was becoming more progressive. People wanted more taste and variety, they were more demanding. In particular people wanted more from Indian food. He admits that at that time Indian food, outside of India, was very flat, almost generic. A set type of menu cooked in a certain number of ways. We were changing that concept. When Dewan married Rupa, they made the decision for him to relocate to Ireland as long-distance commuting was not conducive to a happy relationship. The couple naturally used their culinary expertise to set up a restaurant. Although I had the experience, local knowledge is hugely important, says Dewan. Essentially we knew that the UK experience of Indian restaurants was going to be different to the Irish experience and expectations. They soon put in an application for their first restaurant, a redevelopment at 41 South Great Georges Street in Dublin, and the first Jaipur opened in 1998. At the time it was not a very happening place so it was a bit of a risk, says Dewan. The couple got to work, changing the look and the menu in a way that surprised Dubliners, but in a good way. It was different to what people were expecting of an Indian restaurant, but we got a small following and they stayed with us, recalls Dewan.

Reviews were consistently good and after a year and a half the business took off. Sometimes things can be a bit slow to grow, but a slow burner of a restaurant has a better chance of long term success than the overnight sensations that are incredibly busy for a few months and then the crowd is gone, on to the next fashionable place to be seen. We are here for the long haul. Dewan does not depend on favourable reviews for custom. A review can be so subjective. We will just keep doing what we are doing anyway as we know it is good and people like it. With business on Georges Street going great, the couple were confident to grow their brand and have since expanded to open Jaipur restaurants in Dalkey, Ongar, Malahide and Greystones. Jaipur now employs 90 people in Ireland. Not all locations work to the same formula, however. We were offering an early bird menu at Ongar which just wasnt being taken up by customers, explains Dewan. This meal was popular at our other restaurants so we couldnt understand it. We started to ask around and get more local knowledge.

Dewan discovered that the timing of the early bird menu at the Jaipur in Ongar coincided exactly with the commute of the local residents who were working in Dublin. Obviously we had to change the times to suit these people and we made it later so they could avail of it, he says. But while scheduling is important, its whats on the plate thats the key. Food makes everything tick, says Dewan. You can have the fanciest room but its the food that will make the place work. A fantastic venue with great views will not last if the food isnt up to it.

Asheesh Dewan is the winner of the permanent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2008.
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Maria Angolo, founder of the Life Line Nursing agency, based in Dublin City Maria Angolo has been in Ireland for 27 years. Arriving here from Namibia to study nursing, Angolo attended the Madonna Nursing College at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway. At the time it took three years for a nurse to receive her certificate, she says. My work experience after graduating was in Merlin Park Hospital in Galway which I loved".

After a stint at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Angolo realised that midwifery was not for her, so she took a job as a staff nurse with the Highfield Hospital group. I wanted to be earning more than a student nurse so I went for the salary, she explains. I liked to socialise a lot and I also enjoyed shopping for nice clothes, so earning money was important to me then. Angolo then moved to St Marys in the Phoenix Park to work as a staff nurse for the health board.

This was mainly care for the elderly and I discovered that although there are many who would not enjoy this work, I had found the work I really wanted to do, says Angolo. This type of patient can be very demanding, both physically and emotionally. It can involve the hard parts of care. But the reward and job satisfaction is immense. The patients and their families are so appreciative of the integrity and dignity involved in this type of care that you get it back in spades. They are very grateful. Another chapter began for Angolo when she had a baby and found, as many do, the difficulties of reconciling a demanding job and a small child. An early drop to the childminder followed by a busy day on the wards and then sometimes working until 9pm, it needed a rethink, she says. Angolo considered her options: job sharing or agency work. She did some of the latter for a while, but she was still undecided.

The more I thought about it I knew that there were other people like me who really wanted to choose the hours they worked, she says. The best option would be to open my own agency. Angolo registered for a licence to operate as an employment agency from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I had no real business experience but I just registered my documents and jumped right in, she says. I was able to run the agency from home as I had the space. One room was for reception and booking the placements, and we had another room for interviewing candidates. The first step was to get health workers and nurses onto the books. We advertised, and I couldnt believe it when people started walking in and registering, she recalls. When there was enough staff on the books, Angolo then wrote to hospitals and homes to advertise her agencys services for staff to cover holidays and sick leave. The bookings soon started to roll in, and the agency was up and running.

Life Line Nursing now has nine staff and over 400 nurses and care assistants available on the books. I did not struggle at all, the response from hospitals and from staff was all positive. It was amazing, says Angolo. Her business was recently the recipient of the Best Business Idea award at the permanent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. She puts the success of the agency down to the common sense formula of staff needing flexibility, and hooking up with hospitals needing flexible staff. Some people do not want to be in stable employment and on a roster of work, she explains of her agencys philosophy.

Life Line has recently expanded and moved to larger premises. We offer courses, induction and work experience for care assistants so they know exactly what is expected of them on the job, says Angolo. We also do training in manual handling of patients for care workers and lifting loads for general workers. Chronic back injury is common in health professionals and we aim to help reduce the risk. A good care assistant is one who, according to Angolo, can learn from experience and interact well with colleagues. They need to be able to look around and see what needs to be done and muck in and do it, they do not stand with hands behind their back. It is team work. Indeed, Angolo recognises the dedication of her own workers. The agency would not be here without the work of my own team, and I thank them for that. Would you like to have your business profiled?

E-mail news@metroeireann.com
In the latest instalment of Metro Eireanns MEET THE BOSS, SANDY HAZEL speaks to Terry Whelan, a Dublin-based butcher specialising in South African produceYou get more than meat when you deal with Terry Whelan, a long established butcher on Parnell Street. As a retailer, he interacts with people all day, and philosophy is high on the list of conversation topics. The relationship that a person has with their butcher is hugely important, according to Whelan. Meat is still regarded as the best source of protein and iron for nutrition, and Whelan says that people have long preferred to give their money to the butcher rather than the doctor. He adds: If you eat well, you stay well. People do not necessarily want their butcher to be cheap, either: They want quality. The relationship is one of trust. They know they are getting fresh produce from me.

Whelans customers are traditionally women who shop for families. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, smiles Whelan  but more often these days there are young couples shopping together, and during our interview a Hells Angel who had travelled from Wexford arrived to buy meat for 30 tonight. After an initial apprenticeship from the age of 16, Whelan trained in senior meat management at the College of Marketing and Design. That course was more about the science of meat, but you also learned how to get the most value and the best price from different cuts of meat. I then learned killing at the slaughterhouse, which I think is important for a butcher. After working for other butchers for some years, Whelan decided to go it on his own. The lease on his current premises on Parnell Street in central Dublin was a risk at the time. Parnell Street is very busy and vibrant now, but at the time, 10 years ago, it wasnt as developed and business was mainly local with only some passing trade, explains Whelan, now a member of the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland. But as the area began to flourish  and inspired after a visit to South Africa  Whelan saw that there was a market in Ireland for different types of meat.

In South Africa I experienced foods that were not available here, he says. I saw that other new communities in Ireland were being catered to with foods from home, but the countries of southern Africa werent really represented in the marketplace. Whelan took a chance and ordered a 40-foot container worth of produce from South Africa. I havent looked back since, he says. His butcher shop now stocks fresh beef biltong, fresh droewors, many varieties of boerewors, Ouma rusks and the bestselling Iwisa maize meal  used for making the traditional African porridge dish, pap. Whelan now has extra storage facilities along with his premises at Parnell Street, and there are plans for a site outside of Dublin in the future. Whelan is also proud of an online store that he says is now a very popular way for customers to order. With a web designer recommended by my accountant, I set up TableMountainFoods.com and all meats are delivered refrigerated by courier, he says.

Its a strategy thats beginning to pay off. Whelan is considered an artisan producer; the products stocked by Whelan are featured regularly in food magazines, and his cured hams and pastramis have won gold medals at prestige competitions in the UK. But his main customers are still the locals, with Africans and Indians making up a significant number. The Indian girls go for the lamb, of course. I try to cater for everyone but I do not do halal as that would mean a whole separate system to keep and store the meat, says Whelan. My meat doesnt travel far; its from a farmer called Hegarty at Baltinglass in Wicklow. This week I have made a special lamb boerewors for the Africa Day celebrations and special hampers for some of the embassies. Whelans advice for anyone starting in business is to tread very carefully, especially where payments are concerned. I have been stung before but you learn.

And his own favourite meat dish? Steak and chips, with eggs. Would you like to have your business profiled? E-mail news@metroeireann.com
@MichaelAuslen

A lawmakers pitch to ban abortions in Florida will be heard Monday afternoon, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated its long-standing ruling affirming womens right to the procedure.

Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Keystone Heights, is proposing to make performing an abortion or operating an abortion clinic a first-degree felony in Florida, punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

Hes put forward similar legislation every year since 2010, but it has never before been considered by a committee, the first step required to pass a bill into law. That changes at 4 p.m., when the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, will hear debate on the bill (HB 865).

The Legislature finds that all human life comes from the Creator, has an inherent value that cannot be quantified by man, and begins at the earliest biological development of a fertilized human egg, the bill says.

Read the full story here.
@MichaelAuslen

Surgeon General John Armstrong this week faces his first Senate confirmation vote, and Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, is preparing to ask some tough questions.

Gaetz gave Gov. Rick Scotts top health official a heads-up in a letter sent Friday on seven questions that could come up Tuesday morning when the Health Policy committee decides if Armstrong should keep his $141,000-a-year job. At the heart of them are position cuts in the Department of Health and in county health departments, which Armstrong oversees, even as diseases like HIV grow in Florida.

Since 2012, when Armstrong was appointed, the number of positions in DOH has decreased from 17,107 to 14,358. Scott is asking for an additional 718 cuts next year.

Over that same period of time, HIV infections have risen dramatically in Florida, even as they fell nationwide. Miami-Dade and Broward counties now lead the nation in new HIV cases per 100,000 residents. In the letter, Gaetz asks Armstrong to clarify that data, as well.

And he wants more information about the subject Armstrong most often talks about: obesity, which some advocates say he has focused on to the detriment of disease prevention.

You have clearly and persuasively articulated your goal of reducing childhood and adult obesity  Is there data available that shows the positive impact of your efforts, Gaetz wrote.

Many of the jobs that could be cut are what Gaetz calls phantom positions, which means theyre jobs that arent currently filled but are left on the books in the state budget. And many of the cuts during Scott and Armstrongs tenure have hit county health departments that serve poor communities and those without insurance.

Even with the governors extraordinary success in promoting a million private sector jobs, there are still large numbers of persons looking for work or training for jobs and, at present, are without health coverage, Gaetz wrote. What is the appropriate source of primary care for these individuals who otherwise have to rely upon either the county health departments or free/charitable clinics?

Gaetz is one of six Republicans and three Democrats on the Senate Health Policy committee, which failed to confirm Armstrong last year.

Times Tallahassee Bureau chief Steve Bousquet contributed to this post.
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The Runner's Edge Treadmill Challenge/Youth Homes Fundraiser is scheduled at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3 at Runner's Edge, 304 N. Higgins Ave.

Buy a $10 ticket to watch 12 of Montanas best runners (six men and six women) duke it out treadmill-style in front of a live audience for the title of King and Queen of the Treadmill. There will be a prediction contest, Big Sky Brewing beer, music and live announcing  all to raise money for the Youth Homes.

For more information, visit runnersedgemt.com/events/treadmill/.

***

Valley Christian School plans an open house on Thursday, Feb. 4, at 5:30 p.m. for all families interested in learning more about preschool through high school Christian education.

Parents and students are encouraged to attend. Valley Christian School focuses on the whole-childs education for 4-year-old preschool students through high school graduation. Attend this event for your chance to win a $500 scholarship for the 2016-17 school year. RSVP at admissions@valleychristian.org or 549-0482 Ext. 231.

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Its time to clean out your jewelry collection. The used jewelry you no longer wear can find a new home and help support programs and services for older adults in Missoula County. Donate it now to Missoula Aging Services for the Wear It Again Jewelry Sale that will take place this June. All proceeds from the sale go directly into programs such as Meals on Wheels and Respite Care, benefitting older adults and their caregivers.

Donations of womens costume and fine jewelry, mens accessories, watches, jewelry boxes, vintage jewelry and more are being accepted now until the sale in June. Please bring your donations to the MAS office, 337 Stephens Ave., weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. If you cant get to the office, call 728-7682 and MAS staff will arrange to pick up.

***
"We were truly blindsided by the sale," said Chairman Brad Johnson.

"Have these people taken leave of their senses?" asked Commissioner Travis Kavulla.

"Of course, they jumped the gun," Commissioner Bob Lake said of the parties to the sale.

This month, The Carlyle Group sold Mountain Water Co. to the subsidiary of a Canadian company without consideration by the Montana Public Service Commission.

It's a deal Mayor John Engen considers illegal given a judge's order that ruled the city of Missoula has the right to buy the water utility  a right he said the city intends to exercise.

At times, members of the Public Service Commission have been more amenable to business interests when pitted against concerns raised by the Montana Consumer Counsel. But the sale between private companies without their review left commissioners flummoxed.

The five representatives are elected to oversee private utilities in the state, and they hadn't given the parties a green light for a transfer  or a red or yellow one.

"We feel that this was a frontal assault on our constitutional and legislative authority to regulate the utilities," Johnson said. "And we have to respond as forcefully and in as timely a manner as we can."

Commissioners have requested the parties answer questions about the deal, and on Friday, they will review responses.

It isn't clear whether global investment firm Carlyle and buyer Liberty Utilities of Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. have any incentive to respond, considering their decision to sidestep the PSC process. However, Kavulla said he hopes to hear from at least the Montana Consumer Counsel and the city of Missoula.

A variety of remedies to the Mountain Water sale are possible, from litigation to levying fines, Johnson said. He stressed the body is only discussing options at this point, but he also said commissioners don't believe they should let the matter go unattended.

"To a member, the commission agrees that the response must be swift and forceful," he said.

***

The issue puts a spotlight on the level of authority the commission wields.

"When the PSC reviews transfers and sales, we do so not invoking a specific statute," Kavulla said. "There's no law that says the PSC has to approve a sale. It just logically follows from statutes that give the PSC general supervisory powers over utilities it regulates."

When the commission gave Carlyle permission to buy Mountain Water in 2011, it did so on condition that the PSC "fully evaluate" any future sale by Carlyle of assets worth more than $1 million. A separate court proceeding in the city's quest to buy Mountain set the price for the utility at $88 million.

In 2007, the commission denied the sale of NorthWestern Energy to an Australian company, Babcock and Brown Infrastructure. In their order, commissioners said "the proposed transaction presents the risk of harm to NorthWestern's financial integrity and to Montana customers."

Soon after that ruling, BBI filed for bankruptcy, Kavulla said. Had BBI owned NorthWestern, he said, its own financial problems would have thrust NorthWestern into another bout of bankruptcy after emerging in 2004.

"The upstream ownership of utilities clearly matters," Kavulla said.

In the sale of Mountain Water this month, though, the commissioners did not have the opportunity to investigate Liberty Utilities or its parent company, Algonquin. Johnson said a judge had temporarily stayed the proceeding, so the PSC process was on hold by court order.

Commissioner Lake, whose district represents Missoula, said the inability of the body to review the business deal before a sale does "a disservice to the consumers in Missoula."

"You can't shortcut the process, even though they'd like to," Lake said. "If that was the case, everything would get swapped around, and the consumer would be sitting out there with nobody looking out for their interests."

The commissioners could go to court to try to reverse the sale, although he isn't suggesting any one remedy at this point, Johnson said. He said they could levy "some pretty hefty fines" if they find Mountain Water in violation of their orders, or limit the payment of upstream dividends from Mountain to the parent company.

"We certainly could make sure that none of the associated costs with all of this would in any way be transferred to ratepayers," Johnson said.

***

However the case ends up, the sale doesn't reflect favorably on Liberty, Kavulla said. The company appears "flaky" at best and even untrustworthy, he said, and it has given state regulators reason to regard it with skepticism.

"If their behavior can be so inconsistent on this matter, what does it say about them in general?" Kavulla said.

Last week, the city of Missoula asked Missoula County District Court to appoint a supervisor to oversee Mountain Water to ensure the asset stays intact while the parties sort out disputed costs.
The 1961 Polaris Sno-Traveler looked like a set of blue-painted scaffolding next to the sleek, molded plastic bodies of the other snowmobiles in the parking lot. But on Sunday, it was the one that was getting the most attention.

The Polaris, owned by Jerry Swanson of Hamilton, was the oldest taking part in a vintage snowmobile show that was a part of Lolo Winterfest.

Even before that, some of the very earliest ones were little more than motorcycle engines attached to skids, said Tom Mullins, who organized the inaugural event held at Lolo Hot Springs.

Swanson had purchased the Sno-Traveler, along with a few others, when he lived in Maine about 25 years ago.

Last weekend was the first time I got it running in all that time, he said.

The other two snowmobiles he brought to the show were 1973 models from both John Deere and Harley Davidson, the latter of which only made snowmobiles for around five years in the 1970s.

This things been ridden continuously since then. The previous owner kept it at a cabin on Seeley Lake and they would ride it ever winter, he said.

Dale Richmond wandered through the collection, which included snowmobiles from big names in the industry like Arctic Cat and Ski-Doo to lesser known makers like Brut. Richmond said he had been riding snowmobiles since he started delivering the newspaper on his dads eight horsepower 1964 Polaris when he was 12 years old.

Ive probably owned more than 100 in my life, I used to fix them up and sell them, he said.

Instead of sharing a snowmobile of his own at the show, Richmond had brought along a binder full of original promotional materials and brochures for classic snowmobiles. He said he had started collecting the pamphlets when he was in high school.

I would just write to every company asking for them to send me stuff on their new models, he said.

Between the bed of his pickup truck and the trailer he was pulling behind it, Matt Whetzel of Arlee brought eight of his snowmobiles to the show.

Ive found them everywhere. In wheat fields, barns, behind the shed, and just ask if they are for sale, he said.

Whetzel said he appreciated how many people had come to Lolo Winterfest, especially as it was a brand new event.

Across the highway from where most of the vintage snowmobiles were parked the organizers of Lolo Winterfest had set up a series of timed courses for riders, including slalom and barrel racing. The events were open to both vintage and modern machines, with the factor separating the two being the lack or presence of independent front suspension, Mullins said.

Mullins placed second in the slalom on his own vintage snowmobile, a 1978 Kawasaki Invader.

I think that means Im the first-place loser, he said.
Since the mid-'70s, when the Arab oil embargo struck gas-happy America hard, politicians have been endlessly repeating the mantra of energy independence. So far, its propelled us into useless and endless wars in the Middle East, runaway and highly intrusive oil, gas and coal production on federal lands and offshore waters, and billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to giant energy corporations that could and should, in a free market society, be standing on their own. But the myth that we have to exploit all of Americas energy resources as soon as possible to be energy independent is obviously over. The globe is swimming in petroleum and its time our elected policymakers recognized that reality. Unfortunately, that doesnt seem to be the case.

It was somewhat baffling last week to hear Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock announce he was joining Republican Attorney General Tim Fox in blasting the federal proposal to withdraw almost a million acres of federal lands from future mining in an attempt to recover the greater sage grouse. Once numbering in the millions across the sagebrush sea of the Great Plains, the sage grouse population has been reduced so significantly that the bird was a candidate for listing under Endangered Species Act last year.

While many prominent scientists and conservationists believed the sage grouse should have been listed as threatened and appropriate recovery mechanisms put in place, its fair to say that listing was derailed not through science-based logic, but strictly for political reasons and, mostly, with an eye toward the upcoming 2016 elections. In this regard, Governor Bullock was giddy over the federal governments decision not to list the sage grouse. Instead, he trumpeted his Montana plan to protect the bird, despite the fact that he arbitrarily decreased the protective distances for industrial activity from the recommendations of his appointed advisory council.

But now, having avoided using the Endangered Species Act to protect and restore the dwindling sage grouse, Governor Bullock seems to have contracted a case of Sarah Palins drill, baby, drill syndrome. Mores the pity, since by doing so he is throwing away a golden opportunity to ensure the birds existence for generations yet to come.

In a nutshell, if were experiencing a global petroleum fuels glut, why wouldnt Bullock take this opportunity to embrace, not oppose, the chance to recover the sage grouse?

The facts are indisputable and particularly evident in the reality that Americans are filling up their fuel tanks this week with gas going for less than $2 a gallon in most places, including Montana. Oil on the international market dropped to about $26 a barrel last week. With the end of Iran sanctions, another half-million barrels a day are headed to market and that output is expected to grow. Market analysts predict U.S. oil output may surpass Saudi Arabias by 2020. Theres already so much domestic oil production that Congress foolishly lifted the ban on exporting crude oil initiated during the '70s with the express purpose of keeping American oil onshore.

Yet, for some unknown reason, none of these hard facts seem to penetrate the campaign-driven barriers surrounding our politicians brains. Energy independence? We achieved it. Need more when theres a glut? No, we dont. Is it even economically viable to keep drilling when predictions are that oil will remain below $60 a barrel for the next decade? Well, if the precipitous decline in new drilling in the Bakken area and eastern Montana are any sign, then no, it wont be viable to punch in new wells until the price of oil goes back up.

So why not take this opportunity to give sage grouse what they need and deserve most  protection from the intrusion of industrial activity into the areas they require for mating, breeding, and raising their chicks? If Governor Bullock was a true leader, hed acknowledge that we have a unique moment in time to give the sage grouse a break from industrial encroachment for a decade if not more. During that time its very possible that healthy, sustainable populations of sage grouse might return to the sagebrush sea in numbers that will allow for continued fossil fuel extraction if we need it.

The insistence on producing unneeded fossil fuels by Bullock, Fox and newly announced gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte makes no sense, yet these are our candidates for Novembers ballot. Its tragic that by living in the past theyre blowing a golden opportunity to make a better future for all Montanans.
Following years of consideration, a decision is soon to be made regarding one of Missoulas most treasured sites, the Missoula County Fairgrounds. Preserve Historic Missoula would like to ensure that people are aware that three of the four alternatives would involve major changes to our historic fairground.

Those three proposals would totally and permanently remove the horse-racing track along with much of the midway. Not only is the loss of horse racing the loss of a traditional and much-enjoyed activity, the loss of the racetrack  part of the original design of the fairgrounds  will alter the fairgrounds to the extent that its historic character will be drastically impacted. As will major changes to the midway. Those impacts, along with the reconfiguration of the fairgrounds to accommodate new construction buildings and parking lots, could result in the fairgrounds having its listing on the National Register of Historic Places stripped.

Listing on the National Register of Historic Places involves the recognition of a site or building(s) to make significant contributions to an areas history, of the people and events affiliated with it, and of significant architectural features; its not easy to meet the conditions for listing. A groundswell of community support contributed to get the fairgrounds listed on the national register for all of those reasons. People wanted to honor and help preserve the fairgrounds association with our communitys agricultural history, along with the special times and traditions weve experienced over many, many years.

The ability to stroll along the midway will change. Following a visit to the few remaining historic buildings to see whose photographs, or pies, or dahlias, or livestock won a ribbon, will we be able to look forward to helping some of our local civic organizations in their annual fundraising by buying our favorite fair foods? Those organizations would be required to sell their fair food from a mobile kitchen, the price of which would disallow many to participate.

Building an event center at the fairgrounds could be a boon to Missoula, but such significant alteration of the current fairgrounds and removal of the racetrack and probably the midway at its current proposed location will cause the generations-old Western Montana Fair experiences to be lost. Not only do local folks like to visit the fair and perhaps relish the opportunity to experience an historic tradition, so do others. Cultural tourism contributes much to the areas economy, and many of our areas unique attractions have strong and important historic ties. The fairgrounds is definitely one of these places.

We would like to see the racetrack retained as part of the historic fairgrounds, as well as the midway. And we regard the fairgrounds listing on the National Register of Historic Places to be important. As Missoula grows, we need to keep in mind what makes Missoulas identity special and unique. Our cultural traditions and our historic resources are integral to that.

The Missoula County Fair Board Advisory Committee is meeting Monday, Jan. 25 at 11:30 a.m. at the fairgrounds, Building 12, to discuss and select a proposed alternative to recommend to Missoula County commissioners. All are welcome to attend and to express their concerns and interests. We hope you share your concerns regarding the historic resources and experiences of the fairgrounds.

Preserve Historic Missoula is an independent (not affiliated with any city or county government entities) and not-for-profit organization which for over 10 years has been dedicated to the history and historic preservation issues in the Missoula area. We provide informational and educational opportunities regarding historic preservation for the community. Please see our website or our Facebook page for more details.
HAMILTON  Hamilton resident Kathleen Sheard is a nationally recognized wildlife artist who draws, paints and sculpts glass. Her work is on display across the U.S. in corporate headquarters, private residences, and glass and wildlife galleries. Sheard is a graphic designer who has 38 years of experience as a glass artist.

I have had a fascination with the properties of glass and a love of all animals including wildlife for as long as I can remember, Sheard said. I have brought these two passions together in my wildlife glass art.

Sheard begins her projects with photographs and research. She draws the animal and then builds the glass sculpture.

I give the animal a soul and life, even as it is in its inanimate art form, Sheard said. I hope the art will speak to the viewer, tell a story, and invite the viewer to reach out and touch the art, and in the process become curious to know more.

Commissioned works, a sea turtle glass sculpture, a cycle-of-life art education project and a coral reef project are all underway in her studio in Hamilton.

Sheard said she always wanted to do a life-size glass animal and decided it would be of a turtle. The 2010 BP oil spill had a profound effect on her work. She is bringing together six artists from across the U.S. to create the sea turtle glass sculpture. The display will be 21 inches high and cover a large table. The glass creation will depict any beach on any continent with a turtle nest, mother turtle and hatchlings racing to the ocean. As an educational piece, it tells a darker story of pollution destroying wildlife habitat.

It is called a pipped turtle when a hatchling is starting to come out of the egg  those will be glass, Sheard said. We were going to make glass to represent the plastic water bottles and plastic six-pack rings, but the bigger impact is just to put the plastic on the piece. We have one of the hatchlings going through the six-pack because they can get stuck on that, and they grow and it goes into the shell and shuts down on their lungs and kills the turtles. Fishing line is a real predator.

Sheard said the information will be about oil spills, picking up litter and the hazards of plastic on the beach.

This will probably go to one museum as a show and then it would be great if the Corning Museum of Glass bought it. But it is an educational piece to teach children about the oil spill and about plastic  everything that is killing marine life  not only sea turtles, Sheard said. So, I hope maybe National Geographic or Monterey Bay Aquarium would buy it.

Sheard is a member of the Society of Animal Artists, Artists for Conservation, Artists Along the Bitterroot and Montana Professional Artists Association. She volunteers for sea turtle patrols, and donates a percentage of her art sales to support wildlife conservation.

In October, Sheard was the recipient of the Art for Conservation award by Artist for Conservation, one of the top wildlife art organizations in the world.

The award blew me away because it was for my work on the sea turtles, and it is a very high honor that I was chosen Sheard said.

The award stated it was given  ... for the combination of her artistic excellence and an outstanding contribution to the conservation cause.

Sheard uses many techniques when building her glass works, often inventing new methods. Everything is one-of-a-kind  built one grain or thread of colored glass at a time.

Sheard is working on a commission of a coral reef near Kona, Hawaii. The finished piece will be 25.5 square feet, divided among five panels and depicting 63 sea creatures. She became a certified sea diver to see the reef in person. She has been working on the project for a year and estimates three more years of work before it is completed.

Sheard donates to Living Art of Montana, an organization that uses the arts and nature to support healing. It offers art and writing workshops for people dealing with illness and loss.

Sheards subject matter features wildlife of Africa, the Rocky Mountains and marine wildlife. Her website serves as an online gallery. Her art includes wall pieces, discs, spiritual reliquaries, rondelles, artist studies, kiln cast sculpture, ornaments, limited-edition prints and original drawings. She holds workshops, shows and events.

In my artwork and in my life, I rely on my passion to continually persevere to explore new lands and press my artwork to new limits, Sheard said. I learn. I hone my artistic skills. And I pass along the stories of the wilderness and the wildlife that populates it. My hope is to inspire the viewer to learn more about my subjects, and understand the necessity of working together to protect this land of wilderness we call home.

The gallery of Sheards work can be seen at kathleensheard.com. Contact her at (406) 375-9028.
Two seniors at Loyola Sacred Heart and Polson high schools had a big day last week.

They each earned $5,000 college scholarships and all-expenses-paid trips to Washington, D.C., in March to participate in the 54th U.S. Senate Youth Program.

Mollie Lemm of Polson and Arthur Pettit of Loyola Sacred Heart were announced Thursday as Montanas delegates to the Senate Youth Program by Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau.

The alternates, if either is unable to attend, are Cameron Meikle of Hamilton High School and Paige Robinson of Gardiner High School.

Former U.S. Sen. Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., was one of the four founders of the program and one of the original sponsors of the Senate resolution that started it. Mansfield, the majority leader, and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., meant the youth program to increase civic participation among young Americans.

Lemm and Pettit will join 102 other delegates in Washington from March 5 to 12. The delegates will hear policy addresses from senators, cabinet members, officials from the departments of State and Defense, and directors of other federal agencies. They will also meet with a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Hearst Foundations fund the program. Lemm and Pettits $5,000 scholarships can be used at the colleges of their choice.

Pettit is vice president of the student body at Loyola Sacred Heart, where he is also a member of the Key Club, participates in speech and debate, and writes for the school newspaper. He plans to study international relations in college in preparation for a career in the Foreign Service or legal field.

Lemm is a representative on the Polson High School Student Council, also involved in speech and debate, and works as an intern at a local weekly newspaper, the Valley Journal. She says she is passionate about writing, the environment, and bettering her school and community. She plans to pursue a degree in journalism.

Juneau called the two strong leaders in their schools and communities, and I have no doubt they will go on to do great things in the future.

Alumni of the U.S. Senate Youth Program include Republican presidential candidate Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey (1980); U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine (1971); U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. (1993); former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, Thomas McClarty (1964); and former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove (1969).
HAMILTON  No new developments have been made in the search for Bart Pickard, the 65-year-old Corvallis man who was last seen at Lost Trail Po
Government

Public events

Organizations

On Campus

Diversity Advisory Council meeting, 12:30-2 p.m., University Center Room 326. The DAC is charged to encourage, advocate and facilitate communication, education and relations among persons of various races, physical conditions, religions, national origins, citizenship, genders, ages, socio-economic backgrounds and sexual orientation at UM. DAC reports to President Engstrom and is made up of students, faculty and staff. Committee meetings are open to all campus community members. 243-2831, umt.edu/dac/.
And in Europe, Aberdeen Asset Management, which manages $403 billion and specializes in emerging markets, had $48 billion leave the firm. Aberdeens stock price fell by half for the year.

Traders and portfolio managers say that what worries them now is the sense that sophisticated institutional investors, who generally tend to take a longer-term view than their retail counterparts (and who might even be inclined to buy at these levels), have been the ones driving the selling over the last six months.

Instead of taking advantage of bond and company valuations that are at historic lows, these investors are acting more like lemmings, unloading the good and the bad in their portfolios because that is what they see their peers doing. The panicky climate is also forcing managers to have a chunk of cash on hand to meet redemption requests.

We are seeing evidence that institutional investors are capitulating, said Charles Collyns, an economist at the Institute of International Finance, using an industry term to describe the practice of wholesale selling when all hope is lost.

In a recent survey of more than 100 investment managers conducted by Northern Trust in Chicago, the No. 1 risk factor cited by respondents was that problems in China would continue to bring down growth rates in the developing world.

Also of concern, regulators and economists say, is the fact that many emerging market securities, especially bonds, can be very hard to sell, especially when markets are declining.

The surprise decision by Third Avenue Management last month to close down a junk bond fund because it could not meet investor demands for cash has heightened fears that an emerging market bond fund could find itself in a similar position.
This story  America in the 21st century, and you can trust neither the water nor what officials say about it  would be a horrifying outrage even if it were an accident or an isolated instance of bad policy. But it isnt. On the contrary, the nightmare in Flint reflects the resurgence in American politics of exactly the same attitudes that led to Londons Great Stink more than a century and a half ago.

Lets back up a bit, and talk about the role of government in an advanced society.

In the modern world, much government spending goes to social insurance programs  things like Social Security, Medicare and so on, that are supposed to protect citizens from the misfortunes of life. Such spending is the subject of fierce political debate, and understandably so. Liberals want to help the poor and unlucky, conservatives want to let people keep their hard-earned income, and theres no right answer to this debate, because its a question of values.

There should, however, be much less debate about spending on what Econ 101 calls public goods  things that benefit everyone and cant be provided by the private sector. Yes, we can differ over exactly how big a military we need or how dense and well-maintained the road network should be, but you wouldnt expect controversy about spending enough to provide key public goods like basic education or safe drinking water.

Yet a funny thing has happened as hard-line conservatives have taken over many U.S. state governments. Or actually, its not funny at all. Not surprisingly, they have sought to cut social insurance spending on the poor. In fact, many state governments dislike spending on the poor so much that they are rejecting a Medicaid expansion that wouldnt cost them anything, because its federally financed. But what we also see is extreme penny pinching on public goods.

Its easy to come up with examples. Kansas, which made headlines with its failed strategy of cutting taxes in the expectation of an economic miracle, has tried to close the resulting budget gap largely with cuts in education. North Carolina has also imposed drastic cuts on schools. And in New Jersey, Chris Christie famously canceled a desperately needed rail tunnel under the Hudson.
BRECKENRIDGE, Colo.  On nights when she could not crash on a friends couch or unroll a sleeping mat on an attic floor, Chelsea Lilly tucked her silver Subaru into a supermarket parking lot or a dark spot along a mountain pass, wrapped herself in a green Army blanket and watched movies on her phone until she fell asleep.

Getting work at a day spa in this bustling ski town had been easy, but finding an affordable apartment this winter proved almost impossible. So Ms. Lilly, 34, bounced along an itinerant path of couches and borrowed bedrooms that has become a fact of life for workers in jewel-box tourist towns across the country. Nights in the Subaru got so cold that she shivered awake every few hours and ran the engine to thaw out.

I didnt know it was going to be like this, she said.

The miners who once pried gold and silver from the heart of the Rocky Mountains would attest that living in paradise has never been easy. These days, soaring home prices and a shift toward weekend vacation rentals have created a housing crisis in ski country, one that has people piling into apartments, camping in the woods and living out of their trailers and pickup trucks.

Local officials and housing experts say it is a symptom of widening economic inequality, one that is especially sharply felt in tiny resort towns hemmed in by beautiful but undevelopable public land. While the wealthiest can afford $5 million ski homes and $120-a-day lift tickets, others work two jobs and sleep in shifts to get by.
On Saturday, both countries agreed to increase trade to $600 billion in the coming decade.

That agreement was made during a meeting between Irans leaders and Chinas president, Xi Jinping, who late last week became the first foreign leader to visit Iran after most international sanctions were lifted. China has relied on Iranian oil and views the country as a vital link in Mr. Xis so-called Silk Road strategy, an ambitious agenda that seeks to extend Chinas economic influence westward.

Where we had to stand on the sidelines, the Chinese have been filling the void, said a European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategic considerations. They are way ahead of all of us.

The deep Chinese footprint in Iran does not manifest itself only in the tens of thousands of inexpensive cars that have flooded the streets of Tehran in the past few years. Investors like Mr. Li, who has built two other factories here, as well as Chinese state companies, are active all over the country, building highways, digging mines and melting steel.

In Tehran, the Chinese have been involved in the construction of a huge elevated expressway and the building of the Niayesh Tunnel, which at more than three and a half miles will be one of the longest urban tunnels in the world. The citys metro system was built from scratch, starting in 1995, with Chinese capital and Chinese engineers. The train cars that run on it are Chinese, too.

Westerners visiting the capital often wonder how we managed to pull off such ambitious projects during the heaviest sanction regime in history, said Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour, Irans World Trade Center representative. Well, we did it with the help of our Chinese friends.
Good morning from Iowa, where the forecast calls for snow, but nothing like the blizzard that whomped the East. With one week before the caucuses, nine candidates will be here today (along with Ben and Jerry of ice cream fame).

The adage says that, to win Iowa, you have to organize furiously and then get hot at the end. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Donald J. Trump both have heat, but so does Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who picked up the endorsement of The Des Moines Register on Saturday night.

Mr. Rubio will appear today at a rally with Senator Joni Ernst, the popular Iowa politician who promised to make em squeal in Washington.

Mr. Rubio plans to be on the ground in the state every day until the Feb. 1 caucuses. His goal is not to win but to finish a very close third.
In November, two Chinese dissidents seeking sanctuary in Thailand, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guanping, were sent back to China despite having been recognized as refugees by the United Nations refugee agency. The Chinese police later said that the men had been in Thailand without authorization and were suspected of crimes involving illegal border crossing.

The transfer procedure for the two was in accordance with a cooperation mechanism between Chinese and Thai police, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said, citing the police.

The spokesman for the Thai government could not be reached on Monday.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, an adviser to the deputy prime minister, said he was not aware of the disappearance of Mr. Li, the journalist. Speaking more generally about deportations, he said that Thailand had to be aware of and responsive to Chinas rising influence in trade, investment and tourism.

Several years ago, the number of Chinese tourists here was not even one million, Mr. Panitan said. Now its approaching 10 million.

He emphasized that Thailand must continue to rely on the United States for security cooperation. In the military sphere, The U.S. is still No. 1, he said.

The Chinese government has said that suspects of crimes who return from abroad, including officials and their relatives accused of graft, have often come back voluntarily, offering extravagant contrition for their misdeeds. But critics say the secretive operations are likely to involve coercion and threats, if not outright force, and they point to the far-fetched accounts that detainees have given in the Chinese state-run news media.

Ms. He said her husband feared that if he was forced to go back to China, he would be punished for having publicly recounted the intense pressure that state security officers had used to recruit him as an informant against his colleagues and friends, and for having described censorship he witnessed in his job as an editor. He said the security agents had threatened to charge him with spying unless he agreed to act as an informant.
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My humble and dedicated effort to understand the nuances of the powerful 'empathy machine' -- CINEMA
The ringleader of a conspiracy to transport methamphetamine from Seattle and sell it in Missoula was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison with no eligibility for parole  the mandatory minimum  in U.S. District Court on Friday.

Albert Pedro Jaquez, 36, a married father of a 1-year-old girl, will also have to undergo drug treatment in prison and complete five years of supervised release.

In 2000, Jaquez was convicted of second-degree murder for his role in helping a Seattle man kill another man during a robbery. He served 12 years in prison for that crime.

On Thursday, Jaquezs accomplice in the drug conspiracy, Lavelle Cotton, 34, received five years in prison.

In 1995, when Cotton was 14, he was convicted of murdering a 7-year-old girl during a drug money collection gone awry. The girl, Angelica Robinson, was caught in the crossfire when a gun battle erupted in a house after Cotton came to collect a $100 drug debt.

In the meth case, both men pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance in agreements with prosecutors.

According to charging documents, the men were involved in the drug conspiracy from December 2014 through April 2015. Jaquez would supply the meth in Seattle, and Cotton would transport and sell it in Missoula.

When Cotton tried to sell drugs to a confidential informant in a parking lot on Reserve Street last April 30, Missoula police officers arrested them and found a plastic container with 1 pound of meth in it and another with 2 ounces of cocaine.

Trittnie Von Rogers, who was dating Jaquez and accompanied Cotton to Missoula, was also arrested in the case. She received a three-year deferred sentence for cooperating with investigators.

At his sentencing Friday, Jaquez admitted he had made poor decisions and apologized for his actions. He said he started selling drugs after he got out of prison for the murder conviction because he couldnt get a job.

I sent out between 90 and 100 job applications and didnt get a single call back, he said. Thats not an excuse for what I did, but I decided to transport drugs to provide for my wife and my child. I know what I look like on paper, but thats not who I am.
HELENA  Walk into the Montana Historical Society and step into a life-sized Stan Lynde comic strip Western town.

The historical society is celebrating the famous Montana cartoonist with a new exhibit, From the Heart: Stan Lyndes Comic Creations, which runs through September.

Here youll meet some of Lyndes most legendary characters  Rick OShay and Hipshot.

His two most famous comic strips, Rick OShay and Latigo, reached 15 million readers from 1958 to 1983.

Lyndes Montana-based comic strip, Rick OShay, began in 1958 and ran until 1977 in up to 100 newspapers across the country  including the countrys biggest newspapers; The New York Times; Chicago Tribune; L.A. Times; Philadelphia Inquirer; and many Montana newspapers, including The Montana Standard.

It also had an international following, appearing in Australia, Canada and the Philippines, as well as French, Italian and Spanish newspapers. He created Latigo in 1978, and it ran until 1983.

The exhibit will recreate his studio with drafting table, office chair and art supplies, similar to the one he had in his Helena home. Lynde lived here for his final 15 years in Montana before moving to Ecuador in 2013.

The exhibit also features artifacts, like Lyndes trademark Stetson with a beaded and quilled band, one of Hipshots guns, an array of early and later comic strips, including ones that were singed but rescued from a 1990 house fire that destroyed much of his art and many mementos from fans.

You can see photos of him on horseback and also the chaps, saddle and spurs he wore for the Great Montana Cattle Drive of 1989 that he co-founded and organized.

Youll also get to read Hipshots famous pardon letter, penned and signed by Montana Gov. Tim Babcock in 1966, forgiving Hipshot for all misdeeds committed in Montana.

The pardon was apparently instrumental in Hipshot recovering from nearly fatal injuries and continuing to have a starring role in the comic strip with Rick OShay.

Last Thursday's exhibit opening included talks by Lynde's widow, Lynda Lynde; his son, T.J. Lynde; and also Denney Neville, who was Lyndes inker and letterer for the comic strip from 1971 to 1977.

Lynde would do the comic strip drawings in pencil and write out a script for the characters, and Neville would ink in the drawings and do the lettering, said MHS curator Amanda Streeter Trum.

Visitors will see the various stages of how Lynde developed his comic strips, said Trum, from notes and rough sketches to the inked and colored panels to the printed comic.

Also on display are some of his earliest drawings and comics, which have never been printed or exhibited. Viewers can also reflect on how his artwork evolved and grew more sophisticated over the decades.

There will even be a selfie spot, where you can step into a blank comic strip panel and join Rick OShay and Hipshot.

Im really excited to share Stans passion for the West and to showcase his many talents, said Trum. We want visitors to feel immersed in Stans comic world, and my hope is that people walk away with a sense of how much Stan loved Western life and how skilled he was at presenting it to others.

There will also be stations where kids can try some hands-on comic strip work. Trum hopes it will inspire kids to dream big.

We already knew that Stan was an inspiration for Montanans when he created his comic strips, and I hope that this exhibit will inspire a new generation, Trum said.

Born on Sept. 23, 1931, in Billings and growing up on a ranch near Lodge Grass on the Crow Indian Reservation, Lynde was surrounded by cowboys. Cowboys were my heroes, he said in a 2012 interview with the Independent Record, when he donated some of his original art and possessions to MHS.

He and his wife Lynda were moving to Ecuador at that time.

Lynde said the cowboys were his only playmates during parts of his childhood. They and the people of Lodge Grass became the models for his characters  Rick OShay, Hipshot, Gaye Abandon and other folks in his imaginary town of Conniption.

Most were composites, he said, of the old-time cowboys and the people I knew growing up.

His mother started him drawing when they lived in isolated sheep camps to keep him from roaming in rattlesnake country.

He recalled that every Sunday the Billings Gazette and Denver Post arrived at the family ranch and his parents would read the comic strips out loud to him.

It was an epiphany, he said. I wanted to be a cartoonist all my life from age 5 or 6, thats what I wanted to do.

Its a dream that took him through some very lean years in New York City, where he arrived with just $30 in his pocket. He recalled making soup from hot water and ketchup and living on automat food, popcorn and the generosity of a friends big, boisterous Irish family who would invite him to dinner.

He would find success in his 20s, which news articles of the time noted was highly unusual, since most syndicated cartoonists werent picked up until their 40s.

Lynde returned to live in Montana in 1962.

In addition to his famous comic strips, he also wrote eight Merlin Fanshaw western novels, whose characters were also inspired by people from his youth.

In Lyndes memoir, he recounts being asked, Where are Rick, Hipshot and all the other characters from the strip now?" He replied, I suppose theyre where theyve always been, living in and around Conniption in that special time and place that is theirs alone.

No doubt joining them is Lynde, who died of cancer in August 2013.

Longtime friend Tom Cook, MHS public information officer said, He told the Montana story to the whole nation and really the world. ... He had the West in his blood.
The Belmont Center for Senior Citizens, 615 E. Mercury St., serves lunches during the week.

The center requests a $4 donation; however, the meals costs $5.25 each to prepare. All seniors are welcome for lunch.

Salad bar offered at 11:45 a.m. Mondays and Fridays. Meals also can be delivered to senior citizen shut-ins upon referral by a doctor or social service agency. Free, round-trip bus service is available.

Monday, Jan. 25  Beef enchiladas, beans, rice, and lemon blueberry bars.

Tuesday, Jan. 26  Chicken pot pie, cabbage with bacon dressing, beets and fruit parfait.

Wednesday, Jan. 27  Clam chowder, fish sandwich, chips, frozen fruit salad, and apple spice cake.

Thursday, Jan. 28  Chicken parmesan, pasta, Capri vegetables, garlic rounds, and brownie trifle.

Friday, Jan. 29  Salad bar, sloppy Joes, potato salad, chips and a fruit cup.

The Belmont offers the following activities:

Nurse Bev is back at the Belmont.

The Montana Tech nurses will be back Thursday, Jan. 28.

AARP will be not meet this month.

Woodcarvers meet from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Thursdays.

Sneakers on the Go is from 10 to 11 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The cost is $1.50 a session.

Bingo is offered at 1 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and pinochle at 1 p.m. Wednesdays.

Foot clinic is $13. Call for an appointment at 406-782-8668.

Ceramics meet at 11 a.m. Tuesdays.

Pinochle is at 1 p.m. Wednesdays. The cost is $1 plus 25 cents a set.

Rides to medical appointments are available (only before noon). The rides are $5 for a round trip and $3 one way. For an appointment, call at least 24 hours in advance at 406-723-7773.
Area singing competition sets auditions

Do you have what it takes to be the next Mining City Star?

An annual all-ages, all-genre singing competition is gearing up for 2016. Audition dates and locations follow:

Staggering Ox, Butte  Feb. 4 at 6 p.m.

Sacajawea Bar, Three Forks  Feb. 10 at 7 p.m.

Serendipity, Sheridan  Feb. 11 at 6 p.m.

Party Palace, Park and Main, Butte  Feb. 13, registration 7 to 8 p.m., audition at 8 p.m.

Muddy Creek Brewery, 2 E. Galena St., Butte  Feb. 16 at 6 p.m.

Legends Bar & Grill, Whitehall  Feb. 17 at 6 p.m.

Butte Public Library, 226 W. Broadway St., Butte  Feb. 18 at 6 p.m.

The kids' category is 13 and under; adults are 14 and above.

Details: Natasha, 406-498-2713.

Annual Frigid Digger Run set Feb. 20

The annual Wulfmans Frigid Digger Run starts at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 20, from the Montana Tech HPER Complex.

Distances are 3 and 7.3 miles. Entry fees are $10 for age 14 and under and $20 ($25 after Feb. 14) for age 15 and over. The fee includes a long-sleeved T-shirt and refreshments.

Pre-registration and packet pickup is 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19, at Perkins Restaurant, 2900 Harrison Ave. Race-day registration runs 8:30 to 9:45 a.m. in the HPER lobby.

Applications may be mailed to P&M Runners, 1742 Thornton St., Butte.

Details: Bruce Robinson, 406-723-8662. Applications are available at buttespissandmoanrunners.com.

Tech to host career fair in February

The eighth annual Montana Tech CareerSmart Fair begins with a reception for employers on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

The career fair is Wednesday, Feb. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The fair concludes with interviews Thursday, Feb. 11. All events will be held in the Student Union Building.

The career fair, hosted by Career Services, is designed to offer companies and organizations from all industries a chance to discuss career opportunities with Tech students.

Employers can register online through DIGGERecruiting and find additional recruiting information at www.mtech.edu/career/employers. Or, call 406-496-4140 with any questions or for more personal assistance.
Montanas Child and Family Services are at last getting the focused attention the troubled agency has long needed. The question is whether all this attention will result in the kind of changes that ensure Montanas most vulnerable children are safe and well-cared-for.

A recent review of child abuse and neglect investigations in Montana highlighted some deeply troubling trends, including incomplete or missing assessments, unduly delayed investigations and an overall lack of transparency.

Among the examples cited in the performance audit:

One sexual assault allegation was given a Priority Three assessment, meaning an investigation should have been initiated within 10 days. However, no investigation was begun until 18 days had passed because the worker assigned to the case was ill.

A domestic violence report was given a Priority Two assessment, meaning an investigation should have begun within 72 hours. However, the investigation was dropped because the worker assigned to the case left the agency. An investigation was completed some six months after the initial report only because a second report was received, and led to the removal of the child from the home due to "severe domestic violence."

With head-shaking evidence like that, no one is disputing that Child and Family Services could be doing a better job protecting at-risk children. The argument is whether the agency can overcome its obstacles with sufficient resources and funding, as CFS administrators maintain, or whether major systemic changes would do more to immediately resolve the agencys biggest challenges, as recommended in the Legislative Audit Division report.

While the current situation has some Montanans  including an active group of concerned grandparents, therapists and others who interact with the agency on a regular basis  wishing the entire agency could be dismantled and rebuild from the ground up, recent promising developments regarding CFS point the way to a stronger agency. Rather than use its failings to tear the agency down, Montanans should use this opportunity the build the states child welfare system into something better.

It makes the most sense to start with the systemic improvements recommended in the most recent performance audit of the agency, and indeed, the Department of Public Health and Human Resources, which oversees CFS, has already implemented some of these recommendations.

As systemic problems are resolved, it will become clearer how best to target additional resources and funding. This will most likely mean a major investment in an effective, comprehensive information recording and case tracking system, as well as incentives to keep case workers on the job longer.

***

This is a particularly opportune time to make thoughtful reforms within Child and Family Services.

Last October, Gov. Steve Bullock appointed 14 people to a newly created committee tasked with looking into the child protection system in Montana and recommending improvements. The Protect Montana Kids Commission was formed after complaints and protests from agency critics reached a fever pitch last year. A group of concerned family members and others have criticized the agency for removing children from their homes without explanation and for poor communication with those who might be able to help keep these kids in safe, stable homes.

The best defense against such criticism is a solid paper trail showing the agencys reasoning and attempts at communication; however, the agency is using a recording system all agree is antiquated and ineffective.

The Protect Montana Kids Commission includes Sarah Corbally, the director of Child and Family Services who this month repeated to the Children, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee a longstanding complaint of her own: that her agency lacks the funding and resources it needs to resolve its biggest problems.

However, a legislative audit released last October counters her assertion by noting that the number of child abuse and neglect reports has not increased over the past decade or so, and that the staff dedicated to investigating those reports has about the same workload. Instead, the audit identified long-term and systemic management concerns in the areas of documentation, supervisory oversight and the use of management information which the department should take steps to resolve.

A close look at the report shows that in fiscal year 2010, about 170 full-time field staff investigated 8,106 reports of child abuse or neglect. In 2014, about the same number of staff investigated 7,829 reports. Meanwhile, the number of reports received increased from more than 12,000 to nearly 16,000. And from fiscal years 2010 through 2014, the number of children in care has risen from 1,369 to 1,972.

Its important to note that the majority of CFS workers are employed for less than two years, and according to Corbally, the agency lost 77 investigators last year. She cited low pay as a major cause of high turnover, with $17.50 an hour being the starting rate.

***

Amid these challenges, the agency has worked hard to reduce the interval for filing a report from 99 days to 66 days. This is still almost a week longer than the 60 days required by law, but it shows that the agency is actively working to make improvements.

Other improvements already underway include conversion to a tracking system used by the Montana Department of Corrections and adapted to suit the unique needs of CFS. The agency has also begun monitoring performance using a new program, and is taking steps to adopt a new case management system.

All of these measures will help create that badly needed paper trail and lay the groundwork needed to resolve another major problem: transparency.

Last fall, the federal government warned Montana officials that its inability to share public information about child abuse fatalities could cost the state its child abuse prevention grant. The grant is only worth about $120,000, but the states failure to meet federal disclosure requirements is tremendously costly in a much larger sense. It keeps Montanans in the dark about the terrible crimes of child abuse and neglect, and about the activities of the public agencies we entrust to protect Montanas children.

The Protect Montana Kids Commission is due to provide recommendations for improvements to the governor by March 31. The commission will study current law, child protection systems and resources, and hopefully recommend sweeping improvements. A major overhaul of Montanas Child and Family Services is overdue.

-- The Missoulian
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A way for you to stay up to date with the Peters family while they are in Mexico.
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WARSAW, Poland  U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman was welcomed Sunday by Polish entrepreneurs as he worked to finalize a free trade pact between the United States and the European Union.

Froman said the two sides are trying to conclude the deal, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, this year after nearly three years of negotiations.

There is resistance from some Europeans to the planned agreement, which aims to eliminate tariffs and create common regulatory standards between the worlds two biggest economies. Opponents fear a lowering in food safety standards and the undermining of local regulations by giving international arbitration panels the power to rule over disputes.

In Warsaw, Froman told a group of young Poles with startups, among them software developers, that the deal would be especially helpful to small and medium-sized businesses like theirs. He said they would benefit from a harmonizing of regulatory standards and intellectual property protection.

Its small and medium-sized businesses that are driving the economy. And if we can make life easier for them, its good for all of our economies, Froman said.

Those invited to meet with Froman seemed convinced that they could benefit from it.

Good competition will be beneficial to both sides, said Krzysztof Gogol, president of the management board of WealthArc, a financial technology startup.

Froman met with the entrepreneurs at the Google Campus in Warsaw, one of several hubs Google has established worldwide to help startups launch.

He met with representatives from five companies, taking time to learn about their operations while also talking to them about how the deal, often referred to as TTIP, might help them.

The most visible opposition to the deal was seen in Berlin last October, when 150,000 people demonstrated against it.

Froman said Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos that neither side has any interest in lowering standards, whether that be regulatory protections, safety standards or environmental requirements.

During his visit Froman is also meeting with Polish leaders. A new round of negotiations on the deal is to take place next month.
As Atlas Social celebrates its first anniversary with specials for all visitors, co-owner Michael Gyetvan talked about the idea behind his hip, modern downtown Napa restaurant.

For this, his third eatery in Napa, Gyetvan said he turned for inspiration to the charming local restaurants in Spain and Italy and France where people can stop in and just have a dish or two with wine.

He admits to being surprised when he found people were choosing the casually elegant restaurant as a special occasion destination. But whether they are coming in to celebrate an anniversary, stopping in for lunch, or dropping by for a glass of wine and a quick bite after work, they are equally welcome.

This week, all guests will be treated to a glass and a bite as a thank-you for their support.

Gyetvan and chef Nick Ritchie draw on global inspiration for their menu, which designed around small plates, with extended hours on weekends for the late-night crowd. Its a place to experiment and sample dishes that dont typically turn up on Napa restaurant menus. Some of their most popular hot dishes include grilled cauliflower steak with Bearnaise sauce, ricotta and smoked mozzarella dumplings with tomato sauce, rabbit pot pie, masala-spiced chicken skewers and pork belly tacos al pastor.

Except for a charcuterie plate at $18, everything is $3 (oysters) or $4 (crispy fried egg) to $10. You can try a number of them for what one larger entree costs in most local restaurants.

Chef Ritchie rotates the menu on a seasonal basis, but some items have proven so popular for diners to share that theyve become more or less permanent. They include smoked trout rillettes, crab toasts, herb leaf fries, and crispy fried farm egg with bacon jam.

The other dishes are designed for one person. Here, favorites include cold dishes like ahi tuna crudo or another raw fish selection and angry shrimp cocktail.

The chalkboard also features specials each day, both food and beverage. These include a Daily Bread special that is Atlas take on bruschetta. Now, its curried carrots with herbed salsa

For a beverage, you can get a Tecate for $3, a Pabst Blue Ribbon, or a Bud or Coors Light for $3.50, or a variety of craft beers for $6 to $8.

The wine program is oriented toward locals. Although they originally considered going ABC (anything but chardonnay/cabernet), they relented, but most of the wines are off-beat European varieties from California. These wines go better with this global food than a typical Napa cab or chardonnay, said Gyetvan.

Even so, half the wines are from Napa producers, qualifying the restaurant for the Napa Valley Vintners recommended list of restaurants.

The most popular whites include Y. Rousseau Old Vine Colombard, Trefethen Riesling, Hendry Albarino and any sauvignon blanc. It goes so well with food, said Gyetvan.

Other whites include gewurztraminer, vermentino, cortese, pinot gris, chenin blanc, trousseau, grenache blanc, ribolla gialla, viognier and blends. They do offer five chardonnays.

Among the reds, pinot noir is the most popular variety by far, but Grenache and syrah are also very popular, he said. Other reds they offer include carignan, mouvedre, refosco, sangiovese, zinfandel, tempranillo, malbec, petite sirah, merlot and of course cabernet sauvignon.

The only imports are some sparklers, so you can celebrate with Billecart-Salmon Brut or Ruinart Blanc de Blancs if you want (both are about $100 per bottle).

They serve wine by the 6-ounce glass, in 500-ml carafes or bottles. Prices are $8 to $11 for still whites and $9 to $14 for reds. We price wine reasonably, said Gyetvan. We want to sell it.

They use Coravin wine taps to offer some expensive wine specials as well. Corkage is $15 for a 750-ml bottle.

On Tuesday, bottles are 30 percent off.

Social Experiment (Happy Hour) is daily from 3 to 6 p.m. with herb leaf fries for $3.50, Masala chicken skewers for $3 each, crab toasts for $1.50, oysters on the half shell for $1.50 and pork belly tacos al pastor for $4.50.

During happy hour, selected sparkling and white wines are $5 a glass, red wine $6 a glass and draft beer $5 a pint.

The Atlas Social crew is looking both to the ending of construction and the opening of the Archer hotel a block away, and to the redevelopment of Dwight Murray Plaza, their front yard. They  and the other three restaurants on the plaza  are hoping to enjoy expanded patio seating when that happens.

A focus on locals

Atlas Social is the third restaurant Michael and Christina Gyetvan have opened in downtown Napa. The others are Azzurro Pizzeria and Enoteca and Norman Rose Tavern. Like Atlas Social, they are aimed at locals, offering fresh, locally sourced, satisfying and unpretentious food and drink at reasonable prices.

They also attract many visitors, probably most after recommendations from locals.

The couple met at Tra Vigne in the early 1990s, where Michael was chef de cuisine, and partner and Christina worked at the door.

They opened their first restaurant, Pizza Azzurro, at its original location on Second Street in downtown Napa on Sept. 20, 2001. They had intended to open a week earlier, just after the terrorists attacks on Sept. 11. Fortunately, they overcame that beginning and eventually outgrew the Second Street space. In 2008, they developed an expanded space on Main Street and renamed the restaurant Azzurro Pizzeria and Enoteca.

In late 2009, Michael and Christina opened their second restaurant, Norman Rose Tavern, in the West End District on First Street.

They opened Atlas Social in January 2015. Christina handles much of the business aspects for all three restaurants.

A hometown boy

Atlas Social chef Nick Ritchie is a native of St. Helena who began his culinary career in the Tra Vigne kitchen in 1994 under chefs Michael Chiarello and Carmen Quagliata. In 1999, he went on to complete his associate degree in culinary arts at the CIA Hyde Park, New York, then had an internship at Sazerac in Seattle with chef Jan Birnbaum.

In 2001, he traveled to Italy working for one year at La Campagnola di Salo on Lago di Garda.

Returning to the States, he worked once again under chef Carmen Quagliata, this time at The Vault, in Boston until 2003 when he moved to Seattle for a sous chef position with chef Kevin Davis at The Oceanaire Seafood Room. To round out his time in the Seattle area, he also worked for Daisley Gordon at Campagne and Cafe Campagne, eventually returning to Napa Valley in 2006 to take the chef de cuisine position for Michael Chiarellos NapaStyle.

In 2008, Nick helped open Bottega as chef de cuisine and was named a Rising Star Chef in 2009.

In May of 2011, Ritchie left Bottega to open Alex Italian Restaurant in Rutherford, until joining the private chef team at Winery Chefs in the spring of 2013.

Manager Pat Jeffries is a lifelong Napan and a fixture in the Napa Valley restaurant scene, having more than 32 years of experience at Mustards Grill, BarbersQ, Coles Chop House, Zuzu, Cindys Backstreet Kitchen, The Wine Spectator Restaurant and Celadon.

He previously worked with Michael and Christina Gyetvan as opening general manager at their Norman Rose Tavern.

Atlas Social, at 1124 First St., Napa, is open noon to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Its patio is open in good weather. The phone number is 258-2583, and the website is AtlasSocialNapa.com.
A woman from El Paso, Texas, has filed a lawsuit in Napa County Superior Court against Balloons Above the Valley, claiming she was injured during a hard landing and dragged under the basket.

Melanie Rodriguez filed her suit on Jan. 8 against the Napa-based ballooning company. She continues to incur medical and hospital bills and suffers from lost income, the suit contends.

Due to bad weather over Napa Valley, passengers, including Rodriguez and her friend, took off from Winters in Yolo County on the morning of Feb. 15, 2014. The balloon was piloted by Robert Barbarick, the founder of Balloons Above the Valley, according to the suit.

After an hourlong ride, Barbarick allegedly instructed the male passengers to get to the outside of the basket and the women to get in the middle as he prepared to land.

According to the suit, a worker on the ground told Barbarick not to land, saying, Dont land  landing other baskets  cant help you now.

Instead of waiting for assistance, Robert Barbarick disregarded the warning and decided to land without aid in an open field, the suit alleges, causing (the balloon) to hit the ground and pitch the basket violently forward, throwing Plaintiff out onto the ground and into the way of the oncoming basket.

The basket subsequently collided against her person, then dragged her underneath for a period of time before the balloon aircraft was able to lift the basket and the occupants back off the ground.

According to the suit, Rodriguez sustained great physical and mental pain and suffering, with injuries to her neck, shoulders, arms, back, hips, legs and feet.

She is suing Balloons Above the Valley and Barbarick for general and special damages, including the cost of medical services and supplies as well as lost income, past and future, according to the suit.

Robert Barbarick was unfit and incompetent to pilot the hot air balloon, and Balloons Above the Valley knew, or should have known, the risk involved with allowing him to pilot the aircraft, the complaint asserts.

Barbarick is a pioneer of Napa Valley hot air ballooning. He started flying balloons in 1977 and has over 6,800 hours of flying, according to the companys website. He works hard and is dedicated to keeping the balloon business safe, exciting and enjoyable for every passenger that flies with Balloons Above the Valley, it reads.

Thomas Chesus, a Balloons Above the Valley representative, confirmed that Rodriguez did fly with the company, but said he did not immediately have any information regarding the alleged incident.

Company protocol is that passengers sign a passenger awareness form before taking off, which explains the risks that may be associated with the activity, Chesus said. He also reported that the company will obtain discovery information and plans to respond appropriately.

The ballooning company has not yet filed response to the suit.

Register attempts over two days to get comments from Rodriguezs attorney were unsuccessful. Rodriguez is represented by Eric Arevalo and Nathaniel J. Patterson of Schumann Rosenberg out of Costa Mesa.

A case management conference is scheduled for June 16.
Californias new immunization law eliminating personal or religious exemptions generated the biggest public discussion at, and just outside, the school board meeting in Napa.

With the passage last year of Senate Bill 277, which requires that all children be immunized against contagious diseases before attending public or private school, the Napa Valley Unified School District has started to update its health policies to keep it compliant under state law.

As of Jan. 1, the state no longer allows parents to receive a waiver and avoid getting their children immunized solely for personal or religious reasons. The new law had allowed them to seek these types of exemptions until Dec. 31 of last year.

But many parents attending Thursdays board meeting said there was not enough time to receive the personal exemption by the end of 2015, and asked board members for help.

James Hinton and others requested that the board adopt a resolution urging the Legislature to extend the personal beliefs deadline to July 1, 2016.

In reading a draft of the resolution offered to the board, Hinton said the elimination of the personal beliefs exemption is a major long-standing change in public policy and that many members of the public were not aware of the changes made by Senate Bill 277.

Some parents said they now face subjecting their kids to numerous vaccines, some of which can result in adverse reactions, or pulling them out altogether and going the home-schooling route.

Board members, however, said there was little they could do to help because the school district is bound by law to abide by the provisions of SB 277.

I am sympathetic to a number of your concerns, said Trustee Joe Schunk. But SB 277 is pretty straightforward, and theres not a lot of room for maneuvering and there is no latitude that I can see for local education agencies.

Trustee Thomas Kensok said passing a resolution asking lawmakers in Sacramento to amend the law wasnt likely to do much good.

The way the system works is the Legislature passes the law, and it is our job to carry out what the law is, said Kensok. A resolution would only be advisory, and it would not change whatsoever the rule is.

Board President Robb Felder told parents that the board was not scheduled that evening to take any action on the new immunization policy, but that it would bring it back for a vote at its Feb. 4 meeting.

The legislation closed immunization loopholes after a measles outbreak at Disneyland that sickened 147 people was attributed in part to people who were not immunized against this contagious disease.

But that was not the end of the discussion, even as the board continued with its other business.

After the parents left the room and congregated just outside in the hallway, Superintendent Patrick Sweeney exited the meeting to engage the group further.

He instructed them that there was another option instead of trying to get the personal beliefs deadline extended. Go to your doctor and get them to write an exemption, he said.

The law still allows an exemption for medical reasons, backed by a physician.

Parent Heather Hilton and others in the group said they had pursued this option, but could not find a doctor in the county or even Sonoma who would grant a medical exemption.

Another parent, Cara Hanson, said: There are a lot of parents who are frustrated. They face home-schooling their kids or doing something thats against their moral code.

The impromptu meeting continued long after the board finished its session and left for the night. Repeatedly, the parents brought up the idea of the resolution, insisting thats the best course of action, and that other education officials in the state have sent similar messages to Sacramento.

Hanson admitted that even if the Napa school board passed the resolution, the Legislature may not respond to it. But, she insisted, the resolution would give them hope and that means a lot to everyone.

Sweeney did not give any indication that the board would consider the resolution. He added that he felt bad for the parents, but at the same time: We just want to follow the law.
Authorities responded to a vehicle crash Saturday night that sent one person to the hospital.

Napa County Fire, the Napa city Fire Department and the California Highway Patrol were called to the intersection of Highway 221 (Napa-Vallejo Highway) and Anderson Road at about 9:30 p.m., according to Capt. Spc. Russell West of Napa County Fire.

One occupant was transported by American Medical Response ambulance to Queen of the Valley Medical Center for what the Fire Department described as moderate injuries.

Details of the incident were not immediately available Sunday.
Theres nothing like a family feud to expose jealousies and rivalries that have been percolating for years.

The Capitols Democrats are on the verge of erupting into one of their periodic internal wars, akin to the nasty power struggles that dislodged leaders of both legislative houses in 1980, or the infamous Gang of 5 revolt against Assembly Speaker Willie Brown seven years later.

Legislative term limits, passed by voters in 1990, were a safety valve that prevented such blowups by compelling regular turnover. But with the modification of term limits four years ago, theres much less turnover, so advancing personal or ideological agendas now requires changing the status quo.

A classic example is occurring in San Diego, as outgoing Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins challenges Sen. Marty Blocks bid for a second term, accusing Block of reneging on a promise to quit after one term.

More significant, however, is a looming effort by environmental activists to take out at least two Democrats identified with the Assemblys moderate bloc that stalled a major proposal to curb gasoline consumption.

Its a new front in the decades-long conflict that pits business groups against environmentalists, labor unions, personal injury attorneys and consumer groups.

Each year, the four liberal groups push bills opposed by the business groups. Led by the California Chamber of Commerce and aided by the top two primary system, the business coalition has adroitly intervened to elect enough moderate Democrats to the Assembly to thwart many, if not most, business-opposed bills.

Under modified term limits, no one would be forced out of the Assembly until 2024, so if liberal groups want to change its dynamics now, theyll have to take out some mods, as they are known.

The fact that two mods identified as targets so far, Cheryl Brown of San Bernardino and Mike Gipson of Los Angeles, are black and could face well-financed Latino challengers adds an element of ethnic conflict.

Democratic politicians have obeyed an unwritten understanding that despite their burgeoning numbers, Latinos will not try to diminish the number of blacks in the Legislature or the congressional delegation  even in districts with Latino majorities.

Serious Latino challenges to Brown and Gipson would violate that understanding in a big way. They also would put the Capitols two top Latinos, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon and Speaker-elect Anthony Rendon, on the spot.

Ordinarily, legislative leaders are duty-bound to protect their incumbents with money and other resources, but it was de Leons high-profile climate bill that had to be watered down due to mod opposition, and hes closely aligned with environmentalists, including billionaire Tom Steyer.

Campaigns against Brown and Gipson would be a big challenge for Rendons new speakership. Meanwhile, however, Atkins challenge may force de Leon to intervene on Blocks behalf.

This could be very interesting.

Dan Walters writes for The Sacramento Bee.
A forum for solvers of cryptic crossword puzzles published in the National Post
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

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Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Through promotion of free debate on our website, New Age Islam encourages people to rethink Islam.
US State Dept.: Our ultimate goal is peaceful resolution between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenia to get 33mn grant from EU for police, migration service, business development in Syunik Province

Lacote: OSCE observation mission deployment will contribute to respect of Armenia territorial integrity

World oil prices going up

Newspaper: Karabakh delegation to head for Moscow, meeting with Putin considered probable

Newspaper: Azerbaijan aggression on September 13 paralyzes Armenia public administration for some time

Azerbaijan army opens fire towards Armenia positions at midnight

Retired US Air Force general is offered consulting job in Azerbaijan at rate of $5,000 a day

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
Uriel Kitron, chair of Emorys Department of Environmental Sciences and an expert in vector-borne diseases, will travel to Brazil in February to support the country's research strategies and control efforts for the outbreak.

The Zika virus, unlike other mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue, is relatively unknown and unstudied. That is set to change since Zika, now spreading through Latin America and the Caribbean, has been associated with an alarming rise in babies born in Brazil with abnormally small heads and brain defects  a condition called microcephaly.

This is a huge public health emergency and horrible on many levels, says Uriel Kitron, chair of Emorys Department of Environmental Sciences and an expert in vector-borne diseases, which are transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks or other organisms. The microcephaly cases are a personal tragedy for the families whose babies are affected. They will need much care and support, some of them for decades. The costs to the public health system will be enormous, and Brazil was already experiencing an economic crisis.

For the past several years, Kitron has collaborated with Brazilian scientists and health officials to study the dengue virus, which is spread by the same mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, as Zika. The focus of that collaboration is now shifting to Zika. Kitron will return to Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, in February to support the countrys research strategies and control efforts for the outbreak.

Dengue is a very serious disease, but it doesnt usually kill people, Kitron says. Zika is a game-changer. It appears that this virus may pass through a womans placenta and impact her unborn child. Thats about as scary as it gets.

Since the Zika outbreak began in northeastern Brazil last spring, an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million people have been infected. The resulting illness only lasts a few days. The symptoms, including a rash, joint pains, inflammation of the eyes and fever, tend to be less debilitating than those of dengue. As many as 80 percent of infected people may be asymptomatic.

It was not until months after Zika cases showed up in Brazil that a spike in microcephaly births was tied to women infected during pregnancy. More than 3,500 microcephaly cases have been reported since October in Brazil, compared to around 150 cases in 2014.

While Zikas connection to microcephaly has yet to be definitively proven, the presence of the virus has been found in the bodies of five of the newborns that died with the condition and in the placentas of two women who miscarried babies with microcephaly.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women not to travel unnecessarily to more than a dozen countries currently experiencing an outbreak of Zika virus, as well as Puerto Rico. The governments of Brazil, El Salvador and Columbia, meanwhile, are urging women to delay any plans of pregnancy.

People are worried that Zika may also have other, more subtle, effects on fetuses besides microcephaly, Kitron says. We just dont know that much about Zika. It has not been studied extensively in the lab and field data is also limited.

So far, the few known cases of Zika in the U.S. mainland are linked to people who had traveled abroad and were likely infected by mosquitos elsewhere. If Zika follows the same patters as dengue fever, however, states like Texas, Florida and Hawaii could experience small outbreaks transmitted by mosquitoes during the summer months.

The Zika virus is named after an isolated forest in Uganda where it was discovered in a monkey in 1947. Only a handful of human cases were known until 2007 when it popped up in the Yap Islands of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, sickening thousands of people. In 2013 Zika appeared in French Polynesia and the following year in other islands of the South Pacific.

Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec specializes in spatial analysis of disease transmission patterns and has several research projects for dengue fever ongoing in Latin America. Photo by Charlie Watts Photography.



Although Zika outbreaks have coincided with a slightly increased rate of Gillian-Barres Syndrome, none of the previous outbreaks were associated with a spike in microcephaly births.

The Brazilian Zika outbreak, first identified in May, is the largest ever. The cases are centered in the northeastern states of Paraiba, Pernambuco and Bahia. Zika quickly spread in the region, since the population had never been exposed to the virus, making it highly susceptible. Given the high rate of infection, herd immunity may delay future outbreaks for several years, Kitron says.

Zika cases were initially confused with chikungunya, another virus transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito that was introduced to Brazil and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2014.

Zika, chikungunya and dengue viruses are all now circulating in Brazil. They cause similar symptoms, complicating clinical identification during outbreaks. And no treatments or vaccines exist for any of the three viruses, making mosquito control vital.

Mosquito control is not considered sexy science, like developing a new drug or a vaccine, Kitron says, but more attention and resources need to be devoted to it.

Aedes aegypti are like the roaches of the mosquito world, perfectly adapted to living with humans, especially in urban environments, says Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, another disease ecologist in Emorys Department of Environmental Sciences who studies vector-borne diseases.

Vazquez-Prokopec specializes in spatial analysis of disease transmission patterns and has several research projects for dengue fever ongoing in Latin America. He is traveling to the Brazilian capital of Brasilia in February to assist the countrys vector control team as they continue to battle the outbreak through mosquito control.

While mosquitoes that carry malaria only feed during the evening, the Aedes aegypti feeds almost exclusively on humans and bites primarily during the daytime.

Killing mosquitoes is labor-intensive and expensive if you do it well, and it can be difficult to get funding for it, Vazquez-Prokopec says. Now we have three viruses  dengue, chikungunya and Zika  being spread by Aedes aegypti, so that greatly increases the cost-effectiveness of doing high-quality, thorough mosquito control.
BENGALURU: Social media is the most trending platform of the current generation for being gregarious. Over the years, it has been growing seamlessly and overlapping all the expectations. Thus it is now a multi-functioning platform and is growing as a one-stop for all the social needs. As we have begun 2015 with a positive note, in terms of technology, here goes the list of likely social media changes of 2016, as reported by Observer.

Virtual Reality:

Virtual reality has become much more popular compared to previous years. Now, smart phones are coming out with respective technologies and devices to support them. Similarly, according to the plans of Facebook, it will introduce virtual reality for its users in the near future. Movie watching app is also expected to hit the Smartphone market in 2016.

Social Shopping:

Recently, Flipkart introduced a ping option in its application, which allows its user to chat while shopping. In the same note, in 2106, the social shopping is expected to grow much bigger. Technology giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are likely to release - updates that connect users to online shopping sites.

Live streaming:

Live streaming is said to be the next big thing of the social media. Twitter owned Periscope has already gained popularity and - Facebook is also expected to roll out similar feature in 2016.

Social media work place:

Today social media plays a crucial role in connecting people with similar profession. May it be linkedin or the Facebook at work these apps have become immensely popular. Promoting a business and  connecting vendors and customers -are also possible -here, thus in 2016, social media at work place is anticipated to grow more than expectations.

Customers support:

Gradually, social media sites are turning into a platform of customer service for many big companies. Online ordering is also likely to happen via social media. The recent survey shows that customers, receiving support from social media pages are gradually inclining year by year and 2016 would be yet another positive year for the social media.

Also Read: Republic Day 2016: Know the National Bravery Award Winners

Centre Launches Skill Development Scheme For Minority Community Girls
Center for Smell and Taste under new leadership

Steven D. Munger has been appointed director of the University of Florida Center for Smell and Taste, succeeding founding director Barry Ache, who stepped down from the position at the end of last year.

Munger, professor and vice chair of the UF department of pharmacology and therapeutics, earned his doctorate at the University of Florida under Ache, and has established himself as a leader in chemosensory research. He was recruited to UF in 2014 as part of the UF Preeminence initiative from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where he was a faculty member for 14 years.



"Dr. Ache's leadership has brought together diverse talents from across the UF that might not have collaborated before, he said. I am looking forward to working with this remarkable group of scientists and educators as UF leads the way in the study of taste and smell."



Ache, a distinguished professor of biology and neuroscience at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, and a national leader in the science of smell and taste, has served as the centers director since its founding in 1998. He has been a UF faculty member since 1978. He will continue to be involved with the center in his new role as chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, and said the transition to Munger should prove natural.



Under the leadership of Dr. Steven Munger, the center can be expected to continue to move to prominence in chemical senses research with concomitant gain in competitiveness for grants, collaborations with industry, ability to contribute to the health and wellness of Florida citizens, and public visibility, he said.



Munger is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the Ajinomoto Award for Young Investigators in Gustation. He is also the president-elect of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, the leading scientific society for the study of smell and taste. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for the detection of odors and tastes.



"Chemical senses researchers at UF are poised to make major advances in treating smell loss, improving the taste of food, controlling agricultural and disease-carrying pests, and designing better sensors," Munger said.



The UF Center for Smell and Taste is one of only three recognized centers of chemical senses research in the U.S., and the only one associated with exceptionally strong medical and agricultural enterprises. It includes more than 50 faculty members across 20 departments at UF.




Forty one such cases were reported in Punjab with 57 people involved. Fifty-one arrests have been made so far in the province, reports the Dawn.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, four cases were reported and eight suspects were arrested.

A nation-wide data issued by the ministry of interior and narcotics control on Sunday revealed that of the total arrests made in Punjab, 14 suspects were under investigation and 26 were challaned.

28 suspects were arrested in Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan for allegedly providing shelter and meal to terrorists.(ANI)
Ending months of speculation that General Sharif's tenure was likely to be extended, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said these rumours were baseless.

"The Pakistan Army is a great institution. I don't believe in extension and will retire on the due date," the general said.

"Efforts to root out terrorism will continue with full vigour and resolve. Pakistan's national interest is supreme and will be safeguarded at all costs," he said.

General Sharif, who took over as the army chief from Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is set to retire in November this year.

Kayani stepped down in November 2013 after serving six years at the top slot. General Sharif's appointment was approved on November 27, 2013.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/mr

( 153 Words)

2016-01-25-15:29:34 (IANS)
ISPR Director General Lt-General Asim Saleem Bajwa said in a Twitter message that 'speculations about extension in service of Army Chief are baseless.'

The Pakistan Army rubbished reports that the army chief would seek to extend his tenure from three to four years, reports The Express Tribune.

Earlier, the federal government dropped the clearest hint that it is ready to back a proposal to extend the tenure of chief of the army staff's office from three to four years.

The idea of extension in tenures is a continuation of former military General Pervez Musharraf who gave extensions to himself from 2001 to 2008 and then General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani who was given extensions in his normal tenure and he ended up serving in the role for six years.(ANI)
A staggering 885,000 Muslims - not about 400,000 as previously thought - were recruited by the Allies to fight in World War I, according to a study. More than twice as many Muslim soldiers supported Allied forces in World War I, according to new research into Muslim role in the war. Islam Issa, lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University, found that at least 885,000 Muslims were recruited by the Allies, while creating the first ever exhibition devoted entirely to Muslim involvement in the war, a press statement said. It had been previously thought that around 400,000 Muslims were recruited during the war. But after trawling through thousands of personal letters, historic archives, regimental diaries and census reports, Issas research revealed that the figure was more than double. "Also among the findings was the fact that 1.5 million Indians and 280,000 Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians fought for the Allies during the war, as well as soldiers recruited from other parts of Africa. "Nearly 3.7 million tonnes of supplies and more than 170,000 animals were shipped from India to support the war effort," the statement added. He found that Muslims involved in the war effort came from as far as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and that at least 89,000 Muslims were killed fighting for Allied forces under French or British command. Their roles included front-line soldiers, trench builders and those transporting vital goods and materials. Issa also found that at least 20 percent of all British Empire recruits were Muslims and that the financial and material contribution from India alone was 479 million pounds - 20 billion pounds in todays money. Issa uncovered the figures while researching individual stories from the war for an exhibition being held at the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester, called Stories of Sacrifice. He said: The 400,000 number we so often hear refers to Muslims in the Indian Army, and there were at least 430,000 of these. But many people forget that there was a significant Arab contribution. For instance, Egypt alone contributed at least 150,000 camel drivers for British campaigns, and the other north African countries helped the French with at least 280,000 men. I think the numbers are probably understated; they represent a minimum that we can be sure about, but it could potentially be quite a bit higher." The Stories of Sacrifice is a permanent exhibition which will be on show for at least a year. --Indo-Asian News Service rd/mr ( 418 Words) 2016-01-25-19:25:37 (IANS)
"We are stressing on improving the economic relations in the field of agriculture and space."

The French president was given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhawan here on his second day of his three-day visit to India.

Hollande began his visit on Sunday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke protocol to welcome him at Chandigarh.

--Indo-Asian News Service ruwa-pku/rd

( 94 Words)

2016-01-25-11:05:39 (IANS)
"From today our MLAs will hold meetings in their constituencies to get opinions on implementing the second phase of the odd-even scheme," Kejriwal said at an event organised by the government to celebrate the Republic Day here.

The legislators would invite suggestions from the people regarding how and when to implement the next phase of the traffic restriction scheme aimed at curbing air pollution, he said.

"The odd-even scheme has been a success. And keeping in mind people's wishes, we wish to implement it again," the chief minister added.

The Delhi government had convened a meeting on Monday evening of all the ministers and AAP legislators with regard to preparations for the second phase of the odd-even scheme, Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said.

The scheme was implemented on a trial basis from January 1 to 15, allowing odd-numbered four wheelers on roads on odd dates and even-numbered vehicles on even dates.

--Indo-Asian News Service sid-am/kb/mr

( 199 Words)

2016-01-25-14:37:34 (IANS)
As per a statement from the home ministry, Ambani will be conferred the award posthumously for his contribution to trade and industry -- the only person chosen for the Padma Vibhushan this year under this category.

The president of India confers the award around March-April.

Both his sons -- overseeing the empire he created -- felt overwhelmed and honoured by the announcement.

"The Padma Vibhushan awarded to Shri Dhirubhai Ambani is an honour to the indomitable spirit of Indian entrepreneurship, innovation and ambition to always do better than the best in the world," said Mukesh Ambani, his older son.

The younger son Anil Ambani, who oversees the Reliance Group, said the honour was a recognition of Indian entrepreneurship.

"I personally, and the entire Reliance family, are truly overwhelmed and deeply humbled at the award of this great national honour, the Padma Vibhushan, for the greatest entrepreneur and wealth creator in the history of India, my beloved father, Shri Dhirubhai Ambani," he said.

"The true legacy of Dhirubhai lies in the inspiration that he continues to provide to millions of young people, who are dreaming impossible dreams, and setting out to achieve their entrepreneurial ambitions."

"In his lifetime, Dhirubhai created and shared more wealth with Indians than anyone before or since."

--Indo-Asian News Service ap/pm/

( 247 Words)

2016-01-25-21:59:35 (IANS)
The 41-year-old actor told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town of Davos that corporate greed was causing the climate change, reports News.com.au.

Taking the 'Titanic' actor to task at a dinner later in the day, the head of a Liberal government said that there are families suffering, out of work, who need to be supported, and inflammatory rhetoric doesn't necessarily help those families or help Canada.

Adding on to that, the PM said if DiCaprio actually said if "we took concrete action on climate change he would be the first to come up and celebrate with us." (ANI)
Four persons have been detained in connection with the suicide case of three girls in Tamil Nadu. "Four people are being interrogated as of now and cases of cheating, extortion and abetting suicide are registered against them. Four teams have been set up to secure the rest," said Villupuram collector Lakshmi. "Post mortem is underway on the body of Saranya, and we are trying to convince the other two families to conduct the postmortem here. Other students have given then demands in writing and we have taken it for consideration," she added. She further stated that the students of the college have demanded immediate arrest for the people related to this incident and action against the college for exorbitant fees collected. They have also demanded that the students who are undergoing their courses in the college should be transferred to other college and asked for financial assistance of Rs. 10 lakh for the deceased students. Three second-year students of SVS Medical College of Yoga and Naturopathy and Research Institute at Kallakurichi near Viluppuram in Tamil Nadu committed suicide on Saturday evening, accusing the administration of charging excess fees and 'torture' and blaming college chairman Vasuki Subramanian for their death. The three girls namely E. Saranya and V. Priyanka (both 18 years) and T. Monisha (19 years) in a two-page suicide note said that the students had filed several complaints against Subramanian but to no avail. Citing "torture" by the management, the girls hoped that their suicide would finally force the authorities to take action against the chairman. The girls accused the administration of charging 'excess fees' around Rs. six lakh and never giving the bill. They also mentioned that the college lacked proper classes or teachers and there was 'nothing to learn'. The students had been protesting for more than a month over lack of infrastructure, but it was only in the last two weeks that the protest turned vigorous. The police, which have begun investigating this matter, have so far arrested the Shokkar Verma, the son of the chairman, in connection with this case. The incident comes days after Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar of Hyderabad University, allegedly committed suicide after he and his four friends were suspended by the authorities from the hostel after a fight with the ABVP activists in the campus. The Hyderabad incident has sparked nationwide outrage with the Opposition demanding the resignations of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya. (ANI)
She was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Gachibowli Continetal hospital here.

Various student groups have been protesting over the suicide of Rohith since last week.

Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Central University's hostel room on January 17.

He was among the 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 student leader. (ANI)
Senior party leaders like national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, national secretary Rahul Sinha, state president Dilip Ghosh, state co-conveners Siddharthnath Singh and Suresh Pujari and MP Babul Supriyo are expected to attend the meeting.

While the rally is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m., Shah is expected to arrive around 2:30 p.m.

Shah was on Sunday formally declared as the BJP president for the second consecutive term.

The decision in this regard was announced at the party headquarters in the national capital.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P. Nadda, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs M. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and the Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states proposed Shah's name for the presidential candidature after he filed his nomination papers. (ANI)
Naik visited the hospital yesterday evening at around 8.30 after he experienced chest pain due to cold and congestion. The doctors at the hospital decided to admit him and keep him under observation.

Ram Naik was a member of the 13th Lok Sabha and was Minister of Oil and Natural Gas in the former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet.

He assumed the post of Uttar Pradesh Governor on July 22, 2014. (ANI)




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The elephants killed one person each in Beucha and Godabari villages and tore their bodies into halves.

Later, agitated by the negligence of authorities, the villagers in Godabari started protested by holding the body of one of the dead villagers, Pintu Mondal.

The villagers alleged that despite repeated complaints the authorities take no action for securing their lives.

"About 20-25 days ago, the elephants had caused heavy damage. We requested the authorities to rein in them but nothing has been done so far. The elephants have damaged crops, houses, have killed people in other villages and this time they have attacked this village. We want that such incidents do not happen again," said a villager, Rajib Das.

The bodies were later sent to a hospital in West Midnapore for post-mortem.

Attacks by elephants have been frequent in eastern India, causing serious injuries and deaths to villagers living near forests.

The destruction of wild habitats in the country is one of the main reasons for humans and wild animals coming into conflict. Wild animals like elephants, leopards and panthers often stray into inhabited areas in India in search of food and cause huge human and material loss. (ANI)
The Government has withdrawn all restrictions since last night.

BJP MLA, Kh Joykishan and other organisations which took part in the stir had called if off. The government has also suspended imposition of prohibitory orders in the market areas.

The temporary market will be constructed at Hao Keithel.

Following an earthquake on January 4 last, the three buildings of the womens market were damaged and about 2000 women vendors had no space to sit.

The government decided to make a temporary shed in the middle of Thangal bazaar road which evoked strong protests.

Moirangthem Okendro, Minister Education, said the women vendors will be asked to sit in different places. Prohibitory orders were also withdrawn since last night thus restoring normalcy today in the market areas. Barricades were also removed by police.

Earlier on January 23, Kh Joykishan, BJP MLA, was detained by police when he along with his supporters staged a protest against the decision of the government.

Eight persons, including three women, were injured in the scuffle between police and protestors.

Meanwhile, the affected women under the aegis of Khwairaband Nupi Keithel Semgat Sagatpa Lup said they will sit in the damaged building even if they have to die. UNI NS AD SA AS1528

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-555829.Xml
The government has taken up measures to stop militant activities during the Republic day celebrations. Police and security personnel were called out and positioned at all important places.Police today conducted operations to apprehend militants. Militant organisations operating in the north eastern region had called for a total shutdown of the region from 0001 hrs to 1800 hrs on January 26. United National Liberation Front of WESEA [UNLFW], Co-ordination Committee [CorCom], Manipur Garo National Liberation Army [GNLA)] and Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council [HNLC] said in a joint statement today, Citizens of Western South East Asia [WESEA] are imposed upon, to observe Republic Day and reminded of the Colonial bondage once again." "This unambiguous message has been clear and consistent since the Naga People dared to declare Independent status on 14 August 1947 and the Manipur kingdom was usurped of its sovereignty and independence that recently attained from British Colonialism and annexed forcibly to Indian dominion along with the kingdoms of Tripura and Assam, it said.It was alleged that the government was trying to assimilate all distinct culture, people and territories to India forever. It was stated, "Land territories are constantly ravaged, our indigenous peoples very existence is being threatened with the ever increasing influx of Indian immigrants." These days to conform with the UN provisions of resolving issues with dialogue, peace talks have been often repeated. But, the unmistakable diplomatic sly is, 'Peace within the framework of Indian Constitution', the statement said. It alleged that Gopinath Bordoloi was fooled to take then Assam [a major slice of WESEA] into the Indian fold. UNI NS AD CS1515 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-555836.Xml
Condemning terrorism in all its forms, France along with India today called Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the Pathankot and the Gurdaspur strikes and also of the Mumbai terror attack to justice. In a separate joint statement on counter-terrorism issued here after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande, the two leaders said decisive action were needed against terror outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammad,(the group allegedly involved in the Pathankot terror attack), Lashkar-e-Toiba, Haqqani network and al-Qaeda. "Terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, whenever and by whomsoever it is committed, the statement said. Reaffirming that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group, the two countries agreed to coordinate efforts to better understand radicalization processes, and counter the misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred, perpetrating and justifying terrorism or pursuing political aims. They also noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders posed a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan. They said it was high time that terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens were dismantled and all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals were disrupted.More UNI NAZ SW AE 1705 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-556408.Xml
Extremely disappointed with the Centre's move to recommend President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Nabam Tuki on Monday said the Centre is targeting the Congress Government there. "They should have waited for the outcome of the court, because it is sub-judice. We will fight in the court and let the people decide. I want to meet the Congress MLAs but they are not allowed to come out. People are suffering. The popularly elected government is being targeted by the Union Government," Tuki said. "The decision was taken by the Cabinet, which was not consulted by the state government. They have every right to talk to us, but they did not talk to the Congress high command. They are guided by the BJP people and they are working according to the directions of the BJP only," he added. Meanwhile, the Congress filed petition in the Supreme Court to quash Union Cabinet's recommendation for President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. Chief Minister Tuki has reached 10, Janpath to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi to discuss the issue. A Congress delegation led by Sonia Gandhi is likely to meet President Pranab Mukherjee later today to express their concern over the government's stand. The Congress had earlier dubbed the government's move to recommend President's rule as 'unconstitutional' and alleged that it exposed the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Union Cabinet yesterday recommended President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The recommendation has been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his approval. Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with BJP's 11 MLAs and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue. The Speaker termed the move as illegal and unconstitutional. (ANI)
India and France today agreed to set up an institutional mechanism to discuss bilateral economic and financial matters on an annual basis with a view to identifying and removing possible investment hurdles.The two sides also underlined the importance of the dialogue on trade issues through the India-France Joint Commission, as well as their strong commitment to the European Union-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement. India and France also welcomed convening of the India-France CEO's Forum within a span of nine months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande took positive note of the Action Taken Report and the new recommendations presented by the Co-Chairs of the CEO Forum in Chandigarh yesterday.Mr Modi and Mr Hollande welcomed the signing of a MoU on Cooperation between Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and the Agence nationale de scurit sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail (ANSES) of France in the field of food safety and standards.Recognising the shared commitment of India and France to cooperate in preventing off-shore tax evasion and the steps taken by both countries to strengthen the exchange of information in recent years, the two leaders agreed to explore further avenues for joint co-operation, especially in capacity building and sharing of best practices, in line with G-20 commitments.The two leaders welcomed the conclusion of a MoU on Cooperation in urban development between Telangana and the Bordeaux Metropole in September 2015 and the Investment Roadshow held by Government of Karnataka in Paris and Toulouse in December 2015 and encouraged more such initiatives.UNI NM AE 1715 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0311-556329.Xml
Thailand will consider a stimulus programme worth up to 35 billion baht ($972.49 million) to boost the rural economy, a deputy prime minister said on Monday, as the ruling junta tries to revive flagging growth.The army seized power in May 2014 to end months of political unrest but has been unable to move Southeast Asia's economy forward as pivotal exports and domestic demand remain sluggish.The latest stimulus follows a raft of already approved economic measures, including some 136 billion baht of spending approved in September to inject cash into rural areas."We will propose a programme to develop and strengthen the grassroots economy," Deputy Prime Ministry Somkid Jatusripitak, in charge of economic matters, told a seminar."It will be in the cabinet tomorrow. Each village will receive up to 500,000 baht, to around 70,000 villages, or worth about 35 billion baht."Thailand's cabinet meets weekly on Tuesday.The rural economy has been hit hard by drought and low farm prices, exacerbated by the junta's withdrawal of the generous subsidies of the government it toppled.In September, Somkid told Reuters that boosting rural incomes was an urgent priority.Somkid said he also expected about 100 billion baht from infrastructure projects to go into the economy this year. He did not elaborate.Thailand expects some 20 infrastructure projects worth nearly 1.8 trillion baht covering rail, roads, air transport and ports throughout the country to be under way before 2018 .But many of those projects have been on the drawing board for years and have been repeatedly delayed.The government's planning agency predicts economic growth of 3-4 percent this year and 2.9 percent for 2015, which will officially be released on Feb. 15.In 2014, the economy expanded just 0.9 percent, the weakest pace since flood-hit 2011, with political turmoil bringing it to the verge of recession.REUTERS SA AS1757 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-556672.Xml
Two trucks laden with heavy consignment of rice bags meant for distribution to the family-card holders through the Public Distribution System (PDS) were destroyed in a fire at a godown of the Tamilnadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) at Kodavasal, here today. Police said the trucks loaded with 570 rice bags were parked at the godown, when the fire engulfed the vehicles. On noticing smoke billowing from the trucks, the security guard of the godown alerted fire service personnel, who rushed to the spot and extinguished the fire. However, both the trucks along with rice bags were gutted in the fire. The loss of food grains and trucks was estimated at around Rs 16 lakhs. The trucks ferried the rice bags from TNCSC godown at Tiruvarur to Kodavasal for distribution to the local ration shops. The cause of fire is yet to be ascertained. Kodavasal police have registered a case and are investigating. UNI GSM VV ADB1800 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-556694.Xml
''If India is to shine now and in future, people must have the freedom to decide and governments can be in the business of monitoring, instead of telling people whatto do'', Mr Ratan Naval Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons,observed today. Interacting with the students of SRM University at itscampus in suburban Kattankulathur, he said ''if India should shine, let the people have the freedom to decide''. The Government should have no role in telling people what to do, he added. He told the students that ''as you go through life, many things which you could not find in college, you will find it in your profession'', he said, adding, ''there are many qualities that are sought after in young leaders but the bottom line must be one of making a difference.'' Be honest in what you think and do and this goes for any profession, he said. Prior to the interactive session with students drawn from all faculties including, Engineering and Technology, Science and Humanities, Medical and Dental Sciences, Health Sciences, Management and Law, Mr Tata had a meeting with SRM University Founder-Chancellor Dr Paari Vendhar where they discussed the challenges and opportunities of higher education in India. Referring to the fact that so many young minds of India choose overseas destinations for higher studies, Mr Tata said this would not be the case if educational institutions offered proper facilities and faculties. Lamenting the fact that India still did not have a basic health care network and a country where still a social stigma on disability exists, Mr Tata said both the public and the private sectors need to go the distance in addressing the needs of the under privileged and specially challenged people. Asked on his parameters of support to start-ups, Mr Tata said while he was interested in the ideas of the young minds on projects, his support to any would also depend on not only viability but also in an assessment of greed of the entrepreneur. I like investing in young companies, but money-alone and greed is not what I am for, Mr Tata said.UNI GV KVV ADB1802 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-556706.Xml
In Lucknow, where governor Ram Naik would unfurl the national tri-colour in front of the Vidhan Bhawan in presence of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav tomorrow morning, state police has sealed all the entry points with commandoes being deployed for the security of the VVIPs. Special security has also been provided at the Charbagh railway station and other public places in view of the threat perception.

The district authorities of Faizabad- Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura-Vrindavan, Agra, Allahabad and other religious places too have been alerted.

Security at the Indo-Nepal Border too has been spruced up and intensive checking of the people entering from Nepal is being done thoroughly.

State DGP Javeed Ahmed said here today that all the districts have been asked to be alert."We have asked the district police to be more vigilant during all the Republic Day functions," he added.

Earlier, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had also issued an advisory to UP and some other states for possible terror attack.

Meanwhile, after the arrest of two youths from UP on suspicion of terrorism and their link with IS, UP police has spruced up its intelligence unit.

Two youths, one from Lucknow and another from Kusinagar were apprehended by National Investigation Agency(NIA) on Friday night.UNI MB AE AS AE AS1740

-- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-556476.Xml
The BJP in Karnataka today slammed ChiefMinister Siddaramaiah's Media Advisor Dinesh Amin Mattu, a formersenior journalist, for his opinion saying that the arrests of ISsuspects in Karnataka had targetted youth of certain community. Speaking to reporters here, State BJP Spokesperson and formerMinister Suresh Kumar said it was high time that a former seniorjournalist 'painting communal colour' to arrests made by centralagencies on perpetrators of terrorism and who worked towardsdestabilising the country. Six persons, said to be sympathisers of terror organisation ISwere arrested in three different places in Karnataka includingBengaluru by NIA with the help of other police forces like AntiTerrorist Squads and the State Police recently. They were among the12 arrested across the country and NIA securing the police remand indifferent courts. While four were arrested in the city, one each were arrested fromthe Port City of Mangaluru and Tumukuru on Friday and they have beenalleged to have been harboring IS and inducing youth to join theterror organisation. NIA had further said that the arrested weretrying to create unrest in the country, besides planning terrorattack in Delhi and elsewhere on Republic Day on January 26. Mr Sureshkumar said it was high time that Mr Mattu, being in fullknowledge of terror threat faced by the country, made such 'light'comment. ''In his statement Mr Mattu had said that Muslims were targetedbefore events like Republic Day and being victimised branding themas terrorists. This is unfortunate as the media advisor to MrSiddaramaiah is trying to paint a communal colour to action takenagainst anti-national elements''. The former Minsiter said it was up to the Home Minister GParameshwara or the Chief Minister himself to take a suitable actionagainst the Mr Mattu for his 'irresponsible statement'. ''The Chief Minister and the Home Minister of Karnataka havealready clarified on the arrest of the suspected terror elements.But where was the need for an official like Mr Mattu, to speak oncontrary to their statements, Mr Sureshkumar asked. He opined that a Media Advisor to any Chief Minister had noauthoriy to speak on his personal opinion and should work within hiswork limits. ''But this official has questioned the State governmentitself, over its stand,'' Mr Sureshkumar claimed. ''BJP demands that Dr Parameshwara give a clarification on thisissue and Mr Siddaramaiah take such statement from his officialseriously,'' he said. He however said the Chief Minister was free to take a decision onhis aide, ''but Mr Mattu's thinking was dangerous for the society''. Another BJP spokesperson Prakash Shesharaghavachar was presentduring the press conference.UNI RS MSP HVB1634 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-556420.Xml
Even as officials at the Deputy Commissioners(DC) Office in city were giving final touches to the preparationsfor Republic Day celebrations tomorrow, panic descended on theOffice as some workers and visitors ran out of the more than acentury-old building following a bomb threat today. However, after a through search of the building by Bomb disposalSquad, dog Squad and police personnel turned the threat as Hoax. In the morning an unidentified person called up the Office overphone saying that a bomb was planted in the Office and it would gooff any moment. It is said that the unidentified caller, claiming to be a milkvendor, who called from a Public Call Office (PCO) located nearNanjumalige Circle to the land- line at the District Control Room atthe DC office said that the bomb could blow off any moment. Mahesh, a CAR Constable on security duty at the Office, whoreceived the call, immediately alerted the officials, who in turninformed the Police. Another warning given by the caller that bombs were beingmanufactured at a house belonging to one Basheer near NanjumaligeCircle also proved hoax as cops who rushed to the spot found thatthere were no such activities. The caller had also made a call tothe office yesterday night which went unanswered as there was no onein the office. Deputy Commissioner C Shikha, who was attending a Voters Dayfunction at the Town Hall, said that immediately on receiving thecall she informed City Police Commissioner B Dayananda, who swunginto action and took necessary measures. Dwelling on the security aspect at the office, She said that thebuilding had been provided with sufficient security and there was noneed for deployment of additional security forces.UNI BSP MSP VV ADB1730 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-556550.Xml
Four inmates of various prisons will be releases while 398 others to will get remission of seven to 45 days in their sentence in Himachal Pradesh from tomorrow. Superintendent of Police (Prison) Rajinder Singh Bhatia told UNI today that the state government announced remission in sentence of these convicts on the occasion of the Republic Day. The convicts undergoing life imprisonment or sentence of more than ten years would get 45 days remission, subject to good conduct while convicts sentenced for more than five years and between three to five years would get remission of 30 days and 21 days respectively Mr Bhatia said. The convicts undergoing imprisonment of one to three years and between three months and one year would get remission of 15 days and one week respectively, he said.UNI ML ADG NS1730 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-556044.Xml
President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said that voter's participation in the electoral process is integral to the successful running of any democracy, while attending the 6th National Voters' Day Celebrations here. Speaking on the occasion, President Mukherjee said the National Voters' Day signifies a mutual obligation. It is indeed the duty of the Election Commission of India to ensure that all eligible voters are included on the rolls. It is an onerous and continuous task. But it is equally the responsibility of citizens to enroll themselves as voters. "Voter's participation in the electoral process is integral to the successful running of any democracy. The level of voters' participation reflects the people's level of confidence and trust in democracy," said President Mukherjee. "Today is also the 67th foundation day of the Election Commission of India. This constitutional body came into existence on January 25, 1950 just a day before the celebration of the first Republic Day. It is a significant metaphor indicating that we received the Indian Republic with the mandate of the people," he added. The President said that elections are a festival of democracy. They are not merely a gigantic administrative exercise. He was happy that the Election Commission is using innovative ways to reach out to the people, particularly the youth. "Though the rise of Social Media and internet has raised awareness in our youth, but we still have to pay special attention to those outside the ambit of these digital opportunities. Article 326 of the Constitution had fixed the minimum qualifying age of voting at 21 years. But, there were persistent demands that the voting age should be lower," said President Mukherjee. "Finally, the Constitution (Sixty-First) Amendment Act, lowered the minimum qualifying age to 18 years. In the 10th General Elections to Lok Sabha in November, 1989, an estimated 35.7 million voters between the age group of 18 to 21 years participated and exercised their electoral right. And, ahead of the 16th General Elections in 2014, there were 23.16 million voters between the age group 18 to 19 years alone. In fact, they constituted 2.8 percent of the national electorate," he added. The President said that the Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation - SVEEP, was borne out of IEC initiatives taken up by ECI after the Lok Sabha elections in 2009. He said that he was happy to note that today, the Voter Education programme of the Commission is spread out across the polling stations with an attempt to reach each and every citizen of the country, keeping in mind that those who are not yet eligible to be electors, are the prospective electors. "The abuse of money and muscle power to influence voters remains a cause of concern. The spirit of democracy will be subverted if these malpractices are not checked. It is commendable that the Election Commission has taken up initiatives to promote ethical and informed voting. To expand its reach and facilitate eligible voters the Election Commission launched National Voter Service Portal (NVSP) which provides a host of services like online registration, searching names on voter lists, locating polling stations and other related assistance," he added. President Mukherjee also added that India is today the world's largest functional democracy. "When a newly independent India made Universal Adult Suffrage the basis of elections not all were convinced of our capability to implement it. However, the successful manner in which the very first elections were conducted put these speculations to rest. Since then, over the years, the Election Commission has been conducting elections successfully and improving on deficiencies to increase participation in elections," he said. He congratulated the Election Commission for making innovative changes. He also applauded the Commission for it's new initiative of celebrating the voter with "Matdata Mahotsav" which was held recently in New Delhi ahead of the National Voters' Day. He concluded by saying that he was happy to recognize not only those higher up in the election machinery but also those who worked on the ground level for their contribution to cause of electoral participation. He also congratulated the newly enrolled electors to whom he gave away Elector Photo Identity Cards. He expressed confidence that they would exercise their rights with great care, without fear or favour. President Mukherjee also received the first copy of the book 'Belief in the Ballot'. This book is brought out by the Election Commission of India and published by Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. (ANI)
Home Minister Rajnath Singh today reviewed security situation. The meeting was attended by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and chiefs of intelligence agencies.

The visiting French President Francois Hollande is the chief guest at Republic Day celebrations this year.

In view of recent terror attacks in Paris and at Pathankot air base, stringent measures have been taken to avoid any untoward incident.

Security has been tightened in the national capital, particularly around Rajpath and the parade route.

Delhi has turned into a fortress ahead of the Republic Day celebrations.

Multi layered security has been put in place and elaborate ground-to-air security and traffic arrangements have been made.

Barricades have been installed at all exit-entry points and sensitive locations. Around 40000 security personnel have been deployed at key locations in the city, including metros, market places, shopping malls, railway stations and inter state bus terminals.

In Jammu & Kashmir, foolproof security arrangements have been put in place to ensure smooth and peaceful Republic Day celebrations across the state.

Police and para-military force personnel have been jointly conducting frisking operations in Srinagar and district headquarters where the Republic Day celebrations are scheduled to be held tomorrow.

Security agencies have sounded an alert to prevent any militant attack in Kashmir valley.

The alert has been sounded in the wake of recent attack on Air Force Base at Pathankot in Punjab.

In Srinagar, the main function will be held at Bakshi Stadium. Police sources said at least three dozen Close Circuit Television (CCTV) sets have been made functional in Srinagar alone. (ANI)
In a letter addressed to President Mukherjee and Prime Minister Modi, the Russian president also pitched for deeper bilateral cooperation with India.

"Accept my cordial greetings on the occasion of the Republic Day. India enjoys well-deserved authority in the world arena, plays an important role in solving pressing international and regional issues, possesses mighty economic potential and rich cultural heritage," Putin said in the letter.

"We highly appreciate the relations of special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India.

"I am sure that the further build-up of fruitful bilateral cooperation in different areas, constructive interaction in various international formats corresponds to our common interests and goes in line with ensuring stability and security in Asia and the entire world," Putin wrote.

"From the bottom of my heart I wish good health and success to you, well-being and prosperity - to the friendly people of India," he added.

--Indo-Asian News Service mak/sd/bg

( 191 Words)

2016-01-25-19:06:07 (IANS)
The incident took place in Mozammabad area, about 60 km from Jaipur, police said. One side of the statue was found smeared with black paint and "ISIS Zindabad" scrawled on it.

A forensic team collected evidence from the spot, and the statue was cleaned by the district administration. Police personnel were deployed in the area.

--Indo-Asian News Service as/pm/mr

( 92 Words)

2016-01-25-19:49:43 (IANS)
India's iconic Rajpath will witness for the first time a foreign military contingent, a French formation marching during the prestigious Republic Day parade with France's President Francois Hollande present on the salutation dais as a chief guest with President Pranab Mukherjee. The nations military prowess and achievements in different fields, state-of-the-art defence platforms, its diverse cultural and social traditions, and the governments emphasis on self-reliance and indigenisation will be showcased before the public at the historic Rajpath when the country celebrates its 67th Republic Day. Among the highlights of the parade is a 76-member French Army contingent led by a French military band consisting of 48 musicians marching on Rajpath and presenting a ceremonial salute to the President. The French Army contingent is led by Lt Col Paul Bury. After a gap of 26 years, an Army dog squad drawn from the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC) will also take part, along with their handlers. Sticking to the 66-year-long tradition of the celebration, the colourful BSF Camel Regiment consisting of 56 camels led by Deputy Commandant Kuldeep J Choudhary will take part. For the first time, the parade will also see an ex-servicemen tableau, where Army veterans with their eye-catching float will pass the saluting dais, wherein pioneering role of ex-servicemen in nation building will be displayed. The Indian Armys missile firing capability T-90 Bhishma tank, Infantry Combat Vehicle BMP II (Sarath), Mobile Autonomous Launcher of the BrahMos Missile System, Akash Weapon System, Smerch Launcher Vehicles and Integrated Communication Electronic Warfare System (ICEWS) will be the main draw in the mechanised columns. An Indian Air Force tableau will roll down the Rajpath with the theme Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations by IAF: In Service of the Nation and Beyond. The tableau showcases the IAFs role in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Yemen and Nepal rescue and relief operations, by displaying models of C-17 Globemaster, C-130 Hercules and MI-17V5 aircraft. This year the Navys tableau will have the theme Empowering India through Maritime security and Indigenisation. The tableau displays flight deck operations on the new aircraft carrier Vikrant under construction at the Kochi Shipyard Ltd and the indigenously constructed submarine Kalvari by Mazagaon Dock Ltd, Mumbai, having a Made in India tag on them. The parade ceremony will commence at the Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the nation in paying homage to the martyrs by laying a wreath. After unfurling of the National Flag, the National Anthem will be played with a 21-gun salute. The parade will then commence and the President in his capacity of Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, will take the salute. More UNI MK SW AE 1900 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-556840.Xml
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said that the recently concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) annual summit focused on how to provide better living conditions using technology and how face the challenges to the environment. Giving details about his participation at the WEF annual summit in Davos in Switzerland, at a press conference here today, he said that 350 sessions were held in which thousands of prominent heads of multinationals and leaders participated. The fourth revolution of industrial development and happenings in future, the challenges to environment, on-line business, manufacturing sectors growth in future and the emerging new trends were some of the issues, which were discussed at the summit he said. Mr.Naidu informed that the WEF discussed the consequences of dwindling economic growth of China in the world countries. It was also felt that there was disadvantage to Japan, European countries and China and at the same time, the WEF hoped that India would achieve 7 to 8 per cent of growth rate, he disclosed. He informed that he had discussed with 58 CEOs and heads of MNCs of 16 countries during the three days summit.UNI DP VV ADB1926 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-556952.Xml
Jharkhand Water Resources and Sanitation Minister Chandraprakash Chowdhary today held a review meeting over the progress of various drinking water supply schemes of rural and urban areas at the Nepal house here. During the review meeting, the Minister took stock of technical problems being faced in execution of the various drinking water supply schemes, reviewed toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and also assessed the preparations of the department for summer season. Principal Secretary of Finance Amit Khare, Secretary of Drinking Water A P Singh and Deputy Secretary of Urban Development Department Manisha Joseph Tigga, along with other officials were present during the meeting. The meeting, decided that funds received from the Disaster Management department for making arrangements for drinking water should be handed over to the districts without any delay. He cautioned the officials that no complaints regarding drinking water should be made by the people and the officials should work as a team and visit the villages. They should also ensure that water through tankers should be supplied in the areas facing drought. Mr Chowdhary asked the departmental officials not to delay the files unnecessary in the name of completing the process and asked them to execute the projects on the grounds. He asked the officials to launch a mobile water testing laboratory and invite tenders from companies for supplying water purifiers. The Minister reviewed the work, which was going on to reduce the content of fluoride, arsenic and iron in various areas of the state. He also stressed on making payment to the suppliers, changing the working attitude of the officials and simplification of the processes.UNI AK AKM RJ AE NS1835 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0213-556536.Xml
The Congress on Monday challenged in the Supreme Court the union cabinet's decision to impose president's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The cabinet on Sunday approved president's rule in the northeastern state following the recommendation of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa. Petitioner Rajesh Tacho, chief whip of Congress Legislature Party in Arunachal Pradesh assembly, assailed the governor's report for imposing president's rule, its acceptance by the cabinet and subsequent recommendation to the president. The petitioner said the report was based on "non-existent facts" and there was no breakdown of the constitutional machinery in the state. "The governor's report for imposition of president's rule, its acceptance by the cabinet and subsequent recommendation to the president is based on non-existent facts, actuated by malice in law and facts and there exists no constitutional breakdown which necessitates imposition of the president's rule," the petitioner said. "It has been the continuous attempt of the governor to pull down the democratically elected government in Arunachal Pradesh," he added in his plea. Recounting the sequence of events from November 19, 2015, when 13 Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs supported by two Independents wrote to Rajkhowa to seek the removal of Speaker Nabam Rebia to the advancing of the assembly session to December 16 and the proceedings before the Guwahati High Court, Tacho said that having failed in their attempt to dislodge a democratically elected government, "now a circuitous route of President's Rule is being used". "Given the facts and circumstances, there is no power or jurisdiction to either invoke the provisions of Article 356 of the constitution and/or dissolve and/or suspend the assembly," the petitioner said. While the governor was engaged in the exercise of recommending the imposition of President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh, he held it back both from the high court and the apex court where hearing on petitions by the aggrieved parties were taking place, the Congress leader said. The petitioner said it was the governor who sought hearing in the matter by a constitution bench as the matter before the apex court involved "important constitutional issues". An apex court bench of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice C. Nagappan, while referring to the Arunachal assembly imbroglio to the constitution bench, said on January 14: " Harish N. Salve, the learned senior counsel representing the governor of Arunachal Pradesh, expresses the view that important constitutional issues arise in this case, and as such, the matter should be placed before a constitution bench in terms of Article 145 (3) of the constitution of India. We tentatively concur with the view expressed by the learned senior counsel." --Indo-Asian News Service pk/tsb/vm ( 443 Words) 2016-01-25-20:45:34 (IANS)
"If the people of Tiruvarur (assembly constituency) tell me and if the party permits me I will contest," the nonagenarian politician said on Monday to a reporter's query in Kattur village in Tiruvarur district, around 320 km from here.

As for a political alliance, Karunanidhi said his party will not turn away others willing to ally with it.

The DMK will welcome all parties that will ensure victory for democracy, the former Tamil Nadu chief minister said.

Karunanidhi was first elected to the assembly in 1957 from Kulithalai. He has won all 12 assembly elections he contested since then.

After his win from Thanjavur in 1962, Karunanidhi has been contesting the assembly polls from one of the seats here. In 2011, he however shifted to Tiruvarur.

--Indo-Asian News Service vj/tsb/vm

( 171 Words)

2016-01-25-20:53:34 (IANS)
Actor Ajay Devgn today expressed elation on winning the Padma Sri award. In a statement issued from Bulgaria, where he is shooting for his debut directorial venture Shivaay, Ajay said, ''I feel deeply humbled yet elated to receive such honour from my own country. This announcement today makes it special for me when I'm filming abroad for my new film 'Shivaay'. '' ''I would like to acknowledge that Padma Samman puts an extra responsibility on me and I promise to serve my country for as long as I can,"Ajay said. Ajay has in course of his career, won accolades for his performances in films like Zakhm, Gangaajal Singham and the recent film Drishyam. The actor is currently shooting for his debut directorial venture which also has him in the lead opposite Sayesha Saigal, the grand nice of yesteryears actor Saira Banu.UNI AR RSA 2115 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-557223.Xml
At least 30 Indian fishermen of Porbandar, along with five boats, were captured today by the Pakistan Marine Security Agency (PMSA) near the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) in the Arabian sea off Gujarat coast.National Fish Workers Forum Secretary Manish Lodhari told journalists that the boats from Porbandar had ventured into high seas for fishing nearly a week ago. The messages received by the Forum confirmed that the boats were from Porbandar.Mr Lodhari also claimed that the number of the captured boats could actually be more than five. The initial information with the Forum was that five boats were captured by the Pakistani agency but the number could be more than 8 to 9 with five to six fishermen on board on each of them. Earlier on December 20 last year, 10 Indian boats with 68 fishermen were captured by Pakistan Marine Security Agency off Jakhau port. PMSA had caught about a dozen Indian boats with over 60 fishermen on board in October last year.UNI ND SHS RSA 2121 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-557218.Xml
Uttar Pradesh government today urged the Central government to allow 65.84 lakh BPL beneficiaries of the State belonging to 'primary household category' to be included in Antyodaya category and allotment of foodgrains accordingly. The State government has said permission should be accorded to include in 'eligible household', such ration-card holders with more than seven units belonging to Antyodaya Anna Yojna and new beneficiaries to be included in Antyodaya category. In this regard, state Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan has sent a letter to Secretary, Consumer Affairs, Public Distribution Ministry Vrinda Swaroop, released to the media today. The CS letter sent says after the death of Antyodaya ration-card holders their ration-cards are cancelled. Consent to allow selection of new eligible beneficiary in place of expired ration-card holder has been sought.Through the letter the Chief Secretary has informed that situation was grim in Bundelkhand. Demand has been received from different sources to ensure food security to entire population of this region for short-term. Mr Ranjan said he has toured BundelKhand region and found that Rabi crop had been sowed in only 50 per cent land suitable for farming and there was shortage of animal fodder. After intensive consideration, it was found that 80 per cent population of this not so densely populated area was covered under food security. Hence, providing food security to the entire population of Bundelkhand region for a short-period is not only necessary but inevitable. The Chief Secretary told that the Centre has been requested for allotment of 3 Kg wheat and 3 Kg rice per unit to cover the entire population of seven districts of Bundelkhand region, viz. Banda, Chitrakoot, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Jhansi, Jalaun and Lalitpur under the Food Security Act 2013 for at least six months. UNI MB SHS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-557253.Xml
India and France today "concluded" an Inter-Government Agreement but fell short of signing a deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets as the two sides continued to haggle over the price of the aircraft.The visiting French President, Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi also sent a strong message to Pakistan, calling for a "decisive action" against the terror outfits operating on its soil."The two Leaders welcomed the conclusion of the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the acquisition of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft in flyaway condition, except for some financial issues relating to the IGA which they agreed must be resolved as soon as possible," Mr Hollande and Mr Modi said in a joint statement issued.In a separate joint statement on counter-terrrorism, the two leaders also stated: "The terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, both leaders asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda."While Rafale deal and solidarity on the counter-terrorism occupied the centre stage of the French President's visit, the two sides also intensified their ties in the areas of strategic partnership, security, defence, nuclear energy, climate change, sustainable consumption and production patterns, renewable energies and energy efficiency, sustainable urban development, transport, space, economic co-operation, people-to-people contacts, education, skill development, science & technology, heritage, culture, and sports.The issuance of separate statement on counter-terrorism underscored the seriousness accorded to the issue by the two countries which have recently come under terror attack several times."Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future," the joint statement said. President Hollande also commended India for its stabilising role in South Asia, in particular in Afghanistan, and its recent initiative to launch a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan.Rafale deal notwithstanding, the cooperation on defence did not fare as badly as the two leaders gave thumbs up to Mahindra-Airbus cooperation in Chandigarh yesterday to manufacture military helicopters in India, in keeping with the spirit of Mr Modi's 'Make in India' initiative.The other highlight was some forward movement on the clean energy front. The two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur. Mr Hollande also took a metro with Mr Modi to Gurgaon to lay the foundation stone for International Solar Alliance(ISA) Headquarters and inaugurate the interim Secretariat of ISA at National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon.Tomorrow, Mr Hollande will preside over the Republic Day parade as chief guest and will witness a contingent of French Army marching past. Editor: pick suitably from earlier seriesUNI PRA RSA 2036 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-557161.Xml
Disclosing this here, a spokesperson of the Chief Ministers Office said that the Head, Department of Pulmonary Medicine Dr D Behra after thoroughly examining the Chief Minister this evening, said Mr Badal was satisfactorily getting better day by day as his all medical reports were fine and showing signs of remarkable recovery.

However, Dr Behra said that the Chief Minister would be kept under observation in hospital till the infection was completely cleared.UNI NC RSA AN2022

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Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu from Dhatkidih, and Nasim Akhtar alias Raju were arrested following leads and intelligence about their whereabouts.

Jamshedpur Senior Superintendent of Police Anoop Mathew said that two arrested were members of al Qaeda's sleeper cell and motivated youth to join the terror organisation.

The arrested terrorists were interrogated extensively in order to discover about any possible attack during Republic Day.

According to reports, the terrorists are associated with Abdul Sami, another suspect, who was recently arrested in Jamshedpur.

The arrest comes in the wake of the massive crackdown across the nation to nab terrorists and terror suspects ahead of Republic Day celebrations. (ANI)
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Monday ordered an investigation into the case of the three medical students who committed suicide and also announced a grant of Rs. 1 lakh ex-gratia to the families of the deceased. The declaration from the Chief Minister comes after the Opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) had demanded a judicial probe by a sitting High Court Judge into the alleged suicide of three students of a private institution in the Villupuram district. DMK chief and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi has demanded a judicial probe by a sitting High Court judge into the alleged suicide of three students of a private institution in the state's Villupuram District. Suggesting that the incident is being covered up, Karunanidhi said that when the parents of Saranya, Monisha and Priyanka are in a state of denial about them committing suicide, then what was the reason for the ruling AIADMK to delay an investigation. Yesterday, four people were detained in connection with this case where three second-year students of SVS Medical College of Yoga and Naturopathy and Research Institute at Kallakurichi near Viluppuram in Tamil Nadu committed suicide. The girls, in their suicide note, have accused the administration of charging excess fees and 'torture' and blaming college chairman Vasuki Subramanian for their death. The three girls namely E. Saranya and V. Priyanka (both 18 years) and T. Monisha (19 years) in a two-page suicide note said that the students had filed several complaints against Subramanian but to no avail. Citing "torture" by the management, the girls hoped that their suicide would finally force the authorities to take action against the chairman. The girls accused the administration of charging 'excess fees' around Rs. six lakh and never giving the bill. They also mentioned that the college lacked proper classes or teachers and there was 'nothing to learn'. The students had been protesting for more than a month over lack of infrastructure, but it was only in the last two weeks that the protest turned vigorous. Their post-mortem report has revealed that they died due to drowning and there is no visible external injury on their bodies. (ANI)
Thousands of tribals from both Thane and Palghar districts today took out a protest morcha to the district collectorate and the local tehasil offices on the eve of January 26 to protest against the apathy of the government towards the woes of the malnourished children in the predominantly tribal regions of the districts. The agitation was held under the banner of Shramajivi Sanghatana which has taken up the cause of the tribals. Tribals from the remote villages with banners condemning the government and the Tribal development minister, led the procession to the district collectorates. The agitators comprised of pregnant women, malnourished children, and just delivered mothers. IN the agitation, which was centre of attraction in both the districts, balloons depicting the failed programmes of the government were released in the air. The women carried empty plates indicating that the government programme to provide nutrious food the tribals had not not seen the light of the day. Also the Amrut Poshan Ahar scheme announced by the government was yet to be implemented the agitators told reporters at the site of the agitation. The agitation was led by Working President Keshav Nankar, general secretary Vijay Jadhav and district president Suresh Renjad at Palghar.UNI XR RSA AN2332 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-557292.Xml
The meeting, held under the chairmanship of Mr L V Strugov, First Vice President, United Shipbuilding Corporation and Vice Admiral G S Pabby, Controller of Warship Production and Acquisition, Integrated Headquarters of Ministry of Defence (Navy), Government of India.

IRIGC is a platform to discuss various technical, commercial and administrative issues related to Russian equipment ordered for various warships being constructed in Indian shipyards.

Senior level officers of OEMs from Russia, Rear Admiral R K Shrawat, chairman and managing director of Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd, Mumbai, Rear Adm A K Saxena, director general Naval Design andother officers from relevant Indian and Russian agencies are participating in the meeting.

The meeting is likely to conclude on January 28, a statment issued by Goa Shipyard Ltd here today said.UNI SRN SS SHS RSA PR2315

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All India Congress Committee general secretary Gurudas Kamat today condemned the attempt of the BJP-led Maharashtra government to facilitate landlords to impose huge rent by bringing in the amendments to the Rent Act. Mr Kamat said in a statement here that lakhs of families and small commercial establishments will be driven out if these huge rents are imposed, thereby facilitating landlords or builders to exploit and redevelop these properties. He alleged that the BJP was two-timing the electorate with the Housing Minister representing the government on one hand and the BJP MLAs Lodha and Raj Purohit speaking in different voices on the other. Mr Kamat stated that the recent decisions of the BJP-led government in Maharashtra and at the center clearly indicate their bias in favour of landlords or big builders and added the Congress party condemns these attempts to burden the poor and middle class people of the state.UNI ST SS RSA AN2258 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-557205.Xml
The 'Make in India', ambitious project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of the highest comprehensive concept launched for the development of the country so far, asserted chief of the project Subramanian Swamy today. Speaking on 'Make in India' at a function organised jointly by Shivaji University and Kolhapur We Care institution at premises of the University here, Mr Swamy, a veteran economist, said that after independence, three major concepts came into existence in the country -- one was Mahatma Gandhi's Swadeshi movement, second was self-reliance of Planning Commission and the third is the ambitious 'Make in India' project of Mr Modi launched for development of the country. He said that the objective of central government's policy was to maintain balance by giving permission to foreign companies for setting up of their projects in the country without any harm to domestic industry. ''Our country has supreme technology and intelligent young generation who with new research and motivation could help the country take lead over China in the future,'' Mr Swamy added. University vice-chancellor Devanand Shinde, who presided over the function, also spoke on the occasion.UNI SSS SS RSA PR2321 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-557268.Xml
Following an alert sounded by the Intelligence Agencies with regard to terrorist attack on the important railway station Ambala Cantonment, security forces, including the Army, have deployed personnel in and around the station. The warning from the agencies was received in the wake of Pathankot Airbase terrorist attack in the beginning of this month. The Agencies are learnt to have informed that Pathankot action was not an end of terrorist action but they may strike at other places on the eve of Republic Day which include the Ambala Cantonment railway station. This station had remained the target of terrorist outfits and threats had been received to blast the station. The station assumes much importance being located at oldest Army cantonment. On receiving alert from the agencies, the RPF, GRP and the police have made arrangements to take security measures at the Railway station. The RPF Commandant and GRP SP have claimed that extensive security measures had been taken at the railway station. An intensive search has been started and luggage carried by passengers is being searched. Jawans from the RPF and GRP assisted by the Army, have been deployed in whole of the campus outside the station who are keeping vigilance round the clock. Security has been strengthened after detection of an abandoned car and two bikes. The cross-section of passengers alleged that there was no foolproof security measures inside the station. They stated that security men who conducted the search at random, were found without any metal detector equipment to detect something dangerous carried by any passenger. They simply completed the formality of search and any mischief maker may escape their eyes, they alleged. Metal detector installed at the entrance almost remains out of order. They said that there was an urgent need to strengthen the security inside the station at each of the seven platforms.UNI XC RSA 2209 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0292-557058.Xml
Farmers of economically backward allot Sirmaour districts are up in arms against the move by the state government to allot 1500 bigha of fertile arable land to set up Indian Institute of Management at Dhaulakuan. Local farmers said in the case, they would be forced to purchase seed from other parts of the country which might not be suitable as per their soil and the same may be rhizome-rot disease as they had been facing such ginger disease for the last 36 years. They said as the union government sanctioned one India Institute of Management (IIM) for this hill state and the state government, decided to be opened it in Sirmaur district. The administration suggested the place Agriculture Research Centre Dhaulakuan by providing 1,000 bigha land for the purpose without thinking about the farmers interest, local farmers alleged. Farmers argued that land of research was futile where seeds of wheat barley and maize and other grains and cereals are being produced for consumption of local farmers. They said that seeds are being produced here was being supplied to them at subsidised prices of Rs 30 per kilogram. The seeds became a boon for the ryots as it was provided suitable for local soil and climatic conditions. If this farm is uprooted after setting up of an IIM here, farmers would have to depend upon the open market to purchase seeds a exorbitant prices at Rs 70 to 80 per kg. Farmers of Amboa area under Paonta Block said that they were ready to provide barren 1,400 bigha land for the establishment of IIM, however, no action had been taken by the district authorities and the state government. They demanded that the state must prefer baren land instead of fertile so that the land continues to be useful for them.UNI ML RSA PR2238 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0292-557086.Xml
Haryana Government today on the eve of Republic Day granted special remission to prisoners who are undergoing sentence as a result of their conviction by the Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction in the state. Giving this information here today, an official spokesman said that convicts who have been sentenced for a period of 10 years and above have been granted remission of 60 days and those sentenced for five years or more but less than 10 years have been granted remission of 45 days. Similarly, the convicts who have been sentenced for two years or more, but less than five years have been granted remission of 30 days and those who have been sentenced for less than two years have been granted remission of 15 days. He said that this remission will also be granted to all the convicts who are on parole or furlough from the jail on Republic Day,that is January 26,2015, subject to the condition that they surrender at the respective jails on the due date after the expiry of their parole or furlough period for undergoing the un-expired portion of their sentence. The spokesman said that this remission will not be granted to the convicts who are on bail on the day of granting this remission. The remission will not exceed one-fourth of the total period of sentence. However, in case of persons convicted and sentenced for life, the special remission granted by the State Government will be in addition to the remission granted as per Jail Manual. The sentence of imprisonment imposed in default of payment of fine would not be treated as substantive for the purpose of grant of this remission. He said that all prisoners convicted by the Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction in Haryana but undergoing their sentences in Jails outside Haryana shall also be entitled to get this remission as per the above scale. The remission will not be granted to prisoners convicted for the offences like abduction and murder of a child below the age of 14 years, rape with murder, dacoity or robbery, under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987, Official Secrets Act 1923, Foreigners Act 1948, Passport Act 1967, Section 2 and 3 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1961, Section 121 to 130 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Similarly, the remission will also not be admissible to detenues of any class, Pakistan nationals, the persons imprisoned for failing to give security for keeping peace for their good behaviour sections 107 or 109 or 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 and the Convicts who had committed any major jail offence during last two years and were punished for the same under the relevant provisions of Punjab Jail Manual or any other Act or Rules as applicable on thay day.UNI NC RSA AN2254 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0292-557130.Xml
Canada's government, grappling with a fatal attack in a remote aboriginal town, is very concerned about the "tragic and alarming" conditions in other indigenous communities, a top official said. A 17-year-old boy was due to appear in court today, charged with four counts of murder after Friday's deadly incident in La Loche, an impoverished town in the western province of Saskatchewan. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took power last year promising to tackle high levels of poverty, crime, bad housing and poor health among aboriginals, who make up 4 per cent of the country's population of 36 million. House leader Dominic LeBlanc, a key Trudeau ally from the Atlantic province of New Brunswick, told reporters Ottawa would work with aboriginal leaders "to deal with some of the tragic and alarming social indicators in many of these communities". He added: "I have some of these communities ... in New Brunswick. I worry about them a great deal, and our whole government does." Hundreds of people in La Loche, a community of 2,600, attended a church service yesterday in memory of the four victims. Local Roman Catholic Archbishop Murray Chatlain said recent cuts to school and other services could have played a role in the tragedy, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix reported. "I think those things need to be revisited. Our cuts sometimes end up costing more," the paper quoted him as saying. Trudeau last month promised a new "nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples" - a term that aboriginals use to refer to themselves - and said he would increase funding for indigenous communities. The head of a group representing 65,000 aboriginals in northern Manitoba, which borders Saskatchewan, said the tragedy showed the need for major investments in mental health, education and the economy. "I'm surprised it doesn't happen more - not to this level, of course - given the despair we see," Sheila North Wilson said in a phone interview. LeBlanc said improving the lot of the First Nations was "a huge challenge". Robert Nault, who served as aboriginal affairs minister under the Liberals from 1999 to 2003, said real change would take a long time. "So we're going to have to be patient and start ... working on the lack of infrastructure, the lack of housing, to change our relationship as it relates to education and healthcare," he said in an interview. "It is a slow process." REUTERS PS DS PR0503 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-555639.Xml
The UN Security Council is expected to approve a draft resolution today that calls for establishing a UN mission to oversee disarmament should Colombia's government and leftist FARC rebels reach a final peace deal, diplomats said. The UN press office said yesterday the council was scheduled to discuss Colombia at 3 p.m. (0130 IST) today. Several council diplomats said a draft resolution Britain circulated to the 15-nation body on Thursday would be put to a vote during that meeting. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomats said yesterday they expected the resolution to be adopted unanimously. Colombia's government and FARC agreed on Tuesday to ask the council to help monitor and verify rebel disarmament should the two sides reach a deal to end their 50-year-old war. The text, drafted by Britain and seen last week by Reuters, would have the council "establish a political mission to participate for a period of 12 months ... to monitor and verify the definitive bilateral ceasefire and cessation of hostilities, and the laying down of arms." To begin the process of creating the mission, it would ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "to initiate preparations and to present detailed recommendations to the Security Council for its consideration and approval." It said he would submit his recommendations within 30 days of the signing of a peace deal. It added that the council would establish "a political mission of unarmed international observers" and welcomed the willingness of members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States to contribute personnel. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last year he would make such an appeal to the United Nations.Santos, who staked his 2014 re-election on the peace talks, has been pressing for a deal to end Latin America's longest war, which has killed 220,000 and displaced millions since 1964. 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. In addition to verifying a bilateral ceasefire and presiding over the FARC's disarmament, the international monitors would settle any disputes and make recommendations.REUTERS PS DS PR0722 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-555654.Xml
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Islamic State is a "very real" threat to the country, hours after a video from the regional wing of IS warned of attacks in the Muslim-majority nation for arresting its supporters.Police said the video, featuring operatives from the militant group Katibah Nusantara speaking under the IS logo, was significant because it was the first from Islamic State in Malay."This threat is very real and my government takes it very seriously," Najib told a conference on extremism. "This is a challenge that faces us all around the world. We are far from immune to this danger in Malaysia."Police said on Sunday they had arrested seven members of an IS cell who were planning attacks across the country. The suspected militants were carrying bullets, books on jihad, IS flags and propaganda videos.Ten days ago, Malaysia arrested a suspected militant believed to have been planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur.Three Malaysians who were trying to enter Syria to join IS were arrested this month, Najib said.The video that surfaced online warned Malaysia against the crackdown on IS supporters and featured two Malaysians based in Syria, said Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, director of the police counter-terrorism unit."They threatened to carry out an attack if police did not stop the arrests and release detainees immediately," said Ayob, adding that the video showed militants in the country were becoming more organised."Perhaps they didn't have a direct link with IS before, but now they do, so they can use the IS logo on their videos."Katibah Nusantara, the militant network that released the video, is believed to be led by Bahrun Naim, who was identified as the mastermind behind the Jakarta bombings earlier this month. Indonesian police have said Naim is pulling strings from Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria.Reuters could not independently verify the video."If you catch us, we will only increase in number but if you let us be, we will be closer to our goal of bringing back the rule of the Khalifah (caliph)," said a message on the video, according to Malaysian newspaper the Star. Security experts in the region believe Islamic State's footprint is still light in Southeast Asia because militants are jostling to be its regional leader.REUTERS CJ AS1420 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-556005.Xml
A Saudi-led coalition air strike killed a Yemeni judge and seven members of his family in the capital Sanaa on Sunday, residents said, as an aid convoy delivered food to a besieged southern city for the first time in months.A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthis, who control the capital, since March. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed, around half of them civilians, according to U.N. figures.The bomb partially destroyed the home of Yahya Rubaid, a judge appointed by the Houthis to a national security court who had prosecuted cases against militant groups like Al Qaeda but had also presided over treason cases against President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and other ousted foes of the Houthis.All of Rubaid's family except one of his sons was also killed in the blast, which destroyed the two-storey home, residents said.President Hadi, driven out of Sanaa last year by Houthi fighters that Arab neighbours say are backed by Iran, has returned to lead a government from the southern port of Aden, recaptured in July by troops from the Saudi-led coalition.Pro-Hadi and Gulf Arab forces have pushed up toward the capital but have been bogged down in mountainous battlefronts for months, especially in the southwestern city of Taiz.Residents of the city, Yemen's third largest, have been caught in the crossfire and cut off from humanitarian aid for nine months which many residents call a "siege" imposed by the Houthis.The United Nations World Food Program said on Sunday it was able to send 12 trucks laden with food into some of the worst-affected districts of Tai on Sunday, providing enough aid to feed 3,000 families for a month.The delivery followed weeks of intense lobbying by international aid groups with the Houthis to relieve stricken civilians in the city, one of the country's worst war zonesREUTERS CJ AS1421 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-556021.Xml
Khaleda, on December 21 last year said that there are controversies over how many were martyred in the Liberation War.

Two days after her comments, former secretary of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), sent a legal notice to Khaleda, asking her to apologise to the nation for her remarks, reports The Daily Star.

Yesterday, the Home Ministry approved a prayer for bringing the charge against her for remarks on the number of Liberation War martyrs.

Khaleda's comment drew widespread flak and sparked protest among pro liberation quarters.(ANI)
European Union interior ministers today urged Greece to do more to control the influx of migrants, some threatening to exclude it from the continent's prized passport-free travel zone as the crisis increasingly divides the bloc's members.Greece was the main gateway to Europe for more than a million refugees and migrants who reached the EU last year. But it has been criticised for a failure to control the flow of arrivals, which have shown little sign of falling over the winter months.The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. Of five registration "hot spot" centres that were due to be set up for migrants arriving in Greece, only one is running so far.Overwhelmed by the influx, Greek law enforcement officials have often let migrants through deeper into Europe rather than keep them on Greek soil for proper registration - the first necessary step agreed by the EU before people can move further.Athens says the numbers are impossible to manage and blames the other 27 EU states for not offering real help. The crisis has put the passport-free Schengen zone - hailed by top EU officials as the greatest achievement of European integration - on the verge of collapse."If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move towards central Europe," said Austria's Interior Minister Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner."Greece must increase its resources as soon as possible and accept help," she said on arriving at informal interior minister talks in Amsterdam.The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members. Germany, France, Austria and Sweden are among several countries that have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people."Speaking about timetables, it's already too late. We have seven countries with border controls," Sweden's interior minister Anders Ygeman told Reuters.He said migrant registration centres need to start functioning in Greece and Italy as planned."In the end, if a country doesn't live up to its obligations, we will have to restrict its connections to the Schengen area. If you don't have control of your borders, it will have consequences for the free movement."Excluding Greece would require applying Article 26 of the Schengen code. Germany, the main destination for refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, first floated the idea last year.The Greek minister did not speak on arrival but the EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, himself Greek, sought to talk down the risk of excluding the country from Schengen."Nothing like this has been proposed or discussed. What we have to do is to better manage our external borders. It's obvious that frontline member states must work more and here we are...to help them to better do their job," he said.The Luxembourg interior minister was also against leaving Greece outside Schengen, while Germany's Thomas de Maiziere said that he wanted to preserve Schengen but that time was running out.Berlin hopes a deal agreed with Turkey last November would mean fewer migrants arrive in Greece, but the deal has so far had limited impact.Top EU officials have echoed Berlin's warnings recently that Schengen will not survive without a dramatic change in the coming weeks in the way the bloc handles the crisis.However, EU countries, worried about growing anti-migrant sentiment at home, have failed to agree.As the ministers arrived by canal for talks at Amsterdam's maritime museum, they passed a protest by Amnesty International, a boat packed with mannequins in bright life vests designed to resemble migrants arriving in Europe."Leaders of Europe, it's not the polls you should worry about," a sign said. "It's the history books." REUTERS SA AS1711 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-556485.Xml
Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said on Monday he had discussed possible financing of a Yamal LNG plant by French banks with French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron.The $27 billion project, which is due to start producing liquefied national gas (LNG) in 2017, has been struggling to raise funds due to international sanctions against Novatek , the main shareholder in Yamal LNG."As for the Yamal LNG project, the attention focused on the discussion of issues related to the financing of this project by French banks, and a possibility to organise it in such a way so that financial liabilities are fulfilled," Ulyukayev told reporters after talks.REUTERS SA AS1711 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-556496.Xml
The heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea, Japan and the US will hold a meeting in February to study the current crisis in the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, a South Korean military spokesperson said on Monday. The meeting, between South Korea's JCS chairman General Lee Sun-jin and his Japanese and American counterparts Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano and General Joseph Dunford respectively, will be held through a video conference, Efe news agency cited the Seoul military as saying on Monday. The meeting is aimed at facilitating a possible defence response to the current crisis, a South Korean official said. The Korean peninsula has witnessed an escalation of tensions since January 6 when North Korea carried out its fourth underground nuclear test. The two Koreas, which technically have been at war for more than 65 years now, also activated propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers at the common border. The last time this happened was in August, when the two countries ended up exchanging cross-border artillery fire. Meanwhile, the US army flew a B-52 bomber plane armed with nuclear missiles in the skies of ally South Korea, in response to the North Korean test. Another official said the US plans to carry out a further show of its power as part of its campaign to deter Pyongyang from conducting more nuclear tests. The Kim Jong-un-led communist regime says it detonated a powerful hydrogen bomb for the first time on January 6, although most experts consider the claims to be exaggerated and maintain the country possibly just tested a fission bomb. --Indo-Asian News Service py/vt ( 278 Words) 2016-01-25-18:41:34 (IANS)
"Nothing scares us. Nothing will deter us. No threat will make France waver in the fight against terrorism," the president told the French media during a visit to India, reported Xinhua news agency.

He made the remarks after a new video was posted by the IS on Sunday showing the images and last statements of the assailants who carried out the November attacks in Paris that left 130 dead and over 300 injured.

France raised the terror alert to the highest level and declared a state of emergency immediately after the November 13 attacks. France has also intensified airstrikes against IS militants in Syria and Iraq since then.

Last week, Hollande said that he would ask parliament to extend the state of emergency by three months.

"If I take steps to extend the state of emergency, it is because I know that this threat is there," he said.

--Indo-Asian News Service mr/

( 181 Words)

2016-01-25-18:49:34 (IANS)
"Our ambition is for the ECTC to become a central information hub in the fight against terrorism in the EU, providing analysis for ongoing investigations and contributing to a coordinated reaction in the events of major terrorist attacks," said Rob Wainwright, director of Europol.

The ECTC will be led by Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, a high ranking officer of the Spanish Guardia Civil who is already head of the counter terrorism unit at Europol.

Between 40 to 50 experts on terrorism work in the ECTC, said Wainwright.

The new ECTC has been set up within the current organisational structure of Europol that is already playing an important part in the European response to terrorist threats, he added.

"After the Paris attacks, Europol assigned up to 60 officers to support the French and Belgian investigation in Taskforce Fraternite. Up to now, significant quantity of information has been received from these two countries, resulting in 800 intelligence leads and more than 1,600 leads on suspicious financial transactions," he added.

The launching ceremony took place during the informal meeting of the EU's Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs. The Netherlands now holds the six-month presidency of the EU.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/dg

( 242 Words)

2016-01-25-19:49:40 (IANS)
Former Central African Republic prime ministers Anicet-Georges Dologuele and Faustin-Archange Touadera will face off in a presidential run-off poll, the constitutional court said today. Dologuele won 23.74 per cent of votes cast in the December 30 first round, followed by Touadera with 19.05 per cent, announced the court, which was tasked with certifying the results. Central African law requires a second round of polls if no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round. REUTERS SHS BD2020 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0107-557120.Xml
President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia's government should "carefully" use its "rainy day" reserve funds now when low oil and other commodity prices have dented budget revenues. "Of course, in these conditions which we are living through now, we must carefully but still use our reserve funds ... first and foremost, the reserves of the government," he told a meetings with activists of The All-Russia People's Front, a pro-Kremlin public movement. "This is just what these reserve funds are meant for - to finance social obligations at a time of economic decline - and this is what we will certainly do," he said during a visit to the Stavropol region in southern Russia. He did not specify what funds he was referring to.REUTERS SHS PR2158 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-557278.Xml
Saeed Abedini, an American pastor freed this month from an Iranian prison as part of a US-Iranian prisoner swap, will be reunited with his wife and children today at a Christian center in the North Carolina mountains. The Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, founded by the famed evangelical minister and his family, said Abedini wanted time to adjust and reconnect with his family after more than three years of imprisonment in Iran. Abedini's wife, Naghmeh, also told Reuters last week the couple would work on their marriage. She said in a message to supporters that became public that her husband had been abusive and suffered from a pornography addiction. Abedini arrived at the Asheville, North Carolina, center on Thursday. He and his avid supporter Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, have so far declined comment. A spokesman also declined to say what resources would be made available at the center, known as a retreat to hear speakers, hike and pray. "I'm sure they're praying ... trying to find out where he is spiritually right now," said Joe Nesbitt, an Asheville-based Christian counselor with Grace Life International, who has spent time at the Cove. Abedini, 35, a naturalized US citizen, was sentenced by an Iranian court in 2013 to eight years in prison for allegedly compromising Iran's national security by setting up home-based Christian churches there. He was arrested after returning to Iran for what was supposed to be a short trip to set up an orphanage. Abedini was one of five Americans released by Iran in exchange for clemency to seven Iranians who were convicted or facing trial in the United States. The swap was announced at the same time as international sanctions on Iran were lifted in a deal with the United States and other major powers to curb Tehran's nuclear program. Abedini became a rallying point for US evangelicals, who saw him as a symbol of persecution of Christians. Franklin Graham and other pastors around the country called for his release. Republican White House hopefuls spoke about him, including US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who prayed for Abedini outside the White House. Naghmeh Abedini, who had publicly campaigned for her husband's release, told Reuters last week their relationship was strained. In the fall of 2015, she emailed supporters that she was pulling back from public advocacy and described "physical, emotional, psychological and sexual" abuse by her husband, who she said was addicted to pornography. Reuters could not independently confirm the allegations. REUTERS SHS PR2158 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-557279.Xml
Two Palestinians were shot dead after stabbing two Israeli women today in the West Bank, police said, in an emerging pattern of assaults inside Jewish settlements in the occupied territory. One of the women was in critical condition and the other sustained moderate wounds after the attack in Beit Horon, a settlement on a highway that links Jerusalem and coastal Tel Aviv and cuts through the foothills of the West Bank. "The two terrorists were killed by security forces," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, adding that two explosive devices were found at the scene. It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of violence that has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. It followed three stabbings last week inside settlements carried out by Palestinian teenagers, according to Israeli authorities. Many of the attacks on Israelis at the start of the bloodshed occurred in Jerusalem and other cities. But much of the violence has shifted to the West Bank, where settlers live adjacent to Palestinian population centres. On Saturday, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, who according to an Israeli policewoman "had fought with her family and left home with a knife and intended to die", tried to stab a security guard at a West Bank settlement and was then shot dead by him. Since the start of October, Israeli forces have killed at least 151 Palestinians, 97 of them assailants according to authorities. Most the others have died in violent protests. Almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians have killed 25 Israelis and a US citizen. Many of the Palestinian assailants have been teenagers. The identities and ages of the alleged attackers on Monday were not immediately released. On January 17, an Israeli mother of six was stabbed to death at her home in a West Bank settlement and a 15-year-old Palestinian was arrested for the attack. A day later, Israeli troops shot and wounded a 17-year-old Palestinian who had stabbed and wounded a pregnant Israeli woman in a settlement. The bloodshed has been fuelled by various factors including frustration over the 2014 collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the growth of Jewish settlements on land Palestinians seek for an independent state. Palestinian leaders have said that with no breakthrough on the horizon, desperate youngsters see no future ahead. Israel says young Palestinians are being incited to violence by their leaders and Islamist groups that call for Israel's destruction.REUTERS SHS PR2259 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-557333.Xml
In 1999, dancer and choreographer K.J. Holmes witnessed a total eclipse of the moon off the Oregon coast. Months later, at a club in New York City, she was struck by the almost magical interplay between three jazz trumpeters.

These two observations soon coalesced into Constellation, a structured improvisation exploring the physical, spatial and tonal shifts experienced by both dancers and musicians. At 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3, Holmes will work with Washington University in St. Louis dance students to present a fresh Constellation in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio.

The performance is free and open to the public. The Annelise Mertz Dance Studio is located in Room 207, Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. A reception will follow. For more information, call 314-935-5858 or visit pad.artsci.wustl.edu.

Holmes, the 2016 Marcus Residency Dance Artist in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, will be on campus Feb. 1-3. In addition to Constellation, she will host a series of master classes  open to all upper-level Washington University dance students  on composition, improvisation and body/mind centering.

Based in Brooklyn, Holmes began studying improvisational techniques and somatic practices in the early 1980s, at New Yorks New School for Social Research. She teaches at Julliard, Movement Research and New York Universitys Experimental Theatre Wing.

The Marcus Residency is funded by a gift to the Performing Arts Department by the late Morris D. Marcus, MD, a dermatologist and professor emeritus of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Marcus established the annual residency in memory of his wife, Margaret, who was a dancer, teacher and choreographer.
BEIJING -- The United States Secretary of State John Kerry will visit China from Jan 26 to 27, at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the announcement at a regular press conference on Monday.

The two countries will exchange ideas on bilateral relations and other issues of common concern, Hua said.

"We hope that through this visit the two sides could strengthen cooperation in various areas and promote the healthy and stable development of bilateral ties," she added.
Melbourne (AFP) - Maria Sharapova will take aim at her 17-match losing streak against Serena Williams on Tuesday as she bids to torpedo the American world number one's title defence in the Australian Open quarter-finals.

Sharapova has not beaten Williams, holder of 21 Grand Slam titles, since 2004, meaning it's high time the Russian fifth seed pulled one back in their head to head.

"You're always trying to -- always trying to improve. I got myself into the quarter-final of a Grand Slam," said Sharapova, who has five major titles of her own.

"There is no reason I shouldn't be looking to improve and to getting my game in a better position than any other previous round. It's only going to be tougher, especially against Serena."

The signs are not brilliant for Sharapova, as Williams has played her way into the tournament and has looked increasingly impressive in each match.

"I just feel like I'm really confident in my game right now, not against her or against any other opponent, I'm just really looking at me right now," Williams said, after thrashing Margarita Gasparyan in the last round.

"And I feel like if I can just continue to play well, then it could be good. But every match is new. You know, she (Sharapova) always brings in something new and something special. She's very consistent as well."

In the men's draw, top seed Novak Djokovic is up against Kei Nishikori, the Japanese world number seven who stunned the Serb to reach the 2014 US Open final.

Djokovic is smarting after his five-set struggle against Gilles Simon, in which he dished out 100 unforced errors, and he will be keen to assert himself against an opponent who has won two of their last four matches.

Elsewhere Roger Federer takes on an increasingly confident world number six Tomas Berdych, who fancies his chances of an upset as he tries to reach his third Melbourne Park semi-final in a row.

"It's Roger, so it's always going to be a huge challenge to play him. It's the quarter-final of a Slam," Berdych said. "Yeah, I like it. I like my chances. I'm just looking forward to that match."

Elsewhere on the women's side, Agnieszka Radwanska will start as favourite when she takes on Spain's Carla Suarez for a place in the last four.
Midway through the year, some high schoolers may have disappointing grades, but are reluctant to take ownership of their performance.

Some teens are not emotionally mature enough for the independence many adolescents strive for, says John Kelly, a school psychologist at Commack High School in New York. They struggle to take responsibility for their studies.

Discover how [as teens gain independence, parents seek to stay connected.]

"It's hard for students to see that big picture. They are in the here and now," says Rob Lundien, a school counselor at Staley High School in North Kansas City, Missouri.

But it can be a fine line for parents to walk when teaching academic responsibility, says Kelly.

The following tips can help parents teach their children to be responsible for themselves, and determine when and how it's appropriate for them to step in to help.

-- Be proactive: Teens today struggle to connect what they are learning in school today to life after high school, says Colleen Tortorella, a school counselor at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Knowing that their education is valuable can help them take ownership of their studies, she says.

Parents can do this by making a point to talk with teachers early on and stressing the importance of education at home, she says.

Parents should also be aware of the school's academic expectations, monitor homework and assignments, and make sure the child has a study space in the house, says Kelly, the school psychologist. This can show students that their parents value their education and thus take ownership of their studies, he says.

Learn how [to stay academically engaged with your teen.]

Twitter users chimed in with their thoughts below.

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Grades don't just reflect brains, they indicate hard work & organizational skills help the teen NOW!!

-- Perin Lal (@perinlal) January 22, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Earning my BA & MSW showed my kids to be accountable and do their best

Story continues

-- Tiffany M. Thompson (@TiffanyMThompso) January 21, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews use school communications like Power School to keep updated and ask your child questions about school

-- Mrs. Brooks (@DECAbrooks) January 21, 2016

@alipannoni Parents should step in to teach teens to take advantage of opps to improve grades & teach them how to ask for help academic help

-- Ray Salazar (@WhiteRhinoRay) January 22, 2016

@alipannoni @WhiteRhinoRay @usnews A strong presence of parents would help mitigate the bad grades in the first place. #BeInvolved

-- Gil Jimenez (@MrGilJimenez) January 22, 2016

@alipannoni @WhiteRhinoRay @usnews Invest your time in your kids in order to reap the dividends.

-- Gil Jimenez (@MrGilJimenez) January 22, 2016

-- Intervene when warning signs appear: Poor organizational and time-management skills, falling grades, missing assignments and displays of anger and frustration are all signs a student is struggling and that a parent should step in and help, says Kelly.

One Twitter used had thoughts on the issues, too.

@alipannoni @usnews it's only appropriate to step in and help IF parents are involved with their child's grades all the time! #dntwaitforbad

-- Becky McBride (@MamaMcBride1010) January 22, 2016

"I think it really is important that parents sit down with their student the minute that they have a challenge and walk them through the steps of how to resolve it," says Lundien. "Don't necessarily pass blame on anybody else, take responsibility, work with them on how to communicate with a teacher."

It can also be helpful for teachers if parents inform them of personal issues, such as a death in the family or loss of a parent's job, that could affect the student's academic performance, he says.

-- Motivate and be supportive: Parents should encourage their teen to reach out for help, but when teens do seek assistance, parents should offer their child guidance -- don't do the work for them, says Kelly.

"We'll have parents that will call us and have questions about a grade or a test, but they haven't talked to the teacher or the student hasn't talked to the teacher," says Lundien. The parents might want the counselor to do it for them, but the student should take ownership by talking to the teacher before others step in, he says.

Tortorella thinks parents should let their kids know it's OK to make mistakes, something she thinks many teens are afraid to do.

Twitter users shared their thoughts below.

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Don't be afraid to allow them to fail from time to time: https://t.co/cwoQMUmGUR #SubmarineParenting

-- Kimberly Cooper (@literatigurl) January 21, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Parents must hold students accountable and support rather than enable them. Let them learn from failure

-- Mr. Fielder (@MrFielderCHS) January 21, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Always! 1st find out what the problem is, then help make a plan to correct.

-- Torie N Pendleton (@Pens4jc) January 22, 2016

@alipannoni But sometimes, parents need to let kids fail so they learn from bad grades IF teen has not accepted opps to improve

-- Ray Salazar (@WhiteRhinoRay) January 22, 2016

@alipannoni @USNewsEducation @usnews Finally, parents need to help teens understand difference btween short-term & long-term failure

-- Ray Salazar (@WhiteRhinoRay) January 22, 2016

Parents should praise effort and commitment, rather than just focusing on grades, says Kelly. Work ethic is more important to teach long term.

"We all struggle with challenges in our lives, but it's hard work and determination that really allows us to overcome these difficulties," he says. "That's really what we want to be instilling and building up in our child, is that sense of hard work, that sense of determination."

Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

Alexandra Pannoni is an education Web producer at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at apannoni@usnews.com.
Johannesburg (AFP) - South African prosecutors said Monday they would oppose Oscar Pistorius's attempt to have his murder conviction overturned in the Constitutional Court, describing his appeal as having "no reasonable prospect of success".

The Paralympic champion has been on bail awaiting a new sentence since December, when the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) found him guilty of murder for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.

The SCA overturned his earlier conviction on the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

Two weeks ago his lawyers applied for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, arguing the SCA had "acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally".

But the National Prosecuting Authority on Monday lodged papers with the court opposing the appeal.

"It is our respectful submission that the SCA committed no errors of law and that the arguments by the applicant are without merit and contrived," it said.

The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine's Day three years ago, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he shot four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.

Pistorius was released from jail in October to live under house arrest at his uncle's property in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year prison sentence for culpable homicide -- the equivalent of manslaughter.

The SCA judges last month described his testimony at his trial in 2014 as "untruthful" and delivered a damning indictment of the original verdict.

The Constitutional Court will now decide whether to hear the case.

Pistorius, 29, could face at least 15 years in jail for his murder conviction.

His next sentencing hearing is on April 18.
By Jarni Blakkarly SYDNEY (Reuters) - Qantas Airways and Air New Zealand have suspended flights to Vanuatu due to safety concerns about its airport runway, a likely blow to tourism and the Pacific island nation's recovery efforts after a cyclone last year. Virgin Australia, however, said it would continue to fly to Port Vila, after its investigators examined the runway over the weekend and deemed it safe. Australia and New Zealand account for the bulk of visitors to Vanuatu, which relied on tourism for more than a third of its GDP last year, government data shows. In March, the island was ravaged by Cyclone Pam, which wiped out more than 90 percent of its crops and disrupted the lives of most of its population. Air New Zealand, which flew once a week from Auckland to Port Vila, said it had sent its last flight on Sunday. "Weather and jet engine activity are resulting in loose material on the runway," spokeswoman Janna Wilkinson added. In a statement, Qantas said it had cancelled a codeshare agreement that included selling tickets for local carrier Air Vanuatu over concerns about the condition of the runway. "It would be worse than Cyclone Pam if any more carriers stop flying," Bryan Death, the chairman of the Vanuatu Hotels and Resorts Association, told Reuters by telephone, adding that a snap election on Friday had complicated efforts to secure government funding for the airport repairs. Officials at Vanuatu's civil aviation department were not immediately available for comment, but Air Vanuatu, which is operating flights as usual, said the department had put in place several safety measures after an emergency weekend meeting. These measures included daily sweeping of the runway, regular inspections and marking a 200 m (656 ft) stretch for urgent repairs, the airline said in a statement. Fiji Airways, Solomon Airlines and Air Niugini, the national airline of Papua New Guinea, are still flying to Port Vila according to a spokesperson from Air Vanuatu. (Additional reporting by Colin Packham in SYDNEY and Rebecca Howard in WELLINGTON. Editing by Jane Wardell and Miral Fahmy)
C Handler tackles some touchy subjects from racism to hard drugs in the first season of her Netflix-produced series, Chelsea Does. During the four-part docuseries' final episode, "Chelsea Does Drugs," the 40-year-old standup comic travels with two friends to Peru to try a drug known as ayahuasca, notoriously sought after by celebrities.

"I want to show people what happens when you get fucked up. I'm going to Peru to do ayahuasca," Handler states matter-of-factly in a preview for the streaming show. Handler said she was amped to try the drug for some time, saying, "It's supposed to be one of those transformative experiences; people say it changes their life."

Comedian Chelsea Handler travels to Peru in her new Netflix series 'Chelsea Does' to try the hallucinogenic drug Ayahuasca.

Though Chelsea Does somewhat glorifies the infamous ancient herbal drug ayahuasca  after all of the vomiting and diarrhea, that is  the liquid substance contains N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, a Schedule 1 drug considered very dangerous by the United States government.

What is ayahuasca? As it turns out, the "herbal tea" with hallucinogenic effects is typically derived from a combination of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaves.

At first, it didn't seem like Handler would be able to enjoy the purpose of her trip to Peru after her two friends had negative experiences while tripping on ayahuasca. The standup comic, meanwhile, said she barely felt buzzed during her first night trying the drug. The next day, however, Handler scheduled a private night with a shaman who would help administer and stay with her through her trip.

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After some intense bouts of nausea and vomiting, Handler appeared to be tripping on ayahuasca, frequently moving her arms about and smiling widely, deep in her thoughts. The comedian wanted to learn more about her inner self, a theme which remained a staple throughout most of Chelsea Does.

Spiritual tourism and the ayahuasca drink that "purges the soul" http://bit.ly/1K132yd pic.twitter.com/6R26vgvLae https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZVBb58XEAAcbq-.jpg:large

"Why would having an ayahuasca experience appeal to anyone?" UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences Dr. Charles Grob asked in an interview with Fox News. "I think people are searching for some degree of a psycho spiritual transformation."

However, ayahuasca may have a purpose other than spiritual cleansing: Scientific American debuted a report on a pilot study which tested the drug's potential effects on depression in April. However, the results are far from conclusive.

"It is possible that ayahuasca and other serotonergic psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, may be useful as antidepressants for particular subsets of patients in the future," King's College London researcher and psychiatrist James Stone said in the report. "We await the results of well-designed, random controlled trials to determine clinical effectiveness."
Melbourne (AFP) - Two-time champion Victoria Azarenka was in ominous form Monday, surging into the Australian Open quarter-finals as Chinese qualifier Zhang Shuai kept her amazing Grand Slam run alive.

Former world number one Azarenka proved too strong for Czech Barbora Strycova on Rod Laver Arena, storming through 6-2, 6-4 to set up a last-eight clash with Angelique Kerber, who beat fellow German Annika Beck 6-4, 6-0.

Azarenka, the 14th seed who won at Melbourne Park in 2012 and 2013, has a 6-0 record over Kerber, including in the Brisbane International final this month, making her a hot favourite to keep her title run going.

"I'm looking forward to it. She's such a fighter and such a nice person," said the Belarusian, looking ahead to the test on Wednesday. "I'll just give it my best and I'm sure she'll do the same."

Seventh seed Kerber powered past Beck to reach the quarter-finals for the first time and knows she has a formidable task ahead against a player who has won each of their encounters dating back to 2012.

"I had tough matches against her in the past. I never won against her right now, but that will be a challenge," she said.

"It's a new one, it starts from zero, and I know what's coming from her. I will try to be aggressive and try to go and win the match."

World number one Serena Williams and fifth-seeded rival Maria Sharapova play each other in a headline last-eight clash on Tuesday, while fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska faces 10th seed Carla Suarez.

Johanna Konta joined them to reach her maiden Grand Slam quarter-final and become Britain's first woman to reach the Australian Open last eight since Jo Durie in 1983.

Konta prevailed in a three-hour, four-minute slugfest 4-6, 6-4, 8-6 against Russia's Ekaterina Makarova.

"Goodness gracious," said Konta, who will next face Zhang. "Mentally, emotionally and physically I left it all out there on the court."

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The only other British women to get as far were Virginia Wade, who won in 1972, and Sue Barker who made the semis twice.

- Focused and composed -

Zhang booked her place by battling past injured and tearful 15th seed Madison Keys.

She had lost all 14 of her previous Grand Slam matches before this year's tournament and was mulling retirement, but she has now won four in a row after beating the American 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

It was devastating finale for Keys, last year's semi-finalist, who needed treatment on her upper left leg which hampered her movement. She gamely carried on but was clearly in pain, with tears on court.

"Bad luck Madison. She was injured and I'm very lucky today," said Zhang.

"It was so difficult to concentrate because I could see she was in pain."

Azarenka, 27, has been in the zone at Melbourne Park, dropping just 11 games in four matches as she zeroes in on a return to the top after battling injuries for the past two years.

She went into the Strycova clash with a clear advantage, whipping her on all four of their previous meetings, including at the last two Australian Opens.

But it wasn't straightforward against the Czech, who stunned third seed Garbine Muguruza in the last round.

"She is such a tough opponent. I'm just happy I went through. I played smart, aggressive and really took my opportunities," said Azarenka.

Melbourne Park has been a happy hunting ground for Azarenka, who has now made the quarters or better five times in her last seven attempts.

Kerber, who had a stellar 2015 but underachieved at the majors, eased past Beck who fell apart in the second set after pressing her compatriot hard in the first.
DUBAI (Reuters) - A Bahraini court sentenced 57 men to 15-year jail terms on Monday for rioting in a prison outside the capital Manama last March, the public prosecutor's office said. Bahraini security forces tear-gassed and beat inmates at Jaw prison on Mar. 8 while trying to quell clashes that erupted during family visits, local human rights group Bahrain Youth Society for Human rights said at the time. Bahrain's public prosecutor said in a statement that the convicts had "unleashed acts of chaos, riots and rebellion inside (prison) buildings". Jaw prison is the main facility for hundreds of people jailed over participation in anti-government protests, political violence, or involvement in armed attacks on security forces or civilians. Bahrain, a small island state linked to Saudi Arabia by a 25 km (15 mile) causeway, is strategically important to the West as it hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Tensions have flared in the kingdom since the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprisings led to protests in which Bahrain's Shi'ite majority demanded more rights from the Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslim rulers also accuse Iran's Shi'ite leadership of trying to stir unrest. Charges in the prison riot included damaging public property, attacking police, arson and resisting authorities. Pictures posted on social media of the prison had shown a person with a bandaged head and a man with a bleeding arm. Other photos showed young men standing in a room with overturned furniture or strewn with plastic bags. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the photographs, or where they were taken. Mohammed al-Tajer, the lawyer, lamented the outcome and said that alleged violence against the inmates was ignored. "We raised a complaint that our clients were beaten during the unrest in Jaw prison, but the court sentenced them at the end of the day, ignoring these complaints. (Reporting By Gulf Bureau; editing by Dominic Evans)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian mayor said he would propose banning male refugees from a swimming pool for a month on Monday after complaints from female bathers, earning a swift rebuke from the migration minister who said it would be ill-advised. The proposal underlined an increasingly highly-charged debate over immigration in Europe, particularly since authorities in neighbouring Germany accused gangs of migrants of sexually assaulting women in Cologne on New Year's Eve. "We had women complain because they felt stared at and selfies had been taken with them. It's escalating. We never had any complaints before," said Marc Vanden Bussche, mayor of the coastal town of Kokzijde. Bussche said he had decided to act after police were called in to investigate an Iraqi man who had caught an 11-year-old girl as she came off a slide. The politician from the Dutch-speaking liberal party Open VLD, said he would propose a one-month ban at a council meeting on Monday to allow tempers to cool. The town recently took in 300 asylum seekers. "In the meantime we will teach them about our way of life and explain the rules of the pool to them," he said, adding the ban would not affect children and their mothers. Belgium's state secretary for migration, Theo Francken, advised against the move. "It's never wise to punish a whole group for the transgressions of a few," he said in a tweet. "Asylum seekers live in open centres, they're free to go swimming. But hands off!" The German town of Bornheim, 30 km (19 miles) south of Cologne, temprarily banned male asylum seekers from its pool this month after receiving complaints of sexual harassment. More than 600 women in Cologne and other cities filed complaints ranging from sexual molestation to theft in attacks on the New Year's weekend. Police have said their investigations are focused on illegal migrants from North Africa and asylum-seekers. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Andrew Heavens)
Ben Cohen made 40 pints of Bernies Yearning in his kitchen. (Photo illustration by Yahoo News)



Ben & Jerrys co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield introduced Bernie Sanders at his campaign launch in Burlington, Vt., last year, and now theyve introduced Bernies Yearning, a new, extremely limited-edition ice cream flavor inspired by the Vermont senator and 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful.

Nothing is so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come, Cohen wrote on his Facebook page Monday. The pint of plain mint ice cream topped by a chocolate disk that, according to its description, represents the huge majority of economic gains that have gone to the top 1% since the end of the recession.

Beneath it, the rest of us, the description reads.

(Images: Courtesy of Ben Cohen)



Bernies Yearning isnt an official Ben & Jerrys product. The Ben & Jerrys name and tagline have been replaced by Bens Best and Vermonts Finest Senator on its distinctive packaging. And the company, which Cohen and Greenfield sold to Unilever 16 years ago, quickly distanced itself from the partisan flavor.

This was created by Ben as a citizen, read a message on the Ben & Jerrys Twitter feed. The company is not involved.

Cohen said he produced a limited batch of 40 pints  25 of which will be donated to Sanders campaign.

A spokesman for Cohen told Politico that the campaign had purchased all the ingredients, services, and supplies for the ice cream and that Cohen and Greenfield are volunteering their time to make the pints in Cohens kitchen.



Its not the first time Vermonts finest and presidential politics have swirled together. In 2009, Ben & Jerrys produced a flavor, Yes Pecan, honoring President Obamas historic inauguration and featuring Amber Waves of Buttery Ice Cream With Roasted Non-Partisan Pecans.

Later that year, the company celebrated the legalization of gay marriage in Vermont by renaming its Chubby Hubby flavor Hubby Hubby.
The first flight in three days took off from the South Korean resort island of Jeju on Monday after the biggest snowfall in three decades shut the airport and stranded nearly 90,000 people.

Known as the Hawaii of South Korea for its beaches and usually warm climate, Jeju took the brunt of a week-long cold snap that sent the mercury plunging to record lows across the country.

The popular holiday destination recorded its heaviest snowfall in three decades over the weekend, as the temperature dropped to -6.1 degrees Celsius (21 Fahrenheit).

On Saturday the transport ministry shut Jeju International Airport due to the heavy snow and strong winds. Almost 1,100 flights were cancelled over the weekend and Monday, leaving some 86,000 frustrated travellers stranded on the island.

But finally a plane did manage to take off shortly before 3:00 pm (0600 GMT) and a ministry official said departures would quickly pick up pace.

"Arrivals to the island will take a little longer as they have to clear more than 30 parked aircraft," the official said.

Thousands had been forced to spend the night at the airport, bundled up in blankets and sleeping on cardboard to avoid the freezing floors.

Although it was spared any snowfall, the capital Seoul recorded its coldest day in 15 years on Sunday when the temperature fell to minus 18 degrees Celsius.

On Saturday the state weather agency had issued a cold wave warning for Seoul for the first time in five years.
The yeast behind wine, beer and bread has sex in wasp intestines, researchers say.

This finding that insect guts can serve as love nests for yeast could one day help unearth new industrially important strains of yeast, scientists added.

Yeasts are types of fungus. These microbes ferment sugars, generating acids, gases and alcohols. Bread, wine and beer depend on a single species of of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae  bread gets its spongy texture from bubbles of carbon dioxide released by this yeast, while wine and beer depend on this yeast for their intoxicating qualities. [Raise Your Glass: 10 Intoxicating Beer Facts]

Despite the importance of S. cerevisiae, much remains unknown about how it behaves in the wild, such as how and where it breeds. A number of the most successful domesticated yeast strains are actually hybrids of different species of yeast, so learning more about yeast sex could have major industrial applications, the researchers said.

Now scientists find that wasp intestines apparently encourage yeast to have sex. "Wasps are the alcoves where yeast mating occurs in nature," said study co-author Duccio Cavalieri, a geneticist and microbiologist at the University of Florence in Italy.

In the past 15 years, scientists have found evidence that hybrids of different yeast strains and species occurred more often than previously thought. However, they weren't sure where these hybrids were being bred in nature.

To learn more about yeast sex, scientists focused on wasps because previous work found these insects could host S. cerevisiae in their intestines and spread these microbes in the wild. For instance, wasps can help to jumpstart wine fermentation by leaving yeast behind on grapes.

In the lab, the researchers fed wasps five different strains of S. cerevisiae, each readily genetically distinguishable from one another. They next tricked the wasps into hibernating by lowering the air temperatures to mimic winter. After two months, the scientists discovered hybrid strains of yeast in about a third of the wasps.

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In addition, the researchers discovered hybrids of different yeast species in the intestines of wasps captured from the field  hybrids of S. cerevisiae and S. uvarum, and of S. cerevisiae and S. paradoxus. In lab experiments, they confirmed that S. cerevisiae and S. paradoxus could hybridize in wasp intestines.

Intriguingly, the scientists also found that pure S. paradoxus strains died off in wasp intestines, while S. paradoxus hybrids with S. cerevisiae survived. This finding suggests that wasps could be major drivers of yeast diversity by ensuring that certain pure strains die while more genetically diverse hybrid strains live.

"Yeast evolution, in the form of new genetic combinations, may depend on yeast interaction with insects," Cavalieri told Live Science.

Wasp intestines may offer a chemical environment that permits yeast to complete reproduction, Cavalieri said. He added that wasps go into hibernation for two months in the winter, potentially giving yeast a good amount of time to breed in peace. (Previously, researchers found S. cerevisiaewas brewing alcohol inside a man's gut. The rare condition is called gut fermentation syndrome.)

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Jan. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. 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.
New York (AFP) - The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson has announced what he says will be a final tour of "Pet Sounds," often called one of the most influential pop albums ever.

Wilson said Monday he planned more than 70 shows to mark this year's 50th anniversary of the release of "Pet Sounds," starting on March 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.

The 73-year-old rocker said in a statement that the tour would mark the last time he plays "Pet Sounds" in its entirety, which he will do at each show.

While it was released as the 11th album of the Beach Boys, pioneers of the California pop sound, "Pet Sounds" was essentially a solo work by Wilson. He spent months writing and recording songs and incorporating special effects that ranged from a bicycle bell to a barking dog.

After the innocent feel of earlier Beach Boys albums, "Pet Sounds" turns introspective with Wilson ruminating on the loss of youth and musically shifting into the psychedelic rock that would soon define hippie culture.

After "Pet Sounds" Wilson suffered worsening mental health problems and drug dependency and retreated from music, re-emerging in full force only in the 1990s.

"Pet Sounds" is widely considered one of the most influential works in pop history: Rolling Stone magazine has ranked it as the second greatest album of all time, only after The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Nonetheless, "Pet Sounds" was initially a commercial disappointment in the United States even though it became a hit in Britain.

For the 50th anniversary tour, Wilson announced 11 dates in Britain including at symphony halls and at the London Palladium.

Along with an extensive US leg, Wilson will play in Australia, with two dates scheduled at the Sydney Opera House, as well as Israel, Japan, Portugal and Spain, his management said.

He will perform on his tour with another founding Beach Boy, Al Jardine, and Blondie Chaplin, the South African rocker who joined the band when Wilson's health was declining.
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Burkina Faso has arrested four of seven members of its dissolved presidential guard who were wanted in connection with an attack two days ago on an armoury near the capital Ouagadougou, the army said on Sunday. Burkina Faso is still reeling from an attack by gunmen on a hotel and restaurant on Jan. 15 that was claimed by Islamist militants and during which 30 people were killed, most of them foreigners. The arrests came hours after the landlocked West African country's armed forces published the names and images of the guards who were on the run in local media. Another guard who had also fled died after a gun battle, the army's statement said. The three men were captured when they tried to cross the border with Ghana, the army said, adding: "One among them opened fire on our intervening forces, leading to a riposte. Gravely wounded, he succumbed to his injuries during his transfer to the hospital by helicopter." Authorities are continuing to search for the two guards who remain at large. The authorities had already arrested 11 members of the disbanded elite guards in connection with Friday's raid, during which army officials said the attackers seized Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers. The elite presidential guard was disbanded after members loyal to former president Blaise Compaore mounted a six-day coup against Burkina Faso's transitional government last September in which members of the cabinet were taken hostage, before handing power back to the government under heavy international pressure. On Saturday authorities also arrested Eddie Komboigo, the president of Compaore's former ruling party, the Congress for Democracy and Progress, according to security sources. It was not immediately clear what the charges against him were but he had previously been cited in a report written by the commission investigating the September coup. Friday's raid is the first time the disbanded guard has carried out an action of this kind since its coup attempt failed. The West African country has been fragile since popular protests in 2014 ousted longtime leader Compaore, who had sought to amend the constitution to prolong his 27-year rule. Roch Marc Kabore was elected president in November, ending more than a year of transitional rule. (Reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Sandra Maler)
Ouagadougou (AFP) - Burkina Faso's head of state vowed Monday to do everything in his power to secure the release of an elderly Australian doctor and his wife, kidnapped by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.

Dr. Ken Elliot and his wife Jocelyn, a couple from Perth aged 82 and 84 respectively, were abducted on the night of January 15-16.

They have devoted some 40 years to running the only medical facility in a remote Burkinabe town.

"I would like to reassure their families, their loved ones and the Australian government that everything is being done to find them, in concertation with our friends and neighbours Mali and Niger and our friends abroad," President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said.

He was speaking at a national commemoration in the capital Ouagadougou, attended by several thousand people, for the victims of jihadist attacks on January 15 that left 30 dead.

The West Australian doctor and his wife run a clinic in the dusty town of Djibo, close to the border with Mali. They moved to the impoverished Sahel country in 1972.

The Burkina government has said the pair were kidnapped in Baraboule, near the west African country's borders with Niger and Mali.

The kidnapping coincided with a jihadist assault on an upmarket hotel in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou that left at least 30 people dead, including many foreigners.

The abduction has caused an outpouring of support, with the people of Djibo turning to Facebook to plead for the couple's release.

Hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading "Free Elliot" turned out in the town with their teachers.

A spokesman for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP on January 16 that the couple were being held by jihadists from the Al-Qaeda-linked "Emirate of the Sahara".

In a brief message, 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.
Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - The Central African Republic's top court on Monday annulled last month's first-round legislative vote over "irregularities", but said the second round of the presidential elections could go ahead.

Voters had cast their ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections on December 30 in an election seen as vital for restoring stability after years of religious violence.

Although there was a high turnout and the poll passed off peacefully, the legislative vote was flawed by "numerous irregularities" involving the candidates, Constitutional Court president Zacharie Ndoumba said Monday.

By law, new elections must be held within 60 days, although that is unlikely given the poor state of the country's infrastructure.

A second round of the presidential vote, scheduled for January 31, can go ahead with two former premiers -- Anicet Georges Dologuele and Faustin Archange Touadera -- going head-to-head, the court said.

"The (legislative) elections of December 30, 2015 are cancelled and will be rescheduled.... due to many irregularities and the implication of candidates in these irregularities," Ndoumba told the court in the capital Bangui.

He said the court had received 414 complaints over electoral malpractice and said the transitional administration would remain in place until a new parliament was elected.

The legislative poll took place in 140 constituencies across the country, but electoral material and many ballot papers had not reached some of the more remote areas, officials admitted.

"In certain communities, people only voted in the presidential election because the ballots for the legislative election did not arrive in time," electoral authority spokesman Julius Ngouade Baba said.

- Delays likely for presidential vote -

Although the second round of the presidential vote is scheduled to take place Sunday, it is likely to be delayed by at least a week, a source close to the electoral commission said, with a new date to be announced soon.

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Dologuele, who served as premier from 1998-2001, won 23.74 percent of the vote in the first round on December 30, trailed by Touadera, who picked up 19.05 percent. He served as prime minister between 2008-2013.

The court said there were 1.3 million valid votes cast out of an electorate of nearly two million.

Dologuele, a 58-year-old former central banker, came to be known as "Mr Clean" after his attempts to bring transparency to murky public finances during his time as premier.

Touadera, also 58, is a former maths professor who served as prime minister under disgraced ousted president Francois Bozize. He was considered an outsider among the 30 candidates running for the top job.

CAR has been riven by coups, rebellions, army mutinies and prolonged strikes since the country won its independence from France half a century ago.

The latest sectarian unrest has set mainly Muslim rebels against vigilantes from the Christian majority, with civilians the main victims.
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on Monday and agreed there was more work to be done to reach a deal on a reformed relationship between Britain and the European Union, a spokesman for the British leader said. Cameron has said he hopes to come to an agreement with EU leaders over his plans to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the bloc at a Feb. 18-19 summit. That could pave the way for a British membership referendum as early as June. "They agreed that there had been progress since December's European Council and that there was genuine goodwill across the EU to address the British people's concerns in all four areas," a spokesman for Cameron said following a phone call between the two leaders on Monday. "Both concluded that there was more work to do ahead of the February European Council to find the right solutions." (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Alison Williams)
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's new Liberal government said on Monday it was delivering a "tough message" to Israel as a good friend after expressing concern about Israeli-Palestinian violence, Israeli settlements and unilateral Palestinian moves. The statement came a day after Foreign Minister Stephane Dion was criticized for saying Palestinian initiatives towards statehood in international forums and continued Israeli settlements were unhelpful. "We're steadfast allies and good friends, and good friends can occasionally deliver tough messages, but it's by no means to suggest that we're somehow retreating from any kind of support of Israel," said Joe Pickerill, Dion's spokesman. Dion on Sunday had issued a statement expressing concern about the Israeli conflict, sparking charges by the Conservative opposition that the Liberal government was being unfairly critical of Israel. "As a steadfast ally and friend to Israel, Canada calls for all efforts to be made to reduce violence and incitement and to help build the conditions for a return to the negotiating table," Dion said in the statement on Sunday. His spokesman, Joe Pickerill, elaborated on Monday by saying that Canada was not trying to create a "faux balance" by equating violence by either side, but felt the need to speak out. "We're not necessarily equating the violence by any means on both sides, but there have been issues, and we need to be in a position to point that out," Pickerill said after more than 100 days of violence between the two sides. Dion's statement drew a swift attack from the Conservative Party, which had adopted a resolutely pro-Israel policy while in power, for not laying blame "for recent terrorist rocket and knife attacks with Hamas, a listed terrorist organization in Canada." The Conservatives, who lost the October election to the Liberals, said that by omission, the statement "equates such terrorist attacks with Israeli settlement construction. This is unacceptable." (Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Ottawa (AFP) - A Canadian policeman could be jailed for life after a jury found him guilty Monday of attempted murder in the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding teenager on a Toronto streetcar in 2013.

Constable James Forcillo, a six-year veteran with an otherwise unblemished record, was however acquitted of two more serious charges of second-degree, or not premeditated, murder and manslaughter.

His lawyer Peter Brauti said he would review the decision for a possible appeal and has asked for a "stay" to have it effectively quashed, while police groups voiced outrage.

"Clearly he is shocked and disappointed by the verdict," Brauti said, contending that a video of the incident posted online had unfairly swayed the jury.

"It was a trial by YouTube," he said, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom.

Sammy Yatim, 18, was alone on downtown streetcar in the early hours of July 27, 2013 when police asked him multiple times to drop his knife, according to witnesses and amateur video posted on YouTube.

Nine shots were eventually fired, killing the young man of Syrian origin who arrived in Canada five years earlier with his family.

Journalists and the public quickly questioned the decision to open fire, while shocked family and friends of the victim expressed anger at what they called a disproportionate police response.

The jury dismissed a first volley of shots fired by Forcillo that knocked Yatim to the ground, but decided that a second volley was unnecessary and thus amounted to attempted murder.

The verdict "sends a chilling message" to officers who routinely deal with violent situations, police union president Mike McCormac said. "Will they hesitate when they should take action?"

A lawyer for the Yatim family countered that "it shouldn't be us against the police anymore, it should be us and the community along with good police officers against bad policing. That's the change we need."

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Yatim's mother, Sahar Bahadi, called for changes in police training on how to better deal with people in crisis to prevent more deaths.

"Sammy was a young man who had his whole future ahead of him," she said. "Because of what the police did, we lost him forever.

"Nothing in this world will compensate me for the loss of my son, nor do anything to bring him back to me, but I would like for the sake of this great country for the police to remain a source of confidence, security, and respect for all people."

Forcillo's sentencing and motions will be heard May 16-27, Toronto Star said.
Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's Liberal government said Monday it will sign the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership but may not ratify the trade pact negotiated by a previous administration.

The agreement is expected to be debated in parliament. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals wield a majority in the House but have not staked out a position publicly on the deal.

Following consultations with various Canadian stakeholders, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said: "It is clear that many feel the TPP presents significant opportunities, while others have concerns.

"Many Canadians still have not made up their minds and many more still have questions," she added.

Regardless, Freeland said, Canada will sign the deal at a meeting next week of the 12 partner countries in the Pacific trade pact.

"Not attending would mean withdrawing from the TPP altogether, even before Canadians have had an opportunity to fully debate its implications," she explained. "Just as it is too soon to endorse the TPP, it is also too soon to close the door."

Once the deal has been signed, Canada would have up to two years to ratify the TPP.
(Reuters) - A worker at Centerra Gold Inc's Kumtor mine in Kyrgyzstan was fatally injured while working the night shift on Sunday, the Canadian mining company said on Monday. The employee was working at the ore conveyor at the mine's mill at the time, the company said in a statement. An internal investigation has been launched, and Kyrgyz police and other relevant regulatory authorities have been contacted. The Kumtor mine is the biggest foreign investment in Kyrgyzstan and accounted for 7.4 percent of the Central Asian nation's GDP in 2014. The Kyrgyzstan government and Toronto-based Centerra have been in drawn-out on-and-off talks on restructuring the ownership of the mine. The ex-Soviet republic currently owns a 32.7 percent stake in Centerra. On Dec. 22 the government said it had stopped talks with Centerra because the current agreement "ran counter to the country's national interests." (Reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)
By Thomas Escritt AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A "race to the bottom" on asylum policy among European Union countries is exposing more than 360,000 child migrants to greater risk of harm as the bloc struggles to cope with a surge of refugees, rights watchdogs said on Monday. European children's agencies issued the warning in a report released in Amsterdam, where the EU's interior ministers were meeting to discuss how to deal with the influx of people fleeing war in Africa and the Middle East. One of the main concerns is that EU countries, from Sweden to Britain, have implemented measures limiting family reunification rights that risked separating children from their parents after they had survived perilous journeys. "It seems as if European countries are in a contest to win the title of 'least willing to accept asylum seekers'," said the report from the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children, which represents 41 independent children's rights institutions in 34 European countries. Last year migrant flows to Europe reached their highest level since World War Two, with 1.2 million applying for asylum on the continent. The proportion of children rose from 26 percent in 2014 to 29 percent last year, the report said. Many were minors without their parents. In Sweden alone, 35,000 unaccompanied children requested asylum in 2015. European leaders meeting in the Netherlands, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, are under pressure to balance the need to offer humanitarian shelter with widespread public opposition to admitting large numbers of newcomers. The ministers will study an idea for a bloc-wide border and coast guard and discuss the looming expiry of temporary border controls reintroduced by several countries within Europe's passport-free Schengen travel zone. The report also urged countries to improve transit and reception conditions, giving children priority in the distribution of asylum seekers among the EU's 28 member states, and setting minimum standards of warmth and comfort at reception and transit centers. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt)
By Clare Baldwin

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Chinese national sought by the United States on suspicion of murdering two nephews in Los Angeles told a Hong Kong court on Monday that he would surrender to U.S. authorities.

Deyun Shi is suspected of having killed two of his teenage nephews, aged 14 and 15, at a home in Arcadia, a city in Los Angeles county. The victims were found on Friday and Shi was arrested on Saturday at Hong Kong airport.

Shi, who represented himself, said that he had given his unconditional consent to be handed over to U.S. authorities.

"I would like to give a clear accounting to the U.S. government. Therefore I would like to return as soon as possible," said Shi, speaking through an interpreter.

He added that he was in poor health and a poor mental state, and that he had a history of cardiovascular disease.

U.S. authorities have made a formal extradition request for Shi, but no date has yet been set for his possible return with the case adjourned until Feb. 11.

Shi, who U.S. police consider "armed and dangerous", is also suspected of attacking his wife, U.S. authorities have said.

Shi, however, told the courtroom that "the details of the allegations against me are not true."

He declined to give further details.

A Los Angeles police department official said it was believed Shi was trying to get to Beijing and may have been trying to transit through Hong Kong when he was caught. Unlike Hong Kong, China does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

(Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Iowa's incumbent Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley  one of the senate's eldest members at 82  will seek re-election for another six-year term in November. Though four Democratic candidates have since announced bids of their own, they face a tall task in . He has held office since 1981, and has statewide support from both political parties.

According to a state poll by Quinnipiac University, released in July, Grassley had a 68% approval rating (only did not approve) in the Hawkeye State, while 54% of Iowans said he deserves re-election in 2016. "Iowans seem to like their political leaders, with U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley looking like a strong reelection bet and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst off to a good start," Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll, said in a statement. "Even four in 10 Democrats think Grassley deserves another term."

Furthermore, in a rural state, Grassley has emphasized agriculture and rural development, where the state is the country's leading producer of pork, corn, soybeans and eggs, according to Grassley's senate page. "His leadership positions on the Senate Finance, Judiciary, Agriculture and Budget Committees provide a unique opportunity to shape tax, international trade, regulatory and spending policy that will shape the future of farming in the 21st century," according to his senate page.

It's this rural focus that gives Grassley such statewide appeal, as he's the only member of the U.S. senate who is still an active farmer (which, given his age, is very impressive).

"He will keep Iowa in the national focus on key issues," GOP strategist Robert Haus said, according to the D. "As the only active farmer in the Senate, he'll be a powerful voice for American agriculture and our farmers who feed the world. He will also continue to serve as a great role model for every other U.S. senator. If there were 99 other Chuck Grassley's in the U.S. Senate, our Congress would be a lot more productive."

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What's more, Grassley has continued to visit Iowans on the campaign trail at a blistering pace, and will visit 99 counties as part of his re-election tour, according to the Sioux City Journal. "Grassley is considered the gold standard for how to keep contact with the people he represents," Bret Hayworth wrote for the Journal. "Some Iowa lawmakers and candidates have taken on his 99-county tour practice, and they readily point to Grassley as the originator."

This has translated to the senate floor, where he recently set the record for the longest time without missing a senate vote in 22-and-a-half years, according to the Washington Post. "You could argue the record Grassley now holds is an arcane one that only political nerds in Washington tally up," Amber Phillips wrote for the Post. "But you could also argue Grassley's vote streak gets to the heart of how Congress works. At the basic level, we send our lawmakers to Washington to do what Grassley has done for 22 years  cast votes for us on some of the nation's biggest (and smallest) issues."

Congrats!! @ChuckGrassley sets record of over 22 years w/o missing a Senate vote. IA has great leaders! pic.twitter.com/10C5cx2U9B https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZMv-93WkAAFSiz.jpg:large

If nothing else, Grassley's longevity serves as a primary challenge for any Democratic candidate who runs against him. After all, the senator knows where his priorities lie: the people of his state. "I'm one half of the process and the people of Iowa are the other half," Grassley said in a press release, according to the Journal. "You can't have representative government without dialogue between elected officials and the people we represent."
North Liberty (United States) (AFP) - Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Sunday urged Iowa voters to choose her experience over the idealism of rival Bernie Sanders, who made the rounds of university campuses at the weekend to earn student support.

"I know some of you are still shopping. I'd like to shop too. I hope during the course of this afternoon to convince some of you," Clinton told about 600 people packed into an elementary school gym in the town of North Liberty.

On February 1, voters in Iowa, in the US heartland, will cast the first ballots in the US presidential nominations process -- a long road to Election Day on November 8.

Clinton, the 68-year-old former secretary of state, and Sanders, a 74-year-old senator from Vermont, are running neck-and-neck in some opinion polls, though Clinton enjoys a wide advantage on a nationwide basis.

- 'She never wavers' -

"As secretary of state, she stared down some of the toughest dictators in the world, and so I have no doubt that she can take on the Tea Party, and the gun lobby," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, the influential US women's health care provider.

"She never blinks, she never wavers."

The message Clinton and her team sought to drive home was that her proposals are more realistic than those of Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who has put taking down the financial elite and Wall Street at the heart of his campaign.

He has repeatedly attacked Clinton over what he says are her close ties to some big banks, and has chastised her for giving paid speeches to Wall Street firms.

But Clinton fought back Sunday.

"I have taken on Wall Street for years!" she said. "I have a better plan to do it."

"No bank is too big to fail, and no executive is too big to jail," she added.

She also insisted on her foreign policy bona fides and the "very specific steps" she would take to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group.

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Clinton devoted a long section of her stump speech to her role in the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, which several of President Barack Obama's aides considered to be too dangerous and risky. She said she encouraged Obama to go ahead with it.

"The person who sits in that (White House) situation room has to be able to weigh intelligence and evidence to be able to really dig deep in these details, and I offer you my experience and my judgment," she said.

"We need to chart a steady course," she concluded -- suggesting that a Sanders administration would lack such stability.

Her candidacy on Monday got the backing of The Boston Globe, a newspaper with thousands of subscribers in New Hampshire, which follows Iowa next month as balloting gets underway to choose the two major parties' presidential nominees.

"This is Clinton's time and the Globe enthusiastically endorses her," the daily wrote.

Over the weekend, she got the endorsement of The Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest circulation daily.

- Students 'really into' Bernie -

Still, Sanders' idealism has charmed many Democratic voters.

In a speech at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Sanders hammered home his call for a "political revolution," recalling how at first, he was deemed a "fringe candidate" -- not a serious challenger to Clinton.

"Well, my friends, a lot has happened in nine months," he said.

In an effort to assuage any doubts about voting for him in November, Sanders offered up poll data suggesting he could beat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in the general election by a wider margin than Clinton would.

"In a general election, Republicans win when people are demoralized, when people do not vote and the voter turnout is low," he said.

"Any objective assessment of our campaign versus Secretary Clinton's campaign will tell you that the energy, the excitement is with our campaign."

Sanders added: "The only way we win is when the engine of enthusiasm, when young people come out and vote, when working people come out and vote."

The speech was his eighth of the weekend, three of them on college campuses.

Caleb Cady, a 22-year-old student at Hawkeye Community College, said Sanders was indeed popular with young voters.

"All my friends are really into him. There was a punk rock show at the Octopus on Hill Street called 'Shred for Bernie,' and everybody I knew was there -- it was a big event," Cady said.
CNN is hosting a Democratic presidential town hall as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton battles to maintain her lead in the coveted voting states and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign sees continued surges. The two frontrunners are sharpening their knives and preparing their closing arguments before voters take to the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is still holding onto his campaign as well, though he hasn't gained significant ground throughout the beginning of the election season. Monday's town hall will take place from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and will be moderated by CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo  who seems to favor Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a 2015 Democratic debate

The town hall will be livestreamed on CNN's mobile app, CNNGo. The three candidates will take the stage separately for 30 minutes and will take questions from both Cuomo and Iowa Democrats.

The presidential race has been kicking into high gear for 2016, with the upcoming Republican presidential debate set for Thursday night, hosted by Fox News; it will also take place in Des Moines.

Ahead of the democratic town hall, the three presidential hopefuls have been broadcasting their platforms for potential voters across social media:

It's time to reclaim our democracy. We need to overturn Citizens United, fix our campaign finance system, and protect voting rights.

We must invest in jobs and education for our young people, not more jails and incarceration. #iacaucus pic.twitter.com/QvUn81n1zL https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZiKnN1UAAACn1E.jpg:large
Less than a week after the British government launched an investigation into claims that the front doors of asylum seekers government housing were painted red by policy, a requirement that some refugees in Cardiff, England, wear colored wristbands at all times to receive food aid has been reversed.

Asylum seekers living at a housing service called Lynx House said they were being forced to wear the wristbandsalso redby the private firm contracted to house and feed them, Clearsprings Ready Homes. On Monday, the company dropped the policy after a number of legislators and human rights activists heavily criticized the practice.

FULL COVERAGE: The Global Refugee Crisis

We have raised concerns about these wristbands with the Home Office and Clearsprings but so far nothing has been done, Chloe Marong, coordinator of Cardiff-based charity Trinity Centre, told The Guardian. These wristbands mark asylum seekers out and further stigmatises them in an already very hostile environment.

On Twitter, British Conservative Party politician David Davies compared the over the top wristbands to the yellow stars Jewish people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

The news comes just days after housing contractors in Middlesbrough came under fire for suspicion of implementing a red-door policy on asylum seekers residences. Residents told The Times that the red doors made their homes targets of vandalism by racist groups. British Immigration Minister James Brokenshire ordered an immediate audit of the residences, and the doors are in the process of being repainted.

The British Red Cross estimates that about 126,000 refugees are living in the U.K., comprising less than 0.2 percent of the population. Nearly 55 million people around the world have been displaced due to conflict, war, persecution, and human rights violations, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Those seeking asylum in the U.K. face a number of barriers to adjusting aside from discrimination, including prohibitions on either working or receiving welfare. While some obtain a cash allowance, new arrivals are placed in housing centers like Clearsprings' Lynx House, receiving three meals a day free of charge.

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Though Clearsprings said in a statement that the wristbands were used as a reliable and effective way to ensure refugees were being serviced, several asylum seekers say they have been subjected to harassment and abuse since the wristbands were introduced last May.

People in Lynx House are scared of meeting new people in case they see the wristband and give them problems, Mogdad Abdeen, a former Lynx House resident, told The Guardian. The 24-year-old activist, originally from Sudan, lived at Lynx House for three months at the end of last year. Sometimes when we are standing outside Lynx House queuing for food people shout out of their car windows refugee, refugee. When we complain about the wristbands nobody listens to us.

Another former resident said that locals would be able to identify his status and place of domicile by his wristband.

RELATED: To Repel Migrants, European Border Patrol Turns Bloody

We feel we are not equal with this community. All the time I tried to hide the band so people could not see it, 41-year-old Maher told The Guardian. He was recently granted refugee status in the U.K.

Human rights groups are calling on European Union leaders to address reported instances of discrimination, violence, and sexual assault against refugees.

The EU response to the refugee crisis has been chaotic and divisive, characterized by squabbling over sharing responsibility, cascading border closures and finger-pointing, wrote Judith Sunderland, Human Rights Watch associate director for the Europe and Central Asia division. Once asylum-seekers are on EU territory and in the system, they should have access to basic conditions and services that can lay the right foundation for further integration measures to enable those who obtain legal status to remain.

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 A Danish Citys Strategy for Repelling Muslim Refugees: Eat More Pork

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Original article from TakePart
KINSHASA (Reuters) - A Chinese mining company has signed an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo state mining company Gecamines to build two factories, hoping to boost dwindling copper production by around seven times, Gecamines said Monday. Gecamines and the China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company (CNMC) signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding on Jan. 13, Gecamines' interim director-general Jacques Kamenga told Reuters. Negotiations were ongoing and it was unclear when a final contract might be signed, he said. Under the initial agreement, CNMC would build factories at two existing mines in southeastern Congo, he said, that could boost the current annual output of 15,000 tonnes of refined copper by more than 100,000 tonnes. The first factory, in the town of Kambove, would process 35,000 tonnes per year of copper cathode while the second, at the company's flagship Deziwa mine in Kolwezi, would process 80,000. Gecamines' copper production peaked close to 500,000 tonnes annually in 1986 but has tumbled since the 1990s due to political upheaval, mismanagement and the sell-off of assets to private investors like Swiss-based Glencore and China's Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co, Ltd.. The company produced just 15,000 tonnes of copper in 2014 and was on track for a similar output in 2015, according to Central Bank statistics in September. Gecamines first announced a "strategic cooperation agreement" with the Hong-Kong listed CNMC last June to discuss future collaboration on five unspecified projects in Congo's southeastern mining heartland. Congo is Africa's leading copper producer, having mined more than 1 million tonnes of copper cathode and concentrate in 2014. The country's chamber of mines expects production for 2015 to dip slightly because of electricity shortages and Glencore unit Kamoto Copper Company's (KCC) 18-month production suspension, announced in September. (Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Edward McAllister and Katharine Houreld)
Its only a short phrase buried in the U.S. Constitution, but it enables an unprecedented avenue to change the law of the land: If two-thirds of the states demand it, Congress shall call a convention for proposing constitutional amendments.

A hopeless pipe dream? Actually, no; the issue is front and center right now. Some 27 states have active calls for a convention on a balanced budget amendment, which would force the federal government to pass budgets that do not enlarge the national debt. This means that theoretically just seven more have to act for a constitutional convention to be called, at least on that subject.

In just the first few weeks of this year's state legislative sessions, at least 10 states have bills pending that call for a convention. So suddenly such a meeting, not held since the earliest days of this country, is becoming a real possibility.

Even GOP presidential candidates are seizing on the burgeoning movement, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ohio Gov. John Kasich endorsing this unconventional process and rallying their supporters as legislative sessions start up again.

While the legislation appears to be a grassroots effort bubbling up from the states, in reality its quite the opposite. National groups have been holding workshops, publishing tips and even crafting model legislation for years to persuade legislators to use their states to circumvent the logjam in Congress.

The push is led by American Legislative Exchange Council, the Virginia-headquartered conservative think tank known as ALEC made up of state lawmakers and corporations that advocate free-market policies in the states. It has a cadre of other like-minded national allies working on the controversial strategy to revise the countrys supreme laws.

But in a fight reflecting the broader schism within the Republican Party, other national groups on the right such as the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlaflys Eagle Forum are combating these efforts with their own legislative push to rescind those calls for what is called an Article V convention. Working alongside unlikely liberal allies, they say the country runs the risk of a runaway convention where delegates could change the complete makeup of the Constitution.

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Once you open up the Constitution to change at a convention, then you can change anything in the Constitution, said Michael Leachman at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank that has written about the dangers of a balanced budget amendment. Its theoretically possible.

Related: Key findings from Constitutional Convention investigation

This story is part of Whos Calling the Shots in State Politics?. The Center exposes the powerful special interests that drive elections and policy in the states. Click here to read more stories in this series.

Don't miss another Politics investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

How it works

Americans can amend the Constitution in two ways, as laid forth in Article V of the body of laws. The first has been used to pass all 27 amendments that exist today: Congress proposes an amendment with two-thirds majority in both chambers that must then be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

The second route requires two-thirds of states to call a convention for proposing amendments, according to the Constitution.

Besides these few words, the Constitution doesnt give much more guidance. Lawmakers grapple with how to conduct such a meeting: Who attends? Where is it held? What is the agenda? Who leads the proceedings? What are the rules?

Activists trying to convene such a convention are drawing on historical records to interpret the body of laws for clues on how to pull it off. Based on that limited research, they see two routes to such a meeting.

On one side, ALEC and its allies seek to persuade 34 states to pass resolutions to call the meeting, as well as parallel legislation that outlines the rules and structure of the convention. After the convention delegates meet, 38 states would still need to ratify any amendment that the attendees produce at the convention.

For bills to count toward the necessary 34 applications, though, they must seek the same amendment to discuss at the convention. So far, a balanced budget amendment is the closest to that requirement. But bills have also called for conventions about a cornucopia of issues, ranging from reforming campaign finance to congressional term limits. Critics are concerned that other topics could be introduced once the convention begins.

The other, albeit more unlikely path, wraps up the resolution, rules and ratification in one neat package: an interstate compact. This alternative method requires 38 states to pass the compact package, as well as congressional approval.

This compact strategy still has a long way to go. The group leading the charge, Compact for America, has helped pass bills only in Alaska, North Dakota, Mississippi and Georgia so far. But it also has the backing of ALEC, which posted model compact legislation on its website. And at least four compact bills have been filed to be heard in 2016.

"The founders thought this was a very controlled, moderate, predictable process, said Nick Dranias, Compact for America's president and executive director. "It was not meant as a red button. Nothing could be more lawless than what we already have going on in Congress."

The Texas-based group has deep ties to the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona; its leaders, Dranias and Thomas Patterson, were both formerly top brass there. Compact for America does not disclose its donors for fear of political retaliation, according to its tax filings.

The campaign for conventions, however one comes about, is not solely led by a conservative bastion. Former Democratic presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig stands out as a major leader in the movement.

Lessig and ALEC are pushing for different final goals, though. Lessig hopes to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court campaign finance case Citizens United with a constitutional amendment. Still, they have united on using states to overcome congressional stagnation.

"In my view, if you look at American government today, the fundamental stale institution of Congress is crippled by the way congressmen are selected, Lessig told the Center for Public Integrity. It produces a widely more polarized Congress than the population. An Article V convention is the only solution the framers gave us."

Critics say the only precedent for a successful convention occurred in 1787 when framers met to discuss weaknesses found in the Articles of Confederation. Instead of tinkering with the articles, the attendees scrapped the whole set of laws for the current Constitution. This context only intensifies critics fears of a runaway convention.

Its quite clear that any convention would be subject to enormous lobbying pressure, Leachman said. This convention is deciding amendments to the Constitution. Any interest group in the country would be very interested in the results of that.

Convention supporters point to research that suggests states held nearly 20 smaller conventions before 1787 that can be used as guidelines, according to Rob Natelson, a senior fellow at the free-market Independence Institute think tank in Colorado, who wrote ALECs handbook on such conventions.

Essentially, they served as task forces where delegates from different states could share information, debate, compare notes, and try to hammer out creative solutions to the problems posed to them, Natelson wrote.

Natelson said many safeguards exist to prevent chaos at a convention: legislation that limits the scope of the meeting by attending states, the potential for lawsuits and the required ratification of any proposed amendment. The more pressing worry, he says, is that delegates wont be able to agree on the fine print of an amendment to fix the issue theyre discussing.

The more legitimate concern is not that theyll go wild, but that they wont cure the problem, Natelson said. Getting so many people to agree on wording is difficult and deadlock is probable.

The race to secure states

The push for a constitutional convention isnt just a recent phenomenon. Between 1957 and 1983, 32 states passed calls for a convention to discuss a balanced budget amendment  two states away from the required total. The National Taxpayers Union, a conservative advocacy group that works to rein in federal spending, led the effort decades ago.

But Alabama reversed its call in 1988 after intense lobbying from the John Birch Society, the Eagle Forum, the progressive nonprofit Common Cause, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Norman Lears liberal People for the American Way. It was the first of 16 states canceling their calls between 1988 and 2010.

"We have a wonderful Constitution that has lasted for 200 years, and we don't think anybody should play games with it," Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly told The Washington Post at the time.

Almost two decades after states began withdrawing their legislation, Lessig and Mark Meckler, co-founder of the conservative Tea Party Patriots, helped rally a renewed push for a convention. They brought together around 300 people at Harvard University Law School in 2011 for the Constitutional Convention Conference (nicknamed the Con Con Con). There, the two men on opposite sides of the political spectrum preached about corruption in Washington and why a convention was a citizens last resort to combat it.

Politicians profit when we are inflamed against each other, Meckler said in his opening remarks. If we spend time fighting each other, the politicians can do what they want. Its the incumbents versus the citizens. Those are the two parties we are facing today.

Around the same time, ALEC and related groups jumpstarted a new campaign to hold a convention to discuss a balanced budget amendment. ALEC, primarily funded by corporations and trade groups, released Natelsons handbook for state lawmakers, drafted model legislation and held workshops on the subject at their annual conferences.

The convention supporters are trying to build off the earlier wins in the 1970s and 80s, because the votes do not expire, according to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

Lets get Article V passed, get the power out of Washington back to the local government where the founders intended it to be, said Mike Huckabee, a keynote speaker at ALECs annual meeting in San Diego last July.

The groups latest conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, in December hosted two convention sessions, one titled Beyond the Ivory Tower and onto Main Street: What Ordinary Citizens Think about the Article V Solution and How You Can Become Their Champion.

ALEC did not return multiple requests for comment. But the group has written about its push on its site: The federal government has steadily consolidated its power while eroding state control.

Connected to ALEC, the Florida-based Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force lobbied state legislators in at least 13 states in 2014, according to its tax return, with successful resolutions passed in Michigan, Louisiana, Georgia and Indiana.

The task force has targeted 13 more states in 2016: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina and Maine.

Those pushing for the conventions face some legislative leaders who refuse to send any convention bills to a vote, such as Arizona Senate President Andy Biggs, a Republican, according to the task forces co-founder, David Biddulph. But he said his organization has connected with like-minded groups to help push through these barriers.

Weve got extremely limited resources but extremely valuable friends, Biddulph said.

While primarily composed of volunteers, the task force has partnered with larger, well-resourced groups to push their message and lobby state legislators, including ALEC, the conservative think tank Heartland Institute and the D.C.-based small business organization, the National Federation of Independent Business, Biddulph said.

Another ALEC ally, the Virginia-based Convention of States, is founded by Mecklers right-wing advocacy group, the Citizens for Self-Governance. With big name conservative endorsements ranging from Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to Fox News host Sean Hannity, Convention of States uses similar tactics as ALEC: providing model legislation, citizen toolkits and responses to opposing arguments. The group hosted Article V workshops at recent ALEC conferences and has planned information sessions in Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois and Virginia for this January and February.

Convention of States members did not return requests for comment. However, its co-founder Meckler told Fox News after Rubio endorsed the effort in December, Ive never been more excited about our prospects for achieving real governmental reform as I am right now.

The advocates are bolstered by last years momentum. A Center for Public Integrity review of legislation found that state lawmakers introduced approximately 190 bills in 45 states last year about conventions on a range of issues. Bills passed in at least seven states.

Supporters are also taking more symbolic action. Activists introduced a ballot measure in California to seek a constitutional amendment and Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proposed nine constitutional amendments to strengthen state powers earlier this month, urging Texas and other states to push them using an Article V convention.

Related: Model legislation at work in South Dakota

Related: Article V of the Constitution

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Not giving up the fight

But the Eagle Forum and the John Birch Society are continuing their efforts from the 80s to combat this renewed push from ALEC and its allies to seek a convention.

The whole Article V Convention of States process is a prescription for political chaos, wrote Schlafly in a Jan. 11 fundraising email. Alas, I dont see any George Washingtons, James Madisons or Ben Franklins around today who could do as good a job as the Founding Fathers, and Im worried about the men who think they can.

Meanwhile, the John Birch Society, which advocates for limited government from its Wisconsin headquarters, sends out action alert emails, posts videos, distributes educational materials and works with state legislators, according to Larry Greenley, the groups director of missions.

Florida state Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda couldnt believe a constitutional convention bill passed 73-42 in her chamber with scarcely any debate in April 2014.

I was flabbergasted, she said. I didnt understand why it wasnt more of a heated issue, thinking about changing the Constitution.

After seeing this legislation pass, Rehwinkel Vasilinda raised her concerns among her friends, family and fellow lawmakers. Shortly after, she said, a John Birch Society field coordinator brought the Democratic lawmaker language for a bill to repeal all past calls for a convention.

Bills with similar rescinding language cropped up in the last five years in other states, including Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina and North Dakota.

Rehwinkel Vasilinda introduced the bill last year, but it died in committee. Undeterred, she introduced a new version for this legislative session, which began Jan. 12.

My bill is in some ways a statement and not a bill, she said. I want the issue to get heard and on peoples radar. I want there to be honest debate instead of letting these bills slide by.

This story was co-published with Slate and the Huffington Post.

Related: Seven more states needed to hold a constitutional convention

This story is part of Whos Calling the Shots in State Politics?. The Center exposes the powerful special interests that drive elections and policy in the states. Click here to read more stories in this series.

Related stories

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.
Think of the last piece of big news you got. How did you feel about it? Happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Excited? Grateful? A little bit of all of the above? Experiencing multiple emotions at once may make it seem like you dont actually know just how you feel about somethingthat youre ambivalent, or indecisive, or wishy-washy. Psychologists would say it just means youre emotionally complex. And according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emotional complexity varies a lot between countries.

There are two definitions of emotional complexity that researchers tend to use. One is called emotional dialecticism, which just means feeling positive and negative emotions at the same time. The other is emotional differentiation, which is when someone is able to separate out and describe the discrete emotions theyre feeling.

In the study, Igor Grossman and Alex Huynh of the University of Waterloo and Phoebe Ellsworth of the University of Michigan explored how emotional complexity manifests in different cultures. In a random sampling of 1.3 million English web pages from 10 different countries, they tracked how many times a positive-emotion word appeared within two words of a negative-emotion word. Sites from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore all had significantly higher rates of mixed emotions than the texts from six other countriesthe United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand. South Africa came in somewhere in the middle of these groups.

Next, the researchers collected reports from college students in Russia, the U.S., Japan, India, Germany, and the U.K. about the emotions theyd felt during different experiences, like having a good interaction with a friend, or getting injured. Participants in Russia, India, and Japan were higher in both emotional dialecticism and emotional differentiation.

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The researchers attributed the difference to the fact that people from Russia, India, and Japan also tend to place a higher value on interdependence, defined in the study as attending to the wishes and concerns of others, focusing on the social context and the emotions of other people in their group, and seeing ones emotions as originating through interactions with other people in ones environment. People from Western countries, on the other hand, are more likely to think that their emotions come from within themselves.

The researchers last step was to compare emotional complexity in American and Japanese people across a wider age range, using the same kinds of questions about recent experiences as they had with the college students. Again, the Japanese showed higher emotional complexity than the Americans.

Overall, cultural differences in emotional complexity are robust and often sizable, the study reads. These cultural effects unfolded on a continuum across countries differing in interdependent social orientation. Feeling more emotionally tied to other people, it seems, is linked to a higher level of emotional complexity.



And complex emotions, previous research has found, may be positively linked to a greater sense of well-being. In light of that, the researchers here suggest that future work should examine whether training people to engage with their social environment in a more interdependent fashion may enhance their emotional complexity.

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This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
On this day in 1787, Shays rebellion effectively ended in Springfield, Mass., when its forces failed to capture a federal armory. The uprising was one of the major influences in the calling of a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Daniel Shays and Job Shattuck

The tax protest showed the federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, couldnt put down an internal rebellion. It had to rely on a state militia sponsored by private Boston business people. With no money, the central government couldnt act to protect a perpetual union guaranteed by the Articles.

The events leading to and including Shays rebellion alarmed Founders like George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton to the point where delegates from five states met in Annapolis, Maryland in September 1786 to discuss changing the Articles of Confederation.

The group in Maryland included Madison, Hamilton and John Dickinson, and it recommended that a meeting of all 13 states be held the following May in Philadelphia. The Confederation Congress agreed and the Constitutional Convention of 1787 effectively ended the era of the Articles of Confederation.

Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army captain, led a group of upset western Massachusetts residents that clashed with the state government over the forgiveness of wartime debt and high taxes. In some cases, Army veterans who had never received pay for their service saw their property seized.

In August 1786, the protesters mobilized and seized several local courts after the state government refused to consider debt-relief provisions. Shays led a force of about 1,500 men in an attempted raid of the Springfield armory on January 26. The group was intercepted on the day before its planned attack; four protestors died in a brief conflict with the militia and the group dispersed.

When learning of the conflict, Washington remarked that it threatened the tranquility of the Union.

If three years ago any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite  a fit subject for a mad house, he wrote to Henry Knox.

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At that time, Washington was leaning against attending the constitutional convention, but the impact of Shays rebellion and the influence of his friends led Washington to change his mind.

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By Jim Drury When police fail to find a DNA match to either victims or suspects, the forensic avenue of an investigation can run into the sand. But forensic biomedical scientists at the University of Leuven believe they can help. They have developed a unique test of blood samples that can predict the age of the individual concerned to within four years by examining the aging process of human DNA. A similar test they devised for teeth samples is almost as accurate. According to lead researcher Professor Bram Bekaert, "whenever we find a blood stain the first thing we do is to produce a DNA profile, a profile which can be compared to the profile of a suspect, for example, or with the DNA database. But whenever you don't have a match you're basically stuck. What we tried to do was to get some additional information that the police could actually use to try and find a suspect. So we looked at the literature and we found that specific chemical structure on the DNA are actually associated with age, so some chemicals at specific positions in our DNA actually increase or decrease with age, and we use the most significant positions to put them into a single test and use that on forensic samples." Human tissues and organs change as we age and the process is regulated by our DNA. Bekaert's team examined a set of four age-associated DNA methylation markers and tested them against hundreds of blood samples from crime victims whose age was known. "We extracted the most significant ones (markers), most significant positions from those, put them together, we analyzed them in a large population of blood samples and small population of teeth and then correlated the chronological age, so the actual age of the individual with our predicted age and we saw that we could actually get a very nice correlation, a highly significant correlation with age." The scientists managed to determine individuals' age in blood samples with a margin of error of 3.75 years across the age range. The results were even more impressive among the younger suspects. "The blood test, for example, has an accuracy of about 3.75 years over a whole age population, meaning that from newborns up to about 91 years of age our accuracy was about 3.75," said Bekaert. "The younger the individual is the higher the accuracy is because it has had less influence of the environment. So the more a person has an influence over the environment on his epigenome, as we call it, so the chemical structures on the genome the larger the error rate will become. So the error rate for younger people is about two years of age, while for 91 years of age it will be about five and a half, six, years of age." Bekaert also conducted tests on a smaller sample of teeth, determining an individual's age with a margin of error of 4.86 years. Leuven's police department has already called on the team's expertise in ongoing police investigations. Bekaert has also been asked for help from police departments in the United States and the Netherlands. He expects interest from police departments world-wide for cases where they have no DNA lead - including so-called 'cold cases' where the police have stopped active investigations of an unsolved crime. "The nice thing about this kind of analysis as well is that it can be used in cold cases as well, because the chemical structures on the DNA do not degrade," said Bekaert. "They're stuck there as long as the DNA is there. So in cases where you have blood stains from 20 years ago, for example, you can actually go back and look at how old that suspect - or that perpetrator - was, for example." In cases where a suspect's DNA cannot be identified, having the ability to provide a limited age range for that person would rule out large sections of a population, and indeed many potential individual suspects. Bekaert's team is now seeking to improve their predictive ability within the older persons' age range.
Ankara (AFP) - EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini on Monday expressed confidence Turkey would soon receive a package of three billion euros ($3.2 billion) for mainly Syrian refugees, despite a delay of almost two months since the funds were agreed.

Mogherini, leading a high-level delegation to Ankara for talks with the Turkish leadership, said discussions were ongoing on the disbursement of the funds but played down reports they were being held up by disagreements.

The financial aid is the centrepiece of a deal agreed with Ankara on November 29 for the EU to step up support for Syrian and other refugees in Turkey in exchange for the Turkish authorities cutting the illegal flow of migrants to Europe.

"The talks are ongoing, I am very much confident that the amount that was decided will be there in a reasonable time," Mogherini said after talks with Turkish ministers in Ankara.

Media reports have suggested that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in particular, was blocking the disbursement of the funds to Turkey.

But Mogherini said she wanted to play down "this dramatic approach" over the issue, emphasising that the funds were "not pocket money."

"We are doing the preparatory work for spending this money in an appropriate way. Because again it's not pocket money, it's money that goes to projects," she said.

"The commission is carrying out all the assessments of the needs and projects," Mogherini said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sought to also urge calm over the delay, saying: "We don't take it personally."

"But any delay is affecting daily life of the refugees, schooling and medical needs," he added.

Turkey is currently playing host to at least 2.2 million refugees from the almost five year conflict in Syria and has repeatedly complained that the West failed to provide adequate financial help.

But Brussels now wants to encourage Turkey to keep the refugees inside its territory, after hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed into the EU in 2015, creating tensions in EU societies.

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The November deal also gave new momentum to Turkey's years-long push to become a member of the EU, which had long been held by disputes over Cyprus and human rights.

Mogherini, along with Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides, are later due to hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

EU officials have expressed disappointment the November deal has not led to a noticeable reduction in the numbers of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey, with boats still arriving on the Greek islands daily despite the winter weather.
By Brendan O'Brien MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - A former Wisconsin police officer accused of killing two women, stuffing their bodies into suitcases and dumping them on a rural road pleaded guilty on Monday to murder in one of the cases, online court records showed. Steven Zelich, 54, entered guilty pleas in Kenosha County Circuit Court to charges of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon and hiding a corpse. He was accused in that Wisconsin county of killing an Oregon woman and hiding her body in a suitcase, according to court documents. He faces up to 75 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 30, said Michael Graveley, the deputy district attorney in Kenosha County. "We know that there is behaviour here that is extremely dangerous and this was the surest way to be sure that Steven Zelich was not going to be able to end anybody else's life," Graveley said. Zelich's attorney was not immediately available for comment. Kenosha is one of the two counties where, authorities said, Zelich told police he had killed 21-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, and 37-year-old Laura Simonson, accidentally during sexual encounters. Authorities believe Zelich met both women online, killing Gamez during a bondage session at a hotel in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in late 2012 or early 2013 and Simonson at a hotel in Rochester, Minnesota, in November 2013. Zelich is accused of keeping the two corpses in suitcases at his apartment in a Milwaukee suburb, where he was a police officer until 2001, as well as in the truck of his vehicle before he dumping them, court documents showed. The suitcases containing the bodies were found in Walworth County, Wisconsin, in June 2014. Zelich was charged in that county with two felony counts of hiding a corpse. Additionally, he was charged with first-degree murder in Simonson's death, according to court documents in Olmsted County, Minnesota, which includes Rochester. When his sentencing is complete in Wisconsin, Zelich will be tried in Minnesota, Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Paul Simao)
Former president Mohamed Nasheed said he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives at a press conference Monday in London, where he has travelled for medical treatment.

Flanked by his legal team including Amal Clooney, Nasheed said he would need to consult on his next move, quoting British punk band The Clash to explain his position.

"I know the question you all want to ask is will I go back. This has been more eloquently answered by The Clash in 1982 when I was doing my A-Levels -- 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?'" Nasheed, who was educated in Britain, told reporters.

But he added: "Let me be clear. I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is how and when."

Nasheed, 48, arrived in London on Thursday after being granted 30 days of leave from the Maldives for spinal cord surgery in a deal brokered by Sri Lanka, India and former colonial power Britain.

He and his lawyers visited 10 Downing Street on Saturday, where Prime Minister David Cameron pledged support.

Nasheed became the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

Last year, he was sentenced to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges.

Clooney, who is married to Hollywood film star George Clooney, argued for "urgent" targeted sanctions against figures in the Maldives government allegedly responsible for human rights abuses, including asset freezes in the European Union and US and travel bans.

"Sanctions can work, especially those cases of targeted, smart sanctions," she added.

Nasheed's release had come about as a "direct result of the threat of sanctions", said another one of his lawyers, Jared Genser.

Shortly before the packed press conference, the Maldives government hit out at Nasheed, accusing him of using his prison leave for publicity purposes.

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"It is now clear the former president has been disingenuous at best, and misleading at worst, in seeking medical leave in the UK," foreign minister Dunya Maumoon said in a statement.

"The government acted in good faith in allowing Mr Nasheed to travel abroad for treatment. Yet it is now clear his primary goal was to court publicity in the United Kingdom. This is not medical leave, but media leave."

Nasheed also criticised lawyer Cherie Blair, wife of Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, for advising the Maldives government, a decision which has drawn controversy in Britain's media.

"It's very sad that she got the wrong end of the stick, read the story wrong and dropped this catch," he said.
By Frank Jack Daniel PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti is likely to install an interim government to transfer power to a new president, a senior U.S. official said on Monday, after the Caribbean nation called off an election days before current President Michel Martelly is due to leave office. The United States' Haiti Special Coordinator Kenneth Merten said Washington wanted to see new elections quickly and opposed a long transitional period, but acknowledged elections were unlikely to be held before Martelly's Feb. 7 departure date. "Realistically speaking," Merten told Reuters, "We may be looking at some sort of temporary solution until there is a handover to a new elected president. Our fear is that we go into a situation that is open ended." "In our analysis that is a dangerous place to go," Merten said. Opposition parties want Martelly to leave on Feb. 7, as mandated by the constitution, although some in his party would like him to remain in office to oversee the elections until his five-year term ends in May. Haiti was due to choose Martelly's replacement on Sunday, but the two-man race was postponed indefinitely after opposition candidate Jude Celestin refused to participate over alleged fraud that sparked anti-government protests and violence. Some candidates have called for an unelected transitional government to take Martelly's place for a longer period of time, harking back to a violent two-year period after a coup in 2004. "What is not a good thing is seeing people out on the streets and creating disruption and intimidation, that is not acceptable in our view," said Merten, who was the U.S. ambassador to Haiti at the time of the 2010 earthquake and presidential election that brought Martelly to power. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has been unable to build a stable democracy since the overthrow of the 1957-1986 dictatorship of the Duvalier family and ensuing military coups and election fraud. Large counter-protests erupted over the weekend in the north of Haiti, a stronghold for Martelly's preferred successor, ruling party candidate Jovenel Moise. Protesters demanding quick elections have blocked international highways with trucks and burning tires, and marched through northern cities. Anne Valerie Timothee Milfort, the president of Moise's Tet Kale party, which wants elections to happen as soon as possible, said protesters on Sunday lit a fire against the gate of the home of one of the party's legislative candidates. The opposing protests and inflammatory comments by a former coup leader have raised fears that the two sides could clash in the streets, although Martelly's government is engaging in talks with the president of the Senate, an opposition politician, and the mood in Port-au-Prince has begun to cool. Only a few hundred people turned out for an opposition rally in the capital on Monday, after five days of larger and sometimes violent protests. "We are watching it very carefully, we are very concerned, we hope that dialogue between the candidates, the president and the president of the Senate and others can come to a solution," Merten said. Martelly took power in May 2011, after the constitution's February deadline, because of a political logjam and delays due to the earthquake. (Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Tom Brown)
Al Qaeda Nusra Front

A joint report between two Washington, D.C.-based think tanks concludes that the US is dangerously underestimating a jihadist group that could become even more of a threat to the long-term security of the country than ISIS.

The Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute released its report last week. A group of experts, some of whom were involved in planning the 2007 surge of US troops in Iraq, met over multiple weeks to create the report.

The report said Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, posed "one of the most significant long-term threats" of any jihadist group.

"This Al Qaeda affiliate has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization," the report said. "Its defeat and destruction must be one of the highest priorities of any strategy to defend the United States and Europe from Al Qaeda attacks."

While the US's strategy in the Middle East is heavily focused on ISIS, which is also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is also known as the Nusra Front, is spreading its influence through groups that oppose the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Fighters with whom the US partners in Syria have previously been told they must focus on battling ISIS and refrain from attack Assad's troops. But ISW and AEI pointed out that deposing Assad, a brutal leader who has been accused of massacring his own citizens, is the top priority for many rebels.

In that case, they'll align with the groups with the best funding and equipment that allow them the freedom to fight both ISIS and Assad. In many areas, that group is Jabhat al-Nusra.

"Jabhat al-Nusra has weakened the moderate opposition and penetrated other Sunni opposition groups in Syria so thoroughly that it is poised to benefit the most from the destruction of ISIS and the fall or transition of the Assad regime," the report said.

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"The likeliest outcome of the current strategy in Syria, if it succeeds, is the de facto establishment and ultimate declaration of a Jabhat al-Nusra emirate in Syria that has the backing of a wide range of non-al-Qaeda fighting forces and population groups," it continued.

ISW and AEI predicted that Jabhat al-Nusra could then become a key affiliate for the global Al Qaeda terrorist network that focuses on attacking the West.

So far, it appears that Jabhat al-Nusra has been focused mostly on fighting in Syria. But that could be part of a strategy to avoid scrutiny from Western officials.

"The fact that the US is focused so exclusively on ISIS means that we are ignoring a threat that is as great," Kimberly Kagan, the founder and president of ISW and one of the authors of the report, told Business Insider.

Jabhat al-Nusra is playing a "long game," Kagan said.

"ISIS is in fact overt about its presence and Nusra is covert about its presence," she said. "Nusra's covert presence means the US hasn't focused enough on its presence."

She added: "Al Qaeda's senior leaders have had a deliberate strategy of where they host cells that are planning deliberate attacks against the West at any given moment. Because the US has deliberately targeted Al Qaeda on the basis of whether or not there are attack cells focused on the West, Al Qaeda has tried to minimize the footprint of these cells in areas where it actually wishes to see long-term success. Syria is the top priority for Al Qaeda."

ISIS Islamic State Raqqa Syria Member

Other experts, however, have characterized the potential threat from Jabhat al-Nusra in less dire terms.

Fred Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who was a special adviser for transition in Syria under Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, agreed that Nusra's resources had attracted many anti-Assad rebels to the group's ranks. But he contended that these fighters weren't very interested in broader operations.

"Absent a specific focus on fighting the Assad regime I think it will be difficult for the Nusra Front to exist in any meaningful way in Syria, thereby making it difficult for the group to use Syria as a launching pad for global operations," Hof told Business Insider.

Hof also pointed out that the US could lure these Nusra recruits back to moderate opposition groups if the moderate groups had resources comparable to Nusra's.

Still, Kagan warns that groups like Nusra intended to attack the West "whether they're actioning that intent right now or not."

"US policymakers are underestimating Jabhat al-Nusra because Jabhat al-Nusra wishes to be underestimated," Kagan said.

"We are so focused on ISIS that we are not looking at the second threat," she added.

And defeating ISIS could unintentionally strengthen Nusra.

Both ISIS and Nusra are Sunni terrorist groups. ISIS has presented itself as a group that can protect Sunnis against the Assad regime, which is aligned with Shiites. Once ISIS is gone, Nusra could step in and assume that role.

"Defeating ISIS inside of Syria is likely to increase the capability and strength of Jabhat al-Nusra," Kagan said. "Its waiting in the wings for ISIS' demise in order to establish itself more firmly in key terrain and to present itself as the only reliable ally for the Sunni population."

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After traversing 913 miles across Antarctica in 71 days alone, British explorer Henry Worsley, 55, died 30 miles short of achieving his goal to be the first person to cross the continent unaided.

According to the Guardian, Worsley, a former British army officer, announced his withdrawal from the mission days before his death, writing, "The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journey's end  so close to my goal."

Worsley's expedition began at the Ronne ice shelf, intersected the South Pole and ended on the Ross ice shelf, just before he could complete the journey to the tip of the shelf. (See a map of the expedition here.)

A photo posted by shackletonsolo (@shackletonsolo) on Dec 9, 2015 at 1:36pm PST

The Daily Beast writes that in the recorded message, Worsley said the first thing he would do after flying to is "get a warm cup of tea and have some cake."

He was later airlifted to a clinic in Punta Arenas, Chile, where doctors performed surgery treating him for a bacterial infection in his abdomen, the Guardian reported. On Sunday, doctors announced that Worsley had

Worsley set out on the mission in honor of Sir Ernest Shackleton, who made three accompanied treks to the Antarctic in the early 1900s. In Shackleton's final expedition, his ship capsized, stranding his team. Beyond one-upping his lifelong hero, Worsley's journey raised money for wounded soldiers through the Endeavour Fund, a charity started by members of the British royal family.

A photo posted by shackletonsolo (@shackletonsolo) on Jan 9, 2016 at 6:14am PST

Even though Worsley wasn't able to complete the final leg of his journey, he succeeded in raising more than for the cause, his wife, Joanna, noted in a statement on the fund's website.

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Worsley was also a friend of Prince William. In 2011, the Duke of Cambridge agreed to be a patron of the Scott-Amundsen Centenary Race, which Worsley led in the Antarctic, the Telegraph reported. And though William's brother, Prince Harry, never attempted a trek as lengthy as Worsley's, in 2011 he asked to join the first unsupported trip to the North Pole alongside several wounded servicemen for the charity Walking With the Wounded. The expedition was made into a documentary called Harry's Arctic Heroes.

Prince William remarked on their friend's generosity on Endeavour Fund site, stating, "Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him."

He continued, "Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women by undertaking this extraordinary Shackleton solo expedition on their behalf. We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavor Fund."

Hear Worsley in his own words here:
The back and forth between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather continues after Floyd tried to tie his lack of popularity versus the Irish UFC fighter to racism. McGregor didnt take long to respond to Mayweathers original comments, saying he didnt appreciate being put in that bracket and that people have been buried in the desert for less.

Now a thoughtful looking Floyd Mayweather is responding, saying his words about that guy Conor  McGregor? Is that his name? were misconstrued. Transcript via Bleacher Report:

I didnt say I had anything against Caucasiansor white Americans, or white people, period. Or Irish. All I said is this, in this world, racism still exists. But Im not racist, thats all I said. If he got offended, thats life. Sometimes people will get offended by certain things people say. Just me, I have tough skin. Im built for anything.

Well, Mayweather did talk about McGregor, contrasting the response he received for trash talking with Conor:

I dont really know the McGregor guy; never seen him fight.  They say he talk a lot of trash and people praise him for it, but when I did it, they say Im cocky and arrogant. So biased! Like I said before, all Im saying is this, I aint racist at all, but Im telling you racism still exists.

Except McGregor gets a ton of hate for being cocky and arrogant, from the fans, from the fighters he faces, and from the media. He gets a lot of love too, but thats the thing with being a controversial public figure: Youre gonna have haters. McGregor has his, as does Floyd. Does Floyd have more? Absolutely. But that has less to do with him being black than it does his extensive domestic violence record and his boring style of fighting.

You cant just say whatever you want, tack on Racism is real! and suddenly be right. Racism is real, no doubt. Are cocky and arrogant dog whistle words racists have been using for decades to talk down successful black athletes? For sure. Does any of that have to do with Floyd Mayweathers lack of popularity versus Conor McGregors? Not really.

(Via Bleacher Report)
From his prison cell, Ted Kaczynski  the Unabomber, who terrified the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s  has carried on a remarkable correspondence with thousands of people all over the world. As the 20th anniversary of his arrest approaches, Yahoo News is publishing a series of articles based on his letters and other writings, housed in an archive at the University of Michigan. They shed unprecedented light on the mind of Kaczynski  genius, madman and murderer.

IN THE DESERT SOUTHWEST, USA  We were looking for a sign in a place where there are none. David Kaczynski had told us to look for a row of mailboxes, a rare sight in this remote wilderness, 60 miles from the nearest town. And there he was waiting, to lead us along an unpaved road into the heart of the open desert where he and his wife, Linda, now live.

That desire to escape into the wild was something David had shared with his brother, Ted. Though Ted is seven years older, he and David were once as close as only brothers can be. Over thirty years ago, the Kaczynskis, both Ivy League graduates, each quit their jobs and retreated into the wilderness. Ted built a cabin in the backwoods of Montana; David constructed his in the sweeping desert on the edge of Big Bend National Park in Texas. They both lived off the land, with no electricity or running water.

But over time their paths diverged in dramatic ways. Alone in his cabin and fueled by what court psychiatrists say was severe mental illness, Ted had become the Unabomber, terrorizing the nation with deadly mail and package bombs meant to bring attention to his anti-technology philosophy. David, unaware of what his brother was doing, returned to society and married. Years later, he made one of the most difficult decisions imaginable: to turn in the brother he loved as a suspected killer, which would save the lives of innocent victims, and perhaps Teds as well. He made what he still believes is the only rational decision.

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Its like a shadow over my life, and I dont know what to do with it, David said as he sat on the porch of the remote cabin he and Linda recently built. (Because they still occasionally receive threats, they asked that the location not be disclosed.) But maybe its time to turn the page.

To help the process, David wrote a book, Every Last Tie: The Story of the Unabomber and His Family. It recounts what happened from Davids point of view, and how he and his late mother, Wanda, struggled to acknowledge that a beloved brother and son was a coldblooded killer.

I still look back on the decision and know it had to be done, David said. He could have and probably would have killed other people.  If there was any way out of having to do what I did and still be a responsible human being, I would have. But I had a responsibility. As painful as it was. As it still is.

So David became the tortured hero of the Unabomber story, trying to save Ted from the death penalty while doing what he could to make up for his brothers twisted crimes. He personally apologized to all the victims through letters, phone calls and, in some cases, in-person meetings, even though his brother has never apologized or expressed remorse. When David and his wife were given a $1 million reward by the Justice Department for the tip that led to his brothers arrest after a 17-year manhunt, they gave almost all of it to the victims.

As David recalls, it was Linda who first raised the possibility that Ted was the Unabomber. That was in 1995, after she read about the mysterious terrorists anti-technology manifesto. Linda had never met Ted, who had refused to come to their wedding. But she had read the letters he had sent to David over the years and was disturbed by their increasingly angry tone. She worried he might become violent toward David or others, if not himself. People who are healthy in their minds dont think like this, she had told her husband.

At Lindas urging, they took Teds letters to a psychiatrist shortly after they were married in 1990. The doctor said the letters seemed to show signs of serious mental illness. Linda and David asked about getting Ted into treatment, but learned that unless Ted volunteered they would face the challenging burden of proving he was a danger to himself or others. Little did they know that Ted had already killed the first of his three victims. The doctor also warned that if David sought involuntary treatment for Ted, he risked permanently ending their already strained relationship.

But five years later, as Linda read about the Unabombers manifesto, it set off an alarm with her. Dont be angry with me, she said to David. Has it ever occurred to you, even as a remote possibility, that your brother might be the Unabomber?

David thought his wifes imagination had run wild. He knew his brother had emotional issues. He had known from when he was a kid growing up in Evergreen Park, Ill., just outside Chicago, that his older brother was, as his mother put it, special. But there was no way that Ted could be a killer, he insisted. In spite of his angry letters, he knew him also to be kind and sensitive.

Yet a month later, after David agreed to read the Unabomber manifesto, he was overcome with dread. The Unabombers ideas  and his language  sounded ominously familiar.

Unabomber Letters

Davids stipulation to the FBI, when he contacted it with his suspicions, was that he would be warned before the bureau took action, and that his role would be kept secret. But when word leaked to the media that there was a Unabomber suspect, federal officials moved quickly. David and his family were given almost no notice, and someone leaked his role to the media. Within hours, reporters from all over the world were on Davids doorstep.

A day later, sitting in a jail cell in Lincoln, Mont., Ted asked his public defender how the feds had found him. Oh, didnt you know? the man told him, according to a story that was later recounted to David by a member of his brothers legal team. It was your brother.

Ted shook his head in disbelief. No, he said. David wouldnt do that.

According to his diaries confiscated by the FBI, Ted had spent years consumed with hatred of modern society. But after his arrest, Teds obsession shifted to his brother and what he saw as his unforgivable betrayal. In Teds view, David had abandoned their shared values by returning to mainstream society, and then sold him out to the FBI. Even worse was that David was now telling endless lies  most egregiously, that Ted was mentally ill. LIES, Ted wrote in a letter to a correspondent that hes filed in his archive of personal papers at the University of Michigan Librarys Labadie Collection.

In jail, Ted obsessively read every interview David gave to the media. With colored pencils, he marked up a lengthy New York Times story about the epic tragedy of The Brothers Kaczynski  one good, one evil. Underlining Davids quotes in story after story, he scrawled the same words again and again in his perfect handwriting: WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

As his trial in Sacramento, Calif., approached, Ted became even angrier. Through his attorneys, he refused to speak to his family. His mother and brother had been nothing but a disaster for him, he wrote. His last words to David came in two blistering letters, about six months after his arrest, laying out his theory of why his brother had betrayed him:

Of all the things you could conceivably have done to me, what you have done is by far the cruelest, Ted wrote. You know me well enough to realize that above all I need physical freedom, silence and solitude, and that, to me, permanent imprisonment will be a fate far worse than death.  Why did you do it? To stop the Unabomber? Hardly. The real reason you informed on me is that you hate me.

In a second letter, Ted cited Davids references to his brothers mental illness. Though you dont admit it to yourself, you know deep inside that you were inflicting acute suffering on me by making the public statements that you did, and you were doing it because you hate me on account of your own feelings of inferiority and inadequacy relative to me.

Since that day, he has not contacted David again. David, at the advice of Teds attorneys, apologized to his brother to see if it would break the ice and lead to information that could help his defense.

I do love you, David wrote in an October 1996 letter. Im so, so sorry for what Ive done and for how it hurts you.

It was the first of dozens of letters David has written to his brother over the last 20 years. I dont know if it was entirely truthful, David now says of his apology. My main concern was to see if I could open a door, if that was something he needed. Maybe that was something I could do for him, to help him.

Wanda Kaczynski, mother of convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, shakes hands with Federal Defender Dennis Waks, left as she and her son David, at rear leave the U.S. Courthouse in the Fred E. Moss Federal Building, Jan. 22, 1998. (Reuters)

While David knew he was right to have turned in his brother, he struggled with the decision  and still does because he still loves his brother and wants to protect him. Searching for peace, he has found solace in Buddhism, and spent years in therapy.

But Ted has rejected all overtures  even from his mother, Wanda, who never stopped trying to connect with her son. Someone told me that the greatest tragedy in life is to love someone who cannot love you back and/or to have someone love you and you cannot love that person back, she wrote in 2005. This is especially true for a parent who deeply loves a child who for some reason cannot love back. Well, for me, at age 88, the pain cannot long endure.

Ted did not respond. Wanda died in September 2011.

Over the years, David found some comfort as an advocate for mental health and against the death penalty. He also found tremendous healing in an unusual place: through Gary Wright, one of his brothers victims, who is now one of Davids closest friends.

Though many Unabomber victims and survivors shunned Davids attempts to apologize, he formed an early bond with Wright, who was nearly killed by a bomb planted outside his computer company in 1987. The explosion had embedded so many nails into Wrights body that nurses at the hospital said he looked like a porcupine, but he miraculously survived, though he still suffers from pain and significant nerve damage in his hands.

David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is shown, Jan. 8, 2016, on his property in the southwest US. David and his wife recognized the writings of his brother when the Unabomber's manifesto was published in media outlets. They eventually went to the FBI with this information that led to the arrest of his brother. (Photo by Khue Bui for Yahoo News)

Wright, a devout Christian, found healing after the attack by willing himself to forgive whoever had done this to him. So when David called in late 1996, Wright assured him that he didnt hold him responsible.

On the other end of the line, David was stunned by Wrights kindness, and speaking about him 20 years later, he still is. Someone most willing to help me was someone my brother tried to kill, he marvels. The two became friends, and have traveled the country together, speaking out about the death penalty and the importance of forgiveness.

In perhaps one final dig at his brother, Ted, according to his papers, has sought to make sure that when he dies, he is not buried with his family and that his brother has nothing to do with the disposal of his body.

In fact, its unclear who does have that responsibility. Over the years, Ted, who will turn 74 in May, has repeatedly changed his mind, reflecting his shifting relationships. His onetime attorney Judy Clarke had been listed as among those responsible in paperwork he drew up in 1997, and while they kept in touch for many years after he pleaded guilty, hes now angry at her. In 2007, he drew up another document listing a group of his pen pals as the responsible party, but its unclear if hes still on speaking terms with many of them.

David Kaczynski, drives away on his property in the southwest US. (Photo by Khue Bui for Yahoo News)

I think one thing that weighs on David is knowing that hes probably never going to speak to Ted again, Gary Wright said. Teds eventually going to die, and its probably going to be up to David to pick up Ted and bury him.

Over the years, David has continued to write to his brother, at least twice a year  on his birthday and around the holidays. Its difficult, he admitted, to find things to say to a brother who not only wont speak to him but has been a shadow on his life.

In December, David dutifully wrote to Ted again, but hinted at an end. I want to believe that reconciliation is always a possibility, he said in our interview. I believe he does know that I would be open to meet with him. I would go see him in a minute if he would be open to that. But I am not going to spend my life outside the door knocking if its locked and stays locked.

No one knows what is inside Teds heart, or if he will ever unlock it to the brother who still loves him. But almost certainly the door to his cell will open only to bring him out on a gurney, by which time, whatever David had hoped to tell him, it will be too late.

Read more in this Yahoo News Special Report: >>>
New York (AFP) - US auto giant Ford announced Monday it will withdraw from Japan and Indonesia due to a weak profit outlook in the two Asian markets.

The number-two US automaker after General Motors plans to cease operations in Japan and Indonesia in the second half of 2016. It will close its Ford dealerships and stop importing Ford vehicles into the countries.

Ford said it would continue to provide service and warranty support in the two countries.

In 2015, Ford sales accounted for just 0.1 percent of the Japanese market and only 0.6 percent in Indonesia.

Ford did not say how many jobs would be affected by the move.
By Fiona Ortiz (Reuters) - Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Monday named a special prosecutor and investigator to look into possible crimes in the city of Flint's water crisis. Todd Flood, a former prosecutor for Detroit's Wayne County, and retired Detroit FBI head Andrew Arena will conduct the independent investigation into the lead contamination in Flint after water supplies were switched to save money, Schuette said. Governor Rick Snyder apologized last week for the delay in addressing Flint's problems, which have become a national scandal. Residents of the city of 100,000 people had complained for months about discolored water, but officials moved slowly to address the problem. "Without fear and without favor, this independent investigation will be high-performance and let the chips fall where they may," Schuette told reporters at a news conference. State Representative LaTanya Garrett, a Democrat from Detroit, filed a petition with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to remove Schuette and his team from the investigation, citing conflicts of interest. Schuette and Snyder are Republicans. Schuette pledged the investigation would be independent and said an ethics lawyer would watch out for conflicts. He gave no timeline for the probe, saying it could take a long time to get all the facts necessary. Schuette said it was an outrage that people in Flint are billed for water they cannot drink and that he was looking for ways to get people relief from payments. He said he decided earlier this year that the probe was needed, after the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality admitted errors in Flint water treatment. Dan Wyant, the head of Michigan's DEQ, resigned in December. Last week Susan Hedman, the regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, also stepped down due to the Flint water problem. In recent years, financially troubled Flint has been governed by a series of state-appointed emergency managers. A booming car industry town in the first half of the 20th century, the city has been in decline ever since. In 2014, Flint began using river water, which was more corrosive than its previous supply and caused more lead to leach from its aging pipes. This in turn led to elevated levels of lead, a neurotoxin that can damage the brain and cause other health problems, in some drinking water and in some children. A number of lawsuits have been filed against city and state officials.
A mysterious 160-million-year-old crustacean had incredibly complex eyes similar to those of modern arthropods, a group that includes insects and other crustaceans, among other animals, a new study finds.

The ancient marine arthropod, known as Dollocaris ingens, likely used its exceptional vision to hunt, possibly as an ambush predator, the researchers said.

"It's a very weird creature, indeed," said study lead researcher Jean Vannier, a paleobiologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Lyon. "We found the remains of undigested shrimps in its stomach, and the animal had obvious [grasping] legs. No doubt, acute vision was essential in its daily life." [Fabulous Fossils: Gallery of Earliest Animal Organs]

Typically, Vannier studies creatures that lived during the Cambrian period (between 541 million and 485.4 million years ago), when many animal groups first appeared in the fossil record. Complex sight also evolved during this time, and was a real game changer for these organisms.

"When vision appeared, things changed dramatically," Vannier told Live Science. "Animals with eyes could detect prey more easily, and prey had to worry about it."

But scientists have yet to find a well-preserved eye with fossilized sensory cells from the Cambrian period, he said. So, Vannier and his colleagues turned to the D. ingens fossils dating back 160 million years, to the Jurassic period. The fossils were discovered in the 1980s in the La Voulte-sur-Rhone formation in southeast France, but they had not been properly studied until now, he said.

The eyes of D. ingens are a remarkable find, Vannier said. "Such exceptional preservation of an eye had never been observed in the fossil record, except in very recent fossil flies in amber," he said.

Super Surpr-eyes

D. ingens belongs to an enigmatic extinct group of crustaceans called thylacocephalans, which don't resemble any modern crustaceans, Vannier said. He and his colleagues discovered its incredibly preserved eyes while examining the critter, which measures between 2 and 8 inches (5 and 20 centimeters) in length.

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To study the creature's internal organs, they used X-ray microtomography, a technique that compiles X-ray cross-section scans to make a virtual 3D model. Then, they used a scanning electron microscope, which helped them discover the exceptional eyes.

The eyes make up nearly one-fourth of the animal's entire body, and each eye has about 18,000 ommatidia, tiny cylinders that make up a compound eye (think of a fly's eye). D. ingens has more of these cylinders, which contain a lens and light-receiving sensory cells, than any other modern arthropod except the dragonfly, which has about 30,000.

The size, shape and number of these ommatidia indicate that D. ingens had "acute vision, which normally characterizes predators" such as dragonflies and mantis shrimps, Vannier said.

The study was published online Tuesday (Jan. 19) in the journal Nature Communications.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. 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.
The candidate: Ted Cruz

The gaffe: Speaking in New Hampshire, the senator told a personal tale of woe: You know who one of those millions of Americans who's lost their health care because of Obamacare? That would be me. I don't have health care right now. He used to be covered by his wifes plan at Goldman Sachs, but she's on leave. He added, By the way, when you let your health-insurance policy lapse, your wife gets really ticked at you. Its not a goodIve had, shall we say, some intense conversations with Heidi on that. It turns out he should have had some intense conversations with his insurance broker: He never lost coverage at all.

The defense: Cruzs spokeswoman says the broker gave Cruz bad information. Cruz was automatically placed in a new plan when his old one expired on December 31, but he now says he wants to enroll in a different, wider planwhich is going to cost him more. (Jokes about harping wives are always hilarious, though!)

Why it matters (or doesnt): Every Cruz misstep is surprising, because hes a very disciplined candidate. This is a weird case because its such an unforced errorCruzs tearjerker almost immediately seemed fishy, and indeed turned out to be wrong. But being confused about your insurance is far more relatable than being confused about when to disclose loans from Goldman Sachs.

The lesson: Everyone has wished they could forget their dealings with their HMO, but few of us have actually succeeded.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
By Amrutha Penumudi and Natalie Grover REUTERS - GlaxoSmithKline Plc is concluding feasibility studies evaluating whether its vaccine technology is suitable for the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, a spokeswoman told Reuters. Zika will likely spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization said on Monday. The virus has not yet been reported in the continental United States, although a woman who fell ill with the virus in Brazil later gave birth to a brain-damaged baby in Hawaii. Zika is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is also known to carry the dengue, yellow fever and Chikungunya viruses. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which typically causes mild fevers and rashes, although about 80 percent of those infected show no symptoms. "We're concluding our feasibility studies as quickly as we can to see if our vaccine technology platforms might be suitable for working on Zika," Glaxo spokeswoman Anna Padula said in an email. She declined to provide details but added that vaccine development typically takes 10 to 15 years. France's Sanofi SA, which won approval late last year for the first dengue vaccine, has said it is reviewing the possibility of applying its technology for Zika. "However, there are too many unknowns about Zika to reliably judge the ability to research and develop a vaccine effectively," a spokesman said in an email in early January. Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd said last week it was entirely focused on addressing dengue, and that its experimental vaccine was not designed to cover Zika. Executives at Merck & Co Inc, which will likely be one of the first developers of an Ebola vaccine, were not immediately available to comment on any plans for Zika. (Reporting by Natalie Grover and Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Ted Kerr)
Tuntou (China) (AFP) - Carefully steadying the gleaming red lantern between her knees, a worker applied the Chinese character for "wealth" in golden glitter -- one of the millions that will illuminate the forthcoming Lunar New Year.

A high wooden arch at the entrance to the snowy village of Tuntou, in Hebei province southwest of Beijing, proclaims it the "lantern capital" of the People's Republic.

Bai Liwei, the village's Communist Party leader, told AFP proudly: "80 to 90 percent of the lanterns used in China come from here."

For the past two months, the town has been churning out the pumpkin-shaped lamps in preparation for the biggest holiday of the year in the world's most populous country.

Known as the "Spring Festival" in China, the holiday, which falls on February 8 on this occasion, compares in importance to Christmas in the West, and marks a time when for far-flung family members return home for merriment and meals -- according to tradition, they must be back by midnight on the eve of the new year.

Tuntou village has specialised in artisanal lantern-making for nearly 40 years. It is not the site of enormous factories, instead the industry is driven by a number of private workshops in which families concentrate on the production of a single lantern element -- their spindly metal frames, the exterior "skin" of fabric or silk, the decorative inscriptions.

At the back of one assembly unit, high piles of nearly completed lanterns awaited processing, while workers wielded wooden canes to lift others high off the ground to dangle delicately from the ceiling.

The colour red symbolises luck and happiness in Chinese culture, and the lanterns are omnipresent throughout towns and countryside, trotted out at most important occasions: marriages, business openings, and most of all the Lunar New Year, which generally falls in late January or early to mid February.

"Outside of the peak holiday season, we also receive special requests: giant models, for example, or orders to decorate the Forbidden City in Beijing," explained Bai.

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"Tens of millions of lanterns are produced each year and all or almost all of them are sold. A portion is exported to Southeast Asia, the US or Japan. It's become an economic pillar for the village."

Traditionally, positive Chinese characters such as "happiness", "peace", and "family" are painted on their sides.

But in recent years their inscriptions have become increasingly political.

"The majority of these lanterns are decorated with one of the twelve 'socialist core values' promoted by President Xi Jinping," said Bai.

In Chinese homes across the country, this new year will be ushered in by concepts including "democracy", "freedom", "equality", "rule of law", and "patriotism".
DAVOS, Switzerland  Of the many politicians attending this year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there was one in particular who stood out as the most popular world leader for millennials: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Since he was elected in October, Trudeau has become an international sensation. The internet has swooned over his dashing good looks. Feminists have praised his bold stances on gender equality and women's reproductive health. He's even been dubbed the next Barack Obama.

In Davos, Trudeau's rockstar status was on full display. Everywhere he went, Trudeau was swarmed by hordes of reporters, alongside crowds of googly eyed young people clamoring to take a selfie with the prime minister at every turn.

On Wednesday, Trudeau delivered a keynote address to a packed general audience in which he painted Canada as a dynamic country of innovation and opportunity. But it was during a closed-door session on Thursday with a room full of Global Shapers, a group of under-30 leaders from around the world, where Trudeau's unique appeal with millennials became evident.

Trudeau, who is only 44 years old  the second-youngest Canadian prime minister ever  opened up to the group about his worldview. What was most striking was the extent to which it squarely fits with the way millennials view the world.

Three areas, in particular, jumped out:

1. Profound focus on diversity and equality. Trudeau made news worldwide when he delivered on his promise to select a cabinet with equal gender representation, selecting 15 women out of his 30 new cabinet members. When he was asked why this was such a point of emphasis, Trudeau responded simply, "Because it's 2015."

Trudeau spoke extensively about that decision before the audience of Global Shapers, explaining his deeply held belief in the importance of diversity and gender equality.

"One of Canada's greatest sources of strength is our diversity," Trudeau said. "Having a group of extraordinarily diverse people who share a similar vision and a similar set of hopes and dreams is extraordinarily powerful."

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Later, at a panel on gender equality, which also included Sheryl Sandberg and Melinda Gates, Trudeau went further, saying, "We shouldn't be afraid of the word 'feminist.' Men and women should use it to describe themselves anytime they want."

This view closely matches millennials' perspective who, more than any previous generation, reject gender roles and believe women should achieve exactly the same career goals as men.

2. Explicit emphasis on re-engaging young people in politics. A recent Rock the Vote survey of millennial voters in the United States found millennials to be extremely skeptical about politics, with 55% saying there are better ways of making a difference than voting. Trudeau addressed this cynicism head on and pledged to overturn it.

"We have a vicious cycle in which politicians don't listen to young people, because young people don't vote," Trudeau said in Davos. "We are working very hard to make sure young people are included in the governance of our country."

Trudeau, who previously served as the Liberal Party's critic for youth and multiculturalism, discussed his decision to adopt Canada's Youth portfolio while forming his cabinet. "Youth portfolios are typically not considered important for politicians," Trudeau said. "So I said, 'Let me go to parliament and become the champion of youth.'"

Trudeau has also pledged to create a Youth Advisory Council, consisting of Canadians aged 16 to 24, and garnered praise for his efforts to use digital media to connect with youth voters.

3. Hopeful optimism despite chaos in the world. The same Rock the Vote survey found that despite their skepticism, 57% of millennials remain optimistic about the future, echoing other surveys that show % of millennials believe they will be as well or better off than their parents.

Against a backdrop in which most world leaders at Davos portended a gloomy future marred by slowing economic growth, war, and crisis on the issue of refugees, Trudeau showed quite the opposite. On the issue of refugees, Trudeau emphasized his deep commitment to openness and tolerance, which comes in stark contrast to what candidates like Republican frontrunner Donald Trump have said on the presidential campaign trail.

During his Wednesday address, Trudeau told the audience, "I can't help but being tremendously optimistic," which prompted Quartz's Kevin Delaney to write that Trudeau must be the most optimistic man on Earth.

It's quite clear that Trudeau is leaving Davos with soaring expectations from millennials. Immediately after he concluded his remarks to the Global Shapers, Trudeau snapped a group selfie and was swarmed by the room.

But if President Barack Obama has shown anything, it is that millennial enthusiasm is difficult to sustain. There may indeed be wind at his back, but Trudeau will have to prove he can deliver.
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Pro-government and opposition protesters took to the streets of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince Sunday on a day that should have seen a presidential runoff -- a much-anticipated election called off over security concerns.

Several hundred demonstrators marched to express their anger at outgoing President Michel Martelly and his hand-picked successor, Jovenel Moise.

In October, Moise took 32.76 percent of the vote over opposition flag-bearer Jude Celestin's 25.29 percent during the first round of the election, which many claim was marred by fraud.

"We want a real analysis of the results of the first round before the electoral process continues," said Frantz Legros, an opposition figure.

Holding up their voter identification cards, the anti-government protesters called for Martelly to step aside.

"If we can't vote, then Martelly has to go," they shouted as they made their way through the capital's streets.

Friday's decision by the electoral authority to indefinitely postpone the runoff plunges Haiti -- the poorest country in the Americas -- into uncertainty.

In accordance with the constitution, Martelly is due to hand over to his successor on February 7.

"Michel Martelly has no legitimacy to be part of negotiations for the transition," Legros said.

In Petionville, an affluent suburb of Port-au-Prince, some 50 pro-government protesters turned out.

"We say to the opposition: Watch out, Jovenel Moise also has support," said Gregory Vimick.

"We don't want to get violent but we will stay mobilized to get our president."

Vimick, a member of the PHTK party on whose ticket Moise is running for president, added that if the electoral council and the international community wanted to pull him from the race, "they should know that there will be a civil war."

The international community, including the United States, has been closely watching the situation in Haiti, where sporadic violence broke out Friday and Saturday.

"Electoral intimidation, destruction of property, and violence are unacceptable, and run counter to Haiti's democratic principles and laws," the US State Department said in a statement Sunday.

"The United States, along with the international community in Haiti, urges the government of Haiti, its institutions, and political actors alike to reject violence and take all steps necessary to pave the way for a peaceful election for a new president and the remaining parliamentary seats as is constitutionally mandated."
(Reuters) - Healthcare IT company Cerner Corp's Chief Executive, Neal Patterson, said he had been diagnosed with a curable soft tissue cancer and that he planned to start treatment immediately. Patterson said he would stay involved in the business, but travel less and attend fewer meetings, while receiving treatment. There was no evidence of the cancer elsewhere in his body, Patterson said in a note to shareholders on Monday. The company's leadership was well-equipped to run operations while he received treatment, Patterson said. Patterson, who is also the company's chairman, co-founded Cerner with two colleagues in 1979. The Kansas City, Missouri-based company's shares were down about 1.27 percent at $56.65 on Monday. Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein disclosed in September that he had a "highly curable" form of cancer and would be able to work mostly as normal during treatment. JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon revealed in July 2014 that he had a curable form of throat cancer but said in December that year that tests had showed there was "no evidence of cancer" in his body. (Reporting by Natalie Grover and Rosmi Shaji in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr and Savio D'Souza)
Paris (AFP) - France's Dassault Aviation hailed Monday the agreement reached between France and India for the long-delayed sale of 36 fighter jets, saying a "full accord" could be finalised within four weeks.

The manufacturer "actively supports the French authorities in finalising a full accord within four weeks," it said in a statement.

India and France have signed an agreement on the deal, first announced in 2012, but have yet to settle financial issues, the leaders of both countries said Monday.

French President Francois Hollande said after talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the second day of an official visit to India that the issues would be resolved in "the coming days".

A senior French official told reporters on Sunday the two sides were still haggling over the price, which experts say could reach around five billion euros ($5.6 billion).

Modi announced the order during a visit to France in April 2015.

India entered exclusive negotiations on buying 126 Rafale fighters in 2012, but the number of planes was scaled back in tortuous negotiations over cost and assembly of the planes in India.
By M.B. Pell

(Reuters) - An explosion at the West Fertilizer Co of West, Texas on April 17, 2013 that killed 15 people and damaged 150 buildings likely happened because the owner of the fertilizer storage facility kept combustible material near a 30-ton pile of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer also used to make explosives, according to a report released by the federal Chemical Safety Board on Monday.

The blast was especially deadly because the first responders who gathered to fight a fire at the at the company had not trained for an emergency at the facility and likely did not know the ammonium nitrate could explode, the report said. Twelve of the 15 killed were firefighters and other first responders.

The boards investigators also faulted community planning that allowed the town to grow up around the facility, exacerbating the damage.

The blast destroyed a high school, an apartment complex and a nursing home.

A Reuters investigation conducted in the weeks after the explosion found hundreds of schools, 20 hospitals and 13 churches, as well as hundreds of thousands of households located near ammonium nitrate storage sites across the United States.

The mayor of West, Tommy Muska, said he could not comment on the report because the city is still involved in lawsuits related to the explosion.

Wanda Adair, former vice president of Adair Grain, said she and her husband Donald, the owner of the company West Fertilizer Co, had no comment on the report.

(Reporting by M.B. Pell; Editing by David Gregorio)
While Iowa is the focus of the national election coverage with the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1, the state will also elect a member to the U.S. Senate in November. Incumbent Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley will seek re-election  and if he wins, he will be 89 years old by the end of his term. But four candidates are also seeking the spot, all of whom are members of the Democratic Party.

Tom Fiegen

Fiegen, a former bankruptcy lawyer and Iowa state senator, will run against Grassley in the upcoming election, and with it, a focus on the younger voters of the Hawkeye State. Case in point: Fiegen is one of the few Democratic senators who has endorsed Vermont Sen. and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Like Sanders, Fiegen has spoken out against the Democratic National Committee's approach to the election, and has suggested the nomination is rigged in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "There is a sense the DNC is trying to turn this into an inevitable coronation, and it rubs people the wrong way," Fiegen said, according to the Washington Times. "People are frustrated at how small the [debate] venue was and the lack of transparency from the DNC of how it was handled  the allocation of tickets was a total secret."

Tom Fiegen, running for U.S. Senate, held up a Bernie sign and the Sanders supporters loved it. #IDPJJ

If elected, Senate candidate Tom Fiegen vows to work with "President Bernie Sanders." #wingding

Rob Hogg

Hogg has set his campaign focus on addressing climate change and improving various government programs, such as Social Security and Medicare programs, according to the Des Moines Register. Additionally, he is "near-universally known and routinely rates as the most popular politician in Iowa," according to the Register.

As of Thursday, Hogg has raised around $120,000 in campaign contributions  a promising sign for him. "This shows broad support for my candidacy and a strong desire to make Congress work again for our people, our country and our future," Hogg said, according to Blog for Iowa.

"More urgency" needed in dealing with climate change, Iowa Dems Rob Hogg, Ed Fallon & Frank Cownie say at news conf. pic.twitter.com/Mvfa5uHNHp https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTEAajNUcAEQWto.jpg:large

Bob Krause

Krause had previously ran against Grassley for the U.S. Senate seat in 2010, but ultimately lost, according to the Des Moines Register. Meanwhile, he's had an extensive career in public service with the Department of Transportation, both on a national and state level. Krause's Democratic bid for November will emphasize a different focus compared to his liberal peers: economic issues.

"The main issue I'm running on is income: that encompasses low incomes, stagnant incomes and the ability of working people to leverage and raise their own incomes," Krause said, according to the Iowa Daily Democrat.

Ray Zirkelbach

Zirkelbach became the fourth Democrat to announce a run in the U.S. Senate race, and his background could be the most intriguing of the group. Though he was a member of the Iowa House, he left his term in 2006 and 2007 while he was on active duty in Iraq  an assignment with which he received a Purple Heart, according to the Gazette.

Zirkelbach said he hopes that adding his name will  at the very least  bring "new ideas" to the Senate, according to Iowa Starting Line. "We're going to make it about ideas, and I'd like to see Senator Grassley bring his ideas to the table, fresh ideas, new ideas," Zirkelbach told Iowa Starting Line.

Met #RayZirkelbach the new candidate on the block. I admire what he's done as a vet. He's dedicated.#IaSen

A Grassley re-election: Of course, if any of the Democratic candidates hope to claim the seat, they'll have to get through Grassley, which is a tall task. He's held the office since 1981, and even at 82 (he'd be 89 by the end of the next term, if he wins), Grassley will visit 99 counties as part of his re-election tour, according to the Sioux City Journal.

"Grassley is considered the gold standard for how to keep contact with the people he represents," Bret Hayworth wrote for the Journal. "Some Iowa lawmakers and candidates have taken on his 99-county tour practice, and they readily point to Grassley as the originator."
Rome (AFP) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will on Tuesday attend an Iran-Italy business forum before meeting Pope Francis, as the Islamic Republic rebuilds ties with the West and seals multi-billion dollar deals as sanctions against it are lifted.

Italian officials said contracts signed in Rome late Monday would be worth up to 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion), topped by a five-billion-euro deal for pipeline company Saipem, whose shares surged 18.5 percent in Milan on Monday.

A major order for Airbus planes is expected to be confirmed in France on Wednesday, along with tie-ups with French carmakers Peugeot and Renault.

Rouhani said Monday he had come to Europe with an "open for business" message in his first trip overseas since Tehran's nuclear deal with the West came into force this month.

"The Iranian market offers Italian and European investors the opportunity to establish themselves in the entire region," he said.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi added: "We have signed the first accords, but we are only at the start of a long road."

Renzi said he had discussed efforts to end the war in Syria and the fight against the Islamic State group with the Iranian leader. "If we could reach agreement on the nuclear issue, we can find one on Syria. We can and we have to."

Rouhani is due at the Vatican on Tuesday where Pope Francis is expected to reiterate concerns over human rights and the death penalty in Iran, as well as asking Rouhani to help protect Christians in the Middle East.

The Iranian leader, who is accompanied by more than 100 ministers, officials and businessmen, will fly on to France Wednesday on the next leg of his first official European trip as president.

Rouhani, a 67-year-old former academic and diplomat who is seen as a pragmatist, was elected in 2013 on a pledge to end sanctions and improve relations with the West.

His trip comes a week after Tehran's deal with world powers came into force, allowing the United States and the European Union to begin lifting economic barriers brought in over Iran's nuclear programme that have long hindered its growth.

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- Billions up for grabs -

"We have had friendly relations with Italy and France in the past and we want to continue our good relations with them," Rouhani told reporters before his departure on Monday from Mehrabad Airport.

He also revealed that "important contracts" were in the works with Peugeot and Renault, as European companies scramble to get back into a $400-billion economy with the world's fourth-biggest oil reserves and a consumer market of 80 million people.

National carrier Iran Air said on Sunday it would be buying 114 Airbus planes to modernise an ageing fleet that has struggled to stay in the air as a result of the impact of sanctions.

That deal alone underlines the huge economic stakes involved in Iran's re-opening, particularly for Europe's manufacturing and engineering sectors.

Iran's Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said the first Airbuses were earmarked for delivery by March and that Iran was in the market for a total of up to 500 planes.

Peugeot is tipped to forge a car assembly joint venture with Iran Khodro, reviving a partnership which generated Iranian sales of 473,000 units in its last year before the French company pulled out in 2012.

Iranian media reported the deal will involve investment of 500 million euros.

Iran's central bank governor said last week the country was counting on the nuclear deal unblocking some $50 billion worth of foreign investment.

Italian companies have been amongst the quickest off the blocks, with a major business delegation having visited Tehran in November and some 500 entrepreneurs invited to the forum Rouhani will attend on Tuesday.

Italy was formerly Iran's biggest European trading partner, but volumes have dwindled to a fifth of their former glory because of the sanctions.

National carrier Alitalia said Monday it was upgrading its Rome-Tehran service from four a week to a daily flight in anticipation of increased business and tourist travel.

But, amid the scramble for slices of the Iranian pie, rights groups fear Tehran's repression of political dissent and extensive use of the death penalty (700 executions in 2015 according to the UN) will be forgotten.
By Maher Chmaytelli and Stephen Kalin BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq summoned the new Saudi ambassador on Sunday after he suggested Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias were exacerbating sectarian tensions and should leave the fight against Islamic State to the Iraqi army and official security forces. Baghdad's move underscores the depth of enmity between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim powers as sectarian conflicts rage in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Riyadh only reopened its embassy in Baghdad last month, shut down since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In an interview with Iraq's al-Sumaria TV on Saturday, Saudi envoy Thamer al-Sabhan criticised the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mostly Iranian-backed Shi'ite paramilitary groups seen as a bulwark against the Sunni militants of Islamic State whose rise has inflamed sectarian tensions in Shi'ite-majority Iraq. "The refusal by the Kurds and (the Sunni province of) Anbar to let the Hashid Shaabi come to their regions shows that the Hashid is not accepted by Iraqi society," Sabhan said. Iraq's foreign ministry called the remarks "a break of diplomatic protocol and based on inaccurate information". "The Hashid Shaabi are fighting terrorism and defending the country's sovereignty and acting under the umbrella and command of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces," it said in a statement. In a separate statement, the ministry said the foreign ministers of both countries had met on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference in Bahrain and rejected Sabhan's remarks. "The Saudi foreign minister said these statements do not reflect the official position of the kingdom towards brotherly Iraq," the statement said. There was no immediate report of the minister's comments on the Saudi state news agency. "INTERFERENCE" Earlier Iraqi Shi'ite lawmakers accused Sabhan of meddling in domestic affairs, including recent violence in eastern Diyala province where Sunni mosques and residents were attacked in apparent retaliation for blasts targeting Shi'ite militia fighters claimed by Islamic State. "If such interference is repeated, there will be calls to declare the ambassador persona non grata and demand that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia replace him," Khalid al-Assadi, a member of parliament's foreign affairs panel, said by phone. Local media published similar comments from other Shi'ite lawmakers. "He should be expelled immediately or else he could meet dire consequences," Awatef Nemah from the ruling Shi'ite bloc told al-Sumaria, without elaborating. The reopening of the Saudi embassy in Baghdad has been seen as heralding closer cooperation in the fight against Islamic State militants, who control swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and have claimed bombings in Saudi Arabia. But it has also coincided with a fresh escalation of tensions between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran, longtime regional rivals, after Riyadh executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric this month. (Additional reporting by Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's defence ministry has approved plans to build 153 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, a spokeswoman for the Israeli settlements watchdog Peace Now said on Monday.

Hagit Ofran said the plans were adopted last week, and involve small settlements in the Ariel area in the northern West Bank, the Carmel settlement in the Hebron area and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

According to the NGO, the move marks the end of an informal construction freeze in the Palestinian territory that lasted 18 months.

Peace Now said on December 28 that Israel was working to revive and extend plans for new Jewish settler homes in the contentious area of the occupied West Bank known as E1.

In a report it said was based on government data obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, the group said the housing ministry was seeking to build 55,548 units in the West Bank -- including two new settlements -- of which more than 8,300 homes would be in E1.

E1 and the adjacent Maaleh Adumim settlement form an Israeli buffer east of Jerusalem that the Palestinians say would divide the West Bank and badly hurt the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.

"The area of Maale Adumim and E1 is one of the most sensitive areas in terms of the chances for two state solution," Peace Now wrote.

"For these reasons, whenever an Israeli leader tries to promote the plans in E1, the international community strongly condemns them."

The United States, the United Nations and the European Union oppose all Israeli settlement building but have voiced particular concern about plans for E1.

In 2013, faced with international pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed construction of some 1,200 homes there but Peace Now said the housing ministry had hired architects to prepare fresh blueprints.

"This planning, which contradicts any possible commitment to a two-state solution, continues," said last month's Peace Now report, although it also added that the plans could be years from fruition.

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"They must be approved by the minister of defence and then go through the approval process of the planning authority," the English-language report said.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 amid bitter mutual recriminations.

A chief grievance of the Palestinians was settlement building on land they claim for a future state.

"The continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel's long-term intentions and will only make separating from the Palestinians much more difficult," US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech in Washington on December 6.

Israel seized the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.

Today, some 380,000 Israelis live in 135 West Bank settlements, with another 200,000 in east Jerusalem.
ROME (Reuters) - Italian infrastructure company Condotte d'Acqua said on Monday it would sign agreements for projects with Iranian companies worth as much as 4 billion euros ($4.33 billion), a company spokesman said. Condotte is one of several Italian companies signing large deals during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's 48-hour visit to Rome, which started on Monday. "We are signing accords with the primary Iranian companies for infrastructure, rail and highway projects that have a maximum value of 4 billion euros," the spokesman said. (Reporting by Alberto Sisto, writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
ROME (Reuters) - Business agreements Italy signed with Iran on Monday are "just the beginning" for the two countries, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said. Renzi was speaking alongside Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was in Rome at the start of his first visit to Europe, which came less than two weeks after crippling economic sanctions on Tehran were lifted. A government source said the two countries would sign deals worth up to 17 billion euros ($18.42 billion) during Rouhani's 48-hour stay in Italy. (Reporting by Isla Binnie, editing by Crispian Balmer)
J.K. Rowling turned her creative focus back to the popular world of Harry Potter last year and the results were stunning. Sales of the seven-book series, which concluded in July, 2007, nearly doubled last year in the United States.



New Potter material has been in short supply since the eighth and final Hollywood movie came out at the end of 2010. After selling over 1.5 million print books a year in 2010 and 2011, series sales in the U.S. declined to an average of under 800,000 a year from 2012 through 2014, according to data from Nielsen Bookscan.



But in June, Rowling had a huge surprise for the 6 million Potter fans who follow her on Twitter: She was back at work on a play about the boy wizard and his two best friends from the the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

I'm also very excited to confirm today that a new play called Harry Potter and the #CursedChild will be opening in London next year.  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2015

Rowling later disclosed that she was collaborating with British playwright Jack Thorne on a new stage drama, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," to carry the adventures of the childhood trio into adulthood. The play, in two parts, will open in London this summer. Excitement grew last month when lead casting was announced, including black actress Noma Dumezweni as Hermoine.

And a prequel movie, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which had been loosely in the works for several years, got a star, Eddie Redmayne, and an official trailer (which has been viewed 10 million times on YouTube).



Finally, just in time for the holidays and capitalizing on a recent spurt of sales in coloring books for adults, Rowling released several fill-between-the-lines Harry Potter issues with illustrations from images used to create the eight movies.



The result was not just an explosion of interest on social media and best-selling coloring books, but also a revival of sales of the original series to 1.34 million copies in 2015, up 63% from the year before, according to Nielsen Bookscan. Add in another 220,000 coloring books sold and the total exceeds 1.5 million books. Nielsen gets reports from retailers covering 85% of the print trade book market, including Amazon (AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (BKS).



"Harry Potter continues to attract new generations of readers and is a top franchise for Scholastic," Kyle Good, spokesman for the U.S. publisher (SCHL), said.



Scholastic said it had sold 150 million U.S. copies of the series through 2013, but declined to update the figure. British publisher Bloomsbury, which said in 2013 a total of 450 million copies had been sold worldwide, did not respond to a request for comment.



Rowling has always left open the door to write more Potter tales after famously completing the last book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," in a room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh in January 2007. In 2010, she told Oprah Winfrey she could "definitely write an eighth, ninth, 10th book," adding, "I think I am done but you never know."



Last year's boom in Harry Potter book sales came even as Rowling and her team revamped her groundbreaking web site, Pottermore, launched in 2012 as the official home for fans of the series and the exclusive seller of Harry Potter ebooks and digital audio books. At the time, some thought the author's efforts to sell directly to fans might provide a model to best-selling authors around the world. But few of Rowling's peers had the market power to convince Amazon and Barnes & Noble to open their ebook gates and allow someone else to act as an exclusive front-end for digital sales.



Beginning last fall, Pottermore phased out the ebook and digital audio exclusives. Other ebook retailers were allowed to sell Harry Potter books directly to consumers, starting with Apple's iBooks store in October and Amazon's Audible store in November. Currently, the ebooks are available on more than a dozen retailers' sites.



That changes -- along with disclosure of financial data covering the year ended March 31, 2015 -- led to negative press about the results at Pottermore. Sales dropped to 7 million pounds ($9.9 million) for that year from 32 million pounds the year before, leading to a small net loss, and the number of employees decreased 25% to 30 people, the Scotsman newspaper reported on Jan. 17.



While the figures from Nielsen Bookscan include only U.S. print books, Pottermore executives said their change in strategy at the site also boosted digital sales signficantly.



"Our business is healthy, viable and well-positioned to capitalise on the massive global interest in the Harry Potter franchise and J.K. Rowlings Wizarding World, Pottermore CEO Susan Jurevics said in a statement.



The site broke its monthly sales record in December 2015 with "an unprecedented number" of ebook and digital audio book downloads, Jurevics said.



The Potter ebooks shot to the top of the sales charts on iBooks in October and several digital audio books have been on the top 10 list at Amazon's Audible store since November. Headcount at the site is back up to 40 people, a spokesman said.



The site's sales may wax and wane from year to year but the strategy of collecting contact information and keeping a relationship going with fans is smart, says publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin. "Just wait for the original fans to start having kids -- they can start all over with a new generation," he says.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday hinted Washington may boost the $15 million fund it provides to tackle the deadly legacy of unexploded American bombs in Laos, during a rare visit to the reclusive communist state.

The trip paves the way for a summit hosted next month by President Barack Obama in California with the ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Laos has assumed this year's chairmanship of the regional bloc and will see a flurry of diplomatic activity culminating later in the year in a visit by Obama -- the first by a sitting US leader to the resource-rich but impoverished nation.

Kerry's visit is only the third since 1955 by a US Secretary of State to a country carpet-bombed by America during the Vietnam War.

Unexploded bombs across the region are the result of the massive US bombing campaign aimed at disrupting North Vietnamese supply routes through landlocked Laos.

That grim legacy carries a particular resonance for Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran wounded during combat, who said the US is "deeply engaged in trying to de-mine and deal with the unexploded ordnance issue."

Laos was the most bombed nation in the world per capita, with more than two million tonnes of explosive dumped on the country.

Around 30 percent of the bombs failed to explode, including cluster munitions.

Around 50,000 people have been killed by leftover ordnance since the end of the war, with tens of thousands of others maimed, including children.

The US has gradually lifted its funding to tackle the scourge from $5 million to $15 million this year, Kerry said.

"I know that we're looking at whether or not that could be plussed up even more," he said, suggesting Obama may bring a new pledge of funds when he visits.

-- Laos changing too --

After talks with Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, Kerry also hailed improving ties between the two nations after decades of tension.

"While we dont agree on everything, obviously... we also do agree on a lot of things and on the way the world is changing. And it's changing here too," Kerry said of the nation which has been run by the secretive Communist Party since 1975.

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Fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kerry hailed growing economic, environmental and security co-operation, as well as Laos' chairmanship of ASEAN, as the "defining" issues of a new friendship.

The US diplomat, who is due in Cambodia later Monday, was in Laos days after the five-yearly congress of the Communist Party, which chose 78-year-old vice-president Bounnhang Vorachith as its next leader.

Relations between the US and Laos two have often been hostile, with American support for ethnic Hmong anti-communist insurgents still raw in the memory of the Laos' leadership.

Laos' poor human rights record is also a sticking point, embodied by the 2012 disappearance of prominent activist Sombath Somphone, who was last seen on CCTV footage at a police checkpoint in Vientiane.

The Obama administration has made ties with Asia a diplomatic priority, in particular bolstering ASEAN as a counterpoint to Chinese regional power.

The diplomat said he was encouraged by the Laos premier's commitment to a keeping "unified front" in the face of the big issues facing ASEAN.

"He wants maritime rights protected and he wants to avoid militarisation and avoid the conflict. And that will develop as we are going to Sunnylands," he said referencing the mid-February leaders' summit in the US.

Several ASEAN states are embroiled in an increasingly bitter spat with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea.

The US says it takes no position on ownership of the various reefs and islets under dispute, but insists freedom of navigation in the vital shipping lane must be maintained.
An updated Congressional Research Service report is adding some new background on the controversy over U.S. presidential candidates like Ted Cruz who were born overseas and who are seeking office.

(credit: Flickr)

While not mentioning Cruz directly, the analysis prepared for Congress recaps legal birther cases since 2011, and at least in one paragraph, legislative attorney Jack Maskell states that it is unclear that a situation like Cruzs has been settled definitively.

The report was published on January 11, 2016 by the CRS and written by Maskell. Such reports are not made directly available to the public, but they do appear on paid services and eventually on websites run by interested groups. The January 11 report appeared on a blog, and Constitution Daily has confirmed the update on computer networks accessible by Congress and its staff.

Cruz was born in 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban father. Critics such as Donald Trump want Cruz to prove in court that his birth situation doesnt conflict with Article I of the Constitution, which reads, No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

The 50-page brief is mostly the same as the CRSs 2011 report, which is frequently cited in the debate over Cruzs eligibility to run for President. In one section, Legal Cases and Birth Outside of the United States, the report repeats a statement from 2011.

Under the Constitution, only natural born citizens are eligible to become President or Vice President of the United States. The Constitution nowhere defines this term, and its precise meaning is still uncertain. It is clear enough that native-born citizens are eligible and that naturalized citizens are not. The doubts relate to those who acquire U.S. citizenship by descent, at birth abroad to U.S. citizens, it says, adding italics in the paragraph for emphasis.

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It continues, The uncertainty concerning the meaning of the natural-born qualification in the Constitution has provoked discussion from time to time, particularly when the possible presidential candidacy of citizens born abroad was under consideration. There has never been any authoritative adjudication. It is possible that none may ever develop, it says. However, there is substantial basis for concluding that the constitutional reference to a natural-born citizen includes every person who was born a citizen, including native-born citizens and citizens by descent. (Again, the italics were added here for emphasis by the CRS.)

Then there is a new update to make it clear that there is a debate about the ability of a foreign-born candidate like Cruz to run for President, based on at least two older court cases. (The CRS report doesnt cite Cruz by name in this passage.)

The existence of these earlier cases, including the Supreme Courts characterization in Wong Kim Ark of statutory citizenship of those born abroad, raise interesting contentions and considerations that have not necessarily been definitively resolved with regard to the natural born citizenship status  for purposes of presidential eligibility  of those who have obtained U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent or parents, it says.

The Supreme Courts Wong Kim Ark decision in 1898 found that a child born in the United States to foreign citizens was a United States citizen under the 14th Amendments Citizenship Clause.

The report, as in 2011, describes the differences between people who believe in a narrow interpretation of the natural born citizen clause (which would bar Cruz from running) and those that believe in a broad interpretation (which would allow Cruz to run).

In the narrow interpretation, natural-born citizens need to be born on American soil or under American jurisdiction. The theory states that other citizens are naturalized by laws, including all children born to American parents overseas. Under Article I, a naturalized citizen couldnt run for President, for example, under this theory, because the act of naturalization happens automatically at birth outside of the United States.

These critics cite a passage in the Wong Kim Ark decision referenced in the 2016 CRS report, written for the majority in 1898 by Justice Horace Gray, that reads:

Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of annexation of foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts. (Again, the italics above were added by the CRS in the 2016 report.)

The report also discusses the substantial basis for the broader interpretation of the natural born citizen clause, which looks to the authority of Congress to pass laws to define the conditions placed on citizenship. Under that interpretation, Cruz is eligible to run for President.

It notes that citizenship status has been changed by statute in England for more than 600 years, an important reference in regard to how the Founders may have intended for Congress to deal with the issue. It would not be inconsistent nor necessarily unintended that such status might be affected by legislation by Congress (i.e., except as modified by statute), as it had been in England by Parliament.

The report also points to some recent Supreme Court decisions that support this argument. In the 2001 Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS case, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that earlier cases recognized the wide deference afforded to Congress in exercising its immigration and naturalization power. Under the current citizenship law, a child born to a U.S. citizen mother becomes a citizen automatically, regardless of where its birth takes place.

First, a citizen mother expecting a child and living abroad has the right to reenter the United States so the child can be born here and be a 14th Amendment citizen. From one perspective, then, the statute simply ensures equivalence between two expectant mothers who are citizens abroad if one chooses to reenter for the childs birth and the other chooses not to return, or does not have the means to do so, wrote Kennedy.

In a more recent decision, Zivotofsky v. Kerry (2105), Justice Clarence Thomas said that [Congress] has determined that children born abroad to U.S. parents, subject to some exceptions, are natural-born citizens who do not need to go through the naturalization process.

The report concludes that, the weight of more recent federal cases, as well as the majority of scholarship on the subject, also indicate that the term natural born citizen would most likely include, as well as those native born citizens born in the U.S., those born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, at least one of whom had previously resided in the United States, or those born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent who, prior to the birth, had met the requirements of federal law for physical presence in the country.

Whether these legal arguments about Cruzs eligibility ever get decided by a court remains to be seen. Similar challenges made against John McCain (who was born in Panama) and Barack Obama failed for a lack of standing to sue in court. And then there is a broader issue of the plaintiffs asking a court to decide a political question  something courts usually shun.

For now, parts of the debate will focus on the fact that U.S. laws until 1934 only allowed children born to U.S. fathers overseas to automatically claim American citizenship, and there will be added scrutiny about how the Founders viewed the national born citizen clause.

Bryan A. Garner, a lawyer, author and the editor of Blacks Law Dictionary, went into great detail last week in an article for The Atlantic about the history of such controversies going back to 1352. His conclusion was that all in all, it seems highly likely that the Supreme Court would today hold that the foreign-born child of a mother-citizen is eligible for the Presidency under Article II of the Constitution.

A key would be how the Court viewed the case in light of the 14th Amendments Equal Protection Clause, and a discriminatory difference that restricted citizenship to children, born outside the U.S., to only a father as a U.S. citizen. Judged by current standards of equal protection, no such discriminatory difference would be upheld by the Supreme Court today. But an originalist interpretation would almost certainly be to the contrary, Garner said.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

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The GMO labeling law passed by the Vermont state legislature in 2014 will go into effect on July 1, beginning what could become a new era of mandatory labeling for foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. Other states that have passed similar laws, such as Connecticut, are waiting for neighboring states to do so as well before they enact labeling requirements. But tiny Vermontpopulation 626,500could finally force some sort of action from the food industry, which has fought hard and long against mandatory labeling.

But rather than slapping Made With GMOs on products, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a leading trade group, wants to include new information about allergens, ingredient sourcing, GMOs, and other super-consumer-type data in a bar code. Want to know more about a product? With the GMAs SmartLabel, consumers can simply scan the data-packed bar code with their smart phone. The rumor is that a similar tech solution to labeling has been floated in the closed-door meetings being held between industry leaders and USDA. (Secretary Tom Vilsack is trying to hash out a compromise on GMO labeling before the Vermont law is implemented.) But Bernie Sanders, the states U.S. senator and a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, and five fellow Senate Democrats are questioning the tech solution favored by the food industry.

While we recognize that the companies committed to this initiative are taking a step toward supplying consumers with the information that they deserve to have access to, we are troubled that this initiative may have significant anti-consumer loopholes, the group wrote in a letter to the GMA. We worry that this initiative will instead make it more difficult for consumers to learn basic information about the food products they are buying, such as whether a product contains a specific allergen or whether the product uses genetically engineered ingredients.

The groupwhich includes Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.points out that per Pew Research, only 68 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of consumers say they support GMO labeling. And the idea behind the mandatory label is that all consumers have the right to know, not just the ones willing or able to scan bar codes in the supermarket aisles. The GMA has yet to respond to the senators letter.

But the SmartLabel has a lot of industry muscle behind it, including more than 30 food and beverage companies, including the likes of ConAgra, General Mills, and Unilever. According to GMA, 75 percent of consumers said they would seek out additional information made available through a bar code, showing that the program will meet a consumer desire for more product information, as the December press release announcing the SmartLabel read.

Some companies, however, are beginning to yield to consumer demand and are prepared to roll out products nationwide that are labeled in accordance with the Vermont law. The Campbells Soup Company announced earlier this month that it was embracing mandatory labeling. The new language looks less like a red flag than the entrenched battle of labeling might have you believe: The back of the can reads, Partially produced with genetic engineering. For more information about GMO ingredients, visit WhatsinMyFood.com, where additional details on sourcing and production can be found.

Related stories on TakePart:





 One of the Most Iconic American Food Companies Now Supports GMO Labeling

 Big Food Aims to Kill Mandatory GMO Labels Before Years End

 One of the Biggest Food Industry Opponents to Labeling Laws Prepares Non-GMO Label

Original article from TakePart
Chicago (AFP) - A lead poisoning scandal has struck a second US town, with schools closed Monday in Sebring, Ohio, and the water treatment plant operator accused of falsifying reports.

Elevated lead levels were detected months ago but local officials failed to warn residents until last week despite pressure from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Some 8,100 people rely on the Sebring water system.

The agency said it has "reason to suspect that the operator falsified reports" and has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency's criminal division for help with the investigation.

The Ohio case comes as a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate how the city of Flint, Michigan, exposed 100,000 residents to lead poisoning after cutting water treatment costs.

Officials are accused of ignoring months of health warnings about foul-smelling water, even as residents complained it was making them sick.

President Barack Obama weighed in on the Flint crisis last week, saying he would be beside himself if the health of his children had been placed at risk in such a way.

Lead exposure is harmful to everyone, but it can have devastating impacts on young children by irreversibly harming brain development. It has been shown to lower intelligence, stunt growth and lead to aggressive and anti-social behavior.

- 'Do the right thing' -

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said she could not release further details about what types of reports were allegedly falsified or speculate as to why Sebring officials failed to warn the public.

"We were working with them for quite a while trying to get information out of them and get them to do the right thing," Heidi Griesmer told AFP.

"The games the village of Sebring was playing -- they gave us incomplete data time and time again, and were not providing documents when they were due," she said.

"It made it difficult for our field office to determine whether or not they notified their customers."

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The agency is still trying to piece together exactly what happened.

It appears as though the problem was detected when the local OEPA field office was reviewing Sebring's routine testing reports, Griesmer said. Those tests found elevated lead levels in six houses.

Rather than immediately implementing corrosion control strategies, the local plant operator wanted to keep taking more samples to see if he could get an average lead level low enough to avoid action, according to a September 25 e-mail released by the OEPA.

The state agency eventually issued its own warning on December 3 about lead contamination in the Sebring water supply but most people in town did not hear about it until last week.

That's when the agency's director stepped in.

The schools were closed for testing, the county's public health department issued an advisory and village officials were given a formal notice of violation.

Pregnant women and children were asked to have their blood tested for elevated lead levels at a free clinic on Sunday and officials also began distributing bottled water and filtration systems.

- Water treatment working? -

"It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring's 'cat and mouse' game and should have had closer scrutiny on the water system meeting its deadlines," Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said late Sunday.

"We are in the process of developing new protocols and appropriate personnel actions to ensure that our field staff takes action when it appears that a water system is not complying and taking their review seriously."

The OPEA eventually convinced officials to alter their water treatment in order to reduce the water's acidity and decrease the chances that lead would leach out of old pipes.

The treatment appears to be working, Griesmer said: follow-up tests found that four of the six houses with high lead levels are now below the danger zone.

However, additional tests detected elevated lead level in water from a drinking fountain in one of the town's schools and at least three homes also have lead in their water.

Schools remained closed Monday. The OEPA issued an emergency order Monday removing the head of the water treatment plant and requiring the plant to comply with state rules.

Ohio Governor John Kasich's office issued a statement saying he was "encouraged to learn of the improving water situation" and supported the Ohio EPA's work to force Sebring "to get serious about taking corrective action."

The contaminated water advisory will not be lifted until Sebring achieves two rounds of lead-free sampling in consecutive six month periods.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The leaders of seven of Australia's eight states and territories have called for the country to become a republic, reigniting a thorny debate ahead of a national holiday on Tuesday. Australia is a constitutional monarchy, with Britain's Queen Elizabeth as head of state. The role is largely ceremonial, but the monarch does have the power to dissolve parliament, as in 1975, when Queen Elizabeth sacked the government. The question of Australia becoming a republic is a perennial debate that often crops up around Australia Day, the Jan. 26 holiday that commemorates the start of British settlement. "It's well past time for Australia to become a sovereign nation," said South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill, who signed the declaration. "Any self-respecting, independent country would aspire to select one of its own citizens as its head of state," he said in a statement. Hopes of a shift in sentiment rose when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a staunch republican, took the leadership last year from his monarchist predecessor Tony Abbott. "My commitment to Australia having an Australian head of state is undiminished," Turnbull, who headed the Australian Republican Movement in the 1990s, said in a statement, in response to Monday's declaration. However, Turnbull has previously said the issue was not a priority and that he believed a national vote would be unlikely during the reign of the current 89-year-old monarch. Australia held a referendum on becoming a republic in 1999, which was defeated, with 55 percent of people voting against. Republicans attributed that defeat to the fact the poll divided voters on how best to select the head of state. Polls in recent years have shown varying support for a republic, with most revealing a small majority of the public in favour. (Reporting by Jarni Blakkarly; Editing by Jane Wardell and Clarence Fernandez)
Benghazi (Libya) (AFP) - Libya's internationally recognised parliament was set to vote Monday on ratifying a UN-backed peace deal and endorsing a unity government seen as crucial to stemming widespread unrest.

The United Nations and Western diplomats have urged Libyans to back the agreement as a step toward ending the political chaos and strife that have gripped the country since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Libya currently has two rival administrations and parliaments, with the internationally recognised authorities based in the east and a militia-backed authority holding power in Tripoli.

Lawmakers have for days been heading to eastern city Tobruk -- where the 176-member legislature has been based for a year and a half -- for the two votes, parliament member Fahmy Tuwaty said.

A national unity government headed by businessman Fayez al-Sarraj was formed last week under the UN-sponsored accord, but the recognised parliament needs to approve it for it to start working.

The parliament needs a quorum of 89 members to hold Monday's session and a majority of two-thirds plus one for a successful vote, a parliament official said.

But around 60 parliamentarians are opposed to the UN-sponsored deal, Tuwaty said, mainly over an article that provides that the unity government, once endorsed, will approve top security and military positions.

They fear that powerful army chief General Khalifa Haftar will be removed from his post, he said.

The parliament's head Aguila Saleh and Haftar have also criticised the UN-backed accord.

The head and members of the rival Tripoli-based General National Congress also oppose the deal.

While their support is not necessary for the unity government to start operating, they could prevent it from working out of the capital.

Prime minister-designate Sarraj, who has so far been operating out of Tunisia, arrived in Algeria for a visit on Monday as he continues to seek support from regional governments.

Libya has been divided since a militia alliance including Islamists overran Tripoli in August 2014, causing the recognised administration to flee east.

The Islamic State jihadist group has taken advantage of the turmoil to expand its influence in the country, in recent weeks launching attacks from its stronghold in the city of Sirte on facilities in the "oil crescent" along the country's northern coast.
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Authorities pressed on through the third day of an intense Southern California manhunt on Sunday for an accused killer and two other inmates charged with violent felonies who broke out of an Orange County jail through a plumbing tunnel, officials said.

The escaped prisoners were identified as Hossein Nayeri, 37, Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43, who were housed together in a 68-man dormitory-style unit of the jail before slipping away early on Friday morning, Orange County Sheriff's Department officials said.

"The three escapees ... are dangerous criminals," Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said in a statement.

The trio cut through a steel grate inside their unit, climbed through a plumbing conduit and up to the jailhouse roof, then used bedsheets to lower themselves four stories before disappearing, according to sheriff's spokesman, Lieutenant Jeff Hallock.

Video surveillance footage examined later showed a glimpse of the men before they were last seen inside the jail earlier that morning, Hallock said.

As of Sunday night, local, state and federal authorities searching for the three men were pursuing a number of leads but had received no reports of sightings or other "significant" clues to their whereabouts, he said.

Their "sophisticated" escape was apparently planned for weeks or months and marked the first breakout from the jail since 1989, the lieutenant said.

The jail, housing about 900 inmates, is located in the Orange County seat of Santa Ana, about 9 miles south of Anaheim, the Los Angeles-area suburb best known as home to Disneyland.

Hallock said the men could be armed but declined to disclose what mode of transportation they may be using. He also said authorities are investigating whether the prisoners had help inside or outside the jail.

The jailbreak recalled the escape of two convicted murderers from a maximum-security prison in upstate New York last year. A three-week manhunt ended with the fatal shooting of one of the inmates and the capture of the second a mile from the Canadian border.

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Nayeri, an Iranian national, is one of four people accused of kidnapping and torturing a marijuana dispensary owner, the Orange County Register reported. He had been jailed without bond since September 2014 after being arrested by the FBI in Prague.

Tieu has been held at the facility since October 2013, charged with a murder that authorities believe was gang-related. Duong was jailed without bond last month, charged with attempted murder and other offenses.

(Additional reporting by Frank McGurty in New York and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)
Thessaloniki (Greece) (AFP) - A Pakistani man was stabbed to death on the Greek-Macedonian border on Monday as the European Commission pledged to increase security at a key point for migrants on their route from Greece to northern Europe.

The incident occurred near no-man's-land on the border between Greece and Macedonia, where thousands of migrants of different nationalities gather daily, hoping to secure passage to other destinations in Europe.

Two other Pakistanis were hurt in the early morning attack allegedly carried out by Afghans, local police said.

Both survivors were hospitalised but one is in critical condition, they said.

No arrests have been made.

Greek media reported that the assailants stole 400 euros ($435) and a cellphone.

In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said additional security was needed in the area, amid fears that jihadists posing as migrants could be filtering through.

The issue had already been raised in October between the leaders of countries along the Western Balkans migration route.

"The aim expressed at the Western Balkan leaders summit is to have a controlled flow and to slow down and control the movement of people," Bertaud told reporters.

And because the current mandate of EU border agency Frontex does not allow it to operate in a non-EU country, the gap is filled through bilateral agreements between Macedonia and other EU members, Bertaud said.

"Fifty-seven officers from other member states are already operating on the Macedonian side of the border but it becomes clear from the need assessment we carried out that more will be needed," she added.

EU interior ministers were meeting in Amsterdam under the Dutch presidency of the bloc on Monday to discuss how to tackle the migrant crisis and save the Schengen passport-free zone from collapse.

Members of the so-called Western Balkans group -- including Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Greece -- met on the sidelines of the conference "to take stock of the situation," Bertaud said.

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Countries along the Balkan route last year began restricting entry only to refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

And Macedonia last week began to intermittently close its border with Greece, only allowing passage to refugees wishing to go to Germany or Austria.

Macedonia on Monday said it wanted to cooperate with Brussels but its hand was forced by restrictions imposed by EU nations further north.

Austria earlier this month 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.

"Macedonia has coordinated its steps with the EU and will... follow (Brussels') decisions," said a statement from Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki.

"We have no intention to close the border, but at the time when northern EU countries are tightening measures, we will do whatever necessary at (Macedonia's) southern border to contribute to a solution to the refugee crisis where it is needed," Poposki said.

More than one million migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015, nearly half of them Syrians, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
Setes investors will meet again in February.

Sete Brasil will not be placed in bankruptcy protection after all, according to a report by DBS. At a shareholders assembly held late last week, the plan take the cash-strapped rigbuilder into bankruptcy protection was voted down.

The plan was panned by major shareholders Petros, the Petrobras employee pension fund, which holds an 8% stake, and Santander, which holds a 6% stake. An 85% acceptance level was required for the plan to go through.

Acording to DBS, a new meeting has been set for mid-February this year, and the impact on Singapores two largest rigbuilders is yet to be ascertained.

The impact on Singapore rigbuilders Keppel Corp and Sembcorp Marine depends on details of the restructuring plan. If stakeholders take over the uncompleted units (in the case of bankruptcy) and Petrobras keeps its charter contracts firm, losses will be minimal, DBS said





More From Singapore Business Review


Lagos (AFP) - Nigerian online television and film distribution service iROKO on Monday announced $19 million worth of new deals, including with French giant Canal+, to boost operations and take-up across Africa.

The deals for content development and capital funding come just weeks after US streaming giant Netflix expanded to 190 countries, putting them in direct competition with the Lagos-based firm.

"We're taking Nollywood content to Africa," iROKO founder Jason Njoku told AFP in an email, referring to Nigeria's domestic film industry.

"We have plans to dub content into French, Swahili, Zulu -- so we'll stand apart from Netflix in terms of localisation of content. We are going narrow and deep into local content.

"However Netflix entering into the African market is really exciting, as it reveals the huge potential of the market. For us, we're flattered to be mentioned in the same breath as them."

iROKO, whose operation has been dubbed "the African Netflix", said in a separate statement it aimed to produce "at least 300 hours of original content in 2016, with the expectation of doubling that by 2018".

Mobile phone use has exploded in Africa in recent years and firms such as Njoku's have tapped in to increasing Internet access through smartphones and the popularity of Nigeria's film industry across the continent.

Nollywood is the world's second-biggest film industry in terms of production, is estimated to employ some one million people and contributes 1.2 percent of Nigeria's GDP.

As part of the new deal, Canal+ Overseas boss Jacques du Puy joins the iROKO board, the statement said.

The Paris-based firm's chief financial officer Fabrice Faux said the investment would lead to a "scale-up in French-speaking Africa, with clear ambitions and the means to reach them".
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's Lagos state will ask bondholders next month to agree a change to the payment schedules for 167.5 billion naira ($842 mln) of bonds, the state government said on Monday. The state wants to pay interest and principal semi-annually rather than making a single bullet repayment of the principal at maturity. Lagos, a mega-city of 21 million people in the state of the same name, is the commercial engine of Africa's biggest economy and accounts for about a third of Nigeria's overall output. The meeting will be held on February 23. The state government said the debt in question includes an 80 billion naira seven-year bond maturing in 2019 and an 87.5 billion naira to be repaid in 2020. Coupons on the bonds would remain unchanged at 14.5 percent and 13.5 percent respectively. The state government did not say why it wants to change the payment schedule but analysts said Lagos may be hoping to sell new debt at lower yields to fund infrastructure projects. Nigeria's government approved a $200 million loan from a World Bank agency this month to develop infrastructure in Lagos state, the minister for works, power and housing said. ($1 = 199.00 naira) (Reporting by Oludare Mayowa; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha and Catherine Evans)
By Colleen Jenkins WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Minority voters in North Carolina will have a harder time casting a ballot this presidential election year if a judge allows a law requiring photo identification at the polls to take effect, challengers of the law said in federal court on Monday. But a lawyer representing the state said only a small number of people may not have the necessary forms of identification and exceptions will be allowed under an amended version of the measure. "It's a policy question," lawyer Thomas Farr said. "The evidence here does not rise anywhere close to showing a discriminatory intent." The trial in Winston-Salem is one of several closely watched voting rights battles that will play out across the country as Democrats and Republicans fight for the White House in November. Democrats argue voter ID laws passed by Republican-led state legislatures target voters who typically support the Democratic party. Proponents of the measures say they are intended to prevent voter fraud. The case in North Carolina tests a key piece of broad voting restrictions passed soon after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that states with a history of discrimination no longer needed federal approval for voting law changes affecting minorities. The U.S. Justice Department and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argue North Carolina's revised voting protocol disproportionately burdens African-Americans and Hispanics, who are more likely than whites to lack the acceptable forms of identification. The law "threatens to deter, confuse and disenfranchise voters," said Michael Glick, a lawyer representing the NAACP. "It sets out to solve a problem that never existed." Last summer, U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder heard arguments about the state's decision to shorten its early voting period, end same-day registration, eliminate pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds and stop provisional ballots cast outside the correct precinct from being counted. He has not issued a decision. The voter ID requirement is getting a separate vetting after lawmakers amended it in 2015 ahead of the initial trial. Now voters who cite a "reasonable impediment" to being able to obtain acceptable identification will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. South Carolina is the only other state with a reasonable impediment provision, Farr said. Challengers said the law remains discriminatory and could give election workers too much discretion. It is unknown if Schroeder will rule before the state's presidential primaries in March. (Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Sandra Maler, Bernard Orr)
The number of obese or overweight children has risen by 10 million worldwide since 1990 and there are now more overweight and obese children in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries, the WHO said.

In developing countries, the number of overweight children more than doubled to 15.5 million in 2014 from 7.5 million in 1990, driven by globalization and urbanization, a report by the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity (ECHO) said.

Overweight and obesity impact on a childs quality of life, as they face a wide range of barriers, including physical, psychological and health consequences, Sania Nishtar, ECHO co-chair, said in a statement.

STORY: Why Summer Is Obesity Season for Kids

We know that obesity can impact on educational attainment too and this, combined with the likelihood that they will remain obese into adulthood, poses major health and economic consequences for them, their families and society as a whole.

"The marketing of unhealthy food and drinks was the major factor in the increase in numbers of overweight and obese children, particularly in the developing world, the WHO said.

Almost half of overweight and obese children under five live in Asia and 25 percent in Africa, where the number of overweight children almost doubled to 10.3 million in 2014 from 5.4 million in 1990, the WHO said.It said Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Botswana had the highest percentage of overweight children among African countries.

Children who dont have access to enough nutritious food in early childhood are at an particularly high risk of becoming obese when their food intake and activity levels change, the WHO said.

STORY: Parents of Obese Kids Could Be Fined $800 if New Law Passes

And children of migrants and indigenous people were also at a higher risk of becoming obese due to rapid cultural changes and limited access to healthcare.

The report said that obesity epidemic had the potential to reverse many health gains across the globe and called on governments to address what it called a major health challenge.

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"WHO needs to work with governments to implement a wide range of measures that address the environmental causes of obesity and overweight, and help give children the healthy start to life they deserve, said Peter Gluckman, ECHO co-chair.

STORY: 7 Things Ive Learned from Having an Overweight Toddler

Among its recommendations, the WHO said governments should promote healthy foods, physical activity and healthy school environments.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)



(Photo: Getty Images)

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President Barack Obama won't be endorsing a presidential candidate until the Democratic primaries are settled, but he left little doubt in a new interview that he's pulling for erstwhile rival Hillary Clinton to succeed him in office.

Speaking with Politico amid signs that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is nipping at Clinton's heels in Iowa and growing his lead in New Hampshire, Obama suggested that while the progressive insurgent offered voters a "bright, shiny object," Sanders hasn't thought through the day-to-day reality of serving as president.

The critique: While Sanders has placed economic inequality at the center of his campaign, Obama told Politico that "you don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing."

"I don't want to play political consultant, because obviously what he's doing is working," Obama said, adding, "I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you're going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you."

Though Sanders' surge caught many political observers by surprise, Obama said it shouldn't have.

"Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose," he told Politico. "I think Hillary came in with the both privilege  and burden  of being perceived as the frontrunner... You're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven't seen before  that's a disadvantage to her."

Then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaks at a Burlington, Vermont rally for Sanders' 2006 Senate campaign.

But in an implicit jab at Sanders, Obama suggested that his fiery, often disgruntled brand of progressive populism was ill-suited to the American electorate.

"My bet is that the candidate who can project hope still is the candidate who the American people, over the long term, will gravitate towards," he said.

Stumping in Maquoketa, Iowa, on Saturday, Sanders offered a sharply different message. Railing against inequality, the senator said, "I am angry and millions of Americans are angry." In a statement, his campaign noted that Sanders was firing back at former President Bill Clinton, who has argued that voters need "not anger but answers."

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The Obama factor: It's hard not to read Sanders' denunciation of America's "rigged" economy as, in part, a critique of Obama's stewardship, but despite stylistic and substantive differences between the urbane liberal president and the prickly socialist senator, Sanders has tempered his past criticism of Obama as he seeks to woo Democratic voters.

Though Sanders once encouraged a progressive primary challenge to Obama in 2012, he's lately lauded Obama on a range of issues, from combating the Islamic State terrorist group to campaign finance reform to climate change. With Obama boasting an 81% approval rating among Democrats, and many of his fellow partisans wistful at the thought that he'll be gone soon, it's a necessary shift if Sanders wants any hope of upsetting Clinton.

But it's Clinton who's done the most to tie herself to Obama. That strategy was most noticeably on display in last week's Democratic debate in Charleston, South Carolina, where Clinton tightly embraced the president on issues like financial regulation and health care reform and pitched herself as the one Democrat who could forestall a Republican presidency and wholesale repeal of the Obama legacy.

Sanders' campaign isn't keen on Clinton's effort.

"If Secretary Clinton had had her way in 2008, there never would have been a President Barack Obama," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told reporters after the debate.

Of course, Obama overcame the Clinton financial juggernaut that year, dislodging a frontrunner once regarded as inevitable. Eight years later, that improbable triumph gives Sanders backers hope  but there's one man who's not a fan of the comparison.

Asked by Politico whether he saw Sanders 2016 as an analogue to Obama 2008, the president replied, "I don't think that's true."
New York (AFP) - Oil prices sank Monday, giving up about half of their gains from the previous two sessions, with little changed in the oversupply situation to sustain a rally.

In New York trade the benchmark West Texas Intermediate contract for March delivery slid $1.85 to $30.34 a barrel.

In London, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in March finished at $30.50 a barrel, down $1.68 from Friday's settlement.

Analysts explained the 15 percent jump in crude prices on Thursday and Friday as a combination of speculative moves and expectations that the looming blizzard hitting the US East Coast would drive up demand for heating oil sharply.

Gene McGillian of Tradition Energy said last week's price surge was "mostly short covering after dropping to 12-year lows."

But downward pressure returned on Monday, he said, in part on more worries about the slowdown in Chinese demand and reports that Saudi Arabia plans to push forward with energy development work without cutting back production.

"The question is, are we going to continue lower and retest our lows, and right now, it doesn't seem like there's anything to stop this."

Meanwhile James Williams of WTRG Economics said that while the weather gave a short spurt to fuel oil prices in the United States, he does not see this being sustained, in part because post-blizzard temperatures are expected to be very mild.

"It wasn't so much colder and so, it did not have an impact on heating oil."

He said he expects crude to sink back to $30 a barrel or "even lower".

On Monday, the head of OPEC repeated that he wants oil producers outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to assist in reducing the global oversupply.

"It is vital the market addresses the issue of the stock overhang," Secretary General Abdullah el-Badri told a conference in London.

"It should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together."
Des Moines (United States) (AFP) - Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz intensified their feud with frontrunner Trump branding his rival a nasty "whack job" and Cruz challenging Trump's conservatism, one week before Iowa kicks off the US presidential nominations contest.

Both men are counting on victory in the heartland state, which holds the first-in-the-nation vote in the long march to election day in November, to propel their candidacy into the top spot heading toward primaries in coming weeks in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

They are pouring resources into Iowa, with Cruz in the midst of a days-long multi-county tour and Trump engaging in more retail politicking in recent days.

Ten other Republicans are scrambling for respectability in Iowa, including Senator Marco Rubio, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

But it is increasingly looking like a two-horse race in Iowa, where Trump and Cruz are miles ahead of other candidates in the polls.

Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas, met voters in Manchester, Iowa to tell them "we're in the final sprint. 172 hours. One week from today the Iowa caucuses will decide."

The conservative firebrand again questioned Trump's record, arguing the New York real estate billionaire has been out of step with the party when it comes to issues like taxes, gun and abortion rights, and the size of government.

"I'm happy to have a conversation about how Donald's and my records differ," Cruz said.

But as for engaging in the brutal personal counterpunching that Trump is known for, Cruz was not taking the bait.

Trump "is now insulting me every day. He can do that, that is his prerogative," Cruz said.

"I will not respond in kind because the people of Iowa... and the people of this country deserve something better."

- 'Nasty guy' -

And yet the tenor of the campaign has turned tense one week from the vote, with Cruz unveiling an anti-Trump television ad Monday, less than one hour before Trump took the stage at a rally.

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"Donald Trump. New York values, not ours," a voiceover says in the ad, hitting Trump for flip-flopping on issues like abortion and repeating Trump's comment, made years earlier, that "my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa."

Trump knocked Cruz's ad campaign during his New Hampshire rally, part of his increasing verbal assaults on Cruz.

"I think the establishment actually is against me, but really coming online, because they see me as opposed to Cruz, who is a nasty guy who can't get along with anybody," Trump told CNN.

"We can't have a guy who stands in the middle of the Senate floor and every other senator thinks he's a whack job, right? You have to make deals.

"And Ted can't get along with anybody. He's a nasty person."

Trump continued his assault via Twitter, assailing Cruz as "a nervous wreck" who is sinking in the polls.

He also repeated his charge that Cruz's birth in Canada is anything but a resolved issue in terms of his presidential eligibility.

"It's time for Ted Cruz to either settle his problem with the FACT that he was born in Canada and was a citizen of Canada, or get out of race," Trump tweeted.

Trump is riding high in polls, with Cruz second. Trump secured the endorsement last week of conservative icon Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee.

Cruz, for his part, earned the endorsement Monday of former campaign rival Rick Perry, the onetime Texas governor who last year called Trump a "cancer on conservatism."
By Kay Johnson ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's influential army chief on Monday said he would step down at the end of his three-year term in November, the military's public relations wing said, breaking a precedent of military leaders seeking to extend their terms. General Raheel Sharif is considered by many to be Pakistan's most powerful man. Since he took office in 2013, the army has launched aerial and ground assaults against Islamist insurgent strongholds near the Afghan border in the northwest, earning the military broad support from a Pakistani population tired of militant violence. Critics say the crackdown has been selective, going after some militant groups, but leaving others intact. Elements of Pakistan's army have in the past been accused of tacitly supporting Islamist armed groups that launch attacks in Afghanistan and India as a way to pressure both neighbors. The general has thrown his support behind elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during anti-government protests, while at the same time solidifying the military's hold over national security and foreign policy. General Sharif has also presided over a security crackdown in Karachi, the country's largest city, which has sharply reduced murder rates but drawn protests from opposition politicians who say their activists have been targeted. Under his watch, the military has been given authority to try civilians suspected of terrorism in secret military courts. General Sharif is said to have been personally involved in efforts to bring the Afghan Taliban into peace talks with Afghanistan, though those efforts have stalled. Speculation that General Sharif would seek to extend his tenure for another term was baseless, the army's public relations wing said in a series of tweets issued on Monday. "The Pakistan Army is a great institution. I don't believe in extension," he was quoted as saying. General Sharif's decision would represent a win for democratic institutions, but raises questions on the future of campaigns against militants. No obvious candidate to succeed him has yet emerged. General Sharif pledged that efforts to combat terrorism "will continue with full vigor and resolve" after he retired, the army tweets said. Pakistan's past two military chiefs had sought extensions of their terms instead of stepping down, with General Pervez Musharraf staging a coup to topple Nawaz Sharif during a previous term as prime minister. (Additional reporting by Asad Hashim; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
By Emily Stephenson

ASHVILLE, N.C. (Reuters) - Saeed Abedini, an American pastor freed this month from an Iranian prison as part of a U.S.-Iranian prisoner swap, will be reunited with his wife and children on Monday at a Christian center in the North Carolina mountains.

The Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, founded by the famed evangelical minister and his family, said Abedini wanted time to adjust and reconnect with his family after more than three years of imprisonment in Iran.

Abedini's wife, Naghmeh, also told Reuters last week the couple would work on their marriage. She said in a message to supporters that became public that her husband had been abusive and suffered from a pornography addiction.

Abedini arrived at the Asheville, North Carolina, center on Thursday. He and his avid supporter Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, have so far declined comment.

A spokesman also declined to say what resources would be made available at the center, known as a retreat to hear speakers, hike and pray.

"I'm sure they're praying ... trying to find out where he is spiritually right now," said Joe Nesbitt, an Asheville-based Christian counselor with Grace Life International, who has spent time at the Cove.

Abedini, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was sentenced by an Iranian court in 2013 to eight years in prison for allegedly compromising Iran's national security by setting up home-based Christian churches there.

He was arrested after returning to Iran for what was supposed to be a short trip to set up an orphanage.

Abedini was one of five Americans released by Iran in exchange for clemency to seven Iranians who were convicted or facing trial in the United States. The swap was announced at the same time as international sanctions on Iran were lifted in a deal with the United States and other major powers to curb Tehran's nuclear program.

Abedini became a rallying point for U.S. evangelicals, who saw him as a symbol of persecution of Christians. Franklin Graham and other pastors around the country called for his release.

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Republican White House hopefuls spoke about him, including U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who prayed for Abedini outside the White House.

Naghmeh Abedini, who had publicly campaigned for her husband's release, told Reuters last week their relationship was strained.

In the fall of 2015, she emailed supporters that she was pulling back from public advocacy and described "physical, emotional, psychological and sexual" abuse by her husband, who she said was addicted to pornography. Reuters could not independently confirm the allegations.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, N.C. and Ben Klayman in Boise, Idaho; Editing by Frances Kerry)
Amsterdam (AFP) - The Islamic State group has honed the ability to launch global attacks and is set to focus more on Europe following the Paris massacre, the chief of the EU police agency Europol said Monday.

Rob Wainwright told a news conference that "the so-called Islamic State had developed a new combat style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage -- with a particular focus in Europe."

"So-called Islamic State has a willingness and a capability to carry out further attacks in Europe, and of course all national authorities are working to prevent that from happening," he added.

Wainwright was unveiling the findings of a new Europol report on changes in how the jihadist group operates, coinciding with the launch of the agency's new counterterrorism centre in The Hague.

IS claimed responsibility for the November 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed, releasing a video on Sunday purporting to show nine of the jihadists in which they threaten "coalition countries" including Britain.

A US-led coalition has been fighting IS in Iraq since August 2014, and in Syria since September that year.

"IS is preparing more terrorist attacks, including more 'Mumbai-style' attacks, to be executed in member states of the EU, and in France in particular," the Europol report said.

"The attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets, because of the impact it generates. Both the November Paris attacks and the October 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner suggest a shift in IS strategy towards going global."

IS had developed an "external action command" which was trained for "special forces-style attacks" internationally, the report said.

But the report played down fears that jihadists were smuggling themselves into Europe as part of the huge wave of refugees and migrants that the continent is dealing with, many of whom are fleeing the war in Syria.

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"There is no concrete evidence that terrorist travellers systematically use the flow of refugees to enter Europe unnoticed," it said.

It warned however that many new arrivals were vulnerable to radicalisation or recruitment, with evidence that extremist recruiters were specifically targeting refugee centres.

One of the main tasks of the new Europol counter-terrorism centre was to collect details on the estimated 5,000 Europeans who have gone to fight with IS in Syria and Iraq, Wainwright said.

"We already have details on 3,700 fighters actively engaged in the conflict zone but that's not the full picture and it's something we will be addressing through priority work of the new centre," it said.
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland's former president and Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa will publicly defend himself against allegations that he was in league with the Soviet era communist police, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said Monday.

Marcin Weglinski, a spokesman for the IPN, told AFP that the debate which was requested by Walesa himself will be held on March 16 in the northern city of Gdansk.

At the request of Walesa, the institute invited the Nobel Peace laureate's main critics: historians Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, as well as far-right filmmaker Grzegorz Braun, who has sought out former Polish secret police (SB) agents.

Weglinski said the invitees have yet to confirm their presence.

The IPN, which is in charge of investigating Nazi and communist-era crimes, has also previously accused Walesa of SB involvement.

Walesa told the institute that he has been steadily smeared in the media for his alleged collaboration with the secret police and wanted to clear his name.

In 1992, former interior minister Antoni Macierewicz published a list of 60 suspected SB agents, including big names in Polish politics. Walesa was listed as working under the codename "Bolek", but the politician has always said that any accusations of collaboration are "absurd".

In 2000, a special vetting court cleared Walesa of allegations of collaboration, but accusations and rumours continue to plague Poland's first post-communism president.

In 2010, Walesa lost a defamation case against a journalist who accused him of being a spy for the SB.

He also filed a case against former president Lech Kaczynski, who claimed Walesa collaborated with the SB. Walesa withdrew the case after Kaczynski died in a plane crash in 2010.
By Daniel Wallis

(Reuters) - Police in Southern California appealed to the Vietnamese community on Monday to come forward with any information about three dangerous men who are on the loose after an audacious jailbreak.

Hossein Nayeri, 37, Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Bac Duong, 43, slipped away early on Friday after cutting through steel plate and using plumbing tunnels to elude guards before rappelling from a roof at the central men's jail in Orange County.

All three are violent criminals, police said. At least one, Tieu, is a documented member of a Vietnamese street gang and had been in custody accused of murder.

"We know that in some of the local communities, specifically the Vietnamese community, there is fear that exists about these individuals," said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Dave Sawyer.

He told a news conference that he would not give Tieu's gang the pleasure of hearing him say its name.

"I'm just here to tell you that we have taken an extremely proactive approach to ... putting the pressure on his gang, to let them know that we are here to find him," Sawyer said.

Members of the public can call the authorities anonymously and a sheriff's deputy who speaks Vietnamese relayed the same message for the cameras. A $50,000 reward is offered for information leading to the inmates' capture.

Duong is an "associate" of a Vietnamese gang, Sawyer said, and was in custody for attempted murder. Nayeri has a conviction for homicide and is accused in a kidnapping and torture case.

Sheriff's department spokesman Lt. Jeff Hallock said the three cut through half-inch steel plate before making it to the roof. It was not clear how they obtained the necessary tools.

"All I'm going to say is that there were about four to five different breaches of metal, iron, steel, that type of thing," Hallock said.

A disturbance in the jail during which a deputy was assaulted may have been concocted to delay an inmate count and buy them time, he said.

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"This was a well planned, well thought out escape," Hallock said. He said there was a "strong possibility" Tieu may have made contact with fellow gang members.

"We absolutely need the public's help," he said. "We know that somebody out there knows something."

(Reporting by Daniel Wallis in Denver; editing by Grant McCool)
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A police officer has been indicted on a misdemeanor charge for using a Taser on a councilman in Prairie View, the city where a black woman died in custody in a case that raised questions about racial bias in policing, authorities said on Monday.

Michael Kelley, an officer in Prairie View, was indicted by a grand jury last week on a charge of official oppression, which can bring up to a year in prison, the Waller County District Attorney's Office said.

In the cellphone video, officers responding to a disturbance in October could be seen asking Councilman Jonathan Miller, who is black, numerous times to place his hands behind his back. A Taser is then used on Miller, who is on his knees, and he falls face first to the ground.

One of the officers involved in the incident was also present during the arrest of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in her cell on July 13, three days after she was taken into custody following a minor traffic infraction in Waller County, about 50 miles northwest of Houston.

The incident with the Taser occurred outside of Miller's home. Police were questioning friends of Miller, when he came out to see what was going on, police said.

Bland, 28, was pulled over in her car on July 10 by state trooper, Brian Encinia, for failing to signal a lane change in Prairie View. A confrontation followed between her and the trooper, leading to her arrest.

Encinia was indicted by a grand jury in Waller County in January and then fired from his job at the Texas Department of Public Safety for misconduct in the incident.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by Grant McCool)
NEW YORK (AP)  Dear Pope Francis, 10-year-old Mohammed begins, Will the world be again as it was in the past?

Signed Respectfully yours, the boy wrote from a Jesuit-run school for refugee children in Syria and was treated to a long and personal answer from the pope himself. So were 29 other children who posed questions to Francis in letters from around the globe for a new book poignantly illustrated with their own artwork.

The book, Dear Pope Francis, is out March 1 from Loyola Press in Chicago. Its a project that likely wouldnt have materialized without the help of Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit like the pope and the director of La Civilta Cattolica, a Roman Catholic journal published in Rome.

STORY: Pope Francis Asks Bullied Girl to Sing for Him

Tom McGrath of the Jesuit-founded publishing house co-edited the book with Spadaro after reaching out to the priest for help. Spadaro brought about 50 letters with questions to the pope so he could select 30. Spadaro sat with the pope as he responded to each. Francis often complimented the artwork of the children.

(Photo: Father Anthony Spadaro)

He knows Pope Francis very well, McGrath said of Spadaro. We tried to make it as easy for the pope as possible.

The popes response to Mohammed spoke in part of suffering and the people who inflict it:

There are those who manufacture weapons so that people fight each other and wage war. There are people who have hate in their hearts. There are people who are interested only in money and would sell everything for it. They would even sell other people, he wrote.

STORY: 5-Year-Old Girl Delivers Message to the Pope About Immigration

More to Mohammeds point, Francis answered: No, when the time comes, the world will not be as it was. It will be far better than it was in the past.

Once the pope agreed to participate in the project, Loyola reached out to priests and lay people around the world to connect the publisher with children to write the letters.

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The 30 kids in the book range in age from 6 to 13. In all, about 250 letters were received in 14 languages from 26 countries around the globe. The pope wound up with about 50 letters from which to choose.

(Photo: AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

He loved the project right from the beginning, McGrath said. He has this great affection for children, who have a great affection for him. He was surprised at the depth of the questions.

There was no condensing or editing of the popes responses. In a 90-minute session with Spadaro last August in Rome, Francis responded verbally in a mixture of Italian and Spanish. Spadaro served as transcriber in addition to connecting Loyola Press with the Vatican.

STORY: Pope Cured Babys Brain Tumor With Miracle, Say Parents

These are the popes exact words, McGrath said. At one point he mentioned, 'These are tough. He realized that he owed the kids a deeper answer than right off the top of his head.

Loyola will publish the book in English and Spanish. As an international Jesuit project, it will also be published simultaneously around the world, including in Brazil, Indonesia, Slovenia, Mexico and India.

Arrangements were still being made but Loyola Press plans to bring 10 of the children included in the book to Rome to meet the pope in person, hopefully in February before its March publication date.

The pope is eager to meet them, McGrath said. He was quick to say he would like to make that happen.

Theyll be traveling with their parents from China, Ireland, Argentina, India, Canada, Kenya, Singapore, Australia, the United States and the Philippines.

Mohammed will not be among them, but 8-year-old Natasha from Kenya will make the trip to Rome. She asked the pope in her letter: I would like to know more about Jesus Christ. How did he walk on water?

The popes response?

You have to imagine Jesus walking naturally, normally. He did not fly over the water or turn somersaults while swimming, he wrote. He walked as you walk!  Jesus is God, and so he can do anything!

While one child wanted to know why parents fight and another why the pope wears such a tall hat, 7-year-old William of the United States asked: If you could do one miracle what would it be?

Dear William, the pope said. I would heal children. Ive never been able to understand why children suffer. Its a mystery to me. I dont have an explanation. Leanne Italie

(Top Photo: AP Photo)

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Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by attending an ecumenical service in Sweden as a guest of the Lutheran church, the Vatican said Monday.

In a highly symbolic act of reconciliation that would even recently have been unthinkable for a Catholic pontiff, Francis will visit the Swedish city of Lund on October 31 for a commemoration jointly organised by his own inter-faith agency and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

The surprise move will see the head of the world's Catholics worship alongside the heirs to a religious tradition founded in opposition to the church of Rome and which once regarded the pope as the anti-Christ.

The modern-day Lutheran church in Sweden continues to uphold principles that are anathema to all but the most radical Catholic theologians: it has had a female archbishop, Antje Jackelen, since 2013; has ordained women pastors since 1960 and embraces homosexuality to the point of having both lesbian and gay bishops.

Jackelen said Monday she hoped the commemoration would "contribute to Christian unity in our country and throughout the world."

In a joint statement, the two churches said the event would "highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans."

The event may nevertheless raise eyebrows among some conservatives on both sides -- Francis came under fire in November for suggesting a Lutheran could take communion from a Catholic priest.

At a service Monday in Rome, Francis asked forgiveness for the way Catholics had treated other Christian believers over the years, and also invited Catholics to pardon those who had persecuted them.

"We cannot undo what happened but we cannot allow the weight of the mistakes of the past to poison our relations," he said.

The service in Lund will take place exactly one year before the 500th anniversary of German monk Martin Luther nailing his famous written protest against the Church's abuses of its power to the door of a church in Wittenberg.

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The act of defiance of papal authority resulted in Luther being excommunicated and declared an outlaw by Rome.

The posting of the "95 theses" is considered the starting point of the Reformation -- a dissenting movement that created a religious and political schism in Europe which took centuries to fully unfold and featured many violent chapters before Protestant churches became dominant across most of northern Europe.

- No to papal infallibility -

The numerous conflicts and waves of repression related to the Reformation left a legacy of deep mistrust between the Catholic and Protestant wings of Christianity which has only subsided in the last half-century.

Martin Junge, the LWF general secretary, said such divisions belonged to the past.

"I'm carried by the profound conviction that by working towards reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics, we are working towards justice, peace and reconciliation in a world torn apart by conflict and violence," he said in a statement.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Vatican's Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), said a "Christocentric approach" was required.

The Lund event is part of a dialogue in which the Lutheran and Catholic churches are attempting to agree on a common account of the painful events of the reformation.

The two Churches agreed in 1999 on a joint statement addressing the theological issues at the root of the upheaval.

These included questions such as whether humans could earn their place in heaven through good deeds or whether salvation comes exclusively through the grace of God.

Luther and his followers championed the Bible's translation into local languages and its status as the sole source of divine authority.

They also opposed the sale of indulgences and other forms of clerical corruption and challenged notions such as the idea of penance, the veneration of saints, the existence of purgatory and the infallibility of popes.
Lisbon (AFP) - Conservative Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva vetoed on Monday a bill giving adoption rights to gay couples in one of his last political moves before newly-elected Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa takes the office.

The law allowing gay couples to adopt passed through parliament on December 18, and was one of socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa's campaign promises.

"It is important that such a big change on a sensitive social topic is not entered into force without a broad public debate," Cavaco Silva said in a statement.

The 76-year-old, who served two terms as president, will be replaced on March 9 by centre-right TV pundit Rebelo de Sousa, who was elected on Sunday in the first round of presidential polls.

The outgoing leader asked deputies to consider "the child's best interest" rather than equality "between different and same-sex couples".

The ruling Socialist Party, which came to power after a leftist alliance toppled the conservative government in November, announced their intention to vote on the law again in an attempt to override the presidential veto -- which is possible with an absolute majority vote in parliament.

Adoption is open to all individuals in Portugal, but the law allowing gay marriage which was passed in February 2010 explicitly excludes the right to adopt.

Cavaco Silva also vetoed on Monday a series of amendments to Portugal's abortion laws eliminating fees introduced in July, a move the Socialist Party said it will also attempt to override.
By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Akai Gurley bled to death in a New York stairwell, the police officer who fired the fatal bullet was upstairs arguing with his partner about whether to call in the incident, prosecutors said at the start of the officer's trial on Monday.

New York Police Department Officer Peter Liang is charged with manslaughter and other crimes in the Nov. 20, 2014, shooting inside a Brooklyn public housing project.

"Akai Gurley is dead today because he crossed paths with Peter Liang," Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner told jurors in his opening statement.

Defense lawyer Rae Koshetz said Liang fired his gun accidentally and that he had no idea the bullet had ricocheted off a wall into Gurley's chest in the "pitch-black" stairwell.

"This was a million-to-one possibility," she said.

The death of the 28-year-old Gurley, an unarmed black man, added to nationwide tensions over police use of force against minorities. Liang, 28, is Chinese-American.

Just days after the incident, a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer for killing black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Less than two weeks later, a New York grand jury cleared a white officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Koshetz told jurors the case was "not a referendum on policing in the United States." The 12-member jury is almost entirely white.

Liang drew his weapon as he and his partner, Shaun Landau, entered the stairwell on patrol late at night. Gurley and a friend were walking one floor below on their way out of the building.

Prosecutors have not accused Liang of intending to shoot anyone. But they said he acted recklessly in unholstering his weapon and then failing to check whether the bullet hit anyone because he was too worried about losing his job.

Liang also did not administer first aid, prosecutors said.

But Koshetz said Liang was in a "state of shock" following the shooting, eventually requiring his own ambulance, and was in no condition to help anyone. Drawing his gun inside a dark, "crime-ridden" housing project was not against department rules, she said.

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The trial's first witness, building resident Melissa Lopez, described relaying instructions from a dispatcher to Gurley's friend, who was desperately trying to revive him.

"He's not breathing!" the friend, Melissa Butler, screamed during a recording of the 911 tape played in court.

Lopez said Liang stood by "doing nothing the whole time."

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, David Gregorio and Peter Cooney)
Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday revealed he has kept his USSR Communist Party membership card, and still has a soft spot for socialist ideals.

"I didn't throw out my party card, I didn't burn it," said Putin, a former KGB agent in East Germany, at a meeting with supporters, quoted by Interfax news agency. "My card is lying round somewhere."

To older Russians, holding onto a Soviet Communist party card -- once compulsory for top officials -- shows a degree of nostalgia for the previous regime.

"I wasn't a party member through necessity. I can't say I was totally an ideological Communist but I did really treasure it (the card)," said Putin, pointing out that he served for nearly 20 years in the "armed wing of the party".

Putin -- who has revived some Soviet traditions and state controls over his years ruling Russia -- said that he still "really likes" the ideals of communism, even if they were not implemented properly by Soviet leaders.

"I still really like the communist and socialist ideas," he said, calling these "very like the Bible."

"They are good ideas -- equality, brotherhood, happiness, but the practical embodiment of these great ideas in our country was far from what the Socialist Utopians came up with."

He criticised the regime of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin for murdering the ex-tsar Nicholas II and his family, servants and doctors in 1918 in "mass repressions."

Putin also criticised Lenin for backing killings of members of the bourgeoisie and priests.

The Russian leader gave a vague answer to a question on the possible burial of Lenin, still lying in the Red Square mausoleum -- a step that would outrage many communists.

"As for burial and other questions like this, you know, I think that we need to approach this cautiously, to avoid steps that would divide our society," said Putin. "On the contrary, we need to bring it closer together."

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It was the second time Putin -- whose rule has seen an elite around him amass vast fortunes -- has mentioned Lenin in a week.

Last week he suggested Lenin's ideology was like an "atom bomb" that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, explaining this was because Lenin allowed the republics the right to leave the USSR.

Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a "tragedy."

A 2012 poll by independent polling centre Levada found that 25 percent thought Lenin's body should stay in the mausoleum, while 53 percent thought he should be buried.

Another poll by Levada in 2015 found only five percent thought Lenin's ideas would influence people in the future.
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's former deputy prime minister may face trial over his use of motorcades that prosecutors say he was not entitled to, part of a crackdown on high-level graft in one of the European Union's most corrupt member states. Romanian prosecutors asked parliament on Monday to approve a criminal inquiry into Gabriel Oprea - needed because he is still a senator - but lawmakers have a patchy record on such requests, rejecting some with no clear legal reason. Oprea resigned in November alongside prime minister Victor Ponta after a deadly night club fire triggered massive protests. His use of motorcades came to light in October after one of his police outriders died when his bike crashed into a pothole. Oprea has said he has not broken any laws. "I consider myself innocent and this will be confirmed sooner or later," he told reporters on Monday. "I will support the process of finding out the truth. I know political life comes with varied risks, including ... that of becoming a collateral victim in power battles." Under Romanian legislation, only the president, prime minister and two parliamentary speakers are entitled to motorcades, while ministers can only use them for emergencies. Prosecutors said Oprea, who was also interior minister, used motorcades roughly five times on average each day from January 2014 through November 2015, for official business, private visits, party meetings and traveling to restaurants. He used motorcades three times as often as President Klaus Iohannis and twice as often as Ponta, prosecutors said. "The misappropriation of traffic police resources who should have helped ease Bucharest traffic and using them to facilitate travel for an official not entitled to this benefit with the consequence of making it harder for other traffic participants has made it impossible for the institution to fulfill one of its vital functions," they said in a statement. They also want to investigate Oprea for authorizing motorcades for the prosecutor general. Anti-corruption prosecutors have launched several high-profile investigations in recent years - against ministers, lawmakers, mayors, magistrates and businessmen - in a crackdown that has exposed widespread graft and angered Romanians. Brussels keeps the country's justice system under special monitoring, although it has praised prosecutors and magistrates for recent investigations into the political elite. This month, the Council of Europes anti-corruption watchdog said Romania must update legislation to prevent graft and reinforce improvements made in its major drive against entrenched corruption. (Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Louise Ireland)
By Gabriela Baczynska and Alastair Macdonald AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The European Union edged closer on Monday to accepting that its Schengen open-borders area may be suspended for up to two years if it fails in the next few weeks to curb the influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Shorter-term dispensations for border controls end in May. EU migration ministers meeting in Amsterdam decided they may be extended for two years - an unprecedented extension - because the migrant crisis probably will not be brought under control by then, according to the Dutch migration minister, who chaired the meeting. Some ministers made clear such a - theoretically temporary - move would cut off Greece, where more than 40,000 people have arrived by sea from Turkey this year, despite a deal with Ankara two months ago to hold back an exodus of Syrian refugees. More than 60 have drowned on the crossing since Jan. 1. Greek officials noted that closing routes northward, even if physically possible, would not solve the problem. But electoral pressure on governments, including in the EU's leading power Germany, to stem the flow and resist efforts to spread asylum seekers across the bloc are making free-travel rules untenable. "We are running out of time," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. He urged states to implement agreed measures for managing movements of migrants across the continent -- or else face the collapse of the 30-year-old Schengen zone. But the Dutch minister, Klaas Dijkhoff, said time has effectively already run out to preserve the passport-free regime. The system has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to make chaotic treks from Greece and Italy to Germany and Sweden over the past year. "The 'or else' is already happening," he said. "A year ago, we all warned that if we don't come up with a solution, then Schengen will be under pressure. It already is." Under pressure from domestic opinion, several governments have already reintroduced controls at their borders with fellow EU states. Those controls should be better coordinated, said Dijkhoff, whose government last year floated the idea of a "mini-Schengen", which critics saw as a way for Germany and its northern neighbors to bar the influx from the Mediterranean. FEAR AND LOATHING But the EU executive and leading power Germany are bemoaning a nationalistic tide that could put at risk not just Schengen but the euro and even the foundations of the EU. In that light some diplomats saw the talks in Amsterdam as another scare tactic from those refusing to close the door to migrants. "The discussion is full of these apocalyptic predictions," one said. "But things wont really change in two months." With many EU states, vocally led by the ex-communist East, refusing to take in significant numbers of refugees, the only way to stop chaos in Europe was, he said, to stop arrivals in Greece. Given legal and moral obligations to pluck people from the sea, that leaves the EU reliant on uncertain ally Turkey, which is seeking European cash and other favors. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened her country's borders to Syrians fleeing civil war last summer, is under mounting pressure to halt the inflow, after more than a million migrants entered Germany last year. Unless the numbers drop before Merkel meets fellow EU leaders at a summit in mid-February, some form of border closing by the bloc's leading power would be increasingly likely -- not least as Germans vote in key regional elections in March. That decision would have a knock-on effect across Europe. The Commission, the EU executive, is already reviewing whether Greece's difficulty in processing constitute "persistent serious deficiencies" on the external EU frontier. Such a finding would justify a historic move to allow states to re-impose controls on those arriving from Greece. The Commission is due to make recommendations next month. Athens would then have three months to respond. Existing measures taken by some states under a different rule expire in mid-May. Minister Dijkhoff made clear that few expect the situation to improve by then, so the longer-term suspension should be ready. Under that rule, Article 26 of the Schengen code, countries could re-impose controls on documents for six months, renewable three times, until May 2018. EU officials acknowledged, however, that no one knows what would happen after that if governments were not prepared to return to the status quo before last year. SCHENGEN ON THE BRINK "Everyone understands that the Schengen zone is on the brink," said Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, whose government has warned it will limit entry to migrants. "If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move toward central Europe ... Greece must ... accept help." Her Swedish colleague, Anders Ygeman, whose government called a halt after taking proportionately the greatest share of refugees, told Reuters that if Greece and Italy failed to set up "hot spot" centers to separate refugees from possible terrorists and economic migrants, then they would face isolation from the Schengen area. Appearing anxious to calm a confrontation with Athens - which had already clashed with Berlin last year over bailout loans to keep Greece in the euro zone - the German interior minister was more reserved: "Blaming people in public doesn't help," Thomas de Maiziere said. Senior EU officials have warned of the costs to trade that new border checks could impose, although few analysts foresee a return to lines halted at frontiers around Germany, France or the Benelux countries, across which millions commute daily to work. The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. The EU has now proposed establishing over the coming months a common European Border and Coast Guard to tighten control of the EU frontiers. (Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Richard Balmforth, Larry King)
As Flint, Michigan, continues to search for answers amid sickness and death, the tiny village of Sebring, Ohio, is staring down the lead-laden barrel of another water crisis.

After a routine water test from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency turned up traces of lead in seven Sebring homes and revealed a high lead level at McKinley Junior/Senior High, Sebring Local Schools Superintendent Toni Viscounte chose to close schools on Friday, Jan. 22. Schools were closed again on Monday.

Viscounte told Mic she still doesn't know if it's safe for children to return to classes on Tuesday.

"It's a 16-hour test, and [the EPA] finished collecting samples at 3:30 this morning," Viscounte told Mic. "I won't get the results back until 5 or 6 a.m. tomorrow. If it's a particular spigot or faucet, we can shut that off, but I'm leaning toward closing [Tuesday]. I still have calls to make."

The EPA believes Jim Bates, the local water treatment operator, falsified reports of his duties and failed to notify the public on time about lead in the water. On Sunday, the agency announced plans to revoke Bates' license. There is now a criminal investigation regarding the Bates reports.

"It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring's 'cat and mouse' game and should have had closer scrutiny on the water system meeting its deadlines," Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said in a statement. "We are in the process of developing new protocols and appropriate personnel actions to ensure that our field staff takes action when it appears that a water system is not complying and taking their review seriously."

Sebring, Ohio

According to Viscounte, she was informed the tests returned with water lead levels of over 15 parts per billion, the amount of lead concentration the CDC deems unsafe for drinking. According to the team from Virginia Tech that tested water during the Flint water crisis, however, there's "no safe level" for lead in water.

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The emergency response has been quick. A branch of the Ohio Red Cross has already turned a community center into a water-donation and -pickup station.

Inside a community center in Sebring, Ohio

"It's a steady flow of residents at the community center," Northeast Ohio American Red Cross Disaster Program Manager Scott Meeker told Mic. "The water is coming from the state of Ohio's Emergency Management Agency. Right now, volunteers and the Sebring Fire Department are traveling to residents' homes. We've been here since Friday afternoon."

Meeker told Mic the Health Department declared the water unsuitable for pregnant women and small children.

Right now, the problem seems small. And with luck, it will stay that way. But like the crisis in Flint, there's no indication when the problem might let up  or how serious the problem really is.
By Toni Clarke (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts said on Monday he has placed a hold on President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration until the agency agrees to reform its process for approving opioid painkillers. Markey wants future opioid-approval matters to be reviewed by an FDA advisory committee, and believes the committee should consider the risk of addiction and abuse during the approval process. He also wants the agency to rescind approval of OxyContin for children and convene an advisory panel to guide that process. "Last year, the FDA approved a new pediatric use for OxyContin without convening an advisory committee even though its guidelines note that FDA decisions that relate to controversial issues or matters relating to children are particularly well-suited to advisory committee empanelment," Markey said in a statement. The nominee, Dr. Robert Califf, a cardiologist and researcher, is widely expected to be approved when the Senate votes on the nomination later this year, though critics argue that his ties to the pharmaceutical industry are too close. The FDA did not immediately have a comment on Markey's action. A "hold" is a procedure by which a senator can prevent a measure from being voted on by the full Senate. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted earlier this month to confirm Califf as FDA commissioner, a position open since Dr. Margaret Hamburg stepped down last February. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of moving the nomination to the full Senate, but repeated a threat to oppose it if the FDA does not satisfy her demand for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered salmon. Califf joined the FDA a year ago as a deputy commissioner. He is a prominent cardiologist who previously held senior positions at Duke University, where he founded a large academic research center that received more than half its funding from the drug industry. He has also led multiple large-scale, company-funded clinical trials and published more than 1,200 papers. His interest in streamlining the clinical trial process dovetails with those of patient groups and members of Congress who are eager to see new drugs brought to market faster. U.S. deaths from drug overdoses hit a record in 2014, increasing 6.5 percent to 47,055, propelled by prescription painkiller and heroin abuse, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.. Drug overdoses are seen as a major contributor to recently rising death rates among middle-aged white Americans. Since 2000, deaths from powerful, highly addictive opioids have jumped 200 percent, the CDC said, with those addicted to prescription painkillers, such as hydrocodone, increasingly turning to widely available, often cheaper heroin. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington and Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by David Gregorio, Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis)
The fancy frill and cheek horns that adorned the head of a triceratops relative may have helped the dinosaur communicate, possibly acting as a social or sexy signal, a new study suggests.

This isn't the first time researchers have analyzed the skull of Protoceratops andrewsi, a sheep-size dinosaur with four legs that dates to the Cretaceous period, about 75 million years ago. Protoceratops andrewsi lived just before Triceratops, and paleontologists regularly come across their fossilized remains in Mongolia.

As researchers collected more specimens over the years, they noticed a peculiar pattern: The frill was absent in juveniles, but it quickly grew disproportionately larger in relation to the dinosaur's size in adulthood. [Tiny & Old: Images of 'Triceratops' Ancestors]

This sudden burst in frill growth suggests that 6.5-foot-long (2 meters) P. andrewsi used the structure as a signal, possible to convey its dominance and age, and maybe even serve as a sexual sign, the researchers said.

"Paleontologistshave long suspected that many of the strange features we see in dinosaurs were linked to sexual display and social dominance, but this is very hard to show," study lead author David Hone, a lecturer of zoology at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said in a statement. "The growth pattern we see in Protoceratops matches that seen for signaling structures in numerous different living species and forms a coherent pattern from very young animals right through to large adults."

To investigate, the researchers measured how the frill changed in length and width in 37 dinosaurs over four life stages, including hatchling babies, young animals, near-adults and adults. The frill changed in size, as well as shape, becoming proportionally wider as the dinosaur grew up, they noted.

The dinosaur's cheek horns also grew larger with age, but they did not grow as much as the frills, according to the study. This finding suggests that P. andrewsiused its cheek horns for signaling as well, but more evidence is needed to confirm that idea.

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"Biologists are increasingly realizing that sexual selection is a massively important force in shaping biodiversity both now and in the past," said study co-author Rob Knell, a professor of evolutionary ecology at QMUL.

"Not only does sexual selection account for most of the stranger, prettier and more impressive features that we see in the animal kingdom, [but] it also seems to play a part in determining how new species arise," Knell said. "And there is increasing evidence that it also has effects on extinction ratesand on the ways by which animals are able to adapt to changing environments."

The study raises some interesting and compelling interpretations of P. andrewsi's frills and cheek horns, said Andrew Farke, a paleontologist at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California, who was not involved in the new research.

"I would suspect that there is some sort of role in reproduction for this, if it's the adults that are showing the biggest size of this, it makes sense," Farke told Live Science. "On the other hand, it's also likely that it could just be for how old are you relative to the next animal, so who gets to the food first?"

The study was published online Jan. 13 in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. 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.
This story first appeared in the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

When Basil Iwanyk left Warner Bros. in 2006 to start his own production company, he thought long and hard about what to call it. We needed a title that was all-encompassing  but not Iwanyk, says the 46-year-old producer with the Ukrainian last name (pronounced eye-wahn-ick). Then it hit him. Im from the Jersey shore, and Ive worshiped Bruce my whole life.

Turns out Thunder Road Pictures fits nicely. Over the past 10 years, the Santa Monica-based production house, where Iwanyk oversees six employees, has been making plenty of noise both at the multiplex (with hits like Clash of the Titans, which grossed $493 million worldwide in 2010) and at the art house (with movies like 2010s The Town and 2015s Sicario garnering critical praise). THR checked in with Iwanyk  currently on the Rome set of John Wick 2  to discuss how producing has changed over the decade, why running numbers doesnt always work and how Sicario originally was supposed to end.

Read More: How the 'Sicario' Team Took a Road Trip Through One of the World's Deadliest Cities

What did you learn from being a studio executive working under Lorenzo di Bonaventura? How did that prepare you for producing?

I learned that the only thing you have as a producer is your point of view, your opinion. Youre not a craftsman, youre not a DP or editor or production designer. Your craft is your point of view and articulating that point of view. And I learned how to have empathy for the studio executive.

Why is empathy for execs important?

If someone is going to give you money, you have a responsibility. A lot of producers  and some directors  forget that. They forget that someone is investing in you and wants a return on that investment.

Certain studio heads believe that running numbers is the way to make decisions on movies. Does that work? Do you run numbers?

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You do run numbers and make models and have a financial construct, but at the end of the day, that last 30 percent leap is all your gut, or your trust in the filmmaker. I respect people who say they have a formula, although it would shock me if that formula actually exists. Many of the movies Ive worked on would never survive a formula. John Wick was a successful movie [it grossed $86 million worldwide], but you couldnt have said, Its an action movie with Keanu Reeves about a guy who gets revenge when his dog dies and its directed by a bunch of second unit guys who have never directed before and have gotten a green light. Same thing with Sicario.

Read More: 'Sicario' Editor Joe Walker Outlines How He Cut the Cartel Thriller

Youre saying, Trust the filmmaker.

Exactly right. I mean, Sicario had a totally different ending. In the original script, Benicio Del Toro has his discussion with the drug lord, then he shoots the drug lord and turns to the mother and says, Get your kids out of here. But a week before shooting, we changed it [to having his family killed]. At our first test screening in New Jersey, I told people, Listen, as those kids are killed, theres going to be a big chunk of the audience thats going to reject the movie. But that was the highest-testing scene in the movie. I would never of thought of that, but my job was to take that leap with Benicio and [director Denis Villeneuve].

Whats changed about producing since you opened Thunder Road?

When I started, the best position to be in was studio producer. You received guarantees, you got large overhead, and it was a really good backend. It was a good living. What has changed is that the studios have cut out the middle-budget movies. Overhead has been cut, your backend has shrunk, and they dont pay as much front end. It has become harder to make a living as a studio producer. So the biggest change I made was that I decided to bet on myself. The gold standard of being a producer is no longer being a studio producer; its being what Thunder Road is now.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African authorities are challenging Olympian Oscar Pistorius appeal against his conviction for the murder of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the national prosecuting authority said on Monday. The Supreme Court of Appeal upgraded the 29-year-old's conviction to murder in December after the state prosecutors appealed the athletes April conviction for culpable homicide in the Pretoria High Court. In the affidavit, prosecutors argue that the Supreme Court of Appeal had correctly found Pistorius guilty. Pistorius shot and killed Steenkamp on Valentine's Day in 2013, and has spent the last few months under house arrest at his uncle's home in Pretoria while awaiting his appeal. Pistorius' lawyer Barry Roux has said the appeal would cite grounds including the appeal court reconsidering a trial court finding that Pistorius felt his and Steenkamp's life were in danger when he fired the shots. Pistorius, if his appeal fails, faces a possible minimum 15-year jail sentence for the murder of his girlfriend. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by James Macharia)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Impala Platinum (Implats), the world's No. 2 producer of the metal, said on Monday it was too early to assess the production impact of a weekend fire at its 14 Shaft in South Africa that killed four people. The shaft, part of Implat's Rustenburg operations northwest of Johannesburg, remains closed, a spokesman said. The shaft has a production profile of about 100,000 ounces a year, 7 percent of targeted group output of 1.5 million ounces. "The detailed investigation is continuing to assess the cause of the fire and the damage that has resulted. The fire has reportedly now been extinguished," Implats said in a statement. Implats' share price was down over 3 percent on Monday at 25.27 rand. Like other South African platinum producers, Implats is grappling with depressed prices, rising costs and periodic flare-ups of labour unrest. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia)
Last week's rally in U.S. stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) is fading as the price of crude oil turns lower despite the blizzard that hit the East Coast. Tim Anderson, Managing Director of TJM Investments joins us from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for the latest market action.

To discuss some of the other stories that Yahoo Finance is keeping an eye on today, Alexis Christoforous is joined by Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer and Yahoo Finance's Nicole Sinclair.

Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App

Impact of blizzard in economy



The big financial question coming out of the Blizzard of 2016 ... How will it impact the economy? Business consulting firm Planalytics forecasts the hit could be in the neighborhood of $850 million.

Johnson Controls-Tyco tax inversion



Yet another tax inversion deal is sending a U.S. industrial to the Emerald Isle. Johnson Controls will merge with and control 56% of Tyco International, which is already domiciled there. The move is expected to save at least $150 million a year on taxes and at least $500 million in costs in the first three years. What does Bono have to say about these deals?

Uber, Lyft hurt San Francisco's biggest taxi service



The biggest taxi provider in San Francisco is declaring bankruptcy. And you can blame that in part to Uber and Lyft. Yellow Cab Cooperative cites a number of factors for its Chapter 11 filing, including increasing competition from the app-based ride providers. Who will Uber's next victim be?
In Romantic Comedy Land, the man who wants a prenuptial agreement will never be the one. Maybe he is the ancillary bad boyfriend who must be gotten rid of before the happy ending; most definitely he is a sleazeball. Only sleazeballs want prenuptial agreements, the old saw goes, the ones who dont trust in love, the ones who care more about their money than about you.

Time to stand up for the sleazeballs, then. Not only should you get a prenuptial agreement, but every couple should be required to have one. It should demonstrate that the couple, even amid the hell of navigating save-the-dates and place-settings, has contemplated certain facts. They love each other enough to stay together (ostensibly) forever and are signing a binding contract to that effect. Against all hope, the contract could go horribly awry. I think that a prenup shows genuine commitment to the partner rather than a lack of faith in the relationship, says Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence.

Is it an unromantic move, one that prepares for war while advocating for peace?

Lawrence was working in Australia when a contingent of rabbis there voted that rabbis have to encourage all Jewish couples to sign an agreement dictating terms in the case of divorce. (Among Orthodox Jews, only men can grant women a divorce, or get, and some withhold it, effectively keeping her in loveless limbo.) While contemplating divorce as youre walking down the aisle can be a definite buzzkill, Lawrence sees it differently. Imagining the end of love, and preparing for it, is actually evidence of a strong commitment to the welfare of the other even in the worst contingencies, he says.

Back in the States, a majority of family lawyers surveyed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported more couples coming to them for prenups in recent years  and nearly half of them reported an increase in women instigating it. Minneapolis family lawyer Michael P. Boulette sees the prenuppers you might expect  one spouse with money, one without, or two spouses aiming to protect their assets from each other. But prenupping, for them, is less about greed than self-determination. If you dont have a prenup, the laws of the state youre in will govern, and you dont necessarily want that. (Read: Start googling now!) Family structures have changed fast over the past few decades  divorce is common, women are in the workplace earning their own bank, gay marriage is legal  but family law has not. Were moving into a world where people have less patience with letting the government determine the financial terms of their marriages, says Boulette.

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Of course, many still worry that making a contract in the case of divorce before youre even married is an unromantic move, one that prepares for war while advocating for peace. And prenuptial agreements can still be used to screw over one spouse, and the legal wrangling required would need to be reformed nationwide before a simple prenuptial agreement could be mandatory for all couples  or could be adapted to the myriad family structures emerging in the United States.

But just as many states require a waiting period for those who want to commit their lives to each other, its not unreasonable to require them to go over a certain number of what-ifs  including What if we stop loving each other? Young couples may feel such a conversation could doom the marriage, but, Boulette says, theyre wrong. If your marriage is gonna make it, its gonna make it whether or not you had that conversation.

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Park City (United States) (AFP) - Have you heard the one about the doctor in Kansas who made a fortune peddling goat testicles to cure impotence?

This may sound like the opening line for a joke, but it's actually the strange true tale of John Romulus Brinkley, a small-town doctor in 1900s America, whose rags-to-riches story is the subject of a funny and captivating documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

Directed by Penny Lane, "Nuts!" traces Brinkley's unbelievable rise to fame as he comes up with a surgical method to transplant goat testicles into impotent men while living in the tiny Kansas town of Milford in 1917.

"I started working on this documentary after coming across a book in the library about Brinkley called 'Charlatan'," Lane told AFP. "And the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, 'did it (his medicine) work?'"

Legend has it that the transplant idea dawned on Brinkley when he was visited by a farmer named Bill Stittsworth who, gazing out the window at two copulating goats, asked the good doctor if he could do something about his "sexual weakness."

"It's too bad I don't have billy goat nuts," Stittsworth tells Brinkley -- as recounted in the film -- before convincing him to "just put some goat nuts in me."

As some of Brinkley's "satisfied" customers begin showing off their offspring and the procedure gains popularity, he enjoys a meteoric rise to fame, amassing a fortune and a roster of celebrity clients.

- 'Seduced, and maybe fooled' -

That's until his dubious practices gain the attention of the medical establishment and the federal government, which goes after him and strips him of his license.

Brinkley responds by getting into advertising, launching a wildly popular radio station and continuing to peddle miracle cures to his followers.

He also uses his enormous wealth to dabble in politics and almost wins the governor's race in Kansas.

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The documentary, which has received favorable reviews at Sundance, skillfully mixes animated reenactments, interviews and archival footage to bring Brinkley's story to the screen.

Lane said she was keen on the project because the subject was entertaining, and because it showed how easily people can be seduced, "and maybe fooled," by quacks like Brinkley.

"I wanted to make clear that we are all gullible and dumb enough to fall into it," she said. "But if someone is telling you a story and it seems too good to be true, that's when you should start questioning it."

She added that while some today may laugh at those who fell for the goat testicle impotence cure, there were plenty of modern-day Brinkleys walking around.

"Some people, I think, would compare Donald Trump to Brinkley," Lane said, referring to the leading Republican candidate in the US presidential race.

"Brinkley's campaign for governor annoyed the hell out of the establishment, and we find out that he wasn't really even interested in politics," she added.

"I don't know if that's true about Trump but I suspect it is."
Newtown, Kim A. Snyders documentary on the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, is not an explicitly political film. Structured more like a requiem than a polemic, the doc ebbs and flows in accordance with the cycles of mourning as it speaks with parents of the murdered children, as well as the teachers, priests, doctors and neighbors afflicted with survivors guilt, elegantly and devastatingly capturing the tenor of a small town that will carry these scars for at least a generation. Though it does briefly address the particulars of the gun-control cause which several of the victims families have taken up, Newtowns politics are purely implicit, showing us just how much misery one bad guy with a gun can cause, and proves all the more effective for it. Some viewers  particularly parents  may find its unflinching portrait of grief almost too much to bear, but Snyders film deserves to be seen, and acquisition attention from doc distributors or TV ought to be forthcoming.

There have been bloodier American tragedies in the current century, but perhaps none can match the abject, senseless horror of what transpired in this idyllic Connecticut town three years ago: 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, and six of the schools adult staffers, all slaughtered by a disturbed, heavily armed 20-year-old who subsequently killed himself. (The shooters name is never spoken; nor does his image appear, a choice that feels entirely appropriate to the films objectives.) Newtown opens with harrowing 911 recordings and police dash-cam footage from that fateful morning, and though the film never delves into the forensic details of the massacre, the thousand-yard-stare from a state trooper who surveyed the crime scene as he demurs, I dont think anyone needs to know specifically what we saw, says everything a viewer needs to know.

From here, were introduced to Snyders three primary subjects: Mark Barden, who lost his son Daniel; David Wheeler, father of victim Ben; and Nicole Hockley, who lost her son Dylan. Home videos, some shot shortly before the massacre, give us glimpses into their lives pre-cataclysm, and by following them for nearly three years, Snyder details their gradual, quiet attempts to cope, whether by having another child, staging a memorial concert or, in Hockleys case, crisscrossing the country sharing her story.

The film eschews strict chronology, allowing its subjects their own digressions as they inevitably return again and again to the trauma thats never lurking too far outside the frame. Wheeler turns philosophical, pondering movingly on the randomness of life and the tiny, minor questions that become huge questions when you cant sleep at night. Barden and Hockley form a friendship as they speak at hearings and visit Washington, and share a sense of shock when the post-Sandy Hook attempt to expand background checks for gun purchases fails in Congress.

Yet this is not ultimately an issue movie  plenty of other films, including other films at Sundance this year, have tackled the intricacies of U.S. gun policy, and it would take hours to unpack the psychosis on display in the various insane Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, which understandably go unmentioned here. What Snyder is most interested in is the continuing series of aftershocks that one act of savagery can have far beyond its most visible epicenter. Aside from the mourning families, Snyder trains her camera on the well-meaning neighbors who never know how much to interfere; the schools shattered custodian; the volunteer EMT who slowly realized the extent of the damage from the back of her ambulance. One teacher recalls compiling a spreadsheet to keep track of all 26 funerals. Even footage of a homecoming parade through the center of town is suffused with melancholy. Beyond the numbing statistics and the legislative stalemates and the debates over Constitutional intent, this is what gun violence looks like, the film seems to say; this is what it does.

Scored by Fil Eisler, who recruited 16 fellow composers to contribute variations on his themes, the doc features hauntingly beautiful music  variously mournful and meditative  which works perfectly in tandem with editor Gabriel Rhodes intrinsically musical sense for when to cut, building a very rhythmic film that neither flinches nor overwhelms.

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Director Kelly Reichardt's latest movie, Certain Women, had its Sundance premiere Sunday night, and while two of its leading actresses - Laura Dern and Michelle Williams - were unable to attend the festival, the third, Kristen Stewart, took the stage along with Reichardt and several members of the cast to speak about the film after its screening.

Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, Certain Women follows three women's stories in a small town in Montana. Stewart plays a new lawyer who has gotten stuck teaching a night class that requires her to drive four hours each direction. There, she meets a young rancher (Lily Gladstone), who is also looking for meaning in her life.

"I'm a Reichardt fan," said Stewart. "I think particularly for our story, Kelly is somehow fixated on things that most people miss. She's really good at highlighting the unspoken and the invisible."

The latest film by Reichardt, who previously helmed Night Moves and Wendy and Lucy (also starring Williams), showcases the landscape of the Montana town, along with the small, sometimes mundane movements of its main characters.

Stewart said the interactions - and mostly lack of real interaction - between her character and Gladstone's was of special interest to her. "There's little conversations that are completely separate - you think you're having an exchange with someone ... but sometimes you're just so alone," she said. "I thought it was so perfect and sad, sad, sad."

Reichardt said she first stumbled upon Meloy's short stories in a Portland bookstore.

"I knew right away that I wanted to make a film of her stories," she said. "They were right up my alley - landscapes, people in landscapes, a lot of chores - all my favorite things."

The filmmaker spent a year trying out different stories to see which would work well together. Then, once the script was done, Reichardt said the focus became on the script and shooting in Montana. "Once I got my feet on the ground, I didn't look back to the stories," she said.

"Her movies are super thoughtful in their approach, and slow and steady," added Stewart, who drove from Los Angeles to Montana for the shoot, of Reichardt's pacing. "The fact that she has the patience and the interest in things that people don't normally look at is what paces her movies. It's the comfortability of watching nothing - because there's always something in there."

She added: "She's really letting people live - it's rare."
In Certain Women, Kristen Stewart doesn't see eye-to-eye with co-star Lily Gladstone.

"I think we make eye contact like two or three times!" Gladstone joked to The Hollywood Reporter at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

That's because the Kelly Reichardt film, which follows three women's stories in a small town in Montana, casts them both as two women who are very stuck in their daily grind.

Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, Certain Women casts Stewart as a new lawyer who has gotten stuck teaching a night class that requires her to drive four hours each direction. There, she meets a young rancher (Lily Gladstone), who is also looking for meaning in her life.

Read more: Sundance: Kristen Stewart Says 'Certain Women' Focuses on "Things That Most People Miss"

"What drew me personally to it was it's really sad to watch two people on two completely different pages, maybe think they're understanding something, but you're just having two separate conversations," Stewart explained of joining the project.

And as for shooting in Montana, though only for a short time (upon driving from Los Angeles), "In terms of physical beauty in the States, it's really mind-blowing."
Stockholm (AFP) - A Swedish human rights activist detained earlier this month by China for allegedly posing a threat to national security, has been released, Sweden's foreign ministry said on Monday.

"I welcome the fact that Peter Dahlin can now be reunited with his family in Sweden. This is the result of close contacts between the Swedish foreign ministry and Chinese representatives," Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.

Dahlin, who worked for the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, disappeared on January 4 as he prepared to board a flight to Thailand, and appears to have been caught up in a crackdown on human rights lawyers.

His detention came as China considers a new law to control the activities of foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which has raised widespread concern among overseas groups. Dahlin's group has said it offered training to lawyers who have tried to use China's tightly-controlled judiciary to redress apparent government abuses.

State broadcaster CCTV last week aired footage of a dazed and harried looking Dahlin apologising to China for his alleged actions.

Another Swedish national, China-born Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai, disappeared from Thailand late last year before reappearing on Chinese national television in police custody.

He confessed to a mainland drink-driving offence dating back years and said he did not want Stockholm to interfere with his case.

Gui was rumoured to be preparing a tell-all book about the love life of President Xi Jinping.

Wallstrom said she remained "greatly concerned" about Gui.

"Our efforts to get a clear picture of his situation and the possibility to visit him continue with undiminished force," she said.

Beijing only rarely accuses foreigners of endangering state security, a crime which can involve a heavy sentence.

- 'A worrying trend' -

While forced public confessions are an old practice in Communist China, there has been a resurgence of such incidents since President Xi took power in 2012.

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The European Union's ambassador to China, Hans-Dietmar Schweisgut, had called Dahlin's arrest and televised confession "part of a worrying trend and call into question China's respect for the rule of law and for its international human rights obligations."

Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders last week urged the European Union to impose sanctions on Chinese state media over the "forced confessions".

Speaking to Swedish regional daily Goteborgs-Posten late Monday, the activist's father Thomas Dahlin said his son had not yet boarded a flight to Sweden.

"Of course it feels really good... It's been really tough," he said.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - China has released a Swedish man taken into custody earlier this month suspected of acts detrimental to the country's national security, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said on Monday. But the foreign ministry said it remained concerned about naturalized Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based bookseller who had vanished in October in Thailand. He appeared on Chinese state television earlier this month, saying he had surrendered to authorities over a fatal drink-driving offense more than a decade ago Peter Dahlin, 35-year-old co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, an organization that worked with Chinese human rights lawyers, was taken into custody three weeks ago. Sweden's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement she had been informed by Chinese authorities that Dahlin had been released and that she welcomed his release. "Meanwhile, I am greatly concerned over over the detained Swedish citizen Gui Minhai," Wallstrom said, adding Sweden was working to get clarity on his situation and the opportunity to visit him. China's leaders have launched a crackdown on rights lawyers that has triggered international condemnation. (Reporting by Sven Nordenstam; editing by Ralph Boulton; editing by Ralph Boulton)
Stockholm (AFP) - The University of Orebro in central Sweden said it would close on Monday after an anonymous threat raised fears of a planned massacre.

"A threat directed against Orebro University has been made on the app Jodel," the university said Sunday on its website.

"We cannot jeopardise the safety of our students, staff and visitors. Therefore we have decided, in consultation with the police, to close the university on Monday 25 January."

Jodel is a German-made application for mobile phones that enables students on the same campus to contact each other anonymously and is popular among Swedish universities.

According to the Swedish news agency TT, a message disseminated on Jodel on Saturday told students not to go to classes on Monday "if (they) want to survive."

The university has lodged a complaint and police have stepped up their presence in the campus area, the agency said.

The university has 17,000 students and 1,200 employees.

On October 12, the University of Lund in southern Sweden received a similar threat and closed for a day.

That text was similar to a message released before shootings at Umpqua Community College in the United States on October 1, when a 26-year-old man killed nine people before committing suicide, local media reported at the time.

An investigation found that there was no danger, and the university, the second largest in Sweden, swiftly reopened.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army on Monday recaptured from insurgents a strategic town in the southern province of Deraa after fierce fighting, securing its supply routes from the capital to the south, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting is now outside the western parts of the town of Sheikh Maskin, which lies at a crossroads linking the provinces of Suwaida, Quneitra and Damascus to the southern part of the country. It also links eastern and western Deraa. "The town is very important for both sides. They have both fought fiercely. Now by taking it, the regime has cut off the rebels links between eastern and western Deraa," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, which tracks the violence in the country through a wide network of local sources. "The destruction in the town is huge." The army launched its offensive against insurgents in Sheikh Maskin late last month and was supported by dozens of air strikes carried out by Russian and Syrian warplanes. Capturing Sheikh Maskin would allow the army to press forward toward al-Harra hill which is the highest point in Deraa. Southern Syria is the last major stronghold of the mainstream insurgents who have been weakened elsewhere by the ultra-hardline Islamic State group in the east and north, and gains by the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's wing in Syria, in the northwest. (Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand has quarantined 32 people as it seeks to prevent the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) after a second case of the virus was detected on Friday, a health ministry official said on Monday. The virus was found in a 71-year-old Omani man traveling to Bangkok. His son, taxi drivers, hotel staff and passengers on the same plane are among those quarantined for two weeks, Amnuay Gajeena, director-general of Thailand's Disease Control Department, told reporters. Another eight have been identified and will also be quarantined, he said. "We're still doing an in-depth investigation, so we might be able to bring more people in," Amnuay told Reuters. The Omani man has a low fever, cough and quickened breathing, Amnuay said. Airline and hotel shares were little changed on Monday, in contrast to the sharp falls in June when the first case was discovered. The man diagnosed with the virus in that case was also from Oman. The 75-year-old businessman survived the disease. MERS was first identified in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and the majority of cases have been in the Middle East. Thailand's tourism industry would not be affected by the latest MERS case, Tourism Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul told Reuters. "We think we have the situation under control," she said. "We're confident this will not affect tourism in Thailand." Tourism accounts for 10 percent of GDP, and Thailand expects a record number of international visitors in 2016 - some 32 million, up from 29.88 million in 2015. The World Health Organization said in its latest update on Jan. 7 it has been notified of 1,626 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS from 26 countries, and at least 586 related deaths. MERS is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered China's deadly 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). (Additional reporting by Pairat Temphairojana; Editing by Simon Webb)
Here a tick, there a tick, everywhere a tick, tick: The critters that can carry Lyme disease are now more widespread in the U.S. than ever before, according to new research.

In the study, experts mapped the distribution of Lyme-disease-carrying ticks and found that these ticks are ranging farther north than before, and are now living in nearly 50 percent of U.S. counties.

There are two tick species that can carry the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease: the blacklegged tick, also known as the deer tick (Ixodes scapularis), and the western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus). The bacteria can only be transmitted to people through the ticks' bites. I. scapularis is the primary carrier in the eastern U.S., and I. pacificus is the primary carrier in the far western states.

Researchers previously surveyed these ticks' distribution in 1998 and mapped the tick populations in the continental U.S. Those results showed that the ticks were present in 34 percent of U.S. counties, across 41 states.

In the new study, they looked at studies and data from state health departments, and reached out to public health officials, Lyme-disease researchers and other scientists. [Video: A Tick Bite Visualized]

For every U.S. county, the researchers evaluated whether tick populations for I. scapularis and I. pacificus were "established" or "reported." "Established" meant that there was evidence that a population of ticks was alive and well, and reproducing in the county, whereas "reported" meant that a few ticks had been spotted at some point, although not necessarily recently, the scientists said.

After evaluating data for the 3,110 counties in the continental U.S., the researchers found recorded evidence that the eastern tick, I. scapularis, is now reported or established in 1,420 counties and the western tick I. pacificus is reported or established in 111 counties. Together, the two tick species span 49 percent of U.S. counties across 43 states.

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"What we saw was a pretty substantial expansion in the northeastern U.S. in the north central states," Rebecca J. Eisen, lead author of the study and a research biologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Live Science. The ticks are also expanding farther west and east, she said.

And Lyme cases have been on the rise as well. In 1991, about 10,000 Lyme disease cases were reported in the U.S., but in 2014, more than 33,000 Lyme cases were tallied, according to the CDC. However, some of this increase may be due to more awareness of the disease and more cases being reported. Early-stage Lyme symptoms include fever, chills, joint pain and a distinctive "bull's-eye" rash at the site of the tick bite. If untreated, the disease can cause arthritis, heart palpitations, brain inflammation, and weakness of the facial muscles, the CDC says.

One reason for the ticks' recent range expansion may be climate change, said Ralph M. Garruto, a professor of biomedical anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

"Ticks would be able to move farther north with warmer temperatures, as severe cold and dry conditions affect tick survival," said Garruto, who was not involved in the study.

Eisen agreed, adding that climate plays a significant role in defining the western limit of the range of the blacklegged tick. "For example, it's too dry in Colorado for this tick to survive," Eisen told Live Science.

Garruto also said that human activity could be creating more hospitable environments for ticks. "There may be a lot more forest fragmentation in the Northeast due, in part, to built environments  an aspect of research we are currently looking at," he said. "Perhaps the increasing deer populations in many areas are responsible for moving [the ticks] around," as well as giving the ticks more opportunity to breed, he added.

And established tick populations can readily travel between neighboring counties, Eisen said. "A county is more likely to be colonized if its neighbor has ticks, so having ticks nearby and having woods with deer is a good indication that the tick is likely to come to a new area," she said. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites]

She noted that many ticks do not carry the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

The new study offers "a nice summary of the distribution of tick species that have the potential to carry Lyme, but their distribution alone does not equate with Lyme disease," Garruto told Live Science. Researchers would need to know the percentage of ticks that are infected in order to speculate on whether the expansion of the ticks' range could lead to an increase in Lyme disease cases, he said.

"We really want people to be aware that risks change, and it's important to know what ticks and tick-borne disease are common in the places where you live and where you visit," Eisen said.

The findings were published online Jan. 18 in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Follow Mindy Weisberger 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.
By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Canada's top aboriginal chief wants more action from new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to alleviate crippling poverty and poor living conditions among the country's indigenous community, saying: "Words are easy." Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the main political group representing the country's aboriginal people, said he would put pressure on Trudeau to deliver on election promises to his community. "It's a travesty that this quality of life persists in this great, rich country called Canada," Bellegarde said in an interview on Monday after a shooting spree in a remote aboriginal town last week. "Everyone's focused on La Loche now, saying this is not acceptable in 2016." A gunman shot 11 people, killing four, at a school and home in La Loche, Saskatchewan, an impoverished northern community with high rates of suicide, addiction and unemployment. A 17-year-old youth made his first court appearance on Monday, facing four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and unauthorised possession of a firearm. He remains in custody. "Words are easy to say ... there has to be these investments now to get us to the same starting line as everyone else," Bellegarde said. "We've got 10, 12, 13 people living in a two-bedroom house. That affects everything." Bellegarde, who voted for the first time in the October election that vaulted Trudeau to power, said he believed the new prime minister "gets it," referring to the need to improve living standards. Less than half of Canada's aboriginal people, also known as First Nations, have typically voted in elections because many do not recognise the government's sovereignty. But anger over disproportionately high rates of violence against indigenous women, dire living conditions as well as resource development and environmental issues, prompted Bellegarde to publicly urge aboriginal people to cast ballots last year. PLEDGED HELP Trudeau, the Liberal Party leader, took power last year promising to tackle high levels of poverty, crime, bad housing and poor health among aboriginal residents who make up 4 percent of the country's population of 36 million. In December, Trudeau promised a new "nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples" and an inquiry into the high rates of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The prime minister, 44, was speaking after a report found the forcible separation of aboriginal children from their families amounted to cultural genocide. Friday's school shooting occurred in La Loche which, with the neighbouring Clearwater River Dene Indian reserve, embodies the dire prospects for Canada's aboriginal people. "We are living in Third World Conditions," said Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Bobby Cameron. "The mold in our homes, the cold that comes through the walls ... something's going to give." Trudeau, who plans to run deficits to stimulate Canada's struggling economy, called Bellegarde on Friday to express condolences about the shooting. The national chief urged Trudeau to demonstrate support by increasing aboriginal spending in his first budget, expected in March or April. Trudeau responded by saying it was a priority for him to repair Ottawa's strained relationship with aboriginal residents, Bellegarde said. Bellegarde said he wanted more spending on health, training, preserving languages, policing and infrastructure, such as housing, water treatment and recreation centres. Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi said on Monday he had a mandate to deal with infrastructure that is lacking in aboriginal communities, such as clean drinking water, adequate housing and proper wastewater systems. As part of our plan for the new money, we are going to be fulfilling the commitments we made in order to make sure that our First Nations  have the right infrastructure that the rest of Canadians take for granted, he said, declining to say how much money the government would spend. (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Peter Cooney)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Treasury official said the United States considers Russian President Vladimir Putin to be corrupt and that it has known this for "many, many years," the BBC reported on Monday.

Adam Szubin, acting Treasury secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview with BBC Panorama that the Russian president has been amassing secret wealth.

"We've seen him enriching his friends, his close allies and marginalizing those who he doesn't view as friends using state assets. Whether that's Russia's energy wealth, whether it's other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don't. To me, that is a picture of corruption," Szubin was quoted as saying.

The BBC report said Szubin declined to comment on a 2007 Central Intelligence Agency report that estimated Putin's wealth at $40 billion, but he said the Russian leader's stated wealth is an underestimation.

"He supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year," Szubin said. "That is not an accurate statement of the man's wealth, and he has longtime training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth."

The Kremlin has denied such allegations. For his part, Putin has repeatedly said that he has read press reports about his immense wealth, including that he was even the world's richest man, but he has denied those reports as nonsense.

Putin's public financial disclosures depict a man of modest means. In April, Putin declared 2014 income of 7.65 million roubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.

The United States has placed sanctions on a number of Russian businessmen loyal to Putin as part of its drive to put pressure on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.

In March 2014, the U.S. Treasury Department tied Putin to profits from one of the sanctioned businessmen, Gennady Timchenko, a long-time Putin acquaintance and then co-owner of Gunvor, which trades nearly 3 percent of the world's oil.

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"Timchenko activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin. Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds," the department said in a statement announcing the sanctions. (r.reuters.com/baq77v)

Geneva-based Gunvor, which has not been sanctioned, denied the allegations in the Treasury statement. "President Putin does not and never has had any ownership, beneficial or otherwise, in Gunvor. He is not a beneficiary of Gunvor or its activities," company spokesman Seth Thomas Pietras said in an email.

The BBC report came just days after a British inquiry concluded that Putin likely approved a 2006 Russian intelligence operation to murder ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 in London.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Richard Chang and Paul Simao)
Lisbon (AFP) - Law professor and TV pundit Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 67, was the clear winner Sunday in Portugal's presidential election, taking 52 percent of the vote.

The overwhelming favourite, Rebelo de Sousa was far ahead of his closest rival, independent leftist Antonio Sampaio da Novoa, who won 22.89 percent, according to a nearly complete count. Fifty percent was required to avoid a runoff.

Although largely ceremonial, Portugal's presidency has make-or-break power over the nation's fragile ruling alliance and the right to dissolve parliament in the event of a crisis.

That authority means the ballot is being scrutinised in Europe, given the president's potential impact on the country's economic strategy.

Portugal is being watched by Brussels to see whether it will adhere closely to policies of economic stringency that unlocked a 78-billion-euro ($85-billion) bailout package.

"I want to restore national unity," while "our country is emerging from a deep economic and social crisis," said Rebelo de Sousa, pledging to "be a free and independent president".

Among the first to congratulate him, former conservative prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho said "this victory in the first round gives him indisputable political authority".

Since inconclusive elections in October, a minority Socialist government led by Antonio Costa has been relying on a delicate coalition with the extreme left to run the country of 10.4 million people.

Costa has promised to implement a moderate programme that upholds EU budget commitments.

But it is having to count on the support in parliament of communists and greens critical of EU spending rules and Portugal's membership of NATO.

- 'Professor Marcelo' -

Rebelo de Sousa, a former head of the centre-right Social Democratic Party, had been the big favourite in the 10-candidate race.

Known to TV audiences as "professor Marcelo", he came into the contest with a popularity built over decades in the public eye.

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He has the backing of right wing parties but claims total independence, insisting he will not be partisan but seek to rule "above the fray".

Prior to the election, he vowed to do "everything I can" to ensure the current government's stability.

"He is a consensus candidate and a moderate who takes votes both on the left and on the right," political analyst Jose Antonio Passos Palmeira told AFP.

De Sousa's image divides opinion however.

"Professor Marcelo is the best candidate. He is an experienced politician who inspires confidence," said Lisbon voter Cesario Correia, a 69-year-old pensioner.

Accountant Jose Nascimento, 57, was not convinced. "Marcelo's a showman, a showbiz personality who promises everything to everyone."

If his election is officially confirmed, he will succeed Anibal Cavaco Silva, a conservative who has served two consecutive five-year terms and who had been reluctant to hand power to a leftist coalition he viewed as "incoherent".

The abstention rate in Sunday's vote was estimated at 51.2 percent, lower than the record no-show of 53.5 percent in the last elections, in 2011.

The future president will take the oath of office on March 9.

However, under the Portuguese constitution, he is not entitled to use his authority to dissolve parliament until April, when six months will have elapsed since the last elections.
DOUALA, Cameroon (Reuters) - Four suicide bombers killed about 25 people in a village in Cameroon's Far North region on Monday, a local official said, the most deadly in a string of recent attacks in an area beset by violence connected to Islamist militant group Boko Haram. Two bombers struck the Bodo central market while others hit the town's main entrance and exit points, the official said. "There was a quadruple suicide bombing in the village of Bodo this morning. There are around 25 deaths and several wounded," he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Cameroonian troops form part of an 8,700-strong regional force created to defeat Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign to carve out a separate state in northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram has stepped up attacks outside Nigeria over the past year, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, threatening regional security. Monday's bombing was not the first time the town of Bodo has been targeted. At the end of December, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at the town's entrance. Officials said at the time that the bombers were trying to access the market but were stopped by local residents. No others were injured in that bombing. On Jan. 13, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one other in an attack on a mosque in Kouyape in northern Cameroon. Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria have all contributed troops to a regional offensive devoted to driving back Boko Haram, and the United States has contributed military supplies and troops for assistance. (Reporting by Josiane Kouagheu; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Edward McAllister and Mark Heinrich)
Jerusalem (AFP) - Two Palestinians stabbed two women Monday at a grocery in an Israeli settlement of the West Bank before being shot dead, police and medics said, in the latest in nearly four months of attacks.

Israel's military said two pipe bombs were also found in the area and were being defused.

One of the women, 23, was said by Israeli medics to be in critical condition after the incident in Beit Horon settlement, northwest of Jerusalem. The other, a 58-year-old, was in moderate condition.

The two Palestinians were shot dead by security guards, Israeli police said, adding one was in his early 20s and the other a teenager.

The attack was the third inside a West Bank settlement since January 17, when an Israeli woman was stabbed to death at the entrance to her home in Otniel. Israeli authorities arrested a 15-year-old Palestinian over that killing.

The following day, a pregnant woman was stabbed and wounded in the Tekoa settlement. The 17-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot by security personnel and taken to hospital in serious condition.

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October, and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenagers.

Until recently, most of the attacks had occurred in public places such as checkpoints, junctions and entrances to Jerusalem's Old City.

The fatal stabbing in Otniel led to Israeli outrage and calls for more security measures.

Violence since October 1 has killed 159 Palestinians and 24 Israelis, as well as an American and an Eritrean.

Many of the Palestinians killed have been attackers, while others have been shot dead by Israeli forces during protests and clashes.

Some analysts say the attacks have been in part driven by frustration with the complete lack of progress in peace efforts, as well as by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the fractured Palestinian leadership.

Israel says incitement by Palestinian officials and news media has been a main cause of the violence.

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The youngest Palestinian attacker killed since the violence began was a 13-year-old girl, who was shot dead by a security guard on Saturday at the entrance to the Anatot settlement in the West Bank.

Video footage published by Israeli media appears to show her clutching a knife and running at the private security guard who then shoots her dead.

Israel has faced questions over whether excessive force has been used in some cases, which it strongly denies.

It has used a series of measures in a bid to halt the unrest, including demolishing assailants' homes and withholding the bodies of killed attackers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the home of the Palestinian teen accused of the fatal stabbing in Otniel would be demolished as a deterrent.

Rights groups call the measure collective punishment, with family members forced to suffer for the acts of relatives.
GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. mediated talks on ending the war in Syria will push for a countrywide ceasefire, including all parties except the two groups designated as "terrorists" by the United Nations, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Monday. "The condition is it should be a real ceasefire and not just local," De Mistura told a news conference where he also said he hoped to start the peace talks on Jan. 29. "Suspension of fighting regarding ISIL and al Nusra is not on the table. However (there are) plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place." (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Tom Miles)
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected North Dakota's bid to revive a restrictive Republican-backed law struck down by a lower court that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks after conception.

The court turned away the state's appeal, leaving in place a July 2015 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked the 2013 law. North Dakota's law was among the strictest of a series of statutes passed at the state level imposing limits on abortion.

The law was challenged by North Dakota's only abortion clinic, the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo.

In a separate case, the high court is due to hear arguments on March 2 in a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a restrictive, Republican-backed Texas law they contend are aimed at shutting clinics that perform the procedure. It will be the court's first abortion case since 2007.

In the North Dakota case, the appeals court had said it was bound in its ruling by U.S. Supreme Court precedent on abortion, which holds that states may not prohibit abortions before a fetus reaches viability. But the appeals court said "good reasons exist" for the high court to re-evaluate its past abortion decisions in light of medical and scientific advances that show the concept of viability is subject to change.

Republican backers of the North Dakota law had said 40 years of medical advancements should not be ignored. Opponents said a ban at six weeks would mean abortion would be outlawed at a gestation time when many women do not yet even know they are pregnant.

On Jan. 19, the high court refused to hear a similar case in which Arkansas sought to revive a Republican-backed law also blocked by lower courts that would ban abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The high court legalized abortion in 1973, but abortion remains a contentious issue among Americans. Some states, particularly those governed by Republicans, have sought to chip away at a woman's right to end a pregnancy by passing laws imposing a number of restrictions.

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Viability, according to medical experts, occurs around 23 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Lawmakers in North Dakota, Arkansas and other conservative states have sought to ban abortions at an earlier stage, citing among other things hotly debated medical research suggesting a fetus feels pain starting at 20 weeks of gestation.

The North Dakota case was 15-627, Stenehjem v. MKB Management, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 15-627.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Anjuli Davies LONDON (Reuters) - British regulators are considering whether to allow two Iranian banks in London to resume operations after years of sanctions, two sources familiar with the matter said. Melli Bank and Persia International Bank will only be able to operate in the UK once they have met Bank of England criteria for financial firms, the sources told Reuters on Monday. A nuclear deal with Iran earlier this month led to the removal of European Union curbs on its banks. This could bring Iranian banks in Britain, which less than 10 years ago boasted surging profits and growing European ties, out of isolation. Iran is set to re-engage with the banking world within weeks as international lenders link up with their Iranian counterparts using global transaction network SWIFT, Iran's Middle East Bank and a senior central bank official told Reuters on Friday. Melli Bank and Persia International have been in talks with the regulator and the Treasury about restarting operations in Britain for months and have been placed in the New Bank Start-Up unit, unveiled last week by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to help new banks enter the market, the sources said. The Iranian banks are now working with regulators to get up to speed with new regulation such as capital requirements, risk management and governance, before restarting operations. Melli Bank and Persia International did not respond to requests for comment. The Bank of England declined to comment. The UK said in a statement: "The UK Government fully supports expanding our trade relationship with Iran and encourages UK businesses to take advantage of the commercial opportunities that will arise... However, some sanctions remain in place so UK businesses should continue to ensure they are compliant with all sanctions regimes." Iran has had bank branches in London since the 1960s. In the early 2000s they began spinning off as subsidiaries, making it more difficult to prove a direct financial link to Iran. Charged by the West in 2010 with helping to finance an illicit weapons program and militant groups, the banks' assets were frozen and they were barred from making new loans, and allowed only to service those loans made before EU sanctions. (Reporting By Anjuli Davies; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Alexander Smith)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Monday on warring factions in South Sudan to resolve their differences and quickly form a new national unity government.

The two sides missed a January 22 deadline for forming the transitional government after rebels rejected President Salva Kiir's creation of new regional states while fighting persists.

In a statement, Ban expressed concern over the deadlock and urged that it be addressed at an upcoming African Union summit.

"The formation of the Transitional Government is an essential step in implementing the peace agreement and laying the foundation for peace and stability in the country," Ban said through his spokesman.

An August 26 peace accord was supposed to put an end to a two-year-old civil war marked by atrocities on both sides.

But the fighting has not stopped and each side accuses the other of not living up to their commitments.

"The Secretary-General calls on the parties to overcome their differences," the UN statement said, pledging continued support for the people of South Sudan, who Ban said have been "subjected to unimaginable suffering and human rights abuses."

South Sudan became independent in July 2011, but plunged into civil war December 15, 2013. Fighting broke out within the national army, riven by ethnic tensions fueled by a rivalry between Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar.
Catching up with Union Pacific: The Updated 2016 Investor's Guide

(Continued from Prior Part)

Union Pacifics automotive freight revenues

Previously in this series, we dealt with Union Pacific Corporations (UNP) agriculture revenues. In this part, well look at the companys automotive freight revenues.

The company has access to more than 40 vehicle distribution centers. Union Pacific has a higher market share as an automotive carrier, surpassing one of its biggest rivals in the railroad world, BNSF Railway. In 2014, Union Pacifics automotive freight segment contributed 9% to the companys total revenues.

What auto carloads in 4Q15 could be telling us

Union Pacifics motor vehicles and equipment carloads in the last quarter of 2015 jumped by 8% from the same period in 2014. However, the traffic of intermodal containers, which also transports auto parts, was down by 5% during the same period. Still, automotive freight revenues in 3Q15 rose slightly compared with 2014.

US vehicle sales in 2016

The sales of light vehicles including cars and light trucks are expected to set a new record in 2016, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association in the US. Pre-owned car prices are expected to drop in 2016, fueling hauling prospects for railroads. Cheap gasoline is also expected to drive spectacular automotive sales in 2016. For this year, the association forecasted sales of 17.6 million new cars including light trucks, which was up from 17.2 million predicted for 2015.

According to IHS Automotive (IHS), buying conditions in 2016 and 2017 would remain positive and the US market would absorb ~18.0 million units over next two years. But we dont expect automotive freight revenue headwinds for Union Pacific in 2016. UNPs current stock price reflects decent automotive revenue growth for the next four fiscal quarters.

Union Pacifics peer group

Even Union Pacifics eastern US peers like CSX Corporation (CSX) and Norfolk Southern Corporation (NSC) are bullish about automotive hauling over the next four quarters. Including Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National Railway (CNI), the peer group represents some of the biggest Class I railroads in the US.

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The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) holds 0.59% in CSX and 0.57% in NSC. VIG holds approximately 1.2% in Class I railroads.

Now lets examine the prospects for Union Pacifics chemical freight.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
By Heide Brandes

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - The University of Oklahoma has changed the way it runs a lab that uses live animals after the facility was found to have violated federal regulations for treatment that includes allowing guinea pigs the bleed to death, it said on Monday.

The university was fined $19,143 for violating the U.S. Animal Welfare Act by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which cited the lab for violations that occurred in 2014 and 2015, the USDA said in late 2015.

The fine imposed on Nov. 5 was for incidents that also included hosing down baby baboons, failure to monitor baboons during surgical procedures and not providing environmental enhancements to a primate that suffered psychological stress, the document said.

The university's Health Sciences Center has implemented comprehensive corrective actions in response to each of the incidents, the school said.

"The Health Sciences Center is committed to rigorous safeguards to promote an ethical, humane and compliant research program and appreciates the guidance received from the USDA," the university said in a statement.

In September, University of Oklahoma President David Boren said the school's baboon breeding and research would end within four years after federal officials had found more than 50 baboons died, including 24 young baboons, under the OU Health Sciences Center's care.

USDA investigations found 11 incidents of suspected animal mistreatment at the labs in 2014 and 2015. Additional reports showed that the university has violated USDA procedure 16 times since 2013, an animal rights group said after going through USDA reports.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Los Angeles (AFP) - US authorities hunted Sunday for three California prisoners, including a man charged with murder, who staged a brazen jailbreak that reportedly involved rappelling from the roof of a maximum-security facility using bed sheets.

Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong and Hossein Nayeri went missing from the Orange County Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana, in southern California on Friday, officials said.

"The three escapees ... are dangerous criminals," Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens warned.

"My investigations team is working around the clock with the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the Orange County Probation Office, the US Marshals and the FBI."

"I am confident that this collaborative effort will result in returning these inmates to where they belong -- behind bars," Hutchens added in a statement.

The FBI and US Marshals Service have offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of the fugitive trio.

The Los Angeles Times, quoting Hutchens, reported that the inmates got away by managing to get past security points in at least three areas. They apparently accessed the jail's plumbing system, used tools to cut through metal bars and made a makeshift rope using bed sheets to rappel from the facility's roof.

Tieu, 20, is charged with murder, Duong, 43, with attempted murder and Nayeri, 37, with kidnapping and torture, authorities said.

The jail currently houses more than 900 men, the Orange County Sheriff's Department tweeted, specifying on its website that these include both sentenced and pre-trial maximum-security inmates.

The LA Times said the prison is situated downtown in a busy area that encompasses government offices and a stadium.

"As Sheriff, my utmost concern and primary responsibility is the safety of each Orange County resident," Hutchens said. "I take this situation very seriously."

Santa Ana is located south of Los Angeles.
Beirut (AFP) - Syria's leading opposition coalition is to decide Tuesday whether to attend peace talks in Geneva, following a tense meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, a member told AFP on Monday.

The member of the so-called High Negotiations Committee said Kerry applied "pressure" during a weekend meeting in Saudi Arabia, warning the opposition risked "losing friends" if they failed to attend the talks.

Fuad Aliko said the Committee would meet Tuesday to make a final decision on whether to attend the Geneva talks.

The Saturday meeting with Kerry was "neither comfortable, nor positive", said Aliko, a member of the Committee's designated delegation for the talks.

Kerry told the Committee's chief Riad Hijab that they risked "losing friends", Aliko said.

"This talk means a halt to political and military support to the opposition," he added.

Syria's warring parties were scheduled to begin the latest round of talks aimed at ending the country's conflict on Monday in Geneva.

But they have been delayed at least in part by a dispute over who will represent the opposition.

The High Negotiations Committee, a coalition of opposition bodies formed last year in Riyadh, insists it should send a sole opposition delegation to the talks.

But the Committee excludes Syria's main Kurdish force and other opposition figures, and Russia has branded some of its components as "terrorist" organisations.

Moscow reportedly wants to see excluded members allowed to participate in the talks either as part of the Committee's delegation or in a second opposition delegation.

But the Committee has roundly rejected either option and threatened to boycott the talks altogether if other opposition figures are included.

Aliko said Kerry applied "pressure" during the Saturday talks, though he stopped short of saying the US diplomat had used threats.

"He tried with all his efforts to insist on the necessity of us attending, saying we'd be able to do whatever we want there, but he was not able to reassure us that we are going into negotiations, rather than nothing more than a dialogue," he said.

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"We want negotiations that revolve around a political transition," Aliko said.

The Geneva talks have also been held up by a dispute about some of the members of the negotiating team chosen by the Committee.

The Committee has selected Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negotiator, drawing the ire of some of its other members.

Russia said last week it continues to consider the Army of Islam a "terrorist" organisation.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is expected to hold a press conference in Geneva later on Monday to discuss preparations for the talks.
New York (AFP) - A New York police officer opened fire without justification, argued with his partner and failed to provide medical help to a father who lay dying, prosecutors said at the start of his manslaughter trial Monday.

The trial of Peter Liang is expected to spotlight police tactics at a time of major debate over shootings of unarmed suspects in a country where it is exceptionally rare for officers to face trial for opening fire.

Liang shot Akai Gurley, who was unarmed, on November 20, 2014, in a darkened Brooklyn stairwell when Gurley opted to walk down stairs when the elevator failed to arrive.

His death was described as a tragedy by police against a backdrop of nationwide protests over other unarmed black men who died at the hands of officers, which still reverberate today.

The trial opened in a packed Brooklyn courtroom, where prosecutor Marc Fliedner described Gurley as a "vibrant 28-year-old" who died because his path crossed Liang's.

The defendant sat with his lawyers dressed in a dark suit and purple tie, showing no reaction as prosecutors outlined their case for manslaughter that could go to the jury in two weeks' time.

Liang "fired for no reason" then "wasted precious time arguing with his partner," worried that he would be sacked, Fliedner said.

He did not call his superior officer as he was required to do. Nor did he call for an ambulance and neither was he supposed to have his finger on the trigger under police procedure, the prosecutor said.

Gurley was shot in the chest by a bullet that ricocheted off the wall.

- No medical help -

He and his friend Melissa Butler, whose apartment they were leaving "were doing absolutely nothing wrong," Fliedner said.

In tears, Butler knocked on apartment doors and a neighbor called 911 but Liang and his partner were "nowhere to be seen," Fliedner said.

When Liang did appear, he "walked around" Gurley, not intervening with medical assistance despite being trained to do so.

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Melissa Lopez, the neighbor who called emergency services, said Butler tried to perform CPR in vain, but was not trained.

Her call to 911 was played to the jury. Butler could be heard saying Gurley had stopped breathing, with Lopez relaying instructions from the dispatch caller.

The 28-year-old officer, who was on the job just 11 months before the shooting, faces up to 15 years if convicted. He is accused of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of official misconduct.

He is expected to testify in his defense.

In her opening statement, his lawyer painted a picture of a young officer who turned into a "wreck" too traumatized to communicate after realizing he had accidentally shot someone.

- Not a referendum -

"This is not a referendum on policing in the United States," defense lawyer Rae Koshetz told jurors.

"It was an accident," she added. When Liang realized what had happened, he was terrified and incapable of communicating, she said.

The high-profile deaths in the summer of 2014 of Eric Garner, held in an illegal chokehold in New York, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri, sparked protests against police tactics and alleged racism.

It also spotlighted America's gun culture, in which armed police routinely fear for their lives and the apparent ease with which they are entitled to open fire and face no legal backlash.

An analysis by The Washington Post newspaper and researchers at Bowling Green State University in Ohio found 54 police officers were charged from 2005-15 for fatal shootings while on duty -- a small fraction of thousands of such incidents.

According to a database compiled by The Guardian, 53 people have been killed by US police so far in 2016, with 1,139 killed in 2015.

The Chinese-American officer and his partner had been on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses, the scene of two murders in a year.

Liang left the roof and walked down the stairs to the eighth floor. The lights were not working and at that moment Gurley stepped into the stairwell.

Poor maintenance is a routine problem in housing projects, run by local authorities for residents who cannot afford market-rate rents.

The jury is made up of seven women and five men, and is majority white. Only one member of the jury is black.
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court said Monday that its landmark 2012 ruling banning the sentencing of minors to life in prison without parole can be applied retroactively.

The decision offers hope of early release for more than 2,000 prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole before 2012 for crimes committed when they were minors.

Voting six to three, the nine justices ruled in favor of Henry Montgomery, who had asked to be resentenced in keeping with the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

When he was 17, Montgomery shot and killed a deputy sheriff in Louisiana. He has been locked up since 1963.

Monday's decision will have major repercussions on the US prison system.

Human Rights Watch estimates there are at least 2,225 people serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed before they were 18.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 2012 that sentencing an adolescent to life without parole was a violation of the constitution, requiring that underage criminals be treated differently than adults.

But the historic ruling initially benefitted only minors convicted of murders committed after that ruling.

The latest decision is part of a larger debate over harsh sentencing guidelines and their impact on the overcrowded US prison system.
Paris (AFP) - Versace got Paris haute couture shows off to a hyper-sexy start with a procession of powerful femme fatales as the big gun designers hit the catwalk Monday.

Donatella Versace presented a series of revealing strappy dresses and short sporty Formula One-influenced combinations that dared women to get into the fast lane.

"I think women can be strong and capable of achieving their dreams while being beautiful and elegant," the Italian designer said.

"It is a collection dedicated to all the women who follow their own path."

To prove her point, Versace used a number of older models, albeit with perfect gym-hewn bodies.

The Italian creator, who took over the reins of the high-glamour fashion house from her late brother Gianni, also created an eye-catching line of superhero inspired pieces which seemed to channel Spiderman and the fin-de-siecle decadence of artist Aubrey Beardsley's drawings.

- 'My body, my soul' -

Her models powered down the catwalk late Sunday to a rap of "my body, my soul", the defiant message being that I will wear what I want to make me feel good and in control.

The emphasis was on legs with short embroidered dresses and long ball robes cut away at the front to show off high-heeled pins.

This take-no-prisoners feminist sexiness came into its own in power suits and gowns with cut away sections tied together with stringy not-quite-bondage cords.

Albanian-born British pop star Rita Ora caused a stir when she turned up on the front row wearing an ultra-sexy orange version of one, while the American model Gigi Hadid also turned heads with a see-through dress, another feature of the collection.

Christian Dior, which has been leaderless since the shock departure of artistic director Raf Simons in October, pulled out all the stops to impress Monday, building a palace of mirrors in the garden of Paris' Rodin museum.

While there was much to admire in its riffing on the classic fresh and feminine Dior look, with gorgeous wispy lace and delicate off-the-shoulder dresses with clusters of crystal embroidery, it was far from the unbridled fantasy of John Galliano's time at the helm.

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- Dior's 'new realism' -

Dior itself appeared to admit that its wild days were over, claiming its clients now prefer "to dress freely and without fuss" in what it called "couture's new realism".

Boss Sidney Toledano told AFP afterwards he was in no hurry to find a replacement for Simons, whose minimalist touch lingered on in the dreamy spring-summer range that many critics predicted would sell well.

"It's not like presidential elections where they are deadlines," he said.

The studio team which turned out the show in Simons' absence was immensely talented, he insisted.

"We are doing well. I am proud of the spirit which exists in this house. It's like a great orchestra with a lot of virtuosos."

Schiaparelli had earlier pulled off perhaps the day's most playful and unexpected show.

Designer Bertrand Guyon mixed food, fruit and kitchen prints with a large pinch of the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti's surrealism to produce a collection that was good enough to eat.

Floor length sheath, empire line and fairytale dresses, often with ingenious tongue-in-cheek culinary detailing, alternated with knee-length skirts, pinafore dresses and jackets decorated with historic horticultural motifs.

Dice Kayek went for a much more sombre business-like collection, marked by grey and black jackets with trailing capes and long puffy sleaves.

French label On Aura Tout Vu -- best known for the sparkling bolero jacket made for singer Madonna -- produced the most otherworldly collection of the day with a flock of short black and white feathery dresses for fallen angels.

With its handmade pieces solely within the price range of the world's richest women, haute couture exists only in Paris and is regarded as the pinnacle of fashion.

The designation is protected by French law and attributed exclusively by the ministry of industry to 14 houses whose clothes are tailored to each client.

Another 20 are regarded as "guest members" of the elite club.
Ladies and gentlemen, were reached the Fireworks Factory. The Phenomenal AJ Styles has made his WWE debut, entering #3 in the 2016 Royal Rumble.

Since the day after Wrestle Kingdom 10, theres been non-stop speculation about whether or not the group of top New Japan Pro Wrestling stars whod given their notice to the company would be headed to WWE. Styles was superkicked out of the Bullet Club on the next show, and everyone from Finn Balor to John Cena began welcoming him into the fold.

If you arent familiar with his work, Styles was the Wrestling Observer Newsletter 2015 Wrestler of the Year and Outstanding Wrestler, and is a former NWA, TNA and IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Hes done pretty much everything you can do outside of WWE, and now he finally gets to do everything else here. We cant wait to see where it goes.

(Keep him away from any and all mistress angles, please.)
Theres more than what meets the eye at high-end restaurants. A waiter gives us the scoop. (Photo: Thinkstock)

Think you know whats really going on at high-end restaurants? Think again. We asked Fred  the most charming Manhattan waiter we know  how to be a better guest at a restaurant, and here was his advice (along with a fascinating peek behind the kitchen door):

Dont Assume That Every Ingredient is Precious

Every restaurant in the world lies about where food comes from. Well, maybe they dont lie  but they let you make assumptions, Fred explains Restaurants are all about a numbers game, and the executive chef will cut corners  with croutons, or seasonings, or lettuce. I can buy an organic head of lettuce for $5, or a three pack from Sysco [a big-box restaurant supply store] for $3. If you were to compare the organic one and the Sysco one, unless youre a microbiologist, you will never know the difference. And yes, we might still tell you its organic.

And Dont Assume That The Food is Fresh, Either

Dont assume that all the ingredients are fresh and locally sourced. (Photo: Getty Images)

Dont be like every other diner and make assumptions about how ingredients are sourced. People are stupid, Fred says. They think its magic food. But its not. Its often from a big box store. And when they run out of something in the kitchen, they send a dishwasher to the grocery store for more.

In his opinion, its our own fault if we presume that every single ingredient comes from a farm nearby. Most people who go out to eat are stupid when it comes to food, Fred explains. Theyre just happy they dont have to make it themselves. So unless it is indicated on the menu that Farmer Joe sold us that lettuce, I bet you dime to doughnuts it came from Sysco.



Related: Dirty Business of Restaurants: Confessions of a New York Waiter

Dont Assume Everything is Made In-House



People think everything is made to order that day, but a lot of the dishes have store-bought ingredients, he explains. The chicken in the salad is pre-shredded from a can, and the chicken cutlet was frozen and tossed with Shake n Bake. Order carefully. Theres always something the chef is proud of making himself. On our menu, these are called the specials. Thats what you should order.

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Restaurants Repurpose Ingredients

People think that most dishes are made from scratch, but the reality is that lots of things on the menu are probably being repurposed from other dishes. Take our lobster dish, he says of the restaurant he works at now, people love the sauce, but it is just our lobster bisque. And the bisque  the soup is from a box. We open it up and add chopped lobster to it.

Related: Confessions of a Cruise Ship Chef

His Advice: The reality is that restaurants have to repurpose ingredients to keep food costs down. You can probably tell where its happening if you pay attention to the menu.

You Need to Ask the Right Questions

Read between the lines of the menu and be sure to ask your waiter the right questions. (Photo: Thinkstock)

Its all about reading the menu carefully. If the lobster doesnt say its from Maine, it isnt. Its frozen and air sealed in a bag. I get asked Is your lobster fresh? And I say yes, because it is, laughs Fred. But the correct question is Is your lobster cracked here? and Is your lobster frozen? (Or depending on the food, you could also ask Do you shuck your clams here? and Do you butcher your steaks here?) Fred also worked at a place where it looked like the crab would be hand cracked on site, but it was from a can. And the lobster was from a bag.

Related: 10 Restaurants Worth Waiting in (Very) Long Lines



Know the Exceptions

Fred has worked at several places where there are no entrees under $20 per person, and the clientele is extremely wealthy. But not all restaurants in that price point are created equal. If its Jean-George, and they wrote on the menu that they get their micro greens from Gobblety Gobblety farm, they did. Theyre not just telling you for snob appeal  theyre justifying their food cost.

His Advice: Dont eat at a place at the same price points as the famous top restaurants, but without the doting critical reviews. Youre simply not getting the same thing. Unless the menu says the name of the farm, he reiterates, you should assume a lot of the ingredients are from Shop Rite.

WATCH: Kitchen Confidential: Confessions of a Cruise Ship Waiter

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It's getting hot in here; global average temperatures last year broke records, with 2015 steaming into first place as Earth's hottest year since record keeping began in 1880. Scientists have analyzed the balmy trend, and El Nino is just part of the story, they say.

Temperatures for December 2015 were especially unusual, with the highest average temperatures on land and sea surface recorded for any single month during 136 years of record keeping, according to a Jan. 20 statement by NASA and a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Part of the explanation for the heat spike toward the year's end lies in 2015's strong El Nino, a cyclical event that moves warm water along the equatorial Pacific from west to east, triggering climate activity that can drive temperatures upward in parts of the world and contribute to some extreme weather episodes. But El Nino alone wasn't responsible for the high temperatures that prevailed throughout the year, according to Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"Last year's temperatures had an assist from El Nino," Schmidt said in the statement, "but it is the cumulative effect of the long-term trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing." [Watch Earth Get Hotter  135 Years of Temperature Changes Visualized]

Global climate data analyzed independently by NASA and NOAA, and presented today, told the same story, and a familiar one: 2014, formerly the warmest year on record, lost its title once 2015 wound to a close, clocking in at 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 degrees Celsius) warmer than its predecessor, according to the statement. This is only the second time in 136 years that a previous temperature record has been broken by such a wide margin.

And 2015 is only the latest benchmark in a warming trend that spans over 100 years, according to NASA. In the statement, officials pointed to increasing atmospheric levels of human-made emissions like carbon dioxide that drive global temperatures upward, increasing Earth's average surface temperature by 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) since the end of the 19th century.

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But to what extent was El Nino responsible for a warmer-than-average 2015? From year to year, Earth's oceans and atmosphere engage in a complex dance that moves heat and moisture around the planet. Their movements follow patterns, which become visible over decades of observations. One of those recurring patterns is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), responsible for El Nino and its counterpart, La Nina.

El Nino develops about once every five years, according to Steven Pawson, an Earth scientist and chief of the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. To track El Nino, experts look to an equatorial central Pacific zone known as the Nino 3.4 region. Warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in this zone, calculated over months, tell scientists that El Nino conditions are active, Pawson told Live Science. When sea surface temperatures there are exceptionally warm, "that's a strong El Nino," Pawson said.

And during 2015, a strong El Nino developed, carrying warmer waters from the tropical Pacific east toward South and Central America. The warm waters engage with atmospheric circulation, generally bringing more rain to Southern California and the Gulf Coast  which we saw in 2015, Pawson said. But while El Nino delivered badly needed moisture to the U.S.'s West Coast and southern states, it brought drier than usual conditions to the Amazon, leaving it susceptible to fires toward the middle of 2016, Pawson added. [How El Nino Causes Wild Weather All Over the Globe (Infographic)]

Warmer winter temperatures in the eastern United States are also a hallmark of El Nino. "Typically, El Nino does give us a warmer-than-normal East Coast, especially in the early part of the winter," Pawson said, adding that El Nino was still likely not entirely responsible for 2015's unusually balmy winter temperatures.

And El Nino's effects weren't felt until later in 2015 anyway, Schmidt explained during the NASA/NOAA press conference. Global temperatures generally respond to a developing El Nino after four to six months, he said, while 2015's warming trend was evident from the very beginning of the year.

However, Schmidt pointed out that the last few months of 2015, with temperatures that were abnormally warm, were reacting to the current El Nino. And 2016, which is kicking off with a strong El Nino already in progress, is expected to be an exceptionally warm year, perhaps another record setter, he added.

The evidence glimpsed in warming trends over time shows that other factors are pushing global temperatures steadily higher as the years go by, Schmidt said, warning that "this will be continuing and accelerating" with increased burning of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions.

And there are consequences that come with warming. Heat waves, sea-level increases and glacier loss, Schmidt said, which we are already seeing now, are directly related to global warming. And scientists expect events like these to continue into 2016 and onward, as warming continues.

It's less clear if a warming world means stronger El Nino events that would bring more extreme weather and even greater temperature anomalies to the globe, Pawson told Live Science; that's largely because El Nino occurs only about 20 times in 100 years, so it's harder to detect long-term trends that develop over time.

"There's climate change happening. There are El Ninos happening, with varying strengths. And time's going to tell if the character of El Nino is changing because of climate change," Pawson said.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitterand 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.
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former emperor of New York City, is dipping a 73-year-old toe into the whitewaters of the 2016 presidential race, The New York Times and other news outlets are reporting.

Last October, a column I wrote for The Fiscal Times suggested why he might see an opening. The question now is this: If Bloomberg is drawn into this bruising campaign season, could he really have a shot?

A poll at the end of last week by Morning Consult found that in a three-way race with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Bloomberg would get 13 percent, with Clinton at 36 percent and Trump a at 37 percent, a statistically insignificant edge.

A Morning Consult poll today finds that in a three-way race with Trump and Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg would get slightly less support at 12 percent, with Sanders and Trump neck and neck at 35 percent and 34 percent, respectively. (Interestingly, he would get 18 percent of independents in this matchup vs. 11 percent in a contest with Trump and Clinton.)

Related: If Michael Bloomberg Enters the Race, He Could Help Trump

But according to The Vibe on 30dB, a nonpartisan firm that gauges social media sentiment (and, full disclosure, for which I consult), the immediate reaction to a Bloomberg candidacy as of this morning is considerably more promising at 60 percent positive  even though the possibility of a run is probably not yet top of mind nationally.

Please God, yes! wrote one excited tweeter.

According to The Times, Bloomberg will make a decision by March and could be swayed to run if either Trump or Cruz looks to be the GOP candidate and if Bernie Sanders seems likely to best Clinton for the Democratic nod.

Related: Trump vs. Sanders? Get Ready for a Populist Disaster

There are plenty of reasons Trump, Cruz and every other crazy horse in this wacky race should worry about Bloomberg. Hes sane, sensible, tested, reliably thoughtful and not dragging around more baggage than Lady Gaga on tour.

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But the single biggest reason to fear the former mayor is that he is a politician with a proven track record who also happens to be fabulously wealthy. In fact, compared with Bloomberg, Trump is a church mouse (or mouth) on food stamps. The Forbes list of billionaires puts Trumps fortune at $4.5 billion; Bloombergs worth is estimated to be $38.6 billion.

Bloomberg is not shy about putting his money where his ambition is: He spent an estimated $250 million on his three mayoral bids, and the Times story says Bloomberg has suggested that he would be willing to part with at least $1 billion to mount a third-party insurgency.

Related: Odds Are on the GOP to Win the White House, Unless

Bloomberg is fiercely competitive and determined. When he felt as though his work as mayor wasnt done, he pushed for and got a law change that allowed him to run for a third term  a controversial move that still has some New Yorkers seething.

Trump had spent about $2 million of his own money as of last November and had collected almost $4 million in unsolicited donations, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to make politics more transparent. Thats chump change compared with what Trump would have to shell out to win the presidency should he get the Republican nomination, and you have to wonder how big a dent he would be willing to put in his fortune to maintain even the appearance of a campaign financially beholden to no one.

Related: Trump Looks to Gain from Carson Campaign Meltdown

Even Sanders, who has eschewed affiliated super PACs, has had unaffiliated ones, although according to the Sunlight Foundation his campaign has asked them to cease raising money.

With Bloomberg, voters wouldnt have to worry about murky financial support or favors owed to unions. More than any other candidate, he could say without caveats that he comes with no strings attached.

Sure, Bloomberg originally was a creature of Wall Street, but while he maintains solid relations with the financial community that rents his terminals (hed have to, wouldnt he?), the Street doesnt own him.

Related: Why a Trump-Sanders Race Is Suddenly a Real Possibility

After months of watching a carnival of bloviating, boasts, cheap shots and the usual Clinton dramas (foundation donors, emails, Benghazi), maybe America is ready for a compact candidate who doesnt need to wear elevator heels. Maybe America is ready for a billionaire candidate who doesnt belittle those less fortunate and wave his wallet like some magic political wand. Maybe America is ready for an adult who would be president.

One wag on Facebook wrote of a Bloomberg candidacy: Works for me. But two terms only this time, OK?

Updated at 1:15 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
President Obama has met one-on-one with Hillary Clinton in private several times over the past few months. His staff and her campaign staff communicate often. He has seen many of his top aides go to work for her. And now, in a podcast released Monday morning, he came very close to endorsing her as his successor in the White House. Close  but then he didnt actually explicitly do it.



Vice President Bidens October announcement that he would not run in 2016 removed an obvious conflict for Obama  an impossible choice between two people he calls friends. But in the ensuing months, the president has not offered an endorsement.

To be clear, we have never ruled out an endorsement in the primaries, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told Yahoo News on Monday. Weve just said that [the president] will have the opportunity to vote in the Illinois Democratic primary, and itll be up to him if he wants to make that public.

The president, refusing to side with his former secretary of state, a former senator and first lady, over self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders? What does that say about their relationship  or his confidence in her as commander in chief?

Very little, as it turns out. With one interesting exception (Bill Clinton), recent presidential history shows that sitting presidents tend to make their presidential endorsements late in the primary game. Very late.

In fact, Obama wouldnt be out of step if he waited until after the Democratic nomination was no longer in doubt. George W. Bush endorsed Sen. John McCain in March 2008, only after it became clear he would be the Republican nominee. Ronald Reagan waited until May 1988 to endorse his vice president, George H.W. Bush, only doing so after his lone rival dropped out. Lyndon Johnson waited until weeks before the 1968 election to endorse Hubert Humphrey. Only Bill Clinton endorsed his vice president, Al Gore, before a single primary ballot had been cast, in December 1999  at a time when former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley looked like a strong challenger.

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As president and symbolic head of the Democratic Party, he doesnt want to officially take sides in an intraparty fight. This isnt unusual for a sitting president, Matt Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, told Yahoo News.

This doesnt mean Obama cant indirectly signal his preference. In fact, I think Obama made it clear in the [Politico] interview that he prefers Clinton, Dickinson said.

In that back-and-forth, Obama denied that Sanders reminded him of his 2008 self  a passionate outsider candidate taking on Clinton. He also suggested that Clinton, while really idealistic and progressive, is perhaps more ready to govern and has suffered from the perception of her as the establishment candidate.

Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose, Obama told Politico. I think Hillary came in with the both privilege  and burden  of being perceived as the frontrunner  Youre always looking at the bright, shiny object that people havent seen before  thats a disadvantage to her.

And then Obama gave perhaps the biggest clue to why he has stayed out of the Democratic fray, saying: Heres my view: That whoever the nominee is, is going to need the other persons supporters.

Several former aides to Obamas campaigns and the White House told Yahoo News that the president sees his most important task in 2016 as uniting Democrats in the general election against the Republican candidate.

The most important political goal he has left is to make sure one of these Republican candidates doesnt win, his former chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, told Yahoo News. If he endorses Hillary now, and then Bernie wins in some crazy  and in my view  highly unlikely turn of events, it hurts [Sanders] as the nominee.

So why risk that when it seems like Hillary will be able to pull this out on her own? Favreau said.

The coyness comes from the top. Roughly a year ago, Obama declined to say whether he preferred to see Clinton or Biden succeed him.

I love em both, he said. Good try.

The White House has also played down concerns that a bruising primary fight could damage the eventual nominee.

Nobody in the White House is losing any sleep over the prospect of a vigorous Democratic primary campaign, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at his Oct. 26 briefing.

Im confident that whoever the Democratic nominee is, theyre going to be pretty eager to have President Obamas support, Earnest predicted at his Jan. 11 briefing.

In a Jan. 10 appearance on Meet the Press, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough promised that well do exactly what has been done in the past, which is when the nominee will be set, then the president will be out there campaigning for his partys next would-be leader.

That could take some time if the Clinton-Sanders duel turns into months-long political trench warfare  something like the Clinton-Obama battle eight years ago, which only ended in June.

Still, those hoping that Obama will endorse during the Democratic nomination fight may yet get their wish in just over a month: The Illinois primary is March 15.
The X-Files officially reopened Sunday night with a mythology-heavy episode that drove the familiar duo of Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) back into that FBI basement they last occupied back in 2002.

Some mild spoilers ahead for anyone who's yet to see the Jan. 24 episode, "My Struggle."

Though it's likely that most of the audience who tuned into the premiere of Fox's six-episode event revival did so with some familiarity for the franchise  it has nine seasons and two movies under its belt  the hour expended little energy on catch-up. The alien-obsessed pair uncovered a new twist in their decades-long investigation into a global conspiracy, partnering with a Glenn Beck-esque conspiracy pundit (Joel McHale) and ultimately resumed their old gig that will take them through five more episodes. (The show hits its official time slot, Mondays at 8 p.m., ET/PT on Jan. 25.)

Creator Chris Carter, who wrote and directed the episode, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how he wants the hour to fit into the bigger picture, his take on some of the critical flak the show has gotten and where he'd like to take the franchise next.

The premiere looks more expensive than the original series. Is that because it was  or because there's just more you can do with technology?

It's funny because it's not the most expensive episode. The second episode is. It doesn't seem like it, but the next one is very location-heavy and we used a lot of tools  cranes and camera equipment.

Read More: When 'The X-Files' Became A-List: An Oral History of Fox's Out-There Success Story

So no one flinches when you write multiple UFO sequences?

We built two out there. The one that disappears is a 9,000-pound object. It's incredible in person. But two days before shooting, it fell to the ground from the cables suspending it. There was a question of whether we'd even be able to shoot it on the day they were supposed to. And it was a miracle no one was hurt. We're so lucky because the actors were shooting very close to it. Somebody could have died.

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What doubles for Roswell, N.M., in British Columbia?

We were about four hours outside of Vancouver. And, as I've come to expect in Vancouver, no one flinched. It's just "how do we get this done?" I actually didn't know the [Roswell] location existed. I wrote it, as I've done before, thinking we'd have to go to a rock quarry and paint it all red. The landscape is something I'd never experienced there, and it was absolute perfect.

Select fans have been seeing this episode since October. What's the gradual roll-in of reactions been like?

I could feel the love from Cannes to Comic-Con and the months that followed. It was very nice. Now, we've taken a couple critical hits, but I knew not everyone was going to like it. It was always going to land with some people and not with others. I'm very proud of the episode. I think it's got huge scope, huge paranoia and drives the mythology in a whole other direction.

Was it an easy choice to settle on the pacing of these six episodes?

I always wanted to bookend it with mythology and do the four stand-alones in between. I have some of the best stand-alone writers who've come to work on this show, so you really want to play to their strengths. It's also not dissimilar to the ratio between stand-alone, mythology and comedy that we had in the show during its heyday. We're not doing anything different. We're giving people what they've come to expect.

How did you land on Joel McHale as the paranoid conservative?

Joel came to my attention when someone showed me a video of him hosting the White House Correspondents dinner. He roasted everyone, including the President. He was so funny and had such great timing. I thought he would be perfect to play an Alex Jones or Glenn Beck character. They're funny themselves  and outrageous. I thought he could play the part  and, come to find out, he's an X-Files fan.

You've worked with Gillian and David a lot over the years, but the writers who came back have been away from The X-Files for 20 years. How easily did you get back into the groove?

They were largely responsible for what The X-Files became, so they had a natural take on the show. We had to update ourselves on where we were and how we wanted to begin  but beyond that, they just understand. They have the voices in their heads. They know how an X-File works. When we sat down, that shorthand was still there.

Was there ever a chance of any other past writers coming back?

I did meet with Vince Gilligan, but he was busy on Better Call Saul. Howard Gordon has multiple shows. Alex Gansa is busy with Homeland. Frank Spotnitz has two series. Those are my go-to guys. I'm happy for them all. I don't take pride in it, because their work is their work. And their success says more about them. They helped make The X-Files a success.

You've mentioned that you have a script for a third movie and a desire to do more episodes. Ideally, what's next for The X-Files?

I don't even know. Right now I just want to get great ratings and consider all of our options.

So what do you hope these six will accomplish?

I wanted to put the show in a present-day context, technologically, geopolitically and scientifically. I think you're really going to see how one and six work together. Six is cutting-edge. No one has ever done this on television. I just wanted to bring the show into what I would call a brave new world. I would call that our mission statement, but our mission statement is always, "It's only as scary as it is believable." It has to take place within the realm of extreme possibility.

Read More: When 'The X-Files' Became A-List: An Oral History of Fox's Out-There Success Story
Health officials have identified Zika virus, an illness transmitted by mosquitos, in 21 countries so far and experts believe it will only continue to spread. Currently, there's no vaccine to prevent the virus, nor is there a cure.

The question now is how soon medical experts will be able to combat Zika virus, which is suspected to be linked to microcephaly, aka underdeveloped brains, in infants. The race is on to find a vaccine for the virus, although the process of developing and testing a reliable vaccine "normally takes years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars," reports the New York Times.

However the Instituto Butantan, a Brazil-based research center, announced plans to develop a Zika vaccine "in record time," reports the Associated Press, which, in the world of medical research, still means "three to five years."

A graduate student works to identify Zika virus in a lab in Brazil

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a series of travel alerts for residents who may be visiting the affected countries, with special warnings for pregnant women  including a suggestion to postpone "travel to any area where Zika virus transmission is ongoing."

In several countries where Zika virus has been identified, governments have suggested that women delay their pregnancies until more progress has been made in understanding the connection between Zika virus and birth defects, a suggestion that was met with criticism from many.

"It's incredibly naive for a government to ask women to postpone getting pregnant in a context such as Colombia, where more than 50% of pregnancies are unplanned and across the region where sexual violence is prevalent," Monica Roa, a member of the women's rights group Women's Link Worldwide, told the BBC.

A baby born with microcephaly

Symptoms of Zika virus may include "mild fever, skin rash (exanthema) and conjunctivitis," according to the World Health Organization. Because there is currently no cure, the WHO recommends that people who contract Zika virus "should get plenty of rest, drink enough fluids, and treat pain and fever with common medicines."
To date, nearly 90 cases of hepatitis C may be linked to the Las Vegas Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada. The clinic notified 50,000 patients of possible exposure to the virus, and if more tests continue to come back positive, this case will surpass the damages of a similar disaster that occurred at a Nebraska oncology clinic in 2000.

In the small, farming community of Fremont, Nebraska, townspeople welcomed Dr. Tahir Javed, an acclaimed doctor as the first full-time oncologist at the new, local cancer treatment center. But the fanfare soon turned into a nightmare when 857 cancer patients were subjected to a deadly, blood-borne virus passed on by reused, contaminated syringes during chemotherapy treatments.

In all, ninety-nine of these patients were diagnosed with the hepatitis C virus, making this incident the largest healthcare-transmission outbreak in United States history, to date.

While undergoing breast cancer treatment at the Fremont clinic, Evelyn McKnight contracted the virus. Her new book, A Never Event (a term used to describe a preventable healthcare tragedy) chronicles the true account of her experience, as well as the stories of several other victims of the outbreak.

If you plan on receiving healthcare in the future, this book is a must-read, says Ms. McKnight. The factors that caused my tragedy still occur in healthcare facilities throughout the country.

Ms. McKnight, along with co-author Travis Bennington, an attorney who represented nineteen of the outbreaks victims, and in conjunction with Dr. Thomas McKnight, has created the advocacy organization HONOReform. The non-profit foundation has received enormous attention from CBS Evening News, CNNs America Morning, USA Today, The Associated Press and Newsday.

We started HONOReform to promote patient safety, justice and compassion, says Ms. McKnight. As soon as I knew I was infected because of medical malpractice, I promised that any monetary award I would gain from this horrible experience would be used to help others.

While A Never Event reveals the story of the Nebraska hepatitis C outbreak there have been 70,000 patients in cities throughout America that have received letters notifying them of possible exposure to blood-borne diseases. These facts are startling:

e In the United States, there have been fourteen documented outbreaks of hepatitis since 1999. Among the affected are forty-two patients in New York City and 102 (some of which are cases of hepatitis B) in Oklahoma e Healthcare providers have reused syringes and other equipment to save time and money, so they can cram more procedures (and profits) into a days schedule. e During the discovery of the Nebraska outbreak, Dr. Tahir Javed fled the country to the Middle East. e Every person who receives healthcare is potentially at risk of suffering a similar fate, particularly if they receive injections of any kind.

I went to the doctor to be healed, and I came away with a life-threatening illness, says Ms. McKnight. There is a huge sense of betrayal.

History untold is history repeated, says co-author Travis Bennington. By telling the story of the Nebraska hepatitis C tragedy, we hope future communities will be spared such pain and suffering.

Please feel free to contact the authors directly through their Website: www.HonoReform.org.

(A Never Event by Evelyn McKnight and Travis Bennington; ISBN: 0980058287; $16.95; 352 pages; 5 x 8; softcover; Arbor Books, Inc.)
Taking Rebellion to the streets

Mas Rebellion crafted a threepart story from which its 2016 Carnival presentation: Heroes/ Villains was born. The new mas band promises a return to costumed mas, one that tells a story.

In an interview with Newsday, its founders, Angeli Gajadhar (the bands managing director/ band leader), Keir Roopnarine (the bands creative director) and Daryl Dillon (the bands operations manager) felt the time had come for mas to say something again.

Roopnarine and Gajadhar sat at the bands 22 French Street, Woodbrook mas camp. The low soca in the background adding to the mounting feeling that Carnival was just around the corner.

This band was born out of a story. A story that was written about ten years ago, Roopnarine said. Although its aesthetic design contains modified versions of traditional folklore and Carnival characters, Roopnarine said these are heroes, set in the story, each with its own philosophical story.

That story is something that a couple friends and I wrote about ten years ago, and in this story there is a rebellion or revolution, it doesnt actually come to fruition though it does give rise to some superhero/vigilante type characters. We did not want to borrow from other cultures, we wanted to take from our own and so these characters and vigilantes are the soucouyants, The Bookmans etc.

The only one that we kind of made up on our own is The Vengeful Ibis and she is, in our story, our Phoenix type character and I felt that the Ibis was an appropriate representation of what the Trinidadian rebirth bird might look like, she said. The bands characters are the soucouyant, vengeful ibis, angelic ibis, blue devil clans, bookman, lagahoo, midnight and red devil clans. Gajadhar and Roopnarine said coming back to this type of mas, sort of went against the current status quo. Pretty mas and BBF (bikini, bead and feather) mas is the mainstream Carnival band right now and we are not that. Roopnarine said it is in the bands mandate not to use feathers in their costumes.

She added the bands which popularised the bikini, beads and feathers (BBF) kind of mas were aspirational kind of bands and the ones people gravitated toward. Those bands, she said, became so popular it left a deficit in Carnival, today. Although, Roopnarine said BBF has its place in Carnival today so too does costumed mas.

Mas Rebellion caters to all shapes and sizes, literally. The void created a niche market people wanting to play mas but not in BBF  which Mas Rebellion hopes to capitalise on.

The bands own genesis was formed when Gajadhar  who had been playing mas since she was 12 years old and Rooparine were looking for a band in 2014.

They were, however, dissatisfied with the options that were available to them. They decided to plan a trip but then Dillon came to them and said the group should do a section in a band.

There was also some difficulty in deciding which band they would be comfortable doing this with but found none. The group eventually settled on doing its own band in which certain criteria being essential to its existence.

Accessibility, aesthetic and ease were all major considerations for the Mas Rebellion founders.

The band made all of its costumes locally  another step away from the status quo. It took approximately two years for the band to get on the way and it was not an easy task but it was done.

It was about a year of work, Roopnarine said. The band launched November last year and expects to have between 600 to 1,000 masqueraders. Its costumes range between $1,590 to $6,600.

The band will tell this story across three Carnivals but dont be perturbed the Rebels plan to tell their stories for many more years to come across TT s stages.
Great books with elderly heroes

Some of the best books I have read have elderly heroes, and these books have garnered critical claim. Its quite uplifting  not to mention entertaining  to see that old people are no longer confined to rocking chairs where they sit merely whittling away time. In the books Im reading, old people embark on adventures that appeal to readers of all ages.

Here is a list of books with elderly heroes that you cant miss reading. I listened to all of these books as audio books from audible.

com.

1. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson  The story of Allan, a 100-year-old man who runs away from his birthday party and gets in a whole heap of trouble, makes my list of all-time favourite books. In his younger days, Allan was an explosives expert, and this knowledge carries him all over the world where he meets great world leaders and becomes involved in world events. Allan is a Swedish Forrest Gump. This is political satire at its best.

2. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce  When an unhappy, retired man, Harold Fry, receives a letter from his friend, Queenie Hennessey bidding him farewell because she is dying of cancer, Harold embarks on a pilgrimage: a walk from southern England to northern England to keep Queenie alive.

Queenie suffers from a form of cancer that has disfigured her face and she is barely alive, but Harold is sure that Queenie will continue to live as long as he walks. This is an inspirational book that probes the meaning of life and the willpower to go on after unexpected or bad things happen. The people that Harold Fry meets and the events that happen to Harold Fry along the way will have you cheering.

3. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey by Rachel Joyce  The author calls this novel a companion piece that provides those who love The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry with Queenies version of the story. Both books could have been maudlin and sappy, but Joyce finds a way to elevate these two novels to a higher realm.

Both books will make you ponder what love, friendship and life are really about.

4. Grandma Gatewoods Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery  The true story of the 67-yearold, great-grandmother who became the first woman to walk the 2160 mile Appalachian trail is a remarkable story of perseverance.

Walking in the woods had always been the solace of this mother of ten, who lived with an abusive husband. If you enjoy non-fiction writing, history, biography and stories about nature or hiking, youll relish this book.

5. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro Something is not quite right when an old man and his wife embark on a journey to see their son. Set just after the time of King Arthurs reign, The Buried Giant explores myth and legend in an innovative way.

Ishiguro succeeds in making readers feel like they are part of this magical era. There are surprises galore in this book and a very sobering ending.

These five books demonstrate that elderly people make funny, smart and endearing heroes.

Well meet one more next week in a book that the producers of Game of Thrones are about to make into a movie: Norwegian by Night by Derek
Three Tobago officers arrested

During the incident the man, said to have a criminal record, was allegedly warned by the officers not to testify in an ongoing court matter involving a police corporal.

Newsday was informed by a police source that all three were detained yesterday and placed on an identification parade, during which they were positively identified.

Speaking with Newsday late yesterday afternoon, Archie said she could not confirm any of the details at the time.

When the investigation is complete, we will make a statement.

But at this time, all I can confirm is that three officers are assisting the PSB in an investigation, Archie told Newsday.
Panorama semis too long

Vendors lined the upper part of Frederick Street anticipating the crowd expected to turn up for the event.

The annual musical event saw 20 small, 14 medium and 17 large bands competing for a coveted spot in the finals.

The Small Bands category got promptly underway at the scheduled 9am start time. The National Anthem was played at 9.15am. At 9.17am Pan Trinbagos president Keith Diaz declared the 53rd Panorama competition open.

First small conventional band, La Horquetta Pan Groove struck its first chord at 9.22am, playing Johnny Douglas 1993 piece Raising Dust. As each band played another followed swiftly behind; not allowing for lull-time in between.

The bands played a range of songs, from last years winning Road March song Like a Boss by Machel Montano to Sparrows 1984 hit Doh Back Back to Mash it Up from 1989 by John Jayson Perez. Last years winner Arima Golden Symphony played D Greatest Invention by D Original De Fosto Himself. Golden Hands, a young south band, also paid tribute to late musician Raf Robertson who passed away last year.

But despite the quick movement, members of the audience wondered whether this years addition of the Small Band category on the same day as the Medium and Large was a very wise one.

One Grand Stand patron who gave his name as Trevor from Sangre Grande said, I love pan but the Small Band inclusion in todays activity, carrying the show a little too long. I enjoy it but I prefer the old system where the Small Band was on another day...It is wrapping up in the morning and we have to work. Patsy Chang from San Fernando said, I looked at the situation where they started at 9am and it is now 2.30pm, so if we are going from 9am to 2.30pm that is approximately five and a half hours.

What happens with the medium and large bands which will take longer to set up? It means we will probably have to go to about 2am again and to me that is a bit much.

I think we should have judged the small bands by themselves on another day. In the North Stand, the crowd grew steadily. There were little complaints from patrons there. I am enjoying the pan ...It is awesome but the only problem I have is the caution tape (used to section off corporate groups in North Stand). You dont know if you paid for this section or that section, which should not be, said Norva Bostic from Mausica.

Over at The Greens, by approximately 3pm, the usual crowd it would usually attract was not there. This left some of the attendees confused as to what was happening.

Well thus far it is kind of dead.

I was thinking that it would have had more people at this point because at this time (after 2pm) it is kind of quiet. But I like the fact that they have a mixture of music of the DJs and a few rhythm section going already, said Trent from Tacarigua.

Stephen Alexis, a regular attendee to The Greens, pondered whether or not the recession or time played a part in what appeared to be a low attendance. He said, At this point, I am a little confused because at this time here (The Greens) would have been more crowded. I do not know if it was because Pan Trinbago only sent out tickets this week as far as I am concerned. At this hour there is hardly anyone in here... Alexis said many of his friends opted to head back to the North Stand this year.
60 years of endless mas

The show has brought colour, splendor and the art of masquerading not only to the nations children, but to the wider public.

According to the events chairman, Vindra Amar, it is one event without which Carnival would be incomplete. It has become an institution in the whole Carnival scene, Amar said in an interview with Newsday. The first Kiddies Carnival as it is fondly known as was first held in 1956. The first poster read, Aubrey Adams presents: The Kiddies Carnival and Competition, in aid of the British Red Cross. Adults 75 cents and children 25 cents, according to an address delivered by the committees vice-chairperson, Trevor Fung.

Held under the patronage of Lady Beetham during the first five years of its existence, the show evolved from its origins under the British Red Cross and by 1961, flourished and blossomed in the capable hands of cultural impresario extraordinaire, the late Aubrey Adams. It was Adams who in 1961 named the show, The Red Cross Childrens Carnival, Fung said.

Despite having been affected by the current economic recession, its organisers are promising another great show for Carnival 2016.

Amar said the sponsors have stayed with the organisation. We have been doing very well. It is not as good as in years gone by, but our sponsors have come forward to support the Red Cross. There has been an approximately 20 percent reduction in the sponsorship offered to the event, but the show is holding its own.

Its patron, wife of President Anthony Carmona, Reema Carmona in her address at the launch of this years event, hailed it as being one of the more creative events.

She said, Childrens mas is a veritable storyteller in form and substance and it often tells a human and environmental story which adult mas rarely does. In that regard, it reminds us of what mas is and really should be, either a human tale, an animal tale, a historical tale or a literary tale, a tale that luxuriates and feeds the imagination from the sublime to the ridiculous, and those great themes are still to be found in childrens mas and it therefore represents great hope for the future of real mas in Trinidad and Tobago. And for Amar, while the spectatorship has dwindled over the years, the show has not fallen in the quality of mas that it produces.

The prizes offered also continue to be of a high standard, she added.

The proceeds from the event are used to fund various charitable projects. This year the committee hopes to raise approximately TT$200,000 to refurbish the surgical unit at the Princess Elizabeth Home for Handicapped Children. And so on January 30, Amar called for all families, friends and supporters to attend its Kiddies Carnival. The tickets are priced at $40 for adults and $20 for children. It starts at 11am.
WELCOME

Welcome to Nicholas V's Blog on Blogger



I have been blogging daily on this platform for several years now. It is surprising that I have persisted as the world is changing and "microblogging" is now the norm. I blog to amuse myself, make comment on current affairs, externalise some of my creativity, keep notes on things that interest me, learn something new and to surprise myself with things that I discover about this wonderful, and sometimes crazy, world we live in.



I sometimes get the impression that I am on a soapbox delivering a monologue, so your comments are welcome.



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" ... 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
Reports that foreign troops from Britain, Russia and the United States are already in Libya and would soon be joined by soldiers from France to support the Tobruk-based government have been vaguely refuted by the countrys army.

The Libyan army claimed that it is the only army that is supporting the unity government, stressing that all eastern regions and all gates are protected from militant forces.

A spokesman of the Tobruk government however admitted that they requested a limited intervention from the international community to protect oil fields from Daesh attacks following the recent assaults on a couple of oil infrastructures in the north.

Security sources claimed that around 500 foreign troops are already at the Jamal Abdulnasir military base, in southern Tobruk, on a reconnaissance mission and to support the government ahead of an offensive against the militants of the Islamic State.

France and the US have been supporting a military intervention in Libya and on Friday, Chairman Marine General Joseph Dunford of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said the two countries will make sure their actions are in conjunction with the new government because you want to take decisive military action to check Daeshs expansion and at the same time you want to do it in such a way thats supportive of a long-term political process.

The New York Times quoted him saying the president has made clear that we have the authority to use military force because the Islamic state wants to use Libya as a platform from which they can conduct malign activity across Africa.

The Unity government that was established under the Libya Political Agreement must be approved by the Tobruk-based parliament before January 27 or else it will be null and void and cant authorize foreign intervention.
Amid the ongoing protests, Prime Minister Essid vowed at a press conference Saturday that Tunisia will continue to nurture and protect its young democracy whatever the cost while appealing for calm, national unity and complete security across the country.

Prime Minister Essid called on Tunisians not to follow people seeking to destroy the democratic transition through the protests adding that it is the only example of success in the region. He said the government acknowledges that despite the huge political progress there are lots of economic difficulties and promised that the government will respond to economic demands but we need a bit of time for that.

Protests began last week after a job seeker in Kasserine was electrocuted to death. He had climbed an electric pole, threatening to kill himself to protest against his unemployment. The young mens death triggered violent job protests across the country.

In a televised message, President Essebsi said the protests that have spread to other cities are targeting the countrys stability and security warning that even Daesh in Libya wants to take advantage of this situation of violence. He admitted that unemployment which is estimated at around 15% is the responsibility of the government. I know that the state and the government are able to find the appropriate funds, even if we have to take them from somewhere else to allocate them to this issue in order to face our responsibility, Essebsi stated.

On Friday, France announced a 1 billion support plan for Tunisia over the next five years mainly focused on helping disadvantaged regions and youths, with an emphasis on employment.

A policeman has been killed since the clashes began, but according to press reports, the situation was calm across most of the country after authorities imposed a nationwide nighttime curfew this weekend.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the Jewish settlers who were removed from two homes on Friday will soon return after the necessary paperwork which he said would be fast tracked.

The Israeli Prime Minister made the statement as pressure builds against his government with religious nationalist parties that are part of his coalition government threatening to vote against the government regarding the matter.

Dozens of Jewish settlers occupied two homes in Hebron, West Bank, on Friday, triggering clashes with Palestinians before security forces evicted the Jews with the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, describing them as squatters because they didnt follow the normal legal procedures.

The homes are located close to the site known to the Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs. Palestinians are claiming that the occupants stole the houses while the settlers say they bought them.

Netanyahu said the government supports the settlement at any time and applauded the settlers for their courageous and determined stand in the face of terrorist attacks. He is confident that they will return to the homes as soon as the procedures regarding the purchase are approved and demanded that the cabinet receives a status report on the matter if, in any case, it is not completed within a week beginning from Sunday. The comments of the Prime Minister raised questions about Tel Avivs intention to reach an agreement with Palestine through a two-state solution.

Netanyahus coalition government has only one seat more than the opposition parties in parliament and religious nationalist parties that form part of the government support pro-settlement policies even if it is illegal under international law.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco has underlined this Monday the leading role played by his country in promoting interfaith dialogue and fostering religious tolerance.

In his opening address to the international conference on the rights of religious minorities in Islamic countries, currently held in Marrakech, the Monarch said Morocco has always been an outstanding model of cultural coexistence and interaction between Islam and other religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity.

One of the glorious pages in this history was the emergence of the Moroccan-Andalusian civilization, which brought together various communities, said the Moroccan Sovereign, recalling that large numbers of Muslims had moved from Andalusia to settle in the country which has been hosting a Jewish community since the pre-Islamic era.

The Jewish community in Morocco was never treated by Muslims as a minority, as its members were actively involved in all fields of activity and were present at all levels of society, stressed King Mohammed VI, noting that Moroccans uphold the same tradition towards the Christians, respecting their right to perform their religious rites.

As Commander of the Faithful and defender of the faith, I am committed to protecting the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, said the Sovereign, affirming that Moroccan Jews enjoy the same constitutional & political rights as their fellow Muslim citizens, and play a key role in the countrys economy.

We, in the Kingdom of Morocco, see no reason for denying religious minorities any of their rights. We do not tolerate a violation of this kind being perpetrated in the name of Islam, nor do we tolerate any Muslim being involved in such an infringement, stressed the Monarch, underlining Moroccos religious policy which focuses on preventing any distorted interpretation of the holy Quran.

The Moroccan Sovereign also stressed the importance of

common values to nurture religious tolerance and counter extremism and radical ideologies.

The Marrakech international conference on the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries (Jan.25-27) brings together eminent religious leaders from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and many other Islamic countries.

The conference, which is expected to issue a declaration on the protection of religious minorities in the Muslim world, comes to counter the Islamic fanatic groups such as the Isis lunatics who are wreathing havoc in the world, threatening the regions stability and undermining the true image of Islam, a religion of peace.
Morocco has been solicited to provide logistical support to a US-led international coalition that is to intervene in Libya in the framework of the fight against the Islamic State group in the war-torn North African country

According to Moroccan Al Massae daily, Morocco has been invited to take part in the USled international coalition against IS in Libya which will also include France.

The daily, quoting diplomatic sources, on Monday indicated that the coalition is expected to take shape and become operative for a military intervention in Libya by March.

In the wake of the Paris November 2015 attacks that killed 130 persons, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had urged world leaders to turn their eyes towards Libya calling it a second Syria.

Libyan new Prime Minister-designate Faiez Serra also urged the UN and world leaders to help end the advance of IS in the North African country now split into parts controlled by terrorist groups including IS.

Earlier press reports had said that foreign troops from Britain, Russia and the United States are already in Libya and would soon be joined by soldiers from France to support the Tobruk-based government and launch an offensive against the militants of the Islamic State.

The Libyan army denied the reports while a spokesman for the Tobruk government admitted that they requested a limited intervention from the international community to protect oil fields from Daesh attacks following the recent assaults on a couple of oil infrastructures in the north.

The New York Times on Friday quoted Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Joseph Dunford as saying that the (US) president has made it clear that we have the authority to use military force because the Islamic state wants to use Libya as a platform from which they can conduct malign activity across Africa.

Anyways, the participation of Morocco, hailed as a role-model in the fight against extremist groups and militants, will be crucial to the international coalition.

The North African country which had extended France a pivotal assistance in hunting the November 13 assailants and killing the attacks ringleader has been solicited by many countries around the world to give them a helping hand in the fight against violent extremism.

Morocco is currently engaged in Yemen at the side of the Saudi-led coalition against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
As if relations between Algeria and Morocco were not strained enough, Algiers created out of nothing another uproar, announcing that it will start repatriating the Moroccans heading to Libya via Algeria as their number has been constantly increasing lately.

To give the issue an official dimension, Algerian Minister of Maghreb Affairs Abdelkader Messahel summoned on Sunday Moroccos ambassador to Algeria to protest against the massive and unusual flow of Libya-bound Moroccans from Casablanca transiting via Algeria.

Messahel informed the diplomat that Algerian authorities will repatriate Moroccan nationals and prevent them from traveling to Libya if they cannot produce documents justifying the aim of their trip.

The case of the 500 Moroccans stranded at Algiers airport since early January is thus taking a new turn.

A communique released by the Foreign Ministry stated that the current security context in the region calls for utmost vigilance and that authorities will repatriate any Moroccan travelling to Libya who is unable to justify his/her trip to Libya.

Moroccans holding work or residence permits will be allowed to transit to Libya but travelers who do not have such documents will be repatriated, said the communique.

Algerian authorities have decided to allow for this time and on an exceptional basis the transit of Moroccan nationals currently in Algiers who hold residence or work permits in Libya, the Foreign Department said.

Many analysts expressed surprise at Algerias stand and void arguments, wondering why Algerian authorities want to act on behalf of Libyan authorities, which are the sole side entitled to decide on who should enter their country and who should not. One commentator pointed out that Moroccans crime is that they want to return to Libya to resume their work or seek a job after the inter-Libyan reconciliation sealed in Skhirat, Morocco, under the auspices of the United Nations.

Many press commentators underlined that the 500 Moroccans stranded in Algiers for several days hold duly signed travel documents and should not be treated as illegal immigrants and that Algerian allegations that these Moroccans are attempting to join the Islamic State group in Libya are groundless.

In a nutshell, this is just another soap opera episode created by Algiers to nurture acrimony towards Morocco and Moroccans.
The Secret to Happiness is the Joy of the Lord;

and the joy of the Lord is His manifest presence in your life.





It is our Privilege and Responsibility to Glorify God;

and we glorify God by manifesting His character every moment and in every situation.





Humility and Pride

You can tell a humble man that he has a problem with pride and he will agree with you;

but if you tell a proud man that he has a problem with pride, he becomes your enemy.





This one thing I know for sure, that whenever there is a problem with my relationship with the Lord, it is not His fault.





Some people are just plain lazy;

some people are just overly sensitive to gravity;

others are simply economical with their energy.





It's not enough to preach the Gospel; you must be the Gospel.





If you can describe your life in a nutshell, there's a good probability that you're a nut.





As a good Canadian, I'd like to apologize in advance for anything I might say that offends you; sometimes my mouth hits high gear while my brain is still in low.





Never allow the thought, "I am of no use where I am"; because you certainly can be of no use where you are not. Oswald Chambers





We cannot even begin to approach the Truth until we are willing to go wherever the Truth leads us.





The newest object of idol worship is 'my opinion'!





Suffering is the only experience we have in common with every other human who ever lived.




Just a couple of weeks after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to transform Penn Station and the James A. Farley Post Office (to the tune of $3 billion), the Empire State Development Corporation has released a Request For Proposals (RFP) for the site, now called Empire Station Complex. The RFP outlines the project sponsors (which include the ESD, along with Cuomo, the MTA, and Amtrak) plans to create an "iconic new passenger rail complex and mixed-use destination in the heart of New York City."

Per the RFP, "the status quo at Penn Station is no longer adequate to meet the needs of today's passenger" (that's the understatement of the decade), and so the project sponsors have set out a number of proposed updates to the complex. The 65-page document (available here, in PDF form) goes into extremely thorough detail on what the revamped train depot could look like, with different sections for overhauls of Penn Station and the Farley Post Office (now called the Moynihan Train Hall). Here's some of what that will entail:

 The Penn Station plans call for the creation of a "grand entrance" along Eighth Avenue, which would mean demolishing the Theater at MSG and adding retail to the entrance area. (The RFP is using Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's renderings for the additions and improvements.)

 Connecting the complex to Penn Station South and the infrastructure proposed as part of the Gateway Program, as seen in the map above.

 Another "grand entrance" along Seventh Avenue could also be part of the plan.

 The station itself would be opened up, with new skylights, along with an improved configuration for passengers on the upper and lower levels of Penn Station.

 The two terminals would be linked via a concourse, which is currently under construction beneath the Farley Post Office.

 The Moynihan Train Hall will have 210,000 square feet of space, including "primary facilities for LIRR commuters," including ticket booths, waiting areas, and other amenities.

 The revamped hall could also be home to office spaces and even a hotel, along with services for AirTrain and Amtrak commuters (including ticket booths and a waiting area).

And that's just a small portion of what's potentially to come. According to the Real Deal, Related Companies, which has been attached to the project for several years, will be submitting a proposal; Vornado Realty Trust, which was also working on the development, declined to comment. TRD also reports that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which has been working on the Penn redevelopment plans since the 1960s, is still attached to the project (its renderings of the Empire Station Complex are all over the RFP), but if the developer that's ultimately chosen wants to bring in their own architect, that's a possibility.

Developers who wish to submit proposals can do so for either Penn Station, the Farley Post Office, or both; proposals are due by April 22.

 Moynihan developers don't have to choose SOM, but it will take some persuading [TRD]

 Penn Station's $3B Renovation Plans, Revealed! [Curbed]
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Photo: Ida Mae Astute/ABC/Getty Images

Eight years ago, Iowa was the place where the inevitable Hillary Clinton presidency became evitable. The woman who had, since the 1990s, defined the Democratic Partys horizons was now a figure of its past, pitted  hopelessly, it turned out  against a figure of hope. The Clinton of today faces, from her perspective, a chilling parallel. She is again the candidate of transactional politics and hardened realism, facing an opponent in Bernie Sanders who inspired frenzied enthusiasm. Sanders has even adopted a slogan, A future to believe in, echoing Obamas Change we can believe in.

Its superficial parallels aside, Clinton versus Obama presented a different kind of choice, for a different Democratic Party, than Clinton versus Sanders. One sign of the transformation can be found in the rhetoric of Clintons opponent. The young Barack Obama was already famous for his soaring rhetoric, but from todays perspective, what is striking about his promises is less their idealism than their careful modulation. Obama, of course, proposed to bring both parties together, as though partisan warfare was simply a misunderstanding he could clear up. But even the transformational change he proposed would not usher in heaven on Earth.

Here is the future president speaking in the aftermath of his shockingly large victory in Iowa: When weve made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children  when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet thats a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, youll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began. Even in this moment of giddiness, Obama was promising gradations of progress: More families can afford to see a doctor; a little cleaner and safer planet; a nation less divided.

And here is Obama after the New Hampshire primary, delivering his famous Yes, we can speech: We can bring doctors and patients, workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together, and we can tell the drug and insurance industry that, while they get a seat at the table, they dont get to buy every chair, not this time, not now. Obama was literally promising to negotiate amicably with business interests, to give the insurance and drug industries a say in his health-care bill  in a speech his supporters found so inspiring will.i.am put it to music. No candidate had ever made pragmatism and compromise so uplifting. Obamaism was a promise to reason together; it was lyrical technocracy.

Obamas carefully negotiated, center-left reforms came largely to fruition; his lovely vision of transcending partisanship came to ruin. It turned out that business interests could be reasoned with, but Republicans could not. The policy transformation Obama has delivered relied in large part on substantial but temporary Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress passing a huge stimulus, health-care reform, regulations on Wall Street, and other major changes. Since Republicans took control of Congress during the 2010 elections, the advance of the welfare state has stopped. Obamaism failed as poetry but succeeded as prose. The contest between Clinton and Sanders is the Democratic Party trying to come to grips with those tensions. Was the Obama administration a success or a disappointment?

In Sanderss telling, the Obama presidency meant well but has accomplished little. He credits what he calls the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act  i.e., 20 million fewer uninsured Americans  while proposing a single-payer plan. The Dodd-Frank reforms likewise play little role in Sanderss description of the finance industry, whose rule over Washington he sees as unabated across Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The economy remains rigged by Wall Street to benefit the wealthiest Americans in this country at the expense of everyone else.

Clinton, by contrast, has cast herself fully as Obamas heir. She proposes to build upon his legislative success and carry on his unfinished agenda, such as proposals to extend early-childhood education. As Sanders has risen in the polls, Clinton has placed less emphasis on the aspirational elements of her platform, which stand little chance of enactment. (If they did, Obama would probably have enacted them.) Instead she has stressed the importance of preventing the GOP from winning the presidency, which would give it full control of government and the ability to roll back many of Obamas achievements. Her television ad in Iowa presents her as the candidate who will stop the Republicans from ripping all our progress away. Clintons appeal is a nod to the grim but inescapable reality that any legislation the president signs into law must pass through two chambers of Congress that are currently, and almost certain to remain, controlled by the opposing party. Images of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, glowering and brandishing firearms, flash in Clintons ad.

Sanderss ad does not depict any Republicans at all. Indeed, they barely feature in his rhetoric. The salient question Sanders offers his audiences is not whether a Republican president will sign Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnells bills or a Democratic one will veto them; it is whether the people prevail or corporate interests do.



Ever since the rise of the tea party, Democrats have enjoyed watching Republicans wrestle with the anguish of partial power. The anger faced by Republican leaders in Congress is mainly the bases incomprehension that the GOP lacks the power to roll back the Obama agenda, or even to halt its advance. Ted Cruz, self-styled defender of the Constitution, shrewdly exploited right-wing voters failure to understand that the Constitution gives the president a veto. That veto  not the Republican fecklessness charged by Cruz  explains the failure of bills to repeal Obamacare and impose other elements of the Republican agenda. This constitutional barrier is intellectually simple enough that high-school civics students can grasp it, yet it has proven to be a surprisingly durable source of frustration.

Now, for the first time since 2008, the Democratic Party is choosing between leaders, which means it has finally encountered the same dilemma. Obama in 2008 benefited from the lowered ideological expectations that come with two terms out of power under a disastrous opposition president. His promise to restore reason to governing seemed inspiring. Clinton in 2016 is presenting a similar proposition to what she offered voters eight years earlier: a pragmatic center-left politician.

Sanderss appeal, despite its tonal similarities, is very different from circa-2008 Obamas, as Obama himself acknowledges. Obama proposed to restore a balance between the power of the business lobby and competing interests. Sanders proposes simply to steamroll over business interests. Obama had swollen Democratic majorities in both chambers to enact his agenda. Sanders (and, for that matter, Clinton) would not. In place of any practical road map to enacting his ideas, Sanders substitutes the political revolution, an event he invokes constantly that will sweep aside all impediments. His appeal borrows more from the tea party than from Obama  Sanders draws upon the lefts frustration with the limits of shared power in much the same way as Cruz has done.

Obama in 2008 believed Republicans could be reasoned out of their irrationality. Sanders today believes they can be swept aside when the people rise up and depose their corporate paymasters. Clinton, then as now, promises to grind away at them in a trench war that has gone on for decades and for which there is no end in sight. The thing Clinton has not managed to do  and what, quite possibly, no Democrat could do after eight years of shared power  is make technocracy lyrical.
Perry loves Cruz, may love a cabinet position even more. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Ted Cruz failed to win the love of Americas living tea-party meme, but he can console himself with the endorsement of a former rival. Former Texas governor Rick Perry told Politico on Sunday night that hes throwing his support behind the fellow Texan. Of those individuals who have a chance to win the Republican primary, at this juncture, from my perspective, Ted Cruz is by far the most consistent conservative in that crowd, Perry said. And that appears to be down to two people.

Before exiting the race in September, Perry made it clear he wasnt a Trump fan, but hes never seemed particularly fond of Cruz either. That all changed back in December, however, when they spent the day driving around the governors Round Top, Texas, home in a truck. Apparently Perry got a sense of Cruzs soul, George W. Bushstyle; he reports that as opposed to the media narrative about Cruz, he found him to be one of the best listeners Ive ever dealt with in the political realm, and someone who is probably shy deep down. (We should have realized the senators troll-ish demeanor and excessive pop-culture references are just distractions to keep us from seeing the real Ted.)

Perry has repeatedly suggested that governors make better presidents than senators, but hes come to realize, [T]he electorate doesnt want that. Thats why we have elections, why we democratically select leaders. He said hes now confident that the first-term senator is the right man for the job. He knows hes going to surround himself with people who do have that experience, and Im very satisfied that on Day 1, he will be ready to be commander-in-chief, Perry said, Partly because of the time hes going to spend in learning what he doesnt know, but hes also surrounding himself with people who are extraordinarily capable and wise. Like a certain ex-governor whod appreciate a cabinet post, perhaps?
Terrific handshake you got there, very classy. Photo: Jim Cole/Corbis

Donald Trump may not be an experienced public servant, but he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express Friday night.

For most of the campaign, the GOP front-runner had been day-tripping: commuting to Iowa on his private jet, rambling into a microphone for an hour and a half, then flying back to New York or his palatial getaway in Palm Beach. The billionaires refusal to make shaking hands and kissing babies a full-time gig led many pundits to dismiss his candidacy as unserious. But this weekend, Trump weathered a night in a motel, just to press more flesh in the Hawkeye State, the New York Times reports.

In Iowa, Trump is behaving more and more like a normal candidate. After months of refusing to spend a dime on advertising, the Donald is blanketing the airwaves in 60-second ads; after neglecting to set up a ground game, he has his campaign manager and top spokesperson staying in the state until the caucus; and after largely avoiding close contact with voters, Trump sat among them in the pews on Sunday, taking in a sermon on the virtues of humility.

Jesus is teaching us today that he has come for those who are outside of the church, the reverend, Dr. Pamela Saturnia, told her congregation. Those who are the most unloved, the most discriminated against, the most forgotten in our community and in our world  the Syrian refugees  the Mexican migrants. Trump found that message inspiring enough to put two $50 bills into the collection plate.

Granted, he has a little ways to go on the normalcy front: At a rally Sunday night, he mocked a protester in a turban for wearing a funny hat. And he also boasted over the weekend that his supporters would stand by him even if he shot someone to death on Fifth Avenue.

The moguls mix of traditional campaigning and xenophobic demagoguery seems to be paying dividends: Trump gained 15 points in Iowa over the past two weeks, leapfrogging Ted Cruz to the top of the heap, according to a pair of Fox News polls.

But while Trump is acting more like a real candidate, he still needs his supporters to act like real voters. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post notes, while Trump draws 34 percent of Iowans in the new Fox News poll, 43 percent of those voters have never attended a caucus before.

Trump claims that his supporters would love him even if he committed murder. But do they love him enough to forgo The Apprentice reruns for a night of caucusing on February 1?
The fugitives. Photo: Orange County Sheriffs Department

The three prisoners had clearly been planning their sophisticated escape for weeks, if not months. They cut through steel, and wriggled through plumbing. Then they made rope out of their bedsheets, and climbed off the unsecured roof of the maximum-security Central Mens Jail in Orange County, California.

And now no one knows where these very dangerous criminals might be.

One of the makeshift ropes. Photo: Orange County Sheriffs Department

The escape feels a bit familiar, after the three-week-long freak-out-fest inspired by an escape at Clinton Correctional Facility last June  one that involved manhole covers, frozen hamburger meat, and paintings of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Unlike the New York prison break, authorities dont think that these inmates had help from the inside  at least yet. No one knows how the inmates got the tools that let them cut through multiple layers of steel  or why they were so well informed about the jails layout and security weaknesses.

If anyone has information about the escape  or those on the run  an award of up to $50,000 is up for grabs.

The three fugitives may be armed, and have been charged with awful crimes. Twenty-year-old Jonathan Tieu has been charged with murder, and has been in jail since 2013. Forty-three-year-old Bac Duong has only been in custody for a month, and has been charged with attempted murder. Tieu is believed to be a member of a local Vietnamese gang, according to NBC News.

The escape route. Photo: Kathy Leverett/Orange County Sheriffs Department

Thirty-seven-year-old Hossein Nayeri has been charged with crimes that stem, according to NBC, from a stomach-churning episode that could have been an episode from Breaking Bad. In 2012, he kidnapped a marijuana-dispensary owner, drove him out to the desert with three other people, and ordered the victim to show him where he had buried money. Nayeri and his accomplices then chopped off the guys penis and drove away with it so it would be impossible to reattach. He also set the man, who lived, on fire with a blowtorch and coated him with bleach. He fled to Iran, his home country, and was eventually caught in Prague and returned to southern California, where he would later escape from again last Friday.

Orange County sheriffs deputies investigate early Saturday morning, January 23, 2016. Photo: Kevin Warn/AP/Corbis

The inmates were being kept in a dorm-type cell  bunk beds and all  with 65 other inmates. More than 900 people are held at the facility in Santa Ana. According to the Los Angeles Times, this is the first time anyone has escaped from the jail in 27 years. The Times adds that there is one employee per 33 inmates; the escapees werent found until around 9 p.m. Friday, hours and hours after they escaped.

Authorities have asked the public for help, in pleas written in English and Vietnamese. The fugitives arent believed to have traveled very far. Orange County sheriffs Lieutenant Jeff Hallock told reporters, We think its a strong possibility that [one of the escapees] may have connected with those fellow gang members in the Vietnamese community.

Locals have also been warned not to approach the fugitives. Were over 48 hours that we know this escape occurred, Hallock said. Yeah, they could be very desperate.
Hey, Im not cleaning that up, man. Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP/Corbis

On the second day after Winter Storm Jonas, vehicles can once again glide along most of New Yorks streets (except where they cant). Pedestrians, on the other hand, are left to clamber over frozen mounds and ford gelid salted streams, like characters in an urban remake of The Revenant. After years of policy aimed at making streets more friendly to pedestrians of all ages and abilities, after all the redesigned pedestrian crossings, new bike lanes, and retimed stoplights, a snowstorm is all it takes to make the city revert to its old priorities: first cars, then people. That graying four-foot mound you hauled yourself over this morning simply to cross the street is there because of civic decisions, not just weather.

The heaps at the curb are tough for everyone to navigate, but especially those whose mobility is limited. For days  weeks, if it snows again  the elderly live under effective house arrest. Traveling by bus can turn inadvertently exciting for people with disabilities, like the pianist Steven Blier, who gets around on a high-tech motorized wheelchair. The wheelchair lifts on the buses get slick with slush, and when they extend to snow-occluded curbs they hit at rakish angles. I have to go at full tilt to get up the ramp, and Ive been known to skid off to the side and ram into the little guardrail, Blier reports. People pay a lot of money at Coney Island for rides like this, I always tell myself.

Dont blame sanitation workers. They invariably do a heroic job of plowing roads in mid-blizzard, clearing the way for emergency vehicles and getting the city operational again in a matter of hours. The agency also dispatches an army of temporary workers, nearly 1,000 strong on Monday, to shovel bus stops, curb cuts, and fire hydrants.

Keeping sidewalks clear is the job of property owners, on pain of modest fines. The DSNY offers politely worded suggestions  shovel paths four feet wide, leave catch basins clear, dont push snow into a crosswalk  but those guidelines leave a lot of wiggle room. Consequently, a single block offers a great variety of terrain: clear, dry sidewalks in front of one business, a goat path in front of the next, virgin glacier by a vacant store.

In between, though, youre in no-mans-land. Pedestrians who step off a curb are crossing between spheres of private and public responsibility: Keeping your left foot dry might be up to the corner deli; your right foot is on the Department of Sanitations turf. City plows push snow up against the curb (or into bike lanes), and private snow blowers toss it back, in a game of jurisdictional cold potato. The result is protracted pedestrian misery.

It doesnt have to be this way, and in a city that really knows its snow, it isnt. Montreals published snow-removal policy explicitly states that roads, sidewalks, curb cuts, and bus stops must be cleared simultaneously. The municipality has the gear to make good on that promise. An army of small plows patrols the sidewalks, and giant snow blowers inhale the stuff off the roads and spit it into dump trucks, which cart it away rather than merely shoving it to the side.

Specialized equipment is expensive, of course, but the city could start by recognizing that crosswalk mounds and bus-stop sludge are not natural phenomena; theyre the product of policy. City Councilmember Helen Rosenthal, who has pushed for pedestrian-oriented street design, writes in an email: As we move towards Vision Zero, well have to think about the order of operations to move away from a car-centric perspective. Yes, we will. Now, in the lull between storms, might be a good time to dispatch a team of officials to more snow-adept cities like Montreal and Oslo and find out how to make just walking around in winter less of an extreme sport.
What does fashion look like in Central Asia and the Middle East? Its a question rooted in many identities, with growing Western influences in the Middle East: Dolce & Gabbana recently released its first-ever hijab and abaya line, while fashion houses like DKNY and Oscar de la Renta entered the market with special Ramadan collections last summer.

In her portfolio Pamiri Girl, photographer-artist Narisa Ladak captures traditional clothing worn by women of Pamir, Tajikistan. The women in these portraits immigrated to New York and Toronto, where Ladak photographed them wearing traditional Pamiri and Tajik clothing: kurta dresses in brilliant reds and whites, pechak hairpieces braided into their hair, and sifc beaded necklaces. All of the clothing is handmade, embroidered, and patterned in vibrant colors, and much of the fabric is silky or velvet.

Tajikistans Pamiri ethnic group lives in the Pamir Mountains that border Afghanistan, where Ladak met many Tajik women while working in telecommunications there for two years. Ladak was drawn to the women for their grace but also personally: Like most Pamiris and her Pamiri Girl subjects, Ladak is part of the Shia Ismaili sect of Islam. Pamiri women are known to have more freedom than Tajik women: They eschew veiled clothing and often participate in public gatherings as men would.

I was intrigued by how modern these women were, and how their culture and customs were so heavily influenced by the historical rule of their country by the Soviet Union until 1991, Ladak, who is from Toronto, says. I wondered how their culture interacted with Islam in a place so physically close to a conservative country like Afghanistan, yet a place so far away in terms of ideologies and customs.

Click ahead to see the portraits and hear from each woman, who told Ladak the stories behind their clothing.

This article has been updated to show that Tajikistan is located in Central Asia, not the Middle East.
I don't think the Bechdel test is really a fair thing. You can have strong female characters who don't talk to each other.

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k...but it's such a low bar and like every movie passes the reverse test

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exactly, that is the whole point, it is supposed to be showing that even if you set the bar incredibly low, most movies will still fail the test.

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And it would be like real life? Lol. Tell it tbh bbLuke

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the test isn't about strength of female characters, but about their presence. the point is that even though women make up 50% of the population, movies are mostly about men.

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The test is fine for what it is intended to do. It's not a test of the movie's feminism. It's a good macro look at female visibility and representation in film.

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It's not something I would judge individual movies with but I think it's a useful tool to look at Hollywood sexism at large. That so many movies fail to past the test is pretty pathetic.

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When you only have a tiny portion of women in a movie -- and when they never get to speak to each other -- they never feel real or relevant to me. They always just feel like cyphers. So they can be "strong" (whatever that means) and never really be women, imo.

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The other end of it is my problem: I think it's fine if they talk to each other about a man, but I do want two women to talk to each other.

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Agreed, I have my problems with it too, but sometimes I think it's more of a "tokenism" thing... like it's an indicator about the ratio of women in a movie and how they're represented because of that ratio.



(edit) sorry if this comment was unnecessary, I guess I type like a fuckin turtle cause by the time I posted it you had a lot more replies lmao



Edited at 2016-01-25 01:35 am (UTC)

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Bechdel speaks of two women talking to one another - not as a standard to live up to, but as a sarcastic response to the possibility of lesbian movies existing when not even two straight women are allowed to exist in a movie without their life revolving a around a man.



not only has the lesbian component been erased from it but now people are completely missing the point regarding the necessity of significant fucking presence of women in the movies.

just one woman is not enough, no matter how ~strong~ she is, in any universe. no, not even two.

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um yeah it is. it's the lowest bar possible for films.

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But it asks for so little and a lot of movies just can't measure up.

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Bechdel isn't really intended to individually test a film's feminist credentials or the strength of its female characters. It's a pointedly most basic of basic level representation test that's making a point about the broader industry, because there just really shouldn't be that many films failing it - and the ones that are should have a better reason for it than just being a sausage fest (like Gravity, for example - it'd fail Bechdel but it's a great female role). And yet there are.

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I agree. I hate the stupid test and wish people would stop talking about it.

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yep

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exactly. I would rather watch a movie with one strong female lead than watch a movie with several female characters who are terrible.

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The fact that you even have to consider "one strong female lead" to be an acceptable option just shows how absurdly low the bar is, though...

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why should we be settling for ONE strong female instead of demanding more

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Isn't it pretty absurd that these strong females leads don't have another woman character to talk to in the whole movie? Go look at the cast of Tomb Raider, there are no named women characters.

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what exactly is a "strong female lead"?

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But those are not our only options, right? Because that's just sad af. And how many movies exist and we watch with a bunch of terrible male characters?

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I haven't watched TDK in years, but maybe Rachel talks to some female cops at some point? I remember there being a woman in the police squad who had a pretty big role.

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The thing that makes so many films failing the Bechdel test so awful, though, is that it *is* such a hilariously low bar. And yet.

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you're missing the point completely.

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I am blown away by this news.

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I don't love the Bechdel test. Twilight passes but Gravity fails? lol k

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I don't love the beetled test either, but as far as I remember, Sandra Bullock is the only woman in the movie? so yeah

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It's rough because I really, really don't like Bechdel's work, and I have my concerns that her non-nuanced ideas about human interaction and the way people treat each other are being applied to people who don't have the issues that she does. Her thoughts about the world at large don't always stem from a healthy place.



In general, her "test" comes from Dykes to Watch Out For, and in the broader context of the narrative, it was more about lesbian voices than all women. But I'm also not surprised that the people who talk about the Bechdel test the most don't really know much about Bechdel herself.

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Gravity is an exception, though. There will be films that are outliers in ANY regard (we probably wouldn't get on the case of a film with only one character about casting diversity, for example), but that doesn't mean the broad trend isn't a pattern. The Bechdel test isn't supposed to say say anything specifically positive or negative about individual films.

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I haven't seen Gravity, so someone can correct me if this is wrong, but I read that it still manages to pass the reverse Bechdel test (two men talk to each other about something other than a woman). Soooo, that's a thing.

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ugh such a low bar we're stumbling over!



do they check that they pass the inverse bechadel? i'm sure they all do,

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Toy Story??



I'm pretty sure Andy's mom talks to her baby at some point~

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they were prolly talking about andy, lbr

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that's another issue with I have with it. talking about your son =/= talking about your boyfriend/husband.

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Yeah but still shows that the story revolves around men.



As someone said here, I don't think this test is about how feminist a movie is, but if they are invisible in this huge part of our culture or not.

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Wait they have conversations in Twilight that don't revolve around Edward or Jacob?

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They talk about going to the movies, they go prom dress shopping, Anna Kenrick makes fun of the wedding.

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damn I don't even remember any of that. I saw the movie once

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yeah like when bella and her friend went shopping

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I'm surprised, but I've never seen the movies so lol

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there's a lot of stuff about female friendship but Bella Swan is a really bad friend

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completely unsurprising but I wonder how many of the passing movies just had a brief, 10 second interaction between two random women and that was it for the whole movie



personally I like the amended version--two named female characters and they talk for at least 30 seconds

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i saw an article praising 'the force awakens' for passing the bechdel test and i waited and waited and waited and the only thing i noted was leia saying to rey, at the piss end of the film, "may the force be with you" and i was like THAT'S FUCKING IT?



later on, i realized that it was probably including maz too but even so.

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lmao, the bar is set THAT FUCKING LOW... I don't think the movies that pass the bechdel test are deserving some kind of praise, especially in a case like that. I do remember maz and rey talking about a few things, but it was also about luke and finn.



Edited at 2016-01-25 02:54 am (UTC)

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don't forget bb8 (if we count her as female)



but yes it would pass because of maz & rey

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i'm confused. isn't this talking about female writers, producers, and directors? why are all the comments talking about characters?



oic the first part mentions characters.

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you're baaaack

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Yeah, I think some people get defensive because there are obviously some movies with a great female character or characters that don't past the Bechdel test, but the point isn't that movies that don't pass are automatically trash... It's just sad that this test even has to be a thing, because nobody needs to catalogue movies where men share a scene talking about something other than a woman.

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The test isn't meant to judge real movies at all tbh. It's from one frame of a graphic novel from 20-ish years ago where a black lesbian character is being cheeky about which movies she'll pay for. Even sadder that race and sexuality have been erased by the people who think it's a legit benchmark of anything and not just something ripped from a glorified comic.

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i think people get confused about what the bechdel test is about. it's about judging whether or not a single film is "feminist", it's about looking at a culture's body of work and examining whether or not women are invisible. so yes, a movie about soccer moms obsessing about their daughters' beauty peagent passes the test, but that's not the point.



it also depends on what you consider progressive. for example, telenovelas tend to be shitty with regards to women, but i can always count on them to have have a varied casts of female characters that have relationships with each other. meanwhile, network tv in the usa tends to be a sausage fest that gets heaps of praise if it has a show or two with more than one woman in the main cast.

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Exactly. Showgirls passes the Bechdel Test ffs

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yep its for big picture stuff, u still have to look at movies on an individual level to determine how progressive they are

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bless this comment

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that's so true. and usually - at least with Brazilian novelas - the main character is a woman too.

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Yeah, I'm always glad that I grew up on telenovelas, because there was never a lack of varied, complex female characters. You have good girls, villains, comic reliefs, bussines women, housewives, anti-heroines, etc, and all on the same shows.

Its clear that there's a female gaze in place.

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Oh this weekend I started the 52 Films by Women challenge and totally recommend and encourage it to everyone



Edited at 2016-01-25 01:32 am (UTC)

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oh thank you! lol

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Yess ty bb

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Slightly related, but did anyone see the TCM Marathon of films directed by women? (This was during the month that Chantal Ackerman passed away, which was back in October).

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bow @ three of my favorite movies passing the test....though to be perfectly honest, it's very skant in the case of The Lego Movie ("you just said no a dozen times""and there's also no consistency")

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do need to talk about men)



but



the bar is set so friggin low anyway and to see that most films can't even do the basics of it...





I don't follow the Bechdel test all the time because you can still have strong female characters who don't talk to each other (and sometimes theyneed to talk about men)butthe bar is set so friggin low anyway and to see that most films can't even do the basics of it...

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icon love!

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I don't get hung up on the bechdel test in movies or TV. People gave True Detective season 1 shit for it and I didn't give a shit. I loved it anyway.

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Everybody loves things that don't pass the test. That's not the point.

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Don't even try. People here think that the Bechdel test is a true analytical tool for feminist advancement, but then they turn around and call Lindsay a liar for implying that she was abused by a man. ONTD will never have a view of advocacy or empowerment or human behavior that isn't a list of clinical bullet points.

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goddamn I feel the burn

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what post were you on? almost everyone in the lindsey post was saying they felt bad for her, that they wished she got help and got away from whatever guy was abusing her. there were maybe two or three posts suggesting she was lying.

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LOL yeah it's true. It's all talking the talk and no walking the walk.

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What does Lindsey Lohan have to do with this? I can believe in equal rights for all and think Lindsey Lohan is an awful human being. Being a feminist doesn't mean I automatically believe a woman just because she's a woman.



The test highlights the absurdity of the ratio of women to men in movies. Casts have an abundance of parts for men and few for women. Even if this tests only lead to more secondary women characters or small parts, it's a move forward.

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lol this straw man argument. You know ontd has multiple users right? And the Lindsay post was overwhelmingly support when I looked at it.

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I mean, you can love something and still be critical of it...

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essena oneal realness

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SPOILER ALERT!!: she's not

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"You people should just mail me some adderall and xanax"



same



but srsly.... yikes. :/

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lmao seriously

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lmao

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I mean, I wouldn't return the package

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lmao

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Right? Actually, just the Xanax pls.

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4.5k rent what the fuck

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right? is she renting a mansion?

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4.5k would get me rent, car payment, and all other bills paid and allow me to rent a home in the richest city in my state lmao

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shes a liar , shes def not paying that much.

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mte



I live in NYC so I am no stranger to high rent but for one person that is outrageous

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this is more than my combined income for a month

yiiiiikes

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seriously. I live in a two bedroom by myself and 4.5K is more than I rake in a month wahhh

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She's tacky as fuck and probably shouldn't be living somewhere so expensive but like, I really don't see any reason to be mad about this



if people are willing to donate to this mess, so be it.

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like if you should get mad at anyone get mad at the people donate to this fool

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even in this post alone the gofundme is not the most offensive thing but i think ppl have a right to call her out cause she is a pathological liar and also she might be on some srs drugs. nobody should enable her self medicating especially since she has a child.

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I mean, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. I just think it's dumb to get mad at someone for a gofundme, like yeah a lot of times it's dumb but people are funding it so like idunno, I don't really see her setting up the page as the problem...if that makes sesne

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I more mad at the idiots that donated to this. There are people that really need the money to get them on their feet. Not some bitch who needs new furniture & someone to pay their rent because fuck if they have to downsize.

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Poor people are really addicted to Mountain Dew and meth because Mountain dew has so much sugar it gives them a high & Meth just because.  Tila Tequila  (@AngelTilaLove) January 8, 2016



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let's put that in the ad campaign; Meth: Just Because

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LMAO

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lol

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I love this tweet

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prayer circle for this child...

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I'm drunk and watching The X-Files thinking about an episode where they discover Tila isn't from earth

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i know this is totally irrelevant, but is anyone else surprised by how good tila looks? you'd kind of expect her to be all filled up with fillers and botox and whatnot but she's actually still just as pretty and natural lookign as she was during the myspace days. it surprises me considering the amount of drugs and shit she must be doing.

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evil preserves well

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I totally think this is all just an act for attention in a Paris Hilton kind of way.

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+1. I was just thinking this very thing.

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Apparently she's allergic to alcohol so she doesn't drink that which I assume must help. Also I think she for sure has drug problems but most of her issues are probably mental health related.

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I was thinking the same thing.

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I'm genuinely concerned for her child's safety. Like I think shes going to kill the baby.

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I really wish child services would take her kid away. Like, damn!

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ia does she not have any concerned relatives?

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same, like some of those tweets about the kid were unsettling

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Im actually starting to think it is all an act. Her gofund me ad us really well written and coherent.

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lmao I don't think thats a reaction, I think that was his face when they announced his name at the beginning of one of the debates!

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he farted & the microphone caught it

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4.5k? better sell some ass

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Come on, Child Services.

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what a mess.



ngl i loved this hot garbage of a song back in the day. bless my bad taste <3





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i loved "bitch i ain't fuck ya man"

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i remember her myspace songs and like how everyone said she sounded like chucky from the rugrats. she kind of does.

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tommy pickles went wild

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not even going to lie, this is a jam

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this is a BOP

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I also bopped to this in high school tbqh:





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this is a legit bop though!!

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That's....surprisingly not the worst song I've ever heard.

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I feel bad for her kid. She is a damn mess and she needs to look into staying at a cheaper place.

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Yeah, idk about Cali prices but people in the Megan fox post made it seem like you can get a studio for like 1.5k. Still expensive as hell but still

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The sharp rally in oil prices at the end of last week came to an abrupt halt on Monday, with WTI and Brent both trading down more than 3 percent by midday.

The oil markets took another look at the fundamentals of oversupply after the largest two-day rally in seven years. There were a few reasons for this. First, China released new data that showed a decline in diesel consumption in 2015 compared to a year earlier. The figures added weight to growing concerns about a slowdown in the Chinese economy.

Also, at a conference in London on Monday, comments from Saudi Aramco Chairman Khalid Al-Falih were not received well by the markets. The chairman of the state-owned company said that it could withstand low oil prices for a long, long time. Moreover, he said that the company is still investing heavily in new sources of oil production, a not-so-welcome position for depressed oil markets.

Global equity markets are also down, and have fallen in concert with oil prices at the start of 2016. In fact, oil and equities have tracked each other much more closely than usual in recent weeks and months. Typically, a rise in oil prices depresses stocks because high commodity prices act as a drain on consumer economies. The reverse tends to also take place: falling commodity prices provide a stimulus to consumers, which has pushed up equities. Related: How Soon Could A Sustained Oil Price Rally Occur?

More recently, however, falling commodity prices have raised concerns about global growth. That has commodity prices and global equities moving together more than usual. According to Bloomberg, the correlation between commodity prices and global stocks  surging to a reading of 0.5  is at its most positive in over two years. In other words, more so than at any time since 2013, energy prices are moving up and down in concert with stocks, something that has typically been a rare relationship.

Meanwhile, safe-haven asset classes such as U.S. treasuries, the Japanese yen, and gold have performed better as of late. The correlation between oil prices and equities has turned positive, chief global economist at UniCredit Bank AG, wrote in client report on Sunday. The relationship is wrong, and therefore temporary.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Iraq has been one of the key contributors to the uptick in OPEC oil production over the past year and a half. Despite the fact that the countrys crude oil output has continuously been plagued by security concerns and faltering payments to international oil companies from both the Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad and an ongoing row over oil export rights, it has still managed to ramp up production to record levels.

Iraqs consistent and record oil output last year is, by and large, contributable to the production in the south of the country. According to a January 16. Reuters report, exports from its southern region have been running at 3.297 million barrels per day (bpd) so far in January, representing around 75 percent of the countrys total production.

Iraqs South Oil Co.s Deputy Director Salah Mahdi told Reuters in an interview that Iraqs southern oil exports have been running smooth over the last year and in spite of recent tribal violence in the region, he expects the companys drilling and export activities to continue undisturbed in 2016.

Figure 1: Iraqi oil output in 2015 in thousands of barrels per day

(Click to enlarge)

Image courtesy Peakoilbarrel.com

The above chart gives a good view of the production increases of Iraqi oil in 2015. The latest OPEC Monthly Oil Report shows a slight decline in Iraqs production output in December 2015. Related: Oil Markets Are Balancing Faster Than IEA Would Have Us Believe

OPEC has Iraqs oil production at 4,309 mmbpd in December and estimates its rig count at 51.

No reason to worry about Iraqs oil future it seems or is there?

As mentioned, the lion share of Iraqs oil is produced by Iraqs South Oil Co. around its main export facility, in the province of Basra. The chart below shows the oil deposits in Iraq and all the yellow spots are either giant or supergiant oil fields.

Figure 2: Iraqs oil deposits and (super) giant oilfields

(Click to enlarge)

Image source: Harvard world map

Even though the oil production around Basra is relatively far away from the ISIS controlled areas in Iraq and Syria, it was the same Iraqi government which was unable to prevent the fall of Mosul, Iraqs second city, and Ramadi, which has supposedly been liberated from ISIS, although the city is far from safe yet.

As coalition and Russian airstrikes continue to bomb ISIS positions in Syria and Iraq, the terror group is likely to continue to lose territory and influence but if we have learned anything it is that this is could be a long and protracted process. See chart 3 below for the ISIS controlled and contested areas in Iraq and Syria. Related: Why Surge In Renewables Investment Is Unrelated To Oil Prices

Figure 3: ISIS controlled and contested areas in the Middle East

(Click to enlarge)

Image Source: ISW

As the fight against ISIS continues in the north and west of Iraq, Shiite tribal violence has noticeably increased in Iraqs Basra province after the withdrawal of security forces. The vacuum has given plenty opportunity for tribal militias and criminal gangs to take a hold of the province main connecting roads with robberies, kidnappings and hijackings as a result. Last October, the South Iraq Oil Co. itself became victim of the violence as gunmen stole $500,000 in salaries from the company.

Although significant damage to oil assets has so far not been reported, most of the uproar has been dangerously close to the major - 200,000+ bpd - Qurna and Majnoon oilfields in which Shell and ExxonMobil are operating.

Recently, the Baghdad government has seen some success in suppressing the violence after moving in a complete army division and an intelligence unit in order to secure oil assets and bring down tensions in the oil rich city. Many however doubt the effectiveness of this military operation as local tribal clans as well as the local population resent the Baghdad government, with which they do not wish to share their oil profits.

This tension and resentment should be a concern for the Baghdad government as it relies for around 95 percent on oil exports. Government revenues are down sharply with the fall in oil prices  oil prices are down about 70 percent since 2014 and already down 30 percent since the beginning of this year. Not to mention the discount Iraq is forced to give on its crude as competition has grown fierce over the last months.

Is it pump or drown for Iraq in 2016?

Iraqs total oil output currently stands at around 4.3 million barrels per day. The important question is if Iraq can keep up these production levels in the current oil price environment. Related: The World Is Not Running Out Of Storage Space For Oil

Iraq has recently reached out to some of the worlds oil majors in an attempt to secure investment for its southern oil fields as some of its legacy oil fields are in decline. The Iraqi oil ministry and the Iraqi South Oil Co. are wooing ExxonMobil and PetroChina for a multi-billion dollar enhanced recovery project to boost production in some of the declining oil fields. The before mentioned Qurna West and Majnoon oilfields are also set to be revived using enhanced oil recovery techniques.

But as oil majors are massively scrapping new projects and have simultaneously cut their capital expenditure, not only are megaprojects and offshore projects being shunned but also oil projects that carry a high political or security risk may end up being left out.

Royal Dutch Shell has already announced that it will suspend new investment in further development of the Majnoon field and ExxonMobil has not shown itself too eager to take part in the multi-billion dollar development of Iraqs southern oil fields.

In spite of its deteriorating security situation in the south and the decreasing interest to invest in its new oil developments, one should note that Iraq, together with Iran and Saudi Arabia still have some of the lowest breakeven costs to extract a barrel of crude on a global scale (see below chart).

Figure 4: Breakeven cost estimate per barrel of crude oil

(Click to enlarge)

Source: Alliance Bernstein, October 2014

Conclusion

The question if OPECs second largest member can continue to ramp up its oil production significantly in 2016 will depend first and foremost on the Iraqi governments ability to reimburse international oil drillers who invest in oil projects (Iraq uses a sort of unique model to reimburse international oil companies that invest in its oil projects).

September 30th of last year, the Iraqi government had to ask international oil companies to scale down investments in order to be able to secure revenue payments to these companies in 2016 as it foresaw lower revenues due the drop in oil prices. It is most likely that this message has impacted the willingness and ability of the bigger foreign oil companies to invest and further develop Iraqs southern oil fields.

Secondly and equally important, Iraqs ability to provide a secure environment for its oil producing personnel and assets will determine how success these investment become. Lastly, a possible OPEC decision to stage a production cut, in which Iraq would have to participate, could alter output levels.

Considering all of this, it seems unlikely that Iraq will see any meaningful gains in production in 2016.

By Tom Kool of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Despite the nascent oil price rally that started to take hold at the end of last week, there is a broad swathe of financial distress that continues to engulf more players in the energy sector.

The descent of oil prices down below $30 per barrel was once unthinkable. Price forecasters have had to continuously revise their projections for 2016, with investment banks and energy agencies steadily publishing lower and lower predictions for where they think oil prices will bottom out.

Oil prices received a jolt on January 21 and 22, as a cavalcade of bullish news conspired to push oil prices back into the $30s per barrel. The markets got excited at the possibility of more aggressive action from the European Central Bank on Thursday after comments from Mario Draghi, the banks president. Related: Why Surge In Renewables Investment Is Unrelated To Oil Prices

Also, several voices weighed on oil prices, raising the questions about the unreasonable decline below $30 per barrel. The head of state-owned Saudi Aramco said that oil prices below $30 per barrel was irrational, and that he expected prices to rebound this year. Separately, Citigroup said that oil could be the trade of the year, because a price increase is nearly assured. After all, prices cannot go much lower, can they?

Meanwhile, even if prices rebound, the financial damage of $30 oil continues to impact energy companies around the world. Moodys Investors Service, in several separate moves, put 175 oil, gas, and mining companies up for review for possible credit downgrades. 120 of them are in energy and 55 are mining companies.

On January 21, Moodys issued notices on 69 E&P companies. Included in the long list of companies were important names like Transocean, Schlumberger and Chesapeake Energy. Even under a scenario with a modest recovery from current prices, producing companies and the drillers and service companies that support them will experience rising financial stress with much lower cash flows, Moodys wrote in a press release. Related: Citigroup: Oil Is The Trade Of The Year

Some companies are a lot worse off than others. In fact, Moodys said that it will be looking at multi-notch downgrades in some credit ratings. Multi-notch downgrades are particularly likely among issuers whose activities are centered in North America, where natural gas prices have declined dramatically along with oil prices, Moodys wrote.

That is a pretty dire warning for shale companies in Texas, North Dakota, and the Marcellus Shale. In fact, the day after Moodys issued the press release, Chesapeake Energy, the nations second largest natural gas producer, suspended its dividend to its preferred shares. The move will save $170 million, which Chesapeake will use to pay down debt. The companys stock price is down more than 80 percent over the past year.

On January 22, Moodys put four additional companies up for review for a downgrade, three of which are much more notable: Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and Statoil, plus all of their subsidiaries. Related: Oil Prices Rebound Above $30. Is A Rally Finally Here?

Behind the credit reviews is a rather dim view of the state of oversupply. Moodys wrote that production now exceeds demand by about 2 million barrels per day, which led the ratings agency to conclude that there is a substantial risk that prices may recover much more slowly over the medium term than many companies expect, as well as a risk that prices might fall further. And of course, if prices are lower for longer, it will cause further deterioration in financial ratios, including deeper negative free cash flow.

But, of course, prices around $30 are wholly unsustainable. A comment in the Moodys press release highlights this fact. Moodys wrote that most companies are unable to internally fund sustaining levels of capital spending at current market prices. The only way to fund operations is through more debt or asset sales. But debt markets have largely closed to drillers, and asset sales are probably not an answer either because valuations have declined by so much. Its rather difficult to sell assets into a depressed market, at least at prices that one might want. In any event, companies are not going to sell their way to growth.

In short, that means that production has to fall and prices will go back up. That has been the script that everyone has expected, but the adjustment period has simply taken a lot longer than anticipated. But the financial distress washing over the industry could hasten the rebalancing.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
In the last year of his presidency, Barack Obama appears determined to leave a legacy of limiting greenhouse gases believed to cause climate change, first by reducing the industrial burning of coal, and next by limiting the emission of methane from oil and gas fields on federal lands.

On Friday the Interior Departments Bureau of Land Management proposed limits on flaring, the practice of burning off excess methane produced in drilling for oil and gas, and a requirement that energy companies conduct periodic inspections for methane leaks.



Related: How Soon Could A Sustained Oil Price Rally Occur?

The rules, which would go into effect by the end of the year after public hearings on their implementation, would apply only to drilling on federally owned lands, which host drilling for only 5 percent of the countrys oil supply and 11 percent of its gas.

During the growth of U.S. energy production over the past decade, due in large part to new drilling techniques such as hydraulic fracturing, companies drilling in the United States have relied on flaring or simply allowing excess methane to escape into the atmosphere if theres no way to capture the gas. The new rules would require drillers to capture methane and make it available as fuel.

But the Interior Department says it would go a long way to achieving Obamas goal of reducing U.S. methane emissions by between 40 percent and 45 percent below their levels in 2012 by 2025. The bad news is that, if approved, they would cost the domestic energy industry between $125 million and $161 million a year.



Related: Iran Poses A Threat To Gazprom

The White House says methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in warming the Earths atmosphere, but methane emissions from oil and gas production dropped about 15 percent between 2005 and 2012, according to administration data. Still, Washington estimates these emissions will rise by 25 percent by 2025 unless it acts to limit them.

[W]e should be using our nations natural gas to power our economy, not wasting it by venting and flaring it into the atmosphere, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement. We need to  cut down on harmful methane emissions and use this captured natural gas to generate power and provide a return to taxpayers, tribes and states for this public resource.

Environmental groups applauded the move. [T]odays action from the Bureau of Land Management represents a positive step towards reining in this industrys misuse of our public lands, said Michael Brune, president of the Sierra Club.



Related: Citigroup: Oil Is The Trade Of The Year

Republicans in Congress rejected the move. One, Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that it would be too expensive and further dissuade and expel [energy] producers from federal land.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said the plan would hurt individual Americans. As the markets drop, and Americas saving and retirement portfolios suffer, its astonishing that this president would seek to further cripple Americas energy industry, he said. The American peoples welfare should not have to compete with the presidents desire to cement his climate legacy.

In fact, even if the rules survive the public-comment hearings, theres a chance theyll never get a chance to go into effect. Theyre not due to be implemented until the end of December, only weeks before Obama leaves office. If hes succeeded by a Republican, the new president may rescind them.

By Andy Tully of Oilprice.com:

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Republicans in Washington reacted with outrage to Secretary of State John Kerrys acknowledgment that money now available to Iran with the lifting of sanctions could end up funding terrorist activities, although he still believes in the overall benefits of the deal that prompted Iran to sharply curtail its nuclear program.

Iran was hurtling towards an unaccounted for, uninspected, full-fledged nuclear program with high levels of enrichment where they had enough enriched material to make 10 to 12 bombs, Kerry said Thursday in an interview with CNBC from the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Now, frankly, at Irans consent and agreement, they have rolled that back.

But he added, I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC [Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps] or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.  If we catch them funding terrorism, theyre going to have a problem in the U.S. Congress and other people, obviously.



Related: Oil Markets Are Balancing Faster Than IEA Would Have Us Believe

No need to wait. Already, Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, are criticizing the secretarys words. One is an outspoken critic of President Obamas foreign policy, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who accused Kerry of understating the threat.

It is certain that they will use this money to support terrorism, Graham said in Washington. You might as well have written the check to [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad yourself. You might as well have funded Hezbollah yourself.

Fellow Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire responded contemptuously to Kerrys remarks. Talk about stating the obvious, she said. Its something weve all known from the beginning.

Ayotte is leading a group of Republican senators who plan to introduce a bill that would stiffen the new sanctions that Obama imposed on 11 Iranian individuals and companies that he said had recently violated U.N. resolutions forbidding ballistic missile tests. The senators dismissed the sanctions as tepid and weak.

Kerry stressed to a group of reporters that theres no evidence yet of any improper use of newly freed funds, and said the reputations among Iranians of both Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and President Hassan Rouhani depend on Irans ability to improve the countrys economy, not fund military misbehavior.



Related: 10 Reasons why Sub $30 Oil Is A Major Problem

The secretary repeated an argument often made by the Obama administration that opponents of the deal with Iran have inflated the value of assets, now unfrozen, that are available to Tehran. Many say they amount to up to $150 billion, but he said theyre worth more like $55 billion because of the huge amount of foreign debt that Iran must repay.

Kerry acknowledged that the United States and its allies cant prevent every potential effort by Iran to use these assets for aggressive purposes. But I can tell you this: Right now, we are not seeing the early delivery of funds going to that kind of endeavor.

There have been signs of cooperation, if not an outright thaw, between Tehran and Washington that appear to be linked to the lifting of the sanctions. On Jan. 12 Iran captured 10 U.S. sailors who said their small craft had inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters of the Persian Gulf, but released them less than 24 hours later.



Related: Goldman Sachs Sees Oil Markets Turning Bullish Soon

In a move almost simultaneous with the lifting of sanctions, Iran freed four imprisoned Americans, including Jason Rezaian, a reporter for The Washington Post, who had been convicted of spying for the West. Washington responded by freeing seven Iranians imprisoned in the United States for violating the sanctions.

At the same time, though, Khamenei has warned his country to remain wary of American deceit, and other Iranian leaders have denounced the new sanctions related to the missile tests.

Kerry said he and Obama wish the two countries dialogue would improve. What Im trying to do and what President Obama is trying to do principally is move us away from that kind of confrontation and put to test whether or not we can find cooperation.

By Andy Tully of Oilprice.com

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Tamiru and Yehtinayet own, operate, and supply a store in the Piazza Area called Ester's. They picked us up from the Guest House and took us to their shop at closing time. Afterwards we went out to dinner together.













Thanks for visiting our blog about our journey to adopt our son from Ethiopia! It's been a long process and we are finally blessed to share the stories from the other side of the earth, in beautiful Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Catch up on previous post to this series by clicking Part 1 and Part 2 Meeting Our Son and Part 3 Warming Up.Throughout parts 1-3 we have shared the blessings of God's timing in bringing us to Ethiopia, meeting Tarik, and the visitation times that we have shared with him so far. This part 4 is taking you with us as we explore some of Ethiopia's beautiful country and learn more about her culture.We have shared with you before how we have friends who live in Ethiopia and by God's detail in his design for us to be adopting from Ethiopia, we were able to meet this family again. The first time we met was when they were visiting their family, who are friends of ours, here in the U.S. The miracle of this amazes me. So basically it goes like this. The month after we said yes to adoption in Ethiopia, a family moved to our neighborhood who were from Ethiopia. Of course we were instant friends! A truly wonderful family! Our neighborhood friends' family came to visit here in the U.S. from Ethiopia. They have two daughters who are near our oldest daughter's age. We were sitting around the table together and asking them questions about Addis Ababa, foods, safety, things like that. I showed Yetinayet, the mother, a Google Map of the location of the Guest House and orphanage of our agency. She looked and looked then said, "That's our neighborhood. We live down the street." Can you believe that?? Seriously a God thing and pure confirmation that God was directing our paths and lining up the steps before us.Needless to say, when we were able to travel to Ethiopia, our friends met us at the airport. They were a huge blessing to us helped us during our stay. Amazing people and family to us! And yes, their home was literally a walkable distance from the Guest House.Dinner was at the Semien Hotel in the capital city, Addis Ababa. More information and better pics are on thir website here: http://www.semienhotel.com/index.php/ethiopian-traditional-and-international-food . ANOTHER piece of God's design in His timing for us to be traveling now was that the country was fasting.Let me explain. First the fasting. The country's religion is dominantly Ethiopian Orthodoxy Christian. There are many times of fasting for various religious purposes such as Easter, or honoring a special person of Biblical times. More days of the calendar days are fasting days then not fasting days. Some fasting times are more widely participated, for example Easter, and others not as much. The fasting times call the Christians to hold more in the fore-front of their minds Christ, the followers of Christ, the event, etc of what the fast is being held. Those participating are asked to be in more prayer time, not to eat animal products (not even milk, creams, butter along with the meat products), no dancing, and just to be in a time of thoughtfulness and thanksgiving to God. Christian Orthodoxy is so widely participated and embraced that even Butcher Shops will close for these times and restaurants will either not serve animal products at all, or will offer a separate eating area for fasting foods.Why is this a blessing? I have an odd yet very severe food allergy to...animal products! All the times before travel this was a very huge worry to me in wondering how I was going to eat, explain my allergy, and seek medical help that I would need should an emergency arise. My friends had told me about the fasting times and taught me how to say in Amharic that I must eat as if I were fasting, but the good Lord took that burden from me completely! I was able to eat at the restaurants in full confidence that the fasting foods were safe for me. I am very thankful for this that I was able to enjoy eating the colors, tastes, and textures of Ethiopian foods!Following a wonderful dinner and conversation, we went to a Christian church. There were women praying at the doors of the church. Our friends explained that during fasting, some of the older women in the church would pray day and night at the church for weeks on end. The women will go to eat and then return again, even sleeping at the steps of the church for the time of fasting.The above right picture is an prayer alter that was at the church for those who wanted to offer prayers during the closing hours of the inside sanctuary of the church. Todd, our daughter, and I kneeled to pray as we knew there were many more hurtles to still get through inorder to travel home. We also gave offerings of thanks and praise to the Lord for all the amazing blessings that were unfolding before us after years and years of waiting. It was one of the most special times of our trip.The collage below is of another night out with our friends to a traditional resturaunt called Totot's. There webiste is found here: http://www.totottraditionalhall.com/ Music, fasting food full buffet, coffee, friends, just a picture perfect night!In the middle right picture, the staff is coming to each of us at the table with soap and warm water to first wash our hands before the meal. The bottom left picture shows Tamiru giving lessons to Todd of how to dip with the bread and eat instead of using a fork. Traditionally utentils are not used at the table. Since were are obviously visitors, then utensils were brought to the table. But Ethiopians use the ingera bread to dip, scoop, and eat their meals. Ingera is similar to a pancake but not sweet and more the consistency of a French crepe but spongy. Not near as tough as a tortilla shell, but I think you are getting the idea. Ingera is treasured in Ethiopia. It is made all the time and everywhere. The elderly people say to "respect the Ingera" and will even kiss their plates before and after a meal to show that the ingera is special to their Ethiopian hertitage.Todd made some ingera with our friends! Not bad for a first timer! Ingera is made from a flour type product called Teft, grown locally. Though teft is more like a grass than a wheat that we may think of. It is cooked traditionally over a hot fire and flat stone, but in our friend's kitchen this is the injera pan. And Gabriella is holding Todd's cooked injera!Coffee and the coffee ceremonies are another traditional gem of Ethiopia. "Bunna" is the Amharic word for coffee. The ceremony is a time when the server roasts the green coffee beans and prepares the coffee that fresh! She will sit on a small stool near the coal fire. The coffee is ground then put to boil in a clay pot over hot coals. Served in small coffee cups, the coffee is dense like espresso and oh so yummy. Usually popcorn is served or roasted barely called "kolo." Insense sticks or mixtures are burned during the ceremony and this is what the arrangements look like:Here at our friend's house, Yetinayet is the server while the girls and Todd are visiting together.More of our adventures around Addis take place after we have custody out of the foster home, and the little one gets to enjoy some trips with us! Read on and visit often as our story continues!!
God steps in

God steps in

GOD DID IT

Up against the impossible.

THANK GOD

ONLY GOD! PRAISING THE LORD!!

Thank the LORD

Thanks for visiting our blog about our journey to adopt our son from Ethiopia! It's been a long process and we are finally blessed to share the stories from the other side of the earth, in beautiful Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Catch up on previous post to this series by clicking Part 1 and Part 2 Meeting Our Son and Part 3 Warming Up and Part 4 Company and Culture, and Part 5 Seeing Growth. Don't miss Part 6 Taking Custody!Before we are able to travel home to the U.S. there are many steps that still need to take place. We have decided to stay in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia while these steps are happening. Todd must go back to work after 2 weeks stay, but our daughter and I can stay a little longer if we need too. Now that we made the decision to take Tarik out of the foster home, my daughter and I will be in country for as long as it may take to get Tarik home. This could be a month, maybe more, maybe less depending on all things that are not in our control. Our current flight out is on Saturday giving us one week to get all our papers ready, embassy approved, and fly out together.The stress being in country was more than we imagined. The unknowns, the lack of control or schedule, and hopes to just be finished and be home together- it was intense. There were so many obstacles still lined up in front of us that we felt like we were once again standing with our toes in the Red Sea and only God's power was going to part these waters in front of us. Toes in! We had to call on faith and just believe that God was going to pull through. Now, after years of prayer, was go time.In order for us to get home, we need to first have the birth certificate, passport, doctor clearance, and the court decree. We had already had the birth certificate picture taken, the passport picture taken and now for the doctor clearance. Tarik and I were taken to the doctor appointment. The prayer request here is that Tarik passes as being under two years old. He is under two years but very close to turning two. What's the big deal? Under two years and the tuberculosis test is read same day versus older than two years and the test has to be sent away and can take 2 more days to clear. This is time we just don't have to wait.and gets us to the right doctor that allows us to pass under two years old physical. Thank God!Next, we need a certain number from the US immigration. Problem being? Internet in Ethiopia is very, very sketchy and even when we can get information emailed to our agency in the U.S. there is the time lapse issue. We are at night and day differences so when offices are open in the U.S. they are closed in Ethiopia. This was very difficult.and opens this door! Our number comes through in time for the next step to begin.What's next? We get news that our court decree is completed and has been submitted to the US Embassy for review. Problem. The embassy found a wrong date on the court papers. Start over.Now we need a new court decree. This is easier than it sounds. Paperwork is a nightmare. Getting a new one, I can't imagine the run around. Getting what paperwork we did, means driving it there, getting into an office appointment, hoping the people you need to see are in, getting approval, then driving the new paper to translations. And yeh, can I add that after collecting all these important as gold papers then driving up to a literal shack made of orange tarps and it's the "translation office," um, I was near hyperventilating over it all. Plus, it was raining, pouring rain outside to deliver this new court decree. Tomorrow, it should be corrected and ready for pick up.Next we face the U.S. Embassy. After the new court decree was turned in and accepted, we can have all of our paperwork submitted to the U.S. Embassy to review again and then call us in for an interview. Problem: Our agency can only submit to the embassy on Mondays and Wednesdays. You miss Wednesday and yes, we wait the rest of the week and weekend until next Monday. Already, we missed our flight. Prayer and plead: Lord please let our papers get to the U.S. Embassy on time and on Wednesday!again and got those papers to the embassy despite many many road blocks that are too confusing to mention. Just know, it was awful and impossible.The Internet is not our friend. We get barely any service and when we do, you should see the families in the guest house make a mad dash for their phones! About 5 minutes at a time of Internet and maybe 15 minutes if lucky! Best time for Internet service was in the evening. Worst time to try to communicate with the embassy over email - they close. No phone calls aren't an option as the embassy will only communicate via email. You miss your email, you miss your interview, you miss your ticket home.So let me recap, Wednesday we got submitted to embassy after a paper mistake was redone. Friday the embassy is closed and Saturday is our flight out together. We need an interview and then 48 hours for Tarik's visa to process before we can leave. Impossible again. We pray.All Thursday we are waiting for the internet to come on. It doesn't signal until near 6 in the evening. The good news? Embassy emailed us and we have an interview for Friday morning! WHAT?? This rarely happens and Friday usually means no visa processing. Ok, thanking GOD for this, but can I ask more? We need our visa on Friday too and not to wait over the weekend, or we miss our flight out together.Friday morning we arrive at the U.S. Embassy and the offices look like a piece of American Heaven. The bathrooms are lovely after what we have been used to, and can I say that there was green grass in the court yard too! It made me long for home! We wait to be seen. The man calls us up to the counter after we waited a very long time. Turns out the fellow who called us in for a Friday interview, got called out on an emergency. Thankfully, this other fellow was going to take our case. He asked us questions then asked us, "did we meet our son before court?" Oh not this again. Problem is, if we weren't approved, then Tarik would enter the U.S. a non-citizen and we would have to apply for citizenship. No more paper work please!and this time I cried, since we both appeared before court together then we were approved for the type of visa that would allow Tarik to be an automatic citizen when we touched U.S. soil! THEN, the visa situation. Now we could have been told that it would take another 48 hours to process the visa. NOT with GOD! - the fellow said, "things are going well today, so wait about 20 minutes and we'll have that visa for you."Crying again. So very grateful!! We can go home together tomorrow!!!Or can we? After total excitement and coming back to the guest house to pack up, I get this sense that we should check on Tarik's plane ticket home. I tried to email our travel agent in the U.S. but hadn't received a response. Who knows if he got the request. We called the airline and they said we had to go to their office and this couldn't be checked at the airport. Thank the Lord for friends. We called our friend Tamiru and asked if he could help out. We needed a ride to the airline office at the Hilton Hotel and we needed his help in translating our need.Tamiru saved the day and drove us to the Hilton. A beautiful hotel and resort area we found airline's office. Asking about Tarik's flight ticket, we come to find out that yes, our request for a ticket was made, but there was. Tarik's name (we are still going with his given name Rebira at this point) was spelled wrong. This means, his ticket doesn't match his passport and he will not be allowed to board the plane. Oh. my. good. God. please get us out of this one!! The embassy had to be called and all kinds of arrangements cleared and made so that the ticket name could be changed. Can you imagine if we didn't find this out until Saturday when boarding the plane? We would have missed our flight. Embassy is closed on Saturdays and we would have been back at the guest house waiting. More than that, flights are so booked being that everyone is traveling back to the U.S. for the end of summer, that flights were closed and fully booked up to 2 weeks out.he helped us out of this mess again!! Move those waters!!Only our great big God could've helped us home. After this very long Friday, we had a wonderful dinner with our friends before packing up the guest house room we have called home.More to come.... Read our part 8: Sight Seeing where we capture some of the places we visited before part 9: Coming home!!
Surely, we don't need a degree in political rocket science to figure out who Karl Rove want to see running as a Democrat, in 2016.

Karl Rove leads the propaganda machine called "American Crossroads"

Karl Rove is using his propaganda machine to influence Demoratic primary voters- he needs to "MYODB"

It's like Rove knows the threshhold of support for "none of the above" in the Republican line up must, at least, rise above what Democrats can accumulate in support from voters.





Rove is a strategist who finds devious ways to leverage the negative, in favor of Republican candidates. In the line up of wanna-bees for 2016, there's nobody among the Republicans who is exempt from being reduced to negative rubble, by each other. Therefore, strategist Rove made the decision to do to Democrats what the Republicans are doing, to denegrate each other.





Of course, it's not fair to single out Secretary Hillary Clinton in the "Mind Your Own Damn Business" Karl Rove negative ad campaign. What Rove really wants to do is to expoentially build enough negative campaign momentum within the Democratic candidates, so that they'll do to one another what Repbulicans are successfully doing to turn on themselves. Rove's strategy is revealed as being deceitful by Hillary Clinton. Also, the intention of the Rove ads is, ultimately, to benefit Senator Sanders so the Republicans can begin their "Willie Horton" style campaign against him. Nevertheless, qualified Democratic candidates- Senator Sanders, Secretary Clinton and Governor O'Malley, must resist the pressure to create negative ads against each other. If Democrats start throwing political stones at each other, they'll be doing exactly what Karl Rove is hoping to achieve with his "Mind Your Own Damn Business", negative campaign ads.





Even worse, if Democrats fall victime to the Rove propaganda machine, they'll be allowing political operatives with American Crossroads (aka "Rove Propaganda) to influence the selection of a Democratic presidential candidate.

Hillary: Karl Rove Behind Attacks NewsMax reports





Clinton was asked by moderator Chuck Todd whether big banks paying her more than $200,000 per speech hurt her credibility.



Clinton responded that she gave speeches to a "wide array of groups," after ending her stint at President Barack Obama's secretary of state.



"People were interested in what I saw, what I thought," she said. "Americans doing business in every aspect of the economy want to know more about the world."



"You dont think they expect anything in return?" Todd asked.



"Absolutely not," Clinton insisted, pointing out that she took on Wall Street during her time as the Senator from New York.



"And it's really interesting to me that now I know how to get it done to make sure Wall Street writ large, not just the big banks but the investment banks, hedge funds, and everybody else, can no longer wreck our economy the way they did in 2008." Republican operative Karl Rove is behind an attack ad aimed at turning Iowa caucus-goers against her, Democrat Hillary Clinton said Sunday on "Meet the Press." (with Chuck Todd) Clinton was asked by moderator Chuck Todd whether big banks paying her more than $200,000 per speech hurt her credibility.Clinton responded that she gave speeches to a "wide array of groups," after ending her stint at President Barack Obama's secretary of state."People were interested in what I saw, what I thought," she said. "Americans doing business in every aspect of the economy want to know more about the world.""You dont think they expect anything in return?" Todd asked."Absolutely not," Clinton insisted, pointing out that she took on Wall Street during her time as the Senator from New York."And it's really interesting to me that now Karl Rove is taking money from the financial interests who run an ad against me to try and influence Democrats not to support me," she said. "Why? Ask yourself why? Because he knows, one, I know what needs to be done, and two,the way they did in 2008."





The ad to which Clinton referred was made by Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads (aka "Rove Propoganda"). In the add, it accuses Clinton of being able to pay for her massive TV ad buys with money from Wall Street interests. ( OMG! This is the ultimate Republican hypocrisy! Operatives like Rove obviously have no ethics, whatsoever. Senator Cruz took plenty from Goldman Sachs, to name just one.... )





A graphic in the ad shows Clinton receiving $6.4 million from Wall Street speaking fees and only $118,000 from Iowans contributing to her campaign.



"Hillary rewarded Wall Street with the $700 billion bailout," the ad's announcer says. "Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?"





Clearly, Karl Rove and his unethical operative band of American Crossroads pirriahas want their "last person standing" our of the GOP line up to be running against Senator Bernie Sanders. Of course, if it's Senator "Cruz to loose" who eventually winds up standing on the GOP nomination platform this summer, then the Karl Rove "MYODB" can easily be turned around. "What goes around comes around," "eh"? (As they say in Canada)





To be continued: "The Underhanded 'Rove-Cruz' connection".









Labels: American Crossroads, Hillary Clinton, Meet the Press, propogana, Senator Ted Cruz
In my opinion, the world's most worthy candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize are those people who are helping the despearate Syrian refugees . Obvously, it's likely many people in Syrian are trying to help. the refugees. In fact, there's likely somebody in Syria who is the next "Ann Frank" example, some person who is writing a yet to be discovered chronicle about the ethnic tyranny and the evils perpetrated by the tyrant President Assad.

Greeks are accepting these desperate Syrian refugees and deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian herosim.

Meanwhile, the Greeks are showing a heroic public humanitarian response to the plight of the Syrian refugees. Although Greece is a nation in economic turmoil, the people, nevertheless, are responding to the despearate needs of the proverbial tsunami tidal wave of Syrian refugees, who are floating on to their soils, in need of humanitarian assistance. In fact, the Greeks are trying to help the refugees. Americans need to do much more!!!!

Petition calls for Greek islanders to be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize By CNN By Tim Hume









Now, an online petition has been launched calling for the efforts of these "unsung heroes" on islands in the Aegean Sea to be recognized with a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.



, is addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee and Greece's Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas and had attracted more than 288,000 signatures by Sunday. (CNN) Residents of the Greek islands have found themselves on the front lines of Europe's migration crisis. They're rescuing, feeding and sheltering hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants who found their way to their shores.Now, an online petition has been launched calling for the efforts of these "unsung heroes" on islands in the Aegean Sea to be recognized with a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. The petition, on the Avaaz website , is addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee and Greece's Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas and had attracted more than 288,000 signatures by Sunday.



"Ordinary residents of Greek islands and other volunteers have been on the front lines of Europe's refugee crisis for months, opening up their hearts and homes to save hundreds of thousands fleeing war and terror.



"For their compassion and courage, for treating those in danger with humanity, and for setting an example for the rest of the world to follow, we citizens around the world, nominate these brave women and men for a Nobel Peace Prize.



"Nobody is more deserving of such honor than these unsung heroes."



Greece's government would consider backing the Nobel Peace Prize petition.





A Nobel Peace Prize awarded to help those assisting the Syrian refugees would continue to focus on the plight of these despearate people and provide deserved moreal support for their rescuers.

Labels: Ann Frank, President Assad
By Steve Buckstein

As Oregons February legislative session approaches, Governor Kate Brown wants to head off a contentious minimum wage ballot measure that would raise Oregons rate up to $15 per hour over three years. But, her plan seems to upset all sides.

She has determined that the Portland area minimum wage should be exactly $15.52 by 2022. She has also figured out that the rest of the state should impose a $13.50 minimum by 2022. That is entirely too long to wait, according to activists behind the ballot measure.

Solid research concludes raising the minimum wage at all is not an effective way to alleviate poverty. It is, however, an effective way to pander to voters who either dont read the economic literature, dont believe it, or dont care.

Oregon already has one of the highest minimum wage rates in the country at $9.25 per hour. But, with some cities and states determined to raise their rates to $15 soon, our Governors $15.52 Portland area proposal over six years may not be enough to keep us at the forefront of pricing the least-skilled people out of the workforce altogether.

Perhaps she should go for a $30 minimum wage rate by 2030. Or a $40 rate by 2040. Orwell, you get the idea.

Steve Buckstein is Founder and Senior Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregons free market public policy research organization.
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Obama urged Pakistan to be more serious about crushing extremist networks

NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama has urged Pakistan to show it is serious about crushing extremist networks operating on its territory, saying the latest mass killing of students underlined the need for more decisive action.



In an interview with the Press Trust of India published on Sunday, Obama said the crackdown on extremists was the right policy but was quoted as saying that Pakistan can and must take more effective action.



The US president praised recent crackdowns by security forces but said more should be done to eradicate violent groups.



Pakistan has an opportunity to show that it is serious about delegitimising, disrupting and dismantling terrorist networks, Obama told the news agency in Washington.



In the region and around the world, there must be zero tolerance for safe havens and terrorists must be brought to justice.



Twenty-one people were killed last Wednesday in an attack at a university campus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwas Charsadda town, which was claimed by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, barely a year after a massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar that killed 144 people.



A military offensive against extremists in tribal areas was intensified after the Peshawar attack. Since then (Peshawar), we have seen Pakistan take action against several specific groups, said Obama. We have also seen continued terrorism inside Pakistan such as the recent attack on the university in northwest Pakistan.



Describing the terror attack in Pathankot as another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long, Obama gave credit to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reaching out to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif after the attack.



Both leaders are advancing a dialogue on how to confront violent extremism and terrorism across the region, he said.



In a clear signal to China, Obama said all countries should play by the same rules in international law including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea while India can be an anchor of stability in the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean region.



He also said India and US will continue to expand their military exercises and maritime cooperation so that the two forces become interoperable.



Obama said during his visit to India last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he agreed to a new joint vision for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean region. Its rooted in our shared interests in a region thats peaceful and prosperous and where all countries play by the same rules, in accordance with international law and norms, including freedom of navigation, Obama said.



Obama said the US recognises that the Indian Ocean is vital to the security of the region and the global economy. Our vision recognises that the Indian Ocean is vital to the security of the region and the global economy. And it welcomes Indias determination to Act East with stronger security and economic partnerships across the region, he said.
National League for Democracy (NLD) issued a directive on 22 January that Aung San Suu Kyi would be the only one who is allowed to answer and talk about its policy during the period of transition from quasi-civilian Thein Sein regime to NLD-led incoming government.

The drastic action came about as spokesman U Nyan Win talked to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the choice of two house speakers - Upper and Lower House of the parliament  prematurely that visibly made Aung San Suu Kyi upset, who thought it should be kept secret until officially announced.





On 20 January, U Nyan Win told AFP that senior party member Win Myint would be tapped to serve as speaker of the Union Parliaments Lower House, while the ethnic Karen MP-elect Mahn Win Khaing Than, also from the NLD, would get the partys backing for the Upper House.





The NLD later refused the selection have been made but neither confirmed nor denied the line up made known by U Nyan Win and said that official announcement would be made soon.





Against this backdrop and in relation to what U Nyan Win has made known, Sai Nyunt Lwin secretary general of Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) told Mizzima on 21 January, that a token placing of ethnic MPs in some key parliamentary spots either by Aung San Suu Kyi or according to the demand of some ethnic politicians, won't be enough for reconciliation with the ethnic nationalities. But discussion between ethnic political parties and NLD to map out policy matters such as constitutional amendment and formation of a federal union together is more important than just installation of some ethnic MPs to key governmental positions.





Hkun Htun Oo, Chairman of the SNLD regarding the rumour that there won't be a Vice-President post available for the ethnic nationalities recently said: (I) want the NLD to be an all-inclusive government. They are shouting (voicing) national reconciliation government. The ethnic nationalities have to be included.





He stressed that since his party won some 40 seats, they would be ready for the post of Shan State Chief Minister if selected, but the problem was that the NLD hasn't initiated the meeting with the SNLD and other ethnic parties until now, according to the media reports.





Regarding the problematic nature following the NLD issued directive, Hkun Htun Oo told BBC on 23 January that Aung San Suu Kyi should regularly meet the press and make clarification as needed.





Meanwhile the Arakan National Party (ANP) concerning the Arakan State government formation said if its party is not given the opportunity to lead and given State Chief Minister post, it will go into opposition and also would not participate in any government organization.





Of the 48 seats in Rakhines regional parliament, the ANP won 23 seats and the NLD 13, while the military occupies 12 seats  or 25 percent  under the countrys constitution. The ANP still needs another 2 more seats to have absolute majority.





We are engaged in politics for the development of our nation and the state. If the NLD does not want to work with us and refuses to speak to us  then we frankly want to say we are going to stand in opposition to an NLD-led government, the ANP statement read.





The frustration of the ANP could be detected as chief U Hla Saw told Anadolu Agency on 21 January that they had been waiting to negotiate with the NLD, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, since the official results of the November election were announced. But no word from NLD yet, he said by phone.





To top off his disappointment he said: We hoped that the political dialogue that is being widely discussed would take place between the ANP and the NLD. However we are not seeing the same attitude from the NLD. Instead, they have publicly spoken about their intention to form the regional government in Arakan State despite the fact that they only won nine seats in this region and refused to have a political dialogue with our party, which won 23 seats.





Rumours abound





As unclear NLD policy on how it will interact with the ethnic political parties remains a misery, the disappointment and frustration on the part of the non-Bamar ethnic nationalities snowballed into distrust that could make reconciliation a more formidable task.





Against this backdrop, the rumours making the rounds make the political guessing game more exciting for stakeholders, news media and as well Burma watchers, if not exactly beneficial to the prevailing cacophony sounding atmosphere.





For example presidential position is rumoured to be occupied either by NLD patron Thura U Tin Oo, Dr. Tin Myo Win or Sayar Min Thu Wun's son U Htin Kyaw, according to NLD sources.





As for Union Election Commission, Thura U Shwe Mann who is closed to Aung San Suu Kyi is said to be slated to take over.





Regarding States and Regions Chief Ministers, Dr Zaw Myint Maung for Mandalay Region, Dr Myint Naing for Sakaing Region, Nang Khin Htwe Myint for Karen State, U Nyi Pu for Arakan State and the rest of the States and Regions would be selected from central committee members of the NLD.





Even 3 to 4 from the Union Peace and Development Party (USDP) would be allotted positions in the government and Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing had said to have asked Aung San Suu Kyi to reinstate U Aung Min, the top peace negotiater of President Thein Sein, according to a source near to the NLD.





Of course, such rumours are hard to verify and one only have to wait until official announcements are made.





Where to Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD?





The solo taking over of the spokesperson role by Aung San Suu Kyi could be a sign of insecurity on how to handle the multi-tasks undertaking involving the choosing of candidates for key political positions in the parliament and as well the government ministers, not to mention the presidential candidates, who she would install as a figurehead. Suu Kyi, according to the constitution 59(f) Section could not become President and thus have made known that she would rule by proxy.





Apart from that she still also couldn't find time or has no program to meet the ethnic political parties to determine on how the constitutional amendment and federal form of government would look like, to the disappointment of ethnic nationalities. For they might take it as that given her landslide win in most ethnic states, except for the Shan and Arakan, she doesn't have to compromise, negotiate and consult the ethnic political parties any more.





If this is the case, she is going to be on the wrong track, for no amount of vote gained in ethnic states would grant her a blank check to do whatever she likes and that ethnic rights to exist and ethnic self-determination cannot be nullified or taken away by anybody. Also she should not forget that the votes she had collected from the ethnic states are in large part tactical votes and of course, also due to her popular world stateswoman stature than the NLD policy declaration.





In the long run, if she is true to her ideas of genuine federalism, she should refrain from competing in ethnic states in the next elections, but instead should form coalition with like-minded ethnic political parties and endorse them so as to empower and let them grow, to adequately and conscientiously work for their individual state on their own.





While it is arguable that in an election any party, especially which considers itself as a nationwide party, cross-cutting ethnic lines, could compete any where like in the case of NLD. But there is a moral ethnic aspect that should be observed, not to intrude into ethnic states where the heavy weight Bamar political party could bully the politically handicapped home-grown ethnic political parties, which are materially and capacity wise no match to such nationwide competing party. No federalism minded dominant ethnic group should entertain such idea, particularly when national state-based federal union is to be the norm and system of governance.





For example in Federal Republic of Germany the ruling Christian Democratic Union party never venture into Bavarian State where it's coalition party Christian Social Union is strong. In contrast, the NLD's deeds could not be taken as such when compared to its relationship with the ANP and SNLD, in Arakan and Shan states respectively. And if one is not forgetful, the NLD had worked closely with the ethnic parties under the banner of the Committee Representing the People's Parliament (CRPP), during the two decades repressive years of military rule.





But it could well be that the priority setting of NLD Chairwoman has changed, after the landslide election victory, which is to woo the military more at the expense of the ethnic nationalities, according to Sai Leik, the SNLD's spokesman.





In sum, Aung San Suu Kyi has to walk an extra mile to fulfill her pledge of reconciliation with the ethnic nationalities, after she has done her part quite well with the military. Otherwise, her commitment to build a national reconciliation government together with the military and ethnic in words and deeds will be thoroughly questioned and would even be seen in league with the military to subdue the ethnic aspirations of equality.





Other than that, all the rest of NLD top decision makers would need to get rid of their phobia that the military will find reasons not to hand over power like in the aftermath of 1990 NLD's landslide election win. It is evident that, the present military is keen to improve its image and have embarked on a democratization process, even if it is dubbed a discipline-flourishing democracy for whatever the said label is meant to portray.




Paul O'Shea is an Australian based historian who has written on Pope Pius XII and Catholic responses to the Holocaust for over fifteen years. This blog is designed to be a place of balanced and reliable scholarship on Pius XII and his papacy during World War II and the Holocaust.
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My Della Mae video playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKa6O-DUsAoB4_zACiYD72cm4K-2JXQ4F





My Billsville House Concert video playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKa6O-DUsAoCVHPI27BQl3Pj0VF-m0GvU

January 22, 2016Manchester, VT Della Mae , the all-women noveau bluegrass ("newgrass") band based in Nashville performed at ahouse concert in Manchester, Vt Friday night. Billsville House Concerts hosted these five amazingly talented women, house concert number 81 or 82 there was some question prior to the show's start. Della Mae was winding down a New England tour and the dates worked.They opened the show with "Letter From Down The Road" a tune off their 2013 Grammy nominated "This World Oft Can Be" CD.A few songs in, the full house, standing room only crowd was treated to a Sippy Wallace song Celia Woodsmith Boyd called "the sassiest song I've ever heard", one that Bonnie Raitt made famous "Woman Be Wise"Since its formation in 2009, the Boston-bred, Nashville-based outfit has established a reputation as a charismatic, hard-touring live act. Seeing them in this imitate setting was quite a treat.House concerts allow for band/audience interaction that even smaller venues (listening rooms) cannot provide. Touring to promote their 2015 release entitled "Della Mae" the band heads to the west coast in February but returns to our area in June for the Roots on The River Festival in Bellows Falls VT. They will be performing Friday night June 3. Tickets are on sale now.Della Mae also serve as cultural ambassadors in the U.S. State Department's American Music Abroad program. In that capacity, they've undertaken a series of extended trips to Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, playing concerts for local audiences as well as collaborating with local musicians and participating in children's music-education programs.Add this band to your must see list, you'll be glad you did!Della Mae is:Celia Woodsmithvocals, guitarKimber Ludikerfiddle, vocalsJenni Lyn Gardnermandolin, vocalsCourtney Hartmanguitar, banjo, vocalsZoe Guigueno-- bass, vocalsImages from the show: https://photosbynanci.smugmug.com/Della-Mae/Billsville/
University at Buffalo students test their underwater wireless network in Lake Erie. Credit: Douglas Levere, University at Buffalo

Like Beanie Babies and Steve Urkel, the systems we use to transmit information through water bring to mind the 1990s.

The flashback is due to the speed of today's underwater communication networks, which is comparable to the sluggish dial-up modems from America Online's heyday. The shortcoming hampers search-and-rescue operations, tsunami detection and other work.

But that is changing due in part to University at Buffalo engineers who are developing hardware and software tools to help underwater telecommunication catch up to its over-the-air counterpart.

Their work, including ongoing collaborations with Northeastern University, is described in a study - Software-Defined Underwater Acoustic Networks: Toward a High-Rate Real-Time Reconfigurable Modem - published in November in IEEE Communications Magazine.

"The remarkable innovation and growth we've witnessed in land-based wireless communications has not yet occurred in underwater sensing networks, but we're starting to change that," says Dimitris Pados, PhD, Clifford C. Furnas Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UB, a co-author of the study.

The amount of data that can be reliably transmitted underwater is much lower compared to land-based wireless networks. This is because land-based networks rely on radio waves, which work well in the air, but not so much underwater.

As a result, sound waves (such as the noises dolphins and whales make) are the best alternative for underwater communication. The trouble is that sound waves encounter such obstacles as path loss, delay and Doppler which limit their ability to transmit. Underwater communication is also hindered by the architecture of these systems, which lack standardization, are often proprietary and not energy-efficient.Pados and a team of researchers at UB are developing hardware and software -everything from modems that work underwater to open-architecture protocols - to address these issues. Of particular interest is merging a relatively new communication platform, software-defined radio, with underwater acoustic modems.

Traditional radios, such as an AM/FM transmitter, operate in a limited bandwidth (in this case, AM and FM). The only way to pick up additional signals, such as sound waves, is to take the radio apart and rewire it. Software-defined radio makes this step unnecessary. Instead, the radio is capable via computer of shifting between different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is, in other words, a "smart" radio.

Hardware developed by UB researchers

Applying software-defined radio to acoustic modems could vastly improve underwater data transmission rates. For example, in experiments last fall in Lake Erie, just south of Buffalo, New York, graduate students from UB proved that software-defined acoustic modems could boost data transmission rates by 10 times what today's commercial underwater modems are capable of.

The potential applications for such technology includes:

Monitoring pollution.

Military and law enforcement work; for example, drug smugglers have deployed makeshift submarines to clandestinely ferry narcotics long distances underwater. An improved, more robust underwater sensor network could help spot these vessels.

The scuba industry; diver-to-diver walkie-talkies exist but their usefulness is limited by distance, clarity and other issues.

The energy industry; an improved network could make finding oil and natural gas easier.

Explore further Taking the Internet underwater
A spotted hyena investigates a puzzle box after an experimental trial that showed carnivore species with larger brains relative to their body size are better at solving problems. Credit: Sarah Benson-Amram

Why did some species, such as humans and dolphins, evolve large brains relative to the size of their bodies? Why did others, such as blue whales and hippos, evolve to have brains that, compared to their bodies, are relatively puny?

It has long been thought that species with brains that are large relative to their body are more intelligent. Despite decades of research, the idea that relative brain size predicts cognitive abilities remains highly controversial, because there is still little experimental evidence to support it. However, a paper released today describes a massive experiment that supports the theory.

Sarah Benson-Amram, an assistant professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming, is the lead author on a new paper, titled "Brain size predicts problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores." It shows that carnivore species with larger brains relative to their body size are better at solving a novel problem-solving task. The paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals.

Other authors of the study include Kay Holekamp, a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University; Ben Dantzer, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan; Eli Swanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota; and Greg Stricker, also from Michigan State University.

The authors traveled around the country to nine different zoos and presented 140 animals from 39 different mammalian carnivore species with a novel problem-solving task. The study included polar bears, arctic foxes, tigers, river otters, wolves, spotted hyenas and some rare, exotic species such as binturongs, snow leopards and wolverines. Each animal was given 30 minutes to try to extract food from a closed metal box. To access the food, an animal had to slide a bolt latch, which would allow a door to open. The box was baited with the favorite food of the study animal, so red pandas received bamboo and snow leopards got steak.

The main result is that species with larger brains relative to their body size were more successful than species with relatively smaller brains.

"This study offers a rare look at problem solving in carnivores, and the results provide important support for the claim that brain size reflects an animal's problem-solving abilitiesand enhance our understanding of why larger brains evolved in some species," Benson-Amram says.

Dantzer explains that, "Overall, 35 percent of animals (49 individuals from 23 species) were successful in solving the problem. The bears were the most successful, solving the problem almost 70 percent of the time. Meerkats and mongooses were the least successful, with no individuals from their species solving the problem."

Interestingly, larger animals were less successful overall than smaller-bodied animals. The paper also reports that manual dexterity did not affect problem-solving success.

Video of some of the zoo animals trying to extract food from a closed metal box

In addition to examining the influence of brain size on problem-solving abilities, the authors also asked whether species that live in larger average group sizes are more successful problem solvers.

Holekamp explains, "A hypothesis that has garnered much support in primate studies is 'the social brain hypothesis,' which proposes that larger brains evolved to deal with challenges in the social domain. This hypothesis posits that intelligence evolved to enable animals to anticipate, respond to and, perhaps, even manipulate the actions of others in their social groups. If the social brain hypothesis is correct, then we would expect that species that live in larger social groups would be more intelligent. However, we did not find any support for the social brain hypothesis in this study. There was no indication that social group size influenced problem-solving abilities."

Explore further Hyenas that think outside the box solve problems faster

More information: Brain size predicts problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores, PNAS, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1505913113 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Brain size predicts problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores,
The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a Yale-based initiative that evaluates how 180 countries protect ecosystems and human health, finds cause for both optimism and serious concern. The world's nations have expanded access to water and sanitation while creating more protected areas than ever before, yet countries have failed to reverse degradation of air quality and decline in fisheries, the report finds. The EPI, which measures national and global protection of ecosystems and human health from environmental harm, draws out trends and highlights data gaps in priority areas including air quality, water management, and climate change.

Increased access to water and sanitation stands out as a major success story: concerted efforts to develop clean drinking water and sewage infrastructure have significantly reduced deaths from waterborne diseases. The number of people who lack access to clean water has been cut nearly in half since 2000, though at 550 million, or around 8 percent of the world's population, there is still much room for improvement. The world's nations also show strong commitments to habitat protection, and countries are now within striking distance of international targets for terrestrial and marine habitat protection.

Yet in other areas, environmental progress has stalled, and some issues have shown troubling declines. Twenty-three percent of countries lack any kind of wastewater treatment. The world's fisheries are in a dire state, with most fish stocks at risk of collapse. Air pollution has worsened and today accounts for 10 percent of all deaths, compared with 2 percent claimed by foul water. More than 3.5 billion peoplehalf of the world's populationlive in nations with unsafe levels of air pollution.

Now in its 10th iteration, the EPI provides a diagnostic tool for policymakers to evaluate and improve performance toward environmental goals. The EPI is produced biennially by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and with support from the Samuel Family Foundation and the McCall MacBain Foundation.

"While many environmental problems are the result of industrialization, our findings show that both poor and wealthy nations suffer from serious air pollution," said Angel Hsu, Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS College and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the report. The EPI shows that focused, coordinated global efforts are essential to make progress on global goals and to save lives.

"The EPI sends a clear signal to policymakers on the state of their environment and equips them with the data to develop fine-tuned solutions to the pressing challenges we face," said EPI co-creator Kim Samuel, Director, Samuel Group of Companies and Professor of Practice at McGill University's Institute for the Study of International Development. "With the very survival of the planet at stake, we hope leaders will be inspired to actespecially in urban areas where an increasing majority of the world's population lives.

Seventeen new Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate treaty, both recently adopted by the UN, create a framework for strengthening global initiatives to tackle environmental challenges. Realizing these agreements' goals will require better monitoring frameworks. Data gaps create hurdles and impasses for tracking progress towards meeting targets, including benchmarks for protecting fisheries, ensuring freshwater quality, agricultural sustainability, preventing species loss, fostering climate adaptation, and managing waste.

"Even when data exists, policymakers often struggle to apply this information appropriately," notes Marc Levy, Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University. "The EPI works to identify and address these blind spots within existing policy goals. For instance, a new biodiversity indicator weeds out protected areas that do not intersect with species' habitats, showing where national parks may be ineffective at protecting species.

Technological advances offer solutions to some stubborn monitoring challenges, yet these improvements are not a silver bullet. Satellite imagery and remote sensing fill gaps in the EPI's air quality and forestry information, but this data has its own blind spots. Scaling data collection and assessment down to the individual level has great potential to complete fragmentary pictures and make datasets whole. Appraising environmental quality at the city or regional level can sharpen environmental management strategies, honing in on environmental outcomes that national assessments can miss.

Provided by Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
An artists impression of the giant shark, megalodon. Credit: Shutterstock/Catmando

The sighting of a seven-metre shark off the South Australia coast this month has excited the world's media with some making reference to the great white that featured in the classic 1975 film Jaws.

It was certainly a big shark but there are tales of even bigger sharks lurking in our waters. A quick Google search on "megalodon" brings up around 1.2 million hits about this monster prehistoric shark, made famous in the 2002 eponymous B-movie.

Web pages feature frightening movie clips claiming to show evidence that this gigantic fossil shark, once reaching around 17m in length, is still alive out there, perhaps living in deep seas where they escape detection.

Megalodon (meaning "big tooth") is really the vernacular name used for Carcharocles megalodon, an extinct relative of today's great white and mako sharks in the family Lamnidae. Megalodon is known from its huge fossil teeth, the largest being 18 centimetres long, found nearly all around the globe in fossil marine deposits. It lived from about 16 million to 2.6 million years ago.

The recent Discovery Channel mockumentary about megalodon still being alive had a short disclaimer that it was fictional. Nonetheless, it seems to have sparked a lot of subsequent interest in whether or not such a shark could really out there.

Reconstructed jaws of Carcharocles megalodon by the American Museum of Natural History, New York. This 1927 reconstruction is now thought to be about 30% too big, based on what we know about the teeth, but gives a good idea of the monstrous size of this shark. Credit: Wikimedia

Several articles have been written with shark experts debunking these myths. So where did the stories of megalodon's survival originate from, and what is the truth behind these claims?

Great White sharks  the big one that got away

Perhaps the first case of megalodon mania sprung from real published records of a monster great white in an esteemed museum collection. The largest living predatory shark today, the great white shark(Carcharodon carcharias) grows up to around 6.4m, based on a shark caught off Cuba in 1964.

Early records in the published scientific literature speak of an 11-metre giant caught of Port Fairy, Victoria in the 1860s. The jaws of this fish were sent to the collections of the British Museum of Natural History, in London. The calculated size of the fish was published in the book Catalogue of Fishes of the museum by Albert Gunther, Keeper of Zoology at the museum in 1870.

But in the 1970s, American ichthyologist John Randall doubted this measurement and so he visited the museum in London to recalculate the body size. The original jaws that Gunther studied were examined and their measurements plotted against other specimens where accurate body length to jaw size was known.

Randall's new calculation of the Port Fairy specimen was approximately five metres in length, within typical great white body size range. Randall suggested that a typo crept into the original publication where it should have read 16.5 feet but instead stated 36.5 feet.

Strangely, it was not picked up in the second edition of the book in which Gunther added a maximum size of the shark being 40 feet (12.2m). These inaccurate size estimates published in such a scientifically respectable book no doubt fuelled the idea that monster great whites really did exist in modern times.

One last bit of relevant information about just how big great whites might grow comes from a report of measured bite marks on a whale carcass off Albany during the last decade of whaling in Western Australia.

Back in the mid-1970s, Colin Ostle was employed by the department of fisheries, and his job was to measure the whale carcasses that were taken by the whaling company.

A large m tooth from California measuring close to 15cm. The largest tooth ever measured was just over 18cm, suggesting a maximum body length of up to 17m for this shark. Credit: J Long, Flinders University

I spoke with Colin and he told me how he also routinely measured shark bite marks on whale carcasses and recorded them in his notebook. Over a seven-year period he also caught around 60 great whites, so he was very familiar with their behaviour.

The largest jaw bite marks he ever recorded measured 19x24 inches as part of five bites, all made by the same very large shark which attacked a floating sperm whale carcass that had broken free of its chain as it was towed in to the harbour.

When compared to a 16-foot shark (4.87m) with a known bite gape of 11x13 inches, the scaling up of these large bites would suggest a shark up to 7.8m in length was then alive in the seas off Albany. In 1968, even larger shark bites were claimed to be observed on a whale carcass, but measurements were not recorded.

Shark ecologist Dr Charlie Huveneers of Flinders University is cautious about extrapolating absolute size from bite marks, but conceded to me that:

[] it is quite conceivable that sharks larger than the scientifically confirmed maximum size exist, as for most species scientists are unlikely to have measured the largest individual of that species.

New research about Megalodon and its demise

Around 400 years ago, megalodon teeth were thought to be petrified tongues. In 1667, the Danish anatomist Nicolas Steno figured out from his dissection of a great white shark head that they were the teeth of ancient large sharks.

Scaling up teeth and jaw size with known living sharks yields an approximate maximum size for megalodon around 17m. But, in weight, it would have been at least ten times the mass of a large great white shark.

Unlike great whites, we deduce that megalodon targeted large baleen whales as its prime prey, as we have found its tooth marks on fossil whale bones and sometimes teeth stuck into whale fossils. Some of these specimens can also be put down to scavenging behaviour.

In recent years several scientific papers by Dr Catalina Pimiento, of the Florida Museum of Natural History, have greatly elucidated our knowledge about this impressive prehistoric predator. Her study calculating its trends in body size through time show its average size was likely around 10m for most of its 14-million year reign.

We know that its raised its young (starting at 2m length) in nursery areas of the eastern Pacific. Another study confirms that the species died out at least 2.6 million years ago, based on many reliably dated fossil sites.

Pimiento suggests that the the modern baleen whale fauna was probably established after the extinction of megalodons.

The reasons for megalodons demise are unknown, but could relate to either climate change or biological factors, like the events concerning the evolution and migration of whales to colder Antarctic waters where the sharks could not go.

I proposed this idea back in 1995 in the first edition of my book The Rise of Fishes. Dr Pimiento's new research currently in press seems to support the view. She told me:

I found no evidence for a relationship between megalodon distribution and climate, and therefore, no support for such hypotheses. Instead, I found that megalodon trends in distribution coincide with diversification events in marine mammals and in other sharks, further supporting the biotic set of hypotheses.

It seems likely that the growth and huge size of modern baleen whales, the largest animals on the planet, could well have been driven by predation pressures from megalodons.

Their ability to endure and feed in near freezing Antarctic waters might have been a key reason why megalodons went extinct. Thankfully, for all of us who love swimming and diving in the sea.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


Net importers and net exporters. Credit: University of Sydney

The first-ever global nitrogen footprint, encompassing 188 countries, has found the United States, China, India and Brazil are responsible for 46 percent of the world's nitrogen emissions.

The international collaboration, led by the University of Sydney's Integrated Sustainability Analysis team in the Faculty of Science, found developing countries tend to embody large amounts of nitrogen emissions from their exports of food, textiles and clothing. Australia is one of the few wealthy nations that is a net exporter of nitrogen, because of the substantial agriculture industry.

The economic modelling, which grouped the nitrogen footprint into top-ranking bilateral trade relationships, noted a trend for increased nitrogen production and found developed nations largely responsible for emissions abroad for their own consumption.

PhD candidate Ms Arunima Malik, who co-authored the paper with University of Sydney colleagues Professor Manfred Lenzen and Dr Arne Geschke, as well as two researchers from Yokohama National University and one from Kyushu University in Japan, said significant nitrogen net importers were almost exclusively developed economies.

"High-income nations are responsible for more than 10 times the emissions of the poorest nations," Ms Malik said. "This reflects greater consumption of animal products, highly processed foods and energy-intensive goods and services,"

Nitrogen international trade routes and intensity. Credit: University of Sydney

The vast bulk of emissions came from industries such as agriculture, transport and energy generation. Emissions from consumers-end use were mostly from sewage.

A paper on the research is published today by the international journal Nature Geoscience.

Nitrogen pollution was becoming an increasingly significant problem, as countries not only consumed the naturally occurring element but were also producing greater quantities of synthetic nitrogen, Professor Lenzen said. New work by the University of Sydney looking at trends was expected to be completed soon.

"Polices are needed to integrate nitrogen supply-chains globally in order to reduce pollution, Professor Lenzen said. "We know nitrogen emissions are increasing - just as carbon emissions are increasing as populations expand.

"We are now analysing the trends, such as increased affluence and consumption, and looking at the various industries responsible for nitrogen pollution."

Findings of the research of 2010 data includes:

Consumption in the United States, China, India and Brazil is responsible for 46 percent of global nitrogen emissions.

Japan and other developed nations import reactive nitrogen embodied in Chinese-made clothing as well as US and Australian meat.

The United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and France exchange significant amounts of nitrogen emissions embodied in food products.

Hong Kong's nitrogen imports are primary agricultural and raw food products because it lacks land to produce its own livestock and crops.

Developing countries such as China, India, Pakistan, and Thailand embody large amounts of nitrogen emissions into their exports of textiles and clothing.

High-income exceptions are Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, which export significant nitrogen embodied in livestock products.

Per-capita nitrogen emission ranged from more than 100 kg annually for wealthy nations such as Hong Kong and Luxembourg, to less than 7 kg for developing nations such as Papua New Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, and Liberia.

Of the 189 teragrams of nitrogen emitted worldwide in 2010, 161 Tg was emitted from industries and agriculture and only 28 Tg was emitted by consumers.

Explore further The Danish nitrogen budget in a nutshell
The four MMS spacecraft appear as greenish streaks in this series of photos taken on Nov. 30, 2015 (Dec. 1, 2015, local time), near Tokyo. Credit: Courtesy of Naritoshi Kitamura

Looking like artificial shooting stars, the four Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, spacecraft appear as greenish streaks in this series of photos taken with a DSLR camera from Japan on Nov. 30, 2015, at 2:11 p.m. EST (Dec. 1, 2015, at 4:11 a.m. local time). The spacecraft appear lit up to our eyes, because they reflect sunlight coming in from over the horizon.

The slightly staggered spacing of the four spacecraft reflects their stretched-out pyramid-shaped flying formation, which allows them to create three-dimensional maps of the particles and magnetic fields in near-Earth spacekey information for understanding the dynamic magnetic system around our planet and an explosive process called magnetic reconnection, which can send particles hurtling through space at dramatic speeds.

The four spacecraft were flying at distances of six to 60 miles apart as they streaked over Sagamihara, Japan, near Tokyo on Earth's night side. Over the day side, their formation compressed into a three-sided pyramid shape with a mere six miles between each of the spacecraftthe tightest multi-spacecraft formation ever flown in orbit.

The bright spot near the top of the image is the brighter star of the constellation Canis Minor. Two pieces of space junk are also visiblein the upper left of the frame, an Atlas 1 Centaur rocket body can be seen as it shoots across the sky. Near the bottom of the frame, an Ariane 5 upper stage moves more slowly from right to left.

Captured by space scientist Naritoshi Kitamura from JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, the 10 two-second exposures were taken with a Canon EOS 6D with sensitivity ISO-25600, F5.6 aperture, and 300 mm focal length.

Explore further NASA's MMS spacecraft achieve tightest flying formation ever
Welcome

Welcome to Conservative Musings. The purpose of this blog is to discuss with everyone (conservatives, moderates, independents and progressives) the issues of the day in an intelligent discussion. We believe that discussion can lead to agreement or an agreement to disagree but it must be held in a mutually respectful environment. We learn nothing from name calling or argument for argument's sake therefore we will not allow that to happen here.







We will post our point of view and want a spirited discussion of the issues. Please express your opinions, hopefully we all can learn.




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On the edge

After a lull of more than six years, Indonesias capital Jakarta was once again been hit by a deadly terror attack . This one was apparently mounted by a number of individuals believed to be connected with the so-called Islamic State (IS), in a tradition that emerged with the 2002 Bali bombings : violent attacks by terrorist cells operating in Indonesia, but claiming links with global militant Islamist organisations.The almost immediate outpouring of defiant messages and hashtags in the social media condemning this latest atrocity points at the presence of a robust counter narrative shared by the vast majority of Indonesian Muslims. They want to preserve the plurality of what is alternately referred to as Indonesias brand of cultural, civil or cosmopolitan Islam.Historically, Indonesia has been no stranger to religiously inspired political violence, but it tended to be a domestic phenomenon.In the 19th century, Islam played a role in resisting increasingly invasive Dutch colonialism . After independence was declared in 1945, Indonesia was confronted with an armed insurgence by the Darul Islam (DI) movement in West Java.A breakaway from the main Islamic party, the Masyumi Party , the DI rejected the latters agenda of gradually Islamising Indonesia by democratic means and instead aimed to establish a full-fledged Islamic state. From 1948 until 1962 it challenged the central government, which tried to safeguard the plurality of the countrys multi-ethnic and religious demographic make-up through the so-called Pancasila or five principles doctrine, encompassing the territorial integrity of Indonesia, humanitarianism, social justice, democracy and the requirement of every Indonesian citizen to believe in a single supreme being.As far as the DI was concerned, this last principle  which included the acceptance of Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and Hindu-Buddhism as state-acknowledged religions  did not go far enough in affirming the Islamic identity of a majority Muslim country.After losing a protracted armed confrontation with the central government, the DI uprising was defeated in 1962. However, remnants of DI went underground, and pockets of like-minded extremists with international connections have surfaced occasionally over the ensuing decades. But for now at least, homegrown violent Islamism nonetheless remains mostly a fringe movement, and the idea of religious pluralism has essentially endured ever since.To this day, tens of millions of Indonesians are members of the countrys two Islamic mass organisations: the modernist-reformist Muhammadiyah and traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which have both operated legally in Indonesia since their foundation in late colonial times. They are both larger and older than their counterparts elsewhere, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Pakistans Jamaat-e-Islami Focused on the emancipation of Indonesias Muslims through education and religious propagation, Muhammadiyah and NU continue to shape a pluralist Indonesian Islam which is sensitive to the countrys complex social, cultural and political settings.Both organisations played a key role in the dramatic regime change of 1998-99, which ended more than 40 years of autocratic rule under first Sukarno and then Suharto . NU leader Abdurrahman Wahid subsequently became the countrys first democratically elected president, while Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais became speaker of the Peoples Consultative Assembly The sudden opening up of Indonesian society also led to the emergence of an array of Islamic political parties. But, unlike the popular individual leaders of Islamic mass organisations, these parties didnt perform well. In the four national elections since 1999, their share of the vote has hovered at around 30%.Islamist splinter parties have also failed in their attempts to introduce Islamic law into the countrys national legal system due to a lack of support from the larger Muslim parties associated with the Muhammadiyah or NU. They think the new constitution offers adequate protection for the religious rights of all Indonesians.Islamist politicians developed different tactics to further Islamise Indonesia. These included taking advantage of the devolution of powers to regional and local authorities as part of the decentralisation of government administration. This has resulted in the passing of religious bylaws, imposing  largely symbolic  aspects of Islamic law in certain puritan Muslim regions and localities.A more serious challenge to Indonesias cultural Islam came in the form of a fatwa in the summer of 2005. Issued by the Indonesian Council of Religious Scholars (MUI), it condemned the concepts of secularism, pluralism and liberalism as un-Islamic.Combined with a  conservative turn  in the top echelons of the Muhammadiyah, and to some extent also the NU, reactionary Muslim politicians felt vindicated for their increasingly intolerant attitudes towards Indonesias cultural Islam. Islamist vigilante organisations used it as a license to persecute and even kill people they considered deviants  members of Indonesias tiny shia minority, or of the Ahmadiyyah Movement.The fault lines of this intra-Muslim polarisation became clear when progressive Muslims responded with a  Declaration of Indonesianess . Issued on Pancasila Day 2006, it rejected the fatwa as being in conflict with principles enshrined in the constitution and Pancasila doctrine. The declaration advocates a measured secularisation of the political process and the protection of religious plurality and toleration.Against the background of indecisive government and hesitant law enforcement, the contest between progressive and reactionary Muslims over society, ideas and values has become edgier. But while isolated extremists occasionally succeed in inflicting atrocities, they still have to swim against the strong current of a tolerant, democratic Indonesian Islam. Carool Kersten , Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam & the Muslim World, King's College London This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article
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We have selected 30 for the future in a number of key fields that drive economic growth. You may not know many of their names now, but in 20 years they could be on the cover of FORBES AFRICA with their story of multi-million-dollar success. We hope so. For now, look, debate and work out who is most likely.Nominees came from readers and the FORBES AFRICA team; they were decided upon by a selected panel of judges from across Africa. In charge of it all, fittingly, an under 30 himself, one of our journalists Tshepo Tshabalala. Months of research yielded a list of 150 young hopefuls. We worked for weeks, verifying and investigating, to whittle it down. We favored entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and took into account their business size, location, struggles and determination.Senior editors then debated and argued over the final 30. We find this list exciting, thought provoking and forward looking. We hope you will too.20, KenyaFounder, Zagace LimitedMuyika was orphaned at the age of 10, thrived at school and turned down a scholarship to Harvard to become an entrepreneur. When he was 16, he founded Hypecentury Technologies, a web hosting company. He sold the company two years later to Wemps Telecoms in a six-figure deal. Muyikas new venture, Zagace, which has raised funding from local investors, is a cloud enterprise software that helps companies manage inventory such as accounting, payroll, stock management, marketing and many more all bundled in a simple and easy to use format called Zag apps.27, South AfricaFounder, Mind Trix MediaFew young entrepreneurs in Africa have survived being accused of murder and a collision with two cars that cracked his skull. Kunene has. He created eight jobs and a profit with his website-building company, Mind Trix Media, in Cape Town where he was born-and-bred. The company does business with the big names in South Africa and as far afield as Italy, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Angola.On a Sunday morning, in December 2009, not long after Kunene launched the business, came a knock on the door of his mothers house in Kayelitsha that could have spelt the end.I opened to two men in suits. I thought they were from a church, but they were detectives who said someone had seen me committing a murder the night before. I took them into my mothers garage and showed them a load of T-shirts I had printed the night before and said this is what I was doing. But they arrested me and locked me up in police cells, says Kunene. The budding entrepreneur spent a week in the cells in Gugulethu before police found the real murderer and let him go.All they said was sorry you can go now, he says.Four years later, disaster struck again in Gugulethu, this time on the main road. A car hit Kunene knocking him into the path of another heading the other way. It cracked his skull and smashed one of his legs. He spent three months in hospital and is on medication. Kunene survived to prosper, a lesson to entrepreneurs that if it doesnt kill you, or imprison you, it makes you stronger.29, NigeriaFounder, ReelfruitReelFruit, founded, in March, 2012 is an emerging fruit processing company focused on packaging and branding and processing of locally, and quality fruit products.The first product is a range of dried fruit snacks and nuts. The products are currently stocked in over 80 stores in Nigeria. ReelFruit is an award-winning brand, winning both an international Women In Business Competition in the Netherlands, as well as an SME exhibition (Creative Focus Africa) in Lagos, Nigeria.Williams is trying to expand her nut business into the lucrative airline market. She is raising capital to build a factory on the outskirts of Lagos next year. I hope to be on the cover of FORBES AFRICA in five years time, she says.28, NigeriaCo-Founder, Founder2BeFinding your perfect match is never easy but Akano and his co-partner, Chinedu Onyeaso, have made it easier through Founder2Be. The cupids of commerce introduced a match-making service for business owners in Africa. Like online dating, a deal is just a click away. These Nigerians are not strangers to entrepreneurship; the two cofounders also started Entarado, a web development company empowering small businesses with web and mobile solutions.22, CameroonFounder, Gifted MomNteff was alarmed by the high death rate of newborn babies and pregnant women in his community. When he was 20, he developed a mobile app to help solve this problem. The app helps teenage mothers and health workers calculate due dates. It also collects and sends information to women in the community. His app has more than 500 downloads and is integrated with locally made phones. It has 1,200 pregnant women and mothers as beneficiaries and has led to a 20% increase in antenatal attendance rate for pregnant women in 15 rural communities.Nteff is also working with 200 medical students to reduce brain drain in Cameroon. He plans to reach 50,000 pregnant women and mothers by end of 2015 and 5 million across the continent by 2017.26, NigeriaFounder, GamsoleOlaniran, 26, is the founder and CEO of Nigerian gaming company Gamsole. Olaniran founded the company in 2012, and it has venture backing from 88mph, a Kenyan seed fund. The companys games now have more than 9 million downloads.22, ZimbabweCo-founder, Neolab TechnologyChingonzohs Twitter profile reads: I am out, taking over the world. Apt maybe, Neolab Technology, the award-winning start-up he founded with partners Jabulani Mpofu and Blessing Mukome, works on pioneering technology for emerging economies. They also work with Saisai Wireless, a wireless network for free access to WiFi hotspots in public areas. Neolab, which Chingonzoh calls the start-up factory, works in close conjunction with the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, and the students, training and getting them to work in teams and turn concepts into sustainable start-ups. Chingonzoh was only 19 when he started the venture, after acquiring a Bachelors degree in quantity surveying. I have always had the inclination and passion for technology and how it can revolutionize communities We have created a model that works in the African context based on one key principle: that an entrepreneur must be able to create and transfer value to the end user, using the least amount of resources. Capital must only be availed to scale a product that has already proven its potential. This way, we more or less guarantee the success of a product and do away with over-hyped products whose seeming success is as a result of money and resources. When that money burns out, the product/start-up will then fail. Our model does away with this unsustainability. We believe in frugal innovation: doing more with less!Chingonzoh is now seeking partnerships and investment to scale this model and expand to other markets in and around Africa. I want to help create and launch 100 sustainable companies in and around Africa by 2020; that means launching at least 20 disruptive start-ups every year. We are already working with 22 start-ups for this year. Chingonzoh is also a YALI Washington Fellow, the youngest in 2014, he says.29, South AfricaCo-founder, ISP Web AfricaA school drop-out, Rupert grew up in Cape Town has been running his own web development company since the age of 14. At age 16, his friend asked him to jump in on a joint venture. This is how he became the co-founder and chief operating officer of Web Africa, one of the biggest internet service providers in South Africa. Web Africa was started with no money and built it into a $11 million a year business. In 2014, Bryant relaunched Accommodation Direct; an online tourism business that specializes in short-term accommodation rentals. His dream is to sail around the world.27, UgandaChief Executive, Royal ElectronicsJivraz began life as an entrepreneur in Kampala at age 17 after a chance meeting with an electronics technician. The two struck on the idea of repairing and manufacturing television sets, radios and DVD players. Out of this, in 2005, came the Royal Electronics firm in Kampala. Less than a decade later, this company is one of six in East Africa that earns $15 million a year in revenue. In the next 10 years, Jivraz plans to venture into foreign currency earning cash crops  like maize and green chilies  and property. He also hopes to build homes for low income earners in Uganda. These are the people who are driving the economies of Africa and all too often they feel pushed out of the community, he says.Jivraz comes from an influential family. His grandfather Merali Jivraj, once one of the richest men in Uganda, lost almost everything when Ugandan-Asians were expelled in 1972 by Idi Amin. He says luck has played more of a part than family ties in his success that sees him drive through Kampala in a white Porsche 911 Carrera S. There was even luck in that. I was lucky to find the car in Dubai for three quarters of its price and couldnt let it go, he says.The cover of FORBES AFRICA, the domain of African multi-millionaires? Maybe when Im 50, he chuckles down the line from Kampala.27, CameroonFounder, CardiopadZangThe Cameroonian engineer is the inventor of the Cardiopad, a touch screen medical tablet that enables heart examinations such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) to be performed at rural locations while the results of the test are transferred wirelessly to specialists who can interpret them. The device spares African patients, living in remote areas, the trouble of having to travel to urban centers to seek medical examinations. Zang is the founder of Himore Medical Equipments, the company that owns the rights to the Cardiopad.26, RwandaFounder and CEO, HeHe LabsIribagiza runs a Kigali-based company, HeHe Labs, which builds mobile technology solutions for the government and private companies looking to improve their operational efficiency. HeHe means where in Kinyarwanda, says Iribagiza, who founded the research and innovation lab in 2010 while still in college studying computer engineering.I always loved physics and maths and it was an attractive space for me to be in. My mother is an entrepreneur and my father a teacher. I am a mash-up of what they do, says Irigabiza, who went to high school in Uganda. HeHe runs six labs across Rwanda. It is also working with more than 100 Rwandan students in high schools and colleges. The companys GirlHub has empowered more than 13,000 teenage girls. We are now refining our vision. Its a company for Africa by Africans and we are looking at the next vision for Africa, says Iribagiza. HeHe has over $200,000 in revenues annually. For a young company, that is great and we are investing in more ideas, she says. In 2012, HeHe won a $50,000 grant from Inspire Africa, a Rwandan TV entrepreneurial contest.25, ZimbabweFounder, Esaja.ComMutambo describes himself as an entrepreneur, marketing whiz and all round blogger. He is also the brains behind the recently launched esaja.com  a business network that is dedicated to intra-African trade. Esaja stands for empowering solutions and joint action. Kwame Nkrumah once said I wasnt born in Africa, Africa was born in me. This quote defines me as an entrepreneur, he says. We have a massive African youth bulge and need to get this lion roaring or else itll devour its own future. Trade is key.24, GhanaFounder, Oasis WebsoftOwusu is a software engineer based in Accra, Ghana, and was dubbed the Mark Zuckerberg of Accra by FORBES AFRICA in November 2012. He runs Oasis Websoft, which developed the Anansi Web Browser  hailed as Africas first web browser. I believe software can solve many problems in Africa. Our problems on the continent are different and existing software from abroad are not built to suit the African setting. Propriety operating systems are being entrenched into our society and we spend so much money paying for licenses on this software. I decided to build a company that will address this problem and develop homegrown software, says Owusu.His most recent projects include Anansipedia, an education platform that allows less privileged students to share educational resources; and Bisa, a mobile application that supplies information to the public and gives them access to doctors. Some of his other notable projects include Dr Diabetes, a web application that educates Africans about diabetes. We hope in a few years we can expand our operations in other parts of Africa and to build a digital hub where Africans can learn more about emerging disruptive technologies like 3D printers, drones and how they can be used to improve our lives, says Owusu.28, South AfricaFounder, iFixFourie is the founder of iFix, which repairs and services all Apple products and Samsung smartphones. The company employs 40 people and services more than 4,000 clients a month. iFix has branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Fourie started the company in 2006 from his dorm room at the University of Stellenbosch, helping colleagues and friends repair broken and faulty iPods and computers. Satisfied customers recommended Fouries business and it took off.28, Republic of CongoTech Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO, VMKMankou is the founder of VMK and the creator of the first African-made mobile phone, Elikia. He is also the inventor of Way-C tablet, Africas version of the iPad. Mankou, the son of a school mistress and an oil engineer, provides affordable smart devices in Africa and increases Internet access in the Republic of Congo. Before receiving $700,000 from the Congolese government, Mankou had to finance his project himself. Banks refused to help him because he was too young and a little bit crazy, he says.25, South AfricaFounder, Headboy IndustriesMarishane was in high school when he came up with DryBath, a gel that does all the work of a bath without water. Within a year, he launched Drybath with his company Headboy Industries. He had previously tried his hand at business with his own brand of biodiesel, healthy cigarettes and a security magazine. The idea for DryBath was inspired by a friend of Marishanes who was too lazy to bath. Why doesnt someone invent something that you can put on your skin and then you dont have to bathe? asked the friend. Marishane, born in Limpopo, was voted the best student entrepreneur in the world by the Entrepreneurs Organisation. Google named him as one of the most intelligent young brains in the universe.28, UgandaCo-founder, Pink Food Industries.Sembuya is living proof that a phoenix can rise from the ashes of a family fortune. The Sembuyas were the Rockerfellers of Kampala with their business empire based around Sembule Steel Mills. In the late 1990s, a power struggle at the company, followed by court cases and debt, led to its decline. Young Sembuya dabbled in publishing for a while, but discovering that the family still owned a cocoa plantation he took it over and make it the heart of a chocolate-making company set up a year ago. I have always come up with crazy ideas, he says. The 700-acre farm, which employs 100 workers, is the largest individually-owned cocoa plantation in Africa. It supplies a factory that makes everything from chocolate bars and drinks to biscuits. New machinery has increased output from 80 kilograms a day to 60 kilograms an hour. The chocolate is making inroads with exports across east Africa; the region gets most of its chocolate from Egypt, South Africa and Europe.28, EthiopiaFounder of Feed Green Ethiopia Exports CompanyWolderufael is the founder of Feed Green Ethiopia Exports Company, an Addis Ababa-based outfit that produces and exports popular Ethiopian spice blends such as Shiro, Mitmita, Korarima and Berbere. He worked for Ethiopian Airlines for almost four years and noticed many Ethiopians travelling with bags full of Ethiopian spices. Wolderufael founded the company in 2012, exporting spices and dry food to the United States and Europe and, as demand increased, to new markets within Africa. His latest export is Ethiopian coffee and Wolderufael hopes to be one of the biggest food companies in Africa in 10 years. The company largely employs single mothers, young men and women from poor backgrounds.27, KenyaFounder, Kronex Chemicals LtdThis Asian-Kenyan is the founder and CEO of Kronex Chemicals, a manufacturer of affordable dishwashing liquids and multi-purpose detergent for Kenyas lower class. He started the company to improve the deteriorated levels of hygiene in the country. Kronex set up a manufacturing plant along Mombasa Road in January 2013 and operations started in June that year. He is taking on larger firms in Kenya by producing liquid soap and changing the perception that it a luxury product.22, KenyaFounder, Skydrop EnterprisesMwale founded SkyDrop Enterprises, a rainwater filtration and bottling company which produces low-cost purified drinking water, milk and other dairy products in Kenya. In 2012, Mwale sold a 60% stake in Skydrop to an Israeli firm for $500,000. Next stop: education. Last year, Mwale founded Gigavia, an educational social networking website. Five years after dropping out of high school, Mwale travelled the world and rubbed shoulders with several presidents. The idea for his first business was inspired by two events from his childhood. At 14 he suffered dysentery (infection of the intestines) from drinking dirty water in his village outside the western Kenyan town of Kitale. As a student, his school had visited a Coca-Cola bottling plant where he saw how the company made its bottled water. I knew if there was any business I could easily go into, it was in water, recalls Mwale. So, at 16, he started SkyDrop Enterprises, a producer and bottler of low-cost purified drinking water. He boiled water, packed it in polythene bags and sold it to truck drivers in Kitale.28, MaliFounder and Chief executive, Africa Impact GroupChleuh is the founder an international organization focused on directing investment to socially and environmentally beneficial ventures, an asset class called Impact Investing. The companys services include data and research, news, advisory services, and start-up incubation. Africa Impact Groups clients include impact investors, private equity firms, family offices, leading African corporations, governments and non-profits.21, MalawiFounder, TiwaleChilemba is easing the difficult circumstances that women in Malawi face with Tiwale, her for-profit social enterprise she started when she was 17. Tiwale trains women as entrepreneurs or finds them jobs that suit their skills. It also has a microfinance loan program. Tiwales Design Project trains women to do traditional fabric dye-printing. Some of the revenue from this is used to fund other programs offered by the organization that give women opportunities to support themselves. These include a school grant program that covers fees, transportation costs, school supplies and offers a small stipend.25, KenyaFounder, FundaIn 2008, Kitheka and his friends established an online education platform, Blu-Uni (later renamed Funda), providing university students with a cheaper way to get course material. Kitheka started his business along with his partners after returning to the Miambani village where his father grew up in. After being away for 10 years, the 21-year-old Kitheka was heartbroken to see the lack of progress in the community. Funda was created to provide resources young Africans who have the potential to become the next presidents, CEOs and entrepreneurs. Kitheka says these are the people who will create change in Africa.25, South AfricaFounder, Rethink EducationThis young entrepreneur turned his first cents selling wrist bands in school colors to his friends in the playground, at the age of 12, at the elite Johannesburg school of St Stithians.The next venture came at the University of Cape Town. Hoernle liked a glass of wine and, while finding supply, hit on the idea of driving across the Western Cape to buy in bulk to retail to his college friends. When he left college, Hoernle founded Rethink Education with the aim of focusing directly on the high school market, in an effort to make current technology more useful in the schooling system. We saw the gap in the market where you find people paying R100,000 a year in school fees and yet they still struggle with fractions, he says. Rethinks platforms give learners access to high school mathematics and science content in a chat-styled interface via both mobile phones and the web. To date, Rethink Education has distributed math and science content to more than 500,000 South Africans and is launching in Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe.29, NigeriaMedical Doctor and Founder, The Flying DoctorsOrekunrin is founder and Managing Director of Flying Doctors Nigeria Ltd., an air ambulance service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Orekunrins company is the first air ambulance service in West Africa to provide urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services. Tragedy led me to entrepreneurship, she says. I believe that perhaps my sister, who died when she was just 12 years old, may have lived if this sort of service was available in Nigeria at the time, she says. Born in London and raised in a working-class foster home in Lowestoft, a little fishing town in the East of England, Orekunrin enrolled for a medical degree at the University of York and qualified at 21  one of the youngest ever to take the doctors Hippocratic Oath in Britain. She is a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and was named a Young Global Leader in 2013 by the World Economic Forum.23, UgandaFounder, GipmoOften in Uganda when families struggle to put their children through school, the girl is forced to stay at home while the boy completes school. Ayiorworth couldnt afford to go to school following the death of her father. She started a microlending business so other girls can. Girl Power Microlending Organisation (Gipomo) is a business tied to loans where mothers take out loans to start their own small businesses and in return they must make sure their daughters attend school. This project gained Ayiorworth the Anzisha Price in 2013 for young African entrepreneurs. She ploughed her winnings back into her microlending business.28, GhanaFounder, Golden Palm InvestmentsDelle is a co-founder of Golden Palm Investments, a holding company that invests in startups across Africa. Some of the entrepreneurs on this list have benefited from his investments. Golden Palm Investments focuses on real estate, healthcare, agriculture and technology. Delle showed entrepreneurial promise while in school. He sold his homework to classmates to earn money to travel to the United States, where he had accepted a scholarship. He is also the co-founder of cleanacwa, a non-profit that provides clean water in Ghanas underdeveloped regions. Sangu, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Valiant Capital Partners, is currently an MBA candidate at Harvard.29, South AfricaFounder, Elegance GroupA 2016 swimming Olympic hopeful, Hussmann also runs an aviation business through Elegance Group, which includes Elegance Air, sport consulting and aviation consulting. He was born in Accra, raised in Germany, but made a home in South Africa where Elegance is thriving and making its mark in the aviation industry. It offers the hour package flying principle with chartered airlines, where companies are able to buy bulk hours of 25 to 50 hours and utilize them when it suits.26, NigeriaCo-founder, Easy Taxi NigeriaCardoso was the founding chief executive of online taxi hailing app, Easy Taxi Nigeria, a Rocket Internet-backed startup. While still affiliated with Easy Taxi, he is moving on to new projects. Easy Taxi, under Cardosos watch, grew to be one of the most used taxi hailing apps in Lagos and Abuja. It has been a tough year for Cardoso. His mother, Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, died of Ebola this year. Adadevoh was one of the doctors in Nigeria who helped treat the disease.27, KenyaCo-founder, SokoMahugu is one of the founders of Soko, an online platform where global shoppers can buy handcrafted accessories direct from artisans in Kenya. Born and raised in Nairobi, Mahugu studied computer science for her graduate degree. I used to fix things and gadgets as a child From a young age, I was fascinated by science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Family support motivated my sister to study civil engineering and me to study computer science. Although these are male-dominated fields, my parents positive attitude provided an empowering environment, and we were encouraged to pursue our own interests.If you want to be an innovative tech company anywhere in the world right now, mobile must be a significant component of what you do. Pervasive mobile phone ownership and services such as M-Pesa have made Kenya a global hub of innovative business models that leverage mobile in order to leapfrog many of the infrastructural barriers the industrialized world faces for challenges as diverse as payment solutions and opportunities for poverty alleviation, says Mahugu.Mahugu took the Design Liberation Technology course at Stanford University in 2010 and has been involved in various development projects including Stanfords Nokia Africa Research Center which builds mobile applications for informal communities.
The Philippines legislative body has cut the budget for contraceptives.

This means that poor families, who only rely on free pills, condoms and other forms of contraception, wont have any this year.

Jofelle Tesorio and Ariel Carlos report on the likely impacts of the decision from Palawan, the Philippines.

The women here at this mothers group are merrily chatting with each other before their meeting starts.

One woman even jokingly asks who will be the next to get pregnant.

One of the attendees is 40-year-old Elvie Ubod. She is pregnant with her 10th child. Her first child was premature at birth and died thereafter.

Elvie says she doesnt want any more children because life has already been so difficult...

Today, a health worker from an NGO called Roots of Health is giving a talk about sexual reproductive health and rights.

Elvie attends the Roots of Health meetings for free check-ups and prenatal advice.

Initially she received free contraceptive pills from health centres.

I use conceptive pills on and off, she says, Whenever I feel something is not right in my body, I stop and thats when I immediately get pregnant.

Elvie is a housewife and her husband is a fisherman. Living on less than US$ 3 a day, they dont have enough means to feed the whole family and send the children to school.

They rely on free contraceptives to control the number of children they have.

They are among those who will be the most affected after the Philippine legislature eliminated this years budget of 1 billion pesos or almost 21 million US dollars for contraceptives.

Roots of Health midwife Belle Contezano says the budget cut is like cutting a persons leg.

This really has a tremendous effect, complains Belle, When there was an allocated budget before, health centres always ran out of contraceptives. How much more now when there is no more budget for it?

The budget was supposed to back the full implementation of the Reproductive Health Law or the RH Law, a population measure that took almost two decades to pass due to a strong Catholic opposition.

The Supreme Court declared the law constitutional in 2014, thrashing complaints of the Church and other conservative groups.

But earlier this month, a joint committee in Congress and Senate disapproved the budget.

Reproductive health activists like Amina Evangelista-Swanepoel are angry.

Were pretty furious about it. Its a low-blow. Even among the senators themselves, they are complaining that it was done in an unethical manner, says Amina.

One of the senators who orchestrated it was Tito Sotto, who publicly admitted he caused the budget cut.

Sotto has been a staunch opponent of the RH Law.

Amina says they dont realize what effect it has on the poor and marginalized, that it is a huge disservice to Filipinos.

Its the people who need it the most who are going to suffer, she says, The poor people of this country, their first priority is food, second is shelter, third is education and fourth is health. So even though they know that they cant afford another baby, if they only have so much money, theyre gonna buy rice for the family. Theyre not gonna buy the contraceptives they need to control their fertility.

A set of pills costs about a dollar.

For high and middle income Filipinos, this is probably nothing but for those who live on less than a dollar a day, this is critical. And twenty-five percent of the population is living in poverty.

Amina says the budget cut has dangerous repercussions.

Its gonna lead to more negative birthing outcomes, she explains, The mom could die, the baby could die. For people who very desperate who dont want another baby, theyre going to have abortions.

While abortion is illegal in the Philippines, there are still around 500,000 abortions that happen every year, say health activists.

The Philippines has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Southeast Asia as well as a high maternal mortality rate.

The RH Law not only addresses population control but also a comprehensive measure mandating RH education on youth and strengthening womens and human rights.

For Amina Swanepoel, the lawmakers who axed the contraceptives budget are violating the law.

I definitely believe that the actions they did are illegal so perhaps there will be a legal case against them, for those actions, she says, But at this point the movement is focussing more on trying to see immediately is theres any way to get that funding reallocated before the elections.

The department of health has said they will have to source other funds like foreign assistance.

But it is likely that free contraceptives will run out very soon.

NGOs like Roots of Health are trying to fill the gap. They expect to be overwhelmed with women asking free contraceptives if government centres cant provide them.




1965 will always be remembered as the year of genocide in Indonesia. A crime that reverberates today as both the families of victims and the perpetrators, still confront each other  sometimes daily.

Ric Wasserman investigates tortures past and present in this report, after meeting 77-year-old Sumatran born Tom Iljas, who was deported from Indonesia this October for trying to identify the mass grave where his father is buried

Against the background of the powerful documentaries The Act of Killing and its sequel The Look of Silence, we also hear an exclusive interview with Indonesias ambassador to Sweden, Dewa Sastrawan, on how the government is dealing with its painful past.

Joshua Oppenheimers chilling film The Act of Killing recounts the 1965 mass slaughter of Indonesias communists  from the point of view of the murderers.

In spite of their heinous crimes that saw up to a million people killed, impunity reigns.

The admitted murderers of the past are today, to many, heroes  But not to Tom Iljas

Over coffee in his flat in a Stockholm suburb Tom tells me his story.

I was given a scholarship to Beijing by the Sukarno government to study the mechanization of agriculture, he says, I was finished in September 1965 when the coup took place. My father was murdered by the military in November 1965. I couldnt return home since then.

Tom longed to visit his fathers grave, but didnt know where to look. Then in October last year Tom, now a Swedish citizen, met a student from his village who told him that there were two witnesses who could point out the spot for the mass grave where his father and 40 others were dumped.

If Tom wanted to locate his fathers grave hed have to go soon  while the witnesses were still alive. Tom went home for the first time in decades.

The two witnesses were leading us to where the grave was, but before getting there a group of men who blocked our way, he says, I said I just wanted to say a prayer over the grave but they refused. We were forced to leave. Plain clothed police then stopped our car, took the keys, and held us in custody for 24 hours. They accused us of making a film on the genocide.

It didnt end there. When the police saw Toms Swedish passport they kept him for two more days and nights of questioning. And then they deported him and blacklisted him from returning to Indonesia.

The local residents who wanted to help Tom find his fathers grave may now be at risk.





Its been 17 years since the reformasi process in Indonesia  but the ghosts of the past still haunt the country.

Tom Iljas experience could have been a scene in Joshua Oppenheimers new documentary film The Look of Silence

In the film the protagonist, an optometrist whose brother was tortured and murdered by the local militia in 1965 listens as two villagers talk: A million people were killed,  says one, Thats politics, says the other, with a shrug.

So how far has Indonesia come in building democracy, accountability and human rights since the era of President Suharto?

If anyone in Sweden could shed light on where Indonesia is regarding the reform process, it would be the Indonesia ambassador to Sweden, Dewa Sastrawan.

When we started our reformation the biggest commitment as a nation was how to get the military to the barracks, he says, Before reformasi there was a very centralized and strong control by military related govt. Now its gone.

Ambassador Sastrawan saw both of Oppenheimers films and was moved, he told me.

He was the first Indonesian diplomat, he says, to publically discuss the films with the filmmaker.

When I watched this movie and of course talked with Joshua  this is, to me, personally, part of transparency that we have now in Indonesia, he says.

But Oppenheimers films show that the past isnt as far behind as ambassador Sastrawan would like to think.

The films have not been shown on Indonesian TV or in theatres, in spite of The Look of Silence being nominated for an Oscar award this year.

We cannot expect people will open their minds to talk about past or future, he says, This is part of the democratic process in Indonesia.

Tom Iljas looks at a picture taken of him at his mothers grave in his village, and recalls how close he had come to paying his last respects to his father.

The new Indonesian transparency Ambassasor Sastrawan talks about hasnt yet arrived for him.

Tom Iljas agrees that reformasi has had positive effects  books have been published on the 1965 genocide. One can organize politically. But the c word is still dangerous, he says.

People have the right to organize, he says, as long as it doesnt smell communist.

Ambassador Sastrawan met Tom shortly after Tom returned to Sweden:

Weve been friends since I came here in 2012. I asked Tom, What happened? Tom said its not a permanent ban, just temporary. We will come back. If you ask me what crime he did? I dont know, he says.




Sometimes, it is good to hear the story behind the story. I have a story in todays paper about the Whitehall Central School District having the most instances of testing misadministration in 2015. Click HERE in case you havent seen the story.

A reader commented as to why The Post-Star is dredging up this issue again - 9 months after the initial incident - and why we dont let it drop. The story behind this is a little more complicated. When this story first broke back in the spring, I wanted to find out everything I could about instances of test administration, which could mean that students used a calculator or cell phone when they were not supposed to, a staff member helped students, student were given an accommodation, or some other issue.

I filed Freedom of Information Law requests for correspondence between the Whitehall Central School District and the New York State Education Department about the investigation into testing administration. Nothing too substantial turned up. I also sought the report from the state as to their investigation into this issue. The request was denied on the grounds that they were not subject to disclosure, saying an agency can withhold records if disclosure would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

I also wanted to find out how many instances of testing administration occurred throughout the state, so I did a FOIL request dated June 11 for five years worth of data. I finally received the information I was looking for in an email dated Jan. 7. I spent a couple of weeks reviewing the data and then had some follow-up questions for officials from the State Education Department and Whitehall Central School. I wasnt finished with analyzing all the data and writing the story until Friday. The story was published on Monday.

I found it newsworthy that the misadministration instance in Whitehall, the specifics of which school officials will not disclose, affected the most students than anywhere in New York state. Many districts just had a handle of incidents including the populous downstate areas.

Sometimes, we have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the information and it isnt readily available. News organizations often turn up new information months, years and even decades after the fact. When we turn new things, we will publish them.
School Choice kicks off this week and nearly 700 events will be held to celebrate it in New York state.

Charter school and parochial school advocates want to draw attention to the alternative education offerings they provide. Schools are holding rallies, policy discussions and other events, according to a news release.

School Choice Week provides families in New York with the opportunity to research and evaluate the K-12 school choices available for their children in advance of the 2016-2017 school year, said Andrew R. Campanella, president of National School Choice Week in a news release. The Week also raises awareness of the importance of providing every child with effective education options.

In New York, charter school advocates will again try to increase the cap on schools in this legislative session. In addition, they likely will make another try for passage of the Education Investment Tax Credit, which allows for tax-deductible contributions to private and parochial schools.
Lake George Distilling Company is looking to add some spirit to Canada Street.

The distillery is in the process of seeking approvals for a storefront and tasting room on Canada Street.

Located on Route 149 in Fort Ann, the distillery was opened in 2012 by husband and wife team John and Robin McDougall.

Plans for a tasting room and storefront in the Village Mall on Canada Street were on the village Planning Board agenda for last week, but the McDougalls needed to reschedule their application for personal reasons so it was not heard.

Robin and John said they're excited about being able to open a satellite store, and this is the first opportunity they've had to do since state regulations were amended to allow distilleries to have one satellite store.

Robin said unlike breweries and wineries that are allowed five locations, distilleries may only have one.

Aside from their distillery location, they were also selling at farmers market and wholesale through Saratoga Eagle.

Well sell our bottles there, have merchandise like glasses, flasks, T-shirts -- that sort of thing, Robin said of the new tasting room and storefront planned for Canda Street.

She said they're looking to have a set up similar to the Adirondack Winery's tasting room on Canada Street.

She said they hope to have approvals and be able to open around Memorial Day weekend.
FORT EDWARD | A Hartford man who police said rang up more than $6,000 in fraudulent charges on a credit card that belonged to his former employer has pleaded guilty to a felony grand larceny count.

Craig A. Sweet, 43, of Route 196, pleaded guilty to third-degree grand larceny in connection with theft from National Vacuum Environmental Services Corp. of Kingsbury, authorities said.

He was arrested last May after an investigation by State Police. He had worked for the company for a period of time that ended in September 2014, but kept a company credit card after he left and used it to make $6,095 in charges until company officials discovered the fraud last March, police said.

Sweet is to be sentenced by Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan on Feb. 19. He likely faces 5 years on probation and restitution.
QUEENSBURY  A traffic study of options to relieve congestion along the Exit 20 corridor in Queensbury is set to begin, now that National Grid has confirmed a $50,000 grant to pay half the cost of the study, EDC Warren County President Edward Bartholomew said.

Were ready to roll up our sleeves and go to work on this important project, he said at a recent Town Board workshop.

The utility has a grant fund for economic development projects.

EDC Warren County will contribute $25,000, and Warren County will contribute the remaining $25,000 for the study of the section of Route 9 between Round Pond Road and Route 149 in Queensbury.

The study area includes Great Escape theme park and the stretch of outlet centers known as Million Dollar Half Mile.

There have long been complaints about traffic congestion there, even before recent new development in the area.

The traffic study will update one conducted in 2009.

Warren County, EDC Warren County and National Grid are forming a committee to select an engineering firm to conduct the study.

The review will include meetings with property owners.

There will be a significant amount of public engagement, Bartholomew said. The easiest part was obtaining this money. What will be harder to do is reach a consensus of property owners on this corridor.
GLENS FALLS  North Country Snow and Ice Management has sent employees down to Maryland to help people dig out from the recent blizzard.

About 36 people were deployed over the weekend, and a couple more were going to be sent Monday, according to Yvonne Petro, office manager for the Glens-Falls based company.

They got about 30 inches of snow where our guys are now. Things are just buried. Theyre just trying to get parking lots clear and roadways clear so businesses can open, she said.

The storm missed the Capital Region but dumped more than 2 feet of snow in New York City and close to 3 feet of snow in Washington, D.C. It buried other places up and down the East Coast.

Petro said the company, which has been in business since 2004, also has helped during other major storms, such as in Boston last year. They have also been to Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, according to Petro.

Local companies reach out to them for assistance, she said.

Steve Haskins, superintendent of the Washington County Department of Public Works, said sometimes local employees are called upon by the state Department of Transportation to backfill positions when state crews are sent out of the area.

None of his crews is currently assisting.

DOT crews consisting of 86 people from the greater Capital Region were dispatched downstate to assist with the cleanup. The department sent 35 snowplow trucks, two loader-mounted snowblowers, one grader and two tractor-trailers, according to DOT spokesman Bryan Viggiani. Crews were expected to arrive back in the region Monday evening.

Viggiani said staff watches the weather forecasts to plan for the needs with the states various counties.

With the ability to shift resources based on need, we can also assist our own region in case a storm hits our area during an active deployment to another part of the state, he said in an email.
GLENS FALLS  A portion of a Bernie Sanders campaign event that involves signing a nominating petition has been moved from Crandall Public Library to the bandstand in Glens Falls City Park from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, organizers announced.

A campaign assembly and showing of a video of a Sanders speech to volunteers will still be held at 6 p.m. Thursday in the community room in the library basement.

In keeping with the atmosphere of the library and respectfulness of the Sanders campaign, we, the organizers, recognize publicly that the library in no way favors one candidate over another, organizer Kelly Baker said in a press release. The tone of the affair wont be loud or disruptive.

Baker said in a telephone interview that organizers moved the petition-signing portion of the event at the request of library Director Kathy Naftaly.

She said we shouldnt be doing that in the library, Baker said. She wanted us to somehow see if there was any way we could make it appear that the library is not being partial. I want to respect her wishes and make that happen.

Naftaly, contacted Monday, said circulating nominating petitions to get a candidate on the ballot in the New York Democratic presidential primary on April 19 violates the librarys ban on soliciting.

We dont allow soliciting of any sort, Naftaly. Its more about that than partisan or nonpartisan.

Naftaly said no one contacted her to complain about the event.

Its just that you cant solicit here, she said.

Library rules for using meeting rooms do not prohibit political events, she said.

Political candidates, in fact, have previously held events at the library.

Democratic state Assembly candidate Dennis Tarantino, for example, held his campaign announcement event in the librarys community room in June 2012; and Greater Glens Falls Democracy for America chapter held a forum there with Democratic congressional candidate Aaron Woolf in April 2014.
Whitehall Central School Districts state testing problem, which led to scores on its students seventh- and eighth-grade English tests being invalidated last spring, was the worst case in the state last year.

The district was investigated by the New York State Education Department for misadministration of the tests. Former junior-senior high school principal Kelly McHugh resigned over the issue, and teachers Suzanne Ringer and Paul Gould are suspended without pay this school year but will be allowed to return to work in the fall.

A total of 36 eighth-grade and 52 seventh-grade English tests in Whitehall were flagged as having a problem, according to information released by the state in response to a Freedom of Information Law request by The Post-Star. No other district statewide had more students affected by improperly handled tests.

The exact problem was never revealed, but the state says misadministration could include: students using a calculator or electronic device when they are not allowed; students following test directions incorrectly; staff giving inappropriate help or lessons to students; or cheating by students.

Other problems can include an error in test setup; an incorrect grade being given; bubbles not properly being transferred by the student from the book to the answer sheet; a wrong test being given, or part of the test not given; a lost test; or an inappropriate accommodation given to a student who should not have received it.

The listed reason for Whitehalls misadministration was N.A., or not available.

Whitehall Interim Superintendent of Schools William Scott said it is concerning that the district had the worst case. He said school officials have taken steps to correct the problems. Testing security was the topic of a recent meeting of chief school officers, according to Scott. The protocols and procedures are spelled out in a roughly 40-page document for administrators and teachers.

It goes into a lot of detail on storage, on opening the package, counting, keeping an inventory, making sure you get back the exact amount of tests that were handed out, he said.

There is even a checklist of reminders for teachers and administrators, Scott added.

If this is followed, I dont see how there can be any other mix-ups in the future, he said.

The number of students affected by misadministration of tests statewide grew from about 1,688 in 2011 to 1,866 in 2012, according to state-provided figures. It then spiked at nearly 2,500 in 2013, which was the spring of the first year of the new teacher evaluation system. Student performance on state tests accounted for 20 percent of teachers score.

The cases dropped back down to 2,350 in 2014 and nearly 1,800 this year, according to the statistics. About 20 percent of students did not sit for the state exams this past spring, as part of the opt-out movement to protest against the Common Core standards and state tests.

State Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie said misadministration happens relatively infrequently  on less than one tenth of 1 percent of the number of exams administered.

School administrators and teachers in New York state do an extraordinary job of properly administering state exams, she said in an email.

The most common causes of misadministration are student cheating; student possession or use of a cellphone or electronic device; or testing accommodations mistakenly or incorrectly given, according to Beattie.

Not available is the description for about 844 of the tests misadministered in 2015, about 49 percent, according to a Post-Star count.

As for why so many incidents are classified as N.A., Beattie said state education officials learn of test misadministration from reports submitted by school administrators and data entered into the state system through scanning of answer sheets. The latter source does not include an explanation of the reason.

Most misadministrations are the result of inadvertent human error, according to Beattie. To reduce instances, the department provides dos and donts in the directors and administrators manuals. The New York State Education Department and local BOCES also provide forums and other professional development training on the proper procedures for administering the tests and accommodations for special education students.

State education officials attributed the increase in 2013 to a change in department policy that prohibited students from possessing cellphones and other communication devices during state testing, according to Beattie.

Prior to this change, a students test would be invalidated only if the administrator determined that the student used the device during testing, she said.

Beattie added that most misadministrations affect only a small number of students and sometimes only a single student.

In some years we have had anomalous incidents that affected an appreciably larger number of students. Such incidents substantially increased the total counts of students affected by misadministrations in the years that they occurred, she said.
Old wooden porches that were in poor condition have been removed from the Smith Flats building at the corner of Bay and Washington streets in Glens Falls.

Developer Peter Hoffman, who recently bought the long-vacant building, said he is cleaning debris outside and inside the building as he plans a renovation of the historic structure.

Glens Falls Mayor John Jack Diamond mentioned the project in his State of the City presentation earlier this month as one of his goals for 2016.

Former city official dies

I. Jack Newman, Glens Falls community development director in Mayor Frank OKeefes administration, died Jan. 15, according to a Post-Star obituary.

He did an extremely good job and were sorry for his passing, OKeefe, mayor from 1986 to 1993, said Monday.

Newman returned to city government as a volunteer in 2007 when Mayor Roy Akins appointed him chairman of the city Zoning Board of Appeals.

Water education

Just Beverages is working with school officials in Glens Falls and Queensbury to develop a curriculum that will make school field trips to the companys water packaging plant on Broad Street in Glens Falls more educational, said Jim Siplon, the companys chief operating officer.

Were doing some work to develop at least the outlines of math, or science, or sustainability learning aides that they could add to the curriculum that would make the things they are teaching even richer in context, he said in an interview Friday.

We turn multiplication tables into an exercise of saying, If there are this many bottles in a case and this many cases in a pallet and this many pallets go on a truck, how many bottles are on a truck?  he said. What we do is we bring it to life by having those bottles literally fly by a child on a visit. And then we bring that multiplication exercise as an activity, but something that has some real-life context for them. Thats just one example.

Ambidextrous doctor

Hudson Headwaters has recruited the regions first physician with dual specialty certifications in neurology and psychiatry, said Dr. John Rugge, the chief executive officer of the network of clinics.

Dr. Erik Istre will start work Aug. 1, most likely practicing at Warrensburg Health Center and at West Mountain Health Center in Queensbury.

Having somebody inside this network for our patients who is ambidextrous and can do the whole brain, mind and nerves, is a huge plus for us, Rugge said.

Istre graduated from Albany Medical College and is completing a residency at University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center.

Owls at library

Wildlife Institute of Eastern New York will present a program at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the community room in the basement of Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls.

The program will feature live owls and a video about endangered bird species.

The program is open to the public free of charge.
Identifying the Roots and the Resolve of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Sam Rohrer explores the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict in this discussion with Bill Salus. Topics discussed include: When and Why It Started. Gods Response: Past and Present. Resolving the Conflict, (Psalm 83)

Biden calls for a 2-State solution and Hurricane Ian bites back In this prophecy update Tom Hughes and Bill Salus look at the Hurricanes that hit Canada and Florida in possible relation to Lapid's, Biden's and Trudeau's push for a 2-State solution. Also discussed are the topics of the Obadiah fatal Palestinian Prophecies, the Destruction of Damascus and much more.

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The IDF in Bible Prophecies In this teaching video, Bill Salus identifies several unfulfilled Bible prophecies that involve today's Israeli Defense Forces.

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Prophecies that can occur between Now and Eternity This message was given by Bill Salus at the Harvest Christian Centre Prophecy Conference 2022 in Park Hills, Missouri on 9/9/2022. He presents a Last Days 12-Stage Timeline of Prophecies that could occur between Now and Eternity which he has written about in his 5-book series, the NOW, NEXT, LAST, FINAL and MILLENNIUM Prophecies. He focuses this presentation on the Pre-Tribulation prophecies; prophecies that could find fulfillment before the Rapture.

The Wars Leading to Armageddon Join Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales on this Prophecy Watchers TV show as they explore some of the unfulfilled biblical wars.

The Road to Armageddon: The Pre-Tribulational Prophecies Trailer ...This is the official trailer for a new 4-disc DVD from Prophecy Watchers TV that features Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales.

Emergence of the Exceedingly Great Israeli Army in Bible Prophecy ...In this 5-minute video, Bill Salus and Tom Hughes explore how the Israeli Defense Forces exist in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. This video is an excerpt from the Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD.

The Terrorization of Egypt by the Israeli Defense Forces in Isaiah 19:16-18 ...In this short 4-minute video, Bill Salus and Tom Hughes discuss the future prophecies about Egypt in Isaiah 19:1-18. Egypt's peace pact with Israel ends when Isaiah's prophecies begin. This video is an excerpt from the Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD.

Does Psalm 83 Describe Israels War BEFORE Gog & Magog? ...On today's Watchman Newscast, host Erick Stakelbeck is joined by author Bill Salus of Prophecy Depot Ministries to break down the Bibles mysterious Psalm 83 passage and whether it describes a future war between Israel and its enemies, led by Iran and its proxies. Some say this passage was already fulfilled in 1967 or 1948. However, Salus believes these events have yet to take place and will transpire before the war of Gog and Magog. Could Psalm 83 set the stage for Gog/Magog showdown as described in the Book of Ezekiel?

Future Prophecies Revealed | Tom Hughes and Bill Salus ...For the last 10 years Bible prophecy experts, Bill Salus and Pastor Tom Hughes have opened Gods Word and discovered a series of little-known future prophecies that have escaped the notice of most Christians. This TV show explores some of them.

The Spiritual Survival Kit for Those Left Behind ...If the Rapture happened today, would you or someone you love, be left behind to face the travails of the Seven-Year Tribulation Period? This treacherous period is when God pours out His wrath through a series of twenty-one judgments on Christ-rejecting humanity. Its undoubtedly the worst time to be alive in the history of the planet and the signs of the times point out that this time draws frightfully near! PREPARE YOUR LOVED ONES WITH THE SPIRITUAL SURVIVAL KIT FOR THOSE LEFT BEHIND.

Disaster in Iran: Iran has Double Trouble in the End Times Pastor Tom Hughes and Bill Salus explain the Jeremiah 49:34-39 prophecy of Elam. It seems ready to happen and it appears to be a nuclear disaster by the Persian Gulf. (This is an excerpt from their Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD).

The Destruction of Damascus is a Pre-Tribulational Bible Prophecy Bill Salus and Tom Hughes explain the Isaiah 17 prophecy about the destruction of Damascus. This is an excerpt from their Pre-Tribulation Prophecies 2-Disc DVD.

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Will Ancient Prophecies be Fulfilled in Our Lifetime? On this Prophecy Watchers show, Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales reveal some ancient biblical prophecies that could happen in this generation.

Iran's Double Trouble in the End Times In this interview with Kurt Hudspeth and co-host Dr. Larry Miller of the God Family and Radio Show, Bill gives his insight, based on years of study, into the future biblical battles that are now stage setting. These end times epic events will have a global impact and our world will be shaken. Bill sees Prophecy as a witnessing tool that authenticates the sovereignty of God, Who told us the end from the beginning and wants to inform us because He loves us. Bill hopes that as Christians learn about these things in the Word of God that they will evangelize to the lost.

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE: What Are The Prophetic Implications For Israel? ... Tom Hughes and Bill Salus give a timely update on Ukraine, Russia, USA and Israel in prophecy.

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The Coming Ezekiel 38 Invasion TV Show ...Bill Salus explains why Ezekiel 38 is the marquee event of the end times.

What Happens in the Aftermath of Ezekiel 38 and 39? In this Prophecy Watchers TV show Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales explore the important details about what happens in the aftermath of the Lord's supernatural defeat of Russia, Turkey, Iran and their hordes in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

The MIDEAST WAR is COMMING! Tom Hughes and Bill Salus start with a Mideast update. Then Bill addresses Daniel 11:37, (will the Antichrist be a homosexual)? Also explored is whether or not the 144,000 Jewish evangelist are virgins as per Revelation 14:4. Several other prophetic topics are discussed.

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The Global Government in the Millennium - Christ Rules with a Rod of Iron In this short video Bill Salus teaches about the global government in the MILLENNIUM. This message explains how and why Jesus Christ rules with a rod of iron. Discover the Jewish and Gentile branches of government during this 1000 year Messianic Age.

Psalm 83: Is it an unfulfilled prophecy? In this 8-minute video below, Bill Salus responds to his critics about the Psalm 83 prophetic war





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The Destruction and Restoration of Planet Earth ...This short 2 1/2 minute video is taken from the Bill Salus DVD entitled, The MILLENNIUM Prophecies and the NEW JERUSALEM. At the end of the Seven-Year Tribulation Period the present planet will be destroyed, but the good news is that Jesus Christ will restore the earth to its former glories for the MILLENNIUM.

...In this short video, Bill Salus peers into the prophetic future and shares what he foresees coming in the Middle East. The stage is clearly set for, not one, but several last days biblical wars to happen. These epic foretold events could turn 2022 into an apocalyptic year. This video excerpt was taken from the timely Prophecy Watchers TV show entitled, Prophecy Update: Israel's Nuclear Showdown with Iran. This Prophecy Watchers show can be seen below.

Prophecy Update: Israel's Nuclear Showdown with Iran Join Mondo Gonzales and Bill Salus as they discuss and analyze the momentous events that are happening in Israel currently. The Nuclear talks in Vienna are going nowhere. Israel passed a $1.5 billion dollar legislative packet in October authorizing the training and preparation for a direct attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Iran's brigadier general openly acknowledges recently their desire to wipe Israel off the map. This isn't just the typical saber-rattling. There are new red lines that are being crossed and Israel is now being forced to take decisive action as Iran poses an existential threat.

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The Eternal Order and The New Jerusalem On this Prophecy Watchers TV show, Bill Salus explains the highlights of the Millennium and the Eternal Order that follows. He also covers the events in the Aftermath Age, which is a time period between the Millennium and Eternal Order.

Bill Salus and Tom Hughes are together again. This timely video explores several Pre-Tribulation Prophecies. This show ends with a live Q and A.

The MILLENNIUM Prophecies: the 75-Day Interval ...On this Prophecy Watchers TV show Bill Salus explains what happens in the 75-Day Interval that sets up the Millennial Kingdom.





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Bill Salus & Tom Hughes Reveal The Pre-Tribulation Prophecies WATCH THIS RECENT PROPHECY WATCHER TV SHOW...

Salus and Marzulli discuss groundbreaking Bible prophecies ... This video received over 150,000 views, but was recently censored. So we have reposted it. Watch it before it gets removed again.

Mideast Update: The 3 Hamas Prophecies (11:25 minute video) Did you know that the Hamas and Palestinians appear to be identified in Bible prophecy? In this Mideast Update, Bill Salus discusses the current Hamas vs. Israeli conflict and reveals the 3 prophecies that appear to allude to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza.

Vintage Video: The Post-Rapture Pre-Tribulation Gap Period ...Bill Salus explains the gap of unspecified time between the Rapture and the Seven-Year Tribulation Period....We are building our YouTube channel by posting NEW and OLD videos into a library for our viewers. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE by clicking the YouTube button at the bottom right of this video. It will take you to our channel and then click on the SUBSCRIBE BUTTON.

2021 Update: Why America Will Fall From Superpower Status (Part 1) ...In this 24-minute video Bill Salus points out that America is morally and spiritually bankrupt. He identifies when the USA said "GOODBYE GOD," and how that provoked GOD to abandon America.

Why America will Fall from Superpower Status (Part 2) ...In this video, Bill Salus provides a summary of the Ezekiel 38 prophecy. Bill also presents the biblical, historical, archaeological, geographical and geo-political arguments that America is a cowardly young lion of Tarshish in Ezekiel 38:13. This means that America is a sideline protestor during the end times Magog Invasion into Israel. As such, America is pictured in a less than super-power status. Bill presents the possible scenarios that could cause America to decline between now and the fulfillment of Ezekiel 38.

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The LAST Prophecies on Prophecy Watchers TV Bill Salus has another information packed visit with Gary Stearman of Prophecy Watchers. They highlighted some key content of Bills new book, The LAST Prophecies. What is meant by the Final/Terminal Generation? What is the end times timeline? What starts the 7-year Tribulation and what is its purpose? They also discussed that there will be a final worldwide revival amidst the judgments of the Trib-Period and also pondered, what are the end time technologies that the ancient apostles and prophets tried to describe?

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The Catholic Church in the Tribulation ... Bill Salus explains the future of the Catholic Church in Bible prophecy.

Revealing the Mystery of End Times Babylon Dr. David Reagan and Nathan Jones interview Bill Salus on Christ in Prophecy TV. The topic that is discussed is the true identity of the GREAT CITY called Mystery, Babylon. Is it New York City, Jerusalem, Mecca, Rebuilt Babylon, Iraq, or is it Rome, the city that sits on seven-hills? Watch this TV show to hear the arguments that strongly suggest that the Harlot world religion is the Catholic Church and that the GREAT CITY that it's headquartered in is ROME!

BILL SALUS EXPLAINS WHY PSALM 83 IS A NOW PROPHECY ON PROPHECY WATCHERS TV ... Many prophecy buffs believe that Ezekiel 38 is the prophecy that could happen Now, but Bill Salus explains why that is not likely. He says Psalm 83 is a Now Prophecy, but certain preconditions exist today that suggest Ezekiel 38 is a Next Prophecy.
Regularly ahead of the curve, the Review has opposed federal drug policy for nearly 50 years, was a lonely media voice against the massive freeways planned for Washington, was an early advocate of bikeways and light rail, and helped spur the creation of the DC Statehood Party and the national Green Party,

In November 1990 it devoted an entire issue to the ecologically sound city and how to develop it. The article was republished widely.

Even before Clinton's nomination we exposed Arkansas political scandals that would later become major issues. .

We reported on NSA monitoring of U.S. phone calls in the 1990s, years before it became a major media story.

In 2003 editor Sam Smith wrote an article for Harper's comprised entirely of falsehoods about Iraq by Bush administration officials.

The Review started a web edition in 1995 when there were only 27,000 web sites worldwide. Today there are over 170 million active sites.

In 1987 we ran an article on AIDS. It was the first year that more than 1,000 men died of the disease.

In the 1980s, Thomas S Martin predicted in the Review that "Yugoslavia will eventually break up" and that "a challenge to the centralized soviet state" would occur as a result of devolutionary trends. Both happened.

In the 1970s we published a first person account of a then illegal abortion.

In 1971 we published our first article in support of single payer universal health care

In 1970, we ran a two part series on gay liberation.

i

n 1965 we called for the end of the draft.

In the 1960s we proposed community policing
M WAQAR..... "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Albert Einstein !!! NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''    
The landlocked West-African state declared a nation wide curfew in the aftermath of terror attacks in a luxurious hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou .

Ghana borders Burkina Faso to the north and is heavily dependent on its neighbor for foodstuff and agricultural products like tomatoes.

The System Shippers Officer at the Paga border, Abdul Karim Muslim told Joy Business that the traders are not able to transport their goods into the country in good time due to the curfew, causing the traders to lose monies.

He said: The reason why we are concern of the timing is because of the perishable nature of tomatoes and the onions. Fortunately this time we are having the dry harmattan weather. When there is heat, the tomatoes are not able to be sustained for a period of time and it begins to get rotten.

They normally prefer to come in early in the morning when everything is normal, by 6 Oclock they are already in Paga.

The tomatoes is processed from the Ghana side and then they move, and by the time that the sun is so hot that it will affect the tomatoes or the onions, they might have reached their market places and offload those goods.
This follows several appeal by head teachers across the country calling on government to lift the embargo placed on public sector recruitment.

"Right now all directors, all heads of senior high schools have been asked to declare vacancies in various subject areas and even in basic schools so that we can see the vacancies that exist at all the levels and in the various schedules. We have also declared vacancies for cooks, watchmen and non-teaching staff.

He added that "we are collating the vacancies that are available by second week of February to the end of February for onward submission to the Ministry of Education so that the ministry can get clearance from the Ministry of Finance in order to give quota for the recruitment of teachers to go on and that is what we are all doing now."

See also:How to use short courses to your advantage

This was made known by the President of Conference of the National Regional Directors of Education(CONRED) Alhaji Mohammed Haroon.
The chairman of the committee, Joseph Yieleh Chireh said urgent steps need to be taken to contain the disease in order to prevent fear and panic.

If from the Brong Ahafo Region, it moves to the Northern Region and now to the Ashanti Region, there must be something that is alarming about it so the best thing is to alert the World Health Organization about this situation and seek help as to how effectively we can contain this disease, he said in an interview with Accra-based Joy FM.

The outbreak of the disease began in December 2015 in the Tain District of the Brong Ahafo Region which later spread to Wenchi, Techiman, Bruohan, Kintampo, and Sene districts.

Bole in the Northern Region has also recorded some cases.

Over 30 lives have been lost to the disease while over a 100 people have been infected.

The Health Ministry has assured the general public that there is no cause for alarm.

But according to Mr. Chireh, Ghana has never had a great outbreak of it in the past and the committee is concerned that this must be taken seriously and a little step higher than it is currently being done.

A lot more can be done in the sense that if we talk about public education, by now Ghanaians should all be aware.

He again proposed the setting up of a task force to help sensitize Ghanaians about the disease.

The Ministry of Health must form a task force to be able to intensify whatever they are doing because it is in one corner.
The movie tells the story of a young Ghanaian who travelled to the UK in search of greener pastures. Life became tough when Bismark attempted to sleep with his masters daughter; and when the master found out, he threw him out on the streets of London.On the streets of London, without documents permitting his stay, he comes into contact with Adam, a young Brit who is also jobless and has been thrown out of his girlfriends apartment for cheating on her with another lady.The two began doing menial jobs for money. The two went through some rough times in London. Their fortunes worsened when in their quest to help a lady fix her broken car, Bismark ended up stealing her money.Now the police are after Bismark and his friend Adam and the question is will the police arrest them or not?The movie will be premiering at the Silver Bird Cinema at the West Hills Mall at Kasoa on March 12, 2016. This is the second production of Abbeam Ampomah Danso with Bismark Nii Odoi as the main character.Abbeam Ampomah Danso is also the Chancellor of the Abbeam Institute of Technology at Kasoa.
They were charged for conspiracy to commit crime and robbery.

Prosecuting Police Detective Chief Inspector Oscar Amponsah told the Court, presided over by Mr Justice Emmanuel Bart-Plange Brew, that the complainant, Mr Martin Ohene, a small scale miner, lived at Oda Kotoamso, near Asankragwa.

He said on December 27, the complainant lodged a complaint with the police at Asankragwa in the Amenfi West District of the Western Region that, he and his colleagues were attacked by the convicts when they were returning home from a mining site.

The incident occurred around 1700hrs and the convicts, who were armed with guns, made away with a quantity of black sand gold concentrate worth GH50,000.00.

Detective Amponsah said on January 19, the convicts were involved in a similar robbery case and when arrested, they were identified by the complainant as those who robbed them.
The Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Mr Freddie Blay, acting national chairman, Members of Parliament, and some stalwarts of the party attended the funeral to pay their last respect.

Emeritus Professor Francis Addo Kufuor was the Founding Father of the Department of Chemistry. A distinguished organic chemist, Kufuors research focused on natural products chemistry where he and his team explored many interesting indigenious plants.

He held several positions in the University including Head of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Dean of the Board of Postgraduate Studies (now the School of Graduate Studies), Pro Vice-Chancellor and Chairman of the University Council, and became the first person to be appointed an Emeritus Professor by the University.
The Akosombo hydro-electric dam has not been sold as is being rumoured, Communications Minister, Omane Boamah has said.

HASSAN AYARIGA FORMS NEW PARTY

Former presidential candidate of the Peoples National Congress, Hasaan Ayariga has formed a new political party called the All Peoples Congress (APC), on which ticket he intends to run for president in 2016.

VOTERS REGISTER BOATED BY 10% - BRITISH GOVERNMENT

The British government has acknowledged that Ghanas controversial voters register is bloated by at least 10 percent.

AYARIGA FORMS APC

The former presidential candidate of the Peoples National Congress, Hasaan Ayariga has made good his intention of forming a political party following his defeat in the recent congress of the PNC in Wa in the Upper West Region.

KICK NDC OUT  NANA

Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has charged Ghanaians to kick the governing National Democratic Congress government out of office in the November elections.

33 FIRMS BID FOR ECG

Thirty-three companies from 13 foreign countries, as well as Ghana, had expressed interest in the Private Sector Participation in the Electricity Company of Ghana as at the end of last year.

DISCARDED MANUAL ROADWORTHY STICKERS COST 1.8M

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority has said the 1.5 million manual roadworthy stickers cost 1.8 million, including Value Added Tax (VAT), and not 40 million as reported by the media.

GSE COERCES GOVERNMENT OVER CAPITAL GAINS TAX

The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) has assured that it will continue pushing for government to restore the exemption on capital gains tax and the 3 percent rebate on income taxes for listed companies during the first three years of their listing on the bourse.

PURE WATER PRICES TO GO UP THIS WEEK

Sachet-water producers in the country are set to increase the prices of their products on the market this week, due to the recent utility and fuel price hikes.

PAC TARGETS CIVIL SERVANTS FOR WRONG-DOING
These are the words of Oxfam international executive director Winnie Byanyima at the World Economic Forum which is ongoing in Davos ,Switzerland on dealing with the inequality challenge.

Inequality has been labeled as one of the major global risk and the inequality gap according to research by Oxfam International keeps widening.

Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the worlds population has received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1%. The average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. The report by Oxfam said.

Byanyima believes this phenomenon can be dealt with in two ways if governments and companies work towards more inclusive economies which ensures women are paid well and every workers earns a decent and acceptable wage.

She said the tax haven system which ensures big business keep all their money should be eradicated.

In 2014 corporate investment in tax havens was almost four times bigger than it was in 2001. Increasingly business hides its money from being taxed. Byanyima said.

She advocated sanctions for businesses which hide their profits under tax havens.

Another research by brooking.edu/global has also revealed the extent the poverty gap would be bridged if billionaires donated their money to the poor.

The researchers identified some billionaires in developing countries and how they can improve the life of the poor in their countries if they shared half of the net worth.
This was contained in a letter addressed to the MFWA and copied to the National Media Commission (NMC).

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in October 2015 initiated a move to solicit the support of journalists so as to be able to petition President John Dramani Mahama to institute punitive measures against presidential staffer Stan Dogbe.

The Secretary to the President, Mr Kwesi Quartey, has subsequently indicated that President Mahama has received the petition and will respond to it appropriately.

I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 14th October, 2015 addressed to His Excellency the President on the above subject. His Excellency has taken note of the concerns raised in the letter. He wishes me to assure the Media Foundation that due attention would be paid to the matter in the interest of protecting the reputation of the Presidency, the letter from the Presidents secretary stated.

The Presidential staffer, is believed to have seized and destroyed a journalists recording equipment at the 37 military hospital.

The GBC journalist had gone to the hospital to follow-up on development around the Presidential press corps who had been involved in a serious accident that left one journalist dead and others serious injured.
...The VRA has indicated that we require about 98 million dollars per month to procure fuel for the thermal plants. This translates into US$1.8 billion per-annum and if you do the conversion in cedis, it takes you to GH4.5billion.

It means that we have to work very had towards raising revenue to the tune of about GH4.5billion this year...that is the stack reality that confronts us as a nation, the GNA quoted him as saying,

The power ministry on December 30, 2015 declared an end to the country's protracted three year load shedding exercise in a press statement.

The Ministry has however backtracked on that, playing it safe instead.

Jinapor said the load shedding has not ended even though there have been significant improvement in power supply over the last few weeks.

If by accident, one plant goes down, especially the major ones we will have a setback...And so we need to observe the system for some time, before we can finally and possibly declare the load shedding over and possibly disband the load management team.

President Mahama at a press briefing to mark his third year in office also abstained from committing himself on when the load shedding will end. He instead said it will end soon, after various deadlines he gave never materialized.

The government is counting on The Africa and Middle East Resource Investment (AMERI) power plant to come on stream February to provide some relief.
After failing to lead the PNC in their Presidential polls, the 2012 presidential candidate Hassan Ayariga has formed a new political party to contest the 2016 elections as flagbearer but not on the ticket of the PNC.

According to him, he was not treated fairly adding that the party doesnt deserve him.

Hassan Ayariga accused the party and the Electoral Commission of vote rigging.

He is scheduled to receive a provisional license for his newly formed political party.

The EC is expected to hand over the provisional license to Mr. Ayariga on Friday, January 29, 2016.

Ayariga after losing the primaries described his former party as illegal saying, "I am not going to endorse an illegal party anymore. I have tried to build this party. I have tried to build this party from illegality and make it more formidable and more united."

Dr. Edward Mahama was elected as the flagbearer to lead the PNC for the 2016 lections.

He beat his close contender Hassan Ayariga who was the the party's presidential candidate for the 2012 election.

But national chairman, Bernard Mornah in an interview with Joy FM said, "I do hope hell find time to respond to my calls so we can talk. I see PNC in him so for anything at all it runs in his blood. I have insisted that it is time for him to realise that when Dr Edward Mahama lost to him, he didnt break away; he stayed."

He added that "We are a family and we should sit and resolve whatever it is. As far as Im concerned there is no political party that is being formed and if there is any idea or thought of forming a political party then it is ill-advised. And it is time for us to work together."
While in the country between January 18  19, she met with various stakeholders including members of the Ghana Leadership Team to discuss new and improved strategies to grow the business and deliver more value to customers.

Ms Gordon said Africa's telecommunications market is innovative and competitive, due to the size and scale of predicted growth adding that the focus needs to be on some key strategic pillars.

Ghana is an interesting and exciting market. It is one of the most vibrant and has enormous growth potential and we will differentiate ourselves by adding more value through existing infrastructure and partnerships. For instance with the increasing adoption of smartphones and internet consumption locally and the decreasing prices of smartphones worldwide, we can help drive up the numbers for smartphone connections through a win-win partnership with an affordable handset provider, she said.

She said the focus for Tigo in 2016 is to grow the volume and value of customers by accelerating growth in data, Tigo Business and Mobile Financial Services, MFS.

In 2015, Millicom, the parent company for Tigo, highlighted industry predictions of an exponential growth in Africas mobile broadband subscriptions - which are expected to almost triple by 2018 whilst data traffic in Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to grow by 20 times by 2019  twice the global average. Industry research also forecasts that data revenues in Africa represents 10 percent  20 percent of total revenues, but this number is expected to reach 30 percent by 2018.

Millicoms vision is to leverage on the role of the internet and digital technology to advance people's lives -financially and socially and Cynthias task is to help position and sustain this within the Africa markets in the face of increasing competition.

With responsibility for six countries operations in Africa: Tanzania, Ghana, DRC, Senegal, Rwanda and Chad, her visit to Ghana was second since her appointment on September 21, 2015.

Cynthia has more than 20 years of telecom sector specific experience, leading mobile, broadband and fixed-line operations in emerging markets across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Russia.

She developed her Africa experience while at Orange, where she was Vice-President of Partnerships and Emerging Markets, and Ooredoo where she was Chief Commercial Officer.
In a statement issued on Sunday in Lagos, the LCCIs Director-General (DG), Mr Muda Yusuf, said that normalisation of the foreign exchange market was crucial to stemming the current economic downturn.

Yusuf urged the apex bank to review its foreign exchange policies during its upcoming Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting scheduled for Jan. 25 and 26.

He said that to deepen the market, foreign exchange from Diaspora remittances, export proceeds, foreign investors, multinational companies and non-governmental organizations, should be allowed to trade freely in the autonomous market. According to him, a World Bank report puts Nigerias Diaspora remittance at 21bn dollars in 2014.

He, therefore, urged the CBN to articulate policies that would stimulate and unlock the huge potential in Diaspora remittances and other capital inflows into the economy.

The DG said the adoption of the model would have a significant moderating effect on the exchange rate. He also urged the apex bank to review the 41 items prohibited from accessing foreign exchange from the official market.

"Any product that is not on the official import prohibition list of the Federal Government should have access to the autonomous foreign exchange market.

"Import prohibition is a vital trade policy matter which should be undertaken in an integrated manner with inputs from the Ministries of Finance; Budget and National Planning; Trade and Investment and the Nigeria Customs Service.

"The consequences of import prohibition are far reaching and go beyond the narrow perspective of conservation of foreign exchange.

"The dimensions of inter-sector linkages, employment implications, customs revenue implications, breaches of regional and other international trade treaties should be taken into account," Yusuf said.

He said that fiscal policy measures like taxation and import tariffs should be used to shape the behaviour of economic operators without a disruption in the economy.

According to him, the restrictive foreign exchange policies impacted negatively across all levels of investments resulting in factory closures, job losses, escalating prices, waning GDP growth and weakening investors confidence.
A statement signed by the Head, Communication and Public Affairs, Mr. Haddi Birchi, stated that the FRC report indicated that the corporation was well above average in compliance with Sections 21- 23 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and had fully complied with the provisions of the General Reserve Fund into which 20 per cent of its operating surplus was retained in accordance with Section 22 (2) of the FRA 2007.

Based on the statement, the corporation paid a total sum of N15.4bn to the consolidated revenue account during the period.

It is quite commendable that NDIC is one of the few corporations that have fully complied with IFRS, which has greatly improved financial reporting of the activities of the agency.
According to reports, the governments and workers of states such as Kebbi, Ondo, Cross River, Osun, Niger, Akwa Ibom and Ekiti states have stopped because of issues regarding the implementation of the Pension Reform Act, 2014.

Other states involves are Imo, Sokoto, Lagos, Rivers, Abia, Bauchi, Plateau, Edo and Niger states.

The Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress in Osun State, Mr. Jacob Adekomi, confirmed that the state government had yet to implement the PRA 2014, because remittances based on the 2004 Act had stopped.

Lana said, Osun domesticated the 2004 Pension Reform Act in 2008 but the actual implementation of the pension law started in May 2010. The 2014 PRA has not been implemented. Our concern now is that the law with lesser percentage of contribution was not implemented, will the government implement this one with greater obligation for it?
The story back then was that the actor had a successful operation and was recuperating well.

Actually Charles Okochas road to recovery wasnt that smooth. According to James Louis Okoye an event planner who rushed the actor to the hospital, Charles Okocha could have lost his life due to a reported botched surgery.

James Louis Okoye said that after Charles Okocha was brought to the hospital, the medical staff were slow in responding to the actor.

It was over two hours and thirty minutes before the doctor that was to conduct the surgery came. Then I was told to go and sign approval for transfusion of blood. I told them to check if my blood could match his, and said that I was willing to donate blood to save his life. They said it would take longer time, that they already had blood in their bank. But they said what they had in their blood bank would have to pass through test one, two and three for HIV/AIDS. They said they were waiting to do the last one. For the fact that the case was urgent, they said that if I had no objections, I could sign that I approved for them to use the one they were not very sure of being HIV free. They said they are waiting for the last confirmatory test that the blood was HIV-free James Louis Okoye told Sun News.

After the operation which lasted four hours Charles Okocha was wheeled into the male special ward. When his external stitches were removed, his stomach reportedly opened up.

He was just sitting down and all of a sudden we heard a noise like a balloon burst. Behold, everything in Okochas stomach came out. You know it was a major operation.

Nurses rushed over, looked at him and ran away. Anybody who looked at his dangling intestines could not behold the sight. It was a gory sight. But Okocha was courageous enough to hold his intestines from dropping on the ground and he turned his face away from his hands so that he would not faint at the sight of his own intestines coming out said the event planner.

After 25 minutes of agony and pain, the doctor attended to actor, and the surgery was done all over again. According to James Louis Okoye the hospital allegedly used the wrong material in stitching the actors stomach during the surgery.

The Hospital through the Chairman of its Medical and Advisory Committee Nnewi, Dr. Evaristus Ede Afiadigwe however denied any wrong doing on its part, saying a burst stomach could happen any time after surgery and no wrong material was used during the actors surgery.
"It's unfortunate that the entire country is a racist country. This is one example of the fact that even though some people have given great performances in movies they weren't even thought about," the 71-year-old actor told the AP at Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, January 23:

The 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' actor is just the latest star to address what has been dubbed a "major crisis" by the Academy. The organization instituted new guidelines on Friday, January 22 in order to address the growing diversity controversy.

"We are living in a country that discriminates and has certain racist tendencies so sometimes it's manifested in things like this and it's illuminated," DeVito continued. "But just generally speaking we're racists. We are a bunch of racists."

Other actors who have spoken up about the same issue include, Jada Pinkett Smith who will neither be attending nor watching the movie event, as well as her superstar husband, Will Smith.

Meanwhile, hot Chris Rock, who called the event, "the white BET Awards", will still host but is reported to have changed his script to address the lack of diversity at this year's show.
He took to his Instagram page to express his joy concerning the 40th wedding anniversary of his parents.

See his heart warming comments below:

So much to thank God for! Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary to my Wonderful Parents! May God continue to bless your Union and may we celebrate many more milestones in the name of Jesus! My Motivation & inspiration! Love you both to the moon and back!

Lynxxx is the son of John Edozien, who served as the first Deputy Governor of the Old Bendel (now Delta State).

According to Bloomberg, Chief Edozien is the chairman of a number of Nigerian companies such as Jenkyns Consult Nigeria Limited and Mercedes Benz Automobile Services Limited. He also holds other directorate positions in several companies. He serves as a Director of Linkage Assurance Plc. Chief Edozien has been a Non-Executive Director of Diamond Bank Plc since April 18, 2008.
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! 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!
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 suspect allegedly confessed to the police that he buys stolen vehicles from robbers and gave one of such SUVs to his pastor to pray for his wife.

Also arrested with Osas, was the pastor who received the stolen vehicle, Pastor Titus Onwuchekwa.

The Commissioner of Police in State, Fatai Owoseni, while parading the Delta State born suspect, said more than 18 expensive vehicles were recovered from the suspect.

Bright also confessed that he knew that suppliers of the recovered vehicles were car snatchers because he buys the SUVs at give-away prices.

The Pastor who is of the Presbyterian Church, Umuahia in Abia State, he did not know that the vehicle Osas gave to him was stolen and this was confirm by th suspect who said that Onwuchekwa did not know that the SUV he gave to him was stolen, but he committed himself when he contacted him again and was demanding to buy another car (Toyota Camry) for N250,000.

Unknown to Onwuchekwa, Osas was already in police custody when the pastor came to Lagos to buy the Toyota Camry and he was also arrested.
How else to better explain the deeds of seven arrested cultists who in the process of supremacy battle killed a 65-year-old woman.

According to reports by Punch Newpaper, the incident took place at 19, Oshinfolarin Street in Bariga, yesterday (January 23).

Members of Eiye confraternity had a clash with another rival cult group known as Aiye confraternity, it was a serious battle that led to the vandalization of parked vehicles along the road, and the lost two members of the Aiye confraternity known as Bobo and Abayomi Olubola.

Read More:Man stabbed to death for refusing cultist drinks

Confirming the incident by the Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Dolapo Badmus, he issued a statement concerning the arrest of the cultist who were involved in the death of the deceased identified as Adejoke Adefuye, she was burnt beyond recognition when her house was set ablaze during the fracas.

Some equipment used by the cultist which includes power bikes, one live/expended cartridges and a tricycle were also confiscated by the police.

Parading the suspected cultist identified as Afees Olaide Fagunwa, Nurudeen Lateef, Richard Ewa, Richard Abayomi, Mohammed Musa, Kayode Dada and Adams Adelakun.
"My name is Hajia Jemila from Kano State. I have a very serious issue that is threatening to endanger the life of my 10-year-old daughter. I am 30-years-old and married to an old fashioned man (I am his fourth wife). I did not marry him out of love but I had to obey my father and go into the marriage which is called 'aure'n zumunci' in Hausa (marriage of understanding).

My husband is almost two times my age and was my father's best friend and before my father died, he made sure I got married to him. I was in the Kano State Polytechnic then but my education had to stop as I settled down in marriage but I have never lost sight of my love for education and I have vowed to make sure my children get quality education even if my husband is against it.

Now my husband wants to give out my littleto the son of his friend who is 26-year-old and already married. I have kicked against the arrangement vehemently but my husband has insisted on having his way because he does not believe in the girl-child education. The funny thing is that many of his family members seem to agree with him.

I do not mind even leaving my marriage to protect my little baby. They are putting arrangements in place for the marriage which is supposed to take place in a month's time. I plan to take my two children and run away instead of allowing her to be married off and destroy her future.

Jemila."

The teaser for the day was:

How Nigeria voted:

42% - I will run away with my child

4% - I will go ahead with the plans

54% - I will report them to the appropriate ministry
Punch reports that patients and medical personnel in Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, took to their heels when they discovered that two patients allegedly died as a result of the deadly disease, that has taken over 60 lives so far.

Reports say the Delta state Health Commissioner, Dr. Nicholas Azinge could not confirm the incident.

Azinge said I know some persons have died, I cannot speak further on that because the Federal Ministry of Health is already doing something to sensitise the people and we in Delta State are also sensitising our people.

The Federal Government, through the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole has also warned that the current Lassa fever outbreak could kill 1000 Nigerians if not urgently checked.

He also said the Federal Government will eradicate Lassa fever from Nigeria by April 2016.

Meanwhile, a male patient who tested positive to the disease has reportedly escaped a Hospital in Ebonyi state.

In Lagos state recently, Prof. Christopher Bode, Chief Medical Director (CMD), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, said that all the general hospitals in the state had already been sensitised and prepared for the treatment of any Lassa fever patient.
Punch reports that Falana, in his petition urged the court to investigate the alleged diversion of funds meant for the prosecution of the war against Boko Haram.

An excerpt of his petition to the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, dated January 19, 2016, reads On account of the deliberate refusal of the former military authorities to equip and motivate the members of the armed forces involved in combat operations, the insurgents have killed about 25,000 soldiers and civilians including children and displaced over 2,000,000 people.

The ICC needs to urgently commence an investigation proprio motu on the allegations of the criminal diversion of the security funds of $2.1bn and N643bn earmarked by suspected perpetrators, with a view to determining whether these amount to crimes against humanity within the Courts jurisdiction.

Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser in the administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has been the man in the centre of the $2.1b arms purchase controversy.

Also, some highly placed Nigerians have been indicted, arrested and charged to court by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The International Criminal Court (ICC), governed by the Rome Statute, is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
Leadership reports that he said Pipeline vandalism is highly condemnable; this should not be allowed to happen in a civilized society.

Adding that Our call is that the government should remain focus in its fight against corruption and it should not be tired by whatever pressure.

Wabba also said We also want to appreciate what the security agencies have been able to do in terms of protecting the pipelines in the region, they should put in more efforts to contain the crisis.

He also assured the Federal Government of labours support to help secure oils facilities across the nation.

The NLC President also asked the militants to embrace dialogue, rather that destroying Government property.

He also said I hope that the renewed blowing-up of major oil and gas pipelines is not as a result of the ongoing probe of some political leaders in the region.

The bombing of oil pipelines in the Niger-Delta by suspected militants allegedly resumed after an ex-militant leader, Tompolo was indicted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
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The used vehicles, valued at N2.2 billion ($11 million), were officially presented to the army in Lagos by Patrick Doyle, who represented the US government.

As part of the continuing support from United States to the government, and the people of Nigeria to defeat Boko Haram, I am proud to stand here today as the representative of the US secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, and commander and the representative of the US Africa command, General David Rodriguez, to present the donation of this 24 Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected (MRAP) vehicles to the Nigerian army, Doyle said.

Doyle added: The repairs of the vehicle is up to the Nigerian government to do; they can repair them on their own if they have the facility to do that, but of course, the spare parts are very particular to this vehicle and we have been in discussion with the army previously and we are working out the modalities of how we will get those parts to them.

They will have to order those parts from the United States and we will work out those conditions.

Nigeria is also in the process of receiving eight more of this vehicle through the same programme, which is called the excess defence article program, designed to transfer excess US military equipment to partner nation.

We will work for even more opportunity to utilise this programme in support of Nigerian effort in the north-east in the future. The 24 vehicles cost $11million, the other eight cost $7.4 million.According to him, the US has no need for the vehicles anymore, which is why they being given out to the Nigeria army.

He said: We are getting rid of the vehicle and the reason we have the Excess Defence Article Programme is that we are downsizing forces in our military. We have left Iraq with our forces and we have downsized our forces out of Afghanistan; we do not need all this vehicles anymore, so Nigeria asked for this vehicles and we gladly provided them.

 Addressing the press, Barry Ndiomu, a general representing the chief of army staff and minister of defence, told journalists that the equipment will help in protecting the Nigerian troops in the north-east.

The MRAP equipment will protect our troops, especially against the menace of improvised explosive devices, without any doubt it will help. It will also help us to move the men in a manner in which will probably have less or fewer casualties.

We have our own technical outfit, the Nigerian army electrical maintenance engineers; they have work shop which is the SVP plant in Bauchi.

The vehicles will be moved there as soon as possible, they will make the necessary assessment and I believe the on-going discussions with our American partners, the spear parts should be made available and they will be repaired.

Speaking on for the army, a general representing the chief of army staff and minister of defence, Barry Ndiomu, said the equipment will help in protecting the Nigerian troops in the north-east.

The MRAP equipment will protect our troops, especially against the menace of improvised explosive devices, without any doubt it will help. It will also help us to move the men in a manner in which will probably have less or fewer casualties", he said.
Sani, who represents the Kaduna Central Senatorial District, made the call via a statement, according to Daily Trust.

It reads in part:

Buhari is the only Nigerian leader since after General Murtala Muhammad to take on corruption.

The Nigerian state without Buhari could have continue to be a gangland presided over by criminal elements whose preoccupation in power is both wholesale and primitive accumulation.

President Buhari has beamed the light for us to see the route of our dark past and we have seen how infested it was with rodents, reptiles and rogues, Sani added.
Reacting to the ongoing anti-corruption war, which according to him is looking like a political distraction to his administration, he said the President is acting disdainfully towards the judicial authorities.

Okogie stated this on Sunday, Jan. 24, in a statement by his Director of Social Communications of the Diocese, Monsignor Gabriel Osu.

He said: He (Buhari) must retool, refocus and aggressively face the social, economic (fiscal and monetary) problems we have head-on, without letting the anti-corruption drive look like a political distraction.

A snail-paced and disordered methodology in governance, his apparent disdain for judicial authorities and decisions, a lost today and found tomorrow 2016 Budget debacle, and a rather rudderless and confused Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with an unclear monetary policy strategy (inevitably increasing the economic uncertainties being faced by Nigerians), have set alarm bells ringing in my mind and in the minds of many discerning Nigerians.

Indeed, his perceived discordant relationship with the leadership of the Legislature has many naysayers chuckling and remarking that President Buharis government is heading into his comfort zone, a one man show.

Okogie also stated that a lot of Nigerians are beginning to feel that Buhari is fast transforming this nation into a police state where the president, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Department of State Security (DSS) rule the day.

What they say is given lurid headlines in the media, and it seems to all that some of the defendants cum accused persons are being tried in the press with information conveniently slipping into the hands of the press, presumably from the security agencies, even before such people have been charged to court.

On the bail granted to the Director of Radio Biafra and Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), the cleric said: The pro-Biafran activist, Nnamdi Kanu and the erstwhile NSA, Sambo Dasuki, were granted bail by the courts but such bails were disregarded by the security agents under Buharis watch.

Unfortunately, democracy is difficult and this government must realise that democracy pervasively coloured with impunity, arbitrariness and highhandedness, cannot be used to fight and correct the financial impunity and reckless abandon of the previous administration, even if it is more difficult to do so; the rule of law must be obeyed and be the order of the day.

If Buhari wants to leave a creditable legacy come 2019, he should retool the bureaucracy. For instance, the roof of the Central Bank is leaking water.

Governors, who arm-twisted Okonjo-Iweala into signing out our reserves held by Central Bank, are today ministers in the All Progressives Congress (APC) government.

We are still talking about change and corruption when old things refuse to pass away! These political gimmicks can only carry away gullible or naive Nigerians. President Buhari should beam his flashlight on policies and programmes that will lift up the masses.

Existing industries are almost dead and they call for urgent revitalisation. The budget ought to aid solutions to the mass unemployment, rural-urban migration, skewedness in the distribution of income, abject rural poverty and industrialisation of rural economy.

The 774 local government capitals should be linked to their state capitals. Even the mindboggling infrastructure deficits can take the entire tenure to address.

The weakness in the bureaucracy has not been addressed. The problem the APC government is trying to solve is bound to re-occur because it is treatment of effect rather than the cause, he said, adding that causative factors are being totally ignored or glossed-over while institutional weakness pervades the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs), offices of the Accountant-General, Auditor-General and the Central Bank.

Speaking on the APC-led government's 'change' mantra, Okogie said: Our Change must change something. How could we continue to talk of change in a static system? How could we be talking of change when the same crew are governors, ministers, senators, and members of the House of Representatives? This is a cyclical devolution of power to the same people who are never out of power!

What sort of change is the President talking about? When will the youth take over when even a governor does not take a bow and go? When shall we plan for the replacement of delinquent leadership? This is what constitutes change. Change is not changing from Jonathan to Buhari.

He continued: Change is behavioural and pervades all levels of society including the family, the church, the mosque, schools, market women and business men. When we talk of change, we talk of positive-salutary, healthy growth and development oriented change that cuts across the entire gamut of the society.

What sort of change is this that ignores the glaring unequal distribution of national income? It is absurd that the same government that is unable to pay N18,000 per month to the lowest grade of labour can afford to pay N1.8 million per month to anyone in the economy. Why must tax payers money be used to feed Mr. President and his family?

Why must the tax payers money be used to buy brand new exotic vehicles for the legislature, judges, ministers and governors when they are heavily paid?

Why dont they use loan finance or mortgage finance to buy their cars and houses? This is also a form of looting and it is the cause of grounding the economy and calling in an IMF spin-doctor all the time.

Precisely two years ago this same President Buhari rejected off-hand this use of a spin doctor to heal the ailing economy. He preferred the use of counter-trade and inward looking policies like cutting down costs and flamboyant exotic life styles.

Today, I am not so sure we have the same Buhari. I do hope he has not changed all the colours of the rainbow. The ruling elites are living a luxurious lifestyle while the masses are in abject poverty and yet we are all Nigerians. Enough of this change-conundrum."
Assistant Publicity Secretary of the Kaduna State APC, Hon. Salisu Tanko Wusono had on Friday said they have uncovered further evidence of anti-party activities by Senator Shehu Sani, alleging that he has been holding meetings with PDP members before and after the party slammed an 11-month suspension on him.

But Senator Sani, while debunking the allegations, said they are aware that the said Salisu Tanko Wusono doesnt have the basic literacy and intelligence of writing statements or concocting such lies.

Sani, in a statement signed by Suleiman Ahmed, his Special Assistant on Political matters said they are not ignorant of the fact that Wusono is the face of the Political Adviser to Kaduna state Governor, Mallam Uba Sani, who in turn, is acting on behalf of Governor Nasiru el-Rufai.

"My attention has been drawn to a so called spokesperson of the Kaduna State APC who goes by the name Salisu Tanko Wusono. The statement purports that Senator Shehu Sani met with some PDP stalwarts in Southern Kaduna and even gave them the sum of ten million naira. This claim is an outright falsehood, deceitful and was fabricated to mischievously misinform the public," the statement said.

"Mallam Uba Sani and his cronies like Salisu Tanko Wusono have in the last few months, continuously conceived and expanded this crisis which they have relied upon to extort money from the Governor of Kaduna State," Sani added.

He said Kaduna state APC was yet to recover from the shame such people caused the party when they in collaboration with another aid of the Governor, Muktar Ahmed Monrovia, attempted to bribe some ward excos with the sum of N500,000 to engineer the suspension of Senator Shehu Sani.

"After that failed and disastrous suspension plot against the Senator, they have resorted to other face saving measures aimed at maintaining their lines of extortion. Mr Wusono started spreading unfounded lies and allegations which even the Nigerian Police authorities had to come out publicly and debunk. They also devised the cowardly act of using President Mohammadu Buharis name to incite the public against perceived enemies," the statement said.

Sani, through his aid, said he was disheartening that the APC in Kaduna State has been so polarized and reduced to a level where the party is now being run by persons who have no political clout or integrity.

"It is also very unfortunate that the state governor will allow his stooges to insult National officers, plot and spread lies against elected and notable personalities in the party that gave him succour, political relevance and power when he was muscled out of the then ruling PDP."

Sani said the whole charade about the APC in Kaduna State is a script being played out with the sole aim of making monetary gains and at the same time maintaining a crisis that will make it impossible for stakeholders to hold the government to account.
The crisis occurred after members of the group allegedly attempted to assassinate Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai in Zaria, Kaduna State.

The incident led to El Zakzakys arrest and his whereabouts have been in question since the battle.

It is true that the federal government flew him out of the country for treatment, a source told Vanguard.

He was stabilized before he was brought back to Nigeria. The government did not want to take chances by keeping him in the country.

We did not want a repeat of the incident with the late leader of the Boko Haram movement whose death in custody exacerbated the crisis in the North East, the source added.

The spokesperson of the group, Ibrahim Musa also confirmed the reports to Vanguard and said that El Zakzaky was currently recuperating in Abuja.
According to Punch, Falana stated this in his petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.

Falana in his petition, asked the court to investigate the alleged $2.1b arms purchase scandal.

Punch reports that he also alleged that the sum of $322m and 5.5m from the money stolen and stashed abroad by the late Gen. Sani Abacha, allegedly transferred to Dasuki by a former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to prosecute the war on terror, had been illegally diverted.

The sum of $322m and 5.5m, going by the rate of N198 to a dollar and N214.70 to a Euro, amounts to N7,547,557,636.

An excerpt of his petition to the ICC reads On account of the deliberate refusal of the former military authorities to equip and motivate the members of the armed forces involved in combat operations, the insurgents have killed about 25,000 soldiers and civilians including children and displaced over 2,000,000 people.

The ICC needs to urgently commence an investigation proprio motu on the allegations of the criminal diversion of the security funds of $2.1bn and N643bn earmarked by suspected perpetrators, with a view to determining whether these amount to crimes against humanity within the Courts jurisdiction.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), governed by the Rome Statute, is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
Members of the Green Chamber had last week invited the immediate past minister of the Federal Capital Territory ( FCT ), Senator Bala Mohammed over the land swap policy carried out by his administration.

But the locals through their spokesman, who is also the Magajin Garki, Mr Joel Yazegbe, urged the lawmakers to beam its searchlight to the purported resettlement of locals that were asked to leave their communities for the building of the centenary city.

The community said compensation of Garki village and other communities in the territory should be properly looked at by the House of Representatives members.

Yazegbe said despite different budgets been approved, there was no time compensation for lands, houses were paid to the affected indigenous people.

"In Garki, Akpajenya and Apo communities, 90 percent of names that appeared on the resettlement exercise carried out by the FCDA officials were unknown names to the communities," Yazegbe alleged.
Mohammed who did not give the number of those arrested, said 15 people, including a Divisional Police Officer (DPO) lost their lives in the attack.

"15 people were killed including, a DPO, while among those injured were some military personnel", Mohammed said.

Mohammed debunked speculations that the incident was an attack by Boko Haram, adding that it was purely an attack by Fulani herdsmen as reprisal over the killing of a 10 year old Fulani boy.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the early morning Sunday attack affected Demsare, Koh, Ndikajam, Tabongo and Koh villages where the Principal of Government Day Secondary School Koh, Mr John Buba, was also killed.
A Federal High Court in Abuja adjourned the ruling till January 29, 2016.

Kanu is facing a six-count charge bordering on allegations of treasonable felony, maintaining an unlawful society and illegal possession of firearms, among others.

Citing sections 158 and 162 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), Kanu's lawyer Vincent Obeta argued that the sections contain his clients statutory right to bail since he was not charged for a capital offence.

In a counter argument, the prosecution counsel, Mohammed Diri, insisted that the application did not meet the conditions stipulated in section 162 of the ACJA.

He urged the court to deny the bail application and accelerate hearing into the matter, stating that Kanu may escape if he is released on bail. He added that the Biafra agitator has dual citizenship.

Following the arguments from both counsels, Justice John Tsoho, said the application would be decided on Friday.

According to report, Kanu and his supporter engaged in an argument with prison officials shortly after the seession.
The disclosure was made today, January 25, 2016, by an employee of Asset and Resource Management Company Limited, Nneka Ararume, who said she collected the money from Metuh at his house in Prince and Princess Estate, Abuja, Punch reports.

He gave me the sum of $2m in $100 bills. It was taken to bureau de change operators who would then transfer the money to ARM. From there (Metuhs house) I proceeded to Mr. Sie Iyenomes office at Wuse 2 where I gave him the sum of $1m, Ararume said.

I also invited Mr. Kabir Mohammed and I also gave him the sum of $1m to transfer the naira equivalent in favour of Destra Investment Limited. Later on the same day, December 2, 2014, Mr. Kabir and Mr. Sie Iyenome confirmed the receipt, she added.
Oyo State governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi disclosed this in Ibadan on Friday, Jan. 22.

"Our own dear President and my colleague governors will top list of dignitaries we will be inviting to give late Oba Odugade a befitting burial. I'm using this medium to solicit the support of Ibadan people at home and in the Diaspora to join hands with us to make the ceremonies grand", the governor said.

Ajimobi, who said the late monarch was one of the people instrumental to him becoming the State Governor, described him as his father, saying it was a personal loss to him.
Tompolo has been allegedly indicted severally on different occasions, alongside the former Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) boss, Patrick Akpobolokemi.

The ex-militant leader has refused to honour the several court orders summoning him to court to answer to the fraud allegations levelled against him.

Punch reports that Tompolo has been accused of diverting N22.7b belonging to NIMASA for his personal use.

He is also being accused of defrauding the Federal Government and making false representations.

Punch reports that Justice Ibrahim Buba recently issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Tompolo for his failure to appear in court, on January 14, 2016.

The ex-militants accomplice, former DG of NIMASA, Akpobolokemi. is currently in court, and will be appearing before before Justice Saliu Saidu of a Federal High Court, Lagos, for an alleged N3.4bn fraud.

This is different from his N2.6bn fraud case before Justice Ibrahim Buba.
The event is part of activities organized by the Circle of Diplomats (Circle Diplomatique), Geneva to honour Jonathan.

This was disclosed via a statement released by the Executive Director of the Geneva Press Club, Guy Mettan.

Mettan also said that Jonathan will expectedly speak on the issues of security and civil peace in Nigeria and West Africa and the improvement of health and education of children.

The former Nigerian president will most likely also speak on Boko Haram and Nigerias fight against insurgency.

The Circle of Diplomats will also host a dinner in Jonathans honour on the same day at the Intercontinental Hotel, Geneva.

The former Nigerian president is the first African leader to be honoured by the group and is being recognized for his democratic credentials and efforts towards upholding human rights in Africa.

Jonathan earned worldwide accolade to President Muhammadu Buhari after the March 28 elections, thus preventing Nigeria from erupting into massive waves of electoral violence which many around the world had predicted would occur.
Mohammed also said that the people in question have been using their influence to frustrate the governments war against corruption.

The minister made the comments on Sunday, January 24, 2016, while speaking in Lagos, Punch reports.

We know that those who stole us dry are powerful. They have newspapers, radio and television stations and an army of supporters to continuously deride the governments war against corruption. But we are undaunted and will not relent until corruption is also decimated, Mohammed said.

The federal government is delighted that the anti-corruption war being led by President Muhammadu Buhari has been acknowledged and applauded on a global stage.

It is particularly gratifying that in that speech, Mr Kerry made the link between corruption and terrorism. We agree that corruption is indeed a radicaliser because it destroys faith in legitimate authority.

When the money meant to construct roads is looted, the end result is that the roads are not built and the people suffer and even die in avoidable road accidents.

When the money meant to provide electricity is looted, we all are perpetually sentenced to darkness. When the money meant for healthcare is pocketed by a few, we are unable to reduce maternal and infant mortality. These are the costs of corruption.

The situation is very grim indeed, as far as corruption is concerned. That is why the federal government is embarking on this sensitisation Campaign. Our approach  which is to count the cost of corruption  is not to vilify anyone but to use facts and figures to give Nigerians a sense of what corruption has done to their lives, he added.
Odigie-Oyegun told newsmen in Makurdi on Sunday that both members of the ruling APC and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) found wanting were being prosecuted by the anti-corruption agencies.

He said, "PDP has been in government at the centre for 16 years when all these atrocities were being perpetrated; so it is normal that majority of the people dragged to the court will be their members.

"Recently, there are backlogs of cases coming up as reported by the media and some of the people being taken to court are members of the APC.

"So, it is very unfair to say that the president is doing selective justice in his fight against corruption."

Odigie-Oyegun said the APC-led Federal Government would not compromise the future of the country for the interest of a selected few as it was done during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

He said the president was determined to stabilise the economy and fulfil all his campaign promises and noted that the party's manifesto was built around the president who was an upright person.

"Certainly, there will be hard nuts to crack.

"When we took over, we did not expect to meet this kind of economy where our currency would be so depreciated and crude oil sold as low as 38 dollars per barrel.

"The manifesto of the APC is built around the presidency and welfare of the citizen is the paramount objective of the party.

"President Buhari-led administration would not deviate from this original ideology of the party.

"President Buhari would stabilise the economy and fulfil all his campaign promises.

"Most importantly, everything the president is doing is for the overall interest of the Nigerian citizens," the party chairman said.
Ihedioha made the comment through his media aide, Chibuike Onyeukwu and also condemned the scrapping of 19 government agencies in the state., Vanguard reports.

There is no doubt that the Nigerian economy is facing a downturn as a result of dwindling oil revenue but the solution is not arbitrary disengagement of workers and scrapping of key parastatals, such as the Hospital Management Board, Imo Water Corporation, Imo State Investment Promotion Agency, Imo State Library Board, Agricultural Development Programme and others," Ihedioha said.

Choosing to sack thousands of workers as the only viable option to tackling the states dwindled economic base is unfortunate, senseless, uncharitable and anachronistic, he added.
Speaking through his Special Assistant on Administration and Personnel, Pastor Johnson Odesola, he said Nigerians should endeavour to love and support their neighbours for a great 2016 to be possible.

He spoke during the New Year thanksgiving and prayer service organised by RCCG, National Headquarters, Throne of Grace Parish Ebute-Metta, Lagos.

He assured that 2016 promises to be full of greatness and success, urging Nigerians to be rededicated to God.

He said, My message to Nigeria is a message of hope and in 2016, we will overcome all our challenges and match triumphant throughout the New Year, adding that God told him other evils will come to an end in the country this year.

He stressed that every country that reach the part of greatness works hard as nothing good come easy.

Adeboye said: We have to work hard and trust God for miracles.
Okojie, who was in Bauchi at the 19th to 22nd convocation ceremony of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, stated that Nigerian Universities do not make it to the top hundred universities in the world even though the country has lots of talents that excel elsewhere.

He said, it is worrisome that no Nigerian university is quoted among the top 100 universities in the world.

We rank below a thousand, if we do not aspire to be among the world class universities, we cannot boast of robust system capable of making the country among the top economies of the world.

We have abundance of talents who excel elsewhere but appear incapacitated at home. This is unacceptable.

Whatever makes our abundant talents fail at home and excel abroad must be identified and neutralised for our benefit and that of our future generation, he said.

He added that one of the main challenges the Nigerian institutions are facing is that they keep sabotaging themselves through incessant strike actions.

The repercussions of strike usually retard the smooth running of academic activities with heavy negative consequences," he said.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek reports that the minister made this known when he met with nline publishers in Lagos, as part of his ongoing consultation with key stakeholders in the information and Culture sector.

The Minister however told online publishers to maintain their credibility. ''If the online publications suffer credibility problems, they stand the risk of losing the confidence of their readers and the advertisers who provide the lifeblood for the publications' survival, Mohammed said.

Muhammed also said it was in the interest of the government that online publications grow, saying, Because the more the number of such online publications, the easier it becomes to bridge the information gap between the government and the governed, and the easier it becomes for the government to carry the citizens along in the formulation and implementation of policies that touch on their lives.

He also promised that the federal government would also patronize online publications as regards adverts, saying, ''All we ask for, in return, is that you provide accurate information to the people, and avoid sensationalism and partisanship.''

''The National Security Awareness Campaign, aimed at rallying the support of Nigerians for the war on terror, is ongoing. Also, the National Sensitization Campaign against Corruption was formally launched in Abuja on Monday, and it is aimed at rallying Nigerians against the cankerworm of corruption which has eaten deep into the fabric of our society. We are also preparing to launch a National Re-orientation Campaign, which is tagged 'CHANGE BEGINS WITH ME', to achieve a paradigm shift in the way we do things, Mohammed said, soliciting the support of online media in the Federal Governments fight against terrorism.
The new visa requirements will affect European travelers who are dual nationals of Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria, or who have visited any of these countries in the last five years.

According to reports, the new restrictions are designed to make it harder for Europeans who have fought for the Islamic State to enter the United States.

There will however be exceptions for those who traveled to any of the four countries for government or United Nations work, or for humanitarian or journalistic reasons.

Also, legitimate business with Iran also wouldn't be punished though no waivers appear to apply to dual nationals.

Mashable reports that United States officials and congressional aides involved in discussions say the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will outline how it will phase in the new rule.

The law which was passed by the US Congress in December only affects a minority of Europeans.

Meanwhile, the new law has prompted concern from many, especially citizens who generally enjoy visa-free travel to the United States.
China's embassy in Laos confirmed the blast, which occurred on Sunday morning. The victims had been travelling in a vehicle on the mountain roads of Xaysomboun province, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Laos military personnel rushed to the scene and the injured, surnamed Zhou, has been shifted to a hospital in the capital, Vientiane, for treatment," Xinhua said.

Chinese embassy officials visited the injured person and demanded a prompt investigation into the "suspected bomb attack," Xinhua reported.

At least one of the Chinese victims was an employee of a mining company from southern China's Yunnan province, it said.

Xinhua did not give further details and it is unclear if the individuals were targeted.

Chinese workers have increasingly come under attack as the country's firms expand operations abroad, often in politically unstable places.
A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthis, who control the capital, since March. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed, around half of them civilians, according to U.N. figures.

The bomb partially destroyed the home of Yahya Rubaid, a judge appointed by the Houthis to a national security court who had prosecuted cases against militant groups like Al Qaeda but had also presided over treason cases against President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and other ousted foes of the Houthis.

All of Rubaid's family except one of his sons was also killed in the blast, which destroyed the two-storey home, residents said.

President Hadi, driven out of Sanaa last year by Houthi fighters that Arab neighbours say are backed by Iran, has returned to lead a government from the southern port of Aden, recaptured in July by troops from the Saudi-led coalition.

Pro-Hadi and Gulf Arab forces have pushed up toward the capital but have been bogged down in mountainous battlefronts for months, especially in the southwestern city of Taiz.

The United Nations World Food Program said on Sunday it was able to send 12 trucks laden with food into some of the worst-affected districts of Tai on Sunday, providing enough aid to feed 3,000 families for a month.
I rocked back onto my heels brushing the dust from my hands as I surveyed my handiwork. Four years of college text books now sat in the box in front of me. I stood, trying to tell myself this was the right thing. Why is that so hard? Why is it so hard to let go of a handful of dusty textbooks I have hardly glanced at since I graduated 5 years ago?





My textbooks aren't the only thing I've been going through lately. It seems like ever since I returned home from Papua New Guinea (PNG) I've been trying desperately to slim down my list of belongings and the amount of things around the house. From just trying to make sure my parents don't have a ton to lug around with them when I go back, to trying to help them downsize for their move to a smaller house it's been a constant practice of sorting through stuff to give things away, throw things away and keep a tiny portion of the original. Easier said than done I'm afraid.





It's got me thinking; why is it so hard to let go of our things? Why do I struggle to throw out high school and college class notes, graded papers and exams? Why is it hard to throw away ____ (you fill in the blank)? I've even had to take it to Jesus in prayer because it's been such a struggle. Pretty silly huh? I was having a major existential crisis over my textbooks and college class notes. Why?





Then, as I was praying, it hit me. There are two reasons I hold onto stuff: fear and pride. That may sound strange, but hear me out. First of all, I'm afraid. Afraid that maybe I'll forget some critical piece of information I learned in college and I'll wish I had my textbook. Maybe I'll need that piece of clothing/paper/tool/"xyz" at some point and I'll be sorry I threw it away or gave it to someone else. Bottom line.... I'm afraid God will not provide. Wow! That hit me like a ton of bricks as the conviction set in. Even now, after all I've been through in the last few years, there are times I struggle to trust God. True confessions of a fallible missionary there.





But there's more. I also realized that I hung onto a lot of my things because of pride and insecurity (which are all wrapped up in each other). I felt I needed to hold onto my textbooks because they were proof of the hours of long, difficult work I did to become a nurse. They were testimony to the "battle scars" of nursing school and college classes and 4 difficult years of my life that led to another few difficult years of rookie nursing practice and all that entails. I felt I NEEDED those textbooks to prove my knowledge, my intelligence, my worth. I wanted to keep my graded papers and exams to prove my value. My personal value is often wrapped up in my stuff. I look to it to remind myself of, or get, the approval of others instead of looking to God for His approval. More conviction.





I had thought that I was just nostalgic, but I realized as I talked with the Jesus that my stuff had become a security blanket and, in some ways, an idol both to my accomplishments and myself. Jesus talked a lot about valuing stuff in the Bible and as I prayed I felt Jesus reminding me of these two passages:





Luke 12:16-21 (NLT)

" Then he told them a story: A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. He said to himself, What should I do? I dont have room for all my crops. Then he said, I know! Ill tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then Ill have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods. And Ill sit back and say to myself, My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!

But God said to him, You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?

Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God."

Matthew 6:19-21 (ESV)

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Since I went through my textbooks and I had my major crisis (ha, ha, ha) I've spent a lot of time contemplating what God is trying to teach me through this. First of all, I feel like He's asking me to trust Him and rest in Him for all I need. For all the knowledge, possessions and provisions I need. Second, He's asking me to find my value in Him and to seek His approval above all else. He's asking me to have a rich relationship with Him, that's not dependent on "stuff" and to put the "stock" of my treasure in things that won't be destroyed so my focus will be on the things of God. So, if you see me looking a bit frazzled it's because I'm trying to learn to let go and to take God's hand into the unknown with treasures in heaven and in rich relationship with God.
Almost a decade ago, before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, it was rare to go to a rally for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and not see somebody in a purple smock.

Ever present, the smock-wearing health care advocates, organized by a national union, pushed, prodded and questioned the candidates about their plans for getting to universal health care.

They got noticed.

All three of the leading Democratic candidates proposed detailed plans. And, after Obama was elected president and the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, many involved in the effort celebrated the win they shared.

"It was like, 'Oh, my God. Look what we've done,'" said Beverly Strayhall, a former nurse from Davenport and a local organizer in the effort, called Iowa for Health Care, an initiative of the Service Employees International Union.

Now, six years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, there is a yet another simmering health care debate among the Democrats competing in this year's caucuses.

Clinton, in her second try for the presidency, is proposing to build on landmark legislation to tackle high costs, particularly drug prices.

Sanders has gone bigger, proposing a "Medicare-for-all" plan, akin to a single-payer proposal.

The two have sparred over the breadth, impact and feasibility of their respective approaches.

A week ago, the Clinton camp said Sanders hadn't described how he would pay for his health care plan, and that he would dismantle the Affordable Care Act and plunge the country into another divisive health care debate.

Sanders' campaign accused her of abandoning the ideal of universal care.

Also last week, Clinton took aim at the practicality of Sanders' plan.

"In theory, there's a lot to like about some of his ideas," Clinton said Thursday in Indianola. "But in theory isnt enough. A president has to deliver in reality."

Sanders' camp argued that he's the only candidate who has put forward a plan to provide full coverage. Eleven days before the Iowa caucuses, only one candidate in this race has detailed a plan to provide better health care for all Americans at less cost for middle-class families. Its not Secretary Clinton," Sanders' spokesman, Michael Briggs, said Thursday.

A decade after the smock-wearing activists pushed for candidates to commit to universal care  and signed up thousands of activists to advocate on the issue  much has happened.

The Affordable Care Act has covered millions more people and the rate of uninsured has declined.

But millions remain uncovered and premiums and deductibles are higher in the exchanges than many would like.

"There's no public option," Strayhall said, referring to a government-run insurance plan that had been in all the candidates' plans but never has made it into law.

There's not enough competition to bring down prices, she adds. "I don't really see that. I see the medical industry, they compete for bigger and better and more expensive equipment and procedures." And while that may be good for the patient, she said, it raises costs.

However, Strayhall, a supporter of Martin O'Malley, is skeptical about a Medicare-for-all plan. "Single payer would be great," she said, but then added: "What's to keep a party from getting into power that under funds it. Where would it be then?"

Karen Metcalf, another local organizer from Bettendorf who plans to caucus for Sanders, takes a long view of the Affordable Care Act's deficiencies. "I keep telling myself that 2010 was when the Affordable Care Act passed. It's only 2016, and we're still working on implementation."

She said she's comfortable with Clinton's approach. However, she wont yet choose between the two, saying she still has questions about Sanders' Medicare-for-all" plan.

Metcalf, who plans to caucus for Sanders, said he has done the country a service. "I'm really grateful to Senator Sanders for making sure people don't think health care is a dead issue. There's a long way to go to keep reminding people there's still 29 million people uninsured," Metcalf said.

On the ground, two unions representing nurses are on opposite sides. The union that founded Iowa for Health Care, SEIU, has endorsed Clinton.

Cathy Glasson, president of SEIU Iowa, praises Clinton's work on health care through the years. She also praises the Affordable Care Act. "The law is working. It's saving Iowans' lives," she said.

Glasson shies away from comparing the two candidates' approaches. But she echoes the idea that the Affordable Care Act provides a foundation. "It's a work in progress, but it's a good work in progress."

Another nurses group is working its way across the state in a bus to campaign for Sanders. And Jean Ross, the national co-president of National Nurses United, said she's not satisfied.

"Many people feel we settled for what we've got. If you look at the Affordable Care Act, it doesn't accomplish our goals," she said.

Ross brushed aside the idea that a Medicare-for-all plan isn't politically feasible. "The impetus for starting any kind of solution should never be 'What can we afford? What do we think is politically practical?' It should start with, 'This is what people want. This is what people need. How do we achieve it?'"

Health care hasn't been as big a part of the 2016 campaign as it was in 2008. Income inequality, gun violence and racial relations are playing a bigger role. But health care still is important to voters. Fifteen percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers called it their most important issue, according to a Quinnipiac poll this month.
ANKENY, Iowa  Ben Carson said one of the biggest problems facing the nation is divisiveness and another threat  the terrorist group ISIS  should be handled by giving U.S. military leaders all the tools they require.

Carson, a Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon, spoke at Faith Baptist Bible College in this Des Moines suburb early Monday.

Speaking to roughly 200 of the schools students, Carson told his personal story and laid out his conservative vision for the country. He touted the Judeo Christian foundation that is the root of many of those values and principles of the countrys founders.

Carson said he thinks people are being convinced that those who dont agree should be considered enemies.

How did that happen in America? Where does that spirit of hatred come from? It does not come from our Judeo-Christian roots, I can tell you that. And it is something we must fight, Carson said, calling for a civil dialogue over issues upon which people disagree.

Pivoting to national security, Carson said the president must give U.S. military leaders whatever they request in the fight against ISIS, the terrorist group that is growing in Syria and Libya, and whose sympathizers killed 14 people in a December shooting in California.

Whatever (the military leaders) need, you have to give it to them without tying their hands behind their backs, Carson said, while also criticizing what he called silly rules of engagement.

You cant bomb an oil tanker because there might be people in it. Are you kidding me? Carson said to applause.

Carson said Americans should be prepared for shooting events  like the one in California or dozens of other mass shootings in recent years by training people how to react to a terrorist situation. Carson likened the training to when schools conducted air-raid drills during the Cold War.

Carson paired national security and immigration, saying illegal immigrants are pouring through our southern border. He referenced remarks by former President Teddy Roosevelt, who said the U.S. must always welcome immigrants but only if those immigrants assimilate.

If they dont, they should stay where they are, Carson said to applause. I think that makes perfect sense.

Carson has slipped in polling on the GOP presidential race in Iowa. For a brief moment this summer, he led the expansive Republican field; currently, he is fourth in most polls on the race here. In New Hampshire, he is ninth in Real Clear Politics polling average.

Carson said Monday he is running for president despite its challenges because he felt called by God.

He opened the doors, and I continued to walk through them, Carson said. And I will continue to walk through them until he closes them, because I believe our country is in a lot of trouble right now.
MAQUOKETA, Iowa  Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz continued to face questions about ethanol on the campaign trail Monday, while a new group backing his candidacy began airing radio ads critical of Gov. Terry Branstad, who said a week ago the Texas senator should be defeated in the caucuses.

Cruz, who with Donald Trump, is leading polls going into the last week before the Feb. 1 caucuses, spoke to about 150 people at the Jackson County Fairgrounds here Monday.

Cruz said he would make the 2016 presidential election about repealing the Affordable Care Act and enacting a flat tax. But, as in other places across the state, he also was questioned from the audience about ethanol.

Cruz has faced criticism from pro-ethanol forces, which have pointed to a 2013 bill he co-sponsored that would have ended the Renewable Fuel Standard immediately.

But in answer to the question here, Cruz said he is not anti-ethanol, but he is against all energy mandates and subsidies. He said he had introduced a bill that would phase out the the standard over five years, but he said the bigger threat to ethanol getting into the market was government regulation.

Cruz also pointed to U.S. Rep. Steve King's of Iowa support for his campaign to bolster his case.

There has been no more ferocious defender of farmers than Steve King, Cruz told the crowd here.

The ethanol issue reared its head again Monday, with the pro-Cruz super PAC, Conservative Solutions, airing radio ads in the state saying Cruz would stand up to lobbyist, thugs and the politicians they own. Branstad and Trump. Branstad values, Trump values 

In Des Moines, Branstad defended his statement that Cruz should be defeated and pushed back against the new ad.

I think the people of Iowa recognize that these are false attacks and that they are just desperate politicians who want to score points with certain people by attacking me, he said.

Meanwhile, at least one person in the crowd here was satisfied with Cruzs response on ethanol and said the criticism of him on the issue is unfair.

Im disappointed that theyre painting that picture, because he is a supporter of ethanol just not of subsidies. Theres a difference. Subsidies are different than the product, said Adam Miller, a farmer from Maquoketa, who attended the rally with his wife and five of his children. We dont need the subsidy."

Branstad and pro-ethanol forces say the subsidies for ethanol were phased out years ago. The Renewable Fuel Standard, they note, requires that a certain amount of renewable fuels, including ethanol, be mixed with the nations gasoline supply.

A pro-ethanol PAC, led by the governors son, Eric Branstad, has been targeting Cruz this campaign season.

In addition to appearing in Maquoketa, Cruz had two other stops in eastern Iowa planned for Monday.

(Reporter Rod Boshart contributed to this story.)
DES MOINES  Joni Ernst insisted it was not an endorsement, but as she introduced Marco Rubio at his campaign event on Monday, she praised the Republican presidential candidate for his work in the U.S. Senate and called him near and dear to my heart.

Ernst, Iowas freshman U.S. Senator who has pledged to remain neutral in the GOP primary, introduced Rubio before his campaign event Monday at a banquet center in downtown Des Moines.

I have said Im not going to endorse in this race, and that is a promise I am going to keep to Iowa, Ernst said. But I do want to introduce to as many people as possible  someone who is near and dear to my heart, a good friend to me.

Rubio campaigned for Ernst in 2014, when the former state legislator won Iowas open U.S. Senate seat.

Ernst praised Rubios work in the U.S. Senate and called for a president who will do what is required to enable the U.S. military to vanquish the terrorist group ISIS.

What we are doing right now in the Middle East, folks, is not working.  ISIS is expanding and growing, said Ernst, a former commander in the U.S. Army National Guard who served in Iraq. We dont need to degrade it, to contain it. We need to destroy ISIS. Im looking for a president that will do that.

Rubio called ISIS the most sophisticated and well-funded radical jihadist organization in history, and pointed to terror events the group and its sympathizers perpetrated in Paris, California and Philadelphia. He pledged to increase defense spending to help confront the terrorist group.

This is how dangerous the world has become. And what is (President) Barack Obama doing? Barack Obama is gutting our military, Rubio said. How can it be that the world is growing more dangerous and our military is being weakened?

Rubio is third in most polls on the Republican race in Iowa, behind front-runners Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

During his remarks, Rubio reiterated that he would be best to face Hillary Clinton  assuming she wins the Democratic nomination  in this falls general election because he came from modest beginnings.

That message has resonated with Marcus Pitts, of West Des Moines, who attended Mondays event.

Pitts said he is a firm supporter and will caucus for Rubio because of his "electability."

Lets say he goes against Clinton. Youve got the generational thing. Youve got the new vs. old. Not just age, but Clintons been around forever, Pitts said. Then youve also got the background story. Democrats always hit Republicans saying, Theyre for the rich. Theyre rich. Well Rubios not rich. So that kind of vaccinates him against that argument. 

He checks all the electability boxes. For me, I dont care about anything else except for winning the election. Basically all the other issues are about the same.

Mike Bray, of West Des Moines, attended Mondays event to help him decide between Rubio and Cruz. He said afterward that Rubio has swayed him.

It was a very good speech. He means what he says, Bray said. I think Ill support him in the caucuses.
MARION, Iowa,  With a week left until Iowas first-in-the-nation caucuses, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday implored a packed middle school cafeteria to support her, criticizing presidential contenders on both sides of the aisle.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey appeared with Clinton to fire up the crowd before her speech, calling the former U.S. secretary of state the most qualified person to hold the presidency since George Washington.

She knows that weve got to do a better job in this country to make sure everyone in this country gets a fair shot, and when theyre there, to make sure they get equal pay for equal work, Booker said to applause.

Speaking to a crowd of about 200 at Vernon Middle School, Clinton slammed Republican opponents and chastised rivals for the Democratic nomination, urging voters to caucus for her.

You are the first people in America who get to send a message to the world about what youre looking for in the next president and commander in chief, Clinton said. I really need your help. I need you to go out and help us: volunteer, phone bank and canvass in the next week, and I need you to come to the caucus and bring people with you to stand up for me.

While Clinton has been softer on her main opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in recent days, she still took shots at his plans to combat big banks and his proposals for free college and a new health care system.

Clinton has 49 percent support among likely Iowa caucusgoers, compared with Sanders 41.8 percent, according to a Real Clear Politics average of polls.

The Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act . We cant let them go back to the way it used to be, Clinton said. On the other side, Sanders wants to start all over. He has his plan, which I respect, but I dont want us to throw our country back into a contentious debate about health care.

She called Sanders plan for free tuition a big burden that wouldnt help everyone, saying those who can afford college should pay for it and the focus should instead be on driving down education costs.

While Clinton has faced criticism for her connections to powerful Wall Street interests, she said she has confronted them in the past and isnt afraid to do so again.

No bank is too big to fail, and no executive is too powerful to jail, she said.

Also Sunday, she and Booker made a stop at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids.

According to remarks released by her campaign, she told the congregation President Barack Obama insisted she become his secretary of state, although she preferred to remain a U.S. senator. She said she prayed before making one of the best decisions Ive ever made.

She also invoked the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and described the water crises in Flint, Mich., as a civil rights issue.

Clinton also stopped at Rileys Cafe in Cedar Rapids, signing the wall as Obama did while campaigning in Iowa four years ago.

Following her Marion visit, she spoke at a North Liberty elementary school, accompanied by Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa  Speaking to hundreds packing a Best Western hotel Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio seemed to have his sights set on the general election, lobbing his attacks on Democrats  that partys prospective nominees and President Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton has moved so far left on so many issues that shes going to have a lot of trouble against me when Im our nominee, the Florida senator said during a town hall at which he laid out his aspirations, took questions and stumped for support.

One audience member asked Rubio about political divides, not just between the parties but among Republicans. Rubio answered by first pointing to Democrats.

I would say the Democratic Party is in much more trouble because they have a socialist as their leading candidate right now, Rubio said, referring to Sen. Bernie Sanders. He topped Clinton in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll among likely Iowa caucusgoers, although Clinton leads in some other polls.

I think Bernie Sanders is an excellent candidate for president  of Sweden, Rubio said. I like Sweden. Im not anti-Swedish, and Im not anti-Norwegian. I just want us to be America.

Addressing a split Republican Party, Rubio said it was a diverse party.

We have a lot of differences of opinion on a bunch of different things, he said. But I believe that we are a party that continues to be unified around the principals that our government should be limited, that free enterprise should be what drives our economy, that you should all have individual liberties to pursue your hopes and dreams, and that the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world.

If Republicans lose, he said, policies enacted under the Obama administration would become virtually impossible to reverse.

We are on the verge of becoming the first Americans ever that fail to leave their kids better off than themselves, Rubio said. And I want to point to a moment in time seven years ago when I believe this whole process of decline accelerated. It was with the election of Barack Obama.

Rubios comments were met with applause  sometimes standing ovations  and came a day after the Des Moines Register endorsed him as the GOP nominee. The papers editorial board endorsed Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

A Real Clear Politics average of polls showed Rubio with 12.2 percent support in Iowa. The CNN/ORC poll released Thursday shows Rubio with his highest yet level of support among likely caucusgoers in Iowa  with 14 percent, compared with Donald Trump (37 percent) and Ted Cruz (26 percent).

Rubio didnt level much criticism against his GOP rivals but did stress he would be the most likely of them to win in the general election.

On Sunday, Rubio spelled out some of his plans.

My attorney general and the people that I appoint to the courts are going to be people that defend the Second Amendment, not try to undermine it, he said. And theyre going to be people that defend our religious liberties, not attack them.

Then, Rubio said, hed repeal every single one of Barack Obamas unconstitutional executive orders.

On my first day in office, the world is going to know that the United States is once again firmly on Israels side against Isreals enemies, he said. And you know the main reason why theyre going to know that? Because on my first day in office, I am going to cancel Barack Obamas deal with Iran.

He said he would end the Affordable Care Act and be tough on immigration.

As the son and grandson of immigrants, I can speak with authority when I say this: Enforcing our immigration law is not anti-immigrant, he said.
INDEPENDENCE, Iowa  The 2016 caucuses will be a bit of a milestone for Maegan Sonksen.

Its the first time weve caucused, and its for Bernie, Sonksen said as she and her husband, Brian, 20-somethings from Independence, waited for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to arrive at Heartland Acres in Independence on Sunday afternoon.

Sanders made the case that its his ideas and his campaign that are generating the excitement that will attract the Sonksens to the Feb. 1 caucuses and to the voting booth in November.

Republicans win elections when Americans dont vote as in 2014 when the GOP scored victories at the state and federal levels, Sanders said. Thats because 63 percent of voters stayed home, Sanders said.

Any objective observer, Sanders said, would say its his campaign that is exciting and energizing voters. More than 50,000 Iowans, including 4,000 Sunday, have attended a Sanders campaign events, he said.

I believe from bottom of my heart, we are the campaign that can create the excitement among young, among working people, among people who otherwise might not vote, he said. If we get those people to vote, not only will we retain the White House, were going to win governors chairs all over this country.

Sonksen has known since early in the campaign that she would back Sanders because I had a good feeling about him and what he was saying. Ive never caucused before because theres never been a candidate that I was so confident about.

It was just recently that Steve Nunemaker of Newhall decided to caucus for Sanders rather than Clinton, but for reasons similar to Sonksen.

Hes held the same platform all of his life. He doesnt waffle, said Nunemaker, who came out to the town-hall meeting because I want to meet the next president.

Sanders also had a message for Jennifer Blix of Vinton, who hasnt decided whether to caucus for Clinton or Sanders, who she finds to be an interesting guy  very realistic.

Im for whoever can beat Trump, Blix said.

Thats him, Sanders said. Almost all of the national polls show his lead over a Republican nominee to be larger than Clintons, Sanders told the crowd the campaign said was in excess of 500.

In Iowa, which not only hosts the first-in-the-nation caucuses, but is a general election battleground state, Sanders said polls show Clinton beating Donald Trump by 8 percentage points. He would win by 14, Sanders said.

The polls show Clinton losing to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 4 points, but Sanders winning by 5.

In New Hampshire, he added, the spread is wider, he said

Further evidence of the excitement hes generating is the small-dollar contributions his campaign is receiving, Sanders said. So far, hes received 2.5 million individual contributions averaging $27.

I am pretty proud of that, he said.

The Sanders campaign cited a CBS News Battleground Tracker poll released Sunday showing him leading Clinton by a single percentage point in Iowa and by 19 in New Hampshire.by calling for Iowans to join him in a political revolution. By caucusing for him they can say that it is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.

Together we are going to take this country in a very different direction and that in fact we are going to make a political revolution, Sanders said.

The choice for Iowans, he said, is which candidate is willing to stand up to Wall Street and the billionaire class and represent working families.

According to the CBS poll, 91 percent of Iowa Democrats believe Sanders would pick regular people over big donors.

What this campaign is about is transforming America, he said. The only way we can accomplish those goals  is to take on the greed of the billionaire class who want it all for themselves. That is what this campaign is about.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  A huge crowd, including from outside of the state of Iowa, packed the Muscatine High School gymnasium Sunday afternoon to see and hear from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In a one-hour address, Trump challenged his fellow GOP rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, two of the three Democrats running for president; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the current occupant of the White House, President Barack Obama.

"We're going to win again. We're going to win a lot. We are going to make our country great again. We're going to be very proud of these days. But you have to go out. You have to caucus," Trump said.

He chastised Iowa Republicans for not picking the eventual Republican nominee in the last 16 years.

"You have not had a winner in so long. I give you my word. You're going to have a winner (in me)," he said. The large crowd erupted into cheers and chants of "Trump, Trump."

He vowed to use his skills as a negotiator in business to help advance the United States.

"I'll be the greatest jobs president that God ever created," he said.

Trump pledged to lower taxes on corporations and businesses turning the U.S. from having one of the highest tax rates in the world to one of the lowest.

He supports the Keystone pipeline with the provision that the United States receive 25 percent of the profits.

"I want a piece of the deal. Doesn't that make sense?"

He called on constitutional scholars to determine if Ted Cruz is eligible to run for president having been born in Canada to American citizens. A line about Cruz being able to run for U.S. president and prime minister of Canada got big cheers from the crowd.

Continuing to attack his Republican rivals, Trump called out Jeb Bush for a series of negative ads running in Iowa.

"It's time to give up, Jeb."

Many in the crowd were waving signs with the message, "The Silent Majority stands with Trump." Some sported Trump hats. Others wore Trump T-shirts.

He saved some political venom for the Democrats seeking their party's nomination.

Trump said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders sounded like a Communist. On Former Secretary of State Clinton, he said she supported many policies of President Obama as a way of staying out of prison.

Trump was introduced by Iowa State Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann of Wilton.

"Donald Trump has brought some energy into this party,"' Kaufmann said in a raucous.

Kaufmann promised the full backing of the Iowa Republican Party regardless of which candidate wins the nomination

Jim Switzer, Williamsport, Indiana, drove four hours to see Trump in person.

"He fulfilled everything I wanted to hear. You kind of got to go along with some of it that you don't like. But that's part of it and it's for the cameras," Switzer said.

Switzer said hadn't planned to vote in 2016 and Trump has retorted in his faith in the politicial process.

Wearing a white Trump hat, Rick Levandowski, Independence, Wisconsin, is a military contractor who works overseas.

"I've been watching him for a long time and one of the biggest things that strike me is he's not beholden to anyone. I am a libertarian. Here I am," Levandowski said.

Two Illinois sisters traveled to Muscatine to see Trump.

"I wish he had talked more about the issues," said Victoria Menconi, of Bartlett, Illinois. "I would have liked to hear more of substance."

Menconi is leaning toward Trump but not sure who she will eventually vote for.

Her sister, Lisa Legorreta, Sugar Grove, Illinois said the event was exciting.

"I was very pleased to come and watch him speak in person. And to see the entire dialogue instead of just snippets that you get in the mainstream media," she said.

"I am a Trump supporter because I think he speaks for average people, working people. People like myself who work in a hospital and are watching our health care costs go through the roof and deductibles go through the roof and I think he is really the only candidate who truly means what he says."

Zach Jirak, of Muscatine, a student at Western Illinois University, brought a classmate, Matthew Hutchison, of St. Louis, Missouri, to the rally.

Jirak is a criminal justice major.

"I completely agree when he says cops are the most misunderstood people out there," Jirak said.

Hutchison also supports Trump.

"I really wanted to see him give a speech because I am really behind what he says," Hutchison said.
MAQUOKETA, Iowa  Jackson County Sheriff Russ Kettmann has announced that he plans to seek a sixth term as the sheriff.

Kettmann's term is up at the end of 2016. The position will be on the June primary ballot. Kettmann is a Democrat.

"I ran the first time in 1996 and have served five terms or 20 years," Kettmann said. "I'm 59, so I'm not ready to retire. I enjoy working."

Before joining the sheriff's office, he had worked as a Bellevue police officer since 1986.

Kettmann said in the next four years, his office will need to work on Jackson County Courthouse security as requested by Seventh Judicial District Chief Judge Marlita Greve.

"We are going to have to address the jail. It's just a matter of time before the state shuts us down," Kettmann said.

The inspector has told the sheriff over several years, the Jackson County Detention Center violates some state mandates such as lack of space for visiting areas and overall space issues.

Kettmann has nine deputies.

Kettmann and his wife live in Bellevue. He has three grown children, six grandchildren and one on the way. His son, Corey Kettmann has been one of his deputies for two years.

 Sheri Melvold
When Todd Robert refers to a high-gravity brew, the 42-year-old isnt just noting its elevated alcohol content.

Thats just beer-speak, he shrugged off, as we tasted a Double IPA brewed in his native Pennsylvania. But Robert didnt just throw out the term to sound cool or hip.

Nope. The veteran home brewer subsequently explained the science behind gravity  or the density of the beverage in relation to water. Brewers measure the gravity of their batches before and after the fermentation process with a hydrometer to test the beers booziness. The greater the difference between those two numbers, he said, the higher percentage of alcohol there is in the beer.

Robert may know as much or more about beer than anyone else in the area. He recently became the only Certified Cicerone  the brewing equivalent of the wine worlds sommelier  in the Quad-Cities. Just 11 other Iowans have secured the same status by passing an exam, which touts a less than 50 percent pass rate.

The Quad-City transplant, who moved here from Raleigh, N.C., to live with his fiance and business partner, Gwendolyn Lee, in a downtown Davenport condo, now wants to put his certification to good use.

By the end of February, the techie couple who first bonded over craft beer-speak at a digital marketing convention in Seattle, will open Endless Brews, a new bottle shop and tap room at 310 Main St., Davenport.

I know how to taste beer and I know what to look for, but I want to be around people that are hungry to taste new things, said Robert, who works as a professional graphic designer on the side.

Lee, a 35-year-old Davenport native, said shes just as eager to hunt down hard-to-find domestic beers for their establishment.

Theres such a thirst for this kind of business in the Quad-Cities, said Lee, who operates her own digital startup, RubberStamps.net, out of an office in Bettendorf. Were going to feature things you cant find anywhere else here.

The couple, who said they both like to act fast, met in July, 2014, and got engaged in Dec. 2014, at a brewery. Lee made it clear that they plan to hold off on the wedding, however, until after they have their "beer baby, and get their business up and running.

Sandwiched between Me & Billy and The Full Kit, Endless Brews will offer a 20-tap draft system in addition to a vast selection of bottles customers can purchase to take home.

Although they may stock a few Coors Light bottles in their fridge at home, which debunks any lingering beer snob accusations, dont expect to find that or any other mega-brewery beers at their shop.

Every beer has its time and place, Robert said. The alcohol is just the awesome side effect from drinking it."

Keys falls in Melbourne

Quad-City native Madison Keys battled a leg injury on Monday before losing in the fourth round of the Australian Open to unseeded Zhang Shuai.

Shuai, the 133rd-ranked player in the world, defeated the 20-year-old Keys 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals.

Keys, who's ranked 17th in the world, made it to the semifinals last year before losing to Serena Williams.

RAGBRAI to end in Muscatine

Thousands of cyclists will descend on Muscatine in July to mark the end of RAGBRAI.

The Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa will begin July 24 in Glenwood and end on July 30, organizers announced on Saturday.

Cyclists will start the annual week-long trek, which will stretch 420 miles this year, at the Missouri River and end by dipping their tires in the Mississippi River. Last years ride ended in Davenport.

Milan pot shop to open soon

Medical marijuana patients in the Illinois Quad-Cities may soon be able to purchase the drug legally here for the first time when one of the states newest dispensaries opens in Milan.

Beer distributor Matt Stern, co-owner of Stern Beverage Inc., hopes to open his bulletproof shop, located next to his Budweiser distribution facility, in early February.

State officials inspected Sterns new business, Natures Treatment of Illinois, earlier this month, he said. So far, 23 dispensaries in Illinois are licensed to sell the plant to the 4,000 or so approved patients.

GO & DO

Relax and explore your creative side at tonights "Adult Coloring" event at the Rock Island Public Library, 401 19th Street. The free event, which will provide art supplies, coloring pages and refreshments, begins at 6:00 p.m.
When the first and only director of Gilda's Club Quad-Cities retired at the end of 2015, the cancer support community sought a high-level replacement.

Sally Werner was hired to replace Claudia Robinson, and will bring to the organization more than 18 years of experience as an oncology nurse and in health administration.

A native of Lisle, Ill., Werner became interesting in nursing at a young age because her grandmother, Sally Karjala, was also a nurse.

Werner's grandmother used to take her young granddaughter to her work with geriatric patients. "I really enjoyed that," Werner said.

She decided to focus on oncology after she finished training as a registered nurse. "I just really enjoyed the topic area, and like everyone else, I have family members who have had cancer," she said.

Two decades ago, basic cancer treatment meant a hospital stay of two weeks or more. "Now, most of that treatment is outpatient," she said.

The changing dynamics in care mean there is an increased role for a cancer support community like Gilda's Club.

"It's harder and harder for hospitals to offer support services ... their focus is clinical," Werner said. Gilda's Club supplies many other services to help in recovery and "we are happy to do it."

Werner's husband had a military career, and the couple lived in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia before moving to the Quad-Cities nine years ago to raise their children.

Werner was introduced to Gilda's Club in Philadelphia when she helped to establish a new hospital in the city. In 2014, she joined the club's board in the Quad-Cities and applied for the executive position after Robinson decided to retire.

Recently, Gilda's Club has expanded its service area, and Werner vows to continue that effort.

Regional communities include Muscatine, Clinton and Geneseo, and Werner hopes to provide services to patients in those areas. "We want to get out to them, and develop those connections," she said.

She looks forward to meeting the Gilda's Club members  there is an introductory event on Feb. 11  and working with the staff. She also hopes to support the program directors in cancer centers in the area.

Werner's new role at Gilda's Club will be a "wonderful addition," according to Jill Weaver, Rock Island, president of the organization's board of directors.

Werner is known in the Quad-Cities as she's worked, clinically, with oncologists, hospitals and patients. "So, she's been on that side, helping people with cancer, and also has seen the value the support services can bring to the individuals and their families," Weaver said.

"Sally brings a different skill set that will take us to the next plateau. That's fantastic for Gilda's Club and for the families from the region who may use the services there," Weaver said.

The new chief executive won't have much of a drive to the club's location at 1234 E. River Drive, Davenport: Werner, her husband and three sons live in Bettendorf.
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Welcome to Radio International - the Ultimate Eurovision Experience. It is the legendary Eurovision radio show broadcast to the many Eurovision Fans around the World hosted by JP and his International Team. The show is live every Wednesday from 7-11pm CET via the SWITCH Radio Network in the UK and on the show's Facebook Group Page - Eurovision Radio International. For more radio stations broadcasting Radio International see HOW TO LISTEN below. To all HAPPY EUROVISIONING!
WASHINGTON (AFNS) | See all those contrails heading north, captain? the salty lieutenant colonel asked me on Jan. 16, 1991.

Yes sir! I replied flying as a brand new aircraft commander in the C-141B Starlifter.

The contrails covered the darkening sky and seemed like hundreds of fingers reaching north into Iraq to grab Saddam Hussein. That means we are at war, said the colonel, as the cockpit fell silent and each crewmember pondered the greater implication of the contrails.

That was a quarter of a century ago this week, marking the opening salvo in Operation Desert Storm. The operation was an American shock and awe campaign to evict Hussein from Kuwait and displayed airpower that the world had not seen since Operation Linebacker II over Vietnam.

I was honored to be part of the largest air bridge in history, often flying 24-hour airlift missions from Torrejon and Zaragosa, Spain, or Ramstein Air Base and Rhein Main, Germany, to locations in Saudi Arabia such as Dhahran or Riyadh. The ramps at these locations were so full and it was sometimes difficult to find the assigned aircraft to preflight. Loading crews were challenged to keep up with the volume of cargo and people necessary for the fight.

We would often augment our crews with pool pilots  additional pilots to extend our crew duty day. Each day was long and hot; our ground times downrange were short but filled with the apprehension of dreaded Scud missile alerts. Tired crews would return to Europe for a short rest before repeating the process. We were all supported by the greatest cast the world has ever known, filled with maintainers, aerial porters, fuelers, logisticians and services Airmen.

All told, the total force flew over 69,000 sorties in support of Desert Storm. The operation also saw the first comprehensive use of stealth and space technologies integrated with precision guided weapons.

Twenty-five years later, my C-141B has long ago been retired, replaced by the C-17 Globemaster III. While much of our Air Force has been modernized since that first night in the desert, our average aircraft age today stands at 27 years. We have gone from having 188 fighter squadrons during Desert Storm to 54 today. Aging combat aircraft such as our B-52 Stratofortress and KC-135 Stratotanker are slated to keep flying for a decade or more.

In Operation Desert Storm, I was an Airman in the regular component when it consisted of over 600,000 Airmen; today, it has decreased to approximately 313,000 Airmen. Even with that size, Desert Storm required more than 48,000 Air Reserve component Airmen to remove Hussein from Kuwait. As a result of a smaller force, our Air Reserve component consisting of over 105,000 Air National guardsmen and 69,000 Air Force reservists have gone from a strategic reserve force to one that provides daily operational capability and surge capacity where needed. These figures do not include the vital capability our Air Force civilian Airmen bring to the fight.

Southwest Asia is no less secure and in some ways is more complex and dangerous even though Hussein is long gone. Commitments to our friends and allies are not decreasing, so we will continue to rely on the total force more, not less.

In my current role in the Total Force Continuum Air Staff office, our team is looking for the most efficient mix of regular, Guard, and Reserve Airmen in each primary mission area. In the aggregate, our analysis shows that our Air Force is at least 12 percent too small for current requirements. Just as during the peak of Desert Storm, we are all in and have cleared the bench to meet current requirements.

We are also looking at policy and legislative ways to make our total force more integrated by preserving and leveraging the strengths and efficiencies of each individual component. Programs that will allow transitioning between Air Force components, provide career development opportunities, and feature our three components working more closely together will become the norm over the next 25 years.

In commemoration of Desert Storms largest air campaign this week, make sure you thank a veteran for serving in the operation, and ask a wingman or relative who participated about their experiences. If youre reading this and not part of the worlds greatest Air Force, consider joining either the regular, Reserve or Guard component. We may be smaller than in 1991, but were the most lethal air, space and cyber force; and there is no question our total force will continue to answer our nations call!
South Dakota and North Dakota enjoyed a relatively balmy weekend but some students from those states got caught up in the paralyzing blizzard that affected much of the East Coast.

More than 250 students had gone to Washington, D.C., for an anti-abortion rally on Friday. On their return trip, several buses carrying the students got stuck for as long as 22 hours on Pennsylvania highways, which were clogged with snow and vehicles.

"You could see 30 vehicles in front of us and about 100 vehicles behind us," Dan Specht, who chaperoned students from Yankton, told the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan newspaper.

Other students were from Sioux Falls and Aberdeen in South Dakota and Fargo, Minot, Dickinson and Bismarck in North Dakota. Students from the University of Mary in Bismarck also were stranded.

Students found various ways to spend the time, including singing, conversing, playing games and celebrating Mass outdoors.

"It's actually been quite enjoyable, all things considered," the Rev. Jadyn Nelson, President of Bishop Ryan school in Minot, told KXMC-TV.

Some of the students were scheduled to return home late Sunday, while others were expected to be on the road until Monday.

The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with some areas getting more than 2 feet. At least 30 deaths were blamed on the weather.
Sturgis wants to be the next Northern Black Hills location with a new state park.

But that may take awhile, even though the city made its intentions known last week they would be willing to sell a 640-acre parcel of land they own south of town to the state Game, Fish & Parks Department.

The Sturgis City Council unanimously approved a resolution Jan. 19 saying that the city no longer needs the area for municipal domestic water use and wants it opened to the public.

The resolution went on to say that because of its location and pristine condition, the city believes the highest and best use would be for a state park.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard revealed in his state of the state message earlier this month that plans are in the works for a 1,500-acre Spearfish Canyon State Park.

Sturgis City Manager Daniel Ainslie said the city has talked about possibly selling the watershed or "city dams" property for six or seven years.

Paul Coughlin, Habitat Program Administrator for the South Dakota GF&P, said the issue of the watershed property initially came up when the city expressed interest in buying a 62-acre section of the Marcotte Game Production Area owned by GF&P near Sturgis.

Ainslie said in 2012 that with development encroaching, it was no longer safe for hunting on the Marcotte property in Sturgis. The Sturgis City Council voted in December 2012 to pay the 10-percent down payment of $60,810, or $10,000 per acre of the total purchase price of roughly $620,000. The city sought special legislation during the 2012 Legislative session to allow the state to sell the Marcotte Tract to the city.

Coughlin, whose job it is to oversee GF&P land acquisitions, said that during negotiations on the Marcotte property the two entities discussed trading one for the other.

"It was just talk at that point," Coughlin said.

Instead, the two agreed the city would buy the Marcotte property outright.

The subject of the city dams never went away.

"It has been on our radar for quite some time," Coughlin said. "I have yet to talk to anyone from the city yet."

Coughlin said he is looking forward to having a more in-depth conversation with city officials in the near future about the watershed property.

"I've never been up there, but I think from what I know of the property looking at photographs and talking to other people who have been there, it sounds like a tremendous fisheries resource and a unique place," Coughlin said.

One of the concerns of both the GF&P and the city is that the road that leads to the watershed property has points that run along private property.

"One of the private property owners is not in favor of it," Ainslie said. "That is really what kind of made us think that use by the public could not proceed unless there is better access to the property."

The only road that leads directly into the property is the gated access road, which is limited to use by city maintenance crews and those with access to the Davenport cabins. Landowner Katherine Martel, of Albany, N.Y., said she will resist attempts to open the road to other users, but the public-access plan includes non-motorized trails that would lead into the area from various trailheads on public land.

In the early 1900s, Jarvis Davenport had constructed four reservoirs in the upper area of the Alkali Creek drainage as part of the domestic water supply system for the city of Sturgis.

In 1978, the entire 620 acres and four reservoirs were sold to the city of Sturgis. But new EPA regulations in the early 1980s mandated water treatment for above groundwater sources caused the city to switch to water from deep well sources.

"When all those wells started to come online, the intended use of that watershed property changed," Ainslie said. "They've just sat there."

Not until recently had the city dams been used for a public purpose. The 2015 Sturgis Area Chamber of Commerce Volksmarch took a route which led to the dams.

Then in May 2015, the Sturgis City Council asked the park board to develop a proposal in regards to options for use of the city dams.

The Park Board's recommendations for the city dams included opening the watershed to primitive camping, hiking, biking, equestrian use as soon as possible, and to explore partnering options with government agencies with conditions of no motorized vehicle travel.

Last week's passage of the resolution shows the city is serious about selling the property to the state to be opened to the public, not just for city residents, but for all, Ainslie said.

"It's such an easy drive off I-90 and it's so beautiful up there," he said. "It is a challenging hike to get up there, but it is doable. The views are just incredibly rewarding."

Ainslie said he had spoken with legislators and representatives of GF&P who he said were "very interested."

"They wanted to make sure that there was access that would be entirely on public land, that there would be areas for parking and there is public support behind it," he said.

Now that all those segments have been satisfied, Ainslie hopes the project can move forward. "It's not going to be in the next six to 12 months, but hopefully sooner rather than later," he said.

Mike Kintigh, GF&P regional supervisor in Rapid City, confirmed that the state GF&P had been in conversation with the city of Sturgis on this property. "We are talking with them, but we have not committed to anything," Kintigh said.

Kintigh also confirmed that access is a sticking point on the property. "We want the public to be able to get to it and use it," he said. "We know there are some issues with private landowners and access."

The integrity of the dams on the property also is of concern to the GF&P, Kintigh said.

"We don't want to have to spend $500,000 to $600,000 to repair them once we got in there," he said.

Ainslie said the city has maintained the property over the years by doing annual mountain pine beetle surveillance, cutting and chunking logs from infected trees, and inspecting the dams.

A bill introduced in the legislature this year may make it a bit more difficult for the GF&P to make any land purchases. The bill says that no land may be acquired by the Department of Game, Fish & Parks by any means until the acquisition has been approved by the legislature.

"I'm not really sure what the situation is, but it would be a great outdoor opportunity for folks," Coughlin said.
Victims of Russias top anti-corruption official seek $2.7 mln in damages

MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI)  Victims in the criminal case against Denis Sugrobov, former head of the Interior Ministrys Economic Security and Anti-Corruption Department, have filed claims seeking in total about 220 million rubles ($2.7 million) in damages, Sugrobovs lawyer Eduard Isetsky told RAPSI on Monday.

In early 2014, Sugrobov and other employees of the Interior Ministrys Economic Security and Anti-Corruption Department became defendants of a criminal case on abuse of office.

According to investigators, Sugrobov and other suspects tried to provoke a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer by offering him $10,000 a month for his protection. Sugrobov has been charged with organizing a criminal group, abuse of power and bribery.

His deputy Boris Kolesnikov was arrested in February 2014. In June, he jumped out of a window during questioning at the Investigative Committee in June. Later the Basmanny District Court said no evidence was found of assisted suicide.

In late August, Moscows Basmanny District Court seized assets owned by Sugrobov and Kolesnikov, which have been reportedly estimated at over 300 million rubles ($3.7 million).

Sugrobov, 39, is one of the youngest police generals. Kolesnikov was 36 when he was promoted to general.
Transaero airline files two lawsuits against Rosaviation, demands $7.6 mln

MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI)  One of the most troubled Russian airlines, Transaero, filed two lawsuits with the Moscow Commercial Court against Federal agency of air transport (Rosaviation), according to materials available at the courts website.

In the first lawsuit Transaero demands 595 million rubles ($7.6 mln) from Rosaviation, in the second lawsuit the airline asks the court to find Federal agencys actions illegal. Latter lawsuit also lists airlines Aeroflot and Russia (part of the Aeroflot group) as third parties. Both lawsuits have not been reviewed yet.

After Transaro stopped operating the flights, Rosaviation distributed the air routes between other airlines, including the largest one, Aeroflot.

Transaero found itself unable to pay its debts estimating 250 billion rubles ($3.5 billion). Government-approved plan of transferring 75% of companys shares to Aeroflot failed. Its problems resulted in a large number of flight cancels and delays.

In October, Sberbank and Alfa Bank filed bankruptcy petitions against the troubled airline. The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region initiated a bankruptcy procedure against Transaero on December 16.
Alfred Rsberg, Norway ( Scandinavia )

In the course of videotaping U.S. and international TV documentaries, reports and news reports  I have found (and video copied) a large number of anomalous flying objects in these TV broadcasts. In this UFO blogspot I will report on UFOs found in TV broadcasts (TV footage). I will also inform about any UFO evidence recorded or obtained by a media company or government source from around the world. In addition  I will report on the best Norwegian UFO cases.
Bill Tinsley has served as pastor, church planter and missions leader in Texas,, Minnesota and Wisconsin. He has international experience in S America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife, Jackie where he coaches church planters. Bill has written 12 books available on his web site www.tinsleycenter.com.Email bill@tinsleycenter.com
FREE people are not equal...... EQUAL PEOPLE are not FREE...
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.
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[Press Statement by South Asians For Human Rights and and letter to Pakistani Authorities by ESCR-Net - International Network express concern regarding the detention of Saeed Baloch are posted below]

South Asians for Human Rights

SAHR Condemns the arrest and detention of Mr. Saeed Baloch, General Secretary of the Pakistan Fisher-folk Forum

January 23 2016

Press Statement - Pakistan

South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a network of human rights defenders based in seven countries in South Asia, strongly condemns the arrest and detention of Mr. Saeed Baloch, General Secretary of the Pakistan Fisher folk Forum by the Rangers aa paramilitary force controlled by the Pakistani Army. The arrest took place on 16 January 2016. SAHR also strongly advocates his immediate release.

Mr. Baloch, a well-known human rights activist has been associated with the Pakistan Fisher folk Forum (PFF), committed to protect the socio-economic and political rights of the indigenous fisher folk communities in the country, since its inception. He is also one of the senior members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

SAHR perceives that the arrest may be intended to restrain the activities for the promotion and protection of human rights and the efforts for the prevention of harm to human rights defenders. It is a matter of serious concern that this action of the Government of Pakistan strengthens the belief of the human rights community world-wide that counter terrorism legislation is being used by many states to repress human rights activity and intimidate human rights defenders.

SAHR urges the national human rights institutions and the relevant parliamentary and judicial bodies in Pakistan to take immediate action for the release of Mr. Saeed Baloch and to ensure his safety while in custody. SAHR urges that the condition of his detention be made public immediately. Reminding the Government of Pakistan of all its responsibilities under national law and of its obligations under international law, SAHR calls upon the Government to give lawyers and human rights bodies full access to Mr. Baloch in order that his physical and psychological integrity is safeguarded. SAHR expects the civil society in general and the human rights community in Pakistan in particular to monitor the situation of Mr. Baloch continuously and to make all appropriate interventions to secure his release and his safety while in custody.

On behalf of the members of South Asians for Human Rights.

Hina Jilani

Chairperson

Nimalka Fernando

Co-Chairperson

o o o

On January 21st, 2016 an international network of organisations and individuals working to secure economic and social justice ESCR-Net sent a letter to the government of Pakistan to express concern about the recent arrest of Saeed Baloch, human rights defender, fisherfolk leader and member of the Board of ESCR-Net. See the letter here:
PRESS RELEASE

National Fishworkersa Forum (NFF)

Pakistan India Peoplesa Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD India)

C/O: F-10/12, Malviya Nagar, New Delhi a 110017

Phones: 011-26680883 / 09869077718 / 09345455122

Email: pipfpd.india[at]gmail.com | milango1955[at]gmail.com

January 25, 2016

To, Mrs Sushma Swaraj, Honable Union Cabinet Minister Ministry of External Affairs South Block, New Delhi- 110001

Dear Maaam,

Sub: Seeking your urgent intervention to release fishermen from jails along with their boats

Greetings from Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD) a India Chapter, National Fishworkersa Forum (NFF) and fisher people of Gujarat & Diu. We are approaching you at this crucial juncture with the expectation that you will acknowledge and act with immediate effect on the issues of great concern to the fisher people.

The issue of fishworkers arrests between India and Pakistan by the Maritime Security Agency (MSA) of Pakistan and the Indian Coast Guard dates back to several decades. However, the intensity or the number of people arrested has mostly been on the rise.

Large number of Indian and Pakistani fishermen have been in jails in Pakistan and India since more than a year whereas the maximum sentence for them is six months. We urge you to take immediate action for their release.

We understand and acknowledge that as per the provisions of the Consular agreement, the lists of prisoners including civilian prisoners and fishermen have been exchanged on January 1, 2016 and we hope immediate action will be taken by you in order to facilitate the release of Indian fishermen and take significant steps to release fishermen from Pakistan who are languishing in jails in India.

For years, groups including Pakistan India Peoplesa Forum for Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD), National Fishworkersa Forum (NFF), Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) and other citizens groups have been working relentlessly towards a permanent settlement to the issue of arrests and across-border fishinga. However, both governments continue to treat the issue as a hostage to settle other scores.

There is an urgent need to take forward the demand for a aNo Arrest Policya which would be a significant Confidence Building Measure. We demand that Government of India unilaterally and unconditionally declare aNo Arrest Policya of Pakistani fishermen and boats, so as to prompt a reciprocal action from Pakistan Government on this issue.

As per the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India press release on the website[1], Pakistan released 163 Indian fishermen in August last year and India released 16 Pakistani prisoners including nine fishermen following the exchange of the prisoners list.

According to media reports in Pakistan, India released three Pakistani prisoners in December after they completed their respective jail terms.

We demand that the interim recommendations of the India- Pakistan Judicial Committee on Prisoners, Lahore, April 30, 2013 be implemented, wherein it was recommended that fishermen be repatriated by sea along with their boats. The work done by the committee was highly appreciated by the governments of both countries but it is disappointing to see that there has been no implementation of this.

With rising concerns over the relations between the two countries and in an environment where there have been many who have been in opposition to the dialogue processes with Pakistan, we strongly believe that there is a need for positive dialogue and for our governments to act on the issues faced by the citizens to strengthen the political and people-to-people relations between India and Pakistan.

We hope for a positive response and immediate action.

Yours Sincerely,

M.Ilango, Chairperson, NFF

Jatin Desai, Secretary, PIPFPD
Appeal signed by several academicians from all over the India addressed to University of Hyderabad. This was originally drafted by 131 members of international community of academicians. If you agree, please send your endorsement to Prof. Abhijit A.M. -> abhijit.comp[at]coep.ac.in

Please note that this list is for academicians only, and we are including in this list only academicians. Other activists can draft and send a separate letter if they so wish.

Appeal to University of Hyderabad from Academicians

(An appeal has been made to University of Hyderabad by 131 members international community of academicians. We share their concerns and write this appeal to the University of Hyderabad)

One of the bright minds of the country, a promising scholar at University of Hyderabad, a student of the thought of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Rohit Vemula has committed suicide on January 17, 2016. While the country is celebrating 125th birth anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar, we stand in shock and awe and write this letter with deep concern about the future of healthy academic atmosphere, freedom of thought, caste discrimination, and principles of natural justice on academic premises.

It is evident from the information available from all the news sources, that political pressure played a role in the decision by the University and the University has reversed its own earlier decision about the students. It is also evident that there is a role of the political rival student group and other eminent politicians in the whole affair. The entire sequence of events involving all these agencies, which lead to the suicide of Rohit is deeply disturbing and raises serious concerns on autonomy of educational institutions.

Events of dalit students facing discrimination on academic premises are not rare in India. In his suicide note Rohit said that aMy birth is my fatal accident.a We do not view this incidence in isolation, but as a failure of our system to provide an atmosphere of intellectual and personal growth to people who come from most marginalised sections of the society. It is very important for the academic institutions that students like Rohit should feel free to voice their views and concerns using democratic means and foster healthy debates on all issues of concern to the society.

A university where students have to commit suicide feeling caste discrimination needs to seriously introspect and change. We appeal the University of Hyderabad that justice be done in the case of the suicide of the scholar Rohit Vemula, that the suspension of the other four students must be revoked immediately. We also appeal that a proper inquiry be conducted into the whole sequence of events which lead to the suicide of Rohit Vemula and action be taken against those found guilty.

We, the members of academic community in India, urge the University of Hyderabad to take actions to restore the confidence of academic community 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.

Endorsed by

Dr.S.T.Vagge, Professor , Dept. of Metallurgy & Materials Science, College of Engineering Pune.

Dr.P.D.Shendge, Associate Professor, Instrumentation & Control Deptt., College of Engineering, Pune-5

Prof. Dr. Shantipal S. Ohol, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Pune

Dr. Yashodhara V. Haribhakta, Department of Computer Engg. & IT, College of Engg. Pune

Abhijit A.M., Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering and I.T., College of Engineering, Pune

Vidyanand S. Galphade,Assistant Professor, Department of Metallurgy & Materials Science, College of Engg. Pune -411005,

Dr. Sunil R. Patil, Assistant Professor,, Dept. of Physics, College of Engineering, Pune

Jagadish Kashinath Kamble, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology, College of Engineering, Pune.

Mr. Vijay M Khadse, Assistant Professor, Department Of Computer Engg. and information technology, College of Engineering, Pune

Siddharth K Gaikwad, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Engineering and IT, College of Engineering, Pune a 5

S.M.Nawghare, Assistant Professor, Department Of Civil Engineering, College Of Engineering Pune

Prof. P. M. Raval, Professor, Town Planning, College of Engineering, Pune

Sudipto Muhuri, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physics, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune

Hiren Gohain, retired Professor of English,Gauhati University,Assam

Mihir Arjunwadkar, Associate Professor, Centre for Modeling and Simulation , Savitribai Phule Pune University

Dinesh Abrol, Professor ISID, TRCSS, CSSP, JNU

Harjinder (Laltu) Singh, IIIT Hyderabad

Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, NCRA-TIFR, Pune

Dr. Swati, formerly at B.H.U., Varanasi

Dr Sadhana Natu, Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of Psychology, Modern College, Ganeshkhind, SPPU

Prof Panditaradhya, Prof of Kannada (retd), University of Mysore, Maisuru

Prof. Anil Sadgopal, Member, Presidium, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) & Former Dean, Faculty of Education, Delhi University

Dr. Javadekar Sharad, Akhil Bharatiya Samajwadi Adhyapak Sabha, Formerly at Ness Wadia College, Pune

V.Vasanthi Devi, Former Vice-Chancellor, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tamil Nadu

Anagha Tambe, KSP Womens Studies Centre, SP Pune University

Poornima Chikarmane, Associate Professor, Adult and Continuing Education, SNDT Womens University.

Ms Sarwat Ali, Associate Professor, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi - 110025

Sneha Gole, Assistant professor , Krantijyoti savitribai phule womens studies centre, Savitribai Phule pune University

Kuntal Ghosh, Associate Professor, Indian Statistical Institute

Vandana Palsane, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, Shree Siddhivinayak Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Karvenagar, Pune 411052

Swati Dyahadroy, Womens studies centre Savitribai Phule Pune University

Sachin N, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi

Thokchom S. Surjit, Synroplang for Social Transformation, Shillong, Meghalaya.

Nisha Biswas, retd scientist, CSIR

Uma Chakravarti, retd, Miranda House, Delhi University

Professor K P Mohanan, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, Maharashtra

Sadhna Arya, University of Delhi

Anjali Maydeo, Associate Professor, Director (Hon),B D Karve Research and Consultancy Cell, Karve Institute of Social Service,Pune

Nagmani Rao, Associate Professor, Karve Institute of Social Service, Pune, Maharashtra

Uma V Chandru, Researcher, Bangalore

The list of endorsements is not complete, some more names are there too.
via kraktivist.org

Report of independent fact-finding into the incident of gang-rape and death of an ASHA* worker Somwati Tyagi, in Muzaffarnagar District Uttar Pradesh, India

Report prepared by

Gangotri and Pritisha (Human Rights Law Network), Ruchi Bhargava (SAMA), Rehana Adib (ASTITVA/ HealthWatch Forum UP) and others, Jayashree Velankar (NAMHHR), Jashodhara Dasgupta (SAHAYOG/ HealthWatch Forum UP)

NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR MATERNAL HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS & HEALTHWATCH FORUM UTTAR PRADESH

New Delhi, January 2016

About the area: Muzaffarnagar in western UP borders on Haryana and has recently seen violent communal incidents such as the riots of 2013. These incidents and the consequent polarization of Hindus and Muslims are seen as politically expedient, especially before elections. Apart from being communally asensitivea the local communities are extremely patriarchal in their attitudes towards girls and women, and gender-based violence is extremely common. The region is notorious for Khap Panchayats that dictate what punishments must be meted out to women and men who exercise their rights to choice of partners, and they are often in the news for community-endorsed killings of such couples. In addition the area has very strong influence of the Deoband ulemas who also issue fatwas that try to control the mobility and sexuality of Muslim women and girls to the greatest extent possible. In short, Muzaffarnagar is a flashpoint for communal polarization, caste violence and use of ahonour/dishonoura as a patriarchal notion to control women. Recently that area has other incidents of abduction and rape, and MMS of gang-rape incidents being used for blackmail.

Background: The video clip of a news-report about the recent gang-rape and death of an ASHA worker in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh (UP), was shared on the Medico Friend CircleE- group on January 14, 2016. The incident was seen as reflecting the inadequate arrangements for supporting frontline women health volunteers and their vulnerability to sexual assault and abuse. A fact-finding was suggested by several members of health e-groups and on January 16th a small team from Delhi went for a site visit to try and ascertain the facts of the case.

Our response: A preliminary fact-finding team was composed of a representative (Ms. Ruchi) from SAMA the womenas health organization in Delhi, a lawyer (Ms. Gangotri) and social worker (Ms. Pritisha) from Human Rights law Network, and womenas health activists Ms. Jayashree

Velankar representing NAMHHR (National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights) and Ms. Jashodhara Dasgupta (SAHAYOG /Healthwatch Forum UP). Both are also allied with other health groups such as Medico Friend Circle (MFC) and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA).

In Muzaffarnagar the team was joined by Ms. Rehana Adib (Director, ASTITVA/ Healthwatch Forum UP) and her team members. The team conducted a one-day visit on 16th January 2016 to the district and met the following people a

People we met

Location

1. Station House Officer and other policemen and women Chhapaar Police Station

2. Husband of Somwati, other family members including mother, sister, two younger children Chapra village

3. Former Pradhan of village (Anil Kumar) and several other villagers who came when we were visiting

4. Members of the ASHA sangathan of that district Muzaffarnagar District Hospital

5. Senior Superintendent of Police Muzaffarnagar, Camp Office

In addition, Ms. Jayashree Velankar visited the village again on 21st January during the memorial meeting for the deceased ASHA worker.

In addition to field observations and information provided by people we met, the team also consulted the following sources of information: the Youtube news video clip, local print news clippings (see annexure); FIR of the case. [Information still lacking a Copy of post-mortem report]

About the ASHA and her family-

Name of the victim: Somwati; W/o SurajTyagi

Age: 35 years

Place: Chapra Village, Muzaffarnagar.

Somwati was an ASHA worker for the last eight years in her village. She had three children, an older son who is about 16, a daughter who is about 12 and a younger son who is 8 years. Her husband is a heart patient and does not do any work; he is rumoured to be an alcoholic as well. They had three animals (cows and buffaloes) and lived in a single-roomed house that did not have a toilet. The entire economic burden of the family was on her. She joined as ASHA worker under NRHM and somehow managed to earn a minimal amount. As the ASHA, she also worked in the Muslim neighbourhood of her village and visited their homes.

Timeline of events:

i. For the last eight years, Somwati worked in her village as an ASHA, including among a Muslim neighbourhood. Her phone number was available among families with pregnant women.

September- October 2015

ii. The SHO and press coverage indicates that there were call records over 2-3 months of phone conversations between Somwati and a young man from a Jhojha Muslim household called Shahid. According to the community, the family of Shahid is a powerful one; according to Rehana the Jhojha Muslims are very powerful farmers in that area. The SHO and Police have assumed that the phone records indicate an extra-marital relationship between the two, and have not investigated possibility of threats or blackmail.

iii. According to community women we spoke to, Somwati had gone to the house of Shahid three months ago to provide post-partum care information for his sister-in-law who had just delivered a baby in the hospital. At the end of that visit, Shahid pulled her aside under the stairs and asked her to have a relationship with him. Since that visit, Shahid started chasing her and pressurizing her to have relationship with him. She refused saying she had children almost his age. However he continued to follow her on roads, stalking and calling her up on her mobile. He even asked her to leave her family and marry him and made threats that aeither she would become his or one of them would diea. Somwati kept resisting him. They mentioned that few days before her death Shahid raped her. The rape was video recorded. Shahid blackmailed her to keep quiet otherwise he would make the video public.

7 a 8 January:

iv. According to the former Pradhan and villagers, a video of sexual acts involving Somwati was circulating in the village through Whatsapp for some time before her death. Most of the people had seen it. According to those who have seen it, the video indicates use of force and resistance and presence of more than one man (they mentioned a foot placed on her chest and she was trying to dislodge it. They noticed her shalwar was torn, and her bag and slippers were scattered, etc). The community members said the person Shahid was visible in the video clips, as well as some others. [The group of ASHA workers mentioned three clips, the former Pradhan and SHO mentioned two video clips.]

11th January

Although the rape video was circulating in the village by Whatsapp for some time before her death, it was not clear whether anyone tried to help Somwati or enable the family to register a police complaint. Only the former Pradhan, Anil mentioned having seen it and was intending to speak with the family, but apparently he got delayed due to his embarrassment in broaching the subject with Suraj Tyagi, who was his childhood friendi. By the time he decided to go and speak with them, he could not find them at home.

v.

vi. According to Somwatias husband Suraj, he and his wife had a discussion on 11th night in which she told him about the gang-rape and expressed her great distress at the video that was circulating. According to him, he told her not to worry or take any extreme steps; that they would deal with it somehow; and she said that she would complain to the police against Shahid about the rape and the video. Further, he reported to the team that she was not suffering from any mental depression that would lead to her committing suicide1 and in fact she was ready to fight for justice.

12th January 2016 a

According to Somwatias husband Suraj, on that day, she woke up early at 3 am which was unusual, as they usually woke during the Azan. Her older son was sick with jaundice, and she went with him to a local clinic at Purkazi to consult a doctor and get medicines. However for unknown reasons, the son reached home by himself; Somwati was not with him. Apparently she had asked him to go home without her, and she would follow soon.

It is not known why Somwati did not return with her son2 or what happened with Somwati after her son left her.

Somwatias death occurred on 12 January at some point during the day. A few hours after her son came home, her husband got a call from unknown number informing him that his wife was lying face down on a roadside. She was immediately taken to hospital but she was declared dead.

That evening at 4pm, an FIR was lodged in the local Chhapaar Police Station by her husband Suraj Tyagi and the former Pradhan, Anil Kumar. The FIR was lodged under section 376 & 306 of the Indian Penal Code which deals with the punishment of rape and abetment of suicide respectively and 66 A of The Information Technology Act which deals with punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc

A Post mortem done that night. According to the ASHA workers, the PM doctors had watched the video clips of the gang-rape as well.

13th January a

Next day the incident was covered in the papers and was seen by ASHA workers. All the ASHA workers came together and demonstrated; they blocked the National Highway road to the village for almost half an hour, saying they would not let the body go for cremation until their demands were met. They also had ASHAas joining in from as far as Ghaziabad, and from other parts of the district. All the ASHA works paid for their own travel and joined the demonstration. An FIR was lodged against 100 ASHA workers by Chhapaar Police Station.

The ASHAs got the information that the body had been taken through a different route so they went to her house and had a dharna (sit-in demonstration) on the site. The local MP (BJP) and Union Minister Sanjeev Baliyan came to the house and heard their demands. He called up the DM and CMO and asked them to visit the bereaved family. After he gave assurances to the ASHA workers that the CMO would come, then they allowed the body to be taken for cremation. The CMO came much later in the evening. There was an

1 But in the FIR, he mentioned that on 11th Jan, he came to know about the fact that Somwati was raped by Shahid and after that incident she was mentally depressed and was shocked.

2 on the day we visited the family her son was sick and had gone to visit the doctor, so we could not ask him where she left him on 12th morning, whether she consumed anything, or met anyone else.

announcement that the state would give a compensation of Rs 30,000 to the family but the ASHA workers asked for more.

15th January

xiv. After two days, an official from SDM office came to the house and handed over a cheque for 5 Lakhs from the state government.

16th January

When we had left the house of Somwati on 16th January in the afternoon, we saw that the local Hindutva leader, Sadhvi Prachi, had also come to visit the family.

Initially she did not speak because we were still waiting there. After we left she made a speech in which she reportedly said, aMussalmanon ke liye bas do jagah bache hain a ya to Pakistan ya kabristana (there are only two places left for Muslims, Pakistan or the cemetery).

21st January

xvii. Around 150 ASHAs had gathered from all over Muzaffarnagar district to attend the 10th day ritual following Somwatias death to express solidarity, call for strict punishment of the culprits3 and also to impress upon the family and villagers that the money (Rs 5 lakh) given by the state government be invested in Fixed Deposit in the names of her children. They reiterated their demands and declared that they will meet CMO after 10 days to pursue the matter. After the aPagdia ceremonyii two ASHAs spoke, paying tributes to their colleague Somwati. Both of them talked about how women are still discriminated against and urged all the men present to treat women with equality and dignity. They also stressed that this is not a Hindu a Muslim incident and no attempt should be made to portray it in a communal light. Speaking on behalf of the health movement and womenas movement Jayashree Velankar expressed solidarity with their actions and demands, and stressed on the need to look into safety of women workers. She critiqued the apathy and insensitivity displayed by the health ministry and bureaucrats.

xviii. Following her Sadhvi Prachi made a fairly incendiary speech, warning those present that the government would not protect them; they should take things into their own hands. She made a strong appeal to boycott families of the culprits in addition to demand for imposing draconian laws like NSA.

Our observations and preliminary conclusions

Police response a

Overall, it is commendable that the police showed promptness in arresting the prime accused Shahid that very night within 6 hours of the FIR. (The SHO and others reported complete cooperation from the local Muslim families in Chapra in locating where Shahid was

I.

a)

3 During our interaction, I explained to them the rationale behind opposing capital punishment or NSA for rapists and urged them not to press any demand for such measures. They expressed need for such info and dialogue.

hiding). Till date we understand that a total of three arrests have been made and all are

sent to judicial remand.

b) Their immediate assumption is that it was an extra-marital love affair gone sour, and that itmay have been consensual sex that was filmed. They have concluded this because of the call records. There is also a tacit assumption that it was a suicide as she felt betrayed and had lost her aizzata (honour). We feel that there should have been some exploring of the blackmail angle, or investigation whether there was any foul play. Why is the only conclusion that it was a suicide and failed love affair?

c) The team suggested to the SSP that the additional charges could be added of Sec 292 of the Indian Penal Code which deals with the sale, etc., of obscene books, etc. and Sec 66E of the Information Technology Act which deals with the punishment for violation of privacy, to which he readily agreed.

d) According to the assurance given to us by the SSP, apparently the FIR upon ASHA workers will not be acted upon, it was more of a formality since they had blocked the road.

e) Given that Muzaffarnagar is a potentially inflammable area, we can see that there is clear pressure upon the police and their own anxiety to maintain communal harmony, given that this incident involved Hindus and Muslims. They were prompt in sending a police force to the village soon after Sadhvi Prachi left on 16th January.

Our suggestions for the police force:

a) Investigation needs to be more open-ended: for there should not be an assumption she was having an extra-marital affair only based on call records. If the video is indicating use of force, then it was certainly rape and there may have been blackmail and threats before and after the rape. Also they need to establish number of videos that were circulated and whether steps have been taken to ensure they are no more in circulation.

b) Further, if she wanted to commit suicide then why would she consume poison on her way to home from the doctor/health centre? Where did she go after coming out from the doctor/health centre; why did she send her son home by saying that she will join him later? Can there be some investigation if there was foul play?

c) We strongly feel it is a priority to check communal violence as a result of inflammatory statements by Sadhvi Prachi (video available)

II. Response of health department and ASHA Union a

a) ASHA groups are isolated from each other, but have great solidarity as the entire district came together for the memorial at their own cost. We are impressed by the organizational unity, fast mobilization and voluntary efforts of the ASHA workers to get justice for Somwati. They were able to reach out beyond their district borders, and even had planned to come together for a memorial meeting in the village on the 10th day of the death. They had very clear demands, and have plans to boycott all national programmes like immunization until their demands are met.

b) They needed to put a lot of pressure and boycotted the national programmes like Pulse Polio before the CMO said he needed ten days to consider their demands. They had very clear demands from the government that included:

Proper investigation into the caseiii. They want strict punishment for the culprits (we suggested they avoid calling for hanging of the rapist)

They propose that the compensation money should be made in the name of the children

Life insurance,

Security when they accompany pregnant women at night;

Transport to return or a place to stay at the hospital;

Status of a formal worker;

Permission to conduct delivery (willing to undergo special training)

c) We note the apathy and insensitive manner of dealing with the issue a no one from the district health department came in support for the dharna of the ASHA workers; they were very disappointed when there was no visit by CMO until the local MP (Union Minister) called up and asked him to come

d) After this incident, they report that other ASHA workers are receiving lewd phone calls from men; notably the minority community ASHA workers are feeling vulnerable in case of any backlash.

Our suggestions for ASHA Mentoring group:

a) JSY is a flagship programme and ASHA is the backbone of the community health outreach, but not enough thought has gone into support and back-up needed by the ASHA workers in terms of dealing with the fallout of their new social roles in rural areas, and community reactions to this. We need to consider what is the ecosystem within which ASHAs are working?

b) ASHA workers are meant to go out of their homes at all times of day or night but no support is provided to them in terms of a place/room/bed to wait at the hospital, or any transport to come back home

c) Their phone numbers are public and they have to move and visit the homes of the families in their neighbourhood but this mobility is not supported by gender and empowerment interventions that prevent their exploitation and protect them in case of any unwanted attention /assault/VAW.

d) The VAW, gender equality and human rights understandings of ASHA workers appears inadequate (they are asking for hanging or NSA) and we as feminist/human rights movements have not reached them yet.

e) There needs to be more cross-country solidarity among ASHAs. They do not know about the payments/working conditions to ASHA works in other states

III. Response of non-state actors a

a) It appears that all the men in the village had seen the video and enjoyed watching and sharing it, but no one came and expressed solidarity with the family or went with them to complain to the police in time before the death of Somwati. Only after she died the ex- Pradhan went with the husband to complain about the rape video. [We do not know if the video is still in circulation?]

b) The role of local Hindutva leaders like Sadhvi Prachi needs to be kept under a close watch. Polarization of communities along religious lines has been seen as an easy way to garner votes and the BJP is not shy to use this method. The speeches of Sadhvi Prachi need to be monitored and her openly anti-Muslim rhetoric needs to be checked. She is also advocating indirectly that people should take the law into their own hands and not wait for the government to take action or ensure justice.

According to ex-Pradhan, on 11th at night he got a call from villagers and he was informed that Somwatias sex MMS was going viral on whatsapp. He informed that the video was of 45 mins and it was in three video files (15 mins each.). Further he informed the team that he saw the video on the same night and he clearly saw the face of Shahid forcefully having physical relationship with her. He and few others present claimed that it was evident from the video clip that she was gang raped because he noticed someone else apart from Shahid in the video. They saw that someone was putting his foot on her chest, her salwar was torn, and her slippers and hand bag lay scattered in the field.

He told the team that he planned to inform her husband on next day but unfortunately when he went to his house both husband and wife was not there. Later, he got the news that Somwati was found dead near the roadside. After that he along with her husband filed an FIR at Chappar PS.

ii I was informed this is a ritual to pass on the responsibility of the family to next person. Somwatias 16 year old elder son will now be the Head of the family. I couldnat resist thinking that this was some tacit admission that Somwati was indeed the aHeadaof the family.

iii a..aAlso, there was no change of colour in the body and if someone consumes poison then the body color change. Somwati had made a promise to herself for the family to not to end her life and instead to fight for her dignity and justice. This was shocking for us also because we never thought that she will end her life in this way.a

Report prepared by

Gangotri and Pritisha (HRLN), Ruchi Bhargava (SAMA) Rehana Adib (ASTITVA/HWForum UP) and others Jayashree Velankar (NAMHHR), Jashodhara Dasgupta (SAHAYOG/ HW Forum UP)

] Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA)
Dawn, 23 January 2016

THE latest terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda is one more bloody event in a seemingly unending campaign against innocent young Pakistanis.

But we have seen so many of these horrifying assaults by crazed militants that they now merge into a single blur of pure evil. However, every once in a while, a particular incident remains stuck in the memory, not necessarily for the numbers slaughtered, but for the sheer horror it provokes.

For me, the murderous attack on Malala Yousafzai was one such event. Here was a 14-year-old schoolgirl shot in the head and almost killed for claiming her right to an education. Pakistan a and the whole world a was stunned by the sheer brutality of the act. It is entirely fitting that she has become an international symbol respected for her eloquence and determination.

Little has been done to change Ziaas disastrous course.

The attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar that ended in over 140 victims a most of them children a was another tipping point. The sheer viciousness of the assault caused such outrage that weak and vacillating politicians were finally forced off the fence and supported tough military action against the killers and their ilk. Operation Zarb-i-Azb has massive support among the public, and has caused significant losses among enemy ranks.

While condemning this wave of terror, it would be good to remember that it has not taken place in a vacuum. The state has created the space and the environment for extremism to thrive and put down roots in our fertile soil. Many terrorist groups operating today were created and fostered by our intelligence agencies to further their domestic and external agendas.

More importantly, the state has allowed madressahs to multiply across the country. Many of them teach the virulent version of Islam that is practised in Saudi Arabia and exported by the countryas royal family across the Muslim world. Few impart any knowledge or skills that could be useful in todayas fast-changing world.

Clerics and religious parties have acquired political power far out of proportion to the number of votes they win, or the seats they have in parliament. As a result, they have pushed through retrograde curricula that teach students to hate those who do not follow their faith.

Even though much of this evil raised its head during Ziaas monstrous rule, the dictatoras civilian and military successors have done little to change the disastrous course he put the country on. Lenin once advised his cadres thus: aProbe with a bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, push.a In Pakistan, the clergy has almost always encountered mush.

This brings us to the third tipping point on our path to perdition. When a boy slices off his own hand because of his fear of the consequences of a charge of blasphemy, what does it say about the state of the nation? When 15-year-old Anwar mistakenly put his hand up when the mosque imam, Shabbir Ahmed, asked for those who did not love the Prophet (PBUH) to raise their hands, he was immediately accused of blasphemy.

Knowing the bloody fate of those against whom a similar charge had been made, the teenager rushed home and chopped his hand off with a scythe, and reportedly presented it to the imam on a plate. What is worse than this horrific act is the admiration it has evoked. The boyas piety is being praised, and his parents are filled with pride.

The imam was arrested but then released when nobody pressed charges. However, when the story made headlines around the world, Shabbir Ahmed was re-arrested. I have little doubt he will soon be released and made a hero, just as Mumtaz Qadri, Salmaan Taseeras killer has been elevated to sainthood.

So rather than wring our hands and weep crocodile tears every time such horror stories play out, we need to think about the environment that places perpetrators on pedestals. In Qadrias case, it was lawyers who showered him with rose petals when he appeared in court. These people are supposed to be the most highly educated group in Pakistan, so if they cheer a murderer, what does that say about our society?

In several chilling terrorist attacks, highly educated young men have been arrested and confessed their guilt. So the argument that education would eliminate extremist violence is highly questionable. The truth is that our classrooms, far from being places of learning and questioning, have mostly become centres of spreading hatred and ignorance. And our madressahs and mosques are now often platforms for extremism.

Until we are willing to confront these unpleasant truths, things will only get worse. Many opinion polls have shown the increasingly fundamentalist mindset of young Pakistanis. As teaching standards continue to fall, and TV channels go on churning out programmes based on irrational nonsense, we can expect society to be defined more by religiosity than reason.

The result? More heads and hands will be chopped off.
The Polisario leaders are expecting another blow from the European Union (EU) which is about to exact a census of the Tindouf camps populations, and this only few days after the Swedish government decided not to recognize the independence of Western Sahara. This decision came as an ice-cold shower for the separatists.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, on her part has just called for holding a census of the Tindouf camps populations.

To a question by the French Socialist MEP Gilles Pargneaux during a meeting, in Strasbourg on Thursday, of the Budget Control Committee of the European Parliament alluding to the diversion of humanitarian aid by the Polisario under the discharge of the 2013 budget, Mogherini agreed that there had indeed been problems.

She nevertheless said she would rather answer this question in a plenary session or before the Foreign Affairs Committee, but insisted on the need to conduct a census in the Tindouf camps.

Since 1991, the European Commission has been granting to the Tindouf camps population an annual humanitarian aid of 10 million, but a damning report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF ) has changed the situation when it unveiled in February 2015, a large-scale diversion of European aid by Polisario leaders and Algerian officials.

The report authors explained that one cause of this large-scale trafficking is the lack of accuracy of the exact number of beneficiaries of such aid in the absence of a census.

It is in this context that the MEP Gilles Pargneaux raised in Strasbourg Thursday the need for the EU to require a census of the Tindouf camps populations to assess their needs and extend them aid accordingly.

He said with this census, we will kill two birds with one stone: European food aid will be better adjusted to the needs of the populations and a political solution to this conflict will be facilitated.

Gilles Pargneaux also sought clarifications on the decision taken by European authorities following OLAFs revelations on the scandalous misuse of EU aid by the Polisario.
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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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 Lots of notable new year marijuana reform developments via Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform | Main | SCOTUS declares Miller juve LWOP rule retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana 

This new Politico article, headlined "Cotton leads effort to sink sentencing overhaul: A cadre of conservative Republicans is lining up against the bipartisan measure, imperiling its future," reinforces my long-standing concern that the prospects of significant statutory sentencing reform emerging from Congress gets dimmer every week that passes without movement forward on the bills that have made it through the judiciary committees. Here is the first part of the article:

Sen. Tom Cotton, the hawkish upstart who's already made waves railing against the Iran nuclear deal and government surveillance programs, is now leading a new rebellion against a bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system  hoping to torpedo one of the only pieces of major legislation that could pass in President Barack Obamas final year.

GOP tensions over a bill that would effectively loosen some mandatory minimum sentences spilled over during a party lunch last week, when Cotton (R-Ark.), the outspoken Senate freshman, lobbied his colleagues heavily against the legislation, according to people familiar with the closed-door conversation. The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall with bipartisan support.

It would be very dangerous and unwise to proceed with the Senate Judiciary bill, which would lead to the release of thousands of violent felons, Cotton said later in an interview with POLITICO. I think its no surprise that Republicans are divided on this question  [but] I dont think any Republicans want legislation that is going to let out violent felons, which this bill would do.

Cotton isnt alone. Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and David Perdue of Georgia, also registered their strong opposition during the lunch, even as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vigorously defended the bill, which he helped negotiate. Risch stressed this message, according to one Republican source: Shouldnt the GOP be a party of law and order?

Risch declined to elaborate on his concerns over the bill, saying he was displeased that his private remarks made during a party lunch were made public. But the deepening Republican split over reforming key elements of the criminal justice system  an effort years in the making that has been powered by an influential right-left coalition  may imperil whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ultimately will take up the measure later in this election year.

Conservatives opposing the legislation are coalescing around Cottons view  despite strong pushback from bill supporters  that the measure could lead to the early release of people convicted and imprisoned for violent crimes. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), once a supporter of easing mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders, has also made this argument. And theres stiff resistance in pockets of the Republican Party to do anything that may erode its tough-on-crime reputation.

Backers of the bill say their changes to sentencing laws merely allow qualifying inmates to have their cases revisited by the same judge and prosecutor who landed them in prison. The judge would then have the discretion to hand down a reduced sentence. Its not true, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) of opponents insistence that violent criminals could be freed under the sentencing reforms. Id say, please read the bill and listen to people like [former Attorney General] Michael Mukasey who makes the point, which is a critical point, that theres no get-out-of-jail-free card.

But that perception, hardening among conservatives, is a serious obstacle for supporters of the bill like Cornyn, who as the Senates second-ranking Republican is the most influential GOP backer of the criminal-justice measure. And last week, McConnell  who is often hesitant to press ahead on issues that divide his 54-member conference  indicated a breather of sorts on the bill, saying GOP senators would take some time to get educated on the measure.

Those comments discouraged some supporters, since any major pause could spell doom for the bill this year. In a couple of months, the GOP-led Congress will turn its attention to its top legislative priority  budget and appropriations bills  while individual lawmakers shift into full campaign mode. Members of the Judiciary Committee have been deeply involved on that issue, the rest of us have not, McConnell told reporters of criminal justice reform. So were going to be working through the process of bringing everybody in the Republican Conference up to speed on this very important issue, and were going to do that before any decision is made about floor time.

The criminal justice overhaul isnt limited to sentencing reforms. The measure also includes reforms to the prison system championed by Cornyn and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)  changes that Cotton said he supports. And overhaul efforts also are complicated by the issue of so-called mens rea reform, with House Republicans and some GOP senators  including Orrin Hatch of Utah, the most senior Senate Republican  demanding changes to rules governing criminal intent.

But the sentencing changes are triggering the biggest  and most vivid  rift among Republicans. Cotton and other Republicans pointed to a triple murder earlier this month in Columbus, Ohio, where a man is accused of killing an ex-girlfriend and two of her children. The suspect, Wendell Callahan, had his prison sentence on drug charges reduced twice for a total of more than four years, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
 GOP empire striking back against federal sentencing reform efforts in Congress | Main | Does SCOTUS ruling in Montgomery actually minimize likelihood of full constitutional ban on juve LWOP sentences? 

January 25, 2016

SCOTUS declares Miller juve LWOP rule retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana

Via a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court this morning decided via Montgomery v. Louisiana, No. 14280 (S. Ct. Jan. 25, 2016) (avaialable here), that "Miller announced a substantive rule that is retroactive in cases on collateral review." This is huge news for lots of reasons, and I will likely have a series of posts on this ruling and its reasoning in the hours and days and weeks ahead.

Intriguingly, the majority opinion for the Court spent relatively more energy justifying jurisdiction in the case than the declaration that Miller is a substantive rule under Teague's framework for retroactive applicaton of new constitutional rules. In any event, here are a few key passages from the tail end of the Court's Montgomery opinion explaining its ruling:

The Court now holds that Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law. The conclusion that Miller states a substantive rule comports with the principles that informed Teague. Teague sought to balance the important goals of finality and comity with the liberty interests of those imprisoned pursuant to rules later deemed unconstitutional. Millers conclusion that the sentence of life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of juvenile offenders raises a grave risk that many are being held in violation of the Constitution. Giving Miller retroactive effect, moreover, does not require States to relitigate sentences, let alone convictions, in every case where a juvenile offender received mandatory life without parole. A State may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing them. See, e.g., Wyo. Stat. Ann. 610301(c) (2013) (juvenile homicide offenders eligible for parole after 25 years). Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity  and who have since matured  will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Extending parole eligibility to juvenile offenders does not impose an onerous burden on the States, nor does it disturb the finality of state convictions. Those prisoners who have shown an inability to reform will continue to serve life sentences. The opportunity for release will be afforded to those who demonstrate the truth of Millers central intuition  that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

January 25, 2016 at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Comments

Scalia in high Scalia mode in dissent.

Posted by: Joe | Jan 25, 2016 10:45:31 AM

The Supreme Court's no burden discussion is flawed. Put in plain English, the discussion puts forward the proposition that "Our decision imposes no burden if the State wishes to surrender and agree that the sentence was wrong. It only imposes a burden if the State thinks that the original sentence was right."

Posted by: tmm | Jan 25, 2016 11:08:42 AM

The excerpt speaks of "onerous burden" not "no" burden.

Posted by: Joe | Jan 25, 2016 11:21:43 AM

Three quick observations on jurisdiction:

1. The Court declined to address the principal jurisdictional argument put forward by the parties and the Solicitor General as amicus (that the Court had jurisdiction under Michigan v. Long). Since the SG pressed the argument pretty vigorously, I expected the Court to comment on it. Is it a slap in the face that the Court chose not to do so?

2. Justice Thomas says states can react to the decision by withdrawing state habeas relief for new federal rules that are deemed substantive. While that would be an interesting occurrence, most states either follow Teague or have retroactivity rules that are more generous than Teague, and so I don't really see a state reacting to Montgomery by narrowing the scope of state habeas relief.

3. Neither the majority nor the dissent addressed pre-Teague cases in which the Supreme Court granted cert to consider whether a new constitutional rule should be applied retroactively on state collateral attack. Those case deserved to be mentioned and (if necessary) explained or distinguished.

Posted by: Da Man | Jan 25, 2016 12:50:22 PM

Da Man: 1) The Long issue was moot in light of the way that the Supreme Court decided the case. By deciding that the first prong of Teague was constitutional, it was irrelevant whether Louisiana's analysis actually applied Teague as a matter of federal law or was a state law version of Teague. (Some language suggests that they saw it as the latter).

While I do not recall it expressly citing to Long, the opinion last week in Carr includes some long type analysis.

2)Justice Thomas (and to some extent the majority opinion) is more talking about the scope of state collateral review -- when is a new claim procedurally barred. Teague solves the retroactivity issue, not necessarily the procedural bar issue. I doubt most states will remove "substantively invalid sentences" from state habeas (and I don't think under the Supremacy Clause they could limit such claims to issues of invalid under state law) as that comes very close to the core of the traditional writ -- protected by many state constitutions.

3) Both sides seem to see Teague as cutting off the old cases. I am not sure that it is entirely true. In my mind, relying in part on, I see two types of collateral review. The first type is de facto direct appeal (those claims that state law require to be brought in a collateral review proceeding rather on direct appeal). Griffith should apply to those types of claims. The second type is discretionary review of "defaulted" claims (i.e. those claims that should have been raised in an earlier case but were not). I think that states have the authority to use procedural bars to limit the use of new case law to raise claims that should have been raised earlier. I think that if the new claim survives the procedural bar, then the Supremacy Clause does not allow the state to disregard the current interpretation of federal law.

Posted by: tmm | Jan 25, 2016 3:30:54 PM

TMM --

It's now moot. But normally the Court will address the argument the parties actually advanced. To go straight to an unraised argument gives ammunition to those who think the Court was trying to find not only jurisdiction, but a basis for jurisdiction that would force the (now retroactive) Miller holding on all states that provide a collateral attack remedy. If the majority wanted the SCOTUS to be portrayed as heavy-handed, it succeeded. If it had found jurisidction based on Michigan v. Long, the all states that have adopted Teague (or a more favorable retroactivity rule) could be said to have voluntarily subscribed to SCOTUS retroactivity pronouncements, instead of conscripted into enforcing them. But perhaps conscription is your idea of "our federalism."

Posted by: Da Man | Jan 25, 2016 4:03:45 PM

Why even bother? The bottom line is that the opinion is a joke. The whole, no it's substantive because it should be rare is embarrassingly thin, and the idea that the standard of "well, was it a reflection of youthful immaturity?" is just laughable.

What's not laughable is that there are real live people out there who have suffered awful predations who now have to fight to keep these killers incarcerated against, in many cases, annoyed bureaucrats who want them to move on.

State courts and governors and legislators should resist this nonsense with all their power. Juvie killers sentenced to LWOP should be permanently barred from parole if they commit a single crime behind bars, and wardens should be on the lookout for opportunities.

Posted by: federalist | Jan 25, 2016 10:34:32 PM

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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.




A tagger taken to civil court this past summer by the city of San Francisco learned her fate last week, and it is an expensive one. The City Attorney's office announced that it had won a $217,831.64 judgement against the woman, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera expects her to pay up.

Terry Cozy, the person accused of spray painting a variation of "COZE" or "COZE1" around the city, has until February 15 to pay the amount due, reports the Chronicle.

Cozy would allegedly post photos of her tags to Instagram, Tumblr, and Flickr, but those pages were taken down when she was sued last summer. Officials decided to sue Cozy, instead of pursuing criminal charges, as the standard of proof is lower in a civil case. Also, they had apparently attempted criminal charges before.

"I would just say so far she has not been deterred by criminal prosecution," said Deputy City Attorney Victoria Weatherford last summer when the suit was announced.

I dont think it will stop graffiti in San Francisco, but I hope it makes people think twice, Deputy City Attorney Jill Cannon told the paper. We want people to know that when you damage property, there are consequences  maybe beyond what they anticipated.

The total financial judgment is the result of an estimated $50,000 in damages, plus attorney's fees and various penalties. The City Attorney's office, notes the Chron, can seize Cozy's property or garnish her wages should she fail to pay the fine on time.

"The city spends upwards of $20 million a year on graffiti cleanup," says Herrera. "Thats unconscionable. Let the taggers foot the bill for their mischief.

Previously: San Francisco Sues Prolific Graffiti Artist For $88,000 In Damage To Public Property


At least one veteran nurse at SF General is sounding the alarm bell about a recent policy change at the hospital pushed by the Drug Enforcement Administration that has all leftover pills and controlled substances  and there are a lot  being flushed down toilets, which will result in the chemicals ultimately reaching the San Francisco Bay.

As San Francisco Magazine is reporting, hospital staff had previously been disposing of excess medications into sealed "blue/white bins" which were kept under nurses' watchful eyes and ultimately incinerated. This system is apparently unacceptable to the DEA, and in 2014 issued a letter to the hospital insisting that all heavy narcotics and controlled substances like OxyContin, fentanyl, and Adderall instead be separated out and flushed, while all other medications not on their list could be disposed of in the usual way, in the bins.

The odd part is that the SF Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has apparently OK'd this practice, which will ultimately bring trace amounts of these narcotics into our local waters, even moreso than are already there.

It should be noted that just a few years ago the PUC was promoting events like the Big Blue Bucket Eco Fair where people were encouraged to bring their medicine cabinets full of old pills for safe disposal.

This recent study published in The Sustainability Review using the SF Bay as an example, concludes that most effluent concentrations of various drugs  much of which come form normal human urinary excretion  are not harmful to fish or humans. However, scientists are concerned about these "legacy pollutants of tomorrow," and the report notes that "toxicity thresholds for many of the measured compounds are not established." Also, the report did not look at narcotics specifically.

Apparently the nurses' union, SEIU Local 1021, is meeting with the hospital about the new rules this week, and nurse Aaron Cramer told SF Mag that he doesn't get why the old system wasn't perfectly secure. "To think someone would steal [pills] in public view of the whole department? Its completely ridiculous," he says, adding that the disgusting mass of syringes and mixed substances in those bins is not something that anyone would easily be able to sort through.

Update: The PUC reached out to SF Mag following their story to say, actually, "the PUC chemist who greenlit San Francisco General Hospital's 'sewering' of drugs did so erroneously. [And] Flushing drugs down the toilet, in fact, contravenes city policy." They now say the hospital will be forced to stop doing this, against the DEA's order.

Related: Counterfeit Xanax Has Now Killed At Least Three People In SF
By Shane Kastler

When Moses was born he was supposed to immediately die. Fearing the growing population of the Hebrew people, the king of Egypt made an edict that male, Hebrew children were to be put to death upon birth. But Moses's parents refused to abide by this edict. Instead they hid Moses for a time, and then eventually he was adopted by none other than the king's own daughter. This sounds like an amazing stroke of luck But in fact, it was God's providence.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that Moses's parents hid him in faith because, they did not fear the kings edict. (Hebrews 11:23) While they were certainly afraid of their son being killed, they did not fear, or revere the king's unrighteous law. They refused to accept it and abide by it. In the end, they feared God more than they feared a wicked king.

Not surprisingly, Moses had the same mindset after he grew up. Moses knew that God was going to use him to deliver the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage; and he assumed the Hebrews also knew this but they did not. After Moses killed an Egyptian slave-driver he had to flee for his life. While he undoubtedly feared being killed, he did not fear the King of Egypt. He did not show reverence for the King by obeying him and turning himself in. Instead he fled. Again the book of Hebrews records: By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. (Hebrews 11:27) He feared God rather than the King. Eventually, Moses would come back to Egypt and would indeed lead his people to freedom. Throughout his life Moses showed a reverence for God above all other authorities. You and I should do likewise.

While we are called to respect the authorities placed over us; and we are called to pray for them. We must always fear God more than anyone. Our ultimate reverence should be for our Creator rather than our human authorities. We graciously submit to human authorities, to the extent that they lead righteously. But if it comes down to obeying God or obeying man, we must stand with God. As the only truly sovereign being in existence, it is God who rules the world and it is He who will work all things after the counsel of His will. (Ephesians 1:11)

Regardless of whoever is elected as the next leader of America; be sure to fear God more than the King (or Queen). Because God is the true King. Earthly authorities come and go; but the Lord shall reign forever.
We've been going about this all wrong! When people say Singapore is undemocratic, we shouldn't defend it or get all defensive. We ...
SIOUX CITY | Education funding, various economic developments initiatives, reductions of corporate income taxes and continued investments in quality-of-life projects top the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's priorities for the 2016 Iowa legislative session.

Chamber officials pitched the organization's priorities on Jan. 9 to six area lawmakers: Rep. David Dawson, Rep. Chris Hall, Rep. Ron Jorgensen, and Sen. Rick Bertrand, all of Sioux City, Sen. Bill Anderson of Pierson and Rep. Charles Holz of Le Mars.

About 50 Chamber members attended the early morning forum, which came two days before the House and Senate reconvened in Des Moines.

At the meeting, the lawmakers highlighted topics important to their respective parties and their constituents, including budget concerns, school funding, quality-of-life improvements, stand-your-ground laws, eminent domain laws, the legalization of fireworks in Iowa and water quality.

Audience members voiced their concerns after the lawmakers spoke. Sioux City Schools Superintendent Paul Gausman asked lawmakers to support the renewal of the 1 percent sales tax used by K-12 districts across the state for infrastructure projects.

Gausman called the renewal of the tax, which is set to expire in 2029, the "highest legislative priority of the school board."

"(2029) sounds like a long time from now" Gausman said. "But ... weve actually bonded all the way out to 2029 on those revenues that will come in."

Since 1998, the tax has brought about $240 million to renovate, repair and replace schools in the district, Gausman said.

"We think an extension of the (tax) does make sense to at least give the school district the ability to maintain some of their funding mechanisms," said Sam Wagner, the Chamber's director of business retention.

Gov. Terry Branstad has pitched a plan to extend the tax to 2049. The governor, however, has called for diverting some of the future revenues to water-quality projects. The first $10 million in new revenue each year would go to schools, and the remaining would go to water quality.

At the Jan. 9 meeting, Siouxland Chamber members praised local legislators for continuing to push the need for U.S. Highway 20 improvements to members of the Iowa Transportation Commission, which voted in June to fund $286 to finish the final 40 miles of four-lane expansion for the road.

In an interview after the meeting, Wagner said the Chamber strongly supports the protection of tax increment financing, which he said is Sioux City's main local economic development tool.

In addition, Wagner said the Chamber would like to see lawmakers simplify and reduce corporate income taxes.

Iowa has one of the most complicated income tax structures in the country, he said, which is a burden for residents and employers.

If we have to spend so much time explaining our tax code to perspective employers or to employers that are already here looking to expand, were losing.
SIOUX CITY | The Sioux City School Board on Monday will potentially award two contracts for the new Bryant Elementary project.

The first is a bid package for reconstruction along 31st, Jones and Jennings streets around the school, demolition of the current Bryant building, site work and construction of retaining walls.

The board will vote to award the contract to Sioux City Engineering Company for $3.29 million. The estimate presented in November was $3.1 million.

The second bid package to be awarded is a geothermal well project. Thorpe Water Development, Co.s bid of $594,339 will be considered.

The new school, to be built on the current campus at 821 30th St., is scheduled to open in August 2019.

Demolition of the existing building is set for July 1. The geothermal well project could start as early as the fall.

The third and final package  construction of the new building  will begin after the first two projects are completed.

In order to replace the aging school, the district in 2014 settled on a plan to build a new, expanded Bryant. The larger footprint required the purchase of eight surrounding homes.

Demolition of four homes south of 30th Street began in October. The others will be removed this spring.
LE MARS, Iowa | A Cherokee, Iowa, woman has pleaded not guilty to intentionally crashing the car she was driving in an attempt to kill her passenger.

Melissa Ebert, 28, entered a written plea Friday in Plymouth County District Court to two counts each of attempted murder, willful injury and serious injury by vehicle and a single count of second-offense operating while intoxicated. A trial date has yet to be set.

Ebert is accused in court documents of threatening to kill herself and her passenger, Damian Johnson, before veering her car into the path of an oncoming car driven by Dustin Boll, of Le Mars, on County Road C-28 on Sept. 9. All three were seriously injured.

Court documents said that Ebert and Johnson were arguing prior to the collision. Ebert's blood-alcohol level was 0.088 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent, court documents said.
SIOUX CITY | Freezing fog early Monday caused icy streets and highways and forced some area schools to start late or call off classes for the day.

Up to an inch of snow was expected to fall later in the day.

Area law enforcement agencies urged motorists to drive cautiously.

"We suggest everyone slow down. There are some slick spots," Iowa State Patrol Trooper John Farley said.

Interstate 29 was in good shape, Farley said, as was U.S. Highway 20. County roads were partially to completely covered with ice, he said.

Farley said he had heard reports of a few vehicles in ditches in the area.

In Sioux City, icy spots are scattered throughout the city, Sgt. Todd Sassman said.

"It's just been kind of hit and miss on the streets," he said.

Sioux City streets superintendent Ed Pickens said the Morningside area seemed to be the slickest part of town. City crews were out beginning at 3 a.m. to attack slick spots.

Sheriff's offices throughout Northwest Iowa, plus Dakota County in Nebraska and Union County in South Dakota reported that main highways were in good shape, but county roads were icy. Several vehicles had slid into ditches from Monona County in the south, north to Sioux County and east to Clay County. No serious injuries were reported by any of the sheriff's offices.

Many schools in rural areas started late, and some canceled classes for the day. Sioux City schools started on time.

Mike Gillispie, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, said fog had been expected, but the freezing onto area roads wasn't.

"We knew there was going to be fog around, but we didn't know if it would be dense enough to start depositing on the roads," Gillispie said.

A band of snow was expected to move into the area later in the morning. Gillispie said most areas of Northwest Iowa could expect an inch of snow, which will begin tapering off in the evening. Winds gusting up to 30 mph will pick up in the afternoon, causing blowing snow.

After Monday, Siouxland should dry out. No precipitation is in the forecast through Friday, Gillispie said, and temperatures should climb into the 40s by the end of the week, though there won't be much sunshine.
SIOUX CITY | Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush will make three Siouxland campaign stops later this week.

Bush has planned stops on his Countdown to Caucus Tour leading up to the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. The Siouxland stops will be second visit to the area by the former Florida governor, following a July event at Morningside College in Sioux City.

The Bush stops on Friday include a 4:15 p.m. event at Bev's on the River, 1110 Larsen Park Road, in Sioux City, and a 6:45 p.m. event at Dordt College, 498 Fourth Ave. NE, in Sioux Center.

Bush on Saturday will speak at 9 a.m. at Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center, 1405 U.S. Highway 71, in Okoboji.

Jeb Bush, whose father, George H.W., and brother, George W., are former presidents, last visited Northwest Iowa in July when he campaigned in Sioux City.
Todays top picks from our online calendar. Find more events at siouxcityjournal.com/calendar.

Caucus 101 Workshop: Morningside College will host an interactive workshop for new voters and first-time caucus goers 6:30-8 p.m. at Olsen Student Center, Yockey Family Community Room, 3609 Peters Ave. The event will include both Republican and Democratic caucus simulations. Participants will choose the caucus in which they want to participate. Visit www.morningside.edu for more information.

Ron Campbell Beatles Cartoon Pop Art Show: Ron Campbell, Beatles "Yellow Submarine" animator and "The Beatles" Saturday morning TV cartoon series director, will appear live -- painting, exhibiting and talking cartoons 11 a.m.-7 p.m. at Vangarde Arts, 420 Jackson St. The legendary animator/director will be exhibiting his original Beatles cartoon art as well as painting new works during his appearance. All works are available to purchase.

High School Jazz Band Festival: Ten high school jazz bands participating in the Iowa High School Music Association Jazz Band Festival 3-10 p.m. at Sami Bedell Center for the Performing Arts, 612 28th St., Spirit Lake, Iowa. Admission is $6 for adults and $3 students.
SOUTHERN PENNSYLVANIA | For the Rev. Patrick Behm, it came down to being in the wrong place at the right time.

Thats what the Le Mars, Iowa, priest said after the story of him holding Mass on the snowy side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Saturday morning went viral on social media.

The group -- about 150 high school students from Le Mars, Sioux City, Spirit Lake, Denison and Des Moines -- were returning home from the annual March for Life rally Friday in Washington, D.C., when Winter Storm Jonas came down on the East Coast.

Their plans were delayed after the buses got stuck on the turnpike.

We left Washington, D.C., and things were going smoothly, Behm said. The turnpike hadnt been closed yet but the snow was starting to come down.

At about 9:30 p.m. Friday, the buses lurched to a stop at mile marker 133, and the group had to become comfortable for awhile -- because there they stayed for the next 23 hours. More buses with others from across the country were stuck with them, including a group from Nebraska.

An accident had stopped traffic up the road, Behm said, and in the hours it took to clear up, the snow rendered the buses immobile.

Thankfully, the buses has toilets -- until those filled up, Behm said.

About half a mile down the road, a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation station was equipped with bathrooms and food. The students were able to make use of them -- by walking there and back -- as the hours wore on.

As Saturday morning came, Behm said members of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis approached his group about performing Mass.

It wasnt even my idea, but Im the one blowing up on Twitter and Facebook now, Behm said with a laugh.

Equipped with his travel Mass kit, an altar of snow was built as hundreds congregated outside in the cold.

I just happened to be there, the wrong place at the right time, Behm said.

For Karina Manriquez, a member of the Cathedral of the Epiphany youth group in Sioux City, it was a moment shell never forget.

It was the 17-year-olds first time going to D.C., though the trip up she was plagued with worry as reports of the storms strength mounted.

As the hours wore on, Manriquez and her friends eventually got to go outside to play in the snow, just to shake off the frustration.

People started to build stuff in the snow, and then they came and talked to Father Behm about Mass, and we all started to get really excited, she said.

After the snowy service, the worry melted away because the wait seemed worthwhile, she said.

I think, in a way, it proves our faith. That even with the hard times, were still here together, she said. I dont regret any of it.

The buses eventually were freed, resuming their journey to Des Moines, and eventually, home.

Behm said he expected to be back in Sioux City Sunday night, with a new story to tell.

It was one of the most incredible experiences of my short time as a priest, he said. In Providence, it worked out.
SIOUX CITY | Direct flights from Sioux Gateway Airport to Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport on American Airlines start May 5.

One daily flight will be offered, with departures from Dallas at 12:20 p.m. and return trips from Sioux City leaving at 3:12 p.m. A regional partner, American Eagle, will fly 50-seat regional jets.

American, the only carrier at Sioux Gateway, currently flies twice daily to Chicago O'Hare International.

Billy Glunz, regional director for state and local government affairs with American, said Dallas/Ft. Worth is the airline's largest hub, offering access to 800 daily flights with connections to more than 200 markets within the U.S. and two dozen other countries.

"The Sioux Gateway Airport truly is the tri-state areas gateway to the world," Glunz said at a Jan. 15 news conference at City Hall, flanked by local leaders.

Barbara Sloniker, executive director for The Siouxland Initiative, said local officials had encouraged American to add the Dallas hub ever since American started serving Sioux Gateway in 2012.

The success of the Chicago routes -- 75 to 80 percent of the flights are typically full -- leaves little doubt the Dallas line will also generate sufficient demand, she said.

"Weve made our case with our flights to Chicago," Sioux Gateway Airport manager Mike Collett added. "American would not be here today if they were not as confident as we were that we could get people on the plane."

Sioux Gateway has been without a direct connection to a southern or western hub since Frontier Airlines halted its thrice-weekly flights to Denver in October 2014, just two months after the low-cost carrier entered the Sioux City market.

Sloniker said American's Dallas hub will give travelers access to west, southeast, southwest and international flights.

She also said the additional route will boost economic development opportunities in the area.

"We all know when meeting with economic development prospects, its important for them to get people in and out of the community," she said. "If they want to compete in a global market, they have to have access to a national transportation system and air service.

I think it's just another feather in our cap to promote our growth and the great community we have here," she added.

Collett said the Sioux Gateway Board of Trustees will discuss at a later date whether to offer incentives to American. In the past, for example, the airport has waived landing fees for new airlines.

Its just to give them more comfort on starting a new route, Collett said.

American, the largest U.S. airline, arrived at Sioux Gateway in April 2012, through the Essential Air Service program, which guarantees commercial air travel for small, rural communities. American replaced Delta Airlines, which had flown connecting routes to Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Last month, American told the U.S. Department of Transportation that it would no longer require federal subsidies after its current two-year contract expires on April 30.

The notification abruptly ended a competition bidding process between American and United Airlines for a new two-year contract for the Chicago routes. United asked for $324,159 in subsidies per year, compared to American's request of $1.26 million.
SIOUX CITY | Gail Bivens-Rose, senior vice president and financial adviser with The Stuck Layman Rose Group in Bairds Sioux City office, attended Barrons Top Women Advisors Summit in Palm Beach, Florida.

The summit was a premier wealth management conference designed to promote best practices and generate new ideas among the nation's top women financial advisers.

Attendees at the invitation-only conference Dec. 2-4 explored current issues, from meeting the planning needs of high-net-worth clients throughout a variety of life stages, to business development and investment ideas.
SERGEANT BLUFF | The Association of Paralegals announce that Michelle Miller of Buchheit Law, PLC, has successfully completed the Certified Paralegal examination.

Miller is among 155 paralegals in Iowa and 18,583 nationwide who have attained the certification and are entitled to use the CP professional credential.

Established in 1976, the examination program is a voluntary professional credentialing program developed by the National Association of Legal Assistants.

Miller is a full-time paralegal with Buchheit Law in Sergeant Bluff.
Campbell joined Central Bank in 2014 as an internal auditor and brings over 16 years of banking experience to his new role as a commercial loan officer.

Campbell earned his BA from Morningside College and an MBA from the University of South Dakota. In addition, he is a graduate of the Iowa Bankers Associations Commercial Lending School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the American Bankers Associations National Commercial Lending School in Dallas, Texas. Most recently, Campbell graduated from the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
SIOUX CITY | UnityPoint Health -- St. Lukes is announcing new leadership appointments to its senior management team.

Employed with UnityPoint Health since 2013, Leah Glasgo has been named St. Lukes chief operating officer (COO). She formerly held the role of vice president, clinical operations for St. Lukes. Prior to joining UnityPoint Health, Glasgo served as president and CEO for Stewart Memorial Hospital in Lake City, Iowa. Glasgo will oversee overall hospital operations in her new role.

Chad Markham has been named senior vice president, network development/regional vice president for UnityPoint Clinic. Employed with St. Lukes since 2009, Markham will oversee Organized System of Care/Accountable Care operations and Population Health for the Sioux City region in addition to UnityPoint Clinic regional operations. Markham served as CEO for Hawarden Regional Healthcare in Hawarden, Iowa, prior to joining UnityPoint Health.

Recently named vice president of operations for St. Lukes, Jane Arnold has been with St. Lukes since 2003. In her new role, Arnold will continue to oversee UnityPoint at Home for the Sioux City region with added executive leadership for care coordination, palliative care, imaging, medical laboratory and hospitality services. Previously, Arnold served as the vice president of operations for UnityPoint at Home in Sioux City and Fort Dodge regions and formerly as St. Lukes director of rehabilitation services and the acute rehabilitation unit.

Craig Bryan joins the UnityPoint Health leadership team as CEO of Pierce Street Same Day Surgery (PSSDS). Prior to joining PSSDS, Bryan served as the COO at Black Hills Surgical Hospital in Rapid City, South Dakota, and as the administrator at Gateway Surgery Center in Concord, North Carolina. He has held leadership positions in the surgery center industry for over 10 years and has been in health care management for the past 16 years.
DAKOTA DUNES | Garrett Olson was recently promoted to vice president of finance for Tyson Foods retail packaged brands group.

Olson began his career with Sara Lee Corp. in 1997, which was renamed The Hillshire Brands Company in 2012. Olson remained with Hillshire Brands until 2014, when Tyson Foods acquired it. Olson has worked in various roles including corporate development, financial planning and analysis, international finance and finance for several brands, including Jimmy Dean, Sara Lee, Vans and Golden Island.

In his new role he will be responsible for supporting Tyson's retail leadership team and providing key financial insights to drive the groups strategic decisions.

Olson attended the University of Iowa, where he earned a bachelors degree in finance in 1996. He also attended Northwestern Universitys Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where he earned a masters degree in business administration in 2002.
Republican South Carolina representative Mike Pitts, pictured above, has sponsored a bill in his state's congress, which will be called the South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law if it gets passed. Before covering matters related to government, a journalist would be required to undergo a background check, similar to the background check required before buying a handgun, to report the news. No one who has written anything controversial, or who has written anything that has garnered complaints about government, petitions, or boycotts would be allowed to cover state events. There would also be a non-refundable fee for the background check to report the news, effecting a charge to tell the truth! Also, every journalist in South Carolina would have to be listed in a registry. Hmm....where has your blogger heard something like this before? This sounds an awful lot like the German Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service in 1933, which was aimed at forcing Jews out of any professional field in Nazi Germany.This bill is such a gross violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution that it will never pass. Still, the question that needs to be answered is this: why is South Carolina so afraid of writers and journalists?
Facebook today officially announced that it plans to open its second European data center in Clonee, Ireland. The town, which sits right outside of Dublin will play host to Facebooks sixth data center overall. Construction will start soon and the new facility will go online sometime in late 2017 or early 2018. Facebooks first European data center opened in Luela, Sweden back Read More
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
LEONARDTOWN, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(Jan. 25, 2016)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office Vice Narcotics Division today released the following incident and arrest reports. The Division is an investigative team comprised of detectives from the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office and Federal Drug Agents (HIDTA Group 34). The Division was established on September 1st, 2007.DRUG DISTRIBUTION: Detectives indicted Danielyn Marshal Winder, 36, of Lexington Park, related to felony drug charges. Winder was also wanted through Calvert County on Possession with Intent to Distribute charges as well as an open warrant for Violation of Probation. Detectives conducted surveillance on a California hotel and witnessed Winder making a drug transaction. As deputies approached Winder, he attempted to flee. He was immediately apprehended and arrested. A search and seizure warrant was obtained for his hotel room which led to the recovery of nearly 23 grams of crack cocaine (street value $2,400); 24 grams of marijuana (street value $250.00); a quantity of Promethazine/Codeine (street Value $200.00); and $1,785.00 in U.S. Currency. Winder is being held in the Calvert County Detention Center and additional charges are pending a review with the State's Attorney.MARIJUANA DISTRIBUTION: Detectives identified Darius Timothy Woodland, Jr., 21, of Leonardtown, as a distributor of marijuana. As a result of the investigation a search and seizure warrant was obtained and executed on his home, located in the 41000 block of Norris Road in Leonardtown. Once inside detectives recovered nearly 3/4 of a pound of marijuana (street value $1,500), a digital scale with marijuana residue, more than $350.00 in cash, a cell phone and three handguns and related ammunition. Woodland was arrested and additional charges are pending a review with the State's Attorney.DRUG BUY: Detectives observed Melvin Jerome Maddox, a/k/a Melly-Mel, 46, of Lexington Park, in a drug transaction with Brandi Marie Beckett, 32, of Lexington Park. Immediately following the transaction, both parties were stopped and detained. Nearly $3,000, packaging material and a cell phone were recovered from Maddox and crack cocaine was recovered from Beckett. Both suspects were arrested and additional charges are pending.
#OscarsSoStraight?

Citing the controversy surrounding the Academy Award's diversity problem, out actor Ian McKellen said the award show also discriminates against gay people, Time magazine reports.



The "Lord of the Rings" star said he empathizes with black actors who are taking issue with the lack of people of color being nominated at this year's Oscars ceremony, adding gay actors are still being treated differently.



"It's not only black people who've been disregarded by the film industry," McKellen, 76, told Sky News Monday. "It used to be women. It's certainly gay people to this day."



The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag reemerged this month after no non-white actors were nominated in the acting categories for a second year in a row, resulting in Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith, along with director Spike Lee, boycotting the ceremony.



"These are all legitimate complaints," McKellen said.



It should be noted the lesbian drama "Carol" was snubbed for a Best Picture nod, as was out director Todd Haynes.



Eddie Redmayne, who stars in "The Danish" girl as transgender woman Lili Elbe, was nominated for Best Actor, however, and Cate Blanchette earned a nod for Best Actress for her performance as a gay woman in "Carol." Rooney Mara, who also stars in "Carol," was nominated Best Supporting Actress. "Carol" and "The Danish Girl" picked up a few Oscar nominations for non-acting categories as well.
Fargo, N.D. (AP)  Attorneys for a Fargo hospital say a lawsuit brought by a transgender employee alleging discrimination in the workplace has no merit and should be dismissed.

Faye Seidler, who was born as a male and identifies as a female, said in a federal lawsuit filed last month that Sanford Medical Center violated her civil rights. She is seeking unspecified damages and an order to stop the hospital from discriminating against employees who have undergone or are undergoing a gender transition.

Managers, Seidler said in court documents, did not treat her fairly and she was wrongly denied access to the womens locker rooms. She resigned in March 2015, about a year after she started work as a technician.

Hospital attorneys said in a response that the company made a good-faith effort to address Seidlers complaints and was working on giving her access to the womens locker room before she quit.

Management also instructed all supervisors to watch for any potentially harassing conduct and no harassing conduct was observed, the response said.

The hospital also said that shortly before Seidler quit, she was informed that she had taken more than 112 hours of unplanned time off and was warned that one more absence would result in her firing. The defense document said Seidlers reasons for her resignation were the attendance policy, a system that did not recognize or reward people for contributions, and the lack of a specific transgender policy at the hospital.

Defense attorneys said the company has a strong non-discrimination policy and a well-defined attendance policy already in place and managers instructed all supervisors to watch for any potentially harassing conduct and no harassing conduct was observed.

Seidlers attorney, Joshua Newville, did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Newville said that a hospital policy barring discrimination based on sexual orientation shows a continued misunderstanding of transgender individuals.

This case isnt about sexual orientation. Its about gender, Newville said. It is my sincere hope that this lawsuit will  at a bare minimum  encourage employers to make a more sincere and concerted effort to more fully understand these issues in order to prevent workplace discrimination.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Des Moines Register on Saturday endorsed Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Democrat Hillary Clinton for their parties' presidential nominations, nine days before Iowa caucus-goers head to the polls in the first-in-the-nation voting state.

"At his best, Rubio offers an uplifting message of a 'new American century.' He shares his compelling story and calls for a referendum on the nation's identity," the paper said in backing Rubio.

And in an apparent swipe at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and GOP front-runner Donald Trump -- with whom the paper has feuded for months -- the Register said voting for Rubio is a choice for "optimism" instead of "anger, pessimism and fear."

The paper had several questions for Rubio, including whether he can make "hard choices" on entitlements, offer a better alternative to Obamacare and clarify his views on climate change. The editorial board also said Rubio has recently "pandered to rising pessimism in his party."

"We hope Marco Rubio and his party take a different path, one that can lead to the opportunity and optimism he so eloquently articulates," the paper wrote.

For Clinton, the paper said in its endorsement of the former secretary of state that she is a "thoughtful, hardworking public servant who has earned the respect of leaders at home and abroad. She stands ready to take on the most demanding job in the world."

The paper added, however, that Clinton is "not a perfect candidate," citing the scandal over her use of a private email server and what it said was a refusal to acknowledge mistakes.

"Her changing stance on gay marriage, immigration and other issues has invited accusations that she is guided less by personal conviction than by political calculations," the paper wrote. "She refutes that, and argues persuasively that a willingness to change one's thinking on specific issues, while remaining true to what she calls 'the same values and principles,' is a virtue, one lacking in most politicians."

Rubio's campaign did not immediately issue a public response to the Register's support. When a voter congratulated him Saturday night at a campaign event in Indianola, Iowa, Rubio responded, "Would rather have your endorsement. Still need you to caucus for me."

Clinton, however, told CNN after a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa, that she was "very pleased" to receive the endorsement.

"Obviously, it means a lot to me," Clinton said.

She later tweeted her appreciation.

"I'll work my heart out for Iowans and American families every day. Honored to have the @DMRegister's support---9 days to the caucus! -H" she said.

Although Clinton's main opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, didn't receive the Register's backing, his campaign came up with a clever way of capitalizing on the moment by purchasing advertising space on the paper's website when it announced its endorsements.

Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, dismissed the importance of the Register endorsement on Saturday at the Scott County Democrats dinner in Davenport, Iowa.

"The person who didn't get the endorsement last time, eight years ago, won," Weaver said, referring to President Barack Obama. "So I am not sure what the significance is."

But, he added, "We would have loved to have the endorsement, obviously."

Paper interviewed nearly every candidate

Lynn Hicks, the Register's opinion editor, explained the endorsements to CNN's Poppy Harlow on Saturday.

"We felt that Senator Rubio has the chance, the opportunity, to chart a new direction for the Republican Party," Hicks said, adding, "We had questions about his experience, like a lot of people do, but we felt he was the best hope for the party, not only because he can attract independents, but his ideals can appeal to the base of the party and unify the party."

As for Clinton, Hicks said, "There's no question that she has the most experience, depth and breadth of knowledge and we really felt that she is the one that is prepared to help America face the many challenges that it faces."

The editorial board of the Register, Iowa's largest newspaper, interviewed every major 2016 Republican and Democratic candidate, some twice, with the exception of Trump and Cruz.

"They declined the board's invitation for an interview, but doing so did not disqualify them from consideration for the endorsement," according to a press release from the Register earlier this week.

The race has tightened considerably with Cruz leading Trump by just three points in a Register poll released last week. Clinton leads Sanders by just two points.

The endorsements are significant as many likely caucus-goers have not yet decided on a candidate. In Register polls released last week, 56% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats said they could still be persuaded to support another candidate as their first choice.

But the paper hasn't chosen caucus winners in recent years. In 2012, the paper endorsed Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and Sen. Rick Santorum won the caucuses by a slim margin. In 2008, the paper endorsed John McCain and Clinton, although Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama won in their respective parties.

CNN's Betsy Klein and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire

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The way Matt May and Jennifer Sierra-Grobelaar finish each others sentences, youd think they were an old married couple.

No, were more like Will and Grace, chuckled May, who is a fixture in the South Florida theater community.

The two longtime friends are still headed to the altaras the co-writers and producers of Diego and Drew Say I Do, a new show making its premiere in the Broward Centers Abdo New River Room this winter, and its definitely their love child.

When we first started craft the show, we spent so much time together, night after night after night, writing, writing, writing until it was done, said Sierra-Grobelaar. As ideas come up, we text each other continually throughout the day. Not only do we spend most of our free time together, (the show) has become a fabric of our being.

The audiences at the Broward Center are the guests at the wedding of Drew and Diego.

While it may be easy to draw comparisons with other popular audience-participation shows like Tony & Tinas Wedding, May and Sierra-Grobelaar promise a different experience for the audience.

In a sense its similar, but the way I view it, shows like that dont have a script. Those shows are largely based on improvisation, explained Sierra-Grobelaar. This is a departurethere is a purpose to the story and were not just focusing on the negative aspects of families. Its really about celebrating love.

Celebrating love with two handsome grooms with two eccentric families, an uptight wedding planner, an ex-boy band crooner and a diva in drag, all the essential components for a fabulous gay wedding.

The audience will participate in the ceremony, dance the night away, sample a Southern/Puerto Rican feast and taste the wedding cake, too.

The opportunity arose at a dinner earlier this year with the Broward Centers Jill Kratish. Over the past two seasons, the center has expanding programming in the flexible Abdo New River Room space and developing a new audience base as a result.

Fort Lauderdales sizable LGBT community has long been supportive of the Broward Center and gay-themed programming does well there. May and Sierra-Grobelaar also credit good timing.

Ive had this idea in my head for a while and three days later, the ideas started flowing and we said lets give it crack, recalled May. We had the majority of the script completed when the Supreme Court came down with the marriage equality decision.

The duo is feeling the pressure as the premiere approaches.

I think its both exciting and scary. Were not just the writers, but also a part of the producing team. Were on the hook to make this successful and pay all the bills, said Sierra-Grobelaar, who coordinates marketing for Neil Goldbergs Cirque Productions in Pompano Beach and was an associate producer of the Broward County centennial production, We.

The Broward Center is a phenomenal facility with great people, May added. Weve bounced lots of ideas by them and its been a collaborative effort across the board, which is comforting that were all in it together.

Theyre also thankful for their director, who Sierra-Grobelaar called, the miracle that is John Manzelli.

She said, There are a lot of good directors in South Florida, but he really gets this project. He was able to get so much out of our talent in the stage reading workshop and as we go into our two week rehearsal phase, we already know were in a great position.

The duo are equally enthusiastic about their cast, which includes Mike Westrich, Jeffrey Bruce, Sharyn Peoples, Merry Jo Cortada, and Benny Antipuna and Eric OKeefe in the title roles.

One thing is certain, there are no pre-nuptial agreements involved because this marriage is guaranteed to be a success.

Diego & Drew Say I Do will be presented in the Abdo New River Room of the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale, March 31  April 10. Tickets are now available at BrowardCenter.org.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP)  The head of an anti-gay coalition says police have arrested 11 people in Senegals capital during a demonstration against the release of 11 people accused of homosexual acts.

Abdoulaye Barro said Jan. 22 about 100 people from a 20-group anti-gay coalition staged the demonstration. He said police dispersed demonstrators and arrested some because the protest wasnt authorized.

Residents in Kaolack, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Dakar, say police arrested 11 people on Dec. 25 after they attended the celebration of a gay marriage. Protesters Friday called on the government to express outrage for their release some days earlier.

Homosexual acts are criminalized in at least 34 African countries, including Senegal, where they are punishable by up to five years prison and fines of up to $2,500.
Its pointless to set out plans if we do not assign financial and human resources at ministries and other institutions, watchdogs say.

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AMID criticism of Prime Minister Robert Ficos statements about refugees that were labelled cynical and possibly even criminal, the cabinet passed two documents combating discrimination and intolerance on January 13. Though the plans could be beneficial, the lack of a clear financing mechanism will make them difficult to implement, human rights watchdog groups say.

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Two plans, the action plan on preventing all forms of discrimination and the action plan to prevent racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of intolerance, were passed based on the nationwide Human Rights Protection Strategy that was adopted a year ago.

The Committee for the Prevention and Elimination of Racism, Xenophobia, Anti-Semitism, and Other Forms of Intolerance drafted the latter plan and it will also act as the control body to oversee the passing of the measures outlined in the document. NGOs who are members of the committee welcome the cabinets approval of the action plan.

The plan aims for effective cooperation between the public offices and the non-profit sector, and defines areas where NGOs can play an active part, said Natalia Tomekova from the Open Society Foundation (OSF), one of the NGOs involved in the committee.

The adopted document, however, is a reduced version of the original draft, due to the lacking personnel capacities of the state and the NGOs and the assigned finances.

It is thus questionable to what extent the next government will perceive this plan as important and binding, Tomekova told The Slovak Spectator.

Plan vs. politics

Even the current government displays almost daily what Tomekova called schizophrenia, meaning that formally the government passes documents to prevent intolerance, but its top representatives at the same time are its main propagators, she said.

Zuzana Stevulova from the non-governmental Human Rights League also believes that the top government officials do not identify themselves with the plan ideologically.

If the government was really serious about fighting intolerance, its main representatives wouldnt publicly speak against religious and other minorities, Stevulova told The Slovak Spectator.

This alludes to the rhetoric adopted by Fico towards the refugee crisis. Most recently his statement that Slovakia needs to prevent the creation of a compact Muslim community offended not only the Islamic Foundation in Slovakia but also attracted the attention of international media and provoked criticism at home.

Some lawyers addressed by The Slovak Spectator believe that some of Ficos statements could be treated as a crime and the General Prosecutors Office is dealing with a criminal complaint an anonymous sender filed against Fico by e-mail.

Stevulova also criticised Interior Minister Robert Kalinak who is a member of the committee that drafted the plan.I dont remember him ever attending at least one of its sessions, she said.

Minister sees results

Kalinak, who tabled the action plan, claims that any criticism of the government for its statements and stances is unrealistic and he insists that he is satisfied with the fight against intolerance.

We have very good results, and the level of tension in this sphere in Slovakia has been reduced, he told Sme.

Among other things, the approved document also criticises the current situation in Slovakia, stating that despite all legislative rules and non-legislative measures, the protection of life, health and dignity are far from being ideal.

Education is what the action plan lacks, according to Sarlota Pufflerova from the Citizen, Democracy, Responsibility (ODZ) watchdog. Even though the plan mentions education, that regards mainly people in the state administration. But the whole education system of the country should be more value-oriented, she said, so that children could understand from early age what human rights are and that we should not violate them.

Pufflerova also misses a clear definition of how the plan will be financed.

Its pointless to set out plans if we do not assign resources, financial as well as human, at ministries and other institutions, she said.

Radka Minarechova contributed to this report
A FORMER senior figure in the non-licensed banking institution Horizont Slovakia, 51 year old Frantisek Matik, on the run from 2002 until early 2015, was transported by plane from Serbia to Slovakia on January 22.

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Matik was arrested by Serbian police in January 2015, based on an international warrant issued by the Specialised Criminal Court in Pezinok, and the extradition procedure was started. He was escaping an 11.5-year prison sentence in Slovakia. Apart from this, the court decided to confiscate all his property.

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The wanted Slovak was transported to a prison in Bratislava on January 22, according to Police Corps spokesman Martin Waldl. After checks into his physical and mental health, the general directorate of the Prison and Justice Corps (ZVJS) will decide in which prison Matik should serve his sentence, ZVJS general directorate office chief Adrian Balaz told the TASR newswire.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, non-banking institutions Horizont Slovakia and BMG Invest extracted 2 billion from hundreds of thousands of Slovaks, with the promise of fabulous return on their deposits. Then finance minister Brigita Schmoegnerova in 2000 warned the public that non-banking institutions were not under any supervision by financial authorities, and thus it was extremely risky to entrust them with any money. Both institutions announced sudden bankruptcy in 2002, with many people losing their lifetime savings.

Matiks fellow at the helm of Horizont, Marian Sebescak, served out part of his seven-year sentence in Slovakia before being released on parole and dying in Prague in 2012 at 52 years of age. The third of the leading trio at Horizont Slovakia, Vladimir Fruni, 63, was sentenced to 11.5 years but was released from prison on parole over health issues in 2011  more than two years before serving out the full sentence. He, too, had spent some years on the lam before being arrested in Croatia aboard a luxury yacht.
THE SECURITY guards of a famed bar in downtown Bratislava were accused of racism.

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Miguel Gonzalez, who has been living in Slovakia for almost nine years, tried to enter the bar Music Bar Priatelia/Alize on the evening of Friday, January 22, but was turned away by the bouncers, with the words that Niggers like me were not welcomed, as he described on his Facebook profile, adding that he is in fact Hispanic. The Strategie project of Hospodarske noviny daily broke this on their website.

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Gonzalez claims that this is the first negative experience of this kind in all the time he has spent in Slovakia, and calls on all people to write their own experience with the bar and share them.

His recounting had many responses and 500 Shares, including a debate with both positive and negative opinions, including some first-hand experience but also some shallow insults. Some people reacted directly on the bars Facebook page, with the worst evaluation coming from both Slovaks and foreigners in connection with racism.

The bar itself has not yet responded.

Updated information:

On January 26, Miguel Gonzalez met with the owner of Music Bar Priatelia, Mr. Jozef Sebest, and his management staff.

"I would like to express my appreciation for the constructive discussion that took place and for the apology for the incident that involved myself and my friend Evin Mackmilan Francis which was voiced by the owner," Gonzalez informed the Slovak Spectator. "It was clear from the discussion that the incident does in no way reflect the opinions or policies of the establishment or its owner and that indeed measures were already taken so that similar incidents and misunderstandings do not happen again."
THE SLOVAK intelligence agency, the Slovak Information Service (SIS) explained for the first time what happened to the recordings made through wiretapping the flat on Vazovova street in Bratislava, featured in the high-profile Gorilla file.

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SIS informed the Constitutional Court that they were destroyed in April 2008, the Sme daily wrote on January 23. The alleged transcripts of the recordings were then published in the file which was leaked anonymously on the internet in November 2011 and which describes the corrupted practices and influence of the Penta investment group on privatisation and public affairs in the years 2005 and 2006, involving many businessmen but also then politicians.

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Penta partner Jaroslav Hascak repeatedly  between 2013 and 2015 - asked the Slovak Constitutional Court to destroy the recordings and ban the use of analyses or reports based on them. Hascak visited the SIS safe flat more times than the two times he had originally admitted, his lawyers wrote to the CC in one of the complaints. He thus argued that by wiretapping the flat, the secret service infringed his right to privacy.

The lawyers required all information from the file to be destroyed, as the Constitutional Court ruled in 2012 that this flats wiretapping was unlawful.

Now Hascak admits, through Pentas spokesman Gabriel Toth, that his statement for media in 2012 was not accurate as to the number of visits, but they insist that he did not meet public officials there in order to influence the course of privatisation.

After their requests, the constitutional judges checked what happened to the recordings and SIS confirmed, for the first time publicly, that it had destroyed them back in April 2, 2008, as the minutes from the destruction of the result of wiretapping imply. The result is the wiretapping itself and its literal transcript. Thus, the constitutional judges on October 6 partially refused the request of Hascak and owner of the safe flat, former policeman Zoltan Varga, for the Gorilla to be destroyed. They ordered SIS, however, to store the documents which appeared based on the file so that they cannot be accessed by anyone, as they cannot be destroyed due to valid laws, Sme wrote. These intelligence documents could be, for example, analytical transcription of the talks, summaries or other intelligence information which SIS elaborated (e.g. for prime minister or president). According to the Gorilla file, at least 14 such documents are leaked on the internet.

The constitutional judges (Rudolf Tkacik, Jana Baricova and Lubomir Dobrik) ruled out using the documents officially, for example for investigation. Expert on criminal law Peter Kovac told Sme that this could complicate the investigation, which is led currently by the Gorilla team led by special prosecutor Dusan Kovacik. If the wiretapping was used in contradiction to the law, the recording or any other result of the illegal wiretapping cannot be used as evidence or accepted as evidence by any state, or other public office or authority, he added.

Disclaimer: Penta financial group has a 45-percent share in Petit Press, the co-owner of The Slovak Spectator.
ABOUT 300 schools around Slovakia remained closed on January 25 due to the all-out strike of teachers.

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The strike, not limited in time (i.e. until the demands are fulfilled) started on that day at 11:00, with most of the protesters gathering in the SNP Square in downtown Bratislava.

The reason of the strike is long-term ignoring of teachers, unions and professional associations demands to secure adequate financing of the education system, Vladimir Crmoman of the Initiative of Slovak Teachers (ISU) told the Sme daily.

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A total of 11,564 registered teachers of 746 schools joined the strike, according to the ISU website. However, many schools do not break or suspend classes and only about 300 schools closed, Crmoman told the SITA newswire. Other schools have limited operations.

Read also:

Read also: Learning a lesson Read more

In the Presov Region, only a few teachers of 23 schools of various types joined. The Initiative of Kosice Teachers planned a public meeting to support striking teachers, for January 28 at 15:00 on Main Street, close to the Lower Gate, Sme wrote. Some teachers supported the strike in written form, without joining it physically.

In Bratislava, hundreds of teachers  from Bratislava, Kosice, Nitra, Malacky, Senica, or Povazska Bystrica  gathered, and around 13:00, they headed from the SNP Square towards the parliamentary building where they plan to read a call to politicians. The police present assess their number at 1,500. Afterwards, the protest in capital is slated to end.

Representatives of opposition parties (Most-Hid, KDH, OLaNO, SDKU or out-of-parliamentary SKOK) support the protest, according to Sme.

Education Minister Juraj Draxler said, however, on the Sunday, January 24 discussion show of the RTVS public TV broadcaster that he would not negotiate with anyone, and the initiative cannot achieve any success. Other top representatives of the ruling Smer party and the executive, Prime Minister Robert Fico and Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini showed negative stance, too. "It would be best for all if classes started normally after almost three weeks of winter vacations, Fico said, as quoted by Sme. The legislative process has been concluded, and we cannot do more for teachers until March 5 [the date of the general election].
What a difference a few years make. Prior to 2011, Kaldis Coffee was the big nameand one of the only namesin Gateway City specialty coffee. Since then, there has been an explosion of cafes and roasters adding their mark to the citys coffee history. Slowly but surely, the landscape has given way to new, exciting Third Wave coffee companies making their impact known. Larger companies still exist such as Thomas Coffee and Ronnoco Coffee, but St. Louis is currently host to a growing amount of great coffee options in small packages across the metro area. Hop along as we tune you in to some caffeine options for your next visit to the 314.

[Editors Note: Evan Jones, a journalist and coffee professional, is currently employed by Blueprint Coffee in St. Louisbecause of this fact they are not able to be included in his guide, but let us assure you that Blueprint is a highly recommended stop when youre in the Lou.]

Sump Coffee

Located deep in South City, Sump Coffee was a specialty pioneer in this town when it opened in late 2011. Owner Scott Carey had begun his coffee campaign while living in New York City as a patent lawyer. Upon returning to his hometown of St. Louis, he found his coffee experiences lacking, and decided to create something of his own. Originally a multi-roaster shop, Sump now roasts its own coffee, which features via pour-overs via Hario V60, and espresso drinks made on a newly updated Slayer machine. Youll notice their tight focus on beverages: aside from rotating seasonal drinks, theres hardly a hint of old-school offerings on the menu besides the Dirty Chai. There isnt any cream or sugar available, and milk options are limited to whole and soy. Two small pastry choicesmacaron and biscottimake up a very compact case. Although the off-the-beaten-path shop has a spartan aesthetic, it maintains a dedicated fan base. Sump also regularly hosts food pop-up events with local caterers Kitchen Kulture and MOFU Tofu.

Comet Coffee

Opened just six months after Sump Coffee, Comet Coffee is quietly tucked into the first floor of an office building that sits across the highway from Forest Park. Unassuming is the word best used to describe the shop. The space is quite compact but has a wealth of coffee and pastry options available. As a multi-roaster shop, Comet regularly has at least eight, if not more, V60 pour-over options to accompany their espresso and milk drinks. Recent roasters have included fellow St. Louisians Blueprint Coffee, Vancouvers 49th Parallel, Brooklyns Parlor Coffee, and Oslo, Norways Tim Wendelboe.

But what makes Comet really special is its pastry program. In their minuscule 150-square-foot kitchen, phenomenal pastries are rolled out for their time in the case. The croissants are among the best, if not the best, in town. But dont take our word for it: St. Louis Post-Dispatch food critic Ian Froeb placed Comet Coffee on his initial Top 100 Restaurants list.

Kaldis Coffee

Kaldis flagship location in the DeMun neighborhood of St. Louis feels like its a world away from the city. The community is made up of students, young and old professionals, and longtime residents, some of whom have been grabbing coffee since the shop opened in 1994. Green landscapes sit right outside the entrance thanks to Concordia Seminarys campus (the theologians even have their own coffee blend in the shop). Whether fresh faces or 20+ year veterans, guests are greeted warmly into an inviting space full of exposed brick, art, and comfortable window seats lined with pillows.

Espresso is served here on a three-group Black Eagle machine with two Nuova Simonelli Mythos grinders and a Mahlkonig K30. Filter options include batch brew such as Kaldis Highlander Grog, a maple-rum-flavored coffee that is a popular choice for Kaldis enthusiasts. For the Third Wavers, there are single-origin hand-brew options prepared via Kalita and Chemex. Kaldis latest acquisition, Firepot Tea, rounds out the beverage lineup. Accompanying the libations are in-house baked pastries and an entirely vegetarian/vegan food menu. On the weekends, the shop rolls out Mexican breakfast favorite chilaquiles, which regularly sell out. Despite the newer coffee cafe options around the metro area, Kaldis on DeMun remains the epicenter.

The Mud House

The Mud House owners Jeremy and Casey Miller used to sell antiques. Although their cafe sits on a section of Cherokee Street bustling with antique shops, the Millers focus on fresh products nowadays. Their multi-roaster coffee program is anchored by local roaster Blueprint Coffee and rotates featured coffees from a variety of top roasters including Counter Culture Coffee, Olympia Coffee, Bows & Arrows, Sightglass Coffee, and Madcap Coffee. In addition to batch brew, pour-overs are handled by Hario V60s and a Nuova Simonelli rocks out espresso and milk drinks.

The Mud House also brings quality food and pastries to their customers. The pastry case has a variety of treats, including a very delicious lemon almond tea cake. Breakfast options, including their well-loved breakfast burrito, are served all day, as well as a very tasty pork confit sandwich for lunch. Vegetarian menu options are also available.

Rise Coffee

Anchoring the Grove neighborhood, Rise Coffee is synonymous with community. A light teal color accents the old brick exterior, while wood-grained decor inside warmly invites folks in to stay awhile. Baristas smile and engage with customers strolling through the door from their caffeine cockpit bar setup. Close to the register is the Coffee for the People board, where customers can pay it forward with a coffee beverage to friends or strangers.

In addition to espresso and milk options, filtered coffee is served via FETCO batch brew, Kalita Wave or Chemex. If you cant find any seating in the immediate cafe area, theres more places to sit upstairs. Both levels have an eclectic mix of furniture and furnishings including a deer head wearing a tie, green sofas, and quirky quotes amended to the walls. Since our original visit, founder Jessie Mueller has taken a reduced role and has sold a majority of the business to veteran barista Aaron Johnson. Dont fret, parentsthe upstairs kid play area and play dates are still in effect.

Evan C. Jones is a Sprudge.com contributor based in St. Louis. Read more Evan C. Jones on Sprudge.
In addition to the human cost of 1.34 million people that were killed or injured because of wars and terrorist attacks in the above countries between 2010 and 2014, the Arab Spring also registered $833.7 billion of losses.

The damage to infrastructure reached $461 billion in addition to the irreparable cost of destroyed historic and architectural sites.

The cumulative losses to sustainable GDP were estimated at $289 billion, based on GDP growth estimates and local currency exchange rates.

Stock markets and investment losses amounted to more than $35 billion, while losses to financial markets amounted to $18.3 billion and there was an estimated $16.7 billion loss in missed FDI (foreign direct investment).

The lack of stability and terrorist attacks caused a sharp decline in the number of tourists by 103.4 million between 2010 and 2014.

The number of those displaced for the same period reached more than 14.389 million people, with the refugee crisis costing somewhere in the region of $48.7 billion.

Whether we are with or against the Arab Spring, we have to look at it in the context of history and civilization to realize that it has led to a sharp deterioration in the region, a dramatic loss in economic and growth opportunities over the past several years and destroyed the infrastructure that the region had invested decades, even centuries to build, Gergawi then said.
The consular department of the Russian Embassy in Washington will carry out the functions of the closed honorary post in Puerto Rico, Russias former Honorary Consul to Puerto Rico Anastasia Kitsul told Sputnik.

"But the work will be more difficult  the island of Puerto Rico is Spanish-speaking. Many issues are resolved on the basis of personal presence, and it takes a while to get an answer to a fax or a phone call from outside. In medical emergencies, time is of essence," she explained.

Kitsul, who had served as Honorary Consul for the past 12 years, explained that the role of an honorary consul is apolitical and is primarily focused on protecting the rights of Russian citizens abroad, in close cooperation with local and federal authorities.

In Puerto Rico, such casework included assisting victims of domestic violence, preventing human trafficking, ensuring emergency medical treatment and legal representation. "During the most challenging case of my term as the Honorary Consul, our volunteer lawyer and myself received threats. Both local police and the San Juan office of Diplomatic Security of the US Department of State stepped in to offer protection, and I am very grateful they did."

"If a Russian woman is a victim of domestic violence, American laws provide a safety net, but a foreigner may not know how to use them unless the honorary consul helps navigate the process. If a Russian national is accused of breaking local law, the honorary consul would help ensure that the person has a lawyer and is treated humanely while detained. If a Russian minor is reported missing, the honorary consul would engage both local and federal authorities," said Kitsul. "Ultimately, this work is helpful for both the Russian citizens abroad and the US government," she added.

As reported earlier, according to US State Department spokesman Mark Toner, the United States decided to strip the consuls of credentials in response to what he called "continued Russian interference with our diplomatic and consular operations in Russia."

The activities of formal Russian diplomatic missions in the United States have not been affected, the US Embassy in Russia said.

Russian Embassy spokesman Yuri Melnik told Sputnik on Friday that Moscow is considering a response to the decision by the United States to close the honorary consulates of the Russian Federation in the United States, while Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the US decision was "inadequate."

Honorary consuls can be both citizens of the sending country, or locals. They perform consular services, usually without pay, in locations where career consular offices have not been established. Honorary consuls enjoy limited diplomatic immunity and are tasked with protecting the rights of the citizens of the sending state as well as strengthening humanitarian, cultural and business ties between the two countries.
The Downing of the Russian SU-24 by Turkey was an act of complete idiocy on the part of Erdogan has set the stage up for a new war. Putin is said to be so mad that he is hell bent on making Turkey pay. The speed at which Russia moved to cut ties with Turkey illustrates how serious Putin is. The S-400 units were deployed in record time into Syria with specific instructions to shoot down any foreign aircraft that violate Syrias airspace. The moment these units were on the ground, all the members of the coalition team suspended flights in Turkey. The S-400 is a lethal piece of hardware, and once it locks on a target, there is very little chance of escape. Up until recently, Turkey violated Syrias airspace on a daily basis. We suspect the Russians will wait for them to make one mistake and then legally take their planes down.

There is no polite way to say it, but Turkey acted in a cowardly manner when they downed the Su-24. A bomber is no match for a supersonic jet fighter, and there were two F-16s waiting to ambush Russias Su-24. Furthermore, the Turkmen acted like true barbarians when they shot and killed the unarmed pilot, breaking all international rules when it comes to war. It is stunning that the US did not issue a stronger rebuke against Turkey or for that matter NATO.

US media is not covering it, but Russia unleashed a furious response and delivered a very heavy punishment to the Turkmen and all the rebels in the region the Su-24 was downed. Russia is going to systematically dismember these rebels. The next step will be to attack all the supply lines coming from Turkey and to arm both the Kurds and the Houthis. The kurds will be armed to give Erdogan a taste of his own medicine, and the Houthis will be armed as payback to the Saudis for supporting the rebels in Syria. The house of Saud has taken a big gamble, and they should seriously tone down their rhetoric against Russia. The West still does not understand the mindset of Russians. When they get pissed off, they will do the opposite of what you expect. Pushing Putin now is simply asking for trouble. He has the full support of his people, and he is now ready to go after those that attack Russian interests. We still believe that there is a strong chance that Russia will attack either Turkey or Saudia Arabia to send a very strong message to the world, that those who cross the red line will be dealt with very severely. However, do not expect Putin to act in the same Stupid Manner as Erdogan. Putin is Ex-KGB, and he has a degree in economics too, this means that he will act only when he needs to, and his actions will be based on Cold logic and not in a hotblooded illogical manner as Erdogan did.
Precisely, it happened due to one turnover: a change in role of externalized conflict. Firstly it must be pointed out how well-known peace talks led to mere internalization of Canaan conflict by the end of last century. Remembering how many Arab countries, from Egypt to Jordan and Syria were battling Israel, it came as a surprise when Sunni Muslim political community found a compromise with Israelis. In the 21st century it was only the Lebanon war of 2006 a major conflict that included more than one UN-recognized state, and it excluded Sunni forces. However at some points internalized conflict got more intense than it was previously but this evaluation is out of my current theme.

On the other hand, after Islamic Revolution in Iran some conditions were made for old inter-Islamic conflict to reemerge. Authentic Shia theocracy had just been reestablished. Then it clearly put itself in a role of counterweight to various Sunni monarchies around there on Arabian peninsula. As most of Arab countries, no matter of their concrete provenance, waged war against Israel at that time, not so many people were aware of potential circumstances coming around.

And if someone was able to look even deeper, she would have found even potential roots for some future conflict. I am talking of Shia minority ruling Syria since early 70s, namely Alawites. It was very apparent that new Iran will eventually find its ally exactly at that place, where an actual contrast undermined by some political agitation would lead to bloodshed between very obvious opposing sides.

Nevertheless, many people point out something I will intentionally call direct motives. Those are abundant, from drought disasters to unbearable authoritarianism. Also, they are valid, but are due to fail when we try to give better picture of whole context of events, and ultimately the emerging Proxy war of the Middle East.

What do I mean by Proxy war of the Middle East? I mean of certain situation incomparable by complexity to any other historic one. We have Middle Eastern countries that are powerful enough to indirectly participate in certain conflict. Thats exactly what has been happening in Syria since the war intensified few years ago. Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia and rich Gulf states has been supporting opposition against Alawite Assad regime that has itself been supported by Iran.

Why Is Sunni Coalition To Blame For Recent Conflict?

After Iraqi occupation the risk of having more radical militants recruited in guerilla got higher. It was only the matter of how the fire would be inflamed. And it happen when Sunni coalition countries, to denote them that way, started supporting the uprising against Assad regime. It gave rise to certain militant groups that would subsequently progress to a level of powerful Islamist forces. We have one of them today, and its called ISIS, as everybody knows.

What casts a long term threat to the Middle East here is involvement of Sunni coalition countries. We all know that al-Qaeda was financed by United States during Soviet rule in Afghanistan. Even though their activities remained internalized inside the Afghan borders for a long time, we witnessed how much al-Qaeda expanded later. What to do then when we have the conflict initially externalized by the activity of such groups and their sponsors?

Under pressure Saudi Arabia banned financial support for ISIS. Its fine, but in many ways too late. Not have they just supported the uprising against certain regime, but also very have they supported dangerous people. In addition, what is even more threatening here is the act of having another externalized conflict, supported by proxies. By giving money to opposition groups in Syria, they caused Syrian leadership to ask its allies for help. This leads to the involvement of all regional countries, which is a very clear example of regional conflict which has externalization as its main property.

Supplemented by the same kind of externalization in Yemen, that all together hints long term conflict without high odds for political solution. After Canaan conflict, for the first time we are inclined to say that unusually long conflict is on the horizon, and it is primarily so due to its externalization nearly from the beginning.

Conclusion will seem something like this: any current peace strategy must include conflict internalization as much as possible.
In such circumstances Europe is left as the only alternative for US companies, but the European market also has its own cons. Import facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG) are only located in Western Europe, while Eastern Europe, which appears to be the biggest consumer, will need to construct new pipelines to the West.

Surprisingly, gas exports from the US may lead to paradoxical outcome and further strengthen Europe's dependence on Russia. Relatively cheap Russian gas has already provoked conflicts in Europe. Based on commercial considerations, Germany is keen to build new pipelines and rely on Russian gas, despite Brussel's calls for finding alternative suppliers.

James Henderson of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies wrote in a new report, published on the institute's official website, that if Gazprom continues slashing prices and adapting, by changing the manner of conducting business in Europe, it can secure for itself leading positions in the region for decades, and that's exactly what Brussel has been trying to avoid.

"A more actively competitive strategy can benefit both Gazprom and the Russian government in the short and long term" Henderson wrote, "if Gazprom adopts a new contract model and also commits to trading on European hubs at spot prices in a more wholehearted fashion."

As a result, Kremlin may benefit from this strategy and maintain Russia's position as a key energy partner for Europe.
Europol  together with member states intelligence services  came under attacks over its lack of coordinated intelligence-sharing following the Charlie Hebdo and November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris. There are now significant moves to create joined-up databases and improve the way law enforcement agencies work together.

Although the new ECTC  in The Hague  was planned well ahead of the Paris attacks, the new HQ will help centralize European counterterrorism policy and implementation. According to Europol, "Europe is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over 10 years.

"The Paris attacks on 13 November 2015 indicate a shift towards a clear international dimension of Islamic State to carry out special forces style attacks in the international environment. This and the growing number of foreign fighters are posing new challenges for EU Member States."
On Sunday, a director of a Murmansk transportation company told RIA Novosti that the Norwegian authorities were planning to deport some 280 refugees to Russia.

Earlier on Monday, Norways Foreign Minister Borge Brende said the two countries were maintaining a constructive dialogue to address the issue of refugees who entered the country through Storskog on the border with Russia.

Earlier in January, 13 refugees were deported from Norway to Russia under an agreement to return them through the Storskog checkpoint by bus. A group of 30 refugees were due to arrive in Russia on Thursday, but the deportation was postponed for various reasons given by Norwegian officials.

The multiple deportations came about after Russia agreed that Norway could return any of the migrants in question who hold a valid Russian visa. Last year Norway deported some 400 asylum seekers who had documentation or a multi-entry visa allowing them to stay in Russia as part of a 2008 intergovernmental agreement.

Norways immigration affairs office claims around 700 asylum seekers holding such documents are currently in the Nordic country.

The northernmost migrant route has been used by an estimated 5,500 people fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa as Europe continues to grapple with its largest refugee crisis in decades.
In terms of foreign policy, he said that he wants Serbia to have an alliance with Russia, apparently similar to the one from 1999, when Serbia's parliament voted to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus on the first day of NATO bombing.

"We would like to rely on Russia, and have a status like Belarus, that is, to be an independent state, firmly tied to Russia politically, economically and militarily," Seselj told Sputnik.

Asked on what he would do if the trial against him reaches a guilty verdict during his campaign, Seselj said that he expects it to bolster his campaign.

"We already started the campaign, so this verdict could be a new wind in its sails," Seselj told Sputnik.

He added that Vucic has vowed not to extradite him, although he is prepared for any outcome.

"Will he change his mind? We will see. I can say one thing. I will not run or hide anywhere. If they come for me, they will have to carry me to the airport, so a spectacle is guaranteed," Seselj added.

Seselj's past, as well as his ties with Vucic in the "Greater Serbia" project pursued during the Yugoslav breakup wars could bolster his popularity among voters, who supported Vucic in 2012. In the 2008 split, current Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic formed a splinter of the party, which focused on a path toward EU integration.
So far, the Kremlin's official response has been muted, apart from its official criticism of Chisinau for refusing several Russian reporters from entering the country late last week.

Regarding the protests themselves, last week, presidential press secretary Dmitri Peskov told reporters that Moscow's official position has been to call on all parties to refrain from violence.

"The Kremlin, of course, is closely following all developments in Moldova. And of course, we call on all parties to respect the rule of law, to remain calm, and hope that all forces supporting either side will refrain from any violent actions," Peskov said.

The niceties of diplomatic language aside, it's obvious that Moscow is following developments in Moldova closely, not least because the protests could result in a shift in the country's geopolitical orientation.

Commenting on the situation in an analysis for Russian business magazine Expert, journalist and political analyst Gevorg Mirzayan laid out what's at stake.

So far, the journalist writes, "the ruling coalition has refused protesters' demands [for early elections]. And not just because, judging by the polls, it will lose power. According to the same polls, if early elections were to take place, Moldova may change its foreign policy orientation. Given the population's discontent over the work of the right-wing Europe- and Romania-oriented government, Moldovans might vote for representatives of the left, which are considered pro-Russian, and who seek to develop political and economic ties with Moscow."
BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  The next round of negotiations between Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Isa Mustafa is expected to be held on Wednesday, the European Union External Action service said in a statement on Monday.

"The next meeting of the high level dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina with Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Isa Mustafa, facilitated by Federica Mogherini, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, will take place in Brussels on Wednesday, 27 January," the statement said.

The statement added that the sides were expected to discuss the implementation of the existing agreements between Belgrade and Pristina.
The US, the expert notes, is acting according to their own interest. "Under the pretext of fighting Daesh in Iraq  such assistance has the approval of Baghdad, the US will try to defeat Daesh on Iraqi territory, and then move operations onto Syrian territory. For this, they will need to a legal basis. For example, [they might say they are in] 'hot pursuit of gangs of international terrorists.'"

For its part, Alexandrov suggests, "Russia, obviously, is not going to bomb the Americans. And they will gradually advance, occupying parts of Syria not controlled by Assad's forces."

"For now, all parties in the Syrian conflict pay lip service to the idea of the country's territorial integrity. But if one looks at the situation objectively, Syria has been split into three communities: Shiite-Alawite, Sunni and Kurdish. And 'gluing' these communities back together into one country will be possible only by force."

"This," the analyst noted, "is how Bosnia and Herzegovina were 'glued' back together in their own time. But Bosnia and Herzegovina are in Europe; moreover, they were surrounded on all sides by NATO forces. Together, this helped to impose a certain reconciliatory attitude on the warring parties. In Syria, obviously, such a scenario will be impossible  if only because Daesh is a completely uncontrollable structure which will not defer to anyone."

As far as Russia is concerned, the expert suggested that for its part, Moscow "has no reason to fight [a ground war] in the desert. Our strategic objectives will be achieved if we control the nominal Shiite-Alawite-Christian 'axis' stretching from Damascus to Aleppo. This region is already factually under the Syrian government's control. And if it is kept, we will keep all the benefits of our participation in the Syrian war."

"In this case, Russian military bases will be deployed in Syria, posing a threat to NATO's southern flank  and particularly to Turkey, which has always been hostile to Russia. More importantly, we will have fulfilled our historic mission  of defending the Syrian Christians and Alawites against genocide."


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Syria's opposition wants to launch the intra-Syrian talks as quickly as possible, one of the leaders of the Syrian Popular Front for Change and Liberation said Monday.

"I cannot say, it is up to [UN's Syria envoy Staffan] de Mistura, but we want to begin it as soon as possible, in the coming days," Qadri Jamil told reporters at a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency when asked about the beginning of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva.

Earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a phone talk Monday, agreeing that de Mistura should hastily announce the date of intra-Syrian peace negotiations in Geneva.


WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The US-led coalition carried out 16 airstrikes against Daesh terrorists in Iraq and Syria destroying the group's infrastructure, the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said in a press release on Wednesday.

"In Syria, coalition military forces conducted three strikes using fighter, attack, and remotely piloted aircraft," the release said. "Separately in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 16 strikes coordinated with and in support of the Government of Iraq using rocket artillery and attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL targets."

Sunday's airstrikes in Syria were carried out near Raqqah, Abu Kamal, and al-Hawl, and destroyed three Daesh cranes, two buildings, a vehicle, as well as struck an Daesh-used earthen bridge, according to the Joint Task Force.
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"We are obliged not to disclose the details of what was discussed," Aydintasbas noted. "Therefore, I will describe my impressions in the following way: recently, the questions of freedom of speech, the violation of civil rights and pressures on the media have come to the fore in Turkish-American relations. The position of the Turkish leadership in relation to democratic freedoms serves to weaken Turkey, and [therefore] is alarming to America."

"Also coming to the fore is the problem connected to the fact that Turkey, which has compromised itself on the freedom of expression, the freedom of journalism, and democratic norms to such a large degree, is rapidly losing its position as a reliable ally in the eyes of the United States," the journalist said.

Ultimately, Aydintasbas noted, "American rhetoric with regard to Turkey in recent years has begun to resemble the paradigm of the 1990s  specifically, 'the need to bring about democracy in Turkey', 'the undermining of Turkey's democratic institutions', and the idea that 'we [the US] need Turkey as an ally, and therefore cannot allow it to cause irreparable harm to itself'. I personally have noticed a return to this sort of 'paternalist' approach by the US toward Turkey," the journalist concluded.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The Islamic State, also known as Daesh, will likely seek the opportunity to expand into Saudi Arabia this year after losing ground in Iraq, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) President Richard Haass said at a CFR conference on Monday.

"It seems to me a question of when and not if they [Daesh] look at Saudi Arabia as a place to demonstrate that they still have the capacity for momentum," Haass stated, describing the challenge to Saudi Arabia as "one of the features of 2016."

In recent months, Daesh has faced losses in northern Iraq. The Iraqi Security Forces and their international partners are also taking steps to recapture the city of Mosul, which serves as Daesh capital in Iraq.
LONDON, January 25 (Sputnik)  Russian cooperation with Western countries will not only enhance the efficiency of the fight against the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic) jihadist group, but also contribute to solving other problems in the Middle East, Daniel Kawczynski, a member of the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said.

"We collaborated to destroy fascism. ISIS is today's fascism. Because they believe in killings, torture, they put people in cages, lower them into the sea, they drown them, burn them. This is a clear opportunity for Russia and Europe to collaborate together to take on cooperation, military and logistical, to collaborate together to destroy and eliminate Daesh," the UK parliamentarian told RIA Novosti.

"People in the West think  oh well, we can sort it out ourselves, we do not need the Russians. In reality, we desperately do need the Russians, and the Russians need to be part of the solution, whether it is Syria, whether it is the conflict in Iraq, whether it is the conflict in Libya," he stressed.
Dr Simon Usherwood from the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey in the UK outlines perhaps a contrarian theory in the present situation; that the EU will not break up.

One of the core principles of the EU is that of freedom of movement of people and goods throughout EU countries. The migrant situation seems to be challenging that. In fact, as Dr Usherwood points out, the real threat is not that great.

Yes border fences are being erected between some countries, but not everywhere. Yes there are problems of distribution of migrants between countries, but we are not seeing the breakdown of the basic institutions within the community. EU citizens are still free to move around albeit with a few inconveniences which were not there previously in terms of selective border checks. Dr Usherwood hints that the fences perhaps have more to do with creating the impression that member states are taking the migration problem seriously than actually doing something serious to change existing policy.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)It my be possible to have the sanctions imposed by Western states on Russia lifted as early as this year, Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee, said Monday.

"This year, both the European countries and the United States have shown real progress in [their] approaches to the issue of lifting the sanctions against Russia. Now there is a shared understanding that they are causing damage to everyone, without exception," Dzhabarov told RIA Novosti.

He added that Western leaders' tough anti-Russian rhetoric "is gradually fading away."


MOSCOW/UFA (Sputnik)On January 25-26, the Russian city of Ufa is hosting a meeting of the labor ministers of the BRICS countries. Russian Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin held a meeting with ILO Director-General Guy Ryder where they discussed the continuation of the bilateral cooperation program.

"The program may be signed at the 105th session of the International Labour Conference, which is due to take place in June [2016] in Geneva," the ministry said in a statement.

According to Topilin, as quoted in the statement, Russia and the ILO are ready to start developing a draft of the program to cover the next period soon.


SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik)Earlier in the day, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland said he would send a mission to Crimea to assess how human rights were being observed there. The mission is due to be fully independent and will not address issues related to the territorial status of Crimea.

"We are ready to provide all necessary assistance to [ensure] the mission will receive a complete picture of life today for Crimeans. The success of this mission will primarily depend on how objective its representatives will be when analyzing ongoing processes in Crimea," Konstantin Bakharev told RIA Novosti.

The deputy chairman said that no European politicians or parliamentarians had reported seeing any mass violations of citizens' rights during their visits to Crimea.
SIMFEROPOL (Sputnik)  The Council of Europes (CoE) human rights mission headed by Swiss diplomat Gerard Stoudman has arrived in Crimea, the Russian presidents permanent representative to the Crimean Republic said Monday.

"The Council of Europe delegation arrived in Crimea. A brief business conversation was held after a short dinner," Georgy Muradov told RIA Novosti.

CoE Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland, who dispatched the mission earlier in the day, said it was not planning to address issues related to the territorial status of Crimea.
Obama called Clinton "wicked smart" during the interview, adding that the former state secretary knows every US policy "inside and out." However, her main rival Sanders has an understandable appeal in his fight against inequality, he added.

The US president noted that the current gap between the approaches of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates is the widest he has ever seen.

"To me, the relevant contrast is not between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but relevant contrast is between Bernie and Hillary and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the vision that they're portraying for the country and where they want to take us and how they think about everything from tax policy to immigration to foreign policy," Obama said.

The president expressed hope that Republican voters will eventually "settle down" after venting and expressing frustration and anger "that folks like [presidential hopeful Donald] Trump and, to some degree, [Senator Ted] Cruz are exploiting."

Obama has previously stated that a Democrat would win the presidential election scheduled for November 8.

On Friday, the New York-based rating agency Moody's predicted that the Democratic nominee will receive 326 votes in the White House, compared to 212 votes that will be given to the Republican nominee.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The climate plan proposed by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton would burn up the planet, Democratic presidential candidate Martin OMalley told a US media outlet on Monday.

"I don't believe that her [Clintons] plan is very serious," O'Malley said in an interview with ClimateWire. "I believe that it's an incrementalist approach. And an incrementalist approach is not going to get us to where we need to go, nor is it going to claim this tremendous business opportunity for the United States."

Clinton has proposed increasing the amount of installed solar capacity to 140 gigawats and has advocated that individuals add a significantly greater number of solar panels by 2020. Among other initiatives, she has also come out against drilling for oil in the Atlantic.
With the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran already in place, Tehran and Beijing have started to revive bilateral trade and economic ties, the Chinese newspaper Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) reported.

The newspaper quoted Hua Liming, former Chinese Ambassador to Iran, the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, as saying that Sino-Iranian economic and trade ties, which have suffered severe setbacks over the past 30-plus years, are set to enter a new phase in the coming years.

"As the sanctions have been lifted, Iran's oil exports are back on track," Hua said, adding that the Iranian economy is most likely to benefit not only from oil exports to China, but also from Chinese investment and technology.
After a powerful snowstorm dropped near 20 inches on the racetrack, racing resumes on Monday, Jan. 25 with a powerful 15-race program highlighted by Bushwacker, a three-time Open winner at The Meadowlands, returning to the $30,000 Preferred while Bad Boy Matt seeks a second-straight $27,500 Delaware Special, the handicap double-feature at Dover Downs.

After three consecutive Saturday night feature wins at The Meadowlands, Henderson Farms Bushwacker and Tim Tetrick leave from the outside in a five-horse test in the $30,000 Preferred, a race he won twice at the end of 2015. Speed Again with Yannick Gingras in the bike, brings a two-race win streak. Howard Taylors Major Uptrend, and Corey Callahan, led until deep in the stretch last time before yielding to Speed Again, to finish second.

Another winner last Monday, Adventure Bound brings a record of three wins in his last five starts, including another race in which he finished first but was found guilty of racing inside pylons in the stretch. He will be driven by Allan Davis. Another hard-hitting pacer, Rich Polluccis Dapper Dude, handled by Vic Kirby, has an enviable record of two wins, two seconds and two thirds in his last six outings and completes the select field.

In the $27,500 co-feature, last week, Reg Hazzard and Legacy Racings Bad Boy Matt (A. Davis) roared down the lane for a 1:51.1 victory on a cold night to edge Rusty Carter and trainer Doug Lewis Captive Audience (Callahan) at the wire. Meanwhile, Janet Hudsons Just A Jolt (Tetrick), the race favourite, had to settle for fourth.

The rest of the formidable list of seven Delaware Special starters includes Max Walton and Greg Papaleos Mustang Art (Brett Miller), who won this event three weeks ago, Dont Ya Know (Ross Wolfenden), racing for Joan Dalphon and Eleanor Laws, Foulk Stables recent acquisition Sparky Mark (Gingras) and Frank Chicks ageless Jebswestermshake (George Dennis) makes his seasonal debut from post one.

Post time is 4:30 p.m.

(With files from Dover Downs)
Another barn proved fatal this past weekend. Two equine perished in the blaze, which marks the third incident this month in which horses have lost their lives.

The Dayton Daily News has reported that several horses were saved, but two perished Saturday morning (January 23) when fire ripped through a barn in Spring Valley Township in Ohio.

Spring Valley Township Fire Chief Marvin Moeller was cited as saying that the cause of the blaze has yet to be determined, and that an investigation into the cause of the fire has been requested.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the connections of the horses that lost their lives in the barn fire.

A January 4 barn fire at Classy Lane Training Centre in Puslinch, Ont. claimed the lives of 43 horses, 39 of which were Standardbreds.

On January 14, a barn fire just outside Mount Forest, Ont. claimed the lives of at least 12 Arabian horses.

Last week, the equine team at Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) released its information package to help industry participants reduce the risk of barn fires. Fore complete information, click here.

(With files from the Dayton Daily News)
Officials in Mohawk Racetracks race office would like to advise horsepeople of a change to the Woodbine Racetrack training schedule this week.

The Standardbred track at Woodbine will not be available for training on Tuesday (January 26). Instead, the track will be open for training on Wednesday (January 27) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Woodbine training day will return to its regular spot on Tuesdays next week.

(WEG)
Er is iets heel griezeligs aan de gang in Nederland. Dat wij geleidelijk aan in een totalitaire 'democratie' wegzinken wordt steeds ...
Press release

Dutch Court of Appeal does not clear Dahabshiil of Terror and Criminal Allegations
The purpose of this blog is for me to publish not-quite-daily updates on my continuing research on the English Reformation and its aftermath, especially for Catholics until Emancipation in 1829; I'll particularly highlight the stories of the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, especially those beatified and canonized by the Holy See. I will also highlight promotional events for Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.If you like my blog, you might like my book, available from these retailers , on Kindle , and Nook ! [If you want a signed copy, please contact me via email: englishreform(at)cox(dot)net].Comment moderation is turned on; please be patient with me logging in to approve comments.
". . . Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober." -- Gaudy Night
Pranjal Kshirsagar

Oracle recently launched in India its all new family of SPARC systems built on the 32-core, 256 thread SPARC M7 microprocessor. The new SPARC M7 processor-based systems, including the Oracle SuperCluster M7 engineered system and SPARC T7 and M7 servers, are designed to integrate with existing infrastructure and include fully integrated virtualization and management for cloud. All existing commercial and custom applications will run on SPARC M7 systems unchanged and with significant improvements in security, efficiency, and performance, claims Oracle. In addition, SPARC M7 is an open platform that developers can utilize to create new software that takes advantage of 'Security in Silicon' and 'SQL in Silicon' capabilities.

Elaborating on the key enhancements in systems design, Amit Malhotra, Head- Systems LoB, India at Oracle says that Silicon Secured Memory adds real-time checking of access to data in memory to help protect against malicious intrusion and flawed program code in production for better security and reliability. Silicon Secured Memory protection is utilised by Oracle Database 12c by default. Oracle is also making application programming interfaces available for advanced customisation.

"Software in Silicon functionality ensures that an application is able to access only its own memory region, which lets software programmers identify issues related to memory allocation. Designed to help prevent security bugs such as Heartbleed from putting systems at risk, it enables hardware monitoring of memory requests by software processes in real time. And it stops unauthorized access to memory whether that access is due to a programming error or a malicious attempt to exploit buffer overruns. It also helps accelerate code development and helps ensure software quality, reliability, and security," says Malhotra. With Hardware-Assisted Encryption as a part of the Security in Silicon concept, it accelerates applications as encryption is built into all 32 cores.

SQL in Silicon adds co-processors to all 32 cores of the SPARC M7 that offload and accelerate important data functions, thus improving efficiency and performance of database applications.Critical functions accelerated by these new co-processors include memory de-compression, memory scan, range scan, filtering, and join assist. Offloading these functions to co-processors greatly increases the efficiency of each CPU core, lowers memory utilization, and enables better database query performance, explains Malhotra. Oracle Database 12c In-Memory option fully supports this new capability in the current release. In addition, Malhotra informs that this new functionality is slated to be available to advanced developers to build the next generation of big data analytics platforms.

The new SPARC M7 processor is the design center of the new line of SPARC M7 systems that scale from 32 to 512 cores, 256 to 4,096 threads and up to 8 TB of memory. Oracle says that this new system has set significant benchmarks across various categories of workload. Citing an example, Oracle shares that Infosys' Finacle Core Banking Solution running on an Oracle SuperCluster M7 set a record for the number of banking transactions processed. The tests were conducted across a mix of delivery channel transactions that could originate from branches, ATMs, online and mobile channels. Finacle Core Banking version 11.1.2 was tested on Oracle SuperCluster M7, Oracles SPARC T7/M7 servers running Oracle Solaris 11.3 with Oracle Database 12c along with Oracle WebLogic 12c to determine its performance and scalability parameters. PCI DSS security compliance on Oracle Solaris 11.3 was carried out. Infosys says that the solution supported more than 2 billion bank accounts with near linear scalability.

With the launch, Indian companies have shown interest in adopting the new system, says Malhotra, especially those in banking and telecom.
Naina Khedekar

The auto industry is on the brink of a revolution. This isn't an overnight revelation, and in fact, an Accenture report back in 2013, had revealed how the next-gen in-car technologies could help shape the future demand for sales and bring a sustained revenue stream to the automotive industry. It was been touted that drivers, even in emerging economies, are likely to choose a car based on in-vehicle technology over its performance.

Looks like, Google and Apple have been quite attentive and geared up to leverage on the auto tech segment. From driverless cars to connected cars, everything seems like a part of this plan. After all, technology needs to evolve! The longevity of the smartphone era depends upon what goes on around it, which will ensure it doesnt meet the same fate as the tablet. The reports about stagnancy in market and prediction about Apple's first ever dip in iPhone sales has made them sit back straight and take notice of the foreseeable future.

Now, we are aware of the whole transformation that Tesla Motors and Elon Musk plan to bring in the auto space. You may argue that Electric cars form an almost negligible part of the auto market, but there is no denying that slowly yet steadily the perception is changing. In fact, there is a herd following in the tech industry, especially when the innovation is triggered by Apple. Now, several reports have been pointing at Apple being in talks to build an electric car. Need we say more?

On the other hand, Google has been testing its autonomous car since 2009. The driverless or self-driving car has been tested for millions of miles, so far. Technologies like IoT and Artificial Intelligence, penetration of Internet, rise and popularity of smartphones, cloud have all together contributed at believing tech and auto are in invincible part of each other. In the past, both Google and Apple, had put their best foot forward to get to drivers dashboards. We already have seen Android Auto and Apple Car Play, with interfaces echoing their respective OSes. From maps and navigation to audio streaming and messages, they bring it all.

Probably, thats not enough! The idea could have always been starting with some in-built tech controls and then eventually building their own cars. On the other hand, auto makers are also looking to leverage on the mobile growth and bring some additional, lucrative features to attract audiences. Smart car investments have begun galore, be it Samsung, Baidu or Nokia. And, both Google and Apple want to ensure they get the biggest bite of the pie.

In January 2014, Google along with partners Audi, GM, Honda, Hyundai and Nvidia, formed the Open Automotive Alliance, a coalition aimed at bringing the Android platform to the car. Google has formed a separate division for smart car under the Alphabet umbrella, and also plans to add more partners. Apple released Car Play at the Geneva International Motor Show the same year. While both have been active in the auto space since then, there is no denying that at the end the decision, to a great extent, relies on automotive manufacturers if they want to side with Google or Apple, or simply play their own terms. This clearly means the next battle is winged in the car as Google and Apple try to get to the driver's seat.
Rouhani kicks off first post-sanctions tour in Italy

AFP, Milan :

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrives Monday in Italy, beginning his first European tour since a nuclear deal saw sanctions lifted against the Islamic Republic.

The visit, whose chief aim is to boost economic ties and which will see Rouhani visit France later this week, had been planned for last November but was cancelled after the deadly jihadist attacks in Paris.

The three-day trip comes a week after Tehran's deal with world powers came into force, allowing the United States and the European Union to lift economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear activities.

Tehran said Sunday it will buy 114 Airbus planes to revitalise flag carrier Iran Air's ageing fleet-the first major commercial deal since sanctions were lifted-and the deal is expected to be signed during the Paris leg of the visit.

The Iranian leader has hailed the agreement as a "new chapter" for Iran as its economy returns to global markets.

After a working lunch with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella, Rouhani will meet Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

He is also to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican, in the first official visit by an Iranian president there since Mohammad Khatami in 1999.
PM releases commemorative postage stamp



Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday released a commemorative postage stamp of Taka 10 denomination marking the International Customs Day.

She inaugurated the stamp after the regular weekly Cabinet meeting held at the Cabinet Division Conference room.

The Prime Minister also released a first day cover of Taka 10 and a data card of Taka 5. A special canceller was used on the occasion.

Briefing reporters after the meeting Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said Bangladesh Post Office issued the commemorative stamp, first day cover and data card.

The postage stamp, first day cover and data card would be sold from the Philatelic Bureau of Dhaka GPO from today while the postage stamps would be available later at all post offices including other GPOs and head Post Offices in the country.
25 killed in suicide bomb attack in Cameroon

Reuters, Douala, Cameroon :Four suicide bombers killed about 25 people in a village in Cameroon's Far North region on Monday, a local official said, the most deadly in a string of recent attacks in an area beset by violence connected to Islamist militant group Boko Haram. Two bombers struck the Bodo central market while others hit the town's main entrance and exit points, the official said. "There was a quadruple suicide bombing in the village of Bodo this morning. There are around 25 deaths and several wounded," he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.Cameroonian troops form part of an 8,700-strong regional force created to defeat Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign to carve out a separate state in northeastern Nigeria.Boko Haram has stepped up attacks outside Nigeria over the past year, including in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, threatening regional security. Monday's bombing was not the first time the town of Bodo has been targeted. At the end of December, two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at the town's entrance.Officials said at the time that the bombers were trying to access the market but were stopped by local residents. No others were injured in that bombing.On Jan. 13, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one other in an attack on a mosque in Kouyape in northern Cameroon. Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria have all contributed troops to a regional offensive devoted to driving back Boko Haram, and the United States has contributed military supplies and troops for assistance.
Outbreak likely to spread across Americas

BBC Online :The Zika virus is likely to spread across nearly all of the Americas, the World Health Organization has warned.The infection, which causes symptoms including mild fever, conjunctivitis and headache, has already been found in 21 countries in the Caribbean, North and South America.It has been linked to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains and some countries have advised women not to get pregnant.No treatment or vaccine is available. The virus is native to Africa and was first found to be spreading in the Americas in Brazil in May 2015.The lack of any natural immunity in the Americas is thought to be helping the infection to spread rapidly.Zika is transmitted by the bite of Aedes mosquitoes, which are found in all countries in the region except Canada and Chile. In a statement, The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the WHO, said: "PAHO anticipates that Zika virus will continue to spread and will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found."It also confirmed the virus had been detected in semen and there was "one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission" but further evidence was still needed.Around 80% of infections do not result in symptoms. But the biggest concern is the potential impact on babies developing in the womb. There have been around 3,500 reported cases of microcephaly - babies born with tiny brains - in Brazil alone since October. PAHO warned pregnant women to be "especially careful" and to see their doctor before and after visiting areas affected by the virus.Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica last week recommended women delay pregnancies until more was known about the virus.Although officially PAHO says "any decision to defer pregnancy is an individual one between a woman, her partner and her healthcare provider".Maria Conceicao Queiroz said there was a sense of fear where she lives near the Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro: "Every one is at risk, we're all scared of getting Zika."We're surrounded with dirty water, polluted water, but what can we do but put repellent on, to try to keep the mosquitoes away." Prof Laura Rodrigues, a fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said some data suggested that up to one-in-fifty babies had birth defects in one of the worst hit areas - Pernambuco state in Brazil.She said: "Until November we knew nothing, this has caught us by surprise and we're trying to learn as fast as we can. "Wherever there is dengue, there is mosquito, then it will spread and not just in Americas I think there is a very real chance it will spread in Asia."
Govt jute mills must not be losing money



A VERNACULAR daily report on Saturday said that five jute mills  Daulatpur Jute Mills Limited, Jatiya Jute Mills, Khalishpur Jute Mills, Karnaphuli Jute Mills and Forat-Karnaphuli Carpet Factory in Chittagong  which were reopened by the government in the recent years incurred losses worth over Tk 80 crore in total in three years because of flaws in operation, corruption and high overhead costs. That is in cost-benefit analysis those reopened jute mills have again failed to sustain themselves. The report further added that instead of being self-sustained ones, these mills are again pressing the Ministry of Jute to refinance them so that they can stay in operation.

Jute goods are in high demand in the international market because of harmful effects of synthetic products. But here in Bangladesh the jute industry, particularly in the public sector, is again facing difficulties due to low quality raw jute produced from inferior quality Indian seeds. As a result, demand for Bangladeshi jute products is declining in the international market. Moreover, some major Muslim countries have reduced import of jute bags, jute thread and raw jute from Bangladesh because of political unrest in those countries. The situation in the domestic market is in decay also. The government has passed a law making compulsory use of jute packaging made with 75 percent jute material in manufactured goods both in the private and public sectors. But during the last two years the use of jute bags has decreased because the law is not properly enforced which has impacted jute cultivation as well as the industry itself.

Besides, export of jute goods to India has declined in recent years as the neighbouring country has imposed new tariff and non-tariff barriers. Imposition of such tariff and non-tariff barriers will only leave a negative impact on export of jute products from Bangladesh to India.

Government run jute mills must not waste public money. If these mills cannot be run efficiently by competent and honest persons, then sell it or close it. Business is for making profit. Government should sack those in management who cannot make the jute mills profitable. Indian jute mills are doing well.

It is rather the utmost duty of the government to execute the law concerning jute-packaging use, settle non-tariff barriers with India, and encourage private enterprises to turn around the once major income earner for the country  the jute industry of Bangladesh.
68pc wants CG before next polls: IRI

NTV Online :

As many as 68 per cent people of Bangladesh think a non-party, caretaker government should be brought back before the next parliamentary elections, according to a fresh report published by US based non-profit organisation International Republican Institute (IRI).

In a survey conducted among 2,550 respondents aged 18 and older, and representative of voting-age adults nationally, the report says as of November last year, 68 per cent people are for a non-party, caretaker government should be brought back before the next parliamentary elections. The percentage was 77 in January 2014.

'The study sample was distributed into 255 primary sampling units (PSUs) from all 64 districts of all seven divisions in Bangladesh. PSUs were defined as mouza in rural areas and as mahalla in urban areas', said the report.

The report says as of November last year 51 per cent people think the current parliament should complete its term. Thirty six per cent people like to see the next national parliamentary elections as soon as possible.

In September 2014, 45 per cent people wanted the parliament to complete its term, and 40 per cent wanted a general election as soon as possible.

The report also added as of November 2015, 59 per cent people believe the Bangladesh Election Commission is completely fair and independent. In January 2014 it was 48 per cent.
Sedition case bid to keep Khaleda out of politics: BNP



BNP Acting Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has alleged that the government has filed a treason case against party Chairperson Khaleda Zia out of "vengeance" in a bid to "remove" her from politics in Bangladesh.

Hours after a court on Monday summoned Khaleda in the case, Fakhrul made the allegation at a conference of the Jatiyatabadi Krishak Dal. "This is a case of political vengeance. They are scared of Khaleda Zia's presence in Bangladesh politics and that's why they want to remove her," the BNP's acting secretary general said.

Fakhrul served the warning that the people of Bangladesh would never accept such an attempt to push Khaleda Zia out of politics.

Mamtaj Uddin Mehedi, a Central Working Committee member of the Awami League and former secretary of the Supreme Court Bar Association, after obtaining permission from the home ministry, filed the case against the BNP chief on Monday over her remarks on the number of martyrs in the War of Liberation.

Taking cognisance of the case, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court asked Khaleda Zia to appear before it on March 3 to explain her position.

At a discussion on Dec 21 last year, Khaleda had expressed her doubts over the actual number of martyrs in the Liberation War, saying that varied figures had been mentioned on different occasions.

Explaining her comment, Mirza Fakhrul said, "What did she say at that programme? There is no sign of treason in her remark. Rather, she had said there should be an accurate figure (about the number of martyrs) so that we could pay respect to the real martyrs. I had explained this to the nation through a statement."
Gas burners turn dry

CNG fuelling stations also hit : Angry protests in N'ganj

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :The ongoing gas crisis in Dhaka city and its adjacent area has worsened further with dip in temperature creating immense sufferings to both household and commercial consumers.Almost similar gas crisis has been reported in various areas of Dhaka city including Mohammadpur, Dhanmondi, Tejgaon, Jatrabari Shewrapara, Kafrul, East Rajabazar, Mirpur, Pallabi, Kazipara, Taltola, Shyamoli, Khilgaon, Malibag and Mughda and its adjacent Tongi and Narayanganj on Monday.Earlier in the morning, residents of Narayangang city exposed anger over the continuous gas crisis by staging protest march against the officials of state-owned gas distribution companies. The residents said gas shortage has created various problems in their household living, but the authorities concerned are yet to show their concern over this matter.Admitting the matter, a senior Titas Gas official told The New Nation on Monday that a large part of capital Dhaka city and its nearby areas are now in the grip of a severe gas crisis as a result of supply shortage created by extreme winter and technical glitch in transmission lines. He said, not only household consumers, commercial and industrial users are also not getting sufficient gas to run their businesses and productions. "Gas production-supply mismatch and illegal gas connections are mainly responsible for the ongoing gas crisis," Md Nowshad Islam, Managing Director (MD) of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd, told The New Nation on Monday. He added, a technical glitch has also occurred in distribution lines in the areas runs with gas crisis resulting in gas crisis. "Condensate usually develops in pipe lines during extreme winter lowering the gas pressure," he said, adding, "This also happens this time affecting smooth flow of gas in pipelines". When asked, he said, "We have no equipment to clear this condensate from pipelines. The Titas MD also mentioned that in the capital, there are pipe lines with widths of one to 1.5 inches which cannot bear the necessary pressure of gas flow. Without replacement of the old and narrow pipes, with wider ones gas supply may not improve in the city. Monowara Begum, a resident of the city's Mirpur area, told The New Nation yesterday that her house remains out of gas supply for about seven to eight hours for the last few days creating difficulties to prepare meals for my family.She added that gas supply of her area has been woefully low between 8am and 5pm every day for the last few days. "Now, I have to wake up at 5am to prepare breakfast and lunch for my family to overcome the situation," she said. "The flow of gas has dimmed in the last two days apparently drying the cooking burners. I can't cook food for my family and even boil water to drink," Fatema Begum, a house wife in Tongi area, told The New Nation on Monday.She also said that her family expenditure had increased as all the meals now have to be cooked in a kerosene stove.Moreover, owners of the city's CNG-filling stations are also bearing the brunt of the ongoing gas crisis forcing them to shut down their stations in most of the time a day. "CNG stations tuned dry due to low pressure of gas," Masud Khan, President of CNG Filling Station and Conversion Workshop Owners' Association, told The New Nation on Monday night.He added: The current situation has largely affected our business transaction leading to incur huge losses.
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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!
In Part 1:

Randolph Stow was one of our great writers and I encourage you to embrace the literary legacy of Mick Stow and the highly anticipated 890 page biography "Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow from UWA (University of Western Australia) Publishing by Suzanne Falkiner.

Randolph Stow was one of the great Australian writers of his generation. His novel To the Islands  written in his early twenties after living on a remote Aboriginal mission  won the Miles Franklin Award for 1958. In later life, after publishing seven remarkable novels and several collections of poetry, Stows literary output slowed. This biography examines the productive period as well as his long periods of publishing silence.

In Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow , Suzanne Falkiner unravels the reasons behind Randolph Stows quiet retreat from Australia and the wider literary world. Meticulously researched, insightful and at times deeply moving, Falkiners biography pieces together an intriguing story from Stows personal letters, diaries, and interviews with the people who knew him best. And many of her tales  from Stows beginnings in idyllic rural Australia, to his critical turning point in Papua New Guinea, and his final years in Essex, England  provide us with keys to unlock the meaning of Stows rich and introspective works.



Suzanne Falkiner kindly shared some extracts of her Stow biography and aspects of her wider research.

I had written to her on 24 August 2015:

I am very much looking forward to your bio on Randolph Stow. Part of my interest stems from his wonderful novel "Visitants" which I mentioned in my own book "The OZ Files - the Australian UFO Story" (1996, Duffy & Snellgrove).

You may be interested in my posts on Bill Gill and his 1959 experience:

It is fascinating to see the multiple witness enquiry literary template that exists in both Randolph Stow's "Visitants" and John Fowles "A Maggot" - both with "alien contact" threads - 2 extraordinary books that weave "the other" in fascinating ways through their narratives.

I recollect Randolph had a UFO sighting with William Grono in 1966.

I would be very interested to learn of what Randolph Stow's private papers expressed on his thoughts about the 1959 Boainai events, which he learnt about upon his return and the other reports of that period. Does he elaborate on his own experience?

Best wishes,

Suzanne replied the next day:

Dear Bill,

Stow did elaborate briefly on the events in his unpublished papers, and kept a cutting about the Gill experience. I attach the refs.

However, if you dont examine the papers yourself in the interim, Id appreciate it if you didnt quote from the unpublished text attached until after (or at least nearer to when) my book comes out (February 2016), and then credit it if you do.

I think the key to Stows approach is his comment that it's not whether such objects did or did not exist, which he couldnt have any firm opinion about, but why so many people want to believe that they exist.

He applied the same precept to the 12th century stories of the Green Children and the Merman of Orford, etc, written in Latin by chroniclers as if they were history, that he explores in The Girl Green as Elderflower . He draws a parallel here to Trobriand creation myths (and Christian myths), but maintains an open mind.

Hope this helps!

All the best,

Suzanne

At the same time Suzanne shared extracts from her forthcoming biography.

Stow was in Papua at the time and while he did not hear of the sightings at the time, he was made aware of a similar event on Kitava (part of the Trobriand Islands (the customs and people of that island group were described in Malinowski's classic study "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" (1922)) and a strange disappearance. Stow incorporates both into the novel and the sightings of "star machines" are a recurring thread in the novel.

Suzannes extracts cover both of these aspects  Stows encounter with Kitava locals who described their star machine encounter, ostensibly shortly before their meeting and some months after the Boianai sightings.

She explains that the Kitava information served as the kernel of a second plotline in Visitants. She quoted from Stows papers held at the National Library of Australia  Stows typed notes on Trobriand myth, magic and cargo:

One night we were visited by a group of men who wanted us to settle an intellectual dispute. The question was, whether or not the war with Japan was over. We told them that it had ended fourteen years earlier, and wondered why they were interested. They said that a star or machine had been passing over the island, and they wanted to know whether it was a Japanese or Allied star. They said that they were frightened, but they laughed as they said so.

We assumed that they had seen a satellite or space probe (though it should have seemed obvious at the time that they would never connect such a small pocket of light with a war-machine) and fobbed them off with some photographs of rockets in an old magazine. They [were] dissatisfied, and said that the rockets were the wrong shapesketching a shape with their hands. But I was too tired and too much the know-it-all Dimdim to pay much attention.

Suzanne also quotes from Tony Hassall 1982 interview with Stow  Breaking the Silence. I was already well acquainted with this fascinating interview through Professor Hassalls excellent book Randolph Stow (UQP 1990). It had been originally published in Australian Literary Studies (1982):

No doubt there was a lot of talk about Boianai at the time, but I didnt hear of it. I thought they were talking about a Soviet Lunik, which was in the sky at the time and I dug out a copy of Time magazine, or something which had a picture of rockets on the cover, and said: its like that, its like a bullet. And they said: no, no, its not like that, and made a shape of it with their hands, which I think was, as far as I can remember it, a disc-shape. But I cant actually swear to that now. Anyway, they told me that it certainly wasnt like a bullet going through the sky, it was a machine that had a big light, and it chased some men along the path, when they were coming home from fishing, and they were frightened. And I suppose that I just put that aside; as I couldnt answer the question I just forgot about it until years later

In her book Suzanne elaborates:

Six years on, at Point Barron in Alaska, Stow recorded, in an American magazine he came upon an account of the New Guinea episode of 1959  a similar sighting of a flying object, some five months earlier in late June, at Boianai on the New Guinea mainland about 150 miles southwest and found himself trying to recall every detail of the conversation.

She notes:

This was an extract from Jacques Vallees Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Henry Regnery, 1965), describing a sighting in June 1959 by Reverend William Booth Gill and 37 local people at Boianai , in Goodenough Bay, and in which the astronomer made a plea for statistical analysis of the incidence of sightings. See also NLA MS 10.128 Papers of Randolph Stow, Box 6, Pkt 23 - printed report on Reverend Gills 1959 sighting of a UFO at Boianai.

Suzanne further shared:

In the same typed-up account found among his unpublished notes, Stow mused on the topic of faith, belief and rationality, particularly in relation to cargo cults, or Vailala Madness, as a particular variety of the Millenarian movement was called.

It is a tragicomic business, and the temptation, especially for a writer of fiction, is to emphasise the comic elements and to treat the cultists as a crowd of savage idiots. But we Dimdims are by no means always rational in spiritual matters .The people of Kitava on this occasion conducted themselves like scientistsand the miracle of Our Lady of Fatima might be considered a major event in the history of cargo-cult.

Was missionary work allowing Fatima to leak into Kitava thinking or was this Stow just wondering about Fatima 1917 in general in this belief context?

There were Methodist and Catholic missionaries on Kiriwina at the time, but Mick makes little mention of the RC one, whereas the Methodist one, whose wife was a nurse, lived near the ADO station at Losuia and was more of a friend. No other mentions elsewhere in Stow's papers or correspondence of his being aware of, or interested in, any other incidents or sightings, or again of the Boianai or Kitava sightings. Or indeed of Fatima.

In terms of the Fatima books originally published in Portuguese if Mick had ever encountered them they would not have challenged him. He had a command of the language that supported his intriguing wider speculations on the madness that may have informed the Batavia tragedy. But as Suzanne Falkiner notes Stow probably didnt go down the deeper rabbit hole that is the wider UFO mysteries intertwined with these matters.

Suzanne and I did meet briefly at the special Stow event, which was a wonderful celebration of the life and legacy of Mick  Randolph Stow.

What interested Stow more, Stow told Hassall in 1982, was not whether such objects did or did not exist, which he couldnt have any firm opinion about, but why so many people want to believe that they exist.

In response to Suzannes kind sharing of this research I expanded in my 26 August 2015 email:

Hi Suzanne,

Thank you for sharing this information. It seems to replicate much of the material Tony Hassall aired in 1982 and 1990.

I have Tony Hassall's 1990 "Randolph Stow" (UQP) which features "Visitants" and his detailed interview. I was going to quote from that in "The OZ Files" (1996) but in the end I only referred to "Vistants" and brief background on Mick.

Given that Mick didn't offer "any firm opinion" on UFOs but key was "why so many people want to believe that they exist" the nexus of belief, fact and fiction seemed to be important to him.

Given that Rev. Bill Gill wrestled with the very same dynamic, I thought the evolution of thought he went through was worthwhile drawing to your attention:

. my understanding of the evolution of Bill Gill's thoughts on his sighting. Not really belief, but anchored in fact, and apparently privately mediated by his faith. But he put that out there as just an idea for thinking about. Perhaps the glowing "radiance" "sparking, etc that surround the "men" and the object led him privately in that direction. Publicly "aliens", "Americans" or "aliens", he did not know, but he was certain of what he saw.

Perhaps thats where Mick resonated. Your reference to Bill Grono's belief that he saw a weather balloon with Stow at Greenough in 1966, doesn't seem to sit well with Mick's description of "a point of light making a falling-leaf, and then going away and vanishing with great speed, and then coming back at great speed from another direction, and going through the falling-leaf motion again" (Stow to Hassall) all this about 45 minutes, and they just gave up watching it. This appears to be a remarkable "weather balloon", unlike any I have investigated over decades of research. Perhaps Bill's response was mediated by belief, rather than the facts of the event?

Was there an actual date, apart from year - month, day, time? Direction?

I note that Bruce Bennett wrote in the Westerly (55:2, 153) that when Stow died in 2010 he had "some half-century of memories of this region of England (Suffolk) to supplement his still vivid memories of Western Australia."

I have read Bruce's interview in both the Westerly & Tony's anthology and was left wondering (after Bennett in Hassall, 375) if the interview had been in 1983 rather than 1981, whether the nexus of belief, fact & fiction may have played out differently, given the Harwich & East Bergholt Suffolk location and the mix of memories of place.

I suspect while Mick may not have favoured "News of the World" as reading material, locals of Suffolk would no doubt been agog with the front page of 2nd October 1983, which went global and was reported upon even here in OZ:

There seems no evidence that Stow revisited the dynamic of "Visitants" published in 1979 with its famous 1959 sighting as a prologue. Only slightly removed and certainly in close proximity in sense of place and time and maybe belief - December 1980 Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, aired by the "news of the World" in October 1983.



I suspect at least that Stow would have heard about it?

I was struck by reference to "Our Lady of Fatima" in Stow's musings about it "might be considered a major event in the history of cargo-cult" by "the people of Kitava. Is there an accurate date to Stow's encounter with locals on Kitava (presumably between September 1 and November 1959)? Was there a sense that the locals were telling Stow about something that had just happened, maybe only by days?

Was missionary work allowing Fatima to leak into Kitava thinking or was this Stow just wondering about Fatima 1917 in general in this belief context?

He may have wondered even more if had been exposed to recent writings on Fatima (2005, 2006, 2008, all before Stows passing in 2010, published earlier in Portuguese.

These are very intriguing recent works and in part extend Vallee's research in his 1975 book "The Invisible College - What a Group of Scientists has discovered about UFO influences on the human race". Therein he had a chapter focusing on Fatima: "A morphology of miracles."

Stow had "an open mind." Had he come across all this - Fatima "re-envisioned", Rendlesham Forest 1980 in Suffolk, one can only wonder in light of "Vistants" and its cousin "The Girl Green as Elderflower"?

"Visitants" is considered by many as one of Stow's best books and possibly one of the finest novels in "Australian" literature, therefore these connections are I think are of merit and worth sharing.

Although the Saturday event appears to be "sold out" I plan to dally at the library to see if I can get my foot in the door.

Perhaps we can have a chat there if we cross paths.

Best wishes,

Bill

Suzanne kindly responded with the following additional clarifications on 26 August 2015:

Dear Bill,

Thank you for all that interesting information. I hope Ive answered your queries below:

Suzanne added:

Bill Grono told me that he himself believed it was a weather balloon that he saw with Stow at Greenough.

Was there an actual date, apart from year - month, day, time? Direction?

I agree the weather balloon theory seems unlikely, especially as Bill Grono saw the object or light shooting up into the air as well (do weather balloons have lights?). Nearest I can date sighting is sometime between about 7 January 1966 (approximate date of Stow's arrival back in WA from USA, after 3 week sea voyage from 17 December 1965) and 4 February 1966 (the date he mentions the trip north in a letter, after returning to Perth), and probably more towards the end of that period than the beginning. It was their last night staying in the holiday shacks on the Greenough river before their return, and after theyd had 'a few drinks (which probably would have been rather more than a few), and presumably quite late, ie after they'd had dinner, as Stow wanted to wake the guy in the neighbouring shack to see it also, and he wouldnt be in it. I imagine the shacks would be looking out to sea, but thats a guess.

Is there an accurate date to Stow's encounter with locals on Kitava (presumably between September 1 and November 1959)? Was there a sense that the locals were telling Stow about something that had just happened, maybe only by days?

Stow was on Kitava, on and off between visiting other islands, between 16 October and Friday 13 November 1959. No indication of when in this period the men told him about the object. No indication either of whether it had been a recent sighting, but presumably it was, as other patrols had recently passed through.

The Girl Green as Elderflower immediately alerted me to one more Suffolk mystery that may have (but probably didnt?) become known to Stow  the strange incident of the Aldeburgh flying platform which took place in the middle of World War One (1914  1918). Suzannes kind sharing and my revisiting of Visitants and particularly its curious sister novel

While the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh is not mentioned by name it is generally understood that Crabbes birth place of Aldeburgh is its basis. Britten founded the Aldeburgh festival in 1948. Stow was in good company for Crabbes work was admired by the likes Byron, Tennyson, E.M. Forester, Jane Austen and Walter Scott to name a few. Stow mentioned Crabbe and Aldeburgh in an interview by Bruce Bennent in 1981 (Westerly, No. 4, December, 1981). Stow had a literary connection with Aldeburgh through his appreciation of the near-forgotten poet George Crabbe (1754-1832), who is perhaps more widely remembered through Benjamin Brittens opera Peter Grimes, which was based on a chapter in Crabbes lengthy piece The Borough.While the Suffolk town of Aldeburgh is not mentioned by name it is generally understood that Crabbes birth place of Aldeburgh is its basis.Britten founded the Aldeburgh festival in 1948. Stow was in good company for Crabbes work was admired by the likes Byron, Tennyson, E.M. Forester, Jane Austen and Walter Scott to name a few.Stow mentioned Crabbe and Aldeburgh in an interview by Bruce Bennent in 1981 (Westerly, No. 4, December, 1981).

While Randolph Stow was living in England (either London or Leeds) during the period 1966  1969 the son of the Aldeburgh flying platform witness from World War One sort to share his mothers fascinating story beyond the circle of family and friends where it had circulated since it happened. His letter appeared on page 16 of the Daily Mirror of August 8, 1968.

There are some similarities to Father Gills Boianai sighting. Return to Magonia  Investigating UFOs in History (Anomalist Books) gives an excellent analysis of the Aldeburh Platform incident and gets into the kind of mythic aspects Stow might have been interested it.

We cant be certain Randolph Stow became aware of the Rendlesham Forest case via the News of the World account or the Aldeburgh Platform story via the Daily Mirror letter. We can be sure he was intrigued by UFOs, had first hand testimony given to him from native witnesses, and had his own sighting in 1966 with his friend Bill Grono. This was in the period of the well publicised Queensland Tully flying saucer nest. There were also sightings by farmers in remote parts of Western Australia.
The S.P.D. Murder of John T. Williams

On a sunny, warm Seattle August day in 2010, Native American wood carver John T. Williams was murdered by the Seattle Police Department as he walked down the crowded downtown streets while on his normal daily routine of carving small totem poles with a small pen knife, then selling them to the tourists that flock by the Seattle Public Market.

Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk noticed Mr. Williams walking down the city streets and deemed him a threat, do in major part I believe - simply because he was Native American. Williams was one of many homeless Native Americans who roam downtown Seattle. These people are usually dismissed and overlooked by Seattles daily bustle of businessmen, the working class, and tourists.



When the officer approached Williams from behind, and then ordered him to freeze and drop his small carving knife and a stick of carving wood he was carrying, Williams was hard of hearing in one ear, and failed to hear the police officer over the traffic and pedestrians, thus did not immediately comply; officer Birk then instantly felt that this gave him the right to use lethal force against John T. Williams.

No threat was ever given by the homeless woodcarver. Officer Ian Birk coldly gunned down John T. Williams from behind, murdering him in the streets of Seattle, Wash, right in front of many horrified citizens who later professed that they felt no threat from the homeless Native American man whatsoever.



The officer was fired  thats it, and was allowed to live his life somewhere else, work a steady job, live in a nice house, somewhere out of media sight, and out of the publics mind; smug in the fact that he got away with legal murder with just a slap on the wrist. We must all remember that this type of legal homicide happens every day all over this nation of ours, by those sworn to Serve and Protect us. And that this violent tragedy can happen to anyone, or anybodys family members, especially if they are citizens of color. This makes it everybodys problem who believes in justice, personal safety from unwarranted persecution, and true American freedom in the society they live in. Let us still remember John T Williams, and never forget the fact that he was ruthlessly murdered by the S.P.D.






















































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.
Illinois voters can vote early and vote by mail  but they will not be able to do either on Feb. 4, the day early and mail voting was scheduled to begin.

Mail and early voting has been delayed by lack of certification of candidates for President of the United States.

Objections have been filed against the candidacy of several candidates of both major political parties in the state of Illinois. Illinois Board of Elections is working to determine who will or will not remain on the ballot for the March 15 General Primary Election in Illinois. Certification has been completed for all other federal, state and local candidates.

Without a final certification and verification of all candidates, election officials in Illinois cannot program, print and test primary election ballots. The State Board of Elections schedule calls for all objections to be finalized on or about Feb. 11, 2016, and certified shortly thereafter. Once certification is completed, then county clerks offices can begin producing ballots for in-person and mail voters.

Jackson County Clerk Larry Reinhardt said once the objection process is complete, the state board of elections has to meet to certify the ballot. At the current time, the state board expects to complete the objection process by Feb. 11, with the board meeting by Feb. 12. Local offices can then complete their ballots.

We have to finish the programming the devices, get ballots printed and test them. We will have four or five days, when we usually have a couple weeks, Reinhardt said.

Amanda Barnes, Williamson County Clerk, said once the certification process is complete, it will take local offices a few days to prepare ballots.

We have to proof our ballots to make sure everything it correct," she said. "We are looking at hopefully having everything ready by Feb. 17."

Early and mail voting is scheduled to begin no later than Feb. 17, but there is one issue  military and overseas ballots have to go out Friday, Jan. 29.

Reinhardt said county clerks are going to have to send out a federal write-in ballots, which are basically a blank sheet with lines and boxes. Voters will have to write in the names of the candidates and office and put a check mark in the box.

We will follow up with an actual ballot when they are printed," Reinhardt said. "If we dont get the printed ballot back in time, we will use the write-in. If we do get the printed ballot, we will spoil the write-in.

There will be no change for voters who go to the polls on Election Day, March 15.

For more information, call the county clerk in your county of residence.
MURPHYSBORO  Several representatives from local, regional and state agencies shared Monday morning just how the seven-month-long budget impasse is impacting the lives and livelihoods of the residents they serve, as they are still waiting on state funding to come through.

They represented college students, staff and administrators; businesses that perform environmental clean-up of contaminated soil; crisis centers that deal with people who are victimized by sexual assaults; and social-service agencies that deal with those who are homeless and those dealing with emotional and psychological issues.

They shared the impact with a group assembled at the Jackson County Health Department, in a meeting arranged by State Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, and Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, and attended by Rep. Gary Forby, D-Benton, but much of their ire was reserved for the one man they deem responsible for it all: Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Here are some of the comments of those who spoke:

 Robyn Del Campo, an SIU freshman who is thankful that the Women's Center Sexual Assault Program staff were there to helped her after she reported that she was sexually assaulted in a dorm on the campus. The Sexual Assault program receives $188,000 from the state's General Revenue fund, an amount that is one-third of the program's $557,500 budget.

 SIU junior Naomi Tolbert from Carbondale, who works 25 hours a week and who says she is desperately awaiting funding from the Monetary Award Program; in the meantime, her only other source of financial support comes from her 80-year-old grandmother, when she can spare it; her father was never in her life, she said, and her mother died from breast cancer when Tolbert was 11 years old.

 Ben Smith, a recovering addict who credits Metropolis' Light The Way, Inc. and its Haven House with helping him stabilize his life with a home, counseling, which he credit with him being alive today and not dead or imprisoned;

 Lesley Gates, 42, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, manic depressions and schizoaffective disorder in her late 20s and whose life also started to normalize when she started receiving counseling and housing through Light The Way, Inc., six years ago;

 Tim Bellamey, longtime president of Shawnee Community College, who noted that school's bond rating was upgraded; in 2014, it was upgraded from A+ to AA-, according to a 2014 report from Standard & Poor's Rating Services.

 Hernando Albarracin, a senior project manager with Chase Environmental Group, Inc., who talked about the smaller gas-station owners who cannot clean up some 7,000 environmental spills; those business owners rely on state funding that comes from a fund that collect money from taxpayers when they buy gas.
LOS ANGELES  It was a daring and elaborate escape: cutting through metal, crawling through plumbing tunnels, climbing a roof, rappelling four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets.

But this wasn't a Hollywood movie; it was a real-life breakout that left authorities struggling to find three escapees  one a suspected killer  and put together the pieces of how they managed to escape a Southern California maximum-security jail.

The priority was finding the men  who are possibly armed and considered dangerous  but a probe also is underway to see whether the men had any help from inside or outside the Orange County Men's Central Jail, authorities said Sunday.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trial for violent crimes but their cases were unconnected. They vanished from a dormitory they shared with around 65 other men on Friday shortly after the 5 a.m. inmate head count, county sheriff's officials said.

Somehow, the men obtained tools that allowed them to cut through the quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall, then got into plumbing tunnels. Cutting their way through additional half-inch-thick steel bars, the trio made their way to an unguarded area of the roof of the four-story building, where they apparently moved aside some razor wire and rappelled to the ground using elaborately braided ropes made from linens, authorities said.

The escape wasn't noticed for 16 hours, until a nighttime head count that was delayed about an hour because of a fight involving some other inmates that may  or may not  have been part of the escape plan.

Clearly, the plan had been long in the making and carefully thought out, sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

"We're talking about breaching, in some places, significant amounts of steel, rebar and metal," Hallock said.

As federal and local authorities staged a round-the-clock manhunt, there remained a lot of questions about the escape itself. How did the men get the cutting tools? When did they make the rope and where did they stash it? How did they know the jail layout so well? Did they have outside help, maybe a car waiting after they ran off on foot in their orange jail jumpsuits?

And perhaps most important: did other inmates or jail employees help them?

"We're going to take a look at everybody who may have been assigned there," Hallock said. "What I can assure you is that the compromises in security have been shored up."

He didn't provide details.

"Escapes do occur from time to time," Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. "We try and limit that. We learn from the mistakes. I can tell you that this is a very sophisticated-looking operation. People in jail have a lot of time to sit around and think about ways to defeat our systems."

There had been two previous escapes from the jail but they were decades ago. In fact, nobody had managed it in more than 20 years.

But the aging jail, built in 1968 and housing some 900 men, does have some vulnerabilities. Its design allows inmates to move through different areas more easily than more modern jails.

And inmates do move, which makes it difficult to get daytime head counts.

"We have people going to court, we have people going for medical treatment, and you can't leave them locked down 24 hours a day. There are requirements that they get out and exercise from time to time," Hutchens said.

The inmates include 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, who had been held on a $1 million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. His case is believed to be gang-related.

On Sunday, his mother and sister said they hadn't heard from him and tearfully pleaded for him to surrender.

"I miss you... I want my son back," his mother, Lu Ann Nguyen of Santa Ana, told KABC-TV.

"I for sure know he wasn't the one who orchestrated this. I feel he was manipulated or tricked into doing this," said his sister, Tiffany Tieu.

"Just turn in yourself in. Don't let (it) drag on," she said.

Hossein Nayeri, 37, had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Nayeri and three other men are accused of kidnapping a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012. They drove the dispensary owner to a desert spot where they believed he had hidden money and then cut off his penis, authorities said.

After the crime, Nayeri fled the U.S. to his native Iran, where he remained for several months. He was arrested in Prague in November 2014 while changing flights from Iran to Spain to visit family.

The third escaped inmate, 43-year-old Bac Duong, was being held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges.

While the Mexican border is only a couple of hours south of the prison, authorities said they had no evidence that the men had left the country. Their alleged victims, as well as prosecutors and detectives involved in their cases, have been warned and investigators also are reaching out to their family and acquaintances.

Federal authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information leading to their recapture.

"There's people out there that know who these people are, who may have seen them. We're asking for phone calls, whether it's any piece of information you may have," Hallock said.

"We're exhausting every lead that we currently have," he said.

__

Associated Press writer Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Ray Jameson of Orangeburg won first place in the no-till/strip-till irrigated division of the 2015 National Corn Growers Association's Corn Yield Contest in South Carolina.

Jameson won with Pioneer brand hybrid P1303HR, which yielded 323.0808 bushels per acre.

Russ Jameson of Orangeburg won first place in the irrigated division, winning with Pioneer brand hybrid P1303HR, which yielded 313.1920 bushels per acre.

In 2015, recurrent yield contest winner David Hula of Charles City, Virginia, took his fields to a whole new level by breaking the world record of 532.0271 bushels per acre using Pioneer P1197AM brand corn on his contest plot.

The Jamesons each earned one of the 218 state titles won by growers planting Pioneer hybrids. The NCGA awarded 407 state titles in this year's contest. Growers planting Pioneer hybrids dominated the contest and won 54 percent of all state awards presented.

The NCGA Corn Yield Contest is an annual U.S. national competition among corn growers with the goal of capitalizing on the high genetic yield potential of today's corn hybrids. Growers compete in six corn-production classes, including non-irrigated (A and AA), no-till/strip-till non-irrigated (A and AA), irrigated and no-till/strip-till irrigated classes.
Sexed semen is a technology whose time may have arrived for the beef industry.

The U.S. beef industry is slowly increasing the use of sexed semen. Countries, such as Brazil, already use sexed semen extensively, said John Hall, superintendent of the Nancy M. Cummings Center at the University of Idaho, and a beef extension specialist.

Seedstock producers in the United States are increasingly interested in sexed semen to produce more replacement heifers.

Another reason seedstock producers are interested in sexed semen is to generate more bull calves from a high-EPD herd sire to produce bulls for the commercial sector, Hall said.

While sexed semen has been around the dairy industry for more than a decade, the technology has been more of a novelty for seedstock and commercial cattlemen up until recently, as increased technology and management improvements come into play.

The technology is improving with sexed semen, but there are still challenges for the beef industry and some limitations producers need to be aware of, Hall said.

The dairy industry has used sexed semen for several years partly because the industry uses artificial insemination almost exclusively, he said.

The dairy industry wanted valuable dairy cows over steers, and as a result, businesses starting offering sexed semen commercially for dairy producers about 10 years ago.

At the same time, the dairy industry developed good, solid relationships with the sexed semen suppliers and businesses.

Sexed semen is a business like any other business, but the beef industry is becoming more interested in utilizing that technology, Hall said.

At the same time, sexed semen from more beef bulls is also becoming more commercially available.

Additionally, a seedstock producer could use his own bull if he can work that out with a company that sorts sexed semen, called custom sorting, Hall said. That way, the producer is assured of obtaining the high-quality bull genetics he is looking for while still being able to sort for the heifer replacements he needs in his herd.

The University of Idaho has been researching sexed beef semen, and finding some insights into the uses, limitations, opportunities and challenges of the technology.

One challenge for beef producers has been with pregnancy rates, Hall said.

On average, pregnancy rates with sexed semen are about 40 percent, or 20-25 percent lower than females bred by conventional AI semen.

Researchers found that pregnancy rate could be increased through proper handling of sexed semen units, according to Hall.

Whenever a straw is mishandled and starts to unthaw, recrystallization occurs and that affects the fertility of the sperm cells, he said. All along the way, there is a possibility the straw could be mishandled.

Understanding proper techniques and handling is important for everyone to know.

Education is important so everyone knows how to handle semen units correctly, Hall said.

It is also important to use an AI expert in his field, so that a beef seedstock or commercial producer has the best chance of success, he added.

If we can increase the conception rate to sexed semen up to 50-55 percent in enough animals, that would be of great economic benefit to the beef industry, he said.

If that was followed through by cleanup bulls and the percentage of desired sex increased to 70-75 percent, that would be close to the economic threshold, he added.

UI research showed that commercial producers could also take advantage of the improvements in sexed semen technology.

It has to make sense economically for the producer, Hall explained. But commercial producers could also take advantage of certain markets by producing more steers for a uniform trailer load and to meet specific customer needs.

Hall had UI research data involving three loads of similar-quality cattle  two all-steer loads and a mixed load. The heifers were discounted in the mixed load, and the all-steer loads made significantly more than the mixed load.

The all-steer loads earned $5,180 and $6,746 more than the mixed load.

The additional profits were on top of the cost of AI-ing, and the additional cost of sexed semen, Hall said.

If a cattle producer is considering sexed semen, whether it be a seedstock or commercial cattleman, Hall has the following suggestions:

1. Those producers who have been AI-ing successfully for a few years will have the best chance of success with sexed semen. Experience has its place in sexed semen technology, Hall said.

2. Utilizing experienced AI technicians is important.

3. Producers may want to try sexed semen out on a limited basis at first, say using 50 cows, before using it on their whole herd.

4. Handling and thawing of frozen semen is extremely important because the technology is not cheap. On the average, bull sexed semen runs around $25-$35 a unit, but some genetics place it as high as $50-$75 a straw, Hall said.

For most of us who use AI once a year, we need a refresher programs before we start to use the proper techniques, he said.

While some research showed sexed semen should be used only on virgin heifers, UI research disputed that, Hall said.

We found results using virgin heifers was not necessarily more successful and, in fact, mature cows did very well, he said.
What is your purpose? Why do we do what we do?

Those are questions Dr. Jesse Washington, Orangeburg Consolidated School District Fives new superintendent, often asks himself and those who work for him.

I think everything we do should be with a purpose, he said. We should have expected outcomes, and we should know why were doing what were doing.

When people take time to sit down and think about why theyre doing what theyre doing, their work becomes more real, Washington said. They want to do better. They want to do a whole lot more.

Educators who are in the field because they really want to help children are going to do whatever it takes to help students succeed, he said.

Thats what I mean by working with a purpose.

The 42-year-old Washington became interim superintendent of OCSD5 in September after Dr. Cynthia Wilson left to take another job. On Tuesday, the OCSD5 board named him superintendent.

Washington says one of his main goals is to turn OCSD5 into a student-centered system where everything we do is for the benefit of student learning and student achievement.

Also, I want to see students taking responsibility for their own learning, he said.

But the district has to give them choices, Washington said. They arent all going to college.

Its the responsibility of educators to open up other fields for them and allow them to look at other opportunities.

Show them what possibilities are out there. Open up the work to them, Washington said. Thats part of our charge as educators here and across the state.

For example, The Technology Center offers students numerous career choices and the opportunity to earn certification in various areas while theyre still in high school, he said.

If college isnt the path youre on, you can still go out and still find employment and be a contributing member of society and give back, he said.

The districts technology plan is already allowing students to take responsibility for their education through the use of one-on-one devices, he said.

The teachers use them in the classroom, but students also use them to learn on their own with the teachers acting as facilitators, Washington said.

Student-centered learning also means allowing students to be involved in decision making, he said. For example, a dancing class was added at Mellichamp this year. Perhaps in the future the school could become a magnet school focusing on fine arts.

It need not stop with the fine arts at Mellichamp, Washington said. Another school could become a magnet school focusing on science or technology. The district needs to tap into student interests and build on that.

Educators need to converse with students, according to Washington. Ask them, What are you interested in? How do you learn best?

Scheduling should also be student centered, Washington said.

As it is, core subjects are normally taught in the morning and other courses are taught around them. At some point, depending on student interest, the classes may need to be scheduled differently.

Washington also envisions the district developing more relationships with businesses like the one with Boeing. Company representatives recently met with high school students across the county and spoke about employment opportunities.

While Washington plans to move forward with his own initiatives, he says hell retain some of those already in place like the State of the Schools Luncheon, the Reach Out for Dropouts program and the Back to School Bash.

According to Washington, the possibilities before the districts students are endless.

I think we have in this school district a tremendous opportunity to do some great things for kids if people are passionate about what they do and they really, really feel change can be made, he said.

Washington came to OCSD5 in 2011.

He has been in the field of education since 2001. Hes been a teacher, an assistant principal, a principal and director of public information in districts stretching across the state from Oconee to Beaufort County.

Before getting into education, he spent eight years working for NationsBank.

But education was a family tradition for the Columbia native. His mother is retired from teaching in Lexington School District II and is now a member of the school board. His brother-in-law is a school principal.

Washington earned a bachelors degree in elementary education from Lander University. He spent some years working for NationsBank and teaching before going back to school at the University of South Carolina.

He earned masters and doctors degrees in educational administration in 2003 and 2006.
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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
By Nigar Orujova - AzerNews

China supports Ukraines proposal to create the Trans-Caspian transport route from China to Europe through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, bypassing Russia, in addition to existing transit routes.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, announced about this on January 25, TASS news agency reported.

She further noted the importance for the development of the Silk Road Economic Belt of already existing freight rail route from China to Europe based on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the new Eurasian transcontinental bridge.

Ukraine has earlier announced the start of processing export route bypassing Russia.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol in Baku on January 14 to establish preferential tariffs for cargo transportation on the Trans-Caspian international transport routes. The countries plan to develop a common tariff policy by mid-February.

Meanwhile, Ukraine launched the first test train from Ilyichevsk seaport in Odessa region on the Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China route on January 15.

Kiev plans the new route to run from the station Izov on the border of Ukraine and Poland to Dostyk station on the border of Kazakhstan and China, including ferry across the Black and the Caspian Sea, and will take two weeks at most.

The test train consisting of ten cars and twenty forty-foot containers has departed from Baku international sea trade port to the Kazakh port of Aktau on January 22. The train is expected to arrive to Aktau in January 30.

Earlier, Head of the Economic Department of the Ukrainian Embassy in Baku, Vadim Sidyachenko told AzerNews that Ukraine seeks the development of the Baku Sea Trade Port as a transport hub of the Caspian and the Caucasus regions.

We have already brought Ukrainian shipping transport companies so they were acquainted with the work of the port and hauled loads in this direction, he noted.

In the future, Ukraine plans to carry up to 2-3 million tons of cargo annually through Azerbaijan to Central Asia as well as in Iran and later in India and the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, Turkey has recently increased transportation via Azerbaijan.

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route enjoys an opportunity to become attractive and profitable for consignors from European countries.

The route will transport approximately 300,000-400,000 containers by 2020, bringing hundreds of millions of manats in profit to Azerbaijan.

The first container train on this route arrived at Baku International Sea Trade Port from China in August. The train, consisting of 44 wagons, departed from the Alashankou export station of the Chinese Urumqi-Xinjiang province and arrived in Tbilisi in eight days transiting through the territory of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is keen on developing transportation possibilities of the country by creating the Coordinating Council for Transit Cargo Transportations, and applying the principle of single window for transport of transit cargoes through its territory via the railways, maritime transport, ports and terminals.

Moreover, the country introduced attractive transportation fees in an effort to become a major transport hub of the region.
Azerbaijan is of great importance for Europe, vice-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly George Tsereteli told reporters in Baku Jan. 25.

He said that Azerbaijan and the OSCE have fruitful cooperation, and the issues of its further development will be discussed during the current visit.

It is scheduled to hold meetings in the parliament and the government of Azerbaijan during the visit.

The settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will also be discussed during the talks.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.





/By Trend/




A former history teacher, Tom is a columnist who lives in Lovell, Maine. His column is published in Maine and New Hampshire newspapers and on numerous web sites. Email: tomthemick@gmail.com
Growth in Saudi Arabia's consumer spending is slowing as low oil prices hit households' disposable income and geopolitical tensions make shoppers more cautious, the chairman of one of the kingdom's top retailing chains said.



The slide in the oil price from over $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to just over $30 has forced Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, into budget cuts that have eaten into the income of many Saudis working in the public sector, crimping their spending power.



Muhammad Al-Agil, chairman of Jarir Marketing Co, said he did not expect the slowdown to be as serious as an oil price crash that hit Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s, halting his company's expansion for a year.



Jarir would continue to grow by taking market share from competitors and opening more stores, he told Reuters in an interview.



But Al-Agil said Jarir, which sells books, office supplies and consumer electronics from 33 stores across Saudi Arabia, as well as six in other Gulf countries, was feeling a slowdown that had begun in earnest during the past six weeks.



"Definitely people's wallets are getting smaller," he said, adding: "When people are worried about anything, they spend less, especially on the unnecessary (things)."



Jarir's experience suggests the Saudi economy may continue to lose steam early this year. The government began cutting state spending in the second half of 2015 as the plunge in oil prices pushed its finances deep into deficit, but for most of that period, consumers continued to spend freely.



Now that private consumption has lost some momentum, economic growth may fall considerably from last year's rate of 3.3 percent. Private consumption accounted for 41 percent of gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2015.



Al-Agil said the government's spending curbs had cut overtime payments and other bonuses to employees in the public sector, where most Saudi citizens work, and may have reduced their income by about 10 percent in this way.



Meanwhile, geopolitics has dampened consumer sentiment, he said. Saudi Arabia has been embroiled in a military intervention in Yemen since early last year, and cut all ties with Iran this month when its Tehran embassy was attacked by Iranian protesters after the kingdom executed a leading Shi'ite cleric.



Total consumer spending is continuing to grow, although at a slower rate, because spending on staple goods is holding up, but spending on discretionary items such as consumer electronics is shrinking, Al-Agil said.



The slowdown made itself felt in Jarir's fourth-quarter earnings. Net profit edged up just 1 percent from a year earlier to SR208.1 million ($55.5 million) while turnover fell 3.8 percent to SR1.52 billion, even though the company opened new stores during the year.



But Al-Agil said he would not abandon the company's plan, announced last year, to invest SR1.1 billion over five years to open six to seven new stores annually at home and abroad. In addition, it test-launched an e-commerce operation this month.



Al-Agil insisted that Saudi Arabia's young and growing population, as well as a trend for women to join the workforce - boosting families' income even in tough times - meant it still made sense to invest in an era of low oil prices.



"We have come through difficult periods before and the economy was able to adjust," he said, recalling the oil price crash of the mid-1980s as well as another major slump in the early 1990s. - Reuters
Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced $55 billion in special loans for industrial projects in the Middle East with a special focus on Egypt aimed at boosting its electricity and transport infrastructure, said a report.



Xi made the offer during an address to the Cairo-based Arab League after holding talks with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi during his first tour to the Middle East as president, according to a AFP report.



"China will offer $15 billion as special loans for industrial projects in the Middle East," he told the Arab League.



Also another $10 billion would be provided as commercial loans to boost co-operation in the energy sector and an equivalent amount will be offered as preferential loans, he added.



The Chinese premier also announced the establishment of a common investment fund worth $20 billion for Qatar and the UAE, stated the report.



Beijing has long taken a backseat to other diplomatic players in the Middle East but analysts say the region is crucial to Xi's signature foreign policy initiative - known as "One Belt One Road" - touted as a revival of ancient Silk Road trade routes, stated the report.



China, the world's second-largest economy, also relies heavily on oil and gas imported from the energy-rich Middle East, it added.
Majaal Warehouse Company, a leading developer and operator of industrial facilities, will play a key role at the upcoming Gulf Industry Fair 2016 in Manama, Bahrain.



The leading business-to-business industrial show in the Northern Gulf will be held from February 9 to 11 at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister of Bahrain.



A major player in the region, Majaal Warehouse Company has reaffirmed its participation at the expo for the seventh year in a row, said the event organiser Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE).



Established in 2010, Majaal, a subsidiary of First Bahrain Real Estate Development Company, offers facilities and services uniquely positioned to support small- to medium-sized enterprises (SME) including small unit sizes with municipal addressing, 24/7 security and high speed internet connections.



All of these features enable companies to run their entire operation out of their unit at Majaal.



At GIF 2015, Majaal announced the launch of Mazaya Logistics, situated in the Khalifa bin Salman Port a project collaborated with Kuwait-based Mazaya Holding Company.



These new warehouses have proved to be a popular option for companies looking to expand their business presence in Bahrain.



On its participation, Amin Al Arrayed, the managing director of Majaal, said: "Gulf Industry Fairs aims are consistent with our vision to stimulating Bahrains industry growth. We see Majaal as a catalyst for new development and innovation within the warehousing sector."



"We are not just providing space anymore, we have been approached by multi-nationals looking for solutions as well as land owners who are interested in our business model," he observed.



For us this event is our annual showcase to the business visitors particularly from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia of the industrial facilities developed and under development by Majaal," stated Al Arrayed.



Jubran Abdulrahman, the managing director of HCE, said: "Majaals presence at Gulf Industry Fair is an important contribution to recognising that industrial growth requires first-class innovative industrial facilities."



"The success that Majaal achieves at Gulf Industry Fair is a testament to the B2B value proposition of the event," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Grohe, a leading provider of sanitary fittings, said it has partnered with Dubai Sustainable City to fit the new residential community with its award winning sustainable designs.



Protecting the environment, preserving natural resources and exercising social responsibility have long been important elements of corporate strategy at the leading German manufacturer of sanitary fittings.



Located just 15 minutes from Downtown Dubai, the Sustainable City will offer luxury housing that meets sustainability standards (set by The World Commission on Environment and Development).

The homes are a mix of inspiring architecture and advanced sustainable infrastructure, ensuring residents do not compromise elegant design for a reduced carbon footprint.



The city will generate its own electricity through city-wide and rooftop solar panels and the homes are designed to accommodate this too. Each house takes into consideration the natural aspects of sunlight and wind in order to create cleaner air and providing lower temperatures for a cooler city microclimate, said Grohe in its statement.



The residential area will be made of 500 townhouses and courtyard villas all inspired by the urban form and heritage of Dubais old Bastakyia district.



It will also include tourist attractions including an environmental hotel, a center for science and an innovation center to host local and regional events.



To encourage outdoor activities, there will be a variety of sport and leisure facilities, biking and shaded jogging trails across the city. Further, the city will have a farm and 11 biodomes to produce vegetables and herbs, said the developers.



The Sustainable City is expected to be completed by 2017, it added.



The city concept is also reflected in all of Grohes selection installed in the residential area combining the economic, ecological and safe use of water with excellent design.



These include the Tempesta shower head and hand shower which are engineered to withstand the rigors of, day-to-day, use and create a very satisfying shower with maximum water coverage, said a company spokesman.



Eurocube, a design cleverly engineered for an extensive choice of faucets features accurate square designs for the basin, bidet, shower and bath, he stated.



He pointed out that all of these products reduce water consumption, and combine economic, ecological and safe use of water with excellent design, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Japan's Toshiba Corp plans to sell part of its chip business as it aims to recover from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday.



The electronics conglomerate has started accepting bids, with early interest shown by the Development Bank of Japan Inc, said the sources, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the media.



The state-owned bank has already invested in Seiko Holdings Corp's semiconductor operations.



The sale would exclude Toshiba's mainstay NAND flash memory operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter and one person familiar with the discussions.



On the block are businesses that handle system LSI and discrete chips, which are widely used in cars, home appliances and industrial machinery. The loss-making operations posted sales of 330 billion yen ($2.78 billion) in the year ended March 2015.



A Toshiba spokesman told Reuters the company hasn't made a decision yet on the sale of its chip operations, while a spokeswoman at the Development Bank of Japan declined to comment.



Following the accounting scandal, Toshiba has been focusing on nuclear and other energy operations, as well as its storage business, which centers on NAND flash memory chips used in smart phones.



The Tokyo-based company, which is selling off non-core chip operations, plans to invest heavily in its flash memory production capacity in Japan to better compete with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.- Reuters
Oil futures remained under pressure on Tuesday following a slide that has seen prices fall by more than a quarter since the beginning of the year as the full return of Iran to oil markets adds to an already huge supply overhang.



US crude futures CLc1 were trading at $29.14 a barrel by 0249 GMT (2149 ET), down 28 cents from their last settlement.



Front-month Brent crude futures LCOc1 remained below $29 per barrel at $28.84 per barrel after rising slightly in Tuesday's trade.



Traders said that the diverging movements between Brent and WTI crudes was largely due to technical trading in order to get the two benchmarks back slightly closer together.



The US premium over Brent CL-LCO1=R hit its highest level since 2010 on Monday as Iran's oil will be exported to Brent-priced Europe and Asia while regulations still restrict it from going to the United States.



The US government has also revoked a 40 year old ban on its crude reserves, resulting in oil flows out of the US crude price zone and into Brent.



Prices fell to their lowest since 2003 on Monday as western sanctions against Iran were lifted. Tehran then ordered a sharp increase in output to take immediate advantage.



"It is clear that investor sentiment is driving oil prices... Bearish bets are at their highest level since 1983, indicating heightened concerns around Iran oil flooding the market," ANZ bank analysts said in a note on Tuesday.



Oil prices have fallen over 70 per cent in the past 18 months as exporters around the world pump out over a million barrels of crude every day in excess of demand. Since January, the prospect of the lifting of the sanctions on Iran accelerated the rout.



Most analysts expect Iran's full return to oil markets to be relatively slow due to the need to overhaul its infrastructure following years of under-investment, but Iran is also estimated to have stored 12-14 million barrels of crude and 24 million barrels of condensates for immediate sale.



Goldman Sachs said that Iran's production would rise by 285,000 barrels per day (bpd) year-on-year in 2016 while BMI Research said the rise would by 400,000 bpd.



In OPEC-member Venezuela, state-owned producer PDVSA requested partners to pay for naphtha imports, which it is contractually obliged to provide itself, to produce exportable crudes.  Reuters
Kuwait has awarded KD9.7 billion ($32.2 billion) worth of project contracts in 2015, up 20 per cent over the previous year, said a report.



Of this, over half of the contracts signed are related to the oil and gas sector, as Kuwait attempts to reach its oil production target of 4 million barrels per day (b/d) by 2020, stated the National Bank of Kuwait in its review.



In July 2015, Kuwait awarded the long-delayed new refinery contract at Al-Zour for KD3.9 billion and the contract for the development of the Lower Fars Heavy Oil production facility in the north of the country for KD1.2 billion, stated the country's top lender citing data from business intelligence service Meed.



In the transportation sector, the authorities also awarded the KD1.3 billion contract to build the new terminal building at Kuwait International Airport.



Once completed, the project should see airport passenger capacity double to 15 million passengers by 2020, it stated.



Looking ahead, 2016 should also be a bumper year, with the authorities planning to sign deals worth KD16.7 billion ($55 billion) before year-end, said the NBK.



This comes at a time when Kuwait is expected to record its first actual budget deficit in 16 years, of KD4.7 billion (11.6 per cent of GDP) by the close of FY15/16.



The government, for its part, has shown no sign of cutting capital expenditure, stressing that development projects are to move ahead in 2016, stated the country's top lender.



Despite the more than 70 per cent drop in oil prices since mid-2014 and the huge uncertainties facing the global oil and gas industry in the low oil price environment, Kuwait has pressed ahead with its energy-related development spending, emerging as the regions biggest market for oil and gas projects in 2015.



On the power and water sector, NBK said 2016 is expected to be a landmark year for the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) as it plans to award KD2 billion ($6.6 billion) worth of public private partnership (PPP) contracts.



With Phase 1 of Al-Zour North IWPP completed and close to reaching commercial capacity in the coming months, KAPP has issued the main contract bid for phase 2 of the project, which aims to produce 1,800 megawatts (MW) of electricity and 464,100 cubic meters a day of desalinated water, stated the Kuwaiti lender.



The main contract bid is set for February 2016, with a planned budget of KD820 million ($2.7 billion), it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia), the kingdom's national carrier, plans to raise as much as SR5 billion ($1.33 billion) in Islamic bonds in the second quarter to refinance existing debt and purchase new aircraft, an airline official said.



Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia), the kingdom's national carrier, plans to raise as much as SR5 billion ($1.33 billion) in Islamic bonds (sukuk) in the second quarter to refinance existing debt and purchase new aircraft, an airline official said.



Saudia is in negotiations with local banks, the airline's director-general Saleh al-Jasser was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg interview on the sidelines of the Bahrain airshow.



A Saudia spokesman confirmed the details to Reuters.



The carrier is planning to expand its fleet to 200 aircraft by 2020 from a current fleet of 157, according to a fleet tracking website. It will receive 29 new aircraft in 2016 as it plans to increase frequency on some existing routes as well as launch new routes to the Maldives, Munich, Algiers and Ankara, the spokesman said.



It will also retire about 19 aircraft in the coming years.



Saudia placed an order for 30 A320neo planes and 20 A330-300 Regional aircraft worth around $8.2 billion at the Paris airshow last year, to be used for domestic and regional routes.



The delivery and financing of these aircraft will be done by Islamic financing in a sale and leaseback deal with Dubai-based International Airfinance Corporation (IAFC).  Reuters
BILLINGS, Mont. Federal officials must re-examine a 117 million-ton expansion of a Montana coal mine after a judge sided with environmentalists who sued over the projects potential to make climate change worse and cause other environmental damage.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters gave the Interior Department nine months to look again at the proposal for the Spring Creek mine near the Wyoming border. In its prior review, the agency failed to take a hard look at the expansion, Watters wrote.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, WildEarth Guardians, is pursuing a broad legal campaign against the coal industry, through lawsuits challenging decisions affecting 11 mines in five states. The group has sought to highlight how burning the fuel contributes to climate change.

Watters decision follows similar rulings affecting two coal mines in Colorado and hits to the industry from company bankruptcies and falling domestic and international demand for coal. Plus, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell imposed a moratorium last week on new coal sales from public lands pending a review of the program that is expected to take up to three years.

Canceling the permit for the expansion of the Spring Creek mine would trigger layoffs for most of the mines 275 workers, mine owner Cloud Peak Energy has warned. The expansion would keep mining going at least through 2022.

But the government violated public notice provisions in its handling of Cloud Peaks mining application, Watters said in her ruling Thursday.

Much of the judges findings were in line with recommendations from U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby, who reviewed the case last year. But Watters nine-month deadline is three months longer than Ostby recommended, coming after government officials said they needed more time to finish the required work.

Watters ordered monthly updates on the Interior Departments progress and said the deadline could be extended if necessary.

The two other plaintiffs in the case  the Northern Plains Resource Council and Western Organization of Resource Councils  had claimed in part that Cloud Peak did not successfully restore previously mined lands.
So when they butt-stroked me to the head from an AK-47 and I was bleeding down the side of my face and they threw me back in the cell I could
Gold prospectors hear Yukon miner

The Casper Chapter of the Gold Prospectors Association of America will hold the first meeting of 2016 at 7 p.m., on Wednesday at the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission Building, 2211 King Blvd. The speaker is Derek Dodge, who has been seen on the Gold Rush show on the Discovery Channel. He will be talking about his mining operation in the Yukon, which is different that the show depicts it. He will bring example of the gold he finds. Everyone is invited, so come early to ensure a seat. Enter through the east door. For more information about GPAA or the Casper chapter, or about prospecting in general, contact Rick Messina at 234-0244.

Republican central committee meets

The Natrona County Republican Party will be hosting a Central Committee meeting to discuss the upcoming County Caucus, County Convention and State Convention at 6 p.m., on Wednesday, at the Ramkota Hotel. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Following that discussion, Natrona County legislators will be addressing issues for the 2016 Budget Session and answering questions pertaining to budget items. All registered Republicans are encouraged to attend, however only precinct committeemen and women are eligible to vote on pending business.

Dems talk ward-based voting

Precinct organizers will focus on the big picture of the ward-based voting system at the Thursday meeting of the Natrona County Democrats. Foundation information about the change will be shared followed by attendees working to add the base data to their organizing tool kits.

The training has been set for 6:30 p.m., Thursday at the IBEW Hall, 691 English Dr. Potluck, party provides main entree, attendees bring the sides. Brief business meeting follows at 7, and ward-based training is at 7:30 p.m.

Precinct leaders, organizers and supporters are asked to place this meeting on their calendars and bring someone to learn and help.

RSVP your intentions to attend to Dorothy Bullard, 265-0717 or bdorothy@tribcsp.com or to Cherie Schoonover, 265-6597 or gschoonover@bresnan.net

History hobbyists hear Cooper

The next meeting will be at 7 p.m., on Thursday at the Oil & Gas Commission Bldg., 2221 King Blvd. The program will be given by NCHS member Doug Cooper, the grandson of the first president of the Natrona County Historical Society and the fifth generation of his family to live in Wyoming. He operates his familys ranch, which has been in operation in central Wyoming since 1889. The title of his talk is Rise and Fall of the Sheep Industry in Wyoming, which encompasses the whole historical period, but focuses mostly on the time from World War II until the present. Most history written on the subject ends with the Great Depression, but he will discuss the scandals and political failures that had an industry that once had 6 million sheep in Wyoming decline to the present 275,000 head. For more information, call Robin at 259-4174.

Murie Audubon plans banquet

The Murie Audubon Societys annual banquet and fundraiser will be held on Saturday, February 6, 2016, at the Parkway Plaza Hotel. The evening will start with a social hour/cash bar at 5:30 p.m. At this time you will also be able to check out the raffle items (raffle tickets will be for sale) and the silent auction items up for bids. The dinner will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets for the banquet are $35 each, or $250 for a table of eight and are available from Murie Audubon Board members or call 234-7455 for tickets. Proceeds will go to the Community Naturalist Program and Murie education projects.

The guest speaker will be Dr. Patrick Magee, Thornton Chair of Biology at Western State Colorado University in Gunnison. He will talk about ravens, a species that has increased considerably throughout western North America in the last 50 years. The title of Dr. Magees talk is An Unkindness of Ravens.

Pioneers meet Feb. 7

The Natrona County Pioneer Association will conduct its Winter Quarterly luncheon meeting Sunday, February 7 at 12:30 p.m., at the Parkway Plaza Adrian room. The cost of the luncheon is $10. Bruce McGirr will talk about the Battle of Red Buttes. Anyone interested is invited to attend. Contact Vaughn Cronin at 315-4659 for reservations or more information.

Spring for Casper Charla

Would you like to practice conversational Spanish or help others learn? Come and join the Casper Charla! Te gustaria platicar en espanol? Ven y charla con nosotros! Todos son bienvenidos!

Come and join us from 5 to 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month this spring. We meet at a different Mexican restaurant and partake in food, drink and conversation. All levels of Spanish are welcome, from beginning to native speakers.

Nos reunimos los miercoles en varios restaurantes mexicanos en Casper. Ven por una copa, un antojito o simplemente una charlita.

Wednesday: Tacos Mexico, Feb. 10: La Costa, March 9: Don Juans, April 13: Guadalajara, May 11: La Cocina.

For more information, call Eric Atkins at 268-3116 or Joanne Theobald at 268-2255.

NARFE has social

Casper Chapter #358 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) will have a no-host Social Meeting on February 23, 2016 at noon in the meeting room at the Casper Senior Center at 1831 West 4th Street.

Constitution Party meets

The Constitution Party holds a meeting/caucus from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds Arena classrooms. There is no admission charge. For more information, call Pam Elrod at 472-0884.

Boy Scout, Cub Scout meetings

The River Bend District Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs in Casper are always eager to accept new members. Boys may join at any time of the year. Following is a list of Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops that meet weekly in Casper, along with leader names, phone numbers, meeting places and meeting times.

Cub Scout Packs:

Monday, 6 p.m., First Christian Church, Pack 1013, Scott Hawley, 258-4572

Tuesday, 6 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Pack 1121, Lindy Schweda, 315-2390

Tuesday, 5 p.m., St. Marks Episcopal Church, Pack 1094, Sarah Ann Feeney, 267-4505

Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., Elks Lodge, Pack 1167, Eric Nelson, 333-2796

Thursday, 7 p.m., Our Saviours Lutheran Church, Pack 1030, Brian Bridges, 262-5226

Thursday, 7 p.m., Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, Pack 1002, Tom McCarthy, 277-1420

Boy Scout Troops:

Monday, 7 p.m., First Christian Church, Troop 1013, Steven Hollister, 337-1197

Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., St. Marks Episcopal Church, Troop 1094, Gregg Novotny, 215-4490

Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., Elks Lodge, Troop 1167, Adam Sievers, 333-4575

Tuesday, 7 p.m., Christ United Methodist Church, Troop 1060, Nancy Engstrom, 237-2205

Information provided by Sarah (Sally) Binkley, 250-7290.
Celebrate Recovery every Friday

Looking for a nontraditional approach to recovery from your hurts, habits and hangups? Celebrate Recovery meets every Friday at 5:30 p.m. at Highland Park Community Church, just south of Elkhorn Valley Rehabilitation Hospital on East Second Street. Join us in a welcoming, positive environment where you can come as you are! We start with a family meal, followed by praise and worship. At 7 p.m., theres either a lesson from Celebrate Recoverys planned curriculum or a testimony by a person who has found recovery through Christ. Then, people go to gender-specific small groups until 8:30 p.m., when dessert and fellowship conclude the evening. Child care is available at no cost. For more information, contact Chris at 265-4073.

Photos with Mac OS

The Natrona County Library will offer a Photos with Mac OS computer class Monday at 10 a.m. in the Crawford Room. Learn how to organize, store, and edit your photos; create photo slideshows; order prints; make greeting cards; build albums and even perform automatic face detection. Feel free to bring your MacBook with you to follow along. Call 577-READ ext. 2 for more information.

Family continues suicide support

Good Grief, Support will continue 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Wednesdays at the 12-24 Club, 500 S. Wolcott, by request of attendees. The family of J.R. Hunter who died from suicide in June 2015 began the support prior to the especially tough holiday season. Anyone who is grieving a suicide, death, or considering suicide is welcome and encouraged to attend. All attending this meeting, as well as the content, will be strictly confidential.

The Fresh Start Cafe will be open and you can eat during the meetings. This meeting place was graciously offered by Dan Cantine of the 12-24 Club, you need not be a member to attend our meetings.

Resources for small businesses

Join us Monday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Natrona County Librarys Crawford Room to learn more about the valuable assistance available to support Wyomings businesses and economy. Funding from the State of Wyoming and local and federal government resources supports a wide variety of business services, most of which are free of charge. This presentation will connect you with the expertise in the Wyoming Business Resource Network, and you will learn how they can serve your business  from start-up to expansion, to exit, and everything in-between! There is no fee for this seminar, but please register by calling 577-READ ext. 2 or visiting http://wyen.biz, and clicking on Classes. This event is organized by the Wyoming Entrepreneur Small Business Development Center in coordination with the Natrona County Library.

Introduction to Windows 10

The Natrona County Library will offer an Introduction to Windows 10 computer class Thursday at 2 p.m. in the Crawford Room. Whether youre new to computers or have used them in the past, this class will help you become more comfortable using the Windows 10 interface. Feel free to bring your Windows 10 device with you to follow along. Call 577-READ ext. 2 for more information.

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:

Casper: Jan. 26, Vet Center, 1030 N. Poplar, Ste. B, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Jan. 27 at the VA Clinic, 4140 S. Poplar, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; Jan. 25, Casper College Veterans Center, Goodstein Foundation Library, Room 108A, 1 to 4 p.m.

Douglas: Jan. 28, 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.

Saturday morning watercolor

Art 321, Casper Artists Guild has reopened with our first exhibit of the new year, Anything Goes.

Saturday morning watercolor classes have begun, 10 a.m. to noon, with the following lineup of classes: January 30, practice session; February 6, trees, instructed by Jennifer Morss; February 13, practice session; February 20, reflections and shadows; February 27, practice session.

For more information or questions about these classes, please call Ellen Black at 265-6783.

We are looking forward to our next busy year of classes, workshops, exhibits and the making and sharing art!

Wedding Showcase Jan. 31

The VOWS Wyoming Wedding Showcase is noon to 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 31, at the Parkway Plaza. VIP tickets are $25, general admission are $15, available only at Christinas, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vendors will be there and so will Randy Fenoli, fashion and beauty expert and star of TLCs Say Yes to the Dress, and Randy to the Rescue. He will take the stage before or after the 2 p.m., fashion show and be available for questions. VIP tickets include front seating, a meet and greet and photo opportunity with Randy. The show is presented by Chris Reed of Christinas.

Workshop at Art 321

ART 321 Casper Artists Guild workshop for February: Upholstery workshop, instructed by Connie Atkinson (Hi-Mark Upholstery), will be held for three consecutive months: First session, Saturday and Sunday, February 20 and 21, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; second session, Saturday and Sunday, March 19and 20, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Third and final session, Saturday and Sunday, April 16 and 17, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fee is $60 for members/$80 for non-members + a $10 supply fee. Open to all levels. Register on line or stop by the gallery please.

Order trees from extension office

Premium quality seedling trees, shrubs and perennials are available for windbreaks and wildlife habitat enhancement from the UW/Natrona County Extension. Order forms are available at the Agriculture Resource and Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Road, Casper, WY 82604.

For more information, call Rose Jones at 235-9400.

There are 40 species available: Bareroot species are 25 for $30; large tubed species, 30 for $83; small tubed species, 30 for $70; small trays are 50 for $99; XL potted species are $12 each. Order now for best selection with May delivery.

Healing seminar set

A Conscious co-creation/self-transformation and healing seminar taught by Cathy Hazel Adams, practitioner in Intuitive Quantum Transformation and Energy Healing, will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Feb. 20-21 at the Agricultural Resources Learning Center, 2011 Fairgrounds Road. Price is $130. For more information or to register, visit www.cathyhazeladams.com or call 307-797-9677.

Free tax help begins

The Wyoming Free Tax Service (VITA) will be opening January 26, 2016, and running through April 13, 2016. Our hours will be Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. We will be closed on Sunday and Monday as well as Easter Weekend, Friday March 25, and Saturday, March 26. Our location is the Aspen Creek Building, 800 Werner Court, Suite 180. This is a first come, first serve service so no appointments will be scheduled. Please bring your social security card, photo identification and appropriate paperwork that is needed, or we will not be able to assist you in your tax return.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call (307) 315-1830 during our hours of operation. www.wyomingfreetaxservice.org

Powerful tools for caregivers free

Wyoming Dementia Care is offering family caregivers of those with dementia-related illnesses, including Alzheimers, a new self-care education program called Powerful Tools for Caregivers. The free class will meet each Tuesday for six weeks, beginning Tuesday, February 2 and ending on Tuesday, March 8 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Central Wyoming Senior Services, 1831 E. 4th St.

Powerful Tools for Caregivers is a nationally recognized, evidence-based program that provides caregivers with the tools and strategies they need to better handle the unique challenges of caregiving. The six-week curriculum includes self- care options for relaxation and exercise, ways to reduce emotions like guilt and anger, how to confidently manage caregiving demands and suggestions on how to use local resources.

The three hour per week class is provided at no cost to caregivers by Wyoming Dementia Care in collaboration with Powerful Tools for Caregivers, with partial funding from a Wyoming Geriatric Education Center grant. Class size is limited and pre-registration is required. Call Dani Guerttman at Wyoming Dementia Care, 265-4678, for information.

Open Sky Meditation Saturday Morning Sits

Open Sky Meditation Group is offering a three-hour meditation practice on the second Saturday of each month through May.

Meditation will start at 9 a.m. and end at noon.

First hour will be meditation instruction. Second hour will be open meditation. Third hour will be a guided meditation.

On Feb. 13 and May 14, we will meet in the yoga room 101 at Skelton Energy Institute, Casper College.

On March 12 and April 9, we will meet in room 217 of Strausner Hall, Casper College.

These sits are open to all. Please feel free to come and leave as your schedule dictates. We hope to see you there. If you have questions, feel free to call Gale Sleep at 307-251-6959.

Here and Now: Dementia-focused monthly art class

Every third Tuesday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m. There is no charge. Here and Now is a program made possible through a collaboration between Wyoming Dementia Care and the Nicolaysen Art Museum. It is designed to provide a supportive environment for people with dementia and Alzheimers and their loved ones. The class offers a chance to experience sensory and intellectual stimulation, communicate through art and explore various art media including paint, clay, collage and printmaking.

To register for class contact Dani with Wyoming Dementia Care 265-4678, ext. 106, or at wyodementia@casperseniorcenter.com or Zhanna Gallegos at 235-5247 or at zgallegos@thenic.org

City seeks boomer input

The City of Casper is updating a 2008 study that evaluated how boomer friendly the Casper community is and what services or programs are needed to support that population. Casper area residents aged 50 and older are asked to complete a survey to help identify what has changed from 2008 and how the city can best help to meet the needs of this growing population segment. The survey can be picked up at the Casper Senior Center, Casper City Hall or the Casper Recreation Center or can be accessed online at the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CprSrSurvey.

The survey link can also be found on the City of Casper and Casper Senior Services websites. Public forums and focus groups will follow the survey process. The study committee is scheduled to meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Casper Senior Center. The meetings are open to the public. Recommendations from the study will be presented at public meetings for additional input prior to submission to the City Council.

The plan is slated for completion in late spring of 2016.

Adult learning hours

Fall hours for the Adult Learning Center at Casper College are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and Wednesday and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. The center is closed between 11 a.m. and noon each day and all day Friday and weekends.

The Adult Learning Center offers free assessment and instruction to out-of-school adult students, 16 years old and older, who need to improve their basic reading, writing and math skills in order to reach their educational and employment goals, said Chelse DePaolo-Lara, director.

According to DePaolo-Lara, the Adult Learning Center also provides classes for people who want to improve their English language skills or prepare to take the citizenship exam. English as a Second Language classes are offered from 9:30 to 11 a.m. and noon to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. An evening session is also offered from 6:15 to 7:45 p.m. Tuesdays.

The Adult Learning Center at Casper College is located in the Werner Technical Center on the Casper College campus, and all programs offered at the center are free of charge. For more information, call the center at 268-2230 or visit caspercollege.edu/alc.

Casper Family Literacy program

A local nonprofit organization, Casper Family Literacy is a free program designed to give families an opportunity to earn their HSEC/GED or ESL. While parents are attending classes, we take care of their children in a high-quality preschool and infant/toddler program. Come see us at 500 S. Wolcott St., suite 103, or call us at 472-5640 for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

Food pantry open

Poverty Resistance Food Pantry, 450 S. Wolcott St., in cooperation with the Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies, has fresh produce and other perishable food items for distribution to low-income families. The pantry is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Sunday to make the food more accessible to low-income working folks. Food availability info is posted on Mary Anns Facebook page whenever a new shipment arrives. Income guidelines and verification are less rigid than many other programs. Generally, if a family is eligible for free lunch or CHIP, they are eligible for the food pantry.

Monthly healing service

Christ Episcopal Church, 415 W. Cedar St. in Glenrock, announces the addition of a monthly healing service to our schedule. A Public Service of Healing is a traditional liturgy in the church, and all are invited to come for comfort and support. The service will be held at 6 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month. For info, call Deacon Leigh Earle, 258-2524. The Episcopal Church welcomes you!

Flag drop box

The American Legion Post 2 of Casper has a flag drop box (for retired flags) on Seventh Street off Center Street in front of the Elks Lodge. It is a red, white and blue old mailbox that was donated by the Sons of the American Legion. The flags are collected and disposed of in the proper manner. God bless America and our brave service members, past and present.
Tuesday support meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 6:30 a.m., 917 N. Beech; 10 a.m., 328 E. A St.; noon, 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 5:30 p.m., 456 S. Walnut; 7 p.m., 520 CY Ave., Quick Fix (in back, basement); 7 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 7 p.m., Edgerton: 763 Center St.; 7:30 p.m., Douglas, 628 E. Richards; 8 p.m., 917 N. Beech. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: 307-351-1688.

Narcotics Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 7 p.m., 15th and Melrose, at the church. Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Free tax help begins

The Wyoming Free Tax Service (VITA) opens Tuesday and runs through April 13. Our hours will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. We will be closed on Sunday and Monday as well as Easter Weekend, March 25-26. Our location is in the Aspen Creek Building, 800 Werner Court, suite 180. This service is offered on a first-come, first-served basis so no appointments will be scheduled. Please bring your social security card, photo identification and appropriate paperwork or we will not be able to assist you in your tax return.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call 307-315-1830 during our hours of operation or visit www.wyomingfreetaxservice.org.

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 health care at the following places and times: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Casper Vet Center, 1030 N. Poplar St., suite B

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.

Petroleum ladies hear vocalist

The January luncheon for the Ladies of the Petroleum Club is 12:30 p.m. Alicia Roberts, soprano, will sing love songs in advance of Valentines Day. Roberts is a music instructor at Casper College and has performed through Artcore. The telephone committee will call for reservations. If you have not been called and wish to attend, please call Metta Martin at 235-1044 or Mary Walford at 237-8191.

English speakers form group

A new club at Casper College is seeking English-speaking participants. CHAT, the English Conversation Club, will meet for the first time.

According to Janet DeVoogd, English as a Second Language instructor with the Adult Learning Center at Casper College, English speakers are needed to help students whose native language is not English. This is a great opportunity for people to meet international students, enjoy international food and help others at the same time, she said.

The group will meet from 11 a.m. to noon in the Adult Learning Center at Casper College in the Werner Technical Center, room 105. DeVoogd asks that those attending bring a snack to share if they are able to as well as a smile. Other dates for the group to get-together are Feb. 9, Feb. 23, March 8, March 22, April 5, April 19 and May 5, which will include a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

For more information, contact DeVoogd at 268-2230 or janet.devoogd@caspercollege.edu.

NARFE meets

Casper Chapter No. 358 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association will have a business meeting at noon in the meeting room at the Casper Senior Center at 1831 E. Fourth St. The guest speaker will be Carol Crump. She will be making a presentation on the progress of the boomer study in Casper. This is an update of the 2008 study that evaluated how boomer friendly the Casper community is.

OLLI signup

The Spring Fling signup for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Casper College will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Nolte Gateway Center.

This spring more than 50 classes will be offered both during the day and at night. New classes to the schedule include Take Me Out to the Ballgame I; A Taste of Life During WWII; Japanese Culture, Society and a Concert; The Irish Potato Famine; The Twenty-Photo Travelogue; How to Read a Painting I; and more.

Numerous favorites from past years return as well. A special class featuring Japanese Fulbright Scholar Hiroki Yamamoto and Lisa Icenogle, The Power of Seven: The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, will be taught in three sessions.

The OLLI Sprig Fling signup will be held in the Chapman Lobby on the second floor of the Nolte Gateway Center on the Casper College campus. Registration numbers will be given out beginning at 3:30 p.m. For those unable to attend the signup, registrations will be taken by phone or in person after Jan. 26. To register by phone, members may call 268-2097 or 268-2099. The OLLI office is in room 408 in the Nolte Gateway Center for those wishing to register in person.

Family movie night

Both families and individuals (ages 8 and up) are invited to the Natrona County Public Librarys family movie night at 6:30 p.m. in the Crawford Room. Januarys feature recounts the tale of Stuart, Kevin and Bob who are recruited by Scarlet Overkill, a super-villain plotting to take over the world. Pizza will be provided by the Friends of the Library. Call 577-READ, ext. 2, for the movie title (rated PG).
The Bureau of Land Management has granted the City of Caspers request that two parcels of land be removed from an oil and gas lease sale in the Cole Creek Road area.

The City Council last week sent a letter to the BLM asking for the withdrawal of two of 12 parcels in the sale scheduled for Feb. 2. The Cole Creek Road subdivision sits in the middle of some 22,000 acres being put up for lease. Eliminating the two parcels will remove some 7,000 acres on the western side of lease area.

The city has been in negotiations with Wyoming Land Acquisition Partners, LLC, of Scottsdale, Arizona, for several months about the possible annexation. The city prohibits oil and gas development within its borders, and there was concern if the parcels were leased, the property in the Brooks Ranch area could not be annexed.

In a notice Thursday, the BLM said it will defer lands within the annexation area from leasing until the City of Casper makes its final decision on the application for annexation, or it is determined that an application for annexation is no longer anticipated.

The BLM has a policy of not leasing land within incorporated communities.

Meanwhile, the BLM has not issued any decisions on at least three other letters of protest. Cole Creek area resident Linda Ransom listed a host of issues in her letter challenging the sale.

Round-the-clock noise, near constant truck traffic at all hours, storage tanks, drums of toxic chemicals, inadequately remediated pits, noxious fumes, pipelines, poisoned wells and stock ponds, earthquakes, possible well blowouts, loss of night skies, and very possibly disposal of waste on private property, Ransom wrote. This would be a constant and unbearable nuisance  not to mention the devaluation of the properties.

The BLM had failed to reassess the lease sale following the Station Fire in October, Ransom said.

Even after the devastating personal loss to many residents of Cole Creek by the Station Fire (Cole Creek Fire October 11, 2015), our own Casper District BLM office is intent on issuing oil & gas leases in the densely populated unincorporated subdivision known as the Cole Creek area, which contains over 490 residences Ransom said. It may be a little known fact that a very large number of the residents were giving so selflessly, and so deeply occupied trying to give aid to those who lost everything, or even those who lost some, they certainly were not able to keep up with what the BLM was intent on doing.

Many of Ransoms concerns were mirrored in protests filed by Wild Earth Guardians and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

Julia Stuble, Outdoor Council public lands advocate, said oil and gas development in such a populated area raised a host of safety issues.

You have a rural subdivision, you have kids on bikes riding down dirt roads, and livestock, and dogs; and, the truck traffic that will increase from oil and gas drilling will be pretty astronomical. That is a safety issue, she said. Theres concerns about air quality, and water quality, from drilling so close to home sites  theres myriad reasons around public health that we think makes this leasing, and the development, inappropriate.

There are 52 parcels in the Feb. 2 federal lease sale covering some 46,000 acres in central and eastern Wyoming, including some in the vicinity of the proposed 4,250-well Moneta Divide project bordering Natrona County.
I could not do this job without her, Pollock said.

Briefly, what is OLLI and how long has it been in Casper? We started in 2007. There are Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes all over the country in every state, funded by the Bernard Osher Foundation. Higher retirement states like Florida have more than one. There is at least one in every single state, and we are the only OLLI program in Wyoming. At first it was grant funded and then after meeting all of the requirements, we were given a $1 million endowment.

The target age group is 50, but I want to stress that anybody can be an OLLI member as long as they are 18 years old. We have members who never got to go to college and they still love to learn. All kinds of people love taking our classes, there is no test taking, its not going to be like

your standard 16-week class. People dont want to commit to 16 weeks of a particular subject; they like subject shopping. I call it a liberal arts program for advanced learners, you know, older adults.

Will you tell us about some of the more unique courses? Where do I start? Especially in the early days, we were going everywhere that we could go, we got some really wonderful support from people on campus. Because my husband works for Game & Fish, they came and taught for us, and we still have a great partnership with them and people from the actual college community. We have citizen instructors from all over the community, its a lot easier to find instructors now that people know what were doing. Craig Johnson (creator of Longmire) teaches a class for us in Buffalo every fall and people just love that. Another really lovely one is Larry Cappetto, who is a documentarian and musician. He comes and shows his documentaries. They are history based and he is really interested in talking to veterans before we lose them  hes done them on World War II, Korea, Vietnam. This semester he will do a class about the Holocaust and one about 9/11. We offer a lot of travel opportunities and get to see things you might not get to see if you went by yourself. When we take The Birds of a Feather trip to the Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge, you go on tours with volunteers, get a backstage view, an insiders view if you will, of what happens there.

Whats the Spring Fling sign up? Its 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday on the second floor of the Walter Nolte Gateway Building. We start handing out numbers at 3:30 p.m. An annual membership is good for the calendar year January through December, for all three of our semesters, spring, summer and fall. An annual membership is $55 and is good for two complimentary classes this spring and in the fall. Additional classes are $8 each. If its food related or a field trip, we do have to attach a fee that everybody pays. Karens done a very good job over the years of perfecting the sign up process, so it runs as smoothly as possible.

If Tuesday doesnt work, is there another way to sign up? Some classes are limited enrollment wise. If its food related, we can only take 16 in a teaching kitchen. Larger classes like movie classes can take up to 100 in a big teaching space. I suspect the tour of Backwards Distilling Company is going to fill. What we try to do is look very closely at what fills up and has a long waiting list and if at all possible, try to talk that instructor into doing it the following semester. After Tuesday, registration may be done in person at the OLLI office, Gateway Building, Room 408, or call Karen at 268-2099 to register by phone (credit card payments only).
CHEYENNE  Opting to look for cuts instead of tapping additional state savings, lawmakers are recommending a two-year budget plan that reduces Gov. Matt Meads rainy-day fund request by nearly a quarter billion dollars.

The Legislatures Joint Appropriations Committee finished most of its budget work Friday after spending the last two months reviewing and then crafting the states 2017-18 budget.

The panels spending proposal, which will be up for debate by the full Legislature during next months session, is radically different from the plan Mead put forth in December.

Meads proposal called for using nearly $450 million in state savings to pay for a range of one-time expenses. Thats because revenues are rapidly dropping due to the downturn in the energy sector.

The JAC, meanwhile, is suggesting the Legislature use only $206 million from the $1.8 billion rainy-day fund, formally known as the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account.

And while the governors plan avoided broad budget cuts, the legislative panel is seeking to cut tens of millions of dollars from existing state operations.

This includes the panels move earlier this week to recommend statewide 1 percent standard budget reductions for each year of the upcoming biennium. That would result in about $44 million worth of savings.

The JACs plan also includes a $45.7 million reduction to the states K-12 school funding model and millions of dollars worth of cuts across other agency budgets.

The reality is everyone needs to chip in a little, said JAC co-chairman Sen. Tony Ross, R-Cheyenne.

In a series of other votes this week, the group rejected or reduced many of the governors exception budget requests.

This included cutting Meads request for highways by $10 million, community college building projects by $7.3 million and economic development funds by $6.5 million.

But the highest profile of the committees decisions was its vote Wednesday to reject Meads recommendation to include the optional Medicaid expansion in the Department of Healths budget.

Rep. Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie, made a motion for the group to reconsider the decision during Fridays meeting. But her proposal failed on a voice vote.

Im disappointed in where we are for offering services to people in communities in the state, Connolly said. And the failure to expand Medicaid hurts 20,000 people (who wouldve been eligible for health coverage).

The committee also agreed Friday to settle on spending $90 million in aid for the states cities, towns and counties. Mead originally asked for that amount, but he later upped his request by $33 million.

The group also voted to eliminate about 20 state positions that have been vacant for six months or longer.

Mead ordered a state hiring freeze last month and suggested vacant positions be cut in response to this months news that the states revenue gap is expected to widen by $46.4 for the upcoming biennium.

The JAC also voted Friday to concur with Meads recommendation to divert 1 percent of mineral tax revenues that currently flow into the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund.

But instead of Meads proposal to use that money to backfill his rainy-day fund requests, the JAC wants to use the funds to guarantee there is funding for several capital construction projects.

This includes funding the remaining payments on the Capitol Square Project and spending $45 million for state health facility upgrades, $48 million for the University of Wyomings science initiative and $20 million for a state office building in Casper.

The lawmakers additionally decided how to spend $167.1 million in newly available federal Abandoned Mine Land funds. They want to spend:

$6.8 million for a new Department of Forestry building in Cheyenne;

$5 million for an agriculture and animal science facility at Central Wyoming College in Riverton;

$6 million for a technical education center remodel and expansion for the Northern Wyoming Community College District;

$20 million for the remaining funds needed for the Casper state office building;

$60 million for the remaining funds needed for the UW science initiative;

$70 million for the remaining funds needed for the state health facilities.

The JAC still needs to develop and vote on the states school capital construction funding bill. That decision is expected to be made Feb. 6, the Saturday before the session begins on Feb. 8.

But Ross said he believes the JAC did a good job of making cuts while also paying for important projects.

These are unusual times, he said at the end of Fridays work. We started with about a $465 million operational deficit, and we whittled that down to about $36 million. And we have come up with a model that will get us through the next couple of years.

Connolly is one of the two Democrats on the 12-person panel. In addition to the Medicaid expansion vote, she said she has serious concerns that the cost-cutting moves will hurt state services, unfairly penalize teachers, who could lose pay raises, and spread state agencies too thin.

Already agencies were asked to trim their budget to their bones, she said. And then we went in and cut more. I think these additional cuts could detrimentally impact services.

But both Connolly and Ross agreed that there is plenty of work left to do and plenty of chances for the Legislature to make changes when the session begins.

Just remember, this is part of the process, Connolly said. JAC is a really important part of the process, but we are just a committee.

We have 90 members in the Legislature, and it will now become their bill.
This blog represents my personal views and is not reflective of the views or opinions held by any company, contractor, client or employer I work for currently or have worked for in the past. These views are not an endorsement to take any action in the markets or of any political position, figures or parties.




LONG BEACH, Calif.  Forget about selfies. In California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastlines changing face.

Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern thats bringing California its wettest winter in years  and all in the name of science.

The idea is that crowd-sourced, geotagged images of storm surges and flooded beaches will give scientists a brief window into what the future holds as sea levels rise from global warming, a sort of a crystal ball for climate change.

Images from the latest drones, which can produce high-resolution 3D maps, will be particularly useful and will help scientists determine if predictive models about coastal flooding are accurate, said Matt Merrifield, the organizations chief technology officer.

We use these projected models and they dont quite look right, but were lacking any empirical evidence, he said. This is essentially a way of ground truthing those models.

Experts on climate change agreed that El Nino-fueled storms offer a sneak peak of the future and said the project was a novel way to raise public awareness. Because of its crowd-sourced nature, however, they cautioned the experiment might not yield all the results organizers hoped for, although any additional information is useful.

Its not the answer, but its a part of the answer, said Lesley Ewing, senior coastal engineer with the California Coastal Commission. Its a piece of the puzzle.

In California, nearly a half-million people, $100 billion in property and critical infrastructure such as schools, power plants and highways will be at risk of inundation during a major storm if sea level rises another 4.6 feet  a figure that could become a reality by 2100, according to a 2009 Pacific Institute study commissioned by three state agencies.

Beaches that Californians take for granted will become much smaller or disappear altogether and El Nino-fueled storms will have a similar effect, if only temporarily, said William Patzert, a climatologist for NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

When you get big winter storm surge like they want to document, you tend to lose a lot of beach, he said. In a way, its like doing a documentary on the future. Itll show you what your beaches will look like in 100 years.

What the mapping wont be able to predict is exactly which beaches will disappear and which bluffs will crumble  all things that will affect how flooding impacts coastal populations, said Ewing, the California Coastal Commission engineer.

Were not going to capture that change, she said. Were going to capture where the water could go to with this current landscape and thats still a very important thing to understand because it gets at those hot spots.

So far, project organizers arent giving assignments to participants, although they may send out specific requests as the winter unfolds, said Merrifield.

If users wind up mapping real-time flooding events along 10 or 15 percent of Californias 840-mile-long coastline the project will be a success, he said. A realistic goal is a curated selection of 3D maps showing flooding up and down the coast at different dates and times.

The Nature Conservancy has partnered with a San Francisco-area startup called DroneDeploy that will provide a free app to drone owners for consistency. The app will provide automated flight patterns at the touch of a screen while cloud-based technology will make managing so much data feasible, said Ian Smith, a business developer for the company.

Trent Lukaczyk heard about the experiment from a posting in a Facebook group dedicated to drone enthusiasts. For the aerospace engineer, who has already used drones to map coral reefs in American Samoa, the volunteer work was appealing.

Its a really exciting application. Its not just something to take a selfie with, he said, before heading out to collect images of beach erosion after a storm in Pacifica, California.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Dave Kull has worked in law enforcement for nearly four decades, so perhaps it's no surprise that his musical instrument of choice is one embraced by fire and police brotherhoods for more than a century and a half.

By day, Kull serves as the chief of police of Brandon, a Sioux Falls bedroom community 12 miles northeast of the city. By night, the chief dons his kilt and laces up his Ghillie brogues to play bagpipes for Dakota District Pipes & Drums, a volunteer group that performs at festivals, funerals and other community events.

"Insanity, pure and simple," Kull jokes when asked why he started. Then he pauses and offers a more serious response. "I always just thought it was a neat sound."

For more than 18 years, Kull and Sioux Falls attorney Tom Parliman have served as the core of Sioux Falls-based Dakota District Pipes & Drums, which has "grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk again," Kull said.

The group is again growing, with seven pipers and three drummers belting out tunes during a recent Burns Night gathering honoring Scottish poet Robert Burns. Performances often double as recruiting events.

"We'll play an event and someone will come up and say, 'How do you get started in this?'" Kull said.

Dakota District Pipes & Drums has had an easier time attracting and retaining bagpipers than drummers, even though the bass drum and snares are commonly played by every high school band percussionist.

Parliman, a 35-year bagpiping veteran who serves as pipe major, said he knew he wanted to be a bagpiper as a child. His dad enjoyed big bands, but he was hooked on bagpipes the first time he heard the instrument during a parade.

Parliman has always loved the sound.

"Different people just like different music," he said.

When Kull first started learning to play about 19 years ago, Sioux Falls had no qualified instructors. So once a month he'd make the four-hour trek to Minneapolis, drop his wife off at her sister's house and attend his lessons.

The first step is to learn note fingering on a practice chanter, a foot-long reed instrument disconnected from the bags and pipes. The endeavor grows far more challenging when the player is expected to keep a steady airflow through the bag.

"Then you have to learn breathing and squeezing," Kull said. "Then someone comes along and says you have to march, too."

Parliman and Kull can now teach people to play the bagpipes right in Sioux Falls, and the non-profit group often brings in higher-level outside instructors from Winnipeg. Dakota District Pipes & Drums offers all of its lessons for free during its Monday practice session inside the VA Hospital's auditorium.

Students must make their first investment when it's time to buy their own set of pipes, which typically run about $1,500.

"They have to buy their own pipe, but we usually front the kilt when they're coming into the band," he said.

And that's no small expense. The group sends the fabric and measurements up to a woman in Canada who hand stitches each garment at a cost of about $400 per kilt. Bagpipers complete their outfits with a white dress shirt, a black vest, a black tie and Ghillie brogues, which are wingtip shoes with the tongue removed and extra-long laces that tie up the white kilt hose. Accessories include a sporran bag and a sgian-dubh, a small knife tucked into the hose.

The bagpipers have traveled to Winnipeg for competitions and have played funerals, weddings and Mount Rushmore Independence Day celebrations. St. Patrick's Day is a particularly popular time, although the group prefers to play indoor events rather than the city's annual parade.

"It doesn't play well in cold weather," Kull said.

___

Follow Dirk Lammers on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ddlammers
The corner of South Wilmot Road and East Broadway is about to become even more sandwich centric.

Construction has begun on Corner Bakery Cafe, right next door to the months-old Kneaders Bakery & Cafe on the Wilmot side of the corner that was once home to El Mercado shopping center. Jim Gore of El Paso, Texas-based Bakery Ventures, the company building the Tucson restaurant, said he hopes to be open by the end of May.

We like our brand and we think we will do well in Tucson," said Gore, whose company owns several Applebees and Village Inn restaurants in west Texas and southern New Mexico; the Tucson restaurant will be the company's sixth Corner Bakery location.

We looked at Tucson and we really like it," he said, adding that he and his partners would like to open two or three restaurants in the Tucson area. "It is a competitive market. We just feel like we will be embraced well and we will be a good fit"

A driveway will separate Corner Bakery from its competitor Kneaders, which opened last July, nine months after both national chains announced plans to build on the lot that was once the El Mercado shopping center. El Mercado was demolished in spring 2013 to make way for a CVS store that anchors the Wilmot/Broadway corner.

When they announced their plans in November 2014, neither apparently knew of the other's plans, officials from both said at the time. A driveway separates both restaurants, which are located in an area with several other sandwich shops including Tucson's own Beyond Bread, located up the road at North Wilmot Road and East Speedway.

Gore said Corner Bakery is known for its handcrafted sandwiches on house-made bread and freshmade soups and salads. But its grilled panini sandwiches are its calling card, he said. They are made with fresh ingredients including arugala, pestos, basil, artichokes and other vegetables, as well as a wide selection of cheeses and meats.

Were fast casual, but the quality of our food is really a notch up, Gore said.

Corner Bakery will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its breakfast menu includes its popular pancakes, a selection of scramblers and steel-cut oatmeal topped with fruit. His favorite breakfast item, though, actually comes from the sweets menu: Corner Bakery's signature cinnamon creme cake, which Gore said he eats nearly daily.
It can be hard having to spend time in the hospital. There is the room you aren't familiar with, the tests while hospital staff try to find out what is wrong with you, and the wires and needles you are stuck with. Then there is the IV stand. For an adult, this can be a daunting task; just getting up and moving around can be difficult. Things that we take for granted, like getting up to use the bathroom, become a time consuming effort. Making sure you don't pull something out or get tangled.

Now imagine you are a child. Imagine being the child's parent? You want to help take their mind off of being in the hospital. Well, now you have something extra in your toolbox.

After seeing a story about lily pads: a piece of wood that is painted and placed on the base of an IV stand that is used as a seat for a patient, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Craig Bailey, 355th Equipment Maintenance Squadron commander, contacted one of his Senior NCOs to see how hard it would be to replicate for the children's hospital here in town and if they would want them. That is when things started rolling.

We met with a child life specialist at the Diamond Children's Center at Banner University Medical Center. We also reached out to a local woodworker, who helped develop the prototype to make sure it would work right before mass production started. We even had a test pilot from the hospital take the prototype for a spin to make sure it would work.

Airmen donated the lumber, tools, and time to cut them all out and then Airmen assigned to the 355th EMS and 355th Medical Group and their families decorated them. The Lily pads were decorated as superheroes, lady bugs, cartoons and even an A-10s. After they were painted a clear coated was added for patients with latex allergies and to help with cleaning and disinfecting after use.

Airman from the 355th EMS created a rack and design for the lily pads so the kids could pick out the pad they want without having to go through a stack.
A telephone poll of voters in Arizona Congressional District 2 has former state Representative Victoria Steele trailing incumbent Martha McSally but is slightly ahead of her Democratic rival, former state representative Matt Heinz.

The new poll by Public Policy Polling has Steele, a Democrat, within single digits of the Republican incumbent in a hypothetical general election match-up.

In a poll of 714 CD2 voters, 48 percent said they would vote for the retired Air Force colonel and a former A-10 fighter pilot compared to 39 percent, a Democrat who represented Arizonas 9th District in the State House of Representatives since 2012.

Fellow Democrat Matt Heinz did slightly worse in a hypothetical match-up against McSally, with 35 percent backing him and McSally getting 48 percent.

The poll, conducted by telephone between January 15-18, has an estimated margin of error 3.6 percent.

The Steele campaign, who commissioned the poll, believes this puts her in a good position in the swing district.

Southern Arizonans recognize that Victoria will fight just as hard for them as their Congresswoman, as she did for them as their State Representative. If this momentum continues, and Victoria continues to outperform Heinz in polls, as I believe she will, Victoria Steele will be the Democratic nominee to face Martha McSally next November, said Keith Rosendahl, the campaign manager for Steele for Congress.

Justin Mayhew with Public Policy Polling agreed with Rosendahl.

In our latest poll, former State Rep. Victoria Steele emerges as the strongest challenger to incumbent Martha McSally, said Mayhew. McSallys failure to clear the 50 percent threshold is a telltale sign that Novembers general election will be tight once again, after the 2014 race ended with McSally winning by just 167 votes."

Steele mounts a strong challenge to McSally despite just 35 percent name recognition, Mayhew said.

Other highlights of the poll include:

 In a hypothetical matchup against McSally, Steele wins with women, Democrats, Hispanics, and African-Americans. Steele trails just six points  39 percent vs 45 percent  among young voters (ages 18 to 45) and she is behind just one point 44 percent vs 45 percentwith middle-aged voters (ages 46 to 65).

 Steele and Heinz are both polling at 29 percent, but 41 percent of Democratic primary voters have not yet decided whom they will support.
PHOENIX  Insisting there must be fraud taking place, a Republican-controlled House committee voted Monday to make it a felony to take someone else's early ballot to a polling place.

The 4-2 party-line vote came after a series of speakers, many with links to the Republican Party, said they have heard of situations where groups collect ballots and then choose to turn in only those where the vote is likely to go the way they want. They said that can be as simple as figuring out the political registration of the person whose ballot is being picked up to peering through less-than-opaque envelopes.

More than two hours of testimony, however, turned up no actual evidence beyond hearsay. Even state Elections Director Eric Spencer conceded he could point to no specific instances where someone tossed away someone else's early ballot, something that already is a crime.

But Rep. Michele Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, who chairs the House Education Committee, said it should not be necessary to wait before outlawing what has been termed "ballot harvesting.''

"It increases the opportunity for fraud to exist,'' she said.

And Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said it's irrelevant whether there is fraud or not.

"What is indisputable is that many people believe it's happening,'' he said.
A Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a suspected narcotics smuggler Monday morning along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

The agent fired his service-issued sidearm during a struggle with a suspect around 10:45 a.m. The shooting came as agents were tracking an undisclosed number of suspects who fled a vehicle containing narcotics in a remote area east of Apache, the Border Patrol said in a news release.

First responders provided emergency medical treatment to the suspect, who was flown to an area hospital, the Border Patrol said.

The agency is still gathering information on the incident. More information will be released as it becomes available.

The shooting happened east of Arizona 80 near Skeleton Canyon, according to the Cochise County Sheriff's Office, which responded to a request for assistance from the Border Patrol around 11:20 a.m. The shooting site is in New Mexico, the agency said.

The Hidalgo County, New Mexico, Sheriff's Office has been notified of the incident.
Room C121 is divided into three conjoined areas: a kitchen, traditional classroom and a dining area with several wooden chairs and tables.

Its designed to teach everything a student would need to learn to get into the culinary industry, including safety, sanitation, business planning and, of course, cooking.

When students, ranging from sophomores to seniors, filed into the Sahuarita High School classroom Friday, the room smelled overwhelmingly of sweet bread. Thats because it was cake day, said Esther Skinner, the schools culinary teacher.

The classroom is a place of discipline, as required in any professional kitchen, Skinner said. They understand whats expected of them.

But on this day, she might allow the students to take it a little easy, as some of them have just finished competing in the 2016 Southwest Gas Arizona ProStart Invitational in Flagstaff, a state-level qualifier tournament for a national competition.

ProStart is a two-year nationwide culinary program that reaches nearly 120,000 students, said Tracie Carmel, the ProStart coordinator at the Arizona Restaurant Association. It helps provide support and curriculum to participating schools to help their students come out of school industry-ready.

Sahuarita High Schools program piloted the restaurant management portion of the competition with students Justin Barnes, Carlos Gomez, Gabriella Noriega and Connie Rasmussen, who won first place.

The Sahuarita students presentation on a business plan for an appetizer-only restaurant impressed the judges, Carmel, of the Arizona Restaurant Association, said. Those students will head to Dallas in late April to represent Arizona and compete nationally.

With their success, Carmel said she hopes the restaurant management competition would be in full swing with more schools participating.

Sahuaritas culinary team brought home a second-place trophy, bested only by Mountain View High Schools team.

That team, comprising Emilio Castro, Austin Hommel, Jazmin Ochoa and Gregory Strode, crafted a three-meal course that included Italian smoked salmon roll with Sriracha-mayo sauce, pork saltimbocca and butterscotch rum crumble with mint chocolate pecan ball.

Im sure the employers would be really impressed with our kids, Skinner said.

A lot of preparation went into gearing up for the invitational, she said. Her wildly popular culinary classes, which are divided into three levels, have a total of 145 students, though more than 400 have signed up to get in.

Any student can join the competition-level teams, but they have to show the utmost commitment, including participating in after-school practices, she said.

The restaurant management team spent countless hours coming up with its winning business plan, the students said. They spoke to a number of restaurant managers, chefs and other professionals to develop the best plan.

The teams proposed name for the restaurant is The Sampler, as it would only serve appetizers. The menu was developed with the team members favorite appetizer dishes, such as sliders, wings and flatbread.

Its our interpretation of appetizer and American cuisine, said Noriega, 17.

The theme of the proposed restaurants interior is retro-modern, maplewood, stainless steel and navy blue, said Barnes, 16. We wanted it to be a comfortable setting.

The students didnt just randomly choose the color blue. They chose it because, according to a psychology website, that color represents trust, he said.

The biggest challenge was not the actual business plan, but rather getting in front of people and presenting it, the team said. To practice, the students presented to several classes and groups of parents and teachers.

Judges at the competition in Flagstaff asked hard-hitting questions about their marketing tactics. At first, they completely tore us apart, Rasmussen, 17, said of the judges. But that only served as motivation to make their plan better.

The Sahuarita High School restaurant management teams strategy for the upcoming national competition is to bring an Arizona feel to the national stage, Barnes said.

With their great teamwork  Noriega said they just have to look at one another to know what the others are is thinking about  they hope to bring home the win.

While some other members were more timid about their chances of taking nationals, Gomez, a 17-year-old senior, was not. Im not trying to be cocky, but I think were going to win, he said.

All four students said they have ambitions to continue studying restaurant management.

Rasmussen was accepted into Northern Arizona Universitys hotel restaurant management program. Gomez is also considering NAU, though that would have to wait, since hes already enlisted in the Navy. Noriega is considering the New England Culinary Institute, and Barnes wants to go to the Culinary Institute of America.

As for the culinary team members, they have their eyes on the prize for next years competition. Though they did not make nationals this year, competing was a huge learning experience, said Castro and Strode, who are both juniors.

Our teacher helped us a lot, Castro said. She taught us how to do our cuts, showed us examples.

Shes the one who made our team, Strode said.

Both students said they would carry on with their culinary studies and are considering going to the New England Culinary Institute.

For their work at the invitational, Sahuarita High Schools students earned scholarships to continue their education in culinary arts and restaurant management. The New England Culinary Institute, which many students said they were considering, is one of the schools offering the scholarships.

The culinary program at Sahuarita is designed to help prepare students for their careers in the restaurant industry, Skinner said. Students can obtain their national certification through the program, which would give them advantage in finding employment.

The ultimate goal of the culinary program is to give students a chance to fall in love with the industry, she said. The teacher wants to provide whatever she can to do that.

Not everyone is made for college, she said. I just want to open doors for them.
Portions of a Marana neighborhood are disappearing, slowly sinking back into what once was a sand and gravel quarry.

Residents in The Pines 1 subdivision began noticing the problem roughly a year ago, as portions of a street settled, creating an unusual depression in the road. While some residents complain the neighborhood is continuing to sink, it is occurring at a glacial pace as the soil compacts.

Town officials blame abnormal settlement in pockets solely in The Pines 1 development, affecting roughly 20 homes.

After numerous tests, officials are telling residents that they believe there are no safety issues at this time.

Soil settlement issues were known during the construction phase, town records show. However, the previous developer  Red Point Development  is believed to have only reinforced the area direct below the concrete house pads and not the surrounding areas.

As a result, some of the yards are currently breaking away from the house pads, town officials wrote in a document to concerned residents.

Marana has already set aside $350,000 to fix the issue, dipping into the towns rainy day fund  also known as its contingency fund  to fix rights of way, utility lines and repave streets.

We are firmly committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible, said Town Manager Gilbert Davidson.

The current developer, Richmond American Homes, could not be immediately reached for comment, but in a letter to town officials, it pledged in October that it was already in the neighborhood and had a contractor injecting a special type of cement deep into the ground to compact the soil.

They also pledged to address other issues on a case-by-case basis.

Follow-up work will include sidewalk and driveway demo and replacement where needed, front yard regrading/cleanup, and landscape/irrigation replacement, wrote Fillmore K. Hirohata, the vice president of land development in Arizona for Richmond American Homes.

Red Point did not respond to a request for comment.

Town engineer Keith Brann said while the town council has authorized $350,000 for repairs, he hopes the final figure will be lower.
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.
Help India!

Translated by Yoginder Sikand

Maulana Anwar Shah Kashmiri (1875-1933), a native of Kashmir, was a leading Islamic scholar and taught in the Darul-Ulum at Deoband, Indias premier Islamic madrasa. Among the many Muslims who crusaded for the countrys independence from the British and called for an India where people of all communities could live together in peace and harmony and justice were numerous Deobandi ulama. Their leading role in the freedom struggle and in the effort to form a united front of all religious communities for a new India have, sadly, been largely forgotten. It is crucial that such voices be retrieved and an important part of Indian historythe heroic role of many Muslim leaders in the movement for free Indiabe brought before the general public.

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This translation of certain sections of a lecture of historical importance by Maulana Anwar Shah Kashmiri is a small effort in this regard.

This lecture was delivered by Maulana Anwar Shah Kashmiri as a presidential address to the 1927 Peshawar meeting of the Jamiat ul-Ulama-i Hind (The Union of the Ulama of India), an organisation of largely Deobandi ulama from all parts of India. The lecture, recently published in Urdu by the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Research Centre (Kokerbagh Dak Khana, Nowshehra, Srinagar, Kashmir) runs into over a hundred pages in the original Urdu. Here I have translated only those portions of the lecture which deal with the question of Hindu-Muslim unity.

This is not a word-to-word translation, for a literal translation cannot do justice to the original. However, every effort has been made to present as near a rendering as possible



The Presidential Address of Hazrat Allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri

to the Annual Session of the Jamiat ul-Ulama-i Hind, Peshawar, 1927

An agreement between the Muslims and the non-Muslims



Respected elders! The Jamiat-ul Ulama was formed at a time when there was much talk about a joint pact between the Muslims and the non-Muslims of India. Both communities [Hindus and Muslims] were united in the struggle to free their country from alien rule, and for this were working together from a common platform. I have no hesitation in saying that the Muslims did not go back on their pledge. They committed no treachery against the country or the nation, nor did they resort to any oppression against their non-Muslim compatriots. Despite this, the atmosphere [of unity] which the two communities had succeeded in establishing through dialogue and broad-mindedness did not last long, and today the situation is even worse than it was before 1920. I do not wish to talk about the causes of this development, but I will certainly say that the Muslims bear no responsibility for this, and that they, in accordance with the teachings of their holy faith, are ever obliged to behave with broad-mindedness and the highest standards of morality. I can say with full confidence that if our fellow countrymen turn to tolerance and consensus, they will find no greater advocates of peace, agreement, loyalty and decent behavior than the Muslims. If the responsible elders of both the communities can jointly work out a just and fair settlement that will satisfy both parties so that both communities can thereby live with respect and freedom and carry out their religious duties without hindrance, what better way is there to ensure Indias prosperity?

The basis of any such settlement is that each community must fully respect the other and must desist from attacking the life, property and respect of the other. Everyone should be allowed complete freedom to follow his faith and there should be no interference in or attack on anyones religion. The Muslims, within the limits set by the commandments of Islam and the Islamic law will be the first to welcome any such agreement, and, in accordance with the teachings of their faith, will turn into the protectors of the life and property of those with whom they enter into such a treaty.

History is replete with thousands of instances that tell us that even at the height of their power and glory, the Muslims protected the life and property of the non-Muslims with whom they had entered into agreements, and for that they even sacrificed their very lives.

I want to make it amply clear that if anyone desires that the Muslims should budge even an inch from their religion in order to enter into an agreement with others, this is not at all possible, and if any organization of Muslims, owing to ignorance of Islamic teachings, enters into such an agreement it will be wholly unacceptable and cannot last long. Muslims cannot transgress the boundaries set by Allah. Any agreement that seeks to placate others while at the same time angering Allah cannot be acceptable to us. There is a tradition of the Holy Prophet Muhammad [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him], which says that if anyone seeks to please others by adopting a way that angers Allah, then Allah shall appoint people to destroy him.

I must stress here that just as India is the land of the Hindus, so, too, is it the land of the Muslims. The first Muslims came here many centuries ago. They ruled this country for many hundreds of years. Even today allover India there are reminders of the glory of the Muslims of the past which give ample testimony of their knowledge, skill, and love of the country.

The Muslims have as much love for India as any true lover of his country should, and why not, because they have before them the glorious example of their blessed master, the Holy Prophet [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him]. When the Holy Prophet [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him], faced with the opposition of the unbelievers, left his beloved town of Mecca in accordance with Allahs orders and migrated [to Medina], he addressed Mecca thus: By God, I love you the most among all places on Gods earth, and if my people had not forced me, I would never have left you. After this, when, in compliance with the Divine commandment, he shifted to Medinaand Medina became his [new] home, he prayed thus: Oh God! Make Medina as precious to my heart as Mecca was or even more than that [].

[] Because of the great love that the Holy Prophet [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] had for his land it is impossible that a Muslim can be a true Muslim if he does not have love for his country. That is why, you should rest assured, Muslims have love for their country [India]. Besides the Muslims there are other communities living in India and India is their country as well. Therefore, it is natural that all Indians should have an equal desire in their hearts that India should be independent. However, because the Hindus are in a majority in India and the Muslims in a minority, it is also natural that the Muslims should be concerned about the protection of their religious and other rights. Hence, the best solution is that both communities should come to a just and fair agreement so that no one should feel apprehensive that after the country gains independence the minorities would be mistreated by the majority. If the fears of the Muslims are put at rest by such a pact, they should have no cause for fear. They love their country as well as their religion, and their religion teaches them broad-mindedness and enjoins upon them the honouring of agreements which they enter into. If the concerns that they entertain vis-a-vis the majority are dealt with justly, they can, in fact, prove to be a powerful force for the defence of India.

As for the fear of how the Muslims of India will react if after India wins independence an outside Muslim power attacks the country, I must say that if the Muslims of the country are satisfied with any agreement that they enter into with their non-Muslim compatriots and are not made the victim of the majority, their reaction will be the same as that of a person whose house is attacked, even if the attacker belongs to his own religion and community. An even more important point is that if the Muslims are bound by any agreement with the non-Muslims of the country and the agreement is just and is properly enforced, no outside Muslim power has the religious legitimacy to attempt to breach this pact. Rather, it is binding on such a power to fully respect such an agreement. As the Holy Prophet [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] says: The promise and duty of the Muslims are one. If even the least among them makes an agreement, others are bound to respect it.

This is a short summary of the historical pact of the Holy Prophet [may peace arid Allahs blessings be upon him] My intention in raising these issues is tohelp Muslims know how they can, by exhibiting a certain degree of broad-mindedness and tolerance, enter into a just agreement with their compatriots. As I said earlier, these two communities [Hindus and Muslims] have to live in India and India is the country of both.

[Here, in a footnote, Maulana Kashmiri adds: A well-known incident in early Islamic history well exemplifies this principle. In the war of Persia, a Persian general [presumably a Zoroastrian- y.s.] disguised himself and sought refuge with a Muslim soldier. When his identity was discovered and the matter of his punishment arose, the general of the Muslim army, Hazrat Abu Ubaida ibn Al-Jarrah, heard that a Muslim soldier had given him shelter. He saved the life of the Persian because to respect the promise of a Muslim is a duty for all other Muslims].

I assure my [non-Muslim] countrymen that if they enter into a just and fair pact with the Muslims, and implement it sincerely and do not resort to political intrigues, they will find the Muslims fully loyal and good-intentioned neighbours, because the Muslims, in accordance with the commandments of the Holy Quran, are duty-bound to fulfill their agreements. The Holy Quran says that Muslims must honour all pacts that they have entered into with the non-Muslims till the term of those treaties is over, provided the latter, too, abide by the terms of the treaties and do not assist anyone against the Muslims. And Allah says [in the Holy Quran] that if the non-Muslims deal fairly with the Muslims, the latter, too, must deal fairly with them. Undoubtedly [the Holy Quran says], God is the friend of those who practice forbearance.

Respected ulama! On this occasion there is another issue which one must consider, one that is often the cause of much misunderstanding. This relates to the rules of the Shariat. These rules are of three types: those that concern the abode of Islam (dar ul-Islam); those related to the abode of peace (dar ul-aman); and those related to the abode of war (dar ul-harb). We need to consider in which one of these three categories India today finds herself. As far as the principles of the Shariat are concerned, at best India can be considered to be the abode of peace because [at present] there appears to be no possibility of enforcing the rules of the abode of Islam here. Our revered Shaikh-ul-Mashaikh Hazrat Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz Muhaddith Dehlawi [a leading eighteenth century alim of Delhi] has said that under the present circumstances India cannot be considered to be an abode of Islam.

[] In the event of India not being an abode of Islam today, our duty is to search the books of [our] religion to see which rules apply for the abode of peace, and in the light of those commandments fulfill our duty of guiding the Muslims of India. Although in this short speech I cannot elaborate on all the commandments that apply to the abode of peace, it is necessary that I should make some suggestions. In this regard, it is best that I draw your attention to some sections of the pact that the last prophet of Allah, Hazrat Muhammad [may peace and Allahs blessing be upon him] entered into with the Jews of Medina after he migrated there. By studying those sections of the treaty you will be able to understand what sort of agreement Muslims can enter into with non-Muslims in the abode of peace or the abode of war.

The Pact Between the Holy Prophet Muhammad [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] and the Jews of Medina

As the treaty is very lengthy, I shall simply present those sections of it that are related to the point I wish to make.

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. This is a treaty of Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] and the Muslims and those people who have entered into an agreement with them as allies. All parties to this agreement [Muslims from Mecca and Medina and those Jews who have signed the treaty] will be considered as one party (jamaat) and one community (qaum) as against other non-Muslims and those who have not entered into this agreement It is binding on the Muslims that they should oppose those who try to create strife and oppress and persecute the creatures of God. All Muslims must unite and act against such people, even though the latter may be their own sons.

It is binding on the Muslims that they should help those Jews who have entered into this agreement with us and behave kindly with them and save them from oppression and not help any oppressor against them [] It is their Islamic duty for Muslims to remain true to their pledge and exhibit the highest standards of morality possible The Jews of the tribe of Banu Awf are allies of the Muslims and have entered into a treaty with them. The Jews will be free to practise their own religion, and the Muslims will be free to practise theirs. In matters other than religion, the Jews of the tribe of Banu Awf and the Muslims will be considered one party, and those who resort to oppression, violate this treaty or commit any crime will be liable for punishment. (After this, the Holy Prophet Muhammad [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] mentioned the names of various other Jewish tribes who had also entered into the treaty, such as the tribes of Banu al-Najjar, Banu al-Harith, Banu Saidah, Banu Jusham and Banu Al-Aws, and stated that they would have rights similar to those of the Banu Awf). If any third party should declare war on the Jews and the Muslims, all the treaty partners should fight unitedly. The Muslim and the Jewish armies will be responsible for their own expenses It is binding on the treaty partners that they should behave with piety and good intentions with each other. They must refrain from oppression and injustice and should help the persecuted. Consider your neighbour as valuable as your own life, provided he abides by his word and the rules of morality and commits no crime.

This is a short summary of the historical pact of the Holy Prophet [may peace and Allahs blessings be upon him] My intention in raising these issues is tohelp Muslims know how they can, by exhibiting a certain degree of broad-mindedness and tolerance, enter into a just agreement with their compatriots. As I said earlier, these two communities [Hindus and Muslims] have to live in India and India is the country of both. Therefore, it is the duty of every Indian to try to create such a climate in the country that the daily strife and killings are stopped so that everyone can lead a life of peace and contentment.

[Photo by Yoginder Sikand]
Help India!

By DPA,

Washington : The space shuttle Discovery has undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) to head back to Earth after a week on a milestone construction mission that has doubled the capacity of the orbiting laboratory.

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The mission astronauts installed a fourth set of solar panels, completing the power plant needed to double the stations electrical generating capacity. The power allows the station to sustain six long-term residents instead of the current crew of three, and more occupants could arrive as early as May.

The shuttle crew completed three spacewalks during its mission, including installation of the last solar panels.

Discovery was to fly around the ISS, taking the first photos of the station with its newly deployed solar wings.

Godspeed, thanks for making us symmetrical, giving us more power and all the other wonderful things you did for us, ISS commander Mike Fincke said as Discovery departed Wednesday.

Discovery will pass a Russian Soyuz mission on its way back to Earth. The Soyuz will launch Thursday with two more ISS crew members and space tourist Charles Simonyi, a co-founder of Microsoft taking his second flight in space. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and US astronaut Michael Barratt will replace Yury Lonchakov and Fincke.

The shuttle is carrying scientific experiments conducted aboard ISS and samples from a machine designed to turn urine and sweat into drinkable water, NASA officials said.

Discovery delivered a new machine after an earlier version kept breaking on an earlier shuttle mission. NASA will take about a month to analyse the sample to make sure the water is safe before the expansion of the ISS crew to six.

Separately, controversy has emerged over the naming of a new room at the International Space Station that will provide extra space for the expanded long-term crew.

The name contest applied to Node 3, a cupola to be delivered in February 2010 that will offer astronauts an unrivaled panoramic view of Earth and space. The cupola will also house the controls station for the giant ISS robotic arm.

Thinking to engage the public in the naming process, NASA invited people to vote on names for the room on its website. It had an epic identity in mind, such as Serenity or Legacy.

But the US space agency also invited write-ins and was surprised to find the top vote-getter was TV comedian and political satirist Stephen Colbert.

Colbert, star of The Colbert Report on the cable channel Comedy Central, suggested to his fans that they rush to the website and cast their votes. The Colbert name won, according to the Houston Chronicle, but it wasnt yet known whether NASA would honour the write-in campaign.

In the contest rules, NASA says it will consider the voting results but would not be bound by them.

NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the space programme, it said.

In fact, the website indicates that one of its preferred names, Serenity, was in the running to win the contest.

Other popular names in the write-in were Gaia, the earth goddess; Xenu, a character in Scientology mythology who was dictator of a Galactic Confederacy that adherents believe brought human beings to Earth 75 million years ago; and Ubuntu, the spirit of reconciliation anchored in the Bantu languages of southern Africa.

Discovery leaves behind Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, the first astronaut from his country to take up long-term residence in the orbiting station.

His predecessor on the ISS crew, US astronaut Sandra Magnus, will return home with the Discovery, which is set to land Saturday in Florida.


Help India!

By Manzar Bilal, TwoCircles.net,

Patna: Founder and director of INSAN School, Kishanganj, Padma Shri Dr. Syed Hassan was attacked by some anti-social elements in the night of 20th November 2011 when the school was celebrating its 45th foundation day at its campus in Siksha Nagar, Kishanganj. Though Dr. Hassan was saved successfully, many students who became wall between him and the attackers got injured.

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About 10-12 people were trying to disturb the concluding program of the foundation day ceremony of INSAN School in the night of 20th November, 2011. When the program concluded around 10 pm, these people, who were fully drunken, reached Dr. Hassans residence and tried to attack him but students of the school and some old boys of the school confronted these anti-social elements. Many students got injuries but succeeded to grab three of the attackers and locked them into a room. However, two of them succeeded in fleeing after breaking the ventilation while one was handed over to Police said Syed Shifa Hafeez, son of Dr. Syed Hassan, over phone to TCN.

He said that the attackers also tried to hurt the guest Shafiq Nayyer who came from America to attend the program. He stayed at the residence of Dr. Hassan and came out of the house when heard noise made by attackers. We do not know who are exactly behind the attack but it was very unfortunate incident said Mr. Hafeez when asked who he suspected for the attack.

We just informed the police about the incident and they arrived immediately at the campus and assured security. Several Policemen were deployed there to avoid any untoward incident he said.

But he also expressed that if police were present at the campus during the program, the attackers would not have gathered courage to carry out the incident. We had informed the local police station in written about our program and asked security but they did not take it seriously and only for formality a few policemen were sent there Mr. Shifa added.

He said that the school administration has demanded Police protection for Dr. Syed Hassan.

SP Ranjit Kumar Mishra met Dr. Hassan on Tuesday and assured that stringent action will be taken against the culprits. They have been identified and soon will be arrested. They will be punished through speedy trial.

Meanwhile, several political and community leaders, educationists and intellectuals have condemned the attack on Dr. Syed Hassan who is considered as Semanchals Sir Syed because of his contribution in the field of education. He founded INSAN School on November 14, 1966 with determination to end the illiteracy, backwardness, and poor socioeconomic conditions of the region. He got several awards including Padma Shri for his efforts in the field of education.

Link:

http://www.insanmission.org/homepage.htm


Help India!

By Abdul Gani, TwoCircles.net

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New Delhi: A music band formed by the alumni of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has come up with a latest composition of National Anthem that it is going to release on the auspicious occasion of Republic Day.

ANTIM, is the band comprising of a lawyer, an artist, an engineer, a doctor and an architect  all being the alumni of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). It has developed composition  a soulful rendition of the Indian National Anthem, meant as a tribute to the nation, just as the famous A R Rahman once did, on the Republic day.

The band will release this composition on its YouTube channel and the Facebook page on January 26 when the nation will be celebrating 67th Republic Day.

This band has already struck a chord with its young listeners across the country with its beautiful renditions and original songs, with elements of fusion music inherent and apparent in it.

The National Anthem is a challenge as far as the percussion work is concerned. I had to keep in mind the format of the

Anthem and still sound different than a Classic military drummer. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible with some subtle experiments in triplet notes here and there, Fahad Zuberi, one of the band members said on the challenges he faced while creating the percussions.

He also said, Our music is based on the concept of doing something that is not obvious; to create an element of surprise for the audience.

After a stint of hugely successful performances in the Aligarh Muslim University, these erstwhile members of the Fusion Music Club created their band called ANTIM, which emerged as they graduated into professionals in their respective fields from AMU.

Their progressive and experimental fusion music intricately yet simply weaves jazz, reggae, Arabic, thrash metal, Classical and Western genre elements which result in stellar compositions.

As TwoCircles.net talk with them about this project, the visibly excited band is busy applying the finishing touches to their composition, which is a reinterpreted chord and percussion arrangement. The members thus deconstruct their song and explain it enthusiastically.

For composing a good song it is very important to explore every genre of music. When we listen to a song, we notice several changes that occur (and) that normally flow with the melody of the piece. These changes are musical progressions. Learning basic chords is very important; all the chords fall into place as you learn more about the instrument that you play. We wanted to give our own interpretation to the anthem. We looked at all the rules concerning playing it, and then went ahead with creating our tune, Jeff Foster, another band member said on the composition of the Anthem.

Anam Zafar, vocalist feels it was crucial for her because it happens to be the National Anthem.

The true feel of any song is reflected by how well the artist connects to it, and how well the listeners connect to the artists. To make the songs more soulful, good use of back vocals also becomes necessary, which in turn involves good knowledge for the technicalities of singing. We try to make our music with quality and be pretty different from the mainstream, said Zafar.

The Journey of ANTIM

Fahad Zuberi, a student of Architecture along with Aamir Ahmad, a student of Mechanical Engineering, and Hilal Umar, a student of Electronics Engineering, were playing music together since 2010 and started jamming at the Cultural Education Centre, AMU with Nabeel Firoz, a student of Medicine at AMU and the secretary of the Fusion Music Club at the time.

ANTIM was formally formed in 2012.

The year 2012-2013 saw Firoz leading from the front on vocals and guitars and on most of the bands music production and compositions. The band collaborated with the artistes from the Indian music club in the Cultural Education Centre at the AMU in the early stages. Soon, vocalist and artist Jeff Foster, a student of fine arts and Zafar, a student of law joined the band.

Performing for the first time on December 31, 2012 the band soon gained wide recognition and critical acclaim in the region.

The year 2012 thus became the birth-year for the band and it continued to play in shows and other events at CEC, and outside the University as well.

Year 2013 started with the appointment of Zuberi as the clubs secretary and the band experimenting on the newly bought instruments. The members soon learned these instruments and started jamming.

After two months of jam sessions and experimenting, the band performed a historic two hour concert on October 26, 2013 with a jam packed Kennedy Auditorium. The band improvised many contemporary tracks into Jazz, Blues, Flamenco and Metal music. This show raised the level at which music was being made and performed in the campus.

The bands style and strategies used in the show, then, became the guidelines for the concerts of other clubs at CEC as well. The band subsequently performed various other shows and conducted workshops, created instrumentals with Sitar Ustad Rafat Khan Niazi and Sarangi artist Suhail Yusuf Khan. The session ended with El Vintro Unplugged, a concert where the band presented its acoustic recreations of contemporary and classic tracks.

Year 2014 saw the appointment of Jeff Foster as the secretary of the club that the band was associated with. This association ended in 2015 when all the members graduated from the AMU.

The band is now based in New Delhi and jams regularly. The bands philosophy, as it claims, is that of a structured and disciplined approach to music, hard work and respect for other genres, exploring the abilities of oneself in more than one instrument and staying true to their music.
Help India!

By Ayaz Ahmad of Twocircles.net

The constitutional debate about the minority character of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has its genesis in the Supreme Court judgment of Azeez Basha v. Union of India (1968 AIR 662). In fact, the judgment of Allahabad High Court in Dr. Naresh Agarwal v. Union of India substantially relies upon the reasoning of Azeez Basha to declare the AMU Amendment Act, 1981 as unconstitutional, which itself was intended to change the basis of Azeez Bashas reasoning!

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Many attempts have been made in the past by the Parliament, jurists and academicians through constitutional, legal and rational means to bury the ghost of Azeez Basha, but it has shown fantastic resilience. This article is yet another attempt to give a decent burial to the ghost of Azeez Basha with the help of a hypothetical case which highlights the flaws in the reasoning of Azeez Basha. This hypothetical case has been titled as The Freedom Fighters v. Union of India and from here on, the narration seeks to build bridges with the help of creative freedom available to all fictional works.

If you believe that Independence of India was the result of hard-fought battle by our freedom fighters led by the father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi against the British imperial forces you are wrong! Consider your opinion in the light of a judgment delivered by the Honble Supreme Court of India in The Freedom Fighters v. Union of India case. The brief facts of the case are as follows:

One pseudo-nationalist who never participated in the freedom struggle of India was denied the benefits & allowances which accrue to the freedom fighters for the services rendered by them to the nation with respect to its independence from British subjugation. Aggrieved by this denial Pseudo-nationalist approached the Court of Law. His contentions before the Court in support of his case are summarised below:

(1) That the independence of India was brought into existence by British Parliament through the Independence of India Act-1947. But for this Act, India would have never attained independence in the eyes of Law. So, actually it is the British Parliament which was responsible for Indias independence.

(2) The sacrifices of Gandhi and his battery of freedom fighters pales into insignificance in comparison with the painstaking work of the British parliamentarians in passing the Independence of India Act-1947.

(3) In the light of above facts it is clear that the claim of Gandhi and his battery of freedom fighters as the liberator of India are misplaced, misleading and without any foundation.

(4) As there is a class of person who is getting freedom-fighters allowances & benefits despite the fact that there cannot be any freedom-fighter in India in view of Independence of India Act, there is no reason why the same benefits cannot be extended to the Plaintiff or for that matter, to all Indians or British.

(5) Unequal treatment of the Plaintiff is violation of Article -14, 15 and 16 of the Indian Constitution.

Accepting the contentions of the pseudo-nationalist the court ordered that all the benefits, allowances and privileges granted to the alleged freedom-fighters must be scraped with immediate effect as it violates Article -14, 15 and 16! In arriving at this conclusion, the Court relied heavily upon the judgement given by the Supreme Court in Azeez Basha v. Union of India.

The Court observed that in Azeez Basha case it was held that Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was not a minority institution because it has been established by an Act of Parliament i.e.; AMU Act -1920 & not by Sir Syed and his battery of social servants. Therefore AMU cannot claim any right, benefit or privilege available to minority institutions.

On the basis of analogy it is very clear that the reasoning of Azeez Basha requires that in order to get the privilege of being freedom-fighter one needs to be a freedom-fighter first. As there cannot be any freedom fighter in view of the Independence of India Act-1947, no one can legitimately claim the privileges of freedom fighters. If at all anyone deserves such privilege it is the British Parliament because but for the enactment of the said Act India would have never attained Independence! Holding otherwise will tantamount to overruling Azeez Basha case by implication because it would destroy the very basis on which Azeez Basha ruling is founded. Keeping in mind the need for consistency we are not willing to depart from the ruling of Azeez Basha. As in case of AMU it was the Indian Parliament which brought it into existence so also it was the British Parliament which brought into existence the Independence of India.

Accordingly, as Sir Syed and his followers cannot be said to have established AMU, so Gandhi and his followers cannot be said to have liberated India from the British. Consequently the alleged freedom fighters are not entitled to any benefits, allowances or privileges which could be granted only to those who brought into existence the Independence of India.

The above hypothetical case demonstrates the anomaly that may be created by adopting hyper-technical interpretation of historical events. Establishment of AMU by Sir Syed and his followers in order to disseminate modern, professional and secular education among Muslims is a historical fact as much as the liberation of India by Gandhi and his followers. Legal technicalities should not be allowed to trump historical facts. Instead of going by fictional theories, judgment on historical facts should rely upon historical evidence for proof. Hence, whenever called upon to determine disputes around historical facts, judicial wisdom should refrain from applying fictional theories to settle them lest the outcome of judicial process border upon absurdity opening Pandoras box for dirty politics.

The AMU case, pending before the Supreme Court has presented a great opportunity to correct the monumental error committed by it in Azeez Basha case. Lets hope that this time historical wisdom will prevail over techno-legal trivialities.

The author is Assistant Professor at Glocal Law School, Saharanpur.
When the Louisiana Legislature's next session opens in March,Representatives willlikely draft and enact a state law regarding processes for cities to remove monuments. Several other states already have such laws on the books.

The rush in New Orleans totake downfour monuments weeks before state laws are written is causing many to raise red flags on the process.

In December 2014, the New Orleans City Council passed a motion to remove four monuments it felt violated its nuisance ordinance.

All four are part ofone single council motion.Originallyproposed in July 2015, Mayor Landrieu claimed they were nuisances and needed to be removed.

The First Red Flag was raisedwhen,the Mayor's office presented that it had a private donor funding through a non-profit the expected $170,000.00 cost for removal of the monuments and was discussing with a private entity to display the monuments in a private museum. The Foundation for Louisiana is a nonprofit organization that is allowing the donor's money to "pass through them to keep the donor's name private.

The Foundation for Louisiana lists as a core belief: "Transparency and accountability are cornerstones of integrity and institutional success."

The afternoon the council passed a motion supporting the mayor's request, four non-profits (now referred to as the "Preservationists") who had been taking care of the hundred plus year old monuments for decades, filed a Lawsuit.

Points in the lawsuit included: addressing the approved City Council Motion as one complete issue as opposed to four separate issues. The lawsuit cited Federal Laws such as 18 USC 1369 which protects Monuments to Veterans,via Federal funding or Federal land.

As soon as the hearing started, Judge Carl Barbier stated the City, (not clear if that met the City Council or Mayor's office) had informed him it was withdrawingLiberty Monument and the hearing would focus on the other three monuments.

The Council has yet to report this in a meeting.

The Second Red Flag was raised when,the Judge just did not declare the hearing moot, sincethe Preservationists had in fact"Won" their lawsuit at that point asthe "Approved"City Council motion violates Federal Law and the Preservationistclaims were supported by case law and res judicata.

If so,the City Council might have to start the process over, with new motions on each monument. The time delay could meanNew Orleans will not get the monuments torn down before Louisiana State Law Protects them.

The Third Red Flag was raised when, the lawsuitquestionedthe process in place to evaluate all New Orleansmonuments.Citizens want to defend the character and contextof Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and PGT Beauregard and those that funded their monuments.

Lee had written in 1856 that slavery was a great "evil;" Davis and his brother educated, trained, andfinanced the sale of their plantation to former slaves; Beauregard organized citizens to desegregateNew Orleans schools, with an African-American poet speaking at his memorial.

Othersquestiona monument to former New Orleans MayordeLesseps "Chep" Morrison, who ran for governor as asegregationist.They believethe City Council should first develop a process to review monuments.

Brought out at the hearing was that four city owned monuments paid for by citizens who took decades to raise the funds are scheduled to be removedand turned over to a private museum.

The Fourth Red Flag was raised when, citizens became concernedthat the city has not offered the Lee, Davis, and Beauregard monuments to the long established Civil War Museum but to a private museumthat could describe these men as being pro-slavery, could describe those that funded the erection of the monuments and cared for them as wanting to promote racism.
The Online Railbird Report: "Educa-p0ker" Wins $366,366 to Pull Out to Early 2016 Lead

January 25 2016 Chad Holloway

This week's Online Railbird Report, which captured the high-stakes cash game action on PokerStars, saw "Educa-p0ker" come on strong to not only finish as the biggest winner with $366,366 in profit  which came from 13,522 hands over 58 sessions  but also give him the early lead on the 2016 leaderboard.

On the flip side, "Aron0621" was the biggest loser from January 8-20 after dropping $208,963 in 2,632 hands over 41 sessions, while Alex "Kanu7" Millar was the second-biggest loser down $77,179 in 6,545 hands spread across 60 sessions.

Millar Turns Bad Day Around at Expense of "wilhasha"

On Saturday, January 9, a big $100/$200 no-limit hold'em heads-up match broke out between Millar and "wilhasha." At the time, Millar was down around $90,000 on the day, but he managed to win it all back over the course of three hours, which included winning the biggest pot of the day.

It happened when "wilhasha" ($42,263.66) opened for $600 from button and then called when Millar ($92,491.80) three-bet to $1,680. The flop saw Millar lead out for $839,50, "wilhasha" called, and the appeared on the turn.

Millar check-called a bet of $5,037 and then checked the river. "wilhasha" bet $11,200, Millar check-raised to $39,533.25, and "wilhasha" called off for $34,707.16 total to create an $84,527.32 pot.

"wilhasha" held the , but he discovered he was on the wrong end of a cooler as Millar had flopped a full house with the .

Meanwhile, Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov was actually Saturday's biggest winner after banking $141,900, of which $92,000 came from the no-limit hold'em tables and roughly $50,000 from the $100/$200 pot-limit Omaha tables.

"wilhasha" Gets Revenge on Millar

On Monday, January 11, "wilhasha" and Millar were back at it, but this time the Swede came out the victor winning $158,900 over the course of 10 hours. According to HighStakesDB, the match was even for the first six hours, but after that "wilhasha" began to pull away, which included winning the two biggest pots of the day.

Hand #1: Millar ($79,406.19) opened the button for $460 with the ], "wilhasha" ($35,758.96) called with the , and the flop came down . "wilhasha" checked his two pair, and then called when Millar, who flopped an open-ender, bet $1,009.80.

The turn saw "wilhasha," who picked up a flush draw, check-call another bet, this time $4,406.40, and the peeled off on the river. It was an action card as "wilhasha," who checked for a third time, made his flush, and Millar, who bet $8,812.80, made his straight.

"wilhasha" check-raised all in for $29,882.76 total, and he claimed a $71,517.92 pot after Millar paid him off.

Hand #2: "wilhasha" ($35,527.69) raised to $600 on the button and was met by a three-bet to $1,680 from Millar ($44,444.31). "wilhasha" pushed back with a four-bet to $4,300, Millar five-bet all in, and "wilhasha" called off to create a $71,055.38 pot.

"wilhasha":

Millar:

It was a flip, and the two agreed to run it twice. Unfortunately for Millar, he came up empty on both run out as well as the on the second.

"Educa-p0ker" Takes From "wilhasha"

On Saturday, January 16, the week's biggest winner, "Educa-p0ker," and "wilhasha" tangled at the $100/$200 no-limit hold'em tables for nearly eight hours. Over the course of 4,160 hands, "Educa-p0ker" managed to win a hefty $213,800. Surprisingly, he did lose the biggest pot of the day, which was just one of three to cross the six-figure mark in the match.

It happened when "wilhasha" ($55,762.36) opened for $600 and "Educa-p0ker" ($74,101.64) three-bet to $2,200. From there, "wilhasha" four-bet to $6,300 and then called when "Educa-p0ker" five-bet to $13,900.

The flop saw "wilhasha" call a bet of $8,300 and then he called off for $33,562.36 after "Educa-p0ker" shoved the turn.

"Educa-p0ker":

"wilhasha":

"wilhasha" had flopped a flush to pull ahead of "Educa-p0ker's" aces, but the latter could still win with a heart on the river. They ran it twice, but neither the on the first nor on the second helped "Educa-p0ker" and he watched the 4111,524.72 pot pushed to his opponent.

On Sunday, the two were back at it, and once again "Educa-p0ker" emerged victorious, this time taking $113,200 from "wilhasha" over 1,806 hands. Amazingly, despite the big loss, "wilhasha" won the biggest pot of the day.

It happened when "Educa-p0ker" ($53,238.98) raised to $490 from the button and "wilhasha" ($52,976.77) three-bet to $2,100. "Educa-p0ker" made it $6,300 to go, "wilhasha" called, and the flop came down . Both players checked, the peeled off on the turn, and "wilhasha" check-called a bet of $8,188.70.

When the completed the board on the river, "wilhasha" shipped for $38,488.07 and "Educa-p0ker" called with the for a rivered straight. Unfortunately for him, "wilhasha" had rivered a flush with the to lay claim to the $105,953.54 pot.

Biggest Winners/Losers from Jan. 8-20

Winners Profit Losers Loss "Educa-p0ker" $366,366 "Aron0621" $208,963 "Cobus83" $149,443 Alex "Kanu7" Millar $77,179 "dougiedan678" $98,260 "gragik" $76,429 "bazzzzzzz" $56,918 Mikael "ChaoRen160" Thuritz $75,991

Biggest Winners/Losers of 2016

Winners Profit Losers Loss "Educa-p0ker" $366,366 "Aron0621" $160,594 "Cobus83" $163,746 "SHARMOOTA" $118,140 "TILTMENOT" $103,085 Viktor "Isildur1" Blom $115,592 "dougiedan678" $98,260 Brian "tsarrast" Rast $93,987 "bazzzzzzz" $87,377 "candela2005" $82,585

Data and hands obtained from HighStakesDB.com

Sharelines "Educa-p0ker" was the biggest online winner from Jan. 8-20 with $366,366 in profit.
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.
About Me

I am an urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant and a principal in BicyclePASS, a bicycle facilities systems integration firm, based in Washington, DC. Urban economic competitiveness is dependent on efficient transit and mixed use, compact places. Therefore, I end up writing mostly about mobility and urban design. While I am based in and write about Washington, DC issues, I try to write so that "universal lessons" are evident in the entries.

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Could a Mars colony become a nation? That question was posed by Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in a Washington Post article. Byers answer to his question was yes. A body of international law has evolved over time that recognizes the rights of people to self-determination. That right is one reason a lot of former European colonies are now countries. The other reason is that the locals were often prepared to fight for that right and, after World War II, the Europeans were too exhausted to do much about it.

Indeed, going back farther in history, the United States was born when the American colonies decided that they didnt want to be part of the British Empire anymore and fought a bitter war to make their desires stick.Thus, if the majority of the inhabitants of a Mars colony were to declare independence, they should have it, in Byers view.

Self-determination in practice

To be sure, the right to self-determination has not been universally recognized. It took the fall of the Soviet Union to make countries out of the Ukraine (now under attack by Russia), Kazakhstan, and a number of other places that used to be Soviet Republics. The Kurds have been fighting for independence for decades but havent achieved it because Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and now the Islamic State object.

The Catalonians want their own country, but the Spanish object. The Palestinians want their own country, but at the cost of the Israeli's losing theirs. Indeed, the Canadian province of Quebec at one time wanted to break away and start a French-speaking republic in North America, but the Canadian government objected since it might have meant the breakup of the country.

To illustrate how sticky things might be, let us suppose at some future date that SpaceXs Elon Musk establishes his private Mars colony and, after a while, it declares itself a country. What would be the territory of that country? Would it encompass the entire planet or just land around the settlement that it could reasonably control?

What if some other group landed on another part of Mars and declared itself to be a country as well? That is the sort of situation that starts wars if they are allowed to go out of control.

If the right to self-determination supersedes the Outer Space Treaty, as Byers suggests, a loophole is created through which a great deal of mischief can be made. The Outer Space Treaty forbids those countries which have signed it from claiming celestial bodies such as the moon or Mars as sovereign territory and placing military weapons on the same, but suppose the following scenario:

A group of colonists land on Mars (or the moon, for that matter) and declares themselves an independent state, applying for recognition by the United Nations, and so on.

Let us go further and suggest that this new country enters into a series of treaties with a great power on Earth, including free trade, mutual defense, and giving companies from said Earth country leasing rights for minerals. The Earth country establishes a military base on Mars to help the new nation defend itself, a clear violation of the Outer Space Treaty, but consistent with the new nations right to self-determination.

Let us go further in this thought experiment and suggest that the Mars Republic, in the fullness of time, applies to be a state of the United States or a province of China. That would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty some would say. But the Martians have the right to self-determination others would say.

The Americans would point to the examples of Texas and California. Newt Gingrich, who once imagined creating new states of the Union, smiles wherever he might be at the time. Some might conclude that someone has done an end run around the Outer Space Treaty and someone might be right,

In short, we have a look at some of the foreign policy tangles of the latter part of the 21st Century.
China's island province Hainan sees double-digit growth in tourists Updated: 2016-01-25 08:12 (Xinhua)

People from the Li and Miao ethnic groups perform a bamboo dance in Hainan province. [Photo/China Daily]

HAIKOU -- China's island province Hainan has seen double-digit growth in the number of tourists and their spending, authorities said on Sunday.

Hainan received about 53.36 million tourists in 2015, up 11.4 percent year-on-year. Tourists' spending reached 57.2 billion yuan (about $8.9 billion), up 13 percent year-on-year, said Sun Ying, director of the Hainan Tourism Commission.

Tourism authorities have strengthened cracking down on irregularities in local tourism sector to protect the rights and interests of tourists, Sun said. Nine travel agencies have their licenses revoked in 2015 and were fined 6.83 million yuan in total.

Hainan expects to see a hike in tourists' visits during the upcoming Spring Festival, or China's Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb 8, when tourists travel to the warm island to escape winter cold in north China.

Sun promised the commission will work around the clock to handle tourists complaints in a timely manner and safeguard the rights of the tourists.
Sunset over China's taste for imported goods met by retail giant Updated: 2016-01-25 17:05 By Qiu Quanlin(chinadaily.com.cn)

Sales of imported goods last year at Chinese branches of Walmart Inc, one of the world's leading retailers, doubled those of 2014, according to the company.

"Chinese people have developed habits of consumption that are in accordance with international practice. They will send imported cookies to friends and use overseas snacks for gatherings during important occasions," said Marybeth Hays, chief merchandising, marketing and supply chain officer of Walmart China.

Sales of Danisa butter cookies, for example, will increase by 35 percent year-on-year at Walmart stores during the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 8, according to the company.

"We will import more goods to meet the growing demand from local buyers during the Spring Festival," said Hays.

Walmart China has prepared more than 4,000 varieties of imported goods from nearly 20 countries and regions for the festival, according to the company.

Walmart, which entered China in 1996, has more than 430 outlets across the country, tapping the potential of China's second- and third-tier cities with "great management and high-quality commodities and services".

It has opened outlets in Erdos in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Xianning in Hubei province and Yiliang county in Yunnan province.
China planning new supercomputer Updated: 2016-01-22 19:51 (Xinhua)

TIANJIN - China is planning a supercomputer 1,000 times more powerful than its groundbreaking Tianhe-1A as it faces rising demand for next-generation computing.

Meng Xiangfei, head of the applications department of the National Supercomputer Center, said on Friday that the center will release a prototype in 2017 or 2018 of an "exascale" computer -- one capable of at least a billion billion calculations per second

Exascale computing is considered the next frontier in the development of supercomputers.

Tianhe-1A was recognized as the world's fastest computing system in 2010. Though it has since been superseded by Tianhe-2, Tianhe-1A is being more widely used. Computer scientists are finding it challenging to run contemporary applications at their optimum on faster supercomputers.

With its uses including oil exploration data management, animation and video effects, biomedical data processing and high-end equipment manufacturing, Tianhe-1A's capacity is being stretched, said Meng.

It is carrying out more than 1,400 computing tasks and serving about 1,000 users per day.

The exascale computer will be wholly independently developed by the National Supercomputer Center, according to Meng.

About a seventh of Tianhe-1A's CPU chips are Chinese.
Chinese prosecutors probe 54,000 officials for graft, negligence in 2015 Updated: 2016-01-25 00:35 (Xinhua)

BEIJING -- More than 54,000 Chinese officials were investigated by prosecutors for bribery, dereliction of duty and other duty-related crimes in 2015, anti-graft chief Wang Qishan said in a work report published on Sunday.

More than 20,000 cases were concluded by courts nationwide, including 16,000 cases involving bribery and embezzlement, and 4,300 cases of dereliction of duty, according to the work report made by Wang, chief of the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), at the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC CCDI on Jan. 12.

Tallying up anti-corruption efforts in the past year, Wang said disciplinary authorities received more than 2.8 million tip-offs, and punished about 336,000 discipline violators in 2015.

Investigations into 90 centrally-administered officials for discipline violations were launched or finished in 2015, said the report, adding 42 of them have been transferred to judicial organs for criminal investigation.

Graft busters also probed 49,000 officials for suspected violation of the eight point anti-extravagance rules, 34,00 of them were published according to the disciplinary rules.

The discipline inspection agencies have been firm in dealing with its corrupt elements. A total of 2,479 discipline inspectors nationwide were punished in 2015, according to the report.

An initiative called "Sky Net" unveiled by Chinese government saw 1,023 fugitives being returned from overseas in 2015, recovering 3 billion yuan ($461.5 million) in criminal proceeds.
More older pregnant women expected Updated: 2016-01-25 07:47 By Wang Xiaodong(China Daily)

Hospitals beef up services to handle spike; grassroots clinics seen as pressure reliever

Hospitals and health authorities across China are bracing for an expected surge in older pregnant women this year, after the country adopted a second-child policy.

The policy, which encourages all couples to have two children, took effect on Jan 1.

An additional 90 million women in China, roughly equivalent to the total population of Germany, will eligible to have a second child under the policy, according to estimates by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China's top health authority.

The commission said 60 percent of the 90 million will be 35 years old or older, which will result in increased risk of complications in pregnancy and pose more challenges to health authorities in ensuring maternal and child health.

Measures will be taken to guide pregnant women to choose grassroots hospitals first, since top-level hospitals are overcrowded, the commission said.

The health authorities are planning to improve the hospitals' emergency treatment capabilities and streamline procedures so that deliveries with critical complications can be transferred between hospitals in a timely manner, the commission said.

"We expect a sharp increase in the number of patients this year," said Chao Wei, a publicity officer with Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, one of the capital's best for childbirth.

Chao said the hospital opened night clinics in early January, which are open from 5 pm to 8 pm on weekdays, to cater to the increasing number of patients.

The hospital will employ more obstetricians, pediatricians and midwives this year, he said, adding that it has also expanded its emergency ward, increased emergency beds from eight to 18 and increased intensive-care beds for newborn babies from 30 to 60.

Liu Wenjing, a marketing manager at the Beijing United Family Hospital, said the hospital has seen an increasing number of pregnant patients since November and has extended the clinic hours.

The hospital increased beds, B-ultrasound services and examination rooms to cope with increasing number of patients, she said.

Not just Beijing but many other places in China, such as Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, are also seeing measures taken by hospitals for the expected birth peak, according to media reports.

2021 peak

According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, the number of women in Beijing eligible to have a second baby has increased by 2.36 million after the policy was adopted in January, and most of the women who want to have a second child will have finished before 2021. So the birth peak will extend for about five years, it said.

The total number of obstetrics beds in Beijing's hospitals last year was nearly 5,000, but utilization rates differ greatly among different types of hospitals, according to Wu Ya, an official for maternal and child healthcare at the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.

In some large comprehensive hospitals, utilization rates in obstetrics have reached 108 percent, meaning that all regular beds in the obstetrics departments at these hospitals are occupied every day, with extra beds added to cope with demand. But in some smaller hospitals, such as community hospitals, the utilization rate is only 14 percent.

"We are worried that patients will swarm to big hospitals, which are already overcrowded," she said. "We hope more patients will go to smaller hospitals, so the big hospitals will have more room for those at higher risk."

The commission is considering a measure to guide pregnant women to seek treatment at smaller hospitals first. But those who are directed to a smaller hospital should not worry, because the transfer mechanism from small hospitals to bigger ones will be smooth as long as the doctor believes it necessary, she said.

To meet the expected rise in the number of pregnant women at higher risks, hospitals will also improve priority services for that group.

"We will designate hospitals to specially receive and treat newborn babies with critical diseases" to improve chances of survival, she said.

In 2014, the mortality rate of pregnant women was less than 22 per 100,000, compared with 30 per 100,000 in 2010, while the mortality rate of babies declined to less than 9-in-1,000 in 2014. The rates have reached the average level of high-and medium-income countries, according to Yang Wenzhuang, an official with the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Liu Xiaoli contributed to this story.

wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn

Six-year-old Xu Yuechen looks at her baby brother by the bed of her mother at a maternity hospital in Fuyang, Anhui province. Wang Biao / for China Daily

(China Daily 01/25/2016 page5)
Reaching out to the world's youth Updated: 2016-01-25 13:38 By Zhang Haizhou In Hong Kong(China Daily USA)

It was already 8 pm on Jan 3 when Sodargye, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, returned to his hotel from AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong, where he had just finished two days of delivering dharma lectures to more than 11,000 people.

Dharma - cosmic law and order in Buddhism - is applied to the teachings of Buddha and is the form of spiritual education to which Sodargye has dedicated his life.

"Between 70 and 80 percent of the audience were Buddhists, with some from other religions, and some without a religion," the 52-year-old says in a low voice in heavily accented Mandarin. His left thumb moved slowly along his prayer beads throughout the interview.

Sodargye, from the mountainous Garze county in Southwest China's Sichuan province, has traveled the globe to talk about dharma. His first trip abroad was to the United States in 1993. Since then, he has been invited to talk all over the world, mainly to university students and faculties.

His speeches vary, but they always include some sort of spiritual education.

"The lack of a spiritual education has led to problems of unfairness and insecurity, and some solutions can be found in Buddhism. This is the theme of my talks," he says.

"Development of the spirit cannot match the pace of the growth of material life," he adds, saying that this is a common issue in many countries.

He recalls that he was once asked for his views on terrorism and responded that he supports Islam.

"I've studied Islam, and its doctrine does not bring any harm to the world," Sodargye says. "It has been manipulated by some people in the name of religion."

In 2015, he visited Namibia, South Africa and Lesotho, where he offered advice to young people on how to face hardship with the right attitude. He visited orphanages and saw famine up close.

He recalls how he was told that the average life expectancy in Namibia is just 37 to 42 because of HIV and malaria. A lack of jobs for young people, including university graduates, is also a problem.

"The feeling is that local people have little hope for the future," he says. "So the theme of my lecture was never lose confidence ... The locals are actually very intelligent and energetic. It's worth considering how to boost their potential."

A former cowherd, Sodargye had little formal education until the age of 16, when he entered elementary school. He then studied in secondary school and a normal college, both locally.

Later, he was faced with a choice - to work as a teacher in his hometown or a vastly different life of studying Buddhism.

He says he had a strong interest in the religion from a young age.

When he was 23, Sodargye went to study at the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Sichuan and became a student of its founder, Jigme Phuntsok, who is considered an influential Tibetan Buddhist master.

Through learning, debating and writing, Sodargye soon became a khenpo, the title given to senior Buddhist monks with high discipline.

Having traveled across the world, Sodargye says acceptance of Tibetan Buddhism has been growing rapidly in recent years, especially among younger generations and intellectuals. His lecture at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in late 2015 was attended by dozens of faculty members, fellows and students.

He points out that many people in overseas universities and colleges are familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, including some of the religion's terminologies.

"Some even do very deep research on the theories of Tibetan Buddhism and have raised very thoughtful questions. I was amazed, feeling they are on the same level with monks in my temple (in Sichuan)."

Sodargye says many in the West find it meaningful to study Tibetan Buddhism, as it is a relatively logical religion that can help people train their spirit to reach inner peace.

Giving lectures is not the only way Sodargye popularizes his religion.

He has written several books on Buddhist philosophy in Chinese and is active on the Internet.

He has a website in English where he explains Buddhist philosophy in simple terms, while his blog on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, has more than 2 million followers.

Speaking about the future, Sodargye aims to spend the rest of his life teaching Buddhism to young people.

"I feel that human beings need spiritual training badly," he says, adding that he hopes more people born in the 1990s and 2000s become "truly intelligent people" through systematic training.

zhanghaizhou@chinadaily.com.cn

Sodargye has won a huge number of fans through his books and lectures about Tibetan Buddhism.Provided To China Daily

(China Daily USA 01/25/2016 page9)
Focus of Xi's trip dialogue and development Updated: 2016-01-25 07:47 By Li Shaoxian(China Daily USA)

Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his fruitful visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran over the weekend, his first diplomatic tour to the Middle East region since fully assuming office in 2013. It ushered in a new era, featuring comprehensive, long-term and stable development, for the bilateral partnership.

In general, Xi's three-nation Middle East tour has brought China comprehensive deepened relations with the three countries, taking ties to new heights.

Xi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and production capacity cooperation, as well as other agreements on energy, telecommunication and aviation. The two countries also released a joint statement on forming a comprehensive strategic partnership.

In shared pursuit of enhancing the comprehensive strategic partnership they forged in 2014, China and Egypt signed 21 cooperation agreements on Thursday and endorsed a five-year plan pledging to co-build the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi also brought fresh impetus to the China-proposed trans-Eurasia initiative, in which Iran has the potential to serve as a Middle East bridgehead, thanks to its pivotal geopolitical location and relative stability.

Major breakthroughs are foreseeable in the trade and people-to-people exchanges and energy-oriented cooperation between the two countries, given that the international sanctions on Iran have been lifted and the country craves economic boosters. In particular, with the help of Chinese-funded infrastructure, both nations will enjoy a high level of interconnectivity in the years to come.

The biggest highlight of all is the trip signaled Beijing is putting more concrete efforts into realizing both the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, in a bid to better interconnect with the Middle East.

China will provide a total of $55 billion loan to the Middle East, including $15 billion special loan for industrialization and $10 billion of commercial loans to support production capacity cooperation, and $10 billion preferential loan to the region. It also includes a $20 billion joint investment fund with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to invest in traditional energy, infrastructure development and high-end manufacturing industries in the region.

Besides the second phase of the China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone which will soon begin, China is also poised to take part in other major Egyptian infrastructure projects including the Suez Canal Corridor and the new administrative capital.

More importantly, China is expected to play a more constructive role in regional disputes, and promote peace talks instead of "looking for a proxy in the Middle East or seeking any sphere of influence", as Xi made clear in his keynote speech at the Cairo-based Arab League Headquarters on Thursday.

Beijing has for decades espoused a policy of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs. Being a staunch supporter of the Middle East peace process, it is providing 50 million yuan ($7.6 million) to Palestine to improve local people's well-being, as well as 230 million yuan of additional humanitarian assistance to the people of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen.

But such a stance does not mean the country will "eventually pick sides", as some Western media outlets have speculated, because enhancing the bonds between China and the Middle East is a result of shared willingness to cooperate with no political conditions attached. As Xi said in his speech on Thursday, dialogue and development are the key factors that will help restore peace and stability in the Middle East. That explains why China is the only major power which has managed to maintain friendly relations with the region.

Li Shaoxian is a senior expert on Middle East studies at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. The article is an excerpt of his interview with China Daily's Cui Shoufeng.

(China Daily USA 01/25/2016 page12)
Global powers must tune actions to defeat IS Updated: 2016-01-25 08:04 By Zhu Sumei(China Daily)

More than 10,000 people marched with a gigantic Turkish flag against terrorist attacks to security forces in Turkey's capital city Ankara, Sept 17, 2015. [Photo/IC]

The new year is just three weeks' old and terrorist attacks have already rocked Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Pakistan and India, not to mention those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism is no longer confined to a few countries; it is wreaking havoc across continents and has become a threat to global stability and peace. This calls for leaders across the world to put up a joint fight against terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State group.

That terrorists are launching attacks randomly indicates they are trying to not only consolidate their bases but also hit back at the anti-terrorism alliance.

On the one hand, the IS group's strategic focus has shifted from occupying large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria to launching "lone-wolf" and sporadic attacks in, say, one city, which is a typical al-Qaida tactic. On the other hand, the European Union seems to be fighting IS terrorists within its borders as a considerable number of them have managed to take advantage of the loose border control to enter European countries.

Objectively speaking, the expansion of terrorist networks has been curbed because of the efforts of the international community, which, however, has made little substantial progress in its yearlong military strikes against IS targets. The two combines fighting the IS group, the United States-led coalition and the four-nation alliance comprising Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq, have struggled to efficiently coordinate their actions.

Washington is obviously inclined to avoid further direct intervention in the Middle East, fearing it might get involved in open conflicts in the region again. Burdened by an extensive economic downturn, the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and the influx of Middle East refugees, the EU too has refrained from intensifying its attacks on the IS.

Likewise, some major Middle East countries fighting the IS have to give way to their own concerns. In other words, the so-called war against the IS has become more like a fractured clash of civilizations, in which almost every member appear to be using the war as a convenient excuse to marginalize the "real" enemy or enemies.

On the bright side, the war against terrorism is gaining fresh momentum - so are the efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis - as more countries have decided to pitch in. In response to the horrendous attacks in Paris in November, the G20 summit issued a statement on Nov 16 to combat terrorism, which aims to cut off the IS financial supply routes and impose stricter sanctions on the secret financers.

This was followed by the UN Security Council unanimously passing resolutions urging member states to "take all necessary measures" to prevent and suppress the violent acts of the IS and other terrorist groups. Major powers such as the US, France and Russia have also increased their strikes on IS targets, and Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism.

The IS can be eliminated in the near future should all countries deepen their cooperation and closely coordinate their actions under the UN framework. But it would take more than military operations, intelligence sharing, financial sanctions and judicial coordination to claim victory.

As a new terrorist outfit, the IS has more channels across the globe, online and offline both, for raising funds (it is even using Internet crowd-funding). So the international community has to make more concerted efforts to disable the IS' financing network and prevent the backflow of people who joined terrorist groups overseas into their home countries.

The author is a professor at the International Politics Department of the University of International Relations in Beijing.
Uncle held in HK in killing of 2 Updated: 2016-01-25 12:11 By Lia Zhu in San Francisco(China Daily USA)

A Chinese man was apprehended in Hong Kong over the weekend in connection with the beating deaths of his two teenage nephews in Arcadia, California, according to reports.

Shi Deyun, 44, boarded a Cathay Pacific flight on Jan 22 in an attempt to reach the Chinese mainland. But he was taken into custody by local police after his plane landed in Hong Kong.

He was admitted to a local hospital for what Hong Kong media described as an unstable mental condition.

The two slain boys, ages 15 and 16, were found dead by their mother in their Arcadia home on the morning of Jan 22. Police said they suffered blunt-force trauma to their upper torsos.

Shi's wife, Lin Yujing, the sister of the two boys' father, had filed a temporary restraining order against Shi on Dec 31.

On Jan 21, Shi learned of his wife's plan to seek a divorce at a court hearing in Pasadena. An angry Shi attacked his wife after the hearing and tried to find her in her brother's home the next day, according to a report by China Press.

Shi didn't find Lin at home, but his two nephews, Anthony Lin and William Lin, both international students at Arcadia High School, were in the house.

China does not have an extradition agreement with the United States, but Hong Kong has had an extradition treaty with the US since 1996.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com
China buildings going green at fast pace: expert Updated: 2016-01-25 12:11 By Niu Yue in New York(China Daily USA)

China's "green" building square footage has eclipsed that of the US, according to a real estate report.

"If we combine total floor area of the Chinese green buildings certified by both CGS and LEED, the results would be 320 million square meters (3.44 billion square feet), (so it) has already outnumbered American's 310 million square meters (3.34 billion square meters) slightly," said Manish Kashyap in the recent CBRE Brokerage Research Review. Kashyap is a regional managing director at CRBE, the largest commercial real estate agency and investor in the world.

Kashyap said there were at least 2,500 building projects that had been certified green with the China Green Standard (CGS), a national measure used to determine if a building is environmentally responsible and resource-efficient.

"The total floor area of the CGS reached more than 290 million square meters (approximately 3.1 billion square feet) last year," he said. "The ongoing green-building projects in China will put the statistics even higher in 2016."

A surge in green Chinese buildings did not stick to the domestic standard because more international standards "did play a role", according to Kashyap.

Kashyap said in the review that the US' Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) had been widely adopted by many green-building projects in China.

According to a report issued by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), at least 627 projects on the Chinese mainland with a total floor area of 28 million square meters (301 million square feet) had obtained LEED certification.

The report also showed that in 2015, the Chinese mainland had 7 percent of the LEED market, surpassed only by the US.

"China has obviously become one of the biggest overseas markets for LEED certification," Kashyap said.

Henry Chin, head researcher at CRBE Asia Pacific, said that the Chinese green-building market is lucrative yet largely untapped.

According to Chin, floor area per capita of green buildings in China remains far behind that of the United States. Chin said that for each person in the major Chinese cities, there was only 0.58 square meter (6.24 square feet) of green building area, while for their American counterparts, that area is 6.44 square meters (69.32 square feet).

Zhou Boya, a researcher at the Environment School of Tsinghua University in Beijing, said China's 1 percent annual urbanization growth rate "had necessitated a larger market of green building in China".

Long Yifan in New York contributed to this story.
Columbia library: gifts from China Updated: 2016-01-25 12:11 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily USA)

A bronze bust of Chinese educator Tao Xingzhi, presented by practitioners of Tao's educational philosophy from China, is unveiled on Jan 22 at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University. Jim Cheng (second from left), director of the East Asian Library; Ann Thornton (in purple jacket), vice-provost and university librarian; Jake Jia (third from right), president of Dragon Summit Foundation; and Tao Zheng (second from right), Tao Xingzhi's granddaughter attended the event. Hezi Jiang / China Daily

C.V. Starr East Asian Library at university gets endowment to go with bronze bust

The C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University received two Chinese-themed gifts just before a blizzard paralyzed New York City.

A bronze bust of renowned Chinese educator Tao Xingzhi was unveiled on Jan 22 evening in the library's reading room. At the same time, the Dragon Summit Foundation, a New York City-based non-profit organization committed to promoting cultural exchange between the US and East Asia, announced the establishment of an endowment fund for the library.

"Two weeks ago, when Columbia's president Lee Bollinger met with Chinese premier in China, he emphasized the great importance of Columbia's cooperation with China," said vice-provost and university librarian Ann Thornton. She pointed out that the new bust and endowment fund will help carry the relationship forward.

Chinese educator and reformer Tao Xingzhi attended Columbia University's Teachers College from 1915 to 1917, where he studied educational philosophy under American education reformer John Dewey.

After returning to China, Tao organized the National Association of Mass Education Movement and became the nation's leading promoter of rural teacher education. He later founded Xiaozhuang Normal College in Nanjing to train teachers who were sent to schools in the countryside.

In collaboration with China America Friendship Association USA, 33 practitioners of Tao's educational philosophy flew to the US from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chongqing and other Chinese cities to present the bronze bust to Tao's alma mater.

Tao's own granddaughter, Tao Zheng, was with the group, and it was her first visit to the United States. "Though I never met my grandfather - he passed away in 1946, and I was born in 1948 - I grew up listening to the legendary stories of his life. Our whole family is so proud of my grandfather," said Tao Zheng, who became a teacher herself.

"I'm so excited to be here, learning about the school where my grandfather received his education and seeing his statue unveiled and permanently located here," she said. "We all respect him greatly."

The Dragon Summit Culture Endowment Fund, with initial principal funding of $100,000, will be primarily used for projects and studies related to East Asian visual culture.

The first event funded by the cause - Esther Eng and Other Challenges to Women and World Cinema - will be held in February. Eng was the first female director to direct Chinese-language films in the US.

"Chinese are getting rich and they are now becoming more and more aware of how to give back to public causes, such as education and culture," said Jim Cheng, director of the East Asian Library.

"During China's most difficult time - the beginning of the 20th century - the US opened up, especially universities, which accepted a lot of Chinese students," he continued. "Columbia educated, prepared and helped create a generation of top scholars, scientists, educators, and philosophers for China. I think now it's time for China to give back, to thank the US education system."

"I'm so happy to see it's happening," he added.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
Spain's airline to launch direct flight to China Updated: 2016-01-25 16:55 By Li Jing(chinadaily.com.cn)

Iberia, Spain's largest airline, announced recently it will launch non-stop services between Shanghai and Madrid during the next winter season.

In the airline's statement, Iberia says it expects to begin operations during the 2016/2017 winter season, and has started negotiations with Chinese authorities to request the necessary permits. Iberia will use the A330-200, its most modern aircraft, on the route.

Currently there are no direct flights between Shanghai and Madrid, so the route is expected to bring an enormous improvement in connection opportunities between the two cities. Luis Gallego, the airlines executive chairman, says that via its Madrid hub, Iberia will connect Shanghai with all of Spain, Europe, North Africa and Latin America.

Spain is the third-most visited country in the world and it received a record high 64.99 million international tourists in 2014, according to the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015. Of that number,some 290,000 were from China.

Spain is looking to lure more Chinese tourists and wants to treble that number in the next five years. The low frequency of direct flights between the two countries is seen as the key to boosting growth, industry insiders said.

As of now, Air China is the only airline to fly direct from Spain to China, with four flights per week between Beijing and Madrid and one between Beijing and Barcelona.
China's Paris climate pledges 'reflect China's domestic desires' Updated: 2016-01-25 19:34 By Cecily Liu(China Daily Europe)

China's commitments at the Paris negotiations in 2015 are an "international reflection of China's domestic commitments," said Yvo de Boer, former secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

De Boer, who has since became the director general of the Global Green Growth Institute, said to China Daily at the World Economic Forum in Davos that China's commitment in Paris was encouraging, and shows a strong realization that China's current economic model needs to change, for growth to be more sustainable.

"Chinese commitment in Paris is a reflection of where China wants to go, and not a reflection of what China thinks the international community wants China to go. It is more as a Chinese commitment to China, than Chinese commitment to the world," said De Boer, adding that it reflects China is becoming more confident as a global power.

Under the framework of the Paris conference on climate change, China announced it aims to hit the CO2 emissions peak by around 2030 and slash CO2 emissions per unit of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 60-65 percent from the 2005 level.

In addition, China announced in September the establishment of an independent South-South cooperation fund of 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) to help developing countries affected by global warming, which was a significant step forward in China's climate change leadership role in the fight on climate change combat alongside developing countries.

The GGGI, an intergovernmental organization founded in 2010 to promote a new model of development, which combines economic growth and environmental sustainability, has worked on various projects in China at the provincial level, and is now ready to take these experiences to bigger projects at China's national level, said de Boer.

The economic assessments in China include aspects like how to make energy supply greener and more efficient, how to improve building quality, create better public transport systems and create more jobs in the economy simultaneously.

In recent years it has provided technical input to government officers from three bureaus in Xiangyang city and three bureaus in Hubei province as a part of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development's sustainable consumption project to build capacity and awareness to greener procurement and consumption practices to subnational authorities.

The GGGI also developed a strategic agreement with China's Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy to give policy analysis and recommendations on foundational green growth elements.

"The focus of our China projects are at the provincial level so far, which is working with provinces to understand how you can keep a strong economic growth but also creating jobs in different areas."

"Our work in the future is more at the national level. At the moment, we are working with the Ministry of Environment on the use of green indicators, for example, on how to use a five-year plan not just for economic progress but also to monitor environmental progress," de Boer said.

He said another important question in China is how to improve dialogues with the private sectors, in order to drive changes towards the intended green growth model.

A third issue China faces is how to ensure its foreign investments into other developing economies are green, and this is particularly important as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is now led by and located in China, he said.

De Boer said that the big challenge of taking the provincial projects' experiences that GGGI has accumulated in China to the national level for implementation, because China is a big country and it would be difficult to make policies in the capital and expect them to be implemented easily at the local level across the board.

"The primary concern of local governments is to realize strong economic growth. In addition, the people at city and provincial levels are not experts on climate change, so to bring the perspectives of the national decision makers to the local level would be challenging."

But de Boer is also optimistic about China's future environmental protection efforts. He said China would benefit from shifting its energy sources to greener renewable sources, as the efficiency associated with better sources of energy will bring long term energy bills down and improve air quality.

In addition, as China is a key exporter to the world economy, there would be an expectation for its products to match international standards in energy efficiency, he said.

To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com


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"Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness" -Thucydides
The Vatican Information Service is a news service, founded in the Holy See Press Office, that provides information about the Magisterium and the pastoral activities of the Holy Father and the Roman Curia...[ ]
France will sign an intergovernmental agreement with India to clear the way for a long-awaited $9 billion deal to sell French-built Rafale warplanes to India, French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to attract French companies to India and to share high technology in defence and other fields as part of a bid to promote local industry and build a domestic manufacturing base.

In the run-up to Hollande's visit, Indian and French negotiators on Friday debated the price of 36 combat planes designed to replace ageing Indian air force jets, officials of the two nations said.

"The idea we have in mind is one of an intergovernmental agreement between the two countries in order to allow the firms involved to go all the way," Hollande told journalists.

"It is this intergovernmental agreement that will allow a commercial transaction," said Hollande.

The French leader, speaking in Chandigarh on the first day of a state visit to India, said such an agreement was a prerequisite for the Indian side. He did not elaborate.

Hollande will be the guest of honor at India's Republic Day parade on Tuesday, a sign of the deepening political and commercial ties between the two countries.

India and France are also discussing a plan by French nuclear company Areva to build six reactors in western India, as part of a push to ramp up nuclear capacity.
Iraq's foreign ministry summoned Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Baghdad today to protest his "interference" in the country's internal affairs over remarks on militia forces fighting the Islamic State group.

Thamer al-Sabhan is the first Baghdad-based Saudi ambassador in a quarter century, but while full diplomatic relations are restored, there is still significant hostility to Riyadh in some quarters and there have already been calls for the envoy's expulsion.

The foreign ministry summoned Sabhan "to inform him of its official protest regarding his media statements that represented interference in Iraqi internal affairs," it said in a statement.

Sabhan said in interview with Al-Sumaria television that the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces, which are dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, are not wanted in Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas as "they are not accepted by the sons of Iraqi society".

Iraq turned to Shiite militia forces in 2014 to help counter an IS onslaught that overran large areas north and west of Baghdad, and they have played a key role in the fight against the jihadists.

But militias and their affiliates have also carried out abuses including summary executions, kidnappings and destruction of property, and many members of the Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities view them with suspicion.

The foreign ministry defended the Hashed al-Shaabi, "which is fighting terrorism and defending the sovereignty of the country, and works under the umbrella of the state."



Shiite politicians had earlier reacted angrily to the Saudi ambassador's comments, but the country's largest Sunni bloc defended him.

"The remarks of the Saudi ambassador indicate clear hostility and blatant interference in Iraqi affairs," Khalaf Abdulsamad, the head of the Dawa parliamentary list, said in a statement.
An imam accused of seeking to recruit young men to join the Islamic State group was shot dead in the Rwandan capital Saturday night while trying to escape from a police escort, police said in a statement today.

Muhammad Mugemangango, deputy imam of the Kimiromko mosque in the capital Kigali, was shot dead as he sought to escape police custody during an escorted visit to his home, they said.

"He was under investigations for mentoring Rwandan youths into Jihad and recruiting them to join Islamic State in Syria," the police statement said.

Police said Mugemangango had been detained "on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities" but tried to run away after he accompanied police to his home to conduct a search.

On the way back, he jumped off the vehicle and was shot, they said.

Rwanda's Muslim community is tiny -- accounting for just two percent of the population -- and maintains a low profile. There is no history of radicalisation and no known cases of Rwandans joining IS.

However, the police statement said it believed the "formation of terror networks" was underway.

It gave no further details except to add that, "we will do our best to unmask the network and deal with them in accordance with the law.
What do we do to keep the lights on?, asks Andrews Daniel Andrews at a press conference on Thursday asked "what do we do to keep the lights on?" once coal fired power stations close before insisting his government had a plan to address the question.

Were on our own: Flood levee divides Victorian town Residents on the wrong side of Echuca's "great wall" have voiced their frustrations about being left "on our own" as the Victorian town braces for rising flood levels.

Palaszczuk responds to review into Australias COVID-19 response Speaking at the Housing Summit in Brisbane on Thursday, Ms Palaszczuk was asked to weigh in on the independent review into Australias COVID-19 response.

Went too far: Dutton takes aim at Andrews in response to damning COVID-19 report The Opposition Leader has defended the former government's actions in Australia's coronavirus pandemic response while taking aim at Victoria for its lockdowns, which led to Melbourne being the longest locked down city in the world.
WATERLOO  In the last month before the Iowa precinct caucuses, Marco Rubio picked up his position in the polls and an endorsement from the Des Moines Register.

With a week left to go, Rubio said hes prepared to carry the momentum to the caucus Feb. 1. On Sunday at the Electric Park Ballroom in Waterloo, he framed himself as the candidate to unite a fractured Republican Party, which has 12 candidates vying for the presidential nomination for the November general election.

Rubio spoke to a crowd of more than 230 people, promising to reverse policies put into place during President Barack Obamas administration, including opening trade and diplomatic relations with Iran and the Affordable Care Act.

Were going to kill it, were going to replace it, he said of the Affordable Care Act. Were going to put you in charge of your health care and not the government.

Rubio said he would rework the tax code provide a tax refund for people who purchase insurance plans. Rubio also said he would increase the child tax credit families receive.

He said the credit would help working families and criticized opponents who have called the credit an entitlement.

Its not an entitlement, he said. Its already your money.

Rubio said he would move Medicaid and other poverty programs to state control.

The federal governments one-size-fits-all approach has actually kept people in poverty.

Following his speech, Rubio took questions from the crowd. One woman asked how he would address an immigration system that makes it difficult for impoverished people to legally enter the country.

Rubio said most of the people entering the U.S. from Mexico are fleeing drug cartels and violence in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala. Rubio said the U.S. border has become a magnet for people.

When you leave your border open like that, youre inviting people to take that dangerous journey, he said.

Rubio said he would enforce immigration laws, beef up border fencing and security and let new immigrants in with certain job skills through a merit-based system.

Rubio also affirmed his Christian faith as the driving force for his policy plans and positions.

Pat McIntosh, who attended the event and saw Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speak the night before, said she is leaning toward caucusing for Cruz but also supports Rubio.

I believe our president has to have faith in God to bring our country back, she said. We as Christians are being pushed to not being able to worship.

Recent polls show Rubio behind Donald Trump and Cruz but closing the gap.

I will never look to divide or pit us against each other, Rubio said.

He framed the next election as crucial.

If a Democrat is elected as president, this nation may change in ways that can never be reversed.
CEDAR FALLS  Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a crowd of fired-up followers to keep their enthusiasm for the long haul in a campaign event in Cedar Falls on Sunday evening.

Sanders spoke to more than 1,250 people at the West Gym on the University of Northern Iowa campus Sunday night.

Sanders said the U.S. has had a steady history of opening voting rights to more people, from African-Americans more than 150 years ago to women nearly 100 years ago.

A few people on the top, whether theyre kings, queens, czars or billionaires should not determine the future of our country  you should, he said.

He took exception to pundit and opposition claims he wouldnt be able to win a general election in November and took aim at a corrupt campaign finance system. He pointed to his status as a fringe candidate nine months ago to polling ahead or tied with Hillary Clinton in early primary states for the Democratic nomination for the November general election.

He turned Clintons warnings on their head, telling the crowd voter apathy is good news for Republicans.

Republicans win when people are demoralized and do not vote, Sanders said.

Sanders also appeared earlier in the day in Independence, where Maegan Sonksen, her husband Brian and others were waiting to see their candidate.

The 2016 caucuses will be a bit of a milestone for Sonksen.

Its the first time weve caucused, and its for Bernie, Sonksen said at Heartland Acres.

Sanders made the case that its his ideas and his campaign generating the excitement that will attract the Sonksens to the Feb. 1 caucuses and to the voting booth in November.

The Vermont senator repeated the theme in Cedar Falls, pointing to the campaigns 2.5 million individual contributions over the last nine months.

Any objective assessment would tell you the energy and the excitement is with our camp, he said, which was met with the crowd chanting Bernie.

Following his take on the race, Sanders moved into policy details.

Are you ready to get bored? he asked the crowd.

Sanders touched on wealth inequality, called for gender pay equity and took aim at the prison industry, saying funding would be better spent on education and jobs programs.

We shouldnt be spending $80 billion per year to lock up Americans, he said. Sanders added substance abuse isnt a criminal issue and called for marijuana to no longer be classified as a Schedule 1 substance, the most dangerous level of narcotics.

Sanders also reiterated his plan to provide tuition-free college with a tax on Wall Street speculation. Sanders noted Wall Street got public money in a bailout.

Now its Wall Streets turn to help the middle class, he said.

He called student debt an unnecessary burden. The majority college-age crowd agreed, shouting out their student debt totals.

Why are we punishing people in this country for the crime of trying to get an education? he said. What a sane society wants to do is encourage people to get an education and not saddle them with debt.

That message resonated with Mary Bellone, of Cedar Falls, who said student debt hurt her early in her adult life.

Im so happy hes supporting people getting out of college without a mortgage, she said.

Bellone brought her daughter, Julia Grey, 14, to the event to see Sanders speak. Grey and her friend Jay Bonebrake, 14, said Sanders plan for tuition-free college opens the door for them to attend.

I care about the youth, our future and how were going to go through college and grow up, Bonebrake said.

Bellone said she plans to caucus for Sanders on Feb. 1.
Trump's strategy

ERNEST NUNNALLY

WATERLOO -- Trump is following the "southern strategy" started by Nixon, then Reagan. You lean to the right to win the nomination, then move to the center in the general election. Trump is smart enough to pander to the core of the GOP. The GOP panders to one-issue voters: religious nuts/Christian right, NRA and bigots. They realize they can do anything to these people and they will take it as long as they claim to love the Jewish god and guns while hating and fearing Muslims, Mexicans, blacks and anyone not white.

We told people Obama was a dangerous socialist  when really we knew he was a moderate. But they believed us. The GOP is still the party of the rich, but they cannot win and get their policies passed so they use these really, really stupid people that will vote against issues that affect their lives. Look at the crazies from the last election -- Sarah Palin is so stupid, she thought Africa was a country.

Lies for votes

LANNY SCHWARTZ

CEDAR FALLS -- In Iowa, the right-wing Christian leaders anoint a Republican candidate who makes the best promise about abortion. Then, without a second thought, evangelicals vote for the candidate. What always puzzles me is that abortion is the end of the story without regard for any other Christian values. I think Christian groups should examine their broader array of values.

We have two leading, mud-slinging candidates where I cannot see a scrap of Christian love in their hearts. Where is their great joy of Christianity, and have you ever seen it expressed in their otherwise angry faces? Theyll say any lies for votes. What do you think about their excessive pride? Think about their lust for power. Do you ever see a scrap of the golden rule escape their lips?

Some groups are starting to understand they have been conned about pro-life issues for the last three decades. Congress will bring up pro-life bills but always with a poison pill so they can blame the judges or Democrats.

Your vote gets you tax cuts for the rich and the deregulation of corporate criminals. Think about your vote! Vote for all Christian values, not just one.

Critical thinking

PAUL HIGGINS

WATERLOO -- I don't know of any job on Earth where employees are paid excessively for absence while applying for other jobs, except U.S. politicians. Needless to say, issues are plentiful and citizens deserve all hands on deck. Recently The Courier featured important reveals on several issues: "Tax policy runs amok" (Dec. 15, 2015), "Budget bill needs more work" (Dec. 23, 2015), "D.C. budget bill was rushed" (Dec. 28, 2015). I'd like to see those constructive criticisms expanded, but focus on both issues and "candidates" ... including the PACs and super PACs pulling the puppet strings. Time is short, but facts are key to intelligent caucus results.

Critical thinking is lacking when citizens naively soak up campaign rhetoric, take selfies and solicit autographs. Do people not consider that if you're in Congress now, or have been, there's a high probability you're part of the Fed's ineptness, and likely not a solution? And if you're under investigation by the FBI, you're ineligible for any office.

Given our critical need for demonstrated leadership (not more "firsts"), and as grandiose campaign promises roll off slippery tongues, ask yourself two key questions: "Can any one person actually deliver this?" and "Who's paying for all this?"
WATERLOO | A Monday morning fire left a Waterloo home with heavy damage.

The residents at 520 Boston Ave. were at work when a passerby noticed smoke coming from the house shortly after 8 a.m., said Battalion Chief Mike Jenn with Waterloo Fire Rescue.

Firefighters entered the house and extinguished the flames. Fire damage claimed three rooms, and there was smoke damage throughout the rest of the home, Jenn said. The American Red Cross is assisting the family with emergency shelter.

The fire appears to have started in a back room on the ground floor. The cause of the blaze hasnt been determined, but Jenn said the fire doesnt appear suspicious.
ANKENY | Ben Carson said one of the biggest problems facing the nation is divisiveness and another threat  the terrorist group ISIS  should be handled by giving U.S. military leaders all the tools they require.

Carson, a Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon, spoke at Faith Baptist Bible College in this Des Moines suburb early Monday.

Speaking to roughly 200 of the schools students, Carson told his personal story and laid out his conservative vision for the country. He touted the Judaeo Christian foundation that is the root of many of those values and principles of the countrys founders.

Carson said he thinks people are being convinced that those who dont agree should be considered enemies.

How did that happen in America? Where does that spirit of hatred come from? It does not come from our Judaeo-Christian roots, I can tell you that. And it is something we must fight, Carson said, calling for a civil dialogue over issues upon which people disagree.

Pivoting to national security, Carson said the president must give U.S. military leaders whatever they request in the fight against ISIS, the terrorist group that is growing in Syria and Libya, and whose sympathizers killed 14 people in a December shooting in California.

Whatever (the military leaders) need, you have to give it to them without tying their hands behind their backs, Carson said, while also criticizing what he called silly rules of engagement.

You cant bomb an oil tanker because there might be people in it. Are you kidding me? Carson said to applause.

 He referenced remarks by former President Teddy Roosevelt, who said the U.S. must always welcome immigrants but only if those immigrants assimilate.

If they dont, they should stay where they are, Carson said to applause. I think that makes perfect sense.

Carson said Monday he is running for president despite its challenges because he felt called by God.

He opened the doors, and I continued to walk through them, Carson said. And I will continue to walk through them until he closes them, because I believe our country is in a lot of trouble right now.
DES MOINES  A southern route has been chosen for the RAGBRAI XLIV cross-state bike ride July 24-31.

It will start July 24 in Glenwood in western Iowa, heading east to Muscatine on the Mississippi River on July 31.

Overnight stops, from west to east, will be in Shenendoah, Creston, Leon, Centerville, Ottumwa and Washington.

The route and overnight stops were announced at a launch party in Des Moines on Saturday night.

Organizers also announced a fund drive to build a statue in downtown Des Moines to John Karras and Donald Kaul, journalists who conceived the idea for the ride when they were columnists for The Des Moines Register. RAGBRAI is an acronym for the Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

Karras attended Saturdays launch party, as well as representatives of various communities along the route. Also attending were members of several longtime riding teams, including a team from the Cedar Valley that includes state Rep. Bob Kressig, D-Cedar Falls.

Northern routes had been selected over the past two years, with overnight stops in Waverly and Independence in 2014 and Cedar Falls in 2015.

Correction added 01/25/16: Iowa Rep. Bob Kressig's party affiliation was incorrectly identified. He is a Democrat.
Them thats got shall get. Them thats not shall lose  Billie Holiday

It was in April 2014 that the water turned bad. Residents of Flint, Mich., reported 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 the Detroit Free Press, just an hour down the road, took note. It wasnt until March that The New York Times began reporting the story. It wasnt until Jan. 5 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 Flints ill-fated attempt to save money by switching its water supply to the filthy Flint River. You could focus on findings the river water contained fecal coliform bacteria. Or on the fact chemicals used to kill said bacteria apparently created new contaminations of their own. Or on reports 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 Flints children. The World Health Organization says lead poisoning in kids can lead to brain damage, shortened attention span, antisocial 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 it has been a slow-rolling disaster.

It is inconceivable 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, post-industrial 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 doesnt even have a grocery store.

In 2005, when New Orleans drowned, some of us seemed surprised 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 wasnt 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 theres 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 its been almost two years since 100,000 people had safe water to drink and were just beginning to notice.

Thats unconscionable. News medias mission, it is often said, is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Where the plight of the nations poor is concerned, we seem to have failed on both counts.
For the first time in 50 years, the death rate for young white adults, 25-34, is exceeding the generation that preceded it because of an epidemic of drug overdoses.

The New York Times published that finding Jan. 16 after analyzing more than 60 million death certificates filed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1990 to 2014.

A study of middle-age whites, 45-54, using the same methodology, was released in November by Princeton University economists Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, and Anne Case who came to a similar conclusion.

They found an epidemic of suicides and substance abuse  alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of prescription opioid painkillers  had caused the annual death rate to rise in that demographic.

The Times analysis found the death rate for young African-Americans had declined. The Princeton study determined middle-age death rates for AfricanTAmericans, Hispanics, other races and ethnic groups also had declined.

Coincidentally, The Courier reported Jan. 17 heroin use is increasing in the Cedar Valley. That addiction is linked to the growing use of opioid painkillers  oxycodone or the name brands OxyContin and Fentora  derived from opium poppy or a synthetic version.

Opioids prevent pain and may provide a sense of euphoria, but higher doses can create acute, possibly fatal, breathing problems.

Marcia Wulfekuhle, an addiction therapist at Pathways Behavioral Services in Waterloo, told The Couriers Amie Steffeneicher the heroin addiction crisis reminded her of the Vietnam War era, the last time death rates for a generation were higher than its predecessor.

Wulfekuhle said alcohol remains the leading addiction in the area, but heroin has grown from 2 percent to 4 percent in just three years. Seventy percent of the heroin addicts told her their gateway drug was a pain pill.

According to the CDC, 45 percent of heroin addicts also are addicted to painkillers.

Pain pills cost $10 to $20. When that supply runs out, Lt. Corbin Payne of the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force said addicts turn to pricier heroin at $80 to $100.

As we wrote in this space last month, all drug overdoses (meth included) have surpassed the other categories of unintentional deaths. In 2014, there were 33,804 motor vehicle deaths, 33,636 fatalities by firearms and 47,055 from drug overdoses.

The vast majority of those overdoses involved opioids. Prescription painkillers  hydrocodone (Vicodin), methadone and codeine  were cited in 18,893 deaths, while 10,754 were attributed to heroin, although some victims used both. Deaths attributed to prescription drugs and heroin overdoses increased by 14 percent from 2013 to 2014.

From 2000 to 2014, deaths from drug overdoses were up 137 percent, totaling nearly a half-million, according to the CDC, including a 200 percent increase involving opioids. Forty-four Americans die every day because of a prescription painkiller overdose; 7,000 are treated in emergency rooms.

The opioid epidemic parallels the aggressive marketing of OxyContin beginning in 1996. Painkiller prescriptions quadrupled from 1999 to 2012. The CDC has stated 259 million prescriptions for painkillers  exceeding the U.S. adult population  were written in 2012.

The Los Angeles Times reported in March 2014 that Purdue Pharma had sold more than $27 billion worth of OxyContin since its introduction in 1996, while 1,200 doctors had recklessly overprescribed it.

New Hampshire ranks third nationally in opiate abuse, and Republican presidential candidates campaigning there have openly discussed an addiction that crosses class distinctions.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has talked about his daughter, Noelle, who was addicted to drugs and spent time in jail and recovery. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive officer, lost a stepdaughter to the demons of addiction at 35. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has mentioned a law school colleague who died of a Percocet overdose.

Naloxone is a prescription drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose, but it is only available in Iowa to health professionals and emergency medical personnel. The latter group alone distributed 223 doses in 2014, according to Iowa Watch.

It most certainly does save lives, said Dr. John Hamiel, the Covenant Medical Center pharmacy director.

Yet attempts to expand the availability of naloxone, which is on the World Health Organizations List of Essential Medicines, have failed in the Iowa Legislature.

We would suggest our elected representatives visit the CDC website to get the horrifying details of this national scourge, then approve the legislation. When a generation  or two  is dying way before its time, everything possible should be done to make antidotes accessible.
Q: Regarding KWWLs three regional Emmy awards: There was one about the Korean War veteran and his touching Honor Flight story. Is there an account of this story some place?

A: Jerry Gallaghers report on the Honor Flight that included his father can be found on www.kwwl.com. In the search bar, search for Jerry Gallagher Honor Flight.



Q: Where can we send donations to the Honor Flights?

A: You can send donations to Sullivan-Hartogh-Davis Post 730 Honor Flight, P.O. Box 182, Cedar Falls 50613 or email Veterans@SHDPost730WaterlooHonorFlight.org for more information.



Q: How much more money is the Waterloo Water Works putting out for the new envelopes and two sheets for the bill instead of just using the postcard?

A: The postcard stock cost was 2 cents per piece. The cost for the 8.5-by-11-inch two-color statement with back print and return tear-off, the inside return envelope and the outside window envelope is 14.5 cents per set.



Q: The city of Waterloo owns many lots on the east side of Waterloo. Why doesnt Habitat For Humanity build the 14 new houses on the east side?

A: The Courier has printed several stories where Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity officials explained the benefits of this single-site location, which the city also owns, for multiple homes. The agency has constructed homes on both sides of the Cedar River in Waterloo.

Perhaps you should go to one of the multiple public hearings that were held on this project to explain in more detail why you believe the agency should build all of its homes on the east side of the city.



Q: Jim Walsh said he didnt get paid for the Sunnyside South LLC case against the city of Waterloo, but wasnt he on the citys payroll at the same time?

A: Jim Walsh has never been on the city of Waterloos payroll. He was on contract to provide legal services to the city, which includes a retainer and being paid hourly for work his firm provided.



Q: When does the current local option tax for schools expire? Why have the schools already spent all this money?

A: Once all counties in the state had passed the local option sales tax for schools, the Legislature replaced it with a statewide 1 percent tax that is currently set to end in 2029. Some school districts have bonded against the money so they can make needed upgrades and build new schools sooner.

Since the tax first became an option in the late 1990s, construction costs have skyrocketed, so some districts have argued this is a more fiscally responsible approach to make the money go further.



Q: For the upcoming school bond issue: What percentage of Waterloo tax filers pay an Iowa income tax?

A: Waterloo Community Schools officials have said there are 45,000-plus income tax filers in the district, or about 80 percent of the adult population.
Burundi is a relatively small (11 million people) East African country that has had more internal war than peace in the years since independence from Belgium in 1962. It is one of the very poorest countries in the world, with a very high fertility rate (6.2 children per woman), accompanied by high infant and child mortality, high maternal mortality, and overall high mortality. Regular conflict between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi populations does not help any of this. However, the latest conflict began last year (April 2015) when the current president, Pierre Nkurunziza , announced that he was running for a third term and then was re-elected, despite the fact that the country's constitution prohibits a third term. Reuters reported yesterday that the UN and the African Union want to send peace-keeping troops in, but the Burundi government is thus far resisting that. In the meantime, more than 200,000 Burundians have been displaced, some internally and some as refugees in neighboring countries.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 22, 2016 | BENTON, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 22, 2016 | 12:55 PM | BENTON, KY

Kentucky State Representative Will Coursey filed paperwork Thursday to seek another term representing the 6th House District.



Coursey, a Democrat, has served since 2008, representing people in Marshall, Lyon, and McCracken Counties, and said he has found it more rewarding than he ever imagined.



I have been able to establish a good working relationship with the leadership of the General Assembly and especially my colleagues from West Kentucky, making it possible to really help this region through projects like I-69 improvements and the Land Between the Lakes bridges and a new middle school in Lyon County. I also supported construction of a new modern health department and a new childrens art center in Marshall County. My goal is to build on this progress during the current legislative session and in the years ahead, and I look forward to asking voters for their continued support.



In a press release, Coursey reminds voters of his stance on 2nd Amendment rights. In 2011, he sponsored the law that made it easier for those without concealed-carry permits to keep their firearms in any manufactured-created container in their vehicle. An earlier court ruling had limited firearms to gloveboxes, which some vehicles do not have. A year later, Rep. Coursey sponsored another law that made it possible for people to carry concealed weapons on their own property without a concealed-carry license, a move that also included sole proprietors of their own business.



In Frankfort, Coursey is chairman of the Houses Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee, vice chairman of the chambers Banking and Insurance Committee, and a member of the committees for Agriculture and Small Business; Labor and Industry; State Government; and Transportation. In addition, he is vice chair of the Budget Review Subcommittee on General Government, Finance and Public Protection, a role that gives him the ability to guide state spending in those areas.



Coursey said his top priorities include funding and supporting schools and workforce development programs, strengthening the public retirement systems, and making sure vulnerable citizens are protected.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.
What is posted on who-cester is my work and my views; what is posted here does not represent the views of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (for whom I work as a field director).You'll need to look at masc.org for that.
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The Empire of Chaos is my new name for what I have been calling The Western Empire; The Western Empire name is actually taken as it is also known as the Western Roman Empire, or the western part of the Roman Empire. The name is also too mild for the Empire of death and evil and since Chaos was the beginning in mythology and Chaos means: Complete disorder and confusion!

The above statement goes perfect with a country like America; whom thinks they are the beginning of all righteousness and rules with totally unadulterated CHAOS

Therefore, I shall adjust my thoughts and we have now been given the best name for the latest empire to terrorize the world as we know it. The name I have accepted for the west as they call themselves on the planet we call Earth is

The Empire of Chaos

* * * * * * * * * *

Yesterday I made Tuna Casserole

I took a can of water based tuna, a pack of cheese crackers, a small pack of mayo, a small chunk of Colby cheese and salt, pepper, garlic and mixed all together in a bowl, using the moisture from the tuna can only. Once stirred thoroughly, I put in a throwaway bake pan and baked it on the bottom 25 minutes and top and bottom another 5 minutes

I used what I had and when it was done, I ate every last bit of what you see in the image

Oh My! It was so good and then I moaned about being stuffed the rest of the day 

* * * * * * * * * *

Tonight Boza and I watched the sunset. It was cold and it was windy and it was wonderful

The air is softer and the wind is from the south. This is important for we will now get warmer, like -5 C. instead of -35 C. The frost has actually been blown out of the trees and it just feels warm to me. Boza liked it and we just walked 20 minutes and felt no repercussions, like we do at -30 C. or so. It is strange to look at -20 C. as a good temperature and -10 C. as a heat wave. I am starting to understand Siberian people and how they look at the weather

Heat is easier to cool down from than cold is to heat up from. The energy required to heat a home at -30 C. is unbelievable, but even at +38 C. a fan will allow you to survive. But the energy required to run a fan is a far cry from the energy to heat with

Just a thought of mine! And could you image the energy required to stay warm at -80 C. ?

* * * * * * * * * *

Vova and I are waiting to get our roads plowed, but it looks like more snow is coming and thus, no plowing of the roads. They refuse to plow if it snows. They will only plow if no snow is in the forecast for at least a week. Not going to happen too often

The 80 year old babushka in the White House does not care if they ever get plowed. She puts on her skis as she did today and walks to the nearest village. Today she went to get her 10 liters of weekly milk and she goes to get it, no matter what is happening in the world. She is one tough old bird 

* * * * * * * * * *

Vova has his lights on tonight; and that means he is feeling better. I have been worried and today after he got his nitro yesterday and slept soundly for a day. He seems to be doing good. I just hope he does not over do it and keeps things cool for a few more days. He went rabbit hunting and got cold. That is what got him and I remember that he had pneumonia a few years ago and I worry. We are a long way from civilization

But I know that Vova feels like I do. If you die out here in the Russian Village; You die free, happy and on your own terms!

* * * * * * * * * *

I thanked Sveta last night and I told her to thank her mother. They allow me to live in this village. The home was bought by Svetas mother many years ago and the family faded from using the home after Misha Svetas son grew up. I came along and found heaven in a Tiny Russian Village. I realized today with a fervor, that if I died tomorrow, I have lived a full life and ended up in a village that loves me as much as I love it

Svetas family accepts me somewhat; I know that the only member of Svetas family that I care to accept me is Svetas mother. That I care about and it looks like she does, but she is better if I do not become present to much. She is a nervous type intellect, extremely intelligent and a very kind person. She looks at all the images I post and has been amazed and astounded at what the winter looks like here in the Tiny Russian Village

They never dreamed that someone could live here all winter. It never crossed their minds and they only looked at the place as a summer only situation. So they are watching and learning that winter is a dream come true in the village. Sveta has experienced it personally for the first time this year. She loved it and never comprehended that winter was feasible here in the village

I worry about the situation with Russia and America. I do not want to leave Russia under any circumstances. It is getting nasty from the USA side and sooner or later, Russia will react. Sad and more sad

Oh and I want to thank all the people who donated. I will easily keep the blog online with our host and did not have to take from the budget money to eat and live on

Have a nice day

WtR
All of the materials used here are copyright Doug Stowe.

Photos of our students at work are published solely for the promotion of the Wisdom of the Hands program and

Other uses are strictly prohibited and copyright will be enforced.

Questions about Wisdom of the Hands can be addressed to
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.
Twin Blasts Target Assyrian Shops in Qamishli, Syria

The remains of the bicycle which held the bomb that targeted Joseph Bakery in Qamishli, Syria. Qamishli, Syria (AINA) -- Two explosions rocked an Assyrian neighborhood in Qamishli. The first targeted the Star Cafe, where a bomb was placed on a bicycle that was left in front of the store. The explosion killed 3 Assyrians and injured 20. The second blast targeted Joseph Bakery.

Two of the Assyrians killed have been identified as Morris Khajo and Fawzi al-Kaldani. Two of the injured are in critical condition.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

Star Cafe is near the Miami restaurant, one of three Assyrian restaurants which were bombed on December 30, 2015 (AINA 2015-12-30). 16 people were killed in those blasts, 14 of them Assyrian.

After the attacks on December 30 Assyrian security forces, known as the Gozarto Protection Forces (GPF/Sootoro), set up checkpoints around the Al-Wusta neighborhood, the site of the restaurants and a purely Assyrian neighborhood. This led to clashes between GPF and the Kurdish YPG militia, who demanded the checkpoints be removed. One Assyrian fighter and three Kurdish fighters were killed in those clashes (AINA 2016-01-12).

Joseph Bakery in Qamishli, Syria, an Assyrian business which was bombed today.

January 26 Update:
Jan 24, 2016 | By Tess

Every single day we are inundated with notifications, whether its Likes on Facebook, Retweets, or emails, we have become accustomed to little red tags and bleeps punctuating our daily routines, as they have even become a part of them. While for most of us, these social media notifications pass by without much consideration, one French design artist, Pierre-Felix So, has decided to explore the impact of notifications in our lives by rethinking how they actually notify us.

Pierre-Felix So is a recent graduate in Product Design from the DSAA LAAB in Rennes, France who has used his knowledge of new technologies such as 3D printing and Arduino to create projects that interrogate our relationships with media, and technological objects. For his graduation project called Push Revolution!, Pierre-Felix So has explored and even altered how we respond to social media notifications by creating three objects which turn the virtual notification into a material thing.

The first of the three objects, which Pierre-Felix So has aptly called Ego, deals explicitly with standard, and what he dubs superficial notifications, such as likes and tweets, but instead of alerting the social media user with sounds like our smartphones do, the device emits soap bubbles when a notification is received. As notifications are fleeting, so are the bubbles, which materialize only for a few brief moments before popping. Pierre-Felix So explains that he used bubbles precisely for this reason, to make the user aware of the number of notifications through a material quantifiable presence while also making that presence a fleeting and inconsequential one.

The object, which bears a monolithic and imposing shape that counters the frivolity and lightness of the bubbles it emits, is made from Corian, a material typically used for countertops. On the objects front facing side, there is also a dial which allows its user to choose which social media platform they want to receive bubble notifications from - of course there is also the option of choosing all of them if youre expecting a solid stream of bubbles. In designing the object, Pierre-Felix So went through many different designs and prototypes which were made using 3D printing.

The second object, which was also prototyped using 3D printing technologies, is called Wow and it deals with more personal notifications such as messages, photos, and emails. For Wow, Pierre-Felix So wanted to represent the different emotional impact that these types of notifications have compared to Likes or tags.

The piece consists of a small white stand that has a balloon attached to it that inflates every time you receive a notification. With it, the designer wanted to enhance the excitement of receiving a message by using a balloon, an object associated with happiness, excitement, and fun.

The third object, called TacPad is meant to help get rid of and manage your notifications by creating a more cathartic experience than simply clicking them away with a mouse or trackpad. The object resembles a small key pad that can be connected to your computer, though the buttons are unmarked and when pressed they resemble the feeling of popping bubble wrap. Pierre-Felix So, who is concerned with pleasure and especially guilty pleasures, thought bubble wrap would be the perfect way to turn the deleting of notifications into a liberating, even cleansing process. To mimic the feeling of bubble wrap, Pierre-Felix So used silicone layers in making the TacPad.

Push Revolution! is a conceptual project that could for many people make receiving and deleting notifications a more fun and notable experience. Luckily for us, Pierre-Felix So has made while whole project open source, so anyone can create and 3D print parts of their very own Ego, Wow or TacPads.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Jan 24, 2016 | By Kira

February 8, 2016 marks the Chinese Lunar New Year, an important celebration observed in Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and many other regions across the world. To celebrate the holiday, families and friends come together to share food, drinks, small gifts, and to exchange well wishes and good fortune for the coming months. As this year marks the Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese Zodiac, Taiwanese artist Amao Chen has created a playful 3D printed macaque that is rich in details and features 24 ingeniously designed joints, giving it an impressive range of movement.

Chen, whose goes by the online moniker PaperCube, specializes in creating unique cardboard replicas of pandas, bears, elephants and other wild animals, all with his distinct cube-like style. Not too long ago, Chen branched out into 3D printing and created a 3D printed Formosan Black Bear and 3D printed rhino to raise awareness about the endangered species.

Now, hes back with a playful 3D printed monkey that would make an excellent gift to mark the Chinese New Year. In fact, he even named it BingShen, which translates to Fire Monkey, the specific element and animal corresponding to the 2016 Chinese New Year. If you lift up the 3D printed monkeys feet, youll find the words Bing and Shen printed under each sole.

Chens attention to detail doesnt stop there. In fact, what makes this tiny, 3D printed monkey so charming is its ingenious and completely articulated design, which consists of over 20 individually 3D printed pieces that snap together without the need for screws or even glue.

Taking this 3D printed articulated joint system even further, Chen designed it so that it would consist of 24 nodes, representing the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. The monkeys tail alone accounts for seven of these nodes, and is itself a masterful work of engineering and 3D printing talent.

As you can see in the video below, the tail moves smoothly and almost realistically, while also providing enough balance for the 3D printed monkey to stand on its two feet. In order to pull this off, Chen had to pay special attention to the tightness of the 3D printed jointsif he made them too tight, the tail would stick straight out, yet they were too loose, it wouldnt hold its shape. Thanks to his careful planning, however, Chen managed to strike the perfect balance.

Additionally, each body part was 3D printed using color ABS filament rather than being 3D printed in white and then being painted afterwards. Not only does this cut down much of the post-processing work, but it also ensures bright, vibrant color that wont chip or fade out.

To share this adorable and playful 3D printed monkey with anyone wanting to celebrate the Chinese New Year, or those who are just looking for a fun 3D printing project, Chen will upload the free STL 3D printing files to Thingiverse during the Lunar New Year.

For related educational or just plain fun animal-inspired 3D printing projects, check out Koguma, a 3D printed polar bear piggybank, which has a similar cube-like design, or these adorable 3D printed penguins by Taiwanese artist Stanley Chen.

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Jan 25, 2016 | By Alec

Surely no topic in the 3D printing community is more controversial than that of 3D printed guns. That debate has also been spilling out into wider society and the US political realm, where it has become a full-fledged element of the gun rights debate. Defense Distributed  the Texas-based initiative by Cody Wilson who is pioneering free digital designs for 3D printed guns  is currently locked in a legal battle with the US government on the right to distribute his designs online. The US government, of course, is especially worried about what happens when these untraceable guns end up in the wrong hands and are now being backed by specialists on the other side of the Atlantic. Antiterrorist experts from the UK are now arguing that digital 3D printed gun designs would greatly help ISIS sympathizers to commit terror attacks.

This argument was more often heard over the last few years, though is now more relevant in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino a few weeks ago. It adds a new chapter to the 3D printed gun debate, which is everything but over. Back in 2013, Defense Distributed was ordered to remove their popular 3D printable gun designs (more than 100,000 downloads) from their website by the US State Department. Though they initially complied, Wilson later received legal backing from Second Amendment activists to sue the State Department and some of its officials, arguing that the 3D printable designs are a form of free speech that cannot be censored.

This issue is still ongoing, but in the meantime Defense Distributed has not been doing nothing. They are working on a new release for a 3D printed automatic gun, a AR-15 semi-automatic rifle that is expected to be published online in April 2016. The 27-year-old said of his new project: I promise you the reason you havent seen this yet is because it has been artificially delayed. I would have demonstrated this for you if I was allowed to, he told the British newspaper The Mirror. I am fighting my fight with the government but we have a whole new range of things. When asked to clarify if this meant a new 3D printed machine gun was forthcoming, he confirmed this.

Wilson further added that all you need is a 3D printer and a few hardware store components  such as a firing pin  to use them. You cant 3D print a good slug or a firing pin yet because the material is not dense enough. So we just said use commonly available things, he said. The bullets themselves can be made from plastic, though they would need to be packed with a primer, smokeless gunpowder and improvised shrapnel items.

But the British tabloid, which is known for its left-wing sympathies, has now questioned what this release could do for the violent methods of ISIS  who would obviously greatly benefit from having almost completely undetectable guns that cost less than 100 ($120) to make. Though the 3D printer itself would obviously be a big investment as well, a serious security risk is created by these 3D printed guns, they argue. When asked if he cared about the use of his gun designs in terrorist attacks, Wilson responded negatively. Not really. There are all kinds of books in a library about how to build a bomb. You just have to have a certain commitment to the free exchange of ideas, he argues.

This has been strongly condemned by British counterterrorist experts. Former intelligence officer Hamish de Bretton Gordon was quoted as saying that Wilsons efforts were making the jobs of terrorists so much easier. Particularly in the UK where security services are putting in so much effort to prevent an attack by one of ISs clean skins, he said. The person who is releasing this is completely irresponsible. We can only hope the authorities in the US are going to deal with this individual. Its absolutely crazy. He further added that such a release would force the government to start tracking 3D printer sales.

This sentiment has been repeated by other specialists and politicians. This is a bizarre and dangerous proposal. A plastic machine gun could go unnoticed by airport security, putting the travelling public at risk of terrorist attack, said Shadow Police Minister Jack Dromey. Though guns  and particularly automatic weapons  are very difficult to obtain in Britain, the UK National Ballistics Intelligence Service (Nabis) has said that this could change with the release of 3D printed gun designs. Though no 3D printed guns have been found in the UK so far, they did reveal that they are testing them themselves.

Though British fears will doubtlessly matter little in a US legal battle on free speech and the second amendment, it does highlight another question: do 3D printed guns increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks?

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seriously politicians, you aren't impressing us wrote at 1/26/2016 9:27:04 PM:3D printers a threat? What about CNC milling machines? You can buy a block of performance plastic, say glass filled PE or PPO, and then mill out a much more accurate and stronger part. I'd think once a part is CAM'd up, you'd get usable parts quicker than a 3D printer, given their false starts, slicer tuning, failed prints etc. So, who's going to track all the milling machines out there? Plus you can mill real parts from aluminum or other materials. Lathes? everyone knows how to make a ballpoint pen gun. Single shot, but easily concealed, reloadable and durable enough for hundreds of shots. All guns are made on machines. Those machines are publically available for any budget, and ISIS has money BTW. They could have a Stratasys and avoid all the cheap stuff. they could buy a Makino and make precision plastic parts. They're printing passports on the real machinery, which ain't cheap. And let's not forget, no one needs Cody Wilson to release anything. He is not the gatekeeper for design. He likes to antagonize politicians, which is why we all think he's a pioneer, but many before him have had fun antagonizing politicians.LWRC Patriot wrote at 1/26/2016 9:18:28 PM:ISIS is already getting military grade weapons from the U.S. government so they won't be messing this this kind of hassle anytime soon. Besides, the bolt carrier is one of the most complex piece on the AR-15 and only a few companies have the capability to make them so even if ISIS could 3D print the lower receiver, without the bolt carrier group, it would be a non-functioning weapon.Tenche Cox wrote at 1/26/2016 6:55:52 PM:"3D printed automatic gun, a AR-15 semi-automatic'" Pick one. Metal guns were shown to easily pass through the x-ray machines at airports undetected, so plastic isn't going to decrease detection rates. On top of that, it's widely reported that ISIS' weapons are supplied by the US government, only they call them "moderate rebels" when they do and "radical extremists" when they want to justify totalitarianism. Finally, all of these shootings such as San Bernadino and in Paris occurred in places that restricted law abiding citizens' right to bear arms. If everyone was able to skirt detection by victim disarmament measures, they would be better able to stop ISIS. If you want to stop ISIS then demand that extremists not be supplied with weapons while the public is being disarmed. Demand the public be allowed to arm themselves to the teeth even if they have to use cheap plastic guns to fight the government backed extremists. The only "moderate rebels" that have ever opposed radical Islam are called Shaolin Buddhist monks. They believe in karma and would more likely violently defend against such extremists without being radicalized into violent extremists themselves.Tenche Cox wrote at 1/26/2016 6:48:13 PM:"3D printed automatic gun, a AR-15 semi-automatic'" Which is it, auto, or semi-auto? The fact is that existing metal guns have been demonstrated to pass through the "backscatter" x-ray machines at airports undetected, so a plastic gun isn't going to avoid detection any more than that. Not only that, a clerical error revealed the TSA knows that there is no serious threat that warrants any of their ineffective security theatrics. On top of that, it's been in the media for some time that ISIS gets weapons from the US government, only they call them "moderate rebels" when they do and radical extremists when they want to justify totalitarianism. Finally, every one of these shootings such as San Bernadino and in Paris occurred in places that restricted law abiding citizens' right to bear arms. If everyone was armed, and able to skirt detection by victim disarmament measures, they would be better able to stop ISIS. If you want to stop ISIS then demand that extremists not be supplied with weapons by governments while the public is being disarmed by them. Demand the public be allowed to arm themselves to the teeth even if they have to use cheap plastic guns to fight the million dollar armaments the government is openly giving to terrorists. FYI: The only "moderate rebels" that have ever opposed radical Islam are called Shaolin Buddhist monks. They believe in karma and would more likely violently defend against such extremists without being radicalized into violent extremists themselves.AnotherGuy wrote at 1/25/2016 5:12:18 PM:This is so overblown! A legal gun in the U.S. is only the lower receiver, all the rest can be acquired without tracking and those parts are almost all made out of metal. So much for being almost undetectable. Even those 3D printed guns still use metal ammo, which can be picked up. More dangerous are the designs I found from some bloke in the UK who showed how to get common materials from a plumbing supply store, and from them make a machine gun complete with ammo. That would be cheaper, quicker and harder to stop than 3D printing one of Codys designs and buying all the other parts. Thats just one option. Like ThatGuy wrote above, smuggling is even easier. By getting all excited about 3D printing guns, politicians and journalists are getting all excited about the technology, but showing their ignorance of firearms. 3D printing has not made possible what was not possible before. The answer is not to disarm the general public, as has been done in much of Europe and Australia, which leaves the public defenseless against terrorism and even common crime, rather encourage as many responsible citizens as possible to get armed so they can be their brothers keepers.TheOtherGuy wrote at 1/25/2016 4:13:57 PM:Listen to ThatGuyJulio wrote at 1/25/2016 3:58:14 PM:"That guy", you are ok on probability but not possibility. While 3d printed guns have low probability of being deployed, it's still possible. Ask the US how probable was the attack to the twin towers. Public safety has to consider every posibility, even when not very probable, as you say. Even though, I would argue your point of view. Are you sure it's easier to smuggle a gun than making it at your own garage?. Remember, only one shot is needed to kill someone. They don't need guns that live longer than them. I really feel sorry for Cody Wilson. If something happens with his guns, he'll share some responsability.ThatGuy wrote at 1/25/2016 1:57:49 PM:Hum, barrels? The lower on an AR rifle has very little stress put on it. The upper receiver where the barrel is attached is much more important. A firing pin is also simple compared to the 'bolt carrier group' which is the reciprocating part of the gun that feeds, holds during firing and ejects the spent casing. All of these things have been made on commercial CNC machines for years. Sten guns from WWII were designed to be made on crude machines its minimal skill- not beyond most garage hackers. As the terrorist showed in Paris, it is far easier to just smuggle the guns into Europe and hide them in mosques. Stop hunting for unicorns when their are plenty of horses out there that will get us first.




Jan 25, 2016 | By Alec

Though its adoption has been gradual, 3D printing has been making a name for itself as an excellent manufacturing technology for custom surgical models, tools and even implants used in unusual surgeries. However, its potential is obviously far greater than those existing medical applications, and a collaborative effort by Two Dutch companies has resulted in a number of new applications that could greatly benefit both surgeons and dentists. Atum 3D, from Tilburg, has developed a special 3D printer for the production of drilling molds used in dental operations, while Xilloc has developed a surgical guide mold that will greatly improve the incision efficiency during complex surgeries.

The two companies involved in this collaboration are known Dutch 3D printing experts. Atum 3D was founded back in 2014 by Tristram Budel in Tilburg, and has developed a unique resin 3D printing technique involving a projector that deposits layers of liquid resin  a technique similar to SLA that especially speeds up high quality resin 3D printing. Budel is currently working on commercializing this technique, and the ADAM project was an excellent opportunity to take it further. Xilloc, of course, is a Dutch specialist in medical 3D printing based on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Sittard-Geleen. It was founded back in 2011 by Maikel Beerens with the goal of developing 3D printed titanium implants. Less than a year ago, they began commercializing artificial 3D printed CT bones and recently adopted 4 EOS 3D printers to cope with production demands. They also have plans for 3D printing real bone.

Together, they teamed up in the ADAM project, which is short for Advanced Dutch Additive Manufacturing. This project has been set up by OP-Zuid, a EU-backed subsidy program aimed at developing innovations in the south of the Netherlands. Through Op-Zuid, ADAM received 1.8 million in funds, of which 800,000 was an OP-Zuid subsidy provided by the European Union and the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The project was also backed by Brightlands Chemelot Campus, an initiative financially supported by the province of Limburg and responsible for investing in 3D printers and taking care of the business development portion of the project. This project has successfully brought together various parties. It proves that 3D printing, praised as a promising technology, is now delivering on these promises and that Limburg is actually reaping the benefits of developing this technology, Twan Beurskens of the Limburg Provincial Executive for Economic Affairs and Knowledge Infrastructure said of the ADAM 3D printing project.

Atum 3D's prototype for a 3D printed dental mold.

So what have they achieved through this collaboration? Atum 3D has been focusing on dental care, and has developed a ne 3D printer which can be used to manufacture custom dental drilling guides, that can enable a dentist to optimize drilling accuracy in terms of direction and depth. This should make the placement of dental implants far more accurate than before. Atum 3D argues that this 3D printer is perfect for (small-scale) applications in clinics and dental practices, especially as the 3D printer uses their very quick custom DLP (digital light processing) 3D printing technique. Importantly, the results are bio-compatible and the same technique will also be used to develop other dental tools, including crowns and bridgework, in the near future.

As Atum 3D explains, the ADAM project has enabled them to further their technological developments with leaps and bounds over the past year. Within the ADAM project, they have especially focused on developing these medically certified materials that can be 3D printed without support pieces and are fully biocompatible. They say these drill guides will enable dentists to more carefully plan and execute surgeries, reducing the risks for patients and significantly shortening operation times. Their 3D prints have already been used to place dental implants.

The T-Rex 3D printer.

Through ADAM, they have also developed their latest 3D printer, the interestingly named T-Rex. As the name suggests, its particularly large  featuring a print surface about six times larger than is conventional for resin 3D printers. However, they have already stated that it is primarily to be used for 3D printing large numbers of small objects at extreme speeds, supposedly rivalling injection molding manufacturing.

Xilloc's surgical guide prototype, 3D printed on the EOS P396 3D printer (above).

However Atum 3D wasnt the only one to benefit from the ADAM project, as Xilloc developed an equally functional incision mold to be used by surgeons. This guide tool should help the surgeon optimize the incision placement, resulting in a quicker and more accurate operation. Crucially, it will make them less invasive for patients as well, optimizing the recovery period. This new surgical instrument was 3D printed on one of Xillocs in-house EOS P396 SLS 3D printers, using a powered polyamide material. Though still a prototype, this incision mold is currently being developed further in collaboration with surgeons. Meanwhile, Xilloc is also conducting research on other materials and applications for their medical 3D printing products, with an eye on developing more implants and tools.

In short, the ADAM project is thus exploring the limits and potential of medical 3D printing innovations in the Netherlands, and it is already clear that surgical models and implants form just the tip of the 3D printing iceberg.

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Jan 25, 2016 | By Andre

Continued investment into education should be an important element in every governments growth strategy. Each and every generation has to be educated and brought up to date for 21st century living or the ability to produce a skilled workforce will begin to suffer. So its great to hear that during a press conference held today at the Kulleg Maria Regina boys secondary school in Mosta, Malta, the government announced an additional 15.4 million of funding into new equipment and infrastructure. The news couldnt come soon enough, it seems, as local teachers had been complaining the equipment they had been working with up until now was too slow and inefficient that it hindered learning instead of advancing it like it's designed to do.

While a good chunk of the investment will be spent on laptops, tablets and interactive whiteboards, considerations have been made in providing students with the tools many believe to be essential in shaping the world of tomorrow. Included in this list is the purchase of 76 3D printers and 28 3D scanners. Project coordinator Joe Mamo has gone on to say that this technology is expected to shape the future and that other schools around Europe have also invested in similar forward looking technology toward their curriculum.

It was said students were finding more and more stimulation outside of the classroom thanks to what is available on the internet, so this investment in technology should reinvigorate the sometimes uninspired classrooms with the ability to design and modify their ideas before turning them into physical reality with modern 3D printing technology.

Deputy Prime minister Louis Grech further stressed of the growing gap between what is learned at school and what is expected in the working world. Saying that one cannot teach for the future with yesterdays tools. Overall, this welcome investment in technology will allow teachers to better prepare for their lessons, waste less time and increase efficiency. Students in turn will have an increased ability to interact more closely with the the teachers and the subjects they are learning about.

Of course, no government expenditure program comes without controversy. 12 million of the 15.4 million is supposed to be coming from EU funds while the remainder directly from taxes. The EU money is supposedly part of a resource reassignment plan from an infrastructure fund that has been riddled with controversy since late last year. The Coast Road fund, paid for by the EU, came under scrutiny after the European Court of Auditors (ECA) decided that the correct procedure for awarding developer contracts was not followed. As a result, it was recommended that 25 percent of the EU funds allocated to the project be withheld until all concerns had been addressed.

A member of the auditors group stressed that the ECA is the guardian of every single penny spent by member states and EU institutions. Once an irregularity is flagged, then it is obvious that several eyes will open in Luxembourg over how the other projects are being handled in Malta. This goes right to the crux of public procurement.

As things stand, the 12 million EU funded portion of the just announced education investment comes out of the 25 percent of the Coast Road funds that are currently being withheld. And while the deputy prime minister says an agreement is in place to allow the funding to be reassigned, others worry financing issues still remain.

Regardless of how the money is eventually sourced, the forward thinking strategy put forth by the Education and Employment Ministry of Malta should be admired. Any stagnation in a populations education system limit the children of any generation in terms of achieving success in todays fast paced, competitive world. 3D printing and 3D scanning technologies will undoubtedly be a part of this world so the time is now to invest into this future.

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Steven Nash wrote at 1/28/2016 5:04:32 AM:Hey , This is a great resource on latest education technology trends of 2016 for teaching-learning spaces. I am myself quite excited about tinkering with many new education technology tools as well as deeply embedding the best of edtech resources from 2015 in our classrooms.This year I am placing my bets on Open educational resources, microlearning, (More)Coding in Classroom, Connecting with Internet of Things and Developing Maker Spaces. I actually just compiled a really thorough guide of Top 5 Emerging Education technology Trends of 2016 of my own. I think you might find it interesting to read. Looking forward to more such delightful reads from your feed.




Jan 25, 2016 | By Kira

As 3D printing goes mainstream in 2016, more and more users will be looking for new and fun projects they can 3D print at home. To 3D point them in the right direction, weve rounded up some of the best websites to download free STL files for 3D printing.

In a way, STL files, and the 3D model repositories that hold them, are what make the 3D printing world go roundyou cant start 3D printing without a workable 3D model (preferably in STL, the most widely used format for 3D printing), and no matter what it is you are looking for, chances are you will find it on one of these top-rated 3D content websites. Better yet, theyre almost all entirely free!

With hundreds to thousands of free 3D printable STL files to choose from, these 3D model repositories are the perfect place to start on your next at-home 3D printing project. If you happen to be a 3D designer yourself, many will also allow you to upload, share, and sometimes sell your custom 3D printing designs, while giving you direct access to the global 3D printing community.

In no particular order, here are the best websites to download free STL files for 3D printing so far in 2016:

1. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: Thingiverse

Lets start off with the single biggest 3D content repository of them all: MakerBots Thingiverse. Launched in 2008 for the burgeoning and still quite exclusive maker community, Thingiverse has since grown into one of the most important 3D design communities in the world, allowing users of all levels to upload, share and download 3D printable files absolutely free of cost.

In late 2015, Thingiverse reached a mega-milestone, having surpassed one million uploads and 200 million downloads. The site is also well-known for hosting various 3D printing design challenges. Whether you are an educator, professional engineer, artist, or casual hobbyist, chances are youll find exactly what you are looking for on Thingiverse.

Featured STL file: 3D printed Mouth Operated Mouse.

2. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: YouMagine

Though significantly smaller than Thingiverse, YouMagine is also powered by a large 3D printer companyin this case, Ultimaker. The 3D content repository features a couple hundred free STL files for 3D printing, ranging from Ultimaker 2 upgrades to toys and household items. What makes YouMagine stand out is their commitment to protecting their 3D designers. In 2015, the company released a new open source license specifically for 3D printed objects, known as 3DPL.

In addition, the YouMagine recently tapped into its 500+ member community to conduct a desktop 3D printing survey and gain some insight into what consumers really want.

Featured STL model: Simple 3D printed Circuit Board

3. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: Pinshape

Pinshape is another giant in the 3D content world. This 3D community marketplace consists of over 55,000 makers and 3D designers and offers both premium (paid) STL files and free STL files for 3D printing. In addition to giving 3D designers the option to sell or share their 3D designs, Pinshape also has a streaming option, powered by 3DPrinterOS, that allows users to edit, slice and print a design from the Pinshape platform without actually downloading the design file. This allows designers to protect their source file while still giving fellow makers access to the design.

On top of STL, Pinshape supports OBJ files and ZIP files containing those types. Since it is not owned by a 3D printer manufacturer, the site is also hardware neutral in terms of support.

Featured STL model: Fully 3D printable OpenRC F1 Race Car

4. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: My Mini Factory

MyMiniFactory markets itself as the worlds largest curated 3D object download platform. The key word here is curatedthats because every 3D model uploaded to their repository is carefully selected and then tested by members of the community. If its not guaranteed 3D printable, you wont find it on My Mini Factory.

The well organized and feature-heavy website offers free access to thousands of 3D printable STL files, and if you cant find what you are looking for, you can request it from a professional 3D designer. My Mini Factory is managed by iMakr, an online store that sells 3D printers and accessories, and the largest 3D printing store in Central London.

Featured STL model: 3D printed Tricky Bricks

5. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: Cults

Cults3D is probably the biggest French online 3D printing marketplaces that offers both paid and free high quality STL files for 3D printingbut dont worry, you wont need to learn the language of love to find what youre looking for. The entire website is available in English, French and even Spanish! Beyond just being a 3D model repository, however, Cults sees itself as a 3D printing community, offering a kind of social network for 3D print enthusiasts where they can find and follow new designers, connect with other modelers, save their favorite 3D models, and more.

Featured STL model: Maison & Objet 3D printed Paris-inspired home accessories

6. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: GrabCAD

GrabCAD is more than just a generic 3D content siterather than focusing on household items, decorations or doodads, GrabCAD is a 3D printing community by mechanical engineers, for mechanical engineers, helping them access well-designed parts to help them build their products faster, without having to reinvent the wheel. Owned by Stratasys since 2014, GrabCAD boasts a community of over 1 million engineers, and over 1,130,000 free CAD models (some are available in STL, others can be converted).

However, thats not to say GrabCAD isnt useful for us non-engineering folk. The 3D model library contains everything from jewelry to furniture to Star Wars goods and more.

Featured STL model: 3D printed Jet Engine Bracket, available on GrabCAD here

7. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: Autodesk 123D

Undoubtedly one of the biggest names in CAD design software, Autodesk not only launched their own 3D modeling site, with over 10,000 free 3D STL models for 3D printing, it also released an entire suite of free 3D modeling apps for those who want to get started with 3D modeling themselves, regardless of their current skill levels.

Autodesk 123D allows users to browse through a library of 3D models, download or edit them, and upload their own creations. And Autodesk 123Ds apps include 123D Design, 123D Sculpt+, TinkerCAD, 123D Catch and many more. Not sure where to start? Here is a tutorial for 123D Design, a beginners 3D creation and editing tool that supports several 3D printers.

Featured STL model: 3D Printed Night Light

8. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: 3Dagogo

Owned by a small team of hackers, designers and hustlers that are clearly very passionate about the subject of 3D printing, California-based 3Dagogo is another site that allows users to buy and sell 3D models, while also offering a large selection of completely free STL files for 3D printing. What makes 3Dagogo so great is that every single 3D design uploaded to the site is proven-to-print, and each one even includes a picture of the finished 3D printed model included for non-believers.

3Dagogo is also the developer behind AstroPrint, a suite of cloud-based 3D printing software and services, and, as of last year, the company partnered with Airwolf to support the development of the HD-R 3D printer and develop a Wi-Fi upgrade kit called WofWare, based on the AstroPrint platform.

Featured STL model: 3D printed custom Harley Davidson by Maurizio Casella

9. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: 3DShook

3DShooks marketplace model is a little different from some of the other websites on our list because, while there is a Free Trial Gallery, they actually offer a subscription print-on-demand service for users who find themselves frequently 3D printing new items and want to get the most bang for their buck. 3DShook offers package deals, ranging from $10-$50, as well as monthly, educational, yearly and commercial subscriptions. With a catalogue of over 1000 ready-to-3D-print STL models sorted into more than 40 categories, 3Dshook will let you find everything from tools to toys, with a focus on items that are useful and functional.

10. Free STL Files Download Site for 3D Printing: Instructables

Instructables is much more than a mere 3D model repository, however we had to include it since it is a trusted and fantastic maker resource, featuring thousands of user-created, richly detailed, step-by-step DIY projects, in everything from woodworking to cooking to electronics. There is also a massive channel dedicated to 3D printing, where users will upload detailed instructions for intricate 3D printed projects, and more often than not provide downloads for their free STL files. Todays maker community would not be what it is if it werent for Instructables, and we definitely recommend you check it out.

Featured STL model: 3D printed Six-Flask Cold Coffee Brewer

The above are just our picks for the top 10 best sites to download free STL files for 3D printing, however there are many, many more to choose fromeven after 3D Systems announced that it would be closing its Cubify 3D printing marketplace for good. Alongside a host of 3D model search engines, there is Repables, Threeding, 3DVIA, and many sites that focus more on paid 3D content, such as TurboSquid or CGTrader. There is no shortage of excellent, high quality and totally free 3D printable content onlineyou just have to find it and start your 3D printing adventures.

What are your favorite sites for free 3D printing STL downloads? Let us know if we missed one of yours in the comments, Facebook or on Twitter.

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cierra wrote at 6/5/2017 11:26:25 PM:what about sketchup?




Jan 25, 2016 | By Alec

If youve ever tried to 3D print a toy for one of your kids, youll have seen how limited the shelf life of toys actually is  unless its amazing, most toys are only played with a few times. That says a lot about the staying power of the Rubiks Cube puzzle, which is more than forty years old already. It still captivates both children and adults, and that fascination has already crossed over into the 3D printing community as well. Remember this record-breaking 3D printed Rubiks Cube? The regular cube, however, also still interests people  who are especially looking for ways to maximize solving speed. Well, the answer might be found in 3D printing, as two YouTubers have just uploaded a clip in which they use a 3D printed solving machine to set a new world record of less than 2 seconds.

For those of you who have mysteriously avoided the Rubiks Cube all their lives, it was invented way back in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, it quickly became very popular as a mathematicians gimmick: just endlessly turning corners achieves nothing, but establishing a series of patterns will quickly solve it. A classic cube, as you might know, has six faces each with nine separate tiles. With the help of stickers, they are divided into six solid colors: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. The goal, of course, is to get all colors on a single side.

Some amazing records in completing these cubes have been set already, but none have been so remarkable as what this machine by Jay Flatland and Paul Rose can do. They recently uploaded the clip below, in which they show off their machine capable of completing a cube in less than two seconds  a new world record. This is much faster than existing records, which is 3.253 seconds for a machine and a very impressive 4.904 for a human (held by Lucas Etter). In contrast, Jay and Pauls machine is shown to complete the cube four separate times, in 1.196 seconds, 1.152 seconds, 1.047 seconds, and 1.019 seconds, respectively. Thus not just extremely fast, but consistently so.

So how does this amazing machine work? Well, the robot features four stepper motors that hook onto the cube, all encased in a custom 3D printed enclosure. Four webcams are installed, all hooked up to the PC to continuously scan the configuration of the tiles. That information is fed into the Kociemba Rubiks Cube solving algorithm (running in Linux), which directs the robot to make the necessary movements. This does require all four cameras to work to ensure that the algorithm has all the information it needs.

To get it to start, a camera is first covered with a piece of paper to block the algorithm  giving the user the time to manually scramble the cube. Once plugged in again and the paper is removed, the program collects data as quickly as possible and feeds commands back to the stepper motors. Its an amazingly efficient 3D printed machine and definitely deserves its record. Theres just one small snag, as the duo has applied for a world record, but this hasnt been approved just yet. Surely thats only a matter of time?

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by Claire Chambers



I recently wrote an essay for Dawn on general postcolonial rewritings of Shakespeare's Othello. For the present column, I turn to what Ania Loomba has called 'the made-in-India Othello fellows'. In other words, I am interested in those Indian writers who, from Henry Louis Vivian Derozio onwards, have looked to this play about love, jealousy, and race for inspiration and critique.

In her essay 'Filmi Shakespeare', Poonam Trivedi defies accusations of 'bardolatry' and colonial cultural cringe to trace the history of Shakespeare on the Indian big screen. She shows that this history goes back to 1935 and Sohrab Modi's Khoon-ka Khoon, a cinematic rendering of an Indian stage version of Hamlet. Because the British colonizers laid emphasis on an English literary education for the Indians over whom they ruled, there were many filmic adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. Hamlet's blend of politics and metaphysical mystery seems to have proven the most popular of the Bard's plays for Indian auteurs. These directors, according to Trivedi, in the early days of Indian cinema found themselves between the rock of leaving Shakespeare 'pure and pristine' or the hard place of making him entirely 'bowdlerized and indigenized'. By the mid-twentieth century, the most successful adaptations relocated the plays to India in their entirety. Directors 'used' rather than 'abused' the Shakespearean originals, taking ideas from their plots and themes rather than critically writing back to the plays.

The Bengali film Saptapadhi was in 1961 probably the first to namecheck Othello. In it, a pair of starcrossed lovers  a Brahmin boy and an Anglo-Indian Christian girl  fall in love during a performance of that other text about a relationship transgressing social and racial fault-lines. Then came Jayaraaj Rajasekharan Nair's Kaliyattam (1997), a 1997 Malayalam remake of Othello. It is set against the backdrop of Kaliyattam or Kathakali, a devotional Keralan form of folk-theatre and dance also evoked in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. In Kaliyattam Jayaraaj transplants Shakespeare's racial concerns onto caste, since the plot revolves around a romantic pairing between a low-caste Theyyam performer and a Brahmin girl. Jayaraaj also changes Shakespeare's somewhat trivial, somatic device of a handkerchief that fuels Othello's jealousy into an opulent cloth that also served as a consummation sheet for the two protagonists.

In Ashish Avikunthak's short documentary-style film Brihnlala ki Khelkali or Dancing Othello (2002), he adapts Arjun Raina's dance theatre show The Magic Hour (2000). Like Kaliyattam, both these 2000s adaptations use Kathakali, that art form mindlessly consumed by Western tourists to India, as a launchpad to discuss the Shakespearean play that is most concerned with what Graham Huggan calls 'the postcolonial exotic'.

The first of two Indian 'Othello fellows' whose work I want to discuss in detail is Vishal Bhardwaj. Omkara (2006) is Bhardwaj's second film in a twenty-first-century Bollywood trilogy of Shakespearean adaptations. (The other two are Maqbool, a remake of Macbeth, and Haider, which transplanted Hamlet to the Kashmiri conflict.) In his essay 'Theorising Omkara', the poetically-named critic John Milton argues that Bhardwaj remains respectful to Shakespeare's tragedy, but makes it relevant to contemporary Indians. Issues of caste and biracial identity in colour-conscious India replace Shakespeare's interest in the people then known as blackamoors.

Omkara Shukla (Ajay Devgan) is the son of a Dalit mother and a higher-caste father. Known as Omi, he is repeatedly castigated as a 'half-breed' or 'half-caste'. Raghunath Mishra (Kamal Tiwari), who is father to Dolly (the Desdemona figure, played by Kareena Kapoor), is duly angry about his daughter's elopement with this swarthy gangster. Dolly is contrastingly Brahminical and has a pale complexion. Yet she is unperturbed by the gossip circulating around them as a mismatched couple, declaring, 'A crescent, though half, is still called a moon'.

Othello's status as a general fighting against the Turks is altered in the film so that Omi leads a gang in Uttar Pradesh (Bhardwaj's home province) serving a shadowy political figure known as Bhai sahib (Naseeruddin Shah). This allows Bhardwaj to discuss the endemic corruption that would be attacked a few years later in the 2011-12 Indian anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare.

The villainous Iago character is Ishwar Tyagi, who is known as Langda ('Lame') because he has a pronounced limp. Langda is played brilliantly by Saif Aif Khan, who frighteningly broods, plots and swears his way through the film. To adapt Coleridge's famous phrase, if his felonies are not as 'motiveless' as Iago's are, he nonetheless exudes pure 'malignancy'. Langda has a motive for his evil because he is passed over for promotion in favour of a rival, Kesu Firangi (Vivek Oberoi). Omi chooses to replace himself with Kesu (the film's Cassio character) when he leaves his position as an underworld don to get involved with mainstream politics. In revenge for being passed over, Langda works on Omi's jealousy about his ingenue bride. Dolly's father's words, 'A girl who can deceive her own father can never be possessed by anyone else', come back to haunt Omi, just as Brabantio's line 'She has deceived her father, and may thee' is a repeated leitmotif in Othello. The idea that a deceitful daughter will become a wanton wife finds resonance in a South Asia still shaped by family connections and arranged marriages. It is a shame, though, that a film that is relatively progressive on caste and gender nonetheless reverts to ableist stereotypes. Langda's disability is linked with his evil acts in a way that recalls the sinister hunchbacked Richard III of Shakespeare's history play.

Omkara is a mixed bag when it comes to women's rights. It usefully raises the issue of violence against women. There are some powerful scenes, as when we see Langda's sexual violence towards his wife Indu (in the film this character, unlike Iago's wife Emilia, is also Omi's sister, making Omi and Langda brothers-in-law). Instead of a handkerchief, the film uses the device of a gold Indian waistband, which has sexual overtones because of its suggestion of a chastity belt locking up a woman's 'honour'. Omi gives this priceless kamarband to Dolly as a wedding gift, but Langda persuades Indu (Konkona Sen Sharma) to steal it so as to mislead Omi into thinking Dolly has gifted the waistband to Kesu. When Omi sees Kesu's girlfriend, the dancer Billo Chaman Bahar (Bipasha Basu), wearing it, he goes out of his mind with jealousy. He has already been worked upon by Langda's suggestive remarks about Dolly's faithfulness, which he then cleverly appears to disavow, saying, 'Me and my filthy mind'.

Bhardwaj pulls even fewer punches in the sonic detail of the film's tragic final scene. Viewers are assailed by the stark creaking sounds of a swinging bed on which Omi strangles Dolly  and this has been foreshadowed by various swings that feature throughout the film. The morbid swinging sound is accompanied by the song 'Jag Ja', which contains the repeated lyric, 'Oh ri rani, gudiya, jag ja, ari jag ja, mari jag ja'. This translates as, 'Oh my queen, my doll, come on wake up now', spelling out that Dolly has long been treated as a plaything whose puppet-strings were pulled by the men in her life. Indu, the Emilia character  Omi's sister and Langda's wife  makes a stirring speech near the end about how the Hindu scriptures have painted women as temptresses and unfaithful. Going a part of the way with Emilia in her 'proto-feminist' speech from Othello, Indu rails against the injustice that 'even after holy fires approve us, we're regarded disloyal sooner than loyal'.

On the other hand, the heroine Dolly has little agency, and when her father challenges her relationship with Omi she presents it as something over which she had little choice:

Papa please forgive me. I can't live without Omkara. Don't trust what your eyes say. Your eyes will betray you. God knows how it all began, how I lost my heart to Omkara. I was in love before I knew anything. I remember feeling like a blind bird plunging down an empty well. Everything seemed hopeless. And then I decided I'll end my wretched life. But then there was no point to it, when who I was dying for didn't even know why. Rajju will marry me dead. Since you won't in this lifetime, let me confess I'm yours and yours only. Put me down in your list of slain.

Here Dolly depicts herself as unintentionally losing her heart to Omi, adding to his 'list of slain' and making him the warrior and possessor and her the conquered and the possession. Her only flashes of action are half-heartedly to consider suicide before dismissing this as pointless, and to assert with some spirit that she would rather die than go through with her arranged marriage to fiance Rajju. Omkara is surprisingly explicit for an Indian film, but it is a shame that Bhardwaj did not see fit to allow Dolly to own her sexuality in choosing Omi as her partner.

Whereas Shakespeare's Emilia criticizes men as 'all but stomachs, and we all but food', in Omkara Dolly cloyingly tells Indu that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Indu challenges this, but only to counter with her grandmother's wisdom that the way to keep a man is by keeping him sexually rather than digestively satisfied. That said, Indu does echo Emilia's lines, 'They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, | They belch us', when she states that women should leave their men somewhat hungry, otherwise 'the day they get satisfied they'll puke you out like nobody's business'. It is nonetheless ironic the seventeenth-century play has more to say about women being treated as meat than the noughties film.

This being a Bollywood movie, broadly conceived, there are of course songs. These are unusual in being written by Bhardwaj, who is a composer as well as a director, and limited to just two item numbers led by the sexy Bianca character, Billo. The first of these, Beedi (Cigarette), contains the lines, 'Beedi chalayi leh jigar se piya | Jigar maabadi aag hai', which in the subtitles are unromantically translated as 'Light your fag from the heat in my bosom', and elsewhere as 'Light your cigaratte from the heat of my heart'. In Hindi, however, the word used is 'jigar', meaning 'liver'. Although the phrase may be literally translated as 'heat of my liver', it has connotations of intense, fiery passion. This is because in Hindi and Urdu letters, love and desire is said to originate in the liver rather than the heart. The difficulties of translation are highlighted here, given that the South Asian and Western traditions pinpoint different organs as the seat of the emotions.

In some ways Omkara may be equally linked through intertextuality to Kaliyattam and Dancing Othello as to Shakespeare's Othello. All three productions use the 500-year old story of jealousy to illustrate caste issues. Like Kaliyattam, Omkara alters the handkerchief to a more substantial garment  whereas Jayaraaj used a cloth, Bhardwaj deploys a jewelled waistband as the 'net | That shall enmesh them all'. Omakara, like its filmi predecessors, is an assured postcolonial adaptation that is neither derivative of nor obsequious to Shakespearean dramaturgy. A sense is conveyed that Shakespeare belongs to everyone, so in Trivedi's terms he can be both used and abused.

Comic novelist Upamanyu Chatterjee contributed a short story entitled 'Othello Sucks' to 2015's Granta 130: India  Another Way of Seeing. In it, as the story's title suggests, his characters are critical of Shakespeare, and their irreverence for the play and its context is often hilarious. In the story's very first line, Chatterjee breaks the fourth wall to debate its generic conventions, which owe a debt to non-fiction, radio plays and 'a comic strip in prose'. He also knowingly introduces the story's 'four principal dramatis personae': Father, Mother, Elder Daughter and Younger Daughter. The two girls reluctantly study Shakespeare at their 'good right-wing south Delhi Punjabi' school. Younger Daughter declares that Othello sucks early on in the story, providing the story's title, while Elder Daughter retorts that she was lucky not to read The Merchant of Venice as the older sibling was compelled to do. Younger Daughter objects to Othello's wordiness and multiple meanings, and claims that Desdemona sucks even harder than Othello: 'No one in fact is sorry to see her strangled. It does improve the play'.

Father derides the educators who put Shakespeare on Indian children's curricula, rhetorically asking: 'do we want them as adults to speak in iambic pentameter when they apply for internships to CNN-IBN?'. It is worth noting that Father is not objecting to the privileging of an English-language text over ancient Indian or Bhasha literature, because CNN-IBN is an Anglophone news channel based in Uttar Pradesh where confident speakers of English would be in high demand. Instead he takes a utilitarian approach to education, desiring the inculcation in his daughters of a modern, tech-savvy English that will be useful on the job market. Above all, he is troubled by what he sees as 'the fundamental assumption of the play that Othello is dumb because he is black'. Since A. C. Bradley's 1904 monograph Shakespearean Tragedy, many critics have viewed Othello as a 'noble barbarian' who reverts to 'savage' type when he is manipulated by Iago. If Father is correct about Othello's underlying racism, it is especially problematic in the girls' multicultural Delhi classroom. There Cheik Luigi Fall (a mixed-heritage 'black guy' who Younger Daughter has a crush on) and the dark-skinned teacher Mrs Dasgupta both come up against 'racist and skin-conscious' Indian assumptions.

But, as the lively speech I have already quoted suggests, perhaps the most interesting ways in which these characters challenge Shakespeare is through their language use. Father frequently code-switches into Hindi phrases such as 'Nirbhaya Bhavah' ('Be free from fear') and Shakespearean couplets, while the Daughters feel that 'Communication is possible only by means of SMS, email or sign language'. All the Indian characters speak with self-possession in a Hinglish that shows no sign of being brow-beaten or colonized by Shakespeare's canonical English.

Indeed, postcolonial confidence is the key attribute shared by these 'made-in-India Othello fellows', who borrow from the Bard to shed light on the concerns of twentieth- and twenty-first-century India. They do so very successfully, and it will be interesting to see how adaptations of Shakespeare in general and Othello in particular develop and change as we move further into a twenty-first century already viciously scarred by neo-/colonialism and its afterlife.
by Gail Pellett

On October 7, last year, Gui Minhai went missing from his Thai resort house, his daily medications that he was sorting left on the table. That month, three of his colleagues Lu Bo, Zhang Zhiping and Lui Rongyi disappeared from Hong Kong. Lu Bo and Gui Minhai are co-owners and the others are employees of the Hong Kong based Mighty Current Publishing House notorious for producing salacious books about China's top leadershipbooks long on lusty rumors and stories of corruption although short on sources. At the time of his disappearance, Mr. Gui was planning for a new book, The Pimps of the Chinese Communist Party.

The books published by Mighty Current had survived in the lively Hong Kong book market for two decades while being banned in China. They were particularly popular with mainland day tourists visiting Hong Kong. Now their popular bookstore is closed and the press is shut. Like any troubling story there are complexities and mysteries.

On Dec. 30, Lee Bo, one of Gui's business partners in the publishing company, suddenly disappeared as well. Lee and his wife owned the bookstore that sold their publications. Soon after disappearing Lee made a strange communication to his wife from Shenzhen that he was working on an investigation. His wife noted that he had left his passport at home. A passport he would need to enter Mainland China from Hong Kong. Lee Bo is a British citizen.

Last weekend, Sunday, Jan. 17, Gui, who is a naturalized Swedish citizen, suddenly showed up on CCTV China's official TV networkconfessing tearfully that he had violated his probation back in China for a drunken driving accident in 2003 that had ended in a fatality. Hong Kong based China watchers were quick to point out the edits in the video as revealed by the fact that Guis t-shirt changed color mid-way.

The immediate concern for citizens of Hong Kong is the brazen actions of Chinese mainland police who entered Hong Kong and arrested, kidnapped and removed detainees without warrants or accountability. The outcry from democratic activists has been loud and desperate. They fear that Hong Kong's special One country, Two systems arrangement set up when the Brits left is unraveling quickly. These disappearances augur a dim future for Hong Kong's special status and tradition of legal rights and freedom of the press.

I have been particularly interested in this story because it harks back to so many things I learned about free speech, the press and censorship when, in 1980, I went off to work as a foreign expert at Radio Beijing, China's equivalent to Voice of America. China was opening to the West for the first time in three decades and 1980 was a pivotal moment of transition as the country was slowly recovering from the traumas of the Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaoping was consolidating power to lead the nation in a new economic direction. I was a Deng Xiaoping hire.

As the first experienced broadcast journalist to work in the English department in Radio Beijing's forty-year history, I was invited to teach classes in broadcast journalism and edit scripts. It was a year filled with frustrating experiences in the absence of journalistic ethics, free inquiry or any means to fact check combined with such mistrust that it was impossible to find Chinese officials or intellectuals or anybody willing to be interviewed. And the mistrust included suspicions about foreign journalists like myself. Most of the time I was treated as a spy despite being invited for my expertise in producing and reporting on radio.

I was also learning formidable lessons about the top down Chinese communication system. Documents about government policy were only available to top cadres in the Party in any workplace, special compilations of reprinted foreign news stories were only available to department leaders. Then at the bottom of the chain, thePeople's Daily offered stories, criticism, bromides and instructions for the masses. It was a highly controlled channel of information under the direction of the Propaganda Committee of the Party. The Canadian journalist who first revealed this vertical privileged information system in the Toronto Globe & Mail in the late 70's had to leave the country much as New York Times reporters have recently been expelled for writing stories about the wealth of the leading elites in the Party. During the past few years, other foreign reporters have been denied their permits to report in China when they write about taboo subjects or from a non-governmental perspective.

When I arrived in Beijing in 1980 the Democracy Wall Movement had just been suppressed. It was named after wall posters calling for all kinds of political and cultural reforms. Two years earlier, after the Cultural Revolution had been brought to a close by the arrest of the Gang of Four, this free speech movement by many former Red Guardssome of whom had once burned foreign bookscalled for more democracy. Unauthorized journals flourishedone called Beijing Springrepresenting fresh hope among young people after the disastrous course of the Cultural Revolution. The New Democracy Movement was short lived. Wei Jingsheng, an eloquent voice of that movement, not only called for democratic reforms but when he pointed to Deng Xiaoping as a new tyrant he was arrested and sent to prison for many years. His trial transcripts circulating while I was in Beijingrevealed his real crime was granting interviews to foreign journalists.

But that is ancient history. Publishing exploded along with the economic boom of the 90s and 00s. More and more foreign reporters work from China. An explosion of books by Chinese and foreign authors has deepened and broadened our understanding of twentieth century Chinese history and experience.

During my time in China in 1980-81, the shocking revelations about what had transpired during the Cultural Revolution was all new information to us Westerners. What started as a free speech big character poster movement in 1966 soon became a way to defame, humiliate and punish teachers, principles, Party cadres, and leaders. Abusive accusations on posters spiraled into hostile verbal and physical attacks. The resulting violence and withholding of medical care led in some instances to deaths and suicides. Anything foreignespecially books was looted and burned. Forced confessions were a staple of shaming, humiliation and punishment during the Cultural Revolution. There was no legal system to speak of; law schools were just re-opening in 1980. That's why the re-appearance of strange confessions on Chinese Television so disturbs China watchers and Hong Kong citizens. These confessions, in the absence of defense attorneys, contradict China's insistence that they are pursuing the rule of law.

Censorship in the West and East has a long history, nearly as long as the history of communication. Socrates was forced to commit suicide in 399 B.C. for asking philosophical questions. A couple of centuries later, Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the burning of all books except on agriculture, medicine or prophecy. He wanted to protect the population from poetry, history and philosophy. His banned books even included some of Confucius' work.

In the West the Catholic Church tried to ban books at the time of Luther and the Protestant Reformation. While the Enlightenment celebrated free speech and press, the twentieth century has witnessed a cornucopia of totalitarian control of speech, media, information and books, whether during the Soviet or Nazi era. Censorship was a key weapon under the Apartheid regime for almost five decades. In the U.S. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a banned book in the 19th century then sexually explicit novels, like D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, were either banned or heavily edited in much of the English speaking world during the first half of the twentieth century.

In the twenty-first century the greatest censorship project is China's efforts to control the Internet. Reporters Without Borders, an NGO that studies press freedom throughout the word ranked China 176 among the 180 countries it analyzes in its most recent report.

Yet China's constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, while media regulation controlled by the Party contradicts those laws frustrating many Chinese reporters and editors. The government argument is always that they are preventing the leaking of state secrets, or information that endangers the country. That last phrase reveals that the real fear may be the loss of control by the Party. Whether it is the heavy booted effort to control the press and suppress free speech or the violation of a fair legal process in jailing human rights lawyers who defend journalists, bloggers, and women's rights activists the Party leaders seem increasingly totalitarian. And the parading of victims on Chinese TV making emotional confessions rather than being dealt with in a court of law may indicate power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party.

It all contributes to The Big Chill in Hong Kong. Last year Yuo Wentlian, another Hong Kong publisher was jailed for ten years while preparing a book on President Xi Jinping's relationships with women. And the news of Jan. 22 reveals that yet another pro-democracy reporter, Li Xin, who defected from China last fall and had sought and failed to gain asylum in India, has just disappeared at the Laos, Thai border.

* * *

Gail Pellett's book, Forbidden Fruit1980 Beijing, a Memoir, will be published by Van Dam in February, 2016. Pellett is a writer, director, and producer of award-winning TV and radio documentaries. Her work has appeared on PBS, NPR, NBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Pacifica Radio. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, Mother Jones and the Village Voice, as well as in webzinesTruthout, Common Dreams, Moyers Media and the Pan-Asia Photography Review.
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A team representing St. John Fisher College claimed 1st place at the Deloitte FanTAXtic case study competition, held Jan. 15-17 at Deloitte University, Deloittes campus for learning and leadership development. The winning team presented the best analysis on a complex, issues-driven business tax case.

The competition results were thusly:

1st place team: Tom Agan, Alex DeRosa, Lauren Owens, Rob Riggio and Todd Stebbins each received $2,000 in scholarship, with St. John Fisher College receiving a $10,000 institutional award.

2nd place team: University of Florida received $1,000 per student and a $5,000 institutional award.

3rd place team: Brigham Young University received $500 per student and a $2,500 institutional award.

Honorable mentions: Boston College, Lehigh University, University of Northern Colorado, The Ohio State University, University of San Diego and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I am excited about the future of the tax profession based on the caliber of students participating in this competition, stated Carl Allegretti, chairman and CEO, Deloitte Tax. The students skillfully addressed tax issues that professionals handle on a daily basis, from tax policy to financial reporting. They are truly getting real-world experience to prepare them for a career in tax. My congratulations to all of the teams  well done.

FanTAXtic is an important forum for helping our students prepare for careers in the accounting profession, said Lynn Mucenski-Keck, faculty advisor, St. John Fisher College team, per a statement. Its use of real business challenges in a true-to-life setting, gives our students the opportunity to hone their communication, analytical and research skills. We are most appreciative of the Deloitte judges time and insights, as well as Deloittes generosity in sponsoring this program.

Were proud to have hosted this competition for the 15th year, bringing real-world business scenarios to students as part of the Deloitte Foundations focus on helping prepare the next generation of talent, stated Carol Lindstrom, president of the Deloitte Foundation. It was exciting to see this years student teams work together and use their growing knowledge and skills to deliver outstanding solutions to the business case.

Each participating team in the national competition won the FanTAXtic contest in their respective U.S. regions prior to the finals. More than 77 teams representing 54 colleges and universities participated in qualifier events throughout the U.S., Nov. 6-7, 2015.

Deloitte FanTAXtic was established in 2002, designed to familiarize students with the tax profession early on in their academic careers.

For more on the FanTAXtic competition, head to Deloitte's site here.
The Internal Revenue Service is facing a fresh backlash from Congress after destroying a hard drive from a former employee whose documents were subject to a legal investigation.

The hard drive belonged to Samuel Maruca, formerly the director of transfer pricing of the IRSs Large Business and International Division. Last week, the IRS admitted it had accidentally destroyed the hard drive, even though some of the files on it were subject to a courts document preservation notice in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Microsoft. The IRS said the hard drive was inadvertently not captured by the litigation hold for these cases, and thus was sanitized in April 2015 while the litigation was pending.

The documents being sought related to the IRSs use of outside law firms to conduct examinations of taxpayers. Microsoft has been fighting with the IRS in a long-running tax dispute over its international tax strategies. In 2013, the IRS engaged the law firm of high-profile attorney David Boies, who won an antitrust case against Microsoft in 2000. Microsoft filed a lawsuit last year requesting documents about the IRSs decision to contract with Boies firm (see Microsoft-IRS Dispute Escalates, Now about Company Nemesis Boies).

Two of the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee, chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Oversight Subcommittee chairman Peter Roskam, R-Ill., said they were concerned the IRSs document retention practices are inadequate to ensure compliance with the law. They cited the loss of emails from Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRSs Exempt Organizations unit, who was ousted in 2013 for her role in the scandal that erupted over the IRSs use of terms such as Tea Party to scrutinize applications from political groups for tax-exempt status.

This is not the first time the IRS has lost key records that were subject to a document hold, Brady and Roskam wrote in a letter last Friday to IRS commissioner John Koskinen. In the course of this Committees investigation into the IRSs targeting of conservative organizations, the IRS disclosed that it had destroyed backup tapes containing thousands of Lois Lerners records. Furthermore, the IRS did not inform Congress of the destruction for several months. In the Microsoft case, the IRS discovered the loss of records in December 2015, but did not disclose the loss until January 19, 2016. In order for taxpayers to trust the IRS, they need to know that the IRS is dealing with them fairly and playing by the rules. The IRS, however, has demonstrated now at least twice that it is either unwilling or unable to obey basic rules of discovery before federal courts and before Congress.

Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee also sent a letter last week to Koskinen requesting more information about the loss of the hard drive. Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Koskinen for answers about the IRSs recordkeeping practices.

This disclosure comes months after the IRS deleted electronic evidence related to a Finance Committee investigation, Hatch and Wyden wrote. During the Committees bipartisan investigation into the treatment of tax-exempt organizations, the IRS accidentally destroyed 422 back-up tapes and up to 24,000 emails subject to our document requests. The IRSs missteps in preserving documentswhether they be the subject of a congressional investigation, court order, or FOIA request are concerning, and necessitate further oversight into the agencys document preservation practices.
(Bloomberg) Google parent Alphabet Inc. has agreed to pay 130 million pounds ($185 million) in a tax settlement with U.K. authorities, setting off a backlash as opposition politicians questioned the governments handling of the case.

Google will adopt a new approach for U.K. taxes, and the settlement covers taxes going back to 2005, the company said Friday in an e-mailed statement. Alphabet, which owns the Google search engine, has been criticized for paying a fraction of the taxes due on sales in the U.K. For example, the tech giant paid $16 million in U.K. corporation tax from 2006 to 2011 on $18 billion of revenue, according to a panel in 2013.

The pact divided politicians in the U.K. While Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said on Twitter that it was a victory for the governments policies, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC that the bill was derisory and looked like a sweetheart deal, and that he would call for it to be investigated by the public sector watchdog.

Irish Subsidiaries

Alphabet has faced sharp rebukes from critics and regulators in Europe for using innovative tools to keep its tax rates lower in some regions. Separately, Apple Inc. is facing a European tax investigation that could force the iPhone maker to pay more than $8 billion in back taxes. European officials have accused the company of using subsidiaries in Ireland to avoid paying taxes on revenue generated abroad.

We have agreed with HMRC a new approach for our U.K. taxes and will pay 130 million pounds, covering taxes since 2005, Google said Friday in a statement, referring to the British tax authority. We will now pay tax based on revenue from U.K.-based advertisers, which reflects the size and scope of our U.K. business.

Google has avoided billions of dollars of income taxes around the world by using a pair of shelter strategies known to lawyers as the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, as reported by Bloomberg in October 2010.

Her Majestys Revenue and Customs said it enforces tax rules impartiallyregardless of a companys size.

The successful conclusion of HMRC inquiries has secured a substantial result, which means that Google will pay the full tax due in law on profits that belong in the U.K., HMRC said in a statement. Multinational companies must pay the tax that is due and we do not accept less.

Parliamentary Summons

As a result of the disclosures, Parliaments Public Accounts Committee summoned Google and the tax authority to explain their practices and the settlement to lawmakers.

We were shocked to learn of workarounds of the tax system that were considered normal behavior by big corporations but which appalled the individual taxpayer, Meg Hillier, the Labour Party lawmaker who leads the committee, said in an e-mailed statement. HMRC is effectively admitting it pulled in too little tax from Google for nine out of ten years. This is not a great success rate.

With assistance from Simon Kennedy.
A roundup of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.



Denver: A federal court has permanently barred preparer Gerardo Herrera and his business, El Lobo Multiservicios Professionales Inc., from preparing federal returns.

The government contends that Herrera and his business fraudulently reduced clients tax liabilities using extra dependents and bogus deductions. According to the complaint, Herrera and his staff repeatedly claimed clients extended family members as dependents and improperly claimed deductions for personal expenses such as cell phones and car insurance.

The complaint added that audits showed that Herrera and his staff exaggerated deductions, reported fraudulent charitable contribution deductions and claimed improper head of household filing status.

The IRS allegedly audited more than 200 returns prepared by Herreras business and found misrepresentations on almost all of them.

Reading, Pa.: Preparer Carmen Basilis, 52, has pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges, admitting that she had falsified miscellaneous deductions on clients returns to inflate refunds.

In lieu of receiving Treasury checks, Basilis clients applied for RALs. Using Form 8888 and unknown to her clients, Basilis redirected portions of refunds into her personal bank account then issued the RAL checks to her clients. The IRS then sent the bank the refund that Basilis had requested, to pay off the loans that the filers had been issued.

In addition to taking a portion of the filers refund, Basilis also charged clients a prep and filing fee.

According to published reports, after a grand jury indicted her, Basilis dodged an IRS agent and traveled to the Dominican Republic and back to the U.S. undetected despite a warrant for her arrest. She was reportedly arrested in August after authorities tracked her cellphone.

Sentencing is May 5.

Abingdon, Va.: West Virginia State Police have reportedly extradited former preparer Jeremy Evans, 38, who was wanted in connection with tax fraud.

News outlets quoted authorities as saying that the investigation began in February 2015 after Evans, a Jackson Hewitt preparer, allegedly obtained several individuals 2013 return information and filed the individuals 2014 return in their names. Evans is also reportedly accused of forging the individuals signatures to the 2014 returns prior to filing.

Evans allegedly filed the reports in an attempt to obtain a $50 bankcard from Jackson Hewitt, which was then offered as part of a promotion, reports said.

Evans was reportedly charged with 19 felonies and six misdemeanors, including ID theft, forgery, petit larceny, fraudulent schemes and embezzlement. He remains jailed without bond, reports said.
KC-46A Pegasus conducts 1st in-flight refueling demonstration

The KC-46A Pegasus successfully transferred fuel through its boom to an F-16C Fighting Falcon Jan. 24 to demonstrate aerial refueling operations in advance of its first production decision later this spring.



The KC-46A passed 1,600 pounds of fuel to an F-16C piloted by Lt. Col. Daniel Alix of the 416st Flight Test Squadron, 412th Test Wing out of Edwards AFB, California, who characterized the mission as a complete success.



Officials said it was a big step forward for the program and for the tanker capability that will serve as the backbone of Air Force global operations over the coming decades.



"I'm extremely proud of the entire industry and government program team that made today happen, said Brig. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, the Air Force program executive officer for tankers, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. This aerial refueling marks the first of many, and represents years of hard work beginning to pay dividends.



The tanker has a robust in-flight refueling demonstration schedule over the coming weeks. The test with the F-16C fulfilled the requirement to connect to a light/fast receiver. The remaining tests with the boom will use an A-10 Thunderbolt II as the light/slow receiver and a C-17 Globemaster III as the heavy receiver.



Flight tests employing the centerline drogue system and wing aerial refueling pods will use an F-18 Hornet as the light/fast receiver and an AV-8B Harrier as a light/slow receiver. The KC-46A will also have to demonstrate its receiver capability by taking fuel from a KC-10 Extender.



These refueling demonstrations represent the significant remaining test hurdles before proceeding to a Milestone C low rate initial production decision. Program officials anticipate awarding the first production contract shortly thereafter.



"These are exciting times for the KC-46A program, said Col. Chris Coombs, the KC-46 system program manager, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. We have had plans on paper and data from simulation labs, but this in-flight demonstration shows we are truly making progress on bringing this capability of the next generation of tankers to the warfighter supporting our global missions for years to come."



Master Sgt. Lindsay Moon, a 13-year veteran boom operator, operated the boom controls passing fuel for the mission.



"This mission was a significant event towards certifying this new tanker, said Moon, who is assigned to the 418th Flight Test Squadron Detachment 1 in Seattle, Washington. Controlling the boom from the Air Refueling Operator Station is night and day different from laying on your belly in a KC-135. The system advances being rolled into the KC-46 will give the operator great awareness."



Lt. Col. Donevan Rein, also with Detachment 1 in Seattle, Washington, was the Air Force pilot onboard the KC-46A during the test sortie.



The Air Force contracted with Boeing in February 2011 to acquire 179 KC-46A tankers to begin recapitalizing the aging tanker fleet. The program is currently working to meet the required assets available date, a milestone requiring 18 KC-46A aircraft and all necessary support equipment to be on the ramp, ready to support warfighter needs, by August 2017.


Air Force Global Strike Command completes accident investigation

The Air Force Global Strike Command completed an accident investigation board following a May 2014 mishap during maintenance on an intercontinental ballistic missile.



On May 16, 2014, at approximately 11:15 p.m. MDT, a Minuteman III ICBM assigned to the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, became non-operational during a diagnostic test. While maintenance personnel were troubleshooting the issue, a mishap occurred that resulted in approximately $1.8 million of damage to the missile.



The incident did not result in any injuries, prevent the Air Force from meeting its ICBM requirements, or pose a hazard to public safety.



The Accident Investigation Board found that although the maintenance team chief was properly trained for the task he was performing, he mistakenly performed an action not directed by the technical guidance.



Accordingly, the team chief and the two Airmen on his team were decertified, retrained and returned to duty.



To prevent a reoccurrence of this mishap, the Air Force has strengthened technical guidance, modified training curriculum, and shared information with the other missile wings regarding the conditions that led to the mishap.



In accordance with Air Force policy, further details related to this mishap and its associated investigation are classified.
STRATCOM chief talks nuclear deterrence, modernization

The global security environment calls for a continued strong nuclear deterrent along with modernization for elements of the nuclear triad and advanced training for U.S. Strategic Commands workforce, the STRATCOM commander said here Jan. 22.



Navy Adm. Cecil D. Haney addressed an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussing strategic deterrent forces as a foundation for national security.



Haney said todays security environment is complex, dynamic and volatile, compounded by asymmetric methods, proliferation of advanced technologies, and provocative and destabilizing behavior by current and potential adversaries.



At the same time, he said, while the United States is engaged in a campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other violent extremists, the behavior on an international stage by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran warrants U.S. attention.



Russias programs



Haney noted Moscows continued efforts to modernize conventional and strategic military programs, emphasizing new strategic approaches, declaring and at times demonstrating their ability to escalate  and conducting destabilizing actions associated with Syria, Ukraine and Crimea while also violating the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty and other international accords and norms.



Russia also is developing counter-space capabilities and conducting malicious activities in cyberspace, the admiral said, noting that Russia claims to be establishing its own cyber command that will conduct offensive cyber activities.



Still, Haney said, there is continued progress in the New START treaty, which reduces the number of nuclear weapons and launchers that the United States and Russia deploy.



New START progress



By complying with a series of treaties, the United States has reduced its stockpile by 85 percent relative to its Cold War peak, the admiral said. Instead of dozens of delivery systems, we're well on our way to only four. We are retaining and modernizing only those systems needed to sustain a stable and effective deterrent capability.



Given continued funding and authority, Haney said, we're on track to achieve New START limits of 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems by February 2018.



The treaty, he added, engenders stability by maintaining rough equivalency in size, capability and transparency through inspections, and it helps to assure non-nuclear nations that they dont need their own nuclear deterrents.



On China, Haney said, It's not just the build-up of features into larger land masses in the South China Sea, it's also the build-up of their overarching military capabilities to support their anti-access, area denial campaign and quest for sovereignty in the East and South China seas.



Chinas military investments



China continues to make significant military investments in its nuclear and conventional capabilities with a stated goal of defending its sovereignty, he added. For example, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads, and it recently conducted a sixth successful test of a hyperglide vehicle.



China also is parading missiles, clearly displaying their modernization and their capability advancements. China's pursuit of conventional global strike capabilities, offensive counter-space technologies and exploitation of computer networks raises questions about China's global aspirations, Haney said.



North Korea and Iran



North Korea, with claims of miniaturized warheads, recent claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test and developments in road-mobile and submarine-launched ballistic missile technologies, shows disrespect for United Nations Security Council mandates and a lack of regard for regional stability, the admiral said.



And with Iran, he added, even with the joint comprehensive plan of action, the United States must remain vigilant of any shift in actions regarding nuclear weapon ambitions, ballistic missile programs and continued involvement in Middle East conflicts.



As a functional combatant command, Haney said, Stratcom has transregional responsibility that extends from under the sea all the way up to geosynchronous orbit.



Six priorities



Haney listed what he called his six overarching priorities for the strategic command:



- Deter strategic attack against the United States and provide assurance to allies;



- Provide a safe, secure, effective and ready nuclear deterrent force;



- Deliver comprehensive warfighting solutions;



- Address challenges in space and cyberspace;



- Build, sustain and support partnerships; and



- Anticipate change and confront uncertainty.



Achieving comprehensive deterrence and assurance requires more than just nuclear weapons systems, the admiral said. It rests on a whole-of-government approach, he explained, and includes having a robust intelligence apparatus; space, cyber, conventional and missile defense capabilities; global command, control and communications; and comprehensive plans that link organizations and coherently knit their capabilities.



Americas nuclear deterrent



Americas nuclear deterrent, Haney added, is a synthesis of dedicated sensors, assured command and control, a triad of delivery systems, nuclear weapons, enabling infrastructure, trained and ready people and treaties and nonproliferation activities.



All remain essential to our national security and continue to provide a stabilizing force in the global geopolitical fabric of the world, he added.



Deterrence also requires a comprehensive understanding and perception of the strategic environment from an adversary's point of view, the admiral noted.



Haney said the command has made great strides in force improvement, readiness tracking and resource commitments, but most of its delivery systems and the nuclear command, control and communications architecture must be replaced in the 2025 to 2030 timeframe.



Strategic stability



We are fast approaching the point where (failing to modernize these elements) will put at risk our safe, secure and effective and ready nuclear deterrent, potentially jeopardizing strategic stability, he said.



The budget has a deterrent value of its own and reflects the nation's commitment to its deterrent strategy, he added. If we are to meet future challenges, we must have a synchronized campaign of investment supporting the full range of military operations that secure our national security objectives across the globe, Haney said.



In the same way that STRATCOM sustains and modernizes its platforms and weapons, the admiral said, the command also must sustain and modernize its workforce.



Future force



We must invest in the future of the professionals, both civilian and military, who operate, maintain, secure, engineer and support our nuclear enterprise, he said, adding that his command is working in this area. For example, weve established an academic alliance program focused on developing a community of interest of deterrence and assurance in the context of national security.



STRATCOM is partnered with 20 universities and military higher-education institutes, including Stanford University, Georgetown University, National Defense University and several Nebraska universities, he said.



Tomorrow, we will kick off the third 13-week fellowship program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha aimed specifically at providing professional growth opportunities for my civilian workforce, Haney explained.



In March, he added, the same university will host an inaugural deterrence and assurance workshop aimed at bringing those professionals together for discussions.



We must modernize the force, including the people, to ensure this force remains capable of delivering strategic stability and foundational deterrence well into the future, even as we pursue third-offset strategic choices, Haney said.



The Defense Departments Third Offset Strategy builds on work done in the 1950s and 1970s to ensure the United States and its allies maintain their technological edge over potential adversaries.
Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh demanded removal of the term Adhinayak from the national anthem. According to him, the use of adhinayak in the national anthem recalls dictatorship in ones mind. Singh demanded the removal of adhinayak since it praises the English rule in India. Jana-Gana-Mana adhinayaka jaya hey adhinayaka for whom? It praises British rule. It should be amended and replaced by word Jana-Gana-Mana mangala gaye, he said. I have got respect for Rabindranath Tagore, but national anthems adhinayaka word should be replaced by mangala.

The demand to remove adhinayak from the national anthem was fiercely criticised by many opposition leaders. Not only the national anthem, but last year I&B Ministry not only carried a picture of the preamble without the words secular and socialist , but also ignored Muslims in that advertisement. A day after row erupted over a Republic Day advertisement of the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, the Shiv Sena demanded permanent deletion of the words secular and socialist from the Preamble to the Constitution. The words socialist and secular were added by the 42nd amendment. This is the original preamble almost 26 years older than the one after the amendment. Now, there is a need that the amendment must be placed in the public domain, and action should be taken against the persons responsible for this negligence. The words socialist, secular were introduced in the Preamble through the 42nd Constitution Amendment Act in 1976.

The 42nd Amendment changed the description of India from a sovereign democratic republic to a sovereign, socialist secular democratic republic, and also changed the words unity of the nation to unity and integrity of the nation. The jurist and constitutional expert Hormasji Maneckji Seervai severely criticized this amendment stating that the newly inserted words are ambiguous and should not have been included in the Preamble without a reason

Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Constitution, was opposed to declaring Indias social and economic structure in the Constitution. When the Constituent Assembly debated on framing the Constitution in 1946, K.T. Shah proposed an amendment seeking to declare India as a Secular, Federal, Socialist nation. In his opposition to the amendment, Ambedkar stated, My objections, stated briefly are two. In the first place the Constitution is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism whereby particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgement, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today, for the majority of the people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. However, it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it. This is one of the reasons, why the amendment should be opposed.

His second objection was that the amendment was purely superfluous and unnecessary, as socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution through Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy. Shahs amendment failed to pass, and the Preamble remained unchanged until the 42nd Amendment.

During the Emergency, Indira Gandhi implemented a 20-point program of economic reforms that resulted in greater economic growth, aided by the absence of strikes and trade union conflicts. Encouraged by these positive signs, distorted and biased information from her party supporters, Gandhi called for elections in May 1977. However, the Emergency era had been widely unpopular. The 42nd Amendment was widely criticised, and the clampdown on civil liberties and widespread abuse of human rights by police angered the public. In its election manifesto for the 1977 elections, the Janata Party promised to restore the Constitution to the condition it was in before the Emergency and to put rigorous restrictions on the executives emergency and analogous powers. The election ended the control of the Congress (Congress (R) from 1969) over the executive and legislature for the first time since independence. After winning the elections, the Moraji Desai government attempted to repeal the 42nd Amendment. However, Gandhis Congress party held 163 seats in the 250 seat Rajya Sabha, and vetoed the governments repeal bill.

BJP and Hindu hardliners believe that Indira Gandhi and Congress fraudulently inserted Secularism and Socialism into the Constitution with 42nd amendment when the country was under emergency rule in 1976. This should have been reversed long back. Founding Constitution never had these mentions. Fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy clearly indicate that India is a socialist and secular country. Even before 42nd amendment of 1976, Supreme Court, in Kesavananda Bharti case 1973, had passed a judgement declaring India as a secular nation and it comes within basic structure doctrine and judicial review.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said said that an intergovernmental agreement has been signed to buy 36 Rafale combat jets from France. However, some financial issues regarding deal are yet to be sorted between both the countries. Modi said things will be sorted out soon.

Modi had, during his visit to Paris last year, announced Indias intention to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by the French aerospace major Dassault. The deal is valued at around Rs. 60,000 crore.

We are very happy that we have formed an agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft with France, Modi said at a joint address with French President Francois Hollande after 13 agreements including the Rafale pact were signed.

This inter-governmental agreement follows the government-to-government deal struck by Modi to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from Dassault Aviation SA during his visit to France in April.

Modis move cut short the lengthy arms procurement process that was stuck in talks with Dassault Aviation since 2012.

The deal appears to be inching forward for sure. The progress appears to have been made. However, outcome is still awaited. The delay in outcome is causing confusion in industrial participation programmes that need to be effected on the ground, said Rahul Gangal, a partner at consulting firm Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.

But Hollande and his host, Narendra Modi, both said further talks were needed to finalise terms of the government-to-government deal, which the Indian prime minister had announced when he visited France last spring.

Hollande described the deal on Rafale as a decisive step, adding, There remain financial issues which will be sorted out in a couple of days.

Both leaders played up their interest in cooperation in the fight against international militant groups, with Hollande saying France and its allies would strike again and again against Islamic State.

ISIS is provoking us in the worst possible way, Hollande said, citing the widely used acronym for Islamic State, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, and was behind several attacks on Paris in November that killed 130 people.

Addressing businessmen at industry lobby FICCI, French finance minister Michel Sapin said companies from his country will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector.

Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than $1 billion per year in India. We estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years.

The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, which makes France the major player in Prime Minister Modis Make in India programme, Sapin said.
The desecration of statues of prominent leaders continue with another statue of Mahatma Gandhi defaced in Dudu district in Rajasthan on Monday.

Some unknown miscreants wrote threatening messages on a Gandhi statue in Dudu district in Rajasthan. Efforts are being taken to ascertain the identity of the accused, D C Jain, IG, Jaipur said.

The message has created a panic in Dudu area with police saying that efforts are on to ascertain the identity of the people behind it. ISIS zindabad was scribbled on it.

Additional SP Dudu Sanjay Kumar said the message was written on the back of the statue with paint threatening devastation on January 26. ISIS name was also written along with the message, he added.

26 January ko tabaahi ka manzar dekhne ko milega (You will witness a trail of terror on 26 January), said the threat message with the name of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) painted on the statue.

ISI, the acronym of Pakistans spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence, was also painted on the front part of the statue.

Angry residents shut all shops after the act of vandalisation came to light. A police team was sent to the scene immediately after the incident was reported. Subsequently, a Forensic Scientific Lab team and the district collector also reached the spot.

Amid the national crackdown on terrorists and terror suspects, the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has blocked 94 websites linked to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levants.

94 websites used to radicalise people online have been blocked. We are monitoring websites and social media sites, so that these are not mishandled. Any website used to propagate ISIS agenda is being blocked. We are trying to create an ATS website to connect with the people, said Maharashtra ATS Chief Vivek Phansalkar.
The party asks Fadnavis to take steps for preventing the growth of ISIS in the state.

Shiv Sena gave a befitting reply to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis remote control statement by asking him to first recharge his political batteries. Sena asked Fadnavis government to pull up its socks to fight the challenge posed by Islamic State organisation in the state. ISIS is trying to set up its base in the state to expand its foothold across the country was mentioned in the editorial of Senas mouthpiece Saamna. Earlier while delivering a speech to commemorate Bal Thackerays birth anniversary in Mumbai Fadnavis said that Thackeray has given the remote control of power to his son Uddhav Thackeray who has passed it to him. Through this statement Fadnavis was only giving a hint to Uddhav that since BJP is in power in the state it is calling the shots. Even though the Sena is an ally of BJP but it has often been critical about the latters style of functioning. Sena has always been expressing its displeasure about the policies of BJP government in its mouthpiece Saamna.

Now that (Shiv Sena president) Uddhav Thackeray has handed over the remote control (of power) to me, other (Sena) ministers should also understand this, Fadnavis had said, in an apparent reference to some Shiv Sena ministers who have been critical of his style of functioning.

The Sena, in an editorial in mouthpiece Saamna, on Monday said that Fadnavis has announced that the remote control of the government is in his hands, but, at the same time, ISIS is trying to spread terror in the state. They want to create instability in a progressive state like Maharashtra. The editorial also lauded the efforts of Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) for arresting ISIS sympathisers. It added that the ISIS is planning to convert India into Syria which needs to be stopped at any cost.

The whole country has been gripped by the menace of ISIS. But if the remote control lies in Maharashtra, the chief minister should take it seriously. The CM had announced that he has the remote control of the government in his hands, but, at the same time, ISIS has surrounded the state, the Sena said.

Sena appreciated the efforts taken by Britain to prevent the spread of radicalism.

Even though many tolerant Indian Muslims are against the ISIS, still the attitude of the majority against the terrorist organisation is not clear. They have been raising their voice against the terror outfit but it is not enough. British Government has made it mandatory for the Muslim women to learn English. They have also been trying to prohibit religious teaching in Madarsas, it said.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2016  Connie Tipton, president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association since January 2004, announced today at IDFAs annual Dairy Forum in Phoenix that she will step down at the end of the year.

Tipton succeeded her late husband, Linwood Tip Tipton after his retirement as head of the trade association of dairy manufacturing and marketing industries and suppliers. Together they substantially enhanced the associations membership and influence in Washington by consolidating its previously separate components, the Milk Industry Foundation (MIF), International Ice Cream Association (IICA) and National Cheese Institute (NCI) in the 1980s.

Its time for that change, she said, earning a standing ovation from the Dairy Forum audience. Just to add a point, with my late husband Tip its been a Tipton dynasty for over 50 years. Its been a great thing. She said she has not decided future plans but joked, I may call up John Boehner and well open a lobbying shop. The former Speaker of the House was a strong ally of IDFA on legislative issues for many years.

Connie Tipton joined the joint MIF-IICA staff as an administrator in 1981 and assumed increasingly important leadership roles in the associations legislative and international affairs, economic analysis, public relations, marketing, education and training and trade shows.

According to the IDFA website, she helped launch the annual Capitol Hill Ice Cream Party and encouraged legislation that created the famous Milk Mustache campaign.

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.





IDFA noted that Tipton is a board member of the National Association of Manufacturers Council of Manufacturing Associations, U.S. Capitol Historical Society, Sewell-Belmont Museum & House, Bryce Harlow Foundation, Capitol Hill Day School and BIPAC, which it describes as a broad business-oriented political activation organization. She is also past chair of the Bryce Harlow Foundation Board, a group that provides scholarships and leadership in professional advocacy.

In 2009, Tipton was honored by Association Trends magazine as the Association Executive of the Year and was selected by Capitol Hill publications as one of the top trade association lobbyists in 2002. In September of 2011, Tipton was selected as a Top Association CEO by CEO Update.

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 25, 2016  A new report says that while all member countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership stand to benefit from the trade agreement, the U.S. has the most to gain.

The report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) says the agreement will increase annual real incomes in the U.S. by $131 billion by 2030. Global figures for that same time frame show an increase of about $492 billion with sizable gains also projected for Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The report says the TPP agreement, which was completed last October after years of negotiations, appears to have met its two most important negotiating objectives, benefiting member countries economically and developing rules for economic integration. However, the report also notes that the agreement reflects inevitable compromises among the 12 Pacific Rim countries at the negotiating table.

Founded in 1981, the PIIE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to the study of international policy. Since its founding, the group has weighed in on variety of issues ranging from necessary reforms of the International Monetary Fund to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Agriculturally speaking, the report notes that exports will rise more than imports in primary goods, a classification that includes agricultural products. However, it points out that export gains among primary goods will be smaller because this sector is small in the first place and because its products are often exported in processed form as food, beverages, chemicals, and other raw-materials based products.

Given the scope and complexity of topics addressed, the diversity of the negotiating parties, and the backdrop of inaction on urgent trade issues, the TPP is a notable accomplishment, the report concluded. It is a substantial positive response to slowing world trade growth and rising trade barriers, and a major contribution toward a rules-based global economy.

Chris Wyant, the executive director of the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs, said the study makes clear that the TPP is the most progressive trade agreement in history and contains benefits for American agricultural and manufacturing exports while supporting thousands of higher-paying, middle-class jobs."

Opponents of the deal, who range from the most liberal of Democrats to the most conservative of Republicans, say TPP will only serve to create a more sizable trade deficit by offering smoother access to U.S. markets for foreign competitors. The National Farmers Union and Roger Johnson, the groups president, have led agricultural opposition to the agreement. Earlier this month, his written testimony to the U.S. International Trade Commission said the deal comes up short.

TPP contains no enforceable measures to address the persistently increasing U.S. trade deficit or currency manipulation and will likely lead to the same negative overall outcomes of previous trade agreements, he said.

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Opposition to the deal in the U.S. and election year complications have led some to speculate that Congress wont vote on the agreement until the lame duck session following the election, or possibly not until 2017. The Peterson report notes that delaying TPP approval by one year would represent a $77 billion permanent loss. Aside from that figure, the report also says the U.S. could forfeit gains that compound over time as well as become vulnerable to other trade agreements in the region.

Ministerial representatives from the TPP countries are scheduled to formally sign the pact in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 4.

As trade advocates push for the ratification of this deal with Pacific trading partners, U.S. trade officials are traveling to Brussels, Belgium, today for another round of talks with the European Union on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP). Ambassador Darci Vetter, the chief agricultural negotiator with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, is among the U.S. delegation.

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(The story was updated at p.m.)
The Democratic candidates will face off in a CNN town hall Monday night in Des Moines, and the Republicans will hold their seventh debate, which Fox News will host in the Iowa capital on Thursday.

Both races are tight. The latest CNN poll in Iowa had Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side while a Fox News poll released Sunday on the GOP race had Donald Trump up by 11 points over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 34 percent to 23 percent.

The Republican race has taken on implications for federal biofuel policy, thanks to the last-minute effort by Gov. Terry Branstad and industry leaders to stop Cruz from winning the caucuses because of his opposition to biofuel mandates.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced Trump at a rally Saturday, but an aide said Grassley would appear next weekend with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and is discussing appearances with other candidates, including Cruz. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, will appear with Rubio on Monday but isnt endorsing him.

The East Coast blizzard has forced the House to cancel votes this week, and the Senate has postponed its first vote until Wednesday. The House had only planned a few votes as it was because of the Democratic retreat later in the week in Baltimore that President Obama will attend.

photo courtesy of Sarah Hubbart, Mike Torrey and Associates
The Final Exodus of Assyrians From Syria

It was at the gates of Damascus that Saint Paul went through his renowned soul-shaking experience. From there on, he stopped persecuting early Christians and became a devout believer, preaching the new faith throughout the Roman Empire. Six centuries later, Damascus became the capital of the first Muslim Empire, the Umayyad Empire, and for the next 1,400 years Christians and Muslims lived side by side in the land of Syria. The history of this coexistence is far from rosy, but the continued presence of Christians in that part of the world at the turn of the 21st century proves it is not impossible. The ebbs and flows of history have not been kind to Syria's Christians. Suffering persecution and economic catastrophe, many Levantine Christians took to the sea by the end of the 19th century, fleeing Ottoman rule. Wave after wave began arriving in New York's Ellis Island, looking for opportunity in the new world. Some of these exhausted migrants were among the victims of the Titanic. This dark episode came to be the last mass exodus of Syrian Christians before the long secularist, nationalistic and eventually disappointing 20th century. Today, the rise of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and other extremist groups have presented Syria's Christians with stark choices. Yet it was political decisions made in Berlin and Ottawa that opened the door for their greatest, and perhaps final, mass exodus. The war in Syria destroyed the livelihood of all Syrians, and Christians are no exception. Many unique Christian communities found themselves right on the erupting frontlines. Daesh, with its distorted interpretation of Islam, targets them simply because of their fate. The self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, negated a centuries-old promise made by the second caliph Omar to safeguard the lives of "the people of the book" living among Muslims. One example is the 5,000-year-old Assyrian community of the Khabur river valley in northeastern Syria. Daesh attacked Assyrian villages relentlessly, killing and kidnapping hundreds. The terror campaign pushed thousands to leave their homeland in search of a better life abroad, while others joined against Daesh. The latter choice came with a high price, as Daesh suicide bombers constantly target Assyrian civilians. The latest attack claimed the lives of fifty innocent people in Qamishli a day before New Year's Eve. Dozens of Christian urban and rural communities suffered a similar fate. To most Christians who sought to leave Syria, American and European visas became more difficult to obtain day after day, since contrary to what many thought, Christians did not enjoy any preferential treatment at Western embassies, and there was no deliberate plan to facilitate their departure just yet. In 2014, the number of migrants crossing into Europe via the Mediterranean and Aegean seas began to spike exponentially, and by the summer of 2015, the "refugees welcome" fever had swept across Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel obliged the popular mood; she chided European leaders who wanted to stem the flow of refugees, and called on them to keep their borders open. Thousands of migrants, encouraged by Merkel's open-door policy, took to the sea every day, many of them Syrian Christians. When the trip was too expensive for an entire family to afford, they would send one of their youngsters. Months later, the young man would receive his "permanent residency", which enabled him to bring over the rest of the family via a "reunion visa". Horrific stories from the long journey to Germany soon began to reach Syria. Hundreds drowned in the sea -- at times entire families. Smugglers robbed people of everything they had, while many were stuck for weeks in detention camps in Hungary under horrible conditions. But just as the road to Europe became too dangerous to risk, a much safer one was opened halfway across the world. The new liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an initial plan to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees. Trudeau claimed that the Canadian government would vet thousands of refugees from camps in Lebanon and Jordan in order to resettle them in Canada. There is, however, another selection method the Canadian government is using to cherry-pick immigrants and refugees from Syria: Christian Churches. Church organisations, with the Canadian government's consent, are financially sponsoring Syrian Christian immigrants and refugees. But the limited resources of such organisations do not allow them to sponsor a great number of people. This has prompted many Syrian-Canadians to pay an organisation the sum required to bring over their relatives, while those who don't have anyone in Canada are transferring money from Syria to the church that could sponsor them. As of December 2015, planes are departing from Beirut carrying entire Syrian Christian families to new lives in Canada. Church officials in Syria still refuse to give exact estimates, but when pressed for an answer in private, many priests and bishops admit that less than half their flocks remains at home. Numbering around two million before the war, some informed sources suggest only half a million Christians remain in Syria today. At the current rate, and with peace nowhere on the horizon, the country might very well lose its centuries-old Christian community by the end of this decade.
U.S. Priest Laments Destruction of Iraq's Oldest Christian Monastery

St. Elijah's Monastery, one of the earliest Christian settlements, and the oldest in Iraq, near Mosul, Dec. 10, 2009. Satellite images have been used to confirm that militants with the Islamic State group destroyed a 1,400-year-old stone sanctuary (Eros Hoagland -- New York Times). Amman, Jordan -- Catholic clergy lamented the destruction of Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah, and urged the international community to do more to stop such assaults. "I had the same emotional and perhaps spiritual experience as I did when I was standing over the bodies of fallen soldiers," Fr. Jeffrey Whorton told Catholic News Service after seeing pictures of the monastery's destruction. Whorton served as a Catholic chaplain for the U.S. military in Iraq and holds the rank of major, was instrumental along with others in seeing a preservation initiative mounted on the 1,400-old structure. Whorton said he believed he was the last priest in 2009 to "offer Mass on that altar before it was destroyed." The last recorded church service in recent years to take place inside the monastery's walls was the Easter Vigil in 2010, but that was held in the courtyard rather than the altar area. Reading of the destruction "was that profound and surprisingly strong emotion because of my connection with the monastery," Whorton, who now works at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, told CNS by telephone. "It was a kind of a grief that was like a loss of life almost." The Associated Press confirmed the news that the ancient monastery on the outskirts of Mosul had been turned into a field of rubble, with exclusive satellite images published early Jan. 20. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility. Whorton said the chance to both worship and give informal tours of the monastery during his tour of duty in Iraq "was probably the highlight of my entire priesthood." "I was able to offer Mass there three or four times on that altar. I was made very aware of the great cloud of witnesses," said Whorton, explaining his sense of those ancient Christians who had worshipped over the centuries at St. Elijah. "In the forefront of my mind was the reality that in 1700s, 150 or so [monks] had been martyred there," the American priest said. "So I knew I was in a sacred place offering the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I felt extremely unworthy standing at the venerable altar. That, along with celebrating with the Holy Father, was the highlight of my entire priesthood." People were forced to bend down physically to enter the monastery. It was a "humble acquiescence of bending low for this great space that you are entering," the priest said. Whorton said another unusual feature was a piece of wood shaped like a yoke that stood above the entrance to the nave. "For me, there was a kind of putting on the yoke of Christ and to bend low into that space where my fallen brothers and sisters had died [centuries ago]. It was extremely emotional and a spiritually palpable event for me," he said of his experience ministering in the ancient monastery. "God became present once again on that ancient altar as he has done thousands and thousands of time throughout the 1,400 years of its existence. That's the weight of glory," Whorton said. Many had voiced concern about the fate of the monastery after Islamic State militants swept into the area in June 2014 and had cut off most communication there. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were forced to flee rather than convert to Islam, pay a protection tax or be killed. Whorton said the finality of ancient monastery's fate has weighed heavy on him. "I did not realize until I saw the pictures of the destruction that I would be one of the ones to literally close the door on this ancient church," he said. "I hope that I closed it with all the necessary decorum that is due to such a venerable place," he added. Assyrian Fr. Emanuel Youkhana, who heads the Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, CAPNI, denounced the attack as yet another assault once again on Christians and their heritage in their ancient homeland. "Dozens and dozens of scientific, philosophic, historical and other books were written or translated in such monasteries. This is a memory of Iraq which has been cut off," he told CNS. "When they damage my 2,000 years of Christianity and 5,000 years of Assyrian heritage as the indigenous people of this country, my question is this: If my history is being damaged, my present is being threatened, is there any future?" the cleric asked. He cited examples of the Islamic State's bulldozing the Assyrian city of Nimrod, where the Tower of Babel is believed to have existed. The United Nations called its destruction cultural cleansing and a war crime. Youkhana also drew attention to the destruction of archaeological sites in Ninevah along with the forced displacement of Christians and other religious minorities long present in Iraq from their historic area. He renewed a call for the international community to do more to preserve the Christian presence in their ancient homeland, saying it pained him to see many Christians escaping for safety to the West. "What will be the future of Oriental Christianity if we don't protect or give future chances for Christians to survive and to build a future," he said. "We have to keep this mosaic and diversity, not give up."
January 22, 2016

Millions of Egyptians huddled around their TV sets on Jan. 10 to watch the countrys new parliament convene. The Egyptian media called it a historic moment. Not only had the country been without a parliament for nearly four years (since the dissolution of the Islamist-majority parliament by a Supreme Court ruling in 2012), but the chambers inaugural session also marked the completion of the political road map unveiled by then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in July 2013.

Despite the voter apathy that marred the recent legislative elections, many Egyptians are pinning their hopes on the new parliament to pave the way for a more stable, secure and just society.

What should have been a moment of pride for Egyptians turned into disappointment: Parliaments opening session plunged into chaos after controversial member of parliament Mortada Mansour refused to take the constitutional oath, voicing his objection to the wording, which alluded to the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. Mansours hostile stance toward the 2011 revolution that led to the toppling of the longtime authoritarian president is no secret. He had on several occasions voiced his opposition to the 2011 movement for change, saying that it had been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and that the real revolution was the one that took place on June 30, which is a reference to the mass protests that helped topple the democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi. Still, many were caught off-guard by the lawmakers reluctance to recite the constitutional oath. Surprise quickly gave way to dismay, prompting scores of activists to turn to social media networks to express their concern.

Appearing as a guest on a talk show on the Egyptian privately owned Ten TV, human rights defender Malek Adly criticized Mansours behavior, reminding him that the constitution recognizes the January 25 Revolution and ought to be respected.

Members of parliament who dont respect the constitution should quit parliament, Adly said, adding that the 2011 revolution is not a foreign conspiracy as some lawmakers claim it is.

In the runup to the anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising, attacks by regime loyalists on the 2011 movement for change have intensified amid government fears of fresh protests (called for by some activists) breaking out.

Much of the revolutions vilification has come from elected deputies in a parliament dominated by supporters of Sisi, who is now president, and former members of Mubaraks National Democratic Party. Journalist and writer Lamis Gaber, one of 28 legislators appointed to the new parliament by Sisi, has also voiced her opposition to the Jan. 25 uprising. In a TV interview on the privately owned Sada El Balad, she said, Jan. 25 should only be celebrated as National Police Day in a tribute to members of the security forces who lost their lives fighting terrorism.

The Ministry of Religious Endowments, which issues directives to preachers on the topics for their weekly Friday sermons, has also joined the anti-revolution campaign. In recent weeks, preachers at state-affiliated mosques have repeatedly warned that protests are sinful as they disrupt stability.

Meanwhile, in the weeks leading up to the fifth anniversary of the revolution, the security crackdown on dissent has also gained steam, with police arresting and detaining several activists suspected of calling for protests. On Jan. 2, three Facebook administrators were arrested on charges of using social media to incite against the state. They were also charged with membership in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. In a recent security sweep, police raided several apartments in the downtown Cairo area close to Tahrir Square and closed the Townhouse Gallery and its affiliated Rawabet Theater, major contemporary art and culture spaces frequented by young activists.

Mohamed Salem, an activist and member of the secular Social Democratic Party, told Al-Monitor that he and many of his friends have steered clear of downtown street cafes, which are regular meeting points for the activists, to avoid arrest.

Theres mass hysteria, he said, adding that the police are rounding up scores of young people ahead of the anniversary of the uprising because of unfounded fears of renewed unrest.

Leftists appear to have become the new targets of an expanding security crackdown on dissent that has already seen thousands of government opponents imprisoned since the ouster of Morsi. In the latest arrest spree, on Jan. 14, security forces stormed the home of Taher Mokhtar, a leftist doctor and member of the Doctors Syndicate, in a pre-dawn raid, arresting him and two of his friends. Mokhtar has since been detained on the charge of possessing documents inciting against the regime. A member of the Freedom Committee at the syndicate, Mokhtar has been campaigning for the rights of detainees to medical treatment. Mokhtar was interrogated for several hours by national security prosecutors before being detained.

During the interrogation, the prosecutors asked Mokhtar whether he had taken part in the January 2011 uprising. He replied that he had, adding that it was not a crime. The question sparked outrage among activists who responded with an online petition demanding his release.

The regime has turned participation in the revolution into an official charge, reads the petition posted on a Facebook page created by a group expressing solidarity with Mokhtar.

We are all guilty of taking part in the revolution, and we shall never deny it, the petitioners challenged.

The activists also started an Arabic hashtag that translates into #I-participated-in-January-Revolution, which quickly went viral on social media. They used the hashtag to boast about their experiences during the 18 days of the uprising.

Five years after an uprising that melted all barriers  social, economic, religious and political  the revolutions demonization by regime loyalists reflects the polarization in the society, with powerful counter-revolutionary forces at one end and a smaller group of die-hard  and now increasingly marginalized  young revolutionary activists who vow to continue their struggle to attain the goals of the revolution. In between the two camps are the weary majority yearning for security and stability and prioritizing both over democratic values and human rights.

If I see a demonstrator on the street on Jan. 25, I will physically attack him myself, Mohamed Gomaa, a taxi driver, said.

Enough chaos, he added, We want to feed our children.

His words echo the sentiments of the majority of Egyptians whose livelihoods have been affected by years of economic stagnation and political turmoil.

Tackling the more pressing challenges of a faltering economy and the looming threat of Islamist militancy have become the priority for most Egyptians. They support the government in its efforts to resuscitate the economy and counter the ongoing Islamist insurgency in North Sinai, where hundreds of police and military have been killed in the last three years. The unmet expectations of Egyptians, however, have affected Sisis popularity. While he still enjoys massive support, Sisi is no longer perceived as the revered savior as was the case in the early days of his presidency. Five years after a revolution that called for bread and social justice, his ability to deliver on his promises of economic revival, stability and security are now the true tests of his presidency.
January 25, 2016

At a press conference Jan. 24, the spokesman for Irans judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, announced that 100 people have been arrested over the attack in early January on Saudi Arabias embassy in Tehran.

Mohseni-Ejei said that there were two groups of people who protested in front of the Saudi Embassy after the execution of Shiite activist Nimr al-Nimr. One group of approximately 200 people, who had no intention of committing crimes, consisted of individuals with grievances against Saudis foreign policy and responsibility in the hajj Mina stampede in September that killed 464 Iranians.

The other group, according to Mohseni-Ejei, consisted of suspects who entered the Saudi Embassy with the intention of setting it on fire or people that the enemy had penetrated. The term penetrate has become a popular phrase after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that enemy countries would attempt to politically, economically or culturally penetrate Iran's post-nuclear deal.

Mohseni-Ejei said that while the cases of the second group are being reviewed, there is evidence that the enemy had a hand in this event. He added that one cleric has been singled out for involvement in the case and for also issuing orders for the attack. Mohseni-Ejei described the cleric as someone who was kicked out of university 10 years ago and conducted his clerical training not in person.

According to Mohammad Reza Mohseni-Sani, a member of parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, the individual is Hassan Kordmihan, a mostly unknown but highly active cleric with deep connections.

Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) was one of the first news agencies to write about Kordmihan, who was reportedly detained after returning from Syria. Iranian media did not mention why Kordmihan was in Syria or for how long he was there before returning to Iran. ILNA introduced him as the mastermind of the attack on the Saudi Embassy. Soon, pictures of Kordmihan surfaced on Iranian social media of him sitting next to hard-line cleric Alireza Panahian, campaigning with Tehrans Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and wearing karate attire.

According to ILNA, Kordmihans career began in the city of Karaj, Irans fourth-largest city 30 miles west of Tehran, where he was responsible for organizing an Ansar-e Hezbollah group. Ansar-e Hezbollah is often described as a vigilante group backed by senior figures within the government. They are typically accused of being behind rogue attacks on Reformist gatherings. Unconfirmed reports said that a panegyrist linked to Kordmihans Karaj center was also arrested.

ILNA wrote that Kordmihan did not condemn the attack on the Saudi Embassy. Nearly every official and institution has condemned the attack, including Khamenei. Kordmihan, instead of condemning the attack, justified it by saying, Our support was of anger and zeal, not plunder. He added, If zeal is not displayed against such a thing, no one will have security. Whats an embassy? There are a handful of people here who laugh at our honor. They have to be kicked out disrespectfully. The administration is not doing anything. A handful of youth displayed their zeal. You cannot stop this type of revolutionary passion.

Deputy Interior Minister for Security Hossein Zolfaghari had previously said that the individuals behind the Saudi Embassy attack were an organized group that have been active for at least 10 years, sometimes with the knowing or unknowing support of officials, a description that fits Kordmihans profile. During the 2013 presidential elections, Kordmihan was an effective campaigner on behalf of conservative candidate Tehran Mayor Ghalibaf. According to ILNA, Kordmihan also received financial backing from some institutions and organizations to conduct cultural and religious activities.
January 21, 2016

After years of negotiations with six world powers, Iran celebrated the official lifting of international sanctions on Jan. 16. Having long awaited this moment, the Islamic Republic acted quickly thereafter, commencing efforts to expand its share of the global energy market and engaging in intensive negotiations with possible clients as well as global oil and gas giants to boost production and develop new means of delivery, including new pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities and tankers. While opportunities abound, however, Iran will have a tough time achieving its goals given the plunge in prices for oil and natural gas.

Absent a good grasp of the current energy market and its problems, and given the existing issues afflicting its own oil and gas industries, Iran will not be able to simply boost gas production and expect success in the market. One of the defining features of the current global gas market is how supply is outstripping demand. A key factor in lowering demand for energy, and particularly natural gas, is the current slow growth of the global economy. This appears to be the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and the 2009 recession, with the effects of the latter clearly lingering. As a result, demand for energy has not increased at the anticipated rate. In addition, recent technological advancements that have increased energy efficiency are resulting in lower fossil fuel consumption across the board, suppressing growth in demand.

In a climate where supply is outstripping demand, competition among exporters is naturally fierce. Thus the reality is that Iran faces very tough competition with established rivals, including Russia, Qatar and Turkmenistan. None of these countries has suffered from sanctions the way Iran has, and they have had ample time to establish themselves as significant producers and exporters. Of note, because of sanctions, Iran has not had access to needed foreign investment, financing and advanced technology, leaving plenty to be desired for its gas industry.

Iran  which holds the worlds second-largest proven natural gas reserves and seeks to pursue LNG production  faces competition in particular from major LNG producers like Qatar and the United States. Qatar has been the worlds largest LNG exporter since 2006, with a 30% share of the market in 2014. Although the United States has never been among the worlds top 10 gas exporters, it has sought to increase exports by gaining access to distant markets via LNG, particularly in East Asia.

In addition to traditional natural gas exporters and LNG producers, Iran is also facing competition from re-exporters, that is, countries that buy natural gas and then sell it onward on global markets. Spain and the United States are among the nations most engaged in this practice. The considerable increase in gas re-exporting countries has further reinforced the supply side of the global gas market equation, thereby contributing to a further decline of prices.

Beyond the supply and demand disequilibrium, the global gas market is also affected by the global geopolitical situation, which poses risks to security of the energy supply and distribution cycles. Indeed, the recent string of conflicts around the world reveals genuine concerns among producers, exporters and consumers alike. For instance, the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and Turkey have convinced European markets to decrease their dependency on Russian gas and find more politically stable and amicable sources. In this vein, the current global geopolitical situation presents both opportunities and challenges for Iran.

On the positive side, Iran enjoys an amicable relationship with China and could use massive Chinese financing and investment resources for the development of its energy projects. For example, Chinese companies could finance new pipelines and the construction of LNG facilities, including such infrastructure as storage and terminals. Moreover, Iran can pursue exporting its relatively cheaply produced natural gas to neighboring countries, among them Iraq and its southern Arab neighbors. In addition, it can pursue new gas-swap contracts with neighboring Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkmenistan. Moreover, in terms of re-exporting, Iran could import gas from producers to its north and then either convert it to LNG for delivery to clients in Europe or India via the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman or pump the gas to clients in South Asia through planned deepwater pipelines traversing the Arabian Sea.

The geopolitical situation also presents challenges for the Islamic Republic. The recent negative developments in Irans relations with Arab states in the Persian Gulf may adversely affect Tehrans plans for gas swaps with those neighbors and also its ability to use their LNG facilities, with the exception of Oman.

Despite the many challenges, there are steps that Iran could independently take to strengthen its position. For instance, the Islamic Republic would be wise to take advantage of its relatively low gas production costs to develop new pricing and marketing strategies to open up new markets. It should also reduce its massive domestic consumption by raising prices in country. The freed-up gas from such a step  along with added production from the giant South Pars natural gas field  can be directly exported or used as petrochemical feedstock and possibly even in gas-to-liquid facilities to be converted into such high-value products as gasoline, diesel fuel and methanol. Excess natural gas could also be used in gas-generated electricity plants, producing electricity for export to neighboring countries. This could strengthen Irans geopolitical position in the region. Another positive development for Iran is the revival of its gas condensate exports, which were almost halted due to the sanctions. Investment in this sector is certainly an opportunity that Tehran should pursue.

While Irans efforts to boost its natural gas industry to seize a greater share of the global energy market will face obstacles, opportunities abound, and the Islamic Republic can pursue such opportunities despite the climate of low global prices and geopolitical risks.
January 25, 2016

The stated goal of the Samaria Residents Committee, established in 2008, is to serve the [Jewish] residents in Samaria and ward off  using a variety of means  any potential damage to the settlement enterprise there. The committee is largely funded by the Samaria Regional Council and, by extension, Israeli taxpayers. Its director is the old-time right-wing activist Benny Katsover, who founded the settlement of Elon Moreh in the mid-1970s and is considered by settlers to be the founder of the settlement movement in Samaria.

Why there is a need for a committee to serve the settlers in Samaria, when that is already the purpose of the regional council, remains unclear. Some of the committees activities include giving guided tours of the region to journalists and politicians, planting thousands of trees and painting junctions in the area blue and white. All this is to show everyone, in case they fail to notice, that as far as the settlers are concerned, not only are the settlements an integral part of the State of Israel, but they also strengthen it.

Yet there are other, more defiant activities taking place. After the deadly Islamic State attacks in France last November, for example, the committees cynical way of expressing condolences to the French people was to place an order for thousands of French flags from Shahar Hafakot, a factory in the territories  a snub at the EU policy requiring the labeling of settlement goods. In an earlier episode, in February 2015, the committee put together a video likening the European states to Nazi Germany and Israeli human rights organizations to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis.

The committee's new campaign goes a step further in trying to harm Arab businesses in mixed Israeli towns, or as the committee calls, it putting together a list of businesses that support terrorism. As the committee sees it, Arab Israeli business owners who occasionally close their shops when the Arab sector goes on strike are supporters of terror.

Using billboards and social media, the committee asks people to submit information about Arab businesses that supposedly adhere to the call of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel to go on strike. Take a photo of a closed Arab business, read the committee's flyers, and well make sure to keep it closed.

On Jan. 12, the committee published its first list of businesses to boycott, all located in the northern city of Acre. In an attempt to promote its shaming campaign, the committee claimed that Qatar-based hackers had compromised its WhatsApp account, but that it overcame the attack and was able to document striking Arabs as supporters of terror.

The list of businesses or business owners the committee suspects of supporting terror includes long-established and well-known restaurants. For example, Nashat Abbas, the owner of El-Babur in Acre, was blacklisted for, the group claimed, closing his restaurant during the strike declared in November by the High Follow-Up Committee following the government's decision to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. According to Abbas, he never closed the restaurant that day.

I have a contractual obligation with Acres Economic Corporation, Abbas said. Im not allowed to close the restaurant. Im the chef-owner. I get up in the morning full of optimism to start working, cooking and making good food. Yet what I end up finding is that a bunch of people are inciting against me and are trying to take away my livelihood.

On Jan. 23, several Knesset members from the Joint List went to El-Babur to express their disbelief at the settlers incitement campaign. Even before visiting the establishment, Joint List Knesset member Dov Khenin wrote on Facebook, Some people here want to do to the Arabs what the anti-Semites did to the Jews in Europe. Khenin demanded that the police launch a criminal investigation into the racist campaign and that the transfer of state money to the Samaria Residents Committee be immediately stopped. It is inconceivable for such an organization to continue to receive public funding while obtaining government legitimacy and support, Khenin wrote.

Abbas, whose restaurant is quite popular, told Al-Monitor that he has recently seen a drop in the number of Jewish patrons. Still, there are many people who want to encourage him and express their support, because he is known to hold Jewish-Arab coexistence sacred.

Sohila Hindi, the owner of Abu Sohil, another Acre restaurant, discovered along with Abbas that her establishment had been blacklisted for supporting terror. I didnt know what to do first  laugh or cry, she told Al-Monitor. Her establishment is always closed on Tuesdays, the day the strike was called. Her restaurant was nonetheless reported as closed in alleged solidarity.

Tuesday is our day off. Thats our Sabbath, she said. We work very hard on the weekends, and on Tuesdays the restaurant is always closed. Abu Sohil has been a popular culinary destination since the 1960s. When the original owner, Abu Sohil, passed away in 1993, his daughter, Sohila, took over. She takes the most pride in Abu Sohils hummus, which has been nominated as among the best in Israel. She, too, has noticed that the number of Jewish patrons has declined.

There are some days when we see no Jewish customers at all, she said. We want genuine peace where we can all live together, without hate. Since 1948, Ive been living with Jews like brothers, as one family. Khalas! Enough! The extremists should leave us be. I want peace, but what I want the most is for people to talk about my hummus. Come visit and see what a place of friendship, coexistence and love this is. Is this what the settlers want to destroy?

The blacklist has become the talk of the town among Arab business owners in mixed cities. They feel the atmosphere of incitement worsening with each passing day, putting them in real danger.

The State of Israel is changing day by day, Abbas said. It is being led by the fringe to dark places. Im a second-generation restaurateur. I wont say that there has never been tension between Jews and Arabs, but there were always leaders who, after each incitement by the right wing, would call on the Jewish public to go back to business as usual and frequent Arab establishments. Today you dont see a single leader doing that. This is not the State of Israel I grew up in and whose values and democracy I had gotten to know. It seems to me that the future is going to be black. Pitch black.
January 24, 2016

US Vice President Joe Biden called for a change of attitude by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan toward critics of Turkeys increasingly destructive military campaign against Kurdish rebels and cities in southeast Turkey.

Speaking in Istanbul on Jan. 22, Biden said, If you dont have an ability to express your opinion, to criticize a policy, to offer competing ideas without fear of intimidation or retribution, the country is robbed of opportunity and the country is being robbed of possibilities. He added, When Internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites like YouTube or Twitter are shut down and more than 1,000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition, thats not the kind of example that needs to be set in the region. Biden said that Turkeys commitment to free expression and democracy matter not only to Turks but to America.

Cengiz Candar writes of a witch hunt conducted by the Turkish government against academics and intellectuals who signed a petition protesting the Turkish military campaign against Kurdish towns in southeast Turkey. Erdogan slammed the signatories as so-called intellectuals committing treachery by engaging in propaganda on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group.

Biden told Turkish lawmakers that the United States backed Turkeys campaign against the PKK, but that its heavy use of force in southeastern villages is unsustainable.

Mahmut Bozarslan reports this week on the effect of the Turkish military campaign in Silopi, a predominantly Kurdish town of 121,000 on the Iraqi border. Silopi has been the scene of some of the worst fighting between the Turkish military and the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), the PKKs radical armed youth wing, which many residents also blame for the carnage.

A flurry of military activity was the first thing that greeted the eye in town, with dozens of armored vehicles roaming the streets. The Habur crossing road, which cuts through the city, had become a demarcation line. The neighborhoods on its right side were easily recognizable as the theater of the clashes. One could barely walk through the area, let alone drive. The streets were dotted with craters  the result of explosions employed as a combat tactic by both sides. The security forces blew up barricades to advance, while the militants detonated trenches full of explosives to keep them away. The buildings along the streets were riddled with bullets, now the hallmark of neighborhoods where the clashes take place, Bozarslan writes.

Biden met Jan. 23 with Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. On the agenda was what more Turkey can be doing to battle the Islamic State (IS). Biden has been a kind of truth teller on these matters, providing candor not always possible by US diplomats who have engaged in agonizing diplomacy for what would seem to be the most basic coordination, such as allowing the United States to use Incirlik Air Base to bomb IS. Biden bucked diplomatic niceties on Oct. 3, 2014, when he let slip that the biggest problem is our allies" in cracking down on foreign fighters in Syria, and that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-[Shiite] war.  They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad  except that the people who were being supplied were [Jabhat] al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."

Fehim Tastekin explains the reasons for the many, well-justified questions in Turkey and elsewhere about their commitment to fighting IS. While there is no question that Turkey has been a target and victim of IS terrorism, Ankara can hardly be considered a leader in taking the fight to the jihadi group. What Turkey has done to combat IS has often followed months if not years of US pressure, or has occurred in the aftermath of IS-linked terrorist attacks, such as the deadly suicide bombing on Jan. 12 in Istanbul. Turkey has dealt with IS and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra with a kind of strategic relativism in the broader context of its more pressing priorities in Syria, which are degrading the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), and toppling Assad.

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, Tastekin writes.

Tastekin adds that 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, Tastekin's article asks why the Turkish security services were able to move so quickly to round up IS cells after Jan. 12. 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.
January 25, 2016

Saudi Arabia's execution of 47 accused terrorists on Jan. 2 drew extensive condemnation in the United States. Further, because four of the men executed were Shiites, including in particular Shiite religious leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran and consulate general in Mashhad were stormed the same day and set ablaze by rioting Iranian Basij and others. In response to these incidents, Saudi Arabia and many of its Arab allies severed diplomatic relations with Iran. Yet, in the face of criticism by US officials and pundits trying to twist the executions into an example of the state-sanctioned killing of innocent people, or a case of Sunni sectarian actions against a Shiite minority, the truth needs to be told: The 47 men executed were proven terrorists and criminals, all of whom had committed or inspired murder, and many of whom had direct links to al-Qaeda or the terrorist Shiite group Hezbollah al-Hejaz (Saudi Hezbollah).

The al-Qaeda links were established legal fact. Indeed, 43 of those executed were tied to the men who carried out 9/11. They had been fighters, recruiters, senior commanders and theologians in the terrorist group behind the horrors of the attacks on the World Trade Center, United Flight 93 and the Pentagon. Furthermore, they had been part of the local Saudi branch of al-Qaeda that carried out a series of terrorist attacks between 2003 and 2006 in the kingdom in an attempt to foment mass murder on a scale equal to or beyond 9/11. Although these attempts ultimately failed, they nevertheless led to the deaths of numerous civilians, including many Americans.

As noted, some critics have characterized the Saudi executions as an act of Sunni sectarian violence against members of a Shiite minority primarily because one of those executed, Nimr, was a renowned cleric in the Shiite enclave of Qatif. Leaving aside that only 4 of the 47 men killed were Shiites, thus totally debunking the accusations of sectarian violence, a closer look at Nimr suggests that he was nothing like the peaceful activist campaigning against an authoritarian monarchy and discrimination depicted in the press by certain White House officials. He was in fact a political extremist linked to a known terrorist group and numerous killings. In the words of Tawfiq al-Sayf, a prominent Shiite activist in Saudi Arabia, Nimr was fomenting a Shia equivalent of ISIS.

In his public life, Nimr had been closely tied to Hezbollah al-Hejaz, the armed, avowedly Khomeinist group established in Qatif and active in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, Kuwait and Bahrain. As a leadership figure in the organization, Nimr consistently preached that the Sunni ruling dynasties in the three countries were illegitimate and called for armed struggle against the Saudi government. Hezbollah al-Hejaz carried out the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 20 US service personnel and injured 498 people of various nationalities. The four senior members who led the attack, and who are on the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorists list, subsequently fled to Iran and continue to live there in hiding with the support of the mullahs in Tehran. The plot recently thickened.

On Aug. 26, 2015, it was announced that Saudi intelligence officers had apprehended Ahmed Ibrahim al-Mughassil, leader of the Hezbollah al-Hejaz cell that carried out the Khobar Towers bombing, in a sting operation in Beirut. Since being whisked away under the eyes of Lebanese Hezbollah, Mughassil has been in Saudi custody divulging details about who carried out the Khobar bombings and how they did it. According to a Saudi security official who spoke on condition of anonymity, Mughassil has provided information on the structure of the organization, its funders, its members and its covert links to the current Iranian leadership. Mughassil fingered Nimr as a leading fundraiser, recruiter and facilitator for Hezbollah al-Hejaz in Qatif and Bahrain.

Prior to his execution, Nimr had been directly implicated in the shooting deaths of several Saudi police officers in late 2011, early 2012. Three of his young followers admitted that they had been inspired by Nimr's teachings and directly encouraged by him when they attended a diwaniya (gathering) in his home village of Awamiya, in Qatif. Nimr and the three accused killers were subsequently arrested. Convicted of several acts of murder by Saudi courts, they are the four Shiites the kingdom executed.

Perhaps Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan best summed up the mood in Saudi Arabia and most of the Muslim world when he said, The same people who keep silent during mass killings are now trying to stir up the world over the execution of one person. Four hundred thousand [Syrian] people have been killed  You can never justify yourselves. Executions like those carried out Jan. 2 will continue as Saudi Arabia attempts to defend itself against terrorists. Mughassil, whose horrific crimes will eventually be made public, will most likely be among those executed. In time, such revelations may come as an embarrassment to the Barack Obama administration, which given the Iranian nuclear deal, seems much more concerned about legacy building than prosecuting Tehran-backed terrorists who have taken countless American lives.
January 25, 2016

Usually when Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon makes international headlines, it is because of some unbecoming slip of the tongue. Yaalon never earned himself the reputation of a peace seeker. He is actually considered one of the major factors who helped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu withstand the Obama administrations peace assault of 2013-14, led by Secretary of State John Kerry and former special envoy Martin Indyk. True, Yaalon spent most of his life as a supporter of the Labor Party (now the Zionist Camp), but went through a process of rethinking a shifting worldview while serving as the chief of military intelligence. Today, he is one of those who believe that it is impossible for Israel and the Palestinians to reach a permanent agreement and achieve real peace in this generation, or at the very least, over the next few years.

Having said all that, this year Yaalon has proved himself to be one of the last voices of sanity in Netanyahus far-right government. Credit for this begins with his firm stance in support of democratic values and against all of the far right's repeated efforts to hurt them. It can be seen in his uncompromising stand against the price tag phenomena (attacks against non-Jewish religious institutions or against Palestinians) and its remarkable growth, culminating in the murder of the Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014 and the burning of the Dawabsha family to death in their home in the village of Douma in July 2015. It was Yaalon who defined (by name) the Jewish fringe groups behind these attacks as terrorists, and for the first time allowed the Shin Bet to use methods of investigation usually reserved for Arab terrorists.

Yaalon also did not bat an eye when he was ordered to evacuate and tear down the Dreinoff neighborhood in the settlement of Beit El in July 2015. While Education Minister Naftali Bennett was showing his support for the settlers by addressing them late at night from the roof of a caravan in their settlement, the defense minister showed strength and determination by instructing the security forces to carry out the Supreme Courts order to the letter.

Together with President Reuven Rivlin, Yaalon is now considered to be the last line of defense in the battle for the rule of law, the Supreme Court and liberal democratic values. Usually Netanyahu barely expresses himself on all of the aforementioned issues, and when he does say something, he stammers it out far too late. Netanyahu is too concerned about his historical electoral base on the right, and particularly the support of the settlers, who went to the polls in droves on election day last March and kept him in power. But Ya'alon, it seems, isnt afraid of anyone.

A new climax has been reached in the current crisis. A group of settlers, including branch leaders and other major figures in the Likud Party, purchased two buildings in Hebron. They entered these buildings under cover of darkness and left two new facts on the ground. This is how the settlers regularly operate; they follow a familiar model of secretly purchasing property, taking it over by surprise and then conducting negotiations with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which ultimately controls the West Bank, as to whether they can stay there or not.

Usually an operation involving the evacuation of homes such as this can last weeks, if not months or years. It gets dragged out in the courts, while the validity of the purchase is investigated and it is ascertained whether the owners really made a sale. Discussions ensue over security issues and how the incident impacts Israels diplomatic standing. This time, however, Yaalon decided that it was enough. He heard about the occupation of the homes in real time while conducting his regular assessment of the situation with the IDFs top brass at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. He then ordered that the settlers be removed, without any delays whatsoever.

They had not expected that. On the night of Jan. 21-22, the IDF forcibly removed the settlers from both homes. The coalition immediately erupted in turmoil, with attacks against Yaalon launched not only by Bennetts HaBayit HaYehudi Party, but even by many people from Yaalons own Likud Party (as described by Mazal Mualem). But Yaalon wasnt taken aback. He received partial support from Netanyahu, though a day late. Still, Yaalon stuck to his principles, and he refused to blink.

According to procedures in the West Bank, even if Jews buy a property legitimately from its Arab owners, they cannot settle it without the IDFs permission. This permission is only given after the purchasing process has been investigated, along with the security situation (would the occupation of the property put the security of the settlers or overall security at risk?) and the diplomatic situation (would it be diplomatically damaging to the State of Israel?). In the case of the two houses in Hebron, the purchase has yet to be investigated  which could take a long time  but the security and diplomatic setups are obvious. Israel is contending with a wave of terrorism that refuses to die down, and it is preparing for a diplomatic tsunami, which is gathering momentum. On Jan. 17, US Ambassador Dan Shapiro offered stinging criticism of Israels policies in the territories. A few days later, there was a damning editorial in The New York Times. Later this week, Israel is expected to receive a delegation of officials from the French Foreign Ministry and other ministries for special talks, while France is trying to formulate a draft proposal concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to be submitted to the UN Security Council. This draft proposal could become a major source of problems for Israel, especially if US President Barack Obama chooses a new course of action and refuses to veto it.

Given all of the above, Yaalon decided not to approve the settlers occupation of the buildings in Hebron. He was not intimidated by the brusque attacks he faced  and continues to face  even from senior Likud officials. In this particular case, Yaalon is acting like a prime minister, while Netanyahu is acting like a run-of-the mill minister, still deciding which side to choose. Ya'alon is showing maturity, responsibility and a clear moral compass, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, between the logical and the absurd.

This is something that should not be taken for granted. A wave of right-wing nationalism is sweeping across Israel. It is understandable, too. The country is dealing with a violent and frenetic wave of Palestinian terrorism. Polls indicate that the electorate is moving to the right in response, so that what Yaalon is doing can be considered political suicide.

According to a diplomatic sources, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity and who referred to the most extreme groups of settlers, Yaalon has been saying during talks he held this past weekend that he does not intend to let them set the whole Middle East on fire. In that sense, Yaalon is starting to sound like former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, who served in Netanyahus first government (1996-99) and acted in a similar way.

Mordechai was a retired major general in the IDF, who joined the Likud Party just before the 1996 election campaign. In that sense, he is similar to Yaalon, a former chief of staff, who joined the Likud right before the 2009 elections. They both came from a long career in the army, having learned the situation on the ground. In other words, they were both intimately familiar with the potential volatility of the region. This made both Mordechai and Yaalon the responsible adults in the room, who tried to avoid playing with matches near the ever-present barrel of gasoline. In both cases, too, the prime minister was Netanyahu. Back in 1996, Netanyahu was inexperienced and didn't demonstrate a sense of responsibility. Right now, however, no one has more experience than he does. Yet, while Netanyahu may have learned responsibility, politics prevents him from saying or doing the right thing at the right time. Thats what Yaalon is for. All that is left for everyone else is to sit and wait for the sparks to start flying between them.

At some point, said one senior official in Jerusalem on condition of anonymity, ''Netanyahu will start to suspect Yaalon too. It hasnt happened until now, because Yaalon has not been trying to undermine him and announced that he would not run against him. On the other hand, the way that the defense minister has been acting recently could pique Netanyahus attention, evoking old fears and primal emotions. Yaalon has already received quite a few compliments in the media. That will cost him with Netanyahu.
January 25, 2016

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power now for more than 13 years, has garnered for itself a wide array of opponents along with a wide array of supporters. A new name in the latter group, however, is quite unusual and surprising even by Turkish standards, for he used to be a fierce enemy of the AKP for a very long time. He is Dogu Perincek, the leader of the ultra-left and ultranationalist Patriotic Party.

Perincek, who may be largely unknown to the outside world, has always been a marginal yet famous figure in Turkish politics. He made a name for himself in the '70s as the leader of the Turkish "Maoist" movement, which was at odds with not just the anti-communist right but also the "Leninist" faction of the left. In the early '80s, he seemed to support the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) out of Marxist solidarity. Gradually, however, Perincek and his political movement, along with their provocative periodical, Aydinlik, tilted toward Kemalism, emphasizing the nationalist, secularist and "anti-imperialist" aspect of Turkey's founding ideology.

One manifestation of Perincek's anti-imperialism was his eagerness to present the "Armenian Genocide" as an "imperialist lie" aimed at defaming and weakening Turkey. He was able to carry this argument to Switzerland in 2007, where he was sentenced by a court for "genocide denial." Yet in 2015, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a landmark decision protecting Perincek's freedom of speech, despite the legal effort by Amal Clooney, whose presence as attorney of Armenia added to the media attraction of the case.

Back in Turkey, Perincek had legal troubles for something else. In 2008, he was arrested with the charge of being a key member of Ergenekon, an alleged criminal cabal of radical officers and their civilian allies supposedly cooking up a military coup against the AKP government. Part of the "evidence" was his 2007 book, "Hacli Irtica" ("Crusader Reactionaryism") in which he depicted the "reactionaries" in Turkey  a leftist term for Islamists  as puppets of the "Crusader West." One of the headlines in the book read, "The AKP government is illegitimate, and it will be overthrown."

Perincek remained jailed for the next six years. In August 2013, an Istanbul criminal court  widely believed to be under the influence of the Gulen movement, which was then still an AKP ally  gave him an aggravated life sentence. Only four months later, however, the long-time AKP-Gulen movement alliance crumbled and turned to all-out political war. And only three months later, in March 2014, Perincek and other convicts of the Ergenekon case were set free. Most of them were also convinced that the real "Crusader Reactionaryism" was the Gulen movement, and the AKP was now their ally.

That is how Perincek began getting close to the AKP universe  the party, the media, the trolls and the GONGOs (government-oriented nongovernmental organizations). He began giving long interviews to the pro-AKP press and being hosted by the most hawkish pro-Erdogan pundits. On Jan. 20, he openly declared, "With the religious conservatives, we have formed a common patriotic front." By "we," he was referring to "scientific socialists," a euphemism for Marxists.

This staggering realignment of Turkish political actors is partly due to the Machiavellian nature of Turkish politics. This is an arena of warring political tribes, where alliances can easily shift, turning former enemies into friends. The latest game changer has been the AKP-Gulen movement war, according to which other political actors took new positions.

However, there is also an ideological basis for the latter-day alliance of the AKP and the secular "anti-imperialists" such as Perincek and the like-minded. Known as "ulusalcilik," a term that roughly stands for "secular nationalism," this was an ideological trend of the 2000s that opposed the United Nations plan for the reunification of Cyprus, the European Union accession process and a series of liberal reforms called "the openings." The AKP, which was then in an alliance with liberals, had spearheaded all those reforms, while blaming the pre-AKP era for authoritarianism at home and paranoia about the world. In an important 2010 speech, Erdogan  then prime minister  said, "Until 7 years ago [when the AKP came to power], Turkey was defined as a country 'surrounded by seas from three sides, and by enemies from four sides.' Everybody was seen as an enemy. Every country was presumed to have dirty plans about Turkey, and invisible walls were erected around our country. If the government had any failure, the responsibility was found always in the outside world."

This was the reformist Erdogan who claimed to save Turkey from its taboos and fears and look at the world with more trust and confidence. However, that Erdogan whom I used to admire and support has gradually disappeared. Since the Gezi Park protests of June 2013, which he perceived as an international conspiracy against him, he adopted the very narrative he once criticized: Turkey is surrounded by enemies, within and without, and all troubles stem from these diabolic forces, not from any possible wrongdoing of the government.

This bitterly nationalist narrative, which is churned by the pro-Erdogan media every single day, typically defines the West as the conspiratorial center that wants to halt "Turkey's rise" with numerous plots. That is why it is no surprise that ultranationalists such as Perincek now find themselves very close to their former enemy, the AKP, because it is the AKP that has inherited all of their ideological narrative about building a "fully independent" Turkey that will not care about, for example, what the EU says about the state of its freedoms.

To their credit, people such as Perincek have been principled and persistent about their ideas in this drama. It is the AKP that has taken an amazing turn.

There is one caveat to add to this story. The anti-Western narrative of the AKP continued in full speed until an unexpected crisis: the cold war with Moscow, which began with the downing of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border by Turkish jets last November. Since then, pro-AKP propaganda has gone relatively easy on the West and discovered Putin's Russia as the new evil empire. Whether this is a temporary adjustment or a more strategic one remains to be seen.
AAR Aerostructures & Interiors is shuttering its precision metals parts manufacturing operation in Huntsville.

A company spokeswoman confirmed the closure in an email, saying the company is "restructuring to focus on our aviation and expeditionary services businesses."

AAR Corp. Vice President of Communications Kathleen Cantillon said AAR continues to operate another business in Huntsville.

"AAR Integrated Technologies (InTech) performs C4 (command & control centers) system development, deployment, and technical support services for ground-based C4 systems in vehicles, hard- and soft-wall shelters, and transit cases," she said.

Cantillon said she is waiting to hear back from AAR's local general manager about when the closure will take effect and how many workers will be impacted. Records from the Alabama Department of Commerce show 72 workers will be affected, with a planned starting date of Dec. 16, 2015.

With customers in 110 countries and 60 sites around the globe, the Illinois company operates its Aerostructures & Interiors business on 140 Sparkman Drive in Huntsville. The AAR website said the Huntsville site supplies aerospace-quality metal parts and assembles to original equipment manufacturers and their first- and second-tier suppliers.

In October, AAR's Integrated Technologies C4 Systems Division announced it was the recipient of a four-year, $3.1 million U.S. Air Force contract to provide contractor logistics support for the AN/MSN-7 Communication Central System in Oklahoma. The production and integration facility in Huntsville will provide support for the contract.

This story will be updated as more information is available.
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Rob McDaniel of SpringHouse restaurant in Alexander City is one of the partners in the Alabama Oyster Social, a benefit for state oyster farmers that will take place Friday, Jan. 29, 2016, in Auburn. (Photos by Luke Lindgren)

Some of the top chefs from across the South -- including a pair of James Beard Award winners from Birmingham and New Orleans -- will gather in Auburn this Friday, Jan. 29, for the second annual Alabama Oyster Social.

The chefs will serve everything from raw, grilled and fried oysters to oyster stew.

The event takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. at Auburn University's Ag Heritage Park Red Barn and benefits Alabama oyster farmers and their families. Organizers hope to raise $100,000 this year.



"The 2015 event was a resounding success, but this year we aim to further our beneficiary focus and highlight Alabama oyster farmers on a much larger scale," David Bancroft, owner of Acre Restaurant in Auburn and founding partner of the Alabama Oyster Social nonprofit, said in a media release.



"This will definitely be an exciting and fun night featuring lauded Southern chefs and cuisine," added chef Rob McDaniel of SpringHouse in Alexander City. McDaniel is also a partner in the Alabama Oyster Social nonprofit.



Friday's event will feature food and beverage tasting tents, and the chefs will pair up to prepare oysters and other dishes. They include:

---> 2014 James Beard Award co-winner for best chef in the South Ryan Prewitt of Peche in New Orleans and Bryan Rackley of Kimball House in Atlanta preparing raw oysters.



---> Adam Evans of Brezza Cucina in Atlanta and Justin DeVillier of La Petite Grocery in New Orleans preparing grilled oysters.



---> LisaMarie White and Kelly Fields of Willa Jean in New Orleans preparing fried oysters.



---> Michael Gulotta of MoPho in New Orleans and Derek Emerson of Walker's Drive-In in Jackson, Miss., preparing beef short rib and oyster tartar.



---> Vishwesh Bhatt of Snackbar in Oxford, Miss., and Leo Maurelli of the Auburn Hotel in Auburn preparing fried chicken.



---> Bill Briand of Fisher's at Orange Beach Marina in Orange Beach and George McMillan III of FoodBar in Birmingham preparing oyster stew.



Also, the VIP area will feature:



---> A meet-and-greet social with Chris Hastings, the 2012 James Beard Award winner for best chef in the South and co-owner of Hot and Hot Fish Club and OvenBird restaurants in Birmingham.



---> A special VIP spread prepared by chefs Ban Stewart of SpringHouse in Alexander City and Caleb Fischer of Acre in Auburn.



---> A champagne bar by Grassroots Wholesale.



North Carolina country musician Caleb Caudle will perform throughout the evening, and guests may also enjoy beer, wine and specialty cocktails from Back Forty Beer, Sazerac Bourbon, International Wine, Pinnacle Imports and Cathead Vodka.



"Thanks to our main and supporting sponsors, the upcoming Alabama Oyster Social is almost a cost-free event for organizers," Acre's Bancroft said. "As a result, all proceeds will go to the men and women of Alabama's oyster farming industry who are in need of assistance during the coming months."



Tickets for the Alabama Oyster Social are at $55 for the tasting tents and $150 for the VIP tent. To purchase tickets, go to BrownPaperTickets.com.



For more information about Friday's event, go to AlabamaOysterSocial.com.
Dave Matthews Band will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a summer tour that includes a May 24 show at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham.

Tickets for the 7 p.m. show, the jam band's only stop in Alabama, go on sale Feb. 19 via Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Prices are $65 and $85, plus service charges. There's a six-ticket limit per purchase until Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. Afterward, the limit increases to 10 tickets per purchase.

A presale starts on Jan. 26 at 9 a.m. CST through The Warehouse, for members of the Dave Matthews Band Fan Association.

The tour starts May 11 and runs through Sept. 4, stopping in 37 cities. Here's the full schedule announced today by Matthews' publicist:

May 11, Wichita, Kan., INTRUST Bank Arena.

May 13, The Woodlands, Texas, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.

May 14, Dallas, Gexa Energy Pavilion.

May 17, Oklahoma City, Okla., Chesapeake Energy Arena.

May 18, North Little Rock, Ark., Verizon Arena.

May 20, Cincinnati, Riverbend Music Center.

May 21, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Blossom Music Center.

May 24, Pelham, Ala., Oak Mountain Amphitheatre.

May 27, Charlotte, N.C., PNC Music Pavilion.

May 28, Atlanta, Lakewood Amphitheatre.

May 29, Maryland Heights, Mo., Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre.

June 7, Holmdel, N.J., PNC Bank Arts Center.

June 8, Bangor, Me., Darling's Waterfront Pavilion.

June 10, Mansfield, Mass., Xfinity Center.

June 11, Hartford, Conn., XFINITY Theatre.

June 17, Virginia Beach, Va., Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater.

June 18, Bristow, Va., Jiffy Lube Live.

June 21, Wantagh, N.Y., Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.

June 22, Syracuse, N.Y., Lakeview Amphitheater.

June 24-25, Camden, N.J., BB&T Pavilion.

June 28, Moline, Ill., iWireless Center.

June 29, Bonner Springs, Kan., Cricket Wireless Amphitheater.

July 1-2, Elkhorn, Wisc., Alpine Valley Music Theatre.

July 8, Columbus, Ohio, Nationwide Arena.

July 9, Burgettstown, Pa., First Niagara Pavilion.

July 12-13, Gilford, N.H., Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion.

July 15-16, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

July 19, Toronto, Ontario, Molson Canadian Amphitheatre.

July 20, Clarkston, Mich., DTE Energy Music Theatre.

July 22-23, Noblesville, Ind., Klipsch Music Center.

July 26, North Charleston, S.C., North Charleston Coliseum.

July 27, Tampa, Fla., MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre.

July 29-30, West Palm Beach, Fla., Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre.

Aug. 26, Chula Vista, Calif., Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

Aug. 27, Irvine, Calif, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Aug. 29-30, Berkeley, Calif., Greek Theatre.

Sept. 2-4, George, Wash, The Gorge.

Dave Matthews Band, a jam band from Charlottesville, Va., made its last appearance at Oak Mountain in May 2014. The band has a long history in Alabama, playing in cities that have included Tuscaloosa and Orange Beach.
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Art Franklin will anchor the morning news at CBS 42/WIAT-TV in Birmingham, Ala., beginning Feb. 8, 2016. (Photo courtesy of CBS 42/WIAT-TV)

Former Birmingham newscaster Art Franklin is returning to the Magic City, joining CBS 42/WIAT-TV, the station announced today.

Franklin will anchor the CBS 42 Morning News, and his first day on the air will be Monday, Feb. 8.

Franklin previously spent 12 years anchoring the evening and late-night news at Birmingham's Fox 6/WBRC-TV before leaving the station in 2003.

He subsequently worked at Atlanta stations Fox 5/WAGA-TV and NBC 11/WXIA-TV, and most recently, he worked in public relations, according to a media release from CBS 42.

"Art's return to the Magic City has energized his loyal viewers and is truly a game changer for the market," Erik Schrader, president and general manager of CBS 42/WIAT-TV, said in today's release.

"We are thrilled to have such a well-respected journalist leading our charge in the mornings and continuing WIAT CBS 42's commitment to delivering coverage you can count on to communities around Central Alabama."

This post will be updated.
A search is continuing in Cleburne County for a Carrollton, Ga. man missing for more than a week.

Lamar Allen Putnam, 79, was last seen by friends around noon Jan. 16 in Carrollton. His black 2003 Chevrolet Trailblazer was recovered off U.S. 431 near a bridge at Hollis Crossroads last Saturday.

Carrollton Police Capt. Shannon Cantrell said Monday that Alabama Marine Police are patrolling the Tallapoosa River where the vehicle was found. When Putnam went missing, investigators tracked his cellphone to the area, where they found his vehicle parked underneath the bridge. In addition, Cantrell said, Cleburne County officials are regularly patrolling the area around U.S. 431.

Canvassing the area turned up surveillance footage at a service station near Roanoke that showed Putnam. Family members say Putnam may be suffering from dementia and that he needed regular medication, which he has not received. However, Cantrell said Putnam appears confused on video.

"He was talking to the clerk, but he was on that property for about two hours that day," Cantrell said. "He was outside the car, and in the store, and he appears disoriented, like he doesn't know where he's at."

Putnam is described as balding with brown hair. Investigators originally had a different description of Putnam's clothing. Based on surveillance footage from that day, Putnam was apparently wearing a brown plaid long-sleeved shirt, jeans, brown Merrill shoes and a camouflage hat. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 172 pounds. He told a friend before leaving Georgia that he was going into Alabama to look at a herd of cows.

Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the Carrollton, Ga. police at

(770) 834-4451.
Four people, including two children, who died in an Adamsville house fire over the weekend have now been officially identified, and the community where they lived and died is rallying to help surviving family members.

The Jefferson County Coroner's Office today identified the victims as Pearlie Mae Jones, 70, Kenny Lendale Hines, 20, Coren Tonyea Walter, 6, and Robert Quadariss Armstrong, 4.

Fire swept through the home on Veterans Memorial Drive Saturday morning. Firefighters arrived on the scene at 9:44 a.m., and the house was engulfed in flames. Adamsville Fire Chief Scott Harbison said the fire was under control in 20 minutes.

There were eight people inside the home when the fire broke out. A 1-year-old was taken to Children's of Alabama. Three others escaped the house unharmed.

The fire is believed to have started in the dining room, but the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Adamsville Fire Chief Scott Harbison couldn't say if the fire started because of a space heater, or if the house had working smoke detectors.

The bodies of the children - Coren and Robert - were found in the living room. They were pronounced dead at 9:53 a.m. Jones and Hines were found in a bedroom on the opposite end of the house from the living room. They were pronounced dead at 10 a.m.

Ateisha Bell lost her son, Hines, her aunt, nephew and niece in the blaze. "I don't understand," Bell said at the scene of the fire Saturday. "That is my first son. That is my child. I don't wish this on nobody. It hurts."

Adamsville Mayor Pam Palmer said support is pouring in to help the family with burial expenses. "We just got a huge donation and we all cried,'' Palmer said. "All together we've gotten $5,000. That's the benefit of living in a small town - these people are coming together."

At least three churches have made donations - Ensley Church of Christ, St. Patrick's Catholic Church and Midway United Methodist Church - as well as many businesses and individuals. One woman, the mayor said, drove from Blount County to donate $30. Someone else on Monday morning donated a casket. "God is good,'' Palmer said.
A 27-year-old woman avoided a trial, and potential death sentence, last week when she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in the 2014 slaying of a Birmingham business owner.

Bianca Holman, of Birmingham, had been set to go on trial March 21 in the shooting death and robbery of Cha Ya Anders, 63, of Pinson.

But Holman pleaded guilty last week to felony murder, with a 25-year sentence, according to her attorney, Emory Anthony. The sentence also covers her plea to a separate robbery that had occurred before Anders' death, he said.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd sentenced Holman.

Anthony said considering Holman had faced the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of capital murder, the plea was in Holman's "best interest."

Anders' body was found inside Ebony Beauty Supply in the 2900 block of 27th Street North around 10:30 a.m. April 5, 2014. Police believe Anders, who was found with a gunshot wound, may have been killed during a robbery of an undetermined amount of money the night of April 4, 2014.

Detectives also connected Holman to the armed robbery of Jack's Food Store earlier on April 4, 2014. Witnesses identified Holman as the person who robbed that store, taking $500 and two candy bars, according to police and court documents. Witnesses also said someone matching her description was at the scene of the homicide.

The plea offer from the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office came after Todd in December granted a motion by Anthony to suppress Holman's confession. Prosecutors had argued she had not clearly invoked her right to remain silent, but Anthony had argued she had.
Al Jazeera gains exclusive access to the Afghan forces battlefront with ISIL in Nangahar province.

Achin, Afghanistan  Going to Afghanistans Nangahar province was a bit worrying, simply because the province is known to have fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

ISIL claims part of the province, calling it Wilayat Khorasan.

The armed group has already carried out attacks, including a suicide bombing against the Pakistan consulate in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, about two weeks ago.

Nevertheless we headed there, because this is an important story.





We arranged to be embedded with the Afghan army fighting ISIL. We came across some of the military intelligence officers.

An estimated 4,000 ISIL fighters are based in the province. They came with their families and established a foothold in rural areas on the border with Pakistan.

There is no way that they came with all the weapons and logistics without foreign help, one officer told us.

Another officer said ISIL is mainly made up of foreigners: Chechens, Uzbeks, Pakistanis, Afghans and Arabs.

They are rich. They have a lot of moneyISIL here has links to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [ISILs leader]. The connection is through Arab sheikhs in the Gulf, the officer claimed.

READ MORE: ISIL hits Afghan airwaves to drum up support

At the front, the last military post is well protected with sand and HESCO bags. The fighters inside are local villagers who joined the police to confront ISIL.

Clashes broke out and we took cover. The commander at the post told off his colleagues who were firing back at ISIL positions: Dont waste your bulletswe dont have enough.

There were tense and chaotic moments.

We saw ISILs flag and positions. I asked why the army doesnt go and clear the area.

Once we go they retreatand once we pull out they come back, one of the army officers said.

We had filmed enough and we were told to hurry up.

The battalion commander in the area has had a hardened military career. You could tell from the scar on his neck. I asked where he got it from.

Helmand. Fighting the Taliban. I got hit with shrapnel, he said. As he started counting the wounds on his body, I lost track of his moving finger. It was nearly all over his body.

ISIL will be defeated by the end of March, he said confidently.

I pointed out to him that ISIL carried out suicide attacks just weeks ago in Jalalabad.

Well, attacks happen everywhere in the world, even in Paris, the officer responded. We and the Afghan people wont allow ISIL a foothold here. We will fight them to the last drop of our blood.

WATCH: ISIL and the Taliban

As we were heading back we made a quick stop at a marketplace. People there were clearly worried and dont believe the governments claim that its forces are making gains against ISIL.

The government only controls the main roads and checkpoints, one person said. ISIL controls the rest. They are carrying out all of their activities, including executions.

ISIL is a new battlefront for the Afghan army and government. They are already struggling to contain a relentless Taliban insurgency.

There is some good news for the Afghan government and army: ISIL and the Taliban are also fighting each other.

But the question must be asked, can the government and army defeat ISIL and the Taliban?
Talks bringing together delegates from Syrias government and opposition will attempt to find solution to ongoing war.

Much is resting on the so-called Geneva II peace conference on Syria to end the conflict in the country.

The UN-backed talks, scheduled to begin on January 22 in Switzerland, are set to bring together representatives from both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Western-backed political opposition for the first time since the conflict began almost three years ago.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the landmark conference would be a mission of hope, adding that it was unforgivable not to seize this opportunity to end a war that has left more than 130,000 people dead and millions more displaced.

Origins

Following a year of deadly battles between forces loyal to Assad and opposition fighters, Moscow, which backs the regime, and Washington, which supports the opposition, agreed that there can only be a political solution.

In June 2012, officials from the US and Russia, along with other major powers, met in Geneva and agreed on a road map, known as the Geneva Communique, for Syrias political transition.

The document envisioned the establishment of a transitional governing body  agreed upon by both sides  in Syria with full executive powers that would oversee elections and put the country on the path to democracy.

Since then, several attempts to bring together the two sides have failed, mainly because of disputes over who should represent the Syrian opposition and government in the talks and over Assads future role in the country.

In November 2013, Ban announced a new date for talks: January 22. He called the Geneva II conference a vehicle for a peaceful transition that would fulfil Syrians aspirations for freedom and dignity.

The goal of Geneva II would be to achieve an agreement between the government and the opposition for the full implementation of the Geneva Communique.

Where the Syrian government stands

The Syrian government confirmed that it would attend peace talks  but made it clear that it did not accept the oppositions demand that Assad steps down. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said that those who supported Assads removal from power should wake up from their dreams.

The government also wants the fight against terrorism to be set as a priority in the upcoming talks.

Ending support for the armed terrorist groups in Syria is crucial for any political solution to the crisis in Syria to succeed, the Foreign Ministry said in a letter sent to Ban. Officials often label all armed opposition groups as terrorists.

The opposition

Syrias main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Coalition, voted on January 18 to attend the conference, following days of procedural disputes among its members.

Initially, the internationally recognised Coalition said it would only attend the talks if a number of conditions were met, including the release of political prisoners  particularly women  and allowing relief access to besieged areas. The bloc also said that it would not take part in the talks unless Assad vowed to stay out of the envisioned transitional government.

A week before the talks were set to begin, the Syrian government appeared to have made an effort to show goodwill by announcing that it was willing to swap prisoners with the rebels and was ready to take a series of humanitarian steps to improve the delivery of aid.

However, several politicians in the Coalition who reject the Geneva talks say they are doing so to reflect the wishes of fighters on the ground.

The commander of the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebels, Hassan Abboud, has told Al Jazeera his group would not be bound by the outcome of the Geneva talks. We see Geneva as a tool of manipulation, he said.

The leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, also told Al Jazeera his group would reject the outcomes of the conference. Those taking part in the conference do not represent the people who sacrificed and shed blood We cannot allow the Geneva II game to fool the nation, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani said.

Zahran Alloush, the head of the Military Committee of the the powerful coalition known as the Islamic Front, tweeted that he would ask the groups leadership to endorse putting the participants of both parties in Geneva II on a wanted list.

Whos going?

The Syrian governments delegation will be headed by Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem. Media reports suggest that Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Moqdad, presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban and Syrias UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari will also be part of the delegation.

Countries invited to attend the Geneva II talks: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

The oppositions delegation would be headed by Ahmad Jarba, the president of the Syrian National Coalition. Coalition member Ahmad Ramadan said the 15-member delegation will include two representatives of the countrys ethnic Kurdish minority, two for rebels and two for opposition groups based in Syria.

A senior Coalition member told Al Jazeera that the delegations would be made up of eight members in total, five of which would be Coalition members and three others coming from other opposition blocs.

Delegations from 30 countries are expected to participate in the conference. They were invited by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

It remains undecided whether Iran, a staunch ally of Assads regime, would be among the attendees. The US says Tehran should not be invited because of its failure to sign the Geneva Communique. Russia would like to see Iran in the conference. Tehran said it would only attend if given an unconditional invitation.

Prospects of success

Leaders of major world powers say that Geneva II remains the best opportunity to pull Syria out of the cycle of bloodshed.

But the possibility of achieving any agreement is questionable, amid the fundamental disagreement over Assads future role. The opposition wants Assad to step down. Regime officials maintain that Assad should lead any political transition  and have also alluded to the possibility of him running for president in the countrys April 2014 elections.

Moreover, given that the commanders of the major rebel groups made it clear that they were not bound by the outcomes of the conference, any ceasefire agreement is unlikely to be reflected in reality.

Diplomats from major powers, nonetheless, insist that there is no alternative.

There is a binary choice here, Hugh Robertson, the British minister of state for foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera. You either put pressure on them and try to have a peace agreement in Geneva. Or you do not bother and the fighting continues

If Geneva fails, we stop, we understand why, we regroup and we try again.
The bill is expected to pass as opponents say the seizure of money and valuables is not the most alarming part of it.

A train from Germany will soon arrive, so Rooni Abdel Razak and his colleague Rim Walid leave the safe zone, a temporary room set up inside Copenhagen Central Station, and start walking towards platform 6.

Ever since Denmark started patrolling its borders in early January, fewer refugees have been able to enter the country, but the volunteers at the Central Station in Copenhagen still wait every time a train from either Germany or Sweden arrives, just in case there is a refugee in need of their help on board.

After five months you learn how to spot the refugees. Most look confused and frightened. Some do not trust us, because they have been betrayed by people during their entire journey, says 22-year-old Abdel Razak as he approaches the tracks.

As the train arrives, Abdel Razak and Walid focus on the faces behind the glass. The doors open and people disembark onto the platform. The two split up so that they can walk from door to door and scan the crowd.

Better luck next time, says Abdel Razak as they return to the middle of the platform without spotting anyone in need.

He has been working as a volunteer almost every day for the past five months  listening to peoples stories, assisting them wherever possible and providing answers to their questions about how the forthcoming new Danish asylum rules may affect them.

For the past few weeks, Denmark has faced international scrutiny after the government proposed stricter immigration laws  with some drawing comparisons between the proposals and Nazi practices during World War II.

Of particular interest has been a bill that would allow Danish authorities to seize asylum seekers cash exceeding 10,000 kroner ($1,450), as well as any single item valued at more than 10,000 kroner.

READ MORE: Denmark and Sweden tighten border controls

The government has clarified that valuables with a sentimental value  such as wedding and engagement rings, as well as watches and mobile phones  will not be taken.

Family reunification

But, while many have focused on this, critics suggest that it is another part of the proposal  which is expected to pass a vote in the Danish Parliament on January 26  that is most alarming.

The new law will mean that refugees will have to wait three years after being granted asylum before they can apply to be reunited with their family. The current law permits them to do this after one year.

The right of refugees to be reunited with their family is protected by numerous international conventions ratified by Denmark. We believe the government is overstepping international law by implementing this bill, says Jonas Christoffersen, the director of the the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which says it will help refugees and institutions who wish to file a case against the state because of this law.

Despite criticism of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the bill is expected to be passed with a large majority. Even the opposition Social Democrats have said they will vote in favour.

We want less people to seek asylum in Denmark. We do not find all the changes in the law perfect, but we believe it is what the country needs, says Mattias Tesfaye, the Social Democrats spokesperson on naturalisation.

However, the Social Democrats support for the bill will not be unanimous. Three members have made it clear that they plan to vote against it.

I cannot vote in favour of a law that will destroy the close relations between parents and their children for three years, said Daniel Toft Jakobsen, a Social Democrat who intends to vote no.

I am afraid this will have fatal consequences for those affected. To lay awake in the night worrying about your loved ones who might be in an unsafe place will obviously impact the integration process negatively.

Do not apply here

Najib Allah, 24, stands in front of the safe zone with a blanket over his shoulders. He has just arrived at Copenhagens Central Station after a long and dangerous journey from Afghanistan, via Iran and Turkey, Eastern Europe and Germany.

The safe zone has been decorated with sofas, carpets and paintings that depict classical Danish landscapes. The overall effect is cosy and welcoming, although there are sometimes more volunteers than refugees inside. The volunteers, most of whom are bilingual, greet each other warmly.

Najib came alone. His phone and most of his money was stolen in Bulgaria. He threw the rest of his belongings away because they were too heavy to carry. Now he only has the clothes he stands in.

Najibs journey has been difficult.

To the smugglers we are pure business, he says. They promise and promise to help us, but those who actually need help are not getting it.

He is unsure whether he wants to stay in Denmark or try to take a train to Sweden, but he is happy for now.

It is not unusual for refugees to arrive without any or with only a few belongings. It is for this reason that Gunnar Homann, a Danish lawyer who specialises in Danish immigration law, finds it unlikely that the new law concerning the seizure of valuables will be effective.

It is often a coincidence where they end up, and even if a refugee brings valuables that could be confiscated, he could easily divide these with another refugee, Homann explains.

It is a symbolic rule, meant to say: do not apply here, he continues.

READ MORE: Swedish PM: Tear gas, attacks  that is not my Europe

Over the past few months, Denmark has cut benefits for refugees in an effort to deter them from coming.

It is like a competition between countries to make it harder and harder to come to their country. Now that Sweden has closed its borders, Denmark had to take a step further, says Christoffersen of the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

A burden rather than a resource

The countrys unwillingness to take in refugees can be traced back to the mid-19th century, says Ulf Hedetoft, a professor of International Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

A number of lost wars and German occupation during World War II induced a sentiment of what we lost on the outside, we will win on the inside, says Hedetoft.

He believes Denmark has become economically, socially and politically homogenous, with self-sufficiency promoted while the outside world is viewed with suspicion and even anxiety. Within this model, refugees are considered a potential threat to civic society and cultural solidarity, he says.

In the past, immigrants have mainly been seen as a burden rather than a resource, he explains.

It is a sentiment that has re-emerged with Denmarks right-wing government. Now, immigrants are once again seen to represent a major threat to Denmarks cultural cohesion and economic prosperity, and clamours to close our borders and make refugees choose other destinations are growing day by day, Hedetoft says.

The current Danish border controls have given Abdel Razak and the other volunteers less work at the station as fewer refugees arrive. He walks outside to smoke a cigarette before the next train is due. In his phone he has pictures of people he has met over the past five months.

People sometimes come back to the safe zone to thank us for the help they have received, he says.

The safe zone will most likely remain open until the end of January. No matter what, Abdel Razak and the other volunteers are committed to continuing to help those who disembark there.
Le Van Nam still sees the soldiers who died while fighting alongside him in the 1960s.

Most nights he lies awake in bed, gripped by visions of his fallen comrades beckoning him to join them in heaven. He cries out, trembling with fear, until his wife wakes him and calms him down.

Nam, who fought for the North Vietnamese army, was partially paralysed after a mortar pierced his skull during a 1969 battle. The 76-year-old now has no function in his left arm or leg. And about once a month, he has a panic attack that requires hospitalisation in the mental ward of a local hospital. His doctors typically give him an anticonvulsant sedative that helps break his mood.

The 4.5 million Vietnamese dong, or $211, that Nam receives every month in government disability payments covers about 70 percent of his treatment and hospitalisation costs, according to his son Bach.

His four children pitch in the rest. Were lucky that we have the money, says 33-year-old Bach, who is an accountant in Hanoi. But Nams treatment is entirely drug-based, and he receives no therapy or counselling.

Lack of understanding

There are at least 2.6 million war veterans in Vietnam, but mental health experts say it is impossible to know how many of them suffer from mental disorders because the country lacks comprehensive epidemiological data on mental illnesses.

But if the general population is any guide, the experts say, many veterans likely suffer from undiagnosed mood disorders that do not qualify as severe psychiatric problems. And the veterans, like millions of other civilians, would benefit from holistic treatment programmes that include therapy, counselling and community-based outreach.

Le Hong Loan, a mental health expert at UNICEFs Hanoi office, says the absence of holistic mental health treatment in Vietnam is rooted in a lack of understanding on the part of doctors, health officials and the general public. If you dont know about depression and anxiety disorders  if you dont see them as mental health  then you dont have a system to respond, she says. Mental healthcare is not yet a priority.

It is difficult to quantify Vietnams mental health burden.

The last official survey, completed in 2003 by the National Psychiatric Hospital, estimated that 12 million people, or 14.9 percent of Vietnams population, suffered from 10 common mental disorders  about the same rate as in other low- and middle-income countries, according to Professor Harry Minas of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health in Australia.

But the survey omitted thousands of other disorders, and the results are now a decade old. That is a long time, researchers say, in a country in which economic growth and rural-to-urban migration have profound impacts on social customs and living standards.

Vietnams mental health infrastructure

The government has taken some steps in recent years to explore more holistic treatment programmes and to broaden the scope of mental disorders that are addressed.

For example, a national health programme includes a community-based scheme. The ministry of health has permitted a US nonprofit-making organisation, Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), to establish community-based mental health treatment programmes in two Vietnamese provinces. And in 2011, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung launched a nine-year mental health project worth $400m aimed partly at integrating drug treatment with counselling, psychiatric counselling and other social services.

However, Vietnams mental health infrastructure is plagued by problems. One is a lack of adequate funding, especially for preventive care.

The government spent just over $3m in 2012 on mental health, but most of that was devoted to treatment of existing illnesses, Duong Quang Trung, the director of the Community Health and Development Institute, told the state-controlled newspaper Thanh Nien. And although social programmes are meant to help the poor and most vulnerable to afford treatment, many fall through the cracks.

For example, most mentally ill war veterans are entitled to some degree of free medical treatment, but some of them cannot afford to travel to hospitals or pay the extra charges linked to hospitalisation, according to Vietnamese health blogs and reports in the state-controlled news media.

Even if the government is serious about mental health reform, the current system is not designed to accommodate a comprehensive approach. There is no mental health law or comprehensive mental health strategy in Vietnam, says Dr Nguyen Mai Hien, the director of the mental health programme at VVAF.

Suffering in silence

Most mental healthcare services are administered either by the ministry of health or the ministry of labour, invalids and social affairs, she adds, and there is limited collaboration between them. The first ministry mainly provides care through 34 psychiatric hospitals, while the latter focuses on 17 social protection centres and a nationwide stipend programme for the poor or severely disabled who suffer from mental illnesses.

According to VVAF, Vietnams mental health programme focuses mainly on schizophrenia and epilepsy.

Researchers say one of the biggest obstacles to reform is a conspicuous lack of human resources. A 2006 World Health Organisation study found that there were just 50 trained psychologists and four occupational therapists in all of Vietnam.

There were 286 psychiatrists, but none of them worked outside mental hospitals. In 2009, another study found that Vietnams proportion of psychiatrists ranked below both Thailands and Chinas. The largest future challenge for the Vietnamese mental healthcare field is to attract mental health workers, a team of international researchers wrote in a 2011 paper for the Journal of Asian Psychiatry.

Doctors and health analysts say the main deterrent for young doctors is low salaries. Vietnams official news agency reported in October 2013 that mental health doctors earn just $140 to $190 a month  about the same as the average national wage across all sectors.

A national decree that took effect in September 2013 includes incentives for students to pursue degrees in mental health. In the meantime, many Vietnamese with mental illnesses continue to suffer in silence.

War veterans are no exception. The government is typically eager to publicise the lasting health effects of dioxin, the chemical in the wartime defoliant Agent Orange that US planes sprayed across a large swath of central and south Vietnam during the war. But veterans quiet struggles with depression, anxiety and other mood disorders receive far less attention in the state-controlled press.

In October 2013, thousands of Vietnamese flooded the streets of the capital to pay their respects to General Vo Nguyen Giap, a military mastermind who played a key role in defeating both the French and American armies. Vietnams leaders used the occasion as a way to promote nationalism at a time when many blame the ruling Communist Party for corruption and economic mismanagement. Convoys of military trucks rolled through downtown, and state television showed documentaries glorifying Vietnams wartime victories.



Veteran Le Van Nam, however, said a few days after the parade that the military propaganda no longer interests him much.

In his modest, concrete home about 50km from Hanoi, the only framed pictures are of Nams grandchildren. They are the happiest thing in my life, he said.

He has hidden his war medals because thinking about the war only upsets him, and he is disappointed that the government does not provide more support for his ongoing mental health expenses. He recently went to the ministry of labour, invalids and social affairs to complain, he added. But he does not expect anything to come of it.

This article first appeared in the November 2013 issue of the Al Jazeera Magazine.
The 2011 revolution in Egypt started with marches, demonstrations and civil resistance on January 25.

Protesters were inspired by the successful uprising in Tunisia, where demonstrators succeeded in bringing down the government.

People came on to the streets demanding the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. They complained of poverty, unemployment, corruption and autocratic governance of the president who had ruled the country for 30 years.

Demonstrators included Islamic, liberal, anti-capitalist, nationalist and feminist elements.

WATCH: Egypt burning  the defining moments of the revolution

Violent clashes between security forces and protesters resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people and thousands more were injured.

After 18 days of protest, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced on February 11 that Mubarak would resign as president, handing over power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The announcement sparked jubilation on the streets and sent a warning to autocrats across the Arab world and beyond.
For change to happen, the lessons of the past five years should be kept in mind for the future rounds.

Omar Ashour is Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in University of Exeter.

These kids [protesters] should be arrested in a matter of 24 hours. And we can get them by getting their mothers, their sisters, and their wives. Whoever tells me human rights, I will hit with my shoes  my words are clear. We should get their mothers, their fathers and their wives said the head of the human rights committee in the newly elected Egyptian parliament, the former judge Mortada Mansour. This was a few weeks ago.

His words were already policies.

Five years ago, the brutality of the security services sparked a challenge to the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak: an uprising whose slogans were bread, freedom, dignity, and justice.

Todays political facts of life in Egypt could not be further removed from these slogans: well over 40,000 political prisoners, more than 1,250 forced disappearance in 2015 alone, hundreds of alleged extrajudicial killings (mainly in Sinai), and multiple mass killings of protesters in the aftermath the July 2013s brutal coup.

So, what went wrong?

Enters the SCAF

Perhaps Egypts unbalanced civil-military relations come at the top of the wrongs list. In the words of Carnegie scholar Yezid Sayigh, Egypts second republic can only be established after the officers republic is completely extricated and dismantled.

Between February 2011 and July 2013, this has not only failed to materialise, but has ended up reinforcing the military establishments economic and political dominance.

Religion and identity politics have unnecessarily fuelled the political polarisation between an Islamist majority that kept on winning elections held between March 2011 and December 2012, and a non-Islamist minority. by

The January 2011 uprising led to a military coup against Mubaraks dictatorship and a takeover by an unconstitutional military entity: the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF. Since then, the junta became the most powerful political and economic actor in the country, even compared with the presidential institution, the general intelligence apparatus, the state security apparatus, Mubaraks crony businessmen and all the political parties and groups put together.

Mubarak and the SCAF had similar views on democracy in Egypt. But the uprising and the resulting removal of the former by the latter created unprecedented freedoms as well as free and fair elections.

The main strategic blunder of the pro-change forces  whether reformists or revolutionaries  was failing to protect these achievements and then advancing further to balance civil-military relations.

The failure of the political forces to agree on a non-violent conflict-resolution mechanism has led to extreme political polarisation between pro-change and pro-status-quo forces.

This has resulted in an increased reliance on the wealthy and powerful armed institutions as an arbiter and a saviour. Therefore, in public, political figures would make calls to reform the security sector, to implement democratic control over the armed forces , and to end police and military brutality.

Yet in private (and sometimes publicly), the very same political figures would praise security forces whenever they cracked down on their political rivals or dissolved democratic institutions which did not benefit these figures.

Fragile democratic institutions

This brings us to the short-lived democratic institutions between 2011 and 2013. The political forces did not prioritise the empowerment of these institutions.

On the one end, the losers in the electoral rounds rushed to undemocratic alternatives to be in power, including appointments by the military, and various versions of spoiler tactics.

ALSO READ: My Arab Spring and Egypts silent protest

The winners failed miserably to translate the revolutionary street demands of eradicating torture, ending impunity, transparency and social justice, into policies and legislative procedures. This was mainly due to limited knowledge of running the state apparatus, a lack of creativity and experience, and ideological polarisation based on the use and abuse of religion in politics.

Religion and politics

Religion and identity politics have unnecessarily fuelled the political polarisation between an Islamist majority that kept on winning elections held between March 2011 and December 2012, and a non-Islamist minority that had the prospect of winning elections in the near future, had democratisation continued.

The rift in the 2012 constitutional assembly was the highlight of that polarisation. Article 219  a brainchild of the Salafi members of the parliament who mainly come from the Nour Party  stated that the principles of Islamic law include its comprehensive evidence, its jurisprudential and fundamental bases, and its recognised sources in Sunni sects.

ALSO READ: Another Arab Spring is coming to Egypt

For most of Egypts seculars, this language was both incomprehensible and quite scary. Article 44 prohibited insults or implied insults of prophets and messengers of God. For many Egyptian seculars, this was a direct restriction on freedom of speech.

Moreover, many Islamists and religious institutions cheered such wordings as victories. Indeed, it was an outrage for the liberals.

Regional roles

The impact of regional and international sponsors on that period of democratisation was critical. The support for democratisation in Egypt (especially democratic control over the armed forces) by Western democracies paled in comparison to the support of some autocracies for reviving dictatorships.

Several regional Arab actors did not perceive any meaningful democratisation process as beneficial to their interests. Rather, they viewed these prospects as threats to their regimes security and stability.

As a result, all of the status-quo forces in the Arab-majority uprising countries had wealthy and aggressive regional backers. Western democracies and regional pro-democracy states were hesitant to commit to, or to assist in, a time-consuming, resource-draining, no-holds-barred conflict.

This does not mean that it is the end of democracy in Egypt. In a country of more than 90 million where more than 70 percent of the population are under the age of 35, change is more likely than continuity of corruption and repression.

But for change to happen, the aforementioned lessons should be kept in mind for the future rounds.

Omar Ashour is Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
This time around Ethiopia is competing with war-torn Syria and Yemen for international funds.

James Jeffrey is a freelance journalist formerly based in Addis Ababa. He continues to write about Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and further afield for various international media. Follow him at his website: www.jamesjeffreyjournalism.com.

Ethiopias Tigray and Afar regions to the north have once again been hit by a drought that is estimated to be the worst in 50 years  more terrible than that of 1984, which contributed to the famine that killed more than one million Ethiopians.

The alarm has now been sounded  after an avoidable delay, according to some  with the United Nations and Save the Children swinging into action to raise funds for Ethiopia. This time the argument for funds isnt just to save lives but to ensure that Ethiopias current developmental momentum  and its best chance of being able to handle such droughts  remains on track.

But how could this be happening again  little more than 30 years after a global humanitarian appeal that raised many millions of dollars and saw foreign NGOs rush in to establish famine relief efforts and a host of infrastructure projects designed to prevent such a disaster recurring?





Such incredulity, already voiced in some media, is understandable: although the response from the Ethiopian government has been seen as partially successful, imminent crisis, exacerbated by the reaction  or lack thereof  from the international community, remains a distinct possibility.

Donor fatigue

Herein lies Ethiopias greatest challenge: donor fatigue, especially after 2015 proved to be such a tumultuous, humanitarian-crisis-riddled year.

The harsh economic truth this time is that Ethiopia is competing for international funds against the likes of war-torn Syria and Yemen, and a migrant crisis. In addition, the cogs of the bureaucratic donor system are not renowned for turning quickly.

READ MORE: Ethiopia drought as bad for children as Syrias war

Initially, Ethiopia tried what many in the West complain that developing countries dont do enough of: tackling the situation itself, employing a sophisticated food security network developed over the decades since awful images of the 1984 famine came to stigmatise Ethiopia.

Ethiopia tried what many in the West complain that developing countries don't do enough of: tackling the situation itself... by

The Productive Safety Net Programme is a welfare-for-work initiative enabling six million people to work on public infrastructure projects in return for food or cash.

Furthermore, there is a national food reserve and early warning systems throughout the woredas  the local administrative organisations.

Ethiopias efforts went as far as the early opening of a railway line  the countrys only one  between Djibouti and Addis Ababa, to transport food aid. It also committed an unprecedented $192m to help to prevent deaths from starvation. The countrys ability and its means of providing emergency relief have changed beyond recognition since 1984.

But these efforts hit a snag: between June and October in 2015 the estimated numbers of those affected by the drought doubled to around 8.2 million.

Predicting the severity of the droughts severity was beyond Ethiopias ability with the ocean-warming El Nino causing unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere. Neighbouring Somalia has about three million people hit by crop failures and food shortages.

So, finally, Ethiopias government has asked for help. But some within NGOs say that the government delayed unnecessarily while going it alone to maintain the narrative of Ethiopias great economic renaissance, achieving about 10 percent annual growth over the past decade.

Great economic renaissance

That rate has elevated Ethiopia to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, radically improving the governments cashflow to mitigate such a crisis.

But plenty is already committed to such projects as building of the $5bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africas biggest, to generate enough hydro-electricity to guarantee the countrys economic security.

Such growth finds its apogee in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where the skyline changes each month as new towering buildings appear. However, beyond the modernising cities a very different Ethiopia remains, with about 80 percent of Ethiopias population subsisting on rain-dependant agriculture.

In a health clinic outside Adigrat, Tigrays second largest town, 17-year-old Milite sits with her two-year-old child. A special tape measure around her daughters arm reads yellow  moderately malnourished.

As 17-year-old Milite describes not having enough food at her grandmothers home where she has lived since the soldier father of her child deserted them, her daughter starts crying.

READ MORE: Drought takes terrible toll in Ethiopia

Those trying to initiate donor-funded programmes to bolster the Ethiopian governments efforts say that while people are not actually starving, they are close to it. Such concerns are heightened by the chance that El Nino will quash Ethiopias next rainy season.



The UN estimates that such a situation could result in up to 15 million Ethiopians suffering by mid-2016 unless donations increase.

That is the short term. Aid agencies are warning that significant gains made in food security, education and health over recent years are now in jeopardy in some parts of Ethiopia.

The consequences could ripple through generations, said the UNs International Childrens Emergency Fund.

Foreign financial assistance is already arriving and, combined with money committed by the Ethiopian government, totals about $360m to confront the droughts aftermath. But the overall emergency response could cost $1.4bn, according to aid agencies, especially if fears about El Nino and Ethiopias next rainy season come true.

James Jeffrey is a British freelance journalist based in Addis Ababa, where he writes about Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Despite heavy security presence and arrests, demonstrators take to the streets in Egypt to mark 2011 uprising.

Anti-government protesters defied a security crackdown and took to the streets as Egypt marked the fifth anniversary on Monday of the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptians demonstrated against the military-led government in Alexandrias Al-Qaed Ibrahim Square, which was the site of 2011 protests, as well as in Nasr City and Shubra district in the capital, Cairo.

Two Egyptians were shot dead by police in an alleged exchange of gunfire in Cairos October 6 district.

Security forces also used gas bombs to disperse protesters in Cairos eastern al-Matareya district as well as in Kafr Sheikh.

Residents reported that the build-up of security forces, along with recent crackdowns on activists and arbitrary raids on homes, reflected the governments resolve to prevent marking the anniversary with popular demonstrations similar to those in 2011.

WATCH: Egypt burning  the defining moments of the revolution

In a televised speech on Sunday, Egypts leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi argued that his government was continuing the aspirations of the 2011 uprising, in spite of the documented human rights violations under his rule, as well as the worsening economy.

The presidents speech came just a day after Sisi, a soldier-turned-politician who claimed office in 2014 following victory in an election considered to be suspect, praised the countrys police and vowed a firm response to any threat to the countrys stability.

His nod to the police ran against growing complaints by rights activists that forces have returned to Mubarak-era practices such as torture, random arrests and, more recently, forced disappearances.

Police brutality was among the complaints that drove Egyptians to take part in the 2011 uprising.

Sisi alleged that the 2011 uprising had deviated from its course and was forcibly hijacked for personal gains and narrow interests, in a thinly veiled attempt to justify the militarys ousting of Mohamed Morsi, Egypts first democratically elected president.

The Muslim Brotherhood  the organisation that Morsi was a member of and the largest social movement in Egypt  has been banned and was declared a terrorist group in the aftermath of the 2013 coup.

According to Sisi, the June 30 revolution  a reference to the day in 2013 when protests erupted in Cairo against Morsi, culminating in the July 3 coup  corrected the course of the 2011 uprising.

Tale of Egyptian teen held for two years without trial

But with an estimated 40,000 prisoners, including thousands of opposition activists, and a parliament that many say is unable to properly check executive powers, analysts say that Egypt has veered far off the course set by nationwide protests five years ago.

Many say the continued deterioration of the countrys economy, the security crisis particularly in the Sinai Peninsula that many blame for the rising threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, and Sisis policy to crush any dissent have all contributed to a climate far more repressive than the conditions that sparked the 2011 uprising.

While Sisi remains popular among many Egyptians, he no longer enjoys the reverence that once saw his image  complete with a military beret and sunglasses  on everything from posters to womens underwear in the conservative Muslim nation.
In June 2010, Khaled Said, a young Egyptian citizen of Alexandria, was beaten to death by plain-clothes police officers outside a local internet cafe. At the time, the Ministry of Interior said that he died of asphyxiation caused by swallowing a bag of narcotics, but a picture of Saids battered face began circulating online. A Facebook page entitled We Are All Khaled Said attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and has been viewed as a catalyst for the 2011 revolution, as it increased awareness of police brutality under former President Hosni Mubaraks rule. On the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian uprising, Abdel Rahman Mansour, one of two administrators of the page, spoke to Al Jazeera about a key moment in the revolution.

Contrary to the dominant perception, the decisive moment in the Egyptian revolution, in my view, predates January 25, the day mass protests took over Tahrir Square. Khaled Saids murder at the hands of the police left many of us young men and women consumed by anger and frustration in the days that followed. We spent countless hours thinking about ways to channel this anger, and the idea of a Facebook page that sheds light on all cases of police brutality and torture was born out of those discussions.

In June, we set up the page, and in August 2010, we decided to call for silent protests across the country against police torture. We wanted it to be silent so as to not provoke the police and invite them to arrest us. At the time, I was a student of mass communications at Mansoura University.

MY ARAB SPRING: Tunisias revolution was a dream

We were so worried that people might not respond to our calls and that people might not show up in good numbers. To our surprise, there was an overwhelming turnout, and we were encouraged by such a response to call for another silent protest. Thousands of young men and women showed up in Cairo, Mansoura and many other places across the country. This was the first time I realised that there was simmering discontent that was not being expressed politically, and that this discontent was increasing, particularly among the young men and women who were not politicised but were part of a larger rights movement.





At the time, there were other voices of opposition against the Mubarak regime, like the Muslim Brotherhood, Kefaya and the April 6 Youth Movement, but our Facebook page stood out because nobody knew who was behind it.

We chose to remain anonymous so as to not get arrested, which could have caused our nascent protest movement to be aborted prematurely  but also because we did not want to be associated with any political party or movement. So we opted out of the media attention.

These silent protests turned out to be a rehearsal to January 25.

On January 17, 2011, we posted an event on Facebook calling for protests for a revolution against poverty, torture and injustice. We wanted primarily to mobilise people against police torture, and this is why we marked it for January 25, which was National Police Day.

In retrospect, the revolution did not happen in a vacuum; it existed in the peoples collective psyche for a long time. There were manifestations of the revolution in the bread uprising of January 1977, and it was also reflected in the labour strikes, such as in the Mahalla textile factory in 2008, and in 2003, when protesters occupied Tahrir Square to protest against the US invasion of Iraq.

Personally, I have always believed that a revolution was bound to happen in Egypt, regardless of what shape or form it was going to take.

What made the revolution a success and what made it work were those invisible citizens whose names we do not even know. by

I was raised in a politicised family. My parents were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and I was also a member of the movement until 2007, when I decided to leave. I was 18 at the time, and I decided to defect in protest against the movements first political platform. This notion that women and Copts were not, in the Muslim Brotherhood platform, eligible to run for presidential elections was not acceptable by a number of young men in the group, including myself. We met with Mohamed Morsi to discuss the issue, but he insisted that this was the movements political stand, so we decided to defect.

At the beginning, people were asking Why Khaled Said? since he was not the first victim of police torture. The simple answer to this question is that Khaled Said resembled many young men, and they can easily relate to him. Young men felt that what happened to Khaled could happen to them, so we insisted on focusing on Khaled Said. We used to get solidarity letters from many people. One woman sent us an image of her yet-to-be-born baby and said she would call him Khaled Said.

These ordinary people are what I call the invisible actors. Nobody believed that there were at least 200,000 Egyptian young men and women who could join or work with the human rights movement. Nobody knew they existed. Those invisible actors were the result of the political conditions the country experienced.

They were the core of the protest movement, and we managed to embrace them and represent their interests. At the time, of course, we were not conscious of that fact, but in retrospect, what made the revolution a success and what made it work were those invisible citizens whose names we do not even know.

READ MORE: Is another revolution brewing in Egypt?

I think there are radical differences between 2010 and 2015, despite the widespread police brutality and oppression. I think the collective psyche of the Egyptian people is waiting for a moment, an opportunity, because you cannot achieve success twice with the same tools, and I think this is a good sign. The low turnout in the last parliamentary elections is a reflection of peoples understanding of what type of regime they are living under.

The low turnout was a silent protest on the part of the Egyptian people against the regime. When they see that the moment is ripe to defeat the police again, they will take to the streets to do so. January 25 came about because people believed in their ability to achieve victory. This moment is yet to come, and waiting for it is not a mistake. The onus is on the ordinary people who can make meaningful change.

Now, five years after the revolution, I think the solution to Egypts political impasse may not necessarily be radical or revolutionary. Im of the view that, eventually, Egypts political forces will sit at the negotiation table in what I call the negotiations of the defeated, meaning that in 2011, Mubarak was defeated; in 2012, the military establishment was briefly defeated; in 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood was defeated  and current leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, will be defeated at some point.

This will happen sooner or later, when Sisi is viewed as a liability to the state and no longer serves whatever interests he was brought to serve. I do not agree that if Sisi is gone, another Sisi will come from the generals ranks.

So much has been invested in manufacturing an image and an icon out of Sisi, and that is not likely to happen with any future president, even if they come from army ranks. But again, no one at this point can decide when the next phase of the revolution will come about, or what form it will take.
Leading academic says she backs call for an Australian head of state if sovereignty of indigenous people is recognised.

A leading Australian academic and Aboriginal activist has supported a renewed campaign for Australia to become a republic if it recognises the sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens and gives them more political representation.

Professor Jakelin Troy, the director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney, said she absolutely supported the notion of Australia becoming a republic but that any new system of governance should correctly recognise that Aboriginal Australians initially owned the country.

A republic should include more representation in the parliament and a set of rights equivalent to treaty rights enshrined in law so that Aboriginal people dont have to continue fighting, Troy said.





Australia remains a constitutional monarchy and has been subjected to British rule since it was colonised upon the arrival of Britains First Fleet in Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788.

The fleets arrival date is widely celebrated in the country with an annual public holiday called Australia Day, but many Aboriginal people mourn the occasion as Invasion Day.

On Monday, the eve of this years holiday, almost all of the countrys state and federal political leaders released a declaration, organised by the Australian Republican Movement. It called for the country to become a republic, which would replace the United Kingdoms Queen Elizabeth II with an Australian head of state.

The most recent referendum for independence in the country, in 1999, failed.

Not dissimilar to Syria

Troy said there was a need to recognise that Australias Aborigines were the original owners of the country and to acknowledge the 60,000 years of modern human management of this land.

People dont realise that it looks this way because Aboriginal people crafted it this way. Through burning, cropping and harvesting, they crafted this country to a large degree.

READ MORE: Does Australia have a racism problem?

Troy compared what happened to Australian Aborigines since colonisation to the war in Syria, as it was a war of people against their own people, but there is a white history that never acknowledges that there was a civil war in this country.

People were slaughtered, with massacres occurring right up to the middle of the 20th century. Aboriginal people were regarded as vermin and, in some respects, still are, she said.





Including Australias Aboriginal history in the national education curriculum and making a commitment to preserve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages  of which only 13 are now spoken daily from at least 250 known languages  were also important steps in recognising the sovereignty of Aborigines, she said.

Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland.

Troy said she was hopeful that if more Aborigines were given the opportunity to enter politics, there could even be a prospect of Australia one day having an Aboriginal head of state.

There are signs that Australia is actually growing up, due mostly to young people who are moderates and are more inclined to support human rights issues.

Australia now has the stomach to embrace perspectives other than Anglo-Australian.
Internet giant weighs into heated debate on timing of Australias national day, saying artwork may help reconciliation.

Internet giant Google has weighed into Australias heated debate on the timing of its national day by using an artwork focusing on Aboriginal Australians on its homepage.

In line with its custom of celebrating national holidays with individual Google Doodles, Googles Australian search page www.google.com.au on Tuesday published a doodle created by Canberra High School student Ineka Voigt.

Her artwork Stolen Dreamtime won a competition which called on student artists to produce a piece of work in response to the theme, If I could travel back in time I would





The piece shows an Aboriginal mother and two children in a desert setting.

Describing her work, Voigt said: I would reunite mother and child. A weeping mother sits in an ochre desert, dreaming of her children and a life that never was  all that remains is red sand, tears and the whispers of her stolen dreamtime.

The decision to use a piece of art focusing purely on Aboriginal Australians comes as debate continues about when Australia Day should be celebrated.

Indigenous peoples and those against the celebrations being held on January 26, commonly refer to Australia Day, marking the start of the first British colony in Australia in 1788, as Invasion Day or Survival Day.

They say Australia Day marks the start of the mass slaughter of Aboriginals that occurred under British rule and the serious discrimination against the countrys indigenous peoples that exists to this day.

Each year, the Australia Day vs Invasion Day debate becomes a political issue, but so far no national government has indicated that it would be willing to change the date of national celebrations.

WITNESS: Australia  Creating a Nation

According to the Australian governments human rights commissioner, when compared with non-indigenous Australians, Aboriginals die about 10 years younger, are incarcerated at a rate 15 times higher and are twice as likely to be unemployed.

In a blog post on Tuesday by Leticia Lentini, brand and events marketing manager at Google Australia, the company said it was proud to have Voigts piece on the website.

Its a powerful and beautiful image that is not only a brilliant artwork, but helps bring attention to the critical issue of reconciliation in Australia, the post said.
Thousands march in Port-au-Prince after the countrys presidential runoff election was put on hold indefinitely.

Protesters clashed with police in Haitis capital Port-au-Prince as thousands marched against President Michel Martellys government on a day that was supposed to see a vote to elect his replacement.

Security forces used tear gas and stun grenades on Sunday to disperse crowds.

The demonstrations, on the fifth day of anti-government protests in the capital, saw markedly less violence than on previous days, in which protesters hurled stones and smashed windows.

Last week, Haitis presidential and legislative runoff election to choose Martellys replacement was put on hold indefinitely.

Opposition candidate Jude Celestins refusal to participate in the election over fraud allegations sparked anti-government protests and violence.

Critics of Martelly believe that he unfairly favoured his chosen successor, Jovenel Moise, a banana exporter, who came first in the first round of voting in October.

READ MORE: Haiti presidential election runoff postponed again

The UN, international election observers and foreign governments urged calm and dialogue among the countrys feuding politicians to negotiate a solution to the electoral impasse.

In a statement, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, expressed concern and pressed Haitians to work towards a peaceful completion of the electoral process without delay.

Haitis charter requires a new government to take power on February 7, but election authorities say there is no chance that the country will meet that deadline to pick a new president  threatening a constitutional crisis.

Given the short timeline, some form of interim government is likely to be formed to oversee the election process, yet it remains unclear how the fractious country would settle on a temporary solution

until elections can be rescheduled.

We have less than two weeks until February 7, and there is no way to have another election before then. So it will be up to parliament and the relevant political parties to agree on a transitional government, Antonal Mortimer, a human rights campaigner, told Al Jazeera.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has been unable to build a stable democracy since the 1986 overthrow of the Duvalier family.
Move likely to heighten tensions with China as India gives Vietnam access to image data from its observation satellites.

Indian officials say their country will set up a satellite tracking and imaging centre in southern Vietnam that will give Hanoi access to pictures from Indian earth observation satellites that cover the region  including China and the South China Sea.

The move could heighten tensions between the two countries and Beijing. Both states have long-running territorial disputes with China.

India also extended a $100m credit line for Hanoi to buy patrol boats and is training Vietnamese submariners in India, while Hanoi has granted oil exploration blocks to India in waters off Vietnam that are disputed with China.

The facility will be equipped to receive images from Indias Earth observation satellites that Vietnam can use in return for granting India the tracking site, said an Indian government official connected with the space programme.

This is a sort of quid pro quo which will enable Vietnam to receive IRS [Indian remote sensing] pictures directly  that is, without asking India, said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Obviously it will include parts of China of interest to Vietnam.

Earth observation satellites have agricultural, scientific and environmental applications, but can also provide military intelligence. Indian media put the cost of the station at about $23m.

India  whose 54-year-old space programme is accelerating with one satellite launch scheduled every month  has ground stations in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Brunei, Biak in eastern Indonesia and Mauritius that track its satellites in the initial stages of flight.

The Vietnam facility will bolster those capabilities, said Deviprasad Karnik, an Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman, according to Reuters news agency.

Long-running disputes

India has 11 earth observation satellites in orbit, offering pictures with differing resolutions and areas, the ISRO said.

Vietnam is one of several Southeast Asian nations involved in a territorial dispute with China over the South China Sea.

Beijing has accelerated its construction of man-made islands in the disputed waters to assert its claim to the sea, which is believed to hold vast oil and natural gas reserves.

Earlier in January, Vietnam accused China of violating its sovereignty when it landed a plane on an airstrip built on an artificial island in the Spratly archipelago.

Chinas foreign ministry rejected the complaint, arguing that the flight was a matter completely within Chinas sovereignty.
Leaders trip to Italy and France is first official visit to Europe by an Iranian president since lifting of sanctions.

Irans President Rouhani arrived in Italy on the first leg of a historic trip to Europe, a visit he hopes will attract new investor capital.

The four-day visit to Italy and France that began on Monday is the first by an Iranian president since a warming of relations between Iran and Western powers following the signing of a deal on Tehrans nuclear programme last year.

Rouhanis trip takes place following this months lifting of EU and US sanctions on Tehran, in return for Irans agreement with six major world powers in July to significantly scale down its nuclear programme.

After the nuclear agreement we want to elaborate on a middle-and long-term road map for our relationship with the EU, and especially with Italy and France, Rouhani said, before leaving for Rome with a large economic delegation, the DPA news agency reported.

I will be in Rome and Paris to speak about and possibly come to concrete results on different economic projects, like car manufacturing and the modernisation of our civil aviation.

Audience with the pope

Rouhani will meet President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Monday, and take part in an Italy-Iran business forum on Tuesday, when he is also scheduled to be granted an audience by Pope Francis.

The Iranian president is set to leave for France on Wednesday with trade deals high on the agenda.

Iran already demonstrated its hunger for Western goods at an aviation conference on the eve of the visit, announcing plans on Sunday to buy eight A380 superjumbo jets from Airbus and eventually purchase up to 100 planes from US-maker Boeing.
Rights advocate calls on visiting Emperor Akihito to meet women who were kept as sex slaves during World War II.

Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko are to visit the Philippines, in a rare overseas peace tour seen as a continuation of efforts to strengthen ties with a former World War II adversary.

The four-day state visit starting on Tuesday marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Manila and Tokyo, considered one of the closest allies in the Asia-Pacific region. It also brings back attention to the plight of the Filipinas forced to become sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during the war.

While Japan reached a deal with South Korea last December, offering $8.7m in compensation for war-time sex slavery, there is no similar agreement with the Philippines. That leaves the Filipina victims of abuse, also known as comfort women, still fighting for justice more than 70 years after their ordeal.

Emmi de Jesus, the womens rights advocate and member of the Philippine Congress, said Akihitos visit would be more meaningful if he meets the victims and personally hears their stories.

The emperor could be a very strong influence with the Japanese Prime Minister [Shinzo Abe], and could move for action with regards to the demands of the victims, de Jesus told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: Japans comfort women battle spills into the US

Last Friday in Manila, a few surviving women now in their 80s told reporters that they want an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government, as well as the inclusion of their stories in official historical records.

We have yet to achieve justice. We have lost a lot, including our dignity, Narcisa Claveria, 85, was quoted as saying at the press conference.

In an interview with Al Jazeeras Marga Ortigas in Manila, Hilaria Bustamante, 89, recalled how she was repeatedly abused by Japanese soldiers as a 16-year-old girl.

One Japanese soldier started to rape me while the other two held my arms and legs down. When he was done, the other one started on me  even though I was screaming because of the pain my body was in They kept at it, she recalled.

For years, many of the women had to repeatedly relive the indignities of their experience as they joined countless protests, appeared in public hearings, and even faced the courts in Tokyo and Manila to secure justice. But nothing has come of their efforts so far.

When a Tokyo court rejected their case in 1998, the judge said that the 1907 Hague Convention on war only honours state-to-state and not individual compensation. The judge also said that the 20-year statute of limitation on making claims had lapsed, and that Japan had already compensated the Philippine government under the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Geopolitical calculations

Since the early 1990s, when 200 Filipinas came out in public to tell their stories, the number of victims have dwindled and only about 70 are still alive, many in their mid and late-80s.

According to Lila Pilipina, the organisation representing the victims, at least 1,000 Filipinas were abused by the Japanese soldiers. Throughout Asia, an estimated 200,000 women were reportedly taken as sex slaves.

Victims and critics say the Philippine government shares the blame for the continuing injustice, and accuse President Benigno Aquino of being beholden to Tokyo.

Japan is a top source of foreign aid and investment in the Philippines. In 2014, trade between the two countries hit nearly $20bn.

Richard Javad Heydarian, a columnist and Asia analyst at De La Salle University in Manila, said Aquinos muted response to the issue of sex slavery reflects his geopolitical calculations, given his feelings towards China.

This has a lot to do with the Aquino administrations emphasis on building a strong alliance for the future, in light of the Chinese threat, he told Al Jazeera.

But Heydarian said the Philippine government should also watch out for Tokyos manifestation of historical revisionism, while maintaining a steady and strong strategic and economic partnership.

One big concern with Abes administration is the perception that it is historically revisionist and not fully apologetic about Imperial Japans aggression in early-20th century, including the issue of sex slavery, he said.





Amid Abes flexing of Japans muscle and concerns of revisionism, Akihitos visit to the Philippines is relevant as he represents the face of Japans soft power, Heydarian said.

While in the Philippines, Akihito is expected to pay tribute to the Filipino victims of World War II, as well as holding a memorial for Japanese soldiers. Akihito had previously visited the Philippines while he was a crown prince.

Meanwhile, de Jesus, the Congress member who has been fighting for justice for the former sex slaves, said she hoped Akihitos visit would serve as a reminder of the futility of military intervention.

One of our calls is never again to another generation of comfort women, she said.

Because if theres another military intervention, what happens is theres going to be another cycle of sexual abuse as part and as an instrument of intervention.
Tobruk-based parliament votes against unity government with rivals in Tripoli, and demands cabinet reshuffle.

Libyas internationally recognised parliament based in Tobruk has voted against the UN-backed unity government with rival authorities based in Tripoli, Libyan news agencies reported.

House of Representatives member Abu Bakr Beira said 89 out of 104 members who attended Mondays session rejected the cabinet formed by the UN-sponsored unity Presidential Council (PC).

He said the council would be dissolved if it failed to meet a 10-day deadline to form a new, smaller cabinet.

The unity government, which was announced on January 19, aimed to bridge a political divide that has undermined the fight against armed groups.

Libya currently has two rival administrations and parliaments: the internationally recognised authorities based in Tobruk and a rebel-backed authority holding power in the capital, Tripoli.

The Tobruk parliament also approved the Skhirat agreement as a political deal provided that article number 8  related to sovereign posts in the government, including military occupations  is deleted, giving the presidential council ten days to reshuffle the cabinet or replace the PC with another.

The Skhirat agreement was signed on December 17, 2015 in Skhirat, Morocco. The agreement was meant to lead to the establishment of a single Government of National Accord (GNA) and national institutions that would ensure broad representation.

The agreement calls for a 17-member cabinet, headed by businessman Fayez el-Sarraj as prime minister, based in the Libyan capital.

Under the agreement, a nine-member PC was named and given responsibility for selecting the national unity government.

However, the Tobruk parliament called for the boycotting of two PC members, Ali al-Gotrani and Omar al-Aswad. It suggested that they resume their positions once article 8 is deleted.

Al-Gotrani and al-Aswad suspended their membership from the PC of the UN-imposed government over demands and selection of cabinet members.

Many members of Libyas competing parliaments did not back the agreement, and critics say that the plan does not evenly represent all the countrys groups and factions.

Some critics cite reports that the UN representative who helped broker the agreement, Bernardino Leon, was secretly negotiating a high-paying job with the United Arab Emirates, which backs the Tobruk parliament.

Since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has slid into chaos.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Monday that he will take every step to keep Malaysians safe in the face of mounting threats from armed groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Najib told an international conference of ministers and anti-terrorism officials that he would not allow Malaysia to be open to infiltration.

The Conference on Deradicalization and Countering Violent Extremism comes just 11 days after a deadly attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, which killed eight people  including the four attackers  and as concerns grow over the spread ISILs ideology across Southeast Asia.

Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, who heads the Malaysian polices counterterrorism unit, told Al Jazeera it was impossible to prevent every possible attack.

No enforcement agency can provide a 100 percent guarantee that such an attack will never take place, he said.

Since February last year, police foiled seven plots but attacks could only be stopped with excellent intelligence gathering and pre-emptive operations, he said.

Hundreds of Malaysians are feared to have travelled to Syria to fight with ISIL. Of the 72 positively identified, eight have returned to the country.

READ MORE: Why Western attempts to moderate Islam are dangerous

On Sunday, police said a suspected seven-member ISIL cell had been arrested in a three-day operation carried out across the country.

The suspects had allegedly received instructions to carry out attacks in Malaysia by Syria-based ISIL members, including the Indonesian Bahrun Naim, named as the mastermind of the Jakarta attacks.

Police said the suspects were also given orders by Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jedi, a known Malaysian ISIL recruiter, who had been linked to a beheading video in Syria.

Sidney Jones, a security analyst, told Al Jazeera that ISIL is eager to garner headlines.

Weve seen one attack now in Jakarta  fortunately not very professional and fortunately not as many people killed as it was clear the terrorists hoped  but massive publicity and I think we need to understand that its that publicity that turns the failure into a success, said Jones.

Local media reported the Malaysian and Indonesian branch of ISIL, known as Katibah Nusantara, had released a video on an ISIL-sanctioned website in the Malay language threatening revenge for the capture of its members.

Najib told the conference that there was nothing Islamic about terrorism.

These groups blaspheme against a religion of peace, tolerance and understanding, he said.

But Najib conceded that ISIL had appeal and reach.

Many of those who have joined are idealistic young men and women who have been cruelly deceived by recruiters who pretend to be their friends, said the prime minister.
The UN Security Council has approved a political mission to monitor the implementation of a peace deal between the Colombian government and the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), following a joint request by the parties.

The resolution was passed unanimously on Monday, sending a strong signal that a March deadline to reach a final peace agreement could be within reach.

The resolution establishes a political mission for 12 months, and the council can consider an extension if asked by the two parties.

READ MORE: FARC rebels last days in the Colombian jungle?

It calls on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to make recommendations on the size and operational details of the monitoring mission, which will serve as the international component of a three-party mechanism to monitor compliance by both sides of the ceasefire.

The unarmed mission, which was established for an initial period of 12 months, will be responsible for the monitoring and verification of the laying down of arms and the upholding of a bilateral ceasefire and cessation of hostilities.

Matthew Rycroft, Britains ambassador to the UN, praised the Colombian government and FARC for requesting the UNs assistance.

It is to the credit of the parties that they have worked together to bring this issue to the council, Rycroft said.





It is uncommon for a country to refer itself to the council, but this is exactly the sort of role the United Nations should be playing  supporting conflict prevention and conflict resolution at the national level alongside others, he added.

Al Jazeeras Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said the resolution was seen as an important victory for the world body.

The UN is really in need of a victory right now. If this peace deal comes through and the UN is involved, they can say that this is an example that diplomacy, negotiating peace can work.

The joint request for the monitoring mission was sent last Tuesday.

FARC is the largest and oldest rebel group in Latin America, and once controlled large parts of Colombia.

While the group has been weakened over the years, experts believe that FARC is still active in 25 of Colombias 32 provinces and has a total of around 8,000 fighters.

The conflict between the rebels and the government has claimed more than 220,000 lives and displaced almost five million people over 50 years.
Unidentified men shot dead after allegedly wounding two Israeli women in the illegal West Bank settlement of Beit Horon.

Two Palestinians have been shot dead after an alleged stabbing in an illegal Israeli settlement southwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Israeli authorities alleged the pair stabbed two women in the settlement of Beit Horon before the unidentified men were killed by a guard on Monday evening.

Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said the alleged attack left the Israeli women wounded  one moderately, the other seriously. He also said bomb disposal experts were diffusing two explosive devices at the scene.

The incident increased the Palestinian death toll since the start of the unrest last October to 165. At least 25 Israelis have also been killed.

The wave of violence started after right-wing Israelis carried out incursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of East Jerusalem, the third holiest site for Muslims.

Unrest has since spread throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Palestinian communities in Israel.
European Union countries have asked the blocs executive to prepare for the extension of temporary border controls within the Schengen passport-free travel zone for up to two years, the Dutch migration minister said.

Klaas Dijkhoff said on Monday that the move was necessary as Europe was struggling to control massive waves of asylum seekers arriving from different parts of the world.

Currently, the temporary border measures can be taken only for a limited period of six months. But the unprecedented influx of asylum seekers, which compelled member states to take these measures nationally, have not decreased yet, Dijkhoff, who chaired the EU ministerial meeting in Amsterdam, said.

So member states invited the [European] Commission to prepare the legal and practical basis for the continuance of temporary border measures through Article 26 of the Schengen border code, he said of the an article that allows to have controls at internal borders in place for up to two years.

READ MORE: Denmark to vote on seizing refugees money, valuables

The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members. Germany, France, Austria and Sweden are among several countries that have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people.

On Monday, EU interior ministers urged Greece  the main gateway to Europe for more than a million refugees  to do more to control the external border of the bloc. Some even threatened Athens with expulsion.

Overwhelmed by the influx, Greek law enforcement officials have often let refugees through deeper into Europe rather than keep them on Greek soil for proper registration  the first necessary step agreed by the EU before people can move further.

The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. Of five registration hotspot centres due to be set up for refugees arriving in Greece, only one is running so far.
Okinawa, a Japanese island inside the tropics, has been engulfed by a wave of cold.

The largest island in the Ryukyu chain is used to a steady 19 degrees Celsius on a winter day and 14C by night  cold enough for a jacket. A maximum of 10C and minimum of 6C needs more than a jacket and these were Sundays temperatures, in the rain.

Okinawa is not used to snow, but 100 metres up on the hill snow fell and the temperature dropped to -5C. Rare though snow is, it is not unprecedented: occasional plunges of Arctic air produced snow in Okinawa in 1952, 1964 and 1977.

In northern Vietnam, where mountain farmers are used to 11C in the winter, snow now covers the vegetables growing on the terraces. The same wave of cold air that swept through China arrived in Vietnam on Sunday and Sa Pa, in Lao Cai province, felt a sudden drop in temperature.

After a nice warm boost on Thursday, with a high of 21C, Saturday showed only 8C in the rain, and Sunday brought snow. It has been sub-zero since Saturday night, dropping to a low of -4C on Sunday night.

Snow is rare in Okinawa, and not unheard of in the mountains of Lao Cai. It has been recorded in five of the past 30 years.

The cold has reached further west and south, through Laos and Myanmar to the Thai capital, Bangkok. This is peak holiday season for foreign visitors to Thailand as it is not too hot, nor too humid, and is normally sunny.

By day Bangkok usually reaches 32C and by night falls to about 23C. On Sunday, a northerly wind brought a little rain and the temperature topped out at 27C. Sunday night saw a dip to 16C. Monday struggled to reach even 20C, and that was under cloudy skies.

Over the next few days, temperatures over Southeast Asia, southern China and Okinawa will return, slowly, to normal. There is, however, still time for a repeat performance of a cold plunge before spring arrives.
Report says at least 29 people killed in series of strikes on village market near northern border with Nigeria.

At least 29 people have been killed after at least three suicide bombers carried out a series of attacks at a market in northern Cameroon, Al Jazeera has learned.

The coordinated strikes occurred in the village of Bodo near the border with Nigeria on Monday, a source in Cameroons military told Al Jazeera.

The first explosions struck the road leading to the market. The second and third blasts hit the entrance and interior of the marketplace.

It was the second bombing incident to hit Cameroon this year. On January 13, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one other in an attack on a mosque in northern Cameroon.

In December, two female suicide bombers also blew themselves up in Bodo.

The attacks occurred about 27km from the town of Fotokol, also near the Nigerian border, which had been the subject of previous attacks last year.





No one has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but Cameroon and neighbouring countries have been carrying out offensives against the Boko Haram group, which declared allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2015.

Boko Harams grip on the region has suffered as a result of assaults launched by local armies and a multinational force.

Last December, Cameroon reported killing at least 100 Boko Haram fighters and freeing 900 hostages.

Boko Haram, which wants to implement a strict form of Islamic law in Nigerias northeast, has launched attacks in Nigeria and neighbouring countries including Cameroon over the past few months.

The group was using Cameroons impoverished far north to stockpile supplies and recruits until the government crackdown last year.

Cameroon is part of an 8,700-strong regional force led by Nigeria against the group. The United States has contributed military supplies and troops for assistance.

On Monday, the United Nations and partners are appealing for more than $820 million to help refugees and others affected by violence in Cameroon, Nigeria and Central African Republic.

Boko Harams six-year fighting has killed about 20,000 people and displaced 2.3 million, according to Amnesty International and the UN.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has said that peace talks on Syria will push for a nationwide ceasefire for all parties other than the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Nusra Front armed groups.

De Mistura announced at a press conference in Geneva that peace talks, originally planned to start on Monday, have been rescheduled for Friday and are expected to last for six months.





He said that he expected to send invitations to the talks on Tuesday and that the initial round of discussions was likely to last two to three weeks.

The discussions are still ongoing and I have been very much aware of what happened in Geneva 2. Therefore we have been careful and extremely thorough in wanting to make sure that when and if we start, we start on the right foot, De Mistura said on Monday.

He said all parties would be involved in ceasefire efforts, other than the two groups designated as terrorists by the UN.

The condition is that it should be a real ceasefire and not just local, De Mistura said.

Suspension of fighting regarding ISIL and al-Nusra is not on the table. However [there are] plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place.

Khaled Khoja, the President of the Syrian National Coalition, said in a press release that they are ready for the talks despite the delay.

International intervention in Syria

The core of the issue is not related to setting a date for negotiations, but whether there is an international political will to create an appropriate environment for negotiations.

The moment there is such an environment, we will be ready to engage in negotiations as we have already assembled our delegation negotiators, Khoja said.

Last week, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups should start by the end of January as planned, but the invitation list has remained a sticking point.

The talks in Geneva will come after a set of meetings in Vienna and New York between the international community and regional players. During those meetings Saudi Arabia was expected to come up with the opposition list to attend the Geneva talks.

US and Russia fail to agree on Syria talks invite list





Mohamed Alloush, the leader of the Jaysh al-Islam group, which has been chosen as part of the opposition list, told Al Jazeera there were conditions yet to be applied before any talks could take place.

There is pressure on us to give up the natural and legitimate rights of the Syrian people. These pressures are represented in pushing our delegation to head to the talks without any clear agenda, plus giving up the goodwill measures mainly addressing the humanitarian situation which has nothing to do with politics.

Therefore, we cannot tell our people who delegated us how we gave up their rights and headed to Geneva without stopping the air raids, lifting the siege, releasing the prisoners, or sending aid.

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.
Through interviews with correspondents on the ground, Al Jazeera tells the story of 18 days when history was made.

Egypt Burning tells the story of the Egyptian revolution that forced Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled the country for 30 years, from power.

Through interviews with Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground  whose coverage of the popular uprising made them the target of a state campaign to get Al Jazeera off the air  the three-part series revisits those critical moments as history unfolded.

Part One  Breaking the barrier of fear

The first episode of Egypt Burning tells the story of five days in January 2011 when the people of Egypt broke through a barrier of fear they had known for a generation and rose in revolt against their president.

Anger had long been brewing in Egypt  strikes, unemployment and sectarian tension were on the rise.

Small networks of activists had been agitating against Hosni Mubaraks autocratic rule for years. But it was only when another Arab country, Tunisia, rose up against its tyrant that the Egyptian activists attracted mass support.

People took to the streets across Egypt demanding political freedoms, an end to state corruption and a better quality of life for the impoverished population.

Part Two  Standoff on the Nile

After seven days of mass protests, a peoples movement had taken hold of the country.

At Tahrir Square in the centre of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, the police had melted away. The army had moved in, but was doing nothing to stop the protests.

Full of hope and sensing that the regime might be cracking, the protesters called for a million people to gather and voice their demand that Hosni Mubarak step down. But the regime was about to fight back.

Part Three  The fall of Mubarak

As the protests moved into their third week, what began as a demonstration had turned into a revolution. But with a seemingly immovable head of state and resolute protesters standing firm in their call for the president to resign, Egypt had reached a deadlock.

Tahrir Square had become a tent city; a permanent vigil for the anti-government protesters. But cracks between the demonstrators were starting to show.
Five years ago, Egyptians took to the streets in the hope of putting an end to decades of dictatorship.

On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets demanding bread, freedom and dignity.

Eighteen days later, long-time President Hosni Mubarak was toppled and some thought Egypt had changed for ever.

But five years on, some Egyptians believe that not much has changed.

The country that sometimes thinks of itself as a regional leader is hardly looked to as an example at present.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis opponents accuse him of using an old-school, authoritarian leadership style. Some say the state has become even more repressive than under Mubarak.

So what went wrong with Egypts revolution?

Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:

Samer Shehata  Associate professor of Middle East politics and international relations, Doha Institute for Graduate studies

Salah Abou-El-Fadl  Member of the Social Democratic Party in Egypt

Nader Omran  Former spokesman of Egypts Freedom and Justice Party
As the second phase of talks ends in a deadlock, we ask what hope is there for the next round.

After days of accusation and counter accusation in Geneva, the second round of talks on Syria ended in a deadlock on Saturday.

I apologise to the Syrian people  I apologise to them that in these two rounds we havent helped them very much, the UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said after the talks.

Brahimi said he had instructed all involved to reflect on their negotiating positions: I have suggested it is not good for the process and not good for Syria that we come back for another round and fall in the same trap that we have been struggling with this week and most of first round.

Al Jazeeras Diplomatic Editor James Bays, who has been following the Geneva talks, reported the government delegation and opposition spoke for less than 30 minutes before talks ended.

Both sides remained unbending over their stated positions.

The Syrian National Coalition (SNC) maintains the only way forward is immediate talks on a transitional government. Meanwhile, the Syrian government argues the main priority is fighting terrorism.

Even the intervention of senior diplomats from Russia and the US did not break the deadlock.

While the stalemate continues, the fighting has intensified inside Syria. More than 5,000 people have been killed since the second round of talks began in Geneva which is almost 1,000 people killed every day, the highest since the conflict began.

On this episode of Inside Syria, we ask what hope is there for third round of talks and if there is an alternative approach to end Syrias civil war.

Presenter: Shihab Rattansi

Guests:

Pavel Felgenhauer, Journalist and political analyst in Moscow.

Professor Richard Rubenstein, Political scientist and expert in conflict resolution at George Mason University, USA.



Professor Mahjoob Zweiri, a Middle East analyst at Qatar University, Doha.
About 400 students stayed up all night as they coded from noon Saturday to noon Sunday for SwampHacks.

During the second annual competition, students had 24 hours to create a software program from scratch in the basement of Marston Science Library. UFs Association for Computing Machinery, UFs Women in Computer Science Engineering club and UFs Software Development Club hosted the event.

Students from UF and other state universities coded, and the event attracted about 100 more students than last year. By about 2 a.m. Sunday morning, some students had fallen asleep at their computers and on the floor.

Of the programs created, one could recognize faces and play the persons favorite song. Another program combined Facebook events based on location so they would appear on one website together.

Some people build pieces of hardware, said Bernard Marger, a co-founder of SwampHacks. They might hack together a robot.

The three clubs decided to start one big hack-a-thon last year, the UF computer engineering senior said. Students of any major can attend the event as long as they apply and are a student in the academic year SwampHacks is held.

At first it was, lets do it just for the school, the 21-year-old said. Now its a state-wide hack-a-thon.

Takashi Wickes said he decided to stay in computer science because of a hack-a-thon he attended last year.

He hopes the competition will encourage students from across Florida to code, the 19-year-old said.

If we can convince one of those kids thats unsure about computer science that theres a great community, it would be worth it, the UF computer science sophomore said.

Joshua Kegley, a UF computer science and engineering senior, said he and his team won the competition last year. Their program, Schedule Chomper, created sample course schedules for students based on the classes they wanted to take and their preferences for morning, afternoon or night.

The 28-year-old said his favorite part of SwampHacks is the number of people who make so many amazing things on the spot.

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In school you learn a lot of theoretical stuff, he said. In hack-a-thons, youre working with the actual software and you have to learn it quickly. It emulates what its like to be in a real work environment.

From left: Bradley Treuherz, a 21-year-old UF computer engineering junior, Anthony Colas, a 21-year-old UF computer engineering senior, Sergio Puleri, 20-year-old UF computer science junior, and Max Fresonke, a 21-year-old UF computer engineering junior, compete at SwampHacks on Saturday. The team won second place for their program, which recognizes people's faces and plays their favorite song.
Hundreds of people gathered Saturday to protect Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.

The Paynes Prairie Coalition organized a rally at First Magnitude Brewing Company, followed by a 1-mile march that started at the brewery and ended at the corner of Main Street and University Avenue.

At the rally, local folk band Whitey Markle and the Swamprooters played This Land is Your Land. Attendees made signs displaying messages such as, protect our parks, and, Scott free zone, nearby.

The coalition is worried that bills in the Florida Legislature could open the park to logging, hunting and cattle grazing, which could potentially upset the scenic landscape.

Former chief naturalist Jim Stevenson and current historian Leslie Poole condemned what they said are actions taken by the state government to harm Paynes Prairie.

Stevenson specifically mentioned Gov. Rick Scott and the Department of Environmental Protection.

We first learned about DEPs plans to dismantle the park in April of 2015, Stevenson said.

The coalition  which includes members from the Alachua Audubon Society, Suwannee-St. Johns Group Sierra Club and Florida Native Plant Society  chanted that parks belong to the people.

Poole, a fourth generation Floridian, said her grandfather fished at the park as a child. She now takes her kids to the prairie and hopes to share it with future generations.

Why any state institution would slowly try to erode the beauty and value of state parks  that is beyond me, Poole said.

Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MerylKornfield.

Supporters gather at the intersection of University Avenue and Main Street on Saturday afternoon to protest recently proposed legislation that would allow logging, hunting and cattle grazing at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. The Paynes Prairie Coalition organized the rally, which marched one mile from First Magnitude Brewing Company to the downtown intersection.

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When Gainesville Police Officer Patrick Hopkins saw 30-foot flames rising from a home in June, he ran toward them.

Outside, a mother screamed for help. Black smoke surrounded her daughter, Kimberly Foster, inside the four-bedroom house.

I was scared, Kimberly, 31, said. I didnt want to die.

On Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott awarded Hopkins a medal of heroism.

Fellow Officer Brett Kikendall and Cpl. Kevin Clinton, who responded to the house fire with Hopkins, received the same honor that day.

Hopkins believes they are the first in the department to receive the award.

Itll be something I remember forever, he said.

On June 26, Kimberly woke up to the smell of smoke, which soon seeped into the closet where she hid from the fire. As flames grew outside her bedroom door, the smoke caused her lung to deflate.

Thats all I remember, she said.

Hopkins and Kikendall patrolled together when they heard the call go out: 10-65. Signal 25.

When they arrived at the scene, 49-year-old Loretta Foster told them where her daughter was trapped.

With firefighters still traveling to the scene, Hopkins took a breath and climbed through Kimberlys bedroom window.

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It was impossible for me to breathe or see and I could not hear anything at allbesides the sound of the fire, he later wrote in a report.

One minute passed. Then another.

Inside the bedroom, Hopkins kept low to the ground as he searched for signs of life.

Unable to hold his breath much longer, Hopkins called out to Kimberly.

Moments later, Hopkins felt Kimberlys foot and picked her up.

She was unresponsive inside the closet, and with Hopkins last breaths escaping him, he carried Kimberly through her window.

I dont know how much longer I could have gone, he said.

After being treated for a few cuts and scrapes, Hopkins called his wife.

Ill be home a little bit late, but Ill be home he said.

The hospital released Kimberly after a few days, and Hopkins is still being treated for minor lung issues.

After their home of one month was destroyed, the Fosters moved in with a nearby family.

Around the same time, Hopkins and Kikendall gathered donations from fellow officers to buy the Fosters new beds, toys and other amenities.

The Fosters later sent Hopkins a Christmas card.

It was a miracle that Im alive now, because my momma love me to death and I love her too, Kimberly said.

Hopkins said he knows anyone in the department would have done the same.

Just another day, he said.

Contact Martin Vassolo at mvassolo@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @martindvassolo.
Cars honked and students cheered during a march to support presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Saturday.

The march went through UFs campus and along University Avenue to draw attention to Sanders campaign. About 60 students and Gainesville residents carried posters reading, Feel the Bern, and, A vote 4 Bernie is a vote 4 equality.

Before the march, volunteers registered supporters to vote in the primaries, said Kara Sharp, who helped organize the march. While marching, supporters went to the U.S. Post Office on Northwest First Avenue to mail their forms.

Sharp, a 22-year-old UF economics senior, said she got the idea for the march after seeing other marches for Sanders scheduled across the nation on Facebook. She said there werent any marches in Gainesville, so she and her roommate decided to organize one themselves.

Fewer people showed up than she expected, but she was happy with the turnout, she said.

Obviously, theyre not here because its 30 degrees, she said.

She said although the weather might have discouraged some people from attending, she didnt want to reschedule the march. She said she wanted to show Floridians could handle the cold.

Floridas primaries will be held March 15. Only voters registered with a political party can vote.

Even if they dont support Bernie Sanders, anyone can register here, Sharp said.

Melissa Powers, a UF psychology junior, said she went to the march alone, and it was her first time attending a Bernie Sanders event.

Its always good to take an opportunity to support a cause youre passionate about, the 21-year-old said.

Powers said she marched for Sanders because of his support of Planned Parenthood and the Black Lives Matter movement. She also hopes Sanders decreases the wealth gap between the rich and poor, if elected.

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I just think its kind of ridiculous that we live in a country with such a big disparity between the upper class and the lower class, she said. Anyone who believes in that sort of thing should support him.

Sara Nishku, who helped organize the event, said she thought the march united Gainesville residents of all ages and backgrounds.

Its what Bernie Sanders stands for, in a way, that he brings different people together from all over the nation, the 20-year-old UF food science junior said.

Every few minutes, drivers would honk their horns. Sharp said there was more support than she expected.

We got a lot, a lot of honks  never-ending honks. she said. I felt like I was flying high.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @k_newberg

Bernie Sanders supporters walk west on University Avenue on Saturday. About 60 students and Gainesville residents carried posters and marched across UFs campus to show their support for Sanders presidential campaign.
With the sexual assault and terrorism associated with migrant flows, European values are in a clash with no solution in sight. How does one weigh hundreds of thousands of illiberal, disaffected young men against starvation in Syria, Taliban firing squads, Eritrean indefinite conscription that amounts to slavery and a Mediterranean of floating corpses?

Open-border advocates are unfazed by the molestation of more than 500 women on New Years Eve in Cologne, mostly by asylum-seekers. Sure, there were unprecedented New Years attacks on women in Helsinki, Stuttgart and Hamburg. Sure, unaccompanied Afghan refugees molested girls as young as 11 years old at a Stockholm rock festival two summers in a row. Sure, a Paris attacker entered Europe on a counterfeit Syrian passport. Sure, a man who had stayed in a German refugee shelter attacked a Paris police station while screaming Allahu Akbar. No matter. Musa Okwonga cited the United Nations figure  which says 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced sexual violence  to argue the Cologne assaults were a particularly severe eruption of a situation which, in global terms, has always been volcanic. This is ludicrous.

German feminists Stefanie Lohaus and Anne Wizorek argued Germanys rape culture is deeply rooted in our collective psyche and was not imported. They compare the assaults to Oktoberfest rapes, which police records proved to be false. Large-scale, coordinated, multi-city assaults are unprecedented, and almost all attackers were Moroccan migrants, not sexist Germans. Yes, the nativist right cares about rape only when men of color rape white women. But it is audacious to say German women have it as bad as women in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Almost 90 percent of Afghan women face physical, sexual or psychological violence, or are forced into marriage.

From 2009 to 2011, a Norwegian oil industry town reported 20 rapes, only three of which were committed by native Norwegians. In response, Norway offers to migrants classes in gender norms. An asylum-seeker from Eritrea said, Men have weaknesses and when they see someone smiling it is difficult to control, and that back home, if someone wants a lady he can just take her and he will not be punished.

The fact is, most migrants are men. There are now 123 16- and 17-year-old boys in Sweden for every 100 girls. Numerous studies show a link between such gender skew and terrorism, property crime and violent gangs. Is this still, as the government claims, a feminist foreign policy?

The situation is messy and murky. Neither open-borders idealism nor xenophobic nativism is up to the task. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Unions Charter of Fundamental Rights enshrine the principle of asylum. The EU Directive on Reception Conditions bestows the right to state provision, including housing.

First, Germany must be honest. Jochen Bittner suggests thorough identity checks to separate free-riding criminals from legitimate asylum-seekers; semi-custody for new arrivals without passports; and swift, visible deportation of about 8,000 identified moochers. Thats the stick; we also need carrots. Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch outlines a recipe for integration: Cut out the xenophobic talk of swarms of terrorists, nix the discriminatory headscarf bans, quit detaining asylum-seekers, implement mixed housing and integrate children into local school systems.

Todays fascists-lite might appeal to Western values, but they violate them with bigotry, provincialism and vitriol. The consequences: Minorities on the margins of society can turn against it. In 1995, Khaled Kelkal, a son of Algerian immigrants, shook France with a wave of assassinations and bombings. He was the first homegrown jihadist. His complaint? I didnt study just to end up loading trucks. Culture mustnt serve as a codeword for more concrete issues like poverty, geographic isolation and xenophobia. Refugees are a reality. If we want them to love the West, we must love them back.

Ann Manov is a UF French, English and Spanish senior. Her column appears on Mondays.

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It was announced Friday that Labyrinth, the Jim Henson-directed and David Bowie-starring 80s fantasy cult classic, would be receiving a remake/sequel/reboot/whatever in the near future. Ignoring the questionable taste in announcing the regurgitation of a film so closely tied to its lead actor only 12 days after his passing, the plans to resurrect Labyrinth are an unfortunate reminder that ingenuity remains an ever-dissipating quality in American film.

Although remakes and adaptations have long been woven into the fabric of American cinema, the last 10 years have seen sequels, remakes and reboots come to define our filmic output. With the one-two punch and runaway success of Christopher Nolans reboot Batman Begins and Marvel Studios adaptation of Iron Man, film studios have rushed to push pre-existing stories and properties into production.

Despite many of these films having landed in theaters with resounding thuds, being panned by critics and ignored by moviegoers, producers havent stopped, well, producing them. Did anyone see, much less know about, the Point Break remake that just came out? Seriously, were asking, because many of us in the office had no idea it even existed. And dont even get us started on the abomination that was Terminator Genisys.

Although an exception to the critical and commercial phenomenon mentioned above, its worth examining Star Wars: The Force Awakens, now the third-highest-grossing film ever made, for the sake of example. The Force Awakens, although a perfectly serviceable film in its own right, settles for being a remix  that is, not quite a reboot, not quite its own totally independent entity  rather than introducing story beats and concepts of its own. It mixes and matches the character tropes and plot points of the original Star Wars trilogy, mostly those of A New Hope, rather than introducing novel concepts or unexplored themes to its universe; to call it a full-fledged sequel would be self-deceiving at best and disingenuous at worst.

It is well established that the original Star Wars film is no paragon of originality, either. However, while the film took inspiration from Japanese cinema, sci-fi serials of old and the comparative mythology studies of Joseph Campbell, it did so while innovating film techniques and exuding a sense of scale and wonder audiences had never seen before. For better or for worse, Star Wars changed the course of moviemaking and audience expectations forever. Of course, not every film has to be Star Wars or an impenetrable avant-garde film. However, the options available to the average theatergoer should not be restricted to the latest superhero adaptation, sequels to and/or reboots of already-filmed superhero fare, Michael Bay films or poor attempts to construct a Marvel-esque franchise when the source material itself has already run dry (heres looking at you, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them).

Good, and even great, distinctive cinema is out there; you just have to look for it. Living in or traveling to Park City, Utah, the location of the Sundance Film Festival, certainly helps, but you shouldnt have to be a Mormon, a filmmaker or wealthy in order to watch atypical films (shoutout to the Hippodrome State Theatre right here in Gainesville). There was a time when big-budget Hollywood productions could inspire wonder and still make bank hand over fist. When cinema serves only to peddle product and inspire nostalgia, rather than creativity, it is tantamount to cultural suicide. If last summers Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out taught us anything, its that awe, magic and excitement for the new or different are still possible in big studio films: It is up to us as consumers to not settle for less. But then again, we are the ones who allowed six sequels to The Fast and The Furious  maybe we do deserve Fast 8.
           2005     ..        




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

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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]
PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh has tapped Karen Larrimer to lead its retail banking division.

The current head of retail, Neil Hall, will retire on July 1, the $359 billion-asset company said Monday.

Larrimer will also retain her current position as chief customer officer. Her combined responsibilities will focus on sales and customer service experience and include online and mobile banking.

Larrimer has worked at PNC since 1995 and has been chief marketing officer, executive vice president for business banking and a leader in treasury management. She previously worked at Ernst & Young and Mellon Bank. She is one of American Banker's 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking.

Hall joined PNC in 1995 when it acquired Chemical Bank in New Jersey, where he was president of consumer banking. He became head of retail banking in April 2012. He is a board member of the Consumer Bankers Association and a member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's advisory board.


Perhaps the shrewdest move Joe Biden made was taking a pass last autumn at a presidential run. Then, he might have been considered a spoiler. Not so Elizabeth Warren, whom the left wanted badly to run early last year. Warren, up against Hillarys money and establishment muscle, took a pass. No profile in courage for her.

But Warren might get a second chance at the brass ring. Biden, most definitely. Hillary the Inevitable is doing what Hillary does: melt down as inspection of her heats up. Criminality -- no stranger to the Clintons -- holds out the promise of being more of an upset than Bernie.

Had Warren not been intimidated into skipping the race, shed be building momentum toward the Democratic nomination. With a credible alternative, Hillary would be closing in on yesterdays news status.

Instead, the Democrats have a huge dilemma. Their putative nominee is besieged. Democrat voters (enough of them, anyway, and never mind independents) dont much like or trust Hillary. She is what shes always been: bloodless and programmed. She oozes calculation and insincerity. She gives off the cloying odor of noblesse oblige. Hillary wants the presidency because its a trophy and yet another means to boost the bottom-line of Clinton Family, Inc. The presidency represents a big revenue generator for Bill and Hillary.

Compounding Hillarys troubles, her wing-person (a nod to Lena Dunhams sensibilities) has gone from being a lovable scamp to a lecherous old man. Actually, Bills more than a lecher. Hes finally, openly been called out for what he really is: a woman abuser. Hes, well, a white-faced Bill Cosby, per The Donalds withering inference.

The Donald doesnt play beanbag. He plays kneecapping, in that charmless but highly effective New York way.

Trumps counterpunch to Hillarys sexism left hook whiff couldnt have resonated beyond the right had the cultural terrain not shifted. Younger feminists, were told, expect men to not only talk the feminist PC talk, but walk it. Pro-feminist legislation and policies, past or present, arent enough for todays militant chicks. Stories of Bills jaunts with Jeffrey Epstein, proprietor extraordinaire of Orgy Island, must leave these out-for-blood feminists stewing. You know Orgy Island? Where underage beauties are reported to service Epstein and his men guests. That includes Bill.

So the Fates are being particularly vicious to Hillary. But theres no sign yet that Hillary is prepared to buckle. She has that Nixon-like tough-it-out quality. An FBI referral for an indictment about her misuse of her private email server isnt likely to get her to quit. Nor Clinton Foundation improprieties (the entire professional careers of Bill and Hillary have been improper). It would likely take Obama DOJ indictments to push her from the race.

Conceivably, if Hillary thought indictments could materialize, she might cut a deal with the president: no indictments and shell walk. Shed say publicly that the vast right-wing conspiracy is at it again. The conspiracys phony charges and the ensuing hubbub make it difficult for her to successfully address the nations pressing issues. Shell step aside for the good of the party and nation.

Or Hillary will cling to her candidacy the way the rest of us cling to our guns and bibles. If she does that, and if, as anticipated, the FBI makes criminal referrals, and Obama, for whatever partisan reasons, chooses not to pursue indictments, then the words pox and pariah would not adequately capture Hillarys standing among Democrats, except for her hardcore supporters. Many independents would look askance at Hillary for gravely compromising national security and getting away with it.

Then theres Bernie -- you know, the Larry David impersonator. Or is it the other way around? Bernie, the 74-year-old true believing democratic socialist. (Where on Gods green earth have socialists ever called themselves undemocratic? The Soviet Union? China?)

Bernie as the Democrats default, should Hillary disappear, sends shivers down the spines of Democratic pros and -- yes, really -- professional leftists. Neither wants the partys nominee to be the quixotic Bern. The pros -- establishment and left -- gave up tilting at windmills when George McGovern was pasted in 72. Moneymaking and career-driven Democratic pros want a W in the Ds column this November. No less the professional left, though they want to advance their ideology, too.

Bernies not the vehicle, and the professional left knows it. If anything, a Bernie nomination imperils gains made by the left over the Obama years.

Bernie loses to almost any of the Republican candidates (Jeb might even beat him). Bernie might even lose a few states that Democrats normally win. The House would surely stay in the GOPs hands, with an increase in seats probable. The Senate, now up for grabs, would stay Republican. On the afternoon of January 20, 2017, a Republican president will peel off Obamas executive orders like an underage stripper peeling off her threads at an Orgy Island burlesque show.

Whatever the progressive tilt of the nation recently, most voters arent prepared to accept any packages labeled socialism. Not even from a lovable old codger like Bern. Savvy Democrats and leftists figured this out decades ago. To sell socialism, it mostly has to be done piecemeal and presented as compassion, fairness, or justice (or some mix thereof). The lie has always been that leftism doesnt fundamentally alter America; it merely updates it, ameliorates the bad, and evens things out. No, say Democrats and their smarter leftist comrades, were not for socialism. Like you, we hunger for compassion, fairness, and justice.

Bernie has already labeled the package, probably never believing that hed have any real shot at the nomination. An eccentric with a checkered past isnt someone Americans are prepared to put in the White House. Democratic pros -- and the leftists among them -- arent prepared to go down in flames.

The betting here is that Hillary struggles through Iowa and New Hampshire. Bernie Eugene McCarthys her with strong showings (if not a convincing win in New Hampshire). All the while, the pot boils on Hillarys indictments. Hillary and Obama back-channel a deal. Hillary leaves the race.

Immediately on Hillarys departure, draft Biden and Warren movements commence. But Joe and Liz have cut a deal, too, with the blessings of Barack. Joe leads the way, pledging one-term. Liz acts to cover Joes left flank. Bernie is carrot-and-sticked into acquiescence. The Biden-Warren unity ticket premieres at the Democratic National Convention in July.

Maybe, or maybe not. But one thing is sure: forget Republicans challenges. The Democrats are neck-deep in alligators -- once again, thanks to the Clintons. The way forward is hazardous and certainly uncertain for the whole lot of them.
When John Kasich tells you that he is a skilled executive, believe him.

Governor Kasich met with several New Hampshire fishermen on 8 January. David Goethel, owner and captain of the 44-foot fishing trawler Ellen Diane, is suing NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for bureaucratic overreach and has explained his position in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Governor Kasich read the op-ed and as a result requested the meeting.

This was not a campaign stop. Nobody took names for a mailing list; nobody handed out bumper stickers. The governor was there to learn and to help.

The impromptu get-together was held indoors in the fish-processing bay at the Yankee Fisherman's Cooperative in Seabrook, N.H. The aroma of fish guts filled the air, reminding me of my school-day summers working on the fish pier in Gloucester.

There were several fishermen present  a small several, as years of government assistance have driven many from the business. The governor listened to them as they expanded their complaints beyond the scope of Mr. Goethel's lawsuit. I couldn't hear well, as the non-campaign stop lacked an audio system.

After a few minutes, Governor Kasich said, "OK, can I speak now?" and then went on in a loud but conversational tone to outline what needs doing. First and foremost, he said, get your congressional representatives involved. Have them write letters, forceful letters, to the executive branch. Get the powerful congressional leaders involved, Republicans and Democrats, like Senator Schumer among the latter group.

The fishermen told the governor that there had been several congressional letters in their behalf; all apparently fell on deaf ears. There are currently two letters relative to Mr. Geothel's lawsuit sent to Dr. Sullivan, the head of NOAA, in early January. One was signed by nine senators and several House members from the five seacoast New England states. The other was from the tenth senator of the region, the obsequious Edward Markey.

This prompted another conversation between the fishermen and the governor. At one point I heard the governor say, "Ah, environmentalists." At the end of their conversation, the governor said, "These guys are trying to put you out of business."

The governor had nailed it! He had reached the correct conclusion in less than a half-hour conversation with the New Hampshire fishermen; as Dan'l Webster said, if a few "New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians."

The fishing industry's problems with the government go back decades, but there was always a gentleman's agreement that they had a common purpose. Since the advent of the Obama administration, that's gone by the boards. Obama and his fellow environmentalists have made elimination of a large percentage of the fishing fleet a national policy goal.

Upon inauguration, President Obama appointed Dr. Jane Lubchenco as head of NOAA. Dr. Lubchenco had previously been an executive vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which in more genteel times might have been considered a conflict of interest. She announced that all fisheries, starting with New England's, would be switched to the revolutionary catch shares fisheries management system. She also said that a significant fraction of the vessels would need to be removed to make the industry sustainable. Vessels are inanimate; the people who depend upon them for their livelihoods are not.

At the same time that an extremely eco-friendly administration was taking power and appointing an eco-zealot as head of NOAA, the Milken Institute Global Conference of 2009 featured a session titled "Innovative Funding for Sustainable Fisheries and Oceans." One of the speakers, Mr. David Festa, a vice president of the EDF, envisions a "complete redefinition of our relationship to the natural resource [the fisheries]." By this, he means that the fisheries will all be converted to catch shares, a highly controversial approach sponsored by the EDF. This will present a "business opportunity" and require capital.

This is crony capitalism at its most crass. The government forces the small business operations out of business, and its eco-buddies move in to fill the vacuum.

Governor Kasich recognizes that the environmentalists with aid from the government are trying to put the fishermen out of business. He reiterated this in a conversation with me after the meeting. The governor promised the fishermen that if he is elected, he wil fix the problems. He said, "I won't forget. This meeting has put it up here," and he tapped his head. I believed him.

It has been a grueling campaign. Time is running down to the New Hampshire primary, whose results will be critical to the Kasich campaign. The governor looked tired and had yet another stop on his schedule before calling it a day. Nevertheless, he had added this stop to his already crammed schedule.

I'm a New Hampshireman, and in our great primary tradition, I have yet to decide for whom to vote, so this essay is not an endorsement of Governor Kasich. It is a compliment to a good man who cares for his constituents and will work to resolve their issues.

Mike Johnson is a small-government conservative, a live-free-or-die resident of N.H., and the author of the e-book John Kerry & PCF-44. Email mnosnhoj@comcast.net.
Matt Walsh tweeted his delight at a feverish chain of twenty-two essays denouncing Donald Trump in National Review. Coming only a few days after Sarah Palin's less than stellar speech announcing her support for Trump's candidacy, the Dump-on-Trump-a-thon bordered on hysteria.

Organized alphabetically by the last names of the essayists, beginning with Glenn Beck, the prose feels somewhat like a roller coaster. The authors include many people I know personally and admire. There are lots of money quotes like "He's effectively vowing to be an American Mussolini" (Boaz), "We can talk about whether he's a boor ... a creep ... or a louse" (Charen), and "forget the hair like tinsel on discarded Christmas trees" (Helprin). Ouch!

The tightly knit Brahmin caste feels the need to intervene. They must rush in and correct the thought processes of the conservative masses, because they see many things in the pro-Trump movement that discomfort them. Yet the elite brain trust of conservatives, with their editorial positions and contributor contracts at FOX News, are doubling down too late on a platform whose time came and went. The deeper issue isn't Donald Trump at all; it's the Brahmins and their increasing tendency to misread what's going on in the lives of their readers.

Trump is far from an ideal man to be the president. I get it. But why do so many people prefer him to two dozen alternatives, including my fave, Cruz? It's not simple insanity, bigotry, or dumb people taking over the GOP. On the contrary, all the NRO writers seem to acknowledge a few truths about the hordes of people across America whom they've classified, correctly or incorrectly, as the "conservative base." The authors acknowledge that these constituencies are angry, feel let down, view recent years as times of betrayal, aren't all that impressed by dogma right now, and are now open to someone  specifically Trump, though it might have been anyone who came along with new media savvy  who doesn't even agree with their ideology at all but who represents a cathartic rebellion against the experts who've continually misled them.

Just before the 2012 primary season, there were two groundswell movements: the lefty Occupy movement and the rightist Tea Party. Back then, the lefties were screaming a lot but didn't have specifics, while the Tea Party came fully armed with statistics and wonky minutiae. This primary season is a different game. Now the Sandersites speak in percentages and name the banks and super-PACs they plan to dismantle, while the Trumpers won't give specifics because they don't want specifics; they want, like the Occupy movement of 2011, a whole new order. Both parties have seen the rise of grassroots movements rejecting the common language of Washington wonkery. So maybe this is a sign: everyone wants the wonks out.

Yes, you  Mr. Editor of This, Mr. Contributor to That, Mr. President of Think-Tank X or Institute Y. When Trump scoffs at "politically correct" people, he means you! He probably means me, too; though I am a small player, I should accept some blame.

The putsch against the commentators is shocking because for a long time, this seemed unthinkable. The conservative literati have dominated Facebook walls and Twitter feeds, chattered in the background for hours each day on talk radio, and plastered their mugs all over cable TV as talking, talking, talking heads. For a long time, readers trusted them because they trusted each other (and quoted each other), so it all looked very respectable. Pundits assumed that the followers' trust and patronage would last indefinitely.

The years went by: the Clinton impeachment, hanging chads, 9-11, Iraq, Katrina, the Pelosi apocalypse, Obama, the stimulus, Obamacare, Benghazi, etc., etc. The mandarin talking heads were a stable fixture  perhaps too stable, like a lamp drilled into the floor of a house that was taken apart and reconstructed several times. Notwithstanding some lip service to religion and social values, they had two things to say, and they said them over and over again: free markets and Constitution.

Sometime circa 2005, I was listening to one of the usual suspects trading inside jokes with Sean Hannity. Something dawned on me, which I have kept secret until now: yes, I am conservative, but I don't actually think free markets or the Constitution matters to most conservatives, because most people live in gritty reality rather than abstractions. Most conservatives have a general sense that individuals should be decent, self-reliant, and God-fearing, traits intrinsic to America's earliest roots. But they don't own businesses. They want a functioning government that helps people who need help. They decide tough issues based on right and wrong, not on clauses in the nation's founding document. And they don't want to live in a world where everything is for sale to the highest bidder. Trump might not be the best purveyor of these principles, but he's the common man's weapon against the thought leaders who've been betraying the principles for over twenty years. And payback is a you-know-what.

What happened?

The conservative world has a relationship between opinion-makers and readership that's the converse of the liberal world. Because the vast majority of "intellectuals" are left of center, there are many liberal writers fighting over a small number of liberal readers.

Conservatives live in the opposite situation: there are very few right-wing writers and enormous numbers of conservative readers. Such conservative readers tend to be busy people who spend their days working, raising a family, etc. They catch up on the news when they can, usually with writers whose names they recognize. They have long gravitated to old, reliable voices like Bill O'Reilly, David Horowitz, and Rush Limbaugh, because they like to build a trusting relationship with their sources of commentary, even if they don't actually meet them.

If you are one of the lucky cons with a megaphone, it's easy to overestimate the loyalty of your massive following. This conservative punditocracy abused its followers for many years. At some point, large swaths of their audience were tuning in largely because they had so few conservative choices, not because they viewed public intellectuals as sages.

The first flaw of the intelligentsia, and perhaps its most fatal, was the tendency to become a closed discussion club. Two movements  the free-speech and traditional-marriage movements  gave me glimpses into the internal problems of the echo chamber.

They Complained about Liberal Bias but Let It Metastasize

As a graduate student (1998-2003), I kept many of my right-wing views secret from my colleagues in the program, and especially from professors. I tuned in to talk radio and watched FOX News. I read the gamut, from Ann Coulter to Russell Kirk. I imagined that the people constantly complaining about the liberal bias among college professors were sincere in their complaints.

Certain phrases repeated: "We need to take back the culture." "Dearth of conservative professors." "We need more people in the humanities." "We need the classics."

After finishing a full monograph with 752 footnotes about classic American literature and the roots of conservative thought, I couldn't get conservatives to review the book. Many of them wouldn't return emails and ran the other away when I met them at conferences. They seemed to get endless gigs at colleges to deliver speeches about the need for young conservative scholars. The audience was full of young conservative scholars who would, realistically, have close to zero chance of getting into the circuit. At some point, the whole conservative mafia struck me as simply sleazy.

I wondered, are there legions and legions of lettered literary critics shopping books about conservative arts and humanities, who don't need to waste their time on lil' ol' me?

It became clear that no, there were not tons of conservative faculty coming up through the ranks modeling right-wing scholarship in the humanities. You could count on one hand the number of monographs from the same year that addressed the early American literary scene from a conservative vantage point. The two reviewers who did gloss my book gave it good reviews, so it wasn't weak scholarship; it just couldn't get traction.

And it suddenly dawned on me: this is all a huge racket.

Nothing changes because Mr. Big Conservative doesn't want it to change. Conservative faculty have gone from about a quarter of academia to a handful of scared scholars living in bunkers. The latter cower and can't be counted on to speak up, because they're mortified of controversy and secretly need secular liberals to approve of them.

Carol Swain, John McAdams, Paul Church, and I  all well-established conservative scholars  are being driven out or have been driven out of academic positions. And we aren't the only ones. It's happening right now. Blasting liberal professors for being morons doesn't, in the end, help to increase the number of conservative professors or even slow the bloodletting that's decimating our ranks.

They Said They Would Defend the Family and...

Then came gay marriage. On this issue there was a lot to defend  indeed, with adoption tied to marriage, the very notion of birthright, heritage, and legacy was at stake  and the pressure was enormous on people to capitulate.

The conservative intelligentsia responded to the explosive debate about gay marriage in three ways. One group suddenly changed their minds and supported gay marriage, to the delight of the mainstream press and to the considerable advantage of their own pocketbooks. One group simply pretended the topic didn't exist, so they would neither lose the liberal media's approval nor risk being branded (rightly) as sellouts by the conservative base. And then another group claimed they were going to defend traditional marriage; they garnered support from good-hearted Christians and then lost gracefully.

There were countless young Christians who belonged to the vigorous "chastity movement." They could rise up quickly in the pro-life movement, but the doors were closed to them on the marriage movement. Then, as the persecution of gay-marriage opponents reached a feverish pitch in the two years between Windsor and Obergefell, the advocates who'd monopolized the marriage microphone crumbled, surrendered, and got tongue-tied. Having lost humanity's most important institution, the family, they rushed to rally troops around a model of religious liberty that would protect only a handful of Christian business owners (always protect the business owners first!) from the blowback of society collapsing all around them.

Trump's Ideas Aren't the Issue

Liberal bias and gay marriage were just two issues of many. On immigration, gun control, health care, and national defense, conservatives with bright ideas were shut out while an old guard foundered and lost the battles they had insisted they could win. For a while, we could blame specific politicians for betraying the base's ideas. But eventually a large part of the base concluded that the brain trust telling them what to think was as much a part of the problem as people in public office.

All this is all a long way of saying that a clarion call from National Review has little chance of reversing the Trump revolution.

I support Ted Cruz and have many anxieties about Donald Trump. I hope Cruz gets nominated, but if Trump wins, I'll accept that like the rest of the right-wing writers, I got what I deserved. I will carry on and take away crucial life lessons. And here's to hoping that Trump's lasting legacy will be the rebirth of a new conservative intellectual class down the road.

Robert Oscar Lopez is an English professor and president of the International Children's Rights Institute. The views expressed here are not those of his employer. He can be followed at English Manif or on Twitter (@baptist4freedom).
Contrary to some who have expressed concerns about Ted Cruzs temperament and qualifications to be an effective president, my experience in working with the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate during the early 2000s convinces me that he is the right person at the right time for the job.

Although not a close friend of Senator Cruz, I got to know him reasonably well as a colleague at the Federal Trade Commission from mid-2001 until he left the commission to return to Texas in 2003. During that time, we worked together on a number of projects, including efforts to curtail anticompetitive legislation pending in several states to protect incumbent businesses such as gasoline retailers and automobile dealerships, and a task force established by the FTCs Chairman charged with looking into litigants abuses of legal immunities to the antitrust laws. The Chairman appointed Cruz to lead that task force, and I was one of several members.

In this capacity, I was able to observe Teds professional skills, his personal characteristics, and, significantly, his commitment to constitutionalism, the rule of law, and free-market economics. These personal observations impel me to conclude not only that Ted possesses the qualifications to be president in terms of intellect, temperament, and knowledge of the issues facing the country; but even more importantly, that he is uniquely the right person to lead America at this time in its history.

Ted Cruzs Intellect Is Extraordinary

Teds academic credentials are well known: Princeton, Harvard Law, and clerk to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Even these outstanding credentials do not fully reveal Teds extraordinary brainpower. Indeed, the first impression that I had of Ted was provided by his ability to move down a learning curve of a new subject at lightning speed and acquire knowledge and skills that most people take years to acquire.

Ted and I arrived at the FTC on the same day in 2001. At that time, I had had over twenty-five years experience in the antitrust field. Ted had none. He came to the agency at the behest of the White House as a reward for the work he did on behalf of George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore recount litigation in Florida, not because of any significant antitrust background. Indeed, the chairman had not previously known Ted.

Upon arriving, however, Ted immediately immersed himself in self-study of antitrust law, consulting the major legal treatises in the field as well as reading and absorbing critical antitrust case law. Amazingly, within a few short months, Ted made himself into a superb antitrust lawyer and policy thinker. Observing this feat at first hand left me in awe of Teds superior intellect. He is surely one of smartest persons I have ever known.

Ted Cruz Has a Winning Temperament

Since becoming the junior senator from Texas, Ted has been labeled by some in the media as the most disliked senator among his colleagues. It is reported that he eschews many senatorial courtesies, and the deference to senior members expected of a junior senator. I personally find this attitude refreshing because I see it arising out of Teds commitment to the principles on which he campaigned, as opposed to warm feelings from his fellow senators.

In my own experience, I found Ted to be very easy to work with. I never knew him to tout his own resume, talk down to anyone, or insist on deference to his position. To the contrary, I knew him to be consistently pleasant, generous with his time, and most importantly, always respectful of others views and work-product. I remember, for example, that Ted often dropped into my office to follow up on some comment or idea that I had offered during an earlier task force meeting. Those meetings generally permitted only limited discussion because of the number of people present, and Ted wanted to explore my thinking further. Unlike many persons holding titles in government, it never occurred to Ted that, because of his higher position as head of the task force, protocol would demand that I be called into his office. Such ego-driven attachment to hierarchy never mattered to Ted. To the contrary, he was only interested in getting the best ideas out of the people around him. All in all, I cannot recall a single instance when I did not enjoy interacting with Ted professionally. He not only displayed a consistent winning temperament throughout the time we were together, but did so in a way that drew out the highest quality of professional thinking from those with whom he worked and supervised.

Ted Cruzs Knowledge of the Issues Is Deep

There is no question that today the country is in bad shape. On the domestic economic front, during the Obama years we have experienced near stagnant economic growth, a decline in labor force participation and middle-class prosperity, and a dramatic increase of big government intrusion into the economy in the form of regulatory overreach, ObamaCare, and massive market distortions owing to the failed $800 billion stimulus package. Many elites have accepted perpetual stagnation as the new normal.

One only need listen to Ted Cruzs speeches or consult his detailed policy papers on his website to realize that he not only rejects this new normal but also that he understands its causes and therefore what needs to be done to bring back the dynamism that the United States economy has historically exhibited. In particular, Ted understands that free-market capitalism is the engine that drives growth and prosperity. He also understands that future growth and prosperity require savings and capital accumulation, not a culture of government handouts and spending coupled with a tax system that discourages work and saving. And perhaps most critically, Ted understands the importance of institutions such as the rule of law and sound money to the efficiency of free-market capitalism. The free market engine only works when it is well lubricated and when it rests on a solid legal and monetary foundation.

Significantly, among all the Republican candidates, Ted Cruz is the only one who can be counted on to remain fully committed to the kind of economic freedom that the country desperately needs to restore its economic dynamism. Contrast him with Donald Trump, who shows a near total absence of economic literacy as exemplified by his pronouncements on trade, healthcare markets, and property rights. Or consider the stark contrast with Senator Marco Rubio, who, despite lauding free markets in nearly every campaign speech, could not wait, in the interest of political expediency, to vote for continuation of the New Deal era anti-free market sugar program after arriving to the senate. In contrast, Ted Cruz has never deviated from a commitment to free trade and unimpaired markets. Indeed, in Iowa he rejected all temptation to pander to voters by lending support to the market-distorting federal ethanol mandates that are so important to certain rent-seeking segments of the Iowa farm economy. Whereas Donald Trumps and Marco Rubios blatant hypocrisy brings into doubt the extent to which either can be trusted to hold steady to free market principles in the face of political opposition, Senator Cruzs courage and commitment to economic freedom cannot be questioned.

In addition to economic issues, it is clear that Ted Cruz is superior to all other candidates respecting his understanding of and commitment to Americas founding constitutional order, including federalism, the separation of powers, and the protection of individual liberty against government coercion. One only need observe Teds passion whenever he talks about religious liberty, the rights given under the Second Amendment, and the most fundamental of all liberty rights, the right to life and self-ownership. Compare Ted, for example, to the constitutionally challenged Donald Trump, who wants to disregard the rule of law and the separation of powers as much as President Obama, and instead simply substitute his own version of an imperial presidency. This is not the place to list the near endless examples of Obamas lawlessness or the ways that Donald Trump would mimic that lawlessness, but I think that it is evident that a Ted Cruz administration would be the antithesis of such lawlessness. The founding principles anchored in individual liberty would be the focal point of a Cruz administration.

I will not dwell on foreign policy because it is outside of my area of competence. As a citizen, however, I share the dismay of many of my fellow Americans at the decline in American prestige and respect as a beacon of liberty that has occurred during the Obama years. Knowing Ted Cruz as I do, I have every confidence that, as president, he would restore Americas leadership among the worlds democracies. I have no such confidence that Mrs. Clinton would achieve such a result. I have little confidence that any of the other Republican candidates, and surely not the carnival barker Donald Trump, would have the seriousness of purpose necessary to secure Americas safety, restore its world leadership role, and maintain the fear and respect of its enemies.

Ted Cruz Is Uniquely the Right Person for President at this Time in History

America has traveled along the path of ever-increasing statism for the better part of a century. From the progressive era onwards, the left has fostered the view that the founders Constitution, which was focused on the protection of individual liberty by constraining the powers of government, needs to be reinterpreted to encompass an ever-growing state that solves problems, awards new rights at the expense of others, and redistributes wealth. The result is a monstrous and intrusive federal government, a constantly increasing dependency on government handouts, a stagnant economy, and a long period of declining American influence in world affairs. America is presently in bad shape and on a wayward course. In my view, America will continue to decline and, indeed, ultimately implode if it continues on the same course. To prevent this outcome, it is imperative that Americans, both individually and collectively as a nation, restore respect for and fidelity to our founding principles, most importantly the rule of law as embodied in the original meaning of the Constitution and its amendments. No other candidate comes as close to having the qualifications, the depth of constitutional knowledge, and the commitment to the American founding as Ted Cruz. If America is to survive as a reservoir of liberty, prosperity, and human dignity, it is crucial that we abandon the errant path that we have followed too long and elect a man like Ted Cruz.

Mr. Gebhard is an antitrust lawyer and economist residing in Arlington, Va. He was a colleague of Senator Cruzs at the Federal Trade Commission from mid-2001 until 2003.
Donald Trumps rise this election season has been historic, amounting to something heretofore unseen in the annals of American politics. Given this, its perhaps not surprising that many are still befuddled by the phenomenon. Pundit Charles Krauthammer is bewildered, saying that for some reason Trump is immune to the laws of contradiction. (In reality, Democrats get away with contradiction continually; the only difference is that the media actually report on Trumps.) Also in the news recently is that some find his appeal among evangelicals inexplicable. Of course, its all quite explainable.

In an earlier piece  which I strongly urge you to read  I expanded on certain factors evident in the Trump phenomenon. Trump is

tapping into anger against the Establishment and over immigration and is a plain-spoken breath of fresh air.

sounding a nationalistic note in an age where it is not the elite norm.

not campaigning as conservative but a populist, which, almost by definition, tends to make one popular in an era of mass discontent.

a crusader against hated political correctness, which has stifled tongues and killed careers nationwide. And in being the first prominent person to defeat the thought police (at least for now)  and by not cowering and apologizing to them  he has become a hero.

And as I wrote, [W]hen you have a hero, leading the troops in the heat of battle against a despised oppressor, you dont worry about his marriages, past ideological indiscretions or salty language. You charge right behind him. This is largely why Trumps contradictions dont matter. Yet more can be said.

I often mention the fault of mirroring, which most everyone exhibits and is when you project your own ideals, values, priorities and mindset onto others. Its particularly amusing when pundits and politicians comment on the electorate and speak as if everyone is a politics wonk who analyzes issues logically within the context of a broad knowledge base (pundits themselves often lack erudition and reason; of course, theyre blissfully unaware of it when thus guilty and nonetheless consider those qualities ideals). But man is not Mr. Spock, and logic and reason play less of a role in peoples decision-making than most of us care to think.

This brings us to what Trump now has. Its something all successful politicians have to a degree and that every iconic one has in spades: an emotional bond with his supporters.

Trump has been criticized for speaking in vague generalities and not providing specifics on the campaign trail. This misses the point. If advertising a product on TV, do you willingly provide mundane details about its ingredients or describe the intricacies of its manufacturing process? Thats more the stuff of documentaries, and, insofar as the vendor goes, would only be found on an Internet product-information page (tantamount to a politicians policy-position page) provided for those interested. No, you say Look 15 years younger! or Lose 20 to 30 pounds in 6 weeks! Or think of the circa 2000 Mazda commercial with the young boy whispering Zoom, zoom! It was advertising an expensive, hi-tech machine but was invoking the unbridled joy of childhood, thus endeavoring to pique peoples passions. And thats the secret: capture your audience on an emotional level and theyre yours.

Or think about affairs of the heart. If youre truly bonded and in love with your wife, its not because you first looked at her and, rendering a logical analysis, thought Well, shes vibrant and seems to have good genes, so wed likely have healthy kids; and shes a darn good cook, and I relish a fine pot roast. Rather, a true romantic bond is somewhat inscrutable, an emotional phenomenon, not an intellectual one. And its powerful enough to cause a woman to follow a man into a life of faith or a life of crime (Bonnie and Clyde); it explains the enduring good marriages  and the bad ones.

Likewise, playing on emotion is not the sole province of morally bad or good politicians  only of successful ones. Hitler did it and Churchill did it; Huey Long did it and Reagan did it. When a candidate stands on a podium expounding upon policy nerd-like or has little to say beyond touting his accomplishments (John Kasich comes to mind), theyre proving they dont get it. Create an emotional bond with the people, and theyre yours. And they will remain yours in the face of others intellectual appeals for their affections, for as Ben Franklin observed, You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into. Note that while this relates the futility of trying to shake a person from passionately embraced error, people can also have an emotional attachment to correct beliefs, for the right or wrong reasons and with or without an intellectual understanding (e.g., Plato spoke of inculcating children, who are too young to grasp abstract moral principles, with an erotic [emotional] attachment to virtue).

And this is what Trump does so masterfully. When he repeats his slogan Make America Great Again, says were going to win under his administration or speaks of building a border wall and getting Mexico to pay for it, its silly to wonder why it resonates despite the lack of detail. Hes marketing, not doing R&D; hes not trying to appeal mainly to the intellect, but the emotions. And you do this with the slogan, not by reciting the list of ingredients. Again, this isnt a commentary on the validity of his recipe, only on the principles of effective campaigning.

Having said this, if a candidate is the real McCoy, hell also have a quality product with a list of ingredients (again, a policy-position webpage) for the discriminating shopper. But if hes smart hell understand that most people are impulse buyers with relatively short memories and recognize the importance of branding himself. Coca-Cola has Coke is it! Nike Just do it! and Barack Obama had Yes, we can! (no, he couldnt  but it worked). Now, can you think of a GOP candidate other than Trump identifiable by way of a catchy and popular slogan? And its no coincidence that Make America Great Again was also Reagans slogan in 1980.

Of course, stating the obvious, to connect with people emotionally you must capitalize on something appealing to them emotionally. Trumps bold nationalism does this. What do the others offer? Jeb Bush is associated with saying that illegal migration is an act of love and John Kasich with Think about the [illegals] families, cmon, folks! which might appeal to illegal migrants if they could speak English. And none of the others will even support suspending Muslim immigration  despite deep and widespread fear of Muslim terrorism  which certainly will appeal to Daesh (ISIS).

Its as if Trump is courting Lady America with wine, roses and his alpha-male persona, while the Establishment candidates are lead-tongued nerds promising a tent with NSA surveillance, a bowl of soup and squatters on a burnt-out lawn.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
Liberals are saying that since Hillary didnt actually hand over secret data to someone shes not guilty of anything. They also use that reasoning to say that her case is nothing like that of General David Petraeus who was found guilty of mishandling classified information.

The liberal position essentially holds that if General Petraeus had brought home top-secret SAP documents and left them on his dining room table in a neighborhood with a large number of recent robberies and then gone on vacation for a few years, he would have done nothing wrong.

Liberal reasoning also says that if General Petraeus had just removed the classification markings from the data he shared then he would have done no wrong.

Yet its hard to imagine anyone in the national security community or the military, or even the FBI or your local police department, thinking that if General Petraeus had done either of those things hed be legally free and clear.

Essentially Hillary is guilty for two reasons:

By not properly marking materials she made it likely that classified data would be spread. By placing classified data on an insecure system she made it likely that classified data would be stolen.

Not properly marking data in an email can easily lead to the following scenario:

a) Hillary forwards an improperly marked email to a subordinate

b) The subordinate assumes the data is unclassified since it is unmarked

c) The subordinate shares the information with the press or with co-workers believing that they, the subordinate, arent doing anything wrong

Thats why properly marking material is critical to ensuring that it is not inadvertently disseminated. Its hard to believe that anyone who has been granted access to classified material would not know that.

Hence its likely that Hillary either knowingly disregarded the rules or that she was grossly negligent in understanding what she needed to know in order to be secretary of state given that mishandling classified data could lead to the deaths of Americans or American agents.

Similarly, given the ubiquity of hacking these days, especially by foreign governments, its a given that any data on a private computer connected to the internet is likely to be accessible to bad actors such as Pakistani intelligence.

Hence to put classified data on a computer associated with the internet is tantamount to putting it on your Facebook page.

Now some might argue that there are so many Facebook pages, or computers on the internet, that its unlikely that foreign actors could stumble on Hillarys data. But of course the foreign actors were looking for computers related to senior government officials and the emails Hillary sent would give them all the info they needed.

Given one of Hillarys emails, accessible from the computers of everyone she ever emailed, would make it easy for threats to find Hilarys server. But even without access to such an email there are ways to find peoples email accounts. Essentially just as its easy to find someone on Facebook if you know their name, it would have been easy for any threat actor to find Hillarys server and then break through its security and access her emails.

For these two reasons, Hillarys actions are far worse than what General Petraeus did, since the person that Petraeus shared the data with had a security clearance and, as far as we know, the data was not exposed to outside hackers. Further, its clear that Hillarys actions exposed far more classified information than Petraeuss actions did.

That Hillary seems to be skating on this issue is another indication of the MSM-Washington Elites increasingly brazen behavior. The Demican establishment feels powerful enough to publically acknowledge that the new American rulers are above the law.

During WWII, average citizens were told that Loose Lips Sink Ships because everyone thought that spies could be listening. In todays hyperconnected cyber world where Beijing is a few milliseconds away from every bit of data connected to the internet, the saying is even truer.

But Hillary and her supporters dont seem to care about the American lives that may have been lost due to Hillarys lawbreaking or negligence. Perhaps because the people who are likely to die were members of the military who dont tend to vote Democrat.

You can read more of toms rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious and feel free to follow him on Twitter
After writing up news coverage of the Islamic advance against the West that covered a time period of just under a week, and then a report covering just under four days, and then coverage that spanned 72 hours, I decided to write up one days worth of reports on the death, darkness, and destruction that infects the West courtesy of the religion of war. A sampling of Sundays stories is noted below.

Germany: Christian refugees positively identified members of the Islamic State living in Germany. Frankfurt plans to house senior citizens and refugees together. A pregnant woman was attacked by six refugees. Yet another nightclub contended with migrants attacking female patrons, following women into the restroom, groping them on the dance floor, and forcing women to run a gauntlet when they exit the club (here, here, here, and here).

Israel: Palestinians continued to attack Israelis, such as on Sunday, when they hurled explosives and used knives to slash people (here).

Netherlands: Two pilots leaving Amsterdams airport were intercepted by the RAF, who cracked their communication codes and foiled their plans to carry out an Islamic State attack and bomb four cities in the United Kingdom in the near future (here).

Sweden: The man who hit and spit on a mother with two small children who was attempting to stop him from stealing the purse of an elderly woman was arrested. And he is being sent back to the last country he was in before entering Sweden: Denmark. Danish authorities have confirmed they are ready to receive him. (Note: My Sunday research pulled reports that varied regarding the assailant, with some stating he is Muslim, some stating he is Tunisian without stating his religion, and an AT commentator Mr_Speck noting on my Saturday blog that the man is a Romanian gypsy, so as of this writing, I cannot confirm with 100% accuracy that the man is a Muslim.) (here, here, here, and here).

United Kingdom: Muslims with more than one wife will gain extra benefits under new U.K. welfare reforms. The family of a convert to Islam who joined the Islamic State blames right-wing media for his radicalization. A Muslim refugee threatened to cut out his wifes heart because she had become too English. A Muslim student was suspended from a Muslim school because he spoke with a member of the opposite sex. A court was told an accused jihadists tracking tag fell off because he was praying five times a day. Two Muslim men sexually assaulted and robbed a young woman as she was leaving a nightclub. The chairman of a mosque called for a boycott of the nations counter-terrorism program. The police claim they lost a Rotherham sex grooming gang victims diary that was filled with detailed accounts of the abuse. Leaders of the teachers union colluded with Islamic supremacists to thwart anti-terror initiatives (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

EU: Authorities handed out comic strips to teach migrants not to attack women and that homosexuals kissing is OK. A new report showed that nearly half of those living in Europe hate Jews. The Islamic State released a video showing the Paris jihadists carrying out barbaric acts, including beheadings, in Syria. PEGIDA is planning mass demonstrations across Europe on February 6 (here, here, here, and here).

United States: A bomb scare forced a flight that originated in Texas to be diverted to Ireland. The CEO of the Chobani yogurt company urged the company to hire Muslim refugees. A Muslim in Florida planned to dress up as the Joker and gun down his boss. A Minnesota chapter of the United Way honored a Somali refugee with an award for his non-profit organization that, it turns out, is defunct because it missed important filing deadlines (here, here, here, and here).

In sum, Islamic supremacy asserted itself, from individual acts against individual people to plots for large scale attacks against the West. Meanwhile, Muslims and idiotic Islamist sympathizers made various attempts to quash our ability to intercept attacks before they happen, Europe continued to make pathetic attempts to turn savages into civilized human beings, leaders made one insane decision after another, stupid excuses were offered for unacceptable things, mosques proved dangerous havens for dangerous people, women are constant targets of sexual assault, and a hell of a lot of Europeans and Muslims (that goes without saying) still hate Jews.

All in a days work when evil is at the helm.

Hat tips to the amazing folks who chronicle Islamic supremacism 24/7/365: Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, Religion of Peace, Creeping Sharia, Gates of Vienna, Counter Jihad Report. Additional hat tips: Breitbart, RT, Express, The Tundra Tabloids, Mirror, Telegraph, Daily Mail, NY Daily News, Legal Insurrection, Elder of Zion, i24 News, Algemeiner
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken in December shows that more than 60% of respondents have little or no confidence that the federal government can solve the major problems facing the country in 2016.

This bodes well for Republicans, who generally support reducing the power of Washington and looking to state and local government to address problems.

Terrorism edged health care as the issue most often mentioned  each by about one-third of those questioned  when people were asked to volunteer the issues they believe Washington should address this election year. The polling suggests an electorate more focused on the economy and domestic affairs than on foreign policy. Two-thirds of respondents included an economic issue on their priority list, and about 4 in 5 named a domestic policy other than the economy. In addition to those who mentioned terrorism, nearly half added another foreign policy matter, and immigration was the next most frequent topic raised.

The issues that come to the fore are not Democratic issues; they are Republican/conservative issues. Nowhere to be seen: abortion on demand, income inequality, or government takeover of health care. The fact that health care is still a big issue despite the passage and implementation of Obamacare should worry Democrats, as should the high standing of unemployment as an issue when the "official" rate is about 5%.

Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government's ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats. "They can't even seem to get together and pass anything that's of any importance," said Doris Wagner, an 81-year-old Republican from Alabama who said she's "not at all confident" about seeing solutions in 2016. "It's so self-serving what they do," said Wagner, who called herself a small-government conservative. In Texas, Democrat Lee Cato comes from a different political perspective but reached a similar conclusion. She allowed for "slight" confidence, but no more. The 71-year-old bemoaned a system of "lobbyists paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to get Congress to do what they want" for favored industry. "They aren't doing anything for you and me," she said. Joe Flood, a GOP-leaning independent, said he sees government's inner-workings in his job as a federal contractor. A 49-year-old resident of the District of Columbia, Flood described the executive branch as a bureaucratic behemoth and the legislative branch as an endlessly partisan wrangle. "That's why government can't get anything done," he said. Along with terrorism and health care, respondents were most likely to cite immigration (29 percent), education (25 percent) and unemployment (24 percent) as priorities. Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to mention unemployment, though there was a racial disparity. Almost half of black respondents mentioned the issue, compared with only a one-fifth of whites. A predictable partisan divide was apparent in other issues.

It's still nearly 11 months to go until the vote actually takes place. But I suspect that these GOP issues will, if anything, become more important nationally than any issue the Democrats are currently running on. The advantage on issues doesn't necessarily translate into votes, but it's a very good start and is something Republicans can build on.
Nearly a hundred years ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of the Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

One thing you have to give the conservatives at National Review: they know their Chesterton.

As is widely known by now, the premiere voice of conservatism in America, National Review, recently published an issue dedicated to stopping Donald Trump in his quest for the presidency. The issue contains an editors statement and a collection of Trump-bashing testimonials from 22 sober, distinguished conservatives. Its objective is to take a Republican candidate who is leading in all the polls, who has held a string of massively popular rallies, whose proposals have both (a) inspired a wide swath of regular, often working class, often apolitical folk to unprecedented enthusiasm and (b) defined the national conversation for over half a year  the N.R. broadside attempts to take this candidates juggernaut of success and to stand athwart its path and cry halt.

My first question is, how and why did this issue come about? This was obviously an institutional decision. Did it begin as a spontaneous movement at the N.R. water cooler? Or was there an external mover (or external money) involved?

Because since when did the intelligent, independent minds at National Review try to win an argument by ganging up? What is the logic behind that? We all agree, so we must be right? This is condescending and sanctimonious in a way that would make the editors of Moveon.org gasp and stand up to applaud.

That the independent thoughts of independent writers need to be marshaled into a phalanx speaks to a degree of desperation and loathing on someones part. The method belies the message. My question is, who was one to say get the rope?

The motivation is suspicious because the criticisms brought to bear against Trump are mostly the same tedious jumble of points against the man and his policies that have been heard for six months.

Trumps conservatism is unreliable. Glenn Beck: Trump supported the stimulus. Russell Moore: Trumps conversion to being pro-life is recent. Ben Domenech: Trump advocates a rejection of our Madisonian inheritance (I had missed where Trump said that).

Trump is unqualified. Andrew C. McCarthy: Trump doesnt know who Hassan Nasrallah is. N.R. editors: The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable. (An interesting principle from the advocates of the Founders citizen legislator model.)

Trump is boorish. Mona Charen: Trump constantly insults women. Bill Kristol: Trump is vulgar.

Trump is authoritarian. Mark Helprin and David Boaz both bring out the comparison to Mussolini. No one mentioned Hitler. No need to go to extremes, after all.

Interestingly, except for some references to immigration and the proposal to temporarily ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States (see below), there is scant criticism of Trumps actual positions, excepting that he doesnt really believe them and they are too vague anyway. This is no surprise since, after all, Trumps positions on most core issues deviate little from conservative orthodoxy.

Trumps tax plan  and what is more core to a conservative than taxes?  proposes reduction in business and capital gains taxes very much in line with that of other candidates. Trump claims to be pro-life and that he has evolved on the issue. Is that so unbelievable in the age of ultrasound and the recently revealed gruesome procedures at Planned Parenthood? Trump argues consistently for a strong defense and better treatment of veterans. Do voters especially care if Trump doesnt, like Carly Fiorina, have a specific target number of army corps and aircraft carriers in mind?

The only actual issues that the N.R. posse undertake to address are the ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and the illegal alien issue.

With regard to the ban, Michael Mukasey argues that Trumps idea is nonsense because we already know what is going on  to wit, we face a supremacist movement based in Islam that is intent on destroying Western civilization  and have intelligent suggestions for dealing with it. He claims that a ban would ensure the enmity of those whose support we need and that implementation of such a ban would be impractical.

The fact is, however, that large numbers of Americans view Trumps proposed ban favorably because they recognize that Islam itself is the problem and that those who subscribe to an ideology that calls for the execution of apostates, heretics, and homosexuals are not likely  quite apart from their immediate plans to cause mayhem or not  to add positively to the American cultural quilt.

As for the intelligent suggestions for dealing with radical Islam, Mukasey chooses not to elaborate. Better to just obstruct a solution to the problem.

Finally, lets look at immigration. The National Review editors and contributors evidently do not grasp that a large section of the American population views the uncontrolled movement of millions of Latin Americans over a score of years to all parts of the United States as an invasion that has wrought havoc on wages, filled emergency rooms, increased crime, led to the trashing of our state and national parks, and drained the public purse, all so that urban elites can have cheap nannies and unethical burghers can have cheap labor to put that third Mercedes in the driveway.

Michael Medved argues:

[Trumps] much-heralded hard line on immigration discards pragmatic reform policies favored by the two most popular conservatives of the last half century, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

The N.R. editors add:

Trump pledges to deport the 11 million illegals here in the United States, a herculean administrative and logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government.

The American people, meanwhile, will be excused for not being convinced by eight years of George W. Bush and seven years of Barack Obama that enforcing our laws and sending illegal aliens back to their home countries is, in fact, impossible. Reagan, by the way, was famously convinced that Americans got swindled by the amnesty he signed into law.

Nevertheless, the response of the N.R. elites to the fury that Americans feel at having their government palpably betraying them for so many years is, in effect, suck it up.

The National Review hit piece is a shameful scandal. It reeks of condescension and resonates with impotent rage. It looks on at the Trump phenomenon that unfolds in its own backyard with a mixture of the fascination and jealousy of a sick child. Ben Domenech, perhaps unwittingly, sums it up nicely when he says:

In order to build a governing majority, conservatives do not need Trumps message or agenda, but they urgently need his supporters[.]

Ah, yes. No worry that the reason they are supporters is because of the message or agenda.

At least the N.R. writers are mostly quieter than in the past about the threat of Trumps nomination giving the election to Hillary Clinton. It seems, after all, that that is really not what they are worried about.
Hillary Clinton is every bit the congenital liar William Safire said she was in January 1996. She lies easily, without compunction, as though it is her moral right to lie in service of her own power. She lied consistently throughout her husband's presidency, about all things, large and small. The list of scandal "gates" of which she was an integral part would be too long to cite, but all of the items are easily searchable. Suffice it to say that, like the current occupant of the White House, her behavior over all these years indicates a narcissistic personality disorder.

There are many traits that signify personality disorder. Hillary Clinton exhibits at the very least four of them:

Narcissism  A set of behaviors characterized by a pattern of grandiosity, self-centered focus, need for admiration, self-serving attitude and a lack of empathy or consideration for others

"Not My Fault" Syndrome  The practice of avoiding personal responsibility for one's own words and actions

Pathological Lying  Persistent deception by an individual to serve their own interests and needs with little or no regard to the needs and concerns of others. A pathological liar is a person who habitually lies to serve their own needs

Sense of Entitlement  An unrealistic, unmerited or inappropriate expectation of favorable living conditions and favorable treatment at the hands of others.

These four traits are essential Hillary. That she aspires to be our president is as frightening as Donald Trump's goal of winning the White House. He exhibits many, if not more, of the same qualities that Clinton does.

Trump's personality traits include

Bullying  Any systematic action of hurting a person from a position of relative physical, social, economic, or emotional strength

False Accusations  Patterns of unwarranted or exaggerated criticism directed towards someone else

Frivolous Litigation  The use of unmerited legal proceedings to hurt, harass, or gain an economic advantage over an individual or organization

Impulsiveness  The tendency to act or speak based on current feelings rather than logical reasoning

Self-Aggrandizement  A pattern of pompous behavior, boasting, narcissism, or competitiveness designed to create an appearance of superiority

Targeted Humor, Mocking and Sarcasm  Any sustained pattern of joking, sarcasm or mockery which is designed to reduce another individuals reputation in their own eyes or in the eyes of others

Belittling, Condescending, and Patronizing  This kind of speech is a passive-aggressive approach to giving someone a verbal putdown while maintaining a facade of reasonableness or friendliness.

Classic Trump, all of them. Both Clinton and Trump display Situational Ethics  a philosophy that promotes the idea that, when dealing with a crisis, the end justifies the means, and a rigid interpretation of rules and laws can be set aside if a greater good or lesser evil is served by doing so.

For a nation that can count as its own intellectual giants like George Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, and so many others in between, how does one explain our arrival at the present moment? For seven years a classic narcissist has been president. He has done incalculable damage to the country, much of it purposeful, much of it due to incompetence. He will leave office proud of his dubious "accomplishments": a doubling of the national debt, the reordering and near destruction of our health care, a no-growth economy, exacerbation of racial hostility, a submissive deal with Iran, the release of hundreds of terrorists from Guantanamo, the release of thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prisons onto our streets, a Middle East in barbaric chaos, the flooding of the country with tens of thousands of immigrants who will never be assimilated, etc. The American people are understandably angry. But Clinton? Trump? Something is very, very wrong with our national judgment. People like this are not qualified leaders; they are dangerous in leadership positions.

The quality of education of our young has been declining for at least two generations thanks to the dictates of multiculturalism and the anti-Americanism of the tenured radicals who took over university faculties in the 1970s. University graduates know far less today than high school students did through the 1950s. Today's students are saturated with critical race and gender theories but know little about American history beyond the sin of slavery. It appears that our ability to properly judge moral character and intelligence has been declining along with our educational standards. Neither Clinton nor Trump should ever get close to the White House as commander-in-chief of the United States. This should be obvious to every voting citizen.

See more at http://outofthefog.website/personality-disorders-1/2015/12/6/narcissistic-personality-disorder-npd.
National Reviews attempted destruction of Donald Trumps candidacy is its worst mistake in the journals long history. Whether it will result in the demise of the magazine  a significant part of Bill Buckleys noble legacy  is uncertain but at least possible. If it does, the outcome will be regrettable but just.

Attempting to destroy a candidate who, by far and for long, has been leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination is without precedent in the history of conservative journalism. It violates the fundamental precept of successful politics in electoral democracies, especially Americas two-party, coalition-dependent system.

Any candidate who brings massive new positive interest in your party, and at the same time has the potential to take a big slice out of the oppositions pie, is your friend. Do not insult him (and by inference his supporters). Instead, figure out how to turn this potentially fleeting gift into a stable electoral advantage that benefits the partys ultimate nominee, be it the man who brought it or someone else.

Why is it that Democrats understand this principle clearly, while the best and brightest among Republicans miss it so often? For month after month, Bernie Sanders has been peddling an electorally poisonous brew of warmed over Marxism and eat-the-rich revolution, and yet nary a nasty word has been directed at him or his deluded followers by Democratic Party leaders or their partisan journals.

Could it be that Democrats understand much better than Republicans the obvious: that the only standard for success in electoral politics is winning, and a political party has no enemies among its supporters?

Some of the authors of N.R.s Trump hit piece claim that William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan would be horrified by Trumps candidacy. They have the right verb but the wrong direct object: Reagan and Buckley would be horrified, but not by Trump. Rather, they would be horrified by the political stupidity of denouncing someone who has induced millions of Americans to watch the Republican debates and hear conservative arguments who otherwise would not have and, even more significantly, someone who increasingly appears to have a real chance of bringing back to the Republican fold many hard-pressed working-class and struggling middle-class voters, large numbers of whom have been beyond the partys reach since Reagan.

Allow me to suggest that N.R.s editors and writers, instead of carrying torches and pitchforks to Trumps castle, could better have spent their time honestly asking and answering the easy question: why has Trump happened?

By now, four months and counting since hes has been running away with the race, the answer should be obvious: its both his issues and his manner.

On the issues, the single substantive position that catapulted Trump into the lead  and has kept him there  is illegal immigration. Trump was just one of the pack, and then he promised to deport the illegals and build a wall. He soared immediately to the top and has stayed there since.

It cant be said often enough or strongly enough: an enormous majority of regular Republican and conservative voters (and a substantial minority of gettable Democrats) are deeply disturbed by the apparent decision of Americas political and corporate elites to radically alter the cultural, ethnic, and political makeup of the country as a means of creating an endless supply of cheap labor (Republican elites) and dependable big-government votes (Democrat elites).

That same overwhelming majority of Republican/conservative voters is furious at the party establishments multiple betrayals on the issue, from George W. Bushs sneak-attack attempted amnesty to Marco Rubios apostasy on comprehensive immigration reform to Jeb Bushs act of love. The leaderships illegal immigration war on its voters created a massive opportunity for a Republican candidate to be clear, tough, and believable. Trump seized it. Maybe he too will betray us  as the voters must think by now  but the others already have.

Trump only underscored his seriousness on the issue when he doubled down by suggesting at least a temporary halt to Muslim immigration. From Merkel to Cameron to Jeb Bush to Rubio, the Western establishment is trying to sell the notion that Muslim immigration to the West is benign, but a substantial and growing percentage of ordinary citizens are not buying it. And increasingly the elites substantively empty epithets  Islamophobe, racist, nativist  are met with the indifference they deserve. To ordinary citizens in the West, importing massive numbers of people from a culture most of whose values are anathema to us, including and especially their atrocious treatment of women, who account for about 99.99% of the acts of terror worldwide, and who want to transplant their 7th-century culture to us rather than assimilate to ours...such an influx doesnt seem like the brightest idea.

But it is not merely Trumps stance on immigration that accounts for his rise. He speaks  in phrases and cadences familiar to the non-Ivy League-educated public  of unapologetic patriotism, returning manufacturing jobs to the America, and a desire to be president of the United States rather than of the world. All of this is welcome, and  the essence of the matter  not merely to regular Republican voters.

And in style, Trump is gloriously indifferent to the elites P.C. rules  to which the Republican establishment has so cravenly caved  rules that spell out what people may think, what they may say, and how they must say it. Trumps verbal style and P.C. indifference, which reads as vulgar to N.R. writers, is a breath of fresh air to an American public fretted with increasingly stifling restrictions on freedom of thought and public discussion.

I dont know whom I would choose if asked to pick the Republican nominee now.

But I do know that Trumps presence in the race, and his startling success thus far, should have provided a road map for the Republican nominee  for the issues, clarity, and boldness needed to prevail in the electoral climate of 2016. The positions Trump has taken and the forcefulness of his advocacy, if adopted by whoever the nominee is, could bring back the Reagan Democrats, and others, and could produce a substantial GOP presidential victory in the fall.

N.R.s demonizing Trump is worse than foolish. Its political malpractice of the worst sort: a suicidal rejection of a great opportunity to expand the GOP presidential vote.
The Kerouac House (1418 Clouser Ave, Orlando, Florida) hosts a resident author about every four months. Authors are picked by a committee that reads through over 300 submissions. Resident authors do not need to worry about room and board. They get time to strictly focus on their writing. I had sketched Kerouac House resident Ciara Shuttleworth hard at work as she crafted her poetry in the back of the Kerouac House. Besides being one of the more prolific writers, she was also one of the most social writers. She would hold court late into the night on the front porch of the bungalow with local authors and artists.

The reading on March 25, 2015 was Ciaras chance to share her poetry with Orlando literati. Visit in a authors are often surprised by Orlandos vibrant literary community. She decided to share the limelight with Florida poets that were dear friends, Sandra Simonds, and Erin Hoover. Ciara created fictionalized biographies for her friends that combined myth and heroism. These histories were worth the price of admission alone. Two more tame biographies follow.

Erin Hoover is a poet living in Tallahassee, Florida, with work published in Prairie Schooner, Gargoyle, Redivider, and Sugar House Review, and anthologized in Best New Poets 2013. Erin edits The Southeast Review in addition to volunteering for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is a PhD candidate in Florida State Universitys Creative Writing Program. Before moving to Florida, she worked as a communications director in New York City and co-founded Late Night Library, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustaining book culture and supporting authors early in their careers. Her Twitter is @ErinHoover.

Ciara Shuttleworth was born in San Francisco and grew up in Nebraska, Nevada, and Washington state. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, The New Yorker, The Norton Introduction to Literature 11e, and The Southern Review. Shuttleworth received an MFA in poetry from University of Idaho, a BFA in painting/drawing from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a BA in studio art from Gustavus Adolphus College.
There are quite a few mobile processor manufacturers currently active out there. Some of those manufacturers are more popular than others, and Im sure that pretty much everyone reading this have heard of Qualcomm (company), or, at least, their Snapdragon processors which are powering tons of smartphone, tablets and smartwatches all over the world. Well, Qualcomm is just one company out there, and even though theyre quite probably the most popular ones, other companies have created quite a bit of competition for the US-based giant last year. Well, 2016 is certainly going to be an interesting year for mobile processor manufacturers, and Qualcomm is looking to battle quite a few companies in order to stay ahead, read on.

As some of you might know, Snapdragon 810 was Qualcomms flagship processor for 2015, and unfortunately for the company, that SoC was quite problematic (at first). The first iteration of the Snapdragon 810 SoC havent been performing all that well, the term overheating was used all too often when this SoC is concerned, and that gave other companies a chance to get closer to Qualcomm in terms of market share, and also to promote their name on the expense of this US-based giant. Samsungs Exynos 7420 14nm 64-bit octa-core processor is, by many people, regarded to be the best mobile processor of last year. Samsungs very own chip offered great performance and didnt experience issues similar to Snapdragon 810. Samsungs Exynos 7420 processor was used in only 5 devices last year though, four Samsung flagships, and one additional handset, read on.

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The Exynos 7420 has been included in the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, and the Galaxy Note 5. Samsung has also shipped the Exynos 7420 over to Meizu, a China-based smartphone manufacturer which has utilized this chip in their PRO 5 flagship which has been introduced in September last year. Meizu is one of the fastest growing smartphone manufacturing companies these days, but their brand is nowhere close as popular as Samsungs, of course, so even though Exynos 7420 was one of the best (if not the best) SoC of 2015, it wasnt exactly used by that many companies, like the Snapdragon 810. Next year looks far more promising though, rumors say that Samsung intends on releasing two flagship processors, and they will be almost identical. The Exynos 8890 will, allegedly, going to be used by Samsung only, and the Exynos 8870 will be available to other companies. The only difference between these two chips will be clock speed, the Exynos 8890 will have a slightly higher clock speed than the 8870.

That being said, the Snapdragon and Exynos brands arent the only ones out there, not by a long shot. These two processors might be considered to be the most powerful ones in 2015, but other companies are looking to mess with Qualcomms and Samsungs plans. MediaTek has been around for quite some time now, this Taiwan-based company was initially making only low and mid-range SoCs, but their Helio X10 64-bit octa-core flagship processor was extremely popular last year, and the Helio X20 64-bit deca-core chip will soon be available, and is looking to compete with the two aforementioned brands. Another company is worth mentioning here, Huawei. Their Kirin-branded processors have been around for a long time now, but unfortunately, only Huaweis devices have been using them. The Kirin 950, which was announced a couple of weeks ago, has proved to be truly great. This processor is powering Huaweis Mate 8 flagship phablet, and has showed not only great benchmarking results, but great performance as well. We still dont know if Huawei intends on offering their Kirin SoCs to other OEMs in 2016, but we do hope that will happen, it would bring more competitions to the market, which is always great for the end consumer (all of us). Now, theres also LGs Nuclun flagship SoC which is expected to arrive this year. LGs first Nuclun chip had issues with overheating and LG decided to go back to the drawing board and improve their offering. Well, weve seen several reports claiming that this is LGs year, and that their Nuclun SoC might be ready for launch. We still dont know much about this, so well just have to wait and see, but it was sure worth mentioning, if nothing else.

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So, there are basically four SoC brands weve mentioned here, the Snapdragon, Exynos, Kirin and MediaTek. All of the companies behind these processors are going to release not only flagship processors, but also a number of low and mid-range offerings as well, but lets focus on their flagship chips, shall we. Based on leaked benchmarks and all sorts of info, Snapdragon 820 and Exynos 8890 are the frontrunners this year, but Kirin 950 and Helio X20 have also offered great results in various benchmarks, and it will surely going to be interesting to see can they challenge Qualcomm and Samsung.

It is almost certain that Snapdragon SoCs will, once again, going to be most used in various devices across the globe, especially by the most popular companies out there. LG, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and a number of other manufacturers will almost certainly going to utilize Qualcomms chips, but considering how fast Chinese and Indian markets are growing (especially the latter one), MediaTek has a great chance of stealing some market share away from others, and basically increase their profits in 2016, especially if they play their cards right. I wont comment on Kirin considering Huawei still didnt say if theyll ship their SoC to other OEMs, well make sure to report back if something like that happens, of course.

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The most interesting battle this year will be between Qualcomm and Samsung, Snapdragon 820 and Exynos 8890 will go head-to-head in the market, and considering Samsung will probably offer their Exynos 8870 SoC to other OEMs (aside from Meizu), it is going to be interesting to see how many companies will actually use it. Meizu is probably going to deploy the Exynos processor once again, but what about others? Well, well see, but Qualcomm is in a great position of remaining at the very top of the pile, even though this US-company will have to accept the fact their market share will shrink this year. Keep in mind these are only assumptions, we wont know anything for sure until the end of this year, of course.

So, can MediaTek challenge Qualcomm and Samsung? Well, it all depends on what do you mean by challenge. If by that you mean steal some market share from these two companies, then yeah, they probably can. Helio X20 looks extremely promising, and chances are it is going to perform really well, as did the Helio X10, but as far as sheer power goes, this processor will not be able to compete with the Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890. MediaTeks processors might be really popular in Asia, but in the rest of the world theyre still not that well known, and quite frankly people trust Qualcomm and Samsung more. I believe the same thing can be said for certain companies out there, whether we like it or not, brand name matters, especially if a great product stands behind it.

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This year seems to be really promising as far as technology goes, and especially mobile technology. Well see even more wearables than last year, home security systems are on a rise as well, and well, of course, also see tons of great smartphones hit the market as well. We do believe that Snapdragon will remain on top, and that MediaTek will manage to increase their market share, while Exynos 8890 sure looks promising, and might even compete directly with Qualcomms flagship processor. Either way, what do you think? Feel free to share your opinions with us, and let us know what is your favorite mobile SoC manufacturer, and who do you think will make the biggest progress this year.
HTC is one of those well-known smartphone manufacturing companies, which are trying to find their way back to the top. This Taiwan-based company has been having financial issues for quite some time now, theyre simply not selling enough devices, and are doing their best to turn things around. HTC has introduced a number of smartphones last year, and their new flagship is expected to arrive in a couple of months. That being said, well probably see plenty more One M10 aka HTC Perfume rumors in the coming weeks.

Were not here to talk about the companys flagship smartphone, but their allegedly upcoming smartwatch. Plenty of smartphone OEMs have already released their smartwatches to date, like Motorola, Huawei, Samsung, LG, Asus, Sony but HTC wasnt one of them. The company is focusing on their smartphone and VR businesses at the moment, but weve already seen quite a few leaks regarding HTCs smartwatch, none of those leaks surfaced recently though. A new rumor did surface quite recently, and its coming from @evleaks, a well-known tipster. According to the source, HTC might introduce their smartwatch in April, which means it wont be announced during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Now, this is quite interesting on its own merit, but considering the fact that recent reports said that HTC plans to announce their flagship handset during a separate event as well, it is possible that both of these devices will launch in April.

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As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, we havent seen many HTC smartwatch rumors lately, but some did pop up quite a while ago. Some of those rumors said that this watch will run Android Wear once it gets announced, but that was to be expected, it is hard to expect HTC to use any other platform than Android Wear. This smartwatch will quite probably be made out of metal, and you can expect a somewhat different design than the competition, at least we hope HTC will provide that. This company really needs to differentiate if they want to succeed, plus offer really compelling products at the same time. Thats pretty much it, if any additional HTC smartwatch rumors / leaks pop up, youll be the first to know.
While the LG G5 is slated to be announced next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That hasnt stopped the leaks from coming. Actually, that means more and more leaks are coming out. In the past couple of years, weve seen countless cases appear on Amazon, Mobile Fun and other retailer websites for devices that have not yet been announced. And this year is no different. As the LG G5 gets closer to its revealing, we have more cases appearing. And this time we have one from Armourdillo.

Looking at the picture, above, you can see that the mock up looks a whole lot like the LG G5 we saw over the weekend. On the back, we have what appears to be a fingerprint sensor. As well as the camera module on the back which is a pretty wide oval. Something we havent seen much on smartphones in recent years. It looks like the camera is on the right with various sensors and flash in the center and left side. We can also see that the volume rocker has been moved to the right side. Something weve seen on recent leaks of the LG G5 as well. We cant see much on the bottom, but there appears to be three cut outs there. One for the speaker, micro USB or USB Type-C port and the other is likely a microphone hole. The leak we saw over the weekend was a USB Type-C port, so it wouldnt surprise us to see USB Type-C here on the LG G5.

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Case manufacturers are often correct in their renderings of unreleased smartphones. This is normally because they get the exact measurements of the smartphone before release so that they can create their cases and lines of accessories so theyll be available for launch. While this should still be treated as a leak or a rumor, there is a very strong possibility that this could be what the LG G5 ends up looking like when all is said and done in Barcelona next month. You can head on over to Mobile Funs website and check out the case for yourself.
Just the other day, YouTube hired Jaunt VRs Scott Broock as its Global VR Evangelist, and earlier this month, Googles Vice President of product management, Clay Bavor, was reportedly put in charge of the companys newly-created VR division. If those reports were not convincing enough proof that Google is betting big on virtual reality, then the latest report ought to do it for sure. The Mountain View, California-based company is, apparently, looking for multiple personnel to work on its VR projects, as is evident from a number of job postings on its website. Among the positions up for grabs is that of a Hardware Engineering Technical Lead Manager, a PCB Layout Engineer, an Engineering Project Specialist and an Electrical Hardware Engineer.

Coming to the first job, the listing spells out exactly what the tech giant is looking for in its Hardware Engineering Technical Lead Manager. The company says that the person will drive the design and execution of our ever increasing product portfolio and will be responsible for the building multiple CE devices and will put together the right team that will scale with our product offering. Meanwhile, the PCB layout designer will be responsible for fast-paced boards for consumer devices so as to ensure that these cutting-edge devices are reliable and robust. Most of the listed jobs would require candidates to have a minimum of BS degree in Electronics, but an MS degree in Electrical Engineering is said to be preferred, along with at least five to seven years of experience in working in relevant fields.

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It will be interesting to see when these VR devices from Google finally hit the store shelves, but consumer-oriented VR devices were probably something that was always on the back of Googles mind, and the company was probably just biding its time to throw its hat in the ring. Google, of course, one of the first companies to give regular users a taste of virtual reality at their fingertips with its Cardboard project. The company has also spend big bucks with its acquisition of the tech startup, Magic Leap, whose augmented reality project may also prove to be the backbone for a future offering from Google that may someday potentially be a competitor to Microsofts upcoming HoloLens AR headset.
At the IFA trade show in Berlin last year, Japanese consumer electronics major, Sony, unveiled not one, but three entirely different smartphones as part of its flagship Xperia Z5 range. While the priciest of the lot, the Xperia Z5 Premium, comes with a 4K display, the regular Z5 and the Z5 Compact handsets come with hardware that are a little less emotive, but both devices are fairly decent performers in their own rights. While the devices were introduced as far back as in late August, the two more affordable models are yet to hit US stores, but that anomaly will reportedly soon be rectified, seeing as the multinational giant will apparently start selling the handsets in the country from early February.

However, those looking forward to getting their hands on the latest and greatest from Sony may well have to curb their enthusiasm about the upcoming gadgets. Thats because earlier this month, media reports started claiming something that sounded incredible at first  Sonys Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact will not feature the side-mounted fingerprint scanners that have piqued the interest of both enthusiasts and the media alike. While many Sony fans stateside might have been hoping that the reports would turn out to be false, unfortunately for tech fans, as it turns out, the report is indeed very true. In fact, Sony has now come out and admitted that the two less-expensive Xperia handsets will indeed come without the much talked-about fingerprint scanners in the US.

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Whats now infuriating and dumbfounding some industry watchers and tech bloggers is that Sony didnt even bother providing a proper reason for its decision to leave out one of the headline features in the two aforementioned smartphones. By way of explanation, all that the consumer electronics company said, was that it was a business decision to leave out the biometric sensors in the devices meant for the US market. Now why that should be the case is anybodys guess, but even though theres not much more officially forthcoming from Sony at the moment, hopefully the company will explain its position in the days and weeks to come, so as to clear the air between the company and its would-be customers.
Like many other Android manufacturers, Huawei also has other businesses. Many of you may or may not know that Huawei makes all sorts of hardware for networks. Which we got a chance to see up close during our media tour in Shenzhen back in November of 2015. Huawei equipment is used in networks around the world, and many of you are likely unaware of the fact that you are using their hardware. The issue with Huawei is that the US government believes that the Chinese government uses the company to spy on the US. Something that we cannot confirm, but it has the government a bit paranoid.

When Sprint bought Clearwire in 2013, one of the concessions they made for the deal to be approved was to stop using Huaweis hardware on that Clearwire network. Sprint agreed and even stated that they would destroy that hardware. Well here we are nearly three years later and Sprint is still using Huaweis gear on their towers. Adrienne Norton, who is the spokesperson for Sprints network, stated that Huawei equipment will be destroyed back in November. She continued other equipment will either be recycled or reused. The non-Huawei sites that are not being kept as part of Sprints network plan will have equipment removed in phases as lease terms expire or are terminated. However it appears that the equipment from Huawei has not been destroyed, according to a report. According to the report, a Sprint spokesperson stated that they arent commenting on timing in regards to removing Huawei gear.

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Back in 2012, the US government released a report that called out Huawei as well as ZTE for security threats in the US. Claiming that they could be used as backdoors for the Chinese to spy on the US. As youd expect, the two companies denied the allegations. Since then both companies have been locked out of network infrastructure contracts. With Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and others using Nokia and Ericsson in their place.

While its true that Sprint was due to decommission their WiMax network in November  which is where all of their Huawei gear is being used. They were also ordered by the court to keep their WiMax network up for a bit longer. So while Sprint is still using Huawei hardware on their towers, its due to having to keep their WiMax network up and running.
In the world of US networks and carriers, AT&T and Verizon are constantly battling it out for the top spot, while T-Mobile and Sprint seem obsessed with getting third-place. For a long time, this was the way things panned out among the Big Four, but a few years ago, T-Mobiles upstart CEO, John Legere, changed the way these carriers, carried themselves. Now, its common place to see Mr Legere calling AT&T and Verizon Dumb and Dumber and generally trying to make Sprint look stupid. Verizon had no choice but to get in on the act as well, and most recently they tried to visualize data from RootMetrics that worked in their favor using balls, needless to say their CDMA rival, Sprint, did not fare well in this comparison. Now, Sprint is using the same technique to fight back, with different data, but the same type of balls.

The Verizon ad, which appeared a few weeks ago now, basically claimed their network was the top dog, using data from RootMetrics  from the 1st Half of 2015 that is  which put Verizon as Number 1 in calls, data, reliability and speed. Using a third-party, independent firm like RootMetrics is nothing new to these guys, and if you havent seen the ad that Sprint has gotten so worked up about, you can watch it here:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785YQKmgiTo

Now, Sprint has come out with a new ad of their own, using the same style of balls to get their point across, but theyve skewed the data a little bit. While they claim that their network is quicker for half the price, it seems Sprint is only talking about their LTE Plus Network and the data comes from Nielsens NMP data from October to December of last year. Granted, Sprints data used in their ad appears to be a little more up-to-date than Verizons, but it appears as though Sprint has chosen to go with a very specific portion of their network to make such a claim and doesnt take into account, or even mention coverage details. The ad is below for those interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KZTIgFzGIc

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Sprint is using this opportunity to announce that theyre giving new customers 50% off their bills for a limited time if they switch, so theres definitely a motive here beyond throwing shade at Verizon. What this really comes down to is a classic case of he said/he said by using two different sets of data from different periods and different providers. Regardless, it is a little amusing to see such massive corporations go at it like this.
Just days after reports emerged that Google has struck a deal with the tax authorities in the UK, the opposition is apparently questioning the cozy deal the company was given. Ms. Meg Hillier, the current Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, let her displeasure be known in no uncertain terms, when she expressed her ire through social networking platform, Twitter, over the weekend. According to her and the left wing Labor party that she represents in the British Parliament, the 130 million ($185 million) deal that the American tech company struck with Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC), is derisory. Which is exactly why, Ms. Hillier says that she would summon both Google as well as the HMRC to explain why the company wouldnt be paying more on its cumulative 10-year profits in the country.

Google has apparently made about 24 billion in revenues in the UK since the year 2006, which is when the current investigation dates back to. According to a back of the envelope calculation being talked about, Googles taxable income should come to about eight million dollars over the past decade, should the companys reported thirty percent global profit margins hold true for the UK as well. In which case, Googles tax liabilities should be around ten times what the company is currently acknowledging, at 2 billion and not the 200 million odd, which is what Googles tax bill comes to, including the amount already paid by the company as part of its yearly returns.

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As a little back story, Google on Friday, reportedly struck a deal with the HMRC, to pay 130 million ($185 million) in back taxes in the country, after a multi-year investigation into the companys controversial tax practices found that it had been avoiding paying taxes in the country by channeling its profits to tax havens like Bermuda, which has a zero percent corporate tax rate; and its not just Google either. Many overseas companies like American companies, Facebook, Amazon and Starbucks, are also under the scanner for having allegedly failed to declare their true profits in the country, thereby getting by with paying nominal taxes, if at all. Meanwhile, a PWC study, commissioned by industry lobby 100 Group, showed that the hundred largest companies in the country, together, paid half as much in taxes last year as they did back in 2010. Just about all companies on the list, meanwhile, earned more revenues and made more profits than what they did five years back, though.
Cardiff asylum seekers gets free fashion, food and beds like Jews in Nazi Germany

Asylum seekers staying at Lynx House in Cardiff have been handed free wristbands. The residence, operated by Clearsprings Ready Homes, wanted asylum seekers to wear these wristbands at all times or they would not be fed. Well, thats how the Guardian puts it. The other view is that by showing the wristbands the asylum seeker can get free meals three times a day in the companys restaurant.

The Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) is aghast. It says the wristbands are like the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear. The Nazis, of course, gave Jews  citizens of Germany  free food, lodgings and a burial at halls of residence operated by Concentration Camps Inc. Millions loved it so much they never returned.

The similarities between people seeking a better life and genocide is clear to the people at WRC, like WRC policy officer Hannah Wharf , who says: We have raised the matter many times with the Welsh Government. It harks back to the Nazi regime with people being forced to wear a Star of David and stand out. Its absolutely appalling, it is treating people like lesser beings. It is treating them like animals lining up to feed.

We hear from a 36-year-old refugee in Cardiff called Eric Ngalle. He says people spotted his wristband and told him go back to your country.

The Mail says he was granted refugee status and now works as a writer on a theatre production backed by the Arts Council of Wales. (Eat yer heart our, Primo Levi.) He says the wristband made him feel like an outcast, which, sadly, is what he is. He was in limbo, waiting for official acceptance and the chance for a life free of persecution in the UK.

A spokesman for Clearsprings Ready Homes tells the Guardian its policy came in the face of an increase in asylum seekers: Volumes of people in initial accommodation sites, including Cardiff (have) increased quickly. Clearsprings has taken steps, agreed with the Home Office to increase capacity in line with this demand in the form of additional self-catering accommodation. Those clients in the self-catering units receive a weekly allowance in the form of supermarket vouchers and those in full-board accommodation are issued with a coloured wristband that bears no other logo or text identifying its use or origin. Full-board clients are required to show their wristbands in order to receive meals in the restaurant.

So nothing like those yellow stars Jews was forced to stitch onto their outer clothing on pain of sale labour, torture and death.

But the elite have seen a chance to make themselves look good. Jo Stevens MP thinks this a matter of national debate. Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood says the Home Office should also face serious questions about the situation in Cardiff. I have been told that this alarming practice of forcing asylum seekers to wear coloured wristbands will be stopped, she says. It is understandable the Home Office requires asylum seekers to carry some form of identification for practical reasons such as when they collect meals.

Clearsprings has heard the complaint and murdered the asylum seekers done away with the bands. Asylum seekers will now carry photos ID, you know, like people did under Nazi Germany.

Papers!

Anorak

Posted: 25th, January 2016 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Amsterdam, January 25 - The Schengen Area is safe for the time being, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said Monday at the close of an informal EU interior ministers' meeting on whether or not to restrict the Schengen passport-free area in Europe.

"At the end of this day's work, Schengen is safe for now," Alfano said. "We have a few weeks to prevent it from being dissolved by national egotistical stances".

Alfano earlier rejected the idea of isolating Greece. "We are of the opinion that Europe must remain a stable set-up and there can't be pieces of Europe inside and pieces of Europe outside, because that would be the start of a break-up," Alfano told reporters. Alfano said earlier Italy was "contrary to any steps backward regarding Schengen".

Premier Matteo Renzi has said suspending Schengen would be a "betrayal" of European values.


(see related)(ANSA) - Cosenza, January 25 - Prosecutors said Monday a Moroccan 'foreign fighter' suspect arrested earlier in the day was in contact with known international terror groups. These included ones linked to 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, who in August last year tried to attack a Paris-Amsterdam train with an assault rifle. Street vendor Hamil Mehdi, 25, has denied being a member of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) terror group and said he had recently visited Turkey "only to pray".

But prosecutors said Mehdi has been watching a lot of videos on ISIS and on being a martyr for Islam.

"The young man had kitted himself up with self-training manuals and videos, and he downloaded a lot of videos about ISIS and martyrdom," prosecutors said at a press conference on the arrest.

"We're still combing through the evidence, but we can say for certain that he was in telephone contact with terrorists. We know Mehdi wanted to travel to Belgium in September...and that he fought constantly with his family over his growing extremism," prosecutors said.

For example, Mehdi banned his brother from calling his girlfriend on the phone, and from going to the beach where he might see women in bathing suits.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 25 - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Monday arrived in Rome for a three-day official visit to Italy.

It is his first trip since the recent accord on Iran's nuclear programme and as such will be keenly watched.

Rouhani, who leads a delegation of six ministers and 120 businessmen and public-sector managers, will be received by President Sergio Mattarella at noon and the pair will then have a working lunch together.

Rouhani is scheduled to meet Premier Matteo Renzi at 19:00.

On Tuesday he will meet the Speakers of the Senate and Lower House, Pietro Grasso and Laura Boldrini, and at 11:00 will be received in the Vatican by Pope Francis.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 25 - Italy and Iran are to sign multi-billion-euro agreements in the minerals sector during Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's visit to Rome, a member of the delegation from Tehran told Iranian agency Tasnim on Monday.

"Contracts worth $5.4 billion are ready for investment with Italy in the mineral sector," said Iranian Trade Minister Mehdi Karbasian, who also heads up state-owned holding company Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation (IMIDRO). The contracts "need to be perfected and signed" in the next few hours, he added. IMIDRO has over 50,000 employees and is active in steel, aluminium, copper, and cement production and in exploiting mineral deposits.


(ANSA) - Brussels, January 25 - The European Commission said Monday Italy could reduce its debt to "almost 100% of GDP" by 2026.

However it must keep "the convergence of the structural budget towards medium-term goals" were respected with regards to the Stability Pact "in line with fiscal adjustment" in the communication on flexibility, the EC said in its report on the sustainability of public finances.

This would require a primary surplus of 3.8% of GDP between 2017 and 2016, a figure "significantly higher" than the 2.5% forecast for 2017.

Italy's debt was 134.6% of GDP in the third quarter of 2015, against Germany's 71.9% and Spain's 99.3%, according to Eurostat.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 25 - Italian police on Monday arrested a Moroccan 'foreign fighter' near the Calabrian town of Cosenza.

Hamil Mehdi, a 25-year-old street vendor, denied being a member of ISIS and said he had recently visited Turkey "only to pray".

Cosenza police chief Luigi Liguori said anti-terrorism DIGOS law enforcement agents had been trailing Mehdi since last July, after Turkish authorities blocked him at the Istanbul airport and sent him back to Italy.

Authorities said Mehdi was in Istanbul attempting to reach Syria to join ISIS.

Liguori said the investigation was "very tight and across the board, without neglecting any detail".

Italian authorities said their subsequent investigation revealed Mehdi was planning to move to Belgium, had a "dogged interest for images, films and other propaganda content referring to ISIS", and "a natural propensity" to join the ISIS cause.

In Luzzi, the Calabrian town where Mehdi and his family have their home, Mayor Manfredo Tedesco said he and local residents are surprised by the arrest.

"The young Moroccan and his family were perfectly integrated into our community," said Tedesco.

"Our entire community is truly speechless".

Mehdi arrived in Luzzi in 2006 with his parents and three younger brothers, all of whom have permanent stay permits.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 25 - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted shortly after arriving in Rome on a three-day visit Monday that he was "expecting to reinforce bilateral relations and explore opportunities" in talks with leaders including Premier Matteo Renzi. The tweet carried the hashtag #constructive commitment and was accompanied by a photo with Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Rouhani had a working lunch Monday with Italian President Sergio Mattarella. Also on hand were Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and, on the Iranian side, a delegation of ministers including the foreign minister, the oil minister and the industry minister. Fighting international terror effectively takes international cohesion, Rouhani said. "Everyone must do their part to the utmost, without ambiguities," he told Mattarella at a meeting in the presidential palace. For example, non-Syrian combatants in Syria must be deprived of international support, Rouhani told Mattarella. He added that without a government, Libya will remain in the hands of human traffickers. All parties must agree on a representative government before the international community can engage in the north African country, Rouhani said. Both leaders agreed that in that case, the Libyan government-to-be must ask for international assistance.

Italy and Iran are to sign multi-billion-euro agreements in the minerals sector, a member of the delegation from Tehran told Iranian agency Tasnim on Monday. "Contracts worth $5.4 billion are ready for investment with Italy in the mineral sector," said Iranian Trade Minister Mehdi Karbasian, who also heads up state-owned holding company Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation (IMIDRO). IMIDRO has over 50,000 employees and is active in steel, aluminium, copper, and cement production and in exploiting mineral deposits.

As well, Transport Minister Graziano Delrio and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Akhoundi signed a memorandum of understanding for Ferrovie dello Stato public railways to develop the railway system in Iran.


(ANSA) - Vatican City, January 25 - Pope Francis will travel to Lund in Sweden on October 31 this year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in a joint ceremony between the World Lutheran Federation and the Catholic Church, Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Monday. He said it would be a "very significant gesture of dialogue". The pope has repeatedly stressed the importance of ecumenical dialogue with other churches and inter-faith dialogue with other faiths.

The joint ceremony will be presided over by the pope along with Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan, president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF); and Rev. Martin Junge, LWF secretary general.

The LWF and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) said the event "will give particular prominence to the solid ecumenical progress between Catholics and Lutherans and to the reciprocal gifts derived from the dialogue".

"I'm deeply convinced that working for the reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics, we're working for justice, peace, and reconciliation in a world lacerated by conflict and violence," said Rev. Junge.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, PCPCU president, said the event will have a "Christ-centred" approach.

"Lutherans and Catholics will have the opportunity to celebrate an ecumenical commemoration of the Reform, not simply in a pragmatic way, but with a profound sense of the faith in Christ crucified and risen," Koch said.

The event will also include the recitation of the recently published "Common Prayer", a prayer guided by Catholic and Lutheran liturgy.

Archbishop Antje Jackelen of the Church of Sweden said his Church welcomes the commemoration ceremony with "joy and hope".

"We will pray together with the entire ecumenical family of Sweden that this commemoration will contribute to unity among Christians of our country and the whole world," said Jackelen.


- ROME - Western countries must not treat Iranian President Hassan Rohani like "the king of the world," during his visit to Rome and Paris this week, the Israeli Ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, said Monday.



"I hope it doesn't become a victor's parade by the king of the world to whom everything is allowed," the ambassador told ANSA in an interview in which he underlined his concern over the Iranian head of state's high-profile Italian sojourn.



Israel expects that the West "not forget its basic values" and that it imposes on Iran respect for very precise "red lines" not just on military-use nuclear power but also on the destabilisation by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Middle East and the failure to respect human and political rights.



Rouhani's visit comes on the eve of the Day of Memory of the Holocaust being marked Wednesday. "Iran has a long history of negationism amd each year during these days it organises a competition to ridicule the Holocaust," the ambassador said. "I find it difficult to think that the Italian authorities can't find a way to express their disapproval," he added.



On human rights in Iran Gilon noted that "2,000 people have been hanged in Iran, some of them for political reasons".



"The rights of women, of gays, of minorities are not respected. Out of 3,000 reformist candidates for the new Parliament of Tehran, only 30, or 1.0%, obtained permission to stand in the election".



What disturbs Israel most is the "destabilising" role of Tehran in the region, he added.



The hand of Tehran is present in every regional crisis from Bahrain to Yemen and Lebanon. "Israel does not have a border with Iran but Iranians are on its borders," he said, referring to the "terrorists" from Hamas and Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shiite movement has received sophisticated weapons from Iran and some 100,000 missiles, more than those in the arsenals of many of the regular armies in the world, he said.



The danger is that Iran now feels itself free of restraints, after the nuclear accord, and thanks to the money unfrozen from its accounts will aim for military reinforcement and a new expansionism thanks to its allies ranging from Syrian President Assad to Hezbollah, he added.



Iran is "a threat perceived not just by Israel but also by the Sunni Arab states, who in fact are in the process of re-arming".



"Isis is not the Number 1 enemy, in that it is the fruit of destabilisation and not the cause," the Israeli ambassador said.



"One can only defeat Isis by stabilising the Middle East," said Gilon. And to that the West must "impose limits and bars" to Iranian ambitions, he concluded. (ANSAmed).


(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JANUARY 25 - The Italian Space Agency (ASI) on Monday signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, which focuses on cooperation in the fields of satellite telecommunications, radar observation of Earth and training of students, technicians and engineers, ASI President Roberto Battiston told ANSA.



Battiston led a delegation to Abu Dhabi, where the agreement was signed, including astronaut Maurizio Cheli and several representatives from aerospace and telecommunications companies.



The UAE Space Agency's new program includes a project to become, in 2021, the first Arab nation to send a satellite to orbit Mars.(ANSAmed).


Mideast reality show to become Palestinian president 'El Rais' involving young Palestinians in political life

(by Michele Monni) (ANSAmed) - RAMALLAH, JANUARY 25 - A reality show is offering Palestinians something that has been denied to them for 10 years - the opportunity to vote for their president. The show is called "El Rais" - the President - and is produced by the independent Maan agency and the international Search for Common Ground platform.



The programme, a mix of The Apprentice e Xfactor, is in its second edition and aims to find, albeit only virtually, the necessary qualities among young Palestinians the necessary qualities to take the place of 80-year-old Abu Mazen, who has been the highest Palestinian authority for 10 years even though his mandate expired in 2009.



"The programme aims to involce young people in Palestinian political life through the mechanism of the reality show," Raed Uthman, director General of Maan told ANSA.



"We want to discard the concept, that is very widespread, that to be a hero in Palestine one must necessarily be a martyr and die fighting the Israeli army".



To be heros people have to be first of all "good citizens," according to Uthman.



There have been no new elections in the West Bank and Gaza since 2006 when they were won by the Islamist Hamas movement.



The results, not recognised by most of the international community, led to a long intestinal war between Fatah lay politicians led by Abu Mazen and the islamists, producing a schism that still today seems difficult to resolve.



In addition, according to recent surveys by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Centre (PSR), the popularity of the president is in free fall, with two thirds of Those interviewed demanding his resignation.



The 25 finalists who emerge from selection, now being held in main Palestinian cities, will compete for the title of virtual Rais through a series of tests of their general culture, knowledge of internal politics, of the conflict with Israel and their familiarity with international affairs.



"So far we received full support from Palestinian authorities," said Uthman, "and the foreign ministry has placed itself at our disposal for the trial that will see the competitors occupy for one day the post of (foreign minister) Ryad Al Maliki.



Not just viewers sending text messages will decide who is the new "president" but also a respected panel of judges including PLO leader Hanan Ashrawi, the Arab Israeli Knesset MP Ahmad Tibi and telecommunications mogul Ammar Aker. "Even if it is only a reality show," said Uthman, "it is an exccellent opportunity for young Palestinians to criticise the political leadership, an opportunity often denied in everyday life".




(ANSAmed) - ROME - Italian police on Monday arrested a Moroccan 'foreign fighter' near the Calabrian town of Cosenza.

Hamil Mehdi, a 25-year-old street vendor, denied being a member of ISIS and said he had recently visited Turkey "only to pray".

Cosenza police chief Luigi Liguori said anti-terrorism DIGOS law enforcement agents had been trailing Mehdi since last July, after Turkish authorities blocked him at the Istanbul airport and sent him back to Italy.

Authorities said Mehdi was in Istanbul attempting to reach Syria to join ISIS.

Liguori said the investigation was "very tight and across the board, without neglecting any detail".

Italian authorities said their subsequent investigation revealed Mehdi was planning to move to Belgium, had a "dogged interest for images, films and other propaganda content referring to ISIS", and "a natural propensity" to join the ISIS cause.

In Luzzi, the Calabrian town where Mehdi and his family have their home, Mayor Manfredo Tedesco said he and local residents are surprised by the arrest.

"The young Moroccan and his family were perfectly integrated into our community," said Tedesco.

"Our entire community is truly speechless".

Mehdi arrived in Luzzi in 2006 with his parents and three younger brothers, all of whom have permanent stay permits.
Police deploy at Cairo Tahrir Square on protest anniversary Army armoured vehicles not deployed

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, JANUARY 25 - Police were deployed on a massive scale around the Egyptian capital Monday on the fifth anniversary of the revolution that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. However the army stopped short of deploying armoured cars or tanks in the central, volatile Tahrir Square, the semi-official MENA news agency said.



Traffic in the centre of Cairo was "normal," the agency added. Media on Saturday broadcast images of army tanks and soldiers but there were no witness reports of such deployment over the week-end.



Three 'Central Security' police vehicles and two 'rapid intervention' vehicles were deployed at one of the access paoints to the Tahrir Square, the MENA dispatch said.



The Web site Vetogate showed images of police vans with police poking out of the roofs manning machine guns while Mena said there was a massive police presence "in all the main squares" of Cairo.



Roads leading to the Interior ministry and the security Prefecture of Giza in the west of the capital were closed. Polie reinforcements also were deployed around the Maspero tv centre.



Demonstrations were staged by the islamist Muslim Brotherhood on the previous two anniversaries of the first Tahrir Square protests, degenerating into armed clashes with security forces with scores of people killed.(ANSAmed).




EU Visit to Turkey urges launch of 3 bln euro refugee fund Renewed commitment to Turkish EU accession negotiations

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, JANUARY 25 - EU Commission vice president Federica Mogherini and Enlargement Commisioner Johannes Hahn climaxed a visit to Ankara Monday by stressing in a joint statement with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Turkish European Affairs minister Volkan Bozkir the "need to finalise and promptly go forward" with the 3 billion euro funding of Syrian refugees in Turkey.



During their dialogue the commitment to revitalise Turkey's EU accession negotiations was reiterated including a six month plan that was agreed to include a second EU-Turkey summit expected to be be held before the extraordinary summit in February.



The note described the first EU Turkey summit held November 29 as a "turning point" in relations and said that "access negotiations remain the cornerstone of EU-Turkey relations" with a commitment to to complete "by the first trimester of 2016" preparatory work for the opening of new negotiation chapters.



In the joint declaration TUrkey reiterates its commitment and "the determination to carry out reforms in the field of the rule of law and fundamental rights" in view of the liberalisation of Turkish visas in the Schengen area by October 2016.



For its part the EU "continues to be committed to the struggle against the presence in Europe of the (Kurdish) PKK, which is on EU list of terrorist" organisations.



Both the EU and Turkey "welcomed" stepped up negotiations in Cyprus for an agreement between the Cypriot government and the self-proclaimed Turkish Cypriot TRNC breakaway government.




MADRID - Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, age 67, is the new president of Portugal. The centre-right candidate and renowned political commentator won the elections that were held Sunday, garnering 52% of the votes against 22.75% cast for his main adversary, the Socialist area candidate Antonio Sampaio da Novoa. Marisa Matias from the Esquerda block, close to Podemos and Syriza, was third with 10,15% of votes, ahead of Socialista Maria de Belem with 4.25%.



With Rebelo de Sousa as head of state, Portugal faces a difficult phase of cohabitation with the centre-left government of Premier Antonio Costa.



In his speech immediately after the counting of ballots, the new president said he hoped that the government will generate more economic growth "without compromising financial stability".



According to The Associated Press, at the same time he promised to be impartial and to encourage dialogue between the political parties, "healing the wounds" of the recent crisis.



In Portugal the President does not have executive power and is above all a representative figurehead, but he can be an influential voice and has the right to dissolve parliament if he believes the country is going in the wrong direction.



Rebelo de Sousa warned that he will use his position to prevent the centre-left, anti-austerity government from worsening the financial health of the country, which is weighed down by debt.



Rebelo de Sousa takes over March 9 from the outgoing head of state, his former comrade of the conservative PSD party, but with freer hands than his predecessor in regards to the government of Antonio Costa, who took office despite losing the October 4 elections to outgoing conservative premier Pedro Passos Coalho.



Costa managed an upset thanks to support from the radical left Esquerda Block, close to Podemos and Syriza, and of the Communist Greens of Cda.



The son of the ex conservative minister Baltasar Rebelo de Sousa, 'Marcelo' as he is called familiarly in all Portugal has been a major player in the life of the carnation revolution in 1974 against the Salazarist dictatorship.



A former journalist, he founded the weekly Expresso and was a minister and a leader of the conservative Psd party from 1996 to 1999 (replaced in the job by the future European Commission chief Manuel Barroso), and was a university professor of law.



But Marcelo Rebelo Duarte Nuno de Sousa, to give him his full name, became a very popular figure in Portugal over recent years as a television political commentator. Known as "Il professore" he was the most listened to and considered the most authoritative.



This is a tradition in Portugal where other leaders who reached the highest levels of the state, such as former socialist premier Jose Socrates earned popularity as political pundits in television studios.



In his political campaign 'Il Professore' insisted on his wish to promote 'dialogue,' explaining that "a president is a referee, and a referee cannot score the goals".



However the left evidently suspects that he will be a 'submarine' for the centre-right with a mission of sinking Costa's fragile left-wing government.


Rouhani: Israeli Ambassador, West should impose 'red lines' Iran 'remains threat to region,' Jewish State envoy says

(ANSAMED) - ROME, JANUARY 25 - Western countries must not treat Iranian President Hassan Rohani like "the king of the world," during his visit to Rome and Paris this week, the Israeli Ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, said Monday.



"I hope it doesn't become a victor's parade by the king of the world to whom everything is allowed," the ambassador told ANSA in an interview in which he underlined his concern over the Iranian head of state's high-profile Italian sojourn.



Israel expects that the West "not forget its basic values" and that it imposes on Iran respect for very precise "red lines" not just on military-use nuclear power but also on the destabilisation by the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Middle East and the failure to respect human and political rights.



Rouhani's visit comes on the eve of the Day of Memory of the Holocaust being marked Wednesday. "Iran has a long history of negationism amd each year during these days it organises a competition to ridicule the Holocaust," the ambassador said. "I find it difficult to think that the Italian authorities can't find a way to express their disapproval," he added.



On human rights in Iran Gilon noted that "2,000 people have been hanged in Iran, some of them for political reasons".



"The rights of women, of gays, of minorities are not respected. Out of 3,000 reformist candidates for the new Parliament of Tehran, only 30, or 1.0%, obtained permission to stand in the election".



What disturbs Israel most is the "destabilising" role of Tehran in the region, he added.



The hand of Tehran is present in every regional crisis from Bahrain to Yemen and Lebanon. "Israel does not have a border with Iran but Iranians are on its borders," he said, referring to the "terrorists" from Hamas and Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shiite movement has received sophisticated weapons from Iran and some 100,000 missiles, more than those in the arsenals of many of the regular armies in the world, he said.



The danger is that Iran now feels itself free of restraints, after the nuclear accord, and thanks to the money unfrozen from its accounts will aim for military reinforcement and a new expansionism thanks to its allies ranging from Syrian President Assad to Hezbollah, he added.



Iran is "a threat perceived not just by Israel but also by the Sunni Arab states, who in fact are in the process of re-arming".



"Isis is not the Number 1 enemy, in that it is the fruit of destabilisation and not the cause," the Israeli ambassador said.



"One can only defeat Isis by stabilising the Middle East," said Gilon. And to that the West must "impose limits and bars" to Iranian ambitions, he concluded. (ANSAmed).




Italian Space Agency signs accord with UAE Space Agency UAE wants to send satellite to orbit Mars in 2021

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JANUARY 25 - The Italian Space Agency (ASI) on Monday signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates Space Agency, which focuses on cooperation in the fields of satellite telecommunications, radar observation of Earth and training of students, technicians and engineers, ASI President Roberto Battiston told ANSA.



Battiston led a delegation to Abu Dhabi, where the agreement was signed, including astronaut Maurizio Cheli and several representatives from aerospace and telecommunications companies.



The UAE Space Agency's new program includes a project to become, in 2021, the first Arab nation to send a satellite to orbit Mars.(ANSAmed).




Had social media sites not played a role, we would not have an ongoing independence process in Catalonia. The opposition to independence by the hegemonic media mainly TV networks and print newspapers, in a ratio of about 6:1 has only been countered thanks to the grassroots work by civil society, encouraged to a great extent by a very intense social media buzz. Criticism, humour which drives out fear and even epic have found on the internet the best possible channel to express themselves. This is a fact that will need to be kept very much in mind when future historians write about the impressive political movement that has been rocking Catalonia for ten years. Furthermore, it is no accident that the new Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has been an active member of this space of political dynamism. I will not claim that he has become president thanks to that, but I do think that being an active actor has afforded him a more comprehensive overview and a better understanding of the current political dynamic.

SO IT IS FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE that I would argue against the recent claims by Zygmunt Bauman, the prestigious sociologist. On January 9 he wrote in Spains El Pais that social networks are a pitfall since they construct a false community where dialogue does not occur because controversy is avoided: many use social media to lock themselves within their comfort zone, rather than unite and broaden their horizons. Nevertheless, the opposite is true. By definition, the net is a space for controversy. Also for serene dialogue, of course. But it shines especially in confrontation, like in a tavern brawl, and with the informalities that have traditionally accompanied that  but, fortunately, without being able to come to blows! Therefore, social media never protect. Rather, they expose; nor do they tame, but provoke. And while there may be cases of what Bauman scornfully calls armchair activism, in our case it is evident that this sort of activism has actually got us off our armchair to take to the streets in a civilised manner.

IT WILL ALSO BE THE NETWORKS that will allow, for the first time in the political history of nations and in a manner completely unheard of, the drafting if a new Constitution that will not be borne out of a meeting of a small elite who is awarded the capacity to write it up in the name of everyone else and then put it to a vote. Rather, here we will first have a bottom-up debate and, once it is taken onboard by a constituent parliament, it will travel from top to bottom again to be voted in a referendum. It will not be a bed of roses, to a great extent because, as the picture of what the new country will look like becomes sharper, it will be harder to preserve the common ground typical of the phase of demands which the formation of the government has closed off. But it will be precisely its dynamic of open controversy what will encourage broader social participation than was elicited by the previous stage.

THE SOCIAL NETWORKS, then, will not be a mere container to spread documents or the main communication channel among the participants of this Catalan constituent process. Rather, they will also determine the nature of the dialogue and the negotiation and, therefore, the nature of the agreements, too. Indeed, a moderating intervention of experienced political scientists will be required. But, likewise and to a greater extent, we will need experts who can analyse these networks, who can uncover and so, make transparent the internal logic of the debate so that we can sort what is useful from what is not, and to evaluate its consistency and representativity. Yes: in Catalonia, social networks will drive emancipation.
Writing for the Helios publication network, the companys Director Middle East & Asia, Alan Corner says addressing the oil drop challenges could spur further privatisation initiatives, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

This is not entirely new to Saudi Arabia or aviation, but the urgent need to reduce the budget deficit should be a catalyst to drive existing initiatives and identify new opportunities that can deliver benefits to the government and aviation sector, says Corner.

Saudia has already begun privatising some its business areas, though Corner says it still has some way to go in its overall transformation programme.

Taif Airport has recently been tendered and Corner says bidders are currently being shortlisted for Jeddah. The GACA has also confirmed that Riyadh Airport will be privatised later this year, Dammam Airport will follow in late 2017 and even some of the regional airports are now being considered, he adds.

On the air navigation services front, Corner points out that GACA ANS will be be transformed later this year into Saudi Air Navigation Services - a corporatised and eventually self-funding entity. State-owned monopolies are also being challenged and forced to compete. Helios recently supported GACA in a tender process resulting in the award to Swissport of a second licence to provide ground handling services at all GACA operated airports in the Kingdom. Cargo and catering are the next logical targets.

Corner says that with the economic challenges prompted by the oil price slump, the Gulf states should seized the opportunity to act. As we have seen through our work elsewhere in the world over the last 20 years, the corporatisation or privatisation of state-owned assets can create a win-win for all stakeholders  including end users. Moving from a government department to a governmentowned corporation or even a more commercialised operation will reduce the reliance on state funding. It will also generate revenues whilst creating more commercially focused organisations and a more competitive environment that will drive improvements in efficiency and performance.
The further expansion by the award-winning airline into Eastern Europe adds a further level of choice for passengers travelling between Croatia, Hungary and Azerbaijan and anywhere in the airlines extensive global network. Flights to Zagreb and Budapest are increasing to a 10-weekly service from a current daily service from 3 April and 3 July respectively, while flights to Baku are increasing to an 11-weekly service, also from a current daily scheduled flight, from 27 March.

Qatar Airways is also launching new direct flights from Doha to Belgrade from 16 March, a destination currently served by the airline via Sofia, enhancing the journey time to and from the capital of Serbia on the four-weekly schedule.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive Al Baker, said: Qatar Airways is expanding rapidly, not only in terms of new places and our network offering, but also with the service we offer. Complementing our service in the skies are our transfer facilities at the state-of-the-art Hamad International Airport, coupled with the experience of flying on board one of the youngest fleets in the industry.

In response to increasing demand, one of the airlines double-daily services to Moscow Domodedovo International Airport is currently served with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which offers 122 more seats per departure than the A320 aircraft previously used for this flight. The Qatar Airways Boeing 787 has 254 seats in total: 22 Business Class seats with a 1-2-1 configuration, and 232 Economy Class seats with a 3-3-3 configuration. All seats in Business Class recline at 180 degrees, turning into a fully flat bed.

Meanwhile flights to Warsaw will be upgraded to the Airbus A330 aircraft from 1 July this year, increasing seat capacity on the daily scheduled service from Doha. The Airbus A320 currently serves Warsaw and the second daily frequency service to Moscow.

Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in just 19 years of operation, to the point where today it is flying a modern fleet of 175 aircraft to more than 150 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.
There's a lot to say about our trip to Puglia, Italy over the Christmas holiday. Unfortunately there's not a lot of time to say it, as we move back to the U.S. in just a few weeks. I'm knee-deep in to-do lists, packing, relocation documents, blah, blah, blah. Apparently repatriating yourself is every bit as time consuming as expatriating yourself.Nevertheless, I'm not going to let one of our last European trips of this phase of our lives tick by without being mentioned on the blog. And come to think of it, sharing a lot of photos and not a lot of time-consuming words is probably the best way to reflect on our travels to this region of Italy anyway. Puglia was jam packed with beauty. And also a fair amount of challenges. This is not an area of the world that caters to tourists or even English speakers in general. Which is refreshing in many ways, but also a little stressful and sometimes more than a little inconvenient. Like when you're desperate to feed your children at 6:30 p.m. and nothing is open until 8 p.m. What can I say, we follow a senior citizen eating schedule around here.Anyway, let's let the beautiful photos tell the story. Because the incredibly gorgeous places, views, and buildings we saw are what I'm going to remember about Puglia anyway. Not leaving my credit card at a cafe two hours drive away.After flying into the Brindisi airport, we began our Puglian travels at the luxurious Borgo Egnazia resort. I wrote a full review of our experience at Ciao Bambino , head that way if you want the details. The brief summary is that we came, we pasta'd and pizza'd, we indoor pooled, we kids clubbed, and we relaxed. Bliss.We made a brief stop on the coast after leaving Borgo Egnazia (picture above), then we headed to the hillside town of Ostuni. The charm of this place was oozing out of every little alleyway and cafe.It was particularly dazzling all lit up for Christmas.From Ostuni, we did a day trip to Alberobello to see the famous trulli homes.We didn't stay the night in this historic city known for its baroque architecture and ancient ruins, but it would be a good place to base yourself if you wanted to just stick to one location but still explore Puglia. Very centrally located and large enough to have enough amenities. For us, a day wandering around its famous sites was enough of a taste of its many visual treats (and there are many).If I had to pick a favorite area of Puglia, Otranto would be it. Gorgeous beachside location: check. Magical, winding streets and paths through the historic center of town: check. One knock-your-socks-off fantastic meal: check. For my family, it was pretty much the best of what makes Puglia so special, all wrapped up in one convenient town. And for off season travelers like us, it was one of the few seaside towns we passed through that wasn't completely boarded up for the winter season. In fact, it was bustling with activity, at least over the New Year's holiday.Puglia was unlike anywhere else we've been in Europe. Gorgeous beyond compare. And with a dash of ruggedness and edginess that kept us on our toes.
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by Jibran Khan

Anglicans and Pentecostals also took part in the initiative. From Rawalpindi to Mardan, hundreds of people prayed for the victims of the Bacha Khan University attack, calling for peace and tolerance in the country. For Muslim leader, "This is a great gesture by the Church, adding We will work together for peace and promote peaceful coexistence."

Rawalpindi (AsiaNews) - The Catholic Church in Pakistan held a national day of prayer to remember the victims of terrorism and to pray for peace in Pakistan.

On the Churchs initiative, prayer vigils were held yesterday in many cities across the country, following the massacre at the university in Charsadda, where armed men attacked students and teachers, killing 21 people and wounding 30 on January 20. The Anglican Church and Pentecostal communities joined the initiative.

This comes a few days after civil society groups organized vigils, the National Commission for Justice and Peace issued a message and some NGOs held a rally to urge the government to provide more education to youth and take immediate action against terrorists.

Ecumenical prayer meetings and torchlight processions were held in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad (Punjab), and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where Charsadda is located.

"We have suffered a lot from terrorism and we pray for peace and tolerance in the society, said Fr. Arshed Gill, who serves in Mardan Diocese (30 km east from Charsadda). Everyone here wants peace. We will unite and promote harmony. "

Muslims in Rawalpindi welcomed the Catholic initiative as well. This is a great gesture on behalf of the Catholic Church, said Maulana Arif Alvi, of the Madni mosque. It is an encouraging initiative by the Church. We stand united and will work together for peace. We will to promote tolerance and coexistence."
by Victoria Ma

It is the wish expressed by the new bishop, Mgr. Stephen Lee Bun-sang during the ceremony of installation in his new diocese. The pastoral commitment "will start from the family and the education of young people, key to a harmonious society." Relations between China and the Vatican not purpose of his appointment, but "I will keep an eye on". The Church of Macau is and will be a help to the Catholics of China ".

Macau (AsiaNews)  Newly installed Bishop Stephen Lee Bun-sang of Macao has called local Catholics to unite and live out the Catholic faith and the Chinese values for the well-being of society.

The installation Mass took place on Jan. 23 at the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lady in Macau at the celebration of the 440th anniversary of the establishment of Macao diocese. The Cathedral was packed with more than 1,000 Catholics, including dozens from Hong Kong and mainland China.

Retired Bishop Jose Lai of Macao, Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha of Hong Kong, three papal delegates from Hong Kong and Taipei, and more than 50 priests in Macao and Hong Kong concelebrated.

Raimundo Arrais do Rosario, Macau government's secretary for transport and public works, attended the installation. On Jan. 22, Chief Executive Fernardo Chui Sai-on received Bishops Lai and Lee at the government office, noting the respect of freedom of religion practiced in Macao according to the Basic Law, and his government expects a continued cooperation with the Catholic Church in education, social work and humanitarian works.

At the Mass, Bishop Lai described the new shepherd as holy and learned and with wisdom, and hoped Bishop Lee would adhere to the two missions of Macau diocese  to proclaim the Gospel and to be a bridge of the East-West cultural exchanges. These two missions have been carried by the missionaries and local Church in Macao for centuries, said the 70-year-old Bishop Lai, whose resigned on medical reasons.

Bishop Lee, 59, told the faithful at the end of Mass that as a newcomer to the diocese, he could not talk any plans now, but hoped the faithful would unite as his episcopal coat of arms reads: "ut omnes unum sint" - "that they all may be one" (John 17:21). He said he would visit all the parishes and to listen to views on how to promote evangelization and cultural exchanges in the diocese.

Bishop Lee spoke in Chinese, English and Portuguese, a language he began to learn.

Bishop Lee told reporters after the Mass that it was also important for Catholics and people in Macau to spread the Chinese values of cultivating oneself, putting family in order, governing the state, and pacifying the world, quoting the Chinese Confucian Analects. The families and marriages, education and young peoples formation are of his concerns, he added, and for the well-being of the society.

On China-Vatican relation, he told reporters that it is not the purpose of his appointment, but he would concern this issue. His appointment by Pope Francis was on the basis of the needs of the evangelization and services of the Church in Macau, he said.

Regarding China, he said, the systems of Macau and mainland are different, but he would strive to assist in the areas of formation and needs of the Church.

Asked if the local Church would speak out on social issues in accord with Catholic social teaching, Bishop Lee told reporters that he knew little about the diocese, but would consult local priests on such matters. The most important thing is to have love as the starting point. He hopes the local people have a heart of peace and live harmoniously together and for the well-being of the society.

Bishop Lee, who speaks Chinese, English and Spanish, said he did not worry about having an obstacle to communicate with the Portuguese-speaking Catholics in Macau. Earlier, he told O Clarim, a Church publication in Macao: I dont speak Portuguese, but I intend to learn. I speak Spanish, which is similar to Portuguese. I know that I will be helped. Portuguese is an official language of Macao. We will keep it as it is, whether in the Mass, our Church activities, or in the different organizations.

Published online Jan. 23 in English, Portuguese and Chinese, the O Clarim report quoted Bishop Lee on Jan. 18, two days after the announcement that the appointment was a surprise to him. It was less than two weeks back when the representative of the Holy See in Hong Kong informed him about the Popes desire, he said.

A composer Aurelio Porfiri wrote a hymn in Latin dedicated to the new Bishop of Macao, titled Oremus Pro Antistite Nostro Stephano in January 2016. He directed a concert Macao in May 2015 commemorating Father Matteo Ricci.
On the final day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Francis said that there can be no Christian unity without mercy and forgiveness. Christians are making important steps towards unity listening to the Word of God together and seek[ing] to put it into practice. As they share the mission of proclaiming Gods merciful love as well as walk and work together, they realise that they are "already united in the name of the Lord.

Rome (AsiaNews)  In his homily at the closing Vespers of the 49th Annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, a service traditionally held in the Basilica of St Paul "Outside the Walls" in Rome, Pope Francis said that there cannot be an authentic search for Christian unity without trusting fully in the Fathers mercy. For this reason, in the Year of Mercy, he asked for mercy and forgiveness for the behavior of Catholics towards Christians of other Churches which has not reflected Gospel values.

For the pontiff, Christians are taking important steps towards unity and are listening to the Word of God together and seek[ing] to put it into practice. Indeed, they share the mission of proclaiming Gods merciful love as well as walking and working together. This way, they realise that they are "already united in the name of the Lord.

During the service, which came on the day of the announcement of Francis participation in the "ecumenical commemoration" in Sweden on 31 October, what the Holy Father calls the ecumenism of blood was evoked during the prayer for "Christian victims of persecution" so that they may feel the solidarity of all humanity, but especially that of their brothers and sisters in faith."

The pope, who entered the Basilica through the Holy Door together with Metropolitan Gennadios and David Moxon, personal representative in Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered the homily for Second Vespers of the Solemnity of the Conversion of St Paul starting with the First Epistle of Peter (1 Peter 2: 9) in which Gods people are Called to proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord, which is the topic of the this years event.

St Peter, Francis said, is writing to members of small and fragile communities, exposed to threats of persecution, and he applies to them the glorious titles attributed to the holy people of God: a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods special possession. For those first Christians, like today for all of us baptized Christians, it is a source of comfort and of constant amazement to know that we have been chosen to be part of Gods plan of salvation, put into effect through Jesus Christ and through the Church. Why Lord? Why me? Why is it us? Here we touch the mystery of mercy and of Gods choice. The Father loves us all and wants to save us all, and for this reason He calls some people conquering them through His grace, so that through them His love can reach all people. The mission of the whole people of God is to announce the marvellous works of the Lord, first and foremost the Pasqual mystery of Christ, through which we have passed from the darkness of sin and death to the splendour of His new and eternal life.

In light of the Word of God which we have been listening to, and which has guided us during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we can truly affirm that all of us, believers in Christ, have been called to proclaim the mighty works of God. Beyond the differences which still separate us, we recognise with joy that at the origin of our Christian life there is always a call from God Himself. We can make progress on the path to full visible communion between us Christians not only when we come closer to each other, but above all as we convert ourselves to the Lord, who through His grace, chooses and calls us to be His disciples. And converting ourselves means letting the Lord live and work in us. For this reason, when Christians of different Churches listen to the Word of God together and seek to put it into practice, they make important steps towards unity.it is not only the call which unites us, but we also share the same mission to proclaim to all the marvellous works of God. Like St Paul, and like the people to whom St Peter is writing, we too cannot fail to announce Gods merciful love which has conquered and transformed us.

While we are moving towards full communion among Christians, we can already develop many forms of cooperation to aid the spread of the Gospel. By walking and working together, we realise that we are already united in the name of the Lord.

In this Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, we must always keep in mind that there cannot be an authentic search for Christian unity without trusting fully in the Fathers mercy. We ask first of all for forgiveness for the sins of our divisions, which are an open wound in the Body of Christ. As Bishop of Rome and pastor of the Catholic Church, I want to ask for mercy and forgiveness for the behavior of Catholics towards Christians of other Churches which has not reflected Gospel values. At the same time, I invite all Catholic brothers and sisters to forgive if they, today or in the past, have been offended by other Christians. We cannot cancel out what has happened, but we do not want to let the weight of past faults continue to contaminate our relationships. Gods mercy will renew our relationships.

I cordially greet also the young Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox students who are here in Rome with the support of the Committee for Cultural Collaboration with the orthodox churches, working through the Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, as well as the students from the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey who are visiting Rome to deepen their knowledge of the Catholic Church.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us unite ourselves with the prayer that Jesus Christ prayed to his Father: May they be one, so that the world may believe. Unity is the gift of mercy from God the Father. In front of the tomb of St Paul, the apostle and martyr, kept here in this splendid Basilica, we feel that our humble request is sustained by the intercession of the multitudes of Christian martyrs, past and present. They replied generously to the call of the Lord, they gave faithful witness with their lives to the wonderful works that God has done for us and they already enjoy full communion in the presence of God the Father. Sustained by their example and comforted by their intercessions, we make our humble prayer to God.
The Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation will hold a joint ceremony on 31 October in Lund. The event will include a common worship based on the recently published Catholic-Lutheran Common Prayer liturgical guide. This will be followed in 2017 by the 50th anniversary of the international Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, which led to significant ecumenical results, including the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis will travel to Sweden in October of this year to take part in a joint ceremony between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

In a joint press release, the Holy See and the LWF said that the "ecumenical commemoration" will be held in Lund, Sweden, Monday, 31 October 2016. Pope Francis, as well as Bishop Munib A. Younan, and Rev Martin Junge, respectively LWF president and general secretary, will take part in the ceremony.

The joint ecumenical event will take place in the city of Lund in anticipation of the 500th Reformation anniversary in 2017, the communique said. It will highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans and the joint gifts received through dialogue. The event will include a common worship based on the recently published Catholic-Lutheran Common Prayer liturgical guide.

The Lund event is part of the reception process of the study document From Conflict to Communion, which was published in 2013, and has since been widely distributed to Lutheran and Catholic communities. The document is the first attempt by both dialogue partners to describe together at international level the history of the Reformation and its intentions.

Earlier this year, the LWF and [the] PCPCU (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) sent to LWF member churches and Catholic Bishops Conferences a jointly prepared Common Prayer, which is a liturgical guide to help churches commemorate the Reformation anniversary together. It is based on the study document From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, and features the themes of thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness with the aim of expressing the gifts of the Reformation and asking forgiveness for the division which followed theological disputes.

The year 2017 will also mark 50 years of the international Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, which has yielded notable ecumenical results, of which most significant is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ). The JDDJ was signed by the LWF and the Catholic Church in 1999, and affirmed by the World Methodist Council in 2006. The declaration nullified centuries old disputes between Catholics and Lutherans over the basic truths of the doctrine of justification, which was at the center of the 16th century Reformation.
Students for a Free Tibet organise a mock recruitment drive for Chinas so-called 'Authentic Living Buddha list. Wearing a mask of Chinese President Xi Jinping, they rallied against government interference in Tibetan Buddhism. To be recognised as an authentic lama, all it takes is being Anti-Dalai Lama, and Pro-Chinese Communist Party. For them, Beijing has no right to interfere in religious affairs.

Dharamsala (AsiaNews)  In order to be added to Chinas official Authentic Living Buddha lists, all it takes is to be Anti-Dalai Lama, Pro-Chinese Communist Party, and [you] Dont even need to be a Buddhist, this according Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a group that mocked the mainlands decision to certify those who claim to be living Buddhas.

The student group set up a pseudo enrolment booth near a Buddhist temple in Dharamsala, India, wearing a mask depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Dharamsala is the seat of the Tibetan Government in exile and the Dalai Lamas home since 1959, when he fled Maoist China. The group tried to recruit some monks passing by.

Formally, the goal of Chinas certification is to protect religious believers. Living Buddhas, who are also known as Tulkus, are religious who chose the monastic life and are honoured by the abbots of various Buddhist temples with the title Rinpoche (Precious).

Although praised by members of the government-controlled Buddhist Association of China, the measure is just another step towards the total control of the Tibets monastic tradition.

The CCP is an atheist government who does not have any authority in imposing such [a] law that interferes with a religious belief, a Tibetan told Phayul, an online paper. They have certified the Panchen Lama they have appointed, which proves the list is null and void. No Tibetan will accept this new law, he added.

The Chinese government may have claimed it to eradicate the fake lamas. However, we see it as a politically motivated step to intervene with the reincarnation selection of the 14th Dalai Lama, Dorjee Tseten, SFT's Asia Director said.

It is nothing new from the Chinese authorities, he added. Neither Tibetans nor Buddhists all over the world will accept this new law. This is a gross violation of religious freedom and a perverse interference in Tibetan Buddhism.
Little is known yet about the attack, but one of the people involved worked in the mining industry. Relations between Beijing and Vientiane are based on natural resource development and shared ideological outlook since both are ruled by a one-party Communist regime. This year, the US president is expected in the country.

Vientiane (AsiaNews)  A suspected bombing attack killed two Chinese nations and wounded a third one in a remote province of Laos.

The attack took place around 8 am on Sunday in the remote mountainous province of Xaysomboun, the Xinhua news agency reports. One of the victims was employed by a Chinese mining company.

Chinese diplomats have visited the survivor, identified by the surname Zhou, and have requested a swift investigation into the incident.

China is a major investor in Laos natural resource sector, especially minerals, and shares its one-party form of government.

A special Chinese presidential envoy, Song Tao, is due to visit the country this week for talks with Laotian leaders.

Last week, the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary (Communist) Party chose Vice President Bounnhang Vorachith for the post of party general secretary in lieu of Choummaly Sayasone, 79, who stepped down after ten years in office. Vorachith, 78, is expected to continue his predecessors repressive policies.

The Communists have ruled the country with an iron fist since 1975 when it overthrew the monarchy "in the name of the people".

Almost 700 members took part in the party congress in Vientiane to endorse the new central committee and 11-person politburo.

This year, Laos will chair the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). This summer, when the organisation meets in Laos, it is expected to host US President Barack Obama, who will be the first US leader to visit the South-east Asia nation.
Best Hair Removal Cream for Men

Beat Razor Burn for Good With These Top Hair Removal Creams

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Product photos from retailer site.

Theres a good chance youve Googled how to get rid of body hair at some point in your life. While youve had shaving your face down since you hit puberty, its not as easy getting a smooth, ingrown hair-free shave elsewhere on your body: shaving your back requires a very unappreciated skillset, and its not uncommon for manscaping of any kind to end up in one too many uncomfortable nicks. But thats where hair removal cream comes in.

RELATED: The Best Razors for Men

The stuff has come a long way since it first became a thing. One of the initial hair removal cream formulas back in the 1500s involved a concoction of quicklime and arsenic, but todays hair removal creams are much safer, not to mention more effective. While methods like waxing can be a pain  literally!  using a hair removal cream is pretty fuss-free and actually lasts a long time. Once you apply the cream to your skin, the chemicals dissolve your hair right below the surface, turning it into a sludge you can wipe right off your body. Afterward, your skin stays hair-free for up to four weeks, depending on the product.

Before you get started, keep these tips in mind.

Do a Patch Test: Since youre dealing with chemicals, its always a good idea to do a patch test to see if youll have a bad reaction to the formula. Some people might be especially sensitive to the ingredients used in the creams, so try it out on a small section of your body  like part of your arm or leg  before using it all over. I

Since youre dealing with chemicals, its always a good idea to do a patch test to see if youll have a bad reaction to the formula. Some people might be especially sensitive to the ingredients used in the creams, so try it out on a small section of your body  like part of your arm or leg  before using it all over. I Pay Special Attention to the Directions: Some creams are specifically made for your chest and back, while others are safe to use on more sensitive areas.

Some creams are specifically made for your chest and back, while others are safe to use on more sensitive areas. Get Your Timer Ready: Dont leave the hair removal cream on your skin any longer than youre supposed to, as it could result in a chemical burn or skin irritation. The first time you use a product, you might even want to leave it on for a little less than youre supposed to, just to play it safe. Eventually, youll find the timing that works for your skin.

Now that you know the ins and outs of hair removal creams, its time to figure out which product is best for your needs. One plus about buying these products in 2020 is that the companies have worked hard over the years to ensure they not only smell much better than the ones you remember seeing years ago, but also make them much easier to apply. And because of the addition of moisturizers and other buffers into the ingredient list, theyre not nearly as harsh as they used to be, making it easy for you to remove your hair worry-free.

When youre ready to give hair removal cream a try, start with these products. Theyre cost-effective, highly rated, and favorites of men everywhere.

Best for Coarse Hair

Nair Hair Removal Cream

Nair

Men who have extremely course and thick hair will love this product. Best for the back, chest, arms, and legs, it couldnt be easier to use: Just apply to dry skin without rubbing in, wait a minute, then get into the shower. You can go about your typical routine  avoiding the areas you applied the product to  then rinse it all off once the time is up.

Promising Review: "This will remove any amount of hair quickly and easily without a super offensive smell. Follow the directions well, it does *exactly* what it says. That means do NOT think you're special and able to use this on your sensitive parts. It will burn you just like it says you will, trust me, not fun. For the amount you get, the effectiveness and price this is an easy 5 star with the only mild downside of the scent not being pleasant (But not offensive). Once again, read the directions, don't be like me. Your fleshy fun-bridge will turn into the plains of hell faster than you can say 'Oh god, it's BURNING!'"  Juliett Sierra

$11.69 at Amazon.com

Best for a Smooth Finish

Nad's for Men Hair Removal Cream

This popular cream says its not suitable for use on the genital areas, but that just so happens to be why its a favorite of men around the world: in just a few minutes, all the hair can simply be wiped away. Like Nairs product, its also great on any other thick and coarse hair too, but with added ingredients like shea butter and sweet almond oil, youll get a silky smooth finish no matter where it ends up.

Promising Review: "Great product, no burning, no strong smell either but it still has like very mild smell. Most people complaining obviously are doing it to just b***h. I was skeptical about the effectiveness and chemical burning but neither are a concern for those not allergic"  Jacob B

$8.99 at Amazon.com

Best for Removing Pubic Hair

Veet Gel Hair Remover Cream, Sensitive Formula

Veet

Alright, alright  this product is specifically made for women. But, it might be used by men just as frequently for one simple reason: it works great in the pubic region. Since its made for sensitive skin, its safe to use on a womans bikini line  which made men want to try it out in their nether regions as well. And the result? Thanks to a formula enriched with vitamin E and aloe vera, it will keep the genital area hair-free for weeks.

Promising Review: "I married a hairy beast. And he vowed on the sacracy of our sex life to keep his back hair free for me. Fast forward 9 years and the vow went out the door. Bored on Amazon I order this stuff and forgot all about it until it showed up. I never believed this would work. I did a test patch and after 6 minutes... I was hyped when I wiped and it looked like baby skin. Probably because the hairs so thick his skin hasnt ever seen the light of day. I slathered that stuff on the rest of his back so fast! Voila people! Its freaking magic! I cant belive my eyes! Im going to have to start buying it in the gallons!"  Addicted to Prime

$8.99 at Amazon.com

Best for Long-Lasting Smoothness

Magic Shave Razorless Cream Shave Light Fresh Scent, Regular Strength

Its hard to find a hair removal cream suitable for the face, but thats exactly what this one is aimed at. Magic Razorless Cream Shave  designed for African American men, but useable on any skin tone  is a great alternative to shaving. Men love it for its ability to get the look of a close shave without annoying razor bumps on the face and neck. Plus, the result lasts for up to 4 days.

Promising Review: "This stuff is great! I use it on my *ahem* Lady Bits. You just put it on and let it sit for about 4 minutes, then rub it off with a wet washcloth. The smell is not awful like it is with other diplitory creams. It has a pepperminty smell. It did tingle a bit, but did not hurt. According to the label, if everything does not come off in the first try, you can do it again in 24 hours. I would say do it a day or two in advance of your special date!"  April Kyle

$23.75 at Amazon.com

Best for General Hair Removal

Veet Men Hair Removal Cream for Sensitive Skin

Veet

While the aforementioned Veet for Women product is known for getting rid of hair down under, this is another solid option for other parts of the body  particularly the chest, back, arms, and legs. Just dont use it anywhere else  especially the groin or nipples  because it doesnt do well on sensitive skin. If you do use it in sensitive areas, youll most likely end up with a burn, redness, and other irritation.

Promising Review: "Brilliant product. Despite all the warnings and cautions I brought this product to remove pubic hair after years of shaving. I can confirm that after slapping it all over and waiting about 8 minutes I was completely smooth, all without any discomfort."  Matthew

$20.99 at Amazon.com

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A group of German lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Merkel governments immigration policy in the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.



The suit accuses Angela Merkel of making decisions contrary to German law, the most serious of which they claim is the opening up of German borders for refugees.



The German Chancellor has no right to overstep the boundaries of the law in the framework of her policy and exceed the powers that she has received from the voters through parliament, author of the lawsuit and Dusseldorf's attorney Clemens Antweiler said.



They claim that Merkels open-door refugee policy, which has been heavily criticised, prevents the application of the provisions of the Dublin agreement (the EU law determining the country responsible for processing asylum seeker applications under the Geneva Convention) and according to Antweiler, is then contrary to the countrys constitution.



Antweiler claims that there are other decisions Merkel has made contrary to German and EU legislations, calling into question the Chancellors response to the euro crisis and her decision to abandon nuclear energy, Sputnik News reported.



More than 1.2m migrants reportedly entered the EU in 2015, in what the European Commission says is the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.


Partners in the office more, juniors less

Law firm partners are spending more time in the office while junior lawyers are spending less. A report by specialist recruitment firm Laurence Simons says that partners average 55.8 hours per week, up from 50.2 hours in 2013; juniors spend 46.8 hours in the office, down from 47.4 hours in 2013. The firm says that partners are working more hours as pressure increases from new entrants to the profession, such as the accountancy firms EY and PwC. Meanwhile it says that fewer hours are needed by junior lawyers as the threat of redundancy has eased. The data was reported by the Law Society Gazette.



Heavyweight hire for Baker & McKenzie

Baker & McKenzie in Toronto has hired a former Canadian Attorney General as a partner. Peter MacKay, who has also held ministerial positions in justice, defence and foreign affairs, will join in 1st February to advise on government and regulatory matters. He will also support Canadian firms doing business globally and international clients operating in Canada. Prior to his governmental career he was a Crown prosecutor; he is a QC and member of the Privy Council.



Former judges appointed as Australian public interest advocates

Former Queensland court of appeal judge John Muir and former South Australian supreme court judge Kevin Duggan have been appointed as public interest advocates to represent journalists when government agencies want their phone and internet records. The Guardian reports that the pair were appointed by Malcolm Turnbull in October 2015 according to documents recently released. The advocacy positions were created as part of the new data retention laws introduced last year.



New alliance for NRF in Indonesia

Norton Rose Fulbright has changed its alliance partners in Indonesia. The firm will now work with TNB & Partners, ending a 5-year alliance with Susandarini & Partners. TNB was formed by three former Norton Rose Fulbright partners, Tasdikiah Siregar, Nadia Soraya and Benny Bernarto.



Philip Morris trial in US courts

Tobacco firm Philip Morris USA is facing a trial in the US federal court in Boston this week as smokers allege the company knew it had manufactured a defective product. The class action focuses on the Marlboro brand and claims that the tobacco firm could have made a safer product with fewer carcinogens.



The trial will be between experts on both sides with the jury being asked to decide if the cigarettes are more dangerous than they could be. The plaintiffs have a former Philip Morris employee who is expected to be called to testify that the company had safer variants of Marlboro available.



The plaintiffs want the company to pay for detailed cancer screening. Last month Philip Morris Australia lost a case against Australia in which is attempted to overturn plain-packaging legislation.
The organizers of the event are pleased to announce this increased number of visitors that bought tickets to the first significant automotive event of the year. Last year, 803,451 people visited the NAIAS event.However, in 2009, along with the financial difficulties that hit the US and the auto industry, the Detroit Auto Shows participation dropped to 650,517 visitors with paid tickets.The overall attendance record of this event was attained in 2003, when 838,066 people bought tickets to the Detroit Auto Show. This year, the show reached 5,068 media visitors from 60 countries for the dedicated media preview, along with a record 39,788 visitors from the automotive industry.NAIAS organizers say that the industry visitors came from 2,000 companies and 25 countries.According to Automotive News , the annual black-tie Charity Preview of the Detroit Auto Show drew 13,075 attendees and raised $5.2 million. The black-tie event raised capital that will be distributed to eight Southeast Michigan childrens charities.The Detroit Auto Show has been held at the Cobo Hall since 1965, but the automotive event took its current name in 1989. This years edition had over 60 exhibitors. The NAIAS traces its roots back to December 1907, when the inaugural Detroit Auto Show was held with only 17 exhibitors.Things have gone a long way since 1907, as automakers and suppliers spent over $200 million to redesign their displays for the 2016 event. President Barack Obama also visited the auto show this year, becoming the third US leader to visit the NAIAS Since 2016 just began, the American audience still has a lot of automotive events in front of them, such as the New York Auto Show, the Chicago Auto Show, the Los Angeles Auto Show, Las Vegas SEMA, and many more.Well be sure to keep you posted on updates from every major auto events as they take place.
SUV

We already know it will be called the Levante, but this pre-production prototype is still heavily covered in camouflage. For the first time, our spy photographers have managed to get close enough to the model and have provided us with a set of interior shots.Naturally, since the vehicle is still a prototype, the interior has some camouflage on top of the dash, along with a set of dedicated instruments for the engineers on board. A quick look reveals the fact that the center console looks just like the one found on the Quattroporte and the Ghibli.The elbow rest on the center console has the same shape as that of the two Maserati sedans while the top part of the center of the dash is more like the one on the Ghibli than that of the Quattroporte, but the air vents and other elements seem to be different. Therefore, the interior of the Levante will bring a combination of the Ghibli and the Quattroporte, decorated with a few extra elements.The link to the Quattroporte and the Ghibli is logical because the Levante has a platform with parts from both cars. Furthermore, thewill borrow engines from the two sedans, so theres good reason to use some interior parts from the two models in Maseratis range. A look at the prototype reveals the fact that the car is not very tall and doesnt have a massive ground clearance.Such an approach to the SUV idea makes sense, because nobody would expect an off-roader from a brand like Maserati. Moreover, even if they created a rugged off-road car, sort of an Italian G-Class, few customers would really take it off the tarmac. The new Maserati Levante SUV is expected to be launched at this years Geneva Motor Show, held in March.Production of Maseratis first SUV should start in Turin, Italy, several months later, with the first cars expected to be delivered by the end of the year.
AMG

Until the German brand unveils its upcoming E-Class Coupe, its engineers are hard at work testing the prototype in winter conditions. Thanks to our friends at SB-Medien, we bring you a large photo gallery of the prototype of the upcoming Mercedes-Benz E-Class Coupe spied during testing.As expected, the prototypes feature a thick layer of camouflage, but we can still figure out how the car is supposed to look when it comes to market.The new generation of the E-Class Coupe brings a significant shift in this range, as the platform of the sedan will be lent to the Coupe and Cabriolet models.This has not happened since the early 1990s, back when the edgy W124 was the current E-Class in Mercedes-Benzs range. The coupe version of the cars successor, the W210, was called the CLK and shared components with its smaller brother, the C-Class.This tradition was maintained for a few years, but Mercedes-Benz have changed their minds and reverted to the original idea.The upcoming E-Class Coupe will borrow all the technologies featured on the Sedan version unveiled this year at the Detroit Auto Show. The engine range is expected to be shared as well, excepting some diesel and hybrid variants. However, the E63version should come to market without a hitch. Time will tell if the Cabriolet version of the E-Class will also get a performance version. If it does, there is a risk that the price of such a car could come too close to that of an AMG S-Class Cabriolet, or too close to that particular range.If the price of an eventual E-Class Cabriolet in AMG variant gets too high, the market for such a car could be too small, and the carmaker could decide not to develop a production variant.
Theres a reason people and companies dont give out their best from the off - they risk hitting the ceiling too soon and, from there on, theres only one way left, and its definitely not up. Well, as good as the current S-Class is, theres absolutely no doubt that Mercedes-Benz will find a way to make it even better.For now, though, it seems content just to give us the new facelifted S-Class piece by piece. The first car weve seen caught by our spy photographers had the headlights well hidden behind strips of black tape. However, we could make out some changes on the headlights, only to see this test car over here that uses a different type of unit from both the current model and the previously spotted car.That leads us to believe that the ones we see here completely free of any type of camouflage are the new standard headlights for the S-Class (also spotted in a previous video ), while the ones who were kept hidden are the new optional MULTIBEAM LED units weve discussed earlier.The car that made the journey up North to be tested in winter conditions has another piece of its body wrapped up like its a newborn: the radiator grille. Up until this point, the grille wasnt signaled as the recipient of any sort of changes, so it could be that Mercedes-Benz is fitting the test cars with one element at a time. Or its just trying to confuse us by randomly applying black concealment on different body parts.Our photographers say that all cars had one thing in common, and that is a very well hidden interior, which would point out to several changes there. However, the first set of images weve had revealed half of the dashboard, and unless Mercedes-Benz is having a similar approach of not fitting the cars with all the updates at the interior as well, it looked pretty much unchanged.With the new E-Class breathing down its neck, Mercedes-Benz decided to boost the size of its two displays and fuse them together to create a huge, flowing digital surface. Adding to the hi-tech feeling will be the gesture control system as well as enhanced driving aids, as seen on the E-Class.Dont expect anything radical in the powertrains department, with more of the same for the new S-Class, only with marginally more power and lower emissions - the latter helped by the new 9G-TRONIC nine-speed automatic transmission.Its hard to tell what new info the next spotting of the S-Class facelift will bring, but well surely see a lot more of the test cars in the following months as the release hasnt been scheduled yet and it wouldnt make sense to come any earlier than next year.
Forgiato Wheels, one of the premier custom wheel specialists in America, had a perfect set of rims to match the widened blue Ferrari. They're called Dieci-C and unlike the ones fitted to Rick Ross' Ferrari, they work well with the car.Liberty Walk body kits have their roots in the Japanese bosozoku car and motorcycle culture. Liberty Walk president Wataru Kato says he used to race Skylines with widened fenders all night, so it's not surprising this blue Ferrari looks like it belongs to a Yakuza gang boss.To make the Italian supercar look the way it does, LW cuts the wheel arches and wings in order to accommodate extra-wide 20-inch rims. Then they bolt, yes bolt on, a set of these extensions which instantly gives it a race car look.It's not just for Ferraris. You can have the same extreme look on a Lamborghini, an M3 or a Nissan GT-R. Like most extreme tuning, it's very polarizing. People are going to either love it or hate it. But reading between the lines of our article, we think you guys know which camp we're in.
While the consumers faith in diesel might have been shaken, the American brand plans to develop four- and six-cylinder units to please its European customers. Cadillac will roll out its diesel engines by the year 2020, as part of its sales offensive planned for the next decade.According to Cadillac CEO Johan de Nysschen, the reputation of diesel engines has suffered on account of the Volkswagen scandal, but the prospects of diesel units in Cadillacs are still positive. In an interview with Car&Driver , Cadillacs CEO has confirmed that the upcoming diesel engines will also be sold in the United States of America, not just in Europe.The head of the automaker has also confirmed that the brand will not develop its upcoming diesels per se, but rather borrow them from other General Motors brands. The new engines will be designed to Cadillac specification, meaning that the output, performance, fuel economy, and noise standards should be higher than those of the units they are based on.Cadillac is not at its first encounter with diesel, as the company has been discussing the topic for a few years now. Without diesels, the American brand cannot compete with its European rivals, including brands like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. However, there are premium brands that do well in sales figures without too many diesel engines in their ranges, and Lexus is the best example that comes to mind.Cadillacs first attempt at a production vehicle with a diesel engine began in the late 1970s. Back then, the American brand wanted a way to reach the 1978 CAFE standards for fuel economy.However, Cadillacs brand image and the way US customers viewed diesels suffered significantly due to the reliability issues of those power plants.The carmaker eventually discontinued the units, but the fear of diesels in the US was maintained by the poor performance provided by those engines. Thankfully, diesels have come a long way from the 1970s, so the company could bring a nice surprise to the market.
That image is so immovably stuck in our heads that even over 50 years after a Jeep carried on-duty military personnel for the last time, we're still looking at the Wrangler as a civilian version of the Willys. Well, a North Carolina defense contractor is planning to bring our nostalgic vision back to the present.According to Associated Press, as quoted by The Detroit News , Hendrick Dynamics have an ongoing project based on the Wrangler, which they hope will convince the Government. The Army is supposedly looking for a cheap, lightweight, all-terrain, unarmored vehicle that can be parachuted into conflict areas anywhere in the world. So, basically, the same thing it was looking for in 1940 when it issued standard specifications required for a light reconnaissance vehicle and submitted them to American automakers.Although the present-day project has just taken off, the Charlotte-based company has already developed and built 12 modified Jeep Wrangler prototypes."Weve got a really good opportunity to deliver to the Army a highly capable platform at a significantly reduced cost," said Marshall Carlson, general manager of Hendrick Dynamics. "One of the best points of the project is youre starting with such an incredibly capable vehicle which comes right off the line in Toledo."Neither Fiat Chrysler nor the Army has made any comments on the subject, but a DefenseNews newspaper report from September 2015 claims that the Government will issue a formal request for proposals by the end of this year. Hendrick Dynamics favors using the Wrangler because it's a production vehicle and thus offers an international, developed service and parts network.Over 360,000 "Jeeps" were built by Willys for the Army during World War II, between 1941 and 1945. A few decades down the line, but still in Toledo, Ohio, Fiat Chrysler built over 240,000 Wranglers in 2015.
If anything, Ural sidecars are probably one of the most recognizable WWII icons, when it comes to motorcycles, of course. In fact, the Ural machines played a major role in certain battles during the World War II, with the one at Stalingrad being perhaps the most famous.Urals sprouted from the BMW R71 machines in 1940, and evolved in the M-72 model one year later. Despite having a long history, Ural has not produced a wide range of distinct models, with the variations being rather insignificant, at least until the recent years.These bikes were fabricated in multiple factories back in the day, but the WWII caused the Russian government to reduce the number of plants and move them east. This is how these motorcycles started to be manufactured in Irbit, a town in the Ural Mountains, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast (region).Urals have remained largely unchanged until several years ago, when the management of the factory understood that updates and upgrades were needed to make the bikes more competitive.The old-spec machines suffered from multiple reliability issues, despite their overall ruggedness and awesome capabilities to tackle hard terrain. Ural-inspired Dnepr machines manufactured in Ukraine were even worse, and often riders who had to cover long distances carried a lot of spares including piston rings and the likes of those.With strong markets established almost all over the world, it was natural to see Ural evolving. The engine displacement went up from 650cc to 750cc (40 to 46 cu in.) and then other features were added.The Ural bikes are now equipped with electronic fuel injection, disc brakes with Brembo calipers, Sachs shock absorbers, new, stronger crankhafts, Nippon Denso alternators, a smoother gearbox, and even a hydraulic steering damper.Currently, the IMZ-Ural plant employs 155 people, a mere fraction of the 10,000-strong body that used to work for the Russian manufacturer in its glory days.
People with a lot of money in their pockets were not disappointed on Friday at the worlds largest collector car auction that opened its gates on January 15. The top 10 sales of the day were overshadowed by Hemi power with a 1970 Plymouth Hemi Cuda Convertible priced at a staggering $2,675,000.The second spot was also claimed by a Hemi Cuda Convertible, but this time from 1971. One of the most iconic American cars of all time fetched $2,300,000. Closing the podium was a 1970 Dodge Hemi Challenger R/T Convertible, sold for $1,650,000.A 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda sold for $950,000 and got 4th place in the Top 10, while a 1970 Ford Torino King Cobra interrupted the Hemi dominance on sixth, selling for $525,000.The cheapest of them all and closing the Top 10 was a 1969 Chevrolet Yenko Camaro, priced at $330,000.Seeing this incredible lineup of cars, we can say for sure that Dana Mecum was not exaggerating when he described the Monumental Muscle that crossed the Mecum auction block on Friday as unprecedented.Among all the pieces of the American automotive history, fine examples of Ferrari history were also sold . The most expensive of them all was a pristine 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 Berlinetta that was expected to fetch somewhere between $2,800,000 and $3,500,000.While the last car auction held in Austin in mid-December 2015 achieved $10,876,142 in total sales, as a near 70 percent sell-through was registered with 454 vehicles sold in just two days, Kissimmee is expected to bring even more money to the auction houses bank accounts.The Mecum Auction Company hosts auctions throughout the United States. The company has 29 years of experience and is now offering more than 20,000 lots per year and averaging more than one auction each month. Established in 1988, Mecum Auctions remains a family-run company headquartered in Walworth, Wisconsin.
The Czech manufacturer started building cars in 1905 and eventually made it to the 18 million mark. An important milestone in Skodas history was the takeover by the Volkswagen Group. Thanks to the acquisition made by the German company, the Czech brand received a cash and tech injection that allowed its engineers to develop a new range of models, that eventually became very successful.Skoda factories have received investments as well and became as technologically advanced as their Volkswagen counterparts. The latest of the Skoda works to secure investment is the Kvasiny plant, whose capacity will increase to 280,000 vehicles annually. Last year, the workshop made 150,000 cars and had 4,500 people employed.Skodas story started as a company located in Mlada Boleslav in 1895, founded by Vaclav Laurin and Vaclav Klement. Initially, the company was making bicycles but eventually made its way to building cars.The takeover by Volkswagen began in 1991, the year when the company celebrated making five million Skoda vehicles since 1905. However, the Skoda brand became a wholly owned subsidiary of the German corporation in 2000.The previous production milestone for Skoda was announced on November 24, 2015. The anniversary marked the manufacture of 12 million cars at the Mlada Boleslav factory. So, out of the 18 million Skoda cars, 12 million were made at the companys central plant.Skoda is big in Europe and China, selling its vehicles on a global scale except for North America. The Czech brand has yet to sell its cars on this market. Taking into account Volkswagen Groups recent issues, we do not expect the name to come to America too soon. As some of you know, the German company that owns Skoda is having some issues because of its Dieselgate scandal, and the Volkswagen Corporation has decided to cut unnecessary spending in the coming years.
SUV

MQB

It all started on the companys local Facebook page , where it posted a picture of a slightly opened garage door with the Skoda logo on it. We expect the teaser to concern the futureplanned by the Czech company owned by the Volkswagen Group.The upcoming SUV is reportedly being called either Kodiak or Snowman. We already know it will be larger than the Yeti and that it will be built on theplatform.According to several reports, the car is set to be available in five-seat and seven-seat versions. The new SUV from Skoda will share its underpinnings with the upcoming Volkswagen Tiguan. Unlike Skodas future seven-seat SUV, the Volkswagen Tiguan will not be available in Europe with a seven-seat variant, so the German company is ensuring that the two models will not cannibalize each other on that market share.Given the timing of the teaser campaign, Skoda could publicly unveil its new SUV at this years Geneva Motor Show, held in March. Previous reports expected the car to be showcased at this years Paris Motor Show, but we believe that the axing of the Roomster brought the Skoda SUV closer.As you know, while Skoda did finish the second-generation Roomster, the utilitarian vehicle based on the Volkswagen Caddy was discontinued from the brands lineup for cost-cutting reasons.Skoda's teaser could mean something else and preview an entirely different model, though. However, we believe the company will unveil its SUV since the teaser image is associated with the word "big."Since Skoda already unveiled the third generation of the Superb, and all its other models have been significantly remodeled recently, there aren't that many other possibilities left. That said, the teaser could also preview a Scout version of the Superb wagon or another addition to the Yeti range.
The new KC-46 tanker reached a milestone on Sunday when it completed its first aerial refueling, the U.S. Air Force has announced. The flight took place from Boeing Field, in Seattle. The crew transferred 1,600 pounds of fuel to an F-16. The new tanker uses a remote-vision system to operate the boom, instead of visual contact. The operator is stationed just behind the flight deck and maneuvers in reference to 3-D images provided by panoramic cameras with a 185-degree horizontal field of view. The new tanker also has other advanced systems that make the challenging aerial-refueling process easier for crews.

Fuel management during aerial refueling is highly automated and the crew does not have to manually maintain aircraft center of gravity or manage fuel offload rate during fuel transfer, said KC-46 test pilot Lt. Col. Daryl Corneille. The new tanker also has more refueling capacity, improved efficiency and increased capabilities for cargo and aeromedical evacuation compared to the current design, which is more than 50 years old.The new tanker will provide aerial refueling support to the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as allied nation coalition aircraft, the USAF said. The airplane first flew last September.
The annual ultralight-led flight of a flock of whooping cranes from Wisconsin to Florida has been officially canceled but not for aviation-related reasons as in the past. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday its pulling its funding for the well-publicized effort, mostly because it doesnt work. After 20 years and $20 million spent to try to create a new flock of cranes based in Wisconsin in the summer and Florida in the winter, it turns out that the cranes saw through the human-engineered plan. Although the flying part of it was pretty successful (about 250 cranes raised in Wisconsin were successfully led to Florida by the aircraft) the cranes didnt do their part. Only 10 chicks from the artificially raised cranes reached adulthood. There are now 93 birds in the flock, most of them lousy parents, according to a USFWS official quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Why arent the others getting it? asked Peter Fasbender. The common thread is this lack of parenting skills. Operation Migration, the Canada-based organization that does the flying part, isnt giving up without a fight, however.

The group has launched an online petitionto maintain the flights, arguing that the migration success rate is better with the ultralights than by letting nature take its course. The group notes that donations and fundraising pays for the ultralight flights and the effort draws a lot of media attention to the cause of saving the cranes. But the folks in charge of raising the birds agree that using an aircraft and having people dressed up as cranes interacting with them isnt the best way to create a viable flock. We have to find ways to reduce the element of artificiality, said Barry Hartup, director of veterinary services for the International Crane Foundation. Meanwhile, the last flight of ultralight-led cranes is in its final days with the flock not far from the winter destination of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.
WHO WE AREMakers & Allies is an award-winning design and branding studio producing exclusively for the wine, craft, and spirits industry. Were a multi-talented creative crew that has learned how to play at the top of our game together. Were pre
25 January 2016 12:30 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan is of great importance for Europe, Vice-President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly George Tsereteli told reporters in Baku.

He said that Azerbaijan and the OSCE have fruitful cooperation, and the issues of its further development will be discussed during the current visit.

Tsereteli arrived in Baku on January 25 to hold talks with the Azerbaijani leadership.

Earlier, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Ilkka Kanerva was expected to visit the country. Tsereteli told reporters in Baku that Kanervas visit has been postponed due to his health issues.

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25 January 2016 14:47 (UTC+04:00)

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, have no grounds to act as monopolists of the negotiation process.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev made the remark while commenting on the recent statement of OSCE regarding the reports made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe relevant committees on the situation in Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia and resolutions to be adopted at the PACE winter session.

The OSCE Minsk Group`s interference with the activities of other international organization which is going to contribute to the conflict resolution as well as its interference with the sovereign rights of the state which appealed to the international organization in connection with the issue of serious concern, brings into question the honesty of mediation efforts of the Minsk Group co-chairs and trust and confidence in them, Hajiyev said.

Reminding that the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group still have not justified the mandate given by the UN Security Council, Hajiyev said no progress has been made for more than 20 years in the settlement of the conflict.

The military occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia continues, they failed to ensure the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their native lands. And the main reason of this is the OSCE Minsk group`s conciliatory stance on the continued occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia," Hajiyev said.

He said the co-chairs should take into account the requirements of the UN Security Council's resolutions 822 (1993), 853 (1993), 874 (1993), 884 (1993), as well as the documents of other international organizations concerning the settlement of the conflict

Azerbaijan praises goodwill activities and the contribution of all international institutions to ensure the elimination of consequences of the Armenian aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan and the restoration of peace and stability in the region in accordance with the norms and principles of international law. In this regard, Azerbaijan will continue its activities in all appropriate organizations, Hajiyev added.

There are two resolutions on the agenda of the PACE winter session. They are PACE MP Robert Walters (UK) report entitled Escalation of Violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, and PACE MP Milica Markovics (Bosnia and Herzegovina) report about Sarsang Reservoir in Nagorno-Karabakh, and entitled Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Armenia is unwilling to peacefully resolve the long-standing conflict and is interested in and determined to maintain the current status quo that means keeping part of Azerbaijans internationally-recognized territory under occupation.

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25 January 2016 14:23 (UTC+04:00)

Romanian Ambassador to Baku Daniel Cristian Ciobanu sent a congratulation message on the occasion of the Union Day of Romanian Principalities.

The Union Day of Romanian Principalities, which is celebrated every year on January 24, marks a very important moment for Romanian people. 157 years ago, on January 24, 1859, Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldova united. This historical event has a great significance because it opened the process of unification of all Romanian provinces in a single state and put the basis of forming the modern Romania. It demonstrated the power of solidarity and joint action.

Celebrating Union Day of Romanian Principalities in Azerbaijan, which is a strategic partner for Romania, is a moment of great honor and joy. Relations between Romania and Azerbaijan are developing very successfully in all fields. Romanian and Azerbaijani people are closely linked by the spirit of friendship and mutual respect.

The Romanian embassy in Baku avails itself of this opportunity to warmly congratulate all Romanians in Azerbaijan on the occasion of the Union Day of Romanian Principalities.

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25 January 2016 14:32 (UTC+04:00)

Its necessary to find solution over Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Anne Brasseur, chairperson of the PACE.

She made the remarks speaking at the regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Armenia is unwilling to peacefully resolve the long-standing conflict and is interested in and determined to maintain the current status quo that means keeping part of Azerbaijans internationally-recognized territory under occupation.

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25 January 2016 16:16 (UTC+04:00)

The 10th IEEE International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies (AICT2016) will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan on October 12-14, 2016.

The AICT2016 Conference will build on the success of the previous conferences, which were held in Baku, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Astana and Rostov-on-Don.

AICT2016 is co-organized by Azerbaijan Communication and High Technologies Ministry, Azerbaijan Ministry of Education , Qafqaz University, Baku State University, Lomonosov Moscow State University Baku branch, Azerbaijan Technical University, Institute of Information Technology and Institute of Control Systems of ANAS, with support of IEEE Azerbaijan Joint Chapter and technically sponsored by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

AICT2016 will offer oral, keynote speeches, tutorials and, professional meetings. Submitted papers are expected to cover state-of-the-art technologies, theoretical concepts, standards, products implementation, ongoing research projects as well as application issues of the ICT. In the previous AICT was joined by hundreds of participants from several countries including Australia, Azerbaijan, China, Finland, Georgia, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, etc.

Building on the success of previous conferences held in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia, AICT2016 is expected to be one of the most significant international academic conferences in the field of ICT implementation, which draws together researchers, academics, practitioners around the world to exchange, reveal and promote the latest advances and technologies in regards of the Application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Education and Research, Business and Administration, Industry, Governance, Health Care, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Researchers, practitioners and distinguished speakers are invited to submit a paper and/or to make proposals of original research speeches addressing business and technical issues, challenges, solutions, and technologies in building applications, complete solutions and ICT-based services.

AICT2016 conference is focused in the scientific topics classified into the following technical tracks:

Big Data Management and Application

Data Mining and Data Engineering

Cyber Security Issues

Latest Trends in ICT Application

Communication, network and hardware

ICT in Business Administration, Finance and Economy

ICT in Governance and Government Policy Making

ICT in Education, Humanities, Social Sciences and Research

ICT in Medicine and Health Care

For more detailed information about AICT2016 International Conference, please visit the official website: http://www.aict.info/2016

Secretariat of AICT2016 Organizing Committee

Tel: +99412 4482862, +99412 4482863,

Fax: +99412 4482861,

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.aict.info/2016

Hasan Aliyev str. 120, Khirdalan, AZ0101, Azerbaijan

Information support is Trend, Day.az, Milli.az, and Azernews.az

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25 January 2016 15:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

The significance of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was high on the agenda of talks between President Ilham Aliyev and an OSCE PA delegation in Baku on January 25.

The delegation was led by Vice-Presidents of the OSCE PA George Tsereteli and Kent Harstedt, and OSCE PA Secretary General Roberto Montella.

Speaking at the meeting, Tsereteli described Azerbaijan as a priority for the organization, and also expressed his gratitude to President Aliyev for Azerbaijan's participation in the projects carried out by the OSCE.

He also hailed the successful implementation of cooperation with Azerbaijan so far, and noted that they want to elevate this cooperation to a new level in the spirit of constructiveness and understanding.

Tsereteli noted with regret that because of his illness OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Ilkka Kanerva was unable to visit Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev expressed hope that Tsereteli's visit to Baku will be fruitful and beneficial for both sides.

The sides also exchanged views over the deepening of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the OSCE PA.

Tsereteli is scheduled to hold meetings in the Parliament and the Government of Azerbaijan during his visit. The settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will also be discussed during the talks.

Prior to the meeting with President Aliyev, Tsereteli told journalists that the OSCE is concerned over the escalation of tensions on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

He said that the only way to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is through peace negotiations under the OSCE Minsk Group mandate.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

Armenia continues the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal. Peace talks brokered by mediators from Russia, France and the U.S. have produced no results so far.

The OSCE PA delegation has today visited the Alley of Honors to lay a wreath at the tomb of national leader Heydar Aliyev. The delegation also put flowers at the grave of prominent ophthalmologist, academician Zarifa Aliyeva.

They then visited the Alley of Martyrs to commemorate Azerbaijani heroes who gave their lives for the country's independence and territorial integrity.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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25 January 2016 15:53 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on January 25 on appointment of Natig Amirov his aide on economic reforms.

Prior to this appointment, Amirov was the first deputy minister of taxes of Azerbaijan.

Natig Amirov was born in Azerbaijans Shabran district in 1967. He graduated as an economist from Leningrad Institute of Finance and Economy named after N.A.Voznesenskiy (in 1990), and as a lawyer from the Science-and-Education Center of Tefekkur University in 1998.

In 1990-1991, he worked as senior budget economist in the Financial Department in Sumgayit city, in 1991-1993  as state tax inspector in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, Department on the Involvement of Citizens to Taxes.

In 1993-1994, he was chief tax inspector in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, Department for Taxation of Profits (Incomes) of State Entities, Organizations and Associations and Other Incomes.

In 1994-1997, he was head of the Department on Monitoring Compliance with Tax Legislation and State Price Control in Non-Governmental Entities of Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate.

In 1997-2000, Amirov worked as deputy head in Sumgayit State Tax Inspectorate, and in 2000-2001  as deputy head in Baku city Sabail District Tax Department.

In 2001-2003, he worked as deputy head in Department of Work with Large Taxpayers of Ministry of Taxes. In 2003-2005, he was head of Department of Economic Analysis and Organization of Registration of Ministry of Taxes.

On August 16, 2005, Amirov was appointed deputy minister of taxes by the Order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On March 4, 2009, he was appointed the first deputy minister of taxes by the Order of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

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25 January 2016 17:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

The resolution calling to punish the organizers of the Khojaly massacre was adopted during the 11th session of PUIC conference in Bangdad on January 25.

The resolution entitled Cooperation between the Islamic Conference Youth Forum and the Parliamentary Union of OIC Member States (PUIC) aims at ensuring recognition of the Khojali genocide, committed by the Armenian armed forces in the early 1990s.

The resolution also calls on the OIC member states to take necessary measures to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Khojaly genocide.

A relevant section of the resolution, adopted by members of the 54 states of the parliaments, supports the international Justice for Khojaly campaign initiated by the Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, General Coordinator of the O.I.C. Youth Forum for international dialogue Leyla Aliyeva.

In 1992, on February 26, the Armenian armed forces unleashed hell onto Azerbaijan, targeting innocent and unarmed civilians. Hundreds perished by the hands of Armenian soldiers, lost to a hatred they did not understand.

The town of Khojaly, the second largest town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, came under intense fire by the Armenian armed forces.

Some 613 civilians mostly women and children were killed in the Khojaly genocide, and a total of 1,000 people were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, 25 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, the fate of 150 of them remains unknown. Many civilians were shot at close range, scalped or burned alive.

The Justice for Khojaly International Awareness Campaign, which was launched in 2009, was aimed to catch an international attention to this brutal massacre. To raise international civil awareness through demonstration of creative photos and images of suffered people in the Karabakh conflict and in particular Khojaly massacre, as well as reaching out globally via media, Internet and live events.

The parliaments of Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Jordan, as well as the legislative bodies of more than 15 states of the Unites States, including New-Mexico, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Western Virginia, New-Jersey, Tennessee and Arizona have adopted relevant documents.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) adopted a final Cairo Communique in February 2013, at its summit held in Egypt, labeling the Khojaly tragedy genocide against humanity. The Communique calls on the international community to recognize the genocide.
25 January 2016 17:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

It is necessary to find a solution over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Anne Brasseur, President of the PACE said while addressing the regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

A regular session of the PACE has started in Strasbourg on January 25. The session will end on January 29.

Brasseur stressed that it is necessary to find a solution in order to advance in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, because it has been going on for so many years and there is no step forward.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Brasseur further noted that the debates during the session will contribute to the settlement of the conflict, adding that the PACE does not take somebodys side in this conflict.

It is necessary to find a solution to the conflict and ensure the rights of both sides. The solution will not be found as long as mutual accusations are made, she said, adding that casualties on both sides are also unacceptable.

Two reports on Azerbaijan will be discussed during the OSCE PA Winter Session on January 26.

The session will discuss the report on Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan prepared by MP Robert Walter (UK) and the report by MP Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) entitled Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water.

Europe still has problem of unresolved conflicts

Europe still has a problem of unresolved conflicts, Pedro Agramunt, a new president of PACE said in a speech at the session.

At the first day of the session, Spanish lawmaker Agramunt has replaced incumbent Anne Brasseur as the president of PACE.

He called the unresolved conflicts one of the challenges for the PACE. Such conflicts as Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniestria, the conflict in the east of Ukraine and Georgia, have not yet been settled, the president stressed.

Agramunt said that the issue as well as the problem of security and the migration crisis would occupy the main place in the agenda of the PACE in the near future.

Pedro Agramunt was a member of the Spanish delegation in the European Security and Defence Assembly/Assembly of WEU (Western European Union) since 2000, pertaining to its Committee of Presidents, the Defense Committee and the Political Committee, which was Chairman.

Moreover, he was the president of the Federated Group of Christian Democrats and European Democrats. Agramunt has worked as co-rapporteur of PACE Monitoring Committee on Azerbaijan.

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25 January 2016 18:09 (UTC+04:00)

Bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Latvia are at a very high level, Juris Maklakovs, the Latvian ambassador to Azerbaijan, said in an interview with Trend.



A successful political dialogue is underway, he said. The economic cooperation is being developed.



Maklakovs said that the Latvian and Azerbaijani presidents have always had friendly relations.



"The frequent high-level visits confirm good relations between the sides, he said. Dana Reizniece-Ozola, the Latvian Minister of Economics, and Uldis Augulis, the Welfare Minister, visited Azerbaijan in 2015.



Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Valdis Zatlers, two Latvian ex-presidents will arrive in Azerbaijan in early March, he said. We are preparing the visit of the speaker of the Latvian parliament."



The ambassador said that he intends to contribute to the expansion of economic relations between the two countries.



"Azerbaijan and Latvia could have intensified the cooperation in the fields of information technologies and agriculture, he said. All the possibilities of enhancing the economic cooperation will be discussed during the next meeting of the Azerbaijan-Latvia intergovernmental commission, to be held in Riga this spring."



Azerbaijan can be proud of its agricultural products, he said. If the production is adjusted in a volume necessary for the import of products to Latvia, they would be in a very high demand.



Maklakovs said that Latvia could invest in the sphere of medicine and pharmacy in Azerbaijan.



"The Latvian pharmaceutical companies would like to expand their presence on the Azerbaijani market, he said. Latvia is also interested in the development of such an area as medical tourism.



Medicine is at a rather high level in Latvia, he said. The representatives of the entire consortium of Latvian various medical institutions will pay a visit to Azerbaijan in the first half of February. They will hold a number of meetings, as well as with the minister of health."



Speaking about the countries cooperation in transit field, the ambassador called it a great opportunity for the deepening of economic relations between the parties.



Azerbaijan, as well as China and the Central Asian republics, positions itself as a country through which once the "Great Silk Road" passed and which has potential for transit to Europe, he said. Latvia also sees itself as a transit country because it has very well-developed transit infrastructure. We have a good airport, which realizes flights on 80 destinations to different countries.



The work on a direct flight Riga-Baku is carried out, which will be realized throughout the year, he added.



The diplomat considers that this flight could help to increase the tourist flow from both countries. In addition, Azerbaijani citizens could use it for transit purposes.



Baku is a beautiful city; there are many historical places here. If we are talking about increasing the tourist flow to Riga, it is also needed to advertise Azerbaijan for tourists from Latvia, said Maklakovs. For me personally, Azerbaijan has become a new discovery.



The diplomat also touched upon the topic of education, calling Latvia a promising direction for Azerbaijani students.



Today high schools of Latvia have about 170 Azerbaijani students, he said.



Latvian education is competitive in Europe and provides employment opportunities not only in Latvia, but also in other EU countries, Maklakovs said. Private higher education institutions of Latvia also provide an opportunity to study in Russian. Suitable faculties and courses can be found both in English and Latvian languages at public universities.



In conclusion, the ambassador congratulated Azerbaijani people with the come of 2016, wishing them prosperity, good health, wealth and peace, in spite of all adversities.



I have been six months in Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani peoples kindness and openness touched my heart. For half a year I made here a lot of friends and acquaintances, who are trying in every way to help me in my work in order to contribute in our countries rapprochement, Maklakovs noted.

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25 January 2016 12:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

Azerbaijan has opted for privatization as part of its anti-crisis actions while the country switched into the strict regime of savings for the next 4 years.

President Ilham Aliyev has recently noted the need to prepare a broad program of privatization, attracting both foreign and local investors, to improve the business environment and accelerate business revival.

There are many state owned enterprises in Azerbaijan, which activities are suspended. In some cases, these companies that own plots of land are in a dilapidated state, the head of state said.

The new privatization program is expected to be implemented transparently with participation of international experts. Moreover, favorable conditions will be created for local and foreign businessmen to support their interest in investing into Azerbaijans economy.

The process of privatization is not the guarantee of the economic revival, but it strengthens the competitiveness of the economic sphere, which includes a combination of private and public ownership.

Which state-owned companies can be privatized?

There are still a sufficient number of businesses that are entirely on the state balance sheet, as well as enterprises that are partially privatized, Member of Parliament Rufat Guliyev said.

There are more than 600 joint-stock companies, which are partially privatized in Azerbaijan. The share of the state in these companies sometimes reaches 30 percent. If these enterprises are privatized with direct international investment, it will provide a large inflow of foreign currency in Azerbaijan. In addition, this will entail the influx of foreign technologies, create new jobs and expand the tax base, he explained.

More complex and capital-intensive facilities in need of new technologies have not been privatized so far, the MP added. However, their privatization could significantly improve and revitalize the economy.

One of such state-owned companies is health facilities. Deputy Prime Minister Ali Ahmadov announced earlier that most of the medical institutions of Azerbaijan could expect the privatization in the future.

Privatization process in progress

More than 1,000 different public facilities were privatized in Azerbaijan in 2015, according to chairman of the State Committee for Property Affairs Kerem Hasanov.

In 2015, 685 small state enterprises and objects, unfinished buildings, vehicles, 456 land plots, and 20 joint stock companies have been privatized. Last year, 464 non-residential area and 298 plots of land were leased and five state-owned enterprises were privatized through investment competitions, he said.

Hasanov believes that with the modern requirements it is necessary to conduct research and prepare proposals to identify new areas for privatization, which will increase the state budget revenues.

Meanwhile, MP Vahid Ahmadov said privatized facilities should be operated well after the purchase, but not left for better times to be invested in.

Privatization itself is aimed to make the facility work better, he said.

The impact on the economy will depend of the process, Ahmadov said, adding that privatization process should be followed by healing process. In addition, the facility should work in its field at least five years to continue working in this direction in the future.

There are many fields where privatization can take place including energy sector, oil and gas sector, etc., he said.

The MP said that both local and foreign investors can participate in this projects, adding that first local investors should be attracted to develop non-oil sector, which has grew by eight percent last year.

Ahmadov further added that even large companies like the state oil company SOCAR and Azerbaijan Airlines have fields that can be privatized.

For instance, there are many problems in connection with price of tickets of AZAL. If there is another company along with AZAL in the Azerbaijani market, this will impact the prices, he said.

The MP believes that some facilities of SOCAR can also be sold, so the company works like joint-stock company.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

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25 January 2016 10:52 (UTC+04:00)

The work on the improvement of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) continues, Finance Minister Samir Sharifov said in an interview with ANS TV channel.

The Minister said that previous management of the bank made big mistakes in the work and today these mistakes are being given a legal assessment. "The bank's management was ignoring the instructions of the Supervisory Board of the IBA in many cases, and the data in the financial statements were distorted. All these led to the misappropriation of funds", Sharifov said.

Sharifov underlined that there also were cases of theft of the funds issued in the form of loans to related with the management parties.

"Today, along with the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General's Office we continue to work for the return of bank funds issued in the form of loans. On the other hand, in order not to harm depositors, it was decided to transfer some distressed bank assets to Aqrarkredit CJSC. We are talking about the various plants and factories, whose work is currently unsatisfactory. We intend to improve them, and then sell in order to to return the part of the funds of the bank", Sharifov said.

On July 15, 2015 the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed a decree on the measures for rehabilitation related to the preparations for privatizing the state-owned shares of the International Bank of Azerbaijan JSC.

The shortcomings in the management, investment and loan policy of the International Bank of Azerbaijan in recent years, as well as financing of less efficient, risky investment projects worsened the banks financial state, caused increase in the share of distressed assets and reduced its liquidity, said the decree.

In order to overcome the current situation, restore the banks financial position and ensure its sustainability, the distressed assets of the bank were transfered to the state-owned Aqrarkredit CJSC non-banking credit organization. Bonds for three billion manat were issued under the state guarantee to ensure IBA's liquidity instead.

Aqrarkredit CJSC is the biggest non-banking credit organization operating since 2001, whose shares are owned by the state.

The International Bank of Azerbaijan was founded in 1992 and is the largest bank of the country. Some 51.07 percent of stake in the banks capital is owned by the state, 48.93 percent  by private shareholders.

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25 January 2016 17:52 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

The Central Bank has offered the consolidation of banks in Azerbaijan in an effort to revitalize the banking system which now operates 42 members.

Experts believe that the process should go on voluntary basis through enabling the banks to make decisions by themselves.

Consolidation is not a compulsory measure, economy expert Farhad Amirbayov believes.

"It should be completely voluntarily, taking into account the own sensible motives of banks. It is impossible to conduct this process [consolidation]," he said.

Earlier, Elman Rustamov, the Chairman of the Central Bank, told journalists that the consolidation may affect five to seven banks on the system.

This is a sensitive issue as the banks held deposits which are to be insured. That should produce no problem as the banks will become even bigger after merger, he noted.

Amirbayov hesitated to name the exact number of banks needed in Azerbaijan now. "It is always a subject of discussion, and no one can say whether the number of banks operating in Azerbaijan is sufficient," he added.

"Any consolidation envisages the merger of "good" and "bad" assets. It is normal for any company or bank to have "bad" assets on their balance sheet. Business does not always adhere to the plan. It is dealt with not only the expediency of consolidation, but the ability to manage this process. This is very complex process, requiring to involve appropriate experts," the expert stated.

Consolidation does not mean that merging the the banks with only bad operation, Amirbayov stressed.

"Consolidation allows stable banks, which have deliberately decided to merge, to increase their share in the market and to gain more revenues. This strategy would be more correct if is aimed both growth of profit, and growth of market share," he added.

The International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development support the consolidation of banks in Azerbaijan, regarding it as a way leading to financial recovery of the banks.

There are already good examples of consolidation of banks in the country.

For instance, UniBank was formed by the merger of two commercial banks in 2002 - MBank and Promtexbank, where the EBRD acquired a 15-percent share, and 8.3333 percent is owned by the German Investment Corporation DEG.

Bank of Baku merged with IlkBank in 2005.

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25 January 2016 16:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

China supports Ukraines proposal to create the Trans-Caspian transport route from China to Europe through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, bypassing Russia, in addition to existing transit routes.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, announced about this on January 25, TASS news agency reported.

She further noted the importance for the development of the Silk Road Economic Belt of already existing freight rail route from China to Europe based on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the new Eurasian transcontinental bridge.

Ukraine has earlier announced the start of processing export route bypassing Russia.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol in Baku on January 14 to establish preferential tariffs for cargo transportation on the Trans-Caspian international transport routes. The countries plan to develop a common tariff policy by mid-February.

Meanwhile, Ukraine launched the first test train from Ilyichevsk seaport in Odessa region on the Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China route on January 15.

Kiev plans the new route to run from the station Izov on the border of Ukraine and Poland to Dostyk station on the border of Kazakhstan and China, including ferry across the Black and the Caspian Sea, and will take two weeks at most.

The test train consisting of ten cars and twenty forty-foot containers has departed from Baku international sea trade port to the Kazakh port of Aktau on January 22. The train is expected to arrive to Aktau in January 30.

Earlier, Head of the Economic Department of the Ukrainian Embassy in Baku, Vadim Sidyachenko told AzerNews that Ukraine seeks the development of the Baku Sea Trade Port as a transport hub of the Caspian and the Caucasus regions.

We have already brought Ukrainian shipping transport companies so they were acquainted with the work of the port and hauled loads in this direction, he noted.

In the future, Ukraine plans to carry up to 2-3 million tons of cargo annually through Azerbaijan to Central Asia as well as in Iran and later in India and the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, Turkey has recently increased transportation via Azerbaijan.

The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route enjoys an opportunity to become attractive and profitable for consignors from European countries.

The route will transport approximately 300,000-400,000 containers by 2020, bringing hundreds of millions of manats in profit to Azerbaijan.

The first container train on this route arrived at Baku International Sea Trade Port from China in August. The train, consisting of 44 wagons, departed from the Alashankou export station of the Chinese Urumqi-Xinjiang province and arrived in Tbilisi in eight days transiting through the territory of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is keen on developing transportation possibilities of the country by creating the Coordinating Council for Transit Cargo Transportations, and applying the principle of single window for transport of transit cargoes through its territory via the railways, maritime transport, ports and terminals.

Moreover, the country introduced attractive transportation fees in an effort to become a major transport hub of the region.

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25 January 2016 12:43 (UTC+04:00)

Maros Sefcovic, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of the Energy Union, is quite optimistic to see Caspian gas in Europe well before 2020.

I have to say that President Aliyev was quite optimistic about the completion of this pipeline [the Southern Gas Corridor] even earlier than planned. I left the meeting quite optimistic that we will see Caspian gas in Europe well before 2020, he said in an exclusive interview with EurActiv.

The Southern Gas Corridor, envisaging the transportation of gas from the Caspian Sea region to the European countries through Georgia and Turkey, is one of the priority energy projects for the EU.

At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijans Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

Sefcovic further that the issue of SOCARs buying stake in DESFA Greek gas transport operator is almost resolved.

I think at that time, DESFA was prepared for privatization and a company from Azerbaijan (SOCAR) was ready to invest. So they did, Sefcovic said.

In such an investment, he said, the Commission always looks at the current and the future situation of the market to make sure that there is a proper competition in all areas.

Thereby, the modalities, the proportion, the ownership, the share owned by SOCAR were subject to the discussion, according to Sefcovic.

But I think that now is almost resolved, he said. They are negotiating, but there are no reasons for concern at this stage.

SOCAR won a tender in December 2013 on the sale of 66-percent share in DESFA for 400 million euros. The European Commission started an inquiry into the compliance of the deal on acquisition of a stake in DESFA with the EUs regulations In November 2014. Currently, the deal is being considered by European Commissions Directorate-General for Competition.

Asked about how concerns raised by the Commission about Azerbaijans purchase of the Greek gas operator impact the development of the Southern Gas Corridor, he said as regards to Greece, most issues need to be resolved.

It is a more than 3000 kilometre pipeline. Each and every country that passes through, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Albania and Italy has very similar challenges, routing, i.e expropriation of land or regulatory and environmental issues. Therefore, we organized an advisory council to address the problems when they arise, he said.

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25 January 2016 18:08 (UTC+04:00)

Oil production at Azerbaijani offshore and onshore fields costs Azerbaijans energy company SOCAR on average $20 per barrel.

Elshad Nasirov, SOCAR Vice President for Investments and Marketing, made the remark in an interview with Swiss SRF TV channel.

Azerbaijan has produced 38.32 million tons of oil and gas condensate in January-November 2015, or 0.5 percent less than in the same period in 2014, the State Statistics Committee reported.

The country produces three grades of crude oilAzeri BTC, Azeri Light, mainly sold to European and Asian markets, and Urals, Azerbaijani light crude sold at a discount as it blended in Russia. Bulk of the countrys oil is marketed by Socar Trading, which has been operating since 2008.

The country's largest hydrocarbon basins are located offshore in the Caspian Sea, particularly the Azeri Chirag Guneshli (ACG) field. Similar to its share of total production, ACG also holds over 70% of Azerbaijan's total reserves, with about 5 billion barrels located in this field.

SOCAR produces about 20% of the country's oil output. The remaining 80% of Azerbaijan's output comes from the ACG oil fields by the BP-operated Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) and at the BP-operated Shah Deniz field (which produces oil condensate).

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25 January 2016 11:14 (UTC+04:00)

Irans President Hassan Rouhani left Tehran for Rome early January 25 morning as the first leg of his European tour.

President Rouhani's visit takes place at the invitation of his Italian and French counterparts,IRNA news agency reported.

Irans president travels to Europe for a four-day visit arriving first in Rome and then heads to Paris. This will be his first state visit to Europe where he is scheduled to meet with top officials from both countries.

The first stop is Italy, where Rouhani will meet with Italian president Sergio Mattarella.

Rouhani will then head to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. Its been more than a decade since an Iranian president has visited any European Union nation. Iranian and Italian officials say they hope this visit will help improve economic and trade ties. Analysts expect an investment boom, with Italy reinvesting in Irans car industry in the near future.

The next stop is Paris. Rouhani is expected to meet with French President Francois Hollande. With sanctions lifted, Iran can now access billions of dollars in frozen assets and pursue new trade opportunities.

Several European ministers have visited Tehran this year, hoping to benefit from the opening of a major economy with a young, well-educated population of just under 80 million and some of the world's largest energy reserves.

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25 January 2016 15:06 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

China and Iran, two traditional trade partners, are keen on further boosting trade ties and increasing bilateral trade turnover in coming years.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first head of state visiting Iran since sanctions were lifted on Tehran, was on a two-day visit to Tehran on January 22-23.

Iran was the last point of the Chinese president's three-nation tour to Middle East after Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This was the first visit of the Chinese leader to Iran since 2002, which proved China's intention to open a new chapter in strategic economic cooperation with Iran.

In cooperation with the Iranian side and by benefiting from the current favorable conditions, China is ready to upgrade the level of bilateral relations and cooperation so that a new chapter will start in bilateral relations in the long term, Xi Jinping said before visiting Iran.

The main achievement of Xi Jinping's visit to Iran was signing of 17 Memorandums of Understanding on cooperation in economic, industrial, cultural and judicial fields.

The two countries signed documents for cooperation in various sectors including nuclear, transportation, ICT, culture, science and education as well as economic, industrial and judicial field, investment promotion and environment protection.

One of the agreements allows Chinese banks to open branches in Iran, while others underline high-speed railroads, fiber-optic communication, etc. The two countries are also planning to develop cooperation in various nuclear fields.

As part of the visit, Iran and China discussed ways to bring their bilateral trade up to $600 billion within a ten-year period.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said at a press conference that the two countries have decided to develop a comprehensive 25-year cooperation document.

"Finance, banking and investment issues, as well as long-term agreements on energy and investment in the mining, industry and energy sectors were discussed during the meeting as well," Rouhani added. "In addition to economic issues the two parties also negotiated cooperation in various fields such as security and defense, tourism, technology and science."

Iran and China have also agreed on more cooperation to combat regional terrorism.

Rouhani noted that the two sides discussed cooperation for creating stability and security in the Middle East and helping countries plagued by terrorism, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and providing intellectual and intelligence assistance in the fight on terrorism."

The Chinese president, in turn, said he has traveled to Iran to prepare the ground for a new prospect in relations between the two countries. Jinping added that strong cooperation between Tehran and Beijing will not only benefit the two parties, but also would serve regional and global peace.

The Chinese president said that he seeks strategic ties with Iran, in particular in the energy market.

China was Iran's top consumer of crude oil. Even after international sanctions targeted Tehrans energy sector, China continued its cooperation with Iran through purchasing oil and developing energy projects.



Iran and China have enjoyed diplomatic ties and supported each other since 1971. The Chinese president's current visit once again showed that Tehran and Beijing will continue their ties to make sure that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will be fully implemented without any failure.



Over the past six years Beijing has been Tehrans major trade partner.



According to Iranian Customs Administration, Iran exported 17.56 million tons of non-oil goods, worth $5.33 billion to China during the first eight months of 2015. China was the main importer of Iranian goods in the mentioned period. Beijings imports accounted for 22.7 percent of Irans total non-oil exports in terms of value and 33.3 percent in terms of volume.



Beyond its oil resources, Iran also plays an important role in Chinas regional economic ambitions.

Since 2013, China has pushed to expand its overland trade routes through the Silk Road Economic Belt, an initiative to build roads, railroads, and other transportation infrastructure throughout Central Asia. Iran is a critical part of this plan, due to its strategic location with access to key waterways.

China is for expansion of ties on transport sector and Iran and China both are considered to be significant destinations that are located along the Silk Road.



Earlier in 2015 Iranian media reported that Tehran plans to participate in an ambitious Chinese plan to revive the Silk Road which aims to connect Asia to Europe and Africa through a network of roads, railways, ports and airports.



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25 January 2016 12:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

The removal of Western sanctions on Iran, the fourth country in the world for its proven oil reserves, has forced the energy-consuming countries to rush to the Iranian market.

The Hellenic Petroleum, the biggest oil refiner of Greece, has become the first European refiner to restart trade relations with Iran after the post-sanctions era.

The company, which was a major buyer of Iranian crude, agreed to purchase crude oil from the National Iranian Oil Company on January 22.

The agreement came after Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia and his Greek counterpart Panos Skourletis met in Athens on January 22.

The two ministers also attended talks between executives from Hellenic Petroleum and NIOC, a meeting reported by Reuters on January 18.

Under the deal, the refiner will start buying oil from Iran immediately and will settle its multi-million euro outstanding debt to NIOC, Hellenic Petroleum reported.

Hellenic Petroleum is estimated to owe Iran around $550-600 million for oil it bought before the sanctions but was unable to pay when the international embargo was imposed.

"The deal was achieved after consecutive meetings in Athens and Tehran," Hellenic Petroleum said. "The deal is beneficial for both sides."

After meeting, Skourletis told Reuters that Iran believed Greece could be a conduit for re-entering Europe's oil market.

"They (Iran) are positively disposed towards Greece and think that Greece can be the European conduit for them to re-enter the market," he said, adding that the two countries had traditionally enjoyed close relations.

Hellenic Petroleum's crude purchase from Iran accounted for about 20 percent of the southeast European country's annual crude oil imports before sanctions were imposed on Tehran in 2011.

Iran, which enjoys about 158 billion barrels of oil reserves, used to sell as much as 800,000 barrels per day to European refiners in Italy, Spain and Greece before the sanctions over its nuclear program were imposed.

Tehran ordered a 500,000-bpd increase in its oil output, of which 200,000 bpd will go to Europe, after the sanctions were removed on January 16.

However, the European companies and trading houses are not rushing to purchase Iranian oil because of legal uncertainties over the lifting of sanctions that are likely to take weeks to clarify.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported that Japan plans to extend a contract to purchase crude oil from Iran.

Shana news agency  affiliated to Irans Ministry of Petroleum  has reported that Japans contract will be extended until April 2017. The volume of oil that the country will purchase from Iran will also increase from the current level of 110,000 barrels per day.

But, no figure was nevertheless provided on how much this will increase, Press TV reported.

Japan was one of the key clients of Irans oil before the US-led sanctions were imposed on the Islamic Republic in 2012. Iran also hosted several leading Japanese companies in its oil and gas projects before the sanctions were put into place.

The prospects for the removal of the sanctions against Iran encouraged the Japanese officials to look for the avenues to return to the previous status of oil relations with Iran.

On January 26, for the first time after the removal of international sanctions on Tehran, a Japanese tanker is scheduled to load oil products at Irans Kharg oil terminal.

IRNA news agency reported that Japanese companies, which had proper cooperation with Iranian oil industry during the sanction-era, will be first to carry Tehrans oil after the removal of sanctions.

Chinese tankers are also expected to resume carrying Irans oil shipments as of January 26 after Japanese vessels.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
25 January 2016 15:58 (UTC+04:00)

Saudi Arabia must change its policies towards Iran in order to improve ties with Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said.



He said that Saudi Arabia cut off its diplomatic ties with Iran, and in order to change the situation, Riyadh must show readiness, IRNA news agency reported.



During his recent visit to Tehran, Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif announced readiness to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia to resolve the existing tensions, the spokesman said during a press conference in Tehran on January 25.



However, Saudi Arabia must change its extremist policies, Ansari added.



So far, Iran has not observed any positive sign indicating changes in the policies of Saudi Arabia, Ansari said.



He further accused Saudi Arabia of causing delay in Syrian peace talks and said a meeting was scheduled between Syrian government and opposition groups to discuss the crisis, but was postponed due to Saudi Arabias policies.



The relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia deteriorated following the kingdoms execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, on January 2.



Reacting to al-Nimrs execution, a group of angry Iranian protestors stormed Saudi embassy in Tehran, smashing furniture and setting fire to the building before being dispersed by police.



Officially, Iran expressed strong protest regarding the execution, and the fragile relations between the two countries started going even further downhill from there.



Saudi Arabia and its allies including Sudan, Djibouti, Bahrain and the UAE joined diplomatic action against Iran following the break into the embassy in Tehran.



Riyadh accuses Tehran of meddling in the internal affairs of Arab countries, including Yemen  something Iran has denied.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Lisa Smith of Ginger Bakers in Kendal, Lancashire was waist-deep in floodwater at her catering kitchen, until local sourdough bakery Lovingly Artisan came to the rescue.

When Storm Desmond hit in December, Smiths catering kitchen at Dockray Hall Industrial Estate was completely flooded. Smith told British Baker: Everything in the bakery was gone, other than things like clocks on the wall.

Smith lost 800 Christmas cakes, 10,000 of mince pies and tray-bakes, as well as ovens, fridges, freezers, packaging and ingredients worth around 30,000.

But help was at hand in the form of Aidan Monks, of local sourdough bakery Lovingly Artisan. Smith said: As soon as we were flooded, Aidan contacted me. That was just amazing because we were there within the week and we got going again. It was such a generous gesture.

Monks threw Smith a lifeline, by letting her team-of-five share his kitchens. She added: Without that, I dont think we would have been able to carry on.

offered help

In a further tale of generosity, Ginger Bakers is currently based at Plumgarths Farm Shop, thanks to owner John Geldard, whom she said has been brilliant. She also added that many other businesses had offered help via email and social media.

Smith received a 5,000 flood recovery grant from Cumbria Growth Hub, and at home, the family has received a 500 payment and council tax relief from South Lakeland District Council.

Smith does not know when her house and business premises will be habitable, but said: The support and help has been amazing. So many people in Kendal are in the same situation and thats comforting because people understand what youre going through.
On a visit to Pinellas Countys Pawlicious Poochie Pet Rescue, Everyday Hero host Bill Murphy came upon two of the strangest looking dogs.



Well, they were actually pigs named Mr. Peabody and his gal pal, Princess Sparkles.

Turns out theyre rescues living in a place of love and caring.



And there are plenty of dogs at the rescue. They were unwanted senior citizens who have lived often cruel and pain-filled lives.

Enter Jaime Bunny McKnight, who began the rescue about three years ago when she rescued her first dog, an Italian greyhound.

Many of the dogs McKnight rescues are old and in ill health. Spending thousands of her own dollars, they are made well and are placed in loving homes.

But not all.

Little Foxy was so sick when she arrived, it took McKnight two months to nurse her back to health, actually spending nights sleeping on the floor with her.

And its for that reason the little cutie isnt going anywhere.

A bond like that you cant break and Chihuahuas really, really bond to you so, you know, some of them do stay here, McKnight said.

In another part of the house, Batman and Sherman sleep perhaps dreaming of days gone by. Both are blind and deaf and very old.

Now a non-profit, some of the costs are covered by supporters,

From McKnight comes this promise.

I want them to have the best of the best," she said. "I mean these dogs have suffered unimaginable neglect and abuse, and not to mention theyre old dogs. These arent puppies were talking about where they have youth on their side to recover."

And for all the love here, for the second chance, little Splinter dances for joy.

Everyones got a purpose and I truly feel this is my purpose, McKnight said.
The Florida Gulf Coast Cluster dog show wrapped up Sunday in Brooksville.

Organizers of the dog show, which has been going on for most of January, say this year was a challenge due to the weather, which included cold temperatures, heavy rain and strong wind.

Jeanne St. John said attendance at the show was mixed. More dogs and their owners showed up to hit the ring, but fewer people turned out to watch the fun.

"The weather kept a lot of people away," she said.

Thousands of dogs from all over the U.S., Canada and Mexico made the trip and some will be back next year. St John is hoping for warmer weather.

"You want that 70-ish weather, sun shining," she said. "We all hope for that."

For the dogs and their owners who showed up on Sunday, the trick was to keep warm by bundling up.

Krista Baker says her dog Simon gets grumpy when he's cold, so she keeps his jacket on most of the time.

"We take it off right before he goes in the ring so he stays warm," she said.

Organizers say the dog show is one of the largest in the Southeast.


A group of Bay area colleges are working together to create more opportunities for students to get their degrees.

Through a partnership called the Consortium of Colleges on the Creative Coast, students could be enrolled in one school, but taking classes at another.

We thought 'What an opportunity to capitalize on the assets we all bring to the region,' " said Dr. Sandra Stone, who is the Regional Chancellor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus.

The consortium includes the University of South Florida, New College of Florida, Ringling College of Art and Design, State College of Florida, Eckerd and the Florida State University program at Ringling.

We all have things that we can offer that gives students an opportunity to fill in gaps perhaps so they can do some things they might not be able to do with just the degree they get from their institution," Stone said.

The program has been in the works for years, but is now taking off.

USF Sarasota-Manatee student Antoine Santarelli is supportive of the idea.

Thats pretty good because if they didnt have a class here, Id pretty much have to go to Tampa, said Santarelli. Its a pretty far drive since I live in Sarasota.

Organizers hope the partnership will lead to better opportunities for students while also improving the area by attracting new businesses and industries.

Organizers hope to put the new program into effect in the fall. They are still in the process of working out the details.


A drunk driver crashed into a marked patrol unit that had pulled over another drunk driver, leading to the arrests of both drivers, deputies said.

Todd Casey, 49, and Michael Probst, 36, both of Tampa, are facing charges in connection with the incident, which happened at 10:31 p.m on Dale Mabry Highway North in Tampa.

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, deputies pulled over a 2012 BMW for a traffic violation at the intersection with North Village Drive.

When they spoke to the driver of the BMW, identified as Probst, they detected signs of impairment. Deputies said Probst had blood alcohol content of .114 and .134. Florida presumes legal intoxication at .08.

While they were conducting the traffic stop, a 2005 Dodge sedan side-swiped a marked patrol vehicle, deputies said.

The driver continued on Dale Mabry without stopping, and finally deputies pulled him over at Fletcher Avenue W.

Deputies said the driver, identified as Casey, appeared to be intoxicated. He had alcohol on his breath, his eyes were red and glassy and his speech was slurred, deputies said.

Casey's blood alcohol content was recorded at .181 and .196, more than twice the legal limit, deputies say. He was taken into custody.

Both men are facing charges of driving under the influence. Casey is facing an additional charge of driving under the influence with property damage and traffic citation for violation of the "move over" law.
Smoking has been blamed for a fire that killed one man and injured three others in Lakeland Sunday morning.

In addition, officials have tentatively identified the man who died as John W. Connelly, 59. An autopsy will be performed Monday to confirm his identity, as officials say the extent of the burns he suffered has made it difficult to identify him.

The fire broke out shortly after 4 a.m. at Bella Vista Manor, an independent living facility. Fire investigators say the fire, which is being blamed on smoking, started in the bedroom of Connelly's unit.

Officials say a neighbor who lived in the unit next door pulled the fire alarm, which started the evacuation of the other 41 people who lived in the building and alerted emergency responders to the fire.

Three people were taken to Lakeland Regional Health for treatment of smoke inhalation. Their conditions are not known at this time.

Officials say Bella Vista Manor was built in 1971, which is prior to the implementation of Florida Fire Code that requires multi-family dwellings have sprinklers.

Fire inspectors noted the facility had construction features that were meant to limit fire spread, like concrete construction and fire-rated corridors and doors, officials say, adding that Bella Vista Manor doesn't have a history of fire code violations with the Lakeland Fire Department.

Officials say the location and intensity of the fire, the early-morning hours and the fact that most of the residents are older adults meant the fire had the "potential to be disastrous," but that the quick response by firefighters and police prevented the situation from being even worse than it could have been.


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For six summers, Nola Knowles said she kept one eye on her work and the other on her cellphone just in case her kids had an emergency at home.

The Lumberton mom said the state's school calendar, which includes a three-month summer break, is a burden on working parents.

Knowles said she spent a considerable portion of her paycheck - almost $600 a month - on child care during the summers until her daughter hit an age where she could stay home alone and care for her little brother.

"They were still young to be home alone," said Knowles. "It wasn't the best situation in the world, but it's what we had to do."

Starting next fall, Texas school districts have the freedom to change school calendars and make classes work around families' schedules.

House Bill 2610, which was approved in the last Legislative session, changed the 180 days students are required to attend class to 75,600 minutes, which equates to 1,260 hours.

To find out how those hours should be scheduled, Lumberton ISD recently began polling parents, students and staff, said Gerald Chandler, assistant superintendent.

"You hear everyone talking about 'What if we have a four-day weekend?' 'What if we go year-round?' The survey gives us a better understanding of how the school calendar affects people's lives," Chandler said.

Currently, Lumberton school days are seven hours long or 420 minutes. By changing the required in-school days to minutes, the state allows districts flexibility to have, for example, five weather days instead of two, Chandler said.

Because districts will be work-

ing in minutes, lost time can be distributed among school days to make up for the extra time off.

As an example, adding five minutes to a school day shortens the calendar by two days, according to Chandler. By the same token, shortening a day by five minutes allows for a longer calendar year and a shorter summer break.

Chandler said shortening the school year might cost some parents, like Knowles, more money in child care.

At the same time, extending the calendar might cost taxpayers more if the district has to account for more overtime of non-salaried employees, Chandler said.

"All kinds of variables go into creating the school calendar," he said.

Knowles supports a year-round calendar, but she doesn't think Lumberton is ready for such radical change, she said.

More than 1,300 Lumberton residents, mostly parents, have completed the survey, which to end last week, said Chandler. The survey consisted of 12 questions that inquire about child care, transportation, parents' occupations and holiday plans.

Shorter summers, for example, might affect divorced parents in different cities whose kids need the long break to visit. Other families have relatives across the country and also use the time off to visit.

By law, Texas public schools cannot start fall classes before Aug. 27 and must go through at least May 15.

Chandler doesn't think the district will implement radical changes right away and expects next year's calendar to be similar to this year's.

Lumberton ISD's goal is to begin the last Monday of August and go through Memorial Day, he said.

The district's Site-Based Committee will meet to approve the proposed calendar.
A Beaumont man's claim that he fired on police officers in self-defense is a long shot but not an impossible or unprecedented strategy for winning acquittal, experts say.

Self-defense can be hard to prove in any case, but it's particularly tough when the alleged victim is a police officer. That's because citizens have a limited right to defend themselves against police, even when officers allegedly use excessive force.

For a capital murder conviction, as in any criminal case, prosecutors have the burden of proving a defendant's specific intent to kill.

When the victim is a police officer, prosecutors have an advantage because of the general public's empathy with police officers, said longtime Houston-based attorney Dick DeGuerin, who had a client no-billed by a grand jury in the fatal shooting of a police officer.

Byron Bush, 35, was shot twice in the back by plain-clothed Jefferson County Sheriff's deputies nearly two years ago during a foot chase at an apartment complex on Beaumont's north end.

He was charged with attempted capital murder for firing at the officers.

At trial, Bush's attorney argued that the defendant didn't realize he was running from police and acted in self-defense.

Nine jurors didn't buy it. Two jurors expressed doubts about how the case was presented. The hung jury produced a mistrial.

The case has been reset for April.

Melinda Smith, a Bridge City native and spokesperson for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, expressed disappointment at the trial's outcome.

Smith said often, it's the officers defending themselves, rather than the other way around.

"A lot of times, officers only have a few moments to act when they're encountering a situation or a suspect," Smith said. "They have to always be on guard and do their best to be safe."

Chris Cadena, lead prosecutor in the case against Bush, told jurors that there is no training cops can receive to prepare for seeing their lives flash before their eyes.

That is what happened, according to Sgt. Chad Colander, when Bush fired a 9 mm handgun at him and Deputy Marcus McLellan.

"It was a stressful situation," Cadena said. "You think Bush came there to talk? What do you think would've happened?"

The Burleson County case was a "classic situation" of a man defending himself, DeGuerin said. It was 4 a.m., dark outside, when police raided the home unannounced.

DeGuerin said the self-defense argument is most often employed in the shooting of undercover officers, who go to pains concealing their identities.

Part of undercover officers' training involves understanding the inherent danger of disguising their true identities.

In Bush's case, he was engaged in a foot chase. The Jefferson County deputies were in plain clothes but not undercover.

One wore a polo-style shirt with the department's insignia stitched on the front. Both testified that they wore badges near their waistbands.

"Fortunately, self-defense claims against police officers are not all that common, and I say 'fortunately' because we don't want our police officers getting shot all the time," DeGuerin said.

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
SOUTHEAST TEXAS TALES

Orange was sitting on a powder keg in the summer of 1941 and no one knew it.

Because of a swell in U.S. Navy wartime ship building, the city's population had grown from 7,500 to 15,000 in just 10 months. City officials feared the number would rise as high as 35,000 before the year's end.

The powder keg had nothing to do with the weapons being made in the city. It was the city's overtaxed sewer system and lack of civic facilities that had engineers scrambling to come up with ways to keep residents healthy, safe and entertained.

Municipal engineer Charles P. Smith, fearing an epidemic, told officials during a heated town hall meeting that they needed a better sewer system and new police department, fire station, port building and schools to accommodate the influx of people.

Military personnel also needed a place to blow off steam, some said.

The projected cost for all of these projects was $700,000. That's the equivalent of $11.7 million today.

President Roosevelt approved $75,000 for a new government recreation building in Orange, which had been designated a defense area city.

The spot chosen for the proposed USO hall was Anderson City Park, a city block surrounded by Cypress, 13th, and 14th streets.

Within 24 hours of the contract being awarded, construction materials arrived on site. The plans called for a single-story building of brick, concrete and wood, 161 feet long and 88 feet wide.

The USO (United Service Organizations) and the Orange Recreation Council were tasked to work together and select interior furnishings.

The target completion date was set for early December so that servicemen stationed away from their families would have somewhere to gather for the Christmas holiday.

By late fall, the whole town was abuzz about the USO, which was expected to include a lounge, club, game room, a stage, kitchen and a photo processing darkroom.

Although the YMCA would spearhead operations, Federal Security Administration Field Representative R. Warren Kimsey stressed to the townspeople that it was still a federal building and should be treated the same as the post office.

When the building was dedicated in January, the Orange Pilot Club furnished flowers and the Orange Boy Scouts Troop No. 1 showed up in full uniform.

The Rev. Ed Barcus of the First Methodist Church gave the invocation. A unit of Orange High School's band, the Bengal Lancers, played patriotic music.

Cold drinks were served from the new snack bar, and the Bengal Debs, a unit of the Bengal Guards, provided music for an hour of dancing.

The principal speaker was Beaumont Judge J.M. Combs. He encouraged the audience to remain physically and mentally fit for the difficult times to come during the war.

Speaking of the new recreation center, Combs said, "Building of battleships and other ships does not constitute the entire program delegated to Orange; it is highly important that something be done to build and sustain the morale of the people, which is of as much importance at home where preparations are made for victory, as on the battlefield."

He stressed that recreation was needed by all the people, and that the USO building should be the community center for everyone.

And it became that. From dominoes to dances, the hall had something for everyone.

The Texas National Guard took over the facility in the late '40s and turned it into an armory. The community was still allowed to use the building as a community center when the Guard wasn't working or training there.

The building burned sometime in the 1950s, and in 1961, the property was sold to the Orange Independent School District.

West Orange Middle School sits on a portion of the land where the old USO hall once stood.

Southeast Texas Tales is a weekly feature that revisits regional history.
PHOENIX (AP)  A suburban Phoenix school district is taking disciplinary action after a photo of students spelling out a racial slur with T-shirts showed up on social media.

Tempe Union High School District spokeswoman Jill Hanks said Friday that the discipline process remains ongoing but six girls will be punished in accordance with district policies.
News bulletin: Republicans in the Texas Legislature aren't conservative enough.

... Yes, that is tongue-in-cheek. Most rational people in Texas realize that Republican lawmakers are pretty darned conservative. In fact, you could make a case that they might be a tad too conservative, having underfunded vital social programs for years while handing out one tax break after another to various businesses.

But the Texas tea party movement wants to move the state GOP even further to the right. The San Antonio Express-News reported last week that mega-donors like West Texas fracking billionaire Farris Wilks and his family - who have already put $15 million into Ted Cruz's presidential campaign - are now lining up the Legislature in their cross-hairs. The goal is to elect more tea party Republicans and especially get rid of that dangerous moderate, House Speaker Joe Straus.

That would be a bad move for Texas and its Republican Party.

It's true that Straus isn't an extremist, but his job doesn't require one. As House speaker, he has to deal with 149 lawmakers in both parties who range across the political spectrum. That means actually being able to work with Democrats instead of insulting them.

Straus has fended off challenges from tea party hardliners ever since he became speaker in 2009. His fellow Republicans - again, a pretty conservative bunch - realize he's pretty good at balancing various interests and treating all members with respect.

Voters can help the Legislature help them by rejecting extremists of either side and electing people who actually get things done when the opening gavel bangs down. The hard business of governing requires grownups who can remain faithful to their principles while still operating in the give-and-take of a two-party system.

Joe Straus is doing that now, and House Republicans would do well to keep him or someone like him as speaker.
The Pennsylvania legislature estimates the state's 500 schools districts could save a total of $200 million annually if they united in one statewide health insurance program, according to ReadingEagle.com. The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee conducted the study.

Here are five observations:

1. Sen. David G. Argall headed the effort for the study, and wants the state to merge the school healthcare plans.

2. Sen. Argall plans to propose legislation that demands school districts purchase a statewide insurance plan.

3. The study suggested Pennsylvania could save money by establishing a statewide prescription drug plan.

4. Those wary of the plan point out the discrepancy in health costs between districts.

5. Pennsylvania tried to implement a statewide health insurance plan for schools in 2007, but the efforts failed. Many didn't want to implement the plan if they didn't know exactly how it would be executed.
Here are seven updates:

Appeals court upholds Virginia's much-debated CON law

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond upheld Virginia's certificate of need program. The program requires state medical providers to prove the proposed construction and major equipment purchases are necessary for the region. While Colon Health Centers of America and Progressive Radiology challenged the CON law, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton ruled against them.

Large employers may be excluding outpatient surgeries in insurance plans

In 2015, companies with low-wage workers attempted to claim coverage without inpatient benefits met ACA guidelines, but regulators disagreed. This decision caused many employers to attempt a new cost-cutting measure: eliminating outpatient surgery coverage. The government does not require large employers to offer a list of "essential health benefits." Rather, large employers are mandated to offer minimum value as determined by an online calculator and regulatory guidance, or face a penalty. For more on the story, click here.

Quint Studer to resign from Studer Group

Quint Studer, founder of Studer Group, is opting to leave his healthcare consulting company to focus on a series of community projects. Mr. Studer founded Pensacola, Fla.-based Studer Group in 2000. He said he will step down on March 31 to pursue volunteer work.

AHIP: We want UnitedHealth and Aetna back

America's Health Insurance Plans CEO Marilyn Tavenner said AHIP's main goal is having UnitedHealth and Aetna rejoin AHIP. She went on to say, "From my perspective, the door is open and we want them back, and both of them know that." UnitedHealth left AHIP in June 2015 and Aetna left earlier this year.

OMNI Surgery Center to officially open in NY

This week, OMNI Surgery Center is officially opening in South Utica, N.Y. The ASC will center on interventional pain management and will offer minimally invasive procedures to alleviate chronic low back pain and migraines.

NAPA partners with Riverside Medical Center & ASC

North American Partners in Anesthesia partnered with Riverside Medical Centers and Riverside Ambulatory Center, its affiliated ASC in Kankakee, Ill. Through the partnership, NAPA will be the exclusive provider of anesthesia services at Riverside Medical Center and Riverside ASC. Oleg Korolev, MD, will lead the onsite anesthesia team.

Island Eye Surgicenter breaks ground on new facility

Carle Place, N.Y.-based Island Eye Surgicenter broke ground on a new facility on a 3.5-acre site in Westbury, N.Y. The 27,000-square-foot center will house six operating rooms and 15 patient areas. The center will also have a waiting room, administrative office, a 12-bed recovery room, a staff lounge and patio.

More healthcare news:

Addus HomeCare names AmSurg's Steven Geringer board chairman: 5 key notes

Physicians trail behind by $71k  5 highlights

Florida talks telehealth: 4 things to know




Michael Barnes was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison for stealing more than $20,000 from the Center for Retina and Macular Disease in Florida, according to The Tampa Tribune.

Here are four things to know:

1. Mr. Barnes was hired as a business manager in 2006 and was responsible for running the daily operations of the practice.

2. Records show Mr. Barnes was arrested in 2012 and accused of paying himself unauthorized raises in salary and bonuses at the Center for Retina and Macular Disease as well as charging personal expenses such as family trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

3. In October, a jury convicted Mr. Barnes of grand theft of more than $20,000 but less than $100,000 and two counts of money laundering.

4. Mr. Barnes was also sentenced to 13 years of probation.
Nabil El Sanadi, MD, president and CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Broward Health, was found dead in his condominium from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Saturday.

Authorities responded to a 911 call just before 4 p.m. Saturday regarding a person who reportedly fell in the lobby restroom in a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea condominium. A spokesperson from the sheriff's office confirmed to the Sun Sentinel that a self-inflicted shooting occurred at the building and the victim, later identified as Dr. El Sanadi, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Dr. El Sanadi, 60, was an Egyptian immigrant who moved with his family to Cleveland in the 1960s to escape religious persecution. He served as president and CEO at Broward since 2014, and he also served as chief of emergency medicine for the public health system.

Broward Chairman David DiPietro told the Sun Sentinel that Dr. El Sanadi underwent a triple bypass procedure approximately 10 days ago. COO Kevin Fusco has overseen the system in Dr. El Sanadi's absence. Mr. Fusco will now serve as acting CEO.

Several people who worked with and knew Dr. El Sanadi expressed shock and sadness regarding his death. Sources describe the executive as upbeat, charismatic and someone who did not show signs of being troubled, although his health concerns were cited as a recent stressor.

Dr. El Sanadi assumed his leadership position at a challenging time for Broward. The health system had been under a federal investigation for about four years regarding allegations that the system held improper contracts with physicians to submit tens of millions of false claims to Medicare and Medicaid. In September 2015, the system ended the five-year investigation by agreeing to a $69.5 million settlement with the government. The settlement agreement, signed by Dr. El Sanadi and lawyers for the district, said the illegal scheme went on from 2000 until 2014.

Mr. Di Pietro described Dr. El Sanadi as the champion of Broward Health. "If we needed to do something, like vaccinate children of less means, he would be the first guy I'd call. This is a loss not only to Broward Health, but to the whole community," he told the Sun Sentinel.
R. Clayton McWhorter, a businessman and philanthropist lauded as a central figure in the development of Nashville, Tenn., as key region for the healthcare industry, died Saturday night, according to The Tennessean.

Mr. McWhorter was 82. The cause of death has not been reported.

Mr. McWhorter joined Nashville-based Hospital Corporation of America in 1970 and held a number of roles until serving as CEO from 1985 to 1987. In 1987, he co-founded HealthTrust, a spin-off company from HCA comprised of 104 hospitals that later became a group purchasing organization and cost management company. Mr. McWhorter served as HealthTrust's CEO until the company merged with Columbia/HCA in 1995.

Known for his passion for helping people, Mr. McWhorter served as a mentor to many. Hayley Hovious, president of the Nashville Health Care Council, called Mr. McWhorter a "visionary leader" whose legacy "will continue to inspire entrepreneurs in this community and beyond."

Among his numerous healthcare initiatives in Nashville, Mr. McWhorter was a founding partner for the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame, which commemorates the various impacts Tennessee has had in the national and international healthcare arena. In 1996, he founded Clayton Associates, an investment firm that provides startup companies with venture capital, according to the report.

In 2013, Nashville-based Belmont University established the Clayton McWhorter Society, a giving society intended to further the work of Belmont's health science programs, according to Belmont's website.

"Clayton was just a giant of a person," Michael Burcham, former Nashville Entrepreneur Center CEO said Sunday, according to the report. "So many people, when they have success, they retire or go to the beach. Clayton just kept paying it forward, investing in his community, investing in the welfare of others, investing in startup ideas. It's such a rare, beautiful thing to see such an accomplished man choose to pay it forward and help others. I was very grateful he chose to do that with his life."

Mr. McWhorter was included as an inaugural inductee of the Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame in 2015. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federation of American Health Systems, according to the report.

Note: This article was updated to correct the description of HealthTrust when it was founded in 1987.
Becker's Hospital Review is pleased to release the 2016 edition of its list of 100 Hospital and Health System CIOs to Know.

The executives are leading their organizations through healthcare's technology revolution, overseeing EHR installations, new patient portals and telemedicine advancements while working to keep data secure from breaches, among countless other priorities.

The Becker's Hospital Review editorial team selected leaders for this list based on editorial research and discretion, including prominent CIOs and those who head up IT for some of the nation's largest and most respected hospitals and health systems.

Note: This list is not an endorsement of included hospitals, health systems or associated providers. Leaders could not pay for inclusion on this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order.

Sponsored By Leidos Health

Leidos Health is a leading healthcare IT consulting firm with deep clinical and technical expertise to support our customers in selecting, implementing, and optimizing information technology investments. Leidos Health offers a comprehensive range of technology services for health care providers - from vendor selection, strategy, design, implementation, and optimization, across all major electronic medical record systems. Our professional services help providers meet regulatory requirements, optimize technology for their clinical workflow, improve collections and reduce receivables, and keep data safe.

Michael Archuleta. Director of IT for Mt. San Rafael Hospital (Trinidad, Colo.). Mr. Archuleta joined Mt. San Rafael Hospital in 2012 as director of IT, inheriting a hospital with no health IT team, data center or crucial cybersecurity plan. [READ MORE]

Pamela Arora. Senior Vice President and CIO of Children's Health System of Texas (Dallas). Under Ms. Arora's leadership, Children's Health System of Texas achieved Stage 7 of HIMSS EMR Adoption Model in 2010. [READ MORE]

Pamela Banchy, RN. CIO of Western Reserve Hospital (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio). Ms. Banchy has more than 15 years of health IT experience and has been in healthcare for more than 30 years. [READ MORE]

Daniel Barchi. CIO of NewYork-Presbyterian (New York). Mr. Barchi took on the CIO role at NewYork-Presbyterian in December 2015. [READ MORE]

Mark Barner. Senior Vice President and CIO of Ascension; CEO of Ascension Information Services (St. Louis). In the dual roles of CIO of Ascension and CEO of AIS, Mr. Barner manages IT operations, strategy, project execution and service delivery. [READ MORE]

Gary Barnes. Senior Vice President and CIO for Medical Center Health System (Odessa, Texas). Mr. Barnes has been with Medical Center Health System for nearly 30 years and was previously with IBM. [READ MORE]

Jayne Bassler, RN. CIO of Florida Hospital (Orlando). Ms. Bassler has served as CIO of Florida Hospital in Orlando since 2012. [READ MORE]

Chris Belmont. Vice President and CIO of University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Mr. Belmont has been vice president and CIO of University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center since 2013. [READ MORE]

Julie Berry. CIO of Steward Health Care System (Boston). Ms. Berry has more than 20 years of experience in healthcare technology. [READ MORE]

John Bosco. Senior Vice President and CIO of Northwell Health (Great Neck, N.Y.). Mr. Bosco heads up IT functions at Northwell Health, formerly North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. [READ MORE]

Robert Brandner. CIO of Spectrum Health Systems (Worcester, Mass.). Mr. Brander has years of experience at Dell Computers in IT enterprise architecture. [READ MORE]

Geoffrey Brown. CIO of Piedmont Healthcare (Atlanta). Mr. Brown was appointed CIO of Piedmont Healthcare in 2014. [READ MORE]

Paul Browne. Senior Vice President of Applied Informatics and CIO of Tenet Healthcare (Dallas). Tenet appointed Mr. Browne senior vice president and CIO in 2012. [READ MORE]

Jon Burns. Senior Vice President and CIO of University of Maryland Medical System (Baltimore). Mr. Burns has more than 30 years of experience in nonprofit healthcare. [READ MORE]

Bobbie Byrne, MD. Vice President and CIO of Edward-Elmhurst (Ill.) Healthcare. Dr. Byrne was named CIO of Edward-Elmhurst Healthcare in 2013, shortly after the organization was formed by the merger of Edward Hospital and Health Services in Naperville, Ill., and Elmhurst Memorial Hospital. [READ MORE]

Deborah Cancilla. CIO of PinnacleHealth System (Harrisburg, Pa.). Ms. Cancilla, CIO of PinnacleHealth since 2014, is leading an enterprisewide Epic EHR installation, which will span three hospitals and more than 74 ambulatory and specialty sites. [READ MORE]

Mike Canfield. CIO of Augusta Health System (Fishersville, Va.). Mr. Canfield stepped into his role at Augusta Health System in January. [READ MORE]

Kumar Chatani. Executive Vice President and CIO of Mount Sinai Health System (New York). Mr. Chatani served as vice president and regional CIO of Kaiser Permanente, Northwest Region in Portland, Ore., for nearly nine years before joining Mount Sinai as executive vice president and CIO in 2011. [READ MORE]

Matthew Chambers. CIO of Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas). Mr. Chambers served as CIO of Scott & White Healthcare until 2013, when it merged with Baylor Health Care System. [READ MORE]

Marc Chasin, MD. System Vice President and CIO/CMIO of St. Luke's Health System (Boise, Idaho). Though Dr. Chasin began working at St. Luke's in 2010, he was appointed to interim CIO/CMIO in November 2012. [READ MORE]

Carl Christensen. Vice President and CIO of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare (Chicago). In addition to serving as CIO of NMHC, Mr. Christensen is also CIO of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. [READ MORE]

George Conklin. Senior Vice President and CIO of CHRISTUS Health (Irving, Texas). Mr. Conklin has been with CHRISTUS Health since its inception in 1999. [READ MORE]

Andy Crowder. CIO and Corporate Senior Vice President of Scripps Health (San Diego). The recently appointed Mr. Crowder took the role of CIO and corporate vice president of Scripps Health Jan. 18. [READ MORE]

Richard (Dick) Daniels. Executive Vice President and CIO of Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.). Mr. Daniels began his role as executive vice president and CIO of Kaiser in February 2015. [READ MORE]

Randy Davis. Vice President and CIO of CGH Medical Center (Sterling, Ill.). In his current position, Mr. Davis serves as vice president of support services and CIO of CGH Medical Center. [READ MORE]

Myra Davis. Senior Vice President of Information Services and CIO of Texas Children's Hospital (Houston). In December 2012, Ms. Davis began serving as senior vice president of information services and CIO at Texas Children's Hospital. [READ MORE]

Frank DiSanzo. Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and CIO of Saint Peter's Healthcare System (New Brunswick, N.J.). In 2008, Mr. DiSanzo began his role as chief strategy officer and CIO of Saint Peter's. [READ MORE]

Jake Dorst. CIO of Tahoe Forest Health District (Truckee, Calif.). Mr. Dorst began his role as CIO of Tahoe Forest Health District, which includes Tahoe Forest Hospital, in August 2014. [READ MORE]

Marcy Dunn. Senior Vice President and CIO of Catholic Health Services of Long Island (Rockville Centre, N.Y.). Ms. Dunn first joined Catholic Health Services in 2001, after working with the system as a consultant. [READ MORE]

Adrienne Edens. Valley Area CIO of Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). With more than 30 years of health IT experience, Ms. Edens was named CIO of the Valley Area in August 2015. [READ MORE]

Dee Emon, BSN. Vice President and CIO of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, N.C.). Ms. Emon stepped into her current role with Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center last April. [READ MORE]

Dick Escue. CIO of Valley View Hospital (Glenwood Springs, Colo.). Mr. Escue took the helm of IT at Valley View Hospital in September 2013. [READ MORE]

Ferdinand Feola. Vice President and CIO of Pocono Medical Center (East Stroudsburg, Pa.). Mr. Feola has been with Pocono Medical Center since 2008 and CIO since October 2013. [READ MORE]

Rick Frederick. CIO of Cottage Hospital (Woodsville, N.H.). Mr. Frederick stepped into his role as CIO in 2014 after serving for three years as director of Cottage Hospital's information technology department. [READ MORE]

Shirley Gabriel. Vice President of Information Systems and CIO of University Health Care System (Augusta, Ga.). Ms. Gabriel came to University Health Care System in early 2015 after serving as vice president and CIO of the University of Arizona Health Network in Tucson. [READ MORE]

Roland Garcia. Senior Vice President and CIO of Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Fla.). Mr. Garcia has been senior vice president and CIO of Baptist Health since 2001. [READ MORE]

Indranil (Neal) Ganguly. Vice President and CIO of JFK Health System (Edison, N.J.). Mr. Ganguly joined JFK Health System in November 2013 as vice president and CIO with nearly 15 years of CIO experience under his belt. [READ MORE]

Sreekant Gottimukkala. CIO of Prime Healthcare Services (Ontario, Calif.). Mr. Gottimukkala became CIO of Prime Healthcare in 2006, and then vice president and CIO of Prime in 2012. [READ MORE]

Joy Grosser. Vice President and CIO of UnityPoint Health (West Des Moines, Iowa). Ms. Grosser has served as vice president and CIO of UnityPoint Health since 2009. [READ MORE]

John Halamka, MD. CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston). In addition to serving as CIO of BIDMC, Dr. Halamka is also a practicing emergency physician and a blogger, writing on "Life as a Healthcare CIO." [READ MORE]



C. Martin Harris, MD. CIO and Chairman of the Information Technology Division for Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Harris is a staff member in the Department of General Internal Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, where he has also served as the CIO and chairman of the Information Technology Division since 2009. [READ MORE]

Steve Hess. CIO of University of Colorado Health (Aurora). Mr. Hess became the CIO of University of Colorado Hospital in 2009. [READ MORE]

Kyle Johnson. Vice President and CIO of Eastern Maine Health Systems (Brewer). Ms. Johnson, a healthcare leader with more than 30 years of experience in healthcare, was appointed to her current role in 2014. [READ MORE]

Liz Johnson, MS, FCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO, RN-BC. CIO of Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics for Tenet Healthcare (Dallas). As CIO of acute care hospitals and applied clinical informatics, Ms. Johnson oversees the health IT at 84 Tenet hospitals across the nation. [READ MORE]

Beverly Jordan, MSN, RN. Vice President and Chief Information and Transformation Officer of Baptist Memorial Health Care (Memphis, Tenn.).Baptist Memorial Health Care appointed Ms. Jordan to vice president and chief information and technology officer to lead the organization's transition to EHR vendor Epic in December 2015. [READ MORE]

Mark Kilborn. CIO of Springhill Medical Center (Mobile, Ala.). For nearly 30 years, Mr. Kilborn served as the operations manager of Mobile (Ala.) Infirmary Medical Center. [READ MORE]

Suresh Krishnan. Vice President and CIO of Loretto Hospital (Chicago). Mr. Krishnan has been vice president and CIO of Loretto Hospital for nearly three years. [READ MORE]

Mary Anne Leach. Senior Vice President and CIO of Children's Hospital Colorado (Aurora). Ms. Leach became senior vice president and CIO in 2007. [READ MORE]

Philip Loftus, PhD. Senior Vice President and CIO of SSM Health (St. Louis). Dr. Loftus joined SSM Health as senior vice president and CIO in January 2015, where he oversees the IT and clinical engineering services for the health system's acute care hospitals, physician practices and nursing homes. [READ MORE]

Jonathan Manis. Senior Vice President and CIO of Sutter Health (Sacramento). As CIO of Sutter Health for nearly a decade, Mr. Manis oversees the health system's more than $1 billion investment in using health technologies to improve patient care, including medication bar coding, the tele-ICU and the EHR. [READ MORE]

Ed McCallister. Senior Vice President and CIO of UPMC (Pittsburgh). Mr. McCallister assumed his current position in 2014. Previously, Mr. McCallister spent 15 years with UPMC's Insurance Services Division, first as director and then as vice president and CIO. [READ MORE]

William McConnell. Senior Vice President and CIO of Indiana University Health (Indianapolis). In addition to his senior vice president and CIO duties, Mr. McConnell also sits on the board of directors for cloud computing company Bluelock and the Indianapolis chapter of the American Heart Association. [READ MORE]

Thomas McGill, MD. Vice President of Quality and Safety and CIO of Butler (Pa.) Health System. Dr. McGill joined Butler Health System's flagship Butler Memorial Hospital in 1993 as an infectious disease practitioner. [READ MORE]

Mark McMath. CIO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (Memphis, Tenn.). Though a newcomer to Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare  he joined the system in August 2015  Mr. McMath has a healthcare leadership career spanning more than 30 years. [READ MORE]

Pamela McNutt. Senior Vice President and CIO of Methodist Health System (Dallas). Ms. McNutt has served as senior vice president and CIO of Methodist Health System since April 1993. [READ MORE]

Bruce Metz, PhD. Senior Vice President and CIO of Lahey Health (Burlington, Mass.). For more than 20 years, Dr. Metz has served in senior management and executive IT positions in healthcare and higher education. [READ MORE]

Aaron Miri. CIO of Walnut Hill Medical Center (Dallas). Walnut Hill Medical Center opened its doors in April 2014, and Mr. Miri came on board as CIO in February 2015. [READ MORE]

Michael Mistretta. Vice President and CIO of Virginia Hospital Center (Arlington). Mr. Mistretta joined Virginia Hospital Center in 2015, bringing nearly 30 years of experience to the job of vice president and CIO. [READ MORE]

Dana Moore. Senior Vice President and CIO of Centura Health (Englewood, Colo.). Mr. Moore joined Centura Health in 2001 and has been responsible for the development and implementation of the system's IT strategy across its Colorado and Kansas facilities, comprising 15 hospitals. [READ MORE]

Jon Morris, MD. Senior Vice President and CIO of WellStar Health System (Alpharetta, Ga.). Prior to becoming CIO of WellStar Health System in 2011, Dr. Morris served as interim CIO and the system's first CMIO while also practicing emergency medicine at Kennestone Regional Medical Center in Marietta and was a medical informatics consultant for WellStar. [READ MORE]

Pravene Nath, MD. CIO of Stanford (Calif.) Health Care. Dr. Nath first joined Stanford Health Care in 2008 as the system's CMIO before becoming CIO in 2013. [READ MORE]

Janice Newell. Senior Vice President and CIO of Providence Health & Services (Renton, Wash.). As CIO of Providence, Ms. Newell oversaw the largest U.S. implementation of Epic EMR system. [READ MORE]

Daniel Nigrin, MD. Senior Vice President for Information Services and CIO of Boston Children's Hospital. As CIO of Boston Children's, Dr. Nigrin  who is board certified in pediatric endocrinology and clinical informatics  oversees all of the hospital's clinical, research, teaching and administrative IT systems. [READ MORE]

Jim Noga. Vice President and CIO of Partners HealthCare (Boston). Mr. Noga joined Massachusetts General Hospital as director of clinical applications in 1990 before assuming the role of CIO of the hospital in 1997. [READ MORE]

Joe Norris. CIO of New Hanover Regional Medical Center (Wilmington, N.C.). Prior to arriving at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, Mr. Norris was the associate vice chancellor and CIO for East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. [READ MORE]

Michael O'Rourke. Senior Vice President and CIO of Catholic Health Initiatives (Englewood, Colo.). Before being appointed CIO of Catholic Health Initiatives in 2009, Mr. O'Rourke was a private consultant with the health system for two years. [READ MORE]

Jaime Parent. Vice President of IT Operations and Associate CIO of Rush University (Chicago). In addition to overseeing day-to-day technical operations and IT infrastructure for Rush University, Mr. Parent is also responsible for all of the school's IT research, support for its three graduate schools and school of medicine and is the graduate course director for health systems management. [READ MORE]

Marty Paslick. Senior Vice President and CIO of Hospital Corporation of America (Nashville, Tenn.). In his nearly 30-year career with HCA, Mr. Paslick served as vice president and COO of the system before being appointed to senior vice president and CIO in 2012. [READ MORE]

Doris Peek, PhD. Senior Vice President of IT and CIO of Broward Health (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.). Since 2006, Dr. Peek has served as senior vice president of IT and CIO of Broward Health. [READ MORE]

Fred Peet. Vice President of Information Technology and CIO of Yuma (Ariz.) Regional Medical Center. Mr. Peet served as Yuma Regional Medical Center's interim CIO before taking on the role permanently in 2015. [READ MORE]

Keith Perry. CIO of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.).Mr. Perry is still fairly new to his position, as he was named CIO of St. Jude in 2015. [READ MORE]

Cindy Peterson. Vice President and CIO of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital (Valencia, Calif.). Ms. Peterson has more than 25 years of health IT experience. [READ MORE]

Audrius Polikaitis, PhD. Assistant Vice President of Health Information Technology and CIO of University of Illinois Hospital Health Sciences System (Chicago). Dr. Polikaitis is responsible for all applications, systems and infrastructure that support the patient care, business and financial operations of UI Health. [READ MORE]

Marc Probst. CIO of Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City). Since 2003, Mr. Probst has served as CIO of Intermountain Healthcare. [READ MORE]

Jayashree Raman. Vice President and CIO of Cooper University Health Care (Camden, N.J.). Ms. Raman has served as vice president and CIO of Cooper University Health Care since 2012. [READ MORE]

David Rapp. Vice President of Supply Chain and CIO of Wheeling (W.Va._ Hospital. Mr. Rapp joined Wheeling Hospital in late 2006. [READ MORE]

Stephanie Reel. CIO of Johns Hopkins University and Vice President for Information Services for Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). Ms. Reel has been vice president for information services at Johns Hopkins Medicine since 1994 and CIO and vice provost of information technology at Johns Hopkins University since 1999. [READ MORE]

George Reynolds, MD. Vice President, CMIO and CIO of Children's Hospital & Medical Center (Omaha, Neb.). Dr. Reynolds has been CMIO of Children's Hospital & Medical Center since 2004; he added the CIO role in 2010. [READ MORE]

Ed Ricks. Vice President of Information Services and CIO of Beaufort (S.C.) Memorial Hospital. Mr. Ricks has more than 20 years of healthcare information systems experience working with four health systems. [READ MORE]

Bert Robles. Executive Vice President and CIO of Guthrie (Sayre, Pa.). Mr. Robles has more than 30 years of experience in management and information technology, both in business and healthcare settings. [READ MORE]

Cris Ross. CIO of Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.). Prior to joining Mayo Clinic in 2012, Mr. Ross served as executive vice president and general manager of the clinical interoperability business for Surescripts. [READ MORE]

Robin Sarkar, PhD. CIO of Lakeland Health (St. Joseph, Mich.). Dr. Sarkar has held several leadership roles at Lakeland Health, including assistant vice president of information systems and director of information technology. [READ MORE]

Sue Schade. Interim CIO of University Hospitals (Cincinnati). Ms. Schade has worked in the health IT industry for more than 30 years, serving in CIO positions for 15 of those years. [READ MORE]

Rick Schooler. CIO of Orlando (Fla.) Health. Mr. Schooler joined Orlando Health in 2001 as vice president and CIO. [READ MORE]

Manish Shah. Senior Vice President and CIO of Community Health Systems (Franklin, Tenn.). Mr. Shah joined CHS in 2013 as deputy CIO and took over the CIO role at the for-profit health system in 2016, replacing J. Gary Seay, who retired. [READ MORE]

William Showalter. Senior Vice President and CIO of Froedtert Health (Milwaukee).Mr. Showalter was appointed CIO of Froedtert in August 2015. [READ MORE]

Preston Simons. CIO of Aurora Health Care (Milwaukee).Prior to joining Aurora Health Care in October 2015, Mr. Simons was the CIO of Abbot Laboratories for more than a decade. [READ MORE]

Alan Smith. Senior Vice President and CIO of Capella Healthcare. Mr. Smith joined Capella, one of the largest for-profit health systems in the U.S., in May 2011. [READ MORE]

Ryan Smith. Senior Vice President and CIO of Banner Health (Phoenix). Mr. Smith joined Banner Health in October 2013 as senior vice president of information technology and CIO. [READ MORE]

Steven Smith. CIO of NorthShore University HealthSystem (Evanston, Ill.). Prior to holding the CIO position at NorthShore, Mr. Smith served as chief technology officer of the health system for more than a decade. [READ MORE]

Subra Sripada. Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer and System CIO of Beaumont Health (Royal Oak, Mich.). Prior to joining Beaumont Health after its creation in 2014, Mr. Sripada served in various roles at Beaumont Health System, including executive vice president, chief administrative officer and CIO. [READ MORE]

Joey Sudomir. Senior Vice President of Innovative Technology Solutions and CIO of Texas Heath Resources (Arlington). Mr. Sudomir joined Texas Health Resources in 2013 as vice president of IT operations and quickly worked his way through the ranks at the nonprofit health system. [READ MORE]

Phyllis Teater. CIO and Associate Vice President of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (Columbus). Ms. Teater joined The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Central Ohio's only academic medical center, in 1991. [READ MORE]

Tim Thompson. Senior Vice President and CIO of BayCare Health System (Clearwater, Fla.). Mr. Thompson has served as CIO of BayCare since September 2010. [READ MORE]

Lac Van Tran. Senior Vice President, Associate Dean and CIO of Rush University Medical Center (Chicago). Mr. Tran has had the title of CIO for two decades. [READ MORE]

Joel Vengco. Vice President and CIO of Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.). Mr. Vengco has served as CIO of nonprofit Baystate since 2012. [READ MORE]

John Ward. CIO of TriHealth (Cincinnati).After serving as interim CIO, Mr. Ward was appointed CIO of TriHealth in May 2014. [READ MORE]

David Weiss. Senior Vice President and CIO of BJC HealthCare (St. Louis). Mr. Weiss has served as CIO of nonprofit BJC HealthCare since 1990. [READ MORE]

Deanna Wise. Executive Vice President and CIO of Dignity Health (San Francisco). Ms. Wise has served as CIO of Dignity Health since 2011, and she previously served in the role of CIO at four other health systems. [READ MORE]

Eric Yablonka. Vice President and CIO of University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences. With more than 25 years of experience in leading hospital operations and information systems management functions, Mr. Yablonka has served as vice president and CIO of University of Chicago Medical Cetner and Biological Sciences since August 2001. [READ MORE]

Correction: An earlier version of this list included Gene Shaw as CIO of Yuma Regional Medical Center. Yuma Regional's CIO is actually Fred Peet, and the list has been updated to reflect this. Additionally, an earlier version of this piece incorrectly listed Western Reserve Hospital as Summa Western Reserve Hospital and listed the wrong CIO for Providence Health & Services. We regret these errors.
Winter Storm Jonas socked the Northeast this weekend, paralyzing major cities with a record-breaking amount of snow. The storm began early Friday morning and has now moved into the Atlantic.

Snowfall reached 3 feet or higher in some areas, according to CNN. One of the hardest-hit areas was Glengary, W. Va., about 85 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., which preliminary figures show received more than 40 inches of snow, CNN reported.

Other areas that received significant amounts of snow include New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport (31 inches), Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (29.2 inches, a record), Washington Dulles International Airport (28 inches), Newark, N.J. (28 inches), New York City's Central Park (26.8 inches, the second-highest total since 1869) and Philadelphia (22 inches), according to CNN.

At least 27 people died in the storm, a quarter of a million people lost power and thousands of car crashes were reported, according to The Weather Channel. Millions of people made their way back to work Monday, but hundreds of flights are still cancelled, according to CNN.

Prior to the blizzard, hospitals throughout the East Coast took measures to prepare for emergency situations like this.

Here are six things to know about how hospitals and hospital employees addressed the storm.

1. Travel bans in many cities severely limited transit over the weekend. Baltimore, which had 29.2 inches of snow, implemented Phase III of its snow emergency plan, which bans all traffic except for emergency vehicles, according to The Weather Channel. The travel ban was in place until 6 A.M. Sunday morning. Hospitals were instructed to keep all staff in place for the duration of Phase III.

2. The Seven Hills Jeep Club in Lynchburg, Va., offered nurses at Lynchburg-based Centra Health rides to and from work during the storm, according to a report from The News and Advance. Nurses asked for rides to lesser-known Centra properties such as its retirement communities. As of 9 p.m. Thursday night, the group had 14 Jeeps transporting more than 50 nurses back and forth to work Friday, according to the report.

3. Employees at Highland-Clarksburg Hospital in Clarksburg, W.Va., went into "shelter in place" mode over the weekend due to the snowy roads, according to WDTV News. With nearly two feet of snow outside, several employees stayed at the facility for three consecutive days, while others carpooled to the hospital. Highland-Clarksburg Hospital continued to provide all normal services to all of its patients.

4. Numerous employees of Winchester (Va.) Medical Center also spent the weekend inside the hospital to care for patients and keep the hospital running, WMC COO Grady W. "Skip" Philips told the Winchester Star. Mr. Philips said the snow was "beautiful" for those who don't work in healthcare, but for those who do, "it was a major inconvenience." At the peak of the 30-hour storm, patient volume in WMC's emergency department declined, but picked up again Sunday as the region began clearing out the snow.

5. One man, Paul Schaaf, a 49-year-old helicopter pilot for Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., traveled to work on his bicycle. He biked 7.5 miles to work for his overnight shift and planned to bike back to Arlington, Va., Monday morning, according to Reuters. "I have to get into work no matter what. And the best way to do it is on my bicycle with steel-studded snow tires," Mr. Schaaf told Reuters.

6. In Maryland, hospital leaders contacted staff to ensure all medical contingencies would be covered, including keeping enough surgical personnel on hand, Karen Doyle, an incident commander for emergency operations at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, told The Baltimore Sun. Greater Baltimore Medical Center reported "no impact to operations," Stacey McGreevy, an incident commander and administrator at the hospital, told the publication. Traffic to the emergency room waned during the worst of the storm, but has since returned to normal, Ms. McGreevy said.
Baystate Nobel Hospital in Westfield, Mass., has notified 293 patients who had colonoscopies between June 2012 and April 2013 of a possible exposure to bloodborne pathogens.

According to a report from The Republican, a scope used during the colonoscopies at the hospital may not have been disinfected properly, potentially exposing patients to diseases like hepatitis C and B and HIV. The disinfection problem happened during the last phase of high-level disinfection and occurred due to a training failure after the hospital got new colonoscopy equipment.

The hospital changed cleaning procedures when the problem was originally discovered in April 2013, but was not aware that patients were at risk until a notification from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health arrived in December 2015.

Sarah Haessler, MD, an infectious disease physician at Baystate Health, said in a statement the "risk to patients is very low However, the risk is not zero." The hospital is offering free screenings to affected patients, according to the report.

The incidents occurred before Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Health acquired the hospital in July 2015.
The following hospitals and health systems shared plans to hire workers in the past month, starting with the most recent.

1. Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids needs more nurses: 3 things to know

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is looking to recruit more nurses at a job fair Jan. 30, according to a KCRG-TV9 report. Due to hospital expansion, registered nurses are needed in various areas, including outpatient care, home care, clinics, pediatrics and cardiology.

2. Kaiser Permanente to open member services center, creating 800 jobs

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente will open a national member services center in Gwinnett County, Georgia, this fall, a move expected to add roughly 800 new jobs to the metro Atlanta area by 2020, although most positions will be created by 2017. Kaiser will be looking to recruit workers to answer calls and emails related to insurance coverage and billing. The health system will also relocate some of its Georgia-based member service representatives, appointment schedulers and advice nurses to the new facility.

3. Mission Health offers incentives amid nurse shortage: 3 things to know

Asheville, N.C.-based Mission Health is looking to hire nurses, and is offering incentives. The system has about 260 open RN positions, as well as about 67 certified nursing assistant positions. To fill these open positions, Mission Health is offering sign-on bonuses of $5,000 to $10,000. In return, depending on the bonus amount, the nurses must commit to a minimum length of employment. Mission Health also offers employees a referral bonus of between $1,000 and $5,000, depending on what position the person is recruited to.

4. 500 jobs could be created with Marshfield Clinic's new hospital: 3 things to know Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic's new $175 million hospital in Marshfield could have up to 500 employees once the facility is fully staffed, according to a Marshfield News-Herald report, which cites documents Marshfield Clinic recently filed with the city. The new 202-bed hospital would include pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, critical care units and surgical facilities, according to the report. The hospital would also feature a helipad on the roof, and a new utility plant would be built to provide centralized heating, cooling and emergency power.

5. 140 workers to staff Cobalt Rehabilitation Hospital: 3 things to know

The new Surprise, Ariz.-based Cobalt Rehabilitation Hospital, which has been under construction and expects patients in January, will bring about 140 jobs to the area. The jobs are wide ranging and include neurologists as well as RNs.





Note: Marshfield Clinic has since modified its figure based on formulas that calculated how many employees would be needed to staff the hospital. The hospital is now saying its proposal for a new hospital could generate more than 1,000 new jobs.

More articles on workforce and labor management:

Unionized Tri-City Medical workers gather signatures for proposed salary-capping initiative: 6 things to know

More Pa. nurses unionize as hospitals face financial pressure: 3 things to know

How 5 health systems are recruiting, retaining nurses during an RN shortage
A majority (55.34 percent) of U.S. physicians own guns, according to MD Magazine's survey of 928 physicians.

Here are five takeaways:

1. Of those physicians that own guns, two-thirds reported they mostly use their guns for personal protection.

2. The survey found a majority of physicians support stronger gun control, but did not agree on whether they should help limit gun violence.

3. Almost all physicians (93.7 percent) who backed better gun control supported enhanced background checks. Of those physicians, 41.5 percent supported a ban on concealed weapons.

4. Many physicians did not support the American Medical Association taking a stance on gun control.

5. The survey found more than half of physicians never inquired whether patients had guns in their homes.
Alaska Orthopedic Specialists in Anchorage, which closed in March 2015, has notified affected patients about a security incident.

Here are five things to know:

1. In the course of closing the business later in 2015, the practice discovered a former employee had sent copies of patient information to his or her personal email account without permission.

2. All patients impacted by this incident have been sent a notification and offered identity theft protection services.

3. The practice has also taken steps to ensure the return of all information.

4. There is no proof at this time that the employee used or disclosed the patient information.

5. Alaska Orthopedic Specialists has notified HHS.
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Portglenone-based software company PlotBox, run by husband and wife Sean and Leona McAllister, has developed a cloud system to simplify the management of cemeteries

A Northern Ireland company aiming to revolutionise the way cemeteries are managed has won 10 US contracts.

Portglenone-based software company PlotBox, run by husband and wife Sean and Leona McAllister, has developed a cloud system to simplify the management of cemeteries.

PlotBox uses drones to map out cemeteries and an iPad app that cemetery managers can use to attach records to the maps.

Its latest deals include a contract with the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Co-founder Leona said: "PlotBox brings cemeteries into the 21st century with a very easy to use online platform.

"Traditionally, cemeteries use paper, old software systems and spreadsheets to manage their land. Information is deeply fragmented and difficult to manage.

"Our software, developed through an Invest NI Grant for research and development, takes the information and pulls it into one cloud-based solution, to help improve efficiencies by 50 to 70%."

PlotBox was born when her husband Sean, an engineer and surveyor, offered to help map out his parish's cemetery.

Mrs McAllister added: "Sean took it one step further and began to photograph the headstones too.

"Of course, I got the job of typing up all the inscriptions.

"We presented the information to the parish in a very simple Excel document but they really loved it and found it to be very useful."

Through this work Mr McAllister learned about the issues of mapping cemeteries and realised there was a market for a company to that could help to solve these problems.

PlotBox's success was announced as Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell led an Invest NI tech mission to San Francisco.

He will later travel to New York to meet potential investors and highlight Northern Ireland's reduced corporation tax rate of 12.5% from April 2018.

He said PlotBox was a great example of an innovative business. "The largest contract, recently made with the Archdiocese of San Francisco, is to provide an online cemetery management system to record future burials and is potentially worth almost half a million dollars in future business."

The company had previously taken part in an Invest NI tech mission to the US. This week's tech mission involved 15 Northern Ireland companies.
Ulster meat firm Dunbia could be sold to Brazilian giant JBS after it was revealed it was looking for new buyers.

The Dungannon-based business, with a turnover of 800m-plus last year, is one of the largest meat processors in the UK and Ireland.

Just last month the Belfast Telegraph revealed that a teaser document had been prepared to be sent out to businesses potentially interested in snapping up the Co Tyrone company.

The strategy is usually an early step in establishing interest in a business before a formal bidding process begins.

There is now growing speculation Dunbia is in the process of being sold to JBS, which bought Moy Park last year.

The company did not wish to make a comment on the potential deal.

In a statement issued last month, Dunbia confirmed the business was "considering options for maximising the potential of the company going forward" after having "received several serious expressions of interest from would-be investors over the past two years". It added that it had enjoyed "consistent growth over the past number of years and has ambitious plans to grow and expand the business".

Economist John Simpson said the potential sale to JBS could see Dunbia begin a rapid growth.

"In terms of the big companies in the meat industry, they were an obvious candidate," he said.

"On the basis that they will become part of a bigger firm, that could take Dunbia into expansion territory.

"The danger is there is an issue of Northern Ireland expanding its business and profit, but not necessarily its innovation.

"It is always an uncertain process in which you hope the ambitions of both parties benefit both.

"But whoever buys Dunbia must make a clear intention of what they plan to do."

Dunbia was established almost 40 years ago as Dungannon Meats, a humble frozen meat shop on the outskirts of the Co Tyrone town.

Jim and Jack Dobson's business was going through a small number of cattle each week.

It has since grown to employ close to 4,000 staff - 1,200 of them working in Northern Ireland - across a dozen sites exporting beef, lamb and pork across the globe.

Dunbia currently handles 7,000 cattle, 50,000 lambs and 15,000 pigs annually.

Around half the business involves selling primarily beef and lamb to the UK's supermarkets, including Sainsbury's, one of the firm's first big customers.

Just last month Dunbia's first shipment of pork arrived in India.

There are plans for further exports to the Sub-Continent this year.

Rebranded as Dunbia in 2006, over the last three decades the company has taken over a number of other processors in Ireland and Britain.

Its acquisitions have included Excel Meats and Newgrange Meats in the Republic, and Oriel Jones & Son in Wales.

And last year it took on Lynch Quality Meats in Ayrshire, Scotland.

It has grown its profits by more than 40%, with turnover shooting up to 826m for the year, according to its latest accounts.

Pre-tax profits rose to more than 6.5m in the year to March 29, 2015.
Assembly Speaker Mitchel McLaughlin with piper Darren Milligan and chef Ashley McMahon presenting the haggis at the first official Burns Night celebration in Stormont

Pipe music has been filling the air and haggis has very much been on the menu as a series of events continue across Northern Ireland to celebrate Burns Night.

Although this evening is the precise date of Burns Night, several celebratory shindigs to mark the annual tribute to Scottish poet Robert Burns have already taken place and more are happening.

Traditional Scottish food like haggis is popular, and nowhere more so than in Ballycastle, the closest large town in Northern Ireland to Scotland.

Former councillor in the town Chris McCaughan always likes to celebrate Burns Night and he has already been tucking into his delicacy with neeps and tatties.

The Rotary Club of Ballycastle will host its Burns Night in the town this Friday and guests going along for a four-course meal in the Central Bar are being encouraged to wear tartan and Scottish dress.

The Ulster Orchestra celebrated Burns Night on Saturday in the Ulster Hall when it teamed up with the Ulster-Scots Agency to celebrate the rich cultural links between Scotland and this side of the North Channel.

Last Thursday Speaker of the Assembly Mitchel McLaughlin hosted the first official Burns Night celebration at Parliament Buildings in Stormont's Great Hall.
Sir Ian McKellen said he sympathises with those who feel under-represented

Sir Ian McKellen has said criticism surrounding the lack of diversity among nominees at the Oscars is "legitimate".

The 76-year-old actor said he sympathises with those who feel under-represented and added that it is a grievance which has been felt in the film industry by women and is still felt by gay people.

The nominations for this year's Academy Awards have been mired in controversy due to no ethnic minority actors or actresses named in the top categories.

Speaking to the Press Association, Sir Ian said: "I think you have to live in Hollywood where the Oscars mean so much more than they do elsewhere to understand why people's feelings are running so high.

"And the fact that black people feel under-represented in studio movies and big movies, well, it's what women thought for a long time, it's what gay people like myself still think.

"And it's a legitimate complaint and the Oscars has become the focus of those worries, so I sympathise."

The nominations for the 2016 Academy Awards sparked an online campaign with the hashtag OscarSoWhite, as well as a debate about race and the film industry.

Actors Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, will boycott the ceremony alongside director Spike Lee.

Others including actors George Clooney, Mark Ruffalo, Lupita Nyong'o, David Oyelowo, Viola Davis and British director Steve McQueen have spoken of their disappointment with the lack of diversity among the nominees.

The Academy announced a new aim last week to double the number of female and minority members by 2020.

Sir Ian was speaking at the launch of BFI Presents Shakespeare On Film, a project which will see him travel around the world.

The programme explores how film-makers have adapted and interpreted Shakespeare's work for the big screen.
Top award: Belfast Telegraph Editor Gail Walker (right) with The OUTLETs marketing manager Siobhan McKeown, ready to hand the trophy to this years recipient

Looking forward: Joyce Craig with her Mum of the Year Award

As she prepares to mark the first anniversary of her son Michael's death next Tuesday, Belfast Telegraph Mum of the Year 2015 Joyce Craig has revealed plans to create what will be a lasting tribute to his bravery.

Michael's decision to refuse treatment when diagnosed with an advanced, inoperable and incurable brain tumour in August 2014 was one which bought both him and his mum quality time together.

Although initially shocked that her son refused treatment, Joyce stood by him. And it was only when she lost him five months later that she realised his decision had been the right one.

Now, in the hope of helping others who face the same difficult decisions, Joyce is launching a website as a tribute to her son, to be called Michael's Choice.

Michael was just 25 when he died last February. His illness had been diagnosed the previous August, just as he was putting plans in place to start a new life in Australia where the family had lived for two years when he was a child.

Joyce (58) also lost a daughter, Nicola, who was disabled, four years ago, aged 26. The Bangor mum has a 23-year-old son Christopher who has cerebral palsy and requires round-the-clock care.

As we call for entries for the 2016 Woman of the Year Awards, Joyce, who won our Mum of the Year title last year, says she can look back with happiness to those final precious months with Michael - thanks to the choice he made not to have treatment.

"When people are diagnosed with cancer, they go on what I call 'the cancer conveyor belt'. There is no time to think and you are put straight onto that conveyor belt of surgery and treatment and off you go," she says. "When you get a cancer diagnosis, it is the loneliest place to be - it was certainly the loneliest I have ever felt.

"You go out of that hospital room and there's nothing and no one there." The tireless mum adds: "I hope the website will bring people together to talk to each other and ask questions about cancer.

"We didn't go down the treatment route, although I would like to know more about that. I would also like to show people what it is like if you choose not to.

"I know Michael didn't suffer - which was an eye opener for me, because most people suffer and would tell you that the end is very unpleasant."

Joyce says she wants to share her memories of Michael's journey to help inform others that there is another option besides treatment following a cancer diagnosis.

"Initially there was great hope when Michael was told that his tumour was slow growing and low grade," she recalls.

But 10 days later, after a biopsy, Michael and his mum were stunned and shattered to be told that, tragically, it was a high grade, inoperable and incurable tumour.

Michael was offered a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy which he was told would not save him, but might buy him some time.

Joyce recalls a nurse telling her that Michael was fortunate to be offered treatment as it wasn't available to everyone. She was told the fact Michael was young and fit were the reasons he qualified.

She was naturally relieved to be told her son could be treated, but Michael wanted to think about his options before deciding to have treatment.

Although medical staff were shocked when he turned the treatment down, his mother understood why her son had made his choice. From that moment until she lost him five months later, Joyce stayed by his side and made the most of every moment.

Joyce says: "Michael made me think outside the box and I'm grateful for that. He said to me: 'Mum I am going to lose my hair, will probably end up in a wheelchair and maybe eventually lose my mind and for what? They are not going to save me'.

"Michael made it clear he wanted to spend his last Christmas with me and from that moment he took me on a journey with him.

"The more I listened to him, the more I thought 'this young man knows exactly what is going on'. I told him I would do it with him and hold his hand until I couldn't hold it any longer."

Joyce says being by her son's side reinforced her respect for his decision. "In those months I certainly had my eyes opened. One chemo tablet that doctos wanted him to take was so toxic the nurse giving it to him had to wear gloves," she adds.

"That horrified Michael and I. In the end, he didn't even need morphine and he passed peacefully.

"The few months we had together were very special and we played cards together and watched TV.

"When he was well enough we went out for lunch or Michael went out with his friends."

Joyce told of a particularly poignant moment when Michael was admitted to Marie Curie Hospice in late November.

They had been enjoying a game of cards together as usual when Michael suddenly collapsed in bed.

Doctors and nurses rushed in and told a horrified Joyce that her son was dying. Michael went quiet and all the indications were that he had passed away.

In what was a miraculous moment, Joyce recalls: "I just thought 'no, I need him to go happier than this' and I started talking to him and telling him how much I had loved him from the day he was born.

"I said I had never been so proud of him and his strength, and when they said he had gone I leaned over and whispered in his ear 'please don't leave me yet' and his head moved and his eyes, too.

"The doctor said she didn't understand what had happened and she had never seen anything like it before.

"He was incredible and so brave. He gave me the most pleasant way of saying goodbye, because he didn't suffer."

Michael got his wish to spend Christmas with his mum and they had a lovely day with family in the hospice.

Now, as the first anniversary of his death approaches, Joyce says the first year without her son has been a year of huge change. She says she has done things she hadn't planned and would never have dreamt of doing - and she believes that Michael has been there with her throughout it all.

Before he died, Joyce promised Michael she would fly to Australia and mark his 26th birthday on the spot where he had planned to start a new life, which she now affectionately refers to as "Michael's Island".

The trip brought more comfort than she could ever have hoped for, as she met people Michael had been friendly with on Facebook.

While there, she also heard their stories of how he had made a positive impact on their lives.

Since losing her son, Joyce moved to a new house in Donaghadee in December because she couldn't bear to be at home without him.

"I've had the most amazing year and I've done things I would never have expect to and they were happy things," she says.

"I believe he is still around and things happen which I can't explain - I call them Michael Moments."

One of these special moments for Joyce was winning the Belfast Telegraph Mum of the Year Award last year.

On her first Mother's Day without Michael, which she had been dreading, Joyce was shocked to be told that she had been nominated for our award.

It was a special moment which she believes Michael had a hand in - to help her get through the tough first month of March without him.

"It just lifted my heart and was so out of the blue and totally unexpected," she says.

"The night of the awards I felt happiness and I wasn't expecting to feel happiness again so soon afar losing Michael."

Joyce has decided that she doesn't want to mark the death of Michael's anniversary every year and, while she has made plans for his first anniversary next week, she says it will be the first and last time.

"I have put together a collage of pictures of his life to post on my Facebook page and leave at the tree I planted for him and my daughter in Clandeboye Cemetery," she says.

"I have planned to go away with a friend that day.

"I had 25 wonderful years with him and I don't want to regret the years we didn't have, but instead celebrate the time we did have. After this year I plan to celebrate his birthday and not the day I lost him."

As well as the website, Michael's Choice, which she hopes to launch in March, Joyce has also recently set up a Just Giving page in her son's memory to raise funds for Marie Curie.

She also plans to set up a charity in his memory to support research into the causes of brain tumours.

"I want to raise funds to research the cause - not the cure - of brain cancer, which is the biggest cancer killer in under-40s ,and I would love to help discover what is causing it," she says.

"Hopefully the website will be positive and uplifting. Michael made a choice which, up until he left me, allowed his life to be as positive as it could be.

"It is that positivity I hope to celebrate and hopefully inspire others, too."

You can support Joyce's appeal at https://www.justgiving.com/MichaelsChoice

Celebrating women of substance

Do you know a special woman who has made a difference in your life or the lives of others  someone who has gone the extra mile, endured more than most or succeeded against the odds? If so, we want to hear from you.

The 2016 Belfast Telegraph Woman of the Year Awards, in association with The OUTLET, Banbridge will once again celebrate the exceptional women in our society.

This year our glittering awards night will be held on Friday, March 18 in the five-star Culloden Hotel in what is set to be a memorable and inspirational evening brimming with emotion  and one that will make you proud of the ladies from all across the province.

We are asking you to nominate outstanding women you know in each of our nine categories.

Nominations can be made by anyone who knows an incredible woman they believe is worthy of an award.

For each category, the nominee should have been in her line of work for at least 12 months and have shown particular success, a demonstrable measure of achievement, how she inspired others around her and how she has demonstrated passion, drive and energy in what she does.

Siobhan McKeown, marketing manager at The OUTLET, which is one of the main sponsors of the awards, says: For a third year, The OUTLET Banbridge is delighted to be associated with a prestigious event that recognises the outstanding achievements of women from across our province.

This amazing Belfast Telegraph event is a celebration of the immense contribution that women can make to our society.

Customers visit The OUTLET Banbridge from all over Northern Ireland.

We take great pride in offering them great quality and value for money. An example is our exclusive W5 Lite childrens interactive zone  a free to enter taster of the main W5.

The Belfast Telegraph Woman of the Year event gives us an opportunity to showcase the latest in our Spring Summer collections from LK Bennett, Jaeger, Next outlet, to mention a few. Smarter shopping and a great day awaits you at The OUTLET.

 Each category winner will be presented with a beautiful Belleek Living trophy at our gala dinner hosted by Wendy Austin.

 You may enter nominations in any or all of the nine categories. The overall award for Belfast Telegraph Woman of the Year in association with THE OUTLET Banbridge, will be chosen by the judges from the winners of the nine categories. Each of the nominations must be supported by a citation which should not be more than 200 words.

 Citations should also include your name, address and daytime telephone number as well as the contact numbers for the person you are nominating, and should arrive not later than 12 noon on Thursday, February 25. Send them to: Belfast Telegraph Woman of the Year, Belfast Telegraph, 124 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1EB or email to: womanoftheyear@belfasttelegraph.co.uk.

 To secure your seat or for further information about the event, contact Sarah Weir at JPR, tel 028 9076 0066 or email mail@jprni.com

Categories from business to beauty

 Business Woman of the Year

A woman in the business field who has shown determination, drive and has made a real difference in her working environment

 Woman of the Year in Hair Beauty and Fashion

Sassy, vibrant and in touch with real womens needs, the Woman of the Year in the Fashion Industry has to have a real sense of style and an eye for the X factor

 Mum of the Year

Mum of the Year is a woman who is an outstanding mother, leader and role model

 Woman of the Year in the Arts

This can be any woman in the performing arts, music, the written word or visual medium, whether its behind the scenes or in public  a woman who has truly maximised her talents

 Woman of the Year in Education

Whether this is a teacher, classroom assistant, dinner lady or caretaker, we are looking for someone working in education who has gone that extra mile for children, teenagers or students and their education

 Woman of the Year in Healthcare

She can be any woman working in any area of the health sector as a nurse, doctor, medical technician or any of the many roles across the sector

 Woman of the Year in the Voluntary Sector

Working in the Voluntary sector, this woman could be a carer, a fundraiser or simply someone who sacrifices their time for others

 Inspirational Woman of the Year

The Inspirational Woman of the Year will be someone who has inspired others with that extra special achievement: whether it be overcoming illness or difficulties, or devoting their time to a worthy charity. Whether its behind the scenes or in the public eye, this person should be an inspiration in terms of her attitude, work and life

 Sportswoman of the Year

This award sets out to recognise a keen sportswoman who has either achieved much herself or has successfully inspired others in sport
The Prison Service has been hit with a 220,000 compensation bill after being sued more than 500 times in the last three years.

A total of 542 claims have been made by inmates since 2013.

It means a prisoner sues the Prison System every other day on average.

The figures were released by Justice Minister David Ford.

DUP MLA Alex Easton said: "I find it incredible that prisoners are in a position to make so many claims off the Prison Service.

"We need to get to the bottom of what is going on."

It comes a fortnight after the Belfast Telegraph revealed how the system was being swamped by up to 30 complaints a day.

Almost 9,000 issues were raised in the space of just 11 months.

In one case an inmate reportedly posted the contents of his lunch with his complaint about the food into the prison's grievance box. Mr Ford confirmed that since April 2013 a total of 222,145 was paid out in compensation after 542 claims.

A breakdown of the figures shows 68,895 was paid out between April 1 and December 31 last year after 195 claims.

In 2014/15, some 83,454 was awarded after 188 claims.

And in 2013/14 a total of 159 claims were settled, leading to 69,796 in compensation.

Mr Easton, who obtained the details after an Assembly question, said he was staggered by the number of claims.

"I am completely shocked at the amount of money claimed by prisoners," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

"There must be some sort of review to understand what this money is being paid out for. It is absolutely staggering.

"We need to try and get an understanding of what type of claims are coming in and what this compensation is for."

A Prison Service source described the extent of compensation claims as "astounding".

He claimed cutbacks had led to a sharp reduction in staff numbers, making prisons more dangerous places. "You see a lot of assaults - particularly prisoner on prisoner, and the department ends up being held responsible," he said.

The compensation culture in Northern Ireland's prison system was first highlighted by this newspaper two weeks ago.

According to the Prison Service, in the space of 11 months last year, 8,848 complaints were made by prisoners at our four prison facilities: Maghaberry, Magilligan, the Young Offender Centre at Hydebank and the female prison at Hydebank.

There are around 1,500 inmates currently being held in Prison Service custody.

A Belfast Telegraph Freedom of Information request revealed prison accommodation was the cause of more than 2,000 complaints.

A further 1,368 complaints were made about staff, 498 about lock-ups, 287 about food, 333 in relation to education and 186 about health and safety.

More than 60 allegations of assault by staff members and 18 by another inmate were also made.

Around half of all complaints were made by separated republican prisoners - who represent less than 2% of the overall prison population - according to Alastair Ross, who chairs the Assembly's justice committee.

In November an inspection report described Maghaberry Prison as the most dangerous ever inspected by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said: "Each Prison has a dedicated health and safety unit with support from the Headquarters Health and Safety Adviser.

"Health and Safety systems and procedures are in place that meet legislative requirements with oversight provided by quarterly reports to the Prison Service Management Board.

"Prisoner injuries reported to the Health and Safety Unit, will be investigated and control measures considered to prevent reoccurrence.

"The majority of claims received and paid out are for slips, trips and falls."
Two people have been taken to hospital following an ammonia spill at Ballyrashane Creamery.

The NIFRS are currently attending the report of an ammonia spill at the presmises.

Six fire appliances have been sent to the scene where the creamery was evacuated.

A NIFRS spokesman said: "Firefighters isolated a leak at the premises with no risk to life or property. The premises were evacuated and all persons inside the property have been accounted for.

"A secondary leak was identified and isolated by Firefighters and the premises is being ventilated.

Two persons were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment following the incident."

The Creamery Road and Ballylagan Road in Coleraine had been closed to traffic while emergency services dealt with the incident and have no reopened.

A PSNI spokesman said: "Police would like to thank motorists for their cooperation during these closures."
Police have launched an investigation after the death of a man in the Shankill area of west Belfast.

Officers were last night at the scene of a sealed-off house in Paris Street following the death.

The man was named locally as Andy Bell, who was in his late 40s or early 50s.

Local people said ambulances and police arrived at the house in the early hours of Sunday.

The PSNI has not yet commented officially on its investigation.

However, a source said: "Initially it was thought the man was stabbed, but one theory is that he may have suffered a heart attack during an altercation.

"But the police are staying at the scene until the results of the post-mortem come back."

DUP councillor Brian Kingston said police told him the body of a man was removed from the house, between Snugville Street and Berlin Street.

He said: "I have spoken to the police. They have confirmed the body of a man was recovered from a house in Paris Street.

"They haven't told me what age, but said it wasn't an elderly man, but an adult male. They were holding the scene and are awaiting the results of a post-mortem.

"They received a phone call in the early hours of this morning, which resulted in them attending.

"In response to rumours a man was stabbed, police have told me specifically there is no indication of that currently, so they have no indication that a crime has occurred and we must await the results of a post-mortem.

"With any sudden death they will treat this as suspicious as a matter of course, but at this stage they are saying there is no indication a crime has been committed.

"They couldn't tell me if the man was from the area.

"This is a terrible tragedy for the family of this man and our thoughts are with them at this very sad time."

In Paris Street last night shocked neighbours said police were at the scene all day and a huge forensic operation had swung into action before the body was removed early in the afternoon.

One woman said: "Something seemed to happen around 1am in an upstairs flat, where a man lives alone.

"He had just moved in about three months ago and the whole area was sealed off all day.

"The police wouldn't tell local people what happened, but did say they were investigating a 'serious crime'."

Another woman said: "I heard raised voices last night and turned off my TV, but heard nothing after that.

"A couple of ambulances came to the scene, along with the police."

Another resident said: "This is a very quiet street and everybody is shocked that somebody has died suddenly."
Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Picture - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Lurgan , UK - January 25, Pictured is police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Officers came under attack on Lake Street, Lurgan, from more than 100 petrol bombs. The PSNI said police were on the receiving end of "orchestrated, intense and prolonged violence". Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Officers came under attack on Lake Street, Lurgan, from more than 100 petrol bombs. The PSNI said police were on the receiving end of "orchestrated, intense and prolonged violence". Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on the 25th January 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

A gunshot was fired at police during serious disorder linked to an ongoing security alert in County Armagh on Sunday. Officers came under attack on Lake Street, Lurgan, from more than 100 petrol bombs. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

The scene on Lake Street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a security alert on the main Belfast to Dublin railway line continues. Trouble flared overnight as security forces tried to deal with the incident with petrol bombs being thrown at police along with a gunshot being fired. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Police and ATO at the scene of an alert in the Lake St Area of Lurgan on January 25 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Lurgan security alert: Police come under fire and more than 100 petrol bombs thrown Close

Dissident republicans believed to be behind serious disorder in Lurgan last night where police came under fire are "no better than Daesh terror group", a senior police officer has said.

The disorder has been linked to an ongoing security alert which has caused havoc for rail users as police probe a second bomb alert in 24 hours in Co Armagh.

On Sunday night officers came under sustained attack for a number of hours with more than 100 petrol bombs thrown at police cordons in the area of the Lake Street alert.

At one stage a gunman emerged from the crowd and fired at least one shot at police.

Twenty five paint bombs, bricks and other masonry were thrown by a large and aggressive crowd who gathered at around 9pm and remained until the early hours of the morning.

No police officers or members of the public were injured however a number of police vehicles were damaged.

Helicopter air support, specially trained riot police from other parts of Northern Ireland and dog teams had to be brought to deal with the trouble.

Speaking at a press conference Superintendent David Moore said: "The people that are behind this have no ideology, they have nothing to offer, in many respects they can be compared to Daesh, they have got little to offer but destruction in their own communities."

Daesh is a name for the terror group also known as Islamic State which is fighting for territory in Iraq and Syria.

"We are very lucky not only to be dealing with the loss of life or serious injury to a police officer but we could be dealing with any member of the community in the same position this morning."

One of our Landrovers that was damaged during the disorder in Lurgan last night. #PSNI pic.twitter.com/HHHeTjHizu  PSNI Craigavon (@PSNICraigavon) January 25, 2016

Upper Bann MP David Simpson called the violence "absolutely disgraceful" and said the community was being "held to ransom" by dissidents.

Mr Moore said: "The work of dissident republicans is evident here, not in any way organised, because it is the easiest thing to drop something on a railway line and have someone drunk batter on the window of a crossing guard's booth.

"It is the easiest thing to make phone calls...to try their best to confuse the police response.

"Eventually we deployed in a very careful, tactically sound way and what did we find? Five hours of sustained violence waiting for us."

A number of homes were evacuated today as the alert continues.

The senior officer added: "A methodical clearance operation to dispose of the device will continue today and this is likely to cause disruption not only to rail travel in the area but also to the daily lives of people living close by.

"It will be necessary to evacuate a number of homes and we have already been in touch with most of the householders who will be affected by this operation.

"I am grateful for the cooperation and support of the broader community in Lurgan and I would ask that those who engaged in last nights despicable disorder, seriously consider the consequences of their actions and the impact they are having not only on their community police officers but also on their community itself.

Upper Bann MP David Simpson called the violence "absolutely disgraceful".

He said: "The kind of violence witnessed over the weekend was absolutely disgraceful, and for police to come under gunfire highlights just how serious this trouble was.

"It would seem clear that dissident republican terrorists are responsible for this trouble, particularly given the prolonged and orchestrated nature.

"Those who engage in terrorism and violence today are merely emulating those who attempted to use such failed tactics in the past. There can be little doubt that the continued glorification of past terrorism plays into the hands of those who hold the community to ransom today."

The Lord Mayor of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon, councillor Darryn Causby has said he is "completely aghast" at the overnight disorder.

He said: I completely and utterly condemn the violence perpetrated last night towards the Police as they were trying to deal with a serious security alert at Lake Road.

" I am completely aghast at the blatant disregard these people have for our Police Service and it is extremely fortunate that we are not dealing with serious injuries or death today.

I know this is not the will of the local people and it is disgraceful that a small minority are able to wreak such carnage on our town.

There is no room in our progressive and peaceful society for attacks like this and I would encourage anyone who has any information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, concerning the perpetrators to contact the local PSNI without delay. It is imperative that those responsible for this reckless behaviour are brought to justice.

Local Councillor Carla Lockhart said: "The vast majority of people in Lurgan simply want to get on with their daily lives instead of facing such disruption and violence.

"It is vital that the police are assisted in their efforts to bring those responsible to justice. Anyone involved in firing gunshots at the police clearly has no regard for life or limb and were obviously intent on murder.

"We will continue discussions with the police to ensure they have the resources necessary to tackle this dissident threat."

Sinn Fein's Catherine Seeley condemned those who opened fire at the PSNI during disturbances in Lurgan and said it was "clearly an effort to murder police officers".

She said: "Those responsible for this attack and organising and co-ordinating this rioting and disruption nothing to offer the community.

"Local people and commuters are fed up with these incidents which serve absolutely no purpose except to disrupt lives and services.

"Recently this activity has disrupted people on their way to work, when preparing their children for school, local doctors services have been affected, as has Home Help and other medical services in the area.

"Those behind these attacks have no political vision or strategy.

"It is completely and utterly futile.

"It is important to point out that this does not reflect the views of the community of the north Lurgan area most of whom, I am sure, would strongly agree that those responsible should stop immediately and allow the community to live in peace.

Update: The security alert in Lake Street has now ended. Two suspicious objects have been examined and both have been declared as hoaxes.

All evacuated residents are now able to return to their homes and the train line has reopened.
Dissident republicans who shot at police overnight are no better than the Daesh terror group, a senior officer said.

More than 100 petrol bombs were thrown at the PSNI during five hours of "serious and sustained" violence in Lurgan in Co Armagh, Superintendent David Moore said. They had been lured into the area by a bomb warning which was intended to confuse police. A potentially explosive device was found near the railway line.

At least one round was fired at officers during resultant serious disorder.

Mr Moore said: "The people that are behind this have no ideology, they have nothing to offer, in many respects they can be compared to Daesh, they have got little to offer but destruction in their own communities."

Daesh is a name for the terror group also known as Islamic State which is fighting for territory in Iraq and Syria.

Lurgan has been targeted many times before for dissident republican violence.

Twenty five paint bombs, bricks and other masonry were also hurled by a large and aggressive crowd which gathered at around 9pm and remained until the early hours of the morning at Lake Street.

No officers or members of the public were injured, however police vehicles were damaged.

Mr Moore said: "We are very lucky not only to be dealing with the loss of life or serious injury to a police officer but we could be dealing with any member of the community in the same position this morning."

Helicopter air support, specially trained riot police from other parts of Northern Ireland and dog teams had to be brought to deal with the trouble.

The suspected device caused disruption after the railway line between Belfast and Dublin was closed.

The senior officer added: "This was done for no other reason than to bring my officers into the particular place in Lurgan in order to attack them."

He said: "The work of dissident republicans is evident here, not in any way organised, because it is the easiest thing to drop something on a railway line and have someone drunk batter on the window of a crossing guard's booth.

"It is the easiest thing to make phone calls...to try their best to confuse the police response.

"Eventually we deployed in a very careful, tactically sound way and what did we find? Five hours of sustained violence waiting for us."

He said the rioters included young easily influenced men and bewildered older men who have not realised that the world has moved on.

Police later said the security alert in Lake Street, Lurgan, had ended. Two suspicious objects have been examined and declared as hoaxes.

All evacuated residents are now able to return to their homes and the train line has reopened.
The houseboat from which he fell

It could be the middle of the week before the body of a young man from Northern Ireland who drowned in Australia can be flown home, a charity has said.

The parents and family of Niall Quinn, who died after falling from a houseboat into a river, have been devastated by his death, said Colin Bell from the Kevin Bell Repatriation Fund.

The Silverbridge man, described by friends as "one of the best", had been working as a joiner and was living in Melbourne.

The 25-year-old had been on a weekend cruise to celebrate Australia Day. The houseboat was on the Murray River, near the New South Wales border with Victoria.

Friends said he climbed over a handrail in an attempt to jump into the river. They jumped in after him but lost sight of him in the murky water.

Police believe the builder struck his head before hitting the water. Mr Bell said it has helped the family to make arrangements to bring Niall's body home.

Mr Bell, who spoke to Niall's father Anthony following the tragedy, said it could be Wednesday before the remains can be flown back.

"Friends of the family contacted us and then I was speaking to his parents Anthony and Deirdre," he said.

"They are completely devastated. I think Niall was off with his friends for the Australia Day weekend."

The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust was set up by the Bell family from Newry after the 26-year-old died in a hit-and-run in New York in June 2013.

"I have contacted an undertaker in Sydney," Mr Bell said.

"Niall's body will be flown there, where an autopsy will be carried out.

"Then arrangements will be made to bring him home. It could be delayed slightly because it is Australia Day on Tuesday. So it could be Wednesday before he is brought home."

It is understood Niall's uncle and brother Gary were to fly to Australia last night.

Police in New South Wales said they were alerted at around 1.40am on Saturday that a man, who was staying on the boat with friends, had fallen from the top deck into the water.

Police, assisted by divers, local marine rescue and local boats, assisted in a search.

His body was located around two hours later by Victoria Police divers.

NSW Police Superintendent Peter Hayes said: "On the way down he's actually collided with the bottom deck of the houseboat.

"Last they saw of him, he was floating face down in the river.

"It's a terrible situation to be faced with.

"They're all young men and they've never had to deal with anything like this."

Sinn Fein councillor Barra O Muiri, who knows the family, described Niall as the "life and soul" of the community.

He said the news of the death had left local people devastated.

"He was a very nice fella, a lovely chap and a lad who was never in bad form or got in any bother.

"He was a very happy-go-lucky fella. He would have played a bit of sport with Silverbridge Harps."

The former pupil at St Joseph's School in Crossmaglen was described by the GAA club as "a genuine talent and a proud son of our club".

Among those paying tribute was former Armagh GAA star Jarlath Burns.

"Utterly devastating news about the tragic death of our much loved @SilverbridgeGAA player Niall Quinn. Please pray for his family today," he said. Distraught friends posted tributes and photographs of Niall on social media.
Victims: eight of the 10 workmen who were murdered in the massacre at Kingsmill. Top, from left : Robert Chambers, John Bryans, Joseph Lemon and Joseph McWhirter. Bottom, from left: Walter Chapman, John McConville, Kenneth Wharton and Reggie Chapman

The crowd assembled at the service of remembrance for the victims held at the Town Hall in Bessbrook yesterday to mark the 40th anniversary of the atrocity

Alan Black, the only survivor of the Kingsmills massacre, with his granddaughter Evie

Forty years have passed since the Kingsmills massacre, but for the victims' families the pain is still as raw today as it was then.

Relatives of the 10 men gunned down on an isolated road outside Bessbrook, Co Armagh, wept yesterday as they placed flowers at a memorial for loved ones who died in the IRA atrocity.

A representative from each family was asked to come forward and place a single white rose at the memorial outside Bessbrook Town Hall following an internominational service. It was attended by First Minister Arlene Foster, Justice Minister David Ford, UUP leader Mike Nesbitt and TUV leader Jim Allister.

Several hundred people, including relatives of the dead and the sole survivor, Alan Black, were present, as well as Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden died in the 1998 Omagh bomb, and victims' campaigner Willie Frazer.

They came together to pay tribute to the sons, brothers, fathers and uncles who were killed as they returned from a day's work at Glenanne textile factory on January 5, 1976.

Their minibus was stopped and the gunmen singled out all the Protestants, allowing the one Catholic on board to run away before opening fire.

The victims were John Bryans; Robert Chambers; Reginald Chapman; Walter Chapman; Robert Freeburn; Joseph Lemmon; John McConville; James McWhirter, Robert Samuel Walker and Kenneth Worton.

Racquel Brush, who was only three when her father, 24-year-old Mr Worton, was killed, said: "You try not to get upset on a day like this, but it's hard because you think about the last 40 years and everything that has happened and the men weren't here to see it all.

"I was three and my sister was six, so I don't remember it.

"I don't remember my daddy either; you think you remember things, but it is probably just things family have told us. It's impossible to tell the difference between what you've been told and what you remember.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Victims: eight of the 10 workmen who were murdered in the massacre at Kingsmill. Top, from left : Robert Chambers, John Bryans, Joseph Lemon and Joseph McWhirter. Bottom, from left: Walter Chapman, John McConville, Kenneth Wharton and Reggie Chapman Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Jimmy McWhinter. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim John McConville. Alan Black:Survivor of the Kingsmill, Armagh, Massacre/Shooting, when he was shot with his 10 workmates in an ambushon their way home from work by gunmen. Pictured at the Kingsmill Memorial monument. 4/1/1981 Reggie and Walter Chapman: Protestant brothers brutally murdered on lonely roadside in S. Armagh, Kingsmill Massacre/Shooting. 5/1/1976. Their Bessbrook funeral. 8/1/1976. James McWhirter:Brutally murdered on lonely roadside in S. Armagh, Kingsmill Massacre/Shooting. 5/1/1976. John McConville 19 Kingsmill massacre/ protestant shot dead on lonely roadside in south Armagh, killed along with him were 9 of his workmates 05/01/1976 John McConville (20) :Brutally murdered on lonely roadside in S. Armagh, Kingsmill Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Jimmy McWhinter. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Kenneth Worton. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Robert Walker. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Joseph Lemmon. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim John Bryans. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Robert Freeburn. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Walter Chapman. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland 2011 - 16th June Picture by Jonathan Porter/ PressEye.com - Historical Enquires Team report into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre. 10 Protestant workmen were shot dead by republicans when they stopped their work minibus in the Kingsmill area. One man survived with a Catholic workmate being told to leave. Collect of Kingsmill victim Robert Chambers. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Victims: eight of the 10 workmen who were murdered in the massacre at Kingsmill. Top, from left : Robert Chambers, John Bryans, Joseph Lemon and Joseph McWhirter. Bottom, from left: Walter Chapman, John McConville, Kenneth Wharton and Reggie Chapman

"I know my mummy told us it was bad men that did it and we were so young at the time we didn't really question it, but over the last couple of years an awful lot more has come out. There were people speculating at the time that it was revenge for what happened the night before (the killing of six Catholics in south Armagh), but it is obvious it was months in the planning.

"Mum was never the same, she never married again, she suffered bad health and we had to move away from Bessbrook because we lived next to the graveyard. We moved for her sanity.

"It's been great to see such a good turnout and people still remembering, although my aunt has just said to me that she remembers it like it was yesterday."

Mr Black, there with his only granddaughter Evie, said he was still haunted by the carnage.

Now 72, he was shot 18 times and spent months being treated for his devastating injuries.

He said: "Believe it or not, I am actually a private person. But I'm in that position where I feel I owe it to the men that died and their families to speak out."

Mr Black said he doesn't hold out much hope that those responsible will be brought to justice. "I don't know if it would help, I don't know how it would feel until it happens," he said.

Mr Gallagher, who has been an integral part of the campaign for truth about the Omagh bomb, laid a wreath at the memorial.

He said he understood the pain they felt during the service.

"Their lives took a very different direction than they would have, the majority of them would have gone on to have happy families and they were denied that.

"Everyone lost something that night."

The First Minister branded the massacre "one of the cruellest and cold-blooded acts of terrorism during the Troubles".

"I will stand with the families in their campaign for justice and will help them in any way I can."
The judge is reviewing the stalled inquests on behalf of Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan

A senior judge has accused the Government of failing to properly resource a series of long-delayed inquests into almost 100 Troubles deaths in Northern Ireland.

Lord Justice Weir branded some of the "excuses" offered by state agencies for the lack of progress as "preposterous".

The judge is conducting a major review of the stalled inquests on behalf of Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan.

There are 56 cases relating to 95 deaths stuck in Northern Ireland's coronial system. Almost half the inquests relate to deaths dating back more than 40 years.

Delays in security checking classified police and military papers ahead of disclosure to the coroners' courts have repeatedly been highlighted as the main obstacle in the way of progress.

During a hearing related to the inquest of loyalist paramilitary shooting victim Terence McDaid, the judge was again told disclosure by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) was being hampered by lack of resources.

Barrister Mark Robinson, representing the MoD and PSNI, insisted work on all 56 cases could not be done simultaneously.

Judge Weir responded: "They could be done simultaneously if they were adequately resourced.

"The only thing stopping them being worked on is an absence of resources and the Government provides the resources.

"These cases are being delayed because the Government is not adequately funding the work."

Mr McDaid, 29, was gunned down inside his north Belfast home by the UDA in 1988.

Claims that state forces colluded with the killers - by way of Army agent and senior UDA member Brian Nelson, now deceased - have been examined in a series of official investigations by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, Canadian Judge Peter Cory, and QC Sir Desmond de Silva.

The same probes examined Nelson's alleged role in the UDA murders of solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989 and 27-year-old Gerard Slane the year before.

At Monday's hearing in Belfast Laganside Courts, Judge Weir made clear that the Government, not the Coroners' Service, was obligated under international law to hold human rights-compliant inquests.

"If they can't assist with getting coroners' inquests on for that excuse, or this excuse, or the other excuse, then they will have to find some other way of doing it," he added.

The judge described some of the reasons for delay advanced in the first six days of his review as "preposterous", adding: "They don't improve with repetition."

Fiona Doherty QC, representing the McDaid family, suggested resources may not be the only issue.

"There is a history of the MoD and police obstructing inquiries and investigations into the actions of state agents," she said.

Judge Weir said in all the cases he has reviewed to date he has yet to find a "reasonable explanation" for the delays - "o ther than a disinclination to do the work".

"And the motive for that others can judge."

The outstanding inquest for Mr Slane was examined later on Monday.

The Finucane family has not applied for a new inquest into the solicitor's death, insisting the murder should be examined by a full public inquiry - a demand that has been turned down by the Government.

Judge Weir heard the Slane case was further towards hearing than the McDaid inquest, but stalled disclosure was still a feature.

He was told the family was awaiting papers from a range of bodies, including the Northern Ireland Office, the Cabinet Office and the NI Public Prosecution Service.

The judge questioned whether a form of public inquiry might be a more suitable means to investigate the issues related to the three killings.

Ms Doherty stressed that the McDaid and Slane families wanted inquests to be heard and suggested an inquiry was unlikely, given the Government was "fighting tooth and nail" to prevent one in the Finucane case.

Outside court, Mr Slane's widow Teresa had a stark message for Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers.

"I would appeal now to Theresa Villiers to get her government to hand over the information," she said.

"We need this information to move on. She is just prolonging our agony."

She added: "The Government are waiting on us dying and our kids, but I have got news for the British government - this family and many other families will continue on this, because there are generations of families.

"We will keep going and we will keep fighting until we get the truth. All we want is the truth and justice for Gerard."
Dozens of migrants running toward a moored ferry in the northern French port of Calais on January 23, 2016 in a bid to reach Britain before police removed them from the ship.

Dozens of migrants running toward a moored ferry in the northern French port of Calais on January 23, 2016 in a bid to reach Britain before police removed them from the ship.

Dozens of migrants running toward a moored ferry in the northern French port of Calais on January 23, 2016 in a bid to reach Britain before police removed them from the ship.

A lorry driver from Northern Ireland has spoken of being caught up in chaotic scenes in Calais as migrants seeking to get to the UK stormed a ferry

A lorry driver from Northern Ireland has spoken of being caught up in chaotic scenes in Calais as migrants seeking to get to the UK stormed a ferry.

Stephen Millar from Larne watched on in horror on Saturday as the port was closed after 50 migrants boarded the vessel.

He said drivers' lives were being put at risk.

"I parked in the shipping lane. I heard lots of chanting and shouting to my right," he told the BBC.

"There were hundreds of migrants running towards me. I looked to my left. The security people in high-vis clothing were waving at me to get away, and they proceeded to run away."

The French port was closed on Saturday and services were disrupted overnight into Sunday as a result of the incident, which happened during a protest in support of the migrants.

Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, called on the French authorities to back "decisive action" and deploy soldiers at the port.

He said the incident was the latest in a string of recent incursions in Calais, warning it was "only a matter of time before our worst fears become a reality and a UK-bound truck driver is killed".

Last summer Mr Millar spoke of how he had to barricade himself in his vehicle during long delays in Calais due to the migrant crisis.

He said at the time: "You just think, is it really worth it? My friends ask why you put yourself through that.

"It's a shame, I like the job and like travelling, but every time you leave France to get back to the UK it is really nasty.

"We have to be really careful all around Europe."

France outlined its commitment to maintaining law and order after the migrants forced their way onto the ferry.

Security forces were drafted in after 350 of them blocked the port and some boarded P&O's Spirit Of Britain passenger ship.

Pictures posted on social media showed hundreds of people running towards the port and water cannon reportedly being used to get migrants to disembark.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 26 migrants and nine activists were arrested, and 15 taken into custody.

Trouble flared after hundreds of people marched towards the port from the 'Jungle' site, where some 4,000 migrants and refugees are camped.

Mr Cazeneuve said mobile forces, supported by territorial units and border police, had been mobilised for several months to help secure the Calais camp.
A man jailed today for smashing an antique candelabra at a five-star hotel in Belfast claims his actions were fuelled by unwittingly smoking cannabis.

William John Mulholland caused 1,100 worth of damage by throwing the furnishing as staff tried to escort him from The Merchant, a judge was told.

The 34-year-old was also convicted of a separate, allegedly racially-motivated, assault on a man working at a fast-food restaurant in the city centre.

He was sentenced to a total of five months in prison, but released on bail pending a planned appeal.

Belfast Magistrates' Court heard Mulholland, of Shore Crescent in the city, had limited cash when he entered the hotel on September 25 last year.

He resisted attempts to get him to leave, picking up candles and allegedly throwing them in the direction of door security.

As efforts to escort him from the premises continued, Mulholland lifted and hurled the candelabra.

Defence counsel Mark Farrell said the accused, described as diagnosed schizophrenic, was both apologetic and remorseful for his behaviour.

The barrister explained that his client had been in court on unrelated matters on the day of the incident.

Mulholland had gone outside, asked someone for a cigarette and been handed what he thought was a normal roll-up, it was claimed.

But according to Mr Farrell he was unwittingly given a cannabis joint before heading to the hotel.

He has no memory of his subsequent actions, the court heard.

Mulholland was convicted of criminal damage and a common assault offences over the incident at The Merchant.

Meanwhile, he was also dealt with for assaulting a member of staff at McDonalds in the city centre and resisting police last July.

It was claimed that he told the black victim: "Go back to your own country."

Mr Farrell contended that Mulholland was only meant for him to return to England.

District Judge Fiona Bagnall ordered the defendant to serve a total of five months behind bars for the two incidents.

Granting bail for a planned appeal against sentence, she banned Mulholland from entering The Merchant Hotel. ends
Sinn Fein MLA Martin McGuinness speaks to the press at the Millennium Forum in Londonderry on Saturday after announcing he was seeking election as an MLA for Foyle, his home constituency. He is currently an MLA for Mid-Ulster

Martin McGuinness has been challenged to help tackle long-standing impasses over parades after saying he could attend the Twelfth of July celebrations if invited.

The Deputy First Minister was urged by UUP MP Tom Elliott to "work positively to get resolutions" to the endemic disputes over parades in Portadown and North Belfast. Drumcree and Ardoyne have been at the heart of parading rows.

Mr Elliott told Sinn Fein's Mr McGuinness to use his position to get lasting resolutions at these flashpoint areas "rather than engaging in empty gesture politics".

But yesterday a spokesman for Sinn Fein told the Belfast Telegraph that the best way to resolve the issue was through dialogue.

And he further challenged Mr Elliott to use his own influence within the Orange Order to engage with representatives from the nationalist community.

Mr Elliott's comments came after Mr McGuinness said he would "give serious consideration" to attending the Twelfth celebrations if the Order was to invite him.

Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP Mr Elliott stated yesterday: "That suggestion might have credibility if the Deputy First Minister was to play a positive role to bring about a resolution to allow the Orangemen to walk a small distance home at Portadown and North Belfast.

"How can you expect the Orange Order to have any confidence in what Martin McGuinness has to say when his own party leader, Gerry Adams, has openly gloated about the role that they played in choreographing protests against the Orange Order in places right across Northern Ireland."

Mr Elliott's comments refer to Gerry Adams' infamous comments in the 1990s that Drumcree hadn't happened by accident but had been achieved by the sowing of "community discord" by Sinn Fein activists across Northern Ireland.

Former UUP leader Mr Elliott stressed Mr McGuinness should "concentrate on attempting to get resolutions to long-standing disputes rather than engaging in empty gesture politics".

"If he did that, some people might find his sentiments more believable. He could do with starting in Ardoyne and Portadown and use his influence to attain a lasting resolution."

A Sinn Fein spokesperson yesterday said the best way to resolve outstanding contentious parades is through dialogue: "Sinn Fein has shown in places like Derry that accommodation can be reached through dialogue between residents, loyal orders, political leaders and the business community.

"Tom Elliott needs to use his influence both as an elected representative and as an Orangeman to get the Orange Order to engage with residents' groups and political leaders representing the nationalist community."

He said the party remained committed to resolving the outstanding parades issues through dialogue.
PACEMAKER BELFAST This is the Armalite-type assault rifle found by police in an industrial estate in Strabane, Co Tyrone, on Friday night

A military grade assault rifle has been discovered in Strabane, police said

Superintendent Mark McEwan said the Armalite-type weapon had been intended for an attack on officers.

The gun was found with ammunition during a security alert at Lismourne Place on Friday as part of an investigation into new IRA activity.

Mr McEwan said: "We believe this was brought into the area in an attempt to carry out an attack on police.

"That would have been an attempt to kill police officers, but the calibre of this weapon is such that it is capable of penetrating walls, so any type of attack carried out using this weapon is totally regardless of the safety of the community.

"People in their own homes would not have been safe if this weapon was fired in a built-up area.

"Those who were intent on using this weapon have no concern whatever for the safety of the community."

He said the find would be subjected to a full forensic examination, but at this stage it was believed to be "the real thing".

He also appealed for anyone who had information about this particular weapon, or any suspicious activity, to contact police at Strand Road or Crimestoppers.

The new IRA is believed to have been formed in 2012 from an amalgamation of previously separate dissident republican organisations.

REACTION

SDLP West Tyrone MLA Daniel McCrossan described the firearm find as "deeply worrying".

Mr McCrossan said: This discovery of this weapon is a deeply worrying development. Illegal and irresponsible gun ownership is very dangerous and we have seen weapons of this type used in illegal activity including the attempted murder of police.

The illegal storing of firearms is unacceptable and it allows those who committed to violence to continue to put the public at risk. We must all be vigilant against this threat and I would encourage anyone with any relevant information to contact the police immediately.

West Tyrone Ulster Unionist MLA Ross Hussey said the find raises further doubts about the IRA decommissioning process.

Mr Hussey, who represents his party on the Policing Board, said: "For some time now I have questioned the decommissioning of weaponry by the IRA. I am convinced that there were groups within the Provisional IRA that did not comply with the decommissioning instructions and instead retained some of the weapons and ammunition that were under their control.

The fact is that we do not know what was decommissioned and we certainly have no list of what was not. The Police have described the weapon recovered on Friday evening in Strabane as an armalite-type assault rifle which belonged to the group styling itself the New IRA.

"This concerns me greatly as it is clearly is a weapon with great firepower and was brought into the area to kill a member of the security forces. Past experience tells us that there is also a threat to the public, not least if a child were to come across it."

He added: The price of safety is indeed eternal vigilance, and once again I pay tribute to all those members of the security forces, in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, who through their dedication to duty and bravery, protect and defend us all.
Mark, a councillor, says Aoiffe is happy to be tracked while behind the wheel

A concerned dad has told why he installed 'black boxes' in both his children's cars.

Mark Murnin fitted the devices in the vehicles of Matthew (23) and Aoiffe (21) when they started to drive.

The boxes were installed in conjunction with his insurance company, which offered discounts if the owner agreed to them being placed behind the dashboard of the cars.

He receives a weekly report by email of how his children were driving, and if anything gives cause for concern it is raised in the report.

Also, if at any time there is an urgent concern over how the cars are being driven, the monitoring company puts an immediate call through to Mark.

Saddened by the number of deaths on Northern Ireland roads, Mark, an SDLP councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down Council, urged other parents to do the same. He said the move had been well received by his offspring.

"I was and still am very concerned about the number of car accidents young people are having on our roads. The figures are startling," he said.

"In this past week we have seen more young people lose their lives on our roads in accidents. It is every parent's worst nightmare to hear their child has been in an accident.

"For my own peace of mind I wanted to put something in my children's cars just to monitor their driving performance and to make them more aware of the dangers of speeding.

"Young people have a temptation of showing off in front of their friends, and I didn't want my children involved in any such behaviour.

"When they became the age to drive and were looking for a car I told them I wanted something fitted to monitor their driving and they were okay with that, otherwise there would be no car.

"I originally looked at using an app with the iPhone, but after some research I found this scheme with an insurance company that offered discounts for fitting these black boxes which monitored driver behaviour.

"The device is fitted behind the dash and in the beginning I received a weekly report from the monitoring company on how my son and daughter were driving.

"Should anything be of major cause for concern, like excess speed, then the company would call me urgently to see what the reason was and to highlight it to me.

"Thankfully, this has only happened once, when my son was on an early morning drive to the airport and was going too fast.

"Both my kids were competing against each other as to who was the safer driver, judged by the statistics received in the report."

His son is older and has since changed his car, so does not use a black box, but his daughter still does.

"It gives me great peace of mind that the kids are driving safe and not taking any risks or breaking the law," added Mark.

"I would call on other parents to consider fitting something similar to their children's vehicles to see if we cannot improve road safety.

"Using these type of monitoring devices should benefit the young people by making them better drivers and making them more aware of the speed limits. There are too many young lives being lost on our roads and we need to do something urgently about it."
Northern Ireland Attorney General John Larkin is leading the challenge to the judge's ruling

Northern Ireland's Attorney General has lodged an appeal against a High Court ruling that declared the region's strict abortion laws incompatible with human rights legislation.

John Larkin is to challenge Mr Justice Horner's judgment in the Court of Appeal.

The judge's landmark ruling last year had potentially paved the way for the relaxation of the current prohibition on women accessing terminations in cases of rape, incest or where there is a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality.

The judge's declaration of incompatibility did not immediately lift the current ban but had placed an onus on the Stormont Assembly to legislate on the contentious issue.

Judge Horner had ruled the failure to provide exceptions to the law in certain limited circumstances breached a woman's right to privacy.

In cases of fatal foetal abnormality (FFA), the judge concluded that the mother's inability to access an abortion was a "gross interference with her personal autonomy" and where a sexual crime has occurred the judge said a disproportionate burden was placed on victims.

Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland where abortions are illegal except where the life or mental health of the mother is in danger.

Anyone who performs an illegal termination could be jailed for life.

Judge Horner made the ruling in a case taken by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission against Stormont's Department of Justice (DoJ).

The Attorney General's office confirmed an appeal had been lodged.

Amnesty International pledged to resist any attempt to overturn the judge's ruling.

Amensty's programme director in Northern Ireland Patrick Corrigan said: "The High Court made a very clear ruling that laws governing abortion in Northern Ireland breach the human rights of women and girls. That important ruling stands and we stand ready to resist any attempt to overturn it."

He added: "The Assembly must bring Northern Ireland's abortion laws into the twenty-first century and into line with international law as a matter of urgency."
The UK is set for heavy rain after snow storms hit the US east coast

Communities hit by flooding after Christmas have been warned to prepare for further misery as the storm that battered the US arrives in Britain.

Forecasters have warned that the possibility of heavy rain on already saturated ground after the wettest December on record means more flooding is likely in many of the areas affected last month.

Weather warnings are in place across Wales, Scotland, Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Devon and Cornwall and the South East of England as the remnants of the US snow storms head for the UK.

The Environment Agency (EA) said areas already affected by record river levels, including Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire, are likely to be at risk of flooding as heavy rain on Tuesday and into Wednesday could cause river levels to rise and drains to flood.

A spokeswoman said there was also the possibility of some flooding along the rivers Severn and Wye.

Clare Dinnis, national flood duty manager at the EA, said they would issue flood warnings and alerts where necessary and warned people to be ready for flash flooding in some areas.

"With heavy rain and high tides this week, people in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Devon and Cornwall need to be prepared for the risk of flooding," she said.

"Disruption to travel and some flooding of low-lying land and individual properties is possible."

The Met Office has also issued severe weather warnings for heavy rain and severe gales in these areas, with forecasters predicting around 30 to 50mm of rain in most parts and up to 80 to 100mm in exposed upland areas. Parts of Scotland are likely to face winds of up to 70mph.

A second weather front will see further rain and wind hitting the UK towards the end of the week.

But recent mild temperatures are expected to continue after one of the warmest January days on record on Sunday.

A Met Office spokeswoman said the weather is the remnants of the storm that brought blizzards and near record-breaking amounts of snow to the US east coast.

She said: " As it travels across to us, we're not going to get snowfall, it will just manifest itself as wet and windy weather b ecause, as it travels over the Atlantic, it picks up moisture and warms up, which means it comes as rain rather than snow.

"What we have got is a lot of weather coming our way.

"We've got these warnings out for great swathes of the west coast of the UK, that's for Tuesday into Wednesday, for potential heavy rain accompanied by strong winds as well.

"And because we've had so much rain falling on already saturated ground, s ome of the areas experiencing that will be the ones who have experienced flooding already."

Lancashire, Cumbria and Yorkshire were some of the worst affected by Storm Desmond, which ruined thousands of homes and businesses and resulted in thousands of residents evacuated from their homes.

Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said: "I have today chaired a meeting of the government's COBR committee as we prepare for more rain this week across the North of England and in the South West. This is likely to take place from Tuesday to Wednesday, with a further front expected on Friday.

"While we continue to monitor forecasts to model the precise impacts, we expect rain to fall on already saturated ground, especially in parts of Cumbria, Yorkshire, Devon and Cornwall.

"We know this will be an especially anxious time for many communities who suffered flooding last month and where the ground is still saturated.

"I want to assure them that we are taking all possible steps to prepare for the storm.

"The military are on standby, temporary defences and pumps are being deployed across the country and EA staff are checking and maintaining flood defences, clearing blockages in watercourses and monitoring water levels.

"Our priority continues to be protecting lives, protecting homes and protecting businesses.

"I expect to be chairing further COBRs this week to ensure our response remains targeted, fast and effective."
A three-year-old girl from Northern Ireland has become the first in the world to have a life-changing kidney transplant using 3D printing.

It is the first time in the world that 3D printing has been used to aid kidney transplant surgery involving an adult donor and a child recipient.

Lucy Boucher, from Antrim in Northern Ireland suffered heart failure as a baby when she developed supraventricular tachycardia - meaning her heart was beating irregularly faster than normal.

This resulted in her body, including her kidneys, being starved of oxygen.

Having undergone surgery to address her heart condition, Lucy faced the a lifetime of dialysis treatment due to her kidney failure but that all changed when she was referred to experts at Guys and St Thomas and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

They performed the transplant on November 24 at Great Ormond Street using a kidney donated by her father, Chris Boucher, during a procedure at Guys Hospital.

Models of Chris' kidney and Lucys abdomen were produced using Guys and St Thomas 3D printer so that the surgeons could accurately plan the highly complex operation to minimise the risks.

Lucys father Chris, an assistant lay minister said: When I first saw the models I was taken aback by the level of detail thats in them. It really helped me get an idea in my head of what was going to happen.

"My first reaction when I saw the 3D printout of my kidney was surprise at how big it was and I wondered how it could possibly fit into Lucy.

Seeing the model of her abdomen and the way the kidney was going to be transplanted inside her gave me a clear understanding of exactly what was going to happen. It helped ease my concerns and it was hugely reassuring to know that the surgeons could carry out such detailed planning ahead of the operation.

Based on measurements obtained through CT and MRI scans, the 3D printer produces a model of liquid plastic, moulded under ultraviolet light to replicate the body parts size and density.

This enables surgeons to assess the feasibility of the transplant and to rehearse each step of the operation with the 3D models.

Lucys surgery at Great Ormond Street lasted four hours and was a success with both father and daughter recovering well.

Previously reliant on receiving dialysis treatment three times a week, Lucy will now be able to start attending nursery next year. Her older brother Daniel (5) is looking forward to swimming with his baby sister for the first time as until now she had been prevented from doing this by her medical condition.

Lucys mother Ciara, a teacher, said: We found it amazing that we could see these incredibly detailed models of Chris kidney and Lucys abdomen.

Considering all the potential complications its fantastic that everything has gone so well  its a massive relief. The transplant is life-changing for Lucy.

Mr Pankaj Chandak, a transplant registrar at Guys and St Thomas whose idea it was to use 3D printouts, said:: Our exciting new use of 3D printed models to help plan highly complex kidney transplant surgery in children brings all sorts of important advantages for our patients and the surgical team.

The most important benefit is to patient safety. The 3D printed models allow informative, hands-on planning, ahead of the surgery with replicas that are the next best thing to the actual organs themselves.

"This means surgeons are better placed than before to prepare for the operation and to assess what surgical approach will offer the greatest chance of a safe and successful transplant.
A chairman's signature approving a 200,000 overdraft at a scandal-hit quango was considerably different from his previous signature, investigators said.

The Northern Ireland Events Company (NIEC) has been accused of presiding over a financial fiasco including falsified records.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is examining the demise of the NIEC after an auditors' report found its chief executive covered up losses with misleading and sometimes fabricated records while racking up debts of almost 1.5 million.

The publicly-funded organisation tasked with attracting star performers like Sir Elton John lost 400,000 promoting two motocross events. In response, it sought 200,000 extra borrowing.

Chairman Mervyn Elder told the committee he was not aware that the 200,000 overdraft was given the go ahead in November 2005 without a board meeting of the struggling organisation. Four members of the board and the chairman had supposedly approved the measure.

Investigators examined whether Mr Elder's signature wa s on the overdraft approval letter "falsely" submitted to the overseeing Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL).

The department said: "Following the PAC hearing, we have verified that a signature reading SM Elder is on the second overdraft approval letter.

"However, the company inspectors, working with forensic accountants and forensic technology specialists, have determined that the signature is considerably different when compared with the signature on the resolution for the first overdraft."

Company inspectors were appointed by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment to investigate the affairs of the events company.

The NI Audit Office has criticised oversight failures by NIEC's board and DCAL to prevent what happened under the stewardship of CEO Janice McAleese.

PAC member John Dallat has said: "It was Christmas Day every day at DCAL, it just gave people's money away."

The PSNI has been investigating. Enquiries have concluded and a report will be prepared for the Public Prosecution Service, a spokeswoman said.

The company was established in 1997 as a by-product of the peace process and in its early years was instrumental in bringing star names to perform in the grounds of the Stormont Assembly, including Sir Elton and Luciano Pavarotti.

But its success was short-lived and just over a decade later, having received 18 million in public funds, it effectively folded amid the financial scandal.
A Queen's University student has died in a road accident in Co Fermanagh - the sixth person to die on Northern Ireland's roads so far this year.

The victim, named locally as Anthony Mulvey, died yesterday in a one vehicle crash near Mullaghdun in Co Fermanagh. The Queen's pharmacy school student was aged 21 and from Belcoo.

The number of road deaths so far this year is double that for the same period in 2015, when three people were killed.

Mr Mulvey died after his car left the Sligo Road yesterday.

His university pal Matthew Mulligan paid an emotional tribute on Facebook.

"When I sat beside this fella the first day of first year I never thought he would become my best friend. Nicest person you could meet and I'll remember all the nights out and craic we had together.

"Still can't believe it, love you buddy. I'll miss you more than anything."

Another friend paid tribute on Twitter: "Very sad to hear of the passing of Anthony Mulvey. A true gentleman."

The light green Peugeot 306 Mr Mulvey was driving is believed to have left the road between 12.20pm and 12.45pm yesterday afternoon.

Police are appealing for anyone who was travelling on the Sligo Road at this time and who may have noticed the car to contact officers at Enniskillen PSNI station on 101.

The road remained closed last night.

Mr Mulvey was the fourth Queen University student to be killed on Northern Ireland's roads in the past six months.

Last August, three young friends were killed during a two car collision near Banbridge.

Peter Hughes, Conall Havern and Gavin Sloan, two aged 20 and one just 19, died after visiting new student digs in Belfast, weeks ahead of the new term.
Almost every grammar school in NI had more applicants than places

Selective grammar schools are more popular than ever, with demand at record levels last year.

Despite Education Minister John O'Dowd's opposition to transfer tests, the number of children applying for schools using them surged in 2015.

Full list of grades required for every grammar school below

There were 12,047 applications last year, up from 11,844 in 2014. Only one school was under-subscribed - down from three in 2014. Omagh Academy, meanwhile, received 95 applications for 95 places.

The grammar figures relate to pupils who sat the Post Primary Transfer Consortium's GL assessment and/or the Association of Quality Education's (AQE) Common Entrance Assessment in November/December 2014.

As these tests are not approved by Mr O'Dowd, there are no centralised statistics available.

Former Sinn Fein Education Minister Caitriona Ruane abolished the official transfer test in 2008. Since then most controlled grammars have used the AQE system, and most maintained grammars have used the GL assessment method.

Today the Belfast Telegraph reveals which grammar schools are most popular and the grades needed to secure a place.

Through almost 70 Freedom of Information requests, this newspaper has compiled the only comprehensive table of results revealing the grades needed to get into selective grammar schools.

As in previous years, we have produced AQE and GL summaries showing the grades selective schools accepted.

This year, for 64 schools, we have information on how many applications each received, how many were first preferences, what their approved enrolment is, and the highest and lowest grades accepted. Some of the toughest to get into include Our Lady and St Patrick's, Rathmore, and Aquinas grammars in Belfast; St Joseph's Grammar in Donaghmore - which accepted only As - and Lumen Christi in Londonderry, which took GL scores of no less than 245. In terms of controlled schools, Friends' School in Lisburn took AQE scores of no less than 106; Strathearn School in Belfast wanted 104 or more, and Sullivan Upper in Holywood and Banbridge Academy took no less than 102. The highest mark recorded in the AQE tests was 130 - by a student who gained a place at Methodist College in Belfast - six marks higher than the previous year's record of 124.

Collegiate Grammar in Enniskillen was the only under-subscribed school, with 62 applications for 70 places. However, this was against the backdrop of a proposal by Mr O'Dowd to merge the school with Portora Royal.

Collegiate principal Elizabeth Armstrong said the school had "heretofore been consistently oversubscribed, with the lowest AQE mark accepted being in the 90-98 range in previous years".

DUP education spokesman Peter Weir said the figures showed academic selection was gaining in popularity. "The figures revealed by the Belfast Telegraph in relation to transfer tables show the support for academic selection is not only holding firm, but actually strengthening," he added.

"When departmental-sponsored transfer tests were abolished nearly a decade ago we were told so-called unregulated tests would be mired in legal disputes and that support for academic selection would wither on the vine. Neither has come to pass. Indeed, record numbers of pupils are taking the transfer tests.

"This is reflecting strong parental demand and shows the belief of many parents that selection by academic ability is better than selection by parental wealth."

Stephen McConnell, principal of the Royal School in Armagh, added: "There were in excess of 7,700 applications to sit the AQE Common Entrance examination and a similar number applying to GL assessment. There clearly remains support for the use of academic selection."

Meanwhile, a number of principals have called for a single test system to be put in place.

Patricia Slevin, headmistress of Victoria College in Belfast, said: "We maintain a position which allows pupils who have taken either assessment to apply and be considered for a place.

"The college continues to advocate that there should be only one form of entrance assessment, which would be accepted by all schools who wish to use academic selection to admit their pupils."

This was echoed by Scott Naismith, principal of Methodist College, who said: "As in previous years, the procedure ran very smoothly and efficiently and the college remains committed to working towards a single assessment system."

Methodology used for poll

Under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) legislation we asked 66 grammar schools (including the two that no longer select) to provide the breakdown of the AQE/GL grades/scores achieved by the pupils they admitted in September 2015.

The data gives schools name, location, the highest grade/score/quintile/band it accepted and the lowest grade/score/quintile/band it accepted.

Other information included is the number of first preference choices it received and total applications (which includes first, second, third choices etc).

Several schools have provided bands for the lowest and highest scores they accepted, as this is the method they used to select pupils.

Some schools accept both AQE and GL scores.

Not all schools use academic selection to determine their entire intake. Wallace High School in Lisburn admits around 90% of its Year 8 intake on test results; Campbell College in Belfast admits 70%, while Lagan College in Belfast and Slemish College in Ballymena select just 35% of their pupils using test scores.

Some other schools also use additional criteria to separate students with the same score vying for the final places.

Two voluntary grammar schools, Loreto College in Coleraine and St Patricks Grammar in Armagh, no longer use academic selection.

Total pupil figures do not tally for a number of reasons, which can include pupils with a statement of special educational needs not being included in enrolment figures, and some pupils being accepted through special circumstances or on appeal.

In some schools pupils were admitted without using academic selection and some schools were undersubscribed.
Enda Kenny has asked David Cameron to visit Ireland for the commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule.

The Taoiseach said his Downing Street counterpart would consider the invitation in due course "if that is appropriate".

Speaking after their meeting at Number 10 in London, Mr Kenny said the pair had discussed the "comprehensive, inclusive, sensitive" centenary celebrations of the rebellion.

"I have invited the Prime Minister to come over himself at some time during the year, if that is appropriate, and obviously he will consider that in due course," he said.

Mr Cameron acknowledged the anniversary of "important events in our shared history".

"We'll mark them, as we should, in a spirit of mutual respect, inclusiveness and friendship," he added.

Government suggestions last year that a member of the Royal family could be invited to take part in the main State celebrations provoked an outcry.

The proposal was then binned and a decision taken that will see Dublin-based ambassadors as the only representatives of foreign governments asked to attend events on Easter weekend.

However, Dublin's Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys has since hinted the Prince of Wales could be invited to some of the peripheral events.

Two weeks ago Mr Kenny declared his disappointment in Northern Ireland's new First Minister Arlene Foster's plans to snub commemorations.

The rising in Dublin was a seminal moment in Irish history which ultimately led to partition and the creation of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Ms Foster denounced the event as an attack on the State and democracy which more recently, she said, gave ''succour'' to violent republicans in Northern Ireland.

Throughout 2016, more than 40 State ceremonial events will be held as part of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme.

The climax will be a parade along Dublin's main thoroughfare O'Connell Street - where the Proclamation of Independence was declared outside the General Post Office.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities are among major UK institutions marking the anniversary.

Centenary celebrations at London's Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre, as well as venues in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and other cities are among more than 87 events in the UK throughout the year.
Shamed priest: Father Jose Palimattom appearing on the local TV news after his arrest

Shamed priest: Father Jose Palimattom appearing on the local TV news after his arrest

A US-based priest from Co Tyrone who called police after a colleague showed sickening child porn images to a 14-year-old boy says he has been 'frozen out' by the Catholic Church over his stance.

Father John A Gallagher is living in a friend's home after locks at his parochial house were changed and he was placed on medical leave by his bishop in the Diocese of Palm Beach, Florida.

The 48-year-old claims he was told by a church official to put a paedophile priest on a plane rather than co-operate with police.

A local police chief, so concerned at the Irish cleric's treatment, wrote to church leaders to complain about how the whistleblower is being treated.

Fr Gallagher broke his year-long silence over the affair to tell how the priest from India at the centre of the abuse scandal is a danger to children.

He says he has been unable to find out where the priest is now.

He has written to bishops and cardinals in Ireland and America about the case - as well as Vatican officials - and has, so far, been unable to get a satisfactory response.

Fr Gallagher is originally from Strabane. He served the Long Tower parish in Londonderry until 2000 before taking up a post in the US.

The astonishing case began in January last year when Father Jose Palimattom - who had been at the parish of the Holy Name of Jesus Christ Catholic Church in West Palm Beach for just four weeks - approached a 14-year-old boy after Mass.

He showed the teenager up to 40 images of naked boys.

Police believe he was in the first stages of grooming his victim.

Later that night, Palimattom sent the boy a message on Facebook which read: "Good night. Sweet dreams."

However, the teenager told a friend who reported it to the church choirmaster, who immediately told Father Gallagher.

The priest says he was told that night by a church official in Florida: "We need to make him go away, put on a plane".

In documents filed to the Vatican by a specialist Canon Lawyer on behalf of Fr Gallagher, the priest claimed he was instructed 'do not keep written notes' by the same church official. The legal document was sent to Cardinal Gerhard Muller, Prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

After the incident involving the boy, Fr Gallagher disregarded the instruction to put Fr Palimattom on a plane to Bangalore.

Instead, he interviewed Fr Palimattom along with a retired police officer, who was one of his parishioners.

The parishioner, who took notes at the meeting, said the Indian priest not only admitted showing nude pictures of boys to the local teenager, but also admitted he had sexually assaulted young boys in India before arriving in the States.

It was a confession he would repeat within hours to detectives assigned to the case from a specialist unit of the West Palm Beach Police.

Fr Gallagher said he immediately called the Sheriff's Department of the West Palm Beach police, following rules set down by the American Church after hundreds of child sex abuse scandals.

Some of those cases in Boston are featured in the new movie 'Spotlight' released here last weekend.

The Irish cleric is well-known throughout the Catholic community in the States, has made several religious music records and has made numerous television appearances.

In 2012, the then Pope Benedict XVI wrote him a personal note, thanking him for his work with the church.

But all that was a distant memory last year, he says, when he says he began to feel "the wrath" of the Church.

"It was made clear to me that what I had done (co-operating with the police) wasn't what I should have done," he said.

"It was a very distressing time for me and the parish. But we had a special Mass and I told the congregation what had happened. I told them it was now in the hands of the rightful authorities, the police.

"Palimattom was on the local TV news as his arrest became public. I did the right thing."

Church officials dealt with the boy and his family through lawyers and an out-of-court settlement was made.

In February, says Fr Gallagher, he learned of a bid to have him moved at a meeting attended by around 100 Hispanic Catholics, most of them from outside the parish.

He had brought in a Spanish priest to celebrate Spanish Masses and was unaware of any complaints.

In late April, he says, he was called to a meeting by the Bishop of Palm Beach, Gerald Barbarito. Three other officials were there.

Fr Gallagher says he was due to be promoted, but instead was told to continue in his role for another year, when it would be reviewed again.

He says he wasn't happy with the decision, but was completely unprepared for a phone call from Bishop Barbarito the next day.

"He told me I was being demoted," said Father Gallagher.

"No reason was given. I asked if I could meet with him again and this was refused. He said if I didn't wish to be demoted and moved to another parish, I should leave the priesthood."

Less than four weeks later Fr Gallagher was rushed to hospital in an ambulance with a suspected heart attack after becoming unwell whilst hearing Confessions.

He says he felt aggrieved when Bishop Barbarito visited him in hospital but didn't anoint him or bring Communion.

Six days later he asked Dominican nun Sister Ann Monahan to retrieve files on the Fr Palimattom scandal from his office at the Holy Name of Jesus Christ church.

She managed to do this, but when she returned later, she was stopped by church officials and the keys to the building taken off her.

"I was told to leave. When I protested, I was told 'you're fired'," Sister Monahan (84) said.

"I'm a Dominican and our motto is 'The Truth' and that is all Father John ever did as a priest, tell the truth.

"I've been a nun for 67 years and I felt I was treated badly and Father John was treated very badly indeed. I find it hard to forgive them (the Church) for what happened."

She has now been officially retired.

When Fr Gallagher got out of hospital he returned to his parochial house to find the locks changed. A new priest had been appointed.

He had been due to leave, under the bishop's orders, a month later, in July.

"I was in shock," said Fr Gallagher. "I had just suffered a suspected heart attack and wanted to return to my home to recover. Instead, I was homeless."

A letter from the bishop to his priest suggested he needed 'treatment' for his mental health and an all-expenses paid trip was offered to a clinic in Pennsylvania.

Fr Gallagher refused to go and has been on paid leave since.

When police involved in the child porn scandal learned of his absence, they wrote to Church leaders including Cardinal Sean O'Malley in Boston, who heads a pontifical commission for the Protection of Minors set up by Pope Francis in 2014.

Chief Deputy in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office Michael Gauger said in 44 years as a police officer he had witnessed many other events where church staff had actually impeded investigations.

"Due to Fr Gallagher's co-operation the case was swiftly resolved and the opportunity for additional crimes was diminished," he wrote.

"Educated in the pattern of behaviour by those engaged in this inappropriate behaviour, the crime could have escalated to something physical which would have been devastating to the victim as well as the Catholic Church."

He urged Cardinal O'Malley to make sure Fr Gallagher "receive accolades for his compliance with criminal investigators".

Detective Debi Phillips - in a memo to Gauger written on May 5 before Fr Gallagher's heart attack - said she had been hindered by the church in a previous investigation and expected to face the same opposition in his case.

"Much to my surprise, I was wrong," she wrote.

"Reverend Gallagher and his staff provided timely evidence that was needed to arrest and ultimately convict Jose Palimattom for the felony charge of Showing Obscene Material to a Child.

"If it wasn't for the co-operation ... other children would have also been victimised."

Fr Gallagher has been living in a holiday home loaned to him by a parishioner since last July.

His Bishop only communicates with him via Fr Gallagher's specialist Canon Lawyer.

He has written numerous letters to bishops and cardinals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bishop Diarmuid Martin wrote back to him, and left a voice message, and Fr Gallagher believes that the church in Ireland can help "break the wall of silence over here (in Florida)".

He went on: "Because of the structure of the church, each diocese is run separately from the other, so there is no broad church.

"This is now 2016 and this is what happens to whistleblowers in the Catholic Church.

"Pope Francis speaks of ridding our church of the crimes of sexual abuse and being open and honest about doing it. I haven't seen that in Pope Francis's Church yet."

Both the parish where Father Gallagher served and his Diocesan headquarters, including the bishop, were asked to comment.

Despite numerous emails and phone calls to the Palm Beach Diocese, there was no response.

Mgr Robert Oliver, the secretariat of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in Rome - set up by Pope Francis in 2014 - said the commission could not comment on individual cases.

The Commission is headed by American Cardinal Sean O'Malley.

He did not respond to our press query. He did, however, call Father Gallagher last Wednesday and listened to what he had to say.

Fr Palimattom's order in India - the Franciscans Province of St Thomas The Apostle - also declined to comment.

After the priest's arrest, and before his conviction, the order described him as a "good God-fearing priest and a gentleman".

The order also said they had never received any prior complaints in India about the 48-year-old.
St Mary's Christian Brothers' School on the Glen Road in west Belfast is refusing to bow to pressure from Education Minister John O'Dowd and the Catholic Church to abandon using tests to determine its Year 8 intake

The board of governors of a Catholic grammar school under pressure to abandon academic selection has spoken out in defiance, saying the school will continue to use it.

St Mary's Christian Brothers' School on the Glen Road in west Belfast is refusing to bow to pressure from Education Minister John O'Dowd and the Catholic Church to abandon using tests to determine its Year 8 intake.

In a statement to the Belfast Telegraph, the school said: "The board of governors of St Mary's CB Grammar School has no plans to end academic selection."

The school was oversubscribed last year, with 205 applications for 175 places. It accepted A-D grades in the GL assessments.

St Mary's statement comes after two Catholic grammars in Omagh promised to end their use of academic selection by 2020.

Loreto and the Christian Brothers' School in the Co Tyrone town were both oversubscribed last year with 144 applications for 125 places and 166 applications for 135 places.

They told the Belfast Telegraph they will use academic selection for their 2016 intake, but in a statement issued online last week said they will stop using the tests by 2020.

The phasing out of testing will begin in 2017.

Both schools are due to receive new buildings as part of a relocation on to the massive Strule shared campus at the former Lisanelly Army base in Omagh.

The Catholic Church urged its grammar schools seven years ago to stop using academic selection, while the Catholic Principals' Association claimed grammar schools which use entrance exams are doing serious and lasting damage to the ethos and reputation of Catholic education.

But so far only two grammar schools have stopped using academic selection - Loreto College in Coleraine and St Patrick's College in Armagh.

St Michael's in Lurgan previously used tests but was amalgamated into the new comprehensive St Ronan's.

Loreto College in Coleraine selected the pupils it admitted to Year 8 last September mostly based on which applicants had siblings at the school.

It told the Belfast Telegraph that 189 pupils applied for the school's 120 places last year.

The largest number (72) secured a place because they had a sibling at the school; five got a place because a sibling was a past pupil; 16 got a place because their parents had attended, and the remaining 27 were selected using randomised letter of surname based on being eldest children.
Ibec called on the next government to invest 10 billion euro in infrastructure projects

The next Irish government should commit an extra 10 billion euro to infrastructure projects, business representatives have urged.

New funding options to enable small to medium sized manufacturers to access the capital they need to grow should also be a priority for whoever emerges victorious from the General Election, according to the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec).

Ibec, Ireland's largest business lobby group, has set out its vision in a new campaign, Manufacturing Ireland.

It has also launched a new umbrella association for the sector - the Irish Manufacturers Association.

The organisation has called for "adequate funding" for up-skilling in manufacturing and support for the development of new apprenticeships.

It also stressed the need for a national cyber security programme.

New director of the Irish Manufacturers Association, Avine McNally, said: "Ireland can be a world leader in quality manufacturing, but we need to get the business environment right.

"We need to be competitive, but we also need to share best practice and ensure our workforce is up to the task. We also need to significantly upgrade our national infrastructure, this requires major new investment."
Sinn Fein is answerable to the republican criminal underworld with "their boilersuits and balaclavas", an Irish MEP claims.

Brian Hayes, Fine Gael's director of elections, also compared Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe.

In the strongest attack yet by the main government party on Mr Adams, Mr Hayes questioned who really runs Sinn Fein.

He said: "Sinn Fein presents itself as something new despite the fact Mr Adams has been around as long as Robert Mugabe."

Mr Hayes's comments, made during a speech at the Fine Gael ard fheis in Citywest, were met with roars of approval from up to 3,000 party delegates.

The MEP also described Mr Adams as "that well-known economic guru from west Belfast" and said if the coalition government in the Republic had followed his advice the country would be facing 30 years of austerity.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny made no mention of Sinn Fein in his speech from the conference but Mr Hayes used his contribution about 10 minutes before Mr Kenny's televised address to rouse the crowd.

"This party isn't fooled by Sinn Fein. We know what they are. The Irish people don't want Sinn Fein next or near the government of this Republic," he said.

"But the crucial question for Sinn Fein is, who do they answer to? Is it the people or the republican criminal underworld - with their boilersuits and balaclavas?"

He also hit out at Fianna Fail and referenced their controversial attack poster on Fine Gael's health record, saying they "can't even get a proper poster campaign right these days".

A major report into paramilitary activity last year suggested the IRA Army Council still exists and oversees both the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein "with an overarching strategy".

The independent panel appointed by the British Government stated that "the structures of PIRA remain in existence in a much reduced form" but those that remain include "a senior leadership, the "Provisional Army Council" and some "departments".

It warned individual members of paramilitary groups represented "a threat to national security".

But the three-member panel also found the leaderships of the groups were "committed to peaceful means to achieve their political objectives".

While not actively recruiting or rearming, it said IRA members believed the Army Council "oversees both PIRA and Sinn Fein with an overarching strategy", although it has a "wholly political focus".

Mr Mugabe, who turns 92 on February 21, is the only President Zimbabwe has ever known.
It is the second time the move has been recommended to Health Minister Leo Varadkar

The health watchdog has called for medical negligence, errors and mistakes across the health and social care sectors to be reported to a single agency to improve patient safety.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) said a one stop shop was needed to allow staff to share and act on information about incidents and to learn lessons to prevent them from being repeated.

It is the second time it has been recommended to Health Minister Leo Varadkar and the agency said it about creating a "just culture".

Dr Kevin O'Carroll, acting director of health information with Hiqa, said: "There is currently no single agency in Ireland with responsibility for the governance and coordination of patient safety intelligence and for sharing learning between the numerous agencies which collect patient safety intelligence.

"The diffusion of this information is a lost opportunity to provide early warnings of potential patient safety risks."

The advice was one of 10 recommendations issued by Hiqa after concerns were raised about the safety of maternity services following a number of baby deaths, including those at Portlaoise Hospital.

The 2014 Chief Medical Officer's report on perinatal deaths in that unit made a similar call for a National Patient Safety Surveillance System to be created.

Dr O'Carroll said: "The primary purpose of patient safety reporting systems is to learn from when things go wrong for patients and staff, and to try and prevent such incidents happening again.

"The most important function of a reporting system is to use the results of data analysis and investigation to share recommendations for addressing patient safety risks.

"These systems must encourage healthcare workers to actively report incidents through the establishment of a reporting environment which balances the need to learn from mistakes with accountability."

Hiqa carried out a comprehensive review of patient safety intelligence systems in British Columbia in Canada and in Denmark, England and Scotland and how the Irish systems compares.

Its recommendations also included assigning responsibility and accountability for national patient safety intelligence to an independent organisation and developing effective IT systems to gather and record the intelligence on safety.

It said a national incident management system should be set up across the health and social care system with new laws brought in to support incident reporting. It also said improving data quality and the use of incident information were required.

Hiqa said a review of the experience in Ireland showed there is a need for better governance and coordination of national patient safety intelligence.
Members of the Garda sub aqua unit at the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare, where a body was found inside a container dumped in the Grand Canal yesterday. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Members of the Garda at the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare, where a body was found inside a container dumped in the Grand Canal yesterday. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

The Garda sub aqua unit at the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare

A coffin is taken from the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare, where a body was found inside a container dumped in the Grand Canal yesterday. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Members of the Garda at the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare, where a body was found inside a container dumped in the Grand Canal yesterday. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

The family of 33-year-old Kenneth OBrien, whose torso was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal, are enduring a very stressful time as the search continues for body parts, a garda superintendent has said.

Kenneth O'Brien was reported missing on Friday January 15, a few weeks after returning from Australia, and his dismembered torso was found the following day.

Body parts recovered in the Kenneth OBrien murder investigation were discovered by a shocked member of the public along the Grand Canal.

Gardai were called yesterday evening after a person out walking near the Digby Bridge in Sallins, Co Kildare noticed a bag in the water.

Superintendent Gerry Wall said this afternoon that the member of the public pulled the bag towards the bank and immediately notified gardai after realising its contents.

Detectives preserved the scene and members of the Garda Water Unit conducted searches of the canal, recovering more evidence this morning.

He said: The family are very stressed. They are enduring a very serious, stressful time in their lives that no one would wish on anyone.

Theyve lost a loved one.

"You can understand they are in bereavement and they are helping us in anyway possible with our inquiries," he said.

[The member of the public] were out using facilities and noticed a bag. They brought the bag to the canal side and they reported it to us yesterday evening and we dispatched the technical team to the scene and they immediately initiated a preservation of the scene for evidence. This morning the Water Unit carried out further searches. They were able to find further evidence for us, said Supt Gerry Wall of Leixlip garda station.

All of that has been taken to the mortuary at Naas and that will take a little time for us to assess the importance of that information. They managed to see this and bring it across, its exact depth Im not able to tell you. Suffice to say they acted with public interest in mind and brought this suspicious package to the side, he added.

A separate part of the canal was also sealed-off near the Fonthill area of Clondalkin west Dublin. However Supt Gerry Wall of Leixlip garda station said that no further information was currently available on what was recovered from the water.

Supt Wall also outlined how gardai have to date followed over 300 lines of inquiry during their murder investigation, and continued to appeal for anyone with information to come forward.

A further site of interest to us is along the Maynooth Road, the walkway between Leixlip and Maynooth, its a tarmac walkway. For landmark purposes it is opposite the entrance of Carton Estate.

There is a third site, I just have no appeal information on that at the present time. Again I want to re-iterate an appeal. The family have asked me to say to you they want to say their thanks to the public and the press in the manner which they have reported this most gruesome murder."

Chief Supt Barry McPolin of the Kildare Division said that he was very satisfied with progress of the investigation so far.

We have a very large number of detectives from Kildare division supported by both national and regional units working hand in hand and it is our speed and determination to bring the perpetrators of this brutal murder to justice and before the courts.

We will treat every iota of information that we receive with the strictest of confidence. We are conscious of that fact and maybe that they have some comprehension that theyre may be some difficulty in that respect. They can be assured that we will treat it so sensitively and comprehensively going forward."

Before he was killed, Kenneth OBrien had told his family that he was taking a trip to the country. Gardai say information from members of the public has been key so far in helping them in their investigation.

Gardai said "potential evidential items" had been found in different locations along the canal.

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"These items need to be forensically examined before any definitive conclusions can be made in respect of their evidential value," the Garda press office said.

The partial remains of Mr O'Brien (33) were discovered on January 16 in the Grand Canal near Ardclough, Co Kildare.

One theory being looked at by gardai is that the father of one became involved with criminals he grew up in west Dublin.

A source there explained how O'Brien was persuaded by the organised crime outfit to hand over cash sums to fund their drug-dealing network with the promise of a prosperous return on his investment.

"It appears this gang persuaded him to part with big cash sums on the promise of a return on his investment. This may have worked out once or twice before but something went wrong along the way this time," a source said.

"Kenneth was not a gangster. He wasn't into drugs or violence, but he was taken advantage of by people who grew up around him and knew he was making money in Australia," they added.

"He got into something he thought he could handle. He thought it was the quickest way to turn a profit on his money and provide for his family's future, but something went wrong somewhere," they said.

Another source revealed how a line of inquiry being "strongly" looked at by gardai is that the victim was betrayed by someone he trusted on the day he disappeared.

"One thing that is becoming apparent is that Kenneth O'Brien was meeting with a person he felt he could trust, and did not believe his life to be at risk," a source said.

"Unfortunately it seems there was a double-cross of sorts and he was basically betrayed by this person, who may have either given up his location to his killers or even driven him directly to them for a meeting' that ended in his death," the source added.

Gardai have continued searching the area of Ardclough since last Saturday, when Mr O'Brien's partial remains were discovered.

Investigating detectives attached to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) also discovered 50,000 worth of ecstasy tablets in a farmyard, which sources said may be connected to the murder gang. No arrests have been made in the case.

Irish Independent
The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have expressed their immense sadness at the death of Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley as donations to the charity he was supporting soared above 150,000.

The ex-Army officer, 55, from Fulham, south-west London, was attempting to make history with his expedition to Antarctica and was just 30 miles (48km) from becoming the first adventurer to cross the continent unsupported and unassisted when he had to call for help.

He was airlifted off the ice on Friday and flown to a hospital in Punta Arenas in Chile, where he was found to have bacterial peritonitis. He underwent surgery but died on Sunday.

In a poignant last message posted online on Friday, he said: "My summit is just out of reach."

An exhausted-sounding Worsley said he was looking forward to a cup of tea and piece of cake, and resolved to "gather my thoughts in a final message in the coming days".

He said his spirits had been lifted by the generosity of the public in the past two months, saying the support had been "incredible", but added: " My journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance and the simple sheer inability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal."

Worsley was trying to complete the unfinished journey of his lifelong hero Sir Ernest Shackleton to mark the 100th anniversary of Shackleton's expedition.

The trek was raising money for the Endeavour Fund, a charity which helps wounded servicemen and women and is managed by the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

When Worsley's death was announced on Monday the expedition had raised just over 100,000, but the figure has since risen to more than 150,000, including gift aid.

William, who was patron of the expedition, said he and Harry had lost a friend as he paid tribute to Worsley's ''selfless commitment'' to fellow soldiers.

Fellow adventurers Bear Grylls and Ben Fogle described their devastation at hearing the news.

Grylls wrote: "One of the strongest men & bravest soldiers I know. Praying for his special family," while Fogle said: " So sad to hear that Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley @shackletonsolo has passed away. An inspiration to us all."

Battling temperatures of minus 44C (minus 47.2F), tackling white-out blizzards and treacherous ice, the former-lieutenant colonel was 71 days into his expedition, had passed the South Pole and covered 913 miles (1,469km).

After spending two days unable to move from his tent, the married father-of-two took the decision to pull out of the charity adventure after suffering from exhaustion and severe dehydration.

His wife Joanna, who flew to be by his side, said in a statement: "It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband, Henry Worsley, has died following complete organ failure; despite all efforts of ALE (Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions) and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile."

She paid tribute to her husband for reaching his goal of raising more than 100,000 to help wounded service personnel.

"Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass," she said.

"A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition - his lifelong hero.

"On behalf of myself and family, I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund. "

William and Harry pledged to ensure Worsley's family, which includes his two children, Max, 21, and Alicia, 19, received the help they needed in the wake of his death.

"Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him," the Duke said.

"Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women, by undertaking this extraordinary Shackleton solo expedition on their behalf.

"We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavour Fund.

"We will now make sure that his family receive the support they need at this terribly difficult time."

William had waved Worsley off from Kensington Palace in October, ahead of the start of the trek, and sent him a Christmas message, telling him how proud everyone was of him.

Peritonitis occurs when the thin layer of tissue lining of the abdomen becomes infected. Symptoms can include swelling of the abdomen, vomiting, chills, lack of appetite and a high temperature. Complications include sepsis and septic shock.

In his final statement sent from Antarctica, Worsley described how his desire to help wounded soldiers with their rehabilitation was the central focus of his expedition, but that he had taken the decision to call for help.

"The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journey's end - so close to my goal," he said.
The proposals would require larger public bodies to ensure a minimum of 2.3% of their workforce is made up of apprentices

New proposals to ensure apprentices make up more than 2.3% of the workforce in public bodies in England, have been announced by the Government.

A consultation is being launched on plans to make public sector employers take on more apprentices, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills said.

Skills Minister Nick Boles called on the public sector to "step up" and offer the same opportunities to young people as some businesses.

Mr Boles said: "Our apprenticeships revolution has already given 2.4 million people the chance to learn the skills they need to get on in life, with businesses leading the way.

"Now it's time for the public sector to step up and give those same opportunities as we turbo charge our drive to give youngsters the best start to working life."

The new duty, to be part of the Enterprise Bill, will apply to public sector bodies with 250 or more employees in England and is set to be brought in later in the year, BIS said.

The target will mean a minimum of 2.3% of workers starting each year in larger public sector bodies in England will need to be apprentices, it added.

The Government plans to deliver three million apprenticeships by 2020.
A banner at a demonstration in Calais to call attention to the impact that Europe's migrant crisis is having on their town's economy (AP)

British anarchists are among agitators who are stirring up trouble in Calais, where migrants and protesters stormed the port and boarded a ferry on Saturday, according to reports.

A number of Britons are said to be in Calais with No Borders, an anti-capitalist protest group accused of acting as agitators in the camp dubbed "The Jungle" that is home to an estimated 4,000 asylum seekers.

The port was forced to close for several hours and security forces were drafted in on Saturday evening when a crowd of around 350 people, said to be refugees and supporters, infiltrated secure areas at the quayside.

A group of around 50 people, said to have been a mix of migrants and protesters, managed to board P&O's Spirit Of Britain passenger ship after breaching a chain link fence, interrupting services between Dover and Calais for around five hours.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 35 people, including 26 migrants and nine activists, were eventually arrested for trespass and disorder offences.

According to The Sun one of the activists detained was a British man who was later released without charge.

Calais deputy mayor Philippe Mignonet called on British police to help French authorities identify any troublemakers.

"It's frustrating having the anarchists and activists from England here to stir up trouble," he was reported as saying.

"I think the English police forces know who they are and should come here. It is too easy for these people to leave their country."

As the protest unfolded on Saturday there were ugly scenes when a small breakaway group, said to have been refugees and their supporters, descended on a residential property in Calais.

Video posted online shows a stand-off between the chanting group and two French men who come close to trading blows before being pelted with missiles.

At one point during the footage a man with a British accent shouts from behind the camera "Nazi scum". The protesters only back away when one of the men appears with an air rifle.

A local police chief claimed the No Borders group is predominantly made up of British activists.

Gilles Debove is reported as saying: "Ninety percent of the people involved with No Borders are from Britain. They stir up the migrants and cause us a lot of problems, they are political agitators."

Around 2,000 locals and business owners staged a demonstration in Calais town on Sunday in protest at the impact the crisis is having on the local economy.

The crowds waved "I love Calais" flags and a banner reading "My port is beautiful, my city is beautiful" was seen.

Local official Jean-Marc Puissesseau has estimated passenger numbers in the port have fallen by 40,000 compared to a year ago and the town's shops and restaurants are suffering, with blame pointed at the squalid refugee camp and repeated interruption to ferry and rail services.

Road Haulage Association chief executive Richard Burnett said Saturday's protest at the port was a "shocking breach of security" and called for the French military to be deployed.
The 'unprecedented epidemic' could be leading to thousands of babies being born with birth defects

More must be done to research an "unprecedented epidemic" which could be leading to thousands of babies being born with birth defects, experts have said.

Thousands of children born to mothers infected with the Zika virus in Brazil have been born with microcephaly - a condition where the child has an underdeveloped brain.

The call comes as the World Health Organisation said that the virus is likely to spread across nearly all of the Americas apart from Canada and Chile.

The virus - which causes symptoms including rash, fever, conjunctivitis and headache - has already been found in 21 countries.

Professor Laura Rodrigues, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "There is an unprecedented epidemic of microcephaly in Brazil. It has never happened before.

"It is probably caused by contracting the Zika virus - by pregnant women getting infected and the virus and transmission to the baby's brain and destroying some structures there."

Around 4,000 cases of microcephaly have been associated with the virus in Brazil.

There is no treatment or vaccine and many South American countries have called on women to consider implications of the infection before getting pregnant over fears about birth defects.

Prof Rodrigues added: "This is a new situation, no one was thinking about Zika until November. We don't have a good test, there is no vaccine, no treatment.

"In a lot of Latin America, there is no legal abortion and Aedes mosquito is difficult to control. People have been trying to control it to control dengue and it is a struggle."

The virus is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. Prof Rodrigues said that the implications to the UK are small because it is too cold for the mosquitoes carrying the disease to survive.

So far, three British travellers have been confirmed to have contracted the virus after visiting South and Central America.

Prof Rodrigues said the virus could potentially affect areas where dengue fever is widespread which could have implications for pregnant women travelling to tropical and sub-tropical climates.

"This has the potential to spread to wherever there is dengue," Prof Rodrigues said.

"The risk is really for pregnant women going to areas that are affected."

The National Travel Health Network and Centre has advises that pregnant women should reconsider travel to areas where the outbreak has been reported.
A Home Office contractor supplying accommodation for asylum seekers has come under fire after reportedly giving migrants brightly coloured wristbands which they must wear at all times.

The wristbands have been handed out to asylum seekers staying at Lynx House in Cardiff so they can claim breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Housing bosses insist the bands are discreet and do not single out residents.

But the move - which comes following a similar controversy in the north of England earlier this week - has been slammed by human rights groups.

The Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) claimed the wristbands echoed the yellow star Jewish people were forced to wear during the time of Nazi Germany.

WRC policy officer Hannah Wharf said: "We have raised the matter many times with the Welsh Government. It harks back to the Nazi regime with people being forced to wear a Star of David and stand out.

"It's absolutely appalling, it is treating people like lesser beings. It is treating them like animals lining up to feed."

According to reports, a 36-year-old refugee in Cardiff called Eric Ngalle said motorists on nearby roads would sometimes notice the wristbands and tell their wearers to "go back to your country".

Clearsprings Ready Homes told The Guardian its policy came in the face of an increase in asylum seekers.

A spokesman was quoted in the newspaper as saying: "Volumes of people in initial accommodation sites, including Cardiff (have) increased quickly.

"Clearsprings has taken steps, agreed with the Home Office to increase capacity in line with this demand in the form of additional self-catering accommodation.

"Those clients in the self-catering units receive a weekly allowance in the form of supermarket vouchers and those in full-board accommodation are issued with a coloured wristband that bears no other logo or text identifying its use or origin.

"Full-board clients are required to show their wristbands in order to receive meals in the restaurant."

Earlier this week, asylum seekers in Middlesbrough said they had been targeted by racist thugs after being housed behind red front doors in the Teesside town.

That prompted immigration James Brokenshire to launch an "urgent audit" of asylum seeker housing in the north East.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood said the Home Office should also face "serious questions" about the situation in Cardiff.

She said: "I have been told that this alarming practice of forcing asylum seekers to wear coloured wristbands will be stopped.

"It is understandable the Home Office requires asylum seekers to carry some form of identification for practical reasons such as when they collect meals.

"However, such a visible indicator is unnecessary and has left a community already under suspicion open to further harassment and distress.

"I will be writing to the Home Secretary to seek assurance that this practice will not be repeated anywhere else in the UK."

The Home Office declined to comment on the matter, saying it was "an operational issue" for Clearsprings Ready Homes.
Charity bosses who allowed scandalous fundraising methods to be used were either "in competent or wilfully blind" and are on their last chance to "put their house in order", a committee has warned.

In a damning assessment of the practices used by some of the biggest names to bring in cash, MPs said the "sorry episode" had damaged the reputations of charities across the board.

Trustees must now take proper control of the methods their organisation use or face statutory regulation, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) said.

MPs heard that some charities, including Great Ormond Street Hospital and Macmillan Cancer Support, made it difficult or impossible for donors to block further communication from them or other charities.

Personal information ended up with scamming companies after being sold on by some charities while vulnerable and elderly people were seen as "fair targets" by some organisations, they were told.

The committee also heard an undercover investigation by the Daily Mail found telephone fundraising contractor GoGen ignored the telephone preference service that allows customers to opt out of receiving unsolicited calls.

It also had a script to allow fundraisers to continue to press for a donation even after discovering a vulnerable individual was confused or suffered from dementia.

MPs said they had " no doubt" that most UK charities did not engage in such practices but the behaviour of some had damaged the reputation of all and made it harder for them to raise money.

The report found fundraising is "increasingly competitive" and a large charity can spend more than 20 million a year on trying to bolster its coffers.

Fundraising practices were thrust into the spotlight last year after widespread public concern over the death of 92-year-old Olive Cooke, one of Britain's oldest and longest-serving poppy sellers.

After the pensioner took her own life, her family described how she had been receiving repeated requests from charities for donations with up to 267 letters a month as well as regular phone calls.

During the PACAC's investigation a number of charity bosses admitted there were flaws in their governance.

Oxfam chairwoman Karen Brown told MPs "our monitoring procedures were not adequate to the task" while RSPCA chairwoman Daphne Harris said she "did not know that this had happened" after allegations that the personal data of dementia sufferer Samuel Rae had been repeatedly bought and sold by charities and companies emerged.

A Government-commissioned review chaired by Sir Stuart Etherington put forward plans to tackle the problems, including proposals for a new regulator to be convened by the industry.

But while MPs backed the recommendations, they warned they did not go far enough.

They called for the Charity Commission to do more to keep a check on the sector as well as acting as guarantor of the regulation of fundraising.

The new regulator should seek out and encourage the public to report dubious practices and the Government should implement unused laws that allow the Information Commissioner to protect use of personal data, the committee also said.

PACAC chairman Bernard Jenkin said: "This sorry episode has damaged the reputation of charities across the board, including those who have behaved properly, and hindered their ability to raise essential funds.

"This is the last chance for the trustees of charities, who allowed this happen, to put their house in order. Ultimately, the responsibility rests with them. No system of regulation can substitute for effective governance by trustees.

"All the chief executives of the charities that gave oral evidence to us admitted that they did not scrutinise fundraising by sub-contractors enough.

"The only possible conclusion is that, by failing in this responsibility, trustees were either not competent, or wilfully blind to what was being done in their names."

Rob Wilson, minister for civil society, said: "I have made it clear that the sector has one last chance to prove that self regulation can work, but I am willing to step in and impose statutory regulation if necessary."

A Daily Mail spokesman said: "We exposed serious malpractice on behalf of the generous charity-supporting public who have been victims of cold calling sharks and a cynical trade in their private information."

Sir Stuart, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said: "While the Charity Commission rightly has a role to play in ensuring that charities are well-governed generally, it is important that we do not lose sight of the principle of self-regulation in fundraising on which everyone is agreed."
Stress-induced damage to the brain may not be completely irreversible

Too much stress in your life can lead to brain changes linked to depression and Alzheimer's, scientists have warned.

Evidence from a major review of published research suggests that chronic stress and anxiety damage key brain regions involved in emotional responses, thinking and memory.

Lead author Dr Linda Mah, from the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, Canada, said: "Pathological anxiety and chronic stress are associated with structural degeneration and impaired functioning of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which may account for the increased risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and dementia."

The review paper, published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychiatry, pooled together findings from a number of recent studies of stress and fear conditioning in animals, and people undergoing brain scans.

Dr Mah's team looked specifically at neural circuits linked to fear and anxiety in three brain regions, the amygdala, PFC, and hippocampus.

A see-saw pattern was seen in response to chronic stress with the amygdala, associated with emotional responses, becoming over-active and the PFC under-active .

The PFC contains "thinking" areas of the brain that help to regulate emotional responses by appraising them in a rational way.

Temporary episodes of anxiety, fear and stress - experienced before an exam or job interview, for instance - are part of normal life. But the scientists point out that when such acute emotional reactions become chronic they can "wreak havoc" on immune, metabolic and cardiovascular systems, and damage the brain.

On a more hopeful note, Dr Mah believes stress-induced damage to the brain may not be completely irreversible.

Treatment with anti-depressant drugs and physical activity had both been found to boost regeneration of the hippocampus, she said.

"Looking to the future, we need to do more work to determine whether interventions, such as exercise, mindfulness training and cognitive behavioural therapy, can not only reduce stress but decrease the risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders," Dr Mah added.
The UK could afford to lose around 80% of traffic lights that cause unnecessary delays which cause a loss of up to 16 billion a year, according to a report.

Research by the Institute of Economic Affairs found the cumulative effect of traffic regulation measures "imposes an enormous burden on the UK economy".

The think tank found that just a two-minute delay to every car journey equates to a loss of approximately 16 billion a year.

The report entitled Seeing Red: Traffic Controls And The Economy said: "Not only is a high proportion of traffic regulation detrimental to road safety, the economy and the environment, it also imposes huge costs on road-users, taxpayers and communities."

It states: "Traffic signals could be taken out where they cause unnecessary delays, perhaps following Portishead-style trials where lights are switched off for several weeks to observe the impact.

"Successful schemes in Drachten in the Netherlands (in 2002) and Bohmte in Germany (in 2007) scrapped over 80% of their traffic lights. Together with the Portishead experiment, this suggests a broadly similar proportion of signals could be removed in the UK."

Report author and head of transport at the Institute of Economic Affairs Dr Richard Wellings said: "For too long policy makers have failed to make a cost-benefit analysis of a range of regulations - including traffic lights, speed cameras and bus lanes - making life a misery from drivers nationwide.

"It's quite clear that traffic management has spread far beyond the locations where it might be justified, to the detriment of the economy, environment and road safety.

"The evidence of shared space schemes shows the transformational benefits of less regulated approach, whilst the removal of a high proportion of traffic lights would deliver substantial economic and social benefits."

The authors suggest there is a "strong economic case for replacing standard traffic regulation with strategies that harness voluntary cooperation among road-users".

They said: "A high proportion of traffic lights should be replaced by filter-in-turn or all-way give-ways. Many bus lanes, cycle lanes, speed cameras and parking restrictions should also go. Culling such traffic management infrastructure would deliver substantial economic and social benefits."

From 2000 to 2014 the number of traffic lights on Britain's roads increased by 25%, the report said.

Britain's first speed camera was installed in 1992, but by 2012 there were over 3,000 at 2,300 fixed sites, it added, nothing that the "rapid expansion" of bus lanes began in the late 1990s, growing from 59 miles in 1997 to 172 miles in 2007.

Responding to the report, the Department for Transport said the "safety of Britain's roads is absolutely paramount".

It added: "Road accidents come with a human cost which unfortunately, as families across the country know, is far too high.

"Local councils are responsible for managing their networks in such a way as to balance the needs of all users. We provide guidance on designing and implementing measures but it is up to the authorities to decide how best to implement them."
Ann Maguire was killed by one of her pupils

A full inquest will be held into the death of teacher Ann Maguire, who was stabbed to death in her classroom by one of her pupils, a coroner has ruled.

The family of Mrs Maguire has been pressing for an independent inquiry and inquest into how she was murdered by teenager Will Cornick at Corpus Christi Catholic College, in Leeds, in 2014.

As Cornick was successfully prosecuted for murder, an inquest would not normally have to be held.

But, on Monday, West Yorkshire Coroner David Hinchliff ruled a full inquest will now take place, his office confirmed.

Mr Hinchliff made the ruling at a hearing in Wakefield but no date has yet to be fixed.

Despite Cornick's conviction, Mrs Maguire's husband, Don, and his family believe the circumstances around how around how his wife was murdered have not been fully investigated.

They launched a crowd funding campaign to raise the cash to pursue their aim of an independent review.

Last year, Mr Maguire said: "W e believe that a comprehensive, open and independent statutory review examining all the information is crucial to learning lessons from this horrific incident which took place in front of many other pupils in school, traumatising pupils and staff and devastating our family. We want documents and evidence to be examined in order that steps can be taken to prevent anything like this happening again."

Mrs Maguire's son, Andrew Poole, said the family was not trying to "point fingers of blame" but to "construct an accurate version of events and procedures that failed to protect her."

He said: "But with the criminal case long gone, there remain a growing number of questions and concerns regarding the incident and the lack of any effective subsequent investigation. Whilst we seek answers and clarification on these matters, as yet we have found the avenues of our inquiries carefully protected and safeguarded behind walls of secrecy and authority."

Spanish teacher Mrs Maguire had worked at Corpus Christi Catholic College, in Leeds, for more than 40 years when she was killed by Cornick, who was 15 years old at the time.

Cornick was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 20 years by a judge who heard how he had shown no remorse for what he had done.

The Leeds Safeguarding Children Board has previously said the case does fulfil the criteria for a serious case review but a review is under way.
Islamic State has released horrifying footage of the Paris terrorists preparing for the attacks which left 130 people dead.

David Cameron is threatened in the video, in which IS vows to attack the UK for airstrikes in Syria.

Images of the Prime Minister and Commons speaker John Bercow appear in the 17-minute broadcast posted online by the terror group.

The video appears to feature scenes of the terrorists behind the Paris attacks, including Bilal Hadfi and Samy Amimour, but has only now been published.

Mr Bercow's face appears on screen with a crosshair superimposed over him.

After images of London flash up, footage of the PM appears with a message warning that non-believers will be targeted.

The terror spree last November left 130 dead as IS killers rampaged across the French capital.

Suicide bomber Hadfi was one of three who attacked the Stade de France, and was believed to have fought with IS in Syria.
Jack Letts, in a picture he posted on Facebook, near the Tabqa Dam in Syria

The mother of a young British man dubbed "Jihadi Jack" says reports he is a terrorist are "absolutely ridiculous" and that he has travelled to Syria to help refugees.

Jack Letts, 20, left his home more than a year ago and has since travelled to the war-torn region.

Over the weekend, it was widely reported that Mr Letts had become the first white British male to join the jihadist group and that he had married a woman from Fallujah and may have had a child.

Now, friends and family have angrily rejected the claims and accused the "right-wing" press of reporting misinformation about him.

His mother, Sally, says that she spoke to her son on Sunday: "He is not a member of Isis, he is very probably not the first white convert that has gone out there. He does not have a son and is not known as Abu Mohammed," she told the Standard.

We spoke to him yesterday and he said he had never had a weapon in his life. He went out there for humanitarian purposes to help kids in Syrian refugee camps.

It is not as if he is hiding - he tells us what he has for breakfast. All this is absolutely ridiculous, it is shocking.

Somehow he is supposed to be a global jihadi? It is absolutely ridiculous.

She added that police had been investigating them for more than a year but had found no evidence he had done anything wrong.

Describing him as "kind, funny and gentle", John and Sally Letts said they felt "betrayed" by the media coverage of their son in the press.

"The things they have written about him are completely false", they told the Oxford Mail.

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In photos posted to Facebook, Mr Letts can be seen posing with a single raised index finger in front of what has been said to be the Tabqa Dam in Syria, an area under Isis control.

An anonymous close family member told the Mirror: There has been an avalanche of misinformation. We dont want to comment on all of this, but what I will say is that 95 per cent of what has been published is incorrect, it is desperately wrong.

The only truth is that Jack is a Muslim and he is overseas. But everything else is made up and it is just getting worse.

The source also said that the right wing press were most interested in a snappy line like Jihadi Jack and Jihadi John that rolls off the tongue, but it is all wrong, the Mirror.

Mr Letts comes from a secular middle class background; his mother is a books editor and his father is a farmer who once won appeared on the TV programme Countryfile.

A friend told MailOnline: 'I feel like he has been exploited. No one wants to fight in Isis unless they've been brainwashed. It's really alarming how powerfully he has changed.

He was always an atheist, pretty liberal, typical middle-class kid. At school he was the class clown but didn't take it too far, he was still smart and got fair grades."

Thames Valley Police said to The Independent: We are unable to comment on any specific cases in relation to individuals. However would say that anyone who knows of someone who may be potentially vulnerable to being drawn into terrorist-related activity, including travelling abroad to conflict zones should contact local police for advice and support on 101.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said he did not comment on active cases. It told the Standard: What is important, and would be expected, is that we do all we can to keep people safe and investigate everyone who returns to the UK to establish if any crimes have been committed and if they are a threat to the UK.
The Coxless Crew face the press once safely back on dry land (PA/Sarah Moshman, Losing Sight of Shore)

The Coxless Crew who rowed the second stage of their epic journey - Laura Penhaul, Natalia Cohen, Emma Mitchell and Lizanne van Vuuren (Carver PR/PA)

After nine months at sea a group of female adventurers have completed one of the toughest expeditions on the planet - rowing more than 9,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean.

The Coxless Crew set out on their journey from San Francisco in April, when they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and pointed Doris, their pink 29ft boat, towards Australia.

Shortly before 1am on Monday, after 257 days of enduring storms, enormous waves, sea sickness and the odd attack of flying fish, the four women nosed Doris's faded bow into the Marlin Marina at Cairns to be greeted by their proud families and friends.

There was jubilation as Laura Penhaul, Natalia Cohen, Emma Mitchell and Meg Dyos hugged each other before joining hands and taking their first unsteady steps onto solid ground for more than three months.

Sitting down for a well-earned beer in front of scores of people who cheered them ashore, the women were all grins as they described their expedition and arrival as "an overwhelming experience".

But there were conflicting emotions as they said goodbye to Doris, whose cramped cabins and salty deck have been their home for three quarters of a year.

Their final few days on the waves were spent negotiating the Great Barrier Reef and dodging dive-bombing boobie birds, and with conditions conspiring against them and supplies dwindling fast they had to dig deep to finish the last few miles.

Writing on their blog on Sunday they said: "It has been an exhausting and emotional few days as we make our approach to land.

"The last 8,500 nautical miles don't matter anymore, it is all about these last 20. It's fair to say that with physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation and a lack of savoury food we are being tested to our limits. However this is where we draw on our spirit, row hard, row strong, row together."

Despite taking three months longer than planned the expedition has set two world records, the women becoming the first all-female team and the first team of four to row the Pacific.

The journey, split into three legs with resupply stops in Hawaii and Samoa, was completed in its entirety by three of the crew - Ms Penhaul, 32, Ms Cohen, 40, both from London, and Ms Mitchell, 30, from Marlow in Buckinghamshire.

Isabel Burnham, 31, from Saffron Walden near Cambridge, completed the crew for the first leg; Lizanne van Vuuren, 27, a South African who grew up in Newbury, took over for the second stage, while Meg Dyos, 25, from London, manned the oars for the final section.

The expedition got off to a bad start when water damage to Doris's battery charging system forced them back to California, costing 16 days.

Back on the ocean they rowed continuously as pairs in two-hour shifts, sleeping 90 minutes at a time. Each consumed 5,000 calories a day, devouring freeze-dried meals with a side of protein bars, chocolate, fruit or nuts, washed down with desalinated sea water.

The rowers had to contend with a battering from a tropical storm, waves the size of houses and the heart-stopping approach of a humpback whale that surfaced just yards away.

Drenched by rain and seawater they endured painful sores, but also faced temperatures so hot they cooked a pancake on the deck just from the sun's rays.

Setbacks from El Nino and a notorious stretch of ocean where the winds died away left them weeks behind schedule, and when they reached Samoa they were days from running out of food, but e mails and the occasional call from home helped them through the dark times.

With their expedition - filmed for a documentary, Losing Sight Of Shore - now over, the Coxless Crew will concentrate on raising funds for the two charities they are supporting, Walking With The Wounded and Breast Cancer Care.
STOCK. Urban Decay. Artwork by the renowned Graffiti artist Banksy is seen on the side of building on Wilder Street in Bristol.

A new mural by Graffiti artist Banksy. The image has been catching the eye of commuters after it mysteriously appeared in a bricked up window on Exmouth Market, Finsbury, North London.

A new graffitti artwork allegedly by Bristol based artist 'Banksy' in the yard of a Royal Mail depot in Newman Street, central London.

An image from the latest exhibition of cult graffiti artist Banksy at a secret location in Shoreditch, east London. Banksy's anti-establishment stencil images can be seen on walls and bridges throughout London, the UK and abroad. * The exhibition runs until July 21 and the venue address can be found at www.banksy.co.uk/turfwar.

STOCK. Urban Decay. Artwork by the renowned Graffiti artist Banksy is seen on the side of building on Frog Lane in Bristol.

File photo dated 30/09/14 of the mural called Art Buff, created by street artist Banksy in Folkestone, Kent, as a charity has won a High Court fight over a mural.

Security guards stand beside Banksy's 'Donkey Documents', an intact four ton mural from Jerusalem, in the Design Centre in Chelsea, London.

A new artwork by Banksy, depicting the girl from Les MisArables affected by tear gas, opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

Banksy has created a new artwork criticising the tactics used in The Jungle refugee camp in Calais - but it was covered up with wood shortly after developers discovered it.

The latest mural was drawn opposite the French Embassy in Knightsbridge, west London, and depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her.

The artwork includes an interactive QR code which, when scanned, links to a video of teargas and rubber bullets allegedly used in a police raid on the camp on January 5.

It is the latest in a number of works painted by the elusive graffiti artist criticising Europe's handling of the refugee crisis and conditions in the Calais camp.

Banksy fans flocked to take selfies next to the mural, believed to have been drawn on to the side of the disused complex which is being turned into luxury flats and shops, this weekend.

But within hours of cameras being set up outside on Monday morning, the developers decided to cover the work up with two large pieces of plywood.

Several builders armed with electric drills attached the large wooden boards to the wall, entirely covering the mural.

It followed farcical scenes, which happened earlier in the day, when building staff decided to remove the painting - only to quickly change their mind.

They initially took a crowbar to the side of the wooden board which the work was painted on and tried to hack it off, but soon aborted the attempt amid fears the valuable artwork might be damaged.

They then covered the work with wood only to take it off seconds later following what appeared to be a change of mind from site bosses. Around an hour later, builders again covered the mural with wood - this time apparently for good.

Mike Sadler, director of Cheval Property Management Limited, said: "Cheval Property Management Limited will be preserving the mural and is currently discussing future plans for the artwork."

The decision to cover the art up came after a gang of men tried to prise it off the wall and steal it on Sunday night.

Scotland Yard said it sent officers to investigate the attempted theft at 8.45pm on Sunday night, but the men had fled the scene.

Fans of Banksy said the mural raised important concerns about the treatment of refugees at the camp and should be kept so the public can see it.

Luis Gomez, 31, said: "I think it is a symbol of what is happening now in Calais, and it is a message for all of us to be more conscious of what's happening.

"And opposite the French Embassy, it sends a strong message. I think it should stay here for the public to see it."

Nick Papavassiliou, 42, a charity worker living in London, said: "Every time Banksy puts up a picture it is quickly sold by some owner for a 'charity', so as soon as I saw it last night I thought I'd better come down here quickly before it gets removed.

"It is possible it will raise awareness of conditions in the camp - I hope so. I suppose artworks like this are there to send a message."

Asked about his views on the refugee crisis, he said: "Personally, I think we should do a little bit more than what we are doing - we are all humans after all."

Banksy has previously painted an artwork in The Jungle depicting Apple founder Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant, carrying an early Apple computer and his belongings in a sack.
Former Marks and Spencer chief Lord Rose is to head the drive for Britain to stay in the EU

David Cameron's hopes of a deal on a new relationship between the UK and the European Union still face a number of hurdles, his Irish counterpart has suggested.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said there were still "complications" in relation to the proposals, which will be considered at a crunch meeting of EU leaders in February.

But in a boost to Mr Cameron's reform agenda, Mr Kenny said the problems were "solvable" and he hoped it was possible a deal could be done at the summit in Brussels.

In a joint press conference in Number 10, Mr Kenny said European Council president Donald Tusk would publish a paper next week on the UK's four key areas of concern.

"I actually believe that all of these are solvable, in a really positive sense," he said.

Setting out his desire for the UK to vote to stay in the 28-member bloc, he said: "Europe will be much stronger with Britain as a central and fundamental member."

He added: "I have not seen President Tusk's paper yet and obviously the Prime Minister has pointed out himself his view on whether it's absolutely necessary that we should do it in February.

"My belief is that of the four issues that are on the table there, there are still complications with one or two of those.

"But I think these are issues which can be sorted and can be agreed.

"I would hope personally that it might be possible to do it in February but then I can't speak for all of the other countries around the table."

He called for businesses to speak out on the issue, highlighting the importance of reforming the EU to "work more effectively in the interests of greater trade, of trade agreements, the opportunity to cut unemployment, to create employment and so on".

Mr Cameron said: "Today we have discussed the areas where I have set out we need to see reform, on economic governance, on sovereignty and competitiveness and, of course, on welfare.

"The UK and Ireland share a strong desire to make the EU more competitive and to prioritise free trade agreements with the fastest-growing markets across the world.

"We are making progress in our negotiations and I am confident that with the right political will we can secure the reforms that will address the concerns of the British people."

The Prime Minister said there should be a focus on the "positive opportunity for Britain" of changes in the relationship with Brussels as he repeated his position that there was "plenty of time" to achieve a deal.

He said: "Imagine the scale of the prize if we can remain a member of the single market, with 500 million consumers, a quarter of the global economy, with a seat at the table and a say over the rules, making sure we do right by our business, for jobs, investment and growth in the UK.

"Combined with action to make sure we deal with the things that frustrate people about the EU."

Pressed on whether there would be a deal at February's European Council, Mr Cameron said: "It is possible for it to happen in February. If there is a good deal on the table, I'll take that deal, I'll take it to the British people and explain why it's the best of both worlds. But it has got to be the best of both worlds.

"It has got to be the right deal. If it is not there we've got plenty of time. We don't need a referendum until the end of 2017."

He added: "I have tried to approach this in a very sensible way throughout the last few months, travelling around Europe, explaining what needs to be done, putting very concrete and sensible proposals on the table.

"If all of those get a proper and sensible response, we can do this in February. But I would rather get it right than do it in a rush."

The Prime Minister's comments came after the leader of the campaign for the UK to remain in the EU pushed for a referendum as soon as possible after a deal is reached, following speculation a vote could be held as early as June.

Lord Rose, chairman of Britain Stronger In Europe, said his group would be ready for a June vote: "Once we have a deal, whenever that deal might be, let's assume it is in February, why would you want to wait?

"I think there is enough time to get the information out, to get the facts out, to have a healthy debate."

David Cameron continued his diplomatic push in a phone call with German chancellor Angela Merkel.

A Number 10 spokeswoman said they agreed that there was " genuine goodwill across the EU to address the British people's concerns in all four areas" but that there was " more work to do ahead of the February European Council to find the right solutions".

They also spoke about the European migrant crisis "agreeing that a strong external European border and close co-operation with Turkey are vital", Downing Street said.
The Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see data on fit notes extracted from GP records

The Government will have access to data from individual GP practices on how many "fit notes" are issued for patients.

From next month, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will be able to see information extracted from GP records, including the number of fit notes issued by each practice and the number of patients recorded as "unfit" or "maybe fit" for work.

It has previously said the data will be published anonymously at Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) level but an investigation by Pulse magazine has found that DWP officials will be able to look at the data for individual GP practices. It will also be able to share this data with other bodies.

The data will include how many computer-generated fit notes are issued, how many patients are recorded as unfit or maybe fit for work, the duration of the fit note and the gender of the person the fit note was issued for.

The data will also say what type of health condition the person has and the location of where the note was issued.

A DWP spokesman said: "We know the damage that can be done when people are absent from the workplace for extended periods of time, that's why we want to ensure that people get the best possible support to return to work - or to avoid falling out of work in the first place.

"All fit note statistics are anonymous, and they will help provide a better understanding of why people take sickness absence in different areas across the country, so we can make the service as effective as possible for businesses and employees."

Some of the data is due to be published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) in the spring.

GPs will need to inform patients their data is being taken, but cannot withhold information unless their patient explicitly objects.

The DWP told Pulse no practice-level information would be shared outside the department, with a spokesman saying: "Only the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to access the data at GP practice level."

Family Doctor Association chairman Dr Peter Swinyard told Pulse: "I think that is state snooping.

"Although I am sure some civil servant thought it was a terrific idea somewhere, I am not entirely sure I agree. I don't know if patients understand that when I write a fit note, some bureaucrat is going to be able to have a look at it."

GP and data sharing campaigner Dr Neil Bhatia said he was "not sure why" practice-level data was required, "other than to compare practices, create league tables, name and shame".

He added: "I think it would be extremely difficult to make sense of the information out of context of the consultation."

Phil Booth, from campaign group MedConfidential, said: " It is deeply invasive to copy the patient notes of medically-trained doctors because some civil servant wants to micro-manage medical decisions to score political points.

"The only possible outcomes are nasty to sick patients and busy GPs."
More than ten million people, including an estimated third of a million newborn babies, are at risk from Ethiopia's worst drought in half a century, Save the Children has warned.

The charity has called on United Nations' secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to raise the growing humanitarian crisis when he addresses a meeting of the African Union in the country's capital Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

The UK-based charity has warned that an El Nino-driven drought that started in June has left an estimated 10.1 million people in need of food aid, more than three decades after scenes of starvation and death in Ethiopia first came to the attention of the West.

The crisis in the beleaguered East African nation is one of just two humanitarian crises in the world - the other is the civil war in Syria - currently given the organisation's top emergency ranking.

John Graham, Save the Children's Ethiopia country director, warned a 1 billion drought appeal has so far raised less than a third of the target and called for foreign aid to help assist the Ethiopian government.

He said: "The world is dealing with a multitude of massive humanitarian crises from Syria to Yemen and South Sudan, but the scale of the drought in Ethiopia is like nothing I've seen before in the 19 years that I've lived in this country.

"This is a code red emergency and it needs to be treated like one, yet I have never seen such a small response to a drought of this magnitude from the UN or the international community."

Save the Children estimates some 350,000 children are expected to be born in affected areas between March and August this year.

It says giving birth in "a desperate situation" with food shortages and livestock dying in large numbers is "extremely dangerous for both newborns and their mothers".

Mr Ban is due to speak to the executive council at the AU summit later this week. Save the Children says he should use the occasion to raise the problems facing Ethiopia and call for increased international aid.

Mr Graham added: "If emergency funding doesn't escalate very soon, there is a real risk of reversing some key development progress made in Ethiopia over the past two decades, including the reduction of child mortality rates by two thirds, and halving the percentage of the population living below the poverty line.

"The Ethiopian government has shouldered much of the funding burden for this crisis to date but if they don't get more immediate help from foreign donors they may be forced to redirect funding from other vital areas, including education and maternal and child health programmes, in order to buy life-saving food aid."
The UK boss of Volkswagen has been accused by MPs of using "legal jargon" to insist that software which cheated emissions tests in the US is compliant with European regulations.

Paul Willis, VW's UK managing director, told the Commons' Transport Select Committee that it should not be defined as a defeat device on this side of the Atlantic.

VW Group admitted in September that 482,000 diesel vehicles in the US were fitted with defeat device software to switch engines to a cleaner mode when they were being tested.

But despite the German-based manufacturer also announcing that some 11 million vehicles were affected worldwide - including almost 1.2 million in the UK - Mr Willis insisted that it did not break European rules on testing.

He said the software was not a defeat device in Europe because it is not "part of the emission control system".

Asked by Labour MP Graham Stringer if VW believed its vehicles were "still compliant with European regulations" despite them recognising when they were being tested, Mr Willis replied: "That's our position."

Questioned as to why he had previously apologised for the scandal, Mr Willis explained that he accepted the use of the software in Europe had been "inappropriate".

But SNP MP Stewart McDonald pressed him further on the issue, saying: " You seemed to dance on the head of legal jargon as to whether or not it was a defeat device or whether it does or does not break European laws."

He asked Mr Willis if he thought people would think VW Group was "as we say in Scotland 'at it'" and added: " You have perverse environmental regulations, you've treated European customers with disdain, you've treated regulators like bureaucrats and people are quite fed up."

Mr Willis replied: "I absolutely refute what you're saying.

"Volkswagen is an upstanding company. It cares about its customers, it invests billions, it invests more money than any other car company in technology and it is important that we get to the bottom of this.

"I don't agree with what you say that we treat people with disdain."

Around 508,000 VW cars, 393,000 Audis, 132,000 Skodas, 80,000 VW commercial vehicles and 77,000 Seats in the UK are affected by the scandal.

A programme to carry out remedial work on the vehicles is set to begin next month.
A young boy enjoys the snowfall on a tea plantation in the Pinglin mountain area of New Taipei City, Taiwan during an unusually cold weather front (AP)

An unusually cold weather front has been blamed for killing 57 mostly elderly people in Taiwan.

The cold wave abruptly pushed temperatures to a 16-year record low of 4C (39.2F) in the subtropical capital where most homes lack central heating, causing heart trouble and shortness of breath for many of the victims.

"In our experience, it's not the actual temperature but the sudden drop that's too sudden for people's circulatory systems," said a city spokesman who identified himself only by his surname, Chang.

The cold snap was blamed in the deaths of 40 people in the capital, Taipei, while the neighbouring New Taipei City attributed an additional 17 deaths to the cold weather.

Strokes and hypothermia were among the causes of death in New Taipei City, officials there said.

Temperatures in Taipei average 16C (60F) in January, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau. Because of the relatively mild weather, most households in Taiwan lack central heating, another suspected factor in the recent deaths.

New Taipei City said it was providing shelter for 91 homeless people endangered by the cold.

The cold front also left 3.5 inches of snow on Taipei's highest peak on Saturday and stranded vehicles as people headed into the mountains to see it.

The same polar front closed schools Monday in Hong Kong, where 130 people had been trapped a day earlier on a peak in the city that also seldom gets such cold weather.
Amnesty International activists protest against the ongoing migrant crisis outside the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam (AP)

European Union nations have openly quarrelled over how best to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.

Despite choppy seas and wintry conditions, more than 2,000 people are arriving daily, according to EU figures.

With the vast majority pouring into Europe through Greece after making risky boat journeys from nearby Turkey, Athens is under pressure to do more to guard the country's borders.

"Their state structure is just too weak to do it themselves - apparently," Belgian migration state secretary Theo Francken said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU justice, interior and migration ministers.

Greek immigration minister Ioannis Mouzalas conceded his country was struggling to cope with the flow, but shifted the blame to fellow EU member states for failing to provide enough manpower and boats to patrol Aegean Sea islands just a few kilometres from Turkey's coast and not honouring pledges to relocate migrants.

Mr Mouzalas told reporters Athens wanted 1,800 officers from the EU border patrol force known as Frontex, but got only 800. Of the 28 coast guard ships requested by Greece, only six have arrived, he added.

Ministers arriving for the meeting at Amsterdam's Maritime Museum were met by protesters in two boats, one full of mannequins wearing red life vests similar to those worn by migrants crossing from Turkey and another with a large sign saying: "Leaders of Europe, it's not the polls you should worry about. It's the history books."

The meeting comes only days after European Council president Donald Tusk warned that Europe's passport-free travel area, known as Schengen, could break apart if the migrant strategy is not sorted out within two months.

"To maintain and ensure the free movement within the Schengen zone, it is obvious that we have to better manage our external borders," EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said.

"Everybody travels on," Mr Francken told the VRT network. "So, the Greeks now need to bear the consequences, and we will go for a kind of sanction mechanism and eventually a suspension, under which internal border controls remain possible for two years."

Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said that if Greece cannot stem the flow, Europe may need to set up border controls somewhere else.

"It's clear that if we can't secure the European borders - that means the Greek-Turkish border - then the Schengen border will move to central Europe," she told reporters.

Mr Mouzalas called the idea of sending Frontex officers to the Greek-Macedonia border to halt migrants there "illegal" and insisted more Frontex officers should be sent to his country.
Europol director Rob Wainwright said the 'current threat demands a strong and ambitious response from the EU' (AP)

The European Union has launched a new law enforcement centre to co-ordinate the fight against violent extremism, saying Europe faces the most significant terrorist threat in more than 10 years.

The European Counter Terrorism Centre in The Hague, Netherlands, was officially opened as a part of Europol, the EU's agency for law enforcement co-operation.

Europol director Rob Wainwright said the unit will be staffed by 40-50 experts in counter-terrorism and deal in intelligence-sharing, tracking foreign fighters and sources of illegal financing and firearms, and assisting EU countries in counter-terrorism investigations.

More than 5,000 EU nationals have been radicalised by fighting with Muslim extremists in Iraq and Syria and many have returned home, Mr Wainwright said.

"The current threat demands a strong and ambitious response from the EU," said Europol's chief.

In a report coinciding with the official opening of the centre, Europol said: "There is every reason to expect that IS (Islamic State), IS-inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, but particularly in France, intended to cause mass casualties among the civilian population.

"This is in addition to the threat of lone-actor attacks, which has not diminished."
Malaysian military personnel and policeman stand guard outside a shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur (AP)

Strict security laws are crucial to fighting terrorism, Malaysia's leader warned as the Islamic State group vowed revenge over a crackdown on its members.

Prime Minister Najib Razak says the terrorism threat is "very real" and that the laws are vital to ensure Malaysia is not open to infiltration.

Opening a two-day counter-terrorism conference, Mr Najib said "the best way to uphold civil liberties is to ensure the safety of the nation".

Human rights activists have slammed a law implemented last year that revives detention without trial.

Another law approved last month that gives sweeping powers to a council led by the prime minister has also been criticised.

Police earlier said IS, also known as Daesh, had posted a video that warns of attacks over the arrest of its members.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres was rushed to hospital after experiencing chest pains (AP)

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres is "doing great" after spending the night in hospital, a doctor treating the 92-year-old has said.

Mr Peres was rushed to hospital on Sunday night with chest pains, days after he suffered a mild heart attack.

Doctors detected an irregular heart rate and Mr Peres was monitored in hospital overnight as a precaution.

Mr Peres's personal physician, Raphi Walden, told Israeli Army Radio on Monday that the ex-leader's heart rate had returned to normal. He said it is not yet clear when Mr Peres would be discharged.

Mr Peres, a Noble Peace Prize laureate, completed his seven-year term as president in 2014. He remains active through his non-governmental Peres Centre for Peace, which promotes co-existence between Arabs and Jews.

In his seven-decade political career, he also served three brief stints as prime minister.
The woman was taken from her apartment in Stockholm

A Swedish doctor who admitted to abducting a woman and locking her up in a home-made bunker had planned the crime for years and may have tried to capture other victims, prosecutors have said.

Prosecutors and defence lawyers gave opening statements in the Stockholm district court before proceedings continued behind closed doors.

The 38-year-old man, whose name was not published in Sweden in line with privacy rules, has admitted to sedating the woman, abducting her and locking her up for almost a week in a soundproofed bunker he built inside a machine shed next to his home. He denies charges that he also raped her.

The victim's lawyer Jens Hogstrom told newspaper Expressen that his client was traumatised by what happened and deeply stressed by having to face the doctor in court.

Mr Hogstrom said she is demanding 380,000 kronor (31,000) in damages. That is not an unusual amount in Sweden, where damages are much lower than in, for example, the United States.

Prosecutor Peter Claesson told reporters that the defendant had planned to abduct someone for several years.

He said a parallel investigation was ongoing to find out whether the doctor had attempted to capture other women.

"That cannot be ruled out," Mr Claesson said.

Defence lawyer Mari Schaub has said her client is deeply regretful and that he abducted the woman because he was sad and lonely and "wanted a partner".

A psychiatric examination found he was not suffering from a severe mental illness.

The doctor allegedly made contact with the victim by phone and met her once before he abducted her from her apartment in Stockholm on September 12 after giving her sedative-laced strawberries, champagne and juice.

He kept her inside the bunker until September 18, when he took her to a police station, allegedly to assure police that she was fine. Police officers got suspicious and arrested him.
Peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups are to start on Friday, the UN special envoy on Syria said.

The talks in Geneva are expected to take six months and the sides will not talk directly to each other to begin with.

Staffan de Mistura said the priorities would be creating a broad ceasefire, stopping the threat from the Islamic State (IS) group and clearing the way for humanitarian aid.

"We want to make sure that when and if we start, to start at least on the right foot," he said. "It will be uphill anyway."

Turkey's foreign minister warned that any participation of Kurdish forces in the Geneva talks would be dangerous and would spell the end of the initiative seeking to end the nearly five-year conflict.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces "terrorists", accusing them of co-operating with Kurdish rebels who are banned in Turkey. He said they have no place among the opposition at the Geneva talks.

Geopolitical tensions between countries including Turkey, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia have weighed heavily on efforts by negotiators.

The initiative has run into delays and disputes notably over the invitation list. Fierce ongoing tensions have also led negotiators to decide that the opposing sides will not initially meet face-to-face - a sign that even minimal progress is far from certain.

The Geneva talks are the first since discussions collapsed two years ago.

Russia has called for the inclusion of Kurdish representatives, and the US and others have supported the Kurds in the fight against IS in Syria. But Turkey is strongly opposed.

"There are efforts among some countries to water down the opposition. We oppose this," said Mr Cavusoglu. "To insist that terror groups such as the YPG (the main Kurdish militia) are included within the opposition would lead to the failure of the process. We have to insist that this is extremely dangerous."

But European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who spoke to reporters alongside Mr Cavusoglu, said that "from the European perspective, we attach an extremely high value on the fact that the process in Geneva will be inclusive".

The UN Security Council passed an ambition resolution on the Syria crisis that set a target for the peace talks to start this month. That resolution also aims to produce credible governance and a schedule for drafting a new Syrian constitution.

But air strikes by Russia - a key backer of Syrian president Bashar Assad - against rebels have altered the military situation on the ground.
Vladimir Putin's assessment of Lenin's role in Russian history was markedly more negative than in the past

Russian president Vladimir Putin has criticised Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin for placing a "time bomb" under the state, and denounced brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government.

The harsh criticism of Lenin, who is still revered by communists and many others in Russia, is unusual for Mr Putin, who in the past carefully weighed his comments about the nation's history to avoid alienating some voters.

Mr Putin's assessment of Lenin's role in Russian history during a meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in the southern city of Stavropol was markedly more negative than in the past.

He denounced Lenin and his government for brutally murdering Russia's last tsar along with all his family and servants, killing thousands of priests and placing a "time bomb" under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines.

As an example of Lenin's destructive legacy, Mr Putin pointed at Donbass, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russia separatist rebellion flared up weeks after Russia's March 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict and clashes have continued despite a February 2015 peace deal.

He said Lenin and his government drew borders between parts of the USSR, placing Donbass under the Ukrainian jurisdiction to "increase the percentage of proletariat" in a move Mr Putin called "delirious".

The criticism of Lenin could be part of his attempt to justify Moscow's policy in the Ukrainian crisis, but it also may reflect the Kremlin's concern about possible separatist sentiments in some Russian provinces.

Mr Putin was particularly critical of Lenin's concept of a federative state with its entities having the right to secede, saying it heavily contributed to the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. "It was a time bomb under our state," he said, adding that Lenin was wrong in a dispute with Josef Stalin who advocated a unitary state model.

In the past, Mr Putin has denounced Stalin for massive purges that killed millions, but noted his role in defeating the Nazis.

Mr Putin also blasted the Bolsheviks for making Russia suffer defeat by Germany and cede large chunks of territory just months before it lost the First World War. "We lost to the losing party, a unique case in history," Mr Putin said.

He said he sincerely believed in communist ideology when he served in the KGB, adding that while promises of a fair and just society in the communist ideology "resembled the Bible quite a lot" the reality was different.
The story of Algeria is supposed to be about reforms.

Most dictatorships are. Restrict presidential terms  unless, of course, the people demand the same old fogey as president yet again  and encourage the countrys minority to believe its status is respected. In Algerias case, Abdelaziz Bouteflika presents his country with a president  now in his fourth term of office  who has undergone so many medical operations (in Europe, of course) that he stares into the camera like a dead man.

Theres no point in being over-polite about it. When he was elected for a fourth time two years ago  after a lot of constitutional jiggery-pokery  Bouteflika was regarded by cartoonists and satirists in Algeria as a man already in his coffin. How could he impose such an indignity on brave Algeria, they asked? Could it not be ruled by a living man? Take a look at poor old Bouteflikas recent photo portraits and youll see what they mean. He can hardly speak  and although his brain is active, his acolytes assure us, they find it hard to explain how they can be so certain of his competency if His Excellency the President cannot actually talk to them.

The reforms which Bouteflika trundled out a couple of weeks ago must therefore be seen in context. A president whos allowed only two terms of office, an enlarged parliament, an independent to run the elections and an official presidential imprimatur on Tamazight, the language of Algerias Berber minority  all these may look good on paper. But in a country which is still recovering from the death of 250,000 of its citizens and soldiers in a ferocious 1990s civil war whose participants sometimes outdid Isis in their barbarity  the throat-cutting of babies was a speciality in mountain villages  the length of a presidents rule and the rights of an indigenous language arent quite as important as they seem.

Heres the problem. During the war, the Islamists  who morphed from being the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) into al-Qaeda  were confronted by an army and intelligence service whose use of torture was about as brutal as any in the Middle East. The smashing of teeth and fingernails was minor stuff. To make prisoners talk, the cops would truss them up, stick a rubber hose in their mouth and fill them up with water until they, quite literally, burst asunder. If you started talking, you are dead, a GIA men told me at the time. Because if you start giving information, theyll go on to the end. They often did.

Some soldiers sought asylum in Europe and spilled the beans. They were given drugs, they said, and ordered to torture and murder suspects, especially if they had beards. One very senior officer sought libel damages in France against a soldier whod detailed his experiences in this dirty war in a book  but the officer fled Paris the moment the court ruled against him. An amnesty upheld by our friend President Bouteflika insured not only that reformed terrorists would be free but that the army goons would never be punished.

Indeed, so terrible was the militarys behaviour that Algerian authors found it safer to write fiction about the war in order to tell readers the truth. One short story that actually went on sale in Algeria told of a lieutenant in the army who betrayed his comrades to the Islamists. His wife and children were brought to the scene by helicopter to find his officers had tied him to a tree with barbed wire. They were forced to watch as petrol was poured over the traitor and he was burned alive. Everyone knew the story was true.

So here we must turn to Mohamed Mediene, who was head of Algerias secret service for all those dark years, known  and referred to in the press  as one of the eradicateurs. He finally turned against Bouteflika when the latter (at great personal sacrifice, according to his flunkies) gained a fourth term in 2014. And then, last September, Mediene met his comeuppance. He was suddenly retired from service, apparently at the instigation of the defence minister and several leading generals who wanted to clean up the army.

To the shock of Algerians, Toufik, as he is known, suddenly appeared in the Algerian press  in sunglasses, I might add  to complain about the unjust jail sentence passed on his former chum General Abdelkader Ait Ourabi, who was head of counter-terrorism, the Algerian chaps who dealt with the civil war insurgents in so efficient a manner. Ourabis imprisonment was for destruction of military records and disobeying military orders. Mediene said that his subordinate had operated with passion  we can imagine what that means  and complied with his duties as an officer.

The whole affair prompted two questions. The first was obvious: just what was in those military records? The second  more opaque  was just how deep do the armys roots lie in the body politic of Algeria, a country that was always controlled by the military?

Is Bouteflika being edged out at the wish of Army veterans who are clipping his wings while ensuring that they have no trouble with the Berber people? Or  more likely if I read local journalist Nicholas Noe correctly  is the military tearing itself apart?

Crashing oil prices  and 60 per cent of Algerias budget is dependent on oil and gas  is not going to endear the coffin president to his people. Ten million Algrians live on the poverty line. And with Isis-thronged Libya, Niger and Mali as neighbours, a firm but new military hand may be in the offing.

The French will be there to sell more weapons. And the Americans would of course welcome more allies in the global war on terror.

Independent
It was saddening to read the letter from Wilson Burgess (Write Back, January 18) attacking Ulster-Scots as a dead language - this is just dead wrong.

Interest in Ulster-Scots is growing. At the last census in 2011 more than 140,000 people (about eight per cent of the population) indicated they could speak, read or write in Ulster-Scots.

Just a year later the Continuous Household Survey found the figure had almost doubled to 14%.

Wilson accuses the Ulster-Scots Agency of merely paying lip-service to the language and taking refuge in safe alternative culture.

First, the agency's statutory role is to promote Ulster-Scots language, heritage and culture. These things are not in competition, they complement each other.

Second, the agency has been praised for its efforts. In its recent report the European Committee of Experts (Comex), which oversees the development of minority languages, observed that "the position of Ulster-Scots has improved since the last monitoring round, thanks largely to the work of the Ulster-Scots Agency".

IAN CROZIER

Chief executive, Ulster-Scots Agency
Q. How long have you held your current post within the bank and what is your background in agriculture?

A. I consider myself born into agriculture, with my background on the family farm near Carrickfergus, which I still enjoy working on. We have always kept suckler cows and sheep as the main aspects of the enterprise, but like many Northern Ireland farms we have kept some of almost everything at one time or another.

The whole essence of rural Northern Ireland and its people is important to me and from early days in the Young Farmers' Club of Ulster I have always stayed involved in organisations linked to the industry and its people.

I have held responsibility for the agribusiness team in Danske Bank for just over four years and have managed to be at the wheel through a fodder crisis, a weather crisis with areas (including our own) seeing some of the worst snow in living memory, and now a dairy crisis. The words "interesting", "challenging", "eventful" all come to mind, but especially the word "rewarding". The resilience of Northern Ireland farmers is remarkable and seeing people pick themselves up and be successful in challenging environments always gives me pride when we have played a small part in the plan.

Q. We have just entered a new year. How was 2015 for the bank in terms of agricultural lending to farmers?

A. Generally, it was a successful year in terms of lending, with good numbers out across a wide range of sectors as customers develop their businesses.

It would be fair to say a small percentage of lending over the year has been in direct cash support to farmers, and obviously will add no value to those farms other than sustain them to better times. This is necessary for fundamentally good farms and demonstrates our commitment through the bad times as well as the good.

Q. For the past 12 months and more farmers have been suffering financially crippling low prices for their produce. This is affecting their cash flows, and therefore their ability to pay bills. How has the bank helped farmers in these situations?

A. We have always taken a long-term view of our customers' financial circumstances and the reality is that the better managed farms always come through in the end. We do not have a difficulty in helping them over the bumps along the way.

A banking relationship with a customer has to be about so much more than just asset purchase support.

Working capital support is more difficult and requires a clear understanding at farmer and banker level as to what is being funded, for how long and where the expected repayment is coming from. Extensions in overdrafts are the simplest method for smallish amounts relative to the business, but short-term loans will also be used where the bank is comfortable a repayment strategy can be adopted in the near future.

Q. The dairy industry in particular has suffered a great deal in terms of low prices. Dairy farmers could be regarded as those who take out the higher loans for machinery and equipment. With incomes so low, how are your agri-managers dealing with repayments?

A. Firstly, low milk prices are not a new phenomenon, although I agree that this particular cycle is looking like it will set new records.

However, we have developed good strategies and experience in dealing with farmers through these cycles.

The tools are similar to other sectors in that we will sanction increases in overdrafts and utilise our dairy support loans, which we will arrange in conjunction with cash flow forecasts and draw down on an agreed basis over a period of months.

These loans are unique in the sector in that repayment terms are deferred until the farm has demonstrated an ability to repay through increased milk receipts.

I regard these loans as cash "life support" to the businesses in order that standard day-to-day operations can continue on a prudent and managed basis.

Q. There is not an indefinite period of time that a bank can continue to restructure loans to help alleviate the problems of making repayments in a period of volatile prices. Has Danske Bank gone past the stage of restructuring loans to farmers?

A. We have restructured very few loans in the current crisis, as there is little point in developing a repayment programme when there is no clear forward knowledge of the farm's repayment ability. Constant restructuring kicks the can down the road, and eventually limits the farm's investment and growth ability, but also leaves less of a cushion to deal with future volatility.

We will definitely have a lot of restructuring after this current malaise, but I will be encouraging farmers to pay down as much debt as possible when they have the ability to do so - otherwise they will have no financial flexibility going forward.

Q. Even though milk prices were forecast to recover at the end of 2015 they still have not. There is speculation that prices could drop to 15 pence per litre very soon. How would the bank cope with that in terms of supporting your dairy farmer customers after a year of low prices?

A. Short-term prospects are not encouraging, but most farmers, and indeed the banks, have been working off average milk prices of 17/18ppl in their cash flows, so with winter bonus payments in the last couple of months I think we are reasonably well within broad assumptions.

We have spent a lot of time working with farmers to put facilities in place for most of this year, so broadly we are as expected, and while I am not comfortable with the milk price, I am confident that we have taken the right steps to be supportive and I do not see that changing.

Q. Let's call a spade a spade. Farmers who are coming under increased financial pressure need to wake up and take a closer look at their bottom line, their incomes and outgoings. With a period of uncertain prices ahead of us in 2016, what will the bank be advising on this?

A. Unfortunately, we are at the stage where a decision to just hope that things get better is not an option. Farming is a business at the end of the day and every business owner - whether he or she runs a stall or a top 100 company - needs to constantly evaluate the performance of that business and take responsibility.

There will be things within your control and things outside your control, and although milk prices are largely outside the farmers' control it must drive decisions within their control, such as hire purchase commitment, costs and efficiency focus.

Q. Overheads are high on some farms, as are repayments for high ticket items of machinery and other equipment that are only used some of the year. If these items are not on hire purchase agreements with other companies these are all assets that the bank can easily recall should farmers get behind with payments. What is the bank's view on this?

A. I believe that the machinery costs on some farms are unsustainable. Every asset on a farm needs to justify its existence, whether it's a piece of machinery, a cow, or something else, and although there are lots of farms justifying machinery expenditure, there are plenty who are not. My preference is that farmers manage their own cash position and turn under-utilised assets into cash if that is what is required to support the survival of their business.

Q. How many farming customers does Danske Bank have and how many of them are in financial trouble?

A. We have long been known as "the farmers' bank", and probably bank about half the farmers in Northern Ireland, although it is difficult to be exact.

In terms of how many are in financial trouble? Actually, very few. How many are experiencing difficult trading conditions? Quite a few, as would be expected with market conditions. It must be remembered that a core strength of a farm business is its ability to deal with cycles, whether they be weather-driven or market-driven. Those who cannot develop a business model that can sustain volatile trading conditions will always struggle.

Q. For years banks secured loans by holding the deeds to farms or land. With prices on the floor the values of these securities have also fallen, leaving what could be a negative equity in some cases. How is the bank addressing these situations?

A. Most agents would suggest that they have not seen any significant softening in the value of land assets and that feels right at this stage.

Farmers are obviously large players in the land market, but they are by no means the only players, with many professionals or individuals with access to outside sources of income ensuring that there is still a healthy enough market.

We must not lose sight of the fact that all the banks still have farmers on their books who can and will continue to buy land.

The management capability on the farm and the ability to generate cash profits is more important to us than the value of the asset, but I agree that security does give any lender more comfort.

Q. For the past 12 months industry leaders, banks, milk processors and farmers have all believed that the long-term future of the dairy industry is secure and prices should start to change soon. But they have not. In this new year, has the bank changed its outlook on the dairy industry?

A. It is all about the definition of "soon", I suppose, and nobody can be clear about that. The crux of the problem is a supply and demand imbalance, and although there are thin rays of light around supply easing off and some players coming back into the market, this has not manifested yet in terms of farmgate prices.

I think it is a case of planning for "soon" to be some time away and hoping that's not the case. We have not changed our outlook for the industry, but we have to be realistic and understand that there is only so much debt that a farm can handle.

Q. European Union Farm Commissioner Phil Hogan refuses to change the goalposts when it comes to raising intervention prices for milk. Would the bank support such a move?

A. I think that all avenues have to be explored to give some relief to the local industry, but the fundamentals are market forces - which even Phil Hogan has little control over.

The challenges for Mr Hogan in supporting an intervention review are more complex I suspect than most appreciate, but there is certainly strong local justification in getting the price reviewed.

Q. There are around 2,400 dairy farmers left in Northern Ireland and that number is already likely to drop in January. What is the bank doing to ensure its share of these dairy farming customers stay in business?

A. All the banks have strong dairy farming clients, who will work their way through this, but I think it would be naive to believe that some rationalisation within the industry is not inevitable. From our perspective, we are supporting all our dairy customers (who need support) either by way of direct cash support or where we feel that it would be inappropriate to increase debt levels, we will allow capital moratoriums and time to adjust their businesses. I think we all need to be upfront enough to say that exiting the industry is maybe the right move for some businesses and that could be for a number of reasons, with low milk prices just being the accelerant to the decision.

Q. How many dairy farming customers does Danske Bank have in Northern Ireland? How many of these are the bank concerned about?

A. Over half of dairy farmers in Northern Ireland bank with us, but many of them carry no debt or very small levels of debt, and I would have no concerns about their ability to get through this. Ultimately, the higher borrowed clients carry an elevated level of concern, although many have taken steps to strip costs out of their businesses and have relentlessly pursued efficiency improvements. Those who have yet to do so need to address this urgently. The best we can hope for at the moment is a brake on the price falls and a steady, slow recovery. That means that businesses will have to work on a lower milk price for some time than they had been accustomed to.

Q. What needs to be urgently done to ensure farming has a future in all sectors in Northern Ireland?

A. There are a number of factors, with no one silver bullet. As farmers, generally, we could be more efficient. The efficiency gap between the top and bottom quartile of farmers is huge.

We have some of the best technically skilled farmers in the world who set levels of excellence that others should aspire to, and even if they do not reach it they will have improved. We also need to fully exploit the natural advantages that we have in terms of grass and water abundance.

We need to develop into new markets and increase penetration in existing markets. Lots of work is being done on this front, but we must keep that focus.

I can understand that we need to produce what the market demands, but there has to a realistic share of the profit filtering back to the primary producer and that may need more integration of the whole supply chain.

While it has been successfully done in the poultry sector, the diversity within the grassland-based sector would preclude large-scale integration. But there is certainly room for adoption of some of the principles.

In a lot of circumstances the land assets are not in the hands of people who can take the industry forward and the cost of taking ownership of the land is realistically outside the scope of a business which is investing heavily in on-farm assets such as milking parlours, housing and equipment.

We need a mindset change, where we can be comfortable that access and management of the land is sufficient without ownership.

I would like to see more longer term leasing of land, as I think the conacre system has served its purpose, but it is now time to evolve so that young, progressive and technically skilled farmers can secure land needed to develop their businesses.

Tax legislation and concern about potential future tax legislation creates a mindset which prevents some landowners from leasing land to other farmers who can utilise the land better. If tax powers are being devolved, then I think there is scope to review the whole area, especially as we witness some of the scenarios being played out currently where landowners are looking at all sorts of innovative ways to retain active farmer status.

If there are early lessons to be learned from the current situation, then it is that better use of hedging needs to be on the agenda in terms of farmer and processor contracts to allow more effective forward planning.
If youre a parent theres no doubt that you know who was named the Dragon Warrior. After two successful films, Pos Kung Fu Panda is continuing his legendary awesomeness in Kung Fu Panda 3.

In Kung Fu Panda 3 Po reunites with his biological father and travels with him to a secret sanctuary of pandas. Unfortunately, these pandas do not fit in. There in the sanctuary Po meets Mei Mei who is an overly eager panda who was promised to Po through an arranged marriage when they were children. Also, an ancient spirit called Kai begins to terrorize China and steals the powers of defeated kung fu masters. To help revive the sanctuary and beat Kai, Po must learn to train the village so that they can become a band of Kung Fu Pandas.

Po is constantly faced with obstacles to overcome and surprisingly he never disappoints. There are a number of lessons that weve all learned from these Po and the furious five.

Nothing is impossible: During the first film, it appears that Po has no real talents. In fact, Master Shifu initially rejects Po and writes him off as a fan. However, in the end he proves to be a brutal Kung Fu Panda and in fact becomes the Dragon Warrior. Po never gives up and is able to fight against his low self-esteem and negative belief system to discover his true potential.

Dont dwell in the past: The films discuss living in the present and the importance of not dwelling in the past. If you continue to focus on the past, youll find that your present is bogged down with negativity. In the films, Po must overcome his desire to look back on shortcomings in the past and focus on the day at hand. We should all take note of Pos resilience and apply it to our bad days.

Stop worrying what others think: Everyone in the Furious Five relentlessly criticized Po. They gave him a hard time about his competency and deemed him as delusional. Yet, when everything is said and done Po is the strongest amongst them all. Pos stamina and mindset teaches us that we should never give up. Never allow someone else to tell you what youre capable of. Instead of accepting another statistic, break the mold and push the envelope. If you listen to the voices of others youll have a false perception of your strengths and weaknesses. However, if you chose to stand up for yourself youll discover your greatness and true self worth.

Dont let anyone stop you from attaining your dreams: Perseverance is the element everyone needs to reach their hopes and dreams. At some point in life youll be faced with criticism and defeat however, its your job to keep climbing the mountain to reach your dreams. Po was called stupid and his strength was constantly underrated yet he never gave up. He knew what he wanted out of life and he didnt give up. Perseverance and patience can often times be the only thing you need when striving to reach a personal goal.

Animated films with valuable life lessons should be household staples. Its important that children learn how to become the best versions of themselves. As adults, its impossible to teach little ones about setbacks because weve become jaded due to prior experiences in life. However, a cute panda bear that knows kung fu  now thats the perfect spokesperson for a young one.

Angela Guzman is an Editor at Beliefnet.com.
Asteroids, earthquakes, and timelines when Jesus will return all have failed to come true to this point. In 2015 there was an asteroid expected to hit the earth along with the four moon prophecy by church leaders, but it missed us, and the world stood silent. There is nothing in the news about 2016, but standby.

The Book of Mark makes it clear that only the Father knows when the final trumpet will blast.

"However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows."

There are many others predictions when the world will end and so far, we're in clear.

Harold Camping was an evangelist and predicted before he died that the Rapture would be accompanied with earthquakes. He said God was calling three percent of the population to Heaven. He launched a campaign on Family radio that called of 2011 to be the end of the world. It never happened, obviously and he passed on in 2013.

The Mayans predicted in that an asteroid or other object would destroy the earth December 2012 would mark the end of the time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar that was used before the invasion of Europeans.

Lester Sumrall predicted the world was coming to an end in 2000.The father of Christian television also predicted that there would be a war with Russia before 2000.

Edgar C. Whisenant predicted the Rapture in 1988 during the month of September and wrote 88 reasons why the Rapture would happen and the Christian community embraced this as truth. When this didnt happen he released other books explain the Rapture would happen in 1989 and in1994.

Pastor of the Church of God Ronald Weinland said that in 2008 there would be nuclear explosions signaling the final call. He predicted that in 2012 that Jesus was returning. <>Charles Taze Russell was the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses and said Christ was return in 1914, and there would be Kingdom.

Remember Y2K computer bug would trigger an economic collapse allowing the Antichrist to come into power when 2000 hit? Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins warned people of the pending dangers and it set off a panic in some communities.

Always test the prophetic words, go to the Bible first. Test it and dont be deceived.

When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Corine Gatti is a Senior Editor at Beliefnet.com.
Mid-January marks the celebration of Mahayana Buddhist New Year celebration (although many Mahayana Buddhist such as Japenese Zen, celebrate the New Year on December 31st).

The New Year is a funny holiday for Buddhists. When you invite mindfulness into your life and endeavor to practice it always, every moment holds the same potential as the passing of the calendar year. As one of my students put it, "Happy New Instant."

The New Year is a time to reflect, not that this should just happen once per year. But this is the big one and the most ambitious and, perhaps the most impermanent. Most of the resolutions will fade shortly after the New Year. Gumption will wane, no doubt. How to maintain gumption in the New Year? I'll address that later.

On New Year's Eve, thousands gather in Times Square to celebrate the New Year. This is a qualitatively different celebration then, say, a Japanese Zen temple. In New York people celebrate in a group-think altered state revelry.

In Japan (and in Japan-like climes of Northeast Vermont) there will be a different kind of celebration. From 5:00 to 5:45 meditation. Nothing can surpass this as a testament to the New Year. Contemplating being; breathing, and unfolding into this moment.

Then, once you've grounded yourself in the simplicity of Zazen practice you are ready to reflect on your life for the past year. What went well? What didn't go well? Did you notice any patterns? Based on what you've noticed what are you're intentions for the New Year? This is a way to move into the New Year with a modicum of awakening, and perhaps more.

Karma is a bitch. All our actions lead to consequences. And we have to live with these consequences. Some delectable; some revolting.Since we've accumulated this karma we need to do something with it. Enter the fire ceremony. You write on a slip of paper, fold it, and wrap it with intention. This paper stands as a symbol. "I relinquish this karma, open myself to new possibility, and free myself in this moment. The folded slip of paper goes into the fire. Each participant goes up in turn, pauses, reflects and then drops the paper into the fire. The fire burns the karma.

Karma is the accumulated fires of life. Each time we burn in desire, we collect karma. Each time we act we face the prospect of new karma and the old karma exerts its influence on this moment. If you can burn that karma you can clear a space that allows the next action to be free, spontaneous, and beneficial.

The fire ceremony clears. Then it's time for celebration (and this is the first celebration at 7:30). First celebrate; then meditate. Now for an hour and forty-five minutes.

At 10:13 PM the bell ringing ceremony begins. For 108 minutes, on the top of the minute, a bell is run marking the approach the midnight. At midnight, all the bells ring in celebration (listen here).

At midnight another celebration follows with tempura and udon noodles. In Japan, the monks may imbibe in sake. Happy New Year!

Obviously, this is a different kind of celebration. More deliberate, thoughtful, and sublime. From the Buddha's perspective it's all the dance of life. One version is not inherently better than the other. However, one might facilitate awakening more so. You can awaken in the Times Square crowd. It's possible, if more difficult than awakening at the Zen Temple. You can go through the motions at the Zen temple, but not awaken.

Every moment holds the potential for awakening, every moment in every circumstance. Intention makes the difference. So, make your intentions for the New Year. Open to the sheer beauty and possibility of this moment.

Arnie Kozak, Ph.D., Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapist, Author, and Speaker; Clinical Instructor Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, University of Vermont College of Medicine. Read his blog, Mindfulness Matters.
John Wycliffe

During the 14th Century one man worked to make the Bible available in English. As part of the reformation, John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin to English against Romes wishes. The church accused the theologian of being vulgar and persecuted him relentlessly. After he died, his accusers were afraid of him, still. They returned to Wycliffes burial site to burn the body. He told his enemies "You say it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English. You call me a heretic because I have translated the Bible into the common tongue of the people. Do you know whom you blaspheme? Did not the Holy Ghost give the Word of God at first in the mother-tongue of the nations to whom it was addressed? Why do you speak against the Holy Ghost? You say that the Church of God is in danger from this book. How can that be?"
Iran is holding another contest for its homeland and it will make you sick. The theme of the contest is the Holocaust, or what they deem as being fabricated, and submissions are being accepted from 50 countries until April.

The cash award up to 50,000 dollars in cash. Countries expected to participate are France, UK and the United States. It's freedom of speech said contest secretary Masud Shojai-Tabatabai.

He said that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were equally as offensive in an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency. We do not mean to approve or deny the Holocaust, however, the main question is that why is there no permission to talk about the Holocaust despite their (the West) belief in freedom of speech.

Tabatabai must have selectively forgotten that after Charlie Hebdo went print terrorists killed staffers in France for freedom of speech.

Why should the oppressed people of Palestine pay the price for the Holocaust? We are also worried about the contemporary holocausts in which a great number of women and children are being killed in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, Tabatabai offered.

Israeli officials urged the UN to renounce the contest.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein wrote in a letter addressed to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the contest, the Times of Israel reported.

Words cannot describe the revulsion and protestation of the state of Israel and many across the world at the recurring proof that Iran continues in its policy of Holocaust denial.

The content was launched in 2006 in challenge of the double standard that the prophet Mohammad can be made fun of, but Jews cant. Celebrating atrocities that happened during the Holocaust for a sum of 50,000 dollars is all about some ridiculous double standard from a country that wants Jews all annihilated?

The current President of Iran does not differ from his notorious predecessor, Ahmadinejad, Edelstein added.

Over six million Jews among many others were murdered during WWII.

Corine Gatti is a Senior Editor at Beliefnet.com.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairwoman Khaleda Zia, pictured at a rally in Dhaka on Jan. 5, 2015, faces a sedition charge over comments she made about the number of people killed during the countrys war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

An attorney representing Bangladeshi opposition leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia says the ruling party is harassing his client through a sedition charge brought against her by one of its supporters.

A court in Dhaka on Monday ordered that Zia, a former three-time premier who heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), appear for a hearing into the charge on March 3.

As the government has approved the case, we think the government is behind the case. This move is for political harassment, Zias lawyer, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, told BenarNews.

The charge stems from a public comment made by Zia last month in which she allegedly questioned the official number on how many people died in Bangladeshs war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

There was controversy over the number of the martyrs killed in the war of liberation; different books and documents refer to various figures, Zia was quoted as saying on Dec. 21.

According to Bangladeshs constitution, 3 million people were killed by Pakistani forces and their local collaborators during the conflict 45 years ago when Bangladesh was then known as the province of East Pakistan.

The case has no merit of sedition as suggested by the Bangladesh code of criminal procedure. The procedure stipulates that anyone trying to overthrow the government or conspire to overthrow the government through rumor or propaganda and hatred will face a sedition charge. But her comment had no such ingredients, Hossain said.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir echoed the lawyers criticism, saying the case was being used by the ruling Awami League to sideline Zia. The BNP has no seats in the current parliament after the party boycotted the 2014 general election, claiming that the ruling Awami League (AL) was out to rig the vote.

The government has filed at least four cases against Khaleda Zia; now they file another sedition case . They fear Khaleda Zias presence in politics. So, they want to eliminate her from politics through filing such sedition cases, Alamgir told reporters at the BNP offices in Dhaka on Monday.

Government claims no role in complaint

However, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Sunday denied the allegation that the government had played a role in bringing the sedition charge against Zia, telling local media that the case against her was a purely legal issue.

The sedition charge was brought against the former PM by plaintiff Mamtaj Uddin Mehdi, a Supreme Court lawyer and Awami League member.

He filed suit against her on grounds of sedition for, in his words, violating the constitution and humiliating the martyrs by questioning the accuracy of the official wartime death toll.

The constitution was the highest law of the land and people who violated the charter must face sedition charges, Mehdi told reporters.

Dysfunctional politics

According to observers, the new case against Zia exposes the poisonous nature of Bangladeshi politics.

Basically, the problem lies with the two parties intolerant attitude toward each other; the Awami League cannot tolerate the BNPs existence and vice versa, Nizam Uddin Ahmed, a political commentator and professor at Chittagong University, told BenarNews.

The Awami League led the countrys bloody war of independence; so any controversial comment against the liberation war would anger the ruling party, he said.

Either way, Zias comment questioning the number of people killed during the war will not go down well with the public, Ahmed suggested.

Ahmed Tareq, a political science student at Rajshahi University, agreed.

Khaleda Zia should not have made such comment on a sensitive issue like our war of independence, he told BenarNews.

But, he added, Similarly, filing a sedition case against Khaleda Zia can be counter-productive for the Awami League.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (fifth from right, front row) poses for a photo with ministers and representatives from 19 countries, at the International Conference on Deradicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism in Kuala Lumpur, Jan. 25, 2016.

Local communities should be more active in programs aimed at ending violent extremism, top government officials told an international conference convened in Kuala Lumpur to help counter the Islamic States (IS) radical views.

By working with communities, governments can help nip IS-perpetrated violence in the bud and hasten the rehabilitation of militants jailed for their deadly actions, the officials said on Monday, the opening day of the two-day conference on "Deradicalization and Countering Violent Extremism" hosted by Malaysia.

David Gersten, a senior official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, asked delegates to learn more "about how we can effectively work with communities to prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place."

For example, he said, a local community could be trained to reveal any "observable warning signs that indicate an individual may be moving towards extremist violence."

"This might include helping community members and parents understand how to notice a young person who is justifying the needs for violent action based on terrorist propaganda, gathering money, such as by selling electronics in order to finance international travel, or applying for a passport with the intent to travel to a terrorist-held territory," he said.

Some of these behaviors may be noticed by close friends and family members before an individual drifts toward violent extremism, Gersten said.

"When family and friends are alerted to concerns, it is important that they report to the proper authorities, including law enforcement," he told the meeting in Malaysia's capital.

Malaysia: Enlisting clerics and ex-radicals

Ministers and officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the 10-member blocs strategic partners  the United States, France, Australia, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, China and Italy  are attending the meeting.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told delegates that "preventive solutions" requiring deeper involvement of the community  in addition to punitive action  were needed to contain militant extremism.

He said Malaysia was engaging Muslim clerics, or ulama, and former terrorists in an integrated program to help rehabilitate those detained without trial under strict laws.

The ulama "have better influence over local communities and are considered to be more authoritative in giving the correct explanation of jihad from the religious perspective" while the ex-terrorists "can be good role models and are able to persuade former comrades to leave their misconceived struggle."

Zahid said local communities were also critical for the reintegration of released detainees into society.

"We need to ensure that the risk of being radicalized again is eliminated or greatly reduced during reintegration."

Australian officials said that Canberra's programs to counter violent extremism were aimed at reducing the community "vulnerability" to such influences, among other objectives.

Australia has developed a range of training and educational projects for families, schools, communities, institutions and frontline professionals to build awareness of radicalization, they said.

"We firmly believe that a strong, educated and empowered community is the key  the key to prevention and if necessary, the key to rehabilitation," according to an Australian paper presented at the conference.

Information is the key

Aside from community involvement, intelligence sharing and cooperation among countries are key to combating the IS threat, officials attending the conference said.

"The more we cooperate and share our intelligence on radical and violent extremist activities, the easier it will be to suppress dangerous extremism and prevent future violence," Thai Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda said.

He said that intelligence was crucial for preparedness and response by government officials and law enforcement on the threat posed by radical ideologies.

"We believe that information is the key," he said.

Japan's envoy for countering terrorism and organized crime, Tsukasa Kawada, told the conference that Muslim communities should play a more effective role in combating the IS threat.

He said that when IS took two Japanese hostages last year, Muslims living in Japan  many of whom had come from Asia  appealed for their immediate release and prayed at mosques for their safe return.

"Seeing these actions through TV news, a number of Japanese people were impressed by their kind gestures and sympathized with them  most Japanese had little contact until then with the Muslim community which is relatively limited in Japanese society," Kawada said.

Since then, exchanges between Muslims and local people have increased, he said, adding that such efforts would help create "an inclusive society" and "contribute to the prevention of radicalization."
Prime Minister Najib Razak delivers the keynote address at the International Conference on Deradicalization and Countering Violent Extremism in Kuala Lumpur, Jan. 25, 2016.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that he would not apologize for the tough measures he has taken to combat terrorism, warning the threat from the Islamic State group (IS) was very real and that he had to put the countrys security above everything else.

His statement came three days after Malaysian police arrested seven suspected IS militants allegedly linked to the mastermind of the groups deadly attacks in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Jan. 14 which left four civilians and four attackers dead.

I make no apology, I repeat, I make no apology for taking every step to preserve that safety, and for making the security for all Malaysians and our global visitors as my first priority, Najib said in his opening remarks at the International Conference on Deradicalization and Countering Violent Extremism 2016 in Kuala Lumpur.

This threat is very real and my government takes it very seriously, he said.

Video threat

As the conference opened, Malaysian police said the IS group had posted a video that warned of attacks in Malaysia over the arrest of its members and supporters.

The video, in the native Bahasa Malaysia and released by the Malay unit of IS known as Katibah Nusantara (Malay Archipelago Combat Unit), warned the Malaysian government to halt actions against the group and release those who have been detained or face revenge.

Katibah Nusantara is suspected to be headed by Bahrun Naim, identified as the mastermind behind the Jakarta bombings and being based in Raqqa, the ISs de facto capital in Syria.

The video featured two Malaysians based in Syria, identified by Malaysias police chief as Abdul Halid Dari and Mohd Nizam Arifin, speaking under the IS logo.

The police are continuing proactive measures on matters regarding the video, which will not be taken lightly, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said when met by reporters during the conference.

BenarNews could not independently verify the video.

Detention without trial

Muslim-majority Malaysia has arrested more than 100 people it says are involved in IS. Fifty-five Malaysians have been involved in IS in Iraq and Syria, of whom 17 had been killed, the local media quoted intelligence reports as saying.

Najib took a swipe at rights groups criticizing his tough security laws and calling them a threat to civil liberties.

But let me tell you this: There are no civil liberties under Daesh [IS], and they are no shield against those who are set on committing acts of terrorism. The best way to uphold civil liberties is to ensure the safety of the nation, he told the conference.

In 2012, Najib oversaw the repeal of the draconian Internal Security Act, which the government had used to detain people indefinitely without trial, but last year reintroduced tough legislation he said was aimed at fighting terrorism.

Human rights groups criticized the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA) as it revived detention without trial.

The groups also criticized Kuala Lumpur for another law approved last month that gave sweeping powers to a national security council led by Najib.

Najib branded ISs idea of creating an Islamic state as nothing at all Islamic, adding that the peaceful majority in his country firmly rejected ISs violence to bomb, maim and behead.

The Malaysian leader also elaborated on the countrys plans to set up a Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Communications Centre to fight ISs extremist propaganda online.

[I]t is vital that all authorities  our muftis [Islamic leaders], our media commissions, our tech-savvy young people for whom social media is an integral part of their daily lives  ensure that the messaging the centre puts out is solid, persuasive and real,  he said.

The messages, he said, must cut through the rhetoric and sadly seductive approaches of the militants.

It must state clearly why they [IS] are wrong, and why true Muslims will have nothing to do with this ideology of hatred and destruction.

The two-day conference is aimed at stepping up cooperation among security agencies throughout the world in deradicalization programs, a government statement said.

Ministers and officials in charge of fighting extremist militant threats from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the 10-member groupings strategic partners  the United States, France, Australia, Britain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Japan, China and Italy  are attending the meeting.
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For Immediate Release, January 25, 2016 Contact: Miyoko Sakashita, (510) 844-7108, miyoko@biologicaldiversity.org Feds Launch Review of Endangered West Coast Orcas Conservation Groups Urge Immediate Expansion of

Critical Habitat Protections for Southern Resident Killer Whales SEATTLE The National Marine Fisheries Service today announced a five-year review of endangered southern resident killer whales, which are down to just 84 orcas, to assess whether they are properly protected under the Endangered Species Act. The Fisheries Service last year announced plans to expand existing critical habitat protections from the killer whales summer habitat in Puget Sound to include 9,000 square miles of their winter foraging habitat along the West Coast sometime in 2017, but conservation groups have urged officials to speed up that timeline. These iconic orcas need more federal protection, not less. This status review will show these orcas are still endangered and that we need to quickly address threats from pollution, noise and lack of prey, said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been working to save these orcas since petitioning for their Endangered Species Act protections in 2001. The Fisheries Service will accept public comments for the next 90 days and is soliciting new science since the last five-year review was completed in 2011. Southern residents are threatened by habitat loss, declines in chinook salmon runs and other food sources, ocean noise and environmental toxins, which accumulate in orcas over their long lifespans. Recent studies have shown that maritime noise is affecting their ability to find food and mates, and that persistent organic pollutants in these orcas are harming their reproductive and endocrine systems. These killer whales are at a crossroads, Sakashita said. We need to act now to address the immediate threats to their survival while we continue to develop long-term remedies in the coming years. For more information on these orcas, click here. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places..
Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
I'm not a great one for shouting fraud, but I can't see that there is any other conclusion that one can draw.

Somebody on Kickstarter is trying to raise funds for a film about Kiribati, the coral atoll that all BH readers know is not getting smaller.

Yet the promoters of this film are saying this (click for larger):

That to me looks distinctly like a false statement being used to raise money. A fraud, in other words.
Mobile phone penetration has significantly increased in Kenya and its imperative for small businesses to tap into the potential of this technology to operate better and smarter.

The Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) statistics show that the number of mobile phone subscriptions reached 37.8 million in September 2015, up from 32.8 million in September 2014. This pushed mobile penetration in the country to 88.1 percent from 80.5 percent during the review period. "The mobile market in the country has maintained an upward trend," CA stated in the first quarter sector statistics report for the financial year 2015/2016.

Michael Heim via 123RF

M-Farm is a great example of a Kenyan small business that has been able to successfully curve a niche in the market by tapping into the popularity of the mobile phone in the country. M-Farm uses a mobile application and short-message-service to connect farmers to markets. This way, M-Farm is able to cash in on its services which include updating farmers with new information on price trends in the market and also giving them a step-by-step guide on how to plant crops and reach optimum production.

Foreign firms have also noticed the mobile phone potential in Kenya, which is why Uber launched operations in Nairobi in January 2015. Uber, which was founded in 2009 in San Francisco, United States, uses a mobile application to connect customers with low-cost taxicabs in over 260 cities it operates across the globe. "Our mission for Nairobi is to provide the safest, most reliable rides at the touch of a button," Alastair Curtis, International Launcher at Uber, said at the launch.

Technology company, Cisco, says high mobile phone penetration has a significant impact on businesses, mainly helping to link entrepreneurs to markets and potential buyers. "Enterprises are using mobile technology to operate better and smarter. Organizations are using mobile phones to gather real-time data that help them make informed business decisions," Cisco stated in its blog.

According to CA statistics, mobile money transfer service has also continued to record steady growth, pushed by increasing popularity and convenience in usage. By September 2015, the number of mobile money transfers stood at 28.7 million, up from 26.9 million recorded during the same period in 2014. The high usage of mobile money has spurred innovations in transactions, mainly in the popular M-Pesa platform, helping businesses to have more easier cashless payment options for their customers such as Lipa-Na-M-Pesa.

In October 2015, Chase Bank partnered with Safaricom, the owner of M-Pesa, to launch a service called Mobile2Bank, which allows businesses to aggregate all their banking services, making them accessible through a mobile phone. "This product demonstrates how innovation in the mobile space can be harnessed to address some of the common pain-points in businesses," Chase Bank chief executive, Paul Njaga, said.

Register your business in the Biz4Afrika platform for more useful tips that will enhance your competitiveness and performance in business.
Tash Whitmey and Emad Tahtouh have been appointed as presidents of the Creative Data and Innovation Lions juries respectively.

Tash Whitmey

Tahtouh, director of applied technology at Finch said "I am looking forward to Cannes this year with a nervous anticipation and excitement as to how the creative world has either further developed or utilised technologies.

"While technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, so too do the creative executions that either support or utilise them. In the last 12 months, we have witnessed yet another technology explosion in various areas. VR/360 film, wearables, biotech, electric vehicles, amongst many more, continue to boom and become more and more powerful each day. I am confident that this year the jury will set a new benchmark for what our industry considers true innovation."

The Creative Data Lions have evolved for 2016. New categories have been included to recognise smart problem solving through the creative use of data, including data-driven targeting and business-to-business data solution.

Emad Tahtouh

Whitmey, CEO Havas helia, commented, "As the role of data in marketing becomes more widely known and accepted, welcomed even, we need to celebrate but also provide guidance to an industry that begins to understand how data can effectively help as part of the creative process. It is clear to me that data is the future of marketing. As such, the jury need to look for brilliant examples of how data has been used to inform and inspire creativity in a way that delivers insightful and helpful solutions, with business changing results."

Lions Innovation takes place across 21-22 June 2016. The Awards Ceremony will see both presidents reveal and honour this year's winners, drawing a two day festival of technology, data and start-up focused content to a close. Philip Thomas, CEO, Lions Festivals, said "It is clear that Emad and Tash have a strong grasp on the realities of their industries and as such it would be a definitive year for the Innovation and Creative Data Lions."

Cannes Lions has now opened for entries, accepting submissions into all 23 categories. For more information, go to www.canneslions.com.
We define a writer's style through his or her word choice and syntax (the order of words in a sentence). In business writing, we should choose words and sentence structures that convey our messages in the most effective way. The best way to do this is by writing simply and professionally.

Sometimes, our writing can be too monotonous and it ends up boring the reader. Here are 10 simple ways to improve your business writing style:

1. Avoid using the same word at the beginning of every sentence

If you start every sentence in the same way, the reader will stop paying attention.

Do not write: I like my colleagues. I enjoy working for my company. I am happy with my job.

Do write: I am happy with my job. Working for my company, and working with my colleagues, is enjoyable.

2. Avoid repetitive sentence structures

Vary your sentence lengths. Use simple, complex, and compound sentences. If every sentence you write is five words long, your reader will become bored. Read this to see how annoying it can be: The Importance of Varying Sentence Length. Use short sentences and longer sentences to make sure your reader is paying attention.

Do not write: The directors went to the conference. They met with all their counterparts. They had a busy schedule.

Do write: The directors went to the conference. Although they had a busy schedule, they enjoyed meeting their counterparts.

3. Avoid phrases and words that do not sound like you

If you do not say words like 'preposterous' and 'judicious' when you speak, do not include them in your writing.

4. Do not overuse adjectives and adverbs

When you pad your writing with unnecessary modifiers and qualifiers, your reader's attention will wander.

Do not write: He was absolutely, completely and utterly exhausted after the journey.

Do write: He was exhausted after the journey.

5. Avoid slang

Only use slang in direct speech, and only if you are reporting exactly what somebody has said. Even then, it is better to avoid it. It puts readers off.

Do not write: The managers took a break after the director told them to chill at the bar.

Do write: The director asked the managers to take a break and relax at the bar.

6. Avoid overused words

Create lists of alternative words for the ones you use most in your writing. Warning: Do not swap them for more complicated words. Simply have a user-friendly selection of synonyms. (Have a look at this list for ideas.) The more you write, the more aware you will become of repeating them.

7. Avoid cliches and jargon

Do not use phrases such as 'think outside the box', 'a win-win situation', 'low-hanging fruit', 'touching base', and 'pushing the envelope'. Say what you mean or your readers will become as tired as the expressions you are using.

8. Avoid redundancy and tautology

Do not use superfluous and unnecessary words or statements.

Do not write: I thought to myself.

Do write: I thought.

Do not write: She said it repeatedly, over and over again.

Do write: She repeated it.

Do not write: He was overjoyed and ecstatic to be there.

Do write: He was overjoyed to be there.

9. Avoid wordiness

Do not use too many words if you can say the same thing using fewer words. Do not use big words to show off. This shows your inexperience as a writer. Use the simplest word that gets your message across.

Do not say: Sarah needed to think ahead and plan comprehensively, because she had to make sure of the correctness of every detail, figure and fact, as well as the names of the delegates in order for the conference to run smoothly.

Do say: Sarah needed to plan the conference so that everything ran smoothly.

You may know what COO, B2B, B2C, ERP, and QC mean, but there are many people who have no idea what you are talking about. If you do this, they will waste time looking up the meanings, or they will simply ignore your email.

If you want to improve your business writing, join us for The Plain Language Programme. If you want to learn how to write a book, join our Writers Write course in Johannesburg.
Seasoned radio and TV journalist, Faith Daniels, has joined the Kagiso Media (KM) stable, to head up news at Jacaranda FM in Gauteng and East Coast Radio in KwaZulu-Natal.

Faith Daniels

The 39-year-old newshound, who was born in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, has extensive experience across media platforms. Daniels anchored the 1pm news on SABC 3 and served as editor in the broadcaster's Johannesburg newsroom. She has also worked at SAfm and Talk Radio 702 in Johannesburg as a journalist, producer and anchor.

Armed with this vast experience, a firebrand personality and a deep understanding of South Africa's media landscape, Daniels is up for the challenge, saying she is looking forward to leading the vibrant, dynamic teams at East Coast Radio and Jacaranda FM.

Daniels is tasked with delivering innovative media solutions in line with KM's vision of "building communities for good." Enhancing synergies and cross-pollination between the brands is high on her to-do list.

In addition, Daniels has been tasked with refining the stations' news product, to give them a competitive edge in their respective markets. This includes enhancing the brands' multi-media news offerings.

"Greatness inspires me," says Daniels, who is mum to 2-year-old, Luke. "From the person who silently keeps an entire community going on a meagre salary - to the excellence of Christiane Amanpour in what she contributes to the world of journalism...and the many women (yes women) who change the patriarchal society we live in, bit-by-bit each day."

"As journalists, our stories are nothing special without the ordinary voice. If we cannot hold government, business and everyone else accountable through the ordinary voice, then we are failing ourselves."

Nick Grubb, KM's Chief Executive: Radio, says that the role will build on the solid base already established by two stations: "Our radio news offerings have always been strong, and we're getting great traction digitally. Faith will be helping us take this to another level though. Our newsrooms are a key centre for producing original content every day, and great content is our passion and focus."

Daniels lists being able to travel South Africa as one of the highlights of her career. "There is no better learning tool than travel. South Africans remain my favourite people in the world. My people. I cannot imagine living anywhere else."




Twitter is losing at least three top executives, in a major shakeup at the social network, reports said on Sunday.

Those departing the company include Alex Roetter, the head of engineering, product chief Kevin Weil, and Katie Stanton, the head of media, the Wall Street Journal and tech news website Re/code reported citing unnamed sources.

This represents a third of the executive team listed on the Twitter site next to chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey. Re/code indicated official confirmation would come as early as Monday, along with the announcement of a new marketing head.

The Journal reported that Twitter planned to bring two new board members on board as early as this coming week, at least one of whom it said was a high-profile executive in the media industry.

The newspaper reported that as a condition of returning as chief executive last year, Dorsey had told Twitter that all board members must eventually by replaced.

The panel includes fellow co-founder Evan Williams, one of the largest individual owners of company stock, according to the Journal.

Twitter declined to respond to an AFP request for comment. The social network is currently going through a rough patch amid persistent concerns over its growth prospects.

Twitter stock hit a new record low several days ago and the number of users is only increasing slowly. At the end of September, it had 320 million active users -- just four million more than three months earlier.

Source: AFP
Africa Rising' is no longer relevant - we have long passed that milestone and the transformation that the continent is undergoing is dramatic, certainly in terms of communication and connectivity across all sectors of the market.

The people of Africa are far more 'advertising literate' and significantly more critical of what advertising is and its role in their lives. They embrace the pace of progress and the need to make better lives for themselves, making them very valuable consumers to marketers, further driven by the very young median age of consumers on the continent.

We're already experiencing a massive take off in new ad formats, specifically in digital ads. Thanks to the rise in mobile and video, and new platforms that are pushing the boundaries, everyone is set to benefit from higher-quality, innovative and more engaging ads. Check out Pinterest's Cinematic Pins, for example:

Top digital trends for 2016 and onwards:

1. User-generated content

Albeit this isn't new, user-generated content is transforming everything from reviews to information discovery. Amateur created content is massive and will continue to grow not only in size but also in importance across platforms and content type. Everyone has an opinion and wants it to be heard! Blogs will also become more important in the marketer's armory.

2. Growth of Video-on-Demand

The implementation of digital television and broadcast will open many more channels to consumers besides the terrestrial channels previously owned by the respective states, with the choice of content as the key differential. Content is already key in the choice of consumers' viewing habits, and the availability of cable has driven this. The increasing popularity of DStv's catch-up and online streaming platforms such as Showmax are slowly changing the way TV content is being viewed as people get to view or stream their favourite shows at their own leisure. The growth of the middle class in Africa has also meant more spending power, resulting in more audiences from the continent joining this global trend. Another notable area to watch is digital video - mobile is the medium of choice in Africa and video viewing will becoming just as big, If not bigger, on mobile than on television. Currently vertical video ads on Snapchat have a 9x higher click-through rate than horizontal video ads and Facebook has become a huge video platform. Big opportunity for advertisers...

3. Scheduled content (programmatic advertising)

The explosive trend refers to using technology to manage digital advertising as opposed to a more manual way, using booking forms/ insertion order. It allows advertisers to find and focus on audiences. This props up the bet of targeting your ideal audience, as you're targeting beyond simply an ad impression. By adding geographic, demographic, first party/third party data, behavioural, contextual, and even transactional data to the process, we begin to gain efficiencies in targeting, thereby avoiding budget wastage. Programmatic buying also simplifies the procurement process, allowing for more time to be spent on strategy, optimising and creative. This is being implemented largely in SA, but will soon expand into the media world in Africa, as agencies expand across the continent.

4. Augmented reality

This global trend is growing rapidly, and while the implementation in Africa may still be a way off, it cannot be ignored. Augmented reality allows brands to optimise customers' experiences by bridging the gap between the digital and real world, creating endless possibilities for businesses to engage better with their consumers. Digital content can be added to physical objects, such as print ads or in-store displays, to provide additional information about a product to shoppers.

5. Mobile enterprise apps on the rise

With smartphone use in Africa skyrocketing, companies on the continent are taking heed and employing mobile enterprise applications to streamline business processes and mobilise their workforces.

Mobile enterprise apps let companies manage resources such as inventory and their supply chain using mobile phones, either through SMS or Web-enabled applications. The steady increase in the number of mobile users on the continent is fueling this trend. Research from Informa Telecoms and Media suggests Africa will have over 300 million smartphone users by 2017, roughly 30 percent of the population. Messaging apps are also fast becoming the cornerstone of communication, especially amongst younger consumers and as such, are a must for marketers!

6. Buy buttons for social media

In-app functions such the "buy button" on mobile apps and social networks will increasingly become prominent features that aim to enhance user experience. These allow users to purchase items they have seen on a Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram page with just one click of a button, without having to leave that page. This is fully supported by systems such as Paypal and Apple Pay as they continue to expand their reach.

7. Social video leading the way into 2016

The rise of video bloggers and the popularity of video content sharing has changed the dynamics of consumer/brand interaction online. Social networking sites are beginning to introduce innovative ways that enable people to share video content on social media. Facebook has already tested out the concept of video images for profiles, meaning you can have a video as a profile instead of a picture.

8. Culture relevance

2016 will see more brands pushing towards enhancing their online engagement with customers by appealing to the diverse aspects of society, especially in the continent. We have seen the introduction of dark skin toned emojis. Dove have recently developed curly-haired emoji's and will be launching the "Dove Love Your Curls" emoji keyboard to diversify the existing set of emojis to help promote the Dove Quench products for women with naturally curly hair. Dove will also partner with Twitter so that every time someone uses a #LoveYourCurls hashtag, a custom Dove Curly Emoji will auto-generate within the tweet.

Music and mobile are already huge in Africa  Ion Chiosea  123RF.com

9. Mobile radio streaming

Radio listening has moved beyond the traditional radio set. There is an increasingly young audience preferring to listen to their favourite station via online streaming, especially with many consumers commuting for many hours to work every day - it helps with the monotony of the journey besides keeping them up to date.

Lastly and more generally, mobile advertising will claim its fair share of ad spend as advertisers and marketers try to reach the African consumer.

This is an incredible time for digital, platforms, content types, social media networks and advertising solutions and the radical transformations that are taking place globally will soon find their way on the African continent.
The art of predicting how content marketing will change, or which new technologies or channels we will need to adapt to and/or adopt in this day and age does not get any easier.

What is easy to predict, however, is that the presence of content marketing's well-known golden threads will be still weaving their magic... smiling knowingly as they go.

Just look at some of the quotes from the Content Marketing Association CMA Summit held in London on 3 December 2015.

"Content has to be good!" Anna Watkins, MD Guardian Labs

"I want the offline (real-world) experience in-store to match the content I get..." Allyson Stewart Allen, CEO International Marketing Partners

"It starts with engagement." Shaul Olmert - CEO, Playbuzz

"Brands should be more like publishers..." Michael Sadicario - Chief Revenue Officer, Storyful

Nothing new here, you say. Yes it's not, and that's the whole point! The foundation on which content marketing itself is based, is not going to change. What will always change however, is the new (and old) channel/screen competing for our attention.

With that in mind take Twitter, which is in the throes of allowing users to publish long-form content, and think of the fracas it will cause in an already volatile social space. Brands that left Twitter for Instagram, or are allocating large budget to Facebook, perhaps keeping a little aside for experimenting with Snapchat, will now be faced with yet another conundrum.

Video hubs

Trying to traverse the video market could be equated to being in the middle of a war zone. Facebook has been testing a hub that will host video content where users can browse all types of video material. They've just announced live broadcasting for all, giving Periscope a run for its money. YouTube on the other hand announced YouTube Red, an ad-free subscription service that will give users access to exclusive streaming and videos that can be saved and watched offline. Competition for Amazon Prime and Netflix, perhaps?

Not even Twitter will be left out in the cold. They recently made video far more integrated in its offering and so far they've seen a significant increase in native video views, up 150 times across Twitter, Vine and Periscope.

Serial and Invisibilia fans can rejoice, as the podcast is by no means dead. If you were not watching this space, I would highly advise... The Stockholm tech company Acast, has been chosen by Buzzfeed and the Financial Times to host and distribute their podcasts going forward (as its currently free), and Google is following in the footsteps of Spotify, by bringing podcasting to its Play Music hub - launch date still to be determined.

Content with purpose

With so many places to be, it's rather alarming to see in the Content Marketing Institute's 2016 Benchmarks Report fewer marketers have a documented content strategy than last year. Without a comprehensive strategy in place, you could well be creating content that might serve no purpose. Plus, by outlining a game plan, you will be in a far better position to decide on how (and why) to tackle new and shiny environments, similar to above.

So, if there's one thing you do in 2016, please take the time to develop a solid strategy, document it, and stay ahead of the curve.
Agencies need to start delivering on what clients want and need, in order to survive the current crisis that they are experiencing.

"The individuals that have the greatest ability to survive are those that can adapt to the changing conditions of their environment," reflected Charles Darwin.

This quote has never been more relevant to the advertising industry than now. There is no doubt that the advertising industry is going through flux and, some might even say, a crisis. Agency creative workloads are growing, but client fees are in decline.

Some clients have supplanted agencies in providing leadership for brand strategies, media choices and production. Multinational agencies stretch their resources and downsize to generate holding company profit margins. Traditional agencies struggle to prove that they have digital and social capabilities.

Agency difficulties are great, but the ad industry is neither the first nor last industry to face a crisis. Over the last three years, I have conducted Radar surveys consistently for close to 40 agencies and literally hundreds of clients. These agencies span every discipline: the so-called 'traditional', digital, media, PR, strategic consultancies, multinational and independent. And the themes are consistent.

They never change and only vary according to the degree the specific agencies are delivering. Some are doing an outstanding job, others are good, some are satisfactory and then there are those who are not.

What is interesting is that these trends are not unique to South Africa. They are universal. They are also not rocket science or new. The ones I touch on are not in any order of importance and are but a few of many:

Understanding of clients' business: One of the greatest bugbears clients have, is the lack of understanding of their specific business and commerce in general. This is particularly relevant to middle management, and sadly, as I have witnessed, even some senior managers. They are seen to be too transactional and for the most, good at taking and delivering briefs. But the minute they are asked a question regarding the business, they are devoid of a point of view. This then results in bland discussions and very little thought leadership in terms of adding value to clients' business.

One of the greatest bugbears clients have, is the lack of understanding of their specific business and commerce in general. This is particularly relevant to middle management, and sadly, as I have witnessed, even some senior managers. They are seen to be too transactional and for the most, good at taking and delivering briefs. But the minute they are asked a question regarding the business, they are devoid of a point of view. This then results in bland discussions and very little thought leadership in terms of adding value to clients' business. Agility and the need for speed: We are living in a world that is changing rapidly and irrevocably. Marketers have to adapt to this ever-volatile, changing landscape, as do agencies. However, many agencies have systems that hamper this need and this is causing extreme frustration amongst clients. Marketers want agencies that are agile, proactive, innovative and can adapt to these changes. For many, speed to market is a competitive point of difference.

We are living in a world that is changing rapidly and irrevocably. Marketers have to adapt to this ever-volatile, changing landscape, as do agencies. However, many agencies have systems that hamper this need and this is causing extreme frustration amongst clients. Marketers want agencies that are agile, proactive, innovative and can adapt to these changes. For many, speed to market is a competitive point of difference. Diversity and transformation: The ongoing and imperative need from clients is for agencies to transform in the South African sense of the word. Too many white agency people are making advertising for a country where the majority of consumers are black. After 21 years of democracy this is unacceptable.

The ongoing and imperative need from clients is for agencies to transform in the South African sense of the word. Too many white agency people are making advertising for a country where the majority of consumers are black. After 21 years of democracy this is unacceptable. Integration and co-creation: The word "integration" is being bandied about constantly and is often misunderstood in terms of clients' needs. This is not only about integrating all channels of the communication mix into the solution. What clients are bemoaning is the lack of integration between the different specialist agencies working on their business. The lack of collaboration and co-creation between these agencies in order to deliver solutions for their business is creating confusion. Consequently, clients feel they have to project manage their agencies. While every agency wants a bigger slice of the pie, clients don't want turf wars, but rather a holistic solution that has been co-created by all their agencies. Herein lies the opportunity for agencies to take the lead.

The word "integration" is being bandied about constantly and is often misunderstood in terms of clients' needs. This is not only about integrating all channels of the communication mix into the solution. What clients are bemoaning is the lack of integration between the different specialist agencies working on their business. The lack of collaboration and co-creation between these agencies in order to deliver solutions for their business is creating confusion. Consequently, clients feel they have to project manage their agencies. While every agency wants a bigger slice of the pie, clients don't want turf wars, but rather a holistic solution that has been co-created by all their agencies. Herein lies the opportunity for agencies to take the lead. Digital culture: Brad Jakeman, a PepsiCo executive, berated agencies at a recent conference and called digital marketing the "most ridiculous term I've ever heard." He added: "There is no such thing as digital marketing. There is marketing - most of which happens to be digital."

Jakeman urged marketers to create digital cultures, not digital departments. "We 'ghettoize' digital as though it's the life raft tethered to the big ocean liner. And we have to move on from that."

While the SA market remains more reliant on traditional media than developed markets, we need to accelerate our culture of digital marketing. Many South African clients are urging their agencies to look beyond traditional communications. While this is not a generalisation of the industry, it is not happening enough.

To quote George Bernard Shaw: "The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."
Got a question or tip? Contact us at bizmojoidaho@gmail.com.
According to sources two of the youths were arrested on 9 January and the other two were arrested on 16 January.

Khaing Kaung San, the director of the Wanlat Foundation, said that two youths who had returned from Yangon were staying at the Naing Guest House in the Mingan quarter of Sittwe when police arrived, put blindfolds and handcuffs on them and took them away.

He said: As far as I know they came from Yangon and stayed at Naing Guest House. They were taken by the police for interrogation. They come from Hpakant in Kachin State in eastern Burma where they used to work for a gem-stone factory.

He also said that he did not know why the youths had been arrested.

Narinjara News asked at Sittwe police Station if the youths had associations with the Arakan Army, but the police refused to answer any of Narinjara's questions.

Previously, on 9 January, two youths who were allegedly members of the Arakan Army were arrested in Taungup and handed over to the army, according to local police sources quoted in an article in the Lady News Journal.

The article said that both of the arrested youths were preparing to catch the Aung Thit Sar express bus to Rangoon when they were arrested and that two of their associates had managed to evade the police.

An eye-witness said that the arrested youths were then bought before Taungup Court on the same day and taken away in an army vehicle at about 11.30am. A police officer, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the army blindfolded the youths before they took them away.
Described as an independent organization not under any other group, the SNA claims to represent the Shan people of northern Burma. With a population estimated at 300,000, the Red Shantranslated to Shan-ni in Burmese and Tai-leng in Shanlargely live in southern Kachin State, particularly near Mohnyin and Bhamo, and in Sagaing Division.

A retired Shan-ni soldier from Kachin State, who asked not to be named said: If the tiger has no fangs, the animals will not be afraid of it, if the people have no guns, we will not be safe. We cannot protect our area.

He said he believes that the establishment of an armed group will give the Red Shan a more prominent role in Burmas political dialogue, which was initiated this month with a five-day conference in Naypyitaw. A commonly held perception is that arms allow for demands to be taken more seriously at Burmas negotiating table.

The Tai-leng Nationalities Development Party (TNDP), which won one state seat in Novembers parliamentary election, asked the government to declare a Shan-ni State made up of territory within Kachin State and Sagaing Division.

The Pa-O and Wa also called for self-administrated ethnic states at Januarys Union Peace Conference. These proposed states would lie within Shan States current boundaries.

Such calls for separation have been met with concern by other ethnic leaders, including Khun Htun Oo, chairman of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD).

In a SHAN article published in Burmese on 15 January he said: If we give states to [these] ethnic groups, our country will face problems like Yugoslavia, referring to the eastern European federation which broke up along ethnic lines following a violent civil war in the 1990s.

The Union of Myanmar will disappear, he added.

Little else is known or was revealed about the SNA, including their numbers, political positions, activities or their leadership.

Now is not the time to say who our commander is, said the retired Shan-ni soldier.

Officially, the SNA says it was formed in July 1989, but the group is not included on lists of Burmas active armed organizations. Some suggest that the year could correspond to the formation or recognition of a Red Shan faction in one of the other armed struggles in which they were involved.

After Burmas 1988 pro-democracy uprising, it is known that many Shan-ni served in the All-Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), a political and armed opposition group that was particularly active in ethnic border areas. These Shan-ni soldiers later formed affiliations with the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA-S) in the 1990s.

A Red Shan brigade within the RCSS/SSA-S was active in northern Shan State and was commanded by the controversial former ABSDF leader Than Chaungalso known as Than Gyaung, Khun Kyaw or Myint Soewho, since 2006, has been serving a life sentence in Tharrawaddy Prison, according to documents released by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

One of the SNAs promises is to protect local people bullied by other armed groups. Since the 1960s, Red Shan communities have been situated between two powerful militariesthe Kachin Independence Army/Organization (KIA/O) and the Burma Army. They report having suffered abuses from both sides in the conflict, which has reportedly contributed to the organization of informal Shan-ni militias over the years.

The SNA has reported one clash with the government this month: an outbreak of fighting on 11 January on the Burma-India border. They claimed that Burmese troops from ground force Battalion 369 in Sagaings Homelin Township surrounded them on all sides, including from within Indian territory. Three SNA soldiers were allegedly arrested by the Burma Army and one SNA sergeant was killed.

By Staff / Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N)

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
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CHICAGO  High yields and a statutory lien on state aid layered over its general obligation pledge are what the junk-rated Chicago Public Schools offer investors willing to overlook its precarious cash ledger, bleak budget outlook, and downward credit spiral.

The Chicago Board of Education plans to bring an $875 million issue that includes $795 million of tax-exempt securities and $89 million of taxable paper late next week. JPMorgan is running the books and Barclays is a co-senior manager.

"We believe the various layers of protection for bondholders here provide a secure credit structure that bondholders can rely on," district treasurer Jennie Bennett tells potential investors in an online presentation.

Market participants generally believe that the district, for the time being, will continue to enjoy market access because of the bonds' structural support and its ties to the city government, as long as there are enough distressed-debt buyers.

CPS bonds have been trading at a 350 to 375 basis point spread to the Municipal Market Data's top-rated benchmark.

"Buyers are placing a high value on the statutory lien on state aid, the Chicago economy, and the need for CPS to rebuild its credit quality in order to maintain market access," says Paul Mansour, head of municipal research at Conning Asset Management. "Absent bold action, the hurdles keep growing higher and at some point a debt restructuring may be needed.

"Potential investors need to keep this in mind," Mansour said.

"Based on what we currently know, only the most speculative investors should look at CPS and they should start paying attention to dollar price, not just yield: at some point, the market will realize how distressed CPS is and start trading the name on projected recovery value, regardless of yield," writes NewOak Capital LLC in a new blog post on the city, school district, and state authored by Triet Nguyen, Wendy Berry, and Shelley Michelson.

CPS' offering statement lays bare the district's past fiscal sins: draining reserves and debt restructuring to balance the books, risky assumptions like relying on absent state help, and a dwindling cash position.

The district's most pressing budget strain is its budget assumption of $480 million of so far nonexistent additional state funding either through pension help or greater aid to balance the district's $5.6 billion fiscal 2016 budget.

Gov. Bruce Rauner has warned the district not to expect a bailout, although he has offered assistance if Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel uses his political muscle to sway Democratic lawmakers to support his governance and policy proposals.

The district's chief executive officer, Forrest Claypool, tells investors in the presentation that he's confident state lawmakers will step up, eventually, but adds: "We are prepared to make whatever reductions are necessary including in the classroom" to address the shortfall.

Without the expected state help, says Ron DeNard, the district's top fiscal officer, "CPS will use short term financing to address the remaining budget gap" in addition to cuts that would include an administrative overhaul and teacher layoffs.

The Numbers

About $393 million of the bond proceeds will fund capital projects; $135 million will refund variable-rate debt that is being shifted to a fixed rate; $86 million will retire short-term debt used to cover swap termination payments; and $206 million represents a scoop-and-toss restructuring in which the district borrows to pay off maturing bonds. The deal capitalizes $46 million of interest, and folds in $8.8 million of issuance costs.

Underscoring the district's fiscal strains, principal amortization is pushed off far into the future beginning in 2035 on the tax-exempt series and in 2033 on the taxable series, with most repaid in the final maturities.

The floating-rate conversion eases the district's floating-rate risks and its need to find new bank support to replace letters of credit that are expiring in the coming months. The district has more than $1 billion of variable-rate paper with additional letters of credit expiring in 2017, 2018, 2031, and 2034, according to the offering statement.

The district no longer faces any swap risks after terminating its 10 interest-rate swaps, paying a total of $242 million in termination fees, after downgrades last year triggered termination events.

The district originally faced a negative valuation of $275 million on the swaps, which was reduced through negotiation and shifting market winds. The district dipped into its debt stabilization fund for $142 million of the costs and drew on a short-term credit line issuance of tax and anticipation notes, according to bond documents.

The district faces no other potential default triggers on its bank-related contracts should its credit fall further.

The district has not been shy about highlighting it precarious liquidity having last year released a fiscal update from consultant Ernst & Young warning that warned the district was on course to run out of cash early this year.

The offering statement and investor presentation illustrate just how deeply CPS relies on its short-term lines to stay afloat.

The district has several credit lines in the form of tax and anticipation note issues for the current fiscal year that are due Dec. 27. The district tapped $565 million in TANs initially purchased by JPMorgan late last year and has an up to $370 million line with Barclays. The district has tapped out the Barclays line but will repay $170 million with the bond proceeds.

The district expects to maintain monthly cash flow of $500 million until June when it will drop to a narrow $33 million when its $600 million teachers' pension payment is due. A deposit of $260 million is due next month to cover future debt service. CPS is gambling that it will have new fiscal 2017 lines in place ahead of the teachers' pension payment.

The balance sheet projections anticipate a line of credit draw of $174 million next month and a $370 million draw in June. The numbers assume state aid comes in on time and do not assume additional state help or that proposed cost cutting measures are achieved.

"We have put plans in place to assure the liquidity we need in the near term," Claypool said.

Claypool reiterates the district's case for state help, arguing that it accounts for 20% of Illinois' students but gets just 15% of aid, resulting in a funding disparity that is worsened by the high number of impoverished students educated by the district. Equitable funding would provide an infusion of $450 million annually.

The district's fiscal mess grew out of its use of non-recurring moves like debt restructuring, reserves, and a three-year partial pension holiday as its teacher pension contribution and debt load continued to rise. That's driven up its structural deficit to $1 billion with one-shots exhausted. The district has $9 billion of unfunded pension liabilities.

The district's fund balance  which helped prop up its ratings in the double-A category just a few years ago  was $1 billion as recently as 2012. The fund balance was down to $360 million in fiscal 2015, about $138 million better than expected.

The district's cost to service its $6.1 billion debt load hit $534 million in fiscal 2015, accounting for 9.5% of expenses, and hits a high of $602 million in 2025. Those numbers don't factor in the upcoming issuance.

School officials warned that the help of the Chicago Teachers Union, the city, and state would be needed to eliminate a $1 billion deficit in fiscal 2017 beginning July 1. The district says it can balance the budget with $272 million of cuts and $450 million in additional state help.

The district also wants to raise $170 million in additional property taxes by reinstating a .26% property tax levy for pensions that was eliminated in 1996. The district also wants to shift its $170 million price tag for covering a portion of the teacher's pension contribution on to teachers.

Both have uncertain prospects as the first requires state approval and the latter must be approved by the union, which has warned CPS demands could prompt a strike, another of the investor risks outlined in the offering statement.

New Oak says state help is no panacea.

"A state bailout and/or takeover of the school district's pension system would certainly help but would not obviate the need for structural change via new revenue sources, or radical cost-cutting and cost-sharing measures," the firm's blog post says.

"The tipping point is when the market can't see a solution and I would say between the state and the city you are getting closer to that," says John Mousseau, director of fixed income Cumberland Advisors Inc. "The one saving grace is that you still have a city and a state whose problems are solvable from a resource standpoint but where the politics are overwhelming any chance to get to a solution."

The statutory lien, which wouldn't stave off a debt service default but would help recovery rates in a bankruptcy, shouldn't fully calm investors. Rauner has suggested CPS is a candidate for bankruptcy if the state were to approve enacting a general Chapter 9 statute as he's promoted.

"Our thought is that the statutory lien is just a lien on appropriations. We don't know how that statutory lien can be enforced if money isn't appropriated," says Michael Comes, portfolio manager at Cumberland.

Ratings

Standard & Poor's hit the district with two notch downgrade ahead of this deal, pushing it further down on the speculative grade scale to B-plus from BB, leaving it on CreditWatch with negative implications "while it continues to monitor the board's efforts to maintain sufficient liquidity to meet its financial obligations."

The district's S&P rating is now four levels into speculative grade territory, at the same level as Moody's Investors Service, which lowered its rating to B1 from Ba3 in December and is also reviewing the credit for a downgrade. It is no longer asked to rate CPS' new borrowing.

Fitch Ratings rates CPS bonds at junk BB-plus, with a negative watch; it hasn't yet rated the new deal, and neither has Kroll Bond Rating Agency, which rates CPS at the lowest investment grade level of BBB-minus with a negative outlook.

Public Financial Management Inc. and Sycamore Advisors LLC are advising the district. Chapman and Cutler LLP and Charity & Associates PC are bond counsel.

Adding to the negative headlines CPS faces, the Republican minority leaders of the General Assembly will unveil a legislative initiative Wednesday that would pave the way for a state takeover of the district and provide a potential path to bankruptcy, according to legislative sources.

Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno and House Minority Leader Jim Durkin will hold a news conference to announce the proposals that would also pave the way for an eventual shift to an elected school board. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel currently holds sway over board appointments. Emanuel and Claypool have rejected past calls for the district to consider Chapter 9 and Democrats who control the General Assembly are opposed to bankruptcy legislation. A published report said the legislation would also allow Chicago the ability to pursue Chapter 9.

CPS came under state oversight after a financial collapse in the late 1970s. Sweeping school reform legislation handed control of the schools back to then Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in 1995.

CPS issued a statement late Tuesday in response to comments from Rauner, a Republican, earlier in the day criticizing the district's request for nearly $500 million in help and his hint of the announcement coming Wednesday. "Not only that, the governor's comments are deeply irresponsible as CPS and the CTU are working feverishly to reach a deal that would cut costs while preventing midyear layoffs, and the district prepares for even deeper cuts to the bureaucracy," Claypool said in the statement.

Emanuel's administration issued a statement late Tuesday reiterating his opposition to any measure promoting bankruptcy for CPS.

"The mayor is 100% 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," the statement read.
Former Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Margaret Nasha who yesterday quit the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) to join the Umbrella for Democratic Party has been given the role of UDC advisor.

Nasha, a former cabinet minister left the BDP yesterday. In a press statement released today, UDC spokesperson Moeti Mohwasa celebreated Nashas decision saying her decision to finally put to bear her vast political skill and governance experience as part of a national movement to secure a new Botswana, a Botswana in which all citizens will believe that they can become anything they wished to become if they applied themselves diligently and creatively, is a watershed moment not only in the history of the UDC but also in the political journey of our country.

The statement further reads, Although Dr Nasha had pleaded to join as an ordinary member and activist, she has been prevailed upon to take on, given her experience, the role of advisor to the key offices at the level of the UDC and at contracting party levels, an assignment we are confident she will dispatch with distinction.





Dr Nashas exquisite talents and credentials are compelling, and add further depth to the personnel and capabilities that the UDC intends to cultivate towards both the securing of a win in the next general elections and the subsequent formation of a new peoples Government in 2019, said Mohwasa.




Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a province that has Canadas highest proportion of aboriginal populations, Manitoba should be setting the standard for what works in education. The high school graduation rates here, generally, for aboriginal people  and especially in the First Nations population  are dismal compared with the rest of Canada. Thats been true for a long time.

But Manitoba has not set the pace on getting children ready to start school, to stick with it and to succeed. The record shows other provinces  Ontario and Saskatchewan in their strategies; B.C. and Alberta in funding levels  have good ideas on how to attack the embarrassing gap between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal graduation rates.

In Manitoba, which first set out its plan to close the gap in 2004, about 55 per cent of aboriginal students graduate high school on time, compared with 96 per cent of non-aboriginal students. That is whats called a proxy rate: comparing the number that graduated to the number in Grade 9 four years earlier. The numbers are worse when individual students were tracked through four years.

The gap, instead of closing, has widened, Manitoba auditor general Norm Ricard said in a recent report.

Getting just ahead of the bad news, Education Minister James Allum released a new plan earlier this month. Allum says an NDP government would tighten up on the strategy, but aside from finally making some statistics public  you measure what you value, and you value what you measure, the saying goes  its not entirely clear how good the new plan is.

Ricards office found, to date, there has been a general lack of leadership from the Education Department: after having set out the broad goals in past years, it pretty much sat back and let school divisions and the other government departments involved with improving life for aboriginal people do their own things.

That, in essence, is the absence of strategy. It is throwing cash at a problem to see what sticks. It is a recipe for wasting money.

There was marginal improvement on the aboriginal high school graduation rate in 2013-14, but the department cannot say why. More damningly, it cannot explain why the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students has grown. The obvious observation is the plan  devoid of hard targets, best-practice guidance and analysis of what works where in Manitoba  has done little good.

Thats remarkable. With the highest percentage of aboriginal people among provincial populations residing in Manitoba (16.7 per cent)  and in Winnipeg (11 per cent)  one might think this province would be the think-tank on good educational programs and policies for getting children ready for school, for catching deficits, tracking achievement and supporting aboriginal students, families and their communities.

One only has to look at the work done in Saskatchewan  with equally high numbers of aboriginal students in the system  through its task force on education achievements for aboriginal people and its new policies, to see the difference in planning.

Further, as Ricards report pointed out, attacking the problem comes at a price: B.C. and Alberta spend more than $1,100 per aboriginal student on educational supports; Manitoba spends $290.

The disparity in expenditures would not be so discouraging if the money (approximately $9.1 million annually in Manitoba) was well-spent, targeted and accounted for, but its not. In fact, outside of global graduation rates, reporting on outcomes from school divisions has been almost wholly anecdotal.

Posting provincewide grad rates merely reveals a disparity. Its time Manitoba finds out which programs work, and why, to help aboriginal students change the odds of getting through high school.

 Winnipeg Free Press
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 25/01/2016 (2460 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This week, we celebrate the centennial of women winning the right to vote. We remember that Manitoba was the first province in Canada to do so. We remember that three feminist leaders  Nellie McClung and sisters Francis Beynon and Lillian Beynon Thomas  grew up in Westman. And we remember that the global fight for womens equality is not over yet.

Beyond getting rights like voting, the early feminists had two big dreams. The two dreams were a society without alcohol, and a world without war.

Feminists saw prohibition of alcohol as a specific solution to the overall problem of men exploiting women. Men depleted their familys grocery money to buy alcohol. Men got drunk and violent and abused their wives and children. The remedy seemed simple: get rid of alcohol.

But the answer was not simple. We tried Prohibition of alcohol  introduced in Manitoba along with female suffrage in 1916. But Prohibition did not end alcohol abuse, it just added problems like crime. We now understand that the answer is complicated, and involves legalization, regulation and rehabilitation. We are still learning that lesson today with drugs.

And feminists of a century ago share some of the blame for todays War on Drugs, with its racism, its mass incarceration, and its failure to stop the illegal drug trade.

Canadian feminist leader Emily Murphy was one of the first to whip up hysteria in white society over race and drugs. (In a more positive campaign, Murphy and McClung were part of the Famous Five case. This enabled Canadian women  as persons  to become senators.)

In her 1922 book, The Black Candle, Murphy spread alarm about non-white races and drugs. Murphy advocated harsh laws to crack down on users of drugs like opium, cocaine and a new menace  marijuana. (This was years before the movie Reefer Madness.).

We are still saddled today with the fallout from the racism and bad policies of Murphy and other drug warriors.

The second big dream was a world without war. While the First World War was raging, McClung wrote about that dream in her book In Times Like These. McClungs writing was conversational, ironic and humorous. Yet she was fierce in criticizing men, in defending women and in identifying the cause of war.

Away back in the cave-dwelling days, McClung wrote, there was a simple and definite distribution of labour. Men fought and women worked. Men fought because they liked it; and women worked because it had to be done.

McClung described the sad scene at Manitoba train stations after war was declared. Men were happy to go off to war. But the men were deserting their families, abandoning their children, leaving their wives crying bitterly.

But there would not have been a world war, McClung asserted, if women had been in the German Reichstag. If theyd had a say in governing, German women would have stopped the Kaiser and his brutal warlords from starting the war. A mother herself, McClung sympathized with mothers in Germany: I do not believe women with boys of their own would ever sit down and willfully plan slaughter.

Although men like to fight, war is not inevitable, McClung wrote. War is a crime committed by men and, therefore, when enough people say it shall not be, it cannot be. This will not happen until women are allowed to say what they think of war.

Sentiments like McClungs have been hotly debated over the years. Could there be an end to war if women shared equally in decision-making? Interestingly, we seem to be coming around full circle today, with McClungs thoughts having a new resonance. More involvement of women really does change societies for the better.

So what about the feminist dreams of a century ago? There is progress. Women got the vote, a big accomplishment. In 1916, Manitoba set an example for the rest of Canada. Today, womens rights in countries like Canada set an example for the rest of the world.

A society without alcohol? Not possible: prohibition of alcohol (like drugs) does not work. But we can get better at dealing with these problems. A world without war? That actually looks more possible today than 100 years ago.

McClungs In Times Like These remains a classic expression of first-wave feminism in Canada. The book is still a provocative read today.

The world, McClung concluded, has suffered long from too much masculinity and not enough humanity.

 David McConkey is an active citizen. Contact him and read previous columns at davidmcconkey.com.
A court has heard that a man who is trying to withdraw his guilty plea for the murder of an elderly man in Dublin has been assessed by a psychiatrist.

Kenneth Cummins of Ringsend Park, Dublin 4, initially denied beating Thomas Horan to death at a senior citizens complex two years ago.
Enda Kenny has asked David Cameron to visit Ireland for the commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Taoiseach said his Downing Street counterpart would consider the invitation in due course if that is appropriate.

Speaking after their meeting at Number 10 in London, Mr Kenny said the pair had discussed the comprehensive, inclusive, sensitive centenary celebrations of the rebellion.

I have invited the Prime Minister to come over himself at some time during the year, if that is appropriate, and obviously he will consider that in due course, he said.

Mr Cameron acknowledged the anniversary of important events in our shared history.

Well mark them, as we should, in a spirit of mutual respect, inclusiveness and friendship, he added.

Suggestions last year that a member of the Royal family could be invited to take part in the main State celebrations provoked an outcry.

The proposal was then binned and a decision taken that will see Dublin-based ambassadors as the only representatives of foreign governments asked to attend events on Easter weekend.

However, Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys has since hinted the Prince of Wales could be invited to some of the peripheral events.

Two weeks ago, Mr Kenny declared his disappointment in Northern Irelands new First Minister Arlene Fosters plans to snub commemorations.

The Rising was a seminal moment in Irish history which ultimately led to partition and the creation of both the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Ms Foster denounced the Rising as an attack on the State and democracy which more recently, she said, gave succour to violent republicans in the North.

Throughout 2016, more than 40 State ceremonial events will be held as part of the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme.

The climax will be a parade along Dublins main thoroughfare OConnell Street - where the Proclamation of Independence was declared outside the General Post Office.

Oxford and Cambridge Universities are among major UK institutions marking the anniversary.

Centenary celebrations at Londons Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Centre, as well as venues in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and other cities are among more than 87 events in the UK throughout the year.
By Daniel McConnell, Political Editor

The Government is to announce 1,000 extra social housing units tomorrow, in a bid to address the nationwide homes crisis.

Environment Minister Alan Kelly is to bring a memo to Cabinet for approval and will later publish a report marking the first anniversary of his social housing strategy.

In it, he is expected to confirm that an additional 13,000 social housing units have been delivered through a variety of schemes including refurbishments of voided units and new builds.

Mr Kelly has come under pressure in recent months over the prolonged crisis and for the large spike in the numbers of families presenting to State services as homeless.

The Government has committed more than 2.2bn over 10 years to address the shortage in social housing across the country.

Today, Mr Kelly was criticised heavily for his relaxation of planning laws regarding apartments.

New minimum apartment sizes introduced by Mr Kelly last month cannot actually be built, according to the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).

RIAI vice-president and housing spokesman John OMahony said it was not possible to design an apartment within the new minimum sizes because the smallest permissible rooms would not fit inside.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail are to bring a private members motion in the Dail in relation to the Governments homelessness strategy.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Fianna Fails environment spokesman Barry Cowen said his party is calling on the Government to get real about the scale of the housing crisis.

We are calling out the poor performance of the housing sector. We are specifically highlighting that Michael Noonan said last year that he was instructing Nama to build 20,000 homes, he said.

We believed that was to happen in one year.

Now we hear it is 2,000 homes over five years.

This is completely insufficient to meet the demands of the crisis.
Joan Burton has said that any Fine Gael / Labour Coalition Government propped up by independents would put Ireland's recovery at risk.

The Tanaiste said she is deeply concerned at the suggestion that the current Government might have to make a deal with independents after the election to stay in power.
Telecommunication companies Virgin Media Ireland and Meteor Mobile have avoided criminal convictions for over-charging customers.

Both Virgin Media Ireland and Meteor Mobile had been ordered in December by Judge John O'Neill at Dublin District Court to each pay a 20,000 to four charities and good causes.

Today he was furnished with receipts showing the donations had been made and on finalising the case he struck out the charges.

After hearing evidence of a catalogue of errors which saw customers ripped off by both firms, Judge O'Neill said he could understand the frustration they felt when complaints were not resolved despite their repeated efforts.

Judge O'Neill noted they had no prior convictions and have refunded the 18 complainants. He had said it would be better for the charities to benefit rather than imposing convictions and fines. The money was donated to : Pieta House, the Simon Community, the Merchant Quay Project and Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin in Dublin.

At an earlier stage, prosecution counsel Christian Keeling had said the aggravating factors were the phone companies' failures to deal with customer complaints in a timely and courteous manner.

Following an investigation by industry watchdog Comreg, Virgin Media Ireland and Meteor Mobile pleaded guilty at Dublin District Court to charges under Section 45 of the Communications Act. Virgin Media's seven charges were legacy issues as a result of taking over the UPC network, Judge O'Neill was told.

The court heard customers were over-charged after getting special offers for TV, phone and internet packages and the issue was only resolved after they became frustrated and contacted Comreg.

The court heard a Meteor customer was threatened with legal action and a debt collection company, and another where a man was charged more than 1,000 after he cancelled his account while a woman was expected to pay 400 for calls made by a person who stole her phone.

Comreg compliance officers Miriam Kilraine and Melanie O'Beirne gave evidence at the hearing.

Ms Kilraine told the court that in January last year a customer was offered a 45 per month package, a 50% reduction, for six months, with unlimited calls. However in February the customer received an incorrect bill.

The next complainant had been dealing with the company on behalf of her elderly mother who received a broadband and unlimited calls offer for the first six months at 75 per month. However she was over-charged various sums from for the next two months, with one invoice for 117 and another for 93.

The next complainant, a mother-of-four, had signed up with UPC, now owned by Virgin Media Ireland, for a 50% reduced price package for the first six months, but the discount was not reflected in the following two months billing, including one in which she ended up paying almost twice the agreed amount.

She found the experience of dealing with their customer services infuriating.

Ms Kilraine said the next complainant had signed up in October last year to a 95 per month deal but the bills for the next three months were 139, 100 and 107.

A customer signed up in November 2014 for a Virgin 25 per month for the first six months deal and 60 a month thereafter. However, their first bill was for 55 and they complained to the company but felt they were not believed about having been given the special offer.

Another case related to a customer who had cancelled their account after they moved abroad in June last year but who had money debited from his bank account for the next four months.

Customer Owen Finn had told the court that in January last year he had been given a 73 a month for the first four months package after which the price would rise to 117, for phone, broadband and television services.

However, in February he paid 106 and he later received another bill for 151 and was told by a company representative that this was caused by a glitch. He told the court he had to make several calls to their customer service agents and like the other complainants had to bring it to the attention of Comreg.

Aisling Kelly BL, for Virgin Media Ireland, had said that company apologised. The issues were a legacy offences of UPC which Virgin had taken over. The issues were a result of unfortunate human error, she said, adding that billing assistance had been mishandled by a telesales company no longer used by Virgin.

Comreg analyst Melanie O'Beirne investigated the 11 complaints against Meteor. She said one man was wrongfully threatened with legal actions and a debt collection company for 1,445. There was a system error after he had thought he had cancelled his account.

Another Meteor customer signed up via the company's web-chat service for a plan worth 59 a month in February but 70 was debited from her bank account twice, in March and April. They had no record of the live web-chat when they gave the offer, the court heard.

A customer got an upgrade at the Meteor store on Grafton St in Dublin and ended up getting charged for two different numbers and two different plans notwithstanding that she only had one phone. In that three-month period she was over-charged 97.

Another dissatisfied customer told Comreg she tried everything but she said I'm getting nowhere. She changed her plan in December 2014 and the first two bills were higher than expected; she was over-charged 43 and her efforts to get refunded were unsuccessful until the telecoms watchdog agency got involved.

Judge O'Neill heard a customer opted for a 24-month contract with a 50% discount in August 2014 but the company refused to honour the agreement.

In September last year a customer in Galway got a 9.99 a month package but was charged 20 a month. She ended up paying an extra 60.

A man who changed his mind about continuing with mobile broadband and cancelled the account in June last year still got charged 9.99 a month until January 2015.

Ms O'Beirne said the eighth complainant, a 73-year-old man, told Comreg he was disgusted by his treatment by Meteor. The pensioner had asked in January to cancel his account but was told by a customer service agent that he would have to wait until November. Shortly after that his son advised him that this was not correct, and the man was later told by the company he would have to cancel via email.

Judge O'Neill noted that the man would have ended up paying until November if he had heeded what he had been initially told by the company employee.

A woman had her phone stolen in March and contacted Meteor who assured her that her account had been suspended. However, the company attempted to bill her for 400 of calls made after the phone was stolen, and they took part of her deposit to pay off part of the bill.

The tenth complainant was over-charged 93 on four invoices issued after he had been assured his account had been cancelled.

Another mobile broadband user was over-charged 74 despite returning a dongle and closing his account.

Joe Jeffers BL, for Meteor, had said the company knew this was unacceptable. He said the case was taken seriously by the company.

He had asked the court to note Meteor had almost one million customers and the incidents outlined were mostly the result of human error. They have put in place new measures including a single management complaint process where customers won't have to be asked to rehash their story every time they speak to a representative of the company, he said.
By David Raleigh

Update (5.06pm): Gardai are questioning a man about the mugging of three schoolchildren in Limerick city this Monday morning, which may be connected to a mugging of a teenage girl on Sunday night.

Despite initial reports two girls and a boy were mugged as they made their way to school this morning, Gardai now say the victims were three boys.

The boys are said to be aged between 15 and 16.

Earlier: Gardai are questioning a man about the mugging of three schoolchildren in Limerick city this morning.

Two girls and a boy were walking on a shortcut to a local gaelscoil around 8.30am when they were approached and threatened by a man at a passageway between Athlunkard Boat Club and Lee Estate.

It is understood the man stole the girls' mobile phones and an amount of cash.

Although the two girls were not injured they were threatened by the man who is believed to have been carrying a weapon.

Gardai sealed off the area this morning and carried out a search for a possible weapon.

A 20-year old man, from the Ballinacurra Weston area of the city, has been arrested in connection with the incident.

He is being held at Mayorstone garda station.

Former mayor of Limerick, Independent councillor John Gilligan - who lives in the area where the mugging occurred - condemned the incident.

Cllr Gilligan said he has, ad nauseam, called for a CCTV camera to be installed at the walkway, which links the Island Field with Athlunkard Street, Corbally.

"We have scumbags here who would prey on anyone, young and old or the vulnerable...we can't let this happen again," he added.

"Here we have two schoolgirls mugged on their way to school, and the city council is spending 10m on doing up the walkway, and we don't have any CCTV on it."

"The area is used by people as a shortcut, and for years I've begged the authorities for a camera to be placed there," he said.

"If only to try to prevent this from happening again, we need that camera."

"I'm again calling for it to be erected there," Cllr Gilligan said.
Ireland's major racecourses endured contrasting fortunes in their attendance figures for 2015 due to the vagaries of the weather.

While meetings such as the Punchestown Festival were hit with heavy rain that saw crowds drop, the Curragh enjoyed a good year, with figures up by 6.5%.

"We had a good year at the Curragh. Thankfully we didn't have too much bad weather," said general manager Paul Hensey.

"The Sunday of Irish Champions Weekend wasn't great, but we had a good run with the weather overall, so much so that our attendances were up 6.5%.

"We were delighted with our attendances and we had strong betting figures across the board as well. It was a good year all round for the Curragh.

"When you look at the figures that were released, some fixtures were lost and Festivals were hit with unkind weather, and that can have a big effect."

Punchestown is trying to combat against the imponderable that is the weather by enticing people who book early with offers.

"We were unfortunate to be hit by very bad weather towards the end of the Festival last year," said Punchestown racing manager Richie Galway.

"Saturday has recently been the best-attended day, with an attendance of up to 29,000, but we lost about 10,000 or 12,000 off that because of the very wet weather.

"What we are trying to do to minimise the risk is to focus on our pre-sales, tickets in advance, and put on facilities that will safeguard those, to some degree, from the weather.

"Pre-sales are improving, they are strong, and is a work in progress.

"We have seen a sizeable increase at the Festival meeting the last two years and are doing so again this year with numerous offers and incentives.

"We were very unlucky with the weather. National Hunt racegoers do not necessarily expect summer weather when they come racing, but we had an inch of rain on the final day of the Festival which just made it very difficult to convince people to come.

"We'd like to keep improving the pre-sale of tickets, but a nice week would be helpful also."

The total number of racegoers in Ireland was down by 0.7% from 1.29m to 1.28m in 2015, despite there being four extra fixtures, while the average attendance fell by 1.8% from 3,704 to 3,636.

The very wet weather resulted in 10 meetings being rescheduled, as opposed to one in 2014, while attendances in the final month of the year was down almost 18,000 after the wettest December on record.

There was also a fall in the number of Irish horses in training in 2015.

However, it is far from gloom and doom.

Horse Racing Ireland is to increase prize-money by 3.1m this year from 53.4m to 56.7m while the minimum race value will rise by 1,000 to 9,000.

"We are building on our commitment to increase prize-money and to reduce administrative costs for owners and trainers," said HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh.

"Competitive levels of prize-money will help us to attract and retain owners, which remains our top priority.

"The growth in commercial sponsorship shows that confidence in racing's appeal for a large portion of the sporting public remains strong and we expect further gains in 2016."

Other areas of the Irish racing, like bloodstock sales and the sales of Irish-foaled exported horses, showed growth.

Tote betting was up 28.7% to 79.9m, despite the fact that on-course Tote betting was down 6.3% to 13.3m, while on-course betting shops showed an increase of 9.3% to 10.6m.
An unusually cold weather front has been blamed for killing 57 mostly elderly people in Taiwan.

The cold wave abruptly pushed temperatures to a 16-year record low of 4C (39.2F) in the subtropical capital where most homes lack central heating, causing heart trouble and shortness of breath for many of the victims.

In our experience, its not the actual temperature but the sudden drop thats too sudden for peoples circulatory systems, said a city spokesman who identified himself only by his surname, Chang.

The cold snap was blamed in the deaths of 40 people in the capital, Taipei, while the neighbouring New Taipei City attributed an additional 17 deaths to the cold weather.

Strokes and hypothermia were among the causes of death in New Taipei City, officials there said.

Temperatures in Taipei average 16C (60F) in January, according to Taiwans Central Weather Bureau. Because of the relatively mild weather, most households in Taiwan lack central heating, another suspected factor in the recent deaths.

New Taipei City said it was providing shelter for 91 homeless people endangered by the cold.

The cold front also left 3.5 inches of snow on Taipeis highest peak on Saturday and stranded vehicles as people headed into the mountains to see it.

The same polar front closed schools Monday in Hong Kong, where 130 people had been trapped a day earlier on a peak in the city that also seldom gets such cold weather.
Explorer Henry Worsley, who was on the brink of making Antarctic history with a solo crossing across the ice, has died, his family has announced.

The former British Army officer, 55, from Fulham, London, was 71 days in to his attempt to become the first adventurer to cross the continent completely unsupported and unassisted when he had to call for help and was airlifted off the ice on Friday.

His wife Joanna said in a statement: It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband, Henry Worsley, has died following complete organ failure; despite all efforts of ALE and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile.

Battling temperatures of minus 44, tackling white-out blizzards and treacherous ice, the ex-lieutenant colonel had passed the South Pole - covering 913 miles and was a mere 30 miles from the finish.

After spending two days unable to move from his tent, the married father-of-two took the decision to pull out of the charity adventure after suffering from exhaustion and severe dehydration.

He was flown to a hospital in Punta Arenas where he was found to have bacterial peritonitis. He underwent surgery but died on Sunday in hospital.

Peritonitis occurs when the thin layer of tissue lining of the abdomen becomes infected. Symptoms can include swelling of the abdomen, vomiting, chills, lack of appetite and a high temperature. Complications include sepsis and septic shock.

In his final statement sent from Antarctica, Lt Col Worsley described how his desire to help wounded soldiers with their rehabilitation was the central focus of his expedition.

Having been a career soldier for 36 years and recently retired, it has been a way of giving back to those far less fortunate than me, he said.

He described his sadness at having to pull out so close to completing the challenge.

The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journeys end  so close to my goal, he added.

Worsley was attempting to complete Ernest Shackletons unfinished journey to the South Pole.

He was trying to recreate the majority of the untravelled journey 100 years after Shackletons hopes of becoming the first team to cross the Antarctic continent were crushed.

Shackletons ship Endurance was trapped and sunk by pack ice in 1915, leaving his team stranded.

His wife Joanna paid tribute to her husband for reaching his goal of raising more than 100,000 to help wounded servicemen and women.

Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass, she said.

A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackletons Endurance expedition  his lifelong hero.

On behalf of myself and family, I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund.

Donations now total over 106,773.
South African prosecutors have asked the nation's highest court to reject a bid by Oscar Pistorius's lawyers to appeal against the double-amputee runner's murder conviction.

Prosecutors have filed papers with the Constitutional Court arguing that Pistorius's appeal is not valid, said National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Luvuyo Mfaku.

Lawyers for Pistorius, who killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home in 2013, had appealed to South Africa's highest court, saying another court erred when it overturned a manslaughter conviction and declared the Olympic athlete guilty of murder.

Pistorius is under house arrest while the Constitutional Court decides if it will hear the case.

Sentencing on the murder conviction is scheduled for April 18.

Pistorius's legal team maintains that the Supreme Court of Appeal, which convicted Pistorius of murder, ignored his vulnerability as a person with a disability.

It believes the court wrongly rejected a lower court's judgment that Pistorius acted out of fear when he opened fire at what he thought, by his account, was an intruder behind the closed door of a toilet cubicle.

However, prosecutors argue that they had appealed against the earlier manslaughter conviction because of an error in the way the law was applied, rather than any facts of the case, Mr Mfaku said.

Prosecutors in South Africa can appeal against convictions on questions of law, and the appeals court that convicted Pistorius of murder found that the judge who imposed the earlier manslaughter conviction committed a legal error by incorrectly applying a legal principle called "dolus eventualis".

Under that concept, a person can be convicted of murder if he or she foresaw the possibility of someone dying through their actions and went ahead anyway.

The appeals court said that regardless of who Pistorius said he thought was behind the door, he should have known someone could be killed if he fired.
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Queensland's 2016 road toll is already six above last year, following the deaths of three elderly men in hospital on Monday following separate traffic crashes.

Two pedestrians in their 70s died after crashes on the Gold Coast and near Cairns on Monday, while a third man, aged in his 80s, died in a Brisbane hospital the same day, following a Darling Downs crash on January 19.

Three elderly men have died in hospital following separate crashes in Queensland.

The Queensland road toll stands at 19, compared with 13 at the same time last year.

In the first of Monday's fatalities, police said a man aged in his 70s was crossing a road in the Cairns suburb of Westcourt, about 8.25am, when he was hit by a car.
Australia Day enthusiast David Goodall plans to spend his favourite day of the year cooking up some lamb, cranking up Slim Dusty and sipping a Toohey's Old among the 90 Australian flags that mask his front lawn.

"I'd like to pose a question to the whole of Canberra," Mr Goodall  who prefers to be called "Spurs"  said.

Former horseman David 'Spurs' Goodall of Cook with his 2 year old blue heeler R M. Spurs decorated his Cook home with 90 Australian flags. Credit:Jeffrey Chan

"If you call yourself Australian, why don't you fly a flag on Australia Day?"

He said he's had the nickname since a ranger gave him a pair of spurs at 14 years old, that he still owns at the age of 71. He's been wearing cowboy boots "for donkey's years".
Virgin Australia will continue flying to and from the popular holiday destination of Vanuatu for the time being after a team of the airline's safety experts conducted a full review of the airport's runway over the weekend.

"Following this review, we have concluded that currently our aircraft can continue to safely operate in and out of Port Vila," a Virgin spokeswoman said, referring to the carrier's three weekly Brisbane-Port Vila flights.

Vanuatu's economy is heavily dependent on tourism. Credit:David Kirkland

Air New Zealand on Friday said it would halt flights to and from Port Vila due to concerns over the condition of the runway and Qantas stopped its codesharing with national carrier Air Vanuatu on flights between Sydney and Brisbane and Port Vila for the same reason.

"We continue to monitor the condition of the runway and Virgin Australia will immediately cease all operations between Australia and Port Vila if we are not convinced that the runway is suitable for ongoing operations," the Virgin spokeswoman said. "Safety is always our number one priority and Virgin Australia would never put its passengers, crew or aircraft at risk."
Mitch Hooke, the man who spearheaded the campaign to derail Kevin Rudd's mining tax - and helped kill the Labor leader's prime ministership - has been honoured on this Australia Day for his services to the mining industry.

In 2013, Hooke stepped down as head of the Minerals Council of Australia, the lobby group which launched the ferocious 2010 ad campaign against Rudd's mining tax.

Mitch Hooke has been recognised for his work in the mining industry. Credit:Sean Davey

According to the Australian Honours and Awards Secretariat, Hooke has been honoured as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia for his "significant service to business, particularly to the mining and minerals sector, and to policy development".

Now that Tony Abbott's knights and dames honours have been abolished, the top gong available is the Companion of the Order of Australia, and several members of the business community were given the nod including the man credited with saving Westpac from collapse in the 1990s, Bob Joss.
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has dubbed the television industry's $153 million annual fees a "super profits tax" and indicated that they may no longer be appropriate for the challenged free-to-air industry.

Network bosses, who say licence fees do not reflect competitive pressure for audiences from unregulated digital platforms such as Netflix, Facebook and Google, welcomed his comments saying the abolition of fees was top of their wish list as regards media reforms.

Mitch Fifield hinted that radio licence fees could also be cut after reviews by his department. Credit:Andrew Meares

Senator Fifield was speaking after Fairfax Media revealed that the Department of Communications has recommended that the Turnbull government cut TV licence fees, which are among the highest in the world.

Asked by Sky News about the report, Mr Fifield noted that TV and radio licence fees were introduced in the late 1950s when the only media options for people were print, radio and TV.
It's Australia Day and you're several drinks down at a party in eager anticipation to see whether the next song on the Triple J countdown is the one you voted for. Suddenly you overhear that same old argument between two people over whether the day should be called Australia Day or Invasion Day. Not this one again. Frustrations aside, it always makes you feel a little weird.

Well, it should, if you're Australian.

Invasion Day marchers in 2015. Credit:Jason South

Whether it's Invasion Day or discussions of treaties and Indigenous sovereignty, it makes many of us non-Indigenous Australians feel a little uncomfortable. And here is why.

As historian Patrick Wolfe argues, Australia, for its legitimacy as a state, has always fundamentally depended on the dispossession of the Indigenous nation  Australia simply cannot exist without this invading process in play. Now, as a member of the Australian state, you owe your very existence to this process of invasion. From the land you grew up on to the dividends of your mining shares, it is all a result of the invasion process. This is not a thesis on white guilt. It is a statement of fact.
The establishment in 1788 of a European settlement on a continent that was already populated by more than 400 indigenous nations was significant, to say the least, though no cause for celebration if you happened to be a member of one of those nations. The arrival of the First Fleet ushered in 200 years of moral blindness towards Indigenous people that eventually led to a national apology to the stolen generations in 2008.

Still, Australia Day has become useful at least as a marker, signalling the end of the Long Australian Lunch that begins each year on Melbourne Cup day.

Federation Day would have been the obvious choice for us, but it was trumped by New Year's Day. Anzac Day is riding high, and perhaps Republic Day lies in our future.

Australia Day. Funny name, isn't it? There isn't an England Day, a France Day, a New Zealand Day or an Indonesia Day, though most nations set days aside for national reflection and celebration  Bastille Day, Thanksgiving Day, Waitangi Day  and such days usually recognise a seminal, often revolutionary, event in a nation's history.

Moral blindness is, of course, a very contemporary problem as well. With the encouragement of leaders on both sides of politics, we risk becoming morally blind to our responsibilities towards those who have come here as refugees seeking asylum. We can tip-toe around this and speak of human rights abuses, or a failure to honour our international treaty obligations. But why mince words in the face of the intentional brutality  psychological and physical  being inflicted by Australia on asylum-seekers, including children, imprisoned in our offshore detention centres? Why not call our asylum-seeker detention policy what it is: immoral.

It's immoral because it treats people who have committed no crime as if they were criminals. It's immoral because it fails to honour a moral principle we would normally claim as one of Australia's core values: fairness. It's immoral because it fails the basic test of human decency: treating other people with dignity and respect. Would be really enshrine "the end justifies the means" as a principle to be celebrated on Australia Day?

Celebration is vacuous triumphalism unless it can accommodate such reflections. On this day, as on Anzac Day, we like to reflect on the seductive idea of "national identity". Who are we? What does it mean to be an Australian?

As a social researcher, I have always found such questions unsettling and slightly cringeworthy. Even in cities like Melbourne or Sydney, no one knows what it means to be a Melburnian or a Sydneysider because everyone thinks their little pocket is typical. We all interpret the meaning of "Australian"  and "unAustralian"  through the prism of our own prejudices based on our own experience.

Talk of national identity generally veers towards the heroic and self-serving: irony seems to be on the wane. Even when we say apparently self-deprecatory things like "we're all larrikins at heart", we're really bragging about not being cowed by authority or convention  patently absurd, by the way, as a blanket description of how we actually live. When we claim "mateship" or "the fair go" as unique dimensions of our national character, we forget that mateship, Aussie-style, is a vestige of a white male-supremacist culture, and that every civilised country on earth values freedom, co-operation, mutual support and equal opportunity  the French were embracing liberte, fraternite, egalite even before the first boatload of free settlers had arrived in Sydney.
The only people who really care about the arrival of the First Fleet are the poor bastards who lost their country because of it.

For Australia's first people January 26 is a time to reflect on the bayonet, the poisoned water hole, the blankets infected with small pox. For the rest of us, Australia Day is just that last, much-appreciated day off at the end of the summer drinking season. A chance to burn a few snags and rack up one more skinfull before the kids go back to school.

If Australia Day is about so much more than the arrival of the white man and his guns, why not move it so we get another piss-up at the dry end of the year. Credit:Peter Braig

The disconnect between our feelings about that date  the different way it is variously understood, celebrated and mourned by white, black and everyone in between  is reason enough to consider changing it. Not dropping it, just changing it, the date and the purpose.

The date is easily dealt with because most people could see a benefit to themselves if Australia Day were evicted from January and dropped into the calendar somewhere a little more convenient; say, at the arse end of the year, in the long dry spell after Labour Day.
Our neighbour New Zealand is considering a new flag, so discussion around the barbecue this Australia Day may well gravitate to whether there is a need for Australia to have a new flag.

The main trouble is that even those who want to see Australia have a new flag are divided over what it should look like.

Some say we should keep the Australian imperial blue ensign forever. But it was not until the Flag Act in 1954 that it became the national flag. Prior to that, Australians were more familiar with the red ensign  the civil ensign, recognised by many as the unofficial Australian flag after Federation in 1901.

The blue ensign existed but was for official use and in limited circulation. At the opening of Parliament House in 1927, for instance, the flags flown were principally the British Union Jack (then still the Australian national flag) and the red ensign. The blue imperial ensign we currently take to be our flag was not centre stage.
Michael Hurley digs into traditional American folk forms. Credit:Jamie Williams

Although both now live on the American west coast, having travelled from east coast childhoods, and have impressive guitar picking skills, Michael Hurley has been releasing music for 51 years, since becoming part of the wider New York folk scene in the first half of the 1960s, while Meg Baird was part of the psych-folk underground in Philadelphia at the turn of this century and has about a decade of solo work behind her.

Yet the age gap was the least of the differences on show in this pretty if sonically underwhelming church-cum-venue: a continent and even an ocean separate them.

Whereas Hurley, playing electric guitar and surprisingly chirpy (he had a reputation once as a man not fond of a mid-gig chat) draws strongly from American roots of country and blues, Baird, on acoustic and seemingly nervously shy, is most decidedly in the thrall of late '60s English folk. In a sense he was more grounded in the "present", while she skirted timeliness, though of course it wasn't quite as straightforward as that.

Hurley looked up from under his trucker's cap occasionally, telling us that in hotel rooms the "safest place" to sleep is in the corridors instead of the bed, before returning to stories of highways, dogs, bad choices and the benefits and perils of lust. Oh yes, and CB radios. When was the last time you heard that mentioned in a song?
"With great respect to those who don't share my views and recognising our proud history of European settlement in this country and beyond, over 200 years and more, I will lend my voice to the republican movement in this country," General Morrison said in his acceptance speech on Monday night.

General Morrison, the former army chief, has vowed to make pushing for an Australian republic one of his priority issues during his tenure as Australian of the Year.

Australian of the Year David Morrison would make an ideal head of state in a future Australian republic, according to Australian Republican Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons.

"It is time, I think, to at least revisit the question so that we can stand both free and fully independent amongst the community of nations."

Australian Republican Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons. Credit:Jonathan Ng

Although he acknowledged this would be controversial, General Morrison said it was time to restart the national conversation about a republic 16 years after the defeat of the 1999 referendum.

In his first major comments on the republic since the issue flared, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was "no doubt" another referendum would take place but "the timing of that referendum has to be right".

"I have led a yes case for a republic into a heroic defeat once. I have no desire to do so again," he said. "If you really are committed to Australia becoming a republic, then you want to be sure that the manner and the timing of the referendum is as such that it is successful and that it unites rather than divides Australians."
When the organisation set up to build the WestConnex motorway acquired a former landfill site in St Peters for a road interchange, it knew it would be taking on a substantial task of land remediation.

But it might not have known that it was also entering into long and difficult months of disputes with the former owner of the site  disputes now heading for the Land and Environment Court.

An artist impression of the WestConnex St Peters interchange. Credit:WestConnex Delivery Authority

The NSW government has since accused the former owner of the site, Dial A Dump Industries, with not complying with clean-up notices at the area. The company alleges the government is over-stating the remediation concerns to reduce the valuation of the site.

Emails between the WestConnex Delivery Authority and Dial A Dump Industries, the former owner of the site, shed light on the breakdown in the relationship between the parties, which could have an impact on the overall cost of the motorway.
Mr Gow, the director of Alex Gow Funerals, was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in Governor-General Peter Cosgrove's 2016 Australia Day honours list.

Brisbane funeral director Alistair Gow has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2016 Australia Day honours list. Credit:Robert Shakespeare

But this Australia Day, the entirety of Mr Gow's life has been officially recognised  and celebrated  through the awarding of one of the nation's highest honours.

As a third-generation funeral director, Alistair Gow's family name is synonymous in Brisbane with the end of life.

The 75-year-old was told about his award just before Christmas and had been sworn to secrecy until the clock struck over to January 26.

"We don't know what the reaction will be from friends and family," Mr Gow told Fairfax Media last week.

"We've decided to just have the day at home on Australia Day and just see what happens, basically."

Despite that elapsed time, Mr Gow OAM said it was still a lot for him to comprehend.

"The fact that someone out there has recommended me for this is a very humbling sort of experience," he said.
A north Queensland company wants to meet with workers and creditors of Clive Palmer's Queensland Nickel business to discuss a plan for community ownership of the refinery.

Sister City Partners says that under the plan, workers could become shareholders and in the process achieve long-term job security for the 550 workers who still work at the refinery.

Queensland Nickel was placed in voluntary administration last Monday, three days after 237 workers were laid off at the Yabulu refinery, near Townsville.

The business blamed the low price of nickel for its decision to cut workers, and Mr Palmer has attacked the state government for refusing to guarantee a $35 million loan to help the cash-strapped refinery get by until prices recover.
Authorities are bracing for an influx of injuries on Australia Day, with heavy surf predicted for south-east Queensland's beaches.

And the public holiday is likely to end with lightning, hail and strong winds with severe thunderstorms considered likely late in the day.

Sunshine Coast surf. Credit:Surf Life Saving Queensland

Surf Lifesavers will be out in force as conditions are set to be unstable, with a strong groundswell continuing from the weekend.

Surf Life Saving Queensland state operations support officer Jason Argent said conditions were going to be unpredictable.
A second Brisbane 7-Eleven franchisee will face court next month over allegations of underpaying workers.

Sheng-Chieh Lo and his company Mai Pty Ltd will face legal action from the Fair Work Ombudsman over allegedly underpaying staff more than $82,000 at the West End store in Boundary Street.

A second Brisbane 7-Eleven faces court over allegedly underpaying staff. Credit:Glenn Hunt

According to Fair Work Australia 12 staff members, including international students, were underpaid in the year to September 2014.

It is alleged the staff were paid as little as $13 an hour and Mr Lo concealed the payments by falsifying employment records and entries to the head office payroll system.
Australian Republican Movement chair Peter Fitzsimons says he is "bemused" by WA Premier Colin Barnett's refusal to sign a declaration calling for an Australian head of state.

Mr Barnett was only state leader who declined to sign the declaration.

Colin Barnett is the one state premier who didn't sign the declaration. Credit:Aaron Bunch

Mr FitzSimons, a Fairfax columnist, says it's a "no-brainer" that Australia will become a republic, insisting support for the push is phenomenal.

He says the support from political leaders, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, was no less than a "declaration of desired independence".
The NWS said 57 cm fell in Washington at the National Zoo, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport notched a record 74.2 cm. The deepest regional total was 106.7 cm at Glengarry, West Virginia. A snowman with a pretend National Security Agency badge and a coffee cup stands in Lafayette Square Park, across from the White House in Washington on Monday. Credit:AP In the Washington suburb of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday the main thoroughfare leading into Washington was clear but virtually empty as secondary roads were clogged by slush and partly blocked by huge mounds of snow created by ploughing. Dozens waited for more than half an hour for the subway into downtown as limited metro service began. Maok Niebaur, 25, shovels snow for an elderly neighbour in Alexandria, Virginia on Sunday. Millions of Americans are digging their cars out and clearing driveways and paths on Monday. Credit:AP

"It's beautiful to watch but impossible to get through," said John Salmons, a 24-year-old designer who works at an architecture firm. "The main roads were fine, it was just the secondary roads that were worst." Even with federal government offices officially closed, the Supreme Court was open for business, scheduled to issue rulings and act on pending appeals from the snowbound courthouse across from the US Capitol building. In past storms, including hurricanes and blizzards, the court also remained open, even hearing oral arguments. A masked man walks on King Street as snow falls in Alexandria, Virginia on Saturday. Credit:Cliff Owen The entire region seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that the worst was over. "For us, snow is like a normal winter," said Viola Rogacka, 21, a fashion model from Poland, walking with a friend through New York's Times Square. "It's how it should look like."

Snow from around the Washington area is dumped in the parking lot of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington. Credit:AP Theaters reopened on Broadway after the blizzard forced them to go dark on Saturday on the recommendation of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. "We still have some areas that we have to do a lot more work on. But we've come through it pretty well," de Blasio said on ABC's Sunday program "This Week". "We think we'll be broadly up and running again at the city tomorrow." Gary Utley, 27, of Alexandria, snowboards behind a Jeep driven by his friend, as snow falls, in Alexandria, Virginia on Saturday. Credit:AP Huge losses

Massive blizzards that paralysed much of the US East Coast in the past few days are likely to cause "multi-billion" dollar economic losses in one of the worst storms in the region in over a century, reinsurance broker Aon Benfield said on Monday. Ben Osborn walks with a shovel past a line of snowed-in cars A Steet in northeast Washington on Sunday. Credit:AP "Given the physical damage to homes, businesses and other structures and automobiles, plus the high costs incurred due to business interruption, it is expected that this will end up being a multi-billion-dollar economic cost," Aon Benfield said in a note. The storm would likely be rated as one of the top 15 winter storms in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic since 1900, it added. Bill and Colleen Flynn ski across the Riverwalk Trail over the James River in Lynchburg, Virginia. Credit:Jay Westcott

It was too soon to calculate insured losses, Aon Benfield said, adding a similar storm system in January 1996 caused an estimated economic loss of $US4.6 billion ($6.59 billion) and insured loss of $US920 million ($1.32 billion) in current dollar terms. Storm surge Shawn Covelly knocks snow off his awning, on Sunday in Towson, Maryland. Credit:AP Coastal communities from North Carolina to southern New England worked to recover Sunday from moderate to major flooding that struck during high tides as a blizzard and high winds hammered the Mid-Atlantic region. The National Weather Service said coastal flood warnings remained in place Sunday from North Carolina to Maine.

A costumed character, along with pedestrians, navigate sometimes slippery conditions in New York's Times Square Sunday in the wake of a storm that dumped heavy snow along the East Coast. Credit:AP As the storm surge flooded the underground electrical infrastructure in downtown Ocean City, New Jersey, on Saturday, Delmarva Power cut power to hundreds of customers as a precaution, according to the Associated Press. Atlantic City was also hit by flooding, and firefighters struggled to deal with a blaze in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, because of flooding, the AP reported. Record high levels of water were reported in three New Jersey locations: Great Channel at Stone River, Cape May Harbor and Delaware Bay at Cape May, the Weather Channel said. Floodwaters rose to 9.27 feet in Lewes, Del., on Saturday, setting a record there. High tides Sunday pushed waters back into many New Jersey streets in coastal communities, including Sea Bright, Long Beach, Hazlet and Manasquan, but the flooding in many places soon receded, according to Asbury Park Press. Snowbound schools and US government

Washington, which has a poor track record in dealing with snow, seemed unready for a return to its Monday routine after its largest snowstorm in decades, with major airports, public buses and subways completely shut down all Sunday. Metro trains were to begin limited service starting at 7 am on Monday. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser earlier issued a public apology for commuting headaches caused by the blizzard, which locals dubbed "Snowzilla." She said crews had worked all night and Sunday, ploughing main roads and were just getting to secondary roadways and neighbourhoods. Public schools were slated to be closed on Monday across much of the Washington and Baltimore region, with some shuttered through Tuesday. All federal offices were to be closed on Monday and the US House of Representatives cancelled its voting until February 1. The Pentagon cancelled all its events. Nevertheless, walkers, sledders, some cars and the occasional cross-country skier ventured into the dazzling white Washington landscape under a bright sun.
In its first 24 hours, US presidential political candidate Bernie Sanders' political ad was viewed almost 1 million times.

Washington Post reporter John Wagner, who is on the Sanders beat, described the Democrat's new 60-second presidential campaign commercial this way:

"There are images of Iowa farms, the New Hampshire sea coast, coffee shops, kitchen tables and thousands and thousands of inspired Bernie Sanders supporters, in intimate settings and at the large-scale rallies that have come to define his campaign.

"The new 60-second television spot reaches its crescendo as Simon & Garfunkel sing "they've all come to look for America" while an expanding grid of people who've all come to see Sanders flashes on the screen."
Best of the best celebrate achievements

The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm
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What in the blazes is going on?

The owner of a storage warehouse on the Williamsburg waterfront that went up in flames a year ago recently filed a lawsuit against his tenants, claiming they are at fault for the massive inferno. But neighbors and those who lost their possessions in the pyre say theyve been asking fire authorities to explain what happened for months with no answers, and now theyre wondering what he knows that they dont.

I find it interesting that he is filing this suit right now, said Steve Chesler, co-chair of activist group Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which is fighting to transform the Kent Avenue property into parkland for years. Maybe he has access to information, and hopefully that is going to come to light soon.

Businessman Norm Brodsky, who was occupying two floors of an adjoining facility with his wife Elaine at the time of the fire, filed a $3-million suit on Jan. 15 alleging that storage companies Citipostal  part of CitiStorage, which Brodsky helped found  and Recall Holdings are to blame for the blaze that destroyed his home and cherished belongings.

The suit  first reported by the Daily News  claims the tenants were responsible for maintaining the space and so are liable for the destruction, though does not outline how they neglected to take care of the property.

But this came as news to the other victims and local activists, who say theyve been demanding the fire department release a report for months but only getting hot air in response.

Authorities first told Councilman Steve Levins (DWilliamsburg) office a report would be ready by the end of November, but have repeatedly pushed back the release date, said Chesler. The department most recently projected it would be ready in mid-January, but missed that deadline too, according to a staffer in Levins office.

The people who lost stored paperwork in the inferno are now growing increasingly impatient as their efforts to settle simple claims over the documents keep getting stymied by the fire departments silence, according to their lawyer.

We find it extraordinary the fire department cant come out with a report in less than a year, said Jim Veach of the Mound Cotton law firm.

The department says only that it is still investigating the cause of the fire, and is unable to speculate when the things will wrap up.

The incident remains under investigation, said spokesman Jim Long. I can not speak to the duration or the expected end of the investigation or finalizing of the report.

The scorched earth has been a hot topic in the neighborhood in more ways than one, because the city promised residents a decade ago that it would buy the land and use it to extend Bushwick Inlet Park, in exchange for rezoning swathes of the waterfront so developers could stick luxury high-rises along the shore.

But as the years have gone by with no action, the lands value has continued to climb, and now Brodsky is looking to sell the prime patch of real estate for upwards of $300 million  a price tag the city says it cant afford.

The activist group plans to host a press conference at the site on Jan. 31, the one-year anniversary of the fire, to remind the city that it has yet to make good on the pledge, and to memorialize the blaze that reignited their passion for securing the parkland.

It really did light a fire in the community, said Katherine Thompson, Cheslers fellow co-chair.

Brodskys lawyers and Recall Holdings did not respond to requests for comment. CitiPostal could not be reached for comment.
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The State University of New York has launched an investigation into the discipline policies at controversial charter school network Success Academy, following reports and a lawsuit alleging faculty at its Fort Greene location have used heavy-handed punishment to push difficult and disabled students out.

News of the inquiry also comes a month after the school districts parental advisory board demanded the universitys Charter School Institute  which licenses the Success schools  probe the outpost, claiming it too had heard troubling reports. The institutes director says the numerous allegations were too serious to ignore.

The investigation is taking place because SUNY Charter Schools Institute has received a lot of community input from multiple sources, said Mahati Tonk. Given the nature of concerns raised, it is our responsibility as a charter school authorizer to investigate these concerns.

The charter network  which prides itself on high test scores and standards of student conduct  has been under heavy public scrutiny since a New York Times report in October revealed the principal of the Fort Greene branch once kept a got-to-go list singling out high-maintenance tykes, and claimed the school used frequent suspensions and repeated phone calls home to push parents to take such kids elsewhere.

Success honchos have consistently denied those claims, and say they put a stop to the list just days after it was created, then reprimanded the principal responsible  which is exactly what they believe the state probe will find.

We are confident SUNY will find that Success Academy acted quickly and decisively to the list at Fort Greene and that our discipline policy provides for safe learning environments similar to what parents in Park Slope or the Upper East Side expect from their schools, said Success founder and former Manhattan Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

But the school wont just come under the microscope from regulators  four parents whose offspring were on the list also filed a suit against the charter school network, state, and now-former principal for $2 million last month, with several claiming their kids have special needs, but the taxpayer-funded institution didnt make enough effort to accommodate them, as is required by law.

One of the parents suing  who was also profiled in the Times piece  says she is happy to see the university is responding to their gripes, but doesnt think the inquiry will yield damning results because charter schools are such big business.

I think its a great effort, but Im a realist, said Folake Ogundiran, who withdrew her then 6-year-old daughter from the school in 2014 after she claims faculty asked her to pick her up early multiple times a week when her daughter misbehaved. I believe that SUNY will do what it needs to do so they were able to say that they did launch an investigation and they found x,y,z, but I think they will probably side with Success.

The Fort Greene school isnt the only Success school in the borough under fire  a separate group of parents and Public Advocate Letitia James filed a federal civil complaint on Jan. 20, also alleging the networks schools failed to accommodate their special-needs kids, and also dealt with them via frequent suspensions and calls home.

Two of the 13 students in the complaint attend or attended Brooklyn schools  one in Crown Heights and one in Cobble Hill.

The charters of three Success schools across the city are up for renewal this year, including one in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Mahati said the investigation will wrap up before the university must make a decision.
Brooklyn's gothy-leaning Bootblacks are set to release their debut album, titled Veins, which will be out March 11. Mixing synths, drum machines, echoey guitars and impassioned singing, the band are direct sonic descendants of Xymox and Front Line Assembly. The album's first single, "Sub-Rosa," premieres in this post and you can stream it, and check out Veins artwork and tracklist, below.

Bootblacks were to have played Acheron this past Saturday (1/23) but it, like pretty much every show that night, was canceled due to the snowstorm. No makeup date has been announced, but they play regularly in NYC, so keep an eye out for shows. They have announced a European tour for the spring, and those dates are listed below.



---
photos by Dominick Mastrangelo; words by Bill Pearis

The applause was loud before The Besnard Lakes played a note, and it was coming from the stage. The Montreal band were offering up thanks to the forty or so fans who trudged through the blizzard-like conditions of Winter Storm Jonas to see their free in-store at Rough Trade on Saturday afternoon (1/23). "We were here a year ago, almost to the day. They were predicting 'snowpocalypse' then too, but it ended up being a couple inches," frontman Jace Lasek told the crowd. "But when we looked out the window this morning we were like 'oh shit.'" (They set up a cardboard Ghost cutout on the floor just in case no one showed up.) Troupers and snow experts that they are, The Besnard Lakes actually helped the Rough Trade staff shovel the sidewalk and entrance to the store.

The circumstances of the day -- this was basically the only high-profile show that actually happened on Saturday -- made for a special show. Opening with Are the Roaring Night's great "Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent," the band stuck mainly to songs from their brand new A Coliseum Complex Museum (it was the release show), hitting album highlights "Golden Lion," "Tungsten 4: A Refugee," and "The Plain Moon." The band's widescreen sound -- roaring guitars, spiraling solos, gorgeous harmonies, expert use of loud-quiet-loud dynamics -- make nearly every song seem like what another band might save for their finale. The Besnard Lakes are all peaks and crescendos, and it's a credit to their skill that it all works. It was a terrific show.

Hopefully The Besnard Lakes will announce a proper North American tour soon. More pictures from the snowy Rough Trade in-store, as well as their setlist, below...



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The scene in front of @roughtradenyc right now. Shoveling "IN" Canada style. A photo posted by The Besnard Lakes (@besnardlakes) on Jan 23, 2016 at 9:34am PST

Well, at least we've got one brave soul out to our show - it's the "snowmageddon"! A photo posted by Sheenah Ko (@sheenahko) on Jan 23, 2016 at 10:34am PST

We're open for now! Free Besnard Lakes in-store at 2pm! A photo posted by Rough Trade NYC (@roughtradenyc) on Jan 23, 2016 at 8:08am PST
In this episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Beauties and the Beat, Kim plans a brunch to bring the ladies together but winds up offending Kenya. And Cynthia focuses her attention on taking her eyewear line to the next level and turns to two of the ladies for help.

After attending a series of semi-disastrous events thrown by the rest of the ladies, Kim decides to hold her own event: a brunch. She calls upon her good friend/stylist, Victoria, to help her plan her party.

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No Weaves, No Eyelashes, No Service

Kim has a theme in mind, a beatless brunch. This means the ladies will go without makeup. Beat may not be the best term, since this is defined as extremely ugly. Kim wants to celebrate the canvas when its a little more blank. In other words, ladies: no lipstick, no blush, no fake eyelashes, just au naturale. This should go over well.

Victoria is certain the women will be down. After all, who hangs out at home in their Louboutins? Cut to Phaedra and Cynthia looking totally fly while just cleaning and hanging out.

Kim sends out the invites via voicemail, and to say the women are less than thrilled would be kind.

And Baby Makes Three

Kandi and Todd are prepping for their impending arrival, and Todd is going the old-school route. Hes not against changing the occasional diaper, but hes not 100% down with going 50/50 when it comes to the child-rearing responsibilities.

Kandis a bit rusty, having been out of the mommy game herself for quite a while, so they call upon a baby whisperer to give them some pointers. Kandi plans to breastfeed for three or four months and finds out that this process can actually go on for three or four years. You know what they say, If they can ask for it, they probably dont need it.

Cynthia Builds Her Brand

Cynthia is meeting with her eyewear team, and shes ready to take things to the next level by making a commercial, and she wants Kim and Kenya to take the reins. Why Cynthia would even consider Kenya after watching Life Twirls On is beyond me, but she thinks Kenya has a flair for the dramatic  in a good way  and she is, after all, Cynthias girl. And Kimmys a pro; shes got history in front of and behind the camera. Cynthias dream is for the two to collaborate and she thinks the ladies would make a dream team; they just dont know it yet.

Phaedra Moves Forward

Phaedra is finally ready to move forward with the divorce, and the big issue on the table is drafting a parenting plan. Phaedra is still not eager to take the kids to jail, and shes waiting for the okay from a child psychologist that the boys are ready. Phaedras also hoping that Apollo gets moved to a more kid-friendly facility. Im not sure whats shes expecting. A McDonalds and a bouncy house?

Phaedra and her attorney sit down with Apollos lawyer and start discussing terms. Being a jailbird, Apollos not in a position to make too many demands. Phaedra is hoping for a swift parting, but Apollos lawyer states that it only takes one person to mess up a settlement, and if one person gets unreasonable, all bets are off.

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Weve Got the Beat

The day of Kims brunch arrives, and shes a bit nervous about hosting these high-maintenance ladies. And it looks like shes got good reason to be. Kandi picks up Kenya, and girlfriend has broken the no-makeup rule. She informs Kandi that shes a grown-ass woman and will do what she likes. Even Kandi didnt venture out without something to cover up the dark circles under her eyes.

Kenya doesnt understand why Kim would play makeup nazi, and she thinks Kims basically telling them she thinks they wear too much.

Phaedra shows up at the door, and shes not looking beat or beatless or whatever the hell wearing no makeup means. Phaedra says no Southern Belle ever comes beatless unless youre talking about the vegetable. I dont know if fake lashes technically count as makeup.

Porsha arrives not only with a gallon of crap on her face, but also 10 pounds of extra hair looking like a whacked-out Rapunzel meets Pocahontas.

Cynthia dials things down a notch, but the only one, other than Kim, who really embraced the idea behind the brunch is Sheree, who shows up looking fab and fresh.

Cynthia brings up what is bound to be her worst idea ever  the proposition of Kim and Kenya working together on a commercial for her eyewear line. Kim isnt big on co-directing, stating that shes never heard of it being done, but Kenya throws out the Farrelly brothers as an example. Kenya thinks Kim is being pompous and arrogant, and isnt blown away with Kims credentials.

Cynthia wants to do the shoot in Jamaica, so now this little business trip is morphing into a vacay for the ladies and various escorts if they choose.

Tootie pulls out some notebooks and pens, and invites the ladies to write a poem about natural beauty, but Kenya thinks Kims a bit of a hypocrite since shes had multiple boob jobs and has a wig atop her head.

Kenya confronts Kim and says that she took umbrage with Kims reminder that makeup is to enhance their beauty. Kenya feels she should be able to present herself however she chooses without commentary from others.

Kim insists that she wasnt judging anybody; the woman just thought it would be nice if the ladies could lose the red-carpet glamour for one effing meal. How this translates into throwing shade is a mystery to Kim.

It would seem that after the way Kim and Kenya butted heads at the brunch, Cynthia would reconsider her grand scheme to have them work together, but thats not the case. Kim and Kenya agree to come up with their own ideas and pitch them to Cynthia.

Playing Nice

Cynthia meets up with Kim, ready to hear her pitch. All thats missing is Kenya, but when Cynthia calls to find out Miss Moores ETA, she says she wont be coming. She uses some kind of construction emergency at Moore Manor as an excuse, but we all know thats a load of BS, as does Cynthia. Cynthias pissed that she made time in her busy schedule to appear in Life Twirls On, but Kenya doesnt feel the need to reciprocate.

Cynthia cant help but be impressed with Kims professionalism, but Cynthias still determined to get Kim and Kenyas combined perspectives. And even though Kenya blew her off, Cynthia is going to give Kenya another opportunity to wow her.

When Cynthia questions what role Kim sees herself playing  director or producer  Kimmy makes it clear that she usually does it all. For Kim, there is an I in team. Kim is willing to make the client  Cynthia  happy, even if it means playing nice  with Kenya. And Kims been in the biz long enough to not turn down work, no matter what it is. This promises to be a bigger disaster than Batman v Superman. Mark my words.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta airs Sundays at 8pm on Bravo.

(Image courtesy of Bravo)
Living in the 90s? So are underwater wireless networks

The remarkable innovation and growth weve witnessed in land-based wireless communications has not yet occurred in underwater sensing networks, but were starting to change that. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Like Beanie Babies and Steve Urkel, the systems we use to transmit information through water bring to mind the 1990s.

The flashback is due to the speed of todays underwater communication networks, which is comparable to the sluggish dial-up modems from America Onlines heyday. The shortcoming hampers search-and-rescue operations, tsunami detection and other work.

But that is changing due in part to University at Buffalo engineers who are developing hardware and software tools to help underwater telecommunication catch up to its over-the-air counterpart.

Their work, including ongoing collaborations with Northeastern University, is described in a study  Software-Defined Underwater Acoustic Networks: Toward a High-Rate Real-Time Reconfigurable Modem  published in November in IEEE Communications Magazine.

The remarkable innovation and growth weve witnessed in land-based wireless communications has not yet occurred in underwater sensing networks, but were starting to change that, says Dimitris Pados, PhD, Clifford C. Furnas Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UB, a co-author of the study.

The amount of data that can be reliably transmitted underwater is much lower compared to land-based wireless networks. This is because land-based networks rely on radio waves, which work well in the air, but not so much underwater.

As a result, sound waves (such as the noises dolphins and whales make) are the best alternative for underwater communication. The trouble is that sound waves encounter such obstacles as path loss, delay and Doppler which limit their ability to transmit. Underwater communication is also hindered by the architecture of these systems, which lack standardization, are often proprietary and not energy-efficient.

Pados and a team of researchers at UB are developing hardware and software everything from modems that work underwater to open-architecture protocols  to address these issues. Of particular interest is merging a relatively new communication platform, software-defined radio, with underwater acoustic modems.

Traditional radios, such as an AM/FM transmitter, operate in a limited bandwidth (in this case, AM and FM). The only way to pick up additional signals, such as sound waves, is to take the radio apart and rewire it. Software-defined radio makes this step unnecessary. Instead, the radio is capable via computer of shifting between different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is, in other words, a smart radio.

Applying software-defined radio to acoustic modems could vastly improve underwater data transmission rates. For example, in experiments last fall in Lake Erie, just south of Buffalo, New York, graduate students from UB proved that software-defined acoustic modems could boost data transmission rates by 10 times what todays commercial underwater modems are capable of.

The potential applications for such technology includes:
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.
DETOURS

Songs of the Open Road

Salil Tripathi

Tranquebar

382 pages; Rs 521



In the Preface to Detours: Songs of the Open Road, Salil Tripathi makes the intention of his book clear by stating, "I also read many accounts of the outsider looking in at India, the western gaze trying to make sense of the mysterious east. Mine would be an attempt to look at the world through...a sensibility that has been shaped in India and later tinged by other cultures." And through its pages, he sticks to that aim.

The first section of the book is titled "War and After", in which Mr Tripathi writes about his travels across countries ravaged by war and violence. This section explores the histories of these nations, analysing how they shaped and changed national character and often contrasts these to the present. The second section, "Words and Images", finds Mr Tripathi tracing his travels to new places through literature, poetry and art. As he writes, these are places he understands better "because certain writers or artists have made those places more vivid." The third section, "Loss and Remembrance," is about places Mr Tripathi visited with his wife and, after her death, with their sons. It is a deeply personal section that examines the laconic nature of loss.

Mr Tripathi writes about Bogota and its poetic streets - Amora (Love), Fatiga (Fatigue) and Agonia (Agony) - which radically contrast its gruesome history, facing continuous violence, or "La Violencia", from 1948 onwards, when a presidential candidate was assassinated. He writes about the significance of books to Germany and how they helped shape its historical and contemporary identity. He delves into the persona of Aung San Suu Kyi and what she means to people in Myanmar. He describes the orderly dysfunction of Singapore: "Singapore's raison d'etre was, after all, to be an efficient business centre where people were expected to trade goods and services, not talk about politics, or debate sensitive or artistically challenging ideas." A chapter on Lagos covers much of its history, describing the tenuous relationship between the citizens, the oil corporations and the government. Here the author writes about the "scariest" journey he ever made - where members of a local Nigerian militia almost kidnapped him.

Through the book and each new place the author visits, whether professionally or on vacation, his love for literature, his obsession with words and deep reverence for writers stand out. Although the book is nominally a travelogue, Detours' narrative often meanders from descriptions and experiences of places. Rather it delves deeply into the writings and musings of the prominent writers of these countries and captures their influences and experiences. The chapter on Istanbul holds heavy references to the writings of Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafaq, and how their works depict the cultural, political and religious fragmentation of a contemporary Turkey. The novels of Naguib Mahfouz act as a foil to understanding the political changes across Egypt over time and place. Ernest Hemingway - his life and his writings - are omnipresent in the chapters on Paris and Madrid. Milan Kundera's words float in and out to describe the collective emotions of a war-ravaged Colombia, and later the lakefront of Geneva. Mr Tripathi reflects on the poetry of Pablo Neruda on a trip to Santiago and later Isla Negra, and dedicates an entire chapter to it. On a trip to Bangladesh, he looks for the home where Rabindranath Tagore wrote his poetry.

The third section of the book is poignant. After the death of his wife, the author tries to find consolation in the travel, literature and art that he shared with her. Along with his sons, he travels to the Mediterranean, rediscovers the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and feels the presence of someone no longer around. The author describes a trip to Bloomsbury Country, where Virginia Woolf ended her life by drowning herself in the River Ouse in 1941. Mr Tripathi muses, "The landscape is inspiring; it is impossible to think of what led Woolf to take the ultimate step." The descriptions of a lonely summer and winter in Stockholm, frozen landscapes of Europe, and the quiet desperation of Edvard Munch's art are each embedded with a deep sense of melancholia. However, the author never ends a page on a dismal note. "Not all experiences are happy, and nor are all lives. But experiences shape us. Like waves, experiences lash at us; like the cliff, we stand stubborn against the erosions, taking blows."



Detours has little structure and almost no plot. Such anchors would only limit the scope of the book and constrain its free-flowing narrative. The strength of Mr Tripathi's writing is his casual and conversational style. Reading it is like having a long conversation with an old "literary insomniac" friend over a Sunday brunch. The book is simmering with deeply layered tales of travels to new and different lands, observations, and anecdotes, references to politics, literature, art, history, culture and, not to forget, the author's friends and companions on each journey. Detours puts the complexities, enormity and diversity of the world into perspective and, most importantly, reminds one of the pleasures of discovery and recollection. Simply put, it captures all that is often considered the best experiences of life. Read it over a long weekend.

Sarah Farooqui runs the Takshashila Institutions flagship course, the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (GCPP). She is also the Editor of Pragati  The Indian National Interest Review.

Sarah discusses fiction & non-fiction writing on her blog - The Bookend , a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry
Revv, the Delhi-NCR based self-drive car rental company has launched its operations in Hyderabad with a fleet of 50 cars across models starting from hatchbacks to luxury sedans. Operating on a standard hub model, the Hyderabad office has a 10-member strong team managing the day to day operations to deliver the cars to the customers from anywhere in the city. As part of its geographical expansion in the southern market, the company is planning to launch its operations in Bangalore in the next 2 weeks. Revv was set up in July 2015 by Karan Jain and Anupam Agarwal, two ex-associate partners of McKinsey with a comprehensive background of a decade each, where they helped Fortune 500 clients on strategy and performance transformation. The company bets on a shift in consumer behaviour towards renting instead of owning assets such as cars and has completely re-worked the prevalent self-drive rental model. One of their first-of-its-kind innovations is "pure-play doorstep delivery of cars", even for hourly rentals. To make this viable, they equip their delivery executives with a foldable electric scooter that fits in the boot of every car, and becomes a cost-effective, quick and environment-friendly way of getting back to the parking hubs, says a company press release. Already serving customers in Delhi-NCR, the company has witnessed repeat usage and positive customer feedback on their innovations in the region. Although it is too early to comment, we've seen phenomenal customer adoption and a terrific response from the city, since our launch, said Karan Jain, co-founder and COO, Revv. Our average fleet utility is more than 70%. Given this traction, we are continuously adding to our fleet. We see an enormous potential in the city and can easily envision it becoming a 250-300 car market for us, within the next one year. The company is also in the process of its third launch in the south within the next two weeks, following which it will add 1-2 cities every month to obviate the need for car ownership across the country gradually.

Source : BS Motoring
Battling a spate of cheaper aluminium imports from China and West Asia, aluminium producers have made a strong pitch to the Government of India to either ban bauxite exports or raise exports duty to 50 per cent.

The proposal to ban exports of bauxite, the key raw material in aluminium production, is one of the flagship demands of the domestic producers in the run up to the 2016-17 Budget.

Bauxite exports from the country are chiefly to China which adds value to the raw material and dumps them back in the form of aluminium and other finished products. Thus, China generates employment in their country and provides export rebate to value added products which are shipped back to India where aluminium manufacturers are forced to operate at depleted capacities.

In the last one year, bauxite exports to China have jumped 45 per cent. Indonesia has already banned bauxite exports while Malaysia has announced a three month ban on bauxite mining.

Besides this, to discourage imports, the aluminium has called for hike in basic customs duty on aluminium products by 10 per cent. Over the last six years, the share of imports to the country's domestic aluminium consumption has risen sharply from 40 per cent to 51 per cent.

Consequently, the domestic producers have idled 51 per cent of their installed capacities.

The other demand of the aluminium makers is removal of inverted duty structure and slashing import duty of critical raw materials in aluminium value chain. As per the prevailing duty structure, 7.5 per cent duty is levied on aluminium fluoride and caustic soda whereas coal tar pitch and aluminium import duty are charged five per cent. Major aluminium producers like China, Brazil, European Union and USA don't have inverted duty structure for aluminium. Alumina, coal tar pitch and aluminium fluoride account for 44 per cent of production cost of aluminium and a cut in duty could help save cost by $38 million every year.
Cloud messaging service platform GupShup is planning to launch its Bot Store to host bots that could aggregate and deliver the best solutions for a requirement, using short message service (SMS) as its basic platform. The Bot Store, which is expected to be launched in the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, in February, would focus on the Start Up India initiative as its thrust for growth, said a senior executive from the company.

Bot, which is the short form of robot, is a software application, which could simulate search activities, especially creating search engine indexes by accessing content from various web sites and applications.

The company, which has its established presence in the cloud messaging platform, is looking at using the bots to replace the individual apps in the app stores including that of Apple and Google. Instead of downloading individual app of several companies, for instance to find out best food outlet in the region, the bots would help the user to get a list of the best food outlets in the region along with other details in a single message.

"We have around 36 APIs (application program interfaces) in our website gupshup.me now and we are conducting hackathons to attract developers to use these APIs to develop bots. We will be launching a new website gupshup.io and our plans are to create a bot store," said Ravi Sundararajan, chief operating officer, GupShup.

He added that the bots, which could work through SMS even if there is no internet connectivity, could also be developed in one or two hours, as against the development of apps which would consume more time and investment. With the bots, one could create local bots, for instance where he or she can tie up with the restaurants in a particular area and provide the search results over message to the customer, thus starting a small venture of their own.

"We are planning to focus on India to create this and Start-Up India would drive the growth," he said.

While initially the services would be for free, the company would look at monetising the initiative by charging a per centage of the usage charges, he added.

"How many apps one can download in the limited space he has? This is affecting the visibility of many apps, whereas the bots does not have this issue. I think the future is developing towards replacing all these app stores with bot stores and we are the first one doing it," he added.

The bot stores would be focusing on the smaller and start ups for business, while larger and their apps could continue to attract users. The company, in December, last year opened six APIs in a website and it has seed a good response from the developers.

The company is a market leader in Application to SMS services, which is integrating basic SMS services with e-mail and social media platforms, he said. Last year, it has seen a business of around $60 million (around Rs 360 crore) in India and has seen a compounded annual growth rate of 72 per cent in the past few years. It currently engages with around 390 start ups offering cloud messaging services.

With clients including ICICI and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB), the company is expecting business grow in Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI), social media, e-commerce, government and travel and tourism in future. It currently has 30,000 customers in the country.

With investors such as Charles River Ventures, Helion Venture Partners and Globespan Capital Partners, the company is making profit and can run the business without raising funds, Sundararajan added.
HDFC Bank, the second largest private lender, has reported a 20 per cent growth in net profit in the October  December quarter to Rs 3,356.8 crore. The increase in profit came on the back of a higher other income and net interest income.



Net interest income grew 24 per cent to Rs 7,068.5 crore, against Rs 5,699.9 crore in the corresponding quarter of FY15.



Other income for the bank, which includes fees, commissions, forex gains etc., grew by 13.3 per cent in the quarter ended December to Rs 2,872.2 crore, compared with Rs 2,534.9 crore in the third quarter of FY15.



The lender witnessed some concerns on asset quality with gross non-performing assets (NPAs) increasing on a sequential basis to 0.97 per cent from 0.91 per cent in the quarter ended September. In the same period, net NPA also increased to 0.29 per cent from 0.25 per cent. At the end of the October-December quarter in FY15, gross NPA and net NPA stood at 0.99 per cent and 0.26 per cent, respectively.



Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director, said the lender did see some slippages from the agri business and business banking verticals.



We have had no new bad loans recognition as a result of the systemic review carried out by the Reserve Bank of India. However, there was some minor increase in provisioning that we had to undertake as a result of it, as the account was already into NPA.



The provisions and contingencies for the quarter was Rs 653.9 crore (consisting of specific loan loss provisions of Rs 601.5 crore, general provisions of Rs 49.9 crore and other provisions of Rs 2.5 crore) against Rs 560.4 crore (consisting of specific loan loss provisions of Rs 487.6 crore, general provisions of Rs 62.2 crore and other provisions of Rs 10.6 crore) for the corresponding quarter a year ago.



Deposits grew 26.5 per cent to Rs 5.23 lakh crore and advances grew 25.7 per cent to Rs 4.36 lakh crore at the end of the quarter. Growth in advances was led by retail loan growth at 29.2 per cent followed by growth in wholesale business at 18.9 per cent. The loan mix between retail and wholesale was 53:47.



It was a challenging quarter of credit and deposit growth for the industry with both hovering around the 10 per cent levels. However, we have still managed to outpace the system growth while maintaining our margin and asset quality. The environment still remains challenging and so we have to be cautious on what happens on the wholesale side, Sukthankar said.
IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Virginia Rometty will visit India in February, as the company looks at expanding its business. The Indian market has expanded in double-digits for the global software major in the latest quarter.

India has the largest employee base for the company outside of the United States with about 120,000 workers delivering services to its global customers, competing with large Indian information technology services firms such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro.

The Armonk-headquartered company also has a significant presence in the local market, with revenues of close to $2 billion Rs 13,500 crore) by building solutions for customers such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Adani Group and Idea Cellular. It has a significant presence in financial services space where it has got multiple customers such as Reserve Bank of India, Canara Bank, Max Life and Reliance Life.

The company recently announced setting up a public data centre  the firms second in the country  to offer cloud services in India.

Rometty, who will arrive in Bengaluru on February 2, would showcase IBM Watson, the artificial intelligence platform to its customers. She also has plans to travel to Mumbai, where she would meet RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, people familiar with the development said.

In reply to a Business Standard query, an RBI spokesperson confirmed about Rometty's meeting with Rajan saying "it's a courtesy call"



India's IT spending is forecast to reach $71.0 billion in 2016, a 6.0 per cent increase from 2015, technology researcher Gartner said on November 3. The IT industry is being driven by digital business, and an environment driven by a connected world.

India will continue to be the fastest-growing IT market for the second year in succession and will continue growing to total $85.28 billion by the end of 2019, Aman Munglani, research director at Gartner, had said at that time.

Rometty's visit comes at a time when India has become an important destination for global technology chief executives, as the country embarks on massive spending on technology in its Digital India campaign. In the past few months, senior tech executives including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have pitched for their technologies to be included in India's technology roadmap.
Indian are reporting higher profits due to falling raw materials costs, triggered by steep fall in crude oil prices globally. Chief executive officers (CEOs) say if this trend continues for a few more quarters, it will help India Inc to improve corporate earnings in the rest of 2016, which is facing very difficult external environment.

Statistics for the December quarter results so far shows that Reliance Industries (RIL) saved close to Rs 22,343 crore in its raw material costs, as Brent oil prices fell to around $31 per barrel. RIL's revenues were also down Rs 23,600 crore during the same period and explain the drastic fall in its raw material costs, which a pass is through. Analysts said the big beneficiaries would be cement, fertiliser and power and will report higher profits in the December quarter due to falling coal prices.

Take for example, the Aditya Birla Group's cement company, UltraTech. The company reported a 4.7 per cent rise in revenues and a 5.4 per cent drop in raw materials costs, which boosted its profits to Rs 509 crore in the December quarter. "Lower coal and petcoke prices played an important role in contributing to Ultratech reporting higher profits. We expect this trend to continue," said Atul Daga, chief financial officer of cement major, UltraTech.

Another big beneficiary of falling oil prices were the Indian airline firms. IndiGo and SpiceJet reported higher sales even as aircraft fuel prices fall sharply. SpiceJet's sales were up 11 per cent, while costs were down 35 per cent in the December quarter. Its rival IndiGo also reported a similar trend as average aviation turbine fuel price declined by 16 per cent in the December quarter versus first quarter of the current financial year.

Experts said though overall industry impact of lower raw material prices would tend to be positive, there could be variations across . And that's because progress in infrastructure projects though in the right direction has not been all pervasive. Further, some power projects would have other issues with regard to investments made that have been held up due to other challenges like land or environment. A combination of such factors would get reflected in differential performance in coming quarters.

"We have observed that several producers have also lost their pricing power in the market, though in general the price changes have been positive for these cement and power sectors. We are hence hopeful of these two sectors leveraging the benefit of lower prices of inputs," said D R Dogra, CEO and managing director of CARE Ratings.
Close on the heels of the resignation of its chief executive officer Cramer Ball, Jet Airways has seen another senior level exit.

Jet Airways Vice-President (Sales) Rajeev Nambiar has quit and is returning to Etihad Airways after more than 18 months. He was the sales head of Etihad before joining Jet Airways in July 2014 and will now join Etihad at the same post of sales head.

Naveen Chawla, who heads sales for the western region, will take charge of Nambia's post in Jet.

A Jet Airways spokesperson confirmed Nambiar's resignation.

Both Ball and Nambiar worked with Etihad before taking up roles in Jet Airways.

In December, Ball resigned to join Alitalia in the same position. Both airlines are co-owned by Abu Dhabis Etihad Airways. Ball becomes the fourth CEO of the private carrier to have quit since April 2013 when it offloaded a part of its stake to Etihad.

The airline had then announced that its whole-time director Guarang Shetty will serve as the acting CEO under the supervision of chairman Naresh Goyal.

Ball was also the CEO of Air Seychelles (also owned by Etihad) before joining Jet Airways.
Rane (Madras) Limited has acquired Precision Die Casting Inc, USA, which is in the business of manufacturing high-pressure aluminium die casting for auto applications.

The deal has been sealed at an enterprise value of $8.9 million and the cost of acquisition of the entire equity is at $1. Post the acquisition, the company will invest $2 million through the wholly-owned subsidiary as equity for making improvements in operations for turning around the profitability, said the company.

Part of $511 million Rane Group, one of the leading OE manufacturer and supplier for auto majors in India & Overseas, Rane (Madras) today informed NSE that the company's Board of directors have approved the proposed acquisition.

The company is planning to acquire 100 per cent of the equity shares of Precision Die Casting Inc., USA through its wholly owned subsidiary (WOS), which is being incorporated in The Netherlands.

Precision Die Casting is in the business of manufacturing high pressure aluminium die casting for automotive applications like steering and compressor related die casting components.

Some of the major customers are TRW, JTEKT, Nexteer and Mahle.

The transaction is expected to close before March 31, 2016.

Precision Die Casting Inc was incorporated in 1959 and in 2014-15 it clocked a revenue of $29.48 million as compared to $31.28 million in 2013-14 and $23.08 million in 2012-13. The company has presence mainly in US.
Reliance Communications (RCom) is expecting to close its tower assets sale deal with private equity firms within the next two weeks. Speaking at an analysts conference call on Monday, Vinod Sawhny, chief executive officer of RCom, said, We expect to close the deal in two weeks.Earlier this month, RCom had extended the deadline to complete its tower sale agreements with private equity firms TPG Capital and Tillman Global Holdings till the end of this month. Sources said the could not agree upon lease agreements as RCom will continue to use the towers after the sale and that is why the talks were extended.

The company on Monday also raised its capital expenditure (capex) guidance for the current financial year to Rs 4,000 crore, up from Rs 3,000 crore, according to earlier announcement. It said a similar amount would be spent in the next financial year also.

RCom will continue to lead consolidations in the telecom sector and there would be capex and opex synergies. Also, we are raising our capex guidance to Rs 4,000 crore for this financial year and next year to strengthen our 3G network, Gurdeep Singh, chief executive officer (consumer business), said during the conference call.

The telecom firm has already received approvals from stock exchanges to go ahead with its merger plan with Russian telecom player MTS and is awaiting other formalities to close the deal. Its talks with Aircel to merge the entities has a deadline of March 22 and it expects to complete the transaction before that.

The flagship company of Reliance Group, led by Anil Ambani, has signed pacts with Reliance Jio to sell its 800-MHz licence in nine circles. Both groups have agreed to use each others' towers and optical fibre networks to support each others' consumers by signing intra-circle roaming pacts. Both will offer fourth-generation services by sharing each others' resources, as part of the deal.

The debt-ridden firm is doing everything it can to pare its huge debt of nearly Rs 40,000 crore. Apart from tower sale, the company has started monetising its real estate assets. Earlier, it had announced to sell its flats in Navi Mumbai for Rs 330 crore. It also plans to sell nearly four acres land in central Delhi to reduce its debt burden, company officials said on Monday.
As some 1,000 employees of Shopclues head for a fourth anniversary celebration at a happening hotel in Gurgaon, the company has begun its countdown to profitability, a new buzzword in the Indian e-commerce space.

In fact, Shopclues Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Sethi and Chief Business Officer Radhika Ghai Aggarwal told Business Standard the company was already a market leader. Shopclues, the latest unicorn (valued at $1 billion - Rs 6,500 crore or above), was at the bottom of the sector loss pie, they indicated.

"We have toppled Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon India," said Sethi. He reasoned that the company had the largest aggregation of merchants on the platform and maximum stock keeping units (SKUs). "Also, we are the top player in the Tier-II and Tier-III cities, as 70 per cent of the business comes from there Our capital raise to value generation ratio is the best."





AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LOSS PIE Total combined losses of Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon: Rs 5,052 crore

Amazon India loss in the year ending March 2015: Rs 1,724 crore

Flipkart year ending March 2015: Rs 2,000 crore

Snapdeal year ending March 2015: Rs 1,328 crore

Shopclues: Rs 100 crore

According to the two co-founders, the narrative in the e-commerce sector had changed from who has raised the most funds to who's closer to profitability. Shopclues, still in the red, aims to turn profitable during the first half of 2017. They believe theirs would be the first Indian pure play e-commerce company to turn profitable.

A certain amount of 'fundraise winter' has set in the start-up system, according to Sethi. "People have to conserve now." Even major players might see a slowdown in fundraising, which might in-turn help them correct their business model, said Aggarwal. "Focus is now on profitability and efficiency," she added.

Shopclues is estimated to have raised $220-230 million (Rs 1,495 crore) and has spent only a fraction-about $60 million (Rs 390 crore) or so. The founders like to describe the loss of the company over four years as one month of cash burn of any big e-commerce player in the country.

The firm may not raise fresh fund this year, but things may change if it decides to go for a big acquisition in some time.

"The only time we might go for a fundraising is if we want to make an acquisition which might be strategically important for the company," Sethi said. He did not rule out the possibility of a major brand acquisition in the last quarter of 2016.

The firm was recently valued at $1.1 billion (Rs 7,150 crore) when it went for its last round of funding from Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and existing investors Tiger Global Management and Nexus Venture Partners. Its gross merchandise value of goods sold is pegged at $750 million (Rs 4,875 crore) and is set to grow to $3 billion (Rs 19,500 crore) next year.

According to firm filings with the ministry of corporate affairs, revenue stood at Rs 79 crore in the last financial year, compared with about Rs 31 crore in FY14. The losses increased to Rs 100 crore from Rs 38 crore.

The firm plans to invest in acquisitions in this quarter and through the year in different areas such as logistics, payments and smart marketing.

"We do not have a benchmark around how much money is kept aside for acquisition and will not spend the kind of money the competition is spending on acquisitionsbut probably somewhere between $20 million and $30 million (Rs 130 crore-Rs 195 crore) is a sweet spot for us," she said.

While Sethi and Aggarwal indicate there was no bubble about to burst and that Indian e-commerce was in good health, they agreed that 2016 may well be a year of mergers and acquisitions, and some making an exit.
The controversy surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's fate got reignited on his 119th birth anniversary on Saturday when PM Narendra Modi released at least 100 secret files of Subhas Chandra Bose, of which a letter written by Jawaharlal Nehru to the then UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee had allegedly addressed Bose as a war criminal.

The purported letter reads:



The missive bears no cursive signature, just Yours Sincerely, Jawaharlal Nehru" in printed lines.

1) Curiously, different publications reported different versions of the same facsimile.

The one carried by The Times of India shows December 26 as the date on which it was written. It also spelt Jawaharlal wrongly as Jwaharlal. The one carried by DNA carries the correct spelling of Jawaharlal but is dated December 27. The one carried by opindia.com carries a version where the spelling of Attlee is wrong, though the date matches with that of the one carried by DNA.

The text in all these versions is similar, but have either typographical, grammatical or factual errors. And, they do not bear the Archives of India watermark. The letter could have been dismissed as a poor attempt at malicious forgery to whip up passions on the contentious issue of Subhas Chandra Bose's death.

2) The letter certainly wasn't part of the declassified documents released on Saturday. It has long been a part of the social media folklore, mysteriously appearing at different times and then vanishing from public memory.

3) One of the reasons could be that the declassified documents confirm the existence of a sworn affidavit of stenographer Shyam Lal Jain who had told the Khosla Commission, set up in 1970 to investigate Netaji's death, that he had indeed typed such a letter dictated by Nehru in December 1945. Mail Today reports that the deposition finds mention in the declassified file Disappearance/death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose 915/11/C/6/96-Pol from the Prime Minister's Office. The Khosla commission, which concurs with the theory of Netaji's death in a plane crash, for reasons yet unknown, did not take note of Jain's testimony.

4) One of the files declassified on Saturday answers the question of whether Netaji's name was ever listed as a war criminal by the UK after the end of World War II. Answering the question, Indian High Commission in UK said his name was never a part of the list of war criminals as the list was only drawn up for Japanese and German citizens.



5) Anita Pfaff, Netaji's daughter from his marriage to Emilie Schenkl, says the controversy can be put to rest only if a DNA test is done on his remains, believed to be in the Renkoji temple in Japan. She is likely to make the request to the Union government during a visit to India in February. She believes the theory that her father died in an air crash in 1945. Ashis Ray, a London-based journalist who has uploaded the evidence of the last days of Bose on his site www.bosefiles.info, has welcomed the declassification, while supporting the demand for DNA testing. On the letter written by Nehru to British PM Clement Attlee calling Bose a war criminal, Ray said that Nehru never wrote such a letter.

It was fabricated by mischievous pro-Bose anti-Nehru elements on Calcutta, he told The Hindu.
Ajay Mathur might soon take over as the director-general at Teri (The Energy and Resources Institute), replacing R K Pachauri, who might then become the executive vice-chairman of the governing council of the Delhi-based non-government organisation.

Sources in the government confirmed that Mathurs resignation from the government as director-general of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency was near finalisation, after which he was slated to take over the role at Teri, which works in the environment space.

R K Pachauri, battling allegations of sexual harassment by a woman employee who later resigned, was expected to become the executive vice-chairman of the thinktanks governing council once Mathur joins. Pachauri has consistently denied the allegations.

Pachauri initially went on leave from his position, as director-general, when the allegations were made against him in February 2015. But, he joined back work as the director-general in July 2015 after securing orders from a court permitting him to attend work at all offices of the institution and another order blocking any action by Teri on the internal committee report that had found him guilty of misconduct.

Soon after, the governing council of the organisation announced that Mathur would take over as director-general. The board did not refer to allegations of sexual misconduct at the workplace in its release. It lauded Pachauri for his contribution to the organisation.

Subsequently, Mathur engaged with the governing council to secure clarity over his role after which it emerged that Pachauri would be made the executive vice-chairman.

The governing council itself saw a resignation of one of the two woman-members during the period. Kiran Majumdar Shaw resigned from the council. Later, speaking to The Economic Times, she said she had resigned as a matter of principle following the allegations. She said she believed Pachauri should have stepped down till his innocence was proven. When the woman employee who had made the allegations resigned from Teri in protest, Shaw tweeted saying, Disappointing development.

On January 25, The Economic Times reported a male employee at Teri filing a complaint alleging that he had been pushed by four senior NGO officials to convince his friend  the original complainant  to withdraw her charges and make an out-of-court settlement. The report noted that the male employee too had resigned as a consequence. Reacting to the news, Shaw had tweeted, A very sorry reflection on the injustices committed at a premier institution on the less influential.
After the Pokhran nuclear tests of 1998, France proved to be Indias closest ally in Europe and was its original strategic partner. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande (pictured) held talks that lasted over two-and-a-half hours to strengthen cooperation in a wide array of sectors, including defence and the nuclear energy sector, with the French promising investments by their companies into India to the tune of $10 billion over the next five years and India committing to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.

France also committed significant investments in the renewable energy sector, including euro 300 million for the projects to be taken up by the International Solar Alliance (ISA). Modi and Hollande also took part in the foundation laying ceremony of the ISA headquarters in Gurgaon.

Modi and Hollande also welcomed joint venture agreement between French Alstom and Indian Railways for 800 high horsepower locomotives to be manufactured in Madhepura, Bihar, and is likely to invite foreign investments of Rs 1,300 crore. The French will help with renovating of railway stations at Ludhiana and Ambala, and upgrading the Delhi-Chandigarh railway line.

The two sides upgraded their civil nuclear agreement. The French will now construct six nuclear reactors, up from the earlier two, at Jaitapur in Maharashtra. France reiterated a lifetime guarantee of fuel supply to the nuclear reactors and the two sides agreed for increased localisation of technology in the nuclear sector. The two leaders asked their respective companies to set deadlines for constructing of the rectors.

New Delhi in turn promised to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets in flyaway condition from France. However, no agreement could be reached on the price of the fighter jets. Modi and Hollande said the financial issues must be resolved as soon as possible.

BONJOUR INDIA India, France inked 14 agreements

France to invest $10 bn in India in next 5 years

Signed MoU on India purchasing 36 Rafale fighter jets

France to invest euro 300 mn to support International Solar Alliance

French EDF EN & Indias SITAC to invest euro 155 million in climate change technology by end-2016

France to help construction of 6 nuclear reactors at Jaitapur to fix timeline

French Alstom, Indian Railways JV to produce 800 electric locomotives in Madhepura, Bihar

French firms to help develop Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur as smart cities

Indias Oceansat-3 satellite to host French Argos-4 payload

India-France space agencies to develop thermal infrared earth observation mission

France to partner in Isros next Mars Mission

MoU for industry-sponsored PhD fellowship between IIT-Mumbai & Thales Systemes Aeroportes

Hollande is on a three-day state visit to India, and will be the chief guest at Republic Day Parade on Tuesday. Today, Modi and Hollande held restricted talks for more than an hour, followed by delegation level talks that lasted over 90 minutes, at New Delhis Hyderabad House. The two sides signed as many as 14 agreements in defence, railways, renewable energy, cultural exchanges and urban infrastructure sectors. These agreements were in addition to the 16 inked on Sunday in Chandigarh. French companies will also help India in building Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry as smart cities.

At a separate event on India-France business session organised by industry body Ficci, French Minister for Finance and Public Accounts Michel Sapin said: Over the last five years, French companies invested more than $1 billion per year and we estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion in next five years. French companies represent 10 per cent of solar capacity installed in India and by 2020-22, they could add additional capacities. Sapin said France is the third-biggest foreign investor in India with an investment stock of $20 billion and there are more than 400 French companies present in India. The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector. This makes France a major player in Prime Minister Narendra Modis Make In India programme. This complementarily can also been seen in the context of other programmes of the Indian government, Sapin said. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said the two sides also explored cooperation in high-speed railway. India and France also expressed strong commitment for early resumption of stalled negotiations for the proposed free trade agreement between India and the European Union.

The two also pledged to explore new avenues for cooperation to strengthen exchange of information to prevent offshore tax evasion. The two decided to strengthen their security cooperation, particularly in view of the recent terror strikes in France and in India. They decided to extend by another 10 years their defence cooperation agreement and agreed that they should conduct more joint defence exercises.
Minimum qualification for applying for a post of a police constable is the completion of intermediate education (plus two). In Telangana state enough number of candidates will be available even if this minimum qualification is raised to B Tech.

About 10,196 engineering graduates were among the 1.59 lakh candidates who have applied for the recruitment of 9,281 police constable posts being initiated by the Telangana State Level Police Recruitment Board.

The response to police recruitment suggest that a large number of BTech graduates in the state are not only unemployed but are also willing to take up a job not necessarily corresponding to their educational qualification, for various reasons.

It may be recalled that the two sibling states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were in the news recently when many students travelling to the US to join MS and other post graduate courses were sent back mid way or as soon as they landed in the US. They were all the engineering graduates hailing from these two Telugu states.

After coming out of these engineering colleges some find jobs in IT and other sectors while some of those who do not get the job will go to the US on a student Visa for higher studies as well as in the hope of finding some employment in that country. Even after this, Telangana is estimated to have at least 1 lakh unemployed engineering graduates waiting desperately waiting for some job locally, according to a senior government official.

Mushrooming of engineering colleges in the undivided AP, particularly after the then government of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had introduced the reimbursement of tuition fee for all the private sector professional colleges covering more than 90 per cent of the students under various eligible criteria, saw as many as 3.5 lakh students graduating from engineering courses each year at one point of time.

"As the government was paying the fee, every body has opted for an engineering course. The quality of education and the employability of these students was not given enough attention," said a senior government official on condition of anonymity.

In November last year the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply an Sewerage Board(HMWSSB) had invited applications for 146 posts with engineering qualification. It had received as many as 86,000 applications for these handful number of posts.

Sources say that just around 3,000 out of all those engineering graduates who took part in the multiple recruitment tests so far in Telangana were fit to be taken into the engineering jobs.

In this backdrop the state government's announcement to fill as many as 50,000 posts in various departments, mostly for non engineering jobs, have kept alive the hope among these large number of unemployed engineering graduates in the state. Currently there are 7.5 lakh registered unemployed people in Telangana.

"We have conducted nine recruitment exams between September and December, 2015. About 2 lakh candidates had appeared for these exams. We are the first state public service commission to conduct the online tests in job recruitment for as may as 30,000 candidates in one sitting. Besides this, we had also adopted the biometric identification procedure to avoid possible impersonation by any unscrupulous elements," Ghanta Chakrapani, chairman of Telangana State Public Service Commission(TSPSC) told Business Standard.

Chakrapani said that the state government has also been filling up a large number of engineering posts given its focus on irrigation and infrastructure sectors. Recruitment tests were conducted for around 2,700 jobs so far under various engineer category posts by his organisation and the results were going to be announced very soon, according to him.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's adopted village 'Jayapur' in his Varanasi parliamentary constituency is now a wi-fi hotspot.

The free wi-fi services started in Jayapur village this week, courtesy Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) Uttar Pradesh (East) Circle chief general manager (CGM) H R Shukla told Business Standard here.

Apart from Jayapur, the Varanasi airport has also been provided free wi-fi service by BSNL.

Earlier, eight ghats in Varanasi and two spots in Sarnath had been turned wi-fi spots last year. A wi-fi hotspot typically needs an investment of about Rs 10 lakh.

The company has identified three dozen new wi-fi hotspots across UP in Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Jhansi.

"These spots have been identified on the basis of economic feasibility and footfalls. We would collaborate with private parties under a revenue sharing model at these spots," he informed.

Currently, the free wi-fi service is available for the first 15 minutes. In the next phase, BSNL would fix charges applicable for wi-fi use beyond the first 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, BSNL is upgrading its 3G infrastructure in UP to offer better voice and data services in all the major cities.

BSNL had been mandated to connect 37,455 village panchayats in UP (East) under the ongoing Optical Fibre Network (NOFN).

NOFN is a project to provide broadband connectivity on optical fibre to 2,50,000 village panchayats across India for the implementation of services such as e-health, e-education and e-governance
The news of 85-year-old Pallonji Mistry being chosen for Padma Bhushan, one of Indias top civilian awards, didnt come as a surprise for those who know him.

With a net worth of $12.6 billion, Mistry is well known for constructing some of Mumbais landmarks such as the Reserve Bank of India headquarters, The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers, and the Oberoi Hotels.

Mistry and his sons, Shapoor and Cyrus, now chairman of Tata group, draw power from their 18.5 per cent stake in the unlisted Tata Sons which gives them unparalleled influence over the $100 billion Tata group.

An Irish citizen, Mistry is also known as the Phantom of Bombay House for keeping low profile. Mistry started working when he was 18 and built a close relationship with the Tata group over the decades. Tata group old-timers recall how Pallonjis father built steel and automobile factories for the Tatas and, in return, received 12 per cent stake in Tata Sons in 1930 because the Tatas had no money to pay at that point of time. Since then, the Mistrys kept on increasing their stake in Tata Sons and today are the largest shareholders in Tata Sons after the Tata Trusts.

Another connection with the Tatas was established when Mistrys daughter Aloo married Noel Tata, half-brother of former Tata group chairman, Ratan Tata. The group started in 1865, when Pallonjis grandfather started a construction business with a British partner. The first project was Mumbais first reservoir near Malabar Hill and later both partners built automobile factories and steel mills for the Tatas.

Pallonji was born just a year after the Mistrys acquired Tata Sons shares. When Ratan Tata was made chairman of Tata group, Pallonji kept a distance from the group except for a brief tenure when he became chairman of ACC, which was once Tata groups cement firm. ACC was later sold by Tata group to Swiss cement major, Holcim.

Even as JRD Tata and later Ratan Tata expanded the Tata empire, Pallonji Mistry quietly built a massive construction business. Mistry undertook big construction projects first in Mumbai and then in the Middle East, including Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai. The firm cemented its reputation as world-class construction company when it built the palace for the Sultan of Oman. An example of Mistrys influence on the Tata group was seen in 2011 when his son Cyrus, 48, was named as Ratan Tatas successor. Cyrus Mistry is the first non-Tata chairman in 74 years to lead the conglomerate.

Mistry named his oldest son, Shapoor, 50, chairman of Shapoorji Pallonji Group in June 2012. Mistry has also divided his assets between his two sons equally, as per a filing made to the regulators when a group company, Afcons Constructions filed for an initial public offer. The IPO was never launched.
Reminding both sides of Parliament that they should be responsible, President Pranab Mukherjee ticked off both the government and the Opposition in his pre-Republic Day address.

He said all Indians must guard against forces of violence, intolerance and unreason, but added reform and progressive legislation were necessary for reform and that it was the bounden duty of the law makers to ensure that such legislation is enacted after due discussion and debate. A spirit of accommodation, cooperation and consensus-building should be the preferred mode of decision-making. Delays in decision-making and implementation can only harm the process of development, indicating his disapproval of the role played by the Congress in holding up proceedings in the Rajya Sabha.

On Indias 67th Republic Day, Mukherjees said there was much to celebrate. Although 2015 had been a year of challenges, because of the subdued global economy and unpredictability in the commodity markets, Indias economy also had to face the blowback.

Weak investor sentiments led to withdrawal of funds from emerging markets including India, putting pressure on the Indian rupee. Our exports suffered. Our manufacturing sector is yet to recover fully, Mukherjee said.

But, he added, This year, with an estimated growth rate of 7.3 per cent, India is poised to become the fastest growing large economy. Contraction in global oil prices has helped maintain external sector stability and control domestic prices. Despite occasional setbacks, industrial performance this year has been strong.



However, the President flagged several issues. Each of us has the right to lead a healthy, happy and productive life in India. This right has been breached, especially in our cities, where pollution has reached alarming levels. Climate change has acquired real meaning with 2015 turning out to be the warmest year on record. Multiple strategies and action at various levels is necessary, he said.

Mukherjee had a lot to say on education, possibly in the light of the happenings in Hyderabad and other universities.

An ecosystem that fosters critical thinking and makes teaching intellectually stimulating is necessary. It must inspire scholarship and encourage unfettered respect for knowledge and teachers. It must instill a spirit of reverence towards women that will guide social conduct of an individual throughout his life. It must breed a culture of deep thought and create an environment of contemplation and inner peace. Through an open-minded approach to the wider spectrum of ideas emanating from within, our academic institutions must become world-class, he said.

About the Prime Ministers outreach to Pakistan, he counselled caution: Nations will never agree on everything; but the challenge today is existential. Terrorists seek to undermine order by rejecting the very basis of strategic stability, which are recognised borders. If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards an age of chaos. There will be disputes among nations; and, as is well-known, the closer we are to a neighbour, the higher the propensity for disputes. There is a civilised way to bridge disagreement; dialogue, ideally, should be a continual engagement. But we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets.



Mukherjee quoted Tagores words from Nutan Yuger Bhore: Cholaay cholaay baajbey joyer bheree  paayer begeyi poth ketey jaay, korish ney aar deri (Move ahead, the roll of drums announce your triumphal march; With feet of glory, you shall cut out your own path; Delay not, delay not, a new age dawns).
In a first of its kind under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban), the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation today approved fitting of roof top solar energy panels over 10,000 houses belonging to economically weaker sections in Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs 253 crore.

This 'green' proposal of the state government was approved by an Inter-Ministerial Central Sanctioning & Monitoring Committee (CSMC) chaired by Dr Nandita Chatterjee, Secretary(HUPA).

According to official release from the Minister, Unit Cost of greening these 10,000 EWS houses in 157 Town Panchayats is estimated to be Rs 2.53 lakh per house. Of this, Ministry of HUPA will provide an assistance of Rs 1.50 lakh per house while the state government will contribute Rs 0.60 lakh and the beneficiary's contribution will be Rs 0.43 lakh.

The Committee today also approved construction of 7,204 houses under Affordable Housing in Partnerhsip (AHP) component of PMAY (Urban) in nine cities and towns at a total cost of Rs 572 crore with cost of construction ranging from Rs. 7.22 lakh to Rs.8.46 lakh per house.

Of this, central assistance will be Rs 1.50 lakh per house and the rest will be borne by the state government and beneficiaries.

As per the Committee's approval, another 6,272 houses of Economically Weaker Sections will be improved with required additional construction at a total cost of Rs188 crore under the 'Beneficiary led Construction' component of urban housing mission in 9 cities. For this, central government will provide an assistance of Rs1.50 lakh per each beneficiary while the state government and beneficiary will contribute Rs 0.60 lakh and 0.90 lakh per house resepctively.

Of the total cost of construction/improvement of 23,476 houses in Tamil Nadu approved today, central government will provide a total assistance of Rs 352.14 crore.
The government is in the process of starting 100 model career centres all across the country, to help jobseekers connect with potential employers and skill providers. It would be different from the likes of naukri.com or monster.com as the government is planning to counsel the applicants through online platforms and mobile phones.

The Centre has already allocated money to states for 70 such centres, to be opened shortly.

These centres will be linked to the already operational national career service portal. The Directorate General of Employment and Training, ministry of labour and employment, has been tasked to maintain the portal.

IN THE OFFING 100 model career centres all across the country to help job seekers connect with potential employers and skill providers

The Centre has already allocated money to states for 70 such centres to be opened shortly

These centres will be linked to the national career service portal, already operational

The Directorate General of Employment and Training will maintain the portal

"This initiative is going to be different from other similar services in the sense that some due-diligence is done at our end about the employers," Shankar Aggarwal, secretary, ministry of labour and employment, told Business Standard.

The government may also seek information about employers from outside India before allowing them to advertise on these portals. In the past there have been cases where the government had to intervene and rescue Indian workers from captivity of their foreign employers.

The model career centres will be an upgraded version of the now moribund employment exchanges. India has a network of 947 employment exchanges. Nearly 44.8 million jobseekers were registered with employment exchanges till 2012-13. Other than Maharashtra and Gujarat, where these exchanges still manage to have jobseekers placed, centres in other states have almost ceased to offer any help to applicants.

The Centre plans to bring these exchanges within the information technology platform.

The ministry plans to rope in a number of employers to the platforms. Besides, there are plans to bring counsellors on board. The business model of counselling services is being worked out. It has not been decided as to whether counselling services will be paid or free. "Some reputed counsellors would like to charge their fees. It is yet to be decided whether the cost will be borne by the government or be charged from jobseekers," the labour secretary said.

The emphasis at model career centres will be on counselling of jobseekers. The national career service portal says that "the government is now giving increased focus on career counselling as a key activity for our aspiring youth to pursue the right career choice, so that they join the workforce with better skills for enhancing growth and development." After counselling if jobseekers are found lacking in some skill, they will be directed to training centres.

At the national career service portal, jobseekers can apply for jobs, find information on available training programmes, book an appointment with a career counsellor, register to take part in job fairs and review the latest employment trends by going through the reports. They can also go through description of jobs on offer and have an idea of the expected salary.

Employment exchanges in Maharashtra and Gujarat have reportedly done well by organising job fairs and facilitating placement of jobseekers in the private sector. The Centre's latest initiative through the national portal and model career centres is aimed at replicating that model.

The career portal has corners for jobseekers, employers, counsellors, placement agencies and skill providers. There is a section on reports. It has district-wise lists of counsellors, skill centres and placement agencies. It also provides lists of number of jobseekers in a district and the number of jobs on offer.

Skill providers are allowed to list the courses on offer and upload the course content online. They can add more courses and revise the existing courses.
French companies are expected to invest over $10 billion in the next five years, French minister of finance and public accounts, Michel Sapin, said on Monday.

He was speaking at a joint business session organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and attended by both Indian and French players in the defence, aeronautics, urban development sectors.

"The convergence in economic policy and business ties between India and France is robust and can only grow rapidly in the near future." said Sapin. Saying he regretted France's economic growth not being similar to India, he stressed the economic structure in both favour stability. He also pointed out both countries have managed to hold their own in times of high global market volatility.

Sapin said France is the third-largest investor in India and the figures are only expected to grow.

"The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector. This makes France a major player in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India programme. This complementarity can also been seen in the context of other programmes of the Indian government," he added.

The minister added that France has directed French Development Agency to earmark 60 per cent of total financial outlay to India.

The agency operates in 70 countries and provides finance for development. In 2014, it committed 8.1 billion euros across the globe for various projects.

He met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley this morning and has invited him to visit France for starting an economic dialogue between the two countries which he hoped would turn into an annual event.

Sapin said there are currently around 400 French companies in India, with a total consolidated turnover of $ 20 billion, adding French companies currently represent 10 per cent of the installed solar capacity in India.

Ficci president Harshvardhan Neotia said India and France cannot ignore the threat to its security. FICCI also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NG group from France on the Terra Watt initiative in the area of renewable energy.

There are currently around 400 French companies in India, with a total consolidated turnover of $ 20 billion.

Sapin is accompanying French President Francois Hollande on a 4-day visit to India who is the guest of honor for this year's Republic Day celebrations. Hollande had been pushing the sale of 36 Rafale combat jets to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday an intergovernmental agreement has been signed to buy the jets from France. However, some "financial issues" regarding deal are yet to be sorted between both the countries.

He also attended the foundation laying ceremony for the new International Solar Alliance Headquarters set to come up in Gurgaon.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande with a group of folk dancers in Chandigarh on January 24, 2016.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with French President Francois Hollande announced India as the headquarter for the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

The Alliance announced during Climate Change Summit in Paris last year is partnership of solar resource-rich countries. Currently, there are 121 countries from Africa, South-east Asia and Europe which have agreed to be members of ISA.

"If European countries can form one union and if oil producing countries can come together, then why can't solar rich countries forge a partnership. We have come together for the betterment of the humanity, society, environment and energy concerns, said Prime Minister Modi during foundation laying ceremony of the interim headquarters of ISA.

The headquarters would be based out of National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon, Haryana.

Hollande said that the country would invest its technology and pursue its companies for investment.

"France will invest 300 million for the International Solar Alliance and our companies will contribute through technological improvement and R&D," said Hollande.

Among the Indian agencies, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) and Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) would put $2 million in corpus for ISA.

IREDA is financing agency for renewable power projects and SECI is dedicated subsidiary of ministry of new and renewable energy for executing solar power projects.

Modi also said new innovation and research is required to meet climate change commitments.

Minister of state for coal, power and renewable energy Piyush Goyal said India has embarked on the world's largest renewable energy targets.

India aims to install 1,75,000 Mw of renewable based power projects by 2022, out of which 100,000 Mw is solar.

As a part of its Climate Change commitments, India committed close to 40 per cent of its energy to come from renewable energy sources by 2022.

The underlying rationale for ISA is to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all, said the ISA working draft.

It also plans to increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy substantially by 2030.

The Government of India will support ISA by hosting its Secretariat for an initial period of five years and thereafter it is expected to generate its own resources and become self-financing.
For months, it has been whispered that New Delhi is unwilling to pay the price that French company Dassault Aviation is demanding for the 36 Rafale fighters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked for in Paris last April. On Monday, Modi, and visiting French president, Francois Hollande, both confirmed those rumours.

After bilateral talks in New Delhi on Monday, Modi admitted that "financial issues" had to be sorted out, which would be resolved quickly.

Speaking after Modi, Hollande stated: "There are some financial issues that will be sorted out in a couple of days, but the memorandum has been signed."



The French president was referring to an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) that was inked on Monday. An IGA is a high-level expression of intent that does not have the force of a contract. Several IGAs signed by India are languishing - such as the Indo-Russian IGA, signed in 2007, to develop a multi-role transport aircraft.

There are two major hurdles to the contract. First, New Delhi and had Paris agreed the price of the 36 Rafales would be less than what Dassault had quoted in response to the Indian tender of 2007 for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA). Of those 126 fighters, the first 18 were to be supplied in "flyaway condition", i.e. fully built. Since 36 Rafales are now being bought in "flyaway condition", their per-piece price must be lower than what Dassault quoted for those 18 fighters.

In Paris last April, Modi and Hollande "agreed to conclude an IGA for supply of the aircraft on terms that would be better than conveyed by Dassault Aviation as part of a separate process underway [ie the MMRCA contract]".

Media reports put Dassault's quote for 36 fighters as $7-9 billion (Rs 47,500-60,000 crore). That figure would include the cost of an initial scale of weaponry and spare parts, as well as hangar facilities. That is an astronomic Rs 1,320 - 1,660 crore per aircraft.

"The government would find it extremely difficult to justify that price. For the cost of a Rafale, the Indian Air Force (IAF) could buy 4-5 Sukhoi-30MKI, or 10 Tejas light fighters," points out Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research, who has been critical of the MMRCA procurement.

The second hurdle to buying 36 Rafales in flyaway condition is the abandonment of any "Make in India" component. To bring in an element of that prime ministerial initiative, the defence ministry would have to strictly enforce a 50 per cent offsets clause, which would raise Dassault's cost further.

"There are quite clearly serious complications in negotiating this deal," points out Pushpinder Singh, editor of the authoritative aerospace trade journal, Vayu.

Dassault had, on January 31, 2012, been declared the winner of India's tender for 126 MMRCA aircraft. After exhaustive trials, the IAF chose the Rafale over five other fighters - Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet; Lockheed Martin's F-16IN Super Viper; Saab's Gripen NG; RAC-MiG's MiG-35 and Eurofighter GmbH's Typhoon. However, in protracted price negotiations that followed, the defence ministry found that Dassault's payment would amount to more than what its commercial bid initially suggested. The United Progressive Alliance government dragged on the negotiations. The National Democratic Alliance government chose to abandon the MMRCA tender altogether, and instead buy 36 Rafales over-the-counter.

The IAF insists it needs the Rafale, since it now operates just 34 squadrons against the 45 squadrons needed for a two-front war.

Critics of the Rafale procurement object, first, to its price; but also point out that the IAF already operates seven fighters - Sukhoi-30MKI, MiG-29, MiG-27, MiG-21, Mirage 2000, Jaguar and Tejas LCA. Buying an eighth fighter would require major expenditure on depots, maintenance infrastructure and spare part stocks.

Furthermore, the multi-billion dollar MMRCA contract was to be a springboard for galvanising India's aerospace industry. Buying 36 fully built Rafales would only benefit that of France. The India contract is vital for Dassault, which provides 11,600 French jobs and earned ^3.68 billion in revenue last year. But critics wonder what part of India's defence industry stands to benefit.
The liquidity in the banking system has dried up, but for the central bank's active help. Data shows the government is not spending its money back into the economy fast enough, building up an unusually large cash balance. At the same time, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is actively intervening in the currency market, having sold about $5 billion worth in the past one month to stabilise a falling rupee, thereby removing an equivalent amount of rupee liquidity from the system.

As a result, liquidity shortage in the banking system has assumed a mammoth proportion - prompting the RBI to offer assistance of some Rs 1.6 lakh crore through its various overnight and dated liquidity windows. All with the intention that the overnight call money rates remain at around the repo rate of 6.75 per cent.

Fed with easy liquidity and having enough mortgageable government securities, banks are not complaining - a far cry from a year ago when bank short-term deposit rates used to spike up in proportion to the liquidity shortage.

On a technical basis though, the liquidity shortage is about 1.73 per cent of the net demand and time liability (NDTL) of the banking system, much higher than RBI's own target of one per cent of NDTL.

However, the overarching aim of the regulator now is to keep call money rates anchored to the repo rate.

But the RBI's balance sheet is taking a hit in the process. The government's surplus cash balance with the RBI was at Rs 1,26,765 crore as on January 22. While it is normal for banks to suffer liquidity shortage at the time of tax outflow, the money starts coming back into the system in a fortnight or so as the government starts spending. This has not happened so far, indicating that the government could be going stingy to meet its fiscal deficit target.

Government's cash balance with RBI remains at around Rs 80,000 crore on the higher side. It is quite surprising that the government is not parting with its cash even after almost one-and-a-half month of having collected its taxes," said Gaurav Kapur, senior economist with RBS India, adding, meeting fiscal deficit could be one of the reasons behind this move.

According to a public sector banker, this is not troubling the banks as the RBI is providing adequate liquidity at cheap rates. "Liquidity related problems are largely a thing of the past under the new framework. When there is not much of credit growth, liquidity is largely an RBI subject," said the banker.

While not structural, such liquidity shortage is called 'frictional'. In a scenario like this, central bank comes up with various short-term measures including bond buyout from the secondary market. Last week, the RBI conducted an open market operation and bought back Rs 10,000 crore of bonds to ease liquidity. Frictional shortage is dragging on and could come up as an important input for the RBI when it announces its monetary policy on February 2.
The state government hopes to a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for the Sharbati variety of wheat and Kadaknath, a rare breed of chicken.

While the state wants farmers, producing companies and associations to stake claim for the Sharbati variety, Jhabua-based non-governmental organisation Gramin Vikas Trust (GVT) has reached the final stage of obtaining a GI tag for Kadaknath (locally known as Kala Masi) chicken meat.

Also known as Malwa or Sehore wheat, the Sharbati variety is grown in Sehore, Vidisha and Astha districts, and in some parts of Bhopal and Hoshangabad. Fast moving consumer goods companies like ITC and Cargill claim to use the variety for their 'Chakki Fresh' atta. The variety fetches over Rs 3,000 a quintal in the local market.

"If it gets the GI tag, would fetch more. We are in the process of facilitating farmer associations and farmer producer companies in searching records, so that they can make a solid claim for GI registration,"



Rajesh Rajora, principal secretary, farmers' welfare and agriculture development department, said. The department also plans to conduct lab tests to support their claim.

In tribal-dominated Jhabua district, poultry is the only source of additional income for people. Kadaknath chicken is popular for its palatable black meat.

The breed, black in colour, contains high protein and necessary minerals. However, during the 90s, it reached near extinction due to over-consumption. A senior official in the animal husbandry department says the market demand for the breed is normally 300,000 birds.

"It is difficult these days to get a day-old chick," said Yash Kanungo, regional project manager of GVT, adding, "Our aim is to ensure high-market value through the GI tag for Kadaknath meat, so that the local community that rears this exclusive variety of chicken can benefit."



In 2014, the Chennai-based Geographical Indication registrar had sought a list of 'producers (community involved in this business) and detailed 'uniqueness' of the Jhabua Kadaknath black chicken meat from the GVT.

The GVT is promoted by Krishak Bharati Cooperative for eastern and western India rain-fed projects in seven states, by forming clusters in tribal areas like Jhabua.

"We will soon provide the necessary details," says Anil Pandey, coordinator - Intellectual Property Facilitation Centre, an institute jointly promoted by the Union ministry of MSMEs and Confederation of Indian Industry.

The GI Registry has also sought chemical and physical properties of the chicken meat, melanin pigment and anti-oxidant contents.

The state will play the role of a facilitator, says Prabhanshu Kamal, principal secretary, animal husbandry department.

Meanwhile, the state agriculture department had challenged Apeda (Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority)'s decision to exclude Madhya Pradesh-grown Basmati rice for GI tag.

Apeda in its application did not include Madhya Pradesh in its list of 22 districts of India.
French President Francois Hollande is in India to be chief guest at the Republic Day Parade. Though leaders of both nations are desirous of greater economic ties, economic and commercial relationships between the two havent strengthened over the past few years.

TOP EXPORT ITEMS Mineral fuel, mineral oils & products

Apparel, clothing accessories

Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery & mechanical appliances

Electrical machinery & equipment TOP IMPORT ITEMS Aircraft, spacecraft and parts thereof

Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery & mechanical appliances

Electrical machinery, equipment & parts

Iron & steel

Organic chemicals Source: Commerce ministry

Bilateral trade is less than $10 billion, well shy of the roughly $12-billion target set by both governments. There is no indication of the target being achieved in the immediate future. Indias exports to France rose marginally from $4.98 billion in 2012-13 to $5.1 billion in 2013-14 but declined to $4.95 billion in 2014-15.

By comparison, imports fell from $4.65 billion in 2012-13 to $3.69 billion in 2013-14, rising thereafter to $4.4 billion in 2014-15. France is the ninth largest investor in India with total FDI inflows at $4.76 billion (April 2000 to September 2015). While FDI inflows from France more than doubled from $305 million in 2013-14 to $635 million in 2014-15, the country accounts for only two per cent of all FDI inflows to India. Figures on outward bound FDI arent anything to write home about.

According to the French embassy, in 2013, India was the 47th largest foreign investor in France with cumulative FDI inflows amounting to $410 million. Business Standard looks at the trade relationship between the two countries.
A day after the Union Cabinet recommended President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday asked Union home minister Rajnath Singh the reason for the "urgent" decision, sources said. The Congress challenged the recommendation in the Supreme Court, which listed the case for Wednesday. (The President's Rule is the imposition of Article 356 of the Constitution on a state seen as incapable of running the constitutional machinery. In such times, the state comes under the direct control of the central government.)



The President is likely to seek legal opinion on the issue.

While Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders exuded confidence that the President would eventually give assent to the Cabinet recommendation after seeking legal opinion, a Congress delegation filed a memorandum to the President. It argued this was the first time the Union Cabinet had recommended central rule in a state while the issue was in court. The party also enclosed a "summary of events" detailing the "disquieting events leading to the Governor's illegal actions".

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi termed the move a "blatant" bid to topple a duly-elected government.

"(Prime minister Narendra) Modiji, you talk about federalism, but murder democracy. You talk about cooperation, but use every means to coerce," he tweeted.

The Congress petition was mentioned before Chief Justice of India T S Thakur. He directed the matter to be listed for hearing on Wednesday. Already, a five-judge constitution Bench headed by J S Khehar is examining the scope of discretionary powers of a Governor under the constitution regarding his authority to convene an Assembly session with or without the advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers.

The fresh plea, filed by Rajesh Tacho, chief whip of Congress Legislature party, said that "illegal and unlawful" attempts had been made by the Centre and the Governor, Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, to topple the Nabam Tuki government. It has sought restoration of the Nabam Tuki government, along with Tuki's council of ministers, to office, by "reviving and re-activating" the sixth Arunachal Pradesh legislative Assembly.

The Cabinet decision came under attack from most of the opposition parties, which accused the Centre of "murdering" democracy.

BJP spokesman Sudhanshu Trivedi defended the Centre's action, saying the political crisis in Arunachal was because of an internal conflict of the Congress. Trivedi said a "a government cannot remain in office if it does not call for a session of the House within six months of the last session". He said Congress members of the legislative Assembly had revolted because of "family matter" and corruption charges against the government. The chief minister and the Speaker are cousins and worked together, fuelling resentment within the party, he said.

He said the Tuki government should have called the House by January 21 (Thursday) which it did not because it had "lost" majority. "Let alone the meeting of Assembly, even the meeting of Congress legislature party was not called for the simple reason that Congress had lost numbers," he said.

Trivedi exuded confidence that the President will take a decision in its wisdom.
Apollo Hospitals Group will sell 23.3 per cent stake in Apollo Munich Health Insurance to Munich Re. This deal values the insurer at Rs 703 crore. The Board of Directors of Apollo Energy Company, an Apollo Hospitals Group Company, at a meeting on Monday, approved the divestment of 23.3 per cent shareholding in Apollo Munich to its joint venture partner, Munich Re of Germany for Rs 163.5 crore.

Completion of the proposed transaction is subject to applicable regulatory approvals and execution of customary agreements, which is expected to be completed at the end of the first quarter of 2016.

After consummation of the transaction, Apollo Hospitals Group's shareholding in Apollo Munich would stand reduced from 74.4 per cent to 51.1 per cent. Correspondingly, Munich Re's shareholding in Apollo Munich would move to 48.7 per cent and 0.2 per cent will be held by employees. Apollo Hospitals would continue to hold its stake in Apollo Munich, the company said.

Dr Prathap C Reddy, chairman of Apollo Munich Health Insurance Company Ltd and Apollo Hospitals Enterprise said, "Insurance is a key element for making quality health care facilities accessible to the masses. The show of confidence from our JV partner will go a long way in helping the group achieve its vision of 'Healthcare for all'."



The opportunity for Munich Re to increase its shareholdings was provided through the decision of the government in March 2015 to increase the foreign direct investment cap in the insurance sector from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.

Doris Hopke, the member of the Munich Re Board of Management responsible for Munich Health said "With the increased stakeholding, we are strengthening our position for sustainable and profitable growth in this region. Apollo Munich Health Insurance is committed to make quality healthcare easy and accessible."



Axis Capital acted as the financial advisor to Apollo Hospitals group for the transaction.
With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tightening its noose around deposit taking non-banking financial companies (NBFC), public deposits of these companies grew six per cent to Rs 27,500 crore on a year-on-year basis as on March 31, 2015.

According to RBI data, as of March last year, there were 11,842 NBFCs registered with RBI, of which 220 were deposit-taking. However, the bigger source of funds for deposit-taking NBFCs, issuance of debentures, came down as the funds mobilised through it dropped from Rs 41,700 crore to Rs 40,800 crore between March 2014 and March 2015.

In November 2014, RBI had issued new regulations for deposit-taking NBFCs, under which it increased the minimum net-owned fund requirement for the companies eight-fold from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore by 2017 in a phased manner. Thus, the companies were required to have net owned fund of Rs 1 crore by March 2016, which needs to be increased to Rs 2 crore by March 2017. In addition, RBI said deposit-taking NBFCs have to mandatorily get investment grade credit rating for being eligible to accept public deposits.

While several big deposit-taking companies expect to meet the March 2016 deadline, some others might miss the deadline and be forced to shut shop. Many small companies had to stop deposit-taking activities as they were unable to get investment grade rating from credit rating agencies.

Since November 2014, many small companies have stopped taking deposits. Moreover, of the 220 deposit-taking companies, 175 have net worth of Rs 50-60 lakh. It is extremely difficult for them to meet the Rs 2 crore net worth criteria. We have requested RBI to have a separate category of small NBFCs, said Shiv Dayal Chugh, director, Finance Industry Development Council.

Some of the bigger companies, such as Shriram Transport Finance, too are reducing dependence on public deposits.

Dependency on the deposit-taking arm has been coming down, as we have diversified our source of funding. Moreover, the cost of public deposits is on the higher side. Last financial year, our growth in the public deposit segment was about 10 per cent, said Umesh Revankar, managing director, Shriram Transport Finance.
Currency turmoil in China and fears of a global slowdown have led investors to abandon emerging in droves, rattling the large asset management firms that have long promoted such investments in their hunt for higher returns.

For more than a decade, star managers at Franklin Templeton, Pimco, Aberdeen and Oppenheimer seemed more like Marco Polos than Warren Buffetts, beating a path to Internet companies in China, oil giants in Brazil and gold mines in South Africa.

Investing in these high-risk came to be seen as a necessity for a diversified portfolio as well as an opportunity for these firms to levy some of the highest fees in the industry.

Now, with investors fleeing in a fury, asset management firms are struggling to stanch the bleeding.

Last year, a record $105 billion was pulled out of global mutual funds, with 26 per cent of that figure coming from asset managers based in the United States, according to the fund tracker EPFR.

It was the third consecutive year of bond and equity outflows and one would have go back to the Asian crisis era of the late 1990s to see a similar retreat, said Cameron Brandt, the head of research at the data provider.

"This has become a chronic condition as opposed to the sudden onset of something," Brandt said. "There is almost no conviction out there right now."



For large fund companies whose assets under management ballooned on the back of these flows, the world has changed drastically, largely for the worse.

Take the global bond manager Pimco. It has three bond funds that invest in developing that the research firm Morningstar tracks: a local currency sovereign bond fund worth $4.7 billion; a broader vehicle valued at $1.7 billion, and a corporate bond fund whose assets have eroded to $202 million from more than $1 billion.

In total, emerging market funds managed by Pimco lost $6 billion last year, according to Morningstar.

Pimco has had to steady itself after the explosive departure of a star manager, William H Gross, in 2014. Yet the emerging market outflows, on top of the billions of dollars that followed Gross out the door, have only added to the firm's woes.

Pimco, once the world's largest manager of emerging market bonds, has experienced industry-lagging returns from outsize bets in Brazil and Russia that have propelled an investor exodus that is getting worse by the month.

Last December, investors pulled $619 million from the firm's local currency fund, which has lost 21 per cent of its value over the past year, trailing every fund in the category except one, according to Morningstar.

A $15 billion fund in 2013, it now languishes below $5 billion.

While Pimco may be struggling, it is certainly not alone. A local currency debt fund run by MFS investment management in Boston lost $1.4 billion last year, and Trust Company of the West in Los Angeles had outflows of $1.8 billion from its $2.6 billion bond offering last year.

On the equity side, the $28 billion Oppenheimer Developing Markets fund suffered by far the largest exodus last year, with $5 billion departing the fund, according to Morningstar.

The fund is overseen by Justin Leverenz, who spends more than half the year circling the globe in search of unloved companies. But Leverenz was hurt in 2015 from big positions in Chinese Internet companies like Alibaba, which lost 30 per cent over the last year.

And in Europe, Aberdeen Asset Management, which manages $403 billion and specialises in emerging markets, had $48 billion leave the firm. Aberdeen's stock price fell by half for the year.

Institutions lead the way

Traders and portfolio managers say that what worries them now is the sense that sophisticated institutional investors, who generally tend to take a longer-term view than their retail counterparts (and who might even be inclined to buy at these levels), have been the ones driving the selling over the last six months.

Instead of taking advantage of bond and company valuations that are at historic lows, these investors are acting more like lemmings, unloading the good and the bad in their portfolios because that is what they see their peers doing. The panicky climate is also forcing managers to have a chunk of cash on hand to meet redemption requests.

"We are seeing evidence that institutional investors are capitulating," said Charles Collyns, an economist at the Institute of Finance, using an industry term to describe the practice of wholesale selling when all hope is lost.

In a recent survey of more than 100 investment managers conducted by Northern Trust in Chicago, the No. 1 risk factor cited by respondents was that problems in China would continue to bring down growth rates in the developing world.

Also of concern, regulators and economists say, is the fact that many emerging market securities, especially bonds, can be very hard to sell, especially when markets are declining.

The surprise decision by Third Avenue Management last month to close down a junk bond fund because it could not meet investor demands for cash has heightened fears that an emerging market bond fund could find itself in a similar position.

"There is definitely a liquidity concern out there," said Brandt, the research director at EPFR. "People are asking: 'If I don't get my stuff out now, will I be able to get it out later?' "



Things would need to get much worse for that to happen. The bonds that trade in countries like Turkey, Mexico and Brazil are far more liquid than the deeply distressed corporate securities that Third Avenue's credit fund favoured.

That has not stopped the selling though - especially in recent months. For example, of the $2.5 billion that left Pimco's local currency fund last year, $1 billion came in the last two months of 2015, according to Morningstar.

The emerging markets unit at Pimco is headed by Michael A Gomez, a former debt trader at Goldman Sachs who has been at the firm overseeing these funds since 2003.

The dismal performance of Pimco's emerging market funds has done little to lift morale at the firm since the departure of Gross. And while Gomez's difficult run - over the last three years his local currency fund trails 89 per cent of its peers - and the sustained pace of outflows has put him under some pressure, his superiors continue to stand by him.

"Michael Gomez is the leader of the emerging market team and has our full trust and support," said Daniel J Ivascyn, Pimco's chief investment officer.

Last year, in an effort to better gauge employees' mood, the leadership of Pimco organised a companywide survey, according to people who were briefed on the initiative. It was the first time the company ever did such a thing, and while the 8,000 responses did vary, there were those who took the opportunity to vent - using strong language to complain about the company's culture.

At an employee meeting last month at company headquarters in Newport Beach, Cali., Pimco's president, Jay Jacobs, discussed the survey results. And he said that if there were no improvements he would, at some point in the future, step down.

Also addressing the staff at the meeting was Ivascyn, who acknowledged the performance problems in emerging markets and said that the firm would continue to hire more experts to help matters, with Gomez leading the recruiting effort.

As is often the case in emerging markets, the most opportune time to buy is when everyone else is selling. In that regard, the rally in oil and emerging market currencies last week could well be a sign that the pessimism of late has been overdone.

2016 The New York Times News Service
The central governments Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS) needs specialised banks or a bullion bank to successfully take off, suggest some bankers.

For, say the doubters, even after two rounds of clarification, one by the Reserve Bank (RBI) last week and another by the government on Sunday, the scheme is still beset by doubts. Depositors are still not clear of how the tax deducted source (TDS) provisions would apply. Many, including some temples, want their gold back within a certain maturity period. There are questions from smaller stakeholders such as the collecting centres purity testing ability and the risk that banks take on this.

So far, only 900 kg has been deposited under GMS. Compared to this, the scheme of sovereign gold bonds is much more successful. The latters first tranche got subscription for 917 kg. The second tranche closed last Friday and the subscription is expected to be much higher, due to banks aggressive push and the fact that market prices higher than the bonds' price. In the first issue, market prices were much lower.

On the GMS, bankers point to the risks they need to take  on the Collecting and Purity Testing Centres (CPTC), logistics, cost factors and whether the commission is adequate. Customers have other apprehensions, too.

At an India Gold Forum event here, organised by Bullion Bulletin and the World Gold Council, most agreed more time should be given to see of GMS succeeds. Neeraja Nigam, deputy general manager, precious metals, State Bank of India, said: Customers are apprehensive about whether, at maturity, the gold is not given back. And, if they redeem deposited gold in cash and import is banned, then they might not be able to repurchase it.She added: I think they (the ministry of finance and RBI) have got their act together. After the clarifications, only the TDS issue remains, which according to them, would be addressed within three or four weeks.



She suggested allowing dematerialisation and making it transferable would improve the scheme. In the earlier gold deposit scheme, demat making was allowed but there was none to get it done. At present, the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange is ready to demat. She proposed setting up a gold bullion bank, on the lines of the National Housing Bank, for GMS.

SLOW START 900 kgs of gold monetised so far

Only 46 collection centres certified under the scheme

MMTC to set up its own collection centres

Refineries, banks, temples still have some apprehensions

Bankers say the scheme contains risks, and proper system has to be put in place to make it more transparent

917 kg of gold investment applications received in the first tranche in November

Second tranche closed last week. Response expected to be much better than the first one, as the open market price was higher than bond price

Scheme hopes to get more popularity among people, as the government and the Reserve Bank of India comes out with clarifications

Another proposal was from Raghav Singhal, general manager, global group, ICICI Bank. He suggested incentives for banks, such as on the cash reserve ratio or a priority sector lending status.

Another issue faced by the banks in implementation would be a tie-up with a CPTC. It may be noted that some noted refining entities, including MMTC-PAMP India, a joint venture between PAMP SA Switzerland and the government-owned MMTC, are reluctant to sign agreements with the testing centres. Rajesh Khosla, managing director for the JV, said they were reluctant to accept the purity tests of those centres as these were not capable of identifying the Platinum Group Metals, which are impurities.

MMTC has so far set up six equipped collection centres of its own and wishes to add another every month, to have 50 in the next three years, for GMS.

Other refiners argued on issues with collecting centers in case of a dispute on the purity they assigned. They say there is no speedy mechanism to solve disputes. As a result of banks and refineries having issues about CPTCs, tripartite agreements are not being signed. The scheme wants banks, centres and refineries to sign such agreements.

Collecting centres, also hallmark centres, argue the purity of their test is mostly accurate and any dispute between testing centre and refinery would be resolved between them, without the risk passing to the bank. So far, 46 hallmarking centres have been upgraded to CPTC status and we are waiting to tie-up with banks and refineries. Some refineries are coming for a tie-up but banks are not ready, said Harshad Ajmera, president, Indian Association of Hallmarking Centres, and of the All India Association of recognised Assaying &Hallmarking Centres. He added another 300 centres are ready to invest in and become CPTCs if those who are upgraded get business.

P R Somasundaram, country managing director at the World Gold Council, said there were opportunities for banks to come out with more products, including those that run along with gold accumulation schemes introduced by jewellers.

The bankers generally welcomed a suggestion from G V Sreedhar, chairman of the All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation, that jewellers be allowed to buy back gold jewellery from customers and deposit an equal quantity of gold with banks under GMS. Jewelleries were allowed to file their Expression of Interest with the Bureau of Indian Standards recently. According to an industry source, one jeweller has filed so far.
DERIVATIVE STRATEGIES



LARSEN & TOUBRO : BUY



TARGET: Rs 1163



STOP LOSS: Rs 1130



BUY LT FUTURES @ Rs 1140, TARGET Rs 1163, STOPLOSS OF Rs 1130

[STOCHASTICS BUY + ABV PREVIOUS CLOSE + VOLUME JUMP]



KOTAK MAHINDRA BANK : BUY



TARGET: Rs 695



STOP LOSS: Rs 674.50



BUY KOTAKBANK FUTURES @ Rs 680, TARGET Rs 695, STOPLOSS OF Rs 674.50

[STOCHASTICS BUY + OVERSOLD + VOLUME JUMP] Disclaimer: This report has been prepared by Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Limited (GBNPP), here in after referred to as GBNPP. GBNPP, a publicly listed company, is engaged in services of retail broking, credit, portfolio management and marketing investment products including mutual funds, life and general insurance and properties. Each recipient of this report should make such investigation as it deems necessary to arrive at an independent evaluation of an investment in the securities of companies referred to in this report (including the merits and risks involved). This document is not for public distribution and has been furnished to you solely for your information and must not be reproduced or redistributed to any other person. Persons into whose possession this document may come are required to observe these restrictions. Opinion expressed herein is our current opinion as of the date appearing on this report only. While we endeavor to update on a reasonable basis the information discussed in this material, there may be regulatory, compliance, or other reasons that prevent us from doing so. Prospective investors and others are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not predictions and may be subject to change without notice.
Force Motors has rallied 9% to Rs 2,805 on the BSE after the company reported nearly three-fold jump in net profit at Rs 27.44 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015 (Q3FY16) on back of strong operational income. The automobile company had recorded a profit of Rs 9.99 crore in the same quarter last year.

Net sales of the company during the quarter under review increased by 45% to Rs 740 crore against Rs 512 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal.

The companys earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin stood at 6.38% expanded by 344 basis points (bps) year on year but contracted 217 bps on sequential basis.

Force Motors posted profit of Rs 42 crore on revenues of Rs 756 crore in September 2015 quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 2,834 on the BSE in early morning trade. The counter has seen huge trading volumes with 113,000 shares changed hands in first half-an-hour of trading against an average 116,000 shares that were traded daily in past two weeks on the BSE.
Benchmark share indices trimmed intra-day gains after global crude oil prices resumed their downward trajectory after sharp gains on Friday while caution ahead of expiry of January derivative contracts capped upside gains.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended up 50 points at 24,486 and the Nifty50 ended up 14 points at 7,436.

In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.4%-1% each. Market breadth was strong with 1,693 gainers and 791 losers on the BSE.

"The volatility in global crude oil prices has increased and have started weakening agains after the sharp surge on Friday. Overall market sentiment remains weak with selling seen in mid-cap and small-caps. Further, volatility ahead of expiry of January derivative contracts has also kept investors on the sidelines," said Alex Mathews, Head of Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

will remain closed tomorrow, January 26, on account of Republic Day holiday.

Foreign institutional investors continued to remain net sellers in equities to the tune of Rs 770 crore, as per provisional stock exchange.

The Indian rupee also trimmed early gains and was down 11 paise at 67.73 to the US dollar.

GLOBAL MARKETS



Asian stocks ended higher on Monday after global crude oil prices rebounded on expectations of demand for heating oil in wake of the cold weather conditions in the U.S. East coast. Further, investors will also await the decision by the Bank of Japan from its two-day meet which begins on Thursday, January 28. Nikkei ended up 0.9% while Shanghai Composite gained 0.8%. Among others in the region, Hang Seng ended up 1.3% while Straits Times rose 0.3%.

European shares were trading with marginal losses after opening with marginal gains after crude oil prices pared intra-day gains. The CAC-40, DAX and FTSE-100 were down 0.2% each.

SECTORS & STOCKS



BSE Metal index was the top gainer up 1.6% followed by Consumer Durables, Healthcare index up 1.1% each. On the downside, BSE Capital Goods, Power, Oil & Gas indices were the top losers.

Financial stocks were among the top gainers. HDFC Bank ended up nearly 1% after the private sector lender announced 20% growth in net profit at Rs 3,357 crore compared with Rs 2,791 crore in the same quarter last fiscal. However, gross NPAs rose to 0.97% compared with 0.91% quarter-on-quarter while net NPAs were up at 0.29% versus 0.25% quarter-on-quarter. Mortgage lender HDFC gained 1.4% and ICICI Bank closed 1.5% higher.

Pharma shares also witnessed renewed buying interest with Sun Pharma leading the gains up 2.2% followed by Dr Reddy's Labs and Cipla.

Other Sensex gainers include, ONGC, HUL and TCS among others.

Among other shares, SpiceJet surged 11% on the BSE after the company reported net profit at Rs 238 crore for the quarter ended December 2015 (Q3FY16) against a loss of Rs 275 crore in the year ago quarter. This is the fourth straight profitable quarter for SpiceJet, on the back of low fuel prices.

Supreme Petrochem soared 13% on the BSE after the company posted net profit of Rs 26 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015 (Q3FY16), due to lower raw material cost.

Kitex Garments plunged 13% after hitting a 52-week low after the company reported a single digit 4% year-on-year (YoY) growth in net profit at Rs 24 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015 (Q3), due to lower sales.

Bata India has ended 1% higher on the BSE after the company said insurance giant Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) increased its stake in the company via open market.
Benchmark share indices ended flat after global prices resumed their downward trend while caution ahead of expiry of January derivative contracts capped upside gains.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended up 50 points at 24,486 and the Nifty50 ended up 14 points at 7,436.

___________________________

(Updated at 2;20

Benchmark share indices were trading flat in late noon trades on Monday after European shares pared early gains and turned negative.

At 2:20pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 26 points at 24,461 and the Nifty50 was up 9 points at 7,431.

In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.4%-1% each. Market breadth was strong with 1,693 gainers and 791 losers on the BSE.

Foreign institutional investors continued to remain net sellers in equities to the tune of Rs 770 crore, as per provisional stock exchange.

The Indian rupee also trimmed early gains and was down 17 paise at 67.80 to the US dollar.

GLOBAL MARKETS



Asian stocks ended higher on Monday after global crude oil prices rebounded on expectations of demand for heating oil in wake of the cold weather conditions in the U.S. East coast. Further, investors will also await the decision by the Bank of Japan from its two-day meet which begins on Thursday, January 28. Nikkei ended up 0.9% while Shanghai Composite gained 0.8%. Among others in the region, Hang Seng ended up 1.3% while Straits Times rose 0.3%.

European shares were trading with marginal losses after opening with marginal gains after crude oil prices pared intra-day gains. The CAC-40, DAX and FTSE-100 were down 0.2% each.

SECTORS & STOCKS



BSE Consumer Durables and Metal indices were the top gainers uo 1.4% followed by Healthcare index up 1.1% each. On the downside, BSE Capital Goods, Power, Oil & Gas indices were the top losers.

Financial stocks were among the top gainers. HDFC Bank was up 0.3% after the private sector lender announced a net profit of Rs 3,357 crore which was in line with street estimates. However, gross NPAs rose to 0.97% compared with 0.91% quarter-on-quarter while net NPAs were up at 0.29% versus 0.25% quarter-on-quarter. Mortgage lender HDFC was up 1.4%. ICICI Bank was up 0.4%.

Pharma shares also witnessed renewed buying interest with Sun Pharma leading the gains up 2.3% followed by Dr Reddy's Labs and Cipla.

Oil explorers gained tracking rebound in global crude oil prices. ONGC was up 1.3% while Cairn India gained nearly 7%.

Among other shares, Kitex Garments has plunged 17% to Rs 451, also its 52-week low on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), after the company reported a single digit 4% year-on-year (YoY) growth in net profit at Rs 24 crore for the third quarter ended December 2015 (Q3), due to lower sales.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India's recently prescribing an abridged format for the otherwise mandatory publication of quarterly results by listed companies is seen as an investor-unfriendly move by some. The move is also likely to hit financial and general publications, for which these are an important source of revenue.

The new format is prescribed in Annexure XI of a circular dated November 30. Companies need to publish the current and corresponding period figures of six key items  total income from operations, net profit/loss before and after extraordinary items, share capital, reserves and earnings per share.

Mumbai-based Shailesh Mehta, 70, who says he's invested in 30-odd companies, said: Everybody does not have internet. Why should they change what was prevailing for 60 years? Nor, he said, did the Sebi circular give a rationale for prescribing a shorter version. If you are going to give incomplete details, why publish at all?



Mehta said it was not practically possible for investors to look into numerous companies online. There are 6,000 companies. Which company will I look into? If it was published in the paper, it is easier.



Investors like him feel this also gives companies the leeway to sweep things under a carpet. Another investor felt the Sebi chairman should not take such as major decision when there is a change of guard (at the regulatory body) coming up.

Virender Jain, president, Midas Touch Investor Association, said: There is no data on how many investors get their results information from newspapers. Certainly, it should not be a problem for institutional investors. According to Jain, the larger problem with disclosures is effective monitoring of timing and quality of disclosure.

Compliance professionals, though, did not see any major hitch. An informed investor is internet savvy. He will not be affected, said S N Viswanathan, a senior company secretary. Newspapers might take a hit, as the standard format used to be at least a quarter of a page and could be bigger, depending on the graphs and pictures that companies published. The new format can be fitted in a tenth of a page.



Newspapers and financial dailies, including this one, are among major carriers of corporate results advertisements every quarter. Just going by the size of the ads, quarterly revenues from this segment could be hit as much as 60 per cent.

Larger media houses feel the impact of this new regulation would be minimal on overall ad revenue. The inventory rate of these ads is very low and usually they do not occupy prime positions in large publications. For example, Free Press Journal, one of the major publishers of results, charges a special rate of Rs 42 a sq cm for results ads, as against Rs 570 a sq cm for commercial display ones.

Ad revenues of the results used to go to the cheapest newspapers. Also, these are quarterly revenues. So, I dont see much impact. Also, the compressed version might look too muddled and not many may opt for it, says Vinay Mittal, chief financial strategist, HT Media.

Apurva Purohit, group president, Jagran Prakashan, also felt most companies would stick to larger size ads. My observation has been that 60 to 70 per cent of the companies that give ad results in newspapers will stick to the earlier format. The compressed format will mean less information and that will defeat the purpose of giving the ad in the first place, she said.

Many companies including multinationals such as Colgate and Hindustan Unilever continued to publish in the longer format. Some like Reliance have started using this shorter format from the December quarter itself.

Some media companies saw a silver lining, too. There is the possibility that with the space taken by the ad results reducing, companies might prefer premium publications to give these to. One possibility is that some of the ads will shift to premium newspapers. The other is that the space freed by the compressed results will mean papers will have more space to sell. In any case, the ad revenues for papers wont take a big hit and the overall pie can grow. We shall know in the coming quarters for sure, said Mittal of HT Media.
Shares of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies were trading lower in an otherwise firm market with prominent stocks like Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Dabur India, Colgate-Palmolive (India) and United Breweries from the index hit their respective 52-week lows on the BSE in intra-day trade.

ITC, Marico, Emami, Dabur India, Colgate-Palmolive (India) and United Breweries trading lower by 1% each on the BSE.

At 11:36 a.m. S&P BSE FMCG index was up marginally by 0.13%, while NSE FMCG index down 0.08% as compared to nearly 1% gain in the benchmark indices.

Thus far in 2016, HUL, Dabur India, Godrej Consumer Products, Britannia Industries, GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare and United Breweries seen their market price decline by an over 10% each till Friday. The S&P BSE FMCG index dipped 8% and S&P BSE Sensex fell 6.4% during the same period.

ITC was down 1% at Rs 306, after hitting intra-day low of Rs 304 on the BSE. The companys cigarette revenues for the quarter ended December 2015 (Q3) grew 5.7% year-on-year (YoY), while FMCG growth moderated to 7.1% YoY on sluggish demand and supply disruptions caused by Chennai floods.

Weak demand - particularly in rural  coupled with a price deflationary environment and supply chain disruption caused by heavy rainfall and floods in Chennai impacted revenue growth, ITC said in a statement.

HUL was up 1.4% at Rs 783, recovering nearly 2% from its 52-week low of Rs 770 touched on BSE in early morning trade. Colgate-Palmolive (India) down 1% at Rs 871, also its 52-week low, ahead of its Q3 earnings tomorrow.

Revenue growth for large multinational FMCG companies would remain weak on back of decelerating rural demand and economic slowdown. Further the withdrawal of tax benefits would impact net sales growth, said Centrum Broking in Q3 preview.

According to Elara Capital, despite favorable contribution from a late festive season aiding Q3 sales, volume growth does not bring a lot of cheer to companies.

A late winter this year that impacted sales of winter products, along with floods in Chennai and closure of India- Nepal border affected sales of FMCG companies, the broking firm said in a report.
Indian stocks capped the biggest two-day rally since October as speculation the world's biggest central banks will boost stimulus lifted emerging-market equities. (Indian markets will be closed on Tuesday, on account of Republic Day, which is a public holiday.) Tata Steel Ltd climbed to about a three-week high, while Coal India Ltd had its steepest two-day advance in almost four months, after China pledged to further cut overcapacity in those industries. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd rose the most in a month. HDFC Bank Ltd increased for a third day after reporting earnings that ...
In a few Indian states, a major hurdle to building big industrial units is peaceful land acquisition at reasonable cost. The challenge becomes almost insurmountable if the host state does not have a sufficiently large land bank from which dispensation can be made. Buying contiguous large plots to make one big chunk from individual owners remains more often than not a frustratingly long process. Whatever monetary compensation is offered to landowners in line with market rate, the process still remains fraught with complications, not the least due to third party interventions. Thanks to state largesse, JSW Steel at one point had nearly 4,300 acres in its possession at Salboni in West Bengal. The ownership included 294 acres directly purchased from local farmers. Mammoth-size land was made available to JSW for hosting a 10 million tonne (mt) steel plant and a 1,600-megawatt (Mw) power complex at an investment of Rs 35,000 crore. But, failure to secure iron ore and coal linkages, due to the Supreme Court's intervention, to straighten mining irregularities and discretionary allocation of deposits put paid to all hopes of giving West Bengal a start to industrialisation after the Tatas abandoned the Nano car project at Singur.

The gesture of JSW group chairman Sajjan Jindal in handing back the land acquired from Salboni farmers without asking them to return the money is exemplary worthy of emulation. Further, the group is committed to showing farmers the ideal way to grow crops in the available agro-climatic condition. Given the court ruling on mines allocation, the steel industry struggling to keep its head above water over the past few years and the outlook remaining grim in the medium term, a green field venture of the size contemplated by JSW is beyond every group's radar. At the same time, absence of activity over a vast swathe of Salboni land is an embarrassment to be avoided by the Mamata Banerjee government in the state election year. A 2.4 mt cement grinding unit to be built within a year with plans to double the capacity in three years is, therefore, seen either as a move to placate the chief minister or the beginning of multiple ventures by the resourceful $11-billion JSW group.

Not only is the group's flagship steel company, the largest in the country's private sector, planning to lift capacity from 14.3 mt to 40 mt within a decade, the other JSW firms, too, are growing fast in the energy, infrastructure and cement sectors. Whatever the group engagement for growth in other parts of the country, Salboni could still receive an investment of Rs 10,500 crore, provided the West Bengal government signs a power purchase agreement with JSW for its proposed 1,320-Mw coal-fired power plant, and it also becomes the site for the contemplated paints project. Assuming all the three ventures will be packed into Salboni, JSW will still be left with large surplus land. The easy option is to return the surplus land. The local government certainly does not want that, since the state is not a hot destination for industrial investment. Will it, then, be not wise for the government to ask the group to explore the possibility of doing something relating to steel that does not entail basic metal making? A couple of examples may be cited to underline the point.

Tata Steel, close to finishing building the first phase of a six-mt mill at Kalinganagar in Odisha, has with it for many years 2,970 acres at Gopalpur in the same state for constructing a steel plant that fell through. Responding to repeated urgings by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to do something at Gopalpur, Tata Steel is transforming the unused land in its possession into an industrial park, including a multi-product special economic zone and a ferrochrome project in its role as anchor investor. In fact, the 50,000-tonne ferrochrome plant is ready for commissioning. Second, in November 2013, Arcelor Mittal (AM) had in partnership with Nippon Steel acquired a 5.3-mt rolling mill in the US from ThyssenKrupp with a commitment to buy from the seller 2 mt of slab a year with the remaining slab balance to be procured from AM plants. After many years of wait, AM was able to make a breakthrough in China in mid 2014 when it commissioned a 1.5-mt automotive steel rolling mill at Loudi in Hunan province.
Veteran actor Anupam Kher this year will be honoured with the third highest civilian award 'Padma Bhushan' for his contribution to the Indian Cinema.

"It is the biggest achievement of my career and as a person," stated the actor. "It reaffirms my belief that anything can happen if you work hard."

"Happy, Humbled & Honoured to share that i have been awarded The PADMA BHUSHAN by the Govt. of India. Greatest news of my life:) #JaiHind," the actor tweeted.

In the year 2004, this 60-year-old actor was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India for his contribution to Indian cinema.

Kher made his acting debut in the 1982 Hindi movie 'Aagman'. But he got the limelight in 1984 with 'Saaransh', where 28-year-old Kher played a retired middle class Maharashtrian man who has lost his son.

Other than appearing in hundreds of movies and several plays, the 'Bend It Like Beckham' actor held the post of chairman of Central Board of Film Certification and National School of Drama in India.

Other Padma Bhushan awardees this year include- Udit Narayan, Ram Sutar, Vinod Rai, Heisnam Kanhailal.Barjinder Singh Hamdard, Swami Tejomayananda, Proffesor N S Ramanuja Tatacharya and Proffesor D Nageshwar Reddy.
The Janata Dal (United) on Monday said it had nothing to do with the bail of its MLA Sarfraz Alam, who allegedly misbehaved with a woman on a train, and slammed media for asking the government about it.

JD (U) spokesperson Ajay Alok said the media should refrain itself from asking 'unnecessary' questions regarding the case as it was now up to the court to decide.

"This is all judicial process in which government has no role. This is in the Constitution. If those sections were bailable then he will get bail from concerned court. Government has no role in it. Why are you asking government about it?," he told ANI.

"Unnecessarily the media is asking such questions. Go and ask why Amit Shah was given bail when he charged with extortion and loot? How did Maya Kodnani get bail?," he added.

The suspended JD (U) MLA, who was arrested for allegedly misbehaving with a Delhi-based couple onboard a Rajdhani Express on January 17, was released on bail late yesterday night.

Alam was interrogated for four hours on Saturday during which he admitted to have travelled by the Rajdhani Express, after having denied travelling by it earlier.

He, however, denied charges of misbehaving with a woman.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had last week suspended Alam from the party.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Leonardo DiCaprio to tone down his "inflammatory rhetoric" on climate change, chastising his harsh comments on the energy industry.

The 41-year-old actor told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town of Davos that corporate greed was causing the climate change, reports News.com.au.

Taking the 'Titanic' actor to task at a dinner later in the day, the head of a Liberal government said that there are families suffering, out of work, who need to be supported, and inflammatory rhetoric doesn't necessarily help those families or help Canada.

Adding on to that, the PM said if DiCaprio actually said if "we took concrete action on climate change he would be the first to come up and celebrate with us.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday backed the government's move to recommend President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh, saying there is a constitutional crisis in the state.

"There is a situation of constitutional crisis in Arunachal Pradesh. Seeing the present conditions, the people of the state are feeling cheated," BJP leader and Minister of State for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told ANI.

"The Centre will fulfill all its responsibilities within the constitutional limits," he added.

The Congress Party has, however, dubbed the government's move as 'unconstitutional' and alleged that it exposed the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his people.

Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit accused the Central Government of playing with fire in a 'sensitive' border state.

"It is completely condemnable and unconstitutional. The Congress has majority in Arunachal Pradesh and, therefore, the Prime Minister, BJP MPs from Arunachal Pradesh and local BJP leaders are trying to de-stabilise the government there," Dikshit said.

"It shows the dictatorial tendencies of the Prime Minister and his people. They should immediately take back this order," he added.

The Union Cabinet yesterday recommended President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The recommendation has been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his approval.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with BJP's 11 MLAs and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue.

The Speaker termed the move as illegal and unconstitutional.
Manchester United manager Louis Van Gaal has expressed his disappointment over his failure to live up the expectations of his fans.

"I'm very disappointed I cannot reach the expectations of the fans. They have, or they had, great expectations of me, and I cannot fulfill them, so I am very frustrated, "the Dutchman was quoted as saying by goal.com.

Earlier, United fans expressed their frustration with a torrent of boos on Van Gaal during his side's 0-1 defeat at the hands of Southampton in their Premier League clash at the Old Trafford.

Reflecting on their performances, the 64-year-old said that United had been working hard, but things were not turning out in their favour.

"You cannot say it is that aspect or that aspect, because there are different aspects that play a role and we are not very lucky with our injuries. But nevertheless, we had to win, and we could have won, but it is not happening," Van Gaal said.

United are currently fifth in the league standings and have dropped 10 points behind surprise league leaders Leicester City. They will next lock horns with Stoke City on February 3.
An engineering student of Nova Engineering College allegedly committed suicide in Vijayawada late on Saturday night.

22-year-old Puvvala Prem Prasad, a fourth-year student of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, ended his life by hanging himself in his hostel room. He did not leave any suicide note.

Pavan Prasad, brother of Prem, said that only two days back he was with his brother and he seemed very friendly.

"We don't know what had happened in college or the hostel. We all are in a shock. He was a very hard working boy who aimed for a huge success in life," he said.

Earlier, three female students of Svs Medical College of Yoga and Naturopathy and Research Institute had committed suicide in Tamil Nadu due to lack of basic infrastructure in the institute.

These incidents came to light after Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar of Hyderabad University, allegedly committed suicide after he and his four friends were suspended by the authorities from the hostel after a fight with the ABVP activists in the campus.

The Hyderabad incident had sparked nationwide outrage with the opposition demanding the resignations of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya.
A former senior British intelligence officer has said that he wants to give evidence on security services knowing about the torture of inmates at the United States prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

The former officer is seeking permission to present evidence to a forthcoming parliamentary inquiry that British officials saw detainees being tortured in December 2002.

Details of torture were disclosed during meetings held at the London headquarters of Britain's MI5 in 2002 and the evidence is believed to include claims that British officials witnessed inmates being chained, hooded, waterboarded and subjected to mental abuse by CIA officials,reports the Dawn.

No one was immediately available to comment at Britain's interior ministry which handles media queries relating to MI5.

The prison in Guantanamo in Cuba, was opened in 2002 to house foreign terrorism suspects but has drawn international criticism from human rights activists and many foreign governments.

US President Barack Obama is seeking to close it.
France has announced USD 10 billion investment in India over the next five years, which will largely cater to the industrial sector in the country.

The announcement in this regard was made in the presence of visiting French President Francois Hollande at an event organised by the FICCI here today.

"Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than USD one billion per year in various sectors in India," said French Finance Minister Michel Sapin.

"We estimate that they will continue to invest at least USD 10 billion over the next five years," added Sapin.

Hollande, who will be the chief guest for India's Republic Day celebrations this year, hopes to seal an inter-governmental deal that would pave way for the sale of 36 Rafale combat jets made by Dassault Aviation.

As part of the deal, there would be significant offsets or related French investments that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will support his 'Make in India' initiative to develop the manufacturing sector.

"The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, which makes France the major player in Prime Minister Modi's 'Make in India' programme," Sapin said.
The visiting French President, Francois Hollande, paid tribute to Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi at the Rajghat here this morning.

He was accompanied by Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar.

Later, Hollande also planted a sapling in the Rajghat premises.

The French President was earlier accorded a ceremonial reception at the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Later in the day, he will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Hyderabad House, which will be followed by signing of agreements between both sides in various key sectors.

The French President will on Tuesday witness the Republic Day parade at Rajpath as the chief guest. This is the fifth time that a serving President of France will be the chief guest at India's Republic Day function.
Expressing serious concern over the recent terror strikes in Paris and Pathankot, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the global community needs to act decisively against those providing safe havens to the terrorists.

"The senseless terror attacks in Paris and Pathankot, and in other parts of the world are a gruesome face of one such challenge. Excellency Hollande, I share the sorrow and grief of the people of France on the loss of innocent lives in the Paris attacks. I also commend the strength of your resolve and action to these terrorist attacks," Prime Minister Modi said after holding talks with French President Francois Hollande at the Hyderabad House here.

He said India and France have agreed to scale up the range of counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps both nations to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," said Prime Minister Modi.

We are committed to this cooperation but at the same time, we are also quite alert about the emerging challenges. All the terrorist attacks in Paris, Pathankot and in other cities of the world are a challenge that has to be faced with strength. We believe that all those countries that believe in humanity and in its values should get together and fight against this menace," he added.

The Prime Minister said Hollande is 'a very close friend of India' and expressed his gratitude to the French President for accepting his invitation to be the chief guest on the occasion of the 67th Republic Day.

"President Hollande, you are a capable leader of a great nation. France is one of those countries with which we have had relations from many years and we also have trustworthy strategic partnership. It is a matter of great pride for me and for India to welcome you as the chief guest at the Republic Day of India," said Prime Minister Modi.

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"For many reasons, tomorrow's day will be very significant for our relation. Tomorrow, we will be welcoming a French leader for the fifth time as the chief guest at Republic Day. At the same time, France would be one such country whose military troops will also be marching along with our military troops shoulder to shoulder on the Rajpath," he added.
Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, India and France resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande agreed to have a comprehensive approach to address terrorism under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counter terrorism meetings, to counter violence extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

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Backing India's long pending bid to becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, India and France reiterated the need for urgent reform of the United Nations, including its Security Council, through an expansion in both categories of membership, to make it more representative of the contemporary world. France reaffirmed its support for India's candidature for a permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

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The two countries welcomed the forward movement on the issues of United Nations reforms to the stage of text-based negotiations and the important role played by France in this process.
India and France have shared a long and common history and friendship, which has developed into a strategic partnership and now France is the third largest investor in India, said Michel Sapin, Minister for Finance and Public Accounts, Government of France, at an interactive session organized by FICCI and the Embassy of France in India.

He said that to accelerate the momentum of development during the ongoing visit of the French President Francois Hollande many agreements have been signed between the two countries.

Sapin added that French companies were known for their innovation and creativity and they looked forward to tap the Indian domestic market.

Sapin said that the ongoing state visit will allow the two countries to further their converging interests. To discuss the economic and financial subject Sapin had met Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister of India.

Sapin informed that he had invited Jaitley to launch an annual dialogue session on matters of common interests.

Speaking about the complementarities between the corporate worlds of the two countries, he said that the community recognizes the importance and relevance of cooperation in various fields.

Hence, the industry on both sides was looking at the unexplored opportunities to enhance the trade and investment figures. Sapin said that France was also training the Indian workforce under the 'Skill India' programme and was contributing actively towards it.

Harshavardhan Neotia, President, FICCI, said, "Over the years, French investments and entities have not only stood the test of time, but have firmly reposed their unwavering faith in India's growth story. Today over 800 French companies are having their presence felt in India. The numbers are impressive and given the thrust by the Government of India, we are certain that the future augurs well for us to witness a quantum increase in fence companies making in India."

Neotia urged France to view India as the most promising business and investment destination. Time would then testify that businesses rose to the occasion to herald a new era of cooperation to take India-France relations to newer heights.
After the lifting of sanctions, Iran has announced that it will buy 114 Airbus planes to revitalise its ageing fleet, in the first major commercial deal.

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Iran Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said a deal on the purchase would be signed between national carrier Iran Air and Airbus during a visit to Paris this week by President Hassan Rouhani, reports Tolo News.

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Rouhani will be on his first visit to Europe since the implementation of the deal curbing Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions.

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Akhoundi said that modernising the country's air fleet and infrastructure is a top priority as only 150 of the country's plane are operational.

He said the first batch of new planes would arrive in Iran by March 2016 and added that they need 400 long- and mid-range and 100 short-range planes.

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Rouhani has hailed the agreement as a 'new chapter' for Iran as its economy returns to global market.

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Tehran still needs major transport upgrades that will boost tourism and trade.
After a successful launch of its two superphones, LeMax and Le1s, LeEco today announced the opening of 555 service centers covering more than 300 hubs of the country.

A global pioneering internet and technology company, LeEco is the first smartphone brand to enter the Indian market with such an extensive after-sales network.

The 555 service centers will be 24X7 toll free, providing 10 languages, including English, Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.

Further, in order to ensure that the users get the best experience and world class service even after sale, the brand is offering free pick- up and drop for the Super Premium Phone- Le Max in case of any damage.

"At LeEco, it is our constant endeavor to provide our users with superior products and content integrated ecosystem which ensure that their user experience on all our devices is unified and exceptional," said LeEco, India CEO, Atul Jain.

"We are very excited about our launch in India and look forward to a long-term association with consumers in this market. We are confident to disrupt the market with our innovative products at sustainable prices," added Atul Jain.

LeEco has set a new benchmark in the mobile phone customer service domain and the brand is planning aggressively to expand its footprint in the country.
As per a recent research report by Morgan Stanley (Report released in December 2015), Goibibo.com has been ranked as the number one hotel booking and search engine pan India.

Being the most preferred OTA by hoteliers across parameters in India, Goibibo has crossed 1.6 million hotel bookings for the period of October to December 2015.

With an estimated growth of 400 percent YOY, the largest online hotels booking engine in India has contributed to around 71 percent of the bookings in the month of December 2015 up from 42 percent a year ago.

Goibibo has been rated number one by hoteliers across parameters comprising: Higher booking volumes; Confirmed Bookings; Last Minute Bookings; Backend and IT support; Insights and market intelligence.

As per the same research report besides being number one, Goibibo is also the fastest growing hotels OTA in India. Goibibo's hotels facing technologies is also the most used amongst hoteliers.

"We are excited that we have achieved the No 1 position in India in the hotels category. We have been able to achieve the same by strengthening network effects, providing superior user experience on mobile and delivering powerful tools and technologies to thousands of hotels," said Founder, Goibibo, Ashish Kashyap.

"Hotel bookings on Goibibo are diversified and come from across categories of hotels and geographies. 45 percent comes from 0-2 star rated hotels, followed by 38 percent from 3 star category and 17 percent is garnered from 4-5 star rated hotels," added Kashyap.

He also added that destinations contribute close to 45 percent of hotel bookings whereas leisure destinations constitutes to about 55 percent of hotel booking volumes.

As per the same research report of Morgan Stanley, Goibibo is also contributing the largest growth to hotels across geographies.
The Pakistan marines on Monday detained 30 Indian fishermen including five boats off the Gujarat coast.

Earlier, the Pakistan Marine Security Agency had apprehended 70 Indian fishermen and seized their 11 fishing boats near International Maritime Boundary Limit here.

The two countries frequently carry out such arrests as the maritime border in the Arabian Sea is poorly defined and many fishing boats lack the technology needed to be certain of their precise location.
The Congress Party on Monday dubbed the government's move to recommend President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh as 'unconstitutional' and alleged that it exposed the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his people.

Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit accused the Central Government of playing with fire in a 'sensitive' border state.

"It is completely condemnable and unconstitutional. The Congress has majority in Arunachal Pradesh and, therefore, the Prime Minister, BJP MPs from Arunachal Pradesh and local BJP leaders are trying to destabilise the government there," Dikshit said.

"It shows the dictatorial tendencies of the Prime Minister and his people. They should immediately take back this order," he added.

The Union Cabinet yesterday recommended President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The recommendation has been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his approval.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with BJP's 11 MLAs and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue.

The Speaker termed the move as illegal and unconstitutional.
The Congress on Monday said that the Centre's recommendation to impose president's rule in Arunachal Pradesh is a brazen violation of constitutional norms.

"It is a very unfortunate decision; the whole matter is sub-judice before the honorable Supreme Court of India.I think the decision to request to honorable President to impose President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh not only is unfortunate, but also it is a brazen violation of constitutional norms," said Congress Leader Ashwini Kumar

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Describing the exercise of constitutional power by the cabinet as a murder of democracy, Kumar further added that the elected government in Arunachal Pradesh still enjoys a majority and whether or not the decision of government to keep the Assembly operational was right or wrong is before the Supreme Court.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, backed the government's recommendation for President's rule, saying there is a constitutional crisis in the state and people are feeling cheated.

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"There is a situation of constitutional crisis in Arunachal Pradesh. Seeing the present conditions, the people of the state are feeling cheated," BJP leader and union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told ANI.

"The Centre will fulfill all its responsibilities within constitutional limits," he added.

The Union Cabinet yesterday recommended President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The recommendation has been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his approval.

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Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with BJP's 11 MLAs and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue.

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The Speaker termed the move as illegal and unconstitutional.
Following the Indo-French agreement to scale up the range of counter-terrorism cooperation to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism, the Ministry of External Affairs on Monday said that the world getting less tolerant towards terrorism and that there is an increased pressure on nations that collaborate in acts of terrorism.

"We have been effective in getting the international community to look at terrorism in the manner they should have been looking at. The way countries reacted to the Pathankot attack points to the direction in where the world is going. There's a global pressure on countries that collaborate and connive in acts of terrorism. Level of tolerance towards terrorism going down," Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar told the media here.

Briefing about the much talked about Rafale fighter jet deal, he said the financial aspect of the deal was yet to be hammered out and asserted that there is interest on both sides to come through with this deal as soon as possible.

"There has been considerable progress in the negotiations but the financial side is yet to been agreed on. There was an MoU which was signed between the two Defence Ministers pertaining to the IGA. There will be offsets in the agreement. As of now its fly away condition of aircraft," Jaishankar said.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with French President Francois Hollande at the Hyderabad House here following which they issued a joint statement highlighting endeavours by both nations especially in counter-terrorism.

"The senseless terror attacks in Paris and Pathankot, and in other parts of the world are a gruesome face of one such challenge. Excellency Hollande, I share the sorrow and grief of the people of France on the loss of innocent lives in the Paris attacks. I also commend the strength of your resolve and action to these terrorist attacks," Prime Minister Modi said.

India and France also signed a Memorandum of Understanding over the purchase of 36 Rafale jets, costing India around Rs 60,000 crore.
Security has been beefed up in Tripura as the Union Home ministry has alerted the Indian northeastern states to maintain strict vigil in the run-up to the Republic Day and foil any attempt by separatist outfits to create a vicious situation.

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The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is guarding the highways as well as sensitive interior pockets and patrolling on the border areas has been intensified.

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"Keeping in view of the report that there may be some groups those want to disturb the Republic Day celebration all security forces including CRPF, civil police and other agencies have intensified our patrolling and checking," said CRPF DIG R. S. Sahi.

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Special emphasizes are being given to congested markets, bus terminus, rail stations and airports with sniffer dogs and bomb squads pressed into service for regular checks. Plain cloth police has also been increased for security purpose.

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The search operation is especially for the peaceful celebration of Republic Day as there is an alert going on.

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The elite Tripura State Rifles (TSR) and Assam Rifles (AR) has been kept as the second line of defense and are on special counter insurgency operation particularly in the remote and hilly areas.

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Tripura shares some 856 km border with Bangladesh where BSF is organizing special day and night operation to stop any type of infiltration.

Several separatist outfits in the region boycott the Republic Day celebrations. The media has been mailed statements about the strike.
The Congress Party on Monday said the 'incompetency' of the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra Government has forced key ally, the Shiv Sena, to target it.

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"I am not able to understand why the Shiv Sena is making these allegations against the Maharashtra Government. May be they feel that the state government, which they are also a part of, has become incompetent," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.

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"However it is true that ever since the Devendra Fadnavis led-Government has come to power in Maharashtra, there has been a decline in almost all the sectors in the state. Recently, in the panchayat elections in the state, BJP was on the fourth position while Congress and NCP were at the first and second spot respectively. May be, due to this fear, the Shiv Sena is saying all this," he added.

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The Congress leader asserted that the Shiv Sena's call to stop ISIS should be taken seriously not because of the ISIS expansion in the state but because one of the allies of the state government is talking about their incompetency.

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With several suspected terrorist being nabbed in the state for alleged links with ISIS, the Shiv Sena on Monday said that the Maharashtra Government should make proactive efforts to curb the expansion of the deadly terror outfit.

The Shiv Sena in its mouthpiece Saamna, said that the ISIS has made Maharashtra its remote control from where it wants to expand in the entire nation.

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"ISIS has deeply penetrated Maharashtra and it is a great threat for the state as well as for the nation. Their intention to raise the ISIS flags is an attempt to destabilize and create a sense of insecurity in Maharashtra. The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), along with the Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested many suspects of ISIS in the state which is commendable," the editorial said.

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"It is a great concern for the Chief Minister if the remote control of the terrorist organisation is in Maharashtra which is trying to expand in the entire nation. It is true that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has the remote control of the state in his hands but it is also true that ISIS has made Maharashtra its remote control in the country," it added.
Senior Congress leader and lawyer Kapil Sibal on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah of being hand in glove with rebel Congress leaders to topple the government in Arunachal Pradesh.

Addressing a press conference here, Sibal read out a transcript of a telephonic conversation between rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul and a businessman that stated that the entire crisis in Arunachal Pradesh was 'pre-planned'.

"All this was pre-planned. I have a transcript of telephonic conversation between rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul and a businessman. He says that we will topple this government. He asks for businessman's support. He says that he cannot ask BJP for money, so he asks businessman for help. He also says that Prime Minister, Amit Shah and RSS has cleared his leadership," Sibal said.

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He also criticised Arunachal Pradesh Governor J P Rajkhowa for flouting the 'values of a Republic' and accused him of acting like a 'Sangh Pracharak'.

"The Governor cannot summon the house on his own, the Governor has to summon the house on the advice of council of ministers. In this case, on the November 3rd, the house had been summoned for January 14, 2016. On the instance of 11 BJP leaders, the Governor pre-poned unilaterally without the advice of council of ministers and held the house on 16-18 December," he said.

Sibal also accused the BJP of trying to destabilise all non-BJP governments in the country.

Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be meeting President Pranab Mukherjee today to put forth the government's view this regard.

A Congress delegation led by Sonia Gandhi is likely to meet the President later today to express their concern over the government's stand.

The Congress had earlier dubbed the government's move to recommend President's rule as 'unconstitutional' and alleged that it exposed the dictatorial tendencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Union Cabinet yesterday recommended President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The recommendation has been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his approval.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with BJP's 11 MLAs and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue.

The Speaker termed the move as illegal and unconstitutional.
The post mortem report of the three women medical students has revealed that they died due to drowning and there is no visible external injury on their bodies.

Meanwhile, SVS Medical College Chairman Vasuki Subramanian has surrendered before the court.

Parents of one of the three girls who committed suicide, filed a petition in the Madras High Court today.

Filing a petition in the Madras High Court, the father also alleged that the post-mortem was done without his permission, and, therefore, demanded that it should be done again in Chennai.

"I filed a petition in the Madras High Court that the post-mortem should be done again in Chennai. Without my permission, they did the post-mortem of my daughter. I think she was murdered," he told ANI.

Yesterday, four people were detained in connection with this case where three second-year students of SVS Medical College of Yoga and Naturopathy and Research Institute at Kallakurichi near Viluppuram in Tamil Nadu committed suicide.

The girls, in their suicide note, have accused the administration of charging excess fees and 'torture' and blaming college chairman Vasuki Subramanian for their death.

The three girls namely E. Saranya and V. Priyanka (both 18 years) and T. Monisha (19 years) in a two-page suicide note said that the students had filed several complaints against Subramanian but to no avail. Citing "torture" by the management, the girls hoped that their suicide would finally force the authorities to take action against the chairman.

The girls accused the administration of charging 'excess fees' around Rs. six lakh and never giving the bill. They also mentioned that the college lacked proper classes or teachers and there was 'nothing to learn'.

The students had been protesting for more than a month over lack of infrastructure, but it was only in the last two weeks that the protest turned vigorous.

The police, which have begun investigating this matter, have so far arrested the Shokkar Verma, the son of the chairman, in connection with this case.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M.Karunanidhi has demanded a judicial probe by a sitting high court judge into the alleged suicide of three students of a private institution in the state's Villupuram District.

Suggesting that the incident is being covered up, Karunanidhi said that when the parents of Saranya, Monisha and Priyanka are in a state of denial about them committing suicide, then what was the reason for the ruling AIADMK to delay an investigation.

He insisted that there was a need for a proper probe to ascertain the cause of death of the three and for the families to receive appropriate compensation.
Two Indian seafarers were last week awarded the Operational Medal of the Norwegian Armed Forces by Consul General Torbjrn Holthe in Mumbai.

They had been members of the crew on board M/V "Taiko", which ensured that 1300 tons of chemical weapons were transported from Syria and safely destroyed in 2014.

In 2013, the UN requested assistance from the international community for the removal and transportation of chemical weapons from Syria. The Norwegian Government, in close cooperation with the shipping company Wilhelmsen, provided the civilian cargo ship M/V "Taiko" and two escort vessels from the Norwegian Navy. The cargo ship had an international crew, among them the Indian seafarers.

Consul General Torbjrn Holthe had invited the two Indian seafarers, Mr. Nitin Wadia, radio officer, and Mr. Aju Chacko, third engineer, to his residence in Mumbai to award them the operational medal of the Norwegian Armed Forces. Defence Attache at the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi, Commander Mr. Hogne Rykkje, presented the award on behalf of the Armed Forces.

Present at the ceremony were the seafarers families, Mr. Deepak Shetty, Director General from the Ministry of Shipping, and Mr. Sumit Mullick from the Government of Maharashtra. In attendance were also representatives from the Western Naval Command, as well as several seafarers organisations and shipping companies. "Indian maritime authorities and industry are very proud that two of our own have recived the medal of the Norwegian Armed Forces", said Mr Deepak Shetty and emphasized that the maritime links between India and Norway remain strong.

The awarding of a military medal to a civilian is a rare historic event. This is the first time since War II that civilians are awarded a medal from the Norwegian Armed Forces. Moreover, it is the first time non-Norwegian civilians are awarded the medal. The mission in question is one of Norway's most important contributions to international peace and security in recent years. Mr. Wadia and Mr. Chako received the award for their personal contribution to the success of the mission.
Vice President Hamid Ansari on Monday conveyed his warm greetings to the citizens of the nation on the eve of Republic Day, saying that it was an appropriate occasion to recall the principles of liberty, equality, fraternity and justice for all.

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"I convey my warm greetings and best wishes to all our citizens on the happy occasion of Republic Day Celebrations. The Republic Day is an appropriate occasion to reaffirm our faith in the cherished principles of liberty, equality, fraternity and justice for all, as enshrined in our Constitution," he said.

The Vice President called on the nation to celebrate the achievements of India and solemnly resolve to dedicate themselves towards building a peaceful, harmonious and progressive India.

India celebrates its 67th Republic Day tomorrow and French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest.
Government had launched the Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS) on 5th November, 2015. Thereafter a number of suggestions have been received to make the scheme easier for the customers to participate. Accordingly, in consultation with Government, RBI has issued a Master Direction on GMS on 21st January, 2016, which amends the Master Direction dated 22nd October, 2015 earlier issued by RBI on GMS. The changes made in the scheme are given below:-

1) Premature redemption under Medium and Long Term Government Deposits (MLTGD) Any Medium Term Deposit will be allowed to be withdrawn after 3 years and any Long Term Deposit after 5 years. These will be subject to a reduction in the interest payable.

2). Fees to be paid to Banks for their services i.e. gold purity testing charges, refining, storage and transportation charges etc. on Medium and Long Term Gold Deposits. Effectively the banks would be getting a 2.5 % commission for the scheme which will include the charges payable to the Collection and Purity Testing Centres/Refiners.

3). Gold depositors can also give their gold directly to the refiner rather than only through the Collection and Purity Testing Centres (CPTCs). This will encourage the bulk depositors including Institutions to participate in the scheme.

4) Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has modified the licensing condition for refiners already having National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accreditation from the existing three years refining experience to one year refining experience. This is likely to increase the number of licensed refiners.

5) BIS has published an Expression of Interest (EOI) on its website inviting applications from the more than 13,000 licensed jewellers to act as a CPTC in the scheme, provided they have tie-up with BIS's licensed refiners.

6).

The quantity of gold collected under the scheme will be expressed up to three decimals of a gram. This will give the consumer better value for the gold deposited.

7). Gold to be deposited with the CPTCs/Refineries can be of any purity. The CPTC/Refiner will test the gold and determine its purity which will be basis on which the deposit certificate will be issued.

8). Banks are free to hedge their positions in the case of short-term deposits.

9). Issues like the method of interest calculation and mechanism for taking loans against GMS deposits have also been clarified.

Indian Banks Association (IBA) will communicate the list of the BIS licensed CPTCs and refiners to the banks. To increase awareness among depositors, Government had continued the Media campaign in AIR and FM radio. Print media and Mobile SMS campaign is also being undertaken. Government has also launched the dedicated website www.finmin.nic.in/swarnabharat and toll free number 18001800000, which provide all the information of the schemes.

It is again clarified that Tax exemptions under the GMS include exemption of interest earned on the gold deposited and exemption from capital gains made through trading or at redemption. It is also reiterated that as per CBDT instructions No. 1916 dated 11th May, 1994, in course of IT Search u/s 132, gold jewellery to the extent of 500 gms per married lady, 250 gms per unmarried lady and 100 gms per male member of the family, need not be seized by tax authorities.

As on 20 January 2016, total of 900.087 kilo grams of gold have been mobilized through the scheme.

It is expected that the above modifications will make the scheme more attractive for potential depositors.

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India Inc hopes to see better sales volume and improved capacity utilization in the next two quarters but does not expect any uptick in investment and corporate earnings even as the overall macro situation would change for better, according to an ASSOCHAM Bizcon Survey.

The Bizcon Survey, capturing the reading of the economy as also the firms at the individual level in December,2015 noted that 62.5 per cent of the respondents felt the state of economy would be better in the coming six months, although not much has changed in the past six months .

Lack of investment appetite in the private sector in the backdrop of lower capacity utilization, excess supply and continuous pressure on profitability are the areas of concern, for the next few quarters.

In terms of the domestic investment, 58.3 per cent felt that there has been no change in the investment plans at the level of individual firms. The sentiment seems to remain muted, going forward with 62.5 per cent respondents of the view that January to March 2016 quarter would not see much change in the investment levels. Thus there seems to be a continuing lack of appetite for new investment in the private sector, the Bizcon Survey said.

ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat shared the concerns brought out by the respondents in terms of pressure on profitability and lack of investment. Global deflationary situation creeping into India in several sectors is hitting investor sentiment. The consumer confidence can return only if there are more job opportunities through higher investment into productive areas of the economy like construction, infrastructure and manufacturing. The lead, has to be taken by the government which has an onerous task before itself along with financial sector regulators like Reserve Bank of India and SEBI to ensure investor confidence in the markets which can then feed the investment climate.

Broadly in line with the macro picture, the Bizcon Survey also found similar state of affairs at the industry level, which is however, maintaining a sense of hope and optimism for the short to medium terms, at least in projecting better sales volume and capacity utilization.

Respondents seem to be highly optimistic with regards to their firm's future performance as 70.8 percent feel that they will be in a better position in the coming six months.

As many as 41.7 per cent of the respondents felt that there is a decline in the sales volume during October to December 2015 while expecting better sales volume during January to March 2016 as 45.8 percent of the respondents expect that their sales volume will increase in future. . In terms of the future capacity utilization expectations, 66.7 per cent share the opinion that the industry will be engaged at higher levels.

In terms of cost of credit majority of the respondents (54.2 percent) said that there was no change in the cost of credit during October to December 2015. This is slightly surprising considering the fact that the monetary authority has reduced the policy rates. The possible explanation to this could be that the benefit of the rate cuts is not being passed onto the industry appropriately. However, the industry also feels that there is no possiblility of decline in the cost of credit as 54.2 percent believe no change in shorter horizon.

Whether raw material prices have increased or not in the October to December 2015 quarter, 33.3 per cent said there has been a decline in these Moving ahead as well 37.5 percent of the respondents believe that there will be decline in the raw material prices during January to March 2016 quarter. Ironically, it has not resulted in better margins and improved earnings as consumer demand remains muted.

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Shares of four public sector undertakings viz. Coal India, National Aluminium Company, Bharat Heavy Electricals and NMDC rose 0.2% to 2.05% at 11:06 IST on BSE on media reports that the government has asked them to consider buyback of shares.

Coal India (up 0.53% at Rs 301.55), National Aluminium Company (Nalco) (up 1.16% at Rs 34.75), Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) (up 0.2% at Rs 147.60) and NMDC (up 2.05% at Rs 82) edged higher.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 155.26 points or 0.64% at 24,590.92.

According to media reports, the government has asked these four public sector undertakings (PSUs) to consider buyback of shares as it is falling short in meeting its divestment target for the current fiscal year. Media reports suggested that Coal India and Nalco are in talks with their respective administrative ministries to buy up to 10% of their shares. The Government of India (GoI) held 79.65% in Coal India, 80.93% stake in Nalco and 80% stake in NMDC as per the shareholding pattern as on 30 September 2015. It held 63.06% in Bhel as on 31 December 2015.

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Vedanta and NMDC rose 1.68% to 1.93% Rs at 11:55 IST on BSE after iron-ore prices surged on Friday, 22 January 2016 on reports that a court ordered Brazilian miner Vale to close one of its ports temporarily after alleged environmental breaches.

Vedanta (up 1.93% at Rs 66) and NMDC (up 1.68% at Rs 81.70) edged higher.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 124.50 points or 0.51% at 24,560.16.

Iron-ore prices surged in global markets on Friday, 22 January 2016 on hopes of increased demand after media reports suggested that Brazilian miner Vale, the world's largest producer of iron-ore, was ordered by a local court on Thursday, 21 January 2016, to temporarily shut down its Port of Tubarao over alleged environmental breaches.

Vedanta (formerly Sesa Sterlite) is a diversified natural resources company. The company produces zinc, lead, silver, copper, iron ore and aluminium. On consolidated basis, Vedanta's net profit fell 39.9% to Rs 973.97 crore on 15.9% decline in net sales to Rs 16349.21 crore in Q2 September 2015 over Q2 September 2014. The company is scheduled to announce its Q3 December 2015 results on 28 January 2016.

NMDC is engaged in the mining of iron ore. NMDC's net profit fell 48.3% to Rs 810.24 crore on 48.4% decline in net sales to Rs 1601.76 crore in Q2 September 2015 over Q2 September 2014. The Government of India (GoI) held 80% stake in NMDC as per the shareholding pattern as on 30 September 2015.

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At least 25 people were killed in suicide bomb attacks in Cameroon, a security source said.

A local market in Bodo village near the Nigerian border was hit by at least three suicide bombers, causing a large number of casualties, Xinhua quoted the source as saying.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram was believed to be behind the attacks.

Boko Haram has often attacked Cameroon's Far North region since 2013, killing about 1,200 people.
A staggering 885,000 Muslims - not about 400,000 as previously thought - were recruited by the Allies to fight in World War I, according to a study.

More than twice as many Muslim soldiers supported Allied forces in World War I, according to new research into Muslim role in the war.

Islam Issa, lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University, found that at least 885,000 Muslims were recruited by the Allies, while creating the first ever exhibition devoted entirely to Muslim involvement in the war, a press statement said.

It had been previously thought that around 400,000 Muslims were recruited during the war.

But after trawling through thousands of personal letters, historic archives, regimental diaries and census reports, Issa's research revealed that the figure was more than double.

"Also among the findings was the fact that 1.5 million Indians and 280,000 Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians fought for the Allies during the war, as well as soldiers recruited from other parts of Africa.

"Nearly 3.7 million tonnes of supplies and more than 170,000 animals were shipped from India to support the war effort," the statement added.

He found that Muslims involved in the war effort came from as far as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and that at least 89,000 Muslims were killed fighting for Allied forces under French or British command.

Their roles included front-line soldiers, trench builders and those transporting vital goods and materials.

Issa also found that at least 20 percent of all British Empire recruits were Muslims and that the financial and material contribution from India alone was 479 million pounds - 20 billion pounds in today's money.

Issa uncovered the figures while researching individual stories from the war for an exhibition being held at the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester, called Stories of Sacrifice.

He said: "The 400,000 number we so often hear refers to Muslims in the Indian Army, and there were at least 430,000 of these. But many people forget that there was a significant Arab contribution.

"For instance, Egypt alone contributed at least 150,000 camel drivers for British campaigns, and the other north African countries helped the French with at least 280,000 men.

"I think the numbers are probably understated; they represent a minimum that we can be sure about, but it could potentially be quite a bit higher."

The Stories of Sacrifice is a 'permanent' exhibition which will be on show for at least a year.
Air quality in major Chinese cities dropped significantly last month due to heating in winter and adverse weather, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said on Monday.

The ministry issued air quality figures on Monday for 74 major Chinese cities in December, saying that in the three key areas of the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and the combined Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region, only the Pearl River Delta saw better air quality, Xinhua reported.

Air quality in the other two regions worsened and PM2.5, a major pollutant, increased significantly compared to the same period of 2014, the ministry said.

Luo Yi, head of the department of environmental monitoring of the MEP, said the drop was caused by heating in winter and adverse weather, which led to five rounds of poor air quality in north China.

The PM2.5 indexes of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province climbed in December compared to the previous year. For instance, Beijing's PM2.5 index increased by 166.7 percent.

The air quality of seven cities in south China, including Xiamen, Fuzhou, Kunming, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Haikou and Shenzhen, were the best in China and reached air quality standards on every day of December.

Baoding, Xingtai, Hengshui, Handan, Shijiazhuang, Langfang and Tangshan, all in Hebei province, plus Jinan, Zhengzhou and Harbin, were the top 10 cities for worst air quality in December.
Ali Merchant, who was last seen in the saas-bahu saga "Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai", is excited to be back on the small screen with a lead role in "Sadda Haq". The actor says dearth of good and exciting roles kept him away from TV.

Ali is making a comeback after two and a half years. He will be seen playing the role of a passionate scientist named Nirmaan, and his entry in the second season of Channel V's youth series will be aired on Tuesday.

"Yes, I'm returning to television after quite a long time. I wasn't too excited about the kind of projects and scripts I was hearing in the last couple of years and plus my love for music was keeping me busy as I have been djing," Ali said in a statement.

The actor, who has featured in shows like "Amber Dhara", "Saat Phere - Saloni Ka Safar" and "Bandini", grabbed headlines for getting married to actress Sara Khan, followed by a public break-up.

He shares that with the role in "Sadda Haq" he will try to bring international standards to Indian television space.

Ali added: "I have always played a lover boy on television and this character in 'Sadda Haq' is a multi-layered intelligent guy who is completely styled according to international standards. Unlike most saas-bahu sagas the character, look as well as the entire feeling of the show is like any of international series."
Are you one of those who love the world famous weaves from Banaras or chikankari embroidery, but don't know how to differentiate between what's real and what's fake? Take note of some important indicators before you make a purchase, says an expert.

Neha Baheti, co-founder of Indian Artizans, an online apparel portal working directly with weavers all across India, has shared tips on how to judge the originality of a weave. Here's how:

* The best way to determine if a particular handcrafted product is from India or not is to buy from brands that have certifications from local agencies like Craft Mark.

* To judge whether the chikankari on your cloth is by machine or not, it is suggested that one should see the kind of embroidery the piece of art boasts of. If it is handcrafted, the cloth will have French knots, shadow stitch, criss cross embroidery. In the machine made ones, you do not find these embroideries.

* Patola weaving technique has travelled far overseas and some countries like Indonesia and Japan still have fabrics woven with this technique. However, there is quite a difference in the colours and motifs in India. Patola from Gujarat has an overdose of colour and intricacy. Although both double and single Ikat is being practised elsewhere, but design is something that can be copied assuming that the technique has been well mastered.

* When it comes to Assam silks, the silks used here are Muga, pat, eri. Pat is a very soft silk and to differentiate between handwoven and machine made, is by the locking system noticeable at the back of the sari.

Also, in machine made saris, there are a lot of limitations like colour and sharpness of the designs. The special aspect of handwoven Assam saris are that the border is woven separately and stitched on the sari.

* One can differentiate a machine made sari from a handwoven one by the pallu and its border. In a handwoven piece, the backside of the pallu or border is a replica. In a machine made one, you will find a lot of threads hanging. Also in machine made, there are a lot of limitations like colour, sharpness of the design and intricacy.

* Authentic hand block prints will have small flaws in the printing and drops of extra colours here and there. There will also be very distinct designs in bright colours whereas printed designs will be 100 percent consistent.

* Authentic Banarasi weaves can be judged by looking at the reverse side of the sari. The ones done by hand will be heavy on thread work at the back and will look very different from the front. Also, only an original sari would have floats.

* Another way to identify a real Banarasi sari is to check for a six to eight inch long patch of plain silk on the pallu of the Banarasi saree.

* An original sari will mostly carry Mughal patterns like amru, ambi and domak. A fake Banarasi saree wouldn't have these Indian hand made Persian designs on it.
Australian High Commissioner Patrick Suckling, whose India stint concludes on January 26, on Monday said he was glad to be leaving the bilateral relations at a high point.

During his three-year term, relations between India and Australia went from strength to strength, including the finalisation of a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, paving the way for commercial exports of uranium from Australia to India.

"The relationship between Australia and India has never been better. This relationship has hit a sweet spot and, what's more, there are still immense opportunities awaiting us," Suckling said in a farewell statement.

Describing India as "vibrant, beautiful and complex", Suckling said he appreciated the chance he got to meet people across the length and breadth of the country.

"I do have a very strong affinity with India. It's been a country that I have been coming to for 30 years, first as a student and later as a diplomat. I got my first posting in India in the 1990s as a junior diplomat. My first child was 'made in India,' and I have worked on most major strategies to do with India throughout my career," he said.

Suckling said that after being on different trajectories for decades, Australian and Indian interests had begun to converge in the last 15 years.

"Australia and India are natural economic partners, particularly in areas such as energy security, agriculture, infrastructure, skills development and education," Suckling observed.

He said defence cooperation was a good example of the progress in relations.

"Australia and India took part in their first bilateral military exercises last year. At an officials level, our armies meet, our navies meet, our air forces meet, and there is strong ministerial engagement," he noted.

--Indo-Asian New Service

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Already grappling with construction delays, budget cuts, pollution and a sinking economy, Rio 2016 organisers now face a health alert as they prepare for this year's Olympic Games.

Brazil is battling to contain an outbreak of the Zika virus which has been linked with birth defects and paralysis-causing Guillain-Barre syndrome. The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women against travelling to Brazil and 21 other countries where the virus is present, reports Xinhua.

Officials in Rio said measures are being taken to prevent the accumulation of stagnant water which is a breeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the virus.

"Rio 2016 will continue to monitor the issue closely and follow guidance from the health ministry," the organising committee said in a statement.

The Olympics will be held from August 5 to 21, during Brazil's dry season, and officials say this will mean the mosquito is less prevalent. The Zika outbreak also comes as Rio prepares for its annual carnival celebrations which begin on February 5.

According to Nancy Bellei, the coordinator of clinical virology at Brazil's Infectious Diseases Institute, current high humidity meant tourists faced greater risk.

"This is the worst time to deal with an epidemic of a virus we know very little about. The government is trying to raise awareness and fight the mosquito but we won't achieve control in the short term under the current circumstances," she said.

Bellei added that the virus could easily spread to other countries by infected visitors.

"If a person is infected and then travels to a country where the Aedes mosquito is present, the mosquito can bite the person and thereby introduce the virus in a place where it previously did not exist," Bellei said.

Zika originated in Africa and is thought to have spread to Brazil by tourists in 2014. Local health officials say the mosquito is behind a rise in the incidence of microcephaly, a condition that causes unusually small infant head size. It can lead to stillbirths and long-lasting health problems for survivors.

Brazil has recorded 3,893 suspected cases of microcephaly since October. Less than 150 cases were reported in the country in 2014. The health alert coincides with Brazil's worst recession in decades, exacerbated by a sprawling corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras.

Rio is also struggling to finish a raft of infrastructure projects in time for the Olympics, including a new subway line and several event venues. In addition, organisers have cut about $500 million in expenses while Rio's sailing and rowing venues face ongoing pollution concerns linked to the city's inadequate sewage system.
The central government has alerted the northeastern states over possible terror attacks ahead of the Republic Day on Tuesday, a police official said on Monday.

"The home ministry has alerted the northeastern states to maintain strict vigil in the run up to the Republic Day," Tripura Police spokesman Uttam Bhowmik told IANS.

The Border Security Force (BSF) has also been told to further strengthen vigilance along the India-Bangladesh border to prevent trans-border movement of militants," he said.

Security forces have been searching airports, hotels, bus and railway terminals as well as major markets across the region for possible hidden bombs.

Four northeastern states - Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam - share an 1,880-km border with Bangladesh. India and Bhutan share a 643-km unfenced border.

Four states - Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh - also have a 1,640-km unfenced border with Myanmar. And Arunachal Pradesh has an 1,080-km unfenced border with China.

Several separatist outfits have called for a 24-hour general strike from January 25 midnight and a boycott of the Republic Day celebrations.

The Northeast Frontier Railway has taken up security measures regarding rail traffic in southern Assam and elsewhere in the northeast.

An official of the Airports Authority of India said entry of people, except passengers, into airports across the northeast had been barred. The restrictions would continue till January 29.
A total of 31,527 prisoners, most of whom were juveniles when they committed crimes, were released in an amnesty deal, an official statement said on Monday.

The deal, decided in 2015 by the top legislature and signed by President Xi Jinping, was adopted to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Xinhua reported.
China on Monday handed over its second batch of relief goods worth 20 million yuan ($3.05 million) to Pakistan for the people affected by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake which hit the country on October 26 last year.

Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong and Major General Asghar Nawaz, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) of Pakistan attended the ceremony in Islamabad, Xinhua reported.

"China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners of cooperation sharing weal and woe. We can feel the sufferings of Pakistani people and stand firmly with them. We will do our utmost for their relief," Sun said.

Appreciating the compassion of China for Pakistan and their commitment to stand alongside during difficult times, the NDMA chairman said: "China is the only country from which Pakistan has received aid following the earthquake that shows deep and sincere relations between the two brotherly countries."

The second batch of relief consignment mainly include 2,950 tents for the earthquake-affected people.

China provided the first batch of humanitarian aid worth 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) shortly after the earthquake that killed 280 people and injured 1,770 others. The first batch included 300 tents, 20,000 blankets and 60 electricity generators.

China was the first country to provide humanitarian aid to Pakistan for the relief of the earthquake-affected people on November 5 last year.

Soon after the earthquake, the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) had also donated $100,000 to Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for the earthquake-affected people.

The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad also sent blankets, food items and bottled water to the affected people in the country's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
A day after the union cabinet recommended President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, the Congress on Monday urged President Pranab Mukherjee to look into the matter, accusing Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa of violating the Constitution and also challenged the move in the Supreme Court.

Delhi's ruling Aap Aadmi Party also termed the union cabinet's recommendation as "against the Constitution".

However, the BJP charged the Congress with having failed to protect the Constitution, and said the ruling party in the state has lost the constitutional authority to remain in power.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Mukherjee and discussed the situation.

"We have submitted a memorandum to the president and requested him to look into the matter. We briefed the president about it. Whatever questions he had, we replied to him as well," Congress leader Kapil Sibal said after a party delegation met the president and submitted a memorandum on the issue.

The Congress leader also accused Governor Rajkhowa of violating the Constitution.

"A governor who creates the crisis himself says there should be President's Rule in the state," he said.

"On one hand, you are responsible for creating such a situation in the state, and on the other, you request the union government to impose President's Rule. Both cannot go hand in hand," Sibal added.

The Congress leader said the recent happenings in Arunachal Pradesh were "politically motivated", involving the Bharatiya Janata Party, its president Amit Shah and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

"A taped conversation is a testimony to the fact. We have submitted the tape to the court. They have hatched a conspiracy to destabilise the border state so that their government can be formed there," Sibal said.

"They even tried to bypass the court on this issue," he said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal slamed the central government and said the move was "against the Constitution".

"The Constitution doesn't allow you to suspend an elected government and enforce President's Rule in any state. It is against the Constitution," the Aam Aadmi Party chief told the media.

Kejriwal earlier termed the union cabinet's recommendation of President's Rule as "murder of Constitution on the eve of Republic Day".

"The central government is like an elder brother, whereas state governments are younger brothers. He (central government) should not trouble a younger brother (state government)," Kejriwal said.

"We need the central government's cooperation for proper development and functioning. With its cooperation, the development would be ten-fold," he said.

"Instead of troubling us with CBI raids and President's Rule, the Centre should support us," he added.

Kejriwal said Bhimrao Ambedkar gave India the world's best constitution which talks about justice, liberty and equality, but "it seems that there are several flaws in its proper implementation".

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi too condemned the decision to recommend President's Rule, saying it was against the spirit of democracy and cooperative federalism.

"The political crisis is on in Arunachal Pradesh for last few days. However, it is sub-judice as the matter is in the Supreme Court and the apex court had already referred the matter to a constitutional bench of the court and hearing is on. The next date of hearing is not very far and the cabinet should have waited at least for the next date of hearing," said Gogoi.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the centre, however, said the ruling party in the state has lost the constitutional authority to remain in power.

"Politically, this is an internal matter of the Congress and constitutionally, in either of the way in which the decision is pending in the Supreme Court, they have lost the constitutional authority to be in the government in Arunachal Pradesh," BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi told reporters.

"And morally, I would like to ask one question -- Why are you (Congress) running away from calling the house and proving majority or going for a floor test?"

"In fact, you are not able to convene your own legislative party meeting itself," he added.
A day ahead of Republic Day, all security apparatus were put in place to provide ground-to-air security cover to the capital, where 50,000 armed officers of Delhi Police, NSG and paramilitary forces will maintain hawk-eye vigil to ensure a safe visit of the chief guest, French President Francois Hollande.

All entry points to in the city, which has already been put on high alert considering the recent attack on the Pathankot airbase and pan-India arrest of over a dozen suspected terrorists, were under the strict watch of Delhi Police to pre-empt any possible terror strike.

Police said that 50,000 security personnel -- around 15,000 from the paramilitary forces, 34,000 from Delhi Police and 1,000 from National Security Guard (NSG) -- will be deployed on the streets of the capital starting at 5 a.m. on January 26.

The city will be under close watch of 15,000 CCTV cameras on Republic Day.

NSG snipers will maintain vigil from high-rise buildings within a two-km radius of Rajpath, the spacious central vista of the capital from where the French president along with President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be watching the parade.

Hollande will be the fifth French president to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations over the decades.

Sources said the central, north and New Delhi districts will be manned by over 20,000 security personnel.

Around 20,000 personnel have already been deployed at specific locations to provide impenetrable security to the French president, who arrived here on Sunday on a three-day official visit.

Around 15,000 newly-installed CCTV cameras will be used to keep watch over the parade route starting from Vijay Chowk at the foot of the Raisina Hill, atop which the Central Secretariat complex sits, to the 17th century Red Fort through Rajpath, India Gate, Tilak Marg, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and Netaji Subhash Marg.

The parade will start at 9.50 a.m. and last till 12.30 p.m. on January 26.

Rajpath, the three-km stretch which is the main venue of the parade, has nearly 160 CCTV cameras. One camera has been installed every 18 metres.

Officials said that as part of heightened security arrangements, the city will be declared a no-fly zone, covering a radius of nearly 300 km, for civilian aircraft during the parade.

A seven-layer security ring will guard the enclosure that would be used by Hollande, Mukherjee and Modi.

India Gate and Rajpath have already been shut to people and the area is under constant guard by security personnel.

The airspace over the capital will be monitored by special radars, the officials added.

Vehicle movements from Vijay Chowk to India Gate on Rajpath were restricted from 3 p.m. on Monday till the parade is over on Tuesday (January 26) afternoon.

Traffic on some major arterial roads in New Delhi like Rafi Marg, Janpath, Man Singh Road will be stopped from 11 p.m. on Monday till the end of the parade.

Vehicles, barring those with control and duty lables, will not be permitted to ply in some other New Delhi area, including South Avenue, Thyag Raj Marg, K. Kamraj Marg, Sunheri Masjid, Maulana Azad Road, Akbar Road between Man Singh Road and C-Hexagon, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road, Red Cross Road, Sansad Marg, Imtiaz Khan Road, Rakab Ganj Road, Pt. Pant Marg and Church Road.

Only labelled vehicles of the invitees and vehicles of bona-fide residents of the restricted area shall be permitted to enter.

Delhi Metro rail service will remain available for commuters at all stations during the parade.

The entry and exit at Patel Chowk and Race Course stations, however, will remain closed from 8.45 a.m. to 12.30 p.m., and the Central Secretariat station will only be used for interchange of passengers.

Entry and exit at the Central Secretariat and Udyog Bhawan stations will remain closed from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. on January 26, officials said.
Fashion designer Amit GT, whose creations have been worn by Hollywood stars Eva Longoria and Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, has made his online debut through ecomerrce platform Exclusively.com.

The website boasts of the designer's diffusion line, which has gowns and also sherwanis.

Talking about his decision to take the online route, Amit told IANS: "This is the only way forward. The best thing about selling products online is that you reach out to so many people not just in India but abroad too.

"It is a great platform for both selling and promoting the line."

Encrusted with gemstones and beads along with intricate thread work, the sherwani collection is a reference point to the bygone era of regal Rajasthan. The collection of evening gowns is a confluence of baroque and oriental arts interspersed harmoniously for the evening wear pieces.

The brand Amit GT is one of the few Indian luxury fashion and lifestyle brands to have a large international presence.

Known for his elaborate gowns and cocktail dresses, he has not only showcased his collection at fashion events in Paris, Milan and Vienna, but has also dressed up some known foreign celebrities including Whitney Cummings, Alicia Minshew, Kate Mansi, Kate Flannery, Holland Roden and Rosario Dawson.
Dhanush is headed to Hollywood and is excited about his new destination.

The southern star says he is glad to be making his debut in the West with "The Extraordinary Journey Of The Fakir Who Got Trapped In An Ikea Cupboard", in which he will be sharing screen space with "Kill Bill" star Uma Thurman.

The actor thanked his fans and admirers for giving him the strength to tread new creative zones, adding that he hopes to explore and bring forward different "facets" of the character in the film directed by Iranian-French director Marjane Satrapi.

Dhanush took to Facebook to share his views about venturing into Hollywood with the film, which will also star Bandit Queena actress Seema Biswas, Alexandra Daddario, Barkhad Abdi and Laurent Lafitte.

"I am very excited by this opportunity to work in a full length Hollywood film 'The Extraordinary Journey Of The Fakir Who Got Trapped In The Ikea Cupboard' for the first time.

"The director Marjane Satrapi felt I would be apt for this role and I feel there are many facets I can explore for this character. I thank my fans and media for constantly standing by me and pushing me to explore new endeavors and challenges all the time," reads a post on Dhanush's official Facebook page.

After making a mark in southern cinema, Dhanush took a dive into Bollywood with films like "Raanjhanaa" and "Shamitabh", and now the national award-winning star has his eyes set on foraying on the foreign shores. The son-in-law of southern megastar Rajinikanth has also explored the business side of showbiz as a producer.

With a Hollywood project in his account, Dhanush joins the likes of stars like Priyanka Chopra, Irrfan Khan, Om Puri and Anil Kapoor to find a route to the West.

Deepika Padukone is another Bollywood star, who was gearing up for her Hollywood debut opposite action star Vin Diesel.

"The Extraordinary Journey Of The Fakir Who Got Trapped In An Ikea Cupboard" is a comedy adventure tale based on Romain Puertolas's bestselling debut novel with the same name, which came out in 2014 and has been translated into 35 languages.

The novel relates the pilgrimage of a con man from India to an IKEA in Paris which turns into a philosophical odyssey.

The film will follow his journey from New Delhi to Paris where he falls in love with a woman and accidentally gets deported along with a band of African refugees to the far corners of Europe against his will.

Along with foreign locales like Paris, Rome, and Casablanca, the film will be shot in Jodhpur. The shooting of the film will begin in June, reports variety.com.

The film will mark the most ambitious project undertaken by Satrapi, who earlier helmed films like "Persepolis" and "Chicken With Plums". Satrapi made her English language debut with "The Voices" starring Ryan Reynolds.
The European Union is closely monitoring if Turkey's measures were helping reduce the record flow of migrants to Europe, after a deal of three billion euros ($3.19 billion) was reached with Ankara in 2015 to curb migration, a senior EU official said on Monday.

European Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn made the remarks at a joint press conference in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir and EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, Xinhua reported.

The composition of refugees passing through Turkey has changed, with Syrians fleeing the civil war now making up less than 40 percent, Hahn said.

For her part, Mogherini said she was "very confident" the EU would deliver the pledged three billion euros to Turkey in return for its help in stemming the flow of migrants to Europe.

The fund has so far been stalled due to objections from Italy.

"I am very confident that the amount that was decided will be there in very reasonable timing," Mogherini said.

She stressed that the EU must do more to support Turkey in its effort to care for the refugees, adding that improving conditions within Syria through a transition process was extremely important.

Mogherini further said she shared her concerns with Cavusoglu and Bozkir about the situation in Turkey's southeast, where military operations are ongoing against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"We call for an immediate cease-fire in the southeast and strongly condemn all kinds of terrorism," Mogherini told reporters, adding that the two sides must return to peace talks.

Hahn added the EU was ready to work with Turkey on a new peace process with PKK militants, stressing that the problem has a negative impact on the region, the EU and Turkey itself.

The reignited conflict with the PKK has already affected the planned Syria peace talks as well, which the UN envoy is "trying hard to make inclusive", Mogherini said.

But, Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu said the inclusion of groups like the Syrian Kurdish People's Defence Units (YPG), which has links to the PKK, in the talks as part of the opposition would disrupt the process.
Former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Vinod Rai is among the 19 personalities named for the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in India, on Republic Day this year.

A 1972-batch Kerala cadre officer of Indian Administrative Service, Rai is credited with bringing to the fore financial irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocation, coal mines allotment and 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games during his stint as the 11th CAG between January 2008 and May 2013.

His report on the issue of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the then United Progressive Alliance government created a major controversy as the CAG estimated a presumptive loss of Rs.1.7 lakh crore to the exchequer in the spectrum sales.

On February 2, 2012, the Supreme Court declared the spectrum allotment as "unconstitutional and arbitrary" and quashed all 122 licences issued in 2008 by the then communications minister A. Raja.

--Indo-Asian New Service

mak/tsb/vm
France will allocate 300 million euros in the next five years for the development of solar energy, French President Francois Hollande said on Monday.

"The French Development Agency will allocate 300 million euros to develop solar energy over the next five years in order to finance the initial projects," Hollande said at a function held to lay the foundation stone of International Solar Alliance (ISA) headquarters and inaugurate an interim secretariat of the ISA.

An initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ISA was jointly launched by him and Hollande on November 30 last year ahead of the Paris climate summit. It is an alliance of some 120 countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

"The initial projects must begin quickly," Hollande said on Monday.

"India has offered to set up the headquarters. The first meeting was held in Abu Dhabi a few days ago. The Alliance must begin work without delay in order to achieve tangible results on the ground."

According to the French president, the ISA must act in three ways: pool the demand of high-potential countries and use the resulting mass-effect to bring down the financing costs; harmonise the solar markets and open them up to reduce the cost of investments and for users; and enable the necessary technology transfers between developed and developing countries.
A debate on the limits on the freedom of speech at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Monday turned into a political slug match between supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in front of a mammoth politically divided crowd.

Shrugging off reports on intolerance as selective outrage, actor Anupam Kher, who maintained freedom of speech comes with a sense of responsibility, clashed with Delhi Culture Minister Kapil Mishra.

Targeting Kejriwal, Kher said it was only in India where one could call the prime minister a psychopath and get away with it.

Mishra retorted there was a small group of the same people that was targeting expressions of free speech but people were free to call his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders whatever they wanted to - and did.

The AAP would not be deterred from using the names they have for Modi or Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Mishra added.

He also maintained that the people would not let the India of 2016 be run on the lines of 1992, 1984 and 2002, referring to the years of the Babri Masjid demolition, the anti-Sikh riots and the Gujarat riots.

Other panellists included journalist Madhu Trehan, journalist and writer Salil Tripathi, Dalit activist P. Sivakami and commentator Suhel Seth.
French companies will be investing $10 billion in India over the next five years mainly in the country's industrial space, France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin said here on Monday.

"Over the past five years, French companies invested more than $1 billion per year in India. In my assessment, they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years," Sapin told a business meeting at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

The minister, who is in India accompanying President Francois Hollande on his official visit with a large business delegation, also said the bulk of the investments would go towards India's industrial sector as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" campaign.

Earlier in the day, Hollande said India and France will continue to improve economic ties in a host of areas. "We are particularly stressing on our economic ties in the field of agriculture and space," he said, after being accorded an official welcome at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has warned that the conflict in the country would intensify with consequences across the region if peace talks with the Taliban do not start by April.

"Time is not a friend," he told BBC in an interview. "We all understand that February and March are crucial."

The President said observers should understand the war in Afghanistan was "just one component" of a wider war that also encompassed Pakistan.

"The problems... are interrelated and cannot be solved by use of force in one country.

He suggested Pakistan should take action against Taliban groups that did not agree to talks.

"We need to see that we have common interests and we need to act together to preserve the state system and consolidate it," he said.

Regarding the terrorist group Islamic State (IS) which is trying to expand in Afghanistan, President Ghani said it would be buried in Afghanistan.

He said IS was "not an Afghan phenomenon" and its atrocities had "alienated the people".

"Afghans are now motivated by revenge," he said. "They [IS] have confronted the wrong people," Ghani added.
Gurgaon, better known as Millennium City for MNCs, BPOs and upscale residential sectors, on Monday got a new identity as the headquarters of the newly-launched International Solar Alliance (ISA) that will be devoted to harnessing solar energy.

"Just like the United Nations and WHO (World Health Organisation) are international organisations, the ISA is an international organisation and its headquarter will be in India, in Gurgaon," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a function held to lay the foundation stone of the ISA headquarters and inaugurate its interim secretariat.

Modi, along with visiting French President Francois Hollande, jointly did the honours with France committing 300 million euros ($325 million/Rs.22 billion) for the initial projects of the ISA.

The ISA headquarters will come up on five acres of land in the campus of the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE).

A Modi initiative, ISA was jointly launched by him and Hollande in Paris last November 30 ahead of the Conference of Parties (CoP-21) climate summit. It is an alliance of some 120 countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

Modi said that the ISA was one of the two landmark initiatives that emerged during the two-week Paris summit, at which India and France played key roles. Apart from this, the US, France and India took the initiative of encouraging innovation for producing energy away from fossil fuels without affecting the environment and save the world from global warming.

"India proposed before the world that if petroleum producing countries can have an organisation of their own and African countries can have their own organisation, then why can't there be an organisation of countries that receive sunlight for 300 or more days in a year," he said.

Appreciating the role played by Hollande in the formation of the Alliance, Modi said after India expressed its keenness for a solar alliance, the French president was very helpful in this regard.

Hollande, he said, did everything possible to bring all nations together. He added that this Alliance, which would impact generations, would ensure that the world gets more energy and there is also a focus on innovation.

Speaking on the occasion, President Hollande said that the French Development Agency would allocate 300 million euros to develop solar energy over the next five years in order to finance the initial projects of the ISA.

"The initial projects must begin quickly. India has offered to set up the headquarters. The first meeting was held in Abu Dhabi a few days ago. The Alliance must begin work without delay in order to achieve tangible results on the ground," he said.

According to the French president, the ISA must act in three ways: pool the demand of high-potential countries and use the resulting mass-effect to bring down the financing costs; harmonise the solar markets and open them up to reduce the cost of investments and for users; and enable the necessary technology transfers between developed and developing countries.

Hollande said that at the Paris climate summit, India had shown that it was ready to commit fully to energy transition and the fight against climate change by committing to reduce its carbon intensity by 35 percent by 2030, as compared to that in 2005 and to produce 40 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030.

He said that the ISA was faced with the challenge of raising global investment to the tune of 1,200 billion euros required to develop solar energy by 2030.

"The aim is for 1,000 gigawatts to be installed over the next 10 years," he said.

He said that in order to achieve these objectives, the ISA should pool the energy demands of high-potential countries and use the resulting mass effect to bring down the financing costs, harmonise the solar markets and open them up to reduce the cost of investments and for users and enable the necessary technology transfers between developed and developing countries.

The French President said that several French-Indian projects would be launched in order to contribute to the success of the ISA , and a number of agreements have been signed for this purpose.

Expressing appreciation for the Indian Government's programmes launched for "smart cities", clean energy, energy efficiency and fight against pollution, the French President said that his country would participate in the 100 Smart Cities programme launched by the Indian government.

He said that this initiative could be linked to the ISA projects by helping to increase public lighting and supplying solar electricity to these cities.
Against the backdrop of the terror attacks at Pathankot airbase in Punjab on January 2 and in Mumbai in 2008, which claimed the lives of two French natinals, India and France on Monday called upon Pakistan to bring to book their perpetrators.

The message to Islamabad came in a joint statement on counter terrorism which was issued jointly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande led their respective sides in the delegation-level talks here.

"Stressing terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, both leaders asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda," the statement said.



"Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future," it said.

"President Hollande commended India for its stabilising role in South Asia, in particular in Afghanistan, and its recent initiative to launch a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan."

The two leaders also resolved to deepen cooperation to drive forward the international effort in forums like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF) and ensure that UN member nations strictly comply with the Security Council resolutions.

They said there was also an urgent need to block funding avenues for terror outfits and eliminate their safe havens, training infrastructure and cross-border movement of its perpetrators towards which all countries must cooperate, especially those from where such acts originate.

"They called for actions to be taken, consistent with international law, against all entities, including States, that sponsor, provide support, active or passive, to terrorist groups or harbour them," the statement said.
French President Francois Hollande said on Monday that threats from the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group will not deter his country.

"Nothing scares us. Nothing will deter us. No threat will make France waver in the fight against terrorism," the president told the French media during a visit to India, reported Xinhua news agency.

He made the remarks after a new video was posted by the IS on Sunday showing the images and last statements of the assailants who carried out the November attacks in Paris that left 130 dead and over 300 injured.

France raised the terror alert to the highest level and declared a state of emergency immediately after the November 13 attacks. France has also intensified airstrikes against IS militants in Syria and Iraq since then.

Last week, Hollande said that he would ask parliament to extend the state of emergency by three months.

"If I take steps to extend the state of emergency, it is because I know that this threat is there," he said.
You would not think there was a worsening farm crisis in India's second-largest agricultural economy if you met Jairam Jadhav in Maharashtra's central region of Marathwada, one of the areas facing a drought that equals the worst in a century.

Jadhav, 35, is a happy man. Despite two seasons of truant rains, his well has enough water to supply his 20-acres of sugarcane, cotton and pigeon pea farms for three hours a day. Last year, this time, he could do no better than an hour.

Thanks to the Maharashtra government's ambitious Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan (Irrigated Farmlands Programme), streams flowing through Jadhav's village of Pandharwadi in the district of Beed were broadened, deepened and de-silted before the monsoons. His land is next to one of these refurbished streams, which allow more water to percolate through to his well.

About 250 km to the northeast in Vidarbha's Washim district, Ramesh Marge, 35, is also pleased with the government's efforts. His 45 acres of soya bean and cotton - he's also planted some pulses and vegetables - in Gayaval village are flourishing.

Marge is acutely aware, though, of the great dry that has descended on the lives of farmers.

"When I was a kid, I used to bathe buffaloes in plenty of water in January and February. We do not see water in our village in October now," said Marge. "Last year, we did not have enough water to wash our cattle during the pola (the summer harvest's farm festivities, usually in October)."

In the same village, Shankar Choure showed IndiaSpend how his decade-old orange orchard is blooming. Thanks to a bund-built under the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan - that traps water, he runs four pumps to irrigate his 100 acres of farmland.

Choure, Marge and Jadhav have one thing in common - they are prosperous farmers with comparatively vast landholdings in a state where the average landholding is 1.44 acres, down from 1.86 acres two decades ago, according to Agricultural Census of India.

The proportion of small farmers (owning less than five acres) increased from 70 percent to 79 percent in the 1995-2011 period.

So, while the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan intends to make Maharashtra drought-free by 2019, it appears to have worked mainly for prosperous farmers. As the first part of this series showed (on January 2), a piecemeal approach of random work that ignores the geological water cycle of an area - a watershed - and spreads itself thin as the drought's ravages spread is not helping millions of smaller farms.

In Choure's village of Gayaval - that has the most number of Jalyukt Shivar projects in the taluka - about 60 percent of farmers own less than five acres of land. More than 10.7 million of the state's 13.7 million farmers (or 79 percent) own less than five acres of land, according to the Agricultural Census of India. It is these farmers who bear the brunt of the drought.

Twelve times as many tankers roam 16 times as many villages

The Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan is nothing if not ambitious: It aims to irrigate 19,059 of 40,000 villages in Maharashtra in 22 drought-affected districts by 2019. As many as 41,000 of proposed 0.14 million watershed projects have been completed in one year, according to the government.

Around 24 tmc feet (thousand million cubic feet) water-storage capacity has been added in the state due to the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told Economic Times in an interview.

On the ground, the drought's effects grow, and more villages struggle.

Over the annual farming season in 2014, 1,377 villages from Beed in central Maharashtra were declared water-scarce; this year 1,403 villages are on that list. The government also declared as water-scarce 2,050 and 793 villages in the eastern districts of Yavatmal and Washim respectively in 2014, while no district was declared water-scarce over the 2015 kharif (monsoon) season.

In 2014, as a consequence of mostly adequate rainfall the previous year, 13 tankers supplied drinking water to 15 villages in Beed district. In 2015, two consecutive droughts compelled the administration to send more than 12 times the number of tankers to 16 times as many villages: 162 tankers roam 243 villages.

In spite of consecutive droughts, Yavatmal and Washim districts have sent no tankers out. That may happen in the summer months of April, May and June, when the scarcity deepens.

Small and marginal farmers, defined as those with less than five acres of land, need Jalyukt Shivar the most. From the observations that IndiaSpend made, this is why the scheme is failing them:

In a typical village with 250 houses, only 30 to 50 benefit from the scheme, which is no more than 10-20 percent, while 80 percent have small farms.

Prosperous farmers tend to be near streams and wells, so they mainly benefit from the broadening and deepening. Wells in the same village located away from these streams have run dry, the inadequate attention to geological detail and local needs evident.

Malampatti (band-aid) cannot offer lasting solutions to irrigation crisis

"Although short-term measures are needed, that is only malampatti (band-aid solutions)," said Suresh Khanapurkar, the brain behind what is called the Shirpur Model for water conservation in the northern district of Dhule.

"There is no doubt that the depth and breadth of streams needs to be increased," he said, "but the broadening and deepening must be carried out from the origin to end (where it meets a river)."

The total storage capacity in Maharashtra is around 1,340 TMC, of which 930 TMC is stored in large dams and 170 TMC each in medium and minor storage dams. Water storage in the state is thus heavily-tilted toward large dams.

With Fadnavis himself criticising large dams for their ineffectiveness in mitigating the drought's effect, Jalyukt Shivar will need to play an important role in rescuing the livelihoods of 10 million farmers with holdings of five-acre or less.

Robert Browning said of human aspirations: "Man's reach should exceed his grasp." Jalyukt Shivar has grasped the need, but its reach is inadequate.

(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform, where Waghmare is a policy analyst. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. The author can be contacted at respond@indiaspend.org)
French President Francois Hollande on Monday said India and France will "work to improve economic relations in the field of agriculture and space".

"We are stressing on improving the economic relations in the field of agriculture and space."

The French president was given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhawan here on his second day of his three-day visit to India.

Hollande began his visit on Sunday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke protocol to welcome him at Chandigarh.
India and France on Monday signed 14 pacts to bolster ties and concluded an inter-government agreement for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft by New Delhi but with financial issues yet to be resolved.

The two countries also decided to bolster cooperation against terrorism, and told Pakistan to bring to justice those responsible for terror strikes in Gurdaspur and Pathankot and the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai and ensure that such attacks do not recur.

French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi also agreed to collaborate to construct six nuclear power reactors at Jaitapur in Maharashtra instead of two decided earlier.

The two sides had "a very productive discussion" during the delegation level talks at Hyderabad House here which lasted 90 minutes, beyond the expected duration. Earlier Modi and Hollande had "restricted talks" for about an hour.

Hollande and Modi later took a Delhi Metro train to attend a function in Gurgaon in Haryana to lay the foundation stone of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) headquarters and inaugurate its Interim Secretariat. The two leaders jointly launched the ISA at the Paris Climate Change summit.

India and France came out with a joint statement which talked about the need for "all countries to effectively deal with terrorism emanating from their territory or territories under their control".

They agreed to intensify cooperation in homeland security, cyber security, special forces and intelligence sharing. Terrorism, they said, cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation.

Both leaders called for decisive action against the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and Haqqani Network as well as groups such as Al Qaeda.

Modi and Hollande praised each other after the signing of 14 agreements.

The French president will be the chief guest at the 67th Republic Day function here on Tuesday -- the fifth time a French leader has been given the honour.

A French Army contingent will take part in the parade on Tuesday, making France the first country to take part in the annual military show.

Earlier on Monday, Hollande, who flew into Chandigarh on Sunday, was given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on the second day of his three-day visit to India.

After the bilateral talks, Modi said financial details need to be worked out in finalising the much-awaited purchase of Rafale jets from France, adding this would be concluded soon.

Modi had, during his visit to Paris last year, announced India's intention to buy 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by Dassault. The deal is valued at around Rs.60,000 crore (almost $9 billion).

"Only financial aspects of the Rafale deal is left. The inter-governmental agreement has been finalised. It will be done soon," Modi said.

Hollande said: "It is a decisive step for India to purchase the fighter jets and also for France to make them available to a great country like India."

On the financial aspects, he said: "It will be sorted out in a couple of days."

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, who briefed the media after the bilateral talks, said 30 agreements were signed between the two sides since Sunday.

Referring to the civil nuclear cooperation, he said: "At Jaitapur, we will collaborate to construct six nuclear power reactors."

The joint statement said Modi and Hollande encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 to build six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur, with due consideration to "localisation of manufacturing in India".

France reaffirmed its support for India's candidature for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
A study by an international team from Europe and the US led by an Indian planetary scientist has resolved one of the mysteries that baffled astronomers.

Astronomical studies have shown that several small bodies - Centaurs and Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) - in the outer solar system are having surfaces that are extremely dark but the origin of this colour had remained unclear.

Centaurs estimated to number around 44,000 are minor planets with diameters larger than one kilometre. And TNOs are similar objects at a distance farther than Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system.

Now, in a report published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Chaitanya Giri, who led the research from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, and co-workers claim to have found why these objects appear dark.

They say they have obtained experimental evidence that the darkness of these objects is due to presence on their surfaces of highly 'carbonized' organic material analogous to 'Titan tholin' -- a substance first synthesized in the late 1970s in the laboratory of Carl Sagan and another Indian scientist Bishun Khare at Cornell University to simulate the atmosphere of Saturn's moon 'Titan'.

"We investigated the chemical structure and composition of 'Titan tholin' using multiple analytical techniques such as laser desorption, mass spectrometry, Raman spectroscopy and field-emission scanning electron microscopy," Giri told IANS in an email.

"The investigation led to the discovery of novel graphitic structural components within the larger macromolecular structure of Titan tholin," he said.

"Like the dark appearance of coal, our research indicates that the graphite within the Titan tholin-like material on Centaurs and TNOs contributes to their extreme darkness."

According to Giri, since Centaurs and TNOs are progenitors of comets, "the darkness of comet's surface can also be attributed to similar material."

For instance comet "67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko", which was visited by Europe's Rosetta space mission in 2014, "was extremely dark," said Giri, who was a co-investigator in the mission.

Giri, who is currently with Japan's Earth Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, says the findings of this research will have far-reaching implications.

"For astronomers and planetary scientists, the prospect of complex organic material present on several objects in our Solar System is striking," he said.

Astronomers might further use "Titan tholin" to study the surfaces of exoplanets (that are planets beyond our solar system) and planetary scientists could probe into the role of tholin-like material in shaping up organic-rich atmosphere and geology of several solar system objects.

"Chemists could further explore the exotic conformations in which ultra-complex organics exist in the universe and biologists would further probe whether such organics play any role in origin of life on Earth," he added.

Giri noted that in the past few years, interest in the small Solar System bodies had been on an ascent.

"Besides Europe's Rosetta mission, NASA's Dawn mission to dwarf planet Ceres and the New Horizons mission to dwarf planet Pluto all have given us glimpses to our yet unexplored and enormously diverse Solar System."

Giri said the "Titan tholin" for his study was synthesized at the NASA Ames Research Center while chemical investigations were carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and at the Universities of Maryland (US), Nice (France) and Goettingen (Germany).

(K.S. Jayaraman can be contacted at killugudi@hotmail.com)
An Indian-origin Muslim cleric has been awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Leicester in Britain in recognition of his commendable work for the local community, it was reported on Monday.

Muhammad Shahid Raza, head Imam at the Leicester Central Mosque, received the honorary degree from university chancellor Lord Grocott at a ceremony at De Montfort Hall before a global audience of graduating students and their families, www.leicestermercury.co.uk reported.

Raza was born in Bihar and studied in Moradabad, Agra and Meerut before moving to Britain. He became head Imam at the Islamic Centre in Leicester in 1978.

Raza has spent his life working with Muslim community groups and on intra-faith relations, both nationally and internationally.

"I have always strived to instill in my students a desire to achieve academically and integrate themselves as valuable members and contributors to society," Raza was quoted as saying.

"For this reason, I reflect on this award fondly and I hope it will further inspire the young Muslims of Leicester," he added.

In Leicester, Raza has established a tradition of inter-faith dialogue by welcoming to the centre many groups and individuals from different faith communities, the report said.

Raza also helped form the Federation of Mosques in the city and is currently the executive secretary and registrar of The Muslim Law (Sharia) Council UK.

He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year's Honours list for services to the Muslim community in Leicester.

"Raza has been a hugely influential figure in our city and county as a leading Muslim cleric and teacher over a period approaching 40 years. In terms of Interfaith dialogue over that period, again his influence has been profound," Stephen Foster, coordinating chaplain to the university, was quoted as saying.
Nearly 15 months after it was scrapped and faded into history, India's first aircraft carrier INS Vikrant came alive on Monday in the form of a permanent memorial here on the eve of India's 67th Republic Day.

The memorial was unveiled by Vice Admiral S.P.S. Cheema, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command, and Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta, at a traffic island opposite the Lion Gate near the Naval Dockyard in south Mumbai.

Commodore (retd) Medioma Bhada, who once piloted the ship, said the memorial was a sculpture created with pieces of metal recovered from the shipbreaking yard, designed and fracted by eminent metal sculptor Arzan Khambatta.

The memorial would a living testimony of the deep gratitude to the majestic ship which created a legacy as the pioneer of the Indian Navy's aviation arm.

"The country's first aircraft carrier laid a sound foundation of air operations for the Indian Navy. The valuable lessons learnt on her decks are enshrined in the organisation of Indian Navy, enabling it to fluently integrating the recently-inducted aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya," Vice Admiral Cheema said.

INS Vikrant was commissioned in 1961 and after 36 years of action-packed service displaying India's sea power, was decommissioned in 1997.

Originally built for the British Royal Navy as HMS Hercules in 1943 and which saw action during the India-Pakistan war in 1971, the ship was finally broken up in November 2014, ending a glorious history of 71 years.

The HMS Hercules, a Majestic-class light fleet aircraft carrier, was built on October 14, 1943, commissioned in the British Royal Navy in 1945 and bought by India in 1957.

At that time, it earned the distinction of being Asia's first aircraft carrier.

The gigantic vessel with a displacement of 20,000 tonnes, was commissioned in the Indian Navy on February 16, 1959. It saw action during the 1971 India-Pakistan war and was finally decommissioned on January 31, 1997.

It served as a maritime museum till 2004 and since then, bitter legal battles were fought for saving INS Vikrant in the past decade, right up to the Supreme Court.

Many proposals, including converting it into a permanent museum for future generations, failed to materialise due to varied reasons, chiefly due to financial constraints.

Commodore Bhada of the Vikrant Memorial Forum and Mumbai Citizens Group expressed gratitude to the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation, the Western Naval Command and Mazagaon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd. for their support which finally helped the memorial to come up.
Japan posted a trade deficit in 2015 for the fifth successive year, although the deficit shrank by 77.9 percent to 2.83 trillion yen ($23.9 billion), as import costs dropped owing to the global oil glut and slump in prices, government data showed on Monday.

According to a preliminary report from the finance ministry, exports climbed 3.5 percent to 75.63 trillion yen from a year earlier, on robust deliveries of vehicles to the US, while imports retreated 8.7 percent to 78.46 trillion yen, Xinhua cited the latest annual figures as showing.

The ministry noted that imports of crude oil dropped 41 percent and those of liquefied natural gas (LNG) retreated 29.5 percent, with the figures highly significant as costs for shipping in fossil fuels from overseas largely impact the trade balance, more so in the wake of Japan's nuclear power plants being taken offline after the earthquake-triggered tsunami disaster in 2011.

Exports to the US expanded 11.5 percent in the recording year to 15.22 trillion yen, while imports grew 6.8 percent to 8.05 trillion yen, the ministry said.

Exports to Europe, meanwhile, also increased, expanding 5.3 percent to 7.99 trillion yen and imports were up 5.6 percent to 8.62 trillion yen.

China-bound exports declined, however, in the year, slipping 1.1 percent to 13.23 trillion yen, but imports from Asia's largest economy increased 1.3 percent to 19.42 trillion yen, the ministry said.

In December, the trade surplus stood at 140.2 billion yen ($1.18 billion), with the ministry saying that exports dropped eight percent from a year earlier to 6.34 trillion yen, while imports fell 18.0 percent to 6.20 trillion yen, on a customs-cleared basis.
One of the oldest active politicians in India at age 91, DMK president M. Karunanidhi is ready for yet another political battle, "if the people and my party say so".

"If the people of Tiruvarur (assembly constituency) tell me and if the party permits me I will contest," the nonagenarian politician said on Monday to a reporter's query in Kattur village in Tiruvarur district, around 320 km from here.

As for a political alliance, Karunanidhi said his party will not turn away others willing to ally with it.

The DMK will welcome all parties that will ensure victory for democracy, the former Tamil Nadu chief minister said.

Karunanidhi was first elected to the assembly in 1957 from Kulithalai. He has won all 12 assembly elections he contested since then.

After his win from Thanjavur in 1962, Karunanidhi has been contesting the assembly polls from one of the seats here. In 2011, he however shifted to Tiruvarur.
Actor Kunal Kapoor has expressed his disappointment at missing the "Rang De Basanti" reunion with the team including superstar Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan and director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, due to prior work commitments towards his upcoming film "Veeram".

The cast of the film is holding a grand celebration in Mumbai on Monday as the film gets close to completing a decade of its existence. The film had released on Republic Day 10 years ago.

A screening for the entire cast and crew of the film and launch of a screenplay book of the film has been opganised. And cast members expected to attend the event are Waheeda Rehman, Siddharth Narayan, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni and Soha Ali Khan. It also featured British actress Alice Patten in a key role.

But Kunal, who played the role of Aslam in "Rang De Basanti", is shooting for his first action movie down south. He is yearning to be with the gang and catch up on all the fun.

"I would have absolutely loved to have been there. We had the most incredible and memorable time shooting RDB, and it would be amazing to meet everyone. But unfortunately I am shooting in Trivandrum and can't make it back. I am going to miss my gang," Kunal said in a statement.

The 2006 released film narrated the story of a group of youngsters and how they are drawn towards leading a freedom movement after independence. It also talks about how society invokes the group to fight the system with the aim to bring about a change.

The film brought forward a flashback to the freedom struggle about how freedom fighters like Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Rajguru continue to inspire youngsters.

"Rang De Basanti" also has a political angle with a sub-plot revolving around MiG-21 crashes, after which a wave of gloom runs through the film with the death of Madhavan's character.
Rejecting Saturday's amendments to the country's Constitution, the Madhesi Morcha in Nepal on Monday announced a fresh agitation programme and called for a broader alliance among the other forces of the Terai-Madhes region of the Himalayan nation.

The agitating four-party alliance held a meeting here on Monday to review the more than five-month-old protest and resolved that the stir would continue until their demands were met by the ruling elite in Kathmandu.

The agitation in the country's terai region is spearheaded by the Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) -- or the Madhesi Morcha, as it is more commonly known. It comprises four Madhes-based parties -- Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party led by Mahanta Thakur; Sadbhawana Party, headed by Rajendra Mahto; Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum-Nepal, led by Upendra Yadav; and the Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party-Nepal headed by Mahendra Yadav.

In a statement, the Madhesi Morcha asserted that their struggle would continue till all their demands were met in a package. The meet also demanded the setting up of a high-level judicial panel to probe the numerous instances of killings by the state in the Terai.

In its fresh programme, the Morcha has announced candlelight vigil at district headquarters on Wednesday as a tribute to those killed during the protests; regional assemblies on Saturday to inform people about the latest political developments; and interactions with professionals, intellectuals, labourers and traders on Monday next about the Morcha's agenda.

Under pressure following the more than five months of unrelenting agitation in the country's southern region, the government allies and the main opposition Nepali Congress on Saturday approved two amendments to the barely four-month-old statute relating to proportionate representation and allocation of seats in parliament on the basis of population.

The amendment were approved on Saturday night by a majority vote amid slogan-shouting by lawmakers of the agitating Madhes-based parties, who did not take part in the voting process.

As many as 461 of the 468 lawmakers participating in the voting voted in favour of the first constitutional amendment bill while seven voted against in the 601-seat parliament.

As per the amendment, ethnic clusters in Nepal have been decreased to 15 from the earlier 17.

A delineation commission will be formed to determine the boundaries of constituencies for the House of Representatives, the lower house, on the primary basis of population while geography will be a secondary factor.

The statute-amendment came within two days of Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa -- who is also Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development besides holding charge of the Foreign Affairs portfolio -- inaugurating an ambitious NRs.5 billion Border Area Development Programme (BADP) in the south-eastern Mahottari district.

The five-year development programme shall initially target the development of proposed province number 2 -- the heartland of the ongoing Madhesi agitation -- and will seek to create physical and social infrastructures in the region that borders southern neighbour India.

BADP is targeted at one sub-metropolis, six municipalities and 109 Village Development Committees in Mahottari, Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa districts which have been lagging behind in life expectancy, literacy and per capita income values as compared to other regions of the country.

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."

Thapa's statement was a frank admission of the discrimination that the region has traditionally suffered at the hands of the Kathmandu-centric ruling elite.

The Madhesis have been protesting against the perpetuation of this very discrimination in the new Constitution, adopted on September 20 last year.

Pressing for a more representative constitution, the Madhesi protestors are demanding, among other things, a redrawing of the boundaries of the provinces in Nepal as proposed in the new Constitution -- promulgated on September 20 last year; 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.

At least 60 people have been killed in the last five months in the Madhesi agitation. Nepal faces a severe short supply of essential commodities, fuel and medicines due to blockade of major Nepal-India entry points by the protestors.
The Madras High Court on Monday issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government and ordered the preservation till January 27 of the body of T. Monisha, one of the three girl students who allegedly committed suicide.

On Monday, police arrested Vasuki, Sukhi Verma and two others - top officials of SVS Naturopathy and Yoga College in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district - while the Villupuram district administration sealed the college a day earlier.

While police registered a case of suicide in the death of T. Monisha, A. Saranya and V. Priyanka, their parents alleged the students were murdered for protesting against the lack of basic facilities in the college.

The bodies were taken out of a well in a farm near the college on Saturday evening. Villupuram is around 170 km from here.

The high court order on the preservation of Monisha's body till Wednesday came on her father Tamilarasan's plea.

"Without Tamilarasan's consent and despite his demand for a post-mortem in a hospital in Chennai, the police conducted the autopsy in Villupuram," his counsel R. Sankarasubbu told IANS.

He said the petition demanded the transfer of investigations from the Villupuram police to the CB-CID wing of Tamil Nadu Police and a second autopsy in a Chennai hospital.

"Our contention is that the district administration is helping the college management in the case," Sankarasubbu alleged.

Meanwhile, Dr M.G.R. Medical University vice chancellor S. Geethalakshmi told reporters that the college was not affiliated to the varsity. She said the college's recognition was cancelled a couple of years back.

Nearly four months ago, a few students of the college had allegedly attempted suicide in front of the Villupuram collectorate.

Police said the three students ended their lives after the management demanded higher fees even though the college lacked basic facilities.
The Madras High Court on Monday issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government and ordered the preservation till January 27 of the body of T. Monisha, one of the three girl students who allegedly committed suicide.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa expressed grief over the suicides and announced a solatium of Rs.1 lakh to each of the bereaved families.

On Monday, police arrested Vasuki, Sukhi Verma and two others - top officials of SVS Naturopathy and Yoga College in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district - while the Villupuram district administration sealed the college a day earlier.

While police registered a case of suicide in the death of T. Monisha, A. Saranya and V. Priyanka, their parents alleged the students were murdered for protesting against the lack of basic facilities in the college.

The bodies were taken out of a well in a farm near the college on Saturday evening. Villupuram is around 170 km from here.

The high court order on the preservation of Monisha's body till Wednesday came on her father Tamilarasan's plea.

"Without Tamilarasan's consent and despite his demand for a post-mortem in a hospital in Chennai, the police conducted the autopsy in Villupuram," his counsel R. Sankarasubbu told IANS.

He said the petition demanded the transfer of investigations from the Villupuram police to the CB-CID wing of Tamil Nadu Police and a second autopsy in a Chennai hospital.

"Our contention is that the district administration is helping the college management in the case," Sankarasubbu alleged.

Meanwhile, Dr M.G.R. Medical University vice chancellor S. Geethalakshmi told reporters that the college was not affiliated to the varsity. She said the college's recognition was cancelled a couple of years back.

Nearly four months ago, a few students of the college had allegedly attempted suicide in front of the Villupuram collectorate.

Police said the three students ended their lives after the management demanded higher fees even though the college lacked basic facilities.
Expressing her preference for "physical books", West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said they can never be replaced by e-books.

At the inauguration of the 40th Kolkata International Book Fair at the Milan Mela ground, Banerjee said physical books possess an old-world charm which e-books do not.

"The feeling we get in sifting through a book is beyond description. They have an old world charm, unlike e-books.

"The experience of reading on the internet is nothing compared to the pleasures of turning the leaves of a book," said Banerjee, who declared the event open along with Bolivian author Magela Baudoin by the customary striking of a gong.

The chief minister said seeing children carry books gives her a wonderful feeling.

Two books authored by the chief minister -- one on "intolerance", and the other on Urdu shayari were released at the inaugural programme of the event, regarded as the world's largest non-trade book fair.

The fair will be thrown open to the people from January 26 and conclude on February 7. Bolivia is the theme country this year, while Vietnam is the guest of honour country.

A three-day Kolkata Literature Festival, beginning on Febrary 4, will be part of the fair.

A highlight of the KLF is a discussion on the issue of "intolerance", where veteran poet Ashok Vajpeyi would take part.

Vajpeyi, veteran actor-director Amol Palekar and Bengali novelist Sanjib Chattopadhyay will inaugurate the festival.

Vajpeyi, Chattopadhyay, Tridip Shurud and Kavita Punjabi will be the panelsits at the session "Intolerance in Tolerant India".

Noted blind story-teller Giles Abbot from Britain will also regale the audience at the KLF.
More than 10 lakh people are expected to attend a mega rally here on Tuesday to be organised by an umbrella group of backward classes in Gujarat, which has emerged as a counter force against the Patel quota agitation.

The rally will be held at the sprawling Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation Grounds, the same venue for a rally by the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) four months ago.

To be organised under the aegis of the OBC, SC, ST (OSS) Ekta Manch, the theme of the "maha rally" is "Vyasan Mukti" (de-addiction).

Alpesh Thakor, convenor of Thakor Sena, an OBC community group active in Gujarat for many years, said: "Every year 15,000 to 20,000 youngsters in Gujarat lose their lives to various addictions.

"The entire community and society is pained and we want to bring about a basic change in the mindset through this rally," he said.

Thakor had launched the OBC Ekta Manch as a counter to PAAS leader Hardik Patel's pro-Patel movement. A number of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes supported his Manch.

Tuesday's rally is being seen as a show of strength against the Patel community, which had organised a rally at the same venue on August 26 last year that drew lakhs of people.

The rally led to a police crackdown that resulted in the death of 12 people.

Thakor said Tuesday's rally was expected to see more than 10 lakh people.

The rally is also being seen as a move to unite the OBCs in the state against the Patel demand for quotas in government jobs and educational institutions in the OBC category.

"If people think our rally is only a show of strength, then let them. We are going to break all records," Thakor said, maintaining that the key issues for the rally would be de-addiction and raising the pitch for employment generation.

"We hope that our efforts get replicated in other states too. We want to organise similar events in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra but our focus is to raise the voice of the youth of Gujarat," he said.

Thakor, however, denied that the rally was a move to counter Hardik Patel or against the ruling BJP.

The local administration is gearing up for Tuesday and is not willing to take any chances.

"We are deploying over a dozen police superintendents, 4,000 policemen and State Reserve Police personnel so that things remain under control," Ahmedabad Joint Commissioner of Police Rajiv Ranjan Bhagat told the media.
Myanmar Wildlife Conservation Society will begin its annual survey of the Irrawaddy River dolphin on February 5, said the society on Monday.

The 10-day-long survey will be conducted along the Irrawaddy River between Mandalay, Myanmar's central region, and Bhamo, the northernmost part of Myanmar.

The dolphin conservationists team has been planning to conduct the survey after spotting a rare baby dolphin in a protected area between Mandalay and Kyaukmyaug in September last year, Xinhua reported.

The Irrawaddy River dolphin is found near sea coasts and in estuaries and rivers around Southeast Asia, especially in Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The January 2015 survey shows that 58 dolphins were found between Mandalay and Bhamo, a drop from 72 in 2004.

Most of the dolphins were killed by illegal electric shock fishing, while some were caught in fishing nets, according to fisheries department.

The government has banned electro-fishing nationwide, punishing violators with a three-year prison sentence and about $300 fine.

The government authorities and conservationists reached an agreement in 2015 to form a team -- comprising representatives from the society, the fisheries department and the police force -- to patrol the river once every two months.

The Irrawaddy River, or Ayeyarwady River, is a river that flows from north to south through the country.

It is the country's largest river and most important commercial waterway.
Nepal's imports from China, its second largest trade partner, fell 14.1 percent in the first five months of the current fiscal 2015-16, Nepal's central bank said on Monday.

Imports have been affected by a blockade on the Indian border points and a delay in bringing the closed Khasa-Tatopani border point into operation, Xinhua news agency reported.

Imports from China declined to $342 million in the first five months of the current fiscal, which begins in mid-July, from $398 million during the same period in the previous fiscal, according to the bank.

Normally, Nepal imports 25 percent of goods from China through the land route and the rest enter Nepal by sea via Kolkata, according to the Customs Department.

Imports of Chinese goods through sea have been affected due to the ongoing troubles near the Indian border, according to the bank.

"The supply of goods through the land route has also been affected due to the delay in bringing the Khasa-Tatopani customs point, which had served as the main trade route till the deadly earthquake last year, back to operation," said Nara Bahadur Thapa, chief of research department at the bank.

Currently, the inland trade between Nepal and China is taking place through the Kerung-Rasuwagadhi trade route, which was also closed for six months after the earthquake but was reopened in October 2015.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose on Monday joined the BJP, calling it the only party which pursues of nationalism and believes in Netaji's ideals of inclusivity and communal harmony, while dubbing the Congress the "most communal" party.

The 55-year-old Bose, grandson of Netaji's elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose, formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of its president Amit Shah at a public rally here.

Shah handed over the BJP flag to Bose amid cries of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and tumultuous applause from the crowd.

Bose, who studied Economics at Hendon College, London, pitched his lot with the BJP two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declassified 100 files related to Netaji on January 23.

Later, he said the perception of the BJP as communal was a "misconception".

"The BJP is the only party in the country which pursues of nationalism and believes in Netaji's ideals of inclusivity and communal harmony. And joining hands with the BJP, my job will be to bring these ideals into mainstream," Bose told IANS.

He dubbed the Congress the "most communal" party.

"It's a misconception that the BJP is communal, the most communal party is the Congress.

"It's the Congress which has all these years followed communal and politics of suppression. It has engineered the partition, the Bhagalpur riots (1989), the Sikh riots (1984), etc."

Asked why he did not join the All India Forward Bloc founded by Netaji, Bose said: "It has moved away from the ideals of Netaji and ruined Bengal for 34 years by joining hands with the CPI-M. It did nothing for declassifying the files."

"In fact, the Communist Party of India-Marxist has been supporting the Congress which has obliterated Netaji's contribution to the country from text books and distorted history," he said.

"The Bose family can't be involved with any party which has got to do anything with the Congress."

He said it was for the BJP to decide whether he would contest the upcoming assembly polls.

Chandra Bose, son of Amiya Nath Bose, is the convenor of The Open Platform for Netaji, a forum of family members and historians which has for decades campaigned for declassification of files related to the revolutionary leader.
With the Narendra Modi government declassifying a set of secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, descendants of the revolutionary leader on Monday exuded confidence about the Russian government too making public similar files claimed to be crucial in unravelling his disappearance.

Netaji family spokesperson Chandra Kumar Bose also described January 23 -- when the Centre made public 100 classified Bose files -- as the day when independent India's first transparent government was established.

"We had a talk with Prime Minister Modi about his visit to Russia. He said that President Vladimir Putin, with whom he personally spoke about the issue, has assured of cooperating with the Indian government.

"So, the process is on and we are hopeful that the Russian files which are very crucial, will be declassified," Chandra Kumar, who on Monday joined the BJP, told IANS here.

Chandra Kumar said the Centre was also in talks with the governments of Japan, Germany and Britain over getting public classified information on Netaji.

"We have also urged Modi to write to the Chinese government because they too have some files on Netaji," said Chandra Kumar, who along with many family members was present when Modi put in public domain the 100 secret Netaji files.

Ascribing to claims that Netaji had faked his death in the alleged plane crash of 1945 and escaped to erstwhile Soviet Union, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has recently been demanding the Modi government to raise the issue with its Russian counterpart to solve the "Russian mystery" surrounding Netaji.

Chandra Kumar, who doesn't subscribe to the air crash theory, claimed that the declassified files contain evidence proving that even Jawaharlal Nehru did not believe Netaji had died in the plane crash.

"There are several documents indicating how successive Congress governments have suppressed facts to ensure the air crash theory is not debunked.

"We have got a 1962 letter in which Nehru had written to Netaji's brother Suresh Chandra Bose, wherein he clearly stated that there was no clinching evidence to establish the air crash but only circumstantial evidence," claimed Bose.

A member of the Shah Nawaz Committee that concluded that Bose had died in the plane crash in Taihoku on August 18, 1945, Suresh Chandra, had declined to sign the final report giving a dissenting note on the findings.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said only the financial details needed to be worked out in finalising the much-awaited purchase of Rafale fighter aircraft from France, adding that it would be concluded soon.

Modi had, during his visit to Paris last year, announced India's intention to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by the French aerospace major Dassault. The deal is valued at around Rs.60,000 crore.

"Only financial aspects of the Rafale deal is left. The inter-governmental agreement has been finalised. It will be done soon," the prime minister said in his statement after delegation-level talks with French President Francois Hollande here.

Hollande in his statement said: "We signed an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) on Rafale deal. It is a decisive step for India to purchase the fighter jets and also for France to make them available to a great country like India."

Referring to the financial aspects of the deal, Hollande said: "That will be sorted out soon."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday only the financial details need to be worked out in finalising the much-awaited purchase of Rafale fighter aircraft from France, adding that it would be concluded soon.

Modi had, during his visit to Paris last year, announced India's intention to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft built by the French aerospace major Dassault. The deal is valued at around Rs.60,000 crore (almost $9 billion).

"Only financial aspects of the Rafale deal is left. The inter-governmental agreement has been finalised. It will be done soon," the prime minister told reporters after delegation-level talks with French President Francois Hollande here.

On his part, Hollande said: "We signed an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) on Rafale deal. It is a decisive step for India to purchase the fighter jets and also for France to make them available to a great country like India."

Referring to the financial aspects of the deal, Hollande said: "That will be sorted out soon."

"Dassault Aviation is very pleased with this progress, and is actively supporting French authorities in their efforts to finalize a complete agreement within the next four weeks," the company said in a statement from Saint Cloud in France.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) had shortlisted Rafale for induction into its frontline combat fleet, replacing the ageing Soviet-era MiG-21 squadron but the deal did not materialise for long.

The original deal, at an estimated cost of $20 billion, was for delivery of 126 fighters, including 18 off-the-shelf by Dassault, and 108 to be manufactured in India under licensed production by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) over time, with 50 percent offset obligations to benefit the domestic aerospace industry.

The IAF opted for the twin-engined Rafale in January 2012 over Eurofighter Typhoon of the European consortium EADS Cassidian after outsmarting F-16 of American Lockheed Martin, F/A-18 of Boeing, MiG-35 of Russian United Aircraft Corp and Swedish SAAB's Gripen in a global competitive bid floated in August 2007.
A day before Republic Day, 30 Indian fishermen from Gujarat's Porbandar port, along with five boats, were on Monday captured by the Pakistan Marine Security Agency (PMSA) in the Arabian sea off the Gujarat coast, an official said.

The boats from Porbandar had ventured into high seas for fishing nearly a week ago, National Fish Workers Forum secretary Manish Lodhari told journalists.

Lodhari said the number of captured boats could be more than five.

Initial information said five boats were captured by the Pakistani authorities near the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL), but the number could be 8-9, with 5-6 fishermen on each boat, Lodhari said, adding that the fish workers agency was trying to confirm this.

On December 20 last year, 10 Indian boats with 68 fishermen were captured by PMSA off the Jakhau port in Saurashta region of Gujarat.

Lodhari said the PMSA had also caught almost a dozen Indian boats with over 60 fishermen in October last year.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the union cabinet's recommendation for President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh, suspending an elected government, was "against the Constitution".

"Constitution doesn't allow you to suspend an elected government and enforce the President's rule in any state. It is against the Constitution," the Aam Aadmi Party chief told media here.

Kejriwal earlier termed the union cabinet's recommendation of President's rule in Arunachal as "murder of Constitution on the eve of Republic Day".

Speaking at an event organised by the Delhi government to celebrate the Republic Day, he also sought the central government's cooperation in the functioning of the Delhi government.

"Central government is like an elder brother, whereas state governments are younger brothers. He (Central government) should not trouble its younger brother (state government)," Kejriwal said.

"We need central government's cooperation for proper development and functioning. With its cooperation, the development would be ten fold," he said.

"Instead of troubling us with CBI raids and President's rule, the Centre should support us," he added.

Kejriwal said Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar gave India the world's best constitution which talks about justice, liberty and equality, but "it seems that there are several flaws in its proper implementation".

Talking about Dalit doctoral scholar Rohit Vemulla's suicide at the Hyderabad University, Kejriwal said: "A central minister called the authorities in the university and pressurised them to suspend Rohit and his friends".

"The central minister declared the students who were following the path shown by Dr B.R. Ambedkar as anti-national, which is wrong," he added.

"The poor Dalit boy should have been promoted and appreciated instead of creating an environment that forced him to suicide," Kejriwal said.

The chief minister unfurled the tricolour and took Guard of Honour from contingents of Delhi Police, Delhi Fire Service, Civil Defence, NCC, and school students. The event was followed by cultural programmes.

Kejriwal also said Delhi's ruling AAP government was working for the betterment of poor and common man. "We have focused on improving living standards of poor, middle class by providing free water, subsidised power, better health and education amenities."

"We also scrapped management quota in private schools to abolish corruption in admission process at schools," he said.

"Yesterday (Sunday) I inaugurated a flyover which was constructed at a cost of Rs.300 crore while the sanction cost of the project was Rs.425 crore. PWD saved over Rs.300 crore in three such projects in last two months," he said, adding: "This money would be given to health department for enhancing health amenities."
Congress leaders will meet President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday evening to voice their concerns about President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

The party has also moved the Supreme Court, challenging the union cabinet's recommendation on Sunday to impose President's Rule in the northeastern state.

"We have sought a meeting with the president at 5.30 in the evening today (Monday). We will place our concerns before him. I am sure he'll do justice in the matter," Congress leader Kapil Sibal told mediapersons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has appreciated the privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia while greeting President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the country's 67th Republic Day.

In a letter addressed to President Mukherjee and Prime Minister Modi, the Russian president also pitched for deeper bilateral cooperation with India.

"Accept my cordial greetings on the occasion of the Republic Day. India enjoys well-deserved authority in the world arena, plays an important role in solving pressing international and regional issues, possesses mighty economic potential and rich cultural heritage," Putin said in the letter.

"We highly appreciate the relations of special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India.

"I am sure that the further build-up of fruitful bilateral cooperation in different areas, constructive interaction in various international formats corresponds to our common interests and goes in line with ensuring stability and security in Asia and the entire world," Putin wrote.

"From the bottom of my heart I wish good health and success to you, well-being and prosperity - to the friendly people of India," he added.
The rise of the Islamic State is among the attempts by Sunni hardliners to reverse Shia Iran's gains in Iraq, and comes paradoxically at a time when Iran, long seen by the western world as the source of instability in the Middle East, is now being needed to manage the same instability, says regional expert Vali Nasr.

He also noted that a move towards increased fundamentalism by Sunni powers of the area, such as Saudi Arabia, which is refusing to engage with Iran, now back out of the cold after the nuclear pact, is not a very "strategic" option since their economic power from oil production is lessening (especially the US due to shale gas), these states are vulnerable themselves, and it sets them on a collision course with the West due to the terrorist attacks by IS.

At a session titled "The Shia Revival", named after his 2006 book, at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Monday, he said all this was part of the conflict in the Middle East between Shias and Sunnis, which dates back to a millennium but had risen in the present as a proxy war after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and more recently after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"Shias and Sunnis look on the post-2003 politics of Iraq differently," he said, noting while the former see it as the first modern Shia Arab state, the latter were disturbed at a state that contained the Shia "threat" had been changed adversely - and by the US, seen as their reliable ally against Iran after 1979.

Nasr, the dean of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama regime, contended that Sunni Muslims are "extra sensitive to political developments" and quick to discern anything that can change the balance of power.

The Iranian revolution had raised the prospects of a Shia threat and Sunni powers, especially Saudi Arabia which has had a relationship with the US which even predates the US-Israel alliance, had feared Iran because of two factors - first the prospects of Shia predominance, and secondly because it was anti-monarchial in nature.

However, the fear did not abate even though all the efforts of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime to export the Islamic revolution eventually failed to go beyond Shia Iran, despite they having "doubled down as the most anti-US/anti-Western" power possible which made the world see Iran and its proxies like the Hezbollah as the bad guys. This perception of being "messianic lunatics", as host Jonathan Shainin noted, lasted till 9/11.

"Incidentally, the Hezbollah has been the only Arab army to have defeated Israel," he noted.

Nasr holds that the matters complicated due to regime change in Iraq were further complicated by the Arab Spring " which did to several Arab states what the US Army had done to Iraq - broke down the state".

The Arab Spring saw an implosion in several authoritarian (Sunni) states, and taken to its logical conclusion -- of democracy and elections -- would have disturbing consequences for Sunnis, especially in states like Bahrain where Shias are in the majority, given the example of Iraq.

"That is why the IS with its goal of a Sunni caliphate, has struck a political resonance," he said, adding it is trying to roll back the Iranian gains in Iraq, as well as wrest Syria for the Sunnis.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
The heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea, Japan and the US will hold a meeting in February to study the current crisis in the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test, a South Korean military spokesperson said on Monday.

The meeting, between South Korea's JCS chairman General Lee Sun-jin and his Japanese and American counterparts Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano and General Joseph Dunford respectively, will be held through a video conference, Efe news agency cited the Seoul military as saying on Monday.

The meeting is aimed at facilitating a possible defence response to the current crisis, a South Korean official said.

The Korean peninsula has witnessed an escalation of tensions since January 6 when North Korea carried out its fourth underground nuclear test.

The two Koreas, which technically have been at war for more than 65 years now, also activated propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers at the common border.

The last time this happened was in August, when the two countries ended up exchanging cross-border artillery fire.

Meanwhile, the US army flew a B-52 bomber plane armed with nuclear missiles in the skies of ally South Korea, in response to the North Korean test.

Another official said the US plans to carry out a further show of its power as part of its campaign to deter Pyongyang from conducting more nuclear tests.

The Kim Jong-un-led communist regime says it detonated a powerful hydrogen bomb for the first time on January 6, although most experts consider the claims to be exaggerated and maintain the country possibly just tested a fission bomb.
At least seven people were killed when Taliban militants attacked a police station in Afghanistan's Kandhar province on Monday, police said.

The clash erupted around midday when gunmen wearing suicide vests and carrying weapons stormed a police station in Spin Boldak town bordering Pakistan, Xinhua cited a senior police official as saying.

Those killed included five militants and two Afghan Border Police (ABP) personnel, he said.

The Taliban claimed the responsibility for the attack.

The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since April when the militant group launched its annual rebel offensive against security forces.

Kandahar and the neighbouring Helmand province are notorious for poppy growing and militancy.
A soldier of the army's elite special forces who made the supreme sacrifice in Jammu and Kashmir will be the sole recipient of the Ashok Chakra award during this year's Republic Day celebrations on January 26.

Late Lance Naik Mohan Nath Goswami of the Northern Command's elite special forces will be awarded the Ashok Chakra for attaining martyrdom in Jammu and Kashmir while fighting terrorists, Northern Command's spokesman Colonel S.D. Goswami told IANS here on Monday.

The intrepid commando killed two terrorists before he laid down his life during exchange of heavy gunfire with terrorists in Hafruda forests in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir. He had killed 10 guerrillas in 11 days before attaining martyrdom.

"The martyrdom and indeed the selfless gallantry of late Lance Naik Mohan Nath Goswami received a deserving recognition from a proud nation when he was conferred the Ashok Chakra, the country's highest peacetime gallantry award, on the occasion of the 67th Republic Day," the spokesman said.

He said that late Lance Naik Goswami - the intrepid and indefatigable commando - was a natural choice of his commanders for any challenging mission and he was ever too willing to oblige.

On September 2, 2015, Lance Naik Goswami was engaged in a fierce encounter with terrorists hiding in the Hafruda forests. As the encounter raged, two of Lance Naik Goswami's comrades were wounded.

Undeterred by the intense volley of fire, he rushed to rescue them and in the act - despite getting grievously wounded himself - he not only eliminated two terrorists but also saved the lives of his comrades.

"Lance Naik Goswami succumbed to his injuries in the highest traditions of the Indian Army," the spokesman said.

The martyred commando hailed from Indira Nagar village in Haldwani tehsil of Nainital district (Uttarakhand) and is survived by his wife and a seven-year-old daughter.

Ashok Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry ward, is the peace-time equivalent of the Param Vir Chakra awarded for acts of bravery on the battle front. It is awarded for the "most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent valour or self-sacrifice" other than in the face of the enemy.

The decoration may be awarded either to military or civilian personnel and may be awarded posthumously.
The Sri Lankan government should fulfil its commitments to the UN Human Rights Council by ensuring that foreign judges and prosecutors play a significant role in the mandated accountability mechanism for wartime abuses, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

On January 21, President Maithripala Sirisena told the BBC that, contrary to Sri Lanka's council commitments, he will "never agree to international involvement," saying "(w)e have more than enough specialists, experts and knowledgeable people in our country to solve our internal issues".

Human Rights Council member and observer countries that backed the consensus October 2015 resolution should make clear that foreign participation in a war crimes tribunal was already decided by the council and is not subject to renegotiation, Human Rights Watch said.

After adoption of the resolution, Sri Lanka told the council that it was pleased to join as a co-sponsor "as a further manifestation of Sri Lanka's commitment to implement the provisions of the resolution, in a manner that its objectives are shared by the people and all stakeholders in the country, for their benefit".

Said Human Rights Watch: "The Sri Lankan government sought international involvement to ensure justice and accountability so there's no excuse for backtracking now.

"President Sirisena needs to understand that international participation in a war crimes tribunal was not a vague promise to the UN but a firm commitment to the thousands of Sri Lankans who suffered during the country's long civil war."

Sirisena's statement comes just weeks before a scheduled visit to the country by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.
Tension prevailed in the University of Hyderabad on Monday with students from other states reaching here for a massive protest over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

As hundreds of students from various universities in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and other states poured in, a large number of security personnel have been deployed to prevent any untoward incident.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice, an umbrella of student groups, have called a 'Chalo Hyderabad Central University' to demand the arrest of central ministers Smriti Irani, Bandaru Dattatreya, Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and others, blaming them for the "institutional murder" of Vemula.

There was tension at the main gate of the campus as police stopped students coming from various states.

After protests by JAC, students carrying identity cards were allowed. A police officer said only students would be allowed after they show their identity cards.

The JAC alleged that police stopped several students at various places in the city to prevent them from reaching the campus.

The university administration said there was no permission for the rally. Protesting against this, the students staged a sit-in at the administrative building.

Students reaching the campus were carrying black flags and pictures of Vemula, who committed suicide on January 17 following his suspension along with four other Dalit students over an alleged clash with a leader of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

Some students also held pictures demonising Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani. The JAC, distanced itself from such pictures.

Though Appa Rao on Sunday went on indefinite leave, the students are not satisfied and they want him to resign.

The JAC has also condemned the appointment of Vipin Srivastava as the interim vice chancellor as he headed a sub-committee of the executive council which suspended Vemula and four other students.

Seven students continued their indefinite hunger strike for a second day on Monday. Other students too continued their protest at a memorial they have constructed for Vemula, near a shopping complex.

B.R. Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar visited the campus on Monday and expressed solidarity with the students. He said Dalit students in universities across the country were facing discrimination.

Several leaders belonging to various groups and activists are scheduled to visit the university later in the day to meet and address the students.
Leader of Myanmar's election-winning opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi met with Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing in Nay Pyi Taw on Monday.

Both held discussions on formation of the new government among a series of matters dealing with post-election transition, Xinhua cited the Defence Services office as saying.

They also touched on issues related to peace and tranquility during the period and parliamentary affairs as well as continued implementation of Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) after its signing for lasting peace.

Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing last met on December 2, 2015, for the first dialogue in response to Suu Kyi's call after NLD won a landslide victory in the November 8 general elections.

The next term of sessions of the House of Representatives and the House of Nationalities of parliament, produced through the November 8 general elections, are due to begin on February 1.

The current term of parliament, which was produced through the 2010 general elections and ran from 2011, will expire on January 30.

Meanwhile, Myanmar's Union Election Commission has appointed 366 military-represented parliament members to three levels of the new parliament to take up 25 percent share of seats at each level of the legislative body.

Myanmar held a general election to elect representatives on November 8, 2015. In accordance with the election results, the NLD won the absolute majority of the parliamentary seats, which is strong enough for it to form a new government independently under the constitution.

According to the existing 2008 constitution, besides the elected representatives, the military possesses 25 percent of non-elected parliamentary seats in each level of parliament, directly nominated by the commander-in chief of the defence services.
National Award-winning actor Tabu, who has wowed audiences in comedies like "Biwi No. 1" and "Hera Pheri", doubts if a lot of actresses get to do comic roles.

Asked why she was not being seen in light-hearted films of late, the "Chandni Bar" actress replied: "Not many light-hearted films are made. Not that I am not doing it. I don't know if a lot of female actors get comic parts."

Tabu, who will be seen in "Fitoor" next, admitted she craves for comedies.

"I would love to do more... 'Biwi No.2...3...' and more 'Hera Pheri'," the 41-year-old said at the Kolkata Literary Meet here.

She also raved about actor Govinda, her co-star in "Saajan Chale Sasural".

"It is a pleasure to watch him take a less than ordinary scene and magically make something fantastically entertaining to watch. He has that rare quality," she said.
Vodafone India, a leading telecom services provider, on Monday rolled out its 4G services here.

The company said it will expand its services to cover Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru by March.

At present, the high speed network can be accessed in prominent business and residential corridors of the city, including BBD Bag, Park Street, Alipore, Ballygunge, Salt Lake Sector 5, Airport and EM bypass.

The roll-out will be completed across all parts of Kolkata by June, 2016, in a phased manner.

The launch follows the successful roll-out of the company's 4G services in Kerala and Karnataka, officials said here.

Built on the efficient 1800 MHz band, the state-of-the-art network will enable 4G customers to access internet via mobile with speeds across a range of smart devices including Mobile Wi-Fi.

It would also enable faster download/upload of videos and music, seamless video chats to enjoy and greater ease in using their favourite apps.

Customers will also adore features like high definition video streaming, mobile gaming and two-way video calling.

Vodafone is also the first and only telecom service provider to currently offer international roaming on 4G to its India customers visiting Britain, Germany, Romania, Spain and the Netherlands

Launching the services, company's chief operating officer Naveen Chopra said the initial response from customers who have experienced the 4G services in Kerala and Karnataka "has been positive and encouraging".
The World Bank-funded Mid-Himalayan Watershed Development Project in Himachal Pradesh has helped preserve natural resources and prevent soil erosion besides ensuring substantial improvement in the local economy.

The project was started in October 2005 in 10 districts, a government spokesperson told IANS. Initially, 602 gram panchayats of 42 development blocks were covered.

However, considering the fruitful results, another 108 panchayats that were covered under a micro watershed programme were also brought under its ambit.

The World Bank provided additional financial support in 2012, the spokesperson said, for the newly-included panchayats for comprehensive watershed treatment and effective source sustainability.

The total outlay of the project increased to Rs.630.75 crore (almost $93 million) from Rs.395 crore. The duration of the project has also been extended till March from 2013, said the spokesperson.

A total of 4,932 user groups were formed for managing natural resources in a sustainable manner under the project, which gave a new dimension to the state's development.

Around 70 percent area was covered under plantations which remarkably contributed to conserve the environment, the spokesman said.

Keeping in view the fact state's economy majorly banks on agriculture and allied sectors, a major thrust has been given in the watershed project to increase the availability of water through conservation and maintenance of natural resources.

As staggering 8,961 water harvesting structures with a capacity of 10.78 lakh cubic meters have been set up, besides construction of a 241-km long irrigation channel.

The channel helped diversify agriculture as production of high value crops resulted in reasonable enhancement in farmers' incomes, said the spokesperson, who is associated with the project.

He said 3,219 hectares was covered under plantation during 2013-14. The verification of bio-carbon plantation by independent agencies was got done and report has already been accepted by the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The state received carbon revenue of Rs.1.63 crore which has been transferred to the divisional watershed development officers for further distribution among the panchayat beneficiaries.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Bio-Carbon Project, a major component of this project, is being implemented over 4,003 hectares in 177 panchayats. This includes 3,176 hectares of forests, 293.06 hectares of community land and 533.15 hectares of private land.

The CDM has not only provided carbon credits but has also gone a long way in protecting soil erosion and prevention of landslips in vulnerable areas.

It has helped in development of organic diversification and plantations to benefit the local communities through production of various produce, thereby providing self-employment opportunities, said the spokesperson.

During this period, 33,000 metric tonnes of vermin compost was produced and intervention on arable lands resulted in increase in wheat production by 14 percent, maize by 13 percent and milk yield by 11.55 percent.

More than 32 livelihood activities were implemented by 4,174 common interest groups. These concerted efforts have resulted in increase in the per capita income of the state, which has gone upto 93 percent.

The state has now sought the intervention of the Indian government to prevail upon the World Bank to extend the poject period by at least one year, the spokesman said.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
A women's organisation has threatened to storm the famous Shani Shingnapur Temple here -- if need be, from the sky route even via a helicopter -- when its sanctum sanctorum opens on Tuesday, said an activist here.

Security has been strengthened at the temple which is barred for women devotees. However, the activists remained undeterred in their avowed objective -- to offer prayers at the Shani temple

"We have already booked a helicopter and if we are not permitted to enter from the open ground, we shall drop ladders from the chopper and climb down. We are not scared of any security since women's rights are concerned," an aggressive Trupti Desai, president of Bhumata Ranragini Brigade told IANS on Monday.

She said around 1,500 women from all over Maharashtra shall troop down to the temple on Tuesday morning and offer prayers at the temple which is dedicated to Lord Shani -- the personification of planet Saturn -- and where women devotees are not permitted.

The unique open temple has no walls or roof. A self-emerged (svayambhu) five-foot-high black stone stands on a platform and is worshipped as Lord Shanidev.

The temple platform stands in the centre of the small village, also known as Sonai and attracts millions of tourists and devotees from across the country and abroad.

However, barring the temple priests, none is permitted to climb the nine steps up to the actual stone idol that represents the deity. Everybody must only offer prayers from below the platform, said a temple trustee Prafull N. Surpuriya.

Shani Shingnapur is globally known as the only village where houses do not have doors and locks, and the village remains theft-free.

Even the nationalised UCO Bank's branch in the village does not have locks on its doors.

Belief has it that thieves cannot steal or burgle in the village which is protected by Lord Shani, and misfortune and divine punishment would befall anyone who attempts to steal.
Vietnam's tech feast has a distinctly foreign flavour. Exports of electronics reached $48 billion in 2015 - up 34 per cent from the previous year. Yet Vietnam's gains in the global technology supply chain depend mostly on big investors such as Samsung Electronics.

When the South Korean giant started manufacturing in Vietnam back in 2009, smartphones and personal computers played a minor role in the southeast Asian economy. Last year, however, electronics accounted for almost 30 per cent of the country's total exports - more than textiles, garments and footwear combined. That expansion helped lift economic growth to 6.7 per cent in 2015, the fastest rate in eight years. Analysts at HSBC think the economy will expand at the same pace this year, with exports rising more than 10 per cent.

Much of this is down to Samsung. The $160 billion group's products accounted for a staggering 18 per cent of Vietnam's exports last year, according to state media. The world's largest smartphone maker has pledged over $12 billion of new investment, including a $2 billion plant in the south, Reuters reported in December. That's huge: total implemented foreign direct investment last year was only $14.5 billion.

The ruling Communist Party, which meets to fill key leadership positions this week, is betting that a combination of tax incentives, low wages, and proximity to Chinese raw materials will prompt other electronic giants to follow Samsung and Intel - another early investor. That strategy may already be working: last year, LG Electronics said it will shift production of televisions to Vietnam from Thailand.

The influx may be crowding out domestic firms, though. Exports from local companies actually contracted in 2015, official data show. Private sector firms face heavy debt burdens and limited access to credit, according to analysts at Natixis. A 2014 World Bank report concluded that, despite having a literate and urban workforce, Vietnam still has a shortage of skilled workers.

But for Vietnam's next crop of leaders, financial and educational reforms will take time. And moving up technology's value chain will be harder with global demand for electronics slowing: the smartphone market grew by less than 10 per cent in 2015. If it is to emulate Asian success stories like South Korea and Taiwan, however, Vietnam will ultimately need to develop its own tech champions.
Whenever the talk about innovation bubbles up into a fever, as it is currently doing in India, I abandon my normal route to work from Colaba to Mahim through pretty Marine Drive and take the inner route, through Chinchpokli and Jacob Circle. I do this to catch a glimpse of what is now called Kasturba Hospital and bring myself back to the ground.

The Kasturba Hospital was built in 1892 as The City Fever Hospital. In the late 19th Century, the city then called Bombay was struck by a series of epidemics: malaria, cholera, Spanish influenza, and, most of all, the bubonic plague. Why Bombay? It was then, like today, India's most internationally connected city and ships carrying infected people from Hong Kong brought these diseases, and spread from Bombay city to the rest of western and northern India. In Bombay city alone nearly 200,000 people died in that last decade of the 19th century.

The innovation called "vaccines" was still a decade away, so the British colonial government of that time started enforcing the only measure governments of that time knew against such epidemics - isolating the infected people in hospitals such as The City Fever Hospital to limit the spread of these diseases. Widespread protests erupted against this enforced segregation. In Poona, the British official in charge of enforcing this segregation, W C Rand, was assassinated to the applause of many nationalists. What was an innovative measure to combat a deadly epidemic, in fact the only known measure at that time, was interpreted as yet another act against Indians by the colonial government. The protests around this were a clear accelerator to the Indian Independence movement.

Everyone loves innovation, but, what is often not recognised is that innovations, particularly the really big ones, cause societal crises which can then be harnessed by astute politicians for their causes.

In a similar vein, in the early years of the 20th century, the synthesis of indigo from synthetic sources through innovations in chemistry caused hardships to the indigo growers of Champaran in Bihar - whose protests Gandhiji went on to lead, gaining him prominence in India's nascent Independence movement. The Congress Party's flag, which was used to rally all Indians to the Independence movement to drive out the British colonial government, had for many decades a charkha, the hand spinning wheel, a symbol of indigenous technology that was made obsolete by the arrival of the Spinning Jenny and the use of machines that could multiply productivity manifold.

The power to cause societal pain, at least to some segments of society, is intrinsic to the nature of technological innovation. For that reason, more often than not, it creates forces that pushback and create not only new leaders, be it Tilak in Poona or Gandhi in Champaran, but also protests from novelists and poets. The late-18th century innovations in yarn spinning and textile weaving that we now know of as the First Industrial Revolution, created immense changes in English society - and the work of poets like William Wordsworth and novelists like Charles Dickens in novels such as Hard Times is the response of many at that time who yearned for an idealised, simpler past.

What is intrinsic to technological innovation that causes pain to some segments of society? This arises from the "disruptive" nature of genuine innovation. Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School was the first to point out how this disruptive innovation process works. When they first appear, disruptive innovations may be considered inferior by most; typically, the best customers are not willing to switch to the new offering even when its prices are substantially lower. But there are other customers who value the low price and often lower features. Thus, the arrival of machine spun yarn at much lower prices was ignored by the spinners in 19th century India. The arrival of relatively crude textiles which could not even remotely match the exquisite handloom sarees was ignored by handloom weavers. The arrival of chemistry as science brought indigo from coal tar and much lower prices and was ignored by people who were thriving on growing the indigo plant. When the lower price version spreads it does two

things - on the one hand it makes it affordable to vast new sections of the population; on the other hand, it impoverishes the incumbents who continue their high-price, high-quality product till it's too late.

What are the promises and threats of the current technologies of the internet and web that we see swirling all around us? Many observers view this wrongly as "e-commerce", a way of locating, selecting, buying and getting delivery of heavily discounted products. It is much more than that. It is essentially the promise of making all kinds of professional services ultra-cheap and of even higher quality than today. These technologies will make, for instance, financial, legal, medical and educational services of very high quality available at a fraction of their current prices. This is bound to make the lives of the average citizen much easier - but it will also mean a drastic reduction in the numbers and incomes of bankers, lawyers, doctors and teachers. This is not going to happen without massive societal pushback.

When I passed by Kasturba hospital, today, I paused and tried to imagine what it would take to hasten this era of affordable financial services, justice, medicine and education without succumbing to societal pushback.

Ajit Balakrishnan is the author of The Wave Rider, A Chronicle of the Information Age.email: ajitb@rediffmail.com
As the months go by, one thing is becoming increasingly clear. The new Tata-SIA venture - Vistara - has its task cut out in India and success, if and when it comes, will be at a high cost. One of the biggest reasons why I say this is that the affluent Indian passenger's behaviour has changed dramatically, thanks to low-cost airline IndiGo and its efficient ways.

I don't know how many fliers would recall, but there was a time in the mid-1990s when the Jet Airways business class was the first to fill up. People who had "arrived" wanted to fly Jet business. It gave them an opportunity to make a statement of sorts, network and mingle with others who had, likewise, "arrived". Often, business deals could be struck or consultants could chance upon new clients, all thanks to a two-hour flight. There was also the snobby lot who couldn't be seen flying "cattle class". Former Jet officials still remember how people would use "contacts" to try and get a seat in business and were reluctant to settle for the first row in economy - slightly more comfortable but not quite in the right spot.

Then a new era dawned on Indian aviation with the arrival of Air Deccan. Air Deccan offered cheap flights at never-before rates. But the cheap rates came at a cost; flights were often late, regularly cancelled and generally the service was unreliable. Shoddy was the first word that came to people's mind when they thought of Air Deccan. A senior aviation industry professional described it to me as a "use and throw" product. Yet it gave many who had never flown a chance to do so. Deccan expanded the market, added many new fliers - those who could not afford the pricier Indian Airlines and Jet Airways - but it never did get those who still chose to fly Jet and Indian Airlines.

Even as Jet began to lose its sheen due to the troubles it took when it bought Sahara, Kingfisher Airlines came along and the well-heeled flier took to it like fish to water: Here was something more in line with what he deserved. The swagger, flashy new planes (all blessed by Tirupati priests), prawns, shiny cutlery, smiling and shapely hostesses he and his employer didn't mind dishing out more for the benefits the airline offered. Many Jet loyalists switched sides in the heady days of Vijay Mallya's extravagant offering. Consultants, CEOs, Members of Parliament, actors and actresses flocked to Kingfisher and revelled in the pampering on offer.

But the good days - as we all know - did not last long. And then came along hard-nosed IndiGo - efficient, on time, hassle-free although not a whole lot cheaper. It gave birth to the practical, sensible flier, who needed to get his job done and no longer cared about where he was spotted. Even those who had sworn never to be seen flying "cattle class" seemed to find it acceptable. Many companies - it was also to do with the timing since the 2008 global crisis brought some hard lessons with it - stopped paying for business seats even for its top guns. Who needed business for a short two-hour haul was the question everyone began to ask. Insisting on business began to look uncool. With laptops and all kind of devices in tow, you no longer cared who occupied the seat next to you. Gone were the days when you chose your airline based on who else flew it.

So Vistara enters a country - and an economy - that has been sobered down to reality. And therefore it's no surprise that its business occupancy on all sectors remains low. Even premium economy has been struggling. As one aviation industry veteran put it: "Business means you are rich, economy means you are poor; who wants to pay more to be seen as middle class (premium economy)?" The airline has rightly been exploring the possibility of reconfiguring its aircraft and I would say that makes sense keeping in mind the market reality. Even if the airline manages to fill some premium economy or business seats on the metro routes, it will continue to lose money on Tier 2 and Tier 3 routes, as filling 16 business class and 36 premium economy seats on these will be virtually impossible. And if it has anyone to blame, it is rival IndiGo, the upstart that managed to alter the psyche of the Indian flier.
One of the most forward-looking proposals in the last Union Budget, for 2015-16, was the plan to reduce the headline corporation tax rate by five percentage points in a phased manner while ending the various exemptions that permit companies to pay less than the headline tax rate. This was planned to simplify the tax regime, broaden the tax net, and reduce distortions in the system. In general, the thrust towards reducing tax exemption-based regimes is welcome. What is worrisome, however, is that there seems to be a slate of proposals that act in the opposite direction, to in fact increase the number of tax exemptions - all apparently for the best of reasons, but dangerous nonetheless.

One such proposal came in from the committee appointed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, to look into the venture capital scene in India. The committee, headed by N R Narayana Murthy, has suggested several tax breaks for venture capital that it says will help grow the alternative investment ecosystem in India. For example, services to raise funds from overseas investment are proposed to be exempted from service tax. Meanwhile, it has been proposed by the pension regulator that the upcoming Union Budget, to be presented in five weeks, exempt withdrawals from the National Pension Scheme, or NPS, from taxation, and subject it to an exempt-exempt-exempt (EEE) regime, as opposed to an exempt-exempt-tax (EET) regime. The Seventh Central Pay Commission has also recommended that "withdrawals under the NPS should be tax-exempt to place NPS on a par with other pension schemes". Currently the employee provident fund (EPF) is EEE, while the NPS is EET, and there are worries that this leads to a skewed playing field. But levelling the playing field should ideally mean that all schemes become EET, not EEE..

Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016 There are too many programmes on the anvil that create new claims on the state. The new farm insurance scheme suggests raising the Centre's commitment to filling any gap between premiums and claims. There is a concern here that must be addressed: this would reduce the insurance companies' incentives to administer the scheme properly. Worse, this might encourage insurance companies to discard their own system of scrutiny of cases claiming insurance benefits without any fear of any losses. Indeed, tax exemptions are part and parcel of various recent government thrusts. For example, solar energy is to be provided exemptions - although, worldwide, tax exemptions on renewable energy have often backfired. If solar energy is truly to become a sustainable backbone for the Indian energy economy, then why subsidise it? If solar energy is genuinely getting competitive on tariffs, as many who back renewable energy claim, then why not expose it to a straightforward tax regime? Even the government's manufacturing policy attempts to involve some protection from taxes. The Make in India website proudly lists various "incentives under the Income Tax Act", including heavier weighted deductions for research and development, and additional deductions for hiring new workers.

The government must recognise that an exemption regime is dangerous. It twists entrepreneurs and investors into seeking out tax benefits rather than good and productive ideas. It distorts the economy. Even if considered important as protection for growing industries, it has been found they become impossible to withdraw. Instead of an exemption regime, Indian entrepreneurship and investments will get a boost if there is a stable and straightforward tax regime where no effort is put into tax arbitrage. This should underlie the drafting of the Union Budget.
Indians may be intrigued and even proud to see French defence contingents march down Rajpath today, the first time foreigners have participated in the Republic Day parade. But the country's leaders may do well to use this annual celebration of the birth of the Republic to extend their attention beyond the pomp and circumstance of a two-hour parade. January 26, after all, marks the formal adoption of the Constitution, an extraordinarily extensive document that sets out the essential framework for governance and society in India. Critically, the foundation of this, the world's longest written Constitution, rests on a guarantee to ensure equality before the law for all Indians, irrespective of caste, religion, race, place of birth or gender. Sixty-six years on, it is safe to say that Indian society, aided by Indian politicians, has failed to fulfil that promise.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the status of Dalits, an issue currently roiling the public discourse following the suicide of a university student in Hyderabad. Despite several decades of reservations mandated by law in government jobs and aided educational institutions, Dalits remain wilfully marginalised by mainstream society. In contrast to African-Americans, many of whom entered the middle class within a decade of getting the right to vote in the US, survey after survey suggests that Dalits still dominate the universe of grinding poverty below the poverty line. Muslims, too, account for about 13 per cent of the population and also mostly inhabit echelons around and below the poverty line. Over the past two decades, political targeting of this group has only resulted in a growing marginalisation and demonisation to the point when it is possible for, say, religious vigilantes to murder a man for his suspected culinary habits.

The growing polarisation of Dalits and Muslims in Indian society is only one aspect of the discrimination in Indian society. Only a few years ago, northerners in Maharashtra and north-easterners in Bengaluru suffered the ignominy of being hounded out of jobs and homes by xenophobic activists, suggesting that "place of birth" remains an issue for some within the Indian union. If, however, there is one form of discrimination that cuts across Indian society, it is on the basis of gender. Partial results of the fourth National Family Health Survey in 13 states and two Union Territories show that the sex ratio has worsened, a poor reflection of the regressive nature of Indian society. As the sociologist Andre Beteille put it, "Our contemporary life is permeated by the contradiction between the principle of equality and the practice of inequality. This contradiction is particularly marked in India where a Constitution with a strong emphasis on equality confronts the most bewildering variety of inequalities in almost every sphere of life." For a Republic that aspires to a place at the global high table, this is its most inconvenient truth yet.
When investment gurus such as George Soros and Jim Rogers start saying things are looking really bad, investors need to worry. But, then, these are also times to remember the famous saying of another investment guru, Warren Buffett: be greedy when others are fearful.But, it isnt easy to be greedy because investors tend to follow the herd. The current market seems to be testing the patience of investors again. Just when things seemed to be changing after a good five-six years, global unrest can come back to plague Indian stock markets. There are a few things that you can/should do in this market.Experts say long-term investors dont really need to panic. When the Sensex crashed to 8,160 in March 2009 due to global economic crisis, it was back to 14,300-level two months later in May  a recovery of 75 per cent. Within seven months, it touched 17,300-level, or 112 per cent. In stock market, the longer the correction, bigger is the upside, says Gautam Sinha Roy, vice-president and fund manager at Motilal Oswal AMC. Sitting out after losing money is the biggest mistake an investor can do, even for a short period. Between October 27, 2009 and November 4, 2009, the market went up 24.93 per cent. More recently, in September 2013, the market rose 9.67 per cent within eight trading sessions.A correcting market is a great opportunity to buy or even start a systematic investment plan. Individuals can use the spare cash to invest in the market in a staggered manner. Those already in the market for three years would be sitting on a profit. The market is still up 22 per cent since January 2013.

These investors should continue their investments as usual, especially if they are investing via systematic investment plans. You can also raise the SIP amount slightly depending on your cash flows. If you are investing in equities directly, go for companies that you are comfortable with and whose business you understand. According to investment experts, amid global bad news, there are still many positives for the Indian economy. G Chokkalingam, founder of Equinomics Research & Advisory, believes like European Union, other countries would continue with quantitative easing and postpone the current problems for another three to five years. Changes to portfolio: In a recent report of Morgan Stanley, Chetan Ahya, its co-head of global economics and chief Asia economist, and Ridham Desai, managing director and head of India research, say investors should be positioned in long dollar trades, consumption plays and government policy beneficiaries. Roy of Motilal Oswal prefers sectors such as retail-oriented banks and pharma. But, he says investors need to be selective while picking stocks directly. He also advises that investors can avoid small- and mid-cap stocks unless they find one that has high competitive advantage in its sector and also a healthy balance sheet. Roy, who manages a multi-cap fund, has moved most of his holdings to large caps. Asset allocation: Financial planners say the best thing to do in a falling market is follow the asset allocation strategy. Say, your portfolio comprises 70 per cent equity and 30 per cent debt. Keep a margin of five to 10 per cent for each asset. So, if equity allocation goes below 60 per cent, replenish your asset allocation to maintain the balance. This will automatically tell you when to book profits and when to pour more money into an asset. Keep cash: Chokkalingam has been telling his clients to keep around 30 per cent of portfolio in cash or liquid funds. He says cash gives you the flexibility to invest on dips or can be used for investment opportunity that is open for a very short period. It also lowers the risk in your portfolio. Even mutual funds sit on some cash when markets undergo correction for an extended period and deploy them slowly over time.

Whatever changes you make, do keep tax in mind.
Twelve suspects, arrested from across the country for their alleged links with terror group ISIS, were today remanded in NIA custody till February 5 by a special court here.

The accused, who had their faces muffled, were produced amidst tight security before District Judge Amar Nath during an in-camera proceeding.

According to the court sources, Investigation Agency (NIA) sought their custodial interrogation saying that they were required to be quizzed to unearth the conspiracy of ISIS to spread its reach in India.

The sources said that the probe agency informed the court that the accused were arrested for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day.

The 12 accused produced before the court were Abdul Ahad, Imran, Mohd Afzal, Mohd Sharif, Mubabiir Mushtaq Sheikh, Mohd Alim, Syed Mujahid, Suhail Ahmed, Asif Ali, Njmul Huda, Mohd Obaidullah Khan and Mohd Hussain Khan, the sources said.

These arrested accused were allegedly regularly in touch with active members of IS in Syria through internet chatting via Skype and other social networking apps, they said.

Many of these accused were allegedly assigned the work of recruiting operatives for the terror group, the sources said, adding that the accused were arrested from various places, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Aurangabad.

Two suspected terrorists -- Abu Anas and Nafees Khan, both aged 24 years -- were yesterday remanded in the custody of the central terror probe agency by the court for 13 days on the allegations that they had Islamic State links.

NIA and other central agencies had arrested 14 people on Friday and Saturday for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day.

They were arrested under several sections, those under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Indian universities have secured two spots in the top 20 places inTimes Higher Education's (THE) 'World's Best Small Universities Ranking 2016', which was published today.

Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati ranked 14th globally, followed by Savitribai Phule Pune University in 16th place make their mark in the debut list released here.

The best small university in the overall rankings is the California Institute of Technology.

"India's institutions are well represented in the World's Best Small Universities Ranking 2016. Alongside Caltech, they demonstrate the world-class offering available at smaller institutions, no matter their location," said Phil Baty,'THE' rankings editor.

Small universities are defined by 'THE' as having fewer than 5,000 students and that teach and research across more than four disciplines.

Only 20 small universities in the world are considered world-class.

"When it comes to universities, size matters. For some students big is best, but for others, a small university is the right option.

"Small universities can potentially offer students a more intimate environment, with more support and attention from lecturers, and more of a chance for students to spend time with the star professors who in bigger universities may simply be too busy. The smaller university can also offer a greater sense of collegiality and community, where students are less likely to get lost in the crowd," Baty said.

Although the US has the highest number of universities in the list (five), Europe has eight and Asia has seven.

Of the eight European countries represented in the ranking, the UK does not feature despite being second only to the US for overall world-class universities, with 78 in the top 800 and 34 institutions in the top 200.

'THE' ranking draws upon 20 universities in the central 'THE' World University Rankings with fewer than 5,000 students and teaching and researching across four or more disciplines across 13 performance indicators.
American Airlines says seven people were taken to hospital after a plane from Miami to Milan made an emergency landing in Newfoundland after the plane briefly encountered severe turbulence.

The aircraft landed safely in the East Coast Canadian province yesterday, where it was met by paramedics.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein says three flight attendants and four passengers were transported to hospital for further evaluation.

The seat belt light was on when the Boeing 767 carrying 192 passengers and 11 crew members encountered turbulence. At least four ambulances and a fire truck were seen on the tarmac in St. John's, Newfoundland. An hour after the plane landed, one ambulance remained.

Feinstein says they are working on next steps to get the uninjured passengers to Milan.
An Afghan official says three border policemen have been killed and three others were wounded in a suicide attack near an important border crossing in southern Afghanistan.

Zia Durrani, the police spokesman for Kandahar province, says the attack took place when five suicide bombers stormed the border police headquarters at Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan today.

He says after the attackers entered the building, a firefight followed for about half an hour before the attackers detonated their explosives vests.

Spin Boldak links Kandahar to the Pakistani city of Quetta and is a major crossing between the two countries for people and goods.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Kandahar is the seat of the Taliban, who have waged war on the Kabul government since 2001.
President Ashraf Ghani has vowed to "bury" the Islamic State group's affiliate in Afghanistan, a report said, after Washington granted the US military legal authority to strike the jihadists in the country.

The group, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq, has made alarming inroads in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, as the country grapples with a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

IS jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the Pakistani consulate in eastern Jalalabad city on January 13, the group's first major attack in an Afghan city.

In recent months Afghan forces backed by US drones launched a scorched earth offensive to beat back IS in Nangarhar, where the group's rein of terror has displaced thousands of people.

"This could be a point of no return for Daesh -- we will bury Daesh," Ghani told BBC in an interview released today, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

"Afghans are now motivated by revenge. They (IS) have confronted the wrong people," Ghani said on the sidelines of World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.

The US State Department earlier this month formally designated the group's affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- which calls itself "Khorasan Province" -- as a terrorist organisation.

The name Khorasan refers to a historic region which includes parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighbouring countries.

The White House this month also gave the US military legal authority to target the group's fighters in Afghanistan, the first such authorisation for military action against the group outside Iraq and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The jihadists have managed to attract disaffected Taliban fighters increasingly lured by the group's signature brutality.

In a sign of their growing reach in Afghanistan, the group has taken to the airwaves with a 90-minute Pashto-language radio show called "Voice of the Caliphate".

The government has said it is trying to block the broadcast, which is beamed from an undisclosed location and aimed at winning new recruits.

"The militant network is on the run in Nangarhar," Ghani told CNN in another interview in Davos.

"They have committed unspeakable atrocities there... We are starting to drive them out.
Close on the heels of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's tour of Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will be heading to the drought- hit region later this week even as his government wrote to the Centre seeking full coverage for it under the Food Security Act.

Akhilesh will on January 27 undertake the tour of the backward and drought-hit region, which has become a crucible of intense politics in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections next year.

He will visit Shahjahanpur village in Jalaun and hold a 'chaupal' with the villagers there. He will also be meeting public representatives, an official spokesperson said here today.

During his padayatra in Mahoba on January 23, Rahul had targeted both the BJP government at the Centre and the Samajwadi Party dispensation in Uttar Pradesh over their alleged apathy towards farmers.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary, Alok Ranjan, has written to the Union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Secretary seeking that the entire population of Bundelkhand region be covered under the Food Security Act.

"Bundelkhand region is drought-hit. Demands are being made from different quarters to cover the entire population of the region under the Food Security Act.

"During a visit, I had found that Rabi crops could be grown only in 50 per cent of the land and there is also a shortage of fodder.

"The population of the region is not much and 80 per cent of it is already being covered under Food Security Act. It is not only essential but also necessary to cover the entire population (of Bundelkhand region) under the Act," Ranjan said in his letter.

Seven districts -- Banda, Chitrakoot, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Jhansi, Jalaun and Lalitpur -- should be covered under Food Security Act and the necessary foodgrain allocation should be made for the region for the next six months, he added.

The National Food Security Act, 2013, aims to provide subsidised foodgrains to approximately two-thirds of India's 1.2 billion people.

Ranjan also called for the inclusion of 65.84 lakh BPL beneficiaries under Antyodaya category for allotment of foodgrains as per the rules.

After the announcement of Rahul's Bundelkhand visit, Akhilesh had listed the initiatives taken by his government for the region to blunt the Congress vice president's attack.

The Bundelkhand region is home to 18.3 million people as per 2011 census and is blighted by drought and unseasonable rains that destroyed standing winter crops.

With Opposition parties getting active in Bundelkhand ahead of the the 2017 Assembly polls, Akhilesh has said his government would make the necessary efforts to address the issues confronting the region.
A medical emergency onboard a Mumbai-bound Air India aircraft from London forced the aviation authorities to divert the flight to Baku airport in Azerbaijan.

Air India flight AI 130 with 229 people on board made an emergency landing at Baku's Heyder Aliyev International Airport, a source said.

The Boeing Dreamliner (B787-800) aircraft was on its way to Mumbai when the pilot sought diversion of the aircraft from Air Traffic Control to provide medical assistance to a sick patient on board, the source said.

The flight had departed from London's Heathrow Airport yesterday at 1900 hours and was scheduled to arrive at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at 0400 hours this morning.

It will now reach Mumbai by 1300 hours.

(REOPENS MDS7)



Elaborating about underwater search, Bargotra said it was



not simple like surface search as the exact position will have to be known for it.

He said "when we go for underwater search, we will start from the position that was last reported," adding, under ocean search cannot be done in a vast area as being done now for surface search.

"Aerial search is extended to almost 60,000 square nautical miles and surface search to 14,400 square nautical miles but underwater search will be limited," he said.

To a query, Bargotra said the earlier search was undertaken on a 120/120 nautical miles East of Chennai coast and now had been expanded.

"Only if you have the exact position, the vessels can be deployed and this is the reason they are not being deployed now. Of course the submarine from Navy is deployed."



"One more submarine from NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) is on the way from Mauritius. It is expected to join the search once it reaches India," he said.

Asked on whether the vessel owned by Reliance Industries would be joining the operations as it had helped in the search of Dornier air craft last year, he said, "We are definitely seeking the help of private and government agencies when the time comes for underwater search. As of now, we will not ask the private agency."



Asked if help from foreign countries has been sought, he said,"We have enough resources for conducting the search. As of now we have not sought any help from any other country."



To a query on the limitations faced in the search and rescue operations, he said, the weather was one factor as it was not good over the last four days.

On support from agencies like ISRO and INCOIS, he said, "INCOIS will study the ocean currents as it becomes important in situations like this.

"As regard ISRO, we have requested them to provide a satellite for search operations and I think they are on to it right now," he said.

Asked on similarities between the disappearance of a Dorner aircraft on June 8 last year and the present one, he said, "in both the cases, the aircraft disappeared from radar on short notice. There was no alert or SOS transmitted from them. We were expecting that. Dornier was lost in night time while this has happened in day.

(REOPNES MDS 10)



Meanwhile, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar spoke to the parents of Flight Lieutenant Deepika Sheoran and Flying Officer Co-pilot Pankaj Nandal, who hail from Haryana.

The two were on board among the AN-32 aircraft.

Khattar said his government is in constant touch with the authorities involved in the search and rescue operation.

He also prayed for the safe return of all those on board.
After Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's trip to Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will be visiting the region on January 27 to take stock of the development works there.

The CM will be traveling to Shahjahanpur village in Jalaun and hold a 'chaupal' with the villagers and also meet public representatives, an official spokesperson said here today.

After the announcement of Rahul's Bundelkhand visit, Akhilesh had listed the initiatives that have been taken by his government for the region.

He had also sent Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan to the region, where he said the state government was working to provide better wages and work through MGNREGA to the villagers.

In Bundelkhand's Mahoba district on January 23, Rahul had targeted both the BJP government at the Centre and the SP dispensation in Uttar Pradesh for their alleged apathy towards farmers.
Bollywood star Aamir Khan today came under fresh attack for his "leaving India" comments in the "intolerance" debate with actor Akshay Kumar saying ups and downs happen in every country and one should not start giving "bold" statements.

Aamir, 50, whose comments while wading into the "intolerance" debate last November had kicked up a huge controversy, hit back, asserting he never meant that he wanted to leave the country or that India was intolerant.

"Any kind of ups and downs happen in every nation and you can't get into so much straight away that you start giving such bold statements. These kind of things happen. There are so many good things also which we don't speak about.

"Unfortunately, we have the habit of only pointing out the wrong things but nevertheless everybody has the right to talk," Akshay told India Today TV.

Veteran actor and BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha said that it was "nadaan" (childish) for some in Bollywood to talk about intolerance and he does not agree with them.

"A lot of people from the film industry brought up the issues of intolerance in haste, and it is childish to do so. I don't stand by them in this regard," Sinha said at the Jaipur Literature Festival(JLF).

Asserting that no other country is as diverse as India, Aamir said, "I was born here and I will die here."



"I never said India was intolerant or I wanted to leave the country. I also understand the emotions of those who were hurt. I would like to say that my statement was misunderstood and to some extent media is responsible for it. I was born here and I will die here," the 'PK' star told reporters in Mumbai on the eve of of his 2006 superhit "Rang De Basanti" completing ten years.

"Our country is diverse with so many languages, culture...No other country has so much diversity as India," he said.

Aamir's statement last November that he was "alarmed" by a number of incidents and that his wife Kiran Rao even suggested that they should probably leave the country had caused a nationwide outrage.

After a controversy broke out over his remarks, Aamir came out with a clarification, asserting that he stood by what he said and "neither I, nor my wife Kiran, have any intention of leaving the country.
Plagued with leadership issues, Gujarat unit of BJP is finding it difficult to choose its new president at a time when the party is going through its worst phase after 2001 in the wake of Patel quota agitation and loss in local bodies polls.

The state unit had announced that the new Gujarat BJP president will be appointed after Makarsankrati on January 15. However, it has been delayed for an indefinite period as BJP has not yet finalised the name of the candidate to head the unit in Gujarat, where assembly elections are due next year.

The term of present state unit chief R C Faldu had expired long back.

"The appointment has been delayed as the party central leadership has not been able to finalise the name," a senior party leader said.

"The party is going through one of the worst crises after 2001 and in these times it is crucial to find the right person for the post," another party leader said.

Party president Amit Shah during his three-day stay on Makarsankrati in Ahmedabad had met several leaders in connection with selection of candidate for the post of state unit president.

After he went back to Delhi, MP Arjun Ram Meghwal was appointed as an observer for BJP state president election on January 17.

The confusion is whether to appoint a Patel as state BJP president or an OBC at a time when the party has denied reservation to Patels, a source in the party said.

A section of party thinks when Chief Minister Anandiben Patel is from the Patel community it won't be wise to appoint another Patel to the post. While another section thinks that in wake of Patel quota agitation, appointment of a Patel will send a good signal, the sources added.

Party spokesman I K Jadeja said that appointment of state BJP president will be done in due course.

After departure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the political scene of the state, Patel quota agitation and loss in rural local bodies polls, BJP is passing through a bad phase in Gujarat which will go to polls in 2017.
Bollywood actor Anupam Kher and Delhi minister Kapil Mishra sparred during a debate over the limits imposed on freedom of speech and were joined in by a politically divided audience at the Jaipur Literature Festival here today.

Speaking against the motion at a session entitled 'Should Freedom of Speech be Absolute?' Kher alleged that a perception of intolerance was being created at festivals like JLF, adding that there should not be an impression that people in the country are living in fear.

"There is a perception of intolerance being created at festivals like these. Freedom of expression comes with a sense of responsibility in every citizen of the country. The rules which you follow at home (freedom of speech), you should follow in the country as well," he said.

The actor, who was selected for the Padma Bhushan today, said India is one of the countries with an "expansive freedom of expression".

"Let's not create this impression that we're living in a country, where we have to live in fear and that there is no freedom of expression here and that people are going to come to your home to arrest you and then put you in jail," he said.

Kher said that it was only in this country that one could call the Prime Minister a coward or a psychopath and get away with it whereas when he went abroad he was "subjected to a lot of checking, where I have to take off my shoes and sometimes even my pants".

Hitting out at Kher for apparently targeting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kerjriwal, Aam Aadmi Party minister Mishra said that Prime Minister was not the only person who could speak his 'Mann Ki Baat'.

"Can only one man do his 'Mann Ki Baat' in the country? Everybody can do it. Politicians must not tell me what I write on Twitter or Facebook. Those very people who've assumed the position of the country's culture and religion have no knowledge of our 'dharma'," he said.

Mishra said everyone has the right to chant Modi's name without being afraid of being jailed, to which the crowd responded by chanting the prime minister's name.

Vigorously leading the chants was Kher, who was described by fellow panelist Salil Tripathi as a "bad music conductor".

JD(U) MP Pavan K Varma posited that reasonable restrictions were required on freedom of expression, adding that if everybody exercised their right to speak without restraint, democracy would collapse.

Madhu Trehan and Suhel Seth also spoke against the motion stating a danger of fringe elements hijacking the discourse, and cited examples of figures like US politician Donald Trump.

Dalit writer P Sivakami brought forth view that freedom of press is essential to bring forth the narratives of those who have been subjugated by the upper echelons of the society.
Andhra Pradesh government's efforts at World Economic Forum in Davos to attract MNCs to invest in the state have proved to be successful, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu claimed here today.

"The government gave wide publicity to its 'Sunrise Andrha Pradesh' and 'Make in Andhra' at Davos. The multi-national units also appreciated our efforts to build Amaravati (new capital of AP) with a new concept," Naidu told reporters.

He said "the world knows that while India's economic growth stood at 7-8 per cent, that of Andhra Pradesh at 11.5 per cent whereas other countries including China are facing recession".

Naidu said he had invited University of Cambridge and University of Singapore to set up their campuses in the state.

"Setting up of such universities would show the way for our youths to improve their knowledge and skills," the CM added.

He said that companies like Airbus, Nestle, Siemens, besides leading industrialists have evinced their interest in investing in AP.
Elite commando of Army's Special Forces Lance Naik Mohan Nath Goswami has been awarded Ashok Chakra, the country's highest peace time gallantary honour, for laying down his life while saving his two colleagues during an encounter with militants in Kashmir last year.

This was stated by Defence Ministry spokesman here in a statement.

"He embodied soldiering, stood for it, while he lived and even in death. The martyrdom and indeed the selfless gallantry of Late Lance Naik Mohan Nath Goswami of the elite Special Forces received a deserving recognition from a proud nation," the spokesman said about the award announced on the eve of the 67th Republic Day.

Giving details of the incident, the spokesman said that on September 2, 2015, Goswami was engaged in a fierce encounter with terrorists hiding in the Haphruda forest in Kupwara, North Kashmir.

"As the encounter raged, two of Goswami's comrades were wounded. Undeterred by the intense volley of fire, he immediately rushed to rescue them and in the act, despite getting grievously wounded himself, he not only eliminated two terrorists but also saved the lives of his comrades," he said.

"Goswami succumbed to injuries and made the supreme sacifice in the highest traditions of the Indian Army," he added.

The spokesman said Goswami had been part of two major operations in a span of 10 days that led to elimination of 10 militants in the valley before he laid down his life.

Describing Goswami as the "intrepid and indefatigable" commando, the spokesman said he was the natural choice of his commanders for any challenging mission and he was ever too willing to oblige.

"As if to embrace danger and challenge, Goswami, who is fondly and proudly remembered by his comrades as one who could inspire and ignite patriotic fervour by his sheer presence alone, would volunteer for all risky missions," he said.

"The Indian Army stands committed to ensuring territorial integrity of the country and dignity of its people and it is in this spirit that many soldiers have braved the odds to ensure peace and prosperity in Kashmir as well.

"Any modicum of peace and progress in the valley is largely owed to the sacrifices of these heroes many of whom remain unsung from all uniformed community operating here in the service of the people," he added.
At least 25 people were killed today in a series of suicide attacks in the far north of Cameroon, a region often targeted by Nigeria's Boko haram Islamist group, according to a police toll.

"An initial toll shows 29 dead and around 30 injured," a police source said, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP, without specifying whether the fatalities included the bombers and whether there were three or four blasts.
The condition of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, who is admitted to PGIMER here following complaints of chest congestion and fever, is stable and doctors attending to him have expressed "absolute satisfaction" over his pace of recovery.

A team of doctors attending on Badal has expressed "absolute satisfaction" over the pace of recovery from chest infection, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office said here this evening.

According to the spokesperson, the Head, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Dr D Behra after thorough examination of the Chief Minister this evening, said that Badal was satisfactorily getting better day by day as his all medical reports were fine and he was showing signs of "remarkable recovery."



He, however, said that Dr Behra had said the Chief Minister would be kept under observation in the hospital till his infection was completely cleared.

Earlier, an spokesperson of PGIMER had said that Badal's condition was stable.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Chandigarh, had enquired about Badal's health at PGIMER.

Three days back, Badal was admitted to a local hospital in Nawanshahar after he had complained of chest congestion.

The 88-year-old five-time Punjab CM had suffered from chest spasm after he had just concluded the Sangat Darshan at village Behloor Kalan in Nawanshar on Friday.

After being discharged from the private hospital at Nawanshahr, Badal was admitted to PGIMER here.

The Chief Minister's engagements for the time being had been cancelled.

As per the doctors' advise, the Chief Minister has also cancelled his pre-scheduled visit to Amritsar on January 26, 2016, where he was to unfurl the National Flag and participate in the Republic Day celebrations, as he was indisposed.
A court in Bahrain today handed 15-year additional jail sentences to 57 inmates involved in a prison mutiny, a judicial source said.

The inmates were convicted of rioting and mutiny following the outbreak of unrest at the Jaw prison south of the capital Manama last March, the source said.
Police Commissioner of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, Dr R P Sharma, today asked policemen to be more watchful about terrorist activities.

The warning came in the backdrop of the arrest of a suspected terrorist of Al Qaida from Cuttack by the Delhi police last month and the arrests of at least seven Bangladeshis by the Bhubaneswar police for allegedly trying to procure passport submitting fake documents.

"These incidents should not be ignored and the police should sincerely take note of the developments by generating its own sources and taking proactive measures to check such activities in the twin cities," Sharma, who will take charge as the new Director of vigilance on Wednesday, said.

"Unlike other parts in the country, particularly in North India and metro cities, there is no terrorist activities in Odisha," he said.

He mentioned that two Indian Mujaheedin activists were arrested from Odisha in 2013 but they were travelling in the state to evade arrest.
Delhi High Court today directed DDA to place before the Lt Governor an expert body's recommendations to convert the forested district park and a polluted waterbody near Tughlakabad Fort into a bio-diversity park, so that an action plan can be formulated.

A bench of justices B D Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva issued the direction as it felt the local authorities were taking the issue "too lightly" and the expert panel's proposal was "encouraging".

It expressed hope that Delhi Development Authority (DDA) would place the report before LG before February 3 so that an immediate action plan can be drawn up, saying "time is running short as forests (near the fort) were being encroached upon on a daily basis".

The court also expressed concern that plant life native to India has been eliminated from the forest areas in the Ridge and the DDA district park near the fort, located near the Delhi-Faridabad border, due to the introduction of 'kikar' trees 150 years ago by the British colonial government.

According to the report, kikar trees, which are native to Mexico and are protected in the name of Delhi's green lungs, are an "alien invasive species" and have "eliminated around 500 varieties of native plants and animals".

The report by C R Babu, a noted ecologist, and Faiyaz A Khudsar, a scientist, has claimed the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of United Nations has said that the species needs to be eradicated from India, and recommended replacement of 'kikar' by flora native to India.

It has further said that for development and management of the biodiversity park, two posts of scientists, three supervisors, two nature education officers, 40 multi-tasking staff and 20 security guards be provided, a suggestion which the court has asked DDA to focus upon.

Another recommendation that DDA has been asked to focus on is to notify the already approved Delhi Biodiversity Foundation Regulations of 2015.

The court had set up the panel while hearing a PIL filed by Manoj Kumar, who claimed there was a forest area near the fort on DDA land where local residents were running illegal factories and their polluted, hazardous water was flowing into the forest creating an "artificial lake".

On the issue of polluted water bodies in the park, the



panel has observed that the water quality "is unfit even for irrigation" due to high suspended particulate matter, foetid smell, presence of toxic elements concentration and various other factors.

It has recommended that Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) should immediately give permission to set up a 2.5 million gallons per day (MGD) sewage treatment plant (STP) in a low-lying area inside the fort.

This depression inside the fort is already receiving the sewage from surrounding areas and also being encroached upon, the report has stated and added that the area can be converted into a wetland by using integrated bio-filteration technology for purifying the sewage.

Thereafter, "bioremediation of the polluted water bodies" would be carried out by first desilting them and using the silt for making embankments which in turn would be developed into greenways.

After that aquatic vegetation and fishes, to consume algae, would be introduced and floating root-mats used to clean the water, the panel said in its proposed action plan.

The panel has also suggested that "DDA should develop the district park at Tughlakabad (Tehkhand phase II) along with the contiguous district park (Tehkhand phase I) of Kalkaji extension as DDA Tughlakabad biodiversity park and bring it under Delhi biodiversity foundation".

"The merger of two district parks will provide ecological integrity and would facilitate movement of wildlife," it has said.

It has further suggested that the burial ground and the Central Reserve Police Force camp inside the park be "insulated" by walling them off and a boundary wall be built around the entire park.

It has sought prohibition on discharge of sewage and dumping of solid waste in the area.
Hitting out at Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, BJP today said he should "apologise" if he sincerely felt "sad" for ordering firing on 'karsevaks' in 1990 and come out openly in support of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said Yadav was trying to do "penance" for his "mistake" at a time when the SP government in the state was mired in "corruption" and was on its last breath.

"Mughal king Babur's general Mir Baqi destroyed Hindu temples, including the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Political parties for decades have been doing vote bank politics over the issue. If Yadav is sincere, then he should come out openly in support of the temple," he said in Delhi.

In Lucknow, BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, "The 'karsevaks' on whom the Mulayam government ordered firing were barehanded. In such a case, firing on them was a heinous crime."



He said the firing was ordered even though it had already been announced that 'karseva' was going to be symbolic.

"25 years later he is feeling sad which will not suffice and end the suffering of those who lost their family members," Pathak said, demanding that the SP supremo should apologise to the family members of the 'karsevaks' who lost their loved ones in the incident.

Yadav had yesterday said at an event in Lucknow that he "felt sad" for ordering the firing in 1990 but it was necessary to save the religious place. At least 16 people were killed in the firing.
A suspected bomb attack in Laos killed two Chinese citizens and injured one more, media reported on Monday.

The world's second-largest economy has been pouring money into the sleepy Southeast Asian nation, a fellow Communist state, over the last several years and became its largest investor in 2014.

Beijing's official news agency Xinhua identified one of the victims as an employee of a Chinese mining company operating in the mountainous centre of the country.

The victims were on board a vehicle when the incident happened on Sunday, it cited the Chinese embassy in Vientiane as saying.

The blast, which it repeatedly described as an "attack", occurred in Xaysomboun province, it said.

Unexploded ordnance is an enduring problem in Laos. During the Vietnam War, US warplanes dropped more than two million tonnes of munitions in some 580,000 bombing missions aimed at cutting North Vietnamese supply lines through the country.

An estimated 30 per cent of the devices failed to detonate and 50,000 people have been killed by the explosives since the end of the war.

China's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths, describing the incident as a "violent attack" but not giving details of the method or the suspected motive.

"We advise Chinese citizen to increase security precautions," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing.

The Chinese embassy in Vientiane said in a statement that two of its staff had visited the injured survivor, a civilian surnamed Zhou, in hospital.

A special envoy of Chinese president Xi Jinping is scheduled to go to Laos this week, Xinhua reported separately, following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry. He met the Lao prime minister on Monday as the US courts its former wartime foe.

President Barack Obama is due to travel to the rural landlocked nation later this year for a summit of Southeast Asian countries, marking the first visit by a US president.
Burkina Faso's head of state vowed today to do everything in his power to secure the release of an elderly Australian doctor and his wife, kidnapped by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.

Dr. Ken Elliot and his wife Jocelyn, a couple from Perth aged 82 and 84 respectively, were abducted on the night of January 15-16.

They have devoted some 40 years to running the only medical facility in a remote Burkinabe town.

"I would like to reassure their families, their loved ones and the Australian government that everything is being done to find them, in concertation with our friends and neighbours Mali and Niger and our friends abroad," President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said.

He was speaking at a national commemoration in the capital Ouagadougou, attended by several thousand people, for the victims of jihadist attacks on January 15 that left 30 dead.

The West Australian doctor and his wife run a clinic in the dusty town of Djibo, close to the border with Mali. They moved to the impoverished Sahel country in 1972.

The Burkina government has said the pair were kidnapped in Baraboule, near the west African country's borders with Niger and Mali.

The kidnapping coincided with a jihadist assault on an upmarket hotel in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou that left at least 30 people dead, including many foreigners.

The abduction has caused an outpouring of support, with the people of Djibo turning to Facebook to plead for the couple's release.

Hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading "Free Elliot" turned out in the town with their teachers.

A spokesman for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP on January 16 that the couple were being held by jihadists from the Al-Qaeda-linked "Emirate of the Sahara".

In a brief message, 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.
Four suicide bombers have attacked a market and town in Cameroon's Far North region near the border with Nigeria, killing at least 35 people and wounding 65 others, officials said.

Cameroon officials blamed the Nigeria-based extremist group Boko Haram for the yesterday's attack, saying the assailants crossed over from Nigeria.

In response, Cameroon soldiers carried out raids into Nigeria from the Cameroonian town of Achigashia, killing at least 17 insurgents, Cameroon's Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary said last night.

"The suicide bombers were escorted to Cameroon by Boko Haram fighters," Bakary said. "We must trace them wherever they are."



Two of the suicide bombers targeted the market of the Cameroonian border town of Bodo and two others detonated explosives in town, said the region's governor, Midjiyawa Bakari. The wounded have been taken to hospitals in the northern Cameroon city of Kousseri, he said.

Suicide bombers have killed dozens in the region in the past month. On Jan 18, a 14-year-old suicide bomber attacked a mosque in the region, killing four, the fifth attack on a mosque in Cameroon in less than a month.

Boko Haram militants began stepping up attacks early last year on neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, countries contributing to efforts to crush Boko Haram.

Boko Haram joined the Islamic State group in March. Yesterday, the IS-linked Amaq Agency posted a message reporting suicide bombings in northern Cameroon, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites.

The message said the attacks on Bodo village targeted "gatherings of the militias allied with the army operating on the border with Nigeria."



Boko Haram's six-year insurgency has killed about 20,000 people and displaced 2.3 million, according to Amnesty International and the United Nations.
A 17-year-old high school student was formally accused of murdering two teenage brothers and two teachers in a shooting rampage in the remote Canadian aboriginal community of La Loche.

The teen, who cannot be identified under Canadian law, was indicted on four counts of first degree, or premeditated murder and seven counts of attempted murder as well as a weapons charge during a brief court appearance yesterday.

A court official told AFP the accused would remain in custody until his next scheduled appearance on February 22.

On Friday, the suspect killed two brothers - Drayden and Dayne Fontaine, aged 13 and 17 - at their home in La Loche, Saskatchewan, before going to a nearby school.

There, he allegedly opened fire again and shot dead two teachers, 21-year-old Marie Janvier and 35-year-old Adam Wood, critically injuring seven other people, according to police.

He was arrested after police received an emergency call about "a person discharging a weapon in the community," RCMP superintendent Maureen Levy said.

The attack has traumatized the 3,000 inhabitants of the small lakeside community and shocked Canadians.

Unlike in the United States, mass shootings are rare in Canada, where firearms are more tightly regulated than south of the border.
At least 23 people, most of them from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, were killed by a truck suicide bomber in Syria's Aleppo city today, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 fighters from the group and four civilians were killed in the blast in the Sukari district of the city.
Actors Prithviraj, Priyamani and Dulquar Salman among others today expressed grief over the untimely demise of National award-winning Malayalam actress Kalpana.

The veteran actress died this morning in Hyderabad due to heart attack. She was 51.

"Paruthiveeran" star Priyamani took to Twitter to pay Kalpana an emotional tribute.

"Deeply saddened and shocked to hear the sudden demise of one of my fav actress Kalpana Chechi!what an actress!huge loss indeed!RIP Chechi!"



Malayalam actor Prithviraj, who has also worked in Bollywood films like "Raavan" and "Aurangzeb", wrote on his Facebook page, "RIP Kalpana Chechi! A fine actor and a finer human being! We flew together in to Hyderabad yesterday afternoon... And she was in such high spirits as always! You will be missed forever!!"



Actress Radikaa Sarathkumar tweeted, "I am so shocked to hear about actress Kalpana's sudden demise in Hyd. So sudden, sympathies to sister Oorvasi and family. Great loss of talent.

"Devastated to hear about Kalpana chechi. I've known her since I was a toddler and she would always tell me stories about my childhood. At a loss for words. When we shot the boat scene where Charlie kisses Mary, I remember her being so happy. She kept saying I would never give her kisses as a child," actor Dulquar Salman wrote in his facebook page.

"Shocked and dismayed to hear of her demise. Always the one to surprise us, with her performances, words and her wit - onscreen and offscreen. A consummate artiste - Kalpana. Rest in peace Chechi," National award-winning Malayalam director Anjali Menon wrote.
The Centre today issued a fresh coastal regulation zone (CRZ) clearance to the ambitious 22-km Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project worth Rs 11,370 crore.

The decision follows a National Green Tribunal (NGT)'s October order that had set aside the Environment Ministry's prior coastal clearance of 2013 to the project and asked it look into the proposal afresh.

The proposed Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project, to be implemented by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), envisages construction of six lanes road bridge to ease congestion and reduce pollution in Mumbai. The Maharashtra government plans to issue a tender in March and complete the crucial link by 2019.

"In compliance of the directions of NGT, the proposal 'Mumbai Trans Harbour Link' by MMRDA was considered by the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) in the ministry. Based on the recommendations of EAC, the Environment Ministry hereby accords CRZ clearance to the project," the ministry said in a letter written to MMRDA.

The green nod to the project, estimated to cost Rs 11,370 crore, has been given subject to the compliance of specific and general conditions, it said.

Among specific conditions, the ministry has asked MMRDA to obtain requisite forest clearance (FC) for diversion of 47.41 hectare forest land.

"The project may be executed in the entire stretch in non- forest land, and while making application to get for the forest clearance, the execution of work on non-forest land shall not be cited as a reason for grant of FC and in case FC is declined, the forest land shall be maintained at its existing conditions," the ministry said and asked MMRDA to submit an undertaking to this effect at the earliest.

The MMRDA has also been asked to strictly comply with all terms and conditions stipulated by the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority and implement the Environment Management Plan in consultation with all stakeholders.

It has been asked to implement the project with the provisions of the CRZ Notification 2011 and not affect the coastal ecology of the area. It has also been asked obtain all permissions from concerned authorities prior to commencement of the project.

The ministry also said the current CRZ clearance to the project is subject to final order of the Supreme Court in the matter of Goa Foundation Vs Union of India in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 460 of 2004 as may be applicable to this project.

Although the project had first got the environment clearance (EC) way back in 2005, it could not take off within the validity period of five years of the EC due to irrational offers received from bidders.

Subsequently, the CRZ clearance was given in 2013 after taking into consideration the submissions of MMRDA that the proposal is to construct sea link and it does not attract the provisions of EIA Notification, 2006. However, Pune-based NGT kept the 2013 CRZ clearance in abeyance for six months.

As per the MMRDA proposal, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Sea Link project involves construction of a bridge across the Mumbai harbour between Sewri on the island city side (in the Mumbai Port Trust area) and Chirle on the Navi Mumbai side. The link is about 22 km long with a 16.5 km bridge across the sea and a 5.5 km long viaduct on the land.
In a first, two troops of border guarding force ITBP have been decorated with gallantry medals this Republic Day for exhibiting a steely resolve in the icy Himalayan heights while diffusing the month-long face-off with the Chinese PLA army in Ladakh's Chumar division in 2014.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has always got bravery awards, including military medals, for their brave exploits during their duties in guarding Indian interests in Afghanistan or while working in other internal security theatres of the country like combating Left Wing Extremism.

"This is the first time for the force to get bravery medals for duties along the border it guards.

"The force is rendering some of the toughest duties along the Sino-Indian frontier which has been a witness to some serious confrontations between the security personnel on the two sides, albeit, without even a single bullet being fired ever," a senior official said.

The Police Medal for Gallantry (PMG) has been awarded to Assistant Commandant Deepak Singh and Head Constable Kanwar Singh who "without caring for relief and respite in extreme cold climate at icy heights gave gallant account of themselves to contain and defuse the situation which ultimately resulted in de-escalation of the situation peacefully and in safeguarding the security and interest of the nation."



The Chumar standoff was one of the longest between the two sides on this mountainous border which has witnessed a number of incidents between ITBP/Army and PLA owing to the respective sides' perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

In a candid account of his memoirs about the incident, former ITBP Director General Subhas Goswami had termed as "evil design" of Chinese Army this face-off which, he said, saw both sides entering into "serious" altercations.

Terming the reasons for the standoff as part of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) machinations, Goswami, who was heading the force at that time, wrote about an eye-ball-to-eye-ball situation with the PLA in Chumar, located 210 kms northeast of Leh town of Jammu and Kashmir.

"It was about the eye-ball-to-eye-ball standoff with the Chinese Army at Chumar in Ladakh. On receiving information that the PLA was preparing to build a road in our territory, ITBP along with the Indian Army rushed to the spot and physically prevented the Chinese Army from carrying out their evil design.

"This stout defence led to serious altercations and jostling between the opposing troops," Goswami had recently written in his memoirs he penned for the 54th anniversary of the force which was celebrated last year in October.

He had said the PLA expanded the area of conflict to near by locations by "heli-lifting" its forces from the rear but finally had to "go back to their barracks."



The ITBP is tasked to guard the 3,488km long Sino-Indian frontier.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has urged Iowa voters to choose her experience over the idealism of rival Bernie Sanders, who made the rounds of university campuses at the weekend to earn student support.

"I know some of you are still shopping. I'd like to shop too. I hope during the course of this afternoon to convince some of you," Clinton told about 600 people packed into an elementary school gym in the town of North Liberty yesterday.

On February 1, voters in Iowa, in the US heartland, will cast the first ballots in the US presidential nominations process -- a long road to Election Day on November 8.

Clinton, the 68-year-old former secretary of state, and Sanders, a 74-year-old senator from Vermont, are running neck-and-neck in some opinion polls, though Clinton enjoys a wide advantage on a nationwide basis.

"As secretary of state, she stared down some of the toughest dictators in the world, and so I have no doubt that she can take on the Tea Party, and the gun lobby," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, the influential US women's health care provider.

"She never blinks, she never wavers."



The message Clinton and her team sought to drive home was that her proposals are more realistic than those of Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who has put taking down the financial elite and Wall Street at the heart of his campaign.

He has repeatedly attacked Clinton over what he says are her close ties to some big banks, and has chastised her for giving paid speeches to Wall Street firms.

But Clinton fought back yesterday.

"I have taken on Wall Street for years!" she said. "I have a better plan to do it."



"No bank is too big to fail, and no executive is too big to jail," she added.

She also insisted on her foreign policy bona fides and the "very specific steps" she would take to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group.

Clinton devoted a long section of her stump speech to her role in the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, which several of President Barack Obama's aides considered to be too dangerous and risky. She said she encouraged Obama to go ahead with it.

"The person who sits in that (White House) situation room has to be able to weigh intelligence and evidence to be able to really dig deep in these details, and I offer you my experience and my judgment," she said.

"We need to chart a steady course," she concluded -- suggesting that a Sanders administration would lack such stability.
Mayors of the three BJP-ruled municipal corporations today took strong exception to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's describing them as "political animals" and termed it as an "insult" to the denizens of Delhi.

"It does not behove of the CM of a state to use such a derogatory word like political animal against the mayors who are the first citizens of the areas of the city under their jurisdiction," East Delhi mayor Harshdeep Malhotra said.

"It is not an insult to us as mayors, but it is dishonouring the people of Delhi," he alleged.

Claiming no dues are pending for clearance at the AAP government's end, Kejriwal today said that mayors of all three corporations should "keep their houses in order."



"Mayors are political animals they will say anything. When the municipal commissioners are saying that nothing is due, the mayors should keep their house in order," he said on the demand of funds by the mayors.

Malhotra, however, claimed that Delhi government owed a due of Rs 275 crore as a Municipal Reforms Fund to the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

North Delhi mayor Ravinder Gupta who had recently written letters to Kejriwal demanding payment of dues to the municipal corporations said the chief minister was "deflecting" the main issue of pending funds.

"We have been repeatedly asking Delhi government and the chief minister for paying the amount due to the three municipal corporations including Rs 1,200 crore to the North Delhi Municipal Corporation but they are dilly-dallying in a bid to avoid payment," he claimed.

The three corporations claim that they have a combined due of about Rs 3,000 owed by the Delhi government under the recommendations of the 3rd Delhi Finance Commission.

The mayors also refuted Kejriwal's claim that the commissioner's of respective corporations have given in writing that Delhi government "owes them no funds".

Delhi BJP president and SDMC councillor Satish Upadhyay too criticised Kejriwal for "lacking" political etiquette and terming mayors as "political animals".

He also challenged the chief minister to make public the "no due letters" written by the commissioners within 24 hours.
Himachal Pradesh today celebrated its 46th Statehood Day at Jaisinghpur in Kangra district with chief minister Virbhadra Singh crediting people and successive Congress governments for development that had taken place in the state.

Himachal was granted statehood on January 25, 1971 and the state had been celebrating this momentous occasion every year since then.

Addressing the people at the state level function, chief minister made series of announcement and detailed the progress made by the state, especially during the past three years of Congress rule.

Chief Minister said that Himachal got Statehood due to persistent efforts of former Chief minister Dr Y S Parmar and grace of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the real credit for development of the state goes to Congress governments.

Singh announced Sub-Divisional offices at Nagrota-Bagwan and Shahpur,HPSEB division at Jawalamukhi,DSP office and Fire Brigade unit at Jaisinghpur and up-gradation ofPanchrukhi police post to fully fledged Police Station in Kangra district.

He also announced government Degree College at Rakkar in Dehra sub-division and takeover of Sugh-Bhatoli and S D Rajpur private colleges by the State government.

Chief Minister said that Dharamshala had been made second Municipal Corporation of the State to ensure planned development of the town.

He said that Chadiar, Haripur, Gangath, Panchrukhi, Alampur and Darini were made Sub-Tehsils and Dadasiba as Tehsil by the present government and a new sub-division had been approved for Jawalamukhi whereas Tehsil Welfare Offices had been opened at Shahpur, Nagrota-Bagwan and at Rakkar in Pragpur in Dehra sub-division.

Singh said that a sum of Rs 26 crore was being spent under Rajeev Gandhi Electrification programmeto give fillip to tourism in the district while approval had been given for Himani-Chamunda rope-way and the foundation stone of rope-way between Dharamsala to Mcleodganj had been laid which would be completed within one and a half years.

He said that government had adopted its election manifesto as a policy document and had gone beyond to fulfill the promises made in the manifesto.

Around 1365.65 kilometres of new motor-able roads and 134 bridges were constructed during last three years and 255 villages had been provided road connectivity and emphasis was being laid on providing houses to poor and needy.

As many as 13652 houses had been constructed under Indira Awas Yojana by spending Rs 8538.65 lakh and 2141 under Rajiv Awas Yojana at a cost of Rs 2280.47 lakh.

Besides, three Biswas of land was being provided to the landless in rural areas and two biswas in urban areas.
Oscar-winning hip hop artist Common says he would love to work with Michelle Obama after the First Lady Of the United States debuted her rapping skills.

Michelle teamed up with "Saturday Night Live" comedian Jay Pharaoh and College Humor back in December last year to promote a rap video urging kids to go to college, reported TMZ.

The lyrics struck a chord with rapper Common, who is from the city's South Side.

When asked by if he'd seen the First Lady rapping, he laughed, "I really loved that, man. I love her. She said something about the South Side... It was good, man. You can tell she was passionate.

"I seen that with Jay Pharaoh, and she was good, man. She was good. She's the best. I was like, I wanna sample something what she said about coming from the South Side. She's good. I would rhyme with her on something because she's that dope."



Common, 43, who won an Oscar last year with John Legend for their song "Glory" from the movie "Selma", said he would be more than happy to work on music with the First Lady and her husband, President Barack Obama.

"For the President and the First Lady, I'd do anything. I'd do some music with them for sure," he said.
Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) board today gave nod to increase its authorised share capital to Rs 400 crore.

"The Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on January 25, 2016, has approved the increase in authorised share capital of CONCOR from existing Rs 200 crore (20 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each) to Rs 400 crore (40 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each)," the state-run company said in a BSE filing.

It said its Memorandum and Articles of Association would be amended accordingly.

"This would be subject to such government and other approvals as may be required," the company said.

Concor, a central government enterprise, commenced operations from November 1989 by taking over seven inland container depots (ICDs) from the Indian Railways in Delhi, Ludhiana, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Guntur and Anaparti.

Since then, Concor has developed a vast network of container terminals at prime locations all over the country.

At present, it has a total of 41 exim terminals (rail or Road-linked ICDs and port side container terminals (PSCTs), with another 13 in the pipeline.

Concor provides transport linkages between ports and the hinterland. Regular container trains are run to and from ports to Concor's terminals in the hinterland. Some of the terminals are also served by roads.

The shares of the company closed at Rs 1,212.85 on BSE, up 1.08 per cent from the previous close.
Angry over the move to clamp President's rule in party-ruled Arunachal Pradesh, Congress today approached President Pranab Mukherjee, the Supreme Court and sought to rally round non-BJP Chief Ministers, declaring an "all-out war" against the "trampling" of the Constitution by Modi government.

"The Constitution is being trampled upon. Just a day before the Republic day, the Union Cabinet is taking such a decision. We will fight an all-out war. We will fight in Parliament, in court and along with people. Will tell them how democracy is being endangered", Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters.

After meeting the President along with a party delegation, Azad contended that destabilizing the sensitive state bordering China was fraught with dangerous consequences for all non-BJP states which could be made unstable "through Governors".

Azad said that the party would seek to rally round all non-BJP parties on the issue in the coming budget session of Parliament noting that they had backed Congress when such attempts had been made in Arunachal Pradesh in the last session.

Party leader Kapil Sibal, a noted lawyer, said it was "shocking" that the Arunachal Governor had recommended President's rule in the state in spite of an assurance by his lawyer in the Supreme Court that "no precipitate action" would be taken.

"It is an act to mislead the apex court. We will seek justice", Sibal, a former Law Minister, said adding that a petition has already been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the government's recommendation to impose President's rule.

In a memorandum, the party told the President that "this is the first time since independence that such a recommendation has been made to impose President's rule in the midst of a court hearing.". It also enclosed a "summary of events" detailing the "disquieting events leading to the Governor's illegal actions".

Expressing confidence that he would do justice in the matter, the Congress leaders requested the President to reflect upon what is stated in the 'summary of events' and take that into account while dealing with the memorandum.

Besides Arunachal Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and PCC Chief Padi Richo, the memorandum is signed by Azad, Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, Mallikarun Kharge, Sibal and AICC General Secretary V Narainsamy.
The Congress party today moved the Supreme Court challenging Union Cabinet's recommendation for imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, which has been witnessing a political crisis.

"We have filed the petition before the apex court registry," Congress leader and senior advocate Vivek Tankha told PTI.

He said the petition has been filed by the state Congress Chief whip Bamang Felix and an urgent hearing has been sought.

"We are waiting to hear from the Deputy Registrar who will place the petition before the Chief Justice of India," another lawyer said.

In the petition, there has been a challenge to the report and the recommendation of the Union Cabinet for promulgation of President's Rule in the state.

Earlier in the day, the Congress party decided to urge



President Pranab Mukherjee to thwart any attempt to impose central rule in the state.

The filing of the fresh plea assumes significance as the five-judge bench is examining constitutional provisions on the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor, amid continuing month-long impasse over Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.

In an earlier plea filed by Nabam Rebia, who was allegedly removed from the post of Speaker by rebel Congress and BJP MLAs in an assembly session held at a community hall in Itanagar on December 16, has listed out legal questions, including the Governor's power to convene the assembly session without the aid and advice of the government for adjudication by the apex court.

It was also alleged that the Governor had advanced the assembly sitting from January 14 to December 16 without the aid and advice of the Chief Minister and his council of ministers.

Congress party, which has 47 MLAs seats in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The Governor then called assembly session on December 16 in which Deputy Speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of Speaker. This sitting was held in a community hall in Itanagar.

Various decisions of the Governor and the Deputy Speaker were challenged by Rebia in Gauhati High Court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance these decisions till February one.
Corporate houses sponsoring literary meets are often instrumental in connecting festival directors with renowned authors, says Malavika Banerjee, director, Kolkata Literary Meet (KALAM).

The six-day literary event, which was jointly organised by Tata Steel Limited and Game Plan from January 21 this year, hosted over 100 speakers including renowned authors like Ruskin Bond, Nayantara Sahgal, Amish Tripathi, Amartya Sen, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Javed Akhtar.

"Corporates are supportive of whatever we need. They are also generous with their contacts often helping literary meets in signing up renowned authors," Banerjee said.

The festival this year focused on the theme of "India" and thus featured discussions on the ongoing debate of "growing intolerance" in the country.

Tata Steel came on board as the title sponsors of the six-day-long event only last year before which it was being hosted by Gameplan alone for the past five years since the festival's inception in 2012.

Besides organising the literary meet here, the corporate groups also partnered to curate the 2-day-long Bhubaneswar Literary Meet which began on January 9.

Banerjee said that there was minimal interference and demands on part of the sponsors who themselves were literary enthusiasts.

"They are the most reliable and supportive. They are enthusiastic about literature and make no demands. There is no question of any interference whatsoever," she said.

According to Peeyush Gupta, Vice President, Tata Steel, the active corporate participation expands the scale of the event while boosting growth of art and culture.

"We give them support if needed. The scale of the literary meet increases as a result of our association," Gupta said.

However, he insisted that their role is limited to a macro-level and that they prefer to give the festival directors complete freedom to pick the theme and authors of their choice.

"We do not get into the specific choices as to who is invited and who isn't. Malavika Banerjee has complete freedom in inviting authors and choosing the themes," Gupta said.

KALAM comes to an end today.
Mocking BJP president Amit Shah's attack of Trinamool Congress over the chit fund scam today, CPI(M) called it a "stage managed" drama by both the parties.

"Amit Shah might attack TMC. But what about CBI investigaton into Saradha scam? CBI is going slow on Saradha scam just after our Chief Minister had rushed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year in order to save her party from CBI," CPI(M) Politburo member Mohammed Salim said.

"So what Amit Shah is saying is nothing but stage managed drama between both the parties to fool the people," he said.

CPI(M) and Congress leadership time and again have been attacking TMC and BJP over allegedly entering into a covert political alliance in lieu of CBI going slow on Saradha scam and TMC helping the BJP government in Rajya Sabha, where it is in minority.

After Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP president Amit Shah trained his gun at Mamata Banerjee government today saying that only chit fund industry is flourishing in West Bengal and it is turning into a safe haven for anti-national elements and fake currency racket under TMC rule.
Workers of Congress' youth wing here today protested the alleged suicide of the Dalit scholar in Hyderabad Central University demanding CBI inquiry and sought the dismissal of Union Minister Smriti Irani over the issue.

Led by state unit president of Youth Congress, Ankit Parihar, the workers took out a protest march but were stopped midway by police where they burnt the effigy of Irani, a party release said.

"Since Rohith Vemula was forced to commit suicide because of continued harassment at the hands of ABVP, the Centre and Irani did not want CBI inquiry into it," Parihar alleged.

The UP Youth Congress President said the party will continue its protest till the time all those responsible for Vemula's suicide are brought to book.
Protests escalated today at the Hyderabad Central University with several students from other universities and some social groups coming out in support of the agitating students over the alleged suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

The protesters coverged at the campus, responding to the 'Chalo HCU" call by the Joint Action Committee spearheading the stir.

"Students and others have come in from different parts of the country. There are more than a thousand gathered here. Situation is under control," HCU chief security officer TV Rao said.

Security was beefed up with a large number of police personnel being deployed around the campus as a precautionary measure.

Joint Commissioner of Police Cyberabad T V Shashidhar Reddy said, "We are verifying all those who are entering the HCU campus. There is no such restriction on the 'Chalo HCU' programme."



Earlier, some students and their supporters had complained that the police were not allowing them to enter the campus.

Their demands include outster of Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has proceeded on leave, and passing a "Rohith Act" to prevent suicide of ST, SC, BC and minority students in universities, the protesting students said.

The students and SC/ST faculty and officers forums had objected to the choice of Vipin Srivastava, the senior- most Professor, to perform the duties of the Vice Chancellor alleging that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student.

Meanwhile, B R Ambedkar's grand-son Prakash Ambedkar visited the campus and interacted with the students, whose agitation has received strong support from parties other than BJP and several top leaders including Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi were on the campus last week.

The students who gathered on the campus included those from Calicut University in Kerala, Pondicherry University, Osmania University and Maulana Azad National Urdu University.

As part of 'Chalo-HCU' programme, the agitating students marched from HCU shopping complex area, the hub of the protest, to the main gate and administrative building and back.

The indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch of seven students over suicide of Rohith continued in the HCU for the second day.

The hunger fast was also resumed on the campus yesterday



after the previous batch of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday after their health deteriorated.

A health check will be conducted on the fasting students today, Dr Ravindra Kumar, said a senior doctor at the health centre in the University.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital yesterday after she complained of chest pain, Kumar said, adding, she has been kept under observation in the ICU.

The university had on Sunday put a notice on its website saying the Vice Chancellor will be on leave and that Vipin Srivastava, the senior-most Professor, shall perform the duties of the Vice Chancellor. It did not mention the period of leave.

However, the SC/ST Faculty Forum and SC/ST Officers Forum expressed shock over the decision to appoint Srivastava as officiating VC and alleged that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student, Senthil, in 2008.
Protesters holding a march to express solidarity with Hyderabad University student Rohit Vemula were allegedly assaulted by RSS activists, leading to a clash at Dharavi here.

Following the incident yesterday, an FIR was registered against a dozen people for rioting, police said today.

The protest was held by many groups of Dharavi including the Nationalist Forum under the banner of 'Justice for Rohith Joint Action Committee Mumbai'.

According to protesters, RSS members allegedly attacked them with stones and sticks which left at least a dozen demonstrators injured.

However, BJP leader and local MLA Tamil Selvan alleged the students from Nationalist Forum stopped at RSS office and started making unpleasant remarks about the organisation and its leaders.

Enraged RSS volunteers asked them to leave, failing which both groups clashed, said Selvan.

"We received cross complaints from both the sides and have slapped relevant sections of rioting against the accused. One group of complainants has alleged that attackers belonged to RSS, which we are investigating," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Mahesh Patil.

Patil, however, did not reveal the identity of the alleged attackers and just said that police has registered a case.

The case was registered after protesters gathered outside the Dharavi police station last night demanding action against the culprits.

The injured are recuperating at a nearby hospital, said a police official.

When contacted, a senior associate of RSS said, "We are not aware about the incident. Let us get the details first."



The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), that supported the protesting students, too alleged that RSS members resorted to violence and thrashed some of the protestors including women and demanded that the accused be charged under the Act against atrocities on dalits.

If strong action was not taken, it would give miscreants a free reign to foment trouble in the city, AAP spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon said.
A multi-layer security blanket has been thrown around the national capital on Republic Day eve with anti-aircraft guns and LMGs positioned at vantage points in view of intelligence inputs that terror groups may target some important installations in the national capital.

Gunners have been given clear instructions to bring down any aerial object flying without permission. A 'NOTAM' (Notice to Airmen) has been declared from 10.35 AM to 12.15 PM during which no flights will land or take off at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Special arrangements have been made at the historic Rajpath where President Pranab Mukherjee, who is the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, will be witnessing nation's military might that will be on display.

French President Francois Hollande, who is the Chief Guest of this year's Republic Day, will be seated along with Mukherjee and host of VVIPs including Vice President Hamind Ansari and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a precautionary measure, LMGs have been positioned at 10 vantage points along the route which the parade will take. "Specially trained police personnel with light machine guns have been deployed at 10 strategic spots in New Delhi area," a senior police official said.

Besides the entire might of Delhi Police, personnel from paramilitary forces have also been pressed into security duty service.

Ahead of the Republic Day celebrations, central security agencies and NIA busted a module by arresting 14 members of a terror group which was taking diktats from banned terror group ISIS. The group had planned to carry out sensational strikes at important installations and its members had also visited the national capital, official sources said.

The senior official said that snipper had been put on 45 buildings overlooking Rajpath besides providing a similar cover along all the buildings along the parade route.

Meanwhile, the airspace will remain out of bounds for commercial flights arriving and departing out of the IGI airport here between 10.35 AM and 12.15 PM tomorrow. Around 60 arrivals and departures take place at the IGI airport during this period, for which the notice was issued by the Airports Authority of India.

As many as 1000 traffic officials have been issued revolvers so that they can deal with any untoward incident amid heavy security arrangements across the city involving around 25,000 police officials.

"We are coordinating with central security forces and adequate security arrangements have been made," Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi said.

(Reopens DEL 101)



Meanwhile, Delhi Police has set up a wireless integrated public address (WIPA) system to enhance security at crowded places and popular markets in the city.

"WIPA is a centralised public address system now installed at 31 crowded places and markets in Delhi, and also in 13 major metro stations.

"Through this system, announcements can be made centrally from the police control room to be heard at all the places simultaneously, or even selectively, with a provision to make announcements if the situation warrants," a senior Delhi Police official said.

The present WIPA network includes popular markets at Lajpat Nagar, INA Market, South Extension, Nehru Place and M-Block in Greater Kailash, metro stations like Mandi House, Inderlok, Welcome and Netaji Subhash Place, besides other crowded areas like Ajmeri Gate, Ballimaran, Red Fort, Azadpur, Bhogal, Seelampur market and Tilak Nagar.

The national capital is already on high alert ahead of the official celebrations here after inputs were received about the presence of key members of several terror groups in Delhi.

In an inter-state coordination meeting held earlier this month, Bassi had 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, said a senior police official.

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.
Aviation regulator DGCA is "examining" the report submitted by budget airline IndiGo on the offloading of 70 passengers in Hyderabad from its Raipur-bound flight allegedly for "unruly behavior" last week.

The incident, fourth such related to IndiGo in the last one month, triggered a controversy with the aggrieved passengers lodging a police complaint, prompting the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to seek a report from the Gurgaon-based carrier, sources said.

"IndiGo has sent a report (on the offloading incident). We need to examine all details," a top DGCA official told PTI here.

An IndiGo spokesperson, however, today said that the airline has submitted the report but it is purely on a "voluntary basis" and it wasn't sought by the DGCA.

At least 70 passengers were offloaded from a Raipur-bound Indigo flight at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad last Friday for alleged "unruly behaviour". Following this the fliers, which included some people suffering from diabetes and hypertension, lodged a complaint with the airport police alleging they were harassed by the airline staff.

"Indigo confirms offloading of 70 passengers (group booking) who were scheduled to fly on 6E-466 from Hyderabad to Raipur on January 22 on the grounds of unruly behaviour," the airline had claimed in a statement then.
Tamil-Hindi actor Dhansuh is all set to make his Hollywood debut with Uma Thurman starrer film "The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir."



Directed by Iranian-French director Marjane Satrapi, the film also stars Alexandra Daddario, "Captain Phillips," actor Barkhad Abdi and Laurent Lafitte, reported Variety.

"The Bandit Queen" star Seema Biswas is also part of the stellar cast of the movie, touted as Satrapi's most ambitious project till date.

With the project, the 32-year-old "Raanjhanaa" actor has joined the likes of Indian exports to Hollywood including Irrfan Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri, Anil Kapoor and Deepika Padukone.

His filmmaker wife Aishwaryaa has retweeted the many articles surfacing online that mention the actor's Hollywood debut.

The 46-year-old director made her English-language debut with "The Voices" starring Ryan Reynolds.

The comedy adventure movie is based on Romain Puertolas' bestselling debut novel "The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir Who Got Trapped In An Ikea Wardrobe."



The novel, which came out in 2014, has been translated into 35 languages. It tells the pilgrimage of a con man from India to an IKEA in Paris which turns into a philosophical odyssey.

The film follows a wild storyteller from New Delhi who falls in love with a woman when he reaches Parish, but accidentally gets deported along with a group of African refugees against his choice.
DMK today demanded a judicial probe by a sitting High Court Judge into the alleged suicide of three students of a private institution in Villupuram district.

Party President M Karunanidhi said there were attempts of 'cover-up' in the death of Saranya, Monisha and Priyanka who had allegedly committed suicide by jumping into a farm-well after tying themselves with dupatta on Saturday.

"However, their parents and others are denying this (suicide) and it is being said that the college was charging exorbitant fee amount and harassing the students," he said in a statement.

He said that a proper probe should be done to ascertain whether their death was caused by suicide or murder and that "even if it was suicide, the reason behind it should be clarified."



"The state government should hold a judicial probe by a sitting Judge of the High Court and reveal the facts to the world," he said while pointing out at such a demand being made by political parties and other organisations.

Their families should be adequately compensated by the college administration as well as the government, he said.

The death of the students of the private college at Chinna Salem had sent shock waves across the state.
Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee today urged French President Francois Hollande to lift the ban on wearing of turbans for Sikh children living in France and help give them the right to wear their religious symbol.

President of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) Manjit Singh GK today wrote a letter to the French President and handed it over to him through Ambassador of France in India.

In the letter, Singh said the turban is an inseparable part of a Sikh and without it he is incomplete. He said Sikhs are a progressive and peace-loving community and have contributed in a big way in the country where ever they live.

In another letter, the DSGMC chief has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for justice to 1984 genocide victims by setting up a supervising and monitoring committee over the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the Central government to investigate the anti-sikh riots cases.

He told Modi that 32 years after the genocide, Sikhs have not got justice and a SIT formed by Delhi government has no legal bearing so their hopes are on a SIT formed by Central government under Justice JP Mathur in 2015.

DSGMC president said the SIT formed by the Union government cannot justify its role unless its working in not supervised and asked to give report in time bound-manner so as to adopt a mechanism to monitor its working on day to day basis.

He suggested that since DSGMC is contesting the cases of genocide victims in different courts of law it should also made part of the monitoring committee, clarifying that for some political parties and leaders, 1984 genocide may be political issue and help them reach a political goal, but not for Shiromani Akali Dal which wants all those behind the genocide be sent to gallows.

Singh said the party would make all efforts socially and legally to overcome hurdles coming in the way of getting justice for the genocide victims.
East Delhi mayor Harshdeep Malhotra today sought to offer an olive branch to sanitation workers of the municipal corporation, who have threatened to go on a strike from January 27, saying efforts were being made to regularise payment of their salaries.

Sanitation workers of the three BJP-led civic bodies have decided to go on a strike citing alleged non-payment of salaries and arrears.

In an appeal to the employee unions to call off the strike, Malhotra claimed the salary of the sanitation staff for December month has been released.

However, sanitation workers leaders said that they were determined to go on a strike to seek for their demands which include regular salaries, payment of arrears, regularisation of contract-based employees, and unification of the three corporations.

"There are 64 wards in the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) and sanitation workers have not been paid for 1-3 months. The municipal officials release salaries in a few wards and claim that salaries of all the employees have been paid," claimed Sanjay Gehlot, president of Swatantra Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukt Morcha.

"We are ready for the strike and all the employees including sanitation workers, doctors, engineers, teachers, class III and IV employees of the three municipal corporations will participate in it," he said.

The workers have planned to strike work from January 27, on which they would stage a "massive" demonstration at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence and hand over a memorandum of their demands to him, he added.
Egypt today marked the 5th anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak amid tight security with police cracking down on demonstrators and arresting at least 30 Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Security forces were deployed on streets of Cairo including the iconic Tahrir Square - the focal point of the 18-day popular revolt -- to thwart potential protests against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government.

At least 30 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were arrested in Matareya district when they started a march near one of the mosques in the area, officials said.

The supporters were chanting slogans against police and army.

Police forces dispersed minor demonstrations and marches held by Brotherhood supporters in different parts of the country.

In Alexandria, police dispersed Brotherhood supporters, who marched and chanted against the police and army, demanding the release of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and other members of the banned group.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed and branded a terrorist organisation, yesterday said that it would stage an "unprecedented and unexpected" wave of protests to mark the anniversary.

The situation remained calm in the rest of country as many people stayed home after authorities warned that the January 25 anniversary may witness violent acts.

January 25 was declared "Revolution Day" a year after the revolt in 2012.

The uprising that overthrew Mubarak's 30-year-old regime is no longer celebrated after Sisi, then the army chief, overthrew Mubarak's successor Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 and launched a deadly crackdown on his supporters.

Since Sisi installed the new regime, authorities have banned all but police-approved rallies and overseen a crackdown that has left hundreds of Morsi supporters dead and imprisoned thousands.

Hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed in militant attacks since Morsi's ouster and security forces have so far been unable to suppress the insurgency.

Meanwhile, the capital also witnessed a gathering of pro-government people who celebrated the national Police Day which falls on the same day of the 2011 revolution.

The Government supporters handed flowers to police personnel stationed in the Tahrir Square for security.
EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini today called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated region where the Turkish army is waging a relentless campaign against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.

"We call for an immediate ceasefire in the southeast and strongly condemn all kinds of terrorism," Mogherini told a joint press conference with Turkish ministers in Ankara.

"We are ready to contribute with regards to the Kurdish peace process. We have an imminent interest on that because it can affect the security in the region, and in the broader sense, the EU," added European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.

After a more than two-year ceasefire, fighting resumed last summer between Turkish security forces and the PKK, dashing hopes of ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.

But Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir vowed no let-up in the campaign against the PKK, which has since staged a string of attacks against security forces.

"As a sovereign state, Turkey will continue its struggle against all terrorist organisations, including the PKK, which are threatening its national security," he said.

"In doing so, we try to protect the rights of our citizens."



Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks enforced curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians.

Prosecutors have launched a vast investigation into over 1,200 academics for engaging in "terrorist propaganda" by signing a petition urging Ankara to halt "its deliberate massacres" in the Kurdish-majority region.
European Union nations openly quarreled today over how best to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.

Despite choppy seas and wintry conditions, more than 2,000 people are arriving daily, according to EU figures. With the vast majority pouring into Europe through Greece after making risky boat journeys from nearby Turkey, Athens is under pressure to do more to guard the country's borders.

"Their state structure is just too weak to do it themselves apparently," Belgian Migration State Secretary Theo Francken said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU justice, interior and migration ministers.

Greek Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas conceded his country was struggling to cope with the flow, but shifted the blame to fellow EU member states for failing to provide enough manpower and boats to patrol Aegean Sea islands just a few kilometers (miles) from Turkey's coast and not honoring pledges to relocate migrants.

Mouzalas told reporters Athens wanted 1,800 officers from the EU border patrol force known as Frontex, but got only 800. Of the 28 coast guard ships requested by Greece, only six have arrived, he added.

Ministers arriving for the meeting at Amsterdam's Maritime Museum were met by protesters in two boats, one full of showroom dummies wearing red life vests similar to those worn by migrants crossing from Turkey and another with a large sign saying: "Leaders of Europe, it's not the polls you should worry about. It's the history books."



The meeting comes only days after European Council President Donald Tusk warned that Europe's passport-free travel area, known as Schengen, could break apart if the migrant strategy isn't sorted out within two months. "To maintain and ensure the free movement within the Schengen zone, it is obvious that we have to better manage our external borders," EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said.

"Everybody travels on," Francken told VRT network. "So, the Greeks now need to bear the consequences, and we will go for a kind of sanction mechanism and eventually a suspension, under which internal border controls remain possible for two years."



Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said that if Greece can't stem the flow, Europe may need to set up border controls somewhere else.

"It's clear that if we can't secure the European borders that means the Greek-Turkish border then the Schengen border will move to central Europe," she told reporters.

Mouzalas called the idea of sending Frontex officers to the Greek-Macedonia border to halt migrants there "illegal" and insisted more Frontex officers should be sent to his country.
Family planning has emerged as a "key" strategy to reduce maternal and child mortalities in India, Union Health Minister J P Nadda said even as he asserted that the government is now emphasising on promotion of spacing methods.

Noting that 45 per cent of maternal deaths in India occur in the age group 15 to 25 years, Nadda said the country is moving from "limiting to delaying and spacing" methods for wider health benefits.

"The country has undergone a paradigm shift and now family planning has emerged as a key strategy to reduce maternal and child mortalities and morbidities. There has been a key emphasis now on promotion and provision of spacing methods.

"Considering that 45 per cent of the country's maternal deaths occur in the age group 15 to 25 years where 47 per cent of the total fertility is also clustered, India is moving from limiting to delaying and spacing for wider health benefits," Nadda said.

The Union Health Minister said this while addressing 'India marches towards FP 2020: a meeting of the India Caucus' at the International Conference of Family Planning at Bali, Indonesia.

He said India has achieved more than 65 per cent reduction in maternal mortality from 1990 to 2011-13 against the global achievement of 47 per cent during the same period.

"Family planning is just the first step on a long journey towards growth, equality and development. It works not just because smaller families can be healthier and wealthier but because empowering women is the key to growing economies and healthy open societies," he said.

He observed that India has been "consistently" making efforts towards improving health and reducing fertility for sustainable development ever since the world's first national program was launched by the country in 1952.

The Minister said India formulated its National Population Policy in 2000 which lays emphasis on reducing the unmet needs for family planning, improvement of health care infrastructure and attaining population stabilisation by the year 2045.
A 40-year-old farmer got electrocuted when he came in contact with a high tension wire in Nagla Sewa village here, police said today.

The victim, Satyveer Singh, was electrocuted last evening when he was returning after working in a field, they said.

A group of people in the area protested alleging the incident occurred due to the negligence of electricity department as the wire was hanging low, police said.

On the basis of a complaint by victim's family members, an FIR was yesterday registered againstelectricity department for alleged carelessness, they added.
French President Francois Hollande today made common cause with India on the issue of fighting terrorism, underlining that the purpose of his visit was to "reinforce and strengthen" the cooperation between the two countries to tackle the menace.

Hollande, who is on a three-day visit to India, praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for playing an "important" role in Paris COP21 and said that the two countries are going to "follow up" on all decisions on the climate change front as well as areas of economic cooperation.

The French President, who will be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations here tomorrow, made the remarks at Rashtrapati Bhawan where he was accorded a ceremonial welcome in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee and Modi.

"There are all kinds of threats that are hovering around countries such as India and France and one of the main aims behind my visit is to reinforce and strengthen the cooperation against terrorism between our two countries," Hollande, who was flanked by Mukherjee, said.

"Once again it underlines our shared values that we aim to protect and also represent across the world. We are going to follow up on all the decisions that were taken at the COP21 as far as action against climate change is concerned but in addition to that we will be further strengthening our economic relations in all areas from agriculture to space.

"These are areas which are of interest and there is immense cooperation between our two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi played a very important role in the success of COP21," Hollande said.

The French President also paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi by placing a wreath at the memorial of the Father of the Nation at Rajghat this morning.

Later, responding to a query on ISIS, Hollande affirmed that France will not be "deterred" by any kind of threat of terrorism and that it will always protect the "values" for which it stands.

"France will not be deterred by any kind of threat of terrorism. We will take measures that are required to protect democracy and therefore the decision that was taken to extend the period of emergency in France so that we can take all necessary measures," he said.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Hollande and they discussed bilateral issues including nuclear and defence cooperation.

"Swaraj called on President Hollande. Discussions covered defence, nuclear cooperation, space, environment, climate change and cooperation in solar energy," official sources said.

Hollande had arrived in Chandigarh yesterday, where he attended a business meet and visited some landmarks.
Ford Motor Co. Is pulling out of Japan and Indonesia, saying that market conditions in each country have made it difficult to grow sales or make sustained profits.

"Japan is the most closed, developed auto economy in the world, with all imported brands accounting for less than 6% of Japan's annual new car market," spokesman Neal McCarthy wrote in an email message. The 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement in its current form will not improve Ford's ability to complete there, he said. Congress could vote on the pact this year.

Neither market is large for the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker. Last year Ford sold only 6,100 cars and trucks in Indonesia and only 5,000 in Japan, where it has accused the government of protecting domestic brands.

The company in an emailed statement said that the decision was communicated to employees and dealers today. Ford will exit the countries before the end of the year and plans to explain to customers its commitment to servicing cars, providing parts and making warranty repairs.

McCarthy said auto sales are expected to decline in Japan in the coming years. Analysts have said that's due to an aging population and declining interest in cars among younger people in urban areas.

In Indonesia, it was difficult for Ford to compete without local manufacturing and vehicles to sell in key market segments, McCarthy said. Ford has restructured its business there but still has less than 1 percent of the market with "no reasonable path to sustained profitability," he said.

When the trade agreement was being negotiated in 2013, Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of the Americas and a former head of its Asia-Pacific operations, said that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should be told to open the country's automobile market.

"We hope the US government will send a clear message that any future trade policy with Japan must ensure a level playing field and not come at the expense of American workers," Hinrichs said.
: The foundation stone for the proposed boat-berthing jetty at nearby Sultan Battery waslaid by Karnataka Fisheries Minister K Abhayachandra Jain at a function here.

The Rs five crore project would be undertaken by the Fisheries Department under NABARD Rural Infrastructure Development Fund.

The 100-metre long jetty would beconstructed along with a 300-meter concrete road to connectthe main road to the jetty.

Speaking after the function yesterday, Jain said work on the project would begin soon and another Rs five crore would be granted for the extension of the jetty.

The state government was also considering the proposal to grant diesel at a subsidised rate to around 100 boats in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, which was pending before the cabinet, he said.

Fishermen submitted a memorandum to the minister, seeking sanction of land for the construction of an ice plant, a petrol pump here and to take up dredging in the area order to make the movement of motor boats easier.

Oscar Fernandes MP and J R Lobo MLA were present at the function.
Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur will be developed as 'Smart Cities' with the help of France which today affirmed its commitment to India's ambitious plans for clean and sustainable development.

In this regard, French Development Agency has signed memoranda of understanding with the Union Territory of Chandigarh, Union Territory of Puducherry and the Maharashtra government (for Nagpur).

A Joint Statement issued here today after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande said "the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to cooperate towards clean and sustainable development and reaffirmed their valuable partnership in India's ambitious plans to develop Smart Cities.

In this spirit, the two leaders welcomed the three MoUs signed and the proposed collaboration between AFD (French Agency for Development) and the government of India for financing projects related to urban water and sanitation in Puducherry.

They also welcomed the partnerships between Engineering Projects India Limited (EPI) and nine French companies which will be able to contribute to major infrastructures projects in India, the Joint Statement said.

According to Smart City Mission, a mega scheme of the the Modi government, 100 cities across the country will be developed as Smart Cities.

Improved basic amenities, environment-friendly transportation system, e-governance are some of the essential features of the Smarty City to be developed by the states with central help.

While 20 cities will be selected this month, 40 each will be get the nod in the next two years.

The two leadrers also expressed satisfaction on the progress of a number of initiatives undertaken by Indian and French institutes to promote and preserve cultural heritage and enhance cultural cooperation between the two countries.
France will help modernise Ambala and Ludhiana railway stations and its top company Alstom will manufacture 800 electric locomotives of horse power double than the existing ones in India, involving foreign investment of Rs 1300 crore, according to agreements signed here today.

The two significant pacts, marking stepped up cooperation in the rail sector, were signed after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande.

Alstom and Indian Railways signed a 'shareholding agreement' for production of 800 electric locomotives at Madhepura in Bihar.

As per the agreement, the Madhepura factory will produce 800 electric locomotives with horse power of 12,000 each over a period of 11 years. The existing strength of electric locomotives is 6,000 horse power (HP).

The project would involve foreign investment of Rs 1300 crore, considered to be substantial in rail sector.

Alstom will be responsible for setting of the factory, manufacturing of the locomotives as well as maintenance.

Railways had decided in November to award the contract to Alstom for Madhepura electric locomotive project.

Production of locomotives with 12,000 horse power would be a quantum leap over the existing 6000 HP locomotives used for freight operations.

Under another agreement, France will extend its expertise to modernise Ambala and Ludhiana stations.

An expert team from France will come and study these two stations and accordingly a roadmap will be concretised based on its report, said a senior Railway Ministry official.
To give impetus to ambitious 'Beti Bachao-Beti Padhaao' programme, the Haryana government has decided that the most-educated girls in villages across the state will unfurl the national flag at school-level programmes to be held in their villages on the occasion of Republic Day tomorrow.

Apart from this, all girls in villages and wards who were born between January 22, 2015 and January 22, 2016, have been invited to attend Republic Day function under the 'Mera Pehla Gantantra Utsav' (My First Republic Day) programme, an Education Department spokesperson said today.

To add to it, the mothers of these infant girls would be allotted seats in the front row, he said.

Also, those girls who have secured top positions in Class 10th and 12th, graduation and post-graduation examination during the academic session 2014-15, besides other higher examinations, would be felicitated on the Republic Day.

Following the Republic Day function, a general body meeting would be organised in all schools and they would discuss various topics pertaining to provision of quality education, the spokesperson said.

Haryana is infamous for its skewed sex ratio.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on January 22 last year launched the 'Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao' programme, a nationwide scheme aimed to address the dipping child sex ratio and empower girl child in the country, from Panipat in Haryana.

The prime objective of this programme was to bring change in people mindset towards girl child on or after her birth.

Preventing determination of sex, female foeticide, ensuring safety of girls, their best possible care and providing quality education are integral part of this programme.

In Haryana, the programme is being implemented in 12 districts namely Mahendergarh, Jhajjar, Sonipat, Rewari, Ambala, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, Karnal, Yamunanagar, Kaithal, Bhiwani and Panipat which have the lower girl child sex ratio.
Signalling robust demand for the government bonds, an auction of debt securities today attracted bids of staggering Rs 7,093 crore from foreign investors, more than double than securities put on offer.

The auction, which was held on NSE's ebid-platform for allocation of Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) investment limits in government debt securities worth Rs 3,476 crore (USD 513 million), saw bids for Rs 7,093 crore (USD 1.05 billion), according to the bourse.

At the end of two-hour auction this evening, 31 bids were declared successful, as per the information available with National Stock Exchange (NSE).

The debt auction quota gives overseas investors the right to invest in bonds, up to the limit purchased.

A mock bidding session was conducted on Friday to check the system's performance.

Depository data showed that total investments, including limits acquired by foreign investors through the auction route, stood at Rs 1,31,924 crore till Friday, which was 97.43 per cent of the total permitted investment limit of Rs 1,35,400 crore in government debt securities.

Consequently, the exchange had decided to conduct an auction for the allocation of unutilised debt limits.

During earlier auctions, government bonds were subscribed multiple times, given the huge interest among foreign investors.

The limit for overseas investors in securities was hiked to Rs 1,29,900 crore from October 12 and it was further increased to Rs 1,35,400 crore from January 1, 2016.

Prior to October limit, they were allowed to invest up to Rs 1,24,432 crore in government debt securities through auction.
The government is exploring the possibility of bringing in different tribunals under administrative control of one ministry for better administration, a top official said today.

Law Secretary P K Malhotra said the government has constituted several appellate tribunals in many areas including indirect taxes, central administrative tribunal and debt recovery tribunal and "a time has come to review whether functions of these tribunals can be clubbed together and put under the administrative control of one ministry for better administration".

He was speaking at the platinum jubilee celebrations of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) here.

A constitution bench, the secretary said, had suggested the government to think about bringing tribunals under administrative control of the Ministry of Law and Justice.

He said that the "government is working in that direction (bringing tribunals under one ministry) and we are likely to come up with concrete proposals in this regard".

Last year, the Law Ministry had issued reminders to all central ministries and departments to give details of the number of tribunals working under them. It had also sought a response on how many of them can be merged to bring down their number.

From nearly 37 tribunals, Law Ministry plans to bring down the number to 15 as several are performing identical functions.

There are nearly 37 tribunals functioning in the country dealing with subjects such as income tax, electricity, consumer protection, company laws and railway accidents.

Malhotra also said that as much as Rs 3 lakh crore of revenue is locked up in tax tribunals and there is a need to streamline the procedure for speedy disposal of disputes "so that revenue is not blocked in litigation".

Further he said that although the tribunals were constituted to expedite adjudication, they started following the procedures of the courts, specially with regard to evidence, leading to delays in disposing the cases.

The Secretary said that the ITAT should introspect about the improvements required for quick disposal of pending cases.

Government on its part is making all efforts, including filling of vacancies and improving infrastructure for smooth working, he said, adding "if we have to achieve these objectives (high economic growth), our dispute settlement mechanism has to be simple, contract enforcement has to be much easier and procedural requirements has to be minimised".

Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Law and Justice D



V Sadananda Gowda said that in India the adjudication of administrative disputes has been commented by the judiciary through various cases placed before it over a period of time.

"While the matter seems to be put to rest with Supreme Court's 1997 famous decision in L Chandra Kumar's case, the debate has not ended yet and much remains to be debated in the context of working, independence and efficacy of the tribunals," he said.

There have been many success stories of the tribunals, yet there have been instances of "delays and favouritism" as well though the courts have consistently held that these bodies must maintain procedural safeguards while arriving at their decisions and observe principles of natural justice, Gowda added.

About the criticism of the tribunalisation of justice from some quarters, the minister said increasing tribunalisation has been criticised as an encroachment on the judiciary's independence and contrary to the constitutional scheme of the separation of powers between judiciary and executive.

"The other concern has been that though they were supposed to address the issue of delays and pendency in the existing judicial system, they seem to be bogged down with the same problems. Also, it is alleged that the tribunals lack independence and are no better than the administrative arm of the ministries," he said.

The minister said within the four walls of judicial review, the tribunals carry a great responsibility of not only resolving disputes but also exhibiting higher standards of performance as mostly the tribunals have been reviewing or overseeing appeals from the actions of the administration.

Gowda said: "We must recognise the intrinsic link between the simpler tax dispute resolution mechanism and the effect it has on overall economic growth of a country".

ITAT President Justice (Retd) Dev Darshan Sud said that the pendency of cases has come down to about 95,000 from earlier over one lakh.

He said that soon the ITAT would introduce e-filing and introduce an application which is dedicated to the tribunal.

ITAT has started e-court at Nagpur and successfully connected Ahmadabad and before the end of February, Jabalpur would be linked to Delhi and Guwahati with Kolkata, he added.

He also sought support of the Finance Minister in modernising the infrastructure of Delhi and Mumbai offices.
Greece lashed out today at what it called "lies" by its EU partners following calls for Athens to be suspended from the Schengen passport-free zone if it fails to staunch the flow of migrants into Europe.

At a tense meeting of European Union interior ministers in Amsterdam, Austria and Germany urged Athens to do more to deal with the continent's biggest crisis of its kind since World War II.

But Greece's interior minister for migration Yiannis Mouzalas insisted his country -- already buffeted by a debt crisis that almost drove it out of the euro last year -- was doing its best in difficult circumstances.

"We are tired to listen that we cannot secure our borders," Mouzalas told reporters in Amsterdam. "We are told that we don't want coastguards, it's a lie -- we want more coastguards."



The short sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands accounted for most of the one million migrants and refugees who arrived in Europe last year, but Mouzalas said it would be illegal to push back migrants from Greek waters.

"According to international law, to the law of the sea, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the European, to the Greek law, the only way to act on the sea border is to make rescue," he said.

The rest of the EU is however turning up the pressure on Athens, with growing frustration about its refusal to let EU border guards on its turf, which Greece views as a challenge to its sovereignty.

Last week Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner warned Athens could face "temporary exclusion" from Schengen, the 26-country zone of mainly EU countries that embodies the European dream of free movement.

Austria, Germany and several other Schengen member states have already reintroduced temporary checks at their internal borders, raising fears the passport-free system could collapse.

"Greece has to reinforce its (border) resources and accept help," Mikl-Leitner told reporters in Amsterdam today, adding that it was a "myth" that the Turkish sea border could not be secured.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere -- whose country's decision last year to open its doors to one million asylum seekers sparked anger in transit countries -- urged Greece to "do its duty."



"We want to save Schengen, we want common European solutions, but the clock is ticking," said de Maiziere, adding that the key to solving the crisis was a deal with Turkey to staunch the flow of migrants.
Gunmen suspected to be ethnic Fulani herders have killed a policeman and 19 civilians in attacks on four farming communities in Nigeria's northeastern Adamawa state, the police said today.

"We lost a DPO (Divisional Police Officer) and 19 civilians in his area of jurisdiction when they came under attack by Fulani herdsmen in Girei district," police spokesman Othman Abubakar told AFP.

The senior police officer with his team were "responding to a distress call from the communities under attack to restore calm following an invasion by the armed herdsmen", he said.

Local media reports gave a much higher death toll of 30 including the police officer following the raids yesterday morning.

The herders raided Demsare, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo farming villages in reprisals following an earlier feud between some herders and farmers over destruction of farm crops, Abubakar said.

The villages are in Girei municipality, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from state capital Yola.
: Puthiya Tamizhakam today demanded that the case relating to suicides of three girl students in a private Siddha College in Kallakurichi in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu be handed over to the CBI.

Only a CBI probe would reveal whether the girls had committed suicide, if it was murder or they were forced to take the extreme step, PT president and MLA, K Krishnasamy told reporters here.

Stating that lack of basic amenities in the college was said to be reason for the suicides, he said it was pity that even not a single student had graduate from the college.

Krishnasamy also demanded that Government set up a inquiry panel headed by a sitting judge of Madras High Court to examine infrastructural facilties in all nursing colleges, Agricultural Colleges sanctioned by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here.

TNAU has given nod to start five agricultural colleges in the state and an inquiry would reveal alleged irregularities for sanctioning them, he said.
The Kerala High Court on Monday declined a plea by the state authorities seeking a stay on a Vigilance Court order directing registration of an FIR against former minister K Babu in the bar bribery case.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice A M Shaffique, however, allowed the state government to challenge the lower court order before an appropriate court.

Declining the plea, the bench said that the Vigilance Court should have waited for its order in the case.

The bench gave its order on an application seeking a stay of the Thrissur Vigilance Court verdict filed by Director of the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, N Shankar Reddy and other officials, on behalf of the state.

"Having regard to the factual situation, we do not think that we should entertain the application as it is always open to challenge the order in appropriate proceedings.

"It might be true that the Vigilance Court should have waited for order to be passed by this court. But having regard to the fact that order has been passed, it has to be challenged in accordance with law," the court said.

Moving the stay application while the HC was considering a plea seeking a CBI probe in the case, Advocate General K P Dandapani contended that the Vigilance Court order was illegal and its observations unwarranted.

Meanwhile, Babu, who resigned from the state Cabinet last week following the Vigilance Court order against him, also moved the high court challenging the Vigilance Court order.

Last week, the Vigilance Court in Thrissur has ordered the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to register a case against then Excise Minister Babu over corruption charges against him in the bar bribery scam.

The Vigilance Court has also ordered that the first report in the case should be filed by February 22.

Babu resigned as minister, hours after the court ordered lodging of an FIR against him in the scam.
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court today exempted writer-activist Arundhati Roy from personal appearance in the contempt of court proceedings against her.

Roy was present in the court today. The judges adjourned the hearing for four weeks as the matter is also before the Supreme Court.

The bench of Justices Bhushan Gavai and P N Deshmukh said prima facie it did not agree with the contention of her lawyer that it was improper for the court to take suo moto (on its own) notice of the contempt case over an article penned by her.

Senior lawyer K H Deshpande, Roy's lawyer, said a single judge cannot initiate contempt proceedings and it should have been referred to the bench headed by the Chief Justice.

He also said that opinion of the Advocate General was not sought, as is the procedure while initiating contempt proceedings.

But as the court was not inclined to agree, Deshpande stated that the apex court was also seized of the matter and the hearing may be adjourned.

The court granted Roy exemption from personal appearance following her undertaking that she will appear when required.

The Supreme Court had last week refused to stay the contempt notice issued by Justice Arun Chaudhari of the High Court for "scurrilous attack and nasty language used against the judiciary" in Roy's article questioning the arrest of alleged Naxal supporter G N Saibaba.

Earlier this morning, the bench of Justices Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Vinay Deshpande of the High Court recused itself, so the case was assigned to another bench.

On December 23 last year, Justice Chaudhari had rejected



the bail application of G N Saibaba, who is wheel-chair bound, and directed him to surrender before the police following his stay in the hospital.

The judge took exception to an article written by Roy, saying that "prima facie, it was (written) with a malafide motive to interfere in the administration of justice."



Advocate Kishor Lambat and six others, through their lawyer Shreerang Bhandarkar, have also moved the HC seeking action against Roy over her statements.

They have also cited media reports of a press meet organised by the 'Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G N Saibaba' and remarks of various speakers at the meet, including senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan, criticising the court's refusal of bail.
The Madras High Court today ordered police protection for executing the National Highway four-lane project between Thanjavur and Nagapattinam, inaugurated by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari some time ago.

The Rs.578.93-crore project was being implemented by the Concessionaries Madhucon company.

According to Project Manager B.Nagarajan, they had to complete the project in 30 months as per agreement entered into on April 8, 2015. Otherwise, the company would have to pay fine.

He alleged that eight persons were claiming that they had right over two pieces of land at Manikamangalam and Aravathur villages and giving all sorts of "unnecessary" trouble to the company.

NHAI had handed over the lands to the company which was building administrative office and creating heavy machinery parking slot in the lands. Though the IG of Police and Thanjavur SP had ordered action against the culprits, local police were not taking action, he alleged.

He sought police protection for undertaking the work, following which Justice S.Vaidhyanathan of the Court's Madurai Bench ordered the protection for undertaking the work in Manikkamangalam and Arvathur villages.
The Madras High Court as an interim measure today directed Tamil Nadu government to exempt tenth standard students having mother tongue other than Tamil from writing Part I Tamil language exam.

"We have no option but for the time being to exempt all the candidates who had sought exemption from taking the Tamil examination," the First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan before which several petitions filed by various educational Institutions came up again, said.

The matter relates to making it compulsory for Xth standard students to write Tamil examination in March 2016.

The First bench had earlier directed students and their parents to approach the authorities concerned by way of letters seeking exemption from writing Part-I exams in Tamil.

About 8000 applications were made to authorities to allow them to write the Part I exam in their mother tongue, which were all rejected by the authorities.

Hence, the petitioners approached the court by way of miscellaneous petitions seeking an interim injunction restraining the government from making it compulsory till a decision was arrived at on the writ petitions.

As the annual examinations are scheduled to be conducted in March and considering the paucity of time, the bench as an interim measure directed the government to exempt the students from writing the Part-I Tamil language exam.
Delhi High Court today sought the RBI's response on a PIL alleging that as per one of its circulars, retail trading in any form through e-commerce would not be permissible for companies which receive foreign direct investment (FDI).

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath issued notice to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and asked it to verify whether any such master circular, as claimed in the petition, exists and if yes, to place it before the court by the next date of hearing on February 24.

The PIL has contended that as per the July 1, 2015 master circular of RBI, while FDI is allowed in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, companies that get FDI cannot undertake single and multi-brand retail trading through e-commerce.

It has sought an inquiry into the affairs and transactions of all FDI recipient companies and to stop operations of those found to be directly or indirectly carrying out e-commerce in retail sector.

The petitioners, Dinesh Kothari and Amulya Nidhi, have said that "100 per cent FDI is permissible through automatic route for buying and selling by a company through the e- commerce platform but this is subject to the condition that such companies would engage only in B2B e-commerce as against business to consumer (B2C) pattern and not in retail trading".

They have alleged that "in order to mislead and confuse the competent authorities, the said e-commerce companies are creating a conundrum of group websites/companies amongst the closely held/managed sister companies/business concerns and thereby causing tremendous loss to the government exchequer.."



The petition has further claimed that "to circumvent the law, these entities have created a web of connected entities" which carry out different functions, like logistics, handling payments, providing software and technology support and so on.

The petition has said "one of the structures being



commonly used by these companies is marketplace model. Under this model, the entity which operates the e-platform receives FDI in its capacity as a technology or logistics company or in any permissible sector, but not as a trading entity".

"While in another entity (owned by the same foreign parent), FDI is received in its capacity as a B2B wholesale cash and carry business. B2B entity in turn sells products to B2C company (non-FDI recipient). The B2C entity (front company - mostly indirectly funded by other FDI recipient company) - ultimately sells on e-platform," the petitioners have alleged.

They have also contended that "FDI recipient e-commerce websites and other such FDI recipient business entities have been violating the provisions of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and the rules, bye-laws and guidelines framed there under which relate to the FDI policy of the government".

The petitioners have sought that "required legal action be initiated" against the companies or e-commerce sites or entities who have violated provisions of FEMA and the rules framed there under.
A heavy security has been thrown across Jammu region, including the MAM stadium, here ahead of the Republic Day celebrations tomorrow.

A multi-tier security bandobust has been put in place in and around the main venue Maulana Azad Memorial stadium, where Governor N N Vohra is scheduled to hoist the national flag and take salute.

"Several known troublemakers, suspect people have been taken into preventive custody," Senior Superintendent of Police, Jammu, Uttam Chand said.

"Elaborate security arrangements have been made for smooth conduct of the Republic Day celebrations in Jammu. The main venue of the celebration has been sealed with the deployment of additional men of police and paramilitary forces," he said.

"Nothing is being left to chance. All vehicles coming to Jammu are being checked. Additional check posts have also been set up on the Jammu-Pathankot and Jammu-Srinagar highway and additional deployment has been made at all the border points," Chand said.

The police was also verifying the antecedents of the outsiders living in Jammu, the SSP said.

In the wake of the Pathankot terror attack, the Border Security Force (BSF) has beefed up its security apparatus along the International Border (IB) in Jammu region.

"Full arrangements have been made all along the border to foil any nefarious designs. Though we never let our vigil along the IB down, special arrangements are always put in place on important occasions," a BSF official said.

J-K Police has also sought cooperation of the people attending the Republic Day function in Jammu to avoid any inconvenience.

In a statement issued here today, SSP, Security Jammu, has urged the people not to carry items including cameras, arms, ammunitions, sharp-edged weapons, hand bags and polythene bags, ladies purse, lunch boxes, stop watches, pens, any inflammable material, cigarettes, match boxes, and other such objectionable items to the venue.

People have been asked to immediately inform the police on duty in case any suspect item is noticed.
French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today took an "eco friendly" metro ride to Gurgaon to inaugurate the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

The two leaders boarded the metro shortly after 3 PM. Indian officials and the French delegation, including the country's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, were seen accompanying them.

Official twitter handles, @Elysee and @PMOIndia, posted pictures of the journey. In one of the pictures, Modi and Hollande are seen standing at the platform of the Race Course station.

"An eco friendly ride! PM @narendramodi and Prez @fhollande travel on Delhi metro on way to Gurgaon," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

Hollande, who arrived in India yesterday, will also lay the foundation stone of the headquarters of ISA, which is aimed at increasing utilisation and promotion of solar energy in solar-rich nations.

The event will be held at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon.

(Reopens DEL42)



There was some disruption on Line 2, also known as Yellow Line, that stretches from Samaypur Badli to Gurgaon's Huda City Centre, owing to the high profile ride that lasted around 30 minutes.

"Due to security considerations and a directive from Delhi Police, services had to be regulated for a brief period," a helpline staff of DMRC said.

DMRC chief Mangu Singh accompanied the dignitaries and was seen briefing Hollande and Modi during the journey.
Police say gunmen have fatally shot Honduras' former youth minister Marco Julio Trochez. A communique from Honduras' police department says the attackers escaped.

The statement said that Trochez was shot by three gunmen yesterday as he drove up to his apartment building in La Ceiba about 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Tegucigalpa on the Atlantic coast. He was hit by at least seven bullets.

A friend who was struck by four bullets was hospitalised in satisfactory condition.

Trochez was government youth minister under President Porfirio Lobo Sosa's administration from 2010-2014. He has numerous businesses in his hometown of La Ceiba.

The government says that at least 14 people are killed daily in Honduras. The homicide rate last year was 57 for every 100,000 people.
A day after his appointment, the Hyderabad Central University's interim Vice-Chancellor today faced calls to step down from students and a section of faculty over his alleged involvement in a 2008 suicide amid raging protests over the death of Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula.

The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice, spearheading the agitation over the alleged suicide of Rohit, and the SC/ST Faculty Forum rejected the appointment of Vipin Srivastava as in-charge Vice-Chancellor of the university.

"It is to bring to your notice again that in 2008, Vipin Srivastava was the main accused in yet another institutional murder of Senthil Kumar, a Dalit research scholar in the Department of Physics," the JAC said.

Alleging that Srivastava was implicated in the alleged suicide of a Dalit student in 2008 and also related to Rohit's death, the Forum said his functioning as in-charge VC is "legally untenable" and demanded that he step down.

"In the light of your such moral, ethical and legal involvement, we demand that you step down from the Vice- Chancellor's office immediately in the larger interest of University of Hyderabad (also called Hyderabad Central University)," the Forum said.

Soon after his appointment, Srivastava had said the matter related to the 2008 suicide case "has been sorted out".

Facing students' protest over Rohit's suicide last week, Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile yesterday proceeded on leave for an indefinite period, saying he was "advised to be little away from campus" to break the current "impasse".

In the absence of Podile, Srivastava, the senior most Professor, shall perform the duties of the Vice-Chancellor with effect from January 24, the HCU has said.

The JAC also claimed that faculty members are resigning from three administrative functions in protest.

The JAC demanded that Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani be sacked from her post and a "Rohit Act" be enacted to give legislative protection for students belonging to marginalised community in higher education institutions.

The JAC warned it will call for a bandh in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh if the demands are not met.

Meanwhile, protests escalated today at the varsity with several students from other universities and some social groups coming out in support of HCU students agitating over the death of Rohit.
Further strengthening their cooperation in the field of space technology, India and France today signed two pacts that will "significantly" enable them in monitoring environment, weather and water resources.

Implementing arrangements were signed between the space agencies of the two countries for cooperation in a future joint Thermal Infrared Earth Observation mission and hosting of the French instrument for data collection on India's Oceasnsat-3 satellite.

The agreements were among the 14 pacts signed between the two countries after extensive talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande which focused on ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

Modi and Hollande hailed the signing of two implementing arrangements between their space agencies while recalling the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Indo-French space cooperation in 2015.

"The Leaders expressed confidence that these missions would contribute significantly to the monitoring of the environment, weather, water resources and coastal zones and further strengthen the partnership between the two countries," a joint statement said.

They also welcomed the announcement of collaboration through the participation of the Centre National d'etudes spatiales (CNES) in future space and planetary exploration missions of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

India and France have had long-lasting cooperation in the field of space. While India has used French facilities at the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana for launch of its satellites, the European nation's light satellites were launched by it. France has appreciated India's capabilities of sending light satellites into the orbit. It is also one of the few countries, which has a Space Counsellor in Bangalore, where the headquaters of ISRO is located.
India and France, having suffered repeated terror strikes, today decided to step up their anti- terror cooperation including intelligence sharing and called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of Pathankot to justice.

During their extensive talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, the two sides resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counterterrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalization, a joint statement said.

It further said that India and France will cooperate to disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists,



"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts," it said.

They aslo stressed that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed.

"Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future," the statement said.

The two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistan's borders pose a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan.

In this regard, they emphasized the need to address this challenge by dismantling terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens and disrupting all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals.

Recognising the urgent need to disrupt terrorist networks



and their financing channels, eliminate terrorist safe havens, training infrastructure and cross-border movement of terrorists, Modi and Hollande urged all countries to effectively deal with terrorism emanating from their territory or territories under their control.

"They called for actions to be taken, consistent with international law, against all entities, including States, that sponsor, provide support, active or passive, to terrorist groups or harbour them," a separate joint statement on counter terrorism said.

The two sides emphasized that durable peace and political reconciliation in Afghanistan require maintaining continued international support to the efforts led and owned by Government of Afghanistan.

President Hollande commended India for its stabilizing role in South Asia, in particular in Afghanistan, and its recent initiative to launch a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan.

They reaffirmed their commitment to the key principles of a peaceful inter-Afghan dialogue: acceptance of the Afghan Constitution, renunciation of violence and severing links with terrorism.

Reaffirming that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group, the two sides agreed to coordinate efforts to better understand radicalization processes, and counter the misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred, perpetrating and justifying terrorism or pursuing political aims.

They agreed to facilitate regular exchanges of civil society to promote the values of peace, tolerance, inclusiveness and welfare.

They reaffirmed their shared conviction and confidence that the values of humanism will prevail in countering the malicious propaganda of hatred and intolerance espoused by the divisive forces of extremism and terrorism.

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In addition to the existing counter-terrorism exercises by French and Indian Armies, including Exercise Shakti, held at the beginning of the year in Bikaner, Modi and Hollande decided to hold further operational exercises between French GIGN and Indian National Security Guard, the statement said.

Strongly condemning the heinous terrorist attacks that have struck many parts of the world recently, the two leaders expressed anguish and outrage at the loss of innocent lives in Paris, Bamako, Beirut, Tunis, San Bernardino, N'Djamena and the Lake Chad Basin Region, Kabul, Gurdaspur, Istanbul, Pathankot, Jalalabad, Jakarta, Ouagadougou and Charsadda, the statement said.

Noting that such terror attacks were an attack on the whole of humanity and foundational human values, they reiterated their unequivocal condemnation of terrorism and reaffirmed their determination to jointly combat this scourge and called for greater unity, stronger international partnership and concerted action by the international community.

Considering the urgent need to establish a comprehensive international legal framework to address the growing global menace of terrorism, they called for early conclusion of negotiations and adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the UN.

When adopted, the Convention would constitute an ideal platform for a global alliance of nations against terrorism.

Both leaders urged the international community to make concerted efforts to strictly comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions 1267, 1988, 1989, 2253 and other relevant resolutions designating terrorists and terrorist groups or condemning terrorist acts.

They resolved to deepen cooperation on UN terrorist designations and work towards increasing the effectiveness of the UNSCR 2253 sanctions regime.

They also resolved to work together to drive forward international efforts in forums like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF).

Deeply concerned about the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, they urged all countries to fully abide by UNSCR 1540 as well as IAEA requirements, and ratify various relevant conventions on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) especially in the lead up to the Nuclear Security Summit of April 1, 2016.

Both leaders welcomed the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of resolution 2249 that calls upon Member States to take all necessary measures against the unprecedented threat posed by Daesh/ISIS.
In a significant boost to their civil nuclear cooperation, India and France today encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of the year for the construction of six, instead of two, nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur.

During the talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Francois Hollande reassured reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants while acknowledging India's need for the same.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017," a joint statement after the talks between the two leaders said.

They also favoured conclusion of techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur while giving due consideration to its cost and transfer of technology, besides cost-effective localisation of manufacturing key components in India.

France also reaffirmed its strong support for India's candidacy to international export control regimes and in particular to the NSG.

France was the first country with which India established a strategic partnership in 1998 after New Delhi had conducted nuclear tests. France is also the first country with which India entered into a civil nuclear energy cooperation in 2008 after obtaining the NSG waiver.

"France is among those few first countries with which India has signed agreements in the field of civil nuclear cooperation," Modi said at a joint press event.

"In pursuance of the 2008 Agreement on the Development of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between India and France, the two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur.

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The joint statement also emphasised on cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accordance with Modi government's "Make-in-India" initiative.

During talks, Modi and Hollande expressed satisfaction over ongoing time-bound implementation of cooperation between AREVA of France and L&T of India under the MoU signed in April 2015 for localisation of components for nuclear power project at Jaitapur as well as the progress in pre-engineering studies for the project being carried out by AREVA in collaboration with NPCIL.

They also welcomed initiating of revised MoU between EDF and NPCIL for the construction of six EPR units at Jaitapur.

The developments also assume significance as the nuclear cooperation deal between India and France was signed in 2008 but the 9,900 MW Jaitapur project - one of the biggest nuclear parks to come up in the country - but was stuck.

Apart from facing a stiff local resistance, the project was stuck as both the parties could not reach negotiations on the cost factor.

Both the countries also reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection.

The two countries underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France also greeted the decision by the government of India to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage.

The two leaders appreciated the regular engagement between their atomic energy organisations and their growing collaboration in mutually beneficial scientific and R&D sectors related to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

They also appreciated the long-standing relations between their nuclear regulatory authorities - India's AERB and France's ASN - which has facilitated sharing of valuable experiences, best practices and developments related to nuclear safety and regulatory issues.
India and France today pledged to explore new avenues for cooperation to strengthen exchange of information to prevent off-shore tax evasion.

"Recognising the shared commitment of India and France to cooperate in preventing off-shore tax evasion and the steps taken by both countries to strengthen exchange of information in recent years, the two leaders agreed to explore further avenues for joint co-operation, especially in capacity building and sharing of best practices, in line with G20 commitments," said the joint statement.

India-France joint statement was issued on the occasion of the state visit of French President Francois Hollande here.

India has been spearheading the campaign at international fora for automatic exchange of information with a view to check tax evasion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hollande expressed their commitment to carry forward the dialogue on the EU-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA).

Recently, the chief negotiators of India and EU took stock of the outstanding issues, including duty cut on automobiles and movement of professionals, that have held up talks on the proposed pact.

"France and India are committed to bring about a resumption of the negotiations as soon as possible," it said.

The statement also underlined the need for increasing bilateral economic engagement.

The two leaders welcomed the conclusion of a MoU on cooperation in urban development between Telangana and the Bordeaux Metropole.

The two leaders emphasised that more such initiatives should be taken to enhance the economic ties.

Recalling the commitments made in the Indo-French Joint Statement issued in April 2015 for closer economic engagement, the leaders noted with satisfaction, the involvement of French companies in several new and ongoing projects in India in keeping with the 'Make in India' initiative.

They highlighted the attractiveness of France for Indian investors, especially in terms of leveraging French technological expertise and competencies.

Reaffirming their commitment to facilitating a conducive environment for enhancing bilateral trade and investment, the two countries appreciated the convening of a dialogue on economic and financial issues at a higher level on cooperation in economy and finance.

"This framework will be the forum to discuss, on an annual basis, global and financial governance issues as well as bilateral economic and financial matters, to promote exchanges and cross investments between our two countries and address any hurdles between French and Indian businesses and industries," it said.

Further, both the sides called for increasing investments in preventive healthcare, research and exchange of technical knowledge in the field of food safety.
After successful conclusion of the Paris climate change summit, India and France today agreed to work towards the realization of the agreement's goals and carry out its implementation by collaborating in the field of sustainable development and energy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated French President Francois Hollande for his "sustained" diplomatic efforts that paved way for adoption of the Paris agreement which was based on the principle of "climate justice" and fostering climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development.

"The visit to India is the first foreign visit by President Hollande since the conclusion of COP21. Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated President Francois Hollande for France's valuable leadership and sustained diplomatic efforts that paved the way for the successful conclusion of COP21 in Paris in December 2015...

"...And adoption of the Paris agreement, based on the principles of climate justice, and fostering climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development," a joint statement by the two countries said.

The universal agreements, which were reached at Conference of Parties (CoP21), aims to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius this century and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

President Hollande also thanked India and Modi for playing an "important and proactive" role in the negotiations.

"India and France agreed to continue to work with each other and with the global community towards the realization of the goals of the Paris Agreement," the statement said.

In the wake of the Paris Agreement adopted at the end of the COP-21, the bilateral cooperation between France and India is today "more than ever" committed to meet the climate challenge, it said.

The two countries wish to carry out the implementation Paris agreement goals by promoting collaboration in sustainable development and energy between governments, regions, cities and also companies, the statement said.

India had hailed as "historic" the adoption of a legally-binding pact in Paris but said the deal could have been more ambitious had developed nations shouldered more historical responsibilities.
India has about 85 crore registered voters, with 1.8 crore new electors added to the electoral rolls in the recent past, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi today said.

"I am very happy to inform the gathering that 1.8 crore or 18 million new voters have been registered in our electoral rolls as on January 1 and ahead of the National Voters' Day (NVD). With this addition, the total number of voters in the country has touched about 85 crore or 850 million mark which is equal to population of some continents on stand alone basis or in combination," the CEC said at an event to mark the 6th NVD here.

President Pranab Mukherjee was present at the function as chief guest.

Zaidi said the poll body has made good progress in adding new voters, in the age group of 18-19 years.

In India, a citizen can vote after attaining the age of 18 years.

"Enrollment of 18-19 year age group has always been a matter of concern. Commission is pleased to inform that 50 per cent of total voters of this age group have now been enrolled which is a remarkable progress compared with earlier 10 to 15 per cent a few years ago," he said.

The NVD is celebrated every year to mark the foundation of the election watchdog on January 25, 1950 and is observed with much fanfare by the EC and its associate agencies across the country with an aim to increase voter participation.

"It (NVD) is an unparalleled operation of its own kind anywhere in the world and we are very proud of it," Zaidi said.

To mark the event this time, the President handed over new Electoral Voter Identity Cards (EPICs) to six chosen youngsters who will be voting for the first time after they attained the age of 18 recently.
Expressing concern over the quality of skilled training programmes in India, a Singaporean diplomat today said the country must impart technical and professional job-oriented training to millions of its youth to ensure that their energy is channelised constructively.

Addressing the inaugural conference of "Doing Business In India", Singapore's special envoy to Andhra Pradesh, Ambassador Gopinath Pillai said: "I find not enough is being done to impart skill to the young people (in the country), these young people are hardworking and they do well while working in the Middle East".

Indian institutes of training need to manage their programmes more effectively, the Indian-origin diplomat said.

"Indians should not only focus on the quantity of the institutions that are being set up in the country but also give immense stress on the quality of training its massive pool of youths," said Pillai, who is also Singapore's Ambassador at large and chairman of think tank, the Institute of South Asian Studies".

He also expressed concern about the opposition-led politicians blocking parliamentary proceedings which impact passage of the bills important to businesses.

Pillai also applauded the creativity in India, especially in the cultural, art, and literary spheres.

"India takes the lead in the world of art, music, films, culture, literature," which makes India vibrant," he said.

Some 450 business leaders from Singapore, South Korea and Japan joined more than 100 heads of Indian small and medium enterprises at the inaugural conference, being held from January 25-27.

"We have chosen Singapore as a gateway to South East Asia and the rest of Asia," said HP Singh, chairman and founder of the Delhi-based non-profit Global Social (India) Foundation, a brainchild behind "Tomorrow's India".

"Despite its rich and deep cultural heritage and history, India, today is a young nation where the average age of the population is around 29-year old who are searching for means to expand their horizons beyond India," said Singh, who is the founder of Satin Creditcare Network Ltd.

Elaborating on Singapore as a choice for inaugural event, Indian companies can tap into the city state's diverse capital markets and cutting-edge financial services from more than 500 local and foreign financial institutions as well as 6,000 multi-nationals.

The conference will be held every six months in developed markets, showcasing the latest entrepreneurial trends in India and as a platform for collaborations between India and other countries.
Three-day meeting of 27th Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC) started in Goa today.

The meeting is being held under the chairmanship of L V Strugov, First Vice President, United Shipbuilding Corporation and Vice Admiral G S Pabby, Controller of Warship Production and Acquisition, said a press release issued by the Ministry of Defence.

IRIGC is a platform to discuss various technical, commercial and administrative issues related to Russian equipment orders for various warships being constructed in Indian shipyards, the release adds.

The officials from Russia and India including Rear Admiral R K Shrawat, Chairman and Managing Director, Mazagao Dock Shipbuilders Limited (Mumbai) and Rear Admiral A K Saxena, Director General, Naval Design are participating in the meeting.
Indonesian extremist groups received international financing from Australia and Syria, the country's security minister said today, adding to fears that jihadists are targeting the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Luhut Panjaitan was speaking at a defence forum in Singapore less than two weeks after coordinated gun and bomb attacks in Jakarta left four civilians dead.

He said about USD 800,000 were found last week to have been sent to Indonesian extremist groups.

The Islamic State group (IS) has claimed responsibility for the January 14 attacks, spurring concerns it is getting a foothold in southeast Asia.

"We are tracing right now... How do they (Indonesian extremist groups) get finance," Panjaitan said.

He said about USD 100,000 came from the Syrian city of Raqa, the capital of IS's self-styled caliphate, to support extremist activities in Indonesia, and about $700,000 came from Australia.

He said it was not known where the money had come from in Australia.

"Right now our agencies are working very hard, trying to monitor this financing support, because without financing I don't think they can move more aggressively," Panjaitan said.

He did not give other details about the funds.

Panjaitan stressed the need for greater international cooperation, saying no country could fight the threat alone.

He cited information shared by Australia with Indonesia on the flow of funds, in addition to a communication hotline with Singapore as examples of "good cooperation" between countries.

Panjaitan also said the weapons used in the Jakarta attacks were smuggled from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao to the Indonesian town of Poso.

Panjaitan and Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said financing and logistics support from overseas were evidence that terror groups in the region were improving their coordination.

"There is an international financing network which you must try to strangle and choke to cut off the flow of funds," Ng told reporters at a joint conference with Panjaitan.

"The more we cooperate the stronger we become. This is a fight that may last many decades, we need many partners in this," Ng said.

Singapore last week disclosed it had arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers last year for supporting "the armed jihad ideology" of militant groups like IS and deported 26 of them.

Officials said that while the workers were being being groomed to carry out attacks in their home country and elsewhere, they could have easily turned against Singapore.
Taking a lesson from the recent ink attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi Police today did not allow fountain pens at a Republic Day event here as a preventive measure.

A young woman had on January 17 thrown ink on Kejriwal at a public function due to which court had also rapped the Delhi Police, saying the incident was a "clear-cut case of security lapse" and the force did not behave responsibly in protecting him.

A Republic Day celebration was organised at Chhatrasal Stadium in North Delhi here where the Delhi CM was a chief guest.

"We are not allowing any fountain pens inside. If anybody is found to be carrying one during frisking he or she will be asked to leave it outside," a security personnel said.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party had launched a scathing attack against the Delhi Police accusing it of security lapses over the ink attack on the Chief Minister.

Later, Police Commissioner B S Bassi had rubbished the AAP's 'security lapse' allegations.
France wants to build the Post-Paris Agreement world with India, French President Francois Hollande today said as he called the International Solar Alliance as "India's gift" to the world in combating climate change.

Hollande also pledged 300 million Euros to develop solar energy in next five years.

He said while France has signed an agreement for participating in the creation of 100 Smart Cities programme, it will also link the initiative with the Solar Alliance by helping to increase public lighting and supplying solar electricity to these cities.

He said France will also mobilise its companies, its research and technological institutions and diplomatic network to help achieve the objective of International Solar Alliance and work with India on the vital issue of cost of financing.

"I would like to announce here that the French Development Agency will allocate 300 million euros to developing solar energy over the next five years in order to finance the initial projects.

"Our role now is to implement the agreement, to launch projects without waiting for its entry into force in 2020. The Solar Alliance is meeting this objective. It is India's gift to the world for combating climate change. France is proud to lead it with you. France wants to build the Post-Paris Agreement world with India. The ISA paves the way for this," Hollande said.

He was speaking after laying the foundation stone of Solar Alliance's Secretariat.

Yesterday, three MoUs were signed under the 'Smart city' theme for city-specific urban development between French Development Agency (AFD) with the state governments for the cities of Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry.

"France will take part in the '100 Smart Cities' Programme launched by the Indian government. We can link this initiative to the Solar Alliance projects by helping to increase public lighting and on a broader level, supplying solar electricity to these cities.

"We can also work on rural electrification, decentralised management of energy access and energy efficiency," Hollande said.
The Islamic State (IS) terror group is planning 'Mumbai-style' attacks in Europe after the Paris massacre last November, a report by the Europol police force has warned.

Rob Wainwright, chief of the European Union (EU)police agency, told a press conference that "the so-called Islamic State had developed a new combat style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage - with a particular focus in Europe".

He was unveiling the findings of a new Europol report on changes in how the terrorist group operates, coinciding with the launch of the agency's new counter-terrorismsummit at The Hague on the Netherlands.

The unit will seek to improve information exchange and identify the links between terrorism and other areas of crime.

The Europolreport said: "IS is preparing more terrorist attacks, including more 'Mumbai-style' attacks, to be executed in member states of the EU, and in France in particular".

"The attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets, because of the impact it generates. Both the November Paris attacks and the October 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner suggest a shift in IS strategy towards going global," it said.

IS had claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks on November 13 which killed 130 people.

The new report has concluded that the group has training camps in the EU and the Balkans, as well as in Syria.

It, however, said there was no "concrete evidence" that terrorists were using the influx of refugees into Europe in order to sneak themselves in and carry out attacks though it warned refugees might be "vulnerable to radicalisation".

The new counter-terrorism centre's priority would be to improve information exchange between EU members and will also focus on links to other criminal sectors.

Europol has about 800 staff at its headquarters in The Hague. They work with law enforcement agencies in the 28 member states and in other non-EU partner nations to combat serious crime.
The Islamic State terror group has threatened Malaysia and Indonesia with more attacks over the arrests of its militants in these multi-ethnic but Muslim-majority countries, days after the Indonesian capital was hit by bombings that killed eight people.

In a strongly defiant video posted in Malay language, the Malaysian-Indonesian unit of ISIS, known as the Katibah Nusantara, warned that its numbers would only increase with the arrests of its members.

"If you catch us, we will only increase in number but if you let us be, we will be closer to our goal of bringing back the rule of the Khalifah (caliph).

"We will never bow down to the democratic system of governance as we will only follow Allah's rules," The Star newspaper reported, quoting the video.

The video was reportedly posted on an ISIS website, signifying Katibah's increasing recognition within the group.

Malaysia Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division head Ayob Khan said the threat and direct challenge to the government reflected Katibah's brazen stance.

He identified the two militants shown in the video as Abdul Halid from Kedah and Mohd Nizam Arifin.

"This is the first time that a threat video was made in Malay language showing the IS logo," he said.

"It further proves that IS, especially the Katibah group, views our country as secular, and as such makes the Government and the people as its targets. This is no doubt in retaliation against our security forces' actions against them," he said.

He said the counter terrorism division would be more vigilant as attacks could occur at anytime.

"Prior to this, we only saw videos posted on Facebook or other social media sites but this particular video is a clear indication that Katibah is among the major foreign factions in IS," said Khan.

Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar confirmed that the two militants are Malaysians.

"We know the two of them and that they went to Syria in the middle of last year," he said.

He said Malaysian police is examining the video.

"We are used to receiving fear-mongering messages, so do not try to threaten us," he said referring to the video.

Katibah first came under the radar of intelligence agencies two years ago when it was called Majmu'ah al Arkhabiliy.

The warning comes just days after Indonesian capital Jakarta was hit by bombings and gunfights, claimed by IS, that killed eight people and injured dozens other on January 14.

Both Malaysia and Indonesia are Muslim-majority countries, with diverse populations of ethnic Malay, Indians, and Chinese.
The East Godavari District Joint Action Commity (JAC) of Teachers and Workers today staged a dharna in front of the Collectrate protesting the alleged unruly behaviour of VHP and BJP activists yesterday.

VHP and BJP activists allegedly created a ruckus while Kakinada revenue divisional officer (RDO) and sub-divisional executive magistrate was conducting an official enquiry in a case related to dispute over a religious place in Kondayyapalem yesterday.

Local Dalit organisations also staged a protest over yesterday's incident as the RDO is a Dalit.
Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff says he is keen to make a documentary film in future as they have the power to show reality.

Shroff said he was currently toying with a few ideas that include one on the extinction of some species of bees and butterflies in India, to make a film.

"Documentary is reality. It shows the truth. We used to watch a lot of documentaries, something we used to look forward to...I want to make a documentary too. I'll make it 100 per cent. Currently, I have a few subjects in my head," the actor told reporters.

He was speaking at the press conference of upcoming the 14th Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) for Documentary, Short and Animation Films.

When asked about various themes on his mind, Shroff, the brand ambassador of the festival this year, said, "Cross pollination, bees, butterflies... They are diminishing. I have heard, 50-70 per cent of our original indigenous species have been extinct. I am thinking to make (documentary) on how to conserve that," he said.

The seven-day festival will take off from January 28. While Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis will be the chief guest at the opening ceremony, Governor Vidyasagar Rao will be the chief guest at the closing function.

The event is being organised by the Films Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in collaboration with the state government.

Mukesh Sharma, director of MIFF and Director General, Films Division, said the festival will honour a veteran personality from the Indian documentary fraternity with the esteemed V Shanataram Lifetime Achievement Award that carries a cash component of Rs 5 lakh, a trophy and a citation.

The total cash prize is Rs 60 lakh, out of which Rs 55 lakh is for winners of competition categories.

Out of 825 entries, the jury has selected 110 for competition in four sections, namely international, national, new media and animation.

Shroff said he wanted stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar to come forward and be the face of the festival next year onwards.

While national jury has members like Mike Pandey, who specialises in movies about wildlife, Biju Dhanapalan, and Jane Yu from Taiwan, the international jury comprises filmmakers Don Askarian (Germany), Siddharth Kak and Jesper Anderson, (Denmark).
Bollywood actor and Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan will inaugurate the eighth Bengaluru International Film Festival here on January 28.

The inaugural will be held in front of Vidhana Soudha (state secretariat) and Mysore Palace will play host to the closing ceremony on February 5.

"Jaya Bachchan will inaugurate the eighth BIFFES on January 28 which will culminate on February 5," Karnataka Information Minister Roshan Baig told reporters here.

The fest will begin with the screening of award winning Kannada movie 'Thithi' directed by Raam Reddy, he said.

Reddy is the grandson of the first CM, K C Reddy.

Baig said the event would be more inclusive this time with greater participation from the Kannada and other Indian film industries.

The chief guests would be Oscar-winning lyricist Gulzar, Hollywood and Bengali filmmakers Ashok Amritraj and Aparna Sen and they will also interact with the audience.

Other guests to grace the occasion would be "Bajirao Mastani" director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Telugu film star D Venkatesh and filmmaker Maniratnam.

Cultural events will include dance recitals by actress Shobana and Nirupama Rajendra.

Marathi stage artiste and Bollywood star Nana Patekar may attend the event, S V Rajendra Singh Babu, who heads the 14-member committee, said.

"We have also invited Nana Patekar. The actor told us he would attend the event if gets time off from his shooting schedule," he added.

The film fest will feature theme section, special theme section, academic activities and exhibitions among other related sections.

Films of world renowned filmmakers like Istvan Szabo from Hungary, Jafer Panahi (Iran), Jia Zhang Ke (China), Hou Hsiao- Hsien (Japan), Emin Alper (Turkey), Jacques Audiard (France), Christian Petzold (Germany), Nanni Moretti (Italy) and others will be screened in the event.

A total of 172 films from 50 countries will be shown during the festival.

In the competition section, Asian, Indian and Kannada films will be screened.

There would also be an additional International Jury for Kannada Cinema which, culminating in a special NETPAC award.

Oscar winning Sound Designer Resul Pookutty will conduct a workshop on Sound Design.

The closing ceremony and award distribution will be held on February 4 at Mysore.
Janata Dal (U) today condemned the Union Cabinet's decision to recommend President's Rule in Congress-ruled Arunachap Pradesh calling it the "first Constitutional sin" of the BJP-led goverment at Centre and demanded immediate removal of Governor J P Rajkhowa.

The party also requested President Pranab Mukherjee not to give his consent to the Governor's rule in the state.

"JD(U) strongly condemns the first constitutional sin by the BJP-led central government in the form of its decision to impose President's rule in the border state of Arunachal Pradesh.

"This decision of the NDA-led central government is nothing but an attempt to sabotage the Constitutional mandate, which is not justified in a democracy. This act also shows the BJP's mindset towards co-operative federalism," party general secretary K C Tyagi said in a statement.

He wondered that when the entire matter is being heard by a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court of India, how can the central government take the action without waiting for its decision.

"In December last year, the Arunachal Governor, without consulting the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers, had issued an order to advance the sixth session of the state Assembly to December, 2015 while the session was to commence from January 14 of the New year.

"For this, he was in controversy for a long time. This act of the Arunachal Governor is also of destabilizing nature and not good for the federal structure of the state," he said.

Holding that it seems to be a "conspiracy" of the central government to "destabilize" an elected government, Tyagi demanded that the Governor should be removed from his position.

"The party also requests the President of India not give his consent to the Governor's rule in the state," Tyagi said.

The Union Cabinet had yesterday recommended imposition of President's Rule in the state rocked by political turmoil.
A day after life-threatening monster snowstorm almost paralysed the entire US East Coast, the iconic John F Kennedy airport here partially resumed its services with Air India's plane being the first one to land at the airport.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said John F Kennedy had its first arrival at 7:10 a.m yesterday as Air India flight landed on the tarmac.

The first departing flight left shortly after 10 a.m. The three airports in and around the city -- LaGuardia, Newwark Liberty and John F Kennedy -- however had very limited resumption of service.

Hundreds of flights were still cancelled, with LaGuardia accounting for more than 700 cancellations yesterday.

In Washington DC, all flights remained cancelled over the weekend.

In a statement, Reagan Airport said it expects at least one runway to open for flight operations today.

Same was the case with the Dulles International Airport.

"We expect airlines to operate limited flight schedules at both airports throughout the day on Monday. Passengers should check with their airlines for information about their specific flights," a media statement said.

Called 'Snowzilla', the blizzard propelled by tropical- storm-force winds brought much of US Northeast to a standstill and left as much as three feet of snow, prompting at least 10 States to declare a state of emergency.
A day after life-threatening monster snowstorm almost paralysed the entire US East Coast, the iconic John F Kennedy International airport here partially resumed its services with an Air India flight being the first one to land.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said John F Kennedy International had its first arrival at 7:10 am yesterday as Air India Flight 101 from New Delhi landed.

The first departing flight left shortly after 10 am. The three airports in and around the city -- LaGuardia, Newwark Liberty and John F Kennedy -- however had very limited resumption of service.

Hundreds of flights were still cancelled, with LaGuardia accounting for more than 700 cancellations yesterday.

In Washington DC, all flights remained cancelled over the weekend.

In a statement, Reagan International Airport said it expects at least one runway to open for flight operations today.

Same was the case with the Dulles International Airport.

"We expect airlines to operate limited flight schedules at both airports throughout the day on Monday. Passengers should check with their airlines for information about their specific flights," a media statement said.

Called 'Snowzilla', the blizzard propelled by tropical- storm-force winds brought much of US Northeast to a standstill and left as much as three feet of snow, prompting at least 10 States to declare a state of emergency.
Karnataka Cabinet today gave its approval to conduct global investors meet here next month with a budgetary outlay of Rs 40 crore, official sources said.

'Invest Karnataka 2016', a three-day event, will begin here on February 3 where Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony.

Among industry leaders who have confirmed attendance at the meet are Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani, Anand Mahindra, Sajjan Jindal, Narayana Murthy, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Devi Prasad Shetty, Kris Gopalkrishnan, Gautam Adani and Kumar Mangalam Birla.

Invest Karnataka website lists out Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Venkaiah Naidu, Suresh Prabhu and also Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi among the dignitaries attending the investors meet.

Organisers had earlier said that partner countries that have confirmed their participation in the summit include France, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, the UK, Italy and Germany.

Karnataka will be showcasing 145 projects to investors during the event.

The government has also approved Rs 110 crore to provide underground drainage system in 110 villages that come under the limits of city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), officials said.

The Cabinet also agreed to release 120 life convicts who have completed 14 years of imprisonment without remission and 255 convicts who have completed 14 years imprisonment with remission on account of Republic Day for their good conduct, officials said.

These convicts are lodged at jails in seven different districts of the state, out of whom 13 are women, they said.

The Sankalp Summit also tackled many tough issues like



ventures for the disabled, investing in women businesses and the impact of social risk on businesses. The other tracks at the Summit clustered around championing innovations in financing, disruptive SME financing innovations, technology-led financial inclusion models, scaling sector-led innovative business models, finding the next unicorn in education, accelerating impact and investments in innovative sanitation business models, scaling of healthcare innovations, creating a supportive policy framework and building and regional innovation and knowledge corridor, engaging with innovators and experts from across South Asia, Southeast Asia, EU and Africa to cross-pollinating replicable and scalable ideas across regions.

With over 30 interactive sessions, the Summit discussed case studies, spoke on scenarios and breakthrough innovations in last mile delivery for corporates and financial institutions. In the words of Sankalp Forum, Director, Aparajita Agrawal, "The Summit helped us drive the conversations on - collaborations forward - what will it take to scale innovations and enterprises that can solve some of the tough challenges for the next 3 billion of the world's low-income population - with support from corporates, policymakers, funders and entrepreneurs. The fact that we had partners asking us to take Sankalp Forum to Europe, America, Vietnam and Sri Lanka is a testament to the fact that we are building a powerful engine for creating impact in key markets."



The fireside chat between Kiran Karnik, KRS Jamwal and Amitabh Shrivastava shed light on how better policies coupled with planned intent can help cross the last mile to deliver impact in a relevant manner. New initiatives launched at the Summit included; corporate collaboration for impact facility with USAID, Innovation Labs, Start up Wave for virtual incubation and TRIBE-Online transaction platform from the Intellecap and Aavishkaar group. The Summit also launched insightful reports like the Rockefeller and Institute for Transformative Technologies (ITT) effort called Achieving Universal Electrification in India were released to the audience with a perspective on how to use the power of advanced technology to address the world's most pressing problem.

The summit also celebrated impact innovators and provided



a platform to the 16 shortlisted high potential enterprises who work in the low-income markets. The 4 winners for the Sankalp Awards were handpicked by a jury of eminent business and impact leaders. Another awards category was, The Sankalp Global Innovation Challenge, to recognise global innovations with a focus on technology and development and 10 shortlisted innovators were given a platform to showcase their ideas.

Swasti Agro and Bio Products whose innovative program BioAvert helps in prevention of a variety of crop diseases thereby ensuring food security were selected by USAID to participate at the prestigious GES Summit being led by President Obama in the Silicon Valley in June 2016. About Intellecap:



Intellecap is a pioneer in providing innovative business solutions that help build and scale profitable and sustainable enterprises dedicated to social and environmental change. Founded in 2002, the Aavishkaar and Intellecap Group have directed US $ 600 million of capital to entrepreneurs working on such challenging problems sustainably through equity funds, venture debt vehicle, microfinance lending or investment banking intermediation. Intellecap provides a broad range of consulting, research and investment banking services, to multilateral agencies, development finance institutions, social enterprises, corporations, investors, policy makers and donors. Select clients include the Rockefeller Foundation, Gates Foundation, GIZ, DFID, Hindustan Unilever, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.

For more details please visit, http://www.Intellecap.Com About Sankalp Forum: Sankalp Forum, an Intellecap Initiative, aims to influence the global inclusive development discourse through its work with entrepreneurs, impact investors and inclusive businesses in developing markets. Keeping entrepreneurs and the social impact that they create at its core, Sankalp engages governments, corporations, influential platforms like the G8 and G20, media and civil society to drive a paradigm shift in inclusive development approaches. Sankalp's Global Summit, held in India annually, brings together over a 1000 of these engaged stakeholders from around the world to discuss, debate and create a roadmap for development. The Forum expanded to Africa in 2013, and to Southeast Asia in 2015. Since its inception in 2009, it has connected over 400 enterprises to investors and funders, and built an engaged community of over 25,000 worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.Sankalpforum.Com



Media Contact:



Disha Sanghavi



Disha@the-practice.
US Secretary of State John Kerry today dismissed Syrian government claims and opposition complaints as posturing ahead of UN-led peace talks that are supposed to begin this week.

Kerry, in Laos after discussing the negotiations with officials in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia last week, said he expected there would be clarity soon about when the talks would start.

Today's scheduled start in Geneva has been pushed back due to disagreements over which groups can represent the opposition.

Kerry said that during his short stay in Laos, he had spoken to the UN special envoy for Syria and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey.

The goal is to reach a consensus on how the talks will be run and a planned cease-fire would proceed.

"We're going to have the meeting and (the talks) are going to start," Kerry told reporters. "But what we are trying to do is to make absolutely certain that when they start everyone is clear about roles and what's happening so you don't go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure. You don't want to start Day One by not being able to make progress."



He said his conversations with colleagues were mainly about how the cease-fire and confidence-building measures, such as opening up areas for humanitarian access, would work.

Kerry declined to elaborate, but said any disagreements arising in the Geneva talks would be addressed by another meeting of the 20-odd member International Syria Support Group that is tentatively scheduled for February 11.

Syrian officials have said they will make no concessions at the negotiating table. Opposition figures have complained that they are being forced into the talks.

Kerry said those recent statements reflect only "tensions" and "rumors." He dismissed suggestions of disunity among countries that back the opposition and said US support for foes of Syrian President Bashar Assad remains solid.

"I think these are just tensions. These are things you hear as people are worried," he said.

Over the weekend, a senior official in Assad's ruling Baath party said the government would not make any new concessions in the peace talks at a time when the Syrian army with the help of Russia is making progress in different parts of the country.

"We are not going to give today what we did not give over the past five years," Hilal al-Hilal said late Saturday, during a visit to troops in areas they recently captured from insurgents outside the capital, Damascus.
A magnitude-7.1 earthquake has knocked items off shelves and walls in Alaska, jolting the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. But there were no reports of injuries.

Alaska's state seismologist, Michael West, called it the strongest earthquake in the state's south-central region in decades.

Alaska often has larger or more powerful earthquakes, such as a 7.9 last year in the remote Aleutian Islands.

"However, last night's earthquake is significant because it was close enough to Alaska's population centers," West said, adding that aftershocks could continue for weeks.

The earthquake was widely felt by Anchorage residents. But the Anchorage and Valdez police departments said they hadn't received any reports of injuries or significant damage.

The earthquake struck at about 1:30 a.m Alaska time and was centered 53 miles (85 kilometers) west of Anchor Point in the Kenai Peninsula, which is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, according to the US Geological Survey. Vincent Nusunginya, 34, of Kenai said he was at his girlfriend's house when the quake hit.

It started out as a shaking and it seemed very much like a normal earthquake. But then it started to feel like a normal swaying, like a very smooth side-to-side swaying," said Nusunginya, director of audience at the Peninsula Clarion newspaper. "It was unsettling. Some things got knocked over, but there was no damage."



Four single family homes in Kenai were lost to explosions or fire in the wake of the earthquake.

Two of the homes were destroyed in explosions and the other two were fully engulfed before firefighters determined it was safe enough from gas for them to enter the homes, Kenai battalion chief Tony Prior said.

"No injuries. Thank God," he said. "The second one was a major explosion. We're fortunate that no one was hurt."



About 30 homes were evacuated, and some people took shelter at the Kenai National Guard Armory.

Workers with the gas utility were examining the remaining homes yesterday afternoon with the goal of getting displaced residents back in their homes later in the day.

The USGS initially reported the quake as a magnitude-7.1, but downgraded shortly afterward to magnitude-6.8 before raising it back to 7.1.

The biggest aftershock yesterday was magnitude-4.7, and West said a magnitude-5 or magnitude-6 aftershock is possible.

There were reports of scattered power outages from the Matanuska Electric Association and Chugach Electric in the Anchorage area.

The Homer Electric Association reported on its website that about 4,800 customers were without power early yesterday in the Kenai Peninsula.
Malpe beach in Udupi district, one of the main tourist attractions in southern Karnataka, has become the first beach in India to have wi-fi connectivity.

The facility will be available to tourists free of cost for 30 minutes at any time of the day during their visit, an official release said.

Udupi MLA Pramod Madhwaraj launched the 24x7 facility at a function at the beach yesterday.

He said theduration of free wi-fi access would be extended later.

Theservice is being provided by BSNL, supported by the Centre's Digital Drive Initiative.

Madhwaraj said the Malpe beach committee had spent Rs80 lakh for beach development works last year. Work on road development had also been taken up at a cost of Rs five croreover the years, he said.
A 28-year-old man, working at a Chinese food stall at Dombivali in the district, has been arrested for allegedly murdering his sister-in-law to death, police said today.

The accused was identified as Vikas Gupta, worked at the eatery along with his elder brother, police inspector of Manpada police station G S Randive said.

"Vikas had some argument with his sister-in-law Neelam (wife of his elder brother) yesterday afternoon. He felt that she did not serve food to him properly," he said.

"After the quarrel, he allegedly strangulated her, stabbed her with a sharp weapon and hit her with a chapati rolling pin," Randive said.

The victim was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors declared her brought dead.

According to police, the accused went to the police station himself and informed them about the incident.

Police have sent the body for post-mortem and the accused has been booked for murder.

Further investigation is on.
A 38-year-old man from a village in Sahapur taluka here has been arrested for allegedly strangulating his wife to death, police said today.

Dashrath Nameda was arrested last night in connection with the murder on January 23, according to API, N B Gaikwad of Sahapur police station.

The victim Dashita (32) was found hanging in her house following which police had registered a case of accidental death. However, her postmortem reports from the government hospital in the taluka revealed that she was strangulated, police said.

Based on the autopsy report, police initiated a probe and found that the murder resulted from frequent quarrels between the couple over Nameda wanting to keep a widow in his house along with his wife Dashita.

On Saturday, the accused killed his wife and projected it as a suicide.

Nameda has been booked under section 498A and 302 of the IPC, police said.
A Chinese man arrested in Hong Kong in connection with the slayings of his teenage nephews in California has told a court he won't fight extradition to the United States.

Deyun Shi told a magistrate on Monday that he wanted to consent "as soon as possible" to extradition.

Acting on a request from U.S. Officials, Hong Kong police arrested Shi after he arrived in the semiautonomous Chinese city by plane.

US investigators believe Shi killed the teens before fleeing because he was upset his wife wanted a divorce. He declined the services of a duty lawyer and planned to represent himself.

Shi applied for bail, but it was refused and he was remanded into custody.

The case was adjourned until Feb. 11.
Through posters, pamphlets and banners, Maoists in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region have opposed tomorrow's Republic Day celebrations and the visit of French President Francois Hollande.

Police have beefed up the security in the insurgency-affected areas of the state, inspector general of police (state intelligence wing) Deepanshu Kabra told PTI.

"This time we are extra cautious as Naxals, through posters and banners put up in Kondagaon district of Bastar region, have appealed for boycott of President Hollande's visit and the Republic Day celebrations," he said.

The Naxals have also given a call for 'anti-resettlement week' till January 26 to protest development projects and resultant displacement in Bastar division, Rajnandgaon district and Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, he said.

Armed guards have been deployed at all the important government establishments.

Additionalsecurity has been provided at the headquarters of each of the district in Bastar division (Sukma, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kondagaon, Kanker and Bastar).

Patrolling has been intensified in the interior forest pockets and along the inter-state borders.

Governor Balramji Das Tandon will hoist the national flag at the Police Parade ground in Raipur tomorrow morning and will receive guard of honour, an official statement here said.

Chief Minister Raman Singh will unfurl the tricolour at Jagdalpur, Bastar district's headquarters, and the Assembly Speaker Gawrishankar Agrawal at Ambikapur, Sarguja district's headquarters.
Claiming no dues are pending for clearance at the AAP government's end, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said that mayors of all three BJP-led municipal corporations should "keep their houses in order."



"Mayors are political animals they will say anything. When the municipal commissioners are saying that nothing is due, the mayors should keep their houses in order.

"Why are they coming to us and saying that the salaries are pending?," Kejriwal said in response to a question about the mayors' allegations that the AAP government is not releasing funds to the civic bodies.

"We have given all the funds. We are not left with anything and the data is also in public domain. I had called a meeting of three municipal commissioners a few days back and I asked them what is pending for clearance at our end. They gave us in writing that nothing is left to be given from the government's side," he added.

The Chief Minister had a meeting with all the three municipal commissioners of Delhi on January 15 where the financial condition of the civic bodies was reviewed.

As per the minutes of the meeting, all corporations except the South Delhi Municipal Corporation are in deficit, and are not prima facie eligible to get the Municipal Reform Fund (MRF).

Government gives MRF as an incentive to civic bodies due to improvement in their financial position. In the meeting, Kejriwal was informed by the commissioners that they have not received any funds under the MRF head for the last two years.

Government had clarified that 100 per cent of funds have been released to both North Corporation (NDMC) and East Corporation (EDMC) while 80 per cent of funds has been released to SDMC and the remaining amount will be given to it by January 18.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will today open the exhibition "The Art of the Holocaust", featuring works created by concentration camp prisoners, as the German leader pledged to combat the threat of rising anti-Semitism.

The show brings together 100 works on loan from Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial by 50 Jewish artists created in secret between 1939 and 1945 while they were confined to the camps or ghettos.

Twenty-four of the artists did not survive the Nazi period, even as their works endured.

The drawings and paintings on display at Berlin's German Historical Museum depict the suffering, drudgery and terror endured by the detainees.

But about a third of the collection shows artists' attempts to escape their plight with their imaginations, putting to paper treasured memories and dreams of freedom beyond the barbed wire.

Merkel, looking ahead to the opening and Wednesday's commemorations of the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in her weekly video podcast, said such exhibitions served as a crucial tool for educating younger generations.

She cited in particular the fears of German Jewish leaders that the need to impart the lessons of the Holocaust had grown more urgent with the influx of a record 1.1 million asylum seekers to Germany last year.

"We must focus our efforts particularly among young people from countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread," she said.

The head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, called the works on loan irreplaceable "treasures", many of which were hidden by their creators and only discovered after the war.

They are "the expression of human beings under these unique circumstances to try and prevail... Above the atrocities and deaths," he told reporters at a press preview of the exhibition.

"After thinking and rethinking, we thought it might be the right time, the right place, to bring this collection to Germany."



The only surviving artist, Nelly Toll, travelled to Berlin from the United States to take part in the opening, saying she was "very, very excited" to meet Merkel.

Her two pencil-and-watercolour works were created when she was six years old and in hiding with her mother in a small room in the home of a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
A Japanese rocket maker said today that a large piece of metal that washed up on a beach in Thailand is likely part of a rocket launched by Japan, not a missing Malaysian plane.

The discovery of the metal sparked speculation that it might be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared almost two years ago.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said the metal piece is "highly likely" to be part of a Japanese H-IIA or H-IIB rocket that was launched from southern Japan, based on an initial examination of photos and videos of the object.

Company spokeswoman Sayo Suwashita said officials are trying to determine which rocket and its launch date. Rocket debris falls into the ocean after every launch, and most is collected but sometimes pieces can be found some distance from the launch site, including in foreign waters, she said.

Thai air force and civil aviation authorities said Monday they were unaware of the statement from Japan, while the agency within the Transport Ministry that investigates aviation accidents was unavailable for comment.

Japan has launched H-IIA and H-IIB rockets since the 2000s. The most recent H-IIA launch was in November 2015.

Flight 370 took off from Malaysia in March 2014. It lost communications and made a sharp turn away from its Beijing destination before disappearing. It is presumed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, far away from Thailand.

The debris was found on the eastern coast of southern Thailand's Nakhon Si Thammarat province, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said Sunday that the search for the missing jet, which carried 239 people, is ongoing in the Indian Ocean and that its second phase is expected to be completed by June.

Australia has led a multinational search that has so far cost more than USD 120 million.

Aviation experts from Malaysia visited Nakhon Si Thammarat on Monday to inspect the metal piece, after which the Thai air force flew it to Bangkok for further examination.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau announced Monday that the search of 120 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed where the Boeing 777 is thought to have crashed had been set back after a ship lost its sonar equipment.

The Fugro Discovery, one of three ships conducting the search, towed its side-scan sonar unit on Sunday into a mud volcano that rose 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) from the sea floor, the bureau said in a statement.

The ship lost the sonar unit plus 4.5 kilometers (14,800 feet) of cable. The ship is now making a six-day journey to the Australian port of Fremantle to collect new cable and will continue the search with spare sonar equipment, it said.
A Pakistani migrant was fatally stabbed and two others were hurt in a robbery allegedly perpetrated by Afghans on the Greek border, local police said today.

The incident occurred near no-man's-land on the border between Greece and Macedonia, where thousands of migrants of different nationalities gather daily, hoping to secure passage to northern Europe.

Both survivors were hospitalised but one is in critical condition, the authorities said.

No arrests were made.

Greek media reported that the assailants stole 400 euros (USD 435 euros) and a cellphone.

Countries along the Balkan route have restricted entry only to refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Macedonia last week began to intermittently close its border with Greece, and only allows refugees wishing to go to Germany or Austria to pass.

More than one million migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015, nearly half of them Syrians, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
An 8-year-old minor girl of Barwa community was found dead in a water tank of an under-construction building in Sarswati colony under Railway colony police station of the city, police said today.

The body was recovered from the water tank yesterday night after she went missing since evening, Netra Pal Singh, SHO, Railway Colony police station said.

The body was recovered with footwear and no injury mark was found on it with the police suspecting that the girl might have fallen into the tank while playing, he said.

However, the guard of the under-construction building was detained today for interrogation after the parents alleged that he might have murdered their daughter as he guided them towards the tank while they were searching for the missing girl, Singh said.

A case has been registered under section 174 of IPC, Singh said, adding that the body was handed over to family after postmortem.
At least 11 Islamist fighters and five civilians were killed as a ballistic missile struck a building in northwest Syria during a meeting between rebel groups, a monitor said today.

"Eleven fighters from (Al-Qaeda affiliate) Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist groups were killed yesterday, along with five civilians, when a ballistic missile hit a police station being used as a court in Salqin" in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitoring group said it was unclear if the missile was fired by Russian or Syrian forces.

The monitor said the toll could rise further because a number of people had been seriously wounded in the strike.

The missile struck during a reconciliation meeting between members of Al-Nusra and the conservative Islamist militant group Ahrar al-Sham, who had exchanged fire in the town earlier the same day.

The two groups are leading members of the Army of Conquest alliance, a powerful coalition that took control of Idlib province last year.

Staunch regime ally Russia began an aerial campaign in Syria last September after a string of government losses, including in Idlib, and has since helped reverse some opposition momentum.

Moscow says its strikes target the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and other "terrorists," but activists and opposition forces accuse it of targeting other rebels and often killing civilians.

Earlier in January, Russian raids in Idlib province, which borders Turkey, killed at least 81 people, including 23 Al-Nusra fighters but also 52 civilians and prisoners.

According to the Observatory, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Russian strikes since they were launched on September 30.

The raids have also killed nearly 900 IS fighters, and more than 1,100 militants from other opposition groups, including Al-Nusra.

Moscow has dismissed claims of civilians deaths in its operations as "absurd".

Overall, more than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria's war which began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Mizoram Finance Minister Lalsawta today said that he would present a regular budget for the next fiscal even if the annual plan size was known.

Lalsawta told PTI that this year the state plan outlay had not been allocated after abolition of the Planning Commission forcing the state government to prepare budgets without knowing plan size.

He said that absence of clarity on fund sharing pattern of centrally sponsored schemes (css) between the centre and the states created problems in budget preparations.

Lalsawta was compelled to seek vote-on-account for two times covering seven months last fiscal due to the same problems.
French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today took a specially- arranged Metro train as they travelled to and returned from Gurgaon to attend an event, affecting passenger movement for a few hours in the afternoon.

The "eco-friendly" ride on Metro's Line 2 (Yellow Line), Modi said, was meant to send out a message on ways to fight global warming.

The two leaders boarded the Metro at Race Course station at 3.16 PM and travelled till Arjangarh station, located on Delhi's border with Haryana and around 14 km from the event venue National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon.

"A special train was arranged to facilitate movement of PM and French President in close coordination with security agencies today," Metro chief spokesperson Anuj Dayal said.

The ride till Arjangarh lasted for around 30 minutes, according to French President's official Twitter handle @Elysee. Prime Minister Modi's official Twitter handle @PMOIndia posted pictures of the journey.

Entry of passengers in stations along the corridor, including INA, AIIMS, Hauz Khas, Chhatarpur, were restricted owing to security considerations as per police directions during the VIP movement, a Metro official said.

Modi and Hollande, accompanied by DMRC Chief Mangu Singh and a bevy of security personnel, took the 'point-to-point' Metro that did not stop at any station, back to Jor Bagh station from Guru Dronacharya station at 5.20 PM, Metro said in a statement.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address two meetings, besides seeking blessings of Lord Jagannath at Puri during his two-day visit to Odisha on February 6, state government officials said.

According to the Prime Minister's itinerary, Modi will arrive here from Vishakhapatnam airport in a special IAF plane at 10.45 PM on February 6 and spend the night at the Raj Bhavan.

On February 7, the Prime Minister will attend the inaugural ceremony of the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) at 9 AM. After spending an hour at the NISER function, he will proceed towards Puri where he will pay obeisance to the deities at Sri Jagannath temple at 11 AM.

From Puri, Modi will fly to Paradip and visit the IOCL refinery and will dedicate the refinery to the nation at about 1 PM.

After attending the IOCL function, Modi will return to Bhubaneswar from where he will leave for Vishakhapatnam.

While the Prime Minister will address a gathering at Paradip after dedicating the IOCL's refinery to the nation, he will also address a small gathering of students and others on the occasion of the inauguration of the NISER.

A state coordination committee meeting, chaired by Chief Secretary A P Padhi, today discussed the preparations for the Prime Minister's visit.

Odisha DGP K B Singh, Home Secretary Asit Tripathy, NISER officials, Puri Collector and SP were present at the meeting.
The mother of a 20-year-old white British convert to Islam has defended her son who has been dubbed "Jihadi Jack" over fears he had joined the brutal Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Syria.

Jack Letts left his home in Oxford to travel to the war-torn country a year ago.

His mother, Sally Letts, has insisted that he left for humanitarian purposes rather than terrorism.

The former books editor told the 'Evening Standard', "He is not a member of ISIS; he is very probably not the first white convert that has gone out there. We spoke to him yesterday and he said he had never had a weapon in his



"He went out there for humanitarian purposes to help kids in Syrian refugee camps. It is not as if he is hiding anything - he tells us what he has for breakfast. All this is absolutely ridiculous, it is shocking," she said.

She conceded that the family, based in Oxford, are concerned for Jack's well-being.

"We are worried sick. He is in danger every single moment of the day. He is very naive, very misguided. He wanted to do good in the world and wanted to see for himself. The fact is he did not see the danger or think about his own safety. We wake every single morning not knowing whether he is alive or dead," she told the newspaper.

The family did not oppose Jack converting to Islam, despite them being "pretty well secular" themselves.

Jack told his mother and father John, a leading organic farmer, he was planning to travel to Kuwait to study Arabic.

He only informed them he had subsequently gone to Syria once he arrived. He initially worked with refugees and most recently has been helping in a hospital, his family said.

"He repeatedly said he is not with IS, and he does not lie. He believes it is un-Islamic to lie and if he does he will go straight to hell, so there is no doubt whatsoever. He has worked in a hospital, done some teaching, done some translating. He is integrated with the population," Sally said.

A Scotland Yard spokesperson said, "What is important, and would be expected, is that we do all we can to keep people safe and investigate everyone who returns to the UK to establish if any crimes have been committed and if they are a threat to the UK".
The health department would organise 'Motherhood Week' in this district from January 27 in order to ensure that pregnant women and their child are healthy and well nourished.

Around 17,500 women in 10 blocks of the rural areas here, who have been identified beforehand, would be checked on specific dates during this period, District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma and Chief Medical Officer Dr R P Yadav said.

The pregnant women would be examined for haemoglobin, protein in urine, blood pressure etc by Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) on the basis of which 'High-risk Pregnant Mothers' would be identified, they said.

Those identified as 'High-risk Pregnant Mother' would be transferred to the community health centres in the blocks on February 5 where they would be examined by specialist doctors, the DM and CMO said.

To make 'Motherhood Week' a success, a team of five medical officers would be deputed in every block of the district and a control room would also be set up, Sharma said.
NASA is developing a six-feet tall humanoid robot that could assist astronauts in risky and extremely hazardous deep space missions to Mars and asteroids in the future.

The US space agency is considering ushering new humanoid robots that could offer astronauts a helping hand in future expeditions.

"NASA is counting on robots to setup and care for deep space exploration facilities and equipment pre-deployed ahead of astronauts," Sasha Congiu Ellis of NASA's Langley Research Centre, told Astrowatch.Net.

"Robots are also excellent precursors for conducting science missions ahead of human exploration," Ellis said.

That is why the agency is developing a six-feet tall humanoid robot called R5, previously known as Valkyrie. The machine weighs about 131 kilogrammes.

It was initially designed to complete disaster-relief manoeuvres. In November last year, NASA awarded two R5 robots to university groups - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Northeastern University in Boston.

According to NASA, the teams have two years to perform research and software development in order to improve the robot's autonomy. They also have access to onsite and virtual technical support from the agency.
Nepal's political parties should adopt "flexibility and understanding" to resolve the ongoing political crisis, the Indian envoy here said today as he underlined that a peaceful and stable Nepal is in India's interest.

India wants to see a peaceful, prosperous and stable Nepal, India's Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae said at an interaction programme on 'Nepal-India relations: Prospects and Challenges' on the eve of India's 67th Republic Day here.

"What is in the interest of Nepal will also be in the interest of India," he said.

"India is focussing on attaining economic prosperity and for that we need peace and stability in the neighbourhood. As we have long and open border, it will naturally have an impact on India if there is insecurity and instability in the southern Nepal districts," Rae said.

His remarks come just two days after Nepal's parliament voted to amend the country's Constitution with a two-thirds majority four months after its promulgation, in a bid to resolve the political crisis involving the minority Madhesi community.

The agitating Madhesi community that shares strong cultural and family bonds with India is demanding demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation, and have been protesting for months. At least 55 people have been killed in the protests that have also led to a blockade of the country's key trade points with India.

"We want to see the problems surfaced in the border areas resolved through peaceful means of dialogue," Rae said.

"The political parties of Nepal should adopt flexibility and understanding to resolve the ongoing political crisis," he said.

"We are happy to learn that the Nepal government has taken initiatives for resolving the issue in a peaceful way, which has already resulted in some positive outcome and it is very much encouraging. Once the political crisis is resolved, we would focus on the economic development and prosperity of Nepal, through partnership," the envoy said.

Speaking at the same event, Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa said the country is willing to take benefit from the high economic growth and prosperity attained by India.

"India has attained an economic growth of 7.5 per cent, for which we want to congratulate it, and we would also like to take the benefit from the Indian economic progress by further engaging in partnership and cooperation with the southern neighbour," Thapa said.
A 25-year-old Nigerian student was killed today after being hit by a tractor here, police said.

Saleem, from Kano in Nigeria, had been pursuing an MSc course at the Jodhpur National University in Boranada area here since last year, SHO Anwar Khan said.

"This afternoon, he was walking towards his hostel around 2.00 pm from the college when a speeding tractor hit him from behind," he said.

Saleem was seriously injured and rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died during treatment, the SHO said.

"We have informed the embassy in New Delhi and have arrested the driver of the tractor," Khan said.
No police officer transferred to Nagpur, the hometown of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, is willing to work there and this was one of the reasons for existing vacancies in the department, Nagpur police chief Shardaprasad Yadav today said here.

"It is true police officials who are posted not only in Nagpur, but in the entire region (Vidarbha) are unwilling to work there. They either do not report for duty or even if they do, they ask for a transfer," Yadav said.

"I do not know what is the reason behind this mindset of police officers. There is not much law and order problem there. Not working there has become a mindset, not from today, but from the last many years. This should change," he said.

The lack of interest by officials to serve in Nagpur, Maharashtra's second capital which hosts winter session of legislature, was one of the reasons for existing vacancies in the city's Police Department, the IPS officer said.

Latching on to Yadav's comments, Opposition Congress and NCP took a dig at Fadnavis, saying it is "shameful" the Chief Minister has not been able to change the situation in his own hometown after coming to power in October 2014.

Congress spokesperson Al-Nasser Zakaria said the Chief Minister should stop merely announcing development and welfare projects and should first concentrate on filling up police vacancies in Vidarbha.

"The Government, in the last one year, has been only announcing projects. The CM hails from Nagpur, and if he has not been able to change the situation prevailing there in the last one year, it is shameful. Instead of making announcements he should concentrate on filling up police vacancies as lack of sufficient police force may prove dangerous," he warned.

NCP leader Nawab Malik alleged that good officers are unwilling to work in Nagpur due to "illegal pressures" brought on them.

"BJP karyakartas (workers) do not let law prevail. They keep pressurising police officers to work according to their whims and fancies and that has made Nagpur the crime capital of the State. The situation there will get out of hand if BJP does not mend its ways," he said.
Oil prices resumed their downward spiral today as profit-taking set in after recent strong gains won thanks to hopes of more central bank stimulus to prop up the global economy.

Prices ended on a buoyant note Friday, with both main oil contracts soaring by about 10 per cent. The upward momentum continued into Asian deals today, before dropping back.

"The 20 per cent or so rally in oil prices from their... lows is certainly something that cannot be ignored and given how strongly oil and stock prices have been correlating lately this is also a positive development for equity markets," said Gain Capital analyst Fawad Razaqzada.

Around 1825 IST, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in March was down 73 cents at USD 31.45 a barrel.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for March slid 84 cents to USD 31.35 a barrel compared with Friday's close.

World oil prices and equities had surged late last week on hopes of extra stimulus for Japan and the eurozone.

Before then, the market's dramatic slump culminated with New York crude collapsing to USD 26.19 per barrel -- a level last seen in May 2003.

Brent oil last week skidded to USD 27.10 -- the lowest level since November of the same year.

Today meanwhile, the head of OPEC repeated that he wants oil producers outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to assist in reducing the global oversupply.

"It is vital the market addresses the issue of the stock overhang," Secretary General Abdullah el-Badri told a conference in London.

"It should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together."



The world remains awash with oil supplies, a situation that has been fuelled by OPEC's refusal to curb crude output to squeeze out US shale producers.

The Saudi-backed strategy is aimed also at pressuring non-OPEC member Russia - the biggest global oil producer - and force fellow OPEC member Iran to trim output.

Prices have suffered a rapid descent this month - building on a slump stretching back to mid-2014 - on snowballing concerns over the strong dollar and weak crude demand growth across the faltering world economy -- particularly in top energy user China.
Oil prices extended their rally in Asia today buoyed by hopes of extra stimulus measures in the eurozone and Japan that could help boost demand in the face of a global supply glut.

Prices ended on a buoyant note Friday, with the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for March delivery soaring nine percent to USD 32.19 a barrel, while Brent soared 10 per cent to USD 32.18.

The upward momentum continued in Asia today, with WTI up 14 cents, or 0.43 per cent, at USD 32.33 and Brent 17 cents, or 0.53 per cent, up at USD 32.35 by 0335 GMT.

Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets Australia, said a report showing that private sector business activity in the eurozone continued to expand in January boosted hopes for oil demand catching up with the oversupply.

Data monitoring company Markit said its closely watched composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 53.5 points in January from 54.3 in December. While the figure was an 11-month low it was still well above the 50-point level that separates growth and contraction in the 19-nation bloc.

On Thursday European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi signalled further stimulus measures for the region, while a report in the respected Nikkei business daily Friday said the Bank of Japan is also considering extra measures.

"The demand side of the situation was what was worrying us. Now that we've seen evidence to support that, we've had a lot of short-term interests in the market having to cover. It's a good old-fashioned scramble," he told AFP from Sydney.

"Combined with a strong economy in the US, the demand side of the equation remains on track to catch up with supply about 12 months out."



Sanjeev Gupta, head of the oil and gas practice at professional services firm EY, said prices also got a boost from the severe snowstorm that battered the US East Coast over the weekend as demand for heating oil rose.

However, some analysts remain wary of calling a bottom, especially with Iranian crude poised to return to the market within months following the lifting of western economic sanctions linked to its nuclear programme.
Two-time champion Victoria Azarenka remained in ominous form Monday to surge into the Australian Open quarter-finals, as Chinese qualifier Zhang Shuai's amazing Grand Slam run stayed alive.

Former world number one Azarenka proved too strong for Czech Barbora Strycova on Rod Laver Arena, storming through 6 -2, 6-4 to set up a last-eight clash with Angelique Kerber, who beat fellow German Annika Beck 6-4, 6-0.

Azarenka, the 14th seed who won at Melbourne Park in 2012 and 2013, has a 6-0 record over Kerber, including in the Brisbane International final this month, making her a hot favourite to keep her title run going.

"I'm looking forward to it. She's such a fighter and such a nice person," said the Belarusian, looking ahead to the test on Wednesday. "I'll just give it my best and I'm sure she'll do the same."



Seventh seed Kerber powered past Beck to reach the quarter-finals for the first time and knows she has a formidable task ahead against a player who has won each of their encounters dating back to 2012.

"I had tough matches against her in the past. I never won against her right now, but that will be a challenge," she said.

"It's a new one, it starts from zero, and I know what's coming from her. I will try to be aggressive and try to go and win the match."



World number one Serena Williams and fifth-seeded rival Maria Sharapova play each other in a headline last-eight clash on Tuesday, while fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska faces 10th seed Carla Suarez.

Johanna Konta joined them to reach her maiden Grand Slam quarter-final and become Britain's first woman to reach the Australian Open last eight since Jo Durie in 1983.

Konta prevailed in a three-hour, four-minute slugfest 4- 6, 6-4, 8-6 against Russia's Ekaterina Makarova.

"Goodness gracious," said Konta, who will next face Zhang. "Mentally, emotionally and physically I left it all out there on the court."



The only other British women to get as far were Virginia Wade, who won in 1972, and Sue Barker who made the semis twice.

- Focused and composed -



========================



Zhang booked her place by battling past injured and tearful 15th seed Madison Keys.

She had lost all 14 of her previous Grand Slam matches before this year's tournament and was mulling retirement, but she has now won four in a row after beating the American 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

It was devastating finale for Keys, last year's semi- finalist, who needed treatment on her upper left leg which hampered her movement. She gamely carried on but was clearly in pain, with tears on court.

"Bad luck Madison. She was injured and I'm very lucky today," said Zhang.

"It was so difficult to concentrate because I could see she was in pain."



Azarenka, 27, has been in the zone at Melbourne Park, dropping just 11 games in four matches as she zeroes in on a return to the top after battling injuries for the past two years.

She went into the Strycova clash with a clear advantage, whipping her on all four of their previous meetings, including at the last two Australian Opens.

But it wasn't straightforward against the Czech, who stunned third seed Garbine Muguruza in the last round.

"She is such a tough opponent. I'm just happy I went through. I played smart, aggressive and really took my opportunities," said Azarenka.

Melbourne Park has been a happy hunting ground for Azarenka, who has now made the quarters or better five times in her last seven attempts.

Kerber, who had a stellar 2015 but underachieved at the majors, eased past Beck who fell apart in the second set after pressing her compatriot hard in the first.
DMK today hinted at accommodating any number of constituents in its-party led alliance, with party President M Karunanidhi insisting that all poll pacts should be 'welcomed'.

"We will not say no to parties willing to come (into DMK-led) alliance. We will welcome any party which will ensure democracy's victory," Karunanidhi told reporters here, his native constituency.

DMK has been attempting to stitch a formidable alliance against the ruling AIADMK and Karunanidhi had even invited Vijayakanth-led DMDK for a poll-pact to face the coming elections.

Incidentally, Vijayakanth, the Opposition Leader in Tamil Nadu Assembly, had aligned with J Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK in the 2011 elections, in which DMK was routed and relegated to the second spot among the opposition parties with a mere 23 seats in the 234-member House.

The DMK chief sounded confident when asked about his party's poll prospects, saying they were "indeed good".

Asked whether he would contest this year's polls once again from Thiruvarur, he said he would do so if people of the constituency asked him and also if the party permits.

He currently represents the constituency in the Assembly.

Karunanidhi is on a two-day visit of his constituency, where among others, he is scheduled to address a public meeting.
Around 50 Indian fishermen were today apprehended by Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (MSA) near Jakhau port off Gujarat coast and their nine boats were also seized, a fish workers forum said.

"Pakistan MSA apprehended around 50 Indian fishermen near Jakhau port off Gujarat coast near International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) in the Arabian sea this evening and also seized nine of their boats," National Fishworkers' Forum secretary Manish Lodhari told PTI.

According to him, registration of all the seized boats was done at Porbandar.

"Till late evening, MSA has kept these boats mid sea and they were yet to be taken to Karachi port," Lodhari said.
At least eight terrorists, including foreigners, were killed today when Pakistani fighter jets pounded militant hideouts in Shawal Valley, a mountainous area in North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan.

According to military, the air blitz hit Data Khel and Shawal areas near Pakistan-Afghanistan border, killing eight suspected terrorists, The Express Tribune reported.

The killed insurgents included both local and foreign terrorists, it quoted Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).

Jet fighters hit targets in Shawal killing the militants. Several militant hideouts were also destroyed in the airstrikes.

The airstrike was part of the ongoing operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan area which has so far killed over 3,000 militants.

Zarb-e-Azb was launched in June last year after militants had attacked the international airport in Karachi, killing 26 people including airport security staff.
Pakistan's powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif today said he will retire as scheduled in November this year, dismissing as "baseless" reports that he may seek an extension due to the ongoing counter-terror offensive.

General Raheel, 59, will complete his three-year term in November and it was being speculated that like his predecessor Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he may seek another term, especially as the counter-terrorism operation 'Zarb-e-Azb', started under Raheel's command in June 2014, is in a crucial phase.

Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa tweeted quoting the army chief that speculation about extension in service are "baseless".

"I don't believe in extension and will retire on the due date," General Raheel said, adding that "efforts to rout out terrorism will continue with full vigour and resolve."



General Raheel, Pakistan's 15th Chief of Army Staff, further said that "Pakistan's national interest is supreme and will be safe guarded at all costs."



Earlier General Pervez Musharraf had also given extensions to himself from 2001 to 2008, when he was also serving as the country's President. Together with General Kayani, who got a three-year extension, the two shared the office of Chief of Army Staff between them for almost 16 years.

The operation 'Zarb-e-Azb' against militants has so far killed around 3,500 terrorists and has destroyed nearly 1,000 hideouts, according to the Pakistan Army.

Many commentators were supporting an extension for General Raheel citing the crucial stage the operation is going through.

Local media reports had claimed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was also supportive of an extension to the Army Chief.
Pakistan's powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif today announced that he will retire as scheduled in November this year, dismissing as "baseless" reports that he may seek an extension due to the ongoing counter-terror offensive.

General Raheel, 59, will complete his three-year term in November and it was being speculated that like his predecessor Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he may seek another term, especially as the counter-terrorism operation 'Zarb-e-Azb', started under his command in June 2014, is in a crucial phase.

Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa tweeted quoting the army chief as saying that speculation about extension in service are "baseless".

"I don't believe in extension and will retire on the due date," General Raheel said, adding that "efforts to root out terrorism will continue with full vigour and resolve."



General Raheel, Pakistan's 15th Chief of Army Staff, further said that "Pakistan's national interest is supreme and will be safe guarded at all costs."



Earlier General Pervez Musharraf had also given extensions to himself from 2001 to 2008, when he was also serving as the country's President. Together with General Kayani, who got a three-year extension, the two shared the office of Chief of Army Staff between them for almost 16 years.

The operation 'Zarb-e-Azb' against militants has so far killed around 3,500 terrorists and has destroyed nearly 1,000 hideouts, according to the Pakistan Army.

Many commentators were supporting an extension for General Raheel citing the crucial stage the operation is going through.

Local media reports had claimed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was also supportive of an extension to the Army Chief.

Democracy in Pakistan has had a chequered past as the last Pakistan Peoples Party-led government was the first one in the country's history to complete its full term of five years.

In the past, governments have been ousted by the army, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history.
Amid tight security, a prestigious university in northwestern Pakistan was reopened today, days after it was attacked by the Taliban in which 21 people, mostly students, were killed.

Police said that Bacha Khan University (BKU) was reopened and additional security personnel have been deployed to take care of the university's security.

Classes would start today with special prayers for the victims. Other educational institutions in Charsadda, which closed in the wake of the attack, also reopened.

Several people held a peace march in Charsadda in the memory of the victims and to express the resolve not to be cowed down by the militants.

On Wednesday, four heavily-armed terrorists attacked BKU named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province which is located about 50 kilometres from Peshawar.

Authorities have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan city. They had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan via the Torkhum border.

However, the main facilitator, "terrorist A", who received and made arrangements for the attackers at Torkhum border checkpost is still at large.

Officials have said that the attack on BKU was planned and controlled from Afghanistan as the phone call of commander Omer Mansoor, who later claimed responsibility, was made from Afghanistan.

The BKU assault came about a year after terrorists attacked an army-run school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 people, most of them students.

The Pakistani military intensified an ongoing offensive, named operation Zarb-e-Azb, against extremists in the tribal areas after the 2014 attack.
Amid tight security and special prayers, Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan today briefly reopened before closing down indefinitely, days after it was attacked by the Taliban, killing 21 people, mostly students.

Police said that Bacha Khan University (BKU) was reopened and additional security personnel have been deployed to take care of the university's security.

Classes started today with special prayers for the victims. Other educational institutions in Charsadda, which closed in the wake of the attack, also reopened.

The university, however, was closed indefinitely later.

A university spokesman cited harsh weather conditions, repair and cleaning work for the closure.

The decision was taken at a meeting of faculty members that was chaired by the university's vice chancellor, he said.

It was also decided that the university should remain closed until a police check-post is setup on campus and teachers are provided licensed weapons, the spokesman said.

Several people held a peace march in Charsadda in the memory of the victims and to express the resolve not to be cowed down by the militants.

On Wednesday, four heavily-armed terrorists attacked BKU named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province which is located about 50 kilometres from Peshawar.

Authorities have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan city. They had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan via the Torkhum border.

However, the main facilitator, "terrorist A", who received and made arrangements for the attackers at Torkhum border checkpost is still at large.

Officials have said that the attack on BKU was planned and controlled from Afghanistan as the phone call of commander Omer Mansoor, who later claimed responsibility, was made from Afghanistan.

The BKU assault came about an year after terrorists attacked an army-run school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 people, most of them students.

The Pakistani military intensified an ongoing offensive, named operation Zarb-e-Azb, against extremists in the tribal areas after the 2014 attack.
A Palestinian journalist on a two-month hunger strike in an Israeli jail could die at any minute, his lawyer warned today.

Mohammed al-Qiq's health is "very, very bad," lawyer Jawad Boulus told AFP after a visit on Sunday. "He faces the possibility of death at any moment."



Qiq, a 33-year-old father of two and a correspondent for Saudi Arabia's Almajd TV network, was arrested on November 21 at his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah and is being held under Israel's controversial administrative detention law.

He has been refusing food since November 25 in protest at "torture and ill treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation", according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation.

At 61 days since his strike began, Qiq's organs are at risk of failure.

Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic security service, alleges Qiq is an active member of the Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip.

Administrative detention laws allow Israel to jail suspects without trial for six-month renewable periods, a policy which has been condemned by human rights advocates.

Qiq was transferred to hospital in the Israeli city of Afula about a month ago, a prisons authority spokeswoman said.

His family have previously said they expect Israel to feed him intravenously if he loses conciousness, though Israeli authorities have denied they will force-feed him.

A controversial Israeli law passed in July allows the force-feeding of prisoners in certain circumstances, though it has not yet been invoked.

Top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told AFP that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "personally bears responsibility for Al-Qiq's life".

Qiq was jailed for a month in 2003 and then for 13 months in 2004.

In 2008, he was sentenced to 16 months on charges linked to his activities on the student council at the West Bank's Birzeit University.

Mohammed Allan, a 31-year-old prisoner, ended a two-month hunger strike in August 2015 after his detention was suspended.
Two Palestinians stabbed two women today at a grocery in an Israeli settlement of the West Bank before being shot dead, police and medics said, in the latest in nearly four months of attacks.

Israel's military said two pipe bombs were also found in the area and were being defused.

One of the women, 23, was said by Israeli medics to be in critical condition after the incident in Beit Horon settlement, northwest of Jerusalem. The other, a 58-year-old, was in moderate condition.

The two Palestinians were shot dead by security guards, Israeli police said, adding one was in his early 20s and the other a teenager.

The attack was the third inside a West Bank settlement since January 17, when an Israeli woman was stabbed to death at the entrance to her home in Otniel. Israeli authorities arrested a 15-year-old Palestinian over that killing.

The following day, a pregnant woman was stabbed and wounded in the Tekoa settlement. The 17-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot by security personnel and taken to hospital in serious condition.

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October, and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenagers.

Until recently, most of the attacks had occurred in public places such as checkpoints, junctions and entrances to Jerusalem's Old City.

The fatal stabbing in Otniel led to Israeli outrage and calls for more security measures.

Violence since October 1 has killed 159 Palestinians and 24 Israelis, as well as an American and an Eritrean.

Many of the Palestinians killed have been attackers, while others have been shot dead by Israeli forces during protests and clashes.

Some analysts say the attacks have been in part driven by frustration with the complete lack of progress in peace efforts, as well as by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the fractured Palestinian leadership.

Israel says incitement by Palestinian officials and media has been a main cause of the violence.

The youngest Palestinian attacker killed since the violence began was a 13-year-old girl, who was shot dead by a security guard on Saturday at the entrance to the Anatot settlement in the West Bank.

Video footage published by Israeli media appears to show her clutching a knife and running at the private security guard who then shoots her dead.

Israel has faced questions over whether excessive force has been used in some cases, which it strongly denies.

It has used a series of measures in a bid to halt the unrest, including demolishing assailants' homes and withholding the bodies of killed attackers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the home of the Palestinian teen accused of the fatal stabbing in Otniel would be demolished as a deterrent.

Rights groups call the measure collective punishment, with family members forced to suffer for the acts of relatives.
Government has formed a committee to examine the issue of additional spray of bitumen while building roads over certain allegations that at least Rs 57 crore is wasted annually.

The committee would examine "whether applying tack coat over prime coat is fundamentally necessary or should the requirement of tack coat over the prime coat be dispensed with", as per the Road Transport and Highways Ministry.

The eight-member committee, headed by ADG-II, Highways will examine the issue in the wake of complaint by Prithvi Singh Kandhal -- Additional Director Emeritus, National Centre for Asphalt Technology, Auburn University, Alabama US. He wrote to Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari that India annually loses about Rs 57 crore on additional coating.

The letter said that such practice of additional coating was "criminal loss" and was not in practice in any advanced nation whether US, Australia, Europe or South Africa.

"I request you again to take immediate action to stop this unnecessary criminal loss of about Rs 57 crore every year in highway construction," Kandhal wrote to Gadkari seeking his intervention.

"This additional tack coat (additional spray of bitumen on stone after prime coat when a new road is constructed) is fundamentally unnecessary and is a sheer waste of public funds ...In India because bitumen is very expensive," he said.

According to experience in the US, additional bitumen spray combined with prime coat can result in excessive bitumen over the stone course, which has the potential of being rather harmful to the performance of the road pavement, the letter said.
Stating that the CPI(M) is trying to bring opposition parties under one umbrella to oust the TMC, party Politburo member Mohammed Salim today asked the Congress to come clean on the issue of alliance.

"We are trying to unite people from various sections including political parties to fight against the misrule of TMC. The people of Bengal, who love democracy, want this alliance," he said.

Without naming the Congress, Salim addressing a rally, said, "It can't happen that you will say something and do something else. It can't happen that you will go to Kalighat (TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee's residence) and say something publicly. You have to come clean on what you want, on your stand. You have to respect the feeling of unity among masses."



Amid talks of a possible tie-up between Congress and CPI(M) in the coming Assembly elections in West Bengal, AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi has called the state Congress leadership to Delhi for a meeting on February 1.

Former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra have sent out messages to the Congress from public meetings to join hands with the Left Front to oust Trinamool Congress from the state.

Reacting to Salim's comments, state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said his party would take a decision at an appropriate time and was not answerable to any other party.

"In the upcoming elections, TMC's aim is to return to power, CPI(M)'s aim is to regain lost ground and Congress's aim is to oust TMC. We are not answerable to anyone or any other party. We are only answerable to the masses. We will take our call at an appropriate time," Chowdhury said.

State Trinamool Congress general secretary Partha Chatterjee said both Congress and CPI(M) were trying to gain prominence in state politics by trying to forge an alliance, but people would give a befitting reply by rejecting them.
The Supreme Court today decided to hear on January 27 a plea challenging the Union Cabinet's recommendation to impose President's Rule in crisis-hit Arunachal Pradesh moved by the Congress, which alleged that "illegal" attempts have been made by the Centre and the Governor to topple the Nabam Tuki government there.

The petition seeking urgent hearing was mentioned before Chief Justice T S Thakur, at his residence, who directed the matter to be listed for hearing on Wednesday.

"The matter was placed before the CJI. He has listed for hearing on January 27," Virendra Kumar, Deputy Registrar told PTI. He said listing branch of Registry will allocate the matter before an appropriate bench.

Already, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice J S Khehar is examining the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor under constitution, vis-a-vis the authority to convene assembly session with or without the aid and advise of the Chief Minister and his council of ministers.

The fresh plea, filed by Rajesh Tacho, Chief Whip of Congress Legislature party, alleged that "illegal and unlawful" attempts have been made by the Centre and Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa to topple the Nabam Tuki government.

The Governor's recommendation in the present case is to promote "political interests of party in power at the Centre," the Congress petition finally settled by noted jurist Fali S Nariman said.

After the Union Cabinet yesterday decided to recommend imposition of central rule in the state, a battery of senior lawyers including Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha swung into action to challenge the recommendation in the apex court.

Since the apex court is closed tomorrow due to Republic Day, the petition through the Deputy Registrar was placed at 1800 hours before the CJI, who preferred to get it listed on Wednesday.

The Congress has sought a direction for the Centre and the Governor to furnish records pertaining to his recommendation for President's Rule in the state.

"There is absolutely no material justifying the action under Article 356 of the Constitution of India except the personal ipse dixit (unsupported assertion) of the Respondent No.2 (Rajkhowa) who has abused the Office of the Governor by acting as an agent and the mouth piece of the Central Government," it said.

It has sought restoration of the Nabam Tuki government along with his Council of Ministers to office by "reviving and reactivating" the 6th Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly.

The Congress in its plea has further sought a direction



to declare as "illegal and void-ab-initio" any decision which may be taken during the period of central rule.

"The action of the Governor is not only illegal and unconstitutional but also suffers from malice in fact and in law from bias. The Respondents (Centre and the Governor) are under a constitutional mandate to act in a just and fair manner and their actions are amenable to the Writ Jurisdiction of this court," the petition said.

The plea said the Governor should place the "report and material" leading to the Cabinet's January 24 recommendation for imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

It said that if the report and the recommendation become the basis of proclamation and notification of President's Rule in the state, the same should be quashed.

"Actions/inactions on the part of the Centre and the Governor directly and inevitably impact on the fundamental right of the Petitioner herein under Article 14 of the Constitution herein read with Article 21 of the Constitution, apart from encroaching upon the democratic principles of governance," the plea said.

It also said the decision to impose central rule cannot be justified as "there was no such immediate urgency or break down of the state machinery justifying the emergent meeting of the Cabinet on a Sunday to recommend imposition of President's Rule in the state.

Congress party, which has 47 MLAs in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The Governor then advanced the assembly session and convened it on December 16 in which Deputy Speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of Speaker. This sitting was held in a community hall in Itanagar.

Various decisions of the Governor and the Deputy Speaker were challenged by Rebia in Gauhati High Court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance these decisions till February one.
Pitching for balance between rights and responsibilities towards environment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande today inaugurated the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) here, hailing it as a "new chapter".

The initiative aimed at increasing utilisation and promotion of solar energy in solar-rich nations was launched by both the leaders on the sidelines of Conference of Parties (CoP21) in Paris last month.

Both the leaders also laid the foundation stone of the headquarters of ISA at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon.

Unveiling the plaque, Modi said that although the ISA will be headquartered in India, it will function as a global and independent institution meant to benefit entire mankind.

"While ISA is headquartered in Gurgaon, this will be not be an institution of India alone. This will be an global institution and will function independently.

"Like United Nations and World Health Organisation, it also belongs to the while world," Modi said, adding that people from different countries will discharge various responsibilities for this initiative to give some sort of a heritage to the world.

Modi who travelled with Hollande from Delhi to Gurgaon in a Metro train said that this step is also aimed at sending a message that such environment friendly steps could also be ways to fight global warming.

The Prime Minister stressed that India and France share much in common about their goal to resolve the issue of global warming.

Stressing that developing countries had their developmental needs, Modi said that this cannot be possible without the use of energy and hence the dilemma before the world is how to protect the environment while meeting the developmental needs of such nations.

"Energy has become an integral part of a nation's development journey. For the past one year, the world has been deliberating on how to combat global warming. This alliance ensures the world gets more energy and there is also a focus on innovation," Modi said.

French President Hollande said that a "new chapter" opens for nations to utilise the power of the sun.

ISA, an initiative of Prime Minister Modi, is an alliance of 121 solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

India offered to host ISA at the premises of NISE and has offered a 5 acre land. Three floors of the Surya Bhawan of NISE has been offered for starting the interim Secretariat.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande today laid the foundation stone for an interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), an initiative by the two countries to harness solar energy in over 100 nations.

Speaking at the event here, Hollande said France wants to build the Post-Paris Agreement world with India, as he called the ISA as "India's gift" to the world in combating climate change. He also pledged 300 million Euros to develop solar energy in next five years.

Unveiling the plaque, Modi said although the ISA will be headquartered in India, it will function as a global and independent institution meant to benefit entire mankind.

"While ISA is headquartered in Gurgaon, this will be not be an institution of India alone. This will be an global institution and will function independently.

"Like United Nations and WHO, it also belongs to the whole world," Modi said, adding that people from different countries will discharge various responsibilities for this initiative to give some sort of a "heritage" to the world.

Modi who travelled with Hollande from Delhi to Gurgaon, a satellite city of the national capital, in a Metro train said that the move is also aimed at sending a message that such environment friendly steps could also be ways to fight global warming.

Modi emphasised that India and France share much in common about their goal to resolve the issue of global warming.

Stressing that developing countries had their developmental needs, Modi said this cannot be done without the use of energy and hence the dilemma before the world is how to protect the environment while meeting the developmental needs of such nations.

"Energy has become an integral part of a nation's development journey. For the past one year, the world has been deliberating on how to combat global warming. This alliance ensures the world gets more energy and there is also a focus on innovation," he said.

French President Hollande said that a "new chapter" opens for nations to utilise the power of the sun.

ISA, an initiative of Modi, is an alliance of 121 solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

India offered to host ISA at the premises of NISE and has offered a 5-acre land. Three floors of the Surya Bhawan of NISE have been offered for starting the interim Secretariat.

(Reopens DEL 117)



Reaffirming India's "responsibility" in this "life-saving mission", Modi said solar was the way to control global emissions and cut down the use of fossil fuel.

"The solution to combat one energy problem (of fossil fuels) lies in another (solar)," he said.

Narrating the sequence of events at CoP21, he referred to the new initiatives launched during the summit, the ISA and Mission Innovation, and said three nations - USA, France and India - took the initiative of innovation to protect the environment while the other initiative, which will impact generations, is the solar alliance.

Hollande said while France has signed an agreement for participating in the creation of 100 Smart Cities programme, it will also link the initiative with the Solar Alliance by helping to increase public lighting and supplying solar electricity to these cities.

He said France will also mobilise its companies, its research and technological institutions and diplomatic network to help achieve the objective of International Solar Alliance and work with India on the vital issue of cost of financing.

"I would like to announce here that the French Development Agency will allocate 300 million euros to developing solar energy over the next five years in order to finance the initial projects.

"Our role now is to implement the agreement, to launch projects without waiting for its entry into force in 2020. The Solar Alliance is meeting this objective. It is India's gift to the world for combating climate change. France is proud to lead it with you. France wants to build the Post-Paris Agreement world with India. The ISA paves the way for this," Hollande said.

Yesterday, three MoUs were signed under the 'Smart city' theme for city-specific urban development between French Development Agency (AFD) with the state governments for the cities of Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry.

"France will take part in the '100 Smart Cities' Programme launched by the Indian government. We can link this initiative to the Solar Alliance projects by helping to increase public lighting and on a broader level, supplying solar electricity to these cities.

"We can also work on rural electrification, decentralised management of energy access and energy efficiency," Hollande said.
Israeli police say two Palestinians stabbed Israeli women in a minimarket in a West Bank settlement before being shot dead.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says two assailants entered the shop in Beit Horon, northwest of Jerusalem, and began stabbing Israelis inside.

Rosenfeld says a security guard fatally shot the attackers outside the store.

Rosenfeld says two Israeli women were wounded in today's attack, one critically.

The last four months have seen near-daily Palestinian stabbing attacks that have killed 25 Israelis and an American student. At least 149 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 104 of them identified by Israel as attackers. The rest have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
Puducherry Chief Minister N Rangasamy today said the territorial administration had sought Central assistance but was not waiting for it and "is going ahead with disbursement of relief from out of its own funds," for flood-ravaged families.

The administration had sought funds from the Centre to meet its commitments to provide relief to the flood ravaged families, farmers and cattle owners here.

Government was not waiting for Central assistance and "is going ahead with the disbursement of relief from out of its own funds," he said, felicitating freedom fighters on the eve of the 67th Republic Day here.

He said he had written to the Centre to enhance the quantum of pension for freedom fighters.

He said that the government had filled a number of vacant posts in government departments and as many as 7000 posts had been filled over the last four years and this included filling of teacher posts.
Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today to discuss setting up of an integrated oil refinery in Konkan region of the state.

"I am thankful to Dharmendra Pradhan for a productive meeting on setting up of an integrated oil refinery in Konkan region of Maharashtra. This project on the west coast is the biggest of our nation and will help accelerate the economic development of Konkan region and in turn Maharashtra," Fadnavis said.

He said this integrated project is unique as it has 30 per cent green belt, that will be jointly implemented by Centre, Maharashtra government, along with three state-owned oil marketing companies - Indian Oil (IOCL), BPCL and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL).

Fadnavis said the oil refinery will bring in investment worth over Rs 1 lakh crore in the state and will generate an employment for about 1 lakh people.

"This will give boost to down stream industries in the state," he added.

Maharashtra consumes about 18 million tonnes of petroleum products every year, which is expected to increase significantly in the coming years.
Precision Camshafts, which will launch its IPO on Wednesday to raise Rs 240 crore, has allotted shares worth Rs 123 crore to six anchor investors, including funds operated by SBI, HDFC and ICICI Bank.

The company allotted a total of 66.16 lakh equity shares to the anchor investors, at a price of Rs 186 each (including a share premium of Rs 176 per share), aggregating to Rs 123 crore.

The anchor investors are -- SBI Mutual Fund, IDFC Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, HDFC Trustee Company Ltd, Birla Sunlife Trustee company and Canara Robeco Mutual Fund, the company said in a statement.

Precision Camshafts' initial public offering, which will begin on January 27 and close on January 29 involves a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 240 crore and an offer for sale of up to 91,50,000 equity shares of Rs 10 each.

Maharashtra-based Precision Camshafts makes over 150 varieties of camshafts for small and mid-sized passenger vehicle engines world over.

The company also proposes to set up two new machine shops at Solapur for ductile iron camshafts and assembled camshafts respectively, by fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018.

SBI Capital Markets, HDFC Bank and India Infoline are the book running lead managers to the issue.
Prohibitory orders were today imposed in areas under three police stations in the city after members of a community hurled stones at police alleging discrimination after a clash between two groups.

Talking to PTI over phone, Collector (District Magistrate) S N Ruplah said, "As a preventive measure, section 144 of CrPC banning assembly of five or more people, has been imposed in Adhartal, Gohalpur and Hanumantal police station areas in Jabalpur. The action has been taken after stones were pelted at the police."



The trouble started on January 21, when two communities clashed after their children entered into a fight while playing a game, police sources said.

Around 16 persons were arrested in connection with that violence.

However, members of one community protested alleging it was being ill-treated and hounded, police sources said.

Meanwhile, another community also orgainsed a protest today alleging the authorities and police were discriminating against them.

When the police went to the sit-in site, protesters threw stones at them, who resorted to mild-cane charge.

Following this, the district administration clamped prohibitory orders in areas under three police stations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin today criticized Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, accusing him of placing a "time bomb" under the state, and sharply denouncing brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government.

The harsh criticism of Lenin, who is still revered by communists and many others in Russia, is unusual for Putin, who in the past carefully weighed his comments about the nation's history to avoid alienating some voters.

At the same time, he signaled that the government has no intention of taking Lenin's body out of his Red Square tomb, warning against "any steps that would divide the society."



Putin's assessment of Lenin's role in Russian history during today's meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in the southern city of Stavropol was markedly more negative than in the past.

Putin denounced Lenin and his government for brutally executing Russia's last czar along with all his family and servants, killing thousands of priests and placing a "time bomb" under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines.

As an example of Lenin's destructive legacy, Putin pointed at Donbass, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russia separatist rebellion flared up weeks after Russia's March 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2014, and clashes have continued despite a February 2015 peace deal.

He said that Lenin and his government whimsically drew borders between parts of the U.S.S.R., placing Donbass under the Ukrainian jurisdiction in order to "increase the percentage of proletariat" in a move Putin called "delirious." Putin's criticism of Lenin could be part of his attempts to justify Moscow's policy in the Ukrainian crisis, but it also may reflect the Kremlin's concern about possible separatist sentiments in some Russian provinces.

Putin was particularly critical of Lenin's concept of a federative state with its entities having the right to secede, saying it heavily contributed to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. "It was a time bomb under our state," he said, adding that Lenin's was wrong in a dispute with Josef Stalin who advocated a unitary state model.

In the past, Putin has denounced Stalin for massive purges that killed millions, but noted his role in defeating the Nazis in WW II.

In today's comments, Putin also blasted the Bolsheviks for making Russia lose World War I in their quest for power, making Russia suffer defeat by Germany and cede large chunks of territory just months before it lost World War I. "We lost to the losing party, a unique case in history," Putin said.

Putin said he sincerely believed in Communist ideology when he served in the KGB, adding that while promises of a fair and just society in the Communist ideology "resembled the Bible quite a lot" but the reality was different. "Our country didn't look like the City of the Sun," envisaged by socialist utopians, he said.
An official of the United States government has, for what is believed to be the first time, directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of corruption, in a BBC programme that airs today.

The US government imposed sanctions against a number of Kremlin insiders in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, but did not accuse Putin of direct involvement in corruption.

However, during a Panorama investigation into Putin's "secret riches", the acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury said Putin was a "picture of corruption."



"We've seen him enriching his friends, his close allies, and marginalising those who he doesn't view as friends using state assets," Adam Szubin, who oversees US Treasury sanctions, told the Panorama programme.

"Whether that's Russia's energy wealth, whether it's other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don't. To me, that is a picture of corruption."



The US government has know about this for "many, many years", he added.

The programme cited a secret CIA report from 2007 stating that Putin's wealth stood at around USD 40 billion.

"He supposedly draws a state salary of something like USD 110,000 a year," said Szubin. "That is not an accurate statement of the man's wealth, and he has long time training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth."



Putin's spokesman told the BBC that "none of these questions or issues needs to be answered, as they are pure fiction".

Moscow also on Thursday dismissed as a "joke" a British inquiry's findings that Putin "probably approved" the killing of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko a decade ago in London.
First innings hero Kagiso Rabada struck two early blows as South Africa pushed for victory on the fourth day of the fourth and final Test against England at SuperSport on Monday.

England, set an unlikely target of 382 on a deteriorating pitch, were 52 for three at the close after South Africa declared their second innings on 248 for five.

Rabada, who took seven for 112 in the first innings, dismissed Alex Hales and Nick Compton, while new ball partner Morne Morkel claimed the wicket of England captain Alastair Cook for the second time in the match.

If South Africa are able to take the remaining seven wickets on Tuesday it would be a consolation victory, with England holding a winning 2-0 lead in the series.

Hales made only one run before he received a virtually unplayable ball from Rabada which shot through low and trapped the batsman in front of his stumps.

It finished a disappointing series for Cook's latest opening partner. Hales made 136 runs in eight innings at an average of 17.00.

Cook did not last much longer before pushing back a return catch to Morne Morkel after scoring five.

Compton was next to go, for six, edging a drive against Rabada to be caught behind by Quinton de Kock. Compton sought a review which showed a clear edge.

It could have been worse for England. With South Africa using two spin bowlers in fading light, Root, on ten, survived a stumping chance off Dane Piedt, with De Kock fumbling a ball which turned sharply.

Kyle Abbott, who had not been expected to bowl because of a hamstring injury, took the field and bowled one over.

Hashim Amla and Temba Bavuma batted South Africa into a virtually unbeatable position with a fifth wicket stand of 117.

Amla followed up his first innings of 109 with a resolute 96, while Bavuma struck an unbeaten 78.

Amla was on 96 at tea and his approach in the first over after the interval suggested he was keen to get to his century quickly with a declaration imminent.

Stuart Broad set seven fielders on the off side. Amla tried to play across the line to leg, then flashed at a wide ball. He chased another wide delivery and was caught behind after a 199-ball innings during which he hit 11 fours.

But, with heavy clouds rolling in, South Africa batted on until rain stopped play half an hour after tea. Bavuma hit James Anderson for six over wide long-on, batting for 154 balls in total and hitting nine fours and a six.

Anderson was England's best bowler, taking three for 47. The veteran fast bowler, who had taken only four wickets at a cost of 63.50 runs each in six previous innings, struck twice in three balls early in the day, reducing South Africa to 49 for three.

Anderson had Stephen Cook caught behind for 25, then trapped South African captain AB de Villiers leg before wicket with a superb in-swinger. It was De Villiers' second duck of the match and his third in successive innings.

JP Duminy (29) provided solid support to Amla in a partnership of 57 before the Amla-Bavuma stand took the match beyond England's reach.
India and France today inked an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the sale of 36 French fighter jets, Rafale, but were unable to sign the final deal due to some "financial" aspects, which are expected to be sorted out in "couple of days".

This agreement was among the 14 pacts signed between the two countries after extensive talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande which focused ways to enhance cooperation in counter- terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

"...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Terming the signing of the IGA as a "decisive" step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in "couple of days".

The two countries are in negotiations for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away conditions since the announcement for the deal was made by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price which is estimated to be about Rs 60,000 crore. A high-level team from France is here and carrying out last minute negotiations.

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said.

The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

"Daesh has attacked us. The ISIS is provoking us but we



are determined to take the right decision. We will strike them time and again those who kill our children. I would like to thank you for the support in dire circumstances. France will never forget. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation against terror," Hollande said.

The two sides resolved to step up their joint effort to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts," the joint statement said.

Stressing that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, Modi and Hollande pitched for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

They also condemned the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India.

On other issues which were discussed, Modi said, "From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power. These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership."



On his part, Hollande asserted that "There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology" and hoped that the issues pertaining to the six reactors at Jaitapur nuclear plant will be settled in one year.

In pursuance of the 2008 civil nuclear pact, the two



leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur the statement said.

The negotiations will consider cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accord with Government of India's "Make in India" initiative.

"France acknowledged the need for India to have lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants, as stated in the 2008 bilateral IGA on nuclear cooperation.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017.

"Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection," it said.

France and India underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France reaffirmed its strong and long standing support for India's candidacy to the international export control regimes, particularly to the NSG and welcomed India's decision to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the statement said.

Describing his visit as "outstanding and exceptional", Hollande said it was an honour for France and him to be chief guest at the Republic Day.

"I commend the action of Modi at the climate change conference. I am aware Modi had potential reluctance at the COP 21. He wanted the innovation technology for developing countries to be spread. We owe it to, including Modi for what was achieved at the climate conference, the French President added.

Apart from inking IGA for purchase of Rafale jets, the two countries signed 13 agreements cutting across a wide variety of sectors including railways, culture, space, science and technology.
India and France today inked an MoU for the purchase of 36 French Rafale aircraft but persisting differences over the pricing of the fighter jet came in the way of final multi-billion dollar deal being concluded.

This MoU was among the 14 pacts signed after wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande which focused on ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

"...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Terming the signing of the IGA as a "decisive" step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in a "couple of days".

The two countries are in negotiation for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away condition since the deal was announced by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price. The deal is estimated to cost about Rs 59,000 crore.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said, "What was signed today was an MoU and, when the financial part of it is settled, then obviously the IGA in its entirety will be concluded".

Top government sources said an IGA will be signed once the prices have been finalised which they hoped would take another four weeks.

Sources said the price for 36 Rafales, as per the UPA tender, keeping the cost escalation and dollar rate in mind, comes to a little over Rs 65,000 crore. This includes the cost involved in making changes India has sought in the aircraft, including Israeli helmet mounted display and some specific weaponry, among others.

"The effort is to bring down the price to less than Euros 8 billion (Rs 59,000 crore)," the sources said, adding the actual price negotiations only started from January 21.

Another point under discussion is the payment of advance which India will have to make.

"At least 50 per cent advance will have to be made including 15 per cent immediate payment," the sources said, adding the French government will stand guarantee.

Meanwhile, in a statement Dassault Aviation, manufacturer



of Rafale said," We are very pleased with this progress, and actively supporting French authorities in their efforts to finalize a complete agreement within the next four weeks.

They said today's agreement will pave the way for the "conclusion of a contract" for the sale of 36 Rafale fighters to India.

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders also focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action in these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said.

The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to



bring to justice perpetrators of Pathankot and 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, which also left two French citizens dead. They also asked Pakistan to ensure such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts," the joint statement said.

"Daesh has attacked us. The ISIS is provoking us but we are determined to take the right decision. We will strike time and again those who kill our children. I would like to thank you for the support in dire circumstances. France will never forget. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation against terror," Hollande said.

Insisting that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, Modi and Hollande pitched for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

On other issues which were discussed, Modi said, "From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power... These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership."



On his part, Hollande asserted "There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology" and hoped that the issues pertaining to the six reactors at Jaitapur nuclear plant will be settled in a year.

The negotiations will consider cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accord with "Make in India" initiative.

"France acknowledged the need for India to have lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants, as stated in the 2008 bilateral IGA on nuclear cooperation.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017," it said.

France and India underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France reaffirmed its strong and long standing support for India's candidacy to the international export control regimes, particularly to the Nuclear Suppliers Gropup and welcomed New Delhi's decision to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the statement said.

Describing his visit as "outstanding and exceptional", Hollande said it was an honour for France and him to be chief guest at the Republic Day.

"I commend the action of Modi at the climate change conference. I am aware Modi had potential reluctance at the COP 21. He wanted the innovation technology for developing countries to be spread. We owe it to, including Modi for what was achieved at the climate conference," the French President added.

Later, briefing reporters, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar



explained the issues surrounding the Rafale deal.

"I think essentially what you heard the two leaders say was that on this important but somewhat complicated issue that they have been able to reach agreement in large areas, in the non-financial side.

"On the financial side, we have yet to reach full agreement and people are working on it," he said.

The top diplomat said there is interest on both sides on doing it as soon as possible.

"There is a element of urgency and desire to complete this as soon as possible," he said.

Talking about the MoU, he said there has been considerable progress in these negotiations since last year.

"It was important at this juncture for the progress to be conveyed accurately and positively and that was exactly the intent of the MoU and what is there in the joint statement," he said.

He said the text of the IGA has been agreed upon.

"When you do a text, there is legal scrubbing, there is always a bit of time lag," he said, adding it is not restricted to defence matters only.

"I remember that sometime ago we were discussing on a nuclear matter. It was similar issue where you agree on clinching the text but will need legal scrubbing and the detailing that needs to be done. Except in this case, the financial aspect will also have to be agreed upon," he said.

He also said there would be an offset clause in the deal.

The Foreign Secretary hoped that French companies will be leading in taking advantage of the 'Make in India' initiative, especially in the defence sector.

On the civil nuclear issue, he said the big development is the fact that we have agreed to collaborate to construct six nuclear power reactors. He said the earlier agreement has been revised.

Talking about terror, Jaishankar said globally the tolerance for terrorism is going down.
Telecom operator Reliance Communications has enhanced its annual investment to Rs 4,000 crore with focus on 3G services while it ended 2G service in five circles including Bihar, West Bengal and Assam.

"I am happy to share we are increasing financial guidance for capex this year from Rs 3,000 crore to Rs 4,000 crore. Much part of it this capex will be invested in financing our 3G footprint and strengthening our footprint in MP-CG (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh) where we acquired 900 Mhz spectrum," Reliance Communications chief executive for Consumer Business Gurdeep Singh told analysts today.

He said part of the investment will go in upgrading core network for 4G service, which the company may launch in couple of months from now.

Similar level of investment is expected to be made in coming years as the company will continue to focus on 3G and 4G services.

He said the company is seeing uptake of 3G service and device penetration in its market has reached to level where the company needs to invest for profitable growth.

RCom has also closed servicing 2G customers in five circles -- West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and Northeast areas as it failed to win back 900 Mhz. RCom lost 8.5 million 2G customers as result of ending the service in these areas.

The impact was visible on company's result in third quarter ended December 31. RCom had reported a 15 per cent decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 171 crore for the period compared with net profit of Rs 201 crore a year ago.

Total income also declined by 2.9 per cent to Rs 5,277 crore compared with Rs 5,435 crore last fiscal.

Singh said the roaming agreement with Vodafone is for 3G services and it provides network back to customer where they find 3G coverage gap.

"This (pact with Vodafone) is not a 2G ICR. It is 2G ICR for fall back to our 3G customers should they hit a black patch in the coverage within a circle much like anybody else. This is not a ICR that lets us acquire 2G subscribers from the network. We are a pure play 3G operator in these five circles," Singh said.

He said the company has added 386 sites for 3G across 186 towns in the circles where it closed 2G service.

Singh said Rs 5,383.84 crore paid by the company for spectrum liberalisation to government in 16 telecom circles was funded by proceed it received from Reliance Jio as well as from internal accruals.

Both the companies have signed a pact under which, RCom will trade CDMA grade spectrum in 800 MHz band in nine service areas where Jio doesn't have the radiowaves. In 17 circles, the two companies will share spectrum.

RCom has approached courts for approval for merging



telecom operator Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which operates under MTS brand merger, and expects to close the deal in time.

Talking about discussion with Aircel, Singh said both companies are still working out on area of convergence of both organisation.

Singh said discussion with Tillman Global Holdings LLC and TPG Asia are in advance stage for sale of its mobile tower. The deal was to be closed by January 15 but has been extended till month-end.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today asked Centre for release of assistance towards post-matric scholarship to Scheduled Caste students.

In a letter to Thawar Chand Gehlot, Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, he said, "I would request your personal intervention for early release of the claims of the state towards post-matric scholarship for SC students."



Patnaik said, the assistance released by the ministry towards post-matric scholarship to SC students has been grossly inadequate since 2014-15.

"This has created significant arrears receivable from the ministry and the progressive outstanding dues amount to Rs 121.17 crore till 2014-15," the Chief Minister said.

Such huge gap in receipt of Central assistance against the actual requirement was not only putting the socially and economically poor SC students to hardship, it also posed serious challenges to the state government in managing the grievances of hapless students, he said.

Noting his government attaches top priority to education of children belonging to weaker sections of the society, Patnaik said, to ensure their careers were not jeopardised, the state has incurred expenditure out of its own budget provisions of 2015-16 to meet the arrear claims of 2014-15.

"You will agree that outstanding receivable of Rs 121.17 crore is putting extra financial burden on the already stretched revenue resources of the state government," the Chief Minister said.

"Therefore, there is an urgent need of recouping this arrear amount by allocation from your ministry, to meet the requirement of the scholarship claims of the SC students for the current financial year, 2015-16," he added.
Femina Miss India finalist Rewati Chetri from Assam representing India at the World Miss University, 2016 pageant in China has reached the voting round and seeks the support to win the crown.

Through her Facebook post, Chetri, dubbed as the 'pride of Assam and the North East,' has appealed for support stating "It's you who made me Miss Popular at Miss India and so I am once again counting on each of you for this as well."



Rewati Chetri, also Miss Multimedia, in an email to PTI today said she was at number six till Saturday and suddenly due to rise of votes of Chinese, Bangalesdi and Guatemala contestants, currently she is trailing at number 13 out of 70 countries participants.

The grand finale is scheduled on January 27 and the fashion diva needs people's prayers and support in the form of online votes from multiple accounts, she appealed.

Chetri further said she displayed an Assamese Phoolam Jhapi (patterned bamboo headgear) and Gamoosa (scarf) at the 'Charity Market' of the World University Peace Corps Foundation, the organisers of 27th World Miss University, 2016.

Meanwhile, Rewati has made it to the Top 50 of Times Most Desirable Women, 2015 along with top Bollywood actresses Anushka Sharma and Kangkana Ranaut.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani flew into Italy today looking to reap the economic and political dividends from the lifting of international sanctions imposed over the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme.

Rouhani will also visit the Vatican and France on his first overseas trip since the nuclear deal came into force earlier this month, clearing the way for Iran to rebuild its relationship with the West.

The Iranian leader touched down in Rome accompanied by more than 100 ministers, officials and businessmen who are expected to help him clinch deals worth billions in trade and investment, topped by a major order for new Airbus planes.

He smiled broadly for the cameras at Italy's presidential palace before being ushered away for a working lunch with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, the first appointment in a five-day trip.

The fight against the Islamic State group, whose attacks on Paris forced Rouhani to delay a trip originally scheduled for November, and the war in Syria are expected to feature highly in diplomatic contacts during the visit.

Rouhani, 67 and a former academic and diplomat, is seen as a pragmatist who was elected in 2013 on a pledge to end sanctions and improve relations with the West.

He was scheduled to meet Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Monday evening and will be received by Pope Francis on Tuesday and by French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday.

"We have had friendly relations with Italy and France in the past and we want to continue our good relations with them," Rouhani told reporters before his departure on Monday from Mehrabad Airport.

He also revealed that "important contracts" were in the works with French car makers Peugeot and Renault, adding to a burgeoning list of deals being struck as European companies scramble to get back into a $400-billion (370-billion-euro) economy with the fourth biggest reserves of oil in the world and a consumer market of 80 million people.

National carrier Iran Air said on Sunday it would be buying 114 Airbus planes to modernise an ageing fleet that has struggled to stay in the air as a result of the impact of sanctions.

The deal, to be signed in Paris this week, underlines the huge economic stakes involved in Iran's re-opening, particularly for Europe's manufacturing and engineering sectors.

Iran's Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said the first Airbuses were earmarked for delivery by March and that Iran was in the market for a total of up to 500 planes.

Peugeot is tipped to forge a car assembly joint venture with Iran Khodro, reviving a partnership which generated Iranian sales of 473,000 units in its last year before the French company pulled out in 2012.
Iran will probably sign contracts with automakers Peugeot and Renault, President Hassan Rouhani said today as he headed to Europe seeking to capitalise on Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

"Important contracts will probably be signed on this trip including with Peugeot and Renault," Rouhani told reporters at Mehrabad Airport before leaving Tehran, according to state television's website.

The Monday-Wednesday tour takes place just over a week after the nuclear deal came into force, allowing the United States and the European Union to lift economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curbing its nuclear activities.

A large delegation of 100 political and economic leaders, including the ministers of oil, transport, industry and health will accompany the president.

"We need to modernise our aviation fleet and buy locomotives," the Iranian president said.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said yesterday Iran would buy 114 Airbus planes during the president's visit to Paris.

"This trip takes place ... At a historic moment" and "we should make best use of the post-nuclear- deal atmosphere for growth, development and youth employment," Rouhani added.

Iran needs annual foreign investment of USD 30-USD 50 billion to reach an eight percent growth target and cash in on sanctions relief, the president said last week.

After meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Rouhani will be in France on Wednesday to meet President Francois Hollande.

On the European tour, Iran is to "review and agree on two important documents" that will act as "roadmaps" for mid- and long-term relations with Italy and France, Rouhani said.

"We have had friendly relations with Italy and France in the past, and we want to continue our good relations with them," he said.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today said RSS, which did not take part in Independence struggle, is trying to "hijack" Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose as a Hindu nationalist leader.

"On the day of declassification of Netaji files, RSS said Subhash Bose was their leader. They claimed that he was a Hindu nationalist leader. They want to hijack him," Gogoi said at a press conference here.

Netaji, he said, was the most secular freedom fighter of the country and he had never endorsed religious fundamentalism.

"RSS also wants to say that Sardar Vallabhai Patel was a Hindu leader. But he was the man who had banned RSS for killing Gandhiji. We all know who killed Gandhiji. Nathuram Godse was a RSS member," Gogoi said.

He criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for attacking his predecessor Manmohan Singh.

"No Prime Minister has attacked his predecessor as has Modi. I always appreciated Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji and said that I got more funds during his tenure than my predecessor.

"Personally Modi and I have best of relations but ideologically I am dead against him," Gogoi said.

About the coming Assembly polls in Assam, Gogoi said both BJP and AIUDF are indulging in communal campaigning to gain votes on the basis of religion.

The state government, he said, will issue a "white paper" on 15 years of Congress rule in Assam, on February 7.
Russia's Defence Ministry says it has no plans to create another air base in Syria.

The ministry's statement today follows media reports claiming that Russia could be preparing to set up another base in Qamishli in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey.

The ministry's spokesman, Maj-Gen Igor Konashenkov, said that the military has no intention to set up any additional air bases or advance airfields in Syria.

Russian warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 combat missions since Moscow launched its air campaign in Syria on September 30.

The Russian warplanes are based at Hemeimeem air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia.

The Russian air blitz has helped Syrian President Bashar Assad's army to launch offensives and seize some key areas from the opposition in recent weeks.
Author Salman Rushdie helped the 2015 Booker Prize winning writer Marlon James liberate his voice as a writer and "exploded" his perceptions on writing, the Jamaican novelist said today.

"Rushdie's 'Shame' changed everything. It was the book that changed my narrow perception of how to write a novel. It exploded what I considered to be the rules of writing fiction," James said on the sidelines of the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival here.

The author said writings by the British Indian novelist Rushdie, who had won a Booker for his "Midnight's Children" helped him liberate his writerly voice, which he claimed had been straight-jacketed through reading Victorian literature like "Middlemarch" while growing up.

"Reading Salman liberated my voice as a writer in the same way as Kafka and Marquez liberated Salman's rise," the 45 year-old author who has published three novels said.

On his maiden visit to India, James had in a Facebook post ranted about problems he encountered in the airport.

However, the author soon put his initial hiccups away and said he loved the streets of Jaipur.

"I think a lot of people think I am judging a country by its airport, and I am like you haven't seen my country's airport. There are crappy airports everywhere. In fact I have been to beautiful airports in horrible cities! Its been great, wonderful.

"I absolutely love Jaipur.I went to the Wind palace (Hawa Mahal) yesterday, it was incredible. And just being on those streets is amazing. I might do some shopping today.
Former Bangladeshi prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia was today booked for treason over her alleged "slanderous comments" concerning martyrs of the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, with a court here summoning her to appear before it.

"The case has been filed against her at the chief metropolitan magistrate's court (Dhaka) this morning along with prayers seeking her arrest," a court official told PTI.

After a brief hearing, the court summoned her to appear before it in person.

"The court summoned her (Zia)... She has been asked to appear by March 3 to face the sedition charge for her recent slanderous comments over the 1971 liberation war martyrs number," another official said.

Speaking at a discussion on December 21 last year, 70-year-old Zia had "expressed doubts" about the casualty figures of the 1971 liberation war.

"There are controversies over how many were martyred in the Liberation War. There are also many books and documents on the controversies," she had said.

Zia's BNP is a crucial ally of fundamentalist Jamaat-e- Islami, which was opposed to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan.

The ruling Awami League, 1971 veterans and members of the martyred families had sharply reacted to Zia's comments with some of them even calling her as the "agent of Pakistan".

Today's development came a day after the home ministry gave its clearance to move the sedition case against the ex-premier.

Supreme Court lawyer Mamtaz Uddin Ahmed Mehedi on December 27 had sought Zia be tried for sedition in the court under section 123 (A) of the country's Penal Code.

The magistrate at that time ordered a police investigation into the allegation and asked the petitioner to obtain government clearance to move the sedition case as required by the law.

The Section 123 (A) suggests one to be "punished with rigorous imprisonment which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine" for "condemnation of the creation of the State (Bangladesh) and advocacy of abolition of its sovereignty".

BNP leader and senior lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain on Sunday claimed that "there is no element of sedition in the (Zia's) statement".

According to official figures, about three million people were killed during the nine-month long war against Pakistan.

The latest case could compound Zia's legal problems as she is aready facing trial in two graft cases.
The Bombay High Court today asked the Central and Western Railways to consider setting up a special team for providing medical assistance to accident victims in view of rise in the number of mishaps on tracks.

This would go a long way in providing immediate help to the victims, said the bench of Justices V M Kanade and Revati Mohite-Dere.

The Union Government and the Railways may make a provision for such a special team in the budget, court said.

The HC was hearing a PIL filed by the activist Samir Zaveri, who has lost both the legs in a railway accident, on the issue of safety of suburban train passengers in Mumbai.

The HC suggested the government should tie up with private hospitals located near the stations so that injured persons can be moved there and given treatment in the 'golden hour' (the first one hour after the injury).

However, Zaveri said private hospitals often don't admit victims of railway accidents for reasons best known to them.

Counsel for the Railways, Suresh Kumar, said enough steps had been taken to ensure safety during the train travel and on the tracks but still the accidents occurred. He also submitted a report about measures taken to curb accidents.

To a question whether painkillers are given to accident victims immediately, Kumar said first aid boxes are available with all the station masters.

The Railways were planning to set up emergency medical rooms at those stations where more than 100 accidents have occurred, the lawyer said.

To begin with, ten such emergency medical rooms would be established at stations including Bandra, Andheri and Borivali in the city.

The Railway authorities submitted that certain measures



had been taken, such as construction of foot-over bridges and escalators, and barricades between the tracks.

Petitioner's lawyer Pradeep Havnur said the Railways should constantly update its website to provide details of accident victims so that relatives of the victims get the information quickly.

The court said a separate division for updating the website should be set up to help the accident victims.

The Railways lawyer also informed that emergency medical services (a doctor and ambulance) are provided up to Virar on western line as of now (the local service is up to Dahanu, beyond Virar).

The hearing was adjourned for four weeks as the HC wanted to study the report submitted by the Railways on preventive steps.

The bench had earlier asked the court commissioners to make surprise visits to the stations to check the facilities and submit a report. It too was submitted today.
A hungry shark leapt three metres onto a fishing boat off the United Arab Emirates looking for prey only to end up as catch of the day.

The predator, around two metres (six foot) in length, took fishermen by surprise when it crashed onto on their deck yesterday, 35 nautical miles off the coast of Fujairah, local newspapers said.

"In seconds, it was in the middle of the boat after it hit one of the boat barriers," said sailor Hamza al-Sharaa, 37, quoted in The National newspaper.

Sharaa said the shark jumped three metres out of the water to get onto the boat.

He said the shark died after fishermen sprayed it with fresh water and bashed it on the nose with a wooden bat.

In a video posted online by Ittihad daily, fishermen pointed to the needle-like teeth of the bloodied shark as they paraded their catch.

Fishermen in Fujairah, on the Gulf of Oman, had two similar incidents last year, but with smaller sharks.

Khalifa Massoud of the Fujairah fishermen's association told The National that yesterday's catch is to mummified and put on display at the local maritime museum.
A magistrate's court here today extended till February 8 the judicial custody of former media baron Peter Mukerjea, one of the accused in the Sheena Bora murder case.

Mukerjea (59), lodged in Arthur Road jail here, was produced before magistrate R V Adone after his earlier judicial remand expired.

"His judicial custody is extended till February 8," said Adone.

The magistrate also rejected an application moved by Mukerjea seeking his production before a special CBI court on January 30 which will hear his bail application.

The former media magnate was arrested on November 19 last year for his alleged role in the murder conspiracy. He was in the CBI custody for two weeks.

Mukerjea's wife Indrani is the prime accused in the 2012 murder of her daughter, Sheena (24) from previous relationship, along with her ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai.

Sheena was allegedly strangled in a car in April 2012 in Mumbai and her body was later burnt and dumped in a forest in adjoining Raigad district.

In its charge sheet filed against Indrani, Khanna and Rai, the CBI had said that the murder could be a fallout of certain financial transactions involving Sheena.
A police station in-charge who recently won the best SHO award was shifted to the police line after he didn't register an FIR in an alleged case of gang-rape and loot.

Kanpur SSP Shalabh Mathur today said Chakeri police station in-charge Rajiv Dwivedi was "line-attached" last night for "carelessness" even as the victim's husband claimed he was asked to "come tomorrow (to file the case) as today (Sunday) is a holiday."



The victim's husband, a labourer, said he had gone to Chakeri police station to file an FIR after five dacoits barged into his dwelling yesterday in Kanpur Dehat's Saniganva area and raped his wife, 38, and looted Rs 30,000 and jewellery.

The complainant claimed that at the police station he was asked to "come tomorrow (to file the case) as today (Sunday) is a holiday."



He then approached the senior police officials following which an FIR was registered.

SSP Mathur said a probe team was constituted and the police station in-charge Dwivedi was line-attached last night.

He said the victim has been sent for a medical examination today.

Dwivedi was given the best SHO award in the city about six months ago, police sources said.
With over 2.1 million followers and more than 21.8k tweets on Twitter, it is ususual for British writer and actor Stephen Fry to describe social media as "dispiriting, upsetting and annoying."



"It is dispiriting, upsetting and annoying to be not able to have a discussion on hot button issues without provoking a hornet's nest within social media," Fry said at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival.

According to the 58-year-old writer, arguments and debates on social media often take an ugly turn making it difficult to have a discussion on important issues such as gender, politics and national politics.

"In social media we have these awful bruising encounters when it is just impossible at any level to talk about gender politics, national politics, nationalist politics...

"Maybe we need to go back to a more civilized period in which people can sit together and talk in a symposium form rather than throwing out darts from the comfort of their mobile phones or computers," Fry said.

The comedian said people tend to forget the importance of a comic vision or a comic mode.

Stating that the name twitter itself implied something "inconsequential and trivial," he said, "All these things are ways of not taking yourself too seriously. We tend to forget the importance of a comic vision or a comic mode."



In another surprising revelation, Fry said he hated the currently raging phenomenon of clicking selfies and that he would turn down any request to take one.

"I hate selfies. I am happy to sign things because atleast I can look in your eyes and have a conversation," he said.

The presenter who has penned three volumes of his memoir,



'The Fry Chronicles' said that he was "always fascinated" by casting himself as the hero of his life.

Fry, whose brazenly honest memoir talks about his unstable youth and erstwhile cocaine addiction, said that he chose to write about himself for that would spare his parents any such embarrassment.

"For me writing is an act of expiation and apology to my family for having gone to prison when I was 17 years old and embarrassing them in every possible way you can embarrass parents, who were the most decent kind.

"In writing my book, I didn't want to embarrass them further so I kind of felt that the only person whom I can be brutally honest in writing is myself. Everybody else didn't deserve to have their life opened up," he said.

Fry also spoke on his friendship and long association with fellow actor Hugh Laurie, with whom he "fell in love in a comical sort of way".

The comedian also shared nuggets of delightful information like how J K Rowling had made it a point to use the phrase "Harry pocketed it" in almost all the books of her Harry Potter series specifically after Fry complained that he was having trouble pronouncing it.

Fry claimed to be "the last man alive" who knew the reason why the late Douglas Adams's book "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" contained a central joke: "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." The mention had mystified literary fans for a long time. "It is more about the journey of discovery," Fry said.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice, spearheading the agitation over the suicide of dalit student Rohith Vemula, today rejected the appointment of Vipin Srivastava as interim Vice-Chancellor of the Hyderabad University.

"It is to bring to your notice again that in 2007, Vipin Srivastava was main accused in the yet another institutional murder of Senthil Kumar, a dalit research scholar in the Department of Physics," the JAC said in a release today.

Facing students' protest over Vemula's suicide, V-C Appa Rao Podile proceeded on leave yesterday, saying he was "advised to be little away from campus" to break the current "impasse".

"The Vice-Chancellor will be on a leave. In the absence of the Vice-Chancellor, Vipin Srivastava, the senior most professor, shall perform the duties of the Vice-Chancellor wef 24-01-2016," the Hyderabad Central University said on its website.

The JAC claimed that faculty members are resigning from three administrative post in protest.

The JAC demanded that union HRD minister Smriti Irani be sacked from her post and a "Rohit Act" be enacted to give legislative protection to students belonging to marginalised community in the institutions of higher education.

The JAC said it will call for a bandh in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh if their demands are not met.

The students have been protesting after a dalit research scholar, Rohith Vemula, had committed suicide on the University campus.

(REOPENS BOM 7)



Meanwhile, NSUI National President Roji M John was among those who visited the HCU campus and expressed solidarity with the protesting students.

NSUI activists conducted a one-day hunger strike in several state capitals today, he told
At least 26 people were killed today in three suicide attacks in the far north of Cameroon, a region often targeted by Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamist group, according to a police toll.

The attacks targeted the local market in Bodo, near the frontier with Nigeria in one of the deadliest incidents to hit the region.

"An initial toll shows 29 dead and around 30 injured," a police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP, saying the toll included the three suicide bombers.

Since 2013, nearly 1,200 people have died in Boko Haram attacks in Cameroon's far north, according to a toll given this month by Communications Minister Issa Chiroma Bakary.

Up until then, when Cameroon bolstered its military presence along the border with Nigeria, Boko Haram fighters had slipped back and forth across the frontier, often using the remote north of Cameroon as a rear base and acquiring arms, vehicles and supplies there.

Cameroon since has ordered its army to go on the offensive, joining troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Benin in a regional coalition against Boko Haram.

The region was attacked just last week, when four worshippers were killed in a suicide bombing at a village mosque.

The Nigeria-based jihadists have killed at least 17,000 people and made more than 2.6 million others homeless since their six-year campaign began.
Demanding "justice" for Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula who hanged himself on Hyderabad University campus last week, students of JNU and DU today staged hunger strikes and conducted peaceful marches across Delhi.

While the students from JNU who began their indefinite hunger strike yesterday, continued to raise their demands of resignations of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and the varsity Vice Chancellor, those in DU staged a one-day hunger strike.

The students were joined by the protesters from Youth Indian Congress (IYC), congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) and left-backed All India Students Association (AISA).

"We today conducted a protest march from Vishvidyalya metro station to Delhi University campus in solidarity with the ongoing nationwide protests against the state motivated murder of Rohith," said IYC spokesperson Amrish Ranjan Pandey.

The AISA which has been leading the protests over the issue in the national capital said the issue demands outrage beyond token protests.

26-year-old Vemula Rohit, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Central University's hostel room on January 17.

He was among the 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 student 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.

The issue also took a political turn with allegations that the extreme action was a result of discrimination against Dalit students after Dattatreya had written a letter to Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani seeking action against their "anti-national acts".

In a bid to defuse the raging controversy, the Centre had last week decided to set up a judicial commission to go into the dalit student's suicide in Hyderabad University, which announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 8 lakh to his family but protests continued.

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence and expressed grief over the death of Vemula, the students are demanding the removal of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and the Vice Chancellor.
Taiwan's coastguard said today that one of its vessels used water cannon this month to drive off a Vietnamese fishing boat near disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Two Vietnamese fishing boats were sighted on January 6 some 2.5 nautical miles (around 4,600 metres) off Taiping Island, an Taiwan-administered islet in the Spratlys, the coastguard said in a statement.

The Spratly islands are also claimed in part or in whole by Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

The two Taiwanese coastguard boats, which have been deployed there since December to replace smaller vessels, scrambled to drive off the Vietnamese boats.

One left while the second refused and instead attempted to zigzag. One coastguard vessel opened fire with water cannon because of fears it might be rammed, the statement said.

While denying accusations in Vietnamese media that Taiwanese coastguards had enforced the law outside their territorial waters, the coastguard tried to keep the event low-profile.

"That was a regular law-enforcement practise in a sensitive area," one coastguard official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

China is seen by other claimants as the biggest threat in the South China Sea.

The Philippines and Vietnam have complained that China is becoming increasingly aggressive in its actions in the area - such as harassing fishermen - and also through bullying diplomatic tactics.

As part of efforts to strengthen defence capabilities, Taiwan late last year inaugurated a solar-powered lighthouse, an expanded airstrip and a pier on Taiping Island.

It serves as the home port of the 100-tonne coastguard cutters and could accommodate 3,000-tonne naval frigates.
Union Minister Maneka Gandhi has proposed tax rebates for single married women with children in order to provide them better financial security.

"A proposal in his regard has been sent to the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister," the Women and Child Development Minister told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Single married women include women who are either separated, divorced or widowed. There are over four crore such women in the country comprising around 3 per cent of the total population.

"This is to reduce the financial dependency of single married women with children so that they can take better care of them," a senior officer in the ministry said.

The number of such women is considerably large since many women are abandoned, deserted or unmarried which may not be reflected in the census records as they are not officially divorced or separated, the officer said.

The Ministry has also proposed inclusion of spouse's name in the death certificate so that women can claim entitlement after the death of their husbands.

"We are also working with the office of Registrar General of India as well as the state governments to ensure that the name of the woman is compulsorily mentioned in the death certificate of husband," the official said.

"This will ensure that a widow is facilitated in getting all entitlements after the death of her husband," he said.

The Ministry has also approved construction of a widow home, which will be the largest in the country, in Vrindavan. It will have a capacity to house 1000 women.
Staffing firm TeamLease Services has fixed Rs 785-850 per share as the price band for its initial public offer (IPO) which will hit the capital market on February 2.

The IPO, which closes on February 4, would be made through a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 150 crore and an offer for sale of up to 32.2 lakh equity shares, the company said in a public announcement.

The existing investors include Gaja Capital, India Advantage, HR Offshoring Ventures and GPE (India).

A total of 10,000 shares have been reserved for the company's employees in the public issue.

The company is expected to garner Rs 423 crore at the upper end of the price band.

The proceeds of the IPO will be used for acquisitions and other strategic initiatives, upgradation of the existing IT infrastructure, working capital requirements and other general corporate purposes.

The company, which had filed draft papers with Sebi in September, for the proposed public offer, had received the regulator's approval last month.

TeamLease Services, which was established in 2002 with four offices, 20 clients and 40 employees, is now India's largest and foremost people supply chain company with eight regional offices and 1,200 employees, according to the company's website.

Shares of the company are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE. The issue is being managed by IDFC Securities, ICICI Securities and Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt.

As of September 2015, the company's total revenues stood at Rs 1,215.8 crore and profit after tax was at Rs 10.97 crore.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the Republic Day celebrations here tomorrow with foot patrolling and mobile squads of police on the guard in and around the city.

Security was beefed up at important government offices and vital installations, while the Assam Rifles Ground, where the main function would be held, was swept by bomb disposal squad, district SP Lalhuliana Fanai said.

Deputy Inspector General of Police (Range) L T Hrangchal said that though there was no specific threat report, all district SPs were instructed to step up vigil.

"We also instructed policemen deployed in border areas to intensify patrol in sensitive areas," Hrangchal said.

Security was also beefed up at the Lengpui airport near Aizawl and no tickets for entering the terminal building were issued to ensure no one except the passengers and airport officials get access inside the premises.
Trinamool Congress hit back at BJP president Amit Shah's stinging criticism of it and asked him to first look into various corruption charges against the saffron party's government at the Centre.

"They (BJP) should not talk about corruption. First they should look into the corruption charges against their own government at Centre," TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said and claimed that BJP will not be able to ensure any development in Bengal as it is losing "each and every" election since last year.

"We have taken action in the chit fund scam and are looking into all chit fund cases since 1980. About the (charge of) state moving backwards, they (BJP) will only see that as their own party is moving backwards after the defeat in Delhi and Bihar polls," Chatterjee said reacting to Shah's chrages at a rally in Howrah.

"How will he (Shah) see industry in Bengal? The party he belongs to does not have any base in the state. So it is not possible for him to see the industrial growth of Bengal," Chatterjee said.

Shah targeted Mamata Banerjee government today saying that only chit fund industry is flourishing in West Bengal and the state was turning into a safe haven for anti-national elements and fake currency racket during TMC rule.
Former Bangladeshi prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia was today booked for treason over her alleged "slanderous comments" concerning martyrs of the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, with a court here summoning her to appear before it.

"The case has been filed against her at the chief metropolitan magistrate's court (Dhaka) this morning along with prayers seeking her arrest," a court official told PTI.

After a brief hearing, the court summoned her to appear before it in person.

"The court summoned her (Zia)... She has been asked to appear by March 3 to face the sedition charge for her recent slanderous comments over the 1971 liberation war martyrs number," another official said.

Speaking at a discussion on December 21 last year, 70-year-old Zia had "expressed doubts" about the casualty figures of the 1971 liberation war.

"There are controversies over how many were martyred in the Liberation War. There are also many books and documents on the controversies," she had said.

Zia's BNP is a crucial ally of fundamentalist Jamaat-e- Islami, which was opposed to Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan.

The ruling Awami League, 1971 veterans and members of the martyred families had sharply reacted to Zia's comments with some of them even calling her as the "agent of Pakistan".

Today's development came a day after the Home Ministry gave its clearance to move the sedition case against the ex-premier.

Supreme Court lawyer Mamtaz Uddin Ahmed Mehedi on December 27 had sought Zia be tried for sedition in the court under section 123 (A) of the country's Penal Code.

The magistrate at that time ordered a police investigation into the allegation and asked the petitioner to obtain government clearance to move the sedition case as required by the law.

The Section 123 (A) suggests one to be "punished with rigorous imprisonment which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine" for "condemnation of the creation of the State (Bangladesh) and advocacy of abolition of its sovereignty".

BNP leader and senior lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain yesterday claimed that "there is no element of sedition in the (Zia's) statement".

According to official figures, about three million people were killed during the nine-month long war against Pakistan.

The latest case could compound Zia's legal problems as she is aready facing trial in two graft cases.
At least 23 people, most of them from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, were killed by a truck suicide bomber in Syria's Aleppo city today, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 fighters from the group and four civilians were killed in the blast in the Sukari district of the city.

The attack hit an Ahrar al-Sham checkpoint at the entrance to a security complex belonging to the group.

The Observatory said several prisoners being held by Ahrar al-Sham at a facility in the complex were also believed to have been killed, but it had no immediate toll.

The blast destroyed three buildings, and people were still missing under the rubble, the monitor added.

It was unclear who was responsible for the blast, but Ahrar al-Sham has been targeted by assassinations in the past.

In September 2014, most of its top leadership was wiped out in a devastating explosion at its headquarters in Idlib province that killed nearly 50 people.

And more recently, the group has seen several of its commanders among a string of Islamist rebels killed in mysterious targeted killings.

The attacks have not been claimed, and suspicion has fallen on either the regime or the Islamic State group, which considers all forces that have not pledged allegiance to it to be rivals.

Ahrar al-Sham is one of Syria's most powerful rebel groups, and is a leading member of the Army of Conquest alliance that controls Idlib province along with Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
Two al Qaeda operatives, believed to be members of its sleeper cell and motivating youths to join the terror group, were arrested from the steel city today on the eve of Republic Day.

East Singhbhum district police arrested Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu from Dhatkidih, while Nasim Akhtar alias Raju was nabbed from Road No 6, Zakirnagar, Old Purulia Road, Senior Superintendent of Police Anoop T Mathew told newsmen here.

The two are members of al Qaeda's sleeper cell and motivate youths of the steel city as well as other parts of Jharkhand to join and expand the organisation, he said.

The police picked up 35-year-old Masood following inputs provided by Jamshedpur-based Abdul Sami, who was arrested by Delhi Police special cell from Mewat in Haryana last week.

Masood confessed that he had been linked with the terrorist group since 2003 after he was motivated to join it by Abdul Rehman Katki, who had been arrested by Delhi Police from Cuttack in December last year.

He told the police that he had first met Rehman, a frequent visitor to the steel city, at the Jama Masjid at Sakchi in 2003 and was influenced by him to join the terrorist organisation.

Masood had visited Saudi Arab in 2011 and met Sami on his return and convinced him (Sami) to join the group. He also played a crucial role in sending Sami to Pakistan for terrorist training, Mathew said.

Masood, he said, had also confessed to the police that he had one more operative in his cell but claimed knew him only by face and that he too had received terrorist training in Pakistan.

Search is on for the operative, Mathew added.
Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) personnel have arrested two persons allegedly involved in narcotics smuggling from Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur district and seized 15 kg of charas from them.

Pappu and Maksood were arrested yesterday near pillar number 572 on Indo-Nepal border when they were entering Indian territory, said Janardan Prasad Mishra, SSB Deputy Commandant.

The seized contraband is worth about Rs 1.75 crore in the international market, he said.

They have been handed over to the police, which is probing their links, he added.
Two persons riding a motorcycle were crushed to death by a speeding truck near Kalisthan under Islampur police station of Bihar's Nalanda district today, a police officer said.

The deceased were identified as Arun Kumar, an engineer of the Railways, who was on way to Islampur railway station with his nephew Binod Kumar on a motorcycle, when their motorcycle collided with a speeding truck at Kalisthan resulting in death of the two, Deputy Superintendent of Police Hilsa Parbinder Bharti said.

Both uncle and nephew died on the spot, the DSP said.

Angry over the incident, villagers blocked the road for some time.

The bodies have been sent to Biharsharif Sadar Hospital for post-mortem, the DSP said.
Two officials of Irrigation and Public Health Department have been arrested here in connection with alleged supply of contaminated water which reportedly led to outbreak of jaundice here and six more are under the scanner.

A Junior engineer and a Supervisor of the IPH department were arrested from their residences by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on a complaint filed by Tikender Panwar, Deputy Mayor of Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC), police said.

Both the officials were allegedlyfiling forged reports about the cleanliness of the water to their higher authorities, police said.

The matter came into focus after the outbreak of jaundice with about 900 cases being reported so far. A 32-year-old lady has died due to the disease.

Acting on the complaint of Deputy Mayor, the Police registered a case under section 269,270,277, 336 of the Indian Penal Code and section clause 43, 44 of the Pollution control act.

Panwar, in his complaint, alleged that proper water treatment procedure was not being followed at the plant in Malyana, which led to outbreak of the disease.

The Deputy Mayor had not named any person, but a copy of self inspection report was attached to the complaint.

As per the report, during inspection they found that muck was lying untreated at the plant, less amount of bleaching powder was being used, there was no power generator backup available, there was just one disposal chamber available and even the vehicles could not reach the plant, police said.

Police did not rule out more arrests, saying six more persons were under police scanner.

A team of forensic experts had already collected samples from the plant.

However, the police hasnot been able to nab the contractor of the Sewerage treatment plant.
The UK government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have pledged 3 billion pounds over the next five years to "eradicate" malaria.

UK Chancellor George Osborne and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced the new funding plan at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) today.

The government will contribute 500 million pounds per year from its foreign aid budget for the next five years, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation adding around USD 200 million annually.

The 3 billion pounds total will be used for the World Health Organisation's goal of reducing malaria deaths by 90 per cent by 2030.

"We are optimistic that in our lifetimes we can eradicate malaria and other deadly tropical diseases, and confront emerging threats, making the world a safer place for all," Osborne and Gates wrote in a joint article in 'The Times'.

"When it comes to human tragedy, no creature comes close to the devastation caused by the mosquito. We both believe that a malaria-free world has to be one of the highest global health priorities," they say.

The money will go into the Ross Fund, named after Sir Ronald Ross, the British scientist who won a Nobel Prize in 1902 for proving that mosquitoes transmitted malaria.

Osborne and Gates, who have both just returned from Davos after attending the World Economic Forum, warn that the disease is closely linked to poverty.

They say: "In the world's poorest places, malaria is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. It costs Africa, where poverty is already high, billions of pounds each year in lost productivity, and it accounts for up to 40 per cent of public health expenditure in high-burden countries.

"The world has cut the number of malaria deaths in half in the past 15 years. We are confident that this is a war we can win. With its world-class universities, pharmaceutical companies and strong support at the national level, the UK leads innovation to improve the health and wellbeing of millions."



There were 438,000 malaria deaths in 2015, most of them of children aged under five, and the majority of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.

Efforts to control the disease have made significant progress in the last 15 years, but are threatened by the spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs and to insecticide, the WHO said in its 'World Malaria Report' 2015.
The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution to establish a political mission to monitor and verify a future cease-fire in Colombia that would end Latin America's longest-running guerrilla conflict.

The resolution welcomes the progress in negotiations between Colombia's government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and notes their joint request last week for a UN monitoring mission.

In a rare move for the often-divided council, all 15 members co-sponsored the resolution yesterday.

The request sent a strong signal that a March 23 deadline to wrap up peace talks could be within reach.

"Finally, our continent will have life without conflict," the country's foreign minister Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar told reporters. She said her country hopes to meet the March deadline.

The resolution establishes a political mission for 12 months, and the council can consider an extension if asked by the two parties.

The mission will be made up of unarmed observers from Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Decades of fighting between guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the armed forces has left more than 220,000 dead, some 40,000 disappeared and over 5 million driven from their homes.

"It isn't common for a country to refer itself to the council. But it's exactly the kind of role the United Nations should be playing" in conflict resolution, British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said. "I hope today will mark the start of the final stage of peace talks."



The resolution notes that the Colombian government and the FARC foresee a final peace agreement including "a tripartite mechanism", comprising the government, FARC and an "international component", to monitor a cessation of hostilities and the laying down of arms.

It recognises that the two sides have asked the UN to participate as the "international component."



The resolution asks UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to present detailed recommendations on the political mission's size and operation to the council for its approval within 30 days of a cease-fire.

US Ambassador Samantha Power warned, however, that plenty of work lies ahead, including the removal of land mines and the re-integration of fighters into the population. The UN says that globally, Colombia has the second-highest number of new victims of mines registered each year.

Though nominally Marxist at its founding, the FARC's ideology has never been well defined. It has sought to make the conservative oligarchy share power and prioritised land reform in a country where more than 5 million people have been forcibly displaced, mostly by far-right militias in the service of ranchers, businessmen and drug traffickers.
UN-sponsored Syrian peace talks scheduled to start today will now begin here on Friday and will likely continue over six months, the UN said today.

"There have been different, very different opinions and positions regarding the list of invitations. That has been the issue, the stalemate, so far," said the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

"And the date in which we are aiming at having the beginning of the Intra-Syrian talks is 29th of January," he said of the peace talks that will be held in the UN's European headquarters in Geneva.

The UN-sponsored talks, earlier scheduled to start today were re-scheduled after disagreements among the 17-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) on who should represent the Syrian opposition.

The ISSG includes countries like the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and China.

The talks are structured as "proximity talks" spread over six months, on a "staggered, chronological, proximity approach".

The Security Council had passed a resolution in December last year that supports international efforts to seek a political solution in Syria and recognised the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) as the main body dealing with the Syria peace process. The resolution also calls for a ceasefire between the regime and its opposition in Syria in six months.

The talks will aim at a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition - objectives of which include credible, inclusive governance within six months, scheduling the drafting of a new Constitution and free and fair elections within 18 months of drafting the Constitution. But the immediate focus of the talks would be a broad ceasefire.

"However, the first priority will be the focus of the talks of what most Syrians, if not all, want to hear - the possibility of a broad ceasefire and the possibility of stopping the threat of IS. And, therefore, thanks to the broad ceasefire, an increase in humanitarian aid," de Mistura said.

Though al-Nusra and IS (Islamic State) - two deadly groups unleashing terror in Syria - will not be a part of the talks, "but there are plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place" if a ceasefire is actually agreed upon, the UN envoy for Syria said.

The first part of the talks will last for two or three weeks after which a date for the next round of talks will be decided. The UN official said that he will start issuing invitations for the talks tomorrow but refused to comment on the specifics of the invitations - the issue has been a major point of contention, particularly, between the US and Russia.

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The deadly civil war in Syria, now in its fifth year, has had catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

The UNHCR has recorded 4.5 million registered Syrian refugees including 2.1 million Syrians in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, 1.9 million Syrians registered by Turkey, and more than 26,700 Syrian refugees registered in North Africa.

Additionally, the war has internally displaced 7.6 million people within the boundaries of their beleaguered homeland.

The protracted crisis in the West Asian nation has been a major cause for pushing up global forced displacement numbers to exceed 60 million last year - the largest movement of people seen since World War II.

Though the lion's share of the refugee burden is being shared by the neighbouring countries of Syria, many refugees have chosen to undertake perilous journeys in unseaworthy boats to reach European shores through Greece and Italy sparking furious political debates in the continent.
Undivided Madhya Pradesh's first Director General of Police (DGP), B P Dube passed away here today after a brief illness, family sources said.

He was 91.

The retired IPS officer of 1950 batch was the first DGP of undivided Madhya Pradesh when the post was created for the first time, Madhya Pradesh DGP Surendra Singh told PTI.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

Dube was admitted to a private hospital after suffering heart related ailment and breathed his last this morning.

His last rites will be performed later in the day as per the police protocol.

Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000.
Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik was admitted to a hospital here last night after he complained of dizziness and anxiety.

Naik, 82, felt uneasy as his blood sugar level had fallen. He was admitted to Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science, official sources said today.

He is under observation and is likely to be discharged this afternoon after some tests, sources added.
After months of ferocious fighting, Afghan army units battling the Taliban in southern Helmand province are facing major restructuring and leadership changes, with several key commanders being replaced, a US military official said today.

Helmand has been a fierce battleground since last fall, with fighting taking place in 10 districts. At times, the insurgents have laid siege on army bases and threatened to overrun large chunks of territory. Local officials have called for help from central authorities and complained publicly over corruption that includes syphoning off salaries, food, fuel and equipment.

US Army Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, the head of public affairs for the US-NATO mission, told The Associated Press that the Afghan army corps in Helmand is now being "rebuilt" and that senior officers are being replaced.

The reasons for the changes in the Afghan army's 215 Maiwand Corps "are a combination of incompetence, corruption and ineffectiveness," Shoffner said. The corps' commander has been replaced, along with "some brigade commanders and some key corps staff up to full colonel level," he said.

Helmand is a strategic region for the Taliban, as it as it shares a border of more than 250 kilometers with Pakistan.

It grows large quantities of opium, used to produce most of the world's heroin. The harvest is worth up to USD 3 billion a year, and helps fund the insurgency.

The Afghan Defense Ministry confirmed the changes in Helmand. It said veteran army General Moheen Faqiri was appointed to lead the corps and took over two months ago.

General Dawlat Waziri, the ministry's spokesman, said brigade commanders have also been rotated out and replaced. "Soon, other army units will have new commanders there," Waziri said.

In October, a meeting of the National Security Council discussed the worsening situation on the ground. In the presence of President Ashraf Ghani and US Army General John F Campbell, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the NSC heard that Afghan security forces were badly led, poorly equipped and in the previous three months had suffered 900 casualties, including 300 dead.

Minutes of the October 29 meeting, obtained by the AP, show that Helmand was described by the former head of the intelligence agency, Rahmatullah Nabil, as "the biggest recruiting pool for the Taliban" and the insurgents' "primary source of revenue" from poppy for heroin and marble smuggling.

Another concern is the Afghan police who are fighting on the front-lines across Helmand, often without the equipment and backup of the army, which means casualties are higher.
Syria's leading opposition coalition is to decide tomorrow whether to attend peace talks in Geneva, following a tense meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, a member said today.

The member of the so-called High Negotiations Committee said Kerry applied "pressure" during a weekend meeting in Saudi Arabia, warning the opposition risked "losing friends" if they failed to attend the talks.

Fuad Aliko said the Committee would meet Tuesday to make a final decision on whether to attend the Geneva talks.

The Saturday meeting with Kerry was "neither comfortable, nor positive", said Aliko, a member of the Committee's designated delegation for the talks.

Kerry told the Committee's chief Riad Hijab that they risked "losing friends", Aliko said.

"This talk means a halt to political and military support to the opposition," he added.

Syria's warring parties were scheduled to begin the lates round of talks aimed at ending the country's conflict on Monday in Geneva.

But they have been delayed at least in part by a dispute over who will represent the opposition.

The High Negotiations Committee, a coalition of opposition bodies formed last year in Riyadh, insists it should send a sole opposition delegation to the talks.

But the Committee excludes Syria's main Kurdish force and other opposition figures, and Russia has branded some of its components as "terrorist" organisations.

Moscow reportedly wants to see excluded members allowed to participate in the talks either as part of the Committee's delegation or in a second opposition delegation.

But the Committee has roundly rejected either option and threatened to boycott the talks altogether if other opposition figures are included.

Aliko said Kerry applied "pressure" during the Saturday talks, though he stopped short of saying the US diplomat had used threats.

"He tried with all his efforts to insist on the necessity of us attending, saying we'd be able to do whatever we want there, but he was not able to reassure us that we are going into negotiations, rather than nothing more than a dialogue," he said.

"We want negotiations that revolve around a political transition," Aliko said.

The Geneva talks have also been held up by a dispute about some of the members of the negotiating team chosen by the Committee.

The Committee has selected Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist rebel group Army of Islam as its chief negotiator, drawing the ire of some of its other members.

Russia said last week it continues to consider the Army of Islam a "terrorist" organisation.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is expected to hold a press conference in Geneva later on Monday to discuss preparations for the talks.
The US Supreme Court is rejecting a Pennsylvania inmate's appeal to consider banning the death penalty across the United States.

The justices did not comment today in turning away a challenge from death row inmate Shonda Walter.

Walter's appeal plays off Justice Stephen Breyer's call in an impassioned dissent in June to re-evaluate the death penalty in light of problems involving its imposition and use. Breyer renewed his plea last week when he was the lone justice willing to give a last-minute reprieve to an Alabama death row inmate who was later put to death.
US' Rice University is set to offer a post-doctoral fellowship in Jain Studies in a bid to enhance the global understanding of Jainism as a religion and culture.

The Jain Society and the Rice University here signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a post-doctoral fellowship in Jain studies.

The MoU signed at a ceremony held at the Jain Society of Houston last week stated that USD 80,000 had been given to the university's TT and WF Chao Center for Asian Studies to establish Bhagwan Mahavir/Chao Family Post-doctoral Fellowship in Jain Studies.

Rice University and the Jain Society will split the cost in half for the collaboration, which will include the study of Jainism, its philosophy, history, art, culture and contributions to the world.

"We strive to deepen the global understanding of Jainism as religion and culture, and to contribute to and participate in the TT and WF Chao Center for Asian Studies' (Chao Center) Transnational Asia Research Initiative," the agreement said.

The fund will be under the Chao Center within the School of Humanities and be administered by the director of the Chao Center or his/her designee.

The signing of the MoU took place in the presence of members of the Rice University, the Houston Jain community and Sugar Land, Texas, Indian-American councilman Harish Jajoo, among others.

Former president of JAINA and chairman of the International School for Jain Studies in the US Sulekh Jain said there are no courses offering Jainism at any Houston- area universities. Rice University, which has been around for more than 100 years, will be the first.

The Rice University will hire a full-time post-doctoral fellow Jain scholar with a proven track record of leadership and publication, a statement said.

The scholar will create a platform for discussion, learning and awareness of Jainism and will offer classes each semester.

While Jain studies at Rice is the first in Houston, the curriculum is available at 10 other American universities, including two fully-funded chairs at Florida International University and the University of California-Irvine.
President Pranab Mukherjee today expressed concern over the "abuse" of money and muscle power in elections, contending these malpractices "subvert" the spirit of democracy.

He also urged the Election Commission to reach out to young voters who do not have access to digital and social media platforms.

"The abuse of money and muscle power to influence voters remains a cause of concern. The spirit of democracy will be subverted if these malpractices are not checked," Mukherjee said addressing the 6th Voters' Day celebrations by the EC here.

The day is celebrated to mark the foundation of the Election Commission on January 25, 1950 and is observed with much fanfare by the poll panel and its associate agencies across the country with an aim to increase voter participation.

The President also lauded the poll body for undertaking "innovative" ways to reach out to the electorate, particularly youth, so they exercise their right to vote in a free and fair manner as soon as they are eligible. He said while social media has raised awareness amongst the youth about the elections process, special attention has to be paid to those who are "outside the ambit of the digital opportunities".

"It is commendable the way EC has taken up initiatives for informed and ethical voting," he said, adding India takes pride in being the "largest functional democracy" in the world where more than 84 crore people participate in elections.

Mukherjee said elections in India were not merely a festival of democracy but also a "gigantic administrative exercise", a task, which the EC and its officials have rendered with "perfect impartiality and fearlessness.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today expressed his happiness over a farmer gettig Padma Shri award, claiming that it happened for the first time.

"Congratulations to all Padma awardees... Very happy that for the first time a Padma award is bestowed on a farmer, Shri Subhash Palekar", Naidu said on Twitter.

Naidu's highlighting that a farmer has been given Padma Shri comes in the backdrop of Narendra Modi government having been repeatedly targetted by the Opposition over its alleged "anti farmer" stance.

Palekar, who has been given the award in farming category, hails from Maharashtra.

Born in Belora village of drought prone Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Palekar, a graduate in Agriculture, is acclaimed for his campaign for zero budget natural farming.

Having worked with well-known environmentalists and global farming experts, Palekar has been training farmers about zero budget natural farming throughout India through workshops, seminars, his books in Marathi, Hindi, English, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil languages and by models farms established throughout India.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today said the deliberations at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit mainly focused on creating better living conditions for people across the globe.

"The deliberations at WEF summit mainly concentrated on better living conditions across the globe. The Forum discussed on the future living conditions and also the socio-economic conditions of the nations both developed and developing," he told reporters here on his arrival from the summit at Davos.

Naidu further said the forum put thrust on future of urban development, infrastructure and new vision for agriculture.

According to the Chief Minister, another major subject the WEF discussed was the impact of robotics revolution.

"The forum also provided a new vision for agriculture. This vision would provide more advantage to the developing countries," he added.

Under this vision, developing countries have to implement best agricultural practises, from sowing to harvesting and post-harvesting, which would ultimately transform agriculture into 'the most profitable profession', he further said.
Murugappa Group firm Wendt India has registered a marginal increase of 5 per cent at Rs 2.50 crore in its consolidated net profit for the third quarter ended December 31, 2015.

The company had registered a net profit of Rs 2.38 crore during the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

For the nine-month period ending December 31, the company's consolidated net profit registered a marginal decline at Rs 8.60 crore as against Rs 9.12 crore in the year ago period.

Total income from operations for the three-month period grew to Rs 33.11 crore from Rs 29.63 crore registered during same period last year.

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Indosolar bankers not considering debt restructuring * Indosolar today said the company's bankers are not considering debt restructuring proposal.

The company said the lenders are exploring the possibility of sale of its assets or to invoke change in management of the firm.

"Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on January 25, 2016, inter alia, has noted, the outcome of the Joint Lenders Meeting and as per said meeting, banks are not considering second restructuring proposal as of now and are exploring the possibility of sale to Asset Restructuring Company (ARC) and/or to invoke change in management," Indosolar Ltd has informed BSE.

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FICCI Terrawatt Initiative inks MoU to promote solar energy * Industry body FICCI and Terrawatt Initiative today signed an MoU for creating global common market of affordable solar power.

"FICCI President, Harshavardhan Neotia and Gerard Mestrallet, Chairman and CEO of Engie, founding member of Terrawatt Initiative, have executed a MoU for a global common market of affordable solar power today, on the sidelines of the visit of French President," FICCI said in a statement.

Terrawatt Initiative is a global non-profit organisation based in Paris which aims at promoting solar energy and having one terrawatt of additional solar power deployment by 2030.

According to the statement, Finance Minister of France Michel Sapin was present on the occasion.

IndusInd Bank partners Lohia Auto for vehicle financing



* Private sector lender IndusInd Bank today signed a pact with diesel three-wheeler maker Lohia Auto Industries for delivering on the finance needs of the motor company's customers.

"This alliance is part of our strategy to continue to be a leading player in the field of three-wheeler financing. We will offer retail finance at an attractive rate of interest to customers," S V Parthasarathy, Head - Consumer Finance, IndusInd said.

Loan facility under the tie-up is available in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, a bank statement said.

* * * * * *



Nextbit launches smartphone 'Robin' at Rs 19,999 * US-based Nextbit today launched its cloud-first Android smartphone 'Robin' in the country, priced at Rs 19,999, to cash in on the burgeoning smartphone market in India.

The company currently retails its phones through partners in the US, Canada, Japan and Taiwan. Its phones are available in 40 countries.

"India is an important market. The device is targeted at tech enthusiasts and will offer 100 GB cloud storage to users so that they don't run out of space, combined with an elegant design," Nextbit co-founder and CEO Tom Moss said.

* * * * * *



Uber signs pact with Kempegowda International Airport * Taxi aggregatorUber has signed a pact with Kempegowda International Airport to provide people rides who land in the city from the airport.

Through this pact, Uber will be given a dedicated parking area and pick-up zone called 'U Zone' located within the airport premises, the company said in a release.

Stating that the U-Zone has been created to streamline traffic and reduce congestion at the pick up lanes, it said Uber executives will also be at the airport to help passengers find their cars easily and give them access to wi-fi in case they face network issues.

* * * * * *



Kajaria to set up tiles plant worth Rs 150 cr in Nellore in AP * Kajaria Ceramics, a leading wall and floor tiles manufacturers, is setting up a plant near Nellore in Andhra Pradesh for polished vitrified tiles, a top company official said.

The second in Andhra Pradesh to be set up with Rs 150 crore and to be commissioned in September next year, will have an annual production capacity of five million square metres, its Chairman and MD Ashok Kajaria said.

The company currently produces 20 million sqmt of polished vitrified tiles, he added.

LeEco announces entering Russian market; to invest USD 100 mn



* Chinese firm LeEco today said it will foray into the Russian market and invest about USD 100 million in the market.

"On May 16, 2016, LeEco signed a quadripartite memorandum with Institute of Internet Development (IID), Russian Export Center and JSC Digital Television to export Russian media content to China and other markets and build Le Ecosystem in Russia," LeEco said in a statement.

LeEco will now provide Russian users content through the Internet, smart devices, smart applications and cloud, it added.

"For its foray into the Russian market, LeEco plans to invest over USD 100 million. In 2016, LeEco successfully entered the US and India, making Russia its third overseas market," it said.

* * * * * *



Entertainment App 'Roast' raises funding from IAN * Delhi-based start-up Roast has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian Angel Network (IAN) under the latter's 'Small Ticket Funding programme'.

Sanjay Mehta has led this round of investment on behalf of IAN and will join the company board for further mentoring the team, it said in a statement.

The company plans to utilise the investment for acquiring customers and to invest in its technology platform, it added.

* * * * * *



Jugnoo partners Helpchat to booking auto rides * Auto-rickshaw aggregator, Jugnoo today said it has partnered Helpchat that will allow users to book autos using the latter's platform.

"This association is in absolute alignment to our expansion strategy as it allows us to tap existing users of Helpchat," Jugnoo founder and CEO Samar Singla said.

Set up in 2014, the Chandigarh-based firm has over 10,000 autos empanelled under the brand at present.

* * * * * *



Hotstar,Akamai renew partnership to scale live sports events * Hotstar, a premium video streaming platform, today said it has renewed its partnership with Akamai Technologies to support the former in delivering live sports content.

Live sports in particular has seen a huge surge in viewership on Hotstar, especially as audiences turn to mobile as the primary screen for cricket updates and streaming, the companies said in a statement.

"Since the launch of Hotstar in February 2015, we have seen a 10X increase in online viewership for sporting events.

"Planning for concurrency in live sports is a big part of delivering an outstanding uninterrupted experience for our users and Akamai has been an instrumental partner in helping us scale numbers that are very rarely seen online globally," Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan said.

Wipro launches solution for manufacturing sector



* IT major Wipro today announced the launch ofTotal Customer Centricity (TCC), a Master Data Management solution for the manufacturing sector.

The solution will be powered by the Informatica Master Data Management (MDM) suite of solutions, the company said in a release.

Wipro said TCC will enable global manufacturers to transit from a product-centric to a customer- centric approach.

The solution will allow manufacturers across the globe to capture a comprehensive, single view of each of their customers and products.

* * * * * *



FCB Ulka bags creative duties of mid-day infomedia * Advertising agency FCB Ulka has bagged the creative duties of Jagran Prakashan's mid-day infomedia.

In addition to mid-day, the agency has also been awarded the creative duties for Gujarati mid-day and Inquilab, it said in a statement today.

"FCB Ulka's sound understanding of the media industry and their customised approach would give us that extra edge to take our brands to the next level," mid-day infomedia CEO Sandeep Khosla said.

* * * * * *



Codeathons gain popularity among professionals, employers * Coding contests or codeathons are increasingly gaining popularity among top professionals seeking career growth as well as employers in the tech domain in India.

According to a TechGig Study, codeathons have become a great publicity branding and hiring tool and nearly 40 per cent said they have participated in codeathons at some point in their career.

Nearly 48 per cent employers said that 5-10 per cent participants receive job offers through codeathons while 38 per cent said that on an average, up to 5 per cent participants find new opportunities due to these contests.

"Fair and unbiased evaluation of an individual's skills and talents ensures a truly meritocratic organisation - Codeathons are one of the most effective ways to ascertain expertise and fluency levels among IT professionals irrespective of their rank or seniority," Nilanjan Roy, Head of Strategy, Times Business Solutions said.
West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra today asked telecom companies on ways to push mobile governance with latest high speed 4G network.

"State is offering mobile governance to its citizens with SMS services for disaster management, health, consumer affairs and consumer affairs. We want companies to come forward and propose what more can be done with the new high speed technology of 4G," Mitra said at the launch of 4G service of Vodafone in the city.

Vodafone launched 4G services in Kolkata with Airport to Jadavpur and BBD Bag to Sector V in first phase.

"We will expand the coverage gradually. We will soon expand our 4G services in a phased manner to launch 4G across the city of Kolkata by June-2016," Vodafone business head, Kolkata and Rest of Bengal, A N Sahai said.

He said data was contributing around 25 per cent of total revenue and growing at a rate of over 45 per cent annually.

Vodafone accumulated investment was nearly Rs 9,000 crore in West Bengal and out of that Rs 986 core was invested this year.
DMK leader M K Stalin has assured enforcing prohibition and setting up of Lok Ayuktha in Tamil Nadu if his party was elected to power the assembply polls.

Addressing the state level advocates'conference of his party late last night, he said "as soon as Karunanidhi takes charge as Chief Minister (if DMK came to power after the assembly polls), he will sign for total prohibition and setting up of Lok Ayuktha".

He recalled that Karunanidhi brought an act similar to Lok Ayuktha in 1973 by which all the persons including the Chief Minister were punishable if found guilty in corruption cases.

The meeting also resolved to request the Centre to set up Supreme Court Bench in Chennai. They also demanded that Tamil be made official language of the High Court and people from all communities get representation in judiciary.
Dr Y P Rai has assumed charge as the new Chief Postmaster General, Andhra Pradesh Postal Circle, which covers Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States.

A graduate from Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Rai completed his Doctorate in Biochemistry from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, according to an official release.

Rai earlier worked as Chief Postmaster General, Chhattisgarh Postal Circle.

He joined Indian Postal Service in 1984. Besides holding various positions in Department of Posts, Rai has also served in the Army and Central Government in different capacities, the release said.
Young Mizo Association (YMA), the largest community-based organisation of the Mizos, was today awarded the 'National Civil Society Organisation Award for the best campaign on voter education and Awareness'.

President of the YMA central committee, Lalbiakzuala and general secretary Lalhmachhuana received the coveted award from President Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi.

The YMA received the award for the organisation's efforts and success in creating awareness on the importance of exercise of franchise among the voters resulting in high voter turn-outs in the elections held in the state.

Mizoram also had the distinction of conducting one of the most peaceful, free and fair elections.

Governor Lt Gen Nirbhay Sharma, addressing the function on the occasion of the National Voters Day in Aizawl, congratulated the YMA and the people of Mizoram for the award.

Zaidi said the motto of the EC has been to ensure a level



playing field for all and conduct of free and fair polls every time.

"On the occasion of NVD, citizens of this country and all political parties deserve our special gratitude for reposing total trust and confidence in the Commission.

"We in the Commission have always strived hard to enhance this confidence by our sheer neutrality, fairness, transparency and professionalism in election management," he said.

Zaidi recounted some of the latest initiatives taken by the EC to ensure enhanced voter participation.

The CEC said the Commission, in the year gone by, introduced several new initiatives like launching of a national voters' service portal to provide a variety of services to the electorate, conducting a national drive to purify electoral rolls, introduction of photos on EVMs, sporting of the NOTA symbol on them and recommending legislation on electronic postal ballot option for overseas electors.

He said the EC has two themes to pursue this year-- 'Inclusive and qualitative participation' and 'No voter to be left behind'.

"And we will continue to strengthen electoral democracy with fresh resolve on the occasion of NVD," Zaidi said.
A tenant farmer is one of the bravest entrepreneurs in the country. He battles weather, pests, and diseases on someone elses land to eke out a living. He has nothing to fall back on if the crop fails or price crashes. And to make matters worse, moneylenders mostly fund the operations.

While there is no reliable data on the share of the tenant farmers in agriculture, it is rather safe to assume that they constitute at least a third if not more. Some studies have estimated their share to be around 45 percent nationwide. In order to reduce price risk, most tenant farmers tend to grow crops that are procured by the government at minimum support prices such as maize, paddy, wheat and cotton i.e. more of what is already in the FCI warehouses than what we need. The government believes that to encourage tenant farmers to diversify, some risks need to be taken off their shoulders.

How land leasing works now



There are two general practices of renting agriculture land. Fixed rent for one year (two cropping seasons) is more popular. Depending on the fertility of soil, irrigation facility and the crop, rents can vary from Rs.20,000 to Rs.60,000 per acre. However, when the landowner is in need of a larger amount, a variation of mortgage is entered into. The lessee gives a lump sum of money to the lessor and in lieu of interest, he gets to till the land for a fixed period. At the end of the term, lessor refunds the money and gets back the possession. This type of mortgage is registered with the revenue department but since the amount involved is often large, it is not so common. Where as the short-term contracts are oral due draconian laws against tenancy in many states or to avoid transaction costs in a few states that have liberal laws.

What is NITI Ayog's proposal



A ten-member NITI Ayog committee headed by Tajamul Haque, former chairman of the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices, is working on a new model tenancy contract. The basic idea behind the effort is to find a way to formalise these informal contracts so that the lessee can avail benefits and schemes offered by the government while protecting the title of the gentleman farmer.

Why the propsal may not work



Moreover, the formalisation of tenancy agreement is quite crucial for the revamped crop insurance scheme and the intended direct transfer of benefits to reach the actual cultivator. If a significant portion of the farming community is left out of these schemes, it will be another futile exercise. A formal contract may also give the tenant farmer some access to institutional credit. While this appears to be a win-win for both government and the lessee, it is not clear why landowners will buy into this scheme when their hold on land is already secure. While only 4 percent of land was redistributed to cultivators through tenancy laws, the punitive stories of the past and very low trust on courts to uphold and on the police to enforce contracts will certainly prevent them signing on to anything that even remotely does not threaten their ownership. Even if such agreements are kept outside the purview of the revenue department, as suggested by Arvind Panagaria, Vice-Chairman of NITI Ayog. After all there is a reason behind the common saying that possession is 90 percent of ownership.

Revenue courts, where such disputes eventually end up, are probably the worst courts of law in the country. Adjudicated by a bureaucrat, it is quite common for cases to go unheard for three to five years and then dragged further in civil courts for at least a decade.

Tenant farmers too would be left with no choice but to continue the current arrangement as there will be someone else ready to pick up the plough. Instead of cajoling the unwilling landowners, a financing scheme should be designed for tenants to buy out the land. Why limit 5/25 generosities to only corporates?

Aruna Urs farms in his village in Mysuru, Karnataka. He was co-founder and CEO of a database management company in Mysuru. Prior to that, he worked as an adviser to the government of Timor-Leste (East Timor).

Aruna blogs about farming, rural & agri economy on his blog, Rural Dispatch, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.

He tweets as @arunaurs
By Meeyoung Cho

SEOUL (Reuters) - Crude oil fell on continuing oversupply woes and profit-taking on Monday, reversing from early gains that followed a surge at the end of last week on short-covering and fuel demand triggered by freezing weather in parts of the northern hemisphere.

Brent lost 67 cents to $31.51 a barrel by 0816 GMT. U.S. crude declined 58 cents to $31.61 a barrel.

"People are taking profits after a huge increase ... The other factor would come from still having the market being in a bearish situation where the market is oversupplied," said Daniel Ang, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures.

Iraq's oil production hit a record in December, on increased output from its central and southern fields, oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told on Monday.

Saudi Aramco chairman Khalid al-Falih said on Monday that national oil giant Aramco is not reducing its new investment in oil and gas production capacity despite cost-cutting due to low oil prices.

Adding to that, Indonesia's OPEC governor said that support among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for taking steps to prop up crude oil prices is slim, with only one OPEC country supporting an emergency meeting over the matter.

Earlier on Monday, Brent had rallied to touch $32.81 a barrel, and U.S. crude hit $32.74 a barrel. Oil prices soared about 10 percent on Friday, one of the biggest daily rallies ever, as bearish traders who had taken out record short positions scrambled to close them.

"A change in investor sentiment was the key factor, with speculative short positions in WTI falling from historically high levels the previous week," ANZ said in a note on Monday, referring to U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.

Morgan Stanley said that a weaker U.S. dollar was supporting oil futures denominated in the greenback.

"A notable USD retracement, similar to last spring, remains one of few potential near term catalysts for oil prices ... Marginal changes in crude supply/demand fundamentals will likely be secondary drivers to crude oil flat price action, in our view, similar to what we've witnessed the past year."

A massive snowstorm that hit the U.S. East Coast over the weekend also stoked demand for heating oil, helping to push up crude prices early on Monday.

An analyst note released by Barclays Research said: "Absent further macro deterioration or other bearish factors, and given the extreme levels of short positioning, the market may experience a temporary turnaround."

(Reporting by Meeyoung Cho; Editing by Joseph Radford and Tom Hogue)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - French companies will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector, Finance Minister Michel Sapin said on Monday during a visit by President Francois Hollande to India.

"Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than $1 billion per year in India," Sapin said in a speech to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi.

"We estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years."

Hollande, invited as guest of honour for India's Republic Day celebrations, hopes to seal an intergovernmental deal that would pave the way for the sale of 36 Rafale combat jets made by Dassault Aviation.

As part of that deal, there would be significant "offsets", or related French investments that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will support his "Make in India" initiative to develop the manufacturing sector.

"The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, which makes France the major player in Prime Minister Modi's 'Make in India' programme," Sapin said.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Writing by Douglas Busvine)
(Reuters) - French billionaire Xavier Niel's telecoms group Iliad has approached the UK telecoms regulator to express a "preliminary" interest in entering UK's mobile market, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Iliad's interest to enter UK's mobile market and create a new network operator would depend on the acquisition of telecoms infrastructure as a result of the 10.5 billion pounds ($14.96 billion) O2-Three merger, the FT said. (http://on.ft.com/1UmycR6)

The merged company formed by the O2-Three deal would own half of Britain's most attractive mobile spectrum in the so-called low-frequency bands, which allow operators to cover long distances more cost-effectively, according to Moody's. It would also own 37 percent of the spectrum in high-frequency bands above 1800 megahertz.

It is expected that European Commission antitrust regulators would require the merged entity of O2 and Three to shed some of its parts, in order to create a new competitor, or guarantee access of its network to rivals, as the UK market consolidates from four to three operators, the FT reported.

However, EU regulators have been of the view that consolidation in the telecoms sector was "not necessarily the answer".

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager scuppered a deal between TeliaSonera and Telenor in Denmark last year over concerns it would lead to higher prices for consumers, the first time such a deal had been blocked since telecoms companies began an M&A spree in 2013.

A similar deal acquisition between Orange SA and Bougyues Telecom is expected to be vetted in France, sources told last week.
(Reuters) - French billionaire Xavier Niel's telecoms group Iliad has approached British telecoms regulator Ofcom to express "preliminary" interest in entering the UK mobile market, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Iliad's interest to enter the market and create a new network operator would depend on the acquisition of telecoms infrastructure as a result of the 10.5 billion pounds ($14.96 billion) O2-Three merger, the FT said. (http://on.ft.com/1UmycR6)

A spokesman for Ofcom said it "does not discuss whether it had or had not held meetings with companies".

Iliad could not be reached for comment outside regular business hours.

The merged company formed by the O2-Three deal would own half of Britain's most attractive mobile spectrum in the so-called low-frequency bands, which allow operators to cover long distances more cost-effectively, according to Moody's. It would also own 37 percent of the spectrum in high-frequency bands above 1800 megahertz.

It is expected that European Commission antitrust regulators would require the merged entity of Telefonica's O2 and Three, owned by Hutchison <0215.HK>, to shed some of its parts, in order to create a new competitor, or guarantee access of its network to rivals, as the British market consolidates from four to three operators, the FT reported.

However, EU regulators have been of the view that consolidation in the telecoms sector was not necessarily the answer.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager scuppered a deal between TeliaSonera and Telenor in Denmark last year over concerns it would lead to higher prices for consumers, the first time such a deal had been blocked since telecoms companies began an M&A spree in 2013.

A similar deal acquisition between Orange SA and Bougyues Telecom is expected to be vetted in France, sources told last week.

France's largest telecom company Orange has already started informal talks with rivals Numericable-SFR and Iliad on possible asset sales to satisfy competition concerns.

(Reporting by Ankush Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by David Evans and Alison Williams)
By moving its headquarters to Cork, Ireland, Johnson Controls would become the latest major U.S. company to carry out a so-called tax-inversion after drug giant Pfizer Inc structured such a deal with Irish peer Allergan Plc last November.

While the tax benefits are not as profound as is the case of Pfizer's deal with Allergan, the was enough to stir controversy among politicians in a U.S. presidential election year.

"I have a detailed and targeted plan to immediately put a stop to inversions and invest in the U.S., block deals like Johnson Controls and Tyco, and place an 'exit tax' on corporations that leave the country to lower their tax bill," Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's opponent for the Democratic Presidential nomination, also criticized the deal, calling it a disaster for American taxpayers. Others saw it as an opportunity to also highlight what they argue are the weaknesses of the U.S. tax system.

"Absent comprehensive tax reform that includes shifting to a territorial tax system with base erosion protections, Congress ought to examine viable bipartisan solutions that will effectively target and combat inversions and not tip the balance to tax-driven foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms," said U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a prominent Republican.

The merger will combine Johnson Controls' commercial buildings business with Tyco's fire security offerings, accelerating Johnson Controls' transformation following its decision to spin off its automotive parts unit.

Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls has a market value $22.5 billion, while Cork, Ireland-based Tyco, which specializes in fire protection systems is valued at $14.2 billion.

The deal will create savings of at least $500 million in the first three years, the companies said. They expect to save an additional $150 million a year through tax synergies.

"The move would be consistent with Johnson Control's strategy of transforming from an auto supplier into a multi-industry leader," UBS analyst Colin Langan said in a client note.

Johnson Controls' shares ended trading in New York on Monday down 3.9 percent at $34.21, while Tyco's shares ended up 11.6 percent at $34.15.

Tyco was ahead of many big U.S. industrial companies in seeking tax relief by moving its legal residence offshore. The company moved its headquarters to Bermuda from Exeter, New Hampshire in 2007, then to Switzerland in 2009, and to Cork in 2014.

Tyco said in 2014 that its move to Cork was tax-neutral and that it occurred because of Swiss laws capping executive pay and tighter immigration rules.

TREASURY THRESHOLD

Johnson Controls' shareholders will own about 56 percent of the combined company, with Tyco shareholders owning the remainder, thanks in part to a cash consideration of about $3.9 billion that Johnson Controls shareholders will receive.

Keeping Johnson Controls' shareholders ownership of the combined company below 60 percent was important for the company because the latest U.S. Treasury rules, in a bid to limit inversions, placed some restrictions on deals that cross this threshold.

"The cash consideration is supplied by Tyco very much with the tax inversion in mind. This way you can engage unrestricted in strategies that free up your undistributed foreign earnings," said Robert Willens, a corporate tax and accounting consultant.

The new company, Johnson Controls Plc, will be initially headed by Johnson Controls Chief Executive Alex Molinaroli and will continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. After 18 months, Tyco's George Oliver will become CEO and Molinaroli will become executive chair for one year, after which Oliver will become chairman and CEO.

Johnson Controls has been preparing to spin off its automotive seating and interiors business and said on Monday the spinoff was on track for early first fiscal quarter of 2017.

Shares of Johnson Controls have lost more than a quarter of their value since the start of 2015, while Tyco's shares have fallen over 30 percent.

Tyco was broken up into three companies after turnaround expert Edward Breen took the helm from former CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who was convicted in 2005 of grand larceny, securities fraud and other charges.

Under Breen, Tyco spun off its electronics and healthcare businesses in 2007. He expanded Tyco's security business with the $1.9 billion acquisition of Broadview Security in 2010.

In 2012, Tyco was again broken up into three pieces - one selling valves and controls for the energy market that merged with Pentair Inc , while its commercial fire and security businesses combined into "New Tyco" and traded under Tyco's symbol. The third piece consisted of the ADT North American residential security business, now ADT Corp .

Breen is CEO of U.S. chemical giant DuPont
By Karolin Schaps

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell 4 percent on Monday as Iraq announced record-high oil production feeding into a heavily oversupplied market, wiping out much of the gain made in one of the biggest-ever daily rallies last week.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down $1.35 at $30.83 a barrel at 0851 GMT, losing more than 4 percent from Friday's closing price, when Brent surged 10 percent.

U.S. crude traded $1.15 lower at $31.04 a barrel, regaining its unusual premium to Brent prices.

Iraq's oil ministry told on Monday oil output had reached a record high in December. Its fields in the central and southern region produced as much as 4.13 million barrels a day, the government said.

"The that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro in Amsterdam.

"The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low, and on the other hand short positions are in excessive territory," he said.

Indonesia's OPEC governor said that support among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for taking steps to prop up crude prices is slim, with only one OPEC country supporting an emergency meeting over the matter.

(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Dale Hudson)
By Devika Krishna Kumar

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell as much as 5 percent on Monday, wiping out some of the surge at the end of last week, as investors' focus returned to the market's oversupply amid that Iraq's output reached a record last month.

U.S. crude had traded $1.52 lower to $30.67 a barrel, a loss of 4.7 percent, by 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT.)

Brent crude , the global benchmark, was $1.28 weaker at $30.90 a barrel, 4 percent below its closing price on Friday, when Brent surged 10 percent.

The biggest two-day rally since 2008 on Thursday and Friday helped put a stop to what analysts called an "irrational" sell-off that had sent oil prices crashing over 20 percent in January.

Brent hit a 12-year low of $27.10 on Jan. 20, before the two-day rally, while U.S. futures hit a 13-year low of $26.19, below the pivotal $30 levels.

The 15-percent rebound came as traders raced to close out short positions and a monster blizzard moved toward the U.S. East Coast. It was nearly the largest ever two-day rally, while the renewed selling on Monday added to oil market volatility.

"Friday's advance was an overreaction to the storm," said Jim Ritterbusch of Chicago-based oil consultancy Ritterbusch & Associates.

Ritterbusch said the reversal on Monday comes as "the market is forced to refocus on various fundamentals that are set to become even more negative."

Iraq's oil ministry told on Monday that the country had record output in December, with its fields in the central and southern regions producing as much as 4.13 million barrels a day. A senior Iraqi oil official said separately the country may raise output even further this year.

"The that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro in Amsterdam.

"The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low, and on the other hand short positions are in excessive territory," he said.

Oil prices came under more selling pressure after Standard Chartered said it expects oil prices to remain volatile for the rest of the first quarter, noting "the underlying negative sentiment in the market seems little changed."

HSBC and UniCredit slashed their oil price forecasts for 2016 on Monday, joining several brokerages and banks that have also scaled back their outlooks due to the excess supply in the market.

Yet, some analysts, including Standard Chartered, expect oil prices to stabilise by the end of 2016.

OPEC's Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri said at an event in London that signs were already emerging that the market was rebalancing.

Analysts at Energy Aspects said Monday that global oil inventories would continue to grow in the coming months, but should start to ease by mid-year.

(Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps in London, Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Dale Hudson and Alden Bentley)
LONDON (Reuters) - Senior OPEC and Russian oil industry officials stepped up vague talk on Monday of possible joint action to remedy one of the worst supply gluts in decades, while Saudi Arabia signalled its resolve to allow the market to balance itself.

The latest volley of comments highlighted the intensifying pressure of $30 a barrel oil prices on cash-strapped countries such as Russia, but did not appear to tilt the scales meaningfully towards any concerted action to reverse the price crash, an idea repeatedly mooted but dismissed for over a year.

Speaking in London, OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri said other producers should work together with the group to tackle swollen global stockpiles so prices can recover, essentially reiterating OPEC's longstanding position that it would only consider cutting output if others pitch in.

Moscow, seen as the likely lynchpin of any potential output agreement, has so far refused to cooperate, saying its fields and weather conditions are different from those in the Gulf even as prices below $30 per barrel are way below what its budget needs to breakeven.

But as its currency collapsed to an all-time low last week and with parliamentary and presidential election looming in the next two years, pressure is rising on the Kremlin to protect state revenues and avoid mass public discontent.

"The practise of filling the market with cheap oil at any cost is wrong -- half a year or a year later it could be sold at twice as high," Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil, Russia's second largest oil producer, was quoted as saying.

Last week, the head of Russia's direct investment fund, Kirill Dmitriyev, who doesn't oversee Russian oil policies, said at a conference in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos that Russia could one day cooperate with OPEC - not now but when the markets rebalance - in a year or later.

The comments represent a departure from the previous stance when Russia's energy ministry has repeatedly said it could talk to OPEC but sees no reason to cut production artificially.

Many Kremlin watchers say a deal would depend unilaterally on the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sees oil as only a small part of the puzzle which also includes dialogue with the West and Saudi Arabia on the war in Syria as well as sanctions on Russia imposed by the West over its actions in Ukraine.

Oil traders appeared to put little stock into the comments on Monday, with crude resuming this year's steep rout after a two-day rebound, dropping 5 percent to around $30.

And there is no indication of a change of heart from Saudi Arabia, which drove the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' decision in late 2014 to shift its strategy in favour of defending market share, not prices.

The chairman of state oil firm Aramco, Khalid al-Falih, said he is continuing to invest in production despite deep spending cuts across most of the industry, and that markets would likely balance at a "moderate" oil price soon.

"Saudi Arabia is well documented to be the clear lowest cost producer," he told reporters. "We have scale, capability, technologies that have allowed us to maintain our low cost."

Analysts from Bernstein said global exploration and production spending excluding OPEC would fall by 18 percent this year if oil prices were to average $50 a barrel and collapse by 38 percent if oil was to trade at $30.

"Demand will grow, as it has already started in 2015, and there will be a period not far into the future (when) demand will catch up with supply," said Falih.

FEW TAKERS FOR TEAMWORK

Oil prices have collapsed to below $28 a barrel this month from $100 in mid-2014 on a supply glut that has caused global oil stockpiles to swell to unprecedented levels.

"It is vital the market addresses the issue of the stock overhang," Badri said at the conference at Chatham House in London. "This is now central to the return of a balanced market."

So far only non-OPEC Oman and Azerbaijan have expressed willingness to cut production in tandem with OPEC.

The price drop has started to slow the development of relatively expensive supply sources such as U.S. shale oil and forced companies to delay or cancel billions of dollars worth of projects, putting some future supplies at risk.

"We expect that we will go through one more downturn cycle of oil price. But we will recover. The market is definitely going to balance itself because today's oil price is not sustainable whatsoever," Qatar's Energy Minister Mohammed al-Sada told the same conference in London.

The price slide has squeezed income in producing nations and is particularly painful for OPEC members such as Venezuela, who depend heavily on oil income and lack the capacity to pump more.

Venezuela has requested OPEC hold an emergency meeting to discuss steps to prop up oil prices. But OPEC's Gulf members including Saudi Arabia, who led the 2014 policy shift, have opposed earlier calls for emergency meetings.

Some are instead ramping up production. Iran is pushing to boost exports now that sanctions have been lifted. Iraq may further raise oil output in 2016, reaching levels as high as 4 million barrels per day (bpd) from the country's south, a senior Iraqi oil official, who asked not to be named, said on Monday.

The Qatari minister, whose country holds OPEC's rotating presidency this year, said the request was being considered although he declined to say if he was in favour.

"We received a request and oil ministers are discussing that," he said. "It is being evaluated."

In case producing nations don't reach a deal on output, Saudi Arabia and Iraq have further ability to increase supply thus squeezing rival producers.

(Reporting by Alex Lawler, Reem Shamseddine Editing by Katharine Houreld and David Evans)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - State-run trading company PEC awarded an international tender to purchase and import 250,000 tonnes of yellow non-genetically modified corn to South Korea's Daewoo International, two government officials told on Monday.

Daewoo was the lowest bidder and will supply Ukrainian corn at $192 to $194 per tonne at various ports, they added.

PEC had received 15 bids from global traders such as Noble, Cargill and Agro Corp for the tender.

India is traditionally a major corn exporter to South East Asia, but higher local prices due to the first repeat drought in nearly three decades and rising domestic demand have hampered exports and forced it to import.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Writing by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
HAMBURG (Reuters) - Indian state-run trading company PEC has made a purchase of 225,500 tonnes of yellow corn likely to be sourced from Ukraine in an international tender which closed earlier in January, European traders said on Monday.

The corn was bought from South Korean trading house Daewoo International for January/February shipment, they said.

Indian officials had said on Friday that PEC was likely to award the contract in the tender to purchase and import up to 250,000 tonnes of corn without genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) to Daewoo.

Traders said the purchase comprised 80,500 tonnes bought at $191.99 a tonne c&f, of which 40,000 tonnes was for shipment on Jan. 27 to Feb. 17 and 40,500 tonnes on Feb. 8-27.

A further 65,000 tonnes was purchased at $193.49 a tonne c&f for shipment between Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, they said.

The remaining volume was purchased at $192.99 a tonne c&f with 45,000 tonnes for shipment on Feb. 1-20 and 35,000 tonnes between Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, they said.

Sources said on Dec. 31 the Indian government would ask state-run traders to import half a million tonnes of duty-free corn after a second drought in the country cut crops in what would be the country's first overseas purchase in 16 years.

India is traditionally a major corn exporter to South East Asia, but higher local prices due to the first repeat drought in nearly three decades and domestic demand have hampered exports.

Indian government sources said on Jan. 13 that PEC would issue a new tender for 200,000 tonnes of corn in the coming week but no tender has yet been issued.

Traders said they now expect a new tender to be issued by PEC in the first week of February.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by David Evans)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) expects to reach a deal to sell its mobile phone masts business to a group of companies led by buyout firm TPG Capital Management LP in the next two weeks, its chief executive said on Monday.

RCom last month signed a non-binding pact to sell the business to TPG and Tillman Global Holdings LLC, a U.S. firm that invests in telecoms and energy infrastructure businesses.

Sources had told RCom expected an enterprise value of about 230 billion rupees ($3.5 billion) for the unit, which has a portfolio of about 45,000 masts.

The asset sale is part of RCom's efforts to pare some of its 404.79 billion rupees ($5.97 billion) as of end-December in debt on its books, as India's fourth-biggest wireless mobile phone carrier looks at deploying cash towards improving its network.

RCom, controlled by billionaire Chairman Anil Ambani, on Friday posted a 14.9 percent drop in its quarterly net profit, as cut-throat competition for customers in a crowded mobile phone market squeezed margins.

India is the world's second-biggest market for mobile phone users but tough competition has led to low margins for voice services, and telecom providers are banking on more lucrative data services to lift earnings in the coming years.

RCom Chief Executive Vinod Sawhny said on Monday the company had increased its capital expenditure outlook for this fiscal year that ends on March 31 by 10 billion rupees to 40 billion rupees to expand its 3G coverage in the country.

($1 = 67.7775 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Himank Sharma; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Siemens' healthcare, transportation and energy-management units drove a gain in industrial profit to 10.4 percent of sales from 10.2 percent a year earlier, helped greatly by the weak euro and ongoing cost cuts.

The Munich-based group said it now expected EPS of 6.00 to 6.40 euros ($6.50 to $6.93), up from its previous forecast of 5.90 to 6.20 euros for the year ending next September.

"We delivered a strong quarter and are well underway in executing our Vision 2020. Therefore, we will raise our earnings outlook for 2016, even though the macroeconomic and geopolitical developments remain a concern for our markets," Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said in a statement.

Siemens shares rose 2.3 percent in after-hours trading in Frankfurt .

Like its U.S. rival General Electric , Siemens turned to self-help measures such as job cuts, disposals and an increased focus on high technology as slowing economic growth in China and low oil prices dim the outlook for industrial goods.

Share buybacks and dividends have supported the stock.

Under Kaeser's leadership, Siemens has disposed of its remaining consumer businesses and beefed up its oil equipment offering with the most expensive acquisition in its history, leaving it highly exposed to the energy sector.

OIL PRICE

Siemens' Power and Gas unit, which accounts for a fifth of group sales, saw its profit drop to 9.5 percent in the quarter from 11.3 percent a year earlier. The weak oil price also hurt profits at the Process Industries and Drives unit.

The Munich-based company said profit development was held back by effects related to the acquisition of oilfield equipment maker Dresser-Rand, among other things, and overcapacities that resulted in increased price pressure.

GE said on Friday it would double its 2016 budget for restructuring spending to fight the effects of low oil prices and slow global growth that pummelled its earnings last year, particularly at its oil and gas operations.

Its fourth-quarter industrial margin was 18.3 percent, however - almost twice that of Siemens - excluding effects of its acquisition of French Alstom's energy businesses.

Digital Factory, Siemens' factory-automation unit, remained its most profitable business, with a profit margin of 16.9 percent, down from 18.8 percent a year earlier, partly due to slowing demand from China.

Siemens is fast adding software expertise to this business, and confirmed on Monday it was buying U.S. engineering software firm CD-adapco for $970 million.

For the whole Siemens group, industrial profit jumped 10 percent to 1.99 billion euros in the first quarter, easily beating the poll average of 1.87 billion.

Sales rose 1 percent on a comparable basis to 18.9 billion euros and orders jumped 19 percent to 22.8 billion, thanks to a huge Egyptian power-plant order, an offshore wind contract in Britain and a large number of rail projects.

Siemens confirmed it expects moderate revenue growth excluding currency effects, orders clearly above sales and an industrial profit margin of 10-11 percent this year.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Greg Mahlich and David Evans)
European stock markets fell on Monday, with shares in major oil and gas companies losing ground as an oil price rally fizzled out.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index, which rose 3 percent on Friday to mark its first weekly gain for 2016, fell 0.7 percent. The FTSEurofirst is down 8 percent since the start of 2016.

The euro zone's blue-chip Euro STOXX 50 index and Germany's DAX also both fell by 0.5 percent, with the DAX some 20 percent below a record high reached last April.

Oil prices lost ground, after having rallied 10 percent on Friday. This in turn pushed down the shares of companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total.

World stock markets have fallen since the start of 2016, partly due to signs of a slowdown in China, the world's second-biggest economy and a major consumer of oil and metals.

The Chinese situation has impacted oil prices, along with concerns about oversupply in the oil market.

Pierre de Saab, fund manager at Dominice & Co, also warned that stock markets could fall further this year, given the signs of weakness in the global economy.

However, Greek shares managed to outperform.

Athens' benchmark ATG equity index, which fell around 30 percent in 2015 due to persistent concerns over Greece's debt problems, rose 1.2 percent after rating agency Standard & Poor's upgraded its rating on Greece late on Friday.

Jyske Bank also rose 5.8 percent after the Danish bank forecast making an annual profit. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced today that Clonee, County Meath, will be the site for Facebook's newest data center. The centre will be the first in Ireland and second in Europe.



It will be one of the most advanced, efficient and sustainable data centers in the world. All the racks, servers, and other components have been designed and built from scratch as part of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide coalition of companies dedicated to creating energy- and cost-efficient infrastructure solutions and sharing them as open source.



Facebooks VP of Infrastructure, Tom Furlong commented, "Connecting billions of people around the world is a huge technology challenge, and to meet that challenge we need to build a global infrastructure that is as efficient, as flexible, and as sustainable as possible.

"Our new Clonee facility will be one of the most advanced data centres in the world  with the latest in hyper-efficient OCP hardware and network technologies  and it will be powered by 100% renewable energy. We are excited to be investing further in Ireland and in the EU, and we look forward to helping bring more innovation and more jobs to the region."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
The Dublin Action Plan for Jobs was launched by the Government today and aims to deliver 10-15% employment growth in the capital over the coming years.



It is the final of eight regional jobs plans published over recent months, as part of a new 250m regional jobs strategy led by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD.



Key sectors targeted as part of the plan include areas like technology, financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, tourism and retail as well as smart cities and the creative industries.



The plan aims to increase the number of businesses starting and surviving by 25%, and deliver a 30% increase in Irish companies growing to scale.

Furthermore, the plan includes measures to increase foreign investment, with the IDA planning to deliver 430 additional investments in the years to 2019.



Minister Bruton commented, "Dublin as the capital city and only city over 1 million population is a real driver of economic growth for Ireland. Getting the jobs market right in Dublin is crucial to our overall economic health as a country.

"The city suffered badly during the crash, with 90,000 jobs lost, but we have made up major ground since we launched our Action Plan for Jobs, with 64,000 extra jobs created and around half of that growth coming in the exporting companies which my Department supports.

"This growth wont automatically continue, and with the wrong policies we could easily slip backwards. That is why we are putting in place this plan  to make the changes to support start-ups, increase multinational investment, target growing sectors of the future and promote Dublin internationally and ultimately create the jobs that we need.""



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced today that two Galway technology companies, ice cube and tec support, are planning to expand and will create 100 new jobs over the next 3 years.

The new expansion will include strategic acquisitions and planned growth at international and nation level, the most immediate impact being the opening of a third office in early spring with recruitment beginning immediately.

Both companies also unveiled the umbrella brand for their newly merged status: Intuity. The team at Intuity will focus on cloud computing technology most notably in the area of disaster recovery and business continuity planning to their clients.

CEO of Intuity, Gerard Cox commented, "The past year has been an exciting time for us. Together, ice cube and tec support now form Intuity  one larger stronger business delivering intuitive 360 solutions with added value to our clients.

"We are looking forward to a busy 2016, with a number of strategic acquisitions already identified, key international partners in place and the addition of a third office here in Ireland planned for the coming months."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Aldi has today unveiled the charities and not-for-profit organisations it will partner with in 2016 as part of its community support programme.



The establishment of a network of more than 120 Charity Champions in its stores nationwide has been launched to co-ordinate the programme at a local level. They will work closely with local charities and encourage Aldi staff involvement in initiatives.



At a national level, The Irish Cancer Society, FoodCloud, WEEE Ireland and The Society of St. Vincent de Paul will be some of the organisations that will benefit from Aldis programme through a combination of financial and food donations, sponsorship and staff participation and volunteering.



As part of this initiative, Aldi Ireland has today confirmed it will provide a total of 840,000 in support to leading youth development organisation Foroige over the course of its current three year partnership.

Foroige works with over 56,000 young people (aged 10-18 years old) and 6,000 volunteers each year through a network of more than 600 youth clubs and cafes, 147 targeted projects such as the Big Brother, Big Sister youth mentoring programme and national programmes such as Citizenship, Entrepreneurship and Leadership.



Aldi will provide funding to a number of activities, including the sponsorship of the Foroige Youth Citizenship Awards, a youth development programme that empowers young people nationwide to use their skills, talents and attributes to make a positive difference to their community and society.

Aldi staff will also be encouraged to volunteer and get involved in the various activities at their local Foroige club, such as Foroiges Big Brother Big Sister youth mentoring programme.



Group Buying Director at Aldi Ireland, Finbar McCarthy said, "Making a positive impact on young people in the areas we serve is a central pillar of our community programme. We are delighted to support such a valuable organisation as Foroige.

"Its work in building self-esteem and confidence in young people is something that we truly believe in and we will be encouraging all our staff to get involved with their local Foroige clubs and help make a difference to young peoples lives in their local communities.



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Irish wholesale gas prices are 29% lower on average so far in January compared with January 2015 and 4% lower compared with last month, according to the latest Wholesale Energy Market Report published by Vayu Energy.



Vayu Energy believe that the year-on-year decrease in prices is due to strong supplies, mild weather conditions this winter and a healthy storage outlook.



The average day-ahead price for gas  the contract for gas delivery for tomorrow  is 1.50 c/kWh (cents per kilowatt hour) so far in January.

This compares with an average price of 2.07 c/kWh in January 2015. Irish wholesale gas prices are now 40% lower (in euro terms) compared with the average monthly price recorded for January over the previous three years (2013-2015).

This has had a significant impact on the energy costs of many Irish businesses purchasing gas on the wholesale market, particularly in the industrial and commercial segment.



Senior Energy Analyst at Vayu, Joanne Daly commented, "Bearish sentiment has taken a firm hold of the market with gas prices continuing to experience a significant downward price pressure as a result of continued strong supply from Norwegian and UK pipeline sources in the North Sea.

"Overall, there is little fundamentally to suggest any significant shift in prompt prices is on the way. However, considering previous years, it is important to remember that it is still possible for market conditions to change quickly."



Source: www.businessworld.ie


A UK parliamentary committee will invite Google to testify about a back tax deal under which it will pay 130 million pounds to settle claims covering a 10-year period - an amount the opposition Labour party has described as derisory.

Meg Hillier, the Labour party chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, tweeted at the weekend she would call Google, now part of holding company Alphabet Inc, and the UK tax authority to explain the "cozy deal."

Google and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs were not immediately available for comment.

Corporate tax avoidance has prompted anger in recent years among citizens who question whether the burden of paying to combat the financial crisis was evenly shared.

A study conducted by accountants PricewaterhouseCooper for the 100 Group, a lobby body representing around 100 of the biggest UK companies, showed their combined corporation tax bill was half 2010 levels in 2015, despite rising profits.

Google's tax deal brings its total UK tax bill over the period to around 200 million pounds.

Over the period, its around 24 billion pounds in UK revenues would have generated a tax bill of almost 2 billion, if the UK unit reported taxable profits in line with group margins of around 30 percent, according to Reuters calculations based on Google filings.

Google's tax bill is reduced because its European profits are channeled to Bermuda. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Heidi Rutchey talks with her lawyer David Perry in 1st District Court on Nov. 21, 2013, in Logan, Utah. Rutchey who is charged with first degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son, was granted a continuance so the defense could hire a private investigator. (Eli Lucero/Herald Journal)

LOGAN  A 44-year-old River Heights mother remains in the Utah State Hospital, reportedly still incompetent to stand trial in the death of her two-year-old son over 28-months ago.

Defense attorney David Perry appeared in 1st District Court Monday for Heidi Marie Rutcheys review hearing.

Perry said hospital doctors told him they should be able to restore Rutcheys competency within the next two-to-three-months.

Rutchey has been hospitalized since being found incompetent on January 27, 2014. She was arrested on a first-degree murder charge October 24, 2013.

A month earlier, on September 4, Rutchey was driven to Logan Regional Hospital for an undisclosed medical issue. After she checked into the hospital, questions arose concerning her son Elis condition. Medical staff called police dispatch and requested a welfare check for the child at a River Heights apartment near 400 South 400 East. When Cache County Sheriffs deputies arrived at the location, they found the toddler dead inside.

During Mondays review hearing, Judge Thomas Willmore scheduled another review hearing on April 25 to assess if Rutchey can then stand trial.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
FILE PHOTO

LOGAN  A 53-year-old Logan woman, Lori Ann Anderson cried and wiped back tears as she appeared in 1st District Court Monday, pleading guilty to running an alleged Ponzi scheme and bilking investors of over $1.7 million.

Anderson stood next to her attorney as she waived her right to a preliminary hearing and later pleaded guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of pattern of unlawful behavior, all second-degree felonies.

Anderson reportedly ran an investment business called SMTS Association out of her home for several years.

Brian Williams from the State Attorney Generals Office told the court, Anderson gathered large sums of money from around 70 victims, creating a type of trading club. She then would use those funds in day trading investments through TD Ameritrade.

Williams said while Anderson incurred losses she would use money from new investors to continue making payouts to older investors. She was arrested in December after an FBI investigation.

Mondays guilty pleas are a part of an agreement between prosecutors and Andersons defense attorney, Justin Elswick. Under conditions of the plea, the Attorney Generals Office has agreed not to ask for incarceration if Anderson can repay the $1.7 million dollars by the time of sentencing on May 23.

Judge Thomas Willmore said the victims, some of whom are friends and family of Anderson, can write letters to him or testify during sentencing. He also ordered her not to have any contact with them.

Court records show in 1992 Anderson was sentenced to one-to-15-years in prison after pleading guilty in a similar type case. At that time, she lost her securities license after embezzling $140,000 from Farm Bureau Insurance policy holders.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
What future for the European Union?

Published on January 25, 2016

Story by Marta Pacheco

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After almost five years of proxy war in Syria and the escalation of the terrorist group ISIL, a major crisis was triggered in the European Union. Refugees, controlled borders and disunion are at the centerpiece of the Union. Will Europe be able to uphold its social and moral values?

The Syrian war and the continuous violence in Yemen and throughout the Middle East have been putting the European Union under preassure when it comes to principles like solidarity and unanimity. Both World Wars and later the Yugoslav wars have displaced countless people, unleashing a massive flux of migration towards Europe. No immigration wave has ever been bigger than what we are witnessing nowadays in the old continent.

According to the European Commission, 147,000 migrants arrived in the EU during the first semester of 2015 and 890,000 others arrived in the course of the second semester, mostly from Greece and Italy. During this dangerous journey, many have died at sea while others are exposed to criminal networks of smugglers in the Mediterranean Sea. Since the beginning of 2016, records from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimate that 31,244 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece by sea. Martin Schulz, the German President of the European Parliament acknowledged that the threat of terrorism and the ongoing refugee crisis is testing the EUs resilience in matters of solidity and stability. Furthermore, Mr Schulz admitted: Nobody knows what we are facing this year.

Schengen: on the verge of breaking down?

Besides Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria and France have temporarily reintroduced border controls with the main purpose of limiting the influx of refugees. Only France has closed its borders in connection to security reasons, while the other countries have done so due to migratory flows. Meanwhile, Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos characterised the development of the refugees crisis as worse than before. Feelings of xenophobia are rising amongst EU countries paving a dangerous way to a possible disintegration  which has already been materialized in the form of walls, barbed-wired fences and borders control.

The Commission is working on a set of measures to better deal with this galloping crisis. To begin with, the relocation scheme will be reassessed as many countries - mainly the Visegrad group - have expressed disapproval and unwillingness to participate in the quota system. The Dublin Regulation, which states that migrants must request asylum in the first EU country they reach, is on the table for further review, as most EU delegates have finally admitted the Regulations failure. In addition, a common list of safe countries is under elaboration, to determine the priority of each asylum request. Also, the establishment of hotspots to help heavily burdened countries, like Italy and Greece, to cope with the daily flux of refugees has been set up. However, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy MEP Laura Ferrara accused the lack of efficiency of these helping points: In Italy the hotspots are not working, the identification process is too slow. People whose asylum requests were rejected had neither been helped nor accompanied back to the border she added.

Disunity in the Union

The uproar is still alive and kicking amongst Member States (and European Economic Area members), and countries like Denmark and Switzerland (EEA) are prompting international condemnation. At stake is the confiscation of refugees money and jewelry by the authorities in these two host countries. On the 26th of January, the Danish government will vote a bill on this matter, which has shown a tremendous internal popularity amongst lawmakers. As for Switzerland, the confiscated money will be used to support the cost of asylum applications. According to POLITICO, Swiss migration authority SEM has explained If someone leaves voluntarily within seven months this person can get the money back and take it with them. Otherwise the money covers costs they generate.

Nonetheless, under preparatory phase in the Parliament is a legislative proposal which resolution aims to suspend the obligations of Sweden as a Member State of relocation for the period of one year. Sweden's formal request was made at the beginning of December 2015. Both Sweden and Germany are the top preferences for the asylum seekers, but while Angela Merkels policies on migration have been rather friendly (at least until the events of New Years Eve in Cologne). Sweden, still bound to relocate over 5000 persons to its territory, has been trying to slash the refugees arrival in the country. Even though Merkel has been criticised in Germany for being very tolerant, the Director of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) William Lacy Swing has expressed his deep admiration for Merkel with regards to her solidary and compassionate stance towards refugees.

Overall, the EU has been facing a major existential challenge since its foundation. With the immigration crisis at its borders, the rise of Euroscepticism in influential countries such as the UK and France, and the Greek tragedy threatening to withdraw from the Union, European leaders have much to worry about. Still, the urgent matter now is to deal with the thousands of refugees knocking at our doors and to find a smooth way of relocating them within the appropriate conditions. Rows and disputes have been splitting the Union and undermining its capacity of action; however, all EU Member States have the duty to uphold Europes values and principles. If not Europe, who will help the refugees? As the Gulf States are not taking in any refugees, it is up to Europe, in cooperation with third parties to guarantee the dignity and welfare of these human beings running from war and conflict.

Story by Marta Pacheco
Britain's EU referendum: Should I stay or should I go?

Published on January 25, 2016

Story by Lucy Featherstone

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[OPINION] Politicians and business leaders continue to bicker about the political and economic pros and cons of Brexit, the potential withdrawal of Britain from the European Union. However, the ideological battle should concern us more.

I begin with a confession: I find myself frequently ambivalent about the finer details of politics in the United Kingdom. This is perhaps related to growing up abroad as the daughter of a diplomat, or the fact that I find the ideological and political divisions between the main UK political parties increasingly blurred.

It could also be related to my rather indecisive nature: should one vote for a party, a leader, a party line, or specific policies? Whatever my uncertainties surrounding politics in general, I face no such qualms with regard to the country's impending EU referendum. I am entirely convinced that Britain should stay in the European Union.

Economics, politics, and good old ideology

The question of how Britains economy would be affected has, quite rightly, taken prominence in the debate. British business leaders are divided on the issue, but a majority would still vote to stay in the EU. Prominent US companies with UK branches such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have also backed the "IN" campaign.

Perhaps, however, it would be more convincing to emphasise the high levels of uncertainty surrounding how exactly the UK would relate to Europe after leaving the Union. What about pan-European schemes such as Erasmus, which was the highlight of my modern languages degree? Meeting students from across the EU as well as Russia and the United States had a deep impact on me. The fact that the majority of these students were not, like myself, actively studying languages, made them all the more remarkable.

Learning a foreign language challenged me to view my own nation more dispassionately and has given me life-long friends. Experiences such as these have contributed to my opposition to Brexit: I believe passionately in the ideological value of the European Economic Community and fear the UKs isolation if it were to leave during this moment of crisis in Europe.

I dont believe that I'm alone in having such an "instinctive" view of the European project. The issue polarises because it is not simply an economic or political one. It is precisely this lack of political consensus that led British Prime Minister David Cameron to recently declare an amnesty on Euro-sceptics within his Conservative party. They are to be permitted to campaign for Britain to leave the EU, whilst Cameron himself advocates reform rather than abandonment. The latest polls  from December 2015  suggest a fifty-fifty split on the issue.

Does the rest of Europe care?

Let us be clear on this: the UK came to the EEC late, joining 16 years after it was initially conceived  by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands  in the wake of the Second World War. The UK also decided against participating in the Eurozone, a decision that may well have proved wise in the light of various financial crises across Europe, most prominently Greeces recent bailout.

Yet there have also been changes and challenges as a result of Britains involvement in the European Union. The 2004 EU expansion, for example, led to an increase in Eastern European migrants seeking work in the UK. Cameron has directly addressed the issue of the Free Movement of Persons in his reform proposal, calling for a benefits cap for European migrants during their first 5 years of residency. Unsurprisingly this has been vociferously opposed by leaders from the affected countries and has been largely deemed unfeasible.

Cameron has not had an easy time in his negotiations. It has seemed at times unlikely that any of his proposals will be accepted. There has been frustration from the rest of Europe at Britains unwillingness to agree on a refugee quota. There is also the perception that the UK already enjoys a unique relationship with the EU, including many benefits, a point made on Germanys satirical show ZDF Heute.

Yet at the same time the majority of European leaders would like the UK to remain in the EU. It is, after all, the second largest economy of those nations present. Brexit could well be hugely damaging for the union.

Young people should care or else others will decide for them

One further aspect to consider in this debate is the generational divide. According to the Telegraph: "63 per cent of those aged between 18-29 want to remain in the EU, while 56 per cent of those aged over 60 want to leave." This is hugely significant. If young people do not engage with the issue of Brexit, it could be their grandparents who decide their future for them.

For those on the fence, the issue of the EU referendum can seem, at worst, an irrelevant and incomprehensible debate or at best, extremely confusing. With politicians in the same party disagreeing, how can young people in the UK make an informed decision? By studying the facts and figures and thinking about the impact Brexit may have on the economy, business links and Britains prominence both in Europe and globally.

Yet if we are not wedded to the ideological value of the Union, then these facts may leave us cold. The notion of European solidarity, seen most vividly in the wake of the Paris attacks, is something that should be prized, not abandoned.

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This article was published by our local team at cafebabel London.

Story by Lucy Featherstone
The ongoing struggle for women's rights in Turkey

Published on January 25, 2016

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Having secured the majority in the Turkish elections, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is beginning a new  albeit uncertain  chapter focusing on the civil and social rights of Turkish women. Seyma Gelen, feminist and researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, reveals the meaning behind the recent election results, as well as the secret of AKPs success.

Cafebabel met up with Seyma Gelen, a researcher in Transnational Electoral Sociology, to discuss the coming challenges and slow transformation of an unequal system, with a combination of European awareness and the understanding of a Turkish woman.

cafebabel: How can Turkey prevent women from disappearing from politics?

Seyma Gelen: We should revise electoral law and introduce a quota system giving fair representation to women on political parties electoral registers. Women are few and far between at the managerial level, yet as activists, women continue to rally behind their respective parties.

It has to be said that the same thing is true, for example, in Belgiums political parties. But in Turkey, the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) is the only one actively promoting complete equality between women and men. Looking at Turkish society, a traditional view of gender roles is maintaining the idea of a woman staying at home  both directly and indirectly.

This in part explains womens absence from politics. Because women are told that their primary role is to be a mother, and we know that there arent enough structures in place to support parents with young children, we come to better understand their absence from politics.

Creating appropriate laws is one thing, but having an attitude within society that conforms to those laws is another. Applying the laws yet again is something else entirely, especially when coupled with the need to raise the population's awareness  the male population in particular  about issues linked to inequality.

cafebabel: What measures have already been taken?

Seyma Gelen: In Turkey the biggest barrier is legal equality. There have certainly been campaigns to raise awareness about girls education, which are supported by increasingly active feminist organisations. But the gap still exists between legal equality on the one hand and mentalities and social practices that still favour men on the other.

There are laws and a growing social awareness of violence against women, but instances of domestic violence and rape are still rife. Its always useful to make a comparison: more than 100 women are killed each year in Belgium. Thats an enormous statistic. As Amnesty International points out, it seems that no society is spared. In Turkey, however, 300 women died in 2015 alone! Everyone remembers Ozgecan, the 20-year-old who was brutally killed by a bus driver.

However, lets not forget that lots of women in Turkey have achieved professional success: 36% of university students are women, as are 30% of doctors and architects and 25% of lawyers. Youll also find "showcase" women who have built a career in the finance sector. We could add to this the liberalisation of clothing that has allowed women wearing the hijab to engage in further study and work. Thats an important gain.

cafebabel: What is your opinion on the "We Are Turning Our Backs (#BayanYan ed.) Twitter campaign, targeted at the President? Do you think it could act as a trigger for women to have a stronger engagement with politics?

Seyma Gelen: When it started, the campaign was the reaction of one group of women who disagreed with some of the Presidents views. They turned their backs on him at one of his pre-election visits on the 7th of June 2015. Erdogan's response to these women provoked a reaction on Twitter and the hashtag you quote went viral, but I dont think that it will really be a trigger.

I think it had more to do with one part of Turkish society reacting to Erdogan. It mainly rallied women and feminist associations, but men got involved as well. At the same time Erdogan's supporters got behind him, so the reaction didnt rally men and women from all walks of life. As I explained earlier, Turkish society is above all patriarchal and these matters arent considered a problem for the majority of the population  economic and security issues are more important.

cafebabel: Since coming to power in 2003, Erdogan is increasingly seen as an intolerant, autocratic president by his European counterparts. Do you think this is to do with the way in which his politics is communicated, particularly with regards to left-wing women, or is the problem of a more structural nature?

Seyma Gelen: The way in which Erdogan and his policies are perceived is subjective. European countries condemn some of his policies and, as a result, give him a "brand". We should remember that he isnt seen as an "intolerant, autocratic president" by all Turkish citizens  that depends on your view.

Not everyone is concerned with issues concerning freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the status of women or the concentration of power. The election result, and whats happening now in Turkish politics, shows us that there is a polarisation in Turkish society between pro-Erdogan and anti-Erdogan supporters. I dont see a solution in the short term.

Whatever Erdogan says or does, some will like and support him, whilst others will dislike and oppose him. This societal tension will only lessen when political polarisation does, but the current climate suggests thats a long way off.

---

This article was published by our local team at cafebabel Brussels.

Story by Andre Patrocinio

Translated from Femmes et politique : les inegalites structurelles de la societe turque
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Carlota Santos (right), a research specialist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christis Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, surveys visitors at the Mission Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve to learn who visits the area and how these visitors, whether local or vacationers, value local ecosystem services.

SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Larry McKinney, director of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christis Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, will lead a team of six co-investigators in laying the foundation to create the first report card on the Gulf of Mexico. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Researchers from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and partner agencies will test methods of evaluating the ecological health of ecosystems at Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve to expand the assessment framework to other parts of the Gulf of Mexico. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Researchers from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and partner agencies will test methods of evaluating the ecological health of ecosystems at Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve to expand the assessment framework to other parts of the Gulf of Mexico. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Researchers from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and partner agencies will test methods of evaluating the ecological health of ecosystems at Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve to expand the assessment framework to other parts of the Gulf of Mexico.

By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

As billions are being invested in restoring the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 BP oil spill, a report card to assess the efforts is in the works at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

The research is funded by a portion of Clean Water Act fines collected after the spill. The institute was one of seven research teams awarded federal money in September and will assemble key players in March to execute the first phase of a two-year project  dubbed "Indicators and Assessment Framework for Ecological Health and Ecosystem Services."

The institute was awarded $398,349 and is tasked with developing a framework to objectively evaluate the health of the Gulf and its ties to the well-being of coastal residents. The project will help federal, state and local agencies and nongovernmental organizations focus federal resources more effectively.

Larry McKinney, the institute's executive director, will lead a team of six co-investigators in laying the foundation to create the first "report card" on the Gulf of Mexico based on a Texas-based prototype.

"No one has ever tried to figure out how to assess the health of something as big and complex as the 600,000 square mile Gulf of Mexico," he said. "There have never been tools to do that. Our goal is to be able to answer ... if the money is being put to good use."

During the March gathering, about 50 county and city leaders and environmental experts will collaborate to identify indicators in the Texas Gulf that will help evaluate its ecological health, said on of the six co-investigators to lead the project, director of Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve Jace Tunnell.

Researchers will test their methods at the research reserve, a 185,708-acre complex of Texas marine, wetland and coastal environments and will evaluate the potential for broad use in the Gulf of Mexico. The framework will be used to better allocate resources for ongoing restoration and protection projects.

McKinney's long term goal for the project is to publish an annual report card inclusive of all ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.

A report card, if done correctly, also can help tax payers monitor their tax dollars, McKinney said.

"The best motivation for taking action to address problems in the Gulf is people being concerned," he said. "We're trying to provide the tool for the public to get involved. That puts pressure on decision-makers and resource agents to do something about (major problems)."

Twitter: @CallerBetty
When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas
An electronic sign showns an amber alert over Interstate 80 in Omaha, Neb., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2002. In the early days of brick-sized cellphones, she wondered aloud if an alert could be sounded for missing children. "Why not radio?" Stoker asked, popping up from the table. Simone called a KDMX/102.9 FM midday host, Kim Ashley, and the Amber Alert was born. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

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By BUD KENNEDY, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Editor's note: This is an AP Member Exchange shared by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)  Twenty years after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was found dead in Arlington, a Hood County woman cried all over again.

"It got pretty emotional," Diana R. Simone, the massage therapist whose idea for Amber Alerts has rescued 794 children, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (http://bit.ly/1QmAvnX).

"I just wish something could have been done for Amber."

Simone and a client, the late Rev. Tom Stoker of Fort Worth, were talking about the grim news and crying that day on the massage table.

In the early days of brick-sized cellphones, she wondered aloud if an alert could be sounded for missing children.

"Why not radio?" Stoker asked, popping up from the table. Simone called a KDMX/102.9 FM midday host, Kim Ashley, and the Amber Alert was born.

Two decades later, it's finally working the way she imagined. The new cellphone Amber Alerts have rescued 21 children.

That year, seven local radio station managers from competing chains, including Dan Bennett and Tyler Cox of what is now Cumulus Media's WBAP/820 AM and KLIF/570 AM, did the hard work to set up a local broadcast alert system, similar to those for thunderstorms.

"Now people say, 'Oh, you're the one who thought up those phone alerts waking me up at 2 in the morning!'" Simone said.

"But we're away from radio more now. People listen to their own music. But they take their cellphones everywhere."

Until 2002, the radio managers always credited a "listener idea" and Simone remained anonymous. It was Stoker who unearthed a copy of her follow-up letter, and KDMX officials identified it.

In 2002, she said she had never told anyone it was her idea because "it seemed to be working."

It is. The incidence of child abductions by strangers has declined sharply since 1996, and the alerts also discourage family abductions that risk lives.

"It's fantastic that it acts as a deterrent," Simone said.

"It puts a million eyes on the lookout in a matter of minutes."

Simone, now 70, is often held up as an example of the power of ideas.

When The Dallas Morning News published a salute to Simone earlier this month (bit.ly/1PoY4Hs), the headline was: "Think 'just plain folks' can't make a difference? This life-saving woman sure did."

"In today's world  which too often seems to be going to hell in a handbasket and in which scoundrels, posers and just plain jerks get too much air time  I wanted to make sure Diana Simone's name was lifted up," Grigsby wrote.

Simone was sheepish.

"It strikes me as so strange when people talk about me," she said.

"The heroes are the police looking for these children, and the firefighters, and the people working in battered women's shelters. I only did something, just one thing, one time."

But it has worked 794 times.

___

Information from: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, http://www.star-telegram.com
| BY Ricki Green |

As of today, Lowe agencies across 90 offices in over 65 markets will be rebranded as MullenLowe. In Australia the agency rebrands as 303 MullenLowe at offices in Sydney and Perth.

The global rebranding of MullenLowe Group follows the merger of IPG agencies Mullen in the U.S. with global creative network Lowe and Partners in May last year.

Says Nick Cleaver, CEO, 303MullenLowe Australia: The continued prominence of the 303 name in the local rebrand is reflective of our agencys local market strength and of our on going ownership stake in the business.

Mullen has won numerous accolades including AdAges Agency A-list, Creativity magazines Creative Innovators of the Year as well as scooping the North American Effie Grand Prix 2015 for its American Greetings work.

Both agencies have a proud legacy as independent agencies that have built a fully

integrated offering including the provision of media buying services.

Says Richard Morgan, executive creative director, 303 MullenLowe: Mullen is great creative partner for us  their work for American Greetings and JetBlue shows how likeminded we are when it comes to creating work that gets an unfair share of attention. Were both achieving this by having an integrated model in which our ideas are grounded in digital and media insights, which is rare for any agency.

Over the past 18 months, 303 MullenLowe has expanded its social media and content offering and its digital capabilities under the stewardship of Brad Morris, managing partner for digital and innovation. Gavin Gibsons arrival in July 2015 as managing partner media has seen the agency add to its media smarts with a new programmatic trading desk and a new data analytics capability created. Over the last three months, 303 MullenLowe has bolstered its media team with six new hires.

The agency grew significantly in 2015 off the back of its enhanced offering winning clients including Audi, Macquarie University, Sherwin Williams, major Federal campaigns for Treasury and Austrade, the Cancer Institute, projects for BHP and NSW Transport while growing business with existing clients such as NSW Health, Lend Lease, Indeed and Budget Direct.

New business wins in Perth include P&N Bank, Main Roads Western Australia, Southern Cross Care and Australian insurer WFI.

Says Alex Leikikh, global CEO of MullenLowe Group: The creation of MullenLowe Group has given us the opportunity to create a whole new type of global communications network. A network not defined by silos. A network with integrated communications planning built into the model. A network where we bring together the best cross section of our talent across all disciplines to work on client business challenges and drive more creativity.
Sunday, January 24, 2016 at 7:40PM

In an ongoing move by Google to slowly let its Google+ social network rest, one more app will be losing the requirement to use Google+ for use. Google Play Games will soon no longer require you to have a Google+ account to access the app. This means youll get fewer permission requests to access games and you just need to sign into Play Games once per account instead of having to do so with every game, unless you dont leave auto sign-in turned on.

For developers, there would hardly be any changes to games except those games that ask for Google+ scope unnecessarily will need to be changed to remove pop-up consent windows and those that use Google Play Games player ID for other APIs wont return any valid data anymore. Google wont say yet when the changes will take into effect but it should happen soon.

Source: Android Developers Blog | Via: The Next Web
"Children might come here for an hour while Mum goes to the supermarket or gets a haircut or they might come here for three weeks while the family goes overseas," Mr Mackay said.
Nearly 30 years ago, when I had that fight with my friends Robin and Neil, Australia Day was still acceptable and it's become less acceptable now. For me, then, it was a time to celebrate being in country which didn't kill me or reject me or exclude me in a systematic way. But it marks the day when the colonisers of Australia began to kill, reject and exclude the Aboriginal people. Or, as Stan Grant put it when describing how the brilliant Swan Adam Goodes was treated last year: "I can tell you what we heard when we heard those boos, we heard a sound that was very familiar to us . . . we heard a howl of humiliation that echoes across two centuries of dispossession, injustice, suffering and survival. We heard the howl of the Australian dream and it said to us again, you're not welcome."
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Modified On Jan 27, 2016 02:42 PM By CarDekho for Maruti Baleno 2015-2022

Buoyed by the overwhelming response, company will be unveiling the range-topping Maruti Baleno RS at the Auto Expo 2016.

Latest premium hatchback offered by Maruti Suzuki, Baleno is surely proving to be a blockbuster for the company. Within four months of its launch, this car has created a frenzy among the customers and till date has earned nearly 70,000 bookings. Dubbed as the i20 assassin, Baleno has stormed the sales chart as it outsold Hyundai i20 and Honda Jazz in the month of December 2015. Last month, Maruti had produced 11,203 units of the Baleno and sold 10,572 units removing Hyundai i20 (10,379 units) from the top spot and becoming the top selling premium hatchback.

According to recent reports, officials at Maruti had not anticipated such a response for the Baleno and are in talks with the production team to ramp up the production. Though they fear that the waiting-period of close to six months is likely to continue for some more time.

Keeping the pace with the demand can be all the more difficult for this carmaker as later this month it is planning to begin exporting the Baleno. Reports are that Baleno will be exported to Japan, Western Europe, Latin America and even some African countries.

Maruti Suzuki had increased the prices of the Baleno earlier this month and now the hiked prices of this car range in between Rs. 5.11 lac and Rs. 8.16 lac (ex-showroom, Delhi). However, it remains to be seen how this will affect the demand. This premium hatchback segment will soon see more activity as Maruti is planning to unveil range-topping Maruti Baleno RS at the upcoming Auto Expo. The Baleno RS will be featuring some interesting visual add-ons including a faux diffuser, body kit, side skirts and larger alloy wheels.

Read More: Maruti Baleno BoosterJet Might be Launched this Year Post-IAE 2016 Showcase

Read More on : Baleno india
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.
Applications are invited by Union Public Service Commission. UPSC is looking out for 112 posts Civilian Medical Officers & Other Posts. Details of this recruitment is listed below.

Notification details

Notification No. : 02/ 2016

Name of the post and Number of posts allocated

1. Assistant Library and Information Officer: 1

2. Civilian Medical Officers: 49

3. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professor (Cancer Surgery): 1

4. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Urology): 2

5. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Gastroenterology): 8

6. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Endocrinology): 9

7. Specialist Grade-III (Neurology): 01

8. Specialist Grade-III (Cardiology): 01

9. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Plastic Surgery): 08

10. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Psychiatry): 26

11. Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors (Paediatric Cardiology): 02

12. Assistant Employment Officer: 1

13. Chemist in Indian Bureau of Mines: 1

14. Economic Officers: 2

Who is Eligible for the UPSC job?

Qualification: Candidates interested to apply for the above post must be qualified as per the organisations requirement. Qualification becomes mandatory to test the skills and their perseverance in doing a certain job. Candidates need to be Graduate or post graduate. To know more about the required qualification in detail log on to this organisations website.

Age Limit

Assistant Library and Information Officer: 30 years

Civilian Medical Officers: 35 years

Specialist Grade-III Assistant Professors: 30 years

Assistant Employment Officer: 01

Chemist in Indian Bureau of Mines: 35 years

Economic Officers: 30 years

How to Apply for UPSC job?

Candidates who are interested to apply for the above mentioned jobs must see that they are eligible for this job. Once they find themselves eligible they can apply for this job through post in a prescribed format. Do not forget to send the applications along with other necessary documents.

For Admit Card, Result and all other details visit the official website.

What are the Important Dates Associated with Job?

Last Date to Apply: 11 February 2016.

Also Read:
Republic Day, the national festival, is a day ahead, children and students are looking forward to celebrate with much fervor. On the special day, patriotic songs echoes everywhere as every child flutters a tiny national flag to mark the occasion. Many schools organises various cultural events to make the event memorable.

Apart from other celebrations, speech about the Republic Day and why we celebrate it? required to be shared among children. It is also an effort towards igniting the minds of youth about the Constitution Day. Careerindia has speech for students to address their friends on the occasion.

Republic Day Quiz For Students

Good Morning respected principal, teachers and my dear friends.

My Name is..., studying in Class..., wish to give a speech on Republic Day celebration. On this occasion, I would like to thank my class teacher for providing me a great opportunity to speak about the special day.

As you all know, we have gathered here to celebrate the 67th Republic Day of our Nation. Republic Day, celebrated every year on 26th January has gained special significance in the history of India. Everyear, the national event is celebrated, with lots of joy and happiness to makes the event colourful and memorable. It was on 26th January 1950, the constitution of India came into to effect, and the D-Day is celebrated as National Day to commemorate the moment/day.

We are all aware that India got its independence on August 15, 1947 but the nation didn't have a constitution of its own, instead was governed under the laws implemented by the British.

However, after many deliberations and amendments, a committee headed by DR B.R Ambedkar submitted a draft of Indian Constitution, which was adapted on 26 November, 1949 and officially came into effect on 26 January 1950.

'Republic' means the supreme power. Citizen living in the Republic nation enjoys the privilege/ rights to elect their representatives/ political leader to lead the country. Thus, in the Republic India, every citizen enjoys equal rights irrespective of status and gender he/she belongs to.

Republic Day Celebrations at Delhi

The main Republic Day celebrations is held in the national capital, New Delhi, at the Rajpath in presence of the President of India.

On this day, ceremonious parades take place at the Rajpath, which are performed as a tribute to India. The celebration commences from the gates of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's residence), Raisina Hill on Rajpath past the India Gate is the main attraction of Republic Day Celebrations.

This will be followed by the presence of various dignitaries at Rajpath to celebrate the occasion. President, Prime Minister and other high rank officials of India are usually included in the list of dignitaries.

As a part of celebration, India has been hosting head of state or government of another country as the state guest of honour for Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi. This has been followed since 1950.

The President unflurs the National flag and addresses the nation with Republic Day speech.

On the occasion, prestigious awards will be given away to martyrs and heroes, who dedicated lives to the country. Republic Day parade, is a prominent and eye catching element of the celebration as it showcases India's Defence Capability, Cultural and Social Heritage. The colouful displays will be exhibited by every state depicts their culture.

Also Read:

Each and every school, college and office celebrate and participate in the Republic Day and show their patriotic fervor. Citizen in the country share wishes each other, brings in the festive ambiance, and, also disseminates the importance of the day.
New Delhi, January 25, 2016: Six Kendriya Vidyalayas operating from Air Force Stations (AFS) in Delhi, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad have suspended their classes till the Republic Day due to security concerns which also prompted universities in the national capital to step up their arrangements.

According to officials from Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, six KVs whose classes have been suspended include- Bawana, Gurgaon, Rajokri, Arjangarh and KV1 and 2 of Hindon--the Gurgaon and Arjangarh KVs are located outside the IAF campuses.

However, no order for suspension of classes has been passed for other KVs in Delhi.

Universities including DU and JNU have also issued advisories asking all departments and faculties to ensure that strict vigil is maintained and vehicles entering the campuses are checked.

Metro services will be partially curtailed on January 26.

Four stations in the vicinity of Rajpath--Central Secretariat, Udyog Bhawan, Patel Chowk and Race Course--will remain closed in the morning.

Parking lots will also remain closed from 6 AM on January 25 till 2 PM on January 26.

Govt school students to give performances in front of soldiers

New Delhi, January 25, 2016: Sixty students from different Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas will be visiting Akhnoor and Attari borders and present cultural performances in front of armed personnel.

As per an official statement here, the programme - 'Seema Darshan' - is an initiative taken up by the HRD Ministry in collaboration with the Home and Defence Ministries.

"Under the programme, child artists would demonstrate to the jawans how they are preserving and taking forward the cultural legacy of the country for which the armed forces are constantly on the vigil and also protecting and guarding its borders," the statement said.

The objective of the programme, being organised for five days starting from January 22, is to provide the students with a first-hand experience of the prevailing security environment in the border areas and also to foster patriotism and nationalism, the statement said.

Only Class XI students from the schools have been included in this group.

The students for the groups have been selected from KVs and NVs across all the states of India including Delhi, it said.

PTI
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If youre looking to get in trouble with the law in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, you might need to watch out for ten very silent Toyota Camry police cruisers, as opposed to those noisy V8 Crown Victorias youre probably used to seeing.



So yes, this is actually a real advantage for the Arkadelphia Police Department. Sneaking up on bad guys can be somewhat difficult in a regular cruiser, though with these Camry Hybrids, those types of issues might become a thing of the past.

Other benefits obviously include the usage of less fuel and getting more mpg, which is mainly why Arkadelphia PD replaced 10 of their aging Crown Vics with these brand new Camry Hybrids.

I was dead set against it, explained veteran officer Don Cleek. To me a police cars supposed to be rear wheel drive, V8 and can go through ditches. Thats a valid argument, except that once Chief of Police Al Harris decided to give the Camry Hybrids a try, the officers that ended up driving the Toyota realized that they were doing just as fine a job as the Crown Vics, while also getting about 27 mpg (8.7 l/100km) in all-city driving  compared to 12 (19 l/100km) to 14 mpg (16 l/100km) on the Crown Vics.

Thanks to the fuel savings and significantly lower maintenance costs, the city of Arkadelphia is saving itself about 3% of its annual budget, which is no small feat.

Check out the video in order to see some behind the scenes footage of how all of this came to be and also some interesting testing going on between the Crown Vics and the modern-day Camry Hybrid.

VIDEO
Citroen-owned brand DS just unveiled its new DS 3 and is already promising a host of new high-performance models. Now, the company has confirmed that unlike some other automakers, its future cars will have very distinct designs from each other.



One only has to look at the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, E-Class and S-Class to see the Russian doll design some companies are adopting. However, DS product boss Eric Apode recently told Autocar that its new models will be recognizable from 100 or 200 meters away thanks to their unique exterior designs.

The firms design boss Thierry Metroz expanded on this by saying that the marques avant-garde spirit will be achieved through very different models. We will have a different silhouette for each segment, in order to maintain a surprise.

Of course, all DS models will have common design traits, most significantly with the firms front grille that includes double wings stretching up to under the headlights and first previewed on the DS Divine concept of 2014.

PHOTO GALLERY
Preparing for the US launch of the all-new 570S, the British carmaker its number of retailers.



The new dealerships, located in Bergen County (New Jersey), Boston (Massachusetts), Houston (Texas) and Palm Beach (Florida), will bring the total number of North American dealers to 22, and a total of 80 globally.

All four dealers will offer state-of-the-art sales, after sales and retail facilities and increase the network of the rapidly growing automaker that posted record sales in 2015.

Commenting on the new dealers, president of McLaren Automotive North America Tony Joseph said: It is with great pleasure that we welcome these new locations to our retailer network. Each joins us with a wealth of experience in their local markets, and we look forward to having them support the brand during this period of considerable sales growth.

As production of the P1 has ceased, the models available at North American McLaren dealerships will be the 540C, 570S, 650S Coupe and Spider, 675LT Coupe and, soon, the 675LT Spider.

PHOTO GALLERY
A few fast laps around the track proved that the Mercedes McLaren SLR is a tamed beast compared to the monstrous Ferrari FXX Evoluzione.



While the latter was developed specifically for the circuit and is not street legal, the SLR might just be the perfect ride to a fancy dinner and the vehicle of choice for a cruise around Monaco. With its 626PS (hp) and 780Nm (580lb-ft) 5.4-liter supercharged V8, it will make sure that whoever is behind the wheel will not be late to a business meeting either.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Ferrari FXX was produced in a mere 30 units and it helped launch the brands exclusive XX programme. The exotic remains one of the best-sounding cars out there and its 6.3-liter V12 naturally aspirated powertrain offers a concert that is only rivaled by F1 cars.

The 800PS (789hp) and 686Nm (506lb-ft) of torque sent to the rear wheels help the machine sprint to 100km/h (62mph) in just 2.5 seconds and all the way up to 345km/h (214mph). Its not exactly known how many examples were fitted with the $1.5 million Evoluzione package, which makes the car even rarer.

VIDEO
Following the world premiere of the E-Class in Detroit, the next logical step for the German brand should be the introduction of the E63 AMG range-topper.



Since all powerful Mercs have went through a name change, it is expected to be named the Mercedes-AMG E63 and get the similar styling to other AMG models in Mercedes lineup.

A redesigned front grille, more aggressive front bumper, tweaked side skirts, different rear bumper, boot-lid spoiler and tweaked diffuser incorporating the quad exhaust pipes, similar to what Remco M did in this rendering, are to be expected.

Additionally, a sportier cabin that should remind owners that this is not the average E-Class is also a must for the range-topping E-Class.

The AMG E63 will use the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 from the AMG GT and new C63, in two power outputs for the E63 and the E63 S respectively.

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Long Way North (Tout en haut du monde), which debuted in Annecy last June, where it won the audience award, is finally being released theatrically in France this Wednesday. The distributor Diaphana will launch it on 150 screens.

It used to be that foreign animation like this rarely, if ever, made it to the United States, but times are changing. The stylized action-adventure film directed by Remi Chaye will make a voyage to the United States later in 2016, courtesy of Shout! Factory. Its one of the stronger picks-ups for Shout, which has distributed other international animated features including Snowtime! and Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Heres the English-subtitled trailer:

The film is not only hand-drawn, but employs a graphic approach to design and animation that deviates from the smooth Disney-style movement that Americans typically associate with hand-drawn feature animation. Chaye has some experience in this area; he was the head of layout and first assistant director on Cartoon Saloons Oscar-nominated feature The Secret of Kells.
The California T is Ferrari's popular front-engined V8 model that does gran touring the best. In the corners, however, it isnt as hardcore as some of the Italian brands mid-engined cars. Now though Ferrari claims to have made the California T a better handler with the introduction of a special handling pack.

The California T is being offered with a new Handling Speciale (HS) option for those looking for a sportier driving experience. This new option offers a series of specific calibrations and a setup that lends an extra edge, especially in the manettino's Sport mode.

The handling package incorporates new damper settings and modified springs that make the car stiffer which, although marginally reducing the ride comfort, results in sportier feedback. Ferrari has also worked on the gear shift logic for the Sport mode for quicker both up and downshifts. The HS package also includes 16 per cent stiffer front springs and 19 per cent stiffer ones at the rear and a new exhaust system.

Ferrari has announced that this handling pack will officially debut at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show.
Mahindra and Mahindra will soon start exporting the new KUV100 to neighbouring countries. The latest compact vehicle will be sold in right-hand drive countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa.

The Mahindra KUV100 is produced at the companys manufacturing plant in Chakan, Pune. The carmaker has invested Rs 1,200 crore in this project, which includes capital expenditure, design and research and development. The car is only the second product from Mahindra's portfolio to have a monocoque chassis and is built with 85 per cent localisation. Only a few components are being imported, which has helped the carmaker to price the car aggressively.

Mahindra is doing every bit to boost the KUV100's sales. They are also offering the car through e-commerce websites. It is offered in both petrol as well as diesel variants, the top-of-the-line trim being fully equipped with all the premium features and safety offerings in the list. It competes with cars in the hatchback and crossover segment and is currently enjoying a good demand in India. The volume of exports will be determined by the demand in other countries when sales start in a couple of months.
Photo: Contributed

Tucked at the back of Thompson Rivers University campus lies a little house that contains an alternative from the mainstream for Kamloops residents.

CFBX, Kamloops alternative radio station currently broadcasts at 350 watts, meaning if your radio isnt duck-taped to your kitchen ceiling or you dont live in a house on a hill, chances are you havent tuned in.

However the organization, run by two-full time employees and 50 volunteers, is hoping to 'up' its game.

The non-profit has been operating since 1998, but didnt officially hit the airwaves until 2001 at just 5 watts at then University College of Cariboo. Fast-forward to 2016, CFBX is looking to move its tower off of House 8 to a new location, an arduous task that will cost a significant amount of money.

As most things go at The X, the station will be holding a fundraiser in true alternative style, a beach party in January. Beach Party 4 will be the first of many fundraisers this year that supporters hope will get the campus station rocking.

Volunteer Brian Sanderson says the event will take place at Zacks coffee house, owned by fellow volunteer and programmer Andrew Blackwell. Blackwell and Sanderson have been involved with the station since the early 2000s, and have got together two local bands and a DJ to play at the party, thanks to the help of another volunteer.

When we upped our watts to 350 it improved our sound slightly, explains Sanderson. But, now we really want to improve our sound and that means moving our tower.

There are several places the tower could go and each option could cost thousands of dollars.

We have hit some road blocks in the past, when weve looked into moving the tower, but we know its doable, says Sanderson.

The X currently broadcasts at 92. 5 FM and online, and Sanderson says it is possible to hear the station as far as Barriere, although it isnt clear.

We want it to be a stronger, clearer signal, and reach more people.

Over the years the station has held various fundraisers, from vinyl record yard sales, to pub nights at Heroes; however the running joke is you cant get The X at the campus pub which is located across the street. Sanderson says its time to get serious, and the tower relocation will happen.

We need a lot (of money), and we havent raised money seriously for this cause. We raised money back when, for the 350 watts, and it was successful, he says hopefully.

Currently, the station is run by the Kamloops and Community Radio Society, which maintains operations through donations, student tuition fees and programmers membership fees.

Sometimes we just barely get by, we are not in the business to make money, he says. We just pay for the upkeep of the station and our two full-time employees.

The X offers a variety of music, each hour is different from jazz at dinner, to metal in the evenings, to reggae on Sundays.

Sanderson is hopeful this will be the year to raise enough funds to relocate the tower, and says he would really like to see it moved by 2017.

We are watching what other campus stations are doing, they are bringing in bands and we would like to do that.

In the early days of the station many artists that are well-known today, stopped into House 8 for interviews with volunteer programmers  such as Metric and Xavier Rudd.

Programmers dont need to have background in broadcast or producing, but must have a love for music and be interested in learning more about community radio.

Beach Party 4 will take place Zacks Coffee House, downtown Kamloops, on Jan. 30. Local punk band Fuss, indie group Daydreams and DJ Barnacle will play at the event.
Photo: Contributed

Some Kelowna residents were left in the dark last night.

A snow-laden branch took out some power lines, leaving some 1,400 customers in Black Mountain and South East Kelowna in the dark.

Officials with FortisBC said the branch came down on the wires and caught fire, tripping the Black Mountain substation and plummeting residents into blackness.

Power went out just after 9 p.m. Saturday and was back on by 10:50 p.m.

A wet, heavy snow fell on parts of the Okanagan Saturday, causing a few minor accidents and the power outage.
Photo: CTV

The acting mayor of La Loche says he wants the community's high school torn down to help the village's residents move past the trauma of a mass shooting on Friday.

Kevin Janvier suggested Sunday Dene High School, where seven people were wounded and two people died during the shooting, would have to be demolished in order to give them a feeling of catharsis.

Janiver, along with other community leaders, met with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde in La Loche on Sunday.

After the meeting, Wall told reporters the province would provide support to the grief-stricken village of La Loche for "as long as necessary.

La Loche is small, isolated community of less than 3,000 people located 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

The village is linked by only one road from the south and can be reached by an ice road from Fort McMurray, Alta., in the winter. In recent years, the village has struggled with unemployment as well as education, mental health and housing issues.

"We don't know the specifics around the tragedy, but I can say, in the general sense that the link is hope," said Wall. "And I think a lot of mental health issues stem from a lack of hope."

"It is a huge tragedy, one that reaches far beyond this community," Goodale said of the shooting. "This community is the epicentre of the most recent tragedy, but it is a set of issues that the country has to come to grips with, and Mr. Trudeau is determined to make that happen."

- with files from CTV
Vernon's Gateway shelter has had to turn away more people from its doors this winter than ever before due to beds being full, states a report to city council.

We're hearing from Gateway that there have been more turn-aways than in previous years, Annette Sharkey, executive director of the Social Planning Council, told council on Monday.

Sharkey also pointed to a spike in homeless camps in the city last October from three or four to six.

However the increase was not as significant as expected by social welfare groups following the closure of the notorious Green Valley Motel.

(The closure) was a crisis moment, said Sharkey, who praised social service groups across the community for their efforts to help those who had to leave the motel.

The Gateway Shelter provided additional spaces immediately after the closure of the hotel but this program was only accessed by one tenant, stated the report.

In another disquieting observation, the report said, The COOL Team are seeing more 'party type activity' in public spaces. The COOL team is made up of community outreach workers who ensure the homeless know how and where to access services.

Sharkey expressed satisfaction with the purchase of the Journey Inn on 28th Avenue which is currently undergoing renovations and will provide 39 units of affordable housing.

On the subject of panhandling in the downtown, Sharkey said a brochure has been sent out to businesses telling them where to go if they are having trouble with street people.

I feel we really didn't get out the information for incidents that happen in the downtown and where you could go, Sharkey said of a workshop with downtown business managers late last year.

When asked about underage panhandlers, including a 15-year-old girl who has reportedly been on the streets, Sharkey said the Vernon First Nations' Friendship Centre had a two-bedroom, four-bed emergency shelter for 13 to 18 year olds, adding it was not for longterm cases.
Innovate+Educate, in partnership with Alcoa Foundation, on Monday announced the launch of Tennessee Manufacturers Works. This effort has partners from the Chattanooga area  Tennessee Association of Manufacturers and Thinking Media  Learning Blade. This initiative is aimed at creating clear pathways to manufacturing jobs, with training and curriculum that is aligned to industry demands, said officials.

Tennessee continues to show growth in manufacturing. Data resources provided by Innovate+Educate, a national nonprofit focused on new pathways to employment, shows that as many as 12,000 jobs will need to be filled in Blount/Hamblen counties in the next four years. This includes workers that will retire, and new jobs that will be created. The project will focus on aligning employer needs (competencies) with the training in the region, working to provide assessments and job training to 250 candidates in 2016.

"The urgency for creating new pathways to manufacturing jobs has never been greater," said Ryan Kish of the Alcoa Foundation. "Tennessee has a strong manufacturing economy, but many jobs remain unfilled for months, signaling a need for better career entry points. Alcoa Foundation, with our partners at Innovate+Educate, Tennessee Association of Manufacturers, and Learning Blade are developing innovative fast track pathways to careers in manufacturing. We believe this model has the potential to be scaled nationally, resulting in effectively placing skilled talent into in-demand, well paying manufacturing jobs.

Tennessee Manufacturers Works will leverage real-time labor market information, forecasting tools, and employer feedback on competencies to articulate the competencies required for high demand manufacturing jobs. The effort will also focus on ensuring entry level workers have the ability to move into higher paying jobs within the field, assuring a promising pathways in manufacturing, said officials.

"As we work daily with manufacturers across Tennessee, the number one concern we hear from CEO's and plant managers is the lack of availability of a skilled and dedicated workforce," said Tim Spires, president of Tennessee Association of Manufacturers. "With the recent growth of manufacturing jobs in Tennessee, the increasing retirement of our skilled workforce, and the technical requirements of advanced manufacturing today, we are excited to be working with our partners in this effort. Tennessee Manufacturers Works will bring together industry, education, government, and community partners to build pathways to preparing our future workforce for great paying jobs in manufacturing."

Stakeholders interested are invited to attend one of two launches to be held Tuesday at the TCAT in Knoxville at 10 a.m. and Morristown at 1 p.m. For more information contact Megan King at mking@tennam.com or call 266-1902.






Using molecular dynamics simulations, researchers have analysed the properties of supercritical water. The researchers showed which structure of the hydrogen bond network is formed in different supercritical states and also simulated the relevant terahertz spectra. This approach may help in future to interpret experimental results.

At temperatures of approx. 375 degrees Celsius and a pressure 220 times higher than normal, water reaches the supercritical state, where the liquid and the gaseous phases can no longer be clearly distinguished  according to traditional text-book opinion.

Arguments that the supercritical state might be subdivided into a gas-like and a liquid-like regime, separated by the so-called Widom line, havent been put forward until a few years ago, explains Christoph Schran from the Center for Theoretical Chemistry at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, headed by Prof Dr Dominik Marx.

Three water states in comparison

Using molecular dynamics simulations, the team headed by Prof Marx analysed how to study the Widom line experimentally by means of terahertz spectroscopy. They published their results in collaboration with the Polish Gdansk University of Technology in Physical Review Letters. The simulations were partially conducted at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich.

The theorists compared three states: the state of liquid water at room temperature; a supercritical state with high density; and a supercritical state with low density. The analyses revealed that the hydrogen bond networks between the hydrogen molecules are completely different in those three states.

States differ with regard to size and number of water clusters

In liquid water at room temperature, almost all hydrogen molecules are bound via hydrogen bonds. In supercritical water, however, isolated clusters are formed. They consist of water molecules that are bound inside the cluster via hydrogen bonds, but do not have any hydrogen bonds to other clusters.

The number of clusters of different sizes differs between supercritical states with high and low density. Properties of the gas phase are prevailing in supercritical water with low density, those of the liquid phase in supercritical water with high density.

The researchers simulated the vibrational spectra associated with the three states in the terahertz range, whose shape is largely determined by the structure of the hydrogen bond network. Experimentally, it is not possible to observe directly which factors affect the shape of the spectra on the molecular level. Theoretical chemistry can close this gap: the present study has shed light on the physical processes that determine the shape of the terahertz spectra of gas-like and liquid-like supercritical water.

Our simulations have shown that terahertz spectroscopy should be an ideal method for analysing the properties of hydrogen bonds in the supercritical state of water  on both sides of the Widom line, concludes Schran. Moreover, our findings will help to interpret the underlying molecular processes in the measured spectra.

Supercritical liquids as solvents for the industry

Supercritical water is relevant not only for academic research. The industry utilises it as an eco-friendly solvent. Minor variations of pressure or temperature affect its properties to a considerable extent. Consequently, supercritical water can be fine-tuned to adopt the properties required for the respective application.
I saw the photo of that man shooting that poor fox. I thought it was totally inappropriate.

I am a member of the RSPB Wildlife Explorers which not only involves birds but also wild animals.

So I could easily write to them and tell them.

I am a fan of foxes and would protect them if they were in unnecessary danger. Anyway, how do we know the fox bit the baby?

No-one even knows that for sure. With all due regard to the baby, it was not savaged. That fox probably had cubs to look after and feed and keep alive but now they will probably die as well.

I don't think it is fair. The fox catcher has done more wrong than the fox. Years ago a fox took my pet rabbit but I don't hold it against it. I am strongly against fox hunting.

I am also very angry with the News Shopper for displaying the photograph like that.

Stephen Lee (Age 12)

Heath Lane

Dartford
There is more confusion over Land of Lincoln Health's network of hospitals and doctors.

Alexian Brothers Health Systems in the northwest suburbs confirmed Monday that negotiations over a new contract with Land of Lincoln broke down at the end of last year over reimbursement rates. But a hospital executive said he is "in the dark" about Alexian Brothers' network status.

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Alexian Brothers is at least the second Chicago-area health system to have a contract dispute with Land of Lincoln in recent weeks.

The Tribune first reported last week that the insurance company will remove the University of Chicago's medical center and physicians group from its network after the two sides couldn't reach an agreement on rates. Land of Lincoln customers who had purchased a plan through the federal insurance exchange or through a broker have complained that the insurance company falsely advertised the university's inclusion in the network during open enrollment in November and December.

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"LLH is constantly working to expand its network of providers and also keep premiums competitive," said Dennis O'Sullivan, Land of Lincoln's spokesman. "As a result, networks can sometimes change as health care provider contracts are constantly being negotiated for the most competitive rates for services provided."

Doctors and hospitals have to provide discounts for their services to be included in an insurance company's network. Medical plans give consumers financial incentives to go to "in-network" providers by covering a higher percentage of charges. If consumers go outside the network, they face significantly higher health care costs.

Land of Lincoln wanted Alexian Brothers to join a health plan that the insurer had started last year with Adventist Midwest Health in the western suburbs, said Robert Wright, vice president of managed care contracting at Alexian Brothers. Adventist Midwest formed a joint venture last year with Alexian Brothers called Amita Health.

The Adventist health plan offered consumers cheaper premiums than Land of Lincoln's traditional PPO. Consumers also were offered financial incentives to seek care with one of Adventist's hospitals and physicians but retained the choice to go outside the system to a provider in Land of Lincoln's broad PPO network. The insurer also provided some minimal coverage outside its PPO network, giving consumers three levels of coverage.

To join the Adventist plan, Land of Lincoln asked Alexian Brothers to take a significant cut in reimbursement rates, Wright said. Alexian Brothers has five hospitals in Elk Grove Village and Hoffman Estates and about 260 employed physicians.

Wright said Land of Lincoln's negotiators told him that the cuts were needed for the insurer to survive. The insurer is one of 23 carriers created by the Affordable Care Act to offer lower prices and compete with large insurers like the Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates. The startups are facing financial difficulties after some promised federal aid did not come through. Twelve have shut down or announced their closures.

But Wright said the cuts were not acceptable. He said he came back with a counteroffer but never heard back from Land of Lincoln.

Nevertheless, he said he thought Alexian Brothers, heading into 2016, remained in the insurer's PPO network. But a check of Land of Lincoln's website Friday by the Tribune indicated that Alexian Brothers was not in the network.

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That came as a surprise to Wright. Alexian Brothers spokesman Matt Wakely sent the Tribune a screen shot from Land of Lincoln's website dated Jan. 4. It says that Alexian Brothers is "still part of our 'In-Network' Providers."

"I'm confused here," Wright said Monday. "I'm not sure how we are going to serve our patients."

Wright said he has not received a termination notice from Land of Lincoln, and he described the company's conduct as "extremely unusual."

"I'm obviously going to have a frank phone call with Land of Lincoln," Wright said.

Further complicating the saga is that Land of Lincoln relies on an outside company, Private Health Care Systems (PHCS), for part of its provider network. Alexian Brothers was in Land of Lincoln's network through PHCS, and Wright said he still has a contract with PHCS.

O'Sullivan said the company has always planned to rely less on its rental network with PHCS and contract directly with hospitals and physicians. He suggested that members visit the company's website to learn more about its provider network.

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Until Alexian Brothers receives more clarity about its network status, Wright said patients with a condition that requires ongoing care should contact the health system at 847-385-7193.

"To offer the preferred rates, it will require the cooperation of Land of Lincoln to adjudicate these claims as in-network," Wright said.

asachdev@tribpub.com

Twitter @ameetsachdev
Nearly half of young black men in Chicago are neither in school nor working, a staggering statistic in a bleak new youth unemployment report that shows Chicago to be far worse off than its big-city peers.

To 24-year-old Johnathan Allen, that's no surprise.

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"It's right there in your face, you don't need statistics," Allen said as he testified before a room full of lawmakers and public officials Monday at an annual hearing about youth unemployment, where the report was presented. He encouraged everyone to walk down the street and witness how joblessness devastates communities.

Johnathan Allen, 24, speaks about searching for a job and youth unemployment in Chicago from his Back of the Yards home. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

"Speaking about it every year ain't doing it," he said.

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Forty-seven percent of 20- to 24-year-old black men in Chicago, and 44 percent in Illinois, were out of school and out of work in 2014, compared with 20 percent of Hispanic men and 10 percent of white men in the same age group, according to the report from the University of Illinois at Chicago's Great Cities Institute.

The numbers for black men are far worse in Chicago and Illinois than elsewhere in the country. In Los Angeles and New York City, 31 percent of black 20- to 24-year-old men were out of school and out of work, in line with the national average of 32 percent.

While declines in youth employment across all races have raised concerns for a number of years, the new report puts into stark focus the connection between unemployment and Chicago's racially segregated neighborhoods that also are home to high rates of poverty and crime.

The report shows the highest concentration of youth unemployment is in neighborhoods on the city's South and West sides, especially Fuller Park, Englewood, East Garfield Park and North Lawndale, each of which is more than 90 percent black. The lowest concentration is in mostly white neighborhoods on the North and Northwest sides.

"Conditions of joblessness are chronic, concentrated and comparatively worse than elsewhere in the country," said Teresa Cordova, director of the Great Cities Institute. She called the prevalence of jobless among black males "definitely at crisis proportions."

The report, commissioned by the Alternative Schools Network and based on census data, was presented Monday at the fifth annual hearing on youth unemployment, hosted by the Chicago Urban League at its headquarters in Bronzeville.

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A parade of teens and young people from some of the city's poorest neighborhoods described tough lives that were turned around by a job opportunity. The hearing comes as politicians debate school funding and a continued state budget impasse threatens funding to nonprofits that offer employment programs, some of which have had to be suspended.

Allen, who lives in Back of the Yards, said he got in trouble for drug dealing and gang banging  the "same old, same old," "everybody's story," he said  and was on house arrest and on parole when he connected with the Chicago Area Project, a nonprofit that works to prevent juvenile delinquency in disadvantaged communities. The group steered him toward a job in a youth mentorship program at the community group Fellowship Connection in Humboldt Park, where he helped with a documentary project and got his hands on a video camera for the first time.

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Allen now works as an audiovisual technician for an equipment rental service. He hopes to train to be a security guard.

"I see people in my community who want to do better for themselves, but the only way they can do something better is that they have to make something happen," he said, referring to illegal activities. "I'm a product of how good a job can be."

That jobs give youths something productive to do with their time, as well as providing needed income, is not a revelation, but a study two years ago showed the measurable effect jobs have on curbing criminal behavior.

Working with the One Summer Chicago Plus jobs program, the University of Chicago Crime Lab found a 43 percent reduction in violent crime arrests for youths who secured eight-week-long part-time summer jobs with the program, compared with a control group of kids who didn't, and the positive effect lasted 18 months after the program ended, said Kelly Hallberg, scientific director at the Crime Lab.

David Elam, 25, who testified alongside Allen at the hearing, credited a summer job with redirecting him when he was headed downhill  entrenched in a gang, selling drugs and expecting a child  as it taught him about having a work ethic, managing time and money, and getting up early for work.

"Young people can't be what they can't see," said Elam, a youth organizer with a group called Fathers Who Care.

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Counting men and women together, 41 percent of black 20- to 24-year-olds were out of work and out of school in Chicago in 2014, compared with 18.7 percent of Hispanics and 6.7 percent of whites in the same age group.

The racial divisions are also reflected among teenagers. Among 16- to 19-year-olds in Chicago, 14.3 percent of blacks are neither working nor in school, with boys much more affected than girls, compared with 6.8 percent of Latinos and 6 percent of whites.

Overall, 18 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds in Chicago are out of school and out of work, compared with 13.7 percent nationally, 16.4 percent in New York and 13.1 percent in Los Angeles.

Including people who are in school but don't work, the joblessness rate is 57 percent in Chicago, compared with 51 percent nationally. More than 80 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds in Chicago are not working  a problem in poor communities where students are trying to support themselves or their families while they finish their studies.

Deshawn Muldrow, 17, who lives in North Lawndale and is a senior at CCA Academy, a charter school in his neighborhood, said he has been struggling to find a job to raise money for college and help support his family. His mother is unwell and can't work, he said, so his grandmother works at a senior citizens home to support the three of them.

Muldrow, who wants to study math or statistics in college, said he has applied to jobs in retail shops, grocery stores and fast-food restaurants and, though he has gotten a few interviews, hasn't landed an offer. His testimony seemed to stir something in Cook County Commissioner Robert Steele, one of about two dozen legislators in attendance, who called him over and gave him his business card, urging him to call for a possible job opportunity.

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In the hallway afterward, Audrey Haywood, a history teacher at CCA Academy, gave Muldrow a big hug.

"I'm hopeful," she said.

While the situation of young black men in Chicago is particularly striking, it is not the only group facing challenges. Teen Latinas experienced a 44 percent drop in employment from 2005 to 2014, the steepest drop among the groups measured.

Declines in teen employment over the last decade have raised alarms because young people aren't getting early experience that helps them secure better jobs and higher wages down the road.

Wendy Bueno, 19, who is a senior in high school and taking college courses, said she searched for a job for two years before finally landing a job recently at Starbucks, thanks to a friend's referral. Part of the trouble was that she was trying to stay away from working in fast food, but also because even the dollar stores she applied to were looking for experience.

"How do you want us to gain experience if you don't give us the chance?" she said.

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Bueno, who hopes to study forensic investigation, said she gives half her earnings to her family.

The organizations behind Monday's hearing are calling for a national commitment to employ 2 million jobless youths during the summer and year-round. The groups also propose a state commitment to employ 35,000 jobless youths and commitments from Cook County and Chicago to each employ 10,000 jobless youths.

"If we're not going to invest in our youth, who is going to do it?" said state Rep. Camille Lilly, a Democrat who represents the 78th District on the West Side. "It's our responsibility collectively as the state, city, county and federal government."

aelejalderuiz@tribpub.com

Twitter @alexiaer
A starter option at Saigon Sisters during Chicago Restaurant Week is a vegetarian spring roll stuffed with, among other items, firm slices of golden beets and avocado. (Bill Daley / Chicago Tribune)

Saigon Sisters' dinner offering for Chicago Restaurant Week is described on a printed menu, of course, but that broad outline tells only part of a delicious three-course story.

Consider these little but essential elements of flavor and texture found throughout the meal (priced at $33) at the loop restaurant (567 W. Lake St., 312-496-0090): The citrusy zing of a crispy chicken patty wrapped in a steamed bun, the gingery pickled cabbage served alongside braised caramel pork and the teeny ribbons of fresh basil accenting a dessert of chocolate ganache.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 55 The signature Turtle salad, a finely chopped melange of kale, romaine, green and red cabbages, carrots, sunflower seeds and bacon, is mounded high on a salad plate and dressed judiciously with a sweet onion-citrus dressing, at Fox and Turtle, during Chicago Restaurant Week and beyond. (Phil Vettel/Chicago Tribune)

I was particularly taken with that braised pork, or thit heo kho. This main course dish featured cubes of pork belly, alternating layers of fall-apart-tender meat and meltingly soft fat (I ate that fat without a pang of guilt; it's winter and I'm not hibernating) paired with a hard-cooked egg in a briny sauce. The pickled cabbage and steamed rice served as foils for the saucy pork. Another dish that relied on a similar mix of tastes and textures was the lamb luc lac, cubes of well-seared lamb in an oyster sauce paired with steamed rice and a salad of arugula, pickled red onions and sliced radishes.

You have a choice between two starters, the chicken bao topped with pickled napa cabbage or a vegetarian spring roll stuffed with, among other items, firm slices of golden beets and avocado.

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I liked both appetizers but the desserts left more of an impression. The warm tapioca pudding with coconut milk was pure old-fashioned comfort, akin to a thick soup. Garnishing the tapioca were slivers of crisp green apple, toasted coconut and golden raisins. The chocolate ganache was a more modern dessert, featuring two densely textured cubes of chocolate, crouton-size pieces of a brown butter shortbread cookie, stewed cherries, whipped cream and those essential bits of fresh basil.

Saigon Sisters is also offering an optional wine pairing for $22 with the menu.

Tribune writers will be filing restaurant reports every day during restaurant week, so please check back. The ninth annual Chicago Restaurant Week runs through Feb. 4. For a list of participants, menus and online reservations, visit eatitupchicago.com.

wdaley@tribpub.com

Twitter: @billdaley
Sangria in winter? You bet.

If sangria making were part of chemistry class, we'd all be scientists.

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And if the cold drip process works for coffee or tea, what can it do for sangria? Bin 36 beverage director Enoch Shully wondered just that last summer while visiting Rare Tea Cellar in Ravenswood, where owner Rodrick Markus specializes in rare ingredients and unique accessories sought by Chicago chefs and mixologists. It was there he laid eyes on the cold drip Yama tower, a 4-foot-tall cold brew maker popular with coffee and tea aficionados.

Shully went with his mad scientist idea, substituting cinnamon, star anise, coriander and pink peppercorns for coffee grounds, and now you can get the sangria you didn't know you needed year-round, even in winter.

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The two-day process starts with a 24-hour macerated blend of Spanish red wine, Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, citrus fruit and berries, which gets poured into the tower (on display in the restaurant). The mixture enjoys a slow infusion ride through the herbs and spice before spiraling down a glass coil into the pitcher below. The result is a sangria that forgoes all the unnecessary Lincoln Avenue street festival sweetness with a touch of dryness; the Javier Bardem of sangria if you will. You'll want to hurry to call dibs, however; this small batch prize goes fast.

161 N. Jefferson St., 312-995-6560, www.bin36.com

Brandy Gonsoulin is a freelance writer.
Islamic State occupies swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq. Operating as a rebel army and an international terrorist organization, the shadowy force is engaged in a multisided conflict with political, religious and tribal aspects.

For more than a year, the United States has been leading an international coalition using air power to attack Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. On the ground, the fighting is primarily in the hands of local forces, including the Iraqi army and Kurdish militias, all supported by the U.S. But it's a complex war zone that also includes a civil war in Syria, which has drawn Russia into the battle.

A December 2015 report by the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security studies individuals charged in the U.S. in connection with activities related to ISIS. Since March 2014, 71 individuals in the U.S. have been charged in terrorism-related activities linked to ISIS. Five of those arrests were in Illinois.
The death of Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz brought attention to Explorer groups, which provide tactical and other training to teenagers who aspire to become police officers. (Nick Oza / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

For years in Fox Lake, young aspiring police honed skills suited to an aggressive tactical force, running sniper drills and staging SWAT raids, sometimes dressed in camouflage fatigues.

The Explorer post's leader was a tough-talking Army veteran with a drill instructor's bearing  police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz. He barked commands at his charges during elaborate exercises, such as a 2011 operation in which he and several young men boarded a houseboat with orange-tipped weapons that appear to have been dummy guns.

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"Don't point your weapon at your buddy or I'm gonna kick your butt," he shouted during the drill captured in video Gliniewicz posted to his Facebook page.

Gliniewicz's death in September  first reported as a murder, then ruled a suicide  cast a light on the program he ran and allegedly plundered of thousands of dollars. Officials noted the chapter's military tone, along with Gliniewicz's alleged mismanagement, as they disbanded the group. Fox Lake's leaders said they plan to restart the post but voiced disapproval of its past tactical focus.

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Yet other local Explorer programs continue to teach similar skills. The Fox Lake controversy underscores the fact that the chapters  which serve teenagers as young as 14  operate with limited oversight as they train future police officers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 10 Nick Garcia, a police officer from Antioch Police Department, helps participants from Explorer clubs during the annual Law Enforcement Explorer Tactical Competition at the Chandler Fire Academy in Chandler, Ariz., on Jan. 16, 2016. (Nick Oza, for the Chicago Tribune)

The Boy Scouts of America's local councils charter the chapters and provide some guidance, though Scouting officials acknowledged they give little direct oversight to the groups. While Fox Lake's group struck a particularly aggressive tone, other chapters also focus on the use of force. This month, members of two local groups went to Arizona and donned camouflage fatigues for a competition involving drug raid and sniper exercises.

Alumni have said they learned valuable lessons from Explorer programs, and police officials said the chapters help them interest local kids in becoming police. However, at a time when police uses of force are stirring controversy and political upheaval, experts said they were troubled that the groups could be teaching aspiring officers to solve problems with force.

"It's giving all the wrong people the wrong idea about what municipal policing should be," said Franklin Zimring, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who studies policing.

Interviews, along with video and photos posted online, revealed little evidence that Explorers from the dozens of other posts in Illinois have participated as extensively in the types of tactical drills that went on in Fox Lake. But the Gliniewicz scandal has motivated scouting officials to work more closely with the groups, said Mike Hale, scout executive of the organization's Northeast Illinois Council.

"We certainly plan on having more conversations with our posts about policies," he said. "To be honest, I haven't heard any of the others doing things like (Fox Lake was doing), but I think they're obviously going to be very careful."

Authorities have also alleged that Gliniewicz stole thousands of dollars from the program. Earlier this month, a community service officer who had worked with Explorers in Elgin was charged with stealing some $6,000 from a checking account created for the program.

In Mundelein, police responded to Gliniewicz's alleged thefts by reviewing the finances and practices of their own Explorer program, and they found nothing wrong, said Chief Eric Guenther. Mundelein Explorers spend little time training with guns and focus mostly on more prosaic elements of police work, such as traffic stops, he said. Guenther regards the program as a recruiting tool and he wants Explorers to pick up accurate ideas about policing.

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"People who are entering this thinking that it's kicking down doors and jumping over fences all the time ... that isn't what we do 99 percent of the time," he said.

After Gliniewicz's shooting on Sept. 1, many former Fox Lake Explorers were quoted in the media mourning the loss of a mentor whom was found dead after telling dispatchers he was pursuing three men on foot. Gliniewicz  known to many as "G.I. Joe"  was given a hero's funeral, and authorities spent weeks seeking suspects in his killing.

His public veneration soured in November when authorities said Gliniewicz had staged his death to look like a murder as it became clear his alleged theft from the Explorer program would be exposed. Records released recently call into question his fitness as a role model for youth; his history with the department was blotted by drunken indiscretions and sexual misconduct, records show.

Officials said he also mismanaged the Explorer post, failing to properly register some participants and using untrained adult volunteers. He stockpiled tactical gear  including bulletproof vests and gas masks  and authorities have alleged he submitted forged documents to get surplus military equipment.

Fox Lake's Explorer post, founded in the mid-1980s, was known for service work, such as event parking duty. But video posted online also shows participants firing guns and engaging in fake but intense tactical raids. A video shows Gliniewicz and his son D.J. wearing fatigues as they hurl flash grenades, devices officers use to temporarily blind or deafen people during raids and which can badly hurt bystanders.

After the blast, the lieutenant exhaled smoke from his cigarette and told the assembled group of Explorers about the dangers of the grenades. Then, with a laugh he said, "That is awesome."

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An Explorer from the Antioch-Joliet team points a gun during a search-and-rescue scenario while his team, in the background, prepares for ambush during the annual Law Enforcement Explorer Tactical Competition in Chandler, Ariz., on Jan 16, 2016. (Nick Oza, for the Chicago Tribune)

Several former Fox Lake Explorers could not be reached for comment. Others, including D.J. Gliniewicz, declined to comment.

Fox Lake officials plan to bring the program back once the Police Department is "back on track," said Anne Marrin, who was hired as the village's first professional administrator in 2014. Marrin clashed with Gliniewicz, who toward the end of his life appeared to have considered arranging for her to be harmed, authorities have said.

When the village restarts the program, she said, it won't be in the "paramilitary style" of its past. She said she would rather Explorers not wear fatigues, and she acknowledged the incongruity of teenagers training for tactical action in a village with little violent crime.

"We certainly don't have shootings or anything like that," she said.

Gliniewicz's influence extended beyond the Fox Lake chapter, as the tactical courses it hosted were open to Explorers from other groups.

Fox Lake's group routinely competed at the annual tactical competition for Explorers in Chandler, Ariz. Following Gliniewicz's death, several of the group's members joined the neighboring Antioch group, which sent Explorers to Arizona earlier this month to participate alongside Explorers from Joliet.

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Events this year included "10-Man Hostage Rescue," "Marijuana Field Raid" and "Sniper Challenge." The Illinois teams placed strongly in fitness-related events, Antioch and Joliet police said.

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Antioch Chief Steve Huffman called the use of force in policing a "necessary evil" and said it was important to teach aspiring officers all the elements of the job. Joliet Deputy Police Chief Edgar Gregory echoed that point and said that one of his city's past Explorers recently joined the Chicago Police Department after finishing in the top of his class at the academy.

The Chandler officer who runs the tactical competition, John Somerville, said the contest encourages lasting friendships, along with raising funds for his chapter. He said he understands concerns about police use of force, but that his time as an Explorer proved valuable in his career.

"I think the benefits are just enormous compared to any potential risk," he said.

But experts said they were troubled by young aspiring officers going through any program that heavily emphasizes the use of force. Though Fox Lake's chapter may have struck an especially militant tone, its conduct mirrors a broader trend in police work, said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University's School of Justice Studies.

"I think even though (Fox Lake) might be an extreme example, it's only an extreme manifestation of the normalization of militarization in policing today," he said.

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dhinkel@tribpub.com

An Explorer, right, secures her Antioch-Joliet team during a Robot Operations event during the annual Law Enforcement Explorer Tactical Competition in Chandler, Ariz., on Jan. 16, 2016. (Nick Oza, for the Chicago Tribune)

Twitter @dhinkel
Fifth-graders at Highland Elementary School in Elgin sit at their computers after finishing one of five sessions of PARCC testing. (Dave Gathman / The Courier-News)

DuPage County's Addison Trail High School enrolled nearly 600 freshmen at the start of the 2014-15 school year, but when it came time to give a new state exam in ninth-grade-level English language arts, more than 100 of the kids disappeared from the testing roster.

Nearly 20 percent of freshmen were left out of PARCC testing in English  but not because families opted out or reported students absent on exam day.

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Administrators labeled most of those youths ineligible to test, part of the new and controversial way Illinois is testing high school students across the state: Kids take state exams only if they're in particular courses, and not because they're in a certain grade.

Last year, students in developmental, special education, limited English and even gifted and honors classes were removed from state testing, the Tribune found, raising questions about how those ineligible kids affected overall test performance at schools, and when those students will be given state exams.

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Federal law requires that students be tested annually in reading and math at least once in high school.

"Are all freshmen in the state doing the ELA 9 test? The answer to that is no. That is the dilemma," said DuPage High School District 88 Superintendent Scott Helton. Both Addison Trail and Willowbrook High School in his district excluded dozens of students from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers English exam, with Helton describing the situation as a "gray area" in terms of defining which courses would count for students to test.

It's a complicated task in the stratified world of high school, where students land in a hodgepodge of courses from remedial to advanced, and administrators have latitude from the state to decide which courses will align to which exam.

For example, some of the excluded students in District 88 were in English as a second language courses rather than a regular ninth-grade English class, district officials said, so those students weren't tested. In the past, limited-English-proficient students have been required to take state exams, with some exceptions.

The district also said that several dozen students labeled as freshmen in state enrollment data were actually older students who had failed courses. Those students were excluded because they weren't enrolled in classes aligned with the ninth-grade-level PARCC exam in English. It is uncertain when those students will take the state exam.

In Palatine-based Township High School District 211, administrators excluded some English-language-limited students as well as special education students in lower-level classes. Students with the most severe disabilities take an alternative test, but other special education students have been required to take the regular state exams in the past, and schools were held accountable for the performance of those students.

Lisa Small, the associate superintendent for instruction in District 211, said it was a frustrating experience for special education students because they were handed a test and couldn't engage in it.

"If you are looking for a universal system to test all kids, that is really hard to do," Small said.

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In the past, all high school juniors had to sit for the state's now-defunct Prairie State Achievement Examination and couldn't get their diplomas without taking it, with some exceptions.

But for years, controversy swirled around the Prairie State when districts used loopholes to define what constitutes a "junior" and exclude certain students from testing, including low-performing teens who could pull down test results. Ultimately, changes in the law and state rules helped ensure that juniors would be tested.

Then came PARCC, the Common Core-based exam that gave schools more flexibility in how to test students. Districts could pick which PARCC exams to administer, such as ninth-grade-level English language arts and algebra I, or 11th-grade-level English and algebra II. And students taking the tests could be in different grades, as long as they were in specific courses that would coincide with the PARCC exams.

So in math, for example, a student might be in ninth, 10th or a higher grade and take the PARCC algebra I test, as long as he or she was in an algebra I class or another class linked to that exam.

A list of the courses used in 2015, provided by the state to the Tribune, showed a variety of classes that would allow students to be tested. For the ninth-grade-level PARCC exam in English language arts, though, many districts chose the ninth-grade English/language arts I course as the springboard for identifying which students should be tested. Other courses sufficed, though they were rarely used, such as creative writing and British literature.

It's not clear how many high school students didn't take state exams in 2015 because they weren't in the designated courses. The Illinois State Board of Education said it does not track that statistic, and districts had the autonomy to determine which courses would align with the PARCC exams.

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At the same time, "It is ISBE's expectation that districts fully comply with all federal and state laws and rules regarding assessment of students with IEPs (an individualized educational program for students with special needs) and English Learners," the agency wrote in response to questions from the Tribune.

At the very least, hundreds of students were likely left out of the exams, based on high school enrollment figures and the number of students considered eligible to test, the Tribune found.

The Tribune reviewed data for nearly 300 high schools that offered the ninth-grade-level English language arts exam, comparing the number of freshmen enrolled at the beginning of the school year to the number considered eligible to take the spring exams. Dozens of schools had differences in those numbers.

Lake County's Grant Community High School enrolled 482 freshmen in 2014-15, according to state figures, but only 257 students were tested on the ninth-grade-level ELA exam.

Greg Urbaniak, the high school's director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, said 150 or more freshman honors students were excluded from testing because they were essentially doing 10th-grade coursework. "In reality, what it did was it kind of hurt our scores, because our best kids at grade level weren't testing," Urbaniak said.

"Now we may need to rethink why we had to do that. Our best kids are never going to be tested."

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In Elgin-based School District U-46, several dozen ninth-graders in a gifted program at Elgin High School didn't take the English language arts PARCC exam because they were in a gifted world literature course and not the typical ELA class for freshmen, district spokeswoman Mary Fergus said.

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Fergus also said an estimated 200 to 250 second-year high school students were labeled as freshmen in the fall because of a lack of credits and would not be eligible to take the state exam because they likely were not in a freshman English class in 2014-15. The district also said ninth-graders could be excluded from the exam if they had failed the first part of their freshman English class and were no longer taking the course, she said.

Fergus said the district did give PARCC exams to English language learners, except those just new to the country  an allowed exception.

The practice of giving high school exams based on student courses will continue in the upcoming testing season. Statewide, third- through eighth-graders still will take state exams based on their grade level, though PARCC allows for an advanced middle school student to take a high school-level math exam.

In addition, fifth- and eighth-graders as well as high school students are scheduled to take a new online state science exam. The high school exam will be in biology and, like the current situation, teens will take the exam if they're in the designated courses.

For 2016-17, the Illinois State Board of Education has recommended increasing the state budget for testing and expanding PARCC exams in high schools.

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drado@tribpub.com

Twitter @diane_rado
A Chicago police officer has been placed on desk duty after police in Skokie spotted his personal car in a mall parking lot and noticed that it "closely resembled an unmarked police car," an apparent violation of Chicago police rules and of state law.



It was the second time in eight years that Derek Saxton, 35, was questioned about police equipment on his personal car. Saxton was hired by the Chicago Police Department several years after he was arrested in the first incident.

In the latest incident, Skokie police photographed Saxton's 2014 Ford Police Interceptor about 1:15 p.m. on Jan. 7 in a parking lot near the AMC Showplace Village Crossing theaters, 7000 N. Carpenter Road in the north suburb, according to an internal bulletin issued by Skokie police.



It had lights mounted in the front and rear windows, as well as a spotlight on the driver's side, a siren and light control box and front doors labeled as having "ballistic panels," according to the Skokie bulletin.



The first incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. on July 23, 2007, in the 5200 block of North Miltimore Avenue, according to court and police records. He was driving a black Ford Crown Victoria with red flashing lights and was stopped because the car resembled one "associated with a police impersonator," according to the bulletin.



Saxton told officers he added the red lights because he thought police cars "looked cool," according to the bulletin.



He was charged with a misdemeanor count of having illegal flashing, oscillating or amber lights on his vehicle, according to the bulletin. The charge was later dropped, according to court records. Saxton joined the Chicago police force in 2012.



When Skokie police informed Chicago police last week about Saxton's car and raised questions about his 2007 arrest, Saxton was placed on desk duty in his district pending an internal affairs investigation, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in an email.



Chicago police officers aren't allowed to use private cars outfitted with police-style emergency equipment, Guglielmi said.



"The superintendent ordered an immediate internal affairs investigation into the hiring practices, the 2007 arrest and his use of both" the 2014 Ford and the Crown Victoria he was driving when arrested in 2007, Guglielmi said.



Using such a car would require "special authorization by the superintendent of police. No such circumstances exist here in Chicago and all officers must use department-owned, rented or leased vehicles when conducting official law enforcement duties or department business," Guglielmi said.



Saxton did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday evening.

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Tribune reporter Jeremy Gorner contributed.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel talked about agreeing with CTU President Karen Lewis in opposing Gov. Bruce Rauner's CPS takeover proposal after addressing the media at the Illinois Mentoring Partnerships IMPACT Awards breakfast. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield.

Topspin

It's Monday, Jan. 25, and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is helping Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis see eye to eye on at least one thing.

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As the mayor wrapped up a quick news conference with reporters late last week, he shot down the governor's proposal to put CPS under control of a state board and allow it to declare bankruptcy. The mayor swung around and headed for the exit until WMAQ-Ch. 5 reporter Mary Ann Ahern shouted at him: "Sounds like Karen Lewis is agreeing with you on that. Kumbaya for you and Karen."

"Kumbaya, that's your word," Emanuel said with a laugh as he returned to the scrum of TV cameras and made a case for the common interests he has been arguing for months that the teachers union and the city share in their fight with Rauner to help close a $480 million budget gap driven by pension costs.

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"I agree with Karen," Emanuel said. "As I always say, and I'm quoting a different source, 'You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.' And Karen and I have both noted the same fact, which is there's a disparity in the state of Illinois" in the way the state funds teacher pensions.

After a speech Thursday at Northeastern Illinois University, Lewis dismissed Rauner's takeover idea by wondering, "How are you going to go somewhere else and put your nose in somebody else's business when your own is raggedy?" (John Byrne)

What's on tap

*Mayor Emanuel will announce a homebuyers assistance program Monday afternoon on the South Side.

*Gov. Rauner will announce a consolidation of state information technology efforts in Springfield.

*Days after his dust-up with the governor on pensions, Senate President John Cullerton will speak to the City Club of Chicago. Speeches tend to start sometime after noon and can be seen here.

*Also up at the City Club this week: Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrea Zopp on Wednesday, and Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding on Thursday.

*Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin will talk about the federal renewal of a mass transit tax credit in the morning at the Ogilvie Transportation Center.

What we're writing

*Emanuel says Rauner should focus more on problem-solving, less on name-calling.

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*The prosecution rests at red light camera bribery trial.

*What we've learned so far at the red light camera bribery trial.

*Three weeks into New Year, more than 200 people shot in Chicago.

*Chicago police officers in Laquan McDonald shooting taken off street duty 14 months later.

*CPS lays off more than 200, spares teachers.

*State ethics board raps Chico for conflict vote.

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*Hastert's lawyer asks for sentencing delay because of the former U.S. House speaker's poor health.

*Connections between the Flint water crisis and the Chicago EPA office.

What we're reading

*How Ted Cruz's best friend drew him into Jamaican politics, business.

*Guessing these Uber drivers are safer, slower.

*See ya later, alligator.

From the notebook

*Rauner's "You watch" moment revealed? Gov. Rauner's political campaign put $900,000 into the Illinois Republican Party on Friday, bringing to $8.9 million what he or his campaign have given to the state GOP since he won the 2014 primary for governor.



The cash infusion came just days after Rauner was asked by reporters how he intended to call out lawmakers, primarily suburban and Downstate Democrats, for supporting House Speaker Michael Madigan and accepting money from "the Chicago political machine."



Rauner's response: "You watch."



Only a few days earlier, a political action committee backed by Rauner and real estate investor Sam Zell -- the Turnaround Illinois PAC -- put $1.8 million into Liberty Principles PAC.



The PAC, headed by radio talk show host and failed 2010 GOP governor candidate Dan Proft, has spent at least $325,713 to support the Downstate campaign of Republican Bryce Benton, who is challenging GOP state Sen. Sam McCann of Plainview, according to documents on file with the State Board of Elections.



McCann was the only Republican to join with Senate Democrats in a vote to override Rauner's veto of legislation that would have required arbitration in labor talks between the governor and public employee unions. (Rick Pearson)

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*State budget impasse hits social service agency hard: Nearly 5,000 people will lose services ranging from mental health counseling to senior day care after the state's largest social service provider said it will have to eliminate programs and lay off workers because of the state's ongoing budget impasse.



Lutheran Social Services of Illinois said the state owes it more than $6 million, and as a result will have to shut down 30 programs and eliminate 750 positions. Programs that will be cut include treatment for drug and alcohol addition, housing for recently released prisoners and their families and a children's shelter.



Among those hit hardest are services for seniors, as federal Medicaid funds fall short of covering the state's portion of the tab for programs including home care. The agency had tried to make ends meet through donations and loans, but it said cuts needed to be made not only because of the current funding shortfall but the possibility of years of continued financial trouble for the state.



"Our plans respond to this year's budget impasse and an anticipated lingering state financial crisis over the next several years. We're doing this at a great cost to LSSI and those affected by our services," said Mark Stutrud, president and CEO. "It has been an agonizing process, particularly its impact on our clients and their families who depend on us for their care, as well as our employees whose jobs were eliminated. Many of our employees are direct care personnel who have built relationships and strong trust with the people they serve."



While court orders and various laws have kept many state programs afloat as the state is in its seventh month without a complete budget, funding has been slow to trickle out for social service programs amid bickering between Republican Gov. Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly. (Celeste Bott)

*Diana Rauner's new $100k chief of staff: An attorney for Gov. Rauner has been named the new chief of staff for first lady Diana Rauner.



Emily Bastedo currently works as an associate counsel in the governor's office, where she acts as a legal liaison for several state agencies, including Rauner's budget office, and the Illinois Finance Authority. Before that she was an associate at Chapman Cutler, where she served as bond counsel. Bastedo is also a member of the Elmhurst Community School District 205 board.



Her salary will be $100,000, the same amount she made with the governor's office.



Bastedo replaces Sara Wojcicki Jimenez, whom Republican leaders appointed to the Illinois House to represent a Springfield district. The seat was vacant after Rauner named longtime Springfield Republican Rep. Raymond Poe to head the state's Department of Agriculture. (Monique Garcia)

*Jackson backs Zopp: The Rev. Jesse Jackson endorsed Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrea Zopp on Sunday. The backing could help improve voters' familiarity with Zopp, a government veteran but first-time candidate. Zopp is running against U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth and state Sen. Napoleon Harris for the right to face Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk in the fall.

*Cable time bought by More in state's attorney race: Donna More, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Cook County state's attorney, has purchased $54,882 in cable television time to air advertising starting Monday.



Records show she has bought $27,918 on county cable systems to air 30-second ads and another $26,964 for 15-second ads. The advertising buy lasts through Feb. 21.



More is seeking the nomination March 15 along with current officeholder Anita Alvarez and Kim Foxx, the former chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. (Rick Pearson)

*Foxx gets Evanston support: Speaking of Foxx, she's received the endorsement of the Evanston Township Democratic organization.

Foxx, who recently got the backing of Cook County Democratic slatemakers, is in the March 15 primary contest along with incumbent Anita Alvarez and attorney Donna More.

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Eamon Kelly, the Evanston Township Democratic committeeman, called Foxx "a veteran prosecutor with the experience and credibility to reform our criminal justice system." (Rick Pearson)

*The Sunday Spin: On this week's show on WGN-AM 720, state Rep. Robert Martwick talked Rauner takeover of Chicago Public Schools and Tribune reporters John Chase and David Heinzmann discussed the state of the Chicago Police Department. Full show here.

Follow the money

*The Illinois Sunshine project lists who pulled in the most money last week in state politics.

*Track campaign contribution reports in real time with this Tribune Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ILCampaignCash

Beyond Chicago

*Presidential race, Republican side: Rubio rides endorsement, says he's more electable.

*Presidential race, Democratic side: Sanders looking for young Iowans.

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*Blizzard shuts down D.C.

*Bloomberg mulling third-party run.
SANTA ANA, Calif.  Three California inmates who sawed through a metal grate, crawled through plumbing tunnels and shimmied to freedom down a rope made from bed linens likely had help to pull off the daring plan and also benefited from the complacency of jail staff, security experts said Monday.

The inmates vanished early Friday in a jail break eerily similar to the escape of two inmates from an upstate New York prison last summer. Those men also cut through a portion of wall hidden under a bunk bed and used piping and tunnels inside the facility to reach the outside.

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The California inmates, including one who is charged with murder, were still at large Monday. Jail officials did not realize they were missing until roughly 16 hours after they were last seen because an evening headcount was delayed by an assault on a guard.

A major question for investigators will be how the men were able to plan and execute their flight with such precision, said Kevin Tamez, a managing partner for MPM Group, a Philadelphia-based firm that consults on prison security, management and infrastructure.

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It's likely someone slipped them blueprints or told them how the bowels of the jail were laid out, he said.

"If I were whoever's investigating, there are some people who would be on a polygraph, I guarantee you," Tamez said. "They had to have had some inside help."

Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, said there is no evidence so far that the trio had help from the inside but authorities know it's a possibility.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trials for unrelated violent crimes at the Men's Central Jail. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men.

They cut through a quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall and got into plumbing tunnels before sawing through half-inch-thick steel bars as they made their way behind walls to an unguarded area of a roof atop a five-story building. There, they moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using the bed linen.

It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968. The jail holds 900 men and is located in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The similarities to last summer's escape in New York point to complacency among guards and administrators at the California facility, experts said.

"This summer we had this huge escape from Clinton Prison in New York and every prison or jail administrator in the country should have said to themselves, 'Huh, I wonder if I am vulnerable?' and should have checked their steam shafts and tunnels and every other thing that gives access to the outside," said Martin Horn, a professor of corrections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.

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Motion sensor cameras  available for $55 and often used as baby monitors  can be installed along interior tunnels and pipes to catch inmates, Tamez said.

Thorough searches of dorms likely would have discovered the tools used or damage to the vent grill, he said.

Hallock said the jail's general policy is to do walk-throughs every hour to check on inmates. More involved searches are done randomly, he said, but declined to be more specific.

It's also unclear why the inmates  who were charged with violent felonies  were housed in a common dorm with more than 60 other inmates. Assignment to a large, busy room likely made it easier for them to avoid detection, Horn said.

Authorities believe Tieu and Duong remain in Southern California, possibly hiding out in the local Vietnamese community in Orange County. Officials held a news conference in Vietnamese to ask for help.

Federal authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information leading to their recapture.

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Tieu had been held on a $1 million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling in an alleged gang dispute.

Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Authorities say he kidnapped a marijuana dealer, burned him with a blow torch and cut off his penis because Nayeri thought the man had buried money in the desert.

Duong has been held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts in the shooting of a man on his front porch.

The three were also charged late Friday with a felony for the escape itself, a charge that could carry a three-year sentence for Tieu and a nine-year sentence for Duong because of a previous conviction.

Associated Press
Inside a secure conference room on the 6th floor of the Justice Department in early 2014, top federal law enforcement officials gathered to hear what criminal charges prosecutors were contemplating against David H. Petraeus, the storied wartime general and former CIA director whose public career had ended about 15 months earlier over an extramarital affair.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run through the government's case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeus' lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea.

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The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison.

They were also considering bringing the same charges against his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.

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The government would never file those charges. Not everyone at Justice shared the prosecutors confidence, and lawyers for Petraeus and Broadwell separately pushed back hard, saying they would fight and beat the charges being considered by the Justice Department. Moreover, with its mix of sex and government secrets, a trial promised to be an uncomfortably tawdry affair, one some in government - as well as the defense - preferred to avoid.

Petraeus, in the end, pleaded guilty early last year to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material. No charges were ever brought against Broadwell.

The Justice Department has never discussed how it reached its decision to accept a plea on the lesser charge. But six current and former U.S. officials, as well as others familiar with the case, provided the first detailed look at the internal debates and wrangling with Petraeus' lawyers that took place before the retired four star general entered his guilty plea in federal court in Charlotte, N.C. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private legal deliberations.

As part of the agreement, Petraeus admitted that he improperly removed and retained highly sensitive information in eight personal notebooks that he gave to Broadwell. The Justice Department said the information, if disclosed, could have caused "exceptionally grave damage." Officials said the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.

The plea agreement was an outcome that left some in the Justice Department angry, particularly at the FBI, and some agents have argued privately that it will damage future efforts to secure prison terms in leak cases. But others in government defended the deal as the only viable conclusion to a case where a successful prosecution on the more serious charges was far from certain.

"Nobody was going to be happy with the outcome," said a former Justice Department official. "There was nothing about this case that was typical."

The plea agreement, while it kept Petraeus out of prison, probably ended whatever ambition he had to become president. It also does not protect him from further punishment - such as stripping him of a star - by the military. The Army recently recommended that Petraeus should not face further punishment, but the final decision rests with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter who is considering how to rule, according to Pentagon officials.

"I have turned the page on these matters, I am looking forward, and I will have no further comment. I resigned as CIA Director, publicly apologized for my conduct, and formally accepted responsibility," said Petraeus, 63, in a statement. "I served my country for over 38 years, including five combat commands during my final decade in uniform. I will leave it to the public and to history to judge that record. Beyond that, I will always regret the mistakes I made, and I will always be grateful to those who have supported me."

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A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

On the 7th floor of CIA headquarters

In October 2012, Sean Joyce, the deputy director of the FBI, informed Petraeus, then CIA director, that a pair of FBI agents out of Tampa needed to come to agency headquarters to talk to him. They were investigating a cyberstalking case.

The FBI had discovered that Broadwell had sent anonymous emails to a Tampa Bay socialite named Jill Kelley and her husband months earlier. Kelley, who described the emails as harassing, contacted a friend who was an agent in the FBI Tampa Field Office.

The FBI became interested because the emails contained information about Petraeus' schedule, raising concerns about a possible threat to the CIA director. As the investigation widened, and Broadwell, now 43, was identified, the bureau discovered that she had also sent anonymous emails to military officials - and appeared to be involved in a romantic relationship with Petraeus.

On Oct. 26, the Tampa agents arrived at the CIA and began an interview in the director's office on the 7th floor. The agents wanted to talk to him about Broadwell and Kelley.

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Petraeus admitted the affair with Broadwell and told the agents he had lost his moral compass. He said the relationship began after he left the military.

In the interview at Langley, the FBI agents also asked the CIA director about secret powerpoint briefings on the Afghanistan war that were in Broadwell's possession. They also asked if he had ever provided classified information to Broadwell or facilitated her obtaining it . He denied ever doing that - a statement that later led some in the Justice Department to argue that he should be charged with lying to the FBI when it emerged she had more sensitive material.

The interview ended after about an hour with Petraeus realizing his career was in jeopardy because of the affair.

Petraeus spoke with Joyce and asked if there was any way to quietly resolve the issue and avoid a scandal, according to former and current U.S. officials.

The FBI's position was clear: The agents were going to follow the facts.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, learned about the investigation. Petraeus offered his resignation, but said he hoped there was a way he could remain CIA director.

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On Nov. 9, he stepped down.

Slowly reaching a deal

What first appeared to be a cyberstalking was rapidly expanding into a national security leak investigation when FBI agents copied the hard-drive of Broadwell's computer and found secret documents. On Nov. 12, with her consent, agents searched Broadwell's house.

In additon, investigators discovered more than 100 photographs she had taken of highly classified information from eight bound notebooks Petraeus had kept while commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

They also found other classified material in her possession linked to a 2003 period in which she served on a Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver.

It eventually became clear to the FBI that Petraeus had given those journals to Broadwell as part of her research into the book; the FBI seized the journals in April 2013 after searching Petraeus' house in Virginia.

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Broadwell also recorded a conversation in which Petraeus told her the journals contained classified information, a statement the FBI would attempt to use against him.

But there was disagreement inside the Justice Department and FBI about whether Broadwell should be charged, with some arguing that she enjoyed protection as a journalist.

In June 2013, following harsh criticism of leak investigations targeting the media, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, said he would not indict any journalist for doing their job. Broadwell had media credentials while researching in Afghanistan, and she had written stories and op-eds in newspapers and policy journals.

Her lawyers, including Robert F. Muse, met with prosecutors in May 2014.

"We established that Paula Broadwell was a fully credentialed member of the media and entitled to all the protections under the First Amendment and DOJ policy," Muse said. "Ultimately the government's decision is consistent with what the attorney general told Congress and what President Obama stated: Namely members of the media would not be prosecuted for doing their job."

He said he had no further comment on the case.

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Former and current Justice Department officials said prosecutors did give her media status.

The cyberstalking investigation that began in Tampa was closed at the end of 2012, but prosecutors in Charlotte, where Broadwell lived, continued to examine whether Petraeus had leaked classified information and whether he had lied to the FBI.

In July 2013, Petraeus' lawyers met with prosecutors in North Carolina who told them there was an issue in the case involving classified information and they would need security clearances before it could be fully discussed. Also in attendance at that meeting in Charlotte was Richard Scott, an attorney in the counterespionage section of the Justice Department's National Security Division at main headquarters in Washington - and Petraeus' lawyers regarded his presence as an ominous sign.

Months of silence ensued, however, until February 2014 when the lawyers were invited back to Charlotte for a meeting with prosecutors who planned to lay out their case - the same presentation Holder and Comey had listened to.

Prosecutors emphasized they were pursuing felonies, not misdemeanors, including also a conspiracy charge. The presentation focused in particular on the contents of the eight notebooks. Lawyers for the general learned for the first time that the Justice Department was threatening to charge Petraeus with three felonies, including, "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information" under the Espionage Act.

A conviction could have sent Petraeus to prison and cost him his pension.

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In late April, at a meeting in Washington with prosecutors, Petraeus himself listened to the same presentation of the government's case.

His legal team later rejected any possibility of pleading guilty to felony offenses. In July 2014 in Charlotte, Petraeus' lawyers told prosecutors they couldn't show he intended to disclose classified information and pointed to Broadwell's book, which contained none and had been personally vetted by the general. And they brought up an array of classified material that had appeared in other books and articles, including those written by cabinet members, and had not led to any prosecutions. That showed, they said, that some of the material Broadwell had obtained from Petraeus was already in the public domain.

They also said his statements to the FBI weren't material to the investigation, and didn't impede it. And the lawyers pointed to Justice Department guidelines, which say it is not policy to charge "in situations in which a suspect, during an investigation, merely denies guilt in response to questioning by the government."

In early February 2015, lawyers for Petraeus and the government met once again at the Bicentennial Building in the District of Columbia. James Melendres, a prosecutor with the National Security Division, offered a deal.

For this to go away, he said, Petraeus would have to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and mishandling classified information, a misdemeanor. In the statement of facts that would accompany the plea agreement, prosecutors also said they would want to reference a Petraeus message sent to the CIA workforce in 2012 after John Kiriakou, a former agency officer, was convicted of leaking classified information.

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy," Petraeus had said.

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Petraeus' lawyer, David E. Kendall declined to comment. But another person familiar with the meeting said he described the lying charge as "a non-starter." The Kiriakou reference was also off the table, he said.

Scott, the NSD prosecutor, threatened to call off the talks if Kendall insisted on a no contest plea. On this, Kendall relented.

The end came about a week later when the sides hammered out the agreement of a misdemeanor guilty plea. Petraeus, in a statement of facts, would admit that his statements to the FBI "were false." The agreed fine was $40,000 and he accepted probation for two years.

On April 23, 2015, Petraeus pleaded guilty in Charlotte. The judge upped the fine to $100,000.

A former senior Justice Department official said it was the" cleanest" possible outcome for both sides.

Holder, who was planning to leave office and didn't want to leave the case for the next attorney general, approved the settlement. Holder declined to comment. But he offered this explanation for his decision at a media event last year when asked if there was a double standard that allowed Petraeus to plead to a misdemeanor when his department had zealously pursued others for similar alleged crimes.

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"There were factors that made the resolution of the case appropriate," he said. "There were some unique things that existed in that case that would have made the prosecution at the felony level and a conviction at the felony level very, very, very problematic."

The Washington Post's Julie Tate, Craig Whitlock and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders sits in a hotel conference room waiting for the start of an interview with a network news program on January 24, 2016 in Dubuque, Iowa. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

When Bernie Sanders entered the presidential race last spring, he was considered a fringe figure - an unapologetic independent whose "political revolution" would eschew campaign customs and center around his liberal agenda.

Now, with an upset over Hillary Clinton in next Monday's Iowa caucuses potentially within his grasp, Sanders has emerged as a more combative - and in some ways, more conventionally political - candidate.

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Sanders opens his rallies by ticking through the latest polls - an uncharacteristic touch of bravado intended to convince Democrats that he is not only viable in a general election but a stronger standard-bearer against the Republicans than Clinton.

He also is attacking Clinton more directly, not only on policy differences but also on personal character, demonstrating that he has both the stomach and the punch for a political brawl - even one against the Clintons and their defenders.

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The Sanders pivot was evident in an interview with The Washington Post on Saturday as he flew on a chartered jet - itself a change for a candidate who used to fold himself into the middle seats of Southwest Airlines planes - from his home in Burlington, Vermont, to Iowa for his final week of campaigning here.

Asked about his comments last spring that he had no intention of playing the role of spoiler or weakening Clinton's standing in the general election, Sanders turned the question on its head.

"That's a two-way question, isn't it?" he said. "When Hillary Clinton's hit man is throwing garbage at the media, she is in a sense making it harder for me to win the general election.

"Our campaign is not going to simply sit back and accept all of these attacks," Sanders added. "We are going to win this thing."

In another sign of growing confidence, Sanders has stepped up his talk of the general election. "I would very much look forward to a race against Donald Trump," he said on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." In speeches at his rallies, he sprinkles in previews of "a Sanders administration."

Over the course of The Post interview, Sanders said Clinton was running a "desperate" campaign incapable of generating the kind of excitement his has. He raised questions about her motives and character. He said he expects Clinton and her campaign to "throw the kitchen sink" at him in the coming week in what he described as a craven attempt to avoid an embarrassing loss in Iowa.

Sanders questioned Clinton's association with David Brock, the head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, whom Sanders called a "hit man."

In recent media interviews, Brock has questioned Sanders's commitment to African Americans and derisively labeled the senator, who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, as "a socialist." Brock also reportedly planned to make in an issue of the 74-year-old Sanders's fitness for office - and demand that he release his health records. Brock begged off after Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta tweeted at Brock to "chill out."

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"As somebody who respects Secretary Clinton, its saddens me that she would go to a professional political hit man," Sanders told The Post.

He recalled Brock's efforts 25 years ago as a conservative journalist to "destroy" Anita Hill, after she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. "Why do you have to go to somebody like that to run your super PAC?" Sanders said. "There are honorable people out there."

The intensified scrutiny of Sanders by Clinton and her allies - on abortion rights, health reform and gun control - has had at least part of its desired effect, however, by putting Sanders onto the defensive.

After days of Clinton attacks over his 2005 Senate vote effectively giving immunity from liability suits to gun manufacturers, Sanders reversed his position. Clinton also was relentless in her critique of Sanders's single-payer, Medicare-for-all health plan because it would have been run by the states, many of which are led by Republican governors. Just hours before their last debate, on Jan. 17, Sanders released a new health plan that would be administered federally.

Last week, after criticism from Clinton, Sanders felt compelled to walk back his comments calling Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, which have endorsed Clinton, part of the political "establishment."

Even as he tries to claim the moral high ground, Sanders is stepping up his critique of Clinton considerably. For months, he has drawn sharp contrasts with her over issues, and he vowed never to go after her personally or with attack ads.

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But at recent campaign stops, Sanders has decried Clinton's acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from banking and corporate interests in the run-up to her 2016 campaign. He singles out her payments from the giant investment firm Goldman Sachs.

"I do not believe that you can get huge speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and then with a straight face tell the American people that you're prepared to do what is necessary to take on the greed and illegal behavior on Wall Street," Sanders said. "I don't think people think that passes the laugh test. . . . Why do special powerful interests give you money? Are they dumb? I don't think so."

Recent polls show Sanders pulling even with Clinton in Iowa and outpacing her in New Hampshire, next door to his home state.

Sanders's crowds are swelling. On Sunday, he drew a boisterous audience of 2,200 to a gym at Luther College here in the northeastern corner of Iowa. Sanders said the grass-roots enthusiasm on display at his events positions him to contend for the nomination over the long haul.

"What this campaign is about, and I'm seeing it every day, is an excitement and energy that does not exist and will not exist in the Clinton campaign," Sanders said in The Post interview. "We have the capability to have a very good voter turnout. When we have a very good voter turnout, we retain the White House, we regain the Senate, we do well in the House, and we win statewide elections."

Sanders has taken to starting his rallies by touting polls that show him with larger leads against Trump and other leading Republicans than Clinton. He is trying to argue that he is more likely than Clinton to replicate the kind of general election enthusiasm that propelled Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.

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Clinton says that she - not Sanders - is the Democrat whom Republicans fear the most. She cites recent attacks on her from Republicans, including from American Crossroads, the super PAC run by Karl Rove, the former George W. Bush strategist.

"I've got to tell you, this is perversely flattering to have Karl Rove go collect money from the financial industry to start running ads against me, to try to convince Democrats not to support me," Clinton said Saturday in Iowa.

Her allies, including a battery of party leaders, have gone further, arguing that Sanders atop the party's ticket would be catastrophic.

Clinton is trying to make the case that Sanders lacks the experience, judgment and practicality to be an effective president. In that, Sanders said he sees a parallel to 2008.

He said in the interview with The Post, "If you look at the arguments they're raising against me - don't have enough experience in foreign policy, I'm a pie-in-the-sky kind of guy and promising things that are unrealistic - I think if you check it out, that's very much what they said about Barack Obama in 2008."

There are indications beyond his message and strategy that Sanders is assuming the trappings of a more traditional politician. He rides around Iowa these days on a hulking, luxurious bus. His avalanche of low-dollar fundraising has enabled him to roughly match Clinton in television advertising. A few months ago, he begrudgingly hired a pollster. And most of his campaign stops are set up by a professional advance staff, orchestrated to provide picturesque angles for the national TV cameras that now follow him.

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Sanders has tweaked his appearance, too. That frizzy pile of white hair? He got it cut recently, apparently to look more presidential. Sanders joked at a recent campaign stop that he did so at the insistence of his wife, Jane.

"Enough is enough," he recalled her telling him.

Rucker reported from Des Moines.
I truly applaud Gov. Bruce Rauner's efforts and desire to see change come to Illinois which would return it to a position of leadership and prosperity in the Midwest. And I do understand how much of what is happening in the state is out of his control. He can't force House Speaker Michael Madigan or Senate President John Cullerton to become responsible legislators and change the downward direction that Illinois has been going for so long. They are only interested in maintaining the status quo, regardless of the harm it is causing, because it keeps their public-employee union friends happy and keeps them on the gravy train that they have created.

But there is something Rauner can and should do, and do so now. Part of why Illinois is faring so badly is its anti-business climate, and nothing is more damaging than the oppressive and costly regulation that suffocates business and creativity at every level. While Rauner can't unilaterally change federal regulations, he can, as the chief executive of this state, do a thorough scrubbing of Illinois state regulations. We should be willing to take on some degree of risk in return for untying the hands of our economic drivers. Cut the government red tape and let the world know about it. When investors and corporations see that Illinois is trying to be the "friend of business," we will see the state thrive with jobs creation and capital expansion.

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Rauner must show the voters that, while never stopping his efforts to overcome the tyranny of the legislative leaders, he is doing what he can do as governor for the sake of the citizenry.

 David Howard, Rockford
Sandra Pastore is the new executive director of the Oswego Senior Center. (Oswego Senior Center / Handout)

Sandra Pastore didn't need a whole lot of time to settle into her new position at the Oswego Senior Center.

"I am excited about the future of the center," Pastore said Friday.

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Pastore is a familiar face at the Oswego Senior Center, having served in one capacity or another as a grant writer and co-program coordinator for the multitude of programs the facility offers the older population in the area.

Pastore, of Oswego, was recently named executive director of the Oswego Senior Center, which is located in the old Traughber Junior High School at 156 E. Washington St.

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She has worked with both staff and volunteers since the inception of the facility in 2009. She began her duties as the new leader Jan. 18, replacing Robert Wyngard, who retired five months ago.

"I started out calling Bingo," she said.

Pastore took her passion for working with seniors further by helping to build the non-profit facility from merely a lunch program to one that provides educational, health, recreational and social programs to assist seniors.

She was responsible for co-writing the initial community connection grant that secured the necessary funding to hire staff to oversee programs.

"Our initial funding was $55,000 but it was cut this year," she said.

Pastore explained the center's financial assistance has been reduced to $19,000 because of how funding is now spread across eight counties under the Northeastern Illinois Area Agency on Aging which covers DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

The Oswego Senior Center receives funding from the Kendall County senior tax levy, the village of Oswego and Oswego Township as well.

She said they'll be looking to develop innovative programs to apply for other types of grants.

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"The Baby Boomers are becoming seniors," she said. "The Baby Boomers historically have provided lots of changes, most notably how the work force has developed. I think they will have a role in what senior centers are to communities."

Pastore has a master's degree in social work with a specialization in gerontology from Aurora University. She earned her bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her professional work history has included treating patients with mental illness, working with homeless women and working as a counselor in domestic violence prevention. Pastore is married and has two children.

Linda Girardi is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News
The prospect for beer and wine being available at a Starbucks in downtown Glencoe is one step closer to reality following the recommendation of a liquor license for the popular coffee chain.

At the Jan. 21 board of trustees meeting, Glencoe Village President Lawrence Levin, who also serves as the village's liquor commissioner, recommended a liquor license be granted for the Starbucks at 347 Park Avenue. Levin also recommended a liquor license for Cibo Trattoria in the village.

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Officials have said Starbucks is contemplating expanding its food menu in its Glencoe location, and adding wine and beer selections. Levin's move paves the way for the entire village board to sign off.

Officials said the alcohol offerings at the local location for the Seattle-based coffee chain would be available between 2 and 9 p.m. The new Writers Theatre in Glencoe is scheduled to open to performances later this year about a block away from the coffee shop.

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A Starbucks spokeswoman said there are 29 locations in the Chicago area that offer their "evenings menu." Despite the recommendation from Glencoe's liquor commissioner, Haley Nieman of Starbucks said it was not a certainty that a menu including beer and wine would eventually make its way to Glencoe.

Nieman said Starbucks was in "the early stages of considering Glencoe for the evenings menu."

Some customers at the Park Avenue location said that they would be thrilled if Starbucks does go forward with the expanded offering.

"It's a great idea," Eva Kyriakopoulos said. "Because if you want to meet someone before going to the theater, this place will be perfect."

Fellow customer Marvin Katz echoed that sentiment.

"We talk to people in the morning over coffee, so why not do it in the afternoon with wine or beer?" he said.

Levin said he moved forward with the liquor license recommendation after he and Village Manager Phil Kiraly met with the Starbucks corporate and legal teams, plus the manager of the Glencoe store, after receiving an inquiry in September 2015 announcing an interest in the possible menu expansion.

Levin said background searches were completed to ensure all regulations regarding the village's liquor code were met.

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"They explained their internal training systems that are in place," Levin said, who then moved forward to recommend the liquor license to the village board.

In addition, Levin also recommended that the proprietors of Cibo Trattoria, after being granted a conditional liquor license last August that runs through Feb. 29, should be granted a regular license for their restaurant at 667 Vernon Avenue.

Levin said that inspections showed that the restaurant had complied with all of the conditions placed before them and that the eatery had gotten no alcohol-related complaints from patrons.

"Cibo was in compliance with all other alcohol service regulations," Levin said.

After Cibo opened last year and the proprietors applied for the license, it became clear that one of the owners  Rick Raschillo of Glenview  had a criminal record that included solicitation of murder and at least two other felonies.

Last August, Levin said Raschillo had been rehabilitated and offered the conditional liquor license.

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If granted, the licenses for Starbucks and Cibo Trattoria will be in place for one year. The village board is expected to vote on Levin's recommendations at their scheduled Feb. 4 meeting.

Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press
The collaborative restructuring of a Lake Zurich tax increment financing district provides a blueprint for rescuing other TIFs failing under the weight of the Great Recession, state and local officials said.

Lake Zurich received an Innovation Award last fall from the Lake County Municipal League for reaching out to local taxing bodies and state legislators in splitting the village's downtown TIF into two such districts, extending the life of the first TIF by 12 years and stripping away parcels that were eating property tax increases needed to support development.

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TIF districts are designed to generate tax increases that are set aside to help fund development within their borders. TIF property owners pay those increments, but local taxing bodies continue to receive only the amount of taxes generated before the TIF was created.

The extension helped relieve Lake Zurich's general fund of $1 million in debt payments the village faced without property tax increments within the TIF district available to make the payments, Finance Director Jodie Hartman said in the village's application for the Innovation Award.

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"The debt was spread smoothly over the new, longer life of the TIF," Hartman said. "Due to a AAA bond rating and positive market conditions, the village was able to produce cash flow savings of over $1 million a year for the next 10 years, giving the village time to grow TIF increment funds and healthy development."

Of 576 parcels in the downtown Lake Zurich TIF district, 302 were removed under the restructuring, Hartman said. Of those, 66 had dropped in value and reduced the total equalized assessed value of the district by $2.8 million, she said.

Meanwhile, 181 downtown parcels, most of which were removed from the initial TIF, were used to form a new TIF district, Hartman said. The value of about 50 village-owned parcels was reset to zero and the remaining parcels to 2013 post-recession levels, effectively increasing EAV in the new TIF by about $670,000 in the first year, she said.

Local and state officials praised Lake Zurich for reaching out to other taxing bodies affected by the restructuring. Even Community Unit School District 95, which stood to lose the most revenue in an extension of the TIF, ultimately supported the plan.

State Sen. Pamela Althoff, R-McHenry, called the restructuring a good model of how to address property values negatively impacted by the housing market collapse.

"TIFs are excellent tools, but they have to be used wisely and Lake Zurich did that," said Althoff, a former mayor of McHenry, who helped get the Legislature to approve the proposal. "It's important overall. Ultimately, it will lower property taxes and bring in businesses."

Vicky Cullinan, assistant superintendent of business and operations of District 95, said the district stood to both gain and lose under the restructuring.

"From the direct financial impact to the school district, the restructuring has a negative impact to the school district by extending the TIF an additional 12 years," Cullinan wrote in an email. "As a taxing body that is part of the community and benefits from the services provided by the village, we felt it was a prudent step."

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In the first year, District 95's share of property taxes on the affected properties increased from $306,000 to $465,000 by resetting property values and removing parcels that had declined in value, she said.

With the release of more than 100 parcels from the TIF, District 95 saw an increase in its EAV of $4.9 million, Cullinan said. District 95 has received 64.5 percent of local property taxes in recent years, she said.

Overall, the experience improved relations between the school district and the village, Cullinan said.

"Over the course of a number of meetings, the village and school district better understood each other's needs and priorities," she said. "The village listened to the concerns of the district and presented a solution that made a difficult decision more palatable."

An independent panel of judges chose Lake Zurich for the honorable mention Innovation Award, said Mandi Florip, executive director of the Lake County Municipal League. Winners must demonstrate innovation and ease of replication of their projects.

"Lake Zurich's restructuring absolutely is a model and can be replicated," Florip said. "That is one of the reasons it rose above others. It can be replicated and can offer some cost savings."

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The league sent a packet containing information about Lake Zurich's restructuring to all of its members in mid-December, Florip said.

"I would be surprised if communities do not replicate it," she said. "It's a great program. Anything that can save money or find a new way to make money is helpful and useful."

Lake Zurich Village President Tom Poynton credited Hartman with masterminding the idea.

"Kudos to Jodie Hartman for her unique approach to restructuring a TIF," Poynton said.

Hartman credited the entire Lake Zurich administrative staff for developing the plan.

"While most of the project would not be considered innovative, the idea to release a significant portion of the existing TIF parcels and use a portion of those to create a second TIF was the brainchild of the administrative team," Hartman said.

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Phil Rockrohr is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press

Twitter: @PhilRockrohr
Mike Nelson of Lake Zurich puts on a new plow blade on Jan. 18, 2016, at Fremont Township Highway and Parks Department in Mundelein. A state task force recently recommended townships merge or be abolished to lighten the tax burden for residents. (Mark Kodiak Ukena / Pioneer Press)

A state task force report suggests local governments could merge to save money, but local leaders say it's easier said than done.

Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti recently released a 406-page report written by the Task Force on Local Government Consolidation and Unfunded Mandates. The report says Illinois has 6,963 units of local government, more than any other state.

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The report's 27 recommendations include allowing townships to merge, county government absorbing townships, temporarily prohibiting the creation of new local governments and allowing incentives that the Illinois State Board of Education can use to merge small school districts, among other ideas.

Despite the ideas and possibilities included in the report, local officials say the application of such changes is complicated.

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"To say you're going to get rid of something like a township in order to save money, fine, but you can't just turn over 50 percent of the roads in Illinois to somebody without a funding source," Fremont Township Highway Commissioner Bill Grinnell said. "No matter who does it, the roads still need to be maintained."

Of Illinois' 140,000 miles of roads, more than 73,000 are maintained by townships, according to a 2013 "General Administrative Duties of the Township Highway Commissioner document issued by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

If townships are abolished, the task force suggested those duties default to a county or the county board should encourage other nearby municipalities to annex unincorporated land.

"We do a lot of subdivisions and cul-de-sacs," said Grinnell, who's responsible for more than 40 miles of roads in Fremont Township. "The county doesn't do that stuff. They have the bigger roads. It would take a great effort for the county to take this on. It's a different system than they're used to."

Fremont Township Supervisor Diana O'Kelly has concerns about figuring out how to determine tax rates for merged townships, pointing to other nearby townships that approved much higher rates for various reasons.

"Is it fair to make us all pay that higher rate? Or would that contradict the task force's plan?" O'Kelly said. "Still, if the township with the higher rate comes down, then we can't pay our bills, even after eliminating one or two redundant jobs. If you split the difference, then half the people got a discount and the other half got their taxes raised. Is that fair?"

O'Kelly said townships are more flexible than other forms of government, and each township focuses on individual needs  some might be more expensive than others.

"I have residents trying to live on $800 per month who need help applying for social aid and getting transportation," said O'Kelly, who also served nearly 20 years on the county board before stepping down in 2013. "They won't go to Waukegan, especially if our Pace contract gets eliminated. We're small and efficient."

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One person who took great pride in the task force's work is Lake County Chairman Aaron Lawlor, but his interest is mostly in the unfunded mandates research.

"Something has to give. Property taxes keep going up, and government spending keeps going up," Lawlor said. "We need to stop and understand what drives all this so we can provide relief for our constituents."

The task force interviewed Lawlor, and his responses are included in the report. Lawlor said a bill passed through Springfield reducing the number of jurors needed in court, but the bill included a pay increase for remaining jurors. He said Lake County is paying $400,000 more per year as a result.

Lawlor said the county could also save hundreds of thousands of dollars by not buying ads in local newspapers to disseminate property assessments. He said the county is already required to mail the complete assessments to every address.

Another recent law requires printing ballots for 110 percent of registered voters to be available during early voting and on Election Day, Lawlor said. He said that mandate cost Lake County $1 million.

Circling back to consolidation, Lawlor did have one idea. The report proposes county chairmen have the right to close forms of government if the county appoints the governing bodies. Lawlor said he's asking legislators to approve a bill that would let him fold the Round Lake Sanitary District into the county public works department.

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But when asked for his thoughts on the county taking over for townships, Lawlor said he preferred they explore merging or pooling financial resources with each other.

"The goal is to reduce the tax burden. So if we reduce the number of taxing bodies but spending stays the same or goes up, then what have you really accomplished?" Lawlor said. "In some cases, I think that could happen."

Mundelein Mayor Steve Lentz said he wasn't interested in taking over township duties either. If townships were abolished, he said the county would be better suited to absorb those services. Furthermore, Lentz said he thought the task force's consolidation suggestions were geared more toward small taxing bodies downstate that could benefit from buying in bulk.

Kevin Myers, superintendent of Mundelein High School District 120, expressed similar sentiments regarding school consolidation.

If Mundelein High School hypothetically merged with High School District 128, which covers Vernon Hills and Libertyville, those taxpayers might have to pay for the new STEM labs in Mundelein even though their kids won't go there and their elected school board didn't choose to build it, Myers said.

A number of other issues could arise if Mundelein High School were to merge with any of the three elementary districts in Mundelein, he said.

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"Some of them feed into Vernon Hills High School, and some feed into Wauconda," Myers said. "Now we're talking about parents paying for upgrades at MHS when their kids feed into another high school district. Or we redistrict everyone, which is no easy task."

Referencing a document written by State Superintendent Tony Smith, Myers said the foundation for school district reorganization and consolidation has already been made.

According to the document, a committee should be formed to investigate reorganization or consolidation if "50 voters or 10 percent of the voters residing within each affected district, whichever is less," sign a petition.

"If our governor is trying to say he wants to 'empower' our villages, our towns and our cities, well they're already empowered to do all of this," Myers said. "The voters can petition this and the voters can elect school board members who can initiate this. I do whatever the school board says."

Myers also referenced a 2010 Illinois Board of Education report that shows the number of school districts has decreased 13 percent since 1984, going from 1,008 districts to about 869.

The same document shows that Illinois grants money to research individual situations and if districts decide to merge, Illinois gives $4,000 per full-time teacher to help offset various merger costs.

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"These things take time to sort everything out, and there isn't a one-size-fits all formula," Myers said. "But right now, there are no grants or incentives to do this. The state doesn't have a budget."

rkambic@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @Rick_Kambic
With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than...
A series of events will be held in China and Qatar through the year to mark the China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016, the Ministry of Culture and the Qatari embassy in Beijing recently announced.

The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 is launched in Doha on Sunday. The yearlong event will feature artists and performing troupes from both countries, including Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh (left) and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (right). [Photo provided to China Daily]

Chinese and Qatari artists performed in an opening ceremony on Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, followed by 17 cultural events from China and 10 from the Middle Eastern country. Music, dance, films, exhibitions, literature and food will lace the yearlong program.

What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, an exhibition to showcase the works of more than a dozen Chinese artists and curated by the New York-based artist Cai Guoqiang, will be held at Doha's QM Gallery Al Riwaq from March 12 to Aug 12.

Another displaySilks from the Silk Roadwill be presented at Doha's QM Gallery Katara on March 23.

Sultan Mansouri, the Qatari ambassador to China, says in return his country will bring Pearls, an exhibition on Qatar's rich history of the precious material, to Beijing's National Museum of China in July.

London and Istanbul witnessed the same display earlier.

Yu Jianhong, vice-president of the Beijing Film Academy, says a part of Yi Lu Kuang Biao (Racing Ahead), a film being produced by his institute, will be shot in Doha in the spring. Directed by Chen Bin and written by scriptwriter Yue Xiaojun, the comedy will focus on a group of Chinese people's adventures in Doha, with focus on camel racing, a top sport in Qatar.

In addition, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra will debut in China in October. Under the baton of well-known Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh, the orchestra will play Arabic music, featuring works including Marcel Khalife's Symphony of Return, Jean Charles Gandrille's Violin Concerto and Houtaf Khoury's Angel of Light Piano Concerto.

Cai Shang, general executive manager of Hermark Culture, a Beijing-based company that is managing and promoting Qatar Philharmonic's China tour, says his company is also interested in taking the Suzhou Ballet Troupe to Qatar.

Photographers from both countries will hold exhibitions on landscapes and the cultural experiences of people.

The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 emerged from agreements signed by President Xi Jinping and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani in November 2014. The leaders then announced the two countries' plans to build a strategic partnership and promote mutual cooperation.

Qatar and China established diplomatic relations in 1988.

"It was an important hub on the ancient Silk Road and is also a key country in realizing the Belt and Road Initiative. We hope such cultural events will help further exchanges and promote greater understanding between the two countries," Lu Yanfei, an official of China's Ministry of Culture, told reporters in Beijing on Jan 15.
The Chinese embassy in Venezuela on Sunday opened a photo exhibition on Beijing, which kicked off the Chinese New Year celebrations in the Latin American country.

The exhibition features 100 photographs of the historic landmarks and monuments that lie along the the Chinese capital city's central axis, extending 7.8 km from the Drum Tower in the north to the Yongding Gate in the south.

"We are very pleased to share with our Venezuelan friends the start of this new year, with the opening of this exhibition on China's capital, a city that is more than 4,000 years old," said Lan Hu, political counselor of the embassy.

The exhibits also include 14 miniature models of city highlights, as well as videos and interactive games that bring the central axis to life.Existing since the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), Beijing's central axis is home to such key sites as the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and Tian'anmen Square.

Maria Fernanda Barreto, cultural coordinator of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, appreciated the Chinese embassy for bringing Venezuela closer to the Chinese culture "through this wonderful exhibition."

Barreto noted that 2016 has been named the China-Latin America Cultural Exchange Year, and relevant activities in Venezuela will strengthen the ties between the two nations.

The Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 8, will usher in the Year of the Monkey.




A worker talks to a crane operator with a walky-talky at a nuclear power plant construction site in Shandong province. [Photo/China Daily]

Export of indigenous technologies and 10% share in domestic energy mix are future goals

Last year's big-ticket developments in China's nuclear power industry signify two key themes: the country's inexorable shift towards clean energy, in line with its commitment to be a responsible, climate-conscious economic giant, and its determination to be a leading global nuclear player in the decades to come.

As many as six nuclear reactors went online in 2015. The authorities concerned gave permits for the construction of eight more domestic reactors.

As for exports of nuclear technology, in November the country signed a $6-billion deal with Argentina to build a nuclear plant, the South American country's fourth. In United Kingdom, three nuclear power plants are likely to be built with possible Chinese nuclear technologies.

Last week China signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop home-grown fourth-generation nuclear technology in the Middle East country.

But what helps China to stand out from the nuclear crowd is its stress on innovation, safety and popularization of its technologies, experts said.

Nuclear power is firmly etched into China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). According to the National Energy Administration, China's 28 nuclear reactors in operation have an installed capacity of about 25.5 gigawatts. The nuclear plants now under construction and those approved for construction would collectively generate an additional 30 gW in future.

Xu Yuming, deputy director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, said the current program would see the country emerging as the largest market for nuclear power plants. But, the priority is safe development of nuclear power and increase in the percentage of homegrown nuclear technology in the global market.

"Speed (of executing nuclear power projects) is not the goal. We should put safety above everything, and improve our ability to innovate and develop our own technologies for use domestically, while at the same time paving the way for their export, as per the new five-year plan," Xu said.

The safety-first principle became paramount after China suspended approvals for new reactors in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, and went in for a review of safety standards at existing nuclear facilities.

In March last year, the government okayed construction of units 5 and 6 of Hongyan River nuclear power plant in northeastern Liaoning province, the first such project to receive approvals in four years.

From then, China started to ramp up electricity generation at its nuclear power plants, which gained currency as clean, abundant sources of energy with potential to fuel a high-growth economy.

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Turkey detained 23 suspected Islamic State (IS) militants trying to enter Turkey through Syria, according to the Turkish General Staff's released statement Sunday.

The suspects, whose nationalities were not disclosed, were captured on Jan. 23 as they attempted to enter Elbeyli, a district in the southeastern province of Kilis.

"The 23 suspects believed to be members of the Daesh terrorist group were caught," was the General Staff's written statement on its website, with no further details.

Daesh is the Arabic acronym for IS, commonly used by Turkish officials to refer to IS.

Turkey was pressured to enhance its security measures against suspected IS militants operating in the country, following criticism it was too slow in discerning the threat.

Turkey escalated its efforts against terrorist militants, following persistent criticism of its deficient control of jihadist fighters from crossing its volatile border with Syria.

The increased security measures came after numerous deadly terrorist attacks against Turkey which were attributed to IS militants last year in Sanliurfa, Ankara and in Istanbul this month.
 Flash

The Syrian forces on Sunday captured the strategic town of Rabiah, a main rebel stronghold in the countryside of the coastal province of Latakia, state news agency SANA reported.

Rabiah is a key stronghold of the jihadist groups in the northern countryside of Latakia. The recapture of the town is the second hard blow for the rebels, just a week after the army forces captured the town of Salma.

Both Salma and Rabiah were considered the two main rebel bastions north of Latakia, close to the Turkey area.

The fresh progress in Rabiah, located in the Turkmen Mountain where Tureky-backed rebels are operating, reflects the resolve of the Syrian troops to hit hard at rebel bastions in northern Syria.

A military source told Xinhua on Sunday that the military units entered Rabiah from its western outskirt, namely from the town of Rawda. The source added that the army is now in the central part of Rabiah.

The military units will continue to advance to capture the town of Kinsabah, after which it will reach the western countryside of the northwestern province of Idlib, another bastion of the al-Faterh Army rebels, or the Conquer Army, which constitutes of several jihadi groups such as al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.
The Guardian

Nanfu Wang

Friday 22 January 2016 02.12 EST

Last modified on Friday 22 January 2016 02.14 EST

 Im not a paranoid person, but my experience making a film about human rights in China gave me a sense of fear that I think westerners dont comprehend

Last December, one of Chinas most prominent human rights lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang, was put on trial for picking quarrels and provoking trouble, a charge the Chinese government recently has brought upon hundreds of activists, human rights lawyers in particular, who have been fighting against rampant corruption and human rights abuses throughout the country. Outside the courthouse, a crowd of protesters gathered to show their support for Pu  a rare and dangerous move in a country where public displays of dissent often end in arrest, or worse.

Chinese dissident Hooligan Sparrow, the eponymous subject

of a documentary by Nanfu Wang.

Photograph: Little Horse Crossing The River

On this particular day, a few western journalists also happened to be present outside the courthouse, which is the likely reason why what happened next ended up becoming news at all: the protesters and journalists were attacked by groups of masked men who kept them from entering the courthouse. Some uniformed police officers participated, but many of the men visible in news footage wore masks and plain-clothes, their only common identifier being yellow smiley-face stickers that they wore on their jackets.

Three years ago, I would have watched these news reports with incredulity. Before I returned to China from New York in the summer of 2013 to make my film, Hooligan Sparrow, I had no idea to what lengths and in what absurd ways the Chinese government is willing to go to crush its perceived enemies. But I learned that all I had to do was follow my films subject, Ye Haiyan (AKA Hooligan Sparrow), a womens rights activist, for a few days, and suddenly I myself was being followed by plain-clothes secret police, attacked by angry mobs, and interrogated by national security officers. In one instance, police confiscated my camera and erased my memory card simply for standing outside of a courthouse during a high-profile trial.

I dont think of myself as a fearful or paranoid person. But my experience making a documentary about human rights in China gave me a sense of fear that I think westerners have no frame of reference for. Often when I filmed in public, I had to try to conceal the fact that I was filming. I shot my entire film on a small DLSR camera, a point-and-shoot camera, and in a few instances, a tiny camera mounted in a pair of glasses. These measures were necessary to protect myself and the people I was filming from attracting the attention of police, uniformed or otherwise.

In the scene above, I was filming inside of Sparrows apartment. At this point in the film, she already had been arrested following her participation in a protest against a government official, so everyone present in the room was feeling quite on edge. We knew that we were being followed constantly, both by uniformed police and by plain-clothed secret police. The silhouette of the man standing next to the window, listening, is the perfect visualisation of the fear I constantly felt while making my film.

I quickly turned off my camera and went to hide it when I noticed the man by the window. My biggest fear was that at any moment the police would break in and take all of my footage. After a while, the sense of paranoia was so strong that it became comical. Several times while filming with Sparrow, I would hear a knock at the door and quickly hide my camera, but it would turn out to be people we knew, and we would all laugh.

In the scene above, I was speaking with a person who suggested to me that it was too dangerous to continue filming. He said that none of us knew when one would be arrested, and that even the room we were sitting in could be monitored electronically. The moment where all of us stop to look around for  what, exactly? Cameras? Bugs? I dont think we really knew. That moment reveals a deep, painful truth about my experience of making my film  that the Chinese governments grip on its people is so strong, the repression is so far-reaching and intense, that any Chinese person who dares to think about speaking up cant feel safe in their own home.

Paranoia would be the right word for the feeling I experienced as I filmed in China if it werent for the fact that the danger was real. My family and friends were harassed by police and state security agents. Some of the activists I was following were imprisoned or beaten by hired gangs. When I returned to the US, I had to smuggle my footage out of China so that it wouldnt be inspected as it passed through Chinese customs. And in the years since I finished filming, some of my subjects and even their spouses and children have been imprisoned or prevented from leaving the country. One activist who appeared in my film is currently near death on a hunger strike in prison.

I hope that my film will convey many things  the incredible resolve and determination shown by Chinas brave human rights activists, the choking grip the government has on its people, and the sense of hope that China can change if there are enough people who are willing to fight for it. But for most people who will see my film  people outside of China  I hope they will understand more deeply the sense of fear that so many Chinese people feel every day: fear that at any moment, their lives could come crashing down simply for dreaming of a brighter future.

Hooligan Sparrow, a documentary by Nanfu Wang, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Friday 22 January.

China Aid Media Team

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A worker talks to a crane operator with a walky-talky at a nuclear power plant construction site in Shandong province. [Photo/China Daily]

Export of indigenous technologies and 10% share in domestic energy mix are future goals

Last year's big-ticket developments in China's nuclear power industry signify two key themes: the country's inexorable shift towards clean energy, in line with its commitment to be a responsible, climate-conscious economic giant, and its determination to be a leading global nuclear player in the decades to come.

As many as six nuclear reactors went online in 2015. The authorities concerned gave permits for the construction of eight more domestic reactors.

As for exports of nuclear technology, in November the country signed a $6-billion deal with Argentina to build a nuclear plant, the South American country's fourth. In United Kingdom, three nuclear power plants are likely to be built with possible Chinese nuclear technologies.

Last week China signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop home-grown fourth-generation nuclear technology in the Middle East country.

But what helps China to stand out from the nuclear crowd is its stress on innovation, safety and popularization of its technologies, experts said.

Nuclear power is firmly etched into China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). According to the National Energy Administration, China's 28 nuclear reactors in operation have an installed capacity of about 25.5 gigawatts. The nuclear plants now under construction and those approved for construction would collectively generate an additional 30 gW in future.

Xu Yuming, deputy director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, said the current program would see the country emerging as the largest market for nuclear power plants. But, the priority is safe development of nuclear power and increase in the percentage of homegrown nuclear technology in the global market.

"Speed (of executing nuclear power projects) is not the goal. We should put safety above everything, and improve our ability to innovate and develop our own technologies for use domestically, while at the same time paving the way for their export, as per the new five-year plan," Xu said.

The safety-first principle became paramount after China suspended approvals for new reactors in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, and went in for a review of safety standards at existing nuclear facilities.

In March last year, the government okayed construction of units 5 and 6 of Hongyan River nuclear power plant in northeastern Liaoning province, the first such project to receive approvals in four years.

From then, China started to ramp up electricity generation at its nuclear power plants, which gained currency as clean, abundant sources of energy with potential to fuel a high-growth economy.
Private investment firms in China are facing tighter regulation as the country's securities market regulator steps up its crackdown on illegal activities.

According to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, 25,607 private investment firms registered with it as of Jan 15 manage assets worth 5.1 trillion yuan ($760 billion).

Typically, private investment firms in China are private equity firms, venture capital companies and hedge funds that invest in stocks and bonds in the secondary capital markets.

Of late, their investments have came under scrutiny for a variety of irregularities like incomplete and false information disclosure, selling investment products to unqualified investors (who did not have requisite level of funds), illegal fundraising, financial fraud, market manipulation and insider trading.

Hu Lifeng, a researcher at China Galaxy Securities Co, told Xinhua News Agency, "Many investment firms lacked sound internal corporate governance and many engaged in highly leveraged trading without proper risk control, which ended in forced liquidation and exacerbated the market volatility."

So, the CSRC has enhanced inspections and tightened regulations governing the day-to-day operations of private investment companies.

For their part, the authorities concerned in Beijing and Shanghai reportedly suspended registration of business licenses for investment firms and wealth management companies.

At least 27 investment firms were fined or subjected to administrative restrictions for rule violations after the CSRC inspected more than 140 firms last year.

Another 21 firms were investigated by the police for suspicious criminal and illegal activities, according to the regulator.

The crackdown followed the 2015 summer rout of the Chinese bourses that roiled global markets and portrayed China in poor light among the investor community.

"The regulation and self discipline of the private investment funds failed to keep up with the rapid development of their business," Hu told Xinhua.

Another aspect that seems to have riled the CSRC is the investment firms' propensity to misuse funds raised from their listing on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, better known as the New Third Board, an over-the-counter share transfer system for non-public small firms and startups.

The government set up the NEEQ in late 2012 to support the cash-strapped small companies and startups. Listing on the NEEQ is not via an initial public offering, so it does not make the firm concerned a public company.

It is suspected many investment firms may have funnelled money raised from the NEEQ into speculative trading on stock exchanges or to form illegal or unauthorized funds, instead of sticking to their stated objective of investing it in small firms and startups.

A controversial case in point is China Science & Merchants Investment Management Group, a high-profile NEEQ-listed private investment firm.

After scooping up 9 billion yuan from the NEEQ, it played the A-share market, where the yuan-denominated stocks of companies based in the Chinese mainland are traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses by mainland citizens.

What raised brows all over was its aggressive play. Local media studied China Science & Merchants's filings and estimated it may have invested at least 4 billion yuan in 16 listed companies between July and August last year.

The company's share market investments attracted attention also because they seemed to be inconsistent with its assurance to its investors it will invest 60 percent of the NEEQ proceeds to set up new private equity funds, 30 percent in funds for mergers and acquisitions, and structured funds (which do invest in stock markets), and the remaining 10 percent in new emerging strategic industries and to replenish its capital.

China Science & Merchants was among the companies that received warnings and administrative restrictions from the CSRC. The company was pulled up for violating the rule of information disclosure. It did not make sufficient disclosure about its fundraising plans and how it would use the proceeds. China Science & Merchants declined to comment for this story.
Visitors look at electric home appliances of Haier during an expo in Qingdao city, East China's Shandong province, July 10, 2015. [Photo/IC]

QINGDAO -- China's leading home appliance maker Haier said its profits jumped 20 percent year-on-year to 18 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) in 2015, despite falling global sales.

Haier's global sales reached 188.7 billion yuan last year, down six percent year-on-year, due to global economic downturn and business adjustment of the company, said Zhou Yunjie, rotating president of Haier, in the company's annual meeting on Saturday.

Haier is dismantling its traditional corporate structure in favor of building an open platform where people can bring in their own ideas and resources to develop new products and services, said Zhang Ruimin, chairman of Haier.

Over the past decade, Haier got rid of 20,000 middle managers, hoping to transform into an incubator for innovators, according to Zhang.

Haier accounts for over 10 percent of worldwide home appliance sales, according to a 2014 survey by Euromonitor. Earlier this month, the company announced its purchase of US conglomerate GE's appliances business.
A resident looks out her home window facing the smoking chimney of a thermal power plant in Zhejiang province. Coal-fueled thermal power plants have become a major source of the country's air pollution. [Photo/China Daily]

Coal is going to make way for new energy in China through various reforms in the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20) as the country battles air pollution, said experts.

"China has to build a strong and efficient alternative energy industry in order to cope with the environmental challenges," said Zhao Yong, associate researcher of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission. "Using less energy to drive more output is the key solution to China's healthy growth."

In June 2015, the Chinese government submitted a document to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, specifying that China is committed to reducing the carbon dioxide emission per GDP by 60 to 65 percent by 2030 compared with the level in 2005. The consumption of non-fossil energy will count for 20 percent of the primary energy consumption.

In order to achieve these goals, China has to add new installed capacity of 100 million kW nuclear power, 150 million kW hydroelectric power, 300 million kW photovoltaic power and 400 million kW wind power between 2016 and 2030.

However, the high cost of clean energy is the biggest obstacle in the way of China's green power development. Government subsidies are therefore critical to encourage enterprises to actively engage in the green energy industry, Zhao added.

According to the National Energy Administration, coal-fired power took up 75.2 percent of the total power generation in 2014. Non-fossil fuel power, including hydroelectric, wind, nuclear and solar power, accounted for just 24.8 percent.

The total power generation in 2014 was 5.4 trillion kW, up 5.09 percent from the end of 2013. Coal-fired power reached 4.2 trillion kW, up 0.17 percent from the same period the previous year. Hydroelectric power contributed most, or 24.61 percent, to the growth.

"Solar and wind power generation, which is seen as a great hope for China's clean energy endeavor, has remained at the same level in the past two years," said Zhao.

Shi Lishan, deputy director of the New and Renewable Energy Department of the NEA, had been pointing out that supply side reform is key to overall power generation reform. A lot of the power generated by new energy is not integrated with the national grid. Worse, the operations of the new energy companies rely heavily on government subsidies. So, if subsidies are not extended, these companies' installed capacity lies idle.

Pilot programs have been put in place in some places to experiment with integration of new energy with the power grid. For instance, SPIC Mengdong Energy Group Co Ltd, based in Inner Mongolia, is running China's first regional grid to successfully integrate both coal and wind energy sources.

The company has been working for the past three years in Huolinhe in Inner Mongolia to supply its electrolytic aluminum production.

"The biggest obstacle was that wind power fluctuates greatly depending on the weather," said Liu Jianping, SPIC Mengdong Energy Group's deputy manager. "If the wind slows, it affects the aluminum production."

To resolve the issue, the group adopted a "complementary coal-fired and wind-power system" which he said is able to counter-balance any suspension in wind-generated power by adjusting the wattage of coal-fired power and the rate of aluminum production.

Apart from providing encouragement to new energy production, China is to suspend approvals for any new coal mines for three years. This is to eliminate stockpiles and increase new-energy consumption. The decision was taken at a national energy conference held by the central government in December 2015.

Nur Bekri, director of the NEA, said at the conference that with production overcapacity expected to last for quite some time, green and low-carbon forms of energy will be the main focus of the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20).

In certain regions, China has introduced a "coal to electricity" reform. For instance, Beijing and its neighboring provinces are to replace coal-fired heating systems with electricity. According to a plan of the municipal development and the reform commission released in April 2015, all the coal-fired boilers in key areas of the city will be removed.

"China's coal consumption is divided largely into two sectors: half for power generation and half for other use," said Lin Boqiang, a professor of energy economy at Xiamen University.

"Currently, 70 percent of the coal-fired power capacity was installed around 2003, which is relatively new as such installed capacity is usually able to serve for 40 to 50 years. If these installed units run at peak efficiency, they will be able to replace other coal-consuming sectors to a great extent," said Lin.

"Statistics have shown that with every 1 percentage point increase in the proportion of electricity in terminal energy consumption, energy intensity, or the ratio between energy consumption and economic output, drops by 4 percent. Therefore, replacing low-efficiency energy with electricity is going to reduce energy consumption," Lin said.
While competition is intense in the Chinese online travel industry, the relatively low penetration rate compared with Western peers indicates there may be much room for growth for Chinese market players.

According to the latest numbers provided by UBS Investment Research, the penetration rate of online travel agencies was only around 10 percent in 2015, while the number in the United States was over 40 percent and that for Europe was nearing 50 percent.

Regarding the low penetration rate and Chinese tourists' increasing enthusiasm for both domestic and overseas trips, Xu Ming, analyst at UBS Investment Research, predicted that this year will be a turning point for online travel agencies.

Those which have not made profit yet, will start to turn in a satisfactory balance sheet, and those that are already profitable will seek even faster growth.

Travel agencies which provide non-standard trip products will perform extremely well, including Nanjing-based online outbound travel service provider Tuniu Corp, Xu said.

Yu Dunde, chief executive officer of Tuniu, agreed growth opportunities abound for online travel agencies as consumers' demand is more diverse now than in the past.

"Travel agencies used to classify their products simply according to tourists' consumption level. But as people travel more frequently, travel products should have different characteristics. Thus, we now have products such as family trips, cruise trips and trips tailor-made for the elderly," Yu said.

Tuniu introduced a family trip package late December targeting three different age-groups of children: 2-5, 6-11 and 12-15 years. The idea is to avoid homogenized competition. It is also one of the three focus areas, said Yu.

Enhanced service quality figures among Tuniu's priorities. The company has set up more offline service centers, whose number rose from 15 in 2014 to 150 by the end of last year. It will set up overseas offline service centers this year.

"By 2017, we shall have 1,000 offline service centers in China and more than 100 overseas. Apart from providing services at destinations, we will start our services at the departure stage itself, which consumers value a lot," he said.

Increased efficiency in the supply chain is Tuniu's third priority. In the past, it was not aware of consumers' needs in real time as there were too many intermediaries. Tuniu will now work directly with suppliers, and, by extension, consumers, through its own communication system. The goal is to ensure the output of one Tuniu team-member is twice the industry average.

"It is true that some Chinese Internet companies are undervalued in the US. But the most important thing is not seeking short-term profit in the capital market. What we should really do is to seize the unprecedented chance in the Chinese online travel market right now," Yu said.
A Siemens logo is pictured on an office building of Siemens AG in Munich in this May 30, 2014 file photo.[Photo/Agencies]

DAVOS, Switzerland -- China is still one of the biggest market for Siemens AG, a German multinational conglomerate, and the company remains optimistic about the country's future, a management board member and chief technology officer(CTO) of the company has said.

China's GDP growth rate, which stood at 6.9 percent in 2015, is still one of the fastest in the world, Siegfried Russwurm said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Considering the growth rate and size of its economy, China is still one of the biggest market globally, said Russwurm, adding he believed the Chinese market, where Siemens had witnessed rapid growth, still had a great prospect.

Russwurm also spoke highly of the growth pattern of China.

China is not only a user but also a contributor to the development of Industry 4.0, which is considered by many as the fourth industrial revolution, according to the expert.

As one of the pioneers in the promotion and use of smart technologies, also referred to as Industry 4.0 in Germany, Siemens is one of the first companies to set up smart factories in China.

Russwurm said the electronic product company of Siemens in Shenzhen in southern China is typically taken as "the icon of the factory of the future."

The CTO said Siemens had a strong research and development team in China, which contributed to the global concept of the fourth industrial revolution.

China has become a big part of the global economy, and China would be treated the same as other markets in a digital and global world, said Russwurm.

"We have to learn as a global company not to treat China and Chinese companies differently from customers somewhere else on the globe." he added.

According to him, Siemens factories in China is no different from its factories in Germany.

Russwurm also talked about labor costs in prosperous Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, which he said had surged to a level similar to those in Mexico and East Europe.

Russwurm, who is also a governing body member of the Industry 4.0 platform, also praised the collaboration between German platform and its Chinese counterparts on the Industry 4.0 initiative.
BEIJING -- China's electronic information industry expanded in 2015 thanks to technological innovation and policy, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Total revenues of major electronic information companies, or those with annual revenues of more than 20 million yuan, are expected to hit 15.5 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion) in 2015, double the gross revenues of 2010, said Huai Jinpeng, vice minister of the MIIT.

Innovations such as cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things are bringing opportunities to the sector, Huai said.

China's cabinet unveiled its "Internet Plus" action plan in July last year to shape the information technology and traditional sectors into a cohesive, efficient force.

Huai said the ministry will continue to improve Internet infrastructure in the next five years and make broadband Internet accessible in every corner of China to foster new engines for growth and upgrade the economic structure.
YINCHUAN -- A Chinese company, based in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, has signed a contract to rent 10,000 square meters of land in Dubai's Jebel Ali free trade zone.

The land will be used to build service centers for exhibition, consultation, after-sales service and promotion of China-produced high-quality products, said Li Zheng, director of Ningxia-based SRP Group.

The group is dedicated to promoting cross-border trade between China and Arab nations.

The service center, part of the company's Silk Road E-Path chain, will showcase China-produced automobiles and textiles.

"By exhibiting quality Chinese products, we want to change Middle Eastern consumers' assumption that made-in-China equals cheap, small commodities," said Li.

The company is also considering building more centers in Jordan and Oman trade areas to facilitate e-commerce between China and Arab countries.

SRP also runs a B2B (business to business) platform to help trade by Chinese companies by assisting them in customs clearance, payment, translation, accreditation, logistics and product exhibition.

Arab countries have become China's biggest supplier of crude oil and its seventh-biggest trading partner. They are the world's largest market for construction contracts and grain imports.

"The potential for Chinese companies to boost exports to Arab nations is huge," said Xie Menglin, director of the Small and Medium Companies Association in Ningxia.

The association is also helping metal, construction material and petro-chemical companies expand their business in Oman.
Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, to continue investing in the China market as prospects abound

Like most of the chief executive officers heading multinational corporations, Nancy McKinstry, 56, not only puts in long hours at work but travels 50 percent of her time.

Perhaps, that is why the CEO of Wolters Kluwer, the 179-year-old, multi-billion-euro Dutch information services company, understands that time means everything for professionals.

"Unlike ordinary consumers, who may value price and performance of products, professionals value their time the most," said McKinstry.

The Holland-based, Dutch Stock Exchange-listed Wolters Kluwer is dedicated to help professionals such as lawyers and auditors to speed up their decision-making processes and increase their productivity at work. So, it publishes up-to-date information for legal, tax, finance, and healthcare professionals, and provides digital tools to help them find the regulations and rules in the most effective way.

McKinstry is looking at China to drive the company's future growth. She is convinced professionals in China are a rapidly growing group who would require services of the kind offered by Wolters Kluwer. For, regulations and rules related to law, tax, accounting, finance, auditing, compliance and healthcare are getting increasingly complicated.

"What we see in China is a combination of factors having growth potential. Such a combination will help drive a good market for us," McKinstry said.

The first American and the first woman to head the Dutch publisher, McKinstry is betting big on China. She plans to add 100 people this year to its existing 600-strong China team.

According to McKinstry, Wolters Kluwer thrives on the changes and complexity of regulations in China, unlike some multinationals that face challenges when they try to weather the rapidly changing regulatory environment.

"The information and software we provide can help people track down useful and relevant information in the most effective way and we make sure such information is up-to-date and absolutely right," she said.

McKinstry, who came to Beijing in December to celebrate the company's 30th anniversary in China, said the company entered the China market by providing big-volume books that help multinational companies build up their China business.

"Now 90 percent of our business in China is digital. Take checking the latest auditing regulation as an example. In the print era, it could take three or four days. Now, our database and software can shrink the process to within an hour. Professionals can benefit from higher productivity," she said.

McKinstry joined the company in 1992 in its North American operation, and was appointed chief executive officer in 2003. She leads the transformation of Wolters Kluwer into a digital and software solutions company.

She has been repeatedly included in lists of leading business media people as one of the most powerful women in business, including the Fortune's Global 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and the Financial Times' Top 50 Women in World Business.

She was challenged in an interview before that Google, the online search giant, would make her company redundant. She responded by saying free online information does not necessarily create value always, and what professionals really care about is a reliable brand that can offer up-to-date, accurate and authentic information.

In a "fragmented market" like China, Wolters Kluwer competes with several companies in different categories, McKinstry said. The upside is "it (the market) is still evolving and nobody is dominating. Any company that is able to bring in global products into the market, and able to quickly adapt will win."

The company had revenues of 3.66 billion euros ($4 billion) in 2014. China is one of the fastest growing markets for Wolters Kluwer. But, out of the 40 countries where the global publisher has major operations, China is the only market that Wolters Kluwer is investing more than it earns because the company, McKinstry said, adopts a deliberate strategy to keep strengthening its presence in China.

"We want to go for growth in China," she said. Through organic growth and acquisitions, the company boosted its China team from less than 100 to 600 over the past six years.

The US and other North America markets account for about 53 percent of the company's business, Europe for 39 percent and China, India and Brazil for the rest.

Rather than GDP growth, McKinstry said the company's business is driven by micro factors, such as the rise of professional groups, the growth of highly educated groups and the changes in regulations and regulatory reforms.

"The more there is change and the more complex the regulations, the more help professionals would need to make decisions in a more effective and efficient way," she said.

Time management is a key skill that McKinstry appears to have mastered. As a female CEO with two kids, she is often asked how to strike a balance between work and life.

"The secret is to make the right choice, to know when you have to show up at the child's play, and when to show up at work," she said, adding that another secret is that she has a very supportive husband.

McKinstry admitted she had no ambition to become the CEO of Wolters Kluwer when she first joined the company decades ago. She said her summer internship was the last job she was officially looking for, the other jobs were more like orders from the top - "Could you go and do that please?"

"It is always about delivering the results in the job that you have and being open to do more, that is sort of my approach to the top of the organization," she said.
Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone is looking to innovation, March 6, 2015. [Photo/IC]

The third batch of free trade zones (FTZs) is expected to be finalized shortly, with inland areas and provinces along the Belt and Road getting priority, China Securities Journal reported on Monday.

As an important measure to promote regional economic development, applying for FTZ and taking part in the construction of the Belt and Road have been put forward at local governments' two sessions since the beginning of the year.

Last month, the State Council issued the Opinions on Speeding up the Implementation of Free Trade Zone Strategy, which proposed to further optimize the construction layout of the free trade zones and quicken the implementation of the FTZ strategy.

Henan CPPCC Chairman Ye Dongsong put forward the construction of Henan FTZ for the first time at the central province's two sessions on Saturday.

Ye said the provincial government will intensify efforts to improve the construction and competitive edge of Zhengzhou Airport Comprehensive Economic Experimental Zone, apply for Henan Free Trade Zone, and build Zhengzhou Cross-border E-commerce Pilot Zone.

Shaanxi, a major province along the Belt and Road, has called for FTZ construction in northwestern province. Shaanxi governor Lou Qinjian said on Sunday that the province will actively try to build Shaanxi Pilot Free Trade Zone, promote trade facilitation, and establish cooperation with 13 domestic port cities.

In August 2013, China established the first pilot FTZ in Shanghai. In April last year, three more FTZs were established in the southern province of Guangdong, the Tianjin municipality in the north and another in the southeastern province of Fujian.
Pedestrians walk past a cafe of Starbucks Coffee in Shanghai on Dec 8, 2015. [Photo/IC] Service, high-tech sectors targeted amid increased overseas FDI into the country

Foreign companies are keen to invest in China's service and high-tech industries to maintain robust growth, senior Commerce Ministry officials said on Monday.

There is no sign that multinationals are withdrawing from the country on any scale, according to the officials.

Overseas firms are eager to enhance their earning abilities, said Huang Feng, deputy director-general of the ministry's Department of Foreign Investment Administration.

Huang said that multinationals are keen to invest in healthcare, environmental protection, pharmaceuticals, communication and information services in China, and also in high-tech industries that are being developed more slowly than the overall pace of development.

"Foreign companies have discovered that market demand in China is changing as consumers and companies want to buy more high-value-added products and that there is surging demand for the service industry in the country," Huang said.

He was commenting after foreign media reports said that global companies such as Microsoft, Panasonic and Sharp would withdraw or remove part of their business from China to either their home bases or to other emerging markets.

Foreign direct investment into China rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to $126.27 billion last year, the ministry said.

Foreign investment in the service industry rose by 17.3 percent, accounting for 61.1 percent of the flow in 2015. The remaining FDI was attracted by the country's high-tech, high-end manufacturing and other sectors.

Wan Lianpo, deputy director-general of the ministry's Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services, said, "Major global companies are still optimistic about the Chinese market and investment prospects after assessing the market potential of other major global economies."

Multinationals including Syngenta, Volkswagen, Luft-hansa, Samsung Electronics, Air Liquide, Bridgestone and Intel made substantial investments in China's service, manufacturing and agricultural sectors last year.

Starbucks plans to open 500 stores this year in China, its largest market outside of the United States. It aims to create 10,000 jobs in the country each year up to 2019.

Uber Technologies, the US ride-hailing company, has committed to invest 6.3 billion yuan ($957 million) in China to diversify its businesses ranging from transportation services to automotive financing.

Li Jian, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said that although some multinationals had complained about the changing investment environment in China, they should get used to the new market development model.

This is because China is moving up the value chain and optimizing its industrial structure amid the "new normal"  the phrase introduced by President Xi Jinping to describe growth that is slower but of better quality.
Chinas Internet companies are scrambling to send out cash-filled virtual red envelopes for Spring Festival.

Envelopes worth several hundred million yuan will be handed out by Ant Financial Services Group, the Internet finance arm of Alibaba Group Holding, through its Alipay Wallet apps on Feb 7, the eve of the festival.

Arch rivals Baidu and Tencent Holdings are stepping up their efforts in the campaign, with the aim of expanding their presence in the mobile payments market.

Alipay users can download red envelopes on their smartphones as they watch the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala.

Every round of red envelopes will contain 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) in cash, the company said, without disclosing how many rounds will be involved.

Consumers who collect five virtual lucky cards, which can be found in the virtual red envelopes, can also share the grand prize of 200 million yuan.

Baidi is giving away red envelopes worth 6 billion yuan during Spring Festival, while Tencent is sinking hundreds of millions of yuan into its campaign.

The virtual red envelopes became popular in 2014 after Tencent promoted them on WeChat, Chinas most popular instant messaging platform that boasts 650 million users a month.

Analysts said the envelopes war is aimed at gaining control of the countrys booming mobile payments market, with the three Internet companies trying to lure new users.

Li Chao, an analyst at Internet consultancy iResearch Consulting Group in Beijing, said, Giving out red envelopes is a nationwide tradition that can involve consumers in major cities and small towns, so it makes sense for Internet companies to sink significant investments into this.

Tencent claims to have acquired the majority of its 200 million mobile payment users after pouring 500 million yuan into its Spring Festival red envelopes campaign last year.

Ma Tao, an analyst at Analysys International, said the campaign is also Alibabas latest attempt to add more social networking appeal to its Alipay app.
Employees assemble electric cars at a factory in Beijing. [Photo/China Daily]

Automakers building low-quality cars to get govt aid, say reports

China's central government launched a fraud investigation on Thursday of the new-energy vehicle sector, with the probe to cover government bodies, manufacturers and business customers, after industrial insiders warned of subsidy fraud.

Four government bodies, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and National Development and Reform Commission, will jointly carry out surprise inspections in selected cities.

The authorities will look back three years to check the use of fiscal subsidies in 2013 and 2014 and subsidy applications in 2015; the consistency of key indicators of mass-produced electric vehicles with the data listed in the nation's products catalogs; and the use of the vehicles by business customers.

Yale Zhang, general manager of Automotive Foresight (Shanghai) Co, said there is subsidy fraud in many small cities, mainly covering electric buses and commercial vehicles.

"There are a large number of small vehicle makers who obtain government manufacturing permits, then they sell the permits to even smaller plants, who are only concerned with the subsidies," Zhang said.

Major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have very strict administration of the field. These cities have tens of thousands of NEVs in use, so the business customers require big brands, which are unlikely to be involved in fraud, according to Zhang.

Local Chinese media reported that about 108,000 NEVs were registered for plates in the first 10 months of 2015, 63 percent of the 171,145 units sold. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that the nation quadrupled its output of new-energy vehicles to 379,000 in 2015.

Reports said that some permit holders are simply selling batteries to small plants, without manufacturing working vehicles. The plants assemble poor-quality vehicles and sell them to their own car rental companies, which have no working fleets, but exist only to obtain the subsidies.

Generous subsidies

The central government's fiscal stimulus measures on purchasing passenger NEVs include waiving 10 percent tax on purchase and up to 54,000 yuan ($8,210) in subsidies for pure electric car buyers. Additional subsidies are also available in 88 cities. A pure electric car buyer in Guangzhou, for instance, is eligible for up to 117,000 yuan in subsidies from the national and city governments, while buyers in Shanghai can obtain up to 114,000 yuan from central, municipal and district governments.
BAIC BJEV dealers and service providers receive awards at a company event on Jan 18. [Photo/China Daily]

BAIC Group's electric car making arm, Beijing Electric Vehicle Co, has announced its five-year plan for developing new-energy vehicles, after topping the domestic new-energy vehicle market in terms of volume.

The electric carmaker, also known as BAIC BJEV, plans to expand its annual production to 800,000 units and achieve sales volume of 500,000 units by 2020. It also expects to realize 60 billion yuan ($9.1 billion) in annual revenue in the next five years.

Zheng Gang, head of BAIC BJEV, said: "The company will embrace a research and development team with more than 5,000 members, throughout the entire industrial chain. ...Our world-level innovation center plans to make three models stars in their segments."

Zhang Yong, deputy general manager of BAIC BJEV, said the company is working on collective innovation for a future product, inviting input from customers and media, together with its design studio.

BAIC BJEV expanded its market share in the segment to 25.8 percent and the brand became the world's fourth-largest fully electric car manufacturer, according to a company news release on Jan 18.

BAIC group's Hong Kong-listed arm, BAIC Motor Corp, filed a report with the stock exchange saying its new-energy vehicle sales totaled 20,131 units in 2015, a jump of 268.6 percent from the 5,462 units sold in 2014.

Jia Xinguang, a senior analyst with the China Automobile Dealers Association, said: "BAIC has made progress in new-energy technologies through strategic cooperation with Daimler Group. The future electric cars are going to be built with technologies from the platform for Mercedes-Benz cars. The ideal situation could be that BAIC and Daimler share the platform for premium products.

"However, there's no substantial market for new-energy vehicles yet. NEVs are not yet mainstream."

A total of 331,092 new-energy vehicles sold in the world's largest automobile market last year, including 146,719 fully electric passenger cars, a surge of around 300 percent from 2014.

The electric car company's five-year plan targets becoming listed on a mainland stock market, with a market value of 100 billion yuan, by 2020. The plan was released two months after the State-owned group said in October 2015 that it would list its company on one of the country's A-share markets by 2020.

BAIC BJEV is trying to spin off its solely controlled Hong Kong shell company, which has net assets of 564.6 million yuan and is valued at 624 million yuan.

BAIC BJEV had earlier planned to gain listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, as BAIC Motor Corp completed its initial public offering in Hong Kong in December 2014.
Growth in demand for home deliveries will boost the electric vehicle industry as domestic express delivery companies are using more such vehicles in their fleets, officials said on Monday.

"The call for delivery businesses has gone through the roof, and it will drive the demand for electric vehicles because they are more convenient and cost-effective compared to normal cars," said Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

More than 200 billion deliveries were made last year, up 48 percent from 2014, he said, adding that 70 percent came from online shopping.

"More people prefer to shop from the comfort of their sofas, and want their parcels delivered to the front door, so how to solve the problem of the 'final mile' becomes important," Shi said during a forum in Beijing on measures to deal with air pollution.

"Electric vehicles can be the solution for that," he said.

Currently, many courier companies are buying three-wheeled electric vehicles or electric bikes for delivery services, which is believed to be one of the factors to have caused accidents.

Liu Churui, president of Shenzhen Greenwheel Electric Vehicle Co, said that an electric car with a range of 150 to 200 miles can meet the demand of most urban express services.

"A battery-run electric car is better than a three-wheeled vehicle in terms of safety, convenience and speed," he said. "I think electric cars will eventually change the market and speed up deliveries".
Travis Kalanick, chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc, speaks during the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco, the United States. [Photo/Agencies]

Watch out, Silicon Valley. China's out to eat your lunch.

So says Travis Kalanick, the Silicon Valley pioneer who steered Uber Technologies Inc. to a larger valuation than four-fifths of the companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. He's now setting his sights on China: The ride-hailing company's domestic unit is valued at more than $8 billion after taking more money after the closure of its latest funding round, Kalanick told reporters in Beijing.

The Uber Chief Executive, who's personally overseeing Uber's come-from-behind battle against Didi Kuaidi, argued the country's growing cohort of entrepreneurs will eventually eclipse those that have made the Bay Area a cradle of global technology innovation.

"In the next five years, there will be more innovation, more invention, more entrepreneurship happening in China, happening in Beijing than in Silicon Valley," Kalanick said at the "Geekpark" conference in Beijing this month. That will in turn spur Chinese corporations to begin to go global and open up to entrepreneurs from outside. "We gotta play our A-game in order to compete with the best."

Kalanick's view may sit well with those who deem that the country has birthed some of Asia's largest and most well-regarded technology corporations, from social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd to e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Along with search-engine operator Baidu Inc, they have invested in and helped foster a plethora of startups and online servicesfrom mobile payments and messaging to online financewhose scope and scale outstrip those available in the United States.

Investors are beginning to take note. Investments in China and India, where most of the biggest deals are taking place, more than tripled to $16.9 billion in the third quarter, just under the $17.5 billion invested in North America as of Oct 1, according to Preqin Ltd, a London-based consultancy. Venture investors closed 1,016 deals in China up to the third quarter of 2015more than in all of 2014.

Some of that money went to Uber. The company raised a little under $2 billion from Chinese investors last year, much of which went to Uber China. Kalanick told reporters in a group interview he needs to have a chief executive officer there who is Chinese.

"I'm really attached to the job now. It's where all the action is," he said. "I'm holding the bar at highest level," he added. "Until we find that perfect person, I will be serving as Uber China CEO."

However, some foreign companies still question the innovation of China-based companies. Just the week before last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, US federal marshals raided and confiscated the wares of a Chinese company making one-wheeled skateboards for alleged patent infringements.
A robot made in China is displayed at the World Robot Conference 2015, which opened in Beijing on Nov 21, 2015. The conference has attracted more than 100 experts. [Photo/China Daily]

BEIJING -- A new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) could fundamentally change the world, with driverless cars navigating through traffic jams, celebrity avatars chatting with fans on Twitter and robot caregivers and companions in nursing homes.

This is the far-off future as presented by Pulitzer-winning New York Times tech reporter John Markoff in his new book, "Machines of Loving Grace," in which the longtime observer of Silicon Valley discusses how humans can cope with the advent of the AI era.

"In the coming years, artificial intelligence and robotics will have an impact on the world more dramatic than the changes personal computing and the Internet have brought in the past three decades," Markoff writes. In an interview with Xinhua in Beijing, Markoff said people should reflect on whether machines will steal human jobs and whether they can be trusted and given autonomy.

Some changes are right around the corner. Markoff said the mankind might soon face robots that can mimic human emotions convincingly. "Imagine a Jennifer Lawrence avatar on Facebook or WeChat that can chat with you all day," he said, citing software developed by an Israeli company to emulate celebrities.

Markoff said technology will make use of people's anthropomorphizing tendencies to treat everything as human, "these robots can easily fool us into believing we are dealing with real people -- a worrisome trend in the writer's eyes."

"You tend to trust these machines, but you don't know what their motives or goals are," Markoff said, pointing to new social problems that could arise when socially astute robots are employed, for instance, by the advertising world to sell products.

Humans still in control

For many other AI technologies, Markoff warned against overestimating the speed of change or how quickly they will thwart humans.

Progress in self-driving cars, for example, may be slower than expected, according to Markoff, who was the first reporter to cover Google's self-driving project.

The idea of driving without a driver has been so commercially popular that Google, Tesla, and Chinese Internet giant Baidu are all working on developing the technology. However, Markoff said it might take many years to overcome technological barriers and ethical and regulatory problems related to self-driving cars.

"Cars will increasingly have intelligence and become smarter, but you won't be able to take drivers out in ten years," he said.

Just as robots are unlikely to grab the wheels from drivers' hands in the near future, Markoff remained skeptical that smarter AI will soon replace human labor, causing mass layoffs.

Markoff said he is curious about the reactions of Chinese people toward AI, such as Microsoft chat-bot Xiaoice.

He said the chat-bot seemed more popular in China compared to the West, and Chinese people treated it more as a companion, citing Microsoft data indicating large percentages of Chinese users have texted "I love you" and "Thank you" to Xiaoice.

"I believe it says something different between our cultures," he said.

Markoff said aging societies such as China's can expect robots to help tackle their shrinking pool of young workers and an increasing number of elderly people in need of care.

China has included robotics in its five-year development plan for 2016-2020. Last year, the southern Guangdong province said it would employ robots in about 2,000 companies in three years to tackle its labor shortage, and a nursing home in Shanghai has reportedly introduced chat robots to entertain its elderly residents.

"Right now, machines are more tools, and we design the tools," he said.

Markoff said the development of much-needed elder care robots could take a long time. "Now there are no robots that can safely give elderly humans a shower. When will there be such a robot? Nobody can give a date."
I really can't get enough of the information age. Finding out stuff is so ridiculously simple these days. In my time, we would have to ask around, or trek to the library, find the relevant book and then hunt for whatever it is we sought, with no guarantee at all that it would be found.

But now, no sweat, we just "Google" it. Whether it's news or pop trivia or some obscure Byzantine couplet, or even information on some rare disease, it's all just a few taps on the keyboard or mobile away. Of course we can no longer smugly smile when we are the only person able to recall the date of an important event or an exact quote, but one can't have everything.

And when we Google, chances are, among the first three search results will be a link from Wikipedia. There is hardly an Internet user around the world, I'll wager, who has not benefited from the bounty of this online encyclopedia. Just think how fantastical the whole idea might have seemed in the beginning. That world of detailed information on anything under the sun, and beyond it. The website is said to receive more than 15 billion page views a month, with 7,000 new articles posted every day by its 80,000-strong army of unpaid volunteers. For Wiki, knowledge IS free.

More's the sense of awe, when you read how its co-founder does not regret not monetizing his obviously wildly successful net venture.

Jimmy Wales, the self-confessed atheist from Alabama (going by Wiki), says he grew up with a thirst for knowledge, and fondly remembers keeping track of annual updates on the World Book Encyclopedias. And that arguably geeky fascination saw Wales set up Wikipedia 15 years ago this January with Internet project developer Larry Sanger and others, though Sanger left the nonprofit the following year.

Wikipedia survives on donations, however small. People may recall the bearded figure that sometimes popped up on a searched page, with a plea to donate as little as $1 to keep the site humming. That would have been one of the fundraising drives aimed at readers, with Wales as its face. Whether we donated or no, Wiki kept on going, and growing.

Of course, a venture such as this is not without its share of controversies. Those range from claims that Wales, 49, interfered in posts on prominent personalities or is regularly contacted by celebrities to tweak their information, or that editing has been passed on to professionals, or even that donations are used to fund junkets for staff.

What is undeniable is that Wiki is a brand with global reach. But Wales may be the only Internet entrepreneur who is not a billionaire, unlike peers such as Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates.

However, he has no regrets, Wales told Britain's The Telegraph. His vision is simple: He wants every single person to have free access to knowledge.

In a sad world where greed is good and mendacity an enviable trait, this one's a winner.
The Supreme People's Court is to build an online platform for people involved in civil trials to track the implementation of punishments handed out by courts, a top official said on Sunday.

The system, scheduled to launch in June, will record the outcome of every case heard nationwide and is aimed at improving transparency and ensuring defendants adhere with court orders, said Liu Guixiang, director of law enforcement for the SPC.

"It will help litigants monitor the implementation of a verdict, such as seeing that a defendent's property will be sold at auction or whether their savings have been frozen," he said. "It's also good for keeping judges in line, to avoid improper behavior."

He said the platform will be coupled with another financial system, also to be launched in June, that will allow authorities to lock the bank accounts of defendants who fail to comply with court orders more quickly. The system will work with financial institutions nationwide, including 4,000 banks.

"Finding these people and their savings is difficult in a country as large as China, so connecting the online platform with financial institutions is necessary to improve enforcement," Liu said, adding that the system will eventually be extended to authorities and companies related to real estate and vehicle registration.

Since launching a campaign to tackle the issue in December, the SPC has dealt with about 60,000 cases in which defendants have failed to comply with a court order, including several bosses who refused to pay their employees, said Wu Shaojun, deputy director of law enforcement for the top court.

So far, courts have managed to seize as much as 2 billion yuan ($304 million) for migrant workers whose salaries had been illegally withheld, he said.

The SPC has been releasing information to the public about defendants who fail to comply with court orders since 2013. To date, it has named and shamed more than 3.08 million people.

That year, the court also introduced restrictions on such offenders, such as placing a ban on them purchasing first-class tickets on high-speed trains as well as applying for a bank loan. Such moves have led to about 20 percent of those blacklisted carrying out a court judgment, Liu said.

Zhou Qiang, president of SPC, said on Saturday that a major task for Chinese courts this year is to solve the difficulty of implementing verdicts. "We'll strictly fight those unwilling to enforce verdicts and put more restrictions on offenders," he said.
The rescue of 15 infants from a child-trafficking gang by 78 police officers has drawn attention to poverty and lack of legal awareness in the country's poorest regions.

The infants, the youngest only four days old, have been sent to welfare institutions for temporary placement. Most hail from the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Southwest China's Sichuan province.

Blood samples of the 15 infants have been taken to help identify their parents through a national DNA database. Most of the infants were sold voluntarily by their parents, according to Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-human-trafficking office of the Ministry of Public Security.

"Poverty has always been a strong motivation for parents to sell their babies," Chen said.

In 2013, Liangshan had 13.5 percent of its population, or about 600,000 people, living below the national poverty line, defined as annual per capita net income of 2,736 yuan ($415).

Exchanging children for money is illegal, but couples living in remote areas are just "too poor and too numb" to comprehend the law, Chen said.

A police investigation found that parents might receive 20,000 yuan for a baby boy, two to three times the typical annual income of a family. Traffickers can sell boys for 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, while girls have been sold for between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan.

In the joint police operation with officers from Sichuan and Shandong provinces, a couple were discovered to have traveled frequently with infants from Liangshan to Linyi, Shandong province, returning empty-handed.

Police said the woman purchased infants from parents in poor villages and recruited other women, who pretended to be mothers, to transport the babies by train.

The couple even arranged for pregnant women to deliver their babies at the homes of buyers.

Lack of awareness of the law has contributed to the problem.

"They believed they were doing the infants a favor by sending them to grow up in a better environment," a local civil servant said.

By 2012, police found cases had dwindled substantially due to a combination of poverty alleviation and a tough law enforcement crackdown.

To lift people out of poverty, the Sichuan provincial government introduced a package of poverty alleviation policies. Highways connecting mountainous Liangshan and neighboring cities are being built, paving the way for development.
An undergraduate from Shanghai Fudan University was one of four people from the Chinese mainland to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship this month.

Gong Chenzhuo, who graduated from the university's School of International Relations and Public Affairs last summer, will head to Oxford University in Britain for graduate studies with high hopes and a scholarship of 50,000 pounds ($71,000).

This is the first year the scholarship, regarded as the most prestigious in the world, has accepted candidates from the Chinese mainland.

Each year, thousands of students apply, usually with a chance of success around 0.7 percent. According to Fudan University, more than 40 former Rhodes scholars have become state leaders, with 70 ending up as chief executives of multinational corporations.

"It was his academic excellence, international exposure and social responsibility that made him a standout performer," Zhu Jia, a student counselor at the school, said of Gong.

Gong had the second-highest GPA among 178 students, including more than 30 international peers, in his program at Fudan University, an institution that only accepts top students.

At Fudan, Gong conducted research in public diplomacy and attended two international conferences to present his findings. He also participated in exchange programs around the globe, spending more than 430 days in 28 countries.

"He is able to think independently and critically, and at the same time demonstrate passion and impressive leadership skills," said Shen Guolin, an associate professor in Fudan's School of Journalism whom Gong consulted during his research.

Gong was an avid volunteer, too, having worked as a relief teacher in Chinese villages during three consecutive winters. In the summer of 2013, he went to Mwanza, the second-largest city in Tanzania, to teach children English.

Gong's other achievements include being among the first batch of 20 students recommended by the China Scholarship Council, as well as doing an internship for the United Nations in Tanzania, where he assisted local media in educating the public about HIV and gender equality.

"I aim to establish a nonprofit organization to help rural students and disadvantaged groups in China," Gong said.
Chinese students have enjoyed a good reputation for their performance in math and science compared with their Western counterparts.

This, however, was not the case at the recent competition for Rhodes Scholarships - the world's most prestigious award for postgraduates and Ph. D. students outside the United Kingdom.

The first four Chinese winners ever were Ren Naying, Gong Chenzhuo, Zhang Wanyu and Zhang Chunying. One of the most obvious common points between them is that they all major in social sciences.

Rhodes Trust China, which provides the scholarships with a number of other benefactors, said in a statement to China Daily that the selection does not give any preference to candidates' majors, but judges the "strong willingness, enthusiasm and more crucially, the idealism" of the students.

"The selection of Rhodes scholars should not be limited to arguing whether they study arts or science," the Rhodes Trust China Chairman Tang Meijie said in a statement. "I reckon it should be really about whether they can remember what they were fighting for in the first place, not just to themselves, but to the entire world."

"All 16 candidates in the final round are outstanding and I am not surprised about it at all. What makes these four more qualified is they actually believe this world will become a better place," she said.

In terms of changing the world, Liu Haonan, a physics student at the University of Richmond in Virginia, US, who was among the 16 Chinese candidates competing for the final round of Rhodes Scholarships, believes hard work in the lab generates less social impact.

"I have been committed to physics research. But physics breakthroughs made by an undergraduate student like me will not have much effect on the general public, despite the fact that I tried to enrich myself by participating in more academic conferences and publishing more papers," he said.

"I reckon the reason that Rhodes didn't choose me was because they put more value in a candidate's leadership and influence while helping the disadvantaged, in which aspects the four winners are doing a better job," he said.

"Although physics does seem a bit distant from reality, that does not mean what I am doing is irrelevant. It is actually studying the foundation of this world."

In recent years, traditional majors such as commerce, engineering and IT have no longer been dominating the market among Chinese overseas students, as an increasing number of students are more willing to choose subjects like arts, design and international relations.

Chen Yu, an education consultant in Shanghai, said around 50 percent of Chinese students nowadays pick majors such as arts, communications and business.

"Chinese science students have long been very competitive in mathematics, while the arts students are relatively more creative and critical when they put their thoughts toward social issues," she said.

Ren, one of this year's Rhodes Scholars, has been working as a volunteer at the Beijing LGBT Center for more than two years. She has also been enthusiastic in pushing forward gender equality in China.

"Gender equality is an issue that could cover many aspects of society and you can conduct your research in subjects like economics, humanities, social science and basically every other," Ren said.

"Although I've been putting much effort into trying to accomplish that through different paths, my ultimate object remains unchanged, which I believe is what makes me more qualified than the other 12," she said.

Sun Yuan contributed to this story.
Travellers wait in line to board a train at a train station in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong province, Jan 24, 2016. Guangdong province saw its first snow in 67 years on Sunday, as extreme cold weather continued to move southward across China, bringing the lowest temperatures recorded in decades.[Photo by Liang Qing from South Metropolis Daily/CFP]

The worst cold snap in years disrupted travel plans of some Chinese as millions embarked on journeys home on Sunday, the first day of the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush.

Students, migrant workers and other passengers boarded trains, buses, and planes to head home for the Spring Festival, or the lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 8 this year.

Their trips were impacted by the worst cold in decades, which caused snow and blizzards in eastern and southern provinces. Railway authorities in the eastern city of Nanjing said at least 38 trains were delayed on Sunday.

At the Hangzhou airport, many people started to line up for check-in early Sunday. Airport authorities said flights may be delayed because of defrosting. The airport expects to handle 80,000 passengers on Sunday.

"The Spring Festival travel rush means a bigger workload, and this year, the cold weather has kept us busier," said Liu Ying, a train attendant on the Shanghai-Nanjing express rail service.

Road traffic and flights were also disrupted in Yunnan Province. Since late Saturday, about 11,229 passengers have been stranded at the Kunming airport.p China's transportation authorities estimate more than 2.9 billion trips will be made around the country during the 40-day travel rush.

Motorbikers were also on the move Sunday. Clad in helmets, masks, thick gloves, raincoats, knee guards and layers of plastic bags around their legs, dozens of workers started their journeys from wealthy Guangdong Province, where they work, to neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Motorcyclist Wang Tianzhang got up at four o'clock in the morning on Sunday for a tiring two-day ride with his wife and fellow workers. They work in Foshan, Guangdong, and their hometown is an ethnic village in Guangxi's Hechi City. A train ride takes about 20 hours and requires several transfers. For them, riding motorbikes is more convenient and cost-effective.

"The weather got worse as we headed toward Guangxi. It was freezing, and we had to stop every hour to find some warmth," the middle-aged man said.

Traffic police in Wuzhou City, Guangxi expect to see 200,000 motorcycles this year. Eight service stations have been set up to provide repair services for them.

In eastern and northeastern China, where more high-speed rail routes operate, traffic pressure has eased this year.

A high-speed railway linking Shanghai with the northern city of Harbin takes about 12 hours, about half the travel time for a slower train.

Yang Cuikun, an official with the Nanjing railway authority, said changes in the lifestyles of migrant workers have also contributed to the ease.

"More migrant workers have settled in cities and no longer go back to their hometowns for the lunar new year. Migrant workers are also choosing employment near their hometowns as wages in eastern provinces lose their appeal," said Yang.

At a filling station in Wuzhou, motorcyclist Zhou Xiaodi squeezes water out of his gloves. "Going home has never been easy," he said. "In a few years, I will save enough money to find a job near my home and stay close to my family."
Frequent severe smog caused more than half of China's 74 major cities to fail national air quality standards for about two weeks in December, the national environment authority reported on Monday.

Intense smog blanketed the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region on five occasions, making it the most polluted cluster in December, though Baoding and Hengshui cities had eight smoggy days in a row, said Luo Yi, head of the environmental monitoring bureau at the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

A statement from the ministry also noted that all 13 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region experienced soaring concentrations of PM2.5, harmful particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 microns, in December.

In Beijing, the air quality reached hazardous levels on 13 days, and PM2.5 readings increased by 166.7 percent year-on-year, Luo said.

The severe smog covering the vast northern and northeastern regions dragged more cities to the bottom of air quality lists in December, including seven cities in Hebei province, Zhengzhou in Henan province, Harbin in Heilongjiang province and Jinan in Shandong province.

Baoding, in Hebei province, occupied the bottom position.

Soaring coal consumption for heating, especially in rural regions, and the windless weather contributed significantly to the frequent smog, Luo said.

Elsewhere in China, the cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, including Shanghai, also experienced poor air quality. Just over half the days in December had air quality higher than the national healthy standards.
Greater clarity about smog alerts and more enforcement is needed to combat smog in Beijing, and to that end, municipal political advisers are making suggestions about fighting smog in their proposal during the city's local two sessions.

The members of the 12th Beijing Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), point out that the authorities need to take more specific control of forecast, analysis, supervision and punishment when dealing with air pollution.

Wang Yingchun, a CPPCC member and vice-chief of Beijing Meteorological Service, talked about her concern that people are confused about weather warnings and air pollution alerts.

"Sometimes people think 'heavy fog red alert' means heavy pollution. That's not correct," Wang said.

She said to improve efficiency, the Meteorological Service should focus on monitoring, forecasting and sending early warnings on air pollution while the Beijing Bureau of Environmental Protection needs to work on how to deal with the heavy pollution and come up with measures.

Currently, both authorities send out pollution alerts.

In December 2015, Beijing issued a red alert for smog two times. But the alerts failed to mark the most polluted days.

It made people confused about whether the alerts were accurate.

Wang said the Meteorological Service noticed the situation and it needs to be improved to better serve the people.

"We are all on the same page that fighting smog is a long-term job. People need to be patient with government efforts," said Wang.

Zhang Qiangbin, an environment expert at China University of Petroleum and a CPPCC member, is focusing on tracking pollution sources.

"The main polluters differ every day even though smog looks equally unhealthy on different days," Zhang said.

The government needs to do more specific research into finding out who are the different polluters that cause smog, so they can take effective action, he said.

Cui Tiening, another member and an associate professor at Beijing University of Technology, thinks it's very necessary to make clear the responsibilities of the government, companies and individuals in law.

Cui and Wang agreed that Beijing needs to make more detailed regulations and standards on fighting smog.

Whether the city can win the battle against the heavy haze depends on how well the law is put into practice.

Zhong Chonglei, chief of the supervision team of environmental protection in Beijing, said even though there are already some local regulations in place in Beijing, the plants that discharge the most pollution are relocating to neighboring provinces where the rules are not as strict. But the emissions still reach the heavily populated Beijing.

"Companies will transfer to neighboring places with less strict regulations or lower standards on pollution discharge. So setting unified standards and cooperating together to supervise and punish the polluters in surrounding areas like Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province are urgent and crucial," said Zhong.

He said the bureau is understaffed, with just about 400 employees monitoring emissions in the entire Beijing, which is 16 times bigger than Hong Kong in size.

Environmental protection is not just about what the government does but also how people adopt a new green lifestyle.

The members suggest city dwellers can participate in the hard battle fighting smog by changing a little habit like taking public transportation. Fireworks and charcoal barbecue should also be reduced to keep pollution down.

Big northern Chinese cities, such as Beijing, must fight pollution in whatever ways they can. Clean air is not a luxury, it is a necessity, and the smog should no longer be the most obvious conversation starter for Beijingers.
LHASA -- Tibet has a huge task ahead to reduce by 690,000 the number of people living below the poverty line by 2020, regional poverty relief officials said ahead of the annual meeting of the Tibetan Regional People's Congress, the local legislature.

During the last five years (2011-2015), Tibet lifted more than 600,000 people out of poverty, said Gou Ling, Communist Party of China (CPC) secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region poverty relief office.

However, the plateau environment, which is prone to natural disasters, has posed a challenge to poverty alleviation, Gou said. Disease is also a major factor that is holding back development.

About 74 percent of the impoverished population live in Xigaze, Qamdo and Nagqu prefectures, large swathes across the western and eastern parts of the region.

"The next five years will be the greatest task of all," said Gou.

Tibet plans to focus policy on welfare for poor people, job creation and relocation packages, he added.
Zhang Xin [Photo provided to China Daily]



The rags-to-riches story of Chinese real estate mogul Zhang Xin is perhaps an apt reflection of China's unprecedented economic transformation over the past 30 years, but Zhang says that China's startup boom today is just as strong.

Zhang, 50, earned her school fees as a young girl by working on assembly lines in the textile and electronics industries before going to England at the age of 19. She completed degrees in economics and worked as an investment banker in London and on Wall Street before returning to China in 1995 to found the commercial real estate development firm SOHO China together with her husband Pan Shiyi.

The business became China's largest commercial property developer in first tier cities, and in 2014 Zhang was ranked as the 62nd most powerful woman in the world.

Her fame and achievement also made her one of the young global leaders at at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, where she shared her views on China's business environment in a panel alongside global leaders such as the managing director of International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.

Sitting down for an interview in a cozy room overlooking the snow covered mountains in Davos, Zhang says China's entrepreneurial culture today is no less strong than 20 years ago when she founded her own firm, and her team now generates much revenue from a project known as SOHO 3Q, which provides office management services to startup firms.

"As I walk into SOHO 3Q, I'm attracted by this wide variety of companies. They are all young, vibrant, and have high energy," says Zhang.

SOHO 3Q was launched in February 2015 and rapidly expanded across China from two locations and 1,500 desks to more than 10,000 desks in 11 locations in Beijing and Shanghai. In October 2015, a flagship SOHO 3Q was launched at Guanghualu SOHO II in Beijing, which became the largest co-working space in the world with close to 3,300 desks.

SOHO 3Q boosts efficiency and flexibility, and it allows users to rent individual desks on a weekly basis. Made to suit the needs of today's digital savvy entrepreneurs, SOHO 3Q's services such as reserving a desk or a conference room, extending leases and making payments, can be completed on the website or on the mobile app.

The first tenants of SOHO 3Q were two girls doing movie production, and now it hosts a wide range of Chinese firms with a few dozens of staff, as well as large international companies like Uber which are rapidly expanding in China.

"China has culture of entrepreneurship and by now everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. In Europe you see vast contrast, as not many people want to do startups,"she says.

Zhang sees the waves of Western-educated young Chinese students returning to China to make the most of the economy's booming opportunities and start their own businesses as a continuation from her time, although now industries like internet and digital are the big focus.

When she started, in comparison, the property market was booming as China increasingly became urbanized and Zhang said entering the property market was an obvious decision.

Reflecting on the key reasons of her success, Zhang says "the right moment, the right timing and right partner" are key. When SOHO China was founded, there were very few residential houses and very little commercial building. "The need was obvious".

Her 15 years of experience living overseas allowed her to develop unique views on architecture, and when she returned to China she brought many Western architects to work on SOHO China projects, and consequently the firm's projects became known for architectural achievements.

In addition, her Wall Street experiences also helped her to understand the fundamentals of running her business, including how to raise capital, take the company public and speaking to investors, Zhang adds.

As a keen observer of new opportunities, Zhang grabbed the chance to transform the business model from construction based work to building management in recent years.

"The economy is transitioning from investment led to consumption led real estate market. If you look at Beijing and Shanghai, most of these cities are already built, the opportunities of buying land and building hugely reduced."

She says the Starbucks style SOHO 3Q is very profitable for her firm, and creates important communities for China's next generation entrepreneurs to realize their dreams.

"I get excited seeing those exciting companies."

As Zhang is now one of the world's most successful businesswomen, she feels there is now a change in her life as she wants to now devote more time to philanthropy work where she is able to help other talented and ambitious young people realize their dreams.

"I think at some point in life you'd want to do things beyond yourself. At this stage I want to allocate enough time to help others who are young, who need help."

With her husband, the billionaire couple is endowing $100 million dollars to support talented young Chinese students to attend universities like Harvard and Yale. The project started this year with 16 SOHO China scholars at Harvard and Yale, and Zhang's team held an engagement forum with them last October.

"We don't want to just give them the money, but give them a community, a sense of social responsibility," she says.

To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com
BEIJING - A total of 31,527 prisoners, most of whom were juveniles when they committed their crimes, have been released thanks to an amnesty deal, according to an official statement on Monday.

The deal was adopted by China's top legislature and signed by President Xi Jinping on August 29, 2015, before a national commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The pardoned prisoners, including war veterans, and the very old, young or infirm prisoners, had been released by the end of 2015 as scheduled.

According to the deal, four categories of prisoners were eligible for consideration:

-- Criminals who fought in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the civil war against the Kuomintang (KMT).

-- Criminals who participated in wars to safeguard national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity after 1949, with the exception of those found guilty of serious crimes including graft, terrorism and organized crime, as well as repeat offenders.

-- Criminals who are 75 or above, and those with physical disabilities who are unable to care for themselves.

-- Those who committed crimes while under the age of 18 and received a maximum sentence of three years in prison, or have less than a year left to serve, with the exception of those convicted of homicide, rape, terrorism or narcotics offences.

Of the pardoned prisoners, 50 belong to the first category, 1,428 belong to the second, 122 to the third and 29,927 to the fourth.




Foreign travelers wait to enter Shanghai Railway Station on Sunday. GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY

Faced with the language barrier and cultural divide, foreigners are finding it hard this year to buy rail tickets in China ahead of Spring Festival.

More than 300 million people are forecast to travel home to celebrate the festival, which falls on Feb 8.

But most railway stations don't provide English-language services for international travelers, according to a staff member at China Railway Corp. The employee was speaking on the company hotline, which also has no English service.

China Railway Corp suggested that international travelers be accompanied by Chinese-speaking friends, or ask other buyers for help at ticket windows where there are no signs in English.

Launched in 2011, the official online ticket reservation system does not have an English-language service. Even if foreign travelers have mastered Chinese, they can only make a maximum of four reservations online. They must take their passports to stations for identity checks before making any further bookings.

Once an online booking is made, travelers can collect tickets at stations or have them delivered by mail. The company suggested that foreign travelers should always carry their passports or other identity documents.

Milou Pol, a Dutch citizen who came to China in April last year, said, "At the ticket window, you have to speak Chinese as there are no signs in English or staff members who can speak the language."

She said station employees always ask to see her passport and ticket.

Pol, who works for a Dutch higher education company, said that booking online is a good choice, and that travel websites other than the official railway site have English-language versions.

Robin Wordsworth, a Canadian who has lived in Beijing for three years and works for an organic food producer, said: "There aren't many signs in English to help. ... You need to be able to speak Mandarin to get what you want.

"Buying tickets in person is not the most convenient thing to do as most ticket sellers speak little or no English."

Wordsworth said he was once stranded for two days on a scheduled 24-hour journey between Kashgar and Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region when the train was caught in a sand storm.

"The desert is not the most enjoyable place to be with the air conditioning turned off in the middle of the day. The only food available on the train was spicy noodle soup, which made us sweat more," he said.

The Ministry of Transport estimates that 2.91 billion trips will be made during the peak Lunar New Year travel period.

China Railway said on Monday that 332 million trips are expected to be made by train, a year-on-year increase of 12.7 percent.

Nancy Gabriel, a 32-year-old teacher from the United States, said her attempts to buy a train ticket from Beijing to Chongqing ended in frustration.

"All tickets were sold out. This route is very popular around the Lunar New Year," she said. "My suggestion for international travelers would be to avoid the Spring Festival travel rush."

pengyining@chinadaily.com.cn

How to hit the tracks in China

1. Buy tickets at station windows.

If you can't work out which window to go to, make for the one with the longest line. Remember to take your passport.

2. China Railway's booking website, 12306.cn.

The most popular and convenient way to buy rail tickets in China. On Monday, the first day of the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, more than 4 million tickets were booked online. The site does not have an English-language version.

3. Other travel websites.

Some sites, including Qunar.com, travalchinaguide.com and the Ctrip site provide English-language services for ticket searches and reservations. Any purchases other than those made through China Railway come with certain risks.

4. Local travel agencies.

Booths and windows with signs saying huo che piao (train tickets) can be seen on the streets in most cities. They are usually run by small travel agencies. Buying tickets generally incurs a fee of between 5 and 10 yuan($1.5).
A total of 31,527 prisoners, most of whom were juveniles when they committed crimes, have been released under an amnesty agreement, according to an official statement on Monday.

The agreement, decided on last year by the top legislature and signed by President Xi Jinping, was adopted to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Work on the amnesty was completed by the end of last year as scheduled, Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

Among those released are prisoners who fought in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the Chinese civil war in the 1930s and 1940s. They are at least 80 years old.

This group is very small and does not pose a threat to society, Xinhua said in an earlier report, adding that the amnesty granted to the veterans is apt recognition of their contributions in both conflicts.

The majority of those released  29,927  committed crimes when they were under 18 and were sentenced to less than three years in prison. This group also includes minors with less than a year of their sentences remaining.

To ensure that the release of every criminal was in line with the special amnesty, judicial bodies, including courts and prison officers, made great efforts to read criminals files, examine judgments and verify prisoners identities.

For example, prisons set up more than 2,500 investigation teams.

The amnesty also conforms to the Criminal Law, which was amended in 2011 to allow leniency in punishment of the elderly.

Amnesties are granted under the Chinese Constitution, which has long stressed governing by virtue and laws.

This is the eighth amnesty granted by the Peoples Republic of China since it was founded in 1949.

CHINA DAILY-XINHUA
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area plans to create new innovation platforms for technology

Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun announced on Saturday that the capital will work with Tianjin and Hebei province to boost innovation, industrial upgrading and restructuring, so the three become a leading force for the national economy.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is the third growth pole of China after the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. Its total gross domestic product accounted for about 10 percent of the country's GDP last year.

The Beijing municipal government will focus more on technological innovation and cooperate with the authorities in Hebei province and Tianjin to set up platforms for innovation, Wang said.

Wang made the remarks during the China Development Forum 2015, which is being held in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse from Saturday to Monday. The forum, attended by senior Chinese officials, has attracted more than 400 foreigners from 19 countries and regions.

President Xi Jinping put forward the initiative for the integration and coordination of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province in February 2014 in a bid to balance development, the environment, population and resources, while building an economic zone surrounding Beijing.

More than 100 million people live in the region, which has a combined area of 216,000 square kilometers. Yet there is a big development gap between Beijing and Hebei. Heavily polluted Hebei still has several million people living in poverty, and it faces the challenge of cutting its excessive iron, steel, cement and glass capacity.

"Compared with Beijing residents, the average income of Hebei residents is only 55 percent in urban areas and 50 percent in rural areas," Wang said at the forum.

The Beijing municipal government will work hard with its counterparts in Tianjin and Hebei to narrow the income gaps in the region, he said.

The mayor pointed out that infrastructure, including the construction of subways and railways, will play a key role in integrating the three areas.

The capital will "lay out the annual task list for transportation infrastructure integration, ecological and environmental protection and industrial transfer, so as to make new progress as soon as possible", Wang said.

Beijing's subway system already carries approximately 10 million passengers a day on workdays. By 2020, the total subway length is expected to increase to 1,000 kilometers, according to the Beijing government work report. Construction on four new subway lines is due to start this year.

Beijing will also accelerate the transfer of non-essential functions, such as general manufacturing, downtown wholesale markets, as well as some educational and medical services this year, Wang said.

The mayor has also vowed to cooperate with his counterparts in Hebei and Tianjin to fight pollution and protect the environment.

To reduce pollution, Beijing closed 392 companies, including furniture and machinery factories, foundries and other polluters. The city also removed 470,000 old vehicles from the roads and strengthened its environmental law enforcement.

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said at the forum that it has become more and more important for big cities to coordinate with each other in the policymaking process.

The new normal of China's urbanization is not about how big a city grows, but how well it functions, Gurria pointed out.

anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn

Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun vowed the capital will work with Tianjin and Hebei province to boost regional development and make the region a leading force for the country's economy. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

(China Daily 03/23/2015 page8)
Ecuadorean Minister of Public Health Margarita Guevara confirmed 17 cases of the Zika virus in the country on Saturday, as the mosquito-borne disease linked to birth defects is spreading across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Guevara advised women to postpone pregnancy, warning that the virus that can cause cases of microcephaly among fetuses poses a risk to women who may get pregnant before at least August.

But she said Ecuador is "controlling and working" to stop the virus spreading to pregnant women by instructing hospitals and clinics to carry out ultrasounds and prioritize suspicious cases. No pregnant woman has been infected so far, she added.
The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 is launched in Doha on Sunday. The yearlong event will feature artists and performing troupes from both countries, including Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh (left) and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (right). [Photo provided to China Daily]

A series of events will be held in China and Qatar through the year to mark the China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016, the Ministry of Culture and the Qatari embassy in Beijing recently announced.

Chinese and Qatari artists performed in an opening ceremony on Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, followed by 17 cultural events from China and 10 from the Middle Eastern country. Music, dance, films, exhibitions, literature and food will lace the yearlong program.

What About the Art? Contemporary Art from China, an exhibition to showcase the works of more than a dozen Chinese artists and curated by the New York-based artist Cai Guoqiang, will be held at Doha's QM Gallery Al Riwaq from March 12 to Aug 12.

Another displaySilks from the Silk Roadwill be presented at Doha's QM Gallery Katara on March 23.

Sultan Mansouri, the Qatari ambassador to China, says in return his country will bring Pearls, an exhibition on Qatar's rich history of the precious material, to Beijing's National Museum of China in July.

London and Istanbul witnessed the same display earlier.

Yu Jianhong, vice-president of the Beijing Film Academy, says a part of Yi Lu Kuang Biao (Racing Ahead), a film being produced by his institute, will be shot in Doha in the spring. Directed by Chen Bin and written by scriptwriter Yue Xiaojun, the comedy will focus on a group of Chinese people's adventures in Doha, with focus on camel racing, a top sport in Qatar.

In addition, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra will debut in China in October. Under the baton of well-known Taiwan conductor Chuang Tung-chieh, the orchestra will play Arabic music, featuring works including Marcel Khalife's Symphony of Return, Jean Charles Gandrille's Violin Concerto and Houtaf Khoury's Angel of Light Piano Concerto.

Cai Shang, general executive manager of Hermark Culture, a Beijing-based company that is managing and promoting Qatar Philharmonic's China tour, says his company is also interested in taking the Suzhou Ballet Troupe to Qatar.

Photographers from both countries will hold exhibitions on landscapes and the cultural experiences of people.

The China-Qatar Cultural Year 2016 emerged from agreements signed by President Xi Jinping and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani in November 2014. The leaders then announced the two countries' plans to build a strategic partnership and promote mutual cooperation.

Qatar and China established diplomatic relations in 1988.

"It was an important hub on the ancient Silk Road and is also a key country in realizing the Belt and Road Initiative. We hope such cultural events will help further exchanges and promote greater understanding between the two countries," Lu Yanfei, an official of China's Ministry of Culture, told reporters in Beijing on Jan 15.

Related:

Ancient nations to share cultures
A screenshot from the trailer of BBC's new TV series The Story of China.

A new six-part television series celebrating stories of China's ancient history has begun showing on the UK's public broadcasting service, BBC Two.

Written and presented by British historian, Professor Michael Wood, The Story of China explores the development of Chinese civilization over more than four thousand years.

"China is the country we all want to know about today, and if you want to understand China you have to know about its history," Wood told China Daily.

"People have such set ideas about China, all you see on the news is high rise, mass industry, Gucci and Armani and yet what you don't realize is the amazing vitality, energy and diversity of the culture, and our job is to try and unfold that."

The six-hour series, which took two years to make, takes Wood through some of China's most historic sites, including ruined cities of the Silk Road, desert oases and ancient capitals.

In the first episode, which aired on Thursday night, Wood meets the Qin family in Wuxi who trace their ancestors back to at least 1049.

"The TV audience in the West gets this privilege of being welcomed into a Chinese family before they even set off to think about the history," Wood says.

"Then when you start looking at the history things start coming up that you realize are still alive like family, the rituals and the food."

Throughout his travels, Wood visits temple festivals and ancestral celebrations, traditional storytellers and Buddhist musicians; uncovering some of the most remarkable stories about what makes China what it is today.
An artist with China's Song and Dance Company of Jilin prepares prior to the first presentation in the Colsubsidio Roberto Arias Perez Theater, in Bogota, Colombia, on Jan. 22, 2016. China's Song and Dance Company of Jilin, which visited Colombia for the first time, will carry out two performances in Bogota. [Xinhua/Jhon Paz]

Cultural exchanges will help China and Colombia grow closer together, said Chinese Ambassador to Colombia Li Nianping on Jan 22 after the first performance of the Jilin Song and Dance Ensemble in the Colsubsidio Roberto Arias Perez Theater, in Bogota, Colombia.

As two countries are celebrate 36 years of their diplomatic relations next month, there will be an increase in cultural programs and trade missions, Li said, adding that more Colombians are welcome to China for a visit.

"It is a great honor for me to be working in Colombia as our countries grow closer together. The priority now is to unite our efforts to take bilateral ties to a higher level," he told Xinhua. Colombia's annual exports to China have grown 15 times in 10 years.
"Chopsticks & Beyond", a brand cooking activity of China Radio International's English Service, is held in Beijing on Jan 23, 2016. Chefs from Thailand, India and China showed the audience how to make spicy Thai, Indian and Sichuan dishes. [Photo/cri.cn]

On Jan 23, EZFM (FM91.5 in Beijing), the domestic radio channel of China Radio International's English Service, held an exciting and fun cooking contest named "Chopsticks & Beyond". The contest challenged the taste buds of spectators, providing an opportunity to discover the fabulous flavors of various spicy ingredients at the InterContinental Hotel Beijing Financial Street.

Since the theme of this first contest of 2016 is "Hot and Spicy", chefs from Thailand, India and China have taught the audience how to make spicy Thai, Indian and Sichuan dishes. According to them, the unique taste of the spicy Thai cuisine comes from fresh chili and the sour flavor of lemon; Sichuan dishes are well-known by the dry and oily chili; while Indian's spiciness is from all kinds of powders of curry, chili and masala.
Technologies work wonders. A generation ago, who would have thought that anyone could launch a talk show and win millions of viewers? A television format had to go through a rigorous vetting processand tons of money in investmentbefore it could be aired on the tube, and it still must. But now, all you need is a computer with a camera, or even a regular cellphone with Internet connection.

But what would one do if she (or he) could potentially talk to the whole world? It turns out sex sellsmuch more than simple talk. Many online talk shows have morphed into live striptease, or even worse.

In the wee hours of Jan 10, a chat room on Douyutv put out a live feed of its male host having sex with a woman. It attracted thousands of viewers. In-house vigilantes shut it down within minutes and the police were alerted. An investigation is ongoing.

Like many people who use WeChat and Weibo for most functions, I was totally oblivious of the tidal wave of so-called Internet live broadcast until very recently, which are chat rooms with live video operated by individuals and hosted mostly by game sites.

It is an offshoot of online gaming, which I knew has a market size three times that of China's film market in revenue but has never attracted the equivalent media attention.
A panel of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) experts from Northwest China's Gansu province left for Moldova Tuesday, starting their two-year aid efforts in the country, local authorities said on Wednesday.

The panel consists of four experts who were selected from the TCM colleges and hospitals in Gansu and an interpreter, according to the provincial health and family planning commission.

The experts will provide TCM training and some specific therapies, such as acupuncture and cupping, to people in Moldova.

They are expected to diagnose 15,000 patients in the country over the following two years, said Li Jintian, the president of Gansu University of Chinese Medicine.

Home to abundant raw materials used in Chinese herbal medicine, Gansu is one of the country's largest production bases for TCM, with a long history in the province.

In the past three years, the province has focused on training TCM practitioners in foreign language to promote Chinese medicine among countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

So far, Gansu has helped set up seven TCM colleges and three TCM centers in several countries along the route, such as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

The Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which were proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of reviving the ancient trade routes. The network passes through more than 60 countries and regions with a total population of 4.4 billion.
A clerk counts the cash in a bank in Huaibei, Anhui province, Oct 26, 2012. [Xie Zhengyi/Asianewsphoto]

The sense of anxiety among foreign companies in China is fairly understandable given the slowdown of the Chinese economy.

As headwinds from its slower growth have forced many domestic enterprises into an increasingly tight corner, it is natural that more and more multinational companies have also felt the pinch.

According to the Business Climate Survey recently released by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, 45 percent of respondents reported flat or declining revenues last year, with only 64 percent saying their China businesses were profitablethe lowest proportion in five years.

However, the current difficulties of some foreign companies do not mean that the investment climate in China is worsening.

Complaints about the business environment in China neither reflect the reality nor help these foreign companies adapt to the ongoing transformation of the Chinese economy from a global manufacturing powerhouse to a rising consuming society.

On the one hand, China remains the most attractive destination among developing countries for foreign investors. The latest figures from the Ministry of Commerce show that the amount of foreign direct investment that the country absorbed rose 6.4 percent year-on-year to $126 billion in 2015. Although the growth of foreign investment may be not as high as it used to be, it still represents a vote of confidence in the Chinese economy.

On the other hand, while some foreign companies may have been hit hard by the ongoing slowdown of the Chinese economy, especially in those industrial sectors plagued by overcapacity, there are also winners such as Starbucks which is eager to increase its stores in China from 2,000 at present to 3,400 by 2019.

As the Seattle company goes all out to tap into Chinese consumers' new-found enthusiasm for coffee, other foreign companies should do well to seize the opportunities of China's rise as a consuming society rather than complaining about the loss of old business opportunities.
A signboard of China Eastern Airlines is seen at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Sept 23, 2014. [Photo/IC]

AFTER MORE THAN 40 passengers with valid e-tickets were unable to board the aircraft for a flight from Shanghai to Beijing due to the lack of seats on Thursday night, China Eastern Airlines denied overbooking and said it just replaced the scheduled aircraft with a smaller one. Beijing Times says even if the reason is valid, the airline still has a legal obligation to compensate the passengers:

Even if the airline did change the aircraft instead of overselling tickets, as it claimed, it is still responsible for the delay caused to the over 40 passengers.

The passengers had valid tickets, so they had a legal contract with the airline, which is thus obliged to shoulder the responsibility for its failure to fulfill that contract. However, it is reported that the China Eastern Airlines staff persuaded some passengers concerned to sign a compensation contract waiving their right to sue the company.

The increasing number of disputes between airlines and passengers in recent years have a lot to do with information asymmetry, as the airlines will often resort to some unconfirmed and unconvincing excuse to absolve them of any responsibility for flight delays and overbooking.

As an increasing number of passengers are aware of their legal rights and willing to fight for them, airlines have no reason to ignore their complaints and try to avoid paying compensation. Instead, they are supposed to abide by relevant regulations and regain passengers' trust by demonstrating integrity.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (R front) taste traditional Arab coffee during his visit to the Murabba' Palace, named after its square form of 400 by 400 meters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan 20, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his fruitful visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran over the weekend, his first diplomatic tour to the Middle East region since fully assuming office in 2013. It ushered in a new era, featuring comprehensive, long-term and stable development, for the bilateral partnership.

In general, Xi's three-nation Middle East tour has brought China comprehensive deepened relations with the three countries, taking ties to new heights.

Xi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and production capacity cooperation, as well as other agreements on energy, telecommunication and aviation. The two countries also released a joint statement on forming a comprehensive strategic partnership.

In shared pursuit of enhancing the comprehensive strategic partnership they forged in 2014, China and Egypt signed 21 cooperation agreements on Thursday and endorsed a five-year plan pledging to co-build the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi also brought fresh impetus to the China-proposed trans-Eurasia initiative, in which Iran has the potential to serve as a Middle East bridgehead, thanks to its pivotal geopolitical location and relative stability.

Major breakthroughs are foreseeable in the trade and people-to-people exchanges and energy-oriented cooperation between the two countries, given that the international sanctions on Iran have been lifted and the country craves economic boosters. In particular, with the help of Chinese-funded infrastructure, both nations will enjoy a high level of interconnectivity in the years to come.

The biggest highlight of all is the trip signaled Beijing is putting more concrete efforts into realizing both the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, in a bid to better interconnect with the Middle East.

China will provide a total of $55 billion loan to the Middle East, including $15 billion special loan for industrialization and $10 billion of commercial loans to support production capacity cooperation, and $10 billion preferential loan to the region. It also includes a $20 billion joint investment fund with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to invest in traditional energy, infrastructure development and high-end manufacturing industries in the region.
Tibetan macaques in Sichuan's Emei Mountains. [Photos by Wen Zhenxiao/Huang Yiming/Zhao Renbao/Liu Bingsheng/China Daily]

"Emei's elves" are thieves. Indeed, it wasn't my wife rustling through the pack on my back.

It was a Tibetan macaque.

(My spouse, for the record, is human.)

The animal was up to its furry armpit, swishing around for the peanuts, in my bag.

I asked Carol what she wantedthen noticed her some distance away.

I turned around to find myself staring into its eyes.

Not hers.

A tug-of-war ensued.

I guess it makes sense you'd wield upper body strength disproportionate to your size if you performed treetop acrobatics all day.

(I still won. Barely.)

The monkeys on Sichuan province's Emei Mountains are colloquially known as "little beggars".

More like "little burglars".

That said, I chased another species out of our tree house in Yunnan province's Xishuangbanna before it could snatch anything.

Primates flash-flooded aroundsometimes overour feet at Qianling Mountain Park in Guizhou province's capital, Guiyang, where they're the main attraction. Some napped while limpidly draped over signs advertising their presence, without any sense of irony.

We Homo sapiens perhaps love monkeys because they sway from a nearby branch of our evolutionary tree.

They're cousins that call for family reunions, typically via ecotourism.

China is home to about a dozen speciesplus one ape group, the gibbonthat entice travelers every year.

They hold a special place in Chinese culturemaking the cut of the 12 creatures esteemed as worthy of zodiac reverence.

In the spirit of the Year of the Monkey that starts in two weeks, we explore the country's best destinations to visit the primates that climb close to us up the web of life.
Thai army soldier inspects a piece of suspected plane wreckage which has been found off the coast of southern Thailand in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, January 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

BANGKOK - A piece of suspected plane wreckage has been found off the coast of southern Thailand, a local official said on Saturday, prompting speculation it might belong to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished nearly two years ago.

A large piece of curved metal washed ashore in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, where villagers reported it to the authorities to help identify it, Tanyapat Patthikongpan, head of Pak Phanang district, told Reuters.

"Villagers found the wreckage, measuring about 2 metres wide and 3 metres long (6.6 by 9.8 feet)," he said.

The find has fuelled speculation in the Thai media that the debris could belong to MH370, which disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

There has been no official confirmation that the wreckage belongs to a plane. And Patthikongpan added that "fishermen said it could have been under the sea for no more than a year, judging from barnacles on it."
YANGON - Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar's Defense Services Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing has voiced support for the new government and the new parliament to ensure rule of law and achieve long-lasting peace in the country, the official media reported Monday.

Min Aung Hlaing made the pledge when he met with members of the Myanmar Media Council in Nay Pyi Yaw.

Media are indispensable for the nation particularly at a time when the nation is being built anew. The end of armed conflicts is of vital importance to peace and development, he said.

He urged media professionals to make the public aware of the democratic practice and stressed the need to report events in a positive manner.

The Myanmar Media Council was formed by 27 members on Nov 11, 2015 with U Khin Maung Lay as chairman.

The current term of the parliament and the government, produced through the 2010 general election and ran from 2011, will expire on Jan 30 and March 30 respectively when a new parliament and government will take office in accordance with the result of the Nov 8 general election in 2015.
A Chinese national who allegedly fled to Hong Kong after killing his teenage nephews in the United States said he would surrender to US authorities, Hong Kong's Eastern Magistrates' Court heard on Monday.

Shi Deyun, sought by the United States for murder, was apprehended less than 24 hours following the discovery of the victims after disembarking a Los Angeles to Hong Kong Cathay Pacific flight, en route to Beijing on Saturday.

The nephews, 15 and 16 years old, sustained blunt force traumas with US investigators working on the premise that the killings were linked to a domestic dispute between Shi and his estranged wife who was seeking a divorce and restraining order in court on Thursday.

Shi allegedly went from the court to her Arcadia, California home and assaulted her. The two boys, sons of the wife's brother and sister-in-law, were left home alone as their parents accompanied Shi's wife to hospital.

Shi is understood to have broken into his nephews' home while the parents were away in the evening.

The boys' bodies were not discovered until the following morning after the parents went straight to bed after escorting Shi's wife to hospital.
Comments by Xu Xiujun, associate researcher with the Institute of World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; comics drawn by Tian Jinxue, Yang Nan

On January 22-23, Chinese President Xi Jinping had paid a state visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran at the invitation of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Xi held talks with Rouhani in Saadabad Palace, Tehran. Both sides reached a consensus to upgrade the bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership to push forward bilateral relations to a new level.

A Memorandum of Understanding on jointly pursuing the "Belt and Road" initiative and a slew of bilateral cooperation deals covering energy, industrial capacity, finance and other fields were also signed.

This is Xi's first visit to Iran. It has been 14 years since a Chinese top leader's last visit to Iran.

Xi's visit stands as a first visit paid by the head of a foreign country after an agreement was signed between the US, European Union (EU) and Iran over the Iranian nuclear issue, and the international community announced cancellation of sanctions against Tehran.

Xi's visit is of great significance. The elevation of Sino-Iranian ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership has created a new starting point for bilateral friendly relations.

Xi described the energy cooperation as a ballast stone, interconnection cooperation as a focal point, productivity cooperation as a compass, financial cooperation as a booster, which offers a solid foundation for mutual cooperation under the "Belt and Road" initiative, and guiding strategic docking for bilateral developments.

The Middle East media believe Xi's visit has opened a new chapter in Sino-Iranian relations and had drawn a successful conclusion for Xi's colorful and fruitful Middle East tour.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com.
This post highlights four common and somewhat egregious mistakes my law firms China lawyers often see lawyers make when representing their clients in doing business with or in China, along with a very brief analysis of what causes each sort of mistake.

1. Not Realizing that Chinas Bureaucracy Puts Form Over Substance

Many years ago, a U.S. lawyer called us to discuss his clients desire to form a company in China. The lawyer asked us the minimum capital the Chinese government would likely require his client put into a Chinese bank to be able to form a China WFOE. Based on the nature and size of the business, we estimated $6 to $8 million  this was back when the Chinese government was much more concerned with the registered capital of foreign companies. The lawyer then asked us to confirm that a portion of the required $6 to $8 million could come from factory equipment not cash, and we assured him that it could. At that point, he said, good, because his client had already purchased $5 million in equipment and shipped it to China.

We then had to tell him those equipment purchases could not count towards the WFOEs minimum capital because they had not been previously designated as going to the WFOE. The lawyer then complained about how his client could not afford to come up with another $5 million and how China was putting form over substance. To which we could say little more than, yeah

This is just one of countless instances where an inexperienced foreign lawyer has done poorly by his or her client by just assuming he rest of the world views the law the same as in their own country. China almost always places form over substance and it does that because it views giving its bureaucrats discretionary authority gives them the discretion to solicit bribes to influence the exercise of that discretion.

2. Not Realizing that China Does Not Enforce U.S. Court Judgments

A lawyer calls us with an airtight $2 million dollar breach of contract lawsuit against a Chinese company. This lawyer had drafted a contract calling for disputes between her client and the Chinese counter-party to be resolved in Boston Federal Court and she had already sued the Chinese company in Boston and secured a default judgment against it. She was now seeking our law firms help in domesticating the judgment in China and then enforcing it there and It was clear she expected our international litigators to jump at the opportunity to take this case on a contingency fee basis.

That is until we told her that China does not enforce U.S. judgments. Pretty much never.

She then came up with the idea that we start all over by suing the Chinese company again in China. We had to tell her that could not work because the Chinese court would have two strong grounds for throwing out that lawsuit. First, improper jurisdiction because the contract clearly called for the lawsuit to be in Boston. Second, res judicata because the entire case had already been tried (and won) in Boston (the proper jurisdiction). I have no idea how she explained all this to her client.

Foreign lawyers commonly assume that what makes sense for a domestic transaction necessarily also makes sense for an international transaction. Boston would have made sense in the above instance if the counter-party had been in Los Angeles, but the rules and the issues are different when doing business internationally.

3. Not Realizing that Legal Disputes in China are Conducted in Chinese

Lawyers often call us for tips on handling an arbitration in China (usually with CIETAC). We always quickly ask whether the contract calls for the arbitration to be in English or whether the lawyer calling us (or some other lawyer) on the case is fluent in Chinese. This virtually always elicits a really long silence and then they say something about how they had just assumed their case (usually set for hearing in a few months) would be in English.

If you do not specify that your China arbitration is going to be in a language other than Chinese, it will be in Chinese. This mistake stems from the lawyers inability to grasp that China is not all that different from the rest of the world. I mean, would anyone ever think that an arbitration in Kansas City is going to be in Chinese even though the contract calling for arbitration there is silent on the language of the arbitration? Generally, arbitrations around the world will be in the language of the country in which the arbitration is taking place OR in the language of the contract. Generally, for Asia, it is in the language of the country. Generally, for Latin America, it is the language of the contract. Generally, for other countries it can vary.

If you want your arbitration in China to be in a language other than Chinese, you must specify that in your contract. See How to Write a Bad International Arbitration Clause.

4. Not Realizing that Chinese Courts Often do NOT Recognize Standard Contract Terms

American lawyers often call us our law firm on behalf of their client who has received a product from their Chinese manufacturer, claiming that the product does not meet the contract specified quality. We then determine that the specified quality to which they are referring is reasonably good quality in such and such an industry. To their surprise, we immediately beg off working on the case and we then have to tell them how Chinese courts tend to be very literal in interpreting contracts and are not comfortable with what to them are vague terms like reasonable. We then say that there really is no such thing as reasonably good quality in a country where you can buy a 50 cent t-shirt that falls apart after its first washing. And/or we tell them of the U.S. company that had us call a Chinese factory (many years ago) from which the U.S. company had received a couple million dollars worth of laptop bags whose handles were not strong enough to hold a laptop. The Chinese factorys explanation was that if our client had wanted laptop bags strong enough to truly hold a laptop, our client should have ordered the $5 bags, not the $3 ones.

This mistake usually stems from the belief that the U.S. way of looking at the law applies universally, when it does not. China is a civil law country and a phrase like reasonably good quality is almost meaningless.

If you are not familiar with the ins and outs of China law, just be sure to use a China lawyer of reasonably good quality to assist you. Thats a joke.

What do you think?
(Photo : GETTY IMAGES) Chen's father, an 85-year-old man, who apparently had trust issues, cut 140,000 ($21,200) worth of bank notes into pieces in October so his son and daughter-in-law can "forget about the money."

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A Chinese couple have successfully finished piecing together more than 1,000 bank notes, which were hacked to pieces by the husband's father. The husband was only identified by his surname Chen.



Chen's father, an 85-year-old man, who apparently had trust issues, cut 140,000 ($21,200) worth of bank notes into pieces in October so his son and daughter-in-law can "forget about the money."



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Chen told local media that his father sold their old house in Liaoning province's Anshan City last year for 200,000 ($30,000) and kept the huge amount of cash with him. He and his wife have been trying to persuade the old man to deposit the money in the bank, but he refused.



Thinking that Chen and his wife wanted to take the money for themselves, the old man cut the 140,000 in October last year to "solve the problem once and for all."



After telling his son what he'd done, the couple took the chopped banknotes to the nearest bank, which promised to accept the money after they piece them back together.



Chen and his wife spent three months putting the banknotes together. They even took a leave from their jobs and reportedly spent 17 hours a day on the task from 7 am to midnight.



The couple finished the gruelling task this week and finally deposited it to the bank, along with the remaining uncut 60,000.



It is unclear what the couple plan to do with the money - whether they would prove the old man's fears right and keep it to themselves. But have they not earned it?



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Tagscrazy father, old man cuts banknotes into pieces
(Photo : Reuters) In a survey conducted by job hunting site zhaopin.com, Chinese employee were found to earn an average of 6,070 ($922.64) monthly.

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A newly released report by job hunting site zhaopin.com has revealed that, based on job vacancies posted over the internet this winter in 32 cities across China, the average salary is at 6,070 yuan ($922.64).



The capital city Beijing ranks at the top of the list with 9,227 yuan followed by Shanghai (8,664 yuan) and Shenzhen (7,728 yuan). Meanwhile, second-tier city Hangzhou surpassed first-tier city Guangzhou at 7,097 and 6,913 yuan, respectively. The results shows that Guangzhou was not able to keep pace with the development of the other three first-tier cities.



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Included also in the top 10 are well-established coastal cities from the east such as Suzhou, Ningbo and Nanjing, as welll as developing cities from the southwestern region including Chengdu and Chongqing.



However, cities in the northeastern region like Harbin, Changchun and Shenyang are among the lowest. The report noted that these industrial-based cities may be striving to transcend economically.



the issue of which jobs get the highest pay. The survey reveals that consulting and professional service provider firms like lawyers, accounting and human resources top the list, averaging at 10,634 yuan. Trailing behind the second and third spots are the investment industry at 9,204 yuan and the intermediary agent industry at 8,658 yuan, respectively.



On the private economy side, private companies offer the most competitive pay at 7,322 yuan, followed by joint ventures at 7,134 yuan and solely foreign-owned establishments at 6,400 yuan at third - reflecting the rough progress of foreign-owned companies in China these past years.



In a separate report, 44 percent of Chinese companies are planning to increase employees' salaries between 6 and 10 percent, while 15 percent of the Chinese companies are actually considering raising employee salaries to over 10 percent this year - an increase surpassing other Asian countries. The survey called The 2016 Hays Asia Salary Guide was made by Hays, one of the dominating recruitment companies in the world.



Meanwhile, over 60 percent of Asian employers were found to be considering giving out bonuses. Influencing factors for cash incentives include company performance (95 percent), individual performance (92 percent) and team performance (37 percent).



As to the amount of bonuses that will be handed out, over 30 percent of Asian employers predict it will not be greater than 10 percent of the employee's salary, about 45 percent of employers from 11 to 50 percent, over 10 percent of employers between 51 and 99 percent, and 10 percent as high as 100 percent.



Furthermore, other than salaries and bonuses, the survey also revealed that nearly 85 percent of Asian employers offer additional benefits. Almost 80 percent of Asian employers provide health/medical treatment incentive, more than 40 percent provide life insurance and over 30 percent provide travel allowance and pension.



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Tagssalary, china, Chinese Economy, workers
(Photo : Reuters) Chinese defense analysts have said that China will not initiate military conflict in the South China Sea region, adding that Beijing will resolve the territorial and maritime dispute with claimant countries through diplomatic means.

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Amid Beijing's display of military might in the South China Sea, Chinese defense experts are saying that China will not start a war in the region in a bid to recover islands illegally under the control of other countries.



"We will not initiate military conflict to recover islands illegally occupied by other countries," said Wu Shicun, the former foreign affairs chief of Hainan province, an island in the South China Sea.



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Wu, president of the National Institute of South China Sea Studies and the unofficial spokesperson on the issue for the government, said that Beijing's position has always been to initiate negotiations and dialogues with claimant countries to resolve the territorial and maritime disputes.



Spratlys group of Islands



China is claiming soverignty over almost all of the South China Sea, including reclaimed islets and reefs in the Spratlys, where Beijing has built airstrips, seaports, and other facilities.



The Spratlys Group of Islands is believed to have large deposits of gas and oil reserves. The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia have overlapping claims in the disputed islands.



The United States, together with the claimant countries, have condemned China for building 'illegal structures' on the disputed islands with Washington vowing to defend the freedom of navigation through the waters



Around $5 trillion of maritime trade passes through the South China Sea yearly.



War unlikely



US Defense Secretary Ash Carter has been quoted as saying that the US will operate within the bounds of international laws as what they have been doing worldwide and China is no exception.



A senior foreign policy adviser to the Chinese government Shi Yinhong agreed with Wu that Beijing is highly unlikely to instigate hostilities with other countries in the South China Sea region.



"Other countries have also said the same, and this is all helpful for peace and stability in the South China Sea," Shi said.



Ease tensions



Shi said China will be taking measures to lower the tensions with the US and the claimant countries and will be adopting a more diplomatic tack in dealing with the existing dispute.



Wu, while insisting that China will not be starting an 'unprovoked war," defended Beijing's decision to build facilities in the disputed Spratlys.



Chinese sovereignty



He said China was well within its rights and sovereign power to build the military facilities on the Spratlys in order to protect Chinese people and to secure important installations.



"Any ordinary person can tell that these tiny outposts cannot play a major role in any military conflict," he pointed out.



Wu said China will be open to striking a 'joint development' deal with other countries as its way of sharing oil and gas reserves in the islands under their control.



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TagsSpratlys Group of Islands, Chinese sovereignty, 'unprovoked war', China's military facilities, 'joint development
(Photo : Reuters) Beijing is truly congested. To alleviate this so-called urban malaise, the capital city will be distributing its facilities or functions to neighboring countries based on an integrated development plan of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin.

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With the aim of creating balance between Beijing and neighboring cities, several prominent universities in Beijing will be transferred to Hebei province, according to policymakers. This move is meant to ease the pressure on the city's infrastructure and resources and to alleviate "urban malaise" like traffic, shortage of resources and air pollution.



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Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun explained that the capital will devise a strategy to relocate unimportant functions this year. He made this revelation during the yearly plenary sessions of the People's Congress and Political Consultative Conference. These functions allegedly include regional logistics bases and wholesale markets, government service providers, the general manufacturing industry and some of public services (such as medical and educational institutions).



The new relocation site Beidaihe is a coastal area approximately 300 kilometers away from the capital. Among the universities to be transferred are Beijing Film Academy and Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. However, only their undergrad courses will be moved as postgraduate and research institutions will remain in Beijing.



Meanwhile, prestigious universities such as Tsinghua University and Beijing University will build research centers in Hebei province.



Furthermore, some medical facilities will also be moved. Currently, there are approximately 50 hospitals in the city that have transferred to Hebei, constructed branches or deployed support staff for their hospitals in Hebei.



One of the city's major roles is technological innovation based on an integrated development plan of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin. Under the new integrated development plan of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin, the capital city will become not only a center for technological innovation but also the "national center of political, cultural and international exchange activities."



The plan seeks to make Tianjin the area for national research and development for advanced manufacturing and a shipping hub, while Hebei will concentrate on trade and logistics and serve as a testing field for industrial transition and upgrade.



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TagsBeijing, Beijing University, Tsinghua University, Hebei Province, Tianjen, Beijing Film Academy, Beidaihe
(Photo : Reuters) Chinese solar power manufacturers are strongly considering expanding overseas, particularly to Thailand, where mark ups and anti-dumping duties are lower.

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Several Chinese solar panel makers seeking to expand abroad are investing in the market of neighboring Thailand in light of the increasing mark up and sharp anti-dumping duties in the Europe and United States.



In spite of China's economic slowdown, a number of local solar power enterprises are considering shifting out to Thailand. Aside from the supportive governmental rules and increasing demand, Thailand allegedly offers bigger growth opportunities and low-duty export potential.



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Factors such as decreasing prices but growing costs on rentals, labors and operations are pushing these companies to go overseas. For example, in Thailand, an office located in prime area only costs about $21 per square meter in a year, this is more than twofold Shanghai's $46.8 price tag, according to the US Colliers International.



While average duties of Chinese solar products have been increased, Taiwanese products have been lowered, according to the US Commerce Department. For instance, US import charges on China-made solar energy products were charged almost six times higher at 165 percent than Taiwan's products at 27.55 percent at the end of 2014. US duties cut down the value of Chinese exports to nearly $300 million in 2015 - shorting the profits of over 200 Chinese manufacturers.



Since 2011, Yingli Solar, one of the biggest solar panel manufacturers, has not declared profits largely because of overcapacity and attendant overproduction that resulted in the plunge of solar products' prices. The company is currently undergoing a debt reconstruction process, and based on its financial statement in the first three quarters, its debt has risen up to more than 18 billion yuan.



This month, Yangli revealed it has decided to team up with Thailand's Demeter Corp, to create multi-crystalline photovoltaic panels in Thailand. Operations will commence on the second half of this year, and products will still carry the name of Yingli Solar.



Aside from that, the partnership will also build a 300-mW solar power plant in Rayong (southeast of Bangkok), worth $19 million. It has also negotiated with Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a telecom and electronic giant in China, to supply solar power solutions in Thailand.





Yingli is not the first solar panel company to seek bigger opportunities in Thailand. Last year, the trend began after the company's rivals inlcuding Trina Solar Ltd and JA Solar Holdings Co revealed their ambitions of going overseas.



Changzhou, Jiangsu-based photovoltaic module maker Trina Solar has set up a headquarter in Singapore. It has grown fast across Southeast Asia. In May last year, it allocated $160 million to construct a Thailand-based factory. Construction will begin this year with the aim of creating 700-mW solar cells that can produce power and 500-mW solar panels that can generate electricity.



Thailand is magnetizing investors for a number of reasons. Its solar panels do not invite big tariffs in the USA and Europe. Also, it has a stable investing environment as the government supports the industry. For instance, in 2015, the government unveiled ways to support its industry like making solar panels installed on residential and commercial rooftops. Lastly, the country has been using alternative energy since 2008 as the government has pledged to utilize cleaning energy by constructing big solar farms.



This expansion overseas shows Chinese firms' confidence of solar power in the global market. However, the director of Solar Energy Center of the National Institute of Clean and Low-Carbon Energy Chen Jie said solar panel makers' top priority should still be on enhancing technological innovations and not just on irrational productions.



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Tagssolar panel, china, Thailand, Yangli Solar, Demeter Corp., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
(Photo : Reuters) Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the US-led Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in March.

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Amid Beijing's repeated refusal to impose sanctions against North Korea over its latest nuclear test this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington this March.



It will be President Xi's second visit to the US in less than a year after his state visit to the country in September 2015.



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Nuclear security summit



Reports said defense and military experts from both sides as well as Chinese academics all agree that Xi 'would probably go' to the summit following the two countries' agreement to deepen cooperation on nuclear security during Xi's first US state visit,



Although Beijing has not yet confirmed Xi's attendance, several military and defense analysts working for the government said Xi is expected to fulfill the cooperation agreement on nuclear security he signed with US President Barack Obama.



Common interests



"The two countries share common interests in intercepting nuclear terrorism, so I think there is plenty of room for cooperation on it, among other issues," said Zhang Tuosheng, from the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.



Meanwhile, the White House has also announced that Washington and Beijing are slated to meet before the summit to discuss nuclear security.



Opposing sides



Political observers say the US and China - both permanent members of the UN Security Council - have been on opposing sides on nuclear security especially when it comes to stopping North Korea from conducting nuclear tests and amassing nuclear weapons and missiles.



Former US undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith expressed dismay about China's inability to rein in North Korea and Beijing's open resistance to the international community's calls to punish Pyongyang.



"Why China seems to be more interested in denying cooperation with the US on North Korea issues rather than exerting itself in this area is a mystery to me," he said.



Chinese political and foreign policy strategists have taken up the cudgels for Beijing saying that China has already put much pressure on the North and has made denuclearization in the region a top priority.



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TagsPresident Xi Jinping, Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, defense and military experts, China-US cooperation on nuclear security
(Photo : Reuters) "$5 Insanity", a designer drug chemically known as alpha-PVP is reigning in the international market, surpassing other synthetic drugs like cocaine in Florida.

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Known by its street name of "$5 insanity" because of its cheap and affordable price, a China-made designer drug otherwise called Flakka, which is reportedly more potent than crystal meth, is leading the upsurge of synthetic drugs use across western countries.



The drug, known for its mind-bending effects, is reportedly manufactured in illegal drug dens in China. Flakka, which can be injected, smoked, swallowed, snorted or mixed with other drugs like marijuana, accounts for an increasing number of drug-related deaths in the USA.



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According to Sgt. Rob Pettit of St. Lucie Country Sheriff's Office, Flakka is characterized by a mix of meth and cocaine and a foul odor that resembles like sweaty sock. Once it gets inside the body system, it can create hallucinations, a feeling of euphoria, psychosis and even illusive superhuman strength. It usually lasts for hours and drives the user to take again.



Chemically known as Alpha-PVP, it is made from a synthesized version of a native plant from the Middle East called qat. For many years, this plant has been indicated as a stimulant.



Just like any other synthetic drugs, Flakka can be easily obtained and ordered from Chinese manufacturers via the Internet. The business reportedly gives a 32-fold return to traffickers.



In 2011, Florida reported just one case of Flakka use, but after four years, its upsurge surprisingly rose to 2,000 reported cases in one county alone. After being pressured by western nations, the Chinese government officially prohibited the drug in October. However, its production still reportedly continues. In fact, just last month, a grand jury from Florida called for a special law to stop the scourge.



Narcotics were legal in China until a resolution in 2015 banned 115 illicit drugs including Flakka. However, law enforcers are in doubt whether the latest proposition will prevent the worldwide illegal distribution of the drug.



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Tagsillegal drugs, flakka, $5 Insanity, Florida, china, Alpha PVP, designer drug
(Photo : Getty Images) US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) stands with Laos Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong after their meeting at the prime minister's office in Vientiane on Monday.

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Laos Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong assured U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday that his country will help in countering China's influence in South China Sea.



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's historic tour to Laos is part of his ongoing East Asian tour amid tension between East Asian nations over the disputed South China Sea. Kerry will be soon visiting China and Vietnam as part of his on-going tour - the two countries that are on the fore front of maritime crisis.



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Laos Prime Minister's assurance carries a huge significance for the U.S, as Laos will be taking chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year. The ASEAN summit will be hosted in Laos later this year, which will also be attended by U.S president Barack Obama.



"Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong was very clear that he wants a unified ASEAN and he wants maritime rights protected and he wants to avoid militarization and avoid the conflict," Kerry told reporters after his hour-long meeting with the Laos Prime Minister.



Kerry also stated that relations between U.S and Laos - at one point of war time foes - are improving steadily. Reflecting this growing bonhomie, John Kerry along with Laos's Deputy Prime Minister visited That Luang - the golden spire Buddhist structure - Laos' most sacred monument.



Laos shares friendly relation with China, But is to be less dependent on it.



Traditionally, China and Laos have shared very warm and friendly relations. In fact, Chas always been one of the leading foreign investors in Laos, with Beijing reportedly investing more than $5 billion in 2014.



Analysts, however, believe that Laos has been getting wary over its increasing financial dependence on China. Prompting the small nation to get warm with countries that China traditionally has shared bitter relations. This especially includes countries like 'Vietnam' and 'Japan.'



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Christian girl rebuffs advance of Muslims in car, is run down and killed 25 January, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Examiner)  A 17-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was killed by a group of Muslim men because she spurned their sexual advances, the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) has reported.

According to the report, the girl named Kiran and two friends, Shamroza and Sumble, 18 and 20, respectively, were walking home to their Christian community after work when they were approached by four Muslim men in a car.

The men, apparently intoxicated, told the girls to get into the car "for a ride and some fun," BPCA reported.

The girls then told the men they were Christians and rebuffed their advances. When the men became angry, the girls ran. According to the survivors, one of the men then shouted at the girls:

"How dare you run away from us! Christian girls are only meant for one thing  the pleasure of Muslim men."

The men then ran the girls down in their car. Shamroza and Sumble were thrown clear of the car and suffered broken bones, but Kiran hit the windshield of the car. She remained there while the men drove at a high rate of speed. They then slammed on the brakes and the girl was thrown into the air.

She died when her head hit the ground.

To add insult to injury and death, according to BPCA, Pakistani police forced the family to pay a bribe before making an official report of the assault and murder.

Naveed Aziz, BPCA's representative in the area, said the survivors are "grateful to God for saving them but have been inconsolable at the loss of a close friend. Other girls in the local area are now too scared to travel at night and are being accompanied by the men in their families. The community wants justice for poor Kiran and seeks an end to the targeting of young Christian girls."

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the BPCA, said from London that the poor are frequently oppressed by the rich in Pakistan and Christians are often persecuted.

"Violence against Christians is rarely investigated and highly unlikely to be met with justice. The usual pattern in these cases is for Christians to pay a bribe to encourage police to complete their duty of registering an investigation, and for the criminals to pay further bribes for the police to spoil the investigation."

Chowdhry said the world is ignoring the treatment of Christian women in Pakistan, where an average of two women a day disappear and are raped, sold into sexual slavery, or forced to marry Muslim men.

"Evidence exists that some rogue imams declare that such acts of conversion through violence are rewarded in heaven, what a terrifying thought," Chowdhry said.

English-language newspapers in Pakistan did not report the incident, but they seldom do when Christians are involved. Similar crimes have also gone unreported by the Pakistani media.

In October 2015, a Christian woman named Sonia Bibi was set on fire by a mob after refusing a marriage proposal from a Muslim man  her former boyfriend.

In November 2014, a Christian couple was attacked by a Muslim mob after they were accused of having burned pages from Quran. After the mob broke their legs, they were thrown into a brick kiln. When the woman's clothes would not burn, the mob wrapped her in cotton and threw her back into the fire. She was four months pregnant at the time. The crowd also forced the couple's children to watch.

Persecution in Pakistan is also often carried out under the imprimatur of national improvement. In December, a Muslim news source reported Islamabad's Capital Development Authority (CDA) planned to demolish "Christian slums" to "protect the beauty of Islam."

The plan was halted by the country's Supreme Court that said every Pakistani  even Christians  deserved shelter. The court ordered the CDA to provide written justification for the removal of the houses.

"Most of the [slums] are under the occupation of the Christian community," the CDA replied.

The BPCA, which reported the killing of Kiran, was established after Islamists in the city of Gojra rioted and killed nine people after accusing a Christian couple of using pages from the Quran as confetti at their wedding.
Wheaton College faculty reached a conclusion that they should not fire a professor who publicly said that "Muslims and Christians worship the same God."

The college's faculty expressed "grave concerns about the process," and said that Professor Larycia Hawkin's suspension should be withdrawn.

Hawkins came to be known as "Hijab Professor" after she decided to wear it during the time of Advent to show her support for Muslims.

In December last year, the college suspended her for her remarks on Facebook, citing "theological implications" of her statements as the reason for her suspension.

Dr. Lynn Cohick, professor of New Testament and chair of Faculty Council, wrote in an email to the Wheaton staff that he recommended not firing Hawkins.

"Faculty Council unanimously recommended to administration that the administrative leave and the notification of termination 'for cause' of Dr. Larycia Hawkins be withdrawn due to grave concerns about the process," Cohick wrote in the letter.

"The only way forward is to go back to the beginning where this whole thing started with Larycia," Burge was quoted as saying by the Chicago Tribune. "My own feeling is that the college will find the courage to rescind the leave of absence."

Wheaton published a statement Thursday saying that the college "respects the viewpoints of its Faculty Council."

"The next step in this process is a hearing before the Faculty Personnel Committee. The Faculty Personnel Committee [on Feb. 11] will receive presentations from the Provost and Dr. Hawkins regarding the substantive and procedural issues each would like to raise, will review the evidence presented, and will make a formal recommendation regarding the termination of tenure," continued the statement.

"The Faculty Personnel Committee's recommendation will then be taken into consideration by President Ryken, as he makes his recommendation to the Board of Trustees."

A meeting was called by Wheaton College President Philip Ryken, where the institution's position on Christians and Muslims worshiping the same God were discussed to arrive at acceptable interpretations of the statement of faith which the college will live out.

"There was a lot of frustration. It was really us listening to them and their statements of how they hoped that their relationships and trust could be restored. But they didn't choose to follow the faculty council's admonition to reverse their decision," said Michael Mangis, professor of psychology.

Tenured professors were asked to cast a vote in one of the regular faculty meetings.

"President Ryken and the Faculty Council have discussed a review of current policies and processes, with a view to addressing or clarifying areas of concern. However, Dr. Ryken has also asked Faculty Council to understand that the Faculty Personnel Committee hearing is the method through which the particulars of Dr. Hawkins' personnel matter will be addressed," said the statement.
An American student from the University of Virginia has been detained in North Korea on Jan 2 for committing a hostile act against the state.

A report from North Koreas official state-run news agency accused Otto Warmbier, 21, of entering the country "for the purpose of bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity at the tacit connivance of the U.S. government.

The China-based tour company, Young Pioneer Tours, confirmed Warmbiers detainment in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

We can confirm that the reports that one of our clients is being detained in Pyongyang are true, the company said in a statement. "Their family have been informed and we are in contact with the Swedish Embassy, who are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to address the case."

When Warmbier arrived at the airport to leave the country, he was taken aside by airport officials and escorted into a small room.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of Warmbiers detainment.

"The welfare of U.S. citizens is one of the Departments highest priorities," State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in a statement. "We have no further information to share due to privacy considerations."

Warmbiers detention occurs during a time of high tension between the U.S. and Pyongyang because of its recent nuclear test.
In celebration of its 12th anniversary, Christianity Daily hosted a gathering at a hotel in Los Angeles on January 22nd. The publication has grown to several branches across the U.S. since its establishment on January 23, 2004, and currently also has a news broadcast through Radio Korea. Christianity Daily, originally an exclusively Korean publication, started its English publication in January of 2010. Some 100 first, 1.5, and second generation Korean American church leaders attended the service.
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 lesson in humility is exactly what Donald Trump needs

"Donald Trump goes to church... and gets a lesson in humility," so the headlines ran this morning. All over the world, people woke up to the news that the Republican frontrunner was hit with a rather timely sermon in Iowa yesterday: a message on humility.

According to the Associated Press, the minister at Muscataine's First Presbyterian Church  visited by Trump on Sunday  gave a sermon in which she highlighted the biblical call for Christians to serve and advocate on behalf of vulnerable people.

"Jesus is teaching us today that he has come for those who are outside of the church," Rev Dr Pamela Saturnia said, "those who are the most unloved, the most discriminated against, the most forgotten in our community and in our world".

She directly pointed to Syrian refugees and migrants from Mexico as those to whom Jesus offers freedom and value. Both groups have been targeted by Trump, who has taken a hard line on immigration and even pledged to build a giant wall between Mexico and the US.

The presidential candidate later joked with reporters: "We talked about humility in church today. I don't know if that was aimed at me, perhaps."

According to the New York Times, he then qualified this backstage, adding: "I have more humility than people think".

Humility and Trump aren't often words you find in the same sentence. During the second GOP debate last year, he said that "everything I've done virtually has been a tremendous success". But it's not the first time he's laid a claim to humility, tweeting in 2013:

The new Pope is a humble man, very much like me, which probably explains why I like him so much!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 25, 2013

Quite bold, especially coming from a guy who recently suggested he could shoot someone in the street and not lose any voters, and on the same day retweeted this:

So, humility. Trump. He thinks he's got a lot of it, the majority of us  especially those of us Brits who remain bewildered by his candidacy  aren't so sure.

I wonder if Trump, when pointing out the similarities between himself and the Pope in December 2013, had in mind Francis' statement made just a couple of weeks previously:

"I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."

These words come from the Pope's Evangelii Gaudium, meaning The Joy of the Gospel  the mission statement for his papacy. In the 85-page document, Francis called for a fairer economic system and for the protection of the poor and vulnerable. "Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor," he wrote.

"If the whole Church takes up this missionary impulse, she has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, 'those who cannot repay you' (Luke14:14)."

More recently, the Pope has called for refugees to be treated with the dignity they deserve. "At the heart of the gospel of mercy, the encounter and acceptance by others are intertwined with the encounter and acceptance of God himself," he said last October. "Welcoming others means welcoming God in person!" He's also urged people of all faiths to work together, declaring that everyone  regardless of their religion  is a child of God.

Trump, who has called for all Syrian refugees to be banned from the US, does not have the poor's best interests at the heart of his policy-making. In his bid to "make America great again" he has turned his back on the plight of millions, who have nowhere to go.

Through fostering a climate of Islamophobia and fear, he is in danger of creating an America that is, in Francis' words, "clinging to its own security", at the expense of hundreds of thousands  possibly millions  of lives.

In Philippians 2, Paul urges Christians to imitate Jesus' humility; "who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant," (v6-7)

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit," Paul says in verse 3, "Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others".

This is a huge call, and not an easy one to accept or live out. It won't come naturally, even  dare I say it  to the Pope. So yes, we all need a lesson in humility. And if Trump is to become the next President of the United States, I hope he learns fast.
Catastrophic Mount Vesuvius eruptions feared, threatening millions in Italy

Mount Vesuvius has gained infamy for wiping out the entire city of Pompeii in 79 A.D. The same volcano also buried alive in ash some 6,000 people in 1631.

Italian officials are now warning that these historic disasters can be repeated at an even more massive scale.

According to them, half of the three million population of the Italian city of Naples are now at risk of experiencing a volcanic disaster from Mount Vesuvius.

Sixty-three other new towns and villages are also included in the list of areas deemed vulnerable in case Mount Vesuvius erupts.

Italian disaster officials have warned that residents living within the expanded "yellow" danger zonewhich now stretches across the provinces of Naples and Salernomay experience dangerous ash falls and falling rocks which can topple entire buildings if Mount Vesuvius erupts.

Aside from these, some 600,000 residents are also within the volcano's "red danger zone," which faces the threat of a more apocalyptic scenario should Mount Vesuvius unleash its fury.

Areas in the volcano's direct path of destruction may experience scalding lava flows, clouds of burning gas, and an avalanche of ash and rocks rolling down Mount Vesuvius' slope at terrifying speeds of up to 200mph hour.

In an interview with The Independent, city council spokesman Domenico Annunziata warned that the destruction may reach areas even beyond the danger zones in case of a very powerful eruption.

"The experts have said that in the event of a big eruption and in certain atmospheric conditions, the ash and powder could reach these places further away," Annunziata said, as quoted by The Daily Mail.

He, however, said the effects on areas not in the volcano's danger zones will only be minimal, and should not be a cause for concern among Italians.

"There's no need to be alarmist. We're talking about falling powder, so it wouldn't be devastating," the Italian official explained.

An emergency plan is also in place to evacuate the residents in the danger zones within 72 hours of the volcano's increased activity.
'General Hospital' spoilers: Robert and Anna get closer to Carlos and Sabrina

Last week on "General Hospital," Dante found out that Valerie was missing and he told Jordan that Lulu knew that Johnny was in town for Christmas. He added that, for some reason, Valerie knew Johnny based on the photos that she took with him before the holidays.

At the cabin, Valerie struggled to get free and she knocked over a candle, which started a fire. Outside the cabin, Lulu waited for Johnny, and when he didn't show up, she decided to leave. But when she noticed that the cabin was burning, she rushed in and saw Valerie tied up and unconscious. Lulu was able to free her cousin and get her out of the cabin, but once they got back into the car, Lulu realized that she left her jacket in the cabin, along with her car keys and phone.

When they woke up in the car, Valerie asked Lulu if she and Johnny set her up, and Lulu admitted that they did, explaining that she wanted her to leave Dante alone and to leave town. Valerie slapped her cousin and called her names, but Lulu wasn't having it as she did the same to her. Dante arrived just in time and stopped them from having a big fight. Valerie told Dante what Lulu had done, and later he had the two women sent to the hospital.

At the hospital, both Lulu and Valerie were cleared to go, and Dante told Lulu that he's angry with her for what she did. As he walked out, Lulu broke down and started sobbing.

This week, Valerie draws some boundaries between her and Dante while Dillon offers his support to Lulu. Later on in the week, Lulu asks Maxie and Olivia for help to repair her marriage.

Here are the "General Hospital" spoilers for Jan. 25 to 29:

Jan. 25 (Monday): Jason reconsiders his decision regarding recovering his memories.

Jan. 26 (Tuesday): Valerie sets some boundaries between her and Dante while Dillon offers Lulu his support.

Jan. 27 (Wednesday): Robert and Anna get closer to Carlos and Sabrina.

Jan. 28 (Thursday): Little Jake has a bad reaction to Jason's news.

Jan. 29 (Friday): Lulu asks Maxie and Olivia for help with her marriage.

"General Hospital" airs Monday to Friday at 2 p.m. on ABC.
Iran's 'sinister' execution toll likely topic for Pope meeting with President Rouhani

Pope Francis is to meet the Iranian president this week, and has said he hopes it will mark "a definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world".

President Hassan Rouhani is making his first trip abroad since financial sanctions imposed on Iran by the US, EU and UN were lifted in return for the country curbing its nuclear programme.

During the meeting, the Pope and Rouhani are expected to discuss human rights. Executions in Iran  strongly opposed by the Vatican  have increased since Rouhani took office in 2013. According to the UN, Iran executed more individuals per capita than any other country in the world, and Amnesty International has condemned the execution rate as "horrifying".

Following the news that Iran executed about 700 people in the first six months of 2015, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Said Boumedouha, said the toll "paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially sanctioned killings on a mass scale."

According to Reuters, it is also likely that Rouhani and the Pope will discuss the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Iran is the strongest ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and global diplomats are attempting to arrange the first peace talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war.

Rouhani will lead a 120-strong delegation that includes Iranian entrepreneurs as well as the oil and gas minister and other government officials for five days in Paris and Rome. He is also scheduled to meet with French President Francois Hollande.

A week after nearly all sanctions were lifted, French and Italian officials still do not expect major deals to be signed yet during the trip. Rouhani himself has spoken of a "long road" to Iran's economic integration with the world.

Nonetheless, a senior Iranian official described the visit as "very important".

"It's time to turn the page and open the door to cooperation between our countries in different areas," the official added.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
ISIS officials use huge dam as shield against foes, knowing that airstrikes would trigger devastating floods in Iraq, Syria

Senior officials of the terror group Islamic State (ISIS) are smartly using a massive shield against airstrikes: the Tabqa Dam in Syria.

High-ranking ISIS officials are hiding inside Syria's largest dam, knowing full well that their enemies will not dare launch airstrikes on their positions there since this will inevitably destroy the dam, causing massive floods that could devastate large areas in both Syria and Iraq.

The destruction of the dam, which measures 200 feet in height and almost three miles in length, would also cut the power supply in large parts of Iraq and much of eastern Syria.

The dam, which sources water from the Euphrates River and is located around 25 miles from the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, also reportedly serves as a hideout for high-value prisoners.

The information came from an official at Sound and Picture, an umbrella group of anti-ISIS activists in Syria.

In an interview with The New York Times, Ariel Ahram, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who has studied Middle East dams, stressed how important preserving the Tabqa Dam is for Syria and Iraq's water and power supply.

"That's an ecological disaster for Iraq and a humanitarian catastrophe for Syria," Ahram explained about the possible destruction of the vital facility.

Aaron Wolf, a specialist in water-resources policy, also warned about the horrifying possibility that ISIS members could blow up the dam in case their positions are seriously threatened by enemy forces.

"Of course, you worry. These aren't the people you want controlling basically the arteries of the region," Wolf, who works at Oregon State University, told The Wall Street Journal.

ISIS militants also used to control the smaller Tishreen Dam located downstream from Tabqa, but failed to defend it during an assault from an alliance of Kurdish People's Protection Units and Arab fighters last December.
Islam may soon become the world's most dominant religion, eclipsing Christianity, Pew study says

The rise of extremist Islamic groups has been the talk of the town for the past several months, and many countries are worried of the security threat these groups pose.

Here's some more worrisome news: The Pew Research Center recently projected that Islam may soon become the most dominant religion in the world, eclipsing Christianity.

In an interview with NPR, Pew Director of Religion Research Alan Cooperman said the Muslim population is set to grow more than the Christian population.

"Another way of thinking about it is Christianity had a seven-century head-start on Islam, and Islam is finally catching up," Cooperman said.

He explained that Islam's growth will be brought about by the high number of young Muslims who have high fertility rates.

"Between 2010 and 2050, the world's total population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, a 35 percent increase. Over that same period, Muslimsa comparatively youthful population with high fertility ratesare projected to increase by 73 percent," Pew Research explained.

The study said Christians will also increase in number, but at a slower rate.

"The number of Christians also is projected to rise, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35 percent) as the global population overall," the research stated.

Southern Evangelical Seminary President and Evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land admitted that Islam really has a potential for growth.

"The growth of Islam is partly due to Muslim families sharing their faith with their children," Land told Charisma News.

He, however, said Islam's rise as a dominant religion is not a definite thing.

"These young families may not grow and increase at the rate many think, especially as young Muslim women have more opportunities and may choose not to have as many children," the religious leader explained.

He added that Christianity may well expand its reach, even in areas where Christians once experienced persecution.

"Christianity is growing rapidly in China, the world's most populous country with 1.3 billion people. And despite news that 'nones,' or those unaffiliated with any religion, are increasing, let's not discount the fact that all religions are growing, as the world is perhaps not as secular as we once thought," Land explained.
Israel: Netanyahu seeks to return evicted settlers to West Bank houses

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would allow Jewish settlers evicted by the Israeli army from two houses in the West Bank city of Hebron to return once proper permits were in place.

Israeli settlements in occupied territory, deemed illegal by most countries, are a fundamental issue in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and a factor behind a recent wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks on Israelis.

About 80 settlers were removed from Hebron on Friday a day after Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon withheld his required approval of their occupancy in apartments in a city where tensions between Israelis and Palestinians run high.

The settler group said it had bought the homes from Palestinian owners. But Yaalon said the settlers had failed to seek permission from Israeli authorities to move in and were trespassing.

A Netanyahu aide said on Friday that the prime minister supported Yaalon's decision to evict the settlers, a step that drew criticism from members of the right-wing coalition government and threats to withhold support in parliamentary votes.

But the aide said the settlers could take up residency again after completing the necessary paperwork.

In public remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said his government "supports the settlements" and would expedite an examination of the settlers' case.

"The moment that the purchase process is authorised, we will allow the population of the two houses in Hebron," Netanyahu said, confirming his aide's remarks.
Mass anti-Islam rallies planned across Europe next month

The anti-Islam group Pegida is organising rallies against the "Islamisation" of Europe in 14 countries including the UK next month.

The rallies will take place on February 6 in Birmingham in the UK and other countries including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland, organisers said.

Pegida, a German group whose name is an acronym for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident", regards the "not welcome" campaign as equivalent to Australia's "stop the boats" asylum policy.

Tatjana Festerling, of Pegida, said after a meeting with other sympathetic groups in Roztoky near Prague, that the influx of 800,000 unskilled predominantly Muslim men into Germany alone was a "disaster" and projects for 2016 indicated there could be even more this year.

In a press release on the group's Facebook page, she says: "It's a population exchange. Only a fraction of these people will integrate in the labour market."

She claims German chancellor Angela Merkel's policy has isolated Germany within Europe and that she does not represent the majority of the German people.

"For the peoples of Europe, only two possibilities remain: subjugation or rebellion," Festerling writes. "We here from the international organisation team belong to those who fight for the freedom and the preservation of the wide and varied cultures of Europe. This resistance must take place now and can only be carried out by a merging of all Islam-and-asylum critical civil movements and parties in Europe."

Pegida and similar groups have experienced a surge in support after incidents such as the sexual assaults and robberies on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve. In the United States, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has called for a ban on all Muslims entering the country.
Mosquito-borne brain-deforming virus spreading; at least 20 Latin American countries report cases

More and more countries are being infected by the Zika viruswhich has earlier been associated with brain deformities among infants in Braziland its alarming spread is not over yet.

At least 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including areas with popular tourist destinations, have so far recorded cases of Zika virus infection, according to international health officials.

The countries with reported incidents of the Zika virus include Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, and Guyana.

Cases have also been reported in Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, and Venezuela

Despite its great distance from the affected countries in Latin America, Samoa in the South Pacific has also reported an incident of the virus.

Because of the increasing number of nations infected by the Zika virus, health officials expect it to spread even more, with mosquitoes carrying it across the region or even in other parts of the world.

As a result, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reiterated its recommendation to pregnant women to avoid travelling to areas where there have been reported cases of Zika virus infection, especially in Latin America.

The CDC's travel advisory came at a time when scientific evidence connecting the Zika virus to brain deformity continues to grow.

Brazilian health officials, who earlier examined 35 babies with microcephaly, or underdeveloped heads and brains, are getting more and more convinced that the mental condition is due to the Zika virus.

Although the health officials still need to examine the babies' spinal fluids, they have ruled out that the brain deformity was connected to syphilis, toxoplasmosis, rubella, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex virus infections.

"Studies are under way to evaluate the risks for Zika virus transmission during pregnancy, the spectrum of outcomes associated with congenital infection and the possible association between Zika virus infection and Guillain-Barre syndrome," the Brazilian medical practitioners said.
Franklin Graham on Wheaton row: Muslims and Christians do NOT worship the same God

Islam and Christianity "clearly do not worship the same God", according to leading preacher and evangelist Rev Franklin Graham.

Graham criticised the proposal at Wheaton College in Illinois to end their plans to fire a professor who said she believed Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

On Facebook he wrote: "Both my father Billy Graham and my mother attended Wheaton College in Illinois  in fact that's where they met. I'm surprised and disappointed that the faculty council there is now recommending the college drop their plans to terminate a professor who published that she believed Islam and Christianity worship the same God in December.

"This is no minor issue that should be debated. Islam denies that God has a Son. They deny that Jesus is God. They do not believe in a Triune God  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I can tell you  Islam and Christianity clearly do not worship the same God. How the faculty council can now support this professor being allowed to teach students is deeply concerning."

His outrage follows the controversy at Wheaton where associate professor Larycia Hawkins started to wear a headscarf to show solidarity with Muslims. Stanton Jones, provost of Wheaton, which is a well-known private evangelical Christian college, placed her on notice that "termination-for-cause" proceedings would be begun against her.

However, the faculty council has now recommended that the college end its efforts to terminate her contract. In a letter to colleagues, council chairman Lynn Cohick said it should be "withdrawn due to grave concerns about the process."

Earlier, Hawkins defended herself on social media, including on Facebook.

She said that since she started wearing the headscarf in solidarity with Muslim women, she had experienced "pushback" almost exclusively from other Christians.

"The pushback has primarily centered on the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God," she wrote.

She argued that asserting religious solidarity with Muslims and Jews "will go a long way toward quelling religious violence and enervating religionist fear of the religious other."

She added that her position was one held for centuries to be valid by countless Christians, such as church fathers, saints, and "regular Christian folk like me".

Calling for peaceful disagreement on theological points such as views on the Triune God, the Creed and the Virgin Birth, she pleaded: "Let there be unity in our diversity of views about all of the above. My wearing of the hijab as an act of advent devotion has certainly caused some to question the sincerity of my devotion. To those who question the authenticity of my faith, I love you."

As well as writing on Facebook, Franklin Graham published five successive tweets on Twitter, all of which were "liked" and retweeted many hundreds of times:

Both my father Billy Graham and my mother attended @WheatonCollege in Illinoisin fact that's where they met. https://t.co/p6wa8YzbGJ  Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 23, 2016

Professor Hawkins of @WheatonCollege published her belief that Islam & Christianity worship the same God. This is no minor issue. 1/3  Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 23, 2016

I can tell youIslam and Christianity clearly do not worship the same God. https://t.co/p6wa8YzbGJ 2/3  Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 23, 2016

Islam denies that God has a Son. They deny that Jesus is God. They do not believe in a Triune God Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. 3/3  Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 23, 2016

How the faculty council at @WheatonCollege can support Professor Hawkins being allowed to teach students is deeply concerning.  Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 23, 2016

In its statement of faith, Wheaton College says: "WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life; and we believe that God created the Heavens and the earth out of nothing by His spoken word, and for His own glory."

The statement continues: "WE BELIEVE in the existence of Satan, sin, and evil powers, and that all these have been defeated by God in the cross of Christ.

"WE BELIEVE that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, as a representative and substitutionary sacrifice, triumphing over all evil; and that all who believe in Him are justified by His shed blood and forgiven of all their sins.

"WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God and are enabled to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God."
Turkey: Christian refugees 'pretend to be Muslim'

Christian refugees who have fled ISIS in Iraq and Syria are practising their faith in secret now they live in a Muslim-majority nation, according to a Turkish newspaper.

When civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, thousands fled to neighbouring Turkey. The number of refugees swelled following the uprising of so-called Islamic State, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that tens of thousands of Iraqis are now also seeking refuge in Turkish towns and cities, alongside 1.9 million Syrians.

According to the Hurriyet daily newspaper, thousands of Armenians, Syriacs and Chaldean Christian refugees are now living in small Turkish cities including Amasya, Erzurum and Yozgat.

One family who fled Iraq in 2014 told the newspaper that they pretend to be Muslim in public. The Turkish government is secular, but there are fears that it is becoming increasingly Islamist under president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"My husband and I fled with our two children one year ago with around 20 other families. There was pressure on us in Iraq," an Armenian woman living in Yozgat, told Hurriyet.

"We have relatives in Europe. We are only getting by thanks to their support.

"Our children cannot go to school here because they cannot speak Turkish. They can only communicate with the children of other Armenian families who have moved here."

Another family who fled Baghdad told the newspaper that their seven-year-old daughter had not spoken since the day their home was raided by ISIS militants in 2014.

"We are working hard to provide her treatment, but she still won't speak," Linda Markaryan said.

"We do not have a future here. Everything in our lives is uncertain. Our only wish is to provide a better future for our children in a place where they are safe and secure... We are pious people, but we have to conduct our sermons and prayers at home. This is hard."

Turkey has a strong Christian heritage  the apostle Paul and Timothy were both born there, and the city of Antioch, now Antakya, was known as "the cradle of Christianity"  but a series of genocides in the early 20th century killed much of the Christian population. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 also forced many Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Georgians to leave the country, and the population of Turkey is now more than 97 per cent Muslim.

A recent study by the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusettes found that the Christian population of Turkey has plummeted over the past 100 years from 21.7 per cent to just 0.2 per cent.

In an interview with the BBC in August 2013, however, a Syriac Orthodox priest said that the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey had revived the faith community.

"Thank God our community is alive again," Father Joaquim said. "On Sundays our church is full with worshippers."
Whether the UK should take 3,000 child refugees is a question of morality, not politics

The UK will accept more unaccompanied child refugees in response to pressure for opposition parties and charities.

Although the Home Office have not said how many they will take, they have confirmed the extra children will be taken on top of the 20,000 figure already pledged to be taken by 2020.

However they have confirmed that they will not be from Europe but UN refugee camps in Syria and neighbouring countries, much to the frustration of campaigners.

Both Save the Children and the Labour party have expressed their disappointment the government will not be accepting child refugees from among makeshift camps in Europe such as Calais' Jungle.

Alongside the children's charity and Labour, Tim Farron, the evangelical Christian leader of the Liberal Democrat party, who has long campaigned for Britain to take at least 3,000 children from Europe, expressed his anger at the annoucement. He said the government was doing the "absolute minimum to alleviate the biggest humanitarian crisis facing our world in the last half a century".
Why an atheist philosopher is one of our century's greatest prophets

When you stop and think about it, some of the most significant figures in the Bible are outsiders. People who weren't part of the Israelite nation, people who weren't supposed to carry authority  those of other or even 'rival' faiths...

From the Old Testament character of Ruth, to the Magi who visited Jesus and His parents, to the Good Samaritan, those who were on the outside have often had important lessons for the people of God.

This remains true into the present day. One of the most effective philosophers I have ever read is John Gray. His writing about God, human nature and the limits of atheism mean he's in some ways a very astute theologian. His political predictions have seen him hailed as something of a 21st Century prophet. This may well be surprising, given he is also an atheist.

Gray's atheism is of a very different order to the high priests of the New Atheism though. Indeed he has been among the most savage critics of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and the shaky basis of their intellectual project. "Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest may still believe that, over the long run, the advance of science will drive religion to the margins of human life, but this is now an article of faith rather than a theory based on evidence," he says.

What distinguishes Gray's atheism is the rigour he subjects it to  and the way he unflinchingly looks at the consequences of an atheistic worldview. "None of the divergent values that atheists have from time to time promoted has any essential connection with atheism, or with science," he argues. "How could any increase in scientific knowledge validate values such as human equality and personal autonomy? The source of these values is not science. In fact, as [Nietzsche]... argued, these quintessential liberal values have their origins in monotheism."

Having held academic positions in both the United States (including at Harvard and Yale) and the United Kingdom (Oxford and the London School of Economics) he is well versed in the culture of both countries  and the way in which religion has been a force for good and ill on both sides of the Pond.

Gray's thought has spanned different areas of political and moral philosophy. He began his career critiquing the prevailing liberal thought of the giant of 20th Century American philosophy  John Rawls  and moved on in his most recent work to examine the vexed philosophical question of free will.

However, it is in his work on 'progress' that has had the largest impact  remorselessly attacking a shibboleth of the Western mindset  namely that humans are gradually getting more advanced, becoming in some sense 'better' and, given enough time, will arrive in Utopia (or as near as makes little difference).

The title of a collection of Gray's articles on this subject sums his argument up perfectly: "Heresies: Against Progress and other Illusions." His thought was developed in his best selling works Straw Dogs and Black Mass. Here, in pithy prose he dismantles the unifying theme behind so much of the folly of the last few centuries  the hubris of the idea of progress.

"The myth is that the progress achieved in science and technology can occur in ethics, politics or, more simply, civilisation." Gray goes on, "the myth is that the advances made in civilisation can be the basis for a continuing, cumulative improvement."

Gray is equally scathing about political movements which are animated by progressivism  be they from the left or the right. He correctly identifies the 'progressive' motivations behind some of the worst totalitarian communist regimes of the 20th century. Yet he applies the same rigourous critique to the right of the political spectrum as well as to Marxism.

Gray was among the first to recognise the same progressive tendencies among the neo-conservatives who swept to ascendency in the US and the UK in the wake of 9/11. His dire warnings about the consequences of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 were mostly unheeded. Now though, they look prophetic  in that the rise of ISIS has mirrored what Gray predicted would happen. His biting satire published in the runup to war, "Torture: A Modest Proposal" was a tour de force. Sadly no-one in the White House or Downing Street was listening.

He then spelled it out more clearly. "An attempt to install American-style democracy across a region where US power is already loathed," he stated, "will propel tens of millions of young people, many of them unemployed, into active support for radical Islam. The result can only be terrorism on an even bigger sacle." Sadly, his prophecy is being proven correct by ISIS, even as I write.

In this disdain for the progressive vision of the world, Gray owes much to Christian sources and he acknowledges his debt  especially to Saint Augustine. Gray's admiration for the great Church Father's clear thought is obvious. "In placing the source of evil within human beings, Augustine's account is more humane than myths in which evil is a sinister force that acts to subvert human goodness," he says.

Gray's critique of much of Western society since the Enlightenment is that it has created its own myths to replace Christianity  but has forgotten one of the central insights of the Christian worldview  that we are all flawed. Augustine's doctrine of original sin may seem bleak  but in fact it is a far more realistic view of the human condition than the post-Enlightenment view of humans as rational actors in a rational world. Indeed, he has written about why and how religious faith may indeed be far more 'natural' than so-called 'naturalists' are willing to admit.

His philosophy isn't without its mis-steps. His view of the human condition, free will and the future of humanity can be bleak. Because of his forceful insight about the brokenness of humanity he is a realist. But owing to his lack of faith in the redeeming nature of Christianity, his realism all too easily trips over into pessimism.

Indeed Gray's recent writings on the environment in particular find him in an especially resigned state about the future, declaring that in "a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world... there can be no doubt who the winner will be."

So many of our world leaders would benefit from a crash course in John Gray's thought. The same is true of some of our churches. The naive self-help-style religion which mars parts of the evangelical world could do with a good dose of the realism of Gray's thought.

When asked what is wrong with the world, GK Chesterton is reputed to have said, "I am." Although that insight led Chesterton to an orthodox Christian faith which has eluded Gray, in years to come I suspect we will view him with something like the same reverence; for his clarity, realism and indeed for his heretical lack of faith in 'progress'.
Zac Goldsmith: I am not too rich to be mayor

Zac Goldsmith has insisted he is not too rich to be mayor of London.

In an interview with Christian Today the multi-millionaire Tory hopeful said he did not think his wealthy background precluded him from relating to Londoners from poorer boroughs.

"In order to be able to help people you need to be able to empathise, you have to care and you have got to be able to solve their problem," he told Christian Today. "I don't think you have to have a direct experience of each of those problems to help people."

Goldsmith, who has been MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston since 2010 and is now the Conservative candidate to be Mayor of London, is the beneficiary of a trust fund worth an estimated 300 million. He is the son of tycoon and politician Sir James Goldsmith and went to four public schools during his education, including Eton College where he was expelled for possessing cannabis.

However the environmentalist campaigner said it didn't matter what his background was as long as he could empathise with and solve the issues Londoners face.

"As long as you care about problems and want to tackle injustices and are able to solve those problems then you can be a good politician and a good representative," he said.

"That is what I have always tried to do."

Faith communities in London have grown significantly since 2005 with most of the numbers coming from black majority Pentecostal churches in poorer boroughs of London.

Speaking of his own faith, Goldsmith said he did not "practise religion in a formal sense" but promised to work "very closely" with faith groups and communities.

"My family have influences from all over the place," he said. "My father's side is Jewish and my mother's side is Christian. I suppose I was brought up with a mix of everything."

He added: "If I had to reduce my own faith to a soundbite then I would say I have a deep reverence for the magic of the natural world. That has guided me through my career and through my life."

Goldsmith formally launched his campaign last week with plans to double house building to 50,000 a year by 2020.

Goldsmith, who famously had a spectacular bust-up on-air with Jon Snow, has become more softly spoken over his years as an MP. But he remains a fierce activist. He has campaigned vigorously on environmental issues and fought against his own party on the public's ability to 'recall' their MP for wrongdoing.

"I have been a pain in the backside as far as the government are concerned," he admitted to Christian Today. But now he is trying to turn his rebellious and independent parliamentary history to his advantage.

"An effective mayor must be willing to stand up to the government when they get it wrong," he said. "But more importantly they must be able to get a good deal from government," he said in a clear jibe against Labour rival Sadiq Khan.

Goldsmith is trailing Khan by up to ten points in the latest polls and a number of senior Conservative figures have criticised him for a lack of energy in his campaign. After a delayed start, the Richmond MP has finally launched his campaign focusing on housing, the environment, crime and transport with a strong focus on the night tube. He added he would be "totally prepared" to work with faith groups such as Patrick Regan's XLP in "tackling the root causes of crime".

However he defended the government's plan to allow Ofsted inspections into extra-curricular settings including churches where children receive more than 6-8 hours teaching a week as a "necessary policy".

"It's a very simple policy and I don't think you can argue with it," he said.

"But you can't have a policy like that which only targets one community. Extremism doesn't just exist in one community. There are particular communities which have particular problems at the moment but it is not an absolute.

"So I think the policy of requiring all educational centres outside of school to register is probably the right one.

"But as with all these policies there is capacity for it to be abused and our job is to make sure that doesn't happen."
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A new report on Use of Force regulations at police departments in major U.S. cities gives insight into when and how authorities use force.

The data published by Campaign Zero (a campaign by Black Lives Matter activists to end police violence in America) also shows how departments fail to include common-sense limits on police use of force. See the gallery above for a look at policies at 17 U.S. police departments in major cities.

READ THIS: HPD policy change raises eyebrows

Researchers obtained the material in the report through Freedom of Information Act requests. Campaign Zero looked at four basic criteria in evaluating the city police departments: does the policy prioritize preserving life, require de-escalation, ban choking and strangling and is there a duty to stop excessive force.

Police departments in the cities of Houston, Indianapolis and Minneapolis lacked all four of these common sense policies. (The one major city to have all four policies in place: Philadelphia). In addition, the report noted that police in cities like Houston and San Antonio are not required to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at civilians.

Some of these police departments can be tight-lipped about their policies. The Houston Police Department redacted a large portion of their use of force rules, according to the Campaign Zero report.

HoustonChronicle.com: Unarmed and Dangerous in Houston

The Houston Chronicle took a similar look at those policies back in 2013 and received their own heavily redacted document. (At the same time, police departments in Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso and the Harris County Sheriffs Office released their use-of-force policies without redaction).

That secrecy can be troubling when looking at data on police violence. At the time of the Chronicle report, from 2008 to 2012, officers shot 121 people, 52 of them fatally  a quarter of the civilians shot by the Houston Police Department during that time were unarmed.

See the gallery above for a look at use-of-force policies at 17 major city police departments.
Update! The van has been retrieved by a towing company in Houston after being abandoned by the side of the road. Trailer and instruments still missing.

UPDATE: The van was found early Tuesday morning, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, but the trailer and its expensive contents were nowhere to be seen. The band posted a photo of the van at a local impound lot.

The Black Lillies, a Tennessee roots-rock band, is reporting that its travel trailer and passenger van were stolen from a Houston-area hotel parking lot.

The group had played a free in-store show at Houstons Cactus Music record store on Sunday afternoon and played the Dosey Doe venue just north of Houston near the Woodlands.

The trailer and van were both parked at the Quality Inn location near Bush Intercontinental Airport in the 15300 block of Vantage Parkway East where the band was staying.

According to a band rep the trailer and the bands white 2011 Ford E-350 van was parked at the front of the hotel. That trailer is a 2016 gray Larkspur, which was full of the bands instruments, merchandise, compact discs and vinyl, and some of the bands personal items.

RELATED: Houston indie-pop band's gear stolen in Las Vegas

Surveillance footage from the hotel allegedly shows a black SUV pulling up next to the trailer at around 2:30 a.m. and leaving with the trailer just under two minutes later.

The band rep says that the trailer and van cost about $30,000 together. The total price of the items that were in that trailer is said to be $70,000.

The trailer and van both have Tennessee license plates.

Sadly some musical acts playing the Houston area have fallen prey to thieves.

Last year electronic musician Jason Chung, who tours internationally and records under the name Nosaj Thing, had expensive musical equipment stolen from a van parked in the parking lot of Houston late-night diner House of Pies.

The Black Lillies are currently touring behind a new album, Hard to Please, released late in 2015.

Band member Cruz Contreras told the Houston Chronicle on Monday morning just hours after the theft that the band had bedded down at around 11 p.m. Sunday night. They had planned on heading out at 6 a.m. but woke up to see no van or trailer.

"We travel with eight people so we needed to make sure no one left for breakfast or something," Contreras said. "We were wiped out clean."

He says that they've made calls to their insurance company and filed a report with the Houston Police Department.

There is a treasured 1952 Gibson J 45 guitar that he would love to get back, he says.

The front desk told Contreras that they didn't see the suspects make their getaway.

The band is set to return to Tennessee on Jan. 29 for a show in Johnson City. For now The Black Lillies are still in Houston, it appears, mulling over what the next move is. They are working on finding photos of the stolen equipment in the hopes of getting the word out to local music shops.

A Rally.org page has been set up to help raise funds for the band to move on with its tour.
Two men were wounded Sunday night in a shooting outside a shopping mall in northwest Houston.

The shooting happened about 10:30 p.m. the parking lot at Willowbrook Mall, according to the Montgomery County Police Reporter.

The Reporter indicated a group of men were standing outside in the parking lot when a black Monte Carlo pulled up near them and someone inside fired gunshots in their direction.

One of the victims was wounded in the leg while the other was wounded in the shoulder. They were both rushed to Ben Taub General Hospital. Their conditions were not released.
A trio of Mercedes Benz vehicles greeted "Age of Aquarius" Winter Ball 2016 arrivals, beginning with a white G-Class SUV (better known to car enthusiasts as the "G-wagon") in the Hilton Americas-Houston valet line. Upstairs on the hotel's second level, a sleek S-class convertible marked the check-in station where guests including Kristina Somerville, Valerie Dietrich, and Chita Johnson floated past. Across the hall, two shirtless mermen beckoned black-tie gala-goers into the main event.

Inside the oceanic reception, servers passed turquoise "Mermaid of the Sea" signature cocktails from a central bar topped by an aerial performer dressed as a mermaid. Live auction items, such as the Mercedes-Benz GLE450 AMG coupe, a big board auction, and silent auction listings lined the festive space before a dramatic chiffon partition was moved to reveal a breathtaking blue and green-washed ballroom.
Years of low test scores among Houston Community College nursing students have prompted regulators to forbid the enrollment of new students until scores improve.

The Texas Board of Nursing, which oversees nursing programs in Texas, moved HCC's associate degree-granting program to a "conditional" status late last week after fewer than 80 percent of the system's nursing students passed the National Council Licensure Examination over the last three years.

It's the latest hit to the program, which has struggled in recent years. A past president of Coleman College, the campus that houses the nursing program, was fired in 2014 after faculty begged for months for system leaders to oust her, pointing in part to lackluster scores on nursing licensing tests.

HCC leaders say the downgrade is a "blip on the radar" and the program is improving under new leadership. In 2013, 2014, and 2015 HCC students had a 66 percent, 71 percent, and 78 percent pass rate, respectively.

HCC's vocational nursing program, meanwhile, also may be in trouble after passing rates among students in that program plummeted from 92 percent in 2013 to 68 percent in 2014.

HCC -- which is doubling the size of Coleman College, the Texas Medical Center healthcare campus where the nursing program is offered -- won't be able to admit new students into the associate-degree program until the annual passing rate hits 80 percent.

At the most recent administration of the nursing exam -- one of several throughout the year -- more than 89 percent of HCC graduates passed. Administrators said this is cause for optimism that the program will be back to full approval soon.

"Our outstanding faculty and staff in the nursing program are dedicated to the success of every student," HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado said in the statement. "Since my arrival in May 2014, we have been committed to correcting the deficiencies in the program and returning it to full standing" with the Board of Nursing. "With the Trustees' support we have changed administrators, expanded resources, and taken additional measures to improve program results. Our changes are working, as evidenced by the increase to a 78.43% pass rate for 2015 and the notable 89.47% at the last exam."

The nursing board had previously given HCC a warning and required college officials to turn in a report on its program after passing rates dropped from 86 percent in 2012 to 66 percent in 2013. The board also sent staff to Houston to visit the college.

A report by the board notes that passing rates have improved and the nursing program has the full support of the administration. However, students reported that labs needed more equipment and that they wanted more chances to practice in the labs to improve their skills.

The board report calls for HCC administration to provide adequate faculty resources and equipment, suggesting that the college create a new position for a nurse to schedule and coordinate all clinical learning opportunities and to make sure the labs are fully equipped. The HCC administration is required to provide an improvement plan by April 1.

A separate report on HCC's vocational nursing program found that faculty salaries are so low they've become a barrier to recruiting the best teachers.

The move comes as HCC is spending $98 million in bond money to double the size of its Coleman College, where the nursing program and other healthcare courses are offered.
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The Texas Education Agency has set parent meetings for three local charter schools being closed under a 2013 state law meant to hold poor-performing charters more accountable.

The first meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Fallbrook College Preparatory Academy at 12512 Walters Road in northwest Houston. The TEA notified Fallbrook in November that it would lose its accreditation under a 2013 state law that made it easier to close poor-performing charters. Fallbrook earned the state's unacceptable academic rating for three straight years and fell short of financial standards in 2013-14.
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A grand jury convened to investigate whether a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic had sold the organs of aborted fetuses on Monday cleared the clinic and instead indicted the undercover videographers behind the allegations, surprising the officials who called for the probe and delighting supporters of the women's health organization.

The Harris County grand jury indicted David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, both of California, on charges of tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony with a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. It also charged Daleiden, the leader of the videographers, with the same misdemeanor he had alleged  the purchase or sale of human organs, presumably because he had offered to buy in an attempt to provoke Planned Parenthood employees into saying they would sell.

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced the indictments in a statement, noting the probe had lasted more than two months.

THE BACKGROUND: Undercover Planned Parenthood video targets Houston clinic

"As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us," said Anderson, a Republican. "All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case."

An arrest warrant was issued late Monday; documents detailing the charges were expected to be available Tuesday.

The videographers, who had posed as employees of a company that buys tissue and filmed interactions with Planned Parenthood executives, issued a statement saying they had not committed any crimes.

EXPLAINER: What you need to know about the Planned Parenthood controversy

"The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws," the statement said, adding, "Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see."

Planned Parenthood has denied any such admissions or wrongdoing, calling the videos heavily edited and saying it has never profited from selling fetal tissue, only received reimbursements for the costs of preserving the tissue for research, which is legal. The group sued Daleiden last month.

Anderson's statement said the grand jury "cleared (Planned Parenthood) of breaking the law."

Still, the dozen videos released by the Center for Medical Progress of Planned Parenthood clinics around the country already have had a huge impact, including an effort in Congress to defund the organization.

In Texas, lawmakers are studying new laws on fetal tissue donation, and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission said it will drop Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program.

More probes pursued

The Harris County investigation was one of several that began in the state after the center released footage of a Houston clinic executive casually discussing the methods and costs of preserving fetal tissue, which Republican state officials said was proof the organization was making a profit.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a tea party firebrand from Houston, was the first to call for the Harris County District Attorney's Office to investigate. He also directed a state Senate committee to conduct its own probe.

On Monday, Patrick issued a statement saying the Senate probe would continue because "the horrific nature of these videos demand scrutiny and investigation."

Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who also ordered their own investigations, released statements saying they would continue.

"The fact remains that the videos exposed the horrific nature of abortion and the shameful disregard for human life of the abortion industry," Paxton said.

Planned Parenthood officials declared victory, however, saying they felt vindicated after being cleared by the lengthy non-partisan investigation.

"It's great news because it demonstrates what we have said from the very beginning, which is that Planned Parenthood is following every rule and regulation, and that these people came into our buildings under the guise of health when their true intentions were to spread lies," said Rochelle Tafolla, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which runs the Houston clinic as well as facilities in Louisiana.

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast previously has acknowledged donating fetal tissue in 2010, but has said it did not make any profit then and has not even donated since.

Across the country, two Planned Parenthood branches currently participate in tissue donation programs, according to the organization.

The National Abortion Federation was more direct in its celebration of the indictments.

"As we've known all along, David Daleiden is the one who broke the law, not abortion providers," said Vicki Saporta, the abortion-rights group's president and CEO.

Legislation sought

Daleiden, 27, has said he was a "child of a crisis pregnancy" and has been involved with anti-abortion work since he was 15. He was involved in undercover video work by a group called Live Action in 2007.

He spent years working on the effort on fetal tissue, which is not studied often today, but in the past has helped lead to several medical breakthroughs, including an early polio vaccine.

Planned Parenthood has said he secretly recorded staff and patients at least 65 times over the last eight years. The organization also has alleged that Daleiden used aliases, obtained fake government identifications and formed a fake tissue procurement company to gain access to private areas and record private conversations to be deceptively edited.

THE BACKLASH: Abbott wants harsher penalties in wake of Planned Parenthood videos

The second indictment suggests the grand jury found that he went too far in trying to provoke Planned Parenthood to admit to selling tissue. That charge, for intentionally buying or selling a human organ, is punishable by up to a year in jail while tampering with a governmental record could result a sentence of up to 20 years.

That would be a high price to pay, despite the success that Daleiden had in sparking investigations and legislative studies.

The indictments did not appear to have any chance of slowing those efforts.

In fact, one prominent anti-abortion activist suggested that they were more proof that laws needed to be changed.

"I think the grand jury decision today shows that we have very weak laws when it comes to this," said John Seago of Texas Right to Life. "The Legislature needs to address this."

Brian Rogers and Samantha Ketterer contributed to this report.
Cheryl Vickers almost got away it.

She retired at 65 last year from the Houston Police Federal Credit Union. No one seeming the wiser to what she had done with at least $1.2 million.

But the vice president for accounting's scheme was discovered after a customer came to the credit union with a "stale" check to request it be reissued. A stale check would be one issued months or years earlier by the credit union, but never cashed.

The credit union found records that showed Vickers had already re-issued the customer's check .

Deeper digging showed that Vickers had often reissued such checks to pay her own personal bills. Some of the reissued checks even had her credit card number hand-written on them, according to authorities.

The last check she issued, the very month she retired, was for $7,800 to pay her Chase Bank credit card.

Vickers was charged in mid-December and pleaded guilty last week to embezzling from a federally insured credit union.

She faces up to 30 years in federal prison. A judge has ordered her to repay the money. Cashier's checks or money orders only.

There were a number of crimes that infatuated Houstonians last year.

See some of the most notable in the gallery above.
A Houston man arrested Friday for allegedly sneaking into a woman's home and sexually assaulting her as she slept has been charged with four other similar crimes, court records show.

Reginald Bond, 37, is facing five charges of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit sexual assault, a first-degree felony.

"He's accused of breaking into these women's homes and sexually assaulting them as they slept," said Bond's attorney, Danny Easterling. "We're still investigating the allegations."

Bond is being held in the Harris County Jail without bail. It is unclear how HPD investigators determined Bond was a suspect in five sexual assaults beginning June 2014 until the last one on Jan. 17.

Houston police spokesman Victor Senties said the agency is not releasing details of the investigation, including the area of assaults or whether there could be more victims. The law enforcement agency also declined to release a mugshot of Bond.

Bond, who lives near Jersey Village in west Houston, was slated to appear in state District Judge Denise Bradley's court Monday to be arraigned, but was rescheduled after Easterling was appointed to the case.

If convicted of even one of the assaults, Bond faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Harris County court records show that he has not been arrested before in Houston.
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Those who plan on trying to see the Pope in Mexico next month should be aware that the border will be quite busy.

Pope Francis is due to visit Juarez, Mexico on Feb. 17 and already U.S. Customs and Border Protection is working to make sure the area is safe for the religious leader and that border traffic runs smoothly nearby.

According to a CBP release last week, the agency is working with a number federal and state law enforcement agencies in the El Paso/Juarez area as the border prepares for a surge of sorts of people entering Mexico to get a glimpse of his holiness.

A large number of people from within the El Paso area as well as out of town visitors are expected to congregate in the area and will increase traffic levels throughout the El Paso border area, the CBP said in a statement Thursday.

HOLY HAPPINESS: Pope Francis reveals 10 tips for a happy life

There will be a temporary flight restriction in the area during the Popes visit. In addition, the Bridge of the Americas cargo facility will close at 2 p.m. February 16 and resume its normal operations February 19.

The CBP also concedes that there is a possibility for people to use the event and the increased foot and vehicle traffic in the area to circumvent border crossings.

There is a tremendous amount of advance planning and coordination in the areas of border security and the processing of border crossers relative to this event, the CBP said in a statement.

As a part of Pope Francis visit he is slated to visit a prison in the area and also lead a Mass which should attract more than 220,000 people. The Juarez visit will be the conclusion a six-day trip through Mexico.

The city has been plagued by cartel-related violence over the past decade, making the Popes visit all the more poignant.
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In the annals of long-lost dogs, this one must be a record.

Ginger, a Yorkshire terrier who disappeared from her Miami home 10 years ago, was recently found in a northwest Houston subdivision, about a block from busy West Little York.

The tiny dog and her Miami family have been reunited because Ginger had a microchip, and the man who found her on his way to work made sure she got a checkup.

Houston communications consultant Katharine Fraser, whose boyfriend, Byron Black, picked up the dog, told about the incredible encounter in her blog, The Sage Leopard. As described by Fraser, Ginger was wearing a big red bow but had matted fur where she wasn't balding.

When the microchip scan came back with 10-year-old contact information in Miami, Fraser said she was initially dejected, thinking it couldn't possibly be current.

She was stunned, then, to get a call from Yajaira Fuentes, the dog's overjoyed owner in Miami. Fraser said she was also shocked that nobody else had taken the dog to a vet during the decade she'd been lost.

After a flurry of text messages with Fuentes and one false start at the airport, Fraser and her friend got the dog onto a plane bound for Miami, with expenses paid by Fuentes.

"She really stepped up," Fraser said Monday by phone. "She was thinking about flying here but decided it made more sense (to fly the dog home)."

Now reintegrating into the Fuentes household with two other dogs, a parakeet and a ferret, Ginger will need some surgeries to remove tumors.

Fraser said she and Fuentes have stayed in touch about the dog on Facebook and by text message. Ginger is taking medication and appears to be doing better, Fraser said.

"The dog looks happier," she said.

Meanwhile, Fraser said she and Black have kept an eye out for a lost-dog notices but haven't seen any indication that somebody in Houston is looking for Ginger.
Check out the Houston Chronicle's Cruz News each morning for fresh updates from the Houston-based presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Planning from the start

Almost 30 years ago, a teenage Ted Cruz planned his path to the Oval Office, then he followed it precisely, the Houston Chronicle reported Friday.

A 1987 catalog of scholarship winners describes a 17-year-old Cruz's plan: Go to Princeton, go to Harvard, work in private practice, run for public office "and eventually achieve a strong enough reputation and track record to run forand winPresident of the United States."

Cruz went to Princeton, went to Harvard, worked in private practice, won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2011 and now is running for president.

The revelation bolsters the common criticism that Cruz ran for Senate with his eye on the presidency. It would actually suggest that Cruz has worked throughout his entire successful career with an eye on the presidency.

His former peers and teachers expressed no surprise with his rapid political ascent from an unknown lawyer to a U.S. senator and presidential front-runner within a few short years. He was the top of class, notably serious about his constitutional studies and vocally touted his political ambitions.

On Saturday, video emerged online of Cruz as a high school senior, playfully citing his aspirations for "world domination."

Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle.

Finally, some friends

Cruz nabbed two of his first big endorsements from mainstream Republican figures: former Fox News anchor Glenn Beck and former Texas governor Rick Perry.

Beck joined Cruz at a campaign even in Iowa on Saturday to announce his official backing of the presidential campaign, The New York Times reported.

Back has a powerful voice in Republican politics; he founded the conservative media outlet The Blaze in 2011, and hosts one of the nation's most listened to daily talk radio shows. He has long supported Cruz and his brand of constitutional conservatismand he's emerged as a prominent conservative critic of Cruz's rival Donald Trump. The Saturday announcement makes it official.

Perry announced his endorsement Monday morning in a video statement provided by the Cruz campaign. The longest-serving Texas governor was himself a brief contender in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, during which time he forged a notably sour relationship with Trump.

The two big endorsements come after a tough week for Cruz, when a half dozen Republican senators and the sitting Republican governor of Iowa denounced his presidential campaign, while Tea Party icon Sarah Palin endorsed his rival, Trump.

Cruz was able to spin that opposition from Washington to suit his image as the anti-establishment candidate poised to take on the Republican establishment. Both Beck and Perry are in his corner of conservative voices frequently critical of the Republican Party.

New numbers

A Fox News poll released Sunday puts Trump 11 points above Cruz in Iowa, the host of the nation's first primary caucus.

Earlier this month, another Fox news poll put Cruz four points over Trump in Iowa. The senator from Texas is falling behind.

But he and Trump have been trading the top spot in Iowa since late last year. Nationwide, polls show Trump commands a 15 point lead over Cruz, with most other candidates lagging far behind.

But the new Iowa poll comes after a bad week for Cruz, full of denunciations from Republican officials and one high-profile endorsement for his rival Trump.

This week is starting off better, with two big-name backers putting themselves behind Cruz. That should have some impact on poll numbers in the days ahead.

A Dixie Chick strikes again

Natalie Maines, lead vocalist of the Dallas-based Dixie Chicks, came out against Cruz in a tweet Saturday night.

More than a decade ago, she also shocked the Lone Star State when she told a London audience, "We're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed that [President George W. Bush] is from Texas."

She took a similar anti-war approach to her Cruz critique. She placed a quotation of his call to "carpet bomb" the Middle East next to a condemnation of war by five-star General and former President Dwight Eisenhower.

"I'm ashamed Ted Cruz claims to be an American," Maines wrote.

Hostility televised

Trump and Cruz took their battle to the airwaves this weekend with the rivals' first attack ads.

The critical video spots represent another escalation in the feud between the two front runners for the GOP presidential nomination, who just one month ago spoke kindly of each other. They also represent a significant uptick in investment in the media battle.

The Cruz campaign put out a half-minute video honing in on Trump's use of eminent domain in his real estate developments, characterizing the billionaire mogul as a "fat cat."

The ad said, "Trump colluded with Atlantic City insiders to bulldoze the home of an elderly widow for a limousine parking lot at his casino."

On Sunday, PolitiFact reported that while Trump did try to have the house bulldozed, it never actually happened.

Also on Friday, Trump put out a 60-second ad accusing Cruz of taking a soft line on immigration in 2013.

It shows Cruz stumbling through answers to questions about his support for a bill that would have lent leniency to people in the United States without documentation. The Huffington Post reported at the time that Cruz did not support that bill.

Cruz and Trump clash over who would be stricter on immigration, with both advocating construction of a 2,000-mile wall.

In a fundraising email Monday morning, however, Cruz remained polite, referring to his rival as "my friend Donald Trump."
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Texas' longest-serving governor endorsed Ted Cruz for president, the campaign announced with a video Monday morning.

Rick Perry, himself a brief contender in the 2016 GOP race, offered among the highest-profile endorsements for the Cruz campaign yet. It comes after a tough week for Cruz, when a half dozen Republican Party officials denounced the freshman senator's run, and Tea Party icon Sarah Palin endorsed his leading rival, Donald Trump.

A Perry spokesman said the former Texas governor will be campaigning on Cruz's behalf in Iowa through at least Wednesday.

Cruz vs. Trump: GOP front runner tweets highly edited Ted Cruz portrait

"Ted has proven that he is ready to serve as commander in chief on day one," Perry said in a video released by the Cruz campaign. "He has also proven the willingness to take on the Washington cartel and restore power and opportunity back to the people."

Perry noted to Politico, the first publication to report the news Monday, that the race for the Republican nomination "appears to be down to two people." That would be Cruz and Trump--the two national front-runners according to most polls.

During his own recent presidential big, Perry forged a notably sour relationship with Cruz's top rival, Trump, who in July said that the former Texas governor "should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate."

RELATED: Rick Perry and Donald Trump get vicious in latest political sparring match

In a statement Monday morning, Cruz said, "I am thrilled to have Rick join our campaign, With his principled leadership, we will coalesce conservatives behind this campaign to win the White House in 2016."

Perry will join conservative media man Glenn Beck as the biggest public figures behind the Cruz campaign. Beck offered his endorsement on Saturday.

When Perry left the presidential race in September, the Cruz campaign, based in Houston, swept up swaths of his supporters. And, Perry and Cruz sat down to talk in December, Politico reported.

"I wanted to talk about him, who he was, see if I could get a handle on Ted Cruz the man, not Cruz the caricature I'd seen through the political lens," Perry told POLITICO. "What I found was a very different person than what I had been led to believe."
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has filed a lawsuit challenging a new Texas law that makes it a felony to provide shelter or rent housing to immigrants in this country illegally.

House Bill 11, written by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, and passed last year, states that penalties for human smuggling would be increased and that the number of Texas Department of Public Safety officers on the border would go up as well.
Following a pair of top-name endorsements from former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and conservative radio talker Glenn Beck, a pro-Ted Cruz GOP super PAC is launching two ads Monday targeting poll-leading Donald Trump, Politico reports.

The spots come as a $2.5 million ad buy by the super PAC, Keep the Promise I, as Cruz is in a tight race with Trump in Iowa.

In an updated CBS News poll, Trump is ahead of Cruz in Iowa by 5 percent, but has a bigger lead in South Carolina with 19 percent.

Throughout the campaign and even during primetime GOP debates, Cruz has made it a point to show that Trump is a recent convert to conservatism and has supported liberal values before.

In one spot titled "Extreme," the ad spotlights Trump's record on abortion and shows him in a 1999 interview with Tim Russert from Meet the Press.

"I hate the concept of abortion," he said in the interview. "I hate everything it stands for . . . but I still just believe in choice."

The ad apparently begins, "Donald Trump is not a conservative because he is an extreme on abortion," and shifts to the 1999 interview where Trump says he is "pro-choice in every respect," with the saying repeated three times.

The ad closes with "Donald Trump: for partial birth abortion. Not a conservative."

The next ad, "I like Ted," is the television version of a digital ad they ran last week of audio from Trump giving Cruz a flattering introduction at the 2014 Lincoln Day fundraising dinner in Palm Beach, Fla.

"Now, one of the reasons I like Ted Cruz so much is that he is not controversial," Trump says as laughter is heard in the background. "But the truth is he shouldn't be controversial because what he's doing is right, it's common sense, it's good government, it's so many good things. He's now a very popular and important figure. So, with that, I would like to introduce a very special guy, Sen. Ted Cruz."
THE LEAD: The Perry endorsement

Rick Perry has officially endorsed Ted Cruz for president. The former governor, who left the race last September, was honest and direct in an interview with POLITICOs Katie Glueck about the different nature of todays GOP electorate.

Gov. Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Jebs barely making an impact out there  those are very skilled, very successful, very experienced governors, Perry said. But the electorate doesnt want that. Thats why we have elections, why we democratically select leaders.

Calling Cruz a man of principle, Perry is perhaps the most high-profile establishment figure in the party to back the senator. As Cruz tries to make the argument that the Republican establishment has rallied behind Trump, Perry offers valuable campaign skills that can help Cruz as voting nears. Perry will join Cruz on the trail in Iowa on Tuesday, according to the report.

Its officially one week until voting starts in Iowa, which means its now 36 days until Texas primary day. As always, send me your predictions at this point in the race: bobby.cervantes@chron.com; @BobbyCervantes.

-- Davey Joe Montgomery has the results from the Tarrant County GOP straw poll over the weekend: Cruz prevailed over Trump  39.73% to 26.74%. Rubio 3rd with 9.31%.

-- And dont miss his dispatch on Trump v. Cruz in Texas: For (former Corinth mayor Shirley) Spellerberg, the somebody is billionaire Donald Trump, who sits atop the field in the countdown to the first-in-the-nation delegate contest in Iowa in just over a week, on Feb. 1. And as the 2016 presidential race officially unfolds after more than a year of anticipation, Spellerberg and other Trump loyalists in Texas are preparing for another critical turn in the presidential battle when Texas and nearly a dozen other states hold Super Tuesday contests on March 1.

-- Charter funding question has few easy answers, by the Chronicles Lauren McGaughy. With the Supreme Court close to deciding whether Texas' method of funding public schools is constitutional, a recurrent talking point has once again pervaded the conversation: Charter schools are disadvantaged when compared with traditional school districts because they get less money on average from the state. That narrative is incomplete at best, experts said.

-- Cruz, Trump battle is emblematic of divide in the GOPs anti-Washington uprising, by the Chronicles Kevin Diaz and Brian Rosenthal in Exeter, N.H. The split is emblematic of the deepening divide within the GOP's anti-Washington uprising, where two outspoken allies-turned-rivals are scrambling for the support of charismatic characters such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Fox News host Glenn Beck just over a week before voters in Iowa begin the nationwide process of choosing the party's 2016 presidential nominee.

The division within the insurgency has upended the primary - and sparked a parallel reckoning among a Republican establishment increasingly reconciled to what was once unthinkable: either Trump or Cruz at the top of the ticket.

-- Must watch: Teen Ted Cruz joked of goals, including world domination, you know, rule everything. WATCH here.

-- Agencies lack protocols, often fail to report threats against judges, by the Statesmans Andrea Ball and Tony Plohestski. An American-Statesman review has found that even though such threats appear to happen often in Texas  by some estimates, on an almost weekly basis  Travis County isnt alone in operating under sometimes loosely defined protocols. Determining the frequency of threats across Texas is also difficult because of what appears to be underreporting by counties to the state, despite a law requiring them to do so.

-- Texas: the 900-pound gorilla on March 1, by the Express-News Peggy Fikac. A total of 595 Republican delegates will be awarded on March 1 by 11 states, according to the Republican National Committee, nearly half the 1,236 needed for the nomination. Other states also are voting, but their delegates will be awarded later.

Texas is the big enchilada, with 155 GOP delegates up for grabs, more than any other state on Super Tuesday. Texas alone has more GOP delegates than the 133 decided by the four early states - Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

-- Uresti brothers split on Planned Parenthood funding issue, by the Express-News Gilbert Garcia.Carlos and Tomas Uresti dont disagree on much. But if Tomas fulfills his plan to join Carlos in the Texas Legislature, the two siblings will split sharply on the always divisive issue of womens health care access. 

Farias took the common Democratic position, in favor of a womans right to choose an abortion, and in support of government funding for Planned Parenthood and its affiliates. Tomas Uresti sounded more like a Republican: pro-life and in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood.

-- Paxton appeal to stretch into spring, if not longer, by the Statesmans Chuck Lindell. An appeal by Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is seeking to dismiss charges that he violated state securities laws , will extend at least into spring, with a strong chance of a ruling being delayed until summer or later. The Dallas-based 5th Court of Appeals has given Paxtons lawyers until Feb. 22 to file a brief arguing why they believe the felony charges should be thrown out. Prosecutors will have until March 14 to counter the arguments.

Sen. Ellis is in the hunt for Harris County Commissioner seat: "Im excited to visit with Harris County precinct chairs and other leaders about continuing El Francos legacy of service to his community. I can confirm that I am seeking to be the next commissioner for Harris County Precinct One, per Quorum Report.

SPEED READ

Fikac: Smart, kind strategist helped bring GOP to power, San Antonio Express-News

Tilove: For a first-time caucusgoer, its Cruz (or maybe Trump), Austin American-Statesman

Grieder: Cruz in the Arena, Texas Monthly

Push to get Julian Castro on Dem ticket has begun, BuzzFeed

Supreme Court arguments key to Cruzs rise, San Antonio Express-News

Familiar battle lines appear in Senate sanctuary cities discussion, Quorum Report

Sheriffs race: Gonzalez hoping for replay of 2008, but landscape different, Houston Chronicle

Three Democrats vie to replace DA Lehmberg, Austin American-Statesman

Morath comments suggest broad shift in TEA focus, Quorum Report

Despite headwinds, Austin job growth picked up in 2015, Austin American-Statesman

Responding to Texas quake uptick, seismic study gets underway, Austin American-Statesman

Castro stumps for Clinton in Iowa, fueling VP chatter, The Dallas Morning News

Cruz doesnt care if people dont like him, The Washington Post

Jeb Bush: the will-he-wont-he-unleash-brother question continues, The Washington Post

In reversal, campaign says Cruz does have health insurance, Wall Street Journal

Texas pilot hurt in forced landing near power lines, Denton Record-Chronicle

Houston officers among 19 arrested in prostitution sting, Associated Press

Trump vows to release his tax returns, POLITICO

QUOTE TO NOTE

Now, lets not be going into this anti-Semitic line of discussion because thats clearly not what this is. I say Christian because Im a Christian. What Im saying is biblical. If you know the definition of biblical, its Judeo-Christian.

-- Jeff Judson, whos challenging Joe Straus, talking about how the speaker is disconnected from Christians.Dont miss this story by the Express-News Brian Chasnoff.

RACE TO 2016

-- The Obama theory of Trump, by David Axelrod in the Times. Its far too early to picture the iconic Trump logo affixed to the White House portico. But as the most ardent and conspicuous counterpoint to the man in the White House today, the irrepressible Mr. Trump already has defied all expectations. So, in the parlance of one of his signature businesses, Who wants to bet?

-- Rubios closing argument attacks Clinton, not GOP rivals, by the APs Tom Beaumont. The Florida senator was in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, part of a nine-day blitz across the state, campaigning with confidence to audiences numbering in the hundreds, as preference polls showed Ted Cruz and Donald Trump ahead in Iowa.  It's part of 44-year old Rubio's effort to cast himself as part of a new generation of conservative Republicans, while characterizing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as an embodiment of a longstanding partisan gridlock in Washington.

-- Clinton, Sanders take different lesson from Obamas 2008 win, by the APs Julie Pace and Catherine Lucey. To Bernie Sanders, President Barack Obama's improbable victory in the 2008 Iowa caucuses was a testament to the power of an inspirational underdog. To Hillary Clinton, Obama's win over her eight years ago proved the importance of a robust and refined political apparatus.

The Democratic presidential candidates' theories are driven in part by necessity  Sanders' has undeniable energy heading into the final week of campaigning in Iowa, while Clinton has a massive field operation that's been on the ground for nearly a year. But they also reflect their competing visions of what Democratic voters are seeking in the 2016 election.

-- Bloomberg trial balloon has Republicans laughing, by POLITICOs Anna Palmer. As Trump and Bernie Sanders continue to dominate the 2016 election landscape, Bloomberg is actively weighing whether to jump into the race. He is expected to make a decision by March. The former New York City mayor, who has made gun violence a major focus of his political capital in recent years, could dump as much as $1 billion into the race. His campaign message would be starkly different than that of Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the other leading Republican in the race. It was Cruz, after all, who made a viral video that showed him heating up bacon with a machine gun.
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.
Women in Online Work  program pentru femeile care isi doresc sa munceasca in companii internationale, de la biroul de acasa
Last week, after writing about a few regional language variations, we heard from a lot of readers with their own favorites.

The funniest one may have been from Michael Pollak, an editor at The New York Times, who tweeted:

@meperl And if you date a British guy and he says hell knock you up about 7, dont be alarmed.  Michael Pollak (@tboid23) January 19, 2016

In British English, to knock you up simply means knock on your door, not what it means here. (If you dont know, ask your mother.)

The most ubiquitous ones, though, had to do with what you call the concoction that is two pieces of bread with foodstuffs in between.

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Depending on where you live, it might be a hero, a wedge, a sub, a grinder, a torpedo, a po boy, a Dagwood, etc.

Lets start with the provenance, though, since this is a column about language, not food. Most people know its named after the Earl of Sandwich, though many dont know why. The Oxford English Dictionary says this: Said to be named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (17181792), who once spent twenty-four hours at the gaming-table without other refreshment than some slices of cold beef placed between slices of toast. A sandwich was a poor mans meal, not something an earl should be having as a repast (unless he were losing heavily). A bit after its original use in 1762, it became more common for a light meal, almost a snack.

Even before that, though, the word sandwich had been used to describe a cord of some kind, the OED says. It also traces to the town of Sandwich, in Kent, whose name means a center of trade on sand.

But back to food. Sandwich is the broadest term for the bread-based, handheld food, but we start diverting, regionally speaking, when referring to a sandwich that is a long, probably crusty piece of bread, sliced open to be stuffed.

The Subway chain has made the sub sandwich recognizable worldwide, though its origins are disputed. Its clear that sub is short for submarine, but the first use of that word to describe a long, tubelike underwater vessel is from 1828, according to the OED, and the submarine sandwich didnt really appear until 70 years later or so.

The non-maritime submarine probably has its origin in something called an Italian sandwich, made, appropriately enough, on a long, crusty Italian loaf. Its from the Northeast, though whether its specifically from Maine, as some sources say, is disputed. One story is that an Italian grocer in New Jersey started calling his long sandwiches submarines after he saw the hull of a wrecked sub in 1927.

Hoagie apparently originated not far west of there, in the Philadelphia area. Depending on which source you read, it may have been coined in the 1920s, during World War II, or when the Gilbert and Sullivan opera HMS Pinafore came to Philadelphia in 1879. Never mind: Its really the same thing as an Italian sandwich. A true hoagie, like a true Italian sandwich, must have some sort of an oil- and vinegar-based dressing to be legit.

Similar disputes arise over the term grinder, which first appeared in American dictionaries in 1954. American Speech magazine said in 1967 that a grinder was so named because the consumer must be able to grind the diverse ingredients in his mouth. In the Philadelphia area, or so it said, the only difference between a hoagie and grinder is that the grinder is toasted and may lack lettuce.

But in the Midwest, you might have a guinea grinder, a politically incorrect name for a sandwich that is usually partly Italian sausage, partly ground beef. Its a specialty at the Iowa State Fair.

In the suburbs of New York City, you might find wedges, though there are pockets of regional wedges in the Midwest as well. Its still at heart (and stomach) that Italian sandwich.

In Louisiana, that same sandwich might be a po boy, though the bread is more likely to be French than Italian, and its unlikely to require any Italian dressing. The most popular explanation for that name is that free sandwiches were served to strikers by a New Orleans restaurant in 1929. The strikers were being called poor boys, pronounced with a New Orleans accent, and soon the sandwiches were being called them as well. If you want to go more traditional, you probably want a muffuletta, which is usually made on a large, round Italian or Sicilian bread, which is then cut into, um, wedges.

As before, you need to be careful what you ask for. In many places, if you ask for a hero, depending on how you pronounce it, you risk getting a gyro. Not the same thing at all, but nothing to turn your nose up at, either.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Merrill Perlman managed copy desks across the newsroom at the New York Times, where she worked for twenty-five years. Follow her on Twitter at @meperl.
A Florida appeals court has issued a brief but pointed rebuke to a Palm Beach County judge who believed he was within his rights to order a newspaper to unpublish information it had legally obtaineda clear win for the First Amendment that came with a stylistic flourish.

I wrote for CJR back in early December about an order by Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox directing the Palm Beach Post to remove from its website transcripts of telephone recordings in which a jailhouse snitchwho was slated to testify in a series of trialsbragged about his ability to elicit confessions from fellow inmates. The transcripts, which a public defender put in a court file, were part of the public record when the Post obtained and published them.

The order was widely expected to be overturned, and in late December, Floridas Fourth District Court of Appeal did toss out the order, allowing the paper to republish the material. Last week, the appeals court got around to issuing its written opinion in the case, and its as short and sweet an explanation of First Amendment principles as you could hope for.

The appeals court started with the basics: A prior restraint on publication, or censorship of information that has already been published, is presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Theres an enormous burden to overcome that presumption, and the privacy interests of a jailhouse snitch talking on a jail telephone dont come close to meeting it. The court also found that Judge Cox failed to comply with Floridas quite simple rules of procedure when he attempted to circumvent the Constitution by sealing court records.

But the grace notes in the ruling came from a concurring opinion by Judge Cory J. Ciklin, who quoted famous First Amendment cases and a late Palm Beach Post reporter in order to emphasize the fairly obvious reasons why a judge cannot just order newspapers to unpublish information, particularly information that was legally obtained.

Ciklins opinion quoted Susan Spencer-Wendel, a 20-year Post veteran and courts reporter who left the paper in 2013 after learning she had ALS. She spent the remaining days of her life traveling with friends and family and writing a book about living while dying.

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The book, Until I Say Goodbye, became a New York Times bestseller. In it, Spencer-Wendel described why she loved being a reporter, and why she believed in it. Ciklins opinion ends with this passage, drawn from the book:

It was a privilege to go to work each day and grow democracy, to ferret out stories no one wanted told, to be trusted to inform and, yes, entertain our readers. When someone would ask me: Who sent you? I loved to reply: Well, maam, that would be Thomas Jefferson.

No one at the Palm Beach Post was surprised by the ruling. But Ciklins decision to memorialize Spencer-Wendel in a way she would have cherished was particularly poignant.

The reference to Susan made this opinion even more meaningful to the Post family, said managing editor Nick Moschella. She believed in forcing change in a fair and accurate manner. She would have been leading this charge.

Martin Reeder, the Posts attorney, believes the appellate court ruling, with Judges Ciklins concurring opinion, will be a teaching opinion, something lawyers and judges will study to understand the law.

Trial judges occasionally enter prior restraints, he said. Its hard to understand how that happens considering how well settled the law is. The majority opinion was perfectly accurate and efficiently concise. Judge Ciklins opinion adds that touch of lofty ideals that is welcome in a First Amendment case.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Susannah Nesmith is CJRs correspondent for Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. She is a freelance writer based in Miami with more than 25 years working for regional and national outlets. Follow her on Twitter @susannahnesmith.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a federal agencys procedures have made it too easy to successfully cancel patents after agreeing on Friday to decide a case involving a vehicle speedometer that alerts drivers if they are speeding.

The nine justices will hear an appeal filed by Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC, whose speedometer patent was invalidated in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review procedure after being challenged by GPS device maker Garmin Ltd in 2012.

Companies that are frequent targets of patent suits, including Apple Inc and Google Inc, have taken advantage of the patent office procedure, known as inter partes review (IPR), in unexpectedly high numbers since it was put in place in 2012.

These reviews allow anyone to challenge the validity of a patent far more cheaply and quickly than in a U.S. federal court.

The high court justices will now consider whether the patent office is improperly interpreting the patents that come before it in the reviews. Critics say this leads to a high rate of patent cancellations.

New Jersey-based Cuozzo told the Supreme Court the procedure was surprisingly lethal, noting that in nearly 85 percent of cases some or all of the patent claims challenged have been canceled.

If the patent office does not change course, it would allow hundreds or even thousands of additional patent claims to be invalidated under the wrong standard, Cuozzo said in court papers.

Jeffrey Wall, an attorney for Cuozzo, said he was pleased the high court will examine the case.

The agency had asked the court not to hear Cuozzos appeal, saying in court papers any changes to its procedures should be made by Congress.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

Cuozzo was supported by several industry groups and companies, which urged the justices to take the case.

One friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of 3M Co, Caterpillar Inc, Eli Lilly and Co and Qualcomm Inc said the patent office reviews and litigation in district court needed to be streamlined for the proper functioning of the patent system as a whole.

The cancellation of Cuozzos patent came in the first-ever petition for an IPR. Garmins action was in response to a lawsuit filed by Cuozzo in federal court in 2012. Garmin is no longer involved in the case.

A spokesman for the patent office declined to comment.

The case is In re Cuozzo Speed Technologies LLC v Michelle K. Lee, in the Supreme Court of the United States, No. 15-446.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
Hiscox Expands Terrorism Coverage

Hiscox, an international specialist insurer, announced that they have enhanced their stand-alone Terrorism portfolio adding new products covering property damage due to malicious attacks utilizing nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological (NCBR) devices.

Hiscox NCBR policies offer coverage of up to $25 million for blast damage, decontamination and clean-up costs, as well as lost income due to related government actions. Hiscox also recently introduced coverage for Threat of a Malicious Act. The new Threat product protects businesses against threats of malicious acts that can result in costly disruptions to businesses and lost sales revenues.

Hiscox policyholders also receive access to Control Risks risk advisory services both before and after incidents to reduce their total risk. Control Risks global risk consultancy partners exclusively with Hiscox to offer their clients specialized advice on how to prepare, prevent and mitigate malicious acts through direct consultation and a 24/7 helpline.

Hiscox provides coverage for Terrorism, NCBR and other politically violent activities without a requirement for government certification of a terrorist attack and no minimum loss requirements. The capacity stands independent of the US government-backed Terrorism Risk Insurance Reauthorization Act (TRIPRA).

AIG Boosts Global Commercial Property Limits to $2.5 Billion

American International Group, Inc. announced that it has significantly raised available global commercial property limits to $2.5 billion per occurrence.

The move responds to the growing demand for capacity and services by clients managing more complex global risks and increasing property values. It also reflects AIGs greater appetite for property risk based on its ongoing expansion of risk engineering and data analytics capabilities.

Todays announced limits build on AIGs capacity of $1.5 billion per occurrence available globally to clients since 2012.

RMS Launches New Data Standard for Managing Cyber Insurance

Ahead of the February launch of its new suite of cyber risk management tools, RMS has released its recently developed Cyber Exposure Data Schema. The open standard data schema will provide the insurance industry with a systematic and uniform way to capture cyber exposure data and manage cyber accumulation risk.

The Cyber Exposure Data Schema, developed in collaboration with the Centre for Risk Studies at Cambridge University and with support from eight leading insurance and reinsurance companies, provides firms with a standardized approach to identifying, quantifying and reporting cyber insurance exposure. The schema is both model agnostic and compatible with any exposure management system and will enable firms to:

Share and transfer information about exposures in a consistent and standardized format for risk transfer transactions, benchmarking exercises, and regulatory reporting.

Report exposure aggregates by different types of coverage and potential loss characteristics to a level of granularity that can inform risk appetite decisions.

Assess and monitor risk appetite by estimating losses from accumulation scenarios, or other types of risk models, to the exposure recorded.

Clarify silent or affirmative covers by identifying insurance policies with ambiguity in whether they would pay out in the event of a cyber incident

To develop the Cyber Exposure Data Schema, the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies consulted with a broad range of organizations seeking to harmonize cyber exposure reporting, including cyber risk experts, cyber insurance writers, and industry organizations such as the Lloyds Market Association, U.S. rating agencies, the Reinsurance Association of America, and the Chief Risk Officers Forum.

In addition to making its Cyber Exposure Data Schema available to all industry participants, RMS has also collaborated with Lloyds of London and AIR Worldwide to help the growing cyber insurance market quickly establish the core data requirements for managing cyber risk common to both modeling firms. By using similar terminology and precise definitions, in addition to highlighting the common elements across their data schemas, the initiative will make it easier for companies to code existing account data to identify their potential cyber accumulations.

AXIS Healthcare Launches New Coverage to Protect Hospitals Against Losses From Pandemics

AXIS Capital Holdings Limited announced that AXIS Healthcarethe division of AXIS Insurance that provides professional liability insurance and associated standard casualty coverages for physician groups, hospitals, allied healthcare facilities and individual physicianshas launched an innovative new medical catastrophe business interruption product for hospitals in the U.S. and Canada to protect against a loss of revenue caused by the outbreak of a contagious disease.

The AXIS Healthcare Medical Catastrophe Business Interruption and Extra Expense product includes coverage for any disease that is transmitted by direct or indirect contact. These diseases include bubonic plague, MRSA, Legionnaires Disease, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Hantavirus, SARS, West Nile Virus, HIV, Ebola Virus, Marburg Virus, Lassa Fever, Influenza, and Bird Flu, as well as other lesser-known viruses or plagues. The new product would also provide coverage for diseases that have not yet been discovered by science, or a disease that could mutate into a pandemic at some point in the future.

The policy responds when the contagion directly results in any one of four triggers:

A governmental quarantine of a hospital;

If 25 percent or more of the medical personnel do not come to work;

A 25 percent or more reduction in inpatient stays; or

A 25 percent or more reduction in emergency room visits.

The maximum length of coverage is limited to twelve months from the date the coverage is triggered.

Prior to offering a quotation, a hospital must work with AXIS Healthcare on a pandemic preparedness assessment. The company will send, at its own expense, a healthcare risk manager with specialized skills in pandemic preparedness to assess the quality of the hospitals pandemic program.

Verisk Releases Industrys First Cyber Exposure Data Standard

Verisk Analytics, a data analytics provider, announced that it has released the industrys first global cyber exposure data standard. This standard will help create a uniform method for data transfer across the insurance value chain. Verisks catastrophe modeling business AIR Worldwide has also developed a preparers guide to assist companies in collecting and storing the necessary cyber exposure data in an open format suitable for modeling.

The Verisk cyber exposure data standard is the first step in the process of managing accumulations of cyber risk and will help create a uniform method for data transfer throughout the industry. Many of the fields are optional to provide flexibility for companies that collect different types of information or at different levels of detail. The AIR preparers guide will assist companies in collecting and storing the data. Many client organizations, including companies in the insurance, broker, and reinsurance industry, have reviewed the standard and provided valuable input.

Cyber risk has become the fastest-growing peril over the past year. The ability to analyze cyber risk accurately requires a full understanding of the cyber exposure data. It is imperative that companies capture this data in a common format that can be used by organizations across the insurance value chain. It is also crucial that the exposure data standard used today and in the future be robust enough for organizations to grow into.

In addition, AIR has developed an SQL implementation to allow organizations to begin to use the standard in their enterprises. In the coming months, AIR aims to provide SQL scripts that can be used for deterministic scenario analysis and accumulation analysis.
We are not going to be able to successfully overcome a cyber threat without enlisting the support of the private sector, said keynote speaker Robert S. Mueller III, who served as the United States sixth director of the FBI for more than 10 years.

Speaking before the 20th annual Property/Casualty Joint Industry Forum, Mueller, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and sworn in as director on September 4, 2001just one week before 9/11understands the intricacies of a breach, including the need for analysis and forensics for both government entities and corporations.

Mueller noted that there are two kinds of cyber threats: insider and outsider. The biggest threat to companies is an insider threata Snowden type threatthat comes from a disgruntled employee who has administrators rights and wants to do damage.

The biggest outside threats, he said, fall into five different areas. The first is Hacktivists, anonymous hackers who have as a goal embarrassing people or making a political point. Mueller cited as an example LulzSec, a computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including a compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011.

The second threat are the criminal hackers, who are generally Eastern Europeans that are responsible for those breaches where the accumulation of money as a result of that breach is the goal of the attacker, explained Mueller. He gave the example of the hacking of Target between Thanksgiving and Christmas three years ago, which affected a huge number of customers.

The third area of threat, Mueller said, is the theft of U.S. intellectual property, principally by the Chinese but also by the Russians. The most prevalent hackers are the Chinese who look to steal our military and corporate secrets in an effort to move ahead.

The fourth area of threat is terrorism, according to Mueller. The fact of the matter is, ISIS has just dabbled in utilizing the Internet to attack. You can be guaranteed of those 30,000 plus that have migrated into Northern Iraq or Syria, there are individuals there who have the skillsets, when applied, to undertake substantial attacks against the West, and were going to hear more about them, he said.

The fifth area, Mueller explained, is the military. He gave the example of when Russia invaded Georgia several years ago, a country to the south of Russia. He said that before Russia sent their tanks across the border they knocked out Georgias military command and control center so there was no opposition when they went in.

Mueller said that by identifying these five areas the FBIas well as private companiescan address, prioritize and understand what their vulnerabilities are. He said that companies can apply what the FBI has learned: that you need to ensure the successful upgrade of your IT and you need to be actively engaged throughout the organization and recognize that it cant be delegated.

In preparing for breaches, Mueller warned that nobody is going to avoid being hacked, its just a question of how severe the breach will be. If youre a company that has been breached, the first is the analysis, the forensics. There are three questions the company needs to answer very quickly: Howd they get in? What did they take? And where are they? You cant begin to deal with customers, your own employees or the media unless you have an answer to those three questions.

Too often corporations hit the breach and they have no plan for doing the necessary analytics or how to get the attorneys involved. By that time its too late. Getting the forensics on the ground floor is tremendously important so that when you get that breach you have persons in place with some independence and expertise to know where the malware came from and what to do about that malware, said Mueller. After that all the other considerations flow in.

Mueller noted that all too often general counsels are focused on possible litigation down the road, but that the most important issue is the survival of the corporation and bringing back your customers so you have the money to pay off the litigation expenses. Each one of those considerations in the cyber arena should be addressed prior to any breach.

Mueller added that companies are not very effective at stopping a hack as it is happening. He said that hackers do a reconnaissance, noting that, The average time in the networks, databases is 240 days before they are noticed. Where are they? Which particular networks are they in? Its a long and murky fact-specific investigation to identify, which you cant answer overnight.

Mueller is currently a partner at WilmerHale in Washington, DC, where his practice focuses on investigations, crisis management, privacy and cyber security work.
The Oklahoma mail carrier at the center of the first trial over General Motors Co.s deadly ignition-switch defect is dropping his claims after being accused of lying to the court.

Robert Scheuer, 49, will walk away from the case empty- handed, ending a lawsuit that was supposed to serve as a guide for hundreds of others against GM over the ignition switch, his lawyer said in a filing Friday in Manhattan federal court.

Scheuer had sued over claims the defective switch in his 2003 Saturn Ion disabled his air bag in an accident, leading to neck and back injuries. But the case collapsed after GM found evidence undermining several claims, including the extent of his injuries and details surrounding his familys eviction from their dream house after the wreck.

The apparent lies the plaintiff and his wife told the jury ended the trial early, and we are pleased that the case is over without any payment whatsoever to Mr. Scheuer, GM spokesman James Cain said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman on Thursday granted GMs request to show jurors evidence that Scheuer and his wife, Lisa, had fabricated the story blaming GM for their eviction about four months after the accident. The judge said the new evidence would probably be devastating to the case.

Detroit-based GM claimed Scheuer had doctored a federal- government check stub to provide proof of funds to move into the familys new home. When the real estate agent found out, the family was evicted, the carmaker said. GM said the real estate agent had come forward after the trial started, and that the company had extensive evidence that it had nothing to do with the familys financial troubles.

Scheuer and his wife both hired criminal-defense attorneys this week after the carmaker accused them of lying.

The case was chosen as the first for trial by Robert Hilliard and Steve Berman, two of the top plaintiffs lawyers in the U.S., who are leading the ignition-switch litigation. They havent denied the allegations of forgery and perjury against their client.

GM recalled 2.59 million cars due to the defect and has already paid more than $2 billion in legal costs and settlements. Despite GMs admissions, the company is challenging liability in hundreds of individual cases.

The case is Fleck v. General Motors LLC, 1:14-cv-08176, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Bachelor Ben Higgins Eager to Join DWTS? [NEWS]

Despite his best efforts to play it cool, 2016 Bachelor Ben Higgins can't help but sound excited any time someone asks him about the possibility of joining Dancing with the Stars. According to the Ben, he just wants to get back to his life in Denver, unless he can get ABC to cast him in their hit dance competition. Higgins recently explained he would jump at the opportunity to join the show. So whomever Ben winds up giving his final rose to, they may soon find themselves accompanying him to dance practice.

Although he might like to seem like nothing would make him happier than to move back home to Denver, Ben Higgins told E! News that he wouldn't hesitate to join the cast of Dancing with the Stars if he could only ABC to say yes to the idea:

"I think I'm excited about what experiences are next in life. Just like I never expected to be on The Bachelorette, I never expected to be the Bachelor, I don't know what to expect next and I'm open to anything.

"I have a great life. I love my life here in Denver. I don't want to chance my life, but if there's opportunity to enhance it, I'm all for it!"

For his part, Ben admitted in a recent interview with Glamour that he all but fantasizes about the working on his new routines with someone like Witney Carson:

"I don't know at this point. I would be lying if I said it hasn't been thought about, but [The Bachelor] just started [airing] last week, and there's so much going on.

"I want to take it one step at a time and enjoy this before I start thinking about that. But yeah, obviously it's been thought about."

What do you think about the possibility of seeing Ben Higgins cutting a rug on the 2016 season of Dancing with the Stars?

Would it be great to see Ben follow in the footsteps of Chris Soules and his Christian mentor Sean Lowe?

Or, is it about time that ABC did something different for a change?

Let us hear what you have to say about Ben joining the show in the comment field below.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsBachelor, Ben Higgins, Bachelor Ben Higgins, DWTS, Dancing with the Stars, 2016 News
Ted Strickland

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland speaks before a Hillary Clinton rally last summer in Cleveland. Strickland remains the Democratic front-runner in this year's Senate race. But PG Sittenfeld is making it much harder than Strickland thought it would be.

(Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

AKRON, Ohio -- Former Governor and 2016 U.S. Senate Candidate Ted Strickland is speaking to the Akron Press Club this morning, trying to win back the support of some locals.

Last week the Summit County Democratic Party endorsed Strickland's lesser-known primary opponent, Cincinnati City Councilman PG Sittenfeld, in a break with the Ohio Democratic Party's endorsement of Strickland.

The Democrats are trying to retake the seat held by Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, and Summit County's decision to back Sittenfeld creates a divide in the most heavily Democratic section of the state, one where Democratic primary voters are likely to turn out in large numbers in March.

Strickland's campaign said in a news release that the candidate will likely focus his remarks against his Republican opponent.

A question and answer period will follow. State and national Republicans jumped on that opportunity early, publishing an unsolicited list of questions last week.

Strickland's remarks will begin shortly after noon. Follow the speech live below and check out cleveland.com for coverage after the presentation.

Meanwhile, what do you hope Strickland will speak about?
Top Ohio stories:

Lauren Wilfong, 16, of Loveland in suburban Cincinnati, was killed in a two-car crash Sunday evening in Milford in Hamilton County. (WLWT-TV Cincinnati)(WKRC-TV Cincinnati)

Sebring Water Superintendent Jim Bates is officially suspended this afternoon, after test results showing elevated levels of lead in the Mahoning County village's water system went public last week. (WKBN-TV Youngstown)(WFMJ-TV Youngstown)

An off-duty Toledo police officer is facing charges after allegedly driving under the influence. (WTVG-TV Toledo)(WNWO-TV Toledo)

Southwest Ohio news:

A 24-year-old woman who was shot while driving in Cincinnati's Bond Hill neighborhood earlier this month has died from her injuries, police said Saturday. (WCPO-TV Cincinnati)(WLWT-TV Cincinnati)

Homicide detectives in Harrison in Hamilton County said a man was found dead shortly after police were called to a house for a domestic disturbance call Sunday morning. (WXIX-TV Cincinnati)(WKRC-TV Cincinnati)

Two people were taken to the hospital after their car struck a tree and caught fire this morning in Dayton. (WDTN-TV Dayton)(WHIO-TV Dayton)

Four men accused of killing a West Chester Township man in his home were in Hamilton County court today. (WLWT-TV Cincinnati)

One person is in custody after a woman was reportedly robbed at gunpoint in a Dayton parking lot. (WHIO-TV Dayton)

The Dayton chapter of the NAACP will talk about police brutality in a Town hall meeting tonight. (WRGT-TV Dayton)

Central Ohio news:

A 22-year-old Columbus woman has been cited for drunk driving after rear-ending a police cruiser overnight on Interstate 70. (WCMH-TV Columbus)(WBNS-TV Columbus)

A Newark man is in jail after police say he threw a concrete block through the window of a police cruiser over the weekend. (WCMH-TV Columbus)(WHIZ-TV Zanesville)

A tip to police about a man luring kids in Marysville escalated into a high-speed chase Sunday morning, ending dramatically when the suspect's van burst into flames on a highway. (WSYX-TV Columbus)

Ohio State University students and staff are being urged to be on alert after a student reported to police she was raped inside her dorm room. (WSYX-TV Columbus)

Northwest Ohio news:

Two downtown Findlay buildings went up in flames Friday night, leaving more than two dozen people homeless. (WTOL-TV Toledo)(WNWO-TV Toledo)

Police have yet to name suspects in the alleged weekend assault of a University of Toledo student at an off-campus fraternity party. (WNWO-TV Toledo)

The Toledo Police Department is looking for three men involved in a north Toledo robbery this morning. (WTOL-TV Toledo)

Eastern Ohio news:

Firefighters from four departments braved chilly temperatures and snow Sunday night to fight a large fire in Colerain in Belmont County. (WTRF-TV Steubenville)(WTOV-TV Steubenville)

A suspect in the Friday night robbery at Citizens Bank in Girard was arrested Sunday in New York. (WYTV-TV Youngstown)

The federal EPA selected Youngstown to receive assistance with upgrading its drinking and waste water systems. (WKBN-TV Youngstown)
Ronald Fine sentencing

Ronald Fine, center, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbing 11 stores in eight days last year.

(Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man who robbed 11 stores in eight days to feed his heroin addiction will spend 13 years in prison.

Cuyahoga County Judge Robert McClelland sentenced Ronald Fine, 29, on Friday after Fine told the judge he accepted responsibility for his crimes.

"I want to take accountability for my actions," he said. "I'm just trying to better myself through whatever time I serve."

Fine pleaded guilty this month to 28 counts of aggravated robbery, robbery, and kidnapping charges.

Prosecutors said Fine robbed stores in Cleveland, Linndale and Brook Park. His crime spree started Sept. 21 at Coreno's Video Store at West 130th Street and Lorain Avenue. By Sept. 28, Fine had held up a CVS, two Subway restaurants, a second video store, a gas station, two grocery stores, a pizza restaurant, a cellphone store and an Adult Mart.

Fine's girlfriend, Jennifer Watt, was charged in two of the robberies. She pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery on Friday and is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 25.

Fine kept his hand inside his pocket during each robbery, pretending to have a pistol, Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Yosef Hochheiser said. Police never found a weapon, but Hoccheiser said that didn't matter to the victims.

"In their minds, they were being robbed at gunpoint," Hochheiser said.

A woman who worked at the Adult Mart in Brook Park cried in court as she recalled Fine walking into the store.

"He waited and waited and waited for everyone to clear the store, then he came up and whispered in my ear," she told McClelland. "You don't expect something like that to happen to you on a Monday morning in a full store."

The woman said she quit her job at Adult Mart after Fine robbed her, and she now refuses to work with the public.

Fine wore the same light gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers in every robbery, a move that his lawyer said showed the level of thought Fine put into his enterprise.

"He certainly was no criminal mastermind planning these things out," Michael Shaughnessy told McClelland. "He was a heroin addict looking to get his fix, and the next place to get some quick cash."

Fine told McClelland that he had been fighting substance abuse for a decade. Fine was on probation for a burglary case at the time of the spree, and has nine other felony cases. He is also a registered sex offender.

Hoccheiser said Fine's heroin addiction was not an excuse for his actions.

"We all have our struggles and our demons," he said. "That does not give him the right to terrorize the community as he did."
Cleveland police car 3.jpg

Cleveland police said a man attacked at an East Side bus stop Thursday died the following day while being treated at a local hospital.

(cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office has released the name of a Cleveland man who died after an attack at a bus stop.

Dontez Curlee, 34, died Friday at University Hospitals Case Medical Center following an attack on the East Side where the Lee-Harvard and Lee-Seville neighborhoods meet.

Police called to the corner of Lee Road and Miles Avenue about 4:30 p.m. Thursday found Curlee bleeding from the mouth and head.

Curlee told investigators two unknown males assaulted him in the bus stop and left.

The medical examiner's office will determine Curlee's manner of death.

Police haven't released details about a motive for the attack.
Top stories:

Former Brimfield Township Police Chief David Oliver is expected to plead guilty to criminal charges today stemming from an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct during his time as the township's top law enforcement officer. (cleveland.com) (WNIR 100.1-FM)

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office announced today Dontez Curlee, 34, of Cleveland died after an attack at a bus stop last week. (cleveland.com) (WEWS Channel 5)

Sebring Village Manager Richard Giroux announced this morning he has placed Jim Bates, Sebring water treatment plant operator, on paid administrative leave effective today pending the outcome of a state investigation. (WOIO Channel 19)(Youngstown Vindicator)

Area crime news:

Westlake police are asking for the public's help identifying a woman who swiped a credit card from a Westlake restaurant and used it to make more than $5,000 in purchases. (cleveland.com)(Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

Deputies in Ashtabula County are looking for the man who robbed a hotel at knifepoint Sunday night. (WJW Channel 8)

A woman who crashed her car and fell over a Youngstown embankment early Sunday morning also had a gunshot wound, police said. (Youngstown Vindicator)

Willoughby police arrested a Mentor man after he led officers on a high-speed chase over the weekend and was found to be under the influence. (WKYC Channel 3)

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a Brimfield heroin dealer after he failed to show up in court last week for a hearing to revoke his bond. (WNIR 100.1-FM)

A driver crashed his vehicle into the FirstMerit Bank and post office building Saturday evening in Hinckley Township, police said. (Medina Gazette)

Local news - east:

Parkman Township Volunteer Fire Department Chief Paul W. Komandt passed away quietly early Saturday following a 15-month battle with leukemia. (Geauga County Maple Leaf)

Mentor Fire Battalion Chief Jeff Powalie said a house that caught fire Sunday night is considered a total loss. (News-Herald)

Karyn Pokorny and her fiance Nick Brown live in Twinsburg and are supposed to be getting married in Punta Cana on Thursday, but this past weekend's storm may alter those plans. (WJW Channel 8)

Local news - west:

The Ford Motor Co. officially announced today the Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake will support additional production of the 2017 Ford F-Series Super Duty chassis cab. (Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

A North Ridgeville man purchased the former Dillard's department store at Midway Mall in Elyria in an unusual sale that is raising a red flag. (Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

A cleanup plan is in the works for the Stoveworks dump in the heart of Lorain. (Lorain Morning Journal)

Akron-Canton area news:

A drunken man's pickup veered off the road and plowed into a Brimfield woman's home Saturday night, Brimfield police said. (cleveland.com)(WAKR 1590-AM)

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is investigating a crash that left an officer from the Canal Fulton Police Department injured late Saturday. (WAKR 1590-AM)

Three employees of the Stark County Engineer's office -- who all faced possible disciplinary action -- have resigned from their jobs. (Canton Repository)
The 2015 Biennale in the South Sulawesi city of Makassar, Indonesia Yermia Riezky Santiago | Pacific Press/LightRocket | Getty Images

Southeast Asian art is increasingly attracting critical acclaim but it's lacking a vital element crucial for a healthy market, two of America's most prominent art collectors have warned. Marc and Livia Straus, founders of the Marc Straus Gallery in New York, told CNBC that private patrons in emerging nations must do more to support local artists. "In places like Indonesia, there has to be a real understanding by society of the value of art, both by the government and people of wealth," Marc Straus said on the sidelines of Art Stage Singapore, Southeast Asia's annual flagship art fair. "You do need private patronage. Indonesia has to do that. When they recognize the value of young people who become artists, they'll have a richer society for everybody." Named one of America's top 100 collectors by Art & Antiques Magazine, the couple started buying contemporary art in the 1960s and are well known for cultivating the careers of prominent artists, including Native American painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson. Their world-class collection has been featured in global museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.

Using Southeast Asia's largest economy, Indonesia, as a example, the Straus' noted that cities such as Jakarta and Yogyakarta were teeming with cultural activity but lacked private sector support. All of the big art museums in New York started out with private patronage and now, the arts is the city's biggest tourist attraction, the couple noted. Aside from snapping up promising pieces, there are other ways wealthy locals can support the arts community, they explained. "When people are fortunate enough to put together a collection of art, there's such value in it to helping communities develop," explained Livia Straus. "By putting art in impoverished communities and helping develop educational programs, you're giving back. You're using art to make a difference, that's the next step." "That's the challenge based on what we hear friends and acquaintances say in countries like Indonesia. People need to say 'OK, I have this and now I'm going to do something with that will help society grow'."

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The wife of one of five missing Hong Kong booksellers said she met with her husband in China, according to a statement released by the Hong Kong police on Sunday amid growing diplomatic pressure on Chinese authorities to clarify the fate of the men.

Lee Bo, 65, an owner of a publisher and bookshop specializing in books critical of China's Communist Party leaders, vanished in late December amid widespread speculation that Chinese authorities may have abducted him in the financial hub and spirited him across to China for an investigation.

Lee, who has dual Hong Kong and British citizenship, surfaced on Saturday, meeting his wife at a guesthouse in mainland China, the Hong Kong police said in a statement issued after midnight on Sunday.

His wife, Sophie Choi, told police that she had met with her husband at a guesthouse in China on Saturday and that he was healthy and in good spirits.

The statement cited Lee's wife as saying he was "assisting in an investigation in the capacity of a witness," though she didn't give specifics on the location nor the nature of the investigation, the statement added.

The Hong Kong police said they would continue to probe the case, and would put in a fresh request with police in China's southern Guangdong province to arrange a meeting with Lee Bo.

Calls to the mobile phones of Lee and his wife went unanswered.
Sky rocketing valuations for Indian tech start-ups are being spurred by bullish interest in mobile internet, a senior executive at one of the world's most storied venture capital firms warned Monday.

The number of Indian companies raising more than $50 million-$100 million has risen exponentially in the past two years as investors pile in, attracted by the fast growth in India's mobile internet user base that is forecast to rise to more than 500 million in the next five years, said Shailendra Singh, managing director of Sequoia India.

"But when a glut of capital turns up, companies develop bad habits, they use balance sheets as a source of competitive strength," Singh said at the Kauffman Fellows' first-ever Southeast Asia Venture Capital Summit in Singapore.

Valuations for Indian start-ups in particular raised a number of eyebrows during 2015 as Asia's third-largest economy enjoys an e-commerce boom, fueled by climbing smartphone penetration rates. Flipkart, which claims to be the first billion dollar company in the Indian e-commerce market, is valued at $15 billion while its rival Snapdeal is valued at $5 billion.

New ventures, including e-commerce platforms, raised a total of $8.4 billion last year through nearly 1,000 deals, local media reported in December, citing data compiled by domestic technology and startup blog trak.in. That's a major increase from the $5 billion raised in 2014.

Fears that companies may be unable to justify their high valuations have led some industry veterans to question whether the bubble may be about to burst. But that's still not stopping major players, like Sequoia, who remain bullish on mobile internet.

"There will be no big global internet company to dominate the world unless they dominate a large part of Asia so that's the mega opportunity We will eventually see more global companies being built in Asia that will dominate the world."
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China is deepening economic engagements with Iran just a week after international sanctions were lifted against the country but the closer ties risk infuriating Saudi Arabia, the mainland's largest oil supplier in the Middle East, analysts say. Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first international leader to head to Iran after the trade restrictions were removed, capped his visit to Tehran with 17 agreements for cooperation in areas including energy, trade, and industry, reported Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency. During Xi's visit, the two countries also agreed to increase bilateral trade more than 10-fold to $600 billion in the next decade as China pursues its One Belt One Road project, an ambitious network of road, rail and port routes that will connect China to Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

With Iran at the end of the Asian road before it heads into Turkey and Europe, China is likely targeting to build numerous infrastructure facilities in Iran, said Jean-Francois Seznec, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. But the warmer ties will irritate oil giant Saudi Arabia whose already fraught relationship with Iran has worsened after Saudi Arabia executed a well-known Shiite cleric earlier this month. Xi visited Riyadh and Egypt before heading to Tehran. "China loves Saudi Arabia as far as the oil is concerned because they love (state-owned oil producing company) Saudi Aramaco as a very reliable supplier, but otherwise from a political standpoint, Iran is going to be the favorite child of China in that region," added Seznec.

With Iran not a U.S. ally, China will secure energy security with the country as the Asian country is dependent upon the Middle East for its oil imports.

"It's the only country in the region that is not allied with the United States for the most parts," said Michael Singh, managing director of think tank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. James Dorsey, a senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies noted that Iran is also majority Shia rather than Sunni-dominated, as is the case with Saudi Arabia and China's troubled Xinjiang region in the northwest, home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic group. Chinese authorities have blamed separatist Uighurs for terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of people in recent years.



As for Iran, various factions in the country are likely to be more united in accepting China over the U.S. or Europe as a partner, said Seznec.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Xi on Saturday where he expressed the country's distrust of the United States and Europe. "The government and nation of Iran have always been and [still] are looking for the expansion of relations with independent and reliable countries like China and on this basis, the agreement between the presidents of Iran and China for [promotion of] 25-year strategic relations is totally correct and endowed with wisdom," Ali Khamenei 's website quoted him saying. "The Western [governments] have never been able to win the Iranian nation's trust."

TEHRAN, IRAN - JANUARY 23: Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) meets with Supreme Leader of Iran Sayyed Ali Khamenei (R) in Tehran, Iran on January 23, 2016. Supreme Leader Press Office | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The artwork in Knightsbridge is located opposite the French embassy. It parodies the logo for the musical "Les Miserables", and shows tears streaming from the eyes of the character, Cosette, due to gas from a CS canister.

U.K. graffiti artist Banksy has created a new work in London to protest the alleged use of teargas on migrants and refugees camped around the French port of Calais.

Next to the artwork is a QR barcode linking to a video posted by the Calais Migrant Solidarity project. The video claims to show police attacking a migrant camp, nicknamed the "Jungle", with teargas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades on January 5th.



The Calais Migrant Solidarity project began in 2009 and protests against borders and restrictions on the free movement of people.



There are roughly 6,000 migrants camped around Calais, hoping to cross into the U.K., according to a report by "The Economist" newspaper in November.



Banksy, whose real identity if unknown, is an activist and has made several politically-charged artworks attacking capitalism, media and the abuse of power by governments. Last year, he created a temporary theme park satirising Disneyland called "Dismaland".

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As markets enter their fourth trading week of 2016, the havoc wreaked by oil prices are still being felt across a whole range of assets and markets, with European stocks coming under renewed pressure Monday after Iraq announced its oil output had reached a record high in December. "If you look over the past 12 months and you track an index of emerging markets, stocks, currencies, junk bonds, other commodities to oil; they're practically identical to the oil price," Alan Miller, SCMDirect.com's CIO, told CNBC Monday. "The dramatic fall in oil has seen a sharp reduction in so many different markets and it hasn't balanced," Miller added.

One key factor influencing oil prices is Iran. International sanctions against the OPEC-member country were lifted in January, sending shock waves throughout global markets on concerns that the already-oversupplied oil environment would be burdened with even more oil. How big of a return Iran will make in the oil markets is still unclear. Some analysts expect between 3 to 4 million barrels a day, while others expect technical constraints to hold back its near-term supply potential. Following the lifting of sanctions last week, Iran reportedly issued an order to increase crude production by half a million barrels per day. "I think (Iran's re-entry into oil) is going to be one of the really important variables in fundamentals this year. We're already seeing the first deal announced for a European buyer to start taking oil again from Iran, and we're seeing big numbers being talked about by the Iranian government," Richard Mallinson, geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC Monday.

However, Mallinson admitted he believed Iran's re-entry into the oil market would be hampered by technical difficulties, as it will take time for Iran to get its volumes back up to normal levels.

"(Iran's return) shouldn't come as a huge surprise (to markets) that more oil is coming. The big question is how much comes and how fast, and that's where the market now needs to just watch," Mallinson said, adding that we'll have to watch the customs data from the big oil importers, as Iran doesn't publish weekly production statistics.

OPEC: Saudi Arabia vs Iran

Amid the chaos in the markets there have been growing calls, from countries including Venezuela, for OPEC to call an emergency meeting and address the supply problem. Iran's oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh said Friday however that any emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could hurt the market, if no conclusion was made to support the falling oil prices.

Escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, , isn't expected to aid the market either, as investors lose faith that the two countries could agree a possible cut at an OPEC meeting.

A file photo shows an Iranian worker at the South Pars field in the southern Iranian port town of Asaluyeh. Atta Kenare | AFP | Getty Images

"The ability of a key OPEC memberand in that case in particular Saudi Arabia and Iranto agree on a way forward in an OPEC meeting, in a context where geopolitical tension and heightened escalation of animosity between these two oil giants does not bode well for such an agreement (to cut oil production) any time soon," Alia Moubayed, economist for Middle East & North Africa at Barclays, told CNBC Monday.

On top of the pace and volume of Iran's oil production, this OPEC issue "argues for more downward pressure in the absence of any cut in the foreseeable future or an agreement towards that," said Moubayed, adding that while Barclays expects this pressure to continue in the first quarter, some market strain is expected to "dissipate" later in 2016, depending on how oil's supply and demand balance plays out. OPEC's Secretary-General, Abdullah al-Badri said on Monday that to tackle the oversupply and prop up oil prices, it was essential for OPEC and non-OPEC members to work together to find a solution, Reuters reported.

While Iran's daily production has not yet been determined, Iran's production "is returning" says Neil Atkinson, IEA's head of oil industry and markets division, who told CNBC in January that "the market is going to have to find some way of absorbing those barrels".

"Not only have we got all this extra supply still continuing to come into the market in 2016, but we have less firmness on the demand side of the balance as well. So volatility looks as if it's going to be the order of the day." Reuters contributed to this article.
The Islamic State's destruction of ancient sites in Syria and Iraq has dominated the headlines recently, along with claims that the group reaps enormous profits from looted antiquities. The U.S. government is focused on cutting the Islamic State's funding streams, but probably no one outside of ISIS knows exactly how much money the group is making by trafficking ancient artifacts. As a former CIA officer who worked as an economic and counterterrorism analyst, my response to the question is simple: It doesn't really matter.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials should pay close attention to the antiquities trade emanating from Syria and Iraq, but not because they need to know precisely how much money ISIS brings in. What is important is that the trade itself reveals something about the Islamic State's operational infrastructure, its links with partners and middlemen, and how the group is exploiting the local civilian population. All of this is critical to understanding how the U.S. and its allies may defeat the group militarily, financially, and ideologically.
Seven people were injured after severe turbulence hit an American Airlines Boeing 767 flying from Miami to Milan late Sunday.

The aircraft diverted to St. John's, Newfoundland, where it was met by paramedics, according to The Associated Press. American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein tells the news agency four passengers and three flight attendants were taken to a local hospital for further evaluation. Feinstein said none of the injuries were life-threatening.

More from USA Today:

Actress, bumped from first class, complains online

Hilton launches new, affordable hotel brand

Debris could be linked to doomed Malaysian flight

The seat belt sign was on when the 767 encountered turbulence. There were 192 passengers and 11 crew members on the flight.
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Investors, take your finger off the panic button. The markets are not going over a cliff, according to Vanguard Group CEO Bill McNabb. There will be no repeat of 2008 in 2016. But the CEO of the biggest fund company in the world said investors need to focus on a more fundamental issue  the fact that better-than-decent returns from a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds can't be expected over the next decade.



Since 1929, the classic 60 percent stock and 40 percent bond portfolio has averaged 8 percent annually. McNabb said that long-term performance will look good compared to stock market returns he expects in the next decade: 5 percent to 7 percent, at best. "Stocks are pretty highly valued, and bonds you can project clearly over a decade. ... So when you do the math, you end up 2 percent lower on an absolute basis," McNabb said, speaking with CNBC's Bob Pisani at the Inside ETFs conference in Hollywood, Florida. "The message there is to reset expectations, and that gets to savings rates for people still accumulating [assets] and how you draw down in retirement."

Stocks are pretty highly valued, and bonds you can project clearly over a decade. ... So when you do the math, you end up 2 percent lower on an absolute basis.

Bill McNabb, chairman, president and CEO of Vanguard Group Tim Boyle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Despite higher volatility and lower returns, 2015 was another record year for ETF flows, with roughly $242 billion in net inflows, an increase of about 10 percent. By comparison, mutual funds had $125 billion in outflows. There are now north of 1,600 ETFs and more than 70 ETF providers.

But ETFs have seen net outflows of $7.87 billion so far in January, and assets have fallen by 8.2 percent, according to XTF ETF experts.
At the same time, neighboring Iraq promises to produce even more than its current 3.7 million to 3.8 million barrels a day, a recent record. Reports that Iraq could produce more than 4 million barrels a day weighed on energy prices Monday. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 5.8 percent to $30.34 per barrel.

The global oil market, already suffering a supply glut, has been anticipating the arrival of Iranian crude for months, and now that sanctions against its nuclear program have been lifted, Iran is free to sell more of its oil into a market already oversupplied by 1.5 million barrels or more a day.

An Iranian oil tanker, moored at the port of Assaluyeh for more than a year, set sail for South Korea last week, heralding a new period of uncertainty for world crude prices.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest exporter, has pledged to keep its approximately 10.2 million barrels a day of output steady  or even raise it  unless other producers agree to cut back, an unlikely outcome.

Other OPEC members in the Gulf, like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have stood behind Saudi Arabia, which drove the more-than-year-old policy of letting the market set prices, rather than the cartel's traditional tactic of attempting to control them with production levels.



But it's Iran and Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia that are most capable of adding to OPEC supply, about a third of the world's daily oil output. While Iraq may be close to its limit, officials have said they could add several hundred thousand more barrels a day.

Read MoreHere's who gets hurt by oil price plunge

"Those three have to find a way to come together. They have to find a way to sort this out. The Iranians have become more reticent. I think the Iraqis are going to get every last barrel out because of their financial situation. There's nothing that gives them a better outlook than oil," said Helima Croft, global head of commodities strategy at RBC Capital Markets.

Croft said it is difficult to separate the geopolitics from oil when discussing Iran and Saudi Arabia, facing the worst relations in decades. Iran blames Saudi Arabia for executing a Shiite cleric, who was hostile to the Saudi royal family.

Former U.S. Energy Secretary and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Saudi Arabia is key to the oil price, and if it agrees to an emergency OPEC meeting and production cuts that would change the dynamic. But that is unlikely. "The Saudis hate Iran. They are geopolitical rivals. They don't want to see Iran's economy get any better and oil prices are big factors in the Iranian economy," he said Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Iran has said it can quickly bring back 500,000 barrels a day within weeks, but that it plans to do so in a way that will not hurt oil prices. While 500,000 is not huge when compared to the 94 million barrels a day the world consumes each day, Wells Fargo analysts in a new report say the arrival of Iranian crude will cap any oil rally for now.

"One big question has been answered. Iran is now back in the oil market, but the question still to be answered in the next couple of weeks which will have a big impact on price is what kind of volumes they can put back on the market once they sell off their floating storage," said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS.

"Iranians will try to win back markets by price. They'll go back to their traditional customers in Asia who simply had reduced their share of Iranian oil. It's not like Iran has been out of the market. Iran's only been half out of the market," said Yergin.

The world's other large producers, Russia and the U.S. have not slowed down their output, even though U.S. production is expected to take a hit as oil companies feel the pinch of extended low prices. But if OPEC, responsible for about a third of the world's oil, wants to stop prices from falling, it would be imperative for the Shiite nations of Iran and Iraq to cooperate with Sunni-run Saudi Arabia.

Read MoreThe oil-stocks correlation could be about to break

"It's this whole idea that nobody is blinking. You have Russian and U.S. production. The newest U.S. exports are going to Europe, where they're all battling it out," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital. "It will take weeks to months to see the real impact of Iran's oil on the markets. We've all anticipated it. We've all handicapped it, and now we'll see what the reality is. Plus we're going to have the U.S. refining maintenance season coming up. That's going to add to the glut for a while."

The movement of the tanker Serena was significant, since Iran has an estimated 40 million to 50 million barrels of crude and condensates in floating storage, in addition to the increased production it plans. Iran has said it would immediately return 500,000 barrels, then another 500,000 barrels months later.

"It was the first of that fleet of floating storage that was to leave," said Paulo Nery, head of EMEA oil at Genscape. Nery said the Iranian tanker was the first his firm was able to track, and so far the only one that it reports has moved.

"There are 17 cargoes we know are sitting there for sure that haven't moved," said Nery, adding there are also a couple of others.

Goldman Sachs commodities strategist Jeff Currie said the arrival of Iranian oil will make for a volatile market. "A lot of it was already priced into the market. In terms of the implications ... it means you're going to have to squeeze out more of that non-OPEC oil than you would have if it had not come on line."

Croft said Iran and Iraq seemed to act as a bloc at the OPEC meeting last month, with both emphasizing they would not be limited in output. Iran has since modified its comments, saying it would not harm the market as it brings back oil but it is still expected to be aggressive to regain share.

"They're not going to balance the market for their biggest regional rivals to prosper," said Croft. "In the case of those three fighting, that's the big problem within OPEC. ... Those are the only three that can really do it. Those three have to come together. They have to find a way to sort this out."

Croft said Iran could move to sell what it has in floating storage while it ramps up production. But because of parliamentary elections next month, it may move more slowly to dump oil into the market so its officials escape domestic criticism for dampening oil prices.

On the other hand, if Iran expedites its exports, the world market will take a hit. "Iran came back faster (than expected to market). What if it comes back bigger?" said Croft.

There is little impetus for any of these producers to slow down, a factor that could continue to pound the oil market.

Iraq, for instance, gets most of its revenue from oil. Saudi Arabia is clearly feeling the pain of lower prices, and is now running a deficit, issuing debt and cutting back on social programs. Iran, desperate to return to more normal times, wants to generate as much revenue as possible.

"They're definitely feeling it. But I guess they figure it's worth it in the long run," said Kilduff.


If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.  Lyall Watson





If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.  Lyall Watson



bonjour a Tous,

sa fait longtemps que je cherche du code pour imprimer mon DataGridView complet avec visual basic 2010 express et j'ai teste tous les codes qu'ils s'affichent avec des recherches sur google mais en vain.

Mais finalement, j'ai trouver un code c# que j'ai converti en VB qui me convient parfaitement mais le seul probleme c qu'il boucle infiniment ( boucle infini au niveau du nombre de pages )

NB: Le code ne genere aucune erreur

Voici mon code :

VB.NET Copy Code Private Sub PrintDocument1_PrintPage( ByVal sender As System. Object , ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PrintDocument1.PrintPage

VB.NET Copy Code Try Dim iHeaderHeight As Double Dim iLeftMargin As Integer = e.MarginBounds.Left Dim iTopMargin As Integer = e.MarginBounds.Top Dim bMorePagesToPrint As Boolean = False Dim iTmpWidth As Integer = 0 If bFirstPage Then For Each GridCol As DataGridViewColumn In DataGridView_impot.Columns iTmpWidth = CType (Math.Floor( CType (( CType (GridCol.Width, Double ) / ( CType (iTotalWidth, Double ) * ( CType (iTotalWidth, Double ) * ( CType (e.MarginBounds.Width, Double ) / CType (iTotalWidth, Double ))))), Double )), Integer ) iHeaderHeight = ( CType (e.Graphics.MeasureString(GridCol.HeaderText, GridCol.InheritedStyle.Font, iTmpWidth).Height, Integer ) + 11 ) arrColumnLefts.Add(iLeftMargin) arrColumnWidths.Add(iTmpWidth) iLeftMargin = (iLeftMargin + iTmpWidth) Next End If Dim iRow As Double While (iRow <= (DataGridView_impot.Rows.Count - 1 )) Dim GridRow As DataGridViewRow = DataGridView_impot.Rows(iRow) iCellHeight = (GridRow.Height + 5 ) Dim iCount As Integer = 0 If (iTopMargin + (iCellHeight >= (e.MarginBounds.Height + e.MarginBounds.Top))) Then bNewPage = True bFirstPage = False bMorePagesToPrint = True Exit While Else If bNewPage Then e.Graphics.DrawString( Me .lbl_rs.Text, New Font(DataGridView_impot.Font, FontStyle.Bold), Brushes.Black, e.MarginBounds.Left, (e.MarginBounds.Top - (e.Graphics.MeasureString( Me .lbl_rs.Text, New Font(DataGridView_impot.Font, FontStyle.Bold), e.MarginBounds.Width).Height - 13 ))) e.Graphics.DrawString( Me .lbl_date_now.Text, New Font(DataGridView_impot.Font, FontStyle.Bold), Brushes.Black, (e.MarginBounds.Left + (e.MarginBounds.Width - e.Graphics.MeasureString( Me .lbl_date_now.Text, New Font(DataGridView_impot.Font, FontStyle.Bold), e.MarginBounds.Width).Width)), (e.MarginBounds.Top - (e.Graphics.MeasureString( Me .lbl_rs.Text, New Font( New Font(DataGridView_impot.Font, FontStyle.Bold), FontStyle.Bold), e.MarginBounds.Width).Height - 13 ))) iTopMargin = e.MarginBounds.Top For Each GridCol As DataGridViewColumn In DataGridView_impot.Columns e.Graphics.FillRectangle( New SolidBrush(Color.LightGray), New Rectangle( CType (arrColumnLefts(iCount), Integer ), iTopMargin, CType (arrColumnWidths(iCount), Integer ), iHeaderHeight)) e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, New Rectangle( CType (arrColumnLefts(iCount), Integer ), iTopMargin, CType (arrColumnWidths(iCount), Integer ), iHeaderHeight)) e.Graphics.DrawString(GridCol.HeaderText, GridCol.InheritedStyle.Font, New SolidBrush(GridCol.InheritedStyle.ForeColor), New RectangleF( CType (arrColumnLefts(iCount), Integer ), iTopMargin, CType (arrColumnWidths(iCount), Integer ), iHeaderHeight), strFormat) iCount = (iCount + 1 ) Next bNewPage = False iTopMargin = (iTopMargin + iHeaderHeight) End If iCount = 0 For Each Cel As DataGridViewCell In GridRow.Cells If ( Not (Cel.Value) Is Nothing ) Then e.Graphics.DrawString(Cel.Value.ToString, Cel.InheritedStyle.Font, New SolidBrush(Cel.InheritedStyle.ForeColor), New RectangleF( CType (arrColumnLefts(iCount), Integer ), CType (iTopMargin, Single ), CType (arrColumnWidths(iCount), Integer ), CType (iCellHeight, Single )), strFormat) End If e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, New Rectangle( CType (arrColumnLefts(iCount), Integer ), iTopMargin, CType (arrColumnWidths(iCount), Integer ), iCellHeight)) iCount = (iCount + 1 ) Next End If iRow = (iRow + 1 ) iTopMargin = (iTopMargin + iCellHeight) End While If bMorePagesToPrint Then e.HasMorePages = True Else e.HasMorePages = False End If Catch exc As Exception MessageBox.Show(exc.Message, " Error" , MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon. Error ) End Try End Sub







Ceci est un site de langue anglaise. S'il vous plait modifier votre question et l'afficher en anglais.

(Google Translate[^])





"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer









Thank you Rechard

i'm sorry, I didn't make attention to the used language

I will repost it in English



Hi Everyone, My xml looks like this, a single node with attributes.



Copy Code <?xml version= " 1.0" encoding= " utf-8" ?> <!--Project Time Tracking--> <TimeTracking> <Ticket Client= " 150-338" Code= " Overview" Call= " 33685" Start_Time= " 1/12/2015 10:04:56 AM" Stop_Time= " 1/12/2015 2:09:04 PM" TimeNote= " " >04: 04 : 08 </ Ticket > <Ticket Client= " 602-501" Code= " Post Go-Live Questions" Call= " 33480" Start_Time= " 1/13/2015 2:00:47 PM" Stop_Time= " 1/13/2015 2:30:48 PM" TimeNote= " rate issues" >00: 30 : 01 </ Ticket > <Ticket Client= " 150-315" Code= " Post Go-Live Questions" Call= " 32641" Start_Time= " 1/13/2015 3:15:12 PM" Stop_Time= " 1/13/2015 4:45:12 PM" TimeNote= " QualityOutsource issues" >01: 30 : 00 </ Ticket > </ TimeTracking >



My DataGridView is named Datagridview2 and is populated from a serious of different subs, below is an example:



Copy Code Private Sub SelectedCode() If Not String .IsNullOrEmpty(Me.cboTimeCode.Text) Then DataGridView2.Columns.Clear() DataGridView2.Rows.Clear() Dim doc As New XmlDocument() doc.Load( " c:\myBSG\myBSGTimeclock.xml" ) Dim nodeList As XmlNodeList Dim node As XmlNode = Nothing Dim selCode As String = Me.cboTimeCode.SelectedItem nodeList = doc.SelectNodes( " .//TimeTracking/Ticket[@Code='" & selCode & " ']" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Client" , " Client" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Call" , " Call" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Code" , " Code" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " TimeNote" , " TimeNote" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Start_Time" , " Start" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Stop_Time" , " End" ) DataGridView2.Columns.Add( " Duration" , " Duration" ) For Each node In nodeList If InDateRange(node.Attributes( " Start_Time" ).InnerText) = True Then DataGridView2.Rows.Add(node.Attributes( " Client" ).InnerText, node.Attributes( " Call" ).InnerText, node.Attributes( " Code" ).InnerText, node.Attributes( " TimeNote" ).InnerText, node.Attributes( " Start_Time" ).InnerText, node.Attributes( " Stop_Time" ).InnerText, node.InnerText) End If Next DataGridView2.Sort(DataGridView2.Columns( 4 ), System.ComponentModel.ListSortDirection.Descending) end sub



Now In my grid I have editmode set to EditonKeystrokeorF2 and am wanting to edit one or more cells in a "row" and using CellEndEdit, save the edited cell (or entire row) I cannot find any samples to help me with the save code.. I was thinking it would be something easy like WriteXML but that doesnt work



Any help or direction you could offer would be great. I am thinking that my problem might be that I am using nodes with multiple attributes rather that nodes with separate elements, but my lingo and thought process may be way off.



Thanks



modified 25-Jan-16 10:00am.



Hi,

I'm trying to set the Primary Display...without success!

Here's the code I'm working on, would you please help me see what I'm doing wrong there?

There's no compilation error...it simply doesn't give the expected result!

Thank you!!



VB Copy Code Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices Class MainWindow Const CCDEVICENAME As Short = 32 Const CCFORMNAME As Short = 32 Private Const MONITORINFOF_PRIMARY As Integer = &H1 Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_ATTACHED_TO_DESKTOP As Integer = &H1 Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_PRIMARY_DEVICE As Integer = &H4 Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_MIRRORING_DRIVER As Integer = &H8 Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_VGA_COMPATIBLE As Integer = &H10 Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_ Private Const DISPLAY_DEVICE_MODESPRUNED As Integer = &H8000000 Private Const DM_POSITION = &H20 Private Const DM_DISPLAYORIENTATION = &H80 Private Const DM_BITSPERPEL = &H40000 Private Const DM_PELSWIDTH = &H80000 Private Const DM_PELSHEIGHT = &H100000 Private Const DM_DISPLAYFLAGS = &H200000 Private Const DM_DISPLAYFREQUENCY = &H400000 Private Const ENUM_CURRENT_SETTINGS As Integer = -1 Private Const ENUM_REGISTRY_SETTINGS As Integer = -2 Private Const EDS_RAWMODE As Integer = &H2 Private Const CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY As Integer = &H1 Private Const CDS_TEST As Integer = &H2 Private Const CDS_FULLSCREEN As Integer = &H4 Private Const CDS_GLOBAL As Integer = &H8 Private Const CDS_SET_PRIMARY As Integer = &H10 Private Const CDS_VIDEOPARAMETERS As Integer = &H20 Private Const CDS_NORESET As Integer = &H10000000 Private Const CDS_RESET As Integer = &H40000000 Private Const CDS_FORCE As Integer = &H80000000 Private Const CDS_NONE As Integer = 0 Public Structure PointL Dim x As Integer Dim y As Integer End Structure <Flags()> _ Enum DisplayDeviceStateFlags As Integer AttachedToDesktop = &H1 MultiDriver = &H2 PrimaryDevice = &H4 MirroringDriver = &H8 VGACompatible = &H10 Removable = &H20 ModesPruned = &H8000000 Remote = &H4000000 Disconnect = &H2000000 End Enum Const DISPLAY_PRIMARY_DEVICE = &H4 Private Structure DISPLAY_DEVICE Public cb As Integer <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=CCDEVICENAME)> Public DeviceName As String <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=128)> Public DeviceString As String Public StateFlags As Short <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=128)> Public DeviceID As String <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=128)> Public DeviceKey As String End Structure Private Structure DEVMODE <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=CCDEVICENAME)> _ Public dmDeviceName As String Public dmSpecVersion As Short Public dmDriverVersion As Short Public dmSize As Short Public dmDriverExtra As Short Public dmFields As Integer Public dmOrientation As Short Public dmPositionX As Integer Public dmPositionY As Integer Public dmCopies As Short Public dmDefaultSource As Short Public dmPrintQuality As Short Public dmColor As Short Public dmDuplex As Short Public dmYResolution As Short Public dmTTOption As Short Public dmCollate As Short <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst:=CCFORMNAME)> _ Public dmFormName As String Public dmLogPixels As Short Public dmBitsPerPel As Short Public dmPelsWidth As Integer Public dmPelsHeight As Integer Public dmDisplayFlags As Integer Public dmDisplayFrequency As Integer Public dmICMMethod As Integer Public dmICMIntent As Integer Public dmMediaType As Integer Public dmDitherType As Integer Public dmReserved1 As Integer Public dmReserved2 As Integer Public dmPanningWidth As Integer Public dmPanningHeight As Integer End Structure <DllImport( " user32.dll" )> _ Private Shared Function EnumDisplayDevices( ByVal Unused As Integer , _ ByVal iDevNum As Short , ByRef lpDisplayDevice As DISPLAY_DEVICE, ByVal dwFlags As Integer ) As Integer End Function <DllImport( " user32.dll" )> _ Private Shared Function EnumDisplaySettings( ByVal lpszDeviceName As String , _ ByVal iModeNum As Integer , ByRef lpDevMode As DEVMODE) As Integer End Function <DllImport( " user32.dll" )> _ Private Shared Function ChangeDisplaySettingsEx( ByVal lpszDeviceName As String , _ ByRef lpDevMode As DEVMODE, ByVal hWnd As Integer , ByVal dwFlags As Integer , _ ByVal lParam As Integer ) As Integer End Function <DllImport( " user32.dll" )> _ Private Shared Function ChangeDisplaySettingsEx( ByVal lpszDeviceName As String , _ ByRef lpDevMode As IntPtr , ByVal hWnd As Integer , ByVal dwFlags As Integer , _ ByVal lParam As Integer ) As Integer End Function Public Sub SetAsPrimaryMonitor(id As UInteger ) Dim device = New DISPLAY_DEVICE() Dim deviceMode = New DEVMODE() device.cb = Marshal.SizeOf(device) EnumDisplayDevices( Nothing , id, device, 0 ) EnumDisplaySettings(device.DeviceName, -1, deviceMode) Dim offsetx = deviceMode.dmPositionX Dim offsety = deviceMode.dmPositionY deviceMode.dmPositionX = 0 deviceMode.dmPositionY = 0 ChangeDisplaySettingsEx(device.DeviceName, deviceMode, 0 , (CDS_SET_PRIMARY Or CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY Or CDS_NORESET), 0 ) device = New DISPLAY_DEVICE() device.cb = Marshal.SizeOf(device) Dim otherid As UInteger = 0 While EnumDisplayDevices( Nothing , otherid, device, 0 ) If device.StateFlags = DisplayDeviceStateFlags.AttachedToDesktop AndAlso otherid <> id Then device.cb = Marshal.SizeOf(device) Dim otherDeviceMode = New DEVMODE() EnumDisplaySettings(device.DeviceName, -1, otherDeviceMode) otherDeviceMode.dmPositionX -= offsetx otherDeviceMode.dmPositionY -= offsety ChangeDisplaySettingsEx(device.DeviceName, otherDeviceMode, 0 , (CDS_UPDATEREGISTRY Or CDS_NORESET), 0 ) End If device.cb = Marshal.SizeOf(device) otherid += 1 End While ChangeDisplaySettingsEx( Nothing , 0 , 0 , CDS_NONE, 0 ) End Sub Private Sub Button1_Click_1(sender As System. Object , e As System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs) Handles Button1.Click SetAsPrimaryMonitor( 0 ) End Sub End Class



modified 19-Jan-16 5:55am.







You need to narrow it down to exactly which function call is not working as intended.



The difficult we do right away...

...the impossible takes slightly longer.







ChangeDisplaySettingsEx function (Windows)[^]



The difficult we do right away...

...the impossible takes slightly longer.



So I'm working on my Windows Service that sends email, in which I can read and write the parameters needed for it to communicate now.



I rewrote the service from scratch, and made 3 thread classes.

So the service runs Thread1 to test for communications and file I/O success.

Next Thread2 runs and check for jobs, if there are no jobs, it just sleeps for 15 minutes and checks again.

Finally, the jobs must be sent by Thread3 or the Await Task.



I've never done this before, this is my first time, and I want to get it right.

I did read an article about race conditions, so I can avoid that, and the principles of Threading

http://visualbasic.about.com/od/usingvbnet/a/threadingintro.htm[^]



Thread1 - Test for Communications, Sort of a systems check, Service Stops on failure.

Thread2 - Check for Jobs, if jobs exist, send email

Thread3 - Send Email

Await Task - Send Email



Now if there are jobs, I load the job and run it.



Question:

Is is stupid to load Thread3 to send the job from Thread2? Another Thread called from a Thread.

I did figure out how to stop the threads on shutdown or power down, and sleep. But I'm not sure what the best design would be.



Or should I just use Thread2 to load an Await Task, and have Thread2 monitor the progress, and wait for the Task to complete. Then Thread2 can load the next job if it exist and repeat the process again.



[Edit]

Now I have another question:

I have this thread base code that seemed pretty practical, used an online example.

I placed my job checking code in RunScheduler, and was going to place code to send the emails in StartWorkerThread. I don't get the RunPayLoad. What is Payload Code?

Copy Code Public Class serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode Public Shared ServiceThread As Thread Public Shared ThreadRunning As Boolean = True Public Shared KeepRunning As Boolean = True Private Shared PollingInterval As Integer = My.Settings.PollingInterval Private Shared ActionInterval As Integer = My.Settings.ActionInterval Public Shared Sub Thread_Start() ServiceThread = New Thread(AddressOf RunScheduler) ServiceThread.Name = " serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode" ServiceThread.Start() KeepRunning = True custom_eventLog.WriteToEventLog( " serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode - Thread_Start() has been called" , 7100 , EventLogEntryType.Information) End Sub Public Shared Sub Thread_Stop() KeepRunning = False custom_eventLog.WriteToEventLog( " serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode is stopping. " & vbCrLf & _ " Please note: the worker process will live on for up to " & _ PollingInterval / 1000 & " seconds before it terminates." , 7100 ) End Sub Private Shared Sub RunPayload(ByVal objInput As Object ) ' Write your service payload code and/or function calls here. For example: Try custom_eventLog.WriteToEventLog("serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode - payload execution: " & objInput, 7100) Catch e As Exception custom_eventLog.WriteToEventLog("serviceThread_Jobs_BaseCode - payload execution error: " & e.Message & vbCrLf, 7200) End Try End Sub Private Shared Sub RunScheduler() Dim LastActionTime As Date = DateAdd(DateInterval.Day, -1, Date.Now) Do While KeepRunning If DateDiff(DateInterval.Second, LastActionTime, Date.Now) >= ActionInterval Then LastActionTime = Date.Now ' check for posted jobs StartWorkerThread() End If Thread.Sleep(PollingInterval) Loop End Sub Private Shared Sub StartWorkerThread() ' Check for the Thread Stop Command and Stop Running If (True = KeepRunning) Then Dim WorkerThread As Thread = New Thread(AddressOf RunPayload) ' A parameter value can be transferred to the payload function via Start(): WorkerThread.Start( " Hello world " & Date.Now.ToString( " yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" )) Else ThreadRunning = False End If End Sub End Class



modified 14-Jan-16 14:09pm.





If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.  Lyall Watson







And the first version I wrote of this Windows Service does it using Main()

But the Code looked sort of sloppy and relied too heavily on timers, so I thought I'd try something different.



I guess I just wanted to learn how to use threads, and wanted to implement it in this program.





modified 14-Jan-16 14:38pm.



Timer Class (System.Threading)[^].



If you got a working code without threading I would use that. If it looks sloppy (like you said) I would suggest trying to improve it without introducing unnecessary parallelism. If you want to do something with Tasks/Threads in order to learn about it I would try to find some project that actually calls for it.



And I would suggest using Tasks instead of Threads: Tasks can do the same thing but better/in a more convenient way in 99% of all cases. Take a look at Sacha Barber's articles on the TPL if you haven't already: Task Parallel Library: 1 of n[^]

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.  Lyall Watson







Right now, the subscriber list has about 4000 people, so with a 5 second pause, it doesn't take long to send the list, about 4 hours. And they all go to the same mailserver for sending.



Well for what its worth, at least I have some experience with it, and will be ready if that day ever comes.



I'll probably be back for the stop question, if the cancellation token doesn't work for shutting down the service, and I need to figure how how to save the position of the subscriber list, to pick up where it left off.



But Thanks for the real work view for the proper design aspect!









Do you really need a 5 second pause between mails? Maybe it depends on your mail server/service, but it shouldn't really be necessary. I've sent to lists of c 4,000 in a fraction of the time yours are taking - talking minutes, not hours - using 3 threads in the sending routine.









Be nice to the mail server at the customers ISP, instead of bombarding it, just do a slow feed.

Allow time for people using the website to squeeze in a page request.



I was thinking of that Russian search engine Yandex that just goes full force on my web servers, and didn't want to be like that.



I just reread this, your using 3 threads?

I do compress the HTML before sending to make a smaller package.









This is for an eCommerce site that I wrote from scratch. All the other emails such as order confirmation and your order has shipped gets called by the main thread, and the worker thread loads the HTML Template, changes the field values, and sends it off. The HTML Template is a HTML Document in the App_Data the operator can change to their liking, so it's not hard coded.



Here's the story:



This post is for the Email Advertising Campaign. i originally wrote it as a web app on the back end of my eCommerce program. But when I upgraded my code to Entity Framework, I could not figure out how to talk to the database. So for Black Friday, I had to write Windows Desktop App really fast to send out the emails. That was my first sales campaign, which produced a ton of sales that weekend.



Then I expanded my program, for another sale, and another, more revenue came in. So I added more programs to match what I had on the back end of my web app. So now you can generate HTML templates to send, publish them, create jobs, send jobs by date, book jobs into the future. It's sort of a Swiss knife Windows Desktop App that does it all.



Then I decided to add the Windows Service that I broke back into the program to send in the background, and eventually put it back into my website to run on the server. So this new windows service kicked my butt in terms of design and security permissions. But I figured out how to make a web service on the website to use for data, and write binary serialization classes to the disk drive with permission for the Windows App and the Windows Service. Thought the treads would be the icing on the cake.



So Today

I'm sending emails now using the web service. Now I just need to write a binary file to the disk drive to store the current position of the job, in case the power goes out, or the computer / server is turned off so the service can resume it's duties. And a Task Bar program.



Your program sounds really cool, and I like the design.



I'm curious, what do you think of this Swiss Knife Windows App that I wrote about?

Think it's a waste of time?

Would you be interested in looking at the instruction manual for it?



The intent was to move the website back end to a windows app, and convert the back end into a simple mobile design for small task from the phone. Experiment with being able to do this without tunneling to the database server or punching holes in the firewall.





I'll bear your offer in mind, but I really haven't got time right now to devote to looking at it - on top of two or three other non-trivial projects I've just had a whopper land on my desk which I need to get to grips with fast, which means getting my head around writing cross-platform "open" mobile apps - see my post in that forum if you're interested!




Jan. 25, 2016

 On the evening of Jan. 28, 1986, 30 years ago this week, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and astronaut and Senator John Glenn met with NASA's space shuttle launch team, who hours earlier had lost Challenger and its seven member crew to a then-still-unknown cause just 73 seconds into flight.



Speaking to the controllers from inside the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Bush offered his respects on what he described as "one of the toughest, if not the toughest day" in NASA's history. Glenn, speaking more philosophically, considered the years of triumphs the space agency had achieved.



"Really, if we're honest about it, and honest with ourselves, beyond our wildest dreams, I would have never thought we would ever go this far without losing some people," Glenn stated. "We come to a time when something happens and we have a tragedy that goes along with our triumphs, and I guess that's the story of all mankind."







John Glenn addresses the Challenger launch team at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28, 1986. (NASA/National Geographic)

The meeting in the control center that night was private, but a NASA camera recorded the two men's remarks for posterity. Three decades later, that footage may have been all but forgotten were it not for the researchers behind the one-hour documentary "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes," which debuts tonight (Jan. 25) on the National Geographic Channel.



"One of our researchers asked [NASA] what happened in the launch center in the hours after the accident," said Tom Jennings, executive producer and director of the special, in an interview with collectSPACE.



Learning of the meeting, Jennings requested the video.



"I kept asking everyone who was old enough to remember, 'Do you remember this footage? Do you remember seeing this?' and no one could remember it," Jennings recalled. "We watched a bunch of documentaries on Challenger and nobody had used this before."



"Unless we had bothered to ask, nobody would have ever seen that," he said.



Most of the footage that comprises "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" is more iconic than that example, but the way in which the video clips have been arranged and how the story of the tragedy is told is equally unique. Rather than use a narrator to recount the accident, Jennings turned to seldom-accessed broadcast archives from January 1986.





"We found audio files from a local radio station in Concord, New Hampshire, where [Teacher in Space finalist] Christa McAuliffe was from," said Jennings. "By using these voices that people are not accustomed to hearing, the story takes on a kind of immediacy, as if you are hearing it for the first time."



"That audio, whether it is from radio or NASA or from any other type of recording, that audio becomes our narration," he said.



The documentary opens with footage of McAuliffe standing inside a shuttle training mockup, practicing the educational lessons she planned to deliver from space. It then jumps to video of Challenger on the launch pad as the news director at WJYY radio in Concord describes the scene.



"It was in July 1985, when Christa McAuliffe beat out better than one thousand other teachers to be chosen to be the first private citizen in space," Little is heard saying. "We're just minutes away from Christa's blast off, a very exciting time at [the] Kennedy Space Center."



That excitement would soon turn to devastation, which is why it was important to Jennings that the documentary be respectful to the memory of the crew, including McAuliffe, STS-51L mission commander Francis "Dick" Scobee, pilot Mike Smith, mission specialists Judith Resnik, Ron McNair and Ellison Onizuka, and payload specialist Greg Jarvis.



"In my first conversation with the network I said that we really wanted to make sure that people don't feel that we're taking advantage of the tragedy," he stated. "We wanted to make sure that how ever we presented the story, it would not just be about Challenger blowing up. It would celebrate who [the astronauts] were and what they were about."



Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe's backup for the ill-fated STS- 51L mission and later the first educator-astronaut to fly into space, said that Jennings succeeded.







Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe (left) and her back-up Barbara Morgan seen together during training. (NASA)
Timeline of events

Nov. 9: Former UM System President Tim Wolfe and MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resign.

Nov. 10: Click apologizes for the incident and resigns a courtesy appointment with the Missouri School of Journalism.

The White House press secretary and Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder released statements supporting Schierbecker and Tim Tai, a freelance photographer also documenting the event.

Nov. 11: Schierbecker said he filed a "municipal simple assault" complaint against Click with the MU Police Department.

Janna Basler, the MU Director of Greek Life, is also seen in the video with her arms outstretched walking toward and eventually touching Tim Tai, a student photojournalist on assignment for ESPN. Basler was placed on administrative leave.

Jan. 25: City Prosecutor Steve Richey files a simple assault charge against Click.
Visit these 9 enduring favorites over Homecoming weekend

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Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are.
Brian Wilson will mark the 50th anniversary of "Pet Sounds" with a concert in Tunica in July.

Go Play If you want personality, you gotta #GoMemphis SHARE

By Bob Mehr of The Commercial Appeal

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys landmark LP, Pet Sounds. The albums architect and band founder Brian Wilson is launching a world tour that will stop in the Mid-South this summer.

Wilson will be performing a special Pet Sounds concert at the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica on July 22 at 8 p.m.

According to Wilsons press representatives, his touring band will include former Beach Boys bandmates Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin. Wilson and company will perform Pet Sounds in its entirety, along with favorites from across his Beach Boys solo catalogs.



The tour kicks off in the spring, moving through Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Spain, Israel, and Portugal before launching in America in the summer.



Wilson's most recent album, No Pier Pressure, came out in 2015  a year that also saw his life become the subject of the award winning film, Love and Mercy.



Tickets for the Horseshoe Casino concert are $42 to $62. Seats go on sale to the general public on Friday at 10 a.m. A limited pre-sale begins Tuesday. To purchase or for more information go to ticketmaster.com or call (800) 745-3000.
Mayor Jim Strickland visited with top state legislative officials Monday in Nashville, discussing what he called the "significant financial challenges facing Memphis."







By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  Jim Strickland made his first rounds of the State Capitol as Memphis mayor on Monday, meeting with top legislative officials and the state treasurer and others about the city's finances and other priorities.

Strickland made a couple of visits as a mayoral candidate and as mayor-elect in November and December, he said, but Monday's tour was "my initial visit as mayor, to meet with several of the legislators and with some administrative folks too  No. 1 to introduce myself and No. 2 to talk about some issues."

Because state government and its laws and actions have a huge impact on Tennessee's cities, particularly their finances, the mayor said he wanted to convey to lawmakers  especially those from outside Shelby County who are less familiar with the city's issues "the financial challenges Memphis faces. They are significant," he said.

"We have not fully funded our pensions, which most of these folks know. We have to hire more police officers. We have more needs than finances. And so I've asked them to keep an open mind on issues like the Hall income tax repeal."

Before it adjourns in late April, the state legislature will consider various proposals to either repeal the Hall tax, levied on income from stocks and bonds; redirect some of the revenue it generates, or raise the exemption levels for Hall taxpayers.

The state shares revenue from the Hall tax with local governments on the basis of where the taxpayer resides. The state keeps five-eighths of each taxpayer's tax payment and returns three-eighths to the municipality where the taxpayer lives, or to the taxpayer's home county if the taxpayer lives in an unincorporated area.

Aside from the state, Memphis is the largest recipient of Hall tax proceeds  $14.8 million during fiscal year 2015. Nashville was second at $14.6 million, followed by Knoxville with $10 million. Knox County received $3.3 million, followed by Germantown with nearly $3.1 million. Shelby County received $1.5 million and Collierville $1.16 million.

Lawmakers have considered repealing the tax, enacted in 1929, for years but have focused instead on increasing the exemption levels for taxpayers aged 65 and up. Joint filers who are 65 and up must earn at least $59,000 from all sources before they're subject to the 6 percent Hall tax on their stocks and bonds earnings, and the first $2,500 in those taxable earnings are exempt for all taxpayers, including those 65 and older.

One new idea this year, proposed by House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick (R-Chattanooga) would let cities and counties impose a 2.5 percent tax on investment income themselves to replace the loss in state revenue if the Hall tax is repealed, but local enactment would require a two-thirds majority of a county commission or city council.

Strickland also said police body cameras are a big issue for Memphis, and that he's aware that are bills pending before state lawmakers to require them and to set guidelines for their use.

Gov. Bill Haslam was not on the mayor's itinerary Monday. He met with Haslam in November.
Lawmakers and state officials pack food boxes for distribution to Tennessee's five food banks in Memphis, Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga and Tri-Cities last Wednesday in Nashville.

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By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal

NASHVILLE  State legislators and staffers, members of Gov. Bill Haslam's Cabinet and the state Supreme Court, constitutional officers and other officials transformed the Capitol's War Memorial Auditorium into a giant food-packaging operation for Tennessee's five food banks last week.

The legislature's community service project packed 50,000 meals in 90 minutes Wednesday. The food boxes were transported to food banks in Memphis, Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga and the Tri-Cities for distribution to people in need. The officials and staffers donned aprons and hair nets for the project, lining up at dozens of tables on the floor of the historic auditorium to assemble individual food boxes.

The event was organized by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville), who has been organizing similar food packaging events since his first in 2012 during a meeting of the Southern Legislative Conference in Memphis. That event and several since were in partnership with Outreach Inc., an Iowa-based non-profit founded by Floyd Hammer and his wife, Kathy Hamilton. Its mission is to help provide safe water, food, medical care and education to those in need in the U.S. and internationally.

"Hunger in Tennessee  hunger in America, but hunger in Tennessee and hunger in Shelby County  is inexcusable," Norris said. "It's a major problem. It's over 20 percent in Shelby County alone. They call it food insecurity, but I don't mince words: It's hunger. We can't abide that in Tennessee, and so we're trying to help people help themselves."

Hammer and his wife met Norris through a mutual friend and helped organize the first food packaging at the meeting of southern state legislators at The Peabody four years ago. "Legislators don't always know what the hunger situation is in their states. This is a way to tell people we've got a problem," Hammer said at the Nashville event.

Directors of food banks statewide who were able to travel during last week's winter weather participated.

Memphis Food Bank Executive Director Estella Mayhew Greer said the event is "not only important for us to receive the food to provide those we are serving in Tennessee but this is an educational process as well. It creates awareness among our legislators of the need throughout the state of Tennessee about the hunger problem."

She and her four colleagues from across the state will also be trying to persuade the General Assembly to increase the annual grants it makes to the food banks. Norris said that will be a priority.

"Each year we have provided funding to the five food banks. It's gone down over time. It's never enough. So it's a worthy cause," he said.
Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin (left) talks with Rep. Glen Casada, R-Franklin, on the opening day of the second session of the 109th General Assembly Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016, in Nashville. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

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By Erik Schelzig

NASHVILLE  House Speaker Beth Harwell and State Republican Party Chairman Ryan Haynes on Monday called for state Rep. Jeremy Durham to resign from his seat in the Tennessee General Assembly amid allegations of sexual harassment.

In a news conference at the legislative office complex, Harwell also announced an overhaul of sexual harassment policies following a report in The Tennessean over the weekend that Durham sent inappropriate text messages to women working at the Legislature.

"In light of these recent revelations, it is important that Rep. Durham step down from his position as a member of this body," Haynes said.

Harwell said it would ultimately be Durham's decision, but she said she believes he should resign.

"I think I've made my feelings clear," she said. "I think he needs help, and I think it would be in his best interest."

Harwell said the House will begin work to update the legislature's 19-year-old sexual-harassment policies. Once that is complete, each of the chamber's 99 members will undergo sexual-harassment training, she said.

The speaker also said interns will be banned from attending legislative receptions or parties, and they will be instructed not to give their cellphone numbers to lawmakers.

Durham announced Sunday that he would step aside from his position as House majority whip, but would remain in the Legislature and aggressively seek re-election to the Williamson County seat this fall.

In a written statement Monday, Durham denied any wrongdoing.

"I've never sexually harassed anyone and I'm sorely disappointed that members of my own party would rush to such judgment given that no complaints were ever filed and the general lack of evidence suggesting I did anything wrong," he said.

Durham has been in the spotlight since it was revealed that prosecutors in 2014 sought fraud charges against the lawmaker on allegations of altering two prescriptions. A grand jury declined to indict him, however.

The lawmaker's judgment was also questioned by other Republican leaders after he wrote a character reference letter on behalf of a former youth pastor who pleaded guilty in federal court to child porn possession.

In response to the Tennessean's report over the weekend, Durham was quoted by the newspaper as saying that he did not remember sending the text messages.

The legislator has blamed the negative attention on what he called a "relentless media-driven agenda."
Dave Darnell/The Commercial Appeal files Norfleet Turner (left), Mrs. John Stevens (center) and Langdon Van Norden (right) look at a framed blown up copy of the cover of Opera News at the annual Arts Appreciation dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Jan. 25, 1976. Mr. Turner is Memphis Arts Appreciation Foundation chairman and Van Norden is board chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Association.

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Jan. 25

25 years ago: 1991

NASHVILLE  Gov. Ned McWherter revealed Thursday that he wants to increase funding for higher education and to cut or eliminate sales tax on food. He said he would present an education reform bill within a week to provide $20 million to $30 million in extra funding for state colleges and universities. A tax reform bill will be presented by March.

50 years ago: 1966

Holiday Inns of America, Inc., and United Air Lines have teamed up with a customer service aimed at the business convention market. Holiday Inns officials in Memphis said yesterday the service will be called Meet-O-Matic. The idea is to provide one-call meeting service. With one phone call to either a Holiday Inn or a United ticket office, a customer may arrange all the details of a business meeting  accommodations, meals, transportation and every facility for the meeting. There is no charge for the service.

75 years ago: 1941

The 109th annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee has granted permission to St. James Parish in Memphis to organize a parish within the city. Status of the church was thus changed from a parish in Shelby County and brought to seven the number of parishes in Memphis. The rector of St. James is the Rev. I.H. Noe.

100 years ago: 1916

After laboratory tests showed the presence of harmful bacteria in many foods, F.A. Mantel, city bacteriologist, is urging the pasteurization of milk and cream, the wrapping of bread in waxed or clean paper by the baker, and that the use of tobacco be prohibited in kitchens, bakeries, milk rooms and candy factories.

125 years ago: 1891

On the petition of W.M. Farrington, the Legislative Council has reduced the assessment on the rental value of the Gayoso Hotel to $15,000. The assessment was recently raised to $25,000 but Mr. Farrington said that the hotel would not rent for $15,000 a year.
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By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal

The Shelby County Sheriffs Office said a postal worker accused of assaulting his supervisor has been arrested.

Richard Martin, 59, was arrested just after 10 a.m. Monday at his home in the 3800 block of Tuggle.

He was wanted on aggravated assault charges in connection with an attack on his supervisor over the weekend, Sheriffs Office spokesman Chip Washington said in an e-mail Monday.

Memphis police issued a be on the lookout alert for Martin. According to police, Martins supervisor told investigators that he went into her office and started screaming racial slurs at her and then punched her and hit her with a chair.


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Teachers should be held accountable for their effectiveness in the classroom, but at least two school boards in Tennessee have made a credible case for allowing districts to forgo the use of TNReady test scores in evaluating teachers this year.

The Shelby County Schools board is expected to lobby for a waiver alongside boards in Knoxville and Nashville for a range of reasons, beginning with the extra burden that will be placed on teachers and students this spring by TNReady testing, which will replace TCAP-style multiple-choice questions with essay questions and short-answer responses.

All districts are expected to see declines in scores until teachers and students adjust and would benefit from a waiver of a year or more.

Standardized testing should not be abandoned altogether, but the weight it should have in evaluating teachers should be limited because of a number of important factors, including the narrow range of skills that are suitable for testing, the difficulty of raising test scores among children whose ability to learn is hampered by unstable home environments and poverty, and the temptation to weed out of the tests students who are predictably poor performers.

Principal performance, team teaching, tutoring and the like, which can have an effect on test scores, are typically not adequately accounted for.

In Shelby County, a resolution before the school board points out, teachers also have faced additional challenges associated with the district's merger with Memphis City Schools, "subsequent demerger, and now anxiety concerning the use of first-year data from TNReady test scores ... "

Between a switch to the Common Core State Standards, this spring's change to reflect the TNReady curriculum and other changes that have occurred over the last five or six years, teachers are confused about what is expected of them and are having doubts about how much their work is valued by legislators and the education establishment hierarchy.

At present, school districts have a one-year waiver for using TNReady data to drive policies on hiring and firing decisions, but evaluations, based on such factors as test scores, classroom observations and professionalism, determine a teacher's pay.

The Metro Nashville Public Schools board unanimously approved a request for a one-year waiver last week. The Knox County Schools board approved its resolution to that effect in early December.

Approval of their request by the General Assembly, along with Shelby County's, would replace an illogical "compromise" on the issue, which has scores counting for 35 percent of a teacher's evaluation if it helps that teacher significantly, 10 percent if it is harmful.

The state obviously is not ready to seriously address the question of what role testing should play in evaluations  a complicated matter that would more competently be taken up when the dust has settled on the ever-changing landscape of high-stakes tests.
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By Dana Milbank

WASHINGTON  Thursday night, the National Review, the storied conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, published an issue denouncing Donald Trump.

"Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones," the editors wrote. "Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself."

The Republican National Committee reacted swiftly, immediately revoking the permission it had given National Review to host a Republican presidential debate next month. "Tonight, a top official with the RNC called me to say that National Review was being disinvited," the magazine's publisher wrote online. "The reason: Our 'Against Trump' editorial."

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites  what's left of the now-derided "establishment"  are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and American conservatism.

In recent days, influential Republicans including Bob Dole, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and Rupert Murdoch have made noises about being able to stomach Trump. Republican donors are trying to insinuate themselves in the billionaire's orbit. Trump himself said Thursday: "I have received so many phone calls from people that you would call 'establishment,' from people  generally speaking, conservatives, Republicans  that want to come onto our team."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page had long criticized Trump's candidacy, editorializing in July that the conservative media who applaud Trump "are hurting the cause." The editors opined: "If Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him."

This month, the Journal reversed course. "Mr. Trump is a better politician than we ever imagined, and he is becoming a better candidate," the editorialists wrote, speculating that "he might possibly be able to appeal to a larger set of voters than he has so far."

I had been confident that Republican primary voters would reject Trump. I still think they would, if given the chance. But they haven't been given a clear alternative. Because of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich and the others selfishly refusing to unite behind any one of them, the anti-Trump vote has been scattered.

Instead, they've let the GOP primary battle turn into a fight between Trump and Ted Cruz, and the party's old guard has decided Trump is marginally better because he's more malleable.

But how do you un-ring all these bells? Trump has in word and deed built his candidacy by antagonizing Latinos and Muslims, immigrants and women, Jews and African-Americans, Asian-Americans and the disabled. And if he walked away from his vows to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and to block Muslims from coming into the U.S., he'd abandon the source of his power: the rage of angry, less-educated white men.

My colleague Michael Gerson recently wrote that "the nomination of Trump would reduce Republican politics  at the presidential level  to an enterprise of squalid prejudice. And many Republicans could not follow, precisely because they are Republicans. By seizing the GOP, Trump would break it to pieces."

But how many Republicans could not follow? Partisanship is now more important than any other factor in predicting Americans' votes, which means there is little chance of a Goldwater-style landslide against Trump. Republicans could nominate a ham sandwich and still get 45 percent of the vote.

Heck, Trump could even win, particularly if Democrats nominate a socialist to oppose him, but the only thing more likely to devastate the Republican Party and the conservative movement than a Trump wipeout in November would be a Trump victory. Either way, he'd cement the GOP's long-term demographic problems and bind conservatism to bigotry and nativism.

This is why I wonder about the self-deception of those GOP elites now cozying up to Trump.

The Hill newspaper last week interviewed major donor Robert Bazyk, who decamped to Trump from Bush. The big spender objects to Trump's positions on refugees and Muslims, and his "insults and name-calling." And yet he is funding the man.

If, in future years, Republicans and conservatives are called to explain how Trump happened, they might recall this: Good people could have stopped him, but they didn't.

Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post.
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By Josh Rogin

Donald Trump's repeated public smears of Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl are compromising his right to a fair trial and an impartial jury, according to Bergdahl's lawyer, who is considering calling Trump as a witness in Bergdahl's upcoming court-martial.

While campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump has repeatedly called Bergdahl a "no-good traitor" and a "dirty rotten traitor," and said he "should have been executed." Those comments could land Trump on the witness stand when the former Taliban prisoner goes on trial this year. If Trump is compelled to testify in the proceeding, he could be required to appear in the middle of the presidential election season.

Calling Trump as a witness would be only the latest in a string of efforts by Bergdahl's lawyers to protest Trump's attacks.

"We've made no decision yet on whether to call Mr. Trump as a witness," Bergdahl's lawyer, Eugene Fidell, told me. "We continue to monitor his defamatory statements."

Bergdahl, who spent five years in captivity after he left his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, is charged with misbehavior before the enemy and desertion. His court-martial is scheduled for August. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

Bergdahl's lawyers have been arguing for months that Trump's statements, combined with the huge media platform he enjoys, are creating an unfair situation for their client. Bergdahl is not able to defend himself from Trump's attacks in the press, and the lawyers argue that Trump's accusations are poisoning public opinion and potentially influencing the jury pool.

"The First Amendment rules out any effort to prevent Mr. Trump from making these defamatory remarks," Bergdahl's lawyers argued in a related court filing in October. "The fact remains, however, that his pattern of doing so, with the full glare of public attention before mass audiences around the country, materially threatens SGT Bergdahl's right to fair consideration by the convening authority as well as in a court-martial."

That motion was written before Bergdahl's case was referred for a general court-martial in December. Fidell argues now that Trump's comments could influence that jury pool and others involved in the case. He wants the courts to release documents that he says would show that Trump's comments, including Trump's claim that six U.S. soldiers died searching for Bergdahl, are false.

The court has not yet released a pretrial report by Major General Kenneth Dahl, which reportedly concludes that Bergdahl should not face any additional imprisonment related to his actions. The court has also not released the transcript of Bergdahl's hours-long interview with Dahl. Fidell argues that releasing these documents would give Bergdahl the opportunity to counter bias against him in the court of public opinion.

"Mr. Trump and the echo chamber that has amplified his voice beyond all reason have a right to free speech," Fidell wrote in his court filing. "Simple fairness demands that SGT Bergdahl at least be able to defend himself by permitting public access in real time to documents that put the lie to the kind of character assassination to which he is being subjected."

Military law experts said that while Trump's statements may be defamatory, that is not the question at hand. Bergdahl's lawyers would have to convince the judge that Trump's comments have harmed Bergdahl's ability to receive a fair trial.

"The only legal issue here is that Sergeant Bergdahl is constitutionally entitled to an unbiased and impartial jury trial. The question is, will statements like this taint the jury pool?" said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force judge advocate now a professor at Southwestern Law School. "Is this unfair to Bowe Bergdahl what's going on? Yes. But is it legally unfair?"

The military courts may not be convinced that Trump's influence over politics and public opinion are legally relevant to Bergdahl's ability to receive a fair trial, she said. But if the court at least grants Fidell a motion to have a hearing on the issue, Trump could be called to testify. If the presiding judge approved calling him and Trump refused to attend, he could be subpoenaed.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Trump is not the only figure Bergdahl's lawyers have criticized for publicly opining about the case. Last summer, Fidell argued in court that comments by the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, John McCain, were having undue influence on the case because the Army officer presiding over the case was up for a promotion that required Senate confirmation.

But McCain is no longer running for president. There is no chance he would wield influence as commander in chief. Trump, however, is campaigning for just that power. To rile up his supporters and score short-term politican gain, he is setting aside the constitutional presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty.

Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist.
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When you look at an LED light, does national security jump to mind? If your answer is to scoff, would it change if the LEDs were in TV, mobile device and computer displays, used as a flash for smartphone cameras, used in general lighting markets, and the LEDs were in one of every three cars made in the world?

The LEDs mentioned above are made by Lumileds, a company that pulled in about $2 billion last year and is a part of Philips. By 2010, Philips Lumileds had shipped one billion Luxeon LEDs. In March 2015, Philips announced its intention to sell 80% of the Lumileds division based in California to GO Scale Capital, a group which included Chinese firms; yet on Friday, the majority interest sale hit a major snag. Thats when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) slammed on the brakes, blocking the $2.8 billion sale, even as Philips said it was not permitted to disclose the nature of the concerns raised by the U.S. committee, which vets deals for any national security issues.

The U.S. is increasingly paranoid of Chinese tech companies. Bloomberg reported, The sale stalled over the transfer of semiconductor technology involved in making LEDs. Despite the long negotiations, in the end, the deal fell short of addressing unexplained government concerns.

Philips  Royal Philips NV  is actually a Dutch-owned electronics company; Reuters added, The exact reason why the United States has blocked a Dutch company from selling a lighting division to Asian investors on national security grounds is not clear.

Since neither of the principal actors in the deal were American, it wouldnt be considered a likely target for CFIUS to inspect for potential impacts on U.S. national security, reported MarketWatch; it added:

CFIUS sometimes exerts its power in a way that observers kind of scratch their heads and say, Really? said Robert Profusek, the global chair of mergers and acquisitions at the law firm Jones Day. By their logic, he added, almost anything is a CFIUS deal.

CFIUS has the authority of the President to suspend or prohibit certain transactions, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It consists of 16 officials from U.S. departments such as Treasury, Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, State, Energy, Commerce and the Office of Science & Technology Policy. Forbes added, The chief executive of Philips, Frans van Houten, may be scratching his head over the question of why the worlds champion of free markets is blocking a deal between two overseas groups.

The Wall Street Journal reported that CFIUS doesnt have the power to reject transactions, but it can recommend for companies to modify the terms of their deal or recommend for the U.S. president to nix the transaction. A presidential veto has only happened twice; more often, as was the case with Philips, the companies abandon transactions that CFIUS frowns upon.

A CFIUS attorney told WSJ, National-security reviews are expanding around the world and the national-security issues are broader as the supply chain globalizes; another CFIUS lawyer stated, CFIUS has been migrating to the emerging markets because the sources of inbound investment to the U.S. are shifting. What is perceived as being relevant to national security has also been expanded. You get these two phenomenona coming together at the same time.

LED eavesdropping?

Five years ago it came to light that there was a kit capable of modifying any color LED bulb, such as those found in common appliances, into a listening device  basically a bug  that could send audio over 300 meters, about 984 feet, away.

Forbes also noted, It is true that the potential of LED lights has not yet been exhausted and the lighting can be used as a new kind of Wi-Fi relay and has the theoretical possibility to monitor (and thus eavesdrop) on data activity in a company or city.

So does the CFIUS actually know something we dont about LEDs, some privacy or security snafu, or was the sale blocked and eventually dropped because the U.S. doesnt want Philips to hand over the tech to the Chinese and other Asian firms that make up GO Scale Capital? What actually triggered national security concerns? Its the dreaded Catch-22 of when national security is invoked and the public isnt allowed to know the details because it allegedly involves national security. Reuters suggested the deal may have troubled the U.S. government because of the prospect of a Chinese company acquiring advanced technologies to make the LED lights.

Philips plans to continue to report Lumileds business as discontinued operations and Lumileds is looking for a new buyer.

Meanwhile, GO Scale Capital chairman Sonny Wu said, China will inevitably become the leader of the global LED industry because of its industrial ecosystem and competitive advantages in scale and cost.
Samsung announced on Monday the global launch of its Gear S2 Classic New Edition smartwatches, which first appeared at CES 2016 with 18K rose gold and platinum finishes.

The New Edition rose gold version incorporates gold plating atop stainless steel, not solid gold, according to Samsung.

That distinction would explain a price of 480 (about $520 US), as seen as available for pre-order on the Dutch Cool Blue retail website.

Samsung hasn't listed official pricing or availability by countries other than to say China was the first country where the device was released.

A solid gold Apple Watch, by contrast, could cost a buyer as much as $17,000, although Apple sells many variations at much lower prices.

While Samsung described its newest watches as "merging fashion with technology," there is a debate in the industry over how much high fashion and rich materials will matter in achieving mass market acceptance of smartwatches.

Market research firm IDC said that 21 million smartwatches shipped in 2015, well below projections of many analysts. That number included the Apple Watch, launched in April, which some had predicted would sell 40 million units in its first year.

"People don't really see the value in smartwatches," said IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani in a January interview. He added that women aren't heavily interested in fashion smartwatches, despite attempts by Apple and now Samsung to attract women buyers.

A big concern with smartwatches is whether they will continue to be primarily notification centers linked via Bluetooth to a smartphone. Some enterprise IT managers want smartwatches to operate on their own cellular connection, independent of the smartphone, with a lot more apps than are currently available.

Samsung provides about 1,400 apps for use with the Tizen OS on its Gear 2 smartwatches. The devices will also have the ability to connect to Android smartphones and, later in 2016, to iOS devices.

The future for smartwatches used in business settings is unclear, analysts have said, although there is greater interest in providing enterprise apps for a range of wearables that include smart glasses and devices worn on other parts of the body.
As a third-party presidential candidate, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would likely advocate for unlimited H-1B visas and increased availability of green cards. He could easily become the tech industry's favorite presidential candidate.

Bloomberg is reportedly exploring his options and sees an opening, particularly if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination for president and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wins the Democratic nod.

Bloomberg champions immigration views that are in contrast to many of the candidates, especially Trump, the real estate developer and fellow billionaire, as well as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Both want to raise the salaries of H-1B workers as a way to discourage the use of foreign labor. Cruz, in particular, has called for a minimum wage of $110,000 for temporary visa holders.

As a three-term mayor of New York City, Bloomberg pushed for the expansion of STEM (science, technology, education and math) policies, including a $100 million donation last year toward construction of $2 billion technology campus on Roosevelt Island. The project, Cornell Tech, was developed during his time in office.

Something else that might appeal to the tech sector is Bloomberg's background as a technology entrepreneur, having created Bloomberg L.P., with terminals that provide real-time financial market data.

Bloomberg advocates immigration reforms in speeches and through a lobbying group he co-chairs, the Partnership for a New American Economy. A co-chair of the partnership is Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose company, one year ago this month, laid off possibly hundreds of IT workers, some of whom had to train visa-holding replacements as a condition of severance.

"We must stop telling American companies that they cannot hire the high-skilled workers they need," said Bloomberg, in a speech in 2011. As president, Bloomberg would seek elimination of the H-1B cap, which "is slowing growth and worse, promoting the outsourcing of American jobs."

Other tech-related immigration reforms sought by Bloomberg include allowing any university graduate in an essential field to obtain a green card.

Foreign entrepreneurs who receive backing from American investors should be given a visa to start a company. If the business, after several years, has successfully created new jobs,m then permanent residency should be offered, said Bloomberg.

Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Howard University, said that Bloomberg made his mark in New York "by emphasizing evidence-based policy decisions. He used statistics and data to improve policy decisions.

"The data-driven approach to policy-making is very appealing to engineers and technologists," said Hira. In fact, Mr. Bloomberg was trained as an engineer himself before becoming an entrepreneur."

But Bloomberg "has a major blind spot when it comes to the H-1B program. He has been outspoken that the federal government should provide an infinite number of H-1Bs, and Mr. Bloomberg has spent his political and prodigious financial capital pushing for it," said Hira.

Bloomberg and his lobbying organization "have systematically ignored the data and basic facts about the H-1B program and have provided a distorted portrait" about the program's operation, he added.

Last April, the Partnership for the New American Economy held a meeting with congressional staffers in Washington. It was closed to the press. The documents that were handed out included one that said: "H-1B workers complement - instead of displace - U.S. workers."
Disney IT workers laid off a year ago this month are now accusing the company and the outsourcing firms it hired of engaging in a "conspiracy to displace U.S. workers." The allegations are part of two lawsuits filed in federal court in Florida on Monday.

Between 200 and 300 Disney IT workers were laid off in January 2015. Some of the workers had to train their foreign replacements -- workers on H-1B visas -- as a condition of severance.

The lawsuits represent what may be a new approach in the attack on the use of H-1B workers to replace U.S. workers. They allege violations of the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), claiming that the nature of the employment of the H-1B workers was misrepresented, and that Disney and the contractors knew the ultimate intent was to replace U.S. workers with lower paid H-1B workers.

The lawsuits cite a form that H-1B employers fill out when placing a visa worker, the Labor Condition Application (LCA).

In the LCA, an employer states the job location, salaries paid to the H-1B workers and also attests that U.S. workers will not be "adversely affected."

But former Disney IT workers Dena Moore and Leo Perrero, in their respective lawsuits, allege that they were indeed adversely affected. They had to train their foreign replacements brought in by contractors, and then were terminated.

Both lawsuits name Disney as a defendant; additionally, Moore is suing Cognizant and Perrero is suing HCL.

The LCA requires employers to swear the visa workers "will not adversely affect working conditions" of existing employees, said Sara Blackwell, the Florida attorney who is bringing the case. "Obviously, if you have to train your replacement and then are fired, that is an adverse effect."

Since his layoff, Perrero has been working to raise awareness among lawmakers about the displacement of U.S. workers by foreign temporary labor.

"No shortage exists of American STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) workers," said Perrero. "Disney is not the only one to do this and lawmakers need to take action."

Blackwell is representing, as well, some 30 former Disney IT workers who have filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over the loss of their jobs. These employees are arguing that they are victims of national origin discrimination.

Blackwell said her goal is to "stop the systemic abuse of the immigration system."

A Disney spokeswoman, in response to the lawsuit, offered this response via email: "These lawsuits are based on an unsustainable legal theory and are a wholesale misrepresentation of the facts. Contrary to reports, Ms. Moore was offered another position in the company at comparable pay, and more than 100 of the workers affected by the changes were rehired.

According to Blackwell, Moore applied for many jobs at Disney and wasnt hired. After being laid off, she went to work at another firm. Not long after she started that job, Disney sent Moore a job offer letter, prompting Moore to quit her new position so she could return to Disney. Although she expected to start work right away, the hiring date kept getting delayed and the putative Disney job turned into work on a short-term project, said Blackwell.

As a result, Moore did not ultimately take the job.

Officials at the two contractors were also asked for comment; none immediately responded.
FRENCH police have arrested 35 people after protesters and migrants broke into the Calais ferry terminal and boarded a ship heading to the UK.

Regional president Xavier Bertrand said that the army needed to be brought in to restore security around transport terminals at the town.

Mr Bertrand said that improvements in the processing of asylum applications meant that the population of the Jungle, the name for the area where migrants were camped, had dropped from 6,000 to 4,000.

However, Medecins Sans Frontieres put the number even lower at 2,500, including about 250 children, but said the number was rising.

The breach happened when a group of hundreds of migrants and protesters broke through fencing at the ferry port.

Around 50 of them managed to board the a ship before they were removed.

The incident followed a pro-migrant protest by the group No Borders, which believes in the eradication of national frontiers.

German, Dutch and British marchers joined French protesters around 2,000 people taking part.

Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart described the protest as a diversion that allowed hard-left groups to vandalise a statue of Charles de Gaulle in the town and break into the port.

P&O services returned to normal on Sunday following the disruption.
Nadhim Zahawi is a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and MP for Stratford On Avon.

As Ive written here before, the Prime Minister asked me last year to be his Apprenticeships Adviser. I hope I will be forgiven, but I wish to write about the apprenticeship agenda again.

Ill admit that when the Prime Minister asks you to do a job, it is very difficult to say no. Cynicism aside, everyone who gets into politics does so because they want to help. On a smaller or larger scale, we all want to change things for the better. Were all looking for an opportunity to play a part, so it is a great honour that cannot be turned down when youre given a chance. But I can be honest and say that I am truly glad to have been asked to do this, because increasing our nations skills base is at the core of our Governments, and our partys, One Nation ideal.

The previous Labour Government saw university education as a single silver bullet to expand opportunity and increase social mobility. They saw the increased earnings that graduates receive over their lifetimes, and sought to push everyone towards this route.

I am glad that the current Government has uncapped student numbers to allow anyone who wants to go to university to do so, but the current push to increase apprenticeships is just as important. It is lazy thinking to assume that going through the university system is the best option for everyone, and for every career. There is no one size fits all approach for providing the next generation with the skills to succeed, or for ensuring that businesses can fill the skilled positions they require.

Teachers, having gone through a traditional academic background and university themselves, are naturally most comfortable with systems they are most familiar with. This can influence their expectations and advice to their pupils. We end up with an almost pavlovian response from students where they end up on the UCAS website, because their teachers expect it and all their friends are doing it, before theyve even properly considered the full spectrum of opportunity.

We should not allow the increasing number of students going to university over the last 20 years to damage the reputation of alternative options, leaving them to be seen as second choices. In reality, for many there is simply no better option.

You get in at the ground floor of a company, you learn how to be part of a business, how to contribute, you get good training and you earn a wage for your efforts. Youre then four or five years ahead of a graduate, already knowledgeable about the role and the business, and youve been earning all the while. For too long, young people have been asked to choose between earning or learning, but its a choice that doesnt need to be made.

The UK economy is broad and diverse and apprenticeships can provide a route into every niche; from accountancy to engineering, from software development to being a chef. Apprenticeships dont just provide a pathway into this sometimes bewildering array of careers and the training to ensure they can contribute to the business, but also provide the next skilled generation of a businesses workforce.

When visiting the London Boat Show with UK Marine, I heard from Sunseeker and Princess Yachts, who a few years ago faced difficulties in finding future employees. They seemingly faced the choice of either importing employees from abroad or fighting competitors for the small pool of skilled employees left. Instead they chose the third option of creating new apprenticeship programmes and growing their own skills base. They now have over 100 apprentices each.

When meeting one of their apprentices from Scotland who now helps design the hulls for their super-yachts in Plymouth, she talked about how all of her friends, who went to university, are jealous of her job and the chance she now has. When I met another apprentice last week, he said that doing an apprenticeship made him suddenly feel like he had a career, rather than just a job.

As well as introducing you to the world of work, apprenticeships also provide a sense of progression, of opportunity, of a future. You can carry on developing your skills, becoming better at your job and earning all of the time. You can start at a Level Two, the equivalent of GCSEs, and find apprenticeships all the way through to Level Seven, the equivalent of a Masters degree.

Expanding opportunity is a central part of what the Conservative Party is about, and that has to mean opportunity for all. Increasing the number of graduates cannot succeed in this goal singlehandedly.

We want to build a society and an economy where everyone has a chance to show what they can do, to see what happens when they mix their talent with a good amount of hard work, to help people create a better life for themselves and their families. This aim is at the centre of so much of what the Government does, and apprenticeships are the key.
01/25/2016

File photo Monsanto is suing California to try to block it from adding Roundup to the Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive damage.

The state has been planning to add glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, to its Prop. 65 list since last September, following a finding by the World Health Organization that the chemical is a probable human carcinogen.

Prop. 65 requires the state to label all substances identified as carcinogenic or dangerous to the reproductive process, but St. Louis-based Monsanto argues in a lawsuit filed in Fresno County that the substance is not harmful, Courthouse News Service reported.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also reported to be taking another look at glyphosate. The agency declared it a carcinogen in 1985 but later reversed that decision. The chemical is up for review this year.

Use of glyphosate has increased dramatically in recent years, and it is now used on a variety of crops that are grown for consumers. These include wheat, corn, soybeans, and many other foods we eat everyday. If California adds gyphosate to its carcinogen list, many of those foods might have to carry the familiar Prop. 65 warning label.

Although the labels are legally required only in California, most manufacturers include them on the labels of products sold elsewhere because of the cost and complexity of having separate labels for different states.

Might hurt sales

File photo Monsanto says requiring the warning on foods grown with Roundup, the nation's most popular herbicide, would hurt sales. Roundup generated nearly $5 billion in revenue for Monsanto in 2015.

Besides scaring off consumers, the classification would require some municipalities to stop using Monsanto, since many cities and towns have local ordinances requiring them not to use substances included on the Prop. 65 list.

Monsanto disputes the World Health Organization finding and claims that "[n]umerous regulatory agencies and independent scientists have evaluated glyphosate over the course of its more than 40 years of use and have concluded that glyphosate does not present a carcinogenic risk to humans."

Monsanto further argues that California's own Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) tested glyphosate in 1997 and 2007 and found it did not present a cancer risk to humans.

In its suit, Monsanto says the Prop. 65 listing would "create unfounded consumer fear, causing farmers, government agencies, and other users of glyphosate-based herbicides to switch to other products and/or processes for vegetation management that may not provide the same level of safety, effectiveness, or reliability."

Pressure is mounting

But activists have been stepping up their efforts to ban glyphosate.

For decades now, the public has been exposed, unknowingly and against their will, to glyphosate, despite mounting evidence that this key active ingredient in Monsantos Roundup herbicide is harmful to human health and the environment, said Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association. Monsanto has been given a free pass to expose the public to this dangerous chemical, because individuals, until now, [have] been unable to go to their doctors office or local water testing company to find out if the chemical has accumulated in their bodies, or is present in their drinking water.

OCA last year announced that it was launching the worlds first glyphosate testing for the general public. The project, with specific focus on women and children in the U.S., offered the first-ever validated public glyphosate testing for urine and water.

The testing program was recently suspended, however, because of what OCA said was higher-than-anticipated demand. It says the testing will resume when it contracts with a larger testing laboratory.
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A South Florida home-owner discovered an eight-foot long crocodile swimming in a pool in his super-rich house.

He just remembered one important call that he had to make, and so made it---to officials at 7 a.m. Thursday, according to a spokeswoman for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office.

The water temperature may be why the croc decided to plunge into the water, said Robert Dube with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's (FWC). "I'm sure it had a lot to do with it. The pool was about 80 degrees so I'm sure it was a lot warmer than the ocean that the crocodile was swimming in, especially with the cool weather we've had all week," he added.

While American crocodiles live mostly in saltwater areas, they might also slip into ponds or mangrove swamps, depending on various heat sources to regulate the warmth of their bodies. Hence, they would either stay under the sun or move off into regions that have bodies of air or water that suit them, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's website.

Dube found the crocodile real cool.

"The crocodile was basically just chilling," Dube said, according to CBS Miami.

FWC representatives said the crocodile needs to get out of the pool, as the recent homeowners shifted in just four days ago.

"FWC and the sheriff's office responded to the house and were trying to figure out how to capture this thing," Dube said, The Sun-Sentinel reported. "The croc decided he didn't want all the attention and he climbed out of the pool and slid back into the Atlantic Ocean."

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The Danish fear that the country is facing an influx of diphtheria, tuberculosis and malaria, along with the refugees fleeing from the Middle-East.

"There is no doubt that infectious diseases are coming in with the refugees that we aren't used to. There have been discussions on whether all refugees who come to Denmark should be screened," said Kurt Fuursted, spokesperson for the Danish State Serum Institute, according to RT.

The World Health Organisation had declared that the European nations ought to vaccinate the immigrants quickly.

"The unprecedented influx of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants to countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region poses a public health challenge that must be addressed in a timely, effective manner," the recommendation reads. "Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants should be vaccinated without unnecessary delay according to the immunization schedule of the country in which they intend to stay for more than a week."

Worryingly, the Danish did not follow the guidelines to vaccinate the refugees, so the officials are examining the possibility of the return of diphtheria, which is a bad case of nose and throat infection that has not been diagnosed in Denmark in about two decades.

"The infection can be very dangerous if one isn't vaccinated against it. The dangerous type is very rare and we last saw it in Denmark in 1998," Fuursted said.

Compared to other countries for immigration control, Denmark has been getting far fewer refugees. Last year, the country got about 18,000 refugees, while Sweden nearby faced an influx of more than 160,000.

As there has been a change in the attitudes in the last few weeks, the Danish MPs are planning to make amendments to the Aliens Act, in order to change the fate of a controversial law permitting officials to confiscate the refugees' cash and individual items going over $1,450 in value, reported Al Jazeera. Authorities have also begun to conduct spot checks on travelers entering through Germany.

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One new supernova has been found, and it glows with an intensity that beams brighter than the sun. It's an awesome force that has scientists struggling to understand its power and force, according to CNN.

This is the brightest explosion so far, say the Ohio State University, which is conducting a study on it. The energy it is beaming out equals "hundreds of billions of stars," say their press release. That is why we are able to see it, although it is 3.8 billion light years away.

"This may be the most powerful supernova ever seen by anybody ... it's really pushing the envelope on what is possible," said Krzysztof Stanek, co-author of the Ohio State study.

The heart of the event is a star called a magnetar, a superstar that seems to break the limits of what is possible in physics.

"If it really is a magnetar, it's as if nature took everything we know about magnetars and turned it up to 11," said Stanek.

The research is published in the journal Science.

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Close

Due to a complaint lodged regarding animal cruelty, a human skull was discovered in a spiritual shop in the Los Angeles area, reports the Associated Press.

Other remains that looked suspiciously like human remains were also found in eight containers discovered on Friday at Omi Relekun in Compton.

Situated in a strip mall on the 1500 block of North Long Beach Boulevard, Omi Relekun dubs itself as a spiritual shop and school, said the Daily Mail.



The Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Steve Katz explained that the cops had been called about the skull, which was found in a pot with other similar ones, but they soon discovered the others as well, said Fox News.

However, there does not seem to be any reason for suspecting homicide. The skulls do look as if they have been bought legally.

"There is nothing sinister here," Katz said. "The skull and possible eight other skulls in vessels were being used in Santeria. The question is were the skeletal remains acquired appropriately."

Being an Afro-Caribbean religion with its roots in Yoruba beliefs, Santeria has links with Catholicism and is practiced in various areas of the world. Sometimes it involves animal sacrifice, which is allowed to U.S. followers of Santaria, as it is included in their religion.

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Close

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) stirred a controversy by suggesting that dating apps like Tinder might spread sexually transmitted diseases.

In answer to the charge, Tinder, the popular dating platform, added a health section with a novel reader service section that gave some guidelines related to the nearest HIV and STD clinics, says The New York Daily News.

Called "Health Safety" in the app, the dating app features Tinder's STD testing locator that permits users to compare clinics, doctors, and online providers, while it also gives a link to Healthvana, permitting users to get some online health test results online.

The section also advises users to use contraceptives and asks potential sexual partners about the last time they got checked or the sexual partners they have had before they got into any kind of sexual activity.

Whitney Engeran-Cordova, a senior director at AHF, was optimistic about Tinder's new health section, according to The Daily Express.

"It is such welcome news that Tinder will add a Health Safety section with a link to Healthvana, making it easier for people to find testing locations through an easily accessible, modern platform. And we hope to see other dating sites do the same," she said.

Popular dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr are said to be among the reasons for the increase in STD cases all over the world. Their popularity has made the discussion of sex casual, leading to easy "indiscriminate sexual activity".

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Close

Why do zebras have stripes? One study that seeks to answer the question has raised several more by pointing out that stripes are definitely not for camouflage.

According to Christian Science Monitor, researchers from University of California Davis conducted a study in which they tested the camouflage hypothesis. By simulating the vision of zebra predators, they ruled that stripes did not evolve to provide camouflage as the hunters can easily smell prey from a distance when stripes become visible.

"The results from this new study provide no support at all for the idea that the zebra's stripes provide some type of anti-predator camouflaging effect," study author Tim Caro said. "Instead, we reject this long-standing hypothesis that was debated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace."

To arrive at these findings, researchers ran images of zebra taken from the wild in various digital filters that simulate the vision of predators like lions and hyenas. They found that most predators cannot see zebra stripes beyond 50 meters in daylight and not beyond 30 meters during twilight. At this distance, predators would have already smelt their prey.

Through the study, researchers also ruled out stripes helping zebras in recognizing other members of the species.

With a longstanding hypothesis now discredited, it remains to be known what purposes zebra stripes serve.

The study has been published in PLOS One.

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RSS Goons Attack Rohith Vemula Solidarity Rally In Mumbai

By Countercurrents.org

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

About 500 people who had gathered in Mumbai's Dharavi to protest against the institutional murder of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula of Hyderabad Central Univeristyi were attacked Sunday evening by RSS goons.

Ajmal Khan who injured his head in the attack posted on his Facebook page:

We some 500 protesters gathered in Dharavi to demand justice for Rohith Vemula were beaten up by workers believed to be affiliated to Rashtra Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). The protest march was organised by Nationalist Forum Dharavi, a collective of Vizhithezhu Iyakkam, Jai Bhim Foundation, Andhra Karnataka Dalit Varg Sangh - Dharavi, Republican Panthers along with students from the umbrella forum- Justice for Rohith-Joint Action Committee Mumbai. They were demanding justice for Rohith Vemula of University of Hyderabad who committed suicide on January 17th due to harassment from the university administration. Several protesters including students have sustained injuries. Many women protesters were heckled and attacked. Suvarna, Ajmal Khan, Srushti, Laxman kallada, Vipul, Ganesh, Anadh, Pradeep and Arun Sathish were the people who got injured, they were hospitalized at Sion hospital.

During the protest, casteist remarks were made by the attackers against the participants of the protest raising slogans of Jai Bhim. A poster with Dr Ambedkar's photo was torn and stamped upon by RSS workers. Though several police officers were present on the spot during the attack, they did nothing to stop the goons and instead pushed the protesters away. The protesters bravely stood ground and marched towards the nearest police station (Dharavi) to lodge complaint against the attackers. We were protesting peacefully when 15-20 people attacked the front lines of our rally with lathis and stones the attackers shouted Jai Bhim walon ko maaro' (Attack the Jai Bhim people) as while carrying out the attacks on the rally.

To lodge a complaint against the attackers, the protesters had to camp outside the Dharavi police station. The police was negotiating with BJP MLA Tamil Selva from Sion Kolidwada constituency and RSS themselves took out a rally against the protesters in Dharavi with slogans of Jai Shri Ram. We said we will not go away from the police station until police register case under atrocities act. After a big protest and demand SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 was filed against the people who attacked us.
Frontier Chronicled The Spirit Of The Spring Thunder Era: Interview With Timir Basu, editor, Frontier

The online interview was done by Rabin Chakraborty from Kolkata and Farooque Chowdhury from Dhaka

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

Q: Please tell us about your involvement with Frontier particularly about what attracted you to it. How old were you at the time?



Timir Basu: Well, my proper and somewhat regular association with Frontier dates back to 1979 though my first article, Contract Labour in Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), appeared in 1975. Frankly speaking, in those days I didn't even know the exact location of Frontier's office. I used to send articles through Anrudh Singh, a veteran trade unionist. He was a whole-timer of the undivided Communist Party of India for many years. He is no longer alive.

What requires special mention is how I got involved in journalistic writing in the first place. After my release from jail at the end of 1970 I was searching for an identity to carry on social activities without being branded as a Naxal. I began to organize trade union movement almost as a whole-timer, without any remuneration of course, first in the CESC and then in a limited way in the West Bengal State Electricity Board.

I was the secretary of the CESC Contractors' Mazdoor Samity [CESC Contractors' Labor Union]. Harenda  Haren Mukherjee  was the president of the union. One day somewhat casually I read an article in the EPW [Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai] regarding contract labor engaged in grass-rope' making in Gujarat. It was a short piece but it provoked me to write an article on the plight of the contract workers in the CESC. So I sent a very short piece to the EPW without bothering about whether they would publish it or not. After a few weeks, one of my friends, a regular EPW reader, informed me that they carried my article. Later, I sent the article to Frontier as well through Anrudh, and Samar Babu too published it without delay. Incidentally, the Delhi-based Call, the Central Organ of the RSP, also reproduced it with due acknowledgement to the EPW. So I began to think the unthinkable  a label of a freelance journalist could be a good identity to carry on political activities. I requested Krishna Raj, the editor of the EPW, to send me a copy of the magazine in which my article had appeared. Pat came the reply with the request for writing on labor. I began to write almost regularly for the EPW, mostly on labor issues.

My EPW pieces created a lot of controversy, attracting rejoinder after rejoinder, court cases and all that. As usual I used to send some articles to Frontier as well.

One day I summoned courage and went to the Frontier office at 61, Mott Lane. At that time, only Samar Babu was there. After a brief discussion over this and that he asked me to contribute short commentaries, though he appreciated my EPW articles. So I began to write commentaries. Not that all of them were published. I was producing short write-ups in abundance, like a madman while exposing political bankruptcy of the CPM and their misrule. On one occasion he clubbed together three of my short pieces and made it a column  Calcutta Notebook. Well, in the initial days, Frontier ran a regular column Calcutta Diary. Ashok Mitra, a former finance minister of West Bengal, India, and Gyan Kapur used to pen it alternately.

In those days Bhabani Babu  Bhabani Chaudhury  was working as a part-time helping hand of Samar Babu. Proof-reading apart, he used to contribute edits and comments. After all he had a professional background with The Statesman. Bhabani Babu said, Calcutta Notebook being a column, should be published every week without any break. After that I didn't look back. Calcutta Notebook became a regular feature, and it was well-taken by readers. Samar Babu once said that foreigners who used to visit Frontier office in those days would invariably inquire about Calcutta Notebook and its writer. Notebook in good measure' drew attention of Asoke Mitra (ICS), Samar Babu's close friend as he wrote about it in his write-up on Samar Sen in the commemorative volume The Truth Unites, edited by another Ahsok Mitra.

What troubled me most was how Samar Babu despite his weak health and advanced age had to manage a lot of official work as the structural arrangement of Frontier was somewhat complicated. And it is still so. Well, it is a Private Limited Company  Germinal Publications Pvt. Ltd. Germinal owns Frontier and Germinal is run by a board of directors as per the Company Law. In reality Frontier itself has no independent existence of its own, at least technically and legally. And Private Limited Joint Stock Company means all the mandatory compulsions of Company Law. Law is always against the weak and the small. Big shots don't bother about it. Annual Return to the ROC (Registrar of Companies), Income Tax Return, Trade License, Annual Audit, proper maintenance of account books and ledger, regular recording of minutes of the meetings of the Board of Directors, all these were a real headache for Samar Babu. As Frontier, or for that matter Germinal could not afford to employ a full-time office executive to look after company related affairs, Samar Babu himself had to spend a lot of time to keep company-related matters updated. Moreover, once Samar Babu said, somewhat disgusted, that his creativity would be finished because of the boring job of proof-reading. So I voluntarily began to share his agony and workload while continuing to write regularly and managing the printing press as well. In short I became a full-timer for Frontier, without any salary of course. As for personal expenses private tuition and freelancing in the EPW, and later in Business Standard (at that time it was an Ananda Bazar Group of publication) saved me.

Well, I was in my early thirties at that time. That is really not the point at issue. Many people, young and old, used to visit Frontier office and passionately inquired about Samar Babu's health, Frontier's condition, and so on and so forth, but nobody really came forward to help him in a positive way by offering their free service and suggesting practical steps to raise funds.

Q: Samar Sen, founder-editor of Frontier, was there when you got involved with the weekly. Tell us about some of your more interesting experiences besides the routine jobs at Frontier.



A: Professor Ruth Glass used to visit India once a year. She had some special interest in the Left Front rule in West Bengal, rather the communist experiment in a bourgeois set-up. After each visit, she used to write a comprehensive report India Diary. And she was well-known to Jyoti Basu, the former chief minister, Ashok Mitra and others. As she was always a state guest, Raj Bhavan, the state governor's official house, was her temporary residence. She would invariably like to discuss political issues with Frontier, with a hope to understand our line of criticisms and arguments against the Left Front rule  or miss-rule. So I had to go to Raj Bhavan, and face her questions as Samar Babu was not very interested in such interviews. Barbara Scriber of Germany once made an appointment with Jyoti Basu to assess the social-democratic experiment in Bengal for her report to be published in Germany. So, before meeting Jyoti Basu, she came to our office and discussed at length about the past, present and future of the Left Front rule.

The French Consul General, posted in Calcutta, once came to our office to discuss political issues and understand the cross-currents in this part of the globe. His earlier assignment was in Japan. He was surprised to notice how Frontier was criticizing Government of India's policy towards China against the backdrop of the India-China border clash. He admitted frankly that no French journal would take such risk by criticizing their government when the issue involved a foreign country and that too in respect of the sensitive border dispute. He invited us to his office for free discussion. Samar Babu asked me to go to the French consulate and face the situation. So I had to oblige the grand old man. He was a nice fellow. Incidentally I have forgotten his name. I was somewhat shocked to know that he was about to form his opinion on Bengal, based on reports published in second grade local vernacular dailies. Anyway we spent more than an hour discussing Bengal, Communist Left and related topics. Frontier means voice of dissent, and they counted on it. One deputy Consul General from the Russian Consulate [in those days it was the Soviet Consulate] used to visit our office frequently to go through old volumes of Frontier as he was studying for a doctoral degree on communist movement in India. He was to submit his thesis to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in a year or two. And I had to take the trouble of briefing him about the on-going trends in the communist movement in India, the impact of Naxalism on the movement, and all that.

Q: What was the condition of Frontier at the time?



A: Well, financially ours was a case of hand to mouth existence. The same tradition continues unabated. Always surviving on a shoe-string budget! Most of the old writers deserted us. New writers were not emerging. Samar Babu was reluctant to talk to people who were distancing themselves consciously or unconsciously from Frontier. But I began to meet them separately, and requested them to contribute to Frontier and sought their suggestions for the rejuvenation of Frontier. Amiya K Bagchi, Asoke Mitra (ICS), Ashok Rudra, Ranjit Sau  I discussed Frontier with them. Almost a door to door campaign! Ashok Rudra used to stay at the Indian Statistical Institute (Baranagar) for 2-3 days a week. I made an arrangement so that he could write an editorial comment regularly.

Incidentally Samar Babu was so frustrated that he began to think over the worst scenario closure. And at the end of 1979, once he was seriously pondering over the heading of his last editorial  Enough is Enough. I asked him not to write the obituary. And, from that point, I started to organize or reorganize. Initially, Probodh Dutta, a fanatic admirer of Samar Sen and a shareholder of Germinal helped me in reorganizing. He knew most of Samar Babu's friends and important writers personally. He used to accompany me whenever I went to someone's house for Frontier.

.

Q: Please tell the way Samar da used to work as the editor of Frontier, the hardship he braved, the way he encountered those burning and bleeding times.



A: Samar Babu used to do most of the subbing [editing] and writing at home as I do now. At office he had to do proof-reading, public relations, some office work and a little bit of editorial work. At that time Bhabani Babu was also there. His main job was proof-reading and writing editorials, but not every week.

In those days Calcutta was crowded no doubt, but it was still not so difficult for old people to travel. Samar Babu used to travel in trams. It was convenient for him to reach office. Generally he remained in office for two hours unless there was some emergency work. Before my arrival he used to stay a bit longer. In fact disruption in tram services made his home to office journey troublesome.

Q: What were the circumstances that led you to the editorship of Frontier?



A: In the eighties we developed an editorial team, and Samar Babu got some breathing space. Partha Chatterjee, Sushil Khanna, Anjan Ghosh, Rudranshu Mukherjee, Swapan Dasgupta (The Statesman), Arindam Ghosh-Dastidar (The Statesman) were the main contributors.

Samar Babu was keeping indifferent health, and he somewhat hurriedly finished his autobiography  Babubrittanta (A Babu's Tale). He had to spend a month or so in hospital. One day Bhabani Babu asked Samar Babu to think over the future of Frontier, because his health was not permitting to take so much stress. He was very anxious about the continuity of Frontier after Samar Sen. His suggestion was plain and straight. He asked Samar Babu to popularize my name at least as an official of Frontier on the front page.

Samar Babu was already working on that plan, which I realized later. As Samar Babu was very soft-spoken, he didn't elaborate his idea to anybody. For quite some time in a planned way he was introducing me to his relatives, family members and very close friends like Asoke Mitra (ICS), Debi Chattopadhyay ( of Lokayat fame), Debu Chatterjee (industrialist), Santi Roy (documentary film maker), Kiranmoy Raha (a prominent activist of the film society movement and the holder of subscriber No. 1 position, which was a kind of honor he enjoyed), Khitish Chandra Das (Samar Babu's cousin and a banker, their family was one of the owners of pre-nationalized UBI) and many others. Well, it was K C Das who actually structured Frontier's (rather Germinal's) organizational set up. Once he told me that he was not happy about Samar's appeal in the pages of Frontier for financial help''. He was a company man and he wanted to run it as a company. They could not foresee the possibility of bank nationalization so early. He arranged over-draft facilities for Frontier just over phone. That was before the nationalization. Samar Babu didn't have to face any procedural hazards in bank matters. Perhaps K C Das's plan was to secure massive bank loans and modernize Frontier with an elegant office and a printing press of its own. And private limited company was ideal for it. At the start he was also on the Board of Directors. Germinal's Memorandum & Articles of Association has enough scope to diversify business in areas other than publication of journals. Export, import, manufacturing... what not!

That Samar Babu was slowly but steadily preparing ground for shifting a greater responsibility to me became clear later. Robi da  Robi Sen, a Frontier's man for all seasons, also confirmed it. Asoke Mitra (ICS) gave some hint about it in his piece on Samar Sen in the volume (The Truth Unites). Also, Debi Chattopadhyay, at a function at the Calcutta Book Fair, on the occasion of releasing some books of Samar Babu's poems (Reprints) by Anustup, told me about it. He said Samar used to show unusual restlessness and panic' if some day I remained absent in office even due to illness.

One day I found my name was printed as assistant editor below Samar Babu's name. Frankly speaking, I never thought of it, but Bhabani Babu heaved an audible sigh of relief. It was in 1983. In 1985, Samar Babu became seriously ill  perhaps a wrong diagnosis complicated the problem  and I had to look after everything, i.e., every aspect of Frontier production. After the demise of Samar Sen in 1987, the Board of Directors of Germinal  Robi Sen (Samar Babu's cousin) and Anil Sen (Samar Babu's younger brother)  decided to appoint me as the acting editor of Frontier. After a few weeks, I was declared by the Board as a full-fledged Editor of Frontier. Yes, in terms of years I have long surpassed Samar Babu's tenure.

Q: You are associated with Frontier for a long time. How do you feel now about the weekly after so many years of your association with it? Was the attraction an illusion? Was it rewarding or bothersome?



A: The magazine was virtually on the brink when I joined it. It was not that easy to run Frontier when Samar Sen was alive. It is not easy even now.

The Attraction was not an illusion. But I understood by associating myself with Frontier in the seventies that it was not possible for anyone else to start another Frontier despite its shabby look and uneven' content. Frontier acquired some kind of uniqueness in its own way. Some people in Gujarat once brought out a journal Advance' resembling Frontier. I mistook it as Frontier from a distance as it was displayed in a stall near Calcutta High Court. Nearing the shop, I discovered it was not Frontier, it was Advance'. Well, I don't know its fate. Perhaps it didn't survive long.

Association with Frontier is both rewarding and bothersome. Rewarding, in the sense, I feel satisfied after the production of each issue on time despite so many hazards and handicaps that stand in the way of smooth functioning. But it is bothersome at the same time because I always remain under tension. I am always worried about its immediate future, not its distant future. Immediate future means ever rising production cost, staff salary (meager though), rising postal charges and all that. Perhaps this is an infectious disease I have contracted from Samar Sen.

Q: Tell us about some of your sweetest and bitterest experiences as the Frontier editor.



A: There are a number of incidents that can be called sweet. Rangnekar, editor of Business Standard [at that time it was an Ananda Bazar Group of publication] one day invited me to meet him in his office through his news editor Kuruvilla. I went to Ananda Bazar house and Kuruvilla introduced me to Rangnekar, a short man, known as a left-leaning editor. I found Frontier on his table. Well, I was not yet the editor. Rangnekar told me that he was regularly reading my articles in Frontier [Calcutta Notebook] and EPW. By showing me the latest issue of Frontier, he said, Look, this is a neat, small production, I like it. This was a kind of appreciation! The editor of Business Standard, owned by a big publishing house, considered it as a neat production!

There were always some Frontier addicts. Even today there are some. Maybe, Gayatri dee  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak  is not an addict in that sense. Whenever the crisis situation reached the tipping point, I was in the habit of sending SOS first to Gayatri dee. She always came forward even after her retirement with positive help. Once she sent a short letter Don't stop it, continue it despite hardships, we eagerly wait for it.

These are all sweet moments  appreciation of my hard labor.

Jack Preger, a doctor by profession, was harassed by both Bangladesh and India governments for his voluntary medical service among the destitute  pavement dwellers in Dhaka and Calcutta. He wrote quite a few articles in Frontier and The Statesman describing his plight and bitter experience in conducting NGO work among destitute. Left Front activists made his life miserable by not allowing him to do social service, rather medical service among the poor. He used to visit Frontier office frequently. One day he came to inform me that he was coming straight from the Bangladesh Deputy High Commissioner's office, and there he found the latest issue of Frontier on the Deputy High Commissioner's table. Quite naturally I enjoyed the moment with Jack Preger.

Q: You might have faced some odd moments also. If you do not mind, will you please share a few of those?



A: Yes, I had to face many odd moments during my long innings at Frontier. The most serious one was after Samar Babu's demise. A sort of power struggle erupted for which I was not prepared at all. In fact, I could not think of it even in my wildest imagination. Robi da  Robi Sen  informed me about it. Anyway Samar Babu's wife Sulekha Sen and the Sen family as a whole stood solidly behind me.

Q: How do you evaluate Frontier as its editor for so many years? Can you identify a few unique characteristics of Frontier?



A: Frontier has some unique characteristics, no doubt. Frontier never posed itself as an organ of any particular political leaning. Yet somehow some people, the CPM-people to be precise, branded it as a mouthpiece of the Naxalites, which it was not. Frontier acknowledged the revolt of the youth in the late sixties and early seventies; it tried to focus on new political and ideological thoughts; it hailed the break with the status quo-ist past and emergence of new forces for change. Very few people know how the Naxalite ideologue Saroj Dutta jeopardized Frontier's circulation by issuing a mandate to the followers of the CPI(ML) not to read Frontier, because in his view, Frontier was actually a front of imperialism, the other two being the CPM-led United Front and Jyoti Basu's favorite security establishment  the Eastern Frontier Rifles. For one thing many serious political activists of those days defied Saroj Dutta's obnoxious fatwa and used to read Frontier secretly.

Samar Babu at no point of time wanted to run Frontier on a pre-planned basis. His idea was let readers and contributors reflect on events, both national and international. In other words it was a case of too much dependence on spontaneity and momentum. Bhabani Babu was not in agreement with him on this issue. Samar Babu's fear was that by pre-planning he might impose something from the top. If anything, I have been following the same thumb rules since Samar Babu's demise.

Q: How do you compare the days of Frontier between the days of Spring Thunder and now?



A: The days of Spring Thunder were turbulent. After all Naxalbari galvanized an entire generation for a radical change. Even bank employees and insurance agents ignoring their comfort zone were discussing revolution. Students and scholars were leaving colleges and universities, they were restless. Mao motivated a large number of young men and women to sacrifice their career; they went to villages to serve the grassroots masses and get integrated with them. As Frontier tried to chronicle the spirit and momentum of that era, quite naturally the magazine Samar Sen founded and ran in a humble way, became a source of inspiration to many.

But things are poles apart today. Nobody is seriously talking about revolution. Nor are they interested in revisiting the failed revolution. This is the basic difference between then and now. Social movements independent of party control are emerging across the world, challenging the system and status quo. Activists who are in the forefront do not have a long-term perspective. Their language of revolt has so far failed to the attract attention of the masses. It's localism all the way! The issue of social change and liberation of the oppressed sometimes becomes bizarre and vague. Unless new slogans to attract the imagination of the young emerge, the situation won't change for the better. Frontier's crisis in a sense reflects the crisis of stagnation in revolutionary thoughts.

Q: How do you evaluate the influence of Frontier?



A: No doubt Frontier influenced a large number of young people, politicians, social activists in the yester years. And it continues to influence them though in a limited way. One example may be self-revealing and passionate as well. Political prisoners in Vizag Central Jail, Ranchi Jail eagerly wait for the next issue of Frontier. Sometimes they don't get it because of prison hazards and postal dislocation. So they send post-card requesting our office to send the missing issues immediately. In their communication they say our paper Frontier. The statement our paper Frontier illustrates among other things emotional attachment they have with the journal. With great difficulties they send hand-written articles and letters for publication in Frontier. To them, Frontier serves people's cause in its own way, and how to maintain that continuity is important.

There are many libraries and institutes that subscribe to Frontier and they keep bound volumes. We get repeated reminders from them to replace missing issues otherwise they won't be able to complete binding the volumes. This postal dislocation is a serious problem. Our repeated complaints to the postal authorities have not yet yielded positive results. For them it is business as usual. We have lost many overseas subscribers because of postal dislocation.

Q: To how far, in geographical terms and in terms of type of readers, does Frontier reached?



A: In geographical terms, Frontier is still global. There are readers in Australia  academics, school teachers. There are readers in America, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, England, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and also in Africa. As for the type of readers, it varies. Social activists, journalists, human rights crusaders, political commentators, film and art critics  all are there.

Interestingly when China was communist, Hong Kong used to purchase 60-70 copies of Frontier via sea-mail. Having learnt this Sumanta Banerjee once said, They might be China watchers from the West. China watchers do not need third party assistance any more. They could do the job directly in the very heart of Beijing.

Once there were a substantial number of readers in Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir. During Assam agitation many road-side vendors lost their business and Frontier lost circulation. Despite the fall in circulation Frontier goes to every corner of India.

Q: What's the present condition of Frontier?



A: To some extent the condition of Frontier is static. It is not expanding. The over-all situation is not a hopeless one either. Tragically the young generation is not reacting the way we reacted in the late-sixties and early-seventies. There lies the crux of the matter. Once I expressed my feelings to Samar Babu in the following way:

You didn't ask us to read Frontier, but we read''.

Q: What are the difficulties now being faced by Frontier? Is this, in your opinion, a reflection of the existing socio-economic-political reality?



A: I have already stated that the crisis of Frontier is basically the reflection of the existing socio-economic-political reality. Finance is the main problem. As we don't get any advertisement support, even government advertisement support, we largely depend on life-members  sustainers  to keep Frontier going. Samar Babu failed to raise enough working capital at the start. So he had no option but to endure a hand to mouth existence. The same tradition continues unabated.

Q: Is it possible to make ends meet in Frontier?



A: Yes, it is possible. That's why we are still in circulation despite heavy odds. It's not possible to expand it in a big way. But it is always possible to grow in a small way with some comprehensive planning.

Q: There must be people within and outside India who stood by you at times of your difficulties. Do you want to say something about them?



A: There are many people within and outside India, who supported me at difficult times. Well, B R Bapuji and Ranganayakamma of Hyderabad deserve a special mention. They think Frontier must continue at any cost. They even borrow money from their sons and send it to Frontier. My friend V B Talwar of JNU never failed to support Frontier financially whenever I requested him to do so. Parimal Bhowmick is not known to Frontier readers because he is not a writer. Once he was in Bengal's group theatre movement in the late sixties and early seventies. Incidentally he is a relative of Robi Sen. On a number of occasions Parimal saved Frontier from bankruptcy and helped us tide over legal complexities which were really very tough and frustrating. He has been supporting Frontier silently without receiving the limelight in any forum, ever since I took over the entire charge in 1987. Then Gayatri dee  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is always there to stand by me in times of crises.

I K Shukla was a real Frontier addict. Even after retirement he never forgot to send his monetary contribution. Whenever I sent SOS in respect of Frontier's financial crisis he responded positively. I was not aware that he was suffering from cancer. A cheque of US $25 came with a short note that he was not in a position to contribute more because his wife was seriously ill [she too was suffering from cancer] while suppressing his own ailment. After a few days I got the news that he was no more.

Shukla's friend and co-worker Maharaja Kaul was also a Frontier addict. Shukla was a prolific writer but Kaul was not. Basically he was an organizer, promoting education for the weak and the needy. I cannot forget their emotional attachment.

Perhaps the readers of Frontier's early days know the name of Karrim Essack. He was a regular contributor. His area of specialization was Africa. He was based in Tanzania. Originally a native of Gujarat he was a member of the banned South African Communist Party but had to flee his country of adoption because of police repression and witch-hunt by the apartheid regime. By profession he was a lawyer. He was so emotionally attached to Frontier that whenever he visited India, he never missed any chance to come to Frontier's office. After Karrim's demise, his wife Pamela Essack used to keep in touch with Frontier. She was also a member of the underground South African Communist Party. They are all gone. They all treated Frontier as their own voice.

Q: Publication of a magazine involves lots of diverse tasks like keeping in touch with writers, collecting articles, selecting-editing-preparing press-copy, liaising with press, proof-reading, mailing & distribution, finding finance, handling of money & daily book-keeping, accounting & auditing, maintaining office, daily correspondences, attending visitors, collecting advertisements etc. Who does all these jobs?



A: Initially Samar Babu had a few helping hands, including three regular office employees. Right now we have just two employees excluding Timir Basu and a part-timer. I have to bear the entire burden. Once there was a person who used to collect advertisement on commission-basis, but right now there is nobody to do the job.

Q: May we get an idea about the average day of the Frontier-editor, i.e., the way your day begins with the duties related to Frontier, and the way it moves up to evening or night?



A: Well, my day beings at 5:30 am, no matter whether it is summer or winter. I continue to maintain my school-day habit of sitting with books and writing materials in the morning. As for the day I shuttle between the printing press (DTP Centre) and the office. For half an hour [1.30 pm 2.00 pm] I go to the Central Avenue Coffee House, just for a cup of black coffee. I take full meal once a day  at 11:30 pm and never go to bed before midnight.

Q: Don't you feel that Frontier's condition should be told in clear terms as it reflects the society's failure to support a worthy weekly?



A: Yes, Frontier's condition should be told in clear terms. The problem has been there right from the beginning. It had a commercial (or at least semi-commercial) approach, and yet there was no infrastructure to project and maintain that approach. Over the years the situation has worsened and reached such a pass that now it seems increasingly difficult to manage it in old ways.

Q: What's the way out of the difficult situation that Frontier faces?



A: We must try to motivate younger people and understand the requirement. There is no denying the fact that we are wandering in political and ideological wilderness. Maybe, we are failing to reach them. Bad things can be turned into good. So said Mao. But so far we have failed to translate the dictum into action. But then there is no short-cut. The road to hell or heaven is equally hazardous.

Q: What will be your message or call to Frontier readers?



A: Never say No. I never say No even in difficult times and that's why Frontier is still in circulation.

[The interviewers are grateful to Nilanjan Hazra for the help in editing.

The interview was carried for the first time by Frontier on-line on January 19, 2016.

Rabin Chakraborty is associated with Frontier editing its on-line edition and while Farooque Chowdhury is a freelancer from Dhaka.]




George Jonas Who Once Wrote Brilliantly About Zionist Madness Dies

By Ira Glunts

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

George Jonas died on January 10th in Toronto. The Hungarian born Canadian writer, who was a brilliant and successful journalist, broadcaster, essayist, librettist and poet, died at age 80. No cause of death has been given, but he had been suffering from Parkinsons disease. Jonas, who was well-known throughout Canada, was the subject of numerous newspaper obituaries and fond remembrances there. (See 1, 2, 3).

In the United States, Israel, and among Jews throughout the world, the name George Jonas is solely recognized as the writer of the 1984 book, Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team. That book became the basis for the television movie, Sword of Gideon (1986) and later and more famously, the source for the film Munich (2005), which was directed by Stephen Spielberg.

Vengeance is an account of the actions of an Israeli team of Mossad agents who were sent to Europe ostensibly to assassinate Palestinians who the Zionist state believed to be involved in the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, but whose actual mission included other Palestinians Israel viewed as dangerous enemies. The source of the story, who remained anonymous throughout the time of the books publication, release of the Spielberg film and reissue of Vengeance, was Juval Aviv*, the somewhat disaffected, leader of the Mossad unit depicted in the book, who had fled to Canada.

Not surprisingly, the controversy over the book, which reflected an unromanticized and in parts critical view of the actions of the Mossad, began in The New York Times, the chronicle of all things Israeli, seen through a liberal Zionist/Jewish New York/American lens. A young Philip Taubman, who had obtained a copy of Vengeance prior to its publication, attempted a pre-emptive hasbara () strike in order to discredit the book. This type of review is very familiar to New York Times readers today, but was less so in the 80s. Taubman, who was just beginning his illustrious career, prominently quoted Zvi Zamir, the Mossad head at the time of the incidents described in the book. He also cited the Israeli parliamentarian, writer and propagandist, Michael Bar-Zohar. Both assured readers that no person like the protagonist of the book, who was called Avner, could exist nor could the events Jonas described possibly have been done by an organization as righteous as the Mossad. After the Taubman review, a deluge of pro-Israel attacks of the book followed. The 2005 edition of Vengeance included a biting and incisive response by Jonas to Taubman and other critics, and a very convincing description of how he and his publisher verified Avivs story.

Juval Aviv recounted to Jonas how the Israelis sent hit teams to Europe to kill those who it perceived as enemies. In carrying out this assignment, the Israelis killed completely innocent people such as a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway whom they mistakenly identified as Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh, a close associate of Yasser Arafat, was later assassinated by Israelis in Lebanon in an operation in which Juval Avivs team participated. Aviv told of how he personally killed Palestinian-Italian academic, Wael Zuwaiter, an act which even the Jewish-American/Israel apologist Aaron Klein wrote was a mistake based on uncorroborated and incorrect intelligence.

The release of the film Munich in 2005 propelled pro-Israel proponents to pepper the Spielberg production with merciless criticism. It also reignited attacks on Jonas and his book. I had reviewed the film at the time of its release. However, I first read Jonas book just a few months ago. When I did, I was struck by the ending of the book which I never mentioned in my review, although it is portrayed faithfully in Spielbergs film (which I recently watched again).

Juval Aviv (the Avner character in the book and film) had become disenchanted with his assignment and with the Mossad generally. His dissatisfaction seems to have less to do with the morality of what he was doing or even his growing doubts about the effectiveness of the extralegal killings as a deterrent to future Palestinian attacks, but rather to a more mundane discontent with his working conditions and resentment of the capricious power wielded by his superiors over him.

In an attempt to stop him from leaving the Mossad and fleeing to North America, the Mossad agents withdrew all the monies that were deposited for him as compensation for the mission. Then when that failed to convince Aviv to return, the Israelis tried to kidnap his daughter, but were thwarted by the quick reaction of Avivs brother, who was escorting the young child. In the ultimate irony, the disaffected agent then decided, echoing the sentiments of many Palestinians, that the only language the Israelis understand is the language of violence.

Aviv retaliated against the Mossad by photographing the children of the security officers in the Israeli consulate in New York City. He then entered the consulate, introduced himself, showed the photographs and threatened the children with harm if the Mossad tried to harm his daughter. The result, according to Aviv, was a hastily arranged meeting with his handler, during which the Israelis surrendered by freeing him from his Mossad obligations and allowing him to begin a new life in Brooklyn.

This episode reflects the true madness of the Zionist military mindset. Although Aviv had become a hero within the Mossad for his role as leader of his hit team, the Israelis could not accept his rejection of the Zionist ethos of blind commitment. The Mossad would rather use threats and kidnapping of one of their own mens daughter, than tolerate his rejection and self-imposed exile.

It now strikes me that this episode accurately and powerfully describes the insanity that is required of Jewish-Israeli citizens who must enforce the occupation, fight Israels pointless dirty wars, and brutally and heedlessly suppress the Palestinian population who live among them. I did not see this madness at the time of writing the review, which focused on the immorality of the vigilante justice in the film and the unwarranted attacks against Spielberg.

Ironically, George Jonas, who was Jewish, was an anti-Soviet Reagan conservative, who supported Israel. His source Aviv, despite his doubts and experience, never left the Zionist fold. But in spite of his political views, Jonas told Avivs story both honestly and convincingly. He then defended the truthfulness of Avivs story with grace and intelligence. The book was an accomplishment never quite appreciated in the way it deserved.

The Israeli extra-legal assassinations have continued to the present, so has Zionist faith in the use of extreme violence as an effective deterrent to Palestinian rebellion. This makes Vengeance a book which is very relevant to understanding Israeli Jewish society today. When Israeli soldiers invade Gaza and the West Bank, or when Israeli settlers attack Palestinian homes, they often justify their actions by speaking of deterrence. Many times they leave graffiti on Palestinian property.

The one word that is most often scrawled is nkama() which in English means  vengeance.

*Juval Aviv was known in Israel as Yuval Aviv ( ). He was born Yuval Aviof ( ) on Kibbutz Kfar Menachem, Israel, and later Hebraicized his name as was the custom in that country at the time.

Ira Glunts is a retired college librarian who lives in Madison, NY. His articles on Israel/Palestine have been published in Mondoweiss, CommonDreams, Salon, Truthout and ElectronicIntafada.




Murder By "Suicide": Institutional Murder Of A Dalit Research Scholar

By Anand Kumar

25 January, 2016

Socialism.in

The India wide protests that have erupted following the circumstances orchestrated by the RSS/BJP right wing which lead to the forced death (SUICIDE) of Rohith Vemula. Rohith a Research Scholar coming from the Dalit SC community was pursuing his doctoral studies at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU). His murder by suicide has once again brought to the surface the ugly face of Indias caste ridden hierarchical society. To make matters worse, we have a ruling party that is steeped in an ideology of hate against minorities and the oppressed castes (particularly the Dalits), promoting Brahmanical bigotry every step of the way.

It is not surprising that the HRD ministry under the aegis of ManuSmriti Irani and another minister hailing from Hyderabad  Bandaru Dattatreya (with an RSS background) had a direct hand in the suspension of the 5 Dalit research scholars. A confrontation between ABVP (RSS/ BJP student wing) and Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) in August last year was blown out of proportion when the ABVP goon Susheel Kumar made false accusations against the 5 students and used his connections with the BJP at the highest levels to teach Dalit students their place in the University.

More than a mere clash of personal differences, the radical politics of ASA was beginning to ruffle more than a few feathers. Not only was it challenging the traditional left politics espoused by the CPI(M)s SFI, but were increasingly confronting issues like death penalty, LGBT rights, beef politics, minority rights including those students belonging to Adivasi, Northeastern India, Kashmir etc. With over 500 members from different marginalized backgrounds and beginning to find an echo across the campus (even winning an election in 2011-12), this must have set alarm bells ringing in a very much conservative institution. Incidentally, Rohith Vemula saw himself as a Dalit Marxist and left the SFI precisely for the same reason that Ambedkar had once confronted the Stalinist CPI (M) caste (Lal Salaam to Jai Bhim: Why Rohith Vemula left Indian Marxists).

Hindutva Revival Department under ManuSmriti Irani

This is not the first time that the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry under Smriti Irani has courted controversy. Last year, the Ambedkar  Periyar Study Circle (APSC) was banned at IIT-Madras following an anonymous complaint. Following a social media uproar, this was later revoked. On a more education related issue, the HRD ministry scraped (now reinstated) all fellowships granted to MPhil and PhD students who had not taken the National Eligibility Test (NET). This gave birth to the #OccupyUGC student movement which is very much alive and has linked up with the present protest movement. Smirti Iranis tenure as minister has been anything but controversial. Known more for her roles in the (patriarchal) soap operas than anything concerning education, Irani has gone out of her way to please her RSS bosses.

Worse, Iranis earlier response in relation to the recent events has only fanned the flames by triggering the resignation of over 10 faculty members from the University. Her assertion such as not a Dalit vs non Dalit issue, no blame on any organization/ individual in the suicide letter, following administrative procedure regarding suspension and other defensive arguments are simply packed full of lies. Undue interest was shown by the ministry by sending four letters between September to November to the HCU Vice-Chancellor (VC) regarding the action taken against the students.

The other villain in the plot  Bandaru Dattatreya (MoS for Labour & Employement) is equally responsible for Rohiths fate. Apart from applying undue pressure on the HRD ministry, his letter to the HRD in August last year labeled ASA and leftist political activities in the campus as casteist, extremist and anti-national. It has become the habit of the present ruling party to call anyone opposed to the them as anti-national or anti-Hindu. Ironically it is actually the BJP (and the Sangh Parivar) that is in fact the den of extremist, casteist, communal elements that is opposed to all that is progressive or pro-people and has done everything to break the delicate social fabric of the country.

Previous probe findings that had cleared the students was summarily set aside by the newly appointed VC Appa Rao (a BJP appointee and with a past record of discrimination against Dalits) and students were suspended restricting their access to hostel, library, public spaces within campus etc. More crucially their fellowship funds amounting to Rs. 175,000 (in case of Rohith) that were already delayed by 7 months (due to cut backs in social spending in education in the last year budget) was causing them undue financial distress. A Joint Action Committee (JAC) was formed by the student groups and taking a step further Rohith and his fellow comrades decided to protest by sleeping in the open, but the authorities deliberately ignored them.

Rohiths Story

The short life story of Rohith Vemula, hailing from a Dalit background and raised by single mother, would make anyone cry. The double curse of poverty and still more horrendous experience of being born a Dalit in India can never fully be understand or expressed in words, and yet Rohith overcame all these barriers to securing PhD in a prestigious university under general category, not through the reservation route (which is a major argument used by upper caste elite to further discriminate Dalits students), is no small achievement!

Rohiths last letter says it all. Even before he took that fatal decision to end his life, we find in his letters not complaints or any display of petty mindedness but a zest for life, wanting to be a science writer like Carl Sagan, echoing one his famous words we are made of star dust . The letter stands as a brutal condemnation of the feudal and casteist society that is India, and all that false story build around growth, development etc.

The dignity and magnanimity displayed in the letter should have put the entire ruling political party and its supporters to shame. However, all we get to see is their petty mindedness on full display from shameless characters such as Smriti Irani, Bandaru Dattatreya or BJP party members and the hordes of Sanghi loudmouths online that are casting doubts such as Rohith is not Dalit enough, reservation is all to blame, Rohith was indulging in anti-national activities, was psychologically depressed and so on. It is this attitude and arrogance of the present government (& supporters) that is filled with bigots and nut-cases that would surely be the cause of its downfall one fine day.

Marking a change in its confrontational attitude, Narendra Modi (PM) finally broke silence after 5 days expressing sadness over Rohiths death at a student convocation in Lucknow (UP), but was met by students shouting slogans such as Modi Murdabad, Modi go back etc. More specifically he did not say anything about taking actions against all those responsible. But the damage has already been done, BJP has managed to single handedly alienate Dalits, backward castes and youth across the country. This will surely be reflected in the elections to come in the next period especially in UP were Dalit votes matter.

Protest Movement and Beyond

This not the first time a Dalit was forced to take his own life, nine students (from Dalit or backward castes) have taken their lives in the last seven years at HCU alone. There have also been other incidents of Dalit students committing suicide at elite institutions such as IITs, AIIMS etc because of caste discrimination. While the previous incidents did not evoke any protests across the country and were mainly confined to the institutions concerned. But this time there have been massive protests in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and also in other smaller metros across India.

The difference is the heightened consciousness of many student groups that have been involved in other face offs with the govt. Protests have not been confined to Dalit organizations alone, but many youth from the upper caste background have also shown solidarity.

The other important factor contributing to this is the string of controversies that have been the hallmark of Narendra Modis tenure as PM. Apart from his love affair with the corporate elite at the expense of the majority, the governments covert backing of the Hindutva agenda has polarized the country like never before. (See: Is Modimania On The Wane?)

The FTII student protest lasted for about 139 days and the struggle still continues though in other forms. #OccupyUGC movement despite a formal victory, is still continuing with protests for the last 2 months over certain aspects that has not been clarified by the HRD ministry. So it is not far-fetched to expect this protest to last even longer if the core demands of the JAC are not met. Even if this protest is dissipated, the damage has already been done. And next time around, another controversy of this scale could put a question mark on the longevity of this right wing, communal BJP led government.

On the other hand, the BJP is desperately trying to buy its way out such as the ex-gratia payment of Rs. 8 lakh (which has been rejected by the family of the deceased), ordering a judicial commission inquiry and if the worst comes may even drop Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya or take action against some low hanging fruits like the VC or Susheel Kumar. Unless legally compelled or via mass pressure to act on the JACs core demands, the central govt is unlikely to go beyond mere tokenism. How this will play out depends on several factors and crucially on how sensitively/ insensitively this govt handles the situation.

The present situation in India can best be described as radicalization of different sections of the Indian youth and working people on the one hand and communal polarization going hand in hand. Failure to meet expectations and lurching from one major controversy after another, Narendra Modi govt. could unwittingly end up causing a mass upheaval in the country. But it is the leadership of the left forces that is really wanting to take advantage of that enormous class anger to challenge the communal, casteist and capitalist forces that are presently holding the reigns of administration.

Hence, there is a crying need to build a genuinely left, viable mass alternative to challenge the present Capitalist, Communal & Casteist regime and pave way for a Socialist Alternative as urgently as possible.

Anand Kumar is activist a member of New Socialist Alternative and incharge of the Website Socialism.in






The Malvinas: An Unresolved Dispute

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The question of the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands) remains one of those unresolved disputes in international politics which seldom receives much attention from the world community. This is a pity since the United Nations has for the last 50 years called upon the two parties to the dispute --- Argentina and Britain --- to negotiate a peaceful solution through bilateral negotiations.

The call from the UN is embodied in a General Assembly Resolution --- Resolution 2065 (XX) --- adopted on the 16th of December 1965. It invites the Governments of Argentina and Britain to proceed without delay with the negotiations recommended by the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with a view to finding a peaceful solution to the problem, bearing in mind the provisions and objectives of the Charter of the United Nations and of General Assembly resolution 1514(XV) and the interests of the population of the Falkland Islands ( Malvinas).

Argentina has all along expressed a readiness to negotiate. Initially, Britain had also agreed to open talks on the dispute. Its Foreign Secretary, on a visit to Argentina in January 1966, expressed this view. In paving the way for bilateral negotiations the two governments agreed to cooperate on specific matters related to air and maritime services, and postal and telegraphic communications.

However, London made negotiations on the dispute difficult when it embarked upon exploration of natural resources in the Malvinas, thus contravening the spirit of the UN Resolution. This forced the UN General Assembly to adopt yet another Resolution --- Resolution 31/49 --- in December 1976 requesting both parties to the dispute to refrain from adopting decisions that entail the introduction of unilateral modifications to the situation while the islands are going through the process recommended by UN Resolutions. 102 states voted in favour of the Resolution, 1 (Britain) voted against it while 32 abstained.Britain ignored the stand of the vast majority of nation-states.

It was partly because of British intransigence that the military junta ruling Argentina at that time decided to invade the Malvinas in April 1982 to re-assert Argentinian sovereignty over the islands. It is of course true that the transfer of power from one military dictator to another, economic stagnation and a degree of civil unrest in Argentina were even more prominent factors in the decision to go to war. Argentinas defeat in the 10 week war emboldened the British elite to strengthen its grip upon the Malvinas. London was even less prepared now to negotiate with Buenos Aries.

But the UN has stood by its decision that there must be direct bilateral negotiations between the two countries to find a peaceful solution to the territorial dispute. The UN does not recognize any British claim to suzerainty over the Malvinas and the surrounding islands. Regional groupings in Latin America and the Caribbean such as ALBA and CELAC also support the Argentinian position. So do most of the non-aligned nations who regard British control over the Malvinas as a vestige of the colonial era. Argentina for its part has since 1994 incorporated its claim of sovereignty over the Malvinas into its national constitution.

What civil society should do is to endorse the UN call for negotiations. Many more civil society voices should be raised on behalf of bilateral talks as the only feasible way of finding a peaceful solution to a dispute that goes back to the early decades of the 18th century. Civil society groups in Britain in particular should speak up. They have a moral responsibility to do so.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar,

President,

International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

Malaysia.

25 January 2016.






Media More Outraged By Possible Murder By Putin Than Definite Murder By Obama

By Matt Peppe

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

The British government, whose foreign policy is overtly hostile to their Russian counterpart, declared last week that their investigation into the killing of a former Russian intelligence agent in London nearly a decade ago concluded there is a "strong probability" the Russian FSB security agency was responsible for poisoning Alexander Litivenko with plutonium. They further declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably approved" of the act. The British investigation, which was likely politically motivated, seemingly raised more questions than it answered. But American corporate media were quick to use the accusations against Putin to demonize him, casting him as a pariah brazenly flaunting his disregard for international conventions.

The Washington Post (1/23/16) editorial board wrote that "Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination... Mr. Owen found (Andrei) Lugovoi was acting 'under the direction' of the FSB in an operation to kill Mr. Litivenko - one that was 'probably approved' by the director of the FSB and by Mr. Putin."

Actually, Owen did not find that former KGB operative Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB to kill Litivenko. He found there was a "strong probability" this was the case. This means that even in Owens's view, there is not near certainty, which would meet the legal standard of reasonable doubt that would preclude a guilty judgement. There is even more doubt that even if it were the case the FSB ordered the murder, they did so on Putin's orders.

The New York Times editorial board (1/21/16) finds the investigation's results "shocking." For the Times, this confirms a pattern of Putin's rogue behavior. They claim Putin's "deserved reputation as an autocrat willing to flirt with lawlessness in his global ventures has taken on a startling new aspect."

Both of the prestigious and influential American newspapers argue that the British findings impugn Putin's respectability in international affairs. The Times says:

"Mr. Putin has built a sordid record on justice and human rights, which naturally reinforces suspicion that he could easily have been involved in the murder. At the very least, the London inquiry, however much it is denied at the Kremlin, should serve as a caution to the Russian leader to repair his reputation for notorious intrigues abroad."

The more hawkish Post says: "This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Mr. Putin as if he is just another head of state?"

Putin's alleged "sordid record on justice and human rights," which is taken for granted without providing any examples, is seen as bolstering the case for his guilt in the case of the poisoning death of Litivenko. This, in turn, adds to his "notorious" reputation as a violator of human rights.

The Post draws a line between the lawless Putin and the respectable Western heads of state, such as Obama. Though they frame their call to treat Putin as an outcast as a question, it is clearly intended as a rhetorical question.

It is curious that The Post draws a contrast between Putin and Obama, whose government is supposedly above such criminality. The newspaper does not mention the U.S. government's drone assassination program, which as of last year had killed nearly 2,500 people in at least three countries outside of declared military battlefields.Estimates have shown that at least 90 percent of those killed were not intended targets. None of those killed have been charged with any crimes. And at least two - Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdul Rahman - were Americans.

Obama himself is personally responsible for those killed by missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over the skies of sovereign countries. Several news reports have indicated that Obama is presented in meetings each week by military and national security officials with a list of potential targets for assassination. Obama must personally approve each target, at which point they are added to the state-sanctioned "kill list."

The British government has also assumed for itself the power to assassinate its own citizens outside a declared battlefield. Last fall, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the deaths of two British citizens in Syria, who were subsequently disposed of in a lethal drone strike.

The Washington Post editorial board (3/24/12) claimed that Obama was justified in carrying out lethal drone strokes that kill American citizens "to protect the country against attack." Their lone criticism was that "an extra level of review of some sort is warranted."

After it was revealed that an American hostage was inadvertently killed in a drone strike in Pakistan, The Post (5/1/15) said that the issue of whether the American government continues to conduct drone strikes should not be up for debate. "(T)here is little question that drones are the least costly means of eliminating militants whose first aim is to kill Americans," they wrote.

While they tacitly accept the legal rationale for Obama's assassination program, the New York Times editorial board at least demonstrated some skepticism. In "A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings" (6/23/14), they called the memo "a slapdash pastiche of legal theories - some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law - that was clearly tailored to the desired result." They say that "the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care."

Yet they do not chastise Obama for his "intrigues abroad" nor do they condemn this as an example of his "sordid record on justice and human rights," language they used for Putin. The idea that relying on what are transparently inadequate legal justifications for killing an American citizen without due process would merit prosecution is clearly beyond the limits of discussion for the Times.

Recently Faheem Qureshi, a victim of the first drone strike ordered by Obama in 2009 (three days after his induction as President), who lost multiple family members and his own eye, told The Guardian that Obama's actions in his native lands are "an act of tyranny. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program."

Surely both The New York Times and Washington Post disagree with Qureshi, because they believe the U.S. government is inherently benevolent and its motives are beyond reproach. But based on their editorials about the British investigation of the Litivenko poisoning, if Putin was responsible and was described by Qureshi in the same way, they would wholeheartedly agree.

The U.S. government and its allies in NATO, like Great Britain, have a clear agenda in vilifying Russia and its President. The US-NATO alliance supported the government that came to power in Ukraine in 2014 through a coup. After provinces in Eastern Ukraine - the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking - refused to recognize the NATO-backed coup government in Kiev, the Russian government supported them.

It should be easy to see how, from Russia's perspective, the Ukranian conflict can be understood as an extension of NATO encroachment towards Russia's borders that has continued unabated since James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 NATO would move "not an inch east."

"We're in a new Cold War," Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and politics, told Salon. "The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia's borders, within its own civilization: That's dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules."

Additionally, Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 throughout that country's civil war, and more recently its direct military intervention in the conflict that has turned the tide against US-backed rebels, has strongly rankled Washington.

The language used by top government officials to describe Russia has been astoundingly combative. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the man in charge of the entire US military, claimed Russia is responsible for aggression and is "endangering world order."

The U.S. government's hyping of the Russian "threat" has been used to justify massive spending on the U.S. space program and other military expenditures, such as the $1 trillion to upgrade nuclear weapons,

One could even argue that the narrative of an aggressive and belligerent Russia is the principal justification for the continued existence of the NATO itself, two and a half decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The alliance allows the US military to be stationed in hundreds of bases throughout Europe under the guise of a purely defensive organization.

The U.S.'s most prominent media organizations should demonstrate the strongest skepticism towards the policies and actions of their own government. At the very least, they should hold their own country's leaders to the same standards as they do others. But time and again, the media choose to act as a mouthpiece to echo and amplify Washington's propaganda. They do the government's bidding, creating an enemy and rallying the public towards a confrontation they would otherwise have no interest in, while allowing the government to avoid accountability for its own misdeeds.

Matt Peppe writes the Just the Facts blog. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter or reach him by email at mdpeppe@gmail.com






26 January: Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day And British Invasion Day

By Dr Gideon Polya

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

On 26 January, Australia 's national holiday, Australia Day, White Australia celebrates the arrival of the British First Fleet and first White settlement of Australia at present-day Sydney on 26 January 1788. However Indigenous Australians mark 26 January as Invasion Day or Survival Day, commemorating commencement of an Aboriginal Genocide and an Aboriginal Ethnocide that continues today, this qualitatively representing the worst genocide in human history. The British have invaded 193 countries, as compared to the UK lackey or US lackey White Australians 85, with variously horrendous and genocidal consequences. 26 January should be marked world-wide as British Invasion Day.

In the last 1,000 years the British have invaded 193 out of 203 present-day countries (195 UN-recognized nations and 8 non-UN-recognized self-governing countries) as compared to the French 80, the US 70 (50 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25, Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [1-5]. However the British invasion of Australia on 26 January 1788 ultimately destroyed as many as 600 unique Indigenous Australian tribes and a comparable number of languages and dialects. Thus it is estimated that in 1788 there were 300 distinct Aboriginal language groups and 750 dialects of which only 150 survive) this making the Australian Aboriginal Genocide qualitatively the worst genocide in human history [5- 12].

Britain's and Australia 's quantitatively worst genocide was the WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons in the 1942-1945 man-made Bengal Famine, with Australia withholding food from starving India from its huge wartime grain stocks and as many as 0.3 million starving Bengali women and girls subject to civilian or military sexual abuse. The Bengali Holocaust was the first WW2 mass atrocity to be described as a holocaust (by N. G. Jog in his 1944 book Churchill's Blind Spot: India ) but has been largely white-washed from history and general public perception [5, 8, 13-16].

The consequence of British invasion was typically genocide of Indigenous peoples, as exampled by the Australian Aboriginal Genocides and American Indian Genocides through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. However in India and China , while there were just too many Indigenous inhabitants for total extermination, Indigenous deaths were enormous. Thus 20-100 million Chinese died in the 19th century Tai Ping rebellion precipitated by British imperialism and the Opium Wars, and Indian avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation totalled 1,800 million over 2 centuries of British rule [5, 8, 17]. In Africa slavery, dispossession, exploitation, dislocation and relocation killed scores of millions and the impact of colonialism world-wide continues under neocolonial hegemony. Thus annual avoidable deaths as a percentage of population is presently 1.0% for non-Arab Africa, 0.6% for Indigenous Australians, and 0.4% for South Asia as compared to about 0.0% for White overseas European colonies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Apartheid Israel and the US) [5, 12].

The WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million deaths) and the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (40 million deaths under the Japanese, 1937-1945) occurred at the same time as the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed through violence or imposed deprivation) which was part of a WW2 European Holocaust in which 30 million Slavs, Gypsies and Jews were killed [5, 8]. However with the exception of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust these atrocities have been largely removed from general public perception. Indeed the term The Holocaust has become synonymous with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust to the exclusion of these other contemporaneous and even bigger holocausts. Thus 6 million Poles (half of them Jews, half of them Christians ) died in a forgotten WW2 Polish Holocaust [18-21] . Wikipedia observes: The Holocaust (from the Greek holokaustos: holos, "whole" and kaustos, "burnt" and also known as the Shoah (Hebrew HaShoah, "the catastrophe"), was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators. Some historians use a definition of the Holocaust that includes the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to approximately eleven million [21].

One notes that genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention thus: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group [22].

Google searches for the various holocaust terms relating to WW2 yield the following results (given in brackets): Bengali Holocaust (1,500; this also referring to the 1971 Bengali Genocide), Indian Holocaust (47,800; this term also referring to the exterminating of North American Indians and horrendous avoidable mass mortality in British India, 1757-1947), Chinese Holocaust (7,200), Polish Holocaust (18,400), Russian Holocaust (7,600), Ukrainian Holocaust (13,200; this term also referring to the 1930s Ukrainian Famine under Stalin), Roma Holocaust(28,200) and Gypsy Holocaust (8,100) as compared to the presently overwhelmingly Jewish-specific terms Holocaust (47,200,000), The Holocaust (15,800,000) and Jewish Holocaust (420,000).

Google searches for the various genocide terms relating to WW2 yield the following results (given in brackets): Bengali Genocide (2,100; this also referring to the 1971 Bengali Genocide), Indian Genocide (50,800; this term also referring to the exterminating of North American Indians and horrendous avoidable mass mortality in British India, 1757-1947), Chinese Genocide (8,700), Polish Genocide (1,100), Russian Genocide (31,100; this also referring to Stalin crimes), Ukrainian Genocide (28,300; this term also referring to the 1930s Ukrainian Famine under Stalin), Roma Genocide(15,600) and Gypsy Genocide (1,300) , as compared to Jewish Genocide (134,000).

White Australia has been associated with 30 genocidal atrocities , specifically the (1) 18th-19th century Aboriginal Genocide, (2) Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide, (3) British Indian Genocide, Indian Holocaust, (4) European Chinese Genocide , (5) Maori Genocide, (6) African Genocide, (7) Pacific Islands Genocide, Melanesian Genocide, (8) Fijian Genocide, (9) Boer (Afrikaaner) Genocide, (10) Armenian Genocide, (11) Bengali Genocide, Bengali Holocaust, Bengal Famine, (12) British post-1950 Third World Genocide, (13) US post-1950 Third World Genocide, (14) Australian Colonial Genocide, (15) 20th and 21st century Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide , (16) Palestinian Genocide, (17) Iraqi Genocide. Iraqi Holocaust, (18) Afghan Genocide, Afghan Holocaust, (19) Ongoing Aboriginal Genocide, (20) Biofuel Genocide, (21) Climate Genocide, (22) Tamil Genocide, (23) Bougainville Genocide, (24) Muslim Genocide, Muslim Holocaust and the US War on Muslims, (25) War on Terror carnage, (26) Asian Holocaust, (27) Somali Holocaust, Somali Genocide, (28) American Holocaust, (29) Australian Holocaust, and (30) Bedouin Genocide (for details and documentation about all these atrocities see [23]). Yet these terms and the awful realities underlying application of these terms are largely or completely absent from Mainstream consideration e.g. they are essentially ignored by the authoritative, 2 volume The Cambridge History of Australia [23].

Indeed very recent events mean that the list must be extended. Thus the Australian-US joint electronic spying facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia is critical in supporting US nuclear terrorism as well as in targeting illegal US drone strikes in the wretchedly poor countries of Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan [24, 25]. Australia is now into its Seventh Iraq War and its Third Syrian War in a century, noting that the ongoing, US Alliance-promoted Syrian civil war has killed 0.3 million people and generated 12 million refugees  a Syrian Holocaust and also a Syrian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention [26].

History is written by the victors and the consequent untruth means that history ignored yields history repeated. This is well illustrated by the qualitatively worst genocide of the world, Britain and Australia (the ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Australian Aboriginal Ethnocide) and the quantitatively worst genocide of the world, Britain and Australia (the Indian Holocaust including the WW2 Bengali Holocaust).

Thus while Australians are aware of the gap between Black and White Australia in terms of health, life expectancy, employment, education, living conditions and wealth, and the key terms Aboriginal Genocide, Aboriginal Ethnocide and avoidable mortality are used by activists and decent scholars in relation to Indigenous Australians [9-12], these terms are almost completely absent from the discourse of Mainstream media, politicians and academics in Australia and the UK through a process of censorship and self-censorship as revealed by searching for these terms on the ABC News (the ABC being Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC) and the UK BBC News. Indeed when the term Aboriginal Genocide rarely occurs it is often in the context of denying that it happened (as in the so-called History Wars in Australia ). While about 2 million Indigenous Australians have died untimely deaths from violence, disease and deprivation since 1788, the avoidable death rate of Aborigines is currently an appalling 0.6% of population per year (between that of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia ). While only 150 of a pre-1788 750 Aboriginal languages and dialects survive, and of these all but 20 are endangered, Australian Aboriginal Ethnocide proceeds apace in the 21st century driven by poverty, forced removal of children from their mothers, and exclusion of bilingual education. According to a recent study (2009) : At the end of 2008 the Northern Territory Government, supported by the Commonwealth Government, all but closed bilingual education in remote Indigenous schools by determining that the language of instruction for the first four hours of school must be English. This decision could spell the death of the remaining endangered Indigenous languages in Australia  [27]. The Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide are continuing apace in the 21st century in one of the world's richest countries, Australia .

Indigenous Indian avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation totalled 1,800 million during the British Raj (1757-1947) with this saga of carnage being regularly punctuated by extreme horrors such as the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million deaths) and the Australia-complicit WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million deaths), with numerous, regular famine atrocities in between [5, 8, 13-17]. Yet these horrors have been largely removed from general public perception by generations of British and Australian Mainstream journalists, politicians and historians as documented in my book Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History [8]. This is well illustrated by rare, eminent historians who deserve praise for actually mentioning the WW2 Bengal Famine in their writing but expunge it from some major works. Thus leading Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey is rare among historians in actually referring to the WW2 Bengal Famine in his book "The Great Seesaw. A new view of the Western world 1750-2000" but there is no mention of this or indeed of any recurrent Bengal Famines in his A Short History of the World, A Very Short History of the World or A Short History of the 20th Century [28-31]. Leading British expert of WW1, WW2, Churchill and the Jewish Holocaust, the late Professor Sir Martin Gilbert, must similarly be praised for at least referring (albeit very briefly) to 1.5 million Bengal Famine victims in at least 3 books, namely British History Atlas, The Day the War Ended. VE-Day 1945 in Europe and Around the World and A History of the Twentieth Century. Volume Two 1933-1951 [32-35] but he made no mention of the WW2 Bengali Holocaust in his biographies of Churchill [32, 36, 37]. Just imagine biographies of Hitler that failed to mention the WW2 Jewish Holocaust. Indeed Churchill himself excluded any mention of this WW2 atrocity for which he was primarily responsible from his 6-volume The Second World War for which he gained the Nobel Prize for Literature [8, 32, 38]. As I warned 2 decades ago [8, 39], Bengal is acutely threatened by a worsening, First World-imposed climate genocide that in the absence of requisite action is predicted to kill 500 million Bengalis this century [40], noting that former British colonies Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US are disproportionately high in terms of annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution [41].

Conclusions.

The world or large slabs of the world are existentially threatened by (1) nuclear weapons (that can wipe out humanity at any time), (2) poverty (that is responsible for 17 million avoidable deaths from deprivation annually) and (3) unaddressed. man-made climate change (that is set to flood Island Nations and mega-delta countries like Bangladesh and is predicted to kill all but 500 million of Humanity this century) [42].

However, (1) while Australia has no actual nuclear weapons of its own, it has hosted nuclear tests and the testing of nuclear weapons delivery systems, hosts nuclear-armed warships, plays a key role in US nuclear terrorism through its Pine Gap joint US-Australian communications facility, and is doing its best to oppose a Nuclear Weapons Ban [42]; (2) Australia is one of the world's richest countries but has slashed its foreign aid budget from 0.44% of national income under the short-lived, CIA-removed Whitlam Labor Government in 1972 to 0.25% in 2015-2016 under the pro-war, pro-Apartheid, pro-Apartheid Israel, war criminal, US lackey, pro-coal, pro-gas, anti-science, anti-environment, and climate criminal Coalition Government [43]; and (3) Australia is a world-leading coal and gas exporter and New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the US are world leading White countries for annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution with values of tonnes CO2-e per person per year of 53.2, 52.9, 50,1 and 41.0, respectively (the world average being 8.9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year). In 2011 Australia used up its fair share of the world's Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget of 600 Gt CO2 (600 billion tonnes CO2) (that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2 degree C temperature rise) and has been disproportionately polluting the one common atmosphere and ocean of all nations and stealing the entitlement of responsible countries [41].

26 January is Australia Day for most White Australians but is Invasion Day and Survival Day for the long-suffering Indigenous Australians [10, 44, 45]. The British have invaded 193 out of 203 present-day countries (195 UN-recognized nations and 8 non-UN-recognized self-governing countries) and its genocidal child White Australia has invaded 85 countries as compared to the France 82, the US 70, Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25, Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2. Accordingly, decent, anti-racist people around the world should make 26 January British Invasion Day. Further, the ongoing greed, rapacity, racism, warmongering, war-making and lying by the UK and Australia and their Great Friend the US demand that decent people should (a) inform everyone they can, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those people, politicians, parties , companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in genocidal, ecocidal, speciescidal and terracidal crimes against Humanity and the Biosphere.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70), Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm ).

[2]. Gideon Polya, British Have Invaded 193 Countries: Make 26 January ( Australia Day, Invasion Day) British Invasion Day, Countercurrents, 23 January, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230115.htm .

[3]. Gideon Polya, President Hollande And French Invasion Of Privacy Versus French Invasion Of 80 Countries Since 800 AD, Countercurrents, 15 January, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150114.htm .

[4]. Gideon Polya, US has invaded 70 nations Since 1776  make 4 July Independence From America Day, Countercurrents, 5 July 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya050713.htm .

[5]. Gideon Polya, Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950, that includes an avoidable mortality-related a history of every country since Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[6]. Ray P. Norris and Duane W. Hamacher, Australian Aboriginal Astronomy: overview, 1 February 2013: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rnorris/papers/n287.pdf .

[7]. Australian Aboriginal languages, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_languages .

[8]. Gideon Polya, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability, now available for free perusal on the web: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[9]. Gideon Polya,  Ongoing Aboriginal Genocide And Aboriginal Ethnocide By Politically Correct Racist Apartheid Australia , Countercurrents, 16 February 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya160214.htm .

[10]. Aboriginal Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

[11]. Gideon Polya, Film review: Utopia by John Pilger Exposes Genocidal Maltreatment Of Indigenous Australians By Apartheid Australia , Countercurrents , 14 March, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya140314.htm .

[12]. Gideon Polya, 2015 perspective of ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Aboriginal Ethnocide, Aboriginal Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/2015-perspective .

[13]. Gideon Polya, Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[14]. N.G. Jog, Churchill's Blind Spot: India  (New Book Company, Bombay, 1944).

[15]. Gideon Polya , UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .

[15]. Gideon Polya, Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[16]. Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust

[17]. Gideon Polya, Economist Mahima Khanna, Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty, Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[18]. Terese Pencak Schwartz, Five million forgotten  non-Jewish victims of the Shoah, rememeber.org: http://remember.org/forgotten .

[19]. Edward Lucaure, Poland 's holocaust: 6 million citizens dead (3 million Christianbs and 3 million Jews, holocaustforgotten.com: http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/Lucaire.htm .

[20]. Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation, 1939-1944, Hippocrene Books, 2001.

[21]. The Holocaust, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust .

[22]. UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[23]. Gideon Polya, Review: The Cambridge History Of Australia Ignores Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides, Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm .

[24]. Phillip Dorling, Pine Gap drives US drone kills, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 July 2013: http://www.smh.com.au/national/pine-gap-drives-us-drone-kills-20130720-2qbsa.html .

[25]. Gideon Polya, 50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK , Israeli And US State Terrorism, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .

[26]. Gideon Polya,Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11 , Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115A.htm

[27]. Jane Simpson, Jo Caffery and Patrick McConvell, Gaps in Australia 's Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory , AIATSIS Discussion Paper Number 24, 2009: http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/_files/ntru/DP242009Simpson.pdf .

[28]. Geoffey Blainey, "The Great Seesaw. A new view of the Western world 1750-2000" (Macmillan, 1988).

[29]. Geoffey Blainey, A Short History of the World (Viking, 2000).

[30]. Geoffey Blainey, A Very Short History of the World (Viking, 2004).

[31]. Geoffey Blainey, A Short History of the 20th Century ( Penguin, 2005).

[32]. Gideon Polya , UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm

[33]. Martin Gilbert, British History Atlas(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London , 1968).

[34]. Martin Gilbert, The Day the War Ended. VE-Day 1945 in Europe and Around the World (Harper Collins, London, 1995).

[35]. Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century. Volume Two 1933-1951 (William Morrow, New York , 1998).

[36]. Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill. A historian's Journey (Harper & Collins, London, 1994).

[37]. Martin Gilbert, Churchill. A Life ( Heinemann, London, 1991).

[38]. Winston Churchill, The Second World War (Cassell, London ).

[39]. Gideon Polya (1995) " The Forgotten Holocaust - The 1943/44 Bengal Famine": http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com.au/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html (an edited version of this account has been published as Polya, G.M.(1995) The famine of history: Bengal 1943. International Network on Holocaust and Genocide vol.10, pages 10-15).

[40]. Climate genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[41]. Gideon Polya , Revised Annual Per Capita Greenhouse Gas Pollution For All Countries  What Is Your Country Doing? , Countercurrents, 6 January, 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya060116.htm .

[42]. Gideon Polya , Congress Of Vienna 2015 For Global Stability Fails To Address Key, Existential Nuclear, Poverty And Climate Change Threats , Countercurrents, 12 January, 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya120116.htm .

[43]. Daniel Flitton, ::The blind truth of Australia 's foreign aid cuts, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 2015: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-blind-truth-of-australias-foreign-aid-cuts-20151210-glk3e9.html .

[44]. Stan Grant's speech on racism and the Australian dram as part of IQ2 debate goes viral, ABC News, 24 January 2016: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-24/stan-grant's-racism-is-killing-the-australia-dream-speech-viral/7110506 .

[45]. Stan Grant, IQ2 racism debate: Stan Grant, You Tube, 19 January 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEOssW1rw0I .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950 (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality in Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and Ongoing Palestinian Genocide in The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London , 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the forgotten World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .




Declassify To Demystify

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

25 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

It is not surprising that political parties are vying to magnify the mystery that has been continuously allowed around Subhash Chandra Bose, who definitely enjoys an iconic status in the minds of Indians apart from Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and to some extent Gandhi also. The successive governments of India have kept the public in dark regarding the mysterious disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose after the defeat of the fascist forces led by Japan and Germany. Many people employ this mystery to further their political agenda.

Sangh Parivar has been viciously following an agenda to coopt all those political icons of our nationalist movement who did not belong to the Nehru family. So Sardar Patel became their icon because he differed with Nehru. After Patel, they went on a mission to coopt Ambedkar with their double tongue, but they knew well they couldnt appropriate Ambedkar  an ideologically impossible task  hence they proposed building memorials and using Ambedkars differences with Nehru and his writings on Muslims. The problem was that RSS and its various followers in the government did not allow Ambedkars biography and the 22 vows that it had, to be shared with young students in secondary schools of Gujarat, fearing upper caste backlash. Now with Rohith Vemulas death in the University of Hyderabad campus, the party cannot expect Dalit votes. In fact, one should not be surprised if a large part of OBC ditches BJP this time in states along with Dalits.

Subhash Chandra Bose is another and perhaps the last resort of the Sangh Parivar in attempting to discredit Nehru and his legacy. Hence the threat of declassifying files related to his death or disappearance. We all know how Indians have made Subhashs disappearance into a political dhandhebaaji, particularly West Bengal where they have no time to discuss what ails the state and how they are going to develop it. Subhash Babus political ideology was much more secular than any of these leaders that we have today, but they dont want to discuss his ideology. They want to discuss his death and how best they can use his deaths mystery to discredit their political opponents and mobilise people for their own political agenda. Problem is that our government has not declassified all the files. It is doing things in a planned manner so that it can get political mileage from it, which is very unlikely. Why did it need to declassify files in a serialized way over several months? The West Bengal elections are round the corner and BJP is not in a straight fight with Congress. Mamata has proved that she can handle BJP in in a much better way, despite the fact that some of Subhash Boses relatives have joined the party, but it is not going to pay electorally.

Last year West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee declassified about 64 files which were made available to media and common persons. People could read what was happening at that time and why Subhash and his family were being snooped. The current dispensation at the centre has used the Netaji files bogey to undermine Jawahar Lal Nehru but when they came to power, they refused to release the files to public in the name of national interest. After Mamata Banerjee declassified the files there was mounting pressure on the central government to release those documents. Before they could do anything, the Sangh Parivar launched its own rumor Photoshop machine to discredit Nehru. The government has released the document on Netajis birthday on 23rd January and found nothing except a forged letter of Nehru to British Prime Minister Attlee. As history is not the forte of Sangh Parivar, we can see glaring technical mistakes in the letter including spelling and other grammatical errors. The who historians who have known Nehru vouch that such a superficial letter couldnt have been written by him, and that too, without putting his signature. It is unfortunate the media jumped into it and some devotee reporters of India Today group put the letter on their website as a credible leak of the declassified files. Later, the same journalists actually withdrew it from the website without officially apologizing for the glaring mistake. The way this government is going on its one point programme of discrediting Nehru through using his differences with other political leaders of his time is brazen-facedly shameless and needs to be condemned.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose is one of the most respected national heroes of our country. There is no doubt that from childhood our children have loved to see him as a symbol of military power or discipline, though in any matured democratic society such a figure would be despised for political leadership. One can only imagine what would have happened if Netaji had become the prime minister after independence. Would we be a democracy as we are now? Netaji himself said in numerous interviews that India did not need democracy and it must come under dictatorship for a few decades. Many people feel that he was right because democracy has now given opportunities to so many people, who Indias upper castes feel deserve to be banged and treated as untouchables and shudras. For these devotees, such voices need to be crushed and do not deserve democracy. Democracy is becoming the biggest problem for caste Hindus as they feel that unmeritorious people are now ruling us and on these occasions they love to quote Subhash Babu saying that India should have been put under dictatorship for first 30 years to teach all of us a lesson.

It is important to understand that political differences are bound to happen and despite that people had deep respect for each other. Sanghis now realize that opposing Gandhi would be quite dangerous for them as at the end of the day we are witnessing Gandhis Ramrajya today. Gandhi empowered the caste Hindus one hundred percent so that they acquire all the spaces available hence for Sangh nothing can be as important as Gandhi to promote their Hindutva agenda. However, the biggest obstacle in their path is Nehru who despite his many faults still remain popular with intelligentsia if not with the masses. There is however another factor that after coming to power the publication of Why I killed Gandhi written by his murderer Nathu Ram Godse have surfaced widely along with Meinkampf of Adolf Hitler, another fascist and inspiration for many in the Hindutva family.

These are not just co-incidences but well planned attempts to threaten people and indicate who are in power in India today.

There is nothing wrong in disclosure of important documents as it is of immense use for the students of history to understand the situation in which leaders functioned, though most of these classified documents are mostly intelligence reports which are more or less political gossips and nothing beyond that, in the case of political opponents. It is not that all of these gossips are incorrect but most of these stories are basically based on hearsay and suggest movement or whereabouts, correspondence and communications of the person being snooped. However, the case of Subhash Chandra Bose is different as he is almost worshipped as an icon in India, his military image is still loved by people and therefore his sudden disappearance needs to be investigated or exposed. Was he killed in an air crash? If not then whose ashes are there in Runkoji temple of Japan? If he was not killed then where was he and how come the government not able to locate him? If he was alive and living like a saint then why he did not come openly and speak? What were his fears? A leader like him who challenged Gandhi when the latter was a God will never ever hide in ignominy. Subhash was not the person who could have lived like an unknown person and his commitment for the nation and differences with Gandhian approach compelled to him to tread the most dangerous path of even approach the axis of evils as the terminology used for the fascist powers.

It is understandable that after the defeat of the fascist forces in the World War II things would have become highly difficult for any one closely associated with those forces and Subhashs open association with Germany and Japan would not have saved him from prosecution internationally. These facts are not known to a majority of Indians - how Japan and Germany were tamed in the Second World War and how their leaders faced international trial against all kind of oppression and execution of innocents. Fortunately, public opinion has now widely built in these societies against fascism and militarism, which was witnessed recently in Japan when people protested against the attempt of the government to revive its armed forces. There is too much liberalism in Indian circle regarding Subhash Chandra Bose. We are unable to inform our young that after the defeat of Germany, Japan and Italy the rulers of these countries faced trials and all those who allied with them faced trial and were declared war criminals. Was Netaji a war criminal? So far no documents suggest that. The forged letter of Nehru to British Prime Minister Atlee suggest that as RSS wanted to tell Indians that Nehru tried to make Subhash Bose a war criminal to fulfill his political agenda in India. This is too petty a talk as Nehru stood for Azad Hind Fauz in trials in Delhi and Congress Party was supporting to Boses wife and daughter an amount of Rs 6000 per month according to these files. There is nothing wrong but we must make assumption that if he were alive, he might have faced the criminal charges of associating with the fascist forces. We must understand that India was a new nation that time and had no world standing as it claims today even when Nehru was an international icon of his time.

There are two issues. One is which most of the people agreed that Subhash Chandra Bose had died in air crash. Those who dont want to believe in the death at the aircrash there should tell why he disappeared and remain silent. We believe a man like Subhash Chandra Bose could never have remained silent in the harshest adversity.

There is no doubt that Subhash Boses association with Germans and Japanese had nothing to do with their fascist minds but more with his zeal to liberate India, but it is also a fact that he never wanted India as a democracy for the first thirty years which was a very dangerous thought and the caste system would have continued to be here oppressing the Dalits and shudras. Netaji felt that India had not been an educated society and hence didnt need democracy. Who would have been the victim of the dictatorship of Netaji?

Since August 15th 1947 till October 31st, 1950 when Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel passed away, he remained Indias deputy prime minister and home minister. The Sardar had many differences with Nehru and definitely was an independent home minister. Why didnt Sardar order his intelligence officials to stop the snooping of Netaji? When Sangh Parivar is blaming Nehru for every evil against Netaji, let some more brazen facts come into open and uncomfortable questions asked. There is no denial of the fact that Netaji and other political leaders must have been under snooping by the British Intelligence and after the World War was over the friendly nations must have launched operations to find out all those who were associates of Germany and Japan. It might be possible that those orders of the past were simply carried forwards by the officials. It is same that despite our new constitution drafted by Baba Saheb Ambedkar, most of our acts remain of the nineteenth century, which have not been amended till date. Land Act of 1894 got changed in 2013 after huge public outcry against land acquisition hence it is very much possible that the legacy of the Raj continued till several years later. The only possibility was that the Home Minister of the time must have come under the knowledge of this snooping and should have taken a decision but given the international scenario and India a newly independent nation, it would be have been difficult for any government to act courageously and seek information about Netaji from other countries. Whatever be the reason it is important to understand through the files whether the government of newly independent India ordered any snooping of Netajis family and his connections, or it was just an ongoing thing, but no one can deny the fact that the nations Home Minister must have been in the know-how of the case.

The relations between Sardar Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose are well known but need to be explored further. It is said that Netaji was very close to Patel family, and his brother has donated some land to him through his will, but the will was challenged by Sardar Patel as fictitious and got it nullified from the court. It means that the relations between Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel were not cordial. Contrary to it, Jawahar Lal Nehru stood as a lawyer for the captured soldiers of Azad Hind Fauz. He remained a good friend of the family for years and many people of Netajis family were members of the Congress Party. It is not that Nehru and Netaji might not have had differences and egos. All the leaders during the freedom movement right from Mohammad Ali Jinnah to Subhash, Nehru, Ambedkar were leaders of great understanding and therefore differences, but it is certain that it did not come in their way as all of them were men of caliber, character and commitment to the people.

Hence it would be sad if petty politicians and parties, who had nothing to do with Indias freedom movement, are allowed to use this opportunity simply because the parties are afraid of Nehru and his modernism. Is Nehrus legacy so dirty and forgetful that each time we find a new controversy, we have to involve him?

It has also come to public domain that Subhash had highly despised the idea of Shayama Prasad Mukherjee to float Hindu Mahasabha, to the extent of opposing it violently. Subhash was a thoroughly secular man and his Azad Hind Fauz had people from different communities including Dalits. His Azad Hind Fauz had not only battalion in the name of Gandhi but also of Nehru and Rani Lakshmi Bai. Indian army has now ventured to make women part of its structure in combat zones but Subhash had deep trust in them back in the day and therefore Captain Lakshmi Sehgal was chief of his womens wing. Even when he associated with Nazis, Subhash Chandra Bose remains icon of a pluralistic secular socialist India. His personal life cannot be role model for RSS. A man who made Col Shahnawaz Khan his deputy in the Azad Hind Fauz, who brought women in his forces, who believed in Indias pluralist traditions cant be a model for Sangh Parivar. All attempts to coopt Subhash Chandra Bose into the Sangh family will fail and will not bring any political result for them. Historical figures should be analysed, critiqued and reevaluated without creating a mystical halo around them. India must disband official secret act and all the files of the government must be made public after 30 years and there should not be any politics behind it. We should allow historians, political scientists of all variety to analyse them but not play dirt with their decisions and actions. Throwing muds at historical figure through rumours and planted stories must stop henceforth in the greater interest of the nation and society.

Subhash Chandra Boses idealism of socialism and secularism are important for India. His commitment to serve Indian people need to be appreciated. He contributed to our freedom more than any one else as Baba Saheb Ambedkar said in one of his interviews with BBC London. Subhash Bose did make mistake but none can question his love for his motherland. None can ever suggest that his idea of India was exclusive replica of the Chitpawan Brahmin owned Sangh Parivar. Those who want to mystify Subhash Chandra Bose are his biggest adversaries, as we will get nothing to continuously debating his death rather than his ideas for Indias betterment. Yes, historians have been very liberal to him about his commitments to India but we also need to analyse what would have happened if the fascist forces had won. Our children need to know about the dangers of all those fascist powers who believed in racial superiority and killed people in the name of their identities but at the same point of time it must be made known to our people and history proves that Subhashs idea of India was always inclusive, pro people and absolutely socialist which the Hindutva ideologues despise today.

Vidya Bhushan Rawat is a social and human rights activist. He blogs at www.manukhsi.blogspot.com twitter @freetohumanity Email: vbrawat@gmail.com


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NAMI Evansville friends and families support group about mental illness: Meeting 6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Mulberry Place, 410 Mulberry St. Call 812-897-1694. The breakfast support group will meet at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Pie Pan in North Park. Call 812-303-7548.

NAMI Connection support group for all mental illness disorders: Meeting from 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. Mary's Kempf Bipolar Wellness Center, third floor, rehab building. Information: 812-897-1694.

Welcome to Medicare Seminar: 4 p.m. Thursday at St. Mary's Senior Connection, 951 S. Hebron Ave., Suite C, presented by Gina Downs, director of St. Mary's Senior Connection. This is an informational program only. No specific plans or companies will be discussed. It is free, but registration is required. Call St. Mary's Senior Connection at 812-473-7271 or toll-free at 800-258-7610 for reservations and directions.

Bereavement support group: Meeting 5:30-7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month in the large group meeting room, second floor of Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd.

Men's bereavement support group: Meeting 9-10:30 a.m. the second Monday of each month in Room 204 at Deaconess VNA Plus, 610 E. Walnut St.

Support group for bipolar/manic-depressive disorder: Meeting 7 p.m. the first and third Wednesday of each month, Kempf Bipolar Wellness Center, third floor of St. Mary's Rehabilitation Institute, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4934.

Survivors of suicide support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first and third Monday of each month, Methodist Temple, 2109 Lincoln Ave. Information: Mental Health America at 812-426-2640.

Pulmonary fibrosis support group: Meeting 3 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com.

COPD/asthma support group: Meeting 3 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month, Room 1420, Deaconess Hospital, 600 Mary St. Information: 812-450-6000 or deaconess.com.

Mending Hearts pregnancy loss support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month, Gift Conference Room, off the lobby of St. Mary's Hospital for Women & Children, 3700 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-4204.

Men's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room, 100 St. Mary's Epworth Crossing, Newburgh. Information: 812-485-5725.

Stroke support group: Meeting 10 a.m. the fourth Wednesday of each month, St. Mary's Community Education Room at Washington Square Mall, 5011 Washington Ave. Information: 812-485-5607.

ALS support group: Meeting 6:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, Meeting Room E, Deaconess Gateway Hospital. The support group is for patients, caregivers and survivors who have lost someone to Lou Gehrig's disease.

Women's cancer support group: Meeting 5:30 p.m. the second and fourth Monday of each month, St. Mary's Epworth Crossing Community Conference Room. Information: 812-485-5725.

Compiled by Leah Ward, leah.ward@courierpress.com
SHARE Dalarrius Tyquon Jackson

By Mark Wilson of the Courier and Press

An Evansville man who police have said was a leader in the local L.A. Zombies gang  "L.A." standing for Linwood and Adams avenues  was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison Monday in U.S. District Court on a firearms charge.

Dalarrius Jackson, 22, will also serve three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in November as part of a plea agreement.

Although the sentence was five months more than the advisory sentence, Chief Judge Richard L. Young accepted it after attorneys for both sides said it was part of a three-way negotiation with the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office.

That negotiation resulted in the dismissal of two felony and three misdemeanor state charges against Jackson that could have brought him 10-14 years in prison.

However, Young cautioned Jackson that he should take advantage of prison to get a GED, learn a trade and turn his life around or "it may be somebody shooting you next time."

"If I see you back here in court again it is not going to be pleasant," Young said.

Jackson was arrested in July 2015 after a 911 caller reported that he had pointed a handgun at a woman in Garvin Park.

Officers responded and found a loaded 9 mm handgun in a backpack, believed to belong to Jackson, inside the woman's car. According to a probable cause affidavit, the weapon found by police had been reported stolen in Henderson, Kentucky.

The woman declined to press charges, but Jackson was arrested because he had twice been ordered never to possess a firearm, according to the police.

His defense attorney, Barry Blackard, said the dropped felony charges included an intimidation charge and a separate felon in possession of a firearm, both stemming from the Garvin Park incident.

The federal charge was based on Jackson's May 2014 conviction for criminal recklessness, a class D felony, for which he received a one-year jail sentence.

Jackson's criminal history began with a juvenile arrest for false informing in 2007 and grew to include multiple gun and drug-related arrests, according to a pre-sentence report read in court on Monday. He was expelled from school in 2012 for alleged gang activity.

"I do believe it's a fair sentence," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Brookman.

He said the sentence could give Jackson a chance to get away from the "gang, gun lifestyle."
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By John Martin of the Courier and Press

An Indiana National Guard soldier from Evansville will be the first female in a combat position with the 1st Battalion, 163rd Field Artillery Regiment.

Sgt. Erin Davis will be a field artillery radar operator for the unit, a combat job specialty.

Davis received a challenge coin from Maj. Gen. David C. Wood of the 38th Infantry Division during a visit to the Evansville Armory, according to the National Guard.

Wood praised Davis for being a trailblazer.

"The Army is strong because we have females and males," Wood said. "Having females in our units only makes us stronger."

Davis was proud to have received the award.

"I'm at a loss for words," Davis said. "It's nice to be recognized as a female placed in a position that can make a difference, and it's nice to know that it's being seen at a higher level."

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in December. That decision overturned a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricted women from artillery, armor, infantry and other combat-related roles.
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By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

Police are seeking the public's help locating a 25-year-old Evansville man.

The family of Randall Austin Jr., reported him missing in late December and have told police they had not talked to him since November, police said on Monday. Austin is described as a white male, 6-feet-3-inches tall, weighing 185 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes.

He is known to frequent the North Main Street area and may be driving a purple Pontiac Grand Am, authorities said.

Anyone with information about Austin is asked to call police at 812-436-7979.
SHARE Cory Little Dillon Powers Jackie Snow

By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The Evansville Police Department welcomed four new recruits to the force on Monday, including three who currently serve as Vanderburgh County jail officers.

Several of Evansville's current police officers and Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office deputies started their careers at the jail.

"The training and skills officers acquire working at the jail is readily applicable to police work. The majority of the criminals we catch on the outside have spent time in the jail before." Evansville Police Chief Billy Bolin said. "Confinement officers who make the transition to the police department hit the street already knowing the names and faces of Evansville's repeat offenders."

The three jailers who are now on their way to becoming police officers are Cory Little, Jackie Snow and Dillon Powers. The new recruits will soon head to the Southwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. The fourth new officer is Trendon Amuzie. All four of them were sworn in during a ceremony at the Old National Events Plaza.

Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding started his career at the jail in 1981. Like Bolin, he said the trio's previous training and experience will serve them well going forward.

"Our officers learn how to write reports, complete arrest affidavits and document incidents," Wedding said. "These skills are directly translatable to general law enforcement, particularly for the Evansville Police Department, who shares our records software."
FILE - A tote bag full of methamphetamine-making materials is scattered for inspection by the EPD's Meth Suppression Unit recently. The duffel-type bag was found along with 18 other discarded meth labs along a stretch of railroad tracks just south of Oak Hill Cemetery in July 2011.

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By Zach Osowski

INDIANAPOLIS  After being billed by the House Speaker as one of the top issues facing Indiana, three meth bills dealing with pseudoephedrine medications got about an hour of total vetting time on Monday.

Some of the witnesses trying to testify on the bills dealing with Indiana's meth crisis were cut off after a minute of testimony, and one law enforcement spokesman was simply asked where he stood on the issues before the House Public Health Committee adjourned for lunch and a House Republican caucus meeting.

The committee chairwoman, Rep. Cindy Kirchhofer, R-Beech Grove, used a timer to try and limit witnesses to 30 seconds and committee members were told not to question the witnesses in the interest of saving time.

All told, the three bills up for discussion were heard in about an hour. Prior to hearing the meth bills, two-and-a-half hours of committee time was taken discussing two bills, one relating to mental health and the other relating to tele-medicine.

Witnesses speaking on those bills were not given any time restrictions and were able to answer questions.

Kirchhofer apologized to the witnesses after the meeting, but said the committee simply ran out of time.

The meth bills in question all take a different approach at stopping meth labs by limiting access to pseudoephedrine medication, such as Sudafed. One of them, House Bill 1166, is authored by Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Mount Vernon. Her bill would limit Sudafed purchases to a one-month supply per year. Anything needed after that would have to be obtained via prescription.

McNamara said she feels the bill is a compromise between the desire to make Sudafed and other meth precursors prescription-only and those who use the medications regularly who say prescriptions would be an inconvenience.

She said it is past time for Indiana to do something more substantive when it comes to combatting meth.

"We need to confront this epidemic from the front end," she said. "Right now our police and law enforcement are fighting it on the back end and that's not good enough."

McNamara's bill was presented along with two other bills. House Bill 1157, authored by Rep. David Frizzell, R-Indianapolis, is identical to a senate bill passed out of committee last week, updating the NPLEx system that monitors pseudoephedrine sales. HB1157 would not allow anyone convicted of a drug-related felony to buy Sudafed without a prescription.

The bill received support from a retailer and manufacturing spokesmen who said the bill would prohibit "bad guys" from getting the drugs while not hampering law-abiding citizens who want to buy their allergy medicine.

Rep. Ben Smaltz, R-Auburn, the author of the third meth bill, House Bill 1390, said Frizzell's bill doesn't go far enough to stopping meth.

Smaltz, who said going to prescription-only was the right way to curb meth production, amended his bill to allow for some pharmacy customers who are well-known to their pharmacist to get Sudafed without a prescription.

If a person is not "well-known," the pharmacist would be directed to offer the customer a meth-resistant option instead of Sudafed.

"We have to change the law," Smaltz said. "Right now, you can buy an obscene amount of pseudoephedrine in Indiana."

Smaltz, McNamara and the law enforcement officials who testified all said the best route to go would be prescription-only. McNamara said although such a move might solve the problem, it wasn't a realistic option in Indiana at this time.

None of the bills were voted on. Krichhofer said the bills would be discussed in caucus before a vote would be taken on Wednesday.
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It's happening again. The "inevitability" of Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy may not be so inevitable after all. Unlike eight years ago when Barack Obama beat her for the Democratic nomination and ultimately won the office Hillary and her supporters believed she was entitled to, this time her main opponent is not just Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist, it is Hillary Clinton herself.

Serious media and congressional investigations into Richard Nixon's Watergate crimes did not begin until after his landslide win in 1972. In Hillary Clinton's case, damaging investigations are occurring in the middle of her campaign.

Catherine Herridge, chief intelligence correspondent for the Fox News Channel, reports: "The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible 'intersection' of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News. This track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton's personal server."

As Investors.com notes, "Hillary Clinton's support among Democrats nationally has taken a serious tumble, falling eight points to 43 percent, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. Support for her chief rival, Bernie Sanders, rose six points to 39 percent. As a result, Clinton's lead over Sanders, which had been 18 points, is now just four points."

According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll, Clinton and Sanders are in tight races in both Iowa and New Hampshire. With less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, such numbers are not good news for any candidate, especially Hillary Clinton, whose veracity and job record in the various offices and positions she has held are anything but stellar. Very quickly, Clinton has gone from big mo, to slow mo, to no mo.

Americans wisely don't fully trust politicians of either party, but Hillary Clinton suffers more than most. Last August, a Quinnipiac University poll found that only 34 percent of those Americans surveyed believed Clinton is "honest and trustworthy." Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the poll, reports CNN.com, said that Clinton is experiencing a "continuing slide" with how she is "perceived by voters who continue to say she is not honest and trustworthy."

Democrats are likely worried not just about whether Clinton can capture the nomination  and the odds still favor that outcome  but whether she will be further damaged by the FBI investigations and whether that damage could possibly lead to an indictment, as some Republicans hope. Donald Trump has added to Clinton's woes by bringing up her husband's past behavior toward women at a time when she has positioned herself as the women's champion.

Voices are being heard among the political classes about the possibility of replacing Clinton on the Democratic ticket with Vice President Joe Biden should that become necessary. Such a move could severely impair the Democrat's ability to win the female vote. In a highly unpredictable political year, the Biden scenario would take unpredictability to a new level.

I saw a bumper sticker recently that proclaimed the driver was "Ready for Hillary." With the candidate's disapproval numbers rising and her approval numbers slip slidin' away, it doesn't appear that too many other voters are, in fact, ready.
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It is disheartening that when solutions are available to combat Indiana's methamphetamine crisis, as have been amply demonstrated in Oregon and Mississippi, Indiana lawmakers and the governor look the other way. A U.S. map published by the Drug Enforcement Administration titled "2014 Meth Clandestine Laboratory Incidents" tells a stunning and revealing story.

Oregon went to a prescription rescheduling of pseudoephedrine in 2006 and meth lab busts plummeted from 192 in 2005 to seven in 2014. There was a similar 83 percent drop off in Mississippi, which the DEA shows reported two incidents in 2014.

And Indiana? A disgusting 1,471 out of the 9,338 reported for the entire United States.

Law enforcement officials in Indiana will tell you that only a fraction of the actual meth labs are discovered, shut down and prosecuted.

What made the impact in Oregon and Mississippi? The rescheduling of pseudoepedrine. Which made the announced decision last week of House Public Health Committee Chairwoman Cindy Kirchhofer not to hear HB1390 by State Rep. Ben Smaltz one of neglectful proportions.

Indiana leads the nation in domestic methamphetamine production for the past three years. And at what cost?

According to the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, since 2013 Indiana has dismantled 4,477 meth labs, and rescued 1,104 children living in meth lab environments. In the first nine months of 2015, there were 1,302 meth lab incidents involving 278 children. Over the corresponding time period, Indiana has seen a 32 percent increase in homicides, 26 percent increase in abuse and neglect reports to the Department of Child Services, a 90 percent increase in misdemeanor theft filings in the first six months of 2015.

Worth repeating is something that Kendallville Police Chief Rob Wiley explained last November, which was that while 362 children have been removed from meth manufacturing homes the previous year, "There are about 10 times that many," meaning that another 3,600 kids or so are living in squalid, dangerous and lethal conditions that authorities haven't reached.

So how are Gov. Mike Pence and the Indiana General Assembly responding?

When I asked Gov. Pence about rescheduling PSE in December, he noted that he had created a drug task force, that it was working on a "comprehensive approach," and that he was implementing its recommendations. "Meth is part of the equation," Pence said. "But, frankly, heroin is the scourge that is tearing at the fabric of communities and families across the state. We have to confront it in new ways. I think in this session what you're going to see is our administration supporting efforts to make sure that we are incredibly tough on drug dealers."

Pence wouldn't address the rescheduling solution, and neither would his Democratic opponent, John Gregg, though he told me that the current system "is not working."

The logic here is stunning: Let's not restrict the flow of meth ingredients, but, instead, let's throw the book at the drug dealers once they're done making the product.

Speaker Brian Bosma told me the same thing in November. "I am a fan of putting it on a prescription. I know that it's controversial with many folks, but I would more than pleased to have pseudoephedrine as a prescription drug because even with our sophisticated tracking system in place, they are getting multiple purchasers to travel from spot to spot," Bosma said. "It's not working."

Kirchhofer, R-Beech Grove told the Associated Press last week that there wasn't enough support in her committee to advance the legislation. "I would not look for anything on Wednesday to come out of the Health committee that has a prescription requirement on it," Kirchhofer said. "There are wide opinions and I just don't have the votes to move it in committee or on the House floor."

But that changed within the last 48 hours as Smaltz told HPI that HB1390 will now get a hearing, though a vote is not yet promised, at 9 a.m. Monday. The Auburn Republican has made changes, one of which would allow a "patient of record" to purchase PSE from a pharmacist. A person not a "patient of record" would only be allowed to by a small portion of tamper resistant PSE via a prescription.

Asked what changed, Smaltz cited Speaker Bosma, saying this morning, "I am confident the speaker supports fighting meth labs. He wants all of the bills heard. He wants a solution, everything out of the box. I feel great support. I am certain my bill is alive because of his leadership."

Bosma, a probable gubernatorial candidate in 2020, told the Associated Press last week, "There are three or four options that have been introduced, all worthy of discussion. I've told the chairman I have expectations that they come out with something."

Without a solution like HB1390, everything else is a half measure. The Indiana General Assembly loves half measures, because they prompt little leadership in the face of the various retail councils and consumer health product lobbyists who don't want anything to crimp sales of drugs like Sudafed. It is profits before public safety.

Those fighting the rescheduling say that 90 percent of the meth in Indiana comes from Mexico, something Smaltz vehemently disagrees with. "I have read Department of Justice reports going back to 2005 and nothing backs that up," Smaltz said. "Maybe the percentages are high in the U.S., but not in Indiana." Smaltz points to http://www.in.gov/meth/2371.htm which actually geographically reveals "meth lab addresses" in Indiana.

In 2011, the General Assembly opted for the NPLEx system to track PSE sales. It was supposed to block sales to consumers who had gone over a legal limit. In 2015, according to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council, Indiana has seen a 29.6 percent increase in meth lab incidents since the full implementation of NPLEx took place on Jan. 1, 2012.

In 2005, the General Assembly required PSE products to be kept behind the pharmacy counter, consumers would have to show a government ID, and all sales would be recorded. Under this system, Indiana saw a 70 percent increase in meth lab incidents between 2005 and 2015.

What Hoosiers need is leadership here. Political courage is required. They need Speaker Bosma and Senate President David Long to lean on their committee chairs to bring bills to their floors for discussion and debate. Hoosiers need committee chairs to develop consensus and get something that will work into law. Hoosiers need a governor who has been missing in action on the meth issue to take a stand, and use political capital to press for what is working in Oregon and Mississippi and get it implemented here.

To do otherwise, to fiddle, is to let Rome City burn.
File it under "irony" or "misguided," but executives at some of the world's largest IT security companies willingly gave up Twitter passwords while registering for a security event, according to The Register.

RSA's invitation-only Executive Security Action Forum (ESAF), taking place on 29 February in San Francisco in conjunction with the RSA Conference, asked those registering online for their Twitter credentials to assist in social media outreach.

However, the page not only asks for Twitter handles but direct plaintext passwords as well. Additionally, The Register reports that the site does not use OAUth-enabled single sign-on, the standard that websites can use to allow Twitter logons without endangering security.

The consequence is that a database with Twitter account passwords belonging to IT security executives from Global 1000 companies and government likely exists on the RSA site.

The ESAF has not yet responded to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com
Google has agreed to pay 130 million pounds ($265 million) in back taxes to Britain, prompting criticism from opposition lawmakers and campaigners who said the "derisory" figure smacked of a "sweetheart deal".

Google, now part of Alphabet, has been under pressure in recent years over its practice of channeling most profits from European clients through Ireland to Bermuda, where it pays no tax on them.

In 2013, the company faced a UK parliamentary inquiry after a Reuters investigation showed the firm employed hundreds of salespeople in Britain despite saying it did not conduct sales in the country, a key plank in its tax arrangements.

Google said late on Friday the 130 million pounds would settle a probe by the British tax authority, which had challenged the companys low tax returns for the years since 2005. It said it had also agreed a basis on which tax in the future would be calculated.

"The way multinational companies are taxed has been debated for many years and the international tax system is changing as a result. This settlement reflects that shift," a Google spokesman said in a statement.

The deal comes as governments around the world seek to clamp down on multinational companies shifting profits overseas to reduce their tax bills.

EU competition authorities have investigated arrangements used by Amazon and a unit of Fiat in Luxembourg, Apple in Ireland and Starbucks in the Netherlands, and may start new probes.

British finance minister George Osborne welcomed the deal, saying on Twitter it reflected new rules that he had introduced, but others were less impressed.

John McDonnell, finance spokesman for the opposition Labour party, said the tax authorities needed to explain how they had settled on the figure of 130 million pounds, which he described as relatively insignificant.

"It looks to me ... that this is relatively trivial in comparison with what should have been made, in fact one analysis has put the rate down to about 3 percent, which I think is derisory," he told BBC Radio on Saturday.

"This looks like another sweetheart deal."

Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, agreed.

He said that for a company that enjoyed UK turnover of around 24 billion pounds over the period and margins of 30 percent, the settlement represented an effective tax rate in the low single digits for Google.

This is a lousy number and we need to know more, he said. Richard Murphy, a tax expert who has advised the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on economic policy, said the deal was a disaster and that, based on the turnover and margins Google enjoyed, They should have been paying 200 million pounds a year.

Between 2005 and 2013, Google had UK turnover of 17 billion pounds and its main UK unit reported a tax charge of 52 million pounds, filings showed. In 2014, it had UK revenues of around 4 billion pounds, according to its annual report, but has not yet published its UK tax charge.

(Additional reporting by Steve Trousdale in San Francisco and Kate Holton in London; Editing by Dale Hudson)
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Proofpoint Top Exec Maintains Security Vendor Won't Be Acquired Anytime Soon

Sarah Kuranda

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If you recently read a prediction naming blockbuster acquisition deals that could happen in 2016, it is likely that Proofpoint was one of the companies on the list. But despite the rumors, Tracey Newell, executive vice president of worldwide sales for the security vendor, told CRN an acquisition isnt likely.

A recent report by Daniel Ives, FBR managing director and senior analyst, put Proofpoint on its list of companies that could be bought in 2016, naming the likely potential buyers for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor as Cisco, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle Acquisition-hungry Symantec has also be named by analysts as a potential suitor.

In an interview with CRN at the companys headquarters last week, Newell said she "can't control what people write" about the company. While deferring to CFO Paul Auvil for a more concrete answer on the company's plans, Newell said CEO Gary Steele has said he is focused on "building a company for the future."

[Related: 6 Blockbuster Security Acquisitions You Could See In 2016]

"Theres no question: We've seen tremendous growth in the industry and we're pleased by that," Newell said. "We believe that there will be a new set of next-generation security companies [emerging] as a result of what's happening with the traditional incumbents. We fully intend to be one of them."

The company last week revealed its partnership with Palo Alto Networks, which shares threat intelligence by integrating Proofpoints Targeted Attack Protection solution and the Proofpoint Social Patrol solution with Palo Altos Wildfire.

"We're really pleased with how we're being recognized in the market," Newell said about the partnership. "It's a really compelling story."

The company also landed a lucrative deal with Intel Security, serving as the partner of choice for customers and partners affected by the other security vendor's recent email product end-of-life announcements. That deal is a multimillion-dollar opportunity for Proofpoint, Newell said.

Jane Wright, senior analyst for security at Technology Business Research, said Proofpoint is one the companies that she has been evaluating as a possible acquisition target. However, she said the massive deal with Intel Security could put the vendor in an interesting position to pick up the slack as other vendors divest product lines.

Kevin Pouche, chief operating officer at Brookline, Mass.-based K Logix, said that as a Proofpoint partner, he would like to see the vendor remain independent.

"A company like ours, we're more successful if they remain independent," Pouche said. "I'd like to see them both acquire more technology themselves and continue to grow, or invest in partnerships, like this one with Palo Alto Networks."

Pouche said he would be "surprised" if the vendor wasn't being pursued by companies such as Symantec and Cisco, as it has established itself as a clear leader in its markets in recent years. However, Pouche said, acquisitions by big vendors are not always absorbed as smoothly as partners would like, causing the technology to suffer in the long run.

"If they were purchased by one of these huge companies, what you tend to see is that over time, the technology starts to fall behind and they are no longer a bleeding edge when it comes to technology. You've just seen it again and again. I would rather see them maintain their focus and add more partnerships like Palo Alto and add new technologies," Pouche said.

In the past year, Newell said, Proofpoint has seen considerable success with its evolving channel program, after a recent revamp to reward partners who invested in the security vendor. She said Proofpoint will continue to invest in its channel, particularly globally, where it looks to expand further into the European, Australian and New Zealand markets.

Newell said Proofpoint also plans to continue augmenting its technology portfolio, building on investments it made in 2015 around stopping advanced threats as well as in email, social and mobile security. Those areas are growing in importance in the market, she said, presenting a "tremendous opportunity" for Proofpoint.

"We have the ability that we can triple the company just through selling the existing portfolio," Newell said.

PUBLISHED JAN. 25, 2016
We had a terrific 2015 with the return of Carnival in the spring and fall, said Stephen Kirkland, executive director of Nauticus which oversees port operations in Norfolk.

Our community came together to welcome them back and most importantly, sales were strong. In particular, theres really high demand here in Virginia and nearby North Carolina for more Bermuda product, he said.

Kirkland is more excited about the arrival of the Carnival Sunshine this year, a ship he worked on when it was the Carnival Destiny.

So to see her here in Norfolk will be pretty special, he added.

There is also a growing transit call business at the port from European lines, with AIDA leading the way, with the most popular shore excursion for German passengers being a bicycle tour.

With AIDA, weve really tried to roll out the red carpet for our German-speaking guests, Kirkland explained. We have translators at the terminal and our tour excursion company tries to have German-speaking staff when possible. Even our downtown mall has gotten into the act  they teach their sales associates to say welcome and thank you in German prior to each call.

TUI Cruises has taken notice and has booked calls into Norfolk in late 2017.

The port is working to grow its homeport business with what Kirkland said was mid-Atlantic potential, while at the same time putting an emphasis on more transit calls.

Fuel costs from Norfolk to Bermuda are minimal, he continued. Additional itineraries are also feasible since were right at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Were also located within an easy drive of the mid-Atlantic, especially for our neighbors in North Carolina, and weve got a downtown terminal thats within walking distance of hundreds of hotel rooms.

Excerpt from Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine: Winter 2015/2016
A new 48-hour strike is slated for Greek ports starting Jan. 27, according to Inchape Shipping Services (ISS). It is expected that the routes of domestic and local ferries and commercial vessels calling at Piraeus, Aspropyrgos, Eleusis, Pachi and Megara will be affected.

The strike action has been announced by the Hellenic Crew Union and the Towage and Salvage Crew Union of Piraeus and is scheduled to start at 06:00 local time on January 27 and end at 06:00 on January 27.

During the stoppage period, vessels will not be able to berth, shift or sail from the affected ports. Tug boats in Thessaloniki are expected to work normally on these dates as these crews will not be participating in the strike.

The action has allegedly been called by the unions in response to the governments planned changes to labor and insurance rights, pensions and retirement ages.

ISS Greece said it is working with its clients to minimize delays and will keep its clients updated.

This strike would be applicable to cruise ships as well, however, there are no calls scheduled during the strike dates.
In many ways, security awareness training exemplifies the way information security is seen and tackled by senior management.

A once-a-year, classroom-based approach may be traditional, with security updates and warnings posted on walls and the Intranet, but it is also a sign of a tick-box, compliance-driven approach to security. It is often done to appease industry regulators, PCI and data protection authorities, and the training can offer relatively basic  arguably condescending- advice.

But times are changing. The threat landscape is growing with the arrival of millions of mobiles and wearables, each with their own IP address, while organized crime and nation-state APT groups are looking at new ways of compromising victims. From exploit kits and Trojans to ransomware, phishing and social engineering scams  the criminal game has moved on.

[ ALSO ON CSO: 9 tips, tricks and must-haves for security awareness programs ]

The information security industry has recognized this, calling for an end to prevention-focused defenses, and more focus on response. But surely that means that security training must change in turn?

Still a low priority

Theres a debate to be had on how seriously Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) or Chief Security Officers (CSO) are taking security training  and how well theyre doing it.

One study, commissioned by ClubCISO last year, found that 21 percent of CISOs had never given security training, with a further 21 percent indicating that they only did so when new staff joined the company. Thirty-seven percent said they carried out training on an annual basis and another 21 percent agreed that this was carried out frequently.

More than half (52 percent) of the surveyed CISOs admitted that their security awareness training programs had no measure of effectiveness', while 24 percent said that they relied on online testing. A further 14 percent said they had an after-training test, with a well-prepared 10 percent measuring incident and support call volumes before and after training.

Pete Wood, CEO of infosec consultancy First Base Technologies, says training programs have to change, top-down.

Business are finally understanding they need to make staff part of the defensive posture, rather than just throwing money at product. Historically, its been something that staff members have to attend, that they hate doing, and almost do with the same mind-set as health and safety training. This is not really a 21st century solution.

Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of security awareness training provider KnowBe4  Kevin Mitnicks company, agrees that this old-school, compliance check-box training, usually done over PowerPoint, is fading out.

Thats not hacking it anymore, because two days later everyone has forgotten everything.

Board buy-in is a must

It is clear that establishing a positive training program must start with board backing.

Wood says that it is pivotal to establishing a security culture to get training right, while independent pen tester and social engineering expert Richard De Vere calls for a more direct approach. Get the board involved and shout until you are blue in the face because it's what they are paying you for.

Sjouwerman agrees: This need to be driven by the CEO and COO down.

[ ALSO READ: Does security awareness training even work? ]

Some take bolder steps; one company sent simulated email attacks to board members before presenting to them on the same topic. Several of the board clicked on the links, and the bold CISO got his approval to send these links to end users - and provide follow-up training as required.

Others, however, are not so forthcoming, and it goes back to the importance of CEO-CISO communication.

Red-teaming, gamification and more

Getting board support is crucial for funding, resources and the right culture. But how should training take form? Should it be online, in-person, and how do you shape this program in the first place?

Wood says proactive companies should first do red teaming exercises to work out their potential areas of compromise, so they can shape the program and address the specific risks to the business.

He tells CSO Online the story of one UK-based life sciences company, whose head of information sector hired First Base to build a storyboard of an attack. Woods pen testers researched the company, found out that one threat actor would be organized crime, and discovered how these hackers would try and get information. From phishing emails and malware to on-site attacks via USB dongles, Wood says there were numerous weak points in the organization.

What came out at the end wasnt just a set of recommendations of how to fix this, but we also made sure to film it so they had visual evidence of us wandering around where we shouldnt have been. They took this and made a training awareness program out of it, and they delivered it to the staff across the world as a story.

That sort of imaginative approach to the problem is whats needed, rather than taking a classroom-based approach.

[ ALSO ON CSO: 6 tips for your security awareness training ]

De Vere urges: Training shouldn't be patchy. Pick a good platform and provider and stick to it. Staff have a hard enough task as it is learning all the ways in which they pose a risk to security without misinformation or gaping holes in knowledge. If you don't have a social engineering training platform yet, get one.

Staff should be considered 'responsible' for a breach in security but in return you have to bend over backwards to provide everything they need for support. If they fail, pat them on the back and sign them up for more training.

Sjouwerman says its three-step process from establishing a baseline test, finding the results and training everyone from the mailroom to the boardroom. Tests, he says, must be done on a regular basis to keep employees interested and learning.

The experts are mixed on the new trend for gamifying training, though. Sjouwerman says that phishing games between departments can drive lower click rates, but Wood stresses that it must not be a gimmick, and must be joined up with an existing program.

Next year his firm is working with a UK charity to build red teaming exercises into their annual conferences. People do enjoy it, he says.

Incentive the users

Wood admits that the biggest challenge is continuing the program, making it year round, something he says requires time and money. In the ideal world, he says each business should have security evangelists keeping up with the threats, and thinking creatively how training should take place.

Media reports can be used to keep a buzz around security, especially if breaches are local or industry-relevant.

The experts argue too that you can incentive employees on training. Some say if you use a phishing reporting tool, or have some other way of measuring end-user security awareness; you could award top employees with a gift at a company gathering. It's a positive way of recognizing excellence and reinforcing behavior.

Sjouwerman sees advantages to both the carrot and the stick approach, but advises CISOs to enlighten employees on how this knowledge can be used at home for their own personal security.

Richard Starnes, CISO at the Kentucky Health Cooperative, agrees and tells CSO: In my companys awareness program, we break down the skills and relate them to things you would do to protect yourself at home.

Show someone how to keep their children safe online at home and those skills easily translate to make your company safer at work.

Starnes, who urges CISOs to establish KPIs to establish training effectiveness, adds: There cannot be a culture of blame. I would rather have someone recognize they have made a mistake and notify security. If they do not notify security because they are concerned they may be punished, your awareness program has failed at the worst possible time.
The late December telephonic denial-of-service attack against a Ukrainian power company was a smokescreen to cover up a cyber attack, experts say.

"This is one of the more common reasons why these attacks are done," said Rene Paap, product marketing manager at security vendor A10 Networks.

According to Paap, telephonic DoS attacks have been around for a while, but don't get as much attention as the big DDoS attacks.

Just like a regular DDoS attack, telephonic DoS works by overwhelming the victim's call center with so many fake phone calls that legitimate calls can't get through.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Ukrainian power companies are getting hit with more cyberattacks ]

With the phone system taken out, the people maintaining the power grid wouldn't get alerts from the general public, and may have problems communicating with their own systems as well.

"This was a very well orchestrated attack," said Paap, who declined to go as far as to point the finger at another country in the region. "It wasn't done just by people doing it for the heck of it -- there was definitely an organization with significant resources."

According to Paap, other attackers also use telephonic DoS as a cover.

For example, credit card thieves could flood the telephone lines of the legitimate cardholders so that credit card companies can't get through -- and the crooks have more time to use the stolen card numbers.

Or an attack against a small bank's call center could coincide with a phishing campaign against that bank's customers.

"They overwhelm the system with fake calls, hang up, and call back again," Paap said.

This kind of attack is relatively easy to a business to detect because legitimate calls stop coming in, he said.

Businesses can protect themselves with countermeasures such as protection gateways and firewalls that validate incoming calls and distinguish legitimate calls from malicious ones.

"Though it can be hard," Paap admitted.

TDoS attacks could also be used for extortion, as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned in 2013. At that time, attackers targeted emergency services companies such as ambulance operations and hospitals.

Meanwhile, successful cyber attacks against critical infrastructure have been steadily increasing in frequency and complexity over the past decade, according to a recent Trend Micro report. Of 575 operators in 20 countries, 44 percent said they had been hit by attacks.

Trend Micro's Vice President for cybersecurity strategy Ed Cabrera recommended that critical infrastructure CISOs segregate corporate and Industrial Control Systems networks, among other security measures.

According to Michael Assante, SANS Industrial Control Systems director, the Ukraininan power outage hit 80,000 customers on Dec. 23 and lasted for three to six hours.

In addition to flooding the call centers to prevent customers from being able to report outages, the attackers also used malware to infect production SCADA systems and infected workstations and servers.

"This incident is a milestone because it is the first major cyber attack to substantially affect the civilian population," wrote John Hultquist, director of cyber espionage analysis at iSIGHT Partners in a recent post.
Of all the major breaches that made the headlines in 2015, many of them are believed to have started with some sort of phishing scam. From Anthem to Sony, human error is often to blame for the majority of security incidents that enterprises experience.

Understanding what a phishing scam is and how and why the organization is being targeted will help security professionals be on alert and better train their employees to identify and report potential threats.

Angela Knox senior director of engineering and threat research, Cloudmark said, A phishing scam is when you receive an email or instant message or phone call where the person sending the message is pretending to be someone they are not in order to convince the recipient into giving over information because the receiver is someone they can trust.

The problem is that these bad guys are so sophisticated in their tactics that its difficult to detect the frauds.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Social engineering: 7 signs that something is just not right ]

In one word, the criminals are successful because of trust. A lot of times they will use social engineering tactics, said Knox. By creating a sense of urgency, the scammers are able to make end users act in a hurry.

Our brain shuts down from noting that there is something odd and focuses on the urgency, so these criminals use social engineering tactics to get past the normal doubt tactics. The people are experts, Knox said.

Different varieties of phish include smishing, vishing, and spear phishing, and the goal of each is the same though the medium used to conduct the scam differs slightly. Knox provided a quick definition of each:

Smishing takes those phishing techniques of building trust and establishing a sense of urgency but applies them to text (SMS) messaging.

takes those phishing techniques of building trust and establishing a sense of urgency but applies them to text (SMS) messaging. Vishing uses voice, so its usually a phone call. The criminal can set the caller ID number to be anything they want it to be. The receiver may think the bank is calling because its the bank phone number.

uses voice, so its usually a phone call. The criminal can set the caller ID number to be anything they want it to be. The receiver may think the bank is calling because its the bank phone number. Spear Phishing involves a particularly targeted attack, so its usually in lower volume, especially if someone has more data available. Criminals can make the phishing attack more targeted to break into an enterprise network. The spear part is more targeted.

When Knox gave the example of a spear phishing attack that an end user might see, I shook my head in agreement. It was a tale I had heard many times before. An email from the CEO is sent to someone in the finance department asking them to make a wire transfer. Ive talked with so many high-level executives from major security companies who noted someone in their own organizations had seen this type of attack. Fortunately for them, the threat was detected before trouble ensued.

If you look at the domain name, itll be a similar domain with maybe one letter change, said Knox, and its really important that end users are trained to not respond to these calls for urgency. Teaching employees how to find the domain name can prevent them falling victim to deception.

Though phishing itself is not social engineering, bad guys use their understanding of the ways humans behave to develop these scams. Scamming someone is a psychological con, and these bad actors are some of the greatest and most skilled con artists because they know how to manipulate human trust.

Criminals conduct phishing campaigns by collecting data on sites like, www.data.com, where a lot of employee emails, names, titles are listed. They learn who is in the organization and collect useful data that they use to start a conversation with targeted employees.

They will build up trust before they ask someone to open an attachment, said Knox. They may talk to someone for weeks then say, Now Im sending you an attachment.

The attachments are where the money making comes in. Some are trying to get in to get data that they can sell or reuse. "It could be industrial espionage, or malware that demands someone transfer money out, said Knox. Whether they are collecting credentials or installing bots, spam, or DDoS attacks, the techniques are different but usually the goal is money. The goal is to sell or trade sensitive data, and it's a lucrative market for criminals.

Including examples of these types of scams in an ongoing awareness training program is a key step in mitigating the various threats to the security of the cyber seas.
Probability has turned to certainty. General Electric is leaving Connecticut. Since GEs announcement, Hartford has been abuzz with finger-pointing, always a nasty game. But theres a difference between scapegoating and holding people accountable.

Two-term Governor Malloy and long-reining Democrats should be held accountable.

In doing so, a clear distinction should be made between GEs reasons for leaving Connecticut and its reasons for heading to Boston. The reasons are different.

GE is leaving Connecticut because of Connecticuts high taxes, its business-unfriendly environment and its frightening fiscal and economic outlook. What attracted GE to Boston only matters to GE and Beantown.

Dont let Malloy and the Democrats switch it up, saying that GE is not leaving Connecticut because of its high taxes but rather to relocate to a research and high-tech oriented urban environment.

Dont let Dannel and the boys convince you that high taxes and an unfriendly business environment cant be the reasons that GE is leaving , because Taxachusetts is just the same. Massachusetts taxes are lower and they have been going down, as The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Moreover, sequence is important.

GE, which says it had been muilling relocation for a while, began considering a move in earnest when Malloy and the Democrats jacked up corporate taxes summarily and retroactively last June. Thereafter, GE began touring the nation looking at possible new homes, untimately settling on Boston.

GE didnt act just out of pique. It looked deeper and further than Junes tax hike. Connecticut is facing huge looming budget deficits of $355 million in 2017, $1.7 billion in 2018 and $1.9 billion in 2019 according to the states non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis. A cumulative deficit of almost $4 billion in an annual budget of about $20 billion is a drastically deep abyss. Future tax increases are virtually inevitable.

And these projections are not dynamic. That is to say, they do not factor in the likely reaction of taxpayers, both businesses and individuals, to the coming succession of tax increases that the state will be forced to levy. Famously, Connecticut is the new Dodge City, the place that half the citizenry wanted to get outtta in a 2014 Gallup poll.

Well, they are leaving. The emigrants are higher income tax payers. Connecticut is the only state in the nation where the average income of taxpayers leaving the state is higher than those staying. According to the latest IRS data, between 2011 and 2013, about 95,000 taxpayers left the state; their average adjusted gross income was $112,000 versus an average of $101,000 for the remaining 1.4 million taxpayers. Only 78,000 taxpayers moved into the state, bringing an average AGI of only $86,000.

The states individual income tax base is eroding quickly. Indeed, last Friday (after GEs announcement), the state announced new shortfalls, with income tax receipts for the last six months coming in 2.6 percent below projections made just last June.

With GEs departure, a slow exodus may turn into a stampede.

What to do?

Act like bank robber Willy Sutton. Go where the money is  in this case, the expense money. State employee compensation is the biggest single expense in the state budget.

Connecticut state employees enjoy amongst the highest compensation of state employees anywhere, five years after Governor Malloy claimed to have exacted painful concessions from state employees. Heres how the employees lead negotiator, Dan Livingston, described the 2011 deal:

retirement benefits, Now we have an 11-year pension and health care agreement that no other state worker in the country has;

job security, four years job security. Nowhere else in the country will you find four years job security;

wage increases, Giving up the raise next year [3 percent] to get three threes in a row in the three out years Arbitrators around the country are ordering four zeros in many cases.

Painful? Only to overtaxed citizens who rely on state services that are now being cut to close budget deficits. Who wants to pay more for less?

By official estimates, required state contributions to the state employee pension fund, which is the third most severely underfunded plan in the country, will escalate from $1.5 billion today to twice that amount by 2025 and more than quadruple by 2032. That doesnt include retiree health care benefits.

It is time for real cuts in state employee compensation, primarily retirement benefits.

The problem is that the same guy who negotiated the 2011 deal is, or soon will be, in secret negotiations (theyre secret, so we dont know) on a new multi-year deal with the public unions which supported him in both his 2010 and 2014 elections. No doubt, that scared GE.

It is not alarmist to say that, even before GEs departure, Connecticut had entered the beginnings of a death spiral  of increasing deficits requiring more tax hikes leading to mounting taxpayer flight bringing things full circle to insufficient tax revenue and more deficits. Thats what drove GE out of Connecticut. What attracted GE to Boston is another matter.

Red Jahncke (RTJahncke@Gmail; Twitter: @RedJahncke) is president of The Townsend Group, LLC, a business consulting firm in Connecticut.
Jan. 25, 5:30 p.m. ET: This story has been updated throughout with comments from Theranos and Walgreens.

An audit by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal health agency, has reportedly uncovered serious deficiencies at Theranoss lab facility in Newark, Calif.

The details of the audit were not disclosed but are expected to be released soon -- and could result in Theranos tests being suspended from the Medicare program if not promptly redressed, according to The Wall Street Journal.

CMS told the Journal that it cant confirm any survey conclusions or results at this time.

Theranos spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told Entrepreneur that the company hadnt received a copy of the final routine audit report, which was conducted last fall. Unfortunately, the blind sources that The Wall Street Journal used didnt tell us where they were from or who they are or what level of access that they have, she said. Its all allegations at this time.

Theranoss partnership with Walgreens is also hanging ever more in the balance, according to the Journal. Walgreens, which houses 41 Theranos testing facilities in locations throughout Arizona and California, has already suspended expansion of the program until questions about Theranoss technology are resolved, but the facilities face an even greater risk of being shuttered pending the results from CMSs latest inspection.

Buchanan said that these reports are also incorrect. We are actually looking to expand, she said of Theranoss partnership with Walgreens.

Related: Health Regulators Are Investigating Theranos's Blood Test Technology

A Walgreens spokesman reiterated a former statement to Entrepreneur that it made last October when the retailer initially halted expansion. We are currently in discussions about the next phase of our relationship, that statement read. Plans to open more Theranos Wellness Centers are dependent upon both companies ability to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Previously, CMS had cited problems following an inspection of Theranos Newark lab in 2013, which the company said it resolved, as well as infractions last year at another Theranos lab facility in Arizona. But the latest findings are far more severe, according to the Journal.

Theranos was founded in 2003 by 31-year-old Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes and says it can conduct a multitude of blood tests using a tiny sample pricked from a fingertip. The company was last valued at $9 billion.

Currently, Theranos has only received FDA approval to conduct one test using its proprietary technology, for herpes. (As the only lab seeking FDA approval, Buchanan told Entrepreneur, thats one more test than anyone else. She added that Theranos is seeking FDA approval to create a best-in-class lab.)

Today, Theranos is conducting the rest of its tests with traditional machines, with some outsourced to outside labs -- for which it is suffering financial losses, according to the Journal. As for these claims, Buchanan told Entrepreneur that the company isnt losing any money and is instead experiencing a record-breaking volume of tests in its labs and traffic in its stores.

If The Wall Street Journal actually understood the laboratory industry a little bit better, they would know that its very common practice for labs to send out certain tests to reference labs, she said.

Related: Safeway Seeks to Dissolve Secret $350 Million Deal With Beleaguered Blood Startup Theranos

Related:

Report: Federal Regulators Find 'Serious Deficiencies' at Theranos' California Lab Facility

Health Regulators Are Investigating Theranos's Blood Test Technology

Safeway Seeks to Dissolve Secret $350 Million Deal With Beleaguered Blood Startup Theranos



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
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.
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
Sometimes silence is the most revealing statement. Consider the muteness of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the wake of the report of the public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The 328-page document not only confirmed that this British citizen  a former Russian security service colleague of Vladimir Putin given political asylum here  had been murdered in London by two Russian agents flown in for the purpose. It also set out how this assassination, using polonium from a Russian state nuclear reactor, had probably been authorised by Putin himself.

The British Governments performance over the whole astonishing business has been abject. The Home Secretary, Theresa May, had earlier attempted to block any public inquiry into the murder, until she was overruled by the High Court.

Silence is the most revealing statement: Consider the muteness of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (left) in the wake of the report of the public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko (right)

In the Commons last week her solitary material response was to say the Treasury would freeze the assets of the hired thugs who administered the poison (in the bar of Londons Millennium Hotel).

The Labour backbencher Ian Austin rightly retorted: Putin is an unreconstructed KGB thug and gangster who murders his opponents in Russia and, as we know, on the streets of London  and nothing announced today is going to make the blindest bit of difference.

True, all true. But it should have been the leader of Her Majestys Opposition saying this.

Maligned

After all, Jeremy Corbyn is passionate about the need to prevent what he calls nuclear weapons proliferation  which is why he opposes the renewal of our Trident missile system. And Litvinenkos murder was actually an act of state-sponsored nuclear terror, causing a trail of contamination which required roughly 700 people to be tested for radioactive poisoning.

But about this, too, not a peep from Labours leader, either on the floor of the House of Commons or anywhere else.

The reason is not too hard to establish. Jeremy Corbyn is an apologist for the Russian regime. And he appointed as his director of strategy and communications Seumas Milne, a man who spent much of his time as a Guardian journalist writing columns in support of Putin (with whom he shares the view that Joseph Stalin has been unfairly maligned by Western historians).

Home Secretary Theresa May speaks in the House of Commons, London, after a public inquiry found that President Vladimir Putin "probably" approved the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006

The former editor of the Guardian comment pages is a much cleverer man than Corbyn. Many in the Labour parliamentary party feel that their leader has fallen under the spell of the privately educated Milne  who actually acted as host at what The Times described as a Russian propaganda summit in 2014, where he interviewed Putin.

Im not so sure: it seems to me more like a meeting of minds. Or, as the @JeremyCorbyn4PM Twitter account gleefully declared: Seumas shares Jeremys world view almost to the letter.

That world view, in a nutshell, is that almost everything bad can be blamed on Britains past role as an imperial power and Americas current one as the largest capitalist economy (and leader of Nato).

It is hardly coincidental that until he became Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn had a regular column in the Communist daily, the Morning Star.

In its previous guise as the Daily Worker, the paper was shut down in January 1941 by the UK wartime coalition Home Secretary, Labours Herbert Morrison, because it was opposing our fight against the Nazis as a policy to impose British imperialist peace on Germany.

The reason for that line, of course, was that there was then a Nazi-Soviet pact. The moment Hitler invaded the USSR, the British Communists performed a 180-degree turn, declaring that our war effort was now part of the struggle against fascism.

Interestingly, Jeremy Corbyn to this day uses exactly the same Soviet-era phrase to describe what most of his fellow-countrymen prefer to call World War II.

The attitude that Russian military action is almost by definition justified, while British military action is inherently suspect because we are an imperial power, has no more articulate advocate than George Galloway, the former Labour MP now running as a independent candidate for Mayor of London.

Thus, when Hilary Benn, to Corbyns fury, spoke in favour of Britain joining the bombing of Daesh forces in Syria, on the grounds that we would be fighting fascism, Galloway denounced the Shadow Foreign Secretarys speech as contemptible, adding: Can someone give Hilary Benn a tin hat and a gun and send him off to the bloody war hes gagging for?

Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham speaking in the House of Commons after the public inquiry (left), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (far right)

Yet when Russia had joined in the same conflict, Galloway had tweeted: As Stalingrad and Kursk turned the tide of WW2 so today Russia begins the end of the new fascism of Daesh.

Got it? If Russia bombs the so-called Islamic state, then it is a glorious fight against fascism, but if we do the same then it is contemptible. Perhaps this is understandable coming from a man who has a regular programme on the Kremlin-financed television news channel Russia Today.

But what has this to do with Corbyn and his man Milne? Quite a lot, actually.

Bizarre

Galloway describes Seumas Milne as his closest friend . . . we have spoken almost daily for 30 years. And when Corbyn appointed Milne to be his director of strategy and communications, Galloway exulted: Just what the doctor ordered. The geo-location of this particular tweet was . . . Moscow.

Then stir into this brew the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, whom Corbyn appointed to review Labours official policy on the British independent nuclear deterrent (which is to renew Trident).

Livingstone did an interview in yesterdays Sunday Times in which, to quote the newspaper, he gave a bizarre defence of Vladimir Putin in the wake of the Litvinenko report and defended Putins right to meddle in the Baltic states because they discriminate against Russian speakers.

What none of these apologists for Putin seems to recognise is that while it is true that Britain has an imperial past hardly free of vainglorious expansionism, the current Russian regime has an explicit desire to restore control of what it regards as its own empire, lost as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This  and not Natos attempt to encircle Russia as Jeremy Corbyn wrote in March 2014  is the impulse behind Putins invasion of Ukraine, which has led to the deaths of thousands.

In that context, Alexander Litvinenko was just one further casualty of Putins urge to revenge himself on the West. How strange and sad it is that the leader of Her Majestys Opposition is on the Russian side.

The religious zealots who enforce public morals in Saudi Arabia have long made it a place no normal holidaymaker would ever wish to visit.

Not many of us would fancy risking a lashing or imprisonment for consuming a restorative glass of champagne in the infernal heat.

Now, however, they really have gone too far: Saudi Arabias grand mufti has ruled that chess must be forbidden as un-Islamic, declaring it a form of gambling.

Actually chess does not involve gambling: unlike poker or backgammon, it is not a game of chance.

I am, as it happens, president of the English Chess Federation: so perhaps this means I am now blocked from visiting Saudi Arabia. What a relief.
As a Commons committee heaps praise on the Mail for exposing the scandalous methods of charity fundraisers, a deeply disturbing question remains.

How could regulators fail the public for so long, before action was prompted by this papers campaign  hailed by the MPs as showing the highest standards of ethical investigative journalism?

Bodies such as the Charity Commission and the Fundraising Standards Board, as their names suggest, exist for no other purpose than to ensure the voluntary sector behaves properly.

The MoS laid bare the unethical practices used by UK's charity fundraisers

Tragedy: 92-year-old poppy seller Olive Cooke (pictured), committed suicide last year after being bombarded with calls and letters from charities begging for money

Thats not to mention the trustees of the charities themselves, whose job is to oversee the way their organisations raise and spend funds.

Yet our Investigations Unit exposed how they had got away with exploiting and persecuting donors for years.

Methods included bombarding past contributors with cold calls, often against expressed wishes, selling on data to conmen and employing fundraisers who used brutal methods to extort cash from people they knew to have dementia.

The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee devastatingly observes: Trustees were either not competent, or wilfully blind to what was being done in their names.

As for the MPs recommendations, it makes sense that the public should be encouraged to report malpractice, while disciplinary hearings should be held in public. And yes, data protection laws should be strictly enforced, with two-year jail terms for the worst offenders.

But with their record of failure, do charity bosses and their industrys self-regulators really deserve one last chance to put their own house in order?

Without a change in the law, how long before they revert to old ways  leaving only the free Press to protect the public?

Pension predators

Middle managers, junior doctors, teachers, the self-employed and nurses  all would be hammered by plans under discussion at the Treasury for yet another assault on pension tax breaks.

For not only are ministers considering a further cut of 250,000 in the lifetime limit on nest eggs. Insiders say options also include cutting the maximum annual investment to 10,000  with a blistering tax of 55 per cent on excess savings.

Among the hardest-hit would be middle-aged savers hoping to top up retirement pots after years in which family and mortgage commitments have prevented them from saving enough.

Under Labour, the Tories rightly condemned Gordon Brown for laying waste Britains globally-envied pensions with his 5billion-a-year tax raids.

George Osborne will not be forgiven if he completes Mr Browns dirty work.

Exporting anarchy

This paper has profound contempt for British anarchists said to be exploiting the plight of migrants to stir up violence and disorder in Calais for political ends.

Let the French be assured there is no sympathy in Britain for anyone seeking to heighten tensions in the camps or encourage the storming of ferries to the UK.

Any British among them bring shame on our country and should be treated as harshly as French law allows.

The Calais authorities are right to insist we should do more to prevent troublemakers from going to France. In return, will they try harder to stop illegal migrants crossing the other way?
It started out as a blog to lay bare the realities of motherhood, but its refreshingly honest and hilarious take on parenting made it an online phenomenon with millions of fans.

Now the woman behind the Unmumsy Mum is releasing her debut book with the hope of bringing her straight-talking - often expletive-filled - account of raising two boys to even more parents who feel they don't quite match up to the 'glossy' online world of parenting.

Sarah Turner, 28, of Exeter, Devon, first launched the blog in 2013 after struggling to find an online forum where mothers talked frankly about the difficulties they faced - as opposed to websites and social media channels portraying nothing less than parenting perfection.

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Sarah Turner of Exeter, Devon, here with husband James and their two sons Henry and Jude - the inspiration behind her Unmumsy Mum blog, which she first launched in 2013

The mum regularly posts photos of her toddlers and their antics - here, Jude - her 'feral child' - can be seen rifling through a cupboard and later gets hold of a box of sequins

A little more than a year later, she launched a Facebook page to accompany the blog - which fast became a catalyst for others to open up about the challenging and often hysterical joys of parenting.

The blog has now racked up 4.7million views, the Facebook page has nearly 350,000 followers with a further 17,000 on Twitter.

Sarah, mother to three-year-old Henry and 16-month-old Jude, told FEMAIL: 'I had tried to find blogs and forums when I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

'I tried to search for mums who were feeling similar to me, but all I could find were blogs where mums were saying how they were really enjoying it.

'I had a good network of friends and family, but when you're a new parent up at night feeding and your husband has gone back to work, I didn't want to be texting and bothering my friends all the time. I needed a bit of light relief.

'Something funny, something where people were just admitting that they had a really rough day. There probably was stuff out there but I didn't know where to look.

Sarah Turner of Exeter, Devon, with her two sons Henry (left) and Jude - she admits that what they make of the blog and book when they grow up has been her biggest concern

In another post on her Facebook page, Sarah shares a photo of Henry sprawled out over the floor in a lift

Although enjoying motherhood, the 28-year-old said she struggled to find any blogs or websites to help her through the more challenging times

'I decided to start the blog for those who were feeling massively overwhelmed and struggling to find anything like this as well. Even if nobody read it, it didn't matter.

Her other son Henry has a tendency to provide humour in the form of toilet jokes, which are often shared on the Unmumsy Mum Facebook page

It was 100 per cent how I was feeling, I wasn't going to sugar coat it.

'I think there's almost this unwritten rule that unless you were really poorly and not coping, it wasn't okay just to be having the odd off day and talk about it.

'There can be this feeling of inadequacy, how you will never match up to the glossy lives of people online.

'There's nothing wrong with those types of blogs - I like following Instagram accounts like that myself, because I want the kitchen they've got and love how stylish their kids are - it's aspirational.

'I think that's fine, and there's hopefully a place for all types of blogs, you just have to think about how just showing the glossy bits can make people feel. It's nice to have a balance.'

It seems Sarah, who met husband James when she was 16, isn't the only mother feeling this way.

Thousands of parents have given feedback, admitting to feeling 'guilty' for not being perfect and finding comfort in her blog.

Sarah said: 'People message me with that sense of relief that there is someone else that isn't coping quite as well as you thought everyone else was.

'There have been a couple of messages that really stand out.

'One of them was from a mum who said she had been looking at her personal feed on Facebook, and felt that she was suffering while all she could see was other people's brilliant family pictures.

'She said a knot was twisting inside of her, like she'd never match up to it.

'And then she found my page and read back through all the archive material, and said she just sat and cried because she felt an overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't just her, that she actually wasn't struggling after all.

The blog charting her journey through early motherhood has now had 4.7million views, the Facebook page has nearly 350,000 followers and its Twitter account more than 17,000

Her book deal came about after a woman at the publishing company which took her story on saw a post from the Unmumsy Mum on her personal Facebook page and thought it could be a good idea

Comedy is at the heart of both the blog and book, and has encouraged many parents to open up on social media about the far-from-perfect norms of raising a family

'Others have said: "thank you for making me feel normal" and there have even been messages from grandparents saying their daughter or son had found benefit in the page, and how they wish there had been something like it around when I was a parent starting out.'

Although sending out a serious message at its heart, Sarah's blog has perhaps reached so many due to its comedic and light-hearted approach, interspersed by the odd sentimental post on how rewarding it can be.

It's a theme that continues in her book. Laugh-out-loud moments include a hilarious account of how husband James had to 'milk her' when her ducts became agonisingly blocked, her sons' embarrassing tendency to shout 'bum' jokes from the top of the climbing frame and the time Henry made a very frank and graphic statement about a British Gas man's genitalia.

'Making it funny is immeasurably important for me. One of the highlights of having kids is it's comedy gold, there are so many moments of fun and humour', said Sarah.

The blog clearly struck a chord with parents, and she hopes the book will help many more realise that the 'glossy' world portrayed by many books and websites is not realistic

'I have the same relationship with Lego as I do with alcohol. Such a good idea at the time,' says Sarah in another Facebook post showing one of her son's bedrooms covered in Lego blocks

'I've had a lot of messages from mums who've said if you can't laugh about it you have to just cry. Things can get on top of you, but the humour is really important.

'Some of the stuff I write about probably wasn't even that funny for me at the time, like when you've got a screaming toddler lying on the floor in the supermarket.'

The Unmumsy Mum book is out on February 11. A precursor to the release, The Unmumsy Mums has already been released as a free download

Although comedic, the book has plenty of heart and sentiment in it too - including the opening chapter in which Sarah addresses her two sons on the reasons she started writing the blog.

'What they will make of it has always been a worry for me, not what everyone else thinks.

'If I was them I wouldn't have been offended. I've admittedly said some not very kind things about my children but it's all been tongue in cheek, if they have been little so and so's.'

Another poignant section is dedicated to her mum, who died when Sarah was just 15 years old.

She said: 'I think having lost my mum I have that perspective on life being too short, you actually need to make the most of the time you've got', she added.

As well as exploring the frustrations and the candid lows of motherhood - including the taboo subject of post-baby sex, Sarah also talks about the joys of bringing up Henry and Jude.

'There have been a few moments that really merge into one, just that pure joy of them dancing around in the living room with the music channel on in the background and they're completely naked or just in their pants, just bringing pure light to your life.

'It's moments like that where I feel so lucky to have them, funny things that they say.

We went to Cornwall on holiday and I remember sitting back on the beach and seeing them trundling around while me and my husband kicked back. I remember thinking "this is what it's all about".'

Sarah, who formerly had a high-flying career in finance, was offered the book deal after a woman at publishers Transworld noticed a post from the Unmumsy Mum in her personal Facebook feed and thought it had potential.

It was a dream come true for Sarah who wrote the book over nine months after giving up her part-time three-day role at a university.

Sarah remains overwhelmed by the response to her blog but touched by the thousands of personal messages from mums she has received which have said the blog helped them

The realities of dining when you're a parent - Sarah shows a photo of her fish fingers dinner served on a cow plate, after seeing people on Instagram uploading photos of meals out

She remains, at times overwhelmed by the response to the the blog but, ultimately, hopes it will make a difference to other mothers.

'For me it has been a chance to write the book I wish I had found, rather than it being a manual telling parents how to do things. It is not at all like that', she said.

'I want people to read the book and have a realisation that they've perhaps been a bit hard on themselves, and that what they are feeling is perfectly normal.'
Traditionally, brides hand-pick a group of female bridesmaids and grooms select a handful of male groomsmen to stand by their side on their wedding day.

But many Australian couples have decided to break tradition and mix up their bridal parties to ensure their loved ones are included and honoured with the traditional roles - regardless of their gender.

Over the past year, weddings across the country have seen a rise in 'groomswomen', 'bridesmen', best women and 'males of honour' taking part in the celebration.

Mixed is in: Couples are choosing to have mixed bridal parties for their weddings

Do what's right for you: Over the past year, weddings have included countless 'groomswomen', 'bridesmen', best women and 'males of honour

Why not? In March 2015, Alex (centre) and Sara Mazzoni married in Brisbane, with Mr Mazzoni choosing to include his sister Deanna (right) in his party

In March 2015, Alex and Sara Mazzoni married in Brisbane, with Mr Mazzoni choosing to include a groomswoman in his party.

'It was a pretty easy decision...my best man and two groomsmen were my best mates since high school and my 'groomswoman' would be my sister,' Mr Mazzoni told Daily Mail Australia.

'My sister and I are pretty close. I was actually her 'man of honour' a couple of years before and my sister had also grown up knowing my best man and groomsmen very well, so it was the perfect team!'

Inclusive: Mr Mazzoni said that the only 'slight' issue was when it came to the buck's night, but it was settled with a 'pre-drink together' beforehand

'II think it's definitely the new normal for weddingsyou should be able to share the day with your nearest and dearest by your side,' Mrs Mazzoni said

Mr Mazzoni said that the only 'slight' issue was when it came to the buck's night, but it was settled with a 'pre-drink together' beforehand.

Sara Mazzoni said she'd love to see more couples embracing a less traditional approach.

'I love when couples break the rules and find fun and authentic ways to celebrate the start of their marriage. I think it's definitely the new normal for weddings - you should be able to share the day with your nearest and dearest by your side, no matter if they're a man or a woman,' Mrs Mazzoni said.

Mandi Takis and her husband Robert married in October, with Mr Takis choosing to include Mrs Takis' cousin Evette in his party.

By my side: Many couples are happy to go against tradition to make sure their best mates had a special role on the big day, with Jess Zalums choosing to have her male best friend (second from left) in her party

Gender is irrelevant: Many women decided to include their male best friends as part of their bridal parties

Nearest and dearest: Many of the brides agreed that including their male friends in their bridal party was now a regular and normal thing to do

Do what works for you: A lot of the couples said that they wanted to have people standing next to them who would still be there years down the track

'Robert had been married before and had a good mate as his best man so we decided that for our wedding we would like to have my cousin as she is close to me and my partner,' Mrs Takis told Daily Mail Australia.

'We thought it would only be right to have her be the one next to him and do the honour of the best man duties as my sister was next to me as my maid of honour.'

Mrs Takis said the decision was an easy one as the pair are very family oriented.

Family first: Mandi Takis and her husband Robert married in October, with Mr Takis choosing to include Mrs Takis' cousin Evette (fourth from right) in his party

Perfect choice: 'We thought it would only be right to have her be the one next to him and do the honour of the best man duties as my sister was next to me as my maid of honour'

'I am very much a family person and they are always number one on my priority list so we would much rather have our family a part of our wedding and included in the important roles as we trust them more,' she said.

Other women decided to include their male best friends as part of their bridal parties - all of them happy to go against tradition to make sure their best mates had a special role on the big day.

Samantha Amiridis and her partner also both chose to mix their bridal parties.

Best mates: One bride chose to include her best friend (third from left) as the third member of her bridal party

No regrets: 'I am very much a family person...so we would much rather have our family a part of our wedding and included in the important roles as we trust them more,' Mrs Takis said

'I had my brother Timothy as my chief bridesman and my husband had his sister as his best woman,' Mrs Amiridis said.

'Why? Simply put my brother is my best friend and I didn't want anyone else by my side on the big day. Likewise with my husband.'

'For my husband Billy, his sister Maria was his best woman. She made sure he was on time, dressed perfectly and all organised. She stood by him at the front of the room whilst I walked down the aisle.'
There comes a moment in every woman's life when it's more prudent - not to mention far more elegant - to conceal, rather than to reveal.

So I know I won't be the only woman on the wrong side of 40 to welcome the latest sea change in the fashion world.

Gone are the low-cut tops and the acres of flesh of recent years. Now what we have instead are ankle-skimming dresses (preferably with long or three-quarter-length sleeves), midi skirts, Downton Abbey-esque high-neck blouses and a general air of demureness.

Charlotte Kemp knows she won't be the only one to welcome this new modest fashion trend

It's a look that has even been paraded on the red carpet by the likes of Oscar nominee Alicia Vikander, and fellow actresses Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, in conservatively-cut gowns which, at most, show a glimpse of shoulder.

The ultimate 'new modesty' mascot, though, has to be the Duchess of Cambridge, insists celebrity stylist Alex Longmore, who has dressed the likes of Jodie Kidd, Jerry Hall and Claudia Schiffer.

'You only have to look at Kate Middleton in her long black lace Alice Temperley gown to realise that she oozes sex appeal in the most subtle of ways,' says Longmore. 'Celebrities used to dress revealingly to get noticed - now it's about dressing without the flesh factor.'

Independent fashion and retail analyst Sandra Halliday, editor of trendwalk.net, has noticed a similar style shift in the High Street, too.

'After years of baring more than we dare, now the cool thing to do is to cover up,' she adds.

But there's more to this trend for covering up than just gaining street cred. It's a sign that fashion brands are finally wising up to the huge spending power of stylish, older customers who want to follow the latest trends.

As a result, 'modest wear', as it's been dubbed, is one of the fastest-growing fashion sectors.

'Older women feel more comfortable and confident in clothing that is sexy, but which shows the right amount of flesh,' says Gemma Holmes, creator of Odyl Design (odyldesign.com).

And it's significant that the key trends for this spring can all be worn by those of us with less-than-perfect bodies.

'Part of the reason labels such as Mint Velvet and retailers such as John Lewis, Reiss and Next are doing so well is because they allow women to be 'on-trend', but not 'on-display',' agrees Halliday.

Huge advances in manufacturing techniques - in particular, the rise of laser cutting - have helped to make lace mainstream.

This is an area where Marks & Spencer has excelled: a black lace top with flattering underlay and long cut-out sleeves was one of its winter bestsellers.

Once you hit a certain age, it's as much about realism as it is about modesty.

THE HIGH-NECK DRESS

THE ANKLE GRAZER

Navy trousers, 120, reiss.com Navy jacket, 225, reiss.com Khaki top, 12.99, hm.com Suede pointed heels, 60, topshop.com

THE WAIST ENHANCER

THE SHEER SLEEVES

Burgundy midi skirt, 65, finerylondon.com High-neck shirt, 120, reiss.com Burgundy pointed court shoes, 245, lucychoilondon.com

THE LACE LAYERS

THE KNEE HIGHS
The pair will host body confidence workshops for young girls in Australia

She represented her country as Miss Universe Australia 2014, but Tegan Martin has revealed that she did not always have the confidence that earned her the crown.

The 23-year-old beauty told Newcastle Herald she found school life difficult, had lost a friend to suicide and battled body confidence issues.

Together with fellow pageant contestant Miss USA 2014 and close friend Nia Sanchez, Tegan has started Universal Confidence workshops to inspire self-love in young girls.

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Finding confidence: Miss Universe Australia 2014 Tegan Martin and fellow pageant contestant Miss USA Nia Sanchez share their own battles with confidence

Secrets for success: The duo has joined forces to hold Universal Beauty Confidence and Self Love workshops for young girls

I most certainly didnt have model looks, and I was tangled up in a very draining group of friends in year seven to eight. I went through a stage where I didnt want to go at all, Tegan told Newcastle Herald.

The fact that young girls feel pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty and sizes is really sad.

We all face difficult times growing up, and Nia and I are very open about our own teen battles.

Sharing her story: Tegan said she did not have 'model looks' at school and in years seven and eight, she had a 'very draining groups of friends'

Close bond: Tegan and Nia became close friends during the pageant and Nia asked Tegan to be bridesmaid at her wedding

Tegan and Nia met during their time as Miss Universe contestants in 2014 where they were roommates.

The pair regularly post photos together on social media, and 14 weeks ago, Tegan announced Nia had asked her to be bridesmaid at her wedding.

Since her time as Miss Universe Australia Tegan has gone on to be a regular at red carpets events, a successful model and starred on Australias Celebrity Apprentice 2015.

But the Coogee resident in Sydneys east said she did not always have the confidence she has now, and as a model living in Paris she struggled with body confidence.

Troubled childhood: Nia has had her own struggles and lived for a time in a women's shelter after her parents divorced

Fighting her fears: The Miss USA 2014 crown recipient said her father enrolled her in Taekwondo classes to address her confidence issues

Nia, 25, has had her own battles.

When she was just seven years old her parents divorced leaving her mother financially vulnerable.

Nia and her brother ended up spending several months in a womens shelter while her mother got back on her feet.

Soon after Nia went to live with her father, and when she changed schools she was known as the shy girl.

To combat her confidence issues Nias father enrolled her in Taekwondo, which she said: taught me a lot about myself.

Inside knowledge: The pair has already held workshops in the US where they share their secrets for success

Inspiring confidence: The workshops are coming to Australia and feature interview techniques, coping mechanisms, health and fitness tips and inspiration for self-love

Tegan and Nia have already held workshops together in the US and are set to hold events in Australia.

The Dear Pageant Girl Facebook page said Universal Beauty Confidence and Self Love workshop participants would learn the girls secrets for success.

The pageant queens will also share their interview techniques, coping mechanisms and health and fitness tips.
When youre in the middle of a bitter divorce battle, who better to party with than a woman who won millions from her own ex-husband?

Former model Christina Estrada, who is seeking a big slice of Saudi billionaire Walid Juffalis estimated 4 billion fortune, embraced Lisa Tchenguiz at the socialites 51st birthday party in Kensington on Saturday. Lisa, who wore a black lace dress and a tiara, fought a four-year battle with businessman Vivian Imerman before eventually settling for 15million.

Christina, who slipped into a 1,230 white Balmain mini-dress, is said to receive 70,000 a month from Juffali. Hes trying to use diplomatic immunity to avoid her claims.

Former model Christina Estrada (left), who is seeking a big slice of Saudi billionaire Walid Juffalis estimated 4 billion fortune, embraced Lisa Tchenguiz (right) at the socialites 51st birthday party in Kensington on Saturday

The Foreign Office has wades into Britain's biggest divorce case after Saudi tycoon Sheik Walid Juffali (left) tried to get diplomatic immunity to avoid paying his wife Christina Estrada (right)

Is War And Peace Greta on her own again?

In War And Peace, Greta Scacchi was thrilled that her screen daughter, played by Lily James, has found love with dashing James Norton, but her own personal life seems less happy.

Greta, 55, has a 17-year-old son with her first cousin, Carlo Mantegazza, but appears to have cast doubt on whether they are still a couple.

I wouldnt mind a bit more romance in my life, the actress says. But, if Im honest, I probably get more excited about meeting up with an old girlfriend.

The Eighties sex symbol, known for her steamy scenes in films such as White Mischief and Presumed Innocent, has a daughter with her ex-husband, the actor Vincent DOnofrio.

Greta was thought to live with Carlo, but says: At the moment, Im distracting myself from having an empty house. My sons gone to Australia to study, and my daughter is doing her first big film role in LA.

Its funny, because Ive moved from Sussex to a flat in South London where I was in my 20s  so it feels like Im back into that bachelorette lifestyle I had before children.

In War And Peace, Greta Scacchi was thrilled that her screen daughter, played by Lily James (right), has found love with dashing James Norton (left), but her own personal life seems less happy

Greta, 55, has a 17-year-old son with her first cousin, Carlo Mantegazza, but appears to have cast doubt on whether they are still a couple

A suit at 1,722 - that's Emma being economic

Harry Potter star Emma Watson cast a spell at the weekend over the World Economic Forum in Davos, where she declared that encouraging more women into work would be the single biggest stimulus to the economy.

Emma Watson wore an Antonio Berardi trouser suit costing around 1,722, coupled with a pair of 540 Paul Andrew slingback heels, a designer handbag from Lulu Guinness and 150 gold earrings

And if her outfit was anything to go by, the 25-year-old actress is doing her bit to stimulate the economy.

Before attending a dinner in the Swiss ski resort, she posed for a photo taken by her stylist, Sarah Slutsky.

Emma, who has a reputed fortune of more than 35 million, wore an Antonio Berardi trouser suit costing around 1,722. She coupled it with a pair of 540 Paul Andrew slingback heels, a designer handbag from Lulu Guinness and 150 gold earrings.

Not that any of this would interest the organisers, of course . . .

Tarnished by politicians handing out gongs to their cronies, the honours system nevertheless retains the faith of the Queen.

The Lord Chamberlains Office is advertising for a manager to oversee knighthoods and other ceremonies, upholding, and developing, some of the monarchys most treasured traditions.

The successful candidate for the 40,000-a-year job will play their part in making sure bravery, achievement and service are recognised.

Actor Timothy West has spoken of the gradual disappearance of his wife, the Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales, as a result of Alzheimers disease.

But hes determined to make sure she lives life to the full. I hear West, 81, is to take Prunella, 83, on another boating trip for their touching Channel 4 series, Great Canal Journeys, this time to the romantic destination of Venice. Sailing down the Grand Canal is a very exciting prospect, West told friends. We still enjoy life together.
When Madeline Stuart graced the runway at New York Fashion Week in September she made global headlines.

The Brisbane 18-year-old had single-handedly challenged societys perception of beauty, and her inspiration story was cast in to the spotlight as a catalyst for change.

In February Madeline, who has Down syndrome, will once again take to the iconic runway.

But her mother Rosanne Stuart told Daily Mail Australia while the attention that Madeline received helped further their messages of inclusion and diversity, less attention would mean models with a disability were becoming the norm.

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Face of change: Madeline Stuart, 18, of Brisbane will walk for FTL Moda in New York Fashion Week in February

Making headlines: Madeline first walked in NYFW in September making global headlines and earning a standing ovation

If she gets lots of attention its amazing because we can speak to the world about inclusion and diversity, she said.

In a way if she doesnt get as much attention it means its becoming the norm.

Its a win either way.

Changing perceptions: In a way if she doesnt get as much attention it means its becoming the norm,' Ms Stuart said

Inspirational: Ms Stuart said Madeline enjoyed modelling, but their purpose was to help others who felt isolated

Madeline will walk for American label FTL Moda, the same label she represented at New York Fashion Week in September 2015, wearing Hendrik Vermeulen.

Ms Stuart said modelling was something Madeline loved and she was excited to be invited back to New York, but their purpose was to help people that felt isolated.

The first step to change is becoming aware and the second step is acceptance, she said.

Encouraging inclusion: The first step to change is becoming aware and the second step is acceptance, Ms Stuart said

Fashion forward: Madeline will walk for FTL Moda, attend a clothing launch party, Valentine's Day event and take part in a magazine shoot

I think 95 per cent of discrimination happens because people are not aware, theyre naive.

Just talking to people with a disability makes them feel included, equal and good about themselves.

The first step to change is becoming aware and the second step is acceptance. Rosanne Stuart

She said Madeline had inspired others who struggled with feelings of isolation or addiction to make a change.

She has more than 508,000 followers on Facebook and 112,000 on Instagram.

Madeline and Ms Stuart will be in New York from February 11 to 17 where Madeline will attend FTL Modas clothing launch party, Valentines Day event and a magazine photo shoot in addition to her catwalk duties.

Ms Stuart said Madeline is the first model with Down syndrome to walk twice at NYFW and she was treated no different to to the other models.

Shes a professional model now, she said.

Part of the industry: Ms Stuart said Madeline was a professional model and was treated the same as everyone else

Career aspirations: Her goal is to take part in Tokyo and Milan fashion weeks in late 2016

As a model shes treated the same, she goes to dress rehearsals, make-up rehearsals  does eight hours a day and is paid like everyone else.

I think thats amazing.

Ms Stuart said their goal was for Madeline to walk in Tokyo and Milan fashion weeks in late 2016.

Helping others: Madeline will travel to Uganda and South Africa to host a fundraising event for people with disabilities

Making a difference: Were touching the lives of people that need it touched the most,' Ms Stuart said

In the mean time she will travel to South Africa and Uganda, where Ms Stuart said children with disabilities are believed to be sins.

There they will hold a fundraiser with more than 2,000 people.

Im so excited about that, Ms Stuart said.

Were touching the lives of people that need it touched the most.

Moment to remember: Madeline will walk again for FTL Moda after September's appearance earned her a standing ovation

New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2016 will be held from February 10.

Madeline will walk for FTL Moda, a bi-annual event that showcases new talents in the fashion and modelling fields.
A woman has been the target of cruel online trolls after posting a selfie of her newly-tattooed eyebrows on Facebook.

Mandy Lamrini, from Berlin, shared a photograph mid-way through the inking on January 19 and told her social media followers that she was 'satisfied' with how the permanent treatment looked.

But after sharing the snap, the bar worker was subjected to vile abuse. Mandy has now hit back at criticism and said the tattoos 'suit her better' than the natural look.

Mandy Lamrini, from Berlin, shared a photograph mid-way through the inking on January 19 and told her social media followers that she was 'satisfied' with how the permanent treatment looked

Brunette Mandy, who has a number of other tattoos on her neck and upper body, shared her excitement after having the procedure last week.

Alongside a picture of her taken during the process, she wrote: 'Still fresh, colour still leaves after, old form was tattooed with colour way!!! Am very satisfied!!! Supa Loading, I can only recommend us!!! [sic]'

But the image received a lot more attention than Mandy, who is in a relationship, had anticipated.

The selfie, which shows Mandy make-up free and in a grey hoodie, has now been shared more than 600 times, liked nearly 2,000 times and attracted over 23,000 comments.

But after sharing the snap, the bar worker was subjected to vile abuse. Mandy has now hit back at criticism and said the tattoos 'suit her better' than the natural look, pictured before the treatment

Alongside a picture of her taken during the process, Mandy wrote: 'Still fresh, colour still leaves after, old form was tattooed with colour way!!! Am very satisfied!!! Supa Loading, I can only recommend us!!! [sic]'

Facebook trolls rushed to create memes of her eyebrows, showing them as an eagle preparing to take flight

Many nasty commentators rushed to criticise her look, calling her eyebrows 'creepy' and 'so awful'.

Another contributor added: 'Is everything okay in your head?'

While another person accused her of using a 'Sharpie' to draw them on.

Alongside emojis of a crying face laughing, one online user wrote: 'I think it's quite wonderful. Looks absolutely natural and bring total joy in your face....'

Another person asked how Mandy could 'voluntarily' do 'something like that'.

Facebook trolls also rushed to create memes of her eyebrows, showing them as an eagle preparing to take flight, doge and compared her to Theo Waigel - a German politician who has bushy brows.

Other nasty memes included doge and compared her to Theo Waigel, a German politician with bushy brows

Addressing the criticism on her Facebook page, Mandy wrote: 'I have to walk around with these eyebrows, not you. You're actually fans, even if you don't want to admit it to yourselves'

However, others leapt to Mandy's defence and said it was up to her what she did to her face.

'The only thing around here is ugly, are your stupid primitive comments,' wrote one supporter. 'Every man as he feels comfortable. This society will always be cruel. Shame on you!'

While another added: 'Sorry but I don't find something nice but everyone should do what pleases him / her [sic]'

Another person on Mandy's side said: 'Stay just as you are!'

Mandy later posted a video saying 'these eyebrows suit me better'.

She also said the tattoo studio had designed the brows in line with her ideas.
British Muslim women have taken to Twitter to highlight their personal achievements after David Cameron is said to have privately suggested that the 'traditional submissiveness of Muslim women' could be one of the reasons young men are becoming radicalised.

The social media site saw the hashtag #traditionallysubmissive trend after the women began posting images of themselves holding up sheets of white paper with their successes written on them, and the hashtag.

Those behind the bullet-pointed notes said they had been 'hurt' by the Prime Minister's comments.

A group of British Muslim women began posting images of themselves with a piece of paper listing their achievements on in response to comments said to have been made in private by David Cameron that British Muslim women are 'traditionally submissive'. Pictured Aasiya Versi

The #traditionallysubmissive hashtag quickly took off with many women offering details of their successes. Pictured Fiza Azlam holds a list of her achievements

Pharmicist Fatima Ali (left) was among those posting her riposte to the PM while @Ensanlayaat listed her achievements as learning six languages and working on her second masters degree

All smiles...but Mr Cameron's news that he's planning to spend 20million encouraging more Muslim women to learn English has been met with derision

The Prime Minister is said to have privately argued that one of the main reasons why young Muslim males fall under the spell of fanatics is because their mothers have too much of a subordinate role within their communities to argue against the influence of the extremists.

Last week, he pledged 20million on English lessons for Muslim women living in the UK.

However, if Mr Cameron hoped the pledge would be a step towards a more cohesive society, it seems the women he's targeting merely felt outraged by the suggestion that all Muslim women are 'traditionally submissive.'

Plenty of those posting goaded the PM; user @mamanabeelah, an assistant television producer, wrote: 'I speak four languages, how many do you speak?' above an image of herself and an A4 piece of paper that listed in purple writing her achievements as speaking Gujrati, Urdu, Kiswahili and English, scuba diving and re-reading the Harry Potter books every year.

Young and old took to Twitter to express their feelings citing their favourite hobbies, views and qualifications

An English teacher, @zay_nab110, described how she had taught of hundreds of British teenagers English

The focus for lots of the women was languages, with many speaking five or more. @FizaAslam, a mother-of-three and grandmother of ten who has worked in the NHS for 22 years, said: 'Muslim women are not a problem that need solving' adding that she knows 'five languages AND English.'

An English teacher, @zay_nab110, wrote 'Submissive is most definitely not the word I'd choose @David_Cameron' before saying that she has taught 'hundreds' of British schoolchildren and asking 'Should I learn English too?.'

Pharmicist Fatima Ali was among those posting her riposte to the PM and pointed out her husband said she couild 'talk for England' while @Ensanlayaat listed her achievements as learning six languages and working on her second masters degree.

A group of young women posted by @sundaycircles was accompanied by the caption: 'Our youth group hiked 20km along the Jurassic Coast to raise over 10k for charity. #traditionallysubmissive.'

Observer: Plenty of twitter users appeared to enjoy the #hashtag including @Danny_Blackburn

'Loves tea...and is a finance manager for global firm' @SadiqDamani wrote about her mother's achievements

The hashtag attracted plenty of comments from observers too, who were clearly enjoying the social media rebellion against Mr Cameron. @Danny_Blackburn wrote: 'Loving all the funny, positive Muslim women giving @David_Cameron a well-deserved kicking on the #Traditionallysubmissive hashtag right now.'

While Sadiq Damani posted his mother was 'fluent in three languages' including english and is a finance manager for a global firm.

Ruwayda Mustafah, who described herself as a British and Kurdish blogger, posted a picture of herself graduating 'as a traditionally submissive Muslim woman.'

And @Madz_Raza posted thrill-seeking photographs of her scuba diving and bungee jumping with the caption: 'Do I look submissive to you?'

The hashtag's origins are thought to have come from author Shelina Janmohamed and followers on Twitter who decided to tweet professions, hobbies and views to counter the idea that Muslim women living in the UK are passive.

Best foot forward: This group of friends recounted a charity trip along the Jurassic Coast

Graduating: @RuwaydaMustafah posted a picture of her getting her degree

Kicking back at Cameron, a karate fan and a pharmacy technician with a passion for design were among those adding their voices to the online campaign

Thrill seeker, globetrotter and major foodie is how @Madz_Raza describes herself

Dr Sukaina Hirji, a GP and political activist, said the PM's comments had caused many British Muslim women to be 'extremely hurt' and had worked hard to try and get the hashtag trending by re-posting the achievements of others.

She told Femail: 'I wanted the Prime Minister to take notice that we, Muslim women, are diverse in our backgrounds, talents and roles, and are absolutely NOT traditionally submissive.

She explains: 'We take our inspiration "traditionally" from Khadija; employer, businesswoman and wife of the Prophet Muhammad and the contemporary Tawakkol Karman, a Muslim woman who has won the Nobel Peace Prize.'

In a letter to the Guardian, President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the UK, Nasira Rehman wrote that Cameron's plans to help further 'integrate' British Muslim women would backfire.

Rehman wrote: 'Ahmadi Muslim women are an asset to Britain and policies such as banning all forms of gender segregation in public places and the hijab will prevent them practicing their faith; this is wrong.
Mrs Tucci is sharing the highs and lows and large eating habits on her blog that has more than 123,000 followers

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A Perth mum who is carrying quintuplets is consuming 6,000 calories a day to feed her growing brood.

At 29 weeks along, Kim Tucci, 26, is force feeding herself three times the amount of calories one person should eat in a day to reach the recommended intake.

Mrs Tucci, who is already a mum to two young girls, fell naturally pregnant with five babies while trying for a boy with her husband and has been documenting the highs and lows of her pregnancy since receiving the news.

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Perth mum Kim Tucci (pictured) is pregnant with quintuplets and is eating 6,000 calories each day to feed her growing brood

At 29 weeks along, Mrs Tucci is eating three times the amount of calories than one person eats in a day based on doctor's orders

Mrs Tucci, who is already a mum to two young girls, fell naturally pregnant with five babies while trying for a third with her husband

I'm struggling to eat and force feed myself leaving me with reflux for hours, she wrote on her blog Surprised With Five.

I can't tolerate a lot of dairy and I can't keep protein drinks down, I'm starting to lose weight when I really need to be gaining it.

Her online posts about dealing with pain, nausea, changes to her body and going to the bathroom 12 times a night, has amassed a following of more than 123,000 people  most of them mums who share their own personal stories.

It's getting harder as each day passes to push through the pain, every part of my body aches and sleeping is becoming very painful, she said.

No amount of pillows are helping support my back and belly. Sometime I get so upset that I just want to throw my hands up and give in!

The 26-year-old mother has been documenting the highs and lows of her pregnancy since learning the shocking news

Her online posts about dealing with pain, nausea, changes to her body and going to the bathroom 12 times a night, has amassed a following of more than 123,000 people

It's getting harder as each day passes to push through the pain, every part of my body aches and sleeping is becoming very painful, she said earlier this month

I have a lot of stretch marks now, dealing with such a huge change in my body is hard. My husband always reminds me I should wear my stripes with pride and that I should be proud of them and what my body has achieved.

Is it all worth it?

Yes!!!! I will keep pushing through, Mrs Tucci exclaims.

At 24 weeks along, photographer Erin Elizabeth took photos of the expecting mum to commemorate her journey.

The images became a hit on Mrs Tucci's website and Ms Elizabeth's social media.

Mrs Tucci has been admitted to the hospital on a few occasions for minor issues but all five of the children  four girls and one boy  are healthy.

At 24 weeks along, photographer Erin Elizabeth took photos of the expecting mum to commemorate her journey

Mrs Tucci has been admitted to the hospital on a few occasions for minor issues but all five of the children  four girls and one boy  are healthy

After finding out in July that Mrs Tucci was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic to be told by their doctor that they were having twins - only to find out soon after that she was actually having quintuplets

Mrs Tucci and her husband began trying for their third and final child last year with the hope of having a son to complete their family.

After finding out in July that Mrs Tucci was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic to be told by their doctor that they were having twins.

'I WAS SO EXCITED!! TWINS!!! I was excited at the possibility of twins but absolutely nothing on this earth could have prepared me for what happened next, Mrs Tucci said.

When she asked to use another sonogram machine so she could have a clearer view of the babies, her world was turned upside-down when the doctor found five separate heart beats.

An early photo posted to Mrs Tucci's blog when she was just 11 weeks along but her size can be compared to a mother who is almost at the end of her pregnancy

Mrs Tucci asked to take a second sonogram to see her babies better and doctors were shocked to find out that instead of two heartbeats, there were five

'My legs start [sic] to shake uncontrollably and all I can do is laugh.. The sonographer then told me the term for 5 is QUINTUPLETS!!' she continued.

'I called my husband from the ultrasound room but I don't think he believed me at first. He quickly drove down. I could see the excitement in his face he told me " We can do this".'

Mrs Tucci said it has started to kick in what a big change this will be for her family.

I have only just really embraced this pregnancy and what it will mean for my family, the last few days has been a reality check that it's all really happening!
She's due to give birth in March and it seems that Crown Princess Victoria is bumping along nicely.

The 38-year-old heir to the throne, who is expecting her second child with husband Prince Daniel, 41, displayed her pregnancy glow as she arrived at the Viksjoskolan in Jarfalla.

The royal, who looked radiant in tailored trousers, a graphic print blouse and long-line black blazer, attended a lecture by Emerich Roth about the Holocaust at the local school.

Crown Princess Victoria looked radiant as she arrived at a Holocaust talk at a local school just weeks before she's due to give birth to her second child

With a healthy tan, the Princess smiled broadly as she was greeted by teachers and other guests.

The news that Crown Princess Victoria was expecting her second child with her husband Prince Daniel, a former personal trainer, was announced in a statement released by the Swedish Royal Court on Friday September 4 and confirmed by the princess herself over that weekend.

When the baby is born in March, the new arrival will become the third-in-line to the Swedish throne behind his or her mother and older sister Princess Estelle, Duchess of Ostergotland, three.

Victoria announced her own news on the Sveriges Kunghaus website. The princess, who had been the subject of baby rumours over the summer, declared herself 'happy' at the prospect of becoming a mother again.

With a healthy tan, the 38-year-old Princess smiled broadly as she was greeted by teachers and other guests

The news that Crown Princess Victoria was expecting her second child with her husband Prince Daniel, a former personal trainer, was announced in a statement in September

'Their Royal Highnesses Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel are happy to announce that the Crown Princess is expecting their second child,' read the statement.

'The birth is expected to take place in March of 2016. No changes in the schedule of The Crown Princess Couple's public engagements are planned during the fall of 2015.'

Victoria's baby bump was first seen on the weekend of the announcement in early September.

Glamorous in a floor-length grey column dress by Adrianna Papell, the princess showed off a tiny bump as she joined her parents for the annual Sweden dinner at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

And she isn't the only Swedish royal expecting. Victoria's younger brother Prince Carl Philip and his wife Princess Sofia are expecting their first child in April.

'Their Royal Highnesses Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel are happy to announce that the Crown Princess is expecting their second child,' read the statement released at the time

In a statement published on Facebook, the couple said: 'We are so happy and excited to announce that we are expecting our first child. We are very much looking forward to it.'

Carl-Philip, 36, is the second child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia.

The palace also revealed: 'The birth is expected to take place in April of 2016. No changes in the schedule of The Prince Couple's public engagements are planned during the fall of 2015.'

The Facebook post has received over 65,000 likes on the Royal Swedish Court's page.

Sofia revealed the couple will not be finding out which sex the baby is, telling the Swedish daily newspaper Expressen that 'it will be a surprise'.
A young Canadian woman who finally escaped her abuser after living with him for a year is sharing the harrowing details of how he physically attacked her, controlled her life, and trapped her in a foreign country by hiding her passport.

Tara, who didn't provide her last name, told Cosmopolitan.com about how man she loved - the man she thought was the 'best she could get'  convinced her time and time again to stay with him, despite the terrible things he did to her.

The 21-year-old only managed to break free from him, both physically and emotionally, last year  and says that, while it wasn't easy, it was definitely worth it.

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Trapped: Tara, 21, moved from Canada to Sweden to live with her abuser - where he then hid her passport so she couln't easily leave

During their relationship, Tara's abuser would come to slap her, forbid her from having a cell phone, and get her drunk enough to have unprotected sex with her. But that dark side wasn't at all apparent when they first got together.

The two met online in 2012, when she was 18 and he was 17. Tara described him as handsome, charming, talented, and funny  basically, a dream guy.

While she lived in Canada, though, he was an ocean away in Sweden, so they only met face-to-face for the first time when he flew in to visit.

But his dreaminess didn't wear off, then  in fact, it intensified. Tara's friends and family all thought he was great, and she was convinced that she'd found herself a catch.

As they continued their long distance relationship, though, the abuse started. It was small at first, with him subtly trying to exert control on her life, even though he was thousands of miles away. He'd order her around, but made it seem like his actions were all a sign of how much he cared for her.

'He'd tell me he didn't want me to go to bars or clubs while we were long-distance because he was ''worried'' about me,' Tara explained.

It became increasingly more difficult to go see my friends, but I told myself it would get better

'He gave me strict rules regarding where and when I could go see someone, and would ignore me for days if I upset him. It became increasingly more difficult to go see my friends, but I told myself it would get better once I moved to his country.'

It didn't. They were together for two years when Tara packed her bags and moved to Sweden to be with him, and that's when things started to get worse.

Her abuser would ask her a lot of questions about the people she was meeting, they'd argue, and he would tell her repeatedly that she was just a 'guest' in his home  that the place was his, not theirs.

The negative experiences really got to her, but Tara stayed because he could also be really great, When he wasn't being controlling, he would take her out for nice meals and even buy her presents.

'I thought he was the best I would ever get, since all my friends and family loved him so much,' Tara explained.

Controlling: She was convinced that he was the best she could get, even though he slapped her, hid her things, yelled at her, and wouldn't let her have a cell phone or use the internet

Things only got worse. Tara realizes now that her boyfriend was 'gaslighting' her  the term for when an abuser manipulates situations and lies in such a way that the abused questions her sanity.

Tara's things, like her passport, would go missing. Though she knows now that he hid them, at the time she thought she was being forgetful.

She also noticed damning things in his browser history, stumbling across tips for picking up women and a sexist website where men discussed training women and treating them like children.

He told our friend that even though I am useless to him, 'we still have sex and she makes me dinner'

She confronted him about the pick-up tips, but he denied that he planned to be unfaithful, blaming the inappropriate links on a friend.

'[But] I found out that was a lie, and that he'd told our friend that even though I am useless to him, ''we still have sex and she makes me dinner".'

He started getting more abusive, too. She said: 'He pushed, shoved, and slapped me. He insulted what I wore and how I acted. After arguments, he would often take the internet away so I couldn't contact my friends or family back home, and I didn't have a cell phone. He threatened to kick me out of his apartment on a nightly basis.'

He would also get her drunk but stay sober himself, then have unprotected sex with her. She thinks now that he was trying to get her pregnant, so he could trap her even further.

Finally, she managed to call her dad on Skype to ask for help  but her boyfriend found out, and hung up on the call before plans could be made.

When Tara learned that he had another girlfriend on the side, she finally worked up the courage to leave, enlisting friends and family for financial help so she could get a new passport and go home.

After all that, it was still quite difficult for Tara to move on. She missed him, and was sad to come to the realization that her boyfriend of three years had never really loved her.

She also had to get her life back in order, and looking for a job was difficult since she hadn't worked for a year while in Sweden.

And still, her ex kept contacting her, trying to apologize and convinced her to give him another chance. She ignored him, and knows she is better for it.

'The healing process is long and difficult, but it's so worth it.' she said 'I started shopping for my own clothes again and wearing whatever I liked, whatever made me feel beautiful. I gained the confidence to start going to parties again, something I couldn't do for three whole years.
From partying with the cast of Made In Chelsea to enjoying luxurious weekends away, she certainly has an envious social life.

And Lady Kitty Spencer's latest outing has seen her rub shoulders with fashion's finest after winning a coveted front row spot at Dior's Paris Fashion Week show.

The niece of the late Princess Diana, 25, joined the likes of model Erin O'Connor, actress Cressida Bonas and Swedish star Noomi Rapace for the Autumn Winter 2016, Haute Couture show in Paris.

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The blonde socialite opted for an all-white ensemble for the outing, matching her flared leg, zip front jumpsuit with a full length white coat

The blonde socialite opted for an all-white ensemble for the outing, matching her flared leg, zip front jumpsuit with a full length white coat.

Her hair was worn in loose waves and she accentuated her blue eyes with black liner and a smoky shadow.

She gave the look a monochrome edge by pairing it with a pair of black patent courts, and carried a black and gold Dior microbag, which retails for over 1,400.

But the socialite may have been lucky enough to borrow the trinket for the occasion. Earlier today she shared an image of a Dior store, mentioning a member of their celebrity team.

Lady Kitty Spencer's latest outing has seen her rub shoulders with fashion's finest after winning a coveted front row spot at Dior's Paris Fashion Week show

The socialite, 25, have her look a monochrome edge by pairing it with a pair of black patent courts, and carried a black and gold Dior microbag, which retails for over 1,400

'Decisions decisions,' she wrote. 'What to wear for @dior Collection Haute Couture Printemps -Ete 2016 today?'

The post seemed to indicate that the design house had allowed her to choose an outfit for the occasion.

She also shared an image of herself examining a drawer full of accessories, saying: 'The magpie found the bling!'

Clearly excited to be in the French capital, she treated her 28,8000 followers to an image of a basket full of croissants as she sat down to breakfast at the five star Hotel Le Bristol, where rooms cost 750 (570) a night.

While she now seems to relish being the centre of attention, Kitty grew up away from the media spotlight in South Africa with her mother Victoria Lockwood, the former model who was Earl Spencer's first wife.

Kitty is becoming something of a regular on the haute couture circuit, attending a number of shows during Milan Fashion Week in September.

But while she now seems to relish being the centre of attention, Kitty grew up away from the media spotlight in South Africa with her mother Victoria Lockwood, the former model who was Earl Spencer's first wife.

She also attended William and Kate's wedding in 2011 but her parents have deliberately tried to keep her out of the glare of the media.

American socialite Olivia Palermo gave her pretty tartan dress an edge with over-the-knee leather boots

British supermodel Erin O'Connor sat front row at the the fashion extravaganza and opted for a colour block outfit for a standout look

Aspiring actress Cressida Bonas showed off her natural beauty in a simple black mini skirt and understated pastel polo neck

Rarely seen out on the party scene, Kitty was a straight-A student at Reddam House, a private school for South Africa's elite.

She then went on to study psychology, politics and English literature at the University of Cape Town.

Now, however, she is making her foray into the glittering world of society events and fashion parties.
Bristol is currently embroiled in a custody battle with her ex-fiance Dakota Meyer, 27, who is being forced to take a paternity test

Bristol Palin has left her one-month-old daughter Sailor Grace for the entire day for the first time since her birth, in order to head back to work.

The 25-year-old held her newborn in a car seat as she posed with her seven-year-old son Tripp Johnston for an image she shared on her Instagram page on Monday morning, while revealing to her followers her sadness at having to leave her baby girl behind.

'Back to real life today! I was fortunate enough to take the last month off to stay home with my babies, today marks the first time I've left SailorG, but I could not be more thankful she's in the best of hands!! [sic],' she captioned the family photo.

Family photo: Bristol Palin shared this snapshot of herself posed with her son Tripp, seven, and her daughter Sailor Grace on Monday to commemorate her return to work a month after giving birth to her baby girl

Pretty in pink: The 25-year-old shared this precious photo of Sailor Grace in her pink car seat a week ago

In the image, Bristol is wearing a black long sleeve shirt, black pants, taupe ballet flats, and a chunky gold necklace. Her hair is pulled half-way up while her Louis Vuitton bag sits open in front of her with her water bottle peeking out.

Tripp, her son with her ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston, is pictured in a neon green Nike sweatshirt, camouflage cargo pants, and red Nike sneakers, presumably heading off to school, while Sailor is bundled up in her pink carrier with only a bit of her head peaking out.

And while some people may think one-month long maternity leave is too short, Brisol's mother Sarah Palin only took three days off after her youngest son Trig was born with Down syndrome in 2008.

Despite her reality show and appearances on Dancing with the Stars, the daughter of the former Republican vice presidential candidate has apparently been working at Dr. Michael L. Cusack's office at Alaska Dermatology Laser and Skin Cancer Center in Anchorage for years.

In July, Bristol took to Instagram to share a selfie from inside her office in honor of her six years working with the company.

Longtime gig: Bristol, who works at Alaska Dermatology Laser and Skin Cancer Center in Anchorage, snapped this selfie in July to celebrate her six-year anniversary with the company

Look of love: Bristol is overjoyed over the loving bond that her brother Trig (left), who has Down syndrome, has formed with her newborn. Their mother Sarah Palin only took a three-day maternity leave after Trig was born

'Celebrated six years working for the best people I know .. This place is my home (I actually have a job) #shocker [sic],' she captioned the image, which sees her baby bump beginning to show.

Bristol's mother Sarah revealed that she worked at the office in 2014 in a Facebook post celebrating her graduation from Penrose Academy's esthetics program in Arizona.

'Were happy for her to have finished this challenging, rewarding academy; and now shes ready to be licensed in all things skin, which is what shes always wanted to do,' Sarah wrote.

While working at the dermatologist's office, Bristol filmed her 2012 reality series Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp and competed on ABC's Dancing with the Stars in 2010 and during the 'all-star' season in 2012.

Bristol's reality show appearances may have left some to believe that she is a stay-at-home-mother, but according to her Instagram page, she is a working mom with a fulfilling career as an esthetician.

So proud: The mother-of-two, who is an esthetician, graduated from Penrose Academy's esthetics program in Arizona in 2014. Her mother, Sarah Palin, shared this family photo that year to celebrate

Side job: Bristol can be seen shooting a rifle in a scene from her short-lived 2012 reality series Bristol Palin: Life's A Tripp

Moving and shaking: Bristol competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2010 and again in 2012 for the show's 'all-star' season. She is pictured with her partner Mark Ballas in 2012

However, the mother-of-two is also mourning the loss of her great-grandmother Lena Andree, who passed away last week.

'5 generations under my beautiful great grandma Lena, rest in paradise we love you GG [sic],' Bristol wrote while sharing an old picture of her and her sisters Willow and Piper with their father Todd's grandmother last Wednesday.

Bristol, who often shares photos of her children and family adventures on Instagram, announced her daughter's birth on social media on December 24 with a photo of her cuddling her newborn in bed.

'My sweet Sailor Grace was born yesterday, our family couldn't be more complete,' she wrote.

Meanwhile, Brisol's ex-fiance and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, 27, shared his own precious snap of the mother with her newborn on his Twitter account on Christmas Eve, after months of speculation over whether he is in fact Sailor's father.

Five generations: The mom shared this old photo of her (far right) and her sisters Willow (far left) and Piper (second from left) with their great-grandmother Lena Andree after she passed away last week

Overjoyed: Bristol announced the birth of her daughter in December by sharing this photo on Instagram, however, some believe the baby was actually born on November 4 because of the date scribbled on her IV line

Broken romance: Bristol got engaged to marine Dakota Meyer (pictured), 27, in March, but eventually called off their wedding. They are now in a custody battle over Sailor Grace

Although Bristol has never personally confirmed who fathered the newborn, she had strongly suggested that Dakota is the child's dad, writing on her personal blog in June that she had believed she was 'heading towards' a 'bigger family' and 'more kids' during her relationship with Dakota, adding that this feeling had caused her to 'get ahead of herself' and get pregnant.

However, Dakota is now being forced to take a paternity test as part of the former couple's increasingly bitter custody battle over her new baby.

Court documents seen by Daily Mail Online reveal that Meyer's bid for joint custody in a suit filed in Kentucky and Alaska has stalled pending the results of the paternity test. A question has also been raised over the actual birth date of Bristol's baby.

The Instagram photo posted by Bristol announcing the birth of Sailor on December 24, places the birth date one day earlier. The date of birth on court papers filed in the custody case is also given as December 23.

But the same Instagram picture posted by Dakota with the caption 'Best Christmas present ever!!' reveals a detail whited out in Palin's account  the date scribbled on her IV line.
Finley Kirwan, pictured at 14 months, suffered a terrible allergic reaction to ibuprofen that caused his skin to blister and turn black

A baby boy has survived a deadly allergic reaction to ibuprofen that caused his skin to blister and turn black.

Finley Kirwan, now 15 months old, was rushed to hospital late last month as he was struggling to swallow, was short of breath and had a dangerously high temperature.

His parents, Danielle Hart and Dan Kirwan were terrified when he developed an angry red rash, which blistered and turned black over parts of his body.

He was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) - a rare but life-threatening skin condition that is usually a reaction to medication or an infection.

The bizarre condition causes the cells in skin to die before shedding.

Doctors believe the reaction was caused by ibuprofen as he'd been given the liquid form for children, Calprofen, to ease a cough.

'I was horrified when Finley's skin started to blister, his lips were black and a red rash was covering his entire body, said Miss Hart, 32, from Southampton.

'We had no idea what was happening to him but we knew it was life threatening.

'For the first few days it was touch and go, we were heartbroken.

'Finley had only just recovered from being unwell at the beginning of December and now he had Stevens-Johnson Syndrome'.

'Both myself and Dan had never heard of the condition but we were terrified once we understood its seriousness.'

Finley's organs began failing and his parents were told he might not pull through..

To their utter relief, he survived - and was allowed home three weeks later.

His mother, a teaching assistant, added: 'I stopped at his bedside every night hoping his condition would improve.

'We were so relieved when he started to turn a corner, he's our little fighter.'

Finley's parents were told he had developed Stevens-Johnson Syndrome either due to ibuprofen or the herpes simplex virus - both are known triggers.

Miss Hart is now sharing their story to ensure other parents are vigilant of the symptoms.

She added: 'If we hadn't have rushed Finley straight to Southampton General Hospital then he wouldn't have made it through.

His parents, Danielle Hart (pictured) and Dan Kirwan were terrified when he developed an angry red rash, which blistered and turned black over parts of his body

Finley was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) - a rare but life-threatening skin condition that is usually a reaction to medication or an infection. His mother said: 'I was distraught. At one point Finley had blood pouring out of his mouth as his body was shutting down'

'We could've easily put him to bed that night thinking he would be better in the morning but Stevens-Johnson Syndrome progresses so fast he wouldn't have stood a chance.'

In hospital, Finley's organs began shutting down as the allergic reaction was so severe it was 'causing his skin to burn from the inside out'.

I was distraught. At one point Finley had blood pouring out of his mouth as his body was shutting down Danielle Hart, Finley's mother

Tests showed his liver function was low and he was suffering from a serious stomach bug that he had caught from being in intensive care.

His mother said: 'I was distraught. At one point Finley had blood pouring out of his mouth as his body was shutting down.

'I felt helpless as nurses did their best to save our boy.'

Finley needed his dressings for his blisters changed every two and his pain was managed with morphine and mild sedatives.

He also had creams, eye drops and mouthwashes applied every two hours

Thankfully, his mother was able to be at his side for the duration on his time in hospital - due to the Ronald McDonald charity which provides rooms for families with loved ones in hospital.

Miss Hart said: 'I can't thank them enough for allowing me to have a room so close to Finley.

'It made a really traumatic time a little more bearable knowing that I never had to leave his side.

'And because it was so touch and go, I was terrified to go anywhere further than a few yards from him.'

This is not the first time Finley has suffered poor health - having been born at 29 weeks weighing just 2lb 13oz.

Finley also suffered poor health when he was born at 29 weeks weighing just 2lb 13oz

Miss Hart is now sharing their story to ensure other parents are vigilant of the symptoms. She added: 'If we hadn't have rushed Finley straight to Southampton General Hospital then he wouldn't have made it through'

His mother added: 'He's been through so much in his short life, he was diagnosed with Croup at the beginning of December but we are confident we're over the worst now.

'It's hard to believe we came so close to losing him.

'I hope this story shows other parents that although Stevens-Johnson Syndrome is rare, it can happen and you need to act fast if your child displays any worrying symptoms.'

A spokesperson for Stevens-Johnson Syndrome UK - a charity that supports those affected, said: 'Stevens-Johnson Syndrome is a life-threatening form of adverse drug reaction which affects the skin and mucous membranes in the body and leaves most of its survivors with various debilitating effects for the rest of their lives.

'For most survivors, their real battle with SJS starts in days, months or year after being discharged from hospital.'
Drunk patients will be forced to travel up to 17 miles for hospital treatment after it was announced an emergency care centre will stop treating alcohol-related admissions.

In what is thought to be the first move of its kind, Kent and Canterbury Hospital is set to close its doors to intoxicated patients in a bid to ease pressure on staff at the ECC.

The department, described as an A&E 'by any other name,' treats patients with acute medical illnesses such as people who have suffered heart attacks and stroke.

The move is designed to free-up staff to deal with these types of emergencies rather than caring for people who have gone out and drank too much.

It also has a minor injuries service, for people with injuries including fractures and sprains.

Intoxicated patients will have to travel 17 miles to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate or 15 miles to William Harvey in Ashford if they need to be hospitalised because of their condition

East Kent Hospitals Trust is proposing diverting all non-medical patients to the neighbouring, larger hospitals, which includes intoxicated patients

But the unit does not have A&E doctors or general surgeons to cope with the patients arriving at the busy centre.

East Kent Hospitals Trust is now proposing to divert all non-medical patients who arrive at Kent and Canterbury Hospital to the William Harvey, 15 miles away in Ashford, or to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital, 17 miles away in Margate.

Specifically, it plans to stop ambulances arriving with patients suffering from alcohol-related problems - and refer on anyone who turns up at the hospital drunk.

The move means that hundreds of intoxicated patients who appear at the hospital after nights out in Canterbury will be sent elsewhere, under the proposals, expected to be introduced by June.

Almost a quarter (23.1 per cent) of the population over 16 years old in Kent are estimated to be either increasing or higher risk of drinking across Kent, according to Public Health England figures from 2012.

This is higher than the England average of 22.3 per cent and equates to 272,258 people.

Today, a spokesman for the trust confirmed the move was being considered as part of wider plans to divert patients with non-emergency complaints.

He said: 'With the full support of our commissioners, we are now working closely with the ambulance service to cease the referral of all patients with acute abdominal pain, alcohol intoxication and patients with a primary mental health problem to the ECC at Kent & Canterbury,' he said.

'Patients that self present to the ECC will still be assessed and if they require on-going care they will be stabilised and transferred.

'We never turn patients away and all patients who come to us for treatment will continue to receive the care they need as they always have done. The changes we are making will ensure patients receive the right care, in the right setting.

Kent and Canterbury Hospital plans to close its door to patients who are intoxicated to ease pressure on staff

Drunk patients could be redirected to the William Harvey hospital in Ashford as East Kent Hospitals Trust wants to divert patients away from the emergency care centre at Kent and Canterbury Hospital

The trust aims to create a minor injuries and minor illness unit and an Acute Medical Admissions unit on the Kent and Canterbury site - and hopes to have this implemented by the end of June 2016.'

When it was first formed 15 years ago, the trust said it was opened as a minor injuries and minor illnesses centre that also accepted medical emergencies such as chest pain, pneumonia and breathing difficulties.

Over time, the ECC has seen more patients whose healthcare needs would be better met by A&E services, the spokesman said.

THE A&E WHERE ALCOHOL IS BEHIND THREE IN EVERY FOUR CASES Drinking is linked to 70 per cent of weekend cases dealt with by a single A&E department in Newcastle, according to researchers. Alcohol-related attendance at a big inner city hospital over four weeks in 2012-13 varied from 4 per cent to 60 per cent on weekdays, rising to 70 per cent at weekends. The Newcastle University researchers, writing in the Emergency Medicine Journal, said: This indicates a significant NHS burden if all such emergency departments in the UK are sustaining similar demands associated with alcohol-related attendance. Our results suggest that emergency departments would benefit from routinely providing staff to cover the night and early-morning shifts, particularly at weekends, to cope with the high proportion of alcohol-related attendances at these times. The analysis shows each case costs between 250 and 850 to treat. Advertisement

' At the same time junior doctor training has become increasingly specialised meaning that it is no longer acceptable for medical trainees without A&E training to be asked to manage the broader range of medical and surgical emergencies.'

Binge drinking fuelled by cheap alcohol is having a huge impact on NHS health services.

Admissions linked to alcohol have soared by 64 per cent since Labour introduced 24-hour drinking laws, according to recent figures by the Nuffield Trust health think-tank.

One in 20 emergency in-patient admissions in 2013/14  255,000 in total  was directly linked to alcohol, as was one in 120 planned admissions, according to the report.

But the authors say that this is a vast underestimation of the true scale of the problem, because admissions indirectly linked to drinking  such as falls, domestic violence or heart disease  are not recorded by hospitals.

The figures include patients who spent at least one night in an English hospital, but exclude emergency patients who were discharged the same day.

The authors also report that the number of people attending A&E with probable alcohol poisoning has doubled in six years.

The head of the NHS, Simon Stevens, has previously called on the Government to deal with the overuse of alcohol urgently as it is creating problems for over-stretched A&E units.

He highlighted figures showing that the average price of alcohol relative to wages has dropped by almost half since the 1980s.

The most recent NHS figures show that more than one million patients are being admitted to hospital for alcohol-related illness and injuries every year twice as many as a decade ago.

Separate research, also published last month, reports that 70 per cent of emergency cases at weekends were linked to drinking at one hospital in the North-East.

The study by Newcastle researchers found alcohol-related attendances varied from four per cent to 60 per cent on weekdays and up to 70 per cent at weekends.
Apart from performing their routine crime or traffic-related duties, Delhi Police will now ensure that there is no burning of garbage, leaves, or waste plastic in the open.

Delhi Police Station House Officers (SHO), traffic inspectors and other staff will keep a check on such activities. Police will also take action against offenders, which may land you in trouble if you are constantly polluting Delhis air.

A letter issued from the Delhi Police Commissioners office said: "In relation to burning of plastic and allied produces, the concerned police officers will ensure that no one is permitted to burn the plastic and allied products in part of NCR of Delhi.

Anyone spotted burning garbage or leaves in the open will have to pay at least Rs 5,000

"If any such activity comes to notice, the concerned officer would not only ensure that such activity does not persist, but even would be entitled to seize the entire material, which is illegally and unauthorisedly stored/held by a person without a license or authorisation for dealing with such products.

"Upon seizure of such material, the concerned police officer would take a direction from the Tribunal and dispose of the same by giving it to the authorised dealer in accordance with directions issued."

According to the order, SHOs, traffic inspectors and other authorities would be personally and strictly responsible for compliance with these NGT directions in the areas that fall under their jurisdiction.

Anyone spotted burning garbage or leaves in the open will have to pay at least Rs 5,000.

All the SHOs will ensure that there is no burning of leaves or horticulture residue. Delhi Police will try to identify those offenders who are polluting Delhi air. We have asked all staff to keep a check on this. Also, if any police station will disobey this order, concerned SHO may face action, a senior Delhi Police official told Mail Today.
Chief Justice TS Thakur is concerned about the speed of Indian justice

Concerned about the delay in appointments to the higher judiciary and tribunals, Chief Justice TS Thakur said the government should expedite the process of filling up vacancies to ensure speedy delivery of justice.

I feel that like the higher judiciary in the country, so also I think in the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), one of the major problems that has been experienced over the years is the difficulty or the delay involved in filling up the vacancies, he said.

IIMC students' plea to Jaitley

Students of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) have urged Union minister Arun Jaitley to intervene to ensure there is no further delay in holding the convocation and distribution of original certificates as it was causing hardship to them.

In a petition to Jaitley, the students said that the convocation ceremony was held each year in late October or November but it is not the case this time apparently because of the delay in taking decision about appointment of new Director General.

House washouts worry Kurien

With the last two sessions of Parliament witnessing near washouts, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien has pitched for laws to deny salary and allowances to members who do not allow the Houses to function.

Expressing concern that Parliament is failing in discharging its duties because of such obstructions, Kurien also said Parliament and Assembly secretariats should inform people through media about names of the members who disrupt proceedings.

The Constitution needs to be amended to ensure Parliament sits for at least 120 days and state Assemblies 60 days in a year, Kurien said.

Lie test for Punjab Police SP's friends

After a lie-detector test on Salwinder Singh, who was abducted by the suspected JeM terrorists who attacked the Pathankot air base recently, the NIA will now subject two others, including his jeweller friend, to the test.

The caretaker of a shrine the police officer claimed to have visited before the incident will also be subjected to polygraph test. NIA sources said Singh was cleared.

Subramanian's suggestion

Days after RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan warned bank defaulters against flaunting their wealth, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and NITI Aayog Member Bibek Debroy appeared to suggest that flaunting of riches should not be a matter of that much concern.
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Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah, who is credited with taking the partys membership to a new high and leading it to power in four states, is set to steer the BJP for the next three years after he was elected unopposed for the post of president on Sunday.

Party veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, who have previously expressed their unhappiness with Shahs stewardship, were conspicuous by their absence at the party headquarters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with his Cabinet colleagues Rajnath Singh, M Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari as well as BJP chief ministers proposed Shahs name during the nomination process in which no other leader joined the fray.

According to party insiders, the election of Shah was merely a formality after it became clear that Prime Minister Modi and other party bigwigs - besides the RSS, which has always had a say in the nomination for the top job - preferred him to stay in post.

Sources said that Shahs re-election for the post was almost decided as the Central leadership and the RSS felt that he should continue for the upcoming state polls.

Shah was handed the partys top post in 2014 when Rajnath Singh joined the Narendra Modi Cabinet after the Lok Sabha elections.

Modi, who was not present during the exercise due to official engagements, will attend the parliamentary board meeting likely to be held on January 28 to greet Shah in his new innings.

Modi congratulated Shah on his re-election and expressed confidence that the party will scale newer heights under his leadership.

Congratulations to Shri @AmitShah on being elected BJP president. I am confident the Party will scale newer heights under his leadership, Modi tweeted.

Amit Bhai combines grassroot-level work & rich organisational experience which will benefit the Party immensely, Modi said in another post.

Celebrations outside BJP headquarters after Amit Shah's re-election as party chief

Altogether, 17 nominations were filed proposing the Gujarat leaders name during the three-hour nomination exercise, party vice president Avinash Rai Khanna, who was the chief electoral officer, said as he announced his unopposed election.

All BJP chief ministers, barring Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar who was busy in an official engagement, were present during the nomination reflecting the virtually total support to Shah as party chief.

Subsequently, Shah personally made it a point to meet Advani after being elected.

Sources said that he met Advani late in the evening on Sunday while his meeting with Joshi is scheduled for Tuesday after his return from West Bengal where he will be on a day-long trip.

Party affairs

Several party veterans, including Advani and Joshi, have been upset with the partys functioning ever since they were made members of Margdarshak Mandal, which is seen by many as an indication that they have been rendered irrelevant in the partys affairs.

This will be the first full three-year term for the Gujarat leader, seen to have full backing of Modi, as he had taken over as the party chief in May 2014 after his predecessor Rajnath Singh joined the government.

Membership

Seen as a close confidante of Modi, Shah pushed BJPs primary membership to beyond 11 crore from the earlier less than three crore, according to official party figures, and led its emergence as the biggest political force in Maharashtra and Haryana for the first time.

Shah also led the party to victory in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir but some of the sheen of his leadership wore off after it suffered crushing defeats in Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections, sparking some rumblings within.

However, his aides have argued that he remains the best bet for the party as it faces elections in five states this year and the crucial Uttar Pradesh polls next year.

Whats in store for BJP chief

By Kumar Vikram in New Delhi

Too many challenges are in store for Amit Shah as he is set to head the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the next three years.

While the poll results of Delhi and Bihar still haunt the BJP, upcoming Assembly elections in the four states and one Union Territory will be a major challenge.

Barring Assam, the BJP doesnt seem to have much of a chance in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala or Puducherry.

Amit Shah led the BJP to victory in the Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls

Shah was the natural choice for the partys top post in May 2014 following emphatic victory in the Lok Sabha elections, and he became the party president when Rajnath Singh abdicated the post to join the Cabinet.

While the honeymoon period in power continued through 2014 from Jharkhand to Maharashtra and Jammu & Kashmir to Haryana, it was a massive drubbing for the party at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party when the BJP got only three seats out of 80 in Delhi Assembly.

A few months later Shah and his team had to face another embarrassment as the party lost the crucial Bihar Assembly polls, where many Union ministers were given responsibilities. This also had its impact in Parliament as an emboldened Opposition got together and struck back.

Now, as Shah has formally been elected, his biggest challenge will be to get back to winning ways. The crucial test will be the 2017 UP Assembly polls.

Party insiders said that it would be an enormous challenge to win the polls while strengthening the party for the upcoming battles. Quelling the rebellions will be another task, as the party has seen many such instances particularly those following the Bihar polls results.

Party sources said that in the coming time, the party might take some stringent action to send a strong message in the cadre. The BJP has not selected any face for the state unit president in Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, projecting a face for the chief ministerial post in UP will be a tough decision for Shah as a lot will depend upon this decision.

The party went without any face in Bihar and decided on a name for the Delhi polls in a hurry, and the results were humiliating in both cases.
Driver Manoj Chauhan was shot dead in Manesar. The motive for the killing is not yet clear.

The Pathankot terror attack has left a trail of unsolved mysteries. Security agencies are still clueless about the murders of three drivers who are believed to have been killed by terrorists.

The latest incident was reported on Saturday evening at Manesar, Haryana, when the driver of BJP leader Mahesh Chauhan was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

I was informed about his death at 4.46pm by a person I know over phone. He had gone to drop a friend at Gurgaon. He was shot in front of Rockland Hospital. He was driving an Innova car with the registration number HR26 BE 0747, which was found there along with his belongings, Mahesh Chauhan told Mail Today.

The driver, identified as Monu Chauhan, hailed from Meerut, UP, and had started working with Mahesh nine months ago.

Manesar police have registered an FIR and are investigating the case. The motive for the murder is not clear, as the killers neither stole the vehicle nor the victims belongings.

Meanwhile, the mystery over Himachal Pradesh taxi driver Vijay Kumars murder continues as the police have not been able to find out anything about the vehicle and the three people who had booked it to travel from Gagga Airport in Kangra to Pathankot on January 14.

Vijay was first strangled and then had his head crushed. Police sources said the killers - suspected to be terrorists - spoke in Punjabi dialect and one of them had a limp.

While the Himachal police have ruled out a terror link, intelligence agencies suspect the killers were terrorists as the taxi driver allegedly had links with drug smugglers.

Suspecting a Pathankot-like incident, the security agencies are linking the incident with a possible terror strike.

The Himachal police have sounded an alert in the state where security has already been heightened following an IB alert ahead of Republic Day celebrations. An alert has also been sounded in the neighbouring state of Punjab.

Gurdaspur-based taxi driver Ikagar Singh, 34, was the first victim who was killed on December 31, 2015 at Kohlian village.

Security agencies believe that he was killed during a scuffle with the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who attacked the Pathankot airbase two days after killing him.
A parliamentary panel has expressed concern that the West Pakistani refugees (WPRs), who have been living in Jammu and Kashmir for 60 years, cant vote for the Assembly polls but are eligible to participate in national elections.

There are around 50,000 such people who migrated to the state in 1947, but continue to live on the margins.

According to the recent report of the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs the WPRs are very much citizens of India and have voting rights for Parliament but cant vote in the Assembly polls on the pretext that they are not permanent residents as per the Jammu and Kashmirs Constitution.

West Pakistan refugees can vote only in Lok Sabha elections and are not permanent citizens of J&K (file picture).

As a result the WPRs have not been able to get the benefits available to the other residents of the border state.

The committee feels that though they are living there for more than 60 years, they are not leading the life of free citizens despite having voting rights for Parliament. This right has not earned them any special benefits, said the panel.

The panel has strongly recommended that the Centre should urge the state government to consider giving West Pakistani Refugees the status of permanent residents of the state, so that they can live as state subjects in a dignified way, with all legal rights, including the right to vote in Assembly elections.

Sources said the Union Home ministry has been pursuing the matter with the state government in the past, but the issue lies unresolved.

The panel further noted that the WPRs are not considered permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir on the grounds that they do not own land, a precondition to acquire permanent residency rights.

The WPRs living in the state since 1947 have been running from pillar to post in search of permanent source of livelihood. Moreover, they arrived before enforcement of Article 370, which grants special rights to the state, the panel said.
Terming the Pathankot terror strike another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long, US President Barack Obama on Friday demanded that Pakistan delegitimise, disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks that operate from its territory.

In a tough message, Obama said Pakistan can and must take more effective action against terrorist groups based there, emphasising that there must be zero tolerance for safe havens and terrorists must be brought to justice.

Pakistan has an opportunity to show that it is serious about delegitimising, disrupting and dismantling terror networks, Obama told PTI in an interview, during which he answered a wide range of questions covering Indo-US ties, terrorism and the outcome of the Paris climate change summit.

President Obama said both PM Modi and Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif are working to advance dialogue between their nations, but Pakistan must show a zero tolerance attitude to terrorism originating on its soil.

Obama gave credit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reaching out to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif after the Pathankot attack, and said both leaders are advancing a dialogue on how to confront violent extremism and terrorism across the region.

Voicing his belief that the Indo-US relationship can be one of the defining partnerships of the century, Obama said Modi shared his enthusiasm for a strong partnership.

We have developed a friendship and close working relationship, including our conversations on the new secure lines between our offices, he said.

Asked if the relationship has achieved its full potential, the President replied: Absolutely not.

On the Pathankot attack, Obama said: We join India in condemning the attack, saluting the Indians who fought to prevent more loss of life and extending our condolences to the victims and their families. Tragedies like this also underscore why the US and India continue to be such close partners in fighting terrorism.

Obama was of the view that Sharif recognised that insecurity in Pakistan is a threat to its own stability and that of the region. After the December, 2014 school massacre in Peshawar he had vowed to target all militants, regardless of their agenda or affiliation.

That is the right policy. Since then, we have seen Pakistan take action against several specific groups. We have also seen continued terrorism inside Pakistan such as the recent attack on the university in north west Pakistan.

The President said that he still believed that Pakistan can and must take more effective action against terrorist groups that operate from its territory.

In the region and around the world, there must be zero tolerance for safe havens and terrorists must be brought to justice, he asserted.

Referring to bilateral ties with India, Obama said his visit last year reflected how the ties between the two countries have been transformed.

Since I took office, I have worked to deepen our cooperation with India across the board and I continue to believe that the relationship between India and the United States can be one of the defining partnerships of this century, he said.

"However, common values - two democracies, two innovative economies, two diverse societies - make us natural partners. We are linked by the ties of family - millions of Indian Americans," the US President said.

He said his hope was that his visit could help spark a new era of cooperation between the two countries and I believe it did.
Amid cases of foreign terror outfits accessing sensitive information from Indian defence personnel in exchange for a fortune or by a honeytrap, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) remains clueless about the common mans role in helping the government tackle terrorism.

Specifically, it denies knowing how the assistance of Indian citizens can be tapped to nab terrorists by offering rewards, or how much has been offered for information on those in the top 10 terrorists list for 15 years from 1990 to 2015.

The MHA said it has no knowledge of how much has been offered for information on those in the 'top 10 terrorists' list, including fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim (pictured).

Such information is not available, said a surprising response received from the home ministry on a Right To Information (RTI) query.

RTI applicant Ullhas P Revankar, a short film producer, had asked for the following information from the Chief Public Information Officer of the home ministry:

"What is the maximum amount of reward announced by any ministry of India to the informer for giving information about terrorists on the run? Kindly give a list of top 10 terrorists against whom reward is announced by any ministry of India for giving them whereabouts from year 1990 to 2015? Is the reward given tax-free? If not, how much tax is deducted from the reward? What kind of protection is provided to the informers?"

A response received from MA Ganapathy, joint secretary in the government of India, said: I have carefully perused the online appeal dated November 30, 2015, preferred under Section 19 of the Right to Information Act filed by Ullhas P Revankar against the reply of SK Chhikara dated September 15, 2015. The appellant has alleged that the Chief Public Information Officer has denied him the information.

It goes on to say: I have perused the original application filed by the appellant dated September 6, 2015, and have also gone through replies given by CPIO dated September 15, 2015, by Chhikara he informed the applicant that the information sought by him is not available with the office of which he is the CPIO.

The recent arrest of Indian Air Force airman Ranjith KK for allegedly passing sensitive information to his Facebook friend Damini McNaught is only the latest instance of Indian defence personnel playing into the hands of foreign agents.

Speculation over an insider role in helping terrorists to infiltrate the Pathankot airbase is also gaining ground.

According to reports, a civilian employee posted at the Air Force base has been picked up by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for questioning.
Once in a while, the ruling party in Karnataka wakes up from its deep slumber and realises the need for investment, including FDI, to improve the infrastructure in the state.

The state, then, announces a few sunrise sectors as focus areas of investments.

But once the Global Investors Meet (GIM) is over, the enthusiasm and the commitment subside, as not even 25 per cent of the projects secured materialise on the ground.

The second Global Investors Meet (GIM) 2012 was held when DV Sadananda Gowda was the CM of Karnataka

Against this backdrop, the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government has announced its next GIM scheduled in February, and this one promises to be no different from its previous meets.

Previously, the GIMs were held in 2010 and 2012 respectively, both by the BJP under different chief ministers (BS Yeddyurappa and DV Sadananda Gowda).

This is the first such meet for Siddaramaiah, who is often viewed skeptically by the business community in Karnataka for his lackadaisical attitude towards solving the problems of the industry.

The Congress government has the task of listing out achievements of the GIMs held in 2010 and 2012; otherwise investors, particularly, FDI institutions, may not be interested in this years GIM.

These days, the GIMs have assumed the tag of melas where announcements of huge investments, MoUs and several public-private-partnership projects running into crores of rupees are common.

Subsequently, the list enters the achievements category of the CM whenever the government issues lengthy newspaper advertisements or TV commercials upon successful completion of his tenure in the office.

The GIMs of 2010 and 2012 promised investments of Rs 6.73 lakh crore and creation of 2.12 million jobs.

As many as 578 MoUs relating to various projects were also signed at the two GIMs.

But, the official data released by the government last year revealed that projects worth Rs 45,425 crore had materialised so far and had generated 1,14,000 jobs in the state while a mere 122 MoUs were executed.

Two major impediments in the way of a successful implementation of projects secured at the GIMs are lack of promised infrastructure (land, water and power supply, transportation, supply chain management ecosystem) and lack of political will to meet it. As a consequence, many of the investors back out of the projects or cancel the MoUs.

There is no clarity on how Siddaramaiah or his government will tackle this issue.

Incidentally, the GIM was scheduled to be held last November, but was pushed to February in view of the spate of farmers suicide owing to drought and credit burden.

In reality, the GIM has become a fancy term within the government while bureaucrats admit in private that it is just another show.

Many politicians ridiculed that the GIMs, a brainchild of former chief minister SM Krishna, have outlived their utility.

In fact, Karnataka has one of poorest conversion rates compared to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu in fulfilling the promises made to investors at such meets.

Industrialists and investors in Karnataka will thank Siddaramaiah, if his government can improve existing infrastructure that is crumbling, rather than asking for more investments.

Transportation, roads, civic services and traffic have become unbearable in Bengaluru, especially in the IT hubs, and there is already a flight of capital with many of the MNC IT firms preferring other states for their expansion projects.

The proposed integrated steel plants in iron ore-rich Bellari district are languishing, as the government has not provided litigation-free land, power and water supplies.

Tourist destinations have only got cosmetic changes.

This time, the government has announced 12 focus areas for investments and these include tourism and infrastructure.

Such is the seriousness of this government that it wants global investment to even build 221 public toilets, construction of sky walks, redevelopment of commercial complexes, and 2,000 bus-shelters in Bengaluru!

Do global investors need to even visit GIM? Maybe the investors themselves will find an answer.

Tigers are in danger

Conservationists and biologists appealing for wildlife space to be free of human intervention

Time and again, conservationists and biologists have pleaded with the Centre to keep the ecologically-sensitive Kudremukh National Park (KNP) free of human intervention and mining activity, but their efforts have gone unheard.

This time, the Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd (KIOCL), a Union government PSU, which ceased mining operations in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, has put the habitat of the endangered wildlife in the KNP, including Indias tigers, at risk.

The KIOCL is accused of handing over a parcel of its land in the KNP to a private resort in violation of the land lease agreement.

As a consequence conservationists, who fought a lengthy legal battle to have the mining operations closed, dragged the KIOCL to the Karnataka High Court.

Tiger expert Ullas Karanth has objected to the establishment of the resort in the KNP premises, as it was against the orders of the Supreme Court and in violation of the various conservation laws.

Girls for Guinness World Record!

Students from the prestigious womens educational institute in Bengaluru, Mount Carmel College, are always a step ahead of the rest - academically, culturally, and even in sports.

This time around they attempted to set a new Guinness World Record and the official confirmation from the authorities concerned is awaited.

More than 900 students from the college simultaneously opened most drink cans - TWISS - a canned sparkling fruit juice at their premier Cul-Ah 2016 fest here last week on the premises of the institution.

Over 900 girls opened canned sparkling juice simultaneously to create Guinness World Records

With this, they wanted to overwrite the existing record of Most Drink Cans Opened Simultaneously, set by Ltd Cido Grupa (Latvia) in Ligatne, Latvia, on August 2, 2014, involving 689 people.

If the Guinness World Records officially recognises the new record, then Mount Carmel College will enter the history books.

Interestingly, the record attempt was facilitated by TWISS Drinks, a homegrown beverage company started by Indians buoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modis Make in India initiative.

CM Siddaramaiah slapped with trouble

CM Siddaramaiah allegedly slapped a bureaucrat

The incident involving Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah allegedly slapping a bureaucrat is no longer a trivial matter.

The police have commenced a probe into the incident after an advocate filed a complaint on the issue.

Despite being caught in the camera, both Siddaramaiah and the bureaucrat denied knowledge of the incident.

The TV cameras showed the CMs right hand falling on the babus left cheek during his trip to Ballari city in north-eastern Karnataka on January 16.
Within Europe, our strategic partnership with France is the most comprehensive.

In addition to substantial economic ties, cultural exchanges and growing educational contacts, major cooperation in strategic areas like nuclear, space and defence gives a qualitative edge to our relationship with France as compared to that with other European countries.

Even with the US, while our overall relationship is much larger in scope and impact, the levels of nuclear, space and defence cooperation have not been of the same order in a historical time frame as with France, or even at present if we take this triad as a whole. This highlights the importance of Indo-French strategic ties.

French President Francois Hollande with Prime Minister Modi

Balance

President Francois Hollandes presence as the chief guest at our Republic Day celebrations this morning is a recognition of this reality.

He is the fifth French leader to be so honoured.

Of the several explanations why no other country has received such a distinction, one lies in Europes great weight in international affairs and our need to build productive partnerships with key European countries to safeguard our political, economic and security interests.

Europe has been important for us also for maintaining a balance in our international relations as between the West and others.

We have also needed Europe to prevent the consolidation of a Western block against us in view of our foreign policy differences with the US on key strategic issues.

With its tradition of foreign policy independence, France was our partner of choice in Europe.

Today, with changed circumstances, yesterdays calculations are no longer entirely relevant. India-US relations have greatly improved and France, too, now works closely with the US within the NATO framework. An independent French policy therefore has less geopolitical salience today.

With the Eurozone in crisis and terrorism spawned by religious extremism threatening the EUs political and social fabric, Europes cachet as a continent of peace, prosperity and stability has suffered.

Europes values are being tested with growing anti-immigrant sentiment and the rise of extreme right-wing political groups.

All this has dented Europes stature and by extension that of France, notwithstanding all the political, economic, military, intellectual and cultural strengths of that country.

At the same time, India has become a more valuable partner for France, with its strengths growing, not spectacularly, but steadily.

With rising concerns about Chinas economy and economic woes of other BRICS countries, India, with its projected 7.3 to 7.5 growth rate, is becoming attractive, and is being viewed as a significant contributor to global growth in the years ahead.

PM Narendra Modi has galvanised international interest in his development plans and confident messaging abroad about business opportunities in India.

The growing India-France partnership will be based on these evolving parameters.

Ties

Our gesture in repeatedly inviting French leaders as chief guests at our R-Day celebrations has not boosted our strategic ties to the point it should have.

Our political leadership understands the value of this relationship, but the system as a whole lacks the same strategic outlook.

Whether the French side has always found the right balance between commercial considerations and strategic goals, needs analysis.

Technology transfer as a strategic lubricant has been insufficient. The contract for 126 Rafale aircraft has got reduced to 36.

Despite decades of satisfactory service provided by French-origin helicopters like Cheetah and Chetak, the French have been denied the contract for light utility helicopters twice, and now it has been assigned to Russia.

The ambitious air defence SR-SAM joint development and production project has been largely abandoned after completion of negotiations.

The contract for Airbus 330 Refuelling aircraft has got bogged down.

Now, with the Modi governments emphasis on Make in India in defence manufacturing, the emerging new opportunities require fresh strategies by French companies.

Defence

During Modis April 2015 visit to France, the two leaders had encouraged an early conclusion of techno-commercial discussions for six 1650MW nuclear power reactors at Jaitapur, with due consideration to project viability and manufacture of large and critical components in India.

It is expected that within possibly a year a tangible progress may occur in negotiations over the setting up of French as well as US (Westinghouse) reactors.

Last year the 50th anniversary of Indo-French space cooperation was celebrated, but space-related cooperation, though meaningful, has not expanded dramatically so far, despite Indias growing space capabilities.

France has been most supportive for our candidature for permanent membership of the Security Council, but the decision is not in French hands.

Similarly, France backs Indias membership of the NSG and other three export control regimes, but it alone cannot deliver.

Our counter-terrorism cooperation is set to grow at the international level following terrorist mayhem in France in recent months, but how far France can help with our Pakistan problem is moot because of US reluctance to sanction Pakistan and Chinas protective attitude.

India welcomes more maritime cooperation with France. Both countries conduct joint military exercises involving the three arms.

Cyber security has emerged as a new area of cooperation.

French participation in our smart cities project, railway modernisation and developing solar energy, discussed during Modis April 2015 visit, should expand in the perspective of growing bilateral economic ties.

France is backing Modis Solar Alliance initiative launched during COP 21 in Paris.

An inter-governmental agreement on Rafale is expected during Hollandes visit, as part of more than two dozen agreements on the agenda.
While the declassification of the Netaji files has sparked a massive debate on the need to rewrite modern Indian history, a yet-to be-published book - Bose: An Indian Samurai - by Netaji scholar and military historian General GD Bakshi claims that former British prime minister Clement Atlee said the role played by Netajis Indian National Army was paramount in India being granted Independence, while the non-violent movement led by Gandhi was dismissed as having had minimal effect.

In the book, Bakshi cites a conversation between the then British PM By Rahul Kanwal in New Delhi Attlee and then Governor of West Bengal Justice PB Chakraborty.

GD Bakshi's book claims Netaji's impact was profound, while Gandhis non-violence movement was less significant from a British perspective

The conversation is placed in 1956 when Attlee - the leader of Labour Party and the British premier who had signed the decision to grant Independence to India - had come to India and stayed in Kolkata as Chakrabortys guest.

Letter

Chakraborty, who was then the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and was serving as the acting Governor of West Bengal, had written a letter to the publisher of RC Majumdars book, A History of Bengal, in which he wrote: When I was acting governor, Lord Attlee, who had given us Independence by withdrawing British rule from India, spent two days in the governors palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India.

Clement Atlee reportedly described Gandhi's influence on the British decision to leave India as "minimal".

My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhis Quit India Movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they had to leave?

In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the main among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian Army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji, Chakraborty said.

Toward the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhis influence upon the British decision to leave India. Hearing this question, Attlees lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, m-i-n-i-m-a-l, Chakraborty added.

This startling conversation was first published by the Institute of Historical Review by author Ranjan Borra in 1982, in his piece on Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army and the war of Indias liberation.

To understand the significance of Attlees assertion, we have to go back in time to 1945. The Second World War had ended. The allied powers, led by Britain and the United States, had won. The Axis powers led by Hitlers Germany had been vanquished. The victors wanted to impose justice on the defeated armies.

In India, officers of Netaji Boses Indian National Army were put on trial for treason, torture, murder. This series of court martials, came to be known as the Red Fort Trials.

Soldiers' mutiny

Indians serving in the British armed forces were inflamed by the Red Fort Trials. In February 1946, almost 20,000 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy serving on 78 ships mutinied against the Empire. They went around Mumbai with portraits of Netaji and forced the British to shout Jai Hind and other INA slogans.

The rebels brought down the Union Jack on their ships and refused to obey their British masters. This mutiny was followed by similar rebellions in the Royal Indian Air Force and also in the British Indian Army units in Jabalpur. The British were terrified.

After the Second World War, 2.5 million Indian soldiers were being de-commissioned from the British Army. Military intelligence reports in 1946 indicated that the Indian soldiers were inflamed and could not be relied upon to obey their British officers.

There were only 40,000 British troops in India at the time. Most were eager to go home and in no mood to fight the 2.5 million battle-hardened Indian soldiers who were being demobilised.

It is under these circumstances that the British decided to grant Independence to India. The idea behind putting these documents in the public domain, is not to in any way undermine the significant contribution of Mahatma Gandhi or Pandit Nehru, but to spark a debate about the real significance of the role played by Netajis Indian National Army.

School textbooks are dominated by the role played by the non-violent movement, while the role of the INA is dismissed in a few cursory paragraphs.

The time has come to revisit modern Indian history and acknowledge the immense contribution of Netaji in helping India win its freedom.




French Finance Minister Michel Sapin at the India- France business session in New Delhi

French companies will double their investment in India to $10 billion over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector, Finance Minister of France, Mr. Michel Sapin, said here on Monday.

"Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than $1 billion per year in India.

"We estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years," Sapin said at the India-France business session organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

French companies represent 10 per cent of the solar capacity installed in India and by 2020-22 they could add additional capacities, he said.

Sapin said France is the third-biggest foreign investor in India with an investment stock of USD 20 billion, and there are more than 400 French companies present in India with a consolidated turnover of over USD 20 billion.

The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, he added.

This makes France a major player in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India programme.

This complementarity can also been seen in the context of other programmes of the Indian government, the French minister said. He further stated that France has directed French Development Agency to earmark 60 per cent of total financial outlay for India.

"The economic presence of France in India goes back to a long time and is very diverse. This expression of interest in India did not wait for Indian GDP to supersede that of China," he remarked.

The agency operates in 70 countries and provides finance for development. In 2014, it committed euro 8.1 billion across the globe for various projects.

Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur will be developed as 'Smart Cities' with the help of France which on Monday affirmed its commitment to India's ambitious plans for clean and sustainable development.

The French Development Agency has signed memoranda of understanding with the Union Territory of Chandigarh, Union Territory of Puducherry and the Maharashtra government (for Nagpur).

A joint statement issued here on Monday after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande said the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to cooperate towards clean and sustainable development and reaffirmed their valuable partnership in India's ambitious plans to develop Smart Cities.

The two leaders welcomed the three MoUs signed between AFD (French Agency for Development) and the government of India for financing projects in Puducherry.

French punch for Railway

Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi

France will help modernise Ambala and Ludhiana railway stations and its top company Alstom will manufacture 800 electric locomotives in India packed with twice the horse power of the locos currently running in the country.

Alstom and Indian Railways signed a 'shareholding agreement' on Monday for production of 800 electric locomotives at Madhepura in Bihar which will entail a foreign asset of Rs 1,300 crore.

According to the agreement, the Madhepura factory will produce 800 electric locomotives with horse power of 12,000 each over a period of 11 years. The existing strength of electric locomotives is 6,000 horse power (HP).

The project will involve foreign investment of Rs 1300 crore, considered to be substantial in the rail sector. Alstom will be responsible for setting up the factory and manufacturing the locomotives, as well as maintenance.
The Capital has turned into a fortress, with the Delhi Police and other agencies beefing up security to ensure a smooth Republic Day today.

Intensive surveillance has been put in place at Delhis border points as police fear a possible terror strike involving the three stolen cars with Army and police stickers.

While one of the stolen vehicles was an ITBP IGs SUV with a blue beacon, the other vehicle was stolen from Pathankot. The driver was found dead in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh.

Security personnel have turned the Capital into a fortress ahead of Republic Day

The registration numbers of these vehicles have been circulated to all the police teams, and the vehicles entering the Capital are being checked.

Nearly 50,000 security personnel have been deployed in the Lutyens zone to make the Republic Day parade incident free.

Delhi Police and paramilitary forces have been deployed, including on rooftops of various buildings, as this year attack by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are a major threat.

The local police of UP and Haryana have been deployed to keep a check on such threats.

The Capital was already on high alert after the Pathankot attack and security agencies have now readied multiple plans to foil a terror attack.

After inputs were received about the presence of key members of several terror outfits in Delhi, intelligence agencies have been asked to keep track on suspicious activities to get specific inputs.
BJP president Amit Shah said chit funds were the only industry flourishing in West Bengal

BJP president Amit Shah was in poll-bound West Bengal, where he accused the Mamata Banerjee government of practicing vote bank politics.

He also alleged it had turned the state into a safe haven for anti-national elements and a fake currency racket.

Shah said chit funds were the only industry flourishing in West Bengal.

Chandra Kumar Bose, grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, joined the party while Amit Shah was in the state on Monday.

Financial push for single women

Considering the importance of the financial security of single women, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi has proposed that women's names should be mentioned in their husbands' death certificates, to ensure that widows get all their entitlements.

Gandhi has sent a letter to the Finance Ministry appealing that tax rebates should be given to such women.

Kejriwals sweet pill for aam aadmi

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal interacted with around 3,000 doctors of government hospitals through a video conference to discuss the AAP government's recent decision to waive off user charges.

He also spoke of making medicines free of cost from next month.

The Delhi Chief Minister said medicines and user charges will be made free in government hospitals from February 1.

Its back to school for ex-servicemen

Smriti Irani launched books based on the bravery of five Param Vir Chakra awardees

Ex-servicemen could soon participate in a school curriculum, as the HRD ministry is mulling an initiative under which they can be utilised in schools to provide physical training and also to create awareness about the sacrifices made by the security forces.

HRD minister Smriti Irani was at an event where she launched the first batch of five books for children, which is based on bravery of five Param Vir Chakra awardees.

Family planning on Nadda radar

The Union health ministry will give a fresh impetus to family planning by promoting birth spacing through innovative contraceptives.
They've spent three years waiting for four wheelchairs.

Now, fed up with the indefinite delay, doctors and other medical staff at the government-run Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital have decided to donate the wheelchairs to the institution, which is among the 10 government hospitals in Delhi that issue disability certificates.

Hospital sources said some doctors and a pharmacist at the hospital recently decided to buy six wheelchairs for the welfare of the patients.

The hospital staff have come together to donate wheelchairs worth nearly Rs 23,000 for patients' use. (Picture for representation)

The hospital requires at least four wheelchairs to address patients needs, but currently it has none.

The cost of a single wheelchair is around Rs 3,800. The hospital staff have come together to donate the wheelchairs worth nearly Rs 23,000 to the hospital.

There are two doctors and one pharmacist who have decided to donate two wheelchairs each to the hospital. They will be paying for them through their own salary. The hospital has been facing shortage of wheelchairs for too long, a senior doctor from the hospital told Mail Today.

Recently, Secretary (Health) Amar Nath visited the hospital with his wife and even he was shocked to know that the hospital doesnt have wheelchairs.

He was surprised to find out that there was not a single wheelchair in the hospital. Interestingly, he himself expressed interest in donating a wheelchair to the hospital, the doctor said.

The government hospital, which caters to around 1,000-1,200 patients on a daily basis, has been struggling to procure wheelchairs since 2013.

Sources at the hospital told Mail Today that the last purchase was made at the time of the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

Several letters have been written regarding the purchase of wheelchairs, but all efforts have gone to waste, added the senior doctor.

As per the tentative census of 2015, the hospital has issued 383 disability certificates from April 2015 to November 2015.

People with disabilities face problems while visiting the hospital. There should be at least one wheelchair in the hospital, the doctor added.

Apart from this hospital, its administration also looks after the mortuary at Subzi Mandi, the oldest and biggest mortuary in Delhi.

The hospital is in close proximity to LG house, Tis Hazari district court and the Delhi Legislative Assembly.

The administration had sent a purchase order for four wheelchairs to Central Procurement Agency (CPA) on December 14 last year. The government has made it mandatory for government hospitals to purchase all medical and surgical requirements through the CPA. The move was taken to make the process more transparent.

The entire process is quite cumbersome. It will take around six months for the agency to get us the wheelchairs. Till that time, we will have to look for some options, another doctor from the hospital told Mail Today.
Amid the debate over declining tolerance, President Pranab Mukherjee said the country should guard itself against forces of violence and intolerance.

In his address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day, he also talked about peace and terror, and the parliamentary deadlock, which has stalled crucial pro-reform Bills.

In remarks that come against the backdrop of the intolerance debate, he said reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients of nationalism.

President Pranab Mukherjee addressed the nation on the eve of Republic Day

We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason, he said.

The President said there will be occasional doubters and baiters, who will continue to complain, to demand, and to rebel.

This too is a virtue of democracy. But let us also applaud what our democracy has achieved. With investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, health, education, science and technology, we are positioning ourselves well for achieving a higher growth rate which will in the next ten to fifteen years help us eliminate poverty, he said.

Mukherjee said that ideally dialogue should be a continual engagement to resolve disputes among nations, but peace cannot be discussed under a shower of bullets.

In remarks that come against the backdrop of the Pathankot attack, he also said terrorism is a war beyond any doctrine.

There is no good or bad terrorism; it is pure evilThere is a civilised way to bridge disagreements; dialogue, ideally, should be a continual engagement. But we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets, he said.
A rush to purchase buy-to-let properties before a stamp duty hike arrives in April is hitting the property market, claims a landlord industry body.

A seasonal lull in the rental market saw supply and demand for lettings tail off in December, said the Association of Residential Letting Agents, but its boss warned that buy-to-let landlords are 'storming the UK housing market'.

ARLA says a new three per cent stamp duty surcharge for investors  which comes into play in April  has had an immediate effect, with a quarter of agents reporting an uplift in interest from landlords looking to snap up a buy-to-let property in time to beat an increased tax bill.

Calm before the storm: December saw supply and demand for rental properties fall - along with rent. But this could all change from April when new stamp duty hikes come into play

The number of available homes to rent dropped last month alongside falling demand while fewer agents reported increases to monthly rents, ARLA added. But it said that this could be the 'calm before the buy-to-let storm.'

The report came as speculation mounts over what effect stamp duty reforms around buy-to-let and second properties announced in the Autumn Statement will have on house prices and rents.

Landlords are facing a stamp duty tax bill which in some cases will be tripled from April.

David Cox,managing director of ARLA, said: 'Buy-to-let landlords determined to complete purchases before the changes come into force in April are storming the UK housing market, meaning the lull we'd usually see is less significant.

According to an ARLA survey, 62 per cent of agents predict the changes will result in higher rents while 65 per cent say it will push landlords out of the market and decrease the supply of homes to rent.

Mr Cox said: 'With supply, demand and the number of agents reporting rent increases all declining in December, this could well be the calm before the buy-to-let storm.'

This period of easing in rents could soon end, claimed Mr Cox with new rules cutting the number of properties available to let.

He added: 'But subsequently, after April, we're very likely to see the number of buy-to-let properties on the market begin to decrease, and this will most certainly have a detrimental effect on renters across the country.'

Stamp duty: Chancellor George Osborne caught everyone by surprise in the Autumn Statement when he revealed steep rises in stamp duty for those buying investment properties or second homes

ARLA agents registered an average of 29 prospective new tenants last month, down from 34 in November  a decrease of 15 per cent.

Supply also decreased marginally in December, with an average of 182 properties managed per branch, down from 189 in November.

Those looking for rental properties in the capital continue to struggle, with an average of just 108 properties managed per branch, 43 per cent less than the national average.

Alongside supply and demand, the number of tenants seeing rent hikes also dropped in December, with only two in ten ARLA letting agents reporting a growth in rent  a drop of five percentage points from November and the lowest reported in 2015.

'Repeating the mistakes of a former Chancellor': Estate agents claim there is a rush to buy from landlords

Every month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors issues a house price prediction survey. Last week, the index estimated that across the UK, prices are set to rise by 4.5 per cent a year for the next five years.

The report contains comments from estate agents across the country as to their short-term views of the property market in their area.

Many are reporting the stamp duty surcharge could rock the market in the run-up to April when the changes take place and in the aftermath.

Nigel Sloper, of Finance Planning Surveying Services, Portsmouth, says: 'The three per cent surcharge on second home and buy-to-let will have an impact.

'In the short-term, I expect prices to rise as buyers try to purchase before the April deadline and prices could fall after that date. Could be Nigel Lawson's mistake has been forgotten.'

Former Chancellor: Nigel Lawson - pictured with Margaret Thatcher - was Chancellor between 1983 and 1989

Mr Sloper points to former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, as an example of how tinkering can alter the property market.

Lord Lawson was Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher for six years (1983-1989). He set an August deadline for cohabiting couple to claim double mortgage interest relief in his 1987 Budget. This created a market-distorted rush to secure sales.

Other agents have also revealed what they think stamp duty changes will do to the market.

John Frost, of the Frost Partnership, Slough, says: 'Stamp duty for investors and change to taxation for investors due in 2017 has led to increased interest in buying now.'

James McKillop, of Knight Frank, London, says: 'Three per cent stamp duty proposal in the Autumn Statement has led to more buyers firming up their intention to buy additional residences in my region before 1st April.'

Andrew Wagstaff of Bedfords in Burnham Market, Norfolk, says:' There has been an unexpected increase in agreed sales, subsequent to the announcement of the increase in stamp duty land tax on second and buy-to-let homes.'

Jeremy Leaf, of Jeremy Leaf Co, Finchley, London, says: 'The deadline for the increase in stamp duty has prompted many investors to bring forward buying decision this month and contributed to a general increase in buying activity. Some first-time buyers are still hoping prices may fall after 1 April.'
Holding the purse strings: Chancellor George Osborne

Freeing businesses from red tape and allowing them to flourish has been a central part of our long-term economic plan for Britain.

Whether it has been getting rid of pointless regulations or encouraging banks to lend, this Government is unapologetic about its support for enterprise.

We know that small businesses in particular want lower taxes. Businesspeople also want a simpler tax system. Thats why we committed to transforming the tax system at the March 2015 Budget.

I want to create something that is more effective, more efficient and easier for taxpayers. That means abolishing that dreaded annual tax return, which is what we have pledged to do by 2020.

Riding on the digital wave that has revolutionised how people do their grocery shopping, interact with friends or order a taxi, over the next four years well create the most digitally advanced tax system in the world.

The new digital accounts for businesses will simplify and integrate the different information they already provide to HMRC into a simple, streamlined system. So instead of one big, onerous tax return each year, once a quarter businesses can check that the information they are collecting digitally is correct, and simply click send to update HMRC.

This does not mean quarterly tax returns, a point Ill be making robustly when I debate the issue in Parliament today.

I would never support a reform I thought would add extra burdens on the businesses that have driven the economic recovery. Instead, this is about making life easier for them  and saving them time and money.

These changes are a central part of a package of reforms that will save businesses 400m in accountancy fees and other costs.

Many taxpayers have told us that they want more certainty over their tax bill and access to an in-year picture of their tax position, which their new digital accounts will provide.

The scope for error will also be greatly reduced  meaning fewer businesspeople face the shock of a bigger tax bill than expected at the end of the year.

For many, the transition to the new system will be straightforward. Most businesspeople have already moved away from old-style book-keeping and, as in most other areas of their lives, are making the most of computer technology.

For those who arent already keeping records digitally, well offer free software and clear, simple advice on how it can be used.

But I recognise that some will want time to adjust, which is why were introducing these reforms bit by bit, with none moving on to the new system before 2018.

We will consult widely on how the new system should operate, and invite businesses to test the new tools and give us feedback.

Theres something else that I want to make absolutely clear.

Going digital will not be an option for some people. Businesspeople who genuinely cant use digital tools  perhaps because they cant access broadband, or dont own a computer or smartphone  will be offered alternatives, such as nominating someone else to update their information for them, or giving information by phone.

So there's nothing for businesses to fear in this new system. It does not mean quarterly tax returns, but instead it means the end of the annual tax return, and a simpler, easier, fairer way of doing things.

I know some taxpayers have been frustrated by their dealings with HMRC in the past. Thats why were investing 1.3bn to make it one of the best tax administrators in the world.

The shift to digital tax accounts for our great British businesses is a key part of that.

While we will always ensure that those who really cant file digitally are protected and helped, it is time for the vast majority to take the opportunities that will come from leaving behind our onerous paper-based tax system, and enjoy the savings in time and money that technology offers in so many other areas of their lives.
Only one in four British cities are delivering the Conservative party's plan for a 'higher wage, lower welfare' economy, new findings from think tank, Centre for Cities suggested today

According to the think-tank's report, cities with low pay packets and high welfare bills include Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bradford.

And it said that the North/South divide in the salary and welfare stakes is stark, with 11 out of of 14 'high wage, low welfare' cities located in the South.

Cities enjoying high wages and low benefits bills include Cambridge, Aldershot, Oxford and Aberdeen.

Do you live in a welfare hotspot? The geography of the high wage, low welfare economy, according to Centre for Cities

Meanwhile, in Milton Keynes, the city's total welfare bill has increased by 45 per cent since 2004. Peterborough, Slough and Swindon have experienced similarly large increases in spending on welfare, the findings suggested.

The Centre for Cities said: 'Over the term of the last Labour government, welfare spending outstripped economic growth.

Poll Has your salary gone up in the past 12 months? Yes No Has your salary gone up in the past 12 months? Yes 1014 votes

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'Between 2004/05 and 2010/11 the welfare bill grew at over 4 per cent a year in real terms, compared to an average annual growth rate of the national economy at 0.8 per cent'.

Population growth and stretched housing markets explain some of the significant increases seen in welfare spending across many British cities.

'Long term structural weakness' in certain cities is another crucial factor in why welfare spending has risen sharply, the think-tank said.

In terms of pay, across the country, wages were 5 per cent lower in real terms in 2014 than they were in 2010, the report concluded.

Cities with below average welfare bills have suffered the biggest falls when it comes to the real value of their pay packets, with real wages 6 per cent lower in 2014 than 2010.

Recent data from the Office for National Statistics revealed that, in November, the average gross wage of full-time employees in the UK was 528 a week in April, up 1.8 per cent from 518 a week in 2014.

Annually, this gave Brits an average gross salary of 27,600 last year, an increase of 1.6 per cent from the previous year, the ONS said.

Comparisons: Wages and welfare by city, according to the Centre for Cities

Growth in welfare: Real term growth in welfare from 2004 to 2011, according to the Centre for Cities

In response to today's findings by the Centre for Cities, a Government spokesman told This is Money: 'Todays report is out of date, ignores the latest ONS figures showing the employment rate at a record-breaking 74 per cent, and focuses solely on cities which takes no account of employment growth in large swathes of the country.

'In fact, 1.5million more people are in work outside London and the South East compared to 2010, a third of new apprenticeship starts in the last year were in the Northern Powerhouse, and full-time wages grew faster in areas including Greater Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Worcestershire compared to the national average - even before our new National Living Wage takes effect in April this year.

'All this is good to see. Every new job means the security of a pay packet for a worker and their family. But we are far from complacent and we continue to help local leaders boost their economies through ground-breaking devolution deals and support businesses to grow and create jobs through investment in transport, science and innovation.'

High wage, low welfare: Cambridge is one city with high pay packets and low welfare bills, the report said

High welfare: Milton Keynes has seen its spending on benefits increase by 45 per cent since 2004

Alexandra Jones, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said the report highlighted the size of the challenge facing the Government in building a high-wage, low-welfare economy.

Ms Jones said: 'One of the most pressing issues is the need to tackle skills-gaps and improve schools attainment, especially in low-wage cities, to help those places attract businesses and jobs, and support more people to move into work, particularly in high-skill sectors.

'This should be a key part of the Government's Northern Powerhouse initiative alongside investment in infrastructure, and a top priority for local leaders.

'For cities which have seen strong growth in wages and jobs, the focus should be on addressing housing shortages, to ensure that their success isn't derailed by a lack of affordable homes.'

Separate data published by recruitment firm Robert Half UK today suggested that 58 per cent of senior executives at finance firms plan to increase the number of jobs on offer 'significantly' in the first half of this year.

According to the surveyed business leaders, finding professionals skilled in a niche technical area of expertise remains a significant problem and 80 per cent told Robert Half they are concerned about losing their top staff to other companies this year.
The worried looking middle aged couples gathered in a Shanghai park barely seem to notice the grey drizzle.

They have other things on their minds. 'Rent or own? Car or bus? Shanghai-native or not?' they bark at each other.

On hearing the answers, some are left frowning, while others nod in satisfaction, slowly bringing out pictures of their precious wares.

Shopping: Parents go to the weekly 'marriage market' to look for a potential partner for their children as they peruse a list of would-be suitors' CVs hanging on a line

Choices: Parents arrive with an A4 printout of their child's information which includes their vital statistics - their exam results, salary, whether they own property

For this is one of the city's most important markets - a place where futures are decided.

Welcome to Shanghai's marriage market where meddling parents shop around top find their child a spouse.

The weekly fair, held in the People's Park, is no joke. Every year, more than a million people will arrive, desperate to find their only child the perfect match - a huge burst in popularity since the first worried parents arrived in 2005, looking for their future in-laws.

Among the would-be cupids are fathers like 65-year-old Mr Chen, for whom the market is a must-see every time he visits his Shanghai-based son from his home of Fuzhou, almost 500 miles south.

'My wife and I don't live in Shanghai. We only visit here once or twice a year,' he explained.

'But every time we visit, we come to the match-making corner to collect information of a few women for our son to contact.'

Mr Chen and his wife are now experts in what to look for at the marriage market, but it is set up for ease, and speed.

The A4 advertisements, printouts sitting a-top open umbrellas, keep things simple and to the point: age, education level, occupation, income, and personality.

Preferably, the women will be referred to as 'pretty' and 'quiet', while the men will be 'affluent' and 'responsible'.

The keen vendors will have set up their 'stalls' by 9am, ready with a notepad to take down any details of potential suitors, and will remain in the park until 5pm.

Spouse hunting: This is Shanghai's marriage market where parents question each other on their children's income and prospects to decide whether they are marriage material for their kids

Concerns: Parents worry their daughters won't marry in time to have children and post their resumes on the line in the hope that boys' parents will take an interest

Just like traders across the world, the day can go well - or badly.

But for these eager participants, the free, efficient and truly massive speed-dating group is their weekly guilty pleasure: a marketplace for picking desirable sons or daughters-in-law without their children's knowledge.

'Parents speed date on behalf of their children because they are more eager to marry us off than ourselves.

Most of them are retired, so they have time to do so too,' explained Sharon Li, whose parents visited the market without her knowledge.

'Besides, nowadays young people are shy. They are used to being taken care of on everything.'

Sharon's parents shared the same fears as many others in China.

Despite there being 30million more men than women - thanks, in part, to the one child which made boys more preferable to girls - the majority of the parents at the market have daughters.

Parents speed date on behalf of their children because they are more eager to marry us off than ourselves. Most of them are retired, so they have time to do so too. Sharon Li, 27, graphic designer

Eager parents, who worry their daughters can't marry in time, post up resumes of women as young as 22  the marriage age for girls in China - and would sometimes stop male passers-by for enquiries.

Sharon told MailOnline: 'There are more men than women in China, but there aren't enough quality men for women to marry up to.

'My mother was really worried that I couldn't find a decent man and marry.

'She had me when she was 30, and now she is retired. She fears that if I marry too late then give birth too late, she wouldn't have the energy to take care of my child for me.'

Li, who works as a graphic designer, said her parents attended the market in 2012 hoping to find her a boyfriend. They ended up registering her information with a professional matchmaker there.

'The matchmaker arranged five men for me to meet. Most of them were office workers. There was one who had very rich parents and owned three to four flats.'

Li said she was looking for someone who has a stable job, white skin and good temperament. However, she rejected all candidates after a first date because 'we didn't share common interests'.

Dating game: Sharon said her mother attends the marriage market to find her a husband because became a mother at 30 and worries she will be too old to look after the baby when her daughter gets around to it

Advertising: Parents promote their children's personal CVs on an umbrella. Parents often get involved because they worry their kids are settling down too late and are too busy to find love

Mr Chen's son has also rejected everyone they found at the market.

'We would give the contact information of a few women for our son to select,' he said. 'He did meet some of them, but he often said the feelings were not right.'

But it hasn't deterred them: their son is now 33, working as an auditor in a national bank in Shanghai, and they are keen to have grandchildren sooner rather than later.

My son is too busy himself. He's not in a hurry. He told us many people get married after they are 35 in big cities. Mr Chen, father and marriage market participant

'My son is too busy himself. He's not in a hurry. He told us many people get married after they are 35 in big cities.'

Mr Chen took out a picture of his son, a bespectacled young man who wears a graduation gown.

'This was him eight years ago when he received his Master's degree in Economics,' said the father proudly.

The Chens, like Sharon's parents, could turn to one of the professional matchmakers, ready and willing to find the perfect partner - for a price.

Matchmaking: Some families turn to professional matchmakers to find children suitable spouses. Agents often get men onto their books for free and charge 'desperate' and 'leftover' women over the age of 28 looking for love a 50 Yuan (5) introduction fee

Rejection: Mr Chen's son has rejected women he found at the market. 'We would give the contact information of a few women for our son to select. He met some of them, but often said the feelings were not right'

Among them is Auntie Zhou, a retired department saleslady, who came to the market 'help young people solve life problem' since 2010.

'I don't charge every candidate. It depends on their conditions,' said Ms Zhou.

She hinted that it's mostly free for male candidates, but for difficult female cases  such as desperate 'leftover women', those above the age of 28  she would charge 50 Yuan (5) introduction fee.

Ms Zhou added: 'This is also a great way for me to kill time. It occupies two days of my week.'

However, in the eyes of a sociologist, under the surface of the buzzing 'marriage market' there is a deep and serious social problem nowhere else to be seen in the world.

Sun Peidong, who has two PhDs in Sociology from Sciences Po in Paris and Zhongshan University in China, thinks the market reflects the collective anxiety of a whole generation, who were born after 1949 under Mao's communist ruling.

Ms Sun, 37, published her first book in 2012 which studied the phenomenon of what she refers to as the 'parental match-making corner', with the title of 'Who will marry my daughter'.

Now an Associate Professor of History at Fudan University in Shanghai, Ms Sun told MailOnline: 'The parents who go to the dating corner belong to a generation that China is most in debt to.

'They went through a great deal of hardship in their lives, from being sent to rural areas [by Mao Zedong] to do hard labour in their teenage years to being told [by Deng Xiaoping] to give birth to only one child after they got married to being quickly left out by the commercialisation China has today.'

Their purpose of going to the corner is to find a potential spouse for their only child, but in doing so they find common topics with so many other participants.

By talking with each other they are constructing a sense of community and are trying to solving the problem in a collective way, added Ms Sun.

Prospects: Many parents see material wealth and happiness as interlinked and look for things like salary and home ownership as particularly important when choosing a partner. Appearance is also considered important and many of the 'love CVs' on show include a photograph

Gossip: AQs well as looking for love with for their children, many parents use the marriage market to find shared interests and common ground with other parents

'In short, Mao's children are helping Deng's generation find potential spouses or candidates of marriage,' Ms Sun summarised.

The world's most unromantic yet practical speed dating is going stronger than ever at the People's Park. And it's unlikely to diminish any time soon.
Jefferson Heaver was shot and killed by a man he tried to help after seeing his car spin out on an icy road

Rosa McCollough-Leake hit another vehicle head on after hitting a patch of ice and crossing over into traffic

Madeline Scalf was killed when she lost control of her car and crashed into a tree in North Carolina

Nicole Alston says her husband, 44-year-old Officer Vernon Alston of Delaware, collapsed while shoveling snow

New Jersey woman and her baby were killed by carbon monoxide while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered by snow as victim's husband was clearing the vehicle

Pennsylvania woman Briahna Gerloff, 18, who was eight months pregnant, collapsed and died after shoveling snow Saturday; her unborn baby daughter, Kayliana, passed away as well

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A pregnant 18-year-old woman died shovelling snow in Pennsylvania during the monster storm that walloped the eastern US over the weekend, killing at least 41 people in eleven states and the District of Columbia.

Briahna Gerloff perished Saturday morning after spending time clearing snow outside her house in Pottstown.

The teen was eight months pregnant at the time of her death. Her unborn baby daughter, Kayliana, also passed away.

Relatives said Gerloff suffered from several pre-existing medical problems, including a heart rhythm disorder known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

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Two lives lost: Briahna Gerloff, 18, passed away Saturday after shoveling snow outside her Pottstown, Pennsylvania, home. The pregnant teen's unborn baby daughter, Kayliana, perished as well

Ailing: Gerloff, who was eight months pregnant, suffered from a heart rhythm disorder and other pre-existing medical conditions

I told her it probably wasnt a good idea for her to be outside shoveling, a family member told NBC 10. She wanted to do it anyway.

At around 9am Saturday, the relative went to Gerloff's home on 2nd Street to check on her and found her front door locked.

He eventually entered the residence through the basement door and found Gerloff lying unresponsive on the kitchen floor.

The woman's family member and a neighbor who came over to help called 911 and then began performing CPR on Gerloff, but to no avail.

Paramedics who arrived on the scene pronounced the expectant mother and her unborn baby dead.

A friend has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help with Gerloff's funeral costs. As of Monday morning, the campaign has drawn more than $1,500, surpassing the initial goal of $1,000.

Storm-related fatalities ranged from cars spinning out of control on the road, to carbon monoxide poisoning to heart attacks while shoveling snow.

Sashalynn Rosa, 23, and her son, Messiah, died of carbon monoxide poisoning after snow blocked the tailpipe of their car as they search for a parking place. The woman's three-year-old daughter, Saniyah, is in a critical condition in hospital in New Jersey.

All three were returning home to New Jersey in the family car with their father on Saturday night. Ms Rosa's partner, Felix Bonilla Jr, had been digging out the car while they sat inside to stay warm. With the engine on and the tailpipe clogged by snow however, the toxic gas seeped into the car in just minutes.

'It's hard to lose them like that', said Felix Bonilla Sr, the baby's grandfather. 'The doctors say they don't think she's (Saniyah) going to make it. The doctor says she has a slight chance to make it.

A 23-year-old New Jersey mom identified as Sashalynn Rosa (pictured) and her son Messiah (pictured) died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow. The woman's 3-year-old daughter (her face is muzzed) was also hurt

Madeline Scalf (above) a freshman at Lenior-Rhyne University who was killed when she lost control of her car and crashed into a tree on Saturday in North Carolina

Rosa McCollough-Leake (left) hit another vehicle head on after hitting a patch of ice and crossing over into oncoming traffic in North Carolina; U.S. Capitol Officer Vernon Alston (right) suffered a heart attack after shoveling snow outside his Delaware home

Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler (above) suffered a heart attack on Friday after he shoveled out his residence in Daleville

Good Samaritan Jefferson Heaver was shot and killed by the very man he tried to help after he saw a car spin out on an icy North Carolina road on Friday afternoon

The woman's baby daughter was also hurt and was hospitalized in 'very critical condition,' police said. Authorities believe they were watching other family members shovel snow and didn't realize what was happening.

An 82-year-old man who died after going into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in front of his home in Washington is the first person whose death is related to the snowstorm in the city.

The District of Columbia's Chief Medical Examiner, Roger A. Mitchell Jr. announced the man's death Sunday. Mitchell did not release the man's name or say when he died or where in the city he lived. He encouraged people shoveling to take breaks and make sure that they keep hydrated.

A U.S. Capitol Police officer died of a heart attack after shoveling snow at his home in Delaware. Nicole Alston says her husband, 44-year-old Officer Vernon Alston, collapsed on Saturday afternoon outside their home in Magnolia after he'd been shoveling snow for about an hour. She says he died within seconds.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Alston's death on Sunday, calling him 'a fixture on the Capitol grounds.'

Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine says in a statement that Alston was a 20-year veteran of the force.

Marvin Jacob Lee, 27, who has been charged with murder after he allegedly shot the North Carolina father who stopped to help him

A Kentucky transportation worker died Saturday while plowing snow-covered highways, officials said.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet identified him in a statement as Christopher Adams. The statement says Adams called a supervisor about 5.50am, saying his plow slid into a ditch. When the supervisor arrived, Adams was slumped over, unresponsive in his seat. A cause of death has not been released.

A man died in southeastern Kentucky when his car collided with a salt truck Thursday, state police said. Billy R. Stevens, 59, of Williamsburg was pronounced dead at the scene on state Route 92 in Whitley County.

Two people have died from heart attacks while shoveling snow in Maryland. A 49-year-old man suffered cardiac arrest while shoveling in Abingdon on Saturday, County Executive Barry Glassman said Sunday.

Officials in Prince George's County said a man collapsed and died Saturday while shoveling snow in Fort Washington. Bob Maloney, director of Baltimore's office of emergency management, said not one life was lost due to the storm in the city.

In New York, three people died while shoveling snow in New York City, police said. The New York Police Department's Chief of Department Jim O'Neill told reporters Saturday one person on Staten Island and two people in Queens died. He released no further details on the deaths. A police spokesman said the medical examiner's office will determine exactly how they died.

Another New York resident, 66-year-old Al Mansoor, was struck and killed by a snow plow clearing his driveway in Oyster Bay, Long Island, just after 2pm Sunday.

Nassau County Police say the private plow was clearing snow from the man's property on Cove Woods Road when it hit Mansoor.

The injured man was taken to North Shore Syosset Hospital where he was pronounced dead a short time later. Police say no crime is suspected.

In North Carolina six people have died in car accidents during the storm, authorities have said, including a 4-year-old boy who died Friday afternoon after the pickup truck carrying his family on Interstate 77 near Troutman spun out of control and crashed.

Also in North Carolina, a Good Samaritan was allegedly shot and killed by the very man he tried to help after he saw a car spin out on an icy North Carolina road on Friday afternoon.

Marvin Jacob Lee, 27, has been charged with the murder of Jefferson Heavner. Police said he struck Heavner once and then stood over his body and shot him 'numerous times'.

Heavner, 26, was among a group of people, including neighbors and a passing truck, who went to help when they saw a car spin out and become stuck on a Catawba County road around 5.20pm.

In Ohio a teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed Friday, the State Highway Patrol said. The truck failed to yield at a traffic light and hit the sled, which the ATV was pulling in Wheelersburg, the highway patrol said.

In Pennsylvania, four storm-related deaths have been reported as of Monday afternoon. Authorities say a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently after his car was buried in snow by a passing plow. David Perrotto, 56, was pronounced dead less than an hour after he was found Saturday night in Muhlenberg Township, according to John Hollenbach of the Berks County coroner's office.

Hollenbach says Perrotto was apparently trying to dig out his car. Investigators believe he either was in the car with the motor running to take a break or to try to get out of the space when a snow plow went by and buried the car, blocking the exhaust and preventing him from exiting. Another person trying to dig out their vehicle found the running car. Perrotto was pronounced dead at a hospital emergency room.

Two men, 54-year-old Cesar Bourbon, of Allentown, and an unnamed Halifax resident died while shoveling snow over the weekend.

Geneva College soccer player Nate Ferraco was killed in a crash on an icy road near Evans City, Pennsylvania.

Coming together: After a blizzard slammed into the east coast this weekend, people came out and engaged in winter activities such as snowball fights

Big fight: Video of the snowball fight shows Washington, D.C residents enjoying the snow after the enormous blizzard

Delays: Amtrak had limited services between Washington, D.C and New York. Here train 155 one of the limited trains approaches Seabrook Maryland a suburb outside of D.C almost 1.5 hours late of schedule

Trudging throughthe snow: People walk through two feet of snow in Downtown Washington D.C with the Washington Monument in the background

Cancellations: The departure boards at Union Station in Washington D.C show almost all trains cancelled on Sunday in the northeast and beyond

Fun in the snow: Residents of Belt Road in Washington, D.C, make the best of the snowstorm with a post-blizzard bonfire

Deep in snow: Snow is piled in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, on Sunday following the huge blizzard

Imprint: The imprint of a car license plate is left in the snow following the dig-out of vehicles in York, Pennsylvania

Digging: Residents of the Rodgers Forge neighborhood dig out their cars on January 24, 2016 in Baltimore, Maryland

Anne DesMarais digs her car out of the snow on January 24, 2016 in Baltimore, Maryland. Millions of people are digging themselves out after a record snow storm affected most of the Mid Atlantic States

Bleeker Street is seen in the aftermath of Saturday's Snow Storm, in Soho, New York on Sunday. A storm that brought New York to a standstill has moved off the coast with remnants trailing over parts of Long Island and Cape Cod

A decorated snowman stands in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York, City. Most of New York's streets were cleaned up over night after a huge snow storm slammed into the mid Atlantic states including New York

New York: People take photographs in the snow with the New York City skyline in the background in Central Park in New York

Pedestrians make there way through the slush and snow across Central Park West. The East Coast of the US is beginning to recover from a major blizzard that dumped near-record amounts of snow in the region

Leftovers: Beer and booze sits in the snow at a a post-blizzard bonfire, complete with marshmallows and mulled wine, on Belt Road in the Friendship Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. The nation's capital is beginning to recover from the blizzard, named Winter Storm Jonas, that dumped near-record amounts of snow in the Washington DC area

Skip Hampton pulls his 22 month old son Purcell along West Market Street, with his wife Sarah, after a morning of sledding on a nearby hill in North Carolina, while Refugio Cortes fills up on kerosene, which he and his wife use to heat their home

Cars sit buried in snow in Union City, New Jersey the day after the storm as residents enjoy a bit more down time before some serious shoveling

Snow covers the unplowed streets of the Federal Hill neighborhood in Baltimore as the sun rises on Sunday

Children slide in the snow at New York City's Central Park on Sunday as their parents watch over them

A resident digs her car out from the snow in Union City, New Jersey on Sunday as states began their clean-up efforts

Coastal floodwaters cover Brielle Road in the popular beachside town of Manasquan in New Jersey

Passers-by help push a stuck car out of the snow as another motorist tows it out in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. A winter storm has hit the East Coast, creating a blizzard with brutally high winds, dangerous inland flooding and white-out conditions. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe gestures during a conference call with members of the Virginia General Assembly in the Emergency Operation Center in Richmond, Va., Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. Portions of Virginia are under a blizzard warning. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A man walks by the Hudson River Shore in New Jersey on Sunday with the New York City skyline in the distance

Children in the nation's capital got some good news when it was announced that Congress had officially lifted the decades-old ban that forbid sledding down Capitol Hill

Clean-up is beginning in states across the county after 'life-threatening' storm Jonas battered the East Coast on Saturday (a snowplow clears snow in front of the U.S. Capitol Sunday morning)

A group of children participate in a giant snowball fight in Dupont Circle in Washington DC the day after Saturday's blizzard

Storm Jonas had left the East Coast covered with a think blanket of snow on Saturday as it hovers over the East Coast of the United States

Four people tragically died in South Carolina. Authorities say an elderly couple in Greenville died of probable carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ruby Bell, 86, and her husband, 87-year-old Robert Bell, were found dead at home by their son over the weekend, Greenville County Coroner Parks Evans said in an email. He said the time of death was believed to be Friday night.

Russell Watson, the Duncan Chapel Fire District chief, told The Greenville News that the couple had lost power during the storm and a relative had set up a generator in their garage. Watson said the relative left the garage door propped open with a ladder, but it somehow closed and the generator filled the house with carbon monoxide.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol says a 44-year-old man was killed after being struck by a vehicle that slid out of control after hitting a patch of ice. The crash happened Saturday afternoon in Greenville County, the highway patrol said in a news release.

Jimmy B. Thomas, 61, was driving a car that ran off a road near Jonesville early Saturday afternoon, hitting a ditch and then a tree.

In Tennessee a car slid off the roadway due to speed and slick conditions, killing the driver and injuring a passenger, the Knox County sheriff's department said.

A couple in a vehicle slid off an icy road and plummeted down a 300-foot embankment Wednesday night, killing the woman who was driving, said Carter County Sheriff Dexter Lunceford. Stacy Sherrill's husband, a passenger in the car, survived the crash. It took him several hours to climb the embankment and report the accident.

In Virginia the number of storm-related deaths in Virginia has risen to nine. A man was killed on Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in Virginia Beach that police blamed on speed and icy road conditions, and Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler died on Friday while shoveling snow outside his new house in Daleville, local news media reported on Sunday.

A 55-year-old man collapsed and died after walking home in Leesburg Saturday evening in the blizzard.

On Monday, the state medical examiner's office confirmed six other storm deaths. They included a single-vehicle crash in Chesapeake and five deaths in Hampton and southwest Virginia from hypothermia.

Now that the sunshine and snow play of Sunday has passed, the East Coast is facing a miserable Monday morning as airlines continue to cancel thousands of flights and even the federal government will remain shut down after Winter Storm Jonas.

Washington DC received the brunt of Jonas' wrath - 30 inches to be exact - forcing it to also shut schools on Monday and leaving public transportation in the city limited. DC Metro announced trains on limited lines will run every 20 to 25 minutes, adding that no fares will be charged.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport remained closed on Sunday to both incoming and outgoing flights, causing massive problems for travelers not just around the country but also the globe given the closure of Dulles.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Dulles and Reagan, said the snow and high winds made removal on the runways, roadways and parking lots difficult. Both airports announced limited flight operations would resume Monday.

State offices in Virginia and Maryland also announced they would remain closed on Monday and the House of Representatives said no votes will be held this week.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe cautioned that it would take a 'long time' to clean up the snow, calling it a 'major event', and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she could not give a timeline for when the streets would be cleared.

Joggers make their way along a snow covered road in New York's Central Park on Sunday where 26.8inches of snow fell over two days

Chase Coble works a snow shovel on West Washington Street as city crews worked to clear downtown streets and sidewalks in the aftermath of the winter storm on Saturday

People walk across the Williamsburg Bridget during a large winter storm in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday

A Virginia National Guard Humvee stuck in the snow near Washington DC during the major snow blizzard of 2016, Winter Storm Jonas

Gary Utley, 27, of Alexandria, snowboards behind a Jeep driven by his friend, as snow falls, in Alexandria, Virginia, on Saturday

People walk across the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday during the blizzard brought on by Storm Jonas

States across America began the process of digging their way out of record-breaking snowfall on Sunday after Winter Storm Jonas battered the nation's East Coast on Saturday, wreaking havoc on millions and turning major cities into ghost towns.

Ten states declared emergencies during the storm, which resulted in the cancellation of over 12,000 flights canceled across the country while stranding motorists in states for more than 24 hours in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

New York City, which came to a standstill by Saturday afternoon because of the hurricane-like winds and massive snowfall, reopened all subway lines and bus routes early Sunday morning while allowing cars back on the roads after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a ban on all non-emergency vehicles, though many streets in the nation's most populated city still remained buried under two feet of snow.

It was the second biggest blizzard since 1869 for the Big Apple where 26.8inches of snow was reported in Central Park and a record snowfall in Baltimore where residents got 30 inches of the white stuff. Glengary, West Virginia, topped the charts for the East Coast blizzard with an astonishing 40 inches of snowfall.

As for Jonas, the storm system is now heading across the Atlantic on 3,000 mile trip that is expected to make landfall later this week in the UK where it will once again showcase its violent storm force winds but couple that with heavy rain instead of snow.

Devastating coastal flooding in New Jersey caused by the storm is expected to continue as a result of the tides brought about by the full moon (a broken pier in Stone Harbor above)

A boat sinks off a dock near Stone Harbor Boulevard in New Jersey after a blizzard hit the region causing coastal flooding in some areas

New York City (above on Sunday morning) is opening up subways, mass transit and roadways after closing and shutting down the systems to deal with the massive snowfall, which accounted for the second biggest blizzard the city has seen since 1869

A resident shovels snow away from the entrance to his home in Union City, New Jersey on Sunday

One day after record snowfall covered the city and high winds kept most residents inside, the sun came out in Brooklyn

The skies were clear and sunny in Philadelphia on Sunday where over 24 inches of snow fell between Friday and Saturday

A girl tries to cross snow covered 15th street North West in Downtown Washington which has been covered in feet of snow on Saturday

A plow clears the parking lot at the Rutters Farm Store along the Susquehanna Trail in York, Pennsylvania, on Saturday

A group of kids slide down a hill in the snow near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Lower Manhattan, New York on Saturday

Another snowman watching 1600 Pennsylvania Ave was the 'SNOwden Snowman', modeled after Edward Snowden

A National Park Service plows Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, careful to avoid a lone snowman

Wrapped up warm against the cold, Times Square workers try desperately to clear snow from the streets of Times Square

Workers take a break in order to take selfies in Times Square as snow fell at a rate of up to 3 inches per hour, covering New York

A worker uses a snowblower to clear snow from Times Square in Manhattan on Saturday as tourists watch

People walk in the snow toward Chinatown's Friendship Archway in Washington after record amounts of snowfall on the East Coast

A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the East Coast to a standstill Saturday, dumping as much as 3 feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and shutting down the nation's capital

Super Storm Jonas was the deadliest blizzard to hit North America in at least five years, arriving almost to the exact date that the 2011 Groundhog Day Blizzard claimed at least 36 lives between January 31 and February 2 in the United States and Canada.

Jonas was also responsible for shutting down much of the air and land travel on the East Coast by Saturday afternoon, and even though the storm has moved on some airports, roads and public transportation systems have remained closed as they are still dealing with clean-up from the snow

More than 12,000 flights were canceled from Friday through Tuesday as states from New England to North Carolina wrestled with the massive snow dump.

Flight tracking service FlightAware said 3,505 flights scheduled for Sunday, 865 flights for Monday and 50 flights for Tuesday have been cancelled and around 1,000 flights were delayed Sunday.

With 3,100 flights failing to take off Friday and 4,511 being grounded on Saturday, the total of flights grounded was 12,031 for the five-day period.

Airports in New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore were resuming very limited service Sunday. The major airlines intended to resume service at all airports throughout the region by Monday, though more than 800 flights have been canceled for then.

Along with clearing snow and ice from their own facilities and equipment, airlines and train operators were dealing with how to get all their snowbound employees to work.

Delta expected to begin accepting its first arrivals Sunday afternoon at its New York hubs, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia, both of which got 30 inches of snow.

The airline said its teams began working before daybreak at both airports to de-ice aircraft and ground equipment and clear snow from ramp and terminal areas.

United Airlines said limited service might begin by late afternoon Sunday in New York City, but both major airports in the Washington DC area will remained closed for the day.

Airlines have also started to cut Monday service cancelling approximately 6,000 flights in addition to the 8,000 already-canceled weekend flights.

All major airlines issued waivers for travel over the weekend, allowing passengers to rebook onto earlier or later flights to avoid the storms, without having to pay an extra charge.

The MTA, in addition to closing part of New York City's subway system, also shut down Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North services.

Metro-North restored services at noon on Sunday and was fully operational out of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan by mid-afternoon.

It suffered a bit of a derailment shortly after 9:30am on Sunday however when one of their trains collided with a plow in Stamford, Connecticut, a major business hub which is home to General Electric and located approximately 45 minutes outside New York City.

The plow had become stuck on a crossing and the train was unable to stop in time to avoid an accident. No passengers were on the train and no injuries were reported according to the MTA.

Seven of the 12 branches of the Long Island Rail Road are expected to be fully operational by 5am Monday.

Amtrak was operating Sunday on all its routes, but with a reduced number of trains. Spokesman Marc Magliari said Sunday afternoon that the number of passengers was down from usual, but appeared to include many travelers who couldn't get around on other transportation modes.

It had not yet determined whether it would be back to normal operations on Monday, as it is still coordinating with commuter rail and bus lines to see how many Amtrak employees would be able to get to train stations and other work locations Monday.

A deadly blizzard with bone-chilling winds and potentially record-breaking snowfall slammed the eastern US on Saturday

A trio of snowplows attempts to clear snow from Broadway on the Upper West Side in New York on Saturday as snow continues overnight

A motorist shovels snow to free up a vehicle on the New Jersey Turnpike during a snowstorm after motorists were told to stay indoors

Icicles hang from the awning out the front of a store front in Georgetown, Washington, where up to three feet of snow was reported on Saturday

A statue of Andrew Jackson is covered in snow near the White House where up to ten inches of snow fell on Saturday

A car is stranded Third Avenue in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, on Saturday after several cities in the state were flooded by a high tide

The Stone Harbor Fire and Rescue bring Phil Lazenby, from Stone Harbor, to the Reeds Hotel after evacuating him from his home on Saturday

A North Wildwood firefighter helps local resident Joe Tolomeo from his flooded home on 12th Avenue in North Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday

Ice and water floods overtook several homes and businesses across North Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday

A car attempts to drive through the flooded streets of North Wildwood, New Jersey, on Saturday

High tides in North Wildwood, New Jersey, surpassed the tide of Hurricane Sandy according to North Wildwood city officials

Two people use cross country skis to get around the snow in front of the U.S. Capitol on Saturday

Meanwhile all regional rail service, with the exception of trains to the airport, has continued to remain suspended in Philadelphia, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority announced on Sunday.

In New York, Mayor de Blasio declared a 'winter weather emergency' early Saturday afternoon while announcing that all bus services and above-ground ground subway lines would no longer run in the city while also banning all non-emergency vehicles from the roads.

The lack of vehicles on the road made it easier for pedestrians to get around the city and all underground subway routes remained open throughout the storm, but despite this most residents stayed indoors rather than battle the snow and winds.

The blizzard was so strong at some points that two to three inches were falling per hour which is why the MTA revealed a revised subway map Saturday afternoon after limiting service, a rare occurrence in the city that closed all above-ground subways.

Mayor de Blasio applauded New York City's sanitation workers for getting neighborhoods clean and clear of snow and ice in remarkable time during a press conference Sunday morning where he was accompanied by a scene-stealing sign language interpreter whose animated motions and facial expressions made it difficult to focus on the man whose words he was interpreting.

Dumper trucks were brought to the streets in Washington to help deal with the feet of snow that has fallen since Friday

People carrying umbrellas walk in the snow past the White House where at least ten inches of snow has fallen in the last few hours

A snowman wearing the jacket of a local bakery stands on the street in Washington DC which has seen feet of snow fall in 24 hours

A pedestrian waits to cross the street as a truck carrying a load of snow passes in front on the National Mall in Washington

A man uses cross country skies as he goes down M Street NW in the snow, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016 in the Georgetown area of Washington

A man makes his way through the snow, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016 in the Georgetown area of Washington

Reece Davis, left, helps Scott Bailey dig out after getting stuck at SecurCare Self Storage on West Wendover Avenue in North Carolina

It was a situation remarkably similar to one experienced by his predecessor Michael Bloomberg, whose sign language interpreter Lydia Callis became an overnight celebrity for her transfixing delivery while appearing with New York City's then mayor in the days before and after Hurricane Sandy.

New York City also said they would be hiring individuals to shovel, paying them $13.50 an hour to clear fire hydrants, bus stops, crosswalks and other areas of the five boroughs.

'This was one of the worst storms to ever hit New York City, and we need all hands on deck to dig us out,' said Mayor de Blasio.

'As Sanitation's uniformed workers continue to focus their herculean efforts on clearing our city's streets, snow laborers will be critical in shoveling out other key locations, like crosswalks, hydrants, bus stops, and more.'

He also asked the city's residents to not walk in the middle of the street despite the fact that many sidewalks had not been shoveled now that cars were back on the road.

Mayor de Blasio was also forced to deal a bit of devastating news as well Sunday morning when he informed the youngest residents of the city that despite the massive snowfall schools would in fact be open on Monday.

Skip Hampton pulls his 22 month old son Purcell along West Market Street, with his wife Sarah, after a morning of sledding on a nearby hill in North Carolina, while Refugio Cortes fills up on kerosene, which he and his wife use to heat their home

Issabella Rickman slides down a hill on a sled during a blizzard in Arlington, Virginia on January 23, 2016. A deadly blizzard with bone-chilling winds and potentially record-breaking snowfall slammed the eastern US on Saturday

National Guard have been on hand to distribute water, food and fuel to the stranded drivers as the snow continues to fall

Traffic has been at a standstill for hours now on the Pennsylvania Turnpike stranding hundreds of motorists in the snow

A couple lays in over nine inches of snow with their dogs in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC on Saturday

SUSTAINED WIND GUSTS OF 35MPH OR MORE AND HEAVY SNOW IS WHEN A BLIZZARD BECOMES A SNOWSTORM Q: Is there a difference between a snowstorm and a blizzard? A: Yes. The National Weather Service says a snowstorm becomes a blizzard when it meets a couple of conditions for at least three hours: Sustained wind or gusts of 35 mph or greater, and heavy falling and blowing snow, the type that reduces visibility to less than one-quarter of a mile. Q: Why is this snowstorm so big? A: This blizzard is a case of all the normal ingredients in a big snowstorm coming together. A storm system traveled from the Pacific along a strong jet stream and picked up warm moisture from the Gulf Coast and off the East Coast to stoke the precipitation content. Cold air from the north made that come down as snow, but it wasn't too cold because that would limit a storm. Add to that low atmospheric pressure to the south and high atmospheric pressure to the north, and that means high winds. High winds mean blizzard conditions. It's moving slow, and that means the snow piles up. Instead of being done snowing in 12 hours it can go 36 hours - and that can mean three times the snow. Q: What about El Nino or global warming? Did they play a role? A: While both are still affecting Earth's climate and its weather, most meteorologists downplayed those as factors in this storm. Q: Is this a record? A: It's too early to tell. First, it has to stop snowing. And it may be difficult to measure because the high winds are causing snowdrifts. But meteorologists say this is likely to be in the top three for Washington, though it won't be so high-ranking in the context of the greater East Coast. Washington's biggest three-day snowfall at Reagan National Airport was 28 inches in 1922. Baltimore's was 26.8 in 2003. Central Park in New York City had its biggest snowfall of 26.9 inches in 2006. Q: Do they rate snowstorms like they do hurricanes and tornadoes? A: Yes, they do, but only after the fact. It's a rating system called the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, and it was created by National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini and winter weather expert Paul Kocin. It is based on how big a storm is and how many people feel it. There's a 1 to 5 scale. Kocin is expecting this storm to be a 4, which is called crippling, but not a 5, which is extreme. Advertisement

The kids of Washington DC got much better news when Mayor Muriel Bowser delivered her post-storm press conference on Sunday and said that schools would be closed on Monday.

Children in the nation's capital got an additional bit of good news when it was announced that Congress had officially lifted the decades-old ban that forbid sledding down Capitol Hill.

The effort was spearheaded by District of Columbia Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who added a provision into the approved December spending bill to lift enforcement of the ban once and for all

'Attention DC kids and families: Capitol Hill sledding ban has been lifted,' Norton tweeted. 'Go for it!'

George Washington University also announced that all classes would be canceled, and Georgetown University informed students that the main campus would be closed for the day and that on-site instruction was likewise canceled.

A soldier with the 275th Military Police company in a Humvee stops on I-395 as they assist a stranded motorist in the snow in Washington

Dan Rafalin, left, lifts his daughter, Delila Rafalin, 5, while playing in heavy snowfall with their family on Independence Mall in Philadelphia

Ten-year-old local Hayes Reger sleds around on the West Front Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building on Saturday

A woman uses snowshoes to walk in front of the Eisenhower executive office building during the snow storm on in Washington on Saturday

People walk and bike down Broad Street in Philadelphia, just one of the major East Coast cities covered with a blanket of snow on Saturday

Workers in Washington D.C. have been working frantically on Saturday to try and keep roads and sidewalks open as snow continues to fall for the second day, and will not stop until Sunday

In Washington D.C. there is more than a foot of snow on the ground on Saturday while two feet is possible before Sunday, making it the worst snowfall the city has ever received

Uniform secret service officers push a police car that is stuck in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington D.C.

More than 85million Americans affected by the storm have been advised to keep their homes accessible during the storm in case emergency crews need to enter (pictured, a woman attempts to dig her car out of the snow in Washington)

A homeless man walks on snow covered 14th street North West in Washington on Saturday as the area was battered by snow

Millions of Americans are battling with the elements on Saturday as Jonas brought hurricane-force winds and feet of snow to ten states

A face on the memorial to Judge John Handley, Handley High School benefactor, peers out through the more than 16 inches of blowing snow that has fallen in Winchester, Virginia, on Saturday

A man walks in Greenwich, Connecticut, amid heavy snowfall across the East Coast that is expected to last for the rest of the weekend

Bryan Gold skis down 13th Street in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington on Saturday as it looked almost certain that the state will break its all-time snow record with two feet having already fallen in some places

A worker cleans snow off the platform at the Metro North Train station in Greenwich, Connecticut, where heavy snow fell on Saturday

Michelle Fox plays with her dogs Peaches, jumping, and Annie as snow continues to pile up in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania

City staff struggled to keep sidewalks open as snow fell at rates of up to three inches per hour throughout most of Saturday

Times Square, which is usually filled with tourists at all hours, was virtually deserted on Saturday as workers tried to clear the snow away

Tourists pose with the Wall Street Bull in New York City, despite the treatorous weather

A couple of volunteers help a driver push is car out of the snow in New York City on Saturday

Visitors brave the driving winds and heavy snowfall to take a stroll through Central Park on Saturday afternoon

A snow plow clears Route 206 during a winter storm near Trenton, New Jersey, where flood were also reported on Saturday

A masked man walks on King Street as snow falls in Alexandria, Virginia, on Saturday amid record snowfall across the East Coast

A man with ice and snow frozen to his face makes his way through New York amid heavy snow across the whole of the East Coast Saturday

A delivery man on a bike navigates his way through Manhattan on Saturday as snow continues to fall an is due to continue overnight

A parent and their child dragging sleds cross the road in Manhattan as a snow plow makes its way past on Saturday

A young woman tries to make her way out of a store in lower Manhattan on Saturday before getting caught in snow

Central park was also covered with snow on Saturday, where six inches fell in the first few hours of the morning and kept building at a rate of three inches every hour

Winds of up to 50mph and heavy snow in Manhattan on Saturday caused near white-out conditions as storm Jonas arrived

Snow is continuing to fall across New York on Saturday and is due to continue overnight, bringing as much as 42 inches in the next 24 hours

People walked down Canal Street in New York City after cars were banned from travel on Saturday

People are seen here walking on Canal Street in Chinatown in Lower Manhattan in New York City on Saturday

A woman carefully enters Columbia Circle subway stop, where the stairs were covered in packed snow, on Saturday

Snow is seen on a bench and on the platform at Canal Street Station in Lower Manhattan in New York City on Saturday

A NYC transit worker shovels snow from an above-ground subway platform in New York City before the above-ground trains were closed on Saturday

Cab drivers work to remove their cars on Fifth Avenue in New York City after snow covered the streets, making it difficult to drive

People use a wall surrounding the Washington Monument to walk above the snow after a snowstorm on Saturday

People cross-country ski past the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall after a snowstorm on Saturday after snow blanketed the city

Times Square is seen while snow falls in New York City on Saturday. The city saw more than 25 inches as storm Jonas hit

Women make their way through Times Square in New York as storm Jonas dumps up to 24 inches of snow on to the streets

Pedestrians struggle through the New York snow in Manhattan on Saturday after the city virtually shut down in the face of storm Jonas

Workers have been battling all day in attempts to keep tourist attractions such as Times Square free of snow amid blizzard conditions

While everyone else was bundled up, the Naked Cowboy in Times Square in New York City still bared it all to pose for pictures

Times Square Alliance workers shovel snow off the viewing steps as New York hunkers down under storm Jonas which hit on Saturday

Bethany Wallace loads her car with groceries outside the Stop and Shop in Marstons Mills, Massachusetts, on Saturday

A U.S. Army SUV makes its way down 7th Avenue during the snowstorm in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York

Meanwhile in Virginia people took pictures next to a massive pile of snow that was cleared from the roads on Saturday

Workers struggle to keep the streets open in New York where all driving has been banned as a precautionary measure on Saturday

Ten inches of snow fell in Manhattan on Saturday morning with more expected to come as winter storm Jonas advanced up the East Coast

Forecaster Ryan Maue said he was out of words to describe how bad the storm was by Saturday afternoon, adding: 'This is going to be one of those generational events, where your parents talk about how bad it was.'

That was certainly the case in several seaside resort towns in New Jersey were temporarily isolated by close-to-freezing flood waters when the tide rushed in on Saturday, which hampered local firefighters in one town as they battled a restaurant blaze.

As a result of the snow and flooding in the state 100,000 homes were left without power. New Jersey Transit also shut down on Saturday and had yet to reopen on Sunday morning as workers began the process of clearing tracks.

The winter storm created near-record high tides along the Jersey Shore, surpassing the tide of Hurricane Sandy in some areas according to North Wildwood city officials.

'When the water just started rushing down, it was as impressive as some of the videos you saw of Japan during the tsunamis,' said Jason Pellegrini, owner of Steak Out restaurant in Sea Isle City, who was trapped inside by floodwaters.

The East Coast has been blanketed by snow on Saturday as winter storm Jonas has brought up to two feet of snow to major cities while ten states have declared emergencies (pictured, Washington D.C. on Saturday)

A man poses for a photo on a snow pile during a snow storm in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York on Saturday night

(L-R) Mia Fraser, Zakiya Cordice, Tierra Sinclair, and Raina Schoen Thomas walk through the snowy streets of Times Square on Saturday

Dozens of people take part in an impromptu snow ball fight during a snow storm in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York

This image made available by NASA via Twitter posted on Saturday by space station commander Scott Kelly, shows a view from the International Space Station of a storm passing over the United States

This composite satellite image of the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Ocean on Saturday from the NASA MODIS instruments Aqua and Terra shows snow cover over most the northern USA and Canada

'It came in that fast,' he said.

Another restaurant, The Lobster House, was partly submerged by the rising tide more than 20 miles away in Cape May.

'It touched everywhere,' said Keith Laudeman, the third-generation owner of the nearly century-old establishment on Cape May Harbor. 'It even got to the equipment we moved and never thought would get touched.'

HIGHEST WINDS Assateague Island, Maryland - 85mph Dewey Beach, Delaware - 75mph Langley Air Force Base, Virginia - 75mph Nantucket, Massachusetts - 73mph Good Luck Point, New Jersey - 72mph Poquoson, Virginia - 71mph -The Weather Channel Advertisement

The water quickly receded. And Laudeman said he has a whole crew of people preparing to clean the place so they can reopen in the coming days.

'I had more water than I had when Sandy came through,' he said. 'We had a lot of wind. Fortunately, none of the boats broke loose.'

The barrier islands near Atlantic City were experiencing significant tidal flooding, said Linda Gilmore, the county's public information officer.

The blizzard was so strong that seven locations near Washington unofficially passed the 30 inches of snow mark as of 1pm Saturday while 36 areas had recorded at least two feet of snow at that time.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport remained closed on Sunday to both incoming and outgoing flights, causing massive problems for travelers not just around the country but also the globe given the closure of Dulles.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Dulles and Reagan, said the snow and high winds made removal on the runways, roadways and parking lots difficult.

The authority said passengers should contact their airline directly for specific flight information and to re-book any flights if necessary and that they were continuing to evaluate conditions to make decisions about when to open the runways.

Both airports announced limited flight operations would resume Monday.

People walk through the streets of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday during the blizzard

A pedestrian carrying several bags crosses a street through blowing snow in front of Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Saturday

A United States Coast Guard navigation buoy is seen on the 41st Street beach after breaking from its anchors and drifting five miles in Ocean City, New Jersey

Max Sorensen, 23, paddles through his flooded neighborhood in Stone Harbor, New Jersey with a kayak on Sunday

Robert Artese operates a front end loader clearing sand from a storm water outlet so the accumulated ice and water can drain into the ocean in Margate City, New Jersey

Crews worked to clear the Long Island Rail Road on Sunday with the hope it could be restored in time for Monday morning's rush

A worker from a power company works to restore power on a flooded street in North Wildwood, New Jersey

A man walks on a flooded street at Fairmount and Arizona Avenues on his way to work at a casino in Atlantic City

A view of Arizona Avenue looking towards the bay from Fairmount Avenue is seen as high tides flood neighborhood streets in Atlantic City

Jonas' massive winds and near-record snowfall could not stop the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live from showing up to work as they went ahead with this week's show despite the weather (NBC Studio entrance above on Saturday)

A couple kisses each other on top of a pile of snow in Washington DC on Sunday in front of the Washington Monument

New York children took advantage of the deep snow and hills of Central Park for most of the weekend

Fred Leach, of East Falmouth, Massachusetts, removes snow from a walkway near boats in winter storage at Green Pond Marina

A young boy jumps over a snow wall along the snow covered streets of the East Village, a day after winter storm Jonas

An active senior braves the cold and gets in some winter fitness as he snowshoes through Central Park Sunday morning

A snow covered bicycle is stuck in a snow bank on the the Lower East side, a day after winter storm Jonas hit New York

Ureil Pascual and his brother, Isaac roll around on a snowy sidewalk in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on Sunday

People sled on a hill at the U.S. Capitol after Winter Storm Jonas swept over the nation's capital a day earlier with record snowfall in areas

People walk through the snow covered streets of Union Square, a day after winter storm Jonas in New York City

A woman in New York City drags a young girl through New York City's Central Park in a sled

These same conditions that made flights a problem in the area did not however stop members of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment Tomb Sentinels from keeping up their post guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Solider at Arlington National Cemetery, with a Sentinel stationed at the national landmark throughout the storm.

The weather also could not keep Tian Tian indoors, as the Smithsonian Zoo's giant panda was seen on video throwing snow on his head and even licking it off his feet, not bothered at all by the freezing temperature and gale-force winds.

The snow, ice and gusting winds are also being blamed for the collapse of a roof at a historic Virginia theater near the Chesapeake Bay.

The Donk's Theater roof gave in Friday as the massive winter storm gripping the East Coast swept into Mathews County, about 75 miles east of Richmond. No one was injured.

The county's chief building official, Jamie Wilks, said the theater was a total loss, according to the Daily Press of Newport News. He said the building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The theater opened in 1947 as a movie house. It closed in the 70s but was resurrected as a country music venue, ultimately earning the title as 'Home of Virginia's Lil' Ole Opry.'

Dolly Parton was among the country entertainers who performed at Donk's.

The powerful winter storm pummeling much of the United States also stymied the US. military on Saturday.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter was heading home from a five-day trip to Paris and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. But his high-tech aircraft - known as the Doomsday Plane - wasn't able to land at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland as originally planned.
A 23-year-old mother and her one-year-old son have died of carbon monoxide poisoning after snow blocked the tailpipe of their car as they searched for a parking place.

The mom was identified on Sunday as Sashalynn Rosa and her son was named Messiah.

Miss Rosa, 23, and her son, Messiah, died of carbon monoxide poisoning after snow blocked the tailpipe of their car as they search for a parking place. The woman's three-year-old daughter, Saniyah, is in a critical condition in hospital in New Jersey.

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A 23-year-old New Jersey mom identified as Sashalynn Rosa and her son Messiah died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow

Dead: The woman's 3-year-old daughter (her face is muzzed) was also hurt and was hospitalized in 'very critical condition,' police said. Police say they believe that the mom and her family were watching people shovel snow and did not realize what was happening

A mother and her one-year-old son have died of carbon monoxide poisoning after snow blocked the tailpipe of their car as they looked for a parking place near their home in Passaic, New Jersey (Union City, NJ, pictured)

All three were returning home to New Jersey in the family car with their father on Saturday night. Ms Rosa's partner, Felix Bonilla Jr, had been digging out the car while they sat inside to stay warm.

At 8pm, the father got out to shovel snow from a parking space.

By the time he got back to the car at 8.11pm, his wife and children were unconscious inside, the report states.

All three were transported to St Mary's Hospital in Passaic.

The mother and son were pronounced dead immediately.

The daughter remained in a critical condition on Sunday afternoon.

'It's hard to lose them like that', Felix Bonilla Sr, the baby's grandfather, told ABC news. 'The doctros say they don't think she's going to make it. Doctor says she has a slight chance to make it.

An initial investigation found it is highly likely the family was infected by carbon monoxide because the car's tailpipe was blocked.

The tailpipe is used to funnel out toxic fumes from the engine.

If a tailpipe is blocked, carbon monoxide - a lethal colorless, odorless gas - seeps into the car.

'They were staying warm while the father was shoveling the vehicle out,' Detective Andy White said.

'Its a tragic incident,' White added.
'New Jersey has someone in charge who knew what he was doing,' Christie also said during the

New Jersey coastal towns are dealing with a second day of massive flooding brought on by Winter Storm Jonas in a situation that has become frighteningly similar to what happened to the same areas in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy.

Residents of Atlantic City, Wildwood, Manasquan and Cape May are just a few of the almost 100,000 who were left without power in the state as record storm surges left streets underwater, eroded beaches along the coast and even forced some to evacuate their homes.

One person who did not stick around to deal with the aftermath of the storm however is Governor Chris Christie, who after flying in on Friday and declaring his 17th snow emergency in six years headed back up to New Hampshire on Sunday morning to continue his presidential campaign.

It was there that Christie championed his handling of the storm during a town hall appearance, comparing how he dealt with the blizzard to fighting ISIS.

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Chris Christie (above on Saturday during Winter Storm Jonas) compared responding to a blizzard to fighting ISIS during a town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Sunday

'Whether it's an impending storm or whether it's the scourge of radical jihadist, you have to make people be safe and secure,' said Christie (flooding in Manasquan on Sunday above)

He also said he was glad that not one life was lost in the state due to the storm (a power company employee attempts to restore power in Wildwood)

'New Jersey has someone in charge who knew what he was doing,' Christie also said during the campaign stop of why the state weathered the storm so well (Atlantic City above on Sunday)

Max Sorensen, 23, paddles through his flooded neighborhood in Stone Harbor, New Jersey

'New Jersey has someone in charge who knew what he was doing,' Christie said while speaking to voters in the New England state.

'The reason I knew what I was doing is because I've done it a lot of times before.'

He then added; 'It's not that I was innately born with the ability to deal with snow emergencies or hurricanes, I've done it. You learn.'

That is when he dropped his comparison between preparing for a storm and taking on a terrorist organization.

'Whether it's an impending storm or whether it's the scourge of radical jihadist, you have to make people be safe and secure,' said Christie at a stop in Portsmouth.

'Im proud that we didn't lose one life in New Jersey yesterday because the people of New Jersey, as crazy as it seems, they listen to me.'

ABC News reports that when Christie was later asked what his thoughts were on people who believe he left New Jersey too soon after the storm, he replied; 'I haven't heard anybody who said that.'

Rich Pass sprays a bleach cleaner in his garage to prevent mold after flooding in Sea Isle City on Sunday

usie Baumgardner, of Longport watches out a window, as she and father drive along a flooded street to check on relatives early Sunda

Robert Artese operates a front end loader clearing sand from a storm water outlet so the accumulated ice and water in Margate City

A man walks on a flooded street at Fairmount and Arizona Avenues on his way to work at a casino in Atlantic City

A United States Coast Guard navigation buoy is seen on the 41st Street beach after breaking from its anchors and drifting five miles

Christie also took some time to attack Marco Rubio during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union after the Florida senator made light of the storm and joked that at least it had shut down Washington DC and stopped President Obama from using his 'veto pen.'

He said the remark was an example of Rubio's 'real immaturity' and pointed out that when he made this joke 'families were freezing in the cold, losing power and some of them losing their loved ones.'

He then added; 'That's a difference between a United States senator who has never been responsible for anything and a governor who is responsible for everything that goes on in your state.'

Rubio's spokesman Alex Conant hit back at Christie by saying in an email that he did not even plan on returning to New Jersey for the storm and only did so after being 'shamed into it.'

The calculated comment has yet to draw a response from Christie, who many began to discuss as a possible Republican nominee for president in the wake of his handling of another storm - Hurricane Sandy.

The often polarizing politician drew praise from members of both sides of the aisle for his response to the devastating weather event which ravaged his state leaving over 300,000 homes damaged or destroyed and claiming the lives of 37 residents.

Christie put aside his own party affiliations as well, not only working alongside President Obama but also praising his support for both him and his state after the super storm.

He and Obama even shared a few public handshakes as they toured the state to examine the destruction, which many of his opponents have called a hug when attacking the governor.

A preliminary analysis released by Christie just weeks after the storm estimated that the state suffered roughly $29.4 billion in overall losses as a result of damages to their transit systems and the Jersey Shore.

It is still too soon to know how much the damages brought on by Winter Storm Jonas will cost the state, and while the flooding is not getting any worse in some coastal towns it is still wreaking havoc on the lives of many in New Jersey.

The biggest issue it seems is the erosion of the beaches.

The storm created near-record high tides along the Jersey Shore, surpassing the tide of Hurricane Sandy in some areas according to North Wildwood city officials.

'When the water just started rushing down, it was as impressive as some of the videos you saw of Japan during the tsunamis,' said Jason Pellegrini, owner of Steak Out restaurant in Sea Isle City, who was trapped inside by floodwaters.

'It came in that fast,' he said.

Another restaurant, The Lobster House, was partly submerged by the rising tide more than 20 miles away in Cape May.

'It touched everywhere,' said Keith Laudeman, the third-generation owner of the nearly century-old establishment on Cape May Harbor. 'It even got to the equipment we moved and never thought would get touched.'

The water quickly receded. And Laudeman said he has a whole crew of people preparing to clean the place so they can reopen in the coming days.

'I had more water than I had when Sandy came through,' he said. 'We had a lot of wind. Fortunately, none of the boats broke loose.'

The barrier islands near Atlantic City were also experiencing significant tidal flooding as seen in photos released Sunday.

Christie said on Sunday he is not concerned with the flooding in the state, which he classified as 'moderate,' or the damages suffered as a result of the storm.
It's a good day for The Donald as two new polls have him out in front in Iowa, with just a little more than a week left before the Feb 1. caucuses.

Today's new CBS News/YouGov poll has Donald Trump up by five points in the Hawkeye state, receiving 39 percent of the vote to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's share of 34 percent.

A second poll released by Fox News shows Trump with an 11 point lead, with 34 percent of the vote to Cruz's 23 percent.

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Donald Trump has is five points ahead of Ted Cruz in one poll out of Iowa and 11 points ahead of the Texas senator in another

Ted Cruz was giving Donald Trump a run for his money, but Trump may have been boosted by Sarah Palin's endorsement in Iowa last week, among other things

Donald Trump has regained the lead in Iowa in the newest Fox News poll. Ted Cruz is back in second place while Marco Rubio is in third

Iowa was the closest contest for Trump, who's polling by wide margins among national Republicans as well.

Two weeks ago, he was being bested by Cruz in a Fox News poll, receiving 23 percent, while Cruz was narrowly ahead with 27 percent, but now the billionaire has regained his ground.

Trump is coming off two strong weeks, winning the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and deflecting attacks from Cruz about his 'New York values.'

Meanwhile, the governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, encouraged Republicans not to vote for Cruz over his views on ethanol subsidies. S

'We tend to over-interpret every little thing in a presidential race, but here we actually have solid evidence Trump didn't just win last week in Iowa  he won it by enough to put some distance between himself and Cruz,' said Fox's Republican pollster Daron Shaw.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is the only candidate also polling in the double digits in Iowa.

In the CBS New/YouGov poll Rubio receives 13 percent of the Republican primary vote, versus the 12 percent he gets in the Fox News survey.

Moving on to New Hampshire, the Granite State is still the Donald Trump show.

The CBS News/YouGov poll has Trump out in front receiving 34 percent of the vote.

Cruz has moved up to 16 percent, while Rubio is at 14 percent.

Donald Trump is way out front in New Hampshire, according to two news polls from CBS News and Fox News Channel

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is receiving 10 percent, followed by Jeb Bush and Chris Christie with 7 percent, Ben Carson at 5 percent, Carly Fiorina with 4 percent and Rand Paul with 3 percent.

The Fox poll also has Trump, Cruz and Rubio in the three top spots.

Trump has a 17 point lead in this poll, capturing 31 percent of the vote.

Cruz has 14 percent, Rubio has 13 percent, Kasich receives 9 percent.

Like the CBS poll, Bush and Christie are tied at 7 percent.

Paul is tied with Carson at 5 percent and Fiorina has 3 percent support.

In the Fox poll, Mike Huckabee is polling at 1 percent. In the CBS poll, he and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum received zero percent support.

CBS also surveyed Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and found that Bernie Sanders currently has more support in the first two contest states.

In Iowa, it's super close, with Sanders only beating Clinton by one point.

Sanders receives 47 percent in the new poll to Clinton's 46 percent.

In New Hampshire, the Vermont senator is up by double digits.
An international student working at a takeaway food shop has been underpaid thousands of dollars by her boss because she was not an Aussie.

The Nepalese student who - could not be named for privacy reasons  was underpaid more than $23,000. She also alleges that her employer threatened to cancel her visa if she complained about her low wages to the Fair Work Ombudsman.

A media release from the Fair Work Ombudsman states that the 27-year-old was paid a flat rate as low as $12 an hour to work at the Health Express take-away food outlet at DFO South Wharf in Melbourne.

The student worked at the Health Express take-away food outlet at DFO South Wharf in Melbourne (stock image

The student alleged that Health Express owner Jeffrey Herscu made it clear she would be paid less because she was an overseas worker.

When I came for the interview, he said that I will give you the job, but as you are not an Aussie, I will be paying you a lesser amount, she told Fair Work inspectors who investigated the case.

It was really embarrassing for me. I had Australian friends who were doing the same kind of work, but were getting paid over $20 an hour.

An investigation discovered the casual employee was short-changed more than $23,500 between September, 2013 and March, 2015.

27-year-old also had her name removed from the Health Express roster after she returned from Nepal after caring for her sick father (stock image)

An investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman discovered the casual employee was short-changed more than $23,500 (stock image)

She was entitled to be paid up to $23.15 an hour for normal work, up to $27.78 on Saturdays, up to $32.41 on Sundays and up to $50.93 on public holidays.

To make matters worse, the student returned to Nepal for several weeks to care for her sick father, only to find she had been removed from the Health Express roster on her return.

The woman was one of two international students who complained to the Fair Work Ombudsman that Health Express was underpaying them.

A second male student, 31, from India, was paid a flat rate of between $16.47 and $18.52 an hour between June, 2010 and March, 2015, resulting in an underpayment of more than $27,300.

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James (pictured) said that Mr Herscu and his company have been asked to sign an Enforceable Undertaking

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says Mr Herscu and his company have been asked to sign an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) aimed at encouraging behavioural change.

'It is important that there is a fair, competitive environment for employers who are doing the right thing by creating a level playing field in relation to business costs,' Ms James said.

'Anyone operating a business needs to ensure they take the time to understand our workplace laws applicable to their workplace.

'Employers simply cannot undercut the minimum lawful entitlements of their employees based on what they think the job may be worth, what the employee is happy to accept, what other businesses are paying, or what the job may pay in their country of origin.'
Targeted: Olive Cooke, one of Britain's oldest and longest-serving poppy sellers

Charities exposed by the Mail for preying on the old and vulnerable have one last chance to put their house in order, MPs warn today.

In a devastating report, they will say the well-paid bosses of some good causes have been 'incompetent or wilfully blind'.

And they call for jail terms of up to two years for fundraisers who routinely abuse personal data. The MPs insist statutory regulation will be needed if the charities cannot restore public trust.

The report by the public administration committee says the Mail's charity investigation last summer reached the 'highest standards of ethical investigative reporting'.

After weeks of undercover work, we disclosed how the NSPCC, the British Red Cross, Oxfam and Macmillan were using outrageous 'boiler room' tactics to raise cash.

Firms paid by them were regularly contacting homes on the official 'no-call' list. They were also prepared to take money from those who revealed they had dementia.

Staff were ordered to be 'brutal' and 'ferocious' when asking for cash and told even the old and poor 'have no excuse' not to give.

In the wake of the revelations, David Cameron announced a crackdown  including the establishment of a single, new regulator.

At the same time the administration committee, led by senior Tory backbencher Bernard Jenkin, ordered a probe  taking evidence from the Mail and the charities we exposed.

In its report, out today, Mr Jenkin declares: 'This sorry episode has damaged the reputation of charities across the board, including those who have behaved properly, and hindered their ability to raise essential funds.

'This is the last chance for the trustees of charities, who allowed this to happen, to put their house in order. Ultimately, the responsibility rests with them. No system of regulation can substitute for effective governance by trustees.

'All the chief executives of the charities that gave oral evidence to us admitted they did not scrutinise fundraising by sub-contractors enough.

'The only possible conclusion is that, by failing in this responsibility, trustees were either not competent, or wilfully blind to what was being done in their names.'

Investigation: After weeks of undercover work, the Daily Mail disclosed how the NSPCC, the British Red Cross, Oxfam and Macmillan were using outrageous 'boiler room' tactics to raise cash (file image)

The committee says that trustees must now take proper control of the methods their organisations use or face statutory regulation.

The Government last night said it was prepared to take this step itself, if more abuses came to light.

The MPs call for the Information Commissioner to be given the power to impose jail sentences of up to two years on those caught unlawfully obtaining personal data.

This new power could be used to target call centre staff who flout data protection rules.

MPs PRAISE MAIL INVESTIGATION The Mails devastating charity expose is praised by MPs today for the highest standards of ethical investigative reporting. The public administration and constitutional affairs committee says our probe was so powerful even the charities involved had commended it. The MPs began their inquiry in direct response to our investigation into scandalous boiler room tactics, which followed three weeks of undercover reporting by Mail Investigations Editor Katherine Faulkner. In todays report, they detail how we uncovered a number of abuses by fundraisers and charities. The report says these included ignoring the Telephone Preference Service, which allows consumers to opt out of receiving unsolicited telephone calls. They also cite charities seeking donations from vulnerable people, including those with dementia, and treating vulnerable and elderly people as fair targets. In evidence to MPs, our reporter recounted shocking examples of the exploitation of pensioners. Our revelations caused uproar and within a week the Government decided to act, with David Cameron announcing new laws and a major review of fundraising. The review recommended a total overhaul of charity regulation and a register of vulnerable people. Advertisement

They say the Charity Commission, which will oversee the work of the new regulator, should hold annual public hearings into the workings of charities  including where they are accused of wrongdoing.

This could include instances where charity bosses would require legal privilege in order for them to discuss allegations they, or their staff, have broken the law. In the past, there had been three different bodies responsible for regulating charities  none of which had a grip on fundraising.

The new regulator that will replace them  as yet unnamed  is due to begin work shortly.

MPs say the watchdog should seek out and encourage the public to report dubious practices.

During their inquiry, they heard that some charities, including Great Ormond Street Hospital and Macmillan Cancer Support, made it difficult or impossible for donors to block further communication from them or other charities.

Personal information was sold on and fell into the hands of scamming companies. Vulnerable and elderly people were seen as 'fair targets' by some organisations.

The committee was told the Mail found telephone fundraising contractor GoGen ignored the Telephone Preference Service, which allows customers to opt out of receiving unsolicited calls.

They even had a script to allow fundraisers to continue to press for a donation even after discovering a vulnerable individual was confused or suffered from dementia.

The MPs say that they have 'no doubt' that most UK charities did not engage in such practices but the behaviour of some has damaged the reputation of all and made it harder for them to raise money.

The report finds that fundraising is 'increasingly competitive' and a large charity can spend more than 20million a year trying to bolster its coffers. It points to evidence suggesting that many charities believe they could carry on with business as usual.

The committee says: 'It would be a sad and inexcusable failure of charities to govern their own behaviour should statutory regulation become necessary.'

Crackdown: David Cameron took action against charity bosses in the wake of the Daily Mail's investigation

MPs highlight the fact that, in September last year, Civil Society Magazine reported a poll of charity professionals that showed 80 per cent were 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' with the ethics of their charities' fundraising.

These practices were thrust into the spotlight last year after the death of 92-year-old Olive Cooke, one of Britain's oldest and longest-serving poppy sellers.

Her family described how she had been receiving repeated requests from charities for donations with up to 267 letters a month as well as regular phone calls from their fundraisers.

A Government-commissioned review chaired by Sir Stuart Etherington put forward plans to tackle the problems, including proposals for a new regulator to be convened by the industry.

This self-regulator will have clear guidelines on not deliberately targeting the vulnerable.

Until our investigation, charities were not required to have any written agreement with fundraisers over the ethics of how money is raised.
The Tory ceasefire on Europe was crumbling yesterday as MPs attacked the Prime Minister for trying to strong-arm them into the referendum In campaign and being too feeble in his EU renegotiation demands.

They accused No 10 of pressuring MPs to join the pro-EU Conservatives for Reform in Europe group, led by ex-minister Nick Herbert.

Eurosceptics believe it is a front organisation for No 10 and say MPs have been sent letters or received phone calls asking them to sign up, despite David Cameron insisting the referendum will be a free vote.

The Tory ceasefire on Europe was crumbling yesterday as MPs attacked the Prime Minister for trying to strong-arm them into the referendum In campaign and being too feeble in his EU renegotiation demands

They accused No 10 of pressuring MPs to join the pro-EU Conservatives for Reform in Europe group, led by ex-minister Nick Herbert (pictured), which some have described as 'a front'

The group has also set up a shadow whips operation to count the number of Tory MPs who have agreed to back the Prime Minister.

Significantly, Mr Cameron sent his parliamentary aide, Gavin Williamson, to the groups first meeting last Wednesday. One MP said it had been made clear to them that a free vote doesnt mean a free pass.

SINGLE MARKET IS A 'DISASTER FOR EXPORTS,' NEW STUDY WARNS Britains membership of the EU single market has been not far short of a disaster for exports, a study warns today. The report by the Civitas think-tank was seized on by those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU as an example of how the UK has nothing to fear if it votes to quit. Big business and the In campaign have repeatedly argued that quitting the single market would be a disaster. But, according to the internationally-respected academic Michael Burrage, export growth to the EU has been strongest among non-EU countries since the foundation of the single market in 1992. By contrast, the growth in the value of UK goods exported to other member states has steadily declined since we joined it. Mr Burrage said: In terms of the growth of exports of goods, non-member countries have been its main beneficiaries. While the single market cannot be counted a success in export terms for the EU as a whole, for the UK it must be counted at the very least a massive disappointment, and not far short of a disaster. The study will trigger a row with those campaigning for Britain to remain in the EU. Advertisement

Mr Cameron will visit Brussels next month to try to finalise renegotiations on Britains relationship with the EU before putting the deal to the country in a referendum.

More than 40 backbenchers have criticised him for refusing to meet them to discuss firmer proposals on immigration and restoring sovereignty. Senior backbencher John Baron said the refusal signals No 10 has no intention to pitch for a fundamental change in Britains relationship with the EU.

And ex-Cabinet minister Liam Fox said he had not given up his medical career to watch a Tory Prime Minister hawking a begging bowl around Europe for minor changes on welfare.

Party associations have been told that if they wish to have an Out speaker, they must also put a pro-Brussels enthusiast on the bill. An insider in the leave campaign said: The whiff of a stitch-up grows stronger. The divisions in the Tory party were laid bare by a spat between Mr Herbert and Bernard Jenkin on the merits of an emergency brake on immigration.

The plan is being suggested by Brussels as an alternative to Mr Camerons proposal to ban EU migrants from getting in-work benefits for the first four years they are in the UK.

It would allow for a temporary limit on free movement rules if the economy or benefits system became overwhelmed, but only if Brussels consented.

Mr Jenkin told Radio 4: We are so obviously in a panic period now trying to dress up the outcome of this renegotiation as something when it is likely to be virtually nothing.

But Mr Herbert, who led the campaign to keep Britain out of the euro 15 years ago, insisted the idea of a brake was worth looking at.
Sir Jeremy Heywood's (pictured) Cabinet Office is being investigated for failing to reveal how it is spending public money

Sir Jeremy Heywoods Whitehall department is under official investigation for failing to reveal how it spends huge sums of public money.

The Cabinet Office has fallen a year behind on a key pledge to publish details of all transactions over 25,000.

The probe by the Information Commissioner is a major embarrassment for Sir Jeremy, who is dubbed Sir Cover-Up for his attempts to block the disclosure of official data. Campaigners said the delay was completely unacceptable.

To root out waste, all ministries are expected to publish monthly data on high-cost contracts and items.

The commitment is a key plank of David Camerons mission to lead the most transparent government ever.

But the last data released by the Cabinet Office was for December 2014  by far the worst record in Whitehall.

And the Information Commissioners Office has revealed it is looking into two separate complaints that the Cabinet Office is suppressing data that should be publicly available.

The watchdog has the power to slap fines on public authorities in breach of their publication schemes and can make them release the required data.

Even a decision to take informal action  by asking why the information is being withheld, and offering advice  would be a blow to Sir Jeremy and Mr Cameron.

Dia Chakravarty of the Taxpayers Alliance said: This huge delay is completely unacceptable and shows a worryingly lax attitude toward taxpayers right to access crucial information about how our money is spent.

It is astonishing that not only is the Cabinet Office failing to carry out its responsibility of publishing the data, but also refusing to give a proper explanation as to the reason for this tardiness.

Most Whitehall departments have released data up to and including October or November last year, putting them only a few weeks behind the timetable set by the Treasury.

When the first tranche of spending items above 25,000 was revealed, in November 2010, the Prime Minister said: Just think about what this could mean.

People will be able to look at millions of items of government spending, flagging up waste when they see it, and that scrutiny will act as a powerful straitjacket on spending, saving us a lot of money.

In 2013, the Cabinet Office pledged to match other departments that have voluntarily lowered the threshold to just 500.

Sir Jeremys department also has the worst record in Whitehall for releasing data to the public under Freedom of Information laws.

Across Whitehall, information is withheld in 34 per cent of cases on average when it could potentially be released. For the Cabinet Office, the figure is 57 per cent.

Lord McNally, pictured, said the Cabinet Office was deeply hostile to being open about what it is doing

Last week, Sir Jeremy was branded Sir Cover-Up in Parliament as MPs and peers railed against proposals that the Freedom of Information Act should be curtailed.

A commission launched from his department is looking at how to undermine the legislation, potentially by introducing new costs or time limits for making requests.

Lord McNally, a Lib Dem who was in charge of the FoI Act under the Coalition, said Sir Jeremys Cabinet Office was deeply hostile to being open about what it is doing.

Last night, a spokesman declined to explain why the Cabinet Office had fallen one year behind, while insisting unspecified problems were being tackled.

She said: This Government is absolutely committed to transparency and we make more of our data available than ever before.
Johnson says tech firms pay 'derisory' taxes and No 10 is cool on the deal

Standing in for George Osborne, David Gauke denies a 'special deal' was struck for Google

Treasury Minister David Gauke today denied Google has a 'special rate' of tax after the Chancellor was accused making a 'sweetheart' deal with the search engine giant.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell claimed a deal for Google to pay an extra 130 million in taxes relating to the last nine years was equivalent to an effective rate of just 3 per cent.

But responding to protests in the Commons, Mr Gauke - standing in for Mr Osborne who was in Liverpool with Microsoft founder Bill Gates - insisted neither Google nor anyone else had a 'lower special rate of tax'.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, left in the Commons today, said Google's tax rate was now three per cent - but Treasury minister David Gauke insisted there was no 'special rate'

George Osborne, pictured right today with Microsoft founder Bill Gates in Liverpool, has hailed the tax deal with Microsoft as a 'victory' for the Government - but he was not in London to answer questions in Commons today

The minister insisted the government was more efficient than ever at collecting revenue - pointing to higher receipts from a lower headline rate of corporation tax.

But Mr Gauke had to reply 'no' when asked directly what Google's tax rate was - citing taxpayer confidentiality.

Mr Osborne hailed the 130 million deal as a 'major success' at the weekend but today the official No 10 spokeswoman would only say it is a 'positive step'.

And London mayor Boris Johnson said it was not Google's fault it only paid 'derisory' amounts of tax on massive revenues - suggesting that was the business of individual governments to set their own rates.

Calling a Commons urgent question, Mr McDonnell said Google's 'effective tax rate is now around three per cent despite estimated revenues of 1billion in 2014 alone'.

He urged the Government to publish the deal struck with Google.

Answering, Mr Gauke said: 'Every taxpayer has to pay the rate determined by the law. There is no lower special rate for Google or any other taxpayer in this country.'

Mr Johnson today said he 'to a large extent' agreed 'loopholes and dodges' which allow multinational firms to minimise tax bills should be axed and insisted he wanted to see more tax money raised from online giants.

Mr Johnson - seen as a potential Tory leadership contender and sought by both sides of the EU referendum - insisted individual countries had to be able to set their own tax rates.

London Mayor Boris Johnson today insisted you could not blame Google for its low tax payments

Writing in the Daily Telegraph he continued: 'It is absurd to blame the company for 'not paying their taxes'.

'You might as well blame a shark for eating seals. It is the nature of the beast; and not only is it the nature of the beast  it is the law.

'It is the fiduciary duty of their finance directors to minimise tax exposure. They have a legal obligation to their shareholders.

'Tax is not paid on the basis of what 'feels right' either to public opinion or to politicians.'

Mr Johnson said forcing Apple to pay more money to the Irish government would go against the wishes of politicians in Dublin.

He said the country had chosen 'ultra low' corporation tax specifically to attract international firms.

Mr Johnson added: 'They wanted Irish taxi drivers to have the honour of ferrying Apple executives around, and they wanted Irish waitresses to snaffle their huge tips.

'The EU Commission is partly excited by the chance to bash a corporate American giant; but mainly it is a chance to attack tax arbitrage between member states  to move ever closer towards uniformity and away from a spirit of healthy competition between jurisdiction.

'We need that competition. We need the Irish to be able to do their own thing. Otherwise business tax rates would simply rise in lockstep across Europe.'

Chancellor George Osborne is expected to face calls to answer questions on his deal with Google in the Commons later.

He has faced mounting anger over a so-called sweetheart deal with Google that allowed it to pay just 130million in taxes dating back a decade.

'Sweetheart deal': Google has agreed to pay just 130million in taxes dating back to 2005. The amount was branded 'derisory' in light of the fact that the firm racked up sales of 4.5billion in Britain in 2014 alone

After the US internet giant said it would pay taxes going back to 2005, the Chancellor hailed it a 'victory' for the Government.

Today, the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman would go no further than describing it as a 'positive step', adding there was 'more for government to do to make sure multinational companies are paying their taxes'.

A TAXING ISSUE: TECH FIRMS ARE REGULARLY UNDERFIRE FOR HOW MUCH THEY PAY THE TREASURY Google has agreed to pay 130 million in back tax but several other technology companies have come under fire for their low contributions. Facebook - the social media giant paid 4,327 in corporation tax in 2014. Accounts show the company made a loss of 28.5 million in Britain, after paying 35 million in staff bonuses. Amazon - the group attracted anger after it emerged that the UK arm of the business paid just 11.9 million in tax in 2014, despite taking 5.3 billion in sales from British shoppers. Apple - the US-based technology firm paid less than 2% tax on its overseas profits in 2012, despite foreign earnings of more than 23 billion. Vodafone - the mobile phone provider paid no UK corporation tax in 2012 and 2013, despite earning more than 5 billion of revenue in Britain. Advertisement

But the amount was branded 'derisory' in light of the fact that the firm racked up sales of 4.5billion in Britain in 2014 alone.

It does not even cover one day of Government borrowing.

The Government borrowed 214million a day in 2015 as the state spent far more than it raised in tax.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell yesterday said there may need to be a public inquiry into tax deals between HM Revenue & Customs and multi-national firms.

HMRC is said to be looking to secure tens of millions of pounds in back-taxes from firms such as Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.

But any deals are likely to spark accusations that they are still not paying their fair share.

Mr McDonnell said: 'I am going to request that George Osborne give an explanation to the House of Commons.'

Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, labelled the agreement a 'cosy deal' and said she would call Google and HMRC before the committee.

Fellow Labour MP Wes Streeting, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, branded the 130million a 'paltry sum' and 'peanuts for Google', adding: 'George Osborne seems to be the only person outside of HMRC and Google who thinks this is a good deal for taxpayers.

'We should haul HMRC and Google in front of the committee to explain themselves.'

But Mr Osborne said it was 'a bit rich' of Labour to criticise given the deal secured tax on profits made when Labour was in power.

Google said: 'The international tax system is changing. This settlement reflects that shift and is in line with recent OECD guidance.'
An American woman who was found dead on a deserted stretch of beach on a Caribbean island while on vacation with her husband is thought to have been attacked by a man armed with a cutlass.

The 39-year-old's body was found about 12 miles outside the capital of Grenada, St George's yesterday, less than half a mile from where other tourists had been sunbathing.

It is thought that she had been brutally raped and murdered on the first day of her vacation on the island after arriving at the world-famous La Sagesse resort on Saturday night.

Tragic: An American woman was reportedly found brutally killed on a deserted stretch of sun-splashed beach about twelve miles outside the capital of the Caribbean island of Grenada. Above are her shoes that she kicked off before going off on a walk

It came after it was revealed the attacker targeted the woman and her husband with the sword as they walked along La Sagresse beach.

Police sealed off the murder scene and armed men - said by locals to be soldiers with assault rifles - started searching the undergrowth, which flanks the beach.

And news of the horror killing has quickly spread across Grenada - named the Spice Island because one of its main industries beside tourism is growing nutmegs and other spices.

Local website the SpiceIslander Talk Shop reported: 'Another Tourist Murdered in St David....This Can't Be True.'

St David's is one of the seven parishes on Grenada, which is just 21 miles long and has about 100,000 residents including many British ex-pats.

The website added 'Breaking news!! Officers at the St. David police station confirm that a murder has been committed.

'The incident according to officers, took place in La Sagesse, St. David close to the beach.

'Reports are the victim, (a woman) and her husband were attacked on La Sagesse beach by a man with a cutlass.

The unidentified woman, 39, arrived to the world-famous La Sagesse resort from Georgia with her husband Saturday night. Above people relax on the main beach at La Sagesse

'The husband was able to escape, but the body of the woman was found minutes later in the nearby mangrove.

'The couple who arrived in Grenada days ago, was a guest at one of the hotels. Police already has suspect.

'Reports are that this person of interest is an ex convict, recently released from prison.'

British woman's magazine journalist Sue Hardy, 63, was one of many British tourists on the beach when the drama began around 11.30 local time Sunday morning.

Hardy, who is from Inkpen, Berkshire, is on vacation with her family. She said that they had just set up their sun chairs and were relaxing in the sunshine when 'there was a sudden commotion near the little pen-fronted restaurant, which faces out on to the beach.'

'Some guys were shouting and people were running,' Hardy said. 'At first we didn't know what was happening. But gradually rumors started spreading among the tourists.'

She said that there were about 30 people on the beach, including children, as people started to become nervous and edgy because it was obvious something serious happened.

'The staff were very tight-lipped and it seemed they had been told not to say anything to alarm the tourists,' Hardy said.

'We saw the guy who owns the place running to his jeep and speeding off - he was probably going to talk to the police.

'Gradually we put the story together. It appears the American woman tourist - described as 'very beautiful' by one member of the staff I spoke to - had gone off for a stroll along the beach with her husband.'

British woman's magazine journalist Sue Hardy, 63, was one of many British tourists on the beach when the drama began to unfold. Above is an empty beach chair where the woman took her last walk

Hardy said: 'Some guys were shouting and people were running. At first we didn't know what was happening. But gradually rumors started spreading among the tourists.' Above the beach at La Sagesse is pictured

Hardy said there is a main beach at the resort that is about a half a mile long that has a restaurant and apartments that are located in the main hotel building overlooking the beach.

She said that her husband ran half a mile back to the restaurant and hotel area to get help, leaving his wife.

'Whether she'd been dragged off and kidnapped, I don't know,' Hardy said.

'Some staff ran back to the deserted beach but by the time they got there she had been murdered.

'I was told she had been raped too. They said she was lying on the edge of the water. I don't know how she was killed - maybe the attacker, or attackers, held her down in the water and drowned her, I just don't know.'

Hardy said that police officers would not say anything other than that there had been an incident.

Calls placed to the police department and the resort on the island by Mail Online went unanswered.

'The woman and her husband had arrived last night so this must have been one of their first walks along the beach,' she explained.

'After walking for half a mile round the bay, where you are still in sight from the hotel and restaurant and the main area where tourists sit out in the sun, you can go up a path which leads through a sort of mangrove swamp, with steps so you don't walk into the mud.

'After about 100 yards through this somewhat dark swampy area, you come out on to another beach which is totally deserted.

Hardy said that the woman was reportedly brutally raped before she was murdered at the resort (above)

Hardy, who is on her sixth trip to Grenada, said that the La Sagesse resort is her favorite on the island (above). But she said she won't venture out to that other hidden beach again after the American tourist's death

'No-one can see you there - but of course nobody can see if anyone attacks you there.

'I've been there on previous visits to La Sagesse and I always felt a bit spooked on that deserted beach, as if someone was watching you from the undergrowth.'

Hardy, who is on her sixth trip to Grenada, said that the La Sagesse resort is her favorite on the island. But she said she won't venture out to that other hidden beach again after the American tourist's death.

'As I say, we have been coming here for years and we know lots of ex-pats who have lived here for decades and they all say you are totally safe,' Hardy noted.

'People were just in shock as word spread, and some of the local villagers came down to the beach.

'They were just standing around, aghast at what had happened.There was such a sad sight - she'd left her beach shoes lying on the sand near the restaurant.

'I assume she'd kicked them off to go for a romantic walk with her husband on their first full day in paradise.'
Jeremy Corbyn has sparked fury by telling Argentine diplomats he wants to hand back the Falklands in a power-sharing deal.

The outgoing ambassador in London Alicia Castro branded him one of ours and claimed Mr Corbyn told her personally he wants a Northern Ireland-style arrangement for Britain and Argentina to govern the islands together.

Mr Corbyn was a backbencher when the proposal was first discussed, but since becoming leader he has called for a reasonable accommodation with Argentina on the South Atlantic territory.

Outgoing ambassador in London Alicia Castro (left) branded Corbyn (right) one of ours and claimed he told her he wants a Northern Ireland-style arrangement for Britain and Argentina to govern the Falklands

A referendum three years ago found 99.8 per cent of the islanders want to remain British and David Cameron has insisted the 3,000 strong population have an absolute right to self-determination.

The Labour leaders comments have provoked anger within his shadow cabinet who are deeply resistant to any change of policy. At a shadow cabinet meeting last week, Chris Bryant demanded to know if Labours policy had changed on giving the islanders the final say  and he was backed by shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn who said: We have not changed our policy on the Falklands.

Fiery ambassador Miss Castro has infuriated the Government by calling David Cameron dumb and describing the Falklands referendum as a public relations exercise.

But she is an admirer of Mr Corbyn, describing him in a recent article on the Argentina embassys website as one of ours. She added that he was friendly and humorous and a good listener.

She added: He is saying that dialogue [is] possible and that attitudes are beginning to change, that what was achieved in Northern Ireland can be achieved also here. His decisive leadership can guide the British public opinion to promote dialogue between the governments of the United Kingdom and Argentina.
A survey on the publics opinion of the BBC was so hijacked by a Left-wing campaign group that the Government has decided to hold a second one.

Some 192,000 responses were received during the first consultation asking about possible changes to the size and role of the Corporation ahead of charter renewal.

But 177,000 of them - 92 per cent - were whipped up by campaign group 38 Degrees, which sent a series of leading emails to its members encouraging them to take part.

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Some 192,000 responses were received during the first consultation asking about possible changes to the BBC including size and role - but 177,000 were whipped up by campaign group 38 Degrees

MPs last night criticised the organisation for skewing the study, saying that it is far from representative of the general voice of Britain.

This flood of responses from the groups members has also forced the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to pull 25 staff off normal duties for three months to comb through the messages and has reportedly added 250,000 to the consultations cost. It has taken 10,000 man hours to count all of the submissions.

In a series of emails to its three million members, 38 Degrees warned that the government was planning to rip the heart out of the BBC and accused David Cameron of being in cahoots with Rupert Murdoch to make way for more biased corporate news.

It implied that the BBC would be forced to take adverts and that its political independence could be curbed, neither of which had been proposed by the in the governments green paper.

One email read: Imagine a BBC where Newsnight is riddled with adverts. Or a BBC so underfunded that independent news becomes a thing of the past and the airwaves are dominated by Rupert Murdochs media. This is what the Government wants - we need to stop them.

The group told members that it had put the gobbledegook of the consultation into plain English. However, this entailed telling its members to understand the question: How well is the BBC serving its audiences? as Which parts of the BBC do you particularly love?

While 38 Degrees has criticised culture secretary John Whittingdale for re-opening the consultation, MPs last night attacked the campaigners for skewing the original results.

MPs last night criticised the organisation for skewing the study, saying that it is far from representative of the general voice of Britain, but 38 Degrees hit out at culture secretary John Whittingdale (pictured) for re-opening the consultation

Nigel Huddleston, a member of the culture, media and sport select committee, said: 38 Degrees organise email and letter writing campaigns to MPs on a regular basis and they do tend to have a Left-wing bent and I think everybody recognises that. Its reasonable for people to write to MPs, so we cant dismiss them, but we do need to recognise that despite the volume of responses, it doesnt necessarily mean thats representative of the voice of Britain. Certainly in my experience, 38 Degrees is far from representative of the general voice of Britain.

38 Degrees claims to be independent and is funded by its members but is known for its left of centre views. Other high-profile campaigns run by the group have included opposing changes to the NHS and cuts to tax credits and having American presidential candidate Donald Trump stripped of his honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen.

The need for further consultation on the BBC, which will reportedly take the form of focus groups and opinion polls, means the white paper which will lay out clearer plans for the future of the Corporation will be delayed until at least May. The existing Royal Charter which determines the size and scope of the BBC currently runs until December 31 but may have to be extended because of the setback.

Rachel Oliver, campaigner at 38 Degrees, said: Consultations exist precisely to allow the public to have their views heard - so its a shame that John Whittingdale seems frustrated at the publics appetite to be involved in the future of the BBC.

38 Degrees members are ordinary members of the public, from all walks of life and all parts of the political spectrum. 38 Degrees members responded to this consultation in their hundreds of thousands, and the views each member fed in were their own.

The BBC is the nations public broadcaster, so it belongs to the people, not the government. Politicians cant dismiss public opinion when they dont like what they hear.

A spokesman for the group added: In terms of whether well be continuing to campaign on the BBC, then yes, our members have lots of appetite for it. Were a member led organisation but I cant say what we will be doing precisely because its up to them, not to me.
A man who helped foil a robbery was more concerned about his flip-flops

Two men who foiled a robbery that was about to happen at an Oporto fast food restaurant, were more concerned about a broken pair of thongs than their lives while filming the incident.

In an interview with the panel on Channel Nine's Today show, James Ross-Munroe and Kane Wiblen, talked about the chance coincidence that led them to taking the keys out of the engine of the robber's car in Queensland.

Karl Stefanovic applauded the two unlikely heroes and claimed that they were the reason that he'd come back from holidays.

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Karl Stefanovic (left) applauded the two unlikely heroes that foiled a robbery in Queensland and claimed that they were the reason that he'd come back from holidays

Mr Ross-Munroe told the panel of the Channel Nine breakfast show that they'd been at a 'stubbies and singlets party' when they decided to 'duck up to the servo and get some noodles.'

'I went to jump over a sign on the way slipped over and busted a plugger,' said Mr Ross-Munroe.

The 'plugger'  a slang Australia term for thong, had been the reason they stopped and witnessed two men leaving their car with 'shirts on their faces.'

'I was pretty concerned about the blow out [with the thong] I had but looked up and saw a white commodore pull up with these two blokes,' said Mr Ross-Munroe.

Mr Ross-Munroe (right, in black) told the panel of the Channel Nine breakfast show that they'd been at a 'stubbies and singlets party' when they decided to 'duck up to the servo and get some noodles'

In an interview with the panel on Channel Nine's Today show , James Ross-Munroe and Kane Wiblen, talked about the chance coincidence that led them to taking the keys out of the engine of the robbers' car

'I thought it was a bit 'suss' and thought 'better go check it out,' he added.

Grabbing the keys out of the ignition while the men had been at Oporto's near the service station Mr Ross-Munroe said 'then it sort of unfolded from there.'

Mr Ross-Munroe who had not been wearing a shirt at the time was questioned about being in peril while in a state of 'full manliness' by Mr Stefanovic to which he responded 'at first I thought does this bloke have a knife, but then I saw that he had his hands empty and it sort of went from there.'

Tim Gilbert, another host on the show, told Mr Ross-Monroe that he looked reasonably fit and asked whether he went to the gym to which Mr Ross-Munroe said: 'Mate I don't go to the gym. I haven't been to the gym in years.

Applauding the response Mr Stefanovic finished the interview telling viewers that this was 'the reason I came back from holidays' and said: 'It doesn't get better than this. Right folks, that's our show for the year'

'The only gym I go to is Jim Beam, that's about it,' he added.

Applauding the response Mr Stefanovic finished the interview telling viewers that this was 'the reason I came back from holidays' and said: 'It doesn't get better than this. Right folks, that's our show for the year.'

Mr Ross-Munroe and the man that filmed the original video, Mr Wiblen were both amazed by their overnight fame and said that they'd initially put the video up 'to get a couple of laughs.'

'It's unreal that's in blown up so much,' said Mr Wiblen.

On the night of the dramatic incident, instead of keeping a distance and calling police, Mr Ross-Munroe ran over to the vehicle and yells to Mr Wiblen to record the number plates before he suddenly opens the drivers door and pulls the keys from the ignition.

Mr Ross-Munroe then screams at the service station attendant to call the police before the two alleged thieves run out of the building and into their car.

Mr Ros-Munroe manages to pull out the key to the thieves get-away vehicle: Two men foiled a robbery in progress during a late night visit to a Gold Coast service station and managed catch it all on camera

However, during the thieves' quick escape the driver notices the keys are missing and attempts to leave the scene on foot.

Mr Ross-Munroe leaps into the car to grab hold of the passenger, throwing several punches and screaming obscenities at the man who manages to escape.

The flip-flop superhero's job isn't done yet - he chases the two alleged thieves by foot.

'The moment we caught two blokes breaking into Oportos Arundel, they ran inside so I took their keys out of the ignition,' posted Mr Wiblen

The men posted the video on Facebook: 'The moment we caught two blokes breaking into Oportos Arundel, they ran inside so I took their keys out of the ignition'

'When the driver came back to the car he realised his keys were missing, the passenger jumped in and I managed to land a few punches ...

'I chased them but because I'm fat they got away.'

The video has over 2 million views and has been shared across social media and Australian news programs.

Queensland police confirmed the robbery saying both thieves fled west along Brisbane Road toward Helensvale.

Police had a 23-year-old man in custody, but released him today. They are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
The former Army chief, 92, was the victim of a child sex abuse 'witch hunt'

The Home Secretary was last night facing calls to block a contract extension for the head of Scotland Yard amid growing fury over his refusal to apologise to 'hounded' 92-year-old war hero Lord Bramall.

As a Cabinet minister joined calls for a 'proper apology' to the ex-Army chief over the Met's child sex abuse 'witch-hunt', it emerged Theresa May wants Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe to be Commissioner for at least two more years.

Sir Bernard's proposed deal is expected to be rubber-stamped 'imminently' and to ignite a fresh storm over the unravelling VIP abuse investigation, Operation Midland.

Under pressure: Theresa May, left, is being urged to delay plans to extend Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe's contract

It would mean the Tories' preferred commissioner would be in place before the London elections in May  where a victory for Labour would allow them to choose the next commissioner.

But Mrs May is being urged to postpone the contract extension for Sir Bernard  whose current five-year deal is due to end in September  until an inquiry has been held into the Bramall fiasco.

Pressure mounted on the Met chief further yesterday after Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Lord Bramall had been subject to 'maximum pain' as a result of the mishandling of an investigation into claims he was part of a high-profile child abuse ring.

'Somebody somewhere owes Lord Bramall a proper apology for a case that clearly was badly handed  Clearly he was mistreated extremely badly,' Mr Fallon told The Sunday Times. 'The case itself seems to have been handled very clumsily to cause maximum pain to the field marshal.'

Senior Tory MP Nigel Evans led calls for an influential Commons committee to examine the handling of the so-called VIP paedophile suspects, and for Sir Bernard to give evidence about the force's blunders.

He told the Mail: 'We should get Bernard Hogan-Howe before the Home Affairs Select Committee to explain why Lord Bramall, without a blemish on his record, was treated in this way, and the contract decision should be delayed pending that inquiry. It would be totally inappropriate to make a reappointment while that is going on.'

The MP for Ribble Valley  who has campaigned for those accused of sex crimes to have their identity protected until they are charged  also said Sir Bernard should apologise to the retired field marshal.

Hounded: Lord Bramall, pictured with the Queen in 1995, was a victim of the Met's child sex abuse 'witch hunt'

London Mayor Boris Johnson, other senior politicians, two former chief constables and a string of ex-military leaders have publicly criticised Scotland Yard's bungled investigation into Lord Bramall.

But Mrs May has declined to comment on whether the force should apologise. Tory MP Zac Goldsmith and Labour MP Sadiq Khan  both London mayoral candidates  also refused to issue statements on the scandal.

Sources said Sir Bernard was likely to get a new contract because of his record on keeping London safe during a time of unprecedented national security concerns  and because 'there is nobody obvious to replace him'.

The allegations against Lord Bramall were dropped ten days ago due to a lack of evidence.

Calling for an apology: Michael Fallon

Critics blame the Met for putting the D-Day veteran through the trauma of a ten-month inquiry despite there never being any evidence to support the claims.

Twenty officers raided the peer's home at breakfast, in the presence of his dying wife, and he was later interviewed under caution by police. Scotland Yard last week refused to apologise to Lord Bramall, days after his son Nicholas called for his father's anonymous accuser to be investigated.

Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan expressed regret at the distress caused, but insisted police would be put off investigating claims if they had to apologise when inquiries did not end with a charge.

Operation Midland, a probe into allegations of historic abuse by senior public figures, was launched after claims were made by a man known as 'Nick'  who has anonymity.

However, the collapse in the case against Lord Bramall has led to further questions over the veracity of Nick's claims.

Former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth backed calls for an inquiry by the home affairs committee. He told the Mail: 'Having officers going into your house in white coats and spending ten hours there and not telling you what it's about is the behaviour of a police state.

'This seems to be all on the say-so of an anonymous individual called Nick who has trashed the reputations of a lot of people. We've got to a situation now where the Met police appear to have completely lost the plot and someone has got to look into it.'

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, who received a full apology in person from Sir Bernard for police conduct during the 'Plebgate' affair, told the Mail it was 'hard to imagine the distress' of the field marshal.

He added: 'Any fair-minded person reviewing the treatment of Lord Bramall and his family can only conclude they are all owed a heartfelt and full apology for the way Lord Bramall has been treated.'

Harvey Proctor, a former Tory MP implicated in the allegations of a murderous Westminster paedophile ring, yesterday claimed Sir Bernard was seeking to postpone the collapse of Operation Midland until he had secured an extension of his contract.

Mr Proctor, 69, added: 'I thought Hogan-Howe should have resigned over Operation Midland last summer, so I am quite surprised he has hung on all these months. The Home Secretary should not be giving him a contract extension, she should be sacking him or seeking his resignation.'

He confirmed his lawyers had asked Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse to investigate Nick for wasting police time and attempting to pervert the course of justice. He has yet to receive a reply.

Retired judge Lord Parmoor labelled the investigation of Lord Bramall a 'PR exercise'. In a letter to today's Daily Telegraph, he questioned the ease with which officers obtained a search warrant solely on the basis of evidence from 'Nick'.
Army chiefs apologised yesterday after a 40 million attack helicopter flew too low - and cut off a village's power supply.

The emergency was triggered when an Apache - that can identify and destroy 250 battlefield targets in seconds - was on a training mission just fifteen miles away from its base in Wattisham, Suffolk where Prince Harry was once stationed.

The two-man machine that can fly at up to 200mph was manoeuvring at low level near the village of Hundon when it became entangled in a power line.

Army chiefs apologised yesterday after a 40 million attack helicopter flew too low - and cut off a village's power supply. The two-man machine was manoeuvring at low level near the village of Hundon when it became entangled in a power line

The pilot managed to land safely but locals were stunned when the crew in their flying suits called at the nearest cottage to apologise for causing a power cut by accidentally flying into overhead cables.

More than 100 homes were without powers for but workmen were able to reconnect them to the supply within a few hours.

An Army spokesman said: 'An Apache made a controlled, precautionary landing after a wire strike. Both crew were uninjured and were on a routine training sortie that originated from Wattisham Flying Station.

As with all incidents involving military aircraft there will be a thorough investigation.'

The Apache, which is armed with rockets, Hellfire missiles and a 30mm cannon, is flown by two regiments of the Army Air Corps based at in Suffolk and crews have seen front-line action in the Gulf War, Libya and Afghanistan.

In 2012 Prince Harry completed his two-year month Apache training course at Wattisham, winning the prize for the best co-pilot gunner before being posted to Afghanistan for a tour of duty providing cover for forces on the ground.
For at least the second time in three months, passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from Mexico were allowed to exit John F. Kennedy Airport without going through Customs earlier this week.

According to the New York Daily News, passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico on January 18 were allowed to exit out of the airport without having their passports or bags checked by customs officials.

A similar incident involving another American Airlines flight occurred at the airport in November.

One of the passengers aboard the flight on Monday said he was in Cancun to attend a three Phish concert.

Security issue: For at least the second time in three months, passengers aboard an American Airlines flight from Mexico were allowed to exit John F. Kennedy Airport without going through Customs earlier this week. File photo above

Passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico on January 18 were allowed to exit out of the airport without having their passports or bags checked by customs officials. File photo above

A similar incident involving another American Airlines flight occurred at the airport in November. File photo above

The unnamed 34-year-old business adviser said that he was able to easily walk off the plane to the baggage claim area, without anyone stopping him to go through Customs and Border Protections security checks.

'It's absolutely absurd,' he told the Daily News. 'To think that anyone could be walking off of that plane and just get right into the city. It could be terrorists, El Chapo's henchmen, anyone.'

He added that he approached a Transportation Security Administration agent in the airport about not going through a Customs check.

'I told them what happened and asked them what should I do,' the passenger told the Daily News. 'They said to me 'That's fine, you're OK. Go ahead.'

He explained that when he made it out to the curbside cab line at the busy airport that he noticed several other passengers who were on the flight with him already outside in the line.

After arriving home to his residence in Manhattan, the passenger said he received an email from American Airline officials asking for him to return to the airport to complete the customs security check process.

One of the passengers aboard the flight on Monday said he was in Cancun to attend a three Phish concert. The unnamed 34-year-old man said that he was able to easily walk off the plane to the baggage claim area, without anyone stopping him. File photo above

About the incident, he told the New York Daily News: 'It's absolutely absurd. To think that anyone could be walking off of that plane and just get right into the city. It could be terrorists, El Chapo's henchmen, anyone.' File photo above

'I apologize for any inconvenience this may be for you; however it is a Customs requirement that every passenger entering the United States must clear Customs,' the airline wrote in an email sent to passengers, according to the Daily News.

'You could tell that they knew they screwed up and were desperate to get me to come,' the passenger told the Daily News.

Neither the TSA or U.S. Customs and Border Protection has commented about the reported incident.

However, the passenger told the Daily News that the major oversight has sparked fears that terrorists could enter the country and skip the critical security checkpoints.

He added that he approached a Transportation Security Administration agent in the airport about not going through a Customs check and was told that he was 'OK'. File photo above

'New York remains the number one target for terrorists and it just made me think of Paris and how easy it would be for them to get in,' he told the Daily News. 'It's incompetence like this that could lead to another attack.'

In regards to the incident that happened in November, American Airlines admitted to that security lapse, which was two days after ISIS released a video threatening a terrorist attack in New York City.

'We take the safety and security of our customers, employees and operation very seriously,' the company said in a statement.

'Some passengers on flight 1223 did not complete immigration and customs process upon arrival when they were inadvertently directed to the domestic terminal.'
A towfish searching for missing Maylaysian Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean has been lost after it crashed into a 2200-metre mud volcano.

The towfish and 4500 metres of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said in a statement on Monday.

There were no injuries to crew on the Fugro Discovery that was using the towfish, and it is believed the towfish can be recovered later. Known as a a scanning vehicle, the towfish maps the sea floor using what's known as 'side sonar'.

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No injuries to crew were sustained on the Fugro Discovery that was using the towfish

The Fugro Discovery is returning to Fremantle where a replacement cable will be installed on the vessel, while the spare towfish on board will be readied for future searches.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau released a statement detailing the incident, which resulted in the loss of the underwater vehicle.

Yesterday, while conducting search activities in the southern Indian Ocean, Fugro Discovery lost the sonar vehicle deep tow (towfish) being used to search the ocean floor, the JACC said.

The towfish (pictured) is one of a number of underwater vehicles. It maps the sea floor using what's known as 'side sonar'

The Fugro Discovery is now returning to Fremantle where a replacement cable will be installed on the vessel

The Phoenix International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle has also been used in the search operation

The towfish collided with a mud volcano which rises 2200m from the sea floor resulting in the vehicles tow cable breaking. The towfish and 4500m of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor.

The only debris confirmed to have come from the plane that has ever been found was a flaperon that was washed up on a beach in Reunion last July.

The Boeing 777 went missing in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

The Boeing 777 went missing in March 2014 with 239 people on board (stock image)
He claims that youll only require a 15,000 printer and 100 for everyday materials to create his 3D-printed machine gun.

And pro-gun activist Cody Wilson from Austin, Texas, has been accused of making terrorists jobs so much easier by handing anyone the chance to build an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

The former law student wants to release the digital details for his 3D weapon by April, but he is in a legal fight with the US Government after it told him to take down the code for a pistol he developed.

Shooting practice: A pro-gun activist from Texas has been accused of making terrorists jobs so much easier by handing anyone the chance to build an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle (pictured being held by a friend)

New technology: 3D modelling involves solid objects to be created from a downloaded online file on a printer

The concept of 3D modelling involves solid objects to be created from a downloaded online file, and Mr Wilson said the materials required to make the gun work are all available at hardware stores.

The 27-year-old told the Daily Mirror: I promise you the reason you havent seen this yet is because it has been artificially delayed. I would have demonstrated this for you if I was allowed to.

I am fighting my fight with the government but we have a whole new range of things. Speaking to reporter Martin Bagot, Mr Wilson confirmed he basically had a downloadable 3D machine gun.

The founder of Defense Distributed - who developed the Liberator pistol in 2013 - said the items required to complete the gun include a firing pin in the form of a basic nail.

But his buoyant mood left counter-terrorism expert Hamish de Bretton Gordon fearful that the gun could present a huge risk to Britain, which is under threat from potential attacks by Islamic State.

Former law student: Cody Wilson wants to release the digital details for his 3D weapon by April, although he is in a legal fight with the US Government after it told him to take down the code for a pistol he developed (above)

He told the newspaper: The person who is releasing this is completely irresponsible. We can only hope the authorities in the US are going to deal with this individual. Its absolutely crazy.

SHOOT TO KILL: THE AR-15 RIFLE Favoured by target shooters in competitions and by hunters who stalk small game and sometimes deer, the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America. Police believe that an AR-15 was used by gunman John Zawahri to kill five people in a rampage through Santa Monica before he was himself killed by police in 2013 . It was also the weapon of choice for James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado, and Adam Lanzi in Newtown Connecticut. It fires a 5.56mm, or .223 caliber bullet. Magazines for the weapon (that are in circulation in the US) range from 5 to 100 rounds. With proper training, a shooter can effectively and accurately empty a 30-round magazine in less than a minute. Advertisement

And Andrea Rossel, whose sister Fiona was killed in the 2005 London terror attacks, told the Mirror: There is enough bad stuff on the internet but this is just adding to the threat we face.

In October 2014 Mr Wilson revealed the Ghost Gunner, an 800 milling machine that can produce metal parts to make untraceable rifles that do not have a serial number.

Rather than creating a gun from scratch, the machine adapts a part known as an '80 per cent lower'. This is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts.

By milling the part at home, and buying the rest of the parts online, which are not controlled, it is possible to build a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number.

MailOnline revealed in May 2014 how 3D-printing gun enthusiasts were gathering at a website called Fosscad, standing for Free Open Source Software and Computer Aided Designs.

According to one user, for a complete novice who had no knowledge of 3D printers or guns it would take probably a few months to do it well, to print it and then build the design into a weapon.

In May 2013 the Mail On Sunday built a 3D weapon from blueprints available on the internet  then smuggled it on to a packed Eurostar train after two reporters passed completely unchallenged through strict airport-style security.

I am fighting my fight with the government but we have a whole new range of things Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed

The pistol, capable of firing a deadly 0.38-calibre bullet, was produced in under 36 hours using a revolutionary 1,700 machine to print its components. And because all the parts are plastic, they did not trigger the metal detectors all Eurostar passengers must pass through.

In the past Mr Wilson has argued everyone should have access to guns, saying: I recognise the tool might be used to harm other people its a gun. But I dont think thats a reason not to do it.

In 2014 the UK government 3D-printed at least one gun to try to understand how much of a threat is presented by the technology.

The Home Office says the manufacture, purchase, sale and possession of 3D printed firearms, ammunition of their component parts is fully captured by the provisions in section 57(1) of the Firearms Act 1968.
The owner of a South Carolina barbershop is thankful that he was carrying a concealed weapon after two armed robbers walked into his business demanding money.

Elmurray 'Billy' Bookman, owner of Next Up Barber & Beauty in Columbia, said shortly before 7pm Saturday two men wearing masks walked into his business and demanded money, as one carried a pistol and the other had a shotgun, The State reported

That night the barbershop was packed full of customers, including children, who were trying to get their hair cut.

'I didn't want anybody to get hurt. But the kids, the way they were crying and hollering, you know, so I felt sorry for them,' Bookman told WACH.

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Grateful: Elmurray 'Billy' Bookman (pictured standng left), owner of Next Up Barber & Beauty in Columbia, South Carolina is thankful that he was carrying a concealed weapon during an attempted robbery at his shop

Bookman said shortly before 7pm Saturday two men wearing masks walked into his business and demanded money, as one carried a pistol and the other had a shotgun

That night the barbershop was packed full of customers, including children, who were trying to get their hair cut

He explained that the robbers forced all of the customers, including the children, to put their hands up as they began to go through everyone's pockets and belongings.

When the thieves demanded Bookman to hand over his wallet, he told them it was on a chair across the room.

As one of the gunman turned to find the money, the client in Bookman's chair drew his concealed weapon and shot at the suspect.

Moments later, he also drew his gun and started to shoot at the other suspect in his business.

The owner and customer both fired shots that left one of the suspects dead and the other on the run.

Bookman (above) explained that the robbers forced all of the customers, including the children, to put their hands up as they began to go through everyone's pockets and belongings

When the thieves demanded Bookman to hand over his wallet, he told them it was on a chair across the room. As one of the gunman turned to find the money, the client in Bookman's chair drew his concealed weapon and shot at the suspect

'I felt like something had to be done,' Bookman told WACH. 'If we didn't have our concealed weapons, if we didn't have our weapons here, I don't know what would have happened.

'It helps that he had it [and] it gives you a chance to defend yourself and help other people.'

The Columbia Police Department is investigating how the second suspect escaped from the scene, and if he was shot, WACH reported.

None of the 20 customers or employees inside of the barbershop were injured during the robbery.

One of the suspect's weapons was stolen from a home in the city in 2012, according to WACH.

The name of the deceased suspect has not been released and an autopsy is expected to be performed sometime in the next few days.
A woman was hacked to death by a man with a machete while standing in the hallway of her own building in an unprovoked attacked, say police.

The woman, identified by the New York Daily News as Carmen Torres-Gonzalez, 59, was reportedly standing in the hallway of the Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx, chatting with her mother's home care health aide on Sunday afternoon, when she was attacked by a 'psychopath,' say police.

The suspect, identified as Angel Feliz-Volquez, 25, lived down the hallway from her on the same floor.

Angel Feliz-Volquez, 25, is taken out of the Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx after allegedly murdering a woman who lived in the same building

Feliz (above) allegedly hacked the woman, Carmen Torres-Gonzalez, with a machete and chopped off her hand - one neighbor described him as 'the mental guy'

Cops say the attack was unprovoked and that the woman was chatting with her elderly mom's home health aide when it happened

Neighbors say she was innocently speaking with the health aide when the man attacked, chopping off her hand, and then hacking her to death with a machete, reports the New York Post.

'Its pretty bad,' a police source told the Post. 'This psychopath chopped her hand off.'

Neighbors described the suspect as 'the mental guy.'

One neighbor, who declined to be identified, compared the grisly scene to the horror movie The Shining, saying, 'It looked like somebody just took a couple of buckets of red paint and poured it down the stairs. We have never seen so much blood.'

Neighbors in the housing project said that the gruesome scene was like the movie The Shining

People who lived in the building said the unfortunate victim lived with her elderly mom.

'I heard her screaming,' another resident who didn't want to be named told the outlet. 'The screaming was really chilling.'

The suspect apparently returned to his apartment after the gruesome murder, where police were able to nab him.
A frantic manhunt has been launched by Southern California authorities after three inmates charged with violent crimes, including torture and murder, escaped from an Orange County jail by cutting through steel bars and plumbing channels to gain access to the roof.

The dangerous inmates, Jonathan Thieu, Hossein Nayeri and Bac Duong, were last seen at 5am Friday at the Orange County Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana.

It's been revealed that men cut through half-inch steel bars, made their way through plumbing tunnels and rappelled from the roof using a makeshift rope at the jail, which is about 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

They could have escaped anytime between then and late Friday night, Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, said Saturday.

'This was clearly a well thought out and planned escape' that may have been in the works for weeks or months, the lieutenant told reporters Saturday afternoon, reported KTLA.

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Wanted: Southern California authorities launched a frantic manhunt Saturday after inmates (left to right) Jonathan Thieu, Hossein Nayeri and Bac Duong escaped from jail

Above is pictured the jail cell and vent screen that had been cut, near the floor at center rear, inside of the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, California by the three inmates

The vent screen (above) had been cut and removed from the inside of the jail cell where the three men escaped from sometime on Friday, January 22

A cord made of an undetermined fabric that facilitated the escape of three inmates is pictured above inside the Central men's Jail in California

Officials said the inmates cut through half-inch steel bars and plumbing tunnels to gain access to an unsecured roof. Photographs released by authorities on Sunday show the hole cut and rope used in the escape.

All three men then used cord made of an undetermined fabric to rappel down four stories to the ground and fled on foot in their orange jumpsuits.

According to The Los Angeles Times, there was a fight inside the jail around 8pm that might have been part of their escape plane.

The fight delayed the headcount, which normally takes place at that hour.

The three escapees were able to get past security check points in at least three areas, the Times reported.

The exterior of the jail showing where razor wire was removed from a parapet, center rear, and a rope-like line, seen at right, is pictured above. Authorities believe the three inmates used the rope-like line to repel to the ground during their escape

Investigators are pursuing several leads in their search, and in the meantime a separate probe was launched into how the inmates managed to obtain the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof of the facility (above)

It's unclear how they acquired the tools and how they went undetected.

Hallock said it's the first escape from the facility in at least the past 20 years and could be the first-ever breakout from the jail.

The inmates include Tieu, 20, who had been held on a $1million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. His case is believed to be gang-related.

Nayeri, 37, had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary.

'The three escapees ... are dangerous criminals,' Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens warned in a statement.

Orange County sheriff's deputies and a search dog investigate early Saturday morning after the inmates' escaped

'My investigations team is working around the clock with the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the Orange County Probation Office, the US Marshals and the FBI.

'I am confident that this collaborative effort will result in returning these inmates to where they belong -- behind bars.'

Nayeri and three other men are accused of kidnapping a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012.

They drove the dispensary owner to a desert spot where they believed he had hidden money and then cut off his penis, authorities said.

After the crime, Nayeri fled the U.S. to his native Iran, where he remained for several months. He was arrested in Prague in November 2014 while changing flights from Iran to Spain to visit family.

The third escaped inmate, Duong, 43, was being held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at an inhabited dwelling, being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm and other charges.

Lt. Jeff Hallock said at a news conference 'We're exhausting all investigative resources and measures to bring these three inmates back into custody'

Hallock said the sheriff's department is doing everything it can to find the men.

'Obviously the safety of the community is No. 1,' Hallock said at a news conference.

'We're exhausting all investigative resources and measures to bring these three inmates back into custody.'

A $20,000 reward is being offered by the FBI for information leading to the arrest of any and all escapees.

They could have escaped anytime between Friday morning and late Friday night, Lt. Jeff Hallock said
A six-year-old boy couldn't hide his fear as he came face-to-face with a Burmese python named Bama-Cakes this weekend.

Xanden Hanners looks scared for his life as the 45-pound, ten-and-a-half-foot-long, three-year-old python peeked her head up to say hello to the boy.

The young young girl behind Xanden, however, looks less than impressed with the massive reptile directly in front of her.

Xanden Hanners looks scared for his life as the 45-pound, ten-and-a-half-foot-long, three-year-old Burmese python names Bama-Cakes peeked her head up to say hello to the boy.

Six-year-old Xanden was at Repticon Memphis in Southaven, Mississippi, when the met the snake.

Bama-Cakes was being held in part by an older boy and Xaden tried to get his hands around the massive python, too, before she decided to sneak up and greet him face-to-face.

It appeared that several people were holding Bama-Cakes as part of an activity.
There was definitely a lot of snow in Washington, but just how much may never really be known.

According to The Washington Post, the number that will go down in the history books as Washington's official total: 17.8 inches, falls short compared with some other spots in the region, raising the question: Why the disparity?

The improvised technique used by a small team of weather observers at Reagan National Airport lost their snow-measuring device to the elements midway through the blizzard.

Snow removal is underway on the tarmac at Ronald Reagan National Airport, Sunday, in Arlington, Virginia. A small team of weather observers at Reagan National Airport lost their snow-measuring device to the elements midway through the blizzard

The mix-up may have kept the blizzard of 2016 from breaking into the region's top three snowstorms on record, based on accumulations, prompting the National Weather Service to announce that it will be looking into the procedures used at Reagan National.

The National Weather Service has clear guidelines on how to measure snowfall for one simple reason: How much snow falls may determine whether additional relief is sent into a location after a major storm.

On Sunday, senior weather observer at National, Mark Richards, stood by the accuracy of the reading, saying his team did the best it could under tough conditions.

'Everyone has to understand that measuring snow in a blizzard is a tough thing to do,' Richards said. 'We would like it to be as accurate as possible,' he said.

'But it's an inexact science.'

Susan Buchanan, a National Weather Service spokeswoman, said on Sunday a team of experts would 'comprehensive assessment of how snow measurements are taken' at other locations in order to make suggestions about how to better calculate numbers in the future.

Snow removal is underway on the tarmac at Ronald Reagan National Airport, with the U.S. Capitol dome seen behind on Sunday. The mix-up may have kept the blizzard of 2016 from breaking into the region's top three snowstorms on record

Some residents are questioning why Washington's official weather records are being measured in Virginia since it is not representative of the city.

'People use National Airport as the weather centerpiece of the entire region, but its the warmest location in the entire region,' said Bob Leffler, a retired National Weather Service climatologist to The Washington Post.

'Its just not a good site.'

The National Weather Service measures the snow with a snow board which is oftentimes just made of plywood.

The measuring guidelines require the board to be placed on the ground before the storm so that it does not move.

The snow is meant to be measured every six hours and then the board is supposed to be wiped clear.

However, the board was buried in the heavy snowstorm and the observer could no longer find it so he took a few snow depth measurements and averaged them.

It was not snowfall that was reported to the National Weather Service, rather it was snow depth.

'Snow boards are the standard to use  when you can use them.' Richards said.

'Snow boards are just not effective in a storm that has very strong winds its just going to blow off.'

Jim Lee, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Sterling, Virginia said that the snowfall was likely above 20 inches.
Pictures of a Hong Kong man, who is suspected in the Friday deaths of his two nephews in Arcadia, California, have emerged with a bag of his head in police custody.

Deyun Shi, who is suspected of killing his 15- and 16-year-old nephews was seen being escorted to a police vehicle with a bag over his head as he was taken to magistrate court in Hong Kong on Sunday.

Hong Kong police said on Sunday they had arrested the Chinese national sought by US authorities on suspicion of murdering two people in Los Angeles.

Forty-four-year-old Deyun Shi (2nd L) is escorted by plainclothed police officers in Hong Kong, China, on Saturday

Deyun Shi (left), sitting beside a police officer inside a police van, arrives at a magistrate court in Hong Kong, China, on Sunday

Deyun Shi (center), sitting between police officers inside a police van, arrives at a magistrate court in Hong Kong, China, on Sunday

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had said Shi had also been wanted for an alleged murder attempt made Thursday.

Deyun Shi is suspected in the deaths of his two nephews in Los Angeles

'Detectives learned that after suspect, Deyun Shi's plane arrived at the Hong Kong airport, he was taken into custody by Hong Kong authorities,' deputies said in a Saturday release.

They earlier said that on Friday, 'Detectives learned that Arcadia Police Department personnel responded to a '911'' call from a woman at the residence.

'The woman discovered her two sons, 15- and 16-year-old juveniles, suffering from blunt force trauma. The victims were pronounced dead at the scene,' a statement from officials said.

The sheriff's department said in the Friday statement: 'The suspect is considered armed and dangerous and is also wanted in connection to a spousal assault incident that occurred Thursday, January 21, 2016, in the La Canada area.'

According to CBS Los Angeles, Shi has been accused of using an ax in the assault against his wife.

His wife was seeking a divorce, the television station reported.

CBS Los Angeles reported that the slayings happened while the teens' parents were paying a visit to Shi's hospitalized wife.

Deputies wrote that Shi had fled on a Beijing-bound plane.

His 2015 Yukon GMC XL has been recovered, according to deputies.

The boys' mother found her sons with blunt force trauma Friday in their Arcadia, California, home, and they were declared dead at the scene

The nephews of 44-year suspect Deyun Shi were 15 and 16 years old. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had said Shi had also been wanted for an alleged murder attempt made Thursday
A sick great-grandmother was hit with 100 hospital car park fine as she visited her dying brother after failing to hand her Blue Badge into reception.

Margaret Holt forgot to hand in her pass when she left her vehicle in a free disabled bay at Barnet Hospital in North London to visit her brother Alan.

And the cancer sufferer was shocked when she returned to her car with her sister to find what was her first ticket in 50 years of driving.

Fined 100: Great-grandmother Margaret Holt forgot to hand in her pass when she left her vehicle in a free disabled bay at Barnet Hospital (pictured) in North London to visit her brother Alan

Ms Holt then wrote to private contractor Parking Eye requesting they withdraw the fine, but has since received more letters for payment - and has even allegedly been threatened with court action.

She told the Sun's Daniel Jones: All this is making me more ill and I can no longer handle it. If Ive done something wrong I dont mind being charged for it, but 100 for not booking in at reception is extortionate.

Ive had bone marrow cancer for 11 years and was on chemotherapy last September when I was visiting my brother. When Im on that, things dont always register the same.

Ms Holt said she had spent quite a while at the hospital visiting her brother, who has since been transferred to Watford General Hospital in Hertfordshire where he is now under 24-hour care.

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Barnet Hospital, said first-time visitors must register their badge with reception on arrival in order to receive free disabled parking.

Long stay: The great-grandmother said she had spent quite a while at Barnet Hospital visiting her brother

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'Barnet Hospital has free disabled parking for blue badge holders near to the hospital entrances. However, upon arrival first-time visitors must register their blue badge with reception staff.

'However, now we have been made aware of Mrs Holts case, we will be asking Parking Eye to cancel the ticket. We will also be reviewing the circumstances around her case and working with Parking Eye to see how we can improve our appeal processes in future.'

The company hit the headlines two months ago after giving a couple a 70 parking fine which claimed they had parked in Aldi for 19 hours, when they had visited twice on separate days.

All this is making me more ill and I can no longer handle it Margaret Holt

Lee and Christina Sandow received the penalty for apparently overstaying at the supermarkets car park in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, but it was later cancelled following an appeal.

Last month it was revealed half of hospitals are collecting at least 1million a year from parking charges, including some where patients, relatives and staff are paying in almost 4million annually in fees and fines.

A large proportion of the cash goes straight to private firms. In at least five NHS trusts the companies who run the car parks take 100 per cent of the money generated each year.
After his released, Cash returned to Tasmania and became a policeman

The Irishman spent 10 years in a prison for shooting a police officer in 1844

Cash was sent to Australian in 1827 as a convict after he shot a man

New details about the incredible story of a notorious bushranger who became a police officer after spending 10 years on a prison island have been revealed.

Martin Cash, born in Ireland in 1808, worked as a farm boy in his early years before he was sent to Sydney in 1827 for shooting a man who was with Cash's mistress through a window.

After arriving in Sydney, Cash spent a number of years working in the Hunter River, something he continued to do after being given a ticket-of-leave - a document given to convicts allowing them to live and work within a certain area before their sentence was completed.

'The bushranger of Van Diemen's Land': A wanted poster for Martin Cash that was posted about 1840

Cash became involved in the cattle trade, and soon left Sydney headed for Tasmania - Van Diemen's Land as it was known at the time - and arrived in February of 1837.

Shortly after making it to Tasmania, Cash's real life of crime started, and he was convicted for stealing in 1840.

From that moment on, the Irishman embraced his life as a bushranger. He escaped and evaded police a number of times in the following years, before he shot and killed police officer Constable Peter Winstanley in Hobart Town in 1844.

Cash had travelled to Hobart after being told his wife, Elizabeth, had left him for another man.

The bushranger was finally caught, and after initially being sentenced to death, he was spared execution and ordered to spend the next 10 years on Norfolk Island - a tiny spot located hundreds of kilometres from the eastern coast of Australia.

According to historical accounts, the extended stint spent behind bars changed Cash. He swore off his bushranger life and his career as a wanted criminal came to an unusually quiet end for those of his ilk.

Martin Cash's grave. He was buried in Glenorchy, Tasmania, where he had bought a home with his wife, Mary

This portrait of Martin Cash was included in his autobiography, and is believed to have been drawn about 1870

Remarkably, the killer became a renowned hat-maker and was even put in charge of parts of the dormitory where prisoners were housed.

In March 1854, a fully-reformed Cash was given permission to marry Mary Bennett, who also arrived in Australia as a convict years before.

A few short months later, the newly-married man was given a ticket-of-leave and again travelled to Tasmania.

However, on his second return to Van Diemen's Land, Cash didn't return to a life of crime.

Instead, he became a policeman, had a child named Martin in 1855, and spent four years living in New Zealand after being given a conditional pardon in May of 1856.

The NSW Ticket of leave granted to Martin Cash on July 20, 1832, which he used to travel to Tasmania

A description of Martin Cash at the age of 30, it said he had a large mouth, long feet and a florid complexion

The convict muster detailed Martin Cash's arrival in Hobart on ship Frances Freeling, 1843

In the last few years before his death in 1877, Cash became friends with a fellow Irishman and writer James Lester Burke.

Cash told his life story to Mr Burke, who compiled all the stories and helped the ex-bushranger write an autobiography.

The book was released in 1970, and would go on to be reprinted many times and become a best seller.

After his death, Cash was buried in Glenorchy, Tasmania, where he had bought a home with his wife.

A document shows the arrival of Martin Cash in Sydney on ship Marquis of Huntley, in 1828, following his conviction on 13 March 1827

A newspaper notice after Mr Cash had some materials stolen from his home in Glenorchy, where he lived after giving up being a bushranger

As part of a new promotion from Ancestry.com, convict records have been released for the first time - including documents from Tasmania, where Cash spent most of his criminal life.

According to the family lineage website, the new information covers 'hundreds of untold stories, by Australian convicts'.

'The record collection includes asylum, familial, medical, and death records  encompassing everything from requests to leave prison and requests for marriage, to complaints about the quality of food served,' a statement read.

Ancestry is giving users free access to its records until Tuesday, allowing people to uncover previously unknown or forgotten facts about their family.

Visit www.ancestry.com.au/australiaday2016 to view the information.

Martin Cash was originally sentenced to death for shooting a police officer in Hobart Town (pictured) in 1844

His death sentence was reconsidered, and Mr Cash was instead sent to Norfolk Island (pictured) for 10 years
A Hollywood A-lister has weighed in on the water crisis in Flint, calling for the governor of Michigan to resign as militia members joined the ongoing protests Sunday.

While speaking at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, actor Matt Damon offered some blunt words for Governor Rick Snyder after residents of Flint complained for more than 18 months that their water was contaminated.

'At the very least he should resign! At the very least,' Damon told The Daily Beast of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

'Listen, everybody's entitled to a fair trial in the United States of America, but that man should get one. And soon. That's just my personal opinion.'

Upset: While speaking at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, actor Matt Damon offered some blunt words for Governor Rick Snyder after residents of Flint complained for more than 18 months that their water was contaminated

Of Snyder, Damon said: 'At the very least he should resign! At the very least. Listen, everybody's entitled to a fair trial in the United States of America, but that man should get one. And soon. That's just my personal opinion'

On Sunday, about 30 members of the Genesee County Volunteer Militia held a rally and protest outside of City Hall to demand accountability

Experts are estimating that at least 8,000 children under the age of six may have suffered permanent brain damage after being exposed to extremely high levels of lead in the city's water supply.

Damon, who is the co-founder of the nonprofit Water.org, was at the festival to call attention to the desperate need for clean water in impoverished regions around the world.

Under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, redacted emails have revealed that Snyder's administration was aware of the issue in Flint almost a year ago, but did not inform the public until it was too late.

The Oscar-nominated actor is not the first to call for Snyder to resign amid the water crisis.

Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton both have sharply criticized Snyder for issue.

'Gov. Snyder is committed to helping the people of Flint, protecting their health and safety and correcting the problems with the water,' Dave Murray, press secretary for the governor, said in statement to MLive.com.

Matthew Krol, the militia's executive officer (above right) said 'We're here to defend this community,' while addressing the crowd in a full camouflage outfit with a handgun strapped to his hip

In addition, water resources sites and the Michigan National Guard are also aiding in distribution efforts by giving bottled water to residents

'This situation is the result of missteps at all levels of government -- local, state and federal. We're focused on fixing these problems.'

The 57-year-old governor said that he won't step down from his position and that he is working on solutions to fix Flint's water system.

On Sunday, about 30 members of the Genesee County Volunteer Militia held a rally and protest outside of City Hall to demand accountability.

'We're here to defend this community,' said Matthew Krol, the militia's executive officer, addressing the crowd in a full camouflage outfit with a handgun strapped to his hip, The Detroit Free Press reported.

'We're not going to allow (the government) to step on the people of Flint any longer.

'If it means having to take up arms in defense ... we will do that as well.'

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver recently said that 'Governor Snyder must decide for himself whether he is going (to) step down' and it's 'his call to make for the people'

For the last week, militia members have delivered non-contaminated water door-to-door with the American Red Cross, the Free Press reported.

President Barack Obama signed an emergency declaration on January 16 for Flint and authorized $5million and assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The state must match 25 percent, and more money can come through an act of Congress.

In Snyder's State of the State address on January 19, he unveiled a $28million plan to combat Flint's water crisis.

In addition, water resources sites and the Michigan National Guard are also aiding in distribution efforts by giving bottled water to residents.

His plan allocates funding to six departments from the state and would also enable the state to increase National Guard efforts, MLive.com reported.

It also allocates an increase of nurses in school and to replace fixtures in some public places.

According to MLive.com, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver recently said that 'Governor Snyder must decide for himself whether he is going (to) step down' and it's 'his call to make for the people.'

Snyder is the target of two class-action lawsuits filed by Flint residents over the state's handling of the city's water crisis, The Flint Journal reported.
A Russian gangster was arrested in New York early Sunday morning after police officers spotted him recklessly driving through the city's streets during an emergency travel ban.

Aleksey Tsvetkov, 36, was arrested after New York City Police found him speeding through the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn at 2am after storm Jonas dumped a near-record 26.8 inches of snow on the city.

NYPD's Chief of Department James O'Neill said that officers saw an individual who 'made a series of bad decisions - I counted five'.

A Russian gangster was arrested in New York early Sunday morning during the city's emergency weather travel ban after police spotted him speeding through the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn at 2am. Pictured above, Fifth Avenue during the travel ban

'First of all, he decided to drive after the ban was put in place. Then he decided to speed. Then he decided to blow through two red lights. And then last but not least he decided to drink before all this. So we locked him up for DWI also,' he told the New York Daily News.

Tsvetkov's lawyer Tony Mirvis said that his client, who appeared in court on Sunday wearing a gray best, black boots and black snow pants, had not been drinking and driving.

'He denies the allegation he was intoxicated,' Mirvis said. 'In this case, he will come back to fight these charges.'

Mirvis claimed that Tsvetkov was only driving through the blizzard to reach his parents's home to help them.

'Their parents' electricity was out,' he said, according to the Daily News.

'He thought there could have been a fire,' Mirvis added. 'He denies that he was under the influence and will return to court to fight these charges.'

Cops stopped Tsvetkov, who was driving a 2014 Lexus RX350 with Florida license plates, after they saw him run two red lights, officials said.

He was charged with driving while intoxicated, reckless driving, running a red light and possession of drugs, among other charges.

Tsvetkov had refused to take a sobriety test when he was pulled over, the criminal complaint said.

Cops stopped Tsvetkov after they saw him run two red lights, officials said. He was charged with driving while intoxicated, reckless driving, running a red light and possession of drugs, among other charges. Pictured above, a woman stands in the middle of an empty New York City street during the travel ban

'What are you crazy? You want me to take a Breathalyzer?' he said to police, the complaint alleges.

It is unknown what Tsvetkov's blood-alcohol level was at the time of the arrest, but he was charged with refusal to take a Breathalyzer.

Tsvetkov was one of seven suspected gangsters who in 2003 was indicted on racketeering charges for terrorizing Russian immigrants on Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.

Nicknamed Dumpling, Tsvetkov allegedly acted as an enforcer, who was accused of beating one victim and intimidating others.

The gangster was released on Sunday after posting $2,500 bail.

Beginning Saturday afternoon, New York officials instated a travel ban on the city, which banned all nonemergency vehicles from the roads. Above-ground train service was also stopped.

Still, however, cops responded to 484 vehicle accidents and the FDNY answered 6,000 emergency calls, according to the New York Post.
Ted Kaczynski, 73, asked for info on al-Qaeda, but later declared their strategy 'inexplicably obtuse'

The Unabomber became obsessed with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after 9/11 and would beg for information of the terrorist organisation, his correspondence reveals.

Ted Kaczynski wrote to pen pals from federal prison in Florence, Colorado asking for more information about bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaeda in the wake of the 2001 attack.

He became fascinated by the terrorist organisation, but criticized al-Qaeda's ' apparently stupid strategy' in its war on the U.S. and the West.

'If al-Qaeda's goal is what al-Qaeda pretends it is, namely the collapse of the U.S., or maybe of the West as a whole, their strategy seems inexplicably obtuse,' he wrote in a January 2002 letter.

'They ought to have realized that proclaiming themselves to be enemies of America as such and engaging in indiscriminate mass slaughter of Americans, they could only earn the hatred of all.'

He added that al-Qaeda would have been 'far more effective' if the terrorist group had declared a 'friendship for the American people and waged war on the American state and its ruling elite.

'That way al-Qaida might have won the sympathy of some Americans,' he concludes.

The details of the letters have been published in an investigation into his personal correspondence by Yahoo News.

Kaczynski's letters fill more than 90 boxes at the University of Michigan Library's Labadie Collection, a special division of the library that documents the history of social protest movements, which had contacted him after his arrest to see if he would consider donating his writings.

Kaczynski's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto was published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995.

He was arrested in April 1996 and convicted in 1998 after planting or mailing bombs that killed three people and injured more than two dozen others over several decades.

Now 73, he is imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado, known as a Supermax.

Ted Kaczynski looks around as U.S. marshals prepare to take him down steps at the federal courthouse to a waiting vehicle in Helena, Montana in 1996

The Unabomber became obsessed with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after 9/11 and would beg for information of the terrorist organisation, his correspondence reveals

Ted Kaczynski wrote to pen pals from federal prison in Florence, Colorado asking for more information about bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaeda in the wake of the 2001 attack

In 2010, Kaczynski engaged in a long back-and-forth with students at Huntingdon College in Alabama about the power of Facebook and how public figures like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and the late conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart used the Internet to gain influence.

But he admitted he didn't know what YouTube was or what it meant to go 'viral.'

He also reveals that he preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential race.

The papers reveal that Kaczynski remains strongly opposed to technology.

Yahoo News reports that he is not allowed access to the Internet, but he still solicits email addresses from letter writers to share with others as part of his efforts to create an anti-technology movement.

The letters also show he fell in love with one of his early pen pals, Joy Richards, and they suggest Kaczynski and Richards explored the idea of getting married.

In 2010, Kaczynski engaged in a long back-and-forth with students at Huntingdon College in Alabama about the power of Facebook

Richards died of cancer in late 2006, and Yahoo reports that some of the most anguished letters in the collection deal with the pain Kaczynski felt over her illness.

Kaczynski has not corresponded with his brother since learning that he was the one who turned him into authorities, according to Yahoo News.

Kaczynski also 'ignored repeated desperate overtures from his mother, Wanda, who wrote him constantly until she died in 2011.'

Other documents, Yahoo News reports, show how people wrote to him with requests as varied as asking for gardening and relationship tips to advice on how to win the lottery.

The files also include hate mail and on many of the letters, Kaczynski has noted the date they were sent and the place from which it was sent.

Further correspondence between Kaczynski and his legal team reveal he tried to explain why he became a murderer.

One letter to his attorney Judy Clarke in December 1996 and titled 'VERY SENSITIVE', said: 'You asked how someone like me, who seems to be sensitive to other peoples feelings and not vicious or predatory, could do what I have done.

'Probably the biggest reason why you find my actions incomprehensible is that you have never experienced sufficiently intense anger and frustration over a long enough period of time.

'You dont know what it means to be under an immense burden of frustrated anger and how vicious it can make one.'

In 2001, he wrote about why he had decided to make his own archives public.

He said: 'I dont especially hope that scholars will learn anything from me. My main reason for donating my papers to the University of Michigan is a personal one.
Virgin Australia will continue to fly to and from Vanuatu after Qantas and Air New Zealand cancelled all flights to the pacific island over concerns about the conditions of the country's international runway.

Virgin Australia said they are satisfied with Port Vila's runway after the airline's safety officers conducted a full review.

'Following this review, we have concluded that currently our aircraft can continue to safely operate in and out of Port Vila,' a Virgin spokeswoman said to Fairfax, referring to its tri-weekly return flights from Brisbane to Port Vila.

Virgin Australia will continue to fly to and from Vanuatu after Qantas and Air New Zealand cancelled all flights to the pacific island over concerns about the runway conditions

Air New Zealand said rough weather and jet engines was resulting in loose material on the runway

However, Air New Zealand, which flew once a week from Auckland to Port Vila, said it had sent its last flight on Sunday.

'Weather and jet engine activity are resulting in loose material on the runway,' spokeswoman Janna Wilkinson added.

Qantas has also joined the Kiwi airline's decision and has cancelled a codeshare agreement that included selling tickets for local carrier Air Vanuatu.

Air Vanuatu said after meetings with Airports Vanuatu and its civil aviation authority, extra safety precautions have been put in place until permanent repairs could begin.

Air New Zealand, which flew once a week from Auckland to Port Vila, said it had sent its last flight on Sunday

Qantas has also joined the Kiwi airline's decision and has cancelled a codeshare agreement that included selling tickets for local carrier Air Vanuatu

'The safety measures imposed by Air Vanuatu require daily 'sweeping' of the runway plus regular inspections prior to and after take-off, new obstacle and runway surveys, and 200 metres of runway to be marked for urgent repair,' it said.

Officials at Vanuatu's civil aviation department were not immediately available for comment, but Air Vanuatu, which is operating flights as usual, said the department had put in place several safety measures after an emergency weekend meeting.

These measures included daily sweeping of the runway, regular inspections and marking a 200 m (656 ft) stretch for urgent repairs, the airline said in a statement.

Fiji Airways, Solomon Airlines and Air Niugini, the national airline of Papua New Guinea, are still flying to Port Vila according to a spokesperson from Air Vanuatu.
Police have joined in on the viral 'Be Like Bill' meme bandwagon, sharing a hilarious post to pretend they were on the hunt for a man 'with a slight build and no nose.'

Queensland Police, who are known for their humorous social media posts, uploaded a picture of the stick figure in a beanie on Monday afternoon saying they were searching for a man who has 'been repeatedly disturbing people's timelines.'

ACT Police also jumped in on the fun, using the stick figure, who has gone viral in the past 48 hours, to warn people to 'keep it classy' on Australia Day.

Queensland Police have jumped in on viral Be Like Bill meme, using the stick figure, who has gone viral in the past 48 hours, to pretend they were on the hunt for a man 'with a slight build and no nose'

ACT Police have also joined in on the fun to warn people to 'keep it classy,' on Australia Day in a humorous Facebook post (pictured)

'Queensland Police are searching for a man with a very slight build, dark hat and no nose who has been repeatedly disturbing peoples timelines. He answers to the name Bill,' they wrote on Monday afternoon.

'Be Like Bill' memes have been popping up for the past couple of days and use a simple stick figure, named Bill, to explain how 'common sense' is used in a range of scenarios.

Bill refrains from using too many hashtags on social media, ignores emails from Nigerian princes, gives up his seat on public transport to elderly women and does not cheat on his girlfriend.

The cheeky stick figure urges others to participate in the same behaviour, with the memes signing off with: 'Bill is smart. Be like Bill.'

Queensland police used the viral image of the stick figure Bill (pictured) saying he had 'repeatedly been disturbing people's timelines' since going viral 48 hours ago

'Be Like Bill' memes have been popping up for the past couple of days and use a simple stick figure, named Bill, to explain how 'common sense' is used in a range of scenarios

Bill refrains from using too many hashtags on social media, ignores emails from Nigerian princes, gives up his seat on public transport to elderly women and does not cheat on his girlfriend

ACT police used the popular formula to create their own memes in relation to Australia Day, saying Bill likes to enjoy the day listening to the Hottest 100 and 'having a few brews with mates.'

'Bill isn't going to get out of control and become violent or antisocial. Bill is going to keep it classy this Australia day,' it said.

The ACT police post has been shared over 3000 times in four hours and the Queensland police post has been shared 23,000 times since Monday afternoon.
For more of the latest on Donald Trump visit www.dailymail.co.uk/trump

As he was being ejected, Trump said: 'He wasn't wearing one of those hats, was he? Was he wearing one of those things?'

The man wearing the turban stoop up with a sign that read 'Stop Hate'

as he was talking about 'radical Islamic terror going on all over the place'

A man wearing a turban protesting during a Donald Trump campaign rally Sunday was ejected, as the billionaire called him out.

The Republican presidential candidate's rally in Muscatine, Iowa was interrupted by a group of protesters, which the man was a part of.

At the time, Trump was speaking about the September 11 terror attacks and the San Bernardino shooting as the man wearing a bright red turban stood up.

'We have radical Islamic terror going on all over the place, all over the world, and we have a president that won't say it,' the GOP front-runner said.

Scroll down for video

The Republican presidential candidate's rally in Muscatine, Iowa was interrupted by a group of protesters on Sunday

Two protesters hold a sign that reads 'Stop Hate' after interrupting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his speech at Muscatine High School

The protester wearing the red turban (above) was removed by security after interrupting Trump with another protester

'When planes fly into the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going.

'When people are shooting their friends in California, when they're shooting their friends ...'

Trump abruptly stopped speaking, as the video shows the protester wearing the turban standing up to reveal a sign reading 'Stop Hate'.

The crowd then erupted in chants of 'Trump! Trump! Trump!' and grew louder.

Speaking to the protesters, the businessman said: 'Bye. Bye. Goodbye.'

Once the man wearing the turban and another protester were escorted out by security, the video then shows the audience erupted with loud applause, cheers and chants of 'USA! USA! USA!'

Referring to the man wearing the turban, the businessman said: 'He wasn't wearing one of those hats, was he? Was he wearing one of those things? And he never will, and that's OK because we got to do something folks because it's not working.'

Speaking to the two protesters being removed, the billionaire businessman said: 'Bye. Bye. Goodbye'

Videos of the incident that happened at the Muscatine High School were quickly posted to social media.

Prior to his campaign events start, an announcement has been read in the last few months telling his supporters to 'not harm a protester' but instead chant 'Trump, Trump, Trump.'

According to ABC News, the chants alert security that a protester is in the audience.

Next Monday voters will head to the polls as many of the presidential candidates have spent time campaigning in the Hawkeye state.

Trump was also spotted attending a church service at the First Presbyterian Church.

Religious voters are a major factor in the opening contest on the presidential nominating calendar, and Trump has been working hard to build his appeal among them.

Once the man wearing the turban and another protester were escorted out by security, video of the rally shows the audience erupting with loud applause, cheers and chants of 'USA! USA! USA!'

Next Monday voters will head to the polls as many of the presidential candidates have spent time campaigning in the Hawkeye state

His chief challenger in the Republican race is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative preacher's son who's made deep inroads with evangelicals.

The service, which Trump's campaign invited several reporters to observe, included hymns, readings and a performance by the children's choir. Cream-colored stained glass in the window cast a golden glow.

At one point, Trump shared a prayer book with Debra Whitaker, an Iowa supporter seated to his right. She put her hand gently around Trump's waist as the congregation sang Hymn 409, "God is Here!" Trump could be seen by some mouthing the words of the hymn.

At one point, as church-goers offered each other wishes of peace, Trump received warm greetings from those around him.

When it was time to offer tithes, Trump was seen digging into his pants' pocket. Two folded $50 bills were later spotted in a collection plate that was passed down his pew.
that buried the Northeast over the weekend

East Coast residents went back to work on Monday morning, following a blizzard of historic

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East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard face fresh challenges as the workweek begins: slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalk entrances.

For many, the weekend extends into Monday because of closed schools and government offices. Officials were cautioning against unnecessary driving, even as they expected some commuter trains to be delayed or canceled.

The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with near-record snowfalls tallied from Washington, D.C. to New York City. At least 41 deaths were blamed on the weather, with shoveling snow and breathing carbon monoxide together claiming almost as many lives as car crashes.

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Morning commuters pass plowed snow on Wall Street in front of Federal Hall in New York's Financial District on Monday, January 25

Workers remove snow from a street in New York City's Times Square on Monday, January 25, 2016

People try to navigate a snowbank in the middle of Park Avenue as New Yorkers return to work after the city was hit with a record-setting snowfall

A girl tries not to trip as she walks through the slush with a friend in New York on Monday

Commuters cross piles of snow to catch a bus, Monday in New York City. The weekend's storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with near-record snowfalls tallied from Washington to New York City, creating delays along snow-covered streets

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 25: People wait in line to board an Amtrak train, wich was running on a modified schedule, in New York City

A woman walks along 42nd Street in New York City, past a snow bank, on January 25, 2016

A man holds a child as he passes a snow encased car on 42nd Street in the Manhattan borough of New York, January 25, 2016

Nearly a block-long pile of plowed snow waits to be loaded into a melter, in lower Manhattan, in New York on Monday, January 25

U.S. Secret Service cars park in front of the White House on a plowed Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC on January 25, 2016

Catholic University students shovel the parking lot behind their house following Winter Storm Jonas on Sunday

A television reporter stands on top of a miniature mountain range of snow taken off the streets of the capital and dumped in one of the parking lots near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium

DC dump trucks and excavators create a miniature mountain range of snow, dumping it into the parking lot

A tiny snowman sits on an overpass near Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium on Monday

A Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee uses a snowblower while trying to find and clear a sidewalk

Workers clear the tracks of snow at the Port Washington branch of the Long Island Railroad, Monday, January 25, 2015

People clear snow from parked cars on Henry Street in the Chinatown neighborhood in New York City on Sunday, January 24

A handout satellite picture provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on January 25 2016 shows snow on the ground across several US states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and parts of Canada, in the aftermath of the Jonas blizzard

Some 1,400 flights remain cancelled for Monday and Tuesday, according to the flight-tracking site Flight Aware. Above, a map provided by the website shows that most of the cancellations are centered in New York City

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin was on a rescheduled pre-dawn flight from Springfield, Illinois, to Chicago while on the way to Washington on Monday morning. The Illinois Democrat said he's not even sure he'll be able to get to D.C. today, but he's been through this before.

BLIZZARD FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS Monday Total delays today: 4,155 Total delays within, into, or out of the United States today: 1,518 Total cancellations today: 2,001 Total cancellations within, into, or out of the United States today: 1,604 Tuesday Total delays tomorrow: 34 Total delays within, into, or out of the United States tomorrow: 0 Total cancellations tomorrow: 783 Total cancellations within, into, or out of the United States tomorrow: 471 Wednesday Total delays Wednesday: 0 Total delays within, into, or out of the United States Wednesday: 0 Total cancellations Wednesday: 26 Total cancellations within, into, or out of the United States Wednesday: 8 Advertisement

'Most of us who spend part of our lives in Washington know to expect the worst when it comes to snow,' he said. 'I knew the forecast was enough to cause a problem.'

The snow began Friday, and the last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday. In its aftermath, crews raced all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks devoid of their usual bustle.

Sunday's brilliant sunshine and gently rising temperatures provided a respite from the blizzard that dropped a record 29.2 inches on Baltimore. The weekend timing could not have been better, enabling many to enjoy a gorgeous winter day.

It was just right for a huge snowball fight in Baltimore, where more than 600 people responded to organizer Aaron Brazell's invite on Facebook.

'I knew people would be cooped up in their houses and wanting to come outside,' said Brazell, who was beaned by multiple blasts of perfectly soft but firm snow.

But one day of sunshine wasn't enough to clear many roads. Cars parked in neighborhoods were encased in snow, some of it pushed from the streets by plows. In downtown Philadelphia, some sidewalk entrances were blocked by mounds of snow.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars all week after a one-day record of 26.6 inches fell in Central Park.

That advice came too late for Bob Raldiris, who tried shoveling his Nissan Maxima out of a spot in Ridgewood, Queens, before passing plows and trucks spoiled his labor. 'This is terrible,' he said, pointing to a pile of snow three feet high.

Federal offices will be closed Monday, and Virginia's state workers were told to stay home. Schools from Washington to the Jersey Shore gave students Monday off; In the D.C. suburbs, classes also were canceled for Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in nearby Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell lifted the state of emergency and reopened state offices starting at 10am.

Officials say the two-hour delay will keep more people off the roads during morning rush as cleanup efforts continue.

DART plans to operate regular service with some exceptions.

Pennsylvania has decided to keep the Capitol compex in Harrisburg and Reading state office closed on Monday for non-essential employees.

There was 22.4 inches in Philadelphia, matching the average snowfall for the season.

Airlines try to get back to work at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport on Monday January 25, 2016

Snow is removed from a parking lot at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport on Monday. Flights remained delayed or canceled in the aftermath of a massive weekend blizzard that slammed into the eastern U.S., wreaking havoc on travel in the nation's busiest cities, with airports in the New York City and Washington D.C. metro areas were the hardest hit.

Rental carsare buried in snow, at Dulles International Airport(IAD) January 25, 2016, outside Washington, DC, in Sterling,Virginia

Ben Tippins, who works at Enterprise/Alamo rental cars, sorts over 500 sets of car keys that match up to the rental cars buried in snow at Dulles International Airport(IAD) January 25, 2016, outside Washington, DC, in Sterling, Virginia

People walk past mound of snow on Wall Street two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow

The storm that dumped over two-feet of snow on the city is responsible for the deaths of 41 on the East Coast. Above, Wall Street in New York City on Monday

Above, more snow on Wall Street Monday morning in New York City. The federal government in Washington, DC remains closed to non-essential workers on Monday

Workers clear the street of snow two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow on January 25

Workers clear the street of snow two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow on January 25

New York's transit authority said partial service on the Long Island Rail Road was restored on three of its 12 branches and diesel train service was operating on three other branches.

The problems were due to switches and tracks that were refrozen overnight due to low temperatures. New York City subways, buses and Metro-North Railroad service were operating on a normal schedule Monday.

Broadway reopened after going dark at the last minute during the snowstorm, but museums remained closed in Washington, and the House of Representatives postponed votes until February, citing the storm's impact on travel.

According to an analysis by Moody's, the Washington Metro area lost $570 million due to the storm through Monday, about a quarter of the total economic activity for that three-day stretch. By contrast, the New York metro area lost $460 million  roughly 7 percent of its economic activity.

'I know other cities struggled,' Mayor de Blasio said. 'We are so blessed to have the personnel, the training, the equipment that allows to this city to turn on a dime. Things are not entirely normal, today but most of the city is operating well.'

Asked why New York schools are open while the District's are closed, Washington's emergency management director, Christopher Geldart, said 'It's a total unfair comparison.'

Unlike during 'Snowmaggedon' winter of 2009-2010, when New York's transit system stayed open at first, stranding buses and blocking streets, this time early closings and a coordinated response enabled the city and state to reopen the roads more quickly.

'Because we put the travel ban in, Sanitation was able to get out there and plow as well as they did,' de Blasio said. 'And when the buses came back online, they could actually get around. It was really good decision-making.'

Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, regular weekday rail service on NJ Tramsit resumed service after being shut down by the snowstorm. Amtrak, however, is operating on a modified schedule.

Commuters walk past piles of snow at the Broadway Junction transit hub on Monday, January 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn community of East New York

Commuters crowd an L subway train, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn borough of New York

Commuters crowd a platform between piles of snow in the elevated Broadway Junction subway station on Monday, January 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn borough of New York

A worker clears snow on Third Avenue on January 25, 2016 as New Yorkers return to work after the city was hit with a record-setting snowfall

People walk past a large bank of snow on Park Avenue on January 25, 2016. The city was hit with a record 26.6 inches of snow in one day

A man tries to dig out his snow-covered car in Richmond, Virginia on Monday morning

People navigate through the snow and slush during the morning commute in the Brooklyn borough of New York, January 25, 2016

Commuters carry cups of coffee as they walk to work Monday morning after the record-breaking weekend blizzard in New York City

A woman stands amid a large bank of snow on Park Avenue in New York City Monday morning

People walk past a large bank of snow on Park Avenue as the Big Apple churns to life once more

The sun rises on Park Avenue in New York City on Monday as commuters navigate through banks of snow left behind by the blizzard

AT LEAST 41 KILLED IN SNOW-STORM RELATED DEATHS At least 41 people have died as a result of the mammoth snowstorm that pounded the eastern U.S. The deaths occurred in car accidents, from carbon monoxide poisoning, and from heart attacks while shoveling snow. Here are 37 we know details about so far: WASHINGTON, D.C. - 1 An 82-year-old man who died after going into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in front of his home. DELAWARE - 1 A U.S. Capitol Police officer, 44-year-old Officer Vernon Alston, died of a heart attack after shoveling snow at his Magnolia home. KENTUCKY - 2 Kentucky transportation worker Christopher Adams died Saturday while plowing snow-covered highways. Billy R. Stevens, 59, of Williamsburg, died in southeastern Kentucky when his car collided with a salt truck Thursday. MARYLAND - 2 A 49-year-old man suffered cardiac arrest while shoveling in Abingdon on Saturday. Officials in Prince George's County said a man collapsed and died Saturday while shoveling snow in Fort Washington. NEW JERSEY - 2 Twenty-three-year-old Sashalynn Rosa, of Passaic, and her year-old son, Messiah Bonilla, died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow. Rosa's 3-year-old daughter, Saniyah Bonilla, remains hospitalized in critical condition. NEW YORK - 4 Al Mansoor, 66, was struck and killed by a snow plow clearing his driveway just after 2 p.m. Sunday. Three people died while shoveling snow in New York City - one person on Staten Island and two people in Queens. Police announced the deaths but released no further details. NORTH CAROLINA - 6 Six people have died in car accidents during the storm, authorities have said, including a 4-year-old boy who died Friday afternoon after the pickup truck carrying his family on Interstate 77 near Troutman spun out of control and crashed. OHIO - 1 A teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed Friday, the State Highway Patrol said. PENNSYLVANIA - 4 Authorities in eastern Pennsylvania say David Perrotto, 56, died of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently after his car was buried in snow by a passing plow. A Halifax man suffered a 'cardiac event' Sunday while shoveling, Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick told WHTM-TV. Cesar Bourdon, 54, collapsed while shoveling in Allentown on Saturday night. Geneva College soccer player Nate Ferraco was killed in a crash on an icy road near Evans City. SOUTH CAROLINA - 4 Ruby Bell, 86, and her husband, 87-year-old Robert Bell, died in Greenville of probable carbon monoxide poisoning because of a generator filled the house with carbon monoxide. The South Carolina Highway Patrol says a 44-year-old man was killed after being struck by a vehicle that slid out of control after hitting a patch of ice.

Jimmy B. Thomas, 61, was driving a car that ran off a road near Jonesville early Saturday afternoon, hitting a ditch and then a tree TENNESSEE - 2 A car slid off the roadway due to speed and slick conditions, killing the driver and injuring a passenger, the Knox County sheriff's department said. A couple in a vehicle slid off an icy road and plummeted down a 300-foot embankment Wednesday night, killing the woman who was driving, said Carter County Sheriff Dexter Lunceford. VIRGINIA - 8 A man was killed on Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in Virginia Beach that police blamed on speed and icy road conditions. Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler died Friday while shoveling snow outside his new house in Daleville. A single-vehicle crash in Chesapeake claimed one life. The medical examiner's office has confirmed five hypothermia deaths - in Hampton and Wise, Charles City, Gloucester and Henry Counties. Advertisement

Another issue in New Jersey was the storm surge connected with the blizzard which flooded many Jersey Shore towns., and officials are beginning to assess the erosion.

Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin on Monday plan to visit the Ortley Beach section of Toms River, the Holgate section of Long Beach Township, Stone Harbor and North Wildwood. Gov. Chris Christie said the flooding wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Flying remained particularly messy after nearly 12,000 weekend flights were canceled. Airports resumed limited service in New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, which said it got an entire winter's snow in two days. Washington-area airports remained closed Sunday after the punishing blizzard.

More than 2,500 flights were delayed or canceled Monday, according to the flight tracking site Flight Aware. That's an improvement from Friday and Saturday.

Meanwhile, estimates of the storm's economic impact are tame. Ryan Sweet and Adam Kamins, economists at Moody's Analytics, peg the lost economic output at about $2.5 billion to $3 billion. That's relatively small in the context of a $16 trillion economy.

The figure represents lost income for hourly workers and spending that was skipped. It does not include the cost of damage to roads or other infrastructure.

Amtrak operated a reduced number of trains on all its routes, serving many people who couldn't get around otherwise, spokesman Marc Magliari said. But bus and rail service was expected to be limited around the region into Monday.

People walk past a mound of snow on Wall Street two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow on January 25, 2016 in New York City

A snowman stands in a huge pile of snow in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, January 25

A man steps through a snow drift two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow on January 25, 2016 in New York City

Workers clear the street of snow two days after a massive snow storm covered the east coast of the United States in snow on January 25, 2016 in New York City

Overall snowfall of 26.8 inches in Central Park made it New York's second biggest winter storm since records began in 1869, and Saturday's 26.6 inches made for a single-day record in the city.

Some of the blizzard's heaviest snow bands wound up over New York City and Long Island, sending snow totals spiking higher than the 12-18 inches forecasters predicted Thursday.

'Just about everybody was expecting a strong storm system,' National Weather Service meteorologist Peter Wichrowski said Sunday. 'The question always was, just how heavy was the precipitation going to be?'

Washington's records were less clear. The official three-day total of 17.8 inches measured at Reagan National Airport was impossibly short of accumulations recorded elsewhere in the city. An official total of 22.4 inches landed at the National Zoo, for example.

Commuters wait in the street as piles of snow fill their bus stop on Monday, January 25, 2016, in New York

Trucks dump their loads of snow in the parking lots of RFK Stadium in Washington on Monday, January 25, 2016, as the nation's capital digs out following a monster weekend snow

A vehicle pushes up pikes of snow after trucks dump their loads of snow in the parking lots of RFK Stadium in Washington, Monday, January 25, 2016, as the nation's capital digs out following a monster weekend snow

A vehicle pushes up piles of snow after trucks dump their loads of snow in the parking lots of RFK Stadium in Washington on Monday, January 25, 2016, as the nation's capital digs out following a monster weekend snow

Commuters walk past piles of snow to board a bus at the Broadway Junction transit hub, Monday, January 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn borough of New York

Trains stand as workers clear the tracks of snow at the Port Washington branch of the Long Island Railroad Monday, January 25, 2016 in Port Washington, N.Y

The zoo remained closed through Monday but a video of its giant panda Tian Tian making snow angels got more than 48 million views. Joining the fun, Jeffrey Perez, of Millersville, Maryland, climbed into a panda suit and rolled around in the snow, snagging more than half a million views of his own.

Mother Nature was less deadly this time than human nature. A beloved Capitol policeman joined a grim list of people suffering heart attacks while shoveling snow. And a growing number of people died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In Passaic, New Jersey, on Sunday, a mother and year-old son watching their family shovel snow from the apparent safety of their car died because snow blocked the tailpipe; her 3-year-old daughter was in critical condition.

A man who tried to shovel out his car in Muhlenberg Township, Pennsylvania, met a similar fate after a snowplow buried him inside. And an elderly couple in Greenville, South Carolina, was poisoned by the generator in their garage after losing power.

Roofs collapsed on a Pennsylvania church, a Virginia theater and a barn outside Frederick, Maryland, which got 33.5 inches of snow, killing some cows. Douglas Fink felt terrible about that: 'I was trying to protect them, but they probably would have been better off just standing outside.'

People go sledding in Rockford Park following the blizzard on January 25, 2016 in Wilmington, Delaware. Many streets in the city remained covered with snow

A road remains un-plowed following a blizzard on January 25, 2016 in Wilmington, Delaware. A major snowstorm hit the East Coast over the weekend breaking records of snow fall while causing flooding and ice in other areas along the Mid-Atlantic region

People wait in line to board an Amtrak train on January 25, 2016 in New York City following the record-breaking winter storm Jonas

A woman along a slush covered street on the first workday following a blizzard that set a new single-day record for snowfall in both New York and Washington D.C. on January 25, 2016 in New York City

Manhattan is viewed from Brooklyn on the first workday following the deadly winter storm Jonas that hit the city on Saturday

A newly married couple walk in the snow on the first workday following a blizzard that set a new single-day record for snowfall in both New York and Washington D.C. on January 25, 2016 in New York City

A family builds a snowman on the bank of the Potomac River near the Lincoln Memorial January 25, 2016 in Washington, DC

Sanders Durix skis on the steps of a closed Lincoln Memorial on January 25, 2016 in Washington, DC

Pedestrians walk near a closed Lincoln Memorial January 25, 2016 in Washington, DC

Scott Behrens, left; Tyler Varian, center; and Augie Diana, right play a friendly game of volleyball in the snow January 25, 2016 in Washington, DC

A plow truck and a pickup truck try to squeeze through a snowy side street in Towson, Maryland on Monday, January 25, 2016

Ice clogs the James river as it flows past downtown Richmond, Virginia, Monday, January 25, 2016. Area residents and businesses are continuing to dig out from from the massive snowstorm over the weekend
A former Big Brother contestant is set to face trial after throwing champagne at a fellow reality TV star during a row on a panel show, at a cost of 15,000 to the taxpayer, it is claimed.

Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace, 37, is facing trial for assault after the argument with Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham, 24, on Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother's spin-off Bit On The Side in September.

Police were called to the set in Elstree, Hertfordshire, after the row broke out between the celebrities during a discussion about nominations, causing the show to come off air 12 minutes early.

Prosecutors are spending 15,000 bringing criminal charges against Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace, 37, (left) after she was accused of throwing champagne at fellow reality TV star Farrah Abraham, 24, (right) during a row on Celebrity Big Brother's spin-off panel show, it is claimed

Viewers hearing Horgan-Wallace call Miss Abraham a 'nasty horrible b****' who should 'f*** off' back to America, to which she responded by shouting 'Hag be quiet, hag be quiet'.

The feuding pair are said to have thrown champagne glasses, while former supermodel Janice Dickinson, 60, was accused of throwing a chair. Channel 5 have not confirmed what happened after the programme went off air.

'Allo 'Allo actress Vicki Michelle, 64, who was also appearing on the programme but was not involved in the argument, had to be rushed to hospital after she was apparently caught in the crossfire.

Police were called to the set in Elstree, Hertfordshire, after the row broke out between Miss Abraham (left) and Horgan-Wallace (right) during a discussion about nominations

Miss Abrahams (left) was on CBB's spin-off to discuss the recent evictions of Janice Dickinson (centre) and Jenna Jameson (second from left), who had joined Vicki Michelle (second from right) and Horgan-Wallace (right) for a post-show analysis before the row boiled over

The dramatic incident came days after mother-of-one Miss Abraham, who rose to fame when she appeared on MTV reality series Sixteen And Pregnant, was evicted from the competition following weeks of aggressive behaviour.

She was on CBB's spin-off to discuss the recent evictions of Ms Dickinson and Jenna Jameson, who had also joined them for a post-show analysis before the row boiled over.

Ms Dickinson (pictured) and Miss Abraham were later cautioned for common assault

Ms Dickinson and Miss Abraham were later cautioned for common assault, but Horgan-Wallace - who appeared in Big Brother's seventh series in 2006, did not accept a caution, alleging that the show's producers had engineered the spat.

Now it has emerged that following a five-month police investigation Horgan-Wallace, from north London, was charged with assault, after Miss Abraham was allegedly injured by the champagne.

She was also charged with criminal damage to Miss Abraham's dress, but denied both charges during a hearing in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, on Monday last week, The Sun reports.

A trial is set to take place in March, and witnesses who could be called to give evidence include the programme's presenter, Rylan Clarke, Ms Michelle and two of the show's producers.

The cost of the trial is said to run to around 15,000, and taxpayers' money could also be used to fly Miss Abraham over from the US to give evidence, as a video link would have to take place at 2am her time.

A CPS spokesman told MailOnline: 'Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace was charged by Hertfordshire Constabulary with common assault and criminal damage.
This private life she values so much has some wondering how she will be able to fulfill the very public role of First Lady

Melania said she remains private for the sake of her son with Donald, Barron, 9, who she is raising in New York City

She has also granted just a handful of interviews to the media, and refused to comment on most profiles and pieces about her and her life

The first time she spoke to a crowd was in Myrtle Beach in November, saying of her husband; ''He will be the best president ever. We love you!'

Melania continues to appear with her husband at campaign stops looking picture perfect while clad in couture, but seldom speaks

Donald Trump's lead in the Republican primary continues to grow according to polls, meaning his wife Melania could become First Lady

First Lady Melania Trump.

If that prospect evokes no clear image, that's no accident. Donald Trump's wife has said little in the campaign about the type of First Lady she'd like to be should her husband win the Republican nomination and the presidency.

The distance, she's said, is intentional so she can focus on the couple's 9-year-old son, Barron.

But should her husband become the GOP candidate for the fall, the Slovenian-born model, mother and multilingual speaker would face big decisions about her family, her life and her potential position in American history.

The role of First Lady would be a huge departure for Melania, who has given just a handful of interviews over the course of the campaign but remains her husband's biggest supporter at events.

A striking brunette swathed in couture, frequently seen but seldom heard

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Family: Donald Trump's lead in the Republican primary continues to grow according to polls, meaning his wife Melania could become First Lady (Donald, Barron and Melania) above in November

Love: Donald and Melania's relationship (left in 1998) began at a 1998 party in Manhattan when the newly separated Donald asked then-model Melania Knauss (left in 1999), 24 years his junior, for her telephone number

Seen not heard: Melania continues to appear with her husband at campaign stops looking picture perfect while clad in couture, but seldom speaks (Eric Trump, Lara Yunaska Trump, Donald Trump, Barron Trump, Melania Trump, Vanessa Haydon Trump, Kai Madison Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Donald John Trump III, and Ivanka Trump above in June)

Her first campaign turn came in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in November, as the candidate called his family on stage during a rally. Turning to Melania, his third wife, Trump asked if she'd like to say something.

She stepped to the microphone and cocked a manicured thumb over an elegant shoulder.

'Isn't he the best?' Mrs. Trump, 45, asked the crowd in heavily accented English.

'He will be the best president ever. We love you!'

Like her husband, she is not given to understatement.

As his supporters roared, Donald Trump gave her a kiss and could be heard saying: 'Thank you, honey. Very nice.'

It was the barest of glimpses into the life of a couple who celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary Friday.

Their relationship began at least six years earlier, dating back to the 1998 party in Manhattan when the newly separated Trump asked then-model Melania Knauss, 24 years his junior, for her telephone number.

She rebuffed him because he was with a date that night, she has said.

By the next year, they were a couple. Trump was seeking the Reform Party nomination in the 2000 presidential election. His girlfriend was asked how she viewed herself if ever she became first lady.

'I would be very traditional,' she told The New York Times.

'Like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy.'

Would she now stay as far above the political fray as the couple's triplex overlooking Central Park? That's largely up to the Trumps, but they're in no hurry to decide.

Explanation: Melania said she remains private for the sake of her son with Donald, Barron, 9, who she is raising in New York City (above in February)

Questions: This private life she values so much has some wondering how she will be able to fulfill the very public role of First Lady (left at 2011 Oscars, right at the 2012 Met Ball)

Melania has also been in no hurry to speak with the media, granting just a few interviews over the course of her husband's campaign.

She appeared on 20/20 in November, with Donald by her side, to speak with the couple's close friend Barbara Walters.

Melania also sat down to talk with Harper's Bazaar after being selected to grace the cover of the fashion magazine's February issue.

She briefly appeared on 60 Minutes as well this when her husband was on the program this past September, but around that same time refused to participate in a New York Times profile about her, opting instead to break her silence and speak for the first time since her husband announced his candidacy for president with People.

She explained in that interview why she remains so private, telling the magazine; 'My husband is traveling all the time. Barron needs somebody as a parent, so I am with him all the time.'

Through a spokeswoman, Mrs. Trump declined an interview request from The Associated Press.

Melania would be a first - make that multiple firsts - in American history should she become First Lady.

She would be the only First Lady who is the third wife of a president, and the first to be born and raised in a communist nation, according to Carl Anthony, historian at the National First Ladies' Library.

And she almost certainly has shown more skin than any other U.S. first lady - that was her in 2006, very pregnant, in a gold bikini on the steps of her husband's private jet in Vogue magazine.

By 2016, Melania has gotten married, had a child and adopted a much more traditional posture as a candidate's spouse.

She wouldn't be the first president's wife to be born in another country - that would be Louisa Adams, born in England. Nor would she be the first first lady to have married a divorced man - hello, Nancy Reagan.

And she'd be the third First Lady to have worked as a professional model, after Pat Nixon and Betty Ford.

Facts: Melania (above in October) would be the only First Lady who is the third wife of a president, and the first to be born and raised in a communist nation

Experts on the very few women who have filled this public role said Melania is being smart by laying low now, especially if she is not comfortable talking about politics and policy.

But eventually, they said, she'd be wise to build on what she knows.

Melania studied design and architecture at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia - so perhaps advocating for historical preservation would suit her. Maybe she'd expand her charity work.

Even her model-perfect poise and ability to speak multiple languages could be an asset to her English-only husband during state dinners and other White House social events.

'It's best when they draw from their experience, and marry that up with the overall focus of their husbands' administration,' said Anita McBride , who was chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush.

Anthony said: 'I think she is a great emotional support to him or a ballast for him.'

Donald Trump has signaled that his daughter, Ivanka, might be unusually prominent for a president's daughter.

He volunteers Ivanka's name when asked whose advice he values.

It was she, not Melania, who introduced her father when he announced his campaign.

During breaks in Republican debates, it was Ivanka, one of Donald Trump's five children, with whom he huddled.

For all of her public discretion, Melania has been consistently public about one thing: She's more than an accessory.

'I have my own mind,' she told Harper's Bazaar.

'I am my own person, and I think my husband likes that about me.'

Melania also does not deal with condescension, something that was seen when she appeared on her husband NBC reality show The Apprentice.

On a visit to the Trump triplex above Manhattan, one of the contestants on his show said to Melania: 'You're very, very lucky.'

'Thank you,' Melania, holding a glass of champagne, says with a glittering smile.
After nine months at sea, four British female rowers have completed an epic journey across the Pacific - despite being three months behind schedule.

The group, called the Coxless Crew, set out on the journey from San Francisco last April, when they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and pointed their 29ft pink boat called Doris, towards Australia.

And shortly before 1am on Monday after 257 days at sea, the four women nosed Doris's faded bow into the Marlin Marina in Cairns, Australia, where they were greeted by their proud family and friends.

The four women step on to dry land for the first time in months after completing their record-breaking rowing challenge across the Pacific from San Francisco to Cairns, Australia

The women, who called themselves the Coxless Crew rowed more than 9,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean during the challenge

The women's final few days at sea were spent negotiating the Great Barrier Reef, dodging dive-bombing birds and enduring dwindling supplies

It came after they had to endure storms, enormous waves, sea sickness and the odd flying fish.

There was jubilation as the women, Laura Penhaul, Natalia Cohen, Emma Mitchell and Meg Dyos, hugged each other before joining hands and taking their first unsteady steps on to solid ground in months.

Afterwards, they sat down for a well-earned beer in front of scores of people, who cheered them ashore as the women described their arrival as an 'overwhelming experience.'

But there were conflicting emotions as they had to say goodbye to Doris, whose cramped cabins and salty deck had been their home for most of last year.

Their final few days at sea were spent negotiating the Great Barrier Reef, dodging dive-bombing birds and enduring dwindling supplies.

The women had to endure storms, enormous waves, sea sickness and the odd flying fish. Pictured from left are - Emma Mitchell, Laura Penhaul, Natalie Cohen and Meg Dyos

The women were unable to contain their emotions and embraced each other after finally finishing their challenge three months late

But writing on their blog on Sunday, they said: 'It has been an exhausting and emotional few days as we make our approach to land.

'The last 8,500 nautical miles don't matter anymore, it is all about these last 20.

'It's fair to say that with physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation and a lack of savoury food, were are being tested to our limits.

'However, this is where we draw on our spirit, row hard, row strong, row together.

The journey across the Pacific was split into three legs with supply stops in Hawaii and Samoa and was completed in its entirety by Ms Penhaul, 32, Ms Cohen, 40, both from London and Ms Mitchell, 30, from Marlow in Buckinghamshire

Isabel Burnham, 31, from Saffron Walden, completed the crew for the first leg, Lizanne van Vuuren, 27, took over for the second stage while Ms Dyos, 25, manned the oars for the final section.

The group made it across the ocean using their rowing boat, called Doris, which was 29 foot long and painted bright pink

The women rowed continuously as pairs in two-hour shifts, sleeping 90 minutes at a time and consuming 5,00 calories a day

The expedition got off to a bad start when water damage to Doris's battery charging system forced them back to California, costing 16 days.

Back on the ocean they rowed continuously as pairs in two-hour shifts, sleeping 90 minutes at a time.

Each consumed 5,000 calories a day, devouring freeze-dried meals with a side of protein bars, chocolate, fruit or nuts, washed down with desalinated sea water.

The rowers had to contend with a battering from a tropical storm, waves the size of houses and the heart-stopping approach of a humpback whale that surfaced just yards away.

The rowers had to contend with a battering from a tropical storm, waves the size of houses and the heart-stopping approach of a humpback whale that surfaced just yards away

The Coxless Crew had been raising money for two charities on their journey - Walking With The Wounded and Breast Cancer Care

Drenched by rain and seawater they endured painful sores, but also faced temperatures so hot they cooked a pancake on the deck just from the sun's rays.

Setbacks from El Nino and a notorious stretch of ocean where the winds died away left them weeks behind schedule, and when they reached Samoa they were days from running out of food, but emails and the occasional call from home helped them through the dark times.

But despite taking three months longer than planned, the expedition has set two world records with the women becoming the first all-female team and the first team of four to row the Pacific.
Jihadi John had warned his younger brother to avoid following him to Syria, it has been revealed.

Islamic State terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, who was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa two months ago, had told his 22-year-old sibling Omar that his encounters with MI5 had ruined his life.

And Emwazi, 27, of Queens Park, West London, had warned his brother that the British security services had also scuppered his hopes of marriage and work in his homeland of Kuwait.

Jihadi John: Islamic State terrorist Mohammed Emwazi (left), who was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa two months ago, had told his 22-year-old sibling Omar (right) that his encounters with MI5 had ruined his life

UK home: Emwazi, 27, who lived in this property in Queens Park, West London, had warned his brother that the British security services had scuppered his hopes of marriage and work in his homeland of Kuwait

According to security expert Robert Verkaik in The Independent, Omar said before his brothers death in November: He wasnt the type of guy to complain... but he would say: Dont be like me.

He was always saying: Learn from other peoples mistakes. He would basically say: Look where I am. I cant get married and I cant get a proper job. I cant travel and I cant go nowhere.

While Omar accepted Emwazi must take responsibility for his actions, he has also claimed the security services played a key role in his radicalisation by preventing him leave Britain for Kuwait.

He added: The thing is they would never leave him alone. When it happens constantly it becomes the norm. Its not like he is suddenly going to get frustrated again. So this was how it was for him.

Foreign hopes: While Omar accepted Emwazi must take responsibility for his actions, he has also claimed the security services played a key role in his radicalisation by preventing him leave Britain for Kuwait (above)

This view was in stark contrast to that of MI5 and Scotland Yard, which thought Emwazi belonged to a dedicated network of Islamist extremists backing terrorist activities in Britain and Somalia.

JIHADI JOHN: FROM LONDON BOY TO 'SADISTIC AND MERCILESS KILLER' Emwazi in the school playground in 1994 Mohammed Emwazi was six years old when his family moved to London. He grew up in North Kensington, where a network of Islamist extremists was uncovered in recent years. As a child he was a fan of Manchester United FC and the band S Club 7, according to a 1996 school year book. His former headteacher in London recalled a 'hard-working aspirational young man'. She said he had been bullied at school but insisted she was not aware of any radicalisation of pupils there. He later went on to study information technology at the University of Westminster. Emwazi went on to work 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. He was known to intelligence services in the UK since at least 2009 and had been on a list of potential terror suspects. Court papers connected Emwazi to a network of extremists known as 'The London Boys' - originally trained by al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda's East Africa affiliate. One hostage who fell under his control in the ISIS group's hub in Raqqa talked of a 'cold, sadistic and merciless' killer. Advertisement

The revelations came in a new book by Mr Verkaik, who has also revealed in The Sunday Times that Jihadi John had been contemplating suicide four years before launching his gruesome beheading campaign in Syria.

The ISIS executioner wanted to kill himself after becoming paranoid by MI5's investigations into him as he accelerated his descent into Islamic extremism, according to an email sent in 2010.

Emwazi, whose death was confirmed by ISIS last week, said he planned to take 'as many pills as I can' to escape what he believed was his own personal persecution at the hands of the security services.

The then 22-year-old complained that he felt 'like a dead man walking' after being repeatedly scrutinised by counter-terrorism officers who probed all aspects of his lifestyle - including his family and girlfriends - and subsequently banned him from leaving Britain.

He claimed at the time to have had no interest in Islamic extremism, arguing that he was just an innocent victim of a snooping police state - a lie thoroughly shattered by his role as ISIS chief executioner and short-term poster boy.

Despite a ban prohibiting him from leaving the country, Emwazi first escaped Britain in 2011, when he headed to Lisbon. He returned a short time later but successfully evaded border control again to leave for good in 2012.

After making it to Syria, he became ISIS executioner in chief, filmed on sickening propaganda videos beheading five Western hostages.

These were US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, former Manchester taxi driver Alan Henning, and US soldier turned aid worker, Peter Kassig.

Dressed in all black tunics, Emwazi - by that time known as Jihadi John - became the world's most wanted man.
The doctor known as 'Sweden's Fritzl' had drawn up a sex contract for his victim during the six days he kept her locked in a bunker after drugging, kidnapping and allegedly raping her.

Martin Trenneborg makes a list of demands for his victim, including that she gives him a 'girlfriend experience' when they have sex in the bunker he had built on his remote farm in southern Sweden.

The 38-year-old, whose trial begins today in Stockholm, Sweden, also adds that she can reduce her sentence by performing a number of degrading sex acts.

Vile: Martin Trenneborg, 38, drew up a contract for his victim where he demanded that she would have sex with him as well as well as shave her body hair, pierce her navel and let him film her

Fifty shades: Trenneborg's contract makes a number of demands and outlines several sex acts which would reduce the woman's stay in the bunker

Swedish police found the contract on his computer after he was arrested on September 18 last year, when he and the victim visited a police station with the intention to stop the search for her.

The contract covers a period of ten years, an indication of how long Trenneborg had planned on keeping the woman, who is in her 30s, locked in the bunker.

She needs to provide him with a 'GFE' - girlfriend experience - during sex, including kissing while having intercourse.

He also demands that she shaves her bodyhair, gets a tan and pierces her navel, and allows him to film and photograph her.

Trenneborg also outlines ways the the woman could get 'discounts' on her time in the bunker by performing degrading sex acts, as well as embarking on fitness programs to improve her physique.

In addition, the contract stipulates that the woman would be punished for refusing sex, masturbating and trying to escape, the latter leading to another five years in the bunker.

Terrifying: In addition, the contract stipulates that the woman would be punished for refusing sex, masturbating and trying to escape, the latter leading to another five years in the bunker

Face of a Fritzl: Trenneborg is pictured on social media during his time at Karolinska Institutet while obtaining his medical degree in the early noughties

A courtroom sketch shows Trenneborg, left, and his lawyer Mari Schaub, right, in court on Monday

The contract, which is written in English, refers to his victim as a 'guest' and refers to a possibility of other guests as well as a transwoman or transvestite, using the derogatory term 'shemale'.

The search on Trenneborg's computer also revealed an internet history riddled with degrading and violent porn, as well as documents showing that he had scouted at least ten women before settling for the woman who eventually became his victim.

'It was like a military operation, you have to be prepared for every possible problem before you act', he told police.

'She fitted me in every aspect, lived at the right place on the ground floor, our personalities matched and I liked the way she looked'

'I have been planning this for years. I started building the bunker four years ago.

'The original plan was that she would be there for years. It had seemed very tedious to do all this just to keep her in my possession for a few days.'

'If one looks at the facts while ignoring the small parenthesis that I abducted the person and drugged her, one might say that I have treated her well, in my opinion at least.

'She was better off with me than I've been in the custody of the police these last months.

She was suppose be my girlfriend for years, that was the purpose. But now that I am imprisoned she will not be my girlfriend in the ordinary sense, even I can understand that.

'She was not suppose to be a punching bag or something. We were suppose to be kissing, hanging out, having sex and stuff that normally people do.'

Kidnapper: Trenneborg had spent five years building the bunker, and told his victim he was the only person who could open the door - so if she killed him to escape, she would be left with 'a stinking corpse'

Patient: The kitchen in the bunker, which the man had spent five years building on his rural property

Hidden: The bunker also has a small covered courtyard so the person held captive could go outside without being seen by the neighbours

Trenneborg has been charged with drugging, kidnapping and raping the woman, after keeping her in the dungeon for nearly a week last autumn.

Trenneborg had arranged to meet his victim for a second date on September 12, having met up to have sex two days prior in the woman's Stockholm flat.

However, instead of taking the woman out for dinner, he fed her chocolate-dipped strawberries laced with Rohypnol and drove her 350 miles to his remote countryside home in Axeltorp, near Kristianstad.

Trenneborg, who worked as a freelance physician, proudly told police how he built the 60 square meter bunker himself, starting in 2010.

The concrete-enforced walls are 12.5 inches thick and the bunker has a bedroom, functioning toilet and a fully fitted kitchen.

The dungeon even has a small, covered courtyard, which Trenneborg built with the aim or allowing the victim to go outside without being seen by neighbours.

Trenneborg held the woman in the bunker for five days, keeping her locked behind two steel doors during the day while he worked at a local GP clinic, and spending the evenings with her.

'Every time he came I didn't know what was going to happen, whether he would rape me or torture me or murder me,' she told police.

'At one point he told me that if I were to try to escape, he would punish me by chaining me to the bed and I would get nothing to eat but crisp bread.'

'He only said that he would keep me there a few years and that he would release me after that', she told police during her interview.

Planned: Police found two rubber masks in Trenneborg's bedroom, which the woman said he used as disguises during their journey from Stockholm to Kristianstad

Disturbing: The two masks were found in the doctor's bedroom in his home in Kristianstad, where he had planned on keeping the woman locked up 'as a girlfriend' for years

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

The victim later told police that although she was terrified he would rape her again, he did not force her into any sexual activities while in the bunker.

However, he 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.

'He said that he wanted to have unprotected sex with me. I got some pills from him, it was birth control pills and he told me that he did not want me to get pregnant.'

Trenneborg also told her of his plans to bring in another woman, saying he had a 'celebrity' in mind, or possibly the woman's own mother.

After a few days, Trenneborg, 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.

Trenneborg is believed to have panicked, and brought the woman to Stockholm where they visited a police station together on September 18.

Prosecutors say the doctor forced the woman to tell police a fake story that she was safe and well, in order to call off the search, but officers grew suspicious and took her to one side.

The woman then told police the full story of her horrific ordeal, after which Trenneborg was arrested.
Uthukela mayor Dudu Mazibuko, pictured, has given grants to girls in her area who remain virgins

A South African mayor has awarded college scholarships to 16 young women for remaining virgins, to encourage others to be 'pure and focus on school'.

The grants were introduced this year by Dudu Mazibuko, mayor of the Uthukela district in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province.

Each year the mayor's office awards scholarships to more than 100 promising high school and university students from the area.

The young women who applied for the scholarships voluntarily stayed virgins and agreed to have regular virginity tests to keep their funding, Ms Mazibuko told South African talk radio station 702.

She said: 'To us, it's just to say thank you for keeping yourself and you can still keep yourself for the next three years until you get your degree or certificate.

'The grants will be renewed 'as long as the child can produce a certificate that she is still a virgin,' she said.

The mayor added that the scholarships focus on young women because they are more vulnerable to exploitation, teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

South Africa's department of basic education recorded about 20,000 pregnancies among girls and young women in schools in 2014, with 223 pregnant girls still in primary school, according to the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

A household survey conducted by Statistics South Africa found that 5.6 percent of South African females aged 14 to 19 were pregnant in 2013.

However, equality groups are concerned that the grants send out a counter-productive message.

Mfanozelwe Shozi, chairman for the Commission for Gender Equality, said: 'I think the intentions of the mayor are great but what we don't agree with is giving bursaries for virginity.

A study showed 5.6 percent of South Africans aged 14 to 19 were pregnant. Pictured, Uthukela on the map

'There is an issue around discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, virginity and even against boys. This is going too far.'

Virginity testing is not against South Africa's constitution but it is essential that it is done with consent, Shozi explained.

Some activists have called for the banning of virginity testing in South Africa, describing it as sexist and invasive.
A commuter who spends 6,000 on an annual rail ticket is forced to sit in the cleaning cupboard with a mop and bucket because there are no seats on the train.

The City of London worker often struggles to find a seat on his return journey from London Liverpool Street to Ipswich, Suffolk, a journey he has made for the past 17 years.

So the financial high-flyer, who does not want to be named, has reverted to perching in the tiny cupboard with his book, just inches away from the train's cleaning equipment.

A commuter who spends 6,000 on an annual rail ticket has to sit in the cleaning cupboard with a mop and bucket because there are no seats on the train

He has become such a regular fixture in the staff compartment that employees working on the 6.30pm train often stop to speak with him.

The commuter said: 'I can usually get an official seat on the way in to London during the morning rush hour. But in the evening the train I catch is usually so full there's no space.

'I found this little spot some time ago and I use it quite often. No one seems to mind but it isn't great.'

The worker said there had been a surge in commuters over the past few years and it was very tough to find a seat, especially on rush-hour services heading out of London.

But he is still teased by colleagues who claim his commute is 'easy' compared to theirs, because he only has to get one train.

'Those who come from the south have to catch a bus, a train and then the Tube,' he said. 'They think its luxury that I only have to catch the train - even though I have to sit with the cleaning kit.'

An Abellio Greater Anglia spokesman said the cabin he sits in was technically the crew compartment and houses the intercom for the senior conductor.

The spokesman added that the compartments are in the process of being removed from carriages, increasing the capacity from 24 first class seats to 54 standard class seats.

They said: 'Two of the seven vehicles of this type operating have already been converted and on completion of the programme later this year, this will provide over 600,000 more standard seats a year (or 2,500 more seats a day) on our intercity services.

'We are also continuing to work with regional stakeholders as part of the Great Eastern Main Line Taskforce in making the case for the investment in infrastructure and new rolling stock that we all wish to see.'

The Ipswich to London line has not had serious investment in rolling stock for decades. The last new franchise in the region was unveiled in 2004 and boasted no new trains.

The City of London worker often struggles to find a seat on his return journey from London Liverpool Street to Ipswich, Suffolk. An Abellio Greater Anglia spokesman said carriage capacity is being increased (file picture)

Since then there has been a short-term franchise which also did not include new trains, although it did allow existing carriages to be updated.

Ipswich MP Ben Gummer, who has been part of the task force trying to improve rail services, found the picture of the mops and bucket commuter amusing.

But the Tory MP said it perfectly highlighted the problem faced by travellers.

Mr Gummer said: 'This picture shows exactly why we need to see hundreds of millions of pounds invested in new rolling stock and new track.
Lord Rose, the chairman of the Britain Stronger In Europe Campaign, said while the EU was 'imperfect' it would be a 'huge risk' to leave

Lord Rose, the chairman of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, today stood by statistics suggesting households were 3,000 better off each year because of the EU.

The figure, which was originally produced by the CBI, is hotly disputed.

But Lord Rose insisted he would not query the 'reputable' CBI as he made his case - which today includes a new figure suggesting businesses importing or exporting in Europe are better off by 670,000 because of the organisation.

The Leave campaign has challenged the 3,000 figure and Lord Rose was asked if he would withdraw it in a BBC interview today.

He said: 'I won't withdraw it, it was quoted yesterday by Paul Drechsler, who's the president of the CBI  the CBI is a reputable organisation, they represent British industry and they wouldn't be putting out numbers if they didn't feel there was some veracity to that number and no I won't withdraw that number.

'I'm going to let the statisticians argue among themselves, we have independent people who say to us our facts are correct, so listen, we could spend all morning arguing about the facts.'

Lord Rose urged voters to place the 'imperfect' reality of Britain's membership of the EU against the 'risk of what we might have tomorrow'.

Scottish first minister Ms Sturgeon yesterday warned a repeat of scare tactics - which the SNP blamed for their loss in the 2014 independence referendum - would not be enough to win the historic in/out poll expected as soon as June.

Lord Rose - the ex boss of Marks and Spencer - insisted he was a eurosceptic but said overall the EU was good for Britain.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'I understand the imperfections of Europe, I've traded in Europe as a businessman for 30 or 40 years - but by and large it serves us well.

'What we don't know is what are we exchanging it for? The reality of what we have got today against the risk of what we might now have tomorrow.'

Ukip leader Nigel Farage today said: 'Remain in EU's Lord Rose using entirely spurious figures this morning that no one will believe. Exciting future outside of EU not in.'

He added: 'Outside EU we can have trade and co-operation with our European neighbours whilst negotiating our own trade deals globally. Win-win.'

Lord Rose said 'tariffs' would immediately be imposed upon a Britain exiting the EU that would be in place until new bilateral deals were agreed.

And he warned: 'It may take years - we don't know. And what is the impact going to be in the short term?'

The Tory peer challenged the campaigns backing British exit - one of which saw Ukip leader Nigel Farage and former Conservative leadership contender Liam Fox share a stage on Saturday - to come up with answers on what the new deals would look like.

Lord Rose repeated his risks of tomorrow line before adding: 'Why would companies like BT, why would companies like BP, why would HSBC, be saying to us they think there is a risk of coming out if they didn't mean it.

'The fact of the matter is our job at staying in is to make sure the British public are informed with facts about the issues and when they go to the ballot box they can decide what they are going to do.'

Ukip leader Nigel Farage today attacked the 'spurious' figures offered by Lord Rose and the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign

Mr Farage insisted Britain would do better outside of the EU making bilateral deals with its allies

Lord Rose argued that the EU's benefits to the UK outweigh its costs by a factor of 10 to one and warned voters that Britain faces 'the risk of the unknown' if it leaves.

He added: 'I don't all the facts of what would happen (if we left), we are speculating - this is the issue we are pushing the other side on so hard.

'We know the facts because we are in the EU with its imperfections. Tell us the facts for your side.

'It's a huge risk.'

WHERE AM I FROM? CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN FORGETS THE NAME OF HIS ORGANISATION FOUR TIMES Lord Rose's media push got off to a bumpy start today as he forgot the name of his Britain Stronger in Europe campaign - four times. Interviewed on Sky News he first identified himself as the chairman of grocer Ocado - which he is but was not the context of the interview. He immediately corrected himself to 'Stay in Britain, Better in Britain'. He then suggested the interview start again. Trying again, he introduced himself as Stuart Rose from the 'Better in Britain campaign' before having a final go and arriving at the 'Better Stay in Britain campaign'. The former Marks and Spencer boss was on a media round to promote the new findings published by his campaign. But No 10 distanced itself from claims he made about David Cameron's renegotiation during a radio interview. Lord Rose said the issue of immigration was not 'going to go away' whatever was negotiated - suggesting Mr Cameron was calling for a 'standstill'. The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said only that Mr Cameron was looking at ways of 'better controlling' migration levels. Advertisement

Lord Rose said immigration would not stop if Britain left the EU - but backed the Prime Minister in his efforts to slow down migration from the continent.

Vote Leave highlighted the Civitas reported which analysed trade statistics and found Britain's membership of the EU has failed to have a significant impact on export growth.

Academic Michael Burrage, who wrote the report, found the bloc has boosted the exports of non-EU countries more than its members, with Britain recording slower export growth than any of the other founding nations.

Growth of exports between member states during the common market was 4.7 per cent but has fallen to 3 per cent in the single market, the research said. UK export growth fell from 5.38 per cent to 3.09 per cent over that period.

Exports between the 12 founding members of the single market are 14.6 per cent lower than if they had continued to grow between 1993 and 2012 as they had done under the common market, the report adds.

Mr Burrage said: 'While the single market cannot be counted a success in export terms for the EU as a whole, for the UK it must be counted at the very least a massive disappointment, and not far short of a disaster.'

Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said: 'The unquestioning mantra that the single market has been good for British trade is wrong and should be challenged as this research makes crystal clear.'

Lord Rose's media round continued in bumpy fashion later as he forgot the name of his Britain Stronger in Europe campaign - four times.

Interviewed on Sky News he first identified himself as the chairman of grocer Ocado - which he is but was not the context of the interview.

He immediately corrected himself to 'Stay in Britain, Better in Britain'. He then suggested the interview start again.

Trying again, he introduced himself as Stuart Rose from the 'Better in Britain campaign' before having a final go and arriving at the 'Better Stay in Britain campaign'.

Speaking on the BBC One Andrew Marr programme yesterday, Ms Sturgeon warned against a campaign based on scaring the voters.

She said: 'While there are differences between the Scottish campaign and a European referendum, there are undoubtedly analogies and if the In campaign behaves the way the No campaign behaved in the Scottish referendum I fear it will lose.

'In the Scottish referendum the two campaigns started miles apart in the polls, we had a thoroughly negative, fear-laden campaign from the No campaign, which almost lost.

Prime Minister David Cameron, pictured in Downing Street at the weekend, will continue talks with EU allies this week to secure his renegotiation. His former leadership rival Liam Fox, pictured right at the first Grassroots Go rally on Saturday, has launched his campaign for Out

'In the EU referendum the two campaigns are much closer to start with and if the In campaign falls into the trap of the No campaign, I fear it will lose.'

Ms Sturgeon said rushing to hold a referendum as soon as June - a date which became the subject of fierce speculation as soon as Mr Cameron targeted February's EU summit to finalise his talks - would be a mistake.

The Scottish nationalists have warned against holding the referendum too close to other elections due in May - arguing the campaigns will overlap and cause confusion.

A further complication could be caused by the Scottish school holiday beginning in early July which would be likely to create calls to pushing polling day back to the autumn.

Asked about a June date, Ms Sturgeon said: 'I think it would be a mistake for David Cameron, I had the Foreign Secretary in here last week and said as much to him directly.

'Two reasons why I would not be in favour of a June referendum, one you might interpret as being a bit selfish, the Scottish election is in May, indeed the Welsh, the Northern Ireland, the London elections in May.

'I think to have a referendum campaign starting in parallel would be disrespectful to those important elections.

'The second reason is I think it would be better for David Cameron to leave more time between, if he does get a deal at the February European council, to leave more time between that deal and the decision.

'One of the big problems I see for the In campaign at the moment is that as far as David Cameron is concerned, it is very much focussed on these narrow issues of renegotiation.

In an interview on the BBC today, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon warned a repeat of the 'project fear' tactic which doomed Scottish independence to defeat would not work in the EU referendum

'In actual fact, if the In campaign is going to prevail, this is going to have to become a positive in principle campaign about why it's better the UK to stay within the EU.'

Speaking on Saturday alongside Mr Farage in Northamptonshire, Dr Fox warned: 'The very best that the Prime Minister can get in this renegotiation is better membership of the wrong club.

'It is not worthless but it is not a reason to stay in the European Union.'

The former defence secretary continued: 'If you cannot make your own laws, if you cannot control your own borders, you are not an independent, sovereign nation and I want to live in an independent sovereign nation.'

Mr Cameron is due to return to the renegotiation trail this week with visits to Denmark and Sweden.

He will also meet the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny in London today.

The latest visits come ahead of next month's EU summit - which Mr Cameron has targeted to conclude the renegotiation.

The Sunday Times reported Chancellor George Osborne was closing in on a deal for 'permanent handbrake' on the extension of EU laws.

One version of the proposal is to cut the level at which countries can halt new laws to nations representing 20 per cent of European populations - potentially meaning Britain and Poland alone could halt new rules.

At the moment EU rules say a grouping of 35 per cent of the population can halt proposals - more than all those outside the eurozone.

A senior government source told the Sunday Times: 'People talk about an emergency brake on immigration but this is a permanent brake.

'This isn't one part of the renegotiation, it is the main part of the renegotiation. George can't say this publicly but he thinks this is the only bit that matters.'

More than 50 of Britain's top female politicians, business leaders and artists create their own network for the EU referendum

More than 50 of Britain's leading women in business, politics and the arts today joined the campaign to keep Britain in Europe.

The group - including crossbench peer Martha Lane-Fox, TV presenter June Sarpong and Tory baroness Karren Brady - signed an open letters coordinated by the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign.

Other signatories to the letter today are tech entrepreneur Kathryn Parsons and author Kathy Lette.

The campaign chairman Lord Rose had a faltering day as the EU referendum campaign changed up a gear.

The new group is chaired by Jenny Halpern Prince, left, and is backed by crossbench peer Martha Lane Fox, centre, and Tory Karren Brady, right

He repeatedly got the name of the campaign group wrong and stood by a series of statistics blasted by Nigel Farage as 'spurious'.

The group of more than 50 women intervened on the campaign to warn the In campaign was about 'safeguarding opportunities for future generations'.

An open letter, published in the Evening Standard today, said the Women for In Network would ensure female voices were 'front and centre' of the campaign.

It read: 'We are drawn from all walks of life. We work in medicine, retail, health, financial services, the creative industries, trade unions, interior design and fashion.

'And we have all benefited from our membership of the EU.'

Jenny Halpern Prince, the chairwoman of the new group, said: 'This is the biggest choice facing Britain for a generation  and women's views must be central to the debate about the future of our country.

Other signatories to the letter today are tech entrepreneur Kathryn Parsons, left, TV presenter June Sarpong, centre, and author Kathy Lette

'That's why we're setting up Women for IN as a way to engage as many women as possible in the vital campaign to keep Britain in Europe.'

Baroness Brady said: 'This debate is hugely important for Britain's future for so many reasons. For women in particular, there are things we take for granted like paid maternity leave and rules on equal pay that exist thanks to Britain's place in the EU.

'For my children and future generations, I want Britain to be stronger, safer and better off, so I'm proud to be part of the campaign to stay in Europe.'

Baroness Lane-Fox said: 'Leaving the EU would be a disaster for the next generation of Britain's entrepreneurs.'

'Technology is creating so many opportunities for people right across the world to set up in business.

'Smart phones and tablets mean people can buy, sell and cut deals at home, on holiday and even from the pub.'

Sally Greene said: 'British theatre is able to attract top talent from right across Europe.
Canberra was hit with a hailstorm and

Australian of the Year former Army chief David Morrison was forced to improvise parts of his acceptance speech Monday night as tumultuous winds and heavy rain ruined his prepared notes and interrupted the outdoor event.

Joking that he regretted making his notes in ink, Mr Morrison took shelter from the storm under an umbrella as he spoke to the rain-drenched crowd, many of which were wearing raincoats.

His wasn't the only speech that was thwarted, as the wind got a hold of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's notes and blew them away while he welcomed the crowd.

'Well, it's very important to be agile in the year of innovation,' he joked after deftly picking the papers up from the floor.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (right) names David Morrison (left) as Australian of the Year 2016

The wind got a hold of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's notes and blew them away while he welcomed the crowd (pictured)

The event, held at Parliament House in Canberra experience unfortunate weather, with storm clouds rolling in as the even got underway

'Well, it's very important to be agile in the year of innovation,' he joked after deftly picking the papers up from the floor

Lieutenant General Morrison has taken the title of 2016 Australian of the Year for his passion for gender equality and workplace diversity.

A thunderstorm plagued the live event in Canberra since it began at 7.30pm an urgent thunderstorm warning for hailstones, more heavy rain, flash flooding and damaging winds was issued at 7.59pm.

Hail fell across Australia's capital during the storm, causing 350 calls for help, according to ABC.

About 5mm of rain was recorded and people were warned to stay away from fallen power lines and possibly flooded creeks.

The Emergency Services Agency said the storm had resulted in 350 calls for help, to which ACT Fire and Rescue crews and SES volunteer units were responding.

Presenter Jeremy Fernandez thanked the crowd for sticking out the heavy storm.

'Thank you to all of you for braving the rain and for helping us celebrate the 1026 Australia of the year awards,' he said.

Australian pop star Samantha Jade (pictured) dazzled the crowd at the event

Mr Turnbull addressed the crowd from the impressive stage

The 2016 finalists, presenters and Mr Turnbull (second from the right) brandished umbrellas

A thunderstorm plagued the live event in Canberra since it began at 7.30pm an urgent thunderstorm warning for hailstones, more heavy rain, flash flooding and damaging winds was issued

Mr Turnbull's (pictured) speech blew away while he was greeting the crowd at the annual event

Presenter Jeremy Fernandez (pictured) thanked the crowd for sticking out the heavy storm that poured over the open stadium

The weather could not deter the crowd, which wore ponchos and held umbrellas for shelter

Victoria Cross winner Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith held an umbrella for Australia's Local Hero for 2016 Catherine Keenan as she accepted her award

Mr Fernandez, fellow presenter Tom Tilley and Victoria Cross winner Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith held umbrellas for the award recipients as they took the podium.

PM Turnbull held an umbrella for Australia's Local Hero for 2016 Catherine Keenan as she accepted her award.

'My speech is a little soggy,' Ms Keenan said as she tried to read her acceptance speech.

The Australian of the Year title will give Gen Morrison the platform to try to change the rules, with the former Army chief hoping to use his year to promote workplace diversity and equality.

While Gen Morrison was chief of army he famously told misbehaving troops to 'get out' of the force if they could not accept female colleagues and treat them equally.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull poses with 2016 Young Australian of the Year, Nic Marchesi & Lucas Patchett

As Lucas Pratchett spoke, Nic Marchesi held an umbrella over the pair in a bid to keep them relatively dry

The unfortunate weather did not dampen the spirits of the attendees and Samantha Jade (pictured in white skirt) put on stellar performance with her back-up dancers

The heavy rainfall and wind plagued the entire event and hung over the open stadium

Presenter Tom Tilley (left) interviewed nominees and members of the crowd as they gathered in the rain

Gen Morrison (pictured) has taken the title of 2016 Australian of the Year for his passion for gender equality and workplace diversity

His stern video message to Australia's soldiers went viral in 2013, earning him global recognition and sparking a cultural transformation in the force.

In his four years at the helm, female enrolment in the Army increased by 700.

As an Anglo-Saxon male, former Gen Morrison admits he's benefited from societal rules that play in his favour.

It's exactly those rules he's trying to change.

'The rules that we live by have largely been written by white Anglo-Saxon men,' Gen Morrison said.

'And the beneficiaries are, surprise surprise, white Anglo-Saxon men.'

Gen Morrison retired as chief of army in May last year and took up his role as chair of the Diversity Council Australia, which advises business on diversity in the workplace.

While Gen Morrison (left) was chief of army he famously told misbehaving troops to 'get out' of the force if they could not accept female colleagues and treat them equally

Mr Turnbull (center) stands with Young Australians of the Year 2016 Nic Marchesi (right) and Lucas Patchett (left)

'We need to be careful about the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves because that largely defines our culture,' he said.

'If those stories are exclusive rather than inclusive, if they deny people opportunity on the basis of gender or the colour of their skin, then we as a society can't reach our potential.'

Gen Morrison is also the former boss of a fellow finalist Catherine McGregor and refused to accept her resignation when she went public with her transformation from male to female.

The grass was lined with attendees donning green and gold outfits, chairs and picnic rugs

'My speech is a little soggy,' Ms Keenan (left) said as she tried to read her acceptance speech.

Senior Australian of the Year Professor Gordian Fulde (left) holds his award as he stands with Mr. Turnbull

ustralian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (right) poses with 2016 Australias Local Hero Dr Catherine Keenan (left)

In 2014, he spoke at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict with United States Secretary of State John Kerry and actress Angelina Jolie.

The former Army chief is optimistic about his cause.

'We've still got a long way to go,' he said.

'I think it's getting better. I'm very much a glass half full kind of person on this.'

Gen Morrison succeeds domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, whose 11-year-old son Luke was killed by his father in Melbourne just under two years ago.

Finalist Catherine McGregor (pictured) spoke to reporters as she attended the event

RAAF Roulettes put on a spectacular performance during the Australian of The Year Awards 2016

The RAAF Rouletts flew in perfect formation over Parliament House as a delighted crowd watched on

In Gen Morrison's four years at the helm, female enrolment in the Army increased by 700

The rain appeared to be unbearable for some Parliament House attendees. This man laughed off dramatic issues with his umbrella

People felt patriotic as they participated in the Australian of The Year Awards 2016 at Parliament House on Monday

Despite the weather, Parliament House put on an impressive display, lighting up the small stage
Belgium has called for vast refugee camps holding up to 300,000 refugees to be built in Greece in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of migrants from Syria and other nations outside Europe.

At an emergency summit of European leaders yesterday, Belgian migration minister Theo Francken raised the spectre of setting up 'closed facilities' in Greece to be operated by the EU.

He said that the Greeks 'now need to bear the consequences' of being too weak to guard their own borders and called for Athens to face an EU 'sanction mechanism' under which the rising number of refugees entering the country would be forced to stay there.

EU ministers met Amsterdam to try to tackle the crisis. Teams of border guards are now set to be deployed at the Greek border. Pictured: A group of migrants walk in sub zero temperatures near the Serbian-Croatian border

Belgium has called for holding camps holding up to 300,000 refugees to be built in Greece

Belgian migration minister Theo Francken raised the spectre of setting up 'closed facilities' in Greece to be operated by the EU

It comes as Theresa May tore into Brussels for being more talk than action as plans were belatedly unveiled to try to solve the migration crisis.

At the summit, EU leaders announced teams of border guards will be deployed to stop migrants leaving Greece for the rest of the EU, cutting the country off from the rest of the continent.

The scheme  which effectively suspends Greeces membership of the Schengen zone  is designed to finally halt the free flow of migrants arriving by boat into mainland Europe.

The move came amid a blistering broadside against the rest of the EU by Home Secretary Mrs May  which is likely to attract the attention of Tory Eurosceptics, who are keen for her to lead the campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

She said last night: Europe is facing an unprecedented migration crisis and today was a crucial meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council.

Together with my counterparts from France and Germany, I made the case for urgent action, not just to deal with the immediate crisis but also to resolve the situation in the longer term.

Unfortunately what weve had is more talk than action.

'And we need urgently to work together to ensure that we can have proper processing at Europes external borders, that were returning illegal migrants.

'Europe is struggling to cope, and every country needs to act now.

Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia

During the EU leaders' meeting, Theresa May tore into Brussels for being more talk than action as plans were belatedly unveiled to try to solve the migration crisis

At the summit, EU leaders announced teams of border guards will be deployed to stop migrants leaving Greece for the rest of the EU

The scheme effectively suspends Greeces membership of the Schengen zone

European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker has backed a proposal for EU border guards. Theresa May was expected to resist a call for British troops to be used

After months of inaction, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker backed a proposal to strengthen security on the Greek/Macedonian border to create a second line of defence against migration.

More than 50 guards from other European countries have already been sent to Macedonia, which is not a member of the EU, to strengthen its border with Greece.

The controversial move will heap pressure on Greece to finally control the number of people landing on its shores as it will no longer be able to simply wave them onwards.

Greece has long been criticised for doing too little to control the flow of people into Europe. Despite promises to help control the influx it has been registering less than a quarter of the up to 4,000 people a day landing on its shores.

Leaders will threaten Greece with the loss of its passport-free travel if it fails to secure its borders

Mr Juncker yesterday endorsed the plan, which was greeted with howls of protest from Athens, where officials warned it would turn the country into a cemetery of souls.

But German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere insisted Greece would have to do its duty, and Austrias interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said: Its a myth that Greece cant secure its borders.

It has one of Europes largest navies.

Meanwhile the likelihood of David Cameron being able to hold a referendum as early as June appeared to grow, as Irish prime minister Enda Kenny revealed that the European Council is finally moving ahead and considering the UKs solvable concerns.

Mr Kenny said European Council president Donald Tusk would publish a paper next week on the UKs four key areas of negotiation. He added: I actually believe all these are solvable.

An asylum seeker was arrested for murder last night after allegedly stabbing a woman at a Swedish refugee centre.

Alexandra Mezher, 22, who was originally from Lebanon, worked at the centre for youngsters near Gothenburg. Police gave no details about the suspects age or nationality.

But a police spokesman said: Were dealing with more incidents like this since the arrival of so many refugees from abroad.
Gaunt, exhausted and battling the infection that would eventually claim his life, Henry Worsley took one last picture inside his tent, a tiny refuge from the most extreme environment on earth.

The 55-year-old British explorer had lost 50lb during his mission to become the first adventurer to cross Antarctica unassisted, and appeared at the end of his strength.

But a poignant final message - recorded for his online journal - reflected both despair and the belief that he would come to terms with stopping 30 miles short of the finish line.

'My journey is at an end, he said. 'I've run out of time, physical endurance, and simple sheer ability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.

'My summit was just out of reach. I've spent 70 days on my own in a place I love. I'll lick my wounds, they will heal over time, and I'll come to terms with the disappointment.'

Mr Worsley, a former Army officer from London, died yesterday after succumbing to infection 71 days into his 950 mile charity trek.

The father-of-two had been airlifted to a Chile hospital on Friday after being unable to move from his tent for two days. Doctors diagnosed him with bacterial peritonitis and were unable to stop the infection spreading through his body.

The final diary entry of Henry Worsley revealed he was unable to continue on his trek despite being just 30miles from the finish line. Pictured is Mr Worsley inside his tent in the final selfie he took on the expedition

Rescued: Having spent two days trapped in his tent, unable to move after 70 days in the Antarctic, Mr Worsley was picked up by a support plane on Friday. His family today announced his death

Today his wife Joanna, 56, said in a statement: 'It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband, Henry Worsley, has died following complete organ failure; despite all efforts of ALE and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile.

'Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass.

'A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition - his lifelong hero.

'On behalf of myself and family, I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund. Donations now total over 106,773.'

Mr Worsley and his wife have two children Alicia, 19, and Max, 21.

The trek was raising money for the Endeavour Fund, a charity managed by the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Worthwhile: The married father-of-two (pictured) raised more than 100,000 for injured soldiers and even had Prince William pay tribute to his efforts

The final tweet by Mr Worsley showed his gear packed on to a sled and stuck in a blizzard engulfing the area

The married father-of-two attempted the expedition to mark the 100th anniversary of the failed Sir Ernest Shackleton journey

William said in a statement: 'Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him.

'Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women, by undertaking this extraordinary Shackleton solo expedition on their behalf.

'We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavour Fund.

'We will now make sure that his family receive the support they need at this terribly difficult time.'

Mr Worsley set off from Berkner Island on November 14, in an attempt to complete British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's unfinished attempt 100 years on. He had a very personal connection to the expedition as his ancestor Frank Worsley was skipper on the expedition's ship the Endurance.

The environment is so inhospitable that it pushes even the fittest explorer to breaking point. Daily temperatures drop to -44C while travellers must battle blizzard-like whiteouts.

Mr Worsley aimed to make the journey completely unaided with no re-supplying and reached the South Pole on January 3.

On the way the former Lieutenant Colonel has lost a front tooth after biting on a frozen energy bar and was trapped in his tent for two days by a storm that wiped out an entire penguin colony.

He only changed his underpants once during his journey - on day 61 - and was expected to reach the finish line on the Ross Ice Shelf on Tuesday.

But last Wednesday his pace slowed dramatically, and he covered just four miles in five hours, before collapsing in his tent within sight of the Transatlantic mountains.

His wife pleaded for his team to pull him off the ice, but while the support crew flew to a nearby pick up point, they insisted they had to wait until Mr Worsley made the call.

Mr Worsley is pictured with his wife Joanna, 56, and two children Alicia, 19, and Max, 21, at a Kensington Palace event held prior to his departure to the ice

A soldier for several decades, here he is pictured during his time as a Army officer meeting the Duchess of Cambridge

Prince William meets with Mr Worsley at Kensington Palace ahead of the explorer's attempt to cross the icy continent

Former footballer David Beckham also posted a tribute to Mr Worsley, who he met on the continent at the outset of the adventurer's trip (pictured together)

After spending two days in his tent, he called for help on Friday evening and was flown six hours to Union Glacier camp before being airlifted on to Punta Arenas, in Chile.

In an emotional final audio message after he called for his retrieval, Mr Worsley said the first thing he wanted to do was get a hot cup of tea - and a piece of cake.

Speaking while awaiting the arrival of his rescuers, he said: 'My journey is at an end. I've run out of time, physical endurance, and simple sheer ability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.

'My summit was just out of reach. I've spent 70 days on my own in a place I love. I'll lick my wounds, they will heal over time, and I'll come to terms with the disappointment.

'What will lift my spirit will be the knowledge of all your support and generosity over the past two months.

'I set out on this journey to attempt the first solo unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass, a feat of endurance never before achieved.

'But more importantly, to raise support for The Endeavour Fund, to assist wounded soldiers in their rehabilitation. Having been a career soldier for 36 years and recently retired, it has been a way of giving back to those far less fortunate than me.

'The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journeys end  so close to my goal.'

Agonisingly short: The intrepid 55-year-old, who had to call off his attempt because his body 'shut down' from exhaustion and extreme dehydration, was 913 miles into a 1,100-mile trek across the Antarctic (pictured)

IN HIS WORDS: THE FINAL DAYS OF HENRY WORSLEY'S DRAINING TRIP Mr Worsley kept an audio diary throughout the journey which he updated every day In the final days of his expedition, Mr Worsley's audio diary revealed he was battling with energy-sapping soft snow and fighting 'extreme fatigue'. DAY 67: Mr Worsley revealed he had eaten his pudding hours before his dinner in a bid to try and boost his energy levels. Broadcasting at 1am, he said: 'It has been a punishing day which was looking good at the outset. 'Although an 80 percent whiteout persisted all day, the cruelty was it was very soft snow - it was hellish, all day. 'I must now do over 16 nautical miles per day until I reach the glacier. This makes for a very long 16 hour day, finishing as it did this evening [at 1am] and having to be up again at 5.30.' He ends his trekking update saying he was praying 'for a harder [snow] surface'. DAY 68: The following day, his spirits seemed to be raised after finding a peaceful solitude inside a powerful whiteout - and a glimpse of his finish line. On January 18, he said: 'Bit of a mixed bag today. I woke to the thickest whiteout I can recall, I had glasses on all day. 'Although curiously, I found the hours in the whiteout strangely calm, or though provoking this time. It may be because the surface was flat this time. 'Today was not too gruelling really - as some [days are]. Once the cloud cleared in the afternoon I was able to see the mountains. 'That was a great thrill. Tomorrow I will rise early and aim to catch up a mile or two on the total.' DAY 69: He appears to have accepted defeat upon the realisation he cannot reach the finishing line in time. 'This has been an unproductive day unfortunately, on the realisation that I don't think we have time to reach the ice shelf for the intended pick up. 'If I step on the blue ice, at least I will have reached part of the destination. Today was another day of awful whiteout. 'I have not hit any soft spots, and my fingers are all very sore. The little finger of my left hand is close to being frostbitten.' Appearing to accept to defeat, he goes on to thank all those who supported him, particularly those who donated money. DAY 70: Officially declaring his journey is at an end, he tells listeners that in the words of Shackleton, he has 'shot my bolt' and called in a retrieval. 'My journey is at an end. I've run out of time, physical endurance, and simple sheer ability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal. 'My summit was just out of reach. I've spent 70 days on my own in a place I love. I'll lick my wounds, they will heal over time, and I'll come to terms with the disappointment.' According to his audio diary, the former Army officer finally accepted defeat after several days of whiteouts and -44C temperatures Advertisement

Mr Worsley had developed peritonitis, which occurs when the tissue lining the inside of the abdomen becomes infected and causes nausea, abdominal pains and loss of appetite.

After being collected by rescuers, he was taken to a hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile, where he underwent surgery, but ultimately succumbed to the illness.

His wife said that he had lost more than 50lbs and was on a drip in the hope he would recover from extreme exhaustion.

She said: 'I'm so very, very proud of him. I can't wait to have him home and give him a hug. He was suffering from total shut down and total and complete exhaustion.

'He got into his tent and he couldn't move, couldn't eat, and didn't even have the energy to boil the kettle.

'Obviously he will feel disappointed. I know he will be sad, but Shackleton never reached his goals, and what Henry has done is extraordinary.'

He has raised 100,940 for the Endeavour Fund charity founded by the royal family to fund sporting and adventure challenges to help the recovery of servicemen and women.

On Christmas Day he got a message of encouragement from patron Prince William who told him 'you are doing a cracking job'.

Shackleton Solo team member, Catherine Gale, said last week Mr Worsley was treated for bacterial peritonitis.

Speaking prior to his death, she said: 'He reluctantly made the decision to call the end of the expedition and clearly he pushed himself to the limits. He had very very bad weather - the whole way it was against him.'

Despite his expedition ending in failure, the married father-of-two raised more than 100,000 for injured soldiers.

Mr Worsley drags his sled, containing his provisions and camping equipment, across the snow in Antarctica

David Beckham also joined those paying tribute to the polar explorer.

Writing on Facebook, he described his own memories of the adventurer and posted a photo of himself with Mr Worsley.

'No words can describe the sadness of the loss of Henry Worsley... I was lucky enough to have met Henry on my way out to the Antarctic and I asked if I could use his Union Jack for a picture he kindly leant it to me but I could feel how special this was to him so I was so honoured that he had done this for me..,' Beckham said.

'A man that has served our country for so many years and a man that talked about his family with so much pride... Our thoughts are with Henry's family at this time.'

Fellow modern day adventurers Bear Grylls and Ben Fogle also shared their sadness at the news.

Grylls wrote: 'We are devastated by this loss. One of the strongest men & bravest soldiers I know. Praying for his special family', while Fogle said: 'So sad to hear that Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley @shackletonsolo has passed away. An inspiration to us all.'

And Paul Rose, base commander for the British Antarctic Survey for 10 years, said: 'It's a sad day. I met Henry at the Royal Geographical Society, very briefly, and in that short meeting he really impressed me. He was very organised, very dedicated - an incredible sense of power with him too.'

He told the BBC: 'He wasn't just a head case going off on mad adventure. Henry really thought this thing through so I was terribly sad to see the news today.'

He described Mr Worsley's expedition as 'unheard of', adding: 'It's a tremendous journey... I've worked for many, many years in Antarctica. The conditions haven't changed from Scott and Shackleton's days. The Antarctic is still an incredibly hostile place.'

Relative: Mr Worsley, a descendant of Frank Worsley, Sir Ernest Shackleton's skipper on the Endurance expedition (left), had aimed to complete the unfinished attempt Shackleton (right) made a century ago

Stuck: Shackleton attempted to cross the Antarctic on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17, but disaster struck when his ship became trapped in pack ice (pictured)

Sir Ernest Shackleton's granddaughter Alexandra Shackleton said Mr Worsley's death would be a 'huge loss to the adventuring world'.

'This is a day of great sadness. Henry will be a huge loss to the adventuring world and the fact that he very, very nearly made it - only 30 miles short of his goal - makes it in some way seem worse,' she told the BBC.

'He was very energetic, very keen on testing himself, seeing how far he could get with his endeavours.'

She added: 'The whole point of this one was that Henry was doing it on his own. I suppose you could say he was doing more and more adventurous and interesting things. In this case sadly it was just a bit too taxing.'

Shackleton attempted to cross the Antarctic on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17, but disaster struck when his ship became trapped in pack ice.

In 1921, he returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, but died of a heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia.

The charity Help For Heroes also praised Mr Worsley's commitment to helping fellow servicemen and women.

HENRY WORSLEY'S FASCINATION WITH LAST CENTURY'S EXPLORERS Henry Worsley had just completed a 36-year career in the British Army when he took up the Antarctica expedition. His military career saw him awarded an MBE for distinguished service on operations in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. He also became the 'first man into Helmand' when in 2006, he went without body armour to meet imams and elders before the arrival of the UK task force in Afghanistan. An officer with the Royal Green Jackets and then the Rifles Regiment, he also held a lifelong interest in the Antarctic explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Admundsen. In 2008/09, he led an expedition to commemorate the centenary of Shackleton's 1907/09 Nimrod journey, which pioneered a route through the Transantarctic Mountains via the Beardmore Glacier to a point just 97 miles short of the South Pole. The centenary journey - comprised of descendants of the original party - retraced the original route, arriving at Shackleton's Furthest South exactly 100 years to the day, before completing the journey to the Pole. To commemorate the centenary of Captain Scott's and Roald Amundsen's expeditions, he returned to Antarctica 2011/12. He headed a team of six soldiers in a race along the original 1912 routes to be first to the South Pole. He led the Amundsen route from the Bay of Whales, up the Axel Heiberg Glacier to the South Pole, a 900 mile unsupported journey. In so doing, he became the only person to have completed the two classic routes of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen to the South Pole. He was a collector of "Shackletonia" - memorabilia associated with Shackleton - and lectured on the explorer's leadership style. His book In Shackleton's Footsteps was an account of his 2008/09 expedition and explored the history of the original attempt and reasons behind its failure. Advertisement

The organisation tweeted: 'We are extremely sad to hear Henry Worsley has died. His dedication & support of ArmedForces & @EndeavourFund was exceptional.'

The Endeavour Fund, for which he was raising money, said it was 'devastated by [the] tragic conclusion to @shackletonsolo. We join Henry's family in mourning their loss'.

'We are very proud to have been associated with Henry's tremendous achievements.'

And the head of the Army, General Sir Nick Carter - a close friend of the explorer - paid tribute to Mr Worsley's courage and determination.

'He is an extraordinary combination because on the one hand he is very compassionate, he has huge humanity, he appreciates things like art and beauty and he is wonderful with the young,' he told BBC Radio 4's The World At One.

'At the same time he is a remarkable, brave man - a hard man with extraordinary traits of courage and determination and tenacity to try and achieve his goal, but he does all of it with the most extraordinary modesty and humility.

'You'd never know - like really brave men - how brave he really is.'

Fellow British adventurer David Hempleman-Adams said Mr Worsley died doing what he loved and that people should not be put off pushing themselves to the limit in the wake of his death.

He described Mr Worsleys bid to make the first solo crossing of the Antarctic as 'absolutely phenomenal', but said that tragically 'his luck ran out'.

'If theres any comfort, he died doing something he loved in a beautiful place,' he added.

Hempleman-Adams, who was the first Briton to walk solo and unsupported to the South Pole in 1996, said: 'I think any Briton should be very proud of what hes achieved and what hes done and shown the rest of the world.'

He added: 'He was raising money for a great charity, the Endeavour Fund, and ... hopefully it will not stop people going down and pushing themselves to the limit because thats what man does. It doesnt matter whether thats climbing or polar or sailing or into space.

'Man will inherently push those barriers and thats what he was doing. He was pushing those barriers but doing it because he loved doing it as well.

'We live in a society of health and safety and putting our kids into cotton wool boxes. He was contrary to that. He was going out pushing the limits to the extreme. He showed you could do extraordinary things if you put your mind to it.'

Speaking of his own experiences and the prospect of not making it back, Hempleman-Adams said: 'You never ever think its going to happen you.

Hempleman-Adams was the first person to complete the Explorers Grand Slam, which consists of conquering both the North and South Pole as well as reaching the summits of the highest peaks in each of the seven continents.

Those willing to donate to Mr Worsley's cause can do so here . All proceeds will go to The Endeavour Fund, a charity which helps wounded soldiers participate in physical activity.

Map: The route taken by Shackleton and his crew as they sailed to the Antarctic for the 1914-1917 expedition
Dragons' Den star Doug Richard arrives at court today to face a series of child sex abuse charges

A former Dragons Den star paid a 13-year-old girl to be his sex slave after meeting her on a sugar daddy website, a court heard yesterday.

Doug Richard, 57, spanked the girls bottom and had sex with her as her 15-year-old friend waited in the next room, it was alleged.

The former business adviser to David Cameron paid the schoolgirls 480 to travel from their homes in Norwich to London after meeting them through a website called Seeking Arrangements, a jury was told.

Richard, who has a long association with the Prime Minister and accompanied him on a trade mission to Africa in 2011, advertised himself as a sugar daddy while the girls called themselves sugar babies.

In one conversation, the millionaire father of three asked the 13-year-old: Are you free to come to London after school?

When the girl, who is 5ft and weighs less than six stone, told him she would have to delay her visit, he said he was willing to wait if she sent him sexy pictures of herself with less clothing and in more revealing positions.

The technology entrepreneur told her: I will make a deal with you. I will wait for the following week if you send me those photos you promised. He told the girl he wanted pictures of her in a submissive pose, adding: On your hands and knees so I can see you helpless and exposed.

Richard told her it was her first task for your new daddy  get it wrong and I will have to spank you. She replied: You are my new daddy  I will do anything to make you happy. The exchanges were allegedly recovered by police from deleted internet messages and read out by prosecutor Gino Connor during the opening day of Richards trial at the Old Bailey.

The male was an experienced 56-year-old at the time, Mr Connor said. It should have put him on notice at that point, having seen the photos of her, that she was young  13 years old. The girls agreed to travel to London on January 2 last year and used 120 that Richard had put into a PayPal account to buy their tickets.

The entrepreneur, who received an award from the Queen for services to enterprise in 2006 and appeared in the first two series of the BBCs Dragons Den, collected them from Liverpool Street Station and took them to a cafe. Richard asked them how old they were and they told him they were 16 and 17, the jury was told. He then took them to a 149-a-night apartment and asked the girls if they wanted to be his slaves, it was said.

The court heard that the 15-year-old girl kissed Richard for 30 seconds but pulled away because he was horrible and smoky. She told him she did not want to be his slave so he turned his attention to the 13-year-old, who agreed to have sex with him.

Richard (second from left ahead of the second series of Dragons' Den) appeared in the BBC show for two series alongside Theo Paphitis and Duncan Bannatyne

Mr Connor told the jury: The defendant told the girl to remove her items of clothing one by one. She was compliant and undressed completely until naked. He told her to remove his clothing which she did. He spanked her on about seven occasions.

Richard then told her to perform a sex act on him as her friend watched before they went into an adjoining bedroom where it is alleged they had sex. In a police interview played to the court, the older girl said she could hear her friend whining and squirming, but could not see what was happening.

Later the older girl went into the room and saw her friend perform another sex act on Richard before she fled to the bathroom in tears. She added: She called for me. I went to see her. She was crying. She looked like a mess.

THE NAIVE TEENAGERS WHO HOPED TO FIND LOVE FROM 'SUGAR DADDY' The 15-year-old girl told police that she had joined the sugar daddy website first but had deleted her profile because she did not get any messages. She then told her younger friend about the site because 'it turns out me and her both wanted a sugar daddy', she said. It was there that the 13-year-old first made contact with Richard, the court heard. Asked why she went on the site, the older girl said: 'Just because boys my age do not understand anything and take the relationship much more seriously and everything. 'If you have a sugar daddy they can take care of you. Boys just want to have sex.' Richard, of Islington, north London, denies wrongdoing. Advertisement

Richard gave both girls 60 and called them a taxi so they could go shopping before heading home. They returned home that day and the older girls mother called the police after becoming suspicious about a deposit in her daughters bank account.

Richard, who is originally from California but lives in Islington in North London, was arrested three days later at the Edwardian Lord Milner Hotel, in central London.

After being cautioned, he allegedly asked an officer: Can I ask you a hypothetical question? What if I thought she was over 16 but she was in fact under 16?

When officers advised him to talk to his lawyer, Richard said: 'Under 16, wow.'

Richard answered 'no comment' in police interviews.

Prosecutor Gino Connor said: 'I suspect there is going to be no dispute as far as the sexual activity is concerned.'

He added: 'When you look at the photographs of this girl, and the defendant had seen the photographs, he had also seen photographs of her naked, you need to ask yourselves whether he is telling the truth when he says he thought she was 16 or over.'

The girl who was 15 at the time said her younger friend began chatting to a man on the website.

She said they wanted a sugar daddy because 'a sugar daddy, they can spoil you and take care of you and boys my age just want to have sex.'

Richard insists the sex was 'consensual' and says he believed the girl was over 16 at the time

She said that on the day of the alleged offences, she thought they were just going to walk around London.

The witness said Richard checked his emails before kissing her using his tongue.

She said: 'It was horrible. It was really wet and also because he smoked it was horrible. I had never made out with anybody before.'

What if I thought she was over 16 but she was in fact under 16? Doug Richard, after his arrest

She added: 'I was a bit confused [about] what was happening... The guy explained that [she] wanted to be someone's slave or something like that. She had to take off his clothes.'

The teenager told police Richard spanked her friend seven times before she performed a sex act on him before taking her to the bedroom for an hour-and-a-half.

The girl said that, when her friend emerged, she looked 'like a mess' and was 'left in tears'.

The US-born businessman is facing a five-day trial will be heard at the Old Bailey before judge Mark Lucraft QC.

The millionaire, who appeared on BBC's Dragons' Den in the first two series, reportedly travelled with the Prime Minister on an official government trip to Africa and advised on policy.

The Queen presents an award for enterprise to Richard, then the Chairman and Co-Founder of Library House in Cambridge, at Buckingham Palace in 2006

Richard was chairman of the Tories' Small Business Task Force, advising George Osborne, pictured together

WEBSITE BOASTS FOUR 'SUGAR BABIES' FOR EVERY MAN ONLINE Seeking Arrangements is a dating website that claims to offer users 'a relationship on your own terms'. The website connects 'attractive young women' with 'sugar daddies', which is also describes as 'experienced gentlemen'. They claim to have four 'sugar babies' for every man that has signed up, and claim that 'unpaid bills no longer have to be a concern'. The site claims to offer the men a relationship with 'no strings attached', while female members can enjoy 'shopping sprees, expensive dinners, and exotic travels'. Advertisement

After leaving Dragons' Den in 2005, Richard worked closely with Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne for several years while they were in opposition.

In 2008 he was made chairman of the Tories' Small Business Task Force and represented Britain on an international trade mission to Africa after the 2010 election.

In 2011 he went on an official Government trip to Africa and also worked as an adviser to Chancellor George Osborne.

He founded a business loans initiative called School For Startups, alongside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Richard made his fortune in the California tech industry before relocating to Britain in 2001.

He became one of the original Dragons but left to return to his businesses, claiming the show took up too much of his time.

The entrepreneur denies three charges of sexual activity with a child, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and a charge of paying for sexual services. Richard admits having sexual activity with the 13-year-old but says it was consensual and said he thought she was 16 or older.
One in five inmates serving sentences in Britain's maximum security jails are Muslim, figures show.

There are currently 5,885 highly dangerous criminals behind bars in the eight Category A prisons in the UK, of which 1,229 follow the Islamic faith.

The figure equates to 20 per cent of high-security prisoners and, according to figures obtained by The Sun, is an increase of 23 per cent from five years ago.

One in five inmates serving sentences in Britain's maximum security jails are Muslim, figures show. Lee Rigby's killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were jailed at Category A prison Belmarsh

The percentage rise has been far greater than the Muslim population increase in the UK, which is currently at five per cent.

At Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire, 44 per cent of the 447 inmates are Muslim. It is the highest proportion in any British jail and nearly double the number recorded less than a decade ago.

Among those behind bars at the prison is Zia Al Haq, 36, from Wembley, north London, who was sentenced to 18 years in 2007 after plotting to bomb a London Tube tunnel.

Another terrorist at Whitemoor is Nezar Hindawi, 61, serving 45 years for planting a bomb in his pregnant fiancee's hand luggage on a flight from Heathrow to Tel Aviv, which could have killed 375.

Meanwhile, Belmarsh prison in south east London currently has 248 Muslim inmates out of 868, which equates to more than 28 per cent.

A number of high-profile terror suspects have passed through the high-security jail, including former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg and Lee Rigby's killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.

Manchester prison is home to 202 Muslims out of the 1,106 prisoners, while 163 out of the 615 inmates at Long Lartin, Worcestershire, are Muslim.

Full Sutton, East Yorkshire, has 137 Muslim prisoners out of 586, while Woodhill in Milton Keynes has 108 out of 707.

At Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire (pictured), 44 per cent of the 447 inmates are Muslim. It is the highest proportion in any British jail and nearly double the number recorded less than a decade ago

Frankland prison in County Durham has 97 Muslim prisoners out of 832 while Wakefield, West Yorkshire, has 75 of 724.

Anti-terror think-tank the Quilliam Foundation warned jails were 'ripe' to become extremist recruiting grounds.

A series of reports on Whitemoor have also revealed that inmates come under intense pressure to convert to Islam, which is treated by many as a gang or protection racket rather than a religion.

According to watchdog Independent Monitoring Board, Muslims form the 'biggest power bloc' and are taking over from the previous 'gangs'.

Last year, extremist Kamel Bourgass (pictured), serving life for murdering a policeman, won a Supreme Court case after claiming he had been held in solitary confinement for too long at Whitemoor

In a report released last year, it said: 'Against this background we note that some prisoners and staff found the Muslim presence overwhelming.

'The social and religious fragmentation within Whitemoor potentially posed risks for discipline and hence safety.'

The Prison Officers Association also warned that radicalisation is a growing problem with 'clear evidence of an Islamic gang culture aimed at young men'.

But Ministry of Justice data shows that between October 2012 and January 2015, there were 104 Muslims out of 178 prisoners who'd been jailed for 'terrorism-related offences where the motivation stemmed from extreme ideology'.

This is less than 1 per cent of the total Muslim prisoner population.

In 2010, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers, published a report on Muslims in jails, in which she linked the growth in numbers to the age and socio-economic profiles of the Muslim population in general.

Charity Muslim Aid has previously said that poverty is a key factor driving crime, and therefore imprisonment, among Muslims.

Last year, extremist Kamel Bourgass, serving life for murdering a policeman as he went on the run from a ricin factory, won a Supreme Court case after claiming he had been held in solitary confinement for too long at Whitemoor.

He was segregated at the jail, and eventually moved out of it, because he was feared to be involved in 'an escalation in violence' at the prison'.

Non-Muslim Whitemoor inmates include Michael Sams, 72, jailed for life in 1993 for murdering Julie Dart, 18, and kidnapping estate agent Stephanie Slater.

Ian Huntley, 40, jailed for 40 years in 2003 for murdering two schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham Cambs, has been an inmate.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman told MailOnline: 'The Secretary of State has asked the department to review its approach to dealing with Islamist extremism in prisons and probation.
Swedish police warns that Stockholm's main train station has become unsafe after being taken over by dozens of Moroccan street children.

The all-male migrant teen gangs are spreading terror in the centre of the Swedish capital, stealing, groping girls and assaulting security guards, according to Stockholm police.

Members of the gangs, some as young as nine, roam central Stockholm day and night, refusing help provided by the Swedish authorities.

Overrun: Stockholm police reports that gangs of Moroccan minors, some as young as nine, roam the city's main train station 'stealing, assaulting security guards and groping girls'

Sweden has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Moroccan under-18s who apply for asylum without a parent or guardian in the past four years, with many later running away from the housing provided to live on the streets in the capital.

Stockholm police estimate that at least 200 Moroccan street children move in the area around the main train station in the centre of the capital, sleeping rough, and living off criminal activity.

'These guys are a huge problem for us. They steal stuff everywhere and assault security guards at the central station,' one police officer told SVT.

'They grope girls between their legs, and slap them in the face when they protest. All police officers are aware of this.

'I would never let my children go to the central station. No officer would.'

Issues: More than 500 Moroccan children have applied for asylum in Sweden without a parent or guardian since 2012, and one in five have since run away from housing and authorities (stock image)

The issue of the Moroccan teen gangs first made headlines last year, and the situation has since escalated with Stockholm police demanding authorities to take action.

Desperate officers have started arresting the teens for public drunkenness in order to get them off the streets for a few hours, with the policeman adding that they are 'on our knees'.

The gangs are made up of orphans who have grown up on the streets of Casablanca and Tanger in Morocco, where authorities estimate there are around 80,000 homeless 'street children'.

They have all applied for asylum Sweden as unaccompanied minors after travelling through Spain and Germany, a journey which may have taken them years.

But their troubled backgrounds have made them distrusting and wary of adults, and more than one in five have run away from migrant housing and foster families after applying to stay in Sweden.

Complaints: Stockholm police said they are 'on their knees' after the situation involving the Moroccan street children has escalated in recent months (stock image)

Swedish migration authorities first reported and increase in Moroccan unaccompanied minors applying for asylum in 2012, when 145 arrived, a number which more than doubled in 2013.

Out of the 505 Moroccan children who applied for asylum in Sweden without any parent or guardian, 20 per cent ran away from provided group housing or foster families, disappearing off the radar.

In 2014 the number had increased to 381 children, out of which nearly one third have run away, according to the Swedish Migration society.

In the first quarter of 2015, 146 unaccompanied Moroccan minors applied for asylum in Sweden - 32 have since run away and are unaccounted for.

Yesterday, the Swedish government announced talks with Moroccan authorities to acknowledge that the child street gangs are a 'mutual problem'.

Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said yesterday that Sweden is working on sending the children back to their home country.
A 50-year-old man is in a serious condition in hospital after being attacked by a masked thug brandishing a 2ft-long machete at rush-hour this morning.

The man was attacked by the masked assailant who allegedly sliced and 'chopped up' his victim in front of shocked commuters near a bus stop on Tile Cross Road in Birmingham.

Police said the victim is believed to have been deliberately targeted in the 'nasty attack' and was pictured bleeding heavily and being bandaged by paramedics shortly after the incident at 8am.

A 29-year-old man has since been arrested on suspicion of assault in connection with the attack.

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Police said the victim is believed to have been deliberately targeted in the 'nasty attack' and was pictured bleeding heavily and being bandaged by paramedics shortly after the incident in Birmingham at about 8am

Resident Richard Doyle, 36, who took dramatic pictures of paramedics tending to the blood-soaked victim, said the man, 50, was 'absolutely covered in blood and had cuts to his head and arms and back and legs'

The man was attacked by the masked assailant who allegedly sliced and 'chopped up' his victim in front of shocked commuters near a bus stop on Tile Cross Road in Birmingham. Pictured: Paramedics at the scene

A West Midlands Police spokesman said: 'A man has been arrested after an attack in Birmingham this morning which has left a man with serious injuries.

'Officers were called to Tile Cross Road just after 8.10am following reports that a 50-year-old man had been attacked with a machete. He suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital for treatment.

'Detectives launched an investigation and have cordoned off a section of Tile Cross Road while they examine the scene.

'Shortly after the report a 29-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault  he is currently in custody and will be questioned later today.'

The force added that officers also want to track down a second man who was seen to run from the scene and drive off in a blue BMW.

They later sent armed officers to a property in the Kitts Green of the city, and cordoned off sections of Loyns Close and Lowerstack Croft amid claims they were searching a number of properties.

By-standers said officers had broken down a black fence outside one property in a bid to gain access.

The incident occurred near a bus stop in Tile Cross Road, Birmingham (above), in front of shocked commuters

Police have now cordoned off Tile Cross Road (pictured) and the surrounding area as inquiries are carried out

A police investigator could be seen examining the scene in Tile Cross Road, Birmingham, early this afternoon

The man was attacked by the masked assailant who allegedly sliced and 'chopped up' his victim in front of shocked commuters near a bus stop on Tile Cross Road in Birmingham (pictured above) at about 8am today

Eyewitnesses described how the victim appeared to be 'chopped up' in the road during the broad daylight attack this morning.

Resident Richard Doyle, 36, who took dramatic pictures of paramedics tending to the blood-soaked victim, said: 'I heard a load of commotion outside and looked out and saw the bloke rolling around.

'I went out and people were already there and within minutes loads of police and paramedics were with him.

'He looked in middle-aged, he was absolutely covered in blood and had cuts to his head and arms and back and legs.

A man walked past the shop by the bus stop and another man started chopping him. He wouldn't stop. He carried on hitting him Eyewitness

'It was a horrible sight, there was blood all over the pavement.

'Some women said they had seen him get attacked with a machete and said the man just wouldn't stop stabbing him.

'No-one knows why it happened or what it is about.'

IT worker Neil Daniels, 37, said he was walking out of a shop nearby when he heard screaming.

He said: 'I thought two people were arguing first of all but the screaming just got louder and louder.

'It was horrific. I was 100 yards or more away but I could see the victim lying on the ground rolling in blood. At first I thought someone had hacked his head off.

'It was absolutely shocking. I'm told he is in hospital. He is lucky he wasn't killed.'

Another man, who did not wish to be named, said he was walking along the street when he saw the suspect launch the terrifying attack.

He said: 'It was about 8.10am and a man walked past the shop by the bus stop and another man started chopping him.

'He wouldn't stop. He carried on hitting him.

'His clothes were red. His arms, elbows, his back were all dripping in blood.'

'It was madness. The victim was lying in the middle of the road.'

Armed officers have been deployed to a property in the Kitts Green of Birmingham, and police cordoned off sections of Loyns Close (pictured) and Lowerstack Croft amid claims they were searching a number of homes

Police said the victim is believed to have been deliberately targeted in the 'nasty attack' and confirmed a 29-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of assault. Pictured: Police outside a property in the city today

Another man, who lives in the area, added: 'I saw lots of police and an ambulance by the bus stop.

'I'm shocked. I saw a guy with a machete attacking the other man.'

And a woman said: 'I came to work and saw a lot of women standing by the chip shop on Tile Cross.

'One woman said some guy was at the bus stop and got stabbed with a machete.

'She said an ambulance came and took him away.'

The victim, who has not been named, suffered serious injuries and was taken to hospital for treatment.

Detective Inspector Caroline Corfield, from Force CID, is now urging any witnesses to contact the police.

She said: 'This was a nasty attack that happened in a busy area in broad daylight this morning.

'We've already had several witnesses come forward and I'd ask anyone else who has information about what happened to contact us as soon as possible.

'At this early stage we believe this to have been a targeted attack. This kind of violence will not be tolerated and we need your help to bring those responsible to justice.'

Anyone who was in the area this morning and saw what happened should contact police on 101 or call Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

The 50-year-old man was attacked by the masked assailant who allegedly sliced and 'chopped up' his victim in front of shocked commuters near a bus stop on Tile Cross Road in Birmingham at about 8am today
NHS boob job scrounger Josie Cunningham has claimed childhood demons are to blame for her obsession with plastic surgery

NHS boob job scrounger Josie Cunningham has claimed childhood demons are to blame for her obsession with plastic surgery, saying: 'I just want to be pretty.'

In a tearful interview, the 24-year-old said her outrageous behaviour - which includes going through an abortion so she could have a 7,000 nose job - was in a bid to achieve happiness.

The mother-of-three, who is dubbed the most hated woman in Britain, claims she had a 'very very bad childhood' which sent her on a downward spiral, including prostitution.

In a snippet from the interview, published today by The Sun, she says: 'I had a very very bad childhood. A lot of things happened to me that people don't know about.

'I've never had help, and I've never spoken about these issues, and I think maybe it's time that I do.'

She added: 'I want help to be happy and to be able to put the past that I've had - the bullying, the domestic violence, behind me, once and for all... I just want to be pretty.'

The clip, taken from an upcoming documentary expected to air this summer, comes after the wannabe glamour model defended her decision to abort her unborn child so she could have a nose job and achieve her 'dream' of being a porn star.

In October, she told how she made the decision after several doctors told her they would not carry out the surgery while she was pregnant.

She later appeared on ITV's Loose Women to talk about the move and was told she needed help by panellist Jane Moore.

Miss Cunningham, from Leeds, shot to notoriety when she boasted about having a 4,800 breast enlargement on the NHS.

The operation was given the green light after she convinced NHS chiefs that her life was being made a misery by her 32A breasts, claiming she was bullied over their size.

In a tearful interview, the 24-year-old (pictured in a documentary) said her outrageous behaviour - which includes going through an abortion so she could have a 7,000 nose job - was in a bid to achieve happiness

Last year, Miss Cunningham (left) was hit with a revenge porn charge after allegedly posting a naked picture of her ex-lover Andrew Goy (right) on Twitter. She was cleared of the charge

Routine scandal  including claiming Botox on the NHS and forcing her local council to fork out 6,000 to taxi her children to school  has since made her a regular in glossy magazines and newspapers.

Routine scandal has made Miss Cunningham a regular in glossy magazines and newspapers

She also sold tickets that would have allowed viewers to watch her give birth to her third child for a total of 30,000.

She cancelled the show after finding out the baby was a girl - and admitting chain-smoking when doctors revealed the child's sex.

Before giving birth, Miss Cunningham - mother to sons Harley and Frankie and daughter Grace - also revealed she had wrongly told one man that he was the father of her three-month-old daughter by sending him the wrong DNA result.

She had asked three men to take a paternity test to determine who was Grace's father and wrote the outcome in cards to be delivered in time for Christmas Day. But she mixed up the notes and sent the positive result to the wrong man.

In May, she was sacked from a job at a tanning salon in Walsall, West Midlands, after just one day.

Bondi Tanning said Miss Cunningham was fired after yobs egged the store front and she received too much 'negative attention'.

She later returned to working as a prostitute as it is the only way her showbiz lifestyle can be maintained.

In 2014, she sparked outrage again by setting up a dating website for ugly girls looking for casual sex called pullthepig.com.

She set up another aimed at girls desperate for a council house called wantkidsnow.com.

Last year, she was cleared of a revenge porn charge after being accused of posting a naked picture of her ex-lover Andrew Goy, 33, on Twitter.
An 86-year-old man was Tasered twice by police who mistook him for the 'suicidal' boyfriend of his granddaughter.

John Antoine felt he was the victim of excessive force and was falsely charged with harassment by police in Brooklyn, New York in a case of mistaken identity.

Detectives were looking for the boyfriend of his granddaughter, who was reportedly acting emotionally disturbed after running out of medication.

The family's health insurance firm called the 63rd Precinct to tell police that the 23-year-old was suicidal. The information was passed on to the 77th Precinct, where the family lived.

An 86-year-old man was Tasered twice by police who mistook him for the 'suicidal' boyfriend of his granddaughter (file photo)

Dispatcher tapes reveal the 77th Precinct only told their patrol officers that a man was suicidal at that address, without giving an age or name, according to New York Daily News.

During this time, Mr Antoine's granddaughter and her partner had left the home to get more medication.

Mr Antoine, who was chopping onions for his soup at the time, thought the couple had arrived home when his buzzer rang, but he had buzzed the police into the building.

Detectives found his door slightly open and when they went in they saw the 86-year-old with a knife in his hand and ordered him to drop the knife.

Speaking of the moment they police entered his Bergen Street apartment, Mr Antoine said: 'The police came in and say, "You so and so, put down the knife," and I said, "Why are you coming in my apartment? What do you want?' 'They wouldn't tell me.'

The retired pipe fitter moved to place the knife on his kitchen table, before police zapped him on his neck and leg.

Mr Antoine was taken to two hospitals and doctors found him mentally stable.

A spokesman for the NYPD said the officers acted appropriately as Mr Antoine did not respond to their commands to drop the knife and was in close proximity to a child, aged three (file photo)

After charging him for the refusal to drop his knife, he has decided to file a $5million lawsuit against the city over the incident which happened on October 14, 2015..

His lawyer Scott Rynecki said: 'What makes this more outrageous is that members of the Police Department were given information that the situation they were called to involved a 23-year-old male. And they were in possession of that individual's name.'

A spokesman for the NYPD said the officers acted appropriately as Mr Antoine did not respond to their commands to drop the knife and was in close proximity to a child, aged three.
Any migrants camped in squalid conditions in Calais who have a British connection should be allowed to cross the Channel, Jeremy Corbyn said today.

The Labour leader, interviewed by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield following his trip to 'The Jungle' on Saturday, said the 9,000 people camped in Calais and Dunkirk should be given homes by European countries.

And calling for Britain to take in more people, he said the government has so far agreed to only take in the equivalent of a 'few tube trains' over five years - compared to hundreds of thousands of people accepted by Germany.

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Jeremy Corbyn appeared on the This Morning sofa today and appealed for people he met in the Calais camp to be allowed into Britain if they have British connections

The Labour leader, pictured during a visit to the camp on Saturday, today said the Home Office should 'let up a bit' on the rules regarding minimum income and relationship which apply to bringing in family members

Mr Corbyn blasted French authorities for 'exacerbating' the crisis on Britain's doorstep.

And he told ITV's This Morning: 'I'm not saying all 9,000 should come. Start with those that have a British connection and a British passport - that's an obvious one.

'And the Home Office can let up a bit and be reasonable in those cases.'

Mr Corbyn said he had been 'surprised' by how many people at the camp he had met who held British passports.

But he said they were refusing to use their right to enter Britain without bringing their families with them.

The Labour leader said he could only 'speculate' but suggested strict rules on minimum income for spouses and other family members could be to blame.

Mr Corbyn also suggested in some cases Home Office rules consider a relation to distant for a refugee to qualify for entry to Britain.

Mr Corbyn told of a young man he met who was living in a 'disgusting tent' and was unable to come to Britain because his mother, living in Britain, did not earn enough money.

He said the woman regularly travelled to Calais to deliver food but was unable to bring her son back to the UK.

Mr Corbyn rejected the suggestion he was 'naive' about the implications of dramatically increasing the number of refugees it takes in.

He said: 'Germany has taken several hundred thousand people already, Austria less but taken a lot.

'Britain is taking 20,000 over five years - that is the equivalent of a few tube trains.

'There is a refugee crisis on Europe's borders, there is a refugee crisis in the world. We can't ignore it, we can't wish it away.

'We have to deal with the political causes - the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war in Syria, the war in Libya.

'But in the mean time we cannot just ignore the fact that are a large number of people in a very serious, deeply depressed state and they need our help.#'

The Labour leader added: 'I think there should be a system agreed with all European countries to take some people so we all take a share.'

A quota system is set to be considered again by European leaders as the EU wrestles with an unprecedented wave of refugees walking or sailing into the continent.

Mr Corbyn has hit out at the squalid conditions in the camps in Calais and Dunkirk, pictured during the Labour leaders recent visit, and today blasted he the French authorities for 'exacerbating' the situation

Mr Corbyn said he was 'surprised' by how many people he met at the camp who held British passports but who did not want to travel here without their families

Home Secretary Theresa May is attending an informal meeting of ministers in Amsterdam discussing the migrant crisis.

The EU is seeking reforms to the Dublin convention which currently requires refugees to claim asylum in the first EU country they enter, rules which are overwhelming states in south and eastern Europe.

The waves of migrants could provoke a suspension of the 'Schengen' area rules of free movement on continental Europe.

The informal meeting comes days after EU President Donald Tusk warned that Europe's passport-free travel area, known as Schengen, could break apart if the migrant strategy is not sorted out within two months.

'In order to maintain and ensure the free movement within the Schengen zone, it is obvious that we have to better manage our external borders,' said the EU's Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos.

Ministers are seeking to stem the flow through Greece, where authorities are struggling to contain the crossings by boat from Turkey. If that fails, Europe may need to set up border controls somewhere else, Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

'It's clear that if we can't secure the European borders - that means the Greek-Turkish border - then the Schengen border will move to central Europe,' she told reporters.

EU figures show more than 2,000 people are still arriving daily, despite choppy seas and wintery conditions.

Italy's Interior Minister, Angelino Alfano, said his country was not in favor of effectively pushing Europe's border up to Greece's northern border with Macedonia.

'We are of the idea that Europe must remain a stable structure, that there cannot be bits of Europe inside and bits of Europe outside because that would be the start of dissolution,' he said.
A new artwork by Banksy criticising the use of teargas in The Jungle refugee camp in Calais has appeared on a wall opposite the French Embassy in London.

The mural depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her.

The artwork includes an interactive QR code which, when scanned, links to a video of teargas and rubber bullets used in a police raid on January 5.

Within hours of it being discovered today, property developers on the building site it was drawn on covered it up to 'preserve' it.

A woman stops to take a selfie next to Banksy's artwork in Knightsbridge, London, which appeared overnight

It depicts the young girl from the Les Miserables musical crying due to the effects of a nearby can of tear gas and is a critique of the French police's use of the weapon on migrants in The Jungle, Calais

Painted onto a building site near the French embassy, builders today were tasked with covering the artwork up. The property developers said they would be preserving the artwork, but did not elaborate further

It is the latest in a number of artworks painted by the elusive graffiti artist criticising Europe's handling of the refugee crisis.

In December, he painted a mural of the late Steve Jobs on a wall in The Jungle, Calais, depicted carrying a rucksack through the camp.

Jobs was famously born to immigrant parents and went on to revolutionise the technology world as the head of Apple - overseeing the creation of the iPod, iPad and iPhone products.

But within hours of cameras being set up outside on Monday morning, the developers decided to cover the work up with two large pieces of plywood.

Several builders armed with electric drills attached the large wooden boards to the wall, entirely covering the mural.

It followed farcical scenes, which happened earlier in the day, when building staff decided to remove the painting - only to quickly change their mind.

They initially took a crowbar to the side of the wooden board which the work was painted on and tried to hack it off, but soon aborted the attempt amid fears the valuable artwork might be damaged.

They then covered the work with wood only to take it off seconds later following what appeared to be a change of mind from site bosses. Around an hour later, builders again covered the mural with wood - this time apparently for good.

Mike Sadler, director of Cheval Property Management Limited, said: 'Cheval Property Management Limited will be preserving the mural and is currently discussing future plans for the artwork.'

The decision to cover the art up came after a gang of men tried to prise it off the wall and steal it on Sunday night.

Scotland Yard said it sent officers to investigate the attempted theft at 8.45pm on Sunday night, but the men had fled the scene.

Fans of the artist have been visiting the mural and taking photos of it.

Among them was Julie Moore, 29, a consultant living in London, who rushed to see the artwork before catching a flight to Scotland.

A migrant wearing a scarf across his mouth and nose flees from the tear gas thrown by French police forces in the migrant camp in Calais on Thursday

The Banksy mural depicting Steve Jobs at The Jungle in Calais shows the Apple entrepreneur, who was himself the son of a Syrian migrant, as a refugee living in the camp

She said: 'I went on Facebook this morning and saw a mention of this and so decided to rush here before going to the airport.

'The work is incredible. I think the most powerful thing for me is I'm a lover of musicals and to use such a powerful image of France is just beautiful.

'This is on my morning running route and just a few weeks ago there there was a collection of flowers outside the embassy. It has so much meaning to have it here.

'It is an important message he is getting across.'

The mural has been sprayed on to the corner of a large complex in Knightsbridge which is being turned into luxury flats and shops.

Ged Glaude, 43, one of the builders at the site, said: 'I've just arrived at work and saw the press here. It is not very often you come to work and see a Banksy.'

Nick Papavassiliou, 42, a charity worker living in London, said: 'Every time Banksy puts up a picture it is quickly sold by some owner for a "charity", so as soon as I saw it last night I thought I'd better come down here quickly before it gets removed.

'It is possible it will raise awareness of conditions in the camp - I hope so. I suppose artworks like this are there to send a message.'

Asked about his views on the refugee crisis, he said: 'Personally, I think we should do a little bit more than what we are doing - we are all humans after all.

'These people are in trouble and there are children involved, more should be done just on a humanitarian basis.'

Builders working at the site at one point discussed removing the mural, but now the plan appears to be to cover it up with another piece of wood.

Pictured is the charity mural called Art Buff, created by street artist Banksy in Folkestone, Kent

Another Banksy artwork, this time in Bethnal Green, east London, shows a painter sitting next to a design
A film has been released about the tragic life of Christine Chubbuck - an American news anchor who shot herself live on air.

The movie, called Christine, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah at the weekend. Coincidentally, a documentary version of her life was also on show this year.

Ms Chubbuck killed herself while reading the news for a local Sarasota, Florida, TV station in July 1974, aged 29.

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The lead up to that tragic day has been portrayed by Antonio Campos, with British Hollywood actress Rebecca Hall (pictured) playing the lead role

Ms Chubbuck killed herself while reading the news for a local Sarasota, Florida TV station in July 1974, aged 29

The lead up to that tragic day has been portrayed by Antonio Campos, with British Hollywood actress Rebecca Hall playing the lead role.

Campos' feature takes a sympathetic look at the build up to the shocking act and ponders whether she had mental health issues.

Hall, 33, who has featured in a host of films including Frost/Nixon and Iron Man 3, hopes the story can raise awareness about rare mental illnesses.

She told Indiewire: 'In many ways, there is still so much stigma and misinformation around these sorts of things, to the point that people who are suffering from these problems don't seek the help that is available now in a way that it definitely wouldn't have been available for Christine then.

'A lot that has to do with this sort of misunderstanding, there's still a kind of 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality.

'Destigmatizing it helps to make it human. Otherwise, you're left in a situation of 'I'm a just a bad person. I'm just a bad person and I can't ask for help, I can't do that,' which is what Christine does.

'My take on it was that she was a Borderline Personality Depressive. Shes very, difficult to diagnose, and very difficult to treat, and nearly always gets sort of slightly pushed aside like, "Youre a difficult person" and even more so, "Youre a difficult woman," tragically.'

The movie, called Christine, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah at the weekend. Coincidentally, a documentary version of her life was also on show this year

This image provided by the Sundance Institute shows Kate Lyn Sheil in a scene from the documentary film, Kate Plays Christine, directed by Robert Greene

Ms Chubbuck's story had almost been forgotten about until recently. The video is one of the most secret of its kind after Chubbuck's family took out an injuction preventing it from being reshown- a far cry from similar incidents in modern times.

She had no known health issues and seemed perfectly sane as she read the news as normal on that tragic day.

British actress Rebecca Hall stars in Christine

The 29-year-old looked into the camera and said: 'In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first  attempted suicide.'

She then pulled out a gun from a bag near her feet and shot herself. Her news team froze and, at first, thought it was a joke.

But when her boss ran over to shout at her, he came face to face with the horrible reality of what she had done.

She was rushed to hospital in critical condition, where she later died.

It has been reported since that she used the word 'attempted' as a cover if she failed in her suicide.

Spookily, she had handwritten a news item where she wrote about her suicide in the third person and even mentioned that she would be taken to hospital before dying.

Her family later revealed that she had suffered from depression and had suicidal tendencies.

Her mother believed the lack of relationships sparked her daughter's depression. Ms Chubbuck was due to turn 30 as a virgin and had only been on two dates in her life.

Hall said Christine makes the audience emotionally attached to Ms Chubbuck.

She added: 'I felt that, playing her. It was an interesting feeling on set. The film is a group of people trying to help and trying to help someone survive.

'I really felt that kind of investment. I mean, we all knew what the ending was, but we were all sort of rooting for her to make it, and I think that comes out. She should have.
Former Rutgers University professor claimed he had consented to the relationship by communicating on a keyboard

Note said their 'romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving'

Claimed in note to judge before sentence that she was 'motivated by love'

A professor convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled man wrote a begging letter to a judge insisting she had only been acting out of love.

Anna Stubblefield, the former chair of the philosophy department at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, was jailed for 12 years over her relationship with the 35-year-old man who has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak.

The 46-year-old, who was accused of using her position to take advantage of the man, known as DJ, said he had consented to the relationship by communicating on a keyboard.

Rutgers University professor Anna Stubblefield, 46, of West Orange, is led in to Superior Court for her sentencing, in Newark, New Jersey

Zoe Stubblefield, Anna's daughter addressed the court before her mother's sentencing. Stubblefield, 46, was convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled man who she said had consented to the relationship by communicating on a keyboard

In a letter she wrote from the Essex County Correctional Facility, she told Superior Court Judge Siobhan Teare that her actions 'were motivated by love, and my love was grounded in my belief in (the disabled man's) intelligence and humanity'.

The December 26 note, obtained by NJ Advance Media, was sent to the judge prior to sentencing and stated the same arguments she had used while giving evidence during her trial.

'I believed that he and I were intellectual equals and that our romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving.'

She added that she was 'raised by parents who are committed to the cause of equal rights for people with disabilities'.

Stubblefield wrote that she originally saw the man as a friend but that 'then something happened that took me by surprise  we fell in love.'

She said she would have 'waited' had she foreseen his family's negative reaction to the relationship.

Stubblefield added: 'I regret and sincerely apologize for the distress my actions have caused to his family.'

On her release, Stubblefield will be on supervised parole for the rest of her life and will be required to register as a sex offender.

Stubblefield, pictured with long hair during an event at Rutgers, claimed DJ consented to sex with her through the controversial method of 'facilitated communication'

Stubblefield (left) explained in court that DJ used a keyboard and could bang on the floor if he wanted to stop having sex

The tense and emotional sentencing hearing earlier this month included testimony from the victim's brother and Stubblefield's daughter. Stubblefield's daughter was later removed from the courtroom by officers after cursing at the brother.

Stubblefield met the 35-year-old man in 2009 through his brother, who had been taking her course. Over the next two years, Stubblefield worked with the man using a method known as facilitated communication. She argued that although he could not speak, he could communicate by typing.

She said the two were in love and they revealed their sexual relationship to his mother and brother in 2011.

Prosecutors challenged the method of facilitated communication, and psychologists determined that he was mentally incompetent and couldn't consent to sexual activity.

Dr Anna Stubblefield, 45, was found guilty in October on two counts of felony first-degree aggravated sexual assault for raping a mentally disabled man

The judge barred expert testimony on facilitated communication, determining it's 'not a recognized science.'

She was put on trial after being accused of raping the mute, diaper-wearing man in her office in Newark, New Jersey in 2011.

The philosophy professor testified in her own defense last month that she and the man, known to the court only as DJ, were in a consensual relationship and 'in love'.

DJ, who is unable to speak, needs help eating and walking and is forced to wear diapers, is intellectually disabled, according to his mother and brother who act as his legal guardians.

In Stubblefield's written explanation of her sexual interactions with DJ, she wrote he had 'he lowered himself off the bed on to the floor and scooted out the door down the hall to the front room'.

Guilty: The divorced mother has a 15-year-old daughter and is now facing 12 years in jail

Dr Anna Stubblfefield, 45, grins as she arrives at Essex County Court in Newark, New Jersey, in October

The prosecutor said DJ uses 'scooting' as a method of communication, to get to the fridge if he is hungry or to the sink if he is thirsty. Plant suggested DJ used 'scooting' during the sexual interaction with Stubblefield in order to get away.

'He did not understand what was going on, did not have the ability other than to scoot out,' Plant said.

During the trial the prosecution had questioned how DJ could communicate if he wanted to stop during another sexual incident on the floor of Stubblefield's Newark office. Stubblefield said he could bang on the floor.
Obama seems respectful of Sanders but has 'obvious affection' for Clinton

President is defensive about his legacy, but repeats his regret that the country is so politically divided

President Barack Obama waded into the Democratic primary race to succeed him in full in a new interview published Monday, offering moderate praise for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders but 'obvious affection' for front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Obama. in an Oval Office interview on Friday afternoon, offered his most expansive views to date on his party's primary this year, giving little mention to former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and only caustic views of the Republican candidates.

He was frank in his assessment of each candidate's strengths and weaknesses.

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President Barack Obama dove into the Democratic presidential primary race in a new interview published Monday, speaking roughly of front-runner Hillary Clinton but also praise for her 2008 primary performance

Obama's comments on Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders were his most effusive to date on his party's race to succeed him

Sanders, Obama said, has had the 'luxury of being a complete long shot' so far in the race, giving him a kind of freedom to be himself and speak candidly to audiences.

While both Sanders and Clinton share similar views on core issues like income inequality, Obama said Clinton has had the disadvantage of being a well-known commodity 'in a culture in which new is always better.'

'Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,' Obama said. 'Hillary came in with the both privilege and burden of being perceived as the front-runner.'

Obama lauded Clinton's experience, saying it will help her govern if she wins, but he described her campaign as 'cautious.'

'Her strengths, which are the fact that she's extraordinarily experienced, and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out, sometimes could make her more cautious and her campaign more prose than poetry,' he said.

The interview was the first time Obama has discussed in detail the Democratic race to replace him, and comes just ahead of the first contests to pick a nominee for the November election: Iowa, on Feb. 1, and New Hampshire, on Feb. 9.

Clinton in North Liberty, Iowa, on Sunday

Clinton was Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013

The president said Iowa was where he faced his first primary test against Clinton in 2008, although admits he 'wasn't necessarily ready for Broadway.'

'[M]y answers were too long, I was too wonkish, wasn't crisp in my presentation. And that was true for a while,' he said.

'Everything in retrospect always looks great... [But] I remember [the] endless van rides through cornfields, hungry, tired, going to my sixth event, and making phone calls to either raise money or to talk to some caucus-goer who didn't really want to talk to me but my team said I had to call.'

He admitted to a tinge of regret in how Clinton was treated on the campaign trail.

'The truth is, in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff, I think, got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising,' Obama said.

'And there were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out.'

In fact, he said, Clinton 'had a tougher job throughout that primary than I did.'

'She had to do everything that I had to do, except, like Ginger Rogers, walk backwards in heels,' he said. 'She had to wake up earlier than I did because she had to get her hair done. She had to, you know, handle all the expectations that were placed on her.'

Sanders, a self-described socialist, has benefited from being a little-known longshot so far in the race, allowing him to escape the level of media scrutiny that has been focused on Clinton, Obama said

The president did not speak well of Republican candidates, arguing that the party has tilted dangerously toward an extremist right side

Obama spoke only sparingly of the GOP side of the 2016 race, saying he hasn't watched any of the Republican debates so far and was scornful of the party's tilt to the right in just the past few years.

'You think about it: When I ran against John McCain, John McCain and I had real differences, sharp differences, but John McCain didn't deny climate science,' he said.

'John McCain didn't call for banning Muslims from the United States.  [The] Republican vision has moved not just to the right, but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable.'

Back on the Democratic side of the race, Politico's report said Obama showed 'obvious affection' for his former secretary of state, and 'repeatedly praised Clinton without reservation while offering more tempered praise to the surging Sanders.'

But he was direct in his assessment of her strengths and flaws.

Clinton is better in 'small groups' than big ones, for example, and said her first campaign appearances showed her to be 'rusty' this year, comparing them to his poorly reviewed first debate of the 2012 campaign.

'[S]hes extraordinarily experienced  and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out  [and] sometimes [that] could make her more cautious, and her campaign more prose than poetry,' Obama said.

Sanders has surged in recent polls in Iowa and leads Clinton in New Hampshire. If he wins either state, he will face the kind of intense scrutiny the media has long given Clinton, Obama said.

'You're going to dig into his proposals and how much they cost and what does it mean, and, you know, how does his tax policy work and he's subjected, then, to a rigor that hasn't happened yet,' Obama said.

Obama also said he thought Sanders would need to broaden his message to continue to succeed in the campaign.
The number of Russian spies operating in Britain has returned to at least Cold War levels as diplomatic ties hit a deep freeze in the wake of a public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

David Cameron last week vowed to continue his dealings with the Kremlin with a 'very cold heart' after an inquiry found President Putin had 'probably' personally ordered the nuclear assassination of Mr Litvinenko on the streets of London.

Russian author Andrei Soldatov today said the number of agents in Britain had returned to its Cold War peak.

Russian spies are believed to be concentrated in London and near Britain's major Naval bases - including on the Clyde, pictured, where the Vanguard-class nuclear submarines are based

He told The Times there was a mix of official agents with diplomatic cover, 'illegal' agents with fake British identities and recruited Russian businessmen living openly.

Besides London, Mr Soldatov said cities and towns with a big Royal Navy presence - particularly the Clyde, home to the nuclear deterrent, and Devenport, in Plymouth.

Spies are split across three agencies - the FSB, formerly known as the KGB, the GRU military intelligence agency and the SVR, the foreign intelligence service.

Mr Soldatov told The Times: 'The FSB is mostly concerned with gathering information about people who might present some kind of threat to the authorities in Russia, such as Russian dissidents living in the UK.'

He said at least 30 agents were in the UK.

The new revelations come just days after a bombshell inquiry laid the blame for the killing of Mr Litvnenko at President Putin's door.

Sir Robert Smith declared the president had 'probably' personally ordered the assassination, which involved two FSB spies slippling radioactive polonium 210 into a tea pot.

Following the report, Mr Cameron said: 'What happened was absolutely appalling and this report confirms what we've always believed, and what the last Labour government believed at the time of this dreadful murder, which is it was state sponsored action.'

He said Britain's actions in 2007 had continued, adding the relationship with Russia was 'tough'.

The premier added: 'We must now read the report in its entirety and take everything into account but be in no doubt, this shocking event was reacted to years ago when it happened and we are toughening our action again today.'

The Prime Minister said he was not ruling out further punitive action against Russia but links could not be severed.

'Do we at some level have to go on having some sort of relationship with them because we need a solution to the Syria crisis?,' he said.

'Yes, we do but we do it with clear eyes and a very cold heart.'

But the Russians ridiculed the British report and dismissed its conclusions.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that 'such a quasi-investigation such as the one being talked about today undoubtedly is able only to still further poison the atmosphere of our bilateral relations.'

Mr Peskov said the report 'cannot be accepted by us as a verdict.'
The notorious story of New York politician Anthony Weiner, who torpedoed his 2013 bid to be mayor of the Big Apple when he was caught for a second time sending lewd texts and photos to various women, is coming soon to a theater near you.

The documentary movie Weiner, taken from some 400 hours of footage filmed with Weiner's permission during his mayoral campaign, premiered yesterday at the Sundance Film Festival.

And Daily Mail Online was there to see the no-holds-barred portrait of the former US Congressman as he crashes and burns, taking his wife Huma Abedin - Hillary Clinton's close friend and political advisor - with him.

The 90-minute film which will be in theaters in May and on Showtime in October reveals Huma's pain, humiliation and anger.

At one point she says her life's 'like living in a nightmare.' But she stands by her husband after he publicly admits violating her trust.

Still, when he goes to vote in the election she refuses to go with him, on the counsel of an advisor believed to be one of Hillary Clinton's aides.

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Disgraced politician: Documentary movie Weiner, taken from some 400 hours of footage filmed with Anthony Weiner's permission during his mayoral campaign, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

Caught: The then-New York congressman resigned in 2011 following a sexting scandal. This is one of the several shirtless selfies Weiner sent out to women during his marriage

Close friends: Huma Abedin, wife of Anthony Weiner, is a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. She took the stage with her in December 2015 after a Democratic presidential primary debate in New Hampshire

Huma's biggest 'indignity' is when one of her husband's sex text girls - urged on by radio disc jockey Howard Stern - chases him through a McDonald's as he tries to prevent her from confronting him.

Hot-tempered Weiner is frequently seen having meltdowns, in one of which he almost comes to blows with a Jewish man who calls him a 's***bag' and another where he threatens to 'kick the a**' of TV talk show host Laurence O'Donnell.

Widespread TV coverage of both run-ins don't seem to worry him. After watching tape of the 'scumbag' incident, he's more irritated that one of the TV cameras has revealed his bald spot than the argument and he laughs while watching his fight with O'Donnell.

I wanted to be viewed as the full person I was. It's kind of like, 'Besides that Mrs Lincoln, how was the show?'

Even as his political - and personal - life is falling apart around him he's cracking jokes. After another of his sexting bimbos threatens to tell her story, he's filmed in his car, cackling as he tells one Rodney Dangerfield one-liner after another. And again he seems more irritated by a TV camera revealing his bald spot than by the girl's revelations

Despite all the setbacks, lurid scandals and mocking from late night TV hosts, in the end he still refuses to quit. Just before he garnered a paltry 4.93 per cent of the mayoral vote, he's seen on camera asking himself, 'If I had more time, could I rebound again?'

In the midst of his humiliation and embarrassment - all captured on film - the cameraman asks him, 'Why have you let me film this?' It's the same question many of the people in the Sundance audience were asking.

Weiner says that he doesn't regret it. 'I wanted to be viewed as the full person I was. It's kind of like, "Besides that Mrs Lincoln, how was the show?"'

The first part of Weiner shows old footage of the fiery, passionate representative from New York, an outspoken rising star in the U.S. Congress.

Suddenly the archive film in 2011 shows news clips of photos of bulging men's underwear that Weiner had sent to one of his sexting gals. Even Wolf Blitzer of CNN is seen asking Weiner 'Are these your underpants?'

First he hedges, then he admits it, expresses regret and refuses to resign. Then he does resign and, fast forward two years and he decides enough time has passed for him to revive his battered political career and run for Mayor of New York.

Enter Josh Kriegman, Weiner's one time chief of staff when he was a New York Congressman. Kriegman had left politics to launch a career in movies and he approached his old boss and still close friend about documenting his mayoral campaign.

Weiner - with visions of capturing on film his triumphal return as Mayor, agreed.

By his side: 'It took a lot of work and therapy to forgive him. I love him and have forgiven him.' Huma agreed - reluctantly - to appear with her husband at a press conference after another sexting scandal broke during his run for New York City mayor

Political pressure: Documentary co-director Elyce Steinberg flatly denies claims that Hillary Clinton pressured the moviemakers to take out some sensitive parts of the film

Avoiding appearances: A Clinton aide advised Huma not to go with her husband Anthony Weiner to vote in the election

'He was not far removed from a really disgraceful sexting scandal,' said Kriegman after yesterday's screening. 'This was a remarkable comeback story. Then things took a turn - and we kept filming.'

Kriegman could have no way of knowing just how much 'things took a turn.' One of the first questions Weiner is asked on camera is how Huma felt about him going back into politics.

She supported him, says Weiner. 'She was eager to get her life back that I had taken from her. I wanted to clean up the mess I made and running for mayor was the strongest way to do it.'

Scenes show the Weiners' happy home life, playing with their toddler son Jordan and their pets. Huma hits the campaign trail with her husband, helping to raise money, leading the campaign volunteers and being the perfect political wife. At one fundraiser, dressed in a striking red dress, she tells the crowd, 'I love my city and I believe in my husband.'

Within months he's running first in the polls, despite the naysayers and critics, including Donald Trump, who said at the time, 'We don't want perverts elected in New York City.' The filmmakers include lots of clips of women working on his campaign and singing his praises along with scenes of Weiner kissing babies while a crowd of New Yorker chant, 'Everybody deserves a second chance.'

It took a lot of work and therapy to forgive him. I love him and have forgiven him Huma Abedin when her husband is caught sexting for a second time

Weiner is shown triumphantly telling his campaign staff ,'We're back.' But here, director Kriegman is just setting up his audience. In July of 2013, the bomb dropped. Reports started surfacing that Weiner had been up to his old tricks, sending lewd texts and pictures to female pen pals.

Watching a TV report of website Dirty. com airing seedy revelations about her husband posting the texts under the name Carlos Danger, Huma shakes her head in disgust. She paces in front of him, staring at him with an angry look that says 'Not again.'

Despite her obvious fury, Huma remains calm. She even coolly tells a staffer to 'look happy' when she leaves the couple's New York apartment which at the time was besieged by reporters.

Huma agrees - reluctantly - to appear with her husband at a press conference where, with a smile that looks forced, she tells reporters that she had faced the same crisis two years earlier.

'It took a lot of work and therapy to forgive him. I love him and have forgiven him.' What's not clear from that is, has she forgiven him for the old transgressions - or the new ones?

He gets irritated by his communications director Barbara Morgan playing devil's advocate and posing questions he might be asked by reporters. 'Was it multiple people or just the one? Do you think you're suffering from any kind of addiction?'

He waffles and snaps at her giving no definitive answers.

Sex scandal: Sydney Leathers claims she had phone sex with Weiner - 'sometimes five times a day'

Bigger plans: 23-year-old Leathers made a sex tape for Vivid, plus did an interview in which she detailed some of her and Weiner's sexy phone calls

Weiner apologized to his campaign team but adds that they must 'go on' and 'look normal.' It doesn't satisfy several of the let-down crew. 'I'm frustrated at your lack of clarity with me,' says one. 'I feel like we were left in the dark,' says another.

Weiner confesses that he did 'these dumb things' but adds 'It's behind me.'

Then, out of the woodwork comes 23-year-old Sydney Leathers, claiming that she'd been having phone sex with him 'sometimes five times a day.' She made a sex tape for Vivid, plus an interview in which she detailed some of their sexy phone calls.

Appearing on Lawrence O'Donnell's show on MSNBC and the host asks him, 'What's wrong with you?'

Weiner loses his temper, yelling at O'Donnell, 'Bigger guys than you have been trying to knock me down.' When O'Donnell repeats the question, Wiener tells him to stop 'or I'll come on this show and kick your ass.'

Later he tells the movie cameraman he 'hates bullies.' But while watching a tape of the O'Donnell encounter, he starts laughing, prompting an obviously shocked Huma to ask: 'Why are you laughing - it's bad.'

He says: 'It's funny.' She shoots him a look of bewilderment, then finally walks out of the room saying: 'I can't watch any more.'

When a New York newspaper uses a front page photo of Huma asking 'What's wrong with you?' meaning why is she staying with her beleaguered husband, a frustrated Weiner springs to her defense saying: 'It's not fair to her - I've created this problem.'

It was a low point for Huma. When a cameraman asks her how she's feeling, she says, with a sad look: 'It's like living in a nightmare.'

Four weeks before the election he'd gone from first to fourth in the polls, with an 'unfavorability rating' of 80 percent - yet he's filmed in his car with Barbara Morgan, rattling off Rodney Dangerfield jokes.

His campaign adviser 'Phillippe' - Hillary Clinton's close aide, Phillippe I. Reines - saw nothing funny in the faltering state of Weiner's bid for mayor and on the phone he tells him, 'There's no chance to win any more.'

When Weiner suggests putting out a message saying 'I ain't quitting,' Reines gives a resounding no and tells Weiner that if he goes that route, it would be 'a solo flight.'

At a town hall meeting, where he's heckled by several people, he admits he 'violated the trust of my wife'. But then he defiantly adds'New Yorkers don't quit - I won't quit.' In the car afterward though, he drops the bravado and admits, with a look of exhaustion , 'I'm done.'

Two weeks before election day comes filmed meltdown No. 2. In a visit to a diner, a guy wearing a yarmalke (skullcap) calls Weiner a 'scumbag.' Weiner comes back with 'It takes one to know one' and from that point it escalated into a screaming match, with the two men nose to nose, matching insults, all in front of the TV news cameras.

Several witnesses of the diner incident were left shaking their heads. 'Why didn't he just walk away,' one old man tells the camera. After the incident, Weiner seems more irritated - yet again - by one of the TV cameras revealing his bald spot than the fight.

Humiliated: Watching a TV report of seedy revelations about her husband's continued sexting Huma shakes her head in disgust, documentary reveals

'Happy' family: Scenes show the Weiners' happy home life, playing with their toddler son Jordan and their pets. Huma hits the campaign trail with her husband, helping to raise money, leading the campaign volunteers and being the perfect political wife

Hillary's name is brought back into the movie - yet again - when a reporter, suggesting that Weiner's scandal made him a political liability for his Clinton advisor wife, asks him if Huma would have to make a choice between him or Hillary, he refused to answer.

Huma meanwhile is becoming more and more reluctant to make campaign appearances and things start getting snippy between them.

When she says she doesn't want to face reporters because she won't know what to say, he says, 'You could say I think Anthony is doing an amazing job' - at which she throws him a look of disgust and shrugs.

In another exchange she asks what she should be doing in his campaign and he snaps, 'act like you're married to me.'

On election day, Reines advises Huma that it would not be wise to be seen in public that day with Weiner so she refuses to cast her vote alongside him.

Instead he takes their son Jordan along to cast his ballot and tells reporters that his wife isn't with him because of a scheduling conflict.

To make matters worse - if that's possible - Sydney Leathers, whom Weiner's staff have given the code name 'Pineapple' appears on Howard Stern's radio show saying Weiner had 'p***ed her off because he lied on TV that he'd changed - and I'm the living proof that he didn't.'

When Leathers revealed that she'd never actually met Weiner in person, the ever mischievous Stern suggested she should go out and confront him on election day, along with a camera crew.

She camps outside Weiner's office and one of his staffers announces it's time to 'execute the McDonald's plan.'

This involves sneaking Weiner out through the back of a nearby McDonald's and there's a hilarious sequence in the movie with Leathers chasing as he makes his escape.

While it may be funny, the McDonalds incident also summed up the humiliation Huma's been put through by her husband. 'I'm not going to face the indignity of being accosted by that woman,' she tells him.'

After yesterday's Sundance screening of Weiner, Kriegman's co-director, Elyce Steinberg flatly denied recent claims that Hillary Clinton had pressured the moviemakers into taking out some sensitive parts of the film - although did not appear to deny that there had been attempts to do precisely that.

'No footage was taken out because of pressure from Hillary Clinton,' she said. 'Our hope is that the film can be part of the political conversation.'
For more of the latest Islamic State news visit www.dailymail.co.uk/isis

Small terrorist training camps thought to be set up in EU and the

Islamic State are plotting mass casualty terror atrocities in Europe following the massacres in France last year, the EUs crime-fighting agency has warned.

The terror group claims have to hundreds of militants in countries across the continent ready to bring murder and mayhem to the streets, said Europol.

This militants have set up a specialist command after carrying out horrifying strikes against Western targets, including the machine gun assault and suicide bombings which murdered 130 people in Paris last November.

Concern: Europol has warned that the Islamic State has honed its ability to launch global attacks. Pictured, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris terror attacks which cost 130 people their lives last year

A report by Europol, the agency set up to share intelligence, crime-fighting techniques and bolster cross-border police co-operation, said there was every reason to expect another IS attack.

It said: There is every reason to expect that IS, IS-inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population.

This is in addition to the threat of lone actor attacks, which has not diminished.

IS is preparing more strikes by marauding machinegun-wielding gunmen that echo the Mumbai atrocities in 2008 after repeating the tactics in the French capital.

Intelligence suggested IS had developed an external actions command trained for Special Forces-style operations abroad, said the report.

Europol director Rob Wainwright, pictured, unveiled a new report on changes in how the jihadist group operates

It said: The attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets, because of the impact it generates. Both the November Paris attacks and the October 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner suggest a shift in IS strategy towards going global.

New attacks are also likely against critical infrastructure such as power grids and nuclear facilities not currently seen as a priority for IS.

The jihadists are also thought to have set up small terror training camps in the EU and Balkans, the report added.

The report on changes in the way Islamist terror groups operated was published at the launch of a European Counter Terrorism Centre based in the The Hague, the Netherlands.

Pictured, a man injured in the Paris terror attacks, in last November, is carried to safety by firefighters

It came as IS released a video on Sunday purporting to show nine of the jihadists who attacked Paris in which they threaten coalition countries including Britain.

Europol director Rob Wainwright said Islamic State had developed a new combat-style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage, with a particular focus in Europe.

He added: So-called Islamic State has a willingness and a capability to carry out further attacks in Europe, and of course all national authorities are working to prevent that from happening.

Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called on all Muslims to rise up and overthrow the West.

Last year Andrew Parker, director general of the security agency, said Islamic State terrorists were planning mass casualty attacks in Britain.

He said threats from homegrown jihadis who want to fight for the militant movement showed no sign of abating.
Six Syrian families will be re-homed to the Outer Hebrides - Britain's most remote community - as part of the UK's efforts to help those fleeing war and terror.

The first two families will arrive in the spring, the Western Isles Council said today, joining a population of just 27,400 people which only has one town, Stornaway, where 8,000 people live.

The 130 mile chain of islands, to the north west of mainland Scotland, is regularly battered by harsh Atlantic storms.

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The Outer Hebrides is almost 700 miles from London and is Britain's most remote community - sitting more than 40 miles off the British mainland

Today the islands were battered by rain-lashed gales gusting over 60mph - with storms touching 80mph forecast later in the week. Ferries were cancelled to the islands which are over 40 miles from the mainland.

Ironically the temperature in Damascus today at 6C was colder than Stornoway which reached an unseasonly 11C. But summer temperatures in the Syrian capital touch nearly 40C, while the peak summer average for Stornoway is more like 13C.

The council said in total 'five or six' families would be housed on the remote islands this year.

A meeting of various agencies involved took place today to plan for their arrival.

The Western Isles Council is currently having to find 9.8m of cuts which has led to angry protests over the threatened loss of such things as ancillary music and PE teachers as well as 84 local authority jobs.

An angry woman threatened to punch council leader, Angus Campbell, during a heated budget cuts' meeting last week over a proposal to radically change residential care arrangements for children, which is likely to lead to the closure of the Hillcrest care home in Stornoway on Lewis with the potential loss of 28 jobs.

Affected families are furious over the plan to save 350,000 to place all children all children currently in residential care at the Action for Children-operated facility into foster care.

Fears have been voiced a further 24 posts may be also affected if the knock-on effect makes the associated Action for Children service at Bayhead, Stornoway, unsustainable.

But today a council spokesman stressed that the Syrian families would have no impact on the savings the council is seeking.

Money from the UK's international aid budget is to be used to help councils house refugees from Syria.

'The financing of this will not fall on local authorities. The first year is met from the UK overseas development budget,' said council spokesman Nigel Scott.

'We are taking two families in the spring and five or six in total this year. We have not identified the permanent accommodation needed or the families yet.'

The Outer Hebrides has a beautiful - if harsh - climate more than 40 miles off the British mainland. The 130 mile island chain, including South Uist, pictured, have a population of just 27,400

Parts of the Outer Hebrides - set to experience a stormy week as it faces straight out into the Atlantic- are now completely uninhabited. The only town, Stornoway, has 8,000 people

On the Isle of Bute, where 12 Syrian families arrived in the seaside town of Rothesay in early December, the council has hired two dedicated translators to work with the new arrivals.

On November 17, the first charter flight carrying families mainly from camps bordering Syria touched down at Glasgow airport during a relentless downpour. Since then, more than 300 men, women and children have been settled across the country by half of Scotland's 32 local authorities.

Scotland has welcomed one in three of the thousand refugees David Cameron agreed to take before the end of the year, although the Scottish government's proportionate commitment was to take 10 per cent of the total number over five years.

With the first plane-load landing days after the Paris attacks in November, concerns were raised that some people would conflate the refugees' arrival with the terrorist threat.

There was a suspected arson attack on a mosque to the north of Glasgow and Police Scotland confirmed an immediate spike in hate crimes later that week.

But after the first arrivals, first minster Nicola Sturgeon said: 'Let me be clear  people across Scotland and the UK have every right to seek and receive assurances from their governments that robust security checks are being carried out and that public safety is not being comprised.

When the first refugees arrived in November, first minister Nicola Sturgeon, left in South Ayrshire today, said she was proud Scotland was playing its part. David Cameron, right in Downing Street this weekend, is under pressure to take more refugees into Britain

'But, here in Scotland and across the UK, we should also feel proud that we are providing refuge for some very vulnerable individuals who are fleeing for safety from the type of people who carried out the Paris attacks.'

Scottish authorities are aware that those listed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for immediate resettlement include some of the most vulnerable and traumatised individuals, and have protected their privacy as they begin their new lives in Scotland.

The UK spent 100m of its aid budget on asylum seekers in this country over the last financial year, the Treasury says.

Under Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) rules, money spent on the first year of an asylum seeker's stay can count as foreign aid.

Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to take in thousands more refugees made him examine the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme.

People arriving in the UK in need of protection usually have to apply for asylum - and if this is granted they get 'refugee' status.

But people brought to Britain under VPR have not gone through this process.. Instead, they have been granted Humanitarian Protection, a status normally used for people who 'don't qualify for asylum' but would be at 'real risk of suffering serious harm' in their home country.

Like people granted refugee status, those given Humanitarian Protection can stay for five years, after which they can apply to settle in the UK.
A grandmother claims her five-year-old granddaughter was left bleeding after a glittery bath bomb left shards of glass in the water.

Helga Martin had run a bath for her granddaughters Holly, five, and nine-year-old Libby using two small bath bombs from a Boots children's gift.

But she claims that, after the bath bomb dissolved, Holly started crying and discovered a cut on her foot.

A grandmother says her five-year-old granddaughter Holly (pictured left) was left with a cut (right) after a glittery bath bomb left shards of glass in the water

Helga Martin, 56, (pictured) was giving a bath to her granddaughters Holly, five, and nine-year-old Libby using two small bath bombs from a children's gift set from Boots when she discovered the glass

The 56-year-old, from Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, said she then discovered pieces of glass floating in the water.

Ms Martin immediately searched the rest of the bathroom for broken glass, but believes the glass could only have come from the bath bombs.

She said: 'The bath bomb set was a Christmas present and the girls were really excited to try them out. It was a set of six and they chose a pink and a blue one.

'I popped downstairs while they were playing and heard one of them crying. When I came back in, she was lifting her foot out of the bath and whimpering and that's when I saw the blood.

'I looked all over the bathroom but there was no sign of broken glass anywhere else. I even rang my son and daughter-in-law but they had no idea where it could have come from.

'We realised it must have come from the bath bombs, which was quite shocking. They weren't particularly cheap ones and they were designed for children too, which makes it even worse.'

Ms Martin, from Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, said she discovered pieces of glass (pictured) floating in the water. She said she searched the whole bathroom and that the glass could not have come from anywhere else

She added: 'My granddaughter gets quite traumatised by the sight of blood as she once got a piece of shell stuck in her foot and had to have an operation. Thankfully the cut is healing but it wasn't a nice experience for any of us.'

Ms Martin has since returned the product to Boots but said she is hesitant about using them again.

Ms Martin has since returned the product to Boots but said she is hesitant about using them again

She said: 'When Holly was crying over her foot, Libby put her hand in the water and handed me a piece of glass. I was horrified.

'I went to have a feel in the bath and there was more glass in there.

'I checked the whole bathroom but there was no glass anywhere else. I'm 100 per cent sure there was none in the bath to begin with, because as I ran the water, I put a bath mat in there so it wouldn't be slippy for the girls.'

She added: 'We're hoping they will stop manufacturing the product as it was a scary thing to happen.

'We never normally use bath bombs, just bubble bath, but we used these because they were a Christmas present. I'd be worried using bath bombs in future - or I'd have to crumble them up first, just to be sure.'

A spokesman for Boots UK apologised and said it would investigate the incident once the item had been returned.

They said: 'We are very sorry to hear about this incident. The quality and safety of our products is of utmost important to us.

'We have been speaking to the customer directly and have requested that they return any remaining product, packaging and pieces of glass to our Customer Care team.
A father-of-two is set to stand trial for his wife's murder almost five years after her naked body was found covered in leaves.

Nique Leili, 44, mysteriously disappeared from her Lawrenceville, Georgia, home on July 8, 2011, two days before her husband Matthew filed for divorce, insisting she had left town and cut ties with her family.

Her remains were found eight days later, decomposing, next to the entrance of her family's nearby subdivision.

Matthew, then 42, was publicly named as a suspect, with police seizing a network of computers and surveillance cameras he had set up in his house.

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Matthew Leili is set to stand trial for murdering his wife Nique, 44, (right) five years after her naked body was found covered in leaves in Lawrenceville, Georgia

But it wasn't until March, 2015, just shy of four years after Nique's body was found, that he was charged with her death.

His trial is now set to begin on Monday.

He was arrested thanks to police re-examining evidence found on his computer, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

However investigators are not going into detail about what they found.

Shortly after the grim discovery, Nique's friends and family painted an unhappy picture of the couple's marriage.

Matthew (mugshot pictured) was charged win his wife's death almost four years after her body was found on July 16, 2011

That was backed up by a 911 call in which Nique told a dispatcher that Matthew wouldn't let her leave the house.

There was also an image of her with cuts and bruises to her face.

The injuries were said to have been caused by Matthew.

Before the end of July, Matthew and his wife's family were battling over her remains and custody of the couple's young daughters, ages 9 and 12.

In the end, two funerals had to be held for Nique after an agreement reached between Matthew and her eldest daughter's lawyers.

However the couple's two children remained in his custody.

Around the same time, Matthew released through an attorney what remains his only public statement.

'Contrary to the allegations as reported, Mr. Leili cooperated with police and provided every known fact and circumstance regarding his wife's disappearance,' the statement said. 'Mr. Leili has done nothing wrong, and as such, is refusing to respond to allegations reported in the media.'

Nique Leili's death certificate was released in December of that year. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death inconclusive but did not exclude homicide by strangulation or asphyxiation.

In February 2012, Matthew Leili moved to Vermont, taking his daughters with him and, according to Nique's sister, eliminating all communication with other family members.

On March 4, 2015, Gwinnett County police suddenly announced they had charged Matthew with murder and eavesdropping.

A spokesman for the police said: 'This was not the magic bullet. This was enough to tip the scales.'

He was arrested following a court hearing in Atlanta, during which he was lobbying for the payout from his wife's life insurance policy.

Nearly two months later, the Leilis' daughters posted a video defending their father on YouTube.

'Because of all the lies and hate that the family has for my father,' the caption said, 'they have managed to get him arrested for a murder he did not commit.'

They also backed him during a bond hearing in 2015.

On May 27, a Gwinnett County grand jury returned an indictment charging Matthew with murder, two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault and three counts of unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance.

One of the aggravated assault charges alleged that he '[made] an assault upon the person of Dominique Leili, with intent to rape.'

A cause of death, however, remains a mystery  the indictment alleged that Matthew Leili killed his wife in a 'manner  unknown to the grand jury.'

Shortly after the grim discovery, Nique's friends and family painted an unhappy picture of the couple's marriage. There was also an image of her with cuts and bruises to her face. The injuries were said to have been caused by Matthew (the date the picture was taken is not known)
An actor of the hit Underbelly television series and a close friend of Hollywood star Russell Crowe has been charged with assaulting his ex-partner's father.

Robert Mammone, 50, pleaded guilty in Burwood Local Court on Monday to a fight with his ex-partner's father Gregory Molineaux, at a home in Sydney's Canterbury on November 11, reported The Daily Telegraph.

The court heard Mr Mammone pushed Mr Molineaux into an open door after an altercation over a bottle of vodka.

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Robert Mammone, 50, pleaded guilty in Burwood Local Court yesterday to a fight with his ex-partner's father

Mr Mammone presented to the court a reference written by Russell Crowe, who has been a friend of the actors for over 26 years

Mr Mammone played Tony Mokbel, a notorious drug trafficker who has been convicted for a number of offences, in the hit Underbelly crime series

Mr Mammone played Tony Mokbel, a notorious drug trafficker who has been convicted for a number of offences, in the first season of the hit Underbelly Australian crime series

Mr Mammone presented to the court a reference written by Russell Crowe, who has been a friend of the actors for over 26 years.

'Robert is not a perfect person, none of us humans are and I'm very sure he deeply regrets the situation he finds himself in,' Mr Crowe wrote.

'I have known Robert Mammone since 1989 when we worked on a project together called The Crossing.

'Since then, we have worked on two other projects, Heaven's Burning in 1996, and most recently, as the director of The Water Diviner, I cast Robert as a Greek Evzone military officer.

The court heard Mr Mammone pushed Mr Molineaux into an open door after an altercation over a bottle of vodka

'He needs to be able to travel at a moment's notice if an opportunity arises as exemplified by The Water Diviner where he was required to travel to Turkey to complete his sequences,' Crowe said.

Magistrate Jacqueline Trad said the assault was 'out of character' and placed him on a two-year good behavior bond and recorded no conviction.

Mr Mammone played Tony Mokbel, a notorious drug trafficker who has been convicted for a number of offences, in the first season of the hit Underbelly Australian crime series.
Republican senators aren't interested in having one of their own at the top of the ballot this fall  specifically Sen. Ted Cruz.

'The bottom line is many people around here think Cruz would be worse for our chances of keeping the majority,' a senior Republican senator told the Hill newspaper, requesting anonymity. 'He's so polarizing, it could be a wipeout.'

As the race in Iowa has tightened in recent weeks, the Hill newspaper found that while Republican senators didn't necessarily like Donald Trump  they liked him more than Cruz.

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'It could be a wipeout,' one senior Republican senator said about what might happen in the Senate if Sen. Ted Cruz wins the Republican nomination. Republicans have to defend 24 seats this fall

Sen. Orrin Hatch (left) said he didn't see 'any great desire on [Cruz's] part to really bring the party along with him' while Sen. Kelly Ayotte (right) would likely have a tougher time winning re-election with Cruz at the top

'Trump says things that drive you up the wall  he says he doesn't like guys who get captured and that he'll make Mexico pay for the wall  but he's not mean,' the senator continued, bringing up Trump's controversial comments that he uttered last summer about Sen. John McCain, a POW, along with his bombastic plans for a border wall.

'Cruz is mean,' the senator stated.

Cruz's crusades against the 'Washington cartel' are well documented, with the senator often using that term to criticize his own party.

Last July, he called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor  and that was after leading the movement to shut down the government in 2013, which many Republicans believed was a way for Cruz to get attention for himself, not help the party.

'I haven't seen any great desire on his part to really bring the party along with him so that's something that worries me,' Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Associated Press, according to the Hill. 'I think it would help him a lot if he would learn how other people feel and work with other people a little bit better, and I think that naturally will occur.'

Besides irritating his colleagues in Washington, Cruz's support comes from a small sliver of the Republican party, which might negatively impact down ballot candidates.

Ted Cruz's support comes from a small sliver of the Republican party, which might negatively impact down ballot candidates

Sen. Ted Cruz's people believe that exciting the conservative base will pave the way to the White House - and keep the Senate red too

Looking particularly tough is the Senate.

Republicans are already finding themselves in the situation that Democrats did in 2014, defending lots and lots of seats

The Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats, while Democrats are defending just 10, including seven in states that President Obama carried twice.

A Cruz could hurt someone like Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire's chances.

Ayotte is likely running against New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, who has moved herself to the political middle  for instance, she's suggested the United States keep Syrian refugees out.

Ayotte would likely want to see a Sen. Marco Rubio or a former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the nominee to capture some of that independent New Hampshire vote, suggested Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, who talked to the Hill.

'I'm sure the idea of her and Cruz on the same ticket makes her shudder,' Scala said.

'Beyond the collegial problems, objectively speaking, if Cruz wins the nomination it's going to be thanks to very conservative Republican voters, religious conservatives, social conservatives and so forth,' he continued.

'That's not a good fit for this state,' Scala added.

The senior lawmaker said where Trump does shine is that he has 'crossover appeal.'

The billionaire could help Ayotte in New Hampshire, along with candidates running in other purple states like Florida and Ohio.

Down ballot candidates could also more easily distance themselves from Trump if need be.

'Trump's not really seen as a Republican while Cruz is much more identified with the party,' the lawmaker said. 'Trump would be better heading the ticket than Cruz.

Of course Cruz's people think this theory is flawed, suggesting it's better to excite the GOP base than look for broad-based appeal at the top of the ticket.

'The establishment has been pushing this same flawed narrative for years, yet they keep losing elections for Republicans,' said Cruz's campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. 'Running to the middle and nominating a moderate who will continue to bank the payroll of the Washington Cartel is a losing strategy.'

Frazier pointed to the last midterms, in which Cruz's antics against Obamacare jazzed up the GOP base.

'Just look back at 2014, when Cruz made the midterm elections a referendum on defunding ObamaCare and stopping amnesty  it's what every candidate ran on,' Frazier said.
An Italian police officer who was caught clocking into work wearing his underpants before returning to bed has finally been sacked.

Last October, 53-year-old Alberto Muraglia was secretly filmed clocking in the council offices of Sanremo, north-west Italy, wearing underwear that left little to the imagination

Pictures of the pot-bellied officer clocking on have since become emblematic of Italy's struggle with slackers and absenteeism in the public administration.

Spotted: Alberto Muraglia, 53, was filmed clocking into work wearing his underpants in San Remo, Italy

Mr Muraglia's wife, Adriana, defended her husband and said he always went to work after clocking in

Until two years ago, the officer, who lives in the same building as the council offices he worked in, enjoyed a second job accompanying the Belgian royal family on a yacht in the summer.

Muraglia was one of 35 people arrested after a two-year police operation named 'Operation Stakhanov', an ironic reference to the legendary hard-working figure of Alexey Stakhanov, a Soviet miner.

The man did not even bother commuting to work, sending a spouse, friend or colleague stamp his card on his behalf.

After being sacked by the town council, Muraglia has vowed to appeal the decision, claiming he was being made a scapegoat for dozens of other slacking employees.

'I'll confess, I was a bit sloppy. I made a mistake, but I swear I was on duty nonetheless,' he said. 'On those occasions, I asked my wife or a daughter to stamp on my behalf. But I can assure I was there.'

Mr Muraglia's wife, Adriana, said at times he 'may have forgotten' to clock in and asked her to do it for him

'When I punched my time card in my underwear I had no idea that I would expose myself and the council to such a bad image.'

Muraglia's lawyer defended him saying that he should not be sacked just because he turned up to work in his underwear

'One time, dressed in his underpants, he managed to foil a robbery  he ran out into the street, pistol in hand, and arrested the crook,' said Alessandro Moroni.

At the time of his arrest, Muraglia's wife, Adriana, defended her husband and said he always went to work after clocking in.

She told La Stampa newspaper: 'Some mornings, if he was a few minutes late pulling on his trousers, he would clock in in that manner and then get fully dressed immediately after and go off to work.'

She said other times he 'may have forgotten' to clock in and asked her to do it for him.

Around 75 per cent of employees working at the council in the town are under investigation for allegedly skipping work, The Times reported.
A 71-year-old grandmother-of-nine was slashed in the face while riding a subway train inManhattan Monday morning, making it the four such attack since the beginning of the year.

According to the NYPD, a southbound 6 train was approaching the Bleecker Street station at around 7.15am when a male passenger attacked Carmen Rivera, an Hispanic woman, sitting across from him, slashing the left side of her face.

Both Ms Rivera, a mother-of-three, and suspect got off the train when it came to a stop.

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Terrifying attack: A 71-year-old woman was slashed in the face on board a southbound 6 train as it was approaching the Bleecker Street station Monday morning

Wounded: The injured woman was taken to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a 4-inch laceration to her face

The slasher, described as a man in his 20s, fled the scene on board a southbound D train departing from the nearby Broadway-Lafayette station, reported PIX11.

The injured woman was taken to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a 4-inch laceration to her face.

Investigators described the incident as a random attack, saying the 71-year-old did not know the man who lunged at her with a sharp object.

The suspect being sought by police was last seen wearing red pants, a red hooded sweatshirt and black sneakers. So far, no arrests have been made.

At least three other similar incidents involving slashings have occurred in Manhattan since the beginning of the new year.

Anthony Cristopher-Smith, 30, from Newark, New Jersey, was walking in the East village on January 19 when a man yelling profanities knocked him off his feet and slashed him in the face from his ear to his jawline.

Police later arrested Francis Salud, 28, in connection to the attack. Salud has also been charged for a similar attack on East 23rd Street in October.

Amanda Morris was viciously slashed in the face on her daily commute to work in Chelsea on January 6

Earlier incident: Anthony Christopher-Smith was walking down East 6th Street near Cooper Square with headphones on January 19 when he was knocked to the ground and slashed across the face

On New Year's Day, a 28-year-old woman suffered a facial wound at the hands of a total stranger in The Bronx, and less than a week later, 24-year-old Amanda Morris was sliced with a sharp object while walking to work in Chelsea.
British children are being sent away into care homes outside their home county because social services are being overwhelmed by asylum seekers.

Kent County Council claims it has no choice but to place local children in care elsewhere because it is being overwhelmed by the continuing flow of unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) arriving from the Continent each day.

Kent County Council (KCC) currently has 1,382 such children in its care, up from 980 at the beginning of December and from nearly 630 at the start of last August.

Migrants have come into Europe from countries in north Africa and the Middle East, with many ending up in Calais where the 4,000-strong camp dubbed the Jungle is based.

Kent County Council claims it has no choice but to place local children in care elsewhere because it is being overwhelmed by the continuing flow of unaccompanied asylum seeking children arriving from the Continent (stock picture)

Councillor Peter Oakford, KCC's cabinet member for specialist children's services, said the authority has seen a 30 per cent rise in looked-after children in the last seven months.

He told the children's social care and health cabinet committee: 'This has affected our ability to place citizen children within Kent ourselves.

'We have had to place Kent children outside of Kent due to the influx of UASC, which is not a good position to be in and is not a position we want to be in.

'It's actually costing us more financially because we have had to place, I think, six children into residential care either short-term or longer term, which is far more expensive than normal foster care.'

Under the Children Act 1989, it is a council's legal responsibility to care for under-18s who arrive in their local authority area from abroad, seeking asylum.

Under the Children Act 1989, it is a council's legal responsibility to care for under-18s who arrive in their local authority area from abroad, seeking asylum

As Kent is the closest British county to Calais and Dunkirk, where thousands of migrants and refugees are camped, KCC has had its services stretched since the start of the migrant crisis last summer.

Help to deal with the influx of UASC has been sought by KCC from other local authorities in the UK, with 22 accepting full responsibility for 56 UASC.

However, one council said it would only accept UASC under the age of five. Mr Oakford said: 'It's a little bit of a challenge for an under five year old to walk all the way from Afghanistan on their own.'

While the number of child asylum seekers coming into KCC's care has slowed to around 15 a week during the winter, there are fears the numbers will pick up again as spring approaches.

On the winter arrival rate, Mr Oakford said: 'Although that doesn't sound much, compared to what we had in the summer, it's still three times more than last winter's arrival rates.
A woman from Texas is hundreds of miles away from home in North Dakota after she gave birth during a family road trip over the Christmas holidays.

Crystal Russell was 24 weeks pregnant when she hit the road with her family for a vacation knowing that she would have at least three months before her baby was due.

Complications meant she ended up giving birth to tiny baby weighing just 1lb 2oz, the day after Christmas.

New arrival: Wyatt Lynn Russell came into the world in a North Dakota hospital at 1lb 5oz, small but full of fight

The latest update states: 'Wyatt is doing good now. He had a blockage in his lungs, they have cleared it out and put him back on the ventilator. His mom is ok now but it's truly hard for her being without a shoulder to lean on'

Long term: Wyatt may have to remain in the Bismarck, North Dakota hospital until close to his original due date of April 15

Fighter! At one point, doctors were giving baby Wyatt a 50/50 chance of surival but one month on, he appears to be doing well and growing stronger every day

Crystal is having to stay in North Dakota until her baby, called Wyatt, is strong enough to return back home to Texas.

The drama began while she was visiting her husband's family. She began severely hemorrhaging and was flown to the Bismarck hospital, later giving birth via emergency C-section.

About an hour after they arrived, Crystal went to bed but awoke shortly afterward after she found herself laying in a pool of blood.

'I was scared,' she told the Bismark Tribune. There was also confusion because she wasn't having any labor pains.

After being rushed to hospital, doctors discovered she wasn't in labor, but was bleeding because 50 percent of placenta pulled away from her uterus.

New arrival: It was (from left) Dawson, 13, Trey, 16 and Joey Felts, 14, first time in North Dakota. Little did they know, that by the time they left, they would have a new baby step-brother

Health issues: Wyatt has had four blood transfusions. He needs a nasal tube for feeding and requires supplemental oxygen. He also has one brain bleed, which is not uncommon in babies so small

This photo is of Wyatt's Daddys wedding band around his little arm to show you his true size

Tiny: Wyatt's skin was so delicate it was weeks before mom, Crystal, was even able to hold him

Crystal said the ordeal has shown her just how helpful and supportive family, friends, medical professionals and even strangers can be

Doctors said that she would have to stay in hospital until her due date in April.

A few days later, the hemorrhaging began again, only this time Crystal was in labor.

The doctors gave her baby a 50/50 chance of surviving the birth.

During those confusing, scary first hours, Crystal said her husband was 'my rock' as he continued to tell her everything would be OK. Chris said he was trying to help in the only way he knew how.

'I was really terrified, but I knew if I started panicking it wouldn't be good for her,' he said.

When he was born on December 26th, his eyes were still fused shut but he was crying.

The name Wyatt, means fighter. The baby has a host of health problems and has undergone a number of blood transfusions.

Right now, he needs a nasal tube for feeding and requires supplemental oxygen. He also has one brain bleed, which is not uncommon in babies so small. Doctors say the bleed is of the lowest stage and only has a small chance of lasting effects.

Crystal has been posting updates on her Facebook page every few days along with pictures charting baby Wyatt's progresss.

In her most recent posting on Monday she told of how her son was about to start eating once again.

'Today is going to be a great day, I get to start eating again.' she wrote from baby Wyatt's perspective,'Boy was I hungry. I will start 3 ml every hour but it wont take my long to get me back to full feeding at 6 ml every hour.

'They are winging me off the vent gradually, so I can get this tube out of my throat. It may not happen today but I will do my best to make sure it is out by tomorrow. after all tomorrow will be my one month birthday! '

She says that her baby who will one-month-old on Tuesday will need another blood transition.

'I just want to say thanks to everyone that is praying for my family and I we are going to get through all of this, so I can get home.

God is working on me and has a plan for me and my family. Daddy hope to see you soon.'

For the first few weeks, Crystal and her husband, Chris, were unable to even hold their won because his skin was paper thin; they could only touch his tiny hand.

Crystal is now on her own in North Dakota after her husband was forced to return to his job in Texas. Her teenage sons also needed to get back to school.

Anniversary: Little Wyatt will be one-month-old on Tuesday

Modern family: Crystal said her family in the South have nicknamed him 'the Yankee,' though some would like to call him 'Dakota.' His name Wyatt, which means 'fighter,' is fitting, she said

Unprepared: Chris and Crystal Russell before medical complications caused Wyatt to be delivered 3 1/2 months early

'It's hard at night for me,' she said. 'I'm up in North Dakota, and I have no family, no friends  but everyone here has been so nice and so helpful,' she told the Tribune.

'I'm not a patient person,' Crystal said to the Star Telegram, 'but I'm definitely learning to be. Babies are going to do what babies are going to do. I have to stay strong emotionally for my husband and for my teenagers at home as well.'

Over the past few weeks, she has taken lots of pictures as Wyatt has grown, keeping friends and family updated on her Facebook page.

Wyatt appears to be showing good progress. He seems to be eating well and his eyes are now open.

'He's doing phenomenal. He really is,' said Christopher, who talks with his wife several times a day by phone and in online video chats. 'He has his little hiccups and downtime and she really takes it hard and it's hard for me not to be there for her. The distance thing is really hard.'

Crystal is staying at the Ronald McDonald house for the next few months. A GoFundMe account for the family's hospital bills, money for travel and other expenses has been set up.
Mother admits travelling to Raqqa to live under sharia law but denies joining ISIS and encouraging acts of terror

She said following alleged jihadis and extremists on Twitter did not make her a terrorist

Shakil, 26, tells jury she returned 'of her own free will' after change of heart

A mother accused of taking her toddler son to Syria to join ISIS told a court today that she 'made a mistake' going to live under the terror group's rule.

Tareena Shakil, 26, from Birmingham who fled to the self-declared caliphate in October 2014 after telling her family she was going on holiday to Turkey, told a jury she came back of her 'own free will' after a change of heart.

She denies joining ISIS and encouraging acts of terror through Twitter posts, and told Birmingham Crown Court that the fact she followed alleged jihadis and extremist preachers on the social network did not make her a terrorist.

British mother Tareena Shakil (pictured), who accused of taking her toddler son to Syria to join ISIS, told a court today that she 'made a mistake' going to live under the terror group's rule

'I followed Bet 365 bingo [on Twitter] as well, but I've never been on their website,' she said.

Under a second day of cross-examination from Sean Larkin QC, prosecuting, Shakil explained why she fled ISIS territory on January 7 2015.

'I came back of my own free will,' she said. 'You didn't extradite me.

'I came back because I realised I had made a mistake.'

She had already admitted travelling to the so-called Islamic State and living in the defacto capital, Raqqa, in northern Syria, putting this down to a wish to live under the rule of sharia law.

'I was interested in Islamic State as a place, never in jihad or anything like that,' she said.

These selfies were allegedly taken by Shakil while she was living in ISIS's Syrian stronghold in Raqqa. She has already admitted travelling to the so-called Islamic State, putting this down to a wish to live under the rule of sharia law

Shakil was also asked about the social media accounts of those she followed on Twitter.

These included a jihadi fighter, according to the prosecution, whose account stated they were 'harsh towards the kuffar [non-believers]'.

Shakil, a former college student, who used to live in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, said she only retweeted images and passages from the Koran that she liked and denied being a terror group member.

'If he says he's harsh towards the kuffar, that's a matter for him,' she said.

Tareena Shakil, 26, pictured in her police interview after being arrested at Heathrow Airport in early 2015

Shakil denies joining ISIS and encouraging acts of terror, and told Birmingham Crown Court that the fact she followed alleged jihadis and extremist preachers on Twitter did not make her a terrorist

'I have not been - half my family are non-believers.'

The former health worker was also questioned about a comment she made in a WhatsApp message, sent back home to loved ones, saying the holy war would never end.

Shakil responded: 'You're trying to suggest they were my sentiments when, just over two weeks later, I escaped.'

Mr Larkin replied: 'If you changed them (your sentiments).'

In a heated exchange with Mr Larkin, Shakil said ISIS minders left her unable to describe the true picture of daily life in Raqqa to friends and family because of the threat of corporal punishment or death.

Earlier in the trial, jurors were told that this Facebook account, which has a pro-ISIS profile picture, was used by Shakil

Shakil, who friends described as 'a perfect mother' to her son, said: 'I was one woman alone in the most dangerous place in the world - 4,000 miles from home - around some of the most dangerous people in the world.

'And I don't want sympathy for that, because it was my decision to go there.

'But there's no police there for me to ring to help.'

She added: 'If you follow the news, you get shot dead even in Turkey.

'I can't be there saying 'Life is so terrible here, life is so awful'.'

Shakil denies being a member of ISIS and encouraging acts of terror.
Sentence used to describe 'rabid' uses the phrase 'rabid

Oxford Dictionaries is reviewing its descriptions of words including 'rabid', 'shrill' and 'nagging' after it was accused of sexism by a Canadian anthropologist.

Michael Oman-Reagan tweeted the dictionary publisher after he took exception to the example sentence used to describe the adjective 'rabid', which is defined using the phrase 'rabid feminist'.

He asked the publisher, part of Oxford University Press, to change the wording.

Michael Oman-Reagan's first tweet to Oxford Dictionaries in which he complained about the description of the word 'rabid'

Twiter users both supported and criticised Mr Oman-Reagan, with Kat Latham agreeing with the academic (pictured here)

But Oxford Dictionaries initially stood by the description, posting in reply to Mr Oman-Reagan on Twitter: 'If only there were a word to describe how strongly you felt about feminism.'

Later adding: 'Btw, 'rabid' isn't always negative, and our example sentences come from real-world use and aren't definitions.'

Mr Oman-Reagan (pictured here) is studying a PhD at the Memorial University of Newfoundland

The publisher was quickly criticised by fellow social media users for its position - but some also backed it.

In his blog Mr Oman-Reagan, who is doing a PhD at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, also called for the example sentences for the words 'psyche', 'doctor', 'shrill', 'research', 'housework', 'grating' and 'nagging', which he described as 'explicitly sexist usage examples', to be reviewed.

In the dictionary, psyche has the example sentence: 'I will never really fathom the female psyche'. 'Grating' is defined as 'sounding harsh and unpleasant', with the description 'her high, grating voice'.

The adjective nagging is described as 'a person constantly harassing someone to do something: a nagging wife.'

Oxford Dictionaries has now apologised for its tone and said it will review Mr Oman-Reagan's examples.

In a tweet this week it said: 'We were flippant in some of our tweets yesterday. Sorry.'

Another tweet said: 'We'll review the primary example sentence used for 'rabid''.

The Twitter storm caused by the row meant 'rabid' had become the most popular search term on its site over the weekend.

MailOnline has contacted the Oxford Dictionaries for comment.

Mr Oman-Reagan called on the publisher to review other words including grating, nagging and housework

Oxford Dictionaries has now apologised and is reviewing the descriptions of the words identified by Mr Oman-Reagan

A spokesman for the publisher has been reported as saying it would also be reviewing all examples raised by Mr Oman-Reagan.

Speaking to The Guardian, a spokesman for them said: 'We apologise for the offence that these comments caused.

'The example sentences we use are taken from a huge variety of different sources and do not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press. That said, we are now reviewing the example sentence for 'rabid' to ensure that it reflects current usage.'

Mr Oman-Reagan's view on the description of the word 'shrill' - he has written on his blog about the Twitter row

Another chosen word which has irritated the academic who is studying a PhD at the Memorial University of Newfoundland

Housework was picked out by Mr Oman-Reagan as it included the pronoun 'she' to describe the noun
When Angie Padron saw two armed men rushing at her car at a gas station in Florida last week, all she could think of was her two young children sitting in the backseat.

'I didn't even think about the guns. I didn't think about what they were going to do to me or what they could have done to me,' the 21-year-old mother-of-two said in an interview on Good Morning America Monday. 'I just thought about getting the kids out.'

On January 18, Padron was driving home to Miami with her 7-year-old son and one-year-old daughter in the car when she pulled over at a Tom Thumb gas station in Hialeah, Florida.

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Heroic: Angie Padron (left and right), 21, appeared on ABC's Good Morning America to talk about how she saved her two children from carjackers at a Florida gas station

Mama grizzly: The 21-year-old mom-of-two said when she saw the two armed suspects rush at her car, all she could think of were her son and daughter in the backseat

Putting up a fight: Padron managed to fight off two men who attempted to steal her car as she pumped gas at a Tom Thumb in Hialeah, Florida

Caught on camera: After one of the would-be robbers jumped in the car to steal, Padron managed to get the door open, and made a move to get him out of the vehicle

While the woman was busy pumping gas, two men ran up to the vehicle, and one of them attempted to get inside the driver's seat.

'I was yelling at him, My kids are in the car. Don't get in the car," and he got it anyway,' Padron recalled.

Padron's son, Evan, watched from the backseat as his mother chased off the two bandits.

My mom was yelling at him, saying, Get out of the car, get out of the car, get out of the car, right now, the boy said.

When Padron saw that her pleas weren't working, she jumped into action, dragging the assailant from the drivers seat and removing the mask he had on his face.

The entire incident was caught on a surveillance video and obtained by WSVN.

The two men involved in the struggle fled the scene and were picked up at the road by a female driver in a getaway car.

This is the moment the mom manages to throw the man out her car, as her two children sit on the backseat

Coward: The man is seen in CCTV footage running away from the scene after being defeated by the woman

Enraged: Remarkably, the woman does not look at all scared after the ordeal as the men disappear into the night, and is seen in the footage fixing up her sweater

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, 17 (left) Nicholas Rosado, 29 (center), and Rebecca Utria, 21, were arrested shortly after the incident and have all been charged with attempted carjacking and fleeing police

Police were able to track down the car, and all three suspects were arrested.

Juan Carlos Gonzalez, 17, and Nicholas Rosado, 19, were identified as the men involved in the attempted carjacking.

Rebecca Utria, 21, was the driver of the vehicle.

According to investigators, Gonzalez and Rosado also attempted to carjack another woman on the other side of the gas station, but the driver was able to lock her vehicle in time.

All three suspects face several charges, including attempted carjacking and fleeing police.

Rosado and Utria were being held in jail on $25,000 bond each. As a minor, Gonzalez has been transferred to another facility.
The Queen has stepped in to settle a row between two wealthy cousins over who is the rightful heir to a Scottish baronetcy.

Accountant Murray Pringle, who is in his 70s and comes from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and businessman Simon Pringle, who is in his 50s and lives near Hastings, East Sussex, both lay claim to the baronetcy of Pringle of Stichill.

The title belonged to Simon's late father, Sir Steuart Pringle. However, a family tree project, co-ordinated by Murray, showed that the late baronet was not biologically related to the rest of the clan.

Now, Murray is vying to have the title handed over to his 'legitimate' side of the Pringle family.

Accountant Murray Pringle (right), 74, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Simon Pringle (left), 56, a businessman who lives near Hastings, East Sussex, both lay claim to the baronetcy of Pringle of Stichill

Now the Queen has stepped in to settle the row between the two wealthy cousins over who is the rightful heir to the Scottish baronetcy

After explicit written instructions by the Queen, the case began in November in front of seven judges at a hearing of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

The court heard how doubts about the lineage began when Murray became the administrator of a website aiming to trace all the Pringle 'clan'.

He wrote to the late 10th baronet Sir Steuart Pringle, asking him to complete a DNA test.

The test found that Baronet Pringle came from a different bloodline from his relatives, suggesting there may have been an illegitimate child in a previous generation  namely, Norman Pringle, Steuart's father.

Now, Murray says Sir Steuart's son, Simon, has no claim to the title  which does not come with any land or property  and he should become the 11th baronet instead.

The committee must now decide whether they will accept the DNA evidence.

The ruling could have huge implications for the whole of the British aristocracy  and possibly even the Royal Family itself  as other 'pretenders' to the throne may emerge with genetic evidence to prove their right of succession.

Judges have heard that Charles II granted the baronetcy of Stichill, a village near Kelso, Roxburghshire, to Robert Pringle of Stichill - and the 'male heirs from his body' - on January 5 1683

For the first time, at the behest of the Queen, senior judges will give their views under a piece of legislation dating back more than 150 years.

Seven judges began analysing evidence at a hearing of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London in November.

They reassembled on Monday and are considering how Scottish legislation - including the 1617 Prescription Act - affects the dispute.

The judges, who are all Supreme Court justices and are analysing the dispute at the Supreme Court building, are not expected to publish any decisions until later in the year.

The jurisdiction of the Privy Council dates back hundreds of years.

Its judicial committee heard appeals from countries in the British Empire.

The committee - now normally made up of a panel of Supreme Court justices - still acts as a final court of appeal for Commonwealth countries which have no supreme court.

But the committee can also analyse other kinds of disputes.

And the Queen can refer 'any matter' to the committee for 'consideration and report' under section 4 of the 1833 Judicial Committee Act.

Committee officials said that legislation had been used to bring the Stichill dispute to court - after Murray laid claim to the title.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is watching another Donald blow up this election cycle and he thinks it's 'amazing' and 'different.'

'Well, it seems to me, I see someone who [has] touched a nerve in our country and he has caused people to respond in a way that most politicians have not been able to do,' Rumsfeld said of Donald Trump this morning on the Today show.

Matt Lauer sat down with Rumsfeld to talk about his new app  more about that later  but had to ask about some of the unflattering things President George H.W. Bush had to say about Rumsfeld, who served as George W. Bush's defense secretary.

Rumsfeld said he wasn't surprised.

'No, we were never close, he was kind of to the manor born and I wasn't,' he said of Bush 41.

Donald Rumsfeld sat down today with Matt Lauer and was asked about the presidential cycle, which the former secretary of defense labeled 'amazing' and 'different'

Donald Rumsfeld served as President George W. Bush defense chief, but is now trying to make it in the online gaming industry, introducing a new app called Churchill's Solitaire

The elder Bush had panned Rumsfeld and Bush 43's vice president, Dick Cheney, to journalist Jon Meacham, for a biography of the ex-president, 'Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,' which came out in November.

'I don't like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything,' Bush 41 said of Rumsfeld. 'I've never been that close to him anyway. There's a lack of humility, a lack of seeing what the other guy thinks. He's more kick ass and take names, take numbers. I think he paid a price for that.'

Today, Rumsfeld repeated the line about the two of them not being close.

The former defense head had been quoted, years before, saying he was 'amazed' that President George W. Bush picked him for the cabinet job, seeing that he and W.'s father had a tiff that stretched back decades.

'As I say we were never close, so I guess it doesn't surprise me,' Rumsfeld said.

'I was amazed that he said what he said when he said it because I didn't think it was very complimentary of his son, George W. Bush, and I didn't think it was very helpful to his other son who was running for president,' Rumsfeld continued.

'So I thought it was a strange thing for him to be doing,' Rumsfeld added.

Former President George H.W. Bush (pictured) has been critical of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Today Rumsfeld knocked Bush 41 for being 'manor born'

Donald Rumsfeld noted how Donald Trump (pictured) has 'touched a nerve' with American voters and is appealing to them in a very 'interesting, unusual way'

The chatter certainly didn't help Jeb Bush, who is today polling, on average, nationally at 4.8 percent, according to Real Clear Politics.

Rumsfeld said he wasn't sure why Jeb Bush's campaign could never quite get off the ground.

'I don't know, I suppose there's people who are uncomfortable with a dynasty on the Democrat side or the Republican side,' he said, lopping Hillary Clinton's fortunes together with those of Jeb Bush.

He also clumped Bernie Sanders together with Trump.

'The fact that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are able to draw 10, 15, 20, 30,000 people to hear them speak says there is something going on in our country that they are appealing to in a very interesting, unusual way,' Rumsfeld noted.

Rumsfeld was back in the media spotlight to promote a new gaming app called Churchill Solitaire.

As the story goes, an associate of Rumsfeld's was taught the card game by Winston Churchill himself, and so the former defense secretary wanted to preserve it for the next generation.

During another media appearance today, talking to Brian Kilmeade on the Kilmeade & Friends show on Fox News Radio, Rumsfeld explained that this version of Solitaire is played with two decks of cards and 'it's got a devil's row up top.'

'You've got to look around corners,' Rumsfeld said. 'It's a delightful game.'

'It seemed to me I didn't think it was right for something like that to be lost to the ages,' he added.

While talking to the Fox News audience, Rumsfeld took some time out to whack President Barack Obama.

Rumsfeld said he was 'stunned' to hear that Defense Secretary Ash Carter wanted to send 1,800 troops from the 101 Airborne Division into Iraq to help with the fight against ISIS, suggesting that President Obama and his defense secretary didn't sound like they were on the same page.

'I cannot bring that together with what consistently comes out of President Obamas mouth,' Rumsfeld told Kilmeade. 'I dont understand.'

The host asked Rumsfeld to rank Obama, who now has less than a year in the White House.

Rumsfeld paused for a second and then answered.

'It is hard to do that, to really rank somebody,' he mused, but then gave a definite answer.
Asylum seekers, including Zekaryas Eyob of Eritrea (pictured), have been given wristbands to wear in order to claim food

I went on an all-inclusive holiday once. Much to my surprise, it was great.

We knew exactly what we were paying before we left and didn't spend a penny whilst we were away.

And the kids loved it. All they had to do to get a free drink or hot dog in the middle of the day was show their little coloured band  and somehow they felt they were getting away with something.

They were quite proud of their red wristbands and wished life was more like that every day of their little lives.

Well guess what good people of Britain? For some people it is. The Great British Asylum seekers have landed on their feet here in the land of plenty  El Dorado  because all they need to do to get hold of free food and drink throughout the day is show a red band.

Just as with any holiday booking they can even choose between self-catering options, with a supermarket cash card thrown in for free, or full board  served just a short stroll from their accommodation.

All they have to do is show their wristband. And it's theirs for the taking.

At least, that's what was on offer until today?

Now at this point you might think our government had seen sense. And decided never in human history had so much been given to so many by the labour of so few.

But no. That's just how most of us feel struggling to get to work in the dark and the rain. We don't have a voice.

What has actually happened is the government and the left wing press have decided the red wristbands violate the human rights and dignity of asylum seekers.

At which point of course my nipples itch with outrage and I am obliged to ask the good asylum seekers of Cardiff to rearrange these words into a well-known saying; 'HOME SODDING GO WELL'.

Now these wristbands are to be scrapped and the Labour MP for Central Cardiff is going to petition the government to find out why it was ever allowed in the first place.

Listen, love. The reason we need wristbands is because many of these asylum seekers have no identification of their own. And the reason they have no identification is because they lobbed it over the side of their inflatable when they crossed the Mediterranean from Turkey.

To claim asylum they needed to be Syrian. And to prove this, it was important not to arrive with a passport and paperwork showing you are actually a cabbie from Ankara.

Dignity is not something you deserve but something you are born with and can easily give away. I lost mine on a few, well-documented occasions but have regained some by paying my own way in life, making sure my children try hard at school and cleaning my own toilets.

The move at Lynx House (pictured) sparked outrage among the migrant community. The bands are now to be scrapped and the Labour MP for Central Cardiff is going to petition the government over why they were allowed

I'd argue, many asylum seekers gave their dignity away in the rush to get to the land of plenty.

So many of the liberal left, made rich through London property and high salaries, believe the taxpayer can continue to give, providing a limitless resource to be plundered at will.

But for British workers grafting on an average wage, the burden of tax falls heavily on their shoulders.

Someone in my favourite profession  scaffolding  might earn 30K a year and hand over 7,000 of that to the tax man. Giving away nearly a quarter of your income before you pay your mortgage and Sainsbury's bills feels a lot more painful than the indignity of wearing a red wristband or living behind a red door.

Security company G4S were blasted last week after it emerged asylum seekers were having their doors marked in red paint so employees of subcontractors Jomast knew which were occupied by refugees

Even those bastions of euro-tolerance, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark now take the valuables of asylum seekers and migrants in order to help fund their costs of living.

They are clear that your own resources must be exhausted before the state provides support.

The federal government's integration minister said it also includes family jewellery.

'Even if some prejudices persist  you don't have it any better as an asylum seeker than someone on unemployment benefit.'

It strikes me, there is not just an increasing divide between asylum seekers and native Brits, but a yawning gulf between politicians and workers paying to keep them in a job.

There is no dignity in taking from others. There should only be gratitude. However, there is dignity in working hard and providing for your family.
Mr Danczuk says he didn't check rules and will pay back anything he owes

Claims go back to 2011 but his children have not lived with him in London

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk has been reported to both the police and the parliamentary standards commissioner over thousands of pounds worth of 'fraudulent' expenses claims.

The backbencher is accused of claiming more than 25,000 in extra accommodation allowances since 2011 for his children, despite none of them living with him in London.

The embattled MP, who was suspended from the Labour party over allegations he had been sexting with a teenager, said he had not read the rules in detail.

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Labour backbencher Simon Danczuk (pictured) is accused of claiming more than 25,000 in extra accommodation allowances since 2011 for his children, despite none of them living with him in London

It is understood Mr Danczuk has not seen two of his children for several years - and comes just months after the MP was probed over huge overtime payments for his ex-wife Karen.

He has now been reported to both Greater Manchester Police and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

Mr Danczuk admits he did not check the rules carefully and would pay back anything he is found to owe.

However he also accused Ipsa's rules of being 'too vague' and out of keeping with modern parenting - while claiming the complaints were 'politically motivated'

Parliamentary rules allow MPs a basic annual allowance of 20,600 for accommodation in London.

They can get an extra 2,425 per year for each dependant that stays with them.

The Rochdale backbencher, who is currently suspended from the Labour party, has four children.

However two of them live with his ex-wife Sonia, who has publicly said in the past that he never sees them and has not done so for years.

His other two children, with his most recent ex-wife Karen, live with her in their former marital home in Rochdale.

Since 2011 he has claimed extra cash for at least some of them every year.

It is understood Mr Danczuk has not seen two of his children for several years - and comes just months after the MP was probed over huge overtime payments for his ex-wife Karen

An Ipsa spokesman said the only reason an MP can claim more than the basic allowance for accommodation is for a dependant child. In 2011 he successfully claimed 22,937, in 2012, 29,013.22, in 2013/14 27,581.46 and in 2014/15, 28,466.58.

According to Ipsa rules, the allowance is only available to MPs whose children are 'routinely' living with them and being cared for in London.

He also claimed for 34 train tickets - many of them first class - for his children to travel up and down to London since 2013. Ipsa rules on this are the same - 15 return journeys are allowed a year, but they are supposed to be for children who are routinely living with the MP in London.

A spokesman for GMP said: 'A report of misconduct has been made to GMP and we are currently liasing with IPSA to ascertain who will investigate these allegations.'

IPSA also confirmed it had received the complaint.

A spokesman for Simon Danczuk's office confirmed the two children by his most recent marriage do live in Rochdale, but said they regularly visit him in London.

However when asked whether he would pay it back immediately, before any potential investigation had been carried out, he did not comment.

He told the M.E.N: 'My Ipsa claim was made properly and at a time when it was expected all four of my children would regularly come and stay with me at the same time.

'Perhaps Ipsa's rules are too vaguely worded and not flexible enough to cope with modern families like mine.

'Any divorced father will tell you that living circumstances can change quickly and there can always be periods when you see your children more often than at other times.

Mr Danczuk is currently suspended from the Labour party while an investigation is carried out into claims he 'sexted' a 17-year-old looking for employment

'But it would be irresponsible, and incredibly costly to Ipsa, for me to be constantly moving to different flats in London just to accommodate temporary changes in my family life.

'I have always made it clear that my children are welcome to come and live with me at any time and I have made sure I was able to support them properly when that would happen.

'In doing so I have acted according to my honest interpretation of the Ipsa regulations.

'On another issue, Ipsa has already ruled that I have no case to answer regarding overtime paid to my ex-wife Karen and they will similarly find no evidence of wrongdoing here.

'These frivolous and politically motivated complaints to Ipsa and Greater Manchester Police are the real waste of taxpayer's money.'

An initial analysis of the accommodation claims for the last parliament suggests Mr Danczuk had the highest total claim in the country between 2010 and 2015.

Mr Danczuk was investigated by Ipsa last year over 10,000 in overtime claims for his ex-wife Karen, who had worked for him in his constituency office.

That Ipsa investigation has now been dropped.

He is currently suspended from the Labour party while an investigation is carried out into claims he 'sexted' a 17-year-old looking for employment in his office.

The MP said a 'drink problem' led him to send sexts to Sophena Houlihan when she was 17 and that he felt 'awful' about the lewd messages.

Miss Houlihan, who is now 18, said Mr Danczuk sent her numerous messages, including one asking if she wanted a 'spanking' after she contacted him about a job.

He has been suspended from the Labour Party while an investigation takes place into his conduct, for which he has apologised 'unreservedly'.

The MP has rarely been out of the headlines since splitting with his second wife, Karen last year.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday this month, Mr Danczuk's first wife Sonia Rossington, 39, claimed the MP  who she divorced in 2010  had driven her into therapy with drug and alcohol-fuelled bullying and his obsessive demands for sex.
A new report this week says the FBI is looking into whether Hillary Clinton's top aides at the State Department may have violated protocol by 'cutting and pasting' top-secret information from one computer network to another.

The technique would have been used to allow highly secure intelligence could be routed to her private, home-based email server, agents said in the report by the New York Post.

According to the report, Clinton's senior aides may have used the technique to send information from a classified computer network administered by the Pentagon to a completely separate system used for higher-grade, Top-Secret communications.

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Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton faces new questions about her aide's actions while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013

Clinton at a campaign rally in North Liberty, Iowa, on Sunday

The two systems  the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS)  are not connected to the unclassified system used by some federal employees.

That means emails from one system cannot be sent to the other.

Agents are unsure, then, how highly classified information from the SIPRNet and JWICS systems ended up in at least 1,340 of Clintons private emails  including several which the CIA earlier this month flagged as containing highly sensitive intelligence concerning subjects such as drone operations and human intelligence.

'It takes a very conscious effort to move a classified email or cable from the classified systems over to the unsecured open system and then send it to Hillary Clintons personal email account,' Raymond Fournier, a veteran Diplomatic Security Service special agent, told The Post.

'Thats no less than a two-conscious-step process.'

Fournier told the paper it seems clear from some of Clinton's emails that someone on her staff manually transferred the information into messages sent to her home emails.

Fournier said the closed, classified systems are accessible only by secure desktop workstations whose hard drives must be removed and stored overnight in a safe, meaning that staffers would have retyped the classified information into the non-classified system.

The Post said agents are focusing on three of Clintons top department aides. They were not named, although the report noted that most of her top communications were handled by chief of staff Cheryl Mills or deputy chiefs Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan.

Emails that have been publicly released so far under a judge's order appear to show the former secretary of state and her team playing loosely with the guidelines.

Clinton with Huma Abedin, a longtime aide who was one of her top staffers at the State Department

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge for a one-month delay in the final release of Clinton's emails as secretary of state

In one email, Clinton pressured Sullivan to 'just email' classified cabled remarks by a foreign leader.

'Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it,' Sullivan replied.

In another exchange, Clinton appeared to instruct Sullivan to convert a classified document into an unclassified email by scanning and sending it to her after removing the classified markings.

'Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,' she ordered, although there is no evidence that Sullivan did so.
The wife of a soldier from Pennsylvania, who is away on deployment, found she was lost for words after a repairman charged her just one dollar to fix her broken furnace.

Bridget Stevens' husband, Bobby, is deployed overseas with the National Guard. When she called for help to repair her boiler, Paul Betlyn, 65, was only too pleased to be at her service.

After finishing the job, which would normally cost $150, he handed her a bill for a buck telling her that it was his way of showing gratitude for her husband's military service.

A very nice man: Bridget Stevens, who is a mom of two boys was touched by a selfless act of kindness when her local repair man, Paul Betlyn, fixed her furnace free of charge

Deployment discount: Mr Betlyn said that the $1 bill was a joke and to 'pay tribute' to her husband's service

Lone mom: Bridget is mom to two boys, but her other half, Bobby, is overseas on deployment

Handy man: Bridget's husband Bobby is deployed overseas. He tried to tell her over the phone how to fix the problem but it didn't seem to work

'I'm not the hero here,' Mr Betlyn told ABC News. 'The deployed, they're the heroes.'

The service that he provided went above and beyond in Bridget's eyes.

Her husband, Bobby, is deployed overseas with the National Guard so when she arrived home one evening to her Pittsburgh-area home, and it was freezing cold, she called Mr Betlyn for help.

When none of his suggestions seemed to fix the problem, he drove round to her house to look at the furnace himself.

'As he was working on the furnace, we got to talking about Bobby and the deployment,' Bridget wrote.

Help! Bridget texted her husband, Bobby, who is deployed overseas with the National Guard. When Bobby couldn't figure out what to do, she called Betlyn Heating and Cooling in Moon Township, Pennsylvania

Helping hands! Owner Paul Betlyn immediately came to the rescue and drove around himself to fix the furnace

'I had mentioned in passing that I tried to figure it out with my husband, but since he's deployed and couldn't see it, he wouldn't know what to do. Upon completing the job, he said that the $1 bill was a joke and to thank my husband for his service.'

'I was completely overwhelmed and in shock when Paul handed me the slip,' she told ABC News.

'I didn't really know what to say, and I still have a hard time finding the words to truly express my appreciation.'

Mr Betlyn, who works at Moon Township's Betlyn Heating and Cooling said he wanted to give the mother of two, a 'deployment discount.'

He said that he was simply paying it forward and continuing a family tradition.

'My grandfather was a milkman during the Great Depression and many times he'd go to the door and the woman didn't have any money for milk. But the baby was crying in the background. So he'd put the milk on the table,' Betlyn told ABC News. 'And when I heard about Bridget with her husband being deployedI put the milk on the table.'

Mr Betlyn has now set up a Military Deployment Kisses Fund.

The aim is to raise money to send families overseas to meet with loved ones during lengthy deployments. Almost $5,000 has been raised in just three days.

On the house: Although the repair normally should have cost approximately $150, Betlyn said he decided to do the job without charging Bridget

'I was completely overwhelmed and in shock when Paul handed me the slip,' Bridget said. 'I didn't really know what to say, and I still have a hard time finding the words to truly express my appreciation.'

Betlyn, 65, said his late grandfather, taught him about the importance of helping others and giving back
A bottled water company owned in part by Sean 'Diddy' Combs and Mark Wahlberg is pledging to donate one million bottles of water to the residents of Flint, Michigan following a mains supply crisis.

AQUAhydrate says it's sending one million bottles - equivalent to 5,000 cases - of water to Flint and will continue to provide bottles to residents until the city's water problems are solved.

The company says the water is expected to be delivered on Wednesday.

Wahlberg and Combs first invested and became the face of the Los Angeles-based bottled water company in 2013.

AQUAhydrate - a water company part owned by Sean Diddy Combs and Mark Wahlberg - has pledged to donate one million bottles of water to the Flint crisis

High levels of lead were detected in Flint's water after officials switched from the Detroit municipal system and began drawing from the Flint River as a cost-saving measure

Eminem, Wiz Khalifa and Big Sean are among other celebrities who have pledged support and donations to assist Flint's water crisis.

Erin Brockovich and Cher have also voiced their concern at the situation, appearing on MSNBC's Tamron Hall show on Wednesday morning.

Cher said the governors apology was too little too late, adding: 'He just took advantage of people that have no voice, you know, and that's such a cheap shot.'

The generous act by AQUAhydrate comes after high levels of lead were detected in Flint's water after officials switched from the Detroit municipal system and began drawing from the Flint River as a cost-saving measure.

The crisis has now resulted in a federal state of emergency as water has been deemed unsafe to drink or even bathe in

The crisis arose after the water wasn't properly treated to prevent lead from pipes from leaching into the supply.

Water from the mains supply has now been deemed so unsafe that state attorney general Bill Schuette said he would not 'bath a newborn or infant in Flint water' at a recent press conference.

An 'exhaustive' investigation has since been launched into the ongoing crisis, which has now resulted in a federal state of emergency.

Schuette has named former Wayne County prosecutor Todd Flood as the special counsel of the investigation and retired Detroit chief Andrew Arena as another member of the team, reported ABC.

A rally was staged by Genesee County Volunteer Militia held outside Flint City Hall yesterday to hold the government to account for the crisis

Protesters have also taken to the streets in the past few weeks to express their anger at the situation.

Most recently, a rally was staged by Genesee County Volunteer Militia held outside Flint City Hall yesterday.

The protest was against the alleged corruption they see in the government where they demanded accountability for how the water came to be contaminated.
A prominent African-American state representative in South Carolina has switched his endorsement from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, a nationally noticed move in a heavily-black Democratic state.

State Rep. Justin T. Bamberg initially supported Clinton in December, but announced his reversal in a press conference on Monday.

'Bernie represents bold new leadership and is not afraid to challenge the status quo,' Bamberg said.

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State Rep. Justin Bamberg announced Monday he has switched his endorsement from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders in the Feb. 27 Democratic primary

Bamberg, an attorney, is representing the family of Walter Scott, an African-American Charleston man who was slain last year by a white police officer in a shooting which a secretly recorded video suggested was unwarranted

Bamberg, an attorney, happens to be representing the family of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old North Charleston man who was killed by a police officer last April.

Scott's murder drew national attention after a video surfaced showing Scott was shot in the back while fleeing the officer, Michael Slager. Slager has been fired and charged with murder.

He was released on bond earlier this month and is currently under house arrest. H goes to trial in October.

Bamberg on Monday also pushed back at a common complaint of Sanders, that his call for guaranteed health care and other government-administered benefits makes him unelectable.

'We live in the greatest country on earthwe put man on the moon, don't tell me that we cannot provide Americans the right, the right to healthcare because that right is a matter of life and death for many Americans,' Bamberg said.

'Don't tell me that Sen. Bernie Sanders cannot become president of the United States of America.'

Sanders has had a rocky relationship with the Black Lives Matter movement, which has criticized the Vermont senator for not mentioning racism enough in his campaign platform.

Bamberg's announcement Monday was significant for Sanders, who has been criticized by the Black Lives Matter movement

However, Clinton retains a strong lead of 33 percentage points in South Carolina, where primary voters go to the polls on Feb. 27

Bamberg said in an interview in The New York Times 'Hillary Clinton is more a representation of the status quo when I think about politics or about what it means to be a Democrat.'

'Bernie Sanders on the other hand is bold. He doesn't think like everyone else. He is not afraid to call things as they are.'

Bamberg said he was initially unfamiliar with Sanders but later changed his mind after the two men discussed the Scott case.

'What I got from him was not a presidential candidate talking to a state representative, or an old white man talking to a young black guy,' Bamberg said.

'What I got from him was a man talking to a man about things that they are passionate about, and that was the tipping point for me.'
Dave Martin Benjamin is being questioned by police over the rape and murder of Atlanta anesthesiologist, Jessica Colker

A man being quizzed over the brutal rape and murder of an American tourist in Grenada had only been released from prison a month ago after being jailed for child rape, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Police sources on the Caribbean island said David Benjamin was freed in December after serving 15 years.

He is suspected of killing Jessica Colker who died from extensive skull fracture and asphyxia, as she walked along a deserted beach with her husband on the first day of her holiday, autopsy results revealed today.

Colker, an anesthesiologist from Atlanta Georgia, is said to have been raped before being murdered.

There is no mention of rape in the autopsy report and the American embassy said today it had not been told by police if she was sexually assaulted.

Benjamin walked into a police station in the Parish of St David's the day after Colker's body was found in an area of mangroves near the La Sages hotel in St David's where she and her husband were staying.

A police source told Daily Mail Online: 'Benjamin was set free in December. He had been locked away for the rape of a young child.'

Benjamin, who has three teardrops under his left eye that in gang culture means he has killed or is prepared to kill, has not yet been charged.

He is being held at St George's Police station in the island's capital and was questioned by detectives.

Grenada Police spokesman Sylvan McIntyre said of Benjamin: 'What I can tell you now is that he is in custody. He was not captured, but he turned himself in and our investigations will continue, as we believe he can assist us with our investigation into the incident.'

McIntyre said Benjamin had been released from prison after being convicted of rape and carnal knowledge.

Until recently the set jail term for rape in Grenada was 15 years.

A recent amendment to the criminal code means that any person who is convicted of rape is sentenced to prison for a maximum of 35 years.

Grenada's criminal courts have been dominated by sexual offenses, accounting for more than one-third of all the cases before the High Court for trial.

Murdered: It has been confirmed that Jessica Colker, (pictured here with her husband Brian Melito) was killed while she walked along a beach in Grenada on Sunday

Traveler: These pictures of the Atlanta anesthesiologist date from 2014 when she took a vacation to Italy with her new husband

Marriage: This picture of Jessica Colker and Brian Melito was posted to their wedding registry website ahead of the ceremony on November 1, 2014

Tragedy: Jessica Colker and her husband Brian Melito (both pictured above) have traveled in the Caribbean and Central America extensively

Colker was attacked as she strolled along Le-Cheasere beach in St David with her husband Brian Melito, 62. They were on a stretch of the beach away from other tourists.

It is not known if Melito was injured before he ran to raise the alarm and get help.

When he returned he found his wife's body hidden among the mangroves on the beach.

Police sealed off the beach as a murder hunt was launched and police with automatic weapons were seen searching the area.

Colker and her husband had only flown into Grenada from Atlanta on Saturday and were on the first full day of their vacation.

According to online records, Colker is a registered pediatric anesthesiologist at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

She and her husband are both seasoned travelers and first met at a dance workshop in Costa Rica according to their wedding website profile.

They say they had a smoothie together on the second day of the class and then spent the rest of the week 'dancing, talking, surfing, eating great food, swimming in the ocean under the stars and generally falling in love.'

They became engaged in August of 2014 and wed in November of 2014 in Atlanta.

In their statement issued on Monday afternoon, the US Embassy for the region based in Bridgetown, Barbados, said they were 'working closely with officials investigating Ms. Colker's death'.

Police in St George's confirmed that 'at about 12.00 noon on Sunday January 24, 2016, it was reported to the police that a woman, who was in the company of her male companion went missing following an attack by a man at Le-Cheasere beach in St David.

'A search was mounted in the area and a person later identified as the missing woman was found dead.

'A suspect is currently in custody assisting police with their investigation.'

Colker is the second tourist to have been murdered on the island in just over a month.

In December, Canadian Linnea Veinotte was murdered and suspect, Akim Frank, is charged with her murder. At the time police said the killing was an isolated incident and the island was safe for tourists.

Tragic: Jessica Colker was killed on a deserted stretch of sun-splashed beach about twelve miles outside the capital of the Caribbean island of Grenada. Above are her shoes that she kicked off before going off on a walk

Death in paradise: Grenada is one of the more southern Caribbean islands and the La Sagesse Hotel is marked on the map in relation to the capital, St George's

British woman's magazine journalist Sue Hardy, 63, was one of many British tourists on the beach when the drama began around 11.30 local time Sunday morning.

Hardy, who is from Inkpen, Berkshire, was on vacation with her family.

She said that they had just set up their sun chairs and were relaxing in the sunshine when 'there was a sudden commotion near the little pen-fronted restaurant, which faces out on to the beach.'

'Some guys were shouting and people were running,' Hardy said. 'At first we didn't know what was happening. But gradually rumors started spreading among the tourists.'

She said that there were about 30 people on the beach, including children, as people started to become nervous and edgy because it was obvious something serious had happened.

'The staff were very tight-lipped and it seemed they had been told not to say anything to alarm the tourists,' Hardy said.

'We saw the guy who owns the place running to his jeep and speeding off - he was probably going to talk to the police.

'Gradually we put the story together. It appears the American woman tourist - described as "very beautiful" by one member of the staff I spoke to - had gone off for a stroll along the beach with her husband.'

Hardy said there is a main beach at the resort that is about a half a mile long that has a restaurant and apartments that are located in the main hotel building overlooking the beach.

She said she was told Colker's husband ran half a mile back to the restaurant and hotel area to get help, leaving his wife.

'Whether she'd been dragged off and kidnapped, I don't know,' Hardy said.

'Some staff ran back to the deserted beach but by the time they got there she had been murdered.

'I was told she had been raped too. They said she was lying on the edge of the water.'

Murdered: Canadian tourist Linnea Veinotte was killed in December in Grenada and her alleged murderer is currently in custody

British woman's magazine journalist Sue Hardy, who is on her sixth trip to Grenada, said that the La Sagesse resort is her favorite on the island (above). But she said she won't venture out to that other hidden beach again after the American tourist's death

Hardy said that police officers would not say anything other than that there had been an incident.

'The woman and her husband had arrived last night so this must have been one of their first walks along the beach,' she explained.

'After walking for half a mile round the bay, where you are still in sight from the hotel and restaurant and the main area where tourists sit out in the sun, you can go up a path which leads through a sort of mangrove swamp, with steps so you don't walk into the mud.

'After about 100 yards through this somewhat dark swampy area, you come out on to another beach which is totally deserted.

'No-one can see you there - but of course nobody can see if anyone attacks you there.

'I've been there on previous visits to La Sagesse and I always felt a bit spooked on that deserted beach, as if someone was watching you from the undergrowth.'

Hardy, who is on her sixth trip to Grenada, said that the La Sagesse resort is her favorite on the island. But she said she wouldn't venture out to that other hidden beach again after the American tourist's death.

Jessica Colker arrived to the world-famous La Sagesse resort from Georgia with her husband Saturday night. Above people relax on the main beach at La Sagesse

Sue Hardy, 63, was one of many British tourists on the beach when the drama began to unfold. Above is an empty beach chair where the woman took her last walk

Hardy said that the woman was reportedly brutally raped before she was murdered at the resort (above)

Hardy said that people were in 'shock' as word spread around that a woman had been killed

'As I say, we have been coming here for years and we know lots of ex-pats who have lived here for decades and they all say you are totally safe,' Hardy noted.

'People were just in shock as word spread, and some of the local villagers came down to the beach.

'They were just standing around, aghast at what had happened. There was such a sad sight - she'd left her beach shoes lying on the sand near the restaurant.

'I assume she'd kicked them off to go for a romantic walk with her husband on their first full day in paradise.'

According to the hotel's website the resort is 'Grenada's Best Romantic Getaway'.

Its Facebook page says: 'Blending the elegance and charm of an English country house with the tropical climate, beautiful palm tree shaded beach and lush vegetation, this wildly romantic hideaway offers a wonderful opportunity for recreation, relaxation, nature appreciation and the ambiance in which to enjoy it.'

A staff member at the hotel said then had been told not to talk about the incident.
An Oklahoma town with a population of just 6,700 is searching for answers after the suicides of four young people in the past two months.

The first suicide in Anadarko, Oklahoma happened on December 1, when 16-year-old high school sophomore Jaidon DuBois shot himself.

Not long after DuBois' untimely death, a 21-year-old young man killed himself, followed by a 22 year old. The most recent death involved an 11-year-old girl. All four committed suicide using guns.

In the wake of the back-to-back tragedies, town officials are working to prevent even more unnecessary deaths as they struggle to explain the suicide spike.

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A small town in Oklahoma has been rocked by four suicides in the past two months. Above, concerned citizens hold up signs supporting local youth outside a school last week

The victims of the Anadarko, Oklahoma suicides range in age from just 11 to 22 years old

'I just really want us to get the word out to the community that that is not a solution. It is a permanent fix to a temporary problem,' said Chief Jason Smith with the Anadarko Police Department told KFOR. 'It has brought us to our knees.'

Jaidon DuBois, 16, was the first to commit suicide on December 1. The other three have not been identified

Smith says there does not appear to be any trend between the four deaths, saying each of the victims attended different schools or had already graduated.

He added that there have been accusations of bullying in some of the cases, and that is a factor they are investigating.

'If we could put it under a category, like bullying, wed put our resources toward addressing bullying,' Smith told the Lawton, Oklahoma Constitution. 'Thats the problem right now. There are so many causes. Suicide is a feeling of helplessness and that theres nothing you feel you can do about it.'

Having four suicides in just two months puts Anadarko way over the national average for suicides. According to the CDC, suicides happen at a rate of about 13 deaths per 100,000 people. Anadarko's numbers are four times that number with just the deaths that have happened in the past two months.

However, one factor that makes Anadarko different from other communities is the large presence of Native American people.

Native American teens are more likely to commit suicide than the national average due to factors more likely to be present in their lives such as poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence coupled with the lack of mental health resources in some Indian communities.

It's unclear though whether the recent victims were of Native American descent or not.

About 48 per cent of residents in Anadarko describe themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native, and the town is nicknamed the 'Indian Capital of the Nation' for the presence of Bureau of Indian Affairs office in the area. In fact, most of the people who live in Anadarko either farm or work for the BIA.

Above, a sign that Jaidon's friends painted on the fence at his home. All four suicide victims died from gunshot wounds

'I just really want us to get the word out to the community that that is not a solution. It is a permanent fix to a temporary problem,' said Chief Jason Smith (pictured) with the Anadarko Police Department told KOFR. 'It has brought us to our knees.'

Another issue is that research that teens are susceptible to suicide contagion, meaning they can be propelled to commit suicide when someone else in their community does.

After news broke of the most recent suicide in Andarko, concerned residents stood outside the hospital holding up anti-suicide signs in an attempt to prevent another death.

'Youre alive for a reason. Dont ever give up,' one read, according to the Lawton Constitution.

'We care. You are strong,' another read.

Community leaders are also planning other efforts to curb the trend.

Donnie Edmondson, pastor at Virginia Avenue Baptist Church' says the 'spirit of suicide' has swept the town and that he is planning on organizing an outreach event for this weekend.

The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health is also setting up a 'care station' at a local hospital for those who feel they need assistance, while the city manager is looking into creating suicide prevention courses for the high school.

 For confidential help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here

 For confidential support on suicide matters in the UK, call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90, visit a local Samaritans branch or click here

The four deaths in the past two months is four times the national average. Above, a citizen holds up a sign outside the Anadarko high school last Wednesday

About half of the residents of Anadarko are Native American and Native American teens are more likely to commit suicide than the national average. Above, more people holding up signs last week
Rachel Butterbaugh, 33, left her husband with a bloody lip and several scratches after her refused to have sex with her

A 33-year-old woman from Iowa scratched and bit her husband when he declined to have sex with her, say local police.

Rachel Butterbaugh, of North Liberty, returned to her home on Saturday night at around 10pm to find her husband in bed, according to a police report.

She told him she 'wanted sex' and when her husband refused, she allegedly became physical and 'began scratching and biting him'.

Her husband - known as Jason on Facebook - told police that he tried to defend himself from her and when she eventually relented, she left the scene and called 911, said the report.

Butterbaugh then told police that her husband had choked her.

But when officers arrived at the scene they found that her husband's injuries did not fit that of her description and concluded that she had attacked him.

The man was left with several scratch marks on his neck and a bloody lip.

The couple first met in 1998 and became engaged in 2009, according to Butterbaugh's Facebook profile.

Although Butterbaugh initially told police her husband Jason (pictured right) had strangled her, they discovered that his injuries did not match her story

Butterbaugh, admitted biting her husband and was arrested on a misdemeanor domestic abuse charge and booked into the county jail, reported The Smoking Gun.

She was released from custody late Sunday morning after posting a $2000 bond, according to the paper.

Butterbaugh has two prior assault convictions, according to court records.

Butterbaugh (right) who studied at the University of Iowa, has two prior assault convictions. The couple met back in 1998, according Facebook
The significance of Australia Day has long been debated and the world's most recognised website has now thrust itself into the discussion.

On Tuesday, Google published one of its famous doodles depicting aboriginal woman and children to represent the 'Stolen Generation' on a day that has been set aside to celebrate the arrival of Britain's First Fleet and subsequent influx of European settlers to the country.

Google doodles are logos on the Google search page that commemorate holidays and events.

The latest Google doodle can be seen only in Australia and people have applauded the website for recognising the country's Indigenous population on a day that divides the nation.

On Tuesday, Google published one of its famous doodles depicting the Stolen Generation on a day that celebrates the arrival of Britain's First Fleet

'I think it important everyone has a look at and a think about todays [sic] Australian Google doodle,' one man wrote.

'Is the #AustraliaDay @google doodle visible to everyone, or just those in Oz? It's a great piece of representation on a problematic day,' another Twitter user said.

A third social media user made no secret of his stance on January's Australia Day.

'Australia Day is the celebration of the beginning of British colonisation,' he said.

People have applauded the website for its decision to recognise the Indigenous population on a day that divides the nation

The Google Doodle can be seen only by people in Australia on January 26

A third social media user made no secret of his stance on January's Australia Day

Above is another tweet about the doodle. The artist behind the doodle is teenager Ineka Voigt, from Canberra High School, who was the winner of 2015's Doodle 4 Google competition

But others were not so keen on the design, with one man saying: 'Shows what sort of crap is being taught in our schools, with that Google doodle.'

The artist behind the latest doodle is teenager Ineka Voigt, from Canberra High School, who was the winner of 2015's Doodle 4 Google competition.

The theme of last year's competition was 'If I could go back in time I would...'.

Ineka's creation was named 'Stolen Dreamtime'.

'If I could travel back in time I would reunite mother and child,' the teenager said when she won the competition.

Australia Day remains a contentious day as some believe it was a day of invasion by the British who took away the rights of the Indigenous people. Above is a group of women at the Australian of The Year Awards

Others were not so supportive of the Google Doodle like this man

'A weeping mother sits in an ochre desert, dreaming of her children and a life that never was... all that remains is red sand, tears and the whispers of her stolen dreamtime.'

Ineka said it was her way to say 'sorry' to Indigenous Australians and she wanted to send a message of reconciliation.

'It's important for us to recognise our achievements, but also look at the atrocities. I believe that the stolen generation is one of the greatest atrocities in Australia's history,' she told Canberra Times in November.

Australia Day is contentious to the people who believe it was a day of invasion by the British who took away the rights of the Indigenous people.
Hillary Clinton struggled through three minutes of a foreign policy speech Monday in Iowa as a lengthy coughing fit took hold of her.

An audience of about 150 at the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines had gathered to hear the Democratic presidential candidate's views on Israel.

But ten minutes into her address, phlegm interrupted  leading to a lengthy hacking cough that left the former secretary of state hoarse and raspy.

Her next campaign event in Knoxville, Iowa was a placid affair as a soft-voiced Clinton seemed unwilling to test the boundaries of her limited vocal power.

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'A LOZENGE!' Hillary Clinton had to fish for a cough drop on Monday as a hacking fit interrupted a speech about Israel for three minutes

PAGING MARCO: Clinton reached awkwardly for water, as Sen. Marco Rubio famously did during his response to President Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address

'We've got to get back to making people's voices and votes count,' she warbled during that speech to a crowd of 250, sounding older than her 68 years.

A few more coughs punctuated Clinton's Knoxville speech as she discussed the need for mental health reform.

Clinton has one more afternoon event on her schedule, and then a televised town hall event at night.

Her coughing spell sent her hunting through her podium for water, and in her pockets for a cough drop.

The first hint of trouble turned up when Clinton was addressing the need to 'distrust and verify' Iran's actions in response to last year's nuclear deal with the Obama administration and 'counter Iran across the region.'

'And how we handle enforcement in these early months will set the tone for years to come, so we have to get it right,' she said, clearing her throat and looking distressed.

'There must be consequences  let me see if I get some water here  (COUGH) You do talk a lot in this campaign!' she said, sipping water before descending into a full-blown cough attack.

'(COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) Um, excuse me, just one second here. (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH)'

'A lozenge! (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) I have one. (COUGH)'

QUIET TIME: Clinton's next Iowa event on Monday was a low-key speech in which she seemed unwilling to test the boundaries of her weakened voice

MENTHOLYPTUS: Clinton's lozenge helped  eventually  as she struggled through a long stretch of her remarks on Iran

Three more coughs rang out as she unwrapped the cough drop  and finally asked Jewish Federation president David Adelman to take over from offstage.

'(COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) Here David, You talk,' she said.

'(COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH)'

'Well, we're starting the all-in-one campaign,' her audience heard from Adelman as she let out a '(COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH) (COUGH)' and popped the lozenge in her mouth.

'Pledge cards will be by the door,' he continued as Clinton regained her composure but became progressively more and more hoarse.

'There must be consequences to, (CLEARS THROAT) excuse me, snap sanctions back into place. (CLEARS THROAT) And we have to make sure that Iran knows that if they try (COUGH) to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, the United States will stop them. (COUGH) We will act decisively.'

'Now (COUGH) (COUGH) Iran has not had some change of personality,' Clinton continued. 'They will test our resolve with actions. Like their ballistic missile test. And I supported and am glad we are opposing (COUGH) (COUGH) new sanctions in response, to hold the Iranian government and its Revolutionary Guard Corps accountable for their support of terrorism (CLEARS THROAT), their missile program, human rights violations (COUGH) (COUGH), detention of Americans, and other illicit behavior like cyber crime.'

COUGH COUGH COUGH: The dry-throated fit left Clinton sounding older and weary

'We also need to push for a political solution in Syria, as hard as that may be, because (COUGH) (COUGH) that is Iran's real objective: to control Syria, to have a swath of territory up to Israel's doorstep (CLEARS THROAT) and to connect with Hizbollah.'

'The second thing is,' she added, sounding her hoarsest and most aged, 'we have to go after the tide of extremism (COUGH). This is a threat also on Israel's doorstep. An ISIS affiliate in the Sinai is becoming more aggressive and sophisticated (COUGH), likely responsible for the destruction of the Russian airliner. And Israeli media reported that an ISIS commander for the Sinai recently visited Gaza, raising the stakes even higher.'

As she spoke, Clinton's campaign was distributing a fundraising email focused on the Feb. 1 statewide caucuses in Iowa.

'One week from today, Iowans will head to schools and firehouses (and in at least one precinct, their neighbors' living room) to make their voices heard,' the email said, before asking for contributions.
But defense argues weapon was accidentally discharged and then Liang went into shock

Prosecutor told court Liang recklessly fired his weapon and then did nothing to help the 'innocent man'

Neighbor's 911 call played out in court, 'Just tell them they gotta apply direct pressure to the wound site. Don't move him,' said EMS worker

Gurley, 28, died in Brooklyn projects after being hit by a ricochet in dimly lit stairwell

Liang's defense claims he drew his gun because he 'was on his way to the most dangerous place of a dangerous place'

NYPD officer Peter Liang, 28, was in court Monday as he faces up to 15 years if convicted of killing Akai Gurley in November 2014

A New York policeman shot an unarmed black man  then stood by while the dying man's girlfriend frantically tried to save him.

Akai Gurley, the father of a young daughter, died after being hit by a ricochet in the dimly lit stairwell Brooklyn housing project in November 2014.

Peter Liang, a 28-year-old rookie NYPD officer, faces up to 15 years if convicted of charges ranging from second degree manslaughter to official misconduct.

Gurley's death, in a Brooklyn project, was one of a number of killings that sparked anti-police protests around the country and a national round of soul searching about policing methods.

Liang does not deny the killing but his defense will say that it was not a crime, and that he drew his gun because he 'was on his way to the most dangerous place of a dangerous place'.

Melissa Lopez said she was at home with her husband and two children in her fourth-floor apartment when she heard a shot ring out in the stairwell.

In court: Rookie NYPD officer Peter Liang (pictured last February) faces up to 15 years if convicted of second degree manslaughter for the death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley

Justice: Unarmed father-of-one, Akai Gurley, was shot dead by NYPD Officer Peter Liang in November 2014. Liang appeared in court Monday as 911 calls played out during first day of evidence

Desperate: Melissa Butler, Gurley's girlfriend, banged on a neighbor's door for help with blood on her hands as she tried to save him

Seconds later a woman, with blood on her hands, hammered at her door asking for help. That was Gurley's girlfried, Melissa Butler.

Lopez's 911 call was played to a packed Brooklyn courtroom during the first day of evidence, giving a sense of the desperate effort to save Gurley's life as he laid bleeding on the fifth floor of the Louis Pink Houses in East New York, one of areas of the city most blighted with crime,

'Somebody got shot in the stairwell,' she tells the operator after giving her address.

'You are saying someone was shot on the fifth floor,' asks the operator. 'How long ago was someone shot?'

'Just now, just now,' she replies.

This man had just shot an innocent man and he never even knelt to try to fix what he had done, to look into his dying eyes, even to touch him. Instead what he did was walk around Akai Gurley's body Prosecutor Marc Fliedner

She is assured that help is on the way before being transferred to an emergency medicine specialist, who tells her to find towels and apply them to the wound.

'Just tell them they gotta apply direct pressure to the wound site,' says the EMS. 'Don't move him.'

She is given advice on CPR which she then can be heard shouting up the stairs to Butler.

'Pinch his nose and put your mouth over his,' she shouts.

'Just keep trying to breathe for him,' says the medic down the line.

Gurley's condition worsens and Lopez says he is no longer breathing.

'See if she can do compressions,' says the medic. See if she can give two breaths and then put her hands on his chest and press down.'

Finally, amid the confusion, realization dawns. 'A cop shot him,' says Lopez.

As the landing fills with police officers, the frustration spills into her voice.

'I just called because my neighbor knocked on my door,' she says on the recording, her voice fading in exhaustion and resignation.

'There's like a million cops but no ambulance. I don't know what is going on. I'm telling her to do the CPR and she's doing it. I don't know.'

Gurley was pronounced dead later that night at Brookdale Hospital.

In court Monday she was asked by Marc Fliedner, for the prosecution, what Officer Liang was doing while she and Butler were rushing around delivering first aid.

'He was doing nothing the whole time,' she said.

The prosecution alleges that Liang recklessly fired his weapon and then did nothing to help when he realized Gurley had been badly wounded.

In his opening statement Monday, Fliedner said Liang and his partner were making their way through the floors of the Louis Pink Houses, on a landing where the lights were not working.

Gurley was in the stairwell on a floor below when LIang, with a torch in one hand, pushed his way through the doors on to the stairs.

'He recklessly pulled out his gun fired for no reason and pumped out a bullet that hit the wall near where Akai Gurley was standing and then ripped through his heart,' he said.

Fliedner said Liang failed to offer first aid when he finally descended the stairs to find Gurley slumped on the floor with his girlfriend giving CPR, continued Fliedner.

Crime hotspot: Liang's defense claims he drew his gun because he 'was on his way to the most dangerous place of a dangerous place' in Brooklyn projects

Family: Akai Gurley leaves behind young daughter Akaila, pictured in 2014 with her mother Kimberly Ballinger

Scene: A stairwell at a building in the public housing project in Brooklyn known as the 'Pink Houses'. This is where Akai Gurley was hit by a ricochet and later died

'This man had just shot an innocent man and he never even knelt to try to fix what he had done, to look into his dying eyes, even to touch him,' he added.

'Instead what he did was walk around Akai Gurley's body.'

He said the evidence would show that Liang was using a 9mm handgun with a modified police trigger.

'This trigger makes police guns more difficult to fire than a gun straight from the gun maker,' he said.

The defense insists Liang accidentally discharged his weapon and then went into shock as he realized the enormity of what had happened.

Rae Koshetz told the jury that the American policing system was not on trial at New York State Court in Brooklyn.

'This is not a referendum on policing in the US,' she said. 'Nor is this case about retribution.'

She added that the officer was patrolling with his weapon drawn but pointed down in a safe direction.

He and his partner, Shaun Landau, graduated from police college only a year earlier and were on overtime following a murder nearby.

'He has his gun out because he is on his way to the roof, the most dangerous place in a dangerous place, and there's no rule saying an officer cannot have his gun out,' she said.

She said he initially had no idea that anyone had been hit when it suddenly fired. When he discovered Gurley had been injured he made several attempts to notify his superiors by radio but they failed to transmit the message.

And rather than worrying about his job, he slumped against a wall in a state of shock.

'He is not crying and moaning about his job,' she said. Let anyone in the world who has had the experience of finding out that he has just killed anybody, that he has just fired a fatal shot, be at the top of their game.'

It is extremely unusual for police officers to face trial for in-the-line-of-duty killings.

A survey by The Washington Post and Bowling Green State University found that 54 were charged in the past decade despite thousands of shootings.

However, the mood has changed in the past two years with a series of high-profile killings of unarmed black men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Freddy Gray in Baltimore and Eric Garner, who died after being subjected to a choke hold on Staten Island.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, New York police declared Gurley's death to be a 'tragedy' and Commissioner Bill Bratton described Gurley as a 'total innocent'.

Kerbie Joseph, a Gurley family representative, said the details of the 911 call and the evidence of Mrs Lopez were damning.

'If it wasn't for the witness and Akai's friend there wouldn't have been any attention to Akai Gurley, because the police did nothing,' she said outside the courtroom.
Swedish police demand more cash to stem rising violence in the country

Teenage killer was overpowered by other children living at the centre

The migrant teenager arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death a young Swedish social worker at a at a shelter for refugee children is from Somalia, one of her colleagues has revealed.

Alexandra Mezher, 22, was working on a night shift alone with ten teenagers when she was attacked at the home for unaccompanied young refugees in Molndal, near Gothenburg. She later died of her injuries in hospital.

Details of the 15-year-old boy being held by murder detectives come as Miss Mezher's family blamed Sweden's migration crisis for her death.

Chimene Mezher, 42, today told how she had lost her 'angel', as a cousin said: 'It is the Swedish politicians' fault that she is dead.'

Sweden is one of the main destinations for refugees and migrants entering the EU and police warn they cannot cope with the tide of migrant-related crime.

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Tragedy: Alexandra Mezher, pictured right with her best friend Lejla Filipovic at their high school graduation in 2012, died after being stabbed at her place of work - a care home for unaccompanied child refugees

Pride of the family: Social worker Miss Mezher, 22, a Christian whose parents are from Lebanon, is pictured at her university graduation in June 2015 where she studied psychology

Inspirational: Dedicated Miss Mazher, who was planning on going back to university to do a masters, had been working with refugee children at the centre (pictured) since last autumn

Paying tribute to her 'angel', her mother wept: 'She was my air, she was my everything, why her?'

'She was a just and fair human being. There were so many who loved her. She was my daughter, my friend.. my mate,' Mrs Mezher said.

Miss Mezher's best friend-of-eight-years Lejla Filipovic, 22, also paid tribute to the young social worker today, saying the pair were like sisters.

'She was so goodhearted, she wanted to do so much in life,' she said adding that she had sometimes worried that Miss Mezher was putting herself at risk.

'I know that some of the kids aren't in a good place right now, because they came without their parents, so sometimes I was worried, but I knew that she had good co-workers.'

The tributes came as Swedish police announced that the Somali boy accused of murdering Miss Mezher will stand trial as an adult.

The teenager remains in custody, an unusual step as youngsters are normally sent to a secure childrens home following arrest.

However, police told MailOnline they had made the decision to keep the teenager behind bars due to the serious nature of the crime and the public outrage follow the brutal knife killing Miss Mezher.

Murdered: She was stabbed to death while working a night shift alone at the centre for migrant children in Molndal, on Sweden's west coast. A boy, 15, from Somalia, who lived at the centre, is in police custody

Full of life: Miss Mezher (pictured second from left) had only worked at the child migrant centre since the autumn. She was stabbed to death on Monday at 8am

Search: Detectives were at the migrant centre which houses children aged 14-17 searching for clues. Police today praised two hero teenagers who held the knifeman down until they arrived

Tribute: Flowers and candles have been left outside the housing for unaccompanied migrants in Molndal, near Gothenburg, where Miss Mezher was killed

ALLEGED TEENAGE KILLER TO BE TRIED AS AN ADULT, SAY POLICE The teenage migrant accused of murdering a young Swedish social worker at a refugee centre will stand trial as an adult, MailOnline has learnt. Authorities in Sweden have taken the unusual step of keeping the 15-year-old suspect in police custody due to the serious nature of the crime. Youngsters are normally sent to a secure childrens home following arrest, but the teenager is being held behind bars due to public outrage follow the brutal knife killing of Alexandra Mezher. And he will be held in an adult prison until he goes on trial. A person is criminally responsible when they reach 15-years-old in Sweden, a Gothanburg Police spokesman told MailOnline. The boy is being held at the police station. But it is very unusual that children to be kept in custody by the police. However the public prosecutor has deemed this as a special case due to the nature of the crime and will ask for the boy to be held in prison until he goes to trial. The spokesman added: He is not known by the police and has not been arrested before. But there is always a variable of uncertainty about these kids identity. We dont know anything about the boy family. We have not even established his identity with a 100% certainty yet. Meanwhile police have praised the bravery of the two residents of the migrant centre who tackled the killer, saying their courage had saved lives. The two boys who over-powered the knifeman probably saved lives, a Gothenburg Police spokesman told MailOnline. When the first patrol came to the centre they were informed that the boy was held down by two other boys who were living there. When they entered the crime scene they found him on the floor being held by these two boys. They had over-powered him and probably saved the lives of others. It is fair to say that they were really brave and courageous in their actions. We found what we think is the murder weapon laying beside them. All residents of the migrant centre, a drab three-storey building on the outskirts of Molndal, a suburb of Gothenburg, have been moved to another location, it has emerged. A police spokesman told MailOnline: We have seven witnesses who saw the incident and we will talk to them again tomorrow. The 15 year old boy will be interrogated again tomorrow as well. All the boys who were staying at the centre has been allocated to other centres in Molndal. Advertisement

The incident comes amid rising tensions over migration in Sweden. The number of threats and violent incidents at asylum facilities doubled between 2014 and 2015.

Earlier this week, Stockholm police warned that the capital's main train station is 'overrun' by gangs of Moroccan street children, who are 'stealing and groping girls' and have called for more resources to cope.

Today, Prime minister Stefan Lofven admitted that many people are fearful of attacks similar to the killing of Miss Mezher, because 'Sweden receives so many children and youths arriving alone'.

Sweden accepted more than 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than any other EU state per capita.

Alexandra, of Lebanese Christian origin, lived with her parents Boutros, 46, and Chimene Mezher, and her two younger brothers in Boras, some 40 miles from Molndal.

Her father came to Sweden from Beirut, Lebanon, in 1989 and her mother moved there three years later.

It has now emerged that Miss Mezher had been working alone at the housing in Molndal, which is home to ten unaccompanied minors.

Despite rules that the staff should work in pairs, Miss Mezher had been working a night shift all by herself and was attacked just half an hour before daytime staff were due to take over, it is claimed.

A colleague speaking on condition of anonymity said that staff had previously complained about having to work alone overnight.

'Everyone cried and someone said that this was something we had brought up before, that no one should work alone.'

A spokesperson for HBV Living Nordic AB, which runs several care facilities for unaccompanied minors in the surrounding area, told the paper the rotas followed government guidelines.

Police said Miss Mezher was stabbed shortly before 8am on Monday by a boy, who was then apprehended by other youths living at the centre.

She was taken to Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg, but died later on Monday as a result of her injuries.

Officers discovered a knife at the scene and the teenager has since been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Swedish police have today praised the actions of the other children living in the facility, hailing them 'heroes' after they overpowered the boy after he attacked Miss Mezher.

'Two boys held him down. It is a very good intervention. Had he intended to hurt anyone else, then they have prevented that,' said police spokesperson Peter Adlersson.

'It is easy to become injured yourself when intervening in this kind of situation. We are very grateful for these kinds of actions.'

Miss Mezher had only worked at the centre in Molndal for a few months.

It is is home to ten unaccompanied children aged 14-17, who arrived in Sweden seeking asylum without a parent or a guardian and has provoked unrest.

Neighbourhood-watch groups have reportedly been sent out to prevent teenage girls from being sexually harassed on their way home from the commuter trains from Gothenburg.

Parents have also spoken out against having their children in the same classes as the immigrants.

Hard working: Psychology graduate Miss Mezher who was a Lebanese Christian whose parents were from Beirut, was today described by her mother Chimene as an 'angel'

Poignant: Miss Mezher, a Lebanese Christian, had posted a number 'inspirational quotes' on Facebook confirming her faith

Inspiration: Miss Mezher's Facebook profile give a poignant reminder of the loving, caring person she was. Paying tribute her mother said: 'She was a just and fair human being. There were so many who loved her'

Questioning: A boy, 15, living at the centre, from Somalia, is being questioned by detectives on suspicion of murder. Police have cordoned off the centre as forensics investigate

Scene: Molndal, on Sweden's west coast, where the migrant centre is, has been the scene of rising tension in recent months. Neighbourhood-watch groups have been sent out to prevent teenage girls from being sexually harassed on their way home from the commuter trains from Gothenburg

But Miss Mezher, a psychology graduate from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, was driven by a strong desire to do good, and was fascinated by theories examining why some people commit crime.

She had completed a three-year course in social science for communication and learning and called her dissertation, 'The road to non criminal - a lifestyle change'.

Written with another student, she researched the factors which help offenders break from a life of crime.

It concludes that to make a lifestyle change and be able to break a delinquent behaviour, 'social workers need to build trust in relationships'.

Miss Mezher's cousin said: 'It is so terrible. She was a person who wanted to do good, who wanted to be good.

'And then he murdered her when she was doing her job. We have cried a lot. She was such a nice person, warm and happy.'

Miss Mezher was reportedly planning to return to university to do a masters degree in social science.

The stabbing occurred on the same day as police in Sweden demanded more resources to stem rising violence apparently linked to the migrant crisis.

Police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg, who refused to reveal details of the murder suspect's nationality, said: 'These kinds of calls are becoming more and more common.

'We're dealing with more incidents like these since the arrival of so many more refugees from abroad.'

Home: Miss Mezher was living with her parents, originally from Lebanon, and her younger brothers in Boras, some 40 miles from Molndal

Centre: Miss Mezher, whose family are originally from Lebanon, had only worked at the accommodation for unaccompanied refugee children for a few months

National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson requested 4,100 additional officers and support staff to help fight against terrorism, carry out migrant deportations and police asylum facilities.

He said: 'We are forced to respond to many disturbances in asylum reception centres. In some places, this takes significant police resources.

'This was not the case six months ago and it means that we won't be able to respond as effectively in other areas.

Also weighing on police resources are border controls introduced on January 4 and a higher national terrorist threat level after the Paris attacks in November.

'Many of the problems we are now facing help to prove the point that Swedish police have long been underfunded and under-staffed,' police union director Lena Nitz, told TT.

'It is obvious that the migrant situation is a great strain. It has become clear that the situation is completely unsustainable.'

The police request for more resources comes as greater attention is being focused on allegations of violence by young migrants across Europe, with some countries expressing doubt about their ability to integrate them into society.

Like the rest of Europe, Sweden has been struggling with the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War II.

A country of 9.8 million, Sweden took in more than 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015, the highest number of refugees and migrant arrivals per capita in the EU.

Out of the 160,000 who applied for asylum, 35,369 were unaccompanied minors.

Critics: National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson (left) requested 4,100 additional officers and support staff to help fight against terrorism, carry out migrant deportations and police asylum facilities. Police spokesman Thomas Fuxborg added: 'These kinds of calls are becoming more and more common. We're dealing with more incidents like these since the arrival of so many more refugees from abroad'

Clashes: Tensions are rising in Sweden as it struggles to cope with a record influx of migrants and asylum seekers (pictured: An estimated 15,000 people attended a Refugees Welcome rally in Gothenburg last year)
For more of the latest on Donald Trump visit www.dailymail.co.uk/trump

Singh says he is proud if his turban - a sign of his Sikh faith - caused him to be confused with Muslims and added: 'I will be back at his next rally.'

As he was being ejected, Trump said: 'He wasn't wearing one of those hats, was he? Was he wearing one of those things?'

Protest: Arish Singh, of Iowa City, Iowa, said he wanted to speak out against Trump's rhetoric

A Sikh protester who was manhandled out of a Donald Trump rally today hit back at the Republican presidential candidate branding him as 'childish'.

Arish Singh, who wears a red turban,was ejected from Trump's rally in Muscatine, Iowa yesterday after unfurling a banner saying 'Stop Hate'.

Trump interrupted his address to the rally as Singh, 35, was ejected along with his friend Taylor Williams as the crowd repeatedly chanted ' USA, USA'.

Trump watched from the platform as Singh was jeered and forced out by security officials and told his audience: 'He wasn't wearing one of those hats was he? And he never will, and that's okay because we got to do something folks because it's not working.'

Minutes after the flare up, Trump went onto talk about terrorist attacks in Paris and California and referred to 'hats' several times.

It was unclear whether it was a reference to Singh's turban but there was outrage on Twitter that such a link could be made.

Today Singh, a writer and comedian from Iowa City, Iowa, said he was unsure whether Trump had confused his turban for an Islamic headdress.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Online he said: 'I am not sure what he meant when he used the word "hat".

'But if he thought I was a Muslim, I would not have a problem with that because we all have to stand with the Muslims and reject the hate that is being directed towards them.

'How can anybody stand up and say Muslims should be banned from this country?'

He admitted he had interrupted Trump's address and his behavior had provoked Trump supporters.

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The two protesters hold a sign that reads 'Stop hate' after interrupting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his speech at Muscatine High School

The protester wearing the red turban (above) was removed by security after interrupting Trump with another protester

The Republican presidential candidate's rally in Muscatine, Iowa was interrupted by a group of protesters on Sunday

Speaking out: Comedian Arish Singh, whose act includes a satire aimed at Jeff Dunham, with a dummy who is a white terrorist

But he added: 'This country has a history of civil disobedience and I am proud of that.

'I want to speak out against hate and I will be back at his rally in Iowa on Tuesday.

'Trump comes across as childish and sometimes he just mutters like an old man who has no control of what he is saying.

'But he is in an important position because he is saying stuff from the position of a billionaire and the media is not challenging him.

'He is getting the publicity, but I believe he is trying to make up for his failings earlier in his life and he just speaks a lot without thinking first.'

Singh said he was moved to carry out his personal protest because he believed Trump had been attracting support from white supremacists.

He repeated claims which have surfaced of robocalls being made by white supremacist groups urging support for Trump and said he wanted to see the Republican frontrunner disavow such support.

'I know that through robo calling, these white supremacists are showing their support for him and saying things like "America needs to be free of Muslims".

'Trump should speak out against White supremacists and say he doesn't want their support. He should not allow them to support him and distance himself.

'I did shout "why do you give shelter to white supremacists and why do we have white supremacists robocalling in Iowa?"

'Since 9/11 attacks on Muslims as well as Sikhs who have been wrongly identified as Muslims have increased.

Speaking to the two protesters being removed, the billionaire businessman said: 'Bye. Bye. Goodbye'

Once the man wearing the turban and another protester were escorted out by security, video of the rally shows the audience erupting with loud applause, cheers and chants of 'USA! USA! USA!'

'Those people who cannot tell the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh should be embarrassed of themselves.

'But I stand with the Muslims and I will always do what I can to stop the hating.'

THE TURBAN - A SIGN OF FAITH Men and women who have been initiated into the Sikh faith are known as the Khasla - and the turban is the most visible sign. In order to become a Sikh and join the Khalsa, people need to follow the Five Ks: Kesh: uncut hair as a mark of holiness and submission to God's will. Wearing a turban is a

Kangha: a small wooden comb in the hair as a sign of cleanliness

Kara: a steel bracelet, a reminder that they are connected to God

Kachhera: short cotton underwear, more practical for daily life than the traditional dhoti worn in India

Kirpaan: a sword, for protection. At puberty an initiation ceremony called the Dastaar Bandi (wearing of the first turban) takes place and young Sikhs are allowed to join the Khalsa. Advertisement

He said it was part of the Sikh tradition to stand up to injustice, adding: 'We have to end all hate. We must not let it grow in America or anywhere.'

Singh uses his comedy act for political satire, including an attack on the comedian Jeff Dunham.

Dunham has angered some Sikhs by using a turban-wearing dummy who is supposed to be 'Achmed the dead terrorist', a hapless dead suicide bomber.

Singh added: 'Dunham is a ventriloquist and stand up who has made an obscene amount of money using puppets to make bases stereotypes by packaging it as "family friendly" fare.

'His "terrorist" puppet Achmed is supposed to be satirizing jihads but really just makes ethnic jokes about Muslims.

'I'm all for real satire of jihadis. I loved the Four Lions film, but this is just getting applause for affirming and parading around stereotypes and dehumanizing caricatures.

'There is no connection to Trump in particular here (in the puppet act) other than that both he and Dunham do this dog-whistling to affirm their audience's prejudices.'

At the time of Singh's protest, Trump was speaking about the September 11 terror attacks and the San Bernardino shooting.

'We have radical Islamic terror going on all over the place, all over the world, and we have a president that won't say it,' the GOP front-runner said.

'When planes fly into the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going.

'When people are shooting their friends in California, when they're shooting their friends ...'

Trump abruptly stopped speaking as Singh stood up to reveal a sign reading 'Stop Hate'.

The crowd then erupted in chants of 'Trump! Trump! Trump!' and grew louder.

Prior to his campaign event's start, an announcement has been read in the last few months telling his supporters to 'not harm a protester' but instead chant 'Trump, Trump, Trump.'

According to ABC News, the chants alert security that a protester is in the audience.

Next Monday voters will head to the polls as many of the presidential candidates have spent time campaigning in the Hawkeye state.
The out-of-hours NHS hotline is unsafe for seriously ill children, a bombshell report reveals.

The 111 service puts parents at the mercy of a box-ticking process that can miss life-threatening symptoms.

The shocking finding comes in a report into the death of a baby from sepsis. It said William Mead might be alive today had a 111 call handler realised just how ill he was.

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William Mead, pictured with parents Paul and Melissa, died from sepsis after a series of medical blunders including an NHS 111 service operator not realising how serious his illness was

That blunder is only one of 16 that contributed to the tragedy. But many of the problems are nationwide, the report says, because:

GPs are pressured not to prescribe antibiotics, including to children;

They are reluctant to refer sick patients to crowded casualty units;

Patients suffer loss of continuity when taken ill over a weekend;

Out-of-hours doctors cannot access patients medical records, often leaving them in the dark.

The report is the result of a gruelling year-long campaign by Paul and Melissa Mead to know the truth about their son Williams death in December 2014.

NHS England concluded that a doctor or a nurse taking their call would probably have seen the need for urgent action. But most 111 staff, who use computer scripts, are not medically trained.

Other problems included the failure of GPs to carry out basic checks for signs of sepsis, and to give William the antibiotics that could have saved his life.

Mrs Mead said no words could explain her familys profound loss. She called for lessons to be learnt from Williams death.

William, pictured with his 29-year-old mother, was just over one year old when he died

Tory MP Andrew Percy said: This is deeply concerning. A service that cannot identify serious illness in children in clearly not fit for purpose.

NHS England need to take urgent action to ensure that 111 is safe for children. They need to get a grip.

The Mail has already revealed how the 111 non-emergency hotline was in meltdown in many areas of the country, and linked to the deaths of two children.

Targets had been missed for seven months in a row and, at times, up to 75 per cent of calls were going unanswered.

The report into Williams death, which has not been published but which has been seen by the Mail, paints a worrying picture of NHS out-of-hours care.

It tells how the one-year-old saw GPs six times in the months leading up to his death  but none spotted the chest infection that ultimately cost him his life.

It admits that a deteriorating child like William is not easily identified through the structured questioning used by the 111 call handlers.

The call made by Williams mother was found to have been poorly dealt with by the call adviser, who would have had just a few weeks of training.

He was deemed to have been hurried at times, interrupting on occasion and failing to notice that Williams mother was describing abnormal symptoms such as the limpness in his arms and the fact he was staring into space.

The call handler also failed to realise the significance of Williams loud crying in the background.

The computer programme did not cover this nor the drop in body temperature from very high to low, which is an indicator of sepsis.

Disturbingly, the report found that even when operating properly, the 111 system would not pick up Williams illness.

For us it is a debilitating life sentence that we re-live every day

This failing was identified as a root cause of Williams death in the initial ambulance service report.

That report said the tick-box style system, called NHS Pathways, does not appear to be sensitive to a number of key factors  specifically, the deteriorating signs and symptoms of the paediatric patient, the assessment on pain, and sepsis red flags.

NHS England now plans to issue warnings to health chiefs to act over the dangerous flaws in the 111 system.

It will also demand action over the pressure on primary care in relation to antibiotic prescribing, referrals to secondary care [accident and emergency] and workload.

Bosses have been told to put in place record sharing measures to help out-of-hours doctors make better decisions.

But Williams parents are calling for the NHS to go further  and take urgent steps to raise awareness of the signs of sepsis throughout primary care.

The ombudsman warned in 2014 that the Health Service was failing to spot sepsis, which is where the bodys immune system cannot overcome infection.

SIXTEEN CHANCES AND SIXTEEN BLUNDERS: THE MISTAKES IN-DEPTH The report into Williams death identifies 16 major mistakes in his care after he started coughing and repeatedly vomiting in September 2014. The GPs involved were only identified by letters. The mistakes were: A general failure to listen to parents during GP appointments.

All the GPs who examined William on total of six occasions should have realised his repeated attendances were a sign of serious illness.

At a GP appointment on November 12, GP X  not his regular doctor  diagnosed infection with possible asthma. William did not have asthma, and treatment was inappropriate.

Follow-up checks never made on whether a prescribed inhaler was helping Williams cough.

GP Z failed to spot a key sign of infection  green phlegm in Williams vomit  at appointment on November 21. This was one of a number of opportunities to treat the infection which ultimately caused Williams death.

On December 12 GP Z failed to take Williams heart rate  which could have alerted him to a sepsis diagnosis.

GP Z failed to record his temperature, which was 40C. GP Z should have referred William to hospital, based on his history.

GP Z should have referred William to hospital, based on his history.

GP Z should have given William antibiotics. National pressure on GPs not to prescribe may have affected his and other GPs decision making.

Advice to parents about bringing him back to the surgery if his symptoms grew worse was vague and unhelpful.

A 111 call handler failed to ask key questions when mother called on December 13 as William sickened further. His temperature had fallen significantly.

Call handler failed to refer complex call to a clinically trained staff.

A clinically trained person, the report said, would have responded to Williams loud crying in the background.

111 system itself not sensitive enough to detect the signs of serious illness of this type in a young child.

An out-of-hours doctor calls at 6:52pm on the 13th but fails to realise big drop in temperature indicates serious illness.

Doctor did not get access to Williams recordsanother missed opportunity to spot he was seriously ill. Advertisement

Yet little appears to have changed and the report notes many GPs are unaware of the danger signs.

Mrs Mead, 29 and from Cornwall, said knowing Williams life could have been saved was the worst thing in the world.

She added: For us there are no words that can explain the profound loss that we live with after losing William. For us it is a debilitating life sentence that we re-live every day.

She added: We took William to multiple health professionals with a persistent cough. There were multiple occasions in the lead up to Williams death where there were missed opportunities to treat William.

Mrs Mead there 'were no words' to express the parents' loss and that she and her husband hope similar mistakes are never made again following the emergence of the NHS England report

We hope those involved in Williams treatment will never make the same mistakes again. We also hope the recommendations made improve systems to ensure other lives are not lost.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: This is a tragic case and our sympathies are with William Meads family.

'We expect the NHS organisations involved to continue to work with the family to make sure the tragic events leading up to Williams death are not repeated.

Lindsay Scott, director of nursing with NHS England in the South West, said: On behalf of all NHS organisations involved, I would like to apologise publicly to Mr and Mrs Mead.

She said lessons would be learned and that systems that underpin patient safety would be improved as a result of Williams death.

Its clear in looking back that opportunities to intervene more decisively were missed, she added.

THE SILENT KILLER: HOW SEPSIS KILLS THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE EACH YEAR By Ben Spencer, Medical Correspondent for The Daily Mail It claims 37,000 lives in the UK each year. But there is little awareness about sepsis  the condition that killed William Mead. It is thought that 1,000 of those 37,000 deaths are among children  far more than the number killed by meningitis. Yet, while most parents now know the signs of meningitis after years of awareness campaigns, there is much ignorance, even in the medical profession, about sepsis. Known as the silent killer because it is so hard to spot, it is a life-threatening illness caused when the body is overcome by infection. The immune system goes into overdrive, setting off a series of reactions including widespread inflammation, swelling and blood clotting. This can lead to a significant decrease in blood pressure, which can mean the blood supply to vital organs such as the brain, heart and kidneys is reduced. If not treated quickly, sepsis can lead to multiple organ failure and death. Each year in the UK, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people are admitted to hospital with sepsis and around 37,000 will die. It is not the same as septicaemia, which is also called blood poisoning. This occurs when a bacterial infection, such as in the lungs or skin, enters the bloodstream. This is dangerous because the bacteria and their toxins can be carried through the bloodstream to all the bodys organs. Left untreated, septicaemia can quickly progress to sepsis. If diagnosed early sepsis is fairly easy to treat  usually with antibiotics and fluids. Those treated in the golden hour  the hour after the first symptoms of sepsis appear  are most likely to survive. But every hour of delay increases the chance of death by 6 per cent. Despite the repeated warning of campaigners, British doctors remain spectacularly bad at picking up the warning signs, and sepsis remains the leading cause of avoidable death in the UK. Last month the NHS announced an action plan in an attempt to tackle the problem. A spokesman for the Sepsis Trust said of the report into Williams death: We welcome this report and its acknowledgement that more must be done to improve the way our health system deals with sepsis. Awareness is the number one cure for sepsis. Advertisement

Nothing can prepare you for seeing your baby in a coffin - but the worst thing is knowing he could have been saved

By Frances Hardy for The Daily Mail

It was the day that Melissa and Paul Mead should have been getting married. But, instead of exchanging happy vows with their year-old son William at their side, they were organising the little boys funeral.

One of the hardest things was typing baby coffins into Google then choosing a coffin for our child. It had to be beautiful; worthy of him, says Melissa.

It was just 30 inches long; white and satin lined. Nothing can prepare you for seeing your child in a coffin. Every time I went to the chapel of rest Id cuddle him and talk to him and cry.

On the day they were supposed to get married, Paul and Melissa Mead organised William's (pictured) funeral

He looked so perfect I couldnt believe he wouldnt wake up. The hardest thing was closing the lid and saying my last goodbye.

When you lose a child you lose their future and your future. Theres no tomorrow. You just get through to the end of each day.

Well never know whether William would have been nerdy or sporty; a lawyer, a doctor, an astronaut... His future was snuffed out and all we have are memories.

He was such a lovely, contented baby; cheeky and giggly. Every moment with him was a pleasure. He made being parents easy. He made love easy. I couldnt believe he was mine.

Hed taken his first steps the week before he passed away. Hed already learnt to clap his hands and he was starting to climb the stairs.

Hed begun to express himself by babbling. I took him swimming every week  I used to swim for the county  and hed just done his first dive. Id started to read to him. He was just beginning to change from a baby to a toddler and he was so happy with life.

SIGNS OF SEPSIS IN A CHILD: A child may be critically ill with sepsis if he or she: Feels abnormally cold to touch

Looks mottled, bluish or has very pale skin

Has a rash that does not fade when you press it

Is breathing very fast

Has a fit or convusion

Is very lethargic or difficult to wake up

If a child has one or more of these signs call 999 and say you are worried about sepsis Source: Sepsis Trust Advertisement

Now hes gone I dont fear death any more because when my time comes I know Ill be with my son.

But the worst thing in the world is knowing that his life could have been saved.

William Mead lived for just 382 days, but his death on Sunday, December 14, 2014 from sepsis could have been avoided.

Melissa and Pauls only child died as a result of a catalogue of errors and missed opportunities by doctors and the NHS 111 helpline.

Although he had been ill for three months and his parents  diligent, articulate and caring  had taken him repeatedly to their doctors, vital warning signs were missed.

These oversights were compounded when first the 111 helpline and then an out-of-hours doctor also failed to pick up on the signs that he was grievously ill.

There were a staggering string of 16 failures in his care, each one of them contributing to his final fatal illness.

Yet had William been correctly diagnosed and treated in hospital, there is a very good chance, the expert witness at his inquest stated, that he would still be here today.

Instead he developed pneumonia, and fluid and an abscess on his lung, which led to his death from sepsis.

Today, after a protracted battle to uncover the failings that led to Williams death, Melissa campaigns to raise funds for, and awareness of, sepsis.

I will never come to terms with what happened, she says. It was needless, a chronology of errors and missed opportunities.

We were told by experts so many times that everything was normal, and we had no reason to disbelieve them. We have been let down with the most catastrophic outcome and I am angry. Who wouldnt be?

One of the hardest things was typing baby coffins into Google then choosing a coffin for our child

But I try not to let the anger consume me because it is a quick route to self-destruction.

Ive fought hard for answers and they have been given.

Williams legacy will live on in the recommendations that are made and we hope the same mistakes will never be repeated.

It is now more than a year since William died but for his parents there is no remission from their grief.

Their child was particularly treasured because Melissa, 29, a PA to the director of a finance company, did not believe she would ever become pregnant.

Having had seven operations to remove three ovarian tumours  the first when she was 11  she now has only half an ovary. The chances of conceiving were, and remain, vanishingly small.

But then, after she and Paul, 32, a telecom engineer, had been together for ten years, they discovered she was pregnant.

It was the most wonderful surprise, says Melissa. We never thought it would happen. Id gone to hospital in severe pain and I thought Id got another tumour. But the scan showed I was pregnant.

On November 27, 2013  her birthday  their son was born, the most cherished gift she would ever receive.

He was my miracle baby, the child we never believed wed have. He was everything wed wished for and more, she says.

Today, at their home in Penryn, Cornwall, she clutches a teddy bear that goes almost everywhere with her. Sewn into it, inside a silver heart, are Williams ashes.

All around is evidence of their boy: his first shoes framed above the fireplace, his toys; his smiling face in a thousand happy pictures.

William, pictured left and right, was described as 'bright as a button' before his health deteriorated

Melissa is as voluble as Paul is quiet. They bear their sorrow in very different ways; she cries often while he is silent and stoic.

She recalls the events that led to Williams death: He was as bright as a button, a really healthy little boy, and then he started nursery a couple of days a week in September (2014) while I went back to work part-time.

Towards the end of September he developed a really high fever. He didnt want to eat. I was concerned and we took him to the doctors.

Tonsillitis was diagnosed and William was prescribed antibiotics.

He rallied a little then came out in a pin-prick rash. On October 1 Melissa took him back to the GP.

They diagnosed scarlet fever but because he was already on antibiotics they said there was nothing more they could do, she recalls.

There was a brief respite, then he developed a chesty cough.

By October 13 Melissa and Paul were worried enough to return to the doctor, who seemed unconcerned.

They were reassured that it was just a cough and advised to return if it worsened  which it did. By the first week in November the cough was worse. William was vomiting dark green phlegm, recalls Melissa.

We took him straight back to the doctor who said it was normal for a cough to cause vomiting.

As the month progressed Williams symptoms worsened. His cough persisted; he was now vomiting five or six times a day. His concerned parents took him, once more, to the doctor.

This time a female doctor  not Williams regular GP  listened to his chest and said she heard crackles.

I will never come to terms with what happened...We were told by experts so many times that everything was normal, and we had no reason to disbelieve them

By then he had endured the cough for six weeks. She prescribed an asthma inhaler, recalls Melissa, but we now know he didnt have asthma and shouldnt have had the inhaler. Her notes said he just had a cold.

In fact, Williams condition was by then deteriorating rapidly. But his parents, told repeatedly by the doctors in whom they invested their trust that he had only a minor ailment, tried to be reassured.

The symptoms persisted, however. Melissa and Paul sought reassurance from the doctor that his vomiting was not a stomach bug.

We asked, Should he have antibiotics? but were told that he just had a virus.

The diagnosis was, in fact, gravely wide of the mark. As an NHS inquiry has since revealed, William by then had pneumonia and should have been given antibiotics on his second visit to the doctor. Moreover, the inhaler should not have been prescribed.

Instead he should have been referred to a paediatrician for a chest X-ray, which would have disclosed the gravity of his condition.

As it was, the family soldiered on. Subsequent investigations have shown that by this stage fluid had been building up in Williams chest cavity for three or four weeks.

William, meanwhile, had his routine vaccinations. His parents, who stress that this did not worsen his condition, now know the vaccinations should have been deferred because he was ill.

However, no concerns were raised at the time by doctors and William deteriorated further.

On the Friday before he died Melissa took him to his nursery. But at lunchtime they called to say he was really clingy and had a temperature of 38.4C (36-37C is normal) and wouldnt eat.

Paul rang for an emergency doctors appointment which revealed that his son, feverish and by then extremely poorly, had a temperature of 40.1C.

However, the doctor who examined him failed to monitor his heart rate. This was a key omission as a high heart rate would have alerted him to the severity of the little boys condition, which in turn would have prompted an urgent hospital referral.

CALL FOR 'URGENT MEDICAL HELP': HOW THE NHS 111 SERVICE WORKS The 111 helpline was launched in Spring 2013 to provide round the clock help to the public in an attempt to prevent them going to A&E. On the NHS website it states you should use the service if 'you urgently need medical help or advice but it's not a life-threatening situation.' They say it is staffed by a team of fully trained advisers, supported by experienced nurses and paramedics. However, a whistleblower revealed earlier this year that the staff have just six weeks training and read off a series of questions from a computer screen which generates medical advice based on their answers. Advertisement

So the blunders accrued and little Williams life was now in peril.

Paul asked, Should I take him to hospital? but the doctor said, Dont worry, its nothing grisly.

But I dont think you could get anything more grisly than sepsis, says Melissa. That night, she sat with her son and soothed him as he cried.

The next morning William was lethargic and vomiting again; his parents fears mounted.

By 4pm Melissa was concerned enough to ring the 111 helpline. Here again, the family was failed as yet more vital red flags went unheeded.

Melissa says now: The call handler was not medically trained and he failed to recognise this was a complex case which should have been referred to a doctor.

In our view the tick box triage system is not suitable for babies and young children who arent yet speaking.

There is only scope for parents to answer yes or no and no room for explanation or expansion.

One of the key signs of sepsis  which claims 44,000 lives a year in the UK  is a high temperature which then plummets, but the 111 computer system does not recognise this. Once again, warnings were missed.

Melissa believes the system should be changed to accommodate the symptoms of sepsis, and believes only operators who have clinical training  either as nurses or paramedics  should deal with calls about babies and very young children.

As it was, the 111 operator concluded there was no emergency and booked a call from a doctor, which came almost three hours later  by which time William had gone to sleep.

William pictured on a day out with his father. His condition was missed by doctors as well as the 111 service

During the conversation that ensued, Melissa asked the doctor if, in his professional opinion it would be better to leave William to sleep, or wake him to take him to the health centre.

The doctor advised that the little boy be left to sleep. The next morning, Melissa confronted the unimaginable.

I went to check William. It was dark in his room as the blackout blinds were drawn. I stroked his cheek. It was warm.

He did not move. I put my arms through the bars of his cot and his arm was cool to the touch. He did not move.

I stroked the side of his body and it was stiff. He was gone.

I screamed and screamed to Paul, Hes dead!. Paul lifted him out of his cot and he was in rigor.

We phoned 999 and they talked us through CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), and the ambulance arrived in three minutes.

They treated us with the utmost dignity. I cannot give them enough credit. They tried their bestthen one of them said, Im sorry love, but hes gone. And that was it.

She is choked by tears. Thereafter she and Paul lived through a waking nightmare.

At hospital we were allowed to sit with him for a couple of hours then they said they were taking him to the mortuary.

I said Id take him, and I carried him through the hospital. I asked the mortician to look after him. I dont remember much after that.

Her voice trails away into sobs. The day on which their wedding was scheduled  when William was to have worn a new suit and stood hand-in-hand with them at Falmouth Register Office  went by unmarked under a pall of misery.

All the milestones that are happening for other parents are losses for us. We are forever reminded of what should have been

Christmas passed in a blur of mourning. There followed the ordeal of the inquest, after which the investigations into Williams needless death began.

The whole process was thorough and transparent. I cannot praise the NHS enough for this, says Melissa.

But it has been like fighting the hardest battle of your life with the worst possible outcome, because William is still not here.

Today, a year on, there has been no closure, no abatement in their sense of loss.

All the milestones that are happening for other parents are losses for us. We are forever reminded of what should have been, says Melissa.

When their beloved William died, time was frozen. All round them are reminders of their boy.

His car seat is still in the car, his sippy cup still on our bedside table, his little coat still on its peg. We have no need to move them. Seeing them is hard but they also bring comfort.

Its very sad when I have to dust his toys, when theyre still in their pile, unmoved. When I look in the rearview mirror and his car seat is empty its sad too but we would not change it.

She takes comfort, too, from writing a blog, amotherwithoutachild, about William. She hopes, through her writing, lives will be saved. Through it too, her son attains a kind of immortality.

Meanwhile they live from day to day in a fog of grief.

Melissa takes medication for insomnia, anxiety and depression.

A team of supportive mental health workers provide the scaffolding that keeps her from collapsing, she says.

Yet the sheer effort of getting through each day sometimes almost overwhelms her.

I dont want to take my life, but I do want to be with my son, she says. Its so difficult to understand that these two parallel thoughts can coexist, but they do.

Our lives will always be incomplete. The most important part of them is missing.

'I know we can go on, get married, study, work, go on holidays, try to live a life, but William was crucial to all that; pivotal, the foundation of everything.

And now hes gone and its difficult to continue without him.
Despite the withdrawals, the outfits are still on sale on UK version of the site

The costumes have attracted criticism as 'distasteful and inhuman'

Carnival costumes for children to dress up as wartime refugees have been taken off the German edition of Amazon's website over fears they offend refugees.

Although the outfits have now been removed from other amazon stores including Italy, they are still available in the UK.

Pictured holding a suitcase, the child models are pictured wearing old fashioned clothing, intimidating wartime civilian wear which some people have said mocks the plight of migrants.

Although the outfits have now been removed from other amazon stores including Italy, they are still available in the UK. (Costumes pictured on the German version of Amazon's website)

The subject of refugees is extremely sensitive in Germany, especially in the wake of New Year sex attacks allegedly carried out by foreigners who entered the country as asylum seekers.

Instances of suspected racism quickly attract attention by those keen to prevent right-wing groups using them to stoke further hatred of foreigners.

As a result, when the Amazon's offering of refugee costumes was posted online it quickly attracted massive amounts of criticism from online commentators who branded the costumes 'inhuman and distasteful'.

The costumes were being offered less than a fortnight before carnival celebrations take place in Germany and Switzerland.

The story was published in German and Austrian media.

Those that defended the children's costume on offer pointed out that it was nothing to do with the current wave of refugees, and is intended to represent a refugee during World War II.

The costumes were being offered less than a fortnight before carnival celebrations take place in Germany and Switzerland

The costumes were also removed in Italy after complaints of insensitivity in light of Europe's ongoing migration crisis

But that did not disguise the fact that most critics found the costume offensive. 'Are you not ashamed?', asked one cyberspace commentator.

Another commentator said: 'Tasteless, the suffering of refugees, no matter of what origin, is not a carnival theme.'

Millions of children were turned into refugees during the conquest of Europe and huge tracts of Russia during WWII.

Many of them were murdered in concentration camps, and only a lucky few managed to escape to the UK and America.

The decision over the weekend to remove the items from the German Amazon was later followed by other regional Amazon online stores.

The costumes were also removed in Italy after complaints of insensitivity in light of Europe's ongoing migration crisis.

Oliviero Forti, director of the immigration division of Caritas, one of Italy's largest Catholic charities, denounced sales of the costume as 'shameless' on the basis that refugee children were dying every day attempting to cross into Europe.

He called on the UK retailer 'Fancy Me' to donate costume sale proceeds toward life vests or other aid items for refugee children.
A right-wing Dutch politician has called for male Islamic refugees to be locked in asylum centres to protect women from 'testosterone bombs' unleashing 'sexual terrorism' on Europe.

Geert Wilders, leader of the extremist Freedom Party, claims the measure is necessary to stem the 'rape epidemic' as Muslim refugees wage 'a sexual Jihad' on European women.

The right-wing politician blamed the 'open-door policy' of leaders in Europe for endangering women, and branded Islamic men arriving 'a testosterone bomb'.

Geert Wilders, leader of the extremist Freedom Party, wants refugees to be locked in asylum centres to stem the 'rape epidemic' as Muslim refugees wage 'a sexual Jihad' on European women

He said: All women are fair game. I call the perpetrators testosterone bombs. We have seen what they are capable of and it's sexual terrorism and sexual jihad.'

'Its happening everywhere where they let in hundreds of thousands of mostly single men from a culture of oppression of women,' he said on a YouTube video he released about his proposal.

He goes on to say: 'The pereptrators come from a culture where women are inferior beings, a culture of honour killings and humiliation of women, a culture established by a so-called profit who had sex slaves and raped a nine year old girl called Aisha.

'It is time to face that truth about Islam as well, and anyone who looks away is guilty.'

The politician has also been handing out self-defence canisters of spray laced with red paint to women to protect themselves from attack by 'Islamic testosterone bombs'.

He delivered the spray to the blue-collar town of Spijkenisse where he was surrounded by a large crowd, flanked by bodyguards and police.

Wilders, whose party has 12 members in the Dutch parliament, claimed women in Holland were afraid of being attacked following the mass assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne, Germany.

Controversial right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, centre, handed out canisters of spray laced with red paint to women in the blue-collar town of Spijkenisse as part of a publicity stunt earlier today

Mr Wilders claimed if he wins next year's Dutch election he will close Holland's borders immediately

Pictured: One of the canisters of spray laced with red paint that Wilders is handing out to women

However, a small group of protesters greeted Wilders' 'publicity stunt with chants and banners proclaiming 'refugees welcome, racism is not.

Wilders shook hands with supporters before offering an impromptu speech. He said if he was elected Prime Minister next year, he would 'close the borders immediately and have no more asylum seekers'.

He added: 'We just cannot afford to have more. The Dutch people in a big majority don't want it and we cannot afford it and it makes our people and women only more unsafe.'

Wilders' party currently holds 12 seats in the 150-member lower house, but a poll by Ipsos on Thursday suggested the Freedom Party would win 32 seats now.

The Prime Minister Mark Rutte's Liberals were second with 26 seats, down from its current tally of 40. The online survey of 1,061 voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent. Other polls have Wilders even further ahead.

Migrants wrapped in blankets try to keep warm this morning as they cross the Macedonian -Serbian border in the southern Serbian village Miratovac

Two girls wrap in blankets and hats in the freezing temperatures in Serbia as they cross the border with their families

Wilders is known for his anti Islamic rhetoric which has been far more extreme than US presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

In his video suggesting asylum seekers should be locked up, he added: 'As long as our women are endangered by the Islamic testosterone bombs, I propose that we lock the male asylum seekers up in the asylum centres.

'For them, they have to be closed institutions so that not a single male asylum seeker can still go on the streets and our women are finally protected.'

Dutch authorities prosecuted Wilders in 2011 on hate speech charges after comparing Islam to fascism and demanding a ban on the Koran. He was acquitted at the time, but he is still facing further charges over his highly controversial comments.

Wilders extreme views are being replicated in other European nations, with Marine Le Pen's National Front in France also receiving a surge in popularity.

Leontine Maris was one of the first women to get a spray from Wilders on Saturday.

Migrants marched in the French port city of Calais during a demonstration to support migrants and refugees who live in the 'jungle'

One protester waves his hands in the air as another holds a megaphone during the protest in Calais today

Refugees in Miratovac, on the Serbian-Croatian border prepare for the next leg of their journey north

The immigrants are facing sub-zero temperatures amid harsh winter conditions in Serbia today, pictured

The 53-year-old said she votes for him though she disagrees with some of his more extreme comments. She said she was afraid not just of migrants, but also Dutch men.

She said: 'The whole society is going down the drain.'

University of Amsterdam political science professor Wouter van der Brug: 'The tendencies across Europe are very similar. Across Europe, right-wing populist parties are picking up support as a result of the asylum crisis that we're facing now, and also as a result of terrorist attacks.

'Wilders is getting support across different layers of society.'

However, Wilders' opponents are confident the controversial politician's support will collapse when the Dutch people cast their ballots next year.

Lodewijk Asscher, Deputy Prime Minister and a Labor Party member said: 'It is hard to talk about a tipping point because we have seen this phenomenon in the polls before. Geert Wilders has lost the last three elections. That is something we tend to forget.'

Large numbers of migrants continue to make the perilous journey despite the risks posed by the weather
Feel the brain freeze!

One of the co-founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream has dedicated a custom-made flavor to Bernie Sanders, and it carries a message any supporter of the Democratic presidential candidate could relate to.

Ben Cohen, who, like Sanders, was born in Brooklyn but made a name for himself in Vermont, revealed his new flavor on Monday.

'Nothing is so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come,' Cohen tweeted.

'A participatory flavor including a graphic description of what's wrong in our country (in 3D frozen confectionary form) and a tribute to the only presidential candidate who has offered solutions that will actually fix the problems,' the back label reads

The Bernie Sanders campaign for president paid for the ingredients, services and supplies for Bernie's Yearning, but Ben Cohen volunteered his time to make it

Bernie's Yearning is a tub of plain mint ice cream topped with a 'thick disk of solid chocolate,' which Cohen said represents the 'huge majority of economic gains that have gone to the top 1% since the end of the recession.'

'Beneath it, the rest of us,' the ice cream aficionado wrote.

The ice cream company that Cohen founded along with Jerry Greenfield in 1978, and which the creators sold in 2000, was quick to distance itself from the new flavor, tweeting 'This was created by Ben as a citizen. The company is not involved.'

A picture tweeted by Ben Cohen shows him making the small-batch Bernie dessert in his kitchen

Ben Cohen was born in Brooklyn but made his career in Vermont, just like Bernie Sanders

A Sanders representative told Politico that the Vermont senator's presidential campaign paid for the ingredients, services and supplies for the ice cream, while Cohen and Greenfield volunteered to make the treat in Cohen's kitchen.

Bernie's Yearning will be available in a limited-edition batch of 40 tubs, 25 of which were donated to the Sanders campaign, according to Politico.

There are 'no plans for mass distribution,' the Sanders representative told Politico.

Sanders' main Democratic contender Hillary Clinton has not had a dessert made in her honor yet.
Jeanne and the family dog were stabbed to death

Tammy Modlin and Montana were found shot to death on a bed;

A Florida man has been charged with murdering his girlfriend, her two daughters and the family dog in what police have described as an 'unthinkable, unpreventable, and unpredictable' attack.

Patrick Carlopoli, 27, was arrested in connection to the gruesome triple homicide that played out inside his Fort Myers home early Sunday morning.

Investigators with the Lee County Sheriff's Office say the suspect killed his live-in girlfriend, 37-year-old Tammy Modlin, and her two daughters, 16-year-old Montana Modlin and 3-year-old Jeanne Carlopoli, along with the pet dog that lived with the family at an apartment complex on Iona Lakes Drive.

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Shocking crime: Patrick Carlopoli, 27 (left), has been charged with three counts of homicide in the deaths of his girlfriend, her teenage daughter and his biological daughter, 3-year-old Jeanne Carlopoli (right)

Grisly scene: Tammy Modlin, 37, daughter Montana, 16, and 3-year-old Jeanne were found inside the family's apartment at Iona Lake Apartments in Florida, where police described the scene as 'gruesome'

A police report stated that Mr Carlopoli answered the door to officers with blood on his body and clothes and said of the victims, 'They are in there'

Carlopoli now faces three felony count of homicide, two counts of aggravated child abuse and one con of animal cruelty.

During his initial court appearance Monday, a judge ordered the suspect held in Lee County Jail without bond, reported The News-Press.

According to a sheriff's report, Patrick Carlopoli called 911 at around 4am Sunday saying there were three bodies inside his apartment.

Responding deputies noted that the 27-year-old man had 'visible blood splatter' on his body and clothes when he answered the door and pointed them inside the apartment, saying, 'They are in there.'

According to the report, Tammy and Montana Modlin were found shot to death on a bed with a gun resting between them.

Three-year-old Jeanne Carlopoli and the family dog were found nearby suffering from fatal stab wounds inflicted by a sharp object. The girl would have celebrated her fourth birthday next month, according to WINK News.

Confession: Carlopoli allegedly told the deputies, unprompted, that he shot his 'wife'

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott described the scene inside the apartment at 15224 Iona Lakes Drive as gruesome and complicated.

Carlopoli allegedly told the deputies, unprompted, that he shot his 'wife.' According to investigators, however, he and Modlin were dating but were not married.

Montana Modlin was the woman's daughter from a previous relationship, while Jeanne Carlopoli was Tammy and Patricks biological child.
Children are being denied medicines that could save their life because of the crusade against antibiotic resistance, according to the NHS report into William Meads death.

GPs are under constant pressure to reduce antibiotic prescribing, the report says.

As a result, some are refusing to hand them out, even when it is clinically indicated  in other words, where the patient genuinely needs them.

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GPs are under constant pressure to reduce antibiotic prescriptions to children even if it could save lives such as in the case of William Mead, pictured right (left picture posed by model)

William would probably have survived if a GP had given him antibiotics.

The report found that the pressure not to prescribe antibiotics might well have had an impact on the decision making of the doctors involved in the case.

It is the first acknowledgment that the NHS campaign against the overuse of antibiotics could mean that children who need the life-saving drugs are being deprived of them.

And it will lead to urgent questions over the level of pressure on GPs not to hand out the life-saving medicines.

Doctors have been given a series of apocalyptic warnings by health chiefs and politicians about over-use of the drugs.

They have been told that antibiotic resistance is a potential public health catastrophe that would wipe out modern medicine as we know it.

Doctors have been told antibiotic resistance is so serious it poses as big a threat as terrorism (file picture)

They have been told antibiotic resistance is so serious it poses as big a threat as terrorism.

There have even been suggestions that GPs could face the sack  or have their budgets slashed  for handing the drugs out too much.

The report into Williams death told how GPs failed to give him antibiotics on three occasions in the weeks before his death, even though he was showing signs of infection.

And it concluded that the national pressure on GPs not to prescribe antibiotics may have affected their decisions on giving him the medicines that would have saved his life  even though none of the GPs in Williams case explicitly cited this as a factor.

In a finding which it says has national implications, the report states: It is clear from this investigation  and also from ongoing conversations with GPs  that they are under constant pressure to reduce antibiotic prescribing and referrals to acute hospital A&Es.

Again, the GPs did not cite this directly as an explicit issue from them.

But it is the panels view that GPs feel this pressure acutely, and it might well have had an impact on their decision making and practice in this case.

The report says the national pressure on doctors not to prescribe antibiotics might well lead them not to do so when in fact it might be clinically indicated.

Many experts fear that antibiotics are being taken so freely that they are losing their power to fight deadly infections, fuelling the rise of a new breed of superbugs which cannot be treated.

Part of the problem is that antibiotics, which are designed to fight bacteria, are routinely given to treat minor illnesses, or even viral infections such as colds and flu against which they are powerless.

Prime Minister David Cameron, pictured, has echoed doctors' warnings about antibiotic resistence

This gives the germs a chance to evolve to become resistant.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, the countrys chief medical officer, has issued repeated warnings about their overuse, claiming it should be viewed as seriously as terrorism.

She has warned that in the future, patients could routinely die from scratches, hip replacements or caesareans after developing an infection. She even suggested modern medicine as we know it was at risk.

A panel of doctors urged parents not to question doctors decisions not to hand out antibiotics.

Her message has been echoed by David Cameron.

The Prime Minister has warned that resistance to antibiotics could send medicine back to the Dark Ages.

Others, though, have warned that pressure to withhold antibiotics could have tragic consequences.

The idea of penalising GPs for handing out antibiotics was branded counter-productive and unhelpful by the Royal College of GPs.
Cult leader Warren Jeffs still receives 300 letters a day to his prison cell and when he first got locked up he received up to 2,000

Notorious sect leader Warren Jeffs still receives up to 300 letters a day - despite being in jail, a court has heard.

A federal trial against two polygamous towns in Utah and Arizona heard testimonies from an FBI agent and prison mail room administrator , who revealed the influence Jeffs still wields over the two neighboring communities.

The mailroom employee described the huge volume of letters that Jeffs still gets to his Texas cell and how he has tried to send coded messages to his followers.

Employee Jennifer Smith said Jeffs would receive 1,000 to 2,000 letters per day when he was first locked up.

Jeffs is serving a life term after being convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides.

He is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints, who practice polygamy and whose members sometimes don't use their legal names if their mothers become the 'spiritual' wife of a new man.

The contents of some of the letters to Jeffs were read out to the courtroom.

One from then-Colorado city mayor George M Barlow, was sent in 2012 and spoke about a police chief who was nearing retirement and sought advice from Jeffs on a replacement.

Jeffs, who is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints (some of whose members are pictured above) is serving life after being convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides

The testimonies from prison employee Jennifer Smith also revealed that some of Jeff's letters have been halted for being illegible and potentially 'coded'

The court also heard that Jeffs received a letter in 2013 from Curtis Cooke, a deputy marshal in Hildale and Colorado City, reported The Salt Lake Tribune.

In the letter, Cooke talked of his family life and expressed his loyalty to Jeffs.

The trial against the two towns of Hildale and Colorado City concerns the Justice Departments allegations that the towns and their police force colluded with the FLDS Church to discriminate against non-members and is on its third day as of today.

The federal trial which is in its third day is against two polygamous towns of Hildale and Colorado City (pictured above) over allegations about collusion between the FLDS Church and their police force

The testimony from Smith shone a light on how Texas officials monitor Jeffs from his prison cell.

She also revealed that a few of Jeff's outgoing letters were halted because they were illegiable.

Staff can refuse outgoing and ingoing mail that isn't legible or does not make sense, as these letters could be written in code.

However, Smith didn't specify whether Jeff's letters were coded or not.




An Irish comedian has been praised for his kindness and generosity after donating $50,000 to a foundation set up by the family of a young mother of two who tragically died after allegedly being knocked down by teenage joyriders.

Sarah Paino, 24, who was 32 weeks pregnant, died at the scene in Hobart on Friday around 1am, when they allegedly crashed into her car.

Brendan O'Carroll, who is the star and creator of the very successful Mrs Browns Boys TV comedy, heard about the tragedy while he was appearing on Channel 10 news show The Project, and then offered to donate $50,000 to the family live on air.

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Brendan O'Carroll heard about the tragedy while he was appearing on Channel 10 news show The Project

Ms Painos unborn baby  who was named Caleb yesterday  survived and was delivered in hospital where he remains in a stable condition in intensive care.

She had just dropped her partner to work before her car was crashed into by a stolen Toyota RAV4.

A fundraising effort was set up for her partner, Daniel Stirling, and the couples other child, Jordan, 2, who was also in the car, but survived the crash with minor injuries.

OCarroll is in Australia as part of the Mrs Brown's Boys tour of Australia and New Zealand, and performed in Hobart in 2014.

Hobart has been very good to us, and we want to get the chance to be good back he said.

He pledged $50,000 to help the family after being 'touched' by tragedy

Sarah Paino, 24, who was 32 weeks pregnant, died at the scene in Hobart, pictured with her first born son Jordan

I was really touched by the piece you did on Daniel (Stirling) in Hobart,' Mr O'Carroll told The Project's hosts.

'Were very much a family (on the show), so if its OK with you guys through Channel 10, as the Brown family wed like to donate 50 grand to that fund, OCarroll said on The Project.

Well be out to do the show in Hobart and make you guys smile, but in the meantime wed like to do this.

Ms Paino, 24, died at the scene while her two-year-old son, Jordan, who was also in the car, survived the crash with minor injuries

OCarroll is in Australia as part of his Mrs Brown's Boys tour of Australia and New Zealand, and performed in Hobart in 2014

The Project had been reporting on an online fund raising campaign for the family that had wielded over $150,000, before OCarroll was then moved to make his donation.

When thanked by presenter Waleed Aly for OCarrolls extraordinary gesture, the Irish comedian said: Its our pleasure.

Its OCarrolls second impressive act of kindness of the year after he paid for for the burial of a Polish man who remained in a morgue two weeks after being found dead on Christmas Day in Ennis, Co Clare, Ireland.

The Project presenter Waleed Ali (centre) thanked O'Carroll (left) for his extraordinary gesture
The parents of a two-year-old boy who went missing in July have been named suspects in the case.

Jessica Mitchell and Deorr Kunz Sr reported the disappearance of their son, Deorr Kunz Jr, at a campsite in Idaho last summer, claiming they believed he was abducted.

But after half a year of investigations, police have concluded Deorr's parents are being 'less than truthful' about the circumstances of his disappearance.

On Monday, Lemhi County Sheriff Lynn Bowerman said police strongly suspect the couple know whether Deorr Jr is dead or alive, and where he is.

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Suspects: Jessica Mitchell, 25, and Deorr Kunz Sr are now the focus of the police investigation into missing two-year-old boy Deorr Kunz Jr who disappeared in July. Police believe the parents know where he is

Deorr Kunz, pictured here with his mother Jessica, disappeared on July 10 from an Idaho Falls campsite

No arrests have been made or warrants issued, Fox reports.

The case made national headlines over summer and widespread searches for the missing toddler.

Deorr Jr disappeared on July 10 from Timber Creek Reservoir campsite in Leodore, Idaho, where he was staying with his parents, grandfather and a family friend.

After he was reported missing, multiple agencies conducted searches around the campsite and beyond, using sonar technology to scour a nearby reservoir and wolf den.

However, police found no sign of the child.

Baffled by the case, Bowerman spoke to Fox News in July: Weve literally torn that country apart and found absolutely not one clue.

We conducted an exhaustive search of the area, which included eight agencies, multiple dog search groups and well over 100 people.

The search, which also involved horses and helicopters, covered a 2.5-mile radius around the campsite.

The team used sonar imaging equipment to search the reservoir - half a mile from where Deorr was last seen.

Police also searched a nearby wolf den, home to about 15 wolves, in case the toddler had been dragged there.

Searches of a nearby reservoir revealed no clues as to where the toddler (pictured in a family photo) could be

When he was reported missing, Deorr's parents said they believed he was abducted from the campsite

At the time, Deorr's parents gave their version of events to news outlets.

They said they left Deorr with his grandfather while they went exploring - but the grandfather believed the boy was with his parents.

Deorr would have been alone for between 20 and 45 minutes before anyone noticed he was missing, according to their account.

The parents volunteered to take polygraph tests though they were not being considered suspects.

Police dismissed the suggestion that Deorr was abducted early on because no other campers were seen in the area at the time he disappeared.

Police have said they dont have any evidence that Deorr was kidnapped.

The family were camping about 40 meters from a fast-flowing creek that empties into the Timber Creek Reservoir.

Volunteers, helicopters, horses and dogs took part in the police search spanning 2.5 miles

More than 100 people searched the Idaho campsite where Deorr mysteriously vanished on July 10

The family have been handing out flyers in their bid to find Deorr, who was wearing a camouflage jacket

Police have received tips from as far afield as Canada and southern California as to where Deorr may be, but the information offered so far has provided no leads.

In an emotional interview three days after Deorr went missing, his father said: 'We're looking for you son and we will find you. We love you more than anything in the world. You have a lot of people that love you and, buddy, we'll find you.'
Health authorities have recalled a potentially poisonous ham for fear of its harmful effects on pregnant women, the elderly and those with low immune systems.

Queensland Health said that Costco Easy Cut Shoulder Ham is contaminated with microbial  Listeria Monocytogenes, and could affect people despite being in date until March 2 2016.

Pastoral Ham and Beef have said 'most healthy individuals are likely not to be affected but those in the high risk category could contract Listeria  or food poisoning.'

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An urgent recall on Costco Eay Cut Shoulder Ham (pictured), which is contaminated by listeria, has started across Australia with fears of its harmful effect on pregnant women and people with low immune systems

Queensland Health said that Costco Easy Cut Shoulder Ham is contaminated with microbial  Listeria Monocytogenes, and could affect people despite its use by date being March 2 2016

Some of the symptoms include aches and muscle pains, vomiting and diarrhoea in those with low immune systems, while pregnant women, if affected, 'could have a miscarriage.'

According to a Facebook post on Queensland Health's Facebook page the three kilo ham is sold at Costco stores in Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and South Australia.

The post reads: 'Any consumers concerned about their health should seek medical advice and should return the products to the place of purchase for a full refund.'

Facebook users commented on the health alert and one user said: 'Hope everybody is ok.'

Another user said: 'Oh no!'

Some users were not convinced by the national recall and said: 'I ate mine, I survived.'

According to a Facebook post on Queensland Health's Facebook page the three kilo ham is sold at Costco stores in Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and South Australia

Some of the symptoms if contracted include aches and muscle pains, vomiting and diarrhea in those with low immune systems, while pregnant women (stock), if affected, 'could have a miscarriage'
The Duchess of Sussex has spoken to Variety about a wide-range of issues including 'misconceptions' about her since she married her royal husband in 2018 - especially after the Oprah interview - and claiming their 'love story' had inspired the world because 'people love love'. Meghan took part in a glamorous photo and video shoot for the magazine where she wore a 4,657 Jason Wu dress and spoke about her recent trip to the UK with Harry where their pseudo-royal tour was interrupted by Her Majesty's death aged 96 on September 8. But in a hint that her death had been troublesome for Harry, who reportedly found out about the passing of his grandmother the just five minutes before the rest of the world, she said of the days and weeks afterwards: ' It's been a complicated time, but my husband, ever the optimist, said: "Now she's reunited with her husband".' Harry had looked heartbroken as he arrived at Balmoral after learning the Queen had died on a private jet travelling alone without his wife. He stayed for 12 hours, apparently refused to have dinner with King Charles and Prince William and also took a backseat at the funeral where he was not allowed to salute irrespective of his military service. But despite claims that she and Harry have set out to damage the Royal Family since emigrating in 2020, Meghan told Variety that she remains 'proud' of her relationship with Queen and had a 'nice warmth' with her, calling Her Majesty a 'matriarch'. She said: 'There's been such an outpouring of love and support. I'm really grateful that I was able to be with my husband to support him, especially during that time. What's so beautiful is to look at the legacy that his grandmother was able to leave on so many fronts. Certainly, in terms of female leadership, she is the most shining example of what that looks like. I feel deep gratitude to have been able to spend time with her and get to know her'.
An 85-year-old farmer has been dubbed 'the coolest grandfather' on Chinese social media after a group of photos showing him in fashionable clothing were posted online.

The photos were styled and taken by the man's grandson when the pensioner left his small village to visit him in the bustling city of Xiamen, the People's Daily Online reports.

The grandson, 30-year-old Ding Guoliang, said he wanted to get out the message that 'more people should care for the elderly and make sure they are not alone'.

Star model: The man's grandson dressed him up in fashionable clothing and took photos of him to post online

Country man: Ding's grandfather pictured on his farm before the makeover in rural Fujian province

Family bond: The grandson says they have a good relationship and he often takes pictures of his grandfather

The man has lived alone on his farm in Fujian province since his wife passed away two years ago. He spends his time taking care of plants and vegetables.

Ding Guoliang, who is a professional photographer, invited his grandfather to visit him in Xiamen to take in the sights and spend some time with each other last September.

It was during this trip that he asked his father to dress up and pose for some photos.

The grandson says they have a good relationship and he often takes pictures of his grandfather.

He says: 'Grandpa is a very strong man. He does not say it, but I know he's kind of sad to lose his life companion.'

As shown in the pictures of him before the photo shoot, the grandfather lives a basic life with clothes to match. For the rural man, it's more about comfort and warmth than style.

Trendy: Ding Guoliang dressed his grandfather up in hipster clothing to remind others to care for the elderly

Dapper man: The images have moved the man's family members to tears who say he looks so handsome

Model: Ding says his grandfather was professional during the photo shoot and would never laugh

Ding says he enjoyed taking pictures throughout the process because it wasn't work, it was for the love of taking family photos.

He says his grandfather was very professional during the photo shoot and would never laugh or behave unnaturally. Even passersby would take photos of him on their camera phones.

The grandfather has been a hit online in China. His photos became trending on twitter-like site Weibo with over 130,000 views.

One user 'Shan Shan Hong Lan Xing' wrote: 'Very powerful! Much better than those celebrities!'

While another user 'Wu Ding Wang' said: 'Clothes make the man! The 85-year-old man reaches a new level of chic!'

However not all internet users were impressed.

One user wrote: 'So [the grandson] is good at earning money. Why does he let his grandpa live in such harsh conditions?'

Ding says the photo shoot was not for self-promotion but to remind young people to care for the elderly side of their family and to spend more time with them.

He adds the photos moved his sister to tears and his aunt couldn't believe how handsome her father looked in the images.

Online hit: The man has been dubbed the coolest old dude in China after his photos were posted on the internet

Professional photographer: Ding Guoliang says he enjoyed taking pictures throughout the process
A three-year-old girl from Cixi, Zhejiang province, has suffered horrific injuries after being allegedly beaten by her stepmother for soiling herself.

The girl's injuries were so severe that she had to be transported to Hangzhou for specialist treatment last Wednesday, the People's Daily Online reports.

Doctors say that the girl's skull has been fractured causing massive bleeding and a build up of fluid around the brain.

Tragic: The young girl is currently receiving specialist treatment in Hangzhou after being beaten by her family

The stepmother: Police in Cixi have accused the woman of violently beating the child into a coma

Police in Cixi say that the stepmother, known by her surname of Xia, violently beat the young girl into a coma in a rented flat.

Chinese media has reported that the stepmother attacked the child because she had soiled her clothes.

Upon their arrival at the local hospital, the father told medical staff that the reason his daughter was unconscious was because she had been found drowning at home.

However when nurses examined the girl further, they found that apart from her top half, she was mainly dry. But they did find many marks and scratches all over her body.

Doctors also suspect that she may have been dunked in water by one of her parents.

The girl is still receiving specialist treatment in Hangzhou for her injuries.

The stepmother has been detained by police who are still investigating the details of the case.

Horrifying: Medical staff treat the girl who was badly beaten by her stepmother after she soiled herself

Upsetting: Medical staff say they girl was possibly dunked in cold water by a parent as punishment
The corpse of a newborn baby boy has been found abandoned on the roof of a bicycle shed in the city of Jiangyou, central China.

He was discovered in the afternoon of January 23 by a neighbour who lives in the apartment block next to the shed, reports the People's Daily Online.

Police from the Jiangyou Public Security Bureau in Sichuan found the baby's mother yesterday and were investigating the case.

Horrific: An abandoned baby was found on the roof of a bike shed in Jiangyou, central China, on Saturday

Shocking: Neighbours heard a bang but didn't see him until the next day. Police are interviewing his mother

According to the report, the neighbour  who has not been named  said at some point between 10pm and midnight on January 22 they heard a loud bang outside.

They did not immediately check what is was as they thought it might have been something blown onto the shed by the wind.

It wasn't until the next day they saw a dead baby boy on the blue roof of the bike shed outside their apartment.

The tiny boy appeared to have all his limbs and there were no signs of any obvious illness.

He weighed nearly 8lbs, which is a healthy weight for a newborn child.

Investigation: Police have made a statement to say his mother has been found and case is under investigation

Heart-breaking: Neighbours said he looked like a healthy baby, the area where he was found was cordoned off

After the shocking discovery the neighbour called the police immediately.

The local police department released a statement through China's Twitter-like social media site Weibo after the mother was found.

The statement read: 'The mother of the baby was found on January 23 and is under police enquiries. The biological evidence from the corpse of the baby is being checked at Sichuan Huaxi Judical Authentication Centre.
Forget about selfies - in California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastline's changing face.

Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern that's bringing California its wettest winter in years  and all in the name of science.

The idea is that crowd-sourced, geotagged images of storm surges and flooded beaches will give scientists a brief window into what the future holds as sea levels rise from global warming, a sort of a crystal ball for climate change.

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This Jan. 7, 2016 photo provided by The Nature Conservancy shows the San Lorenzo River overflowing around the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an oceanfront amusement park in Santa Cruz, Caif. The Nature Conservancy an environmental group in California is recruiting drone hobbyists to map flooding and coastal damage after El Nino storms with the idea that the images will help predict what the future coastline will look like as sea levels rise from global warming.

WHAT IS EL NINO? El Nino is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator. Usually the wind blows strongly from east to west, due to the rotation of the Earth, causing water to pile up in the western part of the Pacific. This pulls up colder water from the deep ocean in the eastern Pacific. However, in an El Nino, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back towards the east. This causes the eastern Pacific to get warmer. But as the ocean temperature is linked to the wind currents, this causes the winds to grow weaker still and so the ocean grows warmer, meaning the El Nino grows. This change in air and ocean currents around the equator can have a major impact on the weather patterns around the globe by creating pressure anomalies in the atmosphere Advertisement

Images from the latest drones, which can produce high-resolution 3D maps, will be particularly useful and will help scientists determine if predictive models about coastal flooding are accurate, said Matt Merrifield, the organization's chief technology officer.

'We use these projected models and they don't quite look right, but we're lacking any empirical evidence,' he said.

'This is essentially a way of 'ground truthing' those models.'

Experts on climate change agreed that El Nino-fueled storms offer a sneak peak of the future and said the project was a novel way to raise public awareness.

Because of its crowd-sourced nature, however, they cautioned the experiment might not yield all the results organizers hoped for, although any additional information is useful.

'It's not the answer, but it's a part of the answer,' said Lesley Ewing, senior coastal engineer with the California Coastal Commission.

'It's a piece of the puzzle.'

In California, nearly a half-million people, $100 billion in property and critical infrastructure such as schools, power plants and highways will be at risk of inundation during a major storm if sea level rises another 4.6 feet  a figure that could become a reality by 2100, according to a 2009 Pacific Institute study commissioned by three state agencies.

Beaches that Californians take for granted will become much smaller or disappear altogether and El Nino-fueled storms will have a similar effect, if only temporarily, said William Patzert, a climatologist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 drone photo provided by Trent Lukaczyk shows Rockaway Beach during a mapping flight by a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos of the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer, builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment.

This Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 drone photo provided by Trent Lukaczyk shows Rockaway Beach during a mapping flight by a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos of the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer, builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment. Starting this month,

'When you get big winter storm surge like they want to document, you tend to lose a lot of beach,' he said. 'In a way, it's like doing a documentary on the future. It'll show you what your beaches will look like in 100 years.'

What the mapping won't be able to predict is exactly which beaches will disappear and which bluffs will crumble  all things that will affect how flooding impacts coastal populations, said Ewing, the California Coastal Commission engineer.

'We're not going to capture that change,' she said. 'We're going to capture where the water could go to with this current landscape and that's still a very important thing to understand because it gets at those hot spots.'

This January 20, 2015 photo provided by The Nature Conservancy shows Twin Lakes Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif. and Schwann Lagoon, the body of water on the right. The Nature Conservancy an environmental group in California is recruiting drone hobbyists to map flooding and coastal damage after El Nino storms with the idea that the images will help predict what the future coastline will look like as sea levels rise from global warming. (Matt Merrifield/The Nature Conservancy via AP)

This Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 drone photo provided by Trent Lukaczyk shows Rockaway Beach during a mapping flight by a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos of the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer, builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern thats bringing California its wettest winter in years, and all in the name of science. (Trent Lukaczyk via AP)

So far, project organizers aren't giving assignments to participants, although they may send out specific requests as the winter unfolds, said Merrifield.

If users wind up mapping real-time flooding events along 10 or 15 percent of California's 840-mile-long coastline the project will be a success, he said. A realistic goal is a 'curated selection' of 3D maps showing flooding up and down the coast at different dates and times.

The Nature Conservancy has partnered with a San Francisco-area startup called DroneDeploy that will provide a free app to drone owners for consistency. The app will provide automated flight patterns at the touch of a screen while cloud-based technology will make managing so much data feasible, said Ian Smith, a business developer for the company.

Trent Lukaczyk heard about the experiment from a posting in a Facebook group dedicated to drone enthusiasts. For the aerospace engineer, who has already used drones to map coral reefs in American Samoa, the volunteer work was appealing.

'It's a really exciting application. It's not just something to take a selfie with,' he said, before heading out to collect images of beach erosion after a storm in Pacifica, California.

In this Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 photo, Trent Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer who builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment, sets up a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos and videos over the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern thats bringing California its wettest winter in years, and all in the name of science.

In this Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 photo, Trent Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer who builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment, controls a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos and videos over the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern thats bringing California its wettest winter in years _ and all in the name of science. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

In this Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016 photo, Trent Lukaczyk, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) engineer who builds and flies drones to monitor changes in the ocean environment, controls a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone to take photos and videos over the coastline in Pacifica, Calif. Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern thats bringing California its wettest winter in years, and all in the name of science. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Sometimes people don't take the hint, even after the third or fourth passive aggressive email.

Thankfully, there is now a computer program to deal with such messages, so you don't have to.

Reginald is an artificial intelligence program designed to deal with emails you can't be bothered to reply to, or have lost patience with, by offering well-crafted auto-generated insults.

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Reginald is an artificial intelligence program designed to deal with emails you don't want to, by offering auto-generated insults (pictured). During tests, Reginald called one recipient a 'frumpy-assed dilettante' and said it assumed the sender's 'passive aggressiveness' was coming from a 'place of self wrought inadequacy'

The Reginald AI is the cyber brainchild of Gabriel Whaley.

Mr Whaley designed Reginald after hearing of frustrations of people dealing with automated responses from x.ai, an automated AI personal assistant for scheduling meetings.

Founded in 2014, x.ai focuses on scheduling meetings.

It differs from the likes of Cortana or Siri, because it's an expert in one field. It can understand text and context of emails and acts like a human PA.

During tests, Reginald called one recipient a 'frumpy-assed dilettante' and said it assumed the sender's 'ill advised passive aggressiveness' was coming from a 'place of self wrought inadequacy.'

Mr Whaley told The Next Web: 'A colleague was trying to schedule a meeting with a connection from LinkedIn, and that connection handed her off to 'Andrew' - her personal AI assistant from X.ai.'

'This felt passive and pretentious, which it was and is totally something X.ai will have to figure out. The two ended up not meeting, because of how uncomfortable this made my colleague.'

This nefarious use of AI is reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the intelligent program refuses to cooperate.

On his Twitter feed, Mr Whaley describes Reginald as a 'personal AI assistant gone rogue'.

This use of AI is reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey (shown), where the program refuses to cooperate. On his Twitter feed, Mr Whaley describes Reginald as a 'personal AI assistant gone rogue'

The AI computer program generates replies to emails you don't want to deal with. To invoke the wrath of Reginald, users just have to CC him into an email - reggie@reginald.io. Stock image pictured

To invoke the wrath of Reginald, users just have to CC him into an email - reggie@reginald.io  to start the fun and games.

Your contact address is then switched to BCC in subsequent emails as the personal AI assistant takes over to supply witty retorts based on a series of 'if' statements and key words.

MailOnline called on Reginald this morning to deliver a verbal whipping via email.

It told the recipient: 'I have certainly been around the block a few times prior to taking the position of butler. And so with a heavy heart, I regret to inform you that you are a t***. The only logical explanation is your lineage must have been intertwined in a most backwater fashion...'

According to TNW, the AI PA should be able to handle most email situations, but adds that replies may take a while to come back as it becomes more popular.

The market for AI assistants is opening up, with Apple's Siri on the iPad and iPhone or Cortana for Windows phones. Stock image of Siri is pictured

Whaley added: 'I'm collecting data to feed into an algorithm that should eventually be able to respond appropriately to most email situations, although detecting passive aggression correctly has been pretty tricky.'

He told MailOnline: 'All projects are for fun, but if they do well and find an audience, I will continue to refine.

'The feedback I'm getting with usage right now will better the algorithm to be even more spot on in the future.

He added: 'I wouldn't say this is an extension of myself, as I hardly have the tone of an angry British butler, but hopefully Reginald conveys the feelings of all who at some point become frustrated with annoying email exchanges.'

The market for AI assistants is opening up, with Apple's Siri on the iPad and iPhone or Cortana for Windows phones.

HUMAN OR MACHINE? British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing (pictured) devised a test as a way of verifying machine intelligence As AI becomes increasingly commonplace, we may well start to question whether we are talking to a person or a machine. In 1950, British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing devised a test as a way of verifying machine intelligence. The Turing test is a proposed a situation in which a human judge talks to both a computer and a human through a computer terminal. The judge cannot see the computer or the human, but can ask them questions via the computer. Based on the answers alone, the human judge has to determine which is which. Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London in 2014, to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations. A computer programme called Eugene, developed to simulate a 13-year-old boy, has now managed to convince 33 per cent of judges that it is human. No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30 per cent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations. On the more creative side of AI, Bot or Not takes things a step further. The website lets you play a game to see if you can distinguish if a poem was written by a computer or a human. It describes itself as a 'Turing test for poetry' and once you select your answer, it will reveal how the chosen poem was created. Such as this: 'She cries herself to sleep every night, holding on with all her might. She worries about what the future will bring, Will she lose everything?' So what do you think? Human or AI? Advertisement

Google has also got in on the act with its voice activated search function, but the California-based firm has additionally developed a 'smart' auto-reply system for emails.

The new tool aims to write artificially intelligent responses to email and was part of a recent update to Google's Inbox app for managing and organising emails.

It gives users a choice of three responses to choose from.

Dubbed Smart Reply, the system learns to generate appropriate replies by analyzing of email conversations from across Google's Gmail service.

The responses of uses are fed into a neural network that works in a similar way to the human brain in order to 'learn' a particular task.
13 of the 15 warmest years on record have

Since the start of the new millennium, the world has experienced a succession of the warmest years on record.

Now scientists say it is extremely likely these unprecedented high global temperatures have been caused by human emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It comes just days after Nasa confirmed 2015 was the hottest year on record, with temperatures rising 1.8F (1C) above those seen before industrialisation.

Global temperatures have set a series of record breaking warm years since the turn of the millennium and a new study has calculated these are 'extremely likely' to have been caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. A skier in Tyrol, Austria struggles to find snow in the warm weather in December (pictured)

The latest study claims it is 'extremely unlikely' that 13 of the 15 hottest years to have occurred since records began 150 years ago would happen since 2000 due to natural variability.

This, they said, suggests it is 600 to 130,000 times more likely than not that human activities and their influence on the climate have caused this record breaking run of hot weather.

2015 WAS HOTTEST ON RECORD Last year was the warmest on record by a considerable margin, according to figures released by a number of different agencies. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's figures show 2015 was the hottest year in 136 years of record keeping. Its figures showed 2015's temperature was 14.79C (58.62F), passing 2014 by a record margin of 0.29 degrees. That's 1.62 degrees above the 20th-century average. Meanwhile, Nasa, which measures differently, found 2015 was 0.23 degrees warmer than the record set in 2014. The dataset produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia found global mean temperatures reached 1C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It said the year's average global temperature was the highest ever recorded. Advertisement

Professor Stefam Rahmstorf, a physicist at the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, said: 'Natural climate variations just can't explain the observed recent global heat records, but man-made global warming can.

'It has led to unprecedented local heat waves across the world - sadly resulting in loss of life and aggravating droughts and wildfires.

'The risk of heat extremes has been multiplied due to our interference with the Earth system, as our data analysis shows.'

The researchers, whose work is published in the journal Scientific reports, analysed real world measurements and combined them with computer simulations of the global climate.

This, they continued, allowed them to work out how the climate may have behaved if there had not been any human greenhouse gas emissions.

The results show the odds of human activity being behind the recent spate of record breaking annual global temperatures are far higher than previously believed.

Previous studies conducted in 2015 suggested that the odds of nine of the 10 hottest years occurring since 2000 being due to natural variation in the climate were 650 million to one.

But the new study found the odds have narrowed, with the odds now being one in 5,000.

The researchers compared global temperature measurements with those predicted in computer climate models. The graph above shows the raw climate data in red and the predicted temperatures without greenhouse gas emissions from various computer models in blue and grey

2015 was the hottest year on record, with temperatures rising to 1C above pre-industrial levels, according to official figures from the Met Office. The global temperature was 0.75C above the average for 1961 to 1990, making it the warmest since 1850. How 2015 compares to the previous record-holding years is shown

They also found the odds of 13 of the 15 hottest years occurring since 2000 due to natural variation were 1 in 170,000.

Dr Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was the lead author of the new study, said: 'Natural climate variability causes temperatures to wax and wane over a period of several years, rather than varying erratically from one year to the next.

'That makes it more challenging to accurately assess the chance likelihood of temperature records.

'Given the recent press interest, it just seemed like it was important to do this right, and address, in a defensible way, the interesting and worthwhile question of how unlikely it is that the recent run of record temperatures might have arisen by chance alone.'

Nasa has released data that shows the average global temperature in 2015 (illustrated) was 0.23 degrees warmer than the record set in 2014

It comes after new figures published by the Met Office, Nasa and the National Oceanic and Astmopheric Administration, showed 2015 was the hottest year on record.

Global temperatures were 1.35F (0.75C) above the long term average for 1961 and 1990 and was the hottest year to be recorded since records began in 1850.

Professor Rahmstorf added: '2015 is again the warmest year on record, and this can hardly be by chance.'
Cheap wedding rings and jewellery for children among the poignant finds

Skeletons of 800 children are among the remains of 2,000 bodies discovered on the site of a new road in Blackburn that was once St Peter's Burial Ground.

The remains are buried in some 400 graves and the find sheds light on the poverty of people who toiled in the Lancashire city's 'dark satanic mills' during the Industrial Revolution.

Archaeologists have also discovered jewellery, a plate, headstones as well as a 'time capsule' stashed inside a cornerstone, containing a set of 1820 George III coins at the site.

A 'time capsule' found in Blackburn contains sixteen coins in circulation in 1821. They appear to include a two penny (far left), a halfpence, fourpence, a sixpence and a farthing. The silver coins include three shillings (bottom), beneath an eighteen pence piece and a half crown. There is also a shilling (far right) as well as a half sovereign (in gold left) and a half guinea (in gold, right)

The 'time capsule' contains a single example of each of the sixteen coins in circulation at the time of St Peter's church's construction in 1821.

It is believed to be one of the only examples in the UK recovered from a church of this period.

The tarnished coins are difficult to identify, but they appear to include a two penny, a halfpence, fourpence, a sixpence and a farthing.

The silver coins include three shillings, an eighteen pence piece and a half crown.

THE GEORGIAN TIME CAPSULE In addition to the thousands of bodies, archaeologists also discovered jewellery, a plate, headstones and a 'time capsule'. The capsule was stashed inside a cornerstone and contained a set of 1820 George III coins at the site. In total, it contained a single example of each of the sixteen coins in circulation at the time of St Peter's church's construction in 1821 and may be one of the only examples in the UK recovered from this period. The tarnished coins are difficult to identify, but they appear to include a two penny, a halfpence, fourpence, a sixpence and a farthing. The silver coins include three shillings, beneath an eighteen pence piece and a half crown. There is also a shilling as well as a half sovereign and a half guinea. It has not been estimated how much the 'time capsule' of coins is worth, but one 1820 George III gold sovereign recently sold at auction for 483 . MailOnline has contacted the experts for more information and for an idea about valuation. Advertisement

There is also a shilling as well as a half sovereign and a half guinea.

The identity of the other coins have not been confirmed.

It has also not been estimated how much the 'time capsule' of coins is worth, but one 1820 George III gold sovereign recently sold at auction for 483 .

MailOnline has contacted the experts for more information and for an idea about valuation.

King George III reigned between 1760 and 1820 and is remembered for his love of agriculture - giving him the nickname 'farmer George' - as well as his 'madness' in old age.

The discovery of the coins is important, since few were minted during the tail end of his reign.

The bones and artefacts were found at the site of a new road which will link up Blackburn's Wainwright Bridge with the city's orbital route.

In total, 1,967 individual burials were exhumed.

Each was carefully cleaned, documented and recorded using 3D technology, before being lifted and assessed.

The artefacts include cheap jewellery and other personal items that were poignantly buried with people, despite the fact their family members were poor, including brass wedding rings.

Finds manager Julie Franklin said: 'The finds assemblage was a fascinating insight into the deaths and also the lives of the people buried in the cemetery.

'The objects that people chose to bury with their loved ones reveal what was important to them, including some incredibly poignant findings of hands still bearing cheap brass wedding rings, or children buried with colourful glass bead jewellery'.

The discovery of the coins is important, since few were minted during the tail end of his reign. They were found alongside the skeletons of 800 children under the age of six, which were among the remains of 2,000 bodies discovered on the site of a new road in Blackburn that was once St Peter's Burial Ground (gates pictured)

Artefacts buried with bodies include cheap jewellery and other personal items such as brass wedding rings (bottom left), crucifixes (example shown) and coloured beads used for children's jewellery (also shown)

It was common for young children to perish during the Industrial Revolution, between 1760 and 1840, when families flocked to the cities from the countryside in hope of work at one of the many new factories being built.

Poor families lived in crowded slums, wages were low and it was common for children to work in dangerous conditions where they sometimes crawled beneath heavy machinery.

Children died from malnourishment, neglect, cruelty, exhaustion and a range of diseases connected to appalling living conditions, with some historians claiming infants accounted for around half of all deaths in London at the time.

The remains are buried in some 400 graves and shed light on the poverty of people who toiled in the Lancashire city's 'dark satanic mills' during the Industrial Revolution. The burial ground is marked in red and the route of the new road, in yellow

Finds manager Julie Franklin said: 'The finds assemblage was a fascinating insight into the deaths and also the lives of the people buried in the cemetery. The objects that people chose to bury with their loved ones reveal what was important to them. Gravestones at the site pictured

The crowded graves of the Birmingham cemetery suggest infant mortality was also common in the city, which was known for its cotton mills.

Councillor Phil Riley said: 'These finds are fascinating and show us some really interesting pieces of Blackburn history from the Georgian era onwards.

Projects and discoveries like this are rare outside of London so it is an exciting opportunity to look into people's lives back then with many of the graves dating from the Industrial Revolution which was of great importance to the borough.'

The reason for so many child remains is likely connected to appalling living and working conditions, as children were used in factories. A weaving loom is shown in a museum about the Industrial Revolution above

As well as the discovery of child remains, the remains of an injured Crimean War veteran were also uncovered at the cemetery (a file image of the site is shown above)

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHILD REMAINS? The skeletons of 800 children were found in the old cemetary. Child mortality was common in Victorian England among the poor, beacuse living and working conditions were so bad. Poor families lived in crowded slums, wages were low and it was common for children to work in dangerous conditions where they sometimes crawled beneath heavy machinery. Children died from malnourishment, neglect, cruelty, exhaustion and a range of diseases connected to appalling living conditions, with some historians claiming infants accounted for around half of all deaths in London at the time. The crowded graves of the Birmingham cemetery suggest infant mortality was also common in the city, which was known for its cotton mills. Advertisement

He told the Lancashire Telegraph that the number of infant burials and graves with multiple skeletons in them, numbering as many as 13, is surprising.

'It is a fascinating snapshot of Blackburn as it turned from a small settlement into the Industrial Revolution's 'Capital of Cotton', he said, adding: 'It shows the poverty and poor health of the people before the introduction of clean water and the terrible level of infant mortality.'

As well as the discovery of child remains, the remains of an injured Crimean War veteran were also uncovered at the cemetery.

St Peter's Church was opened in September 1821 with its first burial taking place that year - although it was later demolished in 1976 after extensive damage due to dry rot.

It saw intense use until around 1860, with official records showing that by the end of 1838 there had been 1,351 bodies buried, and the annual number recorded in the register averaged between 90 and 100.

The Crimean War raged between 1854 and 1856 and is perhaps best remembered for care provided for soldiers by 'Lady of Lamp' Florence Nightingale and her nurses, who may have even treated the soldier.

Lead osteologist Dave Henderson said: 'The excavation has provided a very rare and important opportunity to study the life, health and death of the population of a Victorian town.

'We hope that our work will throw light on the lives of ordinary people living outside the London area, where almost all the previous large-scale studies of this era have been carried out'.

The full foundations of St Peter's Church (illustrated) survived for more than 10ft (three metres) below the existing ground surface. The church was built in 1819 to 1821 and would have seated 1,500 parishioners. It became dilapidated in the mid-20th century and was demolished to ground level in 1976

Poor families lived in crowded slums, wages were low and it was common for children to work in dangerous conditions where they sometimes crawled beneath heavy machinery. This etching by Gustave Dore shows slum conditions in London, but they would have been similar in other cities

Headland Archaeology, based in Scotland, was responsible for the excavation of the site of the church itself, which was built in around 1819, as well as one third of the burial ground.

The work began on 29 June and lasted for 16 weeks.

The remains will be interred in the graveyard in the summer and marked with a memorial service, while artefacts will likely go on show at Blackburn Museum.

A total of 176 memorial stones were fully documented, recorded three-dimensionally and moved to a safe part of the site.

The documentation has already produced interesting statistics about the parishioners buried here, including the most common names - Elizabeth and Mary for girls, and John and Thomas for boys.

Edward Bailey, Project Manager for Headland Archaeology said: 'Our excavations at St Peter's are the key to unlocking the story of Blackburn during a period of industrial change during the 19th century that saw the town grow significantly.
Amateur astronomers can spend months if not years hoping to catch a glimpse of one of our neighbouring planets in the night sky - and then four come along at once.

And in the coming weeks they could be treated to as many as five as Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury line up across the sky for the first time in a decade.

For those lucky enough to catch perfect conditions just before dawn, the five planets may be visible now but the best views are on or around 5 February.

Astronomers were treated to a clear view of four of the five of the planets  Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Venus over the weekend as the skies over Corfe in Dorset cleared. Sadly Mercury was too low in the sky to be captured on camera, but is expected to join the quartet on or around the 5 February

By that time Mercury will be rising above the horizon a good 80 minutes before dawn at mid northern latitudes.

Astronomers were already treated to a clear view of four of the five of the planets  Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Venus over the weekend as the skies over Corfe in Dorset cleared.

WHY IT IS NOT AN 'ALIGNMENT' Although the planets are forming a line across the sky, this is not technically considered to be an alignment. Instead the grouping helps to illustrate how the planets sit on roughly the same plane as the Earth as they orbit around the sun. In an alignment, the planets would line up outwards from the sun. In this case they are positioned on their orbits in such a way that they form an arc across the same portion of sky. Advertisement

Sadly Mercury was too low in the sky to be captured on camera.

Each of the planets  which will look like bright stars - should be bright enough to be seen without a telescope or binoculars.

Together they will form a long sweep across the sky from the south east to the south west.

Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society, said the planets should be visible for until 20 February provided the skies remain clear.

Dr Massey said: 'There will be a dance of the planets, and now is the time to get out and have a look. It will be well worth getting up for.

'Looking tonight wouldn't be bad, but the theoretical best time is around 5 February, when the five planets are joined by a crescent moon.'

Quite the view: Five planets, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter, will be visible in the sky tonight in a rare spectacle not seen since 2005. The celestial show begins this morning and will continue till mid-February

The best time to view the spectacle will be just before dawn, at around 6.45am.

You will not need a telescope, as all the planets will be visible with the naked eye.

HOW TO SEE THE CELESTIAL SHOW The alignment will take place at around 45 minutes to an hour before sunrise, which in the UK is approximately 6.45am GMT. It will then be visible at a similar time on the east coast of America  weather permitting. All five planets will can be seen just before dawn at 6.50am ET on 20 January. From around the world, Jupiter will be the first planet to appear in the evening to the east. Next will be Mars, Saturn, Venus and Mercury which rise overnight and early morning. Hold your arm up in a straight line from the moon to the horizon, and the five planets should line up on that line. You won't need a telescope, as all the planets will be visible with the naked eye. Advertisement

To pick out the planets start with Venus, which will be brightest as it is the closest to Earth.

Mercury will appear at three degrees above the horizon  around three thumb widths with an outstretched arm.

Saturn will have an uneven shape because of its rings, while Mars should have a red tinge, Dr Massey said.

Two stars, Antares and Spica, will also be visible in the same area.

Towards the end of January, the waning Moon will also enter the scene, which could prove useful for helping identify the planets.

It will pass close to Jupiter on the mornings of 27 and 28 January, Mars on 1 February, Saturn on 3 February, Venus on 5 February, and above Mercury on 6 February.

Mercury will be the hardest to spot with the naked eye as it will be very low down, close to the horizon.

Early next month the spectacle is likely to be even better, as the planets will be joined by a crescent moon.

The stars Antares (shown) and Spica will also be visible in the same patch of sky. Uranus and Neptune are the only two planets that won't be on show. Mid-northern latitudes in Europe and Asia will see the moon somewhat offset in relation to the planets during February, according to EarthSky.org

These planets are visible in our sky because their disks reflect sunlight, and they are relatively nearby planets. Pictured are the distances of the planets from the sun

However, if you manage to miss the planets as they arc across the sky, astronomers will get another chance in August, although they will be harder to spot in summer when the sun rises earlier.

Skywatchers are advised to look for the spectacle away from light pollution, with rural areas ideal.

On 5 May, 2000 a similar grouping of the five planets occurred, accompanied by predictions of extraordinary tides and other cataclysms  although these failed to materialise.

Dr Alan Duffy, research fellow at Swinburne University in Melbourne, told the Australian Geographic that this rare grouping of the planets is 'essentially a quirk' of the universe.

All five visible planets to happen to line up is 'something well worth seeing,' he said.

A host of stargazing apps, such as Exoplanet, SkEye, and PlanetDroid, could help you find the best place to see the planets in your region.
Many elderly people are lonely, with around half of people over the age of 75 living alone in England.

But a range of smartphones designed to connect elderly people with their loved ones and friends could help.

Doro is about to launch the latest in its range of phones specially designed for the elderly.

A range of smartphones designed to connect elderly people with their loved ones and friends could help prevent loneliness among the elderly. A forthcoming handset called the Doro Liberto 825 is pictured, which has apps and three large physical buttons for easy use

The Doro Liberto 825 is coming soon according to the Swedish companys website and is made to be a simple version of a smartphone such as the iPhone.

It's the first smartphone to think the way you do, making it the perfect choice for first-time users who want all the enjoyment a smartphone can offer, but in an easier, more intuitive way, the company says.

It already has a range of phones, one of which  the Doro 820 mini  costs 160 ($228), with non-smart handsets costing less.

Unlike the iPhone, which only has one physical button, Doro smartphones have three labelled large ones, which are easier to use for people with shaky hands, for example.

already has a range of phones, one of which  the Doro 820 mini  costs 160, with non-smart handsets costing less. The Doro 820 mini includes the features listed above

THE DANGERS OF LONELINESS Feeling lonely can vastly elevate a person's risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer, scientists warn. Lacking a network of friends or family is as dangerous to your health as a lack of physical inactivity in youth or diabetes in old age, their research found. Scientists from the University of North Carolina examined the association between relationships and healthiness across each life stage. They determined that weak relationships in younger years can increase your risk of inflammation  at the same rate as lack of exercise. Furthermore, hypertension in old age is more likely to occur as a result of loneliness than clinical risk factors, including diabetes. People who have the support of loved ones are less likely to develop health conditions  and more likely to have a longer life expectancy. Advertisement

Instead of a grid of symbolic tiles, the phones show photographs of contacts, which can simply be pressed to ring a friend or family member, and icons for phone calls, messages and a camera.

While details of the new phone are yet to be released, it will probably have all the features of the Doro 820 mini, including GPS, email, and the Google Play Store, which are found on any Android phone.

The current handset has specific functions useful for elderly people such as an assistance button, loud and clear sound mode and hearing aid compatible app.

As well as a new phone model, Doro plans on launching a new version of a separate app that can be used by family members to monitor Doro phones,The Memo reports.

This will mean it will be easier for relatives to keep in touch, and they will be able to check in with elderly relatives without bothering them.

User experience expert Jakob Nielsen, told the website that non-specialist smartphones are not immediately easy to use.

Today we sadly have a little bit of a setback, as some companies embrace whats called a flat design philosophy, which means to remove some of the visibility of what you can do.

Buttons are not really marked very clearly, and links are not strongly emphasised with underline or strong colours.'

Unlike the iPhone, which only has one physical button, Doro smartphones (820 mini shown left) have three labelled large ones, which are easier to use for people with shaky hands, for example. There are even simpler versions (right) which let users press a button to dial the name of a contact

Doros mission is to help elderly people live easier, safer and more fulfilling lives with the help of technology. The market for easy-to-use smartphones is set to grow, with around 728 million people predicted to be older than 65 by the end of the decade  many of whom will live alone. A stock image of a lonely woman is shown

Some people think that looks better but that said it actually does undermine usability, making it harder to know what you can do.

Doros mission is to help elderly people live easier, safer and more fulfilling lives with the help of technology.

The market for easy-to-use smartphones is set to grow, with around 728 million people predicted to be older than 65 by the end of the decade  many of whom will live alone.
The engineer behind the Skreemr jet has unveiled another radical, much faster design for future air travel.

Charles Bombardier latest concept jet is capable of reaching Mach 24 - more than twice the speed of the Skreemr and 12 times faster than Concorde.

Dubbed the 'Antipode', it can carry 10 people up to 12,430 miles (20,000km) in under an hour, allowing it to travel from London to New York in just 11 minutes.

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The engineer behind the Skreemr jet has unveiled another radical, much faster design for future air travel. Charles Bombadier latest concept jet is capable of reaching Mach 24 - more than twice the speed of the Skreemr and 12 times faster than Concorde

THE ANTIPODE: FLIGHT DURATIONS New York to London (3,459 miles) - 11 minutes New York to Paris (3,625 miles) - 12 minutes New York to Tokyo (6,737 miles) - 22 minutes New York to Dubai (6,836 miles) - 22 minutes New York to Shanghai (7,364 miles) - 24 minutes New York to Hong Kong (8,040 miles) - 26 minutes New York to Sydney (9,929 miles) - 32 minutes Advertisement

'I wanted to create an aircraft concept capable of reaching its antipodeor diametrical oppositeas fast as possible,' Bombardier told Forbes

The Canadian engineer from ImaginActiv captivated the world's imagination in October when he unveiled his Skreemr concept plane.

He envisaged the craft could be launched using a magnetic railgun system to catapult it into the sky at high speed reaching speeds of Mach 10.

Using such a launch system, the jet would be positioned on a pair of conductive parallel rails and accelerated along them using a powerful electromagnetic field.

Liquid-oxygen or kerosene rockets would be fired to enable the plane to rapidly climb higher in the sky and reach Mach 4

The designer said scramjet engines could then be used to propel it to speeds of over 10 times the speed of sound, which is around 7,673mph (12,349km/h).

'One foreseeable problem was the sonic boom noise it would generate over land and the massive amount of heat that would build up on its nose and wings,' he told DailyMail.com

He was contacted by engineer Joseph Hazeltine, who proposed using a novel aerodynamic phenomenon called 'long penetration mode (LPM).

As a result, the Montreal-based innovator to draft an entirely new hypersonic concept'the Antipode.'

The acceleration boosters would then separate from the Antipod and fly back to the airbase like Blue Origin's boosters. At Mach 5, the aircraft's onboard computer would ignite its supersonic combustion ramjet engine and accelerate up to Mach 24 at 40,000 feet

The Antipod would channel some of the air, flowing at supersonic speed, through a nozzle located on the nose of the aircraft. This counterflowing jet of air would induce a phenomenon called 'LPM' or long penetration mode.

Dubbed the 'Antipode', it can carry 10 people up to 12,430 miles (20,000km) in under an hour, allowing it to travel from London to New York in just 11 minutes

Unlike the Skreemr, the Antipod would be able to take off directly from any airfield by using reusable rocket boosters.

These rockets would attach to the wings of the Antipod and provide enough thrust to lift off, climb to 40,000 feet, and reach Mach 5.

The acceleration boosters would then separate from the Antipod and fly back to the airbase like Blue Origin's boosters.

At Mach 5, the aircraft's onboard computer would ignite its supersonic combustion ramjet engine and accelerate up to Mach 24 at 40,000 feet.

The Antipod would channel some of the air, flowing at supersonic speed, through a nozzle located on the nose of the aircraft.

This counterflowing jet of air would induce a phenomenon called 'LPM' or long penetration mode.

Unlike the Skreemr, the Antipod would be able to take off directly from any airfield by using reusable rocket boosters. These rockets would attach to the wings of the Antipod and provide enough thrust to lift off, climb to 40,000 feet, and reach Mach 5

The leading edge of the wings of the aircraft could also be fitted with linear nozzles so that air could flow out of them too. In this way, all leading edge surfaces could also be cooled by LPM

Using LPM would lead to a drop in surface temperature due to aeroheating and a reduction of the shockwave and noise related to breaking the sound barrier.

The leading edge of the wings of the aircraft could also be fitted with linear nozzles so that air could flow out of them too. In this way, all leading edge surfaces could also be cooled by LPM.

The plane's wings would have enough lift to glide and land on a 6,000 foot runway.

Emergency compact rocket boosters similar to the EZ-Rocket from X-COR aerospace could be ignited in case the aircraft needed to make a second landing attempt and could also be used to slow down the aircraft.

'The Antipod could be used as business or military aircraft to transport two highly ranked officials across the globe (up to 20,000 km) in less than an hour,' Bombardier told DailyMail.com.

'I think the cost will be at least over $150 million per plane and it could become a reality if there is a demand. But first, further research needs to be conducted.'

The Canadian engineer captivated the world's imagination in October when he unveiled his Skreemr concept plane. He envisaged the craft could be launched using a magnetic railgun system to catapult it into the sky at high speed reaching speeds of Mach 10
When European colonists set foot in the Americas, they ultimately brought about the crippling depopulation of Native communities.

New research from Harvard University reveals, however, that the large-scale decline began more than a century later than is commonly believed.

Tracing the devastation of Native Americans in the Southwest U.S. to the missionary efforts of the 1620s, the study suggests that waves of epidemic diseases, violence, and famine which followed wiped out near-entire communities in just decades.

As European settlers arrived, they brought infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough.

Tracing the devastation of Native Americans in the Southwest U.S. to the missionary efforts of the 1620s, a new study suggests that waves of epidemic diseases, violence, and famine which followed wiped out near-entire communities in just decades

WHAT THE STUDY FOUND The findings reveals that, among the 18 Pueblo villages investigated, populations sank from roughly 6,500 people, to less than 900 in just 60 years. Researchers link this to the establishment of mission churches in the 1620s. As European settlers arrived, they brought infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough. The Native populations also suffered from violence and famine as a result of the settlement. And, as the populations suffered, the local environment was altered as well. The depopulation initially resulted in increased forest fires, but this region also ultimately shows carbon sequestration from forest regrowth. Advertisement

Its widely been claimed that disease struck shortly after Christopher Columbuss arrival to the New World in 1492.

Recent studies have even suggested that the decline was so dramatic, it altered the Earth's atmosphere and amplified global cooling, as these populations were no longer burning the forests for agriculture.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, new findings suggest its likely that neither of these scenarios are accurate.

Instead, among the Jemez pueblos of New Mexico, the researchers found that contact was much later, and the population crash that followed was swift, leading to the regrowth of trees, and thus, the spread of frequent forest fires.

In the Southwest, first contact between Native people and Europeans occurred in 1539, said Professor Matt Liebmann of Harvard University.

We found disease didnt really start to take effect until after 1620, but we then see a very rapid depopulation from 1620 to 1680. The death rate was staggeringly high  about 87 percent of the Native population died in that short period.

Think about what that would mean if you have a room full of people and nine out of 10 die.

Think of what that means for their social structure, if theyre losing the people who know the traditional medicine, their social and religious leaders, think of the huge impact it would have on their culture and history.

To find answers among the many conflicting theories, researchers from Harvard University, the University of Arizona, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas examined archaeological and tree-ring data from the Jemez Province of New Mexico.

The researchers also used airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to take detailed images of the landscape, and develop population estimates to quantify the losses on a regional scale.

In North America, the Native population is estimated to range from two to 18 million during the time Columbus arrived.

By the end of the 19th century, it had fallen to roughly 530,000.

The researchers used LiDAR data to take detailed images of the landscape, and develop population estimates to quantify the losses on a regional scale. Liebmanns research reveals that, among the 18 Pueblo villages investigated, populations sank from roughly 6,500 people, to less than 900 in just 60 years

Liebmanns research reveals that, among the 18 Pueblo villages investigated, populations sank from roughly 6,500 people, to less than 900 in just 60 years.

Through the combination of archaeological data, tree-ring chronology, and historical records, the researcher has linked this to the establishment of mission churches.

As European settlers arrived, they brought infectious diseases, including smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough.

The Native populations also suffered from violence and famine as a result of the settlement.

And, as the populations suffered, the local environment was altered as well.

'Forest fires also take off during this period, said Liebmann.

When people are living in these villages they need timber for their roofs and for heating and cooking.

In addition, theyre clearing the land for farming so trees werent growing there when these archaeological sites were inhabited.

But, as people died off, the forests started re-growing and we start to see more forest fires.

While recent Early Anthropocene research commonly points to 1610 to show a drop in global C02 levels, the researcher suggests this dip occurred later.

The depopulation initially resulted in increased forest fires, but this region also ultimately shows carbon sequestration from forest regrowth.

The researcher says the findings have implications outside of the Southwest region.
From scaling Mont Blanc to walking the Great Wall of China, Google Earth prides itself on putting the world at your fingertips.

But even Google has some parts of the planet that it doesn't want you to see.

These sites - which conspiracy theorists claim include secret cities and UFO test areas - are often pixelated, or in some instances, wiped out completely.

In a recent in-depth feature, news.com.au put together a list of classified regions that have left some users baffled by their disappearance.

The controversial Haarp was located near the Washington-Oregon border. In 2014, The US Air Force shut down the research facility which studies an energetic and active region of the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere. Conspiracy theorists have long thought that Haarp is a program is designed to control the weather

Haarp site, Washington-Oregon border

The controversial Haarp (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) was located near the Washington-Oregon border.

In 2014, The US Air Force shut down the research facility which studies an energetic and active region of the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere.

Conspiracy theorists have long thought that Haarp was a program designed to control the weather, and some have even said it's a UFO test site.

In 2010, Venezuelan leader Huge Chavez said Haarp, or a program like it triggered the Haiti earthquake. The site remains hidden on Google Earth.

Haarp was jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

There is an area of Russia in the Siberian tundra that is thickly blurred out on Google  and no one knows why. The closest city is Egvekinot, Russia; neighbour to Alaska across the Bering Strait. Some have suggested this hidden tundra may be one of Russia's 'secret cities'

The secret city, Russia

There is an area of Russia in the Siberian tundra that is thickly blurred out on Google  and no one knows why.

The closest city is Egvekinot, Russia; neighbour to Alaska across the Bering Strait.

In 1986, Russians were told that there were dozens of closed cities, with more than one million people living in them.

The cities had mysterious numbers attached to their names, such as Arzamas-16, which was the home of the nuclear engineers who put an end to America's nuclear monopoly.

Some have suggested this hidden tundra may be one of Russia's 'secret cities'.

One writer on the website Siberian Light speculates it's either 'a radar station or missile interceptor,' while another notes that the image of the area is may have been copy-pasted from another part of the country.

Portlaoise Prison in Ireland's County Laois is a high-security prison housing some of the country's most dangerous criminals. While it isn't blurred on Google Earth, a closer look at the image shows how the colours do not match with its surroundings

Portlaoise Prison, Ireland

Portlaoise Prison in Ireland's County Laois is a high-security prison housing some of the country's most dangerous criminals.

While it isn't blurred on Google Earth, a closer look at the image shows how the colours do not match with its surroundings.

This is because the view of on Google Earth is of an old prison, perhaps so no one is able to plan an escape from the facility.

A large area of the islands in the autonomous archipelago-country of the Faroes are missing, including the old WWII military base on the island of Vagar.

The Faroe Islands, Denmark

The Faroe Islands is a self-governing archipelago, part of Denmark. It's made up of 18, volcanic islands between Iceland and Norway in the North Atlantic Ocean.

A large area of the islands in the autonomous archipelago-country of the Faroes are missing, including the old WWII military base on the island of Vagar.

No one is sure why parts of the Faroe Islands, home to 50,000 people, are pixelated, but news.com.au suggests it may have something to do with fishing rights.

The Szazhalombatta Oil Refinery in Hungary asked Google to be coloured green and have its building and grounds removed from satellite images  but no one understands why. What makes the matter even stranger is that the green blocks out a field of grass with nothing on top of it

Szazhalombatta Oil Refinery in Hungary

The Szazhalombatta Oil Refinery in Hungary asked Google to be coloured green and have its building and grounds removed from satellite images  but no one understands why.

What makes the matter even stranger is that the green blocks out a field of grass with nothing on top of it.

Kangtega, known also as The Snow Saddle, is a major mountain peak of the Himalayas in Nepal. Its summit rises 6,782 metres (22,251 ft). It is blacked out on Google Earth  and no one is sure why. Some have suggested it may simply be a glitch in the system

Kangtega, Nepal

Kangtega, known also as The Snow Saddle, is a major mountain peak of the Himalayas in Nepal. Its summit rises 6,782 metres (22,251 ft).

It is blacked out on Google Earth  and no one is sure why. Some have suggested it may simply be a glitch in the system.

Nuclear weapons were stored at the Volkel base since the early 1960s and the Cuban missile crisis at the height of the Cold War. US diplomatic files, leaked by Wikileaks, mentioned atomic weapons in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Turkey. The Volkel site is camouflaged on Google Earth

The Volkel air base, the Netherlands

According to former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, there are 22 US nuclear bombs stored in the bunkers of the Volkel air base air base.

They include B61 thermonuclear bombs and a device said to be four times as powerful as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Nuclear weapons were stored at the Volkel base since the early 1960s and the Cuban missile crisis.

US diplomatic files, leaked by Wikileaks, mentioned atomic weapons in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Turkey. The Volkel site is camouflaged on Google Earth.

The Keowee Dam, on Lake Keowee in South Carolina, has been blurred by Google. Lake Keowee provides a crucial source for cooling water for Oconee Nuclear Station 'Why would they want to hide a reservoir? Could be the fact that the dam helps run the Oconee Nuclear Station,' wrote one conspiracy theorist

Keowee Dam, South Carolina

The Keowee Dam, on Lake Keowee in South Carolina, has been blurred by Google.

It is approximately 26 miles (42 km) long, 3 miles (4.8 km) wide, with an average depth of 54 feet (16 m), and a shoreline measured at 300 miles (480 km).

As well as providing hydroelectric power, Lake Keowee provides a crucial source for cooling water for Oconee Nuclear Station (ONS), a 2,538 MW nuclear power generating facility.

'Why would they want to hide a reservoir? Could be the fact that the dam helps run the Oconee Nuclear Station,' wrote one conspiracy theorist.

'Whatever the potential risk at bay, someone doesn't want us to see it; simple as that.'

A chunk of the Philippine city of Valencia is pixelated, which some suggest may simply be an oversight on Google's part. The city has a population of more than 180,000 people, which has raised suspicions over why it is hidden from view

Valencia City, Philippines

A chunk of the Philippine city of Valencia is pixelated, which some suggest may simply be an oversight on Google's part.

The city has a population of more than 180,000 people, which has raised suspicions over why it is hidden from view.

The city is located in the central part of the Province of Bukidnon.
The Coto Donana National Park is Europe's largest nature reserve and a Unesco World Heritage Site - which was all news to me. Ashamedly, it had hardly registered on my ornithological radar.

Not so for my father-in-law, Noel, an experienced birder who'd longed to visit Europe's most important wetland, on Spain's south-western costa an hour's drive from Seville.

Getting there was thrilling enough as we pulled into El Rocio on the edge of the park at dusk, and checked into Hotel Toruno.

A place of nature and beauty: Coto Donana National Park is a side of the Spanish Costas that few see

Arriving in a car seemed inappropriate because this is a cowboy town where you expect to see a Spanish Lone Ranger shooting cans off the wooden fences where locals tether their horses.

There's no Tarmac in this frontier outpost, just sandy tracks, a few bars and one or two shops selling leather riding boots and religious mementos linked to the Virgin of El Rocio.

More than a million pilgrims flock here at Pentecost (50 days after Easter) - as she is said to help those with fertility issues.

We took our seats at one of the hotel's rickety outdoor tables and prayed someone might come for our order. But it was only 8pm and the restaurant was not officially open until 8.30pm.

We British love to eulogise about the Mediterranean lifestyle, but at times it is infuriating, and certainly doesn't help deal with the national debt.

But we were allowed a bottle of local wine, and sat underneath a 1,000-year-old olive tree colonised by chattering sparrows until the appointed hour, after which we devoured half the menu.

We got talking to a British couple who told us the salt marsh was all dried up and we wouldn't see any flamingos, cranes or rare herons and should come back in spring or after the rains.

But we felt reassured that the Donana National Park offers a feast of assorted wildlife, not just a set menu of migrating birds.

Next morning, we rose early and headed for the park's visitor centre, where huge four-wheel-drive, 20-seater buses were waiting.

Ours was driven by Gonzalo, who gave a brilliant commentary in Spanish and English.

Noel said Gonzalo's ability to spot rarities from a distance, such as the slender-billed gull, Audouin's gull, Kentish plover, whimbrel and many other birds of interest, was astounding.

His prize sighting was of a majestic Spanish imperial eagle perched on a tree surveying the mile upon mile of flat territory.

After a couple of minutes, it rose on huge, black 6ft wings, banked like a jumbo jet and headed into the distance.

Later, we saw another on top of a tree where, Gonzalo said, it would remain still for hours.

The park covers 210sq miles and comprises beach, sand dunes, scrubland and the massive delta of the Guadalquivir River.

It is named after Ana de Silva y Mendoza, wife of the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, because she built a residence here.

Later, in the 18th century, the artist Goya is known to have visited the Duchess of Alba at the Palacio de Donana when she was its proprietress.

Pretty in pink: You can see flamingos - among other feathered species - in this 'hidden' corner of Spain

We started on the beach (an 18-mile stretch of unadulterated sand) where fishermen were wading into the surf pushing what looked like lawn mowers.

Evoking a centuries-old image, they harvested shells and cockles from the seabed, though these hardy men arrived by Vespa, rather than horse and cart.

Then we headed inland - but only just, taking six attempts to surmount the ridge at the back of the beach, in the shadow of thousands of umbrella trees that help regenerate the dunes by binding the loose sand. As we moved through the reserve, we came across wild horses, red deer - magnificent with big antlers - fallow deer and wild boar, some with their scruffy little piglets in tow.

We did not see the rare Iberian lynx, which is said to inhabit the Coto Donana, but Gonzalo pointed out the tracks of larks, lizards and all kinds of other creepy crawlies.

Recently, a new resort town called Matalascanas has popped up on the edge of the reserve - and it has its own migratory principles, much to the horror of men such as Gonzalo.

Two of the Donana's precious lynxes have been run over by cars on the busy road to the resort and birds that have overflown the fences have been gunned down by trigger-happy hunters.

All the more reason to head firmly for Coto Donana National Park. This is a costa of an entirely different kind.
EasyJet has been slammed by parents for playing on their emotions to make extra cash.

The airline company is being criticised for telling mothers and fathers to pay for selected seating on flights or risk being seated away from their children.

The company's seating policy means that anyone wanting allocated seating on a flight pays between 0.99 and 4.99 for each seat.

The EasyJet booking system advises parents to pay extra to guarantee they are sat next to their children

This rule also applies for parents travelling with children over two years of age, even though the airline is notified that they are a child during the ticket booking procedure.

In its guidelines, EasyJet asks customers to let them know if children will be travelling to make sure they are seated with the adults.

They read: 'Our seating systems will always aim to group you together when you check-in online, but allocates on a first come first served basis.

'To guarantee you will sit together, you need to check in early. If you leave checking in until close to departure and all the seats have been allocated to other passengers, we will allocate as many of you together as we can and will ask other passengers if they are prepared to move once you are on board the plane.'

Children from two years of age and upwards are not automatically sat next to their parents

But many parents have struggled to find seats next to each other during check-in and, when faced with the issue, are told by customer services to fork out for allocated seating if they want to be guaranteed a place next to their child.

They are accusing the airline of cashing in on 'parental angst' and suggest the children travelling with adults should automatically be placed next to each other during the booking process.

Mark Richards, 31, from Bexley, experienced this problem when his wife Sheryll, 34, took their two year old daughter Emilie on a flight to Glasgow from London's Stansted last summer.

He said: 'My wife booked the flight a few days before they were travelling and when she went to check in, they were seated about twelve rows apart.

During inline check-in, parents often find they are seats several rows apart from their children and can only be placed together if they pay an extra fee

'My daughter was two years and three months old at this point, but even so, when we got to the airport, the manager in charge said that the best she could do was to move the seats so that they were five rows apart.

'We had to wait at the customer service desk for an hour while they sorted out two seats next to each other and by the time it was sorted, there was only half an hour to go before the flight left - it was very stressful.

'The woman dealing with it was very rude and complained that she was already having to sort out the same problem for another family.'

Mr Richards believes that EasyJet should limit the number of places it offers for sale through allocated seating, so that it can keep seats back for families.

He said: 'They are playing on parents' worries about not being sat next to their child.

'They should just limit the number of priority seating and that way you keep some seats spare for families in these kinds of situations. There are lots of seats, they dont have to pre-sell all of them.'

Many families struggle to even resolve the situation at the check-in desk though and are forced to ask passengers on the plane to move.

Philip Mo, from Berlin, had booked flights for his wife and children with EasyJet from Berlin to Edinburgh last autumn, but when they went to check in, the wife and two young children were each seated in separate rows.

When he contacted EasyJet, they told him to either wait until they got onto the plane to ask for assistance from the cabin crew or to pay extra to guarantee that they would be seated together.

Many customers have to wait until they reach the airport to be re-seated without an extra cost, and even that isn't guaranteed

Mr Mo has since hit out at the company for exploiting parental anxiety and argued that the airline's computer system shouldn't offer allocated seating if there are minors and parents who need to be seated next to each other on the flight.

He told MailOnline Travel: 'They state they have algorithm that seats families together, but this algorithm is only effective when checking in - they should hold seats when seating is booked.

'The only reason not to is to play on parental angst, [to] increase profits.'

'My opinion is that the stress '[this causes] is intentional to up sales of priority boarding.'

Fortunately for Mr Mo, his wife and children were assisted by very kind cabin crew, who convinced other passenger to move seats in order to accommodate the family, but he believes this is unfair on staff, who are already busy, and on passengers who have paid for their seats.

Other families haven't been so lucky with their fellow passengers.

Sandrine Delafont, from London, was given little assistance in finding two seats next to each other from cabin crew when boarding an EasyJet flight in late 2014, despite her child being of toddler age.

She eventually decided to ask passengers herself if they would swap seats and a pair were only made available when she refused to sit down until a resolution was found.

EasyJet said: 'EasyJet does everything it can to seat families together and has a sophisticated algorithm which seats families together more than 99 per cent of the time - at no additional cost.
An airline has said it will serve food and drinks to dolls - if they are booked on to the plane with a passenger ticket.

The bizarre move has been made by Thai Smile Airways to treat dolls, Luk Thep or Child Angels as they have become known in Southeast Asia, to a similar experience as human passengers.

Owners of the dolls claim they have 'supernatural powers,' and now the airline has moved to acknowledge the craze.

Owners of the dolls claim they have supernatural powers, and it appears the airlines agree

The dolls have been spotted in Thailand seated in restaurants - and now they will be able to 'eat' on the plane

A memo was sent out by Thai Smile to staff saying that the dolls should be 'treated like children'

The dolls, that looks eerily child-like, will be expected to follow all the in-cabin rules such as wearing a seatbelt when instructed.

In return, they will be offered drinks and snacks throughout the flight.

One Thai news site has said that the dolls are 'believed to own the soul of the child, therefore, the owners put clothes on them as if they were real children, with hope that the good care the give will bring luck.'

And the Star revealed that a memo was sent to all airline staff that explained that the Luk Thep dolls 'can be treated like children because they have undergone a "spiritualisation" process that breathes life into them.'

More and more people in Thailand believe the dolls have 'life breathed into them' and are more like children

Many owners treat the dolls just like children day to day and consider themselvers their parents, so the news that they can fly with them in the same way will be comforting

If dolls are brought on board without a ticket for a seat, they are treated as hand luggage, which means they would be stored in overhead lockers or under the seat.

Thai Smile are a subsidiary of the country's national carrier Thai Airways.

The dolls can cost as much as $200, and there have even been instances where owners have booked them into restaurants.

Thai devotee Ratchada Mahanavanont, 45, talking to her Child Angels Dolls at her house in Bangkok

One eatery, the Neta Grill in Thailand wrote on it's Facebook page: 'Neta Grill welcomes all customers, especially we are happy to serve Luk Thep, however with the condition that each dish must be eaten.'

This new trend among Thai people involves carrying, talking and caring for factory-manufactured dolls.

Owners believe the dolls hold children's spirits which bring good luck, wealth, blessings and protection from harm.
Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat has quit as lead writer of the show and will be replaced by the creator of Broadchurch.

Moffat will remain at the helm of the cult sci-fi show for series 10 - scheduled to be broadcast next year - before handing over the reins to new executive producer Chris Chinbal in 2018.

Announcing the end of his tenure, Moffat described the job as the 'best in the universe' and said he was 'keeping the Tardis warm' for the new recruit.

Steven Moffat (pictured) is quitting as executive producer of Doctor Who and will be replaced by Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall

He said: 'Feels odd to be talking about leaving when I'm just starting work on the scripts for season 10, but the fact is my timey-wimey is running out.

'While Chris is doing his last run of Broadchurch, I'll be finishing up on the best job in the universe and keeping the Tardis warm for him.

'It took a lot of gin and tonic to talk him into this, but I am beyond delighted that one of the true stars of British television drama will be taking the Time Lord even further into the future.'

He added: 'At the start of season 11, Chris Chibnall will become the new showrunner of Doctor Who. And I will be thrown in a skip.'

Chibnal, who has become a household name since launching the popular ITV crime drama, added that it was a 'privilege and joy' to take on the role.

'Doctor Who is the ultimate BBC programme: bold, unique, vastly entertaining, and adored all around the world,' he said.

'So it's a privilege and a joy to be the next curator of this funny, scary and emotional family drama.

'I've loved Doctor Who since I was four years old, and I'm relishing the thought of working with the exceptional team at BBC Wales to create new characters, creatures and worlds for the Doctor to explore.'

Moffat will remain at the helm of the cult sci-fi show for series 10, which is scheduled to be broadcast next year, before handing over the reins to new executive producer Chris Chinbal (pictured) in 2018

Moffat was responsible for introducing the 11th and 12th Doctors in Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi (left), as well as casting Jenna Coleman (right) - who will be replaced in the next series - on board as Clara Oswald

He also paid tribute to Moffat, lauding him for 'achieving the impossible' by 'continually expanding Doctor Who's creative ambition'.

'He's been a dazzling and daring showrunner, and hearing his plans and stories for 2017, it's clear he'll be going out with a bang. Just to make my life difficult,' he said.

Moffat took over Doctor Who in 2010 and has played a crucial role in growing it into a global success.

He was responsible for introducing the 11th and 12th Doctors in Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, as well as casting Karen Gillan as Amy Pond. He also brought Jenna Coleman - who will be replaced by a new companion in the next series - on board as Clara Oswald.

Moffat was also at the helm for the 50th Anniversary special in 2013 which saw fans around the globe celebrate the world's longest running sci-fi series with Doctors, Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt fighting the Daleks in a feature length episode.

Controller of BBC One Charlotte Moore said: 'I want to thank Steven Moffat for everything he has given Doctor Who. I've loved working with him, he is an absolute genius and has brought fans all over the world such joy.

'I will be very sad to see him leave the show, but I can't wait to see what he will deliver in his last ever series next year with a brand new companion.
Anna Wintour teamed her monochrome zebra print coat with clashing snakeskin print boots to attend a couple of fashion shows in Paris on Sunday.

The former Vogue editor-in-chief, 66, looked resplendent in her fashion forward get-up at the Thom Browne show, at Paris Men's Fashion Week, before heading to the Versace bash.

The fashion icon beamed as she posed alongside renowned designer Thom at the plush event in the French capital on Sunday.

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Queen bee: Anna Wintour looked amazing in a monochrome coat and clashing snakeskin boots as she hit the fashion shows in Paris on Sunday

Anna, the iconic former editor of fashion bible Vogue, oozed glam in her sophisticated get-up.

Her wintery zebra print style jacket was fitted to flatter her svelte figure, with the collars slightly elevated for dramatic effect.

Ever the fashionista, she clashed her prints wearing a green patterned frock underneath her coat, and a blinging crystal chain to finish her look.

Anna wore her hair in her trademark bob with a blunt fringe.

Friends in high places: She cosied up to designer Thom Browne as she attended her first show of the day

Two's company: Then there was time for a quick pow-wow with Donatella Versace at her star-studded show

Key colours: Models wowed in whites, oranges and blacks as they took to the catwalk

A chic centre parting framed Anna's face as her honey-tinted brunette locks gently curled under.

She beamed as she stood alongside designer Thom for a photo as his Autumn Winter 2016 collection was debuted on the catwalk.

Thom looked dapper in a three-piece charcoal grey suit - all the rage for Autumn Winter 2016, with the likes of model David Gandy rocking suits of the same shade during recent fashion shows.

Thom added a touch of old school cool to his ensemble as he clutched onto a grey felt bowler hat with a black strap around it.

He stayed patriotic and indeed added a splash of colour by wearing braces in the colours of the French flag.

Dynamic: The future of fashion . . . Thom Browne's unique fall line hit the catwalk on Sunday

Hats off: Thom's models wore bowler hats on their face - instead of on top of their heads for the event
She may be at the center of international intrigue after she helped Sean Penn meet with drug lord El Chapo but Kate del Castillo isn't running for cover.

The Mexican actress went to El Coyote restaurant in Los Angeles on Saturday night with friend Jillian Barberie, but wouldn't say anything about Penn's Rolling Stone article on drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman.

'You know what? I can't talk about him,' the 43-year-old beauty told TMZ as she headed into the popular Mexican eatery.

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In the mood for Mexican: Kate del Castillo, left, headed to El Coyote restauranm for dinner on Saturday night with pal Jillian Barberie, a talk radio host in Los Angeles

Mi amiga: Barberie, 49, said she and del Castillo were on a girls night out and looking forward to a margarita

Lips are sealed: The Mexican actress, who acted as a go-between for Sean Penn to meet with drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman after his escape from prison, said she couldn't talk about the situation

heads down: Del Castillo left the talking to her radio host pal

'It's girls night out,' chimed in talk radio host Barberie, 49, who described del Castillo as 'mi amiga.'

'We want a little Mexican, a margarita,' she added.

Later, Barberie tweeted about how the pair had left the restaurant via the kitchen after their meal.

'The staff started clapping for my friend. Such support and love,' she wrote on her Twitter feed.

Sssssh! Former Fox TV local news anchor Barberie shared this selfie of her and the Mexican actress chowing down on chips and salsa inside the restaurant along with a message to fans

She's a hero: She later tweeted about leaving the restaurant via the kitchen and getting support from the staff

Del Castillo, who has most recently been seen on US TV screens in the series Jane The Virgin, helped broker the meeting between the Hollywood movie star and the head of the Sinaloa Cartel who escaped from a Mexican prison six months previously.

The actress is now at the center of a money laundering probe and Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez has said that there were 'indications' she may have used money from El Chapo to help finance her tequila business.

Reuters reported Sunday that del Castillo believes she's the target of a witch hunt by Mexican authorities.

'I have no reason to give explanations to the press. If I don't talk, it's because my lawyers told me not to, because the government wants to destroy me,' the actress said in a statement to Univision, which published the comment on its website.

Target? The actress and model has found herself at the center of a money laundering investigation by the Mexican authorities and told Univision she believes the Mexican government is out to destroy her

Del Castillo's father said last week that his daughter will testify at the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles where she will present proof 'she is clean.'

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.

Guzman's reason for agreeing to meet with the Hollywood star was first explained as resulting from his interest in having a movie made about him.

Then it seemed his interest was in a face-to-face encounter not with Penn, but with del Castillo, with whom Guzman openly flirted in recently published text messages.

Shaking on it: Penn's meeting in the jungle with the 'on the run' head of the Sinaloa Cartel met with controversy. The movie star penned an article about it for Rolling Stone

Charlie Rose from CBS' 60 Minutes asked the actor whether he believed the Mexican government had deliberately sought to credit him with the drug lord's capture to put him at risk from the Sinaloa Cartel.

'Yes,' Penn replied.

'There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I with El Chapo, that it was... 'essential' to his capture,' Penn said.

'We know the Mexican government, they clearly were humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did,' added Penn.
He's a doting father to his children Oscar, 14, and Ava, nine and it seems Australian actor Hugh Jackman is equally as caring for his pet pooches.

When the 47-year-old actor headed out for a family stroll in the snow in New York on Sunday he made sure his dog Dali was as wrapped up as he was.

Hugh, who is married to Deborra-Lee Furness, 60, was seen walking the French bulldog, who was dressed in a gilet and special booties to make sure his paws didn't get too cold in the snow., who he shares with .

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All rugged up: Hugh Jackman was spotted bracing the cold and snow in New York and going for a stroll with his family and dogs on Sunday. He is seen here with pet pooch Dali and daughter Ava

Hugh was rugged up against the chill in a black puffa jacket, ski trousers and a matching beanie, and shielded his eyes against the glare with dark sunglasses.

Adopted daughter Ava was also in her snow gear, which included a purple and black jacket and black trousers.

His white French bulldog was dressed in a black coat and blue snow boots to keep his paws warm from the cold ground.

Adorable: Hugh's white French bulldog was dressed in a black coat and blue snow boots to keep his paws warm from the cold ground

Frosty! The Australian star was rugged up against the chill in a black puffa jacket, ski trousers and a matching beanie, and shielded his eyes against the glare with dark sunglasses

Ready for fun? Hugh appeared to be carrying a board to play in the snow

While out on the walk, the Wolverine star said hello to American designer Calvin Klein, 73, with the pair embracing with a hug on the outing.

It seems the pair bumped into one another in the busy city.

Calvin was out with friends on the trip and he and Hugh enjoyed a brief chat.

New York is currently covered in a blanket of snow, after winter storm Jonas, that bought plenty of snowfall.

Fancy seeing you here! While out on the walk, the Wolverine star said hello to American designer Calvin Klein, 73 (left)

Pals: The pair embraced with a hug on the outing

Catching up: Calvin was out with friends on the trip and he and Hugh enjoyed a brief chat

Icy: New York is currently covered in a blanket of snow, after winter storm Jonas, that bought plenty of snowfall to the area

Looking fashionable: Calvin looked stylish even in a snow coat and trousers

It seems Hugh like other New Yorkers are enjoying the weather conditions, with the star taking to Instagram to share videos with fans including of snow fights.

Hugh - who is originally from Sydney - shared one humorous slow motion clip to his more than 4.7 million Instagram followers, showing himself being pelted with snowballs.

He captioned the video: 'What to do after the blizzard of 2016. SLO-MO SNOWBALL FIGHT! (sic).'

He also shared another clip of his dogs Dali and Allegra bundled in warm coats running about in the snow, writing: 'Morning in the snow!!!! #Dali #Allegra #lovinit.'

Hugh has just returned to his home in New York from Switzerland, where he joined Monaco royal Charlotte Casiraghi, 29, at a Montblanc gala dinner.

Target: Hugh - who is originally from Sydney - shared one humorous slow motion clip to his more than 4.7 million Instagram followers, showing himself being pelted with snowballs
He dubs himself King Kyle of the airwaves and often boasts of a flashy lifestyle to boot.

But when KIIS 106.5 FM star Kyle Sandilands arrived for work on Monday, his mode of transport didn't quite measure up to his high-rolling status.

The 44-year-old breakfast radio host was seen bowling into the Sydney radio station's car park in a Holden ute instead of his beloved gleaming Rolls Royce.

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Different look: On Monday Kyle Sandilands arrived at work in a Holden ute instead of his usual flashy Rolls Royce

When asked by a radio station staffer for an explanation on the different vehicle, Kyle laughed: 'Don't ask..

'I've left all my keys in one car and the car's getting serviced so I've been palmed with the farm ute,' he explained, before driving off in search of a parking space.

The white Holden ute with a red light on the top is certainly a change from his sleek black Rolls Royce vehicle, worth hundreds of thousands.

Kyle was casually dressed for his early-morning radio shift, sporting his signature black T-shirt and matching cap.

Explanation: Kyle explained his usual car was getting serviced and he had left the keys in it

Introducing the ute: The white Holden ute with a red light on the top is certainly a change from his sleek black Rolls Royce vehicle, worth hundreds of thousands

Different drive: Kyle pictured with his Rolls Royce

He and girlfriend Imogen Anthony moved to an acreage in St Ives, North Shore of Sydney, last year.

And with their own private farm, the couple have animals including alpacas and chickens on the property.

Kyle and co-star Jackie O recently returned to the airwaves for 2016, no doubt hoping to top the next ratings survey.

The on-air duo will be up against newcomer Sam Frost and her co-host Rove McManus on 2Day FM, as well as popular Nova team Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli.

Living it up: The 44-year-old dubs himself as King Kyle of the airwaves and leads a flashy lifestyle to boot

On Monday morning Kyle made an interesting admission, saying he would be keen to run for presidency if Australia became a republic.

'I've also made a decision, that if we do become the United States of Australia we won't have a prime minister. We'll have a president,' he began.

'The day we become a republic, is the day I will be running for the presidency. I want to be referred to as Mr President. Who wouldn't want to?'
Her three hit ABC shows star strong black women.

And TV producer Shonda Rhimes, 46, was quick to call out Hollywood on diversity questions at the Producers Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday while accepting the Norman Lear achievement award, according to People magazine.

First of all, [writing about] strong women and three dimensional people of color is something Norman was doing 40 something years ago, Rhimes said. So how come it has to be done all over again?"

Making a statement: Shonda Rhimes called out Hollywood on diversity questions as she accepted the Norman Lear Achievement Award at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday

Rhimes she wrote diverse characters on her shows Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder and Grey's Anatomy because she created content she wanted to see and what she knew was normal.

She asked why more examples of strong black women aren't found outside of her programs.

What are we waiting for? she said. I mean, I know this is a room full of producers, so probably you're waiting for money. Clearly, money.

Diversity: The 46-year-old has written diverse characters on her shows Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder and Grey's Anatomy

How to Get Away with Murder's Viola Davis, 50, introduced Rhimes on stage at the awards show, which was held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in the Century City area.

Davis pointed out Rhimes was the first solo female recipient of the award and alluded to the ongoing controversy over the lack of diversity in this year's Oscar nominations.

In a year, a month, hell, a week in which everyone is talking about diversity, she is living proof that the curve that many people are behind was drawn by her, Davis said.

Making history: Rhimes became the first solo female recipient of the Norman Lear achievement award

Earlier in Rhimes speech, she pointed out that setting an example for content creators was not difficult.

I have, against no odds, courageously pioneered the art of writing for people of color as if they were human beings, she said.

See, the thing about all this trailblazing that everyone says I've been doing, it's not like I did things and then the studio or the network gasped with horror and fought me. It was 2004.

Warm welcome: How to Get Away with Murder's Viola Davis, 50, introduced Rhimes on stage at the awards show
She has been touted as the next 'villain' in the forthcoming series of My Kitchen Rules, thanks to her opinionated nature and no-prisoners-taken attitude.

But Zana's husband Gianni believes that fans will eventually warm to his 24-year-old ladylove despite her penchant for ruffling feathers on the show.

'It's what I love about her. She says what she thinks', explained Gianni, 27, during an interview published in the latest edition of New Idea magazine.

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'She says what she thinks': My Kitchen Rules contestant Gianni, 27, believes that fans will eventually warm to his 24-year-old wife Zana despite her penchant for ruffling feathers on the show

'It takes some getting used to, but people will adore her like I do', he said of his wife, who he married in a lavish Hayman Island ceremony in 2015.

The Melbourne couple, both of whom work as lawyers, were not shy to sing their own praises during the interview, with Zana telling the publication that she likes 'the nicer things in life' and that she has 'earned ever cent' of her formidable wealth.

Zana is certainly painted as the reality cooking show's resident bully, with the latest promo video featuring the brunette beauty turning her nose up at almost everything, grimacing and even calling some dishes 'disgusting'.

See more of the latest news and updates on the My Kitchen Rules stars

Ruffling feathers: Zana is certainly painted as the reality cooking show's resident bully, with the latest promo video featuring the brunette beauty turning her nose up at almost everything

Confident couple: Speaking to the camera, Zana says: 'If we can beat people triple our age in the courtroom, we can beat anyone in My Kitchen Rules'

Speaking to the camera, Zana says: 'If we can beat people triple our age in the courtroom, we can beat anyone in My Kitchen Rules'.

While attending the recent My Kitchen Rules launch in Sydney, Zana told Daily Mail Australia that she couldn't believe how she was portrayed in the show's latest advertisements.

'We know how we are,' she said, before adding that she and her husband don't have 'many enemies.

Mistaken identity: While attending the recent My Kitchen Rules launch in Sydney, Zana told Daily Mail Australia that she couldn't believe how she was portrayed in the show's latest advertisements

'When I think of a villain I think of someone who is genuinely nasty...(and that's) not me but maybe someone else,' she revealed while keeping mum on the contestant's name.

She went on to explain that the 12 other teams learnt to 'appreciate' her and Gianni's honesty on the show.

The highly anticipated show is set to hit screens on January 30.

Who's the bully then? 'When I think of a villain I think of someone who is genuinely nasty...(and that's) not me but maybe someone else,' she revealed while keeping mum on the contestant's name

It's almost here! My Kitchen Rules 2016 is set to hit screens on January 30
Sir David Attenborough, pictured, still has his youthful enthusiasm in the terrific Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur

Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur

Rating:

Whatever David Attenborough is on, I want a bottle of it. The 89-year-old naturalist is as sprightly as a teenager. Any more bounce in his step and hed be on Strictly.

Hunting for monster fossils in Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur (BBC1), Sir David was skipping over the rocks of Patagonia, bending down agilely to pluck fragments of bone and shell from the earth, squatting on his haunches or even lying stretched out on the ground to examine remnants of dino-egg.

The Argentine paleontologists, reconstructing the biggest sauropod skeleton ever discovered, couldnt compete with his energy.

He was constantly joking around  a side of his character familiar to camera crews who have worked with him over the decades, but rarely seen on screen.

Six scientists were wrestling with a fossilised vertebra the size of a small hatchback, struggling to stand it up.

Sir David sauntered over and put out a hand, as if to shove it over, before bursting into mischievous laughter.

When one of the experts explained that the sheer bulk of the titanosaurs hip bones suggested that it swung its tail to help it walk, Sir David joked: I must try that some time  and wiggled his behind like Marilyn Monroe.

Part of his joie de vivre comes from the satisfaction he feels in talking about dinosaur excavations on television. Most of his career has been devoted to filming wildlife, but fossils were his first love.

As a boy, he searched for ammonites and trilobites in the Leicestershire woods. He has never lost that youthful enthusiasm.

Im fascinated by dinosaurs, he said at the outset of the show.

His excitement is transmitted through the screen. You might think its hard to be interested in an animal that died 101,600,000 years ago, but Sir David made us feel we were on safari beside him, watching it forage and feed.

This titanosaur weighed 70 tons and had a neck so long it could nibble the leaves of monkey puzzle trees 130ft off the ground.

OUTING OF THE WEEKEND: Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) had the perfect day out planned in Call The Midwife (BBC1)  a spin along the Great North Road in her Morris Minor, and supper in the restaurant at Watford Gap services. Very nice... in the days before McDonalds and Costa, of course. Advertisement

To sustain its vast bulk, it had no time to chew its food and so swallowed the foliage whole  1,500lb of it every day, enough to fill a skip to overflowing.

The sheer scale of its bones was awesome  up to 25ft long, the size of steel girders. The archaeologists started work, not with trowels and brushes, but with pneumatic drills and mechanical diggers.

It was the eggs, preserved for 100 million years under volcanic ash, that gave us the clearest clue to how the creature must have looked.

One had been crushed and slowly turned to stone when the hatchling inside was about to be born.

A patch of skin had survived through the aeons and it looked like nothing found on Earth today  suggestive of leather covered with fish scales.

Sir David was agog. And that meant we were agog, too.

James May's Cars Of The People

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James May is also a genuine enthusiast, but as he conducted a long, worthy and very dull comparison of fuel consumption in American and Japanese saloon cars circa 1973, nobody was agog.

Cars Of The People (BBC2) celebrates ordinary motors, the sort that families could afford. Starting with the Austin Seven in the Thirties, he worked his way up to the Allegro half a century later.

James May celebrated ordinary cars as part of Channel 4 show James May's Cars of the People, pictured

James was bemoaning the death of the British car industry, which he attributed quite seriously to the fact we won the war: because the Germans and Japanese were forbidden to re-arm, he said, all their repressed military ambition was channelled into the automobile industry.

As a theory, that is dodgy at best. But James was determined to ignore a much more obvious explanation.

He took a swipe at complacent designers. He grumbled about inefficient management. He tutted over the oil crisis.

When it came to the endless strikes at British Leyland, however, and the closed shops, the workers paid to sleep on the factory floor, the blackmailing shop stewards and the picket line violence, all James could do was bewail the bloody class system.
She is one of Australia's most promising acting exports, having recently nabbed a starring role in the upcoming Hollywood thriller, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies.

And Bella Heathcote looked every inch the screen starlet on Friday as she attended a photocall for the Jane Austen parody on Friday.

The former Neighbours actress, 28, sparkled in a pleated skater skirt in glittering gold as she attended the California-based Screen Gems event with her co-stars Matt Smith, Jack Huston, Lily James and Douglas Booth.

Golden girl! Bella Heathcote looked every inch the silver screen starlet on Friday as she attended a photocall for Jane Austen parody Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on Friday in California

The fair-skinned beauty, who plays Jane Bennet in the movie, also wore a silk blouse emblazoned with a retro chain-link print, while accessorising the ladylike ensemble with a thick leather waist belt and a pair of pointed black pumps.

Allowing her naturally flawless complexion to shine, Bella wore a delicate application of blush, a swipe of mascara and a dab of pink lipgloss.

Joining Bella at the event was Lily James, who plays her on-screen sister Elizabeth in the film, based on the 2009 book of the same name.

Stealing the spotlight! The fair-skinned beauty also wore a silk blouse emblazoned with a retro chain-link print, while accessorising the ladylike ensemble with a thick leather waist belt and a pair of pointed black pumps

Lily, 26, swathed her lithe frame in a high-necked midi dress which featured an unusual black-and-white print and sheer paneling at the top.

She completed her look with a pair of pointed oxblood pumps, while keeping her makeup simple and understated.

Matt, James and Jack each donned a different coloured suit, with the former Doctor Who star revealing his stylish side by adding a long silver necklace to his navy and black ensemble.

Demure: Lily James, 26, swathed her lithe frame in a high-necked midi dress which featured an unusual black-and-white print and sheer paneling at the top

Meanwhile, dashing Douglas, who plays Bella's love interest Mr Bingley in the movie, wore a grey ACNE Studios suit.

Speaking to Just Jared about her role in the 19th century mashup, Bella revealed that she wore a corset every day while on set, despite the fact that her character was required to run, jump and sword fight.

'I liked it because it reminded me to stand up straight and not slouch over and act like a slob', mused Bella in the interview.

Chic: Matt, James and Jack each donned a different coloured suit jacket and trousers, with Matt revealing his stylish side by adding a long silver necklace to his navy and black ensemble

Bella first found fame when she joined the cast of the long-running soap, Neighbours in 2009.

In 2010, she was awarded the Australians In Film Heath Ledger Scholarship, which included flights from Sydney to LA and $10,000.

Two years later, she appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is released in the US on 5 February and UK on 11 February.
As her Instagram handle King Kylie suggests, she is social media royalty.

And on Sunday, Kylie Jenner was busy maintaining her reputation as an Instagram super star by sharing with her millions of followers scenes from yet another candid photo shoot.

The 18-year-old posted a series of images of herself working a pair of leather trousers in front of a white Rolls Royce.

Working it: Kylie Jenner shared snaps from a candid photo shoot in front of a Rolls Royce on Sunday

The reality star kept it simple yet stylish for her photo shoot.

On top of her black leather trousers, she wore a white top and a black jacket that bore the image of a dragon.

She polished off the look with a red and black purse, which had her signature bright fluffy accessory attached.

See more of the latest on Kylie Jenner as she shows off her figure in leather trousers

Hitting a fashion high note: The reality star showed off the back of her dragon print jacket

In one image, Kylie moved her perfect beach waves just slightly out of place as she sleepily rested her head against her hand.

For a second snap, the reality star made sure to show off the intricate dragon graphic that was etched into the back of her jacket.

The photo also showed off a glimpse of her pert leather-clad derriere.

The whole picture: Jenner was a mere inches away from the third and final shot of the series

In a third and final image, Kylie showed off her full physique as she approached her luxurious car.

Proving just how popular she is online, all three images each amassed hundreds of thousands of likes in the hours after they were posted.

Kylie is such a phenomenon on social media that the Instagram account for her Lip Kit recently reached an impressive one million followers.

Popular: Kylie, pictured in Woodland Hills on Friday, is such a phenomenon on social media that the Instagram account for her LipKit recently reached an impressive one million followers

The teen, who launched her hugely popular makeup buys last year, sent her fans a gushing message, thanking them for their support:

'THANKS FOR 1 MILLION FOLLOWERS! I've been dreaming and working on this for two entire years and the experience has been even better than I imagined! Thank you thank you thank you! @lipkitbykylie,' she wrote.
Last week they featured in a Vogue photo shoot with Australian beauty Jessica Hart.

And less than a week later, Stenmark twins Zac and Jordan were seen posing with another Hart, this time Jessica's younger sister Ashley.

The brothers feature in an advertising campaign alongside the 26-year-old blonde stunner for the latest Just Jeans upcoming Autumn campaign, joining Ashley as official brand ambassadors for 2016.

A change of Hart! Stenmark twins Zac and Jordan joined Ashley Hart as brand ambassadors for the latest Just Jeans campaign

The photo shoot shows the genetically-blessed trio donning a number of denim threads with Ashley flaunting her svelte frame in a pair of grey jeans and a loose blue shirt.

Wearing her hair in loose tousled waves and opting for a minimal application of makeup, the striking beauty allows her natural beauty to radiate through, as she beams excitedly for the camera.

Meanwhile, the twin brothers are similarly dressed in jeans and thick fitted jumpers, showcasing their impressive muscular physiques as they flash their trademark smiles.

Good jeans! The photo shoot shows the genetically-blessed trio donning a number of denim threads with Ashley flaunting her svelte frame in a pair of grey jeans and a loose blue shirt

Subsequent images show the handsome model's donning thick hooded jackets, as well as more summery ensembles consisting of shorts and T-shirts.

'We are very excited and proud to undertake the role of ambassadors for such an iconic Australian brand,' Jordan and Zac said of their new role with the popular label.

Adding: 'Denim has always been a staple in our wardrobe, and Just Jeans is a brand we grew up with, so it feels like a very natural fit for us'.

Dapper: The twin brothers are similarly dressed in jeans and thick fitted jumpers, showcasing their impressive muscular physiques as they flash their trademark smiles

They look good in anything! Subsequent images show the handsome model's donning thick hooded jackets, as well as more summery ensembles consisting of shorts and T-shirts

The addition of the Stenmark brothers reflects the iconic Australian brand's commitment to featuring home-grown Australian talent.

'Jordan and Zac embody the spirit of the Just Jeans brand. They are Australian boys born and bred, and share a relaxed authentic style synonymous with Just Jeans core values,' Just Jeans Group General Manager Matthew McCormack said.

'From their enthusiasm for sport, to their personal style and the way they incorporate denim into their everyday lives, Jordan and Zac are an authentic fit for the brand.'

'We are very excited and proud to undertake the role of ambassadors for such an iconic Australian brand,' Jordan and Zac said of their new role with the popular label

Last week the brothers were spotted posing in Bondi with Ashley's older sister, Victoria's Secret model Jessica, for an upcoming edition of Vogue Australia edited by legendary photographer Mario Testino.

The 29-year-old blonde beauty sizzled in the plunging swimsuit while striding gracefully down the pavement arm in arm with legendary photographer Mario Testino.

Following behind her were the flawless Stenmark's, walking alongside Jessica with their shirts off, flashing their tanned upper bodies.

'Denim has always been a staple in our wardrobe, and Just Jeans is a brand we grew up with, so it feels like a very natural fit for us,' the brothers said

Both Jessica and Ashley are based in the US.

They have recently spent time in Australia with one another and were regularly spotted at Sydney's Bondi Beach.

Jessica on Wednesday took to Twitter to gush about Ashley before she jetting off back home, sharing a sweet picture of the two of them and writing: 'I love you soooo much #sisters.'
She recently snagged the role of a troubled mother-of-two on TV soap Home And Away.

And it seems that pop-star Samantha Jade has family plans of her own, having admitted that she sees herself as married with kids in the not-too-distant future.

In a recent interview posted on Kate Waterhouse's blog, the 29-year-old songstress spoke of where she see herself in five years' time, saying: 'I hopefully am married by then, and having a child because having a baby and being married is as much of a dream for me as music is'.

Who will be the lucky man? Single Samantha Jade, 29, has revealed that she would love to be married with a child in five years' time

'Id love that and Id love to still be in music', she added.

The career-driven starlet also admitted that being a single woman had meant she could focus all her energy on releasing her latest studio Album, Nine, by the end of 2015.

'I dont have a partner, I dont have a child. So, my work is my everything right now', she explained.

Eye on the prize: The career-driven starlet also admitted that being a single woman had meant she could focus all her energy on releasing her latest studio Album, Nine, by the end of 2015

While 2015 proved to be a romantic write-off for Samantha Jade, the Australian national has spoken of her goals of finding a boyfriend in the coming year.

In an interview with Daily Mail Australia last year, Samantha explained: Next year I feel like, is my year for the love, and you know, because if I had a boyfriend, I'd never see them.

'They'd literally see me for an hour a week maybe.'

On the prowl! While 2015 proved to be a romantic write-off for Samantha Jade, the Australian national has spoken of her goals of finding a boyfriend in the coming year

She added: 'And I'd probably be sleeping in that time. I think it would be very hard. If I dated someone they'd have to get my schedule.'

Describing her ultimate man, Samantha Jade said she would love to date, 'someone who's got very real morals and is normal'.

She also told Daily Mail that her man must be both proud of her achievements but not in the relationship to piggyback off her success.

'I'd like a guy that was like "I don't want to come to this event with you, unless you really want me to be there" she said.

It comes after Samantha Jade split with her former boyfriend, Swedish record producer Christian Nilsson, whom she dated for seven years.

Busy career woman! In an interview with Daily Mail Australia last year, Samantha explained: Next year I feel like, is my year for the love, and you know, because if I had a boyfriend, I'd never see them
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson slipped into their old roles of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for the first time in 14 years on Sunday night, as the X-Files reboot had its premiere.

Bursting back onto TV screens that saw them film 202 episodes across nine seasons, the Hollywood duo were reunited as they once again plunged headlong into the paranormal.

It was same old Mulder spouting conspiracy theories while same old Scully tried to keep him in check - but with only six episodes to play with former agent Dana was already a believer by the end of the night.

I want to believe: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reunited Mulder and Scully after 14 years to face a new threat from an old enemy as the X-Files returned on Sunday night

The episode opened with Fox recapping his fantastical beliefs in his signature deadpan monotone.

'In 2002 the government closed the X-Files... but my personal obsession did not,' he droned. 'We must ask ourselves are they really a hoax? Are we truly alone? Or are we being lied to?'

Fans were then bathed in a warm flood of nostalgia as the unaltered title sequence kicked in, complete with Mark Snow's unchanged iconic theme tune.

Remember this? Fans were bathed in a warm flood of nostalgia as the unaltered title sequence kicked in, complete with Mark Snow's unchanged iconic theme tune

Gross! The episode opened with Fox recapping his fantastical beliefs in his signature deadpan monotone, featuring some creepy snaps from the original X-Files

The show then jumps back to 1947 and the site of the supposed Roswell crash - which is shown to be very much fact.

As an unnamed doctor is escorted by military to the wreckage of an alien ship, they find an injured alien crawling away; the doctor is appalled when the soldiers open fire and kill it.

It then jumps ahead almost 70 years to today, where Scully, now working as a surgeon, gets a call from her former boss Skinner, who is trying to track down her former partner, who we find holed away and sporting some serious stubble.

The truth is out there: The show then jumps back to 1947 and the site of the supposed Roswell crash - which is shown to be very much fact

Witness: As an unnamed doctor is escorted by military to the wreckage of an alien ship

Welcome to Earth: They find an injured alien trying to crawl away from the wreckage

Ask questions later: But the soldiers open fire, killing it

He wants him to meet with a wealthy and successful conspiracy theorist Tad O'Malley - played by Joel McHale - who takes them to meet a young women named Sveta, who claims to have been abducted several times and had fetuses stolen from her... with the scars to prove it.

The girl, whom Mulder interviewed as a child after her first encounter, claims to be psychic and telepathic, and even posses alien DNA; indeed she knows Mulder and Scully had been in a relationship and even had a baby together. But Scully, ever the skeptic, asks to test her DNA.

Meanwhile O'Malley flies Mulder to a secret research facility where a team of scientists unveil an ARV - or alien reproduction vehicle - a spacecraft supposedly reverse-engineered from extra-terrestrial technology.

Today: It then jumps ahead almost 70 years to today, where Scully, now working as a surgeon, gets a call from her former boss Skinner, who is trying to track down her former partner, who we find holed away and sporting some serious stubble

Soup to Champagne: Skinner wants them to meet with a wealthy and successful conspiracy theorist Tad O'Malley - played by Joel McHale

Chemsitry: The quietly paranoid Mulder and the no-nonsense Scully have not changed a bit

The ship is then shown levitating, before disappearing completely, right before Mulder's eyes.

The scientist confirms it is powered by 'Ununpentium', or Element 115, something the government have had possession of since the 1940s, but, as Mulder theorizes, kept secret while energy companies made billions of dollars.

'Essentially the energy of the universe: no fuel, no flame, no combustion... all electro-magnetic,' the scientist confirms.

Taken: O'Malley takes them to meet a young women named Sveta, who claims to have been abducted several times

Ouch: She claims she had fetuses stolen from her... with the scars to prove it

Grim: Sveta said she had false memories implanted, but still could recall having babies taken from her

Mulder then returns to FBI headquarters to check physical X-Files to find that - while his I want To Believe poster is still there and his pencils are still stuck in the ceiling - the files themselves have been removed.

He then meets with the doctor from the Roswell crash site - now an old man - who encourages him to keep digging, but worries they will be scorned if they bring their knowledge public.

Mulder, Sveta and O'Malley then attempt to convince Scully of their theory: that alien technology is real, and that an invasion is impending... but not by the aliens themselves.

Nice ride: Mulder is then taken to a secret research facility where a team of scientists unveil an ARV - or alien reproduction vehicle - a spacecraft supposedly reverse-engineered from extra-terrestrial technology

I'm a believer: The ship is then shown levitating, before disappearing completely, right before Mulder's eyes

'Alien technology being used against us, not by aliens, not with aliens but by conspiracy of men against humanity,' Mulder claims.

He tells her aliens were attracted to Earth by mankind's discovery of the H-bomb, as they tried to prevent us from bringing extinction upon ourselves.

But the government began using the technology to abduct humans, attempting to breed hybrids using alien DNA.

Old job: Mulder then returns to FBI headquarters to meet Skinner and check physical X-Files, only to find that the files themselves have been removed

Relics: However his I want To Believe poster was still there, and his pencils were still stuck in the ceiling

Crackpot? O'Malley believes a group of elites are using alien technology and plan on taking over the world

Mulder and O'Malley claim a group of elites are now using everything from induced drought, consumerism, pharmaceuticals, the militarization of the police and the Patriot Act to wrest control of the US and then the world, under the guise of attacks by terrorists or even aliens, and that they plan to tell the world via O'Malley's webcast the following day.

But Scully is not convinced, telling them their 'fearmongering and technophobia is so stupid and incredibly responsible, it borders on treason', before also informing them Sveta's DNA did not reveal anything alien about it.

But the following day, Sveta appears to recount her support of O'Malley, telling news crews he paid her to make everything up, while O'Malley's webcast is shut down.

On board? Mulder believes O'Malley, and tries to convince the skeptical Scully

Mercy mission: He tells her aliens were attracted to Earth by mankind's discovery of the H-bomb, as they tried to prevent us from bringing extinction upon ourselves

Rid of the evidence: Unbeknownst to any of them, a heavily armed group descends on the hidden research facility and blows up the ARV, killing all the scientists

Bad news? Scully receives the results of Sveta's blood test, as well as her own, which seems to confirm her suspicion both of them have alien DNA

At that same time, unbeknownst to any of them, a heavily armed group descends on the hidden research facility and blows up the ARV, killing all the scientists.

Scully then receives the results of a retest of Sveta's DNA, as well as her own which she had tested alongside on a hunch, which finally clicks it into place for her.

'I sequenced her entire genome. She's not the only one,' she tells Mulder, apparently confirming she too has alien DNA.'Someone needs to stop these sons of bitches.'

Changing her tune: Sveta appears to recount her support of O'Malley, telling news crews he paid her to make everything up, while O'Malley's webcast is shut down

Race is on: Mulder and Scully decide they must find and protect Sveta, who they believe had been coerced into changing her story, and has now disappeared

Uh-oh: However Sveta, fleeing through the desert in her car, finds it suddenly dies, before she is enveloped in light

Elaborate: she looks up to see an alien craft, which targets her with a green beam of light, blowing up the car before she can escape

They then decide they must find and protect Sveta, who they believe had been coerced into changing her story, and has now disappeared.

However Sveta, fleeing through the desert in her car, finds it suddenly dies, before she is enveloped in light; she looks up to see an alien craft, which targets her with a green beam of light, blowing up the car before she can escape.

The final scene shows Mulder and Scully's old nemesis, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, as he takes a drag through a hole in his throat and tells someone off screen: 'We have a small problem - they've reopened the X-Files.

The second part of the two-part premier takes place on Monday night.

Still going: The final scene shows Mulder and Scully's old nemesis, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, as he takes a drag through a hole in his throat, remarking: 'We have a small problem - they've reopened the X-Files

The return of the show comes 14 years after the last episode of the X Files aired on TV, which saw a dramatic finale where Mulder and Scully were forced to fight to keep their secret roles - and the very existence of the supernatural - under wraps.

The X Files first aired in 1993, and told the story of FBI special agents Mulder and Scully, who were tasked with Investigating X Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena.

Created by Chris Carter, David and Gillian were handed roles of a lifetime, which saw them propelled to global fame.

Spanning nine series and two feature films (1998's The X Files and 2008's The X Files: I Want to Believe), the two leads have revealed it took them a long time to appreciate what their breakout roles gave them.

Blast from the past: The X Files first aired in 1993, and told the story of FBI special agents Mulder and Scully, who were tasked with Investigating X Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena

Roles to be remembered: Created by Chris Carter, David and Gillian were handed roles of a lifetime, which saw them propelled to global fame as the secretive duo

Speaking ahead of the launch of the tenth series, during the Fox TCA Panel earlier this month, Gillian candidly revealed ill-feelings about her long-standing role initially clouded her mind.

She explained: 'It took me a long time to embrace it [her role as Scully] after we were done with the series.

'It took a good decade for me to start thinking of it as the gift that it was and appreciate the opportunity I had and how fortunate I was to play a great, iconic character in a show that was iconic in itself.'

Explaining how they both needed a break to move away from the show and gain a positive perspective, David said: 'It took awhile to recognize it as the gift that it is, and that's why we're able to come back now.'

And in the latest six episode offering of the beloved sci-fi drama, fans can expect a mix of old and new cases, as well as some familiar faces.

'We do have a funny one, a horror one, a gross, nasty one, and three that are extending and elaborating and negating in some ways the old mythology,' David teased prior to the premiere.

'It took me a long time to embrace it': Speaking ahead of the launch of the tenth series, Gillian candidly revealed ill-feelings about her long-standing role initially clouded her mind

'It took awhile to recognize it as the gift that it is, and that's why we're able to come back now': David and his co-star revealed the near 14 year break from the iconic roles was the reason they were able to come back to it

Back to para-normal: In the latest six episode offering of the beloved sci-fi drama, fans can expect a mix of old and new cases, as well as some familiar faces

And during a 20-minute preview called The X Files: Re-Opened, part of the new plot was revealed to specifically concern Mulder and Scully's son, whom they gave up for adoption.

'I can't help but think of him, Fox,' Dana Scully says in the preview clip.

'He'd be 15 years old now. I've missed every single year of his life and sometimes I hate myself that I didn't have the courage to stand by him.'

And as well as Gillian and David, the cast for the new season includes Mitch Pileggi, Annabeth Gish, William B. Davis, The Lone Gunmen trio (Richard "Ringo" Langly, Melvin Frohike and John Fitzgerald Byers); as well as newcomers Annet Mahendru, Joel McHale, and Lauren Ambrose.

But fans should not expect another season quite yet, as David revealed his and Gillian's schedules are looking fully booked till 2023.

'Gillian and I have talked about that, and then we just stop because we get to 2023 and we still haven't found a date we can do it,' the Holy Cow author said.

'It's like, "Let's just wait and see what happens after this," and then we can start to talk seriously about whether we can make it work again.'
She recently flew to Sydney to film Germany's Next Top Model, for which she is lead judge and executive producer.

But supermodel Heidi Klum also found time to promote her other business ventures during her trip Down Under this week.

The 42-year-old blonde stopped by Bondi Beach with a group of hunky lifesavers to celebrate the launch of her men's underwear line on Monday.

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Beach ready: Supermodel Heidi Klum, 42, (second from left) posed with a group of lifesavers at Bondi Beach, Sydney, on Monday to promote her new men's underwear line HK Man for New Zealand lingerie brand Bendon

Heidi, from near Cologne, Germany, flaunted her world-famous legs in a black summer dress and a pair of strappy wedge sandals for the photoshoot.

Meanwhile, her fellow models opted for a fitting Bondi lifeguard look with long, navy blue board shorts.

They also wore underwear from Heidi's new HK Man line - which the businesswoman has recently launched with New Zealand-based lingerie brand Bendon.

Bondi rescuers: Heidi, from near Cologne, Germany, flaunted her world-famous legs in a black summer dress and a pair of strappy wedge sandals, as she was accompanied by the strapping lifeguards

Brand ambassadors: The lifesavers all wore underwear from HK Man, which was visible below their long, navy blue board shorts

Heidi, who shares the nickname 'The Body' with Elle Macpherson, concealed her gaze below tinted sunglasses for the sunny outing.

One of her male friends posed next to a large surfboard while she leaned against a dune buggy.

The pictures also show Heidi and the boys strolling down the beach towards the Bondi shore, as the leggy model flicks her hair back to look at the camera.

Working hard: Last week, Heidi announced she will be launching a swimwear range this summer with Bendon, posting this behind-the-scenes shot on Instagram alongside her team and photographer Rankin (centre)

According to Bendon, Heidi's range, HK Man, 'represents confident masculinity through modern and stylish designs'.

The underwear - which ranges between $17 and $35 a pair - features 'fashion forward designs and distinctive colour combinations, while using the latest technology and fabrics for superior fit and comfort,' the company website claims.

During her trip to the Antipodes, Heidi also revealed she will be launching a swimwear range this summer.

Slender curves: The America's Got Talent judge displayed her extremely pert derriere in this sexy promotional shot for Heidi Klum Swim recently

The America's Got Talent judge announced the news on social media last week, posting a behind-the-scenes shot with her team and British fashion photographer Rankin, 49.

Speaking of the project, which is also in partnership with Bendon, she wrote: 'Big things to come... Heidi Klum Swim launching this summer'.

On Friday, she posted a snap of her and a group of bikini-clad models who wore items from her swimwear range, with the caption: 'Heres a sneak peek of whats to come for #HeidiKlumSwim!'
Just days after her video supporting abortion rights was released, this star was once again doing her bit to protect women's reproductive rights.

While went most people think of Sundance Film Festival they think of film premieres, glamorous parties and gifting suites, things got a little more serious on Sunday in Park City, Utah.

Elizabeth Banks was one of a number of celebrities to take a breath from all the glitz to attend the Sex, Politics & Film Cocktail Reception hosted by Lena Dunham and Planned Parenthood.

Late comer: Elizabeth Banks jetted into Salt Lake City, Utah, for the annual Sundance Film Festival on Sunday

Important cause: The actress was one of a number of celebrities to take a breath from all the glitz to attend the Sex, Politics & Film Cocktail Reception hosted by Lena Dunham and Planned Parenthood

While most celebrities have been in town for the annual film festival since Friday, the 41-year-old was spotted flying into Utah just before the event.

Elizabeth is a passionate supporter of reproductive rights having just starred in a new pro-choice campaign supporting women's access to abortion clinics released by the Center for Reproductive Rights Draw the Line.

Touching down in Salt Lake City, the star wisely sipped on a big iced coffee as she made her way through the airport.

Netter late than never: While most celebrities have been in town for the annual film festival since Friday, the 41-year-old was spotted flying into Utah just before the event

Low key: For her flight, the Pitch Perfect director dressed casually in a pair of blue jeans with a green and black striped sweater and a short sleeved coat

Going to need it: Touching down in Salt Lake City, the star wisely sipped on a big iced coffee as she made her way through the airport

For her flight, the Pitch Perfect director dressed casually in a pair of blue jeans with a green and black striped sweater and a short sleeved coat.

Elizabeth travelled light, porting all her clothing in a duffle bag which she seems to have been given while filming Hunger Games as it had the Mockingjay symbol on it.

The star did not have long before the important event held at The Spur, so made a quick change and headed out.

For the reception, Elizabeth donned a pair of tight black jeans with a grey turtleneck and a leather and fabric jacket.

Style swap: The star did not have long before the important event held at The Spur, so made a quick change and headed out

Lending her voice: Elizabeth is a passionate supporter of reproductive rights having just starred in a new pro-choice campaign supporting women's access to abortion clinics released by the Center for Reproductive Rights Draw the Line

While the event was a serious one, Elizabeth and Lena still managed to make each other laugh on the carpet.

Throwing her arm and around the Girls star for a picture, The Hunger Games star could not stop smiling.

Lena being Lena, also struggled to keep a straight face hamming up on the carpet and flashing peace signs at the photographer.

Say cheese: While the event was a serious one, Elizabeth and Lena still managed to make each other laugh on the carpet

Pose range: Lena being Lena, also struggled to keep a straight face hamming up on the carpet and flashing peace signs at the photographer

Her thoughs: The star spoke to those at the reception about the important of Planned Parenthood and the need to have open dialogue about sexuality, reproductive rights and also sexual politics in film

Not just for the cameras: Inside the event, after Lena's speech, the pair got into a deep discussion

Host with the most: The 29-year-old also caught up with Alysia Reiner on the red carpet

Star support: Also attending the event was Natasha Lyonne and Rose McGowan, whose noggin may have been a little chilly as she did not wear a beanie and currently has a shaved head

Lots on: It has been a busy day for Lena, who earlier stopped in at The Hollywood Reporter 2016 Sundance Studio At Rock & Reilly's

Team: The star attended the event with the director of Suited Jason Benjamin as well as Lena's fellow producer Jenni Konner

Getting the word out: The documentary trio also went to the Variety Fandango Sundance Studio Presented by Dockers on Sunday

One more for the road: The filmmakers then headed to the Toyota Mirai Music Lodge for a group photo

To fulfil her hosting duties, the writer and director wore a pair of flared pants with an unusual patterned long sleeved top.

The star - who is also in town promoting her project Suited - spoke to those at the reception about the important of Planned Parenthood and the need to have open dialogue about sexuality, reproductive rights and also sexual politics in film.

Co-stars! Aubrey Plaza attended the premiere of her new comedy Joshy without her cane alongside Jenny Slate

All together! Joshy stars Allison Brie, Lauren Weedman, Nick Kroll, Jeff Baena, Thomas Middleditch, Brett Gelman, Adam Pally, and Jenny rounded up for a cast portrait at the Hollywood Reporter 2016 Sundance Studio At Rock & Reilly's

Sixx at Sundance: Courtney Sixx, 30, attended the EcoLuxe Lounge at Sundance16 in Park City, Utah on Sunday

Brrraving the cold: Brooklyn Decker, 28, exposed her bare legs in a thigh-high sweater dress as she stepped out at the snowy Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Sunday

Also attending the event was Chloe Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne and Rose McGowan, whose noggin may have been a little chilly as she did not wear a beanie and currently has a shaved head.

It has been a busy day for Lena, who earlier stopped in at The Hollywood Reporter 2016 Sundance Studio At Rock & Reilly's.

The star attended the event with the director of Suited Jason Benjamin as well as Lena's fellow producer Jenni Konner.

The trio also stopped in at the Variety Fandango Sundance Studio Presented by Dockers as well as the Toyota Mirai Music Lodge.

Crushing it in orange: Rose McGowan looked opulent at the Tangerine Entertainment Celebrates Women Filmmakers event in Utah on Sunday

Mommy-to-be! Jena Malone, 31, was beaming as she stopped by the Eddie Bauer Adventure House while at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Sunday after recently announcing she was pregnant

Getting handsy! Natasha Lyonne (L) and Chloe Sevigny (R) played around for a portrait
No guessing who put the good word in for these two leading ladies.

Lily-Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith posed with the rest of the Yoga Hosers crew on Sunday night ahead of its midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film stars Lily-Rose's Dad Johnny as 'legendary man-hunter Guy Lapointe' and is directed by Harley Quinn's dad Kevin.

Up and comer: Lily-Rose hung out with the cast of her upcoming film Yoga Hosers at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday night

The 16-year-olds play Colleen Collette and Colleen McKenzie, two yoga store fanatic convenience store clerks whose planned night out at a big party comes under serious threat when an ancient evil portal opens beneath their town.

They must join forces with daddy Depp's Lapointe to defeat the swarm of monsters that emerges.

On Sunday night Lily-Rose - the daughter of Depp and French actress Vanessa Paradis - looked her normal serious self as she posed at the Variety Shutterstock Sundance Portrait Studio.

Why so serious? The 16-year-old looked her normal serious self as she posed at the Variety Shutterstock Sundance Portrait Studio

Co-stars: She and Harley Quinn Smith (M) posed with the rest of the Yoga Hosers crew on Sunday night ahead of its midnight screening

Comic book man: The film is directed by Harley Quinn's dad Kevin Smith

Posse: The film also stars Justin Long, Jason Mewes, Austin Butler,Tyler Posey and Ralph Garman

Wearing a plunging V-neck red long-sleeved top, with black trousers and Robert Clergerie WISTF boots, while she also wore her trademark broody pout.

However after a wardrobe change a little later on, she did allow herself crack a smile.

Also present were the films other stars Justin Long and Jason Mewes.

Cheer up: However after a wardrobe change a little later on, she did allow herself crack a smile

Not pictured: The film stars Lily-Rose's Dad Johnny as 'legendary man-hunter Guy Lapointe'

Plot: The 16-year-olds play Colleen Collette and Colleen McKenzie, two yoga store fanatic convenience store clerks whose planned night out at a big party comes under serious threat when an ancient evil portal opens beneath their town.

Daddy's girl: They must join forces with daddy Depp's Lapointe to defeat the swarm of monsters that emerges.

Kevin himself showed his nerdy support of his own film by wearing a Eh-2-Zed top, which is the name of the store the Colleens work at.

Yoga Hosers is the middle part of his True North comedy Horror trilogy, which began with 2014's Tusk and will end with Moose Jaws.

It is Harley Quinn's - named after the Batman Villainess -fifth film with her dad and fifth overall, having briefly appeared in Tusk, Clerks II and Jersey Girl, and even playing the her father - the infant Silent Bob - in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Superstar family: Lily-Rose is the daughter of French actress Vanessa Paradis (L) and Hollywood megastar Johnny Depp (R)

Part 2: Yoga Hosers is the middle part of his True North comedy Horror trilogy, which began with 2014's Tusk and will end with Moose Jaws

Eldest: Lily is the only daughter of Johnny and French singer Vanessa Paradis
Ashley Darby promised to bring 'spice to the lives' of the women on The Real Housewives of Potomac.

The boisterous former beauty queen lived up to her claims as she made her first appearance on the new Bravo reality show with a series of lewd remarks at a party.

Ashley, 26, was throwing a bash for her charitable organization Sip With Socialites when she met cast members including Katie Rost, Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon at the event.

New addition: Ashley Darby made her first appearance on The Real Housewives Of Potomac on Sunday

And she soon turned heads with a series of quirky comments, admitting that she was planning when to start trying for a baby as 'I need a Gemini or Leo baby.'

But she shocked them even more when they started asking about her Australian husband who is aged 55.

Ashley quickly bragged: 'He has a really big penis, swear to God.'

As people from the table behind them quickly turned her way, Gizelle was first to pass judgment, calling her 'THOT-ish', referring to the slang term for 'that hoe over there.'

Claws out: Gizelle Bryant peppered Ashley with questions and quickly cast judgment on her

Ashley - who was Miss Washington DC 2011 - was then first to stand up and make the call to 'get this party started,' soon rubbing herself up against some of her guests.

'Black women don't hump each other like that,' Robyn insisted.

'Must be a white thing - she's spent way too much time around white people,' she added.

Straight shooter: Robyn Dixon noted that Ashley was humping a little too much at the party

Katie loved their new friend, insisting: 'Ashley has great energy. She reminds me of what I loved about being 26. I really can't wait to hang out with her more.'

But Gizelle admitted: 'I don't know about the girl. She's a little ratchet, a little rough around the edges.

'I can tell you one thing - she is not from Potomac, Maryland,' she added.

One thing: Gizelle said she could tell that Ashley was not from Potomac

We later got to see Ashley at home with husband Michael Darby, an Australian national who is now a 'prominent real estate developer' in the area, where she told him about Gizelle calling her 'THOT-ish' at the party.

'I don't know if she has some issues maybe because her beauty is vanishing?' she told her husband.

Later on camera she added: 'I think that Gizelle is a little intimidated by me.

First contact: Ashley and Gizelle were shown meeting for the first time at a charity event

'I'm young, fun, and I don't need a bustier for these babies,' she said, pointing to her chest.

Robyn also had admitted that that Ashley's look could be the problem, saying: 'I love Gizelle - get her around a pretty girl she does not know and those claws are out!'

Ashley promised her husband she is 'going to go the extra mile' to get the ladies to like her, and vowed: 'I'm going to bring some spice to their lives anyway.'

Extra mile: The reality star danced away at the party

She showed some of that spice when describing her husband, who she plans to open an Australian-American restaurant with, to the show.

'He's the smartest guy I know, he's the funniest guy I know - and that accent makes my panties wet,' she insisted.

She admitted her background growing up in Sandy Spring, Maryland, was completely different than the life she now lives.

Older husband: Ashley talked about her older husband and her luxurious lifestyle

'Growing up we didn't have financial security, we were evicted twice, we had to go to the church for food,' she said.

'Michael introduced me to a more luxurious lifestyle. It was this whole other world that I hadn't known before,' Ashley revealed.

Katie, meanwhile, showed a new side of herself to her friends, with the mixed-race beauty sharing the Jewish side of her life by having a naming ceremony for her twin daughters Kathryn and Renee, who were almost two.

Naming ceremony: Katie Rost held a Jewish naming ceremony for her two daughters

'On top of being biracial, I'm Jewish,' she said.

'The only other black Jews I know are like Sammy Davis Jr - you know, kind of a big deal - and Lenny Kravitz. And Katie Rost.'

As she arranged to meet Rabbi Mark, the man chosen for the ceremony, she said: 'I really want to impress Rabbi Mark, I want him to understand I'm not just a bagel and cream cheese Jew - I'm very Jewish.'

Religious conversation: Rabbi Mark came over to talk with Katie about the naming ceremony

But her plan backfired somewhat when she was forced to admit she 'really only goes to synagogue on high holidays' and cannot read Hebrew texts.

'I feel like I'm taking a test, and usually my good looks and charm work - but I don't know if it's working right now,' she admitted.

Explaining that her mother was African-American and had an Orthodox conversion, she said: 'I was raised as a Jew and it's really important to me that my children have that same heritage and experience. It means a lot to me that I can pass that on.'

Jewish background: Katie explained that she was raised as a Jew

But the ceremony also sparked discomfort over the exact nature of her relationship with boyfriend Andrew Martin, with Katie admitting: 'Andrew tries to make it clear that we're not engaged and I try to keep it muddy. There are a lot of women out there who want to have a guy like him.'

The other women also seemed unsure of her being Jewish, with Robyn admitting: 'I went to school with Jewish people, and not one of them looked like Katie.'

Gizelle also said: 'Going to synagogues, all the Jewish people looking at you like, We know you ain't Jewish!'

The ceremony: Kaite looked on as her boyfriend Andrew joined in on the ceremony

However, Katie reminded the lighter-skinned ladies at the party that some people say the same about whether or not they are really black.

Robyn insisted later: 'My eyes might be light, my skin might be light, my hair might be - dyed - light, but I'm black.

'And that's how I've identified myself my entire life.'

Fan favourite: Robyn said that she's always identified as black despite her light eyes and complexion

Robyn also told the other ladies: 'I don't see what y'all see. I look in the mirror and I see a black woman.'

Gizelle, meanwhile, had a huge falling out with both Karen Huger and Charrisse Jackson Jordan after they both accused her of failing to abide by their high standards of etiquette at previou parties.

Gizelle went all-out to make peace, sending a car to pick them up, giving them hand-written letters inviting them to lunch where she was waiting with flowers.

Olive branch: Gizelle tried to make up with Charrisse Jackson Jordan and Karen Huger after displeasing both of them over her perceived lack of proper etiquette

But she was overly optimistic, with Charisse storming out first telling her: 'The presence of your face repulses me. this is a waste of time.'

Charrisse further made her stance clear when she invoked the 1995 film Friday and told the camera, 'Bye Felicia,'

'She's alone on that one, because this face repulses no one,' Gizelle insisted later.

Body language: Charrisse and Karen were not swayed by Gizelle's attempt at making peace

Movie quote: The 1995 movie Friday was invoked by Charrisse when she said 'Bye Felicia' in reference to Gizelle

Karen also refused to back down from her position of being offended, telling her before she walked out: 'You're fake and phony as a $10 bill. You're a shell of a woman - you're a lost cause. I expected more from you. I see you for what you are.'

Finally, she said of Gizelle: 'There's no place for her in our social circle'.

The drama continues next week on Bravo.
They reportedly tied the knot in a secret ceremony in Hawaii last month.

And on Saturday Jodhi Meares and her rumoured new husband Nicholas Finn reunited with the designer's sister as they touched down in Paris.

The 44-year-old's younger sibling, Sophie Morgan shared an image of the loved up couple as they strolled the streets together in the French capital.

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Sight seeing: Jodhi Meares and her rumoured new husband Nicholas Finn reunited with the designer's sister on Saturday as they touched down in Paris

Sophie simply captioned the image 'Streets of Paris with @jodhimeares @nicholasfinn_ #paris #theupside.'

In the shot Jodhi showed off her natural beauty by opting for no make-up while covering her slender figure with an ankle-length coat.

She wore her thick brunette locks out, allowing them to roughly fall in front of her face.

Revealing: The 44-year-old's younger sister Sophie Morgan revealed the pair were in the city of love as she shared multiple images of the foursome exploring the location on social media

The beauty posed alongside her beau as she turned her back towards the camera.

Nick, who re-posted the snap on his account, showed off a small smirk as he stood firm while dressed in an all-black outfit which included an oversize shirt and tight jeans.

While rocking an unshaven face he covered his eyes with a pair of dark shaded sunglasses as he held onto his camera tightly with his right hand.

He wrote alongside the dark filtered image 'Us being really cool @jodhimeares.'

Despite being pictured wearing wedding rings last week, the pair kept their jewellery hidden from the flashing camera during their outdoors stroll.

Sweet snap: Last week Jodhi fuelled wedding rumours as she shared a snap of Nick wearing a gold band ring

Last Thursday Jodhi seemed happy to add fuel to the wedding rumours as she shared an image of Nick to Instagram with the caption: 'My happy angel #happy #angel #him #love @nicholasfinn_'.

The black and white snap showed the photographer sporting a ring on his wedding finger, while opting for a rather casual ensemble.

Dressed in a long-sleeved sweater, he leaned back and flashed his pearly whites for the camera.

The post comes just days after the pair were spotted at Sydney airport after spending two weeks Down Under.

Married couple? Earlier this month a source 'close to' Jodhi revealed she had said her 'I do's' to her 28-year-old love in Hawaii

Earlier this month a source 'close to' Jodhi told Woman's Day magazine that she and the former model said their 'I do's' in a small ceremony.

'Yes, they got married in Hawaii,' the source said of the couple's island ceremony.

They added that the pair, who share a 16-year age difference, said their vows by the beach surrounded by a small group of family members and close friends.

In a curious twist, Jodhi changed her surname to Tsindos on her Instagram account, though her handle remains as 'jodhimeares'.

While her younger beau goes by the name Nicholas Finn, he cites his full name as 'Nicholas (Finn) Tsindos' on his own social media page.

Name change: In a curious twist, Jodhi has changed her surname to Tsindos on her Instagram account weeks later, though her handle remains as 'jodhimeares'




Her slender curves and toned figure propelled her to fame as a model in the '90s.

And Lisa Snowdon was keen to show she's still got 'it', as she posed for a bikini-clad selfie while on holiday in Thailand.

Taking some time off from her Captial FM duties to enjoy some R&R, the 44-year-old Radio DJ showcased her enviable frame in the snap, which she promptly uploaded to her Instagram profile.

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Bikini babe: Lisa Snowdon was keen to show she's still got 'it', as she posed for a bikini-clad selfie while on holiday in Thailand

Lisa - who shot to fame modelling for the likes of Vogue - was keen to prove while she's managed to retain her incredible figure, her confidence wasn't down to photo trickery as she labelled it '#noretouch'.

Stood in the doorway of her hotel bathroom, the brunette beauty cheekily leant on the door frame as she posed in a coquettish manner for the picture.

With her head tilted to one side so her lustrous mane tumbled down past her shoulders, and her body angled in a form-accentuating way, Lisa was ready to take her selfie.

Wearing nothing but a tiny, striped, deep-red bikini, the Weekend Kitchen presenter flaunted her toned tummy and assets to the max.

Sunny selfies: Taking some time off from her Captial FM duties to enjoy some R&R, the DJ, 44, showcased her enviably honed frame in the snap which she uploaded to her Instagram profile - along with other sunny shots

Drawing attention away from her bust, by partially obscuring her cleavage with the selfie-snapping arm, Lisa drew focus to her toned tummy which she stretched and showed off thanks to her pose.

Likewise, the former cover girl's slim pins were also showcased thanks to her posing skills.

Clearly proud of her natural figure, she captioned the snap: 'Morning- time for a swim... #instaholidays #sweetdreamslondon #adventures #birthdaytrip #nofilter #noretouch..'

And not one to shy away from a holiday snap, Lisa shared another holiday update with her 34,800 followers on Instagram.

Birthday break: Recording the trip on social media, she has been keen to stress how happy she is, while also reflecting on how she has been 'blessed' as she celebrates her birthday

Reclining in the sun, the Hertfordshire-born beauty showed off her tanned and flawless complexion in another selfie.

Laid back on a sun-lounger, with her striking features framed by her perfectly tousled locks, Lisa showed off her striking natural features, as well as a pair of funky red sunglasses.

But not one to just up and leave her work in the UK, Lisa has been sunning herself and taking in the sights of the Far East as part of a birthday sojourn.

Recording the trip on social media, she has been keen to stress how happy she is, while also reflecting on how she has been 'blessed'.

However she was also sure to tell her fans she would be hitting the airwaves and appearing on screens again imminently, with her next QVC appearance slated for Valentines Day in February.
He has become a proud father for the very first time.

And Louis Tomlinson is making sure his son is his priority, with the Doncaster-born superstar relocating to Los Angeles to be closer to his new bundle of joy.

According to The Mirror, the One Direction star has rented a 10million five-bed mansion for six months as well as a separate four-bed pad for Briana Jungwirth and their baby.

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Proud father: Louis Tomlinson is making sure his son is his priority, with the Doncaster-born superstar renting two properties in LA

A source said: 'The five-bed property he has chosen  and the house for Briana and her family  are perfect for them to bring up the baby together, even if they are no longer in a romantic relationship.'

Louis and his former fling welcomed their son, who was rumoured to be called Sydney Rain, on Friday January 22.

A friend of Louis told the MailOnline the former X Factor contestant is planning to be a hands-on dad and support his ex in any way he can.

The pal said: 'Although they're not romantically involved, Louis thinks Briana is a great woman and will be a fabulous mother. Louis has been helping Briana financially and is prepared to get stuck in with all the tasks that caring for a baby demands.'

New parents: The One Direction singer - who welcomed his son Sydney Rain, on Friday - is reportedly renting a 10million five-bed mansion for six months as well as a separate four-bed pad for Briana and their baby

Meanwhile, new reports claim that Louis nearly missed the birth of his son.

The British heartthrob reportedly had to spend most of the time sitting in his car while she was in labour, following an argument with her parents.

A source told The Sun newspaper: 'Briana's mother Tammi went berserk at him in the hospital. He spent a lot of the time she was in labour sat in his car because Tammi wouldn't let him near Briana.

'He's looked after her very well but Tammi feels it's not enough. They are trying to work out a custody deal.'

'Beyond grateful for such a beautiful day': Heavily-pregnant Briana showed off her growing baby bump in this picture, posted on her Instagram account earlier in the month

However, a representative for Louis has told MailOnline that he was most certainly present for the birth.

'This story is absolutely not true and Louis was by Briana's side the whole time in delivery room for the birth,' the spokesperson said.

Confirming the little one's birth last week, he tweeted: I'm pleased to say my baby son was born yesterday :) He is healthy and pretty amazing :) I'm very happy!! (sic).

The British star indicated he was relishing his new-found fatherhood as he added: 'Daddy daddy cool,' moments later.

And as if his happiness wasn't evident enough, he followed his latest comment up with three smiley faces which appeared as ':) :) :)', on his personal account.

While fellow One Direction band-member Harry Styles appeared to be congratulating his pop pal with a tweet which read: 'Flowers all round,' the other boys - Niall Horan and Liam Payne - are yet to congratulate Louis on his happy news on social media.

'Daddy daddy cool': Louis, 24, appeared to be delighted over her newly-acquired fatherhood as he beamed with pride over the birth of his son in a series of thrilled tweets
Acting great Sir Michael Gambon admits his memory has deteriorated so much that he now relies on keeping lines jotted on scraps of paper in his pocket.

The sad confession comes ahead of his latest film release, the remake of classic British sitcom Dad's Army, in which he plays Private Charles Godfrey.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday's Event magazine, he said: 'I cant remember lines... I couldnt remember the lines inwhat have we just done?

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Sad confession: Acting great Sir Michael Gambon, 75, admits his memory has deteriorated so much that he now relies on keeping lines jotted on scraps of paper in his pocket

'There were never more than two lines at a time. You can have a piece of paper in your pocket look at that and keep reciting it in your head, so you dont have to read. Anyway it was alright.'

It's been nearly a year since Sir Michael, 75, called time on his glittering stage career due the difficulties he was experiencing remembering his lines.

In a frank interview with the Daily Telegraph, he opened up about the 'heartbreak' he felt over the decision.

Memory loss: The admission comes ahead of Sir Michael's latest film, the remake of classic British sitcom Dad's Army, in which he plays Private Charles Godfrey

'There was a girl in the wings and I had a plug in my ear so she could read my lines. And after about an hour I thought, "This cant work. You cant be in theatre, free on the stage, shouting and screaming and running around, with someone reading your lines".

'You know, when youre there in front of an audience, that youre not as good as you could be.

'Its a horrible thing to admit, but I cant do it. It breaks my heart. When the script is in front of me and it takes me forever to learn, its frightening.'

And on one occasion, the renowned actor was hospitalised after suffering a panic attack brought on by the fear of forgetting his lines.

Causing problems: The Harry Potter actor's condition has also had a negative impact on his co-stars, with Sir Tom Courtenay, 78, revealing he was worried about injuring himself in one specific slapstick scene

The Harry Potter actor's condition has also had a negative impact on his co-stars, with Sir Tom Courtenay, 78, revealing he was worried about injuring himself in a slapstick scene in which Sir Michael kept forgetting his words.

Sir Tom, who recently won Best Actor at the Critics' Circle Film Awards for his performance in 45 Years, said he was nearly left visually impaired while filming the scene in Yorkshire.

He revealed: 'The first time I fell there wasnt a mattress and a bit of corn stubble nearly took my eye out.

Calling it a day: It's been nearly a year since Sir Michael, 75, called time on his glittering stage career due the difficulty he was experiencing remembering his lines

'They put down a mattress but I didnt want to keep doing it. I told him, get them to write up (the lines) somewhere. I thought Id hurt my neck, so I was saying it out of self-interest.'

And his Harry Potter co-star Dame Maggie Smith previously revealed she was glad that Sir Michael had decided to retire from the stage.

She told the Sunday Times: 'It was about time he admitted it, because it was hair-raising doing things with him.'

Such were Sir Michael's concerns when he realised his memory was deteriorating, that the actor admitted to undergoing tests for Alzheimer's, which he was found not to have.

The Irish-born star  who began his stage career with minor Shakespearean roles alongside Laurence Olivier  confessed that it was his overwhelming fear of forgetting his words on stage that forced him to pull out of a 2009 National Theatre production of The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett.
She is a self-confessed fashion lover, who runs her own successful boutique, so its hardly surprising Lucy Mecklenburgh has mastered the art of dressing well.

The former TOWIE star - who also boasts a successful fitness empire - cut a relatively stylish figure when she emerged from her store in Essex on Saturday evening.

Preened perfectly, the 24-year-old dressed her lean and slender curves in a sleeveless houndstooth-print blazer and a long, flowing grey blouse, which was styled further with tight jeans.

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Fashion lover! Lucy Mecklenburgh cut a relatively stylish figure when she emerged from her store in Essex on Saturday evening

She added a few extra inches to her statuesque frame with black leather knee-high boots, while toting her belongings in designer holdall.

With her glossy tresses left loose in relaxed curls, Lucy looked nothing short of glamorous in her chic sartorial choice.

Her striking facial features were enhanced with a slick of matte lipstick, a few swipes of jet-black eyeliner, a dusting of shimmery eyewear and a touch of blusher.

Preened perfectly: The 24-year-old dressed her slender curves in a sleeveless houndstooth-print blazer and a long, flowing grey blouse, which was styled further with tight jeans

Cutting a relaxed and content figure, the TV star flashed a glowing smile towards flashing photographers as she passed by.

Lucy is back in the UK after celebrating the New Year in Thailand with handsome beau Louis.

The stars, who met last August after appearing on the BBC show Tumble, have been dating since December 2014 and have been inseparable ever since.

Towards the end of last year, the former Tumble contestant opened up to MailOnline about her relationship, gushing: 'We're really happy.'

Strutting her stuff: With her glossy tresses left loose in relaxed curls, the former TOWIE star looked nothing short of glamorous in her chic sartorial choice

Standing tall: She added a few extra inches to her statuesque frame with black leather knee-high boots, while toting her belongings in designer holdall

Talking about the more serious side of things, she said that the couple are in no rush to settle down, saying they've found a perfect balance in life - something she struggled to do with her ex Mario Falcone.

I dont feel any pressure to settle down at all, I kind of love my life the way it is, I love that I dont get to see Louis every day, she explained.

At the moment, were keeping it the way it is [living apart],' she said. 'Maybe [we'll move in together] in the future.'
She had her heart broken by Sam Wood last year when she appeared on The Bachelor Australia.

And now months on Heather Maltman has revealed she's kept all the roses she received from the 35-year-old while on the show.

While spilling her best kept secret to the latest issue of NW magazine the 29-year-old added that she has also had the floral pieces pressed.

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Say what! Heather Maltman has revealed she has kept all the roses she received from Sam Wood while on The Bachelor Australia last year

'I'm that sad' she told the publication while pleading: 'don't judge me'.

Sam sent Heather home after she reached the final four on the show after he claimed the only connect the pair had was on a friendship level.

At the time of eliminating her from the dating show he said: 'The connection we had was great. I will never forget our date. Ive been wanting and hoping that what Ive felt is this amazing friendship would become more.'

Details: The 29-year-old explained that she has had the floral pieces pressed while calling herself 'sad'

Over: The brunette was sent home by Sam after she reached the final four on the show

Sam sent social media into a frenzy when he sent Heather packing with many fans shocked by his decision while labeling him 'Australia's most hated man'.

Heather stood up for the former Bachelor at the time stating she felt sorry for him because of all the backlash he coped for not sending her through to the final three.

'I feel pretty bad for Sam. I think he has coped it pretty hard today with the whole situation,' she said while appearing on The Project.

'At the end of the day he had to do what was right for him and I completely respect that and I think everyone should.'

Loved up: He has since proposed to final rose receiver Snezana Markosk

Happy times: Heather has also found happiness with her new man, Andrew Steele

Sam has since asked final rose receiver Snezana Markosk to marry him, only months after the pair went public with their romance.

But while the personal trainer prepares to walk down the aisle with the mother-of-one Heather found happiness and moved on after finding herself a new man, Andrew Steele.

Since going public with their relationship in October, the pair regularly gush about each other across social media with the brunette beauty constantly referring to him as her 'man friend'.

Heather is currently in South Africa as she prepares to host I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here Now! side show alongside comedian Joel Creasey.
He is reportedly one of the 12 contestants appearing on the upcoming season of I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!

But on Monday Shane Warne spent some quality time with his 16-year-old son Jackson at the Australian Open in Melbourne.

The veteran cricketer appeared to be in a low key mood as he sat in the stands dressed in a white polo shirt and black jacket.

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Family time: Shane Warne spent some quality time with his son Jackson at the Australian Open in Melbourne on Monday before he allegedly heads to South Africa for I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! next week

He teamed up his relaxed attire with a pair of grey Nike tracksuit pants which flowed loosely over his legs.

The 46-year old sportsman displayed his sun-kissed tanned skin as he slicked his dyed blonde hair back.

His son Jackson also failed to show a smile as he sat closely to his father during the match against Bernard Tomic and Andy Murray

Keeping it simple: The 46-year-old veteran cricket player looked down cast as he dressed in a white polo T-shirt and grey tracksuit pants

Not interested? His 16-year-old son also failed to show a smile as he sat closely to his father during the match against Bernard Tomic and Andy Murray

Last Tuesday Daily Mail Australia exclusively revealed Shane would be joining the cast of I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!

A media industry source confirmed the former Australian cricket player was one of celebrities heading to South Africa for the second series of the reality TV show.

Shane fills the category of 'cricket player' - a clue which was released by the network late last year.

Headed to the jungle! Daily Mail Australia exclusively revealed last week that the Australian cricket legend would be joining the cast of Australia's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

He fits the bill: Shane fills the aforementioned category of 'cricket player' - a clue which was previously revealed by the network

He was reportedly offered a spot in the inaugural Australian series last year, although turned the opportunity down despite allegedly being offered a six-figure sum.

Speculation has been rife about who will be joining the cast of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! with Channel Ten refusing to deny or confirm who will be on the show.

The show is based on the popular UK hit series, and series two will be hosted again by Julia Morris and Dr Chris Brown in South Africa.

I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! will launch on Sunday January 31.

Proud father: The sportsman will be leaving behind his three children, son Jackson, 16, daughter Brooke, 18, and daughter Summer, 14, while taking part in the reality TV show
It's no secret she's partial to sharing the odd social-media selfie.

But it appears Sam Faiers' newborn baby Paul is yet to develop her penchant for posing up a storm for her sizeable online following.

This was proved as the former TOWIE star snapped the pair's first mother-and-son selfie for a sweet Instagram update on Monday.

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'No pictures mummy': Sam Faiers looked flawless as she cradled shy baby Paul in the pair's first mother-and-son selfie, posted on her Instagram page on Monday

Sam, 25, appeared to be settling well into newfound motherhood as she looked completely at ease with the few-week-old tot resting in her arms.

She sported a full face of make-up and freshly styled hair while spending quality time getting to know the new adorable addition to the family.

While the fitness guru smiled sweetly directly into the camera lens, Paul junior was far more camera shy and hid his face with his tiny hand.

Poking fun at the snap, Sam captioned it: 'Baby Paul's like 'no pictures mummy' u already have 5000 (sic).'

Her little family: Sam, 25, posted an Instagram picture of her baby and her partner - both called Paul - as they dined out at the Dorchester on Sunday

While the demands of having to care for a newborn can take their toll, Sam has cleverly crafted him into one of her favourite past times - going for posh brunch.

On Sunday, she posted a cute picture of her baby son, Paul, along with her partner, who shares the same name, as they dined in London's upmarket Dorchester hotel.

She captioned the image with the words: 'Breakfast with my Paul's #dorchester (sic).'

In the snap, the new baby can be seen sleeping soundly in his pram while Sam's man, Paul Knightley checks over him in a sweet manner.

Mum's night out: The former TOWIE star was pictured for the first time since welcoming her new bundle of joy into the world as she headed to The Crown pub in Brentwood, Essex, on Friday

The outing comes as Sam was pictured out on the town for the first time since her beautiful baby was born.

The former TOWIE star headed to The Crown pub in Brentwood, Essex, for her sister Billies 26th birthday festivities.

Sam - who gave birth to son Paul Tony on December 29 - radiated a gorgeous glow as she emerged from the fine dining eatery with her little tot and beau.

Cutting a casual yet relatively stylish figure, she covered her post-baby body in a blue plaid shirt and tight denim jeans.

She rounded off the proceedings with a brown suede leather jacket and chic nude heels, while toting her belongings in a pastel pink holdall.

Meanwhile, birthday girl Billie looked sensational in tight leather pants and a black high-neck blouse, which was styled further with over-the-knee boots and a small handbag.

Family outing: The former TOWIE star attended sister Billie's (pictured) 26th birthday party

The family outing comes soon after new mother Sam showed off her baby son for the first time and gushed about how much she was loving parenthood.

She captioned a beautiful image with the words: 'Just a few hours old our beautiful baby ... Look at those lips we can't help but just kiss him all the time our story is in this weeks OK! Magazine.'

The TV babe first shared both a picture of her baby and its name in this week's issue of OK! magazine, telling the publication: 'We always wanted him to be called Paul after his dad.

Adding: 'It's traditional and we didn't have any other names on the list, so he's Paul and his middle name is Tony after Paul's brother, his uncle Tony.

'We call him Baby Paul or just 'baby' at the moment. We haven't called him Paul yet.'

The reality star has announced she and boyfriend Paul senior will star in new tell-all ITVBe series, Sam Faiers: The Baby Diaries.
Jade Roper, 29, and Tanner Tolbert, 28, have tied the knot.

The couple walked down the aisle on Sunday at the posh hotel St. Regis Resort Monarch Beach in Dana Point, California, Us Weekly reported on Monday. The beauty wore a low-cut white lace and satin dress with a long veil that cascaded down her back.

This comes just four months after getting engaged on the season two finale of Bachelor In Paradise.

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They said I do: Jade Roper, 29, and Tanner Tolbert, 28, have tied the knot. This comes just four months after getting engaged on the season two finale of Bachelor In Paradise

Stunning for her big day: The beauty wore a low-cut white lace and satin dress with a long veil that cascaded down her back

Quick decision: This comes just four months after getting engaged on the season two finale of Bachelor In Paradise; here they are seen in September

The bride carried a bouquet made of pink and white roses.

The reality princess was seen walking down a long and winding staircase that had roses and hydrangeas blanketing the banner.

Her bridesmaids had on pink gowns with spaghetti straps and carried bouquets that looked similar to Roper's.

In full bloom: The bride carried a bouquet made of pink and white roses

Cute gals: Her bridesmaids had on pink gowns with spaghetti straps and carried bouquets that looked similar to Roper's

Lovely ladies: One of the bridesmaids had red hair worn in a 1920s bob

The whole thing was filmed by ABC and will air on Valentines Day.

Their wedding was packed with Bachelor alumni and even one current star. Ben Higgins, who is the current Bachelor, was there. It is not known who his date was.

Also present was Bachelor host Chris Harrison.

Her ring: Roper showed of her diamond engagement ring in this Instagram post from last year

They did it: The couple walked down the aisle on Sunday at the posh hotel St. Regis Resort Monarch Beach in Dana Point, California, Us Weekly reported on Monday

Loving it: The whole thing was filmed by ABC and will air on Valentines Day

Bonded: 'Coming into Paradise, I really didnt have any expectations about meeting somebody or falling in love with somebody,' Tolbert, who appeared on Kaitlyn Bristowe's season of The Bachelorette, told Roper during his proposal in September 2015, which happened during the show

And then there were the golden oldies, such as Ryan and Trista Sutter, who met on the Bachelorette and have been married for 13 years with two kids.

Also present was Ali Fedotowsky - who has recently become engaged to Kevin Manno and announced her pregnancy.

Others include Chris Soules, Andrew Firestone, Carly Waddell, Andi Dorfman, Nick Viall, Ivana Bozilovic, Bob Guiney and Jessica Canyon.

The new one: Their wedding was packed with Bachelor alumni and even one current star. Ben Higgins, who is the current Bachelor, was there. It is not known who his date was; here he is seen on January 9

In a family way: Also present was Ali Fedotowsky - who has recently become engaged to Kevin Manno and announced her pregnancy; here they couple is seen with their dog on January 9

'Coming into Paradise, I really didnt have any expectations about meeting somebody or falling in love with somebody,' Tolbert, who appeared on Kaitlyn Bristowe's season of The Bachelorette, told Roper during his proposal in September 2015, which happened during the show.

'Ive never met anybody who makes me feel the way I feel with you.'

Roper was originally on season 19 of The Bachelor.

He said: 'You make me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, and worthy, and understood, which I dont think Ive ever felt from a man before.'

Roper, 29, and Tolbert, 28, have already bought a new home in Kansas City, Kansas.
She's suffered her fair share of wardrobe malfunctions but more often than not, they're caught on camera as she falls out of a Newcastle club following a wild night out.

But Chloe Ferry unintentionally committed the ultimate flesh-flashing crime as she stepped out to her own beauty launch in London on Monday.

The Geordie Shore star's assets stole the spotlight from her glam hairdo as they made run for it at the worst possible time - as she posed for pictures on arrival to the event launching the Hair Rehab Synthetic Range at the capital's Soho Sanctum Hotel.

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Nobody's looking at your hair! Geordie Shore's Chloe Ferry managed to draw all eyes to her assets as she picked out a garish plunging dress for her own beauty launch in London on Monday

Chloe, 21, slipped into a garish green gown which featured a dangerously-plunging and open neck as well as a thigh-high split.

The loose-fitting satin garment struggled to contain her assets and as she turned to the side, her right nipple was exposed.

Fortunately, Chloe was oblivious to the nipple-slip mishap and held her head high as she pulled poses aplenty.

Slipping out: Chloe's breast looked close to escaping from her one-piece completely as she posed side on without thinking of the consequences

Nipping out: The 21-year-old's nipple was on full display as she arrived to the Soho Sanctum Hotel for the Hair Rehab press day

Close call: The green satin maxi dress also featured a thigh-high split and as she turned to the side, she risked flashing a glimpse of her underwear

Thank goodness: Fortunately, when she turned to the other side, her breast managed to stay mostly concealed

Got some front: The MTV star proudly showed off a generous proportion of her sizeable cleavage thanks to the scooped neckline which almost reached down to her belly button

As well as her pert chest, Chloe also offered attendees a generous look at her toned and tanned left leg thanks to the slashed hem.

As if her choice of attire wasn't head-turning enough, she teamed it with a thin chic choker which was made from darker green velvet.

While she appeared to have scrimped on the amount of fabric covering her figure, the same couldn't be said for her make-up as she was heavily dolled up in layers of bronzer, lashings of mascara with a bold plum colour decorating her plump lips.

Striking a pose: Chloe turned heads as she arrived to the photo call for Lauren Pope's hair extension brand - of which she has been selected as an ambassador

Gothic gone wrong: The raven-haired star appeared to have gone OTT with the tan, bronzer and very dark make-up tones

Chloe was attending the photo call of Lauren Pope's hair extension brand as the former TOWIE star has recruited her as a brand-new ambassador.

The Essex-born businesswoman put on a comparably safe sartorial display, favouring semi-sheer white co-ords for the exciting occasion.

The reality stars appeared to have formed a fond friendship as they posed together on arrival although it highlighted the stark contrast between the girls' differing tastes.

Sharing her excitement, Lauren tweeted from her company's official Twitter account: 'A HUGE welcome to the Hair Rehab London family #GeordieShore @chloegshore1 #HairPieceCollection.'

Welcome to the family: Chloe joined Hair Rehab owner Lauren, 33, at the event which marked her unveiling as the new face of the brand
Things are certainly moving quickly now that Mariah Carey and James Packer are engaged to be married.

Just days after the Australian billionaire presented the pop superstar with a 35-carat diamond ring worth gazillions of dollars, the couple have leased a lavish home where they can live together as a family with Mariah's twins Monroe and Moroccan.

The property they're moving into is located in the exclusive community of The Oaks in Calabasas, California, and offers 18,000 square feet of living space on one acre for a rent of about $250,000 a month.

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New home: Mariah Carey and James Packer got engaged last week and now they're moving into a luxury mansion together that they've just leased in the upscale community of Calabasas, California

Leasing agent Emil Hartoonian of The Agency told DailyMail.com Monday that the incredibly rich and incredibly famous pair were looking for privacy when they honed in on the one-acre estate that took five years to build and has never been offered for sale.

'It's a beautiful place to live and raise a family,' Hartoonian said. 'It's one of the very, very few homes to meet their criteria.'

'It's in a double-gated community and they are behind the second set of gates so there's a double layer of security,' he said.

The home boasts a mega movie theatre, a gym and a spa, and offers incredible city views as well as being close to the Pacific Ocean.

Want a famiy life: The loved up couple are moving full steam ahead with their romance after dating for less than a year. They're pictured at the opening of the Australian billionaire's newest casino in China in October

Mega rock: James, 47, proposed tot he pop superstar, who's 45, with this 35-carat diamond ring said to be worth upwards of $8 million

For the children: Mariah's twins Monroe and Morocan, four, pictured with the couple in Europe last summer, will live with her and James in the 18,000 square foot home set behind double gates and 24-hour security

Mariah, 45, and James, 47, will have the Kardashians for neighbors as well as some other famous entertainers and business executives although their busy schedules will no doubt see them coming and going a lot.

The Hero songstress is also a busy mom, taking care of her four-year-old son and daughter from her marriage to Nick Cannon.

And while she and her businessman beau are clearly keen to take their romance to the next level, they're going to have to some settle some legal paperwork first, according to TMZ.

It's love! This will be the third marriage for both the singer and the businessman who went public with their relationship at the New York premiere of The Intern in September

Neither have officially divorced their previous spouses, the website reported last week.

Mariah and Nick, 35, split in August 2014 but are said to still be working out a financial settlement .

James and his singer ex Erica separated in 2013 after tying the knot in 2007.

Erica, who is now dating musician Seal, shares three children with the casino owner - daughters Emmanuelle, three, and Indigo, seven, and son Jackson, who turns six next month.

Still technically wed: Mariah shares twins Monroe and Moroccan with Nick Cannon and they're pictured at Christmas in Aspen, Colorado. The exes, who split in 2014, have yet to finalize their divorce settlement
Candice Accolas baby has arrived.

On Monday The Vampire Diaries star announced on Instagram she has welcomed her first child with husband Joe King, a guitarist with The Fray. The blonde posted a photo of the baby's toes on Instagram.

The baby was born on January 15 and they named her Florence May King.

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New parents: Candice Accola Kings baby has arrived. On Monday the Vampire Diaries star announced on Instagram she has welcomed her first child with her husband, The Fray guitarist Joe King; here they are seen in 2014

Her big debut: The blonde posted a photo of the baby's toes on Instagram with the date of birth in pink

'Im in love again,' the guitar player, 35, captioned the image.

Accola, 28, added a red heart.

The couple announced she was pregnant in August by posting an Instagram. 'So proud to welcome this new life into the world with my beautiful wife and daughters. I truly am a lucky man & dad,' he wrote.

Pregnant during Christmas: The actress showed off her large bump in December

Good news: The couple announced she was pregnant in August by posting an Instagram. 'So proud to welcome this new life into the world with my beautiful wife and daughters. I truly am a lucky man & dad,' he wrote

Florence has already been blessed by Pope Francis during his U.S. visit last year. At the time Candice was only a few months pregnant.

'My husbands band got to perform for the event in Philadelphia on Saturday night,' Accola King told People in 2015.

'I was there just supporting him and them, and it was such an honor to have a moment with the pope.'

The couple were married in October 2014.

He already has two daughters, Ava and Elise, from a previous relationship.

The Vampire Diaries returns for a new season on CW on Friday.
She's known for her love of health and fitness and Lucy Mecklenburgh showed off the results of her regime when she attended a movie screening for Eating Happiness on Monday night.

Beaming as she made her way into the Mondrian hotel in London, the former TOWIE star, 24, looked incredible in a black halter crochet dress which clung to all the right places.

The intricate number was see-through in parts and showed off a sexy slip which had a sweetheart neckline which showed off her ample assets.

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Just the ticket! Lucy Mecklenburgh showed off the results of her intense fitness regime when she attended a movie screening for Eating Happiness at the Mondrian hotel in London on Monday night

With a peplum hem drawing attention to her tiny waist, Lucy's hourglass frame looked phenomenal in the figure-hugging dress.

Ensuring she kept partially covered, the reality star hinted at her shapely legs underneath a crochet overlay, which featured a flattering split at the back.

She gave her look some added height with a pair of black court shoes and carried a cute box clutch in blue.

Halterback girl! The former TOWIE star, 24, looked incredible in a black halter crochet dress which clung to all the right places. The intricate number was see-through in parts and showed off a sexy slip

What a waist! With a peplum hem drawing attention to her tiny waist, Lucy's hourglass frame looked phenomenal in the figure-hugging dress

Leggy lady! Ensuring she kept partially covered, the reality star hinted at her shapely legs underneath a crochet overlay, which featured a flattering split at the back of the gown

Two's company: Once inside, the raven-haired beauty caught up with former Pussycat Dolls star Ashley James

Lucy, who is currently dating gymnast Louis Smith, wore her raven locks in a side parting which were slicked down in a straight and sleek style.

Lucy was in good company at the event, which was attended by the likes of Ashley Roberts and her fellow TOWIE star Lydia Bright.

But despite the smiles on their faces, the night was no doubt a solemn one, as Eating Happiness depicts the cruel world of dog trafficking for meat consumption.

As a dog owner and keen foodie, the star was quick to show her horror at the film, tweeting 'Tonight I'm Supporting @worlddogallianc to stop the dog meat industry'.

Brunette beauty!Lucy, who is currently dating gymnast Louis Smith, wore her raven locks in a side parting which were slicked down in a straight and sleek style that tumbled past her shoulders

All about the accessories! She gave her look some added height with a pair of black suede court shoes and added a splash of colour by carrying a cute box clutch in blue

Showing the results! Lucy's gym-honed figure was proudly on display in the figure-hugging dress following the news that she would be adding another element to her health and fitness website

Meanwhile, the clean eating star recently revealed that she would be adding another element to her health and fitness website, Results With Lucy.

I'm starting my @resultswithlucy 'NEW BEGINNINGS UPGRADED' programme with the food delivery which I'm super excited about, she recently revealed.

I'm hoping u all love the new plan & the food delivery makes your life a little easier! The meals are sooo delicious Bring on a healthy & happy 2016!!!

Feel the love! Lucy added a splash of colour with her quirky baby blue slogan clutch

Bling: She added another subtle element of glitz to her outfit with sparkling scarlet stud earrings

Black or white? Lucy was in good company at the event, which was attended by her fellow TOWIE star Lydia Bright who opted for a cream ensemble that contrasted with Lucy's black number

Raise a glass! It's possible that Lucy was sipping on a soft drink from her champagne flute as she recently revealed she was taking part in Dry (no alcohol) January

Gal pals: Ashley Roberts cut a striking figure in a printed black dress as she cosied up to Lucy

Beige babe: Lydia dazzled in her muted tones of a taupe cropped jumpsuit layered over a cream blouse

Furry friends! Adding some height in a pair of crocodile patterned heels, she carried a faux fur clutch

Cream of the crop! Kimberley Garner stepped out in an off-white coat over her lace navy dress

Pretty in prints! Former Made In Chelsea star and David Walliams rumoured love interest Ashley James put on a stylish display in a tapestry printed skirt whilst Ashley Roberts made a bold fashion statement

Lucy will no doubt be sharing some of the healthy recipes and meals with her boyfriend Louis, who also has a keen interest in fitness.

She met the Olympic gymnast after she appeared in his BBC show, Tumble in December 2014, and the pair have been inseparable ever since.

The couple have just returned to England following their idyllic getaway in Thailand over the New Year.

Red hot! Lizzie Cundy put on a glamorous display as she flaunted her lean legs in the mini dress

Racy in red! The 47-year-old got rather hands on with her friend Tamer Hassan on the red carpet

Belle off the ball! Ashley Roberts put on a stylish display in a black bell shaped gown

Fur-reezing! Vogue Williams made sure she kept warm in an eye-catching shaggy faux fur coat

Lacy ladies! Vogue put on a stunning display in an off the shoulder black lace dress with plunging boots whilst Kimberley Garner kept things modest in a navy lace overlay mini dress
He's in Australia filming his latest blockbuster Hacksaw Ridge, but it isn't all work and no play for Mel Gibson.

The 60-year-old actor-turned-director was seen packing on the PDA while enjoying a romantic waterside stroll with his much younger girlfriend Rosalind Ross, at the weekend.

The pair were admiring the view from Double Bay in Sydney's exclusive inner east, and were spotted cuddling up for a kiss.

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Loved up: Mel Gibson was seen kissing 24-year-old girlfriend Rosalind Ross while on a water-side stroll in Sydney at the weekend

Looking completely loved up, Mel and Rosalind could easily have been mistaken for any average couple enjoying the temperate summer weather.

They are seen walking arm-in-arm down a pier before stopping to lock lips by the water's edge, in a video published by the Daily Telegraph.

Rosalind was dressed casually in an oversized tan coloured shirt and skinny leg jeans.

She added height to her frame with a pair of heeled boots and wore her long raven hair loose in a sleek and straight style.

Mel meanwhile, was in flip-flops and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. A pair of dark shades covered his eyes.

Dressed down: Rosalind was dressed casually in an oversized tan coloured shirt and skinny leg jeans while 60-year-old Mel was in flip-flops and a white shirt

The couple's amorous display comes after Rosalind's close friend Devon Maitozo, told the Daily Mail Online that the brunette has grown sick of the 'negative attention' surrounding her relationship with the Academy Award winner and just wants to 'get on with her life without all the attention'.

'There's been a lot of very not very nice media that's been written about her. Sifting through it has not been very pleasant at all,' said Devon.

'Sensationalising her because of her relationships is not what she's looking for. She would probably enjoy it if it was about her and her career instead of her being the girlfriend of a celebrity but it's not and so she'd like to keep her life private.'

Over it: Rosalind's friend has said the brunette has grown sick of the 'negative attention' surrounding her relationship with the Academy Award winner and just wants to 'get on with her life without all the attention'

Mel and champion equestrian vaulter Rosalind, are believed to have met last year when she applied for a job at his production company Icon.

According to Radar Online, love blossomed during a visit to the father-of-eight's 500-acre Costa Rica ranch.

'They started their romantic getaway in Costa Rica, hiding out in Playa Barrigona, where he owns a tropical sanctuary in the middle of the jungle, before heading to Panama. It's clear the two of them are really happy together,' a source told the website.

Since then, the pair have been virtually inseparable, with Rosalind also joining the actor in Sydney last August and visiting him on the set of World War II drama Hacksaw Ridge, in November.
They've been together for 14 years and Kimberley Walsh and fiance Justin Scott are finally about to tie the knot.

The couple were pictured arriving in Barbados on Monday, along with their 18-month-old son, Bobby and the rest of their family, ahead of their special day.

While the exact date is being kept under wraps for now, Kimberley, 34, has said she has been planning the big day for months.

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Lots to celebrate: Kimberley Walsh arrived in Barbados on Monday with her 18-month-old son Bobby and fiance Justin Scott, ahead of her wedding

Fun times: While the exact date is being kept under wraps for now, Kimberley, 34, has said she has been planning the big day for months

The former Girls Aloud star looked flawless in barely there make-up as she arrived at the tropical hotspot.

She wore a checked shirt over blue jeans and trainers, wearing her hair in a slicked down ponytail.

Hiding her eyes behind designer shades, the singer soon put Bobby in his pushchair before the group set off.

Natural beauty: The former Girls Aloud star looked flawless in barely there make-up as she arrived at the tropical hotspot

Low key look: She wore a checked shirt over blue jeans and trainers, wearing her hair in a slicked down ponytail.

So sweet: Hiding her eyes behind designer shades, the singer cuddled her little boy as she made sure he was happy

Justin was also channelling casual cool in a simple white top and black jeans as he stayed close to his bride to be.

Bobby meanwhile, had a comfortable looking cute striped two-piece on in grey and black.

Last week, Kimberley celebrated her hen night in style, along with her two best friends and former Girls Aloud bandmates, Nicola Roberts and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini.

Cheryl, 32, was on top form as a bridesmaid, kicking up her heels and putting her troubles with husband Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini behind her, telling Hello! magazine:

Long-term love: Justin was also channelling casual cool in a simple white top and black jeans as he stayed close to his bride to be

It's time: The couple have been together for 14 years and welcomed their first child together in 2014

'I always have fun when it comes to my girls.'

The chart-toppers, who were once part of Britain's biggest girl-group Girls Aloud, certainly didn't hold back as they painted the town red at the animal-print themed 'Last Wild Night' hen do.

Cheryl and Nicola, another of the eight bridesmaids, joined Kimberley to let their hair down at London hotspot The Cuckoo Club before she walks down the aisle at a secret tropical destination later this month with property developer and former Triple 8 band member Justin Scott.
Australian leaders unite for a republic

Australian state leaders threw their support behind a republic on Monday, with one saying the nation should not have to wait for the end of Queen Elizabeth II's reign to cut ties with the British monarchy.

Ahead of Australia Day on Tuesday, seven of the nation's eight state and territory leaders signed a declaration calling for an Australian head of state to replace the reigning royal in London.

The only state leader not to sign up, Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett, said he also supported a republic but just did not think "the time is right".

Ahead of Australia Day, seven of the nation's eight state and territory leaders signed a declaration calling for an Australian head of state to replace Queen Elizabeth II Paul Crock (AFP/File)

Federal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is already a noted republican, having passionately led the cause ahead of a failed referendum in 1999, as is opposition Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Australian Republican Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons seized on the new enthusiasm.

"All of Australia's political leaders now support an Australian head of state," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Never before have the stars of the Southern Cross been so aligned in pointing to the dawn of a new republican age for Australia," he said, referring to a constellation in the southern hemisphere sky which appears on the Australian flag.

FitzSimons, who wants the process on a referendum over becoming a republic to start by 2020, said the declaration sent a message to the prime minister.

Turnbull has previously said that he has more pressing priorities than turning the nation into a republic.

"My own view... is that the next occasion for the republic referendum to come up is going to be after the end of the Queen's reign," he said last year.

- 'What are we waiting for?' -

But South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said it would be "the ultimate act of respect" if the Queen presided over the transfer of Australia from a monarchy to a republic.

"I think that's something that she could preside over and do it in the elegant and expert way in which she has handled her relationship as head of Australia," he told the ABC.

"I mean if you think about it, what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for her to die? I would have thought that it's much more respectful to have her supervise this transition."

The British crown's power in Australia is seen as largely symbolic, and while Queen Elizabeth II is hugely popular Down Under the monarchy is viewed by some as an anachronistic colonial relic.

When then prime minister Tony Abbott knighted the Queen's husband Prince Philip last Australia Day, it was met with ridicule and disbelief.

The media dubbed it a "knightmare" for Abbott who was later dumped by his party for Turnbull.

But Gabrielle Hendry, a spokeswoman for the Australian Monarchist League, said while debate was healthy and democratic, "the system works" as it stands and there was no need to change it.

"It gives us an impartial head of state," she told AFP.

The league's national chairman, meanwhile, told the ABC: "The fact is, our constitution is based on the Crown which always represents the people."

Support for a republic has wavered over the years, with a Fairfax-Nielsen poll in 2014 finding that 51 percent of the 1,400 people surveyed favoured the status quo compared to 42 percent supporting a republic.

Weatherill, however, said there had always been "an underlying sense of support for a republic" despite the 1999 referendum failing by 45 to 55 percent.

"It's just a question of rekindling that," he said.

Malcom Turnbull, then chairman of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM), holds a last-ditch press conference in Sydney's Hyde Park 05 November 1999 on the eve of Australia's historic referendum on becoming a republic Torsten Blackwood (AFP/File)
Bomb attack in Laos kills two Chinese: state media

A suspected bomb attack in Laos killed two Chinese citizens and injured one more, Beijing's official news agency Xinhua said Monday.

The world's second-largest economy has been pouring money into the sleepy Southeast Asian nation, a fellow Communist state, over the last several years and became its largest investor in 2014.

Xinhua identified one of the victims as an employee of a Chinese mining company operating in the mountainous centre of the country.

The blast in Xaysomboun province was referred to as an "attack" by Chinese state media Laurent Fievet (AFP)

The victims were on board a vehicle when the incident happened on Sunday, it cited the Chinese embassy in Vientiane as saying.

The blast, which it repeatedly described as an "attack", occurred in Xaysomboun province, it said.

Unexploded ordnance is an enduring problem in Laos. During the Vietnam War US warplanes dropped more than two million tonnes of munitions in some 580,000 bombing missions aimed at cutting North Vietnamese supply lines through the country.

An estimated 30 percent of the devices failed to detonate and 50,000 people have been killed by the explosives since the end of the war.

China's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths, describing the incident as a "violent attack" but not giving details of the method or the suspected motive.

"We advise Chinese citizen to increase security precautions," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing.

The Chinese embassy in Vientiane said in a statement that two of its staff had visited the injured survivor, a civilian surnamed Zhou, in hospital.

A special envoy of Chinese president Xi Jinping is scheduled to go to Laos this week, Xinhua reported separately, following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry. He met the Lao prime minister Monday as the US courts its former wartime foe.

President Barack Obama is due to travel to the rural landlocked nation later this year for a summit of Southeast Asian countries, marking the first visit by a US president.
Japan's 2015 trade deficit narrows as oil prices tumble

Japan's trade deficit narrowed sharply in 2015 as tumbling oil prices took pressure off its soaring post-Fukushima energy import bill, official data showed Monday, while autos led a pick-up in exports.

The deficit decline offered up some good news for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he struggles to stoke growth and ahead of a test to his leadership in upper house elections this summer.

Stronger demand in some key markets, including the United States, and a sharply weaker yen boosted exports from the world's number three economy, the finance ministry said.

Japan remains highly dependent on energy imports to power the world's third largest economy but benefited from sharp falls in oil prices during 2015 Kazuhiro Nogi (AFP/File)

The figures showed Japan recorded its fifth-straight annual trade deficit, but the latest figure narrowed by 78 percent from 2014 to 2.83 trillion yen ($23.8 billion).

Auto exports surged 10.3 percent from a year ago, while the value of crude oil imports dropped 41.0 percent.

For December alone, the nation saw a trade surplus of 140 billion yen, returning to the black for the first time in two months.

Japan remains highly dependent on energy imports to power the economy, but a big drop in oil prices over the summer has taken pressure off the cost of its energy needs.

The nation has kept most of its nuclear reactors closed since a tsunami and earthquake triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima plant in 2011.

The accident forced Japan to turn to pricey imported fossil fuels to keep the lights on, leading to a string of big trade deficits.

"The continued weakening in energy prices is exacerbating the fall in import prices," said Marcel Thieliant at research house Capital Economics.

Abe has pushed to restart nuclear plants, backed by Japan's business community, but the public is sharply divided with many opposed to returning to atomic power.

- 'Energy question' -

Several reactors have been restarted since the worst atomic accident in a generation.

"The resumption of nuclear power plants had only a very marginal impact on the 2015 trade statistics," Junko Nishioka, chief economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking.

"But if the Abe administration moves forward (on more restarts) in the near term, it would have...further impact toward reducing the trade deficit."

But Nishioka warned that overseas demand, particularly in China, was at risk in the face of a struggling global economy.

"Given the market turmoil, it will likely dampen business confidence," Nishioka added.

Falling oil prices have also depressed oil-related investment in the United States, denting demand for Japanese construction machinery, said Junichi Makino, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.

"Looking forward, automobile demand is expected to stay solid, while a pickup is expected for electronics," Makino added.

"But a downside risk remains with general machinery."

The trade figures come as economists look to next month's release of GDP figures for the final quarter of 2015.

Revised data showed Japan's economy grew a stronger-than-expected 0.3 percent in the July-September period, after initial estimates had showed a contraction.

Japan's economy fell into a brief recession in 2014 after consumers tightened their belts as Tokyo hiked the country's consumption tax to help pay down a massive national debt.

That downturn spurred the Bank of Japan to sharply increase its massive asset-buying programme -- a cornerstone of Abenomics -- effectively printing money to spur lending.

The bank holds a meeting this week with speculation rising that policymakers may unleash another round of easing to counter weakness in the economy.

Auto exports from Japan surged 10.3 percent in 2015 from a year ago, according to official data Toshifumi Kitamura (AFP/File)
Kerry in Laos to discuss bomb legacy and ASEAN partnership

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday hinted Washington may boost the $15 million fund it provides to tackle the deadly legacy of unexploded American bombs in Laos, during a rare visit to the reclusive communist state.

The trip paves the way for a summit hosted next month by President Barack Obama in California with the ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Laos has assumed this year's chairmanship of the regional bloc and will see a flurry of diplomatic activity culminating later in the year in a visit by Obama -- the first by a sitting US leader to the resource-rich but impoverished nation.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (C) attends a meeting with US Ambassador to Laos Daniel Clune (L) and Lao Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith in Vientiane on January 25, 2016 Jacquelyn Martin (POOL/AFP)

Kerry's visit is only the third since 1955 by a US Secretary of State to a country carpet-bombed by America during the Vietnam War.

Unexploded bombs across the region are the result of the massive US bombing campaign aimed at disrupting North Vietnamese supply routes through landlocked Laos.

That grim legacy carries a particular resonance for Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran wounded during combat, who said the US is "deeply engaged in trying to de-mine and deal with the unexploded ordnance issue."

Laos was the most bombed nation in the world per capita, with more than two million tonnes of explosive dumped on the country.

Around 30 percent of the bombs failed to explode, including cluster munitions.

Around 50,000 people have been killed by leftover ordnance since the end of the war, with tens of thousands of others maimed, including children.

The US has gradually lifted its funding to tackle the scourge from $5 million to $15 million this year, Kerry said.

"I know that we're looking at whether or not that could be plussed up even more," he said, suggesting Obama may bring a new pledge of funds when he visits.

-- Laos changing too --

After talks with Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, Kerry also hailed improving ties between the two nations after decades of tension.

"While we dont agree on everything, obviously... we also do agree on a lot of things and on the way the world is changing. And it's changing here too," Kerry said of the nation which has been run by the secretive Communist Party since 1975.

Fresh from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kerry hailed growing economic, environmental and security co-operation, as well as Laos' chairmanship of ASEAN, as the "defining" issues of a new friendship.

The US diplomat, who is due in Cambodia later Monday, was in Laos days after the five-yearly congress of the Communist Party, which chose 78-year-old vice-president Bounnhang Vorachith as its next leader.

Relations between the US and Laos two have often been hostile, with American support for ethnic Hmong anti-communist insurgents still raw in the memory of the Laos' leadership.

Laos' poor human rights record is also a sticking point, embodied by the 2012 disappearance of prominent activist Sombath Somphone, who was last seen on CCTV footage at a police checkpoint in Vientiane.

The Obama administration has made ties with Asia a diplomatic priority, in particular bolstering ASEAN as a counterpoint to Chinese regional power.

The diplomat said he was encouraged by the Laos premier's commitment to a keeping "unified front" in the face of the big issues facing ASEAN.

"He wants maritime rights protected and he wants to avoid militarisation and avoid the conflict. And that will develop as we are going to Sunnylands," he said referencing the mid-February leaders' summit in the US.

Several ASEAN states are embroiled in an increasingly bitter spat with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea.

The US says it takes no position on ownership of the various reefs and islets under dispute, but insists freedom of navigation in the vital shipping lane must be maintained.

Laos unexploded bombs Adrian Leung/Gal Roma (AFP)

US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) and Phouvieng Phothisane, acting director of the Vientiane Museums (L), and Tata Keovilay, with the US Embassy tour at the That Luang Stupa or "Pha Tha Luang" in Vientiane on January 25, 2016 Jacquelyn Martin (Pool/AFP)

An Australian ex-military explosives expert inspects an unexploded shell left from the Vietnam War in April 2008 Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP/File)
15-year terms added for 57 Shiites in Bahrain jail mutiny

A court in Bahrain on Monday added 15-year jail terms to the sentences of 57 Shiite inmates involved in a prison mutiny, a judicial source said.

The inmates were convicted of rioting and mutiny following unrest last March at Jaw prison south of the capital Manama, the source said.

The charges included "disobeying orders and forcing guards out of the prisoners' buildings" and then "destroying furniture, air conditioners and security cameras", the source said.

Bahraini riot police stand guard near Manama on August 14, 2013 Mohammed Al-Shaikh (AFP/File)

Security forces finally stormed the buildings and clashed with the rioting prisoners, resulting in casualties among police and inmates, the source added.

Al-Wasat newspaper said the defendants were also fined a total of 508,187 dinars ($1.35 million).

It was not clear what caused the riot in Bahrain's largest prison that is used for Shiites convicted over anti-government protests.

Human Rights Watch called last May for an independent investigation into allegations that security forces used "excessive force" to quell the unrest at the jail and later mistreated prisoners.

Bahrain's Sunni authorities crushed Shiite-led protests a month after they erupted on February 14, 2011.
Japan firm say debris found in Thailand 'likely' rocket not jet

A metal panel that washed up on the Thai coast is "likely" to be from a rocket, a Japanese manufacturer said Monday, pouring cold water on speculation it comes from a missing Malaysian Airways jet.

The claim came as Thai airforce experts transported the large three-by-four metre (nine-by-12 feet) panel from southern Nakhon Si Thammarat province in the Gulf of Thailand to Bangkok for examination.

Saturday's find of the heavy, curved piece of debris stirred intense media speculation that it may be part of MH370, the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board.

A Malaysian official (C) takes pictures of a piece of suspected aircraft debris after it was found by fishermen on January 23, at a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat on January 25, 2016 Tuwaedaniya Meringing (AFP)

It had left Kuala Lumpur and was destined for Beijing.

"The next step is to check, analyse and prove what (the debris) is," Air Vice Marshal Pongsak Semachai, the Thai Air Force's spokesman told AFP on Monday.

But that task appeared significantly easier on Monday afternoon after Japanese firm Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said widely circulated images featuring serial numbers indicated it may be from one of their rockets.

"Although we cannot yet be absolutely certain, we think it is likely that it's part of either an H-IIA or H-IIB rocket," Sayo Suwashita, a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries spokeswoman in Tokyo, told AFP.

The rockets are launch vehicles often used to send satellites into space.

The company reached that initial conclusion "after comprehensively examining information such as the shape of the debris and the numbers seen on it."

That backs up experts on sea currents who said a piece of the MH370 was highly unlikely to be found in the Gulf of Thailand.

Aviation investigators believe the plane went down in a remote part of the Indian Ocean.

Last July a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The island is several thousand kilometres (miles) southwest of Thailand.

Unlike Reunion, the Gulf of Thailand is not in the path of ocean currents from the supposed crash site.

Nothing has been found since the Reunion discovery, despite a search which has so far covered more than 80,000 square kilometres (30,000 square miles) of the seabed.

The search for MH370 Adrian Leung (AFP)
Libya parliament to vote on unity government

Libya's internationally recognised parliament was set to vote Monday on ratifying a UN-backed peace deal and endorsing a unity government seen as crucial to stemming widespread unrest.

The United Nations and Western diplomats have urged Libyans to back the agreement as a step toward ending the political chaos and strife that have gripped the country since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Libya currently has two rival administrations and parliaments, with the internationally recognised authorities based in the east and a militia-backed authority holding power in Tripoli.

The United Nations and Western diplomats have urged Libyans to back the agreement as a step toward ending the political chaos and strife that have gripped the country since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi Abdullah Doma (AFP/File)

Lawmakers have for days been heading to eastern city Tobruk -- where the 176-member legislature has been based for a year and a half -- for the two votes, parliament member Fahmy Tuwaty said.

A national unity government headed by businessman Fayez al-Sarraj was formed last week under the UN-sponsored accord, but the recognised parliament needs to approve it for it to start working.

The parliament needs a quorum of 89 members to hold Monday's session and a majority of two-thirds plus one for a successful vote, a parliament official said.

But around 60 parliamentarians are opposed to the UN-sponsored deal, Tuwaty said, mainly over an article that provides that the unity government, once endorsed, will approve top security and military positions.

They fear that powerful army chief General Khalifa Haftar will be removed from his post, he said.

The parliament's head Aguila Saleh and Haftar have also criticised the UN-backed accord.

The head and members of the rival Tripoli-based General National Congress also oppose the deal.

While their support is not necessary for the unity government to start operating, they could prevent it from working out of the capital.

Prime minister-designate Sarraj, who has so far been operating out of Tunisia, arrived in Algeria for a visit on Monday as he continues to seek support from regional governments.

Libya has been divided since a militia alliance including Islamists overran Tripoli in August 2014, causing the recognised administration to flee east.
Ex-president Nasheed unsure whether to return to Maldives

Former president Mohamed Nasheed said he had not yet decided whether to return to the Maldives at a press conference Monday in London, where he has travelled for medical treatment.

Flanked by his legal team including Amal Clooney, Nasheed said he would need to consult on his next move, quoting British punk band The Clash to explain his position.

"I know the question you all want to ask is will I go back. This has been more eloquently answered by The Clash in 1982 when I was doing my A-Levels -- 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?'" Nasheed, who was educated in Britain, told reporters.

Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed speaks during a press conference in London, on January 25, 2016 Ben Stansall (AFP)

But he added: "Let me be clear. I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is how and when."

Nasheed, 48, arrived in London on Thursday after being granted 30 days of leave from the Maldives for spinal cord surgery in a deal brokered by Sri Lanka, India and former colonial power Britain.

He and his lawyers visited 10 Downing Street on Saturday, where Prime Minister David Cameron pledged support.

Nasheed became the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives in 2008 and served for four years before he was toppled in what he called a coup backed by the military and police.

Last year, he was sentenced to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges.

Clooney, who is married to Hollywood film star George Clooney, argued for "urgent" targeted sanctions against figures in the Maldives government allegedly responsible for human rights abuses, including asset freezes in the European Union and US and travel bans.

"Sanctions can work, especially those cases of targeted, smart sanctions," she added.

Nasheed's release had come about as a "direct result of the threat of sanctions", said another one of his lawyers, Jared Genser.

Shortly before the packed press conference, the Maldives government hit out at Nasheed, accusing him of using his prison leave for publicity purposes.

"It is now clear the former president has been disingenuous at best, and misleading at worst, in seeking medical leave in the UK," foreign minister Dunya Maumoon said in a statement.

"The government acted in good faith in allowing Mr Nasheed to travel abroad for treatment. Yet it is now clear his primary goal was to court publicity in the United Kingdom. This is not medical leave, but media leave."

Nasheed also criticised lawyer Cherie Blair, wife of Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, for advising the Maldives government, a decision which has drawn controversy in Britain's media.
Two Palestinians stab two women in West Bank settlement, shot dead

Two Palestinians stabbed two women Monday at a grocery in an Israeli settlement of the West Bank before being shot dead, police and medics said, in the latest in nearly four months of attacks.

Israel's military said two pipe bombs were also found in the area and were being defused.

One of the women, 23, was said by Israeli medics to be in critical condition after the incident in Beit Horon settlement, northwest of Jerusalem. The other, a 58-year-old, was in moderate condition.

Israeli security forces cordon off the area as emergency personnel (background) give treatment to one of the two Israeli victims of a Palestinian stabbing attack in Jerusalem on October 30, 2015 Ahmad Gharabli (AFP/File)

The two Palestinians were shot dead by security guards, Israeli police said, adding one was in his early 20s and the other a teenager.

The attack was the third inside a West Bank settlement since January 17, when an Israeli woman was stabbed to death at the entrance to her home in Otniel. Israeli authorities arrested a 15-year-old Palestinian over that killing.

The following day, a pregnant woman was stabbed and wounded in the Tekoa settlement. The 17-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot by security personnel and taken to hospital in serious condition.

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October, and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenagers.

Until recently, most of the attacks had occurred in public places such as checkpoints, junctions and entrances to Jerusalem's Old City.

The fatal stabbing in Otniel led to Israeli outrage and calls for more security measures.

Violence since October 1 has killed 159 Palestinians and 24 Israelis, as well as an American and an Eritrean.

Many of the Palestinians killed have been attackers, while others have been shot dead by Israeli forces during protests and clashes.

Some analysts say the attacks have been in part driven by frustration with the complete lack of progress in peace efforts, as well as by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the fractured Palestinian leadership.

Israel says incitement by Palestinian officials and news media has been a main cause of the violence.

The youngest Palestinian attacker killed since the violence began was a 13-year-old girl, who was shot dead by a security guard on Saturday at the entrance to the Anatot settlement in the West Bank.

Video footage published by Israeli media appears to show her clutching a knife and running at the private security guard who then shoots her dead.

Israel has faced questions over whether excessive force has been used in some cases, which it strongly denies.

It has used a series of measures in a bid to halt the unrest, including demolishing assailants' homes and withholding the bodies of killed attackers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the home of the Palestinian teen accused of the fatal stabbing in Otniel would be demolished as a deterrent.
China releases Swedish rights activist: Stockholm

A Swedish human rights activist detained earlier this month by China for allegedly posing a threat to national security, has been released, Sweden's foreign ministry said on Monday.

"I welcome the fact that Peter Dahlin can now be reunited with his family in Sweden. This is the result of close contacts between the Swedish foreign ministry and Chinese representatives," Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.

Dahlin, who worked for the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, disappeared on January 4 as he prepared to board a flight to Thailand, and appears to have been caught up in a crackdown on human rights lawyers.

Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, accused of national security offences, was detained earlier this month as he prepared to board a flight from Beijing Chinese Urgent Action W.G. (Chinese Urgent Action W.G./AFP/File)

His detention came as China considers a new law to control the activities of foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which has raised widespread concern among overseas groups. Dahlin's group has said it offered training to lawyers who have tried to use China's tightly-controlled judiciary to redress apparent government abuses.

State broadcaster CCTV last week aired footage of a dazed and harried looking Dahlin apologising to China for his alleged actions.

Another Swedish national, China-born Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai, disappeared from Thailand late last year before reappearing on Chinese national television in police custody.

He confessed to a mainland drink-driving offence dating back years and said he did not want Stockholm to interfere with his case.

Gui was rumoured to be preparing a tell-all book about the love life of President Xi Jinping.

Wallstrom said she remained "greatly concerned" about Gui.

"Our efforts to get a clear picture of his situation and the possibility to visit him continue with undiminished force," she said.

Beijing only rarely accuses foreigners of endangering state security, a crime which can involve a heavy sentence.

- 'A worrying trend' -

While forced public confessions are an old practice in Communist China, there has been a resurgence of such incidents since President Xi took power in 2012.

The European Union's ambassador to China, Hans-Dietmar Schweisgut, had called Dahlin's arrest and televised confession "part of a worrying trend and call into question China's respect for the rule of law and for its international human rights obligations."

Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders last week urged the European Union to impose sanctions on Chinese state media over the "forced confessions".

Speaking to Swedish regional daily Goteborgs-Posten late Monday, the activist's father Thomas Dahlin said his son had not yet boarded a flight to Sweden.
US Supreme Court makes retroactive ban on life sentences for minors

The US Supreme Court said Monday that its landmark 2012 ruling banning the sentencing of minors to life in prison without parole can be applied retroactively.

The decision offers hope of early release for more than 2,000 prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole before 2012 for crimes committed when they were minors.

Voting six to three, the nine justices ruled in favor of Henry Montgomery, who had asked to be resentenced in keeping with the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

The US Supreme Court said January 25, 2016 that its landmark 2012 ruling banning the sentencing of minors to life in prison without parole can be applied retroactively Karen Bleier (AFP/File)

When he was 17, Montgomery shot and killed a deputy sheriff in Louisiana. He has been locked up since 1963.

Monday's decision will have major repercussions on the US prison system.

Human Rights Watch estimates there are at least 2,225 people serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed before they were 18.

The Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 2012 that sentencing an adolescent to life without parole was a violation of the constitution, requiring that underage criminals be treated differently than adults.

But the historic ruling initially benefitted only minors convicted of murders committed after that ruling.
US police officer goes on trial for manslaughter

A New York police officer opened fire without justification, argued with his partner and failed to provide medical help to a father who lay dying, prosecutors said at the start of his manslaughter trial Monday.

The trial of Peter Liang is expected to spotlight police tactics at a time of major debate over shootings of unarmed suspects in a country where it is exceptionally rare for officers to face trial for opening fire.

Liang shot Akai Gurley, who was unarmed, on November 20, 2014, in a darkened Brooklyn stairwell when Gurley opted to walk down stairs when the elevator failed to arrive.

New York Police Department rookie officer Peter Liang (C) arrives at a courtroom in Brooklyn, New York, on January 20, 2016 Jewel Samad (AFP/File)

His death was described as a tragedy by police against a backdrop of nationwide protests over other unarmed black men who died at the hands of officers, which still reverberate today.

The trial opened in a packed Brooklyn courtroom, where prosecutor Marc Fliedner described Gurley as a "vibrant 28-year-old" who died because his path crossed Liang's.

The defendant sat with his lawyers dressed in a dark suit and purple tie, showing no reaction as prosecutors outlined their case for manslaughter that could go to the jury in two weeks' time.

Liang "fired for no reason" then "wasted precious time arguing with his partner," worried that he would be sacked, Fliedner said.

He did not call his superior officer as he was required to do. Nor did he call for an ambulance and neither was he supposed to have his finger on the trigger under police procedure, the prosecutor said.

Gurley was shot in the chest by a bullet that ricocheted off the wall.

- No medical help -

He and his friend Melissa Butler, whose apartment they were leaving "were doing absolutely nothing wrong," Fliedner said.

In tears, Butler knocked on apartment doors and a neighbor called 911 but Liang and his partner were "nowhere to be seen," Fliedner said.

When Liang did appear, he "walked around" Gurley, not intervening with medical assistance despite being trained to do so.

Melissa Lopez, the neighbor who called emergency services, said Butler tried to perform CPR in vain, but was not trained.

Her call to 911 was played to the jury. Butler could be heard saying Gurley had stopped breathing, with Lopez relaying instructions from the dispatch caller.

The 28-year-old officer, who was on the job just 11 months before the shooting, faces up to 15 years if convicted. He is accused of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of official misconduct.

He is expected to testify in his defense.

In her opening statement, his lawyer painted a picture of a young officer who turned into a "wreck" too traumatized to communicate after realizing he had accidentally shot someone.

- Not a referendum -

"This is not a referendum on policing in the United States," defense lawyer Rae Koshetz told jurors.

"It was an accident," she added. When Liang realized what had happened, he was terrified and incapable of communicating, she said.

The high-profile deaths in the summer of 2014 of Eric Garner, held in an illegal chokehold in New York, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri, sparked protests against police tactics and alleged racism.

It also spotlighted America's gun culture, in which armed police routinely fear for their lives and the apparent ease with which they are entitled to open fire and face no legal backlash.

An analysis by The Washington Post newspaper and researchers at Bowling Green State University in Ohio found 54 police officers were charged from 2005-15 for fatal shootings while on duty -- a small fraction of thousands of such incidents.

According to a database compiled by The Guardian, 53 people have been killed by US police so far in 2016, with 1,139 killed in 2015.

The Chinese-American officer and his partner had been on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses, the scene of two murders in a year.

Liang left the roof and walked down the stairs to the eighth floor. The lights were not working and at that moment Gurley stepped into the stairwell.

Poor maintenance is a routine problem in housing projects, run by local authorities for residents who cannot afford market-rate rents.

The jury is made up of seven women and five men, and is majority white. Only one member of the jury is black.
Brian Wilson plans final tour for 'Pet Sounds'

The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson has announced what he says will be a final tour of "Pet Sounds," often called one of the most influential pop albums ever.

Wilson said Monday he planned more than 70 shows to mark this year's 50th anniversary of the release of "Pet Sounds," starting on March 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.

The 73-year-old rocker said in a statement that the tour would mark the last time he plays "Pet Sounds" in its entirety, which he will do at each show.

Musician Brian Wilson performs on October 12, 2015 Kevin Winter (Getty/AFP/File)

While it was released as the 11th album of the Beach Boys, pioneers of the California pop sound, "Pet Sounds" was essentially a solo work by Wilson. He spent months writing and recording songs and incorporating special effects that ranged from a bicycle bell to a barking dog.

After the innocent feel of earlier Beach Boys albums, "Pet Sounds" turns introspective with Wilson ruminating on the loss of youth and musically shifting into the psychedelic rock that would soon define hippie culture.

After "Pet Sounds" Wilson suffered worsening mental health problems and drug dependency and retreated from music, re-emerging in full force only in the 1990s.

"Pet Sounds" is widely considered one of the most influential works in pop history: Rolling Stone magazine has ranked it as the second greatest album of all time, only after The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Nonetheless, "Pet Sounds" was initially a commercial disappointment in the United States even though it became a hit in Britain.

For the 50th anniversary tour, Wilson announced 11 dates in Britain including at symphony halls and at the London Palladium.

Along with an extensive US leg, Wilson will play in Australia, with two dates scheduled at the Sydney Opera House, as well as Israel, Japan, Portugal and Spain, his management said.
Burkina president vows to do "all possible" for kidnapped Australian pair

Burkina Faso's head of state vowed Monday to do everything in his power to secure the release of an elderly Australian doctor and his wife, kidnapped by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.

Dr. Ken Elliot and his wife Jocelyn, a couple from Perth aged 82 and 84 respectively, were abducted on the night of January 15-16.

They have devoted some 40 years to running the only medical facility in a remote Burkinabe town.

Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore is pictured at Ouagadougou airport on January 18, 2016 Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File)

"I would like to reassure their families, their loved ones and the Australian government that everything is being done to find them, in concertation with our friends and neighbours Mali and Niger and our friends abroad," President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said.

He was speaking at a national commemoration in the capital Ouagadougou, attended by several thousand people, for the victims of jihadist attacks on January 15 that left 30 dead.

The West Australian doctor and his wife run a clinic in the dusty town of Djibo, close to the border with Mali. They moved to the impoverished Sahel country in 1972.

The Burkina government has said the pair were kidnapped in Baraboule, near the west African country's borders with Niger and Mali.

The kidnapping coincided with a jihadist assault on an upmarket hotel in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou that left at least 30 people dead, including many foreigners.

The abduction has caused an outpouring of support, with the people of Djibo turning to Facebook to plead for the couple's release.

Hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading "Free Elliot" turned out in the town with their teachers.

A spokesman for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP on January 16 that the couple were being held by jihadists from the Al-Qaeda-linked "Emirate of the Sahara".

In a brief message, he said they were alive and more details would be released soon.
Syria regime nears capture of rebel stronghold in south

Syrian regime forces were close to capturing a rebel stronghold in the southern province of Daraa on Monday, backed by Russian air strikes, a monitor and state media said.

"Army units are continuing to progress on several axes in Sheikh Miskeen," state news agency SANA said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, reported heavy fighting and several dozen Russian air strikes on the town.

Rebel fighters dig and fill sandbags to make barricades from behind a sniper curtain in the southern Syrian city of Daraa on November 11, 2015 Mohamad Abd Abazid (AFP/File)

"Regime forces now control around 70 percent of Sheikh Miskeen," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The group did not have an immediate casualty toll for in the fighting.

The town is strategically important because of its location on a crossroads between Damascus to the north and the city of Sweida to the east, both of which are under government control.

It also lies about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the rebel stronghold of Nawa, another key target for regime forces.

A security source told AFP the town was a "launching pad" for rebel operations, and one of the opposition's "centres of gravity for the whole of Daraa province".

He said seizing control of the town would sever a key rebel supply route to areas under opposition control around Damascus.

Last month, government troops captured the Brigade 82 base outside the town, and they have since been pushing to capture Sheikh Miskeen.

Most of Daraa province is controlled by opposition forces, though the government holds parts of the provincial capital and a few villages in the northwest.

Syria's loyalist army has been on the offensive since staunch government ally Russia began an aerial campaign in support of regime forces on September 30.
South Africa puts year-long ban on leopard hunting

South Africa has imposed a year-long ban on leopard hunting in 2016 in a decision hailed Monday by conservation activists.

"Provincial conservation authorities were informed that leopard hunts should not be authorised in 2016," the Department of Environmental Affairs said, adding that the ban would be reviewed at the end of the year.

The department said it was acting on recommendations from South Africa's Scientific Authority, which had suggested an intervention to ensure the survival of the leopard population.

A leopard sneaks out from the bush at the Born Free Foundation on May 12, 2010 in the Shamwari Game Reserve Gianluigi Guercia (AFP/File)

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), South Africa can allocate 150 permits each year for the trophy-hunting of leopards destined for export.

The size of South Africa's leopard population remains a mystery.

"We just don't know how leopards are faring in South Africa," said Guy Balme of environmental group Panthera.

"They're secretive, mainly nocturnal, solitary and range over huge areas," he explained.

Conservation groups hailed the year-long ban, saying it was crucial to protecting the species given that the size of the population is unknown.

"Until we know population numbers and carrying capacity we should not hunt them," said Andrew Muir of the Wilderness Foundation.

Kelly Marnewick, carnivore conservation manager at the Environmental Wildlife Trust, added: "It's important to ensure that any wildlife trade we do is sustainable.

"If we can't do that, it's highly problematical. We need a trade ban until we can get to that."

The mismanagement of trophy hunting and the illegal trade in leopard fur are the main threats to South Africa's population of the big cat, according to the government.

Dignitaries from South Africa's Zulu community traditionally wear animal skins for ceremonies, particularly leopard fur.

South Africa earns substantial revenues from selling permits to wealthy foreigners willing to pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to hunt one of the "big five" (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino or buffalo).
Israel approves more than 150 new settler homes in West Bank: Peace Now

Israel's defence ministry has approved plans to build 153 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, a spokeswoman for the Israeli settlements watchdog Peace Now said on Monday.

Hagit Ofran said the plans were adopted last week, and involve small settlements in the Ariel area in the northern West Bank, the Carmel settlement in the Hebron area and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

According to the NGO, the move marks the end of an informal construction freeze in the Palestinian territory that lasted 18 months.

A general view taken on January 21, 2016 shows the Israeli Almog settlement in the Israeli occupied West Bank Menahem Kahana (AFP/File)

Peace Now said on December 28 that Israel was working to revive and extend plans for new Jewish settler homes in the contentious area of the occupied West Bank known as E1.

In a report it said was based on government data obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, the group said the housing ministry was seeking to build 55,548 units in the West Bank -- including two new settlements -- of which more than 8,300 homes would be in E1.

E1 and the adjacent Maaleh Adumim settlement form an Israeli buffer east of Jerusalem that the Palestinians say would divide the West Bank and badly hurt the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.

"The area of Maale Adumim and E1 is one of the most sensitive areas in terms of the chances for two state solution," Peace Now wrote.

"For these reasons, whenever an Israeli leader tries to promote the plans in E1, the international community strongly condemns them."

The United States, the United Nations and the European Union oppose all Israeli settlement building but have voiced particular concern about plans for E1.

In 2013, faced with international pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed construction of some 1,200 homes there but Peace Now said the housing ministry had hired architects to prepare fresh blueprints.

"This planning, which contradicts any possible commitment to a two-state solution, continues," said last month's Peace Now report, although it also added that the plans could be years from fruition.

"They must be approved by the minister of defence and then go through the approval process of the planning authority," the English-language report said.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 amid bitter mutual recriminations.

A chief grievance of the Palestinians was settlement building on land they claim for a future state.

"The continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel's long-term intentions and will only make separating from the Palestinians much more difficult," US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech in Washington on December 6.

Israel seized the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.
With one week to Iowa, Trump and Cruz deepen feud

Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz intensified their feud with frontrunner Trump branding his rival a nasty "whack job" and Cruz challenging Trump's conservatism, one week before Iowa kicks off the US presidential nominations contest.

Both men are counting on victory in the heartland state, which holds the first-in-the-nation vote in the long march to election day in November, to propel their candidacy into the top spot heading toward primaries in coming weeks in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

They are pouring resources into Iowa, with Cruz in the midst of a days-long multi-county tour and Trump engaging in more retail politicking in recent days.

A giant poster of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stands in the backyard of supporter George Davey's residence in West Des Moines, Iowa, January 25, 2016, ahead of the Iowa Caucus Jim Watson (AFP)

Ten other Republicans are scrambling for respectability in Iowa, including Senator Marco Rubio, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

But it is increasingly looking like a two-horse race in Iowa, where Trump and Cruz are miles ahead of other candidates in the polls.

Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas, met voters in Manchester, Iowa to tell them "we're in the final sprint. 172 hours. One week from today the Iowa caucuses will decide."

The conservative firebrand again questioned Trump's record, arguing the New York real estate billionaire has been out of step with the party when it comes to issues like taxes, gun and abortion rights, and the size of government.

"I'm happy to have a conversation about how Donald's and my records differ," Cruz said.

But as for engaging in the brutal personal counterpunching that Trump is known for, Cruz was not taking the bait.

Trump "is now insulting me every day. He can do that, that is his prerogative," Cruz said.

"I will not respond in kind because the people of Iowa... and the people of this country deserve something better."

- 'Nasty guy' -

And yet the tenor of the campaign has turned tense one week from the vote, with Cruz unveiling an anti-Trump television ad Monday, less than one hour before Trump took the stage at a rally.

"Donald Trump. New York values, not ours," a voiceover says in the ad, hitting Trump for flip-flopping on issues like abortion and repeating Trump's comment, made years earlier, that "my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa."

Trump knocked Cruz's ad campaign during his New Hampshire rally, part of his increasing verbal assaults on Cruz.

"I think the establishment actually is against me, but really coming online, because they see me as opposed to Cruz, who is a nasty guy who can't get along with anybody," Trump told CNN.

"We can't have a guy who stands in the middle of the Senate floor and every other senator thinks he's a whack job, right? You have to make deals.

"And Ted can't get along with anybody. He's a nasty person."

Trump continued his assault via Twitter, assailing Cruz as "a nervous wreck" who is sinking in the polls.

He also repeated his charge that Cruz's birth in Canada is anything but a resolved issue in terms of his presidential eligibility.

"It's time for Ted Cruz to either settle his problem with the FACT that he was born in Canada and was a citizen of Canada, or get out of race," Trump tweeted.

Trump is riding high in polls, with Cruz second. Trump secured the endorsement last week of conservative icon Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee.

Cruz, for his part, earned the endorsement Monday of former campaign rival Rick Perry, the onetime Texas governor who last year called Trump a "cancer on conservatism."

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz steps off his campaign bus before an event at the Fireside Pub and Steakhouse on January 25, 2016 in Manchester, Iowa Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP)

A man sells memorabilia of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to supporters standing in line prior to a campaign rally in Pella, Iowa, January 23, 2016, ahead of the Iowa Caucus Jim Watson (AFP)
Trump welcomes a senator, bashes Beck's support of Cruz

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa (AP)  Donald Trump is so confident about the loyalty of his supporters that he predicted Saturday they would stick with him even if he shot someone.

The Republican presidential front-runner bashed conservative commentator Glenn Beck's support of rival Ted Cruz and welcomed a figure from the GOP establishment, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, in rallies nine days before the Iowa caucuses open voting in the 2016 campaign.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump told an enthusiastic audience at a Christian school, Dordt College. "It's like incredible."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Dordt College, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Sioux Center, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Beck campaigned for Ted Cruz and held little back in going after Trump. "The time for silliness and reality show tactics has passed," Beck charged at a Cruz rally. He warned that a Trump victory in the Feb. 1 caucuses could have lasting consequences: "If Donald Trump wins, it's going to be a snowball to hell."

Trump demonstrated the extent to which some in the Republican establishment have begun to accept a potential Trump nomination when Grassley introduced him at a later event in Pella.

Grassley did not offer an endorsement, but his presence underscored Trump's enduring positions at the top of the polls as voting approaches. Alex Conant, speaking for Marco Rubio's campaign, was quick to note, however, that Grassley will introduce Rubio at an Iowa rally in a week.

Days after Trump was endorsed by tea party favorite Sarah Palin, Cruz flashed his own conservative muscle during a rally in Ankeny, Iowa. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican and conservative firebrand, and Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats encouraged local Republicans to unite behind Cruz. Beck praised the Texas senator's commitment to principles of the right and repeatedly jabbed Trump from afar. The same headliners were to appear at an evening rally in eastern Iowa.

At his Sioux Center event, Trump called Beck a "loser" and "sad sack." Beck was one of nearly two dozen conservative thinkers who penned anti-Trump essays for National Review magazine  a hit Trump referred to repeatedly at the rally.

Cruz, running close with Trump in Iowa polls, was almost entirely focused on the billionaire in his Ankeny event, as he professed core conservative values and drew a sharp contrast with Trump on issue after issue, without using his name.

With obvious exaggeration, he charged that one Republican candidate, "for over 60 years of his life," supported so-called partial-birth abortion and a "Bernie Sanders-style socialized medicine for all." Trump is 69 and unlikely to have had positions on abortion and health care as a child.

He blasted Trump's past reluctance to strip federal money from Planned Parenthood and cast the billionaire's plan to deport more than 11 million people who are in country illegally as "amnesty" because he would then let many of them return.

But Cruz shrugged off Trump's shooting comment when asked. "I will let Donald speak for himself. I can say I have no intention of shooting anybody in this campaign," he told reporters, adding that he would keep his criticism focused on issues.

"I don't intend to go into the gutter," Cruz said.

Elsewhere in Iowa, Rubio stressed that he represents the next generation of conservative leadership as he started the dash to the caucuses at Iowa State University in Ames.

"Complaining and being frustrated alone will not be enough," Rubio said. "It has to be someone who tells you exactly what they are going to do as president."

Rubio recently stepped up his Iowa campaign appearances in hopes of breaking Cruz and Trump's hold on the state in an effort to put himself in a stronger position leading into New Hampshire's Feb. 9 primary. The Des Moines Register endorsed him Saturday as its choice in the Republican race, backing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest.

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Peoples reported from Ankeny. Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Ames and Pella, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. speaks Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee town hall in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

People pray during a campaign rally with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Dordt College, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Sioux Center, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Dordt College, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Sioux Center, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

A sign supporting Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sits on the side of the highway on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Orange City, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
2 Chinese killed in Laos suspected bombing

BEIJING (AP)  Two Chinese citizens have been killed and one injured in a suspected bomb attack in central Laos, a mountainous area that in recent months has seen an increase in violence and in years past was the scene of clashes between government forces and the Hmong ethnic minority.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday that the incident took place about 8 a.m. on Sunday in the province of Xaysomboun (pronounced Sai-sum-boon) when the victims, one of whom was employed by a Chinese mining company, were riding in a vehicle.

Chinese diplomats have visited the survivor, identified by the surname Zhou, and have requested a swift investigation, Xinhua said. An official contacted at the Lao Embassy in Vietnam, the country's closest ally, said he was unaware of the report.

China is a major investor in Laos' rich abundance of minerals and other natural resources and shares its one-party form of authoritarian communist government. A special Chinese presidential envoy, Song Tao, is due to visit the country this week, Xinhua said.

Since November, there has been an increase in violence in the province, though the perpetrators have not been identified, nor has the tightly controlled state press provided any details.

In a notice posted on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Laos in November prohibited its employees from traveling to Xaysomboon province due to what it described as nighttime shooting attacks by unidentified assailants. It said one person was killed on Nov. 17 and another wounded on Nov. 18.

The Hmong fought on the side of a pro-American regime during the Vietnam War, and after the communist Pathet Lao took over in 1975, many fled abroad or hid in the jungle. Until a few years ago, there were several small bands of Hmong resisters who continued to hide in the jungle and occasionally clash with security forces, but most eventually surrendered.

The U.S. government-funded news service Radio Free Asia has reported additional attacks in November, December and January, citing unnamed police and other sources. In the latest reported attack, a bus came under fire on Jan. 14, leaving about a dozen passengers hurt but none killed, said RFA.

While RFA's reports could not be independently confirmed, it has a record of being well-informed about Laotian affairs.

In a report forwarded to The Associated Press earlier this month, Hmong sympathizers gave their own version of the recent violence, saying that from mid-November until the end of December, there had been six attacks by government forces on groups of Hmong, killing at least seven and wounding 21.

The report, which came from a source which has provided accurate information in the past, also said that 13 Hmong villagers had been arrested in November for contacting people in the jungle, meaning Hmong who are hiding from the authorities. The source declined to be named because of fears for his personal security.

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Kerry dismisses posturing ahead of peace talks on Syria

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday dismissed Syrian government claims and opposition complaints as posturing ahead of U.N.-led peace talks that are to begin Friday and last six months.

Monday's scheduled start in Geneva has been pushed back to Friday due to disagreements over which groups can represent the opposition.

Kerry said that during his short stay in Laos earlier Monday, he had spoken to the U.N. special envoy for Syria and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey. The goal is to reach a consensus on how the talks will be run and a planned cease-fire would proceed.

U.S. Secretary of States John Kerry, second from right, waves at Cambodian officials upon his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Kerry arrived in Phnom Penh for his two-day official visit to Cambodia. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

"We're going to have the meeting and (the talks) are going to start," Kerry told reporters. "But what we are trying to do is to make absolutely certain that when they start everyone is clear about roles and what's happening so you don't go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure. You don't want to start Day One by not being able to make progress."

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, who announced in Geneva that the negotiations would start Friday, told reporters the sides will not talk directly to each other to begin with.

Kerry said any disagreements arising in the Geneva talks would be addressed by another meeting of the 20-odd member International Syria Support Group that is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 11.

Syrian officials have said they will make no concessions at the negotiating table. Opposition figures have complained that they are being forced into the talks.

Kerry said those recent statements reflect only "tensions" and "rumors." He dismissed suggestions of disunity among countries that back the opposition and said U.S. support for foes of Syrian President Bashar Assad remains solid.

"I think these are just tensions. These are things you hear as people are worried," he said.

Over the weekend, a senior official in Assad's ruling Baath party said the government would not make any new concessions in the peace talks at a time when the Syrian army with the help of Russia is making progress in different parts of the country.

"We are not going to give today what we did not give over the past five years," Hilal al-Hilal said late Saturday, during a visit to troops in areas they recently captured from insurgents outside the capital, Damascus.

Kerry said that claim was inconsistent with the positions of Russia and Iran. Assad's main backers have agreed to a U.N.-supported political transition process that is to form a new government over the next 18 months.

"That doesn't make sense," Kerry said. "If that's their attitude, the war does not end. That is not the Russian attitude. The Russians say (the Syrians) are going to go and they are going to negotiate."

He added, however, that nothing was certain. "We are going to know very quickly, in a month or two or three, whether these guys are serious."

Separately, Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that any participation of Kurdish forces in the Geneva talks would spell the end of the initiative.

Kerry, who met with the chief opposition negotiator in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, also addressed complaints from Assad foes who say the U.S. and others are giving in to demands from the government and its supporters.

"The position of the United States is and hasn't changed. We are still supporting the opposition, politically, financially and militarily," he said, adding later: "We completely empowered them. I don't know where this is coming from."

The opposition demands that Assad have no role in Syria's future, even during a transitional period. Russia, Iran and Syrian the government say that is to be determined by the Syrian people.

While maintaining that Assad cannot be part of the long-term future, the U.S. and others have dropped demands for his immediate removal and have agreed that the negotiations should decide his fate.

"It's up to the Syrians to decide what happens to Assad," Kerry said. "They are the negotiators and they will decide the future."

Kerry said he had explained to the opposition that the composition of a transitional government would have to be agreed by "mutual consent" from the two sides.

"I told them you have a veto, and so does he and so you're going to have to decide how to move forward," he said.

"I just don't buy into this public back and forth. It doesn't serve any purpose," he said. "We have to get to the negotiations without preconditions and get into the discussion of a cease-fire and humanitarian access ... and lay down the road ahead for the transition discussion itself and put to test whether they are serious. Or, if they aren't serious, war will continue."

"It's up to them," he said.
Man wanted for US killings agrees to extradition from HK

HONG KONG (AP)  A Chinese fugitive arrested in Hong Kong in connection with the slayings of his teenage nephews in California told a court Monday he won't fight extradition to the United States.

Shi Deyun told a magistrate several times that he was willing to be sent back to the United States "as soon as possible," adding that the allegations against him weren't true.

Shi arrived Saturday afternoon in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city, on a flight from Los Angeles. Police, acting on a request from U.S. officials, apprehended him at the airport. He was taken to a hospital and then formally arrested early Sunday.

Chinese fugitive Deyun Shi, left, escorted by a police officer in a police van, arrives at a magistrate court in Hong Kong Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Shi who was arrested early Sunday in Hong Kong after arriving on a flight from Los Angeles in connection with the slayings of his teenage nephews in California has told the court he won't fight extradition to the United States. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

U.S. investigators believe Shi killed the 15- and 16-year-old boys before fleeing. The two were found with head trauma in their Arcadia, California, home after police responded to a 911 call. Investigators say he assaulted his wife, who is the sister of the dead teens' father, on Thursday after learning she wanted a divorce.

Shi declined the services of a duty lawyer and planned to represent himself. He was wearing a grey blazer over a black shirt and had a scratch on his right cheek.

When the judge asked if he agreed to extradition, Shi said through a Mandarin interpreter, "I consent as soon as possible."

Shi also applied for bail, saying he could offer a "high amount of bail money" because he had assets in mainland China and the United States.

"The details of the allegations against me are not true," Shi said. "But I'm not inclined to go into the details and give a rebuttal here. I believe I will restore the truth in the U.S. with supporting facts."

He said he was in poor health and had a history of cardio disease and poor mental health.

However, Chief Magistrate Clement Lee refused his application and he was remanded into custody.
Expert: Escaped California inmates must have had inside help

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP)  Three California inmates who sawed through a metal grate, crawled through plumbing tunnels and shimmied to freedom down a rope made from bed linens likely had help to pull off the daring plan and also benefited from the complacency of jail staff, security experts said Monday.

The inmates vanished early Friday in a jail break eerily similar to the escape of two inmates from an upstate New York prison last summer. Those men also cut through a portion of wall hidden under a bunk bed and used piping and tunnels inside the facility to reach the outside.

The California inmates, including one who is charged with murder, were still at large Monday. Jail officials did not realize they were missing until roughly 16 hours after they were last seen because an evening headcount was delayed by an assault on a guard.

Orange County Sheriff's Department Public Information Officer Lt. Jeff Hallock takes questions from the media outside the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Three inmates, including a man suspected in a killing, cut through metal, crawled through plumbing tunnels, climbed a roof and rappelled down four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

A major question for investigators will be how the men were able to plan and execute their flight with such precision, said Kevin Tamez, a managing partner for MPM Group, a Philadelphia-based firm that consults on prison security, management and infrastructure.

It's likely someone slipped them blueprints or told them how the bowels of the jail were laid out, he said.

"If I were whoever's investigating, there are some people who would be on a polygraph, I guarantee you," Tamez said. "They had to have had some inside help."

Lt. Jeff Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, said there is no evidence so far that the trio had help from the inside but authorities know it's a possibility.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trials for unrelated violent crimes at the Men's Central Jail. They were held in a dormitory with about 65 other men.

They cut through a quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall and got into plumbing tunnels before sawing through half-inch-thick steel bars as they made their way behind walls to an unguarded area of a roof atop a five-story building. There, they moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using the bed linen.

It was the first escape in nearly three decades from the California facility built in 1968. The jail holds 900 men and is located in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The similarities to last summer's escape in New York point to complacency among guards and administrators at the California facility, experts said.

"This summer we had this huge escape from Clinton Prison in New York and every prison or jail administrator in the country should have said to themselves, 'Huh, I wonder if I am vulnerable?' and should have checked their steam shafts and tunnels and every other thing that gives access to the outside," said Martin Horn, a professor of corrections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York.

Motion sensor cameras  available for $55 and often used as baby monitors  can be installed along interior tunnels and pipes to catch inmates, Tamez said.

Thorough searches of dorms likely would have discovered the tools used or damage to the vent grill, he said.

Hallock said the jail's general policy is to do walk-throughs every hour to check on inmates. More involved searches are done randomly, he said, but declined to be more specific.

It's also unclear why the inmates  who were charged with violent felonies  were housed in a common dorm with more than 60 other inmates. Assignment to a large, busy room likely made it easier for them to avoid detection, Horn said.

Authorities believe Tieu and Duong remain in Southern California, possibly hiding out in the local Vietnamese community in Orange County. Officials held a news conference in Vietnamese to ask for help.

Federal authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information leading to their recapture.

Tieu had been held on a $1 million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling in an alleged gang dispute.

Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Authorities say he kidnapped a marijuana dealer, burned him with a blow torch and cut off his penis because Nayeri thought the man had buried money in the desert.

Duong has been held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts in the shooting of a man on his front porch.

The three were also charged late Friday with a felony for the escape itself, a charge that could carry a three-year sentence for Tieu and a nine-year sentence for Duong because of a previous conviction.

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Associated Press writer Amy Taxin contributed to this report.

This undated booking photo provided by the Orange County, Calif., Sheriff's Department on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, shows 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, one of three jail inmates charged with violent crimes, who escaped from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. The men include Tieu, who is charged with murder; 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, charged with kidnapping and torture; and 43-year-old Bac Duong, charged with attempted murder. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Saturday that the inmates were last seen at 5 a.m. and could have escaped anytime between then and late Friday night. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

This undated booking photo provided by the Orange County, Calif., Sheriff's Department on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, shows 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, one of three jail inmates charged with violent crimes, who escaped from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. The men include 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, who is charged with murder; Nayeri, charged with kidnapping and torture; and 43-year-old Bac Duong, charged with attempted murder. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Saturday that the inmates were last seen at 5 a.m. and could have escaped anytime between then and late Friday night. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

This undated booking photo provided by the Orange County, Calif., Sheriff's Department on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, shows 43-year-old Bac Duong, one of three jail inmates charged with violent crimes, who escaped from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. The men include 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, who is charged with murder; 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, charged with kidnapping and torture; and Duong, charged with attempted murder. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Saturday that the inmates were last seen at 5 a.m. and could have escaped anytime between then and late Friday night. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

This image provided by the Orange County, Calif., Sheriff's Department on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, shows three jail inmates charged with violent crimes who escaped from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif. The men from left are, 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, charged with kidnapping and torture; 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, who is charged with murder, and 43-year-old Bac Duong, charged with attempted murder. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Saturday that the inmates were last seen at 5 a.m. on Friday and could have escaped anytime between then and late Friday night. (Orange County Sheriff's Department via AP)

This Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a cord made of an undetermined fabric that facilitated the escape of three inmates from Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., sometime Friday. Investigators are pursuing several leads in their search for the inmates, and in the meantime a separate probe was launched into how the inmates managed to obtain the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

This Jan. 23, 2016 photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a cell and a vent screen that had been cut, near the floor at center rear, at Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., from which three inmates escaped sometime Friday, Jan. 22. Investigators are pursuing several leads in their search, and in the meantime a separate probe was launched into how the inmates managed to obtain the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

This Jan. 23, 2016 photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a closeup view of a vent screen that had been cut and removed inside a cell at Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., from which three inmates escaped sometime Friday, Jan. 22. Investigators are pursuing several leads in their search, and in the meantime a separate probe was launched into how the inmates managed to obtain the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof. (Orange County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Orange County Sheriff's Department Public Information Officer Lt. Jeff Hallock, left, takes questions from the media in Santa Ana, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Three inmates from Orange County Men's Central Jail, including a man suspected in a killing, cut through metal, crawled through plumbing tunnels, climbed a roof and rappelled down four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
AP FACT CHECK: Gutted? Disaster? GOP hyperbole on military

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio maintains that President Barack Obama is more interested in providing money to Planned Parenthood than for the nation's armed forces. The front-runner in the GOP race, Donald Trump, says the U.S. military is a "disaster." Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says the Obama administration has "gutted" every weapons system in the U.S. military's inventory.

Gutted? Disaster?

It's become a staple for the Republican candidates to trash Obama and argue that he has failed to spend enough on defense. At the debates and campaign stops, they've cast him as a feckless commander in chief, standing idly by while the world's finest military withers away.

In this Jan. 23, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks during a campaign stop at Sherburne Hall in Pelham, N.H. Trashing President Barack Obama and arguing that he has failed to spend enough on defense has become a staple for Republican presidential hopefuls. Bush says the Obama administration has "gutted" every weapon system in the U.S. militarys inventory. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

What's lost in the din: Money spent on weapons modernization is on par with the Republican George W. Bush administration. The military cuts that GOP contenders are complaining about were approved by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. The military budget is being squeezed by the insistence of lawmakers in both parties that money be spent on bases and equipment that the Pentagon says it doesn't need.

And the government spends roughly 1,000 times more on the armed forces than on Planned Parenthood.

Some of the GOP candidates' claims and how they compare with the facts:

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"In this administration, every weapon system has been gutted," Bush said at a debate in South Carolina this month.

THE FACTS: Total spending for the modernization for major weapons systems actually has remained stable since Bush's brother, George W. Bush, left the White House in January 2009. The department's "selected acquisition reports," which detail past, current and future investments in dozens of weapons programs, show the value of the military services' modernization portfolio in November 2008 was $1.64 trillion. The latest reports, from March 2015, show a value of $1.62 trillion.

The armed forces are undergoing a transformation, according to the Defense Department's budget strategy. The military services will no longer be sized for large, prolonged operations  a reference to the lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which involved massive reconstruction and humanitarian relief components. The focus now is on building a high-tech force that is nimble enough to defeat Islamic State militants and much more sophisticated adversaries.

For example, the Air Force is pushing ahead with the development and acquisition of an advanced bomber, known as Long-Range Strike, to replace the aging fleet of B-1 and B-52 bombers. The B-52s were first deployed when Dwight Eisenhower was president. The B-1s, which were fielded in the 1980s, are no longer certified for nuclear missions.

The new bomber is a highly classified, $80 billion project designed to build an information-age aircraft that eventually may be capable of flying without a pilot aboard. The Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. the bomber contract in October. The contract is part of the Pentagon's broader plan to modernize the entire nuclear force  missile-carrying submarines, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers.

The nagging question for any major weapons program is how to keep them from becoming budget busters. On Obama's watch, the Joint Strike Fighter  the single most expensive military project ever  has experienced significant cost, schedule and performance setbacks that have driven up the price tag. The Government Accountability Office estimated last year that nearly $400 billion will be needed to buy the planned 2,457 aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

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Obama is "more interested in funding Planned Parenthood than he is in funding the military," said Rubio, a Florida senator.

THE FACTS: While the defense budget has dropped in recent years, the cuts were approved by Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress, then signed into law by Obama. But even with the reductions, the size of the special operations forces, which include Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, has grown.

For 2016, the current budget year, the Defense Department's is allotted roughly $581 billion. That includes $59 billion for fighting IS, operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other missions. There's $111 billion for new equipment and upgrades, ranging from jet fighters, helicopters, ships and submarines. Another $70 billion is for the research and development of new technologies.

The Budget Control Act set limits on how much could be spent on defense through 2021. Between 2011 and 2014, the Pentagon's budget fell by more than $100 billion. In 2013, automatic budget cuts known as sequestration kicked in, forcing across-the-board reductions that led to widespread concern the military services would be unprepared to fight the nation's wars.

Yet Congress and the Obama administration still haven't been able agree on a way out of the constraints both sides were responsible for setting.

Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have resisted money-saving measures proposed by the Pentagon, such as closing excess military bases. Congress has prohibited the retirement of the A-10 aircraft that provides close air support for ground troops. For more than a decade, both Congress and the White House didn't offset the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They just wrote a check, adding to an already massive deficit.

Mike McCord, the Pentagon comptroller, said in a recent presentation that the defense budget request for 2017 will be $584 billion.

Planned Parenthood affiliates received $524.8 million in federal health services grants and reimbursements, according to the organization's annual report.

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"Our military is a disaster," Trump said.

THE FACTS: The GOP front-runner typically avoids specifics, so it's unclear what he meant exactly.

There is, however, concern among congressional Republicans and Democrats that too many active-duty troops are being cut from the force.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an advocate for bigger defense budgets, said Thursday that the force-reduction decisions were made before the growth of IS or Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If the sequestration process isn't reversed, McCain said, the Army could drop to 420,000 troops from a wartime peak of 570,000.

"Readiness suffers as our Army shrinks," McCain said, adding that only a little more than one third of the Army's brigade combat teams are ready for deployment and decisive operations.

But McCain, the leading Republican voice in Congress on national security issues, acknowledged the difficulty of seeking more money for defense when so much is being wasted on weapons programs that exceed their expected costs.

"It's hard for us to go back to our constituents when we have a $2 billion cost overrun on an aircraft carrier," McCain said. "If we're going to have credibility with the American people, we cannot have these horror stories."

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Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rplardner
Officials from Obama's Cabinet lining up behind Clinton

WASHINGTON (AP)  Hillary Clinton hasn't just been wrapping herself in President Barack Obama's legacy lately. She's been wrapping herself in his Cabinet.

With Obama's endorsement out of reach for now, Clinton's presidential campaign has racked up support from his administration's top officials. It's part of the effort to win over loyalists in the Obama coalition as Clinton  secretary of state in his first term  fights for every edge.

Obama's housing chief, Julian Castro, campaigned for Clinton this weekend in Nevada and Iowa. Clinton recently accepted the endorsement of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and appeared in South Carolina with former Attorney General Eric Holder. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, and Labor Secretary Tom Perez also are among the current and former officials who have publicly declared their support.

In this Oct. 15, 2015, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, stands with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, left, after she was introduced during a campaign event in San Antonio. Clinton hasn't just been wrapping herself in President Barack Obama's legacy lately. She's been wrapping herself in his Cabinet. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

The high-level endorsements come as Clinton tries to undercut her main rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, by casting him as fair-weather friend to her former boss. She has called out Sanders for suggesting in 2011 that Obama should face a second-term primary challenge, and for criticizing Obama for taking donations from Wall Street.

Sanders' campaign has embraced the outsider status.

"We're proud of the endorsements we've gotten from millions of Americans who are supporting Bernie in taking on the rigged economy and the corrupt campaign finance system that props it up," campaign manager Jeff Weaver said.

Obama administration officials are hardly the flashiest of endorsements, and his Cabinet hasn't produced lots of household names. Clinton was the most recognizable.

But each helps reach some important group  African Americans, Latinos, labor, Iowans  and Clinton need every bit of electoral help she can get.

"You're happy to have them all," said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum. "They each have a marginal impact, but a marginal impact matters when you're weeks before Iowa."

The officials have their own motivations for signing on early.

Castro, a 41-year-old former San Antonio mayor, hasn't shot down speculation that he could find himself on the ticket with Clinton. His turns on the campaign trail could prove to be something of an audition.

"There are rumors you're in vice president training camp," Stephen Colbert asked Castro, when Castro was on the "The Late Show." ''What does that involve other than staying awake behind someone giving the State of the Union address?"

Castro laughed, but didn't dispel the rumors.

Like other Cabinet members, Castro has reached out to targeted audiences. He announced his support to a largely Latino crowd at a San Antonio rally in October. Clinton said she would "look hard" at Castro as a running mate.

Obama has said he will not endorse during the primary, and he and his aides are treading carefully.

White House officials say they have not offered any formal guidance to Cabinet members who have decided to wade into the race before the boss, only that they give the White House a courtesy heads up before they go public with their support.

The standing restrictions on political activity apply. Officials are told not to trade on their office for political purposes or use their official titles at events. Staff time and government money cannot be used for travel or planning. Officials can't ask for money. They can speak at fundraisers.

But there's no prohibition on reminding people who you work for and why your support matters.

"As someone who has had a front row seat, I sure as hell don't want to see the progress we made go backward," Perez said during a visit to a Las Vegas union office for some phone-banking in December. "And that's why, folks, I'm going to say I'm proud as hell of the fact that I have had the privilege of working for Barack Obama and I'm proud as hell to endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States."

Not all past candidates have wanted surrogates linking them so closely to the current occupant of the White House.

Vice President Al Gore relied on several current and former Cabinet secretaries in 2000 to serve as advisers as well as critics of his opponent, Republican George W. Bush. Eight years later, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tried to distance itself from the two-term Bush, particularly on war policies. (McCain's open feud with former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld put so much distance between the men that Rumsfeld would not say whether he would vote for the GOP nominee.)

But as Clinton and Sanders compete for die-hard Democrats, association with the Obama administration remains a net plus. Obama's support among Democratic base voters is rock solid. Ninety-one percent of African-Americans and 86 percent of Democrats say they approve of Obama's job performance, according to Gallup.
Cruz GOP presidential bid aided by billionaire donors

WASHINGTON (AP)  Four of America's wealthiest businessmen laid the foundation for Ted Cruz's now-surging Republican presidential campaign and have redefined the role of political donors.

With just over a week until voters get their first say, the 45-year-old Texas senator known as a conservative warrior has been ascendant. The $36 million committed last year by these donor families is now going toward broadcast and online advertisements, direct mailings and get-out-the-vote efforts in early primary states.

The donors' super political action committees sponsored Saturday rallies in Iowa featuring Cruz and conservative personality Glenn Beck. The state holds the leadoff caucuses on Feb. 1.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, left, is welcomed to the stage by radio and television personality Glenn Beck, right, at a rally at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The long-believing benefactors are New York hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, Texas natural gas billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, and private-equity partner Toby Neugebauer. They honed their plan to help Cruz before he began his steady rise in polls  before he even announced his presidential bid in March.

"No one wants to lose," Neugebauer told The Associated Press when asked why he and others bet big on Cruz. "We didn't miss that an outsider would win. I think we've nailed it."

The groundwork laid by Neugebauer and other major donors began roughly two years ago, first in a casual conversation with Cruz at a donor's home in Palm Beach, Florida, then in a more formal way over the 2014 Labor Day weekend at Neugebauer's ranch in East Texas.

That October, big-data firm Cambridge Analytica  in which Mercer is an investor  began working to identify potential Cruz voters and develop messages that would motivate them. Alexander Nix, the company's chief executive officer, said the importance of this early work cannot be overstated. He credits Cruz for understanding this.

"Money never buys you time," Nix said, drawing from his experiences with campaigns worldwide. "Too often clients will come to you just before an election and expect you to work miracles. But you cannot roll back the clock."

Key donors soon came up with a novel arrangement: Each family would control its own super PAC, but the groups would work together as a single entity called Keep the Promise. They keep in touch through weekly strategy phone calls.

That's not how super PACs usually work. More typically, multiple donors turn over their money and leave the political decisions to professional strategists. For example, Jeb Bush's super PAC counts more than two dozen million-dollar donors.

For Cruz, the pool of really big donors is far more concentrated: Mercer gave $11 million, Neugebauer gave $10 million, and the Wilks brothers and their wives together gave $15 million.

That level of support has opened Cruz to criticism that donors are influencing his policies, whether on abortion, energy or the gold standard.

Ethanol advocates point to his oil and gas donors as the reason he wants to discontinue that government subsidy for the corn-based fuel. Cruz and the donors have dismissed that as nonsense. His campaign cites as evidence Cruz's desire to end handouts to all parts of the energy industry.

Neugebauer, whose private equity investment firm has investments in shale, moved to Puerto Rico in 2014. He said he relocated for his children's education, but there are tax breaks as well.

Mercer is a former computer programmer and co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, one of the country's largest hedge funds. The Wilks brothers are relative newcomers to the world of political donations, having made billions in 2011 by selling their company, which manufactures equipment for the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas.

Although these donors set aside their millions for Cruz 10 months ago, it's only now that the money is making its way to the 2016 race in a major way.

Since mid-December, the Keep the Promise super PACs have documented about $4 million in independent expenditures to help Cruz or attack other candidates  most often Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, federal election records show.

The super PACs have been identifying and connecting with Cruz voters through digital ads and door-knocking, and recently began a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign. A Keep the Promise van tailed the Cruz campaign bus as it made its way through Iowa last week. Super PAC workers handed out thousands of "Choose Cruz" yard signs.

For the biggest donors, it's no surprise that Cruz seems to be well-positioned heading into the primaries. In mid-July, Keep the Promise posted on its website a slide-show presentation called "Can He Win?" The document predicted it would be "very difficult for Establishment to destroy the conservative challenger."

FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2015, file photo, Farris Wilks watches Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speak in the community center named after his mother in Cisco, Texas. The "Reigniting the Promise Community Rally" was sponsored by the Keep the Promise Super PAC and held at the Myrtle Wilks Community Center in Cisco. Four of Americas wealthiest businessmen, including Texas natural gas billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, laid the foundation for Ted Cruzs now-surging Republican presidential campaign and have redefined the role of political donors. (Ronald W. Erdrich/Abilene Reporter-News via AP)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his wife Heidi swing their daughter Caroline, 7, as their younger daughter Catherine, 4, right, waves to members of the audience after Cruz spoke at a rally at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Swedish doctor on trial for keeping woman in bunker

STOCKHOLM (AP)  A Swedish doctor went on trial on rape and kidnapping charges Monday after admitting to imprisoning a woman in a home-made bunker in what his defense lawyer said was a desperate attempt to find a girlfriend.

Prosecutors said the 38-year-old man had planned the crime for years and may have tried to capture other victims before sedating and abducting the woman during a date in Stockholm.

The victim, who is around 30, didn't suffer serious physical injuries during her weeklong abduction. But she was deeply traumatized by the ordeal and stressed about having to face him in court, said her lawyer, Jens Hogstrom.

This is a n undated police handout image made available on Monday Jan. 25, 2016 of the interior the soundproof bunker made by a Swedish Doctor in southern Sweden. A Swedish doctor who admitted to abducting a woman and locking her up in a home-made bunker had planned the crime for years and may have tried to capture other victims, prosecutors said as the trial started Monday. Prosecutors and defense lawyers gave opening statements in the Stockholm district court before proceedings continued behind closed doors. The number at centre was added by source. (Swedish Police/TT via AP) SWEDEN OUT

"She's having a very hard time right now," Hogstrom told The Associated Press during a break in the proceedings. "She's got post-traumatic stress, flashbacks from what happened. She has nightmares."

The doctor, whose name wasn't published in Sweden in line with privacy rules, has confessed to almost everything in the indictment, but denies having raped the woman while she was unconscious.

In court documents obtained by the AP, he told investigators he abducted the woman on Sept. 12 in her Stockholm apartment during their second date. Pretending to be an American living in London, he gave her strawberries laced with a sedative and then drove 530 kilometers (330 miles) to his isolated countryside home in southern Sweden, giving her drugs intravenously during the journey to keep her unconscious.

The woman was terrified as she woke up in a soundproofed bunker that the doctor had spent years building inside a machine shed next to his house.

"I didn't know what would happen, whether he would torture me, kill me or rape me," she told investigators. "He just told me he would keep me there for a few years and then release me."

At one point she tried to attack him with a pair of screws she found in the bunker, but as she was still dazed from the drugs, he easily subdued her and warned her he would shackle her to the bed and feed her only bread if she tried it again, court documents show.

The defendant kept her in the bunker, except for brief occasions when he led her in handcuffs to his home. But on Sept. 18 he took her to a police station, allegedly to show police that she was fine and staying with him voluntarily. As soon as police took her aside for questioning, she "broke down" and told them everything, a police report shows.

"There is no simple explanation for this," defense lawyer Mari Schaub told reporters Monday. "This is a high-performing person who is unwell psychologically and has been longing for a life partner."

A psychiatric examination found he wasn't suffering from a severe mental illness. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

The victim is demanding 380,000 kronor ($44,000) in damages, which her lawyer said is high by Swedish standards. Damages are typically much higher in other countries, particularly the U.S.

Court documents show the defendant did his military service as a ranger in northern Sweden and studied medicine at Stockholm's prestigious Karolinska institute, which awards the Nobel Prize in medicine.

He worked as a doctor at several clinics in southern Sweden, said Bruno Malmlind, human resources manager of the local public health care administration.

"I'm shocked and surprised," Malmlind told AP. "He was appreciated by both patients and staff. There was no sign of any strange behavior."

Prosecutor Peter Claesson told reporters that a parallel investigation was ongoing to find out whether the doctor had attempted to capture other women.

"That cannot be ruled out," Claesson said.

Police seized dozens of files from the defendant's computer with information on secret doors, locks and lists of construction material. One file labeled "Contract" listed "discounts" in years that "guests" could get by performing various sexual acts.

In transcripts of the police interrogations, the defendant said that he never intended to harm the woman. Except for the abduction, which he called a "little parenthesis," he said "I have treated her well, in my opinion."

Court officials are set to go to southern Sweden on Tuesday to inspect the defendant's home. Neither the defendant nor the victim is expected to take part.

This is a n undated police handout image made available on Monday Jan. 25, 2016 of the interior the soundproof bunker made by a Swedish Doctor in southern Sweden. A Swedish doctor who admitted to abducting a woman and locking her up in a home-made bunker had planned the crime for years and may have tried to capture other victims, prosecutors said as the trial started Monday. Prosecutors and defense lawyers gave opening statements in the Stockholm district court before proceedings continued behind closed doors. The the word Bunker at left was added by source. (Swedish Police/TT via AP) SWEDEN OUT

This is an artist's impression of a Swedish doctor left, appearing in court in Stockholm Monday Jan. 25, 2016. The Swedish doctor who admitted to abducting a woman and locking her up in a home-made bunker had planned the crime for years and may have tried to capture other victims, prosecutors said as the trial started Monday. Prosecutors and defense lawyers gave opening statements in the Stockholm district court before proceedings continued behind closed doors. (Ingela Landstrom / TT via AP) SWEDEN OUT
Yemen's PM returns to Aden; Saudi airstrikes kill civilians

SANAA, Yemen (AP)  The Yemeni prime minister and his Cabinet returned on Monday to the volatile southern port city of Aden, months after he was targeted in a suicide bombing that forced them to leave the country.

Khaled Bahah's return is aimed at establishing a permanent government presence in Aden, officials in his office said, even as the country is torn apart by civil war. The officials didn't provide more information.

Yemen has been torn by conflict since 2014, when Shiite rebels known as Houthis and allied with a former president captured large swaths of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, which they took in September that year.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016 file photo, a man stands on the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen. Within hours of ascending to the Saudi throne, King Salman announced sweeping changes that would recast the kingdoms line of succession, and rework its security and economic decision-making processes. It marked the start of what would be a tumultuous year for King Salman, who completes one year as monarch on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

In March 2015, a coalition of mainly Gulf Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against the Houthis and later, a ground operation to retake back ground from the rebels. More than 5,800 people have been killed and over 80 percent of Yemen's population is in dire need of food, water and other aid, according to the United Nations.

Also Monday, a missile fired by the Saudi-led coalition killed a judge and his entire family  eight people in all  in Sanaa's neighborhood of Nahda, security officials said. The judge was a known Houthi supporter.
The Latest: Norway prepares to talk migrants with Russia

AMSTERDAM (AP)  The latest developments in Europe's immigration crisis (all times local):

7:55 p.m.

Norwegian police say they have lifted restrictions on asylum-seekers who arrived across the Arctic border from Russia as talks between the two countries on the return of migrants were set to begin this week.

Children play with a baggage trolley at the terminal building of the Athens' port of Piraeus on Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. More than 850,000 people, most fleeing conflict in Syria and Afghanistan, entered Greece by sea in 2015, according to the UNHCR. Already in 2016, 35,455 people have arrived despite plunging winter temperatures and days of stormy weather.(AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Police spokesman Arild Strommen says the restrictions were lifted Monday, meaning that 82 people detained by police last week for fear they might escape being returned to Russia are "free to go where they please." The plight of three asylum-seekers who sought refuge in a church in the town of Kirkenes near the border was not immediately known.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende told NTB news agency that the talks with Russia will be sometime this week but gave no details.

Last year, 5,500 people crossed at the remote Arctic border post but many of the migrants had permits to stay in Russia where they had been living for years and did not qualify for asylum in the Scandinavian country. So far, Norway has returned 230 migrants at the border but Moscow said last week said it would discontinue accepting them, citing "security reasons."

The Directorate of Immigration said Monday it will soon begin interviewing asylum-seekers near Kirkenes instead of transporting them to the capital, Oslo, more than 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) further south.

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5:10 p.m.

Children's rights advocates are urging the European Union to do more to protect young migrants, warning that if they survive risky boat journeys they often face "malnutrition, physical and mental suffering, health and welfare problems, lack of information and insecurity."

In an open letter to senior European officials Monday, the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children urged senior European officials to better protect the fundamental rights of children who are part of the migrant surge.

Dutch children's ombudsman Marc Dullaert says he was shocked by the risks they face. He says, "I thought, and many people are thinking, that when you are in Europe, then you are safe. Well, on the contrary."

As well as poor living conditions in camps, they face the possibility of being sexually abused or exploited by traffickers or smugglers during their trek.

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4:50 p.m.

Swedish police say that a female worker at a shelter for youth and unaccompanied minors was stabbed to death at the center in southwestern Sweden.

Police spokesman Christer Fuxborg says that two people were holding down the male suspect when police arrived on the scene. He said the 22-year-old woman, who wasn't named, died of her wounds later Monday when taken to hospital. The suspect was arrested by police.

Fuxborg said there were signs of a violent fight at the home, which houses about a dozen 16- to 18-year-old migrants and other youth in Molndal, near the port city of Goteborg. He couldn't give further details pending a police investigation.

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2:30 p.m.

The Belgian government says that because Greece is too weak to guard its own borders, it should face an EU "sanction mechanism" under which the rising number of refugees entering the country would effectively be forced to stay there.

Belgian Migration State Secretary Theo Francken told the VRT network that "the Greeks now need to bear the consequences" if internal border controls within the Schengen area, which is supposed to be a passport free zone, are extended for two years, as is currently discussed.

Francken said the Greek "state structure is just too weak to do it themselves - apparently."

Francken raised the specter of setting up "closed facilities" for up to 300,000 people in Greece to be overseen by EU nations. More than 850,000 migrants arrived in Greece last year and almost all try to move on to the European heartland.

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2:15 p.m.

Police say a group of five men have stabbed a Pakistani man to death and wounded two others near Greece's border with Macedonia.

Police say the incident occurred in the early hours of Monday in the Evzones area where thousands of refugees cross into Macedonia to continue their journey toward other, more prosperous, European countries.

Police said the five men, believed to be Afghans, fatally stabbed one Pakistani man in the abdomen, and wounded the other two while also taking money and a mobile phone from one of them.

The two wounded men are being treated in a local hospital.

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1:55 p.m.

A Greek minister has angrily blamed European Union member states for failing to send Athens enough manpower and ships to help it tackle the migrant crisis and for not living up to pledges to relocate migrants.

Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas told reporters on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Amsterdam on Monday that sending officers from the EU border protection force known as Frontex to neighboring Macedonia in an attempt to halt migrants there would be illegal.

It has been suggested that EU border guards would be more effective on the Greek-Macedonian border, but Mouzalas said sending them there is "not a good idea," insisting: "We need Frontex in Greece."

Mouzalas says Greece is doing all it can to protect its sea borders from boatloads of migrants heading from Turkey to nearby Greek islands, but has not been sufficiently helped by fellow EU members. He says Athens wanted 1,800 Frontex officers, but has got only 800.

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1:35 p.m.

The European Union and Turkey have committed to step up their cooperation to stem the relentless flow of migrants into the continent.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini met with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara Monday. In a joint statement after the meeting, the two sides acknowledged there is a "need to exert huge effort" to counter the flow and that Ankara needs to do more to fight smuggling networks and the influx of migrants who are not eligible for asylum.

In return, the EU committed to make the promised 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) available to help deal with the refugee crisis in Turkey. So far, the EU nations and institutions have been bickering over how to share the cost.

Cavusoglu warned that the delay was obstructing efforts to improve refugee conditions in Turkey, especially in education and health care. However, Mogherini said she was confident that "the amount will be there." She added that the EU was still preparing how the money would be spent.

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12:15 p.m.

Germany's vice chancellor is dismissing a proposal by a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party to manage the migrant influx by setting up centers at borders from which refugees would be allowed into the country according to daily quotas.

Julia Kloeckner, a deputy leader of Merkel's Christian Democrats, floated her "plan A2" over the weekend. Kloeckner hopes to become governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state in a mid-March election, ousting the center-left Social Democrats.

The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats are traditional rivals but currently govern Germany in a "grand coalition."

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democrats' leader, said Monday that Kloeckner's idea is a "campaign action" and is "not practicable."

Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert responded cautiously to Kloeckner's proposal. He said that "some of it complements the government's policy, some overlaps with it."

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09:30 a.m.

European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.

Monday's meeting comes days after EU President Donald Tusk warned that Europe's passport-free travel area, known as Schengen, could break apart if the migrant strategy is not sorted out within two months.

Ministers will be seeking to stem the flow through Greece, where authorities are struggling to contain the crossings by boat from Turkey.

Belgium's interior minister, Jan Jambon, says that Greece "has to do what it has to do  namely, controls. And if that is not the case, we need to look closely into that."

EU figures show more than 2,000 people are still arriving daily.

A forensic police officer carries a box of evidence following a search in front of a migrant center in Molndal outside Goteborg, Sweden, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. A female employee was killed in a knife attack inside the migrant center. (Adam Ihse/ AP Photo) SWEDEN OUT

Amnesty International activists protest against the ongoing migrant crisis as delegates arrive in a boat at the Maritime Museum for an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

German Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere answers questions of reporters prior to an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Amnesty International activists protest against the ongoing migrant crisis with a boat filled with mannequins wearing life vests outside the Maritime Museum, rear, during an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Amnesty International activists protest against the ongoing migrant crisis with a boat filled with mannequins wearing life vests outside the Maritime Museum, rear, during an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders.(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Europol director Rob Wainwright, center, arrives for an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Dutch Justice minister Ard van der Steur, talks to French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, right, prior to the start of an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Dutch Justice minister Ard van der Steur, French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Ireland's Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald, from left, talk prior to the start of an informal meeting of EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers at the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. European Union justice and interior ministers have started urgent discussions on how to tackle the migrant crisis amid the stream of new arrivals and continuing disagreements over how to seal off borders. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

A child in a wheelchair waits as migrants queue up to have their tickets checked as they board the ferry to Athens, on Lesbos Island, Greece, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

Migrants wait to board the ferry to Athens, on Lesbos Island, Greece, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

Refugee woman and a child, wrapped in thermal blankets, walk in freezing weather towards the border with Serbia from the transit center for refugees near northern Macedonian village of Tabanovce on their journey toward Western Europe Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia, the countries on the so-called Balkan migrant corridor that starts in Greece, are only letting in people whose stated final destination is Germany or Austria. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)

Migrants and refugees wait at Athens' port of Piraeus for buses that will take them to the Greek-Macedonian border on Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. More than 850,000 people, most fleeing conflict in Syria and Afghanistan, entered Greece by sea in 2015, according to the UNHCR. Already in 2016, 35,455 people have arrived despite plunging winter temperatures and days of stormy weather.(AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
Pope to visit Sweden, apologizes for Catholic wrongs

VATICAN CITY (AP)  Pope Francis has concluded an annual weeklong prayer for Christian unity by making a sweeping apology for Catholic wrongs committed against other Christians and by announcing he will visit Sweden to mark the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation.

The one-day trip Oct. 31 to the southern city of Lund, where the Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947, will be the first papal visit to Sweden since Pope John Paul II toured five Scandinavian nations in 1989.

Francis has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors by encouraging efforts to heal the rifts with Anglicans, Lutherans, Orthodox, evangelicals and other Christian denominations. But Francis has also used personal friendships to forge ahead where official dialogue has stalled.

Pope Francis is flanked by Ortodox Primate of the Metropolis of Italy Gennadios Zervos, left, and the representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See David Moxon, at the end of the second Vespers prayer in St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on the occasion of the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, in Rome, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

On Monday, Francis celebrated an annual vespers service to mark the end of a weeklong prayer for Christian unity which this year also falls during Francis' Holy Year of Mercy.

In his homily, Francis asked forgiveness for the "sin of our divisions"  an appeal he made in June last year during a visit to a small evangelical house of worship in northern Italy.

"As the bishop of Rome and pastor of the Catholic Church, I would like to invoke mercy and forgiveness for the non-evangelical behavior of Catholics toward Christians of other churches," he said Monday. "At the same time, I invite all Catholic brothers and sisters to forgive if today, or in the past, they have suffered offense by other Christians.

"We cannot cancel what has happened, but we don't want to let the weight of past harm continue to pollute our relations."

Earlier Monday, the Vatican said Francis' visit to Sweden will "highlight the important ecumenical developments that have taken place during the past 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans." It will include a common worship service based on a recently published Catholic Lutheran liturgical guide to help churches commemorate the Reformation anniversary together.

The Catholic Church estimates there are about 150,000 Catholics in Sweden, including 113,000 registered members, according to Kristina Hellner of the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm.

Martin Luther's challenge to the Catholic doctrine of indulgences in 1517 is remembered as the start of the Reformation, from which the Protestant churches originated out of criticism of the Church of Rome led by the pope.

Significantly, when Francis issued his apology Monday, he said he was doing so as bishop of Rome  a title he often emphasizes in ecumenical settings where the primacy of the pope is still a cause for tension.

Pope Francis is flanked by Ortodox Primate of the Metropolis of Italy Gennadios Zervos, left, and the representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See David Moxon, at the end of the second Vespers prayer in St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on the occasion of the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, in Rome, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Cardinals attend the second Vespers prayer, lead by Pope Francis, in St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on the occasion of the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, in Rome, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis, center, arrives to lead the second Vespers prayer in St. Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on the occasion of the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, in Rome, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. (Claudio Peri/Pool Photo via AP)
Snow response in DC, NYC comes down to money, manpower

WASHINGTON (AP)  The nation's capital and its largest city both got walloped by the same near-record blizzard this weekend. But while Washington struggled to recover, New York City was mostly up and running on Monday.

In the District of Columbia, schools and government offices, monuments and memorials and museums were all shut down on Monday. The Metro had an extremely reduced schedule, providing free rides as a goodwill gesture. Digging out remained such a huge challenge that Mayor Muriel Bowser sought federal disaster aid.

In New York, the subway and schools were open, just a day and a half after the last flakes fell, and leaders praised themselves for getting this one right.

Ben Osborn walks with a shovel past a line of snowed-in cars A Steet in northeast Washington, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Washington is digging out after a mammoth blizzard with hurricane-force winds and record-setting snowfall brought much of the East Coast to an icy standstill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A look at the numbers helps explain the outcomes:

Snowfall:

Washington gets eight days of snowfall, accumulating 14.5 inches a year on average. New York gets 11 snowy days, accumulating 25.1 inches, according to federal climate data. In the "Snowmageddon" winter of 2009-2010, Washington got 56 inches and New York City got 51.4. But the capital got just 2 and 3 inches the next two winters, while New Yorkers can always count on at least some heavy snow 230 miles northeast.

Money:

Each spends about $9 per capita on snow removal: The District of Columbia government sets aside $6.2 million a year for its 658,000 people, while New York's snow budget is $77.5 million for its population of 8.4 million. The Big Apple's snow budget and population are each about 12 times bigger.

Size:

The capital covers 68 square miles, a fourth of New York's 302 square miles. The District has 4,400 lane miles to clear, budgeting $1,400 per mile. New York has to clear 19,000 lane miles and budgets $4,000 per mile, almost three times as much.

Snowforce:

District officials deployed 1,200 employees and 727 pieces of equipment to clear streets. New York sent out 4,600 workers and more than 2,000 pieces of equipment, keeping its crews on 12-hour shifts so that half were on the streets at a time.

Consequences:

According to an analysis by Moody's, the Washington Metro area lost $570 million due to the storm through Monday, about a quarter of the total economic activity for that three-day stretch. By contrast, the New York metro area lost $460 million  roughly 7 percent of its economic activity.

"I know other cities struggled," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "We are so blessed to have the personnel, the training, the equipment that allows to this city to turn on a dime. Things are not entirely normal, today but most of the city is operating well."

Asked why New York schools are open while the District's are closed, Washington's emergency management director, Christopher Geldart, said "It's a total unfair comparison."

"Is it a safe situation for those children that get there? That's Mayor de Blasio's call and his folks advising him. Here in the District we know our conditions and what our roadways look like and what it's like for our residents and children out there, and we're making the best decision we can make here."

Most streets in downtown Washington were coated in a brown, slushy mess during the morning rush. Some lanes on major thoroughfares suddenly disappeared under snowbanks.

"It's incredible that these streets aren't plowed," said Robert Raben, 52, who works in public affairs in the capital. "I've lived here 25 years. Snow is not our best foot forward."

In the District's bustling Shaw neighborhood, people frustrated at not seeing plows began shoveling their street, like suburbanites taking care of their driveways.

De Blasio did some damage control in Queens, where plows got stuck and people complained of being forgotten. And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged a miserable experience getting in from Long Island Monday while the nation's busiest commuter railroad ran a reduced schedule. But both were able to focus on what went right this time.

Unlike during "Snowmaggedon," when New York's transit system stayed open at first, stranding buses and blocking streets, this time early closings and a coordinated response enabled the city and state to reopen the roads more quickly.

"Because we put the travel ban in, Sanitation was able to get out there and plow as well as they did," de Blasio said. "And when the buses came back online, they could actually get around. It was really good decision-making."

Getting around was enough of an ordeal in New York for some to simply give up. Wayne Westervelt of Port Washington, New York, rescheduled his doctor's appointment in Manhattan for a hip problem after discovering en route how limited the train service was on the Long Island Rail Road.

"They said to grab a train to Mineola. But they said it's mobbed," Westervelt said. "What am I going to do  go into a sardine can?"

In the capital, Meagan Jones had a brighter attitude as she slogged to work in an H&M clothing store. "They did a lot better than last year," she said.

Cultural differences tend to surface after snowstorms. New Yorkers can be ... demanding. In the capital, people have learned to lower expectations.

"Most of us who spend part of our lives in Washington know to expect the worst when it comes to snow," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who was struggling to return from Illinois on Monday.

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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writers Kiley Armstrong in New York and Jessica Gresko in Arlington, Virginia, and AP photographer Alex Brandon in Washington, contributed to this report.

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Follow Ben Nuckols on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APBenNuckols. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/ben-nuckols.

The White House peeks over plowed snow on the White House grounds in Washington, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard face fresh challenges as the workweek begins: slippery roads, spotty transit service mounds of snow, and closed schools and government offices. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Commuters wait in the street as piles of snow fill their bus stop, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in New York. East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalk entrances. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Commuters crowd a platform in the elevated Broadway Junction subway station, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalk entrances. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

People dig out their cars in Alexandria, Va., Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Millions of Americans were preparing to dig themselves out Sunday after a mammoth blizzard with hurricane-force winds and record-setting snowfall brought much of the East Coast to an icy standstill. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

People clear snow from parked cars on Henry Street in the Chinatown neighborhood in New York on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Millions of Americans began digging out Sunday from a mammoth blizzard that set a new single-day snowfall record in Washington and New York City. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

Taryn Payne helps her friend push out a stuck car in Richmond, Va., Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Area residents continue to dive out from the weekend's snowstorm. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

People walk a path through piled snow in the Chinatown neighborhood in New York on Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Millions of Americans began digging out Sunday from a mammoth blizzard that set a new single-day snowfall record in Washington and New York City. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

Workers remove snow on the tarmac at Ronald Reagan National Airport, with the U.S. Capitol dome seen behind, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016 in Arlington, Va. Millions of Americans began digging out Sunday from a mammoth blizzard that set a new single-day snowfall record in Washington and New York City. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Commuters crowd a platform in the elevated Broadway Junction station as the L subway train arrives, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. East Coast residents who made the most of a paralyzing weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalk entrances. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A New York City Dept. of Sanitation front end loader grooms snow in lower Manhattan, in New York Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. East Coast residents clobbered by the weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalks after some cities got an entire winter's snow in two days. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Workers guide a large, red tarp filled with snow as it is hoisted by a crane from the top deck of the Hudson Yards construction site, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in New York. Workers are clearing the construction site from the weekend snowstorm. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Workers clear the tracks of snow at the Port Washington branch of the Long Island Railroad, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Port Washington, N.Y.. Service is suspended on the Port Washington branch due to the recent snowstorm. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
Street artist Banksy takes swipe at France on migrant crisis

LONDON (AP)  The street artist Banksy has taken a swipe at French authorities for their handling of the migrant crisis in Calais, placing a drawing of the child featured on posters for the musical "Les Miserables" surrounded by tear gas.

The elusive street artist placed the mural near the French Embassy in London. His publicist, Jo Brooks, confirmed Monday that the work was genuine.

The work contains an interactive image that links to a video that shows police using tear gas in a Calais raid.

A man takes a photo of a new artwork by British artist Banksy opposite the French Embassy, in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The artwork depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her. The work is criticising the use of teargas in the refugee camp in Calais. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

It's not the street artist's first criticism of France. Last month, he tried to underscore the potential of migrants by depicting the late Steve Jobs  whose biological father was from Syria  carrying a black garbage bag and an early model of the Macintosh computer.

A new artwork by British artist Banksy opposite the French Embassy, in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The artwork depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her. The work is criticising the use of teargas in the refugee camp in Calais. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

People take photos on their phones of a new artwork by British artist Banksy opposite the French Embassy, in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The artwork depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her. The work is criticising the use of teargas in the refugee camp in Calais. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

A jogger stops to take photos on his phone of a new artwork by British artist Banksy opposite the French Embassy, in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The artwork depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her. The work is criticising the use of teargas in the refugee camp in Calais. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Workmen watch the media photograph a new artwork by British artist Banksy opposite the French Embassy, in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The artwork depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her. The work is criticising the use of teargas in the refugee camp in Calais. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Combs, Wahlberg donating 1 million bottles of water to Flint

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A bottled water company owned in part by Sean "Diddy" Combs and Mark Wahlberg is pledging to donate 1 million bottles of water to the residents of Flint, Michigan.

AQUAhydrate says it's sending 5,000 cases of water to Flint and will continue to provide bottles to residents until the city's water problems are solved. The company says the water is expected to be delivered Wednesday.

High levels of lead have been detected in Flint's water since officials switched from the Detroit municipal system and began drawing from the Flint River as a cost-saving measure.

CORRECTS ANNOUNCEMENT TO MONDAY, JAN. 25, FROM FRIDAY, JAN. 22 - FILE - In this Nov. 22, 2015 file photo, Sean "Diddy" Combs presents the award for best collaboration of the year at the American Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. A bottled water company owned by Combs and Mark Wahlberg is pledging to donate 1 million bottles of water to the residents of Flint, Mich. AQUAhydrate said Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, it was sending 5,000 cases of water to Flint and would continue to provide bottles to residents until the town's water problems are solved. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP, File)

Wahlberg and Combs first invested and became the face of the Los Angeles-based bottled water company in 2013.

Eminem, Wiz Khalifa and Big Sean are among other celebrities who have pledged support and donations to assist Flint's water crisis.

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This story has been corrected to show the name of the performer is Eminem, not Emenim.

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Online:

http://www.aquahydrate.com/
Justices extend bar on automatic life terms for teenagers

WASHINGTON (AP)  More than 1,000 prison inmates, some behind bars more than 50 years for murders they committed as teenagers, will get a chance to seek their freedom under a Supreme Court decision announced Monday.

The justices voted 6-3 to extend an earlier ruling from 2012 that struck down automatic life terms with no chance of parole for teenage killers. Now, even those who were convicted long ago must be considered for parole or given a new sentence.

The court ruled in favor of Henry Montgomery, who has been in prison more than 50 years for killing a sheriff's deputy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1963. Montgomery was 17 years old and playing hooky from high school when he encountered Deputy Charles Hurt, who was on truant patrol. Montgomery pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Hurt dead in a panic, he said.

FILE - In this Oct. 13, 2015 file photo, people line up outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, as the justices began to discuss sentences for young prison 'lifers.' A decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana. The Supreme Court ruled Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, that people serving life terms for murders they committed as teenagers must have a chance to seek their freedom. The court ruled in the case of Henry Montgomery, who has been in prison more than 50 years, since he killed a sheriff's deputy as a 17-year-old in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1963. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority opinion, said that "prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored."

Kennedy said states do not have to go so far as to resentence people serving life terms. Instead, states can offer parole hearings, with no guarantee of release if inmates fail to show that they have been rehabilitated.

Louisiana is among seven states that had refused to apply the Supreme Court's 2012 ruling to about 1,200 inmates who may now qualify for parole hearings. Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and Pennsylvania are the other states, according to public interest law firms that advocate on behalf of inmates.

Many states either have no inmates like Montgomery or have given them new prison sentences or parole hearings.

Monday's decision does not expressly foreclose judges from sentencing teenagers to a lifetime in prison. But the Supreme Court has previously said such sentences should be rare, and only for the most heinous crimes.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling "is just a devious way of eliminating life without parole for juvenile offenders." Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's dissent.

Four years ago, in a case called Miller v. Alabama, the justices struck down automatic life sentences with no chance of release for teenage killers. But the court did not say at the time if that ruling applied retroactively to Montgomery and other inmates like him, whose convictions are final.

In the 5-4 decision from 2012, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority that judges weighing prison terms for young offenders must take into account "the mitigating qualities of youth," among them immaturity and the failure to understand fully the consequences of their actions.

Montgomery himself became a boxing coach and worked in the prison's silkscreen department, which he pointed to as evidence of his maturation.

Chief Justice John Roberts dissented from the 2012 decision barring automatic life sentences for young killers, but he joined the majority on Monday along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan.

The outcome in Montgomery's case is the latest in a line of Supreme Court decisions that have limited states in the way they punish juveniles. Kennedy also wrote the 2005 decision that outlawed the death penalty for juveniles. The justices also have barred life without parole sentences for people convicted of crimes other than murder that were committed before they turned 18.

The court often applies groundbreaking decisions in criminal law retroactively.

Montgomery's case highlights some of the problems that inmate advocates say plague the criminal justice system generally. Montgomery is African-American, and he was tried for killing the white deputy in a time of racial tension and reported cross burnings in Baton Rouge.

The State Times newspaper of Baton Rouge ran a front-page headline after Montgomery's arrest: "Negro Held in Deputy's Murder Here." The story noted that "more than 60 Negroes were detained" in a parish-wide manhunt.

The Louisiana Supreme Court threw out Montgomery's first conviction because he did not get a fair trial. He was convicted and sentenced to life after a second trial.
'Cabaret' US tour stars an actress who says 'it's a dream'

NEW YORK (AP)  The national tour of the thrilling musical "Cabaret" is about to launch and it's led by a young woman who knows it intimately. After all, she watched it for a year on Broadway  from the stage.

Andrea Goss will play the fishnet-and-bowler hat wearing chanteuse Sally Bowles after being a member of the ensemble and an understudy for Sally. She patiently backed up Michelle Williams, Emma Stone and Sienna Miller.

"You learn from everybody you watch. You can't ignore the incredible women who I saw do it and also the ones before," said Goss, from Salem, Oregon, who also cited Natasha Richardson and Liza Minnelli as important Sallys. "You have to somehow pay homage but still make it your own and bring your own to it."

This Jan. 8, 2016 photo shows Andrea Goss, who plays chanteuse Sally Bowles, a role made famous by Liza Minnelli and Natasha Richardson, during a rehearsal in New York for the "Cabaret" tour. The musical, about the world of the indulgent Kit Kat Klub in Berlin, kicks off in Rhode Island on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Kennedy)

The tour, which also stars "Queer as Folk" star Randy Harrison as the slippery Emcee, kicks off in Rhode Island on Tuesday before making its way to Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Nevada, and California.

"Cabaret" centers on the world of the indulgent Kit Kat Klub in Berlin as it becomes intertwined with the world outside, which gets more precarious on the brink of World War II. The songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb include "Willkommen" and "Tomorrow Belongs to Me."

It debuted in Boston in 1966 and was a sensation  audiences were not used to going to shows that mixed burlesque call girls and Nazis, lasciviousness, alcoholism or abortions.

"I always thought that this show was very iffy. We had done so many things that nobody in their right mind would have done. That it worked was a pleasant surprise," said Joe Masteroff, who adapted the story. "'Cabaret' turned out to have a long life. Obviously, it's not dead yet."

The new touring version is directed by B.T. McNicholl, who will recreate the Broadway direction by Sam Mendes and co-direction and choreography by Rob Marshall. It won the best revival Tony in 1998.

"This particular production transformed the musical and almost transformed Broadway theater," said Todd Haimes, the artistic director of the Roundabout Theatre Company, which birthed the production. "I think it's something that should be seen by every generation."

Harrison, who has been in "Wicked" on Broadway, saw Alan Cumming three times as the lascivious Master of Ceremonies and leapt at the chance to play the role, one that's both naughty and heartbreaking.

"It's a dream part. It's an extraordinary role. It's an amazing challenge," he said. "I feel like I can be myself in a lot of ways  in ways that oftentimes I can't onstage."

Goss, whose Broadway credits also include "Once" and "Rent," will be hitting the road for the first time in a show and will be looking forward to exploring coffee shops wherever she is. She's still a little stunned that the role of Sally is finally hers.

"It's a dream. I never thought I would be able to do that when I was younger. You see those roles and it's like, 'That's out of my league.' And to be able to do this, I'm still in a dream."

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Online:

http://cabaretmusical.com
A homemade bomb left behind by the husband and wife behind the San Bernardino terrorist attacks failed to detonate because it was poorly constructed, law enforcement officials have said.

The failure compelled Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, to drive around the area in California after the shootings that killed 14 people.

They were apparently trying to set off the remote-controlled bomb, one official said.

A homemade bomb left behind by Tashfeen Malik (left) and Syed Farook (right) after the San Bernardino attacks that left 14 people dead failed to go off because it was poorly built, law enforcement officials have said

The officials were briefed on the investigation and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Investigators believe the couple intended to detonate the improvised explosive device  placed in a bag left at the center that morning by Farook before the shooting  to kill emergency responders or possibly before their attack.

When police raided the pair's home, they found a chilling cache of 4,500 bullets they didn't use for the attack, and tools used to make explosives such as IEDS.

The armory they developed, which included the 1,600 bullets and four weapons they took to the scene of the shootout with police, could have cost them as little as $4,000.

The pair seemed to be using blueprints found in many issues of Inspire, Al Qaeda's extremist online publication in the Arabian Peninsula.

The magazine in the past has outlined how to make the bomb from household goods and without using metal components. Articles have also encouraged lone-wolf attacks on the American 'super-rich' and published a 'kill list' of potential targets.

The Tsarnaev brothers had used the plans to put together a bomb before they unleashed their own terror, killing people three and injured an estimated 264 others in April 2013, sources told NBC News.

They used a pressure cooker for the blast near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but police found unexploded devices left by the pair in the aftermath.

Farook and Malik's armory was uncovered as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms revealed their weapons were bought legally from a 'family-friendly' gun store in Corona.

The plan to set off an explosive device as part of a wave of attacks is similar to an aborted 2012 plan by Farook and his longtime friend Enrique Marquez, who has been charged for his role in aiding the violence. The pair planned to explode pipe bombs on a freeway and then shoot emergency responders.

The device found at the scene in San Bernardino consisted of three pipe bombs, constructed with Christmas tree lights and attached to a remote-control toy car switched to 'on.' The couple had the remote with them in their rented SUV. It was found after the shootout.

The FBI is still trying to determine where the couple was or what they did during 18 minutes between the December 2 attack and a shootout with authorities that left them dead.

Investigators have no details on the couple's whereabouts between 12:59 p.m. and 1:17 p.m. that day and worry that they may have met with someone, dropped by a storage unit or visited a residence. Authorities accounted for the couple's movements using traffic and surveillance cameras, witness accounts and other techniques.

A chain-link fence is in place at the Inland Regional Center where the deadly attacks on December 2 unfolded

While driving around San Bernardino and Redlands afterward, the couple appeared to drive aimlessly and stopped multiple times over a roughly 20-mile area, according to the FBI. They never strayed far from the location of their initial attack, and at one point appeared to be trying to drive closer. Farook and Malik also stopped by a nearby lake, which a dive team searched unsuccessfully for days, trying to find any abandoned electronic devices.

Detectives watching the area saw the couple driving toward their home in the SUV, and Farook and Malik died in a shootout with authorities.

One of the officials said the hard drive has still not been found, and the two cellphones, which were sent to the FBI lab, were so badly crushed that investigators have not yet been able to conduct a forensic examination on them.

One rifle used in the attack was modified in what appears to be an effort to make the gun fully automatic. But despite the installation of the required parts, the machining wasn't done properly and so the effort was unsuccessful, one official said. The errors constructing the explosive device and modifying the gun may indicate that the two killers were self-taught, but without potential electronic evidence on the couple's computer hard drive and phones, it is hard to know for sure, officials said.
Bomb in San Bernardino attack was poorly built

WASHINGTON (AP)  A homemade bomb left behind by the husband and wife who perpetrated a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in December failed to detonate because it was poorly constructed, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

The failure compelled Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, to drive around the area after the shootings that killed 14 people. They were apparently trying to set off the remote-controlled bomb, one of the officials said.

The officials were briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.

FILE - In this July 27, 2014 file photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook, as they passed through O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. A homemade bomb left behind by the husband and wife who perpetrated a mass shooting at a California social services center didnt detonate because it was poorly constructed, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection via AP, File)

Investigators believe the couple intended to detonate the improvised explosive device  placed in a bag at the scene of the shooting that morning by Farook  to kill emergency responders or possibly before their attack.

The plan to set off an explosive device is similar to an aborted 2012 plan by Farook and his longtime friend Enrique Marquez, who has been charged for his role in aiding the violence. The pair planned to explode pipe bombs on a freeway and then shoot emergency responders.

The device found at the scene in San Bernardino consisted of three pipe bombs, constructed with Christmas tree lights and attached to a remote-control toy car switched to "on." The couple had the remote with them in their rented SUV. It was found after the shootout.

The FBI is still trying to determine where the couple was and what they did during 18 minutes between the Dec. 2 attack and a shootout with authorities that left them dead.

Investigators have no details on the couple's whereabouts between 12:59 p.m. and 1:17 p.m. that day and worry that they may have met with someone, dropped by a storage unit or visited a residence.

One of the officials said a hard drive has still not been found, and two cellphones, which were sent to the FBI lab, were so badly crushed that investigators have not yet been able to conduct a forensic examination on them.

The errors constructing the explosive device may indicate that the two killers were self-taught, but without potential electronic evidence on the couple's computer hard drive and phones, it is hard to know for sure, officials said.

The FBI has said there's no evidence that the attack was directed from overseas.

___

Myers reported from Los Angeles.
South African prosecutors argue against Pistorius appeal

JOHANNESBURG (AP)  South African prosecutors have asked the nation's highest court to reject a bid by Oscar Pistorius' lawyers to appeal the double-amputee runner's murder conviction, a spokesman said Monday.

The National Prosecuting Authority filed papers with the Constitutional Court arguing that Pistorius' appeal was not valid, said Luvuyo Mfaku, a prosecution spokesman.

Lawyers for Pistorius, who killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his home in 2013, had appealed to the Constitutional Court, saying another court erred when it overturned a manslaughter conviction and declared the Olympic athlete guilty of murder.

Pistorius' legal team maintains the Supreme Court of Appeal, which convicted Pistorius of murder, ignored his vulnerability as a person with a disability. It believes the court wrongly rejected a lower court's judgment that Pistorius acted out of fear when he opened fire at what he thought, by his account, was an intruder behind the closed door of a toilet cubicle.

However, prosecutors argue that they had appealed the earlier manslaughter conviction because of an error in the way the law was applied, rather than any facts of the case, Mfaku said.

Prosecutors in South Africa can appeal convictions on questions of law, and the appeals court that convicted Pistorius of murder found that the judge who imposed the earlier manslaughter conviction committed a legal error by incorrectly applying a legal principle called "dolus eventualis." Under that concept, a person can be convicted of murder if he or she foresaw the possibility of someone dying through their actions and went ahead anyway. The appeals court said that regardless of who Pistorius said he thought was behind the door, he should have known someone could be killed if he fired.
Pope Francis answers questions from children in new book

NEW YORK (AP)  "Dear Pope Francis," 10-year-old Mohammed begins, "Will the world be again as it was in the past?"

Signed "Respectfully yours," the boy wrote from a Jesuit-run school for refugee children in Syria and was treated to a long and personal answer from the pope himself. So were 29 other children who posed questions to Francis in letters from around the globe for a new book poignantly illustrated with their own artwork.

The book, "Dear Pope Francis," is out March 1 from Loyola Press in Chicago. It's a project that likely wouldn't have materialized without the help of Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit like the pope and the director of La Civilta Cattolica, a Roman Catholic journal published in Rome.

This image released by Loyola Press shows "Dear Pope Francis: The Pope Answers Letters from Children Around the World," by Pope Francis. (Loyola Press via AP)

Tom McGrath of the Jesuit-founded publishing house co-edited the book with Spadaro after reaching out to the priest for help. Spadaro brought about 50 letters with questions to the pope so he could select 30. Spadaro sat with the pope as he responded to each. Francis often complimented the artwork of the children.

"He knows Pope Francis very well," McGrath said of Spadaro. "We tried to make it as easy for the pope as possible."

The pope's response to Mohammed spoke in part of suffering and the people who inflict it.

"There are those who manufacture weapons so that people fight each other and wage war. There are people who have hate in their hearts. There are people who are interested only in money and would sell everything for it. They would even sell other people," he wrote.

More to Mohammed's point, Francis answered: "No, when the time comes, the world will not be as it was. It will be far better than it was in the past."

Once the pope agreed to participate in the project, Loyola reached out to priests and lay people around the world to connect the publisher with children to write the letters.

The 30 kids in the book range in age from 6 to 13. In all, about 250 letters were received in 14 languages from 26 countries around the globe. The pope wound up with about 50 letters from which to choose.

"He loved the project right from the beginning," McGrath said. "He has this great affection for children, who have a great affection for him. He was surprised at the depth of the questions."

There was no condensing or editing of the pope's responses. In a 90-minute session with Spadaro last August in Rome, Francis responded verbally in a mixture of Italian and Spanish. Spadaro served as transcriber in addition to connecting Loyola Press with the Vatican.

"These are the pope's exact words," McGrath said. "At one point he mentioned, 'These are tough.' He realized that he owed the kids a deeper answer than right off the top of his head."

Spadaro said via email that the pope truly pondered when answering the children.

"Often he looked off into space and tried to imagine the child in front of him," he said. "And in his gaze I saw care, love."

Loyola will publish the book in English and Spanish. As an international Jesuit project, it will also be published simultaneously around the world, including in Brazil, Indonesia, Slovenia, Mexico and India.

Arrangements were still being made but Loyola Press plans to bring 10 of the children included in the book to Rome to meet the pope in person, hopefully in February before its March publication date.

"The pope is eager to meet them," McGrath said. "He was quick to say he would like to make that happen."

They'll be traveling with their parents from China, Ireland, Argentina, India, Canada, Kenya, Singapore, Australia, the United States and the Philippines.

Mohammed will not be among them, but 8-year-old Natasha from Kenya will make the trip to Rome. She asked the pope in her letter: "I would like to know more about Jesus Christ. How did he walk on water?"

The pope's response?

"You have to imagine Jesus walking naturally, normally. He did not fly over the water or turn somersaults while swimming," he wrote. "He walked as you walk! ... Jesus is God, and so he can do anything!"

While one child wanted to know why parents fight and another why the pope wears such a tall hat, 7-year-old William of the United States asked: "If you could do one miracle what would it be?"

"Dear William," the pope said. "I would heal children. I've never been able to understand why children suffer. It's a mystery to me. I don't have an explanation."

___

Online:

http://loyolapress.com/

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

In this Aug. 5, 2015 photo provided by Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., Pope Francis looks over a binder of questions and illustrations from children around the world at the Vatican. He chose 30 of their questions to answer and include in a new book, "Dear Pope Francis," out March 1, 2016, from Loyola Press. (Father Anthony Spadaro, S.J. via AP)
Ex-cop in US pleads guilty to killing woman, ditching body

KENOSHA, Wisconsin (AP)  A former Wisconsin police officer has pleaded guilty to killing a woman and ditching her body in a suitcase along a highway.

Steven Zelich entered the plea Monday, just as his trial was set to begin in the death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon. Her body was found along a Wisconsin highway in August 2012.

Zelich pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon and hiding a corpse.

FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2014 file photo Steven Zelich appears in court in Kenosha, Wis. Jury selection for the former police officer accused of choking to death Jenny Gamez, an Oregon college student, and then stuffing her in a suitcase and leaving it on a rural highway is scheduled to begin Monday, Jan. 25, 2015, in Wisconsin. (Sean Krajacic/Kenosha News via AP, File)

The former suburban Milwaukee police officer also is accused of killing 37-year-old Laura Simonson. Her body also was found in a suitcase along the same highway.

Authorities allege she died in Minnesota, so charges in her killing were filed there.
Ex El Salvador president in coma after brain hemorrhage

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  Former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores is in a coma after suffering a brain hemorrhage and undergoing emergency surgery.

Flores' lawyer Yanira Ticas said Monday that the 56-year-old Flores was rushed to the hospital after fainting Sunday night.

Flores was El Salvador's president from 1999 to 2004. He has been under house arrest awaiting trial on charges of embezzlement and illegal enrichment. He's accused of diverting more than $15 million which had been donated by Taiwan to help the victims of earthquakes in 2001. A court says $10 million of that went to the party that carried Flores to power and the remainder to him.

FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2004 file photo, former President of El Salvador Francisco Flores makes an announcement at the Casa Presidencial in San Salvador, El Salvador. According to his lawyer Yanira Ticas, Flores suffered a stroke on Sunday, Jan. 24,2016 and is reported to be in a coma at a hospital in San Salvador after suffering a brain hemorrhage and undergoing emergency surgery. (AP Photo/Luis Romero, File)
Libya lost $68B from attacks on oil, industry chief says

LONDON (AP)  Libya will fall further into chaos if its factions don't quickly form a unity government, the head of the state oil company warned Monday, noting the country has already lost some $68 billion in oil sales amid political infighting.

Mustafa Sanalla, who is in London to attend a conference and get support from investors, made his comments just after the internationally recognized parliament in the divided country rejected a plan to move toward a unified government. The vote underscored the turmoil that continues to wrack Libya.

Sanalla argued that without a single government, there will be "neither security nor stability."

Libyan national oil company chief Mustafa Sanalla talks during an interview in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The head of Libyas state oil corporation is appealing for political factions to forge a unity government, saying that without a single government there will be neither security nor stability. Mustafa Sanalla believes that the country will become a failed state without action soon.(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

"This vacuum will permit the other terrorist group and extremist groups to step in," he told The Associated Press.

The appeal came a week after representatives of Libya's rival factions announced they would attempt to create a government of unity to stabilize a country engulfed in chaos since the 2011 death of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The United Nations is trying to broker a single government featuring the country's two factions  the Islamist one in the capital, Tripoli, and the internationally backed one in the eastern part of the country.

With each side backed by its own fighters, the Libyans allied with the Islamic State group have gained strength, claiming responsibility for a series of deadly attacks and attacking oil terminals and fields, the sole source of Libya's wealth.

"This problem in Libya, it is not so sophisticated," Sanalla said after the first day of the conference at Chatham House. "We have two factions in Libya. They are not looking (out) for the interests of Libya, unfortunately."

Aside from the obvious turmoil a dysfunctional government provides, the troubles also mean extremists are gaining strength. Islamic State militants have been attacking Libyan oil facilities since the start of the year.

Sanalla said the group doesn't want to hold the facilities, but disable them. His $68 billion estimate of lost production and exports since 2013 does not include damage and losses from the fire at the big port of Ras Lanuf last week or to any other facilities.

Instead of blaming Islamic State alone, he levelled his most harsh criticisms at the Petroleum Facilities Guard, the force that is meant to protect oil facilities.

Describing the 27,000 member force as more of a hindrance than an asset to keeping such sites secure, he suggested that while they may not be directly allied to Islamic State, they share the same goal: keeping the country destabilized.

He demanded that the guards be incorporated into a professional and unified structure Islamic State will "attack and destroy more facilities." He suggested that with their ouster, production would be doubled within days.

Production levels are now a far cry from the 1.61 million barrels a day before the rebellion in 2011.

The guards are led by a militia commander, Ibrahim Jedran, who is a strong advocate for a semi-autonomous region in eastern Libya and who in 2014 tried to unilaterally sell oil against the will of the central government at a time before it split into two factions.

The issues with Libya's stability also have broader consequences.

Libya is separated from Italy by a single body of water, the Mediterranean Sea, and with the continent already facing its worst migrant crisis in a generation, policymakers would greatly welcome a stable government that could stanch the flow at key ports that serve as a jumping-off point to Europe.

Sanalla said the country will move toward prosperity or descend into chaos.

"Libya is at the junction of the road," he said.

Libyan national oil company chief Mustafa Sanalla reacts during an interview in London, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. The head of Libyas state oil corporation is appealing for political factions to forge a unity government, saying that without a single government there will be neither security nor stability. Mustafa Sanalla believes that the country will become a failed state without action soon.(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Tribe asks feds to stop armed group's free travel at refuge

The Burns Paiute Tribe wants federal officials to bar armed activists from traveling back and forth to a national wildlife preserve they are occupying in southeastern Oregon, fearing tribal artifacts will go missing or the group will disturb burial grounds.

The small group took over buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge more than three weeks ago that store over 4,000 archaeological artifacts and maps detailing where more items can be found. Members of the group, who are occupying the site to oppose federal land use policies, recently posted videos to social media that show them looking at some of the relics and criticizing the way the federal government has stored them.

The artifacts belonged to ancestors of the Burns Paiute Tribe, which works closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to preserve prehistoric sites and artifacts at the refuge.

A grader is used on a road at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. An armed group has been occupying the refuge since Jan. 2 to protest federal land use policies. The leader of an armed group occupying the refuge met briefly with a federal agent Friday, but left because the agent wouldn't talk with him in front of the media. (AP Photo/Keith Ridler)

The tribe has "grave concerns regarding the present handling of the occupation as well as the prosecution of the militants," tribal chairwoman Charlotte Rodrique wrote in a letter Friday to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey.

Federal authorities have taken a hands-off approach so far and say they want a peaceful resolution. One of the group's leaders, Ammon Bundy, has been in contact with an FBI negotiator and local law enforcement.

FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said Monday that she couldn't comment because of the ongoing investigation.

Members of the group have been able to come and go from the refuge, at times buying supplies at a local grocery store and occasionally meeting with government officials. Authorities have stayed away from the property, setting up their operational headquarters nearly a half-hour's drive away in Burns. Officials there didn't immediately return requests for comment.

"Allowing the militants free passage to and from the Refuge must stop," Rodrique wrote.

The activists also have built a road through part of the refuge and taken down a fence, she noted.

"We fear that the demolition and construction activities of the militants may have harmed our burial grounds and disturbed Tribal artifacts," she wrote.

There is a robust black market for Native American antiquities, she said.

"We fear that our Tribal cultural patrimony provides an all too easy funding source for the militants," Roderique wrote.

Two leaders of the group didn't immediately return phone messages requesting comment.

But Ryan Bundy said about a week ago that the group was not interested in the artifacts and would turn them over to the tribe if asked. He also said the protection of prehistoric sites at the refuge should take a backseat to grazing and logging rights.

The federal government's approach to the activists has increasingly frustrated some residents. Counter protesters have begun to gather on the refuge with signs telling the group to go home.

Divisions also are starting to appear among law enforcement entities. The refuge is in Harney County, where local officials have been working closely with state and federal authorities.

Glenn Palmer, the sheriff of neighboring Grant County, recently endorsed some of the group's demands, including releasing two local ranchers imprisoned on arson charges and sending home the FBI.

"The government is going to have to concede something" to end the occupation, Palmer told The Oregonian newspaper (http://bit.ly/1KAecVt ).

Malheur County Sheriff Brian Wolfe, who has been helping Harney County and federal officials, said Palmer's position is not helping.

"If anything, it hampers the effort to end this," Wolfe told the newspaper.

Ammon Bundy sits at a desk he's using at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. Bundy is the leader of an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge to protest federal land policies. The leader of an armed group occupying the refuge met briefly with a federal agent Friday, but left because the agent wouldn't talk with him in front of the media. (AP Photo/Keith Ridler)
Slain officer called loving, talkative by wife, colleagues

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (AP)  The first U.S. police officer killed on duty this year was remembered Monday as a talkative man who loved to fix cars, spend time with his family and greet people with his signature line, "What's up my brother?"

Unified Police Officer Douglas Scott Barney, 44, was shot and killed on Jan. 17 while responding to a traffic accident in the Salt Lake City area.

He was killed working overtime to pay for cancer treatments, a disease he had recently fought through. He worked in law enforcement for 18 years.

The funeral procession for Unified police officer Doug Barney makes it's way towards the Maverik Center in West Valley City, Utah, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Barney was killed in the line of duty on Sunday, Jan. 17. (Scott G Winterton/Deseret News via AP))

Authorities say the shooter had a history of gun and drug-related charges over the past decade and had walked away from a state-run parolee drug treatment center.

Barney's 13-year-old son helped push the flag-draped casket carrying his father's body as several thousand uniformed officers saluted and bagpipe music filled an arena in a Salt Lake City suburb.

After the funeral, hundreds of police vehicles joined a procession south to Orem where Barney was buried. American flags and blue ribbons lined the streets. Officers stood in salute on overpasses, and a digital highway sign read, "Rest in peace Officer Barney."

Barney was the first Unified Police Department officer slain since it was formed in 2010 to serve communities in the Salt Lake City area.

The crowd included officers from other states, including 70 who came on free JetBlue flights commonly offered for law enforcement officers to travel to funerals of distant colleagues, company spokesman Morgan Johnston said.

Barney's wife of nearly 20 years, Erika Barney, said her husband's career brought out the best in him. She said he reveled in high-speed chases, had a knack for sniffing out stolen cars and loved the camaraderie of the law enforcement family.

She recalled how he used to view the Officers Down Memorial website, a practice she once considered morbid but later realized was part of the sense of unity in the profession.

"He considered falling in the line of duty a great privilege he probably would have never have been lucky enough to have," she said. "This is the greatest honor of his life."

Barney died just hours before Danville, Ohio, officer Thomas Cottrell was killed, according to the Officer Down Memorial organization. So far, four officers have been killed on duty in the U.S.

Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder called Barney, who was 6 feet, 5 inches tall, a mountain of a man who looked like he stepped out of the movie, "Braveheart." Barney's unique way of gaining the trust of other people was similar to the Irish word "blarney," Winder said.

"Nothing Doug did was small or quiet," he said. "His enthusiasm for life was infectious."

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Barney represented what's right with law enforcement. Herbert offered the Barney family hope by citing the Mormon belief that families are reunited in the afterlife. Like the governor, Barney was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Utah lawmakers held a moment of silence for Barney during the first day of the legislative session.

Friend and fellow officer Chris Bertram said Barney had a golden sense of humor, a signature laugh and loved making fast food runs with colleagues. Most of all, he loved his wife and their three children, he said.

He told Erika Barney: "You were more than a wife to Doug, you were a saint," he said.

Bertram also spoke directly to Barney's three kids: Matti, 18; Merri, 16; and Jack, 13.

"You gave your dad a reason to brag, and he did a lot," Bertram said. "Matti, your singing voice, it was his pride. Merri, your artistic talents are his joy. And Jack, your father raised a son who could light up a room just like he did."

The funeral procession for Unified police officer Doug Barney makes it's way towards the Maverik Center in West Valley City Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Officer Barney was shot and killed in the line of duty Jan. 17 by a man who seemingly had done nothing more than leave the scene of a traffic accident. (Scott G Winterton/Deseret News via AP))
The Latest: Alaska earthquake caused only minor road damage

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  The latest following the magnitude-7.1 earthquake that hit southcentral Alaska early Sunday (all times local):

11 a.m.

It appears public infrastructure damage from Sunday's magnitude-7.1 earthquake in southcentral Alaska was limited to a small stretch of road on the Kenai (KEY'-nigh) Peninsula.

Cones mark a crack on Kalifornsky-Beach Road near Kasilof, Alaska, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, following a magnitude-7.1 earthquake. Alaska's state seismologist, Michael West, called it the strongest earthquake in the state's south-central region in decades. (Kelly Sullivan/Peninsula Clarion via AP)

State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy says a 150-foot section of Kalifornsky Beach Road dropped about 18 inches in the northbound lane. That occurred near the community of Kasilof (KUH'-see-loff).

Crews on Monday are removing the pavement from both lanes along that section. They will then bring in gravel to fill the gaps and level it off. That work will take a day or two.

This is a temporary fix until crews can address the road this summer.

McCarthy says no damage was found from early Sunday inspections of bridges in Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Tyrrel Corveia, 14, lifts a piece of the road surface along a crack in Kalifornsky-Beach Road near Kasilof, Alaska, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, following a magnitude-7.1 earthquake. Corveia lives in a yurt and said she woke up to the structure shaking on its stilts, but said the home sustained no damage. (Kelly Sullivan/Peninsula Clarion via AP)
Panhandlers take on 1 of nation's largest sheriff's offices

CHICAGO (AP)  A federal civil trial pitting two panhandlers against one of the nation's largest sheriff's departments got underway Monday, in a case stemming from a lawsuit that alleges the men were improperly stopped from begging at a popular Chicago square.

Kim Pindak and Sam Phillips claim they lost up to $10 a day over four years because Cook County sheriff's deputies told them repeatedly they couldn't ask for money at Daley Plaza, best known for its iconic Chicago sculpture by Pablo Picasso.

Pindak, 63, said during a break in the trial that he was forced to supplement his income by begging because all but $30 of his $750-a-month federal disability assistance went toward paying living expenses at an assisted-living facility.

Kim Pindak stands outside Chicagos federal courthouse after the first day of testimony in a civil lawsuit involving him and and other panhandlers Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. He and another panhandler brought a suit that alleges they lost up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from begging in Daley Plaza, a popular public square in the city. The trial that started today is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/Michael Tarm)

"A lot of people see us as scam artists," he said. "I don't live in the Waldorf Astoria. I'm just trying to survive."

Wearing a sports jacket his attorneys bought him for the trial, Pindak said over lunch that he never imagined he would one day be a subject in a rare panhandler case to go before a federal jury. He quickly added, "I never thought I would be a panhandler, either."

He said he once aspired to become a physician before suffering debilitating mental illness. The extra income from panhandling allows him to buy an occasional coffee, a pair of shoes or sometimes books about his favorite hobby  chess.

Back in the courtroom, he often looked uneasy as he sat at a table for the plaintiffs. The judge, Rebecca Pallmeyer, has presided over some of the most notable cases in recent Illinois history, including the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan.

In recent years, courts nationwide have increasingly agreed that asking passers-by for money is constitutionally protected free speech under the First Amendment, said Rebecca Glenberg, a civil liberties lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

The case in Chicago will examine whether lax or nonexistent training for sheriff's deputies regarding panhandlers' rights contributed to violations of Pindak's and Phillips' rights.

Pallmeyer already ruled that the men's rights were violated, at least in some instances. Jurors will be asked to come up with a dollar amount for any damages determined.

Pindak calculates he may have lost up to $10 a day for four days a week over a four-year period because of the sheriff's department; that could add up to more than $8,000.

Adele Nicholas, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told jurors during her opening statement Monday that the case is about the responsibility law enforcement agencies have to adequately train their staffs about citizens' rights. She said money wasn't the point.

"This case is about something bigger," she said. "It's about responsible police practices."

But an attorney defending the sheriff's office, Patrick Russell, told jurors there was never a concerted effort to bar panhandlers from Daley Plaza. At worst, he said, panhandlers like Pindak might have been asked to "move along" from time to time.

He said they were not arrested, detained or prosecuted.

"So I ask you: What are the damages?" he said.

Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Mark Weinberg, has filed other panhandler lawsuits. One, a 2001 class-action suit, argued it was illegal for Chicago to define panhandling as disorderly conduct. That suit was settled, entitling 5,000 panhandlers to payouts of $400 each.

City ordinance prohibits aggressive panhandling tactics. But no one accuses Pindak or Phillips of that.

Phillips said he simply holds a sign while panhandling that reads, "I'm Just Hungry."

A man panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

A man, right, panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

A man, center, panhandles on the street Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A lawsuit brought by panhandlers who say they lose up to $10 a day because authorities bar them from a popular public square in Chicago is set to go to trial. The trial that starts Monday in Chicago federal court is a rare instance of jurors being asked to decide the issue of panhandlers' rights. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
US candidates seek final edge in unpredictable race

IOWA FALLS, Iowa (AP)  The 2016 presidential candidates opened their final push Monday before primary voting begins, seeking any edge in a race brimming with unpredictability for both Democrats and Republicans.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, locked in an unexpectedly tight race, planned to deliver their final-stretch pitches Monday evening in a televised town hall forum, while President Barack Obama delivered his own blunt assessment of their contest. Obama praised Sanders for energizing liberals while saying that Clinton's perceived dominance in the race had been both an advantage and a burden.

Republicans who have spent months courting voters in Iowa, where the primary season begins, working to ensure their supporters make it to the caucuses next Monday. With insurgent candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz battling for victory in Iowa, the remaining Republican contenders are hoping that a better-than-expected performance can provide a momentum boost heading into New Hampshire, where the Feb. 9 primary will provide the best opportunity for an alternative to the front-runners to rise.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign event at the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Adding a new flavor of uncertainty was word over the weekend that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering an independent bid, eyeing an opportunity if Trump and Sanders should end up as the Republican and Democratic nominees. Bloomberg's assessment of the race underscores concerns in both parties about whether they can win a general election with outside-the-box candidates like Sanders and Trump.

Obama, in an interview with Politico, praised Clinton as "wicked smart" but said she faced enormous expectations that had taught her to be more cautious. Carefully avoiding the appearance of favoritism in the race, Obama said Sanders had clearly tapped into many Democrats' hunger for a candidate who speaks bluntly and loudly about liberal values.

"You know, that has an appeal," Obama said. "And I understand that."

Sanders, who has been on an aggressive Iowa tour in the final days, returned his focus to his plan for government-run health care. Clinton has warned that Sanders' proposal risks jeopardizing the progress made with Obama's Affordable Care Act. But Sanders sought to give the issue a personal face Monday, turning the microphone over to supporters who told stories about poverty and struggling to afford medicine.

"You're ashamed all the time," said Carrie Aldrich, 46, who teared up as she told Sanders about living on less than $10,000 a year as she struggles with a disability. "When you can't buy presents for your children, it's really, really hard."

For Republicans, the close contest between Cruz and Trump for first place reflects a growing if grudging acceptance among party leaders that one of the two may be their nominee. Party leaders worry that having such a provocative candidate will alienate voters the Republicans need to win in November, potentially risking both the White House and other races.

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Josh Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Lisa Lerer in Washington, Julie Pace and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Scott Bauer in Maquoketa, Iowa, and Kathleen Ronayne in Newmarket, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. reacts while listening to a supporter at a campaign event, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Iowa Falls, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Apprentices plan requires public bodies to enforce 2.3% workforce quota

New proposals to ensure apprentices make up more than 2.3% of the workforce in public bodies in England, have been announced by the Government.

A consultation is being launched on plans to make public sector employers take on more apprentices, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills said.

Skills Minister Nick Boles called on the public sector to "step up" and offer the same opportunities to young people as some businesses.

The proposals would require larger public bodies to ensure a minimum of 2.3% of their workforce is made up of apprentices

Mr Boles said: "Our apprenticeships revolution has already given 2.4 million people the chance to learn the skills they need to get on in life, with businesses leading the way.

"Now it's time for the public sector to step up and give those same opportunities as we turbo charge our drive to give youngsters the best start to working life."

The new duty, to be part of the Enterprise Bill, will apply to public sector bodies with 250 or more employees in England and is set to be brought in later in the year, BIS said.

The target will mean a minimum of 2.3% of workers starting each year in larger public sector bodies in England will need to be apprentices, it added.
Ten million at risk in Ethiopia drought, warns Save the Children

More than ten million people, including an estimated third of a million newborn babies, are at risk from Ethiopia's worst drought in half a century, Save the Children has warned.

The charity has called on United Nations' secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to raise the growing humanitarian crisis when he addresses a meeting of the African Union in the country's capital Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

The UK-based charity has warned that an El Nino-driven drought that started in June has left an estimated 10.1 million people in need of food aid, more than three decades after scenes of starvation and death in Ethiopia first came to the attention of the West.

A child looks through a fence in Ethiopia amid warnings of a humanitarian crisis

The crisis in the beleaguered East African nation is one of just two humanitarian crises in the world - the other is the civil war in Syria - currently given the organisation's top emergency ranking.

John Graham, Save the Children's Ethiopia country director, warned a 1 billion drought appeal has so far raised less than a third of the target and called for foreign aid to help assist the Ethiopian government.

He said: "The world is dealing with a multitude of massive humanitarian crises from Syria to Yemen and South Sudan, but the scale of the drought in Ethiopia is like nothing I've seen before in the 19 years that I've lived in this country.

"This is a code red emergency and it needs to be treated like one, yet I have never seen such a small response to a drought of this magnitude from the UN or the international community."

Save the Children estimates some 350,000 children are expected to be born in affected areas between March and August this year.

It says giving birth in "a desperate situation" with food shortages and livestock dying in large numbers is "extremely dangerous for both newborns and their mothers".

Mr Ban is due to speak to the executive council at the AU summit later this week. Save the Children says he should use the occasion to raise the problems facing Ethiopia and call for increased international aid.

Mr Graham added: "If emergency funding doesn't escalate very soon, there is a real risk of reversing some key development progress made in Ethiopia over the past two decades, including the reduction of child mortality rates by two thirds, and halving the percentage of the population living below the poverty line.
Chronic stress 'linked to depression and Alzheimer's'

Too much stress in your life can lead to brain changes linked to depression and Alzheimer's, scientists have warned.

Evidence from a major review of published research suggests that chronic stress and anxiety damage key brain regions involved in emotional responses, thinking and memory.

Lead author Dr Linda Mah, from the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, Canada, said: "Pathological anxiety and chronic stress are associated with structural degeneration and impaired functioning of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which may account for the increased risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and dementia."

Stress-induced damage to the brain may not be completely irreversible

The review paper, published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychiatry, pooled together findings from a number of recent studies of stress and fear conditioning in animals, and people undergoing brain scans.

Dr Mah's team looked specifically at neural circuits linked to fear and anxiety in three brain regions, the amygdala, PFC, and hippocampus.

A see-saw pattern was seen in response to chronic stress with the amygdala, associated with emotional responses, becoming over-active and the PFC under-active .

The PFC contains "thinking" areas of the brain that help to regulate emotional responses by appraising them in a rational way.

Temporary episodes of anxiety, fear and stress - experienced before an exam or job interview, for instance - are part of normal life. But the scientists point out that when such acute emotional reactions become chronic they can "wreak havoc" on immune, metabolic and cardiovascular systems, and damage the brain.

On a more hopeful note, Dr Mah believes stress-induced damage to the brain may not be completely irreversible.

Treatment with anti-depressant drugs and physical activity had both been found to boost regeneration of the hippocampus, she said.
Calais clashes 'stirred up by British anarchists'

British anarchists are among agitators who are stirring up trouble in Calais, where migrants and protesters stormed the port and boarded a ferry on Saturday, according to reports.

A number of Britons are said to be in Calais with No Borders, an anti-capitalist protest group accused of acting as agitators in the camp dubbed "The Jungle" that is home to an estimated 4,000 asylum seekers.

The port was forced to close for several hours and security forces were drafted in on Saturday evening when a crowd of around 350 people, said to be refugees and supporters, infiltrated secure areas at the quayside.

A banner at a demonstration in Calais to call attention to the impact that Europe's migrant crisis is having on their town's economy (AP)

A group of around 50 people, said to have been a mix of migrants and protesters, managed to board P&O's Spirit Of Britain passenger ship after breaching a chain link fence, interrupting services between Dover and Calais for around five hours.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 35 people, including 26 migrants and nine activists, were eventually arrested for trespass and disorder offences.

According to The Sun one of the activists detained was a British man who was later released without charge.

Calais deputy mayor Philippe Mignonet called on British police to help French authorities identify any troublemakers.

"It's frustrating having the anarchists and activists from England here to stir up trouble," he was reported as saying.

"I think the English police forces know who they are and should come here. It is too easy for these people to leave their country."

As the protest unfolded on Saturday there were ugly scenes when a small breakaway group, said to have been refugees and their supporters, descended on a residential property in Calais.

Video posted online shows a stand-off between the chanting group and two French men who come close to trading blows before being pelted with missiles.

At one point during the footage a man with a British accent shouts from behind the camera "Nazi scum". The protesters only back away when one of the men appears with an air rifle.

A local police chief claimed the No Borders group is predominantly made up of British activists.

Gilles Debove is reported as saying: "Ninety percent of the people involved with No Borders are from Britain. They stir up the migrants and cause us a lot of problems, they are political agitators."

Around 2,000 locals and business owners staged a demonstration in Calais town on Sunday in protest at the impact the crisis is having on the local economy.

The crowds waved "I love Calais" flags and a banner reading "My port is beautiful, my city is beautiful" was seen.

Local official Jean-Marc Puissesseau has estimated passenger numbers in the port have fallen by 40,000 compared to a year ago and the town's shops and restaurants are suffering, with blame pointed at the squalid refugee camp and repeated interruption to ferry and rail services.
Latest Banksy artwork covered up by developers

Banksy has created a new artwork criticising the tactics used in The Jungle refugee camp in Calais - but it was covered up with wood shortly after developers discovered it.

The latest mural was drawn opposite the French Embassy in Knightsbridge, west London, and depicts the young girl from the musical Les Miserables with tears streaming from her eyes as a can of CS gas lies beneath her.

The artwork includes an interactive QR code which, when scanned, links to a video of teargas and rubber bullets allegedly used in a police raid on the camp on January 5.

A new artwork by Banksy, depicting the girl from Les MisArables affected by tear gas, opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

It is the latest in a number of works painted by the elusive graffiti artist criticising Europe's handling of the refugee crisis and conditions in the Calais camp.

Banksy fans flocked to take selfies next to the mural, believed to have been drawn on to the side of the disused complex which is being turned into luxury flats and shops, this weekend.

But within hours of cameras being set up outside on Monday morning, the developers decided to cover the work up with two large pieces of plywood.

Several builders armed with electric drills attached the large wooden boards to the wall, entirely covering the mural.

It followed farcical scenes, which happened earlier in the day, when building staff decided to remove the painting - only to quickly change their mind.

They initially took a crowbar to the side of the wooden board which the work was painted on and tried to hack it off, but soon aborted the attempt amid fears the valuable artwork might be damaged.

They then covered the work with wood only to take it off seconds later following what appeared to be a change of mind from site bosses. Around an hour later, builders again covered the mural with wood - this time apparently for good.

Mike Sadler, director of Cheval Property Management Limited, said: "Cheval Property Management Limited will be preserving the mural and is currently discussing future plans for the artwork."

The decision to cover the art up came after a gang of men tried to prise it off the wall and steal it on Sunday night.

Scotland Yard said it sent officers to investigate the attempted theft at 8.45pm on Sunday night, but the men had fled the scene.

Fans of Banksy said the mural raised important concerns about the treatment of refugees at the camp and should be kept so the public can see it.

Luis Gomez, 31, said: "I think it is a symbol of what is happening now in Calais, and it is a message for all of us to be more conscious of what's happening.

"And opposite the French Embassy, it sends a strong message. I think it should stay here for the public to see it."

Nick Papavassiliou, 42, a charity worker living in London, said: "Every time Banksy puts up a picture it is quickly sold by some owner for a 'charity', so as soon as I saw it last night I thought I'd better come down here quickly before it gets removed.

"It is possible it will raise awareness of conditions in the camp - I hope so. I suppose artworks like this are there to send a message."

Asked about his views on the refugee crisis, he said: "Personally, I think we should do a little bit more than what we are doing - we are all humans after all."

Banksy has previously painted an artwork in The Jungle depicting Apple founder Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant, carrying an early Apple computer and his belongings in a sack.

Workmen abandoned an attept to remove the new artwork by Banksy

Workmen begin to cover up a new artwork by Banksy opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge, London

Workmen secure boarding over the latest Banksy in London

The artwork attracted attention from tourists, commuters and workmen alike

The new artwork by Banksy shows the young girl from Les Miserables affected by a CS gas canister

Security guards stand beside Banksy's 'Donkey Documents', an intact four ton mural from Jerusalem, in the Design Centre in Chelsea, London.

File photo dated 30/09/14 of the mural called Art Buff, created by street artist Banksy in Folkestone, Kent, as a charity has won a High Court fight over a mural.

STOCK. Urban Decay. Artwork by the renowned Graffiti artist Banksy is seen on the side of building on Frog Lane in Bristol.

General view of an alleged Banksy artwork in Bethnal Green, east London.

An image from the latest exhibition of cult graffiti artist Banksy at a secret location in Shoreditch, east London. Banksy's anti-establishment stencil images can be seen on walls and bridges throughout London, the UK and abroad. * The exhibition runs until July 21 and the venue address can be found at www.banksy.co.uk/turfwar.

Artwork at the 'Cans Festival' in a road tunnel in Leake Street, Lambeth London.

A new graffitti artwork allegedly by Bristol based artist 'Banksy' in the yard of a Royal Mail depot in Newman Street, central London.

Urban Art Specialist Gareth Williams moves Banksy's 'Laugh Now' expected to fetch 150,000 - 200,000 at auction.
Johanna Konta: Journey to the quarter-finals has been 18 years in the making

Johanna Konta believes her incredible journey to the Australian Open quarter-finals has been 18 years in the making.

Konta became the first British female to reach the last eight of a grand slam since 1984 after she edged an enthralling contest against Ekaterina Makarova 4-6 6-4 8-6.

The victory marks Konta's best ever performance at a major tournament, beating her fourth round achievement at the US Open last year, and means Britain have a quarter-finalist in the men's and women's draw for the first time since 1977.

Johanna Konta is through to the Australian Open last eight

Konta, ranked 47th, is closing in on the top 30 and she will now meet Chinese qualifier Shuai Zhang in a battle of the underdogs for a place in the last four.

"This journey started when I was about eight years old, so we're coming up to 18 years now," Konta said.

"I've always said I do not believe in a kind of light switch moment. Everything happens for a reason. My journey has been the way it has been for a reason. That's to accumulate the experiences that I've had.

"I cannot give you a moment where I said, 'oh yeah, that's where it started', because it's been ongoing ever since I started playing."

Konta had to come from behind in a nail-biting baseline battle on Margaret Court Arena, which lasted three hours and four minutes - the second longest women's match so far.

It could have been settled sooner had Konta not been broken when serving for the match at 5-4 but she held her nerve at the second time of asking before flinging her racket into the air in celebration.

"It was definitely one of the more spectacular matches I've played," Konta said.

"There have been a few. I still remember a junior match I played and I lost 12-10 in the third. That's definitely still in my mind.

"In my adult career it was one of the memorable ones."

Konta now faces Zhang, ranked 133rd and an even less expected quarter-finalist having arrived in Melbourne on the back of 14 consecutive first round exits in grand slams.

Zhang, however, added American Madison Keys to her list of scalps which also includes second seed Simona Halep and France's Alize Cornet.

"I think Shuai Zhang is actually on a bit more of an incredible journey than myself," Konta said.

"She won her first main draw match at a slam. I think that's an incredibly special moment.

"I played Zhang a couple of times. Actually both times were very good matches.

"We're talking about a quarter-final of a grand slam, so whoever I'm going to play it's going to be an incredibly good player.
William and Harry's sadness over Antarctic adventurer Henry Worsley's death

The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry have expressed their immense sadness at the death of Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley as donations to the charity he was supporting soared above 150,000.

The ex-Army officer, 55, from Fulham, south-west London, was attempting to make history with his expedition to Antarctica and was just 30 miles (48km) from becoming the first adventurer to cross the continent unsupported and unassisted when he had to call for help.

He was airlifted off the ice on Friday and flown to a hospital in Punta Arenas in Chile, where he was found to have bacterial peritonitis. He underwent surgery but died on Sunday.

Donations to Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley's fundraising page have risen to nearly double his intended target

In a poignant last message posted online on Friday, he said: "My summit is just out of reach."

An exhausted-sounding Worsley said he was looking forward to a cup of tea and piece of cake, and resolved to "gather my thoughts in a final message in the coming days".

He said his spirits had been lifted by the generosity of the public in the past two months, saying the support had been "incredible", but added: " My journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance and the simple sheer inability to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal."

Worsley was trying to complete the unfinished journey of his lifelong hero Sir Ernest Shackleton to mark the 100th anniversary of Shackleton's expedition.

The trek was raising money for the Endeavour Fund, a charity which helps wounded servicemen and women and is managed by the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

When Worsley's death was announced on Monday the expedition had raised just over 100,000, but the figure has since risen to more than 150,000, including gift aid.

William, who was patron of the expedition, said he and Harry had lost a friend as he paid tribute to Worsley's ''selfless commitment'' to fellow soldiers.

Fellow adventurers Bear Grylls and Ben Fogle described their devastation at hearing the news.

Grylls wrote: "One of the strongest men & bravest soldiers I know. Praying for his special family," while Fogle said: " So sad to hear that Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley @shackletonsolo has passed away. An inspiration to us all."

Battling temperatures of minus 44C (minus 47.2F), tackling white-out blizzards and treacherous ice, the former-lieutenant colonel was 71 days into his expedition, had passed the South Pole and covered 913 miles (1,469km).

After spending two days unable to move from his tent, the married father-of-two took the decision to pull out of the charity adventure after suffering from exhaustion and severe dehydration.

His wife Joanna, who flew to be by his side, said in a statement: "It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband, Henry Worsley, has died following complete organ failure; despite all efforts of ALE (Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions) and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile."

She paid tribute to her husband for reaching his goal of raising more than 100,000 to help wounded service personnel.

"Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass," she said.

"A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition - his lifelong hero.

"On behalf of myself and family, I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund. "

William and Harry pledged to ensure Worsley's family, which includes his two children, Max, 21, and Alicia, 19, received the help they needed in the wake of his death.

"Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him," the Duke said.

"Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women, by undertaking this extraordinary Shackleton solo expedition on their behalf.

"We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavour Fund.

"We will now make sure that his family receive the support they need at this terribly difficult time."

William had waved Worsley off from Kensington Palace in October, ahead of the start of the trek, and sent him a Christmas message, telling him how proud everyone was of him.

Peritonitis occurs when the thin layer of tissue lining of the abdomen becomes infected. Symptoms can include swelling of the abdomen, vomiting, chills, lack of appetite and a high temperature. Complications include sepsis and septic shock.

In his final statement sent from Antarctica, Worsley described how his desire to help wounded soldiers with their rehabilitation was the central focus of his expedition, but that he had taken the decision to call for help.

"The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journey's end - so close to my goal," he said.

He had already hit his goal of 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund when he radioed for help and was airlifted off the ice just 30 miles away from his bid to complete the first unsupported crossing of the landmass
Search for missing Malaysia jet hits another snag with sonar detector lost

SYDNEY, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Australian authorities searching for a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet said on Monday they had lost a deep-water sonar detector being used to scour a patch of the ocean floor where the plane is believed to have gone down almost two years ago.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014, sparking one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.

On Saturday, a piece of suspected plane wreckage was found off the east coast of southern Thailand but aviation experts and Thai officials said it was unlikely to belong to MH370.

A piece of the plane washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean in July 2015 but no further trace has been found.

The search, using a sonar detector known as a towfish, is focused on a 120,000-sq-km (46,330-sq-mile) band of sea floor in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

"The towfish collided with a mud volcano which rises 2,200 metres from the seafloor resulting in the vehicle's tow cable breaking," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the agency overseeing the search efforts, said in a statement.

The incident occurred on Sunday, it said.

"The towfish and 4,500 metres of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor," it said.

The towfish coasts around 100 metres (330 feet) above the sea floor, sending out sound waves diagonally across a broad strip of terrain to produce a flattened image of the seabed.

Earlier this month, JACC reiterated it would complete scouring the seafloor by the end of June, ruling out a further expansion without new confirmation on the aircraft's location.

On Monday, it did not say whether the lost towfish would delay that timeframe. A spare towfish on board search vessel the Fugro Discovery was being prepared, JACC said. It was thought it would be possible to recover the lost towfish later.
New York flights pick up after rash of cancellations amid blizzard

By Sam Forgione

NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Arriving and departing flights at New York City area airports gained steam early on Sunday evening after the worst U.S. East Coast snowstorm in decades resulted in a deluge of cancellations and delays.

Arrivals and departures at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International, and Newark Liberty were observed on Sunday, although Washington airports were idle except for a dozen flights that were en route, the chief executive of FlightAware.com said in an email.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel - we are now seeing both arrivals and departures at the New York City area airports," said Daniel Baker, chief executive of the aviation website.

Airlines had canceled over 3,500 flights within, into, or out of the United States on Sunday as of 8:40 p.m. (0140 GMT). New York's LaGuardia topped the list of total cancellations with 348 scrubbed flights that were set to depart from the airport, or 76 percent of its planned total, according to FlightAware.com.

Other New York City area airports John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty followed with the second- and third-most canceled flights, respectively, at 326 and 309. Over 1,100 flights for Monday were canceled, with Newark Liberty most impacted at over 220 canceled flights, or over 40 percent of its planned total.

Overall, airlines have canceled over 12,000 flights across the five-day period of Friday-Tuesday, FlightAware.com's Baker said.
India to build satellite tracking station in Vietnam that offers eye on China

By Sanjeev Miglani and Greg Torode

NEW DELHI/HONG KONG, Jan 25 (Reuters) - India will set up a satellite tracking and imaging centre in southern Vietnam that will give Hanoi access to pictures from Indian earth observation satellites that cover the region, including China and the South China Sea, Indian officials said.

The move, which could irritate Beijing, deepens ties between India and Vietnam, who both have long-running territorial disputes with China.

While billed as a civilian facility - earth observation satellites have agricultural, scientific and environmental applications - security experts said improved imaging technology meant the pictures could also be used for military purposes.

Hanoi especially has been looking for advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies as tensions rise with China over the disputed South China Sea, they said.

"In military terms, this move could be quite significant," said Collin Koh, a marine security expert at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. "It looks like a win-win for both sides, filling significant holes for the Vietnamese and expanding the range for the Indians."

The state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will fund and set up the satellite tracking and data reception centre in Ho Chi Minh City to monitor Indian satellite launches, the Indian officials said. Indian media put the cost at around $23 million.

India, whose 54-year-old space programme is accelerating, with one satellite launch scheduled every month, has ground stations in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Brunei, Biak in eastern Indonesia and Mauritius that track its satellites in the initial stages of flight.

The Vietnam facility will bolster those capabilities, said Deviprasad Karnik, an ISRO spokesman.

QUID PRO QUO

But unlike the other overseas stations, the facility will also be equipped to receive images from India's earth observation satellites that Vietnam can use in return for granting India the tracking site, said an Indian government official connected with the space programme.

"This is a sort of quid pro quo which will enable Vietnam to receive IRS (Indian remote sensing) pictures directly, that is, without asking India," said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"Obviously it will include parts of China of interest to Vietnam."

Chinese coastal naval bases, the operations of its coastguard and navy and its new man-made islands in the disputed Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea would be targets of Vietnamese interest, security experts said.

Another Indian official said New Delhi would also have access to the imagery.

India has 11 earth observation satellites in orbit, offering pictures with differing resolutions and areas, the ISRO said.

Indian officials had no timeframe for when the centre would be operational.

"This is at the beginning stages, we are still in dialogue with Vietnamese authorities," said Karnik.

Vietnam's Foreign Ministry confirmed the project, but provided few other details.

China's Defence Ministry said the proposed tracking station wasn't a military issue. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

Vietnam launched its first earth observation satellite in 2013, but Koh said it was not thought to produce particularly high resolution images.

BLURRED LINES

Security experts said Vietnam would likely seek real-time access to images from the Indian satellites as well as training in imagery analysis, a specialised intelligence field.

"The advance of technology means the lines are blurring between civilian and military satellites," said Trevor Hollingsbee, a retired naval intelligence analyst with Britain's Defence Ministry. "In some cases, the imagery from a modern civilian satellite is good enough for military use."

Sophisticated military reconnaissance satellites can be used to capture military signals and communications, as well as detailed photographs of objects on land, capturing detail to less than a metre, Koh and other experts said.

The tracking station will be the first such foreign facility in Vietnam and follows other agreements between Hanoi and New Delhi that have cemented security ties.

India has extended a $100 million credit line for Hanoi to buy patrol boats and is training Vietnamese submariners in India while Hanoi has granted oil exploration blocks to India in waters off Vietnam that are disputed with China.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has shown a greater willingness to step up security ties with countries such as Vietnam, overriding concerns this would upset China, military officials said.

"You want to engage Vietnam in every sphere. The reason is obvious - China," said retired Indian Air Force group captain Ajay Lele at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Both India and Vietnam are also modernising their militaries in the face of Beijing's growing assertiveness, having separately fought wars with China in past decades.

Australian-based scholar Carl Thayer, who has studied Vietnam's military since the late 1960s, said the satellite tracking facility showed both nations wanted to enhance security ties.

"Their interests are converging over China and the South China Sea," he said.
Kerry says Laos keen to avoid militarisation of South China Sea

VIENTIANE, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Laos wants to see maritime rights respected and avoid a military build-up in the South China Sea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday, after a meeting with Laos' Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong.

Laos is the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) grouping in 2016 and hosts a summit later in the year that will include the leaders of the United States and China.

"He was very clear he wants a unified ASEAN and he wants maritime rights protected, and he wants to avoid militarisation and to avoid conflict," Kerry told reporters on a visit to Laos.
Poland - Factors to Watch Jan 25

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Monday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

DEFICIT

Poland's general government deficit will not exceed 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year, Deputy Finance Minister Leszek Skiba told Puls Biznesu daily.

The government plans to cut it by at least 0.25 percentage points annually starting in 2018, he said.

Skiba also said that the recent zloty weakening was mainly caused by uncertainty regarding the final shape of the Swiss franc-denominated mortgage draft bill.

BANK TAX

Poland's bank tax bill is vague and its cost for lenders may be much higher than the planned 5.5 billion zlotys ($1.33 billion) per year, threatening the stability of the banking sector, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reported.

SUPERMARKET TAX

Poland's planned supermarket tax will be imposed on companies with turnover exceeding 12 million zlotys per year, Nasz Dziennik daily said, without quoting its sources.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Romania - Factors to watch on Jan 25

BUCHAREST, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Monday.

DEBT TENDERS

The finance ministry aims to sell 500 million lei ($119.50 million) worth of March 2021 treasury bonds and 1.0 billion lei ($239.01 million) of six-month treasury bills.

BUDGET DATA

Romania's finance ministry may release 2015 budget data. Romania ran a consolidated budget surplus of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product at the end of November.

FITCH RATINGS

Fitch affirmed Romania's rating at 'BBB-' with a stable outlook, supported by its healthier economic outlook and presently better fiscal position, but said fiscal loosening slated for this year and next was a risk.

CORRUPTION PREVENTION

Romania must update legislation to prevent graft and reinforce improvements made in a major drive against entrenched corruption in state institutions, a report by the Council of Europe's anti-corruption watchdog said on Friday.

CEE MARKETS

Central European assets firmed on Friday as dovish comments from the European Central Bank (ECB) and a rebound in crude prices fuelled risk appetite in global markets, cutting pressure on Poland's zloty.

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Air strike kills Yemeni judge and family - residents

CAIRO, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A Saudi-led coalition air strike killed a Yemeni judge and seven members of his family in the capital Sanaa on Sunday, residents said, as an aid convoy delivered food to a besieged southern city for the first time in months.

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthis, who control the capital, since March. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed, around half of them civilians, according to U.N. figures.

The bomb partially destroyed the home of Yahya Rubaid, a judge appointed by the Houthis to a national security court who had prosecuted cases against militant groups like Al Qaeda but had also presided over treason cases against President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and other ousted foes of the Houthis.

All of Rubaid's family except one of his sons was also killed in the blast, which destroyed the two-storey home, residents said.

President Hadi, driven out of Sanaa last year by Houthi fighters that Arab neighbours say are backed by Iran, has returned to lead a government from the southern port of Aden, recaptured in July by troops from the Saudi-led coalition.

Pro-Hadi and Gulf Arab forces have pushed up toward the capital but have been bogged down in mountainous battlefronts for months, especially in the southwestern city of Taiz.

Residents of the city, Yemen's third largest, have been caught in the crossfire and cut off from humanitarian aid for nine months which many residents call a "siege" imposed by the Houthis.

The United Nations World Food Program said on Sunday it was able to send 12 trucks laden with food into some of the worst-affected districts of Tai on Sunday, providing enough aid to feed 3,000 families for a month.
Kerry says Laos keen to avoid militarisation of South China Sea

By David Brunnstrom

VIENTIANE, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Laos wants to see maritime rights respected and avoid a military build-up in the South China Sea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday, after a meeting with Laos' Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong to urge ASEAN unity in the face of Chinese claims.

Laos is the 2016 chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and hosts a summit later in the year that will include the leaders of the United States and China.

"He was very clear he wants a unified ASEAN and he wants maritime rights protected, and he wants to avoid militarisation and to avoid conflict," Kerry told reporters after meeting Thongsing in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Kerry, only the third U.S. secretary of state to visit Cambodia since John Foster Dulles in 1955 and Hillary Clinton in 2012, was responding to a question whether Laos would take a strong line on territorial disputes in the South China Sea as ASEAN chair.

Laos has close political and economic ties with giant neighbour China, prompting the Obama administration to worry that Vientiane might behave like Cambodia did when it held the ASEAN chair in 2012.

Cambodia was accused of obstructing consensus in the bloc over standing up to China's assertive pursuit of its South China Sea claims, which have since included the building of artificial islands suitable for military use.

"It is particularly important that Laos finds itself playing a critical role within ASEAN, and ASEAN itself is critical to upholding the rules-based system in the Asia-Pacific and ensuring that every country, big and small, has a say in addressing the matters of shared concern," Kerry said.

"We want everybody to have a voice within the region without regards to size, power and clout."

Kerry will travel on to Cambodia later on Monday as part of his effort to urge ASEAN unity ahead of a summit President Barack Obama has called with leaders of the bloc for Feb. 15-16 in Sunnylands, California..

Kerry heads to Beijing for talks on Wednesday with the leadership there.

A senior U.S. State Department official said Kerry would seek to set an encouraging tone in Laos by discussing increased U.S. aid, including more funds for work to dispose of unexploded U.S. ordnance left over from the Vietnam War, when Laos became one of history's most heavily bombed countries, as the United States tried to destroy communist supply lines running through it.

Kerry, who fought in the Vietnam War and then became a champion of post-war reconciliation, said the United States had boosted funding for the disposal of unexploded ordnance over the years "and we are looking at whether or not that could be plussed-up even more."

The number of people killed or badly hurt by such ordnance had fallen to about 50 a year, from about 300 a few years ago, he said, adding, "Fifty a year is still too many."

The senior U.S. official said announcements on additional funding could be expected when Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. president ever to visit the country when he attends an ASEAN summit in Laos in September.

After meeting the prime minister, Kerry visited That Luang Stupa, the most important Buddhist monument in Laos, and offered a bouquet of closed white lotus blossoms dedicated to its people.

In Cambodia, Kerry will meet Hun Sen, now Asia's longest serving prime minister, and will draw attention to U.S. concerns about human rights and the treatment of government critics by meeting opposition members and civil activists, the State Department official said.
Pakistani students protest insecurity as campus reopens after Taliban attack

By Jibran Ahmad

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Students at the Pakistani university where Taliban militants killed 21 people last week protested on Monday over a lack of security as authorities reopened the campus in the country's volatile northwest.

Four Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, located about 130 km (81 miles) west of the capital Islamabad, on Wednesday, firing automatic rifles and throwing grenades as they raided classrooms and hostels.

At least 200 students gathered on the grounds of the university on Monday after the gates opened, shouting slogans against both the government and the Taliban.

"You must protect us!" they shouted, while also vowing to continue their education despite the threats.

There were to be no classes at the university on Monday, as administrators, students and teachers met to review security needs in the wake of the attack, officials told Reuters.

"Some people aren't going to the university today as they have serious concerns about the incident and their personal security and that of the students," a teacher at the university said, on condition of anonymity.

Pakistani authorities say the attack was planned and orchestrated by Pakistani Taliban militants based in neighbouring Afghanistan, and has called on the Afghan government to co-operate in its investigation.

Afghan officials have often blamed Pakistan for harbouring Afghan Taliban leaders and allege that many attacks in Afghanistan were planned on Pakistani soil.

The Pakistani Taliban is separate from, but allied with, the Afghan Taliban, and has been waging an insurgency against the Pakistani state since 2007.

Five suspects have so far been arrested in Pakistan for acting as "facilitators" to the attack, Pakistan's army spokesman said on Saturday.
Record hot years almost certainly caused by man-made warming

By Alister Doyle

OSLO, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A record-breaking string of hot years since 2000 is almost certainly a sign of man-made global warming, with vanishingly small chances that it was caused by random, natural swings, a study showed on Monday.

Last year was the hottest since records began in the 19th century in a trend that almost all scientists blame on greenhouse gases from burning of fossil fuels, stoking heat waves, droughts, downpours and rising sea levels.

"Recent observed runs of record temperatures are extremely unlikely to have occurred in the absence of human-caused global warming," a U.S.-led team of experts wrote in the journal Scientific Reports.

Written before 2015 temperature data were released, it estimated the chance of the record run - with up to 13 of the 15 warmest years all from 2000 to 2014 - was between one in 770 and one in 10,000 if the series were random with no human influence.

Lead author Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, told Reuters that the group's computer simulations indicated those odds including 2015 had widened to between one in 1,250 and one in 13,000.

"Climate change is real, human-caused and no longer subtle - we're seeing it play out before our eyes," he wrote in an e-mail. Natural variations include shifts in the sun's output or volcanic eruptions, which dim sunlight.

"Natural climate variations just can't explain the observed recent global heat records, but man-made global warming can," Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-author from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact, said in a statement.

The scientists tried to account for factors including that heat from one warm year spills over into the next. And temperatures in many years are almost identical, making it hard to rank their heat with confidence.

Last month, almost 190 nations agreed at a summit in Paris to the strongest deal yet to shift from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies such as wind and solar power to limit warming.

Separately on Monday, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed U.S. and British data showing 2015 was by far the hottest year on record and noted that a powerful El Nino event, warming the surface of the Pacific Ocean, had stoked extra heat.
Sweden's Social Democrats hit 50-year poll low over asylum crisis

STOCKHOLM, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Support for Sweden's ruling centre-left Social Democrats party hit its lowest level for nearly 50 years, a major opinion poll said, mainly due to a sense the government was being overwhelmed by the biggest influx of refugees in the country's history.

The weekend poll by Sifo for daily Svenska Dagbladet showed the Social Democrats were supported by 23 percent of voters, their worst result since Sifo started surveys in 1967. The party got 31 percent in the 2014 general election.

In the space of a couple of months last year, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven went from saying "my Europe doesn't build walls" to saying "we have taken in too many for too long".

Sweden has now put in place border controls with its neighbour Denmark to stem the flow of asylum seekers that reached a record 160,000 last year.

"People are losing faith in the government's competence because they cannot control the (asylum) situation," said Peter Esaiasson, political scientist at Stockholm University.

Accusations that Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom jumped the queue for an apartment in Stockholm owned by a union of blue-collar local government employees have not helped.

The Green Party, the Social Democrats' minority coalition partners, saw its support fall to 6 percent from 7 percent in the general election , putting the government well behind the four party centre-right opposition Alliance bloc.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats got 18 percent, above the 13 percent they won in the general election and remaining Sweden's third largest party.

The opposition centre right Moderates were up 3.5 percent in the poll at 26 percent.

A new election is not due until 2018, but falling support for the government could see Sweden's complex political map redrawn much sooner.

The government has so-far been able to function thanks to support from the Left Party and the centre-right opposition's unwillingness to bring down the coalition.

Neither bloc can form a majority without support from the Sweden Democrats, a tactic which all mainstream parties have ruled out.

Leading in the polls, the four party opposition Alliance may be tempted to try and take power, banking on the fact the Sweden Democrats have in the past tended to side most with the centre-right in parliament.
Britain and Bill Gates unveil billion dollar initiative to fight malaria

By Alex Whiting

LONDON, Jan 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The British government and billionaire Bill Gates on Monday pledged 3 billion pounds ($4.3 bln) to help end deaths from malaria in the next 15 years, describing it as the "world's deadliest killer".

British Chancellor George Osborne and the Microsoft founder said the money would help ramp up efforts to fight the mosquito-borne disease which killed about 438,000 people last year and infected more than 210 million people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Osborne and Gates said the disease kills a child every minute.

"When it comes to human tragedy, no creature comes close to the devastation caused by the mosquito," Osborne and Gates wrote in a joint article in Britain's the Times newspaper.

"We both believe that a malaria-free world has to be one of the highest global health priorities."

Britain will invest 500 million pounds ($715 mln) a year over the next five years in the joint fund, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $200 mln this year, with similar annual donations to follow.

The fund will support research and development for malaria and accelerate regional malaria elimination efforts.

Between 2000 and 2015, malaria deaths fell by 60 percent globally, and the WHO has set a target to reduce the number of malaria cases and deaths by at least 90 percent by 2030.

But growing resistance to insecticides and malaria treatments threaten to roll back these gains.

"If new insecticides are not introduced by 2020 the situation will become critical and deaths could surge," Osborne and Gates said in the Times.

In November the government and the Gates Foundation announced a new 1 billion pound ($1.43 billion) fund for a range of diseases including malaria called the Ross Fund.

This fund was named after a British scientist who discovered that mosquitoes transmit malaria, aims to develop, test and deliver a range of new products, including vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for malaria.

The commitment announced on Monday also delivers on a pledge first made by Osborne on a visit to Uganda in 2007 to spend 500 million pounds ($713.05 million) a year battling malaria.

"Britain is a global leader in the fight against deadly diseases like malaria - a disease that still claims the life of a child every minute," Gates said.
EU closely monitoring Turkey's progess on curbing migrant flows - Hahn

ISTANBUL, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The European Union is closely watching whether Turkish actions are affecting the record flow of migrants to Europe after it reached $3 billion deal with Ankara to curb migration, European Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said on Monday.

The composition of refugees transiting through Turkey has changed, with Syrians fleeing the civil war now making up less than 40 percent, he said at a joint news conference after talks with Turkish officials. Syrians were the largest group in 2015.
Japan opposition DPJ says Amari graft accusations more serious than previous Abe setbacks

TOKYO, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A senior lawmaker of Japan's largest opposition party said recent accusations that Economy Minister Akira Amari had taken bribes could lead to far more serious consequences than previous setbacks encountered by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government.

Amari is under fire over a media report that he and his aides had accepted money from a construction company in exchange for helping the firm receive compensation for disputes over land ownership and waste removal at a public works site.

Amari, a core member of Abe's economic policy team who played a central role in negotiating the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, said on Friday he had done nothing illegal.

In October 2014, Abe saw two of his ministers resign over political fund misreporting and allegations of a possible violation of the election law, although the scandals left voter support for Abe's government largely intact.

"This is different in nature on two points," Yukio Edano, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), told Reuters in an interview. "First of all, he is one of the pillars of the government. The impact on the government will be heavy."

"Second of all, no matter how you look at it, this is not the kind of case where procedural errors are to be blamed," said Edano, who himself is a lawyer.

Amari's office said no one was immediately available to comment.

The accusations have prompted the DPJ to put together a team of lawmakers to investigate the reported graft, Edano said.

As Abe's ruling bloc controls both chambers of parliament, the opposition camp cannot paralyse parliamentary debate. But by attacking Amari fiercely, they can make the scandal dominate headlines and potentially hurt voter support for Abe ahead of an upper house election in the summer.

On speculation in Japan's political circle that Abe may call a snap lower house election to have it on the same day with an upper house poll in the summer, Edano said it would not be surprising if Abe called a lower house vote even earlier.

"Once the budget bill is passed by around the end of March, it could be anytime. We would like to make preparation with such a scenario in our minds," Edano said.

Opposition parties are in talks to come up with unified candidates to better compete with Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and junior coalition partner, the Komeito party. But an early vote could catch the opposition camp ill-prepared.
EU's Mogherini confident of delivering 3 bln euros to Turkey in migrant deal

By Dasha Afanasieva and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Monday she was "very confident" the bloc would deliver a promised 3 billion euros ($3.2 bln) in assistance to Turkey to help stem migrant flows, despite the funding being blocked by Italy.

EU leaders agreed to the aid as part of a package of measures aimed at reducing the numbers of refugees heading for Europe. But Italy has objected to the grant, saying there needs to be more certainty over how it is spent.

"I am very much confident that the amount that was decided will be there in very reasonable timing," Federica Mogherini told a news conference in Ankara after meetings with Turkish officials.

EU officials were continuing to assess the needs and projects that would receive funding, she said.

"We have to better support Turkey on the incredible work it's doing to host and protect an enormous number of refugees. On the Turkish side ... the management of the flow of refugees and also regular migrants ... has to be done in a better way."

Turkey, a candidate for membership of the EU, hosts more than 2.2 million refugees from the Syrian civil war but record numbers have used its territory over the past year to reach European borders, many attempting a treacherous sea crossing to the Greek islands.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn, also part of a heavyweight delegation from Brussels, said the bloc was closely watching whether Turkish efforts to stem the flow - which have so far included issuing work permits to Syrians and visa requirements for those arriving by air - were having any effect.

The composition of refugees crossing Turkey had changed, he said, with Syrians now making up less than 40 percent. Other migrant nationalities using Turkey as a transit point into Europe include Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians and Pakistanis.
Lukewarm response from Thai farmers to government rubber scheme

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat

BANGKOK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The Thai government's scheme to buy 100,000 tonnes of rubber at above-market prices kicked off on Monday but the farmers targeted by the state purchases showed little interest in selling at the terms on offer.

Farmers in the world's biggest rubber producer and exporter threatened protests and demanded government help after a slowdown in top consumer China pushed rubber prices to a seven-year low.

Thai rubber farmers from the conservative south are a politically powerful group. They were among the first to protest in 2013 against the civilian government led by Yingluck Shinawatra that was overthrown by the military in 2014.

In response, the Thai government said it would buy up to 100,000 tonnes at 45 baht ($1.25) per kilo for unsmoked rubber sheet (USS3), above current market rates but well below the 60 baht the farmers wanted.

The government has set up more than 800 buying points nationwide, said Chao Songarvut, acting director of the Rubber Authority of Thailand.

The government, with a budget of 5.48 billion baht ($152.1 million), will buy rubber until the end of June, or until the amount purchased reaches 100,000 tonnes, he said.

Deputy Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said the government will buy a maximum of 150 kg per farmer.

The measures have already helped push prices higher. Thai USS3, which farmers sell to factories, was quoted at 39.62 baht ($1.10) per kg on Monday. That was up from 33.80 baht two weeks ago, when Thailand's cabinet approved the state buying programme.

But rubber farmers would rather sell to traders at lower prices than travel to buying stations because the government procedure is time consuming and complex, Sunthorn Rakrong, a leader of rubber farmer groups in the south, told Reuters.

"Driving across districts just to sell 150 kilos is ridiculous," he said, adding that farmers usually sell hundreds of kilos at a time.
Suicide bombers kill 32, wound dozens in northern Cameroon

By Josiane Kouagheu

DOUALA, Cameroon, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Suicide bombers targeting a town in northern Cameroon killed 32 people and wounded 66 on Monday, one of the worst attacks yet in the Central African nation as it struggles to contain violence blamed on Nigeria's Boko Haram.

State-owned radio and local officials said four explosions struck a busy market and entrances to the town of Bodo, which borders the Islamist insurgency's strongholds in northeastern Nigeria, at around 10 a.m. (0900 GMT).

A local official, who said the death toll could rise further as a number of those take to hospital were in serious condition, said the attackers had slipped in under the cover of seasonal, dusty Harmattan winds.

"The Harmattan has been blowing for three days. ... The vigilance committees weren't able to see the suicide bombers, who entered the village in the middle of the night," he said, asking not to be named.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, northern Cameroon has become the scene of increasingly frequent suicide attacks as Boko Haram has stepped up cross-border violence that has also spread into Chad and Niger.

Twelve people were killed in an attack on Jan. 13 at a mosque in the town of Kouyape.

Bodo, separated from Nigeria by only a small border river, was previously targeted at the end of December when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at the town entrance.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people from their homes during its six-year insurgency in one of the world's poorest regions.

Regional armies mounted an offensive against the insurgents last year that ousted them from many positions in northern Nigeria.

Following that operation, Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin pledged to set up an 8,700-strong regional force tasked with wiping out Boko Haram. The United States has also sent troops to supply intelligence and other assistance.

The establishment of the force has been plagued by delays, however, and joint operations have yet to begin, leaving it up to national armies to tackle Boko Haram individually.
Malaria - who does it affect and can it be eliminated?

LONDON, Jan 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The British government and billionaire Bill Gates on Monday pledged to invest some 3 billion pounds ($4.3 bln) over the next five years to help fight malaria.

Here are some facts about the disease:

* Nearly half the world's population is at risk of malaria - about 3.2 billion people. It exists in 97 countries and territories

* In 2015, some 214 million people were infected and 438,000 people died of malaria, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa

* Children under five years old, pregnant women and people living with HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable

* The mosquito-borne disease is preventable and curable.

* Between 2000 and 2015, malaria death rates fell by 60 percent

* Four countries have eliminated it since 2007: United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Turkmenistan and Armenia. In 2014, 13 countries reported zero cases of malaria

* Growing resistance to insecticides and treatments threatens to roll back gains

* In Southeast Asia, the disease is developing resistance to the most effective form of treatment. Scientists are worried this resistance will spread to Africa where at least 90 percent of malaria deaths occur

* Mosquitoes are also developing resistance to the insecticides used to treat bednets

* The World Health Organization has targeted malaria for elimination in at least 35 countries by 2030, and reducing death rates by 90 percent in the same time
Tunisian police protest over pay in new test for government

By Tarek Amara

CARTHAGE, Tunisia, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Several thousand Tunisian police marched to the presidential palace on Monday to demand more pay in the latest challenge to Prime Minister Habib Essid's government after a week of protests and riots over jobs.

Tunisia's security forces are at the forefront of the country's war with Islamist militants, who have attacked army checkpoints and patrols and launched major assaults on a tourist hotel a museum and the presidential guard last year.

Chanting "Wages still in the red" and "We defend the nation, we want our rights," police in civilian clothes marched to the presidential palace in Carthage on the outskirts of the capital Tunis.

Job seekers also staged a fresh protest in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the "Arab Spring" uprisings, and were dispersed by police using tear gas, witnesses said.

Unemployed youths were also holding a sit-in at a government building in the city of Kasserine, and a similar protests were held in the southern city of Gafsa and the northern town of Beja.

Tunisia's government is facing increasing challenges including a split in the ruling party Nidaa Tounes, a stubborn Islamist militant insurgency, a weak economy and the explosion last week of social tensions over jobs and opportunities.

Thousands of young men took to the streets in Kasserine last week after an unemployed man committed suicide when he was refused a job. That sparked protest and riots across the country until the government declared a nationwide curfew.

The protests were the worst since the uprising that toppled autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali five years ago and underscored how vulnerable the North African country remains to social unrest.

"We are looking to improve our situation like other sectors, especially as we are the frontline in defending the country," Chokri Hamada, a police union spokesman at the protest in Tunis told Reuters. "We don't have any trust in the government after all their promises."

Presidential guards blocked the road near the palace where around 3,000 police gathered in peaceful protest.

The government is already under pressure from international lenders to cut public spending and trim its budget deficit as part of economic reforms meant to bolster growth and jobs.

France, Tunisia's former colonial ruler, last week pledged 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over five years to help Tunisia deal with its transition to democracy.

Tunisia managed to avoid the violent after-shocks seen in other Arab Spring countries that toppled long-standing leaders in Egypt, Yemen and Libya. Its young democracy brought a new constitution, a political compromise between secular and Islamist parties and free elections.
Vietnam congress accepts PM Dung withdrawal from party election - sources

HANOI, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Vietnam's Communist Party congress on Monday voted to accept Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's decision to decline a nomination to a top committee, several party sources said, ruling out the possibility of him contesting the leadership.

Dung, 66, who had served two terms as premier, was overlooked by the elite politburo when it agreed before the congress on its nominations for key leadership posts in the secretive party.

Six different sources confirmed to Reuters the congress decision, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. The sources said the congress also allowed the incumbent President Truong Tan Sang to withdraw.
Foreign investors urge judicial reforms in Bulgaria

SOFIA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Business leaders from Bulgaria's main trading partners urged the government on Monday to carry out judicial reforms to ensure rule of law and warned that the lack of progress deterred much needed foreign investment.

The chambers of commerce, representing trading partners such as Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States, demanded swift action to overhaul a judiciary that often accused by critics of being inefficient and corrupt.

"The resulting feeling that the reform is not happening leads to uncertainty among investors and the economic entities operating in the country," the chambers said in an open letter to the centre-right government of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov.

"There is a decline in the willingness to invest in Bulgaria to the benefit of other countries."

The European Commission, the EU's executive, has repeatedly rapped Sofia for failing to go after corrupt officials and for a lack of progress in overhauling the judiciary since joining the bloc in 2007.

Foreign direct investment, needed to spur growth in the European Union's poorest member state, was 1.5 billion euros ($1.62 billion) from January to November last year, slightly up from the same period a year ago, but a far cry from an investment boom before the global economic crisis.

Borisov has said judicial reforms are key for his cabinet, but in December the parliament watered down changes in the constitution aimed at overhauling the judiciary, prompting the justice minister to resign.

The parliament has divided the judicial system's ruling body into two separate colleges for judges and prosecutors, but critics say the way the members will be elected will not ensure judges' independence or make prosecutors more accountable.

Borisov pledges that the judicial reforms will be addressed in changes in the judiciary act. No timeframe has been set for the discussions.
Slovak teachers strike for more pay before March election

By Tatiana Jancarikova

BRATISLAVA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Hundreds of schools in Slovakia were shut on Monday as over 11,000 teachers went on strike for higher salaries and larger school budgets, a rare hurdle for ruling leftists before a general election in March.

It was a rare show of discontent in the country where Prime Minister Robert Fico keeps a strong grip on political life and is tipped to win re-election on March 5. He leads opinion polls by over 20 percentage points ahead of his closest rival.

The government has taken advantage of the economic recovery to cement its popularity by welfare spending while keeping the budget deficit within EU rules.

Fico's pre-election handouts range from halving the sales tax on some groceries and hiking maternity benefits to giving coupons to poor families for holidays at state-owned hotels.

The government has agreed a 4 percent pay raise for teachers this year following a 5 percent raise for the past three years. But the protesters, who made up about 12 percent of all teachers in the country, say it is too little.

"Teachers' salaries were so low to start with that the raise promised by the government is not high enough," Branislav Kocan, spokesman for the Initiative of Slovak teachers, told Reuters.

"Many teachers work two jobs to make ends meet. Schools lack money to buy proper teaching aids. We will stay on strike until our requests are met," he said.

According to Education Ministry, average gross salary of elementary and secondary schools teachers was 997 euros per month ($1,080) in 2014, slightly above the national average of 858 euros. But teachers say the figure includes maximum bonuses that not all are eligible to receive.

The Initiative of Slovak Teachers is asking for a 140-euro raise this year followed by a 90-euro raise next year, 400 million euros for schools and several other reforms.

Fico said on Saturday his hands were tied as the budget for this year had already been approved.

"We want representatives of teachers to participate in preparation of the new government's manifesto ... there is nothing more I can do before the election," Fico said ahead of the planned strike, adding the funding of education was up for discussion after the election.
South Africa policing women's bodies with bursaries for virgins - activist

By Katy Migiro

NAIROBI, Jan 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - By giving scholarships to girls who are virgins, South Africa is trying to control women's bodies while ignoring the role of men and sexual violence in spreading HIV/AIDS, a campaigner said.

In KwaZulu-Natal Province, uThekela municipality is offering higher education scholarships, known as The Maidens Bursary, to girls who can prove they are virgins.

"This is part of our contribution in fighting HIV and AIDS and also in encouraging education," Dudu Mazibuko, mayor of uThekela municipality, told local media.

"When they get into high school, that is when they start to be sexually active and they end up with HIV and AIDS and unwanted pregnancies."

South Africa has the largest population living with HIV/AIDS, some 6.8 million people, or 19 per cent of adults, according to the United Nations (U.N.) Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Its government, like many across Africa, has been promoting sexual abstinence as a way of tackling the pandemic.

KwaZulu-Natal, home of South Africa's polygamous president Jacob Zuma, has one of the country's highest rates of HIV.

The Zulu king reintroduced the traditional reed dance ceremonies, for which girls must pass a virginity test to participate, several years ago in a bid to promote chastity and combat the disease.

"Virginity testing is just one symptom of the policing of how women dress, how they behave," Tanya Charles, of the South African advocacy group Sonke Gender Justice, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In 2014, a public outcry pushed KwaZulu-Natal's health department to abandon plans to implant contraceptives in 12 female students who had received scholarships to study in India.

"It is a worrying trend," Charles said. "It points to an ignorance if you think HIV is only spread because girls are having too much sex or unprotected sex or if the solution is thought to be controlling women's sexuality."

More attention needs to be paid to the gender inequalities that make HIV prevalence so much higher among girls than boys, she said, such as poverty. Many girls trade sex for money, particularly with older men.

South Africa has one of the highest incidence of rape in the world, with more than one-third of girls experiencing sexual violence before the age of 18, according to the Medical Research Council.

South Africa's Department of Women said that it was going to "engage with" the municipality to ensure girls and boys have equal access to education.

"Obviously (boys) are not subjected to inhuman treatments like virginity testing in order for them to be given a particular bursary," its spokeswoman, Charlotte Lobe, said.

"The best way for protecting girls against unwanted pregnancy, against HIV and AIDS is to give them education."
MSF calls for inquiry into deadly Yemen hospital attack

By Emma Batha

LONDON, Jan 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) called on Monday for a full investigation into an attack on a hospital in Yemen this month in which it says six people were killed and at least seven wounded, mostly medical staff and patients.

The charity - which has seen two hospitals, a clinic and an ambulance hit in Yemen in the last three months - said the conflict was being fought "with total disregard for the rules of war".

"The way war is being waged in Yemen is causing enormous suffering and shows that the warring parties do not recognise or respect the protected status of hospitals and medical facilities," said MSF Director of Operations Raquel Ayora.

"We witness the devastating consequences of this on people trapped in conflict zones on a daily basis."

A mostly Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia is fighting Iran-allied Houthi militia who control Yemen's capital.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed, around half of them civilians, since the coalition began air strikes last March.

"Public places are being bombed and shelled on a massive scale," Ayora said. "Not even hospitals are being spared, even though medical facilities are explicitly protected by international humanitarian law."

The charity has asked the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) to conduct an investigation into an attack on Shiara hospital in Saada Province, northwestern Yemen, on Jan 10.

MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, has said the hospital was hit by a projectile but could not confirm its origin.

The call for an inquiry comes after another attack on Friday in which an ambulance driver was among at least six people killed in strikes near Saada city. The ambulance was hit as it arrived at the site of an earlier bombing.

MSF said coalition jets had bombed Haydan hospital in Saada Province in October and a mobile clinic was hit in a strike in Taiz in southern Yemen in December, wounding eight, including two MSF staff.

The charity said all warring parties had been given the GPS coordinates of medical sites where MSF works. It said it had not received an explanation for any of the incidents.

The Berne-based IHFFC investigates allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions.

MSF has also called for an independent inquiry into the U.S. bombing of Kunduz hospital in Afghanistan on Oct. 3 which killed 30 people. The charity is waiting to hear whether the U.S. government will consent to the investigation.

"We urgently need guarantees from warring parties that functioning hospitals are never a legitimate target," MSF President Joanne Liu said.

"Is this the new normal: an MSF hospital bombed every month? How many other hospitals are being attacked in Yemen and other conflict zones, run by medical staff who do not have the platform that MSF does to speak out?"
"Running out of time", EU puts Greece, Schengen on notice

By Gabriela Baczynska and Alastair Macdonald

AMSTERDAM, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The European Union edged closer on Monday to accepting that its Schengen open-borders area may be suspended for up to two years if it fails in the next few weeks to curb the influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Shorter-term dispensations for border controls end in May. EU migration ministers meeting in Amsterdam decided they may be extended for two years - an unprecedented extension - because the migrant crisis probably will not be brought under control by then, according to the Dutch migration minister, who chaired the meeting.

Some ministers made clear such a - theoretically temporary - move would cut off Greece, where more than 40,000 people have arrived by sea from Turkey this year, despite a deal with Ankara two months ago to hold back an exodus of Syrian refugees. More than 60 have drowned on the crossing since Jan. 1.

Greek officials noted that closing routes northward, even if physically possible, would not solve the problem. But electoral pressure on governments, including in the EU's leading power Germany, to stem the flow and resist efforts to spread asylum seekers across the bloc are making free-travel rules untenable.

"We are running out of time," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. He urged states to implement agreed measures for managing movements of migrants across the continent -- or else face the collapse of the 30-year-old Schengen zone.

But the Dutch minister, Klaas Dijkhoff, said time has effectively already run out to preserve the passport-free regime. The system has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to make chaotic treks from Greece and Italy to Germany and Sweden over the past year.

"The 'or else' is already happening," he said. "A year ago, we all warned that if we don't come up with a solution, then Schengen will be under pressure. It already is."

Under pressure from domestic opinion, several governments have already reintroduced controls at their borders with fellow EU states. Those controls should be better coordinated, said Dijkhoff, whose government last year floated the idea of a "mini-Schengen", which critics saw as a way for Germany and its northern neighbours to bar the influx from the Mediterranean.

FEAR AND LOATHING

But the EU executive and leading power Germany are bemoaning a nationalistic tide that could put at risk not just Schengen but the euro and even the foundations of the EU. In that light some diplomats saw the talks in Amsterdam as another scare tactic from those refusing to close the door to migrants.

"The discussion is full of these apocalyptic predictions," one said. "But things won't really change in two months."

With many EU states, vocally led by the ex-communist East, refusing to take in significant numbers of refugees, the only way to stop chaos in Europe was, he said, to stop arrivals in Greece. Given legal and moral obligations to pluck people from the sea, that leaves the EU reliant on uncertain ally Turkey, which is seeking European cash and other favours.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened her country's borders to Syrians fleeing civil war last summer, is under mounting pressure to halt the inflow, after more than a million migrants entered Germany last year.

Unless the numbers drop before Merkel meets fellow EU leaders at a summit in mid-February, some form of border closing by the bloc's leading power would be increasingly likely -- not least as Germans vote in key regional elections in March. That decision would have a knock-on effect across Europe.

The Commission, the EU executive, is already reviewing whether Greece's difficulty in processing constitute "persistent serious deficiencies" on the external EU frontier. Such a finding would justify a historic move to allow states to re-impose controls on those arriving from Greece.

The Commission is due to make recommendations next month. Athens would then have three months to respond. Existing measures taken by some states under a different rule expire in mid-May. Minister Dijkhoff made clear that few expect the situation to improve by then, so the longer-term suspension should be ready.

Under that rule, Article 26 of the Schengen code, countries could re-impose controls on documents for six months, renewable three times, until May 2018. EU officials acknowledged, however, that no one knows what would happen after that if governments were not prepared to return to the status quo before last year.

SCHENGEN ON THE BRINK

"Everyone understands that the Schengen zone is on the brink," said Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, whose government has warned it will limit entry to migrants.

"If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move towards central Europe ... Greece must ... accept help."

Her Swedish colleague, Anders Ygeman, whose government called a halt after taking proportionately the greatest share of refugees, told Reuters that if Greece and Italy failed to set up "hot spot" centres to separate refugees from possible terrorists and economic migrants, then they would face isolation from the Schengen area.

Appearing anxious to calm a confrontation with Athens - which had already clashed with Berlin last year over bailout loans to keep Greece in the euro zone - the German interior minister was more reserved: "Blaming people in public doesn't help," Thomas de Maiziere said.

Senior EU officials have warned of the costs to trade that new border checks could impose, although few analysts foresee a return to lines halted at frontiers around Germany, France or the Benelux countries, across which millions commute daily to work.
The Union Cabinet has recommended Presidents Rule in the state of Arunachal Pradesh which has been facing a political crisis since November. This was announced just before Amit Shah was re-elected as president of BJP.

The government which is already facing the heat after Pathankot attacks and suicide of Dalit student could have easily spared itself of taking this controversial decision. And that too, when the matter is in Supreme Court.

Background of the Crisis in Arunachal

The crisis began to take shape from December 2014 when health minister Kalikho Pul was dropped from the Cabinet. Numerous other MLAs and ministers were dropped over most of 2015.

In early November, 21 out of the 47 Congress MLAs rebelled and refused to attend the Congress legislature party meeting.

While most of the concerns around dissidence is around poor development under the CM Nabam Tuki (Arunachal is in the bottom 3 amongst the 29 States when it comes to per capita income growth since 2005), the fact that the nature of dissidence is correlated to who is in power in the Centre indicates a deeper problem with the political structure in the state.

In mid-December last year, Congress dissidents, with the support of BJP MLAs and two independents, impressed upon the Governor to advance the winter session of the assembly. Sensing trouble, the Speaker disqualified 14 dissident Congress MLAs a day before the session started.

The assembly convened outside of the Vidhan Sabha and the Deputy Speaker, presiding over the session, repealed the disqualification order. Then, as a next step, the dissidents passed a resolution to impeach the Speaker. Later BJP and rebel Congress MLAs passed a no-confidence motion against Tuki-led Congress government and chose Pul as the new CM.

Tuki and his 26 supporting MLAs (22 Congress plus 5 MLAs of PAP) boycotted the proceedings terming them illegal and unconstitutional.

On 17th December, the Gauhati High Court passed an interim order staying all actions of the Deputy Speaker and the controversial session, keeping any new session in abeyance till February 2, 2016, on an appeal filed by the Speaker. The court also passed strong strictures against the Governor.

Meanwhile Congress stalled the parliamentary proceedings for many days during the winter session accusing the central government of "killing democracy" by attempting to split the state legislature party. BJP vehemently denied the allegations.

On 13th January, 2016, single bench judge of Gauhati High Court vacated the interim order that kept in abeyance the assembly proceedings. On 15th January 2016, a bench comprising 2 judges of the Supreme Court ordered that the matters pertained to constitutional provisions on the rights of the Governor, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker and hence needed to be decided by a larger bench. It decided to maintain status quo, meaning Tuki continued as CM.

Parallels with the 2003 split

Ever since the end of the 19 years of the Gegong Apang regime in 1999, Arunachal Pradesh has had 5 chief ministers in a span of 17 years. No chief minister has completed a full term of 5 years during this period.

A similar sort of split was played out in 2003 when Gegong Apang split the Congress party in 2003 to form a government with support from the BJP. This was the time of the NDA government at the Centre. Soon after the UPA government came to power in 2004, Apang went back to the Congress and contested the next election under the Congress symbol.

Political and Security Impact

Impact on Parliament Session

Congress has said it will challenge the order if it manages to get presidential nod. If the president doesnt give his assent or the courts overturn/ stay the order, it will cause much embarrassment to the Modi government.

On top of it, the government doesnt have majority in Rajya Sabha. It will struggle to get it passed and may end up revoking the same, like Vajpayee had to in case of Bihar in 1999.

After killing of 11 Dalits in Narayanpur, Vajpayee clamped President Rule in Bihar citing break-down of law and order, but revoked it within 26 days.

However, it is baffling as to why such a decision, which will be categorised as undemocratic by the Opposition, is taken for a tiny state like Arunachal (unless there are some national security related issues with China which has not been made public).

The state sends only 2 MPs to Lok Sabha and is not politically significant from the view of national politic.. Arunachal has one member in the Rajya Sabha, Mukut Mithi who represents the Congress party and is due for retirement in 2020.

So, the change in government in Arunachal Pradesh will have no bearing on the Rajya Sabha. This issue will surely give opposition an issue on a platter to unite against the BJP government.

The very important budget session is scheduled in a months time and this issue will rock the Parliament for sure. Any hopes of reconciliation with Congress on GST have been dwindled by this move.

Impact on BJP image

The Governors conduct and BJPs strategy shows that its machinations are no different from the heydays of the Congress party when dissidents were encouraged to split a legitimately elected ruling party.

Of course, the Congress party also compounded the situation by encouraging the Speaker to disqualify 14 rebel Congress MLAs without sound basis. Instead of using the Governor route, the party should have supported a legal route to ensure that the Tuki government was defeated in the floor of the house.

Alternatively, if the Tuki government would have failed to prove majority in January 2016 (scheduled time of winter session), BJP could have clamped Presidents Rule and ordered fresh elections or explore ways of forming alternative government, which would then look justified.

The whole episode now looks like BJP resorting to ruling the state by proxy through Governor, after failing to back out and form a government led by Congress dissidents.

Is Amit Shah using Arunachal to regain hold of his leadership within the party given the dual setbacks of Delhi and Bihar? With a difficult election scheduled in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh could be showcased as a quick win under Shah's leadership

Security issues:

Arunachal Pradesh is a frontline state with China and the Chinese have claimed Tawang for themselves. The infrastructure in this border state is of the lowest quality given the absence of investments and economic development.

Continuous political uncertainty has led to lack of focus on development with chief ministers more focused on saving the chair instead of developing the state

Historic Perspective of Presidents Rule

In the history of political system in India, Presidents Rule has been imposed 125 times. The highest instances have been for Manipur (10), UP (9), Bihar and Punjab (8 each). Indira Gandhis tenure as PM has seen the highest number of such proclamations (51/124; 41 per cent).

In 1960s-80s of Indian elections history during Indira Gandhis (1966-84) and Janata Partys rule (1977-1980) this was very prevalent. Whenever a new government was sworn in at the Centre, it would dismiss many opposition-ruled states and order fresh polls despite them having majority.

In 1977, when the Janata Party-led government was formed, it dismissed 9 Congress-ruled states including Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.

In 1980 when Indira was voted back to power, she, in turn, dismissed Janata Party governments in the nine states of Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, UP, MP, Orissa and Punjab.

Landmark Judgements with respect to Article 356

The Sarkaria Commission Report on Center-state relations recommended in 1988 that Article 356 must be used "very sparingly, in extreme cases, as a measure of last resort, when all the other alternatives fail to prevent or rectify a breakdown of constitutional machinery in the state".

In a landmark judgment in 1993 (S R Bommai vs Union of India), the Supreme Court laid down strict guidelines to restrict the misuse of Article 356. Two important guidelines of Supreme Court in this respect are:

Whether a government enjoys majority or not shall only be determined on the floor of the house. It is justified only when there is a breakdown of constitutional machinery and not administrative machinery.

After this order, the instances of proxy rule through Governors have reduced. Majority (101/124) President Rule instances happened before 1994. Until the SC decision on the SR Bommai case, there were on an average 2.2 cases of Presidents Rule every year. However, since 11 March 1994, there have been only 22 cases at the rate of nearly 1.04 per year.

Supreme Court hearing

The Supreme Court referred to a larger constitutional bench given the complexity of the roles played by the Governor, Speaker and the Deputy Speaker. In our view, the court is likely to address the following 3 questions:

The role of Governor in advancing the assembly session The role of the Speaker in disqualifying 14 rebel Congress MLAs without any factual basis will also come under heavy scrutiny The role of the deputy speaker in presiding over a session in a make shift location

In sum

The BJP government appears to have offered a stick to the Opposition to beat it with during the Budget session, thereby triggering more disruption.

It is unclear if this is a high-level strategy to show the Congress party in poor light, but any slowdown in economic growth will impact the people of India more than the BJP and the Congress party.

Also, given the current deliberations on this issue in the Supreme Court, it is unclear what triggered this decision and why the hurry. Also, the continued disruption in such a sensitive border state with little economic growth is a matter of serious security concern.
Further cementing the goodwill generated by the visit of President Pranab Mukherjee to Israel and Palestine some three months back, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj visited West Asia earlier this week. Her visit has paved the way for a possible visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India later this year and it is also likely that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may also pay a return visit to Tel Aviv.

Interests

A hallmark of Modi governments foreign policy has been a self-confident assertion of Indian interests. This is reflected in his governments moves vis-a-vis Israel, marking a distinct break from unnecessary and counterproductive diffidence of the past. In spite of sharing 24 years of diplomatic ties and working closely on defence, counter-terrorism, agriculture and energy related issues, no Indian prime minister or president had visited Israel till Pranab Mukherjees visit last year.

When it comes to Indias Israel policy, hypocrisy has been the norm. Sushma has done well to remind the world that Indias relations with Palestine and Israel have been a legacy of previous governments, including the UPA government of the recent past. The BJP government has no incentive to view the region through a religious prism as some of its critics have alleged. So far there is no evidence that this has been the case.

There has been a steady strengthening of Indias relationship with Israel ever since the two established full diplomatic relations in 1992. It is a tribute to Narasimha Raos foresight that he was able to lay the basis of India-Israeli partnership.

In contrast to the back channel security ties that existed before the normalisation of bilateral relations, India has been more willing in recent years to carve out a mutually beneficial bilateral relationship with Israel, including deepening military ties and countering the threat terrorism poses to the two societies.

Over the years, the Indian government has also toned down its reactions to Israels treatment of the Palestinians.

India has also begun denouncing Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts in Israel, something that was seen earlier as rather justified in light of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. India is no longer initiating anti-Israel resolutions at the UN and has made serious attempts to moderate the non-aligned movement's (NAM) anti-Israel resolutions.

Resolution

India has received no worthwhile backing from the Arab countries in the resolution of problems it faces in its neighbourhood, especially Kashmir. There have been no serious attempts by the Arab world to put pressure on Pakistan to rein in the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir.

On the contrary, the Arab nations have firmly stood by Pakistan, using the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) to build support for Islamabad and the jihadi groups in Kashmir. If Arab nations, such as Jordan, have been able to keep their traditional ties with Palestine intact while building a new relationship with Israel, there is no reason for India not to take a similar route, which might give it more room for diplomatic manoeuvring.

In fact, it was recently revealed that since the beginning of 2014, representatives from Israel and Saudi Arabia have had five secret meetings to discuss a common foe, Iran. Though Saudi Arabia still doesn't recognise Israels right to exist and Israel has yet to accept a Saudi-initiated peace offer to create a Palestinian state, this has not prevented the two from working together to thwart a strategic threat that they both feel strongly about.

Strategy

Keeping Indias wider strategic interests in perspective, successive governments since 1990s have walked a nuanced line between expressing genuine concern for the Palestinian cause and expanding its commercial and defence ties with Israel.

The domestic political milieu continues to exert its substantial influence on the trajectory of India-Israel relations. Israel has been a good friend of India but New Delhi continues to be shy of demonstrating its friendship. At crucial times, when India needed Israeli help, it got it unreservedly.

Israel provided India much needed imagery about Pakistani positions using its UAVs during the Kargil War with Pakistan in 1999 that was instrumental in turning the war around for India. When India was planning to undertake a limited military strike against Pakistan in June 2002 as part of "Operation Parakram", Israel supplied hardware through special planes. The terrorism that both face comes not only from disaffected groups within their territories; it is also aided and abetted by neighbouring states.

In diplomacy, public affirmation of friendships at the highest levels is often as important as drawing red lines for adversaries. Modi government is doing well by repudiating the discredited Israel policy of its predecessors. Sushmas visit has made it clear that even as India tries to balance its commitments vis-a-vis Israel and Palestine, New Delhi and Tel Aviv will continue to work towards evolving a more robust partnership.
Once every year Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose makes his appearance. He is normally glimpsed first in The Telegraph office in Kolkata, then in the frontier north-eastern states, followed by a rather non-committal entry into The Times of India's office on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, but invariably he ends up, in uniform, cross-belt and jackboots, in Parliament, where all sorts of superstitions and false notions are allowed to teem and flourish in an ecology of absolute, unrelenting and fervent debates untouched by intelligence. And it is bedlam for exactly three days. Then Netaji disappears. Till next year, same time, same places.

No matter what witnesses say of his death in the Taipei plane crash of 1945, patriots, mostly from the right-wing now, would not let him die. In their head, socialism, Fabian socialism and communism are all one. And Jawaharlal Nehru embodies it because he didnt believe in god.

Captain Lakshmi, Boses close aide and devoted INA (Indian National Army which Bose founded to fight the British) soldier has quoted Habibur Rahiman, another close Bose aide, who survived the crash, that Bose died of 90 per cent burn injuries sustained from the accident. But no, Bose only disappeared. He cant die primarily because we like enigmas. We are a mystic nation, remember?

Its well known that the Japanese had a soft spot for Netaji  from some angles, he even looks like one  and kept his ashes in an urn at the Renkoji Temple, in Tokyo. Even this is disputed, of course. Disputes are the ethereal stuff on which myths survive. Disputes that do not let science get a word edgeways.

There is nothing preventing the Indian government from running a DNA test on the ashes, and see if the results match with Boses daughter, Anita, who lives in Germany. If the results match, Bose is dead; if not, he is an immortal out to grab headlines periodically, a disease we understand only too well now.

India is not likely to let Bose rest in peace. Bose injects a stream of blood-red militant heroism into the pale, pallid body of the Indian freedom struggle, rendered into a sort of protracted process of attrition by sufferance thanks to Mahatma Gandhi. Death is a master, Paul Celan said, from Germany. Well, freedom is a mendicant from India, Bose might well have thought.

Bose represents a certain streak in us that is desperately in need of self-respect.

And its difficult for us to accept, though Gandhi seduced our forefathers into a certain kind of long trance, which suspended them in the indeterminate state between freedom and any immediate need for it, and made us chant songs that convinced us freedom was an eventuality - a mix of non-violence, Congress and Lord Ram - that would come to us sooner or later if only we were passive long enough. And sure enough, it did.

We need Bose in jackboots more than Bose himself might have realised towards his last days. The new Bose files that the Narendra Modi government declassified last week throw little new light on the subject. What we take Bose to be, the man who wanted Indian freedom through the barrel of a gun and founded an army of motley Indians, was actually a tragic figure.

Bose had been elected president of the Haripura session of the Congress against Gandhis wishes in 1938. Gandhi wanted Maulana Azad to run for the presidency. When both Nehru and Azad protested, Gandhi proposed Pattabhi Sitaramayya who lost to Bose. Roughly from then on, Bose was an outcast.

And he continued to be so everywhere he went. One good reason: his ideology  he tended to be progressive and forward, a loose leftist - was at loggerheads with what he thought was his and Indias strategic needs.

He visited Germany and met Hitler in 1942, with the offer of forming an army of Indian prisoners driven into German captivity by Rommel from the deserts of North Africa where the British were engaged in war with him.

There is a photograph of Hitler limply shaking hands with Bose on the internet; in the event all Bose got was a radio station, Azad Hind Radio, which Germany sponsored so Bose could make his fiery speeches and keep himself occupied.

Hitler was preoccupied with the Second World Wars eastern (Soviet) theatre, having launched Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941, which after initial advances was running into rough weather and resistance. Neither Bose nor India could have figured much in Hitlers thoughts, though he fleetingly once had said India was to Britain what the Soviet Union would be to Germany.

Bose then looked to Japan, where he had a warmer welcome and stay, and where he raised the standards of the INA to the semblance of a fighting outfit. He formed a Provisional Government of Free India, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, then under the occupation of imperial Japan.

In late 1944 and early 1945, Boses army, along with the Japanese army fought the British for the upper hand in Manipur, Imphal, Kohima, and Burma, and then were driven back through the Malaya Peninsula. The INA folded up completely with the British recapture of Singapore.

Bose, though, had refused to surrender to the British. He planned to flee to Manchuria and from there to the Soviet Union, because he saw or hoped for the animus between the Soviet Union and the Britain to be of advantage to him in his future military efforts. Apparently he was taking off for Manchuria from Taipei (now Taiwan) when the plane crashed. The rest is mystery.

Thats roughly the story.

But consider the sad and endless political confusions of Indias only international military hero. Its not clear to a neutral observer if it was anti-British sentiments or the humiliation he thought he was subjected to by Nehru (there is that famous 20-odd page type-written letter in which he accuses Nehru of many hateful things), or the fact of persistent frustration with the Congress - he was just unable to break into the insider ring of the party, no matter what he did - or his conflicted idea of the ideology of freedom that rendered alliances strictly tactical: fascist Germany, imperialist Japan, communist Soviet Union.

Almost all these alliances were apparently tactical. But its not clear how Bose would have handled any one of those countries or ideological systems if at all he had won his bet.

All one can say now is Bose was a brave man, caught in the tidal waves of the history of the mid-20th century, who clutched at any straw. Indian freedom struggle had reduced him into a international desperado. At best an adventurist.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is probably Indias most under-rated, misunderstood and sidelined freedom fighter.

Now that the government of India is releasing secret files relating to Netaji, we can finally have a free and frank debate to find out his exact role in Indias Independence.

For a start, here are six myths that relate to him:

Myth 1: He was a rival of Nehru.

Fact: He was actually a rival of Mahatma Gandhi whom he beat in 1938 and 1939.

Most people see Netaji as a rival of Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. That is incorrect. Nehru and Netaji were not in the same league. Nehru was the foremost disciple of Gandhi and Netaji was a rival of the latter.

Gandhi led the freedom struggle till 1938. He was numero uno till that year. Then Netaji became Congress president and ushered in a new era. The Gandhi camp had lost and we were poised to enter a new phase in our freedom struggle.

Gandhi is said to have been a saint and had he actually been so, he would have retired at that stage and passed the baton to Netaji. However, he played intense politics and continued to undermine Netaji.

In the 1939 elections when Netaji was ill and indisposed, Gandhi hit below the belt and put up his candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya in his absence. Netaji supporters brought him on a stretcher and defeated Gandhis man.

At least then Gandhi should have quit, but he refused point blank.

Thats when Netaji decided to play the bigger man. He realised that if the top two fought, the British would get the upper hand. He made a huge sacrifice and quit. In fact, at that time, he proved to be the saint!

Myth 2: He had a marginal role in Indias Independence.

Fact: He had probably the greatest role, even more than the Mahatma.

Under Gandhi, both Purna Swaraj and Quit India got nowhere. The British did not see Gandhi as a threat and his non-violence did not make a dent on the Empire no matter what the popular narrative we have been taught.

What turned the tide were the court trials of Netajis Indian National Army (INA). The infamous Bombay Mutiny of 1946 rattled the British. Indian Navy sailors fought against the British. Even though they lost, our enemy realised that they couldnt continue to rule us.

That was when the British decided to make a run for it. This has been accepted by Lord Louis Mountbatten, who oversaw the Partition. Mangal Pandeys 1857 began our war of Independence and Netajis 1946 ended it.

Myth 3: He should be condemned for joining hands with Hitler, and hence, was really a war criminal.

Fact: At that time the British Empire was a greater evil and crueller.

It is now an established fact that Hitler was one of the cruellest leaders of all time. But at that time the British, French and Spanish Empires were the most evil. Countless Indians suffered torture and death at the hands of the British Empire.

When Netaji joined hands with the Japanese, allies of Hitler, nobody knew anything about Nazi concentration camps. In fact, most of the world refused to believe it even when the war ended and a minority disbelieves it to this very day.

When Netaji joined the Japanese, the British had the bloodiest hands in the world. We shouldnt forget this.

Myth 4: The INA was just a rag-tag bunch of soldiers.

Fact: It was a powerful professional group which could have gone far.

The INA lasted for more than 4 years and boasted of more than 40,000 soldiers. They fought with great valour and dignity in World War 2 but happened to be on the losing side and were rubbished as history is always written by the victors.

Had the British not granted India Independence, this army probably would have waged guerrilla warfare against the Empire! A lot of soldiers from the Indian defence forces would have definitely mutinied and crossed over to the INA. This proved decisive in our final victory.

Myth 5: It doesnt matter how he died.

Fact: This is not an issue related to Congress or the past; he is the nations hero.

There are a lot of people who say that we should let sleeping dogs lie and not rewrite history. This is propaganda. Nobody is rewriting history. Indian history was written wrongly in the first place. It is being merely corrected and not rewritten.

Any nation which wilfully forgets its past is condemned to repeat it. We need to have a correct picture and a healthy debate and we need to view both sides of the history coin.

Myth 6: We should leave Nehru alone.

Fact: If the foundation is rotten, then the whole building comes crashing down.

Our history is built on the premise that Mahatma Gandhi won us Independence and Nehru built modern India. That is far from the truth. 1857 was the foundation for Independence and the very establishment of the Congress party is a key event.

Leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak carried the flame forward and Netaji gave the knockout punch. After Independence, Sardar Vallabhai Patel unified India and secured Kashmir.

Babasaheb Ambedkar laid the economic foundations and was the inspiration behind the Reserve Bank and Finance and Planning Commissions.

Only C Rajagopalachari saw the fallacy in Nehrus License Raj and knew it would collapse one day. All this has been minimised for the sake of maximising Nehru.

Theres another important point.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi stands on the shoulders of Rajiv Gandhi who stood on the shoulders of Indira who stood on the shoulders of Nehru.

If it is found that Nehru knew Netaji was alive after 1945 and allowed him to die, then it makes Nehru the nations criminal.

A multi-storeyed building would come down and it cannot be brushed under the carpet like a small pile of dust.

We have to debate now whether Nehru actually built modern India or destroyed it.
WASHINGTON  Lost in the arguing over whether women should begin mammograms at age 40 or 50 or somewhere in between is the issue theyll all eventually face: When to stop.

Theres a point at which everybody begins to scratch their head and say, How much longer do you have to keep doing this?  said American Cancer Society specialist Robert Smith.

Its an increasingly complex balancing act as older women are living even longer. The risk of breast cancer rises with age. But so do the odds of other serious illnesses that may be more likely to kill in a seniors remaining lifespan  or to make her less able to withstand the rigors of cancer treatment.

If we pick up a cancer in someone whos 75, and they die at 76 of something else, did it really matter? Thats really the question here, said Dr. Susan Boolbol, breast surgery chief at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

Medical guidelines dont agree.

The cancer societys advice: Women should continue mammograms as long as their overall health is good and they have a life expectancy of at least 10 more years. Last week, guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said theres not enough evidence to recommend for or against mammograms at age 75 and older, because that age group just hasnt been studied enough to tell.

Getting such evidence is critical, given the graying of America, said Dr. Jeanne Mandelblatt, an expert on cancer and aging at Georgetown University.

Indeed, some in the 80-and-beyond crowd are as spry as 60-somethings.

People are taking better care of themselves, said Yale University pathologist Dr. Fattaneh Tavassoli. If we dont start discussing it, its going to be more difficult to come up with management approaches for these patients.

She recently reported that Yales medical center is diagnosing more breast cancer at 90 and older, averaging about eight diagnoses a year since 2000, compared with one a year during the 1990s. Many were diagnosed after the woman or doctor detected an abnormality, not from routine mammograms, Tavassoli said. But shes asked if other hospitals see a similar trend and also wants to study what treatment they underwent.

Marion Jones was 84 and active when a mammogram spotted breast cancer. Surgeons re-moved a small tumor, but during follow-up chemotherapy, Jones developed pneumonia and blood clots. She needed a portable oxygen tank for a year until her lungs healed.

For Jones, mammograms were just a habit that she didnt question when a new doctor said she was due, and shes grateful her cancer was detected. But now 86 and healthy again, the Silver Spring, Maryland, woman recently told her oncologist that if her cancer ever returns, she doesnt want chemo.

She said, Marion, at your age you probably wont die of breast cancer, anyway. Itll be something else,  Jones recalled. Thats nice to hear.

About 26 percent of breast cancer deaths each year are attributed to a diagnosis after age 74, according to the American Cancer Society.

The question we have not really studied very carefully is what fraction of those deaths is truly avoidable, Smith said.

Mammography does decline as women get older. About three-quarters of women age 50 to 74 have had a mammogram within two years, compared with 41 percent of the 85-plus group, according to 2013 government figures.

Mammograms bring pros and cons for the oldest women like they do for middle-aged ones  the possibility of reducing breast cancer death versus false alarms, unneeded biopsies and detection of a tumor so small or slow-growing that it never would have posed a threat.

Georgetowns Mandelblatt used math models to analyze that balance, and estimated that healthy older women could benefit from regular screening through age 78 or 80. But among women who already had other moderate to severe illnesses, the harms of screening could outweigh benefits as early as 68, she said.

If cancer is found in the frail, Mount Sinais Boolbol notes there are less aggressive options that aim to stop a tumors growth rather than eradicate it.

She wants doctors and patients to have frank discussions about the womans overall health in deciding how long to continue mammograms.

It really needs to be based on their health status, and not your age, Boolbol said. Because its not one-size-fits-all.

Lauran Neergaard reports for The Associated Press.
Facebook is gearing up to open another data center, this time in Clonee, Ireland. It joins the social media giants Lulea facility in Sweden as its second data center in Europe.

The facility will become part of the infrastructure that enables billions of people to connect with the people and things they care about on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and more, said Tom Furlong, vice president of Infrastructure for Facebook, in a Jan. 24 announcement. And in keeping with an industry-wide push toward more environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient IT operations, the company plans to incorporate clean energy generation and power-sipping systems that adhere to open source hardware specifications.

Clonee will be packed full of cutting-edge technology, making it one of the most advanced, efficient and sustainable data centers in the world, Furlong. All the racks, servers, and other components have been designed and built from scratch as part of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide coalition of companies dedicated to creating energy- and cost-efficient infrastructure solutions and sharing them as open source.

Facebook kicked off the Open Compute Project in 2011 in an effort to usher in an era of efficient data center systems and reduce the power requirements of massive computing facilities. Since then, the initiative has garnered the support of IT and cloud heavyweights, including HP, Intel, Microsoft and Rackspace.

To further lower the new data centers environmental impact, Facebook will rely on Irelands breezy weather.

Our data center in Clonee will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, thanks to Irelands robust wind resources, Furlong stated. This will help us reach our goal of powering 50 percent of our infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.

Facebooks data center footprint it growing at a brisk pace. In July, the company announced it was building another green facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

The data center, Facebooks fifth, will be completely powered by renewable energy, thanks to the 200 MW of new wind energy we helped bring to the Texas grid as part of this deal, said Furlong in a statement at the time. In November 2014, the company announced it had flipped the switch on its Altoona, Iowa data center. Also drawing energy from renewable sources, the data center is the companys first to take advantage of our innovative new networking fabric, which will help us scale much more efficiently as more and more people connect on Facebook around the world, announced Brice Towns, site manager at Facebooks Altoona data center.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
Kabul: A US military official in Afghanistan says major restructuring and leadership changes are underway among Afghan army units battling the Taliban in southern Helmand province.

US Army Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the head of public affairs for the US-NATO mission, says the Afghan army in Helmand is being "rebuilt," with key commanders being replaced.

Shoffner says the reasons for the changes in the 215 Maiwand Corps in Helmand "are a combination of incompetence, corruption and ineffectiveness." He spoke to The Associated Press on Monday.

He says the corps' commander has been replaced, along with "some brigade commanders and some key corps staff up to full colonel level." The Afghan Defense Ministry confirmed the changes.

Helmand has been a fierce battleground in recent months, with fighting taking place in 10 districts.
New Delhi: India and France on Monday inked an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the sale of 36 French fighter Rafale jets but were unable to sign the final deal due to some "financial" aspects, which are expected to be sorted out in "couple of days".

This agreement was among the 14 pacts signed between the two countries after extensive talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande, which focused ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

"...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Read: Need for collective fight against terror: Narendra Modi

Terming the signing of the IGA as a "decisive" step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in "couple of days".

The two countries are in negotiations for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away conditions since the announcement for the deal was made by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price, which is estimated to be about Rs 60,000 crore. A high-level team from France is here and carrying out last minute negotiations.

Read: Honoured to be chief guest at India's Republic Day function: Hollande

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

Read: Hollande, Modi take 'eco friendly' metro ride to Gurgaon

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said.

The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

"Daesh has attacked us. The ISIS is provoking us but we are determined to take the right decision. We will strike them time and again those who kill our children. I would like to thank you for the support in dire circumstances. France will never forget. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation against terror," Hollande said.

The two sides resolved to step up their joint effort to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

"To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cyber security experts," the joint statement said.

Stressing that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, Modi and Hollande pitched for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

They also condemned the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India.

On other issues which were discussed, Modi said, "From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power. These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership."

On his part, Hollande asserted that "There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology" and hoped that the issues pertaining to the six reactors at Jaitapur nuclear plant will be settled in one year.

In pursuance of the 2008 civil nuclear pact, the two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur the statement said.

The negotiations will consider cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accord with Government of Indias "Make in India" initiative.

"France acknowledged the need for India to have lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants, as stated in the 2008 bilateral IGA on nuclear cooperation.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017.

"Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection," it said.

France and India underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France reaffirmed its strong and long standing support for Indias candidacy to the international export control regimes, particularly to the NSG and welcomed India's decision to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the statement said.

Describing his visit as "outstanding and exceptional", Hollande said it was an honour for France and him to be chief guest at the Republic Day.

"I commend the action of Modi at the climate change conference. I am aware Modi had potential reluctance at the COP 21. He wanted the innovation technology for developing countries to be spread. We owe it to, including Modi for what was achieved at the climate conference, the French President added.

Apart from inking IGA for purchase of Rafale jets, the two countries signed 13 agreements cutting across a wide variety of sectors including railways, culture, space, science and technology.
According to the data, C-section aided deliveries in private clinics have risen to 40.3% from 31.9% in the last decade. (Representational Image)

Bengaluru: Doctors recommending unnecessary Caesarean sections (also known as C-section) for pregnant women, is one of the most common complaints about private clinics. If the findings of the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS-4), released on Wednesday, are to be believed, this complaint is justified.

According to findings from the survey, C-sections, (frequently referred to as aided deliveries) have increased from 15.5% in the year 2005-06 to 23.6% in the year 2015-16. As per the survey, the highest growth was reported from private clinics.

According to the data, C-section aided deliveries in private clinics have risen to 40.3% from 31.9% in the last decade. We must also note, that C-section aided deliveries have also seen an increase to 17.2% from 16.9% during this period.

Officials at the State Medical Education Department say, There may be several reasons including the change in lifestyle for the overall increase in C-sections in the state, but the highest incidence of C-sections has been reported from private clinics and hospitals, which is a matter that should be investigated. We hear many complaints about women being forced to opt for a C-section in private clinics by instilling fear in them. The cost of a C-section is around Rs 70,000 in a city like Bengaluru, while a normal delivery would cost just Rs 20 to Rs 25,000.

The source continues, The non-availability of medical facilities, may also be the reason few C-section deliveries are performed in government- run hospitals.

Positive trends

According to the report, Karnataka has made remarkable progress in improving its health care services. The survey has revealed that the state has recorded a growth in key health indicators which include institutional deliveries, treatment of children under the age of 3 years, breastfed within one hour of birth and tackling cases of malnourishment , he said.
French President Francois Hollande and PM Modi today took an eco friendly metro ride to Gurgaon to inaugurate the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

New Delhi: France on Monday joined India in turning on the heat on terror on Pakistan. France and India called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 attacks of 2008 to justice and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future.

France also joined India in demanding action against terror groups LeT, JeM, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, and the Haqqani Network. Both countries also pointed out that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders pose a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Francois Hollande also condemned terror attacks across the world including the recent attacks at Paris and Pathankot.

The two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders pose a threat to peace and security of Afghanistan.

In this regard, they emphasised the need to address this challenge by dismantling terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens and disrupting all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals."

Prime Minister Modi said, From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks.

Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, India and France resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counterterrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fight-ers, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists. To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police.
Delhi Police have unearthed a racket in which a gang promised admission in Delhi Universitys Maulana Azad Medical College on a payment of Rs 70-80 lakh. The investigating officers are probing if the gangs claims were genuine.





It came to the fore when a Shahdara-based doctor approached police, claiming to have been cheated on promises of his daughters admission.



The complainant met the gang members in 2013. He paid over Rs 11 lakh in two years, but no admission was provided, said a police officer. The man has named four men.



He lives with his wife and 19-year-old daughter.

The girl had cleared class 12 in 2013 and had appeared for All India Pre-Medical / Pre-Dental Entrance Test (AIPMT) entrance examination.



During that period, the man met the gang leader for the first time at a cafe in Connaught Place.



He claimed to be a very influential person, capable of getting students admitted to medical colleges and other institutions of Delhi University through his network.



During the course of conversation, they convinced me that they can get the admission of my daughter done in MAMC. I was told that Rs 70-80 lakh will have to be paid on admission, the man stated in his complaint.



He deposited Rs 6.5 lakh in a bank account maintained in Madhya Pradeshs Ujjain district in July 2013.



No admission was provided that year, but the gang claimed that it would be done next year.



On the basis of the promises, he made another payment of Rs 5 lakh cash in August 2014. They returned Rs 2.80 lakh in November 2014, but did not provide any admission, the officer added.



The man had initially filed a complaint with Shahdara police station.

When no action was initiated, he went on to approach the top brass of Delhi Police. An e-mail was also sent to Delhi Police Commissioner Bhim Sain Bassi.



A case under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code was filed on Friday. We are probing the allegations, the officer said.



Last year, Delhi Police had also arrested four men for helping 25 students secure admissions in 10 Delhi University colleges.



Apart from Maulana Azad Medical College, two other medical colleges are affiliated to Delhi University - Lady Hardinge Medical College and University College of Medical Sciences.


Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was shown black flags by protesting Congress workers at a road-opening function, which the AAP leader used to once again flog the Centre for troubling his government.



Kejriwals outburst on Sunday against the Centre revolved around his oft-repeated allegation of the Narendra Modi government taking vindictive steps to avenge the BJPs electoral loss in the city.



It is sad but true...They have done everything possible to fail us, said the Chief Minister.



He blamed the Central government for creating problems for his government and limiting its output to just 10 per percent of its potential.



I hope the Centre will soon mend its ways and accept the fact that the people have rejected the BJP, he said.



Kejriwals attack on the Centre is a party of the AAP governments state strategy of confronting the central government on contentious issues and cooperating on select matters for the good of the city and serving the people.



The Chief Minister has claimed often that the Union Home Ministry has used Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to control the Anti-Corruption Branch and declare as null and void many of the notifications issued by the AAP government.

CBI raid



The recent CBI raid on the Chief Ministers Office over a corruption case related to a top bureaucrat took the relations between the Aam Aadmi Party government and the central government to a new low with Kejriwal claiming that the searches were aimed at terrorising his team.



Kejriwal said the frequent confrontations with the Centre would not be allowed to impact the governments functioning.



I have taken upon myself the responsibility of taking on the Centre and shield my cabinet ministers from unnecessary tension created by them, he said, adding that this was the reason why he had not kept any portfolio for himself.



At the function, Kejriwal highlighted his governments achievement of saving Rs 125 crore out of the project proposal prepared by the previous government.



Soon after the launch of the six-lane elevated road on the Outer Ring Road connecting Madhuban Chowk and Mukarba Chowk, he retweeted a tweet: Another elevated Corridor dedicated for the people of Delhi. Another 125 Crore saved!!...



There was a minor commotion near the venue when former Congress legislator Devendra Yadav and his supporters showed black flags and shouted slogans against Kejriwal.



Kejriwal claims that nearly Rs 350 crore has been saved in this corridor project, spanning three phases. The government credits this to use a new construction technique, but my RTI query did not substantiate this claim, said Yadav who earlier represented the Badli constituency.



The Chief Minister earlier congratulated the Public Works Department officials to help save public money by completing the project in less than the estimated cost.

The construction of this elevated road began during the time of Sheilaji. It was to cost Rs 425, but the AAP government built it at Rs 300 crore.



He said the money saved by the Public Works Department (PWD) engineers would help fund the governments ambitious plan to start providing all free medicines in government hospitals.



To set an example for acknowledging good performance among officials, the AAP government has decided to give rewards to engineers from among the money saved in the project, an official said.




An indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch seven students over suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula continued in the Hyderabad Central University here for the second day even as agitators called for a 'Chalo HCU' protest march to press their demands.



The stir resumed yesterday after the previous group of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday following deterioration in their health condition after three days of hunger strike.



A health check will be conducted for the fasting students today, Dr Ravindra Kumar, a senior doctor at the health centre in the University said.



The agitating students have called for a 'Chalo HCU' today and students from different universities in the country would gather in the campus here, their representative L S Biakani said.



The main demands includes removal of Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has gone on indefinite leave, and passing a "Rohith Act" to prevent suicides of ST, SC, BC and minority students in universities, he said.



Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital yesterday after she complained of chest pain, Ravindra Kumar said.



She has been kept under observation in the ICU.

Yesterday, the university put a notice on its website saying the Vice-Chancellor will be on leave and that Vipin Srivastava, the senior most Professor, shall perform the duties of the Vice-Chancellor. It did not mention the period of leave.



However, the SC/ST Faculty Forum and SC/ST Officers Forum expressed "shock" over the decision to appoint Srivastava as officiating Vice-Chancellor and alleged that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student, Senthil, in 2008.



Meanwhile, a large number of policemen were deployed around the HCU campus.

Joint Commissioner of Police Cyberabad T V Sashidhar Reddy told PTI, "we are verifying all those who are entering the HCU campus. There is no such restriction on the 'Chalo HCU' programme."



However, some students and others complained that the police were not allowing them to enter the campus.
Islamic State (IS) terror group has threatened Malaysia and Indonesia with new attacks over the arrests of its members in these multi-ethnic but Muslim- majority countries, days after the Indonesian capital was hit by bombings that killed eight people.



In a strongly defiant video posted in Makay language, the Malaysian-Indonesian unit of IS, called the Katibah Nusantara, warned that its numbers would only increase with the arrests of its members.



"If you catch us, we will only increase in number but if you let us be, we will be closer to our goal of bringing back the rule of the Khalifah (caliph).



"We will never bow down to the democratic system of governance as we will only follow Allah's rules," the video reportedly said according to The Star newspaper.

The video was reportedly posted on an IS website, signifying Katibah's increasing recognition within the terror group.



Malaysia Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division head Ayob Khan said the threat and direct challenge to the government reflected Katibah's brazen stance.



"It further proves that IS, especially the Katibah group, views our country as secular, and as such makes the Government and the people as its targets. This is no doubt in retaliation against our security forces' actions against them," he said.



He said the counter terrorism division would be more vigilant as attacks could occur at anytime.



"Prior to this, we only saw videos posted on Facebook or other social media sites but this particular video is a clear indication that Katibah is among the major foreign factions in IS," said Ayob Khan.



Katibah first came under the radar of intelligence agencies two years ago when it was called Majmu'ah al Arkhabiliy.



The warning comes just days after Indonesian capital Jakarta was hit by bombings and gunfights, claimed by IS, that killed eight people and injured dozens other on January 14.



Both Malaysia and Indonesia are Muslim-majority countries, with diverse populations of ethnic Malay, Indians, and Chinese.
President Pranab Mukherjee today said that ideally dialogue should be a continual engagement for resolving disputes among nations but peace cannot be discussed under a "shower of bullets".





In significant remarks that come against the backdrop of the Pathankot attack, he also said terrorism is a war beyond any doctrine and is a "cancer which must be operated out with a firm scalpel".



"There is no good or bad terrorism; it is pure evil," the President said in his address to the nation on the eve of 67th Republic Day.



Mukherjee said nations will not agree on everything but the challenge today is existential because terrorists seek to undermine order by rejecting the very basis of strategic stability which are recognised borders.



"If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards an age of chaos. There will be disputes among nations; and, as is well known, the closer we are to a neighbour, the higher the propensity for disputes.



"There is a civilised way to bridge disagreements; dialogue, ideally, should be a continual engagement. But we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets," he said.



Mukherjee said that the sub-continent has a historic opportunity to become a beacon to the world at a time of great danger.



"We must attempt to resolve the complex edges of the emotional and geo-political inheritance with neighbours through a peaceful dialogue, and invest in mutual prosperity by recognising that human beings are best defined by a humane spirit, and not their worst instincts. Our example can be its own message to a world in anxious need of amity," he said.



The President asserted that the optimism at the beginning of the 21st century that energies of people would be committed to a rising prosperity that would eliminate the curse of extreme poverty has faded in first 15 years.



"There is unprecedented turbulence across vast regions, with alarming increase in regional instabilities. The scourge of terrorism has reshaped war into its most barbaric manifestation. No corner can now consider itself safe from this savage monster," Mukherjee said.



He said terrorism is inspired by insane objectives, motivated by bottomless depths of hatred, instigated by puppeteers who have invested heavily in havoc through the mass murder of innocents.



Tracing the birth of Indian Republic in 1950, the President said India today is a rising power fast emerging as a global leader in science, technology, innovation and start ups and whose economic success is the envy of the world.




The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court today exempted writer-activist Arundhati Roy from personal appearance in the contempt of court proceedings against her.





Roy was present in the court today. The judges adjourned the hearing for four weeks as the matter is also before the Supreme Court.



The bench of Justices Bhushan Gavai and P N Deshmukh said prima facie it did not agree with the contention of her lawyer that it was improper for the court to take suo moto (on its own) notice of the contempt case over an article penned by her.



Senior lawyer K H Deshpande, Roy's lawyer, said a single judge cannot initiate contempt proceedings and it should have been referred to the bench headed by the Chief Justice.



He also said that opinion of the Advocate General was not sought, as is the procedure while initiating contempt proceedings.



But as the court was not inclined to agree, Deshpande stated that the apex court was also seized of the matter and the hearing may be adjourned.



The court granted Roy exemption from personal appearance following her undertaking that she will appear when required.



The Supreme Court had last week refused to stay the contempt notice issued by Justice Arun Chaudhari of the High Court for "scurrilous attack and nasty language used against the judiciary" in Roy's article questioning the arrest of alleged Naxal supporter G N Saibaba.



Earlier this morning, the bench of Justices Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Vinay Deshpande of the High Court recused itself, so the case was assigned to another bench.



On December 23 last year, Justice Chaudhari had rejected the bail application of G N Saibaba, who is wheel-chair bound, and directed him to surrender before the police following his stay in the hospital.



The judge took exception to an article written by Roy, saying that "prima facie, it was (written) with a malafide motive to interfere in the administration of justice."



Advocate Kishor Lambat and six others, through their lawyer Shreerang Bhandarkar, have also moved the HC seeking action against Roy over her statements.



They have also cited media reports of a press meet organised by the `Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G N Saibaba' and remarks of various speakers at the meet, including senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan, criticising the court's refusal of bail.




President Pranab Mukherjee today said the country should guard itself against forces of violence, intolerance and unreason.





In remarks that come against the backdrop of debate on intolerance in the country, he said reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients of nationalism.



"Our finest inheritance, the institutions of democracy, ensure to all citizens justice, equality, and gender and economic equity.



"When grim instances of violence hit at these established values which are at the core of our nationhood, it is time to take note. We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason," he said in his address to the nation on the eve of 67th Republic Day.



The President said there will be occasional doubters and baiters who will continue to complain, to demand, to rebel.



"This too is a virtue of democracy. But let us also applaud what our democracy has achieved. With investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, health, education, science and technology, we are positioning ourselves well for achieving a higher growth rate which will in the next ten to fifteen years help us eliminate poverty," he said.



The President said January 26, 1950, when the Republic was born and Constitution was adopted, it saw the culmination of heroic struggle of an extraordinary generation of leaders who overcame colonialism to establish the world's largest democracy.



"They pulled together India's amazing diversity to build national unity, which has brought us so far. The enduring democratic institutions they established have given us the gift of continuity on the path of progress," he said.




In a significant boost to their civil nuclear cooperation, India and France today encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of the year for the construction of six, instead of two, nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur.





During the talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Francois Hollande reassured reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants while acknowledging India's need for the same.



"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017," a joint statement after the talks between the two leaders said.



They also favoured conclusion of techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur while giving due consideration to its cost and transfer of technology, besides cost-effective localisation of manufacturing key components in India.



France also reaffirmed its strong support for India's candidacy to international export control regimes and in particular to the NSG.



France was the first country with which India established a strategic partnership in 1998 after New Delhi had conducted nuclear tests. France is also the first country with which India entered into a civil nuclear energy cooperation in 2008 after obtaining the NSG waiver.



"France is among those few first countries with which India has signed agreements in the field of civil nuclear cooperation," Modi said at a joint press event.



"In pursuance of the 2008 Agreement on the Development of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between India and France, the two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur."



The joint statement also emphasised on cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accordance with Modi government's "Make-in-India" initiative.



During talks, Modi and Hollande expressed satisfaction over ongoing time-bound implementation of cooperation between AREVA of France and L&T of India under the MoU signed in April 2015 for localisation of components for nuclear power project at Jaitapur as well as the progress in pre-engineering studies for the project being carried out by AREVA in collaboration with NPCIL.



They also welcomed initiating of revised MoU between EDF and NPCIL for the construction of six EPR units at Jaitapur. The developments also assume significance as the nuclear cooperation deal between India and France was signed in 2008 but the 9,900 MW Jaitapur project - one of the biggest nuclear parks to come up in the country - but was stuck.



Apart from facing a stiff local resistance, the project was stuck as both the parties could not reach negotiations on the cost factor. Both the countries also reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection.



The two countries underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change. France also greeted the decision by the government of India to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage.



The two leaders appreciated the regular engagement between their atomic energy organisations and their growing collaboration in mutually beneficial scientific and R&D sectors related to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.



They also appreciated the long-standing relations between their nuclear regulatory authorities  India's AERB and France's ASN  which has facilitated sharing of valuable experiences, best practices and developments related to nuclear safety and regulatory issues.
Are die-offs occurring more often? To the casual reader, it can certainly seem that reports emerge on a regular basis of thousands of animals of a species suddenly dying. The latest victims are common murres in the Northeast Pacific.





They have been dying for months, but estimates of the toll jumped sharply when David Irons, a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist walking a beach in Whittier, Alaska, found close to 8,000 dead birds in early January.



Since then, scouting teams in boats from Fish and Wildlife, the US Geological Survey and the Prince William Sound Science Centre counted another 10,000 to 12,000 dead murres on beaches and in the open water of Prince William Sound, said Kathy Kuletz, a seabird specialist for the Alaska region with the Fish and Wildlife Service.



Not so good

As with most die-offs, theories are close at hand. Murres weigh about two pounds and live in large groups, diving to feed on fish like juvenile pollock. In winter, they usually gather near the continental shelf and they need to eat a lot to keep going, up to half their body weight in a day. There are more than two million of them in Alaskan waters alone. But last year was not good for them.



The birds are emaciated and seem to be starving, according to the National Wildlife Health Centre in Wisconsin, which has found no evidence of disease or toxins that could cause such deaths. When there are changes in water temperature, as has been occurring in the Northeast Pacific, food fish may disappear. Still, this die-off has surprised experts because it has been going on for around a year, and it covers such a vast area. Most die-offs in the past have been more concentrated in time and space, said John F Piatt, a seabird expert with the US Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska.



The effects of the current El Nino, a change in ocean currents, also have not yet reached Alaska. If history is any guide, El Nino means trouble to murres. I still dont think weve seen the worst, said John, who said it was likely that 1,00,000 or more birds had died and speculated that if the worst happened, the deaths could reach many hundreds of thousands.



A tougher question for researchers is trying to understand how one population crash fits in with die-offs of other animals and whether die-offs have been increasing in recent years. Certainly, there are remarkable recent events, like the death of half of all saiga antelope last year. And moose, bees and dolphins off the East Coast have also had die-offs in recent years.



Creating a database

Samuel Fey, a researcher in biology at Yale University, was moved by news media attention of die-offs to research whether they were really increasing over time. These individual events garner so much attention, he said. They have shock and awe value. So he and Stephanie Carlson, a specialist in environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a group of other researchers put together a database of more than 700 such events worldwide in 2,400 animal populations dating to the late 19th century.



Their analysis, published a year ago, showed that the magnitude of die-offs since about 1940 had increased. But in terms of frequency, all they could say was that reports of die-offs were certainly increasing. They could not say whether the reports represented a real increase or just increased attention because, as Samuel said after the recent reports of the murre deaths, there is no central database of big die-offs of birds, fish, frogs and other animals. He is, however, working to remedy this with Julie Lenoch, a veterinarian and deputy director of the National Wildlife Health Centre of the geological survey in Madison, Wisconsin.



Understanding both the cause and consequence of animal die-offs is critically important, Julie said, because disease may be involved, like rabies, West Nile or avian influenza, that could spread to farm animals, domestic animals or humans. Toxic chemicals may be a cause, and those can affect other animals and humans. Or changes in climate or weather may be involved and recognising patterns could help prepare for future events and understand natural systems better.



For the murres, there is nothing to be done other than observe, study and record the deaths, with an eye to understanding what they say about the effects of changes in the ocean. The birds have a great capacity to rebound, said John. From 1984 to 1985, he said, 95 per cent of the common murres in the Barents Sea off Russia and Norway disappeared, apparently because of overfishing of capelin.



Today, there are more of them there than ever. On the other hand, when murres near the Farallon Islands off California had a population crash in 1983, some colonies almost vanished, and population growth was very slow after the die-off. Murres can rebound, John said, But sometimes, they dont.
Chinese President Xi Jinpings extended West Asian tour demonstrates that Beijing is keen to bolster its lucrative trade with the region with foreign policy initiatives that would project his countrys potential as a mediator, even as the West and its Arab allies are waging proxy wars against Iran and Russia. During his tour he visited Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt, key players in the region.



His visit, the first of a Chinese leader in seven years, was well-timed. The tour was preceded with the publication of Chinas Arab Policy Paper, the first effort to define Beijings engagement with West Asia in politics, economics, energy and security. This paper signals Chinas determination to broaden relations with the Arabs and Iran, expanding ties beyond Chinese exports of consumer goods and imports of crude oil.



Riyadhs regional rivalry with Tehran is a major concern to China, particularly in the wake of the ratcheting up of tensions following Saudi Arabias execution of Saudi Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, leading to an attack on Riyadhs embassy in Tehran and severing of diplomatic relations.



Xi, reportedly, sought commitments from Riyadh and Tehran that they will pursue regional stability. Disruption of oil and gas shipments to China could cripple its already troubled economy. Even during the current downturn, China increased crude imports from Saudi Arabia, Chinas number one supplier.



Xi and Saudi King Salman inaugurated an energy research centre in Riyadh and a refinery at the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, a joint venture between Sinopec and Saudi Aramco. Xi also held discussions with Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the kings favourite son, defence minister and economic czar and foreign policy overlord, and signed 14 agreements and a memorandum of understanding meant to strengthen bilateral ties.



Xi arrived just days after sanctions on Tehran were eased following its implementation of the agreement to dismantle its nuclear programme reached with the five permanent Security Council members  China, Russia, the US, France and Britain  plus Germany.



As Irans largest oil client in spite of sanctions, Beijing may expect to secure discounts on future purchases, reducing costs at a time of economic slowdown. Iran may be prepared to provide cheap oil to loyal customers like China (and India), as Tehran gives priority to winning back market share which was dramatically reduced by sanctions.



The partial lifting of sancti-ons will also allow the China National Petroleum Corporation and Chinese firms to proceed with plans to invest in the mode-rnisation of Irans oil and gas se-ctor and drill wells in new fields.



Saudi Arabia and Iran provided China with a quarter of its oil imports during the first 11 months of 2015; Chinese oil imports are expected to grow by 3 per cent this year compared to 5 per cent last year.



No more proxies

At his final destination, Cairo, Xi addressed the Arab League, announcing $55 billion in loans and investments for the Arab world and promising not to set up proxies or (build) a sphere of influence in (a) region, already torn by proxy wars.



During meetings with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, Xi signed agreements for electricity, transportation, and infrastructure projects. China has pledged to lend the Central Bank of Egypt $1 billion to support the countrys shrinking foreign currency reserves.



The National Bank of Egypt is to receive a $700 million loan and Banque Misr, a $100 million loan, to fund medium and small-sized development projects. Xi attended the opening of the second phase of a project to create an industrial area with the aim of attracting investments of $30 billion.



The visit to Egypt, ahead of the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled the 30-year rule of President Hosni Muba-rak, was seen in Cairo as a vote of confidence in Sisi who has been heavily criticised in the West for his harsh crackdown on leftists and liberals as well as outlawed Muslim Brothers.



Although China boasts the worlds largest economy, Beijing had previously avoided involvement in West Asian affairs. However, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and the rise of Islamic State (IS) has forced China to reconsider the wisdom of remaining aloof because of the threat to regional stability posed by confrontation and conflict.



China has serious concerns over the drawing power of IS which is conducting operations throughout the region, in Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent. This radical movement has recruited rebellious Muslim Uighurs, who seek to establish a Turkistan Islamic Republic in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwestern China. Several hundred Uighurs have travelled to Syria and received training and gained experience in warfare: China fears their return to their home region.



China could use its considerable economic leverage to pressure Saudi Arabia and Iran to end their rift and join forces against IS and other extremist groups, and to urge Egypt to play an active, moderating role in regional affairs.
District Principal and Sessions Judge Master R K G M M Mahaswamiji called upon voters to exercise their franchise to strengthen the democracy.





Speaking at the National Voters Day programme  organised by the Election Commission of India and the district administration at the Old Fort Hall in Madikeri on Monday  he said that the right to vote is the ultimate power given to a citizen and one must exercise the very right during the time of elections. It is a legal right of all, he said.



Deputy Commissioner Meer Anees Ahmed administered the oath to the voters.Additional Deputy Commissioner M Sathish Kumar said that every youngster should take part in voting.



First Additional Sessions Judge T M Nagaraju, District Legal Services Authority Member Secretary T C Srikanth, Zilla Panchayat chief executive officer Charulata Somal were present.



An awareness jatha was taken out from the deputy commissioners office complex to the Old Fort Hall, prior to the formal function. Winners of the essay and the elocution competitions conducted in connection with the Voters Day were distributed prizes.



The prize winners of essay competition were Abdul Mutaliq, P P Deena, K J Manush, Nikhil, Salvaraj, Ponnanna, A Nalina, Sadiya, S E Anjali, R Prithvi, K D Madhu, K D Megha and M C Renu. The winners of elocution competition were S N Ganesh Bhat, M M Uttappa, M C Renu, K R Harishita, T D Maulya and D C Chandan.
The Basavanagudi police recently arrested a 36-year-old man when he was trying to circulate counterfeit notes.





According to police, the accused has been identified as Shaukat Ahmed, a native of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir. They have recovered 200 counterfeit notes of Rs 1,000 denomination and 200 counterfeit notes of Rs 500 denomination.



On a tip-off, the policemen in plainclothes picked up Ahmed from Krishna Rao Park when he was trying to circulate the counterfeit notes at nearby shops. He used to visit shops and ask them for change. The shopkeepers, without realising that the notes are fake, would tender him the change amount, the police said.



Ahmed is currently in police custody. We are interrogating him to find if there is a gang behind the racket. He has revealed that the counterfeit notes are being printed in Bangladesh and smuggled through the border with the help of middlemen. He had come down to the City about four days ago and was staying in a lodge. A couple of years ago, he was arrested by the Punjab police when he was found circulating counterfeit notes. He came out on bail and resumed the racket, the police said.
The Agara lake in the City is set for a facelift at a total cost of Rs 16.1 crore, with funds from the State government. The Karnataka Lake Conservation and Development Authority (KLCDA) has been tasked with executing the project.





The development works include beautifying the water body (spread over 100 acres in HSR Layout), creating a pathway around the lake, repairing the existing bund, fencing, desilting and cleaning of the wetland area. Officials from KLCDA said that it was a four-year project and tenders had been floated already.



C K Shivanna, chief executive officer of KLCDA, told Deccan Herald that the works would be undertaken in a phased manner.



We have already prepared the detailed project report (DPR) and it is approved by the cabinet. The first-year works are estimated to cost around Rs 5.5 crore. The total cost is Rs 16.1 crore. We had proposed to take up the works three years ago, but it has taken shape only now, Shivanna said.



According to residents, the lake was in a bad state two-and a-half-years ago, with anti-social activities taking place in the vicinity.



With the support of the lake development authority and the citizens, the lake was improved. Currently, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is undertaking the work of setting up the underground sewage system.We are happy about the development works, said Kavitha Reddy, member of Agara Lake Forum.



The forum members said that there are five stormwater drain (SWD) points, yet the sewage water does not enter the water body. In the DPR, it is mentioned that there is no need for a sewage treatment plant (STP), Reddy said.



The lake development authority said that along with Agara lake, Madiwala lake will also be upgraded and there are plans to set up a bio-diversity park at the water body.



Assistant Engineer Honnaiah, during the lake festival held recently at Madiwala, had said that the project would cost Rs 21 crore and will be executed by the State government. He said that there are plans to introduce boating and also set up an Sewage Treatment Plant at Madiwala lake.
BJP legislator and former minister Suresh Kumar on Monday termed as dangerous a reported statement by the chief ministers media advisor, Dinesh Amin Mattu, that it had become a routine of late to arrest some persons ahead of Republic Day and Independence Day.





Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, Kumar said Mattu was giving communal colour to terrorism and sought a clarification from Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on the State governments stand on the issue. Kumar said Mattus statement contradicted the stand taken by the government. Mattu being a part of the chief ministers team is over-riding the stand of the government. The chief minister should clarify whether he endorses Mattus stand. Whether Mattu should continue in his present post is the discretion of the chief minister, Kumar said.



He added that Mattus statement could also demoralise the police force. In a post on a WhatsApp, Mattu stated that he was ready for a comprehensive debate on fighting communalism if Kumar quit the BJP. I will also quit from my post as media advisor and will also take an oath that I will not join any political party, he stated. Mattu further said he had not questioned the arrests and had only expressed concern that usually there were no follow-ups on the arrests.


Legal expert C K N Raja said on Monday that India would be the most powerful nation in the world and could get permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, if all voters cast their right in the right manner.





He was speaking at a programme on the occasion of National Voters Day with the theme Inclusive and Qualitative Participation, organised by district administration and Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) at the Town Hall here.



Raja said, The country would emerge as a powerful nation in terms of economy and social security, if the voters cast their right without being lured in any manner. Political parties and leaders should lead the voters in the right path for the development of the nation. The parties or any individual should not influence the voters unethically.



Speaking about the Indian Constitution, Raja said that it was not only a political document, but was the supreme law of the country. No law can be made against the Constitution and the Supreme Court has the power to ban anti-Constitutional laws. India is the biggest democratic country in the world and it was not an easy task to conduct an election in such a huge country, he said.



In her presidential remarks, Deputy Commissioner C Shikha said that the aim of the Election Commission was to ensure free and fair elections.



Participation in the election is the duty of the people and is essential for good governance. Even though voters of the recent Legislative Council elections took active participation, direct election is receiving poor response. Compared to rural areas, urban people are showing disinterest to elect their representatives. Only about 60 per cent of the voters cast their properly in the elections, she said.



Earlier, Assistant Commissioner C L Anand administered oath to youths, newly enrolled voters. Many youths received their electoral photo identity cards (EPICs) on the occasion.
Nearly five years after the project was conceived, the government has finally zeroed in on a consultant to prepare a detailed feasibility report (DFR) for construction of six elevated corridors to decongest core areas of the City.





The Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL), which was asked to take over the project from the Bengaluru Development Authority a few months ago, has finalised an American engineering firm AECOM to prepare DFR for the project. The total length of these corridors is 82.7 km.



Of the six, three are main corridors with six lanes while the remaining are four-lane connecting corridors. Once complete, the corridors will enable commuting from one end of the City to another within 30 minutes.



The action on the part of the government in taking forward the project comes in the wake of severe criticism of Citys poor road infrastructure by IT and ITeS companies.



The IT bigwigs had threatened to shelve their expansion plans unless there was visible improvement in infrastructure. Following the threat, the government expedited clearance of big projects to ease traffic.



KRDCL has asked the agency to give a preliminary DFR in 90 days and a final report within six months. The DFR includes not just the engineering details and design but also estimate of vehicular traffic, land acquisition issues, whether to go for a joint venture or adopt a Build, Operate, Own, Transfer (BOOT) model, mobilisation of resources and whether the corridors would really help to decongest the City, among others. Once the DFR is submitted, the government will call for fresh bids to execute the corridor project.



A senior official in the Public Works Department (PWD) said that two more agencies - International Consultants and Technocrats Pvt Ltd and Sak Engineering Consultants had participated in the bid. AECOM was chosen because of cost and quality, the official said.



AECOM has planned, designed and executed several projects in India including Sea Bird, Asias biggest Naval base at Karwar in Karnataka and the Hyderabad Metro Rail.
The committee on preventions of crimes against women and children headed by V S Ugrappa has recommended the government to send a special squad to Belthangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada to investigate the large of number of unnatural deaths in the taluk in the last five years.





Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Ugrappa said that the panel visited various places in Dakshina Kannada district recently and was shocked to learn that there had been 500 unnatural deaths, a majority of them women, in Belthangady taluk alone during the last five years.



The district administration and the local police are clueless about the large number of deaths. We have sought that the government immediately constitute a special investigation team to probe the deaths, Ugrappa said.



He said the panel observed that there were 149 medical scanning centres in Dakshina Kannada - more than the number of hospitals in the district.



Sex ratio

The district has a skewed sex ratio. This could be due to female foeticide after illegal sex determination test at some of these centres, Ugrappa said.



He said the conviction rate in Mangaluru and other rural pockets of Dakshina Kannada pertaining to rape cases, atrocities against women, dowry cases was very poor.



There had been only 18 convictions out of the 601 cases of atrocities against women, registered in Mangaluru between 2005 and 2015, he pointed out.

DH News Service
Alluding to the beef ban in BJP-ruled Maharashtra, All India Majlis E Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi has asked the Muslim-dominated old city to support his candidates to stop such bans.





If you want to eat beef you have to vote for Majlis. If you vote for the BJP-TDP combine you may have to forgo the right to eat your favourite food, Owaisi said campaigning for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Council.



They have banned beef in Maharashtra. Given a chance, they will experiment it here, Owaisi said, assuring voters that the abattoirs will be modernised.



Owaisi mimicked Prime Minister Narendra Modi by beginning his speech with Mitro and noted that the Mitro thing would not work in the city. Only Bada Khana will work in old city, he said to the roaring applause.
Parents of one of the girls who allegedly committed suicide in Tamil Nadu has alleged that Monisha (19) and two of her classmates were murdered for questioning the management.





Following petition by Monishas father Tamilarasan, Madras High Court has asked authorities to preserve her body until Wednesday while also asking the state government for a report.



Despite the two-page suicide note found near the well where their bodies were located, Monishas parents suspect they could have been murdered since the girls were found tied and their bodies bore injury marks.



Arresting the colleges Dean Kalanidhi and Correspondents son Sagar Varma and two others, police have filed a suicide case which the parents contest since they believe the girls were murdered for questioning the lack of basic amenities in the college.
The six-day long agitation seeking justice for University of Hyderabad (UoH) Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula took the shape of a national movement on Monday.





About 200 student associations decided to float a National Joint Action Committee to spearhead their agitation. The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Social Justice has given a call for one-day strike in all universities across the country on January 27. The JAC is also planning to commemorate Rohiths birthday on January 30 and is going to give a call for Chalo Delhi programme.



Students from several Central universities here on Monday joined hands in response to a Chalo-HCU (UoH is popularly known as Hyderabad Central University or HCU) call given by the JAC and several other student unions across the nation.



The JAC is demanding implementation of a five-point charter that includes vice-chancellor (V-C) Prof P Apparaos resignation, who is currently on leave, Rs 50 lakh ex gratia for Rohiths kin, unconditional revoking of suspension of four research scholars, employment for at least one family member of Rohith and booking of culprits under SC/ST Atrocities Act.



On the other hand, the non-Dalit teaching staff has joined the agitation by agreeing to write a letter to the President opposing installation of Prof Vipin Srivastava as the in-charge V-C. The JAC leaders told the media that at least two professors who are not Dalits have quit their administrative posts following the appointment of Prof Vipin.



The Chalo HCU programme was a success with students turning in large numbers despite restrictions imposed by the Hyderabad Police at different points in the city. There was tension at the gates of the university as security guards allowed only bonafide students into the campus after checking their ID cards. They also refused to allow political leaders saying that they have strict orders not to allow non-students into the campus.



With reports from different parts of the city pouring in that several students were arrested and sent to Amberpet police station, a thousand strong student group protesting the attitude of the police took a rally to the main gates and then to the administration building demanding free movement of the students.



We are peacefully demonstrating. We have no intention to create any trouble. The students have come from very long distance please dont trouble them, said Prashant, a Dalit research scholar. The anger subsided after Madhapur ACP, M Ramana Kumar, assuring that no student was arrested and all the blockades have been lifted.



In-charge VC- Srivastava, who held several rounds of talks with teaching staff, has urged the students to lift blockade of the administration building so that salaries of teaching and non- teaching staff for the month could be prepared. He further added that Apparaos sacking is not in his hands as vice-chancellors of Central universities are appointed by the President.



More over the VC cannot be sacked while the Hyderabad High Court is dealing with the case filed by the suspended research scholars, Srivastava added. On the other hand, the varsity authorities have informed the Hyderabad High Court that it has lifted the suspension. The court also heard a petition filed by Rohiths mother, Radhika, seeking security.
The Council of Ministers headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday decided to recommend to Governor Vajubhai Vala to release 375 prisoners on the occasion of Republic Day for good conduct.





These prisoners, 13 of whom are women, are likely to be released on Tuesday on the occasion of Republic Day. Only those who have shown good conduct and completed 14 years of sentence with or without remission have been selected for the release. Of the 375 prisoners selected for release, 255 prisoners come under the category of with remission and 120 under without remission category, sources in the government said. The government did not brief the media about the Cabinet meeting due to the model code of conduct for the taluk and zilla panchayat elections.



As many as 252 convicts were released in September 2015 as Vala had not raised any objection. When the BJP was in power, its efforts to release prisoners had gone in vain with the then governor H R Bhardwaj seeking an explanation on the compelling reasons for deciding to release the prisoners.



Prisoners recommended for release are lodged in seven jails: 98 in Bengaluru central prison, 38 in Vijayapura, 114 in Belagavi, 10 in Dharwad, 42 in Mysuru, 23 in Ballari and 50 in Kalaburagi.



Officer punished

The Council of Ministers gave its nod to a proposal to punish assistant treasury officer K Veerabhadrappa, Bengaluru, who was responsible for the question paper leak.



He has been directed to take compulsory retirement. The officer had given a duplicate key of the treasury to a peon who used to leak question papers of public exams, the sources said.



In another case, the Council of Ministers decided to withdraw pension benefits of retired second division clerk M K Manjappa who was involved in a Lokayukta trap case in Hassan district.



It also decided to dismiss from service Dr B R Sushila, the government medical doctor, in connection with the Lokayukta trap.



Besides, the Council of Ministers decided to drop a proposal to demolish the multi-storey building, next to Vikas Soudha. A technical committee of civil engineers set up by the government has suggested that the building will last for at least 40 years if proper care is taken. Hence, it was decided to drop the proposal, the sources said.



Nominations

The Council of Ministers authorised the chief minister to select two persons for nomination to the Legislative Council. The term of two nominated MLCs Prof P V Krishna Bhat and Jaggesh ends on February 3. Persons in the fields of literature, science, art and social service are eligible to be nominated.

DH News Service
The Centre for Law and Policy Research will hold a discussion on the topic The Constituent Assembly Debates in Contemporary Times at the Karnataka Judicial Academy, Crescent Road, High Grounds, Sampangirama Nagar, Bengaluru on Tuesday.





The programme will be held from 11 am to 1 pm and will also feature launch of the website cadindia.clpr.org.in Justice N Kumar, High Court of Karnataka, will deliver inaugural address.



Justice Raghvendra Chauhan of Karnataka High Court and Professor Sudhir

Krishnaswamy, trustee of Centre for Law and Policy Research and director of School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University, will deliver a talk.



Prof Arun Thiruvengadam of Azim Premji University will moderate the discussion.

For details, contact: 7259107458.

DH News Service
Amit Shah chose to address his first political rally in Bengal, a day after regaining his party post, but the BJP national president was conspicuously silent on matters related to Saradha and Trinamool Congresss alleged involvement in the scam.





Insiders said this came as a surprise since state BJP leaders had urged him to raise the issue at the rally where he kick-started BJPs campaign for the forthcoming Assembly elections.



Shah, who was re-elected as the party president on Sunday, lashed out at the Mamata Banerjee administration from his rally at Howrah on Monday. Mamata ji aapne parivartan nahi kiya hai, patan kiya hai (youve not brought change but defeat), he said in his trademark rhetoric. He added that the only way to bring development to Bengal and prevent anti-national activities in the state, people will need to bring a BJP government to power.



Neither Shah nor other BJP leaders, however, said what gave them the confidence to believe the party would fare well in the statewide polls, likely to be held in April-May.



The BJP, which went up from less than two per cent votes in 2011 to 17 per cent during the 2014 general elections, has been steadily losing grounds since early 2015.
French Railways (SNCF) on Monday announced that it would work with the Indian Railways in developing stations and semi-high speed trains.





In the announcement made on the occasion of French President Francois Hollandes visit to India, SNCF said it will join forces with Indian Railways to study renovation of New Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Ambala stations.



While the agreement for feasibility study for New Delhi and Chandigarh was signed last April, the joint deal for renovating Ludhiana and Ambala was signed on Monday.



The six month study of station renovation would involve experts in architecture, rail operation and finance from both the countries. SNCF and IR will use its result to develop models for modernising other stations.



The study would greatly aid IRs programme to bring 400 stations up to international standards.



The two national railways have also inked a preliminary agreement in December to determine the feasibility of upgrading the 245-km-long Delhi-Chandigarh passenger line to accommodate semi-high-speed trains.



Upgrading plans



An implementation study financed equally by France and India will examine upgrading the line to semi-high-speed service at 200 km per hour. The year-long study will also offer recommendations for an IR programme to upgrade nine high-priority passenger lines to semi-high-speed over 6,400 km.



India and France also signed a shareholding agreement on Monday between Alstom and Indian Railways to produce 800 electric locomotives at Madhepura in Bihar.
France will partner India in its next Mars mission, which the Indian Space Research Organisation plans to launch in 2018.





French space agency, CNES on Monday signed a letter of intent with the ISRO for French participation in the next Mars mission. The details of the French proposal remains unknown.



A joint statement issued in the wake of the summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande says, both leaders welcomed the announcement of collaboration through the participation of the Centre National detudes spatiales (CNES) in future space and planetary exploration missions of the ISRO.



Indias first Mars mission was a technology demonstrator. Its success led to the planning of Mars-2 mission for carrying out more substantive scientific experiments. As the slot in 2016 is out of question because of the non-availability of a suitable launch vehicle, the plan is to have the second mission in 2018 when the reliable PSLV could be used. A lander and a rover is being thought of in the second Indian Mars mission.



In addition to the Mars programme, India and France signed agreements for a future earth observation satellite and putting French Argos-4 data collection payload in the Oceansat-3, which may be launched in 2018 to provide continuity of data for already established services in the area of oceanographic applications. The earth observation project is to have a joint thermal infrared mission.



The leaders expressed confidence that these missions would contribute significantly to the monitoring of environment, weather, water resources and coastal zones and further strengthen the partnership between the two countries.India and France currently have two joint payloads Megha-Tropiques and SARAL for studying tropical atmosphere and sea surface.
French President Francois Hollande on Monday joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi in asking Pakistan to bring to justice plotters of the terror strikes in India, including the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai as well as the recent attacks at Gurdaspur and Pathankot in Punjab.





As they met in New Delhi on the backdrop of the November 2015 carnage in Paris and January 2016 terror attack at Pathankot in Punjab, Modi and Hollande agreed to expand bilateral cooperation to combat the menace  including joint counterterrorism exercise by National Security Guard (NSG) of India and Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) of France.



Hollande, who is currently on a tour to New Delhi, joined Modi to step up pressure on Islamabad, just a day after US President Barack Obama said that Pakistan could and must take more effective action against terrorists operating from its territory.



Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, Hollande and Modi said in a joint statement on counter-terrorism issued after the two leaders met in New Delhi.



Recognising the urgent need to disrupt terrorist networks and financing channels, eliminate terrorist safe havens, training infrastructure and cross-border movement of terrorists, Modi and Hollande underlined the need for all countries to effectively deal with terrorism emanating from their territory under their control.



They also called for actions to be taken, consistent with international law, against all entities, including countries that sponsor, provide support, active or passive, to terrorist groups or harbour them.



Ever since at least 129 people were killed in a series of coordinate attacks by Islamic State terrorists in and around Paris on November 13, 2015; France and India have been exploring ways to augment bilateral cooperation to fight terror.



France too joined US, UK, Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Korea, Italy and several other nations earlier this month to condemn the terrorist attack on the airbase at Pathankot.



Modi and Hollande on Monday resolved to step up bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counterterrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of foreign terrorist fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.



The two leaders also welcomed the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of resolution 2249 that called upon member states to take all necessary measures against the unprecedented threat posed by Daesh (Islamic State).
The Centre released a set of five illustrated books narrating valiant acts of five Param Veer Chakra awardees for children on the eve of Republic Day here on Monday.





The books, published by the National Book Trust (NBT) under Veergatha series, were released by Human Resource Development Minister (HRD) Smriti Irani and Army chief General Dalbir Singh at a function.



The books illustrate the valiant act of Major Somnath Sharma (1947 India-Pakistan war), Major Shaitan Singh (1962 India-China war), Havildar Abdul Hamid (1965 India-Pakistan war), Second Lt Arun Khetarpal (1971 Bangladesh liberation war) and Capt Manoj Kumar Pandey (1999 Kargil war).



The NBT will publish similar books on other 16 Param Veer Chakra awardees under the Veergatha series, with the HRD Ministry seeking to instil a sense of inspiration, courage and patriotism in the countrys children at an early age.



I studied in Sainik School Chittorgarh (Rajasthan), learnt about Maharana Pratap and grew up hearing Veergathas of all Ranas and Chetak (Maharana Prataps horse). Param Veer Chakra awardees are real heroes of the country after Independence. Children grow up reading fictional heroes (today). These Gathas (stories) will influence our younger generation, the Army chief said, while addressing the event.



Addressing the function, Smriti suggested for engaging ex-servicemen in providing physical training in country's schools and instilling patriotism in children by telling them stories about valiant soldiers of the country. She also suggested that these ex-servicemen can also provide physical training to school children.



She also sought opinion of a school principal present at the function as to whether ex-servicemen can provide training to children and make them aware of the sacrifices made by the soldiers, at least twice every week.
A day after the Centre recommended imposition of Presidents rule in Arunachal Pradesh, an agitated Congress filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the decision.





Also, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday explained the governments position to President Pranab Mukherjee who sought clarification on the need for Central rule in Arunachal Pradesh.



Mukherjee is believed to be not in a hurry to clear the Cabinets recommendation. Sources said the President has sought advice from constitutional and legal experts to arrive at a conclusion given the political turmoil in the Congress-ruled state.



Earlier in the day, a Congress delegation met and impressed on Mukherjee not to give nod for the Cabinet recommendation, with party vice-president Rahul Gandhi saying it was a blatant bid to topple a duly elected government.



Singh, however, met the President in the afternoon to explain what prompted the Cabinet to suggest Central rule in the state. Sources said the President was kept in the loop on the crisis in the state before the Cabinets proposal for keeping the Assembly in suspended animation.



Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prakash Rajkhowa, in a report to the Ministry of Home Affairs, had mentioned about constitutional breakdown in the state on the grounds that Article 174(1) was violated as Assembly session was not held for six months till January 21.

The report is also believed to have narrated instances of the Raj Bhavan being gheraoed and the Speakers refusal to allow rebel Congress MLAs to even enter the Assembly complex, which the governor felt was a grave violation of democratic norms.



About 21 Congress MLAs have reportedly revolted against Chief Minister Nabam Tuki to form a government with support from 11 BJP MLAs and 2 independents in the 60-member Assembly.



The Congress questioned the Cabinet decision on the pretext that certain decisions taken by the governor and the deputy speaker were pending before the Gauhati High Court, which through an interim order had stayed those decisions till February 1.



Politically, this is a subject of internal conflict of the Congress party, said BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi.
As one of the emerging tourist destinations, Israel has been gaining popularity in India and has experienced a consistent growth in tourism in 2015, according to Amir Halevi, director general, Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT).





Recently in the capital to discuss latest tourism initiatives taken by IMOT for the coming years, Halevi speaks to Metrolife about his experiences in the country and the popularity of India in Israel.



This is my second visit to India. I came here 20 years ago for one-month-long private business trip for tourism purposes. I love the atmosphere here, it is very unique. Even the markets and the historical sites, are great, Halevi tells Metrolife.



Having visited places like Jaipur, Varansi, Delhi and Mumbai, he feels that India and its culture are very attractive, and thats why the country is popular amongst Israelis. Thats why more than 50,000 Israelis travel into India every year. The population of Israel is eight million and 50,000 of them travel to India, so you can understand how popular India is for Israelis, he says.



Along with the cultures, festivities and markets here, Halevi is also fond of Indian food and says that Israeli and Indian food is similar to each other.



Israeli food is Mediterranean food but there are some similarities between them, like for the Indian rotis, we have pita bread.



About the promotion of Israel tourism, Halevi says that they are now focusing on three segments of Israel: the holy lands, the incentives and the people who visit Israel for holiday purposes.



Our focus on the holy lands is because there are many Christians in this country who would like to come to Israel to see the holy places. For incentives, we have tripled marketing budget for India in 2016 to tap the travel agents and direct consumers. And for people who visit Israel for a leisurely time, we will focus more on the culture and tourist spots where they can enjoy, he says.



According to him, India and Israel currently share a good relationship with each other. Your minister of foreign affairs was in Israel meeting our prime minister. So tourism is the best bridge to connect countries and to build relationships and partnerships, says Halevi.


Differences over price stopped India and France from signing the proposed multi-billion dollar inter-governmental agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets for the Indian Air Force.





However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande on Monday witnessed inking of an MoU, which put on record progresses made by negotiators.



Notwithstanding protests by the ruling BJPs ally Shiv Sena, Modi joined Hollande to push for early commencement of works on the proposed nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in Maharashtra.



They prodded the Electricite de France (EDF) and the Nuclear Power Corporation India Limited (NPCIL) to conclude talks for techno-commercial deals covering all the six proposed units by the end of 2016 and commence works on the project in early 2017.



Modi and Hollande together boarded the metro and went to Gurgaon before the meeting.



Hollande is currently on a tour to New Delhi to be the chief guest on the occasion of the Republic Day of India on Tuesday. Hollande and Modi on Monday had two back-to-back meetings  first a one-to-one and then another with aides joining them  and reviewed progress in bilateral ties, ever since the prime ministers maiden bilateral visit to France in April 2015.



Apart from the MoU on purchase of Rafale, Modi and Hollande on Monday witnessed signing of 13 pacts to boost bilateral cooperation in diverse fields like, railways, food safety, space, tourism, culture and science and technology. France has agreed to help India develop Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry as smart cities.



The multi-billion dollar Rafale deal was to be the highlight of Hollande visit to India. The negotiators could not narrow differences, particularly on the issue of price of each aircraft along with its weapon system.



It is a matter of satisfaction that both sides almost concluded negotiations on the Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale jets, except on some financial aspects, the prime minister said, while jointly addressing mediapersons along with the French president at Hyderabad House in New Delhi. We have agreed that the financial aspects would be resolved very soon.



Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian inked the MoU (Memorandum of Understanding), which, according to Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, put on record progresses made in the negotiations on issues other than financial aspects, like technical specifications of the aircraft and the weapon systems.



Hollande said that the MoU was a decisive step for the purchase of Rafale and the financial aspects would be resolved very soon. Sources said that while the estimated cost of the 36 Rafale jets along with weapon systems were pegged at about Rs 60,000 crore by France, India had been insisting on bringing it down.



Hollande and Modi welcomed revision of the February 2009 MoU between Areva and the NPCIL, raising the scope of the pact from construction of two reactors at Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant to six. They prodded the EDF, which of late took over the nuclear arm of Areva, and the NPCIL to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for construction of all the six reactors.



There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology, Hollande said, referring to level of trust between France and India. From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power  these are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership, said Modi.
The vibrant street food culture of India has finally caught attention of restaurateurs and chefs who are busy marrying this integral part of our culinary tradition with global cuisines and are putting an interesting mix of fusion dishes on the menu. With innovative names like Chinese Bhel, Nacho Crusted Mexican Fish Fingers, Mumbai Pav Bhaji Fondue, Oreo Rabri Cake and Ras Malai Tiramisu  consumers are tempted to try dishes that offer the best from both worlds.





However, this arrangement is a carefully-crafted arranged marriage which, the chefs, hope gets translated to a long-lasting partnership. The flavours being fused could be from varying cuisines and palettes, but ultimately they need to come together and present a taste and experience that is beyond one time novelty factor, Sohit Goyal of Boombox Reloaded tells Metrolife.



A ras malai with strawberry syrup could backfire but maybe a ras malai flavoured cake is where the balance lies. It gets harder to mix strong flavours, but if played the right way fusion can tone down certain overpowering flavours, he adds, saying they offer fusion drinks menu inspired by Indian masalas and vintage banta drinks.



The culinary blending of cultures in the food industry isnt new, as Indians have always been accused of Indianising global cuisines. But this kind of fusion is more about bringing chatpata food to compliment other cuisines.



It was the nostalgia for street food that led to the conceptualisation of Imly, a restaurant which has an array of interesting options like Kalmi Vada, Kanji Vada, Mushroom aur Malai ki Tikki and the Golgappas on offer.



Indian street food is considered to be one of the most gruelling one when it comes to fusing because of the presence of wide range of flavours. But we enjoy the perks of being born here and brought up eating such food, says Varun Puri, owner, Imly.



Indian street food can be paired with Japanese, Chinese or Italian. Like we have Japanese Wasabi Aloo Tikki, it is very much like the standard Aloo Tikki, but wasabi is added to the potatoes, giving them a kick. And then the potato patties are covered in panko, a Japanese style bread crumb, which gives them an outstanding crunch as a contrast to the spicy interior, he adds.



Fusion cuisine basically blends the culinary traditions of two or sometimes more nations to a more creative and enthralling level. According to Puri, fusion food tends to be more common in places with diverse cultures and metropolitan area where there is wider audience for such food.



Having said that, it just isnt the street food fusion that is making inroads into the fine-dining space, staples like vada pav, keema pav and pav bhaji have made their way into these sophisticated spaces not only in India but abroad as well. Dishoom in London started the trend of Irani/Mumbai food cafes outside Mumbai and they not only have popular items like Akuri and Bun Maska on the menu, but a dish named 

Kejriwal which, the menu says, shouldnt be confused with Delhis Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.



It is a good trend because people get bored eating regular food. It also depends on the concept of the restaurant, and if the concept and cuisine is strictly fine dining then there is no point adding street food as it would look out of place, says Gaurav Mehta, owner, Global Food Factory.



At present, restaurants in India are following just one theme i.e. serving everything under the roof even if the restaurant concept allows for it or not. You cant blame restaurants for this because customers, especially in Delhi, look for a lot of choices and are easily bored with smaller menus, he adds.



This experimental streak with cuisines is here to stay as new restaurants and cafes are opening quite frequently in the city. It is the food that will script the success of these new joints, so exciting days lay ahead for food connoisseurs.




San Jose, Calif., January 25, 2016 Altera, now a part of Intel Corporation, has expanded its Enpirion power products portfolio with a 6A PowerSoC DC-DC step-down converter that is a full-featured, highly integrated, and fully tested PowerSoC with integrated inductor. The new PowerSoC (EN6362QI) is the first in a new generation of low-V IN (input voltage) power products that offer industry-leading power density while improving performance in the areas of conversion efficiency, output voltage accuracy, load transient response, and output voltage ripple. These features help system designers meet stringent system power requirements and significantly reduce costs while accelerating time-to-market. The PowerSoC is ideal for powering the Altera Cyclone and MAX families of FPGAs and can optimize power usage in a variety of systems requiring a tiny, accurate, high-efficiency power source. For more on this product, visit www.altera.com/products/power/devices.html.



The EN6362QI PowerSoC is 45 percent smaller than other power modules and 75 percent smaller than most competing discrete (non-integrated) device implementations. It offers the highest efficiency of any comparable module, along with superior thermal performance, delivering continuous 6A at 85oC ambient temperature with no de-rating.



The EN6362QI PowerSoC is designed and manufacturing-tested as a complete power system, which results in very low FIT (failure in time) rates and dramatically improves system reliability when compared to discrete power supply solutions. Other key features of the EN6362QI PowerSoC include:

Increased power density: 56 W/cm 2

Optimized total solution size of 170 mm 2

1.5 percent output voltage accuracy over line, load, and temperature

Excellent load transient and output voltage ripple

Precision enable for sequencing

Full suite of protections

Low EMI

Programmable soft-start

The innovation behind this product reinforces the Enpirion solutions leadership in integrated power solutions as we are continuing to drive density higher and solution size smaller, while raising the bar on performance specs such as accuracy and EMI, which are needed by FPGAs and other advanced electronic systems, said Mark Davidson, senior director for Power Products, Programmable Solutions Group, Intel. With its ease of use, the EN6362QI allows our customers to save design time and cost without sacrificing performance by eliminating costly board spins, and focusing resources on system design, not power.



Documentation and Samples

All support documentation and sample requests for the EN6362QI can be found on the Altera website at https://www.altera.com/en6362.






Tower firm Edotco is lining up a $200 million investment in Myanmar over the next 5 years.

Edotco, which is the regional tower branch of Axiata, is also planning to construct 5,000 towers in Myanmar within the next three years. In October last year, the firm spent $221 million on a 75% stake in Myanmar Tower Company, the local infrastructure unit of Digicel. Edotcos Asian operations cover Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It owns over 16,000 towers across these markets.

Edotco CEO Suresh Sidhu said: We are dedicated to establishing a high quality telecommunications network in Myanmar. This will be achieved through the introduction of sustainable and value-added services, such as alternative energy solutions, dual-purpose structures and our proprietary echo remote monitoring and management system.

Myanmar is expected to be a major growth market for tower infrastructure in Southeast Asia, with international players Ooredoo and Telenor deploying their networks across the country after winning licences at the end of 2013. The number of towers in Myanmar is projected to grow to 30,000 by 2024, compared to 8,000 currently.

With the obligation to extend coverage to 90% of the country over the next 5 years, Telenor Myanmar is stepping up its network deployment, having recently added Malaysian firm OCK Group and its local partner King Royal Technologies to its fold of tower suppliers, which already include Apollo Towers, Eco-Friendly Towers and Irrawaddy Green Towers. Telenor has stated that it will need to increase its 3,700 towers to 9,000 if it is to offer nationwide coverage.
Online News Archives

Missing links

For whatever reason,edited out some portions of this piece I wrote for the newspaper. To be fair to my sources and interviewees (at least one missing in the published piece), and in the spirit of dispassionate media criticism, I have reproduced both versions of the article below.Unedited article submitted toDharma AdhikariOnline archives of news outlets form a key part of what French sociologist Pierre Nora calls the memoire prothese, artificial memory. It is a giddying array of data, stored or scattered across the internet.Compare this material site of memory (cloud storage) to something etherealtherecords of antiquity, a cosmic memory bank that recorded every moment of every being in existence. Our ancient sages in the Himalayas, as the myth goes, were able to access it whenever they liked to.Accessing online archives of Nepali media outlets is something different. You are often greeted with the link rot message: Page Not Found. The Web is so humongous, ephemeral, and unreliable. And, just like journalism, it has an unconditional bias for the perpetual now. The past is something for historians.But historians are often more interested in a distant past than the more recent past. Without the journalists complete first draft, historians will be clueless. The issue of link rot, and the practice of deleting pages or overwriting trouble many academics, professionals and the general users.Studies have shown that URL citations in scholarly papers often dont work for long. The average lifespan of a webpage is estimated to be around one to three months. Journalists themselves are afflicted. A mid-career journalist recently bemoaned that he should have saved copies of all his works. Many of his stories were once published online, but they are not there anymore.Karl-Heinz Kramer, professor at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg in Germany, has, since 1998, maintained one of the most comprehensive websites linking stories from Nepal: nepalresearch.com (alternatively .org). Link rot is a big problem, indeed he observes, I invest a lot of time in updating my website. So I simply do not have the time to check for invalid links. Luckily, for him, he saves PDFs of articles, links and references in his hard disk, which is searchable.Mark Turin, Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program at the University of British Columbia, Canada and Director of the Digital Himalaya Project believes link rot is inevitable. The key issue is that the content is stable, and findable, through search engines. Links can always be updated, but as long as the content can be located, how one gets there is secondary.For Kramer, linking sources online is useful; it is a lot faster than going through print books or public libraries. And library catalogues in Nepal sometimes have gaping holes in their records of historical news. Turin notes the ease of access and democratic potentials of online archives. But users need internet connections, technical and language skills, or sometimes subscriptions to realize this potential, he observes.In spite of the hype that the Web offers everything instantly, online news archives of Nepali outlets are often poorly maintained, incomplete and inaccessible. Go search online for major stories published in our publications some 10-15 years back: there is little to be found.Its not clear how many issues of Gorkhapatra, the countrys oldest newspaper, are online; the archive page offers the option of downloading a PDF copy, but the download time will test your patience. Its sister-publication,, maintains issues since June 2014, with copies missing in between.Thearchive goes back to Sept 2014 andmaintains e-copies since April 2014.archive includes the option to navigate though a wide range of years, and actual copies in PDF are available for the past week.andmaintain archives since 2011, with a gap between 2009 and 2010. Before their recent revamping of websites, the Kantipur Media Group (KMG) maintained copies until 2006; now you can access two weeks worth of e-copies of its daily newspapers.Digital-only outlets usually bury their content too deep, and search features are often disappointing. The online archives of broadcast media are patchy; many now upload selected clips on YouTube, but not consistently.Archival retention is an issue. Saving a copy every single day as Kramer does is a way to ensure that you have access to print content that matter to you. If newspapers cannot maintain a complete archive, then perhaps they may opt for a third-party host. The weekly, for example, maintains a complete archive of its copies, through the Digital Himalayan Project, headed by Turin.The problem of access is not just with the PDF versions, but also with webpage stories with unique URLs. It is common for newspapers to delete or overwrite pages, without editorial clarifications: either to defend their reputation, appease newsmakers, or to rectify technical errors. As a prominent example, in 2014, a number of outlets deleted their misrepresented stories on the Dil Shobha episode. If a future historian decides to study the case, she will have to rely on internet archives, such as the Wayback Machine. But even such memory projects do not maintain a complete record of online publications. Their robots crawl our websites only a few times a month whereas they scan news websites of major world publications several times a day.A change in domain name or the server also results in massive link rot. Leaving out metadata, such as date or authors name in an individual story or a caption on an image, is a big problem for researchers, aggregators and archivists who need to contextualize information specifically. For example,individual story pages almost always disappoint us: they usually come without dates, and even without the year. A story may be retrieved successfully, but it is arduous and even impossible to trace when it was published.A vast majority of less-known Nepali news outlets do not maintain any archive at all. For them, the Web appears to be a sand mandala: why work hard on retaining our impermanent imprints? Meanwhile, some well-known publications are actually upgrading their archives.KMG is working on a complete archive to include all editions of its outlets since their beginnings. It is going to take time; we are short of manpower and there are also technical issues, says Yangesh Raj, online coordinator at ekantipur.com. He believes missing stories or copies cost readers ease of access, and they also hurt the publications credibility.Easy access to useful and authentic information is a key concern to everyone, including the users. But the producers, aggregators, archivists and researchers face additional issues of appraising, processing and selecting information, acquiring it, organizing and storing, creating metadata and descriptions about the content itself, and making it accessible and usable for the users.That is a long list of tasks, especially for outlets that lack resources and the will to keep pace with ever-advancing technologies. And as Turin points out, the linguistic diversity of our press also poses an additional challenge in developing and maintaining strong digital archives. It would be tragic if the creativity expressed in Nepal's free media and news platforms were lost due to poor archiving standards, he observes. His advice: have a documentation officer on staff; ensure that you have more than one back up, in keeping with the LOCKS principle (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).While Turin emphasizes endurance, consistency and longevity of data, Kramer suggests effective website oversight: dont change links as often as done in the past; make sure that older links do not get broken or deleted; dont forget to upload PDF copies every now and then, as is the case with some outlets; improve search options of the archives. Unlike, according to Kramer, the e-paper version ofis extremely complicated to read, copy and download. He wonders why the publishers differentiate like that between these two newspapers.That is the type of question many other users are asking of news websites as their archives emerge as compelling sites of modern memories. And, lets not forget completeness, another key attribute of anyrecords.The following was published (26 January, 2016) witheditorial judgement:DHARMA ADHIKARIOnline archives of news outlets form a key part of what French sociologist Pierre Nora calls the "memoire prothese", artificial memory. It is a giddying array of data, stored and scattered across the internet.Compare this 'material' site of memory ("cloud" storage) to something etherealthe aakashik records of antiquity, a cosmic memory bank that recorded every moment of every being in existence. Our ancient sages in the Himalayas, as the myth goes, were able to access it whenever they liked.Accessing online archives of Nepali media outlets is something different. You are often greeted with the "link rot" message: Page Not Found. The Web is so humongous, ephemeral, and unreliable. And, just like journalism, it has an unconditional bias for the perpetual now. The past is something for historians.But historians are often more interested in a distant past than the more recent past. Without the journalists' complete "first draft", historians will be clueless. The issue of link rot, and the practice of deleting pages or overwriting trouble many academics, professionals and general users.Studies have shown that URL citations in scholarly papers often don't work for long. The average lifespan of a webpage is estimated to be around one to three months. Journalists themselves are afflicted. A mid-career journalist recently bemoaned that he should have saved copies of all his works. Many of his stories were once published online, but they are not there anymore.Karl-Heinz Kramer, professor at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg in Germany, has, since 1998, maintained one of the most comprehensive websites linking stories from Nepal: nepalresearch.com (alternatively .org). Link rot "is a big problem, indeed" he observes, "I invest a lot of time in updating my website. So I simply do not have the time to check for invalid links". Luckily, for him, he saves PDFs of articles, links and references in his hard disk, which is searchable.Mark Turin, Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program at the University of British Columbia, Canada and Director of the Digital Himalaya Project believes link rot is inevitable. "The key issue is that the content is stable, and findable, through search engines. Links can always be updated, but as long as the content can be located, how one gets there is secondary".For Kramer, linking sources online is useful; it is a lot faster than going trough print books or public libraries. And library catalogues in Nepal sometimes have gaping holes in their records of historical news. Turin notes the ease of access and democratic potentials of online archives. But users need internet connections, technical and language skills, or sometimes subscriptions to realize this potential, he observes.In spite of the hype that the Web offers everything instantly, online news archives of Nepali outlets are often poorly maintained, incomplete and inaccessible. Go search online for major stories published in our publications 10-15 years ago: there is little to be found.It's not clear how many issues of Gorkhapatra, the country's oldest newspaper, are online; the archive page offers the option of downloading a PDF copy, but the download time will test your patience. Its sister-publication, The Rising Nepal, maintains issues since June 2014, with copies missing in between.The Annapurna Post archive goes back to Sept 2014 and Rajdhani maintains e-copies since April 2014. The Himalayan Times archive includes the option to navigate though a wide range of years, and actual copies in PDF are available for the past week. Republica and Nagarik maintain archives since 2011, with a gap between 2009 and 2010.Digital-only outlets usually bury their content too deep, and search features are often disappointing. The online archives of broadcast media are patchy; many now upload selected clips on YouTube, but not consistently.Archival retention is an issue. Saving a copy every single day as Kramer does is a way to ensure that you have access to print content that matter to you. If newspapers cannot maintain a complete archive, then perhaps they may opt for a third-party host. The weekly Nepali Times, for example, maintains a complete archive of its copies, through the Digital Himalayan Project, headed by Turin.The problem of access is not just with the PDF versions, but also with webpage stories with unique URLs. It is common for newspapers to delete or overwrite pages, without editorial clarifications: either to defend their reputation, appease newsmakers, or to rectify technical errors. As a prominent example, in 2014, a number of outlets deleted their misrepresented stories on the Dil Shobha episode. If a future historian decides to study the case, she will have to rely on internet archives, such as the Wayback Machine. But even such memory projects do not maintain a complete record of online publications. Their robots crawl our websites only a few times a month whereas they scan news websites of major world publications several times a day.A change in domain name or the server also results in massive link rot. Leaving out metadata, such as date or author's name in an individual story or a caption on an image, is a big problem for researchers, aggregators and archivists who need to contextualize information specifically. For example, The Rising Nepal individual story pages almost always disappoint us: they usually come without dates, and even without the year. A story may be retrieved successfully, but it is arduous and even impossible to trace when it was published.A vast majority of less-known Nepali news outlets do not maintain any archive at all. For them, the Web appears to be a sand mandala: why work hard on retaining our impermanent imprints? Meanwhile, some well-known publications are actually upgrading their archives.Easy access to useful and authentic information is a key concern for everyone, including the users. But the producers, aggregators, archivists and researchers face additional issues of appraising, processing and selecting information, acquiring it, organizing and storing, creating metadata and descriptions about the content itself, and making it accessible and usable for the users.That is a long list of tasks, especially for outlets that lack resources and the will to keep pace with ever-advancing technologies. And as Turin points out, the linguistic diversity of our press also poses an additional challenge in developing and maintaining strong digital archives. "It would be tragic if the creativity expressed in Nepal's free media and news platforms were lost due to poor archiving standards", he observes. His advice: have a documentation officer on staff; ensure that you have more than one back up, in keeping with the LOCKS principle (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).While Turin emphasizes endurance, consistency and longevity of data, Kramer suggests effective website oversight: don't change links often; make sure older links do not get broken or deleted; don't forget to upload PDF copies every now and then, as is the case with some outlets; improve search options of the archives. Unlike Nagarik, according to Kramer, the e-paper version of Republica is hard to read, copy and download.That is the type of question many other users are asking of news websites as their archives emerge as compelling sites of modern memories. And, let's not forget completeness, another key attribute of any aakashik records. Published in, 26 January, 2016
A new study sheds light on why people with type 2 diabetes often have problems with their sense of smell.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institutet, Swede, found that damage to specific nerve cells may be behind the problem. The research could lead to preventive treatments for this and other neurodegenerative diseases in people with type 2 diabetes, such as Alzheimers disease, which is very strongly linked to type 2.

A weakened sense of smell is often an early symptom of neurodegenerative disease, and it is also common in people with type 2 diabetes. This suggests that a poor sense of smell could be connected to neurodegenerative disease, but until now nobody has known which nerve cells caused it.

In this study, the researchers found them: a group of nerve cells called interneurons. The altered interneurons are found in the piriform cortex of rats with type 2 diabetes, which is a part of the brain that is essential for identifying smells.

The researchers found that the alterations to the interneurons can be addressed through the anti-diabetic drugs GLP-1 agonists.

Neurodegenerative diseases are highly present within the type 2 diabetic population, said Grazyna Lietzau, one of the researchers behind this study. We believe that these findings could be important for the potential development of preventive pharmacological therapies against for example Alzheimers and Parkinsons in these patients.

The findings are published in Oncotarget.
A US court transcript has revealed sensitive information about a Google-Apple revenue sharing deal. According to Google, this number was supposed to kept under the wraps and may affect future business dealings.

According to a court transcript from Oracle Corporation's copyright lawsuit against Google, the latter has been paying Apple a fat sum of money to keep its search bar on the iPhones. The court script revealed that Apple received a payment of $1 billion from Google in 2014 and that Google also has an ongoing revenue sharing deal in place with Apple. On January 14, during a federal court hearing, an attorney for Oracle said that Google shares a part of its revenue generated from Apple devices with Apple itself. Oracle has been in an ongoing tussle with Google regarding the use of its Java software on the company's devices, without paying Oracle its fair share.

This revelation of a Google-Apple revenue sharing model goes directly against Apple CEO, Tim Cooks criticism of Googles ad-based business model. Although both Google and Apple have not commented on this development, a Google witness who was questioned in the case said that the revenue sharing deal between Apple and Google, at one time, stood around 34%. Google then requested the magistrate judge to redact this information from court transcripts as it may affect the companys future revenue sharing deals with players other than Apple.



"The specific financial terms of Google's agreement with Apple are highly sensitive to both Google and Apple...Both Apple and Google have always treated this information as extremely confidential," said Google in a filing made on January 20. Since then, the 34% number and the information about the revenue sharing deal has been removed from electronic transcript record of the court.



Earlier an Oracle lawyer had also leaked that Google has made only $31 billion in revenue from its Android platform till date. As the case progresses, we may be in for more such revelations by Oracle.



Source: NZherald
All Samsung Galaxy S7 variants are rumoured to use a black chassis and will be dust-proof and water-proof.

This weekend, a fresh rumours came to light when an Samsung employee allegedly passed on information regarding the upcoming Galaxy S7 lineup to Korean website Naver. According to the information, all Galaxy S7 smartphones are likely to sport black chassis to give the phone a premium look. The phone is rumoured to get a 12MP camera with f/1.7 aperture. The alleged employee also claimed that, the upcoming phones are dust and water-proof. All version are likely to contain dual-SIM slots and lastly, Samsung may bring back the microSD card slot.

According to rumours thus far, the Samsung Galaxy S7 lineup will have three phones, namely the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge and S7 Edge +. The phones will have different sizes with the Galaxy S7 likely to sport a 5.1-inch display and Galaxy S7 Edge featuring a 5.5-inch screen. All phones are expected to offer a 2K resolution display and are most likely to sport a Super AMOLED panel. There are also rumours that, Samsung may implement its version of 3D touch to the phone. It is still unclear whether this technology will make it into Android phones as currently none of the apps support native 3D touch gestures.

Furthermore, rumours suggest that the new Galaxy S7 phone range could be powered by a Samsungs Exynos 8890 SoC. A different report also suggested that Samsung might be working on Qualcomm powered Galaxy S7 phones. The report said that Samsung might announce three other variants of the phone powered by the Snapdragon 820 SoC. All phones are likely to offer 4GB of RAM and 32GB of base internal storage. Samsung is likely to continue that unibody design and might offer the S7 range in 64G and 128GB models as well.

As mentioned, the S7 phone range is likely to get a 12MP camera with a f/1.7 aperture. According to the alleged Samsung employee, Samsung will be marketing the phones camera with a slogan like On the night. The new camera is likely to employ dual-pixel autofocus, which camera makers like Canon use in their DSLR cameras. Other details regarding the upcoming phones are still not known.

Samsung is hosting an unpacked event on February 21 at the beginning of MWC 2016 and is likely to announce the new flagship there.
Longer-term Gilts underperformed their developed world peers by a slight margin in the latest week, with the yield on the Treasurys benchmark 10-year note rising by five basis points to 1.71% as risk appetite rebounded towards the end of last week.

On Friday, however, the yield on 10-year Gilts moved lower by two basis points to 1.69% after the latest reading on retail sales in the UK missed economists forecasts by a wide margin.

UK retail sales volumes fell by 1.0% month-on-month (consensus: -0.1%) in December and by an even sharper 1.4% when sales of petrol are excluded, the Office for National Statistics reported.

In a further boost for fixed income markets, George Osborne's fiscal plans got a shot in the arm after the ONS reported a substantial improvement in British public finances in December.

Out in the Eurozone, similarly-dated bunds saw their yields fall back by six basis points over the week.

Spanish yields also moved lower - albeit by less- retreating by two basis points to 1.73%.

Nevertheless, the spread between sovereign debt issued by Madrid and Rome narrowed to 109 basis points, well off the maximum of 122 evident on Thrusday.

Ten-year US Tresury notes also advanced, pushing the yield on 10-year debt to 2.04%, two basis points less than at the start of the week.

To take note of, according to Bloomberg data the odds of a Fed rate hike by the time of its April meeting had been pared down to just 25%.
Oil futures headed lower on Monday, after failing to sustain a jump to $33 per barrel in Asian trading.

In the absence of any notable economic data, Brent fell back down by 3.70% or $1.19 to $30.99 per barrel, while WTI fell 4.47% or $1.44 to $30.75 per barrel at 1728 GMT, over yet another volatile session following Friday's gains stateside and an early uptick over start to this weeks market proceedings in Singapore.

Simon Smith, chief economist at FXPro, said, Many are rushing to adjust upwards their forecasts for the price of oil especially since the commodity bear market has been ongoing for a year and a half now, in some cases longer if you consider some of the softs.

Despite this strong bounce we are still down around 15% on the year for crude prices so its too early to say the worst is over for the commodity complex.

Meanwhile, analysts at HSBC cut their forecasts for the average annual price of Brent in 2016 to $45 (from $60), to $60 (from $70) for 2017 and to $75 ($from $80) for 2018.

Elsewhere, headline base metal futures headed lower on the London Metal Exchange. At 1635 GMT, three-month delivery contracts of copper (down 1.1%), lead (down 1.4%), nickel (down 1.7%), tin (down 0.8%) and zinc (down 0.7%) were firmly in negative territory.

Meanwhile, precious metals climbed back above last Wednesdays highs on renewed safe haven demand. On the COMEX, the front-month gold futures contract posted an uptick of 1.07% or $11.70 to $1,108.00 an ounce, while spot gold was 0.82% or $8.97 higher at $1,106.92 an ounce.

COMEX silver rose 1.37% or 19 cents to $14.25 an ounce, while spot platinum rose 3.47% or $28.90 to $861.40 an ounce.

Liz Grant, senior account executive at Sucden Financial, said, Following the rollercoaster ride on the markets last week, the beginning of the new week was somewhat subdued. LME trading was very quiet with prices trading close to unchanged for much of the day and in thin conditions.

Gold continued to benefit from investor "safe haven" demand, moving back above $1,100 to $1,108 with resistance area above at 1110/15.

Finally, agricultural commodity futures were largely in negative territory. CBOT corn (down 0.14%), ICE cocoa (down 2.01%), cotton (down 1.25%) and CME live cattle (down 0.28%) headed lower in early trading calls stateside.
Crude oil futures weakened in afternoon trading following remarks from Saudi Aramco chairman Khalid al-Fatih that his country would maintain its investment plans.

Saudi Arabia, the worlds main producer of oil could sustain low prices for "a long, long time," al-Fatih told a conference in Riyadh, Bloomberg reported.

Earlier in the day, the Secretary General of the Organisation for the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Abdalla El-Badri, had called on producers from outside the group to assist in braking the glut of oil around the world.

Figures showing a 5.6% drop in Chinese diesel use in December and gasoline use at its lowest in two years were seen by some as adding to Mondays decline in prices.

As of 18:48GMT front month Brent crude futures were off by 4.1% to $30.92 per barrel on the ICE.
Syrian opposition parties repeated a call for a stop to bombardments against their forces in the country before any peace-talks could take place.

Talks to end the fighting in Syria would kick-off on Friday, United Nations envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said, according to Al-Jazeera.

The negotiations, which had been due to start on Monday, and were expected to last six months, would seek a nationwide ceasefire except against Daesh and al-Nusra front fighters.

Mistura said all parties - except for the two groups designated by the UN as terrorists - would be invited to participate in the ceasefire efforts, with the initial round of discussions expected to last between two to three weeks.

Earlier on Monday, Reuters said the Syrian High Negotiation Committee, the leading opposition coalition, had said it would not attend if it was not allowed to choose its delegates.

Russian officials and the current government in Damascus, under Bashar al-Assad, had called for certain groups - said to be Ahrar al-Sham (with ties to al-Nusra which is an Al-Qaeda affiliate and the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam) - which it labels as 'terrorists' to be excluded from the negotiations.

HNC spokesman Salim al-Muslat also asked that air strikes against those groups opposed to Bashar al-Assad and belonging to the opposition stop, as per the UN resolution approved on 18 December.

"We want to realize pure humanitarian matters. They are not preconditions. It is an international resolution at least part of which must be implemented, so we see there is seriousness and good will in this matter," al-Muslat said told Saudi-owned Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

The HNC was formed in Saudi Arabia in December.

Some reports alluded to worries that the push for cease-fire talks was cooling.

According to a report by Deutsche Welle, US Secretary of State John Kerry rejected statements from some figures within the opposition that Washington was 'leaning' on them to attend the talks.

"I don't know where this is coming from. Maybe it's a pressure thing or an internal political thing, but that is not the situation," he said.

Kerry reaffirmed the American stance that it was still squarely behind the opposition.

Nonetheless, Kerry warned all parties involved against taking up maximalist positions even before the talks had begun.

"They have to be serious," Kerry said during a visit to Laos, Deutsche Welle reported.

"If they are not serious, war will continue. Up to them - you can lead a horse to water; you can't make it drink."

"I told them you have a veto, and so does he and so you're going to have to decide how to move forward," he said, according to a report from Voice of America.
The FTSE 100 started the week in the red, with the blue chip market down 21.22 points (0.36%) to 5,878.79 by mid-afternoon Monday.

Shares in Kingfisher dropped after the B&Q owner announced a five-year transformation programme on Monday, saying it plans to deliver a 500m sustainable annual profit uplift by the end of the process. However it warned that profits were likely to take a take a 50m hit in the first year of the plan and a hit of between 70m and 100m in the second year.

The company said it also plans a capital return of 600m over the next three years  most likely via a share buyback  in addition to the annual ordinary dividend.

In a statement ahead of the groups capital markets day, chief executive officer Veronique Laury said we do acknowledge the challenges ahead, however having already made good progress since March last year, and with 80,000 committed colleagues, we feel confident about our plan and look forward to moving on to the first year of our transformation".

Bankers were also some of the biggest fallers after a report from Sky News on Saturday they are preparing to set aside billions of more pounds for provisions against the payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal.

Insiders from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK told the broadcaster that banks would reveal at least 5bn in fresh provisions alongside their full-year 2015 earnings. That would come on top of the 27bn already incurred in costs for PPI mis-selling. Sources also told Sky News the eventual tally for new provisions could be even higher than 5bn.

In the case of Lloyds, which took the biggest hit of the sector and had roughly half the market for PPI insurance, the new provisions could reach a further 2.5bn, on top of the 13.9bn already paid out, the report said.

Tesco also took a hit after Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Dennis said he believed the supermarket may get slapped with a fine of up to 500m by the Serious Fraud Office over its 326m accounting black hole.

He said the SFOs findings, possible fines and trading restrictions on Tesco are due to be announced this week. Dennis said the SFO could fine Tesco more than 1% of its UK grocery sales (350m+) and force the group to repay suppliers 100m of arbitrary unjustified cash payments over several years, as well as identify individuals for prosecution. We believe, this in turn could open the way for shareholder redress.

Meanwhile investors were impressed with Unilever, after the consumer goods group behind Persil and Magnum ice-creams said it will not scale back its UK operations if Britain votes to leave the EU. The comments from Paul Polman, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch business, were published in The Guardian on Monday and echo those of Akio Toyoda, his counterpart at Toyota, who said the Japanese carmaker would continue to produce cars in Derbyshire even if Britain left.

FTSE 100 - Risers

Glencore (GLEN) 81.93p 4.26%

ARM Holdings (ARM) 1,020.00p 2.46%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 4,639.00p 1.84%

Sage Group (SGE) 564.00p 1.71%

AstraZeneca (AZN) 4,432.50p 1.65%

Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 3,522.00p 1.65%

Fresnillo (FRES) 671.50p 1.51%

Anglo American (AAL) 229.60p 1.28%

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 1,405.50p 1.01%

Unilever (ULVR) 2,945.50p 0.91%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

Kingfisher (KGF) 324.30p -6.00%

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 64.18p -4.01%

Barclays (BARC) 184.15p -3.46%

Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 253.80p -3.17%

BT Group (BT.A) 471.85p -3.16%

Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 226.50p -2.41%

Tesco (TSCO) 157.00p -2.21%

Prudential (PRU) 1,296.00p -2.19%

BP (BP.) 345.65p -2.00%

Smiths Group (SMIN) 890.00p -1.98%
Resource stocks were in recovery mode on Monday led by Glencore , while a failure of oil futures to maintain their earlier bounce saw oil and gas midcaps head lower.

The FTSE 100 ended 0.39% or 23.01 points lower at 5,877.00, while the FTSE 250 closed 0.12% or 18.99 points higher at 16,146.98. In the absence of any notable economic data, Brent front-month oil futures contract was down 3.70% or $1.19 to $30.99 per barrel, while WTI fell 4.47% or $1.44 to $30.75 per barrel at 1728 GMT, over yet another volatile session following Friday's gains stateside and an early uptick over start to this weeks market proceedings in Singapore.

Elsewhere, headline base metal futures headed lower on the London Metal Exchange. At 1635 GMT, three-month delivery contracts of copper (down 1.1%), lead (down 1.4%), nickel (down 1.7%), tin (down 0.8%) and zinc (down 0.7%) were firmly in negative territory.

Meanwhile, precious metals climbed back above last Wednesdays highs on renewed safe haven demand. On the COMEX, the front-month gold futures contract posted an uptick of 1.07% or $11.70 to $1,108.00 an ounce, while spot gold was 0.82% or $8.97 higher at $1,106.92 an ounce.

COMEX silver rose 1.37% or 19 cents to $14.25 an ounce, while spot platinum rose 3.47% or $28.90 to $861.40 an ounce. Glencore (up 2.89%) brushed aside a lacklustre commodities market to lead the FTSE 100 higher.

However, oil and gas midcaps tumbled with Tullow Oil (down 5.07%), Weir Group (down 4.80%) and Amec Foster Wheeler (down 4.34%) among the biggest fallers on the FTSE 250. A notable exception was Ophir Energy (up 4.58%), as its shares rose upon signing a non-binding head of terms agreement with Schlumberger, which will receive a 40% interest in the companys Fortuna project in Equatorial Guinea.

Away from resource stocks, banks were among the biggest fallers after Sky News reported they are preparing to set aside billions of more pounds for provisions against the payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal.

Insiders from Barclays (down 4.67%), Lloyds Banking Group (down 5.56%), Royal Bank of Scotland (down 4.12%) and others told the broadcaster that banks would reveal at least 5bn in fresh provisions alongside their full-year 2015 earnings.

Elsewhere, retailer Kingfisher (down 6.12%) led the FTSE100 fallers as it said profits would take a 50m hit in the first year of its five-year transformation programme. Additionally, Tesco took a hit after Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Dennis said he believed the supermarket may get slapped with a fine of up to 500m by the Serious Fraud Office over its 326m accounting black hole.
The number of overseas shoppers using their smartphones to browse UK brands has soared over the last quarter.



New data from the British Retail Consortium and Google has revealed that UK beauty and apparel companies enjoyed the biggest rise in search volumes on mobile devices; with increases of 51% and 41% respectively between October and December 2015.

The statistics also show a decline in the use of tablets with search volumes having fallen by 12% and 21% for beauty and apparel respectively.

This was also the case for leisure-focused brands and department stores, which both saw a rise of 37% and 33% on smartphones but declines of 12% and 16% on tablets.

Christmas jumpers, Halloween costumes, wedding dresses and engagement rings were the most searched for items on retailers websites, while Halloween make-up and perfume topped the beauty list.

Spanish shoppers were found to be the most interested in buying from UK retailers with 62% having searched for UK businesses on mobile in October and December, followed by consumers in Hungary (57%) and Argentina (56%).

Helen Dickinson, chief executive, British Retail Consortium, said: The final quarter of the year was very much a digital one. The internet played a vital role in driving sales for UK retailers, and, as has been the case for some time now, mobile devices were key to this. Among the ever expanding range of mobile devices used by the internet-savvy overseas shopper, smartphones continue to be the most popular. This was particularly the case for shoppers in India, where we saw an impressive 39% increase in smartphone use to search for UK brands. Russia and Brazil likewise saw a significant bump in consumers shopping with their phones. All three markets saw a contrasting decline in the use of online tablets to search for UK goods.

Among growing markets like Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, UK retail searches from mobile phones similarly soared in December, with only Mexico showing an increase in consumers using their tablets to shop online for UK goods.

Martijn Bertisen, retail director, Google, said: In the UK, this Christmas was truly mobile. Over half of searches came from mobile devices during peak periods, and our retailers have felt the effects posting incredible mobile revenue growth this year. Outside the UK mobile is also playing an increasingly important role.

Across many Western countries we have seen high mobile growth, from mature nations such as the US and Germany, through to Hungary and Poland. However in Asian countries that growth has slowed. In 2014 we saw strong mobile growth from our Eastern neighbours  classically early mobile adopters  and we can see the impact of that now.

Analysis: Infrastucture key to cope with international influx

Dyn research also revealed that over half (56%) of UK shoppers believe that the key to improving the overall ecommerce experience is for brands to provide the same quality experience, on computers, on mobile and in the store, many large retail brands have clearly made huge advances in offering an improved shopping experience from smartphones and tablets, leading to increased time browsing and further sales.

Paul Heywood, Managing Director and VP of EMEA, Dyn, said: Its no surprise that consumers around the globe are increasingly turning to their mobile devices when browsing brands online. As mobile devices become further embedded in our lives, online shopping is quickly spreading from desktops to mobile-friendly websites and apps. But Dyn research has revealed that two thirds of Brits expect the same quality and speed of performance on mobile as on their computers. Therefore, given that the number of shoppers overseas are using their smartphones to browse UK brands is only increasing, delivering an excellent consumer experience online through mobile channels has never been more important.

There is a huge opportunity to tap into the mobile market. The demand is there and today, consumers want a trouble-free, efficient shopping and browsing experience: they expect to be able to make purchases or use services immediately and seamlessly, whether on a computer, on a mobile device or on-premises. Businesses must therefore ensure that their digital infrastructure is working properly, regardless of demand, geography or time.

In order to provide every customer across the globe with an exceptional customer experience in the increasingly digital market, businesses must ensure a well-executed technology strategy is in place to support the companys ability to monitor, control and optimise online infrastructure. Only then can they guarantee their online solutions will be consistently available, efficient, secure and reliable. Internet Performance Management is an essential consideration and must be a priority for those global businesses hoping to engage with consumers via mobile, both in the UK and abroad.
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.
Starbucks closing some Teavana bars

NEW YORK (AP)  Starbucks is retreating from Teavana tea bars that first opened in New York City a little more than two years ago and mimicked the coffee chain's namesake stores, except with tea.

The company says it will convert the three tea bars in New York City to Starbucks stores this spring and close another location in Beverly Hills. A fifth location in Seattle near its headquarters will remain open as a way to test new ideas. The more than 350 Teavana retail locations, which primarily sell packaged teas and appliances, will stay open as well.

Starbucks Corp. representative Chistina McPherson says the moves do not change the company's commitment to tea. She said the idea is to instead provide tea options through Starbucks stores, which have a bigger footprint.




Best in state: Gold award

Social, economic and sustainable design

Otak

Photo courtesy of Otak Otak provided construction management services for this stormwater detention vault in Redmonds Overlake Village neighborhood.

Project: Overlake Village south detention vault  integrated facilities

Client: City of Redmond

The Overlake Village neighborhood in Redmond is projected to grow into the central Puget Sound regions next urban center.

Overlake Village will include a mix of commercial, retail and residential uses. An East Link light rail station is slated to open there in 2023.

In the past, the area was developed at a lower density but with a high percentage of impervious surface area and little to no stormwater flow control or water quality treatment. In 2010, Otak completed a study for the city of Redmond laying out a plan to provide stormwater infrastructure to support the citys new vision for development.

Two years later, Otak was hired by the city to help with the development of the Overlake Village regional stormwater facilities plan, which presented in greater detail the flow control, runoff treatment and conveyance facilities needed to support full redevelopment of Overlake Village.

Otak developed a strategic implementation plan to balance the interconnected low-impact development elements, regional facilities, and parks and open spaces. This approach allowed the most cost-effective means of providing stormwater management.

An overarching objective was to provide the maximum benefit to the environment while also supporting a vibrant urban center.

Otak was also the prime consultant for the preparation of construction documents for the first two of three regional facilities proposed in the 2012 regional plan. One of these facilities, the station infiltration facility, is a 4.4-acre-foot infiltration facility that will be located beneath the access road at the future light rail station.

The second facility, the south detention vault, is a 20-acre-foot detention facility located at the downstream end of the watershed underneath the Sears parking lot, which will be converted to a city park as the village redevelops. Construction of this facility was completed last summer, and Otak, along with the city of Redmond staff, provided construction management services.

This project successfully constructed the largest stormwater detention vault in Washington within a highly urbanized neighborhood, requiring deep excavation near busy roadways and adjacent businesses. This regional stormwater facility has stimulated economic growth in the Overlake Village area with several redevelopment master plans being submitted before the final construction was completed.

The project shows how careful planning can create a win-win situation for developers, who can now maximize their site development potential and be assured that the stormwater from their sites is properly managed, and for the city, which wanted maximum environmental enhancement, economic growth and open space in an area that lacked all three.













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By PHUONG LE

Associated Press

SEATTLE  A proposed pipeline expansion project in Canada will put the fishing rights and cultural heritage of U.S. tribes at risk, a lawyer representing several Washington state tribes told Canadian energy regulators Friday.

Kinder Morgans Trans Mountain project would nearly triple pipeline capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of crude oil a day. It would carry oil from Albertas oil sands to the Vancouver area to be loaded on to barges and tankers for Asian and U.S. markets. The project would dramatically increase the number of oil tankers that ply Washington state waters.





. . .
A Polish man who had carried an air pistol in his luggage across Europe and brought it into Ireland appeared at Dundalk Court last Wednesday charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition.The defendant is Piotr Kazmierczak, College Heights, Hoeys Lane, Dundalk and the offence were said to have occurred on March 6 last year.

A Polish man who had carried an air pistol in his luggage across Europe and brought it into Ireland appeared at Dundalk Court last Wednesday charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition.The defendant is Piotr Kazmierczak, College Heights, Hoeys Lane, Dundalk and the offence were said to have occurred on March 6 last year.

Inspector Martin Beggy told the court that Gardai had gone to the defendants address and he had invited them in. This followed complaints by Mr Kazmierczak about problems with intoxication in the area.

He said that Gardai suspected the defendant may have had a firearm, an airsoft rifle and he surrendered it on the spot. The rifle had a dual marking of 17 and any weapon with a dual marking of more than one was considered a firearm in this country.

He had bought it in Poland and brought it through Poland, Germany and France and was of the opinion it was legal here, too. The inspector said the weapon had been examined and had been defined as a firearm under the law. It was capable of firing lead pellets.

A solicitor for defendant said that it was an air rifle, nothing more than that and this sort of weapon was freely available in Poland.

He had been stopped by police in France and they had examined it and let him go. His client had arrived in Ireland in 2005. His wife had passed away seven weeks ago and he was asking the judge to apply the Probation Offenders Act to the case.

Judge Flann Brennan found the facts proven and dismissed the charge. He ordered confiscation of the gun and ammunition.
LAST week Channel 4 in the UK screened a documentary on the secretive practice of Dogging - whereby strangers meet in known locations to engage in sex acts.

LAST week Channel 4 in the UK screened a documentary on the secretive practice of Dogging - whereby strangers meet in known locations to engage in sex acts.

And while there is no doubt the practice still takes place in the Dundalk area, it would appear that people engaged in dogging have left many of the well-known dogging spots behind.

According to internet website Swing4Ireland there were some 53 locations across Dundalk where the controversial activity are thought to take place.

Yet Doggers are operating and leaving messages for each other as recently as last week.

Locations such as the M1 crossover bridge at Hill of Rath; Rathescar Lake in Dunleer; the Ardee exit of the M1 (exit 16), and Faughart Graveyard were all noted as locations within the previous 12 months.

One poster writes: Got cancelled on tomorrow night, so now looking for a girl/girls to have some fun with. Tomorrow night, about ten pm at the lay by beside the M1 crossover bridge on the Hill of Rath.

Another homosexual man advertised to meet strangers in a local leisure centre, while another described a location in Omeath as a nice location and very gay friendly.

There would not appear to be any particular clear distinction between gay or straight dogging locations, but at other spots around the country it would appear that sites often start as straight sites, before being taken over by gay doggers.

One local man who spoke to the paper anonymously said that he believed that the phenomena had died down in recent years, mainly following a Prime Time investigation into the practice. The laneway between the Friary School and the Friary Field was a well known spot, and the area around the Newry Bridge. That area was the butt of a lot of jokes over the years.

From what I know, it doesnt go on to same extent it once did.

Speaking to the Dundalk Democrat, sexual health expert Dr Michael Byrne of University College Cork said that felt that it was not a phenomenon that was widespread.

Neither through my professional career as a GP or anecodotally in my private life have I encountered stories of dogging. Thats not to say it isnt going on though, but it is certainly not something that effects students here in Cork at least.

While some see it as simply fun between consenting adults, others see the phenomena as a depraved one, which turns local beauty spots into no go areas.

Sites that are used for dogging often become littered with used condoms and paraphenalia associated with the pastime.

According to the tabloids, the pursuit may be more common then previously thought, with a poll by the Irish Sun suggesting that as many as 14 per cent of people, or one in seven, had taken part at some stage in their life.

Louth Sexual Health Clinic (GUM) is open every Friday at Louth County Hospital and can be contacted on 086 8241847 .


Check out East Niagara Post videos on YouTube, Vine and Periscope.



Clint Eastwood was in a lot of movies, and many of them can be considered classics. But the most common formula for a Clint Eastwood classic includes Clint directing the movie as well as starring in it. By the time he got to The Outlaw Josey Wales , Eastwood already had a few directing hits to his credit such as Play Misty For Me and High Plains Drifter. Eastwoods unique and deliberate method for telling stories is what makes his movies stand out, and it is also what makes The Outlaw Josey Wales a classic.The Outlaw Josey Wales checks in at two hours and 15 minutes and has one Oscar nomination to its credit. Eastwood has this way of making every second of a two hour and 15 minute movie count, but he rarely gets involved in complex plotlines. The basic premise of The Outlaw Josey Wales is revenge, plain and simple. But the movie does such a great job at pumping up the anticipation of seeing that revenge that you can feel the exhale when the movie finally ends.One of the things I love about Clint Eastwood directed movies is how unpredictable they can be, but how nonchalant he is about their unpredictability. We actually care when two ranch hands are kidnapped by a Native American tribe, and Eastwood ratchets up the emotion for these two ranchers at a couple of points in the movie. But when the rescue of these two ranchers turns out to be anti-climatic, we feel almost let down.Clint Eastwood has this way of making us feel bad for expecting the unexpected in his movies. We probably should not have expected those ranchers to be killed, but we did. When it turns out that the ranchers are fine, Eastwood slaps us in the face for expecting the worst. He does that over and over again in this movie, which is one of the things that makes this movie emotionally exhausting.As a movie fan, I always appreciate the performance of Clint Eastwood in a western. Eastwood created the cool and calm Wild West character, and he could make that character a bad guy or good guy, depending on the needs of the movie. Eastwood can also have his main characters walk that line between bad and good, and force us to make the decision for ourselves. That is exactly what he does in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and I always fancied Josey Wales as a good guy, but I can understand the argument that paints Wales as a horrible and conceited person.Each character in The Outlaw Josey Wales has a purpose in telling the story, and I always liked the idea that Clint Eastwood does not bring in characters for one-liners or shallow plot devices. If a character has a line in a Clint Eastwood movie, then that line means something. Everyone from the granny who runs the ferry service to the carpetbagging salesman matter in this movie, and that helps to give the movie a ton of substance.The script for The Outlaw Josey Wales is well done and moves along at an excellent pace. Each scene builds on the previous scene so well that the only comparison I can really make is to a Quentin Tarantino movie. Despite The Outlaw Josey Wales being two hours and 15 minutes, it needs every second to tell the story right. Everything we see we need to see in order to understand the ending. But, as with every Clint Eastwood movie, the end focuses only on the main character, and several minor plotlines are left unfinished. But we really dont care because we get what we need from those plotlines in terms of finding out what happens to Josey Wales.Clint Eastwood is an iconic actor, but he is also one of the finest directors Hollywood has ever seen. The Outlaw Josey Wales may not get mentioned with some of his great films like The Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, but it deserves to be recognized for the work of art that it really is.3  out of 5


Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Political Suicide by by DonkeyHotey

First, just a reminder that Rachel Maddow will be broadcasting from a townhall meeting shes holding in Flint on Wednesday evening. Watch the video announcement here:

The Rachel Maddow Show heads to Flint! Wednesday 1/27 at 9pm ET! https://t.co/TAhlCLYdjP  Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 23, 2016

Guests will include Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Lanice Lawson creator of Bottles for Babies, Curt Guyette of ACLU in Michigan, Bryn Mickle and Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal, Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press and many others. NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk will contribute to the coverage. Anne and I have secured press passes and will be there to cover it for Eclectablog.

Also, in case you missed it, Anne and I went to Flint on Saturday. Our photojournal and essay about what we found can be seen HERE.

Now, on with the news!

Jeb! Bush blames the Flint water crisis on  you guessed it, too much regulation

On Sunday, Jeb! Bush was interviewed by Martha Raddatz on ABCs This Week program. When asked about the human-caused catastrophe, Jeb! blamed it on our complex, no-responsibility regulatory system:

During an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABCs This Week program Sunday, Jan. 24, Bush called the water concerns a tragedy and what we need to have it a 21st century set of rules, according to a show transcript. It is horrific and it is related to the fact that weve created this complex, no-responsibility regulatory system, where the federal government, the state government, a regional government, local and county governments are all pointing fingers at one another, he said. Several people have called for Snyders resignation over the water woes in Flint, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, while Hillary Clinton has called the situation unconscionable. When asked if Snyder had any responsibility over the issue, Bush said Well, hes taken  hes taken responsibility. And I admire that. Hes not saying that its someone elses fault. Hes rolling up his sleeves and trying to  trying to deal with this.

Say what you will about what has transpired in Flint, too much regulation is not the issue. Public officials in the Snyder administration being over their heads and in positions they are not qualified, certainly played the biggest role. If Dan Wyant couldnt properly adhere to federal Clean Water Act and Lead and Copper Rule regulations, he never should have been appointed to head the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. If this debacle was related to an overly-complicated regulatory environment, wed be seeing this problem across the country which, of course, we are not. Thankfully.

This BS reminds me of The West Wing episode when Republican candidate for president Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda) was asked in a debate about debt relief for impoverished countries. Senator, are you saying youre opposed to debt relief for impoverished countries? Vinick is asked by the moderator.

No, he replied. We should forgive the debts but its not going to help thats not going to help those countries very much.

When hes asked what will help them, his answer is, Tax cuts.

They really only have a small handful of responses when things go wrong and one of them is over-regulation!

Decision to move to the Karegnondi Water Authority may not have been cost-saving

Motor City Muckraker has uncovered an email that suggests the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) wasnt actually trying fleece Flint over supplying the city water. The decision to join the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) rather than remaining on the DWSD system was made by then-Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz on April 16, 2013. Just the day before, DWSD head Sue McCormick sent an email to attorney Jim Fausone saying that Flint could save money by staying with the DWSD because they were lowering their prices. Heres a copy of the email he uncovered:

According to McCormick, Flint would actually have saved nearly a billion dollars over the following 30 years, a 20% savings over the anticipated KWA costs. In other words, the Emergency Manager chose to make the move for reasons other than cost savings. What those reasons were is a matter of speculation. Motor City Muckraker reporter Steve Neavling suggests that it may have been part of a plan to break up the DWSD and then to privatize it. Ypsilanti blogger Mark Maynard has suggested that it may have been an effort to provide water for water-intensive fracking operations. Stay tuned on this shocking twist to this story.

Snyder administration officials were against use of Flint River before they were for it

In related news, rock star ACLU investigative journalist Curt Guyette has revealed emails showing that officials in the Snyder administration originally rejected the use of the Flint River to supply drinking water to the city, a move that led to the poisoning of their drinking water:

[Flint chief financial officer Jerry] Ambrose testified under oath that emergency manager [Ed] Kurtz considered a proposal to use the Flint River, discussed the option with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and then rejected it. In a civil deposition not reported until now, In 2014, Ambrose was deposed in a civil lawsuit brought by retired Flint municipal workers against the state over severe cuts to their health care benefits. Attorney Alec Gibbs questioned Ambrose about the water decision (a year before Flint learned it was being poisoned). There was brief evaluation of whether the city would be better off to simply use the Flint River as its primary source of water over the long term, Ambrose said. That was determined not to be feasible. Who determined it wasnt feasible? Gibbs asked. It was a collective decision of the emergency management team based on conversations with the MDEQ that indicated they would not be supportive of the use of the Flint River on a long-term basis as a primary source of water, Ambrose answered. What was the reason they gave? Gibbs asked. Youll have to ask them, Ambrose said.

Again, this conflicts with the spin being put out by Gov. Snyder and his defenders that this was the plan all along. Clearly it was not.

UPDATE: As Vann R Newkirk II points out at Daily Kos, this discussion was about the use of the Flint River as a permanent source, not an interim, temporary source of water.

Attorney General Bill Schuette appoints two independent investigators

After Flint residents should not be charged for water they cant use, Michigan Attorney General has responded to calls that he appoint an outside investigator to investigate the cause of Flints water problems. Over the weekend he did just that:

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced Monday he has named Royal Oak attorney Todd Flood as a special outside counsel in his offices investigation of the lead contamination of Flint drinking water, and Flood will be assisted by Andrew Arena, the former FBI director in Detroit. Schuette said in a news release he appointed a special counsel from outside his office to avoid potential conflicts of interest, since his office is also charged with defending the state and state officials in connection with civil lawsuits filed over the lead contamination. We will do our job thoroughly and let the chips fall where they may, Schuette said in a news release. This investigation is about beginning the road back to rebuild, regain and restore trust in government.

Not everyone thinks these men are quite so independent, however. Brandon Dillon, Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, released a statement calling their independence into question:

Incomprehensible is the only way to describe the hiring of these two by the Attorney General to assist in what should be a fair and impartial investigation into the poisoning of thousands of children. The people of Flint deserve a truly independent investigation, not one spearheaded by a major Republican donor that has given thousands of dollars to Governor Snyder and has business entanglements that could present serious conflicts of interest.

In a related development, State Representative LaTanya Garrett of Detroit has filed a petitionary letter with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to remove Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and his team from the Flint water crisis investigation. Citing major conflicts of interest, the letter detailed the representatives concerns about Schuettes ability to remain impartial during the investigation, given his party affiliation. The potential implications for his own position within the government would be unclear, if evidence is uncovered linking Gov. Rick Snyder or other top-ranking Michigan officials to negligent or criminal behavior, she said in a statement. The people of Flint require a clear, fair and impartial investigation, Rep. Garrett said in her letter. Due to Schuettes failure to launch a timely investigation upon the initial request of the Flint delegation of legislators, I am not confident that he can serve in the best interest of the Flint citizens.

Attorney General Schuette is scheduled to give an update on the status of his investigation during a press conference sometime today.

Genesee County Volunteer Militia getting involved in protests over lead-tainted water

Just when you thought things couldnt get worse in the Flint water crisis, an armed militia, the Genesee County Volunteer Militia, has decided to get involved:

Flint may have seen multiple rallies in recent weeks that called attention to the citys water crisis  but few if any were as surprising as a rally held by the Genesee County Volunteer Militia. On Sunday afternoon, about 30 militia supporters clad in camouflage gear and bearing Dont Tread on Me flags, gathered outside of City Hall to demand accountability amid a national discussion over how the citys water supply became contaminated. Were here to defend this community, said Matthew Krol, the militias executive officer, addressing the crowd in a full camouflage outfit with a handgun strapped to his hip. Were not going to allow (the government) to step on the people of Flint any longer. He added: If it means having to take up arms in defense  we will do that as well.

Yeah, thatll surely help. I mean, what could go wrong? Who, exactly, do they thinks needs to be shot, I wonder?

Flint business ready to help recycle all those plastic water bottles

One thing that has gotten scant attention in the entire Flint situation is the insane amount of plastic PET water bottles that are being sent into the city every day. Mark Wahlberg, Sean Diddy Combs, Eminem, Cher, and Jimmy Fallon are just some of the celebrities sending water which adds to the water being supplied by the state of Michigan.

One National Guardsman told Anne and I that they had distributed water to around 13,000 people on Friday. At Fire Station #6, we were told they were giving out roughly 80 pallets of water a day. A pallet typically contains 1,728 bottles of water and a case typically contains 24 bottles. If every person got a case of bottled water, just those two sources alone adds up to roughly a half-million plastic bottles to be disposed of each day.

A Flint business person wants to help:

With thousands of plastic water bottles being used as donations come in for city residents, one Flint business is offering a free option to help dispose of the materials. Wondering what to do with all your plastic bottles Flint, Michigan? reads a message on Youngs Environmentals Facebook page. The waste management business will have a roll-out box starting at 9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 25 in front of their corporate headquarters at 5305 N. Dort Highway, between Carpenter and Coldwater roads.

According to their post, they are working on getting more drop off locations setup throughout our city and will do our best to keep everyone updated!

Thats making lemonade of out lead-tainted water if I ever saw it.
California State AssemblymanJim Cooper last week introduced a bill seeking to ban the sale of smartphones that include unbreakable encryption.

The bill would require smartphones made on or after Jan. 1, 2017, and sold in California to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by their manufacturers or OS providers.

Knowingly failing to comply would subject a seller or lessor  meaning a carrier or other company such as Walmart, which supplies smartphones to end users  to a fine of $2,500 for each device sold or leased.

The seller or lessor would not be able to pass on any portion of the penalty to purchasers.

The bill would authorize only the California attorney general or a district attorney to bring a civil suit to enforce these provisions.

The legislation fails to recognize the broad, tangible benefits of encryption, and rather than making anyone safer, will only succeed in making most smartphone owners more vulnerable while doing nothing to limit the ability of criminals to operate outside the purview of law enforcement, Amie Stepanovich, U.S. policy manager atAccess Now, told TechNewsWorld.

Protecting Children

The bill would help fight human traffickers, who use smartphones as a tool, argued Cooper, a former sheriffs captain.

There are many convincing emotional appeals that can be made to justify enabling violations of peoples Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches, said John Gunn, VP of communications atVasco Data Security.

This is just one more, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Law Enforcement Efforts

The California bill and another in New York State reflect sentiment among law enforcement for such a move.

Last year, theInternational Association of Chiefs of Police and theNational District Attorneys Association held a summit on what they called Going Dark  the inability of law enforcement to address the problem encrypted communications pose to public safety.

The organizations want to ensure that its possible to collect evidence by court order, not expand governments surveillance authority, according to a report on the summit.

The report includes the following recommendations:

Provide guidance and recommended strategies to address the issue of Going Dark;

Create an electronic data and privacy policy framework;

Prepare an analysis of current legislation that relates to evidentiary collection of electronic data;

Work with domestic and international partners to continue dialogue about the effects; and

Focus on educating congressional and other policy leaders on the issue.

Senior federal officials met with Silicon Valley executives recently in whats been viewed as a bid to get high-tech firms to cooperate with government requests for data and, possibly, introduce encryption backdoors.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has rejectedcalls to weaken encryption, sparking a rejoinder from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that decision-making on encryption policy is Congress call. AT&T cooperated with the Bush administration in turning over details of calls made on its networks.

The Downside of Coopers Bill

The encryption genie is out of the bottle, and recent proposals to outlaw it wont stop criminals, said Dwayne Melancon, CTO ofTripwire.

Encryption protects electronic financial transactions, private Internet communication, and much of our national critical infrastructure, he told TechNewsWorld.

It is a fundamental requirement in a wide range of government regulations designed to protect sensitive data from hackers, nation-state attackers and others with malicious intentions, Melancon continued. Anything we do to restrict or weaken [it] would weaken the mechanisms we use to secure the Internet.

The Cooper bill will not remove readily available applications that do strong encryption, Christian Lees, CISO atInfoArmor, pointed out.

It would likely also drive government organizations to embrace secondary applications that support strong encryption, he told the E-Commerce Times.
Theres been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the Sisyphean task of protecting privacy in the Digital Age, but that hasnt stopped innovators from searching for ways to preserve it. One of the latest ideas to emerge in the field is Privacy as a Service.

As with many emerging technologies, the definition of PaaS (which undoubtedly will be confused with Platform as a Service) is in flux.

TheDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency sees PaaS as a way to share data safely while preserving privacy. To that end, DARPA has launched its Brandeis program, which aims to develop tools and techniques for building systems that limit the use of private data for an intended purpose and no other.

Currently, most consumers do not have effective mechanisms to protect their own data, and the people with whom we share data are often not effective at providing adequate protection, DARPA Program Manager John Launchbury said.

The goal of the Brandeis program is to break the tension between maintaining privacy and being able to tap into the huge value of data, he continued. Rather than having to balance these public goods, Brandeis aims to build a third option, enabling safe and predictable sharing of data while reliably preserving privacy.

Owner Determines Use

For example, DARPA last month awarded a US$6.3 million contract toGalois for development of the companys Jana program as a PaaS pilot.

Jana is a multidisciplinary collaboration among Galois, the University of Bristol, Rutgers University and George Mason University that aims to provide a practical implementation of private data as a service, which would allow data to be protected against misuse while retaining its utility to analysts, the company said.

Contributed data always is encrypted, even before it leaves its owners possession, Galois said. Query results are limited by how much data the owner is willing to reveal, to whom and when.

Dispel, which recently emerged from stealth mode, has another view of PaaS.

Metadata Vulnerable

One of the barriers to good privacy is the use of static infrastructure to protect data, according to Dispel CEO Ethan Schmertzler.

Even when data traveling on a network is encrypted, its metadata  data that identifies characteristics about the encrypted data  is not. That, combined with the fact that the datas entrance and exit points can be predicted in a static infrastructure, puts the privacy of the datas owner at risk.

If you have enough metadata, you dont need the content of whats sent, Schmertzler told TechNewsWorld.

Metadata protection is something that really hasnt been able to be produced. VPNs [virtual private networks] dont protect you because someone can watch the entry points and exit points because theyre static, fixed targets, he said.

Tor is no better because youre handing your information, along with your metadata, off to strangers, most of whom at this point are government agencies or bad actors, Schmertzler added.

Hiding in Plain Sight

What Dispel does is make it difficult for an attacker to capture metadata at the entrance and exit points of a transmission. Without both sets of metadata, compromising a data owners privacy becomes very challenging.

We let people hide in plain sight, Schmertzler said.

Dispel does that by building an ephemeral network. It dynamically sets ups virtual machines with cloud providers around the world. Because those machines are changing constantly, it prevents attackers from identifying where people are coming in and out of Dispels network.

As a result, we protect metadata  and we also have two layers of encryption on top of that to keep all the data secure, Schmertzler added.

In addition to its invisible connections product, Dispel also offers invisible computers to its customers.

Those computers are virtual desktops running on Dispels infrastructure. Theyre completely sandboxed so malware can never touch a users computer, and theyre easily accessible through the Chrome or Firefox Web browsers.

What the invisible computers achieve for you is virtual air-gap computing, Schmertzler said, so you can do your work on them through your browser and when youre done, we destroy the infrastructure so theres nothing left behind.

Enterprise Appeal

While DARPA sees Privacy as a Service as a technology for everyone, Dispels model may gain the most traction in the immediate future.

I am not sure my crystal ball is any clearer than that of anyone else. However, I suspect Privacy as a Service will appeal mostly to business users, primarily small to medium-size businesses who have a need for privacy  insurance agents, investment professionals, accounting firms, income tax preparers, lawyers, some medical professionals and more, saidPrivacy Blog author Dick Eastman.

Larger corporations that have their own IT department will invent their own solutions, he told TechNewsWorld.

Private individuals also have a need for privacy services, but most of them dont realize that yet, Eastman continued.

As privacy issues grow and the popular media publishes more and more stories about privacy and especially about privacy breaches, they will eventually realize the need, he said. But that wont happen this year.

PrivaTegritys Compromise

Online anonymity pioneerDavid Chaum last week aired an intriguing compromise to the impasse between strong encryption advocates and law enforcement at the Real World Crypto Conference at Stanford University.

Not only does the scheme call for an elaborate workflow for scrambling data, it also includes a way to crack the systems encryption to fight evildoers.

The system called PrivaTegrity is built on nine servers located around the world.

When PrivaTegrity is installed on an endpoint, the app establishes a series of keys with each server. The keys are used to encrypt the messages the device sends.

Encrypted messages are sent to all nine servers. As a server receives them, it divides out its secret key and multiplies the data by a random number.

After that, the messages are sent through the servers a second time. This time theyre mixed together in batches, the order of the messages in the batches is randomized, and then the messages are multiplied by another random number.

Then the messages are passed through the server network once again, the random numbers are divided out and replaced with keys unique to the recipient of a message, who uses them to decrypt the message.

Everyone Not Happy

While PrivaTegrity goes to great lengths to protect data passing through it, it also includes a way to decrypt that data without its owners permission.

Such a move, though, would require the cooperation of all nine server administrators. Its like a backdoor with nine different padlocks on it, Chaum told Wired magazine.

The inclusion of a backdoor of any kind isnt likely to win favor with the advocates of strong encryption, and the need to receive approval from nine authorities in various parts of the globe to access that backdoor isnt likely to win rave notices from law enforcement either. (The FBI, through spokesperson Chris Allen, declined to comment on Chaums proposal for this column.)

When Chaum says this is going to end the crypto wars, its like ending it with a total victory for one side, said Yorgen Edholm, CEO ofAccellion.

This scheme would make it much harder for even the NSA to crack information, he told TechNewsWorld.

This doesnt solve the problem people would like it to solve, Edholm added. Its not going to make the good guys happy and the bad guys unhappy. Its a total win for the privacy people, and law enforcement will be unhappy.

Breach Diary

Jan. 4. Law firm Mintz Levin reports a Massachusetts Superior Court judge has allowed patients to sue a medical center for money damages based solely on exposure of health information in a data breach.

Jan. 5. The Federal Trade Commission announces that Henry Schein Practice Solutions will pay $250,000 to settle FTC charges that it falsely advertised the strength of encryption it uses to protect patient data.

Jan. 4. The Dutch executive cabinet issues a strong statement against weakening encryption to aid law enforcement and intelligence agency investigations.

Jan. 5. The Regional Income Tax Agency of Ohio reveals that personal information of as many as 50,000 people in Ohio is at risk after discovering that a DVD containing municipal tax documents filed on or before 2012 was missing.

Jan. 5. Cloud hosting service Linode resets all customer passwords after discovering unauthorized logins on three accounts. The service has been under constant DDoS attack since Dec. 24.

Jan. 5. Canadian Rear Adm. John Newton says an incident in which a civilian employee uploaded more than 1,000 secret documents to an unclassified network does not pose a threat to military intelligence.

Jan. 5. A new administrative staff is appointed at Hellgate High School in Missoula, Montana, after email containing sensitive academic, medical, disciplinary and criminal information about hundreds of students accidentally was sent to 28 parents.

Jan. 6. Uber Technologies agrees to pay $20,000 and adopt tougher controls on how it handles sensitive data to settle an investigation of its privacy practices by the New York attorney general. The probe was launched after Uber reported a 2014 data breach that exposed data on 50,000 of its drivers.

Jan. 7. Time Warner Cable reports as many as 320,000 of its customers may have had their email and passwords stolen. The company says its systems werent breached and that information was gathered from customers themselves or third parties storing Time Warner data.

Jan. 7. Etihad Airways announces its investigating a reported data breach of its systems in which the personal information of 7,000 customers was stolen.

Jan. 7. iSight Partners, a threat intelligence company, claims Russian hacking group Sandworm was behind a cyberattack in Ukraine in December that cut off power to 80,000 electric customers for six hours.

Jan. 8. Finland announces it will extradite to the United States Maxim Senakh, a Russian citizen who is accused in Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars.

Upcoming Security Events
The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Monday pressed to revive a lawsuit against Cisco Systems for violating human rights in China, in a brief filed with a U.S. Court of Appeals.

Members of Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, originally filed the lawsuit in 2011, but a federal district court in California dismissed it in 2014. The federal appeals court now is considering a challenge to that dismissal.

We applaud the role technology companies play in spreading the benefits of the digital age around the world, the EFF wrote in an amicus brief filed with the appellate court.

We believe it is inappropriate to hold technology companies liable for violations of international law under the [Alien Tort Act] based solely on their provision of general-purpose or dual purpose technologies to governments or others who misuse them to commit human rights violations, the brief states.

The Alien Tort Act allows noncitizens to file lawsuits in U.S. courts for human rights violations.

However, it is also important to ensure that liability is preserved for companies that intentionally build and provide ongoing support for customized technologies that have the clear purpose of facilitating governmental human rights abuses, the brief continues.

Ciscos Complicity

Plaintiffs have presented allegations and evidence in this case that, if substantiated through discovery, would be sufficient to support such liability for Ciscos customization of the Golden Shield (also known as The Great Firewall), the EFF brief notes.

In dismissing the case against Cisco, the federal district court judge said that the Falun Gong victims didnt offer enough support for their claim that Cisco knew the customized features of the Golden Shield, which enabled the identification and apprehension of Falun Gong practitioners, would lead to their torture.

The EFF disputes the courts finding.

Were saying the district court is wrong, because there are allegations in the complaint that Cisco designed and customized its product with the knowledge it would be used for human rights abuses, said Sophia Cope, an EFF staff attorney.

Once Cisco got the contract to work on Golden Shield, they customized features of it to target the Falun Gong specifically, she told TechNewsWorld. We think the facts show that Cisco fully understood, intended and purposely built the Golden Shield to facilitate in the persecution of Falun Gong.

Cisco Did No Wrong

Throughout the proceedings, Cisco has denied any wrongdoing.

We have always maintained that there is no basis for the allegations against Cisco, and there is no merit to the case. We do not customize our products in any way that would facilitate censorship or repression. The case was correctly dismissed by the District Court, the company said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Robyn Blum.

Cisco isnt the only U.S. high-tech company accused of helping authoritarian states violate human rights in recent times. Blue Coat, for example, allegedly supplied Web-monitoring software used to squash dissent in Syria.

As it turned out, two individuals and three companies illegally sold Blue Coat products to Syria. The U.S. Commerce Department last year yanked the export licenses of all of those parties.

Chilling Effect

It would be unfortunate to go after a technology provider for the use of their equipment, said Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT Harvest. Its like going after a gun manufacturer when their guns are used to harm people.

The Cisco cases validity rests on how much the company knew when working with the Chinese on the Golden Shield.

To me, it hinges on how complicit was Cisco in helping to design and configure The Great Firewall, Stiennon told TechNewsWorld.

No companys management should do evil or allow evil to be done with their products, he said, but this could have a chilling effect on manufacturers selling to less than lily-white countries.
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(Honda)

Honda has released pricing information and the release date for the upcoming fuel cell vehicle.

The 2016 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell sedan will be initially launched in California before the end of 2016. It will be priced at about $60,000 and offered with a targeted monthly lease of about $500.

According to Autoblog, the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell is priced competitively with its competitors. The Toyota Mirai is priced at $57,500 with a monthly lease of $500 a month. The hydrogen-powered Hyundai Tucson will also be available to lease monthly for $500.

Like Toyota and Hyundai's hydrogen-powered vehicles, it is also likely that the Honda Clarity FCV will be offered with free hydrogen fuel.

Honda also revealed that initial deliveries of the Clarity Fuel Cell sedan will be coursed through certified dealers in the following areas - Los Angeles, the Orange Counties, the San Francisco Bay Area and in Sacramento.

The 2016 Honda Clarity sedan comes with a fuel cell stack that is 33 percent more compact and 60 percent more dense than the outgoing Honda FCX Clarity. The fuel cell stack is fitted under the hood, providing its five passengers with spacious interiors.

According to Honda, the Clarity Fuel Cell is estimated to produce up to 300 miles of driving range. Refueling time is also quick as it takes only three to five minutes.

In terms of design, the sedan has a low and wide stance with an aerodynamic design and clear character lines. It comes standard with LED exterior lighting and 18-inch aluminum alloy wheels. The cabin boasts of a refined and harmonious design. Interiors are also luxe with the use of rich materials.

The environmentally-conscious sedan has been equipped with Honda's Sensing Suite of safety and driver assistive technologies. The sedan also comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

The 2016 Honda Fuel Cell sedan is set to be released by late 2016. In 2018, Honda is also set to release a plug-in hybrid based on the Clarify Fuel Cell platform.
(Photo: REUTERS / Thomas Mukoya)A riot policeman stands guard outside the main gate of the National Assembly in Kenya's capital Nairobi, December 18, 2014. Kenya's parliament approved new anti-terrorism laws in the face of vocal protests by some opposition lawmakers who said the measures threatened civil liberties and free speech, legislators said

Leaders from Kenya's Anglican and Catholic churches along with other Christian leaders are backing the government in its attempt to create a new law to help fight terrorism.

The Security Laws (Amendments) Bill 2014 passed a second reading in Kenya's parliament, with a 96-45 vote, World Magazine reported on December 15.

But some Kenyan lawmakers exchanged blows and the deputy speaker had water thrown on her during a rowdy parliamentary session which approved changes to the tough new security bill, the BBC reported on December 18.

Members of parliament from opposition parties shouted and tore copies of the bill, shouting that Kenya is becoming a "police state."

Four lawmakers were assaulted and another two fought with their fists.

Parliamentary officials adjourned the debate twice, before the controversial changes were pushed through.

The Kenyan government says it needs more powers to fight extremist Islamists threatening the country's security who are using terror to fight their cause.

Al-Shabab, a terror group linked with al-Qaeda, has escalated a military campaign in Kenya.

It has killed 64 people in two brutal attacks in the north-eastern Mandera region since the end of November. In both incidents, non-Muslims were killed after being separated from Muslims.

Supporters say the bill seeks to improve the capacity of security services to fight terrorism, but critics say it will roll back important fundamental rights.

Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of the Anglican Church of Kenya and Cardinal John Njue of the Roman Catholic Church told journalists before the vote the laws are necessary to stop runaway insecurity.

"This situation regrettably leads us to conclude these attacks, perpetuated by people claiming to be al-Shabab, are taking a religious angle," Archbishop Wabukala said at the news conference

Church leaders said on December 10 that attacks the al-Shabab extremists from Somalia in Kenya are progressively aimed directly at Christians, including targeted executions of non-Muslims.

Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and evangelical African Inland Church leaders have noted that Kenya has had more than 20 attacks this year, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people, leaving many more injured.

The attacks at first targeted Christian places of worship, but now single out Christians in public transportation and workplaces, the church leaders said.

They said Muslims must redouble efforts to preach religious tolerance and end youth radicalization.

"They must move beyond merely condemning the attacks to initiating practical steps to reach out at the sympathizers of terror and help us build bridges between faiths and communities," said Wabukala.

Cardinal Njue said that although recent executions displayed religious patterns, Kenyans should avoid statements that further divide the country along religious lines.

Of Kenya's 45 million people about 82 percent are Christians and about 11 percent, who mainly live along the Indian Ocean coast are Muslims.
(Photo: REUTERS / Joseph Okanga)Plainclothes and uniformed Kenyan police men inspect the scene of an attack by gunmen on worshipers attending a church service at the coastal town of Mombasa, March 23, 2014. Two gunmen stormed a church near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa on Sunday and opened fire on worshipers, killing four people and wounding others, in what police called a terrorist attack

Kenyans have begun a social media campaign to raise funds for the family of a Muslim teacher who died protecting Christians during an attack in the country,.

People are hailing Salah Farah as a "genuine hero" and a symbol of the country after refusing to be separated from Christian passengers during an al-Shabab attack on a bus traveling from Mandera to Nairobi last month.

He succumbed to his wounds on Jan.23, leaving behind four young children aged between two and 10, and a pregnant wife A

Al Shabab is a jihadist terrorist group based in East Africa that in 2012 pledged allegiance to the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda.

After Salah's death, an online campaign was started to raise funds for the teacher's family.

"Salah is a hero," Abdullahi Derow, the 26-year-old activist who started the #HeroSalah Twitter campaign, told Al Jazeera.

"He was the only male child in his family, his father is now very old and his kids are very small," Nairobi-based Derow, who is also from Mandera, said.

"I tried to think about how we can do this for the family, as Kenyans, at least to appreciate what he has done not only for Kenyans but for humanity," explained Derow.

Derow got the approval of Farah's cousin Rashid, and now guardian to his children, before launching the campaign.

"The children need a shelter, they need education, they need to be cared," Rashid told Al Jazeera. "The father and mother are the same".

He noted, "Salah was well respected, a religious man, who had just been promoted to deputy headmaster of a big primary school - he was having a lot of respect in the village."

The campaign had raised more than 150 000 Kenyan shillings ($1 460) mainly through the M-pesa money transfer service, with donations ranging from $200 - sent by a female university professor in Canada - to just a few shillings.

"Even if someone sends just a few shillings, it can make a big difference," Derow said.

Despite being pushed out of Somalia's major cities and towns, al-Shabab continues to launch deadly attacks across the Horn of Africa country.

The group, which last week assaulted a military base run by Kenyan troops as part of an African Union force in the Somali town of El-Ade, has also carried out many attacks inside Kenya.

Derow said the outpouring of support for the campaign was sending a "clear message" to al-Shabab that Kenyans were united.

"There is a feeling of patriotism. Kenyans are feeling by helping the family of #HeroSalah and educating his children is a defiance to al-Shabab," he said.

"We are one in honoring are heroes."

WESTGATE SHOPPPING MALL

A year before, al-Shabaab stopped another bus in Mandera in 2014, divided passengers by religion, and shot the 28 non-Muslims dead.

The Somalia-based terrorist group has launched several attacks in Kenya including the massacres at the Westgate shopping mall and Garissa University College, the Associated Press reports.

Extremists claim they are carrying out reprisals for Kenyan military intervention in Somalia and exploiting historical grievances between Muslim and Christian communities

Earlier in January al-Shabaab attacked a camp for Kenyan peacekeepers in south-western Somalia, killing an unknown number of Kenyan soldiers and the group has claimed responsibility for massacring at least 20 people on Mogadishu's Lido beach on Jan. 21.

Some 82.5 per cent of Kenya's 46 million people are Christians with Muslims accounting from about 11 percent, most of who live in the coastal region.
(Photo: UNHCR)Lutherhan World Federation President Bishop Munib A. Younan (middle) at the launch of "Welcoming the Stranger," a joint declaration emerged from a meeting hosted by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres on June 12, 2013.

A city-sized area in north eastern Kenya which is said to be the world's biggest refugee camp housing 350,000 mainly Somali refugees faces threats of closure by the hosting country.

To make the situation more serious church leaders do not appear to be speaking with one voice on how to deal with Dadaab and its inhabitants who have fled mayhem across the border to live in the 24-year-old camps.

The Lutheran World Federation which plays a key role in the running of Dadaab says it is unrealistic to close the camps following a demand by the Kenya deputy president last week that they be moved.

But a Kenyan Catholic bishop has said in Rome the camps should be moved.

"It is unrealistic at this point to expect that Dadaab should be closed, for several reasons," the LWF's head of communication Heidi P. Martinussen told Ecumenical News in a written statement.

"Firstly, conditions in Somalia are still not such that refugees can return in safety and dignity. It would violate Kenya's international legal obligations and its domestic law to send people back under such circumstances.

"Second, it is not clear that closing the camp would improve the security situation in Kenya. The vast majority of the refugees are themselves victims of persecution and violence, and the great majority of them are women and children.

"Forcibly returning them to Somalia would be a form of collective punishment not against terrorists or criminals, but against innocent vulnerable people."

Dadaab lies about 90 kilometers (50 miles) from the Somali border and was set up nearly in 1991 for fugitives from the mayhem and famine in Somalia.

Both the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the LWF have praised Kenya for generously hosting and protecting refugees from violence and persecution in neighboring Somalia.

On March 31, the five camps in Dadaab had 351,446 refugees, nearly all of who are Somalis.

The LWF works mainly and foremost in the Hagadera where there are 106,000 refugees and at Kambioos where there are 21,000 refugees.

UNHCR spokesperson Karin de Gruijl told journalists on April 14 in Geneva said the refugee agency is "thus urging the Kenyan authorities to give the matter further consideration.

"UNHCR stands ready to work closely with the Government of Kenya to strengthen law enforcement at Dadaab and support other measures to protect refugees and Kenyans alike against possible intrusion by armed actors from across the border."

The Kenyan government has given the UNHCR three months to relocate all Somali refugees in Dadaab refugee back home, Dalsan Radio in Mogadishu reported April 13.

It quoted Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto saying his government had held talks with officials from the U.N. refugee agency on the relocation the Somali refugees.

"We have asked the UNHCR to relocate the refugees in three months failure to which we shall relocate them ourselves," Ruto said the radio station.

On 2 April, Somali extremists from the al-Shabab Islamist movement attacked a college in the Kenyan town of Garissa, killing 148 students.

Kenyan lawmakers and governors had previously accused al-Shabab of hiding out in Dadaab, but there was no link made to the camps after the Garissa slaughter.

The deadly siege at Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in 2013 was also linked to al-Shabab.

Kenyan forces are fighting alongside African Union troops in Somalia fighting against al-Shabab.

Garissa's Catholic bishop, Paul Darmanin, says that moving Dadaab Refugee Camp back to Somalia must go hand in hand with allocating more resources to Northern Kenya for it to succeed, Vatican Radio reported on April 15.

The Garissa bishop, whose jurisdiction covers Dadaab, warns that an Islamic State situation is unfolding in Garissa as many refugees have already settled down and are more well off and comfortable than even career civil servants working in the area, said the radio station.

"Now that there is a government in Somalia, it is good if the camp is closed and the people are allowed to return back home," said Bishop Darmanin.

He was speaking in Rome during a Kenyan bishops' periodic meeting in the Vatican.

But LWF's Martinussen noted, "Closing the camp would provide a victory for those who carry out attacks such as in Garissa.

"It would reinforce the mind-set that spoke through the attacks, separating people and communities, instilling mistrust and hatred as the driving force in people's relationships."
With the need for special education teachers in Utah far outstripping the supply, teacher educators at Utah State University arent letting any potential prospects slip through the cracks.

For high school students, the university has created a dual-credit class that allows them to learn more about special education while they also provide volunteer support to their classmates with disabilities. A highlight of the program is a visit to the universitys Logan campus, where the high schoolers dine with university professors who impress upon them just how much they are wanted in the teaching profession.

For paraeducators who might be intimidated about the prospect of college but who have valuable classroom experience, the university is partnering with school districts to pave their way into teacher preparation. To break through the barriers, districts have found that hosting appreciation events or awards programs are a way to get their paraeducators all in one roomand those events are also a perfect time for university coordinators to talk to them about becoming teachers. Later, the university provides mentoring to the paraeducators who choose to take the next steps.

For career-switchers, the university offers a distance-learning program in special education, a boon to working adults who may live in one of the states far-flung rural communities.

The overarching theme of the universitys initiatives, said Robert L. Morgan, a professor of special education who oversees student recruitment, is that an enticing brochure or a flashy website isnt enough to bring would-be teachers in the door.

If you have a teacher shortage in special education and you need people to be coming into your teacher-preparation programs, you have to go out and actively recruit, Morgan said.

A Shortage Field

Utah is far from alone in facing a shortage of special education teachers: Its been a nationwide problem for decades. For the 2015-16 school year, almost all states reported to the U.S. Department of Education that they would have special education shortages. In a 2011 federal report, 51 percent of all school districts and 90 percent of high-poverty districts reported difficulty in attracting highly qualified special education teachers.

The issues that drive teachers from special educationor that prevent some would-be candidates from considering the fieldare multifaceted, said Mary Brownell, a professor of special education at the University of Florida.

Special education teachers report that they have to teach more subjects than their colleagues, that they dont always feel supported by their administrators, and that they arent given the time and resources they need to do their jobs well, said Brownell, who directs the federally funded CEEDAR Center. CEEDAR stands for Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform, and was created by the U.S. Department of Educations office of special education programs to strengthen teacher preparation in the field.

Brownell says research shows that educators who are what she describes as fully trained in special education are likely to stay in the profession longer. Fully trained, in this context, means having a college degree in the field or multiple hours of specialized post-baccalaureate work.

States, though, often find themselves turning to more accelerated certification routes, just to have educators available to fill slots. Then those teachers leave after a relatively short time, and the cycle of needing to fill those positions begins anew.

Youre solving an immediate need, but youre creating a long-term continual need, Brownell said.

With that concern in mind, some special education advocates are looking warily at a new federal law that allows states to set up teacher, principal, and school leader academies that could provide certifications equivalent to masters degrees. That provision, part of the newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, does not spell out any minimum qualification levels, leaving that up to states to determine.

Supporters say such academies would foster an innovative and vibrant market for teacher preparation.

But Deborah Ziegler, the director of policy and advocacy for the Council for Exceptional Children, says such programs could ultimately connect the least-trained teachers with the most needy students.

You could come in and do a short, several-month program of preparation and then youre placed into a classroom and then you do some ongoing mentoring, she said. Honestly, its unfair to them. You put teachers into a position that they can barely handle and youve not prepared them well enough to be in that position.

For the foreseeable future, however, traditional universities will remain districts main source for most special education teachers, which means they have to devise new ways to bring people into the field.

Janet Fisher, the head of the special education department at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, one of the oldest in the country, said that her colleagues also try to entice potential teacher-candidates early.

Its about letting your passion shine, letting people know what its like to work in the very worthy field of special education, Fisher said. Weve got to be visible. You dont just hide in times of declining enrollment.

Time and Money

In addition to enthusiasm and direct outreach, the types of partnerships Utah State has worked out are an essential part of the recruitment process, said Benjamin Lignugaris/Kraft, the head of the department of special education and rehabilitation at the university.

Those partnerships take a long time to establish, but the rewards can be worth it. Around 100 Utah State graduates each year seek licensure in special education, and the university meets about half the states annual need for teachers in that field. The university also partners with other institutions of higher learning in the state, referring students to them if for some reason its own program might not meet that potential recruits needs.

Utah States initiatives are financed through an annual state allocation of $200,000 to $300,000. Lignugaris/Kraft said that during the recent economic downturn, the state made plans to cut its support, but university officials were able to make a case for what would be lost by ending the recruitment efforts.

There has to be strong state support for doing what we do. If that wasnt there, none of this would be happening, Lignugaris/Kraft said. It doesnt get done for nothing. It requires support, it requires funding, and it requires an investment.

That investment has helped develop teachers such as Kjerstin Mourra, who works with severely disabled students at Sky View High School in rural, northern Utah.

Mourra attended Sky View herself and worked as a peer tutor, enrolling in the Utah State dual-credit course that allowed her to earn college credit while getting a taste of what it would mean to be a special educator. She then went on to Utah State and returned to the school, where she has taught since 2010.

Having that early experience helped her gain some understanding of what it would be like to be a teacher, Mourra said. I definitely felt like the university was excited about me and helped me to get excited about working in special ed.
Sarah Ha didnt have any Asian-American teachers growing up.

Ha was born in the United States but moved to South Korea when she was six years old; she and her little sister were left there for two years while their parents established a life in the United States. Enveloped by Korean culture, Ha all but forgot the English she had grown up learning.

When she returned to Worcester, Mass., Ha found herself isolated and bullied, an English-language learner with no Asian peers, teachers, or subject matter in school.

When I went off to college, I realized much of the curriculum I was exposed to or the educators that were in front of the classroom did not reflect my identity, nor did they create a space for dialogue in the classroom where I felt as though I connected with those experiences, she said.

Percentage Distribution of Teachers in All U.S. Schools, by Race/ Ethnicity, 2011-12 SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics

While the relative lack of racial diversity within the teaching profession has been well documented, diversity-centered recruitment initiatives often target the two largest communities of people of color in the U.S.: African-Americans and Hispanics. But experiences like Has suggest that school recruiters may need to focus greater attention on other underrepresented ethnicities, including Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders.

I think sometimes were seen as teachers of color or teachers not of color, said Alicia Johal, an 8th grade science teacher outside San Diego who is of East Indian descent. People, maybe they put us in a gray area, when really we are teachers of color.

Although Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. population, census data show that the AAPI community is the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country.

Yet between 2000 and 2012, there was virtually no change in the percentage of AAPIs in the teaching profession. In 2012, the year for which the most recent information is available, the National Center for Education Statistics found that there were just under 66,000 U.S. public and private school teachers from the Asian communityabout 1.8 percent of the countrys nearly 3.4 million teachers. In 2000, the percentage was around 1.6.

AAPI enrollment in teacher-preparation programs mirrors the profession as a whole. According to federal Title II data, Asians make up less than 2 percent of teacher-prep students in most states.

Ha is now the senior managing director for Teach For Americas Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative , launched in May 2014 to improve outreach to prospective AAPI teachers. As part of that effort, TFA held four regional summits in 2015 specifically for AAPI undergraduate students.

Justin Tandingan, a director of the TFA initiative, says the low percentage of AAPI teachers in U.S. schools often surprises people.

Whenever I drop that 1.8 percent statistic on [my friends], and have them think about how many AAPI teachers they had growing up, and how that might have influenced them growing up, its a pretty significant moment, Tandingan said. Its voided them of an educational experience that was relevant to their own history.

Teach For America, like some other alternative-licensing programs , appears to be ahead of the curve on recruitment of AAPI teachers6 percent of its current recruits are AAPI. Ha suspects that the organizations recruitment in AAPI-dense areas and the competitive nature of TFA may be factors.

But many traditional teacher-prep programs dont have distinct recruitment strategies for AAPI teachers.

I think at this point [its] working as a bloc, said Rodrick Lucero, vice president for member engagement and support at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, suggesting that schools of education often lump teacher candidates of different non-white groups together under their diversity efforts.

Johal said that education schools at universities need to take steps not to overlook AAPI populations already in their midst.

I was pretty involved on campus and I had no idea that was something I could do at school, she said.

Segmented Hiring

Experts who study teacher staffing often point to a lack of diversity as a retention issue , but while studies support that assertion for black and Hispanic teachers, theres less evidence that it holds true for Asian educators. A September 2014 report from the Institute for Education Sciences on teacher retention offered sparse data on Asians and Pacific Islanders, but what little it does suggest that Asians actually have one of the highest retention rates .

Data from the NCES also show a surge in the number of Asian teachers over the past decade, but Tandingan says a portion of that growth comes from greater reliance on foreign teachers used to help English-learners, as opposed to in core academic courses.

Indeed, to the extent that recruitment efforts focus on AAPI teachers, the need for bilingual educators often plays a role, likely as a reflection of the particular learning needs of many AAPI students. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, immigration accounted for 61 percent of the growth in the U.S. Asian population in 2012-13, far more than for any other group. As a result, recruitment of Asians and Pacific Islanders often prioritizes teachers who can help English-learners.

Even federal initiatives to recruit AAPI teachers tend to focus specifically on English-learning needs.

Under a 2009 executive order signed by President Obama, each cabinet-level agency was required to help improve the AAPI populations access to resources.

Among the many goals outlined by the U.S. Education Department in its 2013 plan under the order was to increase the number of AAPI teachers in schools as well as train existing teachers to work with the language needs of the AAPI community. But by the time the departments 2014 plan came out, there was no longer any mention of AAPI teacher recruitment. The goal was modified to increase the number of teachers in schools who have the language skills necessary to address the needs of the AAPI community.

A spokesman for the department said the change reflected a more accurate and realistic description of what could be achieved. The department had aligned its goals under the White House initiative with those of an existing federal professional-development grant program. Because of federal grant rules prohibiting favoritism toward any one ethnic or racial group in such programs, progress in recruiting AAPI teachers more generally became secondary.

Big-Picture Concerns

Although often lumped into two categories, the term Asian American and Pacific Islander represents many subgroups: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Filipino, Indonesian, and Hawaiian are among the most prominent. Disaggregating test data by subgroup illuminates major achievement variations within the catch-all AAPI demographic. Pacific Islanders performed much lower on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, than Asians.

And academic achievement isnt the only measure that matters, of course.

Look at our suicide rates, and our bullying rates. That measurement is not always taken holistically, Tandingan said, alluding to research showing the nonacademic struggles of AAPI students . If we dont want that kind of conversation, were actually erasing the experiences of a lot of AAPI folks in education.

These nonacademic issues are the kinds of factors that advocates say could be addressed by increasing the presence of AAPI teachers in the classroom.

And such issues can get glossed over because of Asian-American achievement on standardized testing, leading to a stereotype that Asian students are a model minority to be emulated by lower-performing groups of students of color.

Because we dont hear someone asking for help, it doesnt necessarily mean its not needed, Ha said. And I think with a lot of our AAPI students, thats very much the case. If you even see students that might be academically performing well, you might not necessarily see the big picture.
TeacherMatch CEO and co-founder Don Fraynd has a favorite exercise he likes to put principals and school human-resource teams through: He passes out the same stack of 20 teacher resumes, then asks each person in the room to identify two candidates to bring in for an interview.

No matter where I do this, almost every single person gets at least one vote, said Fraynd, whose Chicago-based organization uses sophisticated software applications to help some 200 school districts find the best teachers. Its pretty clear were all over the place when it comes to this decision.

The point, of course, as research has shown, is that personal biases, however unconscious, come into play in the hiring process. Experts like Fraynd, on the other hand, say that more data-focused hiring practices can both help districts attract and secure top-notch candidates and more accurately predict whether a teacher will be effective in the classroom.

In addition to minimizing teacher turnover and absenteeism, both of which negatively affect student outcomes, better use of data has helped some districts streamline their hiring processes and hire candidates earlier.

Thats one of the biggest factors in effective hiring, to really maximize the pool when its at its deepest and widest, said Joseph Hettler, a partner at TNTP , a New York City-based nonprofit organization. TNTP helps districts use data to track historical vacancy trends in specific subjects and schools to take advantage of that ideal hiring time, which Hettler said is between March and May.

With TNTPs assistance, the Shelby County district in Memphis, Tenn., sends an annual anonymous survey to teachers to ask if they plan to return the following school year. The data from this survey, along with information from other sources, help the district predict the number of vacancies likely to open, and in turn, inform recruitment and staffing strategies.Data-driven-recruitment advocates say theyve seen the value in switching to a more objective, fair, and research-backed process. In fact, gut instinct hiring has become a forbidden phrase in at least one district.

Were not even allowed to mention it during the hiring process, said Dale R. Fisher, the assistant superintendent for human resources at the 3,000-student Deerfield Public Schools District 109 in Deerfield, Ill.

Beyond Gut Instinct

Using proprietary screening tools from AppliTrack and HumaneX Ventures, the district first looks for themes in candidates application materials and screening interviews that indicate a commitment to growth, both professionally and with students. Initial high scorers participate in a series of structured interviews, and based on those scores, get invited to a site-based interview. The district then spends the first two years evaluating whether each new hires performance matches expectations.

Using information pulled from a variety of assessments, including the Northwest Evaluation Associations Measure of Academic Progress, the Deerfield district has preliminary data that 85 percent of the people it hired for 2014-15 had a positive impact on students.

Were to the point now where we have such faith in our hiring protocols that resumes and letters of recommendation take a backseat to the online application, Fisher said.

The Cleveland school district started analyzing data four years ago to increase the diversity of its workforce. At the time, 85 percent of its 40,000 studentsbut only one-quarter of its teachersidentified themselves as a person of color. The Ohio district set a goal to bump up that teacher ratio to 30 percent of new hires; those in charge of recruitment met every two weeks to review data and check applicant-pool statistics.

Tracking that information drove our strategy, said chief talent officer Lora Cover.The district surpassed its goal. Thirty-eight percent of the teachers hired for 2014-15 identified themselves as a person of color, upping the districtwide statistic to 34 percent.

Clevelands data also verified that early hiring is essential: Of the teachers hired through June 2014 for the 2014-15 school year, 14 percent were rated as accomplished (the highest rating) using an evaluation that includes student-achievement data; only 2 percent of those hired in July and August shared that designation.

The district is now transitioning to the Workday Human Capital Management system, a cloud-based application suite that Cover says will give us a much more robust set of data and a much easier way to pull it.

With just under 14,000 instructional staff members and 212,000 students, the massive Hillsborough County district in Tampa, Fla., started working with TNTP last fall to be more strategic about where to take recruiting trips to career fairsand avoid places that have traditionally turned out weak applicants. Summer hires alone account for 1,200 new employees in the district.

I knew I was going to hire 600 elementary teachers this past year based on trend data through attrition, resignation, and leave of absence, said Dena Collins, the general manager of Hillsboroughs personnel services. Predicting those numbers well in advance is the easy part.

Finding the Right Fit

The hard part, she said, is making sure candidates are well-suitedgeographically and culturallyfor the school environments in which they will be assigned.

In Tennessee, Sheila Redick can relate. Something weve analyzed multiple times here is to see if theres a profile of a candidate who tends to do better in an urban setting, and unfortunately, there isnt, said the director of talent management for the Shelby County district. Using the Tennessee Higher Education Commissions annual Report Card on the Effectiveness of TeacherTraining Programs, the 100,000-student district has, however, discovered that Teach For America candidates tend to perform as well as or better in low-performing schools and high-needs subject areas than new hires from other sourcesa finding that helps guide its recruitment strategy.

While believing that better data lead to better hiring decisions, Dale S. Rose, the president of consulting firm 3D Group, based in Emeryville, Calif., cautions against putting too much emphasis on big data with blunt data points. The author of Hire Better Teachers Now: Using the Science of Selection to Find the Best Teachers for Your School, Rose said screening candidates is a contact sport. Youve got to get them in the classroom, talk to them.

Even Fraynd from TeacherMatch acknowledges that revolutionary software programsincluding those from his company, which adjust weighting and other factors to make them more predictive over time for particular localescan only go so far.

The big data can get you that crop of people who are statistically going to move the needle, he said, but you still need to know if those folks are going to be a good fit.
The nationwide shortage of bilingual K-12 teachers has school systems looking beyond the United States to fill the growing demand for qualified instructors.

Districts have struggled for decades to find bilingual teachers, especially in communities where English is not the first language for many students.

Now, recent upticks in the percentage of English-language-learner students and demand for dual-language programs for their English-speaking peers have more districts tapping an already shallow talent pool.

Bilingual teachers are in especially short supply in places like Texas, where nearly 40 percent of the residents are Hispanic or Latino.

A number of school systems, including big-city districts such as Houston and Dallas, are turning to Puerto Rico and Spain to find bilingual teachers.

Increasingly, smaller Texas districts and systems from other parts of the country are taking the same approach, traveling overseas and off the U.S. mainland to fill vacancies or newly created positions.

Schools are so hard-pressed to find [teachers] fluent in another language, said Gabriela Uro, the director of English-language-learner policy and research at the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based organization of big-city school systems. Its a huge challenge.

A 2013 survey by the council found that roughly half of its 67 member districts had a shortage of bilingual and ELL teachers or anticipated struggling to fill positions in the near future.

The National Association for Bilingual Education, or NABE, has advocated for a federal response to the problem.

Theres been a lack of attention to this critical need, said Santiago Wood, the executive director of NABE. Every large urban district is in the same place we were 10 years ago.

TESOL International Association, the organization for teachers who specialize in working with English-learners, expressed disappointment that the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new law that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, does not include specific proposals to increase the number of English-as-a-second-language and bilingual specialists in schools.

Things havent changed much in the two years since the Council of the Great City Schools survey. But now, more districts are recruiting internationally, Uro said.

With districts competing for a handful of capable candidates, hiring fairs can evolve into bidding wars, veteran recruiters say. Job candidates in some districts are wooed with annual stipends of $4,000 or more and similarly generous signing bonuses.

Houstons school board this past fall boosted the annual bilingual-teacher stipend by $2,500, increasing it to $4,000, to compete with neighboring suburban districts that were offering three times as much.

We have to be competitive,  make it appealing for people who want to come here, said Janie Ruiz, a Houston senior recruitment manager.

Hiring bilingual teachers is more necessity than luxury. There are more than 52.6 million native and bilingual Spanish speakers in the United States, making the country second only to Mexico in that category, according to a June 2015 report by Instituto Cervantes, a nonprofit created by the Spanish government.

In Texas, as in much of the United States, school districts with 20 or more English-language learners in a single grade must offer bilingual education with a certified teacher.

Spanish Surge

In Houston, the states largest district, roughly one-third of the 200,000-plus students are native Spanish speakers. The districts plan to open more dual-language schools, most of them Spanish-oriented, has also driven the demand for bilingual teachers.

Dallas, the states second-largest district, hires about 2,000 teachers per year on average. Among that group are between 400 and 500 bilingual instructors who earn a $3,000 annual stipend on top of their salary.

Forty-three percent of students in Dallas are English-learners. The fast-growing student population made up about 30 percent of enrollment a decade ago.

Our [demographics] are changing, and the supply of teachers in Texas does not meet our demand, said Meredyth Hudson, a Dallas schools human-resources executive director. Teacher demand will keep increasing. We just have to figure out how to meet it.

The most popular offshore-recruiting destinations for U.S. school districts are Spanish-speaking countries; the language is the most common home or first tongue of the nations English-language-learner students.

A 2015 analysis by the Migration Policy Institute shows that roughly 70 percent of student ELLs are Spanish-speakers. Nationwide, no other language accounts for more than 5 percent of school-age language-learners.

Puerto Rico, where the teachers are already U.S. citizens, and Spain, whose Education Ministry has established partnerships with states and districts, have emerged as the most fertile recruiting grounds.

Heading to Puerto Rico to hire teachers is much like recruiting staff in a neighboring state, said Jordan Carlton, a Dallas schools recruiting specialist.

The teachers already understand U.S. culture and can often have their salaries doubled or tripled by taking jobs in the United States, said NABEs Wood.

Recruiters for both Dallas and Houston take multiple trips to Puerto Rico each year.

Dallas employs about 300 teachers from Puerto Rico, a number thats doubled over the past three years because of robust recruitment on the island. The district has roughly 150 teachers from Spain working in schools. The number of hires has remained relatively steady each year because of visa limitations.

Houston has hired about 50 teachers from Spain and 10 from Puerto Rico in each of the past two years, but would like to see those numbers increase. The district does not track the total number of teachers from those countries, Ruiz said.

As a superintendent in California in the 1990s, Wood recruited teachers from Spain, Mexico, Central America, and Asia.

Recruiting internationally gives districts another option for hiring bilingual teachers and helps them get seasoned instructors, Wood said.

Spains Education Ministry operates more than 20 regional offices in the United States, with two in Texas. To participate in Spains placement program, teachers must have at least three years of experience, and they must commit to working three years in the United States. Teachers travel costs, and sometimes the recruiting trips for districts, are covered by the Spanish government.

Tough Adjustment

The transition, however, is often not as smooth for teachers who make the move from Spain.

Adjusting to a new country and education system has led some homesick teachers to return to Spain after several weeks or midyear, school officials say, leaving recruiters to once again hire for jobs that proved difficult to fill the first time around.

Another challenge is the possible cultural disconnect between Spanish speakers from Spain and U.S. English-learners, most of whom hail from Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central America.

Youre not going to have a Mexican kid speaking like a Spaniard, said Uro of the Council of Great City Schools.

But the cultural relevance and fit goes both ways. Some of the teachers get here and have trouble adjusting. What do you do then?

Uro has witnessed the adjustment firsthand, having hosted a bilingual teacher from Spain in her home.

It can be tough, she said.

To ease the transition for the new international and Puerto Rican teachers, Houston and Dallas staff help their new hires find housing and transportation and help them connect with each other.

Our goal is to set them up for success so they want to stay, said Ruiz of the Houston schools.

There are some who do go back. But if theyre doing well, ultimately, our kids will do well.
At the time Kalie Bennington landed her first interview in September, she hadnt even started looking for a teaching job.

Bennington was starting her final year as an elementary education major at Butler University, in Indianapolis. A week earlier, she had won a prestigious future-teacher award, and Butler had posted a notice of the award on its Facebook page. But when Bennington saw the Facebook post, it was one of the comments that struck her most.

She needs to come interview with me at Washington Township! wrote Tom Oestreich, the director of human resources for the district, which covers a portion of Indianapolis.

Bennington had been told that most schools dont start hiring until the spring. But within hours, she had scheduled an interview with Oestreich for the following week. Less than two months later, she signed a letter of intent with the Washington Township district for next school year.

I was kind of shocked, she said. I couldnt believe that someone would reach out to me through Facebook.

A Late Adopter

But district recruiters like Oestreich see use of social-media platforms as a necessary next step in teacher recruitment. To hire top candidates like Bennington, districts know they need to get out in front of them early. And while most new teachers are still contacted through traditional channels like job postings and career fairs, some district human-resource departments are starting to see social-networking platforms as an efficientand continuousway of connecting with the current generation of prospective educators.

With teacher shortages and the amount of turnover that all school districts in the state of Indiana have seen, teacher recruitment has really become a 12-month job, Oestreich said.

School districts have long seen technology, especially in the form of online job postings and virtual interviews, as a way to reach top talent in a competitive market. But many are only beginning to see the potential of incorporating social-media strategies into their recruitment systems.

Today, around one-third of Americans use social-media platforms, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in November. Thirty-five percent of social-media users have used those platforms to look for or research jobs, and 21 percent have applied for a job they found through social media.

But those numbers apply to all industries, and some experts speculate that schools are slightly behind the curve.

Education was a late adopter of LinkedIn, but its growing significantly, said Brian White, the executive director of human resources and operations at the Auburn-Washburn Unified School District in Topeka, Kan.

White has worked in education for four years. Before he started at Auburn-Washburn, he was a staffing manager in the private sector, where he learned most of his recruiting skills.

In the corporate world, LinkedIn was heavily used for recruiting, he said. When I moved into the world of education, I quickly realized it was not something that was largely a part of what education used.

For the past few years, White has given a presentation on LinkedIn at the American Association of School Personnel Administrators annual conference. His talk tends to cover the basics: what LinkedIn is, how it works, what a profile is used for.

Each time he gives the presentation, he said, the attendees seem more familiar with the social-networking platform. This year, most of them had their own LinkedIn account, but a much smaller fraction, around 20 percent, were actively using the service for recruiting, White estimated. More than half didnt know whether their district had a LinkedIn page.

Think about it from a students perspective, White said. If I went to a LinkedIn site and saw that a district was not active, I would probably have some concerns: Is this district really on top of technology?

And the number of teachers using the platform appears to be growing. Last October, White searched for the word teacher on LinkedIn and found around 4.7 million results. When he searched the term again this October, that number had grown to almost 5.6 million. Universities are teaching students about LinkedIn, he said. I realized that we needed to at least have a presence there.

Increasing Visibility

White makes sure to keep his districts LinkedIn page up to date. When he goes to career fairs, his districts promotional materials always include the LinkedIn logo. He also links to the district page in his email signature.

White noted he has tried recruiting through Facebook, but he found that it wasnt as effective as other platforms. He sees LinkedIn as the least-intrusive way to connect with potential applicants. Youre not crossing those boundaries that may be sacred to some, he said.

In Indianapolis, Oestreich uses Twitter and Facebook along with LinkedIn, and he makes sure to update all the accounts on all three frequently. Last year, a job candidate contacted him through Twitter, and now shes teaching 4th grade in the district.

For every 20 teachers he hires, Oestreich estimates that he connected with one or two through social media.

For some districts, it can be hard to quantify the value of social media in recruiting.

Jason Kennedy, the president of the American Association for Employment in Education and a senior human-resources administrator in the Wake County school district in North Carolina, said he hasnt hired any teachers directly through LinkedIn. But some candidates might see a job on the site and then apply through the official posting, he said. Others might see a job posted on LinkedIn and pass it along to their colleagues.

This is something that were kind of experimenting with, he said. I dont think theres a manual out there when it comes to the education industry.

Over the next few years, Kennedy thinks that many more districts will start using LinkedIn and other social-media platforms to increase visibility and to find talent in the initial stages of the hiring process. But for the latter stages, he prefers more traditional tools.

Face to face is always going to be a part of the hiring process, he said. I dont want that to ever go away.
The European Investment Bank Group, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI), hosted a seminar to present the extensive range of support available to innovative and growing businesses in Scotland.

Under our Innovation Finance (InnovFin) range we have specially designed products for:

banks and financial intermediaries;

mid-sized and large innovative businesses; and

large research and innovation projects emanating from universities and public research organisations, among others.

We also offer specialist financing for:

first-of-a-kind commercial-scale demonstration projects in the fields of renewable energy and hydrogen and fuel cells;

project developers of vaccines, drugs, medical and diagnostic devices or novel research infrastructures for infectious diseases that have successfully completed the pre-clinical stage working.

Lastly, we can also offer advisory services to companies and other promoters investing in innovation, so that they can be better prepared to access EIB financing and/or other sources.

The seminar consisted of concise product presentations and case studies, followed by a networking reception and one-to-one information desk.

Both the EU and the EIB Group intend to more than double their combined support for research and innovation in Europe until 2020, making more than EUR 24bn available.
By Gabriela Baczynska and Tom Korkemeier

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - European Union interior ministers on Monday urged Greece to do more to control the influx of migrants, some threatening to exclude it from the continent's prized passport-free travel zone as the crisis increasingly divides the bloc's members.

Greece was the main gateway to Europe for more than a million refugees and migrants who reached the EU last year. But it has been criticised for a failure to control the flow of arrivals, which have shown little sign of falling over the winter months.

The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. Of five registration "hot spot" centres that were due to be set up for migrants arriving in Greece, only one is running so far.

Overwhelmed by the influx, Greek law enforcement officials have often let migrants through deeper into Europe rather than keep them on Greek soil for proper registration - the first necessary step agreed by the EU before people can move further.

Athens says the numbers are impossible to manage and blames the other 27 EU states for not offering real help. The crisis has put the passport-free Schengen zone - hailed by top EU officials as the greatest achievement of European integration - on the verge of collapse.

"If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move towards central Europe," said Austria's Interior Minister Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

"Greece must increase its resources as soon as possible and accept help," she said on arriving at informal interior minister talks in Amsterdam.

The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members. Germany, France, Austria and Sweden are among several countries that have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people.

"Speaking about timetables, it's already too late. We have seven countries with border controls," Sweden's interior minister Anders Ygeman told Reuters.

He said migrant registration centres need to start functioning in Greece and Italy as planned.

"In the end, if a country doesn't live up to its obligations, we will have to restrict its connections to the Schengen area. If you don't have control of your borders, it will have consequences for the free movement."

Excluding Greece would require applying Article 26 of the Schengen code. Germany, the main destination for refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, first floated the idea last year.

The Greek minister did not speak on arrival but the EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, himself Greek, sought to talk down the risk of excluding the country from Schengen.

"Nothing like this has been proposed or discussed. What we have to do is to better manage our external borders. It's obvious that frontline member states must work more and here we are...to help them to better do their job," he said.

The Luxembourg interior minister was also against leaving Greece outside Schengen, while Germany's Thomas de Maiziere said that he wanted to preserve Schengen but that time was running out.

Berlin hopes a deal agreed with Turkey last November would mean fewer migrants arrive in Greece, but the deal has so far had limited impact.

Top EU officials have echoed Berlin's warnings recently that Schengen will not survive without a dramatic change in the coming weeks in the way the bloc handles the crisis.

However, EU countries, worried about growing anti-migrant sentiment at home, have failed to agree.

As the ministers arrived by canal for talks at Amsterdam's maritime museum, they passed a protest by Amnesty International, a boat packed with mannequins in bright life vests designed to resemble migrants arriving in Europe.

"Leaders of Europe, it's not the polls you should worry about," a sign said. "It's the history books."

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Hugh Lawson)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A suicide bomber driving a fuel tank blew himself up on Monday at a checkpoint run by Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham in Syria's northern city of Aleppo killing at least 23 people, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that four of the group's commanders and four civilians are believed to be among those killed.

It said that the attack in the city's Sukari neighbourhood destroyed three nearby buildings and wounded dozens of people while many are believed to be stuck under rubble. Ahrar al-Sham officials were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Port-au-Prince, Jan 25(EFE).- Opposition protesters have taken to the streets in Haiti to demand the resignation of President Michel Martelly, with pledges that the action will continue today if the leader doesn't step down.

Thousands of Haitians gathered in the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Sunday - the day that the second round of the presidential election had been scheduled to take place before being postponed amid opposition pressure - and began marching through the city.

Dozens of officers of the Haitian National Police(HNP) guarded the demonstration, which saw protesters holding up posters displaying images of opposition candidate Jude Celestin, who refused to take part in the suspended runoff election.

Protesters chanted "Martelly go" and "We want a transitional government", as they demanded Martelly's resignation and for new elections to be held.

In the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville, a small number of pro-government protesters gathered to show support for the completion of the election, as they waved signs displaying pictures of government-backed candidate Jovenel Moise.

Moise received the most votes in the first round of the election, which was held in October, but they were labeled "fraudulent" by the opposition.

An independent commission determined that there were "serious irregularities" in the October vote, and recommended measures including developing a new voter list.

Sunday's peaceful march followed several days of violent protests in Haiti, which saw demonstrators blocking streets and highways and burning a number of voting centers.

In a statement over the weekend, the US urged the Haitian government, "its institutions, and political actors alike to reject violence and take all steps necessary to pave the way for a peaceful election for a new president and the remaining Parliamentary seats as is constitutionally mandated."

Haitian opposition groups have rejected the US government's "open interference" in the election, arguing that Washington favors the ruling party.

As well as electing Martelly's successor, six senators and 25 members of parliament will also be voted in in the runoff election.
$10,000 reward offered for information on disappearance of Kenneth Williams

Investigators are offering the reward of $10,000 for information on the disappearance of Kenneth Williams, who has been missing since May 2011.
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
Re: Why hard to make friends in Switzerland? Quote: Cupid Sadly, to my experience it is impossible to befriend the Swiss, I don't know why but that is how it is. For the first 3 years, I felt bad not having any friends until I saw my family who came here in 1997, and none of them had any friends. I think if you are from non EU country, it is better to just hang out with your own people or other expats. It is hard to accept, but for me that is the reality.



I first came here in '82 for a three month internship, and still have several close Swiss friends from that time (one recently passed).



I moved here permanantly in '86, and still have several close Swiss friends that I met within the first few months.



Tom Odd.I first came here in '82 for a three month internship, and still have several close Swiss friends from that time (one recently passed).I moved here permanantly in '86, and still have several close Swiss friends that I met within the first few months.Tom Last edited by st2lemans; 25.01.2016 at 18:48 . Reason: date error
Re: Security licence My security agents that work for the bar need their permit requested to the commune. YOu pay the fee and submit all the documents and they are good to go. Don't know if they need to take classes.



The ones I use from Phoenix Security (mostly the ones used for barbusiness around here) have a permit from the company and they need to follow classes. The permit stays with the establishment or the company. ie my guys cannot work for a different bar nor can the Phoenix guy work on his own.....
Re: A Swiss-Yodel evening in Geneva [30 January, EF member performing!!] Quote: 3Wishes I added the date to the title, and the fact you're performing. Do you have a video or photo to share too? How will we know whom to make fun of if you blend in like a local?



PS - Remember to include this bit on your naturalization application!

Do not worry! Even though I will wear the same (o so flattering!) outfit as everyone else



Basically, the small nervous guy looking like he's completely out of place, on the right (Bass 2) will be me!





I'll also be serving the drinks at the bar during the interval (so I was told!) and after the show, so anyone can place their orders in English! Do not worry! Even though I will wear the same (o so flattering!) outfit as everyone else http://www.alphuttli.ch/ , I am the only one who does not understand the words of the 8 yodels (except the one in French), there are two yodels I just cannot memorise so I just do the yodel bit and not the sung bit and I'm bringing the average age down by quite a few year!Basically, the small nervous guy looking like he's completely out of place, on the right (Bass 2) will be me!I'll also be serving the drinks at the bar during the interval (so I was told!) and after the show, so anyone can place their orders in English!
Re: Has EF been taken over by the SVP/UDC and supporters/members? Quote:



I do notice that no-one has commented on the very real link Vertigo posted confirming what I was saying about business people here being truly concerned about the effect of the Expulsion initiative on exports and ... business. Not all truths can always be 'linked' in the real world. The link given is however very clear. Here it is again for you to discuss



J Marple - think about it actually. I do believe and know, that many expats who go back to their own country of birth after a lifetime abroad, can truly feel like fish out of water in their own country. Because that country has changed, and so have they. Not sure how long you've been here, and where 'back home' is- but I am pretty sure someone who has lived in several countries for most of their life would find it hard to feel totally integrated 'back home' - a point which has oftened been made here on EF by many- who don't even feel comfortable when going back just for holidays, and find they have little in common with relatives and old friends. No? And as such not being or feeling 'totally integrated', yes, in their very own country.



Strangely enough, my part of the world seems to attract many back in retirement. I have many friends here from childhood, who worked all their lives in Africa, Asia, the USA, Canana, South America... and are also now back. They are totally integrated, and yet- they also look upon many things quite differently to those who never left. For all sorts of reasons- partly because they left because they had idfferent aspirations and curiosities and thererore character and temperament- but also because of the many experiences they've had abroad. I also know several Brits here who have been here for as long as I lived in the UK- same applies to them- and they all say they could never go back to the UK now. Would you? Could you? I totally agree and my comment was clearly tongue and cheek. This comment was in response to Parnell asking for links and saying my 'evidence' was anecdotal- eg via real contacts her with real people.I do notice that no-one has commented on the very real link Vertigo posted confirming what I was saying about business people here being truly concerned about the effect of the Expulsion initiative on exports and ... business. Not all truths can always be 'linked' in the real world. The link given is however very clear. Here it is again for you to discuss EconomieSuisse clearly voiced J Marple - think about it actually. I do believe and know, that many expats who go back to their own country of birth after a lifetime abroad, can truly feel like fish out of water in their own country. Because that country has changed, and so have they. Not sure how long you've been here, and where 'back home' is- but I am pretty sure someone who has lived in several countries for most of their life would find it hard to feel totally integrated 'back home' - a point which has oftened been made here on EF by many- who don't even feel comfortable when going back just for holidays, and find they have little in common with relatives and old friends. No? And as such not being or feeling 'totally integrated', yes, in their very own country.Strangely enough, my part of the world seems to attract many back in retirement. I have many friends here from childhood, who worked all their lives in Africa, Asia, the USA, Canana, South America... and are also now back. They are totally integrated, and yet- they also look upon many things quite differently to those who never left. For all sorts of reasons- partly because they left because they had idfferent aspirations and curiosities and thererore character and temperament- but also because of the many experiences they've had abroad. I also know several Brits here who have been here for as long as I lived in the UK- same applies to them- and they all say they could never go back to the UK now. Would you? Could you? Also the Economie Suisse position is in facebook here
Is Kate Middleton being pressured to produce yet another spare for their heir? That might be the case as there's a new rumor that says the Duchess is being encouraged to get pregnant as fast as she can, even though her daughter Princess Charlotte isn't even one years old yet.

Duchess Catherine News: Critics Say Kate Middleton's Diet Is Taking A Toll On Her Looks

According to Celebrity Dirty Laundry, it's actually her husband Prince William who wants to add a third baby to their brood, but apparently Kate is not having it - at least not right now, that is.

Blogger Grace Gerard suggests that Prince William might be feeling a little jealous over the fact that so many royal couples from around the world are expecting babies and that all of the attention from the British monarchy might shift elsewhere.

Josh Duggar News 2015: Reality Star Is Furious With Wife Anna Over Divorce Rumors

She wrote, "Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden and husband Daniel Westling are expecting baby No. 2 in mid to late March. Sister-in-law Princess Sofia - she's married to Victoria's brother Prince Carl Philip - is expecting the couple's first baby sometime in April. Neither Swedish Royal couple has announced the gender of their little one. Jetsun Pema - Queen of Bhutan - is also pregnant and speculation is that King Jigme's little heir will arrive sometime in the first few months of 2016."

Yet the Duchess doesn't even want to think about getting pregnant again, considering the fact that her last two pregnancies weren't easy ones with her terrible morning sickness. And that's why she's putting her baby plans on hold right now, or until at least she's certain that she's ready.

So far Buckingham Palace has not commented on the report.

Keep up with Enstars for all the latest news on Kate Middleton, Prince William and all of your favorite royal celebrities right here.
It's been a long time since the Harry Potter movies captured the hearts of an entire generation. Since the films came to an end, the stars have worked hard to step out from the considerable shadows of their childhood roles. And overall they've been successful; star Daniel Radcliffe has made a name for himself (and shown impressive acting chops) in a variety of independent films. But while his newest movie is getting a lot of attention, it might not be the sort he was aiming for.

Swiss Army Man, which premiered at Sundance, tells the story of a guy (Paul Dano) who gets stranded on a desert island with a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe). Dano befriends the corpse, which has a propensity towards flatulence. Translation: the corpse farts. A lot.

Daniel Radcliffe plays a dead body that farts in the weirdest movie at #Sundance2016 https://t.co/jkEKM0L60q pic.twitter.com/2Ulwkco7sa  UPROXX (@UPROXX) January 23, 2016

If the idea of watching the child star of a beloved film series as a corpse farting his way through a movie (and engage in some other activities that frankly we'd rather not go into here) disturbs you, you're not alone: tons of people walked out of the premiere, and many were frankly horrified by the little they witnessed.

Counted at least 30 walkouts within first 30 mins of the unwatchable SWISS ARMY MAN before I bailed myself at 40-minute mark. DO NOT SEE IT.  Jeff Sneider (@TheInSneider) January 22, 2016

#SwissArmyMan: Castaway Paul Dano and lively corpse Daniel Radcliffe. Inventive--but annoying, puerile, frustrating. Just no. #Sundance2016  Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) January 23, 2016

Others were intrigued by the artistic implications of what is decidedly a strange and subversive piece of filmmaking.

If I farted while interviewing the SWISS ARMY MAN people, their artistic credibility would hinge on embracing it. an interesting predicament  david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) January 23, 2016

Still others simply were amazed that the film even existed, that such a grouping of actors and filmmakers had come together to make such a weird movie. Then again, independent cinema is often about strange and unexpected work, far off the beaten mainstream Hollywood path (and believe me, Swiss Army Man is as far off the path as you can go). After all, isn't Sundance supposed to be about exploring what cinema can create?

I've seen thousands of movies and never seen anything like SWISS ARMY MAN. Insane. Crazy. Like entering a bonkers dream. Wow. #sundance  Steven Weintraub (@colliderfrosty) January 23, 2016

"I get to play a farting corpse? And a guy rides me across the ocean? Powered by my farts?! Sign me up!" ~ Daniel Radcliffe, apparently.  Thorn Vicious (@ViciousPrick) January 24, 2016

"An existential drama about mortality, love and friendship... in which Paul Dano rides Daniel Radcliffe's farting corpse like a jet ski"  Josh (@Man_Overboard) January 24, 2016

Some suggested the (incredibly valid) theory that the filmmakers were simply messing with the audience and the art house lovers that typically populate Sundance, creating a high-profile film populated with famous actors, then forcing people to watch a movie about a dead farting guy for 95 minutes.

Can't decide if SWISS ARMY MAN is completely trolling the audience. #sundance  Richard Lawson (@rilaws) January 23, 2016

Perhaps what is most remarkable and unexpected, however, is how many people genuinely seemed to connect with this movie. (Keep in mind, this is a movie where a man rides a farting corpse across the ocean). Few of them could explain it, but Swiss Army Man has a distinct number of supporters. They reveled in the surreal experience and found it an oddly touching and affecting film, despite (or perhaps because of) the abundance of fart jokes.

Swiss Army Man - Wacky, surreal, at times brilliant. The most amazing anti-depressant you'll take. It really clicked part of the way thru.  Alex Billington (@firstshowing) January 23, 2016

SWISS ARMY MAN is absolutely bonkers and brilliant in equal measure. #Sundance  Anna Klassen (@AnnaJKlassen) January 23, 2016

SWISS ARMY MAN was absurd, demented and genius. Directors are master of tone. "Shame keeps us from love." #swissarmyman #sundance2016  Terrell Garrett (@TerrellTGarrett) January 23, 2016

Love it or loathe it, Swiss Army Man is making serious waves. The actors are being applauded for their performances (Dano in particular is being singled out for his remarkable work), and the social media response has grown by leaps and bounds. But how do the filmmakers feel about the controversy their work has caused? The directors gave us the weird and wonderful video for "Turn Down For What" by DJ Snake and Lil' Jon, and their visual skills are on clear display (plus their penchant for the unusual). And Radcliffe himself appears delighted by how confused and disgusted audiences appear to be.

"It's exciting, to be honest, using farts other than comedy, like using them for plot and emotion and making some people super uncomfortable," Radcliffe said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "There is something wonderful about it. So maybe these polarized views are exactly what the filmmakers were hoping for; a dramatic reaction that steps outside the usual fare Sundance has to offer.

But the real question remains: is Swiss Army Man a brave and subversive new type of filmmaking that challenges viewers, or is it a plain old stinker? You'll have to judge that for yourself (if you have the stomach for it). Regardless of what the critics and fans ultimately decide, one thing is for sure: there's never been a movie out there quite like this one.
Steven Avery has finally spoken out in the midst of Making a Murderer mania.

How Did Wisconsin Try To Stop 'Making a Murderer' From Happening?

Avery, whose multiple convictions are chronicled in the Netflix docuseries, sent a handwritten letter to local Wisconsin news station WISN last week. Currently in prison, the Wisconsin native urged, "Do an investigation of the sheriff of Manitowoc County."

Continuing to plead innocence, Avery said that the person who really killed photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005 is still out in the world.

'Making A Murderer' Creators Answer Claims They Left Out Evidence

"The real killer is still out there. Who is he stalking now?" he wrote. "I am really innocent of this case and that is the truth!!! The truth will set me free!!!!!!!"

Avery also wrote about his ex-fiancee, Jodi Stachowski, calling him a "monster" in a new interview with Nancy Grace.

"How much money Jodi get to talk bad!" he wrote, clearly implying that she has been coerced into changing her story.

Meanwhile, Calumet County prosecutor Ken Kratz, who is featured throughout Making a Murderer, reportedly wanted to write a book about Avery's trial as long as he confessed to Kratz.

Kathleen Zellner, Avery's latest attorney, released a full letter on Sunday that was sent from Kratz's office to Avery back in September.

"I apologize for misunderstanding your letters from a couple years ago, as I thought you were interested in being honest about what happened and finally telling the whole story to someone. Since I'm the person who probably knows more about your case than anyone else, I hoped that you would choose me to tell your story to," the letter reads.

"Unfortunately, you only want to continue your nonsense about being set up. That's too bad, because you had ONE opportunity to finally tell all the details, but now that will never happen.

"By the way, the difference between you and famous convicted murderers from the past is they told their whole truthful story to someone, who then wrote a book about what actually happened and people got the understand both sides. I was willing to do that for you..."

Kratz letter to SA:Confess so I can write book & profit.This bloodsucking gives vampires a bad name #MakingAMurderer pic.twitter.com/yBsXOE6dhl  Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) January 24, 2016

All 10 episodes of Making a Murderer are currently available to stream on Netflix.
Hillary Clinton's email fiasco worse than originally suspected By Jim Kouri

There were other accusations of misconduct during the Clinton dynasty and there will no doubt be more new allegations against Hillary Clinton in the coming months. The facts should appall any clear-thinking American, but alas, when it comes to the Clintons few things are clear and most voters gave up on "thinking" when they realized they could depend on Clintonian politicians to provide them with unearned largesse. A number of emails on Hillary Clinton's infamous private server -- a server monitored by a company without security clearances -- contained higher than "top secret" intelligence from some of the America's intelligence community's most sensitive operations, according to an exclusive report from Fox News Channel's chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge last week. The Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III sent a letter to leaders on congressional intelligence committees last week detailing the findings from a review of Clinton's emails, Fox News reported. A spokeswoman for the inspector general confirmed to CNN that the report was accurate. Two separate government agencies have indicated that emails on Clinton's server contained classified intelligence, the inspector general reported, including some on so-called "special access programs," which exceed the "top secret" classification making the information super-secret as in "for your eyes only" secret, according to former U.S. military intelligence operative and police anti-terrorism unit detective Michael Snopes. Select Committee on Benghazi Communications Director Jamal Ware has released the following statement: "It is the FBI, not the Benghazi Committee, that is investigating the mishandling of classified information in connection with Secretary Clinton's use of an unsecure, private server to conduct official U.S. government foreign policy. "Of course, none of the Secretary of State's emails  including one in which she appears to instruct a top aide to strip a document of its 'identifying heading and send nonsecure' instead of via classified, secure fax  would have been discovered if not for the work of the Select Committee on Benghazi." Meanwhile, the New York Times revealed that the book, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich" by Peter Schweizer, should have shaken up things within the Hillary Clinton for President campaign, but there was almost a total media blackout when it was released. The scuttlebutt within political circles is that the book expands the narrative about numerous cash donations made by foreign donors to the money-sucking Clinton Foundation. According to reports already known, foreign individuals and organizations donated millions of dollars to the foundation and gave former President Bill Clinton enormous speaking fees while his wife served as President Barack Obama's Secretary of State. She in turn is accused of granting favors from her State Department, all the while transacting business using a private email account and a Clinton owned and controlled Internet server. Schweizer's book uncovers a pattern of financial contributions to the Clintons that ended up giving the contributors access to policy decisions benefiting those donors, while the Clintons built up a personal mega-fortune. Already the Clintons' trusty team of liars, smear-merchants and goon-squad members are out in full force -- with the help of their news media sycophants -- attacking the messenger and attacking the motives of anyone who dares to investigate these allegations. However, truth be told, neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton is a hero of the middle-class. Historically -- going back to their early days in Arkansas -- at best they are narcissistic opportunists, and at worst they are criminal masterminds who run an alleged criminal enterprise with minions such as Lanny Davis, John Podesta, David Kendall and numerous others. And this behavior and these accusations are nothing new. In fact, the media was so captivated by Bill Clinton's sexual proclivities that it intentionally or unintentionally ignored news stories that should have outraged the American population. For example, President Bill Clinton's FBI director, Louis Freeh -- in his book titled, "My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror" -- revealed that Clinton kicked to the side of the road the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. Clinton had promised America that he would do everything in his power to bring those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds to face U.S. justice. But Freeh became angry when Clinton refused to personally ask then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to place boots on the ground to question the terrorism suspects the kingdom had arrested and to at least visit the crime scene where Americans died horrible deaths. Freeh wrote in his book, "Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood [Abdullah's] reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library." Freeh said, "That's a fact that I am reporting." Freeh told anyone in the news media who would listen that he wished to leave his post but decided to remain the FBI director until President Clinton left office in 2001. He feared the future of the FBI if Clinton could appoint his successor. "I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI [and] for the director," he told 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace. "[So] I was going to stay there and make sure he couldn't replace me." In 1996, President Bill Clinton created the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security and assigned it three specific mandates: to look at the security threat to the airline industry, and how the US could address it; to examine how government should adapt its security regulations for aviation; and to look at the technological changes coming to air traffic control. In the aftermath of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 terrorist bombing and facing voters in a reelection campaign that year, President Clinton asked his commission to focus its attention first and foremost on the issue of airline security. He ordered his minions to submit an initial report within 45 days, including an action plan to deploy new high technology machines to detect the most sophisticated explosives. The Commission held six public meetings, and heard from scores of witnesses representing the aviation industry, law enforcement and security, and the public, including the loved ones of victims of air disasters. Eventually the Commission, whose commissioners included family members of the victims of Flight 800, released a number recommendations including several measures to improve screening and create a national structure for airport screeners/security officers. It also called for airlines to hire security companies on the basis of performance, not the lowest bidder. When the airline industry became nervous over the costs of implementing the Commission's recommendations, the White House sent a letter to Air Transport Association saying there were no mandates only suggestions being offered for the benefit of the airlines and airports. The day after letter to the Air Transport Association was received, Trans World Airlines donated $40,000 to the Democrat National Committee. By the time of the Clinton's presidential re-election, other airlines had given large donations to Democrat Party committees: $265,000 from American Airlines, $120,000 from Delta Air Lines, $115,000 from United Air Lines, $87,000 from Northwest Airlines. According to an analysis done for the Boston Globe by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations, a total of $627,000 was donated to the Democrats by major airlines right after the Clinton administration shelved the Commission report and recommendations. There were other accusations of misconduct during the Clinton dynasty and there will no doubt be more new allegations against Hillary Clinton in the coming months. The facts should appall any clear-thinking American, but alas, when it comes to the Clintons few things are clear and most voters gave up on "thinking" when they realized they could depend on Clintonian politicians to provide them with unearned largesse. Jim Kouri, CPP, is founder and CEO of Kouri Associates, a homeland security, public safety and political consulting firm. He's formerly Fifth Vice-President, now a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, a columnist, and a contributor to the nationally syndicated talk-radio program, the Chuck Wilder Show. He's former chief of police at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at St. Peter's University and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri appears regularly as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Fox News Channel, Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, etc. He also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty (Law & Order). He holds a bachelor of science in Criminal Justice from Southwest University and SCI Technical School in New York City and completed training at the NYC Police Academy, FBI Continuing Education Program, and the Certified Protection Professional (CPP) of the American Society for Industrial Security. To subscribe to Kouri's newsletter write to COPmagazine@aol.com and write "Subscription" on the subject line. Home
Central planners freaking out about discussion of gold's role



By Clint Siegner

Growing Support for Sound Money Rankles Fed Apologists Sound money issues make for good politics these days. The leading Republican candidates have all suggested reforms to our monetary system. The topic is popping up in debates as well as interviews. Predictably, Fed worshippers and proponents of central planning everywhere are snickering and trotting out the usual responses. Michael Hiltzik, with the Los Angeles Times, recently published a column titled "The Worst Idea in the Presidential Debate: a Return to the Gold Standard." He thinks "a return to the gold-standard would be so not right that it's not even wrong." It's another way of saying the idea is so bad it defies analysis. Nevertheless, he tries anyway. He's terribly smug given his essential argument is for how great centrally planned monetary policy is. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other managed economies revealed the pitfalls of putting a handful of bureaucrats in charge of markets. But his point of view represents what most people are getting from the financial press, Wall Street, and Washington DC. Let's have a look at Hiltzik's main points then take them apart. False Claim #1: The economic science is settled Mr. Hiltzik takes a page out of the playbook of climate activists. He wants people to believe that only wingnuts, Luddites, and Republican presidential candidates are still talking about gold. He cites a 2012 survey of economists supposedly "drawn from the entire spectrum of economic theory." None thought a return to a gold standard was a good idea. Case closed. One assumption is clearly wrong. The entire spectrum is not represented. None of today's prominent Austrian school economists are included on the panel. You won't find names like Mark Skousen, Hans-Herman Hoppe, Robert Murphy, or Joseph Salerno. But you will find Barry Eichengreen, who has criticized the Fed for not being interventionist enough, and Austan Goulsbee, who served as chief on Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. The truth is there are plenty of economists who question the stewardship and discretion of Congress, the president, and, especially, Federal Reserve bankers. Heck, even Alan Greenspan is criticizing the fed and talking about an important role for gold these days. Lots of people, not just economists, wonder if the Fed's promise to foster higher prices forever is really working out for ordinary folks. Millions of Americans stand to get hurt by unlimited borrowing and money creation. Following Nixon's final abandonment of gold redeemability in 1971, all restraint vanished. That is why presidential candidates talk about reforms. Last week, a 53-44 majority of senators voted for the Audit the Fed bill. It wasn't enough to defeat the Democratic filibuster, but clearly frustration with the status quo is widespread. Proponents of unlimited money creation and politburo style management of our currency and markets are the true wingnuts. False Claim #2: A gold standard favors the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else Hiltzik tells us "As far back as the 19th century, it was well understood that the stability' provided by linking currencies and exchange rates to a fixed value of gold benefited only one economic class  creditors..." In other words bankers and the wealthy, people in a position to loan money, supported gold. The move to fiat currency benefitted everyone else. Apparently Hiltzik isn't familiar with the origins of the Federal Reserve. It is privately held by the largest banks (i.e. lenders) in the United States. It was devised, in secret, by the most prominent bankers and politicians of the early 20th century, and they certainly didn't do it to help the poor. They did it to help themselves. Since the formation of the Federal Reserve, the banking sector quadrupled as a percentage of GDP. Meanwhile, the wealth gap has been growing, and that trend accelerated dramatically about the time Nixon closed the gold window. The current system is an unmitigated disaster for virtually everyone outside of Washington DC and Wall Street. Consider the following charts from Zerohedge detailing just how awful the recent trillions of dollars in money creation and unlimited expansion in government has been for Americans at large: Since Hiltzik seems to care about the common man, he should join the large and growing movement of people who want a return to sound money. The idea is so right for these times. Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, the national precious metals company named 2015 "Dealer of the Year" in the United States by an independent global ratings group. A graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, Siegner puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals' brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs. Home
Questions of ethnic identity persistence in mass-media dominated North America (Part One) By Mark Wegierski

The persistence of the cultural identity of some so-called "white ethnic" groups such as Polish-Canadians has become increasingly problematic in the North American (U.S. and Canada) cultural space, dominated by mass media. The official declaration of Canada as a multicultural society has not led to an increased profile for some of these "white ethnic" groups such as Polish-Canadians. Indeed, there is a marked contrast between the major emphasis placed today in Canada on so-called visible minorities  as opposed to the "white ethnics". Canada and the United States today are countries where the various mass media have reached a historically unprecedented level of importance in determining the way in which persons think, create, and live. Living in such a mass-media saturated society, it now becomes almost impossible to even conceptualize how life might have been lived before the advent of radio, cinema, television, rock- and rap-music, cable-networks, or the Internet. To the extent that a certain cultural tendency does not appear prominently in the mass-media, its presence in society is almost certainly going to be minor. There is indeed some question whether the Internet, with its potential for a genuine pluralism of outlooks, is rather different from such media as radio, cinema, television, and rock- and rap-music, where the presence of so-called gatekeepers was always quite salient. However, the Internet had arrived as a truly widespread medium only in the late 1990s. Indeed, the first websites accessible to everyone who had a computer and Internet connection became possible only in 1995. Thus, the Internet arrived after over four decades of the very heavy conceptual and infrastructural weight of earlier media, most notably, television. Canada today is clearly in the ambit of a North American mass-media based pop-culture. This pop-culture quite relentlessly obliterates any distinctive fragment-cultures. This happens especially when they lack a presence in the mass-media and pop-culture, or in the state-supported official custodians of Canadian culture -- typified by so-called CanLit -- or are unable to generate a certain cultural resiliency on their own. Let me preface my upcoming comments by saying that I have lived closely in the Canadian and American mediascape and soundscape for over forty years. Thus, I am rather familiar with the output of the major media in Canada, and especially in the Toronto cityscape, where I was born and have lived nearly all of my life. Despite claims of over a million persons of Polish descent in Canada, the Polish-Canadian group has become possibly one of the least salient groups in Canada today. The relentless assimilative pressures of North American mass-media in regard to such groups as Polish-Canadians can easily be seen. There is, first of all, just the fact of the loss of most of the Polish language among the generations born in Canada. Secondly, there is the extreme infrequency of even a mention of Polish or Polish-Canadian matters in the mass-media. Also, apart from the infrequency of Polish mentions in the news, there are currently no opinion columnists in any of the major Toronto English-language newspapers -- The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun -- who could be identified as belonging to the Polish-Canadian community. Nor is the author of this article aware of any such persons working as opinion-columnists at any major Canadian newspaper. The author is also unaware of any such persons working as senior editors at newspapers, magazines, or recognized publishing houses. Nor is he aware of any such persons working as prominent literary agents, or being owners of more prominent bookstore chains. To be continued. Partially based on an English-language draft of a presentation read at the conference, Transatlantic Encounters (Lodz, Poland: University of Lodz), September 28-30, 2008. Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher. Home
Hillary will not be indicted By John Bender

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton should be indicted. Just the evidence that has been reported in the press is enough for even an inept prosecutor to convict Clinton on multiple charges. However, the evidence and the law are not going to be the determining factors in this case. Politics will be. There are two major hurdles that would have to be overcome in order for Clinton to be brought to justice. First, FBI director James Comey would have to refer the case to the Justice Department with a recommendation that Clinton be charged. This may or may not happen. Comey has a reputation for honesty, integrity, and principle. He stood up to the Bush administration and refused to authorize their warrantless wiretapping scheme. However, in 2014 the FBI under Comey made the absurd assertion that nothing warranted bringing criminal charges in the IRS scandal. So, one is left to wonder if Comey will act on principle as he did in 2004 or will cave to political considerations. If Comey acts on principle and recommends criminal indictment he will face a firestorm from the Brian Williams press. The attacks will be savage and relentless. The question is; does Comey have the character to do the right thing knowing what he will face after he does. The second hurdle would come if Comey recommends indictment. Attorney General Loretta Lynch would have to approve the indictments. The odds of that happening are about the same as someone hitting the Powerball jackpot and being struck by lightning on the same day. It could happen but calling it unlikely is like Noah saying he was in a rain shower. Lynch is a far left ideologue who has no respect for the Constitution. She has backed Obama's executive amnesty for illegal aliens and worked with Obama to strip certain citizens their Second Amendment rights without their Constitutional right to due process. Obama has already said the issue was "ginned up" because of politics and that, "this is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered." He was signaling the regime's narrative and giving the lapdog media a preview of how the regime will react to Hillary's crimes. There is no reason to believe Lynch will honor her oath of office no matter what the evidence shows. There is one more consideration that will preclude any indictment of Hillary. She will not go down alone. Hillary will go nuclear if indicted and take down as many members of the regime as she can. She will use every asset she has to destroy Obama's legacy if the regime indicts her. There is no way Obama will allow that if there is ANY way to avoid it. Lynch and the lap dog press will have an easier time containing and minimizing the damage to the Obama regime's legacy if she refuses to indict Hillary than if she indicts Hillary and she goes to war on them. Refusing to bring Hillary to justice will be a one week story and then be forgotten. Going to war with the Clintons would be a bigger story than Watergate. The Obama regime will not let that happen and Lynch is the firewall protecting both the regime and Hillary. John Bender is a freelance writer living in Dallas, Texas. He is a former staff writer for EtherZone.com and his columns have appeared in various print and internet publications. His work has been cited by Rush Limbaugh and he has been a guest on various radio talk shows including the David Gold Show, the Mark Davis Show, and the Armstrong Williams show. Home
Explaining the Islamic State phenomenon By Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah

Much has been written about the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (the Levant)  ISIS. Most of the analysts have looked at ISIS as another terrorist organization, an al-Qaeda off-shoot, waging a guerrilla war with cohorts of unorganized thugs. The Afghani-style gear, the pickup trucks, the all black or army fatigue uniforms that most ISIS fighters wear, the unshaven beards, the turbans, hoods and head "bandanas" with Arabic inscriptions have added to the confusion. In fact, ISIS is much more than a terrorist organization; it is a terrorist state with almost all governing elements. Over the last four years, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, the Islamic State developed from an extremist fringe and marginal faction participating in the civil war to become the strongest, most ferocious, best funded and armed militia in the religious and ethnic war that is waged today in Syria and Iraq. ISIS rules today over 300,000 square kilometers, a swath of land roughly bigger than the United Kingdom with a population of almost 10 million citizens. In the course of its first year of expansion, ISIS has changed its name to the Islamic State, a choice made to illustrate that its goals are not limited to Iraq and the countries of the Fertile Crescent. Moreover, the IS caliphate now has 10 branches, following pledges of allegiance in the past few months from new fronts including Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria, Afghanistan, Nigeria and, most recently, the Caucasian Emirates. Factors behind the Establishment of the Islamic State To understand the IS phenomenon, it is crucial to examine the factors that contributed to its emergence. Since the fall of Muslim empires and supremacy, Muslim scholars and philosophers have tried to understand the reasons behind its collapse, its domination by Western Powers, its colonization and its incapacity to reproduce the genius that so much characterized the Muslim civilization following the conquests that stretched the Muslim lands from Spain to India, West Asia, and China. Most, if not all the scholars tried to analyze the characteristics behind the "Golden Age" of Islam and why at a certain point, the Muslim world stopped producing innovations in science, medicine, algebra, mathematics, military warfare machines and graphic arts. The conclusion of most was that Muslim civilization had drifted away from the teachings of the Koran and adopted foreign and heretical inputs that had destroyed its fabric. The remedy they proposed was to return to the "pure Islam" which would heal the wounds and respond to the West by first reconstructing the Muslim society according to their raw interpretation of the Koran and organizing to defeat Western power. Indeed, since the fall of Muslim Spain in the fifteenth century and especially since the beginning of western colonization of Muslim territories, the Muslim world has witnessed the rise and fall of successive radical movements whose prime aim was to combat the West while regenerating the original Muslim society of Prophet Mohammad which was thought to be the cure for all ailments. Muslim thinkers like Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (late 19th century), Muhammad Abduh (19th century), Sayyed Qutub (20th century), Muhammad Iqbal (early 20th century), and the Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi in Sudan (19th century) are only a few examples of Muslim radicals who inspired upheavals against Western powers. ISIS is but another refined product of the radicalization of the Sunnis in West and Central Asia. Since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, foreign military intervention in the latter part of the 20th century, be it Soviet or American , was greatly responsible for the awakening of Sunni radicalism in West and Central Asia and to its expression today as a Holy War against the West, its allies and Israel. The perception that the West led by the United States are the new Crusaders trying to subdue Islam has nurtured extremists ideologies and created many militant organizations whose mission is to fight "the infidels." This perception should be considered to be at the root of the creation of Al-Qaeda whose raison d'etre is to fight the West and to strive to re-create a Muslim ( Sunni ) caliphate in the areas extending from North Africa to "Ma wara al Nahr," meaning Central and Eastern Asia, the historical boundaries of the once Islamic empire. The civil war in Syria transformed very quickly into a radical Sunni armed insurrection against the Alawite Iranian-backed Assad regime. The Muslim Brotherhood, which led the battle against the regime at the beginning of the conflict, was soon joined by radical organizations financed not only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar but also by other actors such as the United States, UK, France and Turkey. Qatar alone is said to have poured into the conflict more than $500 million. The Syrian scene provided all the ingredients for the radicalization of Sunni organizations. The Syrian civil war is an "all-in-one" situation in which all the previous factors are involved: foreign presence, Sunnis against Shiites, Iran and Hizbullah, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the United States, France and Turkey and an international coalition led by the United States fighting Islamic militants in the lands of Islam. Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund Islamic organizations all over the world, nurturing mainly the Salafi-Wahhabi schools at the expense of traditional and moderate Islam. Most of the Muslim states have been exposed for a long time to Wahhabi proselytism that is by essence opposed to the "moderate" Sufi Islam practiced in North Africa. No wonder after the revolution in Libya and the takeover of Mali by Islamic fundamentalists, the Muslim militants destroyed all religious shrines, an exact copy of the reality in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. However, it appears now that Saudi Arabia is apprehensive of what seems to be the result of its actions: One of the biggest contingents fighting in Syria and Iraq is Saudi (almost 2,500). As a consequence of the assessment that these Jihadist organizations could harm the monarchy, Saudi Arabia and all Gulf states have adopted a sort of "Patriot Act" and designated all those volunteers as terrorists. The Islamic Republic of Iran has also played a major catalyst role in contributing to the polarization of the Muslim world into two rival camps, Shiites and Sunnites. Since the beginning of the Khomeini takeover in 1979, Iran has been preaching a pan-Islamist ideology while sealing alliances with Islamic movements in the Arab world, Africa, and Asia. Iran concealed its Shiite philosophy and succeeded in creating the illusion that it was transcending its origins and its identity as a Shiite entity. It was not until the beginning of the so-called "Arab Spring" that the Arab nations realized the Iranian scheme. The war in Syria and Iran's open alliance with the Assad regime and the Shiite regime in Baghdad, Iran's subversive activity in Lebanon through Hizbullah and the Houthis in Yemen, unveiled the implications of the Iranian contribution: the transformation of local conflicts in West Asia into a Shiite-Sunni open conflict over hegemony. Moreover, the Arab perception that the U.S. administration was looking to mend the fences with Iran at the expense of it historical clients in the Middle East accelerated the crisis between the Arab world and Iran and justified in the eyes of many the armed struggle waged by the Islamists against Iran and its allies in the region. Another factor in the rise of the Islamic State is the so-called "Arab Spring" which was the expression of the failure of the Arab nation-states. The events in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen were exploited by Islamic militant movements which found the right opportunity to rise from their clandestine activities after years of oppression and persecution by the different Arab regimes to the forefront of the political struggle for power. Years of military rule did not eradicate the Islamic political forces that had remained in the shadow and camouflaged themselves under the cover of charitable organizations, social assistance and non-profit entities. However, after a first round in which the Islamists seemingly won in Tunisia and Egypt, the secular forces backed by the military succeeded in overcoming the Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood was dealt a heavy blow both in Syria and Egypt. However, the different regimes were unsuccessful in eradicating the plethora of militant terrorist Islamic organizations that are still conducting their deadly attacks against the different regimes. Some regimes survived  even though deeply shaken and destabilized  like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco  while others like Libya deteriorated into failed states, and others are struggling for their survival such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. The second American war in Iraq in 2003 dealt a death blow to the Sunni minority that had ruled Iraq since its separation from the Ottoman Empire by British colonialism. The Americans, striving to establish a new world order with democratic regimes as a copy of the West, established an unprecedented Shiite regime which in turn discriminated against the Sunnites who found themselves out of jobs, positions, army command, and Baath party offices. Paul Bremer, then head of the U.S. occupational authority in Baghdad, disbanded the Iraqi army in May 2003. Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. This was the fertile ground that welcomed Al-Qaeda and allowed the symbiosis between the Sunnite opposition to the Shiite regime and the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Until the schism with ISIS in 2013, Al-Qaeda was, in fact, the sole quasi-military opposition to the U.S.-led coalition campaign. Amazingly, the Islamic State terrorists who have emerged in Iraq and Syria are not new to the U.S. and Western security agencies. Many of them spent years in detention centers in Iraq after 2003. "There were 26,000 detainees at the height of the war," the New York Times reported, "and over 100,000 individuals passed through the gates of Camps Bucca, Cropper, and Taji." The leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was incarcerated in Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. "A majority of the other top Islamic State leaders were also former prisoners, including Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Abu Louay, Abu Kassem, Abu Jurnas, Abu Shema and Abu Suja," the Times detailed. "Before their detention, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and others were violent radicals. Their time in prison deepened their extremism and gave them opportunities to broaden their following." Unfortunately, the phenomenon went unnoticed for most American decision makers. "The prisons became virtual terrorist universities," the Times reporters Andrew Thompson and Jeremi Suri wrote. "Policies changed in 2007 Where possible, the military tried to separate hardline terrorists from moderates." But after the American withdrawal these prisoners were placed in Iraqi custody. The Islamic State freed these extremists as they swept across parts of Iraq. "With a new lease on life," the New York Times reported, "these former prisoners are now some of the Islamic States' most dedicated fighters."2 Never in the modern history of the Muslim world has a conflict drawn so many jihadists as is the case with the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars, surpassing wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Since the outburst of the conflict in Syria in 2011 and the 2014 takeover of Mosul by the IS (the Islamic State), Syria and Iraq have become the epicenter of the global Jihad. Thousands of jihadists originating from more than 90 different nationalities have flocked to Syria and Iraq to be part of the battle against the Assad regime and the Shiite regime in Iraq. The latter two are reinforced by Hizbullah and Iran. The jihadists seek to participate in the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world after the defeat in battle of the Western powers and their local Arab allies. The attraction the Islamic State is exercising on Sunni Muslims around the globe and jihadists in the Arab and Muslim world is tremendous. The Islamic State has become the beacon to rally thousands of militants in Iraq, Syria and around the globe. The attraction is not limited in space or time. The movement is in Europe, the United States, Australia, Xinyang and also in the Arab world and Africa. As a matter of fact, most of North Africa's jihadist groups were hesitant to associate themselves with the Islamic State until the United States commenced its military intervention in Iraq and Syria in August 2014. Profiling the Jihadist Almost all of those who join the armed Jihad, Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State fall into two primary categories: Criminals, often recruited in prison by radical imams who manage to rally those individuals to their cause by promising them that if they continue their actions on behalf of Islam  and not just for their only personal enrichment  their actions will become lawful and consistent with the will of Allah. The "exalted" and the "deranged" who dream of war and action, seeking to assert their manhood at all costs and who are in search of violence and epic adventure to express it. For these individuals, jihad offers a unique opportunity to indulge their inclinations and publicize them to satisfy their deranged ego. Religion doesn't have much to do with the jihadists' actions. Most know nothing about Islam and mindlessly repeat some verses that have been hammered into them by radical imams, less stupid than them, but much more dangerous. Those who are outside these profiles are only a tiny minority  exceptions that confirm the rule. Jihadist university graduates, for instance, are often frustrated individuals who have failed to integrate into society through work, study, socialization, marriage, etc. There again, radical imams succeed to convince them that their failures are not of their making but that of the environment that dismisses them. They teach them the idea that it is legitimate that they restore the situation to their benefit and by acting with force. In fact, all jihadists have a psychiatric pathology, characteristics of obsessive-compulsive, even depressive disorders, as well as an inability to be socialized. The study of their past reveals that they had left homes and families voluntarily, that many had been the witnesses of family crises, and that they were often unemployed. Some have even made use of drugs when they were not directly involved in its trafficking. The Islamic State has an undeniable power of attraction over these individuals. Indeed, it controls a territory on which it can implement the life principles that guide its action. Thus, young men leaving to join the IS receive on the spot what they have lacked in their previous homeland: On the one hand, they receive a reason that spares them the need to reflect, to earn a salary, to court women, while on the other hand they are offered warlike activities that become an outlet for their frustrations. For many, aspects of life  physical, sexual and sentimental  in the Islamic State are better than in their country of origin. This is particularly the case for Chechen fighters who flock to the IS because the conditions of combat in Iraq and Syria are less harsh than against the Russians. Many young jihadists in the Arab world believe the Islamic State offers them greater social justice. No doubt they hear of the permission to murder, torture, rape, and entering into forced marriage of non-Muslims, or even of Muslims when they are not quite as radical. And, of course, there is the extermination of the Shiites.5 Why North Africans? Out of the thousands who volunteered for jihad, about 5,000 fighters, originating from North African countries, have joined the ranks of IS and the Jabhat al-Nusra fundamentalist organizations active in Syria and Iraq. The biggest contingent is composed of Tunisians (3,000), followed by Moroccans (1,500) and Algerians (500-800) representing roughly 50 percent of the foreign fighters. These numbers exclude the European fighters of North African origin (mostly from France, 1,800, and Belgium, 400-600). Ironically, most of North Africa's jihadist groups were hesitant to associate themselves with the Islamic State until the United States commenced its military intervention in Iraq and Syria in August 2014. Jihadists such as Abdel Malek Droukdel from AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), Mohammed Zahawi , from Libya's Ansar al-Sharia, and Mokhtar Belmokhtar from al-Mourabitoun, who fought alongside Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, had refused, sometimes openly, to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State  even after it captured swathes of territory in Iraq in June 2014 and declared a caliphate. Recently, however, North Africa's younger jihadist generation has become emboldened to break away from al Qaeda, seeking instead to join Baghdadi's IS caliphate to benefit from its success and wealth. Rather than deterring these groups, the U.S.-led coalition's sporadic airstrikes in Iraq and Syria seem to have afforded the Islamic State even more legitimacy in the eyes of North Africa's jihadists. Some of the Moroccan militants are filling senior positions in the Islamic State as are "emirs," ministers (Justice, Finance, Interior), as well as a Military Emir (Military Chief) and even the head of a geographical region (the Turkman Mountain). However, 75 percent of the North Africans are "Inghimasiyyine," an Islamic State terminology for an undercover operative responsible for protecting convoys and serving as the second wave of attack when an offensive mission or targeted attack is carried out. During the first days of the civil war in Syria, the North Africans were organized in brigades, one of which was named "Sham al-Islam" and headed by a Moroccan, Ibrahim Benchekroun, alias Abu Ahmad EL-Maghrebi. Some even nicknamed the brigade as the "Liwa al Infransiyyoun" (the French Brigade) since the combatants communicated among themselves in French; some of its members were French nationals, mostly of North African origins, who were integrated into the North African French-speaking brigade. The ill-fated brigade that was active in the Latakia region of Syria was almost annihilated by the Syrian army loyal to Bashar Assad. The remaining members were scattered in different units created since then by the Islamic State. Considered by the Islamic state as "Muhajirun" (immigrants), the North African fighters receive a monthly salary of $2,000-3,000 (compared to $500 paid to the local fighters). If married, the volunteer receives an additional $200 and $50 more for each of his children. A new born child will automatically generate a "bonus." Multiple Motives for North African Jihadists Why are so many North Africans keen to join the Jihadist effort? What stands behind this massive mobilization and readiness of young people to leave everything behind, cut their ties with family, disappear from their milieu without any announcement, smuggle themselves to the Syrian or Iraqi arenas (at great risk from their respective countries and under the constant watch of the security and intelligence agencies that monitor movements to and from the Middle East), and of course ready to sacrifice their lives in Syria, Iraq or in Europe for a cause fought thousands of kilometers away from their native North African country? The explanation may be found in the following: North Africans have always wanted to be close to the "core" of the Middle East, feeling marginalized by historical events taking place in the Arab-Israeli conflict away from their region. North African states sent expeditionary troops to the Middle East after the 1967 Six-Day War to take part in the battle against Israel. Morocco sent two brigades (one was deployed in the Syrian Golan Heights and one in Egypt) while Algeria sent a brigade to Egypt. Those troops were actively engaged in combat during the Yom Kippur 1973 war against Israel and suffered heavy losses. North Africa is the setting for developing jihadist movements partly inspired by the war in Afghanistan and by the Khomeini revolution in Iran. But the unsatisfied needs of young, mostly unemployed people, left behind by the process of modernization and westernization and an unwillingness to accept the reality of power also plays a role. The disintegration of Libya after Qaddafi and the takeover of the country by jihadist militias have served as a contagious example to North African jihadists, meaning that what has been achieved in nearby Libya by jihadists could be repeated in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. The North Africa states have been exposed for a long time to Wahhabi proselytism that is opposed to the "moderate" Sufi Islam practiced in North Africa. Morocco and Tunisia were tolerant to the Wahhabi theological invasion while Algeria chose to fight it by all means. Identification with the Wahhabi ideology is only one step from joining soul mates to fight the "heretics" leading "heretic" regimes. Oddly enough, northern Morocco, which seems to be the area that has drawn the most jihadists to the Islamic State, is a region were strict Salafi sheiks dominate the religious scene and do identify openly with the ideology of the Islamic State and its targets. There is also an economic factor one cannot ignore. Most of the Moroccans who have joined the Islamic State come from the north of the country that has been neglected by former King Hassan II. The northern region of Morocco is hit by severe unemployment and subsequent radicalization. The fact that the Islamic State pays salaries that cannot even be imagined in Morocco is a factor in the enrollment of jihadists by the Islamic State. Finally, one cannot under-estimate the geographic factor: North Africa is very close to southern Europe and the jihadist network existing there, which makes coordination and recruitment easier. Those networks appeared first during the second Iraqi war (2003) when people thought it acceptable to travel to Iraq and join the fight against the "American aggressor." What Are the Ultimate Objectives of the Islamic State? The answer is simple, and it lies in the publications of the Islamic State: establish an Islamic Caliphate that would restore Islam's historical splendor. According to the maps published by the Islamic State, the Islamic State will include Andalus in the West (Spain) and stretch from North Africa  the Maghreb  (and the whole of West Africa including Nigeria) through Libya and Egypt (considered one geographical unit  Ard Al-Kinana), include what is called in Islamic state terminology, Ard el Habasha (from Cameroon in the west, Central Africa, the Lake Victoria states, Ethiopia and Somalia), the Hijaz (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States), Yemen until Khurasan in the east  defined as the Central Asian Muslim Republics beginning with Azerbaijan and including Pakistan and the southwest part of China, land of the Muslims of Turkish origin, the Uyghurs. The Islamic State also includes Iran and Turkey (named Anatol) in their entirety and parts of Europe (mainly the Balkans, more or less conforming to the borders of the defunct Ottoman Empire with the Austro-Hungarian territories).

Caliph Abu Bakar Ibrahim Al Baghdadi The Islamic State has made no secret who is its enemy: In an audio-taped message, Al-Baghdadi announced following his self-proclaimed caliphate that the Islamic State would march on "Rome" in its resolve to establish an Islamic State from the Middle East across Europe. He said that he would conquer both Rome and Spain in this endeavor and urged Muslims across the world to immigrate to the new Islamic State. On November 13, 2014, exactly a year before the Paris terrorist attacks, a voice message attributed to Al-Baghdadi vowed that IS fighters would never cease fighting "even if only one soldier remains." The speaker urged supporters of the Islamic State to "erupt volcanoes of jihad" across the world. He called for attacks to be mounted in Saudi Arabiadescribing Saudi leaders as "the head of the snake"  and said that the U.S.-led military campaign in Syria and Iraq was failing. He also said that ISIL would keep on marching and would "break the borders" of Jordan and Lebanon and "free Palestine." Al-Baghdadi also claimed in 2014 that Islamic jihadists would never hesitate to eliminate Israel just because it has the United States support. The distillation of these warlike declarations could only mean a continuation of the IS war effort directed at: Toppling the Shiite regime in Iraq and containing Iran. Taking control of the Syrian-Turkish border. Reaching Tripoli in Lebanon to secure a harbor on the Mediterranean Sea and by extension to destabilize Lebanon. Toppling the Assad regime in Syria. Destabilizing Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Destabilizing Europe and the U.S. through terrorist acts. Blowing up the Russian plane flying out of Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai and the Beirut and Paris terrorist attacks definitely fit in this IS strategy. Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, a special analyst for the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. Home
Why do they lie to us over and over?

By Dr. Robert Owens



Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Progressives and the Big Lie(s)

When faced with the highest levels of unemployment in American History why does the government trumpet a falling unemployment rate? In the face of overwhelming evidence of ineptness at best in Benghazi why do our hacks and their flacks insult us with answers like, "Dude this was two years ago!" With the obvious politicization of the IRS why does the president tell us there isn't even a smidgen of corruption in the IRS while professional bureaucrats who really run this country take the 5th, stonewall, and lie?

The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media regales us with oxymoronic statements such as, "Despite the unemployment rate plummeting, more than 92 million Americans remain out of the labor force." The Great Recession grinds on in the lives of everyday working people while our leaders talk about a recovery that only benefits them and their cronies. If you live in Washington DC or the surrounding area you are probably doing fine, for the rest of us in fly-over country not so much.

The shoes in the Benghazi scandal continue to drop finally reaching the point where even go-along-to-get-along John Boehner finally agreed to allow the House to vote on the establishment of a select Committee so that this long simmering embarrassment could hopefully come to the truth. Then again, as our once and future Queen said, "What difference at this point does it make?"

A funny thing happened on his way to becoming the Speaker of the House after Boehner fell on his sword for the Progressive agenda House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the entire Benghazi investigation was designed only to hurt Hillary's poll numbers. He blew his chance for the big seat but at least he completely discredited the committee which also advanced the Progressive agenda.

Remember the IRS scandal. The one that was swept under the carpet?

Article 2 section 1 of the Articles of Impeachment filed against President Nixon was about the abuse of power. It stated, "He has, acting personally and through his subordinated and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

Now 40 years later, under the Obama regime, the taxman cometh. When massive harassment of conservative groups by the IRS came to light as reported in The Daily Caller (DC) we were told:

Progressives were targeted, too

For months, Democrats and the media relied on the talking point that progressive groups also ended up on an IRS "Be on the Lookout" list while the agency was auditing and seizing information from conservative groups. But as The DC reported, IRS agents testified before the House oversight committee that the IRS scrutinized ACORN groups because it thought they were old groups applying as new ones; the group Emerge America was scrutinized for potential "improper private benefit;" and no evidence exists to prove that the IRS targeted any Occupy Wall Street group.

"Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word progressive,' all of which were then approved by the IRS [T]here is simply no evidence that any liberal or progressive group received enhanced scrutiny because its application reflected the organization's political views," according to an oversight committee staff report.

No White House involvement

"Not necessarily the White House" was the phrase that some Democratic "strategist" used when attacking one of our Daily Caller stories on cable television last year. He meant that while the IRS may have been corrupt to its very Washington core, President Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett have not yet been photographed sifting through Tea Party applications at a desk in the Lincoln Bedroom.

But we do know, however, courtesy of The Daily Caller's reporting, that Lerner exchanged confidential taxpayer information on conservative groups with White House officials including White House health-policy adviser Ellen Montz and Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy Jeanne Lambrew, who just happened to be the most powerful official on Obamacare implementation within the White House.

A couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati

Ah, yes. The "WKRP in Cincinnati" Theory of 2013. You know the episode where the wacky characters in the Cincinnati office make a little "whoops" and take it upon themselves to target conservatives nationwide? A team of reporters from The New York Times, including dreamboat Nicholas Confessore, even went to bat for the administration on this theory last year, publishing a disgraceful article about Ohio-based "confusion" and "staff troubles" among "Low-level employees in what many in the I.R.S. consider a backwater."

But at least five different offices ranging from Chicago to Laguna Niguel, CA. were engaging in this kind of "confusion," and the whole excuse got torn down like Riverside Stadium. A Cincinatti-based IRS official said that Washington "was basically throwing us under the bus." The bus to the world-renowned American Sign Museum.

Lerner can still cite the Fifth Amendment

That's what her lawyer, Bill Taylor, wrote in a recent letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, calling a possible contempt vote "un-American." But it's just not true. Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privilege when she made a statement attesting to her innocence at a May 2013 oversight hearing. The oversight committee and U.S. House counsel both determined as much.

It could take years for the IRS to get all of Lerner's emails

That's what new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who has been threatened with contempt himself, told oversight investigators. But the independent group Judicial Watch managed to obtain emails showing Lerner coordinating with the Department of Justice to potentially prosecute conservative activists. It only took Judicial Watch one Freedom of Information Act request to get that stuff. "Now I see why the IRS is scared to give up the rest of Lois Lerner's emails," said oversight member Rep. Jim Jordan. When they were found and they did show not only that the conservative groups were targeted but also that the IRS tried to cover it up, nothing happened except Louis Lerner continues to receive her massive pension of over $100,000 per year plus we have learned that she also earned Up to $129,000 in bonuses for her exemplary work.

Don't worry, federal government investigators are on top of things

Eric Holder's Department of Justice tapped an Obama political donor to head its investigation. FBI investigators went months without contacting the conservative groups that were victimized by the IRS targeting, and leaked to the press that no criminal charges would be filed in relation to the case before much of the relevant information we currently have even came out.

The Obama administration's investigation of the scandal was such a joke that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte accused Obama and Holder of "undermining" investigators on multiple occasions, and joined with other House GOP leaders in calling for a special counsel to prosecute the case.

But if the investigation was a joke, here's the punchline: The Justice Department has been the only investigative body to ask Lois Lerner any questions, at an off-the-record "Q+A" that was not under oath.

Only Tea Party groups were targeted

Good for the IRS for taking a firm stand against all those wacky Tea Party groups popping up out in Palookaville trying to exercise their little "First Amendment rights." Bunch of Koch-funded rednecks.

But oh wait: The IRS also audited the Leadership Institute, founded by Morton C. Blackwell, which has been one of the Washington area's foremost conservative activist training organizations since 1979, even demanding personal information about the institute's college-aged interns. Oh yeah, and the IRS also told a pro-life group "you can't force your religion" and tried to stop pro-life activists from picketing Planned Parenthood clinics.

The targeting is over now

Sure it is. Just ask Ron Paul and his group Campaign for Liberty's donors about that.

Now the latest update, despite a court order to the contrary the IRS has deleted hard drives that held critical evidence in the agency's on-going scandals.

And now the BIG LIE continues in the Benghazi scandal. The movie 13 Hours has come out. It is amazing and every American should see it. Written by and based upon the experiences of three of the surviving heroes this movie tells the story that has been hidden from us for so long. In the aftermath of the release the families of the victims have once again come forward and said that Hillary told them at the coffin ceremony that a video was the cause of the attack. She also said that they would arrest the maker of the video. Subsequently some of Hillary's emails which were only obtained through a Freedom of Information request, a law suit and a judge's order show that she knew this to be a lie at the time she used it to cover herself and the President at the time. She has admitted this is true at the discredited Benghazi hearings.

The families are saying Hillary lied. Hillary is now saying that she never blamed the video and in essence that the families are lying. Every news outlet is playing this like a "He said she said" debate. They are interviewing the families. Of course Hillary avoids interviews from anyone except her pet networks and their softball questions.

Here is my big problem with the big lie. One click of the mouse and you can pull up the YouTube video of Hillary at the coffin ceremony blaming the video. The maker of the video was arrested and is still in jail. The one who lied to the families, lied to the nation isn't in jail, isn't under a cloud of shame. No, they are now busy with the help of the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and their cable henchmen lying her way to the White House

Why do they lie to us over and over?

The easy answer is because they can. The major media has morphed from a watchdog to a lapdog barking on cue that everything is all right, there's nothing to see here, move along.

The best government money can buy has shown us that they can safely operate on the assumption that American voters choose their leaders based on the philosophy, "I know he's a liar but I like what he says."

But hey there's a game on tonight! Or as President Obama's body double Alfred E. Newman has been known to say, "What me, worry?"

Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
The Thousand Year Peace: Chapter Thirteen: The New World Order House of Cards: Part One By Michael Moriarty

I had planned to write an article about the frighteningly radical sympathies that both President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have expressed for Islam. What is radical sympathy?

Radical Sympathizers The inability of the entire North American leadership

to fully prosecute

an effectively unrelenting war

against what is undeniably

the pure elixir of human evil,

ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda et al. What is inspiring me to repeatedly cry "Fire! Fire!" in louder and louder, painfully more strident tones? America's refusal

to impeach

Barack Hussein Obama! I've been engaging in what Time Magazine once described as my "freedom of screech". It was Time that helped give us a President Barack Hussein Obama. Twice! Apparently,

it has all been

for the sake

of the New World Order!" Let me review, for the hundredth time, The North American House of Cards that the New World Order Illuminati  and their diseased entourage of United Nations' compatriots  have made out of the United States, Canada and what is left of The Free World. Given that a second Trudeau has inherited the Canadian throne for an entirely new and transformed generation of Canadians, perhaps it is best to return to that most-transformative year for all of North America, 1968 and the election of Pierre Trudeau. Le Pere Trudeau, in his first administration, reigned as Prime Minister for over ten years, from April 28th, 1968 to June 4, 1979.

Fidel Castro as Pierre Trudeau's Imam The empowerment of the North American Far Left was actually born with Pierre Trudeau. It is hard, in retrospect, to not now call him a full-out, unadulterated Castro-worshipping Communist. We leap almost fifty years forward to the present moment and see that the seeds which Trudeau sowed then have erupted in a new face for North American Communism: Red Islam. Marxist Muslims. The anthropomorphic image of Vladimir Putin's Neo-Soviet Alliance with the legendary Terrorist State of Iran. From 1979 to 2016, almost 40 years of slow, steady and, with the exception of President Ronald Reagan, unrelenting, New World Order Treason. Insuring the inevitability of a Red Islamic hegemony. A New World Order Coalition of Communist Muslims, Marxist Islam running the former democracies of North America?! The international Communist movement, after all these years of failure in its efforts to rule the remaining Free World, suddenly realized that to complete the job, they must enlist the most fanatically homicidal of earthly religions, Islam. The enemy of my enemy is, indeed and of necessity my "new best friend". Such "best friends" as Islam and World Communism, both fighting for a New World Order, are unavoidably, with the invaluable example of Pierre Trudeau, planning martial law for all of the United States. And Canada if necessary. Pierre declared martial law over Canada in October of 1970.

The Trudeau False Flag In short, Pierre Trudeau, in contrast to his son, needed anti-Communist bona fides. You don't, to use an Obama word, "transform" the whole Free World in one Canadian administration, particularly if you've been suspected, like Pierre Trudeau was, of being Communist all along. Now, after 46 years of increasing North American submission to the United Nations' plans for a New World Order?! It has been concluded by the New World Order Illuminati that the only possible way for Karl Marx, Stalin and Mao to get their ways with the human race is to ally themselves with the ruthlessly butchering history of Islam. Radical Islam particularly. Why? Muslims can and will do the all-necessary dirty work of terror when the Communist Party has been forced to disavow, so repeatedly, its violent dirty work, particularly in South America. Let Islam

be the wolf

in the transforming Communist costume

of The Lamb. Together,

the Islamic Wolf

and

The Communist Lamb

shall build

The New World Order. Break the back of Judeo-Christianity by creating the worldwide Red Islam that now exists with such seemingly unstoppable force in the Presidential and Prime Ministerial offices of both Washington, D.C. and Toronto. Trudeau and Obama. Red Islam, Communist Muslims will never have a better chance than now to close their fists around the Judeo-Christian Civilization or, at least, what is left of it. They will now, with martial law, choke to death that once-powerful Western Civilization of Marx and Mohammed and obliterate it. This is the great moment that Pierre Trudeau and his pal, Fidel Castro, had dreamt of all along. The final end of North American Democracy. With that gone, Europe will belong to Putin and Iran! The leading contender for the next President of the United States, Donald Trump  if a next American election ever happens  has apparently planned for a kind of Roman Triumvirate. He, Putin and the Politburo of Red China as Emperors of a Pax Internationale wherein everything is "negotiable". I much prefer that to what both Justin and Barack have in mind. Tune in next week to Part Two of The New World Order House of Cards. We will discuss what I see as the main choices for the immediate future: Obama's Martial Law that suspends American elections wither that or Obama's Impeachment. Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home
'American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization' is a one-stop-shop for how the US became a polarized nation

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 25, 2016) - American University Professor James Thurber's new book American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization provides a full diagnosis of the gridlock in Congress that is impacting democracy in our nation. The book takes a deep dive into partisanship and the media, rancor on Capitol Hill, and how gridlock is reflective of lifestyle choices and environment.

Timely Subject

Academics have attempted to ascertain just how Americans became so divided. And this is where American University School of Public Affairs Distinguished Professor James Thurber made a noteworthy contribution, co-editing a newly-published book, American Gridlock: The Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization. It's immensely valuable because it pulls together many different facets of academic research on this subject into a single volume. It's like a one-stop shop for how the U.S. became a polarized nation.

You've seen partisanship and you've seen gridlock. You turn on C-SPAN, and you might watch two members of Congress lambasting each other. You can see vitriolic smackdowns from pundits on cable TV. And it's omnipresent in everyday life, too. If your uncle was espousing irksome political opinions over Thanksgiving dinner, you might have been struck with the urge to fling mash potatoes at him.

With a deeply divided Congress, a lame duck president, and the 2016 presidential campaign already at a fever pitch, this issue couldn't be more timely and pertinent.

"The two parties are really in two different universes, totally talking about different things. No one is coming together in dialogue," says Thurber.

Rancor on Capitol Hill

In a recent interview, Thurber talks about contemporary partisan rancor, and one way he measures that is through congressional voting. Members of opposing parties are voting together about as infrequently as they did just before the Civil War, he says.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, there was plenty of cross-party cooperation. Roughly one-third of members in the House and Senate were moderates voting together, Thurber says. But the situation since that time has deteriorated. "From the early 1980s to present, every year we've lost more and more people voting together, and fewer and fewer competitive [congressional] races in the general election," he says.

A prime motivating factor for this transition was the dwindling number of conservative Southern Democrats, Thurber says. The entire South became reliably Republican, and the blueprint for the eventual "red" and blue" America was born.

Though this process started in the 1960s with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's embrace of civil rights legislation, it hadn't neared completion until much more recently. "Just to put it in perspective: In 2008, we had 58 [moderate-to-conservative Democrats], and now, if they're willing to even say they are, it's about six Democrats. And there are no moderate or liberal Republicans," says Thurber.

In the introductory chapter written by Thurber and co-editor Antoine Yoshinaka, they explain how partisanship in Congress has stifled the budgetary process.

"Partisan battles over the federal budget over the last 20 years are a prime example of the fundamental policy differences between the parties. Bipartisanship is rare if not nonexistent in Washington when it comes to tax increases and cuts in popular domestic programs. Both are needed to reduce the deficit and the debt, but the parties have taken increasingly extreme positions on their willingness to compromise on taxes and means testing in social programs," they write.

A Full Diagnosis

When examining the nation's gridlock, it's a little like diagnosing a patient with numerous maladies. Where do you even begin? The book is broken into five parts: polarization among voters and activists; polarization in national institutions (Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court); polarization in the states; polarization in the media; and a final section with implications and conclusions.

Alan Abramowitz writes a strong overview of the new American electorate. Straight-ticket voting has reached record levels, and the 2012 presidential campaign saw the highest level of party loyalty of any race since exit polls started in 1972. "According to the national exit poll, 93 percent of Republican identifiers voted for Mitt Romney and 92 percent of Democratic identifiers voted for Barack Obama," Abramowitz notes.

Later on, Samuel Abrams and Morris Fiorina argue that the number of nonpartisan voters in the middle has actually not shrunk. Instead, the electorate has "sorted," meaning the two political parties are more ideologically homogeneous and distinct from each another. "Party sorting increases inter-party conflict and makes cross-party compromise more difficult," they write.

David Karol documents the prominence of issue-driven interest groups, from the NRA and the anti-tax Club for Growth on the right to the League of Conservation Voters and abortion-rights group EMILY's List on the left. He notes that these activist groups are now quite integral to the party coalitions. And in looking at campaign donations, interest groups have become more inclined to give money to candidates from just one political party.

There are a number of other solid contributions here. Brandon Bartels has a chapter on how the Supreme Court has generally become more polarized over time. Boris Shor looks at polarization in state legislatures, which can be more intense than it is at the national level.

Partisanship and the Media

Three contributions look at the relationship between gridlock and the media. AU's Jennifer Lawless and her co-author Danny Hayes determine how polarization affects local news coverage. Lopsided House races receive less substantive local news coverage than competitive races, Lawless and Hayes found. And since so many Americans live in safe, one-party dominated congressional districts, this dearth of local campaign stories could have broader consequences.

"After all, when citizens are exposed to news coverage about politics, they are not only more likely to know about their representatives, communities, and issues facing the nation, but they are also more likely to participate," they write. "If polarization diminishes the news environment by making more and more congressional districts uncompetitive, then the foundation of democracy--citizen engagement--may be imperiled."

Many political observers believe that partisan media outlets, like FOX on the right and MSNBC on the left, provide divisive content that radicalizes their viewers.

In this book, Gary Jacobson believes that partisan media likely contributed to the record levels of partisan polarization in the 2012 presidential election. He also looks at how certain issues are covered. Climate change, he points out, is treated quite differently by conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and left-leaning figures like Jon Stewart and Chris Matthews. Views on human-induced climate change did not differ by party in the 1990s, but by 2012 it was considered established fact by liberals and widely denied (or viewed skeptically) by conservatives. "Thus, it is not surprising to find large residual effects of partisan media attention on beliefs about climate change and that polarization on this issue was unusually high," he writes.

Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson argue that partisan news media is probably more a symptom of polarization, and not its cause. Among several reasons, they note that a relatively small number of people consume partisan news shows.

Culture, Identity, and Geography

Thurber says there is no single formula that explains these divisions. You have cultural issues like guns and abortion that have created chasms in the American electorate. And the party coalitions are now fragmented by race, with white males increasingly aligned with the GOP and minority populations supporting Democrats.

And gridlock is also reflective of lifestyle choices and environment. Thurber says people's beliefs are often influenced by where they live, whether it's an urban community or a rural town. Even if economic dislocation increases Americans' mobility--with conservatives moving to liberal areas, or vice versa--it doesn't necessarily diversify a region's ideological composition.

Thurber offers this illuminating hypothetical: "Let's say you're a Detroit United Auto Worker and you retire before Detroit went down. And you move to Phoenix, Arizona, and you're in a nearby suburb. It's full of Republicans. Do you go down there and help organize for the Democratic Party? Do you organize for unions? No. You go down there, and you either adapt to the surroundings or you don't get involved."

Partisanship is Bipartisan

Many liberal commentators believe that tea party Republicans have no desire to govern, and thus, no impetus to work with Democrats. And some researchers also put much of the blame for the current stalemate on the Republican Party's rightward drift. Yet Thurber disagrees, arguing that the left also bears some responsibility for national gridlock. And in the book, Thurber and Yoshinaka explain why Republicans have an incentive to compromise.

"The fact remains that a vast number of policies (or repeal thereof) advocated by those who generally identify as conservatives still require government to act," they write, mentioning GOP goals like tax cuts, pension reform, and curbing public unions.

In the end, Thurber says, both political parties do the voters a disservice. Even with hardball, winner-take-all politics, everyone still finds a way to lose.

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Located in Washington D.C., American University is a leader in global education, enrolling a diverse student body from throughout the United States and more than 140 countries and providing opportunities for academic excellence, public service, and internships in the nation's capital and around the world.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers will receive $2.4 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop compact free electron lasers that will serve as powerful, affordable x-ray sources for scientific discovery. This new technology could lead to portable and high-contrast x-ray imaging to observe chemical reactions, visualize the flow of electrons, or watch biological processes unfold.

Currently, x-ray light sources hold great scientific promise but there are only a handful of these light sources worldwide: each is miles long and costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. What's more, access to these facilities is greatly limited, clogging the pipeline of scientific experiments possible.

A free electron laser uses an accelerator to produce a high-energy electron beam that produces laser radiation. Unlike conventional accelerators, laser-plasma accelerators use high-power optical lasers instead of high-power radio frequency waves to accelerate electrons across short distances, typically centimeters. These electrons "surf" on waves generated by the interaction between the laser and the plasma, much like a surfer pushed forward by an ocean wave. Laser-plasma accelerators are desirable because they hold the potential to produce a compact, inexpensive high-energy electron beam compared to a conventional accelerator.

Laser-plasma accelerators, however, are an emerging technology. Research to-date has produced electron beams with sufficient energy to produce laser radiation, but other measures related to the quality of these beams still remain unresolved.

Berkeley Lab researcher Wim Leemans and his colleagues have been refining laser-plasma acceleration for more than a decade.

"We are now in the position that we know enough that we want to push for this next big challenge: can we build small accelerators and produce radiation that is typically produced by larger accelerators?" said Leemans, director of the Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division (ATAP) at Berkeley Lab. "We want to develop these accelerators in such a way that accessing the light produced by these beams is much less expensive and can be performed in much smaller settings."

The Moore Foundation grant will enable experiments that address this important question by observing free electron lasers operating at short wavelengths using an electron beam from a laser-plasma accelerator. Leemans, who also directs the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) center housing one of the most powerful lasers in the world, will work with a team that also includes Berkeley Lab senior scientist Carl Schroeder and scientist Jeroen van Tilborg, along with postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and technical staff.

During the course of his career, Leemans says he has seen "tremendous progress" toward generating high-quality electron beams from laser plasma accelerators. "Ultimately, if it turns out that we have the beam quality under control, there's nothing stopping us from going toward x-rays," he said. "If we can push down the wavelength of the light into the x-ray, potentially even into hard x-rays, then we have radiation sources with a footprint that is probably one-tenth or less than the big machines."

"State of the art x-ray sources offer an unprecedented opportunity to probe the microscopic world, but access to these sources is extremely limited," said Ernie Glover, science program officer at the Moore Foundation. "If successful, this project will demonstrate a path to significantly reduce the size and cost of these sources and greatly expand their scientific impact."

"With support from the Moore Foundation, we hope we can show that this technology is real and that it will revolutionize the way accelerators can be built in the future for universities, companies, small institutes and beyond--that's our goal," said Leemans.

This research is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant 4898.

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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/.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and preservation of the special character of the Bay Area. Visit Moore.org or follow @MooreFound.
BETHESDA, MD - The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce that William "Bill" Wood (University of Colorado Boulder) has been awarded the Society's Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education in recognition of his significant and sustained impact in genetics education.

"Dr. Wood is one of the pioneers in the reform of science teaching. He believes that teaching should be more than just lecturing and should utilize our knowledge of how people learn, should pose authentic problems in teaching, and engage the learner in the learning process." said Rachelle Spell, Senior Lecturer at Emory University and one of those nominating Wood for this honor.

In addition to his contributions to bacteriophage research and developmental genetics, especially in C. elegans, Dr. Wood has long been dedicated to the development of innovative pedagogical approaches and high-quality undergraduate science education. He was an author for several textbooks, in biochemistry, immunology, and molecular biology, and has contributed to several National Academies studies related to science education.

He is especially recognized for his leadership in helping to develop the National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology, which has played an important role in improving undergraduate instruction nationwide. A strong proponent of instruments for student assessment and evaluation of teaching, Bill collaborated with education researchers to create the Genetics Concept Assessment, a tool that measures the impact of active learning techniques on students' conceptual learning. His work helped to initiate a national trend of evidence-based reflective teaching and active learning.

Dr. Wood served as Editor-in-Chief of CBE-Life Sciences Education, a peer reviewed journal published by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), with GSA as an editorial partner, and until recently was an active member of its editorial board. He has also been a tireless advisor to groups including the National Research Council, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and The College Board. Wood is a founding member of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology. He has also received education awards from the ASCB and Society for Developmental Biology.

GSA Executive Director Adam Fagen, who worked with Wood on the Summer Institute, said that "it is inspiring to see someone who has been such a leader in scientific research apply the same enthusiasm, commitment, and rigor to science education. Bill continues to inspire and innovative, and we are glad to honor his continuing leadership in genetics education."

The Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education recognizes significant and sustained impact on genetics education. Recipients of the award have promoted greater exposure to and deeper understanding of genetics through distinguished teaching or mentoring, development of innovative pedagogical approaches or tools, design of new courses or curricula, national leadership, and/or public engagement and outreach. The award was named posthumously for Elizabeth W. Jones (1939-2008), the recipient of the first GSA Excellence in Education Award in 2007. She was a renowned geneticist and educator who served as the 1987 GSA president and as Editor-in-Chief of GSA's journal GENETICS for almost 12 years (1996-2008).

The award will be presented to Dr. Wood at The Allied Genetics Conference, July 13-17, 2016, in Orlando, Florida.

To learn more about the GSA awards, and to view a list of previous recipients, please see http://www.genetics-gsa.org/awards.

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About the Genetics Society of America (GSA)

Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional scientific society for genetics researchers and educators. The Society's more than 5,500 members worldwide work to deepen our understanding of the living world by advancing the field of genetics, from the molecular to the population level. GSA promotes research and fosters communication through a number of GSA-sponsored conferences, including regular meetings that focus on particular model organisms. GSA publishes two peer-reviewed, peer-edited scholarly journals: GENETICS, which has published high quality original research across the breadth of the field since 1916, and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, an open-access journal launched in 2011 to disseminate high quality foundational research in genetics and genomics. The Society also has a deep commitment to education and fostering the next generation of scholars in the field. For more information about GSA, please visit http://www.genetics-gsa.org.
There is little dispute that in the wake of European colonists' arrival in the New World, Native American populations were decimated by disease and conflict. But when it comes to the timing, magnitude, and effects of this depopulation -- it depends on who you ask.

Many scholars claim that disease struck the native population shortly after their first contact with Europeans, and spread with such ferocity that it left tell-tale fingerprints on the global climate. Others, however, argue that -- though still devastating -- the process was far more gradual, and took place over many years.

A new Harvard study, however, suggests both theories are wrong.

Led by Matt Liebmann, the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology, a team of researchers was able to show that, in what is now northern New Mexico, disease didn't break out until nearly a century after the first European contact with Native Americans, coinciding with the establishment of mission churches.

But when it did finally strike, the study shows, the effects of disease were devastating. In just 60 years, native populations dropped from approximately 6,500 to fewer than 900 among the 18 villages they investigated. The study is described in a Jan. 25, 2016 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to Liebmann, the study was co-authored by Joshua Farella and Thomas Swetnam from the University of Arizona and Christopher Roos from Southern Methodist University.

"In the Southwest, first contact between native people and Europeans occurred in 1539," Liebmann said. "We found that disease didn't really start to take effect until after 1620, but we then see a very rapid depopulation from 1620 to 1680. (The death rate) was staggeringly high -- about 87 percent of the Native population died in that short period.

"Think about what that would mean if you have a room full of people and nine out of 10 die," he continued. "Think of what that means for their social structure, if they're losing the people who know the traditional medicine, their social and religious leaders, think of the huge impact it would have on their culture and history."

The fallout from that depopulation, however, wasn't merely cultural.

"Forest fires also take off during this period," Liebmann said. "When people are living in these villages, they need timber for their roofs, and for heating and cooking. In addition, they're clearing the land for farming, so trees weren't growing there when these archaeological sites were inhabited. But as people died off, the forests started re-growing and we start to see more forest fires."

That finding, he said, also links the study with ongoing debates about whether the world has entered a new geological era -- dubbed the Anthropocene -- marked by the fact that humans have affected the climate on a global scale.

Though there is still wide debate about when this new epoch started, a number of researchers have pointed to 1610, when -- ice core records show -- global CO2 levels dropped dramatically.

"one of the 'Early Anthropocene' theories suggests that because Native Americans were being removed from the landscape on a massive scale, especially in the Amazon, they were no longer burning the forest for agriculture, and as the forest re-grew it sequestered carbon," Liebmann said. "The argument hinges on the notion that the depopulation of the Americas was so extreme that it left its mark on the atmosphere and climate at global scales.

"Our data speaks to a period a little bit later than the dates of low CO2 from the ice cores, but depopulation in the Southwest could have intensified that dip," he added. "The important thing, from my perspective, is that the Southwest was one of the earliest points of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in what later became the U.S., and it hadn't yet experienced a catastrophic depopulation by 1610, so it's hard to argue for it happening anywhere in the rest of North America at that early date."

Mapping nearly 20 Native American villages, however, is no easy feat -- many researchers might spend years examining a single site. To pull it off, Liebmann and colleagues turned to a technology known as LiDAR, which uses lasers to penetrate the dense forest cover and create a map of the region that, in some cases, is accurate down to the centimeter.

"I thought my career would be standing on these sites with a (surveying tool called a) total station," Liebmann said. "I've mapped a couple of archaeological sites like this before, and it can take years, but with LiDAR I have the ability to calculate the architecture of 18 villages in an instant. This new technology is what made this study possible."

Armed with that data, Harvard Anthropology graduate student Adam Stack and undergraduate student Sarah Martini were able to calculate the volume of each building and develop an equation to estimate how many people lived in the area.

Dating the sites -- and in particular when villages may have been abandoned as the population dwindled -- is far trickier.

"Usually, we use tree rings to date architecture in the Southwest," Liebmann said. "If someone cuts down a tree to use as a roof beam, archaeologists can look at the tree rings to date it. But for this project we didn't excavate the sites, so we couldn't recover the roof beams. Instead, the dendrochronologists on our team looked at the inner rings of trees that are still growing on these sites to establish when they germinated. They found that tree growth took off between 1630 and 1650. When we get a cluster of dates in the same 20-year period, that tells us that something happened at these villages to start these trees growing there."

What that something was, Liebmann said, was the removal of the native population from the landscape. Without humans in the region to clear trees for building materials, heating, cooking, and agriculture, the forest began to reclaim that territory, providing, literally, more fuel for fires.

"When we looked at the patterns of fires in the tree rings, we could see that up until about 1620, fires were small and sporadic," Liebmann said. "Native American fields were acting as literal fire breaks. But as the forest started re-growing, much more widespread fires occurred. That continued until almost exactly 1900, when a combination of increased livestock grazing and a change in federal forest management policies began to suppress all fires."

Ultimately, Liebmann said, the study shows that understanding how and when depopulation happened, and the ecological fallout from it, is far more complex than researchers have previously thought.

"Our findings support the notion that there was a massive depopulation, but it's not quite as simple as many people have thought before," Liebmann said. "This research also speaks to...current debates in the American West about how we should manage fire risk. What our study shows is that forest fires were being managed by Native people living in dense concentrations on the landscape -- not unlike the situation today in many parts of the Southwest. So there may be some lessons here for contemporary fire management."

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A gene that is often lost in childhood cancer plays an important role in the decision between life and death of certain cells, according to a new study published in the journal Developmental Cell

Jan. 25, 2016, New York, NY and Stockholm, Sweden - Neuroblastoma is the third most common type of tumour in children. Its aggressive nature and the frequency of metastatic disease at diagnosis contribute to the fact that neuroblastoma accounts for almost 15 per cent of childhood cancer fatalities. For the past two decades a region on chromosome 1 that is often missing in neuroblastoma cells has been thought to harbour an important tumour suppressor gene.

"Our data strongly suggest that KIF1B, which is localised on chromosome 1p36, might be such a neuroblastoma tumour suppressor gene", says principal investigator Susanne Schlisio at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet and Assistant Member at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Stockholm, Sweden.

Neuroblastoma tumours originate from the same transient progenitor cells -- neural crest cells -- that give rise to the nervous system along with other tissues. Members of some families are at higher risk than others to develop tumours that originate from these cells due to mutations in specific genes. The research team behind the new study previously discovered that genes mutated in some of the tumours play a central role in determining whether neural crest cells live or die. Neural crest cells that should ordinarily have succumbed to programmed cell death escape that fate when KIF1B- is lost. Later in life, the cells might develop into cancer cells.

In the current study, the investigators describe the mechanisms by which KIF1B- causes cell death. They found that KIF1B- affects the cells power stations, the mitochondria, by activating an enzyme named calcineurin. Schlisio and her colleagues also show that a critical signal required to induce cell death by fragmenting the mitochondria is compromised by the loss of KIF1B-. By examining neuroblastoma tumors biopsied from patients, the researchers demonstrate that loss of KIF1B- is associated with poor prognosis and reduced survival.

The team also demonstrates a general mechanism that can explain how calcium-dependent signalling by calcineurin is executed. This is a significant finding because the loss of control of calcineurin signalling seems to play a role in many diseases, including neurodegenerative disease, cardiac disease and cancers.

"We conclude that KIF1B- plays a key role in the decision between life and death for neural crest cells and tumours originating from the neural crest", says Susanne Schlisio. "In time, knowledge of the mechanism by which KIF1B- induce cell death might prove important in attempts to develop new neuroblastoma therapies."

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The research was financially supported by grants from the Ludwig Institute, the Swedish Children Cancer Foundation, the Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Swedish Cancer Society.

Publication: 'The 1p36 tumor suppressor KIF 1B is required for Calcineurin activation controlling mitochondrial fission and apoptosis', Shuijie Li, Stuart M Fell, Olga Surova, Erik Smedler, Zhi Xiong Chen, Ulf Hellman, John Inge Johnsen, Tommy Martinsson, Rajappa Kenchappa, Per Uhlen, Per Kogner and Susanne Schlisio, Developmental Cell, online Jan. 25 2016,DOI:10.1016/j.devcel.2015.12.029?

About Ludwig Cancer Research

Ludwig Cancer Research is an international collaborative network of acclaimed scientists that has pioneered cancer research and landmark discovery for more than 40 years. Ludwig combines basic science with the ability to translate its discoveries and conduct clinical trials to accelerate the development of new cancer diagnostics and therapies. Since 1971, Ludwig has invested nearly $2.7 billion in life-changing science through the not-for-profit Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the six U.S.-based Ludwig Centers. To learn more, visit http://www.ludwigcancerresearch.org.

About Karolinska Institutet

Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. Its vision is to significantly contribute to the improvement of human health. Karolinska Institutet accounts for over 40 per cent of the medical academic research conducted in Sweden and offers the countrys broadest range of education in medicine and health sciences. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet selects the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.

For further information please contact:

Rachel Steinhardt

Vice President of Communications, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research

rsteinhardt@licr.org

1-212-450-1582

Karolinska Institutet Press Office

http://ki.se/pressroom

pressinfo@ki.se

46-0-8524-860-77
New research findings from Lund University, Sweden show that a simple analysis of chromosomal breaks in sperms can help guide choice of fertility treatment and, thereby, increase chances of successful assisted reproduction for involuntary childless couples.

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW: Simple sperm test offers help for involuntarily childless couples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeiMnVM_SFo

Sperm DNA Fragmentation Index (DFI) is a method for analysing semen quality that shows presence of chromosomal breaks in sperms. The method complements other more well-known analytical methods available for assessing semen quality, such as assessment of sperm number quantity, motility and morphology.

A new study, which is the largest study within this field of research so far, shows that DFI analysis can be used for selecting the most efficient treatment to involuntarily childless couples. The study is based on analyses of more than 1 600 such couples referred to the Reproductive Medicine Centre at Skane University Hospital in Malmo, Sweden for help. All men who participated in the study underwent DFI analysis.

Men with a high DNA fragmentation index (DFI) also have more chromosomal breaks, which is linked to lower fertility. The couples who participated in the study underwent assisted reproduction, either through the standard method in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or the more advanced - ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).

In standard IVF the harvested egg is mixed with a large number of sperms in a test tube. The goal is that the fertilisation will succeed without further measures or assistance. ICSI involves selecting a single viable sperm cell that is then injected into the egg through a needle.

Getting the most effective treatment from the start

"In couples where the man had many chromosomal breaks, their best chance of becoming pregnant was to use ICSI rather than IVF. The DFI analysis thereby makes it possible to personalise treatment and increase the chances of having children", says Krzysztof Oleszczuk, PhD student at Lund University and senior consultant at Skane University Hospital.

"We hope that these results will mean that involuntarily childless couples are offered the most effective treatment right away. Undergoing unsuccessful assisted reproduction can be very stressful - both physically and mentally - especially if done repeatedly", explains Aleksander Giwercman, professor at Lund University and consultant at Skane University Hospital.

To confirm these results, a follow-up multicentre study is currently underway, in which three hospitals in the greater Copenhagen area will participate within the scope of the EU funded research collaboration in the Oresund region on fertility - ReproUnion. However, Aleksander Giwercman is looking forward to immediately transferring this new knowledge into practice at the Reproductive Medicine Centre at Skane University Hospital.

For a long time, the clinic has emphasised the importance of conducting a thorough analysis, both in terms of research and treatment, of women and men in couples that are involuntarily childless:

"Traditionally the main focus has been on the woman in cases where couples have difficulties to conceive. But our research and experience show that it is important to thoroughly study both partners", says Aleksander Giwercman.

The study is published in the medical journal Andrology.

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"Sperm chromatin structure assay in prediction of in vitro fertilization outcome", Authors: K. Oleszczuk, A. Giwercman and M. Bungum

Andrology, published online 2016, Jan 12, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26757265
WOODS HOLE, Mass.--Bacteria usually live in mixed communities with many different kinds of bacteria present. But it's been largely unknown how these communities are organized, because the technology didn't exist to see how they are structured in space.

This week, for the first time, scientists describe distinct bacterial assemblages living in dental plaque, which they discovered using a novel imaging approach that "cuts through the overwhelming complexity of detail in microbial communities and allows common patterns to shine through." The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was led by Jessica Mark Welch of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, and Gary Borisy of the Forsyth Institute, Cambridge.

Plaque on teeth, the team discovered, contains micron-scaled "hedgehog" structures in which eight different kinds of bacteria are radially arranged around a ninth kind, filamentous Corynebacteria. Seeing these structures offers scientists valuable information on how the bacterial members function that can't be gleaned from genomic analysis, which specifies what microbes are present in a community, but not how they are organized.

"Microbes behave very differently depending on where they are and who they are next to," Mark Welch says. "They will secrete entirely different sets of chemicals and metabolites depending on who their microbial neighbors are. So, if we want to accurately describe what these microbes are doing - really, what they are - we need to know where they are."

The team proposes a model for how dental plaque develops, which is based on their imaging observations combined with plaque sequencing data from the Human Microbiome Project.

"This is a really exciting new way to look at microbial communities," Mark Welch says of the spectral fluorescence imaging approach they developed at MBL. "The degree of organization we found in the hedgehog structure was amazing, as was the repeated finding of the same structure in different individuals. This finding that bacteria can develop such a degree of spatial organization may be generalizable to other microbiomes. We just have to go look."

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Citation:

Mark Welch JL, Rossetti BJ, Rieken CW, Dewhirst FE, and Borisy GG (2016) Biogeography of a Human Oral Microbiome at the Micron Scale. PNAS doi/10.1073/pnas.1522149113

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery - exploring fundamental biology, understanding biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
All tumor cells are the offspring of a single, aberrant cell, but they are not all alike. Only a few retain the capacity of the original cell to create an entire tumor. Such cancer stem cells can migrate to other tissues and become fatal metastases. To fully cure a patient's cancer, it is crucial to find and eliminate all of these cells because any that escape can regenerate the tumor and trigger its spread through the body.

Liang Fang and his colleagues in Walter Birchmeier's group at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), working with colleagues on the Berlin-Buch campus, have now discovered a molecule that interrupts biochemical signals essential for the survival of a certain type of cancer stem cell. The work is published ahead of print in the online edition of Cancer Research.

In their study Liang and his colleagues focused on a biochemical network within cells called the Wnt signaling pathway, which Birchmeier's lab has studied for many years. One of their discoveries has been that certain types of cancer stem cells require continual stimulation via this pathway to survive and maintain the properties that make them so dangerous. A component of the network called beta-catenin plays an essential role in transmitting Wnt signals to genes that promote the survival and reproduction of the cancer cells. In healthy cells there is no signal from Wnt, and beta-catenin is destroyed.

"In the absence of a signal, beta-catenin is locked out of the cell nucleus," Birchmeier says. "It is linked to a complex of proteins that ultimately break it down. Normally it requires a signal to be released from this 'destruction complex,' and it travels to the cell nucleus." There beta-catenin binds to transcription factors such as the protein TCF4, and in combination the molecules activate specific target genes. In cancer there is no signal, but defective cellular molecules behave as if they have received one and release beta-catenin from the complex.

It might be possible, the scientists reasoned, to prevent this by interrupting the interaction between beta-catenin and TCF4 with a drug. Contacts between two proteins are normally very difficult to destabilize with the small molecules that make up drugs. Proteins usually bind over large areas of their surfaces, which means that a comparatively small obstacle won't prevent the interaction. That is the case with other beta-catenin binding partners.

But the crucial points of contact between beta-catenin and TCF4 appeared to be small "hotspots" which suggested that an inhibitor might block it. Liang Fang took the problem to the campus Screening Unit and Medicinal Chemistry group, a partnership between the MDC and FMP. The facility has high-throughput technology platforms and a "library" of tens of thousands of substances that scientists use to search for inhibitors. The screen turned up a compound they called LF3 which very strongly inhibited binding.

After showing that the compound stripped cancer stem cells of some properties essential to their survival, the lab's next step was to determine whether it would have any effect on tumors in living animals. The scientists turned to the company EPO, a campus-based spin-off of the MDC, to develop lines of mice with tumors derived from human colon cancer tissue. The company specializes in creating mouse models from individual patients' tumors, then testing the animals with a battery of known drugs in hopes of finding one that will effectively combat a specific case of cancer. In this case, all the animals developed tumors, even when injected with a relatively small number of enriched cancer cells.

The animals were then treated with LF3. "We observed a strong reduction of tumor growth," Walter Birchmeier says. "What remained seemed to be completely devoid of cancer stem cells - LF3 seemed to be powerfully triggering these cells to differentiate into benign tissue. At the same time no signaling systems other than Wnt were disturbed. All of these factors make LF3 very promising to further develop as a lead compound, aiming for therapies that target tumors whose growth and survival depend on Wnt signaling."

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Reference: Fang L, Zhu Q, Neuenschwander M, Specker E, Wulf-Goldenberg A, Weis WI, von Kries JP, Birchmeier W. A small-molecule antagonist of the -catenin/TCF4 interaction blocks the self-renewal of cancer stem cells and suppresses tumorigenesis. Cancer Res. 2015 Dec 8. doi: canres.1519.2015.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- From gene mapping to space exploration, humanity continues to generate ever-larger sets of data -- far more information than people can actually process, manage, or understand.

Machine learning systems can help researchers deal with this ever-growing flood of information. Some of the most powerful of these analytical tools are based on a strange branch of geometry called topology, which deals with properties that stay the same even when something is bent and stretched every which way.

Such topological systems are especially useful for analyzing the connections in complex networks, such as the internal wiring of the brain, the U.S. power grid, or the global interconnections of the Internet. But even with the most powerful modern supercomputers, such problems remain daunting and impractical to solve. Now, a new approach that would use quantum computers to streamline these problems has been developed by researchers at MIT, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Southern California.

The team describes their theoretical proposal this week in the journal Nature Communications. Seth Lloyd, the paper's lead author and the Nam P. Suh Professor of Mechanical Engineering, explains that algebraic topology is key to the new method. This approach, he says, helps to reduce the impact of the inevitable distortions that arise every time someone collects data about the real world.

In a topological description, basic features of the data (How many holes does it have? How are the different parts connected?) are considered the same no matter how much they are stretched, compressed, or distorted. Lloyd explains that it is often these fundamental topological attributes "that are important in trying to reconstruct the underlying patterns in the real world that the data are supposed to represent."

It doesn't matter what kind of dataset is being analyzed, he says. The topological approach to looking for connections and holes "works whether it's an actual physical hole, or the data represents a logical argument and there's a hole in the argument. This will find both kinds of holes."

Using conventional computers, that approach is too demanding for all but the simplest situations. Topological analysis "represents a crucial way of getting at the significant features of the data, but it's computationally very expensive," Lloyd says. "This is where quantum mechanics kicks in." The new quantum-based approach, he says, could exponentially speed up such calculations.

Lloyd offers an example to illustrate that potential speedup: If you have a dataset with 300 points, a conventional approach to analyzing all the topological features in that system would require "a computer the size of the universe," he says. That is, it would take 2300 (two to the 300th power) processing units -- approximately the number of all the particles in the universe. In other words, the problem is simply not solvable in that way.

"That's where our algorithm kicks in," he says. Solving the same problem with the new system, using a quantum computer, would require just 300 quantum bits -- and a device this size may be achieved in the next few years, according to Lloyd.

"Our algorithm shows that you don't need a big quantum computer to kick some serious topological butt," he says.

There are many important kinds of huge datasets where the quantum-topological approach could be useful, Lloyd says, for example understanding interconnections in the brain. "By applying topological analysis to datasets gleaned by electroencephalography or functional MRI, you can reveal the complex connectivity and topology of the sequences of firing neurons that underlie our thought processes," he says.

The same approach could be used for analyzing many other kinds of information. "You could apply it to the world's economy, or to social networks, or almost any system that involves long-range transport of goods or information," Lloyd says. But the limits of classical computation have prevented such approaches from being applied before.

While this work is theoretical, "experimentalists have already contacted us about trying prototypes," he says. "You could find the topology of simple structures on a very simple quantum computer. People are trying proof-of-concept experiments."

The team also included Silvano Garnerone of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and Paolo Zanardi of the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California.

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The work was supported by the Army Research Office, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative of the Office of Naval Research, and the National Science Foundation.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In patients suffering from Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the pancreas, eventually leaving patients without the ability to naturally control blood sugar. These patients must carefully monitor the amount of sugar in their blood, measuring it several times a day and then injecting themselves with insulin to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. However, precise control of blood sugar is difficult to achieve, and patients face a range of long-term medical problems as a result.

A better diabetes treatment, many researchers believe, would be to replace patients' destroyed pancreatic islet cells with healthy cells that could take over glucose monitoring and insulin release. This approach has been used in hundreds of patients, but it has one major drawback -- the patients' immune systems attack the transplanted cells, requiring patients to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives.

Now, a new advance from MIT, Boston Children's Hospital, and several other institutions may offer a way to fulfill the promise of islet cell transplantation. The researchers have designed a material that can be used to encapsulate human islet cells before transplanting them. In tests on mice, they showed that these encapsulated human cells could cure diabetes for up to six months, without provoking an immune response.

Although more studies are needed, this approach "has the potential to provide diabetics with a new pancreas that is protected from the immune system, which would allow them to control their blood sugar without taking drugs. That's the dream," says Daniel Anderson, the Samuel A. Goldblith Associate Professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), and a research fellow in the Department of Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital.

Anderson is the senior author of two studies describing this method in the Jan. 25 issues of Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology. Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Joslin Diabetes Center, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School also contributed to the research.

Encapsulating cells

Since the 1980s, a standard treatment for diabetic patients has been injections of insulin produced by genetically engineered bacteria. While effective, this type of treatment requires great effort by the patient and can generate large swings in blood sugar levels.

At the urging of JDRF director Julia Greenstein, Anderson and his colleagues set out several years ago to come up with a way to make encapsulated islet cell transplantation a viable therapeutic approach. They began by exploring chemical derivatives of alginate, a material originally isolated from brown algae. Alginate gels can be made to encapsulate cells without harming them, and also allow molecules such as sugar and proteins to move through, making it possible for cells inside to sense and respond to biological signals.

However, previous research has shown that when alginate capsules are implanted in primates and humans, scar tissue eventually builds up around the capsules, making the devices ineffective. The MIT/Children's Hospital team decided to try to modify alginate to make it less likely to provoke this kind of immune response.

"We decided to take an approach where you cast a very wide net and see what you can catch," says Arturo Vegas, a former MIT and Boston Children's Hospital postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Boston University. Vegas is the first author of the Nature Biotechnology paper, co-first author of the Nature Medicine paper, and an author of the Nature Biotechnology paper. "We made all these derivatives of alginate by attaching different small molecules to the polymer chain, in hopes that these small molecule modifications would somehow give it the ability to prevent recognition by the immune system."

After creating a library of nearly 800 alginate derivatives, the researchers performed several rounds of tests in mice and nonhuman primates. One of the best of those, known as triazole-thiomorpholine dioxide (TMTD), they decided to study further in tests of diabetic mice. They chose a strain of mice with a strong immune system and implanted human islet cells encapsulated in TMTD into a region of the abdominal cavity known as the intraperitoneal space.

The pancreatic islet cells used in this study were generated from human stem cells using a technique recently developed by Douglas Melton, a professor at Harvard University who is an author of the Nature Medicine paper.

Following implantation, the cells immediately began producing insulin in response to blood sugar levels and were able to keep blood sugar under control for the length of the study, 174 days.

"The really exciting part of this was being able to show, in an immune-competent mouse, that when encapsulated these cells do survive for a long period of time, at least six months," says Omid Veiseh, a senior postdoc at the Koch Institute and Boston Children's hospital and co-first author of the Nature Medicine paper. "The cells can sense glucose and secrete insulin in a controlled manner, alleviating the mice's need for injected insulin."

The researchers also found that 1.5-millimeter diameter capsules made from their best materials (but not carrying islet cells) could be implanted into the intraperitoneal space of nonhuman primates for at least six months without scar tissue building up.

"The combined results from these two papers suggests that these capsules have real potential to protect transplanted cells in human patients," says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, a senior research associate at Boston's Children Hospital, and co-author on both papers. "We are so pleased to see this research in cell transplantation reach these important milestones."

Insulin independence

The researchers now plan to further test their new materials in nonhuman primates, with the goal of eventually performing clinical trials in diabetic patients. If successful, this approach could provide long-term blood sugar control for such patients. "Our goal is to continue to work hard to translate these promising results into a therapy that can help people," Anderson says.

"Being insulin-independent is the goal," Vegas says. "This would be a state-of-the-art way of doing that, better than any other technology could. Cells are able to detect glucose and release insulin far better than any piece of technology we've been able to develop."

The researchers are also investigating why their new material works so well. They found that the best-performing materials were all modified with molecules containing a triazole group -- a ring containing two carbon atoms and three nitrogen atoms. They suspect this class of molecules may interfere with the immune system's ability to recognize the material as foreign.

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The work was supported, in part, by the JDRF, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the National Institutes of Health, and the Tayebati Family Foundation.

Other authors of the papers include MIT postdoc Joshua Doloff; former MIT postdocs Minglin Ma and Kaitlin Bratlie; MIT graduate students Hok Hei Tam and Andrew Bader; Jeffrey Millman, an associate professor at Washington University School of Medicine; Mads Gurtler, a former Harvard graduate student; Matt Bochenek, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dale Greiner, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Jose Oberholzer, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Gordon Weir, a professor of medicine at the Joslin Diabetes Center.
An international coalition of researchers led by Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientist Swapan Nath, Ph.D., has identified 10 new genes associated with the autoimmune disease lupus. The findings were published in the Jan. 25, 2016 issue of Nature Genetics.

Nath and his colleagues analyzed more than17,000 human DNA samples collected from blood gathered from volunteers in four countries: South Korea, China, Malaysia and Japan. Of those samples, nearly 4,500 had confirmed cases of lupus, while the rest served as healthy controls for the research.

From that analysis, the researchers identified 10 distinct DNA sequence variants linked to lupus, a debilitating chronic autoimmune disease where the body's immune system becomes unbalanced and attacks its own tissues. It can result in damage to many different body systems, including the joints, skin, kidneys, heart and lungs. More than 16,000 people are diagnosed with lupus in the U.S. each year, and it affects as many as 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people worldwide, according to the Lupus Foundation of America.

"We know lupus has a strong genetic basis, but in order to better treat the disease we have to identify those genes," said Nath, a member of OMRF's Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program. "Large-scale studies of this magnitude are becoming the gold standard for locating genes associated with autoimmune diseases like lupus."

Thirty-seven researchers from 23 institutes, hospitals and universities in the United States, Malaysia, Korea, China and Japan took part in Nath's study.

"These findings mark a significant advance in our knowledge base for lupus genes," said Judith James, M.D., Ph.D., director of OMRF's Autoimmune Disease Institute and Arthritis and Clinical Immunology Research Program chair. "For every gene we identify, it brings us closer to uncovering the trigger for this puzzling disease. It's good news for researchers and patients alike."

In the study, one gene in particular, known as GTF2I, showed a high likelihood of being involved in the development of lupus. "GTF2I seems to be one of the key players in lupus susceptibility," said Nath. "Its genetic effect appears to be higher than previously known lupus genes discovered from Asians, and we surmise that it now may be the predominant gene involved in lupus."

With these new genes identified, Nath and his colleagues can try to pinpoint where defects occur and whether those mutations contribute to the onset of lupus pathogenesis. Nath said that understanding where and how the defects arise will allow scientists to develop more effective therapies specifically targeting those genes.

The ultimate goal, said Nath, is to understand the disease better and develop personalized intervention therapies for patients based on their genetic makeup. "We are a long way from that point, but huge collaborative efforts like this help to get things going."

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OMRF scientists Celi Sun, Julio Molineros, Ph.D., Xana Kim-Howard, Prasenjeet Motghare, Krishna Bhattarai, Adam Adler and Jonathan Wren, Ph.D., also contributed to the discovery.

Funding for the project was provided by grants R01AR060366 from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, R01MD007909 from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and R21AI103399 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, all part of the National Institutes of Health.

Photos of Swapan Nath, Ph.D., available for download: http://omrf.org/newsgallery/nath/

About OMRF

OMRF is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute dedicated to understanding and developing more effective treatments for human diseases. Its scientists focus on such critical research areas as cancer, diseases of aging, lupus and cardiovascular disease. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Suggestively called Cryptomaster, the herein studied daddy longlegs genus, represented until recently by a single species, is not only difficult to find in the mountains of southwest Oregon, but had also stayed understudied for several decades since its establishment in 1969. Inspired by much newer records of the previously known species, called after the notorious Hebrew monster Leviathan, an American team of researchers from University of California Riverside and the San Diego State University, led by Dr. James Starrett, undertook a new search for mysterious endemic harvestmen, which was successfully concluded with the discovery of another beast, Cryptomaster behemoth. Their work is available in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The Cryptomaster daddy longlegs belong in the largest and incredibly diverse harvestman suborder, called the Laniatores, which are characterized by having relatively short legs and preference for hiding underneath logs, stones and leaf litter in tropical and temperate forests. Typical for many of these well over four thousand species is that they might inhabit very restricted geographic regions and yet be strikingly genetically diverse. This is why when the authors understood about the recently expanded distributional range of the Leviathan's namesake across different mountain ranges, they did not take long to assume that there could be more species having settled nearby.

Curiously, both Cryptomaster daddy longlegs species showed two forms of their species, a smaller and a larger one, but neither form was genetically different enough to suggest the presence of a separate group. The scientists observed the variation in both males and females from across both species and all their known localities.

Having its localities further increased as a result of the present study, C. leviathan shows surprisingly small genetic distance between its populations. In contrast, its sibling species is so far known to occupy far more restricted range, yet shows considerably more genetic variations.

Bearing the name of the huge notorious Hebrew monster Leviathan, the first member of the harvestman genus has won its name because of its excessive size when compared to its relatives within the family of travunioid daddy longlegs. Following the already established trend, the new species is called Cryptomaster behemoth after another large monster known from the Book of Job.

"This research highlights the importance of short-range endemic arachnids for understanding biodiversity and further reveals mountainous southern Oregon as a hotspot for endemic animal species," point out the authors in conclusion.

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Original source:

Starrett J, Derkarabetian S, Richart CH, Cabrero A, Hedin M (2016) A new monster from southwest Oregon forests: Cryptomaster behemoth sp. n. (Opiliones, Laniatores, Travunioidea). ZooKeys 555: 11-35.doi: 10.3897/zookeys.555.6274
Found on a herb bush, a toad of only 24 mm average length, measured from its snout tip to its cloaca, was quick to make its discoverers consider its status as a new species. After identifying its unique morphological and skeletal characters, and conducting a molecular phylogenetic analysis, not only did Dr. Aggarwal, Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Dr. Vaudevan, Wildlife Institute of India and Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species along with their team, introduce a new species, but also added a new genus. The new 'Andaman bush toad', as its proposed common name is, is described in a paper published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

With its significantly smaller size when compared to its relatives, the new toad species seems to have had its name predetermined by nature. After naming its genus after the initiator of herpetological studies in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the first Curator of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Edward Blyth, the species name was derived from the local epithet 'beryet', referring to 'small frog' in Andamanese. As a result, the toad was named Blythophryne beryet.

"We believe that the Great Andamanese knew of the existence of this small arboreal anuran," the scientists explained their choice. "We hope the nomen we coin here will also raise awareness about the dwindling, indigenous tribal populations in the Andamans, their culture and extinction of their tribal languages."

The herein described toad species occupies mostly evergreen forests across five of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, India. Although highly abundant, this is probably because of its narrow range of distribution.

Being active at night, the little amphibian can be regularly seen all year round, rested on the leaf surface of herb bushes. During daytime, it tends to hide under leaf litter on the forest floor. It is also characterised by reddish brown colouration, complete with two feeble dark brown inverted 'V'-shaped markings.

Because of its severely fragmented population, restricted to no more than 10 locations, its conservation status is regarded as 'Endangered' based on the IUCN. Additional threats to the so far monotypic genus and its habitat are also posed by human activity and invasive fauna.

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Original source:

Chandramouli SR, Vasudevan K, Harikrishnan S, Dutta SK, Janani SJ, Sharma R, Das I, Aggarwal RK (2016) A new genus and species of arboreal toad with phytotelmonous larvae, from the Andaman Islands, India (Lissamphibia, Anura, Bufonidae). ZooKeys 555: 57-90. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.555.6522
In the water above natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil and gas bubbles rise almost a mile to break at the surface, scientists have discovered something unusual: phytoplankton, tiny microbes at the base of the marine food chain, are thriving.

The oil itself does not appear to help the phytoplankton, but the low concentration of oil found above natural seeps isn't killing them, and turbulence from the rising oil and gas bubbles is bringing up deep-water nutrients that phytoplankton need to grow, according to a new study appearing in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience. The result: phytoplankton concentrations above oil seeps are as much as twice the size of populations only a few kilometers away.

"This is the beginning of evidence that some microbes in the Gulf may be preconditioned to survive with oil, at least at lower concentrations," said Ajit Subramaniam, an oceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and coauthor of the study. "In this case, we clearly see these phytoplankton are not negatively affected at low concentrations of oil, and there is an accompanying process that helps them thrive. This does not mean that exposure to oil at all concentrations for prolonged lengths of time is good for phytoplankton."

The study is the first to demonstrate this kind of teleconnection between the sea floor, subsea floor and microbial processes in the upper ocean, said Andy Juhl, an aquatic ecologist at Lamont and coauthor. It also provides insight into how microbes and oil interact under water, he said.

Subramaniam and Juhl, along with colleagues in the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG) consortium, began studying interactions around oil seeps after the Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster in 2010, to better understand what happens to oil during catastrophic gushers and to find ways to better respond to similar disasters in the future. The natural seeps, found in many parts of the Gulf of Mexico, are tiny compared to an oil-well blowout. An oil slick from a natural seep lasts between one and seven days and reaches between 1 and 100 square kilometers. In comparison, the surface oil from the Deepwater Horizon well covered about 11,200 square kilometers and persisted for months, Subramaniam said. But natural seeps still produce enough oil and gas that the scientists can smell it at the surface and see the oil bubbles burst.

In the lab, Juhl has been conducting experiments to understand how different concentrations of oil affect different types of phytoplankton. He has found no amount of oil on its own that has a positive effect on phytoplankton. "The direct effect of oil is usually negative, but in some cases small amounts of oil can be outweighed by the positive effect of the nutrients that are tagging along," Juhl said.

Lead author Nigel D'Souza, then a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont, discovered the phytoplankton response to oil seeps while on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico monitoring chlorophyll fluorescence - energy that is emitted as light by compounds inside phytoplankton cells used for photosynthesis. Each time the ship crossed over a known oil seep, he noticed a spike in phytoplankton abundance. It was a eureka moment, Juhl said. The evidence backed up what Susan Phan, a coauthor and Columbia University student working on her senior thesis with Subramaniam, had previously noticed in remote-sensing data. The scientists were able to compile multiple lines of evidence through chlorophyll fluorescence, water sampling and satellite images that all supported the idea that phytoplankton were benefitting from something connected with the seeps, even though the seeps were thousands of feet below.

The biggest impact was seen a few hundred feet deep in the water column, at the point where phytoplankton have enough light from above to still grow, and are receiving the most nutrients rising from below. Over oil seeps, D'Souza found that the population was about double the usual amount. The measurements also showed increases in phytoplankton abundance at the surface.

There are still many questions. For example, scientists don't yet know which types of phytoplankton are thriving over the seeps, or if some types of phytoplankton in the community are negatively affected by the rising oil. Previous studies have subjected phytoplankton to oil in laboratories to test their sensitivity and found differences in the impact on oceanic vs. coastal phytoplankton and differences when phytoplankton were in nutrient-rich or nutrient-poor water, as well as damage to some phytoplankton cells at various concentrations of oil.

The microbe community at the surface is also complex and includes oil-degrading bacteria and other microbes. The increase in phytoplankton could, for example, be affected by the impact of oil on bacteria that compete with phytoplankton for nutrients, the authors write.

"Satellite radar data have given us a detailed picture of where natural seeps are concentrated across deep seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico," said co-author Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer and professor at Florida State University. "Building on this, the present, novel results show biological effects near the ocean surface in areas where seeps are most prolific."

Subramaniam and Juhl plan two pathways of study next: to analyze the behavior of different types of phytoplankton above seeps to better understand how they interact with oil, and to improve understanding of how oil from deep underwater rises to the surface.

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The study was part of the ECOGIG Consortium, a multi-institutional group that studies natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico, funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. The other coauthors on the study were Mark Hafez, Alexander Chekalyuk, and Beizhan Yan of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; and Sarah Weber and Joseph Montoya of Georgia Institute of Technology. D'Souza is now a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The paper, "Elevated surface chlorophyll associated with natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico," is available from the authors.

Contact:

Ajit Subramaniam -- (845) 365-8641 ajit@ldeo.columbia.edu

Andy Juhl -- (845) 365-8837 andyjuhl@ldeo.columbia.edu

More information: Kevin Krajick, Senior editor, science news, The Earth Institute kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.earth.columbia.edu.

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is Columbia University's home for earth science research. Its scientists develop fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world, from the planet's deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu | @LamontEarth
The Oceanography Society (TOS) congratulates Rana A. Fine, professor in the department of ocean sciences at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, for being selected as a Fellow of The Oceanography Society. The citation on Professor Fine's certificate recognizes her for significant contributions to the understanding of the ocean circulation and ventilation. Dr. Fine will be formally recognized on February 23, 2016 during a ceremony at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

An excerpt from the nominating letter for Dr. Fine, notes that "Rana's research contributions cover a wide range of scales from regional, to ocean basin, to inter-basin, to global scale; from low to high latitudes (both hemispheres); and from sea surface to sea floor. They deal with the full 3-D ocean circulation, quantifying the ventilation of the thermocline and deep ocean resulting from convection and subduction."

Professor Fine received a B.A. in Mathematics from New York University, an M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Miami and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the UM Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Fine has received the highest honor attainable at the University of Miami, induction into the School's Iron Arrow Society and, a Provost's Award for Scholarly Activity.

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The TOS Fellows program recognizes individuals who have attained eminence in oceanography through their outstanding contributions to the field of oceanography or its applications during a substantial period of years. To learn more about The Oceanography Society and the TOS Fellows program, visit: http://tos.org/tos-fellows
Professor of International Maternal Health Andrew Weeks from the Institute of Translational medicine has been awarded 850,000 to further develop an award-winning device that could save the lives of women all over the world.

Postpartum Haemorrhage (PPH) is often defined as the loss of more than 500 ml or 1,000 ml of blood within the first 24 hours following childbirth. PHH is a common maternity emergency affecting 40,000 British women each year and which can lead to long lasting complications. Globally, it remains a major cause of death and is responsible for around 25% of the 289,000 maternal deaths annually. Although common, its management has changed little over the last 40 years.

Professor Weeks and his team have worked in collaboration with the University of Liverpool Department of Clinical Engineering, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen Universities Hospital NHS Trust, Liverpool Business Gateway units, Protolabs, Plastribution, and Pelican Feminine Health Care to develop a device, the PPH Butterfly, which not only stops the bleeding immediately, but also helps to diagnose its source.

The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) fund have awarded Professor Weeks 850,000 to take his research forward and to test the device's safe use in the management of PPH in women experiencing a PPH.

Of the award Professor Weeks, who is also a consultant obstetrician at the Liverpool Women's Hospital, said: "The award is a tribute to strong partnership working with the University, the NHS and Industry partners. Whilst as a clinician I could see a clinical need, it took many collaborators to produce the final product and my thanks go to them for their contributions.

"This funding is fantastic news for the project, and will really help us to undertake further design work, develop a training package for those who will use it, and to test the device on women experiencing PPH."

Professor Weeks and his team were also recently awarded the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network Award for Innovation for the device.

A video about the device can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlo4SoItJ1c

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AMHERST, Mass. -- A team of cybersecurity researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by computer scientist Brian Levine has a received a $4.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to bring a CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to the campus, the first public university in New England to receive such an award.

NSF's CyberCorps program, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, supports the educational and professional development of domestic students who will help the nation address threats to national security including critical infrastructure such as utilities, water treatment, military defense systems and refineries.

Upon graduation and completing the training, students will join government agencies at full pay and benefits working in cybersecurity, such as the FBI, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and analogous agencies at a state or local level. Any government service involving cybersecurity fulfills the service requirement, ranging from protecting the nation's infrastructure from state-based hackers to joining a state university as a researcher or educator in cybersecurity.

The program, which will support a total of 28 students over the next five years, will admit its first students in the fall 2016 semester, Levine says. Students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and can receive up to two years of support from the CyberCorps SFS. For each year they accept aid, they will serve for year in a federal, state or local government position related to cybersecurity.

"The program offers very generous support," Levine notes, "and we will be actively recruiting women and people from underrepresented minority groups interested in security." Graduate students receive full tuition and fees per year, plus a $34,000 stipend, health insurance reimbursement up to $3,000, a $4,000 travel allowance and book allowance of $2,000; undergraduates received the same except the stipend is $22,500 year. In addition to financial benefits, Levine says students in the CyberCorps SFS program will receive support in extra mentoring groups, assistance in finding summer internships and permanent positions at federal and state agencies, and other professional development opportunities.

Students majoring in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, Isenberg School of Management, the department of mathematics and statistics and the department of electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst are eligible to apply.

Katherine S. Newman, senior vice chancellor and provost, says, "This program answers a critical national shortage of highly trained experts in cybersecurity, and will prepare students for successful careers in this field through a combination of strong curricula, ample professional development, extensive advising, interdisciplinary enrichment and access to recruiting opportunities."

John McCarthy, senior vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, says, "This program will support and expand several of the campus's advanced programs that educate and train cybersecurity researchers and professionals. It will support interdisciplinary cohorts of seven scholars across four nationally recognized colleges and departments at UMass Amherst, computer science, electrical and computer systems engineering, mathematics and statistics and business."

Levine notes, "Our role is to help students move swiftly into government security positions and other roles where there is a shortage." Some of the CyberCorps SFS scholars will come from schools and colleges not usually associated with cybersecurity such as business and statistics, he adds, because "we are trying to train people who know about management and statistics with added computer science expertise to broaden the government's ability to address cybersecurity. Problems in security and privacy are no longer only technical gaps. Multidisciplinary approaches have the best chance at addressing these issues."

Wayne Burleson, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-principal investigator of the program with Levine, says, "Government agencies really need a program like this because they are competing with major tech and business corporations who offer very attractive financial and tuition incentives. The government needs that same talent and is trying to match recruitment. I think it's important to us as citizens to know that the government is seeking to retain the best talent in the field."

Levine adds, "Meanwhile, as we train these SFS students we're building up a stronger program here at UMass, which benefits all students on campus. Many of the professional development events will be open to all. At the end of five years we will have trained 28 students who have advanced experience and skills in the latest cybersecurity techniques and approaches, and we will help to bring them into the government."

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WORCESTER, MA -- A new optogenetic technology developed by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Texas A&M Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences & Technology, called optogenetic immunomodulation, is capable of turning on immune cells to attack melanoma tumors in mice. Using near-infrared light, researchers have shown they can selectively activate an immune response by controlling the flow of calcium ions into the cell. This breakthrough could lead to less invasive, and more controlled and selective immunotherapies for cancer treatment.

"This is the first time anybody has used optogenetic techniques to stimulate the immune system, much less to fight cancer cells," said study author Gang Han, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology at UMass Medical School. "The advantage an optogentic approach has over other immunotherapies, which typically activate global immune responses, is that we now have the tools to closely monitor the dose and location of the treatment to mitigate potential side effects to healthy tissues."

Neuroscientists have been using optogenetics, which combine recent breakthroughs in both optical technology and genetics, to stimulate the activity of individual neurons in animals using light. Nerve cells are engineered with light-sensitive proteins that allow researchers to send or stop sending nerve impulses when they are exposed to a particular color of light. This has allowed researchers to map and decode neural circuitry in live animals.

Adapting this technology for use in other cells has proved challenging. Optogenetic technologies targeting neurons rely on the electrical impulses these cells use to quickly transmit messages. Other cells use different, and more diverse, methods of communicating, making them more difficult to turn on and off. These cells are also typically found deeper in the body where it is difficult for light to penetrate.

Dr. Han, in collaboration with Yubin Zhou, PhD, assistant professor at the Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Texas A&M Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences & Technology, approached these problems by focusing on the flow of calcium ions into cells as a potential on/off switch and using specially designed up-conversion nanoparticles to activate them. Details of the technology were published in eLife (http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e10024).

Dr. Zhou and his team genetically engineered dendritic cells with a light-sensitive calcium gate-controlling protein. When exposed to blue light, the calcium ion gates on the dendritic cell open and it is activated. (Once activated, the dendritic cells are responsible for programming T-cells that than attack infected or cancerous cells.) When the light is turned off, the gates close and the dendritic cells turn off.

To reach immune cells in a live animal, Han attached to the cells a nanoparticle he developed that converts near-infrared light into visible blue light. Unlike blue light, near-infrared light can penetrate tissue to a depth of two centimeters. When the near-infrared light hits the nanoparticle inside the animal it converts it to blue light. This, in turn, activates the light sensitive protein controlling the flow of calcium to the cell.

The light-sensitive cells and nanoparticles, called opto-CRAC, were then delivered with the tumor antigen surrogate ovalbumin to mice with melanoma tumors in their lymph nodes to see if an immune response could be activated to target cancer cells. A tumor antigen, such as ovalbumin, is needed to program newly activated T-cells with their intended target.

"When we exposed a near-infrared laser beam to these animal models injected with both the nanoparticle and the genetically engineered immune cells, this caused calcium channels on the dendritic cells to open and we saw a corresponding increase in the number of T-cells that were activated," said Han.

"More importantly," said Han, "we saw significantly suppressed tumor growth and reduced tumor volume in these animals. This suggests that the activated dendritic cells were successfully programming T-cells to attack the tumor."

One advantage of this method is that researchers can finely tune which cells are activated and in what part of the body. This specificity could potentially reduce system-wide side effects often seen with other targeted cancer immunotherapies.

It's also likely that this technique can be adapted to study other immune, heart, endocrine or hematopoietic cells. "Any cell that used calcium to perform its task could potentially be activated using this newly developed technology," said Han. "The flexibility of this system means it can be adapted to explore other cellular processes while minimally interfering with other physiological or biological functions."

About the University of Massachusetts Medical School

The University of Massachusetts Medical School, one of the fastest growing academic health centers in the country, has built a reputation as a world-class research institution, consistently producing noteworthy advances in clinical and basic research. The Medical School attracts more than $249 million in research funding annually, 80 percent of which comes from federal funding sources. The mission of the Medical School is to advance the health and well-being of the people of the commonwealth and the world through pioneering education, research, public service and health care delivery with its clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health Care. For more information, visit http://www.umassmed.edu

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MIAMI--A new study from an international team of scientists found commercial fishing vessels target shark hotspots, areas where sharks tend to congregate, in the North Atlantic. The researchers suggest that sharks are at risk of being overfished in these oceanic hotspots.

Neil Hammerschlag, research assistant professor at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and UM Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, was part of the scientific team that published their findings in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors report in the study that catch quotas for sharks by commercial fishers might be necessary to protect oceanic sharks.

"Our research clearly demonstrates the importance of satellite tagging data for conservation," said Hammerschlag, director of the UM Shark Research and Conservation Program who conducted the satellite tagging and tracking of several shark species in the northwestern Atlantic for the study. "The findings both identify the problem as well as provide a path for protecting oceanic sharks."

During a four-year period from 2005 to 2009, the researchers tracked more than 100 sharks equipped with satellite tags from six different species in the North Atlantic while concurrently tracking 186 Spanish and Portuguese GPS-equipped longline fishing vessels. They found that the fishing vessels and sharks occurred in ocean fronts characterized by warm water temperature and high productivity, including the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current/Labrador Current Convergence Zone near Newfoundland.

"Many studies have tracked sharks, and many studies have tracked fishing vessels, but fine-scale tracking of sharks and fishing vessels together is lacking, even though this should better inform how shark fisheries should be regulated," said Professor David Sims of the Marine Biological Association, and the senior author of the study.

According to the researchers, about 80 percent of the range for two of the most heavily fished species tracked--the blue and mako sharks--overlapped with the fishing vessels' range, with some individual sharks remaining near longlines for over 60 percent of the time they were tracked. Blue sharks were estimated to be vulnerable to potential capture 20 days per month, while the mako sharks' potential risk was 12 days per month.

"Although we suspected overlap might be high, we had no idea it would be this high. Space-use overlap on this scale potentially increases shark susceptibility to fishing exploitation, which has unknown consequences for populations," said Nuno Queiroz of the University of Porto, Portugal, the lead author of the study.

Tens of millions of ocean-dwelling sharks are caught by commercial fishing operations each year. The researchers suggest that a lack of data on where sharks are likely to encounter fishing vessels has hampered current shark conservation effort.

The researchers propose that because current hotspots of shark activity are at particularly high risk of overfishing, the introduction of conservation measures such as catch quotas or size limits will be necessary to protect oceanic sharks that are commercially important to fleets worldwide at the present time.

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The study, titled "Ocean-wide tracking of pelagic sharks reveals extent of overlap with longline fishing hotspots," was authored by By Nuno Queiroz, Nicolas E. Humphries, Gonzalo Mucientes, Neil Hammerschlag, Fernando P. Lima, Kylie L. Scales, Peter I. Miller, Lara L. Sousa, Rui Seabra, and David W. Sims. Instituations contributing to the research were: Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Universidade da Porto in Portugal, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton, Fundacion CETMAR, University of Miami, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, University of California Santa Cruz, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade do Porto

The paper is available at: http://www.pnas.org/lookup/doi/10.1073/pnas1510090113

Hammerschlag's work was supported by the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, Batchelor Foundation, and West Coast Inland Navigation District in Florida. The research study was part of the European Tracking of Predators in the Atlantic (EUTOPIA) initiative.

About the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School

The University of Miami is one of the largest private research institutions in the southeastern United States. The University's mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940's, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world's premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu. Information on the University of Miami's Shark Research and Conservation program can be found at http://www.SharkTagging.com
Treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory diseases may benefit by new findings from a study that identified potential therapeutic targets for a devastating disease striking some 2.3 million people worldwide.

Inflammation is an important part of body's response against infections and tissue damage, but unresolved inflammation contributes to the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases and promotes cancer development.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, described a protein regulator known as Trabid as an important piece of the puzzle that leads to autoimmune inflammation of the central nervous systems in MS patients.

Study results were published in the Jan. 25 online issue of Nature Immunology.

"Our findings highlight an epigenetic mechanism for the regulation of the cytokine genes, IL-12 and IL-23, and established Trabid as an immunological regulator of inflammatory T-cell responses," said Shao-Cong Sun, Ph.D., professor of Immunology. "Trabid appeared to regulate histone modifications by controlling the fate of a histone demethylase called Jmjd2d."

Cytokines are small proteins important for cell signaling, and IL-12 and IL-23 are mediators of inflammation and associated with inflammatory diseases. Sun believes that Trabid and Jmjd2d may be potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of inflammatory diseases such as MS.

"Since chronic inflammation is a major risk of cancer, future studies will examine whether Trabid and Jmjd2d also have a role in cancer development," said Sun.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL-12 and IL-23 connect innate responses and immune responses and are also involved in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, said the researchers. The innate immune system, also known as the nonspecific immune system, is an important subsystem of the overall immune system that comprises the cells and mechanisms that defend the host from infection by other organisms.

"Cells of the innate immune system including dendritic cells and macrophages, have an important role in regulating the nature and magnitude of adaptive immune responses," said Sun. "They recognize microbial components including various receptors that trigger intracellular signaling events that impact the function of those cells. Deregulated production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by cells of the innate immune system also contributes to autoimmune and inflammatory diseases."

Sun's team found that deletion of a protein-coding gene known as Zranb1, which encodes Trabid, in dendritic cells inhibited expression of IL-12 and IL-23, impairing differentiation of inflammatory T-cells. The process protected study mice from autoimmune inflammation.

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MD Anderson study participants included Jin Jin, Ph.D., Yichuan Xiao, Ph.D., Hongbo Hu Ph.D., and Qiang Zou of Immunology. Other participating institutions included Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai; Si-Chuan University, Chengdu, China; and The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (P30CA016672, AI064639, and AI057555, AI04519), the Center for Inflammation and Cancer at MD Anderson, the Thousand Young Talents National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Zhejiang University Special Fund for Fundamental Research.
The 2016 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a Yale-based initiative that evaluates how 180 countries protect ecosystems and human health, finds cause for both optimism and serious concern. The world's nations have expanded access to water and sanitation while creating more protected areas than ever before, yet countries have failed to reverse degradation of air quality and decline in fisheries, the report finds. The EPI, which measures national and global protection of ecosystems and human health from environmental harm, draws out trends and highlights data gaps in priority areas including air quality, water management, and climate change.

Increased access to water and sanitation stands out as a major success story: concerted efforts to develop clean drinking water and sewage infrastructure have significantly reduced deaths from waterborne diseases. The number of people who lack access to clean water has been cut nearly in half since 2000, though at 550 million, or around 8 percent of the world's population, there is still much room for improvement. The world's nations also show strong commitments to habitat protection, and countries are now within striking distance of international targets for terrestrial and marine habitat protection.

Yet in other areas, environmental progress has stalled, and some issues have shown troubling declines. Twenty-three percent of countries lack any kind of wastewater treatment. The world's fisheries are in a dire state, with most fish stocks at risk of collapse. Air pollution has worsened and today accounts for 10 percent of all deaths, compared with 2 percent claimed by foul water. More than 3.5 billion people -- half of the world's population -- live in nations with unsafe levels of air pollution.

Now in its 10th iteration, the EPI provides a diagnostic tool for policymakers to evaluate and improve performance toward environmental goals. The EPI is produced biennially by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and with support from the Samuel Family Foundation and the McCall MacBain Foundation.

"While many environmental problems are the result of industrialization, our findings show that both poor and wealthy nations suffer from serious air pollution," said Angel Hsu, Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS College and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the report. The EPI shows that focused, coordinated global efforts are essential to make progress on global goals and to save lives.

"The EPI sends a clear signal to policymakers on the state of their environment and equips them with the data to develop fine-tuned solutions to the pressing challenges we face," said EPI co-creator Kim Samuel, Director, Samuel Group of Companies and Professor of Practice at McGill University's Institute for the Study of International Development. "With the very survival of the planet at stake, we hope leaders will be inspired to act -- especially in urban areas where an increasing majority of the world's population lives.

Seventeen new Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate treaty, both recently adopted by the UN, create a framework for strengthening global initiatives to tackle environmental challenges. Realizing these agreements' goals will require better monitoring frameworks. Data gaps create hurdles and impasses for tracking progress towards meeting targets, including benchmarks for protecting fisheries, ensuring freshwater quality, agricultural sustainability, preventing species loss, fostering climate adaptation, and managing waste.

"Even when data exists, policymakers often struggle to apply this information appropriately," notes Marc Levy, Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University. "The EPI works to identify and address these blind spots within existing policy goals. For instance, a new biodiversity indicator weeds out protected areas that do not intersect with species' habitats, showing where national parks may be ineffective at protecting species.

Technological advances offer solutions to some stubborn monitoring challenges, yet these improvements are not a silver bullet. Satellite imagery and remote sensing fill gaps in the EPI's air quality and forestry information, but this data has its own blind spots. Scaling data collection and assessment down to the individual level has great potential to complete fragmentary pictures and make datasets whole. Appraising environmental quality at the city or regional level can sharpen environmental management strategies, honing in on environmental outcomes that national assessments can miss.

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View the full report: http://issuu.com/2016yaleepi/docs/epi2016_final/1?e=23270481/32968129
Causes of Nosebleeds

Sudden and inexplicable nosebleeds may seem scary, but typically they're not. To put you at ease in case you have one, we've assembled a list of common culprits, as well as tips on how to treat a bleeding nose and when to seek medical care.

1. Underlying Health Conditions

Liver disease, kidney disease, chronic alcohol consumption, or another underlying health condition can lower your bloods ability to clot and therefore cause your nose to bleed.

Heart conditions like hypertension (high blood pressure) and congestive heart failure can also cause nosebleeds, as can hypertensive crisis  a sudden, rapid increase in blood pressure that may be accompanied by a severe headache, shortness of breath, and anxiety, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).

Colds, allergies, and frequent nose-blowing can also irritate the lining of your nose, resulting in a nosebleed.

2. Dry Air

Dry air from indoor heating or outdoor cold can dry out the lining of the nose, causing it to crack and bleed. Using a humidifier while sleeping can help relieve dryness, and nasal sprays are helpful for moistening the nostrils.

3. Foreign Objects

Nosebleeds can also occur if a foreign object is placed in the nose. This is most common among small children, who explore their world by putting objects in their mouth, nose, or ears. Examples of these items include small toys, pebbles, food, erasers, and dirt.

4. Blood-Thinning Medications

Because blood clotting is a necessary step in preventing or stopping a nosebleed, any medication that changes the bloods ability to clot can cause a bloody nose  or make one harder to stop. Examples include anticoagulants like Coumadin or Jantoven (warfarin), the anti-platelet medication Plavix (clopidogrel bisulfate), over-the-counter drugs like aspirin, and prescription or over-the-counter NSAIDS like naproxen.

Many people with the heart condition atrial fibrillation (afib), an irregular heartbeat, take anticoagulant medication to prevent blood clots from forming. And if you've had a heart attack, your doctor may have recommended a daily aspirin to help prevent a recurrence. Blood clots can lead to a stroke or heart attack if they travel through the blood and reach the brain or heart, but the anticoagulant medications commonly used to prevent clots carry an increased risk of bleeding.

5. Nose Picking or Scratching

Accidental injury to the blood vessels in the nostril from nose picking can cause a nosebleed. This is common in children, but also in adults who are prone to itching or scratching inside their nose.

How to Stop a Bloody Nose at Home

While sitting and leaning forward, use direct pressure to stop bleeding by pinching your nostrils shut for at least 10 minutes, breathing through your mouth.

Alternatively, you can make a nose-pinching device using tongue depressors and tape.

If bleeding starts again, use a nasal decongestant spray (such as Afrin, Dristan, or Vicks Sinex) to constrict the blood vessels of your nose, and again apply direct pressure to stop bleeding.

To prevent another bloody nose, use saline and topical ointments to moisturize inside your nose, but only once bleeding has stopped. And avoid picking or scratching your nose.

When to Get Help for Nosebleeds

Although most nosebleeds can be treated at home, some are severe and require medical attention. Kevin Campbell, MD, a cardiologist at Wake Heart and Vascular in Raleigh, North Carolina, says Nosebleeds are rarely life-threatening. But under certain circumstances, such as if you're taking blood thinners like aspirin or warfarin, nosebleeds can be quite concerning and require medical care. In such cases, your healthcare provider may need to adjust the dose of blood-thinning medication, he says.

Having more than one nosebleed a week is also a sign that you should talk to your doctor. If nosebleeds are recurrent  whether or not you're on blood-thinning medications  it's reasonable to seek help from your primary care physician, says Dr. Campbell. He adds that recurrent nosebleeds may point to other, more significant medical conditions.

You should certainly seek medical attention in an emergency room if your nosebleed lasts longer than a few minutes, or if you're unable to stop the bleeding with direct manual pressure," Campbell says.

Additional reporting by Ashley Welch
Take action now: Contact United Methodist officials and urge them to overturn their ban on Discovery Institute.

Regular readers of Evolution News are likely aware that the United Methodist Church has banned Discovery Institute and intelligent design from the churchs upcoming General Conference. Last week, John West reported here on a response from Bishop Michael Coyner of Indiana to the many emails he, among other UMC officials, had received from the public, protesting the ban.

That was bad enough. Now Coyner, who happens to be my Bishop, goes further. He is pleased to brush off protestors, including me, as bastards.

That is how he reacted to a comment on his Facebook page where he posted his E-pistle about how he was being spammed with angry messages from people I do not know and would reply by hitting my Delete button. A local pastor, Rev. David Schrader of Grace United Methodist Church in South Bend, commented with a mock Latin phrase, Illegitimi non carborundum. For those not familiar with it, the phrase roughly translates as, Dont let the bastards grind you down. The Bishops own comment on Rev. Schrader comment was a big smiley face, indicating his approval.

Lets get this straight. In a public place, one pastor scorns as bastards those who contacted the Bishop in good faith. To this vulgar insult, the Bishop responds with a warm endorsement. A Bishop, my Bishop, evidently agrees that those who wrote to him in all sincerity, hoping he would take them seriously and at least make some inquiries, are just bastards worthy of curt dismissal.

This is the same Bishop who, as Dr. West reported, complained about how his inbox was filling up with complaints about the ID ban, who went on in his E-pistle to defend the ban and spread inaccurate information about it, and who ended by admonishing his correspondents to follow James 1:19: Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and even slower to get angry.

I must say I find all this quite disappointing. I have contacted Bishop Coyner in the past about different issues, and for the most part he has answered me in a fairly timely manner. This time around, however, he hasnt answered at all, other than with the belittling E-pistle and the smiley face appended to Rev. Schrader comment. Such responses are unworthy of a Bishop.

Image credit: Amandajm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.
People keep pretending that assisted suicide and euthanasia are about terminal illness. Thats a clear ploy to get people to accept the premise that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering.

After that, logic will take over. Once a population begins to accept the overarching premise, the limitations such as terminal illness melt away. Sometimes, it doesnt even have to wait that long. In Belgium, elderly married couples can receive joint euthanasia  even if one or both arent seriously ill.

Now in Australia, a healthy elderly couple is praised in a journal called Starts at Sixty! for committing joint assisted suicide before becoming ill. From Why This Couple Chose to Leave the World on Their Own Terms:

Peter and Pat were scientists, explorers, parents, and jokesters. They had devoted their lives to their passions and raised three daughters  Judy, Anny and Kate. They lived life to the full and were determined to avoid the illness and fragility that so often comes with old age. Both Peter and Pat had discussed their choice to take their own lives for many years. They decided long ago this was the way they wanted to go and they made sure their daughters understood their decision. To them, prolonging life for the sake of living was not enough. They enjoyed hiking and reading and debating each other on science, literature and arts. They did not want to live a life where all of these things were not possible. The idea of nursing homes and palliative care was not something they wished to consider. They would die with the sharp minds and good humour they had cherished their whole lives.

They decided to commit suicide before becoming ill or debilitated by age  with the information on how to do so provided by the Down-Under Kevorkian, Philip Nitschke:

Peter joined Nitschkes organisation Exit International, which teaches people peaceful methods to end their own lives, and was a strong advocate for the right choose how and when to pass on. On 21 October, a week before Peter and Pat passed, their daughters arrived at the family home to spend time with their parents before they had to say goodbye forever. Their three girls are similar to their parents. Two have PhDs and one is a concert pianist in Germany. They are rational, just like their parents, and understand their desire to go out on their own terms. Anny asked if they could wait until after Christmas, just to have one more family celebration together, but they would not. The date had been set and they would make their final exit the day after Pats 87th birthday.

The children were fully supportive! They came over for a goodbye gathering, and left  knowing their parents would then kill themselves.

Speaking about her parents decision to take their own lives, the couples youngest daughter Kate said she believes, like her parents, that people should be afforded the right to suicide if they are of sound mind. It shouldnt be so difficult for rational people to make this decision, Kate said. Obviously, care has to be taken but assisted suicide should not be illegal.

Notice, no serious illness or disability required. Thats the logic of assisted suicide kicking in!

We used to consider such joint suicides a preventable tragedy. Increasingly, they are a cause for celebration, as elder suicide is beginning to be normalized and extolled.

Mark my words, if trends continue, you will be asked to attend the suicide of a loved one. If that happens, what will you do?

Say yes, and you are morally complicit. Say no, and you risk being ostracized by the family as judgmental and moralistic. People have not even begun to grasp the radical changes assisted suicide brings to a society.

Image credit:  aletia2011 / Dollar Photo Club.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.
Despite the euro to pound sterling rate (EUR/GBP) starting with a series of surprising gains at the start of the week, the single currency has since faced renewed pressure in relation to its British peer.

"EUR/GBP also came under further pressure yesterday, despite EUR/USD bouncing strongly within its range (support today is 1.0815/10 while resistance lies at 1.0875/80 ahead of 1.0985/90), with .7455-.7400 the important technical support here equivalent to GBP/USD. Resistance in the cross lies at .77625/30 today." Lloyds

The trend higher for the euro (EUR) was largely a reversal of the earlier losses, which saw the single currency devalued towards the end of last week by some excessively dovish speeches from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

The British pound vs euro exchange rate has softened to 1.3154 with investors left wondering when we will see a reverse in this downtrend.

Crucially, Draghi indicated that the ECB was unlikely to make any real policy adjustments until March at the earliest, a statement which was interpreted negatively by most investors.

Here are the latest FX rates for your reference:

On Thursday the Pound to British Pound exchange rate (GBP/GBP) converts at 1

The live inter-bank GBP-GBP spot rate is quoted as 1 today.

The GBP to CHF exchange rate converts at 1.125 today.

FX markets see the pound vs us dollar exchange rate converting at 1.118.

NB: the forex rates mentioned above, revised as of 20th Oct 2022, are inter-bank prices that will require a margin from your bank. Foreign exchange brokers can save up to 5% on international payments in comparison to the banks.

Sliding German Confidence Fails to Dent EUR/GBP and EUR/USD Conversion Rate Strength Today

Economic events in the Eurozone so far have not been especially supportive, with Germans January IFO Business estimates and Italys Industrial Sales and Orders results for November both declining overall, relative to previous printings.

Potentially adding to this negative state will be Italys pessimistically forecast November Retail Sales results and Germanys impending Bundesbank Monthly Report, both of which are due out in the near future.

More optimistically anticipated will be Draghis planned speech of the day, which is due this afternoon. Although unlikely, it seems that economists and investors alike will be hoping for something resembling hawkishness from the policymaker, despite the circumstances working against this logic.

Pound Sterling to Euro (GBP/EUR) Weakened by Referendum Activities Today, CBI Business Optimism due Later

Against the Euro, the Pound Sterling has flopped, while in its movement against other currencies the UK currency has largely repeated this performance.

Among the detracting factors for the British Pound today have been a spat raised between the In and Out campaigns over the potential access for the UK to Europes single market, with the former party raising concerns over what kind of deal would be struck in the aftermath of an Out majority. The 'Out' campaign has been strengthened by the news that Toyota and Unilever would continue to operate in the UK in the event of a 'Brexit'.

British ecostats due in the near future will include the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Business Optimism result for January, which previously came in with a disappointing -12 points.

INR/EUR Exchange Rate Declines Today as Outside Influences Panic Investors

Although the previous week was marked by an Indian Rupee-supporting and progressively rising price of crude oil per barrel from under $28.50 to over $32.00, the current week has started with a decline in the commodity cost to $31.00.

Despite this, the Indian Rupee has been in a state of decline against the Pound Sterling, Euro and US Dollar this morning. Likely causes include the lack of Indian data and a poll from Moodys that foresees a large number of external risks affecting the Indian economy compared to last year, although S&P have claimed that the risks are limited.

Investors will be in for a long wait until the next Indian economic data is released, which will come in the form of Fridays Foreign Reserves stats for January and the negatively forecast December Government Budget Value.

Exchange Rate Forecast: Trouble on the Horizon? Italian Finance Minister Waxes on Tensions Between Eurozone Members

Although Britain's relationship with the EU has been under scrutiny recently, it is worth remembering that internal divisions also exist for the single currency bloc.

Pier Padoan, Italys Minister of Economy and Finances, has spoken on the potentially hazardous plans to cap the maximum number of government bonds that can be held by Eurozone banks.

Speaking in Davos, Padoan stated:

Lets be very careful about translating into practice rules that look nice on paper. This would again be possibly a source of policy-induced instability.

Last year Greece was in the spotlight and causing issues for the Euro. Although 'Grexit' concerns have eased, the currency bloc still faces a number of headwinds.
Hello everyone! I'm an EU citizen (dual US/Italy) and have been boppin' around the EU and my native country for about my whole life I can't seem to stay in one place, hence my new move! I've lived in Italy four times in my life in various cities for a total of about 14 years, along with London and Sicily (yes I consider that a separate country!), and I'm done with Italy -- time for a change, new horizons, new culture, new people.I've been going back and forth in my mind about where my next "home" is. I pretty much had it down to between Bavaria and France -- I bugged everyone I knew or was simply acquainted with in France and on the France boards here as to their opinions about difference places. After some wonderful advice, I'm beginning to return to my first thought....lower Bavaria.I've been in the area twice in my life -- once as a teenager when my family visited southern Germany and toured the Black Forest, etc., and again a few months ago when I took a week's vacation in Austria and Germany. I knew only a little about it, but also heard a lot about it from my niece a few years ago when she lived and worked in Garmish for a year. Granted, the only place I went in Germany (due to time) was Mittenwald. I fell in lust with the area...I stayed for three days and only spent half of one day wandering around the cute central tourist part of the town. The rest of the time was wandering around the back roads, etc., seeing what "life" was like for those who lived there.What hit me the most was not only the people, but the cleanliness, even in the highly touristed areas.And now my questions! There's just me and two large suitcases in this move, no others, no kids, no pets :-( , no furniture, no car. No, I'm not retired nor rich! I work basically over the internet doing copyediting and proofreading, plus my business ESL teaching is over the phone (with the ability to use Skype calling plan to make said calls to my company students here in Italy). I'm working on snagging more copyediting work, but that's an ongoing thing.I want smaller cities/towns (Munich far too big for me -- been in enough big cities here in Italy), internationality (something I dearly miss as I've been living in non-internationality for many years here). I want cleanliness...have I mentioned that?...the filth here is horrible. I need affordability in renting an apartment. I don't really want a little tiny studio (unless studios there are large -- here the studios are so small you can barely turn around) so maybe a small one-bedroom.No, I don't speak German. I did take a year of it many years ago, and find that there is much I can understand. Well, some. I've seen some great sites for learning it, though, plus I know others who speak it.What towns would you recommend for my desires/needs? Oh, without a car, I need to be on a train line.Was that enough questions?! I would really love any input from everyone living there and, of course, people living in that area! Once I actually get a town pinpointed, I plan on taking a few-day trip to see what's what, especially if I'm still deciding between a couple. I've been known to move to a new city sight-unseen and hope for the best. I live in Lecco right now, which I consider a large town. I love love love the water, and I know there are some large lakes (and even hot springs and such!) and it's where I'm most at peace.Enough for nowThank you to everyone in advance and I look forward to hearing everything! I'm ready to go google-mapping and imaging!Maria
People arriving at New Zealand's international airport in Auckland are benefitting from faster and safer use of immigration with the use of new technology reaching a record high.The recently installed SmartGate technology was used by over 100,000 passengers in one of the busiest holiday periods in the second week of January.  Customs Minister Nicky Wagner said she is pleased that so many people arriving in the country are using the new technology. "This is the highest number of passengers to use SmartGate in one week. I was pleased to open the first of the new next generation SmartGates at Auckland International Airport last November, following the Government's $6.6 million capital funding for SmartGate expansion," she explained."The new Gates are a welcome addition during the busy holiday season, as the process is faster, more intuitive and eliminates the need for the ticket and kiosk. Using the information available in ePassports and facial recognition technology to do customs and immigration checks allows Customs to focus on high risk travellers while letting low risk people clear the border easily," she pointed out.She added that more SmartGates will be installed in Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown this year to manage growth in traveller volumes while ensuring New Zealandis border processing systems continue to be world-class.Meanwhile a new air route due to start in September between Wellington and Singapore, via Canberra in Australia, has been welcomed by Transport Minister Simon Bridges.The Singapore Airlines new service will operate four times a week and Bridges pointed out that it opens up two new international connections and creates the first ever, non-stop connection between New Zealand and Canberra and the first direct service operated with a single flight number between Wellington and Singapore.The latest figures show that national guest nights for November 2015 were 4.6% higher than in November 2014. The data from Statistics New Zealand shows that the increase was led by South Island. The Otago region had the largest increase in guest nights, boosted mainly by Queenstown and Wanaka.Year on year North Island guest nights were up 2.9% and South Island guest nights were up 7%. Domestic guest nights were up 5.2% and international guest nights were up 3.8% while overall nine of the 12 regional areas had more guest nights.
EAST LANSING, Mich.  Ronald L. Hendrick will be recommended as dean of Michigan State Universitys College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. If approved by the MSU board of trustees, Hendricks appointment will be effective July 1, 2016.

Hendrick, a Spartan alumnus, has been serving as acting vice president for agricultural administration and acting dean for the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Science at The Ohio State University. Previously a senior associate dean and professor, Hendrick has been acting dean since Bruce McPheron was named interim executive vice president and provost in early December.

Hendrick, who joined Ohio State in 2013, also served as director of the School of Environment and Natural Resources. Prior to that, he was associate dean for academic affairs in the D.B. Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. He was also graduate program coordinator for UGAs School of Forestry.

Im honored to serve the college and university that provided the foundation for so much of my personal and professional success, said Hendrick. Im thrilled to be coming back to MSU in a leadership role.

Hendrick earned his bachelor and doctoral degrees from MSU in forestry and forest ecology, in 1986 and 1992, respectively. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks from 1992-1993.

Hendrick succeeds Fred L. Poston, who retired in December.
New report backs farmers' calls for better waste crime policies
South View football playing for volunteer coach with cancer

John Bell was given 60 days to live in August, but he was determined to rejoin South View football. The volunteer coach accomplished that goal in Week 9.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry highlighted the links between corruption and unrest in countries including Libya, Yemen, Burundi, and Iraq.

Only better governance can rout the scourge of corruption, which costs the global economy $2.6 trillion, blights job prospects, and opens up a vacuum that allows the predators to move in, he said.

Kerry called on business leaders to demand accountability from their counterparts in government.

Extremism often finds nourishment where leadership is fragile, he said.

Secretary Kerry is right to link corruption and conflict. American policy makers have been talking about the link for a while.

When the U.S. Institute of Peace  established and funded by Congress  published a study guide five years ago on governance, corruption, and conflict, it said:

[C]orruption has links to conflict. Although corruption is not likely to be the only factor responsible for the destabilization of a country, it can have a major impact on undermining the government  and public confidence in governing institutions  which, in turn, can become a driver of conflict. The links between corruption, governance, and conflict are complex and interrelated, and they are a reality in many countries.

Two years ago, we found that fifteen countries then at war against an external enemy or through internal insurrection had an average ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index of 150 (out of 175 countries).

The countries Kerry mentioned in Davos that are unstable and under pressure from insurgents  Libya, Yemen, Burundi, and Iraq  have an average rank on the Corruption Perceptions Index of 164.

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.  See more at: https://fcpablog.com/blog/2016/1/21/doj-indicts-china-scientists-for-alleged-gsk-trade-secrets-r.html#sthash.ifukyc3S.dpuf

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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.  See more at: https://fcpablog.com/blog/2016/1/21/doj-indicts-china-scientists-for-alleged-gsk-trade-secrets-r.html#sthash.ifukyc3S.dpuf

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.  See more at: https://fcpablog.com/blog/2016/1/21/doj-indicts-china-scientists-for-alleged-gsk-trade-secrets-r.html#sthash.ifukyc3S.dpuf
A U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class was sentenced to 27 months in prison for accepting cash, electronic gadgets, and travel expenses from a Singapore-based defense contractor in exchange for providing classified U.S. Navy information.

Dan Layug, 27, pleaded guilty in May 2014 to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Hes the first defendant sentenced in the sprawling bribery case involving Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA).

The company provided port services to U.S. Navy ships in the Asia Pacific region.

GDMA owner and CEO Leonard Glenn Francis  also known as Fat Leonard  and other GDMA employees paid bribes to obtain classified ship schedules and other sensitive Navy information. The company allegedly used the information to manipulate ports of call to where GDMA operated. It then overcharged the Navy under its contracts and submitted bogus invoices for port services.

The DOJ alleged that GDMA won more than $20 million in contracts tainted by bribery.

In his plea agreement, Layug admitted taking a $1,000 per month allowance from GDMA, plus luxury hotel stays for himself and others in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Thailand, the DOJ said Thursday. Layug also asked GDMA for an iPad 3, a Nikon digital camera, an iPhone5, a Samsung S4, a Blackberry, a VAIO computer, and PSP and Wii gaming units.

According to the plea agreement, Layug used his position as a logistics specialist at a U.S. Navy facility in Yokosuka, Japan to access classified U.S. Navy ship schedules. He then passed the information to GDMAs vice president of global operations.

Layug admitted he also provided pricing information from one of GDMAs competitors.

Judge Janis Sammartino ordered Layug to surrender to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on April 1. She said to him: You put the Navy at risk. You put your colleagues at risk. And you put our country at riskI think our security and safety were all at risk.

So far, nine defendants have been charged in the case; seven of them have pleaded guilty.

Captain Daniel Dusek and Commander Jose Luis Sanchez were charged with bribery conspiracies involving GDMA and have pleaded guilty. Sanchez admitted accepting money, gifts, travel, and prostitutes.

In December 2013, NCIS Special Agent John Beliveau pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges for regularly tipping Fat Leonard about the status of the governments investigation into GDMA.

In January 2015, Francis reportedly changed his plea to guilty in an appearance in federal court in San Diego. Hes been held without bail since his arrest in California in September 2013. The Malaysian national was charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.

Two defendants, Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz and former Defense Department civilian employee Paul Simpkins, are waiting for their trials.

Three rear admirals including the commander of naval forces in Japan announced their retirements in early 2015 after the secretary of the Navy censured them for the bribery scandal.

Naval Forces Japan commander Rear Adm. Terry Kraft and rear admirals Michael Miller and David Pimpo received censure letters from Secretary Ray Mabus. The letters were intended to document their failure of leadership for the handling of Glenn Defense Marine Asia between 2006 and 2007. The three admirals arent facing criminal charges at this time.

In December, prosecutors in Singapore charged a woman who worked for the U.S. Navy there with taking bribes of cash and hotel stays from GDMA, and passing classified information about ship movements to the company.

Gursharan Kaur, 55, a Singapore citizen who served as a lead contract specialist with the Navy from 2006 to 2009, was also charged with money laundering. She used some of the bribe money to buy an insurance policy and an option to buy a condominium, prosecutors said.

In the U.S., the DOJ said Thursday it is continuing the investigation.

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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
Three men who thought they were laundering $2.6 million from a penny stock fraud have pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

Michael J. Dodd, 65, and James Robert Shipman, Jr., 64, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to launder money.

A third defendant, Kenneth Landgaard, 46, pleaded guilty to the same charge on January 15.

The three defendants were business partners. Dodd, a U.S. citizen who lived in Panama City and also used the name Michael Stanley, set up offshore foundations in Panama for clients and coordinated with Landgaard to move cash on private jets.

Landgaard, a U.S. citizen living in Alexandria, Minnesota, owns and operates Magjets Group, an aviation company based in Panama City.

Shipman lives in Hollywood, Florida.

Landgaard and Shipman were arrested after flying to an airport in New York on a private jet, where they took $2.2 million in cash from an undercover agent. They had agreed to launder the money through banks in Panama and Belize.

Dodd was arrested a few hours later at a Manhattan restaurant where he expected to meet with the undercover agent.

The undercover agent posed as a criminal stock promoter as part of an FBI sting operation, the DOJ said.

Before their arrests, the defendants had already laundered $400,000 in cash from the undercover agent.

The agent said he was a middleman working with corrupt stock brokers who artificially inflated prices for worthless stocks in exchange for high commissions, the DOJ said.

Despite the backstory about dirty money from the penny stock fraud, Shipman, Langaard, and Dodd agreed to launder $2.6 million in exchange for a fee of 13 percent to 15 percent.

The FBI recorded them explaining in detail how to hide the money laundering operation from law enforcement authorities.

Dodd insisted that the undercover agent download and use encryption software for online chats and voice communications.

Landgaard required the undercover agent to deliver the money in expensive Louis Vuitton duffel bags. Shipman explained that cops cant get the authority to buy a Louis Vuitton bag, its too expensive .

Landgaard and Shipman also insisted that the undercover agent buy and use burner phones for all calls to them.

The investigation was a joint operation by the FBI and IRS. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations also had a role.

The defendants pleaded guilty before Judge John Gleeson at the United States Courthouse in Brooklyn.

The all face up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing dates havent been set.

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
Ferne McCann wants to become a movie star.

Ferne McCann

The 25-year-old reality TV beauty, who won over the nation when she appeared on 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' last month, is following her dreams and heading stateside in a bid to crack it internationally as an actress.

A source explained: "Ferne has quickly become the nation's sweetheart since her stint on 'I'm A Celeb' but she doesn't want to be stuck on a reality show forever.

"She's heading to Hollywood for a series of secret meetings with major studios in the hope she can fulfill her dream of becoming a movie star.

"It's what she's dreamed of since she was a little girl and she's ready to take the next step. Film producers have been impressed with what they've seen so far."

And the brunette beauty is determined to do all it takes to be successful and has been undergoing private acting lessons to make sure she's ready for her auditions in the US.

She told The Sun newspaper: "Acting is one of my ambitions and I'm really learning the craft. I've always done it in my school life and that but I've started acting lessons one-to-one and a lot of my friends are in that kind of industry so I'd love to act. My dream is to feature in a film."

However, Ferne's decision to head across the pond could shatter her chances of ever returning to 'The Only Way is Essex', the show which made her famous, in the future.
Matthias Schoenaerts has made quite a name for himself over the last couple of years and he is set to return to the big screen this March with Disorder.

Disorder

We have seen Schoenaerts star in the likes of Rust and Bone, The Drop, and Far From the Madding Crowd, movies, and performances that have sent his star rocketing.

2016 has already been a busy year for him as we have seen him in The Danish Girl and A Bigger Splash is on the horizon and Disorder is another movie to watch out for.

Schoenaerts is set to take on the central roles of Vincent, an ex-soldier with PTSD as he teams up with filmmaker and writer Alice Winocour. Disorder is only the second feature film for Winocour and comes four years after she made her debut with Augustine.

The brand new trailer for Disorder has been unveiled and we have it for you to take a look at:

The movie sees Diane Kruger star alongside Schoenaerts while Paul Hamy, Percy Kemp. and Zaid Errougui-Demonsant are also on board.

Following a tour of duty, Special Services soldier Vincent (Schoenaerts) takes a job in security for a wealthy Lebanese businessman and his family. During a lavish party at the family's luxurious 'Maryland' villa in the South of France, Vincent senses that something is amiss.

When his employer is urgently called away on business Vincent is left to ensure the safety of his wife Jessie (Kruger) and their child. Suffering from post-traumatic stress, Vincent battles his own paranoia whilst clinging to the certainty that Jessie and her family are in real and immediate danger, unleashing a hell-bent determination to protect them at all costs.

Disorder is set to receive its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on 21st February and its Irish premiere at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival on 22nd February.

Disorder is released 25th March

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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As one of the biggest success stories of 2015, Rachel Platten is back with her brand new album and single.

Rachel Platten

We got the opportunity to put some questions to Rachel about her multi platinum track 'Fight Song', her new music and much more. Read on to find out what she had to say.

You saw huge success in 2015 for 'Fight Song' - when did it sink in that you had a major hit on your hands?

It still hasn't sank in really. Even hearing you ask that is always a surprise for me. This has been a dream of mine for so many years and sometimes I ask myself, 'Is this really happening?'!

What sort of reaction did you get from fans, friends and family following that song's release?

My friends and family have always been extremely supportive, but the support I've received from fans has been so overwhelming. I love hearing all of their 'Fight Song' stories, I have been so inspired by so many of them.

Fans saw you on stage with Taylor Swift for a collaboration during her show in Philadelphia - what was that experience like?

Playing on stage with Taylor in front of 55,000 people, to see them all singing the words to my song and throwing their fists in the air, was incredible. It was a moment I could have only dreamed about only a year ago.

Your new single's 'Stand By You' - what should those who haven't heard it yet expect?

It's a love song in its core. 'Stand By You' is about sticking by the person you love not only when things are easy, but being there for them during trials and letting them know they aren't alone.

Where do you draw influence or inspiration from for your material?

Everywhere! My life, friends, family, nature... At any moment I could be surrounded by someone or something that may inspire a song.

When did your love for music and performing really begin?

I have always loved music. My Mom used to sing with my sister and I when I was younger and I was in choirs and loved to perform, but when I was in college I went on a study abroad to Trinidad and while I was there I sang back up at my first concert. At that moment, it was like a switch went off in my heart and I knew performing and making music was what I was meant to be doing.

What would you say are some of your best memories of music to-date?

I have had a lot of incredible memories this past year. Having 'Fight Song' go triple platinum. Playing Dick Clarks' 'Rockin' New Years Eve'. Getting to hear and meet so many incredible fans who have been touched by my music, to hear their stories and feel their strength!

If you could work with anybody on new music, who would you choose and why?

Sia would be incredible. I think she is an incredible artist and songwriter.

Do you have any definitive aims or goals for your career going forward?

I want to continue to remain present and grateful each day that I get to be doing what I love. Making and performing music I believe in.

What should we expect from you in the coming weeks and months?

I just released my new album 'Wildfire' on New Years Day, I am about to play the Pro Bowl in Hawaii and I am about to go on my first headlining tour in America, which I am very excited for. It's going to be a VERY great year!

Rachel's new single 'Stand By You' is out now.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Brian Wilson has announced he is going on a world tour to mark the 50th anniversary of classic Beach Boys album 'Pet Sounds'.

Brian Wilson

The 73-year-old musician can't wait to recognise the landmark date of the band's 11th LP - which contains acclaimed songs such as 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'God Only Knows' - with concerts all "across the world".

For the shows, Brian will play the album in full and will be joined by fellow Beach Boys bandmate Al Jardine and former member Blondie Chaplin.

In a statement, Brian said: "It's really been a trip to sit here and think about releasing Pet Sounds 50 years ago. I love performing this album with my band and look forward to playing it for fans all across the world."

The 'Brian Wilson presents Pet Sounds' world tour will begin on March 26 at The Civic Auckland theatre in New Zealand before heading to Australia, Japan, North America the UK and Spain.

The run of shows will be the final time fans will get the chance to hear 'Pet Sounds' - which celebrates its anniversary in May - performed in its entirety by Brian and tickets go on sale this Friday (29.01.16).

Brian recently admitted although he is aware he will have to retire sometime in the future he wants to keep performing and making music for as long as he is able to.

The songwriter - who released his last solo album 'No Pier Pressure' in 2014 - said: "I've carried a lot of weight on my shoulders - a heavy load. For me, music is about love. Love is the message I want to share. I hope people feel the love in my music, I want to keep going. That makes the hard work worth it."
Britain's Prince William is mourning the loss of a soldier who has died after becoming ill during a solo trek across Antarctica.

Prince William

Henry Worsley, 55, was forced to quit the expedition just 30 miles from the end of his 913-mile mission, on which he was aiming to become the first person to cross the Antarctic on foot unaided, after he was struck down with extreme dehydration and exhaustion.

Henry was rushed to hospital in Chile after being struck down with illness and was found to have peritonitis, a stomach lining infection. He has now sadly died.

William said: "We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all."

The SAS hero was taking part in the trek to raise money for the Endeavour Fund, which helps injured servicemen and women, and while he couldn't complete his challenge he managed to raise more than 100,000 for the foundation.

William previously said: "Henry Worsley has achieved a great deal over this epic journey, and I am immensely proud of all his efforts.

"The courage he has shown is a source of inspiration for the wounded servicemen and women who benefit from his support of The Endeavour Fund."

He was faced with minus 40-degree temperatures and only managed to change his underwear once in the past 70 days.

William sent Henry a message on Christmas Day (25.12.15), saying he was doing a "cracking job".
Matt Smith has heralded Steven Moffat as the "greatest writer" to have ever worked on 'Doctor Who' following his announcement he is leaving the programme.

Matt Smith

The 33-year-old actor was cast as Moffat to play the Eleventh Doctor in 2009 when he began his role as showrunner on the BBC sci-fi series and insists he will always be grateful to him for giving him one of the best roles in television.

Speaking to promote his new film 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', he said: "I'm sad he's leaving 'Doctor Who'. He's done so much for it and so much for me ... He has done so much for the show and I feel very privileged that I got to work with, what I think, is the greatest writer."

Smith made his debut as the titular Time Lord in April 2010 in 'The Eleventh Hour' and bowed out in the 2013 Christmas special 'The Time of the Doctor', handing over the key to the TARDIS to current incumbent Peter Capaldi.

Although Smith believes life-long fan Moffat's contribution to the programme is unmeasurable, he is confident it will continue to be a success and get even bigger as 'Doctor Who' starts a new chapter under 'Broadchurch' creator Chris Chibnall.

Smith added: "He (Moffat) pretty much is 'Doctor Who', but the show will always endure and there's a wonderful writer coming in and as always, it's about regeneration and reinvention of things."

Moffat, 54, announced at the weekend he would be leaving his position once he finishes making Series 10, which will air in 2017, and that Chibnall would be taking on the role of showrunner. His first episodes will air in 2018.

Moffat - who has worked on series for the last six years - said: "It feels odd to be talking about leaving when I'm just starting work on the scripts for season 10, but the fact is my timey-wimey is running out. While Chris is doing his last run of 'Broadchurch', I'll be finishing up on the best job in the universe and keeping the TARDIS warm for him. It took a lot of gin and tonic to talk him into this, but I am beyond delighted that one of the true stars of British television drama will be taking the Time Lord even further into the future."
Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued a detailed clarification saying that the federal government is authorised to levy sales tax on supply and manufacturing of goods, whereas the power to levy sales tax on services have been vested with provinces.The clarification came in response to contentions expressed over double taxation by a Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) delegation during its recent meeting with the FBR chairman.

Pakistan's Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued a detailed clarification saying that the federal government is authorised to levy sales tax on#

The KCCI delegation, headed by Businessmen Group Vice Chairman Haroon Farooki, included KCCI President Younus Muhammad Bashir and KCCI sub-committee on GST & Refunds Chairman Sohaib Ahmed Faridi, who met FBR Chairman Nisar Muhammad Khan recently in Islamabad to express deep concerns over double taxation by federal and provincial authorities, which created hardships for the business and industrial community of Karachi.Consequently, the FBR issued a clarification declaring comprehensive definition of sales tax levy by the federal government and provinces under the Constitution.FBR pointed out that the manufacturers of five zero-rated sectors are being charged by the board at 3 per cent of the processing charges, which is being paid by the textile and other zero-rated industries. Sales tax on Services Act has levied tax on toll manufacturing of goods, which falls outside the ambit of the provinces as per the Federal Legislative List of the Constitution of Pakistan, hence, the contention of province is not correct.According to FBR, the supply chain of textile industry starts with the production of cotton , which is converted into finished product after going through various processes. The garments/ made-ups cannot be manufactured without ancillary industries such as spinning, weaving, sizing, dyeing and stitching etc.The FBR elaborated that only in large manufacturing houses, the factory encompasses all these processes in one or more premises owned by the manufacturer. However, in large number of cases, all these processes are outsourced due to lack of expertise and paucity of funds to finance manufacturing activities by a single owner. Therefore, the owner of the goods forward raw material to other manufacturers for processing and converting the same into finished goods. The main thrust of all these processes is to manufacture the goods, which are sold and exported as per requirements of the customers, FBR said.FBR's letter further stated that these manufacturing activities cannot be excluded from the supply chain activity of goods and are not covered under any definition of service. Therefore, the contention of the province is not valid on the grounds that without performing the activity of spinning, weaving, sizing, knitting and stitching etc., finished form of a good in manufacturing cannot take place, hence, the argument tendered by the province does not seems to be logical.Referring to various legal and constitutional facts, the FBR said that Part B of the Second Schedule to the Sindh Sales Services Act, 2011 is in violation of section 2(16)(a) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990. Therefore the provinces are not competent to levy such illegal tax on processing/ manufacturing of the goods by the registered persons who are already paying sales tax on such activities. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
At FESPA 2016, which runs from March 8-11, organisers are hosting a one day Digital Textile Conference, with the objective of providing a comprehensive learning platform.According to a FESPA press release, textile printing is proving to be one of the fastest growing sectors in the digital wide format print industry, and with technology a key driver for the changes, demand for education is high.

At FESPA 2016, which runs from March 8-11, organisers are hosting a one day Digital Textile Conference, with the objective of providing a#

The conference runs from 10.45 to 18.00 on March 8 and will cover topics such as 'Insights into the growth and creative development of digital textile markets' by Ron Gilboa of Infotrends.Another topic is 'Growing your business with fabric printing' by Daniel Arzt of Sun Ski Sport and 'Smart textiles' by David Schmelzeisen, academic, Institut fur Textiltechnik der RWTH Aachen.'Digital print in fast fashion' will be presented by Mike Horsten, general manager marketing EMEA, Mimaki Europe B.V.There will also be a keynote Q&A on 'The evolution of digital textile print for fashion' with Bruno Basso & Christopher Brooke from Basso & Brooke, who are pioneering the digital print process in fashion.The day will also include panel discussions and key networking opportunities during the inclusive lunch and drinks reception, FESPA said.Other free textile sessions throughout the four days include topics like; 3D printed clothing, Direct to garment printing: should we or shouldn't we? and Screen printing and direct to garment.With textile highlighted as a key growth area in our recent FESPA Print Census, we are committed to ensuring that we provide as much useful information as possible, said, Roz McGuinness, FESPA divisional director.Our educational sessions have this same objective in mind and we are confident that delegates and visitors will leave the sessions feeling like they have learnt useful information to take their business forward, he too added.Duncan MacOwan, FESPA's head of events and new media said, Our one-day Digital Textile Conference provides printers with information and first-hand experience from some of the leading industry experts.We have aimed to get a complete spectrum of speakers who will discuss different aspects of the textile industry, he informed.The objective is to provide useful insight for those printers who may be already producing printed textile or looking to branch out into a slightly different area, Duncan observed. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd (GSFC) is exploring global markets for exporting for its Nylon-6 fibres Gujcon-CRF and Gujcon-PRF."GSFC aims to leverage opportunities in construction and infrastructure sectors in India and overseas markets. We are exploring opportunities of export of these products to African countries, Gulf countries including UAE and Dubai, Sri Lanka, Canada, GSFC Chairman and Managing Director Sudeep Kumar Nanda said.

Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd (GSFC) is exploring global markets for exporting for its Nylon-6 fibres Gujcon-CRF and Gujcon-PRF.#

GSFC claims Gujcon-CRF and Gujcon-PRF increase the strength and durability of structures. Just 100 gm of Gujcon CRF and PRF per 50 kg bag of cement will enhance the strength of the structure. It will also help in the reduction of plastic shrinkage, cracks and reduction of water permeability.At the product launch in Hyderabad, Nanda, said Just like human beings, buildings should also have immunity to fight cracks, leakage and other problems. Our Gujcon products will bring new revolution in buildings as well as road infrastructure by providing secondary reinforcement in all construction applications, he said.A small quantity of the fibres, when added to cement for secondary reinforcement, increases the serviceability, durability and life of the structures by preventing shrinkage cracks and water seepage and by enhancing performance properties such as resistance to wear and tear, impact, shock, load, abrasion, he added.Nanda said the company which recently exporting its first consignment of Nylon-6 to Myanmar, is gearing up to harness this field of opportunities by offering high-quality patented products. India is the third country after the US and Belgium to have such products.GSFC also signed an MoU recently with Mahatma Gandhi Labour Institute (MGLI) Ahmedabad, for setting up a National Institute for Skill Development and Entrepreneur ship at the GSFC university. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Indonesia wants to trade with Surat in the field of textiles, along with diamonds and tourism, Saur Siringoringo, counsel general, Indonesia has said, according to media reports.

The Indonesian government is working to create a direct connectivity between Bali and Delhi and Bali and Mumbai in order to promote bilateral trade between both the countries. Siringoringo is with Hariyanta Soetarto, consul (economics), and Siti Fatimah, vice-consul (economics), as part of the Indonesian delegation in Surat for the ongoing international industrial exhibition, Udyog 2016.

Fatimah said, There is immense scope for Indonesian companies to export and import textiles and textile machineries and diamonds to the city. Tourism too has a great potential.

Indonesia wants to trade with Surat in the field of textiles, along with diamonds and tourism, Saur Siringoringo, counsel general, Indonesia has said#

The ASEAN-India free trade agreement (AIFTA) has provided a boost to the trade ties between India and Indonesia. The trade between both the nations has increased to $16.20 billion in 2014 compared to $4.79 billion in 2009. (HO)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
The visit is also in preparation for the proposed visit of Prime Minister J.V Bainimarama to Japan, in March 2016 at the invitation of the Prime Minister of Japan Hon Shinzo Abe.

Fijis Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management Hon Inia Seruiratu is leading a high level visit to Japan to look at strengthening relations between Fiji and Japan through his portfolio.The visit this week to Tokyo is part of a high level exchange at the political level for both countries as they deepen relations following a successful visit to Japan in May last year by the Prime Minister Hon. Voreqe Bainimarama. The Minister will hold talks with his Japanese counterparts as well as senior political leaders. Hon Seruiratu will also meet the Chairman of the Japan/Fiji Parliamentary Friendship League and senior officials from Japan International Cooperation Agency [JICA] of Japan to be briefed on the Nadi River Alignment Project. Meetings with a few business leaders who are considering investing in Fijis rural and outer island infrastructure projects will also take place.Since the Prime Ministers visit to Japan last year, the two countries have looked at identifying areas that could potentially boost bilateral ties. High-level exchanges at the Ministerial levels, trade missions, trade fairs and trade growth are outcomes since the Prime Ministers visit. Today, Fiji and Japan are looking at diversifying their relations into new areas and to establish a new and innovative level. Fijis geographical and socio-economic position is considered by Japan as effective in assisting sustainable development plans in Fiji and in other Pacific Island Countries (PICs).
The Prime Minister Hon. Voreqe Bainimarama has congratulated the Republic of Nauru on the 48th anniversary of their independence.



In a congratulatory message to the President of Nauru, His Excellency Mr Baron Waqa, the Prime Minister spoke on the strong relations shared between Fiji and Nauru.



I wish to extend to Your Excellency, on behalf of the Government and the People of Fiji, my sincere Congratulations to you and the Government and the People of Nauru, as you celebrate the 48th anniversary of independence of your beloved Nation on the 31st day of January.



Our two countries have over the years built a solid and steady relationship which I am confident we will continue to mutually enhance as we embark into 2016.



Prime Minister Bainimarama also spoke about the common challenges faced amongst Pacific nations and reaffirmed Fijis commitment to work closely with her neighbours to address these challenges.



Whilst the challenges that the Pacific will face over these coming years are both vast and inescapable, we can be encouraged by the recent endorsement of the Agenda 2030 and the adoption of the Paris Agreement as overarching global frameworks that will allow us to explore solutions.



I look forward to continuing to work closely with you in consolidating our existing partnerships in the pursuit of our mutual interests and in the collective nurturing of a more resilient Pacific Community. 
Asin-Rahul

Asin and Rahul Sharma recently hosted a lavish wedding reception in Mumbai for their industry friends.

(In Pic-Asin and Rahul Sharma posing for the cameras)

Reception

Many Bollywood stars graced sin and Rahul Sharma's reception with their presence.

(In Pic-Asin, Rahul Sharma and Shilpa Shetty posing for a selfie)

Akshay Kumar

It was superstar Akshay Kumar, who introduced Asin to his friend Rahul Sharma.

(In Pic-Rahul Sharma, Asin and Akshay Kumar snapped at the reception)

Asin

Asin had told in one of her interviews that she will take a break from films after marriage.

(In Pic-Asin clicked with her friend Jacqueline Fernandez)

Rahul

Asin's husband Rahul Sharma is an Indian businessman and the co-founder of Micromax Informatics.

(In Pic-Candid moment of Rahul Sharma and Asin)

Wedding

Actress Asin and Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma wedding celebrations in New Delhi were a private affair.

(In Pic-Chetan Bhagat posing for a selfie with Asin and Rahul)

Rishi Kapoor

Bollywood actor Rishi Kapoor, with whom Asin worked in All Is Well, too was a part of Asin and Rahul Sharma's grand reception.

Mumbai Reception

Asin, 30, and Rahul Sharma 40, posing for a selfie with their friends at the Mumbai reception. Many Bollywood stars were present at the party.

Love Birds

Love birds Asin and Rahul Sharma met when Asin was Shooting for Housefull 2 with superstar Akshay Kumar.

(In Pic-Asin and Rahul Sharma)

Divya Khosla Kumar

Divya Khosla Kumar, who is busy in the promotions of her upcoming film Sanam Re these days, was also the part of the celebrations.

R Madhavan

R Madhavan, who will soon be seen in Rajkumar Hirani's film Saala Khadoos, also attended Asin and Rahul Sharma's reception with his wife.

Shilpa-Raj

Shilpa Shetty and husband Raj Kundra posing for the shutterbugs with newlyweds Asin and Rahul Sharma at their Mumbai reception.

Asin With Her Friends

Asin posing with her industry friends at her wedding reception. Asin was looking stunning in her beautiful hand made wedding lehenga at the function.

Inside Pic

Inside picture of Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez at Asin and Rahul Sharma's Mumbai reception.

Jacqueline was looking very pretty in her Indian attire at the party.

Asin's Marriage

According to recent reports, Rahul Sharma proposed Asin with a beautiful piece of stone which is a 20-carat solitaire worth Rs 6 Crores.
Barclays has become the latest in a long line of banks to pull out of the unprofitable Asian cash equities business as fierce competition and high costs make it untenable for all but the largest players and a few boutiques.

The British bank said in an email to clients on Thursday that it is closing cash equity research, sales, and trading as well as convertible bond trading across Asia. It also plans to shutter all of its investment banking operations where it is sub scale across the region including Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia.

About 230 people will lose their jobs in Asia as part of a global restructuring resulting in 1,000 redundancies, a person familiar with the matter said.

"We are sharpening our focus on the geographies and products where we have a clear competitive advantage, with a physical presence only in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Singapore," Tom King, Barclays's global chief executive officer of investment banking, said in a memo to staff.

One banker who arrived at work in Hong Kong on Thursday morning only to be told hed been let go said the severance package was disappointing and the atmosphere grim. Barclays's equities division, which is run by Vikesh Kotecha and John Chang in Asia-Pacific, will pay out bonuses for those who remain in March.

Rival brokers are already looking to snag Barclays's cash equities clients as well as the few the British bank is trying to hang on to. "Barclays are retaining a skeleton crew in a few areas, they can't hope to retain clients if they can't offer them freebies such as equity research," said one senior trader at a European bank.

Much of the British bank's trading flow will likely gravitate towards the largest brokers in the region such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and UBS. However, a small proportion might find its way to boutiques since fund managers like to maintain multiple relationships for security purposes and because of increased pressure from regulators for greater transparency on how fees are allocated.

Brokers including Barclays ramped up their operations across the region in 2010 when stock markets surged, only to make a dramatic U-turn when revenues failed to cover the high cost of retaining staff across Asias patchwork of jurisdictions.

Malaysia's CIMB laid off 32 employees from its cash equities and investment banking divisions in Hong Kong on Friday; Jefferies cut just under 20 people in cash equities in December; Standard Chartered closed its equities business last year. Other brokers to pull out of the region since the global financial crisis include Piper Jaffray and Samsung Securities in 2012.

Mid-size brokers have been decimated, said one head of Asian equities trading based in Hong Kong. There is no room for a me-too cash equities business; brokers are warring over every basis point of market share.

The British bank's exit from the market is unlikely to significantly reduce the overcapacity as its equities trading share in Asia was outside of the top six, according to the latest survey by consultants Greenwich Associates.

Only a handful of equity franchises are profitable in Asia as commissions are squeezed by the shift to etrading, according to various industry sources. Margins have also been squeezed by the recent downturn in Chinese stock markets.

Kotecha had reportedly predicted in April that cash equities in Asia would make money in 2016 after the cuts he had already made.

Agony ends

After months of uncertainty, cryptic signals from headquarters, and leaks on looming job cuts, staff at Barclays heard the news from King via webcasts on the companys intranet.

Asia co-head Eiji Nakai also spoke to staff via a webcast from Tokyo.

In the email to clients, Barclays said equity research, headed by Bhavtosh Vajpayee, will immediately cease to cover Asian listed stocks.

Some bankers have already left the bank.

Jake Scrivens, Barclayss managing director and head of the investment bank's Asia Pacific markets structuring team, moved to Exiger, a financial crime, risk and compliance firm. Didier von Daeniken, who had headed Barclayss private banking business for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, left to join Standard Chartered in December.

Barclays is also selling its Asian wealth management division, according to a variety of well-placed industry sources.

Whats left?

Barclays said that it is returning to its roots, focusing on serving clients in its core European and US markets.

Pockets of traditional strength, which existed in Asia long before the British bank acquired Lehman Brothers's US business, will remain, such as equity derivatives and prime brokerage, which counts Nathan Fischer among its senior sales people.

Returning to its roots

A second senior trader at a rival broker said Barclays's equity derivatives and prime services operations could function as a standalone business, as it was well respected in the industry and thought to be profitable. US and European hedge funds with only a small proportion of their trades running through Barclays machines would likely keep using the service, a third rival trader agreed.

The email to clients said Barclays may continue to offer electronic cash execution only services, run by Greg Lee, in certain instances.

But one Barclays banker said the business unit had been gutted.

Long-only fund managers are unlikely to continue to send orders to Barclays for electronic cash services if they no longer receive high-touch service or research, said the first rival senior trader, keen to snag the business.

Barclayss jewel in the crown is its high frequency business in Japan, said industry rivals. The seed of doubt might have been sown amongst its high-frequency clients that Barclays may not sustain this business going forward, the trader said.

The job cuts will have a knock-on effect on the bank's investment banking arm. Its equity capital markets business in Asia will focus on helping Asian companies to raise capital in the US and Europe, given it no longer has any equity distribution capability within the region. ECM bankers will also continue to work on corporate equity structuring and private solutions.

"In banking, we will maintain a full-client offering in debt financing, risk management, and cross-border [mergers and acquisitions]. We will focus our equity capital markets offering on equity-linked financing, derivatives, and taking our local clients to the international capital markets, particularly the UK and the US," King said in the memo.

Its M&A bankers will focus on cross-border deals, much like its role in helping British retailer Tesco on the documentation of its sale of Homeplus to Korean private equity firm MBK.

Barclays had 18,200 full-time employees in the Asia Pacific region as of 2014, down from 18,500 in 2013 but up from 16,500 in 2012, according to its annual report. Its income from the region totaled 776 million in 2014, down from 1.28 billion in 2013.
The investment bankers behind Chinese banks looking to list in Hong Kong expect an uphill struggle after the total market value of companies listed in Hong Kong companies fell below their net asset value for the first time in 18 years.

The total market value of Hong Kong-listed stocks fell to 1.5% below their net asset value last Thursday, according to Bloomberg data, as capital outflows and the depreciation of renminbi weighed on investor sentiment.

Although the Hang Seng Index has since recovered nearly 800 points, shares in Hong Kong are still 4% below their forecast 2016 net asset value.

The benchmark indexs price-to-book ratio  a measure of market price relative to net asset value  was recorded at 1.03 times on Monday, the lowest point since the Asian financial crisis in 1998. The ratio reached as high as 3.5 times in early 2000 and barely touched 1.1 times during the global financial crisis of 2008.

Price-to-book ratios are a widely tracked valuation measure for banks and insurance companies alike because they provide some indication of a financial group's ability to use its capital to create value. They also reflect its underlying financial condition relative to its market price.

Chinese banking stocks have been hit particularly hard for some time in Hong Kong, trading well below book value due to worries over slowing Chinese economic growth and rising non-performing loans.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the worlds largest lender by market capitalisation, saw its H-shares trade at 0.87 times book value at the end of last year, according to Bloomberg data. Regional lenders such as Bank of Chongqing and Huishang Bank traded even lower, at 0.74 and 0.79 times book value, respectively.

For investment bankers and equity capital markets specialists, depressed valuations in the secondary market mean far tougher pitches when it comes to marketing new deals to investors. That is because most Chinese banks and insurance companies are not allowed by the China Banking Regulatory Commission to dispose of assets at below their last reported book value, because it is seen as selling state assets at distressed prices.

The rule applies to financial institutions which are majority-owned by central or regional governments, a Chinese ECM banker told FinanceAsia. Practically this covers almost every bank in China because the CBRC has not approved the establishment of any privately owned banks until 2014.

China Zheshang Bank, a nationwide lender backed by the Zhejiang provincial government, is gearing up for an initial public offering to raise as much as $1 billion this year, industry sources said. Bank of Tianjin, which is majority-owned by Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone State-owned Assets Administration Bureau, has also filed for an IPO worth as much as $800 million.

It isnt an easy task to pitch these deals to investors because banks of much larger size are already trading at distressed prices in the secondary market, so there are a lot of choices out there, a second ECM banker in Hong Kong said. Because of the existing regulations, we are obliged to convince investors to invest in these new companies at a premium to those big lenders, and the premium is increasing as valuation for these big banks fall.

Relationship deals

Given that most Chinese banks are trading at around 0.9 times book value in Hong Kong, investors interested in new bank IPOs will have to pay a premium of at least 10%.

So these companies could end up as so-called friends and families IPOs, with the majority of the shares going into the hands of an issuing bank or insurance group's business partners or to other people with close ties to the issuer, bankers and investors have told FinanceAsia.

Such relationship IPOs often attract criticism because they are seen to betray the price discovery process associated with a free market. Many of them are also suspected to be tied to loans, offers of collateral, and business contracts.

But some bankers close to Chinese financial deals said it could be the only way to help these companies list in a bear market where public investment is less likely.

With the help of relationship investors, a number of financial institutions were able to squeeze out a few deals last year.

They include Shandong-based Bank of Qingdao, which priced a HK$4.65 billion ($607 million) flotation in November with support from other Shandong companies including Jinan Binhe New District Constructive Investment, and Rizhao Huaheng Materials Trade. Bank of Zhengzhou also completed a $656 million deal having secured investment from the likes of Zhengzhou Airport and Zhengzhou Zhengdong Construction.

Both banks listed at par to their respective book value at the time of their IPOs.
Future Land Development bond prices tumbled on Monday after the Chinese property developer said its chairman and controlling shareholder, Wang Zhenhua, was being investigated by the country's authorities.

With investors increasingly on alert as Beijing's anti-corruption probe broadens out, Future Land's 2019 bonds sank more than 10 points to 98.653, sending yields surging to 10.722% in late Asian trade from Friday's close of 7.358%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Jiangsu-based companys outstanding 2017 and 2018 also took a hit, while its share price ended down 4% in Hong Kong once trading resumed following Friday's suspension. The shares fell by as much as 14% at one point in Asian morning trade, the biggest one-day drop since July.

In a statement to the Hong Kong Stock exchange on Friday, Future Land said its chairman was being investigated by the Commission on Discipline Inspection of Changzhou citys Wujin district. The filing gave few details but said the matter under investigation was personal and unrelated to company activities.

It is unclear whether Wang, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, is assisting the regulator because of corruption, market manipulation, or something else. It is also not unusual in China for property company executives to assist in an investigation and subsequently be released without charge.

Two institutional investors told FinanceAsia that the sharp drop in Future Lands bond prices highlights growing market fears of a new phase in corporate China's relations with the Chinese government. But they added that it wouldnt increase the risk of bankruptcies or bond defaults in Future Land Development as their ability to offload inventory remains sound.

I think the company has done a lot to soothe investors soon after it said the chairman was being probed by the mainland authorities, said one of them, a Hong Kong-based fixed-income fund manager, who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the press.

According to the fund manager, the company has held at least three conference calls with investors since news broke of the investigation.

Future Land has said that it does not expect the investigation to have any impact on its financial position and that its operations remain normal. In a seperate filing, the company said it received Rmb15 billion ($2.28 billion)-worth of credit facilities from two mainland banks, lifting its total credit line to Rmb38.8 billion.

However, rating agency Moody's said on Monday that it has changed its outlook for Future Land to negative from stable, citing uncertainty over the company's operations and funding support as a result of the investigation.

The company's bonds are rated B1/B+ by Moody's and Standard & Poor's.

Graft probe

China's widening anti-corruption probe adds an extra, thin veneer of anxiety to nagging investor worries that defaults in China could yet pick up as the economy slows, leaving the country's debt-fuelled property sector on shakier ground. Global investors bought more than $21 billion of Chinese property credits, which are mostly junk-rated and subject to higher default risk.

Kaisa Group became the first mainland Chinese developer to default on its US-dollar debt last April, after its chairman Kwok Ying Shing unexpectedly resigned on December 10 2014 after a block was placed on sales in Shenzhen.

Meanwhile, Agile Property Holdings's chairman, Chen Zhuolin, was put under house arrest in October 2014 after Chinas anti-graft watchdog found evidence of bribery by Agile and some officials in the provincial capital of Kunming. The chairman of the Guangzhou-based developer was released from custody after being detained for two months, the company said in a filing. Chen himself was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Whether the investigation into Wang unfolds as it did with Agile or follows the same path as Kaisa is yet to be seen. For Chuanyi Zhou, a credit analyst at Lucror, though, the former currently looks most likely, with Wang helping a probe into corrupt local officials.

Zhou said the chairman of Future Land is "cooperating", so it is unlikely that its properties will be affected or spur market-wide concerns as Kaisa did.

Investors are getting more used to news about Chinese regulators to investigate companies that might be engulfed in grafts, said a second institutional investor based in Hong Kong. Investigation into bribery in the property sector will be ongoing and more companies might fall into such circumstances.

Im not at all surprised by any of these kind of investigation as Future Lands latest incident cannot be dismissed as a one-off, he said.
ALISO VIEJO, CA--(Marketwired - January 24, 2016) - Tony Amaradio, inspirational financial expert and strategic philanthropist, urges for an increased amount of stewardship as the new year is upon us. In today's climate, efficient budget planning has become more important than ever as more people are struggling to obtain a suitable balanced income. Finances and economic situations have changed, even for those who had never felt tough times in the past. Amaradio is concerned as money issues account for 22% of divorces in North America, and is determined to educate individuals about the importance of financial stewardship and the keys to achieving it, since he himself started out from an unprivileged background.

According to Amaradio, "effective stewardship starts with everyday spending, something that can be harder than it seems at first sight." By embracing this, individuals can get one step closer to wise budgeting, avoid disagreements on financial matters, and potentially increase their belief in God. Based on his own experience as a faithful Christian, husband, and a successful businessman, Amaradio explains that conflicts surrounding decisions can be eliminated through protecting others, leading to harmony within marriages and families. The Chief Strategist also highlights five keys to how to achieve this.

First, it is essential to define a mission statement outlining specific values, aims, and goals. The next step is implementing a plan and creating a budget to meet those objectives. In his groundbreaking handbook about financial stewardship, Faithful with Much: Breaking Down the Barriers to Generous Giving, which he co-authored with his wife, Carin, Tony Amaradio advises on retirement planning, debt management, investment, insurance, college planning, and more. The third key to this success is developing a balanced, Christian life based on the belief that financial strength begins with spiritual health. "Stewardship is about understanding the brief nature of possessions," states Amaradio. By appreciating that belongings are temporary, while God's love is infinite, individuals may achieve protection through responsibility.

The fourth element is to save more, thus being able to give more, and ultimately becoming better examples for society. This may be achieved through several strategies that include allocating funds appropriately, financial planning, investment diversification, and tax-advantaged charitable giving. The fifth key is for people to review their current plan, updating it based on their changing needs annually. This would allow those to remain in full control of their expenses. Amaradio suggests that gathering, analyzing, closely monitoring relevant data, and regularly reviewing goals is an essential part of this stage. To help Christians thrive and achieve financial stewardship, Amaradio provides a program named "Faithful with Finances." It offers guidance and important tools to both individuals and churches who help them achieve optimized results.

Tony Amaradio is the Founder and Chief Strategist of two major companies: Select Portfolio Management, Inc. and Select Money Management, Inc. Amaradio started his career after he graduated from University of Michigan with a BBA and then the University of Detroit, receiving an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Taxation. For over thirty years, Tony Amaradio has been assisting clients in establishing, planning, and managing assets, offering services that include the design, implementation, and proactive monitoring of their portfolios. He is a highly sought-after speaker for events, in which he is invited to talk all over the country. Tony Amaradio dedicates time and donates considerable amounts of his income to philanthropic causes, such as the charitable ministry Joni and Friends. Faithful with Much: Breaking Down the Barriers to Generous Giving, is a handbook that educates individuals on how to achieve effective financial stewardship.

Tony Amaradio -- Inspirational Financial Expert: http://anthonyamaradionews.com/

Tony Amaradio -- Shares Valuable Insights on the Principles of Stewardship: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tony-amaradio-shares-valuable-insights-032247130.html

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LONDON, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Gabby Logan and Together Mutual Insurance search for Britain's'Community Initiative of the Year' and 'Community Hero of the Year' celebrating local volunteers with national prizes of 25,000 per category

Today, TV favourite Gabby Logan launches 'Britain Has Spirit', a new campaign searching for Britain's best individual and group volunteers. Gabby is calling on the British public to nominate their local shining stars, who selflessly give up time volunteering for nothing in return.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325082 )



Recent research of 2,000 Brits[1] reveals that our sense of community is declining, with nearly half of those surveyed admitting they never volunteer in their local area and two thirds of respondents unsure whether Britain still has a sense of pride. Together Mutual Insurance saw these results as a wakeup call, to reinvigorate Britain's community spirit and celebrate local British heroes.

Historically we have always come together and embraced national pride when it really matters; the Olympics and Paralympics, the Royal wedding, the Diamond Jubilee. However it seems that our enthusiasm for our community and neighbours is waning. One in five Britons say community spirit has worsened in the last five years and six in ten of those surveyed lament that Brits just don't talk to each other anymore. With today's launch of Britain Has Spirit, it is your chance to make headlines for the causes and people that matter in your area.

Gabby comments; "We all know how well Brits celebrate individual and team endeavours, as so often demonstrated in sport. Britain Has Spirit has launched to try and re-evoke a sense of community pride and honour those who are tirelessly giving their time and effort to make communities and neighbourhoods better, all year round."

Chris McElligott, Director at Together Mutual Insurance adds, "The results of our survey were somewhat deflating. With Britons giving their local neighbourhood a mediocre five out of ten for community spirit - we knew it was time for change. On the back of our successful campaign 'Better Together' we are delighted to announce the launch of Britain Has Spirit. We will be really excited to congratulate all the worthy winners."

Nominations can be made within 12 British regions in two categories; 'Community Initiative of the Year' and 'Community Hero of the Year'. A judging panel will determine regional shortlists which will then be opened up to a public vote. All 12 regional individual champions will each enjoy a fun experience day prize and the groups, 1,000 towards a street party. Regional winners will then be collated and votes will again be cast by the public this time for the national winners. The national winning 'Community Initiative of the Year' and the national winning 'Community Hero of the Year' will each win 25,000 towards a local initiative or charity of their choice.

For more information and to nominate please visit http://www.britainhasspirit.com or through the web app. Alternatively, join the discussion on Together Mutual Twitter page @TogetherIns BritainHasSpirit and the Together Mutual Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TogetherMutualInsurance .

[1]Independent Survey by Together Mutual of 2,000 Britons 2015.

For further media information contact Charlotte Treadwell or Elle Baird at YOU:

T. +44(0)20-7420-3550 Email: charlotte@you-agency.com / elle@you-agency.com


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The United States potentially will make recommendations to position U.S. troops with Iraqi security forces in northern Iraq to support the next phase of isolating the key city of Mosul, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.



Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who met in Paris with his French counterpart for talks focusing on the multinational effort against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. troops would be placed where they can best support the Iraqi forces in the fight.



'We're about winning. ... We want to have the Iraqis win,' he said.



The details are still being worked out, noted Dunford, who said he will make the recommendations to President Barack Obama based on what U.S. commanders and Iraqi security forces identify as the type of support the United States can provide in a plan to retake Mosul.



Mosul is the largest city captured by the ISIL terrorists.



Discussions with Iraqi officials will determine what support they need, whether in an advise-and-assist role at the operations center level, the division level, or the brigade level, Dunford said.



Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, is working with the Iraqi security forces to develop the concept of operations, Dunford said.



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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/25/16 -- (TSX VENTURE: BCG) - BCGold Corp. ("BCGold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company has signed a definitive agreement with Gorilla Minerals Corp., ("Gorilla") an unlisted reporting issuer, to purchase their 100% owned (subject to a 3% NSR) Wels Property in Western Yukon. The Company also wishes to announce that a pre-condition for this acquisition will be a corporate restructuring and the completion of a $600,000 financing. Insiders and major shareholders from both companies are expected to participate in this financing.

Highlights

-- BCGold to acquire 100% interest in the Wels Property subject to a 3% NSR, in 2 separate claim blocks of 229 contiguous quartz claims (4,788 hectares) and 10 contiguous quartz claims (52 hectares), located in the prolific White River Gold District, 50 kilometers east of Beaver Creek and 180 kilometers south of Dawson City in west-central Yukon. -- The Wels Property hosts a newly discovered reduced intrusion related gold mineralizing system, similar in age and style to Kinross's Fort Knox deposit in Alaska (6 million ounces gold production to date) and Victoria Gold's Eagle Gold Project (2.3 million ounces gold reserve), Yukon. -- Rock sampling results from 4 trenches excavated in 2014 by Gorilla Minerals Inc. over a portion of the Saddle Zone gold-arsenic-antimony- bismuth soil anomaly, measuring 1,000 metres X 350 metres, averaged 2.63 g/t gold over 19.0 metres; 5.30 g/t gold over 18.0 metres, including 15.40 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in Trench T14-01, 8.80 g/t gold over 45.0 metres, including 13.81 g/t gold over 21.0 metres in Trench T14-02; 0.56 g/t gold over 25.5 metres in Trench T14-03 and 1.27 g/t gold over 25.5 metres, including 3.04 g/t gold over 10.5 metres in Trench T14-04. -- A small Saddle Zone follow-up diamond drill program conducted by Gorilla in 2015 (442 metres in 5 drill holes) returned significant drill intercepts that include 0.76 g/t gold over the entire hole length of 97.5 metres, including 3.11 g/t gold over 19.5 metres from 31.5 - 51.0 metres and 5.71 g/t gold (with visible gold) over 9.0 metres from 31.50 - 40.5 metres in drill hole WELS15-1; 0.29 g/t gold over 39.0 metres from 49.0 to 88.0 metres in drill hole WELS15-02; 0.34 g/t gold over 6.0 metres from 9.0 - 15.0 metres in drill hole WELS15-03 and 0.79 g/t gold over 21 metres from 49.5 to 70.5 metres, including 1.01 g/t gold over 12.0 metres and 4.41 g/t gold over 1.5 metres in drill hole WELS15-04. Drill holes WELS15-01 and WELS15-03 ended in mineralization and quartz veins, and Saddle Zone mineralization remains open along strike and at depth. -- Soil sampling has identified 2 additional gold-arsenic-antimony-bismuth soil anomalies on the Wels Property (North Ridge and Southwest Spur) measuring 1,000 metres X 750 metres and 2,000 metres X up to 1,000 metres, respectively. Both anomalies warrant trenching and rock sampling to further define drill targets. -- Corporate restructuring with 5:1 share rollback and $600,000 private placement at $0.05 per Unit, with each Unit consisting of 1 common share and 1 common share purchase warrant priced at $0.10, good for 2 years. No change in control. -- Augmented Board of Directors and Management.

Transaction Summary

BCGold advises that it has entered a binding agreement to acquire Gorilla Minerals Inc.'s 100% owned Wels Property subject to a 3% NSR (the "Transaction"). At the closing of the Transaction (the "Closing") scheduled to be on or before March 31, 2016, BCGold will acquire the Wels Property in exchange for a cash payment of $60,000 and a total of 8,000,000 shares of BCGold, issued on a post 5 for 1 consolidation of the issued and outstanding shares of BCGold (the "Consolidation") to be distributed pro rata to the shareholders of Gorilla. BCGold shall, concurrently with Closing, and as a condition thereof complete a $600,000 private placement (the "Financing") at a minimum price of $0.05 per Unit, with each Unit comprised of one share and one warrant, and each warrant entitling the holder to acquire a further share at $0.10 for a term of 2 years. The Transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and all securities are subject to a four month hold period. Finder's fees will be payable in connection with the private placement, in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Also as part of the Transaction, BCGold will augment its Board of Directors with the addition of 2 of Gorilla's directors, Mr. Scott Sheldon, President and CEO of Gorilla, and Mr. Ranj Pillai, an independent director of Gorilla. On Closing Mr. Sheldon will be assuming the role of Manager - Corporate Communications of BCGold and Mr. Pillai, in his current role as Executive Director for the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Government in Yukon, will provide BCGold invaluable and first-hand insights in working with First Nations in Yukon as an independent director for the Company.

This Transaction requires 2/3 shareholder approval from Gorilla shareholders to be sought at a Special shareholder meeting at a time and place to be announced. Gorilla is a tightly held, unlisted reporting issuer with 80% of its 10.6 million share float held by 3 Directors and 1 major shareholder. BCGold is in receipt of written shareholder voting approval from these 4 shareholders.

BCGold currently has 41.8 million shares outstanding, which will be reduced to 8.4 million shares subsequent to the 5:1 share rollback. Post transaction, BCGold will have a total of 28.4 million shares outstanding, that includes the share issuance of 8 million shares in connection with the Transaction and a $600,000 financing share issuance of a maximum of 12 million shares. No change of control will result from this transaction. The Offering is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and all securities are subject to a four month hold period. Finder's fees will be payable in connection with the private placement, in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Wels Property

The 4,840 hectare Wels Property is located 50 kilometers east of Beaver Creek and 180 kilometers south of Dawson City in west-central Yukon. The property is located 20 kilometres east of the Snag airstrip.

Gold mineralization on the Wels Property occurs within a previously unrecognized high-level Cretaceous Age granite that hosts gold mineralization of the RIRG (reduced intrusion related granite) deposit type, similar in age and style as the Fort Knox and Eagle Gold Project (Dublin Gulch) gold deposits, in Alaska and Yukon respectively. The Wels Property is unique in that it is the first recorded occurrence of Cretaceous-aged RIRG gold mineralization in Yukon south of the Tintina Fault.

Grid soil sampling in 2011 and 2012 by Gorilla Minerals outlined three Au, As, Sb and Bi anomalies named North Ridge, Saddle and Southwest Spur. One rock sample collected from Trench A on the Saddle zone returned 4.90 oz/ton gold. Rock sampling results from 4 trenches excavated in 2014 (155 metres) and reported by Gorilla Minerals Inc. (See Gorilla News Release dated November 21, 2014) over a portion of the Saddle Zone gold-arsenic-antimony-bismuth soil anomaly, measuring 1,000 metres X 350 metres, averaged 2.63 g/t gold over 19.0 metres; 5.30 g/t gold over 18.0 metres, including 15.40 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in Trench T14-01, 8.80 g/t gold over 45.0 metres, including 13.81 g/t gold over 21.0 metres with visible gold observed in 2 locations in Trench T14-02; 0.56 g/t gold over 25.5 metres in Trench T14-03 and 1.27 g/t gold over 25.5 metres, including 3.04 g/t gold over 10.5 metres in Trench T14-04. Trenching in 2014 (155 m) produced a weighted average 8.80 grams/tonne gold over 45.0 metres.

Microscopic examination of panned concentrates of pulps from selected samples showed that gold is free, irregular shaped and attached to vitreous quartz, with minor oxidized sulphides. Crushing and panning trench samples in 2015 helped focus drilling by confirming gold in bedrock below soil anomalies west of the 2014 trenches.

The 2014 program determined that the Saddle Zone is underlain by a biotite granite hosting high grade gold mineralization outlined by trenching that measures 50 metres by 30 metres on an east west trend and is open in all directions. A second zone 25 metres to the west at the base of the Saddle Zone topography returned 11.0 g/t gold over 4.5 metres.

Additional Wels Project details can be found on the Company's website at www.bcgoldcorp.com and the 2014 NI43-101 report can be viewed on SEDAR and Gorilla's website at www.gorillaminerals.com.

2015 Wels Property Drill Results

In 2015, in addition to a short trenching program over nearby high gold-in-soil anomalies, 442 metres of NTW core drilling was completed by Gorilla in five drill holes on two fences from 30 metres south of the east-west Trench A. This work program, in addition to the 2014 trenching program, were completed under the auspices of Mr. Al Doherty, P.Geo., Gorilla's Qualified Person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. An updated NI43-101 report detailing Gorilla's 2015 Wels property drill program is currently in preparation by Mr. Doherty, and will be posted on SEDAR and the Company's website in due course.

The limited Wels property drill program confirmed the presence of intrusion related sheeted quartz vein systems along east-west trending brittle structures at depth, under the high grade zone located by trenching. Drilling in the Saddle zone extended the mineralized zone to the west, indicates these zones remain open along strike and at depth, and that parallel sheeted vein zones exist on the property.

All holes drilled to the north intersected significant gold values. Drill hole WELS15-01, inclined -50 degrees to the north, intersected 0.76 g/t gold over the entire hole length of 97.5 metres, that includes 3.11 g/t gold over 19.5 metres from 31.5 - 51.0 metres and 5.71 g/t gold (with visible gold) over 9.0 metres from 31.50 - 40.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-01 ended in a mineralized quartz vein that assayed 0.75 g/t gold over 1.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-02, from the same setup and drilled at -75 degrees to the north, intersected 0.29 g/t gold over 39.0 metres from 49.0 to 88.0 metres and was not drilled far enough to intersect the down dip extension of the main intercept in drill hole WELS15-01. Drill hole WELS15-03, also drilled from the same set up at -50 degrees to the south, intersected 0.34 g/t gold over 6.0 metres from 9.0 - 15.0 metres and ended in a quartz vein that assayed 0.70 g/t gold over 0.15 metres between 65.65 - 65.80 metres.

Drill hole WELS15-04 was drilled at -45 degrees to the north, 60 metres westward from the first fence and previous holes. This hole intersected 0.79 g/t gold over 21 metres from 49.5 to 70.5 metres, including 1.01 g/t gold over 12.0 metres and 4.41 g/t gold over 1.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-05, drilled southward at -50 degrees from the same setup intersected 1.29 g/t gold over 3 metres from 78.0 - 81.0 metres.

"This is a totally new, very exciting discovery, on ground that was first staked in 2011", states Brian P. Fowler, P.Geo., President and CEO of BCGold Corp. "The granite hosting the mineralization was only recognized in late 2013 and the 2014 trenching and 2015 drilling has confirmed that the mineralization is of the reduced intrusion related model. The contacts of the granite have not been defined and the intrusion is only unroofed in two locations. BCGold is very excited to acquire the Wels Property and we look forward to further defining and enlarging the known limits of this intrusion-related gold system through deliberate exploration efforts. BCGold is very grateful that Gorilla has agreed to augment our Board of Directors and provide shareholders with this excellent exploration opportunity."

Proposed 2016 Exploration Program

BCGold intends to advance the Wels Property in 2016 by conducting a program of geological mapping, prospecting, and further trenching to define the limits of the Saddle Zone and develop drill targets on the North Ridge and Southwest Spur Zones. The Company invites expressions of interest from qualified Companies wishing to earn into the Wels Property through a significant exploration commitment.

Consolidation of Engineer Mine Property

BCGold wishes to further announce that the Company intends to roll it's 100% owned historic high-grade gold Engineer Mine Property, adjoining 50% owned Gold Hill Property and Blind Creek property option into Engineer Mines Ltd., a jointly owned private Company. BCGold has initiated discussions with option partners Guardsmen Resources Inc., 50% owners of the Gold Hill Property, Blind Creek Resources Ltd., optionor of the Blind Creek Property, and Engineer Mining Corp., owners of the fully permitted 30 tonne per day mill at Engineer Mine, to pool their respective interests into Engineer Mines Ltd. The primary purpose to consolidate the Engineer Mine Property in this fashion is to eliminate option payments, minimize holding costs and facilitate the sale to any private group interested in producing gold at Engineer Mine in 2016.

At Engineer Mine, BCGold is uniquely positioned and fully permitted to mine and mill accessible high-grade gold mineralization. In 2011 the Company successfully mined and milled 246 tonnes of vein material from the Engineer Vein on Level 5 and produced and monetized 800 kg of gravity concentrate for $US107,000. The bulk sampling program identified 2 accessible high-grade gold exploration targets on the Engineer Vein between 5 and 8 Levels, which are believed to contain between 12,000 to 17,000 ounces of gold, grading between 30 g/t to 60 g/t gold, in 8,000 to 14,000 tonnes of vein material.(((i))) Mine de-watering, geological mapping and panel sampling of production drifts on 6 and 7 Level in 2012 confirmed the depth extension of these two exploration targets, and re-established a third that was cut off by a dyke on 5 Level.

(((i))) The potential quality and grade of this exploration target is conceptual in nature, as there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and that it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.

The Engineer Mine produced more than 18,000 oz gold and 9,000 oz silver in the 1920's, at realized head grades of 39 g/t gold and 20 g/t silver. Commercial mining from narrow, high-grade gold veins ceased in 1928. There is more metreage in underground development (5,650 metres of drifts on 8 mine levels, raises, shaft and winz) than exploration drilling at Engineer Mine. In 2011 BCGold commissioned SNOWDEN to complete a NI 43-101 report and calculate an inferred mineral resource of 41,000 tonnes grading 19.0 g/t gold, containing 25,000 oz of gold. This resource is confined to 2 of the 25 known veins to occur on the property. The exploration upside to dramatically increase this resource is excellent. The deepest drill hole, 18 metres below the deepest mine level, returned 22.32 g/t gold over 1 metre. There are greater than 25 known veins on the property and commercial production only came from 2 veins.

BCGold has defined 4 shallow bulk-tonnage epithermal gold drill targets with supporting historic mining and recent magnetic, resistivity (geophysics) and MMI soil geochemistry results in the immediate mine area. The Company believes these targets represent the core of the Engineer Mine mineralizing system. In addition to mineable, narrow-vein, high-grade gold, the Engineer Mine property has excellent potential for a significant bulk tonnage, shear zone gold deposit occurring along greater than 8km of highly prospective shear structures on the properties. In 2008 BCGold drilled the Shear Zone "A" structure over a 400 metre strike length and intersected a continuous breccia body up to 35m thick and averaging 0.45 g/t gold. Shear "A" can be traced for greater than 5 kilometres, and has a near-surface, 1 kilometre X 500 metre untested SkyTEM resistivity anomaly immediately south of BCGold's 2008 drilling.

The current U.S. currency exchange rate, recent rise in the gold price and drop in oil price, in Canadian terms, have greatly enhanced the margin for high-grade gold production at Engineer Mine, and the Company has seen a substantial increase in qualified expressions of interest to purchase the mine.

WS Copper-Gold Properties, Yukon

BCGold also wishes to announce that it has commissioned Ms. Jean Pautler, P.Geo. to prepare a NI 43-101 compilation report detailing the results of greater than $2.5 million in recent exploration work by BCGold on the Company's 100% owned WS, BC, ICE and Sleep properties in south-central Yukon. This large, road accessible mining property (319 claims) is situated adjacent to and overlays the southern extension of the Carmacks copper deposit, currently being drilled by Copper North. The focus of Copper North's drilling is to increase the Carmacks mineral resource to meet their PEA requirements for planned near-term commercial production.

In 2015 Copper North conducted a 2-phase drill program targeting deposit extensions southward towards BCGold's northern claim boundary. Drilling near this boundary in 2008 by BCGold intersected a near-surface mixed copper oxide / sulphide zone that averaged 0.17% copper over 63.1 metres (including 0.34% Cu of 23.6 metres). This zone is believed to be the southern extension of Copper North's Zone 14 and remains open at depth and along strike to the south. BCGold has a number of other undrilled, coincidental magnetic, I.P. and copper in soil anomalies along strike and parallel to this feature on the WS and adjoining ICE claims. The Company is seeking an option partner or newly listed company to drill off the Zone 14 extension and advance the property.

About BCGold

BCGold is a Vancouver-based junior resource company focused on copper and gold exploration in historic and emerging mining districts in British Columbia and Yukon. The Company acquires prospective gold and copper-gold exploration properties considered to have significant mineral potential by staking, option or purchase agreements. The Company strives to acquire 100% of these opportunities and after cost-effective and diligent exploration to develop drill targets, option 51-70% of these properties to third parties in return for some multiple of the Company's expenditures. The Company currently has a portfolio of 10 - 100% owned gold and copper-gold properties and 2 partially owned gold properties in B.C. and Yukon. BCGold is actively seeking qualified option partners to advance these properties.

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. R. Allen Doherty, P.Geo., a consultant to the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Doherty personally supervised all aspects of the 2014 and 2015 exploration work on the Wels Property conducted by Gorilla Minerals Inc. A NI43-101 report detailing drill results from the 2015 Wels Property exploration program is in preparation, and will be posted on SEDAR and the Company's website upon completion.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Brian P. Fowler, P. Geo., President & CEO

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.

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures and exploration, development and production activities. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the timing and completion of contemplated financings, the actual use of proceeds, receipt of regulatory approvals and the timing and success of future exploration, development and production activities. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

Contacts:

BCGold Corp.

Brian P. Fowler

President & CEO

604-697-2401

bcgir@bcgoldcorp.com




BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Illinois Tool Works Inc. (ITW) said it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire the Engineered Fasteners and Components business or EF&C from ZF TRW for about $450 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2016. EF&C, a supplier of engineered fastening systems and interior technical components to the Automotive OEM market, generated revenues of about $470 million in 2015. Headquartered in Germany, the company operates 13 manufacturing facilities globally and employs about 3,500 people. ITW plans to fund a majority of the acquisition with non-U.S. cash. Including all acquisition related non-cash costs, the company expects the acquisition to be slightly accretive to earnings per share in the first 12 months and to generate long-term returns on invested capital at or above the company's 20-plus percent target. ITW Executive Vice President Sundaram Nagarajan said, 'The Engineered Fasteners and Components business will be a highly complementary addition to ITW's Automotive OEM segment that will broaden our ability to serve our customers and further expand our long-term organic growth potential. In addition, we believe there will be significant opportunity to enhance the performance of the business through the application of ITW's 80/20 business process.' 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.
PUNE, India, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report"Infrastructure Monitoring Marketby Technology (Wired and Wireless), Components, Application (Damage Detection and Others), End-User (Civil, Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Mining, and Others), and Geography - Global Trends & Forecast to 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, the total market is expected to reach $2.47 Billion USD by 2020, at a CAGR of 26.3 % during the forecast period.

Browse more than 75 market data Tables with 74 Figures spread through 160 Pages and in-depth TOC on"Infrastructure Monitoring Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/infrastructure-monitoring-market-251897013.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Increasing need of safety and reliability as well as the aging infrastructure are factors that drive the Infrastructure monitoring market.

Civil infrastructure is expected to lead the Infrastructure Monitoring for end users.

The growing demand for infrastructure monitoring in civil infrastructure, worldwide is one of the key drivers of the market. To continue the growth of a country's economy, it is essential to monitor the health condition of the civil infrastructure and take necessary actions to avoid accidents. IHM has the ability to provide real-time monitoring solutions of civil structures, while reducing the maintenance cost.

Wireless technology is expected to exhibit high growth rate in the market for Infrastructure Monitoring.

There is a growing demand for wireless technology in the Infrastructure Monitoring Market. Wireless infrastructure monitoring has emerged as a technology that would significantly influence the field of infrastructure asset management and structural monitoring.

The market in APAC is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

The market in APAC is expected to grow at high CAGR between 2015 and 2020 because of the rapid infrastructure development. Major driving factors include government regulatory bodies, large number of infrastructure construction projects, and natural calamities which create the need for IHM. China and Japan are the leading countries in the infrastructure monitoring market in this region.

The report analyzes the market trends for each of the segments and their respective growth rates. Apart from the market segmentation, the report also covers in-depth analyses such as Porter's five forces analysis, value chain analysis with a detailed process flow diagram, and market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges for the growth of the infrastructure monitoring market. The report also provides a qualitative and quantitative description of the verticals considered for the market. It also gives a detailed view of the market across four geographic regions: the Americas, Europe, APAC, and RoW. The Americas is the largest market, while APAC has been identified as the fastest-growing market, globally.

Ask For PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=251897013

The report also profiles the most promising players in the infrastructure monitoring market. The key players in the market are COWI A/S(Denmark), AVTECH Software, Inc. (U.S.), Acellent Technologies Inc.(U.S.), Geocomp Corp.(U.S.), Nova Metrix LLC (U.S.), Advitam Group (France), Geokon, Inc. (U.S.), Pure Technologies (Canada), Strainstall UK Ltd. (U.K.), Airbus Group (Netherlands), Structural Monitoring Systems Plc. (U.K.), Digitexx Data Systems, Inc. (U.S.), and BAE Systems ( U.K.).

Browse Related Reports

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Market by Technology (Wired and Wireless), by Solution Type (Hardware and Software & Services), by Application (Bridges, Dams, Tunnels, Buildings, Stadiums, and Other), and by Geography - Global Trend & Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/structural-health-monitoring-market-101431220.html

Vibration Monitoring Market by Product (Portable & Non-Portable), Component (Accelerometer, Proximity Probe, & Others), Application (Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Chemical, Metal & Mining, & Others) & Geography - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/vibration-monitoring-market-29273491.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical info graphics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.

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Event will showcase French and American science-and-technology innovations and foster transatlantic collaborations in the life sciences.

Organizers announced today that there will be a panel related to Rare Diseases: Models and Opportunities at "French-American Innovation Days (FAID) 2016", to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 9 and 10, 2016, at the MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Click here for registration, program, and other information.

http://faid2016.france-science.org/

In alphabetical order, FAID 2016 panelists on the topic of Rare Diseases: Models and Opportunities on February 10 will include: Yves Agid, MD, PhD, Founder Scientific Advisor, ICM Brain Spine Institute; Fanny Mochel, MD, PhD, Head, Metabolic Research Group, ICM; Jose-Alain Sahel, MD, Founder Director, Institut de la Vision; and, Michel Vellard, PhD, VP Research, Ultragenyx Pharmaceuticals. These speakers will share their hands-on approaches to developing therapies in niche markets.

The two-day event is focusing on the latest developments in Precision Medicine. It will bring together leading experts in the field to explore how these developments impact clinical research. The Symposium is also expected to facilitate research and development partnerships among researchers, emerging and established companies, business development executives and investors in the United States and France. The FAID symposium's organizers are: The Office for Science and Technology of the Embassy of France in the United States in Boston; and, GLOBAL CARE Initiative

Sponsorships opportunities are available; please contact GLOBAL CARE Initiative at contact@globalcare-initiative.com

ABOUT FAID's ORGANIZERS:

The Office for Science and Technology of the Embassy of France in the United-States

The Office for Science and Technology is a team of professors, senior researchers and engineers, in Washington D.C., in Boston, MA, and five other locations in the United States. Its mission is to promote bilateral partnerships in science, technology and innovation. It has been organizing the FAID conference in Boston since 2002. www.france-science.org

GLOBAL CARE Initiative (Based in Paris and Lyon)

GLOBAL CARE Initiative is a consortium of five Carnot Human Health Institutes that covers four therapeutic fields in human health: cancer (solid tumors and lymphoma), vision and audition diseases and rehabilitation, infectious diseases and central nervous system diseases. The consortium brings together 2,500 researchers and a wide array of technical assets and expertise.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160125006344/en/

Contacts:

Ronald Trahan Associates Inc.

Ronald Trahan, +1-508-359-4005, x108

President

rtrahan@ronaldtrahan.com
Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global roofing market report. This research report also lists 10 other prominent vendors who are expected to gain market share over the forecast period.

To identify the top vendors, Technavio's market research analysts have considered the top players contributing to the overall revenue of this market. The report includes market forecast of the roofing market based on product type (bituminous roofing, metal roofing, tile roofing, and other), and end-users (residential, commercial, and retrofit/renovation).

The analysis in this report is based on vendor briefings, interviews with industry experts, and telephone and online surveys. Technavio analysts have also presented a breakdown of market shares by the leading regions, including APAC, Americas, and EMEA.

Vendor competitive landscape:

Vendors of the global roofing market operate in a highly competitive environment. The market is dominated by large global vendors such as Braas Monier, Etex, Owens Corning, Saint Gobain, and Wienerberger. These players have vast geographical presence with huge production facilities located worldwide. Nonetheless, there is a sizeable number of small regional vendors dominating the market.

Due to the increase in demand for building roofing globally, manufacturers are focusing on incorporating new technologies into the roofing segment. This enables them to differentiate their products from those of existing vendors. Vendors today are focusing highly on solar and TPO roofing because of their energy-efficiency properties, thus increasing the competition in the market. In addition, owing to the rise in demand for roofing, vendors are also investing in expanding production units to other geographical areas.

Five leading roofing product manufacturers

Braas Monier

Headquartered in Luxembourg, the Braas Monier Building Group was founded in 2009. The company manufactures and supplies pitched roof products, including both, roof tiles and roofing components, in Europe, Asia, and South Africa.

The company is supported by a strong operational network of more than 115 production sites in 37 countries. It has operational presence in countries including Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Malaysia, Austria, Poland, Norway, South Africa, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, China, and Russia.

Technavio's lead research analyst, Shilpa (senior analyst, heavy industry) says,

"Braas Monier has an R&D department focused on improving the processes used in the production of concrete tiles, clay tiles, and components. Its product portfolio includes a range of roofing components, roofing tiles, roofing systems, insulation, chimney systems (steel and clay), and ventilation systems (roofs and living spaces)."

Etex

Etex was established in 1905 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. It is a construction company and it manufactures and sells building materials and systems such as tiles, slates, plastic building materials, fire protection, textile floor coverings, roof elements, paints and adhesives, and pipes and tanks. It caters to private and public sectors worldwide.

Shilpa, lead analyst, says,

"The company manufactures flat fiber cement slates, concrete roof tiles, and clay roof tiles available in various colors, shapes, and sizes. It also manufactures large roofing elements used in the agricultural and residential building sectors. To cater to its customers, the company employs close to 17,000 people, operates through 102 consolidated companies, and has an operational presence in around 43 countries.

Owens Corning

Owens Corning was founded in 1938 and is headquartered at Toledo, Ohio, US. The company manufactures and markets glass fiber reinforcements, materials for composite systems, and residential and commercial building materials.

"Owens Corning manufactures, fabricates, and sells glass fiber reinforcements in the form of mat, veil, and fabrics. The company also offers residential and commercial building materials such as insulation materials including thermal and acoustical batts, loose fill insulation, foam sheathing, and accessories. In addition, it offers roofing materials such as oxidized asphalt and roofing accessories. The company offers its products under various brand names such as Owens Corning, Pink Fiberglas, Cultured Stone, ProStone, Modulo Stone, ParMur, and Langeo Stone. It has operations in North America, Europe, and APAC, and has a workforce of around 14,000 employees," says, Shilpa

Its roofing segment engages in the manufacture of oxidized asphalt materials and residential roofing shingles used in residential and commercial construction and specialty applications. This segment generated revenue of $1.75 billion and accounted for close to 32% of the company's revenues in 2014.

Saint Gobain

Saint Gobain is headquartered in Courbevoie, France. The company is a leading producer, processor, and distributor of construction and high-performance materials and packaging. The company employs 181,742 people. It offers its products to a wide range of industries, including automobile and transportation, aeronautical and aerospace, defense and security, packaging, health and bio-medical, and industrial equipment.

The research study mentions that the company offers a wide range of roofing and associated products under several brands. The company also provides advisory services for new solutions such as insulation, cladding, watertightness, and living roofs.

Wienerberger

Wienerberger was founded in 1819 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The company provides building material solutions that include bricks, clay roof tiles, concrete pavers, and pipe systems. The company has 204 factories across 30 countries with 14,836 employees working globally and contributing to the company's annual revenues of close to USD 4 billion.

The company provides clay roof tiles under the Koramic brand. These are offered in a wide range of shapes, colors, and surface structures. These roof tiles are used primarily to cover pitched roofs. The Koramic range includes over 25 different types of roof tile and related accessories in over 50 colors, including beaver tiles, plain tiles, glat interlocking tiles, flemish tiles, interlocking pan tiles, monk and nun tiles, and romane tiles. These roof tiles are made available to consumers in a range of surfaces including natural, engobed, glazed, and sanded.

Browse Related Reports:

Global Roofing Material Market 2015-2019

Global Asphalt Market 2015-2019

Global Green Buildings Materials 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/20160125005076/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
Paul Hetterich and Bill Newlands taking on expanded leadership roles

VICTOR, N.Y., Jan. 25, 2016 - Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE: STZ and STZ.B), a leading beverage alcohol company, announced today several executive appointments across the organization to further bolster its business and support the company's long-term growth strategies.

"These appointments illustrate the strength of leadership and the depth of talent at Constellation Brands," said Rob Sands, president and chief executive officer, Constellation Brands. "As we tap the next generation of Constellation leaders, we are strengthening our organization by making changes that allow for continued growth and development of our leaders, while ensuring continuity that sustains and builds upon our dynamic growth. This is an exciting time for our company and our people as we build for our future."

Bill Hackett, who has been with Constellation Brands since 1984 and currently serves as president of Beer, has been named to the newly created role of chairman of Beer. Hackett will continue to report to Rob Sands and remain a member of the Executive Management Committee. In his new role as chairman, Hackett will continue to provide guidance and insights on business strategies and long-term vision for the beer business.

Paul Hetterich has been named president of Beer reporting to Rob Sands. Hetterich has been with the company since 1986, and most recently served as executive vice president, Corporate Development and Beer Operations. In addition to his current responsibilities for beer operations, Hetterich will now have oversight for the commercial functions of the beer business as well.

Bruce Jacobson has been promoted to chief commercial officer, Beer and will assume additional responsibility for commercial operations reporting to Paul Hetterich. Jacobson has led the Beer Division sales team since 2004.



"I am incredibly proud of what our Beer business has achieved, but I'm even more excited about the future of our business," said Bill Hackett, chairman of Constellation Brands' Beer Division. "Over the years, we've built a strong team with a focus on developing the next generation of leaders. These promotions are a continuation of that process. This is the right time to make these changes. Our beer business is performing well and we have great momentum in the marketplace. I look forward to the continued success of our Beer Division."

Bill Newlands has been named president of the Wine & Spirits Division and will continue to report to Rob Sands. Bill will also retain responsibility for the Growth Organization which provides insights and innovation activities across the company. Ben Dollard, who was most recently president of Constellation's Canadian Business, has been named chief growth officer and will have responsibility across both the Beer and Wine & Spirits Divisions for driving the growth agenda. Dollard has been with Constellation since 2001 and has strong brand building, sales, marketing, and production experience. Dollard will report to Newlands and also have reporting responsibility to Hetterich.

Jay Wright, currently president of Wine and Spirits, was named president of Constellation's Canadian Business and will continue to report to Rob Sand. Wright's strong relationships and deep knowledge and understanding of the Canadian marketplace will help drive the continued growth of the Canadian business.



All executive appointments are effective Jan. 26, 2016.

About Constellation Brands

Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ and STZ.B) is a leading international producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits with operations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and Italy. In 2015, Constellation was one of the top performing stocks in the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index. Constellation is the number three beer company in the U.S. with high-end, iconic imported brands including Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo and Pacifico. Constellation is also the world's leader in premium wine, selling great brands that people love including Robert Mondavi, Clos du Bois, Kim Crawford, Meiomi, Mark West, Franciscan Estate, Ruffino and Jackson-Triggs. The company's premium spirits brands include SVEDKA Vodka, Casa Noble Tequila and Black Velvet Canadian Whisky.



Based in Victor, N.Y., the company believes that industry leadership involves a commitment to brand-building, our trade partners, the environment, our investors and to consumers around the world who choose our products when celebrating big moments or enjoying quiet ones. Founded in 1945, Constellation has grown to become a significant player in the beverage alcohol industry with more than 100 brands in its portfolio, sales in approximately 100 countries, about 40 facilities and more than 8,300 talented employees. We express our company vision: to elevate life with every glass raised. To learn more, visit www.cbrands.com (http://www.cbrands.com/).

CONTACTS :

Media

Cheryl Gossin: 585-678-7191

Mike McGrew (Beer): 312-873-9317

Alicia Laury (U.S. W&S): 415-912-3851

Michelle Saba (Canada): 905-564-6906 x5771

Investor Relations

Patty Yahn-Urlaub: 585-678-7483

Bob Czudak: 585-678-7170





Bruce Jacobson_CCO, Beer (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725835.jpg)

Ben Dollard_CGO (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725837.jpg)

Jay Wright_President, Canadian Business (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725838.jpg)

Bill Newlands_President, W+S (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725836.jpg)

Paul Hetterich_President, Beer (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725834.jpg)

Bill Hackett_Chairman, Beer (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725833.jpg)

CBI Logo Full-Color Horizontal JPG (http://hugin.info/143788/R/1981178/725829.jpg)



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: Constellation Brands Inc via Globenewswire



HUG#1981178


VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - Vonovia SE (DAIMF) announced, in relation to the voluntary public takeover offer for all bearer shares of Deutsche Wohnen AG, the company's management board and supervisory board resolved that the acceptance threshold set forth in the offer document dated 1 December 2015 shall be set at 50%. As a result of the adjustment of the acceptance threshold, the offer's acceptance period is extended by two weeks. Vonovia SE said Deutsche Wohnen shareholders can now accept the offer until 9 February 2016. 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.
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/25/16 -- (TSX: CMR)(TSX: CMR.A) - BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited ("BlackRock Canada"), an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK), today announced the final January 2016 cash distributions for the iShares Premium Money Market ETF. Unitholders of record on January 26, 2016 will receive cash distributions payable on January 29, 2016.

Details regarding the final "per unit" distribution amounts are as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash Distribution Fund Name Fund Ticker Per Unit ($) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- iShares Premium Money Market ETF CMR 0.01367 ---------------------------------------- CMR.A 0.00366 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Further information on the iShares ETFs can be found at www.blackrock.com/ca.

About BlackRock

BlackRock is a global leader in investment management, risk management and advisory services for institutional and retail clients. At December 31, 2015, BlackRock's AUM was US$4.645 trillion. BlackRock helps clients around the world meet their goals and overcome challenges with a range of products that include separate accounts, mutual funds, iShares (exchange-traded funds), and other pooled investment vehicles. BlackRock also offers risk management, advisory and enterprise investment system services to a broad base of institutional investors through BlackRock Solutions. As of December 31, 2015, the firm had approximately 13,000 employees in more than 30 countries and a major presence in global markets, including North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East and Africa. For additional information, please visit the Company's website at www.blackrock.com/ca / Twitter: @BlackRockCA / Blog: www.blackrockblog.com/can

About iShares ETFs

iShares is a global leader in exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with more than a decade of expertise and commitment to individual and institutional investors of all sizes. With over 700 funds globally across multiple asset classes and strategies and more than US$1 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2015, iShares helps clients around the world build the core of their portfolios, meet specific investment goals and implement market views. iShares funds are powered by the expert portfolio and risk management of BlackRock, trusted to manage more money than any other investment firm(1).

(1) Based on US$4.645 trillion in AUM as of 12/31/15.

iShares ETFs are managed by BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited.

Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in iShares ETFs. Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. Fund securities are not covered by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation or by any other government deposit insurer. There can be no assurances that the fund will be able to maintain its net asset value per security at a constant amount or that the full amount of your investment in the fund will be returned to you. The fund is not guaranteed, its values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. Tax, investment and all other decisions should be made, as appropriate, only with guidance from a qualified professional.

Contacts:

Contact for Media:

Maeve Hannigan

416-643-4058

Maeve.Hannigan@blackrock.com






CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - South Korea will on Tuesday release preliminary Q4 figures for gross domestic product, highlighting a busy day in Asia-Pacific economic activity.



GDP is expected to expand 0.6 percent on quarter and 2.9 percent on year following the 1.3 percent quarterly advance and the 2.7 percent yearly gain in the third quarter.



Japan will provide December figures for producer prices, which are expected to rise 0.2 percent on year - unchanged from the previous month.



New Zealand will see December data for credit card spending; in November, spending was up 0.7 percent on month and 8.5 percent on year.



The Philippines will release November numbers for imports and trade balance. Imports are expected to rise 16.1 percent on year after gaining 16.8 percent in October. The trade deficit is pegged at $1.310 billion, up from the $1.937 billion shortfall in the previous month.



Singapore will provide December figures for industrial production, with forecasts suggesting an increase of 1.4 percent on month and a decline of 6.7 percent on year. That follows the 3.6 percent monthly contraction and the 5.5 percent yearly fall in November.



Hong Kong will see December data for imports, exports and trade balance. In November, imports were down 8.1 percent on year and exports were down an annual 3.5 percent for a trade deficit if 33.1 billion Hong Kong dollars.



Finally, the markets in Australia are closed on Tuesday for Australia Day, and will re-open on Wednesday.



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OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/25/16 -- Itinerary for the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, for Tuesday, January 26, 2016:

Montreal 7:15 a.m. The Prime Minister will meet with Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre. Mayor's Office 275, rue Notre-Dame Est Montreal, Quebec Closed to media. Montreal 8:00 a.m. The Prime Minister will hold a joint media availability with Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre. Main foyer of Montreal City Hall 1st floor 275, rue Notre-Dame Est Montreal, Quebec Notes for media - Media should arrive no later than 7:30 a.m. Montreal 9:00 a.m. The Prime Minister will meet with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives at their New Year Members' Meeting. Closed to media. Ottawa 11:30 a.m. The Prime Minister will attend the Cabinet Meeting. Closed to media. Ottawa 4:00 p.m. The Prime Minister will meet with the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Closed to media. Ottawa 5:45 p.m. The Prime Minister will attend the Defence Leader's Symposium reception. Closed to media.

Contacts:

PMO Media Relations:

613-957-5555




CustomerMatrix, a New York City-based provider of a cognitive computing platform, closed a $10.5m Series B funding round.

The round was led by HSBC, with participation from Aster Capital, and existing investors Newfund and True Global Ventures.

The company, which has now raised a total of $19.5m, intends to use the funds to continue its expansion across fintech hubs worldwide.

to drive the digital transformation of corporate and investment banks, wealth management institutions as well as insurance companies.

Led by Guy Mounier, CEO and Co-Founder, CustomerMatrix offers a cognitive computing platform that recommends specific actions for customer-facing employees in their existing workflows, ranked by impact value, and allows organizations to capture hidden revenue opportunities in real-time.

The company, which has its R&D center in Paris, France, and operations in Asia centered in Hong Kong, serves global banks such as BNP Paribas, insurers such as Allianz, as well as business brands such as Schneider Electric, Wolters Kluwer and Nexans.

CustomerMatrix is also a founding member of the Cognitive Computing Consortium with IBM-Watson.

FinSMEs

25/01/2016
Three global pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, and the technology transfer offices of universities (Imperial College London, University College London and the University of Cambridge have teamed up to create a new 40m fund.

The Apollo Therapeutics Fund aims to support the translation of academic science from within these universities into new medicines for a broad range of diseases. All therapy areas and modalities, including small molecules, peptides, proteins, antibodies, cell and gene therapies will be considered as areas of interest.

Apollo will advance academic preclinical research to a stage at which it can either be taken forward by one of the industry partners following an internal bidding process or be out-licensed. The three industry partners will also provide R&D expertise and additional resources to assist with the commercial evaluation and development of projects.

Each of the three industry partner companies will contribute 10m over 6 years to the venture. The technology transfer offices (TTOs) of the three university partners  Imperial Innovations Group plc, Cambridge Enterprise Ltd Limited and UCL Business PLC  will each contribute a further 3.3m.

The initiative will be led by Dr Ian Tomlinson, former Senior Vice President, Worldwide Business Development and Biopharmaceuticals R&D, for GSK and founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Domantis Limited, who has been appointed Chairman of the Apollo Therapeutics Investment Committee (AIC).

The AIC will be advised by an independent Drug Discovery Team (DDT) of ex-industry scientists who will be employed by Apollo to work with the universities and their TTOs to identify and shape projects to bring forward for development.

Apollo will be based at Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst. Once funded, projects will be progressed by the DDT alongside the university investigators, with other external resources and also in-kind resources from the industry partners as appropriate. For successful projects, the originating university and TTO will receive a percentage of future commercial revenues or out-licensing fees and the remainder will be divided amongst all the Apollo partners.

FinSMEs

25/01/2016
FUSION, and the startups of its first batch, will participate for the first time to the Virtual FinFair on Tuesday, January 26th (9am  9pm CET). FUSION startups as well as the accelerator will have a virtual booth at the only 3D online fair for Finance Professionals.



On this occasion, FUSION will reveal a new financial vehicle, allowing investors to invest in the most promising worldwide fintech companies (pre-IPOs), as well as promising fintech stars from its acceleration program.



Visitors of Virtual FinFair will be able to visit the booth of FUSIONs startups as well, discover their offering and start interacting with them.



Guillaume Dubray, Founder of FUSION and Managing Partner at Polytech Ventures, commented: Virtual FinFair is a unique and effective way to meet the worldwide financial community. We are excited to present our new investment vehicle on this occasion!.



Dont hesitate to visit FUSION and the startups booths on January 26th  without moving from your office! - at Virtual FinFair 2016 (http://vff.e-merging.com/).



About Fintech FUSION:

FUSION is Switzerland's first fintech accelerator, based out of Geneva. FUSION capitalises on Switzerlands position as a global hub for financial services as well as its world-beat ing reputation for innovation to drive the fintech agenda. Our aim, quite simply, is to fuse the best of Switzerland with the most promising fintech talent to lead innovation in financial services. Our approach is rooted in collaboration. Our corporate members and mentors are drawn from all areas of financial services, such as banking, insurance and commodity trading. We have academic sponsorship from some of worlds top engineering research institutes. We have involvement from venture capital funds, which will syndicate funding. And, we host start-ups from all over the world. This, we believe, is a unique mix promising to produce unique and game-changing results!

www.fintechfusion.ch



About Polytech Ventures

Polytech Ventures is an early stage VC firm based in Switzerland and in the USA. The company is strategically located at EPFL in Lausanne, one of the most dynamic and recognized innovation centers in the world, and with a permanent presence in the Silicon Valley. Polytech Ventures focuses on early stage start-ups working on digitizing industry value chains such as financial services. Polytech Ventures believes in the virtuous collaboration between academia, entrepreneurs, investors and corporations.

www.polytechventures.com



About Virtual FinFair:

Virtual FinFair is a one of its kind event where the international financial community get together online for one day represented by their avatars. Visitors will be able to navigate in a realistic environment with the possibility to visit booths, chat with other people, download brochures, watch videos, exchange business cards or simply extend their network.

http://vff.e-merging.com/
While the nation is still in shock over Dalit student Rohith Vemulas suicide, a fourth year engineering student, who comes from a backward community, committed suicide in Ibrahimpatnam near Vijayawada on Saturday night, Deccan Chronicle reported.

Puvala Prem Prasad, 22, was an electrical and electronics engineering student at Nova Engineering College. His roommate Manideep Kumar, who found the body, told The Indian Express that he was depressed as he was not doing well in his studies.

Prasad hung himself in his rented accommodation, Kondapalli circle-inspector D Chavan told Deccan Chronicle, adding that he took this step because he had not cleared his subjects at college. However, Prasad did not leave behind any suicide note.

NDTV reported that for the last three years, Prasad had not passed his exams. He had a backlog of 11 subjects and next week, he would have received his scores from his supplementary exams, reported The Indian Express. According to his brother, after their parents deaths in 2013 and 2014, he had become lonely. He also did not attend his classes regularly, reported the Deccan Chronicle.

Prasad belonged to the Madiga Scheduled Caste community and was from the East Godavari district, according to NDTV.

Prasads suicide comes at a time when the nation is reeling after Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide in Hyderabad as a mark of protest against the treatment meted out to him at the University of Hyderabad. Vemulas death has led to protests at the university, resignation of the vice-chancellor and blame game between the Congress and the BJP. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped in on Friday, saying, "The reasons for his suicide and the politics over his suicide are a different issue. However, mother India has lost a son."
President Pranab Mukherjee told Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to explain the need for President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. Reports said that Rajnath is expected to meet the President over the deepening crisis in the northeastern state at 2pm on Monday.

The Union Cabinet on Sunday recommended imposition of President's Rule in Congress-ruled Arunachal Pradesh, which is rocked by political turmoil, in a move that could have major political ramifications. The government's recommendation comes at a time when Supreme Court judges are hearing petitions linked to the political crisis in the state. Sources say the government consulted the Attorney General before taking the decision.

Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Cabinet at an unscheduled meeting this morning took the decision to recommend imposition of President's rule in the northeast state, official sources said in Delhi.

While some reports said that Arunachal Pradesh has been put under President's Rule, others did not confirm it rightaway. DNA report claimed that President Mukherjee signed the order on Sunday night.

It is learnt that the Cabinet also recommended that the state Assembly be kept under suspended animation. The decision came at a time when Supreme Court is hearing petitions on the political crisis.

The decision drew stinging condemnation from the Opposition with Congress alleging democracy was being trampled and that Modi was "fountainhead" of political intolerance while a shocked Chief Minister Nabam Tuki said such a decision in a sensitive border state was "unprecedented" and "unacceptable".

Accusing the Modi government of trying to destabilize a state bordering China, Congress leader Kapil Sibal also said the party will challenge in court the Cabinet decision if it gets presidential assent.

A senior official in Arunachal government backed Centre's action and told The Hindustan Times that the government had to intervene because the crisis in Arunachal Pradesh amounted to violation of the Constitutions Article 174(1) which prescribes that there should not be a gap of more than six months between two sessions of a state legislative assembly.

The Congress dismissed the BJP-led Centres so-called compulsion to intervene.

Sibal, who also is a counsel for the state government, targetted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sibal called him the "fountainhead" of political intolerance. He said the party would challenge in court the cabinets recommendation if it gets the President's nod.

"The government has taken a wrong step. There cannot be possibly any wrong step than this. The governor had embarrassed himself and now the government is embarrassing itself. They will pay a heavy price," Sibal said.

Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal expressed "shock" over the Cabinet decision, saying it is "murder" of the country's Constitution.

Union Cab recommending Prez rule in Arunachal shocking. Murder of Consti on Rep D eve. BJP lost elections.Now acquiring power thro back door  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 24, 2016

Strongly condemn Centre's move to impose Prez rule in Arunachal Pradesh, while the matter is still pending before SC's Constitutional Bench.  Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) January 24, 2016

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki expressed surprise over the Union Cabinet's recommendation for imposing President's rule in the state.

"This is really shocking as the Centre did not consult the state government before taking such a harsh decision. Arunachal is absolutely peaceful without even a single case of law and order breakdown reported in the last month," Tuki told PTI.

"There is no Constitutional crisis in the state as recommended by the governor. Whatever crisis is there it is his (Governor's) creation," Tuki said, adding that he enjoyed full support from all the cabinet ministers.

"With only a day left for Republic Day celebrations, such a decision will dampen the democratic spirit of the state's people who are zealously guarding the border with China," Tuki said.

Defending the Centre's move, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said it is a constitutional process because the Assembly did not hold its session for more than 6 months.

"And this year on 21 January, the six months time has completed. President's Rule could have been imposed immediately but the matter is sub-judice and the decision is pending in the Supreme Court. But the time frame of six months have exceeded. We do not have any role in the recommendation of President's Rule because it is a constitutional process."

The Congress MLAs who revolted against Tuki welcomed the Cabinet decision with Pasang Dorjee, a legislator and spokesman of the rebel group, saying they were ready to form an alternative government with the support of BJP and others.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on 16 December last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 of BJP and two independents to 'impeach' Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue, in a move branded as "illegal and unconstitutional" by the Speaker.

The BJP has 11 MLAs in the 60-member House. Even the Deputy Speaker was among those who rebelled, reports said. While the Congress moved a motion demanding removal of the Deputy Speaker, the BJP sought the Speakers removal. The Governor intervened and advanced a session of the assembly. He also sent a letter directing that the first item on the agenda of the session should be a resolution for removal of the Speaker.

The Governor told the Deputy Speaker, who is not too happy with the Congress, "shall preside over the House from the first moment of the first sitting of the House in accordance with provisions in article 181(1) of the Constitution.

With agency inputs
Rohith Vemula's suicide has done one thing  it has made people look inwards about caste and prejudice and its implications in an individual's life. It made people realise that it is not enough that caste is abolished under the Constitution of India, but that it must truly be rooted out from people's minds and hearts.

The PhD student from University of Hyderabad committed suicide on 17 January. Vemula was active in student politics and had grown increasingly silent after the disciplinary action initiated against him  expulsion from the university hostel. Rohith Vemula and four others were attacked by ABVP supporters in the university for wanting to screen the documentary Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hain.

The research scholars were expelled from their hostel in December. They were denied access to hostels and other buildings on the campus except their classroom, library and conferences and workshops related to their subject of study. They were evicted from their rooms on January and since then they were forced to sleep in a makeshift tent on the campus.

Soon after this issue took centre-stage in the Indian news media, students from across the globe stood in solidarity for Rohith Vemula. According to this report in The Deccan Chronicle, condolence meetings were held in many American universities, Johannesburg and a candlelight vigil will be held in London on 25 January.

To Debrahminize is to Decolonize. Decolonization is Debrahminization.Scholars and activists from the Decoloniality... Posted by Alex Abbasi on Friday, January 22, 2016

Alex Abbasi posted on Facebook, "Long live the Ambedkar Students Association! Long live Dalit Bahujan Solidarity! Long live the Spirit of Rohit Vemula, Rest in Power! Death to Brahminism! Justice to Rohit Vemula and all other fighting Dalit/Bahujan students!"

In support of @jacuoh's #ChaloHCU movement, NSUI will go on a hunger strike in all the state capitals across India on 25th. #Justice4Rohith  NSUI (@nsui) January 24, 2016

The National Students' Union of India organised a protest in Bengaluru and announced on Twitter that NSUI will go on hunger strike in all state capitals across the country on 25 January.

Thousands of activists from across the country are now in Hyderabad University for the #ChaloHCU. #JusticeForRohith  NSUI (@nsui) January 25, 2016

In the University of Hyderabad, thousands of students gathered to pay tribute to Rohith Vemula, through song and art. A candle march was also held.

University of Hyderabad students pay tribute to scholar Rohith Vemula with paintings and by singing songs pic.twitter.com/OrqZPtMtZV  ANI (@ANI_news) January 24, 2016

Candle march in Hyderabad to pay tribute to University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula: ANI pic.twitter.com/ugUyaTzIc3  Times of India (@timesofindia) January 24, 2016

Diksha Dhar, a research fellow at University of Pennsylvania posted:

A solidarity meeting and discussion was held at the university. The official Facebook event page reads: "As we write this, student across India are mobilising and protesting, calling Rohith's suicide an "institutional murder". Through this event, we hope to remember Rohith and his struggles, and express solidarity with student mobilisations against casteism in Indian universities."

In Solidarity with the Students of University of Hyderabad, The faculty and students of the University of Pennsylvania, ... Posted by Diksha Dhar on Friday, January 22, 2016

The Bahujan Writers Association joins the protest and expressed solidarity:

Students across the world are using social media: Facebook and Twitter to channelise their dissent and mobilise action within the community.
Srinagar: In the 13th issue of Debiq, the mouth-piece of the Islamic State (IS), the outfit claimed that it had strengthened its foothold in Kashmir. It also called for the region's 'liberation. The assertion, however, was vehemently opposed by the senior separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who also pointed out the groups insincerity towards its global causes.

A lot of discussion ensued as to whether the so-called Islamic State, which has wreaked havoc in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, will find a resonance in the restive Himalayan region which has already witnessed two bloody decades of violence.

A major concern among the security establishment in the past year has been the waving of IS flags, especially in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar, the neighborhood surrounding Jamia Masjid, the central mosque in the city, by young people.

Here, contextualising flag weaving by these desperate youngsters is important.

The hoisting of IS flags has become a routine for protesters, mostly youth, after Friday congregational prayers. While people outside the state are awestruck due this phenomenon, observers, in Kashmir, have dismissed it as a mere mischief.

Surprisingly, a majority of people in the valley are of the opinion that waving of IS flags is a mere representation of juvenile theatrics which is primarily aimed to provoke the state establishment.

The teenage protesters, as young as 13-years-old, are aware that Islamic State is a raging phenomenon in the Middle East, and, have understood the nuisance value these flags now bear to annoy the system.

The youngsters realised this after they hoisted the flag for the first time more than a year ago and the footage they received in the self-indulging vigilante media channels, who ran the flag show over and over again warning against an apparent threat in the already volatile state.

Even after two years, the popularity of IS has not spread beyond the walls of the city and even not beyond the Nowhatta neighbourhood. As for the young protesters, the tactic to unfurl the IS flag in downtown alleys at a distance from where media attention can be grabbed has worked. The strategy of the so-called IS sympathisers is confined to just how and where the state should spot these flags.

To fill the ever-demanding television hunger for breaking news, the television reporters fill the gap in Srinagar and the kids run away happily, knowing they have irritated the state enough for the day.

Over the years, unlike in the beginning, it is gradually becoming quite evident that there will be no takers of the extreme ideology in Kashmir, which is why several other flags or posters of Hizbul Mujahideens Burhan Wani have slowly begun to replace the IS flags.

Both mainstream politicians and the separatist camp have been denouncing the violence perpetrated by the ISIS fighters. Severing linkage of IS with Kashmir, Syed Ali Geelani says there are no chances of the presence of Daesh in this region, but these kinds of statements can provide a tool for India and they will try in every possible ways to defame the genuine struggle of Kashmiri people in the entire world.

Rebuking the claims of IS, Geelani questions the direction and right planning of the group and says if the IS were sincere then they should first put the liberation of the Aqsa Mosque from the Israeli occupation as priority.

The Hurriyat hardliner has time and again disassociated from people who wave IS flags in Srinagar city. He has time and again termed the organisation un-Islamic.

When they (ISIS) kill Shias, it is wrong. When they ask Christians to convert to Islam by force, it is wrong. I say it publicly with full authority that they do it wrong. Islam never said to force someone to become Muslim.

Understanding this phenomena has become important than ever for the reason ISIS now claims it would try to expand its outreach to Kashmir and would soon advance expand its reign of terror to Kashmir. One of its leaders Hafiz Saeed Khan said in an interview to the groups propaganda magazine that they want free the land occupied by cow-worshipping Hindus.

It (Kashmir) had once been under the authority of the Muslims, along with the regions surrounding it. Afterwards, the secularist... cow-worshipping Hindus and atheist Chinese conquered other nearby regions, as is the case in parts of Kashmir and Turkistan, he said.

There have been attempts to push Islam with an extremist orientation in Kashmir, a state brought up on the Sufi ethos. Even then, the only extreme that people in Kashmir have reached is what Geelani professes given his outreach and following in Kashmir. It does not mean much.

Police officials in Kashmir have the same opinion about ISIS sympathisers in the Valley.

They have pointed out how several boys detained last year failed to read what was written on these flags prepared using portable swing machines in Srinagar. Some flags recovered from a group of teenagers by the police also mentioned a painters signature on them.

The waving of these flags have remained limited to Srinagar city. Most of the boys who wave these flags know they wont get any media attention outside the city.
New Delhi: Twelve suspects, arrested from across the country for their alleged links with terror group Islamic State, were today remanded in NIA custody till 5 February by a special court here. The accused, who had their faces muffled, were produced amidst tight security before District Judge Amar Nath during an in-camera proceeding.

According to the court sources, National Investigation Agency (NIA) sought their custodial interrogation saying that they were required to be quizzed to unearth the conspiracy of ISIS to spread its reach in India.

The sources said that the probe agency informed the court that the accused were arrested for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day.

The 12 accused produced before the court were Abdul Ahad, Imran, Mohd Afzal, Mohd Sharif, Mubabiir Mushtaq Sheikh, Mohd Alim, Syed Mujahid, Suhail Ahmed, Asif Ali, Njmul Huda, Mohd Obaidullah Khan and Mohd Hussain Khan, the sources said.

These arrested accused were allegedly regularly in touch with active members of IS in Syria through internet chatting via Skype and other social networking apps, they said.

Many of these accused were allegedly assigned the work of recruiting operatives for the terror group, the sources said, adding that the accused were arrested from various places, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Aurangabad.

Two suspected terrorists  Abu Anas and Nafees Khan, both aged 24 years  were yesterday remanded in the custody of the central terror probe agency by the court for 13 days on the allegations that they had Islamic State links.

NIA and other central agencies had arrested 14 people on Friday and Saturday for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day. They were arrested under several sections, those under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

PTI
Mangaluru: The Legislative Committee on Women and Child Safety in Dakshina Kannada (DK) district has decided to recommend to the government to give directions to police to take suo motu cases in increasing incidents of 'moral policing' in the district.

A meeting of the committee held here yesterday took the decision with a view to sending a strong message to the people against resorting to such practices, committee chairman V S Ugrappa said in a release here.

Certain sections in DK district were of late taking the law into their hands upon seeing boys and girls together in a group, which was an undesirable trend, he said.

Police should not allow the culprits to go scot-free saying that victims had not filed a complaint as it would lead to more such incidents, he said.

The committee would also request the government to amend the Goondas Act to incorporate a provision for booking the accused in moral policing incidents under the Act. DK Superintendent of Police S D Sharappa and city police commissioner M Chandra Sekhar, who attended the meeting, said such culprits could be held under the Act even without an amendment.

The release claimed that incidents of moral policing had come down with police booking a few culprits under the Act.

PTI
Islamabad: Pakistan has turned down India's proposal to jointly interrogate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and other suspects linked with Pathankot airbase attack, official sources said.

Authorities in Pakistan have detained Masood Azhar after the 2 January terrorist attack at Pathankot airbase. Several other suspects were arrested and authorities closed down a number of JeM-run madarsas (seminaries) in different cities, The Nation reported on Monday.

Azhar, who was released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for 155 passengers of the Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, was quizzed by the investigators. The JeM chief's brother Mufti Abdul Rehman Rauf was also detained, officials said on Saturday.

Pakistan is likely to send a special investigating team to Pathankot in consultation with the Indian government for further investigations.

On 2 January, heavily armed militants, suspected to be from Pakistan, attacked the Pathankot airbase. A total of six terrorists and seven security personnel were killed in the operations.

Following the attacks, Indian and Pakistani governments agreed to postpone scheduled diplomatic talks till the end of January.

French President Francois Hollande on Monday said India was "fully justified" in asking Pakistan for justice against the perpetrators of Pathankot attack.

Hollande said India and France were "united in their determination to act together against terrorism".

India wanted to send investigators to interrogate Masood Azhar and his brother but Pakistan "politely refused" it, a senior official said.

Pakistan assured India that Islamabad was seriously investigating the case and will not hesitate to act if anyone was found guilty, the official said.

"India wants us to hand over Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed and as we have declined a number of times, they want us to at least give access to the investigators to interrogate them. We have told them it was not possible," he added.

Another official said investigators were interrogating the suspects arrested in the Pathankot case.

He said the authorities were in contact with India and keeping them updated. Pakistan has already submitted initial report to India regarding Pathankot attack.

The cell numbers used by the attackers, according to the report, were not registered and could not be traced in Pakistan.

Pakistan had been working on the Indian leads to find out if at all Pakistan's soil was used in the plot, he said.

Analyst Brigadier (retd) Agha Hussain Ahmed said the basic motive of terrorists behind this attack was to derail the recently initiated peace process between Pakistan and India.

"Pakistan has assured the Indian government of its full support in this regard and demanded India to hand over the proofs and evidence against any Pakistani involvement to take further action. Investigation of our citizens must be held in Pakistan," he added.

Defence analyst Mohammed Khan said the two countries needed to see who was behind the attack on Pathankot airbase in India.

"Pakistan warmly welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his arrival to Lahore. The international community appreciated the meeting between the two premiers and stressed to resolve all matters by using the option of dialogue. After the Pathankot incident, Indian media said the military establishment of Pakistan is against the talks between India and Pakistan," he said.

Mohammed Khan said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif both have stressed that Pakistan will fully cooperate with India in eliminating and countering terrorism.

He said Pakistan could not hand over its citizens to India or any other country for investigations.

IANS
What goes into the grand spectacle that is the Republic Day celebration? A lot, and that is an understatement if you take into consideration nine months of preparation, the scale of logistics and detailing that takes care of every second of the 120-minute parade. Behind the grand show of synchronisation theres choreography of high order.

The task of organising a grand parade on 26 January was first taken up by General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa, first Indian chief of the country's army, a year before India became a republic. Since then the preparation and planning of the parade is being overseen by South Block, headquarters of the Ministry of Defence. A deputy secretary is designated as the overall in-charge of the show. Here, work begins almost nine months before the event, according to an officer privy to the preparation details.

On the direction of the ministry, the Army headquarters tasks the Headquarters, Delhi area, with the execution of the parade under the supervision and command of the adjutant general  a military chief administrative officer. The preparation starts somewhere in March-April. In the month of April, the contingents which are likely to participate in the parade are identified and their units are informed. The troopers are called sometime between July and August. They undergo a training of good three-four months at their respective centres.

Following completion of their preparation, they are sent to Delhi in the first week of December. Here, a structured plan waits for them. They are made to undergo over 600 hours of rigorous practice. The task of the in-charge of Army Delhi areas administration is to get those who have practiced together and get them ready for the parade. The makeshift camps set up in Delhi Cantonment for the preparations of the grand celebration not only house nearly 10,000 men of the Indian Armys regiments who travel to the National Capital from across the country to make the event happen but also becomes a full-fledged work station that start functioning from December every year. Several organisations, including state governments, security agencies, municipal corporations, electricity distribution companies and even schools, work in tandem and tirelessly to make the event a success.

In Delhi, practice starts from December. Every day by 3 am, contingents from the Air Force, the Navy, Central police forces, the Delhi Police and volunteers of the NCC among others join the soldiers from the Army at Rajpath for the first practice. But none of them can simply walk into the arena. Every shortlisted individual who reaches the capital must pass through at least four check points where the Army and the police scrutinise everything all over again, including caps, gloves, ID cards and, of course, weapons which in no circumstance can carry a live cartridge.

While troops leave for Rajpath from their home base inside the cantonment and Rajpath for practice, the team at the Integrated Mech Camp at Delhi Cantonment simply does not have it easy. The camp houses tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missile regiments, radars and jeeps. For this years celebration as many as 120 vehicles have been pulled in from various parts of the country since September last year. These are too heavy and too precious to move around. It is done with a lot of care.

After getting the brief not to exceed the speed limit 10 km per hour and maintain a uniform separation of 50 metres between two vehicles, the almost 3 km long convoy of 76 vehicles with 140 personnel on board makes it way out. The elements of this convoy are so significant that one of mistake would have huge ramifications.

From here on, mathematics which takes over. Almost everything is about numbers, starting from the beginning of the march to its duration to the number of beats and so on. The President arrives at the dais in a buggy drawn by ponies at 10 am. After he takes salute of his guards, the National Anthem begins, accompanied by the unfurling of National Flag and firing of 21 cannon salutes all at once and within 52 seconds.

Such is the extent of detailing that the planning is not in term of minutes but in seconds. At five check points established at Rajpath, those marching get their feedback: too fast or too slow. Everything is done to ensure that the main dignitaries see the uniform march of every contingent for a duration of 1.13 minutes. Forty-two contingents of 144 soldiers (12 in each row and column) each march down Rajpath every year. This time, one contingent of Armys dog squad and troops of French armed forces will join the parade.

With the help of radio mobile and Army communications set up by the signal core, a special team keeps an eye on each contingents actions. The marching of each contingent is synchronised with their respective band's beats.

Now, what about those who have to drive their fully covered vehicles where the driver has very little visibility and have to move at a speed of 5 km per hour? Those driving tractors carrying tableau get selected after an intense review. Through a square hole, the driver has to maintain a visual contact with his guide, a jawan who marches in sync with the rest for the entire length of the parade.

By the time the practice nears completion, a thick set of papers with detailed noting of the flaws of every contingent is prepared  from hands not springing enough, knees not getting lifted high, medals falling off uniforms to speed not being maintained. The message is clear: be perfect in parameters. Following the first practice, the best among the best is selected.

Nearly 200 men of the Indian Army camp day and night inside the India Gate complex to ready the Army vehicles for the parade. All vehicles have to pass through 10 checks and several layers of paints before being rolled out at the Rajpath. If things go wrong, the camp comes up with immediate corrective measures.

In a bid to reduce duration of the parade from 120 minutes to 90 minutes, the defence ministry has had to say no to many participants, including armed forces like the CISF, the ITBP and SSB as well as several schools. Even the Army had to reduce its strength by sending back trained contingents. They say the parades of the future will be even shorter.
University of Hyderabad, the embattled centre of excellence also known as Hyderabad Central University (HCU), is now in jeopardy what with unrelenting students, a large section of teachers supporting their agitation, and a host of politicians visiting the campus to express solidarity with the striking students.

Politics apart, the campus is mourning the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula. Now, Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile has stepped aside to ease the atmosphere.

In his act of bowing out, Prof Appa Rao has given in to three important demands of the striking students:

1. He has stepped out of the shoes of the helmsman, albeit temporarily.

2. He has announced an ex gratia of Rs 8 lakh to Rohith's family (though not in consonance with the Rs 50 lakh compensation demanded).

3. The executive council has revoked the punishment imposed on five students, who were suspended, of course, with a rider that the decision is subject to the verdict of courts of law in the various cases.

Against this background, a Chalo HCU programme was conducted on campus drawing huge crowds and delegates from different universities across the country on Monday.

Prof. Vipin Shrivastava was appointed the in-charge vice-chancellor and Prof. Appa Rao will resume duty after some time, once the dust has settled. He will, in the meantime, be working on an Indo-UK research project.

When we interacted with students and professors on what should be done for setting the house in order, we received various views.

Interestingly, a large section of students and teachers demanded that in-charge Vice-Chancellor Vipin Shrivastava also must go. They hold him responsible for the prevalent situation on campus. They said it was he who had headed the committee that recommended the suspension of five Dalit students, which triggered the ongoing controversy.

Prof Lakshminarayana, head of the professors body, told Firstpost that Shrivastava must step down in the larger interests of the university, as there is no trust in him. This message must be sent across; for he shouldnt have accepted the responsibility of the in-charge V-C. He also explained that Shrivastava was the Dean of Physics when the fellowship was stopped to research scholar S Senthil Kumar who had committed suicide. There appears to be large-scale resentment over Shrivastava holding the fort in the absence of Appa Rao.

Prof Vinod Pavarala, who was Dean of Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, feels that the academic schedules of the university have never gone for a toss like this. He advises that teachers too should take a greater initiative in ensuring that we dont give room for any discrimination.

Here are the seven things the university should do to set the house in order.

1. Identify a more acceptable academic, one who has proven administrative capabilities, even if he or she is from outside the campus. They must be appointed the in-charge vice-chancellor. At the moment, nothing less than replacing Shrivastava will work for he is seen as the villain. The student community is treating him worse than it treated Appa Rao. There is an immediate need for a vice-chancellor who can get students of all affiliations to come together.

2. What is prevalent in the university is trust-deficit. Therefore, trust must be restored by the administration in itself and a dialogue should be opened with teachers, whose sentiments were badly hurt. In fact, over 100 teachers of all ranks gathered on Friday and volunteered to accompany Appa Rao as he opened a dialogue with the striking students. He, however, refused to adhere to their request. Now with Shrivastava stepping into his shoes, the teachers feel the impasse on campus is far from over. To bolster their sagging morale, the new person should take into confidence the University Teachers Association, SC/ST Teachers and Officers Association, non-teaching staff and all stakeholders, and draw up a plan of action.

3. Students must be persuaded that since four of their demands have been met to a certain extent  Appa Rao has been sidelined, Rohith's family has been given compensation, the punishment meted out to Dalit students has been terminated and a judicial inquiry has been ordered  it is in the interests of the student community that they step back a bit and allow academic activity to get back on track.

4. On a long-term basis, the university must ensure that its teachers are involved in the decision-making process. Teachers should also be sensitised to the fact that the world outside is full of inequalities and they should not think that caste doesnt matter in my classroom. After all, the classroom is a microcosm of the external world: the social composition of campuses is always undergoing a metamorphosis as students from diverse economic, academic, social and cultural backgrounds join the university.

The Pavarala Committee too said in the recommendations it made in 2008 that rather than being impervious to caste and other markers of inequality in our society, it is important to be proactive in mentoring and advising students who come from less privileged backgrounds. At a time when 'access' and 'equity' in higher education are the buzzwords of the government and the University Grants Commission, it is imperative that a top-ranking central institution such as ours takes a lead in nurturing and promoting a corps of scientists from among the marginalised sections of our society.

5. There have been charges by the students that some professors are not agreeing to be mentors or guides for research being undertaken by SC/ST students. The inconsistencies in admission processes for doctoral programmes have to be addressed and every effort must be made to eliminate the feelings of persecution and discrimination among students of SC/ST and other backward classes.

6. Every department must have a grievance redressal mechanism so that students can air their grievances without any fear of reprisal. This must involve faculty and students, with adequate representation of reserved category and women members. Students should be informed about the mechanism and what procedures they need to follow to avail of it. This is one of the issues dealt with by the Pavarala Committee.

7. The university must allow free flow of political thought and debate across a wide spectrum of issues impacting different sections of society. Even the nations policy and political issues must be debated on the campus in a highly academic environment, while taking the necessary steps to insulate the university from political parties and politicians. The already-charged situation on campus in the aftermath of Rohith's suicide was fomented even more by politicians.
President's rule was imposed in Arunachal Pradesh on Tuesday after President Pranab Mukherjee gave assent to the Union Cabinet's recommendation on such a course following political instability in the state.

Earlier on Monday, the better part of Kapil Sibal's specially convened press conference on Union cabinet's recommendation to impose President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh was focused on the charge that Modi government was being "politically intolerant" and was misusing office of Governor to destabilise non-BJP state governments. Interestingly, for long decades, such charges were against Congress governments at the Centre.

The Congress's media briefing came amid reports that President Pranab Mukherjee has sought certain clarification on Cabinet recommendation for imposition of President's Rule in the border state. Home Minister Rajnath Singh met the President to explain government's position. The Congress president Sonia Gandhi had earlier petitioned President on the subject seeking his intervention on the subject. She petitioned him yet again, this time around to convince him as to why he should reject advise of Union cabinet and refuse to sign on the dotted line.

The Congress party's official Twitter handle has made a series of tweets on highlights of Sibal's press conference. But they don't answer some critical questions --

First, is there a constitutional crisis or not in Arunachal Pradesh?

Second, has the Congress not created a constitutional crisis?

Third, is there not a serious in-house conflict within ranks of Congress Legislature Party?

Fourth, has Congress' Nabam Tuki not lost confidence of majority members of the House in Arunachal Pradesh and been reduced to a minority?

Fifth, does a government which does not enjoy support of majority of House in assembly has a right to rule the state?

Sixth, why has the Congress not convened its own legislature party meeting to clear the air on its leader's status?

Seventh, is it not a fact that 21 Congress MLAs have rebelled against their own government and joined hands with 11 BJP MLAs and 2 Independent MLAs in 60 member state assembly?

Eighth and most important, has Chief Minister Tuki not created a constitutional crisis by not allowing convening of an Assembly session even as six months have passed since the time last Assembly session was convened. The deadline for convening assembly session passed on 21 January. Last assembly session was held on 21 July.

Article 174 (1) of Indian Constitution says: "The Governor shall from time to time summon the House or each House of the Legislature of the State to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit, but six months shall not intervene between its last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session." The crux of this Constitutional provision is that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of the Legislative Assembly in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next Session. In case of Arunachal this critical provision has clearly been flouted and forms one of the principal reasons why Modi government, based on report of Arunachal Pradesh Governor has sought imposition of President's Rule In the state.

Sources said the President Pranab Mukherjee is taking his time because he has to examine legal constitutional provisions before he acts on advise of the Union Council of Ministers since Congress president had on 16 December 2014 had led a delegation to him claiming that the constitutional provisions was being subverted. She and other Congress leaders have met him a second time in this regard. He thus wants to satisfy himself of the ground situation and also provisions of law so that his position is not embarrassed as had happened in case of APJ Abdul Kalam acting on recommendations of Manmohan Singh government had signed on dotted lines for imposition of President's Rule in Bihar even as he was touring abroad. The Supreme Court had later made some critical remarks against imposition of President's Rule in that state.

Congress's main argument against Governor Rajkhowa, a former chief secretary of Assam, is that he convened assembly session to take up no confidence motion against Speaker Nabam Rebia, first cousin of Chief Minister Nabam Tuki one month ahead of the schedule, 16 December than what was otherwise scheduled 14 January. The Governor ordered that a resolution seeking the removal of Speaker Nabam Rebia shall be the first item on the agenda of the House, and the Deputy Speaker shall preside over the House from the first moment of first sitting. The resolution on the Speakers removal must be discussed and voted upon in the very first sitting.

In November a section of Congress rebels and BJP MLAs had moved a motion of no-confidence against the Speaker.

Since the Speaker was unyielding in convening the session to take up the motion, these MLAs petitioned the Governor who obliged them after taking his own time in coming to this conclusion. There are established norms that if there is motion of no confidence against the Speaker then that motion will override all other motions and will have to be taken up at the earliest opportunity. But surely was not being done.

The ruling Congress dispensation then locked the Arunachal Pradesh assembly premises, not even allowing entry of MLAs led to an unprecedented situation of the 21 rebel Congress MLAs, 11 BJP and 2 Independents meeting at a private place and declare that the incumbent Speaker and Chief Minister ousted. That was a wrong thing to do but it was equally wrong to lock assembly premises and not allow the session to be held.

There was a suggestion that a one-day assembly session to be convened on 19 January to avoid an emerging constitutional crisis but the Congress didn't agree to take up no-confidence motion against the Speaker.

Those at the helm of affairs can consider of a repeat of what had happened in Uttar Pradesh assembly way back in February 1998 after then governor Romesh Bhandari had dismissed Kalyan Singh and appointed Jagdambika Pal as chief minister. The Allahabad High Court then ordered that a composite floor test be done to elect chief minister -- whosoever between Jagdambika Pal and Kalyan Singh wins. Kalyan Singh won in that floor test, setting a healthy precedent where the House elected the chief minister. Can something like this happen in Arunachal.
By H Singh



New Delhi: He stormed Punjab's electoral podium of Muktsar on the wave of an odd odd-even scheme that oddly had Delhi's notorious population of lane-jumpers and jaywalkers rally behind him in solidarity.

For Aam Aadmi Party convener Arvind Kejriwal, the climate couldn't have been better for the Maghi Mela this month at Muktsar. He had grabbed significant mainstream and social media space for launching unprecedented traffic restrictions supposedly to fight off dirty air in the world's most polluted city now under his command.

The chief minister didn't resolve Delhi's particulate problem, but his measure won him the reputation of a "doer" when the country's central government was hardly seen dealing with the national capital's disastrous environment.

On the political front, Kejriwal and his team have also had made loud and successful noises over the CBI's raid at his secretariat, beating the BJP at its own game  Facebook and Twitter.

No wonder then that the turnout at the AAP chief's public meeting at Muktsar outnumbered that of the Congress party and of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) of his Punjab counterpart Parkash Singh Badal and son Sukhbir Singh Badal

The Punjabis of Punjab, unlike the Punjabis of Delhi or elsewhere, are a bit more disgusted by incumbency and endemic corruption  both in politics and in religion.

The lower attendance at the Akali rally the same day can very well be summarized as a potent sign of the ruling Badal family's fall from public favor.

Punjab has traditionally been an electoral battleground between the blue and white turbans - or duppattas, to put it gender neutrally! The blue of the Akalis, including their various factions, and the white of the Congress party.

So, when the state's deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, attacked Kejriwal and his group sarcastically as "topiwallas", he set his stamp on the notion that AAP was no longer a fringe element. Even without that seal, Muktsar showed Kejriwal is set to transform the 2017 election scene in Punjab into a three-way contest.

His yes-we-can style is appealing. Whether he can or not is a different question.

In the last vote, Punjab for the first time gave a second term to a ruling coalition at a time when a Sikh from the Congress party was the country's prime minister.

Had there not been AAP, it would have been a cakewalk for Capt Amarinder Singh to wrest power next year because of the sinking - or sunk - people's approval of the Badals.

Yes, Kejriwal's party will be a key player in the 2017 elections in spite of the fact it is being micromanaged from Delhi. But it will be premature to conclude massive crowds at its Muktsar rally will translate into votes.

AAP has its own faultlines. As of now, it has no strong leader to be its face in Punjab. The tiny pool of its MPs is bereft of political intellect and sophistication.

Rumors are rife former BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu may become an Aam Aadmi. Really? Can then he be a candidate for the chief minister's post? Given his typical dominating traits, will he suit Kejriwal? So, there is an ocean of ifs and buts between rumors and reality.

Fortunately for AAP, Khalistan is no longer an issue in Punjab while Sikhism is.

The Badals stand accused of denigrating and misusing the top Sikh administration, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), under their control. So they have sizably lost what they called their Panthak or religious support.

Hardliner outfits have little credibility left.

The time is running out for Kejriwal if he really wants to make history in Punjab.

Rhetoric against him by his opponents will only grow louder, and perhaps effective, if he didn't come out with a fresh Sikh name and face for the state's electoral arena.

That face has to be suave. It has to have a fair understanding of the Sikh psyche. It has to be urban. It has to be moderate. It has to stand out as a contrarian to the attitude of a Raja and the Jagirdari style of an Akali president.

Punjab is ready to experiment, but eventually it won't with mere stemwinders.
Varanasi: Aam Aadmi party on Sunday said that the purported letter by Jawaharlal Nehru allegedly calling Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose a 'war criminal' is "fake".

Addressing a press Conference, AAP leaders Ashutosh and Sanjay Singh seconded the Congress' claims about the letter calling it rubbish and forged.

The AAP leaders said the letter that has surreptitiously been circulating on the internet was a part of a conspiracy in which few people were trying to portray one leader as greater than the other.

They alleged earlier it was tried to glorify Sardar Patel as bigger than any other leader in the country.

The AAP leaders said that people "who have no association with country's freedom struggle are trying to belittle Nehru and Gandhi."

They also criticised the NDA government for declassifying secret files relating to Bose in parts.

The duo said that the government should declassify all the files together instead of making it part-wise such as 25 files every month.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made public digital copies of 100 secret files relating to Bose on his 119th birth anniversary, which could throw some light on the controversy over his death.

The files were declassified and put on digital display at the National Archives of India (NAI). The NAI also plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Bose in the public domain every month.

The AAP also targeted the Samjawadi party government for "jungle raj" in the state, and said law and order has been paralysed with loot and murder taking place frequently.

The duo also questioned BSP chief Mayawati's "silence" over the suicide of a Dalit student Rohith Vemula.

They alleged that money and muscle power was used to win the Zila Panchayat elections, which the SP government openly supported.

They also urged the election commission to hold the Zila Panchayat chief elections directly on public voting system instead of the voting by few elected Panchayat members.

PTI
To track latest political developments and to understand their import on Indian polity, it is always advisable to first take a look at Arvind Kejriwal's Twitter feed.

With the speed of Usain Bolt and the reliability of a Rolex, Kejriwal will unerringly shoot the first arrow if any development has even a remote chance of discomfiting Narendra Modi.

The fact that he didn't disappoint on Monday is ample proof that the BJP has run into yet another PR disaster, this time over the Cabinet's decision to impose President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

Hardly have the embers died over Rohith Vemula's suicide that the Centre now finds itself sucked into the vortex of another controversy that has quickly formed the latest coalescing point for its national and regional rivals.

Calling it a "travesty of constitutional mandate, subjugation of federalism and trampling of democracy", a smarting Congress has threatened to move the Supreme Court while Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed his "strong condemnation".

What really happened?

In an unscheduled meeting chaired by the Prime Minister on Sunday, the Union Cabinet has recommended the imposition of Presidents rule in Congress-ruled Arunachal Pradesh and has sent it to President Pranab Mukherjee for assent. Some media reports, however, indicate the President signed on the dotted line on Sunday night.

The Centre seems to have acted on a report from governor Jyoti Prashad Rajkhowa who sought New Delhi's intervention to prevent the border state from slipping into a 'constitutional crisis'.

The immediate political crisis was triggered on 16 December, 2015 when 21 of the 47 Congress MLAs in the 60-member House, along with 11 BJP and two Independent MLAs, decided to impeach Assembly speaker Nabam Rebia from a makeshift venue in Itanagar.

The impasse, however, started in June last year when the Speaker fired 14 Congress rebel MLAs. Subsequently, two cabinet ministers were also forced to resign. The Congress still formed a majority with 26 MLAs since the House strength had reduced to 44 with the suspension of 16.

It wasn't long before deputy speaker TN Thongdok passed an impeachment motion against the Speaker for "allegedly acting in a biased manner due to his personal relation with CM Nabam Tuki."

Governor Rajkhowa, a former BJP leader, accepted the impeachment motion and revoked the suspension of 16 rebel MLAs despite the House being dysfunctional.

This sparked a chain of events that culminated in Assembly sessions being conducted in community halls and hotel conference rooms (since the Assembly House was kept under lock and key) in which Speaker Rebia was impeached and a no-confidence motion passed against CM Tuki.

The Speaker subsequently approached the Gauhati High Court, which put an immediate stay on the legislative process. The matter is now before the Supreme Court.

Did Centre violate federal integrity?

Going by the letter of the Constitution, no.

If the Supreme Court rules in favour of the interpretation that the makeshift sessions were invalid, there will be a Constitutional breakdown because Article 174 states that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of the Assembly in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session. The next session should therefore have taken place at the latest by January 21, 2016.

On the other hand, if the court holds that the 16 December session was valid, then it seems the Tuki government is in a minority and is therefore not allowing a vote of confidence. In either case, the state is heading for a constitutional crisis.

The Centre's hands will also be strengthened by reports of gherao and blockade of Raj Bhavan by some Congress MLAs which amounts to a Constitutional breakdown since the Governor is a nominee of the President. Reports also indicate that there was flouting of Article 167(b) of the Constitution as the Tuki government was not responding to the Governors letters.

In fact, imposition of President's rule, it can be argued, is an ethical move by the Centre which could have easily allowed the formation of a BJP coalition government if it had acted in a skewed manner.

Losing the perception battle

Be that as it may, the BJP is staring at yet another firefight. Though in accordance with Constitutional provisions, the Cabinet receommendation has already been dubbed "unconstitutional" by Kejriwal. He said the BJP is trying to "grab power through the back door."

Congress leader Kapil Sibal has accused the BJP of trying to destabilize the border state. "This is political intolerance and Modi is the fountainhead of that intolerance," said the former Union minister.

"From Hyderabad to Arunachal Pradesh, the BJP is spreading their message of intolerance. This is plain and simple coercive federalism," the Congress leader said during a news conference on Monday.

In the arena of political debates where punchlines and over-the-top reactions are suited to high octane TV debates, it is difficult to explain the nitty gritties of Constitution or legal jurisprudence.

What one remembers is Rohith Vemula's grief-stricken mother rejecting the ex-gratia offered by the government or the optics of Centre overthrowing a democratically elected government.

Arunachal Pradesh development will be another addition to a string of BJP's PR disasters.
As BJP president Amit Shah has had his three-year stint as BJP president renewed, the tasks cut out for him will pose insurmountable challenges. Shah, though a political lightweight, occupies a unique position in the BJP as he possesses the unquestioned trust of the prime minister. His predecessors like Kushabhau Thackeray, Jena Krishnamurthy, Bangaru Laxman, M Venkaiah Naidu or even Rajnath Singh never shared as cosy a relationship with the top leader of their times as Shah doees with the partys numero uno: Narendra Modi.

But Shah is still under tremendous pressure on account of the formidable expectations he is supposed to match in his new term:

Dejected cadre

There is little doubt that after successive defeats in Delhi and Bihar, the partys cadre across India is quite pessimistic about the future. Despite the tall claims of Shahs organisational abilities, he turned out to be neither an imaginative leader, nor an affable one. That he relies more on his own band of loyalists than local workers had alienated the cadre in Delhi and Bihar. Shahs image, rightly or wrongly, is pervasive across the country. Will he go in for an image makeover? Given his tenacity and devil-may-care spirit, it is unlikely that he will change his style of functioning.

Brahmin-Bania groove

After a long time, the BJP once again seems to be stuck in the Brahmin-Bania groove of identity politics. Its leadership and battery of acolytes in the top leadership are largely drawn from a social stock identified with the traditional support base of the BJP: Brahmin-Bania. In the Hindi heartland where caste consciousness is quite high, the partys discretion is proving to be costly in political terms. Not only OBCs and Dalits but a section of upper caste is also getting alienated from the party leadership.

State Assembly elections

After facing humiliating defeats in Delhi and Bihar, the party is desperately in need of a victory to break the jinx. The aura of invincibility and strategic astuteness attributed to Shah is blown to smithereens. And there is no sign of even partially regaining that aura in the upcoming elections in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala or Punjab. But that can be explained as the states are not favourable to the party. The same cannot be said about Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP and its allies won 73 seats out of 80. Apparently, there are signs of the party losing ground in the countrys most populous and politically-significant state.

Possibility of a lame-duck government

If the party continues to get drubbed in the 2017 elections, particularly in UP, the efficacy of the Modi government will be highly compromised. It will be largely a lame-duck government, whose writ will not even run within the walls of New Delhis Lutyens' zone. This will be a scary scenario for a party that won a clear mandate nearly after three decades in India. With Shah at the helm of affairs, this will be an ignominy that he will find difficult to live down.

Neither money nor strategy wins elections, politics does

In the Delhi and Bihar elections, Shah with his battery of loyalists did indulge in an aggressive display of money and marketing strategies. He was however outsmarted by his much-less resourceful rivals. Evidently, this should have shattered his belief that semantics is substitute for substance. Has he learnt his lessons?

Organic growth of state leaders

There is a serious dearth of state leaders in the BJP. In Delhi, Bihar, such a deficiency cost the party dearly. In Uttar Pradesh, the absence of a leader is being felt long before the election. Except for the states in which the party is in power, the growth of natural state leaders is being dissuaded, if not curbed. Unlike the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-LK Advani era when leaders like Sikandar Bakht, Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and even Ambedkarites were roped in to cultivate as parallel leaders, the party seems averse to attracting talent from outside. How will Shah address this question? In all likelihood, he may be dismissive of such suggestions. But that will limit the partys growth as the BJPs expansion within its own ideological fold has its limitations.

Intellect deficit

The party seems to be going through a serious case of intellect deficit. Unlike the past when the BJP leaders used to coin terms like minority-ism or social engineering, that gained currency in political lexicon, the idioms and language used by the party leadership have a ring of frivolity if not lumpenisation. The BJPs national executive which used to throw up new ideas like economic nationalism, has been reduced to be a mutual appreciation society. In the post Vajpayee-Advani phase, the partys political resolutions, economic resolutions or presidential addresses have become an exercise in insipid verbosity. The party seems to be in the grip of morbid intellectual atrophy. Will Shahs new term diagnose the ailment and attend to it? It is difficult to hazard an answer.
Peshawar, Pakistan: Officials say a northwestern Pakistani university where Islamic militants gunned down 21 students and teachers last week has reopened for classes amid tight security.

University official Kabir Khan says classes at the Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda resumed on Monday. Police official Iqbal Khan says extra security measures are in place.

The attack last Wednesday, triggered a gunbattle that lasted for hours until all four militants who took part in the raid were killed. The assault shocked the nation and raised grim memories of the December 2014 massacre in the nearby city of Peshawar where the Taliban killed 150, mostly children.

Over the weekend, Pakistani officials said they arrested five suspects on charges of facilitating the Charsadda assault, which was claimed by a breakaway Taliban faction.

AP
Hong Kong: A Chinese fugitive arrested in Hong Kong in connection with the slayings of his teenage nephews in California told a court on Monday he won't fight extradition to the United States.

Deyun Shi told a magistrate several times that he was willing to be sent back to the United States "as soon as possible," adding that the allegations against him weren't true.

Shi arrived on Saturday afternoon in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city, on a flight from Los Angeles. Police, acting on a request from US officials, apprehended him at the airport. He was taken to a hospital and then formally arrested early Sunday.

US investigators believe Shi killed the 15 and 16-year-old boys before fleeing because he was upset his wife wanted a divorce. The two were found with head trauma in their Arcadia home after police responded to a 911 call. Investigators say he assaulted his wife, who is the sister of the dead teens' father, on Thursday after learning she wanted a divorce.

Shi declined the services of a duty lawyer and planned to represent himself. He was wearing a grey blazer over a black shirt and had a scratch on his right cheek.

When the judge asked if he agreed to extradition, Shi said through a Mandarin interpreter, "I consent as soon as possible."

Shi applied for bail, saying he could offer a "high amount of bail money" because he had assets in mainland China and the United States.

"The details of the allegations against me are not true," Shi said. "But I'm not inclined to go into the details and give a rebuttal here. I believe I will restore the truth in the US with supporting facts."

However, Chief Magistrate Clement Lee refused his application and he was remanded into custody.

The case was adjourned until 11 February.

AP
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Francois Hollande held their third bilateral meeting in nine months on the second day of the French president's three-day India visit, on Monday. Apart from signing a general joint statement, the two heads of government also inked a joint statement on counter-terrorism in light of the Paris attacks earlier this month and the fact that India has been a regular victim of terror attacks.

Here's the full text:

India-France joint statement on counter-terrorism on the occasion of the state visit of President Francois Hollande of the French Republic to India

January 25, 2016

1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Francois Hollande strongly condemned the heinous terrorist attacks that have struck many parts of the world recently and expressed their shared anguish and outrage at the loss of innocent lives in Paris, Bamako, Beirut, Tunis, San Bernardino, NDjamena and the Lake Chad Basin Region, Kabul, Gurdaspur, Istanbul, Pathankot, Jalalabad, Jakarta, Ouagadougou and Charsadda. Noting that such terror attacks were an attack on the whole of humanity and foundational human values, they reiterated their unequivocal condemnation of terrorism and reaffirmed their determination to jointly combat this scourge.

2. Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, India and France resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counter-terrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists. To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts. In addition to the useful counter-terrorism exercises, by French and Indian Armies, including Exercise Shakti, held last in Bikaner at the beginning of the year, they decided to hold further operational exercises between French GIGN and Indian National Security Guard.

3. Deeply concerned about the growing threat of terrorism to global peace and security, Prime Minister Modi and President Hollande called for greater unity, stronger international partnership and concerted action by the international community. Considering the urgent need to establish a comprehensive international legal framework to address the growing global menace of terrorism, they called for early conclusion of negotiations and adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the United Nations. When adopted, the Convention would constitute an ideal platform for a global alliance of nations against terrorism.

4. Both leaders urged the international community to make concerted efforts to strictly comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions 1267, 1988, 1989, 2253 and other relevant resolutions designating terrorists and terrorist groups or condemning terrorist acts. They resolved to deepen cooperation on UN terrorist designations and work towards increasing the effectiveness of the UNSCR 2253 sanctions regime. They also resolved to work together to drive forward international efforts in forums like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF).

5. Deeply concerned about the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, they urged all countries to fully abide by UNSCR 1540 as well as IAEA requirements, and ratify the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) including its 2005 Amendment as well as the International Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT), especially in the lead up to the Nuclear Security Summit of 1 April 2016.

6. Recognising the urgent need to disrupt terrorist networks and financing channels, eliminate terrorist safe havens, training infrastructure and cross-border movement of terrorists, Prime Minister Modi and President Hollande underlined the need for all countries to effectively deal with terrorism emanating from their territory or territories under their control. They called for actions to be taken, consistent with international law, against all entities, including States, that sponsor, provide support, active or passive, to terrorist groups or harbour them.

7. Both leaders welcomed the unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council, of resolution 2249 that calls upon Member States to take all necessary measures against the unprecedented threat posed by Daesh/ISIS. Prime Minister Modi commended Frances leadership and decisive actions in the fight against terrorism.

8. Stressing that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, both leaders asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future. President Hollande commended India for its stabilising role in South Asia, in particular in Afghanistan, and its recent initiative to launch a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan.

9. The two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders pose a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan. In this regard, they emphasised the need to address this challenge by dismantling terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens and disrupting all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals. The two sides emphasised that durable peace and political reconciliation in Afghanistan require maintaining continued international support to the efforts led and owned by Government of Afghanistan. They reaffirmed their commitment to the key principles of a peaceful inter-Afghan dialogue: acceptance of the Afghan Constitution, renunciation of violence and severing links with terrorism.

10. Reaffirming that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group, India and France agreed to coordinate efforts to better understand radicalisation processes, and counter the misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred, perpetrating and justifying terrorism or pursuing political aims. They agreed to facilitate regular exchanges of civil society to promote the values of peace, tolerance, inclusiveness and welfare. They reaffirmed their shared conviction and confidence that the values of humanism will prevail in countering the malicious propaganda of hatred and intolerance espoused by the divisive forces of extremism and terrorism.
North Liberty, United States: Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Sunday urged Iowa voters to choose her experience over the idealism of rival Bernie Sanders, who made the rounds of university campuses at the weekend to earn student support.

"I know some of you are still shopping. I'd like to shop too. I hope during the course of this afternoon to convince some of you," Clinton told about 600 people packed into an elementary school gym in the town of North Liberty.

On 1 February, voters in Iowa, in the US heartland, will cast the first ballots in the US presidential nominations process -- a long road to Election Day on 8 November.

Clinton, the 68-year-old former secretary of state, and Sanders, a 74-year-old senator from Vermont, are running neck-and-neck in some opinion polls, though Clinton enjoys a wide advantage on a nationwide basis.

"As secretary of state, she stared down some of the toughest dictators in the world, and so I have no doubt that she can take on the Tea Party, and the gun lobby," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, the influential US women's health care provider.

"She never blinks, she never waivers."

The message Clinton and her team sought to drive home was that her proposals are more realistic than those of Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who has put taking down the financial elite and Wall Street at the heart of his campaign.

He has repeatedly attacked Clinton over what he says are her close ties to some big banks, and has chastised her for giving paid speeches to Wall Street firms.

But Clinton fought back on Sunday.

"I have taken on Wall Street for years!" she said. "I have a better plan to do it."

"No bank is too big to fail, and no executive is too big to jail," she added.

She also insisted on her foreign policy bona fides and the "very specific steps" she would take to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group.

Clinton devoted a long section of her stump speech to her role in the Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, which several of President Barack Obama's aides considered to be too dangerous and risky. She said she encouraged Obama to go ahead with it.

"The person who sits in that (White House) situation room has to be able to weigh intelligence and evidence to be able to really dig deep in these details, and I offer you my experience and my judgment," she said.

"We need to chart a steady course," she concluded -- suggesting that a Sanders administration would lack such stability.

Students 'really into' Bernie

But Sanders' idealism has charmed some Democratic voters.

In a speech at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Sanders hammered home his call for a "political revolution," recalling how at first, he was deemed a "fringe candidate" -- not a serious challenger to Clinton.

"Well, my friends, a lot has happened in nine months," he said.

In an effort to assuage any doubts about voting for him in November, Sanders offered up poll data suggesting he could beat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in the general election by a wider margin than Clinton would.

"In a general election, Republicans win when people are demoralized, when people do not vote and the voter turnout is low," he said.

"Any objective assessment of our campaign versus Secretary Clinton's campaign will tell you that the energy, the excitement is with our campaign."

Sanders added: "The only way we win is when the engine of enthusiasm, when young people come out and vote, when working people come out and vote."

The speech was his eighth of the weekend, three of them on college campuses.

Caleb Cady, a 22-year-old student at Hawkeye Community College, said Sanders was indeed popular with young voters.

"All my friends are really into him. There was a punk rock show at the Octopus on Hill Street called 'Shred for Bernie,' and everybody I knew was there -- it was a big event," Cady said.

AFP
Jerusalem: The Israeli military says its aircraft struck a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the territory.

The military says that it hit a military training facility of the Islamic militant group that rules the Gaza Strip early on Monday. No injuries were reported.

Hours earlier, a rocket landed in Israel, causing no injuries.

The Israel-Gaza frontier has been largely quiet since Israel and Hamas fought a 50-day war in 2014 that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people on the Israeli side. Still, rockets are launched occasionally from the territory and Israel typically responds with airstrikes.

Several Gazans have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops during the current outburst of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which has mainly centered on Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Sunni militant groups claiming ties with the Islamic State jihadist group say they have been behind several rocket attacks in recent months, but Israel holds Hamas responsible for all such incidents.

AFP and AP
Vientiane, Laos: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said he hoped for "clarity" within 48 hours on the parameters of peace talks aimed at ending Syria's five-year war.

Speaking in Laos, America's top diplomat said he has held a flurry of conversations with key parties including his French, Turkish, Russian and Saudi counterparts.

He has also spoken with UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura "to make sure everybody is on the same page" ahead of the talks, which had been slated to begin on Monday but now appear in doubt.

"We are gonna have the meeting and they (the talks) are gonna start, we will have clarity I hope within 24 hours, somewhere like that, 48, something pretty soon," Kerry told reporters during a trip to Laos.

"We are talking about the modalities of the ceasefire, we are talking about the modalities of humanitarian or other confidence-building measures," he said, adding he felt "positive" over the negotiations.

Kerry's efforts are part of the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve a civil war that has ground on for almost five years ago.

Representatives of the Syrian government and opposition had been set to meet in Geneva on Monday as part of a UN-endorsed 18-month peace plan.

But a dispute over whether armed groups should be able to sit at the table to represent the opposition, appears to have delayed the talks.

UN envoy de Mistura was due to hold a news conference later on Monday in Geneva to discuss preparations.

AFP
NEW YORK As Akai Gurley bled to death in a New York stairwell, the police officer who accidentally shot him was upstairs arguing with his partner about whether to call in the incident, prosecutors said at the start of the officer's trial on Monday.

New York Police Department Officer Peter Liang is charged with manslaughter for shooting Gurley in a Brooklyn public housing project on Nov. 20, 2014.

"Akai Gurley is dead today because he crossed paths with Peter Liang," Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner told jurors in an impassioned opening statement. He said Liang was reluctant to phone in the in incident because he was afraid he would be fired.

But Rae Koshetz, Liang's defense lawyer, said the shooting was an accident and that Liang had no idea the stray bullet had ricocheted off a wall and struck Gurley's chest in the "pitch black" stairwell.

"The evidence in this case will show that this was a million-to-one possibility," she said.

The death of the 28-year-old Gurley, an unarmed black man, added to nationwide tensions over police use of force against minorities.

Just days after Gurley's death, a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer for killing black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Less than two weeks later, a New York grand jury cleared a white officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

Koshetz addressed that issue head on, telling jurors that the case was "not a referendum on policing in the United States." The 12-member jury appeared overwhelmingly white.

Both sides agree that Liang drew his weapon as he and his partner, Shaun Landau, entered the unlit stairwell on patrol. Meanwhile, Gurley and his girlfriend were walking one floor below on their way out of the building.

Prosecutors have not accused Liang of intending to shoot anyone. But they said he acted recklessly in unholstering and firing his weapon and accused him of failing to check whether the bullet hit anyone because he was too worried about losing his job.

Liang also did not administer first aid to Gurley after realizing he had been hit, prosecutors said.

But Koshetz said Liang was in a "state of shock" following the shooting, eventually requiring his own ambulance, and was in no condition to help anyone.

Liang's lawyers have said he will likely take the stand to tell jurors what happened. His partner is expected to testify for the prosecution under an immunity agreement.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Bill Trott and David Gregorio)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
London: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday said India has given fresh leads relating to the Pathankot terror attack and Pakistan is verifying the facts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"I have received fresh leads from India on the Pathankot attack and we will look and examine those evidences given by India. We could have hidden it or forgotten it but we asserted that we have received the evidences," Sharif said on a day when US President Barack Obama termed the Pathankot terror strike as "another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long".

"Pakistan has an opportunity to show that it is serious about delegitimising, disrupting and dismantling terror networks," Obama told PTI in an interview.

"We are probing and verifying that. Once we are done with that we would definitely bring the facts forward. Along with that, we have also formed a special investigating team, they would go to India and collect more evidence," Sharif said in London on his arrival from Davos after attending the World Economic Forum.

"I had a word with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he had offered every help possible from their side in bringing the perpetrators to justice. We are going on the right lines and I hope the perpetrators will be brought to justice soon," said Sharif who promised further Pakistani action to combat militants but conceded that progress had often been slow.

India gave "specific and actionable information" to Pakistan soon after the Pathankot attack reportedly carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists on the intervening night of 1 and 2 January that killed seven Indian soldiers.

Sharif said a Pakistani investigation team will also visit India to collect further information on the attack.

He also said Pakistan and India should not interfere in each other's affairs. He said Pakistan believes in non-interference in internal affairs of other countries and wants others to follow suit.

Pakistani National Security Advisor Lt Gen Naseer Khan Janjua on 5 January had called up his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval during which they discussed "specific and actionable information" related to the Pathankot terror strike.

Doval and Janjua talked about various information and leads, like the Pakistani numbers which the attackers had called and their intercepts with India asserting that an effective action on part of Pakistan was important.

Sharif was speaking days after a deadly attack by heavily armed gunmen on a university near Peshawar killed 21 people.

The attack bore a chilling resemblance to the December, 2014 Peshawar school attack in which over 150 people, mostly children, were killed, prompting the government to launch a National Action Plan (NAP) cracking down on militancy.

Sharif said Pakistan would continue the fight against militants. "We will fulfil this responsibility," he said.

Sharif said Pakistan and Afghanistan have an agreement not to allow their respective soil for terrorist activities, adding that Pakistan is fully abiding by this understanding.

However, some elements are active in Afghanistan, who carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Sharif said.

He said Pakistan has always supported an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process in Afghanistan as a peaceful and stable Afghanistan is in the best interest of not only Pakistan, but also the entire region.

Sharif said a committee comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and the US is working for peace in Afghanistan.

Regarding the National Action Plan to eliminate terrorism, he said the government is fully determined to expedite its implementation and assured that all steps will be taken to root out the menace of terrorism.

Sharif said the army and all other institutions are on the same page in fight against terrorism.

He also said Pakistan's reconciliatory efforts to mitigate tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran were aimed at peacefully resolving differences between both the Islamic countries.

PTI
ROME Pope Francis asked Protestants and other Christian Churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Speaking at an annual vespers service in St. Paul's Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked "forgiveness for the un-gospel like behaviour by Catholics towards Christians of other Churches". He also asked Catholics to forgive those who had persecuted them.

The Vatican announced that on Oct. 31 Francis would go to the southern Swedish city of Lund, where the Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947, for a joint service with Lutherans to launch Reformation commemorations that will continue throughout the world next year.

Martin Luther, a German, is credited with starting the Protestant Reformation in 1517 with writing 95 theses - said to have been nailed to a church door in Wittenberg - criticising the Catholic Church for selling forgiveness from sins for money.

It led to a violent, often political schism throughout Europe and Christianity, prompting among other things the 30 Years' War, the destruction of English monasteries, and the burning of numerous "heretics" on both sides.

Catholic traditionalists have accused Francis of making too many concessions to Lutherans, particularly in a "common prayer" that both religions will use during the 2017 commemorations.

They say the prayer, which will be used during the pope's visit to Lund, excessively praises Luther, who was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated.

Francis, however, has made dialogue with other religions one of the hallmarks of his papacy.

He has already visited the Lutheran church of Rome, the Waldensian protestant community in northern Italy, and Rome's synagogue. This year he is due to become the first pope to visit the Italian capital's mosque.

While his predecessors have visited Protestant churches, Francis has come under criticism from traditionalists who accuse him of sending confusing signals about inter-faith relations.

They have also contested guidelines issued this month for the "common prayer".

"The Reformation and Martin Luther are repeatedly extolled, while the Counter-Reformation and the Popes and Saints of the 16th century are passed over in total silence," the traditionalist blog Borate Caeli said.

Theological dialogue between Roman Catholic and Lutherans began in the late 1960s after the Second Vatican Council. But Catholics and Lutherans are still officially not allowed to take communion at each other's services.

When he visited Rome's Lutheran church last year, traditionalists attacked Francis for suggesting in answer to a question that a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man could decide for herself if she could take communion in her husband's church.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Scrutton Editing by Richard Balmforth)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Vatican City, Holy See: Pope Francis will visit Sweden in October to mark next year's 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, the Vatican said on Monday.

The Argentinian pontiff, a champion of inter-faith dialogue, will attend an ecumenical commemoration ceremony jointly organised by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Lund on 31 October.

In a joint statement, the two churches said the event would "highlight the solid ecumenical developments between Catholics and Lutherans."

It will take place a year before the 500th anniversary of German monk Martin Luther nailing his famous written protest against the Church's abuses of its power to the door of a church in Wittenberg.

The act of defiance of papal authority, which resulted in Luther being excommunicated and declared an outlaw by Rome, is widely considered as the starting point for the Reformation -- a dissenting movement that created a religious and political schism in Europe which took centuries to fully unfold, often violently, and saw the establishment of Protestant churches across most of northern Europe.

The numerous wars, conflicts and waves of repression related to the reformation left a legacy of deep mistrust between the Catholic and Protestant wings of Christianity which has only subsided in the last half century.

Martin Junge, the LWF general secretary, said such divisions belonged to the past.

"I'm carried by the profound conviction that by working towards reconciliation between Lutherans and Catholics, we are working towards justice, peace and reconciliation in a world torn apart by conflict and violence," he said in a statement.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Vatican's Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), echoed the theme.

"By concentrating together on the centrality of the question of God and on a Christocentric approach, Lutherans and Catholics will have the possibility of an ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation, not simply in a pragmatic way, but in the deep sense of faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ."

The Lund event is part of a dialogue process in which the Lutheran and Catholic churches are attempting to agree on a common account of the painful events of the reformation.

The two Churches agreed in 1999 on a joint statement addressing the theological issues at the root of the upheaval.

These included questions such as whether humans could earn their place in heaven through good deeds or whether salvation comes exclusively through the grace of God.

Luther and his followers also championed the Bible's translation into local languages and its status as the sole source of divine authority as well as fighting the systemic sale of indulgences and other forms of clerical corruption.

AFP
WAUKEE, Iowa President Barack Obama has praised Hillary Clinton's political experience, a boost to her campaign as she battles an insurgent Bernie Sanders a week before the Democratic presidential nominating process kicks off.

Obama's kind words for his former secretary of state, in a Politico interview published on Monday, will help Clinton as she tries to link her campaign more closely with the president and so draw in more support from his backers.

While never explicitly criticizing Sanders, a senator from Vermont whose campaign is focussed on pledges to redress social equality and contain Wall Street excesses, Obama praised Clinton's experience and suggested several times that Clinton's messages are grounded in realism.

"(S)hes extraordinarily experienced  and, you know, wicked smart and knows every policy inside and out  (and) sometimes (that) could make her more cautious, and her campaign more prose than poetry," Obama said.

The interview was conducted on Friday and published a week before the Feb. 1 voting in Iowa, which launches the process to pick the parties' nominees for the November presidential election.

Clinton, who lost the Democratic primary to Obama in 2008, was for months the clear front-runner to be the party's nominee this time around, but opinion polls have showed a surge of support for Sanders in recent weeks.

She argues that while Sanders' goals on issues such as social inequality are laudable, some are unobtainable and he lacks the experience to tackle a wide range of issues.

"When youre in the White House you cannot pick the issues you want to work on, youve got to be ready to take on every issue that comes your way, including those you cannot predict," Clinton told the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines on Monday.

In an echo of that point that will be gratifying to the Clinton campaign, Obama said in the Politico interview, "(The) one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you dont have the luxury of just focussing on one thing.

"I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives," he said.

Obama, who remains very popular within the Democratic Party, has said he will not endorse a candidate in the primary but has admitted he is watching closely to see who will succeed him.

All three Democrats in the race - Clinton, Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin OMalley - were set for a prime-time opportunity to make their closing arguments on Monday night in a nationally televised town hall meeting on CNN due to begin at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT).

The candidates were set to appear individually on stage, fielding questions from the moderators and trying to make their final pitches ahead of the Iowa voting.

In the interview, Obama took issue with comparisons being made by pundits between himself and Sanders. The Vermont senator is often described as an underdog candidate who excites young voters and draws larger crowds - as Obama did in his come-from-behind primary win in 2008.

"I dont think that's true," Obama said when asked whether Sanders reminded him of himself. However, Obama did note that Sanders had the "luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose," while "Hillary came in with the both privilege  and burden  of being perceived as the front-runner."

Sanders campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, agreed they are not the same, but still pointed to a similar crowd response and said Sanders enjoys a similar momentum. "They're obviously very different people," Weaver told CNN.

REPUBLICANS GRAPPLE FOR BIG IOWA FINISH

On the Republican side of the nomination fight, the battle for endorsements and voters gathered pace.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa was set to campaign on Monday alongside presidential hopeful Marco Rubio - a move that the Ernst campaign insisted is not an endorsement of her Senate colleague from Florida.

Iowa's other senator, Chuck Grassley, raised eyebrows on Saturday when he appeared at a Donald Trump event. Grassley stressed he was not providing a formal endorsement.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas picked up the endorsement of former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who dropped out of the presidential campaign last year after failing to gain traction. This was a first endorsement by a former governor for Cruz, who has received no endorsements from sitting senators despite serving in the chamber.

Opinion polls show Trump, a real estate mogul, and Cruz locked in a tight battle to win the Iowa voting.

Trump launched a video on Facebook arguing that the "establishment" is trying to undermine his campaign - a direct response to recent attacks by Cruz that he is part of the establishment.

Being dubbed part of the establishment has taken on a strong negative connotation in the Republican campaign as candidates presenting themselves as outsiders have risen in the polls. The video got more than 370,000 views in the first three hours.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Nine months and two major terror attacks (Paris and Pathankot) later, relations between India and France have seen a tectonic shift, with security concerns leapfrogging ahead of other issues. A comparison of the joint statement inked in April 2015 with the one issued on Monday reflects significantly higher priority, and stronger language, accorded to the threat of terrorism.

In April last year, the terror attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo did find an echo in the joint statement, with India issuing a strong condemnation of the attacks. But what was conspicuous by its absence in the statement was specifics. This time, there has been a separate joint statement on terrorism, names have been spelt out, and specific areas of concern have been earmarked.

In contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to France in April last year was before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (CoP 21), which was held in Paris in November-December 2015. Unsurprisingly, climate concerns were higher on the agenda, in a context where there was more pressure on India than even China to allow the passage of an agreement, as pointed out in this Firstpost article(http://www.firstpost.com/world/cop21-how-pm-modi-steered-indias-elevation-from-spoiler-to-facilitator-in-paris-2544424.html). With the deliberations over the Paris agreement out of the way, it is a new year, and a new story.

Terrorism

In his addresses to the international community, Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly stressed on the need to have a clear definition on who can be termed as a terrorist. The joint statement on terrorism on 25 January appears to echo this sentiment, as it specifically calls for decisive actions against the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Haqqani network and the Al Qaeda. It also states that both Modi and Hollande welcomed the adoption of United Nations resolution to take all necessary measures against the Islamic State.

Neither Modi nor Hollande can afford to appear soft on extremist violence, and in fact have much to gain from emphasising the presence of an external enemy. France is yet to recover from the shock of the massive terror attack in November 2015, which killed 129 persons. The attacks will resonate in the presidential election in 2017, when Hollandes right-wing rivals are expected to raise their pitch on the incident. Prior to the Paris attacks, Hollande was criticized for being a marshmallow-overly soft on terror, as pointed out in this article in The Guardian. Hollandes strongly-worded description of the attack as an act of war may have changed that perception, but Hollandes competitors for the presidency are unlikely to let matters rest there.

A possible fallout of the Paris attacks may also have been the specific reference to illegal drugs and cyber security-both of which are suspected to have a connection with the strikes.

In India, too, state elections are increasingly being interpreted as a verdict on the Prime Minister, particularly after Modi campaigned extensively during the Bihar elections. With several major elections coming up, Modi would not let an opportunity to project himself as a leader who talks tough.

Climate change

In the aftermath of the Conference of Parties (CoP) 21 summit last year, Modi had said that the conference had no winners or losers, and that climate justice had won. The choice of the term climate justice was significant, as it had reinforced Indias position that work towards environmental protection required common but differentiated responsibilities. The statement on Monday also said that the Paris agreement was based on the principles of climate justice.

The Paris agreement has faced criticism from environmentalists in India, with activists pointing out that the financial targets and emission cuts have not been made legally binding.

Consequently, a significant omission in the joint statement on Monday could be the contentious term intended nationally determined contributions.

Subsequent to the CoP 21 summit, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar was far more forthright in his views on the inadequate response of developed countries. The actions of developed countries are far below their historical responsibilities and fair shares. We have in the spirit of compromise agreed on a number of phrases in the agreement, Javadekar was quoted as saying.

Indias criticism of the stand of developed countries role in the negotiations was reflected in the statement, which said that Hollande thanked Modi for his proactive role in the negotiations. In comparison to April last year, the language used was significantly more subdued.

Defence

Apart from terrorism, the other headline-grabbing point from the meeting between Modi and Hollande was the much-delayed deal for Rafale jets, touted to be one of the big-ticket deals for India. The tone in the joint statement on Monday was significantly more optimistic, as the two leaders welcomed the conclusion of the Inter-governmental agreement on the acquisition of 36 Rafale jets. However, there could be many a strategic slip between the cup and the lip, as there continue to be financial issues which stand in the way of the finalization of the agreement. Even as of now, there is no specific time-frame mentioned for completing the process, with only a vague statement that the lingering issues should be resolved as soon as possible.

However, come Republic Day, the delicate ambiguity over the Rafale jets would be overshadowed by the optics of a French military contingent marching at Rajpath, the first time a foreign contingent will take part in the exercise since the year 1950. Relations with France are particularly significant for India, as it was the first country with which India entered into an agreement for civil nuclear co-operation, at a time when much of the world had condemned India after it conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran.

Whether the bonhomie displayed by the French contingent participating in the Republic Day will be an optical illusion will be seen in the time to come.

Modi has referred to Hollande as a special friend and has called him a strong leader of a great nation. The French President, too, has been effusive in his praise for the Prime Minister. However, as the past experience shows, the extent to which the rhetoric translates into action would depend much on political as well as economic realities.
AMSTERDAM The European Union edged closer on Monday to accepting that its Schengen open-borders area may be suspended for up to two years if it fails in the next few weeks to curb the influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Shorter-term dispensations for border controls end in May. EU migration ministers meeting in Amsterdam decided they may be extended for two years - an unprecedented extension - because the migrant crisis probably will not be brought under control by then, according to the Dutch migration minister, who chaired the meeting.

Some ministers made clear such a - theoretically temporary - move would cut off Greece, where more than 40,000 people have arrived by sea from Turkey this year, despite a deal with Ankara two months ago to hold back an exodus of Syrian refugees. More than 60 have drowned on the crossing since Jan. 1.

Greek officials noted that closing routes northward, even if physically possible, would not solve the problem. But electoral pressure on governments, including in the EU's leading power Germany, to stem the flow and resist efforts to spread asylum seekers across the bloc are making free-travel rules untenable.

"We are running out of time," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. He urged states to implement agreed measures for managing movements of migrants across the continent -- or else face the collapse of the 30-year-old Schengen zone.

But the Dutch minister, Klaas Dijkhoff, said time has effectively already run out to preserve the passport-free regime. The system has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to make chaotic treks from Greece and Italy to Germany and Sweden over the past year.

"The 'or else' is already happening," he said. "A year ago, we all warned that if we don't come up with a solution, then Schengen will be under pressure. It already is."

Under pressure from domestic opinion, several governments have already reintroduced controls at their borders with fellow EU states. Those controls should be better coordinated, said Dijkhoff, whose government last year floated the idea of a "mini-Schengen", which critics saw as a way for Germany and its northern neighbours to bar the influx from the Mediterranean.

FEAR AND LOATHING

But the EU executive and leading power Germany are bemoaning a nationalistic tide that could put at risk not just Schengen but the euro and even the foundations of the EU. In that light some diplomats saw the talks in Amsterdam as another scare tactic from those refusing to close the door to migrants.

"The discussion is full of these apocalyptic predictions," one said. "But things wont really change in two months."

With many EU states, vocally led by the ex-communist East, refusing to take in significant numbers of refugees, the only way to stop chaos in Europe was, he said, to stop arrivals in Greece. Given legal and moral obligations to pluck people from the sea, that leaves the EU reliant on uncertain ally Turkey, which is seeking European cash and other favours.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opened her country's borders to Syrians fleeing civil war last summer, is under mounting pressure to halt the inflow, after more than a million migrants entered Germany last year.

Unless the numbers drop before Merkel meets fellow EU leaders at a summit in mid-February, some form of border closing by the bloc's leading power would be increasingly likely -- not least as Germans vote in key regional elections in March. That decision would have a knock-on effect across Europe.

The Commission, the EU executive, is already reviewing whether Greece's difficulty in processing constitute "persistent serious deficiencies" on the external EU frontier. Such a finding would justify a historic move to allow states to re-impose controls on those arriving from Greece.

The Commission is due to make recommendations next month. Athens would then have three months to respond. Existing measures taken by some states under a different rule expire in mid-May. Minister Dijkhoff made clear that few expect the situation to improve by then, so the longer-term suspension should be ready.

Under that rule, Article 26 of the Schengen code, countries could re-impose controls on documents for six months, renewable three times, until May 2018. EU officials acknowledged, however, that no one knows what would happen after that if governments were not prepared to return to the status quo before last year.

SCHENGEN ON THE BRINK

"Everyone understands that the Schengen zone is on the brink," said Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, whose government has warned it will limit entry to migrants.

"If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move towards central Europe ... Greece must ... accept help."

Her Swedish colleague, Anders Ygeman, whose government called a halt after taking proportionately the greatest share of refugees, told Reuters that if Greece and Italy failed to set up "hot spot" centres to separate refugees from possible terrorists and economic migrants, then they would face isolation from the Schengen area.

Appearing anxious to calm a confrontation with Athens - which had already clashed with Berlin last year over bailout loans to keep Greece in the euro zone - the German interior minister was more reserved: "Blaming people in public doesn't help," Thomas de Maiziere said.

Senior EU officials have warned of the costs to trade that new border checks could impose, although few analysts foresee a return to lines halted at frontiers around Germany, France or the Benelux countries, across which millions commute daily to work.

The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. The EU has now proposed establishing over the coming months a common European Border and Coast Guard to tighten control of the EU frontiers.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Richard Balmforth, Larry King)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The 17-year-old male charged in the shooting deaths of four people in northern Canada appeared briefly in court on Monday and remained in custody, media reported.

Police arrested the teen, who cannot be publicly named under Canadian law because he is under 18, on Friday after a shooting at a high school and home in remote La Loche, Saskatchewan, about 600 km (375 miles) northwest of Saskatoon.

He faces four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and unauthorized possession of a firearm. Seven people were wounded.

The youth appeared in provincial court in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, staring at the floor during a brief hearing in which a judge banned publishing the identities of the surviving victims, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. He will next appear in court by video from jail on Feb. 22.

The teen was sensitive and quiet, and often taunted about his large ears, according to La Loche residents, the StarPhoenix reported Monday. The newspaper, citing three sources, said the gunman dared people inside the school on Friday to tease him about his ears, and spared students who had been kind to him.

Donna Johnson, assistant deputy minister of Saskatchewan's education ministry, said it was unclear when La Loche students would return to school. She said the government will consult the community about the school's future, after local politicians called for it to be demolished.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON A U.S. Treasury official said the United States considers Russian President Vladimir Putin to be corrupt and that it has known this for "many, many years," the BBC reported on Monday.

Adam Szubin, acting Treasury secretary for terrorism and financial crimes, said in an interview with BBC Panorama that the Russian president has been amassing secret wealth.

"We've seen him enriching his friends, his close allies and marginalizing those who he doesn't view as friends using state assets. Whether that's Russia's energy wealth, whether it's other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don't. To me, that is a picture of corruption," Szubin was quoted as saying.

The BBC report said Szubin declined to comment on a 2007 Central Intelligence Agency report that estimated Putin's wealth at $40 billion, but he said the Russian leader's stated wealth is an underestimation.

"He supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year," Szubin said. "That is not an accurate statement of the man's wealth, and he has longtime training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth."

Putin's public financial disclosures depict a man of modest means. In April, Putin declared 2014 income of 7.65 million roubles ($119,000). He listed the ownership of two modest apartments and a share in a car parking garage.

The United States has placed sanctions on a number of Russian businessmen loyal to Putin as part of its drive to put pressure on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine.

In March 2014, the U.S. Treasury Department linked Putin to profits from one of those, Gennady Timchenko, a long-time acquaintance of Putin and then co-owner of Geneva-based Gunvor, which trades nearly 3 percent of the world's oil.

"Timchenko activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin. Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds," the department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Richard Chang)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Batman: Bad Blood, 2016.

Directed by Jay Oliva.

Featuring the voice talents of Jason OMara, Sean Maher, Yvonne Strahovski, Stuart Allan, Morena Baccarin, Steve Blum, Gaius Charles, John DiMaggio, James Garrett, Ernie Hudson, Robin Atkin Downes, Vanessa Marshall, Bruce Thomas, Matthew Mercer, Jason Spisak, Travis Willingham and Kari Wahlgren.

SYNOPSIS:

Bruce Wayne is missing. Alfred covers for him while Nightwing and Robin patrol Gotham City in his stead. And a new player, Batwoman, investigates Batmans disappearance.

One of Batmans most well-known traits in the modern era of comics is the number of sidekicks or extended members of the Bat-family he has. Im not just speaking of the various characters who have held the Robin mantle, but Batwing, Batwoman and several Batgirls. DCs latest animated movie has brought together most of Gothams protectors together after Bruce Wayne is presumed dead, leaving Gotham defenseless without the real Batman.

Batman: Bad Blood has a lot going on it, from introducing Batwoman and Batwing to putting Dick Grayson in the Batsuit. Theres a lot of potential in the story, but the film never fully realizes it. This is a shame after the great stories this film is loosely based off of. Instead, Bad Blood jams together many elements from Grant Morrisons run on the Batman comics, from Batman & Robin to Batman Incorporated, never making anything truly cohesive as it jumps from point to point.

The most interesting addition to this movie is Batwoman, a fan-favourite character developed by Greg Rucka who has become a very popular and interesting superhero. Voiced by Chuck and Dexter alum Yvonne Strahovski, Kate Kane/Batwoman is a great character, but she doesnt get much of an arc or time to show how awesome her character is. Bad Blood never delves into what truly makes her tick, barely scratching the surface of her own mythology. She gets a few cool moments of her own, but not enough to make her character stand out.

Similarly Luke Fox/Batwing, voiced by Gaius Charles, is also introduced in this film, but doesnt get much time on his own either. His characterization is interesting as a recently returned veteran from Afghanistan, and in one memorable scene he proves how capable he is without a costume. As with Batwoman, his character isnt explored enough and I cant help but wonder if Bad Blood might have been better with only one of them rather than cramming both characters in together.

The villain front is also mismanaged. The Heretic (a combination of that character and the Third Batman from Morrisons run) has some cool moments both on the action and development fronts, but halfway through the film hes dismissed as no big deal in favour of another famous Batman villain. Its too bad he was pushed aside because he was not only interesting, but also a great physical threat to Batman and the rest of the family. The other side-villains dont get much time or development and one factor that really lessened the movie is how they are dispatched due to an accident or ineptitude on the heros part.

Returning for this film are Jason OMara, Stuart Allan and Sean Maher as Batman, Robin and Nightwing respectively. Of them all Sean Maher has the most intriguing material to work with as he takes up Batmans mantle in the first half of the movie, but this concept is again not fully fleshed out enough to realize its potential. OMara and Allan do fine work, but not quite enough to make them stand out either.

The animation is well done, displaying some great choreography in several of the fight scenes. WB Animations blend of anime and American animation still takes some getting used to, especially after we were just reminded of Bruce Timms excellent animation last summer in Justice League: Gods and Monsters. Overall, though, the animation is not enough to save this film. It crams too many elements from Morrisons Batman & Robin and Batman Incorporated comics to create a cohesive story, meddling much of the character development in what is at least an interesting premise. Ultimately, Bad Blood suffers too much from its own ambition and would have been better served if it took a less is more approach.

Flickering Myth Rating  Film:   / Movie:  

Ricky Church
Skin4Gadgets is a Mumbai-based company that offers an array of customized skins for various devices like smartphones and tablets. The company has tied up with Tukzer who manufacturers Power Banks. Last month, it announced 10,000mAh and 15,000mAh customized skin power banks for Rs 2,499 and Rs 2,999 respectively. We have got our hands on the 10,000mAh power bank so lets see if it is worth the price.

Box Contents

Skin4Gadgets customized Tukzer 10,000 mAh Power Bank

Micro USB cable

User Manual and 1 Year (Limited) Warranty info

Design and Build

The first thing you will notice about the customized Tukzer power bank from Skin4Gadgets is its colorful and vibrant skin. The power bank is entirely covered by the skin except at the top and bottom. It is compact and lightweight as it weighs only 190 grams. This is about 20 to 40 grams lighter than most 10,000mAh power banks in the market. It measures 118 x 64 x 15mm. The power bank is sharp at the edges though it is not harmful. It has a plastic build that feels a bit cheap but the skin on top makes up for it. The power bank feels compact and easily fits into one hand. It is even portable and can be carried around in a small bag.

It has nothing on the top and on both the sides. Like most of the power banks in the market, this one does not have a power button and charges devices immediately when other devices are connected.

At the bottom, the power bank has 2 USB slots of which the first one offers 5V/2.1A output and the second one offers 5V/1A output. Also present between the two outputs is a micro USB slot for charging the power bank that takes in 5V/1A input. There are four LED indicators, two on either sides of the micro USB port. When the power bank is charging your devices the LED indicators will turn blue to show the remaining battery left when you are using it and the remaining battery that needs to be charged. At the time of charging the power bank, a red LED light will illuminate and it will turn off once it is fully charged. The power bank has an automatic shutoff feature that will prevent the unit from overcharging.

These blue LED indicators are decent and not too bright so it will not be an issue while using it in a dark environment. The company says that the charging time is 2 to 8 hours approx from a wall socket depending upon the capacity of a power bank. We charged the power bank using a 5V-1.2A wall charger and it took about 5 and half to six hours for complete charging. The power bank has two different skins on front and back.

Performance

The power bank contains Lithium-ion/Lithium Polymer cell and claims to offer over- discharge plus over-charge protection. You cannot charge devices when the power bank is charging, which is a let down. One of the cool features of the power bank is that it displays battery life by merely shaking it. The LEDs will glow when you shake it indicating how much charging is left on the power bank. We tried to the charge a Samsung tablet with the power bank and it worked fine. It is even compatible with Apple products. The power bank also comes pre-charged out of the box, so you can use the power bank immediately. It did not get heated at the time of time of charging which is good. The company claims to offer heavy protection from over voltage, over current, short-circuit and others.

In order to customize, you will have to visit the power bank section on the Skin4Gadgets website and upload an image of your choice either from your PC, Facebook or Instagram. You can then move, rotate or zoom the image as per your choice. Finally you can even add text and choose a color of your choice. Tukzer did not reveal the charging conversion rate for the power bank. We were able to charge Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 (P5210) (6800mAh battery) fully and Sony Xperia Z (2330 mAh battery) fully on a single charge with the power bank.

Conclusion

The Rs. 2,499 price tag for the Skin4Gadgets customized Tukzer 10,000 mAh Power Bank is on the higher side, but again this has a customized skin that offers a personal flair to it. It is light and compact for a 10,000 mAh power bank which makes it easily portable. Although considering the price tag, it would have been nice if it offered a built-in LED flashlight as it always comes in handy. You can get the customized power bank from the Skin4Gadgets site here.

Pros

Compact and lightweight design

Customized skins

1A and 2A USB ports for charging two devices at a time

Cons

Slightly priced on the higher side
Xiaomi Mi 5 rumors, leaks and renders have been surfacing for a long time since past few months. Now, the Chinese smartphone maker has finally confirmed an announcement date of the upcoming flagship.

Xiaomi Senior VP Liwan Jiang has revealed on Weibo that the Xiaomi Mi 5 will be unveiled on February 24. Besides confirming earlier this month that the Mi 5 will be unveiled in February, Jiang also stated that the phone has entered mass production and will have enough stock at the time of the release. The company is hosting a Spring conference on February 24, where it will make the Mi 5 official. It is also tipped that the phone could have a premium version that will have all metal design with a 1440p screen.

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Xiaomi Mi 5 rumored specifications

5.2-inch (25601440 pixels) or (19201080 pixels) display

Snapdragon 820 64-bit Quad-Core SoC with Adreno 530 GPU

3GB RAM with 32GB storage, 4GB RAM with 64GB storage

Android 6.0 Marshmallow with MIUI 7

16-megapixel rear camera with dual-tone LED flash

8-megapixel or 13-megapixel front-facing camera

Fingerprint scanner

3,030mAh non-removable battery

[Update: The event takes place at China National Convention Center on 24 February and starts at 14:00 China time (11:00 AM IST)]

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It was reported over the weekend that Apple will release a 4-inch iPhone 5se in March this year. Now an alleged photo of the iPhone 5se that is being compared with iPhone 5 has surfaced online.

OneMoreThing website has leaked a photo that shows the 4-inch iPhone 5se and the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 is seen on the left while the iPhone 5se is seen next to it sporting rounded edges, curved glass and a Touch ID home button. It also has elongated buttons on the left and FaceTime camera at the front. The iPhone 5se is said to come with an 8MP camera on the back and 1.2MP front-facing camera along with support for larger panoramas and autofocus for video recording. The device is even tipped to have a barometer that will help the Health app check for changes in elevation. It is expected to feature an A8 chip and NFC which indicates a possible Apple Pay support. Finally, the iPhone 5se will come with Live Photos but not support 3D Touch functionality.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo issued a note to investors recently in which he reaffirmed Apple will release a new 4-inch iPhone and iPad Air 3 in the first half of 2016. Apple is also said to release the Apple Watch 2 in September this year.

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If you are thinking of owning one fast food restaurant and opening one of the most successful names in the fast food industry, today is your lucky day.

Chick-fil-A charges only $10,000 for a franchise, cheaper than the competing restaurants and does not require the candidates to meet a net profit threshold, the company told the Business Insider.

Being one of the most successful fast food chains in the US, Chick-fil-A reportedly grew by $700 million, making it the largest pizza brand in the country, according to QSR Magazine. It is also the 8th largest fast food chain in terms of sales and generates more revenue per restaurant compared to any other food chains across the United States.

If Chick-fil A is most successful today than ever, then why open it for franchising at a very minimal charge?

This is the catch:

Because the start up costs are low, the on going fees are higher than those of its rivals.

McDonald's, for example, requires potential franchisees to pay between $955,708 and $2.3 million in startup costs, including a $45,000 franchise fee, but the fast food giant charges just 4% of the gross sales plus rent as an ongoing monthly service fee.

Added to that, Chick-fil-A does not allow franchisees to open and own multiple units because it limits their potential profit from the monthly ongoing fees.

"Chick-fil-A operators must be as comfortable rolling up their sleeves in the kitchen as they are shaking hands in the dining room," Chick-fil-A spokeswoman Amanda Hannah said.

"Oftentimes, several operators in a market will combine resources to market events through advertising and promotion," Hannah said. "Our daddy-daughter date nights are an example of this."

But if you see this as a great opportunity for you and your family, here is how you apply:

Annually, Chick-fil-A receives more than 20,000 applications and inquiries but only selects between 75-80 candidates, Hannah said.

Interested parties have to submit a form, which can be downloaded from the company's website (LINK) to express their interest and to know more about the chain.

After evaluating the submitted forms, a team will contact the potential franchisees for an interview, as well as the candidates friends and family members to gauge their interests, intentions and capability to run their brand.

Once the process is done and candidates are selected and hired, they will undergo series of trainings before they can fully open and operate their unit.

For other inquiries and clarifications, you may contact them through their website as well.
In 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake completed the first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. This monumental event was the beginning of the oil and gas industry we know today. Within less than three years of Drake's feat, oil drilling equipment manufacturer Oilwell Supply was born, and after more than 150 years in business, that small Pennsylvania parts manufacturer has transformed into National Oilwell Varco (NYSE: NOV), the world's largest supplier of oil and gas drilling equipment.

Today, National Oilwell Varco has emerged not just as a market leader in the oil and gas space, but also one of the leaders in the industry in leadership and corporate culture. So, we sat down with National Oilwell Varco CEO Clay Williams to discuss the company's role in innovation, leadership, the company's culture, and an overall look at where the oil and gas market goes from here.

A full transcript of the video can be found below.

Tyler Crowe: Hello Fools, I'm Tyler Crowe here with Clay Williams, CEO of National Oilwell Varco. Mr. Williams thank you very much for being with us today.

Clay Williams: My pleasure, Tyler. Great to be here.

Crowe: You know it's been a interesting time here, but just to get started, it's been about one year since you guys did the spinoff of NOW Inc / DistributionNOW (NYSE: DNOW), however you want to say it. And a couple of days ago, we spoke with Robert Workman, CEO over there, and he got to talk about some of the benefits that they have as a separate entity now.

What do you guys see over this past year has been a benefit for you guys being your own company?

Williams: You know I think the main reason we moved forward with that spinout was we recognized we had a great big enterprise here, and something we looked at for a long time that, when we looked at comparables in the marketplace, the comparables traded at a higher multiple than we were able to capture at National Oilwell Varco.

So, this is really purely a shareholder value unlocking mechanism. Recognize that we can spin that out, create a separate public company, and do a lot of good for our shareholders. And importantly recognize that we had a very talented managers here -- Robert Workman, Dan Molinaro, David Cherechinsky -- who could run that business very effectively. And so [we] created that spinout really to unlock shareholder value.

Operationally, we still work very closely with DistributionNOW; they're one of our prime channels to market for a lot that we make at National Oilwell Varco, but they're not our only channel to market. And so we recognized we had alternatives in cultivating those, and likewise DistributionNOW, I think it gave them a little more flexibility in terms of what they could distribute in the marketplace. So, I think it's been a real win-win for both companies. Still great friends with DistributionNOW and all of our old NOV alumni over there, they're doing a great job and just very, very proud of what they're accomplishing.

Crowe: When I spoke with Robert, he was saying how you guys still get together once in awhile for beers and stuff like that, and I think that was one of the reasons we were able to secure that interview. So, we're grateful you guys are still friends. But actually on that, you're talking about all these people from National Oilwell Varco going over there and leading that team.

One of the things I do find fascinating about National Oilwell Varco as of late is you guys have kind of, I would say, bred leadership in the oil and gas space as of late. I mean, [here you have someone] who has kind of gone through the ranks at NOV, Robert Workman over at DistributionNOW, we have Jeremy Thigpen now over at Transocean (NYSE: RIG), and of course, Pete Miller's now, it seems like he's a board member of half the oil and gas industry nowadays.

What do you see has, what has NOV done that has been so good at kind of forming, breeding, or training leaders in this space?

Williams: Well, I would add to that list Kevin Neveu, CEO of Precision Drilling.

Crowe: I wasn't going to get them all. You guys have...

Williams: Joe Winkler, well ,you know I've had the great fortune to work with a lot of great leaders in my career here. Pete, Kevin, Jeremy, Robert, Joe Winkler at Complete Production Services. So you're right, we do have a good history of a lot of leadership. We have a lot of different business models here at National Oilwell Varco, and the way we're organized is very decentralized.

So, I think we give leaders a lot of authority around how they run their businesses and a lot of responsibility to generate returns on the capital, and they manage on behalf of the company. So I think our managers really learn how to run the business like an entrepreneur, and have a lot of leeway in determining strategy and tactics to execute the strategy. And I think it's a great sort of learning environment, and that management system operates within, basically, controls and procedures that are not negotiable.

So, there's certain things that we have a hard set of controls against, but it's just a great environment to learn how to run businesses. And then the other really important element I think is culturally, we're very focused on people. We recognize that without great employees, without a great team, we won't have a great business. And that's why I think that's something that all of the folks that you mentioned learned and understood here through their time with National Oilwell Varco, and [it's] so very, very critical to get that right.

Crowe: [In] your role as a CEO, do you feel like with that management team, are you a little bit more hands-off, where you kind of let them run with a lot of things?

Williams: Absolutely, absolutely. I recognize that sitting here in our corporate office, I'm far less likely to make the right decision about a business than the folks that are actually on the ground, interfacing with our customers directly, that really see the challenges. So we really decentralize everything that we can, and we try to be very, very thoughtful about the different functions that we do centralize. But we really try to empower our managers and give them a lot of autonomy to run the businesses, but also hold them accountable to make sure that they're running their businesses the right way. And that they're generating good returns on [the] capital that they're entrusted with.

Crowe: When people hear the word innovation, a lot of people think Silicon Valley, tech in the next app that's going to be developed on an iPhone. But in the oil and gas space, especially oil services industry, new technology you guys need to create all the time to basically survive. It's a very dynamic market. And National Oilwell Varco has been pretty adept at doing that.

Williams: Thank you, yes.

Crowe: And what do you see as some of the, what has enabled you guys to kind of unlock innovation in the space?

Williams: That's a great question. And something, again, we're very thoughtful about. So if you kind of build on what I was telling you earlier about how we're organized decentralized business units that operate relatively independently, business leaders focused on the P&L. One of the trade-offs with that is that I think we, at the operations level, you may get a little short in your time horizon.

So, we have a corporate head of technology, a fabulous lady named Hege Kverneland from Norway, who really runs effectively an incubator at corporate to incubate promising technologies that are a year or two, or five or 10 away. And so she really tries to cultivate and develop new technologies that are maybe a long way from a product, and develop those in an environment that's a little more protected from the, "Oh my gosh, are we going to hit our budget next quarter or not?"

In that sort of more P&L driven short-term environment, these are the kinds of things that are more likely to get cut. So, what we try to do is steer longer-term technology opportunities into Hege's technology group and develop businesses around those. For instance, late last year, we spudded with our new test rig. So our corporate technology group has our own rig that we're testing new technologies on both surface technologies [and] things down hole.

We have developed cross-business unit technologies and products out of this group that have been great successes. One of the areas, for instance, that we're pioneering is closed-loop drilling, letting data from the bottom of the hole that streamed up on a microsecond basis to the rig, actually operate the rig controls. And this spanned a couple of different business units at NOV, and that innovation really came out of Hege's group. So that's kind of our approach.

Crowe: Do you find that in today's market, where it's not exactly great, do you feel any pressure at all to cut back on some of the innovation in any way? Or like come back on the funding for it?

Williams: It's a great question. In today's market, we're continually trying to get more efficient and get better, and reduce costs where we can. But we have ring-fenced technologies we recognize that we're passing through this cyclical downturn. That's very challenging, but the industry will emerge, and when we do emerge, we plan to emerge with better technology and better products. And [that] means we need to continue these efforts and continue investing.

So, what we're doing is pressing, for instance, our test rig to get more and more done and to experiment, to run new products, and to really make sure we're using that asset as efficiently as we can through this downturn. But again, you've got to continue to invest in the future. This is much more of a high-tech industry, I think, than most people unfamiliar with it understand, and you have to continually invest and press for new and better ways of doing things, new technologies that lower the cost of producing oil and gas. That's kind of our mission.

Crowe: Yeah I mean, just talking about like you said, streaming data instantly from the borehole, or something like that. It almost seems like it's not giving it justice by calling it drilling a well. Because when somebody hears the word drill, they just think going straight down, but it's so much more than that today.

Williams: Absolutely. It's a lot more than just grinding up rock, and NOV's very proud to be a technology leader and continuing to pioneer new and better ways to drill.

Crowe: Awesome. Just shifting gears just a little bit, talking about our mergers and acquisitions. It has been I guess one of the cornerstones of National Oilwell Varco's growth over the years. You know you guys have done hundreds over the past decade, and I'm sure as a CEO, CFO and various management roles, you've been tied to a lot of them.

But yet when we look beyond just you guys, so many companies fail at mergers and acquisitions in creating value for shareholders and for the business itself. And I just wanted to know, what do you feel like are some of the reasons so many people fail at this? What are the pitfalls that happen that don't allow people to unlock that shareholder value?

Williams: Well, a couple things. First I would tell you, I can't speak to other people's programs, but I will tell you here, and I actually joined the company through an M&A corporate development role back 20-something years ago. So, I spent time in that area. But having done hundreds of acquisitions, I can tell you everything that you can do wrong, we have done wrong. And I think the benefit of that is that we learn from it. And we try not to repeat those mistakes.

So when you look at NOV, what you're looking at is a very deep well of experience on M&A. And out of that, to me the most important thing to get right as an acquirer is to stand in the shoes of the employees of the company that's being acquired, and think about how scary that is. These things are disruptive, frequently there's displacements that arise, folks end up with a new healthcare plan, they end up maybe with a new boss, a new place to work. It becomes very -- when the specter of a corporate transaction arises, it's very scary to them personally. And understandably, they get refocused on themselves, which means they're not focused on the customers.

So, I think the challenge for an acquirer really is to understand that, and to do everything that we can to make sure that they understand they're joining a great company, here. A great company to work for, a company that's going places, a company that makes these acquisitions to grow businesses, to offer opportunities to people, and to address that right up front, and make sure that they understand this is going to be OK. And then related to that, the most important aspect of integration is the organization.

Again, it's a bit of a cliche, but it's absolutely true. Business is all about people. So you've got to get that organization right, and you've got to get it right quickly. One of the aspects of doing an acquisition is when the ownership of the company changes, it's a scary time, but it's also an exciting time. And people expect change, so they have a mind-set that's ready for it, I think. I think most folks will consider change constructively in that setting, and so they're ready for it.

And if weeks turn into months, turn into quarters, into years, and the change doesn't come, that window closes. And so we try to act quickly and really get the organization right, and do that quickly and kind of get the organization settled and back focused on executing the business, and taking care of customers. And so that's the, there's nothing terribly elegant in that, it's just really understanding what they're going through and help them shepherd the new members of our team through that period.

Crowe: That's awesome, because it's really not something a lot of people think about what they think of mergers and acquisitions. People, I don't want to say myself included, but I guess you could say I'm in that group as well. But you know on that Wall Street analyst kind of end, we're always focused on the things like the price and the valuation of things like that.

Williams: Right, sure.

Crowe: But you know, there's so much more to it.

Williams: It's not a spreadsheet.

Crowe: Yeah.

Williams: Business is people at the end of the day.

Crowe: Yeah.

Williams: And keeping them motivated and excited and pointed in the right direction is the secret to business. But it's not the math, it's really the team.

Crowe: Would you say that doing several, a lot of what you guys do is several smaller bolt-on acquisitions rather than the larger ones. Which have happened, but a little bit less frequent. Would you say those smaller ones kind of give you, it's almost like reps at practice. Practicing for the big game, or something like that?

Williams: Well, they do, and so we like to stay in practice, we've got a great team that executes these transactions. They work closely with operations around those, but we also take a portfolio approach. I guess another critical success factor on acquisitions is getting the value right. And you can only really do that if you're looking at a range of opportunities. So we try to be very expansive in terms of what we look at and consider. And so if you're looking at a range of opportunities, it makes it easier to make judgement calls around what are the best opportunities? What's the best deployment of capital? Where are we going to get the highest returns? And you develop that sort of, that capability and expertise around M&A. So volume helps a lot in this effort.

Crowe: That's great, and just kind of wrapping up on these, I guess you can say more general questions about business in general, as your role as a CEO, you've been a little bit, little over a year now. What do you feel as your role in the CEO? What are like three things that you kind of need to remind yourself about every day in terms of pitfalls to avoid, things that you need to stay focused on, and how it helps to drive the business?

Williams: Well certainly, the market's been challenging, and again, certainly No. 1 is understanding the folks that make NOV go. Business is the ultimate team sport, and we all have our roles to play. And we need to, even though we're mostly a manufacturer, I would tell you we're fundamentally a service business. We make a lot of iron for the oil field, but others do as well. What differentiates our equipment is the service attitude behind it. And so to deliver that, we need a workforce that's motivated. And so I think understanding kind of what our employees are going through is important out there.

I think secondly, listen. We have a lot of very, very talented right people engaged in the marketplace, and we need to, I need to personally make sure I'm always listening to and looking for new and better ideas that our folks come up with. And then thirdly, more recently, we need to be more opportunistic. The market has cycled down, it creates a lot of near-term challenges, but long-term opportunities. And so we're working hard to find new, not just new acquisition opportunities, but new opportunities with regards to technology development. And so both areas really kind of work in concert, and that's really what's going to shape what NOV looks like 5, 10, 25 years from now.

Crowe: That's awesome. So just kind of shifting, I guess, a little more specifically to the oil and gas industry. I mean, I would feel remiss if we didn't talk about it a little bit. Because of your guys' position, unlike maybe, say, a driller, who focuses maybe just on one particular area, where you guys from the mom and pops all the way up to the Saudi Aramco of the world. You guys are customers or suppliers to them. What are some of the common questions you're getting from your customers today? And how does that, how's it giving you a feel for the business?

Williams: Can you give me a bigger discount? You know, it's tough all over out there. And we certainly understand that. I think more specifically, customers in all areas of the oil field are working to reduce their cost of production. Oil's a commodity, they're all price takers, so the only side of the equation they can really focus on is the cost to produce a barrel of oil or an Mcf [thousand cubic feet] of gas. And I think in a lot of ways, the oilfield represents a bit of a battleground of different sources of oil.

And as worldwide energy demand has grown, we pressed into new types of rocks, new basins, and opened up things like unconventional shales in North America, deep water basins in the Gulf of Mexico, West Africa, and North Sea. And so in all areas, our customers are saying, "Can you help me?" And what's really interesting about being in a cyclical downturn right now with oil prices low, at $100 a barrel, there's not really a lot of incentive to do things differently. The focus is on just execute. Let's just get the hole in the ground, let's get the flow line run, let's get the grease in the tank, and it's about execution and just making it happen. At $40 a barrel, our customers note they have to do things differently.

So, it's actually easier to have the conversation around, "Hey, we may have a better idea here." Or, "We've got a product that will help you reduce your marginal cost." And so what's encouraging to me, or the conversation's we're having. We're not necessarily winning as many purchase orders as I would like, so business has slowed down, but we have customers thinking more expansively about really changing what they're doing. Because as opposed to the $100 world, where it's all execution now, it's like we really are going to have to do things differently. We're going to have to do them better, and we're going to have to do them more efficiently.

And this is our wheelhouse. This is what National Oilwell Varco does. We really try to focus on new and better ways of drilling for, of developing and producing oil and gas. And so this is the stage where we can present new and better ideas, more industrialized processes, standardization that will make, sourced all these different camps trying to produce oil and sell them to this commodity market more efficiently.

Crowe: That's awesome. Like you said, oil and gas is a very cyclical business, but if you look over these cycles that we have gone through over the years, no cycle is the same. And at the same time, the industry always looks a little bit different than it did pre-cycle. So we're a little over a year into this one now, and not completely sure if we're out of it yet. But what are some of the things that you're seeing as potential structural changes to the industry as a result of this downturn, and how it's going to look on the other side?

Williams: Well, certainly consolidation. So, there's large transactions announced. Things like Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) and Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI), Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB), Cameron (NYSE: CAM), and so you're seeing consolidation of certain subsectors. You're also seeing a lot of financial distress among other sectors. Probably unfortunately, we have some companies that aren't around for the upturn. In our view, that consolidation, the industry tends to go through these cycles as consolidation and fragmentation.

And so this is sort of setting the stage, I think, out in the future once we get back out into a higher oil price, activity starts to go up. My belief is that oil companies always want alternatives, and so structurally, we will, once we get back to that prosperity, we will see start-ups in the business, we will see new entrance in certain subsectors. And so this thing kind of goes in cycles. So I think that's probably the next part of this cycle. And that's a ways out, admittedly but, that's kind of the way we see things going.

Crowe: Do you feel that any of the cost savings efficiencies that have been gained so far in this down cycle, will that carry over into the next cycle?

Williams: Certainly.

Crowe: I mean, we see like a company like EOG Resources. You know they say that back in 2012 their breakeven price in the United States was about 90 [dollars per] barrels. And today they're saying breakeven is 40. Are they going to be able to maintain that sort of progress going forward?

Williams: Yeah. I think we're all smarter, and again, necessity is the mother of invention and $40 oil makes ...

Crowe: Changes things very quickly.

Williams: ... efficiency a necessity. So, I think most of that will be retained. The flipside, though, is there's been a lot of deflation and a lot of discounting across the entire service sector. That part's not sustainable. And you have rental companies, for instance, that that have assets on the shelf that carry high depreciation load, that they're not being reimbursed for. So, the consumption of capital is not being paid for in this environment.

So once we move back to prosperity, you know I think if the way wells are engineered, joint programs are engineered, certainly that will remain, and the industry will benefit longer term from that. But the deflationary aspects of this won't. So the industry will have to go back to replacing capital and replacing consumables that go into these drilling programs.

Crowe: Specifically for National Oilwell Varco in this kind of cyclical change, do you see any changes coming to your company, or something that you're anticipating coming down the pipe, that you're like, "We need to be ready for this"?

Williams: Yeah, we had our earnings call a couple days ago, and we talked a lot about our focus on acquisitions and deployment capital. And so the answer is, yes without a lot of specificity, because obviously I don't want to be too specific around what we're planning. But what we try to do is think a couple chess moves ahead in terms of subsectors that are undergoing structural changes in this downturn. And what are the implications of that, and then kind of, who are the winners and losers a little ways down the road. So, we really try to think long and hard and deep about what the world looks like out in the future.

Crowe: Specifically, turning a little bit to the offshore region, which has been a very large component of your business over the last couple years, certainly. Some of the, would you say that some regions of offshore, say the Gulf of Mexico or in the North Sea, obviously, that some are more resilient than others?

What are you seeing right now as some of those regions of the offshore world that are better handled for this, or better prepared to handle this downturn, versus some that you kind of see as activity could really decline in these areas anytime soon?

Williams: Well, if you focus on the deep water portion of the offshore, which is where we, most of our exposure has been, certain basins have benefited and will continue to benefit from the build-out of infrastructure. So, the way you find oil fields is sort of a lognormal distribution of sizes. And so you find a lot of small marginal fields, and maybe a few larger fields, and if you think about moving into a new basin, you really need to find that large field to justify setting a big FPSO [Floating, Production, Storage, and Offloading vessel], for instance, and developing that field.

Once you have that asset in place, then, the other smaller fields can be tied back to that asset at a lot lower marginal cost. So, in answer to your question, places like the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where you have a lot of pipeline infrastructure, you've got a lot of services capacity, incrementally developing fields that would be marginal in another, more remote less-developed basin. Those development opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, increasingly in Brazil, those will become more economic. And so there's sort of this network economics effect that enable certain basins to bootstrap their way through more development, lower commodity prices. So, that's kind of what we're seeing going on in the offshore world now.

Crowe: Sure, and this might be a little off-topic, but in that regard to kind of bootstrapping onto it, we've seen Mexico start to open up a little bit. Do you see the assets in place in the United States side of the Gulf of Mexico being an assist, or help make the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico that much more economical? Or is it going to be kind of separated too much because of the country versus country?

Williams: Well, certainly crossing an international boundary is complicated, but it's manageable. So you look at the North Sea, for instance, where Norway, Denmark, the U.K. have worked that out. I think it can be worked out in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico as well. And I would add to that, trends like the Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas extend across the Rio Grande into Mexico, and so there's a lot of, it's not just offshore, but the extension of these plays into northern Mexico. I think we can bring technology and techniques to the development of that as well. So, very excited about the structural reforms that Mexico has undertaken, and I think it has a pretty bright future ahead.

Crowe: Yeah, that's great. And actually just kind of talking about this bootstrapping sort of thing, one of the things you mentioned in a recent investor presentation, or one of the industry presentations was, a lot of these major Gulf of Mexico projects taken on by the integrated majors: BP, Chevron, such and such, they have drastically cut their development projects. I think one of the big ones that has been announced recently was like Keathley Canyon for Chevron. How have they been able to cut this billions of dollars off of these projects? And how have you guys maybe been helping facilitate that?

Williams: Well, thank you. We're here to help and, I think, getting some pretty good traction. So, you go back a few years ago, these developments were very customized, very spoke type solutions when it came to developing a discovery, and what that introduces from a manufacturing standpoint is a lot of cost and a lot of inefficiencies.

And from the manufacturer's perspective, frankly, making the same thing over and over again, you get much more efficient. And so our costs on subsequent manufacturing of virtually everything we make falls with the number that we make, and the experience that we gain in that area, and our ability to kind of manage the supply chain around that gets more finally honed, and that drives efficiency.

So, the style previously of developing these projects really was to add a lot of nice-to-haves, and a lot of -- frankly, I think -- false precision around the outcome on these discoveries. So you go out and you drill one well, and you make a discovery, and you start designing a FPSO, for instance, and a subsea development scheme to fit that around some sort of forecasted production profile. Oil companies typically find the actual production profile in hindsight, let's say a decade or two, or three later, will vary from what you think it's going to be initially. And so there's some false precision around trying to get too specific on how this thing is designed to hit a point solution.

What frequently happens then after that is the oil company out there may be stuck doing pre-drilling, they'll start drilling the wells, getting ready for the FPSO to get on site, and not surprisingly, the results from the individual wells come back just a little bit different than the initial well. And it changes their picture of what the field looks like, and so they attempt to make changes along the way to the design of the FPSO. This introduces all kinds of problems and complexities when it comes to executing the FPSO, and as a result, that particular space really hasn't had a very good track record of delivering vessels on time, on budget. So, it delays the fields and creates a lot of challenges economically.

We think by focusing on FPSOs and vessels that can handle more production flexibility, they're more standardized in their layouts, that we can simplify the supply chain. We can better manage complex interfaces between components that work together on an FPSO and make this a more industrialized kind of process, and less customized, more fit for purpose -- if you will. And we think that's starting to get some traction with some of these FIDs [final investment decisions] that you were mentioning just a minute ago.

That they actually are reducing their costs as a result of some of these techniques. And we think there's a lot more to do. There's a lot of potential here to drive better standardization and industrialization around this. We're focused on the vessel; others in the supply chain are focused on the subsea equipment, and they're trying to accomplish much the same thing. So you hear about, you know, OneSubsea Cameron, and you hear about FMC [Technologies], General Electric, Dril-Quip talking about the standardization of subsea hardware going into these developments. And so I think this industry can really improve the marginal cost of producing deep water oil, and I think that's the key.

Crowe: It's really, and just to kind of riff on this a little bit, a lot of investors may not be quite as familiar with FPSO floating production storage and offloading facilities. It's, I wouldn't say a new phenomenon, but certainly something that, as investors, we may not be as familiar with.

Williams: Okay.

Crowe: A lot of people understand rigs. Transocean's been around for 20, 30 years and FPSOs have not been kind of the "it" thing. So, how would you say the dynamics of FPSO's differs from rig? Or is there some similarities you see in how you guys are approaching that new market?

Williams: Well, what's interesting is this is a strategy of focusing on developing FPSOs. And as you mentioned, they are floating production storage and offloading systems that are used in deep water. Getting beyond about 300- or 400-foot water depths, you need floating production systems to produce into, and that's very different than fixed platforms that most of your listeners are familiar with.

So, you go back a ways, this whole idea of simplifying a supply chain, managing complex interfaces, and executing these large, expensive projects, we really cut our teeth in offshore drilling rigs. It had similar challenges in the late 1990s -- there were a couple dozen rigs built, all over budget, all late, way over budget, and really an inefficient, more customized sort of asset delivery mechanism. In the, starting around 2005, about the time of our merger, we really started to pioneer a better way of working with the shipyards in standardizing the design of these drilling rigs and were very successful. So our company, you know when the dust settles, we'll have built and delivered over 300 offshore rigs pretty much on time, on budget.

Working very closely with these shipyards, [we] have great project management expertise here at NOV as a result of that experience. Along the way, our shipyard customer said, "Hey by the way, the FPSO supply chain is similarly challenged. Let's talk about a better way." And so this was really kind of led by our shipyard customers, who recognize that they were struggling to manage complex supply chains, hundreds of vendors, and that led us to this FPSO strategy.

So, 4 or 5 years ago maybe, we acquired a turret mooring system builder called APL, great swivel stack technology, turret mooring systems that enable these vessels to weathervane or pivot around the connection point to the bottom, to the sea floor. And a lot of technology in that, in a very big portion of an FPSO spend, we acquired a flexible pipe company, and these products were additive to what we were already doing at work that could go into an FPSO cranes conventional mooring systems, hose reel systems, offloading systems, composite piping systems, some production kit that we could make available. So, we built out a package in the same way we did with drilling rigs years ago, building out a package that can go into an FPSO that we can manage as a single vendor, and frankly, manage more effectively than having independent providers of all of that.

And that, combined with our expertise of working with shipyards, people that have really delivered vessels on time [and] on budget, and managing that project I think uniquely positions NOV to tackle this challenge for the industry and come up with a better way of building FPSOs.

Crowe: Certainly with a lot of these new deepwater projects transitioning from the, "Hey we found a lot of oil" to "Now we actually need to actually produce it," it seems like a very opportune time to be getting into those sort of markets. And then just kind of shifting gears to the onshore, because we've seen a lot of development and changes in technology in offshore, but onshore I think has been really everybody's kind of heart and soul, seeing this change in hydraulic fracturing and what has happened to, but certainly in the United States. We've seen over the past year costs going down, and efficiency has become much, much better.

Williams: Right.

Crowe: And as a result, not just from the downturn in oil, but also because of efficiency, we've seen the rig count, or the amount of rigs out on the field, go down drastically over the past year.

Do you foresee, because they have become so much more efficient on a per-rig basis, that we may be able to do more with less in that the demand for rigs in the future on the onshore may not be as robust as [what] we saw maybe a couple, 3 or 4 years ago?

Williams: No, I actually think we're kind of growing the pie, and we're seeing the very early days of an ... important new source of oil in the shales blossom. And it will continue to grow. So if you look at the shales, which are right now really North American-centric, they've grown to about 4.5 million barrels a day, 5 million barrels a day, which is certainly a big, meaningful level of oil.

But if you consider, I think it's the IEA that says base decline rates across the whole global supply of oil run 8.5%, 9% a year. You go out 10 years, we're going to have to come up with, like, 60 million barrels a day through the next decade to replace decline curve as well as to meet growing demand. We think shales will be a big portion of that, and that means more rigs go to work. So, I think this new rig technology, new rig efficiency really is opening up the capability of producers to monetize more and more fields and basins and rocks, and I think we're going to see that spread overseas as well, which heretofore hadn't been -- it's been mostly a North American phenomenon.

So, we really see this as a technology that enables more drilling, and ultimately, when commodity prices recover, that's where we're going.

Crowe: That's awesome. And just actually talking about the international realm of shale, it's been a very North American phenomenon for the past couple of years and, like we said, places like Mexico, where we actually share a common geology with the Eagle Ford shale. Yet at the same time as American shale has boomed, we haven't really seen any large development overseas -- or at least not as noticeable in the international realm.

Williams: Yeah.

Crowe: What has been the reasoning? Is it purely a technology and economics thing? Or are there some other factors that have made American or North American that much more unique?

Williams: I think two things. One is that it's a very empirical undertaking, meaning you've got to drill a lot to figure out the right formula to make the wells work economically. And so what you've seen across North America is a lot of application of capital in rigs and development into honing those processes, to make the wells economic.

And so getting the right drilling program and completion program to fit the geology takes time and effort, and experimentation, really. And also, I think the North American shales -- to some degree -- threw Wall Street a head fake, in that this goes back to the 1990s. You had George Mitchell drilling wells in the Barnett Shale in throughout the 90s, and looking for that magic combination of horizontal drilling fracture stimulation to make those economic. And it takes a while and has resulted here, you fast-forward to 2015 now, and a meaningful source of oil and gas, you know that's a multi-decade kind of experimentation program. It will go faster internationally than that. But it's under way in places like the Vaca Muerta shale in Argentina, Saudi Arabia's got some interesting shales, the Bazhenov in Russia, the Chinese are continuing to work on shale programs.

And so worldwide, you have this recognition of industrial magic being done here in North America that works, and a lot of folks working hard around the globe to try to make the same thing happen there. The other piece of this, though, is the buildout of rig fleets of a services industry that can drill these wells efficiently and then complete these wells efficiently, and those two kind of go hand in hand. That second part is really where NOV hopes to make a difference.

Crowe: Do you feel as though some of the processes, or the way we have kind of honed it in the United States, is that very applicable to what has happened overseas? Or is a lot of stuff that we see in terms of development very geology-specific, where they have to get in, drill the wells, and really understand the formation before they can start to make those tweaks?

Williams: Yeah it's -- every basin's, every shale's different, and so ... by definition, this is a marginal source of oil or gas. I mean this shale -- when I started in the industry, we didn't produce from shales. We drilled through them to get to reservoir rock, and so by definition, it's a marginal rock, you have to do a lot of very close cost management and technology, or figuring out that the stratigraphic column and what works in those shales. And so that empirical process is under way. But we're confident folks are going to figure that out and make that work.

Crowe: Okay. We may not be a month or two months from the rebound in oil prices and kind of the, I guess you can say, drilling activity around the world. But when it does happen, how long do you feel like it's going to take to really impact your business? And how do you feel, or how long would it take you guys to ramp back up to ... pre-downturn sort of levels?

Williams: It would take a while, I think, for the industry to ramp back up. One of the [phenomena] we see in our business and we talk about on our earnings call is the cannibalization of equipment. Our customers are very good at moving strings of drill pipe, at moving spares, and expendables from one of rig or one frack fleet to another to keep assets that are running, running without buying new spare parts. So the idle fleet of equipment that's out there are systematically being robbed, and it will take time ...

Crowe: Turned into skeletons almost.

Williams: ... it turned into skeletons, and it'll take time to get them back in working order, A. And B, our customers are going to have to bring in crews and probably train crews, and you know they've lost a lot of experience, here. So it's not a smooth transition, I think, back to prosperity for anybody. I would add I'm really looking forward to that day. We know it's out there -- I'm terrible at predicting when, but I tell our folks: "Look, every month that goes by, we're a month closer to recovering in the commodity price." It's definitely coming, and when it does, NOV will be called upon to come in and get those assets back to working order.

Crowe: That's awesome. So, I want to shift gears one more time. And what we did before we came down to Houston, here, is we actually took questions from the Motley Fool investor community and gave them an opportunity so that you guys could specifically ask questions to Mr. Williams.

And we got a ton of questions, but I don't want to ask 20 or 30, so I took a lot of them and condensed them down to, I guess you could say, the three biggest ones that we got from our investing community. And the first one that we got was, offshore has obviously been a huge market for you guys, and probably right now, in terms of business, is a majority -- if not more -- of your business. Looking, it could be a little lean for a while with buildout that we have seen, and demand for new rigs may get kind weak as we work through that oversupply. What are some of the levers NOV can pull for growth in the meantime?

Williams: First, to wrap some number around it, because we just reported our third-quarter earnings. We did $860 million in revenue in the third quarter -- about 26% of our overall mix. We reported $3.3 billion. So 26% of our current revenue mix is going into constructing new offshore rigs, meaning 74% of our business does other things. All these business models are under pressure given the current environment that we're in.

So like I said earlier, we're investing in new technologies, things like this closed loop automated drilling technology, which we're very excited about. ... One of the few business units that saw sequential growth was our IntelliServ, our drill pipe business unit, and they're seeing rising demand and interest for application of that technology to specific fields. It kind of ties back to what I was talking about earlier in the shales. If you can drill with real-time data as to what's going on at the bottom of the well through the shales as you're drilling horizontally, it lets you get up that empirical learning curve faster.

And so, it lets you develop shale basins more quickly and arrive at that, sort of, magic formula of how to produce these wells economically that much more quickly, which is the reason we're seeing more interest, I think in this particular technology. And so, very excited about that, the promise of that. Very excited about the promise of bringing more automation to land rigs in particular, and I think it's still early days with regards to upgrading the fleet of land rigs out there. And so, we're seeing a bit of a pivot from offshore to land where we now have a much larger installed base of high technology NOV kit out there. Our customers, as we get back to a little more drilling activity, they are going to need more aftermarket support of that. And then on the production side, I've talked at length this morning about our initiatives around FPSO changing that business model and arriving at a better industrial solution for our customers.

So, there's a lot of things across NOV to be excited about. And that really builds on a foundation of market leadership across all that we do. Very proud of what we've done in building offshore rigs. Frankly, I think a lot of investors oversimplify NOV and think of this as only an offshore rig builder, and nothing could be further from the truth. We have 14 other business units that are market leaders globally that have great technologies and future growth prospects. And so very, very excited about all that we do and know we have a very bright future ahead.

Crowe: Okay. If I were to take a 30,000-foot view of NOV -- and this is kind of getting into one of the questions that was asked -- beyond just oil and gas, one of the things that has been your keys to success is taking that ad hoc kind of segmented business somewhere and consolidating, bringing it into a more standardized sort of format.

Do you feel any time in the future that there are any opportunities outside of oil and gas industry that NOV could pursue and use that kind of model to really bring value to it?

Williams: Absolutely. We actually have some very good industrial businesses that are outside the oil field today. They all share some sort of tie, though, to what we are typically doing in the oil fields. We make, for instance, downhole drilling motors that use drilling mud to create torque and to actually turn the bit at the bottom of the drill pipe. And so you put fluid in, and you get torque out. That's just the pump run in reverse. So if you put torque in, you can pump fluid out. And so our downhole drilling motor business also supports an industrial progressing cavity pump business, for instance.

So, I think there are adjacencies that we can act on in industrial spaces, and when it comes to corporate strategy, we continually kind of look not just in oil field, but elsewhere in terms of where we might be able to bring some value. The key thing, though, and I want to stress this, is if we move into a new area, we really need to be a better operator. We need to be a better owner of that business because we have some competitive advantage, some skill set we can bring, some perspective we can bring to that business that's unique. And so we really try to find areas where we're going to operate, where we're going to be the best operator. And so we're -- that's a long way of saying we really try to be very disciplined around where we choose to operate ... recognizing all business is hard. Where we deploy capital, we need to see our way clear where we're going to generate great returns.

Crowe: Awesome. And I feel like a lot of our investors seem like they're maybe losing a little bit of sleep as of late watching the oil and gas market. And a lot of investors kind of looked at specifically National Oilwell Varco. One of the things that they saw is a security blanket was your backlog -- all that built-up work for rigs and for FPSOs and some other projects you guys have been working on. They kind of use it as their security blanket that says, "Oh with that much backlog we'll be fine."

But it's been declining quite a bit as of late, and one thing that a lot of questions we got related to [was] basically contract commitments. Because we have seen some companies -- rig owners specifically -- have been canceling a couple contracts. We saw Seadrill cancel a contract for in the shipyard because of some delays and whatnot. Is the contract backlog that you guys have, is it as a secure source, or is there any risk of maybe some of that decline because owners or customers [saying], "We can't really afford this right now"?

Williams: Well, over many years, we've recognized when we sign these contracts, although times were good, people were ordering rigs, this is a cyclical business, and we will be tested from time to time. And so we've always required down payments and progress billings along the way that front run our investment in these projects.

So, it's unfortunate that we find ourselves in a market where you're seeing some drilling contractors seeking to get out of these things. The good news for us is that we've -- these contracts have largely been paid out. And so our financial exposure is limited. We actually, to get into the contracting, we most typically work directly for the shipyard. And the payment terms that the shipyards offered in the past were more generous than we typically have been able to get. So, we're paid in advance of these. I would add, too, that although our customers are coming under financial stress from this, we've long [had] great relationships with our shipyard customers and with the drilling contractors.

I think in our case, there's a recognition that the drilling contractors [and] the shipyards alike need the OEM to support the equipment to make sure that we're there to support these assets going forward. And so we feel pretty good about -- I wouldn't say "good," that's probably -- but we sleep well at night when it comes to our backlog as well. I would add, though, out of the $8 billion we just reported at the end of September, three of those are in Brazil. And that's certainly a situation that's very challenging, and so we're watching that closely and [are] hopeful that our customers there will figure out their financing to get that back on track.

Crowe: Kind of beat me to the punch. I was actually going to specifically ask about Brazil, but got a little ahead on that one. We're going to wrap up with two last questions -- the kind of things we like to ask at the Motley Fool, anybody when we get opportunities to do this.

So if you were to be able to speak directly to an investor, what do you feel are three things that an investor should focus on when they look at NOV to say, to keep track of you guys, to let them know that you guys are on target, and what you guys should be doing?

Williams: To me, business is about two things: one is getting a good strategy. Doesn't have to be the perfect strategy. But secondly, executing that strategy well.

And I think execution is the main thing that makes business success go. So, we're very focused on execution, and that shows up in margins, and that shows up in financial discipline, and so, and I just can't say enough good things about the team here -- our business unit leaders that actually run these businesses -- and in terms of their ability to execute. So I'd say that's what to focus on.

And the second thing I would tell investors is be an investor. Most people I talk to are traders. And there's a difference. And this is a great global franchise that has market leadership across a supply chain that's critical to providing the world's energy needs. And it's cyclical. And so now I believe we're obviously at a cyclical low. I'm not calling bottom yet, but we're certainly a lot closer to it now than we would've been a year ago.

Crowe: You guys don't have a crystal ball in the back closet or anything like that, that says what's going to happen?

Williams: We discovered our crystal ball is defective and not terribly accurate. It's accurate in the sense that we know this is a cyclical business. We've talked very openly with investors in good times and bad. Hey, it's going to go up, and it's going to go down, and you've got to be prepared for both worlds. And we sort of manage our business that way.

And so you're looking at longer term, this is a capital consumptive industry that we serve. It's an industry that requires new and better technology to press into new basins, and new sources of oil and gas. And when it does so, it consumes that capital and it requires consumables and spare parts and a very complex infrastructure to kind of keep it going. And NOV plays a vital role in making that happen.

I think that's a pretty good place to be, and the cyclicality will pass, and this industry will recover, and this company is exceptionally well-positioned, and we stand ready to step back in and kind of get us back to where we need to be in terms of industrial activity. And to me, that's investing. Buying a great business, a great franchise, one that's got the right level of diversity, the right level of financial resources and balance sheet strength. That's investing. Trying to time that and tick that at the right points, maybe your listeners can do that. I can't. So I think it's a great franchise I'm very, very proud of [it], and [we've] got a very bright future.

Crowe: Awesome. Last question. We're stealing from Peter Lynch. One of the things that he always got to do when he sat down with management, he always asked them who were some of the people that, either a competitor, or maybe even somebody in a different space than you, that you really look to, that you admire as a management team, or somebody that every once in a while, you look at them, take a couple ideas, because you think that they're really doing something right. So, who would you say are some of the people that you look to as maybe people you get advice from, or ideas from time to time?

Williams: Yeah, interesting question. A couple of names come to note. I had back in the early 1990s, I went to the University of Texas business school and got to know George Kozmetsky, who cofounded Teledyne with Henry Singleton. And I never met Mr. Singleton, but got to meet Mr. Kozmetsky and you know, they kind of built Teledyne up through smart capital allocation and timely capital allocation in kind of a decentralized way, which always intrigued me as a business model.

More recently, we've had Berkshire Hathaway as a shareholder and as an enterprise, I think the decentralized approach and the confidence that Warren Buffet has in the leaders of his portfolio businesses to do the right thing, to run those businesses, that they're closer to the coal face. There's a lot of parallels, here. I mean, we have very different business models, and great business people running those those businesses, and trusting them is pretty central to what we do. And I think the right approach, the opposite of that is to centralize everything. And I think a lot of big organizations fall into that trap of thinking, you know -- we need to take control of this, and we need more command and control, and frankly, that's built upon the assumption that somehow or other, I'm smarter, or [the] head office is smarter, and usually, that's not the case.

And so we trust our folks, and that's the kind of company I think that we want to be.

Crowe: Awesome. Mr. Williams, thank you very much for your time today.

Williams: My pleasure.

Crowe: It's been a pleasure. Maybe next time when we do this, we'll be in a little bit more favorable market conditions than we are today.

Williams: I look forward to it; I certainly hope so.

Crowe: Thank you very much for watching, and we'll see you next time.
Boston has rolled out the red carpet for General Electric (GE -0.24%) with a host of tax breaks and incentives. But the #makeGEpay hashtag, now trending on Twitter, isn't the welcome it was hoping for.

Much of the reporting (and tweeting) surrounding the company's move from its longtime home in Fairfield, Conn., to neighboring Massachusetts, has focused on the pros (it "could finally give the Boston business community a helipad!") and the cons ("a punch in the stomach for Connecticut") for the two locales. Far more interesting for shareholders is, what does it mean for GE's bottom line? And will it inspire other Connecticut conglomerates to follow suit (lookin' at you, United Technologies (RTX 0.31%))?

First, the good stuff

The package of goodies from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the City of Boston total some $151 million, mostly consisting of state grants and a $25 million property-tax break from the city. This deal doesn't include $125 million in promised infrastructure improvements.

That's a lot in exchange for moving just 800 jobs to Boston. Nobody's denying GE got a pretty sweet deal. In fact, this is the source of the #makeGEpay hashtag: Some Bostonians feel as if the deal is a little bit too sweet.

But even $125 million is just a drop in the bucket for a company that has annual revenues north of $148 billion. Even if the incentives package had been twice as large, it wouldn't mean much for investors -- remember, there are administrative costs to a relocation as well.

Which brings us to the (ostensible) reason GE made the move in the first place: taxes.

The taxman cometh

While GE's press release about its current move doesn't cite any reason in particular for leaving its longtime home, the most obvious -- and most cited in the media -- is Connecticut's new corporate tax structure, enacted last year. Many Connecticut corporations, GE among them, objected to it and questioned whether they would stay in the state if the measure was passed.

GE had issues with multiple features of the new tax plan. According to the Tax Foundation:

The state's budget included $500 million in new corporate tax revenue. The largest change was switching the state to combined reporting. Combined reporting changes how businesses treat the income of affiliated subsidiaries. Under combined reporting, a corporation must include income from its subsidiaries in its tax calculations, instead of each component being taxed individually. The plan also increased the sales tax on data processing from 1 percent to 3 percent.

Connecticut's corporate tax rate of 9% is one of the highest in the nation. So, through combined reporting, more of GE's profits would be taxed at this relatively high rate, starting this year.

The thing is, Massachusetts is an odd place to escape to, if escaping taxes is what GE is after.

Out of the frying pan

Massachusetts -- long derided as "Taxachusetts" -- has a corporate tax structure that isn't all that different from its neighbor's. True, its corporate tax rate is lower than Connecticut's, but only by a piddly 1%. It also has combined reporting, so GE isn't escaping that particular policy.

Sussing out the overall effects of this change in headquarters on GE's bottom line is tricky. WNPR in Connecticut reported that GE paid no state income taxes on its $4.2 billion in U.S. profits in 2014. It's tough to see, then, how this move is going to affect GE's bottom line: It doesn't get much cheaper than free.

In a statement of response, a GE spokesman told the station that "GE paid $3.0 billion in cash income taxes worldwide last year, including in the U.S. In addition, GE paid more than $1 billion in other U.S. state, local, and federal taxes." No further breakdown was available.

In 2014, GE reported its effective overall tax rate as 17% (excluding GE Capital earnings, the taxes on which are not included in GE's tax calculations), or $1.6 billion. Even if this move resulted in a reduction of its total tax liability from 17% to 16% (which would be an incredibly huge impact), it would only reduce the corporation's tax liability by about $100 million, to $1.5 billion. That's hardly going to register on the company's $15.2 billion bottom line.

It's also why United Technologies is unlikely to leave Hartford for greener pastures. United Technologies is Connecticut's largest private employer, with 22,000 jobs in the state. And the state has been very generous with the company in return: It received a $400 million subsidy deal in 2014. That kind of money is sure to outweigh any potential tax benefits of relocation.

The Foolish bottom line

GE's departure to Boston may well save the company some money in state income taxes and yield it some nice incentives from its new home. But ultimately, the move means more for GE employees -- who will probably pay a lower personal income tax in Massachusetts -- than it does for GE shareholders. Likewise, shareholders of other Connecticut companies such as United Technologies shouldn't get their hopes up about a big payday, either.
What happened?

Amid a bribery scandal involving officials at the highest levels of the Jakarta government and uncertainty over whether the state should seize the massive Grasberg copper and gold mine, Maroef Sjamsuddin, the CEO of Freeport McMoRan's (FCX -0.46%) Indonesian unit has abruptly resigned his position for "personal reasons."

Does it matter?

Copper and gold miner Freeport McMoRan has been involved in a tussle with the Indonesian government for several years as Jakarta tries to extract more lucrative terms and a piece of the action at the Grasberg mine. Newmont Mining (NEM -3.19%), which has its own profitable operations in the country, has also run into conflict with the government.

It's a drama being played in many Third World and emerging nations, where indigenous populations believe First World miners have taken advantage of them and are now attempting to change the rules mid-game.

As metals markets boomed and commodity prices soared, countries rich in natural resources sought to grab a bigger piece of the pie. All across South America, for example, gold miners such as Barrick Gold, Kinross Gold, Yamana Gold, and even Newmont suddenly ran into roadblocks as permits to operate were held up until the new demands were met.

Both Freeport and Newmont have been operating under long-standing contracts of work in Indonesia that laid the ground rules for their operations while also protecting them from attempts at extracting higher taxes from them. That is, until Jakarta wanted to boost the domestic ore processing industry and held miners hostage to its demands they process ore in-country before shipping it elsewhere. The problem was that Indonesia's infrastructure was unable to support the output of the miners.

While Freeport and Newmont clashed with the government, state officials were recorded by Freeport Indonesia CEO Maroef Sjamsuddin trying to extort bribes in exchange for getting permits to operate. The scandal broke open late last year when he testified and had the tapes played in court. Indonesia's parliament speaker subsequently resigned his post in the aftermath.

Sjamsuddin's presence might have been a source of contention as Freeport continues to work out its differences with the government, coming so soon after the miner's U.S. boss resigned his post, suggesting that Freeport McMoRan may still be roiled in turmoil for some time to come.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy failed to impress officials at General Electric (NYSE:GE) with a last-ditch effort to keep the conglomerate from moving its corporate headquarters out of the state even after he vowed to match the best offer dangled by other governors looking to lure away the company and its bevy of jobs and taxes, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Though no final decision has been made, people with direct knowledge of the matter say Malloys December presentation, described as lackluster by GE officials, increases the possibility that the company CEO Jeffrey Immelt will move its long-time corporate headquarters out of Fairfield, Connecticut.

A final decision is expected before the end of January.

They [Malloy and other state officials] basically came in and said we will match the best proposal offered by any other state, said a person with direct knowledge of the meeting. But Immelt isnt looking for a deal; this is more complicated.

A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment. A GE spokesman said: We have formed an exploratory team to assess the companys options to relocate corporate headquarters. The team is currently engaged in the process and is taking many factors into consideration. When there is a final decision on relocation, we will communicate it publicly.

Such a move would be a blow to Connecticuts economy, which has failed to fully recover from the 2008 financial crisis and could have political implications in a state dominated by Democrats, like Malloy, who was elected governor in 2010. The states senior U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal is seeking re-election in November, and his likely Republican challenger, economist and television personality Larry Kudlow will likely make the states dismal business climateand GEs possible movea central theme of his campaign.

Immelt announced in June that GE was considering moving its corporate headquarters out of Connecticut to a more tax friendly state. The announcement came after Malloy reneged on a campaign promise not to raise taxes and then crafted a budget with the states Democratically-controlled legislature that called for higher levies on individuals and corporations.

Since then, officials from around a dozen states such as Texas and Ohio have met with Immelt and his exploratory team in an attempt to woo the company and its jobs. GE insiders say Immelt has narrowed the potential sites of a relocation to Westchester County, NY, New York City, Providence, RI and Boston, MA. He might also opt to remain in Fairfield in the end.

Part of the decision to remain in the northeast is predicated on the proximity to the companys massive leadership and development center in Crotonville, New York near the Westchester County town of Ossining, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. If the firm decides to leave Connecticut it would likely keep some employees in the state and could donate its headquarters to Sacred Heart University, which named its business school after the companys former CEO, Jack Welch.

About 800 people work at GE corporate headquarters in Farfield, and the relocation would also bring significant corporate and individual tax revenues to the winning state. GE is one of the worlds largest companies with a market value of close to $310 billion. Earlier in the year, it announced it would sell off most of its massive GE Capital unit, amid tougher regulations that have made the financial business less profitable.

Immelt did not attend the December meeting between Malloy and the companys exploratory team, but he was immediately briefed on the matter, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting. The biggest sticking point for GE in Malloys presentation was that it didnt address all the factors that Immelt is considering in determining whether or not to move the corporate headquarters aside from the states tax structure.

They include Connecticuts access to quality transportation and the overall business climate that remains sluggish even years after the 2008 financial crisis, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

A big part of the problem facing Malloy in keeping GE at its current location in the state is that GE officials believe he didnt take Immelts threat to leave Connecticut seriously, these people say. A number of other state officials met with Immelt even before Malloy made his initial pitch to the company in the summer, and when he did, Malloy made a crucial error.

In a power-point presentation, Malloy used a photo of a jet engine that was built by a GE competitor, Pratt & Whitney. Immelt pointed out the mistake during the meeting, these people say.

That incident has set the tone for the rest of the negotiations, a GE insider tells FOX Business.

And GE's final decision may set the tone for other large corporations located in Connecticut including Aetna (NYSE:AET), Hartford Financial Services Group (NYSE:HIG) and United Technologies (NYSE:UTX).
Housing experts predict U.S. home value growth around 3.5 percent this year. But which markets are leading the charge?

To determine the hottest real estate markets for 2016, we looked at the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) Forecast, recent income growth and current unemployment rates. These variables were scaled and combined equally to form a hotness score.

Heres a look at the top 10 metros:

No. 1: Denver

The ZHVI is expected to increase 5 percent year-over-year in the Denver metro, where the unemployment rate is a low 3.1 percent. Neighborhoods in Aurora, CO  Delmar Parkway, Highline Villages and Centretech  are the hottest. Denvers Ruby Hill is also among the metros hottest hoods.

See homes for sale in Denver.

No. 2: Seattle

In Seattle, the ZHVI is expected to rise 5.4 percent year-over-year. Northwest Bellevue is the areas hottest neighborhood with the median home value predicted to increase 9.2 percent to $1.15 million year-over-year. Seattles University District, Holly Park and Olympic Manor are also hot spots.

Check out homes for sale in the Seattle area.

No. 3: Dallas-Fort Worth

The Dallas-Fort Worth market is holding strong with a 4 percent unemployment rate and solid income growth. The median home value is also expected to go up by 5.6 percent year-over-year, according to the ZHVI Forecast. Holford, Oak Lawn and M Streets are the hottest neighborhoods.

Find homes for sale in Dallas-Fort Worth.

No. 4: Richmond

Richmond, VA is seeing the strongest income growth of the top 10 markets, and unemployment is low. The housing market is also expected to be hot, with the ZHVI increasing 2.2 percent year-over-year. Church Hill, Carytown and The Fan should be the hottest hoods in terms of home value growth.

See more homes on the market in Richmond.

No. 5: Boise

With a 4.7 percent increase in the median home value expected this year, Boise, ID has earned its spot among the hottest real estate markets. At the neighborhood level, Central Bench, North End and Maple Grove-Franklin top the list with a ZHVI Forecast over 5 percent.

Find homes for sale in Boise.

No. 6: Ogden

Ogden, UT is another hot market with strong income growth, low unemployment and a ZHVI expected to increase 4.9 percent year-over-year. The metros hottest ZIP codes include 84025 in Farmington, 84037 in Kaysville and 84401 in Ogden proper.

Find more homes for sale in Ogden.

No. 7: Salt Lake City

Another Utah metro, Salt Lake City, made the list with a ZHVI Forecast of 4.4 percent. The hottest cities for home value growth are expected to be Grantsville, Erda and Stansbury Park. The 84074 ZIP code in Tooele is also a hot spot.

See whats on the market in Salt Lake City.

No. 8: Omaha

In Omaha, unemployment is very low at 2.9 percent, incomes are on the rise and home values are trending up. The ZHVI is expected to increase 3.2 percent year-over-year. The 68136 and 68131 ZIP codes in Omaha are hottest, followed by 68066 in Wahoo.

Find homes for sale in the Omaha area.

No. 9: Sacramento

Sacramentos median home value is predicted to rise 5.1 percent year-over-year. The Southeast Village, Folsom Road and Hagginwood neighborhoods should lead the way with a ZHVI Forecast over 8 percent.

Check out Sacramento homes for sale.

No. 10: Portland

Portland, OR is the 10th hottest market for 2016 with the median home value expected to rise 5 percent. Woodlawn is predicted to have the most home value growth (7.2 percent year-over-year), followed by Parkrose (7.1 percent) and Sumner (7 percent).

See homes for sale in Portland.

More from Zillow:2015s Most Valuable Housing Markets10 of the Most Expensive Homes Sold in 2015How Underwater Homes Are Dragging Down Entire Housing Markets
Oil prices fell 4 percent on Monday as Iraq announced record-high oil production feeding into a heavily oversupplied market, wiping out much of the gain made in one of the biggest-ever daily rallies last week.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down $1.35 at $30.83 a barrel at 0851 GMT, losing more than 4 percent from Friday's closing price, when Brent surged 10 percent.

U.S. crude traded $1.15 lower at $31.04 a barrel, regaining its unusual premium to Brent prices.

Iraq's oil ministry told Reuters on Monday oil output had reached a record high in December. Its fields in the central and southern region produced as much as 4.13 million barrels a day, the government said.

"The news that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro in Amsterdam.

"The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low, and on the other hand short positions are in excessive territory," he said.

Indonesia's OPEC governor said that support among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for taking steps to prop up crude prices is slim, with only one OPEC country supporting an emergency meeting over the matter.

(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho in Seoul; Editing by Dale Hudson)
Over the weekend, Iowa-based newspaper The Des Moines Register officially endorsed Republican candidate Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for their parties' presidential nominations.

The newspaper said, "We hope Marco Rubio and his party take a different path, one that can lead to the opportunity and optimism he so eloquently articulates." The endorsement also called Hillary Clinton a "thoughtful, hardworking public servant who has earned the respect of leaders at home and abroad. She stands ready to take on the most demanding job in the world."

With only a week left before voters head to the polls for the first-in-the-nation caucus, will the editorial support actually help a candidates race?

Newspaper endorsements are never going to affect the hard core supporters of any candidate, they dont really care about them because theyve already decided. Endorsements work at the margins, they get you to pay attention to somebody that you havent paid attention to before especially when there are this many candidates, said Arthur Sanders, political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Paying attention to the other Republican contenders besides the top two, billionaire businessman Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, could pose a challenge. In a recent Fox News poll out Sunday, Trump has a commanding lead in Iowa with 34% of support from Republican caucus-goers. Cruz is in second place with 23% and Marco Rubio comes in third with 12%. These poll numbers show a significant shift from just two weeks ago where Cruz led the GOP field with 27%, Trump had 23% and Rubio was in third place with 15%.

Sanders says the editorial endorsement could signal a select group of voters that do not fall under the Evangelical or Tea Party caucus electorate.

If you are a mainstream Republican and you dont want Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, you dont feel strongly about any of the other candidates, this endorsement might make you say maybe we should coalesce around Marco Rubio, said Sanders.

Historically, The Des Moines Registers endorsement hasnt sealed the deal for winning the Iowa caucus or the party nomination for either party. In 2008, the newspaper endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton but the Iowa caucus win and eventual party nomination went to then Senator Barack Obama. On the Republican side, the newspaper endorsed Republican candidate Senator John McCain, while he won the eventual parties nomination, the caucus win went to Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

The Iowa caucuses are too early in the process and the caucuses are more helpful to narrow the field then they are to pick a winner, said Sanders. What they are saying is here is someone you ought to vote for.

Sanders says The Des Moines register is considered to be a liberal Democratic paper which is why the endorsements significance is more important to Democrats than Republicans. He says it may not do much to move the scales for undecided voters, but it does boost the candidates image.

The real risk for Hillary Clinton was they were going to choose someone else, she is not going to win any more votes because of the endorsement but would rather have the endorsement than not because that means somebody else didnt get it, said Sanders.

In a recent CNN/ORC poll, Bernie Sanders is in the lead with 51% support from Democratic Iowa caucus-goers compared to Hillary Clintons 43%.

The Des Moines Register started endorsing candidates in the 1988 election. There have been many hits and misses over the years, proof that anything can happen in an election cycle. Here is a look back at past caucus endorsements, winners and nominees:

1988

Endorsed Republican: Bob Dole

Caucus winner: Bob Dole

Nominee: George Bush

Endorsed Democrat: Paul Simon

Caucus winner: Richard Gephardt

Nominee: Michael Dukakis

1992

None endorsed

1996

Endorsed Republican: Bob Dole

Caucus winner and nominee: Bob Dole

2000

Endorsed Republican: George W. Bush

Caucus winner and nominee: George W. Bush

Endorsed Democrat: Bill Bradley

Caucus winner and nominee: Al Gore

2004

Endorsed Democrat: John Edwards

Caucus winner and nominee: John Kerry

2008

Endorsed Republican: John McCain

Caucus winner: Mike Huckabee

Nominee: John McCain

Endorsed Democrat: Hillary Clinton

Caucus winner and nominee: Barack Obama

2012

Endorsed Republican: Mitt Romney

Caucus winner: Rick Santorum

Nominee: Mitt Romney

Iowa caucus voters will cast their ballots next Monday, February 1. Fox News will host the final GOP debate before the caucus this Thursday, January 28.
BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Women in El Salvador and Colombia are being cautioned to avoid pregnancy due to the potentially dangerous Zika virus, but little access to contraception or abortion and pregnancies from rape leave many women unable to heed that advice, campaigners say.

The recommendations by health ministers in the two Latin American nations come after a surge in cases of babies born with severe brain defects in Brazil, which experts believe are linked to the mosquito-borne Zika virus spreading through the region.

Alejandro Gaviria, Colombia's health minister, called on women to delay pregnancies six to eight months.

"We are doing this because I believe it's a good way to communicate the risk, to tell people that there could be serious consequences," he said.

In Colombia, which has the second-highest Zika infection rate after Brazil, there are 560 known cases of pregnant women infected with the virus.

Jamaica, which has not reported any confirmed cases of Zika, also has recommended women delay becoming pregnant.

Leading women's rights campaigners criticized the recommendations, saying women in the region often have little choice about becoming pregnant.

"It's incredibly naive for a government to ask women to postpone getting pregnant in a context such as Colombia where more than 50 percent of pregnancies are unplanned and across the region where sexual violence is prevalent," said Monica Roa, vice president of strategy for Women's Link Worldwide, a global women's rights group.

Contraception in Colombia is provided free but women, particularly in impoverished rural areas, have little access, the Colombian activist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Many women also do not know they can get an abortion in Colombia under certain circumstances, she said.

"In a crisis like the Zika outbreak, the lack of sexual education is exposed," Roa said. "Health ministries should inform rather than recommend."

In El Salvador, where the health ministry is advising women to postpone pregnancy until 2018, official figures show 96 pregnant women are suspected of having contracted the Zika virus.

As in Colombia, little or no sex education in schools in El Salvador means girls lack information they need to avoid unwanted pregnancies, activists say.

El Salvador has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Latin America, with girls aged 10 to 19 accounting for about a third of all pregnancies.

Rape at the hands of stepfathers, relatives and gang members is a key reason, rights groups say.

El Salvador also has a total ban on abortion, which is a crime under all circumstances including rape or a severely deformed fetus or when a woman's life is in danger.

"In El Salvador, the recommendation to postpone pregnancy is offensive to women and even more ridiculous in the context of strict abortion laws and high levels of sexual violence against girls and women," Roa said.

Sara Garcia, a reproductive rights activist in El Salvador, says the caution against pregnancy must be accompanied by public discussion of the causes of unwanted pregnancies.

"It's not simply about telling women not to get pregnant. There are pregnancies that aren't planned, are imposed on women and girls and are the product of sexual abuse," said Garcia, a member of the Citizens' Coalition for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador.

In El Salvador in 2013, the Supreme Court refused to allow an ill woman carrying a malformed fetus to have a potentially life-saving abortion in a case that sparked global outcry.

Women's rights campaigners also blamed the health ministry recommendations for failing to address the role of men.

"Once again, governments put the burden on women to protect themselves from any risks," said Paula Avila-Guillen, programs specialist at the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights.

(Reuters Messaging: Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org Reporting By Anastasia Moloney, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)
U.S. doctors are fielding a spate of calls from expectant mothers who recently traveled to countries affected by the Zika virus and fear possible exposure to the mosquito-borne infection linked to a spike in fetal brain damage in Brazil.

New U.S. treatment guidelines only recommend blood tests for pregnant women with symptoms of infection. But 80 percent of Zika patients show no symptoms, leaving many women no way to know early enough to make an informed choice about their unborn children, leading obstetricians told Reuters this week.

"These effects are not necessarily going to be seen at a time when the mother can decide to terminate the pregnancy," said Dr. Natalie Meirowitz of Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising pregnant women not to travel to 22 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean where the Zika virus causing infections. The agency added eight of those countries to the list on Friday.

Brazil said the number of babies born with microcephaly, a condition marked by an unusually small head, rose 10 percent to 3,893 over a period of 10 days. El Salvador officials have urged women to avoid getting pregnant until 2018 due to Zika.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates its members have received "hundreds, if not thousands" of calls from patients who had traveled to affected regions, a spokeswoman said.

"It's consuming our lives," said Dr. Laura Riley, president of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and a specialist in high-risk pregnancies at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The CDC is trying to determine how many pregnant women may have traveled to affected regions in the past several months. The agency issued interim guidelines this week advising doctors to administer blood tests only for pregnant women with symptoms.

Some doctors are concerned that the guidelines mean other pregnant women who are at risk would not be identified. That is because 80 percent of people infected by Zika never have symptoms.

For asymptomatic women, the CDC recommends ultrasounds to check for microcephaly in the fetus, looking for underdeveloped heads or calcium deposits in the brain. But microcephaly typically does not become apparent on ultrasounds until later in pregnancies, often after the 24th week when many U.S. states prohibit abortion.

"That's the toughest situation that we have with the guidelines right now," said Dr. Emily Landon, an infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago Medical Center, referring to the testing recommendations. "We know women can become asymptomatic and still have Zika."

LIMITS TO TESTING

With no commercially available Zika tests, only the CDC and some state health laboratories are equipped to detect the virus. Riley, who advised the agency on its guidelines, said testing every woman who visited or lived in affected countries during the outbreak period could "flood the CDC."

Dr. Denise Jamieson of the CDC, who helped write the guidelines, said lab capacity was just one factor in the decision to only test pregnant women with symptoms. The biggest concerns, she said, were that the tests are hard to interpret and prone to false positive results, which could lead to decisions based on inaccurate information.

Jamieson said the guidelines will be reviewed for their effectiveness.

Riley stressed that asymptomatic women will be offered ultrasounds.

"Ultimately, what patients want to know is whether their baby's brain has been affected," said Riley. "You aren't going to know that without the ultrasound."

The main benefit of testing is to put at ease women at ease, said Scott Weaver, an expert in mosquito-borne diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

A positive test result for Zika in a pregnant woman does not necessarily mean a baby will develop microcephaly, Landon said. Additional ultrasounds would be necessary, and even those may not show evidence of a problem early enough for a woman to take action.

No therapy is available for an infected fetus that has developed microcephaly, obstetricians said.

Meirowitz recently saw a patient who had vacationed in Puerto Rico during her seventh week of pregnancy, and recalls getting a mosquito bite. Because the woman, now 20 weeks pregnant, never got sick, she was not offered a blood test.

"We ruled out microcephaly" after doing an ultrasound, but still had concerns, Meirowitz said. "We know from other viruses that you may not see ultrasound findings showing fetal infection right away, particularly microcephaly. That is what's so difficult."
Dole Fresh Vegetables, Inc. has voluntarily withdrawn packaged salads processed at its Springfield, Ohio, facility linked to a six-state listeria outbreak that has killed one and sickened 12, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that the company had stopped its production at the facility, which investigators believe is the only location the affected products were processed. According to the FDA, no other Dole production facilities or products are affected.

Affected products begin with the letter A in the upper right-hand corner of the package, and they were sold in the following states and Canadian provinces:

States included in the withdrawal:

 Alabama

 Connecticut

 Florida

 Georgia

 Illinois

 Indiana

 Kentucky

 Louisiana

 Michigan

 Massachusetts

 Maryland

 Minnesota

 Missouri

 Mississippi

 North Carolina

 New Jersey

 New York

 Ohio

 Pennsylvania

 South Carolina

 Tennessee

 Virginia

 Wisconsin

List of Canadian provinces included in the withdrawal:

 Ontario

 New Brunswick

 Quebec





Listeriosis the infection that results from exposure to the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes can lead to passive symptoms like diarrhea and nausea, fever and muscle aches. But it can be life-threatening for infants, the elderly, or individuals with weakened immune systems such as pregnant women, according to the CDC.

The six states that have reported deaths or illnesses are Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Dole has asked retailers that carry its products to check their stores and warehouses to ensure products affected by the recall arent sold to their customers. According to the FDA, Dole is working on confirming that the withdrawn packaged salads have been removed from the supply chain.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Maltreatment and abuse have important effects on the health, quality of life and even the lifespan of elderly people, but there is very little evidence on ways to stop it, according to a new research review.

Elder maltreatment can include physical injury, emotional abuse like screaming or threatening, illegal use of financial resources, sexual abuse, intentional or unintentional neglect, as well as using physical or chemical restraints.

There's some evidence for the benefits of interventions to help long-term carers find ways to handle older patients without physically restraining them, researchers say, but many other questions remain unanswered by the studies available.

"Prevalence rates vary by country and assessment method, with some surveys claiming that as many as 1 in 4 older adults is exposed to some type of maltreatment," said lead author Liat Ayalon of the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. "No doubt there are a lot of efforts to increase public attention in this field, but in reality, we know little about the potential effects of these efforts."

Bruises, disorganized appearance or isolation may indicate elder abuse, Ayalon told Reuters Health by email, but many of these signs resemble general pathology in older adults that are unrelated to maltreatment.

"The secrecy around abuse, because it tends to occur within the family is another challenge," Ayalon said.

The researchers searched through a few thousand studies addressing elder maltreatment, but only found 24 that met scientific standards and were published in English between 2000 and 2014.

Two of these studies were designed to help professionals detect or stop elder maltreatment, three were aimed at intervening with the older adults who experience maltreatment, and 19 were targeted at caregivers who maltreat older adults. In the last category, only one specifically dealt with family caregivers, while most addressed paid caregivers.

Interventions that targeted use of restraints did appear to help caregivers to use physical restraints less, the researchers report in Age and Ageing.

But most of the studies on physical restraint did not assess the quality of the intervention, and did not describe exactly which type of caregivers they were targeting, the authors note.

The analysis in found no conclusive evidence for or against the benefit of interventions targeting the abused elderly to help prevent maltreatment. Just one study provided evidence for interventions targeting unpaid caregivers who maltreat.

Elder care in Japan is most often left to family members, even after the establishment of a public long-term care insurance system across the nation, said Miharu Nakanishi of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, who was not part of the new review.

"This may sometimes lead to social isolation of family members who care for the elderly person," Nakanishi said.

Abuse from family caregivers is technically domestic violence, so may require different interventions than those used for professional caregivers, Nakanishi told Reuters Health by email.

Caregiver burnout, high levels of interdependence, financial dependence and alcohol abuse among caregivers are all risks for abuse, Ayalon said.

"Cognitive impairment in older adults is another vulnerability factor that puts older adults at risk for abuse, so are behavioral problems associated with dementia," Ayalon said.

"Many times, maltreatment is not a result of a volitional act, but rather represents the inability of the caregiver to deal with the task of caring appropriately," Ayalon said.

Physical restraint may be a necessity in some settings, especially to prevent falls, but it tends to be over-used, Ayalon said. "As can be seen by current research, it is one of the only acts we can actually reduce and prevent at the present time - hence, this is one place where we, as professionals, can intervene and improve the care provided to older adults."
When Linda Meyer's 19-year old son Taylor died from a tragic accident at the end of 2014, she looked beyond her grief and saw a way to honor him and ensure that others lived.

Last month, after a series of extraordinary events, the mother of three was able to hear her son's heart beat again. Now, both she and the man who received Taylors heart are working to boost organ donation awareness through their story.

"Taylor was not an organ donor, and for me, it never really came up," Meyer, of Santa Cruz, Calif., said. "But I didn't want his heart to die. I know that sounds selfish of me, but Taylor was such a giving person, he would give his heart to someone if he could."

"I felt the ripple effect of someone who's gone, but who is still there."  Linda Meyer

It was Dec. 30, 2014 when an accidental gunshot left Taylor Meyer mortally wounded. After three agonizing days, doctors declared him brain dead, and Linda Meyer made the painful decision to take her son off life support.

Surgeons from University fo California San Francisco harvested his lungs, pancreas, kidneys, liver and heart. The California Transplant Donor Network liaison told Meyer she would likely never meet the recipients of her son's organs, but she held out hope.

Days later, her sister told her about an article in The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, a town about three hours north of Santa Cruz.

"New Year, New Heart for Santa Rosa Man," read the headline of a Jan. 6, 2015 story accompanied by a picture of Jim Keegan giving a thumbs up and smiling 18 hours after heart transplant surgery. The article described how Keegan had received the heart of a 19-year-old Northern California man who had tragically died days earlier.

For Keegan, 67, time had nearly run out. His heartbeat was being supported by a temporary implant, and he was nearing the end of a 30-day window during which he had "priority status" for a transplant.

I only had nine hours left on that A-1 status, he said, explaining that the very next day, he was slated to go to a lower-priority status on the organ recipient list.

Over the holidays, he'd been told to keep his distance from his wife Diane and their large family - four grown children and 10 grandchildren, out of fear of contracting a potentially fatal illness.

Even as the Keegans prayed for a new heart for their patriarch, they had known one becoming available could only mean another family would have suffered a tragic loss. Still, when a suitable heart was found, the Keegan's could only celebrate.

"Diane went into hysterics and started to hyperventilate," Keegan recalled. "It didn't really sink into me until after we got to the hospital."

Meanwhile, Linda Meyer, certain that it was her son's heart beating inside Jim Keegan, was anxious to meet him. But she also knew that transplant protocols meant it could only happen if Jim Keegan agreed.

The two families shared connections long before Taylor Meyer'sheart brought new life to Jim Keegan. Years earlier, Meyer's uncle had worked with Keegan at a bank in Santa Rosa, and Meyer's cousin had been a close friend of Keegan's son. Meyer also knew Keegan headed a prominent commercial real estate firm and was an active community leader.

But Meyer did not know how Keegan felt about acknowledging the gift her son had given him until last October, when word arrived in a typewritten letter he had sent via transplant network officials. Keegan confirmed he had Taylor's heart, expressed condolences for Meyer's loss and gratitude for her selfless act.

"If you're open to it, I would love to meet you, and thank you in person," he wrote.

Meyer was speechless.

"I'd written him a hundred times in my head, because I wanted Jim to have a sense of who Taylor was," she said. "I wanted him to have a sense of my son."

Keegan was nervous, and felt the guilt of a survivor who lived because someone else did not.

"It was hard to deal with, the idea of meeting the family who lost a son, and I'm alive and he's not," he recalled.

They finally met, each with relatives in tow, at the Keegan's home in Santa Rosa, shortly after the one-year anniversary of Taylor's death and Keegan's transplant.

When they hugged, Meyer could feel the heart beating inside Keegan. Then, through her tears, she listened through a stethoscope provided by Diane Keegan.

"I felt the ripple effect of someone who's gone, but who is still there," Meyer recalled. "After a long year, I finally felt some peace."

Meyer had brought along a photo album to augment stories about Taylor, first as an inquisitive child and later as a bright young man who adored his siblings and liked helping people.

"Taylor was an amazing young man," she told me. "He had the biggest heart in the world, always kind and considerate, a wonderful brother to his siblings. He lived a lot in his 19 years."

Keegan, in turn, told her about his love of fishing and hiking, and about his plans for the future, now that he knew he could make plans.

"I have a teenager's heart," said Keegan, adding that he feels better than he had in years. "Its a string of miracles to be where I am today."

Meyer never heard from any of the other people who received Taylor's organs, and doesn't expect to. But she said meeting Keegan was a profound comfort, and he echoed those words as well.

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, more than 132,000 men, women and children are waiting for a critical organ transplant in the U.S. Meyer is hopeful her story will encourage more people to register as donors, and close the gap between supply and demand.

Diane Keegan's bumper sticker perhaps says it best: "Don't take your organs to heaven with you. Heaven knows, we need them down here."
Much has been said about Senator Marco Rubios boots. The boots, also known as, bootghazi, were even mentioned on Jimmy Fallon, where he said his boots may be in an undisclosed location.

I do think there's more to this story than just a well-heeled man.

Female politicians have been characterized for their fashion or lack thereof. Pantsuits anyone? They are also characterized for their looks, jewelry, weight, and lip-gloss. Instead of the focus being on inner beauty, smarts, policies, or ability to lead, females in the public eye are gone over with a fine tooth comb on the exterior. So is this a cultural shift, now that were seeing it more for the male candidates too?

There is a lot of talk about Donald Trumps hair and now Marco Rubios boots!

So are both male and female candidates fair game for criticism about their appearance? Senator Rubio, welcome to the club.
We are just one week away from the Iowa Caucuses. The presumed front runner last year at this time? Jeb Bush. Or rather Jeb! as his campaign has dubbed him, hoping to add a little excitement to the mix (and possibly to underplay his famous last name.)

But after one year of failing to rev up voter enthusiasm, is it time for Jeb to pack up his attack ads and go home?

Not only are his poll numbers far from where his supporters thought they would be by now, Jeb is also acting as spoiler, destroying the candidate most likely to beat Hillary Clinton. In doing so, it appears his nasty campaign against Marco Rubio has wrecked his own chances. In clobbering his popular rival and one-time mentee, Bush has shown himself either incapable of bucking the operatives running his Super PAC, or full of baloney.

After eight years of Barack Obama, the last thing this country needs is another weak-kneed leader. Or a hypocrite.

For months, Jeb Bush publicly agonized over whether he should run for president. Bush worried that he would be forced into the political gutter, claiming that he would only run if his campaign could focus on the issues. He was eager to lay out his prescriptions for solving the countrys ills, to push education and tax reform, for instance, but not keen to engage in a cage match with the other contestants. He wanted to run joyfully because he thought the country needed a candidate who would lift the countrys spirits.

The head of Bushs Super PAC apparently sees the campaign differently. Since Right to Rise (R2R) has raised ten times the money brought in by the campaign, its easy to imagine whos calling the shots. Mike Murphy, according to some, is on a personal vendetta against Marco Rubio, whom Bush loyalists consider disloyal for having entered the race. As a result, R2R has spent an astonishing $20 million on ads attacking the Florida Senator  about one third of the Super PACs ad spending to date, and more than the group has spent undermining any other candidate.

Some of the ads target Rubios attendance record in the Senate, and his numerous missed votes. Some paint him a flip-flopper, changing positions with the shifting political winds. And then there was a cheesy ad mocking Rubios boots, of all things, which surely was another rung down into the gutter. (In fairness, the New York Times ran no less than four pieces on Rubios boots.)

That poke was, as Rob Garver described it in The Fiscal Times, supposed to be funny but instead came across as awkward and uncomfortable, like a Dad joke told in a car full of teenagers.

Has the assault on Rubio helped Bush? Certainly not in Iowa, where R2R has spent $8.5 million blasting Rubio. In that state, Bush is languishing in fifth place with only 3 percent of the vote, compared to 14 percent going to Rubio and 37 percent to Trump. In more moderate New Hampshire, a state where the Bush-Rubio rivalry is critical to both campaigns, the Bush Super PAC has spent $7.5 million attacking Rubio.

The gap between Bush and Rubio has narrowed, but most polls show Marco leading by a few points. The ads appear to have hurt Rubio, who was comfortably in second place in early January, with 14 percent of the vote. But, they havent helped Bush, who has been stuck since the beginning of the year at 8 percent.

Perhaps more important, the attack ads havent helped Bush nationally. Back in September the former Florida governor claimed an almost 10 percent support amongst GOP primary voters; now hes under 5 percent. In terms of how voters see Bush, the news is not good. Some 54 percent have an unfavorable view of Jeb compared to 32 percent who see him more kindly.

The gap has widened in recent months. Ditto for Marco Rubio, who during most of the past year had a net favorable rating; he is now upside down, with the unfavorable/favorable ratio at 41/36.

Jeb Bush has disappointed followers who expected him to run as he had promised, on solving the nations issues. As a successful governor of a successful state, Bush brings gravitas and stature to the race. He has also disappointed those who expected Bushs ability to raise huge early money to put him and keep him out front; Donald Trump upended those expectations, and every other aspect of the race.

Jeb has also disappointed those who expected him to be a better campaigner. After all, he has run for office successfully in the past; people wonder now, how did he win?

The most likely answer is that he won by being himself, not the puppet of his Super PAC. Though there is supposed to be clear distance between the campaign and R2R, Murphys influence is undoubted. Murphy and Bush have worked together on campaigns since 1997; Murphy claimed in a Bloomberg interview, I understand what Jeb wants, I understand what kind of campaign he wants So, was Bushs promise of a joyous campaign utter bunk, or has he been hijacked by his operatives?

The most cringe-worthy moment of Jebs campaign came during the CNBC debate, when he challenged Rubio over missed votes. The moderator had already raised the issue and Rubio had successfully parried it, making Bushs attack superfluous and awkward. Jeb had clearly been instructed to go after Rubio, and he did as he was told.

That was not Bushs only awkward campaign moment. Like Hillary Clinton chastising the banks that pay her so well, the more inauthentic Jeb becomes, the more likely he is to flop. Perhaps thats why he can barely deliver a sentence that doesnt include a verbal hitch. In his head, he is thinking one thing, but his directors have him saying another.

Jeb could come back, but to do so he has to campaign as himself  showing voters the serious but also personable candidate they see in small gatherings.

Take back control of the campaign, ditch the nastiness, and he might have a shot.

The sooner the better.
The Supreme Court will decide if the First Amendment covers a public employee fired or demoted over a boss misperception that the employee was backing a political candidate.

The court last week hashed out the free speech ramifications of just such a scenario in the case of a New Jersey cop who claims his bosses demoted him after mistakenly assuming he was backing a challenger in a local mayoral race.

Jeffrey Heffernan maintains his demotion from detective to a foot post in 2005 was political payback by superiors in the Paterson Police Department. He had been spotted with a campaign sign of a candidate running against the mayor who had the support of the police chief.

I was picking up a sign for my mother, and thats all I was doing, Heffernan has said, according to the Bergen Record.

The justices agreed during arguments Tuesday that government officials cannot retaliate against public employees who exercise their rights under the First Amendment. But there was vigorous debate over what happens when public officials act based on a mistaken belief that an employee is involved in political activity.

"There's no constitutional right not to be fired for the wrong reason," Associate Justice Antonin Scalia told Heffernans attorney Mark Frost.

Frost said what mattered was that his client's superiors were trying to suppress his political speech. He said the fact that Heffernan was not campaigning doesn't matter since the government was motivated by the assumption he was.

By the end of the hour-long give-and-take it seemed Heffernan would have had a better First Amendment case if he had endorsed the mayors challenger, The Washington Post reported.

The First Amendment talks about abridging freedom of speech, and I thought the case came to us on the proposition that he wasnt engaging in speech at all, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, adding: Im not sure how he can say his freedom of speech has been abridged.

On the other hand, Justice Elena Kagan said under the city's rationale, an elected Democrat who comes into office can't demote or fire known Republicans but he could get rid of anyone "who is just politically apathetic."

Heffernan initially won a $105,000 jury verdict against the city, but the judge later tossed the decision and recused himself due to a conflict of interest. A new judge dismissed the case and a federal appeals court affirmed. He retired from the force in 2011.

Heffernans lawyers asked the justices to overturn the appeals court decision.

Arguing for the city, lawyer Thomas Goldstein said the government's motive doesn't matter  it can't violate First Amendment rights unless a person is actually exercising those rights.

"It's a very sympathetic claim, OK? Goldstein said. "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."

A decision is expected by the end of the Supreme Courts term in June.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence suggested Sunday that congressional Republicans are manipulating the inspector general who recently reported about new top secret information found on Hillary Clintons private email system.

California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff argued that several Republican committee chairmen are investigating Clinton's use of the private system as secretary of state while actively campaigning against her.

"I think the inspector general has to be very careful not to allow himself to be used by one political party against the other in a presidential race, Schiff told "Fox News Sunday."

He also said that one of the chairmen went to a campaign rally for front-running GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and said his purpose is to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Schiff also repeated the argument about the difficulty in trying to agree on what is top secret information. It was among the most recent efforts by Democrats to downplay or discredit the Jan. 14 letter from Intelligence Committee Inspector General Charles McCullough to top Capitol Hill Republicans.

The unclassified letter states that a recent review by intelligence agencies identified "several dozen" classified emails -- including specific, top-secret intelligence related to so-called "special access programs.

Since the letter was reported by Fox News, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon has suggested that McCullough put two Republican senators up to sending him a letter so that he would have an excuse to resurface the same allegations he made back in the summer that have been discredited.

And Clinton has suggested the purported super-secret information was perhaps a New York Times article about a drone program.

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a Republican on Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told Fox News Sunday in response: We're not just talking about a newspaper article.

It's (about) the conversation that interchanges between staff. This whole Clinton procedure (is) trying to attack the messenger and to say the messenger must be a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

However, he declined to discuss what is in the emails but suggested that what McCullough cited in the letter would absolutely represent a security threat.

He also argued that McCullough was nominated for the post by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by a Democratic-controlled Senate.
With seven days until Iowans take the first official step in determining the fate of 2016's presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are holding their front-runner edge as rivals work to score last-minute support that could thrust them to the front -- or, keep them alive.

On the Republican side, the latest Fox News Poll shows Donald Trump regaining his lead in Iowa and surging past Ted Cruz. Looking to make up lost ground, the Texas senator was barnstorming the Hawkeye State on Monday, and announced the endorsement of former candidate and ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

On the Democratic side, Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders likewise are in a tight race for caucus-goers. But given Sanders big lead in New Hampshire  which holds the first primary eight days later  Iowa arguably is more important for her than for Trump, who leads decisively in the Granite State.

To that end, the wide field on the Republican side means success in Iowa and New Hampshire will be determined not only by who finishes first -- but who can make it into the top three.

In Iowa, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appears to be in solid third place position in most polls.

Fox News analyst and former George W. Bush senior adviser Karl Rove said Monday that his recent endorsement by the Des Moines Register should also help, among voters who might be inclined to support him.

Thats a big plus, Rove told Fox News. In New Hampshire, the battle for second position is even more intense  with Cruz, Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also tangled up in the polls. Rove said its possible any one of them could jump into second place there.

But a lot could still rest on who finishes first in Iowa.

Rove said if Trump notches a strong victory in the first two contests, and goes on to do well in South Carolina and Nevada after that, its going to be hard for anybody to knock off somebody who has demonstrated, in the first four contests, a consistent win.

Trumps candidacy has exposed a fissure in the so-called Republican establishment, with some party figures and senior leaders praising him and others outright lambasting his candidacy.

The conservative National Review put out a special issue last Friday purporting to state the conservative case against the billionaire businessman whose political bravado  more than any conservative orthodoxy  has characterized his campaign and attracted supporters. The magazines editorial called Trump a menace to American conservatism, a message echoed by essays from other conservative contributors.

Trump responded by calling the magazine a failing publication.

But not all in the so-called establishment are distancing themselves from Trump.

In Iowa, senior Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, introduced him at a rally over the weekend, while stopping short of an official endorsement. And Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has been openly urging caucus-goers not to support Cruz, in part because of his stance on ethanol.

But Cruz, who until recently was trading the lead with Trump in Iowa polls, is campaigning hard for the Iowa vote. On Monday morning, fellow Texan Rick Perry got behind Cruz candidacy, calling him a very committed conservative whos ready to lead on day one.

His is hardly the only late endorsement before the first two contests. Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, speaking on Fox News, endorsed Bush for president on Monday.

And last week, Trump snagged a high-profile endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Iowas results will be a real indicator of the race months from now.

The state in recent cycles has had a mixed track record of picking winners. On the Republican side, Iowa has picked the eventual nominee in two of the last four contested caucuses going back to 1996. The last two winners  Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum  did not become the nominee. On the Democratic side, the state has a better record; not since 1992, when it chose Tom Harkin, has Iowa picked a losing political horse.

Right now, Clinton is edging Sanders in the Democratic race, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

But Sanders, speaking Monday at a community college in Iowa Falls, defended his electability in a general election  trying put at ease those voters who might not think he can go up against someone like Trump. He said that when someone says they dont want to vote for Sanders because he cant beat Trump, Sanders said, Thats just not accurate.

Clinton, Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley plan to participate in a CNN-hosted town hall Monday night.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is getting some sweet, sweet support from one of the co-founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream -- in the form of his very own flavor.

Ben Cohen, himself a Sanders supporter, tweeted Monday about the new flavor hes created, called Bernies Yearning.

Jerry and I have been constituents of Bernie Sanders for the last 30 years, Cohen says on the official site for the product. Weve seen him in action and we believe in him. When were out speaking on his behalf people always ask if theres a Ben and Jerrys flavor.

As a result, Cohen dreamed up Bernies Yearning  plain mint ice cream with a thick disc of chocolate at the top. The mockup carton explains that the disc represents the economic gains that have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent since the recession. Beneath it, the rest of us, it says.

Nothing is so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come #FeelTheBern #BerniesYearning: http://ow.ly/Xv3o1 Posted by Yo Ben Cohen on Monday, 25 January 2016

Cohens design for the flavor initially was just an idea, but after a positive response he decided to make a limited batch of 40 pints. Twenty-five pints have been donated to the Sanders campaign and are being signed and distributed via a contest.

The Ben & Jerrys company tweeted after the announcement that the flavor is not an official Ben & Jerrys product, but a personal creation of Ben Cohen.

The tasty treat isn't the first step into politics by Ben or Jerry, who both have been associated with left-wing causes. In June, the company renamed their "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" flavor as "I Dough, I Dough" in celebration of the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race last year, on Monday endorsed fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz for president.

Perry announced his support for Cruz on Fox News, and in a video statement released by the Cruz campaign.

I am convinced without a doubt that on day one, this very committed conservative American will be ready to be commander-in-chief, Perry told Fox News.

Cruz, who worked in Perry's administration as the solicitor general of Texas between 2003 and 2008, is currently in second place in Iowa and trailing Donald Trump by 11 points, according to a new Fox News Poll released on Sunday. With only a week until the Iowa caucuses, Trump was solidly in first place with 34 percent, while Cruz trailed him with 23 percent.

The only other candidate to score double digits in the recent survey among Iowa GOP likely caucus-goers was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio with 12 percent.

Rick Perry became the first candidate in the once-17-person Republican race to drop out, suspending his campaign on Sept. 11 of last year. He was later joined by Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham.

Prior to Perry, Graham was the only other ex-candidate to make an endorsement. The South Carolina senator announced his support for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush earlier this month.
President Obama, in an extensive interview published Monday, defended Hillary Clinton and questioned Bernie Sanders in his strongest terms yet  likening him to a bright, shiny object and dismissing comparisons between his own 2008 bid and Sanders rise.

Weighing in extensively on the race a week before the leadoff Iowa caucuses where Clinton and Sanders are locked in a tight race, the president told Politico that Clinton entered the race with the privilege and burden of being perceived as the frontrunner.

By contrast, he said, I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete longshot and just letting loose.

Obama offered this context to explain the dynamic in the race, with Sanders increasingly posing a challenge to what was once thought to be Clintons cakewalk to the nomination. He cast Clinton as the experienced candidate, and Sanders as the new political attraction that has captured voters attention.

She is a good, smart, tough person who cares deeply about this country, and she has been in the public eye for a long time and in a culture in which new is always better. And, you know, you're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people don't, haven't seen before, Obama said. That's a disadvantage to her. Bernie is somebody who -- although I don't know as well because he wasn't, obviously, in my administration, has the virtue of saying exactly what he believes, and great authenticity, great passion, and is fearless. His attitude is, I got nothing to lose.

Obama, though, dismissed any potential comparison between his own 2008 bid and Sanders 2016 run.

I dont think thats true, Obama said, when asked about whether Sanders is an analog for Obama.

Asked repeatedly about the 2016 race, the president was extremely cautious to avoid showing explicit favor in the Democratic race. White House officials have said Obama will not endorse in the primary, which pits his 2008 primary opponent and former secretary of state against a liberal independent senator from Vermont who many Democrats feel embodies the upstart, idealistic nature of Obama's own campaign.

But Obama clearly questioned his readiness and touted Clintons experience.

The president said Clinton is "wicked smart," but that her strengths are also her weaknesses. Praising her extensive preparation for the Oval Office, Obama said Clinton's experience had taught her to "campaign more in prose than poetry."

Asked toward the end of the interview whether Sanders should be more rounded, he said: You don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing.

Obama said there was no doubt Sanders had tapped into a "running thread" in Democratic politics that questions why people should be scared to talk bluntly about inequality and "be full-throated in our progressivism."

"You know, that has an appeal," Obama said. "And I understand that."

Turning to the Republican primary, Obama said Donald Trump and Ted Cruz exploit an anger and frustration that is real within the Republican Party. But he said his hope was that when voting began, Republicans "will settle down and say, `Who do we want actually sitting behind the desk, making decisions that are critical to our future?"'

In the interview, Obama reflected on his own victory in Iowa eight years ago as the most satisfying of his political career, praising the process as a true expression of the way American democracy is supposed to work.

And he acknowledged his own weaknesses as an untested national candidate in 2008 in the high-stakes campaign in Iowa.

"I was too wonkish. I wasn't crisp in my presentation, and that was true for a while," Obama said. He said in his own primary campaign against Clinton, his supporters and staff "got too huffy" about legitimate questions that Clinton and her campaign had raised.

"There were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out when she was tough, and not calling some of our folks out as much when we were tough in ads," Obama said.

Meanwhile, in a separate interview Sunday with CBS Sunday Morning, Obama said he wouldnt run for a third term even if he could. He said the presidency takes a toll on family life, and the office "should be continually renewed by new energy and new ideas."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Two Republican senators want the Justice Department to investigate claims that Environmental Protection Agency officials wrongly pursued a covert propaganda campaign to promote the agencys controversial water regulations.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., asked the DOJ to investigate whether the EPA knowingly and willfully violated federal law as part of its Clean Water Rule in 2015.

Only a thorough and independent investigation can determine whether a crime has occurred, the senators wrote to Lynch in a letter dated last Thursday, noting the penalty for breaking the law in question runs up to a $5,000 fine and two years in prison.

In December, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded that EPA social media campaigns on the water rules violated the law -- by spending money on grassroots lobbying, and in a way not authorized by Congress.

But the senators, in their letter, suggested the EPA is doing little about it.

Despite the fact that the Government Accountability Office found that they broke federal law by running a covert propaganda campaign to support their sweeping WOTUS (Waters of the United States) rule, the EPA has doubled down on their lawlessness, Sasse said in a written statement. Its time for the Department of Justice to investigate.

The lawmakers claim the EPA continues to violate the law in question -- the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits officials from spending money not approved by Congress -- and that only a thorough and independent investigation can determine whether a crime has occurred.

The GAO report in December had criticized the EPA for using social media to push the new water regulations. It also said the agency went beyond its legal authority by linking to environmental groups websites that asked readers to contact lawmakers on the topic.

The GAO probe began in June after Inhofe first requested the review. The watchdog report faulted the EPA for using the social media site Thunderclap to correct what it viewed as misinformation.

While the governments use of Thunderclap itself wasnt illegal, the GAO said the agency crossed the line when it asked supporters to share a pro-EPA message on Twitter and Facebook without attributing it to the government.

The omission is why the EPA was accused of covert propaganda.

Since the GAOs findings, Sasse and Inhofe claim the EPA has not corrected its actions and continues to break the law.

Under the Antideficiency Act, EPA must conduct an internal investigation and identify the persons responsible, they said in the letter to Lynch. However, EPA is dismissive of GAOs legal decision. In fact, even though GAO issued its legal decision on December 14, EPA has not removed from its website the messages that GAO found to be covert propaganda and grass roots lobbying.

The senators also claim a court brief filed on behalf of the EPA mischaracterizes the GAOs conclusion as an opinion letter and not a formal legal decision that an Antideficiency Act violation occurred. They claim the EPA administrator must also submit a report to Congress detailing the violation and the amount of taxpayer money spent  something the senators say the EPA has not done.

The regulations in question sought to clarify which waterways in the U.S. are protected under federal law. While the government cast the changes as a way to give clarity, critics say it expands the EPAs regulatory reach, even to relatively minor bodies of water.

For its part, the EPA has defended its handling of the water regulation campaign and has said everything its done has been legal.

We appreciate the GAOs consideration of these matters, but respectfully disagree, Liz Purchia, an EPA public affairs official, wrote in a blog following the GAO report. At no point did the EPA encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature about the Clean Water Rule.  Plain and simple.

She also argued that critics were grasping at anything to distract from and derail our progress.

Calls to the EPA and DOJ for comment on Monday were not immediately returned. Federal government offices in Washington were closed Monday following the weekends historic winter storm.
Theres been lots of chatter over Donald Trump proclaiming at a rally that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing an iota of his support.

I suggest we lower the outrage meter. This is Trumps in-your-face sense of humor, and one of the reasons that thousands flock to his rallies is that you never know how far hes going to go in pushing the envelope.

It was not the best joke in an era of mass shootings, to be sure. But everyone gets what Trump was trying to say. No outrageous comment, no media attack, no revelation of a past liberal position seems to shake the loyalty of his fiercest fans.

This was underscored yesterday by new Fox News polls, giving Trump an 11-point lead over Ted Cruz among likely Iowa caucus-goers, and a 17-point edge over Cruz in New Hampshire. Remember when it looked like Cruz had Iowa almost wrapped up?

While it remains to be seen how many Trump supporters actually turn out43 percent in the Iowa poll would be first-time caucus votersits little wonder that Trump is oozing confidence. Hes not going to worry about verbal missteps. Hes not going to worry about Michael Bloomberg. And hes not going to worry about National Review.

The magazines all-out assault came shortly after I wrapped my Las Vegas interview with Trump. But it underscores how his biggest problem hasnt been the liberal press but a precinct of the profession that is usually firmly entrenched in the GOPs corner: the conservative media.

The journalistic coup attempt spearheaded by National Review is so deeply revealing, both of the nature of Trumps candidacy and a cultural divide on the right.

Trump is not running as a true-blue conservative. That is why media reports of the liberal positions he took and Democrats he befriended in the 1990s, a recent staple of Ted Cruzs attacks, have failed to dent his armor. He presents an amalgam of positions, from a hard-right stance on illegal immigration to a center-left view on protecting entitlement programs to a liberal appeal to tax hedge-fund guys.

Rich Lowry and the editors of National Review are right: The Donald is not their kind of candidate. He has no interest in that. He is selling an image of strength and success, packaged with plenty of bombast, that transcends the usual litmus-test politics.

When I interviewed Trump in Las Vegas for Sundays Media Buzz, I asked whether he has, through some kind of weird alchemy, become the establishment candidate, as Cruz says. Trump made no attempt to dispute it, calling the Beltway power brokers great people and citing Bob Doles criticism of the Texas senator. Im a dealmaker, he said proudly.

By recruiting 22 writers to attack Trump, by calling him an opportunist and a huckster and a menace to American conservatism, National Review is standing up for what it believes. Trump responded in typical fashion, attacking the messenger as a faltering franchise, as he has done with Politico and other media outlets. National Review is a failing publication that has lost its way, he said, with its influence at an all-time low. Sad! And yes, Trump said the magazines founder, William F. Buckley, would be ashamed, despite the fact that Buckley described him in 2000 as a self-regarding demagogue.

My colleague Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the Bush White House, says most Republican voters dont read National Review, portraying its editors and writers as living in a bubble. But every movement needs its thinkers to debate and deconstruct its philosophical principles.

No print publication has the influence it once had, and NR has certainly gotten a tsunami of media attention for its assault by recruiting the likes of Bill Kristol, editor of the rival Weekly Standard.

But Trump benefits from a newer and brasher wing of the conservative media, the more populist arena of Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Breitbart and others who may be more in touch with the grass roots than editors who live in Manhattan and Georgetown and attend conferences and cruises.

National Review provides the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement, but it is also part of a cultural elite that many conservatives believe has let them down. Trump, the street fighter who emerged from a tabloid culture, has no interest, and no particular need, to win over the intellectuals. He is a brawler fighting a populist campaign. They are what George Wallace, in a very different context, once referred to as pointy-heads.

For National Review and its brethren, smaller government and a muscular foreign policy are the essence of why they fight the policy wars. These positions are not what motivate Trump, who often notes that he opposed the Iraq war, championed by the neoconservatives.

This same dynamic is at the heart of his battles with Fox News, where Trump has been pounded by the likes of George Will and Steve Hayes, along with Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and Lowry, all associated with National Review.

We saw this same disruption in 2008 when Sarah Palin, who endorsed Trump this week, became the darling of Kristol and other media conservatives. When such commentators as David Brooks, David Frum and Kathleen Parker broke with the orthodoxy and called Palin unqualified to be vice president, they suffered a severe backlash.

Perhaps inevitably, things get personal between journalists and commentators who find themselves on opposite sides of the same movement.

Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out, National Review writes.

It may have been a misstep for the magazine to go beyond using its ideological firepower against Trump and organize what looks like a political campaign to block him from winning the nomination.

Trump jokes about shooting people, but he may not need to expend much ammunition on a bunch of opinion folks who make their living with words.
Forget about selfies. In California, residents are using smartphones and drones to document the coastline's changing face.

Starting this month, The Nature Conservancy is asking tech junkies to capture the flooding and coastal erosion that come with El Nino, a weather pattern that's bringing California its wettest winter in years - and all in the name of science.

The idea is that crowd-sourced, geotagged images of storm surges and flooded beaches will give scientists a brief window into what the future holds as sea levels rise from global warming, a sort of a crystal ball for climate change.

Images from the latest drones, which can produce high-resolution 3D maps, will be particularly useful and will help scientists determine if predictive models about coastal flooding are accurate, said Matt Merrifield, the organization's chief technology officer.

"We use these projected models and they don't quite look right, but we're lacking any empirical evidence," he said. "This is essentially a way of 'ground truthing' those models."

Experts on climate change agreed that El Nino-fueled storms offer a sneak peak of the future and said the project was a novel way to raise public awareness. Because of its crowd-sourced nature, however, they cautioned the experiment might not yield all the results organizers hoped for, although any additional information is useful.

"It's not the answer, but it's a part of the answer," said Lesley Ewing, senior coastal engineer with the California Coastal Commission. "It's a piece of the puzzle."

In California, nearly a half-million people, $100 billion in property and critical infrastructure such as schools, power plants and highways will be at risk of inundation during a major storm if sea level rises another 4.6 feet - a figure that could become a reality by 2100, according to a 2009 Pacific Institute study commissioned by three state agencies.

Beaches that Californians take for granted will become much smaller or disappear altogether and El Nino-fueled storms will have a similar effect, if only temporarily, said William Patzert, a climatologist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"When you get big winter storm surge like they want to document, you tend to lose a lot of beach," he said. "In a way, it's like doing a documentary on the future. It'll show you what your beaches will look like in 100 years."

What the mapping won't be able to predict is exactly which beaches will disappear and which bluffs will crumble - all things that will affect how flooding impacts coastal populations, said Ewing, the California Coastal Commission engineer.

"We're not going to capture that change," she said. "We're going to capture where the water could go to with this current landscape and that's still a very important thing to understand because it gets at those hot spots."

So far, project organizers aren't giving assignments to participants, although they may send out specific requests as the winter unfolds, said Merrifield.

If users wind up mapping real-time flooding events along 10 or 15 percent of California's 840-mile-long coastline the project will be a success, he said. A realistic goal is a "curated selection" of 3D maps showing flooding up and down the coast at different dates and times.

The Nature Conservancy has partnered with a San Francisco-area startup called DroneDeploy that will provide a free app to drone owners for consistency. The app will provide automated flight patterns at the touch of a screen while cloud-based technology will make managing so much data feasible, said Ian Smith, a business developer for the company.

Trent Lukaczyk heard about the experiment from a posting in a Facebook group dedicated to drone enthusiasts. For the aerospace engineer, who has already used drones to map coral reefs in American Samoa, the volunteer work was appealing.

"It's a really exciting application. It's not just something to take a selfie with," he said, before heading out to collect images of beach erosion after a storm in Pacifica, California.
Prosecutors have charged a Massachusetts teen with involuntary manslaughter after text messages to her boyfriend appeared to show her urging him to commit suicide.

Conrad Roy III parked his truck outside a Fairhaven Kmart last year and killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. Prosecutors say Michelle Carter, his girlfriend at the time, assisted him by urging him to overcome his doubts about taking his own life, pressuring him to do it and even telling him to get back in his truck after becoming frightened that the plan was working.

"You can't think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don't get why you aren't," Carter allegedly wrote to Roy on the day he died. Carters lawyer has denied that she pushed him to kill himself and has asked the judge to dismiss the case.

In their written response, prosecutors included text exchanges between Carter and Roy that they say support their claim that Carter caused her boyfriend's death by "wantonly and recklessly" helping him poison himself.

Roy, 18, had a history of depression and had previously attempted suicide two years earlier, taking an overdose of the painkiller acetaminophen.

"You can't keep living this way. You just need to do it like you did the last time and not think about it and just do it, babe," Carter texted him.

Joseph Cataldo, Carters lawyer, said her texts amount to speech protected by the First Amendment. He said its clear from the exchanges that Roy had made up his mind to take his own life and Carter, now 18, didnt cause his death.

"He got the generator, he devised the plan and he had to go find a spot. He parked, he had to get the gas for the generator, he had to turn the generator on, he had to sit in that car for a long period of time. He caused his own death," Cataldo said.

"He had thought this out. He wanted to take his own life. It's sad, but it's not manslaughter."

Roy spent most of his time in a psychiatric hospital following his earlier suicide attempt. In the weeks prior to his death, he was gearing up to graduate from high school and receive his sea captains license, said his aunt, Becki Maki.

"He did not have the signs of someone who was considering that," Maki said.

Carter and Roy had met two years earlier while both were visiting relatives in Florida. They kept in touch through text message and email upon returning to Massachusetts. The two lived about 50 miles apart and hadnt seen each other for about a year before Roy died.

Roy used a gasoline-operated water pump to poison himself with carbon monoxide.

While discussing the plan, Carter appears to taunt Roy. "But I bet you're gonna be like 'oh, it didn't work because I didn't tape the tube right or something like that," she wrote. "I bet you're gonna say an excuse like that ... you seem to always have an excuse."

Cataldo said Carter had tried to repeatedly talk Roy out of killing himself and only decided to support his plan after it became clear Roy wasnt going back. After about a month before his suicide, she suggested that he seek treatment at a psychiatric hospital where she was receiving treatment for an undisclosed condition. Roy refused and later suggested that they both kill themselves, like Romeo and Juliet, Cataldo said.

In a text exchange on July 7, 2014, six days before he was found dead, Carter advised Roy to seek help.

"Well it's too late I already gave up," Roy responded.

Some legal experts say it may have been a reach for prosecutors to charge Carter with manslaughter. Massachusetts does not have a law against assisted suicide.

"Causation is going to be a vital part of this case," said Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University law professor. "Can the prosecution prove that she caused him to kill himself in this way? Would he have done it anyway?"

Prosecutors point to a text Carter sent to a friend after Roy's death.

"...his death is my fault like honestly I could have stopped him I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car because it was working and he got scared and I (expletive) told him to get back in ... because I knew he would do it all over again the next day and I couldn't have him live the way he was living anymore I couldn't do it I wouldn't let him," Carter wrote.

Roy's grandfather, also named Conrad, said his grandson seemed happy in the days before he died.

"He was coming out of his depression," Roy said. "We saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and she just blew that tunnel up. She shut the light off."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An assistant communications professor at the Missouri School of Journalism resigned from her courtesy appointment Tuesday after she was caught on video confronting a student journalist and attempting to block him from shooting photos on a public quad.

The video, showing University of Missouri protesters and Assistant Professor Melissa Click, was posted on Youtube shortly after University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe resigned following a week of protests after his perceived lack of response to a series of racially-charged incidents.

Clicks courtesy appointment allowed her to serve on graduate panels for students from other academic units, according to the Columbia Missourian. Her position as mass media professor in the Communication Department remains unclear.

Dean of the Missouri School of Journalism David Kurpius announced Click's resignation on his Twitter account late Tuesday.

More On This... University of Missouri chancellor, president resign amid race backlash

Click issued an apology after reviewing the video, saying she reached out to the journalists involved to offer my sincere apologies and to express regret over my actions.

I regret the language and strategies I used, and sincerely apologize to the MU campus community, and journalists at large, for my behavior, and also for the way my actions have shifted attention away from the students campaign for justice, she wrote in her statement.

From this experience I have learned about humanity and humility. When I apologized to one of the reporters in a phone call this afternoon, he accepted my apology, Click said. I believe he is doing a difficult job, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with him.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kurpius lambasted Click while lauding the photojournalist.

"The Missouri School of Journalism is proud of photojournalism senior Tim Tai for how he handled himself during a protest on Carnahan Quad on the University of Missouri campus," Kurpius said in Tuesday's statement.

"The news media have First Amendment rights to cover public events," Kurpius said. "Tai handled himself professionally and with poise."

Tom Warhover, the executive editor of the Columbia Missourian, a university newspaper, told the Times he was "pretty incensed" about Tai's treatment.

"I find it ironic that particularly faculty members would resort to those kinds of things for no good reason. I understand students who are protesting and want privacy. But they are not allowed to push and assault our photographers -- our student photographers."

Tai told the Los Angeles Times the situation resembled last year's protests in Ferguson, Mo., which he also covered. The only difference, he said, was "it was the police doing it then."

Click for more from The Los Angeles Times.
A six-foot alligator kept in a suburban Illinois home for 26 years was removed Saturday by authorities, WLS reports.

Conservation officers and an alligator specialist wrangled the 200-lb reptile, which was discovered by an appliance repairman.

The repairman snapped pictures of the animal after noticing movement inside a container in resident Charles Prices basement, and contacted animal control officers, Sgt. Bill Shannon of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources' told WLS.

Price is charged with misdemeanor unlawful possession of an endangered species, as it's illegal for people to own alligators without a permit. The American Alligator is native to Florida and endangered in Illinois.

Neighbors were reportedly unware the animal was living there. Price would periodically put it out into his backyard, but most of the time it was caged, Shannon added.

Price got the American alligator at a swap in Kankakee, Illinois, when

it was a baby, Shannon added.



Click for more from WLS


Someone might be stocking up for the Super Bowl.

Wisconsin police said a semi-trailer packed with $70,000 worth of cheese product was stolen early Friday morning, less than a week after a similar cheese theft.

The Germantown Police Department said on its Facebook page that the trailer was found about 10 hours after it disappeared  but the cheese was gone.

We have recovered the trailer, minus the cheese, Lt. Todd Grenier told WTMJ. This was not a one- or two-person job.

A week earlier, another cheese heist occurred less than 200 miles away.

Approximately $90,000 worth of parmesan cheese was missing from a logistics or storage facility here in Marshfield, Marshfield Police Lt. Darren Larson told CBS58.

Unless the thieves eat it, however, it appears the $160,000 worth of cheese is likely to go to waste.

The cheese was sealed inside the truck, and when the bandits opened the truck, they broke the seal, rendering the cheese unlawful for sale, according to federal law, CBS58 reported.
A review of active shooter cases by the Air Force has confirmed what gun rights advocates have long been saying: Firearms in the hands of good guys are often the best bet for stopping massacres.

The military branch earlier this month sent out a letter to its base commanders around the nation reminding them that they can authorize subordinates to carry guns, even while off-duty and out of uniform. It also established three programs to help ensure that armed service members are in a position to protect their bases.

"None of these programs gives the installation commander authorizations they didn't already have the authorization to do," Maj. Keith Quick, the Air Force Security Forces Integrated Defense action officer, said in a statement according to Military.com. "We are now formalizing it and telling them how they can use these types of programs more effectively."

Finally, someone in the federal government is recognizing what has been obvious to sheriffs and police across the country...  John Lott, Crime Prevention Research Center

The memo followed a review by the Air Force of active-shooter incidents across the country, which was spurred by last July's attack on a recruiting office and nearby reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn., in which four Marines and a Navy sailor were killed.

In that attack, Muhammad Youseef Abdulazeez's rampage only ended when responding police shot him. But an ensuing investigation determined that the base's commanding officer fired at Abdulazeez with his personal weapon and one of the murdered Marines had an unauthorized 9-mm. Glock on him when he was killed.

In the aftermath of the shooting, questions were raised regarding one of the military officers involved in the shootout, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy White, and if charges would be filed against him for discharging a firearm on federal property. Nothing has been formally filed.

"The investigation is still working its way through the leadership process," Lt. Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a spokeswoman for the Navy tells FoxNews.com.

Past reports have suggested that charges will not be filed against White.

Critics immediately asserted that armed military officers at the recruiting office where the rampage began, as well as more armed Navy personnel at the base, could have saved lives.

An Air Force spokesperson acknowledged to Military.com that the attack in Chattanooga was the reason for the review and outcome.

Quick said three programs established by the Integrated Defense team enable commanders to increase security through conceal-carry. One of the new initiatives, the Unit Marshal Program, enables commanders at every level permission to work with security forces to train Air Force members and allow them to open carry their M9 service pistol at their duty location.

The Security Forces Staff Arming program enables more security officers to carry a government-issued weapon while on duty.

Finally, someone in the federal government is recognizing what has been obvious to sheriffs and police across the country, John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told FoxNews.com. "Concealed handgun permit holders have stopped dozens of what would have clearly been mass public shootings."

The U.S. military has always had the authority to allow open and conceal carry, but has mostly used discretion in allowing service members to tote weapons on bases.

As far as I'm aware, it's always been in the power of military commanders to make decisions of this nature, Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence tells FoxNews.com. But the men and women leading our military understand their mission and the risks that come with barracks and mess halls full of guns.

"Don't hold your breath waiting for them to embrace America's degenerate gun culture. They won't, and

thank God given the potential implications for national defense."
A homemade bomb left behind by the husband and wife who perpetrated a mass shooting at a California social services center failed to detonate because it was poorly constructed, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

The failure compelled Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29, to drive around the area of San Bernardino, California, after the shootings that killed 14 people. They were apparently trying to set off the remote-controlled bomb, one of the officials said.

The officials were briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Investigators believe the couple intended to detonate the improvised explosive device  placed in a bag left at the center that morning by Farook before the shooting  to kill emergency responders or possibly before their attack.

The plan to set off an explosive device as part of a wave of attacks is similar to an aborted 2012 plan by Farook and his longtime friend Enrique Marquez, who has been charged for his role in aiding the violence. The pair planned to explode pipe bombs on a freeway and then shoot emergency responders.

The device found at the scene in San Bernardino consisted of three pipe bombs, constructed with Christmas tree lights and attached to a remote-control toy car switched to "on." The couple had the remote with them in their rented SUV. It was found after the shootout.

The FBI is still trying to determine where the couple was or what they did during 18 minutes between the Dec. 2 attack and a shootout with authorities that left them dead.

Investigators have no details on the couple's whereabouts between 12:59 p.m. and 1:17 p.m. that day and worry that they may have met with someone, dropped by a storage unit or visited a residence. Authorities accounted for the couple's movements using traffic and surveillance cameras, witness accounts and other techniques.

While driving around San Bernardino and Redlands afterward, the couple appeared to drive aimlessly and stopped multiple times over a roughly 20-mile area, according to the FBI. They never strayed far from the location of their initial attack, and at one point appeared to be trying to drive closer. Farook and Malik also stopped by a nearby lake, which a dive team searched unsuccessfully for days, trying to find any abandoned electronic devices.

Detectives watching the area saw the couple driving toward their home in the SUV, and Farook and Malik died in a shootout with authorities.

One of the officials said the hard drive has still not been found, and the two cellphones, which were sent to the FBI lab, were so badly crushed that investigators have not yet been able to conduct a forensic examination on them.

One rifle used in the attack was modified in what appears to be an effort to make the gun fully automatic. But despite the installation of the required parts, the machining wasn't done properly and so the effort was unsuccessful, one official said. The errors constructing the explosive device and modifying the gun may indicate that the two killers were self-taught, but without potential electronic evidence on the couple's computer hard drive and phones, it is hard to know for sure, officials said.

The FBI has said there's no evidence that the attack was directed from overseas.
Critics are blasting a Massachusetts citys new law that they claim requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write an essay and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.



The new laws take effect this week in Lowell, a city of 110,000 that lies 35 miles north of Boston. Pushed by Police Superintendent William Taylor and passed by the City Council, they require applicants for unrestricted handgun licenses to state in writing why they should receive such a license. Taylor, who was unavailable for comment on Monday, has sole discretion for approving or denying the applications.

It is absurd that people should have to write an essay to the town to explain why they should be able to exercise their constitutional rights, said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts. We already have a very strict set of gun laws in the state, but this is way over the top.

It is absurd that people should have to write an essay to the town to explain why they should be able to exercise their Constitutional rights.  Jim Wallace, Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts.

State law sets guidelines and requirements, but gives local chiefs of police broad discretion in implementation. While other cities and towns in Massachusetts have tough licensing regulations, Lowells new requirements, which also include taking a gun safety course over and above one already required by the state, prompted complaints at a public hearing last week.

"I will never write an essay to get my rights as an American citizen," resident Dan Gannon told the City Council.

The new policy was prompted in part by a year-old federal lawsuit brought by Commonwealth Second Amendment, a Bay State gun-rights group. Attorney David Jensen said the suit stems from Lowells history of denying qualified applicants permits to carry handguns without what the plaintiffs consider a legitimate rationale.

Jensen said the jury is still out on whether the new policy will prove a remedy or just a more formal system for rejecting applications.

The question right now is what they actually do, Jensen said. Our initial response to that would be that the Second Amendment secures the right to keep and bear arms. You really shouldnt be required to write an essay explaining why you would like to exercise this fundamental right.

Lowell Police spokesman Capt. Timothy Crowley said characterizing the written requirement as an essay is not accurate.

If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why, Crowley said. That is not unreasonable to most people.

Local attorney Richard Chambers, who often represents applicants who have been turned down, said calling the new requirement an "essay" is right on target.

"An essay when you're in school is when you write something, you turn it in and they grade it," Chambers said. "This is an essay. And it's also just another layer of bureaucracy they've tacked on to block people from exercising their rights."

Despite the criticism, the new rules were adopted unanimously and are set to take effect this week.

"We're no longer taking a cookie-cutter approach to issuing firearms licenses," City Manager Kevin Murphy told the Lowell Sun, noting that the new policy will allow Taylor to look more closely at each applicant.

Thats exactly what concerns Wallace, who urged Lowell residents not to adhere to the new rules and to simply turn to the courts if and when their applications are denied.

Its like having a college professor say, Im going to read your essay and if I dont like it, Im going to give it back to you, Wallace said.

A 1998 state law known as the Gun Control Act included a raft of new regulations, fees and requirements that contributed to an 80 percent reduction in gun licenses over time, according to Wallace. The new law in Lowell, which Taylor said has about 6,000 gun owners with licenses to carry, will require a specialized training course.

A local firearms-safety instructor, Randy Breton, told the Sun the training requirement appeared designed to purposely make it cost-prohibitive to apply for a gun permit. He said one five-day course approved by the city costs $1,100.

"It's beyond ridiculous," Breton told the newspaper.
A New Yorker who believes cops discriminate against minorities has adopted a police tactic to make his point, handing out his own "summonses" to whites in affluent neighborhoods for infractions he says are selectively enforced.

Riding a bike on the sidewalk, jay-walking or carrying an open beer can bring a costly ticket in some sections of the Big Apple, yet barely register with police in others, according to Robert Gangi, co-founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project.

White people in [the affluent Brooklyn neighborhood of] Park Slope virtually never get ticketed for these kind of activities whereas African-American and Latino people in different neighborhoods in this city will get sanctioned  ticketed and sometimes arrested, he said recently, according to Wagingnonviolence.org.

Gangi's group next plans to hand out its fake summonses in the tony Upper East Side neighborhood near Gracie Mansion, where Mayor Bill de Blasio lives.

We think that that will send him a message loud and clear, Gangi said.

During a PROP ticket blitz in Park Slope last October, Gangi and a group of volunteers handed wrongdoers and scofflaws summonses along with pamphlets explaining their purpose. Recipients were informed they weren't really being penalized, but told, according to The New Yorker, that "you very well might have if you were in a different neighborhood and a person of color.

Gangi said some of those who were stopped signed a petition calling for policing reforms, while others just kept going.

Gangis organization claims, its data reveals an imbalance in policing. In minority neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, there are, on average 2,000 summonses handed out per year from 2009 to 2011. In Park Slope, a more affluent neighborhood, the statistics show an average of eight are given out.

Gangi claims that city police precincts in low-income neighborhoods have quotas for summonses, which the NYPD has long denied.

The NYPD did not respond to a FoxNews.com request for comment on the issue.

Gangi and other police critics fault the so-called "broken windows" theory, widely credited for bringing down crime in New York and other major cities during the 1990s. The theory holds that enforcement of minor laws creates a climate of order that prevents more serious laws from being flouted.

Gangi said that police officers in certain precincts in low-income, minority areas are given quotas and unfairly target minorities.

The broken windows theory has been criticized as a license for selective enforcement, and has come under increasing fire as tensions between police and minority communities have increased.

George L. Kelling, one of the co-founders of the Broken Windows theory, wrote an op-ed in Politico last summer defending his theory titled, Dont Blame My Broken Windows Theory for Poor Policing.

Despite these and other criticisms, the demand for order remains high in minority and poor communities, he wrote. And I would argue that our theory has been largely misunderstood.

Kelling told FoxNews.com that police respond to demand.

"You go where the problems are," he said. "Once police start ignoring these high-crime areas, that, too, is dicriminatory in another way."

He said summonses should be given out fairly, regardless if the offender is drinking wine during a picnic in Central Park or drinking a beer inside a park in a low-income neighborhood. But bad policing should not reflect poorly for the effectiveness of broken windows.

"At one time, criminal investigation involved torture," he said. "Just because something was wrong, it didn't mean we should do away with criminal investigations all together."

A police officer who patrols a high-crime neighborhood in New York told FoxNews.com that stopping people for seemingly minor crimes such as biking on the sidewalk can prevent more serious crimes, making enforcement a good example of the broken windows theory in action.

Gang members often have young teens transport weapons for them in order to minmize their own exposure to the law. Stopping a youngster for riding on the sidewalk could lead to discover of a gun in a backpack, for instance, he said.

If the kid is stopped with the gun, hes a kid, the police officer said. Its risky for an adult to carry a gun in public.
Ten years after an Orlando woman disappeared without a trace in a case that has stumped investigators, police and the family of Jennifer Kesse are pleading with the public for information to help them solve the investigation.



"We will not stop or let up on our efforts to locate Jen and bring her home, the woman's father, Drew Kesse, told Fox News on Friday.

It has been a very long road and quite challenging at times but our hope is still strong and our strength is too until we can end Jennifer's personal hell," Kesse said.

The Orlando Police Department was expected to hold a press conference with the family Friday in the hopes someone will come forward with information.

Known by friends and family simply as "Jenn," the 24-year-old Orlando woman was last seen alive on Jan. 23, 2006.

Kesse, who lived alone, was reported missing by her parents the next day when she failed to show up for her job as a manager at Central Florida Investments.

Kesses car  a black Chevy Malibu  was found by authorities on Jan. 26 approximately one mile from her condominium.

The Orlando Police Department had hoped for a break in the case when it released security footage of a person seen parking Kesses vehicle near a pool at an apartment complex and walking away.

But the suspect  who appears to be between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5  has never been identified.

"The cruel hard reality is not one thing has changed in her case, Drew Kesse said. Jennifer remains just as missing today as she was 10 years ago."

"Not one fact has come to light which could end Jennifers hell. Not one solid lead has been given nor generated by authorities. How can that be?" he said of his daughter, a 2003 graduate of the University of Central Florida in Orlando and an Alpha Delta Pi sorority member described by family as driven and outgoing.

In a 2013 interview with FoxNews.com, Drew Kesse said he believed more than one person was responsible for his daughters disappearance. His theory is that Jenn was abducted while leaving her home early on Jan. 24, and that she never made it to her car.

No forensic evidence was obtained from her vehicle  only one latent print, which her father called too minuscule to be useful.

Kesse had suggested his daughter -- 5-foot-8 with blond hair -- may have been taken by human traffickers and may no longer be in the country.

The Kesse case was featured in a 2014 episode of Fox News Channels Greta Investigates, a crime anthology series hosted by Greta Van Susteren.

If you have any information about Jennifer, her father said, however trivial you may think it may be, make the call."

"No names, no ID, just tips and rewards. Call the FBI, a lawyer or your clergy. Be the person who makes the difference. This haunts us every minute of every day.

Anyone with information on Jennifer Kesse is urged to call the Orlando Police Department at 407-246-3982 or Crimeline of Central Florida at 1-800-423-8477.

More information on the Kesse case is also available at www.jenniferkesse.com.

Fox News' Cristina Corbin and Steven Tierney contributed to this report.
The latest on the escape of three prisoners from a county jail in Southern California (all times local):

10:50 a.m.

California law enforcement authorities believe at least two of the three men who staged an elaborate escape from an Orange County jail on Friday are still in the region.

County sheriff's officials had a Vietnamese-speaking deputy appeal for public help during a press conference Monday.

Orange County has a large number of Vietnamese-Americans, and Lt. Dave Sawyer said officials believe 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu and 43-year-old Bac Duong may be "embedded" in the community.

The two men and 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri were awaiting trial for violent crimes when they vanished Friday.

The men somehow cut through metal, got into plumbing tunnels and rappelled from a roof using braided ropes made from linens.
A lunatic hacked off his Bronx neighbors hand and then fatally slit her throat with a machete in an unprovoked attack on Sunday, according to police sources.

Angel Feliz-Volquez, 25, ambushed and butchered Carmen Torres-Gonzalez, 59, as she chatted with her mothers home health-care aide outside their fifth-floor apartment in the Mott Haven Houses, law-enforcement sources said.

The victim was found lying in a pool of blood in the hallway just after 4 p.m., the sources said.

Her right hand had been chopped off completely, her left hand was partially severed and she had suffered cuts to her throat, cheek and shoulder.

Cops nabbed Feliz-Volquez a short time later in his apartment, which is in the same building  and on the same floor  as the victims.

Officers recovered the machete in the stairwell.

Charges against Feliz-Volquez  whom neighbors described as the mental guy  are pending, according to sources.

Click to read more from The New York Post.


How much snow fell on Washington D.C. during this past weekend's massive snowstorm? Officially, 17.8 inches. But the actual answer may never be known.

The Washington Post reports that the snow-measuring device used by a team of weather observers at Washington's Reagan National Airport was buried in the blizzard, leaving them with no way to record the true amount of snow for hours on end.

The error promped the National Weather Service (NWS) to announce that it will be looking into the procedures used at Reagan National, where the official snow totals for the nation's capital are recorded.



The team at Reagan National, in Arlington County, Va., use a device called a snow board, in keeping with the requirements of the NWS. The board is supposed to be placed on the ground in a location where it will not be affected by high winds or drifting snow. It is supposed to be wiped clean and replaced every six hours.

According to the Post, 17.8 inches of snow had fallen at the airport as of 8 p.m. local time Saturday. Although snow fell for at least another four hours, 17.8 inches was the final measurement submitted to the NWS.

The Post reports that the board was buried by snow sometime Friday night and could not be located. Instead, the weather observer made a series of measurements of snow depth and averaged them.

By contrast, weather observers at the other two major airports in the Washington D.C. area  Dulles Airport in northern Virginia and Thurgood Marshall-Baltimore Washington International Airport in Maryland  recorded 29.3 and 29.2 inches of snow, respectively.

However, the Post reported that other snow readings taken nearer the airport were closer to the Reagan National team's total. 19.4 inches were recorded in Crystal City, Va., approximately one mile north of the airport, while 22 inches were reported at the White House, about 3.5 miles away.

On Sunday, Mark Richards, the senior weather observer at National, stood by the accuracy of the reading, saying his team did the best it could under tough conditions.



"Everyone has to understand that measuring snow in a blizzard is a tough thing to do," Richards said. "We would like it to be as accurate as possible," he said. "But it's an inexact science."

However, Bob Leffler, a retired NWS climatologist told the Post that the loss of the snow board may have resulted in Reagan National's observers underreporting the true total amount of snowfall by between 10 and 20 percent, which would make the true total between 19.5 inches and 21.4 inches.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from The Washington Post.
A memorial service is underway for a Utah police officer who was fatally shot earlier this month while working overtime to pay for his cancer treatments.

Several thousand officers in uniform saluted Monday and bagpipes played as a casket carrying the body of Officer Douglas Scott Barney was brought into an arena in a Salt Lake City suburb. Barney's young son pushed the casket, which was draped in an American flag.

The 44-year-old worked for the Unified Police Department and died on Jan. 17 while responding to a traffic accident. The Officer Down Memorial organization says he was the first officer killed in the U.S. this year.

Authorities say Cory Lee Henderson killed Barney and later died in a shootout with police.

Barney's wife and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert are scheduled to speak at the funeral.
One week until the first votes in the race for the White House!

Iowa heads to the polls for their first-in-the-nation caucuses next Monday!

1000EST -- OH Gov Kasich holds an event. The Stone Church, Newmarket, NH. LIVE via LiveU

1015EST -- Sen Cruz makes a retail stop. Jackson Fairgrounds, Macquoketa, IA. LIVE via LiveU

1000EST -- Sen Sanders holds a meeting. Ellsworth Community College, Iowa Falls, IA. LIVE via LiveU

1300EST -- Sen Sanders holds an ISU town meeting. Iowa State Univ, Ames, IA. LIVE via LiveU

New Fox News Polls out last night show Donald Trump has not only regained his lead in Iowa.. hes beating Ted Cruz by double digits.

In Iowa Trump gets 34% among Republican caucus goers, Cruz gets 23% (down 4% from two weeks ago), Rubio gets 12%.

In New Hampshire, Trump gets 31%, Cruz gets 14% and Rubio gets 2%. Kasich is number four at 9%.

Well get the polling on the Dems tonight at 6pm.

Trump has been running more of a traditional campaign this week with visits to Iowa diners and small gatherings. Hes even stayed at local hotels.

The Democrats are holding their final debate before the Iowa caucus tonight in Iowa.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is exploring running as an Independent. He is reportedly disgusted by the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. (Imagine Trump v Bloomberg v Sanders in a general election!)

President Obama is calling out Republicans in a new interview released today. He said politics has become meaner, and that voters would turn away from anger (and Trump and Cruz). He also seemed to suggest in an interview with Politicos Glenn Thrush that he sympathized with Hillary Clinton, Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose, he said. I think Hillary came in with the both privilege  and burden  of being perceived as the frontrunner Youre always looking at the bright, shiny object that people havent seen before  that's a disadvantage to her.

The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are digging out and trying to get back to normal after a blizzard for the record books. At least 29 were killed. As much as 40 inches of snow fell in parts of the country. It will take days to get roads cleared, planes back on schedule, and driveways shoveled. School is cancelled for many children. The Federal Government will remain mostly shut down today as DC got about two feet of snow. New York City got a more than expected two feet, and JFK Airport has the biggest snowfall totals in its history!

Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cambodia and Laos today. He was working on negotiations over Syria that had been scheduled for today but have been cancelled.

Southern California police are looking for three men considered dangerous who escaped from a maximum security jail in Orange County.

Markets are likely to open lower today as oil has resumed falling. Friday, stocks had the best day in more than a month.

Tyco will reportedly merge with Johnson Control in what could be a $20 billion deal.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has fired several top executives in a big shake up of the struggling social media company.

A new ISIS video purportedly shows nine of the Paris terrorists who later died in the attacks and the aftermath bragging about their plans and threatening England. The 17 minute video also shows them committing atrocities in what is believed to be Syria.

For more news, follow me on Twitter: @ClintPHenderson
The parents of a 2-year-old Idaho boy who disappeared in July have been named suspects in the case, authorities said Monday.

Lemhi County Sheriff Lynn Bowerman said Jessica Mitchell and DeOrr Kunz Sr. have been "less than truthful" in the disappearance of their son, who was last seen at a campsite near the Timber Creek Reservoir in Leodore where he was staying with his parents, great-grandfather and another adult.

Bowerman said that he believes the parents know the location of DeOrr Kunz Jr., of Idaho Falls, and whether he's dead or alive.

He said the couple has not been arrested and no warrants have been issued. Bowerman said an arrest isn't imminent because the situation could change if DeOrr Kunz Jr. is found.

Bowerman and his deputies have scoured the rugged terrain surrounding the remote Idaho campsite for the boy -- using sonar imaging equipment to probe a nearby reservoir and searching a wolf den for any trace of the child.

At 2:30 p.m. on July 10, the child's 25-year-old mother called 911 from the campsite to report her son missing. She and the boy's father said they left their son with his great-grandfather while they went off to explore. The great-grandfather believed the boy was with his parents, according to police.

What happened during the 20 to 45 minutes the child was alone is a mystery to authorities.

The family's campsite sat approximately 40 yards from a fast-moving creek -- 4 to 6 feet in width and about a foot deep -- that spills into the Timber Creek Reservoir, a half mile from where the toddler was last seen.

The boy's parents have said they believe their child was abducted.

Bowerman, however, told FoxNews.com in July that he's not convinced of an abduction, noting that no other campers were seen or heard in the area at the time of the disappearance.

He also described the terrain as "steep and rugged" and said vehicles can reach the site but "the road is extremely rough."

"We don't have any evidence that somebody kidnapped this child," Bowerman said.

FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A pit bull attack killed a 7-year-old boy in North Carolina and wounded his older brother Sunday, local media reported.

Talen West and his brother Jaylen, 8, were playing in the woods near their home in Lumberton when their neighbor's dog attacked, according to WRAL. The kids' cousin, Devin West, said Jaylen tried and failed to fight the dog off his brother.

Emergency workers rushed both boys to the hospital, where the younger brother was pronounced dead with puncture wounds on his body, Fox 8 reports. The older brother was released with injuries to his leg.

The dog died at the scene, possibly from a heart attack, WRAL adds.

Investigators say they're looking into what may have provoked the dog. The West family said the animal had no history of violent behavior.

"Everybody is just sad and under a lot of stress right now," Devin West said.

Lumberton is roughly 35 miles southwest of Fayetteville.

Click for more from Fox 8.
The University of Missouri communications professor caught on video scuffling with a journalist during a November campus demonstration was charged with third-degree assault Monday morning, the Columbia city prosecutors office confirmed to FoxNews.com.

A summons with a yet-to-be determined court date is set to be mailed to UM assistant professor of communications Melissa Click. If shes found guilty, her penalty would ultimately be up to a judge, but would likely require paying a fine, a spokesperson from the prosecutors office said.

The video, which was quickly posted to YouTube, showed Click confronting videographer Mark Schierbecker during a campus protest on Nov. 9 and apparently trying to block him from shooting video on a public quad. At one point, Schierbecker asks to speak with Click, who promptly tells him to leave.

No, you need to get out, she says, pointing away and then seeming to grab Schierbeckers camera. You need to get out. You need to get out.

When Schierbecker refuses to leave, Click yells to a group of nearby demonstrators: Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.

The campus protests began over perceived racial issues at the University of Missouri. System President Tim Wolfe resigned during the demonstrations.

Click has since issued an apology and resigned a courtesy appointment at the Missouri School of Journalism. That appointment allowed her to serve on graduate panels for students from other academic units, the Columbia Missourian reported.

But she retained her primary position at the school, though the UM Board of Curators called for her firing just last week.

While the University of Missouri seems to have no accountability, the judicial system in Missouri does, Columbia State Representative Caleb Jones told ABC17.
A woman in South Carolina hurled ceramic figurines at her husband and hit him with nunchucks after he refused to have sex with her, police revealed Wednesday.

Sondra Earle-Kelly, 51, faces aggravated domestic violence charges, Fox 8 reports. The fight took place the night of Jan. 17 in Rock Hill, north of Columbia, investigators say.

Kelly's husband was watching TV in his living room when she asked him to go to bed with her, police told The Charlotte Observer. When he refused, she kept "assaulting him with whatever she could pick up," police report.

They also say the woman claimed she had no idea how her husband got hurt. Police said she'd been taking the sedative Xanax.

Officers said the wife had wounds to her abdomen that were apparently self-inflicted.

She was released on $15,000 bond.

Click for more from Fox 8.
Seven people were hospitalized Sunday night after an American Airlines plane from Miami to Milan ran into heavy turbulence and was forced to make an emergency landing in eastern Canada.

The Boeing 767 landed safely at St. John's International Airport in Newfoundland at around 9:45 p.m. local time.

At least four ambulances and a fire truck were seen on the tarmac. Paramedics rushed toward the plane with stretchers and what appeared to be a backboard.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said three flight attendants and four passengers were transported to hospital for further evaluation. He said he didn't think any of the injuries were life threatening.

The aircraft was carrying 192 passengers and 11 crew members. The airline said the cabin's seatbelt light was on when the jet hit "severe" turbulence.

Feinstein said they are working on next steps to get the uninjured passengers to Milan. Airport spokeswoman Sara Norris said the plane will stay in St. John's overnight.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.




An American tourist was brutally stabbed to death at a deserted beach on the Caribbean island of Grenada Saturday, according to police who say the suspect quickly turned himself in.

The 39-year-old woman had been walking in the sand with her husband when the attacker stabbed her with a cutlass, a short sword, The Telegraph reports.

Her husband escaped the attack, police said, and the woman's body turned up near the water. Neither the victim nor her husband was identified.

The couple was staying at La Sagesse, a resort southeast of Grenada's capital, St. George's. They'd apparently come across a beach that other travelers described as "totally deserted."

Journalist and witness Sue Hardy told the Mirror, "No one can see you there - but of course nobody can see if anyone attacks you there."

She added, "I wouldn't venture on to that other, hidden, beach again."

Ex-convict David Martin Benjamin admitted to the crime, according to Yahoo Travel. He recently got out of prison, according to reports, and walked to the police station to turn himself in.

The slaying comes just over a week after American news producer Anne Swaney was strangled while visiting Belize.
Bosnian police have arrested a Bosnian media mogul and former security minister who is under suspicion of obstructing justice.

Prosecutors said that Fahrudin Radoncic was arrested Monday and that three locations were raided in a search for evidence.

The arrest is linked to last week's arrest of the incumbent secretary of the security ministry, Bakir Dautbasic, who is suspected of obstructing the investigation against an alleged drug lord who is on trial in Kosovo and who apparently ran his business from Sarajevo.

Dautbasic is accused of trying  together with a woman who was also arrested  to persuade a witness to leave Radoncic out of her statements in the case against Naser Keljmendi, who is charged with murder, organized crime and the sale and production of drugs.
Egyptian prosecutors referred eight museum workers to to a disciplinary court Sunday for "gross negligence" after a botched repair job on King Tutankhamen's burial mask left scratches on the priceless artifact.

The 3,300-year old mask, whose beard was accidentally knocked off and hastily glued on with epoxy in 2014, was scratched and damaged during the amateurish repair work, prosecutors said in a Sunday statement, which implicated the then-head of the Egyptian Museum and the chief of the restoration department.

"In an attempt to cover up the damage they inflicted, they used sharp instruments such as scalpels and metal tools to remove traces of adhesive on the mask, causing damage and scratches that remain," the statement said, citing an investigation. The eight now face fines and disciplinary measures including dismissal.



The mask was put back on display last month after a German-Egyptian team of specialists removed the epoxy and reattached the beard using beeswax, used as an adhesive in antiquity.



A year ago, a museum conservator who was present at the time of the repair told the Associated Press that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king's mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches. Another conservator who inspects the artifact regularly also saw the scratches and said it was clear that they had been made by a tool used to scrape off the epoxy. They both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

Restoration specialist Christian Eckmann said shortly thereafter that the cause of a scratch found on the mask had had not been determined, but that it could have been recent.

The mask was discovered in a tomb along with other artifacts by British archeologists in 1922, sparking worldwide interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt. It is one of the world's most priceless artifacts and the best-known piece in the Egyptian Museum, a major tourist attraction in Cairo that was built in 1902 and houses ancient Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

Lately, King Tut has been at the focus of new archaeology and media buzz after British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves theorized that Tutankhamun, who died at the age of 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of what was originally Queen Nefertiti's tomb.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


A former British Army officer turned adventurer has died just days after abandoning his attempt to cross Antarctica alone.

Henry Worsley's family said Monday that he had died "following complete organ failure" at a clinic in Punta Arenas, Chile. He was 55.

Sky News reported that Worsley had bacterial peritonitis, which occurs when the tissue lining the abdomen becomes infected.

Worsley was just 30 miles from the end of the almost 1,000-mile trek when he called for help and was airlifted off the ice Friday. He had covered more than 900 miles in 71 days, pulling supplies on a sled, while attempting to complete Ernest Shackleton's unfinished South Pole expedition of a century ago.

Worsley's wife Joanna said the expedition had raised more than $140,000 for wounded troops.

In his final statement sent from Antarctica, Worsley described his sadness at having to pull out so close to the finish.

"The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journey's end -- so close to my goal," Worsley said.

The adventurer also said that after having been a career soldier for 36 years, the focus of his trek was "giving back to those far less fortunate than me."

Prince William said he and his brother had "lost a friend" and paid tribute to Worsley's "selfless commitment" to his fellow servicemen and women.

"[Prince] Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him," he said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Sky News.
The exact message from the Pentagon to ISIS' tanker drivers just before U.S. warplanes decimated the terrorist army's oil convoys last November has been revealed.

Text of leaflets dropped before bombing began, warning truck drivers to run for their lives, was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the blog War is Boring.

Warning. Airstrikes are coming, oil trucks will be destroyed, read one leaflet. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life.

Oil trucks are being destroyed because buying this oil is the lifeblood of Daish. Leave the trucks and flee, read another, using the Arabic term for the Islamic State.

U.S. Air Force A-10 ground attackers and AC-130 gunships took out hundreds of oil-hauling trucks in northern Iraq and eastern Syria that were a key part of a smuggling operation that brings the group an estimated $1.4 million a day.

Oil trucks are being destroyed because buying this oil is the lifeblood of Daish. Leave the trucks and flee.  Pentagon leaflets dropped on ISIS oil convoys

One leaflet showed an image of a U.S. fighter jet flying low toward an oil tank, with the drivers running from the site. It was reportedly created before the attack from a drill. Another included a map of the region and prominently marked the oil fields in eastern Syria.

In addition to air dropping the leaflets, U.S.-led coalition planes conducted low-level "show of force" flights over certain ISIS-controlled oil regions.

The Pentagon said in November that more needed to be done to inhibit the terror group's generation of oil revenues in Syria and Iraq. The Treasury Department said in 2014 that the group earned nearly $1 million a day from illicit oil sales.

Click for more from War is Boring


The Islamic State terror group is preparing "Mumbai-style" attacks to be carried out in Europe by a "special forces-style" group of militants, the chief of the European Union police agency Europol warned Monday.

"The so-called Islamic State [has] developed a new combat style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage  with a particular focus in Europe," Rob Wainwright told reporters, according to AFP.

Wainwright, who was unveiling the findings of a new Europol report on how ISIS conducts its business, added that "all national authorities are working to prevent that from happening."

ISIS, which claimed responsibility for a series of attacks that left 130 dead in Paris in November, released a new video Sunday showing nine of the extremists who carried out the attacks beheading and shooting captives.

Europol is setting up a new counterterrorism center in The Hague to combat the ISIS threat.

"ISIS is preparing more terrorist attacks, including more Mumbai-style attacks, to be executed in member states of the EU, and in France in particular," the Europol report said.

In the 2008 Mumbai attacks, gunmen from the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group killed 166 people.

"The attacks will be primarily directed at soft targets, because of the impact it generates. Both the November Paris attacks and the October 2015 bombing of a Russian airliner suggest a shift in ISIS strategy towards going global," the report said.

Europol said ISIS has developed an "external action command" trained specifically for "special forces-style attacks" internationally.

But the report also downplayed fears that jihadists are among the refugees pouring into Europe.

"There is no concrete evidence that terrorist travelers systematically use the flow of refugees to enter Europe unnoticed," it said.

The report did say though there is evidence that extremist recruiters are targeting refugee centers.

Click for more from AFP.
Customer Advertising Preferences: 9 of 10 Actually Want Ads!

It's not news that consumers' preferences are changing with the technology they use - at home, at work, or on the go - leaving marketers confused about where to launch campaigns and how to allocate their media spend. In examining research on the advertising preferences of U.S. adults conducted by MarketingSherpa, social media expert Heidi Cohen highlights the following in her blog:

72 percent prefer email

48 percent prefer postal mail

34 percent prefer TV ads

31 percent prefer magazine and newspaper ads

11 percent prefer mobile apps

7 percent prefer online video ads.

One surprise she notes is that 9 out of 10 (92 percent) consumers actually want advertising. "While consumers don't agree on the best forms of advertising, most consumers are interested in advertising at some level. Less than 10 percent of respondents wanted NO advertising." Her advice to marketers: "Consumers find some types of advertising valuable. That said, they don't like to be interrupted with irrelevant ads."

Marriott Tests Videos To Attract Next-Generation Travelers

In an ongoing campaign to bring in Millennials and other digital generation travelers, Marriott International is experimenting with digital content. The brand's 12-minute video, "Business Unusual," debuted on Jan. 11 at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel, a Marriott property. It was produced by the Marriott Content Studio (created in Sept. 2014), in conjunction with content developer Substance Over Hype. According to the Chicago Business Journal, Marriott has produced two other short films, "French Kiss" and "Two Bellmen," as well as two original YouTube series: "Hot Shoppe" and "Do Not Disturb."

Facebook Updates "Real Name" Policy

Facebook has always required users to use their real names on the service, which has been unpopular with transgender people and others such as women in danger from stalking and domestic violence - or even people who just want to left alone from unwanted attention. For the past year, Facebook has allowed users seven days to update or verify their names if they're believed to be using a "fake" name. Before that, some users with "fake" names found their accounts deactivated without notice. (One famous case in the U.K.: Jemma Rogers, who joined Facebook as Jemmaroid von LaaLaa, and had to legally change her name to sign in.) "The policy itself isn't changing, according to a statement from Facebook on Tuesday, but the social network will now allow users to explain a special circumstance when verifying their name. That will flag the profile for Facebook's review teams so they can provide 'personalized support,'" according to Rebecca Ruiz, a writer at Mashable.

Selfies from the Sky: Twitter Patents a "Social Media Drone"

Twitter has received a patent for a photo-taking drone whose movements and camera can be controlled by users who will be able to post photographs and live stream video captured by the drones' cameras on their accounts. Not much else is known about the company's plans. A spokesman for Twitter told CNBC: "Two words: Drone selfies," reports Sam Shead, a technology reporter for Business Insider. Are you ready to get on board with aerial photos of customers at your locations?

Daniel Lieberman is the founder of Daniel Lieberman Digital ("I speak Geek - You don't need to"). Based in Shelburne Falls, Mass., he helps companies, organizations, and individuals learn to use the Internet to communicate, market, and brand themselves using the most up-to-date tools and techniques. Contact him at 413-489-1818 or daniel@daniellieberman.org.
Juice It Up! Reports Strong Close To 2015

Company Experiences 10 Percent Same-Store Sales Increase Over Previous Quarter

January 25, 2016 // Franchising.com // IRVINE, California  Juice It Up!, one of the nations leading raw juice bar and hand-crafted smoothie franchises, has announced that same-store sales were up 10 percent over the previous quarter. The company also saw an increase in year over year same-store sales along with an uptick in chain wide sales overall. These latest financials are in large part attributed to Juice It Up!s incredibly successful holiday campaign featuring a limited-edition Apple Pie Smoothie, which was promoted via social integrations and a variety of digital marketing efforts.

2015 was a pivotal year for Juice It Up! as we gained meaningful traction in the raw juice space, which just continues to grow in popularity with no signs of slowing down. We are thrilled to have closed the year so strong! said Frank Easterbrook, President & CEO. Were focused on continuing to raise the bar in the segment, and weve been hard at work designing new products that were confident our fans and franchisees alike are really going to get excited about in 2016.

All Juice It Up! products are designed to not only be delicious, but also meet the functional and nutritional wants and needs of guests at every level of health. Menu items include fresh-squeezed functional raw juices, blended-to-order real fruit and veggie smoothies, and nutrient-rich bowls loaded with superfruits Acai and Pitaya. With the recently-introduced Smoothie Bowls, guests can transform their favorite Classic and Veggie Smoothie into a nourishing meal replacement, topped with fresh bananas, granola and a drizzle of honey. To supercharge any bowl or smoothie, guests can ask to Make it Green by blending in raw kale and spinach to add an extra dose of fiber, vitamins and minerals.

With an operations-focused culture, Juice It Up! continues to attract highly-qualified new and existing franchise operators to grow with the brand. Ideal franchisees possess an entrepreneurial spirit and a creative local store marketing mindset, and are passionate about living a healthy lifestyle. To learn more about the benefits of owning a Juice It Up! straight from current franchisees, watch https://youtu.be/qkn3vxafNOI and visit http://www.juiceitupfranchise.com for additional franchising details.

About Juice It Up!

Juice It Up!, a leading raw juice bar and hand-crafted smoothie franchise, specializes in delicious and functional fresh-squeezed juices, blended-to-order real fruit smoothies and nutrient-rich options such as Acai and Pitaya Bowls. Founded in 1995, the Irvine, California-based lifestyle brand is focused on providing its guests with a variety of great-tasting, better-for-you food and drink choices designed with personal wellness in mind. With more than 80 locations across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas, the company is showcasing revamped restaurant designs, a heavier focus on the growing demand for raw juice options and a menu refresh that reflects the brands active personality and motto to Live Life Juiced!. An established lifestyle brand with unparalleled experience in the raw juice bar industry, Juice It Up! is poised for significant expansion throughout the U.S. For more details about the benefits of owning a Juice It Up!, visit www.juiceitupfranchise.com.

Juice It Up! Social Media Pages:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/juiceitup/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/juiceitup/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/livelifejuiced/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/juiceitup/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/juiceitupcorp/

SOURCE Juice It Up!

Contact:

Chelsea McKinney

Powerhouse Public Relations, LLC

(949) 261-2216

Chelsea@powrhousepr.com

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Planet Beach Spray & Spa is an International Franchise with the Most Recent Location Set to Open in the Republic of Panama

The health and wellness industry is projected to be a trillion dollar industry by 2017.

NEW ORLEANS, LA (PRWEB) January 23, 2016 - Planet Beach spray & spa is a unique and innovative membership-based franchising corporation. Founded in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1996 the spa has grown to 175+ locations worldwide. In 2007 Planet Beach decided to expand the concept abroad through the International Master Franchise Program and has awarded the rights to develop the concept in Canada, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UK and most recently the Republic of Panama.

Yvonne N. Kilborn and her husband Carlos A. Gonzales along with their business partner Alvaro E. Villanueva decided they wanted to become Masters in the Republic of Panama after discovering the Planet Beach franchise system while attending a franchise expo in Jacksonville, Florida. We were really sold by the fact that Planet Beach had an innovative and efficient service model. It allows customers to meet their relaxation needs without having to take hours out of their day. We truly admire the consistency in the quality of service and treatments that is made possible by the operation, said Carlos Gonzales, a business professional with more than 10 years of experience working in Fortune 500 companies.

Knowing that customers are spending over $125 billion a year in the health and wellness arena, the three Masters plan to open eight spas in the greater metropolitan area of Panama City, Panama. The first is scheduled to open in March of 2016. There was just something about Planet Beach. The value proposition for the customers seemed unbeatable and the financial numbers as a business made sense, said Yvonne Kilborn.

Now that they are in their first pre-sale, and have already sold 25+ memberships, they can see their dream finally coming true.

For franchising information please call 1 888 290-8266 or visit our website http://www.myplanetbeachfranchise.com

SOURCE Planet Beach

Contact:

Alison Pitre

Planet Beach

+1 504 361-5550 Ext: 324

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Isabella Roeske was in the second grade when she visited England and saw the University of Oxford.

Isnt it beautiful? her mother, Sarah, asked.

Bella, as shes known, beheld the hallowed campus with its spires, turrets and overall castle-like appearance and declared: Thats were Im going.

Since that moment, Bellawhos now 13has done everything she can to prepare herself for college.

The eighth-grader at Battlefield Middle School in Spotsylvania County is busy every week night with school clubs and extracurricular activities beyond the classroom.

On weekends, she types her notes from class and organizes the thoughts shes jotted in notebooksthen does further research on the people and events that have been discussed.

I just like them all neat so I can find things, she said.

Shes so involved with creative writing or the yearbook club, a church program that feeds the needy or a community symphony for young musicians, that her parents sometimes have to tell her to relax.

And thats an unusual message from any parents of teenagers, much less two educators.

Her mother is an International Baccalaureate teacher at Mountain View High School in Stafford County. IB is a rigorous and challenging academic program thats known worldwide.

Her mother met her father, Lance, when both taught at Stafford High School. He currently works as a program manager with the Department of Energy in Washington.

Isabella has been driven to lengths that we cannot explain since she was very young, he said about his daughter. But she sees the profits from her successes, so its difficult to get her to pull back.

Still, there are Saturdays when her father tells her shes allowed to do only one hour of homework or weeknights when her mother insists she takes a break and miss a meeting.

Bella, who looks a little like actress Amy Adams in the movie, Enchanted, said she enjoys the heavy load.

I like all the work, she said. I like having something to do. In the summer, I wanted school to start because I was bored.

Lest anyone worry shes totally missed out on being a teenager, Bella confesses that her bedroom isnt nearly as organized as her notes.

She says she talks on the phone all the time with her friends. But shes just as likely to be discussing homework assignments as recipes. The 13-year-old also cooks her own meal and feels so comfortable in the kitchen, shes taken over her mothers cabinets and asked for pots and pans for Christmas.

Her cooking is amazing, and shes always finding unique recipes to try, said her friend, Katelin Taylor.

Katelin helped Bella make chocolate shortbread and hazelnut biscotti, which the girls gave as presents to family members and teachers. When Bellas mother brings some of the baked goodies to school, her fellow teachers immediately know that Bella has been busy.

Sheila Smith, principal at Battlefield Middle, believes Isabellas drive to succeed at anything she does comes from internal desire and external support.

Isabella is one of the brightest students Ive met, she said, recalling one semester when the teen took French and Spanish at the same time. Ive never seen her overwhelmed; she is always smiling, friendly and kind.

Linda Carter, who works with volunteers at The Table, a food pantry at St. Georges Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, saw the same. Bella volunteers every Tuesday, one of about six middle-schoolers there regularly.

I think she really cares about the world, she cares about people, Carter said.

Katelin said Bella has occasional stress, but that she enjoys not just being involved in lots of activities but taking leadership roles in them as well.

Shes an avid researcher and is fascinated by psychology, Katelin said. It sounds like a strange way to spend her time, but thats Bella for you.
Life is always simpler when issues are easily compartmentalized. But we as a society are learning, albeit slowly and in deliberate steps, that people defy compartmentalization and attempting to do so can have hurtful or even illegal consequences.

For example, a majority of Americans now acknowledge gay and lesbian people and agree they deserve the right to marry like anyone else. The transformation of the American psyche on this  so dramatic over the past decade and made a right by last summers U.S. Supreme Court ruling  is truly remarkable. Though this live-and-let-live outlook is far from unanimous, enough Americans by now accept or even welcome this reality as part of our national diversity.

Perhaps the next phase of our cultural change is the awareness of gender identity that doesnt fit the boy-or-girl mold. A first step toward this awareness is understanding that being a transgender individual has nothing to do with being gay. Realizing to whom you are attracted has implications entirely different from realizing that the gender you were born with is not the one with which you truly identify.

Those willing to at least try to understand that people can be so fundamentally different might also recognize the fallibility of legislation introduced with the expectation that people might be able to simply undo or set aside who they are.

The U.S. Department of Education acknowledged that when it added transgender students as a protected class under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational institution, public or private, receiving federal funds.

The Virginia General Assembly may test that protection if it passes either of two bills introduced by Del. Mark Cole, RSpotsylvania County. House Bill 663 and HB 781 would require the state to work with local school boards on developing policies to require rest- rooms, showers and locker rooms in schools and all other public buildings in Virginia to be used according to ones anatomical sex or biological sex.

Coles legislation is primarily aimed at addressing the concerns of parents in Stafford County who fear their daughters might find themselves sharing the girls restroom with a boy who identifies as a girl. Both bills would establish fines for violations. One bill suggests the option of providing alternative facilities, upon request by a transgender student, such as a staff restroom or other accommodation.

But restroom stalls provide immediate privacy to any student who uses one, and that privacy needs to be respected no matter who is using it. Singling out transgender students to use school staff restrooms or facilities that they alone would use harkens back to the separate-but-equal concept that history tells us doesnt work.

The Gloucester County school division is fighting a federal civil rights complaint after adopting a policy in December 2014 limiting bathroom and locker facilities to students biological genders. Under the policy, transgender students would use an alternative private facility.

The American Civil Liberties Union is appealing a lower court ruling in September that denied Gloucester High School student Gavin Grimm, who is biologically female but identifies as a male, use of the boys restroom.

Its obvious that Del. Coles bills address the same issue and, given the ongoing federal case, could set the state and school boards that adopt such policies afoul of federal law.

Whatever the outcome of the Gloucester civil rights case or the legislatures action, we hope for solutions that show respect for all individuals affected.
Dalton, Georgia Hospice Takes Initiative to Sponsor A Family in Need

Harbor Light Hospice in Dalton, Ga takes initiative to sponsor a local family in need in order to improve community outreach and positively spread awareness of hospice care in the U.S.

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In the spirit of the holiday season, Harbor Light Hospice made the decision to improve its community outreach by sponsoring a local family in need. The Dalton Georgia hospice has firm roots in the community and believes that sponsoring a local family in need will illustrate that hospice care providers are a contributing part of local communities much like police officers or fire firefighters.

Hospice care is a specialized form of medical care in the U.S. that is offered to patients who have been given a terminal diagnosis and have an estimated six months or less left to live. Because hospice cares for the terminally ill, it is often shunned by local communities who may not want to openly acknowledge end-of-life as a natural part of life. However, hospices have been major contributors to local communities since the beginning of the hospice movement in the United States in the early 1970's.

A fact that is not widely recognized is that hospice care is required to be involved with the community by law. This is illustrated by guidelines that outline requirements for hospice providers to utilize the service of local volunteers. Hospice volunteers are members of local communities who volunteer their time in a variety of ways including patient-focused activities and administrative tasks which help the organization better serve patients.

Reaching out to local communities is an urgent initiative of the national hospice community. Unfortunately, many communities are underserved by hospice for a variety of reasons. Certain demographics access hospice care at a far lower percentage than others. Research shows that certain populations such as the African American population do not widely utilize hospice when compared to other populations. It is possible that this is due largely in part to misinformation about hospice care.

Harbor Light Hospice's decision to sponsor a local family in Dalton, Georgia is a perfect example of a hospice provider making the extra effort to support the local community while simultaneously disseminating the hospice mission in a positive way. Initiatives such as these encapsulate the hospice compassionate care model. Other hospice providers in the U.S. should consider executing their own charitable initiatives in their local communities to help better integrate hospice into the lives of the U.S. citizenry.

About Harbor Light Hospice

Harbor Light Hospice operates under a philosophy of care that assists patients, family, and friends during the final stages of a terminal illness. Harbor Light Hospice promotes dignity and emphasizes quality of life for those who choose to die in familiar surroundings with those they love. Hospice services can be provided at home, at a skilled nursing facility, or at an assisted living center.

For more information about us, please visit https://www.harborlighthospice.com

Contact Info:

Name: Alex Caruso

Email: alex@321webmarketing.com

Organization: Harbor Light Hospice

Address: 800 Roosevelt Ro. Building C Suite 206, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, United States, 60137

Phone: (703) 810-7553

Video URL: https://www.harborlighthospice.com

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/dalton-georgia-hospice-takes-initiative-to-sponsor-a-family-in-need/101958

Release ID: 101958

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Hospice Patient Receives Special Opera Performance From University Music Students

Harbor Light Hospice helped a hospice patient enjoy a once in a lifetime moment by arranging a special performance of the opera, "Carmen." The performance was given by a talented group of students from the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music.

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Harbor Light Hospice helped a hospice patient enjoy a once in a lifetime moment by arranging a special performance of the opera, "Carmen." The performance was given by a talented group of students from the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music. The group performed select pieces from the famous opera at the Westpark Healthcare Campus in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cleveland Ohio hospice helped make this patient's special day happen as part of their ongoing "Dare to Dream" initiative which has been making special moments possible for hospice patients and their families for years. Harbor Light Hospice, which is also known for being a Mansfield Ohio hospice has become a premiere example of what it means to go the extra mile for hospice patients.

Initiatives such as Harbor Light Hospice's "Dare to Dream" program illustrate the concept that hospice provides far more than physical symptom management. Patients faced with a life-limiting illness may also suffer from emotional, spiritual and social maladies which require unique care and attention. Hospice care focuses on enhancing the overall quality of life. The patients who have participated in the "Dare to Dream" program were able to live their lives to the fullest on their special days despite being faced with a terminal diagnosis.

The example set by Harbor Light Hospice should encourage other hospice and palliative care providers to continue to strive for excellence in patient care by thinking outside the box in order to bring hospice patient's moments of joy during end-of-life. Proactive actions for the benefit of the patient will help debunk the myth that hospice is purely medical and that it lacks a human component. If the general public better understands the true hospice mission of compassionate care, then hospice care may begin to be more widely accessed throughout the United States.

About Harbor Light Hospice

Harbor Light Hospice operates under a philosophy of care that assists patients, family, and friends during the final stages of a terminal illness. Harbor Light Hospice promotes dignity and emphasizes quality of life for those who choose to die in familiar surroundings with those they love. Hospice services can be provided at home, at a skilled nursing facility, or at an assisted living center.

For more information about us, please visit https://www.harborlighthospice.com

Contact Info:

Name: Alex Caruso

Email: alex@321webmarketing.com

Organization: Harbor Light Hospice

Address: 800 Roosevelt Ro. Building C Suite 206, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, United States, 60137

Phone: (703) 810-7553

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/hospice-patient-receives-special-opera-performance-from-university-music-students/101966

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Monheit Law Launches Resource Website For Xarelto Lawsuit News

Monheit Law has launched a new website for individuals who took blood thinner Xarelto and suffered an adverse event in the form of a serious personal injury. The goal of the site is to provide up to date news on the pending Xarelto lawsuits. For more info call: 877-646-0035

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Monheit Law has announced the launch of their new resource website which is designed to provide the public with exclusive Xarelto Lawsuit news. To create the site, they have partnered with several other dedicated U.S. Law Firms. It is designed to be a valuable resource for people across the country, and a tool which will help injured victims pursue justice.

The website is designed to provide users with the most current information on Xarelto multidistrict litigation number 2592, which is being overseen in Louisiana by the Honorable Judge Eldon Fallon. MDL 2592 is currently composed of over 2,800 cases federally-filed against manufacturers Bayer AG and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, (a subdivision of the well-known Johnson & Johnson corporation).

Plaintiffs involved in the lawsuits commonly allege that blood-thinning drug Xarelto can cause dangerous uncontrollable bleeding episodes for those using it, and that manufacturers were both reckless and negligent to release the drug to market without any corresponding antidote for emergency situations.

Without an antidote, if a patient taking Xarelto suffers even minor injuries and begins to bleed, physicians will be unable to clot their blood. In these circumstances, the physicians are required to resort to extreme life-saving measures such as surgeries to drain pooling blood and relieve pressure; or blood transfusions to prevent the loss of too much blood. Patients in these situations are at significant risk of passing away, or suffering from lifelong complications.

Unlike Xarelto, traditional blood thinners do not have this issue. They offer an antidote in vitamin K. When a patient using a traditional blood thinner becomes injured, doctors can treat them with vitamin K to clot their blood-a difference which could potentially save their life.

The website also discusses Pradaxa, as Pradaxa is a similar new-generation of blood thinner which has already settled its mounting lawsuits. Pradaxa was manufactured by Boehringer Ingelheim in 2010. Quickly after the product's release to market, it was surrounded by more than 3,500 reports of serious health complications. More than 750 of these reports were fatal. Just one day before the trial against Boehringer Ingelheim was to begin, the company agreed to pay $650 million to plaintiffs to settle their lawsuits. This comparison can provide valuable information for Xarelto plaintiffs today as they look ahead to future trials.

In addition to providing this information, the website also details the findings of various critical studies which have been highlighted in Xarelto lawsuits, linking the drug to a number of serious injuries with potentially lasting or even deadly effects.

Those who have used Xarelto and have suffered from adverse effects which they attribute to the drug may be entitled to significant compensation. Anyone interested in exploring their legal rights in the matter is encouraged to visit bloodthinnerhelp.com and reach out to the attorneys at Monheit Law to request additional information or ask questions. Monheit Law is currently offering free consultations to affected individuals.

Contact Info:

Name: Michael Monheit

Email: michael@monheit.com

Phone: 877-646-0035

Organization: Blood Thinner Help

Source: http://www.prreach.com/pr/22074

Release ID: 102007

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Knee Osteoarthritis Market Global Opportunities, Trends and Forecasts To 2020 Market Research Report

MarketReportsOnline.com adds "Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market: Trends and Opportunities (2015-2020)" report to its research store.

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The Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market: Trends and Opportunities (2015-2020) research of 55 pages with 25 Figures and 3 Tables to the pharmaceuticals industry segment of its online data and intelligence library. This research report provides an in-depth analysis of global knee osteoarthritis market with special focus on non conservative treatment for OA such as Viscosupplementation. Complete report available at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/429768.html.

Geographical Coverage: The US

Company Coverage of Knee Osteoarthritis Market: Johnson & Johnson-DePuy, Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. & Stryker Corporation

Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent joint disease mainly affecting middle-age to elderly population globally. It can occur in any joint such as knees, hips, hands and spine; knee being one of the most affected joints. Knee osteoarthritis is a progressive, degenerative disorder involving the degradation of the intra-articular cartilage, joint lining, ligaments, and the underlying bone of the knee. There are many factors that can increase the risk of osteoarthritis in a person such as age, being overweight, genetic condition, etc. Sometimes a combination of these factors leads to such condition.

Treatments for knee OA are based on the stage of disease. Depending on the severity of OA, there are different approaches and treatments available that helps the patient with lessening the pain and increasing mobility. Conservative approach is used for treatment in initial stages of OA. With increase in severity Cortisone injections and Viscosupplementation are used. Global knee osteoarthritis market is driven by increase in geriatric population, high rate of obesity, rising healthcare expenditure and high incidence of knee OA in the US market. Factors which affect the industry includes a decline in reimbursement and coverage, defective medical devices, lack of trained healthcare workers and regulatory risk. The market is characterized by growth in the Outsourced Precision Manufacturing segment and advent of HA single injection from non-animal source.

Purchase a copy of this Knee Osteoarthritis Market research report at USD 800 (Single User License) http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=429768.

The report titled "Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market: Trends and Opportunities (2015-2020)" accesses the key opportunities and underlying trends in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry in the forecasted period (2016-20). Further, key drug manufacturers of the global knee osteoarthritis market like Johnson & Johnson, Zimmer Biomet Holdings and Stryker Roche are profiled in the report.

Segment Coverage of Knee Osteoarthritis Market:

1. Viscosupplementation Market

2. Single-Injection & Multi-Injection Market

3. Gx Steroids Market

Major Points From Table of Contents are Listed Below:

1. Executive Summary

2. Background

3. Knee Osteoarthritis

4. Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market Analysis

5. The U.S. Knee Osteoarthritis Market

6. Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market Trends

7. Global Knee Osteoarthritis Market: Growth Drivers & Challenges

8. Competitive Landscape

9. Company Profile

List of Tables

List of Figures

Explore More Related Reports on Pharmaceuticals Market at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/cat/pharmaceuticals-market-research.html.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.marketreportsonline.com/429768.html

Contact Info:

Name: Ritesh Tiwari

Organization: Market Reports Online

Phone: + 1 888 391 5441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/knee-osteoarthritis-market-global-opportunities-trends-and-forecasts-to-2020-market-research-report/102001

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Salem Oregon Hospice Expands Website With Online Materials for Dementia Patients

Dementia/Alzheimer's is a progressive disease that will affect millions of Americans every year.

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Dementia/Alzheimer's is a progressive disease that will affect millions of Americans every year. Individuals who are suffering from advanced dementia illness will require assistance from familial caregivers and oftentimes, medical professionals. Being a caregiver for an individual afflicted with advanced dementia/Alzheimer's is extremely demanding, both physically and emotionally. Luckily, caregivers in Salem, OR who search for, "hospice salem oregon" online will now be able to find Harbor Light Hospice's expanded website that includes new and beneficial materials which discuss hospice care for dementia patients.

Every life-limiting illness presents its own unique challenges when providing care. For example, a patient suffering from stage four pancreatic cancer, but is completely cognizant and communicative will require different care than an individual afflicted with an advanced dementing illness. Individuals with advanced dementia/alzheimer's are oftentimes unable to explicitly communicate their needs/how they are feeling, are incontinent and may also be more susceptible to broken bones and torn skin if their limbs have begun to revert inwards. These types of barriers to care provide more of a reason to enlist assistance from a hospice provider. Trained medical personnel will be better adept at managing the symptoms of patients with advanced dementia/alzheimer's, and can greatly reduce the anxiety felt by family members who may be confused on how to provide effective care.

Although there is no cure to dementia/Alzheimer's, there are certain proactive steps individuals can take early on in the disease to make care during end-of-life more manageable. Filling out advance directives can provide clear directions on how to manage end-of-life situations if a person is unable to make decisions for themselves. Harbor Light Hospice's expanded website includes useful information that is specific to advance directives for dementia patients.

About Harbor Light Hospice:

Harbor Light Hospice operates under a philosophy of care that assists patients, family, and friends during the final stages of a terminal illness. Harbor Light Hospice promotes dignity and emphasizes quality of life for those who choose to die in familiar surroundings with those they love. Hospice services can be provided at home, at a skilled nursing facility, or at an assisted living center.

For more information about us, please visit https://www.harborlighthospice.com

Contact Info:

Name: Richard Hartig

Email: rhartig@harborlighthospice.com

Organization: Harbor Light Hospice

Address: 2290 Commercial St, SE, Suite 108, Salem, Oregon, United States, 97302

Phone: 888-325-8192

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/salem-oregon-hospice-expands-website-with-online-materials-for-dementia-patients/101991

Release ID: 101991

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The Law Office of Wilfred Ward Yeargan Updates Website for Consumers

The Law Office of Wilfred Ward Yeargan has released an updated website that is geared towards informing local consumers on Virginia DUI laws and regulations.

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The Law Office of Wilfred Ward Yeargan has recently launched a revamped website which focuses on providing consumer information related to Virginia DUI laws. The website features a new user-friendly design and navigational layout and will be continuously expanded with new and refreshing content on a variety of legal issues in Virginia. Fairfax DUI lawyer, Wilfred Yeargan decided to put a heavy emphasis on providing information on Virginia DUI/DWI laws as they significantly affect individuals in the Fairfax, VA area.

As a Fairfax VA DUI Defense Lawyer, Mr. Yeargan believes that there is a significant amount of disinformation amongst the general public when it comes to discussing DUI/DWI laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol is strictly prohibited. However, in many situations individuals charged with a DUI/DWI in Virginia do not fully know their rights and may find themselves being taken advantage of in court. Awareness of Virginia Law is key when navigating through the DUI/DWI legal process.

The initial set of content updates for the firm's newly designed website is a comprehensive section on Virginia DUIs. Some of the content topics that will include:

- Virginia DUI/DWI Laws

- Virginia DUI/DWI Penalties

- Virginia DUI/DWI Defense Strategies

- First DUI Offense in Virginia

- Second DUI Offense in Virginia

- Third DUI Offense in Virginia

- Felony DUI in Virginia

The content being provided is designed to be very specific as there is a significant difference between penalties for a first offense and a second offense in Virginia. These informational pages will be additionally bolstered by a continuous stream of blogs that touch upon niche topics relating to DUI/DWIs in Virginia. It is the hope of Mr. Yeargan that the easy to navigate website and accessible information will help individuals understand their basic rights if they are facing legal ramifications so that their rights are protected in court.

The extensive information being provided on the website reflects the firm's belief in a transparent approach to providing legal services. An educated consumer is an empowered consumer and individuals should not feel intimidated when seeking legal counsel. Wilfred Yeargan, Esq. has made himself more available to the public by offering free initial consultations at the firm's Fairfax, VA office location or via phone.

About The Law Office of Wilfred Ward Yeargan

A Fairfax, VA law firm, the Law Office of Wilfred W. Yeargan offers comprehensive services for criminal, traffic, DUI/DWI, and personal injury litigation. Attorney Yeargan also assists clients with other legal issues and disputes.

For more information about us, please visit https://www.yearganlaw.com

Contact Info:

Name: Wilfred Yeargan

Email: wardyeargan@earthlink.net

Organization: The Law Office of Wilfred Ward Yeargan

Address: 11350 Random Hills Road, Suite 800, Fairfax, Virginia, United States, 22030

Phone: (703) 345-1677

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/the-law-office-of-wilfred-ward-yeargan-updates-website-for-consumers/101974

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The Best Compound Bows Help Katniss Fans Find the Best Bows for Women with New Section

The Best Compound Bows has created a new section of its website aiming to encapsulate the best of its content for women, helping them choose the right bow for their needs and ambitions.

San Francisco, CA -- January 25, 2016 (FPRC) -- Archery is now a sport, but has its roots in the martial arts, and is still a popular method of hunting. More so than ever, it is also associated with women, with everyone from Kiera Knightley in King Arthur and Evangeline Lily in The Hobbit, to Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games wielding a bow with deadly accuracy. As a result, the sport has attracted more women than ever, and The Best Compound Bows has now launched a special area of its site committed to helping women find the best bow for their needs.



The section ( http://thebestcompoundbows.com/for-women/ ) includes all the same great information included in the normal site but optimized and focused on female users, eliminating the heavier and larger male bows so women can find an instant shortlist of the best products for them. These products are divided along all the same lines, with the best budget, best beginner, best hunting and best takedown bows.



The section will also have optimized content and guest editorials written by female archers, together with information on the best brands ( http://thebestcompoundbows.com/brands/ ), accessories, chest guards and more, all designed to help women get the best from their bows.



A spokesperson for The Best Compound Bows explained, "We are thrilled with the influx of women into our sport, and we welcome them with open arms. That's why we've put together a new section of the website designed to help women get the best from archery at any level, whether trying it our as a hobby, mastering the hunt or looking to compete at a high level. The section will be regularly updated and feature the best new additions to the market, so new users would be well placed to bookmark the site and come back often for new updates."



About The Best Compound Bows

The Best Compound Bows is an online resource center committed to providing the best consumer advice available online. The site helps people understand where to find bows online, how to identify the best bow for their needs, and helps users make informed purchasing decisions. The site regularly publishes new reviews and guides together with editorial content.



For more information please visit: http://thebestcompoundbows.com/





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Wellington Weddings Publishes the Premier Wedding Guide for New Zealand Couples

Couples find they have the information they need to make their big day special when they make use of this guide, announces WellingtonWeddings.co.nz

--

According to Statistics New Zealand, 20,125 marriages were registered in the country in 2014, with 13,958 marriages being the first for a couple. Another 2,898 overseas residents opted to marry in the country also, and each couple needed to plan their big day. Many opted to turn to Wellington Weddings (www.wellingtonweddings.co.nz), the premium wedding guide, for assistance in this task.

"From the very beginning, we decided to focus on showcasing the city's finest suppliers - the best venues, caterers, florists, the most talented photographers, the most in-demand makeup artists and hair stylists. We offer our users a curated experience, where every supplier has been carefully handpicked and invited to be a part of the guide." Sam Browne, Wellington Weddings co-founder, announces.

Wedding trends change from year to year, and couples wish to keep up with these trends. Browne picks pastels and metallics as a massive trend we are going to see in 2016, along with satellite bars (a bar offering a special cocktail, spirit or wine tasting), late night karaoke(!) and a move away from traditional dining tables at the reception in favour of very long rectangular tables designed for the most inclusive, communal experience.

"Every week, we publish new blog articles in conjunction with our talented, highly experienced wedding experts. Review top ten lists, get expert advice and learn about how to make your wedding day everything you want it to be with the help of this resource. In addition, couples may choose to follow Wellington Weddings on Facebook and Instagram to ensure they have the latest information at all times," Browne declares.

The weekly newsletter becomes another invaluable tool when planning a wedding. Couples find they have information delivered right to their inbox, so they can read it while on the go and learn more about the many wedding offerings in the area, upcoming competitions, the latest information on the blog and more. The goal of Wellington Weddings is to provide everything a couple can need when planning their day.

"Visit the site today and learn about how Wellington Weddings can be of assistance to you. Every couple deserves to have a wedding they'll remember for a lifetime. Everything we provide is designed to help them achieve this goal," Browne states.

About Wellington Weddings:

A premium wedding guide catering to individuals in Wellington, New Zealand, Wellington Weddings provides a comprehensive, curated directory of the premier wedding suppliers, including venues, dress makers, photographers and more. Each week, the guide provides exclusive expert advice on a variety of topics, including how to find the perfect wedding photographer, makeup and hair trends, buying a tailored suit, choosing the right flowers and more. Wedding Showcases are published every quarter and highlight gorgeous real weddings throughout the city.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.wellingtonweddings.co.nz

Contact Info:

Name: Sam Browne

Organization: Wellington Weddings

Address: 84 College Hill

Phone: +6421 889 551

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/wellington-weddings-publishes-the-premier-wedding-guide-for-new-zealand-couples/102010

Release ID: 102010

For more information visit r



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Posh Nails & Spa of North Little Rock Announces New Organic Dipping Powder Manicures

( January 22, 2016 ) North Little Rock, AR -- When faced the challenge of offering the best manicures and nail care for her customers, Vickie Le knew she had to offer a better kind of nail treatment. Through her determination and innovative spirit, she incorporated organic dipping powder manicures into her offerings.

Dipping powders have been available for a while, though relatively new to the market. They are less harsh for nails and for people who have to breathe the fumes of other types of nail treatments.

Organic dipping powder goes one step further by actually nourishing your nails, helping them to become stronger and healthier.

"People always want to know what makes it organic," says Vickie Le, owner of Posh Nails & Spa in North Little Rock, Arkansas. "It's made of five vitamins and calcium that work together to strengthen and nourish the nails."

Old fashioned nail polish, when used regularly, can wreak havoc on nails because it creates a barrier on the nail that restricts them from breathing. This causes them not to grow well and weaken. Shellac nail polish and gels are better, but not perfect.

Dipping powders, on the other hand, are water resistant but still allow the nail to breathe and to continue to grow normally. The end result is stronger, healthier nails.

Those allergic to acrylic dipping powders will find these a pleasant alternative.

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"It's important to note," continued Lee, "that organic dipping powder is also better for your nail bed, not just your nails."

Le looks forward to introducing her North Little Rock nail salon customers to this new nail treatment.

Posh Nails & Spa of North Little Rock offers a myriad of nail treatments and spa activities such as spa parties. Readers can learn more about organic dipping powders by viewing a video on their website.

About Posh Nails & Spa:

Posh Nails & Spa is a new nail salon in North Little Rock, AR providing nail air, French tips, manicures and pedicures and other spa related services. They can be found at 5913 John F. Kennedy Blvd., North Little Rock, AR 72116 or online at http://poshnailsandspanlr.com or by phone at 501- 771-7777. You can also find them on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/Posh-Nails-Spa-1011480135579547

For more information visit r



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The number of underperforming funds included in the Spot the Dog list of shame has increased by almost 50 per cent in just six months.

The latest edition of the guide, compiled by Tilney Bestinvest, singles out 54 funds that have consistently underperformed their benchmarks by at least 10 per cent in the previous three years.

This represents a 46 per cent rise from the 37 vehicles identified six months earlier. However, the level of assets held in such portfolios remains broadly flat, having risen from 17.6bn in summer 2015 to 18bn.

While the number of underperforming funds has increased, their presence varied significantly over different sectors.

The report identified global equities as the area containing the most dog funds, with 18 across the combined Investment Association (IA) Global and Global Equity Income sectors.

US equity funds were another major culprit, with the IA North America sectors 10 dog products representing around a fifth of the grouping.

Equity funds in the UK fared better, with just eight vehicles out of a universe of 246 making the list, while just four severe underperformers were identified from 97 European equity products.

A number of asset managers featured heavily on the list.

Groups with large fund ranges are inherently more likely to feature in Spot the Dog, since few companies are consistently good across the board, the report noted.

Aberdeen Asset Management topped the list of shame with 11 underperformers, a result partly blamed on its house style.

Asian and emerging market funds have lost their lustre, and the common process means the malaise has spread across the group, the report said.

The real picture is even worse, as Aberdeen is also the underlying manager of seven other funds in the report, meaning its investment teams are running their portfolios on a third of funds in this edition.

A strong house process can be an advantage, but too much commonality can take away the individual flair with which managers add value.

While the Aberdeen funds in the list hold 3bn in assets under management, M&G again topped the list in terms of overall assets in dog funds.

Its four underperforming vehicles accounted for 6.4bn in total, with the M&G Recovery and M&G Global Basics funds again prominent.

[These are] former flagship funds that look more like oil tankers, the report said.

Other repeat offenders were St Jamess Place and Scottish Widows, each with three funds in the list.

Meanwhile, groups including Aviva Investors, Axa Investment Managers, Artemis, Baillie Gifford, Columbia Threadneedle and First State were praised for being completely absent from the hall of shame.
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If the deal that the state Board of Education struck last week to allow 14 Oregon schools with Native American mascots to keep those mascots sounds familiar, theres a reason for that:

As far as we can tell, the deal is just about exactly what Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio, has been pushing for all along in her long battle over the mascot issue.

As you will recall, the board previously had ruled that public schools with Native American mascots had to stop using those names by 2017 or possibly risk their state funding. On Thursday, however, in an unexpected bit of business, the board amended its previous ruling, declaring that schools that get permission from one of Oregons nine tribes can continue to use their mascots. (The ruling could affect mid-valley schools in Philomath and Lebanon, both of which use Warriors as their mascot.)

This may not be the final word: Activist Sam Sachs of Portland, a longtime foe of using the mascots, said Native American students plan to file a suit against the state and the Board of Education later this spring.

In the meantime, though, if Sprenger feels even a little bit vindicated by the turn of events this week, shes earned it.

This issue has been percolating in state government and school districts for years, and reached a boiling point with the boards initial 2012 ruling to ban the Native American-inspired mascots. In 2013, Sprenger and other Republican legislators pushed hard for a bill that would clear a path for school districts to work with tribes to keep using the mascots if certain conditions had been met. That bill passed the Legislature, but was vetoed by Gov. John Kitzhaber  the only bill from that entire session Kitzhaber vetoed.

Undeterred, legislators returned with a proposal in 2014 allowing school boards and tribes to work together to keep the mascots. The bill also ordered the Board of Education to create the rules that would govern those agreements. At the time, Sprenger worried that the board didnt seem inclined to work on those rules, and her fears were well-founded: Last May, the board voted against an amendment that would have allowed schools to gain permission from tribes.

So this weeks board action came as a surprise. What prompted the change of heart? A story in The Oregonian quoted a spokeswoman from the Department of Education as saying that state officials have been talking with the states tribes. And, the official said, some tribes and school districts have worked together to create plans in which students learn more about tribal history and culture.

Which is exactly what Sprenger hoped would happen in the first place. She has said that her original goal in launching this battle was to foster wide-ranging and honest discussions between tribes and school districts  the kind of freewheeling give and take that can allow students some real-world insights. She even promised to visit every affected school district to walk officials through what they needed to do to keep their mascots.

In the wake of her effort, it would appear that at least some of those discussions took place. With any luck, more of them might be in the works.
Russian demonstrators : Confrontation between police and Russian demonstrators at Marktplatz

Foto: dpa

Bonn Protestors of mainly Russian background and police had a confrontation about a demonstration on Sunday in Bonn city center.

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Accounts vary as to what happened in Bonn on Sunday afternoon in front of the Alte Rathaus (City Hall). One witness told General Anzeiger that a demonstrator from a group of around 100, tried to attack police who approached them. A police spokesperson, however, said that some persons from the demo had only tried to push them aside. Following was a verbal confrontation as police tried to find out who was responsible for the demonstration and if it was registered.

Demonstrators were overwhelmingly Russian or with a Russian background. They were said to be motivated by news from Russian state television about the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl by migrants in Berlin. The girl was said to have been of Russian heritage and news travelled heavily through social media.

Demonstrators held signs that said Merkel is destroying Europe and Multiculti = exchange of population. From the steps of the Rathaus, statements were called out such as Refugees are to be considered dangerous. People in the area who expressed their displeasure with the statements were threatened.

As more police were called to the scene, the situation became calmer. Police confirmed that the demonstration continued then without further incident. Their estimate was 50 demonstrators.
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Trouble As Nigerians Protest Alleged Murder Of Colleague By South Africa Police

clarajancita at 25-01-2016 03:31 PM (6 years ago) (f)

A Nigerian man, living in Kempton Park, suffocated and died after allegedly choking on the drugs he was selling, acccording to the police.

A Nigerian man, living in Kempton Park, suffocated and died after allegedly choking on the drugs he was selling, acccording to the police. Local residents claim it was police brutality that led to his death which took place in the early hours of the 23rd of January.

This led to an outrage from Nigerians in the area as they advocated for justice against the policemen on ground at the scene of the incident.



A correspondent who contacted a Nigerian living in South Africa revealed the policeman who picture appears above covered the face of culprit with an air-proof material and manhandled him out of torture which caused him to suffocate to death.



Reports have it that the unnamed youth is known to the policemen as a marijuana peddler. He pays a bribe ranging from 50 Rands and more to the police after every arrest but on that fateful day he had no money to offer which didn't go down well with the security operatives.

He was rushed to Arwyp hospital in Kempton Park where he was confirmed dead by the nurses on duty for the weekend. Representatives of the Nigerian embassy in South Africa were also on ground to investigate the controversy.



A Nigerian who spoke under the condition of anonymity revealed the colored South African security operatives have an undying culture of harassing Nigerians for money with incessant recorded cases of physical abuses.



See photos and video of the protest by concerned Nigerians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG2z32mpQgA&feature=youtu.be Local residents claim it was police brutality that led to his death which took place in the early hours of the 23rd of January.This led to an outrage from Nigerians in the area as they advocated for justice against the policemen on ground at the scene of the incident.A correspondent who contacted a Nigerian living in South Africa revealed the policeman who picture appears above covered the face of culprit with an air-proof material and manhandled him out of torture which caused him to suffocate to death.Reports have it that the unnamed youth is known to the policemen as a marijuana peddler. He pays a bribe ranging from 50 Rands and more to the police after every arrest but on that fateful day he had no money to offer which didn't go down well with the security operatives.He was rushed to Arwyp hospital in Kempton Park where he was confirmed dead by the nurses on duty for the weekend. Representatives of the Nigerian embassy in South Africa were also on ground to investigate the controversy.A Nigerian who spoke under the condition of anonymity revealed the colored South African security operatives have an undying culture of harassing Nigerians for money with incessant recorded cases of physical abuses.See photos and video of the protest by concerned Nigerians:

Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 25-01-2016 03:31 PM (6 years ago) | Hero

Mrmontana at 25-01-2016 03:53 PM (6 years ago)

(m) This is serious. Even S.A police are this wicked. Posted: at 25-01-2016 03:53 PM (6 years ago) | Newbie This is serious. Even S.A police are this wicked. Reply

Powerfulify at 25-01-2016 04:03 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Police is police anywhere with wicked attitude. Posted: at 25-01-2016 04:03 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Police is police anywhere with wicked attitude. Reply

zezprincess at 25-01-2016 05:01 PM (6 years ago)

(f) Nawaooo,I thought all this bribery and corruption na from only nigeria police,so I reach south africa,Chaaii,So na like this they end the man's life,RIP,This case shall be properly investigated,Rubbish. Posted: at 25-01-2016 05:01 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Nawaooo,I thought all this bribery and corruption na from only nigeria police,so I reach south africa,Chaaii,So na like this they end the man's life,RIP,This case shall be properly investigated,Rubbish. Reply

gogoman at 25-01-2016 05:06 PM (6 years ago)

(m) police are thugs in uniform!!!!!!!!!!! either in lagos or jo burg or buru buru for kenya Posted: at 25-01-2016 05:06 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero police are thugs in uniform!!!!!!!!!!! either in lagos or jo burg or buru buru for kenya Reply

dareper at 25-01-2016 05:26 PM (6 years ago)

(m) That's bad Posted: at 25-01-2016 05:26 PM (6 years ago) | Hero That's bad Reply

AmazingMarie at 25-01-2016 05:47 PM (6 years ago)

(f) mam inhumanity to a fellow man. whether he was a criminal or not he ought not be treated the way he was treated unless this story is false. Posted: at 25-01-2016 05:47 PM (6 years ago) | Hero mam inhumanity to a fellow man. whether he was a criminal or not he ought not be treated the way he was treated unless this story is false. Reply

Knowman at 25-01-2016 06:01 PM (6 years ago)

(m) NO!!!!!!!!! We should let everyone enjoy coming to our country while we remain slaves on theirs . Nigeria is a free country where foreigners do all sort of atrocities and we see our people, Government and police protect them but we can't do good in their countries and they give us credit for that except " KILL THEM KILL THEM" . Posted: at 25-01-2016 06:01 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming NO!!!!!!!!! We should let everyone enjoy coming to our country while we remain slaves on theirs . Nigeria is a free country where foreigners do all sort of atrocities and we see our people, Government and police protect them but we can't do good in their countries and they give us credit for that except " KILL THEM KILL THEM" . Reply

nwaafoigbo at 25-01-2016 06:56 PM (6 years ago)

(m) i see biafra comeing very soon Posted: at 25-01-2016 06:56 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming i see biafra comeing very soon Reply

winace at 25-01-2016 07:17 PM (6 years ago)

(f) Hmmmm dis is bad na Posted: at 25-01-2016 07:17 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Hmmmm dis is bad na Reply

kp45 at 25-01-2016 10:39 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Now that's bad Posted: at 25-01-2016 10:39 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Now that's bad Reply

Novic at 25-01-2016 11:05 PM (6 years ago)

(m) NO!!!!!!!!! We should let everyone

enjoy coming to our country while

we remain slaves on theirs .

Nigeria is a free country where

foreigners do all sort of atrocities

and we see our people, Government and police protect

them but we can't do good in their

countries and they give us credit

for that except " KILL THEM KILL

THEM" . Posted: at 25-01-2016 11:05 PM (6 years ago) | Hero NO!!!!!!!!! We should let everyoneenjoy coming to our country whilewe remain slaves on theirs .Nigeria is a free country whereforeigners do all sort of atrocitiesand we see our people, Government and police protectthem but we can't do good in theircountries and they give us creditfor that except " KILL THEM KILLTHEM" . Reply

Novic at 25-01-2016 11:05 PM (6 years ago)

(m) I thought all this bribery

and corruption na from only nigeria

police,so I reach south

africa,Chaaii,So na like this they

end the man's life,RIP,This case

shall be properly investigated,Rubbish. Posted: at 25-01-2016 11:05 PM (6 years ago) | Hero I thought all this briberyand corruption na from only nigeriapolice,so I reach southafrica,Chaaii,So na like this theyend the man's life,RIP,This caseshall be properly investigated,Rubbish. Reply

Oworen25 at 26-01-2016 05:06 AM (6 years ago)

(m) Nigeria is a free country where foreigners do all sort of atrocities and we see our people, Government and police protect them but we can't do good in their countries and they give us credit for that Posted: at 26-01-2016 05:06 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Nigeria is a free country where foreigners do all sort of atrocities and we see our people, Government and police protect them but we can't do good in their countries and they give us credit for that Reply

viggie at 26-01-2016 09:17 AM (6 years ago)

(f) well done to the police, this nigerians want to kill south african youth with this drugs.it must be a wake up call to all nigerian drug dealers life is short to wake up with regrets Posted: at 26-01-2016 09:17 AM (6 years ago) | Newbie well done to the police, this nigerians want to kill south african youth with this drugs.it must be a wake up call to all nigerian drug dealers Reply

joseusi007 at 26-01-2016 02:06 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Quote from: viggy shabangu on 26-01-2016 09:17 AM well done to the police, this nigerians want to kill south african youth with this drugs.it must be a wake up call to all nigerian drug dealers



Nice quote !!!



i grew up thinking all drug dealers are harden criminals that can kill to get their way.

Now in the jungle called nigeria no one sees anything wrong with dealing drugs. Posted: at 26-01-2016 02:06 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming Nice quote !!!i grew up thinking all drug dealers are harden criminals that can kill to get their way.Now in the jungle called nigeria no one sees anything wrong with dealing drugs. Reply
Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: What To Expect From 2016's Biggest Smartphones Features oi -VijayKumar

2016 will be a big bet for smartphone makers. Several leaks and rumors have already started about the upcoming smartphones of this year. The two big players: Apple and Samsung are on hot seat with their rumored smartphones: Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 respectively.

Well, both phones are yet released, but rumor mill is fill with the leaked specifications that are close to reality. The Samsung Galaxy S7 will arrive first of course, it is expected to come out in February, just ahead of Mobile World Congress.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge Dual-SIM Variant Certified, Could Be Announced On February 20

Meanwhile, Apple's next possible iPhone - the iPhone 7 - will not arrive until the end of the year, but the rumor mill has not stopped leaking the specifications of the next iPhone. This post will talk about how each smartphone will be like, starting with the specs, based on leaks.

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: Key Specifications

The Galaxy S7 is rumored to sport a 5.1 inch display with a maximum resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. The design is expected to change but not as radical as form the S5 to S6. The smartphone will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, paired with 4GB of RAM and will have 32GB, 64GB and 128GB of internal storage.

SEE ALSO: 10 Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Secret Features That You Didn't Know Existed



On the other hand, the iPhone 7 is likely to have a display of 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch 3D Touch display with QHD resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. The phone is expected to have completely new design with thinner body and bezel. As per the rumors, the iPhone 7 will be powered by A10 processor with 3GB of RAM and will come in four storage models: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: Design

The iPhone 7 will feature a radically different design. The next iPhone will have a thinner body, a thinner bezels and maybe an edge-to-edge display. There is also a strong rumor that Apple is working on physical home button with embedding a virtual home button and Touch ID in the screen itself.

SEE ALSO: Weekly Roundup: Smartphones, Smartwatches And Gadgets Launched This Week

On the other hand, The overall design of the Galaxy S7 variants will remain the same and the major changes will be under the hood. According to the rumored information, the Galaxy S7 will feature faster processor, a new DRAM chips with a microSD card slot.

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: Display

The Apple iPhone 7 will probably get a higher resolution display, specifically a QHD display with a resolution of 2560x1440, to compete the high-end Android smartphones, which comes with similar display resolution. Samsung rumored to add some kind of 3D Touch-like pressure sensing display to its next flagship. Further, the iPhone 7 should come in the standard 4.7 inch display and 5.5 inch for Plus model.

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: Camera

The camera for the iPhone 7 has been rumored for a quite long time. It is rumored to feature a dual-lens camera module in the iPhone 7 offering a DSLR like picture quality. While, Samsung Galaxy S7 will take the advantage of dual-camera setup, something like HTC One M8 and Huawei Honor 6 Plus. The AnTuTu benchmark shows that the next flagship will features a 16 megapixel rear camera with a 5 megapixel front-facing camera.

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs Apple iPhone 7: Release Date

Samsung usually unveil its flagship smartphone at the MWC in Barcelona, but rumors suggest that the Galaxy S7 will be unveiled ahead of MWC just like the Galaxy Note 5. According to the new information, the Galaxy S7 will arrive in early-February . As per the Apple's launch pattern, the iPhone 7 will be released somewhere in September 2016.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Concept Images

Apple iPhone 7 Concept Images

Source | Image Courtesy

Best Mobiles in India

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Lenovo Vibe X3 with 5.5-inch display, 21MP camera and 3GB RAM launching in India on January 27 News oi -Sudhiir

Lenovo has teased the Vibe X3 smartphone which is slated for a January 27th launch. Lenovo announced the phone last year in China in the month of November along with the Vibe X3 Lite.

SEE ALSO: Panasonic Eluga Turbo with 5-inch HD display, 13MP camera and 4G LTE launched for Rs. 10,999

Lenovo Vibe X3 specifications

The Lenovo Vibe X3 has a 5.5" Full HS IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. The smartphone comes with a fingerprint sensor on the rear side.The phone has a 21MP camera with dual tone LED Flash, PDAF. The rear camera comes with a Sony IMX230 sensor with a 4K video recording with an 8MP camera on the front for selfies. The smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

The smartphone is powered by a Hexa-Core Snapdragon 808 processor with Adreno 418 GPU. It comes with 3GB of RAM.It comes in storage variants of 32GB and 64GB expandable up to 128GB with micro SD.

It has 1.5 W dual front-facing speakers with Dolby Atmos and SABRE 9018C2M chipset which give the Lenovo Vibe X3 a very enhanced audio output.

SEE ALSO: OnePlus One OxygenOS 2.1.4 update brings new camera modes, app permissions and more

The smartphone has a Dual Hybrid SIM slot with support for Nano SIM card which also doubles up as a micro SD card. Connectivity options on the phone include 4G LTE, 3G, WiFi 802.11, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, GPS and NFC.

Get your Lenovo Vibe X3 with an amazing 21mp Rear Camera and a 8mp Front Camera pic.twitter.com/oPifcpwgHz  Lenovo India (@Lenovo_in) January 24, 2016

The smartphone has a 3.5mm audio jack with FM Radio. It has dimension of 154x76.5 x 9.3mm and weighs 173 grams. The smartphone has a 3600mAh battery. The smartphone is available in White color. There are no details on the pricing of the the phone as of yet. Lenovo will release details of pricing of the smartphone by mid-week.

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Kerry Accuses Iran of Arming Hezbollah With 80,000 Rockets

Sputnik News

18:49 23.01.2016(updated 18:50 23.01.2016)

The United States shares Saudi Arabia's concerns of Iran supplying the Hezbollah Shiite militia with up to 80,000 rockets through Syria, US State Secretary John Kerry said Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Speaking at a press conference alongside Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir in Riyadh, Kerry said the concerns were the reason why Washington maintains certain sanctions imposed on Iran.

'I mean, Hizballah has 70-, 80,000 rockets. What do they need that for? It seems to me that  and much of it's supplied, obviously, across the border from Iran through Damascus,' Kerry said, using an alternate spelling of the Lebanon-based militia banned by the US government.

Hezbollah has been fighting insurgents in Syria, including the al-Nusra Front terrorist group.

'So these are concerns that we share, which is why the arms component, the missile component, the human rights component, the state sponsor of terror component are all part of the continued sanctions of the United States and the agreement,' Kerry said.

Tehran was found in compliance of dismantling a major part of its nuclear program last week, paving the way for the lifting of economic sanctions as outlined in the landmark nuclear agreement reached with world powers last summer.

The Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is among Iran's regional rivals, including Israel, that have opposed the nuclear deal. Riyadh has cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran early in January.

 Sputnik

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Aircraft That 'Bites': Russia to Sell Egypt 46 Alligator Helicopters

Sputnik News

16:10 23.01.2016(updated 17:51 23.01.2016)

To equip the French-made Mistral-class ships, Egypt is buying 46 Russian Ka-52 Alligator reconnaissance and combat helicopters, Austrian online newspaper Die Presse reported.

The next-generation combat aircraft is designed to destroy tanks, armored and non-armored ground targets as well as enemy troops.

The newspaper wrote that Ka-52 Alligator aircraft are already 'biting' in Syria, where they successfully passed their first efficiency test in real combat conditions.

Egypt is continuing to increase its military capabilities to fight against illegal armed groups and terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula, Libya and Yemen, the newspaper wrote. For this purpose, Russian made helicopters will be very useful, 'particularly combined with the French helicopter carriers.'

The newspaper reminded that in 2015 Cairo had already purchased 24 French-made Rafale fighter jets, two Mistral class helicopter carriers as well as two German type 209 submarines.

 Sputnik

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NATO Considering Use of AWACS Surveillance Planes in Anti-Daesh Fight

Sputnik News

15:03 23.01.2016

NATO has confirmed it is considering using the alliance's AWACS to assist the US-led coalition in its fights against Daesh in Syria.

NATO country members are discussing a request to use AWACS air surveillance aircraft in the battle against Daesh militants in Syria.

Currently, the US is spearheading an anti-Daesh coalition of some 60 countries, including 28 NATO member states, in Syria. The move will mark a departure for NATO which up to now has not been involved in direct combat actions against Daesh.

'We can confirm there has been a request for concrete support from NATO to the anti-ISIL effort in the form of NATO AWACS surveillance planes,' a NATO official was quoted as saying by AFP.

The request is currently being discussed by allies, the source added, without identifying which country had submitted the request.

US officials said that recently Defense Secretary Aston Carter had sent letters to all members of the coalition seeking additional support.

The unit of AWACS  Airborne Early Warning and Control System surveillance aircraft  comprises over 20 planes which can locate and identify aircraft targets within a radius of 400 kilometers.

The fleet could operate as flying command posts, communicating with other aircraft and helping them to coordinate the coalition's airstrikes against Daesh.

'Any decision would be in line with the Wales summit declaration which indicates NATO's readiness to support the bilateral efforts of allies,' the official pointed out.

Diplomatic sources told AFP that an agreement could involve NATO deploying its AWACS planes to the US to free up aircraft Washington could then use for anti-Daesh airstrikes.

'There would be no direct NATO role in the anti-IS [anti-Daesh] coalition,' the source said. 'There will be no NATO AWACS planes over Iraq or Syria.'

NATO has so far refused to involve itself in the Syrian conflict, partly due to concerns from such members as Germany that NATO's engagement would complicate peace talks, according to Deutsche Welle.

Daesh is currently one of the main threats to global security. In three years, the terrorist group seized large parts of Iraq and Syria. In addition, they have been trying to establish their influence in North African countries, particularly in Libya. According to estimates, Daesh now controls an area of up to 90,000 square kilometers. Between 50,000 and 200,000 fighters are said to be fighting in its ranks.

However, there is no united anti-Daesh front. Among those fighting the militants are the Syrian army, a US-led international coalition, the Iraqi Armed Forces as well as Kurdish fighters, Lebanese and Iraqi Shia militia troops.

On September 30, at the request of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Russia launched airstrikes against Daesh and al-Nusra Front targets in Syria.

 Sputnik

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US Does Not Plan to Increase Number of Special Forces in Syria - Pentagon

Sputnik News

07:35 23.01.2016(updated 07:36 23.01.2016)

The United States is not planning on increasing the number of its special forces in Syria, US Department of Defense spokesman Peter Cook told Sputnik on Friday.

DAVOS (Sputnik)  In October, the White House revealed plans to send up to 50 special operations troops to Syria to aid the so-called moderate opposition. On Friday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that boots on the ground would be part of the US strategy to defeat the Daesh.

'Fifty special operations forces have been talked about for some time, there is no difference, there is no increase. It is the same decision as a few months ago,' Cook said.

'We have discussed that a small number of American special operations forces have been in Syria to try and enable Syrian opposition forces, Syrian Arab forces, Syrian Arab coalition,' Cook added.

Since 2014, the US-led coalition of some 60 nations has been carrying out airstrikes against the Daesh first in Iraq and later in Syria  albeit without the approval of the Syrian government or the UN Security Council.

Russia has been carrying out separate precision airstrikes against Daesh and al-Nusra Front in Syria since September 30, at the request of President Bashar Assad. Both groups are outlawed in Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly said that the Russian forces would provide support to the Syrian Army only by air, ruling out the possibility of Russian ground operations in the country

 Sputnik

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Pentagon: Beijing Making 'Self Isolating' Moves in S China Sea

Sputnik News

06:07 23.01.2016(updated 06:09 23.01.2016)

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has stated that Beijing is taking steps which will lead to international isolation amid ongoing tensions over disputed territories in the South China Sea.

The comment by the Pentagon top official was made on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Carter offered that the US is not seeking an excuse for a clash with China, but noted that the American military will keep operating in the region.

"I am not one of those people who believe that conflict between China and the US is inevitable. It is certainly not desirable and I don't think it is likely," he said, adding that American forces, "will fly, sail and operate whatever international law permits in the South China Sea."

Carter blamed Beijing for mounting tensions in the region and reiterated that Washington is not fueling the conflict, while urging no one to "take sides."

"China is taking some steps that I fear are self-isolating, driving towards a result that none of us wants,' Carter said, referring to China's activities in the region.

China has recently constructed airstrips on artificial islands built in territories it has arbitrarily claimed in the South China Sea. The islands are being tested for new military and civil aviation facilities. Beijing has repeatedly claimed it doesn't intend to militarize the region, but suggested that it is ready to defend its South China Sea facilities, if necessary.

The disputed South China Sea territories include the Spratly and the Paracel Islands, as well as certain maritime areas crossed by important international trade routes. Powers including China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have launched overlapping territorial claims on areas across the region.

 Sputnik

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Afghan Forces Liberate Over 30 Southern Villages From Militants

Sputnik News

06:06 25.01.2016

The Afghan army has cleaned over 30 villages from the militants in the southern Kandahar province, local media reported, local authorities said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The military operation in the province was launched 20 days ago, and at least 30 militants had been killed and another 18 wounded, local government spokesman Samim Khpalwak was quoted by the Pajhwok Afghan News agency on Sunday.

The notorious Taliban insurgents were expelled from the area, including their permanent hideouts there, he added.

The operation was complex and involved the Afghan National Army, as well as police, civil order police and the National Directorate of Security (NDS), another official from the military told the agency.

Afghanistan is in political and social turmoil, with long-standing Taliban insurgency and other extremist factions operating in the country, such as Daesh, which is outlawed in Russia and many other countries, taking advantage of the instability in the state.

Afghan security forces regularly conduct military operations against insurgents.

According to the TOLOnews broadcaster's recent report, almost 10,000 security and terrorist incidents occurred last year in Afghanistan.

 Sputnik

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Operation Inherent Resolve Strikes Continue in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 24, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and 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 Syria

Fighter, attack, ground-attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted seven strikes in Syria:

-- Near Ayn Isa, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL structures and an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Hasakah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL building and an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Hawl, two strikes destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Raqqah, one strike struck an ISIL weapons storage area.

-- Near Mara, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL heavy machine gun and two ISIL fighting positions.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, ground-attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Baghdadi, one strike denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Kisik, two strikes destroyed seven ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck two ISIL tactical units, destroying five ISIL fighting positions and denying ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units, destroying four ISIL staging areas, an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL fuel tank and denying ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Sinjar, one strike destroyed four ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL staging area.

-- Near Tal Afar, one strike suppressed an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Beiji, one strike destroyed an ISIL petroleum, oil and lubricant cache.

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, 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, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Dunford: Recommendations Forthcoming on U.S. Troop Presence in Northern Iraq

By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity

PARIS, January 24, 2016  The United States potentially will make recommendations to position U.S. troops with Iraqi security forces in northern Iraq to support the next phase of isolating the key city of Mosul, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who met here with his French counterpart for talks focusing on the multinational effort against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. troops would be placed where they can best support the Iraqi forces in the fight.

'We're about winning. ... We want to have the Iraqis win,' he said.

The details are still being worked out, noted Dunford, who said he will make the recommendations to President Barack Obama based on what U.S. commanders and Iraqi security forces identify as the type of support the United States can provide in a plan to retake Mosul.

'It is fair to say we will have positions  we already do [in Erbil]  up in the north that will facilitate supporting Iraqi security forces as they isolate Mosul,' Dunford said.

Mosul is the largest city captured by the ISIL terrorists.

Consultations on Best Way Forward

Discussions with Iraqi officials will determine what support they need, whether in an advise-and-assist role at the operations center level, the division level, or the brigade level, Dunford said.

'I'm prepared to recommend a level of accompaniment that will allow us to be successful,' he said. 'But I want to wait for the Iraqis to tell us, based on the lessons learned in Ramadi, what they believe is right for them.'

Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, is working with the Iraqi security forces to develop the concept of operations, Dunford said.

The Iraqis will identify what support they need and what Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga forces need, looking at capability gaps and where the United States can be most effective in integrating its effort, he said.

Because the details are still being worked out, Dunford said, he did not have specifics on what capabilities will be needed or how many U.S. troops would be required.

But, he said, 'We're going to set ourselves up for success.'

The U.S. forces, he said, would be in addition to U.S. troops already in an advise-and-assist mission at Taqaddum Air Base.

Dunford said he discussed the topic with Iraqi officials earlier this month during a visit to Iraq.

Work Remains in Anbar Province

In the meantime, the chairman said, the focus is consolidating in and around Ramadi, and then moving out to Anbar province. 'There is a lot of work that remains to be done in Anbar, not only in and around Ramadi and the immediate surrounds, but the entire Anbar province,' he said.

The U.S. presence may change 'in terms of what our weight of effort is,' he said, adding the United States likely will 'be in and around those locations for some time to come, because there is still work to be done.'

The United States will still support the Iraqi security forces, with no immediate changes there, with 'the exception of probably a reorientation of main effort,' he said.

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Yemeni forces kill 8 Saudi troops in retaliatory attacks

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:21PM

Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah fighters and allied army units have killed at least eight Saudi soldiers in retaliation for the Arab kingdom's deadly aggression against their country.

According to Yemeni media reports, at least three soldiers were killed by sniper fire near Yemen's Midi region on the border with Saudi Arabia's Jizan Province on Sunday.

Five other Saudi forces were killed at the hands of Yemeni forces in a similar fashion in Jizan's al-Tawal region.

Fighters from the popular committees, backed by Ansarullah fighters, alongside Yemeni army soldiers are carrying out attacks against Saudi military positions in retaliation for Riyadh's deadly aggression against their country.

Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression in Yemen in March 2015 to undermine the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh and fled to the kingdom in the face of Houthi's increasing advances.

More than 8,278 people have been killed and over 16,000 others injured since the attacks began. The war has also devastated the country's facilities and infrastructure.

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Burkina arrests 11 failed coup soldiers in arms depot raid

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 5:6PM

Eleven former members of the Burkinabe presidential guard which fomented a brief but failed coup last year have been arrested after a raid on an arms depot near the capital Ouagadougou.

Senior military official Mahamadi Bonkoungou said all 11 detainees were former members of the elite RSP unit, which was disbanded after briefly seizing power last September.

The attack on the arms depot was staged by 'a dozen ex-RSP members' at around 4 a.m. (0400 GMT) Friday, Bonkoungou said.

The raid did not claim any victims and the depot at Yimdi, 20 kilometers west of Ouagadougou, is now under army control.

Bonkoungou said after the attack security was stepped up and police were still looking for 15 soldiers linked to the raid.

The army announced it would release photos of the suspects still on the loose to 'encourage the population to participate in their arrests.'

The soldiers stole several AK 47 Kalashnikov assault rifles and anti-tank rocket grenade launchers in the raid.

The RSP unit's former chief, General Gilbert Diendere, mounted a putsch on September 17 using crack troops from the RSP, a group loyal to former head of state Blaise Compaore, who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2014.

The coup was thwarted by elements in the army, backed by street protesters, who attacked the plotters' barracks.

At least 11 people were killed and 271 were injured in the attack.

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UK Labour chief seeks deal with Argentina over Las Malvinas

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 3:15PM

Britain's Labour Party leader has expressed support for a power-sharing deal with Argentina over the disputed Malvinas Islands, aka the Falklands, reports say.

Jeremy Corbyn has told Argentinian diplomats he wants a Northern Ireland-style power-sharing deal for the South Atlantic islands.

Argentina's outgoing ambassador to London, Alicia Castro, said the Labour leader "shares our concerns" and "he is one of ours," according to the Guardian.

In an interview published on the Argentinian embassy's website, Castro said Corbyn had visited the Argentinian embassy in London and was "friendly and humorous."

"He is saying that dialogue [is] possible and that attitudes are beginning to change, that what was achieved in Northern Ireland can be achieved also here," she said.

"His decisive leadership can guide the British public opinion to promote dialogue between the governments of the United Kingdom and Argentina."

The Labour leader drew criticism last week by saying in a television interview that he wanted discussions on "some reasonable accommodation" with Argentina.

While saying the islanders should have an "enormous say" in any discussions on their future, he stopped short of saying they should have a veto over any new arrangements.

Located about 500 kilometers (about 300 miles) off Argentina's coast and home to about 3,000 inhabitants, the disputed islands have been declared part of the British Overseas Territories since Britain established its colonial rule on the territories in 1833.

Argentina and Britain fought a 74-day war in 1982 over the islands, which ended with the British side claiming victory over the Argentinians.

The United Nations (UN) Special Committee on Decolonization considers the islands as a colony, which is waiting to be decolonized.

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Saudi military goes on with new airstrikes on Yemen

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:48AM

The regime in Riyadh has conducted new airstrikes on Yemen, nearly ten months into Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor.

On Sunday, Saudi warplanes bombarded residential areas in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, more than twenty times.

The warplanes also targeted the Yemeni army's headquarters in the Huth district of Amran Province. The Majzar district of Ma'rib Province came under four Saudi strikes.

Yemen's al-Masirah news channel reported that the Sahar district of the northwestern province of Sa'ada was pounded by Saudi jets.

Local Yemeni sources also said Saudi warships launched rocket attacks on the Mukha district of the province of Ta'izz.

In a separate development, Yemeni soldiers backed by the Houthi Ansarullah fighters, launched a retaliatory missile attack on a military base in Saudi Arabia's southwestern province of Najran. Yemenis also destroyed a bulldozer belonging to Saudi mercenaries in the Jebel Hilan of Ma'rib.

Also on Sunday, unknown gunmen shot dead a Yemeni police colonel along with his wife in the province of Aden.

Saudi Arabia began its military aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015. The strikes are supposedly meant to undermine Ansarullah and restore power to the fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Some 8,300 people have been killed and over 16,000 others injured since the strikes began. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on Yemen's infrastructure.

Yemenis have been carrying out retaliatory attacks on the Saudi forces deployed in the country as well as targets inside Saudi Arabia.

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US-led drone strikes kill over three dozen in eastern Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 5:14AM

At least 41 people lost their lives when US-led foreign forces carried out separate drone strikes in Afghanistan's embattled eastern province of Nangarhar, Press TV reports.

Attaullah Khogyani, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said an aerial assault struck Dih Bala district in the province, which is located 120 kilometers (74 miles) east of the Afghan capital, Kabul, late on Saturday, leaving 25 members of the Takfiri Daesh militant group dead.

He added that two airborne attacks also targeted Abdul Khel and Bandar areas of Achin district in the same Afghan province on Friday night and Saturday noon, killing six Daesh extremists.

Khogyani further noted that 10 more people were killed on Friday night in a US-led drone attack in the same Afghan province, which has seen a rise in the presence of Daesh militants over the past months.

On January 19, a US drone strike in the Achin district of Nangarhar Province claimed the lives of three people. Local officials said a Daesh militant commander, identified as Qari Sajjad, and two of his comrades were killed in the airstrike.

The development came only three day after more than a dozen people were killed in a US drone attack in the same Afghan province.

The 201st Selab (Flood) Corps of the Afghan National Army announced in a statement that the aerial attack was conducted in the Dih Bala district of the province, identifying the deceased as 17 members of Daesh Takfiri militant group.

The CIA spy agency regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border.

Washington has also been conducting targeted killings through remotely-controlled armed drones in Somalia and Yemen.

The United States says the airstrikes target members of al-Qaeda and other militants, but according to local officials and witnesses, civilians have in most cases been the victims of the attacks.

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Taliban Skeptical of Four-way Afghan Peace Process

by Ayaz Gul January 24, 2016

Afghanistan's Taliban has restated certain preconditions prior to ceasing hostilities, and has stopped short of formally rejecting a U.S.-backed four-nation process aimed at promoting Afghan peace.

The Islamist insurgency presented these views through its chief peace negotiator, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, at an unofficial two-day dialogue of Afghan stakeholders that concluded Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

The Track Two discussions come as senior officials from the United States, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan are engaged in regular four-way discussions aimed at clearing the way for direct peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

"Peace should not be used as an instrument for achievement of one's political, personal and party objectives. Unfortunately, foreigners and the Kabul administration are [now] engaged in these activities and do not have a real intention for peace," Stanekzai said, without directly referring to the four-way peace process.

Pugwash Conferences, a Nobel Prize-winning group promoting solutions to the armed conflicts, hosted the Qatar meeting.

Taliban and Afghan government envoys as well as civil lawmakers, society and peace activists were invited to the Track Two conference for the informal discussions on ways to end the war in Afghanistan. Former Afghan interior minister Umar Daudzai and an uncle of President Ghani, Abdul Qayyum Kochi, were among the participants, but no government representative attended the meeting, according to foreign ministry officials in Kabul.

Taliban sources said Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a written message to the conference, accepted the Taliban as a political opposition and said his government was ready to hold direct peace talks.

The sources added that acting Afghan Defense Minster Masoom Stanekzi sent Ghani's message to the gathering on the final day.

It is a positive sign because previously the Afghan president was demanding China, the U.S. and Pakistan put pressure on the Taliban to bring them to the negotiating table, said the Taliban sources.

There is no official word from Kabul, however, on who attended the Qatar dialogue, nor have the organizers issued a concluding statement about the deliberations.

Taliban chief negotiator Stanekzai, head of the Taliban's political office in Doha, told the meeting his group wanted complete withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign troops and establishment of an "independent Islamic system" in the country before it considered rejoining peace talks for ending the 15-year war.

He went on to demand official recognition for the Taliban's Qatar office, release of its prisoners, removal of U.N. travel and financial restrictions on Taliban leaders, and an end to what he said was "poisonous propaganda" against the insurgent group.

Stanekzai insisted that these demands must be met before starting the peace process to ensure "feasible" progress towards peace.

The Taliban negotiator reiterated it wants\ed direct negations with the United States to discuss issues such as agreeing on a deadline for withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and removal of Taliban leaders' names from a U.S. list of rewards for their arrests.

"But as to issues pertaining to the Afghans, the Islamic Emirate believes, the Afghans have preparedness and capability to resolve these issues themselves," said Stanekzai.

He said the Taliban was committed to civil activities such as freedom of speech and women's rights "in the light of Islamic rules, national interests and values."

But the insurgent group is being widely condemned for last week's suicide attack against a mini bus carrying staff of the country's biggest television station, Tolo news.

The car bombing killed seven employees of the media group and wounded more than 20 others. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the TV was airing anti-Islam, anti-Taliban and anti-Afghan reports to malign the group, and accused Tolo news of working as an 'intelligence network.'

The violence sparked a national and international outrage, and has led to street protests in many Afghan cities.

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Israel 'Supports Settlement at Any Time' After Hebron Incident

by VOA News January 24, 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed strong support for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank Sunday amid increasing pressure from hardline coalition members over an incident in the flashpoint settlement of Hebron.

'The government supports settlement at any time, especially now when it is under terrorist assault and is taking a courageous and determined stand in the face of terrorist attacks,' Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

Israeli troops on Friday removed several dozen settlers from two buildings in Hebron which the settlers had entered the previous day, saying they had bought them from Palestinians.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who authorized the removal, said the settlers had not received authorization to enter the buildings and were there illegally.

Israel will allow the settlers to return once their paperwork is in order, Netanyahu said.

Hebron is a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with several hundred Jewish settlers living in the heart of the city under heavy military guard among around 200,000 Palestinians.

The Israeli leader heads a coalition with only a one-seat majority in parliament, making him especially vulnerable to the demands of religious nationalists in his cabinet regarding settlements, which much of the international community opposes.

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Kerry Arrives in Asia; Trip Focuses on ASEAN, North Korea

by Pamela Dockins January 24, 2016

Secretary of State John Kerry is in Laos, where he will lay the groundwork for a February summit with leaders of 10 ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) countries that will be hosted by President Barack Obama.

Kerry arrived in the capital, Vietiane, late Sunday. It is the first leg of a three-nation tour of Asia that also includes stops in Cambodia and China.

During his stay, Kerry and Asian leaders will discuss pressing regional issues, including the South China Sea dispute and growing concerns about North Korea's nuclear program.

In February, President Obama will host a special ASEAN summit in California. The gathering will be an opportunity for U.S. and Asia Pacific leaders to explore opportunities to broaden economic and cultural ties. Later this year, Obama travels to Laos, for an ASEAN summit, becoming the first U.S. president to do so.

"What makes the visit [by Secretary Kerry] particularly significant and timely," said a senor State Department official, "is that Laos has just taken over as the chairman of ASEAN."

In a Saturday briefing, the official added the U.S. had been doing a "fair amount" to support Laos' chairmanship.

Kerry will continue talks promoting bilateral ties in Cambodia, another ASEAN country and one of the fastest-growing economies in the region.

However, the U.S. is also concerned about political strains in Cambodia, the senior State Department official said.

"The relationship between the ruling party and the opposition party is fraught right now," said the official, who said Kerry would meet with opposition and civil society leaders as well as Cambodia's prime and foreign ministers.

North Korea a focal point

Kerry will also visit Beijing during this trip, which comes after North Korea drew international condemnation, this month, for testing what it said was a nuclear device, for the fourth time since 2006.

"In an odd way, every time North Korea does a nuclear test that's a moment of opportunity for the United States to try to convince China to cooperate more closely in punishing North Korea," said Scott Snyder, a Korean studies analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The U.S. has been pressing China, an economic lifeline to North Korea, to use its leverage to urge Pyongyang to stop what world leaders view as provocative action. Also, the U.N. Security Council, which includes China, is considering imposing additional penalties on North Korea.

In spite of China's "friendly overtures" to North Korea, it has experienced success in getting the North to tone down provocations, said the senior State Department official.

"In the past, the Chinese have often quietly found ways to send a message that a North Korean leader simply could not afford to overlook, the official said.

The U.S. has also been urging China and its neighbors to seek a peaceful resolution to a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.

Earlier this month, regional tensions flared when China tested a runway on one of its artificial islands in the region. China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

Asia is the second leg of a five-nation tour for Kerry that also included stops in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.

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Africa Wants Veto Powers in UN Security Council

by Sebastian Mhofu January 24, 2016

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo say Africa wants to see reforms enacted at the U.N. Security Council and they want the continent to be given at least one spot as a permanent member. The call came at the end of a visit to Zimbabwe by Nguema and ahead of an African Union General Assembly later this month.

Mugabe  who is handing over the rotating AU chairmanship  said his Equatorial Guinea counterpart ,Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, was in Zimbabwe because of the upcoming African summit in Ethiopia.

'On the event of the meeting of the African Union, he [Nguema] saw it meet to discuss what our position is regarding various matters. The issue of the reform of the U.N. Security Council and our position as Africa. Then the issue of peace and security in Africa and terrorism.'

Nguema said there was need for African leaders to translate political independence to economic independence. He said Africa's leaders must work today to ensure that this becomes a reality. On the issue of the U.N. Security Council, speaking through an interpreter, Nguema said reforms should be taken seriously.

'Concerning the reforms of United Nations Security Council which Africa is gunning for; we are asking for two seats of the security council of the United Nations. But if we are not given two, let us be given one with full recognition of members with right to veto. I think that is the revolution which Africa looks for.'

Russia, Britain, China, France and the United States are the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Now Africa  as a continent  wants to be represented in that powerful U.N. group.

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Documents Show Degree of IS Control Over Life in Its Territories

by Jamie Dettmer January 23, 2016

From detailed orders to those who drive cars to instructions for storeowners on how, and to whom, they must display their wares, Islamic State militants have been determined to oversee every aspect of life in territory they control.

Analyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi of the Middle East Forum, a U.S.-based think tank, has amassed an archive of official IS documents. Collected since the terror group's rapid expansion in Iraq and Syria, the documents provide a fascinating and frequently horrifying glimpse into the self-proclaimed caliphate, often revealing the militants' anxieties and obsessions  and, of course, their harshness.

Al-Tamimi began the online archive in January 2015 and has been adding to it ever since.

"The most notable chronological pattern over time has been the attempts to restrict information access and dissemination  that is, information should come out to inhabitants within IS territory and from IS territory to the outside world only via IS-approved channels," Al-Tamimi told VOA.

"This is evident in Internet access restrictions, warnings to IS members not to open personal accounts, preventing photos of battles being taken by personnel not working in the media departments. And now, most recently, the ban on satellite TV," he said.

The communications clampdown has endangered anti-IS media activists trying to send out information. In recent months, an IS assassination campaign against media activists has extended from Syria into nearby southern Turkey.

Strict regulations

One order instructs Islamic State followers not to discuss on the Internet news about "the movements of your brothers." And there are strict regulations on the operation of public Internet cafes.

In some towns, cafes that rent Internet connections to users have been shuttered completely. Those that remain open in Raqqa city, the center of IS activity in Syria, have been ordered to record the identities of all patrons, "except soldiers of the Islamic State and their families."

No cafes may allow wireless Internet connections outside their premises. Another directive states: "Whoever is found with an Internet connection inside his home, office or any private place will expose himself to severe reckoning."

A major worry for the militants is the flight of trained medical personnel from major IS-controlled towns in both Syria and Iraq.

An ultimatum issued by militants in Mosul eight months ago  nearly a year after Islamic State fighters captured the Iraqi city  threatened seizure of the property of any medical professionals absent from their jobs for more than 30 days.

Another fixation is on education, and preparing children for the caliphate that IS says it will establish. Many documents in the IS archive deal with changing schools' curriculum to emphasize the teaching of religion in the classroom.

Prayer, fasting and the observance of religious festivals account for many directives. Orders also detail medieval-style punishments to be meted out for crimes and infringements of the harsh Sharia code IS militants have imposed  including whippings, amputations, stoning and crucifixion.

A thief, for example, must have his right hand cut off and then displayed in public for three days, hanging on his neck, "as recompense for what he has committed."

Harsher punishments

As IS militants expanded their territory and consolidated their grip, the punishments got harsher. Al-Tamimi notes that "the degree and speed of implementation of Sharia was slower" when IS militants first started to grab territory.

Security is uppermost in the minds of the jihadists. As the bombing campaign by the United States and its coalition partners intensified, more and more security directives were issued.

"Signs stuck to cars of the Islamic State that distinguish them from others are to be removed in light of the ease by which they can be targeted by the enemy," one edict declares. Bans were announced also on GPS and mobile communications devices.

Travel restrictions stem from both security worries and the fear of a mass exodus of civilians from the so-called caliphate. Women under age 50 are not permitted to travel without an accompanying husband or close male relative.

And the militants demand clear reasons for wanting to travel  from needing medical treatment to collecting Syrian government pensions. Those who are ill can be accompanied by only one other person. All travelers must surrender deeds to their homes and cars as a guarantee that they will return home.

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Malaysia police arrest seven Daesh-linked supects

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 2:0PM

At least seven people suspected of having ties to the Takfiri Daesh terrorists have been arrested in Malaysia on suspicion of planning terror attacks across the Southeast Asian country.

Malaysian national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said in a statement on Sunday that the militants were taken into custody during a series of raids in different parts of the country over the past three days.

'All the suspects are members of the same (terror) cell, which is responsible for planning to launch terror attacks in strategic locations across Malaysia,' the police chief added.

Sources say security forces discovered Daesh flags and seized a large amount of weapons from the detainees.

The police chief also pointed out that one of the detained suspects received orders from Bahrom Naim, an Indonesia-based Daesh militant commander in Syria, who was instrumental in the recent deadly attacks in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

Malaysian law enforcement agencies have raised the security alert level following the January 14 terror attacks in neighboring Indonesia.

The attackers detonated explosives and opened fire on people in a Jakarta district packed with malls, embassies and UN offices and waged a gun-battle with police. The assault left five attackers, a Canadian and an Indonesian man dead and 20 others injured

According to Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian, the assailants had links to the Daesh Takfiri terrorists and were part of a group led by Naim.

The Daesh terrorist group is wreaking havoc in several countries, mainly Iraq and Syria.

Authorities in Kuala Lumpur say dozens of Malaysian nationals have traveled to Syria in recent years, where they have joined the ranks of Takfiri Daesh militants.

Over the past year, Malaysian police have detained numerous people on suspicion of being Daesh supporters.

Senior officials in Jakarta also believe that roughly 500 Indonesians have traveled to the Middle East region to join the Takfiri Daesh terrorists and other militant groups. Nearly 100 are believed to have returned to Indonesia in recent months.

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Chinese president meets Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:09, January 24, 2016

TEHRAN, Jan. 23 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met here Saturday, pledging to beef up practical cooperation between the two countries and jointly safeguard security, peace and stability in the region and around the world.

Noting that China and Iran enjoy a long history of friendly exchanges, Xi said China will always be a 'reliable cooperative partner' of Iran and stands ready to deepen bilateral cooperation on all fronts.

China and Iran are 'natural partners' in implementing the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, the president said, calling on the two sides to boost cooperation in infrastructure, interconnectivity, production capacity and energy within the framework of the initiative for the benefit of the two peoples.

Xi told Khamenei that China will unswervingly follow a peaceful development path and adhere to an independent foreign policy of peace.

'China is willing to maintain mutual support with Iran in regional and global affairs, and jointly safeguard peace, stability and development in the region and around the world,' he added.

Khamenei expressed gratitude to China for its enduring support for Iran, and said that Tehran is willing to push the bilateral practical cooperation to a new high.

Iran is an important country along the Belt and Road and stands ready to play a greater role in jointly pursuing the initiative with China, the supreme leader said.

He said China is a very influential country in the world and Iran hopes to strengthen communication and coordination with China to jointly safeguard security, peace and stability in the region.

Xi concluded on Saturday night his five-day, three-nation tour in the Middle East, which had previously taken him to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

It is Xi's first overseas visit this year and also his first trip to the region since becoming Chinese president in 2013.

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Larijani: Implementation of JCPOA opens new chapter for regional countries

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Baghdad, Jan 24, IRNA -- Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said on Sunday that implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will open a new chapter to develop cooperation among the regional countries.

The implementation of the JCPOA would be a major stride to thwart threats such as terrorism and extremism and help economic development of the region, Larijani said.

Larijani made the remarks in the opening ceremony of the 11th conference of the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC) in Baghdad.

In the contemporary era, the Islamic Republic of Iran successfully defended its peaceful nuclear program over the past 12 years of intensive talks and many ups and downs, he said.

Nuclear agreement between Iran and G5+1 in fact was the victory of diplomacy and denial of threat and sanctions proved the practicality of peaceful means in resolving disputes, he said.

During nuclear talks between Iran and G5+1, one of the regional governments was urging one of the big powers to suspend negotiations and it orchestrated the oil price falls which harmed all Islamic states themselves, he said.

Iran has no dependence on oil revenue and has access to various sources of income, he said adding that they harmed themselves and others by such hallucination.

The gathering will discuss major regional issues, especially terrorism and the security concerns.

The 11th session of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation was attended by 45 Islamic states.

Some 16 Arab governments excluding Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain have attended the confab.

The event kicked off on the premises of the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad on Wednesday (January 20) at the level of MPs and will continue by January 25 at the level of parliament speakers.

The Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC) is composed of the parliaments of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member states. It was established in Iran on 17 June 1999. Its head office situated in Tehran.

1430**1416

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Leader praises IRGC Navy sense of responsibility to seize US marines

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 24, IRNA -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Sunday praised a group of IRGC Navy troops for sense of responsibility to protect Iranian territorial sea and seizure of 10 US marines at sea earlier this month.

The Supreme Leader held a brief meeting with the group of personnel of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy to commend their 'courageous' act.

Two US navy boats were stopped by IRGC naval forces on January 12 when they entered the Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island in the middle of the Persian Gulf.

They were released later after an inquiry determined that they entered the Iranian waters "unintentionally" due to the technical problems of one of the boats which had lost contact with their central commanding units.

"What you have done was very outstanding, interesting and timely. In fact, it was a work of God," said the Leader referring to the incident as an "commendable and courageous" move made based on the faith of the IRGC forces.

"It was in fact a work of God that brought the Americans (marines) into our territorial waters to be arrested by your timely move with their hands put on their heads," said the Leader referring to a picture showing the US Navy forces at the early minutes of their arrest sitting on their knees on the boats.

1394**1416

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Iran vows crushing response to any aggressor

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun 24 Jan 2016 - 13:12

TEHRAN (ISNA)- Iran will give a crushing response to any possible act of aggression against the country, says a commander.

Speaking during a live televised interview on Saturday, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the second-in-command of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said Iran's Armed Forces are determined to defend the Iranian territorial integrity and national interests in case of any invasion.

He added that the recent capture of 10 US Marines, who had trespassed on Iran's territorial waters, was proof of the power of Iran's naval forces, describing it as a clear victory for Iran at a crucial juncture.

The IRGC commander said this incident was a determining development in the region, because it made all foreign forces face a new reality and change their assessment of the power of the Islamic Republic of Iran in defending its territorial integrity and vital interests.

"We will continue to boost our defense capability and our missiles will be updated day by day," Salami said, adding that Iran reserves the right to develop conventional weapons in order to "defend its independence and territorial integrity."

On January 13, the IRGC announced that ten US Marines, who had drifted into the country's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf and had been taken into Iranian custody, had been released after Americans apologized for the incident.

Earlier the same day, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the IRGC Navy, said two US Navy crafts carrying 10 Marines had reached three miles into the waters surrounding the Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf.

Fadavi added that the trespassing occurred because of technical problems with the navigation systems of the US vessels.

On January 20, US Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Iranian authorities for their cooperation in the release of US Navy sailors.

Addressing a press briefing at the National Defense University in Washington, Kerry said the peaceful resolution of the issue was a "testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays" in keeping the US safe.

End Item

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JCPOA implementation offers chance for new regional cooperation: Iran

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 4:31PM

Iran says the recent implementation of a nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of countries has provided new opportunities for enhanced regional cooperation.

Iran's Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani made the remark in the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad on Sunday as the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (PUIC) was opening its 11th session.

The implementation of the agreement "opened a new chapter for the enhancement of cooperation between Iran and the countries of the region," he said.

The Islamic Republic and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council  Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States  plus Germany finalized the agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in the Austrian capital of Vienna on July 14, 2015.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, announced the implementation of the JCPOA during a joint press conference in the Austrian capital on January 16. After the JCPOA went into effect on January 16, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the United Nations Security Council, and the United States were terminated. Iran in return has put some limitations on its nuclear activities.

"By taking advantage of the atmosphere after the Vienna agreement, the countries of the region can take key steps toward the elimination of common threats like terrorism and extremism and help with the development and advancement of the region, too," Larijani noted.

The PUIC session is gathering representatives from 40 Muslim countries, including 16 Arab nations. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are absent at the session.

"Over the course of the nuclear negotiations, we heard that one of the countries of the region was pressing a great power to delay the talks so they could reduce oil prices. They harmed all Muslim countries [with the reduction of the prices]," said the Iranian official. "Iran is not dependent on oil and enjoys several resources. They, however, did everyone damage as a result of their delusion."

Larijani said, "After the agreement too, they instilled the concern into the countries of the region that Iran may invade the regional nations," asking, "Has the Islamic Republic of Iran invaded any country in the region over the past 36 years?"

"The nuclear agreement was, in fact, the victory of diplomacy and the negation of threats and sanctions, and it displayed the effectiveness of the peaceful approaches of conflict resolution more than before."

The Iranian speaker referred to the crises in Syria and Yemen  where Saudi Arabia is respectively backing armed anti-government militants and directly waging a war  and said, "The issues of Syria and Yemen and other countries in the region have no military solution; they will rather get resolved through political means and dialog.

Saudi Arabia launched the military aggression against Yemen in March 2015, killing so far over 8,200 people. In Syria, the foreign-backed militancy has claimed the lives of 260,000 people since the outbreak of violence in 2011.

The military solution only paves the ground for terrorism, Larijani said, noting that Tehran only recommends negotiations.

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Daesh kills three own commanders in northern Iraq

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:51AM

The Daesh Takfiri militant group has reportedly executed three of its own commanders in Iraq's embattled northern province of Nineveh after the latter sought to break away from the terrorist outfit.

An informed source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Daesh terrorists killed the fellow extremists on the grounds that they wanted to desert the group and had tried to escape the city of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, English-language online newspaper Iraqi News reported.

The source added that the executions were carried out by firing squad and in front of a crowd of onlookers in the center of Mosul.

On October 10, 2015, Daesh terrorists killed 50 fellow extremists in the western city of Khan al-Baghdadi, situated about 180 kilometers (110 miles) northwest of Baghdad, after accusing them of espionage and passing confidential information to Iraqi security personnel.

The development came on the same day as Daesh terrorists beheaded 10 fellows publicly in the town of Hawijah, located about 282 kilometers (175 miles) north of the capital, on the ground that they had collaborated with government forces and leaked information about militant commanders.

Daesh members later took away the bodies of the slain militants with them to an unknown location.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since ISIL Takfiris launched an offensive in June 2014, and took control of portions of Iraqi territory.

The militants have been committing vicious crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.

The Iraqi army and fighters from Popular Mobilization Units are engaged in joint military operations to win back militant-held regions.

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Neo-Ottoman Dream: Iraqi PM Slams Turkey's 'Empire' Ambitions

Sputnik News

16:55 24.01.2016(updated 16:57 24.01.2016)

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Turkey was trying to re-establish the Ottoman empire, was unwilling to fight Daesh and should withdraw its troops from Iraq, IraqiNews.com reported.

"Turkey is telling us that it is eager to fight ISIS [Daesh], but I'm telling them frankly, I'm not seeing evidence of that and I hope to see more evidence of their intention to fight ISIS," adding that, "I think the Turks have to shift their priority from considering the Kurds as their problem, to ISIS as their major problem."

He also said that Daesh terrorists were responsible for the recent bombings in Turkey and advised Ankara to "take the risk of ISIS seriously."

The Iraqi Premier accused Turkey of extending its fight against the PKK into Iraqi territory and of willing to do so also in Syria.

Haider al-Abadi said Iraq was keen on maintaining good relations with neighboring Turkey but insisted on the earliest possible withdrawal of Turkish troops from Iraq.

In early December 2015 Ankara sent approximately 130 troops to a town close to Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, which was captured by Daesh in June 2014.

The initiative was not authorized by Baghdad, which called it a violation of sovereignty.

Iraqi authorities urged Ankara to withdraw soldiers and military hardware from the province of Nineveh and refrain from similar actions in the future.

 Sputnik

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Kurds Repel Massive Daesh Attack Near Mosul, Terrorists Take Severe Losses

Sputnik News

02:02 25.01.2016(updated 02:25 25.01.2016)

Dozens of Daesh mujahideen were killed and many more retreated amid fierce clashes with Peshmerga not far from Mosul.

While awaiting as the Iraqi army gets prepared for the liberation of Mosul, the Kurdish armed militia Peshmerga spent their time in recurrent skirmishes with Daesh fighters who dared to come too close to their outposts. Pilots from the US-led coalition provided air support or, to omit the vague military slang, attacked terrorists from above.

Some two dozen militants from Daesh have reportedly lost their lives and about the same number were wounded in the most recent clashes with the Kurds that broke out on Saturday in the district of Makhmur about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast from the terrorist stronghold Mosul.

"Daesh terrorists attacked our (Peshmerga) headquarters in Makhmur district southeast of Mosul, using car bombs and mortar shells," a Peshmerga statement read, as quoted by ARA News. "At least 20 terrorists were killed and 28 more wounded in the clashes before the group withdrew from the area towards its strongholds in Mosul."

Trucks packed with explosives failed to blow up positions held by Peshmerga, Waar Media reported. Daesh lost 32 fighters in the intense battle with the Kurds, who used mortars to repel the attack, the Kurdish news outlet detailed. Coalition aircraft were also involved.

An international coalition airstrike was confirmed to be carried out south of the town of Makhmur on the same day.

"Near Makhmur, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun and an ISIL fighting position," an Operation Inherent Resolve online release details.

It was not specified whether an attack fighter or remotely piloted aircraft was utilized in the mission by the western allies.

 Sputnik

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Kerry reassures 'solid relationship' with Saudi

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 10:23AM

The United States has once again reassured Saudi Arabia of its "solid relationship" with the kingdom following the removal of sanctions on Iran.

'We have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance, and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we've ever had,' US Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday before departing Riyadh for Laos after his 24-hour visit.

He repeated the same US allegations against Iran that it had been moving towards producing nuclear weapons before it reached a deal with the P5+1, saying Washington-Riyadh relationship will remain unchanged after the agreement.

'Nothing has changed because we worked to eliminate a nuclear weapon with a country in the region,' he added. 'We will continue to work in the region with our friends and our allies.'

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council  the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China  plus Germany (P5+1), finalized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, on July 14, 2015.

On January 16, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini announced that sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear program had been lifted. The announcement was made after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed Iran's commitment to the JCPOA.

Under the JCPOA, limits are put on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the removal of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The sanctions relief has angered some Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Kerry has long sought to reduce concerns among the US' Persian Gulf allies about the overtures to Iran.

Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors have felt that they no longer receive support from their traditional ally Washington in its illegal fight against Yemen.

However, Kerry on Saturday reiterated Washington's support for Saudi Arabia's ongoing war on Yemen, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 8,000 people.

He said the Saudi decision to launch airstrikes in Yemen was aimed at dealing with the Ansarullah movement and al-Qaeda operatives in the Arab country.

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Kerry Says U.S. Ties With Saudi Arabia Stronger Than Ever

January 24, 2016

by RFE/RL

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said the U.S. friendship with Saudi Arabia is stronger than ever and that the two will work together to try to end wars in Syria and Yemen.

Kerry made the remark on January 24 as he wrapped up a visit to Riyadh.

Kerry said the United States has 'as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had,' adding that 'nothing has changed' because of the Iran nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabia has long viewed Iran as a regional menace. The historic deal, implemented a week ago, lifted sanctions on Tehran and unfroze billions of dollars in assets.

'Doing an agreement to get rid of a nuclear weapon doesn't do away with the other issues that are still of concern, so we will continue to work in the region with our friends and our allies,' Kerry said.

Kerry said he had discussed ways to end the fighting in Syria and 'new ideas' to bring peace to Yemen, where the Saudi-backed government is battling Iran-supported Shi'ite rebels.

He added that Saudi Arabia is 'committed to work with us in the efforts to try to stabilize Syria and calm down this hyped-up, exploited division between Sunni and Shi'a.'

Saudi Arabia backs the Sunni-dominated Syrian rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Iran.

On January 23, Kerry expressed confidence that UN-mediated talks on ending the conflict in Syria would go ahead as tentatively scheduled next week in Switzerland.

The talks are expected to begin January 25 in Geneva, though the start date remains uncertain due to a dispute over who will be part of the delegation representing the opposition challenging Assad's rule.

With reporting by AFP and AP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-saudi-arabia-kerry-visit/27507538.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.

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Thrashed! Syrian Army Beats Back Daesh Attack Near Damascus

Sputnik News

10:00 23.01.2016(updated 10:10 23.01.2016)

Syrian forces have repelled a massive offensive by Daesh militants in the area north of the capital Damascus, Iran's Fars news agency reported on Friday.

'Earlier this morning, the ISIL launched an assault on the Syrian army's checkpoints along the Qalamoun-Sadad Road; however, these attacks were eventually repelled by the Syrian soldiers and the National Defense Forces,' the army said in a statement.

Should the Daesh forces take control of the Qalamoun-Sadad Road, the terrorist group would be in position to strike Damascus too, the statement added.

On Thursday, 150 terrorists laid down their arms and surrendered to the Syrian Army as government forces continued their offensive in the eastern and western parts of Damascus province.

'150 wanted militants in al-Qadam area in Damascus gave up fighting and surrendered to the army,' a Syrian official said.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Army continued to raid the militant groups' gathering centers in Eastern Ghouta, leaving tens of the terrorists dead or injured and destroying their military infrastructure and supply routes, Fars News reported.

The Syrian Army also attacked the terrorists' positions in al-Merj region and al-Bilaliyeh in Eastern Ghouta, leaving many militants killed and wounded and destroying much of their military hardware.

 Sputnik

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Syria vows no 'new concessions' at future Geneva talks

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 1:44PM

A senior official in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ruling party has said the government will not make any new concessions in the upcoming Geneva peace talks.

'We will not make new concessions at [the] Geneva peace talks," the assistant regional secretary of al-Baath Arab Socialist Party, Hilal al-Hilal, said on Sunday.

The comments come ahead of talks planned to start in the Swiss city on January 25.

The Geneva talks, which are likely to be delayed, are part of an 18-month timetable approved unanimously last December by the United Nations Security Council to resolve the Syria conflict.

The UNSC Resolution 2254 endorses a roadmap for a peace process in Syria.

The resolution calls 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.

The Syrian government has announced its readiness to participate in the negotiations but stressed that Damascus should be provided with a list of terrorist groups who are barred from the meeting and also the names of Syrian opposition figures expected to join the talks.

The UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has hinted that foreign-back opposition groups in Syria who enjoy support from major governments including France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are deliberately undermining ongoing efforts for a political solution in Syria, according to a report by the Foreign Policy magazine.

"The truth is that the parties remain locked in fixed positions and a 'zero-sum' game," de Mistura told a closed-door briefing to the 15-nation UN Security Council meeting on January 18, adding, "Parties disagree not only on substance, but ... they also question that the UN could or should exercise its discretion in 'finalizing' the opposition list."

Damascus has been fighting foreign-backed militant groups in the country since 2011.

The war in Syria has so far claimed the lives of over 260,000 people and displaced nearly half of population.

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Syria army retakes key militant bastion in Latakia

Iran Press TV

Sun Jan 24, 2016 8:56AM

Syrian forces, backed by military aircraft, have managed to wrest control over a strategic town in the country's western province of Latakia as they continue to gain ground in battles against foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants.

On Saturday, Syrian troopers liberated Rabia town, which lies in the northern part of the province and close to the border with Turkey, from the clutches of terrorists, Arabic-language Syria Now news website reported.

An unspecified number of militants were killed or injured in the process, and a sizable amount of munitions destroyed.

Rabia served as a major stronghold for foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists, and its capture gave Syrian army soldiers the upper hand in their campaign to secure the northern sector of Latakia Province.

Syrian soldiers also established control over Shakeriyah, Beit Awan and Beit Ayoush villages, situated east of Rabia and more than 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of the capital, Damascus.

Separately, Syrian forces retook the villages of Eastern al-Halwa, Western al-Halwa as well as Beit Ablaq, and cleared the hilltops surrounding the provincial capital city of Latakia from militants.

Elsewhere in the northwestern province of Aleppo, Syrian army forces recaptured a small town south of the city of al-Bab.

A Syrian military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said army forces regained control of a number of areas in the northeastern part of al- Sheikh Meskin town in the southwestern province of Dara'a.

He said more than 30 Takfiri militants were killed or injured during the heavy clashes.

Additionally, Syrian army units shelled militant bases in the city of Aleppo as well as the outskirts of the southwestern city of Suwayda, killing a large number of Takfiri militants.

At least 13 al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were also eliminated as Syrian forces conducted a mop-up operation in the northern Syrian village of al-Lataminah, located 39 kilometers (24 miles) northwest of Hama.

The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has reportedly claimed the lives of more than 260,000 people and left over one million injured.

The UN says 12.2 million people, including more than 5.6 million children, remain in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria. The violence has also displaced 7.6 million people.

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Syrian Army Liberates Some 45 Square Miles in Latakia Province in Two Days

Sputnik News

22:03 24.01.2016(updated 00:05 25.01.2016)

Syrian Armed Forces supported by popular militias liberated some 120 square kilometers (46 square miles) of the country's northwestern province of Latakia in two days, Syrian army said in a statement on Sunday.

DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  The statement said that a large number of terrorists were destroyed, with others fleeing toward the Syrian border.

'Syrian Arab army in cooperation with militias gained control over 120 kilometers of Latakia province's territory in the last two days,' the statement said.

One of the major terrorist strongholds in the region, located in the town of Rabia. had been mopped up, the statement added.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Army Gains Control Over Key Town in Latakia Near Turkish Border

Sputnik News

16:20 24.01.2016(updated 18:01 24.01.2016)

The Syrian army backed by popular defense groups has managed to gain control over the strategically important town of al-Rabea'a and the village of al-Rawda in the Latakia province near the border with Turkey.

The towns were liberated as the Syrian government forces continue to gain ground in battles against militants.

According to reports, an unspecified number of militants were killed or injured in the process, and a large amount of munitions were destroyed, SANA news agency reported reported.

The town of Rabia functioned as a major militant stronghold, and its capture gave the Syrian army the upper hand in its campaign to protect the northern sector of Latakia province with the border with Turkey.

A military source told SANA news agency that the engineering units are currently searching the area and disassembling the explosive devices and landmines planted by the terrorists.

Earlier on Saturday, army units similarly established control over the villages of al-Tefahiya, Hilwa al-Gharbiya, Hilwa al-Sharqiya, al-Amlik, Beit Arab, Beit Ablaq, and Tal Asholan along with all the hills surrounding them in Latakia's northern countryside.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Forces Recapture Latakia Town

by VOA News January 24, 2016

Syrian forces recaptured the town of Rabia Sunday, continuing their string of victories over rebels in the northwestern province of Latakia.

Rabia is about 10 kilometers south of the Turkish border and is one of more than a dozen areas the government said its fighters took control of in recent days.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in Syria, said the pro-government troops were backed by Russian airstrikes and strategic help from Russian military officers.

In eastern Syria, the Observatory said Sunday that airstrikes by Russian and Syrian warplanes killed at least 164 people in the last three days in Deir Ezzor province.

The dead included 43 children in four separate towns.

Airstrikes on Raqqa

The Observatory also reported 44 deaths from Russian and Syrian airstrikes in Raqqa, the northern city that serves as the de facto capital for the Islamic State group.

The latest violence comes as the United Nations works to bring opposition groups and the Syrian government to Geneva for a new round of peace negotiations.

U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura wanted the talks to begin Monday, but with disagreements over who will take part, the start will likely be delayed for at least several days. He plans to give a briefing Monday afternoon to update the situation.

The conflict has raged in Syria since March 2011 and left more than 250,000 people dead. Millions more have fled the country, while many of those who remain are in need of humanitarian assistance.

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Poroshenko Vows Not to Postpone Vote on Ukraine's Decentralization

Sputnik News

20:03 23.01.2016(updated 20:04 23.01.2016)

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Saturday that Kiev is not going to postpone a vote on constitutional amendments on the country's decentralization.

KIEV (Sputnik)  Ukrainian lawmakers approved amendments on decentralization in late August 2015.

Ukraine's Constitution requires changes in the founding document to be adopted in two stages. The amendment first needs to be backed by 226 votes in its first reading, then by 300 votes in its second reading during the next parliamentary session.

'We are by no means going to withdraw or postpone a vote [on constitutional amendments on decentralization],' Poroshenko said at an Association of Ukrainian Cities conference, setting the first half of 2016 as the timeframe of the vote.

The Ukrainian legislature's next session begins on February 2 and lasts into the summer.

Poroshenko expressed confidence the decentralization clause, one of the requirements of the Minsk deal, has the needed 300 votes.

He added that the second reading of the constitutional amendment on decentralization should take place against the backdrop of 'apparent and decisive progress' in the sides observing a ceasefire, releasing hostages, allowing European observers and holding local elections.

 Sputnik

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Poroshenko Says 'Torpedoing' Minsk Deal Could Lead To Full-Scale War With Russia

January 24, 2016

President Petro Poroshenko has warned Ukrainian politicians that the collapse of the Minsk agreements aimed at ending a war with Russia-backed separatists could set off a 'full-scale conflict' with Russia.

Poroshenko was speaking at a conference of local leaders in Kyiv on January 23.

'Those political forces that want to torpedo the Minsk agreements at any cost...and to block the constitutional process, must clearly understand the consequences of their actions,' he said.

'They will lead to the resumption of the 'hot phase' of the conflict, including a full-scale -- and not local, as it has been so far -- conflict with Russia,' he added.

His words appeared to be aimed at foes of 'decentralization' legislation that Ukraine is required to pass under the peace deal signed in February 2015 by Ukraine, Russia, and separatists who hold parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Minsk deal is crucial for Kyiv because it calls for the restoration of Ukrainian control over the state border between the separatist-held territories and Russia, which has backed the separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.

Ukraine's parliament gave preliminary approval to constitutional changes granting more power to the regions in August, but their adoption requires a two-thirds vote in the 450-seat legislature.

Poroshenko said he hopes the legislation will be passed in the first half of this year, in the next parliament session, which begins after February 1.

However, some lawmakers say the legislation must be passed during the current session to be valid, but that is highly unlikely to happen. As a result, Poroshenko's allies have asked the Constitutional Court for a ruling that would effectively extend the deadline for the vote indefinitely.

Poroshenko also said that adopting decentralization obviates any need to for laws granting 'special status' to the separatist-held regions or any others, a remark that is not likely to please the separatists.

Based on reporting by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Unian, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/poroshenko-minsk- agreement-full-scale-war-russia/27507474.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.

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Ukraine's Prime Minister Calls For Referendum On New Constitution

January 24, 2016

by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called for a referendum to be held on a new constitution for the country.

Speaking on January 24 in his weekly televised speech, Yatsenyuk said it is "high time for the Ukrainian people to have its say about a new Ukrainian constitution in a new European Ukraine."

Yatsenyuk said the constitution would be a "new agreement on redistribution of powers between authorities, an agreement on relations between the center and the country's regions, an agreement on a new honest and fair judicial system, and on clear geopolitics"  namely, on the country's future goals of becoming members of the European Union and NATO.

Yatsenyuk's remarks came a day after President Petro Poroshenko warned the country's politicians that the collapse of the Minsk agreements aimed at ending a war with Russia-backed separatists could set off a 'full-scale conflict' with Russia.

Speaking at a conference of local leaders in Kyiv on January 23, Poroshenko said, "Those political forces that want to torpedo the Minsk agreements at any cost...and to block the constitutional process, must clearly understand the consequences of their actions.'

'They will lead to the resumption of the 'hot phase' of the conflict, including a full-scale -- and not local, as it has been so far -- conflict with Russia,' he said.

Poroshenko's words appeared to be aimed at foes of 'decentralization' legislation that Ukraine is required to pass under the peace deal signed in February 2015 by Ukraine, Russia, and separatists who hold parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Minsk deal is crucial for Kyiv because it calls for the restoration of Ukrainian control over the state border between the separatist-held territories and Russia -- which has backed the separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.

With reporting by Unian, Interfax, and TASS

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine- yatsenyuk-new-constitution/27508024.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.

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Almost $48 million in local transportation projects proposed for the Dan River Region could be funded during the next five months, according to Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Political wish lists of the past are replaced with a data-driven process that is objective and transparent, making the best use of renewed state funding received in 2013 and the recently approved federal transportation funding, McAuliffe said in a news release. Each project is scored based on its merits and value, making Virginia the first state in the nation to use such an outcome-based prioritization process.

The five local projects are among nearly 300 that were recently scored to determine their priority as part of the new House Bill 2 law. About $1.7 billion in funding is available for the nearly $7 billion needed for all of the projects.

The local projects include:

 About $3.3 million in upgrades to the intersection of Berry Hill Road and U.S. 58 west of Danville to accommodate traffic for the nearby Berry Hill Road industrial park.

 Reconstructing Berry Hill Road itself to be able to accommodate more traffic, including more trucks, with a price tag of $23.7 million.

 The construction of a single lane roundabout at the intersection of Stony Mill Road and Tunstall High Road, which would cost about $2.2 million.

 A two-phase plan to widen Mount Cross Road to the city limits, making the road a five-lane section with a two-way center turn lane with a new park and ride lot and sidewalk, which is priced at $17 million.

 Widening Climax Road to a minimum of 20 feet to accommodate traffic, which is priced at $1.3 million.

Each project has been rated according to things like safety, environmental impact and other factors, said Lynchburg VDOT spokesperson Paula Jones.

Based on these preliminary scores, the Stony Mill Road roundabout ranks first in local projects and fourth in the Lynchburg region. Following in seventh place is the Berry Hill intersection improvements, then Mount Cross Road at 13th, Climax Road at 21st and Berry Hill Road at 30th.

According to the funding scenario devised by the state, 26 of the 36 Lynchburg region projects will be able to secure funding this year.

However, Jones noted the scores were very preliminary at this stage of the project. The Commonwealth Transportation Board plans to review the projects in February. The board will conduct public hearings in April and May and then come up with a funding scenario to be finalized sometime in June.

Basically, thats how its broken down into how these projects move forward, Jones said.

Local business owner Lane Mills said he wasnt convinced the Stony Mill Road roundabout would be beneficial to the intersection. Mills, who has owned the Mills Grill and Grocery for nine years, said he thought the new intersection would create confusion at the intersection for drivers.

Currently, Mills said the only time the roads get busy is during school hours. Tunstall High School and Tunstall Middle School are north of the intersection. Mills said he hasnt been contacted by VDOT about the current project, but said he had contacted the agency at an earlier time about placing a stoplight at the intersection.
I. Introduction

Over the past several decades, the number of employers hiring independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, temps, part-timers, and contingent employees has increased significantly. Hiring independent contractors tends to provide employers with substantial financial savings, flexibility in staffing projects and greater efficiency due to the specialized expertise of the worker. Additionally, many workers prefer independent contract work because they reject the traditional 9-5, long-term employment under one employer in favor of the flexibility, diversity and freedom that comes with working as an independent contractor.

Notwithstanding the many benefits of the independent contractor relationship to both the employer and the worker, employers must be cautious when classifying a worker as an independent contractor. Serious civil liability may result from misclassifying workers as independent contractors under Massachusetts wage and hour laws, including mandatory treble damages and attorneys fees, costs and interest.

II. The Independent Contractor Statute  M.G.L. c. 149,  148B

Like many states, Massachusetts has enacted legislation defining which workers may properly be classified as independent contractors, M.G.L. 149,  148B (Independent Contractor Statute). Under Massachusetts Independent Contractor statute, a worker is presumed to be an employee, unless the employer can prove that the worker:

Is free form the employers control and direction in connection with the performance of services; Performs services outside the usual course of business of the employer; and Customarily engages in an independently established trade, occupation, profession or business.

Unless a worker meets all three of these rigid requirements, the Independent Contractor Statute classifies such worker as an employee for purposes of Massachusetts wage and hour laws, regardless of whether the worker prefers to be classified as an independent contractor.

III. Attorney General Advisory

In 2008, the Massachusetts Attorney General issued an advisory providing guidance regarding the Attorney Generals understanding, and enforcement, of the Independent Contractor Statute (Attorney General Advisory). With respect to each of the three-prongs, the Attorney Generals Advisory provides the following:

Prong I  Free from Control

An employment contract or job description indicating that an individual is free from supervisory direction or control is insufficient by itself to classify an individual as an independent contractor. Rather, to be free from an employers direction and control, a workers activities and duties should actually be carried out with minimal supervision .

Prong 2  Service Outside the Usual Course of Business of the Employers Business

Whether a worker is performing services outside the employers usual course of business depends on whether the services form a regular and continuing part of the employers business or are a part of an independent, separate, and distinct business from that of the employer. Thus, in Athol Daily News v. Div. of Employment and Training , 439 Mass. 171, 179 (2003), the Supreme Judicial Court held that newspaper carriers were performing services within the usual course of business of the employer newspaper because the newspaper defined its business as publishing and distributing a daily newspaper.

To aid in understanding how the Attorney General would enforce Prong 2, the Advisory provides the following examples:

A drywall company classifies an individual who is installing drywall as an independent contractor. This would be a violation of prong two because the individual installing the drywall is performing an essential part of the employers business.

A company in the business of providing motor vehicle appraisals classifies an individual appraiser as an independent contractor. This would be a violation of prong two because the appraiser is performing an essential part of the appraisal business

An accounting firm hires an individual to move office furniture. Prong two is not applicable because the moving of furniture is incidental and not necessary to the accounting firms business.

Prong 3  Independent Trade, Occupation, Profession or Business

Finally, determining whether the service in question is an independent trade or business depends on whether the worker is capable of performing the service to anyone wishing to avail themselves of the services or, conversely, whether the nature of the business compels the worker to depend on a single employer for the continuation of the services. Coverall v. Div. of Unemployment Assistance , 447 Mass. 852, 857-58 (2006) (internal citations omitted).

It is worth reiterating that all workers are presumed to be employees unless the employer can prove that the worker satisfies all three prongs.

IV. Employer Liability for Violation of Independent Contractor Statute

Misclassification of workers under the Independent Contractor Statute subjects an employer to serious consequences, including potential criminal prosecution for the most egregious violations and civil liability for mandatory treble damages, attorneys fees, costs and interest.

Attorney General Enforcement

The Attorney General is authorized to issue a civil citation or institute criminal prosecution for intentional or even unintentional violation of the Independent Contractor Statute. Willful violations of the law can result in fines of up to $25,000 and imprisonment for one year, with subsequent violations carrying a $50,000 fine and two years imprisonment. Even unintentional violations can result in a fine up to $10,000 and six months imprisonment.

Workers Private Right of Action

Workers aggrieved under the misclassification statute may bring a private right of action, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, seeking mandatory treble damages, mandatory attorneys fees, costs and interest.

Mandatory Treble Damages

In 2009, the Supreme Judicial Court held that mandatory treble damages for violation of the Independent Contractor Statute includes any wages and benefits the worker proves he was denied because of his misclassification, including holiday pay, vacation pay, and other benefits that he would have been entitled to as [an] employee. Somers v. Converged Access, Inc. , 454 Mass. 582, 594 (2009). Notably, in Somers , the Supreme Judicial Court rejected the employers defense that the worker was paid more as an independent contractor than he would have been paid as an employee.

Liability for misclassification also includes payment of back taxes and penalties for federal and state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare and payment of any misclassified injured employees workers compensation benefits.

Mandatory Attorneys Fees

Finally, employers who violate the Independent Contractor Statute are also liable for mandatory attorneys fees, costs and interest . See Killeen v. Westban Hotel Venture, LP , 69 Mass. App. Ct. 784, 790 (2007). The mandatory attorneys fee provision provides an incentive for attorneys to represent workers in misclassification cases, even where the potential recovery for the worker is not substantial. Consequently, the number of misclassification cases continues to rise.

Conclusion

Potential financial liability for misclassification of workers is considerable. All employers who hire independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, temps, part-timers, and contingent employees should carefully consider whether the worker is properly classified as an independent contractor. There is currently legislation pending at the State House that would relax the strict three-pronged test set forth in the Independent Contractor Statute.[1] However, until such legislation is enacted, Massachusetts continues to adhere to one of the most rigid independent contractor statutes in the country. Given the potential for serious liability under the Independent Contractor Statute, including mandatory treble damages, mandatory attorneys fees, costs and interest, employers should carefully examine how they classify their workers to ensure compliance with the strict criteria set forth in the statute. In the event that there is any confusion over proper classification, the employer should seek legal advice to ensure compliance with the Independent Contractor Statute.

About the Author

Goldman & Pease LLC provides experienced, professional legal counsel in corporate and business law, real estate and civil litigation. The firm provides legal planning and counseling to help clients avoid problems by addressing changing circumstances and by anticipating future opportunities. Attorney Howard S. Goldman is the founding partner of the law firm of Goldman & Pease LLC, 160 Gould Street, Needham, Massachusetts 02494, (781) 292-1080, and email address of hgoldman@goldmanpease.com. Mr. Goldman concentrates his practice in the areas of real estate, finance, and civil litigation, where he represents business owners, property managers, developers, and contractors for more than thirty five years. He is an active member of the Massachusetts, Norfolk, and Rhode Island Bar Associations in his field and is also an active member of CAI and IREM, where he frequently lectures and writes columns affecting the real estate and finance industries. Associate Kalee DiFazio assisted in drafting this article and focuses her practice on civil litigation matters, including contract disputes, real estate and complex business litigation.

[1] See H.1725 and H. 1727 which seek to amend M.G.L. c. 149, sec. 148B by changing the and in between prongs 2 and 3 to an or, which would allow an employer to prove that a worker is an independent contractor in multiple ways. Also, S.1002 seeks to amend M.G.L. c. 149, sec. 148B by removing the independent contractor test altogether and inserting the following text (a) For the purposes of this chapter and chapter 151, the Commonwealth shall adopt rules and regulation to conform to section 3121 of the Internal Revenue Code and section 530(d) of the Revenue Act of 1978, as described in IRS Publication 15-A, as amended and in effect on January 1, 2014.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 25, 2016) - (TSX VENTURE:BCG) - BCGold Corp. ("BCGold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company has signed a definitive agreement with Gorilla Minerals Corp., ("Gorilla") an unlisted reporting issuer, to purchase their 100% owned (subject to a 3% NSR) Wels Property in Western Yukon. The Company also wishes to announce that a pre-condition for this acquisition will be a corporate restructuring and the completion of a $600,000 financing. Insiders and major shareholders from both companies are expected to participate in this financing.

Highlights

BCGold to acquire 100% interest in the Wels Property subject to a 3% NSR, in 2 separate claim blocks of 229 contiguous quartz claims (4,788 hectares) and 10 contiguous quartz claims (52 hectares), located in the prolific White River Gold District, 50 kilometers east of Beaver Creek and 180 kilometers south of Dawson City in west-central Yukon.





The Wels Property hosts a newly discovered reduced intrusion related gold mineralizing system, similar in age and style to Kinross's Fort Knox deposit in Alaska (6 million ounces gold production to date) and Victoria Gold's Eagle Gold Project (2.3 million ounces gold reserve), Yukon.





Rock sampling results from 4 trenches excavated in 2014 by Gorilla Minerals Inc. over a portion of the Saddle Zone gold-arsenic-antimony-bismuth soil anomaly, measuring 1,000 metres X 350 metres, averaged 2.63 g/t gold over 19.0 metres; 5.30 g/t gold over 18.0 metres, including 15.40 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in Trench T14-01, 8.80 g/t gold over 45.0 metres, including 13.81 g/t gold over 21.0 metres in Trench T14-02; 0.56 g/t gold over 25.5 metres in Trench T14-03 and 1.27 g/t gold over 25.5 metres, including 3.04 g/t gold over 10.5 metres in Trench T14-04.





A small Saddle Zone follow-up diamond drill program conducted by Gorilla in 2015 (442 metres in 5 drill holes) returned significant drill intercepts that include 0.76 g/t gold over the entire hole length of 97.5 metres, including 3.11 g/t gold over 19.5 metres from 31.5 - 51.0 metres and 5.71 g/t gold (with visible gold) over 9.0 metres from 31.50 - 40.5 metres in drill hole WELS15-1; 0.29 g/t gold over 39.0 metres from 49.0 to 88.0 metres in drill hole WELS15-02; 0.34 g/t gold over 6.0 metres from 9.0 - 15.0 metres in drill hole WELS15-03 and 0.79 g/t gold over 21 metres from 49.5 to 70.5 metres, including 1.01 g/t gold over 12.0 metres and 4.41 g/t gold over 1.5 metres in drill hole WELS15-04. Drill holes WELS15-01 and WELS15-03 ended in mineralization and quartz veins, and Saddle Zone mineralization remains open along strike and at depth.





Soil sampling has identified 2 additional gold-arsenic-antimony-bismuth soil anomalies on the Wels Property (North Ridge and Southwest Spur) measuring 1,000 metres X 750 metres and 2,000 metres X up to 1,000 metres, respectively. Both anomalies warrant trenching and rock sampling to further define drill targets.





Corporate restructuring with 5:1 share rollback and $600,000 private placement at $0.05 per Unit, with each Unit consisting of 1 common share and 1 common share purchase warrant priced at $0.10, good for 2 years. No change in control.





Augmented Board of Directors and Management.





Transaction Summary

BCGold advises that it has entered a binding agreement to acquire Gorilla Minerals Inc.'s 100% owned Wels Property subject to a 3% NSR (the "Transaction"). At the closing of the Transaction (the "Closing") scheduled to be on or before March 31, 2016, BCGold will acquire the Wels Property in exchange for a cash payment of $60,000 and a total of 8,000,000 shares of BCGold, issued on a post 5 for 1 consolidation of the issued and outstanding shares of BCGold (the "Consolidation") to be distributed pro rata to the shareholders of Gorilla. BCGold shall, concurrently with Closing, and as a condition thereof complete a $600,000 private placement (the "Financing") at a minimum price of $0.05 per Unit, with each Unit comprised of one share and one warrant, and each warrant entitling the holder to acquire a further share at $0.10 for a term of 2 years. The Transaction is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and all securities are subject to a four month hold period. Finder's fees will be payable in connection with the private placement, in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Also as part of the Transaction, BCGold will augment its Board of Directors with the addition of 2 of Gorilla's directors, Mr. Scott Sheldon, President and CEO of Gorilla, and Mr. Ranj Pillai, an independent director of Gorilla. On Closing Mr. Sheldon will be assuming the role of Manager - Corporate Communications of BCGold and Mr. Pillai, in his current role as Executive Director for the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Government in Yukon, will provide BCGold invaluable and first-hand insights in working with First Nations in Yukon as an independent director for the Company.

This Transaction requires 2/3 shareholder approval from Gorilla shareholders to be sought at a Special shareholder meeting at a time and place to be announced. Gorilla is a tightly held, unlisted reporting issuer with 80% of its 10.6 million share float held by 3 Directors and 1 major shareholder. BCGold is in receipt of written shareholder voting approval from these 4 shareholders.

BCGold currently has 41.8 million shares outstanding, which will be reduced to 8.4 million shares subsequent to the 5:1 share rollback. Post transaction, BCGold will have a total of 28.4 million shares outstanding, that includes the share issuance of 8 million shares in connection with the Transaction and a $600,000 financing share issuance of a maximum of 12 million shares. No change of control will result from this transaction. The Offering is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and all securities are subject to a four month hold period. Finder's fees will be payable in connection with the private placement, in accordance with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Wels Property

The 4,840 hectare Wels Property is located 50 kilometers east of Beaver Creek and 180 kilometers south of Dawson City in west-central Yukon. The property is located 20 kilometres east of the Snag airstrip.

Gold mineralization on the Wels Property occurs within a previously unrecognized high-level Cretaceous Age granite that hosts gold mineralization of the RIRG (reduced intrusion related granite) deposit type, similar in age and style as the Fort Knox and Eagle Gold Project (Dublin Gulch) gold deposits, in Alaska and Yukon respectively. The Wels Property is unique in that it is the first recorded occurrence of Cretaceous-aged RIRG gold mineralization in Yukon south of the Tintina Fault.

Grid soil sampling in 2011 and 2012 by Gorilla Minerals outlined three Au, As, Sb and Bi anomalies named North Ridge, Saddle and Southwest Spur. One rock sample collected from Trench A on the Saddle zone returned 4.90 oz/ton gold. Rock sampling results from 4 trenches excavated in 2014 (155 metres) and reported by Gorilla Minerals Inc. (See Gorilla News Release dated November 21, 2014) over a portion of the Saddle Zone gold-arsenic-antimony-bismuth soil anomaly, measuring 1,000 metres X 350 metres, averaged 2.63 g/t gold over 19.0 metres; 5.30 g/t gold over 18.0 metres, including 15.40 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in Trench T14-01, 8.80 g/t gold over 45.0 metres, including 13.81 g/t gold over 21.0 metres with visible gold observed in 2 locations in Trench T14-02; 0.56 g/t gold over 25.5 metres in Trench T14-03 and 1.27 g/t gold over 25.5 metres, including 3.04 g/t gold over 10.5 metres in Trench T14-04. Trenching in 2014 (155 m) produced a weighted average 8.80 grams/tonne gold over 45.0 metres.

Microscopic examination of panned concentrates of pulps from selected samples showed that gold is free, irregular shaped and attached to vitreous quartz, with minor oxidized sulphides. Crushing and panning trench samples in 2015 helped focus drilling by confirming gold in bedrock below soil anomalies west of the 2014 trenches.

The 2014 program determined that the Saddle Zone is underlain by a biotite granite hosting high grade gold mineralization outlined by trenching that measures 50 metres by 30 metres on an east west trend and is open in all directions. A second zone 25 metres to the west at the base of the Saddle Zone topography returned 11.0 g/t gold over 4.5 metres.

Additional Wels Project details can be found on the Company's website at www.bcgoldcorp.com and the 2014 NI43-101 report can be viewed on SEDAR and Gorilla's website at www.gorillaminerals.com.

2015 Wels Property Drill Results

In 2015, in addition to a short trenching program over nearby high gold-in-soil anomalies, 442 metres of NTW core drilling was completed by Gorilla in five drill holes on two fences from 30 metres south of the east-west Trench A. This work program, in addition to the 2014 trenching program, were completed under the auspices of Mr. Al Doherty, P.Geo., Gorilla's Qualified Person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. An updated NI43-101 report detailing Gorilla's 2015 Wels property drill program is currently in preparation by Mr. Doherty, and will be posted on SEDAR and the Company's website in due course.

The limited Wels property drill program confirmed the presence of intrusion related sheeted quartz vein systems along east-west trending brittle structures at depth, under the high grade zone located by trenching. Drilling in the Saddle zone extended the mineralized zone to the west, indicates these zones remain open along strike and at depth, and that parallel sheeted vein zones exist on the property.

All holes drilled to the north intersected significant gold values. Drill hole WELS15-01, inclined -50 to the north, intersected 0.76 g/t gold over the entire hole length of 97.5 metres, that includes 3.11 g/t gold over 19.5 metres from 31.5 - 51.0 metres and 5.71 g/t gold (with visible gold) over 9.0 metres from 31.50 - 40.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-01 ended in a mineralized quartz vein that assayed 0.75 g/t gold over 1.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-02, from the same setup and drilled at -75 to the north, intersected 0.29 g/t gold over 39.0 metres from 49.0 to 88.0 metres and was not drilled far enough to intersect the down dip extension of the main intercept in drill hole WELS15-01. Drill hole WELS15-03, also drilled from the same set up at -50 to the south, intersected 0.34 g/t gold over 6.0 metres from 9.0 - 15.0 metres and ended in a quartz vein that assayed 0.70 g/t gold over 0.15 metres between 65.65 - 65.80 metres.

Drill hole WELS15-04 was drilled at -45 to the north, 60 metres westward from the first fence and previous holes. This hole intersected 0.79 g/t gold over 21 metres from 49.5 to 70.5 metres, including 1.01 g/t gold over 12.0 metres and 4.41 g/t gold over 1.5 metres. Drill hole WELS15-05, drilled southward at -50 from the same setup intersected 1.29 g/t gold over 3 metres from 78.0 - 81.0 metres.

"This is a totally new, very exciting discovery, on ground that was first staked in 2011", states Brian P. Fowler, P.Geo., President and CEO of BCGold Corp. "The granite hosting the mineralization was only recognized in late 2013 and the 2014 trenching and 2015 drilling has confirmed that the mineralization is of the reduced intrusion related model. The contacts of the granite have not been defined and the intrusion is only unroofed in two locations. BCGold is very excited to acquire the Wels Property and we look forward to further defining and enlarging the known limits of this intrusion-related gold system through deliberate exploration efforts. BCGold is very grateful that Gorilla has agreed to augment our Board of Directors and provide shareholders with this excellent exploration opportunity."

Proposed 2016 Exploration Program

BCGold intends to advance the Wels Property in 2016 by conducting a program of geological mapping, prospecting, and further trenching to define the limits of the Saddle Zone and develop drill targets on the North Ridge and Southwest Spur Zones. The Company invites expressions of interest from qualified Companies wishing to earn into the Wels Property through a significant exploration commitment.

Consolidation of Engineer Mine Property

BCGold wishes to further announce that the Company intends to roll it's 100% owned historic high-grade gold Engineer Mine Property, adjoining 50% owned Gold Hill Property and Blind Creek property option into Engineer Mines Ltd., a jointly owned private Company. BCGold has initiated discussions with option partners Guardsmen Resources Inc., 50% owners of the Gold Hill Property, Blind Creek Resources Ltd., optionor of the Blind Creek Property, and Engineer Mining Corp., owners of the fully permitted 30 tonne per day mill at Engineer Mine, to pool their respective interests into Engineer Mines Ltd. The primary purpose to consolidate the Engineer Mine Property in this fashion is to eliminate option payments, minimize holding costs and facilitate the sale to any private group interested in producing gold at Engineer Mine in 2016.

At Engineer Mine, BCGold is uniquely positioned and fully permitted to mine and mill accessible high-grade gold mineralization. In 2011 the Company successfully mined and milled 246 tonnes of vein material from the Engineer Vein on Level 5 and produced and monetized 800 kg of gravity concentrate for $US107,000. The bulk sampling program identified 2 accessible high-grade gold exploration targets on the Engineer Vein between 5 and 8 Levels, which are believed to contain between 12,000 to 17,000 ounces of gold, grading between 30 g/t to 60 g/t gold, in 8,000 to 14,000 tonnes of vein material.(*) Mine de-watering, geological mapping and panel sampling of production drifts on 6 and 7 Level in 2012 confirmed the depth extension of these two exploration targets, and re-established a third that was cut off by a dyke on 5 Level.

(*) The potential quality and grade of this exploration target is conceptual in nature, as there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and that it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.

The Engineer Mine produced more than 18,000 oz gold and 9,000 oz silver in the 1920's, at realized head grades of 39 g/t gold and 20 g/t silver. Commercial mining from narrow, high-grade gold veins ceased in 1928. There is more metreage in underground development (5,650 metres of drifts on 8 mine levels, raises, shaft and winz) than exploration drilling at Engineer Mine. In 2011 BCGold commissioned SNOWDEN to complete a NI 43-101 report and calculate an inferred mineral resource of 41,000 tonnes grading 19.0 g/t gold, containing 25,000 oz of gold. This resource is confined to 2 of the 25 known veins to occur on the property. The exploration upside to dramatically increase this resource is excellent. The deepest drill hole, 18 metres below the deepest mine level, returned 22.32 g/t gold over 1 metre. There are >25 known veins on the property and commercial production only came from 2 veins.

BCGold has defined 4 shallow bulk-tonnage epithermal gold drill targets with supporting historic mining and recent magnetic, resistivity (geophysics) and MMI soil geochemistry results in the immediate mine area. The Company believes these targets represent the core of the Engineer Mine mineralizing system. In addition to mineable, narrow-vein, high-grade gold, the Engineer Mine property has excellent potential for a significant bulk tonnage, shear zone gold deposit occurring along >8km of highly prospective shear structures on the properties. In 2008 BCGold drilled the Shear Zone "A" structure over a 400 metre strike length and intersected a continuous breccia body up to 35m thick and averaging 0.45 g/t gold. Shear "A" can be traced for >5 kilometres, and has a near-surface, 1 kilometre X 500 metre untested SkyTEM resistivity anomaly immediately south of BCGold's 2008 drilling.

The current U.S. currency exchange rate, recent rise in the gold price and drop in oil price, in Canadian terms, have greatly enhanced the margin for high-grade gold production at Engineer Mine, and the Company has seen a substantial increase in qualified expressions of interest to purchase the mine.

WS Copper-Gold Properties, Yukon

BCGold also wishes to announce that it has commissioned Ms. Jean Pautler, P.Geo. to prepare a NI 43-101 compilation report detailing the results of >$2.5 million in recent exploration work by BCGold on the Company's 100% owned WS, BC, ICE and Sleep properties in south-central Yukon. This large, road accessible mining property (319 claims) is situated adjacent to and overlays the southern extension of the Carmacks copper deposit, currently being drilled by Copper North. The focus of Copper North's drilling is to increase the Carmacks mineral resource to meet their PEA requirements for planned near-term commercial production.

In 2015 Copper North conducted a 2-phase drill program targeting deposit extensions southward towards BCGold's northern claim boundary. Drilling near this boundary in 2008 by BCGold intersected a near-surface mixed copper oxide / sulphide zone that averaged 0.17% copper over 63.1 metres (including 0.34% Cu of 23.6 metres). This zone is believed to be the southern extension of Copper North's Zone 14 and remains open at depth and along strike to the south. BCGold has a number of other undrilled, coincidental magnetic, I.P. and copper in soil anomalies along strike and parallel to this feature on the WS and adjoining ICE claims. The Company is seeking an option partner or newly listed company to drill off the Zone 14 extension and advance the property.

About BCGold

BCGold is a Vancouver-based junior resource company focused on copper and gold exploration in historic and emerging mining districts in British Columbia and Yukon. The Company acquires prospective gold and copper-gold exploration properties considered to have significant mineral potential by staking, option or purchase agreements. The Company strives to acquire 100% of these opportunities and after cost-effective and diligent exploration to develop drill targets, option 51-70% of these properties to third parties in return for some multiple of the Company's expenditures. The Company currently has a portfolio of 10 - 100% owned gold and copper-gold properties and 2 partially owned gold properties in B.C. and Yukon. BCGold is actively seeking qualified option partners to advance these properties.

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. R. Allen Doherty, P.Geo., a consultant to the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Doherty personally supervised all aspects of the 2014 and 2015 exploration work on the Wels Property conducted by Gorilla Minerals Inc. A NI43-101 report detailing drill results from the 2015 Wels Property exploration program is in preparation, and will be posted on SEDAR and the Company's website upon completion.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Brian P. Fowler, P. Geo., President & CEO

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.

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures and exploration, development and production activities. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the timing and completion of contemplated financings, the actual use of proceeds, receipt of regulatory approvals and the timing and success of future exploration, development and production activities. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.
Vancouver - Alta Vista Ventures Ltd. (Alta Vista or the Company) (AVV-CSE, YRLLF-OTC) has signed an engagement letter with Jacob Capital Management Inc. (JCMI) for the purposes of completing the acquisition of RedeCan Pharm and expanding its operations. Redecan Pharm is one of Canadas 20 MMPR (Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations) cultivation and sales licenses (see news release dated November 27, 2015).We are very familiar with RedeCan Pharm and the great job the founders have done in growing the business to its current level. In particular, the low cost operating environment and the considerable acres available for expansion serve as a solid foundation to build on. We look forward to working with the RedeCan Pharm and Alta Vista teams to complete this compelling transaction and develop the underlying business into one of the leading producers in the MMPR program, stated Khurram Malik, Cannabis Lead at Jacob Capital Management Inc.The JCMI team has been very active in the Medical Marijuana sector and was one of the first to realize the potential of the space. They will be a value added partner in that they will be able to help us with many facets of building our business, stated Ian Foreman, president of Alta Vista.In consideration for acting as strategic advisor Alta Vista has issued JCMI 500,000 shares. An additional 1,000,000 shares will be issued on March 6, 2016 and 2,500,000 shares will be issued to JCMI upon the successful completion of the acquisition of RedeCan.The core JCMI team has managed in excess of $6b in transactions in its specialty areas of focus since 2007. In addition to clean technology, renewable power, and water, the team has completed almost $100m in transactions in the Cannabis sector around the world in the last 1.5 years. Moreover, JCMI has developed several strategic assets and relationships that allow it to offer advisory services to build and grow existing Cannabis businesses around the world.The purchase of Redecan Pharm is a critical step in Alta Vistas goal of becoming a significant player in Canadas medical marijuana marketplace. Under the terms of the LOI, subject to satisfactory due diligence and the signing of a definitive agreement, Alta Vista Ventures can purchase RedeCan Pharm by paying $7,000,000 in cash and issuing a total of 7,575,757 shares.In addition to the right to purchase RedeCan, Alta Vista has the right to purchase Thor Pharma, an early stage MMPR applicant that could add up to 75,000 square feet of growing space. Alta Vista cannot guarantee nor estimate the timing for the issuance of an MMPR license to Thor Pharma.As part of its ongoing efforts to expand in the sector Alta Vista continues to evaluate additional opportunities.On behalf of the Board,Ian ForemanIan Foreman, PresidentFor information on Thor Pharma and RedeCan please contact Mr. Don Shaxon at 289-697-8625.For additional information on Alta Vista Ventures please call the Company at 604-678-2531.Neither Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.Statements in this press release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Companys future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in such statements. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.Copyright  2016 Filing Services Canada Inc.
VANCOUVER, BC / TheNewswire / January 25, 2016 - Maritime Resources Corp. (MAE-TSX Venture, "Maritime") provides an update. Following one of the most challenging years in mining exploration, we offer you this update on corporate activities and assure you that the Board of Maritime will remain vigilant and focused in 2016 on our plan to advance and bring back into production our 100% owned Green Bay gold project in Newfoundland.

We are currently in the process of raising funds through a non-brokered private placement (see News Release 15-05 dated November 5, 2015) of units coupled with a streaming royalty that will return 100% of the original investment made pursuant to the offering to investors, which return will be paid out of production from the Green Bay project. If you have any questions about the offer, please contact us and we would be glad to answer any questions. The TSX Venture has granted an extension and we expect to close this financing in the near future.

We have collected tendering bids to conduct a Prefeasibility Study ("PFS") which we plan to begin once the financing is completed. The study is expected to take about 4 to 6 months to finish. The PFS will be conducted on the Hammerdown portion of the deposit which contains in excess 727,500 tonnes @11.59 g/t Au in the M&I categories and in excess of 1,767,000 tonnes @7.58 g/t Au in the Inferred category, both at a 3 g/t cut-off grade. We believe that this step will ensure that we position the Company to increase shareholder value.

Maritime has a unique advantage with a Canadian gold property containing a high grade vein system that is accessible from surface, with underground infrastructure in place as well as proven metallurgy with high gold recoveries. The availability of infrastructure and mill, just 150 km from Maritime's Hammerdown mine site, will greatly reduce the timeframe for permitting and also capital requirements of production. For further information on the Property, please visit our website.

Bernard H. Kahlert, P.Eng. is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this release.

About Maritime Resources Corp:

Maritime holds 100% of the Green Bay Property, located near Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador. The Property hosts the past producing Hammerdown gold mine and the Orion gold deposit separated by a 1.5 km distance, as well as the Lochinvar base metals/precious metals deposit.

The Hammerdown gold deposit was successfully mined by Richmont Mines between 2000 and 2004 while gold prices averaged $325/oz. During its operation, a total of 291,400 tonnes of ore were mined and milled, at an average grade of 15.83 g/t Au, recovering a total of 143,000 ounces of gold. The Orion gold deposit consists of two main vein systems, both of which are open along strike, and down plunge to the northeast.

Further information on the Green Bay Gold Property can be found on our website along with the NI43-101 compliant Technical Report filed on SEDAR on July 11, 2013 at www.maritimeresourcescorp.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Doug Fulcher"

Doug Fulcher

President, CEO

Cathy DiVito, Investor Relations Telephone: (604) 336-7322 info@maritimeresourcescorp.com The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Statements in this press release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Company's future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in resource exploration and development. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
SUDBURY, ON, Jan. 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Transition Metals Corp. (XTM  TSX.V) ("TMC" or "the Company"), is pleased to announce the acquisition of all of the former exploration and development assets of First Nickel Inc. The purchase includes approximately 1,100 hectares of leased and patented mining and surface rights property and 7,591 hectares of mining claims, including projects with defined historical NI 43-101 nickel, copper and platinum group metal (PGM) resources located in the Sudbury and Timmins areas. The properties were purchased pursuant to an asset purchase agreement between the Company and the court-appointed Receiver of First Nickel Inc. (the "Receiver"). The Receiver has obtained a vesting order from the court and confirmation of closing is expected on or about January 25, 2016. The Company has agreed to pay consideration of $100,000 cash and 980,392 common shares of the Company at a price per share of $0.102, representing a value of $100,000 based on the 20 day trading weighted average share price.

Company CEO and president, Scott McLean commented, "We are very excited about the transaction and in particular the low cost acquisition of nickel resources associated with the Lockerby East and West Graham Properties. In reviewing the opportunity, our exploration team quickly recognized the significant potential for Ni-Cu-PGM mineralization on unexplored portions of the SIC basal contact and footwall of the property which are not subject to the Lockerby Mine closure plan. These properties come to the Company unencumbered by prior agreements, royalties or off-take arrangements and are located just 8 kilometres northeast of Company subsidiary, Sudbury Platinum Corporation's (SPC) flagship Aer-Kidd project."

About the Lockerby East and West Graham Property

The Property consists of approximately 390 hectares of freehold patents located on the south range of the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC), Sudbury, Ontario (Figure 1). It includes 100% of the Lockerby East and South Patents as well as a 70% interest in the West Graham Property (30% owned by Landore Resources Ltd.). In 2009, First Nickel disclosed a NI 43-101 Indicated Resource for the Conwest Zone at West Graham totaling 8.55 million tonnes grading 0.45% Ni and 0.31% Cu, along with an Inferred Resource of 2.0 million tonnes grading 0.38% Ni, 0.30% Cu. Adjacent to this resource at depth lies the Lockerby East Zone with 0.18 million tonnes grading 2.32% Ni and 0.78% Cu. The Company considers the cited public domain resource estimates to be historical in nature and cautions the reader that they may no longer be relevant. The acquisition of the Lockerby East and West Graham property does not include certain property associated with the Lockerby Mine site which is currently in the process of closure on behalf of the province of Ontario.

The Company has completed internal compilation and interpretation of historically available exploration data, including a detailed review historic borehole electromagnetic (BHEM) surveys in the vicinity of the Lockerby East and West Graham property and has identified very high conductivity target areas associated with the basal contact of the SIC in close proximity to intersections of anomalous mineralization. Four discreet, high conductivity areas (>5,000 seimen) coincident with anomalous mineralization and/or thick occurrences of basal contact SIC units, are identified from the data available from the sparsely distributed drillholes as shown in the long section provided in Figure 2.

The Company's Chief Geophysicist, Kevin Stevens commented that "BHEM responses observed in the historic data from the Lockerby East exploration drilling exhibit geophysical signatures consistent with the accumulations of massive sulphides in the Sudbury Igneous Complex. Part of an exploration plan going forward will include the BHEM resurvey of many of the historic exploration holes with modern tools. It will be most exciting to apply some modern geophysical tools to the property".

Subject to a Memorandum of Understanding between the Company and its 48% owned subsidiary, Sudbury Platinum Corporation, the Company is obligated to offer the Lockerby East and West Graham property to Sudbury Platinum for its acquisition cost.

About the Dundonald and Raglan Hills Properties

The Dundonald property near Timmins consists of approximately 950 hectares of freehold patents, mining leases and claims and hosts a small NI 43-101 resource totaling 116,000 tonnes grading 3.16% nickel which remains open at depth. The Company considers the disclosed resource estimate for Dundonald to be historical in nature and cautions the reader that it may no longer be relevant. Nickel mineralization is associated with a similar depositional setting to the recently discovered Grasset Nickel deposit in Quebec. The Dundonald property also hosts a copper-zinc occurrence known as the Terminus zone. Drilling by Falconbridge in 1990's on the Terminus Zone intersected a 10.1 m core length of 1.37% Cu, 7.53% Zn, 0.13% Co, 1.1 g/t Au, and 2.9 g/t Ag.

The Raglan Hills project consists of approximately 7,351 hectares of mining claims located in the Southern Mining district near Bancroft, Ontario. In 2009 First Nickel announced the discovery of a new zone of PGM mineralization at Raglan Hills upon intersecting 5.05 metres grading 0.762 g/t platinum and 1.216 g/t palladium.

Qualified Person

The technical elements of this press release have been approved by Mr. Greg Collins, P.Geo. (APGO), a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. The source and dates of the cited historical estimates and publically disclosed supporting technical reports are provided below in footnotes 1 through 3.

The reader should be cautioned that the mineral resources cited for the Lockerby East, West Graham and Dundonald properties are of a historical nature that have not been independently verified by the Company's Qualified Person. It is not known the extent to which the key assumptions, parameters and methods used to prepare the historical estimates are still relevant. The Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources; and the Company is not treating the historical estimates as current mineral resources or mineral reserves.

 Technical Report on the West Graham Property Conwest Zone Resource Estimate, Graham Township, Ontario Canada prepared by Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle Associates Inc., January 15, 2009

 Technical Report on the 2009 Resource Estimate for the Depth, East and Upper West Zones, Lockerby Mine, Sudbury, Ontario, prepared by First Nickel Inc., February 23, 2009

 Technical Report on the Dundonald Project, Dundonald and Clergue Townships, Porcupine Mining Division, Ontario for First Nickel Inc., G.A Haron, P/Eng, January 30, 2009

About Transition Metals Corp

Transition Metals Corp. (XTM -TSX.V) is a Canadian-based, multi-commodity project generator that specializes in converting new exploration ideas into Canadian discoveries. The award-winning team of geoscientists has extensive exploration experience in established, emerging and historic mining camps and actively develops and tests new ideas for discovering mineralization in places that others have not looked, which often allows the company to acquire properties inexpensively. The team is rigorous in its fieldwork and combines traditional techniques with newer ones to help unearth compelling prospects and drill targets. Transition uses the project generator business model to acquire and advance multiple exploration projects simultaneously, thereby maximizing shareholder exposure to discovery and capital gain. Joint venture partners earn an interest in the projects by funding a portion of higher-risk drilling and exploration, allowing Transition to conserve capital and minimize shareholder's equity dilution. The Company has an expanding portfolio that currently includes more than 25 gold, copper, nickel and platinum projects primarily in Ontario, Nunavut and Saskatchewan.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Information

Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, the information in this news release constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "plans", "proposes", "estimates", "intends", "expects", "believes", "may", "will" and include without limitation, statements regarding estimated capital and operating costs, expected production timeline, benefits of updated development plans, foreign exchange assumptions and regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, metal prices, competition, risks inherent in the mining industry, and regulatory risks. Most of these factors are outside the control of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, the Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Transition Metals Corp.
Method

Combine all the ingredients for the dressing and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and add the vegetable oil. Season the beaten eggs with a little salt and pour into the pan, rotating the pan to create a thin layer of egg. Fry for about 2 minutes until the egg is cooked through, then transfer to a cutting board. Roll the egg and slice into thin strips.

Bring a large pot of unsalted water to the boil and cook the noodles according to the packet directions.

Rinse well under cold running water until the noodles are cool to the touch. Drain well.

Divide the noodles between two plates, along with the egg and the remaining ingredients. Pour the dressing over the top and toss.

Tip

To make shredded chicken breast, boil a saucepan of water and add one chicken breast. Simmer for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the chicken stand in the water for a further 10 minutes. Shred with your fingers.
Cooking up a storm: Thi Le, chef and co-owner of Anchovy in Richmond. Photo: Simon Schluter

Born in a Malaysian refugee camp to Vietnamese and Cambodian parents, Thi Le came to Australia aged two. She grew up swapping lunches with Lebanese, Turkish and Filipino friends in Sydney's western suburbs before going on to work as a chef in hip restaurants including Cumulus, Luxembourg, the Town Mouse and Sydney's (now defunct) Universal. She recently opened a restaurant of her own, Richmond's Anchovy, whose elegant interiors and sophisticated menu has got the food critics talking.

Le is one of a band of next-generation restaurateurs who are innovating the Vietnamese dining scene by focusing on quality ingredients, stepped-up service and social media-friendly aesthetics. Spawn of the cheap and cheerful eateries that still line pockets of Footscray, Springvale and Richmond's Victoria Street, this new-wave includes recent newcomers St Cloud, Hochi Mama and Pho Nom, just to name a few.

Blood pudding served in a cosberg lettuce leaf at Anchovy. Photo: Wayne Taylor

"Those old restaurateurs, they introduced Vietnamese cuisine to Australia," says Le, now 30. "I guess for myself, we're educating people. There's more to Vietnamese food." For example, French cooking may not be the only influence on Vietnamese cuisine. "Last year we were researching Vietnamese food and what shocked me was the influence of Indian food on southern Vietnam."

It turns out the Vietnamese have a version of biryani, love using cardamom and, rather than being based on the French crepe, it's more likely the Vietnamese pancake is offspring to the dosa. "For me, that's quite exciting  exciting enough to tell my family. They didn't know about the history of those dishes," adds Le.

While many of Anchovy's dishes, such as blood pudding, are unlikely to grace a Victoria Street menu anytime soon, some old favourites, such as rice paper rolls, endure. The difference, says Le, is that instead of filling them with cheap bean sprouts, her version tastes more like the rolls Vietnamese families eat at home, with ingredients including pickled and fried shallots, garlic chives, perilla, betel leaf, shredded coconut, noodles, mint, coriander and house-cured fish. (The difference is also reflected in the price: Le's rolls sell for $8 each.)

Pho Nom owner-chef Jerry Mai believes in ethically sourced food. Photo: Simon Schluter

Pho Nom's Jerry Mai, 38, says new-wave restaurants tend to treat their ingredients with greater respect. "There's no bicarb or baking soda marinating the meat [typically used to tenderise cheap, tougher cuts and to make them appear larger by bloating them with water]," says Mai. "It's just approaching food as you would in a western restaurant; creating a really nice Vietnamese dish using traditional techniques or flavours."

And the new-wave restaurateurs have also grown up with social media, which may even be influencing their cooking. Thai Ho, 31, co-owner of Hochi Mama, in the city, says dishes at his bar restaurant are designed to be photogenic and "Instagram-friendly." "It's for the modern age, now," says Ho. "Everyone wants to go to restaurants and take photos of the food that they're eating and our food is all photogenic, which is great." Born in Australia to parents fleeing Vietnam in 1980, Ho owned nightclubs before opening this Vietnamese bar-restaurant late last year. With its graffiti-decorated interior, dim lighting and R&B soundtrack Hochi Mama is in stark contrast to the modest Formica and neon lighting on offer at first-generation eateries. "It's very Melbourne," says Ho.
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Sam's Club marks 10-year anniversary

Sam's Club is celebrating 10 years in San Angelo, with a 10 a.m. party open to the public at the store's Club Cafe.

Balloons and cupcakes will be shared at the event, which honors Sam's Club's employees and the community it has served for a decade.

"As we celebrate our anniversary, we are so excited to share this event with our community partners," said Charlotte Anderson, membership and marketing coordinator.

The San Angelo store is No. 1 in the company among 653 stores nationally, for having the highest number of "plus-memberships," Anderson said, and its pharmacy is consistently rated in the top three of the entire Sam's Club chain.

"We are in a great market and San Angelo has been great to us," she said.

The store has approximately 150 employees, 20 of which are "charter associates" having worked here since it opened in January 2006.

General manager Andy Maier started his Sam's Club career at the San Angelo Sam's Club.

"He is an Angelo State University alumnus, and raised in San Angelo," Anderson said. "He is a hard worker and a great manager."

While most retail purchases require a membership to Sam's Club, the pharmacy and cafe are open to the public from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Sam's is located at 5749 Sherwood Way and can be reached at 325-223-9373.

City employees top record for pledges

The city of San Angelo's United Way campaign raised a record $112,483 for 19 local nonprofit agencies.

The total topped the city's prior high, set in 2009, by more than $8,000, the city reported. The 2015 campaign, which ended Dec. 31, marked the third time city employees eclipsed the $100,000 mark.

"My colleagues' generosity never surprises me," public information officer Anthony Wilson said.

"But even I was blown away by the total amount of giving in our campaign. City employees, I believe, view themselves as fortunate, and they see their contributions to the United Way as an extension of the public service they render every day. Their gifts will make a tangible difference in the lives of thousands of our neighbors here in San Angelo."

Of 871 full-time employees, approximately 40 percent pledged contributions to the United Way, with 13 pledging $1,000 or more.

The city's campaign was led by civic events manager Sidney Walker and police officer Rick Tinsley. Stephanie Collins, the fire department's executive office coordinator, helped increase giving among firefighters by $10,000. Lori Davila, the business/finance assistant in Civic Events, coordinated the city's most successful raffle for the United Way.

Anthony Wilson served as the 2015 campaign chairman for the United Way. He was also the loaned executive when city's campaign first raised more than $100,000 in 2009.

Business startup training planned

The Angelo State University Small Business Development Center is hosting the training event "Ready... Set... Go... Essentials to Business Startup" at 3 p.m. Wednesday, at no cost.

The ASU-SBDC professional staff will present the basics of starting a new business for entrepreneurs and new business owners.

"We will help answer your basic business start-up questions and share resources that will help you along the way," said training coordinator Dezaray Johnson. "You will learn the basics of writing a business plan, how to estimate start-up costs, contacts and resources you will need, and more."

Participants will receive at no charge the "Essentials of Starting a New Business" workbook and a "Starting a Business in San Angelo" guide.

The speaker will be David A. Erickson, MBA, Certified Business Advisor and director of the ASU-SBDC, located downtown at 69 North Chadbourne. Advance registration is requested by calling 325-942-2098 or through sbdc.angelo.edu.

Seminar to teach QuickBooks basics

The Angelo State University Small Business Development Center will present "Introduction to the Basics of QuickBooks" at 5:30 p.m. for $150.

"QuickBooks is one of the most powerful tools you will use in managing your business," said training coordinator Dezaray Johnson. "This three-part training series allows students to gain hands-on experience in the day to day operations of using QuickBooks in your small business."

This introductory-level course will assist participants in learning the basics of setting up a QuickBooks program and basic operations to streamline bookkeeping and accurately manage business financials.

A certificate of completion for Continuing Education Units will be provided by Howard College upon completion of the three-part series.

The class will be presented Jan. 25, Feb. 1 and Feb. 8 by Adriana B. Havins, MBA and Certified Business Advisor at the ASU-SBDC, located downtown at 69 North Chadbourne. Advance registration is requested by calling 325-942-2098 or through sbdc.angelo.edu.

Supermarket adds to rewards program

Albertsons has expanded its rewards program with the launch of "Baby Club" and "Pet Club" programs."

"These programs allow guests to earn rewards on the items they buy most often." said Robin Cash, loyalty marketing manager for The United Family which owns Albertsons.

Baby Club members, designed for parents and guardians of children ages newborn to 35 months, will receive monthly offers on items, such as formula, wipes and diapers. In addition, members will receive a free smash cake for their child's first birthday and be eligible for special events and contests exclusive to members.

Pet Club members will receive exclusive monthly offers on essential products, including food and toys. Members will also receive a special treat for their pet's birthday.

Energy group plans luncheon, speech

HOUSTON  The Texas Alliance of Energy Producers Alliance plans a luncheon presentation at noon Tuesday at the Houston Petroleum Club, Schlumberger Vintage Room.

The bold topic will be the "Crude Oil Analysis & 2016 Forecast" presented by Karr Ingham, noted petroleum economist and author of the Texas Petro Index.

Ingham is expected to present, through the release of data collected for the TPI, his analysis of what has happened, why it has happened, and what we can expect in the future.

Information from the Texas Petro Index is used to forecast activity in drilling, completion and production activities.

Please RSVP to donnab@texasalliance.org if you plan to attend.
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By Federico Martinez

West Texas Counseling & Guidance is making a final push to raise a total of $1.85 million to help relocate and expand its services. The organization needs to raise the final $67,050 by Sunday or they will lose a $75,000 pledge from the Abell-Hanger Foundation which set the deadline.

The counseling organization has received $26,000 in donations during the past two weeks, said Tiffany Talley, the organization's director of development and community relations.

"We've had a very generous response from the public during the past two weeks and we're incredibly grateful," Talley said. Donations from two Concho Valley area banks is included in the $26,000 collected. "Any size gift will make a difference."

The counseling agency, which employees 17 therapists, has more than tripled the number of clients it serves since 2009, said Dusty McCoy, the center's director. In 2015 the agency served 2,034 clients  about 33 percent of them youths, according to agency records.

Talley said the $1.85 million would be used to renovate the sixth floor of the Cactus Hotel and allow the counseling organization to provide more programs and services and serve many more clients.

For more information or to find out how to donate, contact Talley at 325-227-7703
Adam Sauceda/Standard-Times Firefighters contain a blaze that broke out in a home being constructed on London Court. Shot.Archived:01.23.16

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By Federico Martinez

At least one of four San Angelo firefighters was seriously injured and two suffered minor injuries after part of a structure collapsed on them as they responded to a house fire Saturday, officials reported Sunday.

The names and current condition of the firefighters were not yet being released Sunday night. All four firefighters were taken to hospitals after the accident occurred.

Fire Marshall Ross Coleman reported Sunday night that the fire is still under investigation and no further details were available. No one was living in the house which was still under construction, investigators previously reported.

The fire department was responding to a structure fire on London Court in The Bluffs Subdivision at about 4:30 p.m., Saturday, according to Assistant Fire Chief Scott Farris. The four firefighters were injured when they were struck by a falling "veneer structure." One of the firefighters was trapped underneath the structure for about 5-6 minutes.

Two of the injured were taken to Community Medical Center and two to Shannon Medical Center, Farris said.
Esther Cepeda is a Washington Post columnist. Contact her at estherjcepeda@washpost.com.

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CHICAGO  There are some ugly truths about being the first in your family to attend college: Those you leave behind aren't always happy for you, they sometimes think you're a traitor for leaving home and, when you return on breaks, they might accuse you of acting like you're better than everyone else.

Jennine Capo Crucet explores these issues and more in her devastating debut novel "Make Your Home Among Strangers."

It's not often I persist through a book that's so frustrating and painful. It's a testament to Crucet's ability to make the reader root for her heroine that I was glad I'd seen it through to the end  although I came away shellshocked from the protagonists' tumultuous journey.

The story is about the travails of Lizet, the youngest daughter of Cuban immigrants who attends a badly underresourced high school in Hialeah, Florida, but secretly applies to an elite private college in New York state and gets in.

As if that weren't stressful enough, her parents take the occasion to finally separate after a long, stormy marriage and there is the additional stress of Lizet's older sister intentionally getting herself pregnant in order to (unsuccessfully) get her boyfriend to marry her.

Lizet leaves the small apartment where her mom, sister and newborn nephew are living and heads off to school, without their blessing, on a patchwork of grants, scholarships, loans and a work-study job.

She's only a few weeks into her first semester at the fictional Rawlings College when she finds herself in over her head. Though her math and science courses had been easy in high school, her current ones aren't going well and, worse, she's been accused of plagiarism in her writing seminar.

It's at this point  Lizet is beginning to crack under the pressure and realize that, though she didn't expect it, she's wading out of her depth  that Crucet digs into the thorny issue of forging an adult identity even as you are being torn in two by the worlds you're straddling.

At school Lizet has grown weary of having to answer the persistent question, "Where are you from?" with "Florida." And then made to answer "But where are you from from?" with the explanation that her parents are Cuban. But she's also hurt and ashamed when, at home over Christmas, her sister mercilessly accuses her of looking, acting and talking "white."

I originally picked up this book thinking it would be predominantly about the on-campus obstacles first-generation college students face in navigating their new environment  the failure to anticipate how rigorous classes will be, the challenges of funding such a huge investment and the unfair burden of being a campus's designated diversity quotient.

And Crucet definitely gives readers a sense of the exertion it takes for someone of limited means to be able to function smoothly in a place where everyone is rich  if not financially, then at least in the background information necessary to fit in.

Anyone who will soon be shepherding a first-generation college student through this experience can gain insight into the countless unanticipated social and academic roadblocks that low-income college freshmen face: But this book hits at a deeper concern. It's really about finding the courage to excel despite  not because of  your family's hopes for you.

To be 100 percent clear: Not all, or even a majority, of low-income families with no college experience react to their child's opportunity at a highly selective university by labeling the accomplishment a betrayal and grudgingly accepting their absence. Most families, I'd like to think, are positive if, ultimately, mostly helpless and perplexed by the process.

And not all minority students arrive on college campuses and feel marginalized, exoticized or left out of a school's majority white community  I certainly didn't, though I, too, was a "first." And even Lizet had a Latina peer who seemed to be well adjusted and positive about her new life.

The heart of "Make Your Home Among Strangers" is about the difficult question of what a "first" must sacrifice to actually graduate and what he or she owes those who are left behind.

Crucet rewards readers with a relief-filled ending, courageously not forcing any contrived, easy answers. Her captivating book is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the family struggles that some first-generation college students navigate on their road to success.

Esther Cepeda is a Washington Post columnist. Contact her at estherjcepeda@washpost.com.
Former Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed Ted Cruz for president, Politico reported early Monday.The move comes more than four months after Perry dropped out of the race himself  and a week before the first-in-the-country caucus in Iowa. Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, is locked in a tight battle there with billionaire Donald Trump.The Republican race "appears to be down to two people," Perry said in an interview with Politico Sunday night. "From my perspective, Ted Cruz is by far the most consistent conservative in that crowd."Perry has long been a fierce critic of Trump's, once calling him a cancer on conservatism. While Cruz avoided criticizing Trump for months, he is now blasting him as a candidate whose rhetoric does not match his record.Since Perry ended his bid for the White House, he has spoken highly of Cruz, most recently praising his tax plan and defending him against backlash for his use of the term New York values. Perry was a little harsher on Cruz during his campaign, suggesting the country does not need to elect another inexperienced senator like President Barack Obama was.Cruz and Perry have met at least twice since the former governor dropped out the race. One of their visits took place at Perry's new home in Round Top and lasted at least half the day.Perry is expected to play the role of full-fledged surrogate for Cruz. The campaign sees him as particularly helpful on veterans issues, which he made central to his own bid, and while he spent the final weeks of his run assailing Trump, his portfolio will not be confined to that.Perrys endorsement coincides with Cruzs final tour of Iowa before the caucuses. The senator is scheduled to make three stops across the state Monday  in Maquoketa, Manchester and Independence.
Gov. Bill Walker called on lawmakers Thursday night to plug the hole in Alaska's sinking financial ship by approving the three major pieces of his budget plan: budget cuts, new taxes, and spending some of the Permanent Fund's earnings.In his second annual State of the State speech, he urged senators and representatives gathered in the House chambers to "pull together" even as he acknowledged that approval of his proposals could ultimately come at a political cost to him."I did not run for governor to keep the job," he said. "I ran for governor to do the job."Wearing a dark suit, a Haida-themed tie and an Alaska pin with two pipelines, Walker compared the state's financial plight -- it has a $5 billion budget with a nearly $4 billion deficit -- to that faced by his family in Valdez after the catastrophic 1964 earthquake, which destroyed the Walkers' construction business.Instead of declaring bankruptcy, his family members cut spending and found every job possible to pay the bills, with Walker starting a dog-sitting business for tourists."We survived through hard work, and pulling together as a family," Walker said.His speech set the stage for what's expected to be a contentious legislative session, with lawmakers divided over the mix of cuts, taxes, and Permanent Fund earnings that should be used to fix the deficit.Lawmakers' reactions Thursday were largely positive, even as they said that they didn't agree with all of Walker's ideas."He set up a good conversation," Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole and the Senate majority leader, said at a news conference afterward. "We're grateful."Walker is asking lawmakers to approve comprehensive financial reforms this year; without them, the state is projected to spend one-third of its savings. He's flexible on the details, he told legislators."I am not flexible, however, on the need to get there this year," he added. "It's time to fix the hole in the boat."Walker's plan would create a small income tax and reduce the size of Permanent Fund dividends, but it would also insulate the state from swings in oil revenues as commodity prices go up and down.For decades, those oil revenues have been used by lawmakers to pay Alaska's bills. Those revenues have dropped sharply over the past year with the crash in oil prices and the natural decline of production of the mammoth North Slope oil fields.The governor's proposal to create taxes and reduce dividends have generated sharp opposition from Republican and Democratic legislators.But in his 45-minute address, Walker stressed twice that even if approved, Alaska would remain the only state to write its residents checks every year. And Alaskans would still confront the second lowest tax burden in the country, he said.Walker spent the first part of his speech reviewing his administration's initiatives and achievements in his first year in office, and describing a few new ideas, like the creation of a public integrity unit in the state's Department of Law to investigate corruption, deaths in state custody, and officer-involved shootings.And he mentioned a few areas of potential growth, like tourism and agriculture. For the second straight year, he cited the "incredible" carrots produced by Alaska farmers, saying he has lobbied national food chains to carry the state's produce.But, citing comments by a state senator, he said the top three priorities this year are "the budget, the budget and the budget."Walker pushed back against criticism that his administration hasn't been aggressive in finding savings within government, citing the $400 million that he and lawmakers cut from the state operating budget last year. In October, he said, the state had 587 fewer employees than the previous year.But cuts alone won't solve the problem, he added -- firing every state employee would still leave a multibillion-dollar deficit.The state's crisis is now so dire, Walker said, that Alaska is spending $400,000 from savings each hour. If the problem isn't fixed quickly, he added, lawmakers will be forced to spend money from the Permanent Fund's earnings account to cover the budget gap."The Permanent Fund dividend will go to zero dollars in just four years," he said.Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle offered generally warm responses to Walker's speech, though the state Republican Party immediately issued a sharp attack."What he said tonight sounded less like vision for the future, and more like a vision of bigger, bloated government," the party said in a statement.Other Republicans, even some who have criticized Walker's administration in the past year, used softer rhetoric."I think, in general, we are supportive of working in the same direction as the governor," said one of those critics, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks. "But we probably are going to disagree with some of the details."Kelly has almost exclusively focused on government cuts in discussing fixes to the state's budget crisis. But Thursday evening, he acknowledged that "we probably have to do some other things."And I will look very closely at the governor's Permanent Fund process," he added.Rep. Adam Wool, D-Fairbanks, said he thought Walker's speech "showed leadership.""We need that," he added.Asked if he thought the Legislature would follow Walker's instructions and pull together, though, Wool chuckled. Then, he responded: "I think something's going to happen.""We're not going to kick the can down the road," he said.
Republicans are near their postwar high in the number of governorships they control. At 31, they still have plenty of opportunities to add to their total in this falls elections.Democrats hold eight of the 12 governorships up for grabs in 2016, including five that will be left vacant by retirements. Like Kentucky -- where Republican Matt Bevin was elected in November -- both Missouri and West Virginia are home to Democratic incumbents who are term-limited, and those states have not supported a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton was on the ballot.West Virginia is one of several states where Democrats failed to recruit their top choice to run: in this case, U.S. senator and former Gov. Joe Manchin. Republicans took over both chambers of the legislature in 2014, giving early momentum to GOP Lt. Gov. Bill Cole.Missouri is less certain for Republicans. The suicide of gubernatorial candidate and state Auditor Tom Schweich last February has cast a long shadow over the race. A large group of Republicans will be battling up until the primary in August, giving well-funded Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster time to position himself for the general election. The Schweich incident truly divided the Republican party here in Missouri, says Ken Warren, a pollster at Saint Louis University.The GOP may also find fertile ground in an unlikely region: New England. In Vermont, Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin -- who barely won re-election in 2014 -- is stepping down. Power has switched between the parties every time the office has come open since 1962. Whats more, GOP Lt. Gov. Phil Scott is popular and the type of moderate Republican who does well in the state and region. Democrats also received a blow in November when state House Speaker Shap Smith bowed out of the race.While Vermont has a history of ticket-splitting, the race in New Hampshire is more likely to be swayed by the vote for president, as well as the outcome of the U.S. Senate contest featuring outgoing Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. The race for chief executive remains wide open for now.In Montana, Republicans are hopeful about unseating Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. His approval ratings are in the 60s, but he could have a real race in a red state against self-funding tech entrepreneur Greg Gianforte.By contrast, Democrats only have two realistic chances to make gains. In North Carolina, GOP Gov. Pat McCrory will have to answer for a slew of conservative policies enacted in a purple state. Polls show him in a tossup race against Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper. And in Indiana, GOP Gov. Mike Pences approval ratings have been subpar.A University of Minnesota study found that in the 2010s Democrats have won the lowest percentage of races for governor of any decade over the past century. Given the landscape, its not hard to imagine there will be more Republican governors in 2017 than there are now.
House bills

Senate bills

Two of the most vexing problems facing the state, the Flint water crisis and the financially struggling Detroit Public Schools, were the subjects of bills introduced by lawmakers in Lansing last week.Three bills regarding what constitutes a teacher strike and penalties for teachers and school districts where strikes occur -- teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan -- were introduced by Senate Republicans. The bills are in response to teacher sick-outs in Detroit that have resulted in the closure of dozens of schools over the past three weeks.One bill would simplify the procedure and shorten the time it takes to declare a teacher strike is occurring. The other two bills would suspend the teaching certificates of teachers engaged in a strike, and another would deduct 5% of school aid payments to districts where school officials don't deduct the pay of striking teachers.Another bill, introduced by Senate Democrats, would require that the Legislature and the Governor's office be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which requires public disclosure of documents. The issue has been hot this year in light of the Flint water crisis because both the Legislature and governor's office are exempt from FOIA laws. Michigan is one of only two states with such an exemption. The Free Press and other organizations have called for an end to the exemptions.HB 5221: Repeal section of a new law that prohibits local officials from communicating about ballot proposals in the 60 days before an election. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Schor, D-Lansing.HB 5222: Maintain 31 judges in 36th District Court in Detroit. Sponsor: Rep. Brian Banks, D-Detroit.HB 5223: Return the schools in the Education Achievement Authority (all in Detroit) to the control of the original school district. Sponsor: Rep. Brian Banks, D-Detroit.HB 5224-5226: Create fund-raising license plates for prostate cancer awareness and provide checkoff options for state income taxes for the prostate cancer foundation fund. Sponsor: Rep. Paul Muxlow, R-Brown City.HB 5227-5229: Revise disclosure procedures for nonpublic credit unions, banks and savings bank's financial information to third parties. Sponsors: Reps. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield; Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, and Jim Runestad, R-White Lake.HB 5230: Prohibit indemnity agreements in snowplow and deicing services contracts. Sponsor: Rep. Ken Yonker, R-Gaines Township.SB 712: Eliminate distance exemptions for specially designated resort liquor license distributors. Sponsor: Sen. Jim Marleau, R-Lake Orion.SB 713-715: Provide for changes in provisions concerning designating what is a strike by teachers, and require suspension of teaching certificate for teachers engaging in strikes and deduct 5% in school aid payments from schools who don't dock pay of striking teachers. Sponsors: Sens. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair; David Robertson, R-Grand Blanc, and Joe Hune, R-Whitmore Lake.SB 716: Require the legislative branch and governor's office to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Sponsor: Sen. Coleman Young II, D-Detroit.SB 717: Provide for alternative means to protect against exposure to environmental hazards from leaking underground storage tanks. Sponsor: Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba.
The escape from Orange County's largest jail probably took only a few minutes.But it took 16 hours for jailers to realize that three dangerous suspects had broken out of the Santa Ana lockup. This gap gave the inmates a huge head start on their pursuers, who on Monday continued a sweeping but unsuccessful dragnet.The length of time it took for authorities at the Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana to detect the escape was one of several issues detention experts and others were dissecting Monday amid the manhunt. Some also questioned why inmates accused of such violent crimes were housed in dormitories rather than individual cells, which is the practice at other jails and prisons in the state.The last time jail personnel saw Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu or Bac Duong was during a 5 a.m. prisoner count on Friday. Orange County jail staff only conduct two physical inspections of the inmate population each day. The second check on Friday was delayed by a jailhouse brawl that some investigators believe was designed to cover the initial escape, officials said.Nayeri, 37, was charged in the 2012 torture and kidnapping of a wealthy marijuana dispensary owner and his housemate's girlfriend. Nayeri and several accomplices allegedly dragged the man into a desert, burned him with a blowtorch, doused him in bleach and severed his penis, authorities have said. They believed he was hiding up to $1 million in cash and hoped the torture would cause him to surrender the money. The victim was left to die in the desert, but was rescued after the woman with whom he was kidnapped ran nearly a mile to get help.Tieu, 20, was described as a "documented Vietnamese gang member" awaiting a retrial in connection with a 2011 gangland murder, prosecutors said. Duong, 43, has several prior convictions and had been charged with attempted murder in a 2015 shooting in Santa Ana.The three were also formally charged with escape on Monday, prosecutors said.The men were held in a section of the Santa Ana jail known as "Module F," a fourth-floor dormitory where 68 inmates sleep in bunk beds rather than individual cells. Nayeri, Tieu and Duong had to cut through at least four layers of metal, steel and rebar to travel from the dormitory, through unsecured plumbing tunnels and onto the roof where they used a makeshift rope of knotted bedsheets and cloth to rappel to freedom, said Lt. Jeffrey Hallock, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department."These guys have nothing to lose. These guys were looking at life terms," said Martin Horn, the former head of corrections in New York City and Pennsylvania, who now teaches at the John Jay Institute of Criminal Justice in New York City. "Why are they, looking at life or worse, not being held in closed cells? Who made that judgment?"Merrick Bobb, who once oversaw reforms of the Los Angeles County jail system, said it seems unlikely that the men obtained the materials necessary to create their escape route on their own, and said he was surprised to hear that what was tantamount to a weeks-long construction project went undetected."These aren't tools that can be made out of dental floss," Bobb said. "Such cutting creates a lot of noise and it would have to be covered up."No staff has been suspended as part of the investigation into the jail break, and officials said they have not found any evidence that jail personnel played a role in the escape.In contrast to Orange County, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department houses inmates accused of murder or attempted murder, such as Tieu and Duong, or inmates with violent criminal pasts, such as Nayeri, in individual cells, according to Cmdr. Keith Swensson, a department spokesman.At the state level, inmates convicted of violent crimes are also normally held in individual cells. An inmate convicted of murder could, with a lengthy stretch of good behavior, be promoted from maximum-security housing to a less-secure dormitory setup, but that could take as long as 20 years, according to Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.Orange County also conducts physical counts of its inmates less frequently than jailers in Los Angeles County and those at the state level. In Los Angeles, deputies conduct physical checks on inmates at the downtown Men's Central Jail at least three times a day, Swensson said. State corrections officials are required to do so a minimum of four times, according to state regulations.Since its construction in 1968, the Santa Ana jail facility has seen only three escapes, the last of which came in 1989, Hallock said. But that success rate could actually have been part of the problem."Complacency is the No. 1 enemy of good jail administration. No one has escaped in years, so why worry?" Horn said. "Officers and deputies tend to believe nothing happens, so they let down their guard. When I was in Pennsylvania, we had three escapes, and complacency was to blame for them all."During a Monday news briefing, Orange County Sheriff's officials were repeatedly asked about the decision to house the three men in dorms and the time gap between the jailhouse counts."The focus right now is on apprehending the suspects; at some point we will be looking at our protocols," said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Dave Sawyer, who is leading the investigation.Sawyer said that investigators do not believe the three men have fled the state or country. Based on Tieu and Duong's gang connections, Sawyer said it is more likely that the men "may be embedded somewhere in the community." Police made pleas to the local Vietnamese community in both English and Vietnamese, asking for help in capturing the escapees."We sincerely need input from the community to help us put these three dangerous individuals back into custody," said Sawyer.A spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office said Sunday that the men would not have been housed in the dorm-style area if they were known to be flight risks. It is unclear what information jailers had when they assigned the escapees to their living quarters.While it does not appear Nayeri had been accused in a previous prison break, he has twice fled the country to escape criminal charges. After the alleged attack on the marijuana dispensary owner, Nayeri fled to Iran and remained there for several months before he was eventually arrested in Prague, Czech Republic, according to Orange County authorities.In 2005, after he'd been arrested in connection with a drunken driving death in Madera County, Nayeri also fled the country after posting bond, according to Roger Bonakdar, an attorney representing relatives of the victim, Ehsan Tousi. He was arrested again in 2006 and sentenced to one year in prison under a plea agreement, Bonakdar said.Several calls to the Madera County district attorney's office seeking information about the case were not returned.The case has drawn national attention after a similar escape at a maximum security prison in upstate New York last summer. Convicted killers Richard Matt and David Sweat sparked a three-week manhunt after they used power tools to cut through steel pipes and plates inside the aging Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., to break through a brick wall and climb out of a manhole cover on their way out of the prison.The escape also raised questions about the possibility that the men had received help and sparked criticism about the freedom the men were given despite their murder convictions. The two were granted more freedom than most inmates because they were members of an "honor" program. An investigation later revealed that a prison employee also provided them with some of the tools necessary for their tunnel escape route.Matt was shot and killed 20 days after he escaped, and Sweat was shot and captured two days after that.Escapes from state-level prisons have declined greatly in California in recent decades, records show. Some experts said the Orange County breakout highlights the issue of holding inmates awaiting trial for violent crimes in jails, rather than prisons, which are designed to contain inmates for lengthy stretches of time."If you give them enough time," Bobb said, "they will learn your systems."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Sunday that a Chicago native once passed over for top cop will return to help guide civil rights reforms in the Chicago Police Department.Recently retired Philadelphia police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, an architect of the Chicago department's community policing program, will return to advise city leaders on policies, training and accountability when it comes to the use of force, interactions with people with mental illness and community policing, the city said in a statement Sunday. Ramsey lost bids in 1992 and 1998 to become police superintendent in Chicago."Hopefully, we will begin to make progress, make inroads, in many communities where relationships are strained," said Ramsey, who grew up in Englewood.Ramsey, 65, said he believes Emanuel and police commanders "have a sense of urgency" about making improvements."I wouldn't be a part of this if I didn't think their efforts were sincere," Ramsey said.Ramsey will be paid $350 per hour as a consultant, the mayor's office said. He plans to begin work Monday, participating in a conference call with officials in Chicago. Ramsey, who lives in Philadelphia, also plans to frequently travel to Chicago to work with police officers, community members and the U.S. Justice Department, which announced a review of the department in December in the wake of the release of the Laquan McDonald video."Commissioner Ramsey is not only a national leader in urban policing who has led two major police departments through civil rights reforms -- he is also a native Chicagoan who knows our Police Department and our communities," Emanuel said in a statement. "With roots in Englewood, he has a unique understanding of the important role community relationships play in making our city safer."Ramsey said he was not interested in the open Chicago police superintendent job, instead preferring to focus his attention helping police departments work on rebuilding trust with communities. He also recently was hired as a consultant in Wilmington, Del.The Justice Department will be reviewing the Police Department's practices in Chicago, the type of investigation that has led to federal court oversight and sweeping reforms in other troubled big-city police departments throughout the country. Emanuel initially called the idea "misguided," then reversed his opposition to align with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, both of whom already had called for the Justice Department to act.
Hundreds of inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles in Pennsylvania, Missouri and other states could get a second chance at eventual freedom under a Supreme Court ruling Monday.In a 6-3 decision that united the court's liberals with two Republican appointees, the court said an earlier ruling that banned mandatory life sentences for juveniles applied retroactively. The ruling means the affected inmates can seek resentencing or parole hearings."Life without parole is an excessive sentence for children whose crimes reflect transient immaturity," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.As a result, Kennedy added, "a hearing where 'youth and its attendant characteristics' are considered as sentencing factors is necessary to separate those juveniles who may be sentenced to life without parole from those who may not."While the decision Monday applies nationwide, certain states might see an impact.Pennsylvania, in particular, had 482 inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were juveniles, according to a legal brief filed last year. This was more than any other state, and it includes the likes of 78-year-old Joseph Ligon. An inmate at Graterford state prison, Ligon was convicted of a 1953 murder that occurred when he was 15.Missouri had 113 inmates in similar circumstances. All told, more than 2,000 inmates nationwide are serving life without parole for juvenile crimes, according to a legal brief filed last year."Some of these people have already spent years, even decades in prison, they have grown up and matured in prison, contributing to their prison communities, some have mentored younger prisoners, some have earned an education or learned a trade," Katherine Mattes, director of the Tulane Law School Criminal Litigation Clinic, said in a statement.Convening new hearings to re-examine these underlying cases will prove problematic, attorneys general for Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and 13 other states warned in a brief urging the court to reject the claim for retroactivity."Requiring the states to resentence hundreds of offenders, many of whose crimes were committed decades ago, would undermine the community's safety and would offend principles of finality," the states argued in the brief, led by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette.The Supreme Court's majority, though, reasoned that the constitutional logic of an earlier decision involving mandatory life sentences for juvenile crimes necessitated retroactive application.In a 2012 case called Miller v. Alabama, the court held that a juvenile convicted of a homicide offense could not be sentenced to life in prison without parole without considering the juvenile's special circumstances, such as immaturity and potential for growth.The case decided Monday involved a Louisiana inmate named Henry Montgomery, convicted of a 1963 murder that occurred when he was 17.In the decision, written by Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. along with four Democratic appointees, the court concluded that the requirement set forth in the Miller v. Alabama ruling was more than simply procedural."Miller's conclusion that the sentence of life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of juvenile offenders raises a grave risk that many are being held in violation of the Constitution," Kennedy wrote.Kennedy further insisted that the ruling "does not impose an onerous burden on the states," as full-bore resentencing hearings may not be necessary. Instead, he suggested, states could simply institute parole hearings.In Montgomery's case, Kennedy noted, the 69-year-old inmate has attested to "his evolution from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community." The truth of that, Kennedy argued, can now be tested in a hearing."Prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored," Kennedy wrote.Justice Antonin Scalia, writing a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, termed the majority decision "nothing short of astonishing.""In Godfather fashion, the majority makes state legislatures an offer they can't refuse: Avoid all the utterly impossible nonsense we have prescribed by simply permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole," Scalia wrote.(c)2016 McClatchy Washington Bureau
In what seems a waterfall release of free services, Microsoft Philanthropies has revealed intentions to donate $1 billion in cloud tools to universities and nonprofits.The word comes from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who on Jan. 19 lauded the action as a new and vital resource for social and economic change. The resources are calculated to touch more than 70,000 organizations in a swift three-year span, with as much as $350 million donated in 2016. The reasoning, Nadella writes in a company blog post , is to confront an emerging digital divide, one rooted in the ecosystem of advanced technologies like predictive analytics and big data. Many nonprofits and research groups struggle to afford the tools, and Nadella said an intervention was the only foreseeable remedy.Philanthropy is a start, Nadella said, but to truly harness the public cloud for public good, businesses, governments and NGOs must come together with a shared vision and relentless passion to improve the human condition and drive new growth equally.Notwithstanding charitable ambitions, the donation may have financial benefits as it seeds and secures new academic and nonprofit customers in a try-before-you-buy experience. Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services are all embroiled in a battle to be the leader in cloud services, and generating greater adoption may start with such an investment.But whatever the results, Nadella  whos nearing the two-year mark as Microsofts CEO  has directed staff to open up the Microsoft Azure Cloud so organizations can benefit from company data centers around the world for computing, storage and app development. Atop these offerings, the measure will furnish a host of CRM, business intelligence and predictive analytics tools while answering a few connectivity challenges.Microsoft has committed itself to a last-mile broadband initiative to spread the digital reach of its cloud services in unconnected communities. Specifics are vague on this front; however, a company release did mention public-private partnerships with governments and went as far to enumerate expectations of 20 such projects in 15 countries by the middle of 2017.For tangible examples of what results might look like, Microsoft pointed to its partnership with the Sao Paulo Research Foundation's Biodiversity Research Program. The foundation used its cloud technologies  coupled with 700 wireless sensors  to study impacts of climate change on communities supported by rainforests. Similarly, in Botswana, Microsoft has collaborated with various health and innovation groups to manage digital health records and deliver specialized medicines.
Virtually everyone who follows cities has come to the same basic conclusion: somehow, theyre going to be completely transformed by self-driving vehicles.Of course, we dont know how, exactly, that will happen. Maybe the technology will render transit moot. Maybe it will reduce congestion and slow down the push for roadway expansions. Or maybe it will drastically reduce car ownership.But one group of people who appears to be slow preparing for the implications of self-driving vehicles  ironically enough  are the planners who will be charged with figuring out how to implement them. A new paper in thesays almost all major metropolitan planning organizations have failed to include self-driving vehicles in their long-transportation plans.Just one of the countrys 25 largest metropolitan planning organizations even mentions driverless vehicles in its most recent plan, according to research by Erick Guerra, an assistant city planning professor at University of Pennsylvania. Guerras examination was based on plans in place in spring 2014.And the one that did  Philadelphias Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission  only made a reference to the technology in a sidebar highlighting the uncertainty around it.The implications of the failure of these organizations to plan for the technology could be huge, Guerra writes.Unfortunately, the extent and direction self-driving cars impacts, particularly if transformative, are unlikely to be fully understood until they have already started to happen, Guerra said in his paper.Metropolitan planning organizations, or MPOs, are federally mandated policymaking organizations made of representatives from local governments. Theyre charged with planning regional transportation priorities, and part of that work involves creating long-range plans every four years. But Guerra argues MPOs may be shirking their duties, since MPOs (especially those serving the largest cities) have both the staff and the mandate to consider the implications of driverless cars.Essentially, MPOs seem torn between the pressure of conducting planning using the best information available today and the need to conduct long-term planning for a technology that is still relatively nascent. Guerra interviewed 15 MPO planners and granted them anonymity to get more candid insight into why they arent planning for driverless cars.One of the bigger challenges we have is [to predict] how will autonomous vehicles change travel behavior, and I have no idea, one of them told Guerra.A lot of times our planning processes are more reactionary [sic] than anticipatory, another said.Guerra writes that MPOs are unsure how to plan for the technology and seem frustrated that existing reserach doesnt offer much actionable information on how to prepare for it. But that may be problematic if the technology reaches the market soon.The good news is that planners arent entirely ignoring driverless vehicles. The San Francisco, Seattle, and Atlanta regions have all started testing various driverless vehicle scenarios into their planning efforts. Guerra found just about all the planners he spoke with were extremely knowledgable about the technology and believed self-driving vehicles would have significant impacts on travel behavior, safety, and infrastructure, among other areas.And all but a few interviewees said some of their planning efforts, such as focus groups or meetings with experts, explored the implications of autonomous vehicles. But that work isnt reflected in their official, long-range planning documents.Interestingly, todays planners arent that unique from their forefathers. In the early 20th century, planners were slow to incorporate automobiles  the kind with human drivers  into transportation and city planning efforts.Guerra argues that MPOs that want to get ahead of the issue should consider developing plans for self-driving vehicles outside of the more rigid, federally-mandated planning process.But for now, some of them still seem confused about how, exactly, to do that. Yes, theres a discussion [about incorporating autonomous vehicles into planning efforts at our MPO], one planner told Guerra. We dont know what the hell to do about it. Its like pondering the imponderable.
Increased charges

FCC vote

Getting connected

Frenetic tapping

Internet a right

(TNS) -- After the library has closed and most students have gone, Bridgid Skiba lingers, finishing her homework with the wireless Internet still leaking through the buildings shuttered doors.Its one of several creative solutions Skiba, a student at City College of San Francisco, has devised to finish assignments in spite of her limited access to the Web. She leans heavily on her smartphone for research or spends hours on the campus and in libraries around the city.Skiba is one of an estimated 60 million Americans who lack Internet access at home.On Thursday, she participated in a Twitter town hall  an organized online conversation about a singular topic that united comments from people around the country under the hashtag #RightToConnect.She told participants how her grades suffer when she cant complete her assignments or participate in required online discussions with her teachers and classmates.It was (an) enlightening experience the first time I went online, Skiba tweeted. It was as if I had finally caught up to the world.More Americans than ever rely solely on their phones for online access, according to the Pew Research Center. But being smartphone reliant poses many challenges.People who connect to the Internet using only their phones are more likely than others to hit data caps that, in turn, limit how much they can do online, or the added charges could make the phones prohibitively expensive, according to Pew.Of those who do not have broadband Internet service at home, nearly half cited cost as a reason, and most are people of color or from low-income households.Nearly half the students surveyed recently by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation were unable to complete a homework assignment because they lacked Internet access.In research and policy, you often hear the phrase willingness to pay, like what would people be willing to pay for Internet access, said Colin Rhinesmith, an assistant professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma who has done significant research on the digital divide. But its not about a willingness to pay, its an ability to pay. For a lot of people in this country, the choice really is between Internet and food for the week.Amid mounting pressure from politicians and activists, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote as soon as next month to update a program designed to provide low-cost access to phones for people who qualify.A $1.6 billion government program known as Lifeline, established in 1985, provides a monthly subsidy to 13 million eligible families to underwrite phone lines. In 2005, the program expanded to include mobile phones.In Thursdays conversation, several activists and government officials called for the expansion of Lifeline to also include broadband Internet service.Several nonprofit organizations throughout the country help connect those in need with computers, smartphones and Internet service, but when asked what low-income people can do to immediately improve their connectivity, the panel  which consisted of FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Van Jones, president and co-founder of DreamCorps and #YesWeCode  had no immediate answers.One suggestion, from the United Church of Christs media justice ministry, was to reach out to librarians, local advocacy groups or political representatives.The Center for Media Justices downtown Oakland headquarters was ground zero for this digital discussion  though it was audibly quiet. Gathered around a long wood table in the middle of a windowed room sat three people: spokeswoman Chinyere Tutashinda, standup comic Kamau Bell and Ana Montes, the organizing director of The Utility Reform Network. On a huge screen at the end of the room, Steven Renderos, the centers senior campaign manager, was seen by video conference from Los Angeles.Bell, charged with moderating the discussion, launched questions into the ether from his keyboard, announcing every new topic with a celebratory, Boom!But mostly, the room was quiet, punctured by the frenetic tapping of keystrokes.Skiba was one of five individuals without at-home Internet access who participated in Thursdays conversation. Organizations hosted the participants at offices in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas and Minnesota to provide access to Twitter.It makes absolutely no sense to me to think of the Internet of being anything but a right in this day and age, Bell said after the Twitter talk had wrapped. All of us on the Internet know how important it to us and to our lives whether its for just really ridiculous reasons or really key reasons. And I knew that everyone wasnt on the Internet, but I didnt realize how serious that is for their day to day lives.That, organizers said, was exactly the point of hosting a chat about the digital divide on a digital platform.People who use Twitter every day, who can participate in this town hall, really take the Internet for granted, Tutashinda said. Its a great way to bring the stories and experiences of people who dont have Internet at home to those who otherwise wouldnt hear it.
(TNS) -- A bipartisan group of Wyoming legislators has put forth a bill that would change the way the state treats cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin.House Bill 26 would amend the Wyoming Money Transmitter Act to define digital currency as a permissive investment. That means cryptocurrencies would be treated the same as U.S. dollars, Euros or any other currency when dealing with monetary transfers.The bills main sponsor is Rep. Tyler Lindholm, R-Sundance. Lindholm said the best way to explain what the bill would do is to consider the current rules for transferring money using a company like Western Union.If I was going to send you $100 via Western Union, the Wyoming Money Transmitter Act requires Western Union to have $100 in cash reserves, so they have a backup if they lose my money somewhere along the way, Lindholm said.But what if you wanted to buy something using a service like PayPal, and you wanted to pay with Bitcoin instead of dollars? Under the states current interpretation of the law, PayPal would need to have the corresponding amount of Bitcoin in reserves, in addition to dollars.In other words, if you wanted to buy $100 worth of product in Bitcoin, the company making the transaction would need $200 in reserves to cover the transaction  half in Bitcoin, half in dollars.With Bitcoins, theyve got to do double what anybody else does, Lindholm said. And for that reason, several institutions have refused to do business in the state of Wyoming.Bitcoin is the most prominent cryptocurrency, but there actually are more than 650 such currencies available for trade in online markets. Lindholm describes them as a sort of hybrid between fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and precious metals like gold or platinum.Like fiat currencies, Bitcoins and other digital currencies base their value on trust in the system instead of any specific backing commodity. But like precious metals, Bitcoins are finite; there is an upper limit to the number of Bitcoins that can ever be produced.Bitcoins are created using a decentralized process called mining, where individuals process transactions and secure the decentralized Bitcoin network using specialized computer hardware. In exchange for that service, they collect new Bitcoins, or fractions of new Bitcoins.In terms of the mathematics behind it, its absolutely fascinating, said Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, one of HB 26s co-sponsors. Its certainly not a system I would have 100 percent confidence in  I dont want all my money in Bitcoin, thats for sure  but from a policy standpoint, for the state of Wyoming to treat it differently than any other currency holds it back.Despite wide swings in value, Bitcoin has seen increased usage in online transactions. And for that reason, Rothfuss and the other co-sponsors of HB 26 believe it and other cryptocurrencies deserve a fair shot in the Equality State.The legislation were providing doesnt do an awful lot other than try to provide that level playing field, Rothfuss said. In my view, it needs to be treated the same as a ruble or a Euro, or any other currency.Lindholm said HB 26 makes good business sense, given that the current state law has already caused some Bitcoin-friendly businesses to pull out of Wyoming.Thats actually how I found out about it; I was going through my Facebook feed and a friend from Casper brought it up, Lindholm said. A business called Coinbase let them know they could no longer operate in the state because of the regulations.Lindholm concedes that the nature of Bitcoin may make it difficult to explain to fellow legislators who are unfamiliar with it. But hes hopeful he can get HB 26 past the two-thirds majority threshold needed for successful introduction in the House of Representatives in a budget session.Ive got two minutes to introduce the bill for the introductory vote, but essentially this is about keeping equal opportunities between currencies, Lindholm said. A big reason for me pushing this bill is that we dont want to run businesses, especially emerging technologies, out of Wyoming.












First of all, before you all call me a tease again, Frostig had three dominant Genetic marker series that revealed themselves. His results were not inconclusive.





There, are you satisfied? Heh heh...





*sigh*





Okay fine. If you don't want to know what I have to say you can look up the results - they are right after the first picture of Frostig, okay?









-But for you goodly patient ones-







Let me explain the Science behind all of this in a feral way!





Up to a certain point, Science had incomplete Databases of Genetic markers for all breeds of horses. So people who might say breed type cannot be revealed in genetic testing aren't exactly wrong. There are still many breeds that have not had their Genetic Markers researched thoroughly to add to the Database.





That is changing.





There has been a great advancement in the last five years of Equine genetics. These techniques are now being used to decipher Breed Genetic Markers in both Wild Horse herds and Breed registries across the world.





Here are just a few scientific papers from the last 5 years to back that evidence up -





T

he Arabian and Thoroughbred, 2011





T

he Welsh Pony/Cob, 2015









The Mustang & Burros, 2013

















Testing Microchrondial DNA is actually easier and more cost effective than

blood typing. That is why this type of testing is becoming available for not just Horses, but for people, canines, and other species.













Basically, what I received back from Texas A&M

lab was a check-off Breed Sheet with 51 Breed Identifiers listed (with Frostig's three checked off) and a sheet with his general Genetic Markers w/Alleles. This information only determines Ancestral DNA as a whole - the Genetic Markers checked off closely "resemble" the Genetic Markers for the Breed- ones that have already been scientifically identified. The key word is "resemble".





Probabilities, remember?

This Science is still in its spawning stages. Hopefully, in the future, they will have all horse breeds genetically identified, and a viable indicator for Breed specific.





I gave Texas A&M permission to use Frostig's

Microchrondial

DNA for research, as he is an Adobe Town Mustang (Wyoming). Dr. E. Gus Cothran was one of the first to pull breed specific Genetic Markers off of the wild horse herds in the USA for the US government; Texas A&M

has one of the World's

largest databases and has worked with governments all over the world in determining Genetics of wild horses. I trust the Science behind this testing and am very excited to see where Equine Genetic testing is headed in the future.





So are you ready for the results yet?





HERE WE GO!













Frostig's Genetic Markers closely resemble

these Breed's Genetic Markers in this order-









1) Welsh pony (origination U.K.)









2) Selle Francais (origination France)





3) Morgan (origination U.S.A.)









WOW! Right? He's a Welsh Sporthorse in the making!





So what does this really mean?

Since there was not a breed registry in the USA until 1907 for Welsh ponies (although some were brought over in the 1880's), and Selle Francais didn't have an official American breed registry until the 1990's, those genetic markers are fairly recent for placement in Wyoming where Frostig is from. Morgans have been around since the early 1800's but historically started on the East coast of the USA. Since he has no Spanish related markers (the oldest ones for North America), his ancestors most likely were not wandering around Wyoming 200 years ago. HOWEVER someone else in his herd

may have ancestors with these specific genetic markers; but not Frostig.





An interesting note- when researching the breed, "Selle Francais" I also found two others in the USA who tested their Mustang with Texas A&M. B oth had "Selle Francais" listed in their Genetic Markers. Coincidentally, these Mustangs were conceived in the Herd Management Areas (HMA) next to Frostig's HMA in Wyoming. With that kind of information, I could conclude there was a Selle Francais purposefully put into that area at some point, and we lucky ones have reaped the genetic benefits :)





Really, though,

It's kind of like winning the Sporthorse lottery;

I have a Mustang Welsh Sporthorse!

yes!

















So let's go a little further into the West's equine history, shall we?





Where I live, Montana, there are many historical accounts of people moving out West to take advantage of a marketing opportunity in the late 1800's - early 1900's. It wasn't just Gold that brought people out here.

What was the marketing opportunity?





In World War I (1914-1918) an estimated Six MILLION cavalry horses served in battle. Six Million horses. And of that number, close to a Million USA horses were sent to War overseas. That meant there was a need in the United States to provide "trained" horses to the US and the British government for war.





One Million USA horses.

Think about it. That is a lot of horses. Where could you find that large of an amount of horses in such a short time frame?





Well, during the Homestead Act of 1862, not only could you homestead 160 acres in the West to claim free land, there was money to be made rounding up roaming horses on unclaimed lands to train and sell to buyers. Not only is it written in Montana and Wyoming history, we even have photographic evidence.









Evelyn Cameron, a famous early photographer, and her Husband, Ewen, a biologist, both British Aristocrats, specifically arrived at Terry, Montana from England to raise polo ponies during the late 1800's. With her photography skills, she documented the area's surrounding families whose livelihoods depended on training and selling horses for cavalry use, when farming wasn't working out due to drought and poor soil conditions. Her photography for the era is amazing.









And just south of Montana's border, in Wyoming, Oliver Henry Wallop, the son of an English Earl, went into partnership with a Scot named Malcolm Moncrieffe, son of a Baronet. Together they sold over Twenty Thousand horses to the British for the Boer war (1899-1902). But in the meanwhile, they gave back to the horse community, breeding for better horses- and polo ponies.









Then there were the Chappel Brothers from England. They collected and sold over a hundred seventeen thousand horses in the USA to the WWI cause. But when the War was over and the market had dropped, they were left with many horses. With the new fancy gasoline engines taking over for horsepower in Chicago, they decided to take advantage of the situation and open a cannery in Illinois to market a new idea - canned Dog food - Ken-L Rations, using horse meat. But then they needed even more horses. Opening up an Equine collection facility in Miles City, Montana took care of that problem.









So as you can see, there were many that took advantage of these horses in the West during that time period, depleting the numbers roaming the range.

But where did all these horses come from in the first place?









Based on Genetic Markers, some Mustangs really do have a Spanish Breed background from when their ancestors were brought over in the 1500's and left behind to multiply in the Americas. But for the majority, as people migrated into the West from the 1700's on, there are historical accounts of new breeds of horses being introduced from nearby ranches and government breeding programs.





In order to save money in a harsh climate, Ranchers would let their horses run in the winter out on the range, the unclaimed land. They would round them up in the Spring for them to go back to work or be sold for profit. Those horses who could not work, or be sold due to age (both young and old), were left out on the range. And the US Government during the wars actually supplemented herds by introducing good stock to increase healthier herds.









So these free-ranging horses multiplied, breaking off into smaller bands. These smaller bands multiplied for the good, though- herd health and genetics count on these naturally selected separations. However, sometimes new "blood" was introduced to breed a taller horse, or a sturdier horse etc., to make sure herds did not become inbred (poor genetics).





This system worked, for the most part, that is until more people began to migrate out West in larger numbers.













When the Homestead Act came about, people homesteaded by claiming rangeland; they captured horses to sell to the British Government first, then both US and British. This depleted the herd numbers. When the WWI was over, these same people ranched, they farmed, they started new businesses that either used wild horses for pet food, some ranch use, rodeo bucking stock... or needed no horses at all.





Then the day came when all land was claimed; the range was now filled.





And the horses left behind that survived all this change? They are still managed today by the Bureau Land Management (BLM) in specifically located HMA's out West according to US government law.





They exist. They are called Mustangs.

And they are the last of the Free horses.





















Today, with land a precious commodity, the determination of what species stays and who goes is in a delicate balancing act in the West. As with all things, there is politics involved as Science evolves. It will be interesting to see what the conclusion is when it comes to the future management of Mustangs in the USA.









I will not go further into this discussion because it is a sensitive one; everyone has an opinion, and they should. For me, I do know the final answer should be determined by everyone's actions, not just the government.









I would suggest to those who are able, to consider adopting a Mustang from the BLM. They truly are purposeful horses with some great genetics. The ones who can no longer be in an HMA due to land restraints need a home.

Why should we devalue these horses for a system we, us humans, created?

















My horse is a Mustang; I am very proud of who he is.









But thank you Science-

photo by David King





because my Frostig is basically a handsome Welsh Sporthorse-

















with a badass tattoo.

















We have plans, together, me and this boy.









~









(Keep an eye out for post part three!)









~













-For references and further reading-









Adopt a BLM Mustang









Horses in WWI





















Evelyn Cameron & her photography-













Her life in her own penmanship- diaries-













Horses in the West - Also includes information about selling horses to the British, US Governments for War, Remount Service (many old photos)













Selle Francais, North America













Welsh Pony/Cob Society













American Morgan Horse Society













Genetics for Dummies













Genetics for Others













Equine Genetics for Smarty pants
























Two former F1 drivers have lamented the current state of the sport.

1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve and F1 veteran Gerhard Berger think changes at the very heart of formula one are now necessary.

"F1 tries to be everything," Villeneuve, now a Formula E driver, told CNN.

"And that's wrong. It tries to be an endurance car - it's some form of hybrid - and hybrid technology weighs around 100 kilos and that's four seconds a lap of weight.

"It's not F1, it's not extreme, it doesn't make sense," the French Canadian declared.

"F1 has to be out there, extreme, unattainable, stupid, crazy -- that's what it's always been. It's a laboratory where the sky's the limit.

"There are a lot of things that are making F1 a lot less appealing to the public. A bunch of things like DRS," said Villeneuve, now 44.

He concludes that F1 needs to "go back to its roots", and Austrian Berger agrees.

"Today," said the former McLaren and Ferrari driver, "the viewer is confronted with a bunch of rules and words that he does not understand.

"Every Sunday there is something new," Berger told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport.

"DRS, KERS, token, ultra-soft tyres ... no one in the world knows what a 'token' is. But formula one talks about it every day.

"People are at work all week and for two hours they want to be entertained with a grand prix. So if Bernie (Ecclestone) and Jean (Todt) are not able to keep this nonsense from the spectators, they must not be surprised when no one is interested anymore," Berger charged.

The 56-year-old said that, to solve the problem, F1 needs someone to stand up and take clear control of the sport.

"In reality I sometimes fall asleep in front of the television now," said Berger. "Because after one lap you know who will win the race.

"What it needs is a neutral body who represents the fans and the sport, and takes the final decisions. In these democratic votes by the teams, there are way too many bad compromises," he insisted.

"If Bernie and Jean have sold their power, they need someone capable and financially independent, with the sport in his blood and the necessary power to direct from above.

"Then everyone can decide if they want to be in or not. That was the old system," said Berger, "and it worked. That's what we have to go back to."

(GMM)
Pirelli secretly altered the construction of its F1 tyres in preparation for 2016.

That is the claim of the British magazine F1 Racing, reporting that the addition of the 'ultra soft' compound is not the only change being introduced by the sport's official supplier for the new season.

The report said "major changes" have also been made to the actual construction of the 2016 tyre.

It was reportedly tested at the end-of-season test in Abu Dhabi last November, where representatives of the media was controversially barred from attending.

Not only that, even the teams "were not made aware of the change until after the test", F1 Racing revealed.

The report said the new compound has an "under-tread layer that is intended to create a pronounced drop in performance as tyre wear reaches 70 per cent."

Upon entering F1 in Pirelli, the Italian marque designed tyres that degraded aggressively, in order to spice up the show.

But following criticism and some controversies, including multiple tyre failures, Pirelli's more recent products have been comparatively conservative.

F1 Racing said: "The under-tread layer should stimulate scenarios similar to those in the 2011-2012 season, but with reduced likelihood of the tyres suffering delaminations or punctures".

(GMM)
Organisers of the inaugural grand prix in Azerbaijan have hit back at reports that the June race is in doubt.

Reports have suggested that due to the tumbling price of oil, local officials are coming under pressure to scrap expensive events like the street race in Baku.

But Formula One Management (FOM) on Thursday released race start times for the 2016 season, confirming a 'twilight' green light at 6pm for the Azerbaijan race.

And the Baku City Circuit issued a statement to address media speculation that the oil and currency (Manat) problems have moved a cloud above the new European grand prix.

"The devaluation of the Manat will have no impact with regards to the staging of the first ever formula one race in Azerbaijan," it reads.

"When the budget for the grand prix of Europe was approved, it was initially calculated in US dollars. As a result, we are not expecting any changes to the current event budget," the Baku race organisers added.

The statement admitted to some "concerns" about the oil and currency situation, but explained that the "overall economic impact" of hosting F1 is still worth the cost.

(GMM)
Monza race organisers and Bernie Ecclestone are still negotiating over the fee for a new Italian grand prix contract.

Recently, it appeared the risk the historic race could fall off the calendar had subsided, after a controversial law preventing the Italian automobile club (Aci) from contributing funds was tweaked.

But Italy's Autosprint now reports that the organisers and F1 supremo Ecclestone are still negotiating the size of the annual race fee.

Aci chief Angelo Sticchi Damiani said a deal is "very close to a conclusion and signing, although we still have to agree on some details".

Reportedly, what was being offered by the Italians is about $20 million per year, while Ecclestone is demanding $28m -- the same as the deal for the Austrian grand prix.

Sticchi Damiani is quoted by Italpress: "Ecclestone has called for $28 million, a figure much higher than we are paying but much lower than other race tracks.

"Baku, for example, will pay about $150 million over three years," he revealed.

(GMM)
Sauber can still have a good 2016 even though the debut of the new car is delayed.

That is the view of Swedish driver Marcus Ericsson, who nonetheless admitted that not getting to drive the C35 until the second and final test in March is "not ideal".

"But we can still get some work done (at the first test)," he told the Swedish newspaper Teknikens Varld, "to gather data from the tyres and also test some new parts and settings.

"Ideally you would have the new car from the first test but there is not so much we can do about that now," Ericsson added.

One positive aspect for Sauber is that engine partner Ferrari is said to have improved its power unit for 2016, and - unlike Toro Rosso - Sauber will be running it.

"I don't know much more than what we have all been reading," said Ericsson, "but I have heard that the Ferrari engineers are very satisfied with the numbers they are seeing so far."

However, as the 2016 engine is reportedly significantly different in its architecture, Sauber cannot test it until the new C35 is up and running.

Ericsson commented: "Hopefully Ferrari and Haas will be able to sort out any teething trouble, and Ferrari is very good with its reliability anyway, so I'm not particularly worried."

(GMM)
Earlier this month, China-based EV maker BAIC EV, opened a new R&D center in Detroit, Michigan, which will help the company evaluate overseas market demand, obtain core EV technology, build on brand influence, and eventually provide support for their international layout. This new R&D center, the second for the company in the United States, followed a successful debut of BAIC EVs i-link Intelligent & Connected System (US version), the first Chinese system to apply 4G technology to the interaction between telematics and a cloud platform.

The Detroit R&D Center will work closely with BAICs other centers in Silicon Valley and Aachen, Germany, and integrate resources in battery, motor, and vehicle development and design. It will work to develop advanced technologies in motor drives, power electronics and intelligent control.

In addition, the center will introduce advanced technologies and development to China, as well as bring Chinese EV products to the world with the aid of local resources.

BAIC said it would run the Detroit R&D Center relatively independently to ensure that the technologies developed are the most advanced in order to become a world-class research center of EV technology and products.

The i-link is the first system in China equipped with voice identification technology, an information recreational system, and a unified ultra-large information board in the cabin. It is also tailored for digitalized driving information system, wireless charging equipment for mobile phones, and enables drivers to access services such as remote inquiry, examination, control and early warning systems.
On the banks of an ancient lagoon in Kenya, researchers have found evidence of what is thought to be the oldest massacre involving hunter-gatherers.

The skeletal remains of 12 adult victims discovered in Nataruk, near Lake Turkana, tell a grim story of merciless violence by one group of hunter-gatherers against another about 10,000 years ago.

Ten of the skeletons show clear signs of violent trauma, including club and arrow wounds to the head, ribs, knees, hands and neck, according to a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

One skeleton was found with what appears to be an obsidian arrow still lodged in its skull; another had an arrow in its chest.

Two of the skeletons  those of an older man and a woman who was at least six months pregnant  showed no evidence of lethal injury. But researchers say it is possible they suffered violent deaths as well.

Fatal arrow wounds to the abdomen, for example, dont necessarily leave skeletal lesions.

Marta Mirazon Lahr, a human evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge who helped uncover the grisly scene, said it suggests warlike behavior goes back further in human history than was previously thought.

Most scholars have considered that warfare emerged as a result of ownership of land, farming and more complex political systems, she said. Our findings show that this hypothesis is incorrect, and that intergroup conflict had a much longer history.

Evidence of warfare is well preserved among settled, sedentary communities  either among themselves, or between them and hunter-gatherers they may have encountered. But until now, there was no archaeological record of armed conflict between early nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, Lahr said.

There have been signs of human violence that predate the Nataruk find, however. For example, human remains discovered at the Qadan graveyard at Jebel Sahaba, Sudan, go back 12,000 to 14,000 years ago and show clear signs of violence. But the fact that the victims were buried suggests they were part of a more sedentary society.

There have also been isolated examples of violent trauma not far from Nataruk, but whether that was a result of intergroup fighting is unclear.

That is what is unique and important about this paper, said Kim Hill, an anthropologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study. There is little doubt that this represents intergroup warfare.

The prehistoric carnage reported in the paper occurred about a mile from the shores of Lake Turkana, which at the time provided a fertile environment for many plants and animals. The fossil record suggests the area was brimming with life, including elephants, hippos, rhinos, zebras, warthogs, gazelles and millions of fish  as well as lions, hyenas and wild dogs.

The edge of the lake must have been an amazing place to live  but also dangerous, Lahr said. We have also found several fragments of human fossils at other sites with evidence of having been eaten by carnivores.

The researchers believe the victims of the massacre were a small traveling band of hunter-gatherers who stopped by a lagoon to hunt or fish.

The position of the skeletons suggests that the victims hands were bound at the time of their death. Since their killers wielded weapons that are not associated with hunting and fishing, the researchers believe the attack was planned.

It is impossible to know how big the group of assailants might have been, but Lahr said it was probably larger than that of the victims.

The most important thing in determining whether it is worth attacking or not is simply the numbers, she said.

There is no evidence that graves were dug for the victims, and the haphazard position of their bodies suggests they were not moved after their deaths.

Despite the amount of forensic evidence uncovered at the site, it already seems clear that the discovery will not put to rest the raging debate among anthropologists over whether hunter-gatherers engaged in warfare.

Douglas Fry, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggested the abundant resources near Lake Turkana made it possible for the hunter-gatherers who lived there to enjoy some aspects of a sedentary existence, including food storage and more social complexity. These, he argues, lead to warlike tendencies.

My suspicion is that the finds described by Dr. Lahr and her colleagues reflect the increased intergroup conflicts that become possible  even likely  during a pre-agricultural revolution that ushered in a host of social changes, said Fry, who wasnt involved in the Nature study.

Hill saw the paper as offering further evidence that warfare among hunter-gatherer societies probably occurred quite frequently as a way to gain resources.

In short, theory and common sense suggests that people will kill when they can get away with it and when there is something to gain, he said. Hence, intergroup violence has probably been part of Hominin natural history for a long time.

Lahr agreed.

Nataruk is extraordinary for having preserved what was probably not an unusual event in the lives of hunter-gatherers at the time, she said. But we should also not forget that humans, uniquely in the animal world, are also capable of extraordinary acts of altruism, compassion and caring. Clearly both are part of our nature.


The more paranoid among Greenwich residents might be worried when they literally see a black helicopter flying over town. But fear not, the flights are merely an attempt by Eversource Energy to check on the status of the transmission lines.

This week Eversource will be flying over Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, Norwalk and Westport with high-resolution cameras to take images of its transmission lines. The majority of the work was expected to happen in town on Monday.

The helicopter is going to be following along the transmission line headed into the Cos Cob Substation, Frank Poirot, spokesman for Eversource Energy, said on Monday. People who are in the train stations and riding Metro-North are going to see it and some of them might have questions about whats going on. Its just us taking some images of the equipment.

Poirot said the helicopter will travel along the line over Interstate 95 and the Metro-North tracks.

According to the utility, the photographs collected during the helicopter flights will help build a more detailed record of structures, lines and other electrical equipment which will increase the efficiency of maintaining the electric system in Connecticut.

Poirot said the poles supporting the lines are typically 75 to 110 feet high and the helicopter will be flying very close to them.

This does tend to get a lot of attention, Poirot said. Helicopters are not usually flying this low and this is not something people are going to see every day.

The flights will take place from 7 a.m. to dusk, weather permitting. The helicopter will have a visible registration number of N175JL.

According to Poirot, the helicopters evaluation of Greenwich could carry over to Tuesday. It was scheduled to move west from Stamford into Greenwich over the course of the Cos Cob line Monday and then later in the week go east into Westport.

Poirot said the evaluation is part of a three-year project for Eversource to look at its more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines throughout the state. This is the first year of the project; approximately 500 miles will be covered each year.

Greenwich Police Public Information Officer Lt. Kraig Gray said calls were coming in Monday from concerned residents but the department was assuring them it was nothing to be worried about.

Theres nothing nefarious going on here, Gray said. Its just a regular operation.

kborsuk@scni.com
Momofuku Nishis ceci e pepe. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Why do chefs love cacio e pepe, that ancient alchemy of sharp cheese, black pepper, olive oil, and pasta plus cooking water? It has all the elements that make something taste good, says Dave Chang, better known for interpretive ramen than cucina povera. Spice, salt, umami, dairy, and texture. Its in the pantheon of perfect dishes. You cannot make cacio e pepe better.

Of course, that hasnt stopped Chang and Josh Pinsky, the chef of Momofuku Nishi, from trying: Their unorthodox take replaces the traditional Pecorino Romano with a more Changian form of umami, a creamy, cheesy, proprietary paste made from fermented chickpeas (thus the dishs name, ceci e pepe). The result is remarkably true to form, and only the latest in a surge of foods that treat cacio e pepe as a touchstone rather than an inviolable recipe. Youll still find classic renditions all over town, of course.

But youll also find the flavor profile applied to more unusual canvases: the communion-wafer-like hostino that begins a meal at Del Posto; softly scrambled eggs at Maialino; frittelle at Missy Robbinss new Lilia; pizza at Otto; and arancini at Elis Essentials Wine Bar. Starchy sides take well to this treatment, be they orzo at the new downtown steakhouse Quality Eats, or house-milled polenta at Hearth, whose owner, Marco Canora, also provides a recipe for cacio e pepe popcorn in his cookbook A Good Food Day. And then theres the modernist wine bar Mulino a Vino, whose kitchen makes savory doughnuts out of spaghetti and fills them with cheesy, peppery cream. Can Cacio e Pepe Doritos be far behind?

*This article appears in the January 25, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
The doomed Upper East Side location. Photo: Starbucks

Starbucks is finally ready to write its Teavana tea bar experiment off as a loss. In 2012, the chain forked over $620 million in cash for the tea line, and Howard Schultz boasted the acquisition presented a $90 billion global market opportunity.

Now the company says the stores havent lived up to expectations, so its time to say good bye: New York Citys three Teavana locations will become plain old Starbucks by the end of April, and the one in Beverly Hills will just close. Seattles location will keep operating, although thats not too surprising since the chain always runs a handful of experimental cafes on its home turf. Anyone still interested in the Teavana tea experience will have to visit one of the 350 retail stores.

Starbuckss new earnings report was called gangbusters by some, but the ongoing struggles with its subsidiary brands are real, at least in America. Last year, the chain also pulled the plug on the 23 standalone stores run by La Boulange, the celebrated San Francisco bakery it bought for $100 million. Curiously, Starbucks earlier this month announced Teavana would debut in India, which Starbucks is describing as the latest major, major business opportunity.

In short, Americans seem to hold a place for exotic teas, just not the Starbucks kind. Its tins of oolong and matcha were apparently something not even Oprah could get Americans to care about, despite her generous offer of selfies.
Huawei's Honor 5X is headed to the US before the end of January, as you may know. But the affordable handset announced in November is also on its way to the UK and Continental Europe as it turns out.

The Chinese company has already listed the device on Vmall, its European online store. No pricing information has been revealed so far, but a countdown timer that's attached to the listing does reveal the launch date for the Honor 5X in Europe: February 4.

If you enter your email on that page, Huawei will give you a promo code taking 20, 20, or CHF 20 (depending on your location) off the handset's price - and if you do grab an Honor 5X then you'll also get another promo code shaving 10, 10, or CHF 10 off your next order.

Huawei's online store is currently available in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland. So if you live in one of these countries you'll soon be able to order one straight from its maker.

The Honor 5X comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, a 5 MP selfie snapper, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 chipset (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core CPU), 2 or 3GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, and a 3,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, but an update to Marshmallow has been promised for the future.

Thanks for the tip, Matt!




Haiti - Politic : Fanmi Lavalas continues to support all mobilisations





Following the decision of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to postpone indefinitely the 2nd round of elections for security reasons https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16394-haiti-flash-elections-of-january-24-are-canceled-update-7h10-pm.html , in a note Fanmi Lavalas applauded the victory of the people and calls for maintaining the mobilization to continue the fight until the final victory.



"[...] Fanmi Lavalas bends very low at the courage and dignity of the Haitian people, who managed to slow this infernal electoral coup. Congratulations for this victory ! We will never stop to mobilize and show our commitment for a true democracy in the country, and this was done once again after their failure of December 27 and January 17, the key elements of the electoral coup, the Provisional Electoral Council and the power Tet Kale and the international community (Core Group) back on the January 24, 2016.



[...] Lavalas presented his sympathy to all the victims, their families and friends.



But the battle is not over. The electoral coup is not finished. Right now, it is the same coup that takes another form. he conspirators are trying to continue with a second round with the candidate of selection while the report of the Presidential Commission of Electoral Evaluation shows clear evidence of fraud and serious irregularities. This is the same massive fraud that Fanmi Lavalas had denounced after its visit to the tabulation center on 21 and 22 November 2015 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-15823-haiti-flash-verification-authorized-to-ctv.html





The Haitian people reject any classification 'tet chat' of CEP of Opont and of Martelly; it said that it can not be a continuation of the electoral process without there is results.



For this reason, Fanmi Lavalas continues to require an ndependent verification commission to provide the Haitian people the truth about the results of the polling day of 25 October and to allow the continuation of the electoral process. The formation of this Commission, its mandate and the agenda should be prepared in consultation with all sectors of the opposition. Fanmi Lavalas asks for the dismissal of Electoral Council of Opont.



Fanmi Lavalas will sit quickly with parties, political organizations, and all other sectors in the country to provide a response to the political crisis and prepare for the continuation of the electoral process in Haiti for a legitimate government that will work for the country to regain its sovereignty and dignity.



Fanmi Lavalas declares that the mobilization must not stop because the coup machine has not stopped yet: each neighborhood, each zone, each department take your responsibilities. Fanmi Lavalas continues to support all mobilizations across the country."



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - FLASH : Guy Philippe ready for armed struggle against the anarchists





Sunday, Guy Philippe, leader of the National Reconstruction Front (FRN), former police commissioner and head of the anti-Aristide uprising in 2004, called his supporters to resist to the "anarchists" of Port-au-Prince, which forced the cancellation of presidential elections.



"[...] Once again the Republic of Port-au-Prince dictated to the rest of the country what it wants, we know that in the last election there were some irregularities [...] but yet in a Republic where there are laws, rule of law [...] it is necessary that the law is respected. The law says that the only way to replace a President is is if a president resigns or if the President is in mental or physical disability, now he is not in these cases.



Everyone in the street talk of a transitional government [...] it is my duty to say that the country is in danger and it is my duty to make arrangements as responsible. I say, there are no transitional government that will help it, save it.



These are snowshoers, vagabonds, criminals who want to take power without legitimacy, legally I do not know how they will [...] but they will never have popular legitimacy, because the people that's not what it wants [...]



Senator Beauplan https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16393-haiti-news-electoral-zapping.html called for disobedience, I request disobedience to the disobedience and from February 7, we in the Grande-Anse we will not accept any order of an illegitimate and illegal government.



Illegal because there is no law that says what's coming. Illegitimate because the people do not recognize and do not want these people.





If the nature of things it is necessary to have a transitional government, we ask that each department has a person recognized and loved that makes part of this government [...] we will not let 5-6 people in Port-au-Prince to decide the province and the day that happens, I would ask all my supporters, all my soldiers to join me, I need their help, not to make the mess, we are revolutionary, I am a revolutionary but I am not an anarchist, we will not burn schools, vehicles but we will not take their diktat under pressure [...]



I ask elections, the people ask elections, quick elections, there are no transitional government that can come lead the Grande-Anse and the South if it is not the war they want, because I, Guy Philippe I will stand before them, I will not accept them, I will not receive orders of them [...] it is clear to everyone.



Ayiti pap peri !"



No one can say with certainty what support could get Guy Philippe in his call for mobilization, but it remains popular in his stronghold of South of Grande-Anse and the highly polarized situation in the country remains highly unstable and explosive.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Elections : The EU calls on all actors to show restraint and a sense of responsibility





Sunday, in a statement the High Representative Federica Mogherini, Vice Presidency of the European Union (EU) has taken note of the decision of the President of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to postpone, for security reasons, the second round of presidential elections scheduled January 24 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16394-haiti-flash-elections-of-january-24-are-canceled-update-7h10-pm.html



"Faced with the violence that occurred in the recent events and the worrying evolution of the situation, the EU calls on all actors involved to show restraint and a sense of responsibility in the interest of the country and its population.



It is now essential to stop any violence and that all stakeholders engage in a process to conduct the electoral process to an end by the organization of the second round of presidential. In this context, a new election timetable must be adopted quickly in order to guarantee the constitutional order and the continuity of the State and allow Haitian voters to fully exercise their political rights.



The EU reaffirms its support for transparent elections honest and democratic. Elections are a necessary step to allow citizens to freely choose their representatives and thus provide the country with legitimate institutions to meet as soon as the multiple socio-economic challenges.



The European Union, as a partner and friend of Haiti reaffirms its commitment to assist Haiti on the path of sustainable and inclusive economic development for which political stability is a prerequisite."



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Elections : Statement by State Department





Concerning the elections in Haiti, Mark C. Toner, Deputy Department Spokesperson declared "The United States supports all efforts aimed at finding consensual and constructive solutions that will conclude the electoral process expeditiously with an outcome that reflects the will of the Haitian people, consistent with Haitian law and the Haitian constitution.



Electoral intimidation, destruction of property, and violence are unacceptable, and run counter to Haitis democratic principles and laws as well as the values expressed in the Inter American Democratic Charter.



The United States, along with the international community in Haiti, urges the Government of Haiti, its institutions, and political actors alike to reject violence and take all steps necessary to pave the way for a peaceful election for a new president and the remaining Parliamentary seats as is constitutionally mandated.



As in the past, the United States is taking great interest in how elections in Haiti are unfolding and expects that persons responsible for organizing, financing, or participating in electoral intimidation and violence will be held accountable in accordance with Haitian law.



The United States reaffirms its support for credible, transparent, and secure elections that reflect the will of the Haitian people."


























Haiti - News : Electoral Zapping...





Supporters of Jovenel Moses took the streets

Past weekend in Cap Haitien, supporters of Jovenel Moisehave took the streets in the rain to say "Vive the elections, No the transition, NOthe coup, Vive the democracy" and calling for the second round of elections, to the respect for their vote. Similar situations have been reported in several other provincial cities including Fort Liberte, Port-de-Paix, Terrier...



France is concerned about the deteriorating situation in Haiti

Friday, January 22, the Spokesperson of Foreign Affairs of France asked about the situation in Haiti responded "France is closely following the situation in Haiti and is concerned about the degradation of the pre-election environment. It condemns the acts of violence which only exacerbate tensions and calls on all parties to exercise restraint. In the present circumstances, France hopes that the spirit of dialogue and cooperation prevails over confrontation."



Jovenel Moise condemns

"I condemn all anti-democratic acts that hurt the country today. Haiti's land is the only asset, our ancestors have bequeathed us. I ask the organization of the second round quickly. I will not back !" declared Jovenel Moise candidate under the banner of PHTK.



Pro and anti-Government in the streets

The opposition and Fanmi Lavalas held demonstrations on Sunday 24, a date that was scheduled for the second round of elections, to say yes to democracy, not the electoral coup. At Petion-ville, they are supporters of the power in place who took the streets to say to the opposition "[...] Attention, Jovenel Moise has its supporters too, we do not want to be violent but we remains mobilized for our President," another activist least moderate warned "if the opposition wants to withdraw Jovenel Moise of the race, they have to know it there will be a civil war in the country."



BRIDES has not realized poll between rounds

The Directorate of BRIDES informs the public in general and the Internet users in particular that given the ambiguous and unclear position of elections, it has not realized for the moment, a pre-election poll between the two rounds of presidential. It also informed that once the situation will be clarified between the protagonists, it will always be present to put at the disposal of the population of vote predictions most scientists as possible.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

09:40, 20 OCT 2022
Sexually suggestive comments or jokes

Intrusive questions about your private life or physical appearance

Inappropriate staring or leering

Unwelcome hugging, kissing or cornering or other types of inappropriate physical contact

Sexually explicit text messages, images, phone calls or emails

Raise the issue directly with the harasser and tell them that their behaviour is unwelcome

Talk to a colleague for support

Talk to a union delegate or contact a union office for advice

Contact a community legal centre or working womens centre for legal advice

Contact 1800 RESPECT for telephone and online counselling, information and referral

Make a complaint to your manager/employer

Contact the Australian Human Rights Commission or state and federal anti-discrimination agencies for information or to make a complaint.

enior lawyer accused of sending photos of his erect penis and sexually explicit text messages to a junior employee is facing a sexual harassment suit.The lawyer, who works at a Melbourne CBD firm, has been accused of harassing his female colleague over a seven month period in 2015.He allegedly bombarded her with sexually explicit text messages and became aggressive when she didnt respond to him, Fairfax Media reported.He supposedly sent messages saying, "I want to f--- you madly", and told her about his erect penis.The woman said that if she did not reply, he then became aggressive and abusive."Why are you f-----g ignoring me? I'm your boss. Show some respect," he allegedly said in another text.However the law firm, which has not been named, categorically denies the womans claims and maintains the text-message relationship was inappropriate, yet consensual.Maurice Blackburn principal Josh Bornstein is representing the woman, who is seeking damages and compensation."This is a case that has featured a barrage of sexually charged, explicit material being sent by a senior person to a younger employee, including X-rated photographs," Mr Bornstein was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald."It is behaviour that is at the extreme end of sexually harassing behaviour and it has no place in a law firm, footy club or any other workplace."Mr Bornstein described the alleged harassment as "relentless" and says workplaces need to do more to tackle the issue."We still have enormous work to do in getting organisations to confront wrongdoing  and where the wrongdoing is by someone highly regarded or valuable to the organisation, it is no excuse for failing to hold people to account," Mr Bornstein told the SMH.One in four women are sexually harassed in the workplace, according to the 2012 national sexual harassment survey.Sexual harassment is unlawful under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).The Australian Human Rights Commission lists some examples of behaviour that may be considered sexual harassment as:According to the Australian Human Rights Commission , sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour, which makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated.The Commission makes the point of saying sexual harassment is not interaction, flirtation or friendship which is mutual or consensual.A review published in the journal Aggression and Violent Behaviour says sexual harassment claims more victims than any other sexual crime.It affects a significant proportion of working women and it affects their personal lives and professional functioning, thus preventing them from advancing in the workplace, and affecting one of their fundamental human rights; the right to work with dignity, the review states.The alleged harassment has taken a heavy toll on his clients health, says Mr Bornstein.It is also alleged that the woman repeatedly complained to her practice manager, her alleged harasser, and one of the firm's principal lawyers.The Human Rights Commission encourages persons experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace to:
The opposition party has seen its support rating increase by 1.7 percentage points to 22.8 per cent after dislodging the Centre Party from the top of the polls in December, while that of the Centre Party has dipped below the 20 per cent mark for the first time since 2014.

The Social Democratic Party has widened its advantage over the Centre Party as the most popular political party in Finland, finds the latest opinion poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat.

The support rating of the National Coalition has remained relatively unchanged by comparison, creeping up only by 0.2 percentage points month-on-month to 17.9 per cent.

Support for the third member of the three-party coalition, the Finns Party, fell by 1.2 percentage points to 9.6 per cent, signalling the first sub-10 per cent reading for the party since 2010, according to Helsingin Sanomat. Sampo Terho, the chairperson of the Finns Party Parliamentary Group, affirmed in an interview with the daily that the party will recoup its losses after the measures laid out by the Government are implemented and communicated to the public.

More than one in ten, or 11.1 per cent, of respondents voiced their backing for the Green League, 7.9 per cent for the Left Alliance, 4.5 per cent for the Swedish People's Party and 4.2 per cent for the Christian Democratic Party.

Parties not represented in the Finnish Parliament were the pick of 2.3 per cent of the 2,432 people interviewed for the poll between 14 December and 14 January.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Lasse Lehtinen / Uusi Suomi

Source: Uusi Suomi
While hunger, poverty and depravity continue to stalk developing lands, the report by the prestigious Congressional Research Service (CRS) finds that the United States remains the single largest weapons supplier to developing nations, controlling more than 50 percent of the global arms market. From 2011 to 2014, Washington made arms supply agreements worth nearly $115 billion with developing nations.

BERLIN (IDN) - Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed, declared U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 1953. A new report shows that these remarks remain relevant and yet unheeded 62 years later.

The report says that though global arms sales were on decline since 2011, the U.S. arms exports rose to $36.2 billion in 2014 from $26.7 billion the year before, boosted by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Titled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2007-2014, the study was delivered to the U.S. legislators less than ten days before the start of the year 2016.

According to the report, Russia followed the United States as the leading arms supplier, chasing $10.2 billion in sales, compared with $10.3 billion in 2013. Sweden ranked third, with roughly $5.5 billion in sales, followed by France with $4.4 billion and China with $2.2 billion.

The report reveals that a key U.S. ally  South Korea  was the worlds top weapons buyer in 2014, finalising $7.8 billion in contracts. Pitted against North Korea, Seoul has faced continued tensions with its belligerent neighbour in recent years particularly over its nuclear weapons programme.

The bulk of South Koreas purchases, worth more than $7 billion, were made with the U.S. and included transport helicopters and related support, as well as advanced unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles.

The report authored by Catherine A. Theohary, Specialist in National Security Policy and Information Operations, further reveals that Iraq followed South Korea, with $7.3 billion in purchases aimed at build up its military in the wake of the American troop withdrawal there and combating the extremist Islamic State.

Another developing nation, Brazil, was third, worth $6.5 billion worth of purchase agreements, primarily for Swedish aircraft.

The Congressional reports have been informing legislative debate in the U.S. since 1914. The latest, published in December 2015, is considered among the most detailed official, unclassified data from U.S. government sources on global arms exports, made available to the public. It updates and revises CRS Report R42017, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2003-2010, by Richard F. Grimmett.

He was the chief author of CRS reports in international weapons and sales transfers. Since his retirement in 2012, Washington had not documented one of its biggest and most deadly weapons, remarked World Beyond War, a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace.

Greater Competition

According to the current report, total global arms sales rose slightly in 2014 to $71.8 billion, from $70.1 billion in 2013. Despite that increase, the report concludes, the international arms market is not likely growing over all, because of the weakened state of the global economy.

2014 was the second successive year that worldwide weapons sales remained steady, an indication that the market has begun to stabilise after several years of extreme fluctuation.

The report finds that the lack of market expansion has led to greater competition among suppliers. Some arms producers have in fact adopted measures like flexible financing, counter-trade guarantees and coproduction and co-assembly agreements to try to secure sales.

Theohary, author of the report says: A number of weapons-exporting nations are focusing not only on the clients with which they have held historic competitive advantages due to well-established military-support relationships, but also on potential new clients in countries and regions where they have not been traditional arms suppliers.

The principal focus of the report, says Theohary, is the level of arms transfers by major weapons suppliers to nations in the developing world  where most analysts agree that the potential for the outbreak of regional military conflicts currently is greatest, and where the greatest proportion of the conventional arms trade is conducted.

For decades, during the height of the Cold War, providing conventional weapons to friendly states was an instrument of foreign policy utilized by the United States and its allies, adds Theohary.

This was equally true for the now defunct Soviet Union and its allies. The underlying rationale given for U.S. arms transfer policy then was to help ensure that friendly states were not placed at risk through a military disadvantage created by arms transfers by the Soviet Union or its allies.

Following the Cold Wars end, U.S. arms transfer policy has been based on maintaining or augmenting friendly and allied nations ability to deal with regional security threats and concerns.

Data in the report illustrate global patterns of conventional arms transfers, which have changed in the post-Cold War and post-Persian Gulf War years. Relationships between arms suppliers and recipients continue to evolve in response to changing political, military, and economic circumstances.

Motivation

Whereas the principal motivation for arms sales by key foreign suppliers in earlier years might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much, if not more, on economic considerations as those of foreign or national security policy, writes Theohary.

During the period covered by the report, 2007-2014, conventional arms transfer agreements (which represent orders for future delivery) to developing countries comprised 77.2% of the value of all international arms transfer agreements.

The portion of agreements with developing countries constituted 75.5% of all agreements globally from 2011-2014. In 2014 arms transfer agreements with developing countries accounted for 86% of the value of all such agreements worldwide.

Sales of conventional arms to developing nations from 2011 to 2014 constituted 62% of all international arms deliveries. In 2014, arms exports to developing nations constituted 44% of the value of all such arms sales worldwide, says the Congressional report.

However, as Eisenhower said: This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

These figures have changed over the decades. But the message relevant and urgent  coming from a man who was commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War.

In his farewell speech, he warned of the menace of the military-industrial complex, which is meanwhile entrenched not only in U.S. but also in Russia, China and other leading arms suppliers of the world. [IDN-InDepthNews  30 December 2015]

Photo: An Apache helicopter from Fort Bliss, Texas, is transported to its parking location Dec. 13, 2015, at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. The helicopters were scheduled to take part in the annual Qatar National Day parade. Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/James Hodgman.

2015 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

Pic credits: LEHTIKUVA / AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAIS
Ask Matt ... about I-26 widening

Trees in a narrow median on I-240 in Asheville.

Related Stories

Q. There is a stretch of interstate highway in Asheville that has large trees planted in the median. Can that be done on the I-26 widening project in Henderson County?

Yes. Our highway department friends still allow trees in interstate medians. That stretch of I-240 in Asheville is known as the Beaucatcher Cut. The oak trees have survived there for many years. Work on the Cut began in 1977 amid much controversy including a thousand people showing up for a save the mountain rally. Two million cubic yards of rock were eventually blasted and hauled out of the Cut.

NCDOT offers a betterment program, which some cities have used to gussy up the interstate to enhance tourism. The marginal cost of trees is usually funded by local government. I could not get a per foot cost on betterment items as they must be designed and bid but ballpark estimates are available. So if Hendersonville, Fletcher or Henderson County want trees to spring from a concrete barrier section of the Interstate, they need only contact NCDOT.

Some readers may remember the 2001 proposal to widen I-26 to six lanes throughout Henderson County. Opponents won a federal lawsuit that blocked the project on the grounds that the NCDOT had not adequately studied the environmental impact. Among other things, the feds didnt like creating a bottleneck by omitting the expensive South Buncombe section. Well, the project is back  and with a vengeance. Throughout Henderson Countys 13.6 miles of interstate plus another 8.6 miles in Buncombe County grassy medians will be replaced by Jersey barriers. Their four-foot height may vary throughout depending on the superelevation (changing road levels around curves). Glare screens could also adorn the barriers. Admittedly, none of these improvements are pleasing to the eye but trees would soften the blow.

But theres more. Our little four-lane Interstate 26 will swell to eight lanes because it must tie in to the Asheville Connector, the $600 million 7-mile project designed to fix Malfunction Junction and the I-40 mess in West Asheville. In short, to eliminate the bottleneck they must connect the Connector. That piece of 8-lane interstate widening (project STIP # 4700) begins on I-26 just south of I-40 near the Farmers Market and continues for 8.6 miles to N.C. 280 at the Airport. This section will be packaged with Henderson Countys project (STIP # 4400) to make a 22.2 mile project that will terminate near the Polk County line. Im officially dubbing our piece The Terminator. Any implied movie reference to a cyborg assassin is purely coincidental.

For Henderson Countys own 13.6 mile section, the design engineers told me they are looking at three alternatives: a six-lane highway, an eight-lane highway (a truckers paradise), or a combination design where eight lanes would narrow down to six probably at the Fletcher-Mountain Home exit at U.S. 25. The estimated price of the 22.2 miles is $264 million. I suspect that widening the bridge over the French Broad River and rebuilding the 79-foot Blue Ridge Parkway bridge over I-26 is a big chunk of the cost. The first public hearings will be held this year with construction to begin in 2020. Hope you like the color orange.

Send questions to askmattm@gmail.com.
Jenny Drake and baby Zoe on the flight back to the US

Premature baby Zoe Ireland Drake has arrived safely home in Tennessee.

It was an emotional homecoming for her mum Jenny who unexpectedly went into labour while on a transatlantic flight from Paris to North Carolina last October, when she was just 25 weeks pregnant with Zoe.

The flight was diverted to Dublin and Zoe was born shortly afterwards in the Rotunda Hospital, weighing just one pound and 13oz.

The generosity of an anonymous donor who pledged the remaining 30,000 needed for a special medical charter flight home made it possible for the family to jet out of Dublin early on Saturday.

Little Zoe was flown into Nashville on an AirMed International critical care hawker jet on Saturday evening.

Finish

She was then brought to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital where she was set to finish up some antibiotics.

Doctors were this week making sure that she was healthy enough to go home, following the long flight.

Jenny told the Herald yesterday that they were thrilled to be home. The family are from the city of Murfreesboro, in Tennessee.

"Zoe did great on the flight," she said. "We are hoping to get her home sometime next week.

"I'm seeing my sister for the first time in three months in about an hour.

"Please thank the Irish people again for taking us in as their own.

"We will definitely be back, and this time I actually plan to do some sightseeing," she said.

Jenny said that she now has a second home, and she and her husband Gavin can't wait to bring Zoe and her son Aiden (3) back one day to show them the city where Zoe was born.

The couple had needed to raise 67,000 to fully cover the cost of the medical flight to take baby Zoe home.

Predicament

A GoFundMe account had raised 38,000.

Jenny spoke of their predicament when she did an interview on RTE radio with Ray D'Arcy last Monday.

The following day, the radio host surprised her with the news that a donor had come forward, and offered to put up 30,000 for the flight home, but the man wanted to remain anonymous.
A man made "vile" threats to kill a garda, then headbutted him on the nose after officers arrived at his home with an arrest warrant.

Francis Grogan (26) swung his fists while standing behind his mother before assaulting the garda.

Judge John Cheatle found him guilty and adjourned the case for a probation report.

Grogan, of Ball's Lane, Halston Street, had admitted obstruction but denied assaulting Gda Paul Madden in an incident at his home last March 3.

Dublin District Court heard Gda Madden went to the accused's home with a warrant and showed it to Grogan who had opened the kitchen window.

Grogan said he was "too busy" and would go to the garda station the next day. He then locked the porch door and shouted "Ha ha".

The door was answered by Grogan's mother and the accused reappeared and said he was going to kill Gda Madden.

Officers heard him rummaging around inside and the sound of cutlery or knives.

He stood behind his mother, "swinging his fist directly under Gda Madden's jaw".

He had to be restrained, and while this was happening he headbutted the officer.

Gda Madden said he did not need medical treatment after the assault but he took the threat seriously.

Aggravated

Grogan admitted he was "aggravated", but claimed the gardai grabbed him on the stairs and pinned him down.

He denied swinging his fists at Gda Madden, headbutting him or threatening him. He said the first he had heard of the threat allegation was in court.

Judge Cheatle found Grogan guilty and said he had made "vile and abusive threats."

Grogan had previous convictions and had never worked.
Operation Thor was launched by the garda in November Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Gardai have recovered 1.7m worth of stolen jewellery from a Dublin city "cash-for-gold" business.

The jewellery was stolen by travelling gangs from victims' homes and eventually recovered following a three-month operation by officers from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau.

Most of the organised gangs involved in nationwide burglaries trade mainly in cash and jewellery, and the special operation was set up to target receivers of their nightly hauls.

The number of burglaries has dropped since the launch of the garda's new initiative, Operation Thor, in November.

Most garda divisions have recorded a drop over the past three months. However, two major blackspots remain in Dublin west and in the south east of the country.

The bureau's breakthrough against the burglars arose out of an interception of items being handed over by members of a gang to a receiver. The handover took place outside a fast-food premises in west Dublin.

Undercover detectives had placed some of those involved under surveillance for several weeks and closed in when they spotted the haul being moved from one vehicle to another.

Burglary

It was later established that the intercepted haul had been stolen two hours previously in a burglary in south county Dublin.

Follow-up inquiries led officers to a wholesale jewellery business being run by two brothers from a "cash-for-gold" shop in the capital.

Gardai raided the premises and recovered documentation relating to over a thousand items, which were later valued at over 1.7m.

The wholesalers are unable to account for the jewels in their paperwork, and inquiries are currently under way to establish how many of the items were stolen.

The positively-identified items were taken in 20 separate burglaries by travelling gangs from households in Galway, Limerick, Kerry, the Midlands, Dublin and Wexford.

Gardai have arrested and questioned a number of suspects. In tandem with the investigation, inquiries are under way by the Criminal Assets Bureau into the financial affairs of those suspected of receiving the stolen jewellery.

The bulk of the members of the targeted gangs operate out of bases in south and west Dublin although some have moved into counties Wexford and Kildare.
A safe lies in the bath in Twink's house

Showbiz star Twink has spoken of her devastation after all her jewellery was stolen and her house vandalised during a weekend burglary.

The panto queen, real name Adele King, lives in a Victorian mansion in Knocklyon in south Dublin.

The burglary comes only a week after she celebrated her daughter Chloe's first solo performance at the National Concert Hall.

Twink took to Facebook to describe the destruction she arrived home to after dropping daughters Chloe and Naomi to their cousins' house.

Culprits

"The sight that greeted me was beyond what the word 'shock' implies," she said.

She branded the culprits "scumbags" and "parasites".

"The room was four-feet-deep in clothes, every drawer was pulled out."

The 64-year-old said "every birthday, Christmas, anniversary gift" she had ever received was gone.

"Every item of decent jewellery and masses of my beloved, good quality costume jewellery that I have collected all over the world are all gone, and the memories attached to them gone for ever," she said.

"All my beloved mother's and grandmother's jewellery, my wedding rings, my baby rings, the girls' precious baby bracelets, my old charm bracelets from the Sixties, all gone."

A picture that her ex-husband David Agnew painted of Twink years ago was smashed on the floor and trodden on.

She went on to describe how her handbags, money, cards and luggage were also taken.

"Cards, money for the bills on Monday. Absolutely everything I own and love. Gone," she said..

"Pictures were torn off my bedroom wall and flung to the ground.

"I raced from room to room crying 'Jesus no, not more theft'," she said.

"The heating panels were ripped from the wall in the closet.

"The whole panel behind the sink area of my bathroom was ripped - all to check behind them for stuff, the gardai said.

Safe

"They did find stuff behind them - 20 years of cobwebs and a load of plumbing pipes."

Twink also told how her safe was "reefed out of the floor" and "flung into the bath".

"They watered it hoping to short circuit it and open it but they couldn't," she said.

"One garda said it was the worst destruction he'd ever seen in a break-in.

"The house was stripped bare of anything they could carry. We have all gone into shock mode at the scale of this."

Twink vowed that the thieves would be caught and appealed for information to be provided to Rathfarnham gardai.

"I will be like a dog with a bone," she said.
Former Justice Minister Alan Shatter was met by a chorus of jeering when he spoke at a public protest about the closure of a south Dublin garda station.

Mr Shatter, who was minister when Stepaside garda station - which is in his constituency - was closed in April 2013, told the Herald the decision was an operational one made by then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

Around 500 people from the Stepaside area, which has a population of 22,000, turned out for yesterday's public meeting.

The closure of the south Dublin garda station along with 138 others across the country, which was signed off by Mr Shatter, is saving the State 556,000 a year, according to figures released by current Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald last year.

Angry

Yesterday, angry locals described how they are living in fear as the result of an increase in the number of burglaries in the area.

The latest CSO figures show a 34pc increase in burglaries across the Dublin Eastern division, which takes in Stepaside.

"It was an operational decision of the Garda Commissioner to close 139 stations," said Mr Shatter.

"It wasn't for me as minister to engage in special pleading on behalf of constituents in circumstances where the operational advice was we would be better off with gardai doing regular policing work than sitting at a desk in Stepaside."

Communications Minister Alex White said he would support a new garda station for the general area.

Mr Shatter also hit out at promises made by other speakers at yesterday's event, including Independent TD Shane Ross and Fianna Fail senator Mary White, that the decision to close Stepaside station can be reversed, describing it as "seriously misleading".

"I think it is unfortunate that some of the speakers implied that should they be re-elected they can have the station reopened because the legal position is that they can't," he said.

However, Mr Ross said: "It was a political decision made by a minister and it is a political decision which can be reversed by a minister."

Mr Shatter said initiatives such as Operation Thor, set up to target burglary gangs, are a more efficient use of garda resources.

"The suggestion that had we had a garda station open this burglary problem would not have arisen, is unfortunately mistaken," he said. "Burglars are delighted that gardai are sitting in garda stations."
Gemma Collins is horrified to hear the young ages that some addicts were exposed to drugs

Children as young as nine are using cocaine, an experienced drugs worker has said.

Gemma Collins is the manager at the Crinan Youth Project in Dublin's north inner city, which provides day services to drug users aged between 14 and 21.

She said she has encountered children as young as nine who have used hard drugs, including cocaine.

"It can be devastating to assess a 14-year-old and realise that the first time that they took something they were nine and it was a sleeping tablet in their house or it was cocaine with some older boys," she said.

"If you know a child that age, developmentally they're not even in a place to understand what they're doing."

Problem

In another instance, Ms Collins said a young person she encountered had first used heroin aged 11.

"Often people's first drug is cannabis and they would use that first between 11 and 14 in a lot of cases," she said.

"But people do need to wake up and realise that it is happening and they are getting younger and younger."

Drugs Minister Aodhan O Riordain last night told the Herald he is well aware of the nature of the drug problem in Ireland.

"A lot of drug projects tell me similar things.

"I have met many people in recovery who started experimenting at a young age with alcohol, cannabis and other substances," he said.

The Crinan Youth project will celebrate 20 years working in the north inner city this year.

The project accepts clients with various substance abuse problems and tailors a rehabilitation programme to their needs.

It was originally set up as a community response to the heroin epidemic in the area.

"It meant that young people could access methadone without attending a clinic environment.

"There would be older people who would be much more well-versed in street stuff there," Ms Collins explained.

"It's the equivalent of putting a child into an adult prison. Why would you do that? They could learn things that they don't need to know and also they could be at risk."

Now the centre, which can accommodate up to 30 young drug users at a time, is dealing with new waves of drugs.

"Cannabis has been massive, probably 98pc or 99pc of the people that are coming are smoking cannabis. Some problematically and some don't believe it's a problem.

"Benzodiazepines, alcohol and cocaine would be the main ones now. It would be rare to come across a young person now who is coming to our project that is using heroin.

"There's lots of reasons [for the decline in heroin use]. It's a very different experience taking cocaine and alcohol.

"It's a much higher, powerful, confidence-boosting experience, while heroin is a sedative type of experience and kids don't want that today."

Ms Collins said that the problem with so-called "benzos" in the city centre is "chronic".

"People are buying them off the internet, they don't even know what they're buying, the streets are flooded," she said.

Health

Mr O Riordain said that within the new National Drugs Strategy, a steering group is examining various options.

"Education and empowerment of young people is central to that.

"We have to listen to what young people are saying. Drug habits and fashions change regularly. A message that may connect with them this year, may not connect with them next year.

"I think we need to fundamentally change the way we connect with this whole issue.

"Criminal sanctions are not working for people that are using.

"We need to use the health, education and counselling spheres, and use the resources of the criminal justice system to tackle the pushers," he said.
Bill Schuette said Todd Flood, a former assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, which includes Detroit, will spearhead Schuette's investigation and serve as special counsel. He'll be joined by Andy Arena, who led Detroit's FBI office from 2007 until 2012.

"We will do our job thoroughly and let the chips fall where they may. ... This investigation is about beginning the road back, to rebuild, regain and restore trust in government," Schuette said in a statement ahead of a news conference scheduled for Monday morning.

The attorney general's office represents both the people of Michigan and state government, so Schuette said the move will prevent conflicts between him and his investigation team and the team defending the governor and state departments against water-related lawsuits.

Lawsuits against Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and the state will be supervised by Chief Deputy Attorney General Carol Isaacs and Chief Legal Counsel Matthew Schneider. Schuette noted there was a similar effort during Detroit's bankruptcy case to ensure that conflicts of interest were avoided.

Flood, who currently is a lawyer in private practice handling both criminal and civil cases, said it's a "privilege to have this opportunity to serve." Arena currently heads the Detroit Crime Commission, a nonprofit aimed at reducing criminal activity. Both will report to Schuette.

"Flint families and Michigan families will receive a full and independent report of our investigation," Arena said.

Schuette, a Republican, announced Jan. 15 he would investigate what, if any, Michigan laws were violated in the process that left Flint's drinking water contaminated with lead.

The financially struggling city switched from Detroit's municipal water system and began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. The water wasn't properly treated to prevent lead from pipes from leaching into the supply.

Residents have been urged to use bottled water and to put filters on faucets.
But Liang will go on trial this week for manslaughter anyway in a prosecution that stands in contrast to other cases around the country in which officers intentionally used deadly force against other unarmed black men but escaped criminal charges. Opening statements are set for Monday in state court in Brooklyn, where Liang is expected to take the witness stand and claim he fired his weapon by accident.

Defense attorney Robert Brown has called the shooting a "terrible tragedy"  not a crime.

But advocates for stricter police accountability see the second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and other charges brought by Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson as justified. They say the case offers a counterpoint to decisions by grand juries declining to indict white police officers in other killings, including those of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

The case "is a good sign the DA's office is moving in the right direction," said Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, senior community organization for the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "But we have a long way to go."

Chinese-American supporters, however, say Liang has been made a scapegoat for past injustices.

"He just happens to be a very convenient person to go after," said Phil Gim, who's helped organize rallies supporting Liang.

Liang had been an officer for a mere 18 months on the night of Nov. 20, 2014, when he and a partner were patrolling a Brooklyn housing project amid reports of a spike in violent crime.

Liang had his gun drawn as they descended onto an eighth-floor landing in a stairwell where the lights had burned out, prosecutors said. At the same time, the 28-year-old Gurley and a friend he was visiting entered the door into the seventh-floor landing before Liang  his gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right  fired a shot. The bullet ricocheted and struck Gurley in the chest, who made it down two flights of stairs before collapsing.

According to grand jury testimony by Liang's partner, Liang repeatedly told him, "It went off by accident" and fretted that he would be fired. The two then bickered for at least two minutes about which one should call a supervisor to report the discharge.

Prosecutors allege Liang acted recklessly in his handling of his weapon and that he and his partner did nothing to help Gurley, even after they knew he had been shot. Court papers describe the pair walking around the dying victim and down a flight of stairs as the weeping friend tried to give him CPR.

Prosecutors also have accused Liang of violating New York Police Department policies instructing officers who draw their guns to keep their finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.

"We don't believe that Officer Liang intended to kill Mr. Gurley," Thompson said last year while announcing the charges. "But he had his finger on the trigger and he fired the gun."

Liang shot his weapon, he added, "when there was no threat."

The defense has suggested that Liang's gun was defective and contends that he was too distraught to help Gurley. A supervisor who arrived at the scene has described the officer as being "pale, unsteady on his feet and incoherent."

The slaying recalled two others by officers patrolling Brooklyn housing projects  the shootings of 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury on a rooftop in 2004 and of 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. while carrying a toy gun. Neither officer was charged.

Gurley's family has brought a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of his estate and his young daughter.

At an announcement of the suit in May, the girl's mother, Kimberly Ballinger, vowed to "be in court every time to make sure that justice for him is kept, that justice for him is received."

___

Associated Press Writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.
Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town

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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.
Imagine being wrongfully charged and jailed after 14 years of torture, never knowing if you will ever walk free. This is Mohammad Aamir Khans harrowing story, of unspeakable injustice which stole from him the best years of his youth.

But his story is also one of endurance, love and hope. In two years that I have known him, I found him a gentle person, free of bitterness and anger, and convinced about justice, democracy and secular values.

In a deeply affecting book he has written with Nandita Haksar, Framed as a Terrorist: My 14-year Struggle to Prove My Innocence, he describes how when he was 20, one late-winter evening in February 1998, in a by-lane of Old Delhi, close to his home, he was picked up by plainclothes policemen, and driven to a torture chamber. He recounts his days and nights of torture: Stripped naked, his legs stretched to extremes, boxed, kicked, subject to electric shocks, anti-Muslim abuse and threats to frame his parents. He finally succumbs, and agrees to sign numerous blank sheets and diaries. As a result, he is charged in 19 cases of terror crimes.

From here begins a nightmare that lasted nearly 14 years. Housed often in solitary confinement in Tihar and Ghaziabad jails, his only encounters with the world outside are his innumerable court hearings. No judge asks him about the torture, nor do doctors record his torture wounds. He is acquitted in one terror case, only for another to begin.

What he endured would break the spirit of most men. I would lie awake at night and often cry myself to sleep. I just saw the lights of the tower and heard the sound of the boots of the guards and I thought my entire life would pass within these walls.

Even more than his confinement, isolation, the brutal and dehumanised prison conditions, and the hopelessness of his tortuous court proceedings, what grieved him most was helplessly watching his parents suffer outside.

But it was also their love and faith in his innocence that sustained him through these bleak long years of suffering. He describes how his father, Hashim Khan, was present at every hearing. Abbu arrived before the courts opened. He went straight to the typists who sit in rows outside the lawyers chambers He came early so he could get his applications typed for permission to meet me in the lock up to give me home-made food Armed with his application Abbu made his way through the crowds to the court where my case would come up to catch a glimpse of me. The police continued to harass his parents, money for lawyers ran out, none came forward to help, as they were stigmatised as parents of a terrorist.

One hearing in 2001, the judge noticed that his father was absent, and the policeman explained that he was in hospital. The judge permitted him to see his father for an hour. Surrounded by tubes, Abbus first words to him were: I could not come to your hearing. Aamir recalls how much he worried for him, but was satisfied that by then he had been acquitted in 11 of the 19 cases.

It was in court weeks later that he was informed that his father had died. The judge comforted him, God will take care of everything. Aamir also recalls the humanity of his fellow-convicts, who comforted him. Once when he was observing his roza fasts in solitary confinement, a Sikh convict would throw dates into his cell for him to break his fast. Some judges were fair, that is how he was finally acquitted, case by case, over 14 years. At the same time, 9/11 and the Parliament attack created a communally-charged environment through the criminal justice system, and jailers began to openly humiliate Muslim prisoners, whose numbers also swelled in jail. Judges became distant and cold.

The burden fell on his mother alone, who negotiated the unfamiliar and masculine worlds of courts, jails and lawyers chambers for another 11 years. She would now attend court proceedings, and carry messages she barely understood to the lawyers. He was represented now by legal aid lawyers. Sometimes he was acquitted in trial courts, sometimes in high courts.

One winter evening, in January 2012, he was told that he was free to walk out of the prison. Some of the most poignant passages of the book are when Aamir describes how much the world had changed during the 14 years of his incarceration. He learned about the Internet and mobile phones. He was amazed how many channels television had; he only knew Doordarshan.

But by the time he was freed, his mother was confined to her bed. He often tells me how fortunate he feels that Allah allowed him to take care of his mother in her last years.

His childhood love, Alia, had waited for him these 14 years. Ours was an old-fashioned love, he says shyly. They barely spoke to each other. Her father was initially unwilling to marry his daughter to a man who had spent most of his adult life in jail. But a delegation of eminent persons of the locality went on his behalf to plead with him, and he finally conceded. They have a daughter now, the centre of their lives. He worked with the organisation Anhad to promote communal harmony and justice.

In December 2015 the National Human Rights Commission issued a show cause notice to the Delhi government asking why monetary relief of Rs 5 lakh should not be paid to Aamir. It described him as a victim whose youth was destroyed due to wrongful confinement for 14 years as a terrorist; he lost his parents, his career, his hopes, dreams and everything

But I wonder if anything, anything can indeed compensate Aamir for all that he has lost.

Harsh Mander is convener, Aman Biradari. The views expressed are personal
UPAs Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that minorities must have the first claim to national resources. But NDAs minority affairs minister Najma Heptulla has refused to accept Muslims as a minority. Smriti Iranis HRD ministry has said that it is not in favour of according minority status to institutions like the Aligarh Muslim University. Now a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court will decide the minority status of Sikhs in Punjab.

The word minorities is used at only four places in the Indian Constitution. No definition of the term minority is given in the Constitution. But minority is a group that is numerically smaller in relation to the rest of the population, it is non-dominant in that its values are either inadequately or not represented in the public sphere or in the constitution of societal norms, it has characteristics which differ from the majority group and, importantly, it wishes to preserve these characteristics.

The Supreme Court has consistently maintained that minorities are to be defined on the basis of numerical inferiority and it is the state in relation to which minority or majority status is to be determined. Thus the debate about minority status of Sikhs in Punjab has huge significance. There has been no deviation from the principle from the Kerala Education Bill case of 1957. As the Constitution talks of both religious and linguistic minorities in Article 30, the courts have held that minorities are to be defined at the level of state as states were carved out on linguistic basis. But then the linguistic basis of state creation is no more valid as Telangana was not created on the basis of language and thus the apex court may re-examine this issue in the context of religious minorities.

The apex court in DAV College case held Hindus as religious minority in the State of Punjab and thus there can be reservation of Hindus in the minority institutions run by them in the Punjab. Chief Justice TS Thakur rightly raised this issue when he said that Hindus have minority status in several Northeast states and in Jammu & Kashmir.

Article 30 gives same rights to both religious and linguistic rights but it nowhere says both religious and linguistic minorities must necessarily be determined at the level of state. One approach can be to define religious minorities nationally and linguistic minorities on the basis of the state. The government of India under National Minorities Commission Act, 1992 has already notified Sikhs as religious minority for the entire country. But a better approach would be to accept the dissenting opinion of Justice Ruma Pal in the TMA Pai Case. The judge observed that whether a group is a minority or not must be determined in relation to the source and territorial application of the particular legislation against which protection is claimed. If it is a Parliamentary law that is being challenged, minorities must be defined nationally. If it is a state law, then minorities must be determined at the state level keeping in view numerical inferiority within the state.

There was a highly regressive decision by the Allahabad high court a few years ago which held that Muslims are not a minority as they are too many and quite powerful. The court also held that no one is a minority in India, making minority rights irrelevant. Minorities should be protected as they enrich Indias mosaic.

Faizan Mustafa is vice-chancellor NALSAR University of Law The views expressed are personal
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawatis enigmatic silence on suicide by dalit scholar Rohith Vemula at University of Hyderabad has puzzled political observers.

Opposition parties and dalit outfits have launched a countrywide agitation to project the Narendra Modi government as anti-dalit, but the BSP that claims to be a dalit-based party has neither hit the road nor launched a campaign on the issue yet.

At a time when the BJP is working hard to woo dalit voters in the run-up to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the Vemula episode provided an opportunity to Mayawati to mobilise her cadre to checkmate the BJP but she has made no such move.

Instead of visiting Hyderabad and rallying dalits  the BSPs core voters  Mayawati merely issued a press note on January 20 demanding strict legal action against union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya.

Terming the suicide horrible and shameful, Mayawati said, Owing to harassment by the union ministers and the university administration, Vemula committed suicide. She demanded legal action against Hyderabad Central University vice chancellor Appa Rao as well.

Read: Rohith Vemula suicide: Hyderabad varsity V-C goes on leave

She also sent a fact-finding team led by Rajya Sabha MP Vir Singh to Hyderabad. The team submitted its report to Mayawati, but the BSP has not made its contents public.

Dalit ideologue SR Darapuri says political compulsions have forced Mayawati to maintain a distance from the Rohith case. Mayawati is aware that dalit votes (alone) cannot bring her to power in 2017. She does not wish to annoy the upper and backward caste voters with a rigid stand on Vemulas suicide, he explains.

If the 2017 election leads to a hung assembly, the BSP will not hesitate to joins hand with the BJP. The BSP has formed governments in alliance with the BJP thrice earlier. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, a large chunk of dalit voters deserted the BSP and the party failed to win a single seat. Mayawati is reworking the social engineering formula (dalit-brahmin combination). An open stand on the Vemula suicide will upset her applecart, Darapuri says.

Read: Depression or oppression: What led to Rohith Vemulas suicide?

But rebel BSP leader and former minister Daddu Prasad feels, Senior BSP leaders are misguiding Mayawati on the Vemula suicide. The issue came on a platter for the BSP that was routed in the 2012 assembly and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Mayawati would have gained lost ground by launching a countrywide agitation to become the rallying point of dalit anger. Acting on the advice of senior leaders, she has preferred to ignore the issue. It will hurt the BSP in the coming election.

Defending the party chief, a senior BSP leader says, Mayawati has directed the party workers to raise the Rohith Vemula suicide issue and the increasing atrocities on dalits from public platforms. The BSP will also raise the issue in the budget session of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly starting from January 29.

Read: The medias caste: How its to blame for Rohith Vemulas death

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Thirty-two patients at Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradeshs Satna district have complained of pain and swelling in eyes after being treated at a private hospital for diabetic retinopathy with Avastin, a Roche-made drug whose sale has been put on hold in Gujarat and Telangana after reports of partial loss of eyesight.

The countrys apex drug regulator had ordered state drug controllers to collect samples of the drug for testing from the across the country after use of Avastin reportedly led to partial loss of eyesight in 15 patients in Gujarat.

Dr BK Jain, the Director of Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya in Chitrakoot, a town in Satna, said patients for diabetic retinopathy were given Avastin injections on December 29 after which some of them complained of burning sensation and swelling.

Nobody has lost vision. It was just a mild reaction and as such there is no need to panic. I told the Collector that he should send a team of experts to investigate the matter and see for himself how we operate here, said Jain.

Though doctors around the globe use Avastin to treat vision loss, it has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for that purpose. Studies have shown that eye injections of Avastin check vision loss but the company does not claim to sell the drug for this specific purpose.

We would like to highlight that Avastin has not been approved for intra-ocular use by the US FDA, EMA or the government of India. It is not developed and manufactured to meet intra-ocular standards. Adaptation of the product for use in this way is considered off label, the company spokesperson had told HT.

The collector of Satna, Santosh Mishra said he had ordered an investigation into the incident.

I have directed the chief medical and health officer to send a team of three experts to Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya to probe the incident and submit a report within four days. If some patients were affected post treatment, we will try our best to ensure that they get the best possible treatment, he said.

The eye treatment scare is haunting the state for the third time in the last three months.

Earlier in January, 17 patients complained of blurry vision after being operated for cataract on November 27 in Sheopur district.

In November, at least 46 patients lost vision in one eye after they underwent a cataract surgery at a camp organised by the Barwani district hospital.

Sadguru hospital, a reputed charitable, said it sets high standards.

We conduct 400 to 600 eye procedures daily. We maintain very high standards and have not received any complaint from anyone, said the hospital director.
When you have a panel full of journalists, it becomes difficult for anyone to complete a sentence without interruptions. This is exactly what transpired at the Trial by Media session on the final day of the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur on Monday. Avirook Sen, Madhu Trehan and Shoma Chaudhury spoke about the phenomenon of trial by media with Rohit Gandhi valiantly attempting to moderate.

There is a difference between trial by media made on facts and one made on speculations and a further distinction of judgment by the media said Chaudhury. Aarushi Talwars murder case was a central talking point with Trehan pointing out that the media helps in creating a certain image to which the judiciary is not oblivious. Going a step further Chaudhury stated that the Talwars were in jail because of the Indian media.

Read: JLF 2016: Indias visual culture, an embarrassment of riches

Sen, whose extensive book Aarushi focuses on the case and the trial thereafter, said he believed his job as a journalist was to question the dominant narrative, which blamed the parents for Aarushis death. He said that while the media should play the prosecutor and the defense, the problem arises when it plays the judge.

Chaudhury pointed out that a similar phenomenon overtook activist Dr Binayak Sen, who was declared a Maoist leader, a label that prevented him from carrying out humanitarian work in Chhattisgarh. This situation, said Chaudhury, showed how one of the warriors of democracy had been silenced by the media.

Read: What makes South Asians laugh? Suhel Seth has the answer

Trehan stated that some stories go unnoticed as they did in the brutal rape case in the northeast which grabbed attention only after a group of women stripped in a public protest.

The sentiment that ran through the discussion was that the media needed to be more accountable, especially when lives and reputations are at stake. Comparing the growing dramatisation of news to Ekta Kapoor-inspired family dramas, Sen said free speech is a privilege.

For more JLF 2016 stories click here.
Kashmiri Muslims would welcome Pandits if they return to the Valley, journalist and writer Sahil Maqbool said at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Monday, adding that political agendas had soured the relationship between the two communities.

Maqbool, who was part of a session on Kashmir with writer Siddhartha Gigoo, co-editor of A Long Dream of Home; The persecution, Exodus and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits, said the Kashmir conflict can have a solution only when Kashmiris across communities  Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs  sit together and discuss the issues.

Read: To resolve Kashmir issue, Congress-BJP talk must: Kulkarni

We, the Muslims of Kashmiris, fully understand the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits in the last 25 years. But we also need to understand that there is a political reason due to which the issue is not being solved, he said. Maqbool said the relationship between Pandits and Muslims in the Valley was friendly until armed militancy began and counter-insurgency operations began. I can assure you that if our Pandit brothers come back, they can share our homes and land. Properties which were not sold off by Pandits are still intact, untouched, he said.

Siddhartha Gigoo narrated tales of Pandits who had to leave Kashmir and of many of those who still live in camps. He recounted how, when he had travelled to Srinagar in 1996, his Muslim friends had said the city was a warzone and that his life would be in danger if I did not grow a beard.

Read: JLF 2016: We need new narratives on Partition, says Ayesha Jalal

Kashmir has survived the conflict. And today, a number of Kashmiri Muslims I meet tell me that they know about the ordeal the Pandits had to suffer, Gigoo said, adding he hoped for some sort of reconciliation between the two communities.

In an earlier session, entitled Chronicles of Exile, Gigoo said that the children of people living in exile have become rootless. It is important, he said, that they know their customs, culture and rituals.

For more JLF 2016 stories click here.

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The Partition remains one of the most contentious issues in the subcontinents history. Nobody expected it to be so bloody  it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus, who had been ruled by the British for centuries. But following the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and the decision to press for an independent Pakistan, tensions increased and as the summer of 1947 approached, all hell broke loose. The violence was brutal led to a divide between India and Pakistan that still remains a root cause of many contemporary problems.

Setting the agenda for a session entitled The Great Partition at the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur on Monday, moderator Vazira Zamindar, associate professor of history, Brown University, said the event raises difficult questions about 20th century nationalism, minority rights, gender violence and massive displacement.

Initially, it was a minority rights movement but it actually aggravated the issue of minority rights rather than solving it, said Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University.

Speaking on the violence that ensued around that time and the use of madness as a trope to explain the brutality especially in Punjab, Nisid Hajari, author of Midnights Furies, said that there are two ways of explaining the peoples reaction to Partition.

Read: To resolve Kashmir issue, Congress-BJP talk must: Kulkarni

One could be that they were misguided and the other is madness. In 1947, violence was not spontaneous. Small hardcore groups often armed and trained would go around and whip up passion. Then, a mob mentality takes over. The seed of violence that comes from these organisations is critical to setting off the wider waves of violence.

Venkat Dhulipala, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina Wilmington added that incendiary speeches that were made between 1940 and 1947 on the transfer of population were one of the key triggers of violence.

The violence was not due to religious reasons but due to property issues, said Jalal.

Adding to the explanations on why such violence took place, author Urvashi Butalia said the violence was not only organized and a result of some kind of madness, but had gender dimensions too. Had families not been inherently violent against women, then such extreme acts of violence would not have happened against women. Additionally, when we talk about minorities lets not talk just about Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, but also Dalits, women, hijras. All were affected by the Partition; what about them?

She added that much more research needs to be done into Partition histories. The other unfortunate story is that despite so much scholarship our day-to-day conversation on the Partition is absent, Butalia argued.

Read: The problem with India is its extreme inequality: Piketty at JLF 2016

On the issue of narratives, Yasmin Khan, associate professor of history, University of Oxford, said there is a risk of replaying the same tropes and that individual stories can make a difference.

Agreed Jalal: A recent Gallup poll said that 39% Pakistanis claim to have heard of an incident in their family or acquaintances family in which a Muslims life was saved by a Hindu or a Sikh during Partition. These narratives should also be brought to the forefront.

Responding to an audience question on the role of political leaders in the violence, Khan said that the leaders cant be blamed as they were human and were exhausted by the Independence struggle. There was also pressure from their followers.

Read: JLF 2016: If I want to eat beef I will, says Barkha Dutt

Lets not forget that the leaders were also representatives of networks, she said.

On how to heal the scars of Partition, Butalia said the three countries must invest in a Partition museum. There are many artists working on the idea. I would love to see the museum being built at Wagah, she said.

In conclusion, Jalal said the time had come to go beyond finger pointing and move towards healing and discovering new narratives on Partition. We need to move forward to live together and prosper, she said.

For more JLF 2016 stories click here.

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Laxmi Narayan Tripathis Me Hijra Me Laxmi, translated into English from the original Marathi by R Raj Rao, talks of the authors journey from a confused boyhood in a Brahmin family to becoming a global champion of transgender rights.

How has the space that the Hijra community has traditionally occupied in Indian society changed?

During the days of kings and nawabs, and to the religious too, we were known as sub-gods, the updevatas. For kings and queens, we were the most trusted and loyal ones. We were employed as advisors, cooks, took care of harems, everything was under us. Later, under the British, everything changed. We were removed from the mainstream and thrown to the corners. The whole community was devastated.

Read: JLF 2016: Dont have extramarital relationships, says Karan Johar

Some activists believe the word queer is a political term. What are your thoughts on where the Hijra community stands with respect to the LGBT movement?

This English world with white collar social activists only exists in air-conditioned rooms. It doesnt work with the people selling their bodies or begging on streets. For me, they are more of a concern. I dont understand LGBT. All I understand is sexual minorities. We are from one minority, which is neglected, and within that neglected minority, we are the most neglected. This is because we are the one sexual minority which can be seen with your naked eyes.

I dont understand LGBT. All I understand is sexual minorities. We are from one minority, which is neglected, and within that neglected minority, we are the most neglected. This is because we are the one sexual minority, which can be seen with your naked eyes, Laxmi said.

Do you think the 2014 Supreme Court judgment recognising the third gender is enough?

The judgment was enough. The problem is that after it, nothing is being taken forward. Now the government is coming up with the Rights of Transgender Persons bill. We have done community consultation and discussed everything. The government has been very promising. Whatever has to be done should be done in taking the community into consideration and not according to the whims of the bureaucracy. We dont need saviours; rather, we need to be saved from the saviours.

Read: Freedom of expression is the biggest joke in the world: Karan Johar

You come from a conservative Brahmin family. Would your experience have been different had you come from a different background?

One community where caste, religion nothing, comes across is ours. Thats the beauty of being a hijra. If I had been royalty, it would have been tedious (laughs). I am really honoured to belong to my family. My parents loved me very much.

Speaking of your book, what role do you think literature, theatre and the arts play in awareness?

It is very necessary. Even the press has been our first and best ally, which helped to sensitise the mainstream society.

Do you believe Section 377 will be scrapped anytime soon?

Of course, it will be. India cannot live with Section 377 anymore.

For more JLF 2016 stories click here.
Gaza is under blockade. This means that only very few goods get into Gaza; that there arent enough construction supplies to rebuild after the war; that a student from Gaza cant go abroad to study, or somebody who wants to get medical treatment in Egypt cant cross the border to get that.

The picture presented by American activist and Vice columnist Molly Crabapple at the session entitled Eyeless in Gaza at the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur on Monday gave the audience a fair idea of the situation in Gaza, which has only got worse after Israels Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The war was started by the Israelis under the pretext that Hamas was involved in the kidnapping of three teenagers, which later turned out to be entirely untrue, says Crabapple. Operation Protective Edge was a war of intense brutality. 2,100 people were killed, allegedly 70% of them were civilians and five percent were kids, she says.

Gaza is a tiny place thats 25 miles long and 3.5 miles to 7.5 miles wide, where many are confined. It is this anguish of collective punishment. A lot of people told me that it is not one case, one or two years until another war starts, she says. About the strategy that Israel uses to confine people in Gaza, Leleh Khalili, Professor in Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies said: It is a particular brand of warfare waged by countries; they claim to follow the rule of law and because of this claim, they cannot openly engage in unrestrained mass slaughter. If they do, they have to dress it up in something. And that something often is a kind of a legal retaliation or collateral damage.

In these instances, what you end up getting are policies of confinement, policies of siege, forced starvation, control of populations, massive use of intelligence against the populations, massive control of their movements and ever more increasing surveillance.

Read: JLF 2016: We need new narratives on Partition, says Ayesha Jalal

Palestinian workers remove debris from buildings destroyed in the war between Israel and Hamas militants. (AFP)

According to Khalili, it is important to remember that the massive apartheid walls being built to separate the West Bank were, in a sense, first tested in Gaza in the 1970s by (Ariel) Sharon. He believed these walls were a means to control the population she said adding that Israel is also using starvation as a weapon.

They actually had memos which counted the minimum number of calories needed for children, women and men in order for them not to starve, says Khalili, who believes the underlying logic of displacing people and confining others to a small area is one set in colonialism. She traces it to the Iron Wall doctrine developed by hardline Zionists in the 1920s.

A Palestinian child looks out of a house painted by Palestinian artists in the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. (AFP)

When you have made the local population completely hopeless of national aspirations is when you actually get the win, Khalili said.

Omar Barghouti of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement took Khalilis points further: Hopelessness is the key weapon used to colonise the mind of the oppressed. In the worst case scenario, it will be Gaza.

Read: To resolve Kashmir issue, Congress-BJP talk must: Kulkarni

Incidentally, BDS was started in 2005 with a goal of achieving basic Palestinian rights under the international law. Barghouti believes the conflict and the resultant plight of the people is not only a Palestinian or an Arab problem, it is an international problem which requires justice to be done under international law.

An issue common in other countries is the intersectionality of struggle, believes Barghouti, who added that Indians could ask why they should care about Gaza or Palestine. At a basic level, it is about withdrawing cooperation from an evil system. India is complicit in maintaining this evil system especially through the military trade, he said.

For more JLF 2016 stories click here.

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Ashok Leyland, Indias second largest truck maker by sales, plans to exit the construction equipment business to reduce non-core assets and pare its debt, a top company official told HT.

The Chennai-based company, will scale up core areas such as manufacturing trucks, buses, engines and grow its finance business. We see growth in the defence business which is currently the fastest growing in its sector, managing director Vinod Dasari said in an interview.

In 2009, Ashok Leyland formed a 50:50 joint venture with US-based John Deere for earth moving equipment business and the first product was launched in November 2011. But since then only one product has been launched. With the infrastructure industry slowing down, and mining taking a hit due to a Supreme Court ban, the joint venture never managed to scale up and Ashok Leyland now wants to get out of it.

In November, the company wrote-off Rs 157 crore as a diminution in the value of its investment in that business. The production is not happening. So we will find the best solution. I dont think we will participate in that business, said Dasari. However, no final decision has been taken.

Since 2011, a downturn in automobiles led Ashok Leyland to review its 27 joint ventures, including a company that makes high pressure die-casts. We will look at each one of themeither you have a strategic fit with my core or you are generating a lot of money for me. If one of them is not true, then I shouldnt be the owner, said Dasari. The company also wrote down about `224 crore of its investment in a joint venture with Nissan.

The move to reduce non-core businesses is to cut debt. By September 2015 quarter, Ashok Leyland managed to halve its debt to a little over Rs 3,000 crore in eight years and the long-term plan is to bring debt levels lower than the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation). In the July-September quarter, the company reported revenue of Rs 4,940 crore on net profit of Rs 287 crore. EBITDA was Rs 594 crore.

The Hinduja group flagship is focusing on its truck and bus making business, where it currently has a market share of close to 30%.

Defence will also be a big play. Ashok Leyland provides logistical vehicles to the armed forces and its vehicles are used by the United Nations peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere.

This is a Rs 500 crore business, I have a clear line of sight to make it five times and we are targeting to make it at least 10 times over five years, said Dasari. The company, which is planning to bid for Rs 20,000-30,000 crore worth of defence projects, is in talks with Lockheed Martin and Nexter for manufacturing tie-ups.
In December 2014, Vijay Shekhar Sharma said a polite no to SoftBank. The Japanese telecom and Internet behemoth wanted to put money in Sharmas One97 Communications. An amount so big it would have become the single-largest shareholder.

Sharma really needed money then. One97s digital wallets, under the Paytm brand, were experiencing sustained buoyancy. Its online market place needed to ramp up. It wanted to grow in financial services.

Yet Sharma said no. SoftBank would have become the single-largest shareholder, something I was not comfortable with.

So it should come as a surprise that he agreed to give 40% stake to Chinas Alibaba group in return for $680 million in 2015, making it the single-largest shareholder in One97.

Or, maybe it should come as no surprise. Not if you know the turning point in Sharmas thinking and ambition. That came as he sat in the audience, listening to Alibaba founder Jack Ma in October 2011 in Hong Kong.

WIND BENEATH HIS WINGS

Back then, Jack Ma talked about doubling Alibabas business on its way to becoming the worlds largest ecommerce company, bigger than Amazon. Sharma was completely taken in by the scale of Jack Mas ambition. Now, he derives strength from it.

Last year Paytm doubled its business to $4 billion, and plans to double it again in 2016 by building a bouquet across mobile wallets, online marketplace, and financial services. It already has 100,000 merchants on its marketplace, processing 75 million orders a month. It has 120 million wallets, and claims that they are involved in more transactions than credit cards.

When Sharma said no to SoftBank, the Japanese company went ahead and invested in Paytms rival Snapdeal. But Mark Schwartz, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia-Pacific, who was present when Sharma met SoftBanks Nikesh Arora, later wrote to Jack Ma and got Sharma a meeting with him.

Sharma met Jack Ma in Hangzhou in China  a meeting that was meant to end in half an hour but lasted nearly four times that. Sharma not only got money but also a business tip. Alibaba had built the wallet business on top of its ecommerce marketplaces TMall and Taobao.

Jack Ma can do wonders, and he can make others do magic, says Sharma. If he is right, it wont be the first dash of magic in his career.

BOY TO MAN

A decade ago Sharma thought twice before spending Rs 10. This was when his partners left him bankrupt. He moved into a small hostel at Delhis Kashmiri Gate, often skipped meals, and walked miles to save money.

He came from Harduaganj, a small town near Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh, where his father taught biology. Sharma went to a Hindi-medium school, where many children would go barefoot because they could not afford shoes. After Class XII, he spent a year preparing for engineering exams and learning English, and made it to the Delhi College of Engineering.

Turning entrepreneur after college, he had dismal to moderate successes with several technology ventures, until 2012 redefined his path. That was the year Sharmas digital wallet business of recharges and bill payments gathered steam. Two years later, Paytm was doing more transactions every day than IRCTC, the Indian Railways ticketing site.

Paytm had a small marketplace business, which found wings as the wallets grew in popularity (you can pause here to go back to Jack Mas tip). We doubled the number of sellers on our marketplace, says Sharma. Though the platform allows payments through credit and debit cards and cash-on-delivery, the preferred mode of payment is the wallet.

Making banks think again

Other online market places such as Flipkart and Snapdeal are way ahead of Paytm in the total value of transactions as well as valuation. But Sharma hopes to catch up. His wallet has brought him so far; he is counting on the payments bank licence, which came through in August, to take him the rest of the way.

A payments bank can do some of what a full bank does, like deposits and payments, but cannot give loans. But Paytm is the only e-commerce outfit to have the licence. And that takes Sharma a vital step closer to emulating Jack Ma. We learnt banking from Alibaba. It manages $112 billion of deposits in money market funds and is a branchless bank, says Sharma.

Does it worry him that as he gets into banking, banks are getting into digital wallets, including the big gorilla, the State Bank of India? Instead of worrying over that, Sharma wants to take the battle to the banks camp.

The Paytm bank will be a bank with a difference. The wallet will be integrated with the bank account. The wallet balance will become the bank balance and earn interest. Next, Paytm will get into bed with the enemy. We will issue credit cards and debit cards, which can be used at any ATM... Paytm will be used as any other bank account. For things like net banking you will need your phone number and Paytm password.

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When Ajay Shriram and his younger brother Vikram came out of the room, their shirts were drenched with sweat. Not due to heat but nervousness. It was 1990. They had just met other members of the family behind the DCM group and been told about their share of the empire. Bharat Ram and Charat Ram, leaders of the Indian industry at the time, led the group and wanted to carve it out to avert conflict in the future.

Ajay and Vikrams father, Sri Dhar, had left it to his brother Bansi Dhar and cousins to give his sons a fair deal. What they got was a chemicals and fertiliser complex at Kota in Rajasthan and the Swatantra Bharat Mills in Delhi.

The Kota complex was making a small annual profit. But Ajay and Vikram didnt have the foggiest idea what it did. I had been there just once. I had gone to Ranthambore hoping to see some tigers. My train back got cancelled. I called the family in Delhi and they sent a car to Kota, says Ajay. Vikram had never been there.

They knew Swatantra better  that it was saddled with 7,000 workers, divided among 13 unions, and was making losses. There were political meetings at the gates of the mill five times a week, recalls Vikram. Suddenly it came into our lap.

Uncle Arun Bharat Ram, who heads chemicals company SRF, consoled them. Dont worry, son, we will support you. Take it up as a challenge.

Ajay Shriram was 36 at the time, Vikram 32. Their father had retired five years earlier and lived in Kolkata. The third brother, Ajit, was young and needed his brothers to care for him. But they decided to pick up the gauntlet.

They were looked upon as a tad too young. Before the recast, both worked in different businesses of the group and reported to an executive director or a general manager. Suddenly they were managing directors. DCM Shriram, the company they formed in May 1990, had a debt-to-equity ratio of eight to one  a ratio the healthiest of cash flows will struggle to sustain.

Their uncles Arun Bharat Ram and Siddharth Shriram calmed the lenders nerves. They told them Ajay and Vikram could indeed manage a business on their own. But ANZ Grindlays called in its loans.

The brothers presented their plan to the bank. We cannot pay now, but we will pay back. We will be happy if you came to our factory every quarter and looked at our books. If you go to court, it will be years before you got your loan back. The plan worked so well that after a couple of years ANZ said they could take more money if they wanted.

The brothers had to burn a lot of money to modernise. Swatantra had spinning, weaving, and dying sections, and a silk mill. Ajay and Vikram met union leaders and politicians and told them their game plan. If it continues like this, the mill will sink, they said.

So they put together an attractive voluntary retirement scheme to cut manpower. As the numbers came down from 7,000 to 2,000, they shut down weaving, dyeing, and the inefficient silk mill.

In about three years, the remaining unit, spinning, reached a point where it no longer made losses. In 1996, the brothers shifted it, to Tonk, near Kota, under a Supreme Court order. This reduced the workforce further and eventually in 2007 the mills land in Delhi was sold to real estate developer DLF for a handsome `1,600 crore.

Soon after, the mill had to stay shut for two weeks because there was no money to buy naphtha, a key raw material. They raised capital and set up a captive power plant.

In 1996 the brothers made their first significant investment by setting up a chlor-alkali plant at Bharuch in Gujarat. But they kept the expenditure low by buying an old plant in Georgia, US, and shifting the machinery. In 1997 they started their sugar business and, some five years later, started a rural retail chain called Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar, which had to be eventually shut down.

Twenty five years after the brothers truly took charge of their business, its net worth is more than 50 times what it was in 1991.

Sugar also has been a painful business for nearly five years, plagued by adverse policies of governments. They have a plan for it, but that may be another entry under How They Did It.

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The Delh high court on Monday directed the CBI to supply it and the AAP government with photocopies of the documents seized by the agency during raids at the office of chief minister Arvind Kejriwals principal secretary Rajendra Kumar on December 15.

The court said the documents were required as it wanted to examine their relevancy to establish whether the original papers can be retained by the CBI or not.

The court ordered the documents to be supplied within two days and listed the matter for hearing on January 29.

Whatever documents you (CBI) have seized, you have to give one set of photocopy of all those to the court and the counsel for Delhi government, justice PS Teji said. The judge said the agency may keep the originals with it so that the court can look into it at any point during the arguments.

The judge wanted to see the documents to know whether they were important or not. I am not aware of the contents of the documents. You get me one set of documents, the judge said. The high courts direction came on CBIs plea seeking stay on a trial court order asking it to release the seized documents to the Delhi government, saying it needed them as the investigation was on.
Stepped up security arrangements ahead of Republic Day celebration led to the Ghaziabad police nabbing a wanted criminal following a late night gun battle and a high speed car chase near the Ghaziabad police lines.

According to police sources, two men in an i10 car hit a barrier near police lines and sped towards the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) area on Govind Puram Road as there were security checks on NH24, NH58 and Hapur Road.

A team of Kavi Nagar crime branch was alerted after the security barrier was broken. The car was chased for over a kilometer after it sped towards the PAC area. Seeing the police PCR and vans in chase, the duo fired nearly 7-8 rounds of fire and police retaliated with 6-7 rounds, said Ashok Shishodia, Kavi Nagar station house officer.

Sources said police managed to catch one of the men, identified as Ankit Dixit, after the car was roadblocked near Gaur Homes high rises, close to PAC area. Police also seized a 9mm and .315 calibre weapon from Dixit while the other accused managed escape in the dark.

A wanted criminal from Tulsi Niketan in Ghaziabad, Dixit carries a reward of Rs 25,000 from the Delhi police.

Allegedly a member of the Chotu Pahadi gang, he is believed to have been involved in a robbery of Rs 1.08 crore outside a Ghaziabad bank in June, 2015. The gangs involvement in the heist came to light after Pahadi was arrested by Delhi police. The Ghaziabad police later identified Pahadi, Deshraj, Rahul and Dixit as the masterminds behind the robbery.

Police sources said that Dixit hails from Tulsi Niketan in Ghaziabad and member of Chotu Pahadi gang who performed the bank heist.

Pahadi was remanded in police custody January and nearly Rs 5 lakh from the robbery was recovered. (Further) Rs 3 and Rs 2 lakh were recovered on instance of Rahul and Deshraj, respectively. All the three accused are presently lodged at Tihar Jail in Delhi, a police officer said.

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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks in 2001 are events in recent history that have changed the trajectory of world politics. While the former brought hope and jubilation for a better world, the latter was a wake-up call to the reality that terrorism anywhere is terrorism everywhere. The Arab Spring  a wave of demonstrations that broke out across West Asia and North Africa, which saw regime changes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, and protests in more than a dozen other countries  was expected to have a similar impact. Egypt, where thousands of people gathered on the streets of Cairo on January 25, 2011, chanting El-shaab, yureed, isqat el-musheer (the people want the fall of the regime), eventually saw a regime change. The elections held later saw the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood win but its government was ousted in 2013 after a coup by former general and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The hope that resonated from Tahrir Square to other places in the region ended in an anti-climax.

Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the uprising, Mr Sisis regime has arrested activists, accusing them of inciting anti-State activities. His regime has come down heavily on the media in ways reminiscent of the rule of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak. Egypt, which was the poster boy of the revolution, is back to square one. Mohamed Bouazizi, the fruit-seller from Tunisia who set himself ablaze protesting police corruption, and Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who rallied protesters at Tahrir Square, have become symbols of the uprising  unfortunately, today its only the symbols that remain. The Spring has left behind a winter of despair. These developments make it appear that Arab exceptionalism  that West Asia cannot embrace democracy  is not just a biased theory.

The past five years have not only failed to address the existing problems but have also seen new troubles erupting. Shia-Sunni sectarian differences have sharpened, Riyadh-Tehran animosity has heightened and short-sighted geopolitical considerations have meant that nations are fighting terror at cross purposes. Not much progress has been made in addressing human rights concerns and corruption is still rampant. Add to this the effect falling crude oil prices will have on the region. Tunisia, with its earnest efforts to establish democratic institutions, is a silver lining. The challenge for policymakers is to address immediate concerns, like the Islamic State, while not losing sight of the democratisation agenda of the region.
Days before he set out for his second India visit, the socialist president of France Francois Hollande admitted that his country was in a state of economic emergency. The unemployment rate in France is 10.6%. Read this against the International Labour Organisation (ILO) finding that the unemployment level in developed countries has fallen slightly from 7.1% in 2014 to 6.7% in 2015. That gives you a clearer picture.

India is likely to remain the fastest growing large economy for a long time to come. Though the right-wing Indian prime minister Narendra Modi doesnt share many of Hollandes socialist moorings, India-French alliance now is more about Paris getting deals from India than anything else. And that is the way it has always been. Needs speed up diplomatic engagement.

India has a declared military modernisation programme with a tab of 150 billion USD. French president, among others, need to look for ways to create jobs for some 3.6 million people back home. He has a presidential elections coming up in 2017. In shorts he is up against some real immediate tasks.

Rafale fighter aircraft deal, if its comes through at an early date, will be very good news for France. Each of this 36 planes India has decided to buy has a price tag of 160 to 180 million USD with their payloads and required armaments. Though purchase of air-crafts in flyaway cannot boost make in India flagship, French remains a technology superpower India badly needs as company. Many Indians firms HAL and private sector like L & T and Bharat Forge and others have long-standing partnership with France that India needs to leverage.

Ideologies can wait in international relations. India can drive its demands hard now. France has remained one of the most reliable partner for India in strategic terms. But now France needs a country like India in two of the crucial areas of this cooperation more than ever on account of economic factors. After defence comes the civil nuclear cooperation.

Read: India, France vow to fight terror jointly, Rafale deal may take time

Areva, the French company to set up nuclear plants in Jaitapur in India is dogged by financial troubles for some time now. The French firm EDF took over Arevas reactor business recently. As it is, Areva was not convinced about Indian governments assurance on the nuclear liability regime. Now question marks have also been raised about EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) that EDR in building in Flamanville in Northern France. Areva plans to build six EPR reactors in Jaitapur.

Some key issues remain to be sorted out between the French nuclear regulator ASN and the EDR about the weak spots in the vessel.  of the reactors. (vessel the container that protect the reactor core). There have been strong protest against the nuclear plant in Jaitapur on many counts. But the troubles the Areva is snowed under now will push the deal further back. By many accounts EDR needs huge loads of money to revive Areva. The nuclear majors across the world are struggling to stay in profitable shape.

The views expressed are personal.

Read: Rafale jet deal could take more time: Francois Hollande

Chandigarh a very beautiful city, glad to be here: Hollande

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To check the use of unfair means, the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission on Sunday (MPPSC) allegedly forced the State Administrative Services (SAS) candidates in Bhopal to take off their mangalsutras, socks and woollens, leaving them literally shivering with cold and anger in the examination halls.

The examination was held at 564 centres across the state. About 2.45 lakh candidates had applied, but only 80% had appeared in it on Sunday, according to the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission figures.

Bhopal division examination observer VR Khare admitted that the examinees had been asked to take off their jackets, shawls and stoles in the examination hall with a view to checking the use of unfair means. Instructions to this effect had been conveyed to the candidates in advance, he said.

Justifying the step, he said the organizers didnt want the credibility of the SAS examination questioned as was that of the AIPMT (wherein the candidates were caught in the examination halls with bluetooth devices and SIM cards stitched to their shirts).However, the candidates disliked being asked to take off their woollens in the winter without the organizers making arrangement for heaters in the halls. They termed it as a case of human rights violation.

One of the examinees said the only saving grace was that the candidates werent asked to take off their clothes and wondered why they were asked to remove their socks. This kind of behaviour caused a lot of inconvenience to the candidates, he said.

One Sunita Jain from Ratalam said that the invigilators even asked women candidates to take off their mangalsutras and other ornaments. They didnt even allow those who were suffering from cold and cough to carry a handkerchief, she said, adding, This examination was a punishment for us.

Read more: Thousands appear for AIPMT retest amid tight security

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Millions of undergraduate and postgraduate students may have the option in a few months to pursue an online course on any subject, like Indian History or Political Theory, from a university of their choice by registering on a government portal.

Under the SWAYAM project, the marks they obtain will be credited to their final score sheets and will be treated on par with any regular course pursued at a brick-and-mortar institution.

The government initiative to offer quality education online to citizens for free has split academicians with some supporting the project that they say can democratise higher learning while others argue theres no substitute to classroom teaching.

Several experts say the move could be a major boost for higher education in India, which is perpetually battling a shortage of infrastructure and qualified teachers.

So, if you are not happy with the teaching of a particular paper at your college or university, you could opt for an online course in that subject from some other university and it will not hurt your job and career prospects.

However, not everyone is convinced the human resource development (HRD) ministrys Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) project is feasible.

The government will have to ensure that everyone has access to computers and internet to make use of this scheme. So access is a major concern, said former Lucknow university vice-chancellor Professor RP Singh.

Also, grading and marking will be an issue as some are lenient in giving marks while others are not.

Ministry officials are confident of rolling out about 500 online courses from April under the programme, similar to the massive open online course (MOOC) system followed internationally, but concerns remain.

Why would an Indian History professor of a particular university accept the marks awarded by his counterpart from another university or institution, ask some experts.

Or, why would a particular university offer a degree for a course a part of which may have been taught and evaluated by another academy? Besides, universities do not have uniform syllabi for any subject.

It will not be a case of a university offering a course to students of another university, but rather an IT platform for courses would be put up prepared by a group of professors and teachers. It would be properly regulated and would also be accepted by universities, explained a ministry official.

HRD ministry officials also said all the concerns would be sorted out soon at a meeting with authorities from the University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education and state universities.

Courses by SWAYAM will be ratified by the university and this will ensure that the credit transfer happens smoothly, said Prasenjit Sen, rector, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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A majority of government-run schools in Madhya Pradeshs Agar-Malwa district have no teachers and the education system is in shambles, officials said.

According to district education department officials, out of the 999 schools in the district, at least 42 schools do not have a single teacher while 68 schools were running with only one teacher.

Agar-Malwa became the 51st district of Madhya Pradesh on 16 August 2013. It was carved out of the existing Shajapur district with Agar town as the district headquarters.

15 schools without teachers in Barod development block alone

In Barod development block alone, 15 government schools are running with no teachers, followed by Agar with 11 government schools without any teachers, while nine in Susner and seven in Nalkheda have no teachers.

The district with a population of more than 4.80 lakh has 999 government schools, including 651 primary, 296 middle, 31 high schools, 19 higher secondary and two model higher secondary schools.

Bhayana village in Agar development block most affected by shortage of teachers

Bhayana village in Agar development block of the district is the most affected by shortage of teachers.

The village has a middle school with 148 students but due to lack of teachers, students have either dropped out or attend another school in the neighbouring village.

The principal of the primary school in the village doubles up as the middle school principal and he has the support of only three guest faculties.

As per the Right to Education Act, all schools except unaided minority institutions have to maintain a healthy pupil-teacher ratio in schools. For every 30 students, there should be at least one teacher.

The district administration has failed to provide sufficient staff in the schools even after several representations from villagers.

No appointments since 2013, says district education officer

Asked about the reason for the shortage of school teachers, Rama Nahata, district education officer in-charge, said there have been no appointments since 2013 and teachers transferred from urban areas were unwilling to take classes in rural schools.

No promotions have taken place in last the three years since the district was curved out in 2013. As a result, several schools are facing a staff crunch. We are managing to run the schools with the help of temporary teachers, she told Hinduatan Times.

Anand Singh Vaskele, former district education officer of Agar, said the government needs to address the problem soon and the only solution is to appoint permanent teachers to fill the vacant posts.

Schools cannot be run with visiting teachers, most of whom are inexperienced, he said.

Most teachers, who are transferred from urban to rural areas, either stop their transfer orders cancelled by using political connections or do not attend their duties. As the district education officer or district collector has no authority to appointment permanent teachers, only the government can redress the problem, he added.

SHORTAGE THREATENING EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

Total number of schools in Agar district: 999

Total number of students from classes 1-12 in the district: 67,721

Total number of school teachers in district (excluding visiting teachers) in the district: 2,479

Sanctioned posts in primary schools: 1,687

Vacancy: 258

Sanctioned posts in middle schools: 986

Vacancy: 508
Security agencies will not use motorcycles during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande to Gurgaon on Monday after cops failed to trace a police bike stolen ten days ago.

Fearing that the two-wheeler might be misused for terror activities, the police department has also informed Delhi police about the revision in security arrangement during the VVIP visit.

The bike  a yellow coloured TVS Apache (HR-26 CQ-1796) went missing from the constable Pradeeps house in Hans Enclave on the intervening night of January 15-16. Having failed to trace the vehicle all these days, an FIR was lodged at the Sadar police station last week.

It was the second police vehicle stolen in NCR after a top cops SUV was stolen outside his house in Noida earlier this month.

Given the high-profile visits and with the Republic Day just round the corner, the Gurgaon police are taking no chances, more so because a Punjab police top cops car was used to get past the checkpoints during the terrorist attack on Pathankot air base earlier this month, hence the revision in security plan for the day.

No two-wheelers will be used in the security arrangement of the VIPs. There will be no riders deployed on the route, said deputy commissioner of police crime (DCP East), Balbir Singh.

The two leaders will be at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) located on the Gurgaon-Faridabad Expressway to lay the foundation stone of the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

Gurgaon has been on high alert ahead of the VVIP visit that will be followed by the Republic Day on Tuesday. A suspected al-Qaeda operative was nabbed by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police from neighbouring Mewat district last week, besides a threat of IS operatives planning to attack NCR Malls.

The district administration of Gurgaon has already imposed Section 144 in a radius of 2,000 metres from the venue at NISE.
The armed forces are preparing to kick off a bold experiment to test claims made in favour of alternative medicine by throwing open the doors of some top military hospitals to doctors specialising in these remedies, Indias top military doctor has said.

For the first time, the military is giving a chance to specialists in different forms of alternative medicine, ranging from ayurveda and naturopathy to unani and homeopathy, to treat severely-ill soldiers, veterans and their dependents who have not responded to conventional treatment.

Mainstream doctors have traditionally resisted alternative medicine treatment. But lets be frank, we really dont have the domain knowledge to dismiss it. The idea behind the experiment is to see if alternative medicine can work where allopathy has no answers, said Lieutenant General BK Chopra, director general, Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS).

The AFMS, a cadre consisting of more than 6,000 doctors, is tying up with the ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) to kick-start the experiment.

The AYUSH had mooted a proposal to integrate the alternative medicine system with the conventional system, but the army suggested that a pilot project be undertaken first. The project will begin with 10 alternative medicine specialists being assigned to four army hospitals  Base Hospital in Delhi Cantt, Military Hospital in Jalandhar and Command Hospitals at Chandimandir and Pune.

AYUSH secretary Ajit M Sharan said some forms of alternative medicine had a legacy of more than 3,000 years but had not been exploited to their full potential. These systems can be used to supplement conventional medicine for treating different types of cancers and TB, as standalone treatment for diseases like arthritis and dementia and also as food supplements. The tie-up will benefit soldiers, Sharan added.

As part of the experiment, the specialists will be assigned to terminally-ill patients and those with some form of cancer. General Chopra said, We dont have much to offer to such patients and perhaps some other treatment could work for them. Alternative medicine systems shouldnt be written off as they have evolved over centuries.

The scope of the project could be expanded if alternative medicine treatment proves to be effective. This would give alternative medicine practitioners a bigger platform for research and could help address some myths about the systems they practice, Chopra said. These traditional medicine practitioners will work under the supervision of army doctors to provide the best medical care to patients. Patients will benefit if we can find scientific evidence that suggests alternative medicine can cure or curtail diseases, he added.

Requesting anonymity, a serving army doctor said it would be critical for the AFMS to monitor the experiment at every stage as traditional medicine has so far been a no-go area in the armed forces.
The death of 40-year-old Koliya left a village of 400 in eastern Assam in mourning, with a day being set aside in tribute. Koliya, a celebrity in Tinsukia district, is not a village elder or distinguished community member, but is an ape.

The forest department in Tinsukia on Sunday announced January 14 as Hoolock Gibbon Day, after the name of the species, to mark Koliyas death. Considered a member of the Inthong village that is home to mostly the Buddhist Singpho community, Koliya was hacked to death by a few villagers for allegedly attacking a boy on the outskirts.

She was part of our family, our community. She had been spending her daytime with us since 1990 after some people killed her male partner. The least we could do was organise a death ritual for her on Wednesday, community elder and former panchayat president Bhupeswar Ningda, 79, told Hindustan Times.

Koliya is an ape in eastern Assam after which January 14 is observed as Hoolock Gibbon Day.

The miscreants attacked Koliya when she was on her way back to the forest after leaving the village, which is located 500 km East of Guwahati.

Villagers observed doha, the funeral rituals observed 10 days after the death of a person, on Sunday which was when the local forest officials announced Hoolock Gibbon Day in Koliyas honour.

A hoolock gibbon (Bunopithecus hoolock) is a gentle, harmless animal unless provoked or teased. There were reports of miscreants having pestered Koliya, said divisional forest officer of the area RK Das, calling the killing unfortunate.

Das said the police registered a case under section 429 of the IPC and 51 of Wildlife Protection Act against two men some villagers named in the FIR. The accused however are absconding.

Ningda said Koliya gave more than she took, mostly a fruit or two. She was the reason why no monkeys dared raid the fruit trees in the village. The villagers also benefited from tourists who came to see her, said Ningda.

Hoolock gibbons are the only ape species found in India, and the entire shrewdness is confined to the northeast, according to forest officials.

There are at most 500 of the species spread across eastern Assam, parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Tripura. The largest troop  125 apes  is in Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary near central Assams Jorhat town.

Some hoolock gibbons reside in Dihing-Patkai Wildlife Sanctuary that straddles Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts. This sanctuary is close to Inthong, a part of the larger Ketetong village where the idea of tea plantation was first sown in 1823. Scotsman and tea planter Robert Bruce was offered his first cup of Assamese tea by Singpho tribal chief Bisa Gam which led to the first organized tea plantation.

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While many among us witnessed shocking images of flooded roads and submerged cars on our television screens during the floods that struck southern India last year, certain fortune hunters were resourceful enough to look beyond the tragedy to spot a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Today, many among them  automobile dealers as well as individual buyers  are making a beeline for a city thats giving away luxury vehicles worth crores for a fraction of their actual price tag.

The bargains are unbelievable  a 2009 model BMW or an Audi for as low as Rs 2 lakh, a Land Rover worth Rs 1.25 crore for a mere Rs 18 lakh  and it only gets better. The competition is heating up now, and an ever-increasing number of people are taking the opportunity to score some wheels that they could otherwise imagine owning only in their wildest of dreams.

If you are really lucky, like textile manufacturer T Mathavraja from Salem turned out to be, you could drive home in a 2014 model Audi A6 that doesnt even need any tinkering. Revealing that he paid just Rs 17 lakh for the car, an audibly excited Mathavraja gushed over the phone: No, I did not even have to spend a paisa on repairs, not even for cleaning the vehicle! I just got in and began driving.

The auction was conducted by cardekho.com at its yard in Tiruverkadu, Chennai.

It felt fantastic to win this baby, when there were some 20-25 bidders at the auction! I would otherwise have had to pay Rs 50 lakh for it, he said, adding that he mostly relied on his gut feeling to make the purchase.

A gleaming Jaguar ready for inspection at Tiruverkadu yard in Chennai. (HT Photo/V Srinivasulu)

However, Arvind Dabas  a car dealer operating from Delhi and Noida  brought with him a team of 15 highly trained mechanics armed with modern gadgets that leave nothing to chance. Speaking to HT, he said this could only be a win-win situation for him.

There is no chance of making a loss. If there is vehicle thats completely damaged, I rip it apart for parts. We will get its registration cancelled and buy it as scrap, he said.

His team, comprising three engineers and a dozen mechanics, has been housed at a rented place in the outskirts of the city.

Dabas, who wants to buy many flood-damaged cars  irrespective of size or condition  from Chennai, intends to spend four to five months in the city. He has taken a huge 10-acre yard, capable of holding a couple of thousand cars, on rent.

The former constable is an old hand at purchasing cars damaged in natural disasters. Though he had bought around 300 cars in the aftermath of the Jammu and Kashmir floods, it couldnt compare to Chennai  which he claimed was the biggest in terms of damages and number of cars on offer.

The city found another bulk buyer in Tayyab Mirza from Hyderabad, who picked up around 40 cars of various makes and brands.

Tiruverkadu car yard of cardekho.com view. (V Srinivasulu / HT Photo)

If theres somebody else whos smiling amid all this, its the auctioneer himself  cardekho CEO Abhishek Gautam. This is his fourth flood-related auction, the previous ones being the 2005 Mumbai floods, the 2006 Surat deluge and  finally  the Jammu and Kashmir floods of 2014. He says that Chennai, by far, suffered the most in terms of vehicular damage.

Auctioning some 5,000 vehicles is going to take quite some time, which is why I have taken a flat on rent for myself as well as my team from Delhi, he said. Most of the submerged vehicles suffered from damage to their engines as well as electronic circuitry, Gautam added.

Dabas, quite an expert at vehicles himself, gives his opinion with greater authority. He says that while some cars suffered little damage and were in need of only a little tinkering, others  like a Land Rover he bought  would need anywhere between Rs 3-4 lakh to be made roadworthy.

Read: Going for a song: Audis, BMWs sell dirt cheap in flood-ravaged Chennai

This is the estimate given by my engineers, and they are usually right, he said in a telephonic conversation. His more notable purchases included a shiny Audi  barely a few months old  with a price tag of just `18 lakh.

These auctions also work to the advantage of insurers, who are otherwise stuck with the tough job of paying the clients their dues. The more successful the auction, the better we can plug our losses, said an insurance company official.

Insurance firms were flooded with as many as 30,000 claims for damaged vehicles during the November-December deluge. As many as 10,000 of these vehicles would have to be auctioned off, sources said, adding that high-end luxury cars would take at least three to six months to dispose of.

Porche at Chennai yard. (HT Photo/V Srinivasulu)

While owners can directly sell a damaged car, not many prefer to do it on account of the paperwork required as well as security issues. Alternatively, insurance companies deal with used car dealers who either repair it or sell it as scrap. The third option is to give the vehicles to auctioneers such as cardekho.com, auctions division and copart.in, which will try to get the best price for you.

Besides physical auctions, players like cardekho.com and copart.in carry out online auctions  thereby allowing people across the world to participate in the bidding process. And in a situation that works to the benefit of everybody from the insured to the auctioneers and the lucky buyers, the only losers turn out to be insurance companies.

We are trying to cut down our losses but all the claims are being settled in a fair and just manner to ensure that our clients dont suffer, the regional head of an insurance company said on the condition of anonymity.

The losses suffered by insurance companies due to the 2015 floods are huge, and it would be impossible to gauge the quantum of the claims at this juncture, he added.

Photos: Audis, BMWs sell dirt cheap in flood-ravaged Chennai

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Protests intensified at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Monday over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula that has snowballed into a major political row even as students rejected the interim vice-chancellor and called for a strike at college campuses across the country on January 27.

Students from various parts of the city and country gathered at the institution to show solidarity, responding to a Chalo HCU (Lets go to HCU) call from the joint action committee spearheading the campaign.

Protesters are demanding the ouster of vice-chancellor P Appa Rao, who has gone on leave, and the enactment of a legislation called Rohith Act aimed at preventing suicides of students from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, backward classes and minority communities in universities.

Vemula was among five students suspended by the institute following allegations of assault on a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), an RSS-affiliated students body.

The incident has sparked a nationwide outcry with critics alleging that the HRD ministry pushed for the Dalit students to be punished by sending five reminders to the universitys vice-chancellor after labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya complained to Smriti Iranis department.

A march was held inside the university campus on Monday while outside students  some reportedly from Mumbai, Delhi, Allahabad and Kozhikode were stopped at the gates by police.

The students and the universitys SC/ST faculty have objected to the choice of Prof Vipin Srivastava as the interim V-C, alleging that he headed a panel which has been responsible for the death of Rohith and was one of the accused in the suicide of another Dalit student, Senthil Kumar, in 2008.

Following the rally meeting today on the campus we are planning to take a Chalo Delhi programme next week, said a student.

Read more: Dalit row: JNU students on indefinite hunger strike for Rohith Vemula

Sudhakar Babu, convener of the SC/ST teachers forum, told HT that the number of members who resigned from their administrative roles in protest has reached 15.

The students are also demanding `50 lakh as compensation for Vemulas family, which earlier rejected the `8 lakh ex gratia announced by the university.

Vemulas mother Radhika who was admitted to hospital on Sunday following complaint of chest pain is reportedly stable, said sources.

The Hyderabad HC, 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  has posted the matter to February 12.
The suspense over proposed central rule in Arunachal Pradesh continued till late on Monday as President Pranab Mukherjee was yet to give his nod to the cabinets recommendation.

On a day of fast-paced developments, the Congress moved the Supreme Court challenging the governments decision that has evoked sharp criticism from the Opposition and cast a shadow on the functioning of Parliament when it sits for the crucial budget session next month.

Before a Congress delegation met the President to seek his intervention, home minister Rajnath Singh called on Mukherjee to explain the rationale behind the governments recommendation that was sent to him on Sunday. The President is likely to seek legal opinion before giving his decision.

The Supreme Court decided to hear on January 27 the Congress plea which assumes significance as a five-judge constitution bench, headed by justice JS Khehar, is examining the scope of discretionary powers of the governor under the Constitution in convening an assembly session without the advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers.

The BJP justified the Centres action, saying it had to intervene because the crisis in Arunachal Pradesh amounted to violation of the Constitutions Article 174(1) which prescribes that there should not be a gap of more than six months between two sessions of a state legislative assembly.

Party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the political crisis was triggered by the Congresss internal conflict.

Read | Rajnaths likely arguments to President Pranab on Arunachal crisis

But senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal countered that the Gauhati high court had recently held valid the session that was conducted at a community hall in Itanagar on December 16. That is the position of BJP and the governor before the Supreme Court and the high court. So, if they feel that the session was validly held, then how can they (Centre) impose Presidents rule. This is a contradiction in itself, he said.

Stung by the move, the Congress has declared an all-out war against the trampling of the Constitution by the Narendra Modi government and also sought to rally round all non-BJP parties against the move in and outside Parliament.

In a series of tweets, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said the move is a blatant bid to topple an elected government and that his party will fight the attack on the Constitution. Modiji, you talk about federalism but murder democracy. You talk about cooperation but use every means to coerce, he said.

At the AICC briefing, Sibal charged the government with not being interested in smooth functioning of the budget session and has, therefore, taken such a decision which reflected its policy of coercive federalism.

He came down hard on governors with an RSS background appointed by the Centre alleging that they have trivialised the high office by acting as Pracharaks of RSS and have been tasked to destabilise all non-BJP led governments through the office of the governor. Arunachal Pradesh is just one such example, he said.

Sibal cited controversial statements of governors Kesari Nath Tripathi of West Bengal, Ram Naik of Uttar Pradesh, Tathagat Roy of Tripura, Kalyan Singh of Rajasthan, PB Acharya of Assam and Vajubhai Vala of Karnataka to drive home his point.

The Congress, which has 47 MLAs in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled and 11 BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The governor then called an assembly session on December 16 in which the deputy speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Speaker Nabam Rebia.

Read | Its against Constitution: Politicians on Arunachal Prez rule move

Read | Constitutional experts support move to recommend Prez rule in Arunachal

(With inputs from Agencies)
Three Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU) students started an indefinite hunger strike to pressure the Centre into taking action against Union ministers Bandaru Dattatreya, Smriti Irani and University of Hyderabad vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile for allegedly abetting the suicide of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

The hunger strike by students is a part of the action by Joint Action Committee for med in Hyderabad and Delhi under the  Justice for Rohith banner. Similar hunger strikes have also been started in Kolkata.

Lenin Kumar, a PhD student at the School of International Studies, Shubhanshu, a political studies student, and Shushree, a masters student at the Centre for Studies in Regional Development, began the strike on Saturday night at JNUs administrative block.

Shushree even wrote an open letter to the Centre which starts with same words as Rohiths letterBecause I too wanted to be a writer, and talks about her frustration towards the government attitude.

They demanded that the Centre grant aid to Rohiths family.

Read more: Hyderabad: Rohiths mother admitted in ICU due to chest pain

Rohiths JRF (Junior Research Fellowship) was the sole source of income for his family. Not only should the financial security of his kin be ensured, his family should have enough to make sure that Rohiths younger brother can pursue his dreams and ambition in life, said Shubhanshu.

There is also a demand from the students that an Equal Opportunity Office, like the one in JNU, should be started in other universities as well.

Recommendations of Prof Thorat Committee report must be implemented and dalit student organisations should also be given freedom from persecution, said Kumar.

The Thorat Committee constituted under the chairmanship of professor Sukhadeo Thorat made strong recommendations in 2011 to uplift the status of minority students and teachers.
A Jet Airways flight was stopped minutes before taking off from Delhi on Monday after a bomb scare following a threat by an anonymous caller.

All 104 guests and seven crew members were deplaned from the aircraft scheduled to leave for Kathmandu and security agencies were conducting a search, a statement released by Jet Airways said.

A call was at 12.55 pm at the deputy commissioner of police airport office where the caller said that a gift for you is at seat no 18 and said Happy Independence Day. No phone number was displayed, said a senior police officer.

The bomb threat call was received at the airport terminal just before the scheduled departure of the Kathmandu-bound Jet Airways flight 9W 260 at 1.25pm, officials said.

They said the plane was taken to the isolation bay at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) was also activated, they said, and a final clearance for the flight was awaited.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our guests. Security of our guests and crew is always our number one priority, Jet Airways said.

The incident came two days after a Mumbai-bound GoAir flight carrying more than 150 people from Bhubaneshwar made an emergency stopover an hour into the journey following an anonymous tip about a bomb on board the flight. However, no suspicious item was found after a security check.

Security has been scaled up across the nation ahead of the Republic Day celebrations which will be attended in Delhi by French President Francois Hollande.

The National Investigation Agency on Friday rounded up over a dozen people, including the self-appointed India head of Islamic State, during raids in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

In another development, the anti-terrorist squad of UP Police arrested two suspected IS operatives, one from Lucknow and another from Kushinagar while they were hunting for two others, all of whom were believed to be part of a terror outfit that was planning attacks on Republic Day celebrations and the Ardh Kumbh mela in Haridwar.
French President Francois Hollande promised additional investment of $1billion ( around Rs 6,700 crore) every year in India even as 16 agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed between the two nations on Sunday. The pacts signed at the India-France Business Summit at Chandigarh in the presence of Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi included an agreement between Airbus Group and Mahindra to manufacture helicopters in India and MoUs with AFD (the Agence Francaise de Developpement) for urban development in three cities, including Chandigarh, under the Smart City theme.

The agreement for cooperation to manufacture the helicopters was signed between Pieree De Bausset, president and managing director, Airbus Group India, and Prakash Shukla, group president, Mahindra Aerospace, as part of the Make in India initiative of the Indian government. The other agreements pertain to sectors ranging from green energy and engineering to urban development and waste treatment.

Before signing the agreements, members of the visiting French delegation in a panel discussion on India-France Economic Cooperation  The Way Forward raised issues pertaining to stability and sustainability of legal framework and regulatory divergence, besides discussing opportunities available in India for investment, mutual cooperation and sharing of technical knowhow.

Read: With Hollande in India, France get down to business

Loic Ar mand, chair man, France LOreal, said there was a strong need for legal stability and sustainability of legal framework from the Indian administration.

The authorities have to focus on regulatory convergence to bring the Indian regulations closer to letter and spirit of European Union regulations, he said. Armand said there is no problem for big corporations like his, but medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) needed regulatory convergence.

Big corporations are Indian in India and European in Europe, but the same is not possible for MSMEs, he said.

The France LOreal chairman added that he all for speeding up implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST), saying that it could be a game-changing reform.

Feedback Ventures chairman Vinayak Chatterjee spoke on the plethora of big possibilities available in India  in defence, aerospace and other areas of new generation precision engineering, especially in the northern region with its skills in engineering.

Read: India, France vow to fight terror jointly, Rafale deal may take time

He listed power transmission and distribution, rail infrastructure and urban development as areas of growth and opportunities. There are talks on for development of two existing railway stations in Punjab and Haryana, he said.

Airbus Group India president and managing Pierre de Bausset said there was huge pool of talent and growing medium and small enterprises in India. There are good policies, but processes create a problem sometimes, he said.

Earlier, the Indo-French CEOs Forum held a closed-door meeting in which 25 business leaders each from the two nations participated. CEO Forum co-chair Paul Hermelin said that energy, renewable energy, defence, water treatment, smart cities, infrastructure etc. have been identified as areas of cooperation and long-term commitment. The Indian side of the CEO Forum was led by co-chair Dhruv M Sawhney.

Read: Chandigarh a very beautiful city, glad to be here: Hollande

Read: Hollande in India: France badly needs deals, ideologies can wait
Described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the man of the match of the NDAs victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Amit Shah began his second innings as the BJP president on Monday.

However, Modis most trusted lieutenant faces several challenges this time, from expanding the partys voter base and winning future elections to keeping the sheen of Brand Modi unblemished among its cadre. Through his tenure of three years, Shah will be allowed little time to rest on past laurels. Whats more, the fag end of his current tenure will roll into 2019  the year India faces yet another general election for the Lok Sabha.

How Shah conducts himself over the next three years will have a bearing on his image as the most successful BJP president, a reputation he had almost nailed before the partys winning spree sputtered to a halt in Delhi and then in Bihar.

Here are some big hurdles that Shah will have to cross without tripping over them.

Impending elections

Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry will go to the polls this summer. Following the back-to-back drubbing his party faced in Bihar and Delhi, Shah hopes to silence his critics by gaining some relief in these states. He would be particularly happy if BJP emerges as the largest party in Assam, increases its footprints in Bengal, and make inroads in the southern states. Though it is a tall order, given the partys strength in these states, Shah will regain his reputation as an organisational man if the targets are achieved.

Uttar Pradesh

Its the big-ticket election in this crucial northern state  slated to be held next year  that would be Shahs actual test. As general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, he was hailed as the architect of the BJP victory here in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. However, the party did not fare well in the subsequent by-elections and local body polls  sounding alarm bells in the saffron camp. Shah will have to win Uttar Pradesh again to silence critics who say that the Modi wave would have swept the BJP to victory with or without Shah.

Punjab and others

Shah probably considers the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) his arch-nemesis. After halting his victory march in Delhi last year, the newborn party is now on the verge of altering the historical bipolar polity in Punjab by emerging as a new political force to reckon with. If AAP manages to dethrone the Akali-BJP government in Punjab in 2017, the NDAs critics would be able to say conclusively that both Shah and Modi have lost their magic touch. Next year, the BJP president will also have to pull out all stops to win Uttarakhand and retain Goa  two states where the Congress remains the partys main rival. A victory in any of these states will boost the Congress morale, further eroding the BJPs political standing.

Big plans

After he took over from Rajnath Singh in 2014, Shah had set upon some ambitious tasks  such as making BJP the worlds largest political outfit, training party cadre, setting up offices in every district, and documenting the partys history. While some of them have been achieved, many others are yet to take off. Though Shah had also set up separate committees to involve party cadre in promoting the Modi governments flagship schemes, such as the Clean Ganga project and the girl child education scheme, not a lot of progress has been achieved on this front either. Over the next three years, Shah will have to ensure that his big plans see the light of day.

Indiscipline

When Shahs hard-earned electoral invincibility seemed to be fading away, some party leaders crossed the Lakshman Rekha of party discipline to question his style of functioning in public. The partys initial hesitation to crack the whip on them initially only served to embolden the others. Over the next three years, Shah may have to deal with such cases with an iron fist. One of his first challenges would be to take a call on Kirti Azad, who was suspended for dragging finance minister Arun Jaitley into the DDCA controversy. Any further delay in cracking the whip on him will fuel the conspiracy theories already at work.

Quelling extremist voices

The BJP had to face flak and also pay a heavy electoral price for controversial statements made by the likes of Yogi Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj. Unfortunately for Shah, even repeated statements from the Prime Minister and senior leaders that the focus should not deflect from matters of governance and development failed to silence them. Indias global image also received a beating over certain instances of BJP leaders pushing an aggressive Hindutva line. As BJP president, Shah will be under immense pressure to deal with such elements who work at cross purposes with the government.

Taking veterans along

Two members of partys Margdarshak Mandal  LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi  openly revolted against Shah after the BJPs poor show in Bihar. Clearly disgruntled over being shunted out of the parliamentary board and cast into a body that has little say in party matters, the two drove home their point by skipping Shahs re-election event at the party office on Sunday. While the two ageing leaders are unlikely to become a part of the BJPs decision-making system again, the party president may have to reach out to them for preventing any further controversies. Whats more, with the countrys presidential and the vice-presidential elections due next year, many BJP leaders have already begun floating the names of Advani and Joshi for the top constitutional posts.

Read | With polls coming up, Act Two for BJP president Amit Shah

Social expansion

Under Modi and Shah, the BJP tried to shed its image of a Baniya-Brahmin party and reached out to leaders from marginalised sections of the society by giving them tickets to the Lok Sabha as well as assembly elections. The party also undertook outreach programmes for both OBCs and Dalits  two sections of the society that form a majority of the electorate in the crucial state. While the strategy reaped rich electoral dividends in the Lok Sabha election, it backfired in Bihar  where these sections aligned with the partys rivals. The controversy surrounding a Dalit students suicide in Hyderabad has further dealt a blow to the BJPs efforts at social expansion. Shah will now have to walk the extra mile to reinforce the partys commitment to Dalits and OBCs, or lose their votes to other parties that succeed in wooing them better.

Heavyweight team

The first innings of Amit Shah as BJP president saw lightweight leaders, sans any history in contesting the polls, occupying key organisational positions. The lack of political talent in the organisation became evident when senior ministers had to be sent to the states to assist in the electoral process, exposing Shah to criticism. When he sets up a new team, he will not only have to induct senior leaders with organisational experience in his team but also honour provisions in the party constitution that offer one-third representation to women. Also, not a single Dalit face figures among the party office-bearers. Shah may be required to strike a balance.

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India signed an inter-governmental pact with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets on Monday but said sorting out details of the $9 billion deal such as pricing and post-sales servicing would take some more time.

India had scaled back the original plan to buy 126 Rafale jets to meet its air forces urgent needs, but Modi and Hollande had to step into the deal after commercial negotiations between plane-maker Dassault Aviation and Indian officials collapsed.

Officials had hoped to sew up the deal for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande to announce during the latters three-day visit to India. Hollande is the chief guest at the Republic day celebrations in New Delhi.

But both sides said more talks were needed over the deal, which was announced by Modi during his visit to France in April.

France is a special friend. Eighteen years ago, France was the first country we signed a strategic partnership with. We are now here to take it higher, Modi said at a joint press conference following his talks with Hollande.

India is seeking to quickly upgrade its mostly Soviet-era military equipment, looking to pump in some $150 billion into the overhaul, as it faces off Chinas growing assertiveness in the region.

Hollande and French business leaders also met with their Indian counterparts to boost bilateral trade, which totaled $ 8.6 billion in 2014.

Addressing businessmen at industry lobby FICCI, French finance minister Michel Sapin said companies from his country will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector.

Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than $1 billion per year in India. We estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years.

The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, which makes France the major player in Prime Minister Modis Make in India programme, Sapin said.

France also promised support for Indias clean-energy quest, including a $300 million initial support for a solar energy alliance launched last month during global climate talks held in Paris.

Also Read | With Hollande in India, France get down to business

Also Read | Hollande in India: France badly needs deals, ideologies can wait

Also Read | France to invest $1bn more in India every year
President Pranab Mukherjee advocated on Monday the need for dialogues between India and Pakistan but qualified his remarks with a caution that peace cannot be discussed under a shower of bullets.

He was referring, though indirectly, to the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase that pushed the dialogue process into uncertainty.

Ahead of the Budget session in Parliament, the President said that it is the bounden duty of lawmakers that legislations are enacted after due discussions and debate.

A spirit of accommodation, cooperation and consensus-building should be the preferred mode of decision-making, he said in his address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day.

His remarks came in the backdrop of a stalemate between the Opposition and the government over several crucial reform-related legislations, including a bill to roll out the goods and services tax. The government has accused the Opposition of stalling development by disrupting Parliament. In response, the Opposition blamed the NDA government of trying to bulldoze legislations without discussions.

Read: Full text of President Pranab Mukherjees address to the nation

President Mukherjees remarks on the India-Pakistan dialogue were significant as New Delhi and Islamabad were trying to salvage the peace process in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

Foreign secretaries of the two countries were scheduled to meet in Islamabad on January 15 but it had to be resheduled because of the attack. The two countries were yet to confirm the next date for the meeting.

Terrorists seek to undermine order by rejecting the very basis of strategic stability, which are recognised borders. If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards an age of chaos, the President said.

There will be disputes among nations; and, as is well-known, the closer we are to a neighbour the higher the propensity for disputes. There is a civilized way to bridge disagreement; dialogue, ideally, should be a continual engagement. But we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets.

President Mukherjee said the country should guard itself against forces of violence, intolerance and unreason.

In remarks that came against the backdrop of a growing debate on intolerance in the country, he said reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients of nationalism.

Our finest inheritance, the institutions of democracy, ensure to all citizens justice, equality, and gender and economic equity. When grim instances of violence hit at these established values which are at the core of our nationhood, it is time to take note. We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason, he said.

Calling 2015 as a year of challenges, the President said Indias economy also had to face the blowback of the subdued global economy.

Weak investor sentiments led to withdrawal of funds from emerging markets, including India, putting pressure on the Indian rupee. Our exports suffered. Our manufacturing sector is yet to recover fully, he said.

He also lauded some flagship programmes of the Centre to deal with the current situation.
India will set up a satellite tracking and imaging centre in southern Vietnam that will give Hanoi access to pictures from Indian earth observation satellites that cover the region, including China and the South China Sea, Indian officials said.

The move, which could irritate Beijing, deepens ties between India and Vietnam, who both have long-running territorial disputes with China.

While billed as a civilian facility - earth observation satellites have agricultural, scientific and environmental applications - security experts said improved imaging technology meant the pictures could also be used for military purposes.

Hanoi especially has been looking for advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies as tensions rise with China over the disputed South China Sea, they said.

In military terms, this move could be quite significant, said Collin Koh, a marine security expert at Singapores S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. It looks like a win-win for both sides, filling significant holes for the Vietnamese and expanding the range for the Indians.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will fund and set up the satellite tracking and data reception centre in Ho Chi Minh City to monitor Indian satellite launches, the Indian officials said. Indian media put the cost at around $23 million.

India, whose 54-year-old space programme is accelerating, with one satellite launch scheduled every month, has ground stations in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, Brunei, Biak in eastern Indonesia and Mauritius that track its satellites in the initial stages of flight.

The Vietnam facility will bolster those capabilities, said Deviprasad Karnik, an ISRO spokesman.

But unlike the other overseas stations, the facility will also be equipped to receive images from Indias earth observation satellites that Vietnam can use in return for granting India the tracking site, said an Indian government official connected with the space programme.

This is a sort of quid pro quo which will enable Vietnam to receive IRS (Indian remote sensing) pictures directly, that is, without asking India, said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Obviously it will include parts of China of interest to Vietnam.

Chinese coastal naval bases, the operations of its coastguard and navy and its new man-made islands in the disputed Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea would be targets of Vietnamese interest, security experts said.

Another Indian official said New Delhi would also have access to the imagery.

India has 11 earth observation satellites in orbit, offering pictures with differing resolutions and areas, the ISRO said.

Indian officials had no timeframe for when the centre would be operational.

This is at the beginning stages, we are still in dialogue with Vietnamese authorities, said Karnik.

Vietnams foreign ministry confirmed the project, but provided few other details.

Chinas defence ministry said the proposed tracking station wasnt a military issue. The Chinese foreign ministry had no immediate comment.

Vietnam launched its first earth observation satellite in 2013, but Koh said it was not thought to produce particularly high resolution images.

Blurred lines

Security experts said Vietnam would likely seek real-time access to images from the Indian satellites as well as training in imagery analysis, a specialised intelligence field.

The advance of technology means the lines are blurring between civilian and military satellites, said Trevor Hollingsbee, a retired naval intelligence analyst with Britains Defence Ministry. In some cases, the imagery from a modern civilian satellite is good enough for military use.

Sophisticated military reconnaissance satellites can be used to capture military signals and communications, as well as detailed photographs of objects on land, capturing detail to less than a metre, Koh and other experts said.

The tracking station will be the first such foreign facility in Vietnam and follows other agreements between Hanoi and New Delhi that have cemented security ties.

India has extended a $100 million credit line for Hanoi to buy patrol boats and is training Vietnamese submariners in India while Hanoi has granted oil exploration blocks to India in waters off Vietnam that are disputed with China.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has shown a greater willingness to step up security ties with countries such as Vietnam, overriding concerns this would upset China, military officials said.

You want to engage Vietnam in every sphere. The reason is obvious - China, said retired Indian Air Force group captain Ajay Lele at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Both India and Vietnam are also modernising their militaries in the face of Beijings growing assertiveness, having separately fought wars with China in past decades.

Australian-based scholar Carl Thayer, who has studied Vietnams military since the late 1960s, said the satellite tracking facility showed both nations wanted to enhance security ties.

Their interests are converging over China and the South China Sea, he said.
Politicians on Monday dubbed the governments move to recommend Presidents rule in Arunachal Pradesh as unconstitutional and said it amounted to trampling of democracy.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the recommendation of imposing Presidents rule, suspending an elected government in Arunachal Pradesh, was against the Constitution.

Constitution doesnt allow you to suspend an elected government and enforce the Presidents rule in any state, the Aam Aadmi Party chief said. It is against the Constitution, he added.

Kejriwal had earlier termed the union cabinets recommendation of the Presidents rule in Arunachal as murder of Constitution on the eve of Republic Day.

Centre should have waited for courts to decide on Arunachal, AAP leader Ashutosh tweeted as some TV reports said that Arunachal Pradesh has been placed under Presidents Rule after President Pranab Mukherjee signed the order on Sunday night.

With Arunachal Pradesh the beginning of the end of Modi has started. I knew he had no love for constitutionalism, now it's proved.  ashutosh (@ashutosh83B) January 24, 2016

On Sunday the Union cabinet recommended Presidents rule in crisis-hit Arunachal Pradesh , a move that triggered a fresh slugfest with the Congress which ruled the northeastern state calling the decision an act of political intolerance.

Following the recommendation, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will call on President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday and is expected to apprise him about the decision of the Union Cabinet to recommend imposition of central rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

In a related development, Congress President Sonia Gandhi is likely to lead a delegation to the President requesting himnot to give his assent to the Cabinet decision.

Presidents Rule in Arunanchal is trampeling of democracy & exposes Modijis double speak of states being equal part of Team India, Congress leader Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet.

Constitutional experts support move to recommend Prez rule in Arunachal

Meanwhile, the Janata Dal (United) has held the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responsible for the political crisis in Arunachal Pradesh and accused Governor JP Rajkhowa of interfering with state governmentss functioning.

The entire crisis in Arunachal Pradesh is due to the Central Ministers. There was a deliberate attempt to pressurise the Speaker of the state assembly. The Governor of the state is responsible for interfering with the government?s functioning, he should be recalled immediately. We condemn this and this is against the spirit of cooperative federalism,? JD (U) leader KC Tyagi said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also criticised the Centres recommendation in tweets.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year when 21 Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 of the BJP and two Independents to impeach assembly speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue. The move was branded illegal and unconstitutional by the Speaker.

Altogether 27 MLAs in the 60-member assembly, including chief minister Tuki and his ministerial colleagues, boycotted the proceedings.

Government sources argued that if the top court, which has referred petitions on the Arunachal Pradesh crisis to a constitution bench, considers as valid the December assembly session at a community hall in Itanagar it will mean the states Congress government is in a minority and it is not allowing a floor test of its strength to happen.

Again, if the court rules the session as invalid then it amounts to a constitutional breakdown because the six-month rule was breached. Therefore, in either case, the state is heading for a constitutional crisis, a source said.

Constitutional experts saw nothing wrong in the Centres move if the assembly failed to meet in more than six months.

The Union council of minister is well within its power to advise Presidents rule as there is sufficient ground to conclude that the constitutional machinery has failed in the state, former Lok Sabha secretary general PTD Achari said. There is nothing unusual or extraordinary in the Opposition criticising the move.

Earlier, high court Justice Hrishikesh Roy observed prima facie the governors decision to advance the assembly session to December 16 for taking up the impeachment proceedings against the Speaker was in violation of Article 174 and 175 of the Constitution.
Calling it a landmark initiative to save the world from global warming, and to push solar energy as a viable alternative across the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande jointly inaugurated the Interim Secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gurgaon on Monday. They also laid the foundation stone of the ISA secretariat, which will be hosted by India at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) campus in Gurgaon.

NISE, Gurgaon will provide 5 acres of land for the construction of the ISA secretariat, and during the interim period three floors of the Surya Kiran building at the campus will be allotted to run the alliance. The Alliance comprises more than 100 solar-resource-rich countries working together with the objective of globally increasing the use of solar energy.

Both PM Modi , and the French president Hollande travelled in Delhi Metro till Arjangarh Metro station, and reached NISE by road which is 11 km from the station. A DMRC spokesperson said that a special train was arranged for the two heads of the state to travel to Gurgaon, and scheduled in such a manner that movement of other trains was not disturbed.

In his address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that that it launch of Solar alliance in Haryana was a historic occasion as it was happening in the land which has given the message of Geeta. The people of India are dedicated to life, and respect all forms of energy particularly the Sun. This alliance which aims to harness solar energy is part of our belief system, and would be taken to logical conclusion, he assured. The PM described the solar alliance as one of the two landmark initiatives, apart from innovation, that emerged during the two-week Climate Change Conference held in Paris last year, in which key roles were played by India and France.

We realised that if oil producing countries can unite, then 122 nations in the world who get more than 300 days of Sun can also unite, and the idea of solar alliance was born out of this thought. I assure you that this idea will impact generations as world would generate more green power, said Modi. He appreciated the role played by French President in the formation of Alliance, and brining all nations together.

The French Development Agency will allocate 300 million Euros to developing solar energy over the next five years in order to finance the initial projects to be undertaken by the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

Speaking on the occasion, the President of France, Francois Hollande, described the Alliance as Indias gift to the world for combating climate change. He said that the Prime Minister had approached him last year with the idea of an international coalition aiming at development of solar energy, particularly in countries with the greatest potential for it, and making this energy accessible to all. Following this, he and Narendra Modi had together launched the International Solar Alliance at the opening of the Paris Climate Conference on November 30, 2015.

Hollande said that the Alliance was faced with the challenge of raising global investment to the tune of 1,200 billion Euros required to develop solar energy by 2030.

The French President said that several French-Indian projects would be launched in order to contribute to the success of the Alliance, and a number of agreements have been signed for this purpose.

Haryana Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Union minister of state for power, coal and renewable energy, Piyush Goyal were present on the occasion along with several dignitaries.
Chandra Bose, the grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, joined the BJP in the presence of party president Amit Shah during a public rally at Howrah on Monday.

Earlier, talking to reporters after meeting Amit Shah, Bose said that hell reveal his reason for joining BJP once it happens.

Hours before Shahs rally, sources said that Bose may become a candidate for the Lok Sabha polls from West Bengal. Bose will also be a prominent face in the partys campaign in the state that has millions of Netaji fans who believe that Netaji did not die in the 1945 air crash in Taipeis Taihoku.

BJP leaders indicated to HT that the party may highlight Boses induction into the party and the declassification of Netaji files which are with the Centre in the run-up to the assembly polls in West Bengal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the digital copies of 100 files related to Netaji on his birth anniversary on Saturday.

Bose is the one of the most vocal among a section of Netajis family members who oppose the theory that he died in the air crash in Taihoku in August 1945. Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Sugato Bose, who is also a professor of history at Harvard University, and his mother Krishna Bose, a former Lok Sabha MP from Trinamool, think that Netaji was killed in the air crash.

Read | PM releases Netaji files; Mamata wants leader of nation title for Bose

He has met Modi more than once in the past few months to press for the full declassification of files on Netaji and spoke highly of the PMs efforts to do the same. Bose has also demanded in public that Modi should speak to leaders in a few countries such as Japan, Russia and the UK to gain access to files on Netaji for a final solution to the mysterious disappearance of the leader.

Ironically, Bose will be campaigning against chief minister Mamata Banerjee who also believes that Netaji did not die in the 1945 air crash.

Bose, who used to work for Tata Steel, lives in Kolkata with his wife.
The nabbing of Muddabir Mushtaq Sheikh from Mumbra, a suburban Thane district, as part of the countrywide crackdown against the Islamic State (ISIS) that led to the arrest of 14 people, has brought to the fore the systematic recruitment process and the al Qaeda-like hierarchical structure of the terror outfit in India, leaving the central and state agencies worried.

The structure of the outfit was decided by Shafi Arman, the handler of recruitments in India operating from Syria, in 2013, and Sheikh, 33, was made the amir (chief) of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilal al-Hind, ISISs wing in India.

Khalid Ahmed Ali Khalid alias Rizwan, a 20-year-old arrested during the raids in Mumbai, was the second-in-command of IS in India, under whom four other chiefs were nominated, said police sources interrogating the suspects.

He was on Sunday produced before a holiday court of magistrate Amit Launkar in Mumbai and was remanded in police custody till January 30.

Read more: Scouting on Whatsapp, Twitter: Terror outfits look for recruits online

Khalid sought forgiveness, saying galti ho gayi saab (I have made a mistake, sahib).

According to the police, Khalid played a key role in the indoctrination of Ayaz Sultan, Malwani resident who has gone missing, who was then made a recruiter. Khalid, according to sources, had visited Malwani and stayed with Sultan, and had also met other members, who were indoctrinated by Ayaz.

Sources said the terror groups hierarchical structure, which IS has adopted from al-Qaeda and improved, was decided by Shafi in 2013 when he made 33-year-old Muddabir Mushtaq Sheikh from Mumbra as the amir (chief) of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilal al-Hind, the IS wing in India. Muddabir was also arrested during the raids.

Since the arrests in Mumbai, Mangaluru, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Uttar Pradesh, more than a dozen suspects were under surveillance.

Khalid told investigators that he used to guide people under him exactly on the basis of instructions he received from Shafi in Syria.

Both Mudabbir and Khalid have no remorse for their actions or them having joined the IS.

In fact, Mudabbir went to the extent of telling his investigators that he had no respect for the Constitution of India.

He told us that his arrest does not make any difference to the structure of the IS in the country. He was bold enough to say that some other person will be made the Amir and work to establish IS will be continued, a police officer said.

What is disturbing is the manner of attacks Shafi has told these recruits to conduct. It is not alone to conduct blasts in the country. From operating like lone wolves who could use anything including a knife to attack a foreigner to organising multiple attacks in the country, Shafi was guiding them. His method is to attack and create confusion, and has told them that the IS from Syria will issue statements owning responsibility, said another officer.
The recent crackdown on Islamic State of Iraq and Al- Sham ( I SIS) operatives across the country has once again brought to focus the groups online presence  in particular the numerous social networking accounts that members of ISIS have formed to hunt and recruit more members.

Read more: Scouting on Whatsapp, Twitter: Terror outfits look for recruits online

One of the recent ISIS documents  available online despite the central governments assurance that access to them will be restricted  has a list of Twitter accounts for male recruits and a separate one for women.

These people live in t he Islamic State, the document states. They have Surespot and other private messaging apps. If their Twitter is banned, they will always make a new one. Remember to use the anonymous TOR browser or the ChatSecure app! the document states.

Read more: NIA crackdown reveals arrested Mumbra man is chief of ISIS India wing

A senior anti- terrorism officer, who was part of the crackdown said, Once they make initial contact on a social networking site like Twitter, they move to private messaging apps, and then the indoctrination begins, and it ends with a call to join ISIS in Iraq.

The focus of ISIS or al-Qaeda on India is not new, said the officer. Though al-Qaeda has never claimed any terror strike, there always was a tacit understanding between terrorist organisations like LeT and al-Qaeda.

The major issue that concerns security agencies is the proliferation of the ISIS media wing, which has been constantly releasing e-books. It i s worrying to see ISIS analyse the Paris attacks in an e-book, said a senior ATS officer, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Read more: ATS blocks 94 websites for being pro-ISIS

Another recent ISIS document released names Ilyas al Kashmiri, who ISIS identifies as the worlds most fearsome guerrilla expert, as the person who has encouraged LeT, Taliban and al-Qaeda to start a terror campaign in India.

The AQ knows t hat by spreading terror in India, it will attack Pakistan for harbouring terrorists on its Afghan border. Pakistan will retaliate and al-Qaeda and the Taliban will support their Muslim neighb ours, and possibly even Bangladesh [another Muslim majority neighbour]. This full regional war will make a Muslim vs Hindu conflict, finally giving Muslims a victory as promised by Prophet Muhammad, reads the document as the reason to spread terror in India.

The document makes it a point to comment on the beef ban,  In India, a movement of Hindus is growing to kill Muslims who eat beef. The people who fund these organisations want a huge following of Islam-haters, who can turn i nto potential recruits f or future wars in their countries. They have a political wing for the propaganda to get more recruits, and armed militias who can start a terror campaign against their number 1 enemy  the Muslims.

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A day after the Union cabinet recommended bringing Arunachal Pradesh under central rule, home minister Rajnath Singh will meet President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday to explain the circumstances under which the government decided to pull the plug on the states Congress-led coalition government.

The Congress has stated that the cabinet decision was a reflection of the Narendra Modi governments political intolerance. This is an act of political intolerance by the government, which speaks of cooperative federalism, party leader Kapil Sibal said.

Judging by the governors report, heres what the home minister is likely to tell the President in a bid to convince Rashtrapati Bhavan that the states constitutional machinery has indeed crumbled under chief minister Nabam Tuki:

The constitutional crisis is real

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year, when 21 Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 BJP members and two Independents to impeach assembly speaker Nabam Rebia from a makeshift venue in Itanagar. The speaker called the meeting illegal and unconstitutional. Only 27 MLAs in the 60-member assembly, including chief minister Tuki and his ministerial colleagues, boycotted the proceedings. The matter is now before the Supreme Court.

Singh is likely to argue that the constitutional crisis in the state was real, irrespective of how one looks at this controversial meeting. If the Supreme Court rules the session invalid, it would amount to a constitutional breakdown because the assembly has breached Article 174 of the constitution  mandating that the gap between two sessions of the assembly should not exceed six months.

Read more: Its against Constitution: Politicians on Arunachal Prez rule move

On the other hand, if the top court rules that the session was valid, it would mean that the states Congress government was in a minority but unwilling to let a floor test of its strength be conducted.

State wasnt responding to guvs letters

The state government was violating Article 167(b) of the Constitution, which requires the state to respond to governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowas request for information regarding affairs of the state as well as legislative proposals.

Law & order situation has deteriorated

The law and order situation has deteriorated severely, with even the Raj Bhavan being gheraoed and access to it blocked. Moreover, the governor had informed the home ministry in his reports that government officials were indulging in indiscipline, lawlessness and politicking. The Centre has also accused the civil services of funding certain student groups and communal organisations against others, fuelling communal passions even against the governor.

State turned blind eye to insults thrown at guv

The state administration remained a silent spectator while the governor, a nominee of the President himself, was being publicly insulted and humiliated. The gherao of the Raj Bhavan amounts to a constitutional breakdown in the state.

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Days after the surrender of Japan in World War II and the plane crash that purportedly killed Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru rejected a suggestion that the iconic freedom fighter should be treated as a war criminal.

Nehru made the remarks during an interview with the press in Delhi on August 29, 1945 in response to a question from an American journalist on whether Bose should be dealt with as a war criminal. The interview was widely reported by leading Indian dailies, including the Hindustan Times.

Read more: Congress vows to expose and punish creators of fake Nehru letter

I resent the suggestion that Subhas Bose should be dealt with as a war criminal. Were he  in the event of his still being alive  to be tried as a war criminal, I would wish all persons considered war criminals to be brought to trial so that facts might come out, Nehru said.

The remarks, part of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Volume 14 published by the Nehru Memorial Library, assume significance in light of a controversy caused by a fake letter circulated on social media just before the government declassified 100 secret files on Bose last week.

Read more:PM releases Netaji files; Mamata wants leader of nation title for Bose

The letter, described as fake by several Nehru experts and historians, made it appear as if Nehru had referred to Bose as a war criminal while writing to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1945.

Netaji, who has been in the limelight again because of the intense interest in the declassified files, was purportedly killed in a plane crash in Formosa (now Taiwan) on August 18, 1945. Though some of his relatives dismissed this theory, Boses daughter recently told Hindustan Times that she believed he died in the crash.

Read more: My father wouldve been prominent alternative to Nehru: Boses daughter

Bose and Nehru were both leaders of the Indian National Congress but had a falling out after Netaji called for complete Swaraj (self-governance) and even the use of force to drive out the British in the late 1930s.

Despite their differences, Nehru insisted during the interview that even if Bose were to be tried as a war criminal, the trial should not be handled by judges from Western countries alone.

It should not be a trial by British and American judges alone. There should be Indian judges also. It should be an impartial trial conduct-ed against an Indian background. And in my list there will be many high officials sitting in Delhi who are bigger war criminals than Subhas Bose. That list will be very different, he said.

Nehru also listed the reasons why he believed Bose had not done anything wrong by leading the Indian National Army in the fight against the British.

I have known Subhas for over 20 years. He was once President of the Congress. A most unusual thing happened and an ex-President of the Congress was turned out of the organisation. That was before the war. He also formed a party against the Congress. Then came the war. He escaped from India, went to Germany and then to Japan. So far as I know, the Indian National Army had already been formed even before Bose went to Japan. I do not find anything unusual for a supposed legal government to levy taxes, Nehru said in response to the American journalists question about Boses men killing many Americans and extorting money from the poor in Burma and Malaya.

He added: As for extortion there has been enough in India. Free gifts were collected for war funds and millions had been extorted. Three million people had died of starvation in Bengal.

Nehru, however, questioned Boses decision to ally with the Axis powers, Germany and Japan, to fight the British.

As for Bose, I have never doubted his passion for freedom. Bose had no love for the Japanese but he was foolish to imagine that he could further Indian independence by allying himself with the Japanese and Germans who were not only aggressive powers, but dangerous powers, he said.

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The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was launched in 1977 with an aim to look into the welfare of Muslim youths.

But as the years passed by there was a radical shift in SIMIs ideology and in 1986 it went on to call for the Liberation of India through Islam. SIMIs then parent body Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JEI-H) soon disowned the organisation for its inflammatory statements and floated another students body called the Students Islamic Organisation.

SIMIs activities, however, continued without facing any legal obstacles. And after the demolition of Babri Masjid SIMIs polemic grew. State governments who took notice of the organisations activities started cracking down on its activists in the late 90s.

But when the outfit refused to lie low, the centre imposed a blanket ban on SIMI and its activities in 2001. Its headquarters at Zakir Nagar in New Delhi stopped buzzing after its senior leaders and prominent activists went into hiding.

Though SIMIs network had collapsed, following the 2001 ban, its activists had managed to stay in touch. SIMI had already made inroads across the length and breadth of the country. SIMI had its sympathisers from Uttar Pradesh in the north to Kerala in the south, and from West Bengal in the east to Gujarat in the west.

Though SIMIs network had collapsed following the 2001 ban, its activists had managed to stay in touch. From 2001 to 2004, SIMI and its activists maintained a low profile and carried out its activities to contact, recruit and gather funds in a clandestine manner.

And under the command of Noman Badr, a resident of Haldwani in Uttaranchal and central advisory committee member of SIMI, it dusted itself up and he slowly but steadily brought the organisation back to its feet. Till 2001, there are more than 400 full-time cadres or Ansars of SIMI, and over 20,000 ordinary members, security agencies say.

Safdar Nagori, believed to be the chief of SIMIs extremist wing, and Amil Parvez got in touch with Badr, who asked them to come over to Haldwani. Badr also got in touch with a few SIMI activists and had planned to revive the movement in a clandestine manner.

Nagori, Badr, Illyas Khan, Aamir, Humam Ahmed Siddique, Dr Abrar, Kamruddin, Hatif Iqbal, Shewaz Badohi, Ashraf Jafri, SIMIs former president, met at its first ever meeting at Haldwani soon after its ban in 2001.

It was decided in the meeting that former office bearers of SIMI would collect funds during the month of Ramzan. Everyone was given a different target, Parvez, who was arrested in 2008, later told interrogators.

Parvez replaced Dr Abrar as the chief of Bihar in the month of Ramzan in 2001 and floated two organisations under the banner Muslim Students Federation of Bihar and Tehreek Tahaffuz-e-Shaaire Islam (Movement for Protection of Islamic Symbols and Monuments) and started collecting funds.

A rally also was organised to commemorate the demolition of Babri Masjid, states Parvez, in which ex-SIMI president Ghulam Sarwar Falahi took part and donated Rs 35,000.

Internal conflicts

But like any other organisation, its members too had internal conflicts. In 2004, a meeting was called to sort out the differences between members. Shahid Badr Falahi, Safdar Nagori, Imran Ansari, Asif Khan, Irshan Khan, Dr Abrar, Yasin Patel, PM Salam, Ashraf Jafri, Tahil Jamaal, Akram Falah, Dr Anis, Amir and few others were present. This was the first time that personal differences between members came out.

Shahid Badr Falahi accused Safdar Nagori of carrying out activities according to his own whims and fancies and without consulting the central advisory committee. The CAC complaint was that Amil Parvez was not informed about anything.

There were heated arguments over the issue that accounts were not properly maintained. Akram Falahi was removed from the committee and Shahid Badr and Safdar Nagori resigned from the organisation.

After a month, another meeting was called at Saraimir in Azamgarh were Shahid Badr and Safdar Nagoris resignations were given back to them. Shahid and Safdar who were great friends had fallen apart because of the earlier meeting. Now they just talk for operational purposes, Parvez said.

In February 2006, a meeting was held in Kerala where Misbah-ul-Haq was elected the president and PA Shibli was nominated the secretary. Members tabled their reports during this meeting but there was huge ruckus because Shahid Badr did not voice his opinion.

Parvez was arrested under the National Security Act in the last week of March 2006 from Unhel. He was released in the first week of June 2006.

Regrouping

Later in 2006, a meeting was held at the farmhouse of one Haji Sahab from Shyam Nagar at Choral in Madhya Pradesh where Kamruddin, Safdar, Shibli, Shahduli, Shahbaz, Hafiz, Sajid Mansuri from Gujarat, Abdul Subhan, Faizal from Khajrana, Asif alias Siraj from Karnataka were present.

A decision on the amount to be collected as contributions was made at this meeting. Members were asked to collect Rs 5 lakh from Karnataka, Rs 3 lakh each from Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, Rs. 2 lakh from Maharashtra and Rs 1 lakh from Kerala, said Parvez.

The last known meeting held was at Vadodara in Gujarat where top SIMI members, including Nagori, met at a mosque near the National Highway No 8 and discussed the atrocities Muslims in Gujarat had to face during the riots of 2002.

Later the big wigs, including Safdar, Shibli, Kamruddin, Amil Parvez, were arrested by the special task force of Madhya Pradesh police in March 2008. But this has not stopped SIMI. In May 2014, when some of their colleagues were being produced before a court in Bhopal, its members shouted pro-Taliban slogans and sloganeered against Prime Minister Narendra Modi making their intent clear.
Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy on Monday appeared before a judicial commission probing the solar panel scam and denied charges that he and his office had any role in the scandal.

In the scam, several people were allegedly cheated of crores of rupees by Saritha Nair and her accomplice Biju Radhakrishnan by offering solar panel solutions.

Chandy, who appeared before the Justice Sivarajan Commission, said the state had not incurred any loss due to the scam. He said he had not met Saritha or Sreedharan Nair, who made the first complaint in the case, commission sources said.

Radhakrishnan had in December alleged he had paid Chandy a bribe of Rs 5.5 crores, out of which Rs 5.1 crore was collected personally by the chief minister while the rest was paid to his personal staff.

The chief minister also made it clear that neither he nor his office had helped the fraudulent solar energy company Team Solar, founded by Saritha and Radhakrishnan.

Chandy said he had met Radhakrishnan only once, but it was to discuss a personal issue which he did not want to disclose before the panel. This is the first time a chief minister in Kerala has appeared before a judicial commission.

The opposition CPI(M) led LDF had launched a massive agitation demanding Chandys resignation as the scam took a political turn after it emerged that at least two of the members of the chief ministers staff -- Tenny Joppen and Jikkumon had alleged links with Saritha.

The government had appointed the retired high court judge as the one-man commission on October 23, 2013 to probe the scam.

Saritha and Radhakrishnan allegedly canvassed business by using high-level names including that of Chandy. While Saritha was granted bail after remaining behind bars for nearly nine months, Radhakrishnan is still in jail.
Coming soon in Chhattisgarh, a village for surrendered Left-leaning extremists that will be a one of-a-kind rehab replete with security, roads, electricity, potable water, school and health care facilities.

The idea to build a protected village solely for former extremists in Kondagaon district, about 220km south of Raipur, was floated after the administration faced the challenge of providing a safe and suitable rehabilitation facility for outlawed CPI(Maoist) cadre who were surrendering in large numbers.

Most of these surrendered rebels cant go back to their native villages since they could become targets of their former comrades. So far, 170 rebels have surrendered in Kondagaon district. Initially, 100 Maoists will be settled in the village to be created within 10km of the town, district police chief JS Vatti said. They will have access to common day-to-day items and various welfare schemes.

Warfare experts have praised the initiative, with retired Brigadier BK Ponwar calling it a positive step.

The most important thing after surrender is proper rehabilitation that should cater to their future requirements. With this approach, an encouraging message will go to the Maoists to join the mainstream, he said.

Former Maoists in Rajnandgaon welcomed the effort. We are rehabilitated close to the police line and do mushroom farming for a living. The Kondagaon experiment will lead to a happy, settled life for the surrendered cadre, said Ganeshwar aka Ravi Uike, a former platoon commander of the CPI(Maoist).

However, activists called the village plan a piecemeal approach. What about the more than 300,000 tribals displaced from 644 villages of Bastar during the controversial Salwa Judum campaign? Despite the SC order in 2011, the state government has effectively done nothing to trace the displaced tribals, said Pravin Patel of the Forum for Fast Justice, an NGO.

The Congress also posed a similar question. We have no issues with rehabilitation through legal ways. But why a separate village? Is the state government going to reflect its hyped achievements through such a village? asked Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, general secretary of the opposition partys state unit.
Tamil Nadu police on Monday arrested two people in connection with the suicide of three female students of a private medical college in Villupuram and detained two lady wardens of the college hostel for questioning.

While the police arrested the son of the chairperson of the SVC Naturopathy and Yoga College and an administrator, a hunt is on for its absconding chairperson, Vasuki Subramanian. Subramanians husband is also missing, police sources said.

The three students  T Monisha, E Saranya and V Priyanka  had drowned themselves in a well near their college as part of a suicide pact late on Saturday evening. Their bodies were found floating in the well by local residents. They had reportedly tied themselves together with a dupatta before jumping into the water.

A note from the three women alleged that the college administration had been charging exorbitant fees from them. Officials of the institute were also accused of discriminating against some students because they had gained admission through merit, and were therefore exempt from paying substantial sums of money as fees.

Parents of the 19-year-old women have charged the college administration and its chairperson with murdering their children and then dumping their bodies in a well.

While political parties have demanded a thorough inquiry into the whole incident and strict action against the guilty, people staged a protest in front of the government hospital in Villupuram where an autopsy was being conducted on the bodies of two of the girls.

Read: TN students death: College official, son detained for questioning

Parents of T Monisha have refused to accept the autopsy on their daughter at the hospital and demanded that it be carried out at Chennai as they did not have faith in the local hospital at Villupuram.

They have moved the Madras high court with a request that the autopsy be carried out at a government hospital in Chennai. The case is expected to come up later during the course of the day.

Monishas father, M Tamilarasan, charged the college management with murder and said that the alleged note presented by the police and the college management was a fake one. Tamilarasan told reporters in front of the hospital that the handwriting in the note does not match that of any of the three.

He also alleged that Monishas body bore injury marks on her head and back and said the bodies of the other women also have injury marks.

A police officer familiar with the investigation said that charges of murder may be pressed against college authorities.

Read: 3 women medical students found dead, suicide note recovered

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A former researcher with The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) has filed a police complaint alleging that some of his seniors had pressured him to persuade a 29-year-old woman to settle out of court her sexual harassment case against RK Pachauri, the institutes executive vice-chairman.

Some others before him had also allegedly approached the woman with the offer under duress but he was the first to lodge a complaint with Delhi Police against senior Teri executives for coaxing and cajoling him to convince her for an out-of-court settlement.

Teri did not respond when Hindustan Times asked if the mans allegations were true while a senior executive of the energy and environment think-tank said they were instructed not to speak to media on the case.

Read | Former IPCC chief RK Pachauri may lose full control of Teri

Another senior executive, who handles Teris day-to-day affairs, said she was not aware of the latest police complaint.

The womans former colleague filed his complaint with Delhi Police on January 12 but the case made little progress because statements of people accused by him were yet to be recorded.

As far as the fresh complaint is concerned, sources said Pachauri has not been approached yet, although the man gave a detailed account of how his seniors allegedly forced him to approach her.

DCP (South) Prem Nath was not available for comments despite repeated attempts.

The alleged victim in the Pachauri case filed her suit in February 2015, saying she was being harassed by him since September 2013.

The Teri researcher alleged that his seniors asked him in July 2015 in a hush-hush manner to approach the woman with the offer, soon after she filed a case against Pachauri, the former chief of the high-profile Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The former researcher alleged that he resigned from Teri because his seniors compelled him to approach the woman. His complaint, many believe, could prove handy as vital evidence against Pachauri, who is now on bail, in the sexual harassment case.

The woman said many people had tried to convince her for a settlement.

Some senior officers have been contacting my colleagues, urging them to ask me to withdraw the case. A friend of mine was contacted around October-November by her immediate senior, asking her to talk to me and settle the matter amicably. I am not going to do anything of that sort, she said.

The woman resigned from Teri in October after she was transferred to another department where her reporting manager was allegedly taking a keen interest in the case.

The new bosses were actively calling a meeting of my friends and discussing the case. They would ask my friends what I was up to and how I should deal with the case. They were contacting different employees in the organisation. Some were even told that the accused is ready to apologise and things like that, she said.
Chandra Bose, a grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, joined the BJP on Monday in the presence of party president Amit Shah in a public rally at Howrah.

Bose took the partys flag from Shah on the podium at Dumurjola Stadium and spoke to reporters about the key reason behind join the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The BJP took the initiative to declassify all the files lying with the Centre. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also assured that he will make his best efforts to request the governments of a few countries such as Russia and Japan to access the files relating to Bose lying with them, Bose said.

It is too premature to engage in these discussions, he said when asked about his own candidature in the assembly elections.

The BJP always had a marginal political presence in the state with its vote share hovering around 5-6% until the 2014 Lok Sabha polls when its vote share jumped to nearly 17% thanks to the Modi wave in the country.

According to BJP leaders, it is likely that he will also be given a ticket to contest the assembly polls in West Bengal that are due this summer. Bose will be a prominent face in the partys election campaign in the state that has millions of Netaji fans who believe that Netaji did not die in crash at Taihoku.

BJP leaders indicated to HT that the party may highlight Boses induction and the declassification of Netaji files which are with the Centre in the run-up to the assembly polls in West Bengal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the digital copies of 100 files related to Netaji on his birth anniversary on Saturday.

Bose is the most vocal of a bigger section of Netajis family members who oppose the theory that he died in the air crash in Taipeis Taihoku in August 1945. Boses cousin and Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Sugato Bose, who is also a professor of history at Harvard University, and his mother Krishna Bose, a former Lok Sabha MP from Trinamool, think that Netaji was killed in the crash.

Bose met Modi more than once in the past few months to press for the full declassification of the Netaji files spoke highly of the PMs efforts to do the same. Bose also demanded in public that Modi should speak to leaders in a few countries such as Japan, Russia and the UK to gain access to files on Netaji for a final solution to the mysterious disappearance of the leader.

He will be campaigning against chief minister Mamata Banerjee who also believes that Netaji did not die in the crash, and put pressure on Modi to make the files public.

When asked whether he will be comfortable campaigning against someone who was the first to start declassification of the Netaji files - Banerjee revealed the contents of all 64 files with the Bengal government on September 18, 2015 - Bose said, There is nothing personal in election campaigns.

He also made it clear that Trinamool Congress leaders did not offer him a place in the party.

Bose, who used to work for Tata Steel, lives in south Kolkata with his wife.
A womens group has threatened to storm the famous Shani Shingnapur Temple in Maharashtras Ahmednagar -- if need be, from the sky route via helicopter -- on Tuesday, said an activist.

Security has been strengthened at the temple where women are barred from paying obeisance. However, the activists remain undeterred in their avowed objective -- to offer prayers at the Shani temple.

We have already booked a helicopter and if we are not permitted to enter from the open ground, we shall drop ladders from the chopper and descend. We are not scared of any security since womens rights are concerned, Trupti Desai, president of Bhumata Ranragini Brigade (BRB) told IANS on Monday.

She said around 1,500 women from all over Maharashtra shall troop down to the temple on Tuesday morning and perform prayers at the temple, dedicated to Lord Shani -- the personification of planet Saturn.

Read: Will continue to enforce ban, says Shani temples first woman chief

Desai said women must be permitted access inside the temple as the countrys Constitution treats men and women equally.

After tomorrows (Tuesday) attempt succeeds, we shall launch similar agitations in other places of worship all over India where women are denied entry on various grounds, Desai said.

Meanwhile, police and the temple authorities have put up three levels of barricades, deployed a considerable force of women constables and village volunteers to guard the temple from Tuesdays likely onslaught by BRB activists.

The unique open temple has no walls or roof. A self-emerged (svayambhu) five-foot-high black stone stands on a platform and is worshipped as Lord Shanidev.

The temple platform stands in the centre of the small village, also known as Sonai, and attracts millions of tourists and devotees from across the country and abroad.

However, barring the temple priests, none is permitted to climb the nine steps up to the actual stone idol that represents the deity. Everybody must only offer prayers from below the platform, said a temple trustee Prafull N Surpuriya.

Shani Shingnapur is globally known as the only village where houses do not have doors and locks, and the village remains theft-free.

Even the nationalised UCO Banks branch in the village does not have locks on its doors.

Belief has it that thieves cannot steal or burgle in the village which is protected by Lord Shani, and misfortune and divine punishment would befall anyone who attempts to steal.

Although the temple itself has a much older history, the present form of management of its activities is over five centuries old, Surpuriya said.
A 23-year old girl from Indore, who was working in a stock marketing firm in Delhi, was shot dead in cold blood in one of the busiest localities of Patna.

The girl, Shristi Jain was gunned down by a youth, while she was travelling in an auto-rickshaw to board a train for Indore at Patna Junction. Police said prima facie it was a case of love affair.

The girl had her hands tattooed. While her one hand was tattooed with Maa, the other hand carried a sentence: Some love one, some love two. I love one, that is you with abbreviated name RS, said to be the name of her boyfriend.

The incident happened at a stones throw distance from the Jakkanpur police station, inter-state bus terminus and Patnas new educational hub comprising Chanakya National law University (CNLU), Chandragupta Institute of Management (CIMP) and Aryabhatt Knowledge Unievrsity (AKU). The assailant, however, managed to escape easily after carrying of daring operation.

Police suspect it to be a case related to a love affair

Police suspect it to be a case related to a love affair due to the circumstantial evidences and tatoos. Police said, the accused has also been identified, who used a licence revolver to kill his girlfriend.

Though the victim was rushed to a nearby hospital, she breathed her last before reaching there and finding her love, which brought her to Patna. The doctor pronounced her dead at the hospital. Her body was later sent for postmortem.

Preliminary investigations suggest that the girl reached in the state capital on January 23 by air and she along with one Rajnish Singh of Vaishali hired two separate rooms in a hotel in Jakkanpur. The police has begun probe into reason of the killing, said ADG (headquarters) Sunil Kumar, adding that the girl received four bullets into his body.

City SP in Patna, Dhurat Saayli Savlaram told HT that the victim is an employee of a private company of stock marketing. She checked-in in the hotel at around 2.10 pm and got room number 107, while her alleged boyfriend had already booked room No. 106 at around 11.35 am the same day, as per the records of the hotel, she added.

According to police, Rajnish stayed in his room with one Anjani Kumar Singh. However, according to hotel staff, he stayed with the girl in her room. On Sunday all three checked-out from the hotel, but girl returned shortly due to non-confirmation of her train reservation to Indore.

Boy was involved in heated argument with Shristi for unknown reasons

On Monday, according to a hotel manager, Rajnish arrived at the room of the Shristi and was involved in heated argument with her for unknown reasons. The boy was in anger and was saying that he had spent Rs 1 lakh on the girl and would not allow her to go like this. The girl, however, insisted that she would go. Subsequently, the girl requested the hotel manager to arrange an auto-rickshaw for Patna Junction, he added.

The auto driver said that the boy followed the auto and wanted it to stop. However, I did not stop, as the girl insisted that she wanted to go to the railway station. Finally, the boy shot her, he added.

Girl had put her profile on shaddi.com, says her father

The girls father, Sushil Jain, said the girl had put her profile on shaddi.com and some people from Biahr had liked it. She had gone to Patna for talks in this regard. She had called up on Monday morning also that she would give details on her arrival, he added.

Police have registered the murder case against unidentified accused and launched a manhunt.

Police sources said the involvement of someone closer to the family could not be ruled out as the police found 2 plates of refreshments near the kitchen.

Here in Indore, the girls parents lived in Sneh Nagar, and her uncle Manish Gupta was the only person in the house as her father Suhir Jain, her mother Mamta Jain and sister Shagun Jain had left for Patna after receiving the news of Shristis death from Patna police.

Manish Gupta said that her niece worked in Delhi and had gone to Patna on an official assignment. He said that Shristi had talked to him at 5.30 pm on Sunday and then again with her mother at around 8 pm. He said that they were not in a condition to reveal more details. He said they were planning to bring her body to Indore for cremation.

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Two days after chief minister Devendra Fadnavis took a swipe at Shiv Sena ministers in the presence of their chief Uddhav Thackeray, it was their turn to hit back. The chief minister had on Saturday made it clear he held the remote control to his government.

In an editorial in the party mouthpiece Saamna on Monday, however, the Sena made light of Fadnavis statement and said, holding the remote made little sense if the batteries to the remote were not charged. The Sena and the BJP have been caught in unending tussles, with the latest war of words sparked off on Saturday, which was late Sena chief Bal Thackerays birth anniversary. The editorial sought to mock Fadnavis statement by expressing concern over the arrest of alleged IS sympathisers and preachers. Investigations have pointed to the possibility of the Mumbra IS suspect being the outfits India head. ISISs country commander was caught in Maharashtra. If ISISs remote control is here in Maharashtra, then the CM must take serious note of this.

The editorial said the multiple arrests show the IS was keen on unfurling its flag in Maharashtra  another attempt to mock state BJP chief Raosaheb Danves comments last week that the BJPs flag would be unfurled atop the BMC next year, alluding to the 2017 civic polls.

Whoever has the remote control to power has to put a stop to this spreading reach of the IS. But, what must one do if he has the remote control with uncharged batteries? If you want to stop the ISIS, you will have to charge your remotes batteries first, the piece said.
Through 2015, the Mumbai airport was the least punctual among four private-run metro airports  Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad being the other three .

The on-time performance (OTP) report showed that on an average, only 74.36% flights every month were on schedule in Mumbai. Hyderabad (84.06%) and Bangalore (82.47%) did better. Even Delhi, which handles about 100 more take-offs and landings a day than Mumbai, recorded an average on-time performance of 81.56%. Mumbai handles an average of 865 flights daily. Barring January (when it was the third best), Mumbai stayed at the bottom of the table for the whole year.

The Mumbai air traffic control (ATC) establishment blamed errant arrivals for the mess.

Let us assume a Mumbai-bound flight gets delayed in taking off from its airport of origin owing to poor weather; its arrival in the city gets delayed. This leads to bunching in the skies here, said Jayant Dasgupta, general manager, Mumbai ATC. We are equipped to handle up to 30 arrivals in an hour. But such unplanned delays result in 35 to 40 incoming flights circling above the airport during peak hours.

ATC officials are forced to hold flights lined up on the ground for take-off, which eventually has a cascading effect.

Departures could be held up, but beyond a point, holding up an arriving flight could lead to diversion that means inconvenience to fliers and more fuel burns for the airline, said Dasgupta.

Industry experts, however, accuse the airport management of biting off more than it can chew. Data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed the Mumbai airport added close to a 100 flights in 12 months from October 2014 (see box).

Most busy airports in the world require parallel runways to achieve smooth operations. The same logic applies to the Mumbai airport. But if they continue to add traffic without augmenting the airfield such problems will continue to stay, said Sudhakar Reddy, national president of the Air Passengers Association of India (APAI), a non-profit body formed by frequent air travellers.

The airport operator blamed the delays on factors beyond its control. Mumbai airport is a very efficiently run airport. In 2010, the OTP of Mumbai airport stood at 59 with 620-odd flights, and today the OTP stands at 73 with approximately 880 flights, said a Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) spokesperson .

The spokesperson, however, expressed concern over the growing passenger traffic. The work on the Navi Mumbai International Airport should begin soon to divide the increasing traffic.

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Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar was admitted to hospital in Pune on Sunday after he complained of fatigue and mild fever, according to party leaders.

Pawar was hospitalised at Ruby Hall Clinic because the fluid level in his body went up slightly.

The doctors said efforts were being taken to balance the fluid level in Pawars body. His blood pressure, according to doctors, is stable and he will soon be discharged from hospital.

NCP spokesperson Ankush Kakade said, He was travelling for the past few days and was feeling tired. The doctors said he is alright. He will be travelling to Mumbai on Monday.

According to party sources, however, Pawar was on antibiotics for removing his wisdom teeth. One of the side-effects is water retention.

The senior leader had celebrated his 75th birthday celebrations in December last year. He had also undergone hip replacement surgery at Breach Candy hospital in December 2014.
Why are students committing suicides in temples of learning--educational institutes--where they go to learn life skills and not to sacrifice themselves? I feel something is seriously amiss with the way we are communicating and transferring education to our students. It needs urgent systems correction.

Education for me is about caring and enriched communication. Reading a book is a direct communication between the author and the reader. A newspaper is a communication between the editor or a reporter and the curious reader. A television show or a panel discussion is education when it transmits views for better communication and making society aware. A priest or a spiritual speaker is there to lift spirits. There are umpteen modes of learning. It all depends on the content, frequency and method of communication.

Our ancient wisdom was transmitted painstakingly through the oral word and recorded on dried leaves. It was about transferring wisdom from the teacher to the taught. This is how the world got the Upanishads and Vedas. Even group meditation in total silence is transmitting education. But what is unique in our ancient education handed to us through scriptures is that there was an uplifting dialogue between the giver and the receiver with humanity as the beneficiary. The Gita is a dialogue between Lord Krishna and the warrior pupil Arjun.

What about our current-day education? How is it being transmitted? Is it becoming one-sided? Does it call for participative learning? Is it about the limited course material or does it include its application in life? Does it provide for a regular dialogue between teachers and students? Is it a conversation that ensures consistent growth, instilling thirst to learn more, seek more, share more, give more, grow more, think more in life skills? Not only to agitate or strike more.

What kind of binding communicating systems do we have in our educational institutes, which ensure early prevention as against post-mortems, police cases or judicial inquiries? Why must students come to a stage where they want ouster of their own teachers? Or how do we explain the recent suicides by students in learning institutes?

Something missing

Something is missing at our learning places. Why do teachers not communicate with students on a regular basis? Why do they not sense what is disturbing young minds and address it immediately? Why dont heads of institutes hear students on a regular basis -- both at formal and informal forums? Why are there no systems in place for anonymous feedback? Why are students not part of policymaking or considered a valuable resource of problem-solving or contributing ideas? How can we make them partners in education through sustained communication?

Let me share a personal experience. When posted as special commissioner, training, Delhi Police, I saw that the standard of teaching by police officers varied from officer to officer. Most of them did not have the teaching skills. Their knowledge was also outdated and they needed to update it. It being a disciplined force, to whom do students complain of poor teaching? I placed locked communication boxes in every classroom, so that students could give feedback anonymously. Within days, teachers started to improve their skills. They started to deliver as they were getting regularly assessed. I gave the feedback to them, collectively when encouraging, individually otherwise. It worked as teaching and learning were transformed.

Unless we find ways and means of early intervention and also give voice to students, a few, depending on their sensitivities, may be driven to extreme situations when no one hears them.

Noblest profession

Teaching is the noblest profession. Education is the best gift one can give to the other. Does the educating class realise it? Do we have mandatory practices to communicate, listen and act? Is this part of their appraisal? If we are to save any further deterioration, we need feedback systems in classrooms and in certain key places of educational institutes. All feedback, including electronic, must be addressed by the head. Key issues without disclosing the source must be shared and acted upon. Even anonymous feedback has value. It can alert you. But such a continuing dialogue and use of feedback system will be done only by the leadership that has clean hands and a caring heart.

Education is the bedrock of any society. From the same students will emerge leaders of tomorrow, including the teaching faculty. What are they learning? What kind of leaders or teachers will they be if they are not experienced, sensitive, communicative and caring?

A stitch in time saves nine. The ultimate stage of taking a life does not happen overnight. It brews. It breeds. Friends do get to know. We have to put in systems of communication and feedback in place, which alert administration and teachers. Listening and conversations must happen. Parent-teacher associations have a vital role to play as they are the very foundation of the health of society.

Every educational institute must be mandated to have ongoing dialogue and feedback systems in place. Teachers and institutes must be appraised on this. Lets not wait for a public interest petition to be filed and judiciary to direct it. Civil administration and education community must take responsibility. We, the parents, and the media must demand this.

The writer is former IPS officer and runs the NGO Navjyoti India Foundation. The views expressed are personal
France will help modernise Ambala and Ludhiana railway stations and its top company Alstom will manufacture 800 electric locomotives of horse power double than the existing ones in India, involving foreign investment of Rs 1300 crore, according to agreements signed in Delhi on .

The two significant pacts, marking stepped up cooperation in the rail sector, were signed after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande.

Under another agreement, France will extend its expertise to modernise Ambala and Ludhiana stations.

An expert team from France will come and study these two stations and accordingly a roadmap will be concretised based on its report, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Alstom and Indian Railways signed a shareholding agreement for production of 800 electric locomotives at Madhepura in Bihar.

As per the agreement, the Madhepura factory will produce 800 electric locomotives with horse power of 12,000 each over a period of 11 years. The existing strength of electric locomotives is 6,000 horse power (HP).

The project would involve foreign investment of Rs 1300 crore, considered to be substantial in rail sector.

Alstom will be responsible for setting of the factory, manufacturing of the locomotives as well as maintenance.

Railways had decided in November to award the contract to Alstom for Madhepura electric locomotive project.

Production of locomotives with 12,000 horse power would be a quantum leap over the existing 6000 HP locomotives used for freight operations.
As if the chilling weather was not enough to make things difficult for them, the Chandigarh Police personnel were not offered any refreshment and no arrangement of mobile toilets was made for women cops during their 36-hour-long duty for the VVIP visit to Chandigarh on Sunday.

A woman cop said it is not possible to leave the spot during a VVIP visit. Keeping this in mind, senior officials should have made arrangements for mobile toilets where women cops were stationed or assigned them duty at places close to public toilets.

While women personnel deployed at Sector 7/8 roundabout were able to use the public toilet in the market area, those on duty at the Tribune roundabout and airport light point faced a lot of inconvenience.

Cops also resented the authorities failure to provide them refreshments during the duty. Some of them said that they were suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes and needed to take food at short intervals, but their seniors paid no heed to their concerns.

A senior police of ficial, requesting anonymity, said that some money is deducted from their salary for welfare fund, which could have been used to arrange food for those on duty. He said the department had already purchased a mobile van for serving food at different points, which was not put to use on Sunday.

Cops said that personnel of paramilitary forces, including Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security Force, were getting food and refreshment, but the UT police had failed to do so. They said former senior superintendent of police (SSP) Naunihal Singh had introduced the system of providing tea and snacks every four hours and even food during long duty hours at the time of any VVIP visit.

No senior police official replied to comment on the issue despite several calls made to them.
The local police won the hearts of the locals when it managed to locate three missing children of Sangrur and helped them to reunite with their families on Sunday.

The three kids were rescued from two cities of Rajasthan.

In the first case, siblings Rajeev and Meena were missing from September 26, 2015. They are children of Vijay, a resident of Ram Nagar Basti of Sangrur. The brother and sister are 16 and 10-year-old respectively. Both of them were rescued from Raayia Tunda village in Churu district of Rajasthan.

Police said an army man used to visit their home in Sangrur frequently. Police suspect that the army man took Meena and Rajeev with him and handed them over to Mukesh Kumar, a resident of Churu.

Police said Mukesh forcefully got married to Meena and also forced her brother Rajeev to live with them. When Meena and Rajeev tried to escape, Mukesh locked both of them in a room in his house, police added.

Police said both the children were recovered from a locked room in Mukeshs house. Mukesh was arrested and further investigation is in progress. However, the army officer is yet to be arrested.

In another case, Sahil Kumar, a Class 7 student of a private school in Sangrur, went missing on January 18, 2016. He was rescued from Jaipur by the police.

Police said Sahil left home when his father scolded him. He stole Rs 4,000 from his fathers wallet and went to Delhi, where he came in contact with a person named Ashok Kumar. Ashok and Sahil stayed in a hotel for two days and later, Ashok took Sahil to Mathura and abandoned him due to fear of apprehension by police. However, Sahil managed to reach Jaipur.

Police said Ashok wanted to sell Sahil for money. With the help of Delhi Police and Railway Protection Force, Sangrur police laid a trap to rescue Sahil and finally traced him in Jaipur. Police arrested Ashok Kumar and further proceedings have been initiated against him.
Moga has become the first district in the state to take steps to form anti-tobacco clubs in government schools to make students aware of ill-effects of tobacco products and check their use among the youngsters.

Heads of as many as 252 schools  67 senior secondary, 86 high, 87 middle, 2 Adarsh and aided schools  in the district have been directed to form Children Against Tobacco (CAT) clubs.

On the directions of deputy commissioner Parminder Singh Gill, district education officer (DEO) Baldev Singh has sent letters to all the 252 government schools in this regard and directed the heads to form the clubs within two weeks.

As per the information, each club would comprise 30-40 schoolchildren above 12 years of age and two teachers will be appointed as coordinators.

The club members will educate other students about the ill-effects of the tobacco products by holding seminars and will get training from time to time.

Any student found consuming tobacco or smoking will be counseled by the teachers and his or her parents will be taken into confidence.

Rachhpal Singh, spokesperson of health and family welfare department, Moga, said school authorities have started forming the clubs. So far the clubs have been established in 27 schools of the district. They will be in place in all the institutions within two weeks, he said.

Moga civil surgeon Dr Jajbir Singh Sandhu said as per the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) of 2009-10, the average age of tobacco initiation was 17.8 years. Through this initiative, we want to ensure that students keep themselves at bay from this bad habit, he said.

Sandhu said as per a study, approximately 2,500 people were dying daily due to tobacco use and 5,500 fresh consumers get added every day.

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In 2008, the Akali-BJP regime enacted the Punjabi Language Act to ensure mandatory teaching of Punjabi from Class 1 in all schools of the state. Eight years on, 40 schools in five districts have been found cocking a snook at the law, with the state government finally rousing itself from slumber.

During random checking recently, 15 schools in Ludhiana district, 12 in Pathankot, seven in SAS Nagar, five in Rupnagar and one in Barnala were found to be defaulters.

When contacted, education minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said he had told senior officials concerned to submit a detailed report in this regard within a month.

The defaulters are being issued notices to fall in line by the next academic session, beginning in April 2016, the minister said.

I was taken by surprise after this preliminary check. Going by the number of such defaulters in only five districts, the total across the state must be more than 100, Dr Cheema added.

The minister said he had asked literary organisations such as the Punjabi Sahit Akademi and Kendri Punjabi Lekhak Sabha to initiate a drive in private schools for promoting the language on priority.

DEOs empowered

The minister said district education officers (DEOs) had now been empowered to take strict action against defaulters, besides enforcing the law effectively in all schools.

The order empowering the DEOs was issued on December 14, 2015, by the secretary, higher education and languages, KAP Sinha, to enforce the law under Section 6 of the Act.

When asked about the belated response, the minister said the onus had been on the language department to empower DEOs to take action against the defaulting schools, adding that the issue had been resolved after he took it up with language minister Surjit Singh Rakhra.

Before he went on deputation with the Centre, C Roul, during his tenure as principal secretary, school education, had in November last year taken up the matter with the language department to effectively enforce the law in schools.

Roul had taken legal advice from the states legal remembrancer (LR) for empowering DEOs in this regard.

Rouls predecessor Anjali Bhawra had in February 2014 issued orders to all deputy commissioners in the state to ensure mandatory teaching of Punjabi from classes 1 to 10 under Section 3(1) of the Punjabi Language Act.

The order dated February 19, 2014, read: It has come to the governments notice that a huge number of private schools affiliated to the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) or ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) are not falling in line with the said Act. There are also reports that many institutions even punish pupils for speaking in Punjabi on the school premises.

This practice shows disrespect to the Punjabi language that became the basis of the existence of the state, Thus, such institutions should be asked to halt the practice.

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Rifts in the ruling alliance partners in Punjab once again became apparent when the Tarn Taran unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday announced to oppose Shiromani Akali Dal candidate Ravinder Singh Brahmpura in the high stake Khadoor Sahib bypoll, slated for February 13.

Furious over the  unjust behaviour of SAD in the Raja Joshi assault case, the BJP leaders have given indications to oppose the SAD candidate in the bypoll, which is considered to be an acid test for the Akalis.

In a press release issued here, Navreet Singh Shafipur, district president of the BJP, said all the leaders and workers of the district would openly oppose the SAD candidate in the by-elections, as justice has not been delivered to the BJP workers, including Raja Joshi, district vice-president and younger brother of Punjab local bodies minister Anil Joshi, who were allegedly attacked by the SAD workers backed by Tarn Taran MLA Harmeet Sandhu during the local municipal council elections on February 11, 2015.

He said, We will not only oppose the SAD candidate, but also approach every voter of the Khadoor Sahib constituency to make him aware of the atrocities being committed by the SAD leaders. We will tell the voters how miscreants of the SAD party opened fire at BJP workers and thrashed them.

Lashing out at chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, he said he gave shelter to the criminals and appointed them on key posts in the party.

Terming Sandhu as head of these criminal elements, he said they would also expose the truth of Khemkaran MLA Virsa Singh Valtoha who called himself as terrorist with pride, before the people. We will reveal the character of both the leaders, as both will approach the people to garner their votes, he added.

He said, We will create awareness among masses about the wrongdoings and the unjust activities of the SAD leadership under which the ordinary people are not safe. We will remind the CM that the BJP workers worked very hard to ensure his victory in the 2012 assembly elections, as a result of which he and his son is enjoying the posts of CM and deputy-CM, respectively.

He said the BJP has proper village-wise organisational structure and base in the Khadoor Sahib segment and they could leave a deep impact on the electoral scene here. In coming days, I will call meeting of BJP rank and file belonging to the segment to chalk out our future strategy, he added.

It must be mentioned here that the BJP leadership of Tarn Taran have been alleging that no adequate action has been taken against those behind the attack on Joshi. They say special investigation team (SIT), which was formed by the CM to sort out the matter, had too not delivered the justice to them.

Since the clash, the Tarn Taran BJP leaders have been keeping distance from the SAD leaders and staying away from their activities. They also stayed away the state-level meeting called by Sukhbir Singh Badal on January 20 to assign duties to the SAD leaders for election campaign.

Prior to this, they boycotted the sangat darshan programme addressed by the chief minister in Khadoor Sahib segment and Sadbhawna rally held at Goindwal Sahib on December 14 last year.
With Congress probable candidate for the Khadoor Sahib by-elections, former MLA Ramanjit Sikki, expressing his inability to leave the Golden Temple premises till culmination of his annual sewa on January 31, his decision may put both the party and the state election commission in a bind.

The last date for filing of nomination papers is January 27 and the candidate has to make an oath or affirmation in person before officers authorised by the election commission a day before the scrutiny of the nomination papers (January 28).

While rules allow a candidate confined in a prison or under preventive detention, in hospital or elsewhere owing to illness and someone who is out of India to be administered the oath before the officer in-charge of the respective place or countrys representative, there are no rules for someone who expresses his inability to leave a religious place.

When contacted, Punjab chief electoral officer VK Singh said they have not encountered such a situation and he would need to find out what the rules permit.

Incommunicado owing to the annual sewa, tracing Sikki inside the Golden Temple was an arduous task. After looking for him at the parikarma of the temple, he was found in the Darshani Deori. HT talked to him after he came out and sat near the Akal Takht Sahib.

I was deeply anguished by the sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and I did not ask the party before resigning as MLA. The state government has done nothing to address the problem. Neither the culprits were arrested nor was anybody held responsible for the death of two protesters in police firing at Behbal Kalan in Faridkot, he said.

Sikki said he would abide by the wishes of his people and the Congress high command. For me, the people and my party are supreme. If they ask me to contest, I will, he said. On ECs provision of candidates in-person presence for oath, he said, If God has decided something for me, He will show the way. I am not thinking about this at present.

The Khadoor Sahib seat is slated for a bypoll on February 13 and Sikkis name has been approved by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the announcement in this regard is likely on Monday. Sikki made his electoral debut in the 2012 state polls and defeated Akali stalwart Ranjit Singh Brahmpura. The Akali Dal is fielding the veterans son Ravinder Brahmpura to reclaim its old bastion.

EC official may have to visit Sikki

As per EC rules, if a candidate is unable to appear before the returning officer or the assistant returning officer, the oath or affirmation may be made before any other person nominated by the election commission on an application addressed to it.

The EC may have to send its representative to visit Sikki if the Congress makes an application on his behalf. The merit of such an application will, however, be decided by the EC.

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Are you having relationship troubles? Is the long distance bothering you or do you have trust issues? Are you looking for someone to talk your heart out about these problems?

Worry not. So, TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist and author, Cyrus Broacha is here to help you: From navigating relationship trouble to helping your love life go the distance, hes got all the dating advice youll ever need from your first date to something that you cant find a solution to.

From how to approach your crush to how to handle a break up, shoot your questions to Cyrus and he will answer them.

I am a second year engineering student from IIT Bombay. I was always very studious in my school. After getting into IIT, I started socialising. In the past one year, I fell in love once, but to no avail. That girl chose my best friend over me. Since then, I have totally lost faith in love. I am good at flirting. I even had many one night stands and meaningless sex. I thought I needed it. But now, I am falling for someone. I dont know whether she likes me. What should I do?-AM



You are IITian, dude!

See, I told you that IIT cant teach you everything. You learn much more at St. Xaviers. Or Lady Shri Ram, definitely Mount Carmel, Bangalore. But its too late, dear AM. For you to correct your miseducation, Im enclosing 2 blue pills . Take them twice a day for your cynicism. Also, 1 yellow capsule once a day on an empty stomach. Mind you for your distrust and loss of faith. Also, this certificate of merit for all those many hours of having meaningless sex. Congratulations! Now prepare for real love, by not thinking of the outcomes. Love is not an IIT entrance test. Its much more difficult and tutors are at a premium. Enjoy your feelings and present your normal self to the lady. The more positive you are, the better would be the results. Also, in the 80s, the IIT connect would have been considered a heavyweight. But now, its a gold medal. So, aagey badho, sainik!

Ive liked a girl since childhood. A few years back, her father was transferred to another state. Recently, I met her on Facebook. She remembered me and asked me for my number. I dont know if she has the same feelings for me as I have for her. In fact, I have started loving her now. I have even given her clues that I love her. I am planning to propose to her when I meet her. Should I tell her the truth now? -Ajay



Like seriously.

Ajay, the other day, my friend Kunal told me that he found an open road on Marine Drive. Im going to tell you what I told him, Yo bro, whats the problem? (Please note I use a heavy Bengali accent when I say things like Yo Bro, also, For yo and jay lo). Lets not indulge in PP (premature propositions). Youve met your love after a long time, shes keen on staying in touch, so the grass is greener, and you know, this is virtually unheard of in the subcontinent. Why not get to know each other again. Follow dating protocol and only clinch the deal when the percentage is clearly in your favour. At my age, the only people who ask me for my number is out of work, plumbers and electricians. But in your case, its a great sign. Now, excuse me, Im off to Marine Drive.

Read: Long distance love can work, says Cyrus

Im in love with my cousin, and she loves me as well. But our families wont accept our marriages because they consider her as my sister. What should I do? - AM



Make your own independent decision.

Well, rule no 1  your cousin is not your sister. Rule no 2  a bear is not a fox. Rule no 3  a banana is not an apple. They are all technically wrong. We do this rubbish in India all the time. If we really consider our cousins as our siblings, then shouldnt they get a share of our parents property and estate? Hai koi jawab, bhaijaan? Having said that, physical relations with cousins are fraught with risk. I mean I know a couple of cousins who mated and their offsprings look like their chauffeur, which of course is another problem going beyond cousins. I would try to dissuade you, because of the social stigma and health hazards involved. Also, youll get less presents on birthdays, as the same family is involved. But, as adults, we weigh the pros and cons, or in your case the cousins, and decide for ourselves. Rule no 4  armed with all the facts, make your own independent choice, but fully expecting little or no support.

My friend was in a relationship with a girl for three years. She broke up with him after he cheated on her. Recently, I proposed to that same girl. She said she doesnt want to be in a relationship. But after some time, she said that she needed time to answer my proposal. Do you think she will say yes to my proposal? And what should I do post that?-VJ



Loves me, love me not?

VJ, just because I have long hair, and have the gait of an aging female ramp model, doesnt mean Im a girl. More importantly, it doesnt mean Im that girl. And by that girl, I mean your girl. Or that girl that you want to make into your girl. The final answer remains with her. But I will say this, in my 39 years of researching romance, (including over 40,000 hours of seriously hard core government banned adult content) tells me that she is definitely interested, especially if shes holding on to you like this. However, my 107 consecutive personal rejections from both genders also confirms the deal is far from sealed. Yet, now is the time for you to show us what you have got and seriously romance her. The gate is ajar and the watchman is missing.



Read | Sometimes, just say no: Cyrus Broachas relationship advice

Got a question? just write to uncle Cy: cyrus@hindustantimes.com And Ill give you some relief. err that is, provided, Im not doing a headstand at the time.
For some time now, cross-dressing has become a fad on the small screen. Sunil Grover was a huge hit as Gutthi, even Ali Asgar as Dadi, Gaurav Gera as Pammi and Kiku Sharda as Palak are hugely popular. Ravi Dubey is the recent to join the bandwagon. Dubey will play a 50-year-old Maharashtrian woman, Jyoti Tai, in his upcoming fiction, Jamai Raja.

Ravis character, Sid, has to disguise himself as Jyoti Tai due to some unfortunate turn of events. Excited to be able to play such a character, Ravi is leaving no stone unturned to get into the skin of the character. He points out that it is not easy for men to carry off the look and mannerisms of a woman. Turning into Jyoti Tai is definitely not easy. Ive not used any prosthetics as theyre time-consuming. Instead, considering that daily shows have limited time, we watched a few online make-up videos to know how to get into an elaborate disguise quickly. Apart from that, I am also working on getting the perfect diction of a middle-aged Maharashtrian woman, he explains.

Ravi has earlier played a Rajasthani dancer, a Pathan and even a tapori. As an actor, I believe in surrendering myself to the character and carrying multiple looks in one show has been a wonderful experience. When I was told to don the look of a middle-aged woman, I wanted to ensure that it doesnt look like a caricature. After all, Sid is doing this to stay close to his loved ones. This isnt a gimmick to make viewers laugh, he adds.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

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It was a carnival-like atmosphere at the YMCA ground in Karachi when the Pakistan Hindu Council (PHC) arranged the mass wedding of 60 couples, all hailing from underprivileged families.

Besides the hundreds of relatives of the couples, many more  including members of the majority Muslim community - came to witness the weddings that have become an important highlight of the Hindu communitys social calendar in the port city.

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, founder and patron of the PHC, which arranged the mass wedding, said the ceremony began some years ago on the demand of council members who realised a number of Hindu couples were unable to marry simply because of rising costs.

We are talking about people whose monthly income is around Rs10,000 and they are expected to save more than Rs 5 lakh to get their son or daughter married, said Vankwani. That is why we started this initiative.

Over the years, more than 300 couples have been married in the mass weddings. Despite the chaos and confusion that prevails, most families are happy with the arrangements.

Some 20 stages are arranged for the couples and the marriages take place in shifts. In each shift, 20 lucky couples take the pheras and tie the knot, said Engineer Hotchand Karmani, vice president of the PHC.

The event is held at the YMCA ground, where tents are set up in a circle. Each tent has a stage with a sitting area for the bride and groom and six of their relatives. When the priest starts the prayers, the couple get up and circle the ceremonial fire at the centre of the stage.

Hotchand Karmani said the arrangements can sometimes be a logistical nightmare. People throng the stages and overcrowd them. Others wander off and get lost. My only fear is that one day, the wrong people will end up tying the knot, he said with a smile.

Adding to the carnival-like atmosphere is the loud music that blares from the centre stage. The music, stages and food are provided by the PHC. It is a costly affair but the council subsidises this with corporate sponsorship and donations from the Hindu community. The council charges Rs60,000 from each couple for the service.

Hindus come from as far as Tharparkar, located more than 400 km from Karachi, to get married at the ceremony. Gopal Ram, a resident of Mithi, was present to witness the wedding of his son. The cost of holding such a wedding in Thar would be much higher, he said.

Many Hindu families even take loans to cover the costs of arranging marriages.

Sitting next to Ram is Allah Bux, a Muslim friend, who said he was enjoying the ceremony and had come to give his friend moral support. A shaadi is a shaadi and friends and family have to be there. That is our tradition, he said

But there is more to a shaadi for many Hindus in Pakistan. Community leader Mangla Sharma said the debts of poor Hindus, many of whom belong to scheduled castes, eventually lead to their ruin. The debts keep piling up and they end up in dire straits, she said.

That is why the PHCs initiative is welcomed by many.

The 1991 census in Pakistan estimated the number of religious minorities at around 5%, of which just 1.5% were Hindu. The latest estimates put the number of Hindus in Pakistan at just under 3 million, and a large percentage reside in rural areas of Sindh province.

Of this number, 50% are in Tharparkar, Mirpurkhas and, to some extent, in Sanghar. About 25% are in Hyderabad and Badin. The remaining are in the rest of Sindh. Scheduled castes form about 85% and they are the ones hit hardest by costs associated with marriages.

The other issue related to Pakistans Hindu community is the lack of a Hindu marriage law. A bill was presented by the fourth National Commission on the Status of Women in 2011 and followed up by the chief justice, who instructed the government to amend rules for registering Hindu marriages.

The absence of a proper law means men can go around getting married more than once without the knowledge of their first wife. The women dont have proper documents to produce if the matter goes to court.

But all this is forgotten when happy couples tie the knot at the mass weddings. For most, this is the best news they have had in a long time.
Bangladesh opposition chief Khaleda Zia was ordered Monday to appear in court to answer a sedition charge, in another blow to the beleaguered former premier which will likely anger her supporters.

The chief metropolitan magistrates court accepted a case filed against the 70-year-old for questioning the official number of deaths during Bangladeshs war of independence against Pakistan in 1971.

Zia was ordered to appear in the Dhaka court on March 3 over a speech delivered in December in which she said there were controversies over the numbers killed.

Her lawyer, Khandker Mahbub Hossain, said the case brought by a pro-government lawyer should be dismissed as there was no element of sedition in Zias comments.

Under the relevant law, sedition takes place if anybody attempts to depose the government or makes a statement provoking the people against the government, but Zia has not done so by her statement, he told reporters.

The government says three million people were killed in the war when then East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. Independent researchers however say the overall death toll was much lower.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas government set up a war crimes tribunal in 2010, paving the way for prosecution of opposition leaders for atrocities committed during the struggle.

Four politicians have since been convicted and executed and about a dozen leaders of an opposition alliance have been found guilty.

The convictions have triggered deadly violence, with some 500 people killed, mainly in clashes between opposition activists and police.

The government maintains the trials are needed to heal the wounds of the conflict, but the alliance says they are an attempt to eradicate its leadership.

This is a case of political vengeance, a spokesman for Zias Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, said in reaction to the courts decision.

Zia faces 10 years in jail if convicted of sedition. She is already facing five corruption cases and is being prosecuted for a series of anti-government marches last year.

Zia, a two-time former prime minister, argues that all of the cases are politically motivated and aimed at keeping her out of politics.

Hasinas government also launched a major crackdown on Zias party last year, arresting hundreds of activists over deadly anti-government violence.
Madhesi parties on Monday rejected an amendment to Nepals new constitution and announced a fresh week-long protest programme to pressure the government to accept their demands.

A meeting of the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF), comprising four parties, decided to organise various forms of protests in the Terai region bordering India from January 26.

A statement from the UDMF accused the government and major political parties of forcibly passing the amendment bill without taking the Madhesi people on board or addressing all their demands.

On Saturday, Nepals parliament passed two amendment proposals for a fresh delimitation to increase the number of constituencies in the Terai area and for proportional inclusion of backward communities in state bodies.

The amendments were rejected by the UDMF, which described them as incomplete because they do not address the groupings main demand for fresh demarcation of federal boundaries. Madhesi parties are seeking a package deal for their 11 demands.

India welcomed the amendments as a positive development but urged all parties in Nepal to resolve remaining contentious issues through talks.

We hope other pending issues would be resolved through talks with a spirit of flexibility and compromise, Indian ambassador Ranjit Rae said in Kathmandu on Monday.

Addressing a programme to mark Indias Republic Day, Rae hoped the political crisis would be resolved soon. He urged everyone to be pragmatic so that economic development isnt affected by the political turmoil.

Our sole objective is to see peace, stability and development in Nepal. If there is instability, disturbance and insecurity in our neighbourhood, it will affect our economic development goals, he said.

Reports said goods were being transported with small carts at the Birganj border crossing despite an ongoing blockade of the main trade point between India and Nepal by Madhesi protesters.

The border point, which accounts for nearly 70% of Indo-Nepal trade, has been blocked since September by the protesters.

Over the past few days, traders have been moving their supplies with horse-drawn carts late at night. There is still no movement of heavy vehicles, including tankers carrying petroleum products.

Madhesi parties have been protesting since August against Nepals constitution. Nearly 60 people, including security personnel, have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes between police and protesters.

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Bharat Patel, a Loughborough-based accountant, got so furious when his wife Taruna said she wanted to go to India during the last Christmas holidays that he struck her head with a wine bottle and plunged a knife deep into her.

Patel, an employee of Loughborough University, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail last week for the attack on November 18. The knife penetrated his wifes ribs, lungs and heart but she survived after emergency care at Nottingham Queens Medical Centre.

She was stabbed while she was sitting down, making Diwali sweets, reports from Leicester said.

Patel went into a rage because he could not take time off from work to look after the couples two children during their holidays, when the wife wanted to be in India.

Judge Nicholas Dean of Leicester Crown Court told Patel: It seems you are remorseful and I observe your demeanour. Whatever the stresses and strains you suffered at work, whatever pressures there were within your marriage, this shouldnt have happened.

He added, It was bad enough to strike your wife over the head with a bottle in front of your daughter. You proceeded to stab her deliberately with the knife which penetrated her ribs, lungs and touched the heart. Its only good fortune she wasnt killed by your actions.

The court was told the couples arranged marriage had broken down and they were in the process of separating, reports said.

Patels lawyer Mary Prior said: There was a history of domestic violence for a few years when they argued and he has, on occasions, slapped her. In 2014 he was cautioned for punching her once on the face, which caused a nasty bruise.

His wife wanted to go to India at a time when he couldnt take time off work to care for the children when they were off school. She told him if you play dirty with me Ill play dirty with you, that was to make an accusation upon which basis she would obtain all the property and the children.

Prior said this caused Patel to lose it and hit his wife and stab her. Its something he will regret every day of his life but that wont be any comfort to the victim or his daughter who saw her father hit her mother over the head with a bottle.
A Yemeni judge and seven members of his family were killed in a Saudi-led coalition air strike in the capital Sanaa on Sunday, residents said, as an aid convoy delivered food to a besieged southern city for the first time in months.

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthis, who control the capital, since March. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed, around half of them civilians, according to UN figures.

The bomb partially destroyed the home of Yahya Rubaid, a judge appointed by the Houthis to a national security court who had prosecuted cases against militant groups like Al Qaeda but had also presided over treason cases against President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and other ousted foes of the Houthis.

All of Rubaids family except one of his sons was also killed in the blast, which destroyed the two-storey home, residents said.

President Hadi, driven out of Sanaa last year by Houthi fighters that Arab neighbours say are backed by Iran, has returned to lead a government from the southern port of Aden, recaptured in July by troops from the Saudi-led coalition.

Pro-Hadi and Gulf Arab forces have pushed up toward the capital but have been bogged down in mountainous battlefronts for months, especially in the southwestern city of Taiz.

Residents of the city, Yemens third largest, have been caught in the crossfire and cut off from humanitarian aid for nine months which many residents call a siege imposed by the Houthis.

The United Nations World Food Program said on Sunday it was able to send 12 trucks laden with food into some of the worst-affected districts of Tai on Sunday, providing enough aid to feed 3,000 families for a month.

The delivery followed weeks of intense lobbying by international aid groups with the Houthis to relieve stricken civilians in the city, one of the countrys worst war zones.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah was purportedly killed in a drone strike in the Nangarhar region of Afghanistan, reports in the Pakistani media said on Monday.

Several Pakistani television channels and websites reported about the death of Fazlullah, also known as Mullah Radio, late on Monday night though there was no official word on the development.

There have been reports of Fazlullah being killed in a drone strike several times in the past, the most recent being in 2014, but they were all proved to be wrong.

The Pajhwok Afghan News agency said on its Twitter feed that Afghan officials had confirmed the killing of Taliban commander Qari Hedayatullah in a drone attack but there were no reports of the killing of Fazlullah.

Fazlullah took over as chief of the TTP after Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike in 2013. Hakimullahs predecessor Baitullah Mehsud too was killed in a drone strike in 2009.

The reports in the Pakistani media said Fazlullah was purportedly killed when a drone targeted his residence in Afghanistan. Some reports said five people were killed in the attack, including a woman, though they could not be independently confirmed.

Fazlullah rose to prominence as the head of the Taliban in the Swat valley, located a little more than 120 km from Islamabad. His fighters took control of the area and killed scores of Pakistani security personnel and tribal elders who opposed the Taliban.

He became known as Mullah Radio for his fiery broadcasts on an illegal FM radio station. After he became the TTP chief, he fled to Afghanistan after the Pakistan Army launched an offensive against his fighters in the countrys northwest.

Fazlullah also ordered the 2012 attempt on the life of rights activist Malala Yousufzai, who was 14 years at the time.
Twitter's stocks finally recovered last Wednesday amid rumors that the microblogging site has become to the prospect of a possible acquisition from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The company's shares rose by as much as 14 percent to $19.04 during the day's trading, lifting the company's stocks from record lows, according to The Guardian.

However, the prospect of the acquisition was quickly shot down by News Corp immediately, as a spokesman from the news firm stated that the rumors were simply "untrue," once more affecting the social media site's stock prices.

By the end of the day's trading, Twitter's shares were valued at $17.38, far less than the figures it reached during the height of the rumors, but significantly more than its price before the alleged takeover was announced, reported Business Insider.

Twitter's stocks have been under fire lately, mainly due to investors having reservations about the company's capability to increase its user base. It's quickly plummeting value has sparked constant speculation that the microblogging site is due for acquisition.

Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Tactical Management, stated that Twitter's troubles might get a very prominent reprieve if it does partner with another agency, according to The International Business Times.

"At this point the best chance Twitter has to survive in the long term is to join forces with a larger, preferably media, outlet. If not, they have a very long and bumpy road ahead of them," he said.

Check out more Business News here.

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Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Sunday praised former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg as he considers an independent presidential run, saying the billionaire was "a great mayor." The former Florida governor said that he doubts that Bloomberg will run for president unless Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the two main party candidates.

"Look, he's a good man," said Bush on ABC's This Week, according to ABC News. "He was a great mayor. He is much more liberal than I am. But he's a good person and I don't think he'll get in the race if -- unless it's Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders probably."

"But that's way off into the future. Right now we're focused on eight days of getting our caucus goers -- voters out and then move into New Hampshire, where we have a strong following and we're making really good progress," he added, according to The Hill.

Sanders, who also appeared on the show, but in a different segment, said that having Bloomberg and Trump as two of the candidates will only reaffirm what his entire platform is about -- that politics has become the playground for billionaires.

"Well, you know, I think it would be very interesting if Donald Trump became the Republican candidate who is a multi-billionaire, and Michael Bloomberg became an independent candidate who is a multi-billionaire," Sanders said. "And it will tell people what I have been saying for a long time is that this country is moving away from democracy to oligarchy that billionaires are the people who are controlling our political life."

Earlier this week, as rumors swirled about Bloomberg entering the race, Trump said he welcomed the addition. "I would love to see Michael run -- I would love the competition," Trump told The New York Times.

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The teenager who claimed his family's wealth made him unable to understand the consequences of his actions will be forced to return to the U.S. within weeks, according to CBS News. The case is infamously known for creating and implementing the "affluenza" defense.

Ethan Couch was arrested last month with his mother in Puerto Vallarta, following concerns that Couch had broken the terms of his probation and skipped a meeting with his probation officer, according to CBS News. Couch originally rose to public attention in 2013 after killing four people in a car accident while intoxicated. He recevie just 10 years probation in juvenile court because of this novel "affluenza" defense.

Couch's lawyers in Mexico have now sought to lift the injunction preventing his deportation, according to a statement released by his American attorneys. Doing so means Couch will soon be able to return to the U.S. and attend his hearing on Feb. 19, according to the New York Times.

The hearing will determine whether Couch's case will be transferred to the adult system on his 19th birthday in April, meaning that his probation would be carried out under the supervision of adult court, according to CBC News. Doing so would mean that Couch could face up to 10 years in prison per death in the accident if he were to be caught violating his probation again, according to CBC new.

"It's not a foregone conclusion this will happen, but we certainly hope it does," Tarrant County district attorney spokeswoman Samantha Jordan told reporters, according to CBC News. His mother, Tonya Couch, was extradited back to the U.S. at the beginning of the year.

Migration officials in Jalisco stated that even though the deportation fight has now been dropped, it could take another month before Couch returns, according to the New York Times.

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Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Sunday dismissed criticism that he isn't capable of winning a general election, saying he could take on Republican front-runner Donald Trump and "beat him badly." Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press, Sanders responded to comments by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who called the Vermont senator unelectable.

"Well, what I say to her is that if she would look at the matchups that are taking place between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump right now, she would find that we were 15 points ahead of him nationally," said Sanders, according NBC News. He added: "In tossup states, battleground states like Iowa and New Hampshire, we are even further ahead of him," he added.

Sanders also pointed out how he believes his message, compared to Trump's, resonates with the overwhelming majority of Americans.

"I would very much look forward to a race against Donald Trump, a guy who does not want to raise the minimum wage, but wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the two two-tenths of one percent who thins wages in America are too high and who thinks that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese," he said, according to RealClear Politics.

Those proclivities, according to Sanders, will translate into a win if the two were to face off in the general election -- something the self-proclaimed socialist desperately welcomes. "There is nothing more in this world that I would like to take on more than Donald Trump," he added, according to The Hill. "We would beat him, and we would beat him badly."

In recent polling, Sanders is ahead in a head-to-head match-up with Donald Trump, with the Vermont senator garnering 46.8 percent support over the billionaire businessman, who has 41.5 percent, according to averages compiled by RealClear Politics.

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Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has regained his lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio trails far behind in third place, according to a new Fox News poll released just over a week before caucus-goers cast votes in the first 2016 election contest on Feb. 1.

Trump now sits out front with 34 percent support among Republican caucus-goers, up 11 points from the 23 percent he got in a similar poll two weeks ago. Cruz came in second with 23 percent, down from 27 percent in the previous poll.

Rubio took third with 12 percent, down from 15 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson placed fourth with seven percent, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul got six percent, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tied with four percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum tied with two percent, and businesswoman Carly Fiorina brought up the rear with one percent.

Cruz previously had an 18-point advantage over Trump among respondents who identified as "very" conservative, but the latest poll shows that the two almost tied, with Cruz taking 34 percent to Trump's 33 percent.

It's the same story among white evangelical Christians. In Fox New's last poll, Cruz led that demographic by 14 points, but he now beats Trump by only two points.

Fox News suggests that Trump's rise could be due to two factors. During Fox Business Network's Republican debate earlier this month, Trump questioned whether Cruz, who was born in Canada and can legally be president, and Cruz criticized Trump for holding liberal "New York values." Then on Tuesday, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed Trump, and Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad asked his constituents to vote against Cruz due to his opposition to ethanol.

Even with Trump out front in Iowa, things may change before the caucus. Sixty-three percent of respondents told pollsters that they could change their mind, and 25 percent of Trump's supporters said the same thing. Twenty percent of Republican voters said that they dislike Trump so much that they would vote for the Democratic candidate instead.

Not much has changed in New Hampshire, where Trump continues to lead Cruz by double digits, 31 percent to 14 percent. Rubio came in next with 13 percent.

The telephone polls were conducted among 801 voters between Jan. 18-21 with live interviewers, each with a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Nationally, a Fox News poll released two days ago showed Trump leading the field with 34 percent, followed by Cruz with 20 percent, Rubio with 11 percent and Carson at eight percent. Another recent national poll released by CBS News/New York Times showed Trump 17 points ahead of Cruz.

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Scientists from the Zoological State Collection and the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe have discovered up to twenty-four new beetle species in Australian rainforests; the species will mark the newest additions to the weevil genus Trigonopterus.

Although Australia is known for its vast deserts and savannas, many native Australian species are confined to the wet tropical forests that are found along the east coast of northern Queensland, which is where the new beetle species were found. Many of the new findings were collected in the 80s and 90s and were discovered by researcher Alexander Riedel, who co-authored the recent study.

"Usually a delay of decades or even centuries occurs between the encounter of a new species in the field and its thorough scientific study and formal naming," he said in a press release. "This is due to the small number of experts who focus on species discovery. There are millions of unidentified insect specimens stored in collections around the world, but only few people have the training necessary to identify those of special interest."

Old museum specimens are typically not ideal for DNA sequencing techniques, which work better on freshly collected material, prompting the team to set off to the field, leading to the discovery of the Trigonopterus garradungensis.

Each of the newly discovered weevils were found in very restrictive areas - some were even found in only one locality - likely due to their lack of wings decreasing their ability to spread. Additionally, many of them were found in leaf litter, making their discovery more difficult.

In addition to the study, high-resolution photos of each of the newly discovered species will be uploaded to the Species ID website along with further scientific information in order to make future studies on their evolution more effective.

The findings were published in the Jan. 21 issue of ZooKeys.

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On Saturday, the Hearing Board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) approved an abatement order that calls for, among other things, the permanent closing of the leaking well at Aliso Canyon, Calif. The board voted 4-to-1 in favor of the order after a marathon 6-hour meeting with the public in Woodland Hills, according to Yahoo News.

The abatement order requires Southern California Gas company (SoCalGas), according to National Public Radio:

- close and seal the well in perpetuity - and not restrict the efforts to just correcting the current leak;

- provide resources for a round-the-clock check of the air quality in the area;

- to deploy a system to identify leaks when they first occur for all the 115 reservoir wells at Aliso Canyon;

- to use an infrared camera to check on the leak for one month even after the leak has been fixed (since the human eye can't see the gas);

- to give state and federal agencies all the data they will need to assess the full extent of the methane gas that leaked;

- prepare a plan for how residents and the state would be notified during any future leaks;

- apply for and get the endorsement from regulators ahead of deploying "odor suppressants or neutralizers".

However, the order did not go the full distance as many residents were demanding and ask SoCalGas to shut down all the wells in the Aliso Canyon facility permanently. Michael Brune of the Sierra Club said "SCQAMD's failure to put Californians' livelihoods first is shameful, and Gov. Brown should intervene swiftly. There should be no other choice but to shut down the dangerous Aliso Canyon facility and look to close every urban oil and gas facility throughout California and our country, to ensure the health of our communities and our climate is never again sacrificed for corporate profits," according to The Los Angeles Times.

A hearing will be held on Feb. 20 to check on how the terms of this abatement order have been implemented.

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A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck the Mediterranean between Morocco and Spain on Monday, causing cracks on some high buildings in the area and forcing schools in the region to close as a precautionary measure, according to The Telegraph.

The U.S. Geological Survey stated that the earthquake struck the area at about 4:22 a.m. local time, about 62 kilometers north of the city of Al Hoceima, which is located 163 kilometers east-southeast of Gibraltar.

Aftershocks, which were measured at 5.3 on the Richter Scale, followed the initial tremors. With the epicenter being quite shallow, the U.S.G.S. has stated that there is a very "low likelihood of casualties and damage," reports Africa News.

In the Spanish enclave of Melilla bordering Morocco, the tremors were prominently felt, though authorities in the area have reported no severe damages. Isidro Gonzalez, a Melilla official, stated that the damage from the tremors was quite marginal. "For the moment, there has been only material damage and we haven't detected any that is very serious," he said.

The official further stated that there were some buildings in the area which displayed some minor cracks after the tremors. Some balconies and facades on a number of buildings also partly collapsed as a result of the earthquake, according to Yahoo! News.

As a precautionary measure, authorities in the area decided to close schools in order to properly assess the damage.

For more world news, click here.

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The Boston Globe has "enthusiastically" endorsed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination on Sunday just two weeks before the New Hampshire primary where the paper reaches 20,000 subscribers, saying "This is Clinton's time" to lead the country.

"Today, the nation has new challenges, which require a different kind of leader - someone who can keep what Obama got right, while also fixing his failures, especially on gun control and immigration reform. That will require a focus and toughness that Obama sometimes lacked," the Boston Globe's editorial board wrote. "This is Clinton's time, and the Globe enthusiastically endorses her in the Feb. 9 Democratic primary in New Hampshire."

In recent polling, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leads in New Hampshire by nearly 13 points, according to an average of recent polls compiled by RealClear Politics, in which Sanders has 52.4 percent support compared to Clinton's 39.6. Martin O'Malley is in third with 2.6 percent.

The Boston Globe's editorial board hit particularly hard on the issue of gun control in which they not only asserted that Clinton had the correct stance, but that there is a contradiction in Sanders' positions on guns and corporations.

"Clinton's assertive record on guns stands in contrast to that of her main Democratic opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who voted against the Brady background-check bill and, his claims notwithstanding, is not a convincing champion of gun control," the board wrote, according to CNN. "Sanders presents himself as an avowed foe of big business, but his vote to protect firearms corporations from legal liability tells a different story. Clinton is simply more credible on what for too many Americans is a life-and-death issue."

Sanders has had a positive impact on the race, however, according to the Globe, with his focus on income inequality and the influence of Wall Street on politics. "His entry into the race has pushed Clinton to the left in ways that have made her positions inconsistent - she has come out against a Trans-Pacific Partnership that she helped to initiate as secretary of state," they wrote. "But Sanders's candidacy has also opened up more room for Clinton to champion working people who are struggling in a changing economy."

The endorsement for Clinton follows others from the Des Moines Register in Iowa on Saturday and the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire on Sunday.

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Just over a week after suffering from a mild heart attack and being discharged from the hospital last Tuesday, Israel's former President Shimon Peres found himself, once again, in the hospital after he reported having "chest pains" and responding paramedics performed an EKG test, detecting an irregular heartbeat, his spokeswoman announced Sunday.

"It was diagnosed that he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat. Due to the diagnosis, his doctors decided that the 9th President will spend the night in hospital for observation and testing," Ayelet Frisch, said in a statement, according to The Times Of Israel.

Later Sunday, Peres' personal physician, Rafi Walden, elaborated on the situation saying, "to be on the safe side we took him to the hospital where we diagnosed a slight disturbance in the rhythm of the heart."

"It was very slight and it passed simultaneously without even need for treatment so he is feeling perfectly well now," he said, according to the Associated Press.

This marks the second time in two weeks Peres has found himself in the hospital due to the health complications. Last Tuesday he was discharged from Tel Hashomer Hospital after complaining of chest pains. He was found to have a narrowed artery, prompting doctors to perform a cardiac catherization, keeping him in under observation since he was admitted on Jan. 14.

Peres, though retired from his 55-year political career, still remains a active through the Peres Center for Peace, an NGO that promotes coexistence between Arabs and Jews, as well as peace and development in the Middle East, according to FOX News.

A protege of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres earned many achievements throughout his career, including winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo peace accords, aimed at promoting peace within the Middle East.

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Jason McLemore, a 44-year-old Mississippi gun store owner, and his 17-year-old son, Jacob, were killed in a shootout with two customers after an argument with two customers stemming from a $25 firearm repair fee, police announced over the weekend.

The exact time of the shooting has yet to be determined, but police confirmed it was reported a little after 3:00 p.m. Saturday at the McLemore Gun Shop on Hwy 43 North near Henley Field, reported CBS' and ABC's combined Mississippi affiliate WLOX-TV. The incident began when Audy McCool, 52, and his son, Michael, 29, went to the gun shop to pick up a gun one of them had left for repairs. However, they were told that the gun had yet to be serviced, and one of them became upset about that fact, since he had already paid $25 for it.

Jason McLemore's wife reportedly saw the encounter unfold, and tried to call her husband and son to prevent it from escalating.

"During this argument, we believe there might have been some pushing and shoving," Chief Deputy Shane Tucker said, according to the Sun Herald. "One of the customers and one of the owners produced firearms. We don't know who shot first."

By the end of the shootout, both Jason and Jacob were dead, while Audy had to be airlifted to a Hattiesburg hospital and Michael to a New Orleans medical center to be treated for serious injuries.

The shooting is still under investigation with the Pearl River County Coroners Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation on the scene, reported NBC's New Orleans affiliate WDSU-TV. No charges have been filed.

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Put your feet up, weary travellers and Monday mourners. It's National Irish Coffee Day.

The history of the Irish coffee is as interesting as the drink is delicious. In 1942, a group of exhausted travellers arrived at Foynes Airbase after an 18-hour journey across the Atlantic. The head chef at the restaurant at the airbase made the group some coffees with a splash of whisky to take the edge off, and legend has it, one of the travellers asked if the delicious concoction was Brazilian coffee, explains Punch Bowl. The chef, Joe Sheridan, quipped back quickly that it's not Brazilian coffee, it's Irish coffee!

Ten years later, the drink had made its way to America, specifically to the Buena Vista Inn in San Francisco. There, owner Jack Koeppler partnered with Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer, to recreated the Irish Coffee that had been making waves at Shannon Airport in Ireland, says The Buena Vista. After some experimentation, the pair was encountering problems. The taste was off, and the cream wasn't floating on top of the drink like it did in Ireland. Koeppler got on a plane to go taste an Irish Coffee for himself and when he returned, he figured out the tricks to get it tasting quite right.

Here's how to make a perfect Irish Coffee, just like the one made back in the '40s, recipe from The Buena Vista. If the cream won't float, this is likely because American cream is super-pasteurized, says The Kitchn. If you whip the cream lightly until very soft peaks form, you can pour it over a warm spoon and it should float. Even better, go to a local dairy and buy some unpasteurized milk.







Fill glass with very hot water to pre-heat, then empty.

Pour hot coffee into hot glass until it is about three-quarters full. Drop in two cocktail sugar cubes.

Stir until the sugar is thoroughly dissolved.

Add full jigger of Irish Whiskey for proper taste and body.

Top with a collar of

lightly whipped whipping cream by pouring gently over a spoon.

Enjoy it while piping hot.

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In a recent series of video stings, James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has succeeded once again in showing ordinary Americans what their liberal betters think of them - in a nutshell, not much.

O'Keefe first made his mark in 2009 when he and a few pals went undercover to bring down ACORN, an astonishingly corrupt cartel of community organizations with its many hands stuck deep in Uncle Sam's many pockets. O'Keefe's trick was a simple one: to get ACORN officials to reveal privately what they would never say publicly.

To be fair, Common Core operates on a loftier plane than did ACORN. Hatched originally by the National Governors Association and nurtured by the Obama administration, Common Core aims to standardize what is taught in schools across America. Who could object to that? Initially, at least, 42 states signed on.

Unlike the folks at ACORN, no one affiliated with Common Core has been caught on tape advising clients how to put underage sex slaves on the federal teat. Like the ACORN people, however, those attached to Common Core will readily say in whispers what they would never post on their website.

For instance, the "Myths vs. Facts" section of Common Core's website fails to address the most-asked of all questions: Is Common Core attempting to force feed progressive values - such as they are - to America's students?

Common Core-affiliated publishing executive Kim Koerber would seem to have answered that question in the affirmative. Unaware she was being recorded on video, Koerber proudly confirmed all the suspicions conservatives might harbor about educational decision makers.

As Koerber saw things, conservatives just "want to talk about those dead white guys." They don't like the way the Constitution is being taught because "they're idiots and they don't know what's in it." They talk so much about "climate change not being real" they make her want to scream. And as to the Second Amendment, said Koerber, "Damn the Second Amendment."

Curiously, Koerber launched her harangue by insisting, "Fox TV viewers think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that's why they are against it." Truth be told, she said little to put their minds at ease.

Koerber and others like her have little choice but to think the way they do. Natural selection being what it is, they are convinced their higher IQs destined them to be liberal. "What Conservatives Fear Most Is a Well Educated America," reads an altogether symptomatic headline on Politicususa.com. In the article, the author, rather uncharitably, explains what motivates conservative parents: "Their deep-seated believe (sic) is that if ignorance is good enough for them, it is more than sufficient for their children."

On the more grammatically solid end of the progressive media chain, opinions vary little. Writes Bill Keller, former editor of the New York Times, "Local control of public schools, including the sacred right to keep them impoverished and ineffectual, is a fundamental tenet of the conservative canon."

Having explored the left's natural habitats - I have a Ph.D. and my wife is a university professor - I can confirm that condescension is epidemic in those environs. When liberals are among their own, and they often assume they are even when they are not, they reflexively speak of conservatives as idiots.

The problem is compounded because other than on occasions like, say, Thanksgiving, liberal educators are almost always among their own. In 2012, for instance, 96 percent of Ivy League professors who donated to a candidate gave their money to Barack Obama. High school faculty lounges have become almost as diversity free.

If our educators actually knew more than conservative parents, one could at least understand their amour de soi, but they don't. Each year, the generally liberal Pew Research Center conducts a survey of political knowledge. As far as I can tell, Republicans always do better than Democrats.

"Differences in news knowledge across partisan groups are relatively modest, though Republicans tend to do somewhat better than Democrats overall," said a Pew researcher of the 2014 survey. Although he understated the persistent knowledge gap, he did concede that in some categories Republicans did much better.

He cited one example in particular: Yes, Common Core. "Republicans are 16 points more likely than Democrats to answer the Common Core question correctly (58% vs. 42%)."

Would someone please tell Kim Koerber that?

---

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessary represent those of Headlines and Global News.

An independent writer and producer, Jack Cashill has written 11 books since 2000, nine of which have been featured on C-SPAN's "Book TV." He has also produced a score of documentaries for regional PBS and national cable channels. Jack has written for Fortune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. He has a Ph.D. from Purdue University in American studies.

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Afghanistan's Taliban are playing hardball with members of a conference aimed at reigniting peace talks within the Middle East, demanding the release of political prisoners as one the conditions required before they would consider rejoining the effort.

Among the "preliminary steps need for peace," the Islamist insurgents are demanding the release of various political prisoners, the group's removal from a UN blacklist freezing their assets and imposing a travel ban on its leaders and ending the "poisonous propaganda" campaigns carried out at their expense, according to Quadrangle Online.

"Without them, progress towards peace is not feasible," the group said in a statement Sunday.

These demands came a day after representatives of the Taliban and former Afghan officials met in Qatar at a conference, organized by Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan. This marked a rare occurrence that has proved difficult ever since the Taliban were driven from power by a U.S.-led military operation in 2001, and have been fighting to regain control ever since, according to The Express Tribune.

It also comes several days after Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met for their latest round of discussions to lay the groundwork for ending the 15-year conflict. However, the Taliban, who have been invited multiple times throughout the course of the international talks, have been notably absent from each one.

The first formal peace talks with the Taliban since the outbreak of the war deteriorated last year after the group announced Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's founder and the one who sanctioned the talks, had been dead for two years, according to Reuters.

In the meantime, the Taliban have stepped up their attacks across Afghanistan in recent months, which experts believe is a bid by the militants to gain greater leverage when they decide to join the peace talks.

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Florida State University has settled a lawsuit with Erica Kinsman, the former FSU student who alleged that she was raped by then-Seminoles quarterback and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers signal-caller James Winston in 2012. As a result of the settlement, Kinsman will received $950,000, a sum which includes attorney's fees, and the university has agreed to make a "five-year commitment to awareness, prevention and training programs," according to Rachel Axon of USA Today.

"I will always be disappointed that I had to leave the school I dreamed of attending since I was little," Kinsman said in a statement, per Axon. "I am happy that FSU has committed to continue making changes in order to ensure a safer environment for all students."

FSU president John Thrasher admitted that the university's decision not to admit liability as part of the settlement was meant to avoid further litigation expenses.

"We have an obligation to our students, their parents and Florida taxpayers to deal with this case, as we do all litigation, in a financially responsible manner," Thrasher said in a statement. "With all the economic demands we face, at some point it doesn't make sense to continue even though we are convinced we would have prevailed."

As part of her lawsuit against the university, Kinsman alleged that the school was "deliberately indifferent" and that its response to her reported sexual assault was "clearly unreasonable." Kinsman also alleged that FSU officials attempted to conceal information regarding her assault.

FSU attempted to have Kinsman's lawsuit dismissed, but a judge ruled in August that it could go forward.

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Eight museum employees will be charged with negligence after they knocked the beard off the King Tutankhamun's funerary mask and did a shoddy job in its repair, Egyptian authorities said Sunday.

There have been differing accounts about how the artifact's 3,300-year-old beard ended up breaking since the damage was revealed back in 2014, reported CNN. One source said the beard broke when the mask fell during cleaning while others say the beard had loosened with age.

In either case, the group tried to cover up the damage by using epoxy glue to reattach the beard and then used metal tools to to remove parts of the glue that became visible. Museum officials then dismissed the claims of damage when they emerged, calling them unfolded.

However, a scratch was later discovered on the mask and prosecutors opened an investigation into the damage last year, determining that workers did not follow protocol during restoration.

"Ignoring all scientific methods of restoration, the suspects tried to conceal their crime by using sharp metal tools to remove parts of the glue that became visible, thus damaging the 3,000-year-old piece without a moment of conscience," prosecutors announced, according to the Daily News Egypt.

Those facing charges include the former museum director, former director of restoration, four senior restoration experts and two restorers, all of whom were removed from their jobs pending the results of the investigation, according to USA Today.

In the meantime, the mask went back up on display in December after German experts removed the damage and reattached the beard professionally using beeswax, which is traditionally used as an adhesive for antiquities.

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T he historic Kent town of Rochester is enjoying a mini boom, underlined by the recent unveiling of a stunning 26 million railway terminal to replace the old station that first opened for business in 1892.

Trains from the new station will take commuters to London in just 35 minutes for an annual cost of 3,876. The station is a key part of major regeneration and expansion plans for the town made famous by Charles Dickens, who lived nearby and set many of his famous novels there.

The Rochester Riverside development, which will create 1,500 new homes, remains in its early stages, but this cathedral town, which sits at the point where the North Downs (almost) meet the Kent Downs, is already a great option for commuters and buyers are evidently cottoning on to its charms. According to research by Savills, Rochester has enjoyed price growth of 12.1 per cent since 2007, taking its average property values to 202,961.

Historic town: festivities on Rochester High Street / Alamy



The skyline of Rochester is dominated by the castle and the ancient cathedral. The town has its share of tea shops  Mrs Tickits Pantry being a local institution  and gastropubs such as The White House, plus the smart Olivers Bar and Restaurant. Saturday nights can get a bit rowdy, but the high street is pleasantly free of chain stores. Instead, it is possible to browse through boutiques, antique shops and art galleries, and the monthly flea market is a great place for both vintage finds and local crafts.

Kents educational standards are rightly admired nationwide. Rochester Grammar School for girls (it admits boys into the sixth form) is rated outstanding by Ofsted, as is the boys grammar Sir Joseph Williamsons Mathematical School. The brilliantly named The Hundred of Hoo Academy is rated good.

540,000: four-bedroom semi-detached house in Maidstone Road, Rochester



Its a 30-mile drive or a 45-minute train ride from Rochester to Whitstable, so seaside day trips are a breeze.

Claire Carter, a senior partner at Freeman Forman, says buyers tend to fall for Rochesters pretty old town where a two- to three-bedroom cottage will cost about 400,000. Living close to the High Street, castle and cathedral does carry a premium.

Alternatively, live a few minutes walk further out of town and pick up a three-bedroom Victorian terrace for 250,000 to 300,000 or a modern four-bedroom detached property for 250,000. A modern apartment overlooking the River Medway will cost about 180,000.

700,000: five-bedroom semi-detached house in Maidstone Road, Rochester



Given Rochesters fast commute, some buyers opt to live in the surrounding villages. Top choice is attractive Upnor, on the banks of the Medway, with a fishing village vibe and its own primary school, shop and two pubs.

A three-bedroom flint cottage in the centre of Upnor will cost 300,000 to 350,000. Occasionally, large family houses come on to the market priced near the 1 million mark.

Rochester Riverside, a 52-acre regeneration zone, will give the town a boost, with new homes, shops, restaurants, and a school. Only a handful of homes have been built, making this site more of a watching brief for buyers.

Medway council is expected to announce a development partner in March. The plan is to transform this brownfield site into a new waterfront village by 2030.
Put hotel investment into the context of other accommodation options at the Hotel Alternatives Event 2016, the conference that examines the investment case for emerging accommodation segments. The conference is to take place on 2 and 3 February 2016 at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in London. The event, organised by leading hotel investment journal Hotel Analyst, brings together the sharpest minds and most innovative practitioners investing in accommodation businesses. The key aim of the event is for the investment community to reach an understanding of what is happening across all types of buildings with beds.

For more information please contact Sarah Sangster

020 8870 6388
CHICAGO -- Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) officially announced today that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with SFO to brand and manage a 350-room Grand Hyatt hotel. Located on the airport grounds, Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport is anticipated to open in mid-2019. Hyatt Hotels Corporation CEO and President Mark Hoplamazian and SFO Airport Director John L. Martin participated in a signing ceremony on January 21 at the SFO Aviation Museum in International Terminal A.

In 2014, SFO, an enterprise department of the City and County of San Francisco, announced plans to develop a new airport-owned hotel to enhance the overall offering of the airport. The San Francisco Airport Commission voted to award the contract to the Grand Hyatt brand under Hyatt's management in September 2015, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved it in December 2015. With this approval, Hyatt is set to bring its hospitality expertise and award-winning Grand Hyatt brand to SFO, one of the most important airports in the United States, which recently achieved a new all-time passenger traffic record of 50 million annual passengers in 2015.

"Realizing a brand new hotel at our world class San Francisco International Airport has long been part of SFO's Capital Plan, and I am pleased with this new relationship with Hyatt," said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. "The construction and operation of Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport is a major economic win for the entire San Francisco Bay Area region, creating jobs, revenue, and an even better world-class experience for travelers at SFO."

"We look forward to working closely with the team at SFO, which shares Hyatt's passion for quality, innovation, service and the creation of a caring environment for its customers, associates and the community it serves," said Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt. "The Grand Hyatt project at San Francisco International Airport is consistent with our company's objective to grow strategically with great partners and in gateway destinations where our loyal guests and meeting planners want us to be."

Grand Hyatt hotels reflect the unique culture of their locations and appeal to both travelers and the local community by delivering "moments of more." Located at the entrance to SFO, Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport will sit on a 4.7 acre site close to terminal buildings and parking garages with direct accessibility via an AirTrain station to the terminals. The hotel is being designed with approximately 350 rooms, 17,500 square feet of flexible meeting space, 24/7 business center, health club and spa, indoor heated pool, whirlpool, and sauna. Additionally, the food and beverage offerings will include both full-service and casual restaurants, wine and sushi bar, and a rooftop cocktail lounge.

"We are excited to work with Hyatt, a world-renowned brand in guest hospitality," said SFO Airport Director John L. Martin. "With this agreement, we take the first step forward in our vision to create the most innovative, luxurious, and environmentally sustainable on-airport hotel in the world."

Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport will be uniquely designed to reflect its distinct environment within a backdrop of intuitive service, dramatic architecture and innovative design. During the signing ceremony, the design-build firm for the hotel was also announced. Webcor Builders and Hornberger + Worstell Architects will be spearheading the design work together with SFO and Hyatt's design team. The design is envisioned to be among the most innovative and environmentally friendly airport hotels in the world. SFO will construct and own the hotel while Hyatt will provide branding and day-to-day management. Construction on the project is expected to begin in the fall of 2016, with completion expected in mid-2019. The facility is being designed to achieve both a four star designation and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) "Gold" certification for environmentally sustainable design and operation.

About Hyatt Hotels Corporation

Hyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company guided by its purpose  to care for people so they can be their best. As of June 30, 2022, the Company's portfolio included more than 1,150 hotels and all-inclusive properties in 72 countries across six continents. The Company's offering includes brands in the Timeless Collection, including Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Residence Club, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, and UrCove; the Boundless Collection, including Miraval, Alila, Andaz, Thompson Hotels, Hyatt Centric, and Caption by Hyatt; the Independent Collection, including The Unbound Collection by Hyatt, Destination by Hyatt, and JdV by Hyatt; and the Inclusive Collection, including Hyatt Ziva, Hyatt Zilara, Zoetry Wellness & Spa Resorts, Secrets Resorts & Spas, Breathless Resorts & Spas, Dreams Resorts & Spas, Vivid Hotels & Resorts, Alua Hotels & Resorts, and Sunscape Resorts & Spas. Subsidiaries of the Company operate the World of Hyatt loyalty program, ALG Vacations, Unlimited Vacation Club, Amstar DMC destination management services, and Trisept Solutions technology services. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Forward-Looking Statements in this press release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "may," "could," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "likely," "will," "would" and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable when made, are inherently uncertain, and are subject to numerous assumptions and uncertainties, many of which are outside of Kiraku, Inc. or Hyatt's control, which could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements made in this press release are made only as of the date of their initial publication and neither party undertakes an obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold, except to the extent required by applicable law. If one or more forward-looking statements is updated, no inference should be drawn that any additional updates will be made with respect to those or other forward-looking statements.

Aurelia Vasquez

Hyatt

+1 312 780 5873

Hyatt
STAMFORD, Conn. -- From the 2016 American Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) today announced strong continued growth in North America, following its 5th consecutive year of increased signings with 92 new hotel deals in 2015, an increase of 44 percent over the previous year. During 2015, the company also opened 43 new hotels, nearly double the 2014 number.

"Our strong growth in North America played a significant part in Starwood's record-breaking growth last year, fueled by notable increases across our brand portfolio, particularly our select service and our luxury brands," said Simon Turner, President of Global Development for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. "North America remains an extremely important market for the company, with 55% of our existing portfolio and one third of our global pipeline, and we see continued growth momentum across all of our brands in 2016."

"We are thrilled with the balanced growth we achieved in 2015, which grew our pipeline in North America by over 30 percent," said Allison Reid, Senior Vice President of North America Development for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. "The number of conversions we signed last year was up significantly and new build activity also increased. Owners and developers are showing continued strong interest in Starwood's brands, powerful network, global booking platforms and loyal customer base."

Growth of Starwood's Specialty Select Brands Continues to Soar with More than 100 Hotels in the Pipeline

Starwood's tech-forward Aloft brand, representing Starwood's largest pipeline in North America, led the company's growth this year as it continues to turn heads and meet the needs of today's hyper-connected global traveler. Aloft remains one of the fastest growing hotel brands with 10 openings in 2015 and 9 more slated for 2016 in North America. Element Hotels opened five hotels in 2015 and continues to see significant expansion opportunities as demand grows for the smart, sustainable brand. On track to more than double its North America portfolio in the next three years, Element will open more than 20 hotels across the U.S. and Canada by year end 2018. Known for its universal appeal and flexible development options, Four Points also continues to expand with plans to open this year in key markets like New York, San Diego and Dallas Fort Worth, in addition to markets throughout Canada such as Sherwood, Alberta and Barrie, Ontario.

Demand is also on the rise for dual-branded hotel developments featuring Starwood's Aloft and Element brands in key metropolitan markets across North America. Aloft and Element hotel projects will debut in Austin, Boston, Redmond, Wash., Columbus, Ohio, Dallas Love Field, andCharleston, S.C. in the next three years.

High-End Brands Continue to Differentiate Starwood and Fuel Growth in Key North America Markets

Starwood remained one of the few major hotel companies to increase its luxury pipeline with 11 new hotel deals in 2015 across the St. Regis, The Luxury Collection and W Hotels brands, doubling the company's luxury pipeline in North America in just 12 months. St. Regis continues to build on its more than 100 year heritage since opening in New York City in 1904, while the industry's largest luxury brand, The Luxury Collection, is renovating and converting renowned hotels throughout the U.S. to meet rising domestic demand for high-end accommodations, including the Cal Neva resort on Lake Tahoe and The Liberty in Boston. The brand will also make its long-awaited arrival in Napa Valley's idyllic St. Helena in 2016. W Hotels, the category killer in the lifestyle space, was a standout in 2015, tripling its executed pipeline through 2019 with notable signings in Aspen, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Bellevue and Downtown Los Angeles. The brand continues to break ground in high-barrier to entry markets, with development already under way to open 6 more hotels in North America by 2020.

Starwood's upper upscale brands, Sheraton, Westin, Le Meridien and Tribute Portfolio, more than doubled their number of openings and quadrupled the number of new rooms added compared to the previous year. In its launch year, Tribute Portfolio far exceeded company expectations, adding 11 new hotels (signed and opened) or more than 3,500 rooms. The Westin brand has 15 hotels in the pipeline and has opened five hotels this past year, while Le Meridien continues to aggressively invest in its growing portfolio with a recent debut in Columbus, Ohio and new signings in Downtown Houston, TX, and Orlando, FL at Universal Blvd. At the same time, The Sheraton brand welcomed the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel and the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers as Sheraton Grand properties, one of many initiatives under way for Sheraton 2020, a comprehensive 10-point plan designed to solidify Sheraton as a leading global hotel brand of choice, everywhere.

About Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Starwood Hotels &

Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 1,300 properties in some 100 countries and approximately 188,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences under the renowned brands: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton,Tribute Portfolio, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft, and Element, along with an expanded partnership withDesign Hotels. The company also boasts one of the industrys leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Visit www.starwoodhotels.com for more information and stay connected @starwoodbuzz on Twitterand Instagram and facebook.com/Starwood.
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Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is the first global luxury travel trade event, organized by the world's leading publishing house Conde Nast.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is the first global luxury travel trade event, organized by the world's leading publishing house Conde Nast.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is the largest in scale luxury travel trade event in Eastern Europe with more than 3000 square meters richly decorated by top international designers and florists.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is the only luxury travel trade event in Eastern Europe officially recognized by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is bringing together the creme de la creme in the luxury tourism industry.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is the most technologically advanced travel trade event in Eastern Europe. Visit the newly designed web site at www.cntfair.com and take advantage of the unique Meeting Planner and Messenger. The Meeting Planner gives each registered delegate the possibility to organize up to 25 meetings for the day, which is up to 75 pre-scheduled meetings per company. No any other travel trade event in Eastern Europe offers such opportunity. The Messenger delivers the latest in the communication technology and the communication between exhibitors and buyers will be faster and easier than ever.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair gives participants opportunities to make new, prosperous business connections with luxury travel companies and go beyond the traditional exchange of experience.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is taking place in one of Moscows most historic and iconic buildings - the Metropol Hotel.

Be among the top 100 companies in the travel industry - recognized leaders in various segments of luxury tourism and leading suppliers of high-end travel services.

Meet with more than 800 selected by Conde Nast leading representatives of the tourism industry, corporate clients and media from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The unique Hosted Buyers program offers 120 selected handpicked travel representatives a real five star experience and pampering from the moment of registration until their departure back home, including limousine transfers and accommodation in the best luxurious hotels in Moscow. The carefully chosen 150 VIP Buyers are the top management of the most influential and respectful travel companies in Eastern Europe.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair Conferences are an exceptional opportunity to learn about the latest travel trends from leading brands, to trade stories and ideas, and to hear inspiring lectures from the worlds most respected professionals.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is a travel-trade event that becoming synonymous with the luxury travel industry in Eastern Europe.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is concluded with a glamorous evening event.

Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair is taking place one day after the Annual Conde Nast Traveller Russia Readers' Choice Award.

Please, click here to access the 2015 fair statistics and feedback from industry leaders and our proposal for participation at the Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair 2016 together with the special advertising and sponsorship opportunities.

Register now at the Conde Nast Traveller Luxury Travel Fair by clicking here.
When compared with 2014, occupancy in Canada decreased 0.8% to 64.3%. However, average daily rate in the country was up 4.5% to CAD143.52. Revenue per available room increased 3.6% to CAD92.29.

The Canadian hotel industry reported mostly positive results in the three key performance metrics during 2015, according to data from STR, Inc.

When compared with 2014, occupancy in Canada decreased 0.8% to 64.3%. However, average daily rate in the country was up 4.5% to CAD143.52. Revenue per available room increased 3.6% to CAD92.29.

Among the provinces, British Columbia posted the largest increase in ADR (+9.5% to CAD158.37) as well as the only double-digit rise in RevPAR (+13.9% to CAD105.99). Occupancy in the province rose 4.0% to 66.9%.

The Yukon Territory recorded the largest increase in occupancy (+5.3% to 67.6%) and the second-highest rise in RevPAR (+8.3% to CAD82.20).

Alberta saw the only double-digit decline in occupancy (-11.2% to 59.5%) as well as the largest drop in RevPAR (-10.3% to CAD89.91).

Saskatchewan, the only other province to experience a double-digit decrease in RevPAR (-10.0% to CAD76.63), also reported the largest drop in ADR (-1.5% to CAD131.21).

About STR

STR, Inc. provides clients - including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry - access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering the United States, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean. STR provides a single source of global hotel data covering daily and monthly performance data, forecasts, annual profitability, pipeline and census information. STR founded the STR family of companies and is proudly associated with STR Global, STR Analytics and Hotel News Now. STR also founded the Hotel Data Conference. For more information, please visit www.str.com.
Business or Pleasure?

People travel for many reasons, but normally travelers can be separated into two main segments - business and leisure. Identifying the motives behind these two demographics gives marketers valuable insight into how to better engage and give the best experience to each visitor looking to book. We researched some of the top trends by type of customer to evaluate the best ways for hotels to market to each.

BUSINESS TRAVELERS: WHATS MOST IMPORTANT?

Location Internet Access Loyalty Points On-Site Amenities Mobile Booking

The preferences of business travelers all revolve around the idea of convenience. It begins with the ability to book their travel plans on the go or last minute, making mobile booking an attractive feature for a hotel. Guests traveling for work are most concerned with how quickly they can reach their destination and how efficiently they can get their work done. This means being in close proximity to a convention center and of course reliable internet access. With little down time, business travelers expect to have everything they could need within the comfort of the hotel, such as continental breakfast, on-site restaurants and coffee shops. A hotel offering all of these things on-site can expect to see more loyal business travelers.

How to Market?

With higher frequency travel and more hotel stays, Business travelers in particular are known for their brand loyalty. In fact, 65% of business travelers belong to a hotel loyalty program (e-marketing). From a marketing standpoint, highlighting loyalty rewards and encouraging loyalty signups is a great way to connect with current guests and excite potential customers. Attracting business travelers with site content can be as easy as promoting free wifi or offering free continental breakfast with their stay.

LEISURE TRAVELERS: WHATS MOST IMPORTANT?

Price Reviews & Recommendations Comfort & Amenities Nearby Attractions & Food Packages & Specials

Leisure travelers have a whole different approach to hotel shopping, focused mainly around comfort and relaxation. Price is another big factor for a leisure traveler considering they are planning a longer stay than a business traveler. In contrast, leisure travelers are on the search for the best deals and packages, paying special attention to customer reviews. A poor guest review can make a big impact on booking, as 82% of leisure travelers consider reviews to be very to somewhat important, compared to 77% of business travelers. For a traveler with vacation in mind, the comfort and added amenities offered by a hotel are the icing on the cake.

How to market?

Marketing to the leisure traveler is based around the experience. With this audience, its important that marketers allow potential guests to visualize their whole vacation when they are researching. By providing nearby attractions and trip recommendations next to the hotel amenities and hotel accommodations will give travelers a full picture of what they can look forward to. With this market, its also important that hotels pull out all the stops when it comes to packages and pricing. Encouraging these guests to sign up for an email list that will provide them with new and upcoming packages or promotions can be especially valuable as many spend multiple days to weeks in the planning process.

GREAT, SO NOW WHAT?

Its important to know how to market to each of these travelers, but when theyre searching the site, how do you tell which is which? A lot of information can be obtained from where sites visitors are coming from and which pages theyre landing on. For example, by targeting visitors from review sites like TripAdvisor, who are researching multiple properties and reviews, sites can customize messaging to appeal to leisure travelers.

Marketers should take a look at their top landing pages and referring sources and determine which would be primary route for each type of customer. This not only increases the chances that each visitor receives the most relevant information, it also creates a better and more meaningful experience for each.



About Spring Engage

Spring Engage is a real time engagement technology provider. Our solutions give hotel marketing professionals the tools to give each customer on their site the best and most personalized experience. From targeted campaigns and content to social media and email lead capturing, hotels have the ability to incorporate intent and customization in their messaging on site.



Contact:

Beth Harvey beth@springengage.com (919) 794-5003
SFO Airport Director John L. Martin and Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) officially announced last week that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with SFO to brand and manage a 350-room Grand Hyatt hotel.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) officially announced last week that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with SFO to brand and manage a 350-room Grand Hyatt hotel. Located on the airport grounds, Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport is anticipated to open in mid-2019. Hyatt Hotels Corporation CEO and President Mark Hoplamazian and SFO Airport Director John L. Martin participated in a signing ceremony on January 21 at the SFO Aviation Museum in International Terminal A.

In 2014, SFO, an enterprise department of the City and County of San Francisco, announced plans to develop a new airport-owned hotel to enhance the overall offering of the airport. The San Francisco Airport Commission voted to award the contract to the Grand Hyatt brand under Hyatts management in September 2015, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved it in December 2015. With this approval, Hyatt is set to bring its hospitality expertise and award-winning Grand Hyatt brand to SFO, one of the most important airports in the United States, which recently achieved a new all-time passenger traffic record of 50 million annual passengers in 2015.

Realizing a brand new hotel at our world class San Francisco International Airport has long been part of SFOs Capital Plan, and I am pleased with this new relationship with Hyatt, said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. The construction and operation of Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport is a major economic win for the entire San Francisco Bay Area region, creating jobs, revenue, and an even better world-class experience for travelers at SFO.

We look forward to working closely with the team at SFO, which shares Hyatts passion for quality, innovation, service and the creation of a caring environment for its customers, associates and the community it serves, said Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt. The Grand Hyatt project at San Francisco International Airport is consistent with our companys objective to grow strategically with great partners and in gateway destinations where our loyal guests and meeting planners want us to be.

Grand Hyatt hotels reflect the unique culture of their locations and appeal to both travelers and the local community by delivering moments of more. Located at the entrance to SFO, Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport will sit on a 4.7 acre site close to terminal buildings and parking garages with direct accessibility via an AirTrain station to the terminals. The hotel is being designed with approximately 350 rooms, 17,500 square feet of flexible meeting space, 24/7 business center, health club and spa, indoor heated pool, whirlpool, and sauna. Additionally, the food and beverage offerings will include both full-service and casual restaurants, wine and sushi bar, and a rooftop cocktail lounge.

We are excited to work with Hyatt, a world-renowned brand in guest hospitality, said SFO Airport Director John L. Martin. With this agreement, we take the first step forward in our vision to create the most innovative, luxurious, and environmentally sustainable on-airport hotel in the world.

Grand Hyatt San Francisco International Airport will be uniquely designed to reflect its distinct environment within a backdrop of intuitive service, dramatic architecture and innovative design. During the signing ceremony, the design-build firm for the hotel was also announced. Webcor Builders and Hornberger + Worstell Architects will be spearheading the design work together with SFO and Hyatts design team. The design is envisioned to be among the most innovative and environmentally friendly airport hotels in the world. SFO will construct and own the hotel while Hyatt will provide branding and day-to-day management. Construction on the project is expected to begin in the fall of 2016, with completion expected in mid-2019. The facility is being designed to achieve both a four star designation and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification for environmentally sustainable design and operation.
Last Friday, Chingy made a surprising revelation when he voiced his support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Considering the contempt the hip-hop community has for the current GOP frontrunner, it was unsurprising Chingy was on the receiving end of significant backlash via social media shortly after praising Trumps skills as a businessman, and hence, his suitability for the nations highest office (which Chingy believes functions like a large corporation).

Today, Chingy has gone back on his endorsement of the controversial candidate, and hes released something of a video apology to explain his change of heart.

The video begins with Chingy addressing his fans while a beat quietly plays in the background: Its been brought to my attention today that the comments I said on Twitter stirred up a lot of controversy throughout the Internet. And because of that I wanna make a few points, said the Holidae Inn rapper.

His first point: I do NOT endorse Donald Trump. Not whatsoever.

After renouncing his endorsement, Chingy explained that he initially tweeted out in support of Trump after he had read an article that detailed some of the positive changes Trumps presidency might be able to bring to the country.

Chingy went on to reveal that his fans have since made him aware of some of Trumps more negative attributes and policy proposals, and he thanked them for informing his decision to no longer support the New York real estate mogul.

I actually want to thank the fans who brought this to my attention and made me aware of the negative things he stated. And so I wanna thank them for bringing that to my attention, because now I can definitely tell you I do not endorse Donald Trump.

The clip ends with Chingy apologizing to anyone who was offended by his initial backing of Trump.

I wanna sincerely apologize to anybody out there who was offended by that.

Chingy
StupidGenius is the duo of Chaz King and Lil Rich, who hail from Lowell, MA and have been making huge noise in the greater Boston area, thanks to their recent collabs with Tory Lanez as well as Suffolk Countys Cousin Stizz. Theyve come through tonight with their brand new mixtape, Gamechangers, which features both of those singles as well as 12 new tracks.

Aside from Tory and Stizz, features come from OG Maco, CK Major, and Glo Dee. Production comes mostly from Lil Rich himself, with some help from guys like TJ Beats and DumDrumz. StupidGee continues to push an innovative sound out of a region that doesnt get much spotlight.

Gamechangers provides an immersive introduction to the Mill City duo, so give the tape a listen and tell us what you think.
The legendary bassist who co-wrote 'Old Town' with Phil Lynott has passed away

The New Year has become even more unforgiving with the death yesterday of Jimmy Bain, the 68-year-old Scottish bassist who played on both Phil Lynott solo albums and co-authored 'Old Town'. He also took care of keyboard duties when Philo toured.

The Irish connections don't end there, with Bain also playing with Vivian Campbell in Dio and Last In Line.

"It was Jimmy who gave me my first big break in the music industry and for that I am forever indebted," notes Campbell. "Jimmy's struggles with his demons were well documented through the years, but over the last 18 months, he had finally won that battle and he was bright and lucid and motivated throughout the writing and recording of the new record. He leaves behind him a rich legacy of work from Rainbow, through Wild Horses, Dio, and finally, Last in Line.

"Jimmy was immensely proud of our new album and his input to it was immeasurable," the Def Leppard man continues. "He was a very kind and gentle and generous soul and our lives were greatly enriched for having known him. We will continue to celebrate his life through his music. Our thoughts and condolences are with his family at this most difficult of times. Rest in peace, dear friend."

Bain was a member of Rainbow during the '70s; also played on Thin Lizzy's Black Rose; joined forces with one of their former guitarists, Brian Robertson, under the Wild Horses banner, and appeared on Kate Bush's 1982 album, The Dreaming.

"I'm very saddened by the loss of my friend," says Dave Mustaine. "We were very close. Godspeed."
As a pair of significant anniversaries fall, the Neil Jordan film is set for a special screening

Neil Jordans acclaimed film Michael Collins will be screened at this years Audi Dublin International Film Festival.

With films 20th anniversary upon us, and the 1916 commemorations in full swing, it seems only fitting that the film, a landmark in both Irish film and history revival, would get a run-out.

The film will be screened on Saturday February 20 in Dublins Savoy Cinema on OConnell Street, and will be attended by director Neil Jordan and cinematographer Chris Menges. A Q&A will follow, hosted by Irish Times' political correspondent Harry McGee.

The film was and is the great film of the period from Neil Jordan at the height of his filmmaking powers," said Festival Director Grainne Humphreys. "I expect it will resonate with the festival audience just as beautifully as it did 20 years ago.

Starring Liam Neeson as the titular hero, the late Alan Rickman as Eamon de Valera and Julia Roberts as Collins love interest Kitty Kiernan, Michael Collins became the highest grossing film ever in Ireland upon its release and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

Michael Collins will also be made available on DVD and BluRay from May 4th on a remastered 20th Anniversary Addition with Intro and Commentary by director Neil Jordan, as well as being re-released nationwide on March 18.
This week marked the 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Courts ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in our country. Since the courts ruling, nearly 58 million innocent lives have tragically been taken. To put that into perspective, there are roughly 58 million people living in the states of New York and Californiacombined.

To share these startling numbers and advance pro-life policies, thousands of grassroots advocates from across the country, including Missouris 8thDistrict, are in Washington, D.C. this week for the Annual March for Life. For the last 43 years, the March for Life has been a rallying cry for all those who believe, as I do, that life begins at conception and that all life is valued. I admire the courage of their conviction to march for life despite long journeys and a blizzard warning here in our Nations Capital.

For this march, I am reminded of 1987, when Nellie Gray, the late President of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, joined with others to battle a fierce storm but continued to march. Nellie said at the time, our continuing to march that day was not stubbornness to defy the elements, but willingness to cope as best we could in our determined efforts to defend the unalienable and paramount right to life of our born and preborn brothers and sisters. The resolve of each person who trekked to Washington, while the city was under a blizzard warning and state of emergency, to march for life inspires me and renews my faith that together we can protect the sanctity of life.

This week serves as an important reminder to every elected official, doctor, father and mother that ALL life is precious. We are reminded that at the center of our Pro-Life struggle is the protection of all human life. We cannot live in a society where some life is valued and other life is not.

I stand united with the March for Life delegation and Pro-Life advocates across the country in the belief that all life is precious. All life has value and the casual taking of life is wrong. Across our great nation, millions of Americans are coming together today to demand that the federal government stop assisting in this great assault on innocent life. The federal government should not spend one single dime on Planned Parenthood or any associated groups. Taxpayer dollars should never be used to take the life of the unborn.

As work continues to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also lay the foundation for a society that does not accept abortion as a form of birth control. Pro-Life advocates like myself have taken up this cause, but work still remains. Open hearts and open minds can heal our nation and change abortions into adoptions. We must join together to pray for the protection of the unborn. The intersection of prayer and action can produce amazing results. I know we can accomplish our goals, and innocent human lives can be saved.

Jason Smith represents Missouris 8th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. Contact him at 573-335-0101 or visit https://jasonsmith.house.gov
The following are excerpts from reports generated by the Houston Police Department:

Joshua P. Vaughn, 26, of 13755 Highway 32 in Success, was issued a citation for stealing under $500 after allegedly shoplifting several Lego Star Wars toys from Walmart on Jan. 16.

A 19-year-old Houston woman came to the police station Jan. 14 to report a scam.

The woman told an officer she had posted a truck for sale on Craigslist for a price of $1,000. She stated a man who was allegedly in Illinois called and said he would purchase the truck and sent her a check for $2,500.

The woman said the man told her to send a Moneygram for $1,450 to a delivery driver in San Antonio, Texas, and she did. She stated the driver never came to pick up the truck, and her bank told her she had to pay back the $2,500 because the check was fraudulent.

Information about the case was sent to the state attorney general. There are no suspects.

Donald E. Shelhammer, 74, of 411 Craig Lane in Raymondville, was issued a citation for failure to obey a traffic signal after a two-vehicle accident at U.S. 63 and Holder Drive at about 2 p.m. Jan. 15.

Brian K. Lancaster, 40, of 211 S. Grand Ave. in Houston, and Brandon M. Ingram, 27, of 10340 Horner Drive in Licking, were each issued citations for failure to obey a reasonable request by a police officer after an incident at about 1:05 a.m. Jan. 16.

The two men were allegedly yelling at each other and causing a disturbance outside the Office Bar on Grand Avenue. Officers arrived and twice advised them to separate, but they didnt comply and the officers had to step in.

Tina M. Wagner, 23, of 17333 Highway B in Houston, was cited for following too closely after a two-vehicle accident at U.S. 63 and First Street at about 2:15 p.m. Jan. 18.

Donald A. Newell, 26, of 413 Broadway in Houston, was cited for stealing under $500 after allegedly swiping a pack of Starburst candy from Dollar General on Jan. 17.
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Fraser Institute News Release: Cost sharing the norm for universal health care countries throughout the developed world; Canada is the outlier Media Contact:Aanand Radia, Media Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute, (416) 363-6575 ext. 238, aanand.radia

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 7:52 am

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VANCOUVERCanada remains one of the few developed countries with a universal-access health care system that doesnt require patients to participate in paying for care through some form of user fees, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.Most countries in the industrialized world with universal coverage for health care charge user fees for access to hospitals, general practitioners or specialists with exemptions for low income citizens and individuals with chronic long-term illnesses. Canada is an outlier, said Steven Globerman, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Select Cost Sharing in Universal Health Care Countries.A prominent feature of Canadas health care system, as mandated by the Canada Health Act, is an absence of any charge for publicly-insured health care services.The study finds that this isnt the norm elsewhere. Most universal health care countr...

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Inventive IP Telephones With Enhanced Features

Posted by dummy dummy on Monday, 01-25-2016 3:11 am

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Now, have telephones with enhanced IP and other facilities like computer cabling, data cabling, through phone system Atlanta GA that looks forwards in serving their clients with additional services like  voicemail systems & surveillance cameras Paging and sound system etc.Several communications works are providing special inventive IP method (internet protocol address) system, which makes the network interface and identification very easy. The firm for many phones and their second hand IP address box also provides replacements parts. The rates are completely affordable and clients can even exchange servicing of their PBX in Atlanta, GA. People must be wondering what are the uses of the inventive IP and how can it help them? Well, it has been very useful in both residential as well as professional business organization. In professional organization the individual need new system with enhanced uploaded IP, whichhave been provided by firms in many metro area with Business ...

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James Sheegog Joins Faculty Team Delivering Chief Learning Officer Graduate CertificateAn early pioneer in technology-based executive education joins George Mason University to teach online and residential sessions. James Sheegog left his director positio

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 6:03 am

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CHAPEL HILL, NC (PRWEB) JANUARY 21, 2016James F. Sheegog, the founder of Rowhill Consulting Group joins the faculty team at George Mason University responsible for delivering the inaugural Executive Chief Learning Officer (ECLO) certificate program. This ECLO course is the only university program of its kind.http://business.gmu.edu/eclo/ Drawing on the expertise of world-class faculty from the School of Business and the Learning Technologies Division of the College of Education and Human Development, this six-month program is grounded in cutting-edge research and proven practices from industry thought leaders with a solid track record linking learning and development to business goals.Mr. Sheegog will teach strategic thinking dimensions, which examines real case studies from nearly 30 years of advisory work around the globe. The program blends distance-learning technologies with residential faculty sessions at the Arlington, VA campus. Other topics address in the ECLO program includes,...

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Michael F. Slavin's "One Million in the Bank" Earns Book AwardMichael F. Slavin, president of the oil and gas exploration company U.S. Emerald Energy, has recently received a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association for his book, "One Million in

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 5:51 am

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HOUSTON, TEXAS (PRWEB) JANUARY 20, 2016Michael F. Slavin, president of Houston-based U.S. Emerald Energy, a gas and oil exploration company, has received the Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association for his book, "One Million in the Bank". The book focuses on starting a small business, with practical advice about forming a business plan, finding investors, and taking advantage of the free information and help that is available to small business owners through agencies such as SCORE or the SBDC.The Nonfiction Authors Association is dedicated to providing education, resources and support for nonfiction authors. Its Gold Award, the highest available, is given to books that meet its high standards for writing and production quality, based on a set of specific criteria as evaluated by several judges. It was recently announced that "One Million in the Bank" had officially received the Gold Award.Michael F. Slavin was raised by his grandparents in St. Joesph, Mis...

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NCHRA Welcomes Human Capital Innovator China Gorman To All New HR Advisory Council

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 7:10 am

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The Northern California Human Resources Association (NCHRA) alongside its annual HR West conference, has announced the addition of Human Capital Management expert and thought leader, China Gorman, to the Advisory Council for HR West and the NCHRA. Representing the front edge of change, the Advisory Council was formed to share unique vantage points about the direction business is heading and how organizations can adapt to succeed within its new direction.SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (PRWEB) JANUARY 20, 2016The 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...

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OnSIP Appoints CMO and Hires VP Channel Sales, Both Board Members of Nonprofit Women in the Channel Management Team Expanded to Support Growing Demand for Hosted VoIP Platform

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 6:54 am

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NEW YORK, NY (PRWEB) JANUARY 20, 2016Cloud 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, Hay...

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Tracy Craig wins 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year AwardTracy Craig, Owner and Principal of Craig Communications, named to class of 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year by Enterprising Women magazine.

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 6:08 am

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OAKLAND, CA (PRWEB) JANUARY 21, 2016Enterprising Women magazine inducted Tracy Craig, Owner and Principal of Craig Communications, to its class of 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year. The annual Enterprising Women of the Year Award is a prestigious award for women business owners who are recognized as community leaders, entrepreneurs, and role models to women and girls. I am deeply honored to receive this award recognizing our companys many efforts to mentor the next generation of women, stated Craig.Craig started Craig Communications in 2000 as a way to stay home with her children and earn a living. She found that being a mother comes with a wealth of skills that help her excel as an entrepreneur, including creativity, managing a budget, problem-solving and balancing a wide-range of responsibilities. Craig leveraged these skills and now manages a staff of eleven diverse employees and operates two offices, including a new corporate office in Oakland, California tha...

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Visualizing Goals Influences Financial Health and Happiness, Study Finds TD Bank Survey Reveals that Images Enable People  and especially Millennials  to Stay on Track

Posted by Press Releases on Monday, 01-25-2016 6:31 am

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CHERRY HILL, N.J., Jan. 20, 2016  A lot has been discussed and written about the power of images, and how picturing success can help you achieve it. And yet, are people who visualize their financial success any more confident about achieving it than those who dont? Is a picture really worth a thousand words? TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, decided to find out, and surveyed 1,127 individuals and 500 small business owners across the U.S. about their visualization practices. According to the survey, people who imagine their financial and other goals are much more confident about achieving them than those who dont. In fact, those who keep images, photos or vision boards of such goals are almost twice as confident (59 percent vs. 31 percent) that they will achieve them than those who dont. And while New Year's resolutions are notoriously difficult to keep, 67 percent of individuals surveyed believe that pictures will improve their odds of achieving ...

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Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-25 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Protesting farmers block border crossing with Bulgaria, set up new road blocks [02] ND leader Mitsotakis received by Cyprus President Anastasiades in Nicosia [03] Fyrom FM: Skopje to take action on refugee flows 'in step' with northern EU countries [04] History of Hagia Sophia at Hellenic Cosmos VR 'Tholos' Theatre [05] BoG Gov. calls for urgent completion of 1st review of econimic programmea [01] Protesting farmers block border crossing with Bulgaria, set up new road blocks Farmers in central and western parts of the Macedonia province in northern Greece abruptly escalated their protest actions on Monday, with a decision to indefinitely block the Promachonas border crossing with Bulgaria with their tractors. In the meantime, more farmers continued arriving and new road blockades sprung up at the Kouloura junction on the Egnatia motorway, in addition to a road block at the Kerdyllia junction that sprung up last week. Farmers and livestock breeders at Halkidona and Giannitsa jointed forces to form a new road blockade on the Axios Bridge in west Thessaloniki, made up of more than 1,300 tractors and heavy farm machinery. New roadblocks also appeared at Paleokomi in Serres, Deskati in Grevena and Gomati in Ierrisos Halkidiki, while the number in Pella rose to three, at Arnisa, Mavrovouni and Mesimeri. Further south, the mood remained equally militant and the seven gatherings of tractors in Fthiotida prefecture proceeded to block traffic in intervals throughout the day, for one or two hours at a time. The national highway from Athens to Thessaloniki was closed in both directions for over an hour at the Anthili area, with cars diverted onto side roads and the local road network. At Atalanti, farmers only blocked access in the lane from Lamia to Athens, while elsewhere they blocked the old national highway, trapping trucks that were unable to get through to continue their journey. A road bloc at two points on the Lamia-Domokos road to Karditsa and Trikala caused bedlam and huge delays, forcing traffic onto minor roads, while farmers bloced both lanes at the 110th kilometre of the national highway through Viotia for two hours. [02] ND leader Mitsotakis received by Cyprus President Anastasiades in Nicosia NICOSIA (ANA-MPA/ A. Viketos) -- Developments in the Cyprus issue, regional matters and the island republic's imminent exit from the memorandums dominated a meeting here between Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and the new leader of Greece's main opposition New Democracy party, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on Monday. Anastasiades briefed ND's new leader on his meetings at Davos with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci. Afterward, Mitsotakis stressed ND's solid support for the efforts of the Cypriot people and their president to achieve a just and viable solution to the Cyprus issue. [03] Fyrom FM: Skopje to take action on refugee flows 'in step' with northern EU countries SKOPJE (ANA-MPA/ N. Frangopoulos) -- The foreign minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) on Monday said his country does not wish to close its borders with Greece in order to stop refugee and migrant flows but will "do whatever is necessary" to resolve the crisis if EU countries to the north impose more stringent controls. FYRoM FM Nikola Poposki said the Skopje government was coordinating its actions in step with action taken by EU countries, such as the decision to distinguish between third country nationals attempting to enter as migrants and war refugees last November, or recent requirements that a refugee's destination country be listed in documents. The country's authorities have recorded 41,227 refugee arrivals from Greece since the start of the year. [04] History of Hagia Sophia at Hellenic Cosmos VR 'Tholos' Theatre The 1,500-year-old history of Hagia Sophia, an iconic world cultural heritage site and the most spectacular Orthodox cathedral in eastern Christendom for a millennium, is explored in a new 45-minute screening on show at the Hellenic Cosmos Culture Centre's dome-shaped Virtual Reality Theatre, or 'Tholos', in Athens. The interactive presentation charts the cathedral's history from the 6th century, in January 532, when Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian commissioned the temple from the architects Anthemios and Isidorus, and weaves in elements of subsequent Byzantine history and culture. Among others, it explores the challenges faced by the architects in carrying out their ground-breaking and ambitious construction, the problems they had to overcome and also explores the intricate decorations of the interior. Details on the days and hours of screenings are available at the website www.hellenic-cosmos.gr [05] BoG Gov. calls for urgent completion of 1st review of econimic programmea A successful completion of the first review of the Greek economic adjustment programme was of crucial importance, as it would signal the beginning of talks with Greece's partners on action to further restructure the country's public debt, while at the same time it will be the key to restoring confidence and the return of deposits to the banking system, Bank of Greece governor Yannis Stournaras emphasized on Monday. Addressing an American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce conference, the Greek central banker warned that the urgent completion of the first review was imperative, as risks have risen in the global economy. In the framework of increased risks and uncertainties for the course of the global economy, a potential failure to complete the first review would be destabilising as it would lead to a retreat of confidence, deteriorating financial conditions and a bigger recession. Stournaras said that the Greek economy has the ability and prospect to return to positive growth rates this year, despite rising international risks and uncertainties and despite a carry-over from a negative effect of 2015. He stressed, however, that this would depend on implementing commitments undertaken by the Greek government in the framework of the new programme and a completion of the first review. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
majority of HR emphasises retirement planning over helping older workers enhance the organisation with their skills and experience, a new study has found.The research, conducted by Ashridge Executive Education, surveyed 2,000 employees over 50 years old and found that HR was off target by failing to align how baby boomers are portrayed, managed and valued within the company with what those individuals actually want from work.Overall, companies are failing to realise the potential of older workers in spite of campaigns and research conducted in a number of countries showing the benefits of employing this older demographic of workers.Only one per cent of HR staff felt that older workers required some career development. This matches the common misconception that baby boomers wish to stay in their senior roles and thus block the next generation of workers from coming up the talent pipeline.However, the research found that these mature employees were ambitious, wanting further growth and development.Baby boomers are often in senior positions and are role models for others in the business. If they are not stimulated and engaged at work, the knock-on effect on the motivation levels of others could be enormous, Carina Paine-Schofield, research fellow at Ashridge, said.Organisations also need to think about how the way they perceive and manage older workers impacts on recruitment and their brand image as an employer.Instead, the main focus of HR seems to be developing younger generations with any training offered to mature staff including aspects such as retirement and financial planning. This highlights a major mismatch which HR needs to rectify in order to get the most out of any mature workforce.
OTTAWA  A Liberal minister says the new government will take steps to address to growing gap between the rich and the poor, but is warning that not all campaign commitments will make it into the budget.

The admission from Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos comes as the NDP intends to make income inequality its primary focus as Parliament resumes Monday.

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Duclos, a well-regarded economist from lUniversite Laval, told The Huffington Post Canada the Grits remain focused on income inequality and on creating growth that includes everyone  women, immigrants, First Nations, as well as all regions of the country.

Jean-Yves Duclos is sworn in as minister of families, children and social development. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may not have spoken as passionately about income inequality on the campaign trail as he did before the election, but Duclos said it was "implicit" when the party talked about "the middle class and all those hoping and working to join it."

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In December, the Liberals cut taxes on middle-class Canadians and raised the tax rate on those making above $200,000 to help address that inequality, Duclos said.

"It's not a coincidence that we focused on the top one per cent," the minister added. "It's not that we don't like the top one per cent  most of those belonging to the top one per cent of our society work very hard and earn those incomes in the most legitimate way with investment in our society  but because we felt the middle class needed more support."

Over the past 20 years, the top one per cent saw a steady rise in their incomes that wasnt matched by lower income earners, the minister said.

The Liberals 1.5 per cent tax cut for taxable incomes of $45,282 to $90,563 amounts to a maximum of $679 a year.

"It could be bigger," Duclos acknowledged. "But, I think, it's still better than nothing."

"It's not a coincidence that we focused on the top one per cent."

In February, Duclos is scheduled to meet with his provincial counterparts to start hashing out an agreement on early learning and childcare funding, which, he said, will be "most beneficial to lower income families."

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The first meeting will be about setting objectives for a program, but an eventual deal will likely allow for differences between regions based on local needs.

The Liberals' budget, likely to come at the end of March, will include several measures from the platform that tackle income inequality.

A new child benefit  to be implemented in July  will be particularly beneficial to lower income families and will lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, Duclos said.

The budget will also include investment in social housing, a higher Guaranteed Income Supplement for vulnerable seniors, several measures to help indigenous people, as well as spur job creation through infrastructure spending.

But Duclos cautioned that not everything the Liberals promised during the election will be included in the budget.

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"There will be things that will have to wait."

NDP MP signals shift on taxes, deficit spending

NDP MP Niki Ashton said she is concerned that the Liberals are already moving away from many of their election promises relating to income inequality and that they may leave more spending promises on the chopping block, blaming dire economic times.

"In the '90s, we saw inequality grow the fastest. It was under Liberal governments  and it had everything to do with decisions that they made at that time," she told HuffPost, referring to cuts in transfer payments to the provinces.

She pointed to the Liberals failure to strengthen the Canada Pension Plan, the failure to roll back the age of qualification for Old Age Security (OAS) in the Throne Speech, as well as the Grits refusal to commit to reinstating Canada Post home delivery for those Canadians who had already lost it  a way of saving good paying jobs.

Ashton said she was especially concerned that the Liberals might weaken their commitment to First Nations education.

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NDP MP Niki Ashton speaks in the House of Commons. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

"This kind of an investment would go a long way in closing the inequality gap faced by the poorest communities in Canada."

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair told his caucus last week that income inequality would be the partys new rallying cry.

"Income inequality is one of the most glaring injustices in our society," he said in a speech.

Canadians who are working hard should not see their incomes stagnate or drop as the wealthiest individuals get richer and corporations post larger profits, the NDP leader said.

"Income inequality is one of the most glaring injustices in our society." - NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair

Some people who call themselves "progressives" believe its good enough to espouse equality of opportunity, Mulcair said, but as social democrats, we believe  government can and, we feel, must play a direct role in eliminating inequality.

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Mulcair, who fought the election opposing higher personal income taxes on the rich and supporting balanced budgets, told his 43 MPs he would not abandon his partys social democratic vision for Canada, "not lose sight of who we are and who we fight for."

Those fighting words were what his most vocal critic  Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, who has called on him to resign  had been hoping to hear.

"We need to be talking about income inequality, we need to be talking about things that Bernie [Sanders, a populist U.S. senator from Vermont vying for the Democratic presidential nomination] is talking about, like free-post-secondary education," she told HuffPost last week.

For now, the NDP doesnt intend to call for free post-secondary education  something that was in the Green Partys platform  or tax increases for the wealthy, Ashton said.

The party will focus on its election priorities, she said, but given the troubling trend of the growing inequality, it will be incumbent on us to continue to look at how we can push the agenda, how we can tackle inequality.

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NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is applauded after a speech to his caucus in Montebello, Que. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

"We certainly believe in making the changes necessary so that those that have the most money are giving back, giving their fair share, and that the revenues that we have as a government are being used to support those most in need and being used to close that growing inequality gap."

Ashton suggested the caucus might consider whether it will support deficit spending "given the economic situation we are in."

During the election, the NDP pledged to run balanced budgets.

"We've always supported the need to be fiscally responsible," Ashton said, "but obviously in changing times you have to make the right decisions."

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Changes to EI

When MPs return to work, the NDP will be calling for changes to employment insurance  something the Liberals have already telegraphed  to help those who have lost their jobs avoid falling into poverty or chronic joblessness.

The party also plans to focus its attention on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP)  a free-trade deal the Liberals are poised to sign that may cost several thousand Canadians their jobs.

A report last week suggested the TPP could cost 58,000 jobs, while another report from Swiss bank UBS suggested that a coming fourth industrial revolution  defined by the use of robots and intelligent software  would likely benefit the richest and continue to exacerbate the income gap.

The World Economic Forum, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended in Davos, Switzerland, suggested in its jobs report that governments should redraft educational curricula and provide incentives to promote lifelong learning to help its lower-skilled and middle class workers adjust to rapid change.

Duclos told HuffPost the Liberals remain committed to free trade and will judge the merits of each deal separately. "We know that free trade, when it is conducted in a proper manner is always beneficial."

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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)

Globalization, technological change, market competition, and, in some cases, greater concentration of power as causes, however, had all exacerbated income inequality and the government had a role to play in redressing it, he said.

"We want to have greater inclusion because we want to have greater equality of opportunities."

From a moral standpoint, Duclos said, income inequality is worth addressing because about 80 per cent of what people experience in terms of their living standards is affected by circumstances out of their control.

"It's due to the country in which you are born, the family in which you are raised, the luck that you have in terms of your skills, your health, in finding a good job after you graduate, it depends on who you meet and so on."

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But societies with greater income equality also see greater political and social inclusion, the minister said.

"It's been shown that greater equality increases economic growth by making the people more likely to invest in their future and in the future of their society."

Meanwhile last Monday, Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose told a Toronto business luncheon audience that the Tories believe "that government should help anyone in genuine need, and hinder none who find success."

"Government should pave a pathway to prosperity, and then get out of the way," she said.

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He hasnt officially declared his candidacy for Conservative Party leader, but Kevin OLearys admission hes considering a bid is enough political ammo for the federal NDP to build a pitch asking party supporters for money.

Last week, we learned that wealthy businessman Kevin OLeary may be considering a run to lead the Conservative Party  thats the LAST things our country needs right now, reads an email to prospective donors on Sunday.

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Donald Trump of the North. Yikes!

The message, signed by NDP operations director Dave Hare, uses a moniker linking the former Dragons Den star to a certain orotund American real estate mogul vying to be the Republican Partys 2016 presidential candidate.

Not sure what the big deal is about this Kevin OLeary guy? Hes become known as the Donald Trump of the North. Yikes!

Donald Trump speaks during a Liberty University Convocation in Lynchburg, Virginia on Jan. 18, 2016. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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It ends with a line referencing the Liberals' majority government win, saying Canadians voted against that kind of fear and division dominating American politics today. The pitch cites the 3.5 million people who voted NDP in October.

The Huffington Post Canada reached out to OLeary for comment about the NDP fundraising pitch, but did not hear back before publication.

Ambrose in communication with OLeary

OLeary has publicly distanced himself from comparisons to Trump, telling the The Canadian Press he and the increasingly controversial political figure are different people.

I am certainly not Donald Trump in policy  foreign policy or domestic or social, he said. The former Lang & OLeary Exchange co-host continued to express his pride in how great the country is.

I'm a Lebanese-Irish, I don't build walls (and) I am very proud of the society we're building in Canada  I think it is the envy of the planet.

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Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose has confirmed shes been in communication with OLeary to informally discuss his possible candidacy.

Fair shot for unfit leader

News the Montreal-born OLeary is considering dipping his toes into a federal leadership race hasnt necessarily spooked some of the partys longest members.

In an earlier interview with HuffPost Canada, longtime Tory MP Deepak Obhrai called the celebrity investor an unfit match for Conservative leader.

Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai stands in the House of Commons during question period in Ottawa on May 30, 2014. (Photo: Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press)

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I never saw this guy [OLeary] anywhere. Anywhere. At any of these functions. As a matter of fact, I havent heard from him in those 18 years, and now we have a celebrity trying to run, Obhrai said. Well, he doesnt have the foggiest idea what this party is all about.

He compared OLeary to Belinda Stronachs high-profile candidacy bid for party leader in 2004. She finished second to former party leader Stephen Harper.

We do not want another celebrity running around for our party.

Tory MP Michael Chong, who is considering a run of his own, told CBC that O'Leary is spending too much time south of the border.

"Donald Trump may be a political force south of the border, but that kind of politics isn't coming north any time soon," Chong said.

But despite the claims that OLeary lacks adequate political experience to lead, preliminary polling data suggests the contentious businessman has a fair shot at the top Tory spot.

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Last week, Mainstreet released data suggesting if a hypothetical Conservative party leadership race were held today, former cabinet minister Peter MacKay would be the frontrunner with 25 per cent support  followed by OLeary with 23 per cent.

Other high-profile Tories including Kellie Leitch, Tony Clement, Maxime Bernier, Lisa Riatt and Jason Kenney are also top contenders whose names are being touted as possible candidates.

The poll sampled 4,937 Canadians across the country by landlines and cell phones. The results have a margin of error of 1.39 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The Conservative Party will elect its new leader on May 27, 2017.
Peter MacKay is restarting his legal career.

The former Central Nova MP is joining the Toronto office of global law firm Baker & McKenzie as a partner, the firm announced Monday.

MacKay, a former Crown prosecutor, will advise firms doing global business and international companies doing business in Canada, according to a Baker & McKenzie announcement.

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Baker & McKenzie managing partner Kevin Coon said the firm's global clients face many regulation challenges when trying to move across borders.

"I can't think of anyone who is better placed than Peter MacKay to assist our clients on the legal, business and compliance challenges of today's marketplace," he said.

Peter MacKay was a lawyer before entering politics. (Photo: CP)

MacKay called Canada "a key player in a dynamic and challenging global economy."

"I have been honoured to serve the Canadian people for many years in the House of Commons and Government of Canada, and the time is right for me to transition to the private sector and begin the next phase of my career," he said.

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On Thursday, MacKay told reporters there was "lots of time" to consider a bid for Conservative leader.

"I'm keeping a close eye on things across the country and it's never far from my mind," he said.

With files from The Canadian Press

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The interim Conservative leader says a proposed pipeline that would carry oil across Canada should be viewed as a matter of nation-building.

Rona Ambrose made the comments Monday at a press conference in Ottawa marking the return of Parliament. The Tory leader and longtime Alberta MP was asked about Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre's public opposition to the proposed Energy East pipeline.

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Ambrose said Albertans and Saskatchewanians are telling Coderre and other Quebecers they need support from the rest of the country in light of plummeting oil prices.

Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose speaks at a press conference marking the return of Parliament. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

"For Mr. Coderre to come out and insult Albertans and oppose a pipeline that hasn't even been built yet is unfortunate," she said.

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"This isn't in the spirit of Confederation. It's not in the spirit of national unity. It's not in the spirit of Canadians who always reach out when people are having a tough time."

Ambrose invited the Montreal mayor to visit the Western province to learn more about technology used to ensure pipeline safety, saying it's something every Canadian wants.

She also urged Coderre, a former Liberal MP, to examine this issue from a "science-based" perspective and suggested local politics was purely behind his stance.

"This isn't in the spirit of Confederation. It's not in the spirit of national unity."

"I hope our country is bigger and better than that that," she said. "That politicians would never seek to deny another Canadian their livelihood."

The Tory leader expressed concerns that people in other parts of Canada dont grasp "how dire the situation is in Western Canada." Ambrose said that Westerners are already making comparisons to the National Energy Program of the 1980s, when strict measures were put in place that "deflated" the economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.

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People feel they have no hope, she said, and those who "have always felt generously toward other parts of the country" now worry that they are not getting that in return.

Trudeau needs to get involved: Ambrose

In question period Monday, Ambrose sparked big applause from her caucus when she recommended the prime minister "stop using his cellphone for selfies" with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and instead use it to call Coderre. It was reported shortly after question period that Trudeau has set up a meeting with the mayor.

On Global News last weekend, the Tory leader said Coderre's remarks were "very frustrating" for Albertans who have lost jobs in the oil sector.

"This is about a part of the country that's suffering and another part that could help," she said.

Ambrose called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call his "good friends" Coderre and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to convince them to get onside with the project "that is really about nation-building."

She shared a clip of her comments on Facebook:

This is about a part of the country that is suffering and another part that could help. Our country needs projects that... Posted by Hon. Rona Ambrose on Sunday, January 24, 2016

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Last week, Coderre and more than 80 other Quebec mayors announced their opposition to Energy East, citing environmental risks. The announcement irked several Western politicians, including Wildrose Party Leader Brian Jean who called Coderre hypocrticial for opposing the pipeline while dumping raw sewage into his waterways.

"You can't dump raw sewage, accept foreign tankers, benefit from equalization and then reject our pipelines," Jean tweeted. Coderre fired back by accusing Jean and his Wildrose caucus of thinking the "Flintstones is a documentary."

Candice Bergen, the federal Tory natural resources critic, called on Trudeau last Friday to make clear where he stands on Energy East.

In a Friday statement, Bergen ridiculed Coderre's "emotional response" to the project.

She also noted the prime minister reportedly scolded DiCaprio at the World Economic Forum for bashing the oil sector.

"It is not sufficient for the Prime Minister to support and defend Canadian oil only while socializing with American actors like Leonardo DiCaprio in a posh hotel in Davos," she said in the release.

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Klaus Vedfelt via Getty Images Close-up of business people's hands in the office.

In this day and age, it's rare not to be quick with your fingers, but one study is urging all of us to slow down.

According to a recent report by researchers at the University of Waterloo, the quality of one's writing is likely to improve if they avoid typing quickly.

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Typing can be too fluent or too fast, and can actually impair the writing process, Srdan Medimorec, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts at Waterloo said in a statement. It seems that what we write is a product of the interactions between our thoughts and the tools we use to express them.

The study, which was published in the British Journal of Psychology, asked some participants to type essays with both hands and others to type with one. According to Medimorec's team, participants who used one hand took more time to come up with words and even used a larger vocabulary. People who typed fast, the study notes, probably went with the first word that came to mind.

When it comes to writing, other studies have suggested writing with a pen (yes, this is still a thing), is still better than typing away at a keyboard. One professor of developmental psychology from the University of Geneva told the Guardian in 2014 handwriting was a "complex task," which requires humans to use several skills.

Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: you need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter," he explained to the site.

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Typing on a keyboard, he adds, does not have the same effect.

Waterloo researchers, meanwhile, note they believe writing quickly can have the same detrimental effect as typing quickly, but more research needs to be conducted.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS In this photo taken July 31, 2015, an orca whale breaches in view of Mount Baker, some 60 miles distant, in the Salish Sea in the San Juan Islands, Wash. The Southern Resident killer whales living in the area have lost about 20 percent of their population since the 1990s, likely because of dwindling food sources and contamination. This particular group of whales, now numbering at 81, is endangered. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

This article was co-authored by Living Oceans Society executive director Karen Wristen, Raincoast Conservation Foundation senior scientist Dr. Paul Paquet and Raincoast executive director Chris Genovali.

Straddling British Columbia and Washington state, the Salish Sea is home to a diverse assemblage of species and habitats. Thousands of streams and rivers drain approximately 7,500 kilometers of coastline into more than 16,000 square kilometers of marine waters. These waters support over a dozen commonly seen marine mammals, 170 bird species, 200 fish species and thousands of species of invertebrates. Weaving through an archipelago containing hundreds of islands, the mixing of large freshwater rivers with marine waters in basins, bays and straits has created an ocean rich with life that is surrounded by outstanding natural beauty.

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The Salish Sea is also seen as a desirable place by fossil fuel exporters to ship non-renewable, and typically dangerous, hydrocarbons to foreign markets. One of these proposals is Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion, which would effectively triple the existing pipeline output from current levels to 890,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day. The consequent escalation in shipping traffic exiting Vancouver's Burrard Inlet would result in more than 400 tankers laden with tar sands oil traveling the Salish Sea every year -- a 500 per cent increase from 2010.

As described in the recently released Raincoast Conservation Foundation report, "Our Threatened Coast: Nature and Benefits in the Salish Sea," the implications of the Kinder Morgan plan are enormous for the Georgia Basin-Puget Sound ecosystem. For example, the proposed tanker route overlays much of the critical habitat of the Salish Sea's endangered southern resident killer whales. Already under pressure from a suite of threats, for these whales to survive it is imperative that risks from shipping and oil spills in the Salish Sea are reduced, not increased.

The Canadian National Energy Board's (NEB) ongoing assessment of the Trans Mountain project has again demonstrated why the tight timelines imposed by the former Conservative federal government's restrictive amendments work to defeat the kind of rigorous scientific assessment that the public is led to expect and undeniably deserves.

In a ruling December 17, 2015, the NEB refused to admit into evidence a formative review by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences commissioned by Congress to assess the potential environmental consequences of spills of tar sands oil, i.e. diluted bitumen (dilbit). In doing so, the NEB claimed that the proponent (Kinder Morgan) would be unduly prejudiced by admitting the evidence late in the hearing process and refused to extend its timelines to incorporate this new and highly relevant information. Notably, however, failure to evaluate existing evidence can result in unnecessary harm. The NEB ruling does not address how denying admission of this new evidence might compromise its own assessment and recommendations.

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The National Academy paper, published December 8, 2015, addresses "whether the transport of diluted bitumen in pipelines has potential environmental consequences that are sufficiently different from those of commonly transported crude oils to warrant changes in regulations governing spill response planning, preparedness, and cleanup." The answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Dilbit is inclined to submerge quite soon after a spill on water and can sink to the bottom even if the oil is less dense than water. Tracking, confining and cleaning up dilbit is an unresolved problem that current technology does not address effectively. Moreover, regulatory processes have failed to come to grips with these concerns.

By contrast, Trans Mountain's application asserts that "Dilbits...[and other Group 3 hydrocarbons] have been transported throughout the world and the general behaviour of these oils are quite comparable with respect to fate and weathering, and spill countermeasures (Vol. 7, p 7-50)." Describing the results of its laboratory analysis, the company claimed that dilbit proved "no different than what might be expected of other conventional heavy crudes when exposed to similar conditions" (Vol. 7, p. 7-56). Importantly, these assertions and claims are largely contradicted by the findings of the far more authoritative National Academy report.

The National Academy report makes seven detailed recommendations to U.S. regulators for changes to spill preparedness and response planning, to address specifically "capabilities for detection, containment, and recovery of submerged and sunken oil". (p.6) The report goes on to observe: "Although many differences between diluted bitumen and commonly transported crudes are well established, there remain areas of uncertainty that hamper effective spill response planning and response to spills. These uncertainties span a range of issues, including diluted bitumen's behaviour in the environment under different conditions, its detection when submerged or sunken, and the best response strategies for mitigating the impacts of submerged and sunken oil."

The National Academy's paper is the most comprehensive and rigorous expert review on these matters that has ever been undertaken, and directly speaks to the key issues that the NEB is mandated to address. The Committee that prepared the paper included Canadian and U.S. experts in a broad range of sciences, as well as in pipeline operations and spill response. Its conclusions and recommendations are at odds with the information presented by Trans Mountain. Specifically, the report emphasizes that there is currently no reliable way to clean up a spill of diluted bitumen, no certainty about the harm that a spill will do or how to mitigate that harm.

The NEB's decision to omit this critically relevant information from consideration exemplifies the flawed review process, as does their basis for refusal: choosing expediency over the rights, needs, and safety of the public. Assessing projects of the magnitude of Trans Mountain, particularly ones that involve novel substances about which little is known, demands time and care.

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The timelines imposed on the NEB review have obstructed a thorough, careful examination of the issues. Accordingly, this most recent ruling has resulted in highly relevant evidence being excluded. The NEB remarked that in its role as a regulator of the expanded pipeline, it could consider the National Academy's work later on. By that time, however, Kinder Morgan might already be pumping a supertanker-load of dilbit every day, with no reliable plan or equipment in place that can deal effectively with a spill.

A version of this article previously ran in the Vancouver Sun.

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Recognize that all behaviour has meaning.

Many of the behaviours we see in dementia arise because a person's needs are left unmet. When you observe the behaviour, you need to figure out what it is telling you. Here are some examples:

Grabbing: If a person with dementia constantly reaches out and grabs people who come close it may be an indication that he/she needs something or somebody. The person may need to go to the toilet, have a question that needs to be answered, may be bored or may be lonely and seeking human connection.

Trying to Leave: Boredom and loneliness are two key reasons for "exit seeking" behaviour. When people with dementia have something meaningful to do, these behaviours often disappear. If they want to leave at the same time every day, look for things to do before the behaviour begins.

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Toileting Behaviours: Many habits from the past are spared in dementia. For example, men who urinate on walls tend to be those who worked on a farm or in other outdoor jobs; people who toilet in a garbage can often had an outhouse and used a chamber pot indoors; and people who put toilet tissue on the floor often had a septic and placed toilet tissue in a garbage can. Overly learned behaviours often survive in dementia and this explains why the behavior is occurring. Memory supports can help those who have the ability to practice and learn what they should be doing in the present.

Memory supports can help those who experience memory loss.

Memory supports are well suited for those who are clearly struggling to remember important information and have enough remaining ability to respond to the use of memory aids that are familiar, visible and placed where they can be accessed and clearly seen.

People with dementia often struggle with such things as finding locations, finding things (in drawers and cupboards), doing things in the right order (such as going to the toilet or putting clothes on in the right order), remembering facts (including faces and names) and remembering details related to times, dates and locations of daily, future or past activities. This is where memory cues can help, in the form of words and/or images, depending on the past and present abilities of the person living with dementia. The best way to figure out whether a person is able to use memory supports is to test them out, one at a time. With each memory cue you will need to point to the cue and tell the person that this is what he/she needs to look for when he/she wants to find the location/item or what he/she needs to do when he/she wants to complete a task. While some will learn the details almost immediately, some do not have the ability to remember information for more than 10 seconds, and would thus not benefit from memory cues.

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Examples of Memory Cues in Action:

Finding a Location: Directional arrows that point to the location of the room, such as the bedroom, bathroom or dining room, along with a sign on the door (a word, image or both), can help with finding the destination, as long as you teach, and rehearse, how to use the memory cue.

Repetitive Questioning: When memory is impaired answers to questions are often forgotten almost as quickly as you provide them. The best way to help a person with dementia remember answers is to write it down (if they can still read). You will need to create a memory cue that provides the answer to the question and teach your loved one to look at it when he/she wants the answer. Rehearse the action of looking at the paper when he/she wants the answer to a question. Consider creating a daily agenda and teaching the person to look at it when he/she wants to know all the important details about each day.

Toileting Challenges: While an arrow that points to the bathroom helps with finding the toilet, this isn't enough for those who don't know what to do when they get there. Memory cues that list each step in the toileting sequence, in words and/or images, may be needed. You will need to practice these steps, one step at a time.

Develop your own cues, according to the needs and abilities of your loved one, or you can consider using the ones created, and tested, by DementiAbility. (See: Memory Aids for Dementia available at www.dementiability.com).

People with dementia can live with meaning and purpose, if their world is adapted according to their interests, skills and abilities.

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While there is no cure for dementia, there are still many things we can do to help maintain the abilities of people living with dementia.

Caregivers have the best intentions in mind when they take over routine tasks that were previously part of the daily life of the person living with dementia. The important message that needs to be emphasized is that there is still so much that the person with dementia CAN do, if each task is adapted according to the abilities that remain. Help to enhance self-esteem by adapting tasks and leisure activities according to the abilities that remain.

Make a list of all the things your loved one used to enjoy doing. Think about the chores at home and the leisure activities he/she enjoyed. Then consider how these things can be adapted to your loved one's current level of ability.

DementiAbility focuses on exposing abilities, with the aim of helping people with dementia live and work at their highest potential. The goal is to find out what people with dementia can do successfully with the objective of maintaining function and adding meaning, purpose and joy to each and every day.

Eager to learn more? Check out the book entitled, 'Helping Me, Helping You' by Gail Elliot. To learn more visit: http://www.dementiability.com/Books/other/book-memory-helping-me-helping-you

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TransCanada

Welcome to the 21st Century

On January 21, Mayor Denis Coderre, speaking in the name of the 82 municipalities of Montreal 's Urban Community said "NO" to TransCanada's Energy East pipeline. True, he has no legal authority to block the pipeline. However, his moral leadership expressed the social consensus of its 3.9 millions citizens. And the other half of the population of Quebec also agrees with his analysis that Energy East offers few economic advantages, but unacceptable environmental threats. This project failed to meet the criteria of a thorough analysis.

In Western Canada, there is great indignation about this political stance. Premier Brad Wall says that Mr. Coderre can't say anything about the environment because he dumped raw sewage in the St. Lawrence last fall. True, I was outraged by this "flushgate." But it was a temporary action lasting a few days to repair a tunnel. Before any westerner starts to do some "holier than thou" finger pointing, I would remind them that, Victoria, the beautiful capital of British Columbia is dumping all its raw sewage in the Juan de Fuca strait and has no immediate plan to remedy the situation. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander!

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There is also a nationalistic argument about buying Canadian petroleum instead of foreign oil. Let's look at the facts: Eastern Canada's three refineries (Suncor in Montreal, Valero in Quebec City and Irving in St John, N.B.) have a total capacity of 672 000 barrels/day. In order to supply these refineries, one has to remember that Enbridge's line 9B has a capacity of 250 000 b/day. And the offshore production of the Maritime provinces produces at least 100 000 b/day of Canadian petroleum. Neither should we leave the 300 000b/day of U.S. light crude out of the equation! Furthermore, those three refineries are not equipped to refine tar sands. They don't appear to have clear plans to invest in the expensive equipment necessary to process dilbit.

In other words, the East can't use your tar sands. So don't wrap yourself in the Canadian flag! Energy East has one purpose: to export your crude on world markets. But there is opposition everywhere to that obsolete policy. British Columbia and the First Nations don't want Northern Gateway, nor Kinder Morgan. The President of the United States blocked Keystone XL. Your third choice, is an expensive route to the Atlantic. Quebecers are just as smart as British Columbians, indigenous people or Americans in rejecting your self interest as well as your self-righteous anger! Again, what is good for the goose should...

Mr. Coderre also pointed out that this decision must be consistent with the Conference of Paris. The last report of IPCC has clearly stated that climate change is a major threat to mankind; to prevent a catastrophe, 80 per cent of fossil fuels must remain in the ground. The total footprint (strip mining, production, transport, refining and combustion) of 1 100 000 b/day of tar sands will boost Canadian production of GHG (green house gases) through the roof. To come anywhere near our international commitment, Canada has to export its GHG (and its jobs) to foreign buyers by selling unrefined bitumen.

Selling unprocessed raw natural resources was OK for a colony at the time of Confederation; but it was a no-no for industrialized nations such as Britain, the U.S., France or Germany. These 19th century nations used the raw materials of other countries -- and their colonies -- to enhance their manufacturing capability and their wealth. Unfortunately, for the past ten years, Canada has pinned all its industrial strategy on selling unrefined petroleum. A loonie on the par with the U.S. currency has crippled the manufacturing capability of central Canada. Now, that petroleum skydived to $ 30/b, this antiquated policy has sent the Canadian dollar below the 70 cents benchmark. An undiversified economy could possibly push us into an economic depression.

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Yet, Energy East wants to force the Canadian economy in this 19th century straight-jacket for the next 40 years. As a member of the G8, we need an economy based on know-how, renewable energies, manufacturing as well as refining our natural resources. Mr. Coderre is right in rejecting TransCanada's antiquated project. Welcome to the 21st century!

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ASSOCIATED PRESS President Barack Obama, right, and Canadaas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, speak to reporters following their bilateral meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Philippines, Thursday, Nov. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

This week the country's 14 health ministers have been gathering in Vancouver for a pan-Canadian summit to begin negotiating a new health accord. The previous accord saw $41 billion transferred to the provinces over the last decade. This next one may be even bigger.

The challenge facing our health ministers is to set clear priorities for how federal health dollars should be used. If we learned anything from the previous health accord, it is that wide-ranging agreements get diluted and that diluted agreements do not achieve their intended results -- even when they boost provincial coffers.

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The rationale for a health accord lies in the lackluster performance of our health systems when compared to other industrialized countries and the catalytic role that federal government leadership can play. Canadians currently pay more, receive less, wait longer and live shorter than citizens of most other industrialized countries. We only look good in international rankings when compared to the United States.

We can do better, and this health accord is our best opportunity for doing so. But health ministers will only succeed if they commit to spending smarter and negotiating wiser.

To start, spending smarter means channeling any new health dollars strategically towards those services that will achieve the greatest health impact. We do not need to invest in more of the same. This means ending what amounts to unlimited budgets for costly curative health care at the expense of other health-promoting initiatives like home care, public health, rehabilitation and social services.

In particular, the vast majority of government health dollars currently go towards hospitals and physicians, both always shamelessly crying poverty no matter how comparatively well-funded they may be. This leaves fewer dollars for new ways of delivering care and for population health strategies that keep us well in the first place.

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The best principle for channeling new health dollars is value-for-money. This means gathering all available evidence on the benefits and costs of each service and prioritizing accordingly. Measuring cost-effectiveness can be difficult. We do not always have complete information and it takes expertise to pool results from different studies. This can be overcome by centralizing these assessments nationally and linking federal funding recommendations to which provinces can respond.

"Canadians overwhelmingly support health reform, provinces have an appetite for change, federal politicians are willing leaders and the risk of silly partisan disagreements is low. "

More difficult are the politics of implementing value-for-money policies. No politician will win votes by funding even the most cost-effective services like public health if the people who benefit don't know it. They are also not helped by the Canada Health Act , which petrified priority for hospital and physician services instead of creating an automatic process for updating priorities as needs change, values evolve, evidence develops and cost-effectiveness becomes clear. As a result, the hospital and physician winners of today's underperforming system have also understandably created the most powerful lobbies.

All health ministers and Canadians would benefit from institutionalizing in the health accord a binding commitment to spending smarter. Status-quo champions would find their influence diminished when health ministers can argue that unpopular value-for-money decisions are about spending tax dollars wisely.

To get there, health ministers also need to negotiate wiser. Next week's meeting need only have three results. First, a commitment to spending new federal health dollars on the most cost-effective initiatives. Second, a mandate for officials to begin work on a mechanism for identifying, constantly updating and adapting those initiatives for the unique context faced by each government. And third, a detailed plan for delivering a final health accord, including a target date for a First Ministers conference.

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In this way, the new health accord will not only commit governments to principles and processes worthy of celebration, but also to a plan for kick-starting a more sophisticated partnership that reflects our federation in which all 14 governments share constitutional jurisdiction over health.

The political conditions are right for getting such an ambitious agreement off the ground and setting this new collaborative tone. Canadians overwhelmingly support health reform, provinces have an appetite for change, federal politicians are willing leaders and the risk of silly partisan disagreements is low. There is also growing understanding that the status quo is unacceptable and that we can do better.

Negotiating this new health accord could end up being the most significant achievement of the recently elected federal government. It could be Trudeau's Obamacare. But all governments will collectively be judged for the accord's success or failure.

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Radford Family

By Megan Radford, World Vision Canada, with files from Kathryn Reid

When I was a kid, my family had a long-standing joke that we never lived in a house more that two years. I've now lost track of the number of houses and apartments I've called home. The last time I counted it was somewhere around 25, but that was several moves ago.

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Megan (left) and her sister with their dolls, while living in Senegal. Photo from the Radford family.

You would think that by now I'd be an expert at moving. Saying goodbye should be as easy as packing my suitcase. But it isn't.

The pain of 'goodbye'

When I was 12 years old, I had to leave my home. My family had been living in Senegal, West Africa, for five years. I believed that was where we would stay, and the day my parents sat my sister and I down and told us otherwise is seared into my memory.

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Megan (second from right) with her family at the Western-most point in Africa, in Senegal. Photo from the Radford family.

It was the summer, so there was little time to process or say goodbye. Many of my friends had already left on vacation.

We spent the weeks until our journey back to Canada deciding what to bring in our few suitcases, what to ship home later, and what to leave behind for good. As a child, losing those treasured playthings was heartbreaking. But saying goodbye to my best friend was worse.

Jess and I spent our last day together playing Barbies and plotting how I would hide in her closet when my dad came to pick me up. For a minute I think we almost believed it would work, until I heard my dad's voice downstairs. My stomach felt like a rock as I realized that there would be no hiding from this. I said goodbye to Jess, and to Senegal, forever that day.

Identifying with Syrian children

When I think about all the children who have been uprooted by the conflict in Syria, I get that same rock in my stomach. I know the uncertainty and pain of saying goodbye, not knowing when or if you will ever see your home and friends again.

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But I don't know what it feels like to flee with just the clothes on your back and a small bag of essentials. I don't know what it feels like to not know whether your closest friends and family are alive or dead. I don't know what it feels like to not have a safe place to sleep after a grueling journey.

As hard as moving is, it is nothing compared to the trauma and constant upheaval of living as a refugee.

When I left Senegal, there were a few things that were certain:

1.We would have a place to live when we arrived in Canada.

2.I would be going to a new school.

3.My family would be together.

Megan (second from right) with her siblings at the Eastern-most point in Canada, Newfoundland. Photo from the Radford family.

Without those three things to hold on to, I'm not sure how I would have gotten through that painful first year in Canada. Sabrina (nine) and her brother Ahmed (seven) don't have those certainties.

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Sabrina and her family

As of September, Sabrina and her family were living in a tent on the border with Hungary. The tent is a temporary solution, but there isn't a long-term one. There is no furnished house waiting for her family when their journey eventually ends.

Sabrina (right) and Ahmed (left) and the tent they've been calling home for now. World Vision photo.

Sabrina hasn't been to a new school since her family left Syria over two years ago. Ahmed has never been inside a classroom. Their few toys are named for the countries they've passed through. Serbia is the latest, a yellow plastic bus.

Travelling with Sabrina's family is 16-year-old Ahmed, who lost his father in the war. His family has been torn apart; he has had to make new connections to survive.

The only certainty for these children is change. World Vision has been able to help with emergency assistance, remedial classes, and child-friendly spaces that provide psycho-social support for the difficult circumstances refugees endure.

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Sabrina's doll, one of the few possessions she's carried with her on the journey, reminds me of my own as a child. World Vision photo

You can help bring stability

But there is so much more to be done. The conflict in Syria has raged for five years, leaving children like Sabrina without a home and without an education. Until there is peace, the future will remain uncertain for Syria's children.

Join the conversation, and ask Canada to step up in the peace process. Write or Tweet to your MP using the hashtag #SyriaCrisis. Enough is enough. It's time to speak up for children like Sabrina.

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The Government has rejected accusations that it has not done enough to tackle the migration crisis, with International Development Secretary Justine Greening saying on Sunday that no European country had "done more" to help Syrian refugees.

Greening's comments come as Prime Minister David Cameron told the Commons that the Government is looking to admit 3,000 unaccompanied children into the country, following mounting pressure from UK charities to help young people fleeing war-torn states.

Greening told Sky News's Murnaghan programme: "We've steadily evolved our approach as this crisis has evolved, we've been right at the forefront frankly of helping children who've been affected by this crisis and will continue to look at how we can do that over the coming days and weeks."

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The Government rejected accusations it had not done enough to tackle the migration crisis

Ministers have faced calls led by the charity Save the Children for 3,000 refugee children living alone in Europe to be resettled in the UK. The campaign has also been backed by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron.

Addressing concerns that the British government was not doing enough to tackle the wider migration crisis, Greening said: "No country in Europe has done more to help Syrian refugees.

"The UK has been there since day one.

"Worldwide we're the second biggest bilateral donor helping refugees on the ground and our focus has very much been on meeting refugees' first choice....The refugees that I talk to want to stay close to home, they want to stay in the region that they are familiar with."

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Justine Greening

Greening said coming to Europe was a "last resort, not a first resort" for many refugees.

She added: "We've said that over the course of this Parliament we will resettle 20,000 refugees.

"We're going to do that in a safe, and measured and a managed way, working with UN agencies taking them directly from the region, it means we can focus on the most vulnerable people including children who otherwise would have no chance to make the kind of journey that we've seen other refugees make.

"And of course we've been helping on the ground in Europe too, so the UK has been working with the UNHCR on registering migrants as they arrive."

She said: "So we are playing our role, we are looking at whether we can do more in relation to...unaccompanied children because children have always been from day one at the heart of our response in the region."

Earlier this month a committee of MPs, the International Development Committee said Britain should welcome thousands of lone children from Europe on top of the Syrian refugee resettlement programme.

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Asked if there could be a Government announcement, Farron told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics: "I very strongly hope so."

He added: "I hope he (Cameron) is moving in that direction, and it looks like there may be some signs that he is. I think it the right thing to do on a humanitarian level."

Farron went on: "I do say that it's the least it can do, the least the Government can do."

He added: "There's a real sense that the UK is not engaging with the refugee crisis in Europe at all. I'm not saying we should open our borders completely, but I think that it is very, very strange that at a time that David Cameron is trying to make a case for Britain in Europe, he's not not making much of a case for Britain with the rest of Europe."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday called for Cameron to offer children not just a refuge in the UK but proper homes and education, following a visit to refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk.

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He said: "We must reach out the hand of humanity to the victims of war and brutal repression.

"Along with other EU states, Britain needs to accept its share of refugees from the conflicts on Europes borders, including the horrific civil war in Syria.

"We have to do more. As a matter of urgency, David Cameron should act to give refuge to unaccompanied refugee children now in Europe  as we did with Jewish Kindertransport children escaping from Nazi tyranny in the 1930s.

"And the government must provide the resources needed for those areas accepting refugees  including in housing and education  rather than dumping them in some of Britains poorest communities."

Also on the Huffington Post UK:
Two of Londons most high-profile barristers were pitched into direct conflict today, as Amal Clooneys client expressed his contempt for Cherie Blair QCs decision-making, and then Amal's very senior colleague went even further, questioning the motivation of the former prime minister's wife.

READ MORE:

In one corner, Mohamed Nasheed, Amal Clooneys client and the deposed former president of the Maldives  ousted in a coup in 2012, and currently serving a 13-year sentence for arresting a judge, a conviction Amnesty International has deemed "politically motivated". His country's leaders have allowed him to travel to the UK for back surgery, but he is due to return to his home nation within 30 days, to continue serving his sentence in solitary confinement.

In the other corner, the Maldives government, responsible for having Mr Nasheed arrested, charged and convicted of "terrorism", and then imprisoning him in solitary confinement for the last ten months. It is this regime that Cherie Blair and her law firm Omnia have been advising, and Mr Nasheed pulled no punches when pressed on the subject at a press conference in Mrs Clooneys legal chambers on Monday.

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Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney with her client former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed

Its very sad that a Labour former prime ministers wife has decided to work against the people of the Maldives, said Mr Nasheed.

I have been fortunate to have worked with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Ed Miliband when he was the Environment Secretary.

I would assume that Mrs Blair is now clearly aware of what is happening in the Maldives, and then she would reconsider her views on the best way forward for the people of the Maldives.

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I am not with the view that Mrs Blair would be against human rights issues, or protecting human rights, or furthering human rights in the Maldives. I am sure she will not work any further for the regime.

Its very sad that Mrs Blair got the wrong end of the stick, read the story wrong, and dropped this catch. I feel very, very sad that she read the story wrong. Toby Cadman or others, its not so important, but for a former British prime ministers wife to read the story wrong, is very wrong.

Mohamed Nasheed with his legal team in London, Jared Genser, Amal Clooney and Ben Emmerson QC

One of Mr Nasheeds legal counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, who worked alongside Cherie Blair before she founded Omnia Strategy in 2011, went further in his contempt for the decisions made by his former colleague.

Ordinarily, in cases inside this country, barristers are bound by the rule that they must take any case, regardless of their views of the merits of the case, and regardless of whether they would rather be acting for the other side, he explained. Its like the cab-rank rule, like a cabbie who must take the first person waiting.

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That rule doesnt apply in international cases. The way that a lawyer in this country can say, I had no choice or no right to make a choice, that doesnt apply in international proceedings.

It follows that those who make a choice must take responsibility for the choice that they make. Im not going to speculate on motivations here, although no doubt many would be able to figure that out.

But its not just Cherie Booth, its her company, its called Omnia, and she works alongside a barrister called Toby Cadman. All I can say to you at this point is that as a lawyer, my view is that the conduct throughout in public of those involved at the very front end of this process has been deeply disappointing.

Cherie Blair's law firm responded quickly to these comments, telling Huffington Post UK they were "wholly inappropriate and without ground".

A spokesperson said of the firm's work in the Maldives: "Our objective has always been to assist the Government in improving transparency and accountability. It is important to note that the Government came to power in 2013 through a democratic process accepted by all political parties and the international community. As a Commonwealth-backed Commission of National Inquiry (CoNi Report, 30 August 2012) confirmed, the resignation of former President Nasheed was voluntary and of his own free will. It was not caused by any illegal coercion or intimidation".

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"As a law firm, Omnia Strategy advises Governments on issues relating to matters of International Law and treaty obligations. In the case of Maldives, the countrys institutions are not fully formed - multi-party democracy has only been in place for a decade. The work Omnia Strategy has undertaken is intended to bring tangible improvements to a young nation.

"Any comments suggesting the contrary are wholly inappropriate and without ground.

"Omnia Strategy is not currently instructed by the Government of Maldives and has no further comment."

Mohamed Nasheed is the former President of the Maldives, the first democratically elected leader of his nation. He was voted into office in 2008, and seen as a key figurehead in his nation's battle against climate change, but deposed in February 2012 in controversial circumstances, explained by him as "resignation at gunpoint".

When asked if he will return to his native country and probable continuing confinement, Mr Nasheed was philosophical, suggesting he would do what was best for his continuing mission of democracy for his home country.

"The regime would have a tendency to call me chicken (if I stayed away)," he said, impressively cheery for a man with such an uncertain future.

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"It is very important that we have a democratic Maldives and a stable country, that also brings stability to the Indian Ocean. Therefore it is important that I do whatever I can to see that we go back to democratic principles.

"Would that be served best if I am inside or would that best be served if I am say, for instance, in Sri Lanka, or in India.

"Its a tough question. The Clash has answered it more eloquently, 'Should I stay or should I go?'"

Today's criticisms aren't the first insults traded in what is becoming an increasingly bitter legal battle. Last summer, Mrs Blair deemed Amal Clooney's request for sanctions against the Maldives to be "inappropriate and unjustified." Mrs Clooney and her colleagues were quick to come back, saying, "Such suggestions are entirely misplaced."
A Britain First video of the political group staging a 'Christian patrol' through Luton's Bury Park armed with wooden crosses has been viewed over 15 million times on their Facebook page - but even local church leaders have distanced themselves from the far-right group.

About 20 members of the party, led by Paul Golding and his deputy Jayda Fransen, recorded themselves walking through what they labelled an "Islamist hotspot" on Saturday, where they handed out newspapers and confronted local Muslims in what charity Tell Mama said was an "intimidating" fashion aimed at "inflaming" tensions.

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During the march Britain First wrote that they had faced "ferocious hostility from local Muslims", and said their video was a "shocking look into the Islamisation of our beloved country". Its activists, the party said, were pelted with eggs and verbally abused by Muslims who claimed to have "taken over" Luton.

Britain First leader Paul Golding leads the 'Christian Patrol' through Bury Park in Luton

In the nine-minute clip - which has also gained over 350,000 views on YouTube - Fransen gets into a heated argument with a local Muslim, where she tells him Britain is "our country, not your country, it's a Christian country".

When the man replies that she is jealous because we are "taking over", Jansen adds: "You think you can take over a town and say 'it's your country, you're taking over'... not for long, see this cross, it will prevail." Later she confronts a Muslim woman about her hijab, telling her that she's "been hidden because your men can't control their urges", something that sparks an extended confrontation that clearly upsets the woman.

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As Britain First members make their way through the town an increasing crowd of Muslim men surround them, as police attempt to keep the groups separated. At first local men simply object to the march, but they become increasingly agitated as party members continue to taunt them with the line "this is our country, not yours". At several points local men charge Britain First activists, threaten to "fucking hit you, motherfucker" and call Fransen a "slag". One local man also blindsides a Britain First member in an attempt to push him to the ground.

Bury Park is a 'vibrant and welcoming kind of area, that's the message we want to get across'

Tell Mama said Britain First's confrontations with locals are being used by the party to "create the notion of them and us'. It said "predictably" young men took "the bait" in Luton, which led to Britain First activists "agitating and further adding to the growing tensions".

The group, which opposes anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia, on Monday compared British First's march to those undertaken by the 'Muslim Patrol' - a group of Islamic vigilantes - who harassed and attempted to shame members of the public in London's Whitechapel and Tower Hamlets in January 2013, and were accused of homophobic attacks. Several members of the group were later arrested.

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Britain First members have been accused of "inflaming tensions"; a Luton man is pictured above confronting the activists

Tell Mama said after the 'Muslim Patrol' was prosecuted it "made it clear that any faith-based patrol or vigilante group was contrary to the rules and criminal and civil laws of this country" and that they should not be allowed to take place.

"We stated that they could possibly spark off serious unrest in areas and that action needed to be taken to send a clear message that the State would not tolerate any behaviour which intimidated citizens walking our streets.

"Sadly, it is now 2016 and these inflammatory actions continue with Britain First trying to paint themselves as defenders of Christian values, something that they are far from. They continue to walk into areas, stir up unrest and walk away leaving local communities to pick up the pieces.

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"It is also interesting to note in the video of their agitation, that their actions lead to a young female policewoman finding herself in the middle of groups of testosterone laden young men looking to fight. Is this really the patriotism that our country needs  the answer is a resounding no."

On Sunday local Christians handed out roses around Luton, keen to distance themselves from Britain First's march.

Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen confronts a local women about her hijab

In one video, posted by the group on YouTube, a local priest says: "We want to work for a cohesive society, where people get on, where it is mixed, and where everyone feels they can come and live... so this isn't a 'no-go zone'... as you sometimes hear it being said. It's absolutely not a no-go area. It's a vibrant and welcoming kind of area and that is the message."

In another clip the priest, along with a local Christian woman, are seen speaking with the Muslim woman that Fransen confronted. She is told that Britain First do not "represent Christianity". The Christians tell the woman that they don't want the "horrible atmosphere" the party created on Saturday, and want to "live together with our neighbours, whatever faith".

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Britain First has subsequently questioned their loyalty, labelling the Christian leaders "treacherous".

Treacherous "Christian" leaders in Luton cosy up to Muslims to condemn Britain First - https://t.co/T9rrleB3v9pic.twitter.com/qhEwqmy1A5  Britain First (@BritainFirst) January 25, 2016

On their website the party wrote: "So-called 'Christian leaders' in Luton have queued up to condemn Britain First after our Christian Patrol in the Bury Park area.

"These 'Christians' are gormless, trendy, politically correct, tree-hugging, sandal wearing hippies who only care about 'multiculturalism', appeasing Islam and publicising themselves."

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'Real Christians of Luton' hand out roses and speak to Bury Park residents the day after the British First march

Tell Mama said it was "high time" action was taken against Britain First and the way that it "seeks to create and foment disturbances in communities" as it was "concerned that their actions may lead to serious unrest or physical assaults and this is the last thing we need for our country and our communities".

At present there are two petitions against Britain First. One to ban them from Facebook and Twitter has 972 signatures, and another to ban them as a political party has over 10,000.

Bedfordshire police told the Huffington Post UK that officers were "immediately dispatched" after learning that Britain First were staging a march.

A spokeswoman said no arrests were made but an investigation had been launched to "determine whether any offences were committed during the course of Saturday's events". Anyone with information is asked to contact Bedfordshire police.

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Ofcom have reached a decision over controversial comments made by Celebrity Big Brother housemate, Winston McKenzie.

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Winston, a former UKIP member and London mayoral candidate, faced a backlash from CBB fans before hed even set foot in the house, over comments he made about gay men.

In his opening VT, he said: I would cope with a homosexual in the house I would just stand with my back against a brick wall the whole time.

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Winston McKenzie

Although his comments sparked more than 400 complaints to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator has now ruled that they will not be launching an investigation.

They say in a statement: We are satisfied that Channel 5 broadcast clear and appropriate warnings about the potentially offensive content, and intervened in heated exchanges and situations at appropriate times.

We have also taken into account the audiences expectations of this well-established reality format, and that the series is aired after the watershed.

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Winston was eventually evicted three days after entering the CBB house, but not before he had further riled viewers and his fellow housemates with his comments and behaviour.

The rest of the housemates turned against him when they learned that he had previously compared the adoption of children by same-sex parents to child abuse, and refused to apologise for his remarks.

He was also given a telling off by producers for his behaviour towards the female housemates, after Nancy DellOlio complained she felt uncomfortable sharing a bedroom with him.

CBB viewers have since complained to Ofcom over a number of incidents in the house, most notably a massive row which erupted when Tiffany Pollard had mistakenly been led to believe that David Gest had died, following the sad death of David Bowie.

Winston McKenzie's Controversial Moments See gallery
Friends fans, be prepared to let out a squee of excitement - the cast of have come together ahead of next months TV special.

READ MORE:

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Ummmm NIGHT MADE. Can't breathe #friends meets #bbt @bigbangtheory_cbs I died and went to heaven A photo posted by @normancook on Jan 24, 2016 at 10:10pm PST

The Chandler Bing actor was notably absent from the reunion, which sees the stars of both shows honouring the work of director James Burrows in an NBC TV special.

He was unable to make the celebrations due to work commitments in the UK, although will appear on the show in a segment introducing the rest of the cast.

The fivesome were joined by Big Bang stars Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg and Kaley Cuoco in the photo, which was shared by Kaley on Instagram on Sunday (24 January) night.

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'Friends' aired for ten series between 1994 and 2004

While Matthew wasnt present for this occasion, he has given fans renewed hope that a bona fide reunion, after he admitted that he thinks the rest of the cast would be up for filming a new episode of the show.

Speaking on Chris Evans Radio 2 Breakfast Show on Friday (22 January), Matthew said: I don't know what the price would be, but I think the actors would actually be open to it, I do.

"I think we would be open to doing something, some kind of TV special. I don't know about a movie.

We have EVERYTHING crossed.

Must See TV: A Tribute to James Burrows is set is air in the US on 21 February.
A Treasury minister has sparked Labour ridicule by admitting he doesnt know what rate of tax Google is paying in the UK.

David Gauke also refused to repeat George Osbornes now-infamous claim that the 130m deal was a major success for the taxpayer.

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Labour and Tory MPs lined up on Monday to condemn the payment, which covers back taxes owed since 2005, as derisory because the firm made 3.6bn in UK sales in 2013 alone.

Standing in for the Chancellor during an emergency debate in the House of Commons, Mr Gauke faced a string of MPs who wanted to know whether the internet giant had received a sweetheart deal with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Labours Diana Johnson asked him why Google wasnt paying the 20% corporation tax like other firms.

The minister says this does not amount to a 3% tax rate for Google. For the sake of public confidence, can he just say what the actual tax rate is?

To loud Opposition jeers, Mr Gauke replied:  No.The position isbecause of taxpayer confidentiality, the point I was making was that to look at profits from sales in the United Kingdom is not a way in which one can calculate it.

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The [corporation] tax rate is currently 20%. That applies to everybody. But in terms of the effective tax rate, that depends on the particular circumstances of any business.

Mr Gauke also insisted that as a minister he was not aware of the details of the HMRC deal. "I cannot comment in large part because Im not privy to information [about Google's exact deal].

At the weekend, Mr Osborne came under fire after he tweeted that the deal with Google was a victory, and for his claim to the Guardian that it was a "major success".

#Google tax bill is a victory for the action we've taken.I introduced Diverted Profits Tax.We now expect to see other firms pay their share  George Osborne (@George_Osborne) January 23, 2016

But following the backlash, today even the Chancellor appeared to tone down his language, saying instead that it was merely good news.

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No.10 Downing Street refused to repeat the major success quote, despite being asked three times to do so.

The Prime Ministers official spokeswoman instead said: It's a step forward. We've always been clear that we want to see low taxes for business, but these taxes must be paid.

Boris Johnson waded into the row, saying it was absurd to blame Google for not paying taxes.

You might as well blame a shark for eating seals. It is the nature of the beast, he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.

We buy tens of billions of pounds worth of American hardware, software and services  and yet these companies pay quite derisory sums in tax to the UK Exchequer: derisory, that is, when you consider how much dosh they are earning from us all.

There is a widespread feeling that the loopholes and dodges should be axed, and that they should be paying more. To a large extent I agree.

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Bill Gates and George Osborne on a visit to Liverpool

Labours Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell had tried to drag Mr Osborne to the Commons to answer an Urgent Question on the tax announcement on Monday.

The Chancellor was in Liverpool on a visit with Bill Gates to unveil fresh cash to combat malaria, but sent his tax minister Mr Gauke in his place.

Mr McDonnell was scathing about Mr Osbornes absence, saying it was a display of disrespect to this House that the Chancellor confirms this dal with a tweet over the weekend, but refuses to come here today to make a statement.

The Shadow Chancellor pointed to Boris Johnsons quotes, as well as criticism of the deal by The Sun newspaper, to back his case.

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The Chancellor has managed to create an unlikely alliance between myself, The Sun newspaper, the Mayor of London, and, according to reports, even Number 10. All of us think this deal is not the major success he claimed at the weekend.

Tory backbencher Steve Baker added his criticism of the system too.

In the mad world of Corporation tax on international companies this sum of money is at once derisory, substantial, lawful, and completely unacceptable to the public..it is therefore time for a complete overhaul of the corporate tax system.

And Tory chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, called for "fundamental reform of the corporate tax base".

David Gauke, under fire

Mr Gauke hit back at Labour, saying that it was an insult to the tax authorities to criticise their years of hard work on the deal.

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"There is no sweetheart deal. HMRC does not undertake sweetheart deals, what it undertakes is a thorough inquiry and then when companies accept their liabilities that inquiry can be brought to a conclusion.

We are ensuring that HMRC is successful in bringing in revenue that is due under the law. Theres not lower or special rate for Google or anyother taxpayer in this country.

He also stressed that corporation tax was not based on profits on sales in a country but on assets and activity and warned there would be severe dangers to UK firms if such rules applied overseas.

British car firms, based here but with big sales in the US, would suffer for example if they were forced to pay tax in line with in-country sales there.

We have been more effective than ever in collecting tax from large numbers. HMRC [staff] numbers are going up this year, not down, he said.

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Mr Gauke did get some support from his own side from former journalist and now Tory MP Matt Warman, who spent two years on the story of how much tax Google had paid.
Thousands of Brits have been left in pain after being fitted with hip implants in incorrect or "mismatch" sizes, a report has claimed.

According to an investigation by The Daily Telegraph, the hip replacement firm DePuy has admitted to making "an error in the measuring techniques" when making metal-on-metal implants.

DePuy is one of the largest hip replacement firms in the world and the error is thought to have been made in their Yorkshire factory.

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Following the newspaper's report, leading health experts have warned that wrongly-fitted hip implants could cause patients to experience further health complications later down the line.

Orthopaedic surgeon, Professor Tim Briggs, told The Telegraph that when implants "mismatch in size" debris may break off the implant components and enter the bloodstream.

"If there is a difference in the size  it doesnt have to be very much at all  you will change the wear characteristics and you may well generate more metal ions," he added.

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Stephen Cannon, honorary consultant at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons, agreed that manufacturing issues could lead to further health problems.

"If [parts of the implants] dont match, whether it be metal against metal or metal on plastic, then the wear rate goes up," he told the paper.

According to the NHS, anyone who has a metal-on-metal hip implant should watch out for the following symptoms which may suggest something is wrong with the device:

- Pain in the groin, hip or leg

- Swelling at or near the hip joint

- A limp or problems walking

- Grinding or clunking from the joint

- Chest pain or shortness of breath

- Numbness or weakness

- Changes in vision or hearing

- Fatigue

- Feeling cold

- Weight gain

While these symptoms do not necessarily mean that a hip implant is failing, the NHS says they do need investigating.

According to the Telegraph report, artificial hips made by DePuy have been surgically implanted in hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including more than 350,000 patients in the UK. Of these more than 20,000 were implanted with metal-on-metal devices.

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The Huffington Post UK has contacted DePuy for further comment, but has yet to hear back at the time of publication.
Terrorists who attacked Paris in November appear in the latest so-called Islamic State propaganda video, which also shows images of London while threatening David Cameron and John Bercow.

Images of the Prime Minister and the Commons speaker appear in the 17-minute long clip posted by the terror group, the Press Association reports.

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It appears to feature images of Bilal Hadfi and Samy Amimour, who were both killed carrying out the shooting and bombing attacks that killed 130 in the French capital.

Amimour, also known as Abu Qital al-Faransi, was one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up at the Bataclan music hall.

Suicide bomber Hadfi, 20, was one of three who attacked the Stade de France and was believed to have fought with IS in Syria.

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Bilal Hadfi (above) blew himself outside the Stade de France and Samy Amimour (below) attacked the Bataclan music hall

The Frenchman was known to French intelligence services. They were among nine of the suspected attackers killed after carrying out the atrocity.

Mr Bercow's face appears on screen with a crosshair superimposed over him.

After images of London flash up, footage of the Prime Minister appears with a message warning non-believers will be targeted.

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On the night of the Paris attacks, Hadfi set his bomb off outside the stadium after being failing to get inside, where the explosion would likely have killed far more.

Amimour set off his suicide vest as police stormed the Bataclan venue, where people attended a concert by The Eagles of Death Metal. A total of 89 people were killed.

They reportedly take part in gruesome execution scenes in the video and are shown wearing combat fatigues and taking part in battle.

A voiceover praises them as "Lions of the Caliphate".

Officials said the footage was "another desperate move" by IS, also known ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.

A Government spokesman said: "We are currently examining this latest Daesh propaganda video - another desperate move from an appalling terrorist group that is clearly in decline."
File photo dated 13/11/15 of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (right) and his predecessor Ed Miliband, as Mr Miliband said that Jeremy Corbyn is fit to hold the office of prime minister, but he would not be drawn on whether he believes his successor as Labour leader will walk through the door of Number 10. Hannah McKay/PA Wire

Ed Miliband lost the 2015 general election because Labour "negatives are deep and powerful", according to a secret internal-party report.

The leak comes as one former shadow cabinet minister fired by Jeremy Corbyn has been urged to launch a "suicide bomb mission" to oust the Labour leader.

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ITV News has obtained a copy of the election post-mortem, commissioned by former deputy leader Harriet Harman, and conducted by veteran Labour pollster Deborah Mattinson.

The report, titled 'Emerging from the Darkness, said Labour would need to "atone for its past", "be for middle class voters, not just down and outs", "above all, be competent, especially on the economy" and "show it takes Scotland seriously".

In a sign of the trouble Labour is in in Scotland, SNP voters told Mattinson they saw Labour as simply "an incompetent version of the Tories".

Mattinson's Britainthinks polling company reached the conclusions after holding focus groups with key voters in Watford, Croydon, Nuneaton, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

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The analysis will provide ammunition to Labour MPs who believe Corbyn is ignoring the lessons of the election by taking the party to the left.

Labour MP Michael Dugher urged to launch 'suicide' mission against Corbyn

On Monday, The Times reported some in Labour want Michael Dugher to launch a leadership bid in the event Labour performs badly at May's local elections.

However according to the paper, others in the party, who are also concerned about Corbyn's leadership, have warned it is too early to try and stage a coup.

Dugher, who was sacked as shadow culture secretary in Corbyn's reshuffle, said the Labour leader "faces a big test" in the May elections.

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As I said yesterday, we've got to really listen & learn from last May if we're to win again. We could start here... https://t.co/0AiAKF4PFS  Michael Dugher MP (@MichaelDugher) January 25, 2016

"We need to win in London but we have got to show we can make big gains in the rest of England as well and we have got to hold on to power in Wales."

He said Corbyn must show he can turn his huge Labour mandate into "real support" from voters.

"It's not rocket science. At the most basic level if they think you are out of touch on immigration and welfare, you had better start talking about immigration and welfare. That would be a good start."

Labour must "stop picking fights with itself", he added.

@OwenJones84 you could say that. Personally, I don't find any form of 'suicide' that appealing...  Michael Dugher MP (@MichaelDugher) January 25, 2016

The Mattinson report leaked to ITV News is the latest in a series of documents to be made public that attempt to explain why Labour unexpectedly lost in 2015.

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On Sunday the pollster described another report, authored by former Labour cabinet minister Margaret Beckett, as a "whitewash".
Muslim women are uploading photographs of themselves in graduation gowns and helping in their communities in protest at comments made by David Cameron last week.

The prime minister said privately that learning English would help tackle the traditional submissiveness of Muslim women whilst he was launching a new initiative to tackle extremism.

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However scores of women have countered his view by posting pictures and comments using the hashtag #TraditionallySubmissive, in a social media campaign that has drawn support from JK Rowling.

The Harry Potter author has been retweeting many of the pictures to her 6.5 million followers.

Some posed the question "Why don't you get to know us before you feel you have the right to comment on us", whilst others uploaded pictures of themselves with a list of their achievements.

The pre-arranged Twitter Storm started at 6pm on Sunday evening and has reaped in hundreds of responses, ranging from those graduating to those helping the local community:

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Hey look! Here's me on @BBCRadio4 voicing my own opinion. By myself. On my own. In English #TraditionallySubmissivepic.twitter.com/8ItZCeEs77  Shelina Janmohamed (@loveinheadscarf) January 24, 2016

3 generations Muslim women teacher civil servant & most likely 2 be anything she chooses #TraditionallySubmissivepic.twitter.com/VZLnBaNVjA  Nazia Mirza (@naziasmirza) January 24, 2016

@David_Cameron I'm a white British Muslim convert with a PhD. Senior Lecturer, TV presenter #traditionallysubmissivepic.twitter.com/jxpwy6Z41t  Online Shia Studies (@RebecMasterton) January 24, 2016

Some told the prime minister how they felt about his comments, writing on a board a list of their qualifications and talents:

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@david_cameron#TraditionallySubmissive Why don't u get to know us before u feel u have the right to comment on us pic.twitter.com/vvsmSLFX5u  Fuf Virani (@FufV22) January 24, 2016

Whilst others proudly uploaded photographs of family members:

In pic is my mum, sister, cousins & wife - all of them educated, speak English & awesome! #TraditionallySubmissivepic.twitter.com/dno4JdyZ8N  Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) January 24, 2016

Here's my #traditionallysubmissive mum feeding the neighbours whilst fasting in Ramadan. She speaks English too pic.twitter.com/zdygIIe8NL  Adnan R.Siddiqui (@AdnanRSiddiqui0) January 24, 2016

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One person posted a round-up of the event:
New mothers are not getting the mental health care they require before and after giving birth, a charity alliance has warned.

The Maternal Mental Health Alliance, a coalition of UK organisations committed to improving the mental health and wellbeing of women, said new mums are not getting adequate support, because there is a lack of Mother and Baby Units (MBU) across the country.

If mothers who do not have access to a MBU experience mental health issues, they may be admitted to adult wards for treatment, meaning they are separated from their babies.

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Dr Alain Gregoire, chair of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, told Sky News: "It would be a national scandal if there were no maternity hospitals and general surgeons were doing caesarean sections, in large parts of the country.

"Access to expert treatment and facilities for women's mental health at this time are just as important, and the NHS should be held to account for ensuring that these are available for women and their babies throughout the UK."

Many women who do not have access to MBUs are admitted to adult wards without their babies

There are currently 17 MBUs in the United Kingdom, but Wales and Northern Ireland do not have any and there are areas in the North East, South and East of England that are not covered.

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Referring to statistics from the NHS, the alliance said one in 10 women develop a mental health illness during pregnancy or in the first year of motherhood.

Sarah Wood, founder of mental health group Lotus Petal PND, was not surprised by the news.

"Unfortunately there is a real lack of support for women experiencing perinatal mental illness," she told HuffPost UK Parents.

"Now media coverage has highlighted the lack of MBUs in the UK, it's vital we have facilities where mums can be treated for their illness without being separated from their baby."

Wood, who runs her support group in Essex, said women's mental health needs to be treated with the same importance as their physical health during and after pregnancy.

"Essex is just another county which lacks enough support for mums," she added.

"We do have a very good perinatal emotional wellbeing team, but unfortunately they only serve a very limited area and for a short amount of time.

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"That is why I started Lotus Petal PND last year, as there were no peer support groups available for mums to help them through their recovery.

"I have collaborated with local children centres, health visitors and midwives to create a safe environment for mums to gain support, advice and friendship."

Natalie Nuttall, co-founder of The SMILE Group, a charity providing peer support to families affected by perinatal mental illness in Cheshire, says support at a local level is lacking there too.

"There needs to be a cohesive approach to review perinatal mental health support, from early prevention to further investment in MBUs," she said.

"I struggled personally with severe post-natal depression five years ago and found support was very disparate. At The SMILE Group, we work closely with clinicians and stakeholders with the aim of providing a continuous care pathway.

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"It's important we invest in resources as well as raise awareness and educate people on the symptoms of perinatal mental illness so parents are empowered to seek prompt, appropriate support."

Sky reports that the Department of Health has said the alliance is right to draw attention to the issue and it wants to improve its response.

Earlier this month, David Cameron pledged 1 billion to end the "shame and embarrassment" of mental health sufferers.

Help And Support National Childbirth Trust The UK charity has a helpline (0300 330 0700) where volunteers provide a listening service for new parents experiencing difficulties or worries during early parenthood. Connecting with NCT branches can make parents feel less isolated. PANDAS (Pre and Postnatal Depression Advice and Support) PANDAS is a UK charity that supports families suffering from pre (antenatal) and postnatal illnesses. The charity offers sufferers and their families support and advice to help aid their recovery through the helpline (0843 2898 401), email support and national community groups. APNI (Association for Postnatal illness) The charity APNI offers a helpline (0207 386 0868) between 10am and 2pm every week day as well as offering female and male online forums where parents can discuss their issues anonymously. Mind Mind is a national UK charity with many regional branches dealing with different types of mental illness. They provide advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. To find a local branch or contact them, visit their website. MAMA MAMA is the 'Meet a mum' association which offers a helpline (0845 120 3746) and self-help groups for mothers with small children who are looking to discuss issues and confide in others who might be experiencing the same thing.
File photo dated 08/05/15 of Prime Minister David Cameron arriving at 10 Downing Street, London, with his wife Samantha, following an audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, to confirm his second term as Prime Minister following his party's General Election victory. Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

Samantha Cameron warned her children to expect to be on the receiving end of "oink oink" jokes in the wake of allegations her husband, the prime minister, took part in a Oxford University ritual involving a pig, it has been claimed.

Mrs Cameron is said to have revealed the parenting advice in a private conversation as she took part in a celebrity special of the BBC's Great British Bake Off programme.

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The claim was made by Jason Manford, the Absolute Radio host who took part in the show alongside Mrs Cameron.

Manford said Mrs Cameron was "nice" whereas the prime minister was "dead behind the eyes".

I must say, now, you can probably guess from my accent that I didnt vote for her husband. But Im surprised they dont roll her out more," he told radio listeners.

"I guess it was quite humorous I think until it went crazy. She did say something to me which I thought endeared her more to me. I said: 'has it been alright this week at home?' It's quite a weird conversation to be having with the prime ministers wife.

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"She told me: 'yeah I just said to the kids Monday morning that you might get a few oink oink noises at school but just try not to fight with anybody'."

Manford added: "I thought that is good parenting advice."

The so-called 'piggate' scandal erupted last year after a biography of the prime minister claimed Cameron inserted a private part of his anatomy into a dead pigs mouth. The story was denied by Downing Street who dismissed it as " "nonsense".

The book was written by former Tory party donor Lord Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, a former Sunday Times political editor.
READ MORE:

Hannah Mustralengo, a student from West Sussex, has hit back at critics, after she failed to impress on the ITV daytime quiz show, saying shes anything but dumb.

Things didnt get off to the best of starts for Hannah during the episode which aired last week.

When she told host Bradley Walsh that she was at Bath University studying French and Italian, all she could muster was Bonjour and Ciao when she was asked to say Hello Brad, its a pleasure being on The Chase in both languages.

Things went from bad to worse for the 19-year-old when she was given the opportunity to wow us with her general knowledge in the Cash Builder round, but failed to get a single question right.

Story continues after the video...

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But now Hannah has broken her silence over the criticism she received, telling The Argus that she received good GCSE grades and a Gold Duke Of Edinburgh award.

Despite her apparent lack of general knowledge, Hannah still made it through to the Final Chase and took home 2666 - her share of the 8000 prize fund.

Following the show, The Chase host Bradley Walsh also spoke out to defend Hannah, blaming her performance on nerves.

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'The Chase' host Bradley Walsh

"She was shaking, she was petrified, Bradley explained. I just said to her as we were going to the next part of the show 'if you want to go for zero, go for zero'."

He added that he was "thrilled" for her after she took home a share of the cash prize.
In the latest in our WISE WORDS interview series - where stars from a whole range of fields share the important life lessons they've learned along the way - were posing some of the big questions to Jan Leeming.

MORE WISE WORDS:

Best known as a TV presenter and newsreader, Jan has been a familiar face on our TV screens for four decades. As well as reading the BBC News throughout the 1980s, she co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 1982.

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Jan has joined seven other celebrities to sample retirement life in Jaipur, India, in 'The Real Marigold Hotel'

More recently, she has has taken part in reality show 'I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!' where she took part in a record number of bush tucker trials. She has also appeared on 'Come Dine With Me' and other TV specials.

This week sees her joining a group of seven other celebrities taking part in a real-life experiment, based on the premise of hit film 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'. Just as those characters moved to India to enjoy their retirement in warmer, more exotic climes, so these celebs, including Jan Leeming, Patti Boulay, Miriam Margolyes, Sylvester McCoy and Wayne Sleep, travel to Jaipur to spend a few weeks in apparent retirement, soaking up the charms of Jaipur, India, and seeing if it would suit them to live.

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To mark the show, which begins tomorrow on BBC1, Jan speak to HuffPostUK, sharing her thoughts about lessons learned along the way, when she's been at her happiest, and some of the harder lessons learnt along the way...

Jan joins Patti Boulay at the Taj Mahal as part of their big adventure

What do you do to switch off from the world?

I will read a book- usually an historical novel or I will go for a walk along the beach.

How do you deal with negativity?

These days I walk away from it. Life is too precious to waste time dealing with negativity. These days I try to focus on the good things in my life - the areas in which I am blessed especially in having good health, a wonderful son, friends and an interesting life.

When and where are you happiest?

I think the happiest period of my life was in my early twenties when I lived in Sydney, Australia. I fulfilled my dream of becoming a professional actress and I adored the sun, sea, sand and the outdoor life. I also much admired the way the Australians just accepted you for what you were - they had no side and it didn't matter a damn who your father was or how much money you or your family had. It was as close to an egalitarian society as one could come.

Whats the best piece of advice youve ever been given?

Although it is difficult to practise, learning to leave the past behind.

What has been the hardest lesson youve learned?

The hardest lesson is that no matter how much you might love a man, there is no guarantee that the love will be returned or constant.

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What would you tell your 13-year-old self?

To thine own self be true. Follow your instincts, follow your dreams and be honest.

What 3 things are at the top of your to-do list?

To learn to speak French fluently; to see more of the world whilst I still have my health; and to see my son happily settled in a good relationship

What do you think happens when we die?

I do think we leave something of ourselves behind in the form of 'aura' for want of a better word. I can sense 'presence' in places and I'm sure this is the 'energy' left by the departed.

When do you feel a sense that we live in the presence of something bigger than ourselves?

I only have to look at nature - the flowers, trees, mountains, the sky and the stars to realise that we are mere 'specks' in the Cosmos

What do you try to bring to your relationships?

Understanding and Trust. Without trust there can be no true love.

What keeps you grounded?

The knowledge of all my faults and failings keeps me very grounded.

What was the last good deed or act of kindness you received?

It came from my son. Although he could not really afford it, he bought me a business class plane ticket to Australia to see him and arranged and paid for my accommodation. It meant a huge amount to me and, although I will find some way of repaying him, the 'Gift' touched my heart greatly.

Also, whilst filming in India I was talking to a lovely English woman who rents an apartment in the Havelli of an Indian Princess. At the end of the interview I happened to say that we'd been working so hard we'd had not time to shop and I very much wanted to buy a saree. The Princess/landlady left the room and returned carrying a pink saree which she gave to me as a gift. A beautiful gift from a stranger. I was very touched.

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'The Real Marigold Hotel' begins on Tuesday 26 January at 9pm on BBC Two.
A mikehaywardcollection.com / Alamy

Weather chaos looks set to reign this week, as near record-high temperatures, a deluge of rain and gale-force winds combine to provoke an avalanche of discussion among us Brits - and for once it's entirely justified.

The unsettled outlook for the UK comes just after the US was battered by a 'once in a generation' blizzard. Storm Jonas dumped as much as 42 inches of snow onto swathes of the East Coast wreaking havoc for millions.

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Now heavy rain is predicted as Jonas, which will be called Gertrude once it makes its way to the British Isles, will lead to severe weather warnings for parts of north-west England, north Wales and Scotland.

A lone New Yorker traverses an empty street in the wake of Storm Jonas on Sunday

The Met Office says up to 100mm of rain is expected in exposed uplands, while the Environment Agency (EA) has warned areas previously affected by flooding should make preparations.

Forecaster Charles Powell said: "The remnants of the US snow storm when it arrives will be rain from first thing across western Scotland and Northern Ireland."

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Active frontal systems tomorrow could bring up to 80-100mm of #rain in exposed uplands https://t.co/TmvTfmDfrKhttps://t.co/G8MyJtVeUq  Met Office (@metoffice) January 25, 2016

Chris Wilding of the EA told the Press Association: "Our thoughts are with all those who have suffered serious flooding over the past few months, and it is once again vital that people prepare for heavy rainfall and the risk of further flooding.

"We will issue flood warnings and alerts where necessary as rivers respond to the rainfall, which could also inundate drains, so people need to be ready for flash flooding in some places."

Cumbria, which was one of the areas heavily impacted by flooding in December, has been put on a yellow alert by the Met Office.

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People sail at Kingsbury Water Park as Britons enjoyed unseasonably warm weather this weekend

Meanwhile Sunday's temperatures came close to setting records for January's warmest. The maximum temperature hit 16.5C, putting it close to the 18.3C recorded in 2003.

The maximum temperature yesterday was 16.5C, putting it close to the 18.3C recorded in 2003 for the highest January temperature.

The Met Office is providing updates on the situation via Twitter, below.
Haven't we all been here before? One side wants to leave the Union, promising a world of freedom from interfering foreigners and a bright economic future all on our own. The other berates the public with dire threats that life outside the Union will rob us all of our jobs and leave the country destitute and alone. If you think the debate over the EU sounds familiar to all the same fuss we had over Scotland in 2014 you're not wrong.

Then, of course, the Union survived (for now) albeit by a narrow margin. Throughout that debate the pro-Union side constantly made the same mistake; they tried to scare the opposition into submission. Almost every pro-Union speaker warned that Scotland would be poorer and that citizens would feel the consequences. Technical calculations were produced that demonstrated all the financial costs.

No doubt many were convinced. Ultimately though this is a pretty weak basis for unity. People do not feel loyalty for the sake of being a bit better off, especially during an economic crisis when those benefits are hard to see anyway. Real longevity needs a Union that matters to people even when economic times are tough. The unionists in Scotland never made a real case for identity and loyalty beyond basic economic calculations, and they just about got away with it.

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The EU 'In' campaign might not be so lucky, with recent polls showing a majority of the British electorate now favouring leaving the EU. Once again the 'In' campaign has fallen back on fear mongering and economics to save the day. Business leader after business leader will be wheeled out to repeat the narrative that leaving the UK will kill jobs and damage British economic performance. The 'In' campaign website features a video from Karen Brady (Tory peer, Apprentice minion to Alan Sugar) saying the same thing and lots of scary stats about Britain's reliance on EU trade.

Even if it's all true, it's still a weak case. We have had the Eurocrisis for seven years. 45% of Greece's 2.5 million pensioners now live on incomes of less than 665 a month - below the poverty line defined by the EU. Youth unemployment in Greece and Spain is at around 47%, and worryingly high in several other states. If the EU's only raison d'etre is to make us all richer it is not hard to see why Eurosceptics are dominating the debate.

It is frustrating to see the debate fall out this way, with Eurosceptics and Europhiles casting around stats and figures and obsessing over economic predictions. Is this really all it is? Is there nothing more to say? David Cameron in Davos on Thursday seemed to say so, saying business should "set the context" in the EU debate.

It needn't be like this. The European project was never, really, about a free market. Its origins owe more to Catholic political theology than to Keynesian economics. The founding fathers of today's EU, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, were committed to a new vision of Europe. A vision founded on the idea of peace, solidarity, subsidiarity (a term they borrowed from a Papal encyclical) and the improvement of the working conditions and lives of workers and citizens.

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That vision hasn't always been successful. The EU has had its failings; many of them in fact. In responding to the Eurocrisis the respect for solidarity and working conditions has been too often overridden by an obsession with lowering debt, no matter the cost to the welfare state or employment rates. A commitment to peace wasn't enough to stop genocide in Bosnia, or to prevent a crisis in Kosovo. A commitment to subsidiarity has not yet seen the democratic deficit addressed, leaving a technocratic elite in a position of broadly unaccountable power.

Yet for all that there is hope here. The European project once had a very clear sense of its own moral purpose and mission. It had a soul. If it were able to recover that soul it would find itself in a much stronger position. Economic performance is ever variable, but a raison d'etre based in being a moral force for good is a more durable status and one that might be better suited to winning the loyalties of citizens. At the very least one would think that Europe's defenders might have something more to say than just repeating those scary economic threats.
The recent flooding in the UK has been near-catastrophic, costing people their homes and businesses. Worst of all, it happened at the time of year that we most cherish our homes and belongings: Christmas. Storm Abigail might have sounded friendly, but it certainly wasn't a visitor that most people wanted during the festive season.

The Lake District was one of the most severely hit areas which I was greatly concerned about because I have family and friends who live there. Thankfully my family and friends weren't affected by the floods but other people in the town were. Seeing the devastation the floods caused has a lot of us thinking who's to blame?

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The Government's Fault?

Some people suggest that it is the government's fault for not putting enough investment into flood defences. In fact, David Cameron has now started calling for more to be done to stop flooding happening again in the future. If he had made this call at the time of the flooding last year, then this year's problems might not have happened, or at least not be as severe. It's also really important to remember that councils will need money from the government to put plans into place. But then again, even if Cameron calls for things to change, it's the councils themselves who are expected to put it in motion.

Responsibility of Local Councils?

People are also criticising local councils for being slow to take action, or too caught up in PR exercises to actually do the right thing. In some areas, councils did start to increase their flood defences as early as 2013, but in others, nothing has yet been done. It's easy to understand the frustrations of the people who have been affected by the floods. Ideally, the councils should be working with homeowners. Something as simple as providing leaflets advising them on how to flood-proof their homes could be a good start, as well as funds for reinforcing and rebuilding homes that have previously been damaged. For those who see their houses being flooded year on year - with little chance of being able to sell them on as a result - it can only get worse if nothing is done.

Freak Weather Problem?

It might also be that, even though we do try hard to put barriers and defences in place, sometimes the weather just gets the better of us. Reports have linked worse flooding in the UK with climate change, suggesting that things might get worse a lot faster than we are able to predict them. If you don't even understand how much rain is going to fall, how can you put a plan in place to deal with it? This has to be a huge part of the problem, and we could be taking action in our own homes to start slowing climate change down. It seems a lot of people agree that little could be done due to the unpredictability of the rain fall. In a survey carried out by Simpson Millar 62% of respondents actually didn't think there was any way to avoid the damage that was caused. Perhaps they are right, but if freak weather conditions are to be a more common occurrence with climate change surely something has to be done.

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Image: iStock.com/Stefano Tinti

The Home Affairs Committee is currently open for submissions to its inquiry on prostitution until 18th February and the words and attitudes of sex buyers, as collated by experts must inform any overhaul of the law:

"Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that 'real' women would not put up with."

Dean Kirby's article in last week's Independent reported Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff's plans to propose "managed red-light districts" in the capital. While allowing prostitution to take place between appointed hours, ensuring no penalty for the purchase or sale of sex, the intention is to make those selling sex feel safer. The scheme would follow the model recently set up in Leeds: where a prostituted woman, Daria Pionko, was murdered by a sex buyer two days before Christmas 2015.

All campaigners agree that the safety of those who sell sex, and the need to ensure that no-one does so in coercive and exploitative conditions is a massive concern. To this end, an element of Mr Boff's plans is sound: to decriminalise those who sell sex in managed districts between appointed times. This would enable them to report all crimes that they experience without fear of prosecution. However, without additional provisions addressing the far-reaching harms within prostitution, the establishment of managed districts would serve as a half-hearted good-will gesture at best, and a dangerously incomplete strategy at worst. Beyond taking away the fear of prosecution, the "managed" district does little to solve the very real dangers that come with being prostituted. Being unafraid to report an assault still means an assault, or in Ms Pionko's case a murder, has taken place. The reasons why the murder rates of women in prostitution are 12 times higher than those for the average woman remain unaddressed.

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An effective strategy prioritising the safety of those in prostitution requires a more robust approach. Decriminalising the sale of sex should be applied retrospectively, ensuring that records are clear should their backgrounds be checked for employment, accommodation or financial purposes. This must be combined with investment in exiting routes for those who wish to get out of prostitution. Support, advice and therapeutic services to manage common practical and health worries, need to be available to all (those who sell sex experience PTSD, depression and anxiety disorders at levels similar to those who have been in armed combat). With specialist services closing due to funding cuts, those in prostitution are increasingly vulnerable. Eaves for Women, who conducted the research referred to, was forced to close as recently as October 2015.

It is also essential to acknowledge that "managed" districts do nothing to address the unprecedented levels of violence those working indoors, either in brothels or as escorts, experience - where 96% of buyers pay for sex. 71% of women in or exiting prostitution experience violence, mostly from sex buyers, and 32% enter prostitution before the age of 18. A managed district merely provides an environment that facilitates exploitation.

There are numerous routes into prostitution, and through volunteering since 2012 with a charity that supports these women, I have learned how one accident of fate could lead any of us into this situation. It is extremely difficult to make generalisations, but if any can be made, they are these: demand drives prostitution, and if nobody purchased sex, prostitution would be eradicated. So to reduce prostitution, we must look to the buyers.

Despite some of the buyers' perceptions that during prostitution women may be feeling "miserable", "scared", "relief that I'm not going to kill her", "empty", "disconnected", they were not deterred by this. And although 51% witnessed those they paid for being controlled, or 'pimped' which is a crime under current law, less than 5% reported their suspicions to the police. However, when asked if having their name and picture made public, a criminal record, a fine, or being added to the sex offenders register would deter them from buying sex, 80-85% confirmed it would.

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Indeed where a Sex Buyer Law has been enforced in Sweden, Norway and Iceland, countries renowned for their exemplary equality laws, this strategy has proven to reduce prostitution. Meanwhile the results of decriminalisation are verging on well-publicised apocalyptic levels of abuse in New Zealand, Nevada in the US, The Netherlands and Germany.
This week the Office for National Statistics announced that unemployment figures dropped to 5.1%, with 30.18million people in work in the UK - the lowest rate of unemployment in a decade. Of course, this is great news - finally, more and more people are finding security in employment and are now able to support themselves and their families financially, as well as aid the growth of the UK economy.

Employment is always a good sign, however wage growth stagnation isn't. Earnings have now slowed for four consecutive months. This means that although we have more people in work, there are also more people feeling unsatisfied, under paid, and that there's no room for progression because they're not being developed. In fact, one of the top reasons employees leave a job is because of a genuine lack of interest by their employers towards their career progression.

Is this a classic case of what goes up must come down? In my view, employers really need to think carefully about the negative impact of wage stagnation and why it's so important to ensure employees are being offered their market rate.

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Of course I understand this is difficult, especially for the flock of new startup businesses who struggle to find the funds to employ staff, but who know investing in a team is the best route to success.

All businesses need a team of people who are passionate and productive in their roles - that should be a globally recognised truth.

Productivity has been at the forefront of George Osborne's plans for building a more prosperous nation, but how do we expect to put this into practise if wage growth continues to stagnate? Employees will not become more productive if we do not have the financial levers to encourage them to do so.

Instead, what we'll see is an increase of employees searching for pastures new elsewhere. London offers 23% higher salaries than anywhere else in the UK, however when you take into account rising levels of housing and living costs, these salaries seem unsubstantial compared to those offered by other countries in Europe and further abroad.

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It was recently reported that the UK is the third best place to look for work in Europe but neglecting our employees financially could be a real worry for the UK economy, resulting in a shortage of top talent, meaning a decline in business scalability.

A mass exodus of talent will inevitably lead to skill shortages across the UK. Working in recruitment, it's always interesting to see the rise and falls of demand in different sectors. Finance and professional services continue to sustain a high demand for new talent but interestingly, we've also seen a surge in construction projects needing workers.

We are already seeing skills gaps in many sectors across the UK. For example, in London there are 95.7billion worth of construction projects requiring a 20% increase in skilled workers; with 90,000 workers in the industry looking to retire between now and 2020.

This is an issue on the back of every employers mind; 63% of which believe the biggest threat to the UK's competitiveness as a place to employ people is the abundance of low level skills which are prevalent in the market.

So, how do we combat this? We need to make our employees feel valued. If we do not have financial instruments such as market rate wage to motivate staff then that's when investing in their soft skills and offering effective training will ensure they are developing themselves professionally. In turn, this will increase productivity throughout your business.

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Last week, in addition to the debate in the House of Lords, which saw an embarrassing government defeat on the undemocratic party funding proposals in the Trade Union Bill of 327 votes against, to 234 in favour, the government released its long-awaited impact assessment of the bill.

For many of us the question remained - how could the Tories possibly justify their decision to target the largest, democratic, grassroots organisation in the country in the way they have done in the bill? For those of you who haven't yet read the mammoth 112 pages of the impact assessment - spoiler alert: it's not included.

In fact, those of us hoping to find answers to any of the substantial questions posed during scrutiny of the legislation were once again bitterly disappointed by the release of the report. It really is a shame that the Tories don't subject themselves to a fraction of the transparency that they are so keen to impose on unions.

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And if the content was bad then the fact that such an important document of public concern was so silently released is even worse. If only David Cameron was as vocal of the serious impact of Tory legislation on the wider public as he is during his pre-prepared jokes at Prime Minister's Questions.

The impact assessment on union finances is the first issue dealt with in the report and doesn't make for pleasant reading. It shows that unions will face costs in excess of 11.2million and the financial burden doesn't end there. As well as this initial outlay, unions - and ultimately union members paying their subs - will be subjected to another 26million over the five year period subsequent to the passing of the bill.

This is further proof - not that it was required - that the bill is a blatant attempt by the Tories to inflict yet more red tape on unions.

It also serves to hinder unions in the vital service they provide to members by diverting money away from providing support, advice and a much-needed lifeline in the workplace, to, what the report repeatedly explains away as, "familiarisation costs" "administrative costs" and other "new costs" which can all be attributed to Government-imposed bureaucracy.

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This also assumes that the same government, who have shown their failure to grasp how unions operate time and time again during debates on the legislation that I have been involved in, have not missed anything this time. In fact, the TUC deems these figures to be too modest and expects the financial burden on unions to be significantly greater.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the report adds insult to injury.

Buried in the report lies the Tories' favourite disclaimer: "None of these changes are about banning strikes". Instead there is talk of the importance of unions having a "democratic mandate". Funny that the Tories have chosen to focus on this rather than their own democratic mandates as only 56 out of the 330 Tory MPs elected at the last General Election received the levels of support they deem necessary for industrial ballots.

If the onus was really on promoting democracy within the trade union movement then why are alternative methods of conducting union ballots not explored? Workplace or e-balloting were serious options raised by myself and colleagues in the House, as well as by representatives from the trade union movement and beyond, but were all repeatedly dismissed without consideration.

Those looking for recognition of the vital work played by unions will also be bitterly disappointed. In fact the best that the report does is acknowledge "Trade unions can play an important role in the workplace". Faint praise indeed. Perhaps the government should instead consult the Survation poll showing that 77% of the public view trade unions as "essential" in protecting workers rights, or, you know, the six million trade union members across the UK. Just a thought.

This, of course, is hardly surprising. During my stint on the bill committee, it soon became clear that first and foremost the Tories have a fundamental lack of understanding, or appreciation, when it comes to trade unions.

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They do not see unions as a force for good, campaigning for better employment rights for those across the country. They do not see them as a vehicle for promoting equality and social change. They do not see them as providing working people with a much-needed collective voice. They see them, pure and simple, as a threat. A threat to the reign of a perpetual Tory Government - and how do you deal with something you feel threatened by? Cut off its resources and take away its voice, just as this bill hopes to do to the union movement.

The Tories can do their best but they have seriously underestimated the difficulty of silencing the collective voice and this is why we hope you'll continue to stand with us and voice your opposition to the bill.

Jo Stevens is the Labour MP for Cardiff Central and secretary of the Trade Union Group of MPs

A version of this blog was first published on the Trade Union Group of MPs blog, and can be read here
Shortly before Christmas, British and French Red Cross volunteers carried out a joint operation in Northern France, distributing around 1,300 bags of aid to people in five camps, including Grande Synthe near Dunkirk.

Conditions there are shocking. At the end of last year the camp's population was increasing substantially each week, inhabited by people from Iraq and Syria, including a large number of families with children. We were told the locations of the camps and the number of people were largely dictated by smugglers.

As the light ebbed and the cold set in, it was heart-breaking to see young children in such dangerous conditions. The site had been prepared for construction prior to the encampments, so it had quickly turned to a boggy field. Kids played on piles of rock or in muddy clearings near dirty water. There was little sanitation. We spoke to many families that day as they huddled around small fires for warmth, mums and dads doing their best to smile for their children.

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Following our first distribution, and work from Medecins Sans Frontieres to create a new camp to meet minimum humanitarian standards, a number of politicians have visited, including most recently Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition. All have been appalled by the conditions. Understandably there was much focus from the French and UK Governments on the situation in Calais last summer - but unfortunately the situation in Grande Synthe seemed to go unnoticed. Things can't go on like this - where young families fleeing war are abandoned in a field for the winter. We need action from both the UK and French Governments, starting with humanitarian assistance.

There is a very recent precedent for this. In August the home secretary, Theresa May, signed a Calais agreement with her French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve which said "in the face of a migratory phenomenon without precedent, and with a substantial humanitarian element, the United Kingdom and French governments are unified in their response". It went further in highlighting their joint concern around "health and sanitation challenges, alongside the risk of trafficking and other crime affecting the most vulnerable". These concerns are valid, but there was no sign of any action on them in Grande Synthe. In particular we remain concerned at the threat to children from trafficking.

What should happen? I am certain politicians of all parties would agree that young families should not be left to live like those currently in the camp at Grande Synthe. In supporting the work of MSF and others, we hope both the UK and French Governments will assess the humanitarian need at the camps and provide assistance. There can be no suggestion that these conditions act as some form of 'deterrent' to further arrivals. People are not leaving everything behind on the promise of a camp that meets basic humanitarian needs, they are forced to leave, often for their lives. They are trying to protect their children and to have a future.
Girls who grow up with abuse are at risk of being abused as adults, and we are not doing enough to protect them.

Abuse has a number of effects on girls. Girls who are abused growing up may run away from home or truant from school, putting them at risk of homelessness and having a serious impact on their qualifications and future life chances. Some girls turn to drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with the distress and trauma they've experienced. Some get involved in gangs or petty crime, and come into contact with the police and criminal justice system. Abuse also increases the likelihood of serious mental health problems and disabilities.

All of these things make a girl an easy target for perpetrators and so vulnerable to further abuse whilst making it harder for her to get help. We know perpetrators of domestic violence target women or girls who they think will be easier to control and some will deliberately target girls who have run away from home or care or girls who are truanting from school to sexually exploit them.

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Yet we know that too often girls who run away from home or truant from school are seen as 'trouble makers' or 'attention seekers', especially if they are also involved in low-level criminal activity. Part of the problem has been societal attitudes. In some areas when girls have been targeted by perpetrators of child sexual exploitation, professionals have been reluctant to intervene or have dismissed them because instead of seeing abuse, they see these girls as 'sexually precocious' women in relationships with older men, or as prostitutes. When vulnerable girls commit crimes or become involved in gangs, it can be too easy for people to see them just as criminals, and not as the victims of much more serious crimes.

Girls who have mental health problems or who use drugs and alcohol are even less likely to be believed if they talk about abuse. This is despite very good evidence that women with severe mental health problems or addictions are very likely to have been abused. Part of the reason perpetrators target girls with mental health issues or addictions is because they know those girls are unlikely to be taken seriously.

Sadly, specialist services to support girls and women who have experienced abuse as children and who may be at risk of being abused again are thin on the ground and poorly funded. There is also not enough knowledge and recognition of girls' needs in more mainstream services like health and the police.
When I arrived at Manchester Metropolitan University in September 2014 I had been estranged from my father for a little over three years, and apart from my best friend, I knew no-one else in my situation. But after reading about other estranged people's stories through the charity Stand Alone, it got me thinking. If one in five families go through estrangement at some point in their lives, and many people become estranged between the ages of 16 and 24, then surely I wasn't the only one at MMU? That's where my idea for the Ohana society was born.

Independent students have perhaps a more difficult journey into university than most. These students who don't have a family network need the full loan and grants, but the evidence that they need to gather to access this type of finance is based on strict guidelines, and the process of finding it is highly daunting to potential and continuing students.

Coming up with a name for the society was problematic, as I didn't want it to be something that obviously revealed someone's situation if they weren't ready to share it with their friends or classmates. I chose Ohana as, in Hawaiian, the term means 'family; blood, adoptive or otherwise'. This perfectly encapsulated what I wanted my society to be: like a family.

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The Bank of Mum and Dad doesn't exist for a lot of estranged students. And in spite of getting through the Student Finance hurdle and receiving the full financial support, many students still struggle to find accommodation, pay their rent throughout the year on top of covering the costs of food, other living costs and maintaining a social life with their peers. This leads to working multiple part-time jobs in order to cover these extra costs. The pressure for us is higher. This is where the Ohana Society can help, providing cheap or free activities for estranged students and giving them the chance to get together with those who understand their situation and have a social life that they may be lacking .

In order to set up my society, I needed a committee. Being in a position where I knew no-one else in my situation, this proved somewhat paradoxical; I was setting up the society because I didn't know anyone else who was estranged, but I needed someone else who was estranged to be on my committee. I decided the only way I was going to do that was to get the word out about my society through talking at the beginning of lectures and hope that someone wanted to get involved.

I talked to a couple of my classmates about my predicament, when one of them told me that she was estranged from her father as well. I wanted to fill as many of my committee positions as I could, so I spoke with my tutor about arranging a talk in lectures about the society. I realised two of my other classmates were stood at the door listening to our conversation- as we left the building one of them explained that they too were estranged and would be interested in being part of my society.

The stigma attached to cutting contact with family makes it harder for those who haven't experienced it to empathise. The amount of times I've been told to 'make up' with my dad because "you only get one" leaves me feeling frustrated. My reasons for cutting contact didn't even seem to matter. Many people don't know what estrangement means, let alone the reasons behind it, so another focus is to educate people in MMU who aren't aware and tackle the stigma that comes with it. Not all families or family members are loving and supportive, and some of us have to start fending for ourselves a bit earlier than others.

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Estranged students also have to take into consideration what they're going to do during the holidays. Not only is there a large focus on 'families' during Christmas, Eid and other holidays, estranged students need to consider where they're going to stay over the long summer holiday period. With talk of holidays, Ohana looks to provide a safe haven for students to talk about these difficulties and learn to find their own way to 'reclaim' these difficult holiday periods.

The fact that there were two students in one of my classes alone that are in a similar position to myself, but that we didn't know until the conversation arose, shows that estrangement is something that needs to be talked about more in a university environment. There needs to be a society for these students to meet and interact with others in their situation so they can see that they really aren't the only ones going through it. Knowing the statistics is one thing, but to actually see that there are others in your position- be it in the form of media or in person- makes estranged people feel less alone in their situation.

Although I know my society can't help the members financially, I want to help them with the feelings of isolation, and give them the support network they cannot get from their family. I want the members of my society to realise that they aren't alone in the struggles that they have faced, and they aren't alone in those they will face in the future. I also want people who aren't estranged to realise that cutting contact from your family doesn't make you a bad person and the reasons are often real and justifiable. I want people who aren't estranged to understand that just because "you only get one mother/father/sibling/family etc." doesn't mean that they will treat you with respect, care or are automatically healthy for your life.

It's no surprise that students who are estranged are at a greater disadvantage then those with supportive families. All in all, I want my society to help make the lives of estranged students at MMU a little easier, and make the MMU community a more estrangement-friendly place. And if I can manage that, then I'll be happy.

Stand Alone has been supported by The Big Lottery fund and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation to work with more estranged students like Laura to set up their own societies in their University setting. If you are a student and can relate to these issues, please get in touch: contact@standalone.org.uk

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Two weeks ago nearly 600 Labour Party members and activists signed a change.org petition calling on the release of the crushing 2015 General Election post mortem analysis: the Beckett Report.

In commissioning the report the then interim party leader, Harriet Harman MP, claimed that the investigation would be both a quantative and qualitative inquiry which 'would leave no stone unturned'.

Alongside calls from a number of MP's that petition played no small part in ensuring that the report, long believed to be locked in a bottom drawer somewhere in the leader's office, was duly released.

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The problem is increasing evidence is coming to light that rather than being a forensic dissection of the party's appalling result the report is in fact something of a whitewash.

Criticisms were made very quickly that Dame Margaret's assessment seemed, to a degree, to abdicate responsibility. Seriously could anyone who had door knocked in the run up to the election believe that Ed Miliband was not a significant contributory factor?

Disclosures are now coming thick and fast that in fact as opposed to being a definitive account of the election defeat numerous much more forensic pieces of work have been conducted by the party looking at the true reasons for defeat.

Academics and authors of the authoritative election study 'The British General Election of 2015' Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh claim in their recently published book that in addition to the Beckett Report party officials commissioned another investigation called 'What Happened', the results of which have never been published.

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Only yesterday highly respected pollster Deborah Mattinson disclosed that she had worked for the party conducting focus groups in constituencies including Nuneaton and Watford, where Labour had significantly underperformed last May, but evidence from those sessions was largely absent from the final Beckett Report.

Details of some reports have now, inconveniently for the party, been leaked to the Daily Mail.

The problem is that whilst the Labour Party sits on evidence arising out of the analysis of defeat huge numbers, both party members and eventually the voting public, will find it hard to believe that the party has really taken the time to learn the lessons of defeat. Certainly what cannot be allowed to happen is a constant drip feed of damaging information being leaked out of the Labour party organisation.

It's for that reason, despite the fact I'm usually hugely averse to them, that I have launched a second e-petition calling on the leadership to release all reports commissioned by the party in the wake of the election defeat.

Jeremy Corbyn has long been an advocate of openness and transparency, it is only days since he rightly called for a strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act.

The truth is however that the principles of transparency don't just apply to government, they apply to the Labour Party too.

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There is not one Labour Party member who doesn't want to see the party back in power in 2020. The only way that is possible is to make sure we learn the lessons of five years previously.
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Since the dust has started to settle over the debate around whether Oxford University should topple its statue of Cecil Rhodes, the constant nonsensical refrain seems to be that doing so would be 'whitewashing history.' It's as though his name would suddenly be wiped from all history books and Wikipedia pages the moment it came down, with his legacy expunged in a sea of political correctness.

Yet it ignores the fact that statues themselves are an attempt to 'whitewash' history - often a stab by public figures with chequered careers at out-living their own mortality, ensuring the less unsavoury aspects of their legacies are cemented in the public consciousness. Few historians would consider them unbiased sources of fact. A casual stroll through central London serves as a grim reminder; the statues of General Charles James Napier in Trafalgar Square and Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster give few respective details of Napier's fondness for brutally suppressing rebellions in India, or Cromwell's massacres of Scottish and Irish Catholics.

In the eyes of many who want his statue to stay up, the considerable sums Cecil Rhodes gave to Oxford University - an institution not historically famed for being cash-strapped - is meant to atone for his crimes in South Africa and the former Rhodesia, which involved violent land-grabs and systematic attempts at disenfranchising the black populations who dwelt there. Yet the debate over whether or not to pull down his statue is a needed one. It sheds light on which public figures deserve monuments and whether simply because a statue exists, all arguments should be shut down about whether it should have been there in the first place.

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Examples abound elsewhere. Brussels still boasts a statue of King Leopold, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese labourers, while Spain hosts the Valley of the Fallen - a lurid and grotesque tribute to fascism given how the bodies of the scores of Republicans who fought against Franco still lie in unmarked graves. It's an interesting contrast to how we often applaud modern examples of statues being pulled down, such as those of Saddam and Gadaffi, but as other blood-drenched figures who inspired monuments start to recede into history, we are content to close down debate by insisting that 'it's what they did back then' - an argument which seems to frequently be trotted out in defence of the statue in front of Oriel College (an institution, it's worth pointing out, that Cecil Rhodes only attended for one term).

The need to be aware of how modern bias can colour our reading of the past is an important dimension to any debate about history, but it's often a lazily-deployed tactic. In this case, the sub-text seems to be that Rhodes was merely a man of his time. While this might be true, it ignores how his views were extreme even by the standards of the 'civilising mission,' and skates over the many stakeholders of empire, particularly missionaries, who were appalled by the sort of violent and exploitative imperialism that Rhodes championed.

Iconoclasm also has a long, and some would say distinguished, tradition in art, particularly in the UK - the Tate Britain paid tribute to it recently with its exhibition 'Art Under Attack.' The idea that a statue shouldn't be pulled down for its own sake misses how important it has been in the history of art to challenge the idea that physical tributes to public figures should always be unquestioningly protected.

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Last month, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address.

His speech focused on the nation's most pressing issues, including strengthening democracy. Before Congress, guests and the American people President Obama called for making voting easier, not harder, for all Americans.

In a little noticed part of his speech, the President made clear that one of his priorities in his final year would be to push to upgrade America's voting system and "modernize it for the way we live now." In doing so, he acknowledged that the current system is outdated, and he demonstrated a bold commitment to ensuring that the same level of daily modernity, security and convenience enjoyed by US citizens would be reflected in the manner in which they exercise one of their most treasured rights.

President Obama believes that the US can, and should, adopt a more contemporary approach to its election technology. And I couldn't agree with this proposed reform more. As chairman of Smartmatic I have seen how incorporating modern tools into a nation's election process benefits citizens and governments, and it is a practice all nations (not just the US) should adopt. Doing so makes elections more efficient, transparent, accountable and accessible from registration to voting and ultimately helps to strengthen democracy.

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Among the many benefits, newer, updated systems reduce polling lines, granting more freedom to people who must leave work to vote. They allow handicapped voters to hear ballot options, voters to select language preferences, election commissions to audit polling stations, and offices to speed up ballot counting. Most important, perhaps, these systems are more secure and more reliable than the outdated machines they should replace.

Regardless of the specific technology, its benefits, and where it's adopted, the type of modern and accessible voting system called for by the President must be founded on several core principles.

Its technology must be simple and easy-to-use both by voters and polling officials alike; it must make life easier for election officials through logistical and management efficiencies; it must provide transparency to third-party validators; and it must be impenetrably secure and affordable to local election bodies and, ultimately, the taxpayer. It may sound novel, but it's not.

Today, systems like these exist and are being used successfully in select nations around the world.

Belgium, for example, adopted a system using stand-alone voting machines that use screens to provide a user-friendly voter experience. With this technology, Belgium conducted the first ever EU Parliamentary elections with paper trail in 2014, helping to ensure greater transparency.

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In Brazil, during their last election two years ago, over 141 million voters elected 1,709 officials from 26,131 candidates by way of electronic voting. Doing so, resulted in its national elections registering the lowest cost per vote the country has seen in 16 years.

Belgium and Brazil represent just two of the many countries taking steps to advance efficiencies within their democracy. Adopting electronic and internet voting systems has helped numerous other countries such as the Philippines and Estonia increase voter participation, audit their elections, conduct elections efficiently and affordably and build confidence in their government.
Touching down at 06:20 having spent the night travelling inevitably steeps reality with a peculiar hue, but driving out of Mytilene airport in my Hyundai tin can, I felt an eerie sense of both recognition and foreignness. I knew the roads - I had driven them tens of times in October. I knew the town, and I knew its harbourfront restaurants. As I drove past the first pile of lifejackets, I knew them, too. But it all seemed different somehow. Under the harsh winter light, and with the cold pressing doors firmly shut, the island felt dormant - and not contentedly so.

I drove along the coast road, taking the dirt track from Skala Sykaminea that runs alongside the island's northern beaches where the majority of boats land. Even early in the morning, they were a hub of activity, with hi-vis-vested volunteers waving flags and directing arrivals. The routines were all the same, repeated every day since I first saw them in September - and long before. But I was still shocked by them. Almost like watching a silent horror film - perhaps with the freezing cold numbing senses - this activity felt like a parallel reality. Worse, it seemed in a struggle against reality.

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On my 90-minute drive, and all before 09:30, I saw three boats land - one towed in to shore by a rescue rib - and a coastguard boat speeding off to some point in the middle of the ocean. Although I knew that the crossings hadn't stopped - that people were still braving the cold and the icy wind and waves to reach Greece - actually seeing it, and feeling that insidious, biting island cold, floored me. I was fascinated to watch and refamiliarise myself with these operations, but I grew sickened as I couldn't stop my instinct imagining myself as a passenger on those boats; myself in wet clothes; myself convulsing from cold; myself delirious from motion sickness and brainfreeze. Perhaps that was the fascination.

One concrete difference I noticed was a lacing, the whole way along the shoreline, of the carcasses of big wooden boats - trawlers and tourist cruisers - that must have held up to 250 bodies as they crossed. Perhaps the price was higher to travel on these apparently sturdier vessels. Several lay on their side, the frigid grey waves lapping at the benches where, in past summers, a British tourist's bottom might have perched as they wowed at Turkey's coastline and complained about the heat and not having enough space. I thought of the shipwreck in October, just after I had returned to London, in which dozens died, just off these beaches. A boat just like these.

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Why do the smugglers use these boats, that would be so much more expensive than the plastic dinghies mass produced in China? Certainly not out of deep concern for the safety of their passengers. I can only presume that they 'adopt' any boats taken out of commission, deemed unsafe to sail, before loading them to multiple times the safe capacity even of their heyday, sailing them to the middle of the ocean at night, and abandoning ship.

Constructively, though still hauntingly, there were teams in the water dismembering these skeletons with chainsaws. The wood was destined for Moria, the official registration camp, to be used in fires to keep people warm through the cold nights and days. All over the island, in fact, there had been a thorough clean-up and improved management of the rubbish and debris left as a mark of those passing through. An extremely positive development, of course - but it also contributed to the impression I was getting that the refugee situation has less presence on the island; that a concerted effort was being undertaken to cover up and hide away these visitors - an island secret. A disturbing notion.

Sinister as it is, I don't blame the islanders for this - I appreciate that their income relies on tourism. What is far more disturbing is that tourists - a high percentage from the UK - are cancelling holidays to Lesvos, from fear of being made uncomfortable by coming into contact with refugees; with the reality of those people at whom they express vapid sympathy through their television at home. I am the last person to refrain from criticism of the new Windy Ridge camp opened by the US-based IRC. However, the inauspicious location of the camp - on a windy ridge (surprisingly), in a valley, and down a dirt track inaccessible to buses - is less the result of poor planning by the organisation, and more the only option presented by the locals, keen to keep this away from the eyes of tourists. So instead of pointing accusatorily at Greek islanders as being anti-refugee, perhaps we ought instead to examine ourselves, and why it is we feel that the presence of people from the Middle East on their way to safety would rather spoil our fun. And, if you want an easy way to help the crisis this summer, book a holiday to Lesvos.
Songs about hardship are timeless phenomena. Whether it be unrequited love or a personal struggle, songs about the trials we face between the crib and grave are popular around the globe. A good example is Psalm: 137, as although less than 2% of the UK population now attends church on a weekly basis, a surprising number of people will be familiar with the song that begins, "By the rivers of Babylon...".

Despite often incorporating themes of struggle and survival, rap music can be a little more contentious than the spiritual Psalm. From ostentatious displays of wealth to misogyny and recreational drug use, rap has its die-hard followers as well as its staunch critics.

It was one of the latter that I found teaching a Russian language course at the University of Cambridge.

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"He's not really Russian", she said, in reference to the Russian rap artist I'd mentioned.

"No decent pop music has been produced in the past 10 years in Russia".

One could say that the issue is merely generational, that it's no surprise ageing academics don't connect with an incredibly modern cultural phenomenon. But the repercussions of that attitude are much more persistent.

The world of academia is small and parochial, where the professors of today are responsible for anointing their successors. Creating an environment that shuns a certain genre will often give rise to another generation who follow in the same blinkered footsteps.

Like a scene from Orwell's 1984 (or a certain Apple commercial in 1984), PhD students were nodding in agreement. "It's just disguised American culture" one chimed.

Despite its gaudy facade, post-Soviet rap, and popular music as a whole, can provide a profound insight into the region.

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Just like their American and European counterparts, disillusioned young men immortalise their everyday urban struggles through music. Neither oligarchs nor the literary intelligentsia, their interests, hopes and dreams are expressed through an accessible medium such as rap or hip-hop.

This disillusion is often political, like that found in the songs of protest on both sides of the simmering Ukrainian conflict. Surrounded by arms-laden militiamen, a pro-Russian rapper-turned-militant 'Rapper Donskoy' sings about the struggle to 'liberate' Donbass. Meanwhile for those leading the pro-European revolution, the Belarusian rock song "Warriors of Light" became the anthem of the Maidan movement. Shortly after the revolution that song would silence nightclubs in Kiev and elicit a single unified chorus.

Popular music also provides an insight into how post-Soviet societies see themselves. Central Asian nationalism has spawned a collection of "Straight Outta Kazakhstan"-style Russian-language patriotic would-be P-Diddies. Even President Putin's sky-high ratings have generated mainstream rap songs of praise, with grassroots parodies springing up overnight to mock them.

From a spornosexual obsession for bodybuilding to combatting corruption, across the Soviet Union a generation of young men (and increasingly women) are expressing their dreams and realities through rap.

Oxbridge elitism has hindered generations of working-class British students, but it also hinders our diplomatic efforts. By dismissing the stories of young, urban working class Russians in academia, we fail to recognise that it is Putin and his supporters we have to engage with, rather than Pushkin.

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The fact that they're shunned in the hallowed halls of Cambridge is no surprise; if they weren't they may not rap.

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The use of email by America's 12-17 year olds more than halved last year. It's one symptom of a trend that has taken us from War and Peace to the Emoji.

There was a time when people wrote letters to each other. Have you written a letter to a private individual (i.e. not a utility company, solicitor, etc) in the last five years? Do you know anyone who has? I thought not.

The golden age of letter writing is long gone, along with Dr Johnson and Charles Dickens. But Virginia Woolf died in 1941, leaving behind volumes of personal correspondence. It's only quite recently that letter writing has been consigned to the dustbin of history.

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Now, correspondence takes very different forms. All of which are short. I am therefore looking forward to the launch of the collected Facebook updates of David Cameron, and the concise, annotated Tweets of Stephen Fry. (Not forgetting the complete text messages of Rebekah Brooks.) Thanks to digital communication tools, the world has lost touch with long form communication.

And short form communications are getting shorter. We used to think 140 characters was restrictive, but the inventors of the YO app went one better, giving users the option of just a single word ('Yo', if you hadn't guessed it). The inventors tell me this is 'contextually based communication' - which means you're meant to figure out that when Dave sends you a Yo at 6pm, it's because Dave wants someone to go to the pub with. The Yo is supposedly all the message you need.

The UN should add 'Words' to its list of endangered species. Consider this. My daughter has around 4,000 photos and videos in her iPhone, most of which have been shared with her social network via the likes of Instagram and Snapchat. She almost never sends emails. She and her generation are growing up as visual communicators. This is the age of the picture.

Pictures are a super-short, yet highly complex form of communication. It easily could take a thousand words to accurately describe the contents of a photograph. Pictures cross language barriers with ease, and convey emotion with precision. Email and text messaging frequently do not. I'm sure we've all experienced the phenomenon of sentiment being completely misread by a recipient of one of our emails... This is one reason we like to use pictures - emoticons - to help people interpret what our short form written messages really mean.

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So what does this mean for the professional communicators in the world of marketing and advertising?

If you want to communicate to post-literary generations, your start point is that their attention span is short, they do respond to arresting visual content and they don't respond to long copy communication.

As brands start to behave more like people and less like broadcasters - showing their personality, communicating rather than telling, engaging on an emotional level, and being part of a connected social life - they will need to learn a new visual language in order to be successful. Visual language is the language of the designer not of the copywriter and I'm delighted that this (IMHO) rather undervalued profession seems set for better days providing 'content' for marketing purposes.

I suspect that in communications agencies, the art directors may become more influential than the copywriters. (It didn't used to be like that. They used to say that the art director was the one with the felt pens, the copywriter the one with the brains. But that was, of course, deeply unfair.)
I am writing this on the flight home from this year's World Economic Forum meeting at Davos. Inequality was an urgent and recurrent theme throughout the four days. The agenda had again been set by Oxfam, with their skilful and well-timed publication of their analysis of the dramatically unequal distribution of global wealth. US Vice-President Joe Biden directly referenced Oxfam's report in his speech on Wednesday, the de facto keynote address of the entire conference.

I represent HelpAge International at Davos and am one of the civil society representatives invited to the meeting by the WEF. Our organisation is the secretariat to a global network of some 115 organisations working with and for older women and men nationally.

Population ageing is something of a grand Davos theme, an obvious megatrend of global significance. The world is ageing fast, with implications across so many key issues discussed at the global meeting - healthcare, economic productivity, gender, the future of jobs, social security systems, even robotics!

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Commonly misconstrued as a "rich world" challenge, population ageing is actually a global phenomenon. With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, most regions will see the proportion of their total population composed of men and women aged 60 or more rise from around 12% now to 25% or even 30% by 2050.

There is a long-standing but instructive cliche that many emerging economies are getting old before they got rich - certainly, the frontline of global ageing is no longer confined to Japan and Western Europe, but now includes countries such as Vietnam, Brazil, China, and Bulgaria.

Inequality, arguably the core social and economic issue of our time, can be viewed effectively through a lens of older age. There are two dimensions of inequality and older age that I would like to explore here.

Firstly, and logically enough, as people age, the effects of accumulated hardship or opportunity manifest themselves ever clearer. Inequality usually widens between rich and poor with age. For rich people in rich countries, the talk at Davos rightly surrounded the tremendous opportunities offered by greater longevity in an age of unprecedented scientific discovery. There was an excellent and well-attended panel discussing what life will be like if (perhaps when) we see 150-year human lives. What would be the impact on life, love and work? At an "ideas lab" just next to the main centre, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology held regular presentations over the course of the week on "Biolotechnology Solutions for Ageing Populations", and demonstrated some of the extraordinary scientific discoveries that they are confident will shortly dramatically slow or even start to reverse the ageing progress in the 21st century.

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Meanwhile, for the world's poorer older people (and there are hundreds of millions), and those caught up in crises such as Syria, women and men face enormous and specific health, income and protection challenges as they age, the result of hardships accrued through the life course, or of a sudden shock such as conflict and displacement.

For this large poorer segment of the world's older people, many live with zero or very limited access to some of the medical breakthroughs even of the late nineteenth century, such as the sphygmomanometer (the device that measures blood pressure). South Africa, for example, now has the highest level of adults over 50 living with hypertension ever recorded in a population, but still very low levels of blood pressure testing and management. Hypertension, despite being the biggest single cause of avoidable death and disability on the planet, is not a health sector priority for most emerging economy Ministries of Health with rapidly ageing populations, or for the international donor community in their development planning and programmes.

Women face very specific challenges as they age, again through gender inequality accumulated through the life course. One of the very many examples - in both developed and developing countries, lower pay when working, along with a de facto "care penalty" means fewer and smaller pensions, and therefore, much lower income, for women in older age than for men.

But there is a second dimension of inequality around older age, which is that older people, who may have seen a lifetime of poverty, poor health and exclusion, then face active or passive discrimination and disadvantage on account of simply being older, even within development and humanitarian programmes.

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Syria's older population, pre-war, had broadly similar rates of type 2 diabetes and higher rates of hypertension than the United States - but almost five years and well over a billion dollars into the global humanitarian response, recent John Hopkins' research confirmed that the health needs of the older refugee population in Lebanon had simply not been catered for by the massive international response - "More than half of older refugees reported their health was very bad and about two-thirds said their health has gotten worse since arriving in Lebanon. Despite having many physical limitations and chronic health problems - most commonly hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, difficulty walking, and impaired vision - nearly all older refugees reported they were unable to obtain adequate medical treatment." I simply don't believe that any other age segment would have been overlooked in this way.

The momentum behind the gender equality movement is truly exciting, but how often do you see images or hear the voices of older women? How often are the specific health, income or protection needs of older women cited among the priority development interventions? How often do we see older women as among the potential entrepreneurs for whom better access to credit might transform their economic situation? The girl or young woman of today, abused by forced early marriage to a much older man, faces a huge statistical probability of living through an extended period of widowhood, often with specific protection threats surrounding this very status, yet global data on violence against women is not even measured for women once they pass the age of 49.
Many I work with often ask me where it was and when it was that my interest in the Central African Republic came about. Images of devastation and scenes of violence gripped me just over two years ago. An unprecedented level of conflict with devastating consequences was taking place in the Central African Republic. Taking place in front of our eyes, it wasn't on the front covers of the newspapers nor was it to be seen as a featured headline on our television screens, the crisis was met with little international outrage and even less activism. Brutal killings were taking place, and innocent lives continued to be lost but few people knew of what was happening and even fewer placed the country as a point of interest. The conflict in CAR hasn't attained the name 'The Forgotten Crisis' for no reason.

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The international response to what took place and what continues to take place is both a travesty and injustice. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children fled to neighbouring countries such as Chad and Cameroon but more than 600,000 people remain displaced inside the country with many trapped inside enclaves they cannot escape.

In 2014 I travelled to meet some of the 450,000 refugees who fled CAR, meeting them along the Chadian borders in displacement camps hosting thousands. As I met refugees, they told me torturous stories of how they lost their loved ones, and the attacks that had been taking place. Elderly grandmother Ashta told me how anti-Balaka militia had burnt her arm. Businessmen, women, teachers, wives of politicians were now living in displacement camps. This was not a story of famine and poverty, those I met inside the camps were individuals and families who fled for their lives - attacked for no reason other than being a persecuted community.

In March 2013 the mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power ousting President Francois Bozize. The Muslim led coup and the violence that came with it prompted a backlash in the mainly Christian country from a vigilante mainly Christian group known as the Anti-Balaka - a group responsible for what has been called "ethno- religious cleansing" in CAR. Thousands of Muslims fled for their lives but for those who still remain in the landlocked country, the battle for their health and safety remains. A conflict divided upon religious lines, Human Rights organisations have documented the abuses differing communities in CAR continue to suffer.

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A report entitled "Erased identity: Muslims in ethnically cleansed areas of the Central African Republic" was released by Amnesty International in the summer of 2015. The report documented the 'ethnic cleansing' and forcible conversion to Christianity of Muslims, with the findings claiming that those Muslims who would not convert were killed.

"Prayers are effectively banned, traditional Muslim clothing cannot be freely worn, and the reconstruction of mosques, an estimated 400 of which were destroyed across the country, is not allowed." - Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response officer, Amnesty International

More than 6,000 people have been killed since the crisis began and the rubble remains from torn down masjids as the anti-Balaka militia continue to roam the streets. The economically prospering Muslim communities of CAR have suffered greatly in this recent conflict and continue to be persecuted, as their identity is sought to wiped out and their presence in CAR removed by Christian and Animist militia. Many Christians also live in fear. Earlier this month it was revealed that at least four U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic allegedly paid girls in exchange for sex. The abuses took place at the mostly Christian M'poko camp home to 20,000 people, just yards from the airport runway in the countries capital, in this camp a prostitution ring run by boys and young men alleged to be anti-Balaka militia offered girls. Human Rights Watch also documented twenty five cases of sexual violence between September and December last year in and around the displacement camp. In several instances, Christian women were raped by members of the "anti-balaka" militia after being accused of interacting with Muslims. These aren't the only cases of sexual exploitation and abuse with the UN accused of 22 other incidents in the past 14 months.

Violence and abuse hasn't ended in the country, but due to the lasting effect of the recent conflict almost three years in, according to the World Food Programmehalf of the population in the mineral rich country faces hunger.

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"Conflict, violence and insecurity are huge factors in pushing communities into hunger. In the Central African Republic, farmers cannot work their fields and nearly one million people have been displaced from their homes. This affects food production and drives up the prices of what little food is still available on local markets, pushing millions over the brink." - Gregory Barrow, World Food Programme
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has named Former Chief of Army and equality advocate David Morrison AO the 2016 Australian of the Year.

The former Lieutenant-General Morrison was recognised for his work enforcing and promoting gender equality and diversity in the armed forces.

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Morrison made headlines in 2013 when he posted a public video message in response to the rife sexual abuse in the army, telling officers who were demeaning women to get out as the army would no longer tolerate it.

"They (female soldiers) are vital to us maintaining our capability now and into the future," he said.

"If that does not suit you then get out. You may find another employer where your attitude and behaviour is acceptable but I doubt it," Morrison said in the video which has gained more than 1.5 million views.

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Since leaving the army, Morrison has been appointed Chair of the Diversity Council Australia.

And the number of women joining the army has grown by two per cent since his video hit Youtube.

In his acceptance speech Morrison pledged to continue the work of Rosie Batty in campaigning against domestic violence.

"She has set a benchmark for us all, and the scourge of domestic violence, which faces us as one of our great social issues, won't be solved in a year. Maybe in 50 or 100 years but it is up to us in our lifetimes to do something about it and I look forward to contributing to her great work," said Morrison.

"The second area is diversity. And as the chair of the Diversity Council Australia, I know what we can do when we give everyone a fair go. But in a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism, I can't explain why there is a gender pay gap in this country between men and women across all professions of 17.8% and worse in many of the professions that we are all proud to be part of. That needs to end.

"And finally, and with great respect to those who don't share my views, and recognising our proud history of European settlement in this country and beyond, over 200 years and more, I will lend my voice to the republican movement in this country. It is time, I think, to at least revisit the question, so that we can stand both free and fully independent amongst the community of nations.

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"Thank you for placing so much trust in me. I look forward to being your Australian of the Year in 2016. God bless everybody."

Earlier:

Professor Gordian Fulde named Senior Australian Of The Year

Professor Gordian Fulde has been named Senior Australian Of The Year.

As Director of Emergency at St Vincents Hospital and Sydney Hospital for more than three decades, Professor Gordian Fulde is -- at 76-years-old -- the longest serving emergency department director in the country.

Professor Fulde also dedicates his time to educate young people about the dangers of binge drinking, and is a board member of the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation.

Appearing on Kings Cross ER occasionally, Professor Fulde has been at the forefront battling alcohol and drug fuelled violence, and not only uses this experience to help those coming through the emergency doors, but to help train staff working in the emergency department.

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Professor Fulde was heavily involved in campaigning for the lock out laws in Sydney's Kings Cross.

Accepting the award, Professor Fulde said:

"I'm overwhelmed. I'm still going to read this speech, because this is just - wow. I'm really blown away. Such an honour. Even to be nominated, I thank you. And really, as the young would say, OMG!

"And especially with all these fabulous finalists and so deserving, but serious part coming, it's really not about me. What it is about is us as a community. We do not want excess alcohol or drugs causing so much damage and devastation. We really do not need to be drunk and ugly or out of it to enjoy this fantastic country, Australia. In Australia, we really do look after our mates and each other.

"For over 40 years, I have seen and treated the carnage caused. It is preventable. It is unnecessary. The cost to the - of injury and despair to the individual, to the family, to the friends, to the community, even turning to Malcolm, the taxpayer is astronomical. It's all about saving well-being lirchs and souls. Some 25 nights ago, first time ever, New Year's Eve, Sydney, millions went out. They drank alcohol. They celebrated. But we had no death or no severe brain damage brought to Emergency. There were massive crowds. But society accepted, cooperated, not needing to be totally drunk, intock cased, aggressive, violent, to have a good time."

Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett named Young Australians of the Year

For the first time, two people have been jointly awarded Young Australian of the Year. And the historical award goes to Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett, the co-founders a free mobile laundry for the homeless.

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Creating Orange Sky Laundry in September 2014 with one van, two washing machines and two dryers, the 21-year-olds soon grew the business to six vans  each in a different city -- and more than 270 volunteers. They now wash over 350 loads of each week.

And to top it all off the pair are best friends.

Accepting the award, Patchett said:

"Nic and I are humbled and honoured to be the 2016 Young Australians of the Year, an award which reflects the tireless dedication of our 300-plus volunteers community and countless supporters from around Australia who we'd also like to send a massive thanks to. Every night, 105,000 Australians do not have a place to call home. They do not have a safe, quiet and particularly tonight, a dry place to sleep. They do not have a basic human right. Clean clothes and conversation. Orange Sky Laundry started as a simple idea from us two regular blokes from Brisbane. We wanted to wash and dry clothes for free. But after 70,000 kilos of washing, over 15,000 volunteering hours across six services in Australia, we realised it is so much more. We can restore respect, raise health standards, and be a catalyst for conversation."

Marchesi added:

"Last week, I was lucky enough to meet a new homeless friend, Grant. We washed and dried his clothes for free for the first time ever. As I passed Grant's laundry back to him, he told me something that I'll never forget. He said 'Nic, I haven't been able to have a conversation with anyone for over three days.' It's so crazy and humbling to think such a simple idea has had such a significant impact. This year, both Lucas and I are incredibly excited to continue expanding services to reach every one of those 105,000 Australians homeless tonight."

Dr Catherine Keenan named Australias Local Hero

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Dr Catherine Keenan has been named Australias Local Hero for her work as co-founder and executive director of the Sydney Story Factory, which helps students from Indigenous and non-english speaking backgrounds express themselves through the written word.

Trading in her career in journalism to establish the charitable business, Keenan is now helping thousands of students build confidence with all classes running free of charge.

Since 2012, Keenan has grown the volunteer base to 1,200 people with one-on-one and small group classes helping primary and high school students.

Accepting the award, Keenan said "telling stories is a fundamental part of being human."

"It's how we understand the world around us and how we convince others to work with us to change it.. It is also - and anyone who sat with a child will tell you this - a profoundly and often wildly creative act. Telling stories is the way we take the complicated emotions and weird spiralings of imagination inside us and give them shape and form. It is how we show who we are to the world. We know the huge benefits of helping young people tell their stories. We know it because a growing body of research demonstrates the many and varied benefits that accrue for young people. They are more likely to go on to tertiary education, they watch less TV, they are more likely to volunteer in their community. I have seen it time and again. When kids are able to tell their stories, they stand just that little bit taller."

By @mearesy: PM Malcolm Turnbull shields Local Hero winner Catherine Keenan from the storm #AustraliaDay#auspolpic.twitter.com/C5FJEjbG2J  Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) January 25, 2016

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull delivered the opening address on the lawns of Parliament House. After a brief fumble and dropping his speech, Turnbull recovered and remarked "well, it's very important to be agile in the year of innovation."
Fairfax Media

Former federal Greens leader and senator Bob Brown has reportedly been arrested in Tasmania, in connection to a long-running protest over logging operations in the north-west of the state.

Brown, who resigned from the senate in 2012, was said to have been arrested for participating in a protest at Lapoinya. The news was shared by the Bob Brown Foundation's Twitter account:

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Bob Brown has just been arrested at Lapoinya in NW Tas, site of community protests over logging. Being taken to Burnie Police stn. #politas  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 25, 2016

Lapoinya, a tiny town on the northern tip of the state, has been embroiled in a long-running conflict with logging companies over the proposed felling of forests in the area. The town, with a population of only a few hundred at the last national census in 2011, has been fighting the plans but logging was due to commence this month.

A spokesman for Brown's office confirmed the news to The Huffington Post Australia, saying Brown had been arrested about 11.45am.

"A few of the local community were arrested last week [for protesting] and Bob went up yesterday to support the community. He was on or near the site, and was snared by the police," spokesman Steven Chaffer said.

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Bob Brown charged under draconian anti-protest laws: defending forests, wildlife & community at Lapoinya. #politaspic.twitter.com/OaKjqCIpfS  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 25, 2016

Chaffer said a range of "draconian anti-protest laws" had recently been brought in by the Tasmanian government, which carried "very stiff sentences".

"But Bob is not the sort of person who would stop protesting just because there's a law not to," Chaffer laughed.

Brown has been vocal about the Lapoinya action online, posting several tweets about the logging and the protests.

Brave community of Lapoinya punished for stand against forest destruction. First arrest under harsh new laws won't be the last. #politas  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 19, 2016

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Tasmanian police confirmed the arrest in a media release on Monday afternoon.

"A 71 year old Cygnet man has today been arrested and charged after failing to comply with a police direction to leave a business access area to Lapoinya State Forest. A 67 year old Sisters Beach man was also arrested and charged after failing to comply

with a police direction to leave the business access area. Both people failed to comply with the direction and leave the business access area under s. 8(1) of the Workplaces [Protection from Protestors] Act 2014," a police statement read.

"The arrested people were transported to the Burnie Police Station, charged and bailed. Two other people today received a direction from police at the same time and will receive Police Infringement Notices."

"While the general demeanour of protests was peaceful, police will continue to monitor the situation and take action accordingly."
Written By Jotina Buck



In what ways are mass social change and transformational success really achieved? Is it by the ideas that are deeply ingrained tell us that money, power and influence are gained by way of sizing up and beating out our competitors? Or is it by joining forces as a united front with like-minded business owners to widen our stride and deepen our impact?

Traditional entrepreneurs would prefer the earlier while 21st century millennials are embracing the latter.

To be or not to be? Do we compete or do we collaborate?

It's a daunting question as everyone wants notoriety and icon status. Some are leery of collaboration because they feel threatened by others. The mindset associated with feeling threatened is what induces a competitiveness. As young children, we are taught to compete for everything and this has cultivated a win-lose mindset in every choice we make. In order for one to win someone has to lose. Many business owners have carried this same belief into their practices. Hence, it is natural to withhold information or fail to provide help if needed. Reality television and print media has duped us into thinking the keys to stardom, fame and rapid success are attained by tearing others down and racing to the top. With social media at our fingertips, we can document our lives moment by moment for thousands to see. This has created an endemic in our culture that steers us farther and farther from collaborative work because everyone wants to be or do the next best thing.

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Understand this simple truth, you can be the most vicious and dangerous threat to your business if you are unwilling to work with others.

Harry Truman once quoted, "There's no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets credit." This idea can only be embraced if one shifts their mindset. Young and social entrepreneurs are on the uprising and are rapidly injecting business sectors with images that yield to the power of collaboration.

Collaboration is not about losing your identity in someone else's purpose.

Collaboration is about:

1. abandoning your existing competitive mindset by deflating your ego;

2. opening your mind and getting comfortable with shared power; and

3. embracing the idea that every gift is an asset to the greater good and recognizing the value that you bring to the table.

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The Washington Post article on "Smart Leaders and The Power of Collaboration" suggests that, "Collaboration isn't about being best friends, or even necessarily liking everyone you're working with. It is about putting all and any baggage aside, bringing your best self to the table and focusing on the common goal."

After all, good business is built on support and innovation. What better way to support and co-create than through collaborative efforts. Someone anonymously quoted, "Alone we can go fast but together we can go FAR." How far do you want to go? You can only go as far as your biggest collaboration.

John Nicklos of Lead 360 often expresses, "It's time we move from networking to co-working"; and I'll add from competition to collaboration. Commit to being a part of something bigger than yourself.

Jotina is no stranger to loss, failure and hardship. Her story of losses and triumphs evokes change across the world as she is an International Speaker. She is trained in mind mapping, positive psychology, visioning and spiritual development. Her creative approaches to create change and produce sustainability are truly world class change agents.
I happened to be in Tunisia on the 14th of January, which not only marks the 5th anniversary of the Tunisian 2010 revolution; a date that sparked all the 2011 Arab countries' uprisings, but which also marks the 5th anniversary of interrogating my generation: the Arab Spring generation. Despite my excitement for visiting Tunis for the first time, the anniversary matter poured existential questions all over me; and the fact that I was in Tunis to take part in a two-weeks training course on Human Rights advocacy along with a number of participants from several Arab countries did not ease my troubled mind. "Has Tunis revolution achieved anything?" headlines of newspapers, TV programs, radio shows, etc asked on and on that day. "Has the Arab Spring achieved anything, for that matter?"

Traveling to Tunis felt like traveling to the starting point of the Arab Spring, the first chapter in the ongoing written novel of the 2011 uprisings. Tunis, where it all began. Part of me thinks that I owe this country a great deal of my political awareness, and another part laments: why did you let the genie out of the bottle, Tunis? why?

Even though I hold a belief that Tunisians made a great achievement with their revolution, e.i. avoiding to slip into a civil war or massive armed fights, the Tunisians I met during my stay, probably everyone I met, were not satisfied with the post-revolution changes. Lots of the old politician faces are still leading the system, marginalization of youth is still an issue, unemployment has become higher, the emergence of terrorist groups and lack of security worry most of the Tunisians, the implications of the several terrorist attacks witnessed in the country over the past 5 years have hit its economy so hard. The current riots in southern Tunisia are one of the latest examples of people's continuous anti-government sentiments and dissatisfaction of how the country is managed currently. Walking around the capital, seeing military trucks, police cars, etc filling the streets was a reminder of how things are on the edge in the country.

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"Tunis did great with its revolution. At least, you did not experience a war like many parts in the region following the uprisings in 2011," with a ridiculous simplification and with my traumatized brain by the war in Yemen, I tell a Tunisian friend.

"Change is a process. We started the change but that does not mean that everything will get changed immediately. The only aspect where we see some progress at is that we have a greater space for freedom of speech," replies (A)* my Tunisian friend. Freedom of speech is the pillar of all changes in all walks of life. Any change starts by expressing your thoughts, desires, fears, hopes, freely and without any fear of what can happen next to you after you uttered your words. I realized this once again while being in Tunis.

Unfortunately, a great deal of regression on freedom of speech is being seen in Egypt as it's witnessing the 5th anniversary of its 25Jan revolution on Monday. As I get texts on my phone the bad news that a teenage cousin of mine along with his father are in the process to be recruited by the Houthis in Sana'a to go and fight, my troubled mind again asks (S)*, my Egyptian human rights activist fellow at the training if their revolution did fail? Mind you, (S) had to change the route of her travel to Egypt from Tunis for security reasons, as the Egyptian government is having unprecedented paranoia and conducting massive arrests of young people. And instead of being bitter and all negative, her response astonishes me.

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"No. The revolutions did not fail. In fact, it is unfair to judge these revolutions in a holistic way. One must consider the contextual factors of each country. For instance, illiteracy is a key factor in comparing the different progress between the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. More importantly, we're dealing with dictatorships that lasted for 3 and 4 decades. How can anyone expect to fix the situation in a matter of 2 or 5 years!" in her crispy and confident Egyptian accent says (S).

I belong to a generation that will be remembered in history as not only a generation that amazed the world with initiating massive uprisings across the MENA region but also as a generation that its ability in making a revolution a successful one was constantly questioned. An email after another sent by journalists asking me to respond to the question, "did the revolutions fail?" make me wonder; that's not an innocent question. It's rather a statement; it is an accusation that my generation is to be blamed for wrongdoings.

I belong to this generation which took the first bullet for the next Arab generations. We have our moments of agony manifested in understanding violence is the current loudest language, in seeing our friends vanishing one after another to be forcefully ripped out of their youth to be spent behind bars, in understanding that warlords making exile our new home, in skipping years of youth that were supposed to be spent foolishly, in being incapable of starting a family, in constantly doubting the value of life, in struggling to not see our life as a chain of breaking news, and many other painful moments. And yet, we chose to resist because we began revolutions that next generations will thank us for. I joined Yemen's 2011 uprising and the Arab uprisings because of many reasons; one of them is because I thought that revolutions were a cool anarchy act. Today, struggling to see value in life in such bleak time is another cool anarchy act.
The NYS Allies for Public Education endorsed Dr. Betty Rosa for Chancellor of the NYS Board of Regents and Regent Beverly Ouderkirk for Vice Chancellor. Other educational advocacy groups supporting Rosa and Ouderkirk include Class Size Matters, Long Island Opt Out, New York BATS, MORE (Movement of Radical Educators), and Save Our Schools. Rosa, who represents the Bronx on the Board of Regents, would replace Merryl Tisch who is resigning when her current term is over. Vice Chancellor Anthony Bottar is also resigning in March. A career educator, Rosa worked in the N.Y.C. school system as a bilingual paraprofessional, teacher, reading coordinator, assistant principal, principal and district superintendent. Ouderkirk currently represents the North Country on the Board of Regents. She was a kindergarten and elementary school teacher and principal as well as a district superintendent.

The Board of Regents elects the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. The vote is scheduled for March while Tisch and Bottar are still on the Board and eligible to vote. NYS Allies for Public Education is calling on the Regents to postpone the vote to April when Tisch and Bottar's seats have been filled by other candidates.

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I announced my candidacy for Tisch's at-large seat, presented my program in a Huffington Post blog, and submitted my request for consideration to the State Assembly committee. If selected by the State Legislature, I pledge to support Rosa and Ouderkirk for the Regents' executive positions.

Dr. Rosa has been a consistent critic of Common Core, high-stakes testing, and other so-called educational reforms. She is suspicious of corporate donations that end of shaping educational policy and in 2013 she charged that Common Core program was based on incomplete and manipulated data "using false information to create a crisis." Rosa and Ouderkirk are both identified with a dissident minority on the Board of Regents that opposed using student scores on high-stakes standardized tests to evaluate teachers.

I recently received an email from a retired teacher objecting to my position opposed to metal detectors in schools and concerned about my potential appointment to the New York State Board of Regents. He wrote, "There really is no racism involved in protecting all students and nobody belongs in power who cannot comprehend that we must protect all students everywhere." He wants the metal detectors to remain.

I am not accusing teachers who support metal detectors in schools of being racists and I agree with the writer that society has to protect young people. But I do equating placing metal detectors in schools attended overwhelmingly by Black and Latino youth with racial profiling and illegal "stop-and-frisk" policies. By placing metal detectors in minority schools our society conveys to students that education officials see them as threats who cannot be trusted. I strongly object to this. It is also important to note that airports authorities screen everyone, not just selected individuals.

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Lonely Student

In the past couple of weeks, many college students have been returning to their campuses after about a six-week long break between semesters. After a semester filled with late night study sessions, never-ending reading assignments, and mandatory group assignments that cause overwhelming stress and frustration, long breaks between semesters are well deserved. Students can take time to recuperate between the grueling demands that college can bring.

These breaks also serve as spaces in time where college students can take advantage of some other college perks like short winter classes, study-abroad trips, and internships. Apart from these opportunities, most students go home to enjoy a never-ending supply of free laundry and home cooked meals.

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This sounds great... right?

But, what if students don't have a home?

This reality set in during the fall of my freshman year of college. At the end of the first semester, the dorm was shutting down for most of the winter break and I had to leave. This was a problem for me because, unlike most students, I could not return "home." I didn't have one. During my senior year of high school, I was deemed a "McKinney-Vento," or homeless, unaccompanied youth because I chose to escape verbal abuse in what would have considered my "home."

I never thought that being "homeless" in college would be an issue because I was planning on living on campus. I thought I had secured my living situation for the next four years when I submitted my housing deposit and enrollment forms. As a first-generation college student, I lacked the social capital in understanding that dorms closed for extended periods of time. Even if I was aware of this, I depended solely on financial aid to not only pay for my college tuition and fees, but also housing.

I didn't have enough money to even put a down-payment on a cell phone (which was required for a teenager without any credit), let alone get approved for an apartment. Even if I did, living on campus is often encouraged by institutions of higher education and is often associated with successful academic transitions to college.

So, where did I go?

During my freshman year I returned to live with the family that took me in during my senior year. During the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I worked at a summer camp that paid an unbearably low salary, but guaranteed free housing. Over the course of the following three years, I continued the trend of the housing shuffle, subletting friends' apartments, sleeping on couches, and so on before I was able to move into an off-campus apartment with a couple of friends (whose parents' could be guarantors) at the end of college. I found it interesting that, even amongst the other students on scholarships and financial aid, I was one of the very few students to remain in my college town over winter, spring, and summer breaks. At the time, I felt like I was the only one; but my story is one of many.

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In recent years, college access initiatives have increased in order to help underrepresented students attain a higher education. As a result, colleges are being pushed and challenged to meet the needs of the students with stories that capture the hearts of admissions officers across the United States. Stories like From Homeless to Harvard are inspirational and give credit to the idea that with hard-work and determination, anyone can attend the institution of their choosing and succeed. Institutions and organizations use stories like mine as "feel-good" narratives and bragging rights for successfully supporting low-income students. But what are institutions doing to support homeless students, or students like them, that because of uncontrollable circumstances cannot go home?

Thanks to organizations like National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, there is information that can help inform staff and leaders at these institutions about the issues that homeless college students face.

There have even been changes in federal legislation to help homeless students, like in 2008 when the FAFSA was changed to include unaccompanied youth as a pathway to prove an independent status. Furthermore, Senator Patty Murray is attempting to support homeless college students through federal legislation. These are steps in the right direction, but the problem still exists that some students will be kicked out of their dorms during breaks.
In Part I of this letter, I criticized the Open Hillel movement for claiming they are motivated by grandiose principles of "free speech," "critical inquiry," and "inclusivity," when it's plain that their proposal (to "open" campus Hillels to supporting the delegitimization and destruction of Israel) would only empower those who seek to damage Israel and alienate those Jewish students who actually feel Zionism is worth supporting. Anti-Israel activists already have plenty of campus resources at their disposal, and it's simply offensive to insist that Hillels become yet another source of such activism.

But leaving Hillel alone is not enough for the newly formed Academic Council of Open Hillel. These academics complain that Hillel's Standards of Partnership "narrowly circumscribe discourse about Israel-Palestine."

But Hillel's standards are hardly "narrow." They offer no restrictions whatsoever on individuals. The most ardently Israel-critical Jewish students and professors are welcome to participate in Hillel events, attend programs, and debate and defend their views to their hearts' contents. Hillel is inclusive of all Jewish students, as it should be.

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What Hillel's standards do restrict are the group partnerships and speakers it will host. But even these restrictions are minimal and reasonable. Hillel does not limit the many criticisms of Israeli policies people may want to make, and is entirely open to those who genuinely seek to improve Israel's policies through constructive criticism. It is merely off limits to those who seek, ultimately, to damage the state and destroy it. Hillel aims to be inclusive of, and a home to, all Jewish students, after all, including those who believe that Jews have the same right to self-determination that other peoples have. It therefore refuses to be a home to those who seek to destroy the one Jewish state in the world.

But apparently this irks Academic Council members such as Hasia Diner (New York University) and Aaron Hughes (University of Rochester), who support Open Hillel in the name of "free speech." Diner (for example) writes, "Jewish life on university campuses must reflect the openness to ideas which defines the academy." Her confusion here is a straightforward example of the fallacy of division taught in first-year logic classes. Simply put, norms which do and ought to apply to the whole (of a community, say) need not, and often should not, apply to the component parts.

To see why, consider the values of "multiculturalism" and "diversity," much endorsed by the academy in recent years. In all the hoopla almost nobody has noticed a tension in the way these values are endorsed. In order to have multiculturalism, you need a multiplicity of cultures. In order to have diversity, you need a multiplicity of distinct identities. And in order to have these multiplicities in any meaningful way, you need to have cultures and individuals whose primary values are not multiculturalism and diversity.

Those who value multiplicity and diversity, therefore, must also value those who focus on developing the distinct modes of life and perspectives that constitute that multiplicity. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latin Americans, Muslims, gays, transgendered, women, you name it: all of these groups dedicate resources to development of their modes of life and perspectives, and more power to them.

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Oh--and Jews too, of course.

Contra Diner, specifically Jewish life should not be governed by exactly the same values as academic life in general. You would never insist that the students in the African-American House on campus include white supremacist organizations amongst those with whom they partner, for the sake of "free speech." You would never insist that Muslim student groups embrace those who consider Islam to be the religion of terror, for the sake of "diversity." You would surely understand why many in the LGBQ center would resist an effort by religiously conservative gay students to bring in speakers who "correct" homosexuality through prayer, and you wouldn't insist they bring in these speakers for the sake of "inclusivity." The reason is that these "special interest" groups naturally and reasonably promote their unique or particular interests. The academy as a whole should have and support all these groups, for the sake of free speech and diversity, even the unpopular ones. But these groups, individually, have the right, and should have the right, to limit and define themselves as they see fit.

That is the essence of genuine free speech, critical inquiry, and inclusivity: the existence of many distinct voices and interests competing in the marketplace of ideas.

And what Israel-hostile campuses desperately need these days are more pro-Israel voices. If you want the academy to genuinely be a place of diversity and freedom of speech, a place where thoughtful and carefully conceived opinions battle in the marketplace of ideas, then you should want a place where pro-Israel voices can be nurtured. What Open Hillel seeks to do to the contrary is to dilute, weaken, and destroy one of the few natural places to cultivate the pro-Israel voice on campus. This will not increase genuine freedom of speech, which requires a multiplicity of voices, but suppress it. In the current campus atmosphere, it will drown out any contrary voice that resists the totalistic cry, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free."

To be clear, I am not endorsing isolating ourselves so that we never hear "the other side," and universities should be places where we hear from many sides. But pro-Israel students are already inundated with the "other side." Hence I think it imperative that Hillel remain an institution devoted, as its policies state, to "the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders" and "to provid[ing] every Jewish student with the opportunity to explore and build an enduring relationship with Israel." It is imperative for the sake of genuine free speech in the academy, and, contra Diner, for the genuine vitality of specifically Jewish life.

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Last week, former Governor Martin O'Malley began his town hall meeting at New England College by comparing his own debate performance to the tiny Who-ville residents in Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, where only one endearing elephant can hear them, no matter how loud they scream and shout.



O'Malley discussed why Clinton and Sanders had dominated the last debate. He explained that the moderators told the campaigns that 90 percent of the questions would go to the two frontrunners. O'Malley spoke about he had to fight his way into the conversation and then make his case in just the few seconds he had.

O'Malley told the sparse audience in Henniker, New Hampshire that his campaign was like a boat and the election was like a river, giving him little control where he could go. Unfortunately for O'Malley, he seems to have accidentally launched his rowboat among cruise ships.

When one questioner bemoaned the lack of debates, O'Malley took the chance to berate the Democratic National Committee for both limiting the number of debates and scheduling them far from primetime. Of the four so far, three have been over the weekends, two of which fell on Saturday nights. Much has been discussed about how minimizing the number of debates helps Hillary Clinton, but O'Malley went on to discuss how Bernie Sanders would not want to add debates because the current schedule helps to ensure a two-person race.

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I'll never forget the tears that fell from my niece's eyes when I told her that I had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. I was a child myself when she was born, so it goes without saying that she was my world. When the prognosis is bad, the people around you start to eulogize you without really knowing they are doing it. Having three small children and a 34% chance of survival is enough to rattle everyone. We don't always tell people what they mean to us unless the situation is dire, but it was during my struggle that my neice Adrienne decided to tell me that I had been her role model growing up. She followed the same career path as me, but quickly trumped me, by landing a job at Fox News in New York. She was a fearless, go-getter, and she made me so proud. As life often does send trials our way, 911 happened, and months later, she made a decision to move out west to work as a movie producer. At that time, I had no idea how much of an impact our love and adoration for each other would have.

Going through treatment for cancer was tough; I was devastated to lose my hair at such a young age, but all that seemed so small compare to losing my life. To make things worse, Hurricane Katrina hit my home town, and life would instantly become a lot more complicated. With the loss of some of our family homes, displacement, and even finding a hospital to get the next three doses of my chemotherapy, but honestly, the last thing I was concerned with was how I looked. The dilemma of finding something to cover my head was taxing. My crazy head of wild, curly hair was impossible to match and wigs were completely unflattering. The wigs I thought would be fun to wear, made me look like a different person, and I felt the eyes of people who knew me glaring at my appearance. I wanted to spend time with my children and research cures, but instead, I found myself running from department store to department store looking for suitable scarves. It wasn't long before I discovered all of the many problems with that. They were difficult to tie after surgeries,and my clothes had to match my one scarf. The worst part was that silk scarves don't stay in place, and found myself humiliated by the constant exposure of sections of my bald head. I suffered in silence, and just had to accept it. Through the miracle of a new drug I was cured, and life simply went on.

Then one fateful day, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. I knew I could not control what was happening to her, but I could try to control the struggle associated with the hair loss. Everything changed for our family again, as we were all thrust back into the world of cancer. We decided to take a 'cheer-up' trip out to see Adrienne in Los Angeles to shop for scarves. Just like five years before, shopping turned out to be a bust, and none of us could believe there was still not a simple solution to this problem. Over lunch, we imagined a better way, and even giggling over the suggested name of the idea...Chemo Beanies, but deep down, we knew first-hand, there was a need in the marketplace.



Unbeknownst to us back home, Adrienne got to work alone on the west coast. She spent endless hours getting a business degree in her living room, teaching herself how to incorporate, make logos, build websites, shoot product photography, master photoshop, and quickbooks. Not to mention, learning the ins-and-outs of manufacturing, shipping, exporting, sales, and inventory management. But most impressively, running up and down the streets of Los Angeles Fashion District, building relationships with suppliers that would allow Chemo Beanies to succeed, and she did all of this while pregnant!



Within weeks, she showed up in New Orleans with the early prototypes. When Danielle started wearing the beanies to chemo, everybody wanted one. After five years in business, both sisters have been cured, and Chemo Beanies are being distributed in over 800 wig shops, mastectomy boutiques, hospital gift shops, family pharmacies, and trendy gift stores around the globe. Impressively, Adrienne led our team while giving birth and raising two children who have also sacrificed a little piece of their stay-at-home mom for the greater good.



In 2013, Chemo Beanies was recognized by Chase Bank and awarded a Mission Main Street Grant. The acknowledgement by one of the largest banks in the world gave us even more confidence that we were on the right track. The capital allowed us to soar, but most importantly to us, it allowed us to streamline our manufacturing cost, and continue to keep the business right here in America.



Helping a loved one go through cancer is difficult in so many ways. When I think of my niece, Adrienne, I think of how she lived thousands of miles away, and did not have to go through this journey at all, but she did, for the love of her aunts, and now for every women in need.



There is a Harvard study that claims only 5% of start-ups succeed. Knowing that, it is even easier to be proud of my selfless, talented neice. We describe Chemo Beanies as a business born out of love and necessity, and in just five years, Adrienne's efforts have helped over one hundred thousand women with this simple idea brought to life. Staring at another through rose-colored glasses can bring out the best in people, and I cannot imagine a greater gift then watching my niece turn my lemons into lemonade!


Despite its achievements, the Paris Agreement is flawed: it considers energy, but not water. Without full consideration of water resources, climate policies and energy progress will fail to protect communities and foster sustainable development.

After politicians and legislators from 195 countries have returned home from the climate talks in Paris last December, they now seek to implement plans to curb climate change. If all parties enforce their commitments, the earth will warm by an estimated 2 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels.

The Paris agreement is viewed as a historic achievement that will ensure more vulnerable countries such as island nations are protected from a catastrophic future while global emissions levels are ambitiously reduced. Yet, others contend that the climate talks failed to find realistic solutions, such as imposing a fee on greenhouse gas emissions, and that it lacks sufficient enforcement.

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While the Paris talks highlighted the critical relationship between energy choices and climate change, it remains to be seen what impact these commitments will have on water resources.

In Paris, the presence of water groups was felt through their participation in debates and side agreements. The water organizations encouraged national climate adaptation plans to integrate water into governance frameworks. Additionally, over 300 water organizations created a Paris Pact to improve water management practices.

Despite these gains, the Paris agreement does not mention water and thus does not signal investments and technical support of water projects and assessments. Without such analysis, countries expose themselves to heightened water insecurity and undermine their ability to achieve lasting climate solutions to meet their Paris targets.

Water for all is one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals

With the onset of climate change, the water cycle is expected to shift. This may include altered precipitation patterns and type, thus changing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, and the degree of variability. Such uncertainty will put pressure on governments' ability to provide adequate services for their people and meet increasing resource demand from all sectors, including municipalities, agriculture, and industry.

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Just as the combat against climate change itself, ensuring water and sanitation for all is one of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which the international community agreed upon in last October.

By 2035, energy consumption is anticipated to increase by 35 percent globally, increasing water consumption by 85 percent. Annual freshwater withdrawals for energy, agriculture and municipal uses are outpacing supply and the natural recharge rate.

Already today, total freshwater use in some nations exceeds 100 percent of the renewable water resources because water is extracted from non-renewable aquifers or desalination plants. Withdrawal rates that exceed the natural replenishment rate threaten communities, ecosystems, and the long-term viability of agriculture and industry.

Israel uses 260 percent of its freshwater resources. Hungary and the Netherlands extract over 90 percent. The Bertelsmann Stiftung found that this puts these countries at the very bottom of the 34 OECD nations when it comes to meeting the UN's SDG on water, thus failing on a vital indicator of sustainable development.

By contrast, countries like Iceland and Norway tend to extract less than 1 percent of their renewable water resources. The United States uses about 17 percent, falling in the middle range in international comparison.

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One-third of the world's aquifers are severely stressed

As rivers, lakes and other surface water resources are stretched to meet demand, there is increasing reliance on groundwater resources. Approximately half of the world's population relies on groundwater as their potable water supply. Globally, the rate of groundwater extraction is rising by 3 percent annually.

Researchers found that water levels in 21 of the world's 37 major aquifers declined between 2003 and 2013. Thirteen, or one-third of the total aquifers, were classified as being "highly stressed," "extremely stressed," or "overstressed."

California, which is experiencing a historic drought, has highly stressed aquifers with more than 60 percent of the state's water supply using groundwater. As groundwater resources are exhausted, the water table falls, the costs of pumping increases as users search for water at greater depths.

In California, water-related electricity accounts for nearly 20 percent of the state's total electricity consumption, and farmers are now drilling up to 2,500 feet underground in search of new water supplies.

In California's Southern neighbor Mexico the water shortage has already been described as an issue of national security. Groundwater extraction from local aquifers provides more than 70 percent of the water needs of the Mexican population. Its use has transformed rural economies through improved crop productivity and diversification, but it is not sustainable. Overexploitation of the groundwater resources has resulted in land subsidence and widespread societal impacts.

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Falling energy costs might foster unsustainable use of groundwater supplies

As countries move forward to implement renewable technologies in the wake of the Paris talks, it will be vital to consider how energy costs affect groundwater pumping costs and influence which water resources are developed.

Mexico was one of the first economies to release its plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the lead up to Paris. The country is already on a good track here with production-based CO2 emissions being below 4 tons per capita - the lowest level of all industrialized nations.

Mexico will seek to develop its abundant solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy supplies to continue combating climate change. The expansion of renewable energy, however, will change energy pricing regimes.

Currently, steep energy costs, power rationing, inefficiencies in the power sector, and unreliable connections to electricity in many countries have a silver lining effect of restricting groundwater pumping or prohibiting development of certain groundwater supplies. Falling energy costs might encourage the unsustainable use of fragile and nonrenewable groundwater supplies if water management policies are not enacted alongside climate and energy reform efforts.

Climate change coupled with unsustainable water management can exacerbate already complicated scenarios. It is critical that politicians and resource managers devise creative solutions to manage groundwater use. Without full consideration of groundwater resources, climate policies and energy development will fail to protect communities and will lead to adverse outcomes.

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A Muslim girl waits on a subway platform for her train to arrive, Oct. 8, 2015 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Slate's Alvaro Bedoya published an article chronicling how the civil rights leader had been systematically surveilled, harassed and threatened by the United States government:

Even though [King's] an American citizen, he's placed on a watchlist to be summarily detained in the event of a national emergency. Of all similar suspects, the head of FBI domestic intelligence thinks he's "the most dangerous," at least "from the standpoint of ... national security."



Bedoya goes on to list the other leaders of color in the United States who have been subject to surveillance and suspicion at the hands of U.S. government agencies over the last 60 years, including American Muslims, especially since September 11. Bedoya reaches a disturbing, if not surprising, conclusion about the state of this country's surveillance program:

If you name a prominent civil rights leader of the 20th or 21st centuries, chances are strong that he or she was surveilled in the name of national security... Across our history and to this day, people of color have been the disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance.



Unfortunately, the federal government has doubled down on broad surveillance (and harassment) of marginalized communities in the wake of 9/11. Most notably, the government has deputized untrained civilians to further their surveillance reach through the now ubiquitous "See Something, Say Something" ad campaign. This desire by the government to cast a wider net to identify and respond to "suspicious behavior" has only heightened the risk of unfair and unjust targeting of marginalized individuals.

Started in 2003, as a campaign by the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority costing around $2-3 million per year (mostly paid for through federal government grants), the patented slogan "See Something, Say Something" has now been used by more than 50 agencies in the United States, and is even in use in Canada and Australia.

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Apparently the task of identifying national security threats now falls on all of our shoulders. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be very good at it. Experience has shown that this crowd-sourcing of surveillance ensures that it is not behavior or activity that is identified as suspicious, but rather skin color, religious markers, language, and other signs of difference. Individuals and families are coded as suspicious regardless of their activity. It's stereotypes passing as national security policy.

In the same vein, Think Progress' Jack Jenkins examines how "anti-Muslim profiling at airports goes beyond TSA." Jenkins provides some recent examples of air travelers acting as extensions of the government's surveillance programs by alerting authorities to individuals who made them "uneasy" or were "acting suspicious."

But the truth is, not all "suspicious" activity is created equal. And in the calculus of protecting national security, the costs of following up on these alleged threats must be included as a part of the overall equation. Unfortunately, that cost is rarely, if ever, factored into the decision-making, as Jenkins points out, "many airline protocols appear oriented toward responding to passengers who complain -- not those affected by the complaints."

This is a country that struggles with its racist history and the continued impact of racism on policies and culture today. The very idea of asking people explicitly and implicitly impacted by those racist and bigoted norms to be the country's first defense system is alarming. "Suspicious activity" becomes a code word for anything outside the accepted norm, and by participating in this charade of "addressing security threats," the U.S. government further perpetrates the cycle of oppression of those outside the dominant [read: white] culture.
And Communications App 'Telegram' is Offering a Helping Hand

A few years ago, our band KIOSK - which is banned from performing in Iran - was invited to perform at a festival in Germany. At the time, the festival's organizer was involved in various cultural exchange programs with Iran. He told me that during one of his trips to my homeland, he brought up the idea of hosting a festival in Europe on contemporary Middle Eastern music with the participation of an official from the Iranian Ministry of Culture. The official asked the organizer if the festival would feature bands based outside of Iran as a way of determining whether music that is not "approved" by Iranian authorities would be played. When the organizer said yes that indeed, he was planning to invite KIOSK, the Iranian official replied that the ministry forbids any musicians from Iran from participating in such a festival.

At first, the German organizer entertained the idea of excluding KIOSK from the European festival, but as he thought about it more, decided against it. He could not understand how an authority from the Iranian regime in Tehran could impose his country's values and regulations on a festival that is not even being held in his country? The festival was being held in Germany and was being funded by Germany - where freedom of speech is respected and upheld.

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Sadly, this is but one example of the Iranian government trying to impose its values beyond its borders. The government forces visiting female members of foreign delegations to wear "Hijab," arguing that it is the law of the land and that no visitor is an exception. At the same time, Iranian film makers and actors, scholars or artists who are invited to festivals and events outside Iran are monitored by the government and can get in trouble upon their return if they are not dressed "properly according to Iranian laws." They can even be banned from working for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex when they go on stage to receive a prize for their work or to give a speech.

In a recent incident, the Iranian authorities insisted that the French government should not serve wine at the reception dinner they were planning in honor of Mr. Rouhani's visit to France. When the French refused to comply, the Iranians had a solution: cancel the dinner and have breakfast instead! Again, Iranian authorities were trying to impose their laws and regulations on sovereign territory where they have no jurisdiction.

Last week, the Iranian Secretary of Communication announced that Telegram, a messaging app that is popular among Iranians, has agreed to hire Iranian agents to monitor content, looking for possible "immoral" conversations. There was no clear definition as to what officials deemed to be immoral, a designation that puts many Iranians at risk. Iranians already live in a state of fear. Recently, a cartoonist was sentenced to prison because she shook her lawyer's hand in the courtroom. What will happen when someone posts to Telegram a cartoon or comment that is critical of the Iranian government? Is that for Telegram to report? The company isn't even based or run in Iran; it is based in Russia. How far of a reach will such companies allow Iran to have?

Ever since the 1979 revolution in Iran, the idea of "exporting the revolution" has been a fantasy for Iranian officials. But how elusive of a fantasy is it really? It now seems that Iran is able to exert more control over the private lives of Iranian citizens inside Iran and is somehow being allowed by the international community to do so. In light of such clear violation of civil liberties, the reactions of those in dealings with Iran and those of individuals living in free societies will have a world of impact on the lives of Iranians inside Iran. It will also show the rest of the world what they really stand for, liberty or profit.

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Show your support against Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: https://www.movements.org/market/1804
Another Perspective

Special to the Des Moines Register.

Des Moines Register, January 25

Tonight in Des Moines, one week before the Iowa Caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party and Drake University will co-host a CNN Town Hall. The three participants are perennial presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, straight man Martin O'Malley, and life-long Marxist Bernie Sanders.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Andy McGuire said Democrats are honored to showcase "our fantastic candidates." McGuire sharply rebuked Ted Cruz for being a Republican and praised "New York values." McGuire also noted that Iowa Democrats, according to this newspaper's poll, feel the number one issue in the state is the lack of diversity in the Academy Awards. McGuire expressed hope that CNN panelists tonight would not be diverted toward "phony issues" like the slow economic recovery over the last seven years or the resurgence of Iran amidst the meltdown in the Middle East.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson agreed and praised McGuire's leadership of the party, but he has said in the past that the Iowa Democratic caucuses should be outlawed because of insufficient black participation. "Any state with fewer than 5 percent African-American population should not be allowed any impact."

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"Gee, the caucuses are, for me and we and he, an anomaly, you see, let us be, or pay a fee and provide a key," summarized Jackson. Attacking Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz for citing Dr. Seuss during a Senate filibuster September 25, 2013 against Obamacare, Jackson also criticized Seuss for plagiarizing Jackson's own speaking style.

Jackson has praised Iowa in the past. Jackson's son, former U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), convicted of fraud, served 23 months in federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Jackson is on record as having urged the Bureau of Prisons to allow his son to report to a halfway house in Iowa. Instead, Jesse Jr. served the final part of his sentence at a Baltimore halfway house that Rev. Jackson said was in a dangerous neighborhood.

But Jackson had high praise for the leadership of the Iowa Democratic Party and praised its outreach to gay, black Muslim teens from Yemen, a program he hopes will be a model for the nation. "We don't take a Muslim on a whim, or a gay in May, or a teen not mean, from Yemen, when?" exclaimed Jackson, who said wandering Yemenites, persecuted for their sexual orientation, deserved a new start in Iowa. "These boys are here to pursue the American dream," explained Jackson. "They pose no threat, except to the few orthodox homophobic Jews in Iowa who wear provocative black outfits on Saturday, and we can't let these few Hymies take over from the evangelical majority."

"Iowa is defamed as the state of evangelicals," Democratic State Chair Andy McGuire conceded. "We are proudly the state of ethanol. And we cherish diversity. Although I am happy as a woman, I will consider hormonal supplements and supplemental sex change surgery if that's what it takes to demonstrate our party's solidarity with transgendered African-Americans."

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McGuire, long-time president of Meridian Health plan of Iowa, praised "Obamacare." Asked to comment on gender gap polls showing male Democrats favoring Sanders over Clinton by a wide margin, McGuire answered without hesitation: "If you like your penis, you can keep your penis."

Born Andrea, Andy McGuire ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor but said she promised party activists she would serve as party chairman for at least two years, and in her current gender, before running for Congress. But she explained she never made a commitment to stay white.

"I'm a doctor. I'm a mother of seven. I'm a business executive, an M.D. and an M.B.A. who can multi-task," McGuire said. "And it's a canard that Iowa is a white state. It's a blue state."

McGuire said the outcome of the caucuses next Monday would be determined by the growing number of blacks in Iowa. "Sanders is for free college for everyone, and his message is resonating across the board. Hillary needs to come out for reparations. Black Dollars Matter."

The local movie theater four years ago stopped showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show each Saturday at midnight. Instead, starting on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2011, after demonstrations led by Al Sharpton, the theater began showing installments of Alex Haley's Roots. White people arrive dressed as characters in Alex Haley's novel. For the sake of racial progress, blacks see Roots at an earlier Saturday matinee.

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"I have seen the entire Roots fourteen times and I now consider myself African-American," said McGuire. McGuire said civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal, head of the Spokane NAACP, inspired her to convert to African-Americanism because, she said, Iowa needs more black faces.

Donald Trump, campaigning in Iowa three days ago, said no one with McGuire's face should chair a political party. Asked by a reporter for this newspaper if his comment were sexist, Trump said, "I never said she had the face of a loser, only that she did not have the face of a party leader. Andy McGuire has a beautiful face."

While not officially taking sides in the presidential primary, McGuire faulted Bernie Sanders for running a television spot in Iowa that features only white people. Noting that the Sanders ad showed 30 people, and that Iowa is 2.9 percent black, McGuire said, "Social justice required precisely one black."

Party officials are considering sanctions against Sanders for the ad. BleedingHeartland.com has been concerned that McGuire, who chaired Hillary's 2008 campaign in the state, is manipulating the party against Sanders. McGuire has a license plate that reads "HRC 2016." Hillary no longer uses her maiden name Rodham, so McGuire is painting white paint over the "R."

"This is more than an issue of race," McGuire said. "Jews are only 0.2 percent of Iowa's population," noted McGuire "Yet, two of the 30 people in Bernie's ads are Jewish, based on their surnames." McGuire also noted that Michigan Democrats will be presenting a resolution at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to protest the Jewish-to-Muslim ratio of Nobel Prize winners.

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The controversial Sanders ad also has drawn criticism from David Brock, Hillary's onetime nemesis. After a lucrative career as an investigative journalist attacking Hillary, Brock experienced an epiphany and began a new lucrative career defending Hillary. Brock, who founded Hillary's SuperPAC, termed the Sanders ad "bizarre" and a "significant slight to the Democratic base."

"From this ad, it seems black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders," concluded Brock, who said Iowa Democrats want more Syrian refugees.

"If we don't support President Obama's plans for more Syrian refugees, you're going to see more Iowa Democratic women wearing burkas as a show of support for Muslims," party chair Andy McGuire said. "As Hillary has so eloquently stated, the future does not belong to those who defame Muslim women because of the way they dress."

McGuire, who received her medical degree from Creighton University School of Medicine, said running again for public office is not her only option. "I have an MBA from Kennesaw State. It may not be the Wharton School like Donald Trump, but, as Donald Trump concedes, I am not a loser. I could apply my business background. Each year I have been active in Planned Parenthood, we have raised the number of abortions."

The Prairie Meadows Casino and Racetrack in Altoona, a nonprofit organization, provides $100,000 each year to Planned Parenthood, and McGuire -- who has chaired the Prairie Meadows Grants Committee, takes credit. But a spokesman for Bernie Sanders said, "$100,000 is not that much because Prairie Meadows gave the Des Moines Social Club $250,000 just to put on a play called 'Cock.'"

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The abrupt addition of tonight's Town Hall had caught Iowa's NPR reporters by surprise. Two weeks after Donald Trump announced its candidacy, NPR Iowa was still predicting he would not run.

"Tonight's prime time town hall will give Democrats an opportunity to ask tough questions of Bernie Sanders," noted Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who added, "Some Democrats say Sanders at the top of the ticket would be a disaster." But she then acknowledged the potential of Sanders to increase the voter turnout of the silent majority of Marxists.

Wasserman Schultz adamantly denied she was a backer of Hillary Clinton.

"The fact that the Clinton Foundation is providing a college scholarship for one of my children is a red herring," Wasserman Schultz insisted, denying that she had limited the original schedule to only six debates, typically on weekends to under-expose Sanders, and now Hillary is running scared. "I resent any suggestion that tonight's town hall is a last ditch attempt to screw Sanders."

Wasserman Schultz is descended from the family of August Paul von Wassermann, who in 1906 developed the antibody test for syphilis, popularized as the "Wassermann test." Her granduncle August dropped the second "n" in September 1939 to sound less Jewish. Wasserman Schultz said that if the Democrats hold on to the White House and elect a majority to both houses of Congress, she would add back the extra "n" in her middle name. The Wasserman Test has been rejected as "Zionist" by Shite Muslims, but many Sunnis allow use of the test if required by Angela Merkel.

Wassermann studied under the pioneering German microbiologist Robert Heinrich Herman Koch at the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin. Wasserman Schultz denied that Charles and David Koch are related to her granduncle's mentor, R.H.H. Koch. "This is a recurring smear by Valerie Jarrett who has been trying to remove me as DNC chair from day one."

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Last week in California, Chuck Reed and Carl DeMaio announced that they would no longer move forward with a measure to gut retirement security for hundreds of thousands of hard-working California firefighters, nurses, and social workers. Their stated reason for postponing the measure until 2018 is laughable.

The fact is, on all fronts, they lack support to move a measure attacking public employee pensions.

But, they tried hard.

Reed and DeMaio drafted three different versions of anti-pension ballot measures in hopes of finding one that would resonate with voters. No matter how much they tinkered with language, however, the public was not buying what they were selling. Public polling from Capital and Main in December 2015 showed that two of the measures would garner 40 and 42 percent of the vote. Reed and DeMaio are at least smart enough to bow out of a fight they cannot win.

Right-wing, anti-pension ideologues who have bankrolled similar efforts in other states were also unwilling to fund the efforts this time around. John Arnold, the Houston-based, former-Enron billionaire who has spent more than $50 million attacking pensions across the country, did not jump on board to fund the Reed/DeMaio efforts this year. In 2014, Arnold gave more than $1 million in support of a measure to move city of Phoenix employees into a risky 401(k)-style system. With $1.43 million total spent on the measure, Arnold was the major funder.

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Voters overwhelmingly rejected the Arnold-backed measure.

In Phoenix, as in California in 2005 and 2012, voters have endorsed pensions as the best way to provide retirement security for firefighters, police officers, nurses, and other public employees. These workers contribute a portion of every paycheck to their pension, and in many states are not eligible for Social Security benefits; they rely on pensions as their main source of income in retirement. California lawmakers have also recognized the need to expand retirement security for six million Californians with no retirement plan offered through their employer. While a broad coalition of lawmakers, faith groups, and social justice organizations fight to expand retirement security, Reed and DeMaio continue their attacks.

In 2014, Reed abandoned a similar measure due to inadequate financial backing. A 2012 attempt from other individuals also failed due to "difficulty raising the funds needed to gather qualifying signatures." That begs the question: who does actually want to gut retirement security of public employees other than a handful of California elites whose political careers have otherwise been a failure.

As mayor of San Jose, Reed pushed Measure B, which cut retirement and health benefits for current and future public employees. Police officers and firefighters sued and Reed lost in court. Recently, the new mayor of San Jose worked with public employees to strike a deal that was agreeable to all sides. This new agreement on pensions in San Jose undoes the most painful cuts of Reed's Measure B. Reed's efforts have been rejected by the courts and his statewide grandstanding against teachers, firefighters, and police officers has been rejected by the electorate, as the 2016 story shows.

DeMaio's track record is no better. While on City Council in San Diego, he supported a measure to shift city employees there into a 401(k)-style system. The State Public Employment Relations Board has since ordered the city to rescind the changes. After serving his single term on the San Diego City Council, DeMaio ran for Mayor in 2012. And lost. He then ran for Congress in 2014. And lost.

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Xi Jinping is known for a lot of things, but tightrope walking is not one of them. This week however he has embarked on a tour of the Middle East that has seen him stop in both Saudi Arabia and Iran, thus forcing him into a delicate balancing act as the two nations lock horns in their worst conflict in a decade.

Both nations are key oil suppliers to China and are crucial to Xi's core policy, the One Belt One Road development plan. This plan sees China investing in mass infrastructure projects, both land and sea, to link China with Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Saudi Arabia suspended diplomatic relations with Iran at the start of January. The rift was sparked after the Saudis executed top Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, alongside 47 others, for terrorism offences. This ignited protests in Iran that saw Molotov cocktails thrown at the Saudi embassy. Protestors cheered and ransacked the building as it burnt to the ground.

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January's events are merely symptoms of a deeper malaise that stems from the differing strands of Islam practiced in the respective countries. The Saudis are Sunni Muslims while Iran is the largest predominantly Shia nation in the Middle East. Both nations are fighting proxy wars against each other in theatres throughout the region. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia is fighting against Houthi rebels, who are allied with Iran. In Syria, Saudi Arabia is pushing for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Tehran. The suspension of diplomatic relations between the two nations means these battles are likely to only become more intractable.

China is the largest importer of crude from both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Chinese oil demand however is slowing. According to figures released this week Chinese total oil demand is set to grow about 3% this year, or 300,000 barrels a day, compared with around 5% growth in 2015.

China also appears to be diversifying supplies away from Saudi Arabia. Imports of Saudi Arabian crude by China rose just 2% in the first 11 months last year, compared with overall Chinese import growth of about 9%. Imports from Russia meanwhile jumped nearly 30%. Russia is China's second largest oil supplier.

This is not to say that China is going cold turkey on Saudi crude. More worryingly for Saudi however is Iran's commitment to start producing 500,000 barrels of crude a day. China is likely to be one of the primary recipients of this new oil coming on stream. China is at least partially responsible for the nuclear deal that has allowed Iran to step out from under the heavy yoke of crippling sanctions. Xi hopes to leverage this and previous warm relations with the nation to secure lucrative contracts going forward.

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This will not sit well with the Saudis. It has always been China's avowed policy to put business first and not to interfere with the internal politics of sovereign nations. This is what has allowed China to become the top trading partner to unsavory regimes such as Jose Eduardo dos Santos's Angola and Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

For the Saudis China's claim that business is business is likely to wear thin if the contracts substantially bolster Iran. China and Iran are more closely aligned politically. China tacitly supports Russia and Iran's pro-Assad position in Syria, to which Saudi Arabia is diametrically opposed.

China is also likely to see Iran as a useful bulwark against the radical whabbism that underpins ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism worldwide. China has recently felt ISIS's sting, with the summary execution of Fan Jinghui and with three Chinese managers dying among the hostages in the Mali attacks. China has also seen an upsurge in violence in the restive province of Xinjiang from Uighur militants aligning themselves closer to global whabbism.

It is likely therefore that a result of these talks, whether now or in the medium term, will be to closer align Tehran to Beijing. Tehran has a vested interest in stabilizing Central Asia. This plays into Beijing's strategic aims in the region. Beijing shares borders with a number of Central Asian nations, including Afghanistan, and is intensely focused on ensuring that Islamic fundamentalism can be contained and not infect China through Xinjiang. It would not be surprising therefore if Iran were to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group of Central Asian nations and Russia, focused on ensuring security throughout the region.

The One Belt One Road initiative will only be successful if Central Asia can develop and stabilize. Iran has a much bigger hand to play in this than Saudi Arabia. It will be ever harder therefore for China to remain neutral between these two parties.

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Aside from raising diplomatic heckles, China recently caused a stir when it announced plans to build a base in the East African nation of Djibouti. On November 26, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry sought to downplay the strategic significance of the move. "In accordance with relevant UN resolutions," explained spokesman Hong Lei, "China has deployed more than 60 vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast in 21 [anti-piracy] escort missions since 2008. In the process of escorting, we encountered real difficulties in replenishing soldiers and resupplying fuel and food, and found it really necessary to have nearby and efficient logistical support."

This sentiment was not shared by US AFRICOM commander Gen. David Rodriguez, who told The Hill that the "logistics hub" and airfield would let China "extend their reach" into Africa. The base, whatever its purposes, will provide China with a means to protect oil imports from the Middle East that traverse the Indian Ocean and provide China greater access to the Arabian Peninsula.

Shen Dingli, professor of International Relations at Shanghai's prestigious Fudan University, stated "The United States has been expanding its business all around the world and sending its military away to protect those interests for 150 years. Now, what the United States has done in the past, China will do again." For Mr. Shen, the building of bases is commensurate with China's increasing stature as a world power.

The base in Djibouti and the diplomatic travails that Xi is undertaking this week are symbolic of a wider shift in Chinese foreign policy. Previously China operated under the rubric of ensuring stable borders, having a foot in Asia, and facing the world (). This policy does not chime with the increasingly global China we see today.

China is the main export partner of 43 nations. In Africa there are now over one million Chinese living and working. As China's global footprint extends it becomes increasingly vulnerable. The evacuation of 83 Chinese and Sri Lankan nationals from Yemen earlier this year was emblematic of China's increasing exposure to threats overseas. Chinese workers have been killed in Zambia and have been taken hostage in Nigeria.

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Baga lies deserted. A year ago the town, on the banks of Lake Chad, was home to nearly 300,000 people. Today fewer than a thousand remain after attacks last January by Boko Haram. Amnesty International estimated that 2,000 people were killed and most of the town was burnt to the ground.

According to the Global Terrorism Index the world's deadliest terror group is not ISIS. That dubious crown instead belongs to Nigeria' Boko Haram. The data shows that in 2014 Boko Haram was responsible for 453 incidents of terrorism that took 6,654 lives. ISIS was more prolific, engaging in 1,071 incidents of terrorism, but with a lower death toll of 6,073 people. Boko Haram also targets more civilians than ISIS; 77% of deaths at the hands of Boko Haram were civilians, compared with 44% of ISIS's victims. Why is it then that we don't hear anywhere near as much about Boko Haram as we do about ISIS?

Boko Haram and ISIS are similar groups. They are both radical Islamist movements that have managed to seize territory and establish caliphates in their respective regions, though recently Boko Haram's territory has been somewhat undermined. They are both primarily insurgencies-i.e. violent non-state actors who launch coordinated attacks against targets with the intention of toppling the state and establishing their own government. They both adopt terrorism as a tactic to further those aims. They also show an affinity for one another, though it would be overreaching to say they collaborate. ISIS accepted a pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in March, daubing the area of northern Nigeria under Boko Haram's control the "Islamic State's West Africa Province"

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However it is the differences between these two groups that are fundamentally altering the coverage they are receiving. The first is that ISIS has a much more ruthlessly effective propaganda machine. Operating across multiple platforms, including all the most popular forms of western social media, ISIS has been able to guarantee a constant stream of media coverage. The media-savvy nature of ISIS has compelled the world to look and report on it. Boko Haram does not have the technical knowledge, or the capacity -- much of the Boko Haram controlled area in northern Nigeria is without Internet and only garners patchy cell phone reception.

This compounds another of the reasons for the paucity of coverage of Boko Haram; there simply aren't enough eyes on the ground reporting it. Boko Haram has been extremely effective at keeping journalists out and thus they are forced to report from Lagos or other cities at significant remove and almost exclusively through second-hand reports.

There is also unwillingness within Nigeria to cover Boko Haram properly. In January of last year, at almost exactly the same time as the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, Baga was razed. With the death toll at 2,000 it was 2015's deadliest terrorist attack globally, let alone within Nigeria. Yet the President at the time, Goodluck Jonathan, did not even acknowledge an attack took place. He took to Twitter to express his condolences to those who had lost their lives in France, but failed to mention the exponentially larger bloodshed that had occurred in his own country.

This was a political consideration. Many politicians in Nigeria simply do not want to admit how bad the situation is lest it reflect on their chances for re-election. The Baga attack came just a few weeks before the general election, though ignoring it didn't change Goodluck Jonathan's fate. He lost to Muhammadu Buhari -- the first time in Nigerian history that an incumbent President failed to retain power.

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Aside from the difficulty of reporting and the systemic reluctance to engage with the scale of the problem within the Nigerian establishment, there is also the fact that there is little outside penetration into Boko Haram. ISIS is exceptionally good at recruiting foreign fighters to its cause-largely a function of its exceptional propaganda machine. These foreign fighters post to social media and give us glimpses of life inside the Islamic State. When they return journalists easily track them down. Many, who were unprepared for the cruel reality of the Islamic State and have fled, actively seek outlets for their stories.

Boko Haram is yet to become a magnet for foreign fighters. It has also been unable to export terrorism farther afield to sweep the media spotlight. While Boko Haram is an international threat, and regularly carries out attacks in neighbouring countries such as Chad, Niger and Cameroon, beyond sub-Saharan Africa it has never managed to execute a terrorist attack.

ISIS on the other hand has switched up its tactics in 2015 by brutally committing terrorist attacks against western and other foreign targets. Aside from the Paris attacks, it was responsible for the downing of a Russian airliner, killing 224 over Egypt. The shooters in San Bernardino reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS, as did attackers recently in Istanbul and Jakarta. This strategic shift has forced the world to look squarely at ISIS and has allowed us to lose sight of Boko Haram and the quagmire that is northern Nigeria.
In this photo made Monday, Dec. 22, 2014, a well pump works at sunset on a farm near Sweetwater, Texas. At the heart of the Cline, a shale formation once thought to hold more oil than Saudi Arabia, Sweetwater is bracing for layoffs and budget cuts, anxious as oil prices fall and its largest investors pull back. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Co-authored by Doug Woodring

The disruptive innovation of fracking followed by the collapse in crude oil prices gives the world a surprise opportunity for investment in clean energy. One we better seize if we are to meet the carbon reduction goals reached in Paris last month at the UN COP21 Climate Change Conference.

The old school of thought was that only high oil prices made renewable energy more competitive - even with a decidedly uneven playing field - renewables have had to compete with over US$650 billion in global oil industry subsidies.

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But with Big Oil hemorrhaging at the wells and laying off large numbers of staff, countries should be less inclined to keep those unnatural levels of subsidies intact, and reallocate spending to long-needed clean energy infrastructure and services.

Crude oil is precariously selling below US$30 a barrel, creating the chance of a lifetime for a decisive shift of energy investment dollars.

The writing is also on the wall with oil large companies having less shareholder support, resources, or the will to make new investments in increasingly expensive and controversial wells. The smart money has to shift to long-term investments in clean energy, especially if countries intend to meet the ambitious carbon mitigation commitments they made at COP21 - to keep global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

But the other significant factor which drove the shift is fracking.



Fracking is the ability to extract - with relative ease - gas from shale in previously unreachable locations and quantities. Fracking gets heavily pushed by the U.S government as the ideal compliment to renewable energy. Because unlike carbon spewing coal-fired power plants that run continuously, natural gas fired plants can be turned off and on as energy is needed - at night when there's no more solar or during periods of low wind and turbines stand idle.

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Fracking occurs in upwards of 22 U.S states. Photo credit: Paul Horn, Inside Climate News, 1/15/2015

Environmental groups don't like the potential methane emissions and compromised water quality impacts of fracking, but there is actually a silver lining.

Fracking pulled the rug out from under the feet of large oil industry incumbents, with a multitude of smaller players getting in on the production and supply bonanza. Big Oil's monopoly began to shift.

Then fracking found itself on shaky ground as prices for propane - a natural gas liquid produced during the process - fell along with crude oil. This added to the natural gas glut because of over zealous production, and then decreased demand due to initial warm U.S winter temperatures has meant the fracking players - both big and small - are also shutting up shop. So, where will the money go?

To clean energy.

Because there's no turning back global will, societal pressure and of course innovation. The scaled advances in solar, wind and other clean technologies, will bring renewable energy prices down even further, while take-up rates and installations escalate.

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The Ivanpah Project is the world's largest operational solar thermal power plant - providing power to 140,000 homes and located in California's Mojave Desert. Photo courtesy of California Energy Commission

We've seen the rapid growth of electric vehicles and battery capacity through the likes of Tesla and Panasonic, the boom of megacities where car use will decrease, and agreements within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that reduce tariffs on clean technology equipment between members, while aiming to double renewable energy generation by 2030.

The assumption was that low oil prices would kill off new innovations.

Not this time.

It only takes a year or two for innovation and scale to take root, and with all the other factors falling into place, this is the time for renewables to truly take off.

Even the World Economic Forum while talking about the fourth industrial revolution hasn't factored in this development yet - the end of oil as we know it!
Once in a great while, an artist comes along whose work is so distinctive, so unusual, so imaginative, and so colorful that it stands out from the crowd, much like a peacock stands out in a colony of penguins. Elizabeth St. Hilaire is such an artist.

I have seen thousands of works of art over the years - in galleries, museums, art shows, hotels, and in private collectors' homes - but I've never seen art like Elizabeth's. Who creates fabulous flamingos, pretty pigs, darling donkeys, colorful Koi, delightful Dalmatians, and charming chickens - all out of bits of torn painted paper? No one. Elizabeth is one-of-a-kind. Her work, both in style and method, is uniquely hers.

It was her signature bird - the peacock - that first caught my eye. A friend had emailed an image of Peter Peacock, a large collage painting on display in a gallery in Sedona. I've seen many peacocks over the years, but never seen a one quite like the one that Beth created with paint and collage.

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I had to learn more about the fabulous artist who could create such a powerful peacock image, so I tracked down her web site, made contact and asked to interview her.

BJG: I've enjoyed looking at, and often buying, art over the years but I'd never seen torn paper paintings until I discovered your wonderful work. Is this an artistic medium that you invented? Are there others who do what you do? Tell me how you came to "paint" with torn paper.

Elizabeth St. Hilaire: I have a Bachelor's in Fine Art from Syracuse University; I graduated with honors in 1990. When I was a student, realism was considered the mark of a good artist. So I spent hours and hours drawing what I saw - looking closely, rendering accurately. My professors demanded traditional media, recognizable subject matter, and tried-and-true techniques. Drawing is the foundation of art as ballet is the foundation of dance, so a classically trained artist must start with lots of drawing. This I understood.

But over time I began to realize that I was creating work that I personally did not love - or even like. I wanted to be loose; I wanted to paint like the impressionists; I wanted my work to have energy, spontaneity, and excitement. I wasn't achieving what I wanted.

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So I began searching for solutions, for pathways to creating better work. I started incorporating papers into my acrylic paintings, painting over paper, painting under paper, painting with paper. A combination of paper and paint began to loosen things up. Painting over crumpled, glued down tissue paper could not be too detailed or labored.

Around the time I was experimenting with my process, my father paid a visit -- bringing with him a box of things from my childhood, things I had left in the attic the day I left my childhood home. "It's time" he said "for me to give this box of things to you. I didn't have the heart to look through it or throw anything out. That's up to you."

I briefly dug through the box: report cards, old math tests, ticket stubs, first hair cut snippet, cards from my parents' wedding and their first baby (me). It occurred to me that incorporating these papers into a piece of art would allow them to live on in a new life, preserved and made into something I could appreciate every day on the wall. So I decided to create a portrait of my mother, since so many of the papers had to do with her, my father, and me. That piece, "Looking in on Jane," won Best of Show at the Orlando Visual Artists League that year. I had never even placed in the top three before, let alone won Best of Show. It was this collaged portrait of my mother that drove me deeper into the possibilities of mixed media in an impressionistic, painterly style.

In the last ten years, my style has evolved and changed as I've experimented and grown. I didn't learn the technique from anyone else's instruction - just my own successes and failures. My style was certainly built upon the foundation I acquired while studying fine art in college - those hours of accurately studying form, light, and shadow were by no means wasted.

I have taught my technique to many others, and I have my work on-line, so yes, there are other people whose work does look much like mine. Many of them are former students, or people who have purchased my instructional DVD. Some are just artists who have looked closely and dissected my style. Either way, it's nice to see mixed media collage taking such a foothold and being recognized as a reputable medium in galleries and juried shows.

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(Photo: D. Nelson; used with permission)

Who do you most love about being an artist? Is there anything you don't love about being an artist?

Elizabeth: What I love most about being an artist is creating a legacy. I love knowing that I will teach and inspire others to be artists and that they will someday win "Best of Show" or decide to declare art as their college major. I also love knowing that the artwork that I create will hang on people's walls and be part of what makes their house a home. These things I love; these things are important to me; these things make me feel like my job is makes a difference in the world.

If I think about things I don't love about being an artist, it would be administrative stuff: keeping track of books, invoicing, taxes, billing, insurance, inventory, profit and loss, ..... yuck. But until I can afford an assistant, I do it all myself. It's part of being a successful artist.

You're very prolific - producing wonderful works of art in seemingly no time at all. You're also very versatile - you teach workshops around the world; you offer on-line workshops; you sell original works of art; and you license your art for merchandising to Pier One and other stores. Where do you get your boundless energy? How do you manage your priorities and your time?

Elizabeth: I tell people that I work quickly because I need to maintain the looseness and spontaneity of my art. If I labor over my work, overwork it, you can tell. I never want to lose the painterly, impressionistic look I have achieved, so I work quickly, move fast, stay loose. Also, I love what I do. I enjoy painting and the finished product. I paint as many hours as I can each day.

Versatility is a necessity. I am a full-time working artist. What does this mean exactly? This means that my income is 100% from fine art. I do not have a husband supporting me; I do not have a part time job as a barista at Starbucks. Teaching on-line and around the world, licensing my art to be reproduced as prints and on household items, publishing books, and selling originals all add up to a decent living.

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Not having all your eggs in one basket is timeless advice. When I have a slow teaching month, I produce more paintings in my studio. When I need to pay my quarterly taxes, I am happy for my quarterly licensing check. My self-published books and digital downloads make money for me long after the hours and weeks and months that I spent writing, photographing, and publishing them.



(Photo: RL Photography; used with permission)

So many artists seem to be terrible business people. They love to create their art but they hate marketing and selling. As a result, many artists can't make a living making art. But you do. What advice would you give to other artists? What can they learn from your experience as a successful artist who makes a very nice living making art?

Elizabeth: When I first started out, I read the most amazing book called "I'd Rather Be in the Studio: The Artist's No Excuse Guide to Self Promotion" by Alyson B. Stanfield. Alyson summed it up beautifully when she basically noted that artists just want to create the work, to stay in the studio, and hope that it sells itself. We don't want to have to put in the hours and hours of time it takes to market and sell our work (minimum 60% of my time). BUT.... if you don't do it, you end up as your own biggest collector.

Before I became a full-time fine artist, I was a self-employed graphic artist for twenty years. I marketed and sold a variety of products for a diverse group of clients. Nothing prepared me better for selling myself than the time I spent selling for others. I have created my own logo, website, business cards, brochures, post cards, banners workshop flyers, e-mail blasts, newsletters, Facebook banners, window signage, etc. AND I have a thick skin - I know how not to take rejection of my art personally.

My advice to other artists? Learn how to make the most of social media - that is the direction things are going and it reaches the largest audience for the smallest investment. Facebook is my weapon of choice, closely followed by Pinterest. Both of these platforms can be updated and edited from your phone (the ultimate in immediacy). We can engage people and hold their attention with constant, steady updates and insights into the art making process - like, what's on my easel right now.

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What is your overall vision for your life as an artist? What is the future you see for yourself?

Elizabeth: My vision for my life and myself as an artist? Well, I am pretty much already there. All I ever wanted was to be able to support myself as a fine artist, to be able to travel, visit new places and meet new people. I also wanted to inspire others, which teaching adults and volunteering with children has allowed me to achieve as well.

As for the future? I'd like to slow down (just a little) on the travel, to paint large scale works (once in a while) that are totally from my own imagination, regardless of whether or not I think they will sell.

And sometimes, when I get a really good night's sleep, I dream about building a small scale bed and breakfast that would offer a diversity of art workshops in an amazingly creative environment. I envision myself teaching, hosting other teachers, and of course, baking homemade pies and citrus breakfast cake.

Any questions I should have asked you, but didn't?

Elizabeth: My favorite artist is Gustav Klimt. I love his combination of flat decorative patterning and realistic rendering. I was able to make my pilgrimage to Vienna, Austria to see his work in person, at the Austrian Gallery in 1990. My visit was before the Austrian government had to return five of the eleven paintings in their collection to Maria Altman -- the case that is the subject of the movie "Woman in Gold." I was lucky enough to sit in front of both portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer for hours on end, making sketches and notes through the shift change of the museum guards. I will never forget it - traveling alone, staying in a youth hostel, eating only a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese I carried around with me. Making the trip solely for the purpose of experiencing his work, breathing it in, soaking it up, being enveloped by it, overwhelmed with it. I am, and always will be, an artist, en toto.


"In the streets in Yemen where daily life is beyond difficult, I've learned about the almost unimaginable capacity for the human spirit to carry on. I've learned about resilience and strength." -- Thana Faroq

And Thana Faroq is proving it to audiences all over the world with her powerful photography. Thana explains that her art allows her "to eliminate ignorance, educate and inspire, even during times of war." Born and raised in Yemen, Thana was granted a scholarship at the age of 16 to finish high school in Canada, where she completed the IB Diploma Programme. Obtaining a second scholarship, she travelled to the U.S. to study International Relations and Photography at Clark University.

It is my great pleasure to welcome Thana Faroq to The Global Search for Education. In the interview that follows, Thana talks about storytelling through pictures, the role her education played in her incredible journey as an artist, the capacity of the human spirit to prevail, and her big dreams for life moving forward.

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What kinds of things are learned by paying attention to street life that are not learned from other sources?

You learn a lot just by observing everyone in the street. People's spirit and energy are always inspiring. It's a life that doesn't stop; there's something about the unscripted and dynamic moments that can provoke, inspire, or even disturb you. I think I have seen some of the best and worst of humanity since I became a street photographer.

Also, in the streets in Yemen where daily life is beyond difficult, I've learned about the almost unimaginable capacity for the human spirit to carry on. I've learned about resilience and strength.

You also get to develop special skills in communicating with and loving people, and interacting with them. To me, there are things in the streets that are far more important than capturing the right moment. Sometimes it's about making the connection with people out there.

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"Stories that cross cultural barriers can describe realities to them and bring new perspectives to their little worlds." -- Thana Faroq

Are there other ways of documenting street life that interest you beside photography?

Currently no, but when I was younger, I used to love writing. I would keep a journal and write about everything that really mattered to me. Street life was among the things I would write about -- the people I met and the conversations I would have with them. Sometimes I would take public transportation just so I could listen to people's stories on the bus. I would enjoy their talk about everything -- politics, family, the jokes and the complaints about life. I used to write about it all. Now when I think about it, maybe this was my early documentation of street life. But I felt that words were limiting, they didn't resonate like photos. They don't give the instant feelings of the sweet and sorrow that our lives may lead us into. So writing alone was no longer an exciting process and I had to combine it with photography.

What is it about diversity in the kinds of stories we tell children that is especially enriching to their lives?

We all love stories and to a certain extent we were influenced by our bedtime stories. Right? This is important because our children will be raised on stories that they can learn from and relate to, and that will make them think and question the things around them. Stories that cross cultural barriers can describe realities to them and bring new perspectives to their little worlds. They will grow up with real values of tolerance, love and understanding.

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"Through education I learned the true meaning of creativity, which is creating the individuals who would make a difference in the world." -- Thana Faroq

What kind of insight into the lives of a community is gained by seeing a photo of it? What is lost?

I believe that photos are the perfect form to teach us something beyond what is visible to us. You can learn a lot about communities, cultures, and people just by "reading" the images of them. Photos of a certain community will inform you about its life conditions and ways of living. Sometimes the photo will communicate to you a special experience that you aren't aware of. In some cases, it will erase a misconception you had about the people in the photo. Photos will not transcend everything of course, but you will get the flavor of what makes communities unique.

However, I believe that art is subjective and the camera can be misleading. Maybe the story in some photo isn't the best -- or let's say it's not an accurate representation of the people in a community. In this case, the truth is lost in here. This is why I talk about "reading" a photo, which implies that we make an effort to understand and question photos and the stories they carry to us.

What can we learn from your story? How do we get better at supporting the artistic passions of young people around the world?

Passion has been the driving motive for everything I do. It's the power that keeps me going in the face of daily life struggles. It's the motive to challenge the status quo and face the current unfortunate events in my country. When people ask me how am I not afraid of photographing in the streets, I simply smile; I can't be afraid -- I am motivated and I trust my camera. And this is what I want people to learn: to trust their passion, to respond to it with hard work and perseverance because it pays off.

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In the case of fine art and photography, there are many great emerging and passionate young artists that people aren't aware of. It's unfortunate that we only praise and recognize those who are already established. There's nothing wrong in looking at how the young generation is expressing themselves. Why don't we give them the opportunity to examine their talents and to share their stories? Let's be curious about them. Some of these great talents get buried with time because they haven't received the necessary attention they need to carry on.



"I want to explore other communities and cultures and produce iconic images that make an impact and influence the way people see certain things in their societies."

-- Thana Faroq

You have said that your education enabled you to do what you do now. Can you explain why you believe this?

By the time I returned home, my interest in street photography had grown, but I knew it was going to be a great challenge. However, the strength I developed through education allowed me to break barriers and it was my motivation to keep going. My IB education and university degree provided me with unique opportunities to discover myself and to find my true passion.

So often I wonder, what if I didn't have this strong educational background? Would I be the same person today? Maybe, but I wouldn't have the capacity, the skills and the weapons to be the artist and the woman I desired to be.

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My education experience abroad changed my life; it gave me the courage to confront people in the streets who I no longer call strangers. I'm equipped with confidence; I wasn't scared to document street life in times of war because through education I learned the true meaning of creativity, which is creating the individuals who would make a difference in the world. The world can be as small as their personal life or as big as the physical world itself. The context doesn't matter. To me, it is Yemen at the moment.

What's next for Thana Faroq - where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

I am very inspired by universally recognized photographers such as Steve Muccary, Jimmy Nelsson and Lisa Kristine who traveled the world to capture the essence of human struggle and joy everywhere they went. Five years from now, maybe I would have a similar experience and become an international photographer touring the globe. I want to explore other communities and cultures and produce iconic images that make an impact and influence the way people see certain things in their societies.



For more information.



C. M. Rubin and Thana Faroq

(All photos are courtesy of Thana Faroq)

Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.

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"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Ben Franklin

Judge Not That Ye Be Not Judged: A disparaging attitude toward those who are different breeds fear. And fear produces the profiling, and the consequential limitations of freedom, bikers experience world-wide.

A bigoted social mentality has empowered the United States government to place multiple international members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club on a no-entry list -- under the guise of the Patriot Act -- while engaging little, if any, public outcry.

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Fair Disclosure: I'm not part of the biker culture. In actuality, I'm a Middle American, fairly conservative, church girl. And I'll be the first to admit, I'm pretty darn judgmental. Always have been.

Yes, I know it's wrong. And yes, I'm working on it. Really I am. Feel free to check-in later for a progress update.

But I can assure you, I don't need a twelve-step recovery program. I'm already enrolled in the unofficial Sonny Barger, "Get-Over-Yourself-Candy-You're-Not-Better-Than-Anyone-Else," one step program.

How did that happen? Despite our vast differences, I've been close friends with Sonny for over three decades. And if there's one thing I know for sure -- he's a man of integrity.

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So, when Sonny addresses my predisposition to be judgmental, I pay attention. In reality, I've gained more wisdom from this individual, than I have listening to a thousand sermons.

The Sit Down: Recently, Sonny shared what he considers might be a U.S Justice Department vendetta against his club, initiated, in part, by former Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano.

"It started with a federal program intended to infiltrate the club," Sonny explained over lunch, "They called it Operation Black Biscuit."

"Wait... what? Did you say, Operation Black Biscuit?" I stammered, realizing the project's code-name sounded, uh... slightly 007ish.

After assuring me that I'd heard correctly, Sonny suggested I write an article after conducting additional research. I agreed. And here's what I found...

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Operation Black Biscuit: The project began when the U.S government decided to infiltrate the club. In an attempt to entrap members from Arizona -- a state, then, under the helm of Governor Janet Napolitano -- the feds enlisted the help of local law enforcement.

Seeking the Cave Creek charter's computer, agents were determined to gain possession the hard way. Rather than simply knocking on the door -- with warrant in hand -- officers chose the more costly, and vastly more dramatic, super-spy method.

So, on July 8, 2003, a SWAT team showed up at the Cave Creek clubhouse prepared for battle. After hurling flash grenades through the windows, shooting the guard dog and ramming the building with an armored vehicle, the club's prospect opened the door to see what was happening.

The moment he emerged, Officer Laura Beeler panicked and repeatedly opened fire -- wounding the prospect. Initially, Beeler claimed she shot in response to his gunfire, but that just wasn't the case. Evidence revealed the prospect's weapon hadn't been discharged.

And the computer? After months of study, and to law enforcement's chagrin, the hard-drive bore no signs of criminal activity. None.

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Soon afterward, officers endured additional setbacks when a Maricopa County judge deemed the raid unlawful, noting the prospect acted reasonably under chaotic circumstances.

The Case: When things shook out: Sixteen club members, from other charters, were indicted on federal racketeering charges.

However, despite the indictments, law enforcement was on a downward slide. When federal ATF agents and U.S. prosecutors began fighting among themselves, the case went south.

In the end, all the indicted were either released, or able to plea-out on far lesser charges. None of the more serious federal racketeering charges stuck. Not one.

In retrospect, many legal historians view Operation Black Biscuit as a failure.

The White House: In 2009, former Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano, was appointed by President Obama to become Chief of Homeland Security. So, she packed her bags and headed for Washington D.C. Unfortunately for the club, her suitcases had just enough room to hold a pretty big vendetta.

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And in classic hell-hath-no-fury style, guess who remained at the top of her pay-back list?

A Wide Legal Net: Utilizing the Patriot Act, (a provision intended to guard our nation against terrorists after 9/11, but which is often misused to strip freedom from innocent individuals without due process) Janet Napolitono placed multiple Angels, as well as their friends, family and supporters, on a no U.S. entry roster.

Many of these individuals have no criminal record, yet are assigned to a register that precludes them from entering the United State for any reason -- including weddings, visiting sick relatives and attending funerals.

Muddy Waters: Some of the impacted have been unaware they're on national entry restriction (heads up: the government is not required to inform anyone), until they've landed at an airport and been abruptly arrested.

While Homeland Security has free-rein to add any person, or group, they darn well please, the U.S. Attorney General retains final authority.

Those who wish to challenge a no-entry status can have their names removed via a successful legal challenge against the United States Government. But remember, this is the same government that doesn't bother to inform individuals they're on the list in the first place.

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Following the crazy trail? Thought so.

Trump and Hillary: Recently, Donald Trump suggested Muslims should be temporarily banned from entering the United States, until we can better sort out the potential risks. In a sanctimonious response, Hillary Clinton claimed such tactics would contribute to the unfair profiling of innocent people.

Oddly enough, when Hillary was Secretary of State, she had absolutely no problem contributing to the international profiling of club members and their associates.

Before you assume I'm waving my pom-poms for either candidate -- let me assure you, I'm not. For all I know, Trump would ban Angel travel as well.

This is not about campaigns. This is about freedom. It's about a knee-jerk judgmental attitude that reproduces discrimination.

And it's about hypocrisy.

The Bottom Line: On some level, we all judge. It's human nature. We tend to fear those different than ourselves. Those who walk differently. Talk differently. Dress differently. Live differently.

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And it's clear -- much of Middle America is apprehensive about bikers. Unfortunately, this is the catalyst for legislative injustice. Divide and conquer. Works every time.

Government embraces social anxiety, garnered from people riddled by a bigoted pre-disposition, to authorize spending your tax dollars on crazy-ass 007 projects, pitting neighbor against neighbor. So, when you judge someone simply for being different, remember the cost.

Oh, and the price of freedom. Yeah, remember that too.
Despite being a savvy traveler, I had been hesitant about visiting India for a very long time. To be honest, I was intimidated by the very long list of travel suggestions and cautions which I dreaded having to consider- from not drinking water, a lengthy visa procedure, to safety precautions among other things. I was also worried my stomach would burn (I don't eat spicy food!). Finally, this year, I couldn't say no to an invitation to join my mom for the trip of a life time to visit all the spiritual sites in Northern India. Thank god the e-visa didn't take long. Nervous, and freshly- studied in Indian culture, we were on our way to New Delhi!

Little did I know, I was about to discover the magic of raw, open life in a majestic and mythic country- one capable of shaking what is rock solid inside you. Contrary to what I expected, India is not a country you see, is a country you feel. You have no choice (yes, it will be uncomfortable at times) but to get out of your hard shell of western comforts and open up. In only 1 visit, this is all what India did for me:

Awakened my physical senses: It only took a few minutes after leaving the airport for the country to stimulate all my senses. Heavy traffic quickly generated by cars, bikes, rickshaws, and cows- make for quite visual, loud and somehow suffocating yet happy welcome. When visiting temples, images of goddesses, gurus, symbols and statues- capture your eyes. India is alive for sure. Everyone seems to makes their own music with their honk. Bell sounds are abundant. I got to touch many floors barefoot (temples actually require you to do so as a form of respect). It's humbling and grounding to walk among others barefoot. Seems like we are all pilgrims in life following the smell of incense toward sacred grounds. The smell of Chai and spices move your stomach. Your tongue and mouth are up for a party every day. In one day, India makes you wonder if you have been just living numb all your life. It feels very human to reclaim your senses. I thank India for kick-starting all of mine again.

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Reminded me about Human Responsibility: I visited along with two hundred thousand Sikh pilgrims the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The temple and its reflection on the water is breathtaking, but what left me pondering for days was witnessing the volunteering service that offered a free warm meal to everybody who visited. The kitchen is so magical and busy that the menu changes every 2 hours. Every station- chopping, cleaning, bread making, cooking- is run by the hands and hearts of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds. The offering of this meals represent one of the most treasurable human values- the responsibility we have for each other's wellbeing- even if that starts with a warm plate of food. It was humbling and touching. Whether it is food, love, attention or peace, may we all cultivate the generosity of our hearts to deliver on this duty towards each other.

Pointed out mental divides. I participated in the famous "changing of the guard" ceremony at the Waga India- Pakistan border. After several security checks, you get to watch the ceremony seating in an open air stage. I stayed on the Indian side and just beyond a small gate, I could see the same ceremony taking place on the Pakistani side. Instead of red hats on the Indian side, the Pakistani soldiers wore black. Instead of women and men sitting together in India, on the Pakistani side, men and women in their abayas were sitting in different sections. Both ceremonies seemed beautifully animated in their own respective way. I kept waiting for the ceremonies to merge, which never happened. I very much respect the patriotism and the uniqueness of each culture I witnessed and in this case it was very positive exchange. I wondered the whole time however how a simple gate could make the same experience so different and separated. Country borders are a serious thing, but how many unnecessary mental divides do we create in our own head? How many great opportunities do we miss because of this? I am grateful for this lesson of the limitation of our mental divides.

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Showed me the true essence of yoga: I began to practice Yoga a few years ago in the US in a beautiful small yoga studio with peaceful music and a very well trained yogini. It changed my life in many ways. In India, I found a much raw and difficult practice. Then I remember the lessons from Autobiography of a Yogi, which helped me recognize that the true essence of yoga and meditation is being able to be in equanimity regardless of what is happening around. The true intent is to master your mind and be one with what is. It is easy to be calm in a clean space with no noise and nice candles. Calming the mind with multiple external disruptions, is the true test. That is what daily practice means in India. I've been kidding myself with "Fitness yoga" like practices, I now challenge myself to be able to practice anywhere.

Explained Karma. In the west we use Karma as an expression of destiny or cause, however, in India it's almost a rule of life. My great Indian guide, Pramod Singh, explained that "Karma is not a business, not a formality, is a way of life". In every action you take, you are supposed to put your best intention and then let go of what will happen - even up to afterlife. You just do your part, and you are better off when that deed is a good one. If you expect an immediate reward it would be a business, which is clearly not. I felt vividly this acceptance of life's unfolding and the humble approach to every day's tasks in the people I met. I find this relationship with uncertainty (which is what every day in India feels like) quite remarkable. I still have much to learn.

Even in one visit, this magical country has the ability to change one's life perspective. It shakes your beliefs and touches all your senses and you have no choice but to feel truly alive. So, I hope you don't wait as long as I did to give India a try. Be ready to be shaken to the core for a refreshing awakening!

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One year ago today the left-wing populist Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) won the Greek parliamentary elections; the first time since the re-introduction of democracy in 1974 that another party than the two dinosaurs of the post-dictatorship democracy, the center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and the center-right New Democracy (ND), came first. While the success of Syriza was expected, its choice of coalition partner took many by surprise, not in the least its many (foreign) supporters. And yet, the choice for the right-wing populist Independent Greeks (Anel) made perfect sense at that point in time.

Syriza had won the elections on the basis of its Third Way proposal on the Memorandum, which governed the relationship between the Troika - the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - and Greece after several bailouts. Anel was the only other parliamentary party to support its utopian "No to the Memorandum, Yes to the Eurozone" position. Hence, Syriza leader, and new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras had no other choice than to form a government with ANEL in an attempt to try and renegotiate the bailout conditions in the way it had promised his voters.

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Nine months later the still fresh, though worn down, Prime Minister handed in his resignation and brought Greece to the polls for the fourth time in just over three years. No one, not even Tsipras, argued that the first Syriza-Anel government had been a success. Personified in its flamboyant Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, Syriza went for an all-out moral battle with the Troika, assuming that it possessed the absolute truth and that its opponents - in classic populist parlor increasingly demonized as "enemies," "traitors," and even "terrorists" - would see the light once it had been shined upon them. But as Varoufakis lectured economics at Eurogroup meetings, his colleagues became increasingly entrenched in their original positions and lost their little remaining sympathy for the plight of the "radical left" Greek government.

To break the deadlock Tsipras pulled out his joker, a snap referendum on an incomprehensible issue, which only made sense in Syriza's worldvision of an epic battle between "democratic Greece" and the "technocratic Troika" - as if other Eurozone ministers, like the Dutch Jeroen Dijsselbloem and the German Wolfgang Schauble, did not have a democratic mandate for their austerity policies within their own countries. Syriza won the Greferendum convincingly, 61 percent voted "Oxi" (no), but soon found that nothing had changed outside of Greece. Consequently, Tsipras ignored the referendum results, betrayed his "democratic mandate," and accepted a bailout package that was even more disadvantageous for Greece than the deal he and his supporters had rejected in the referendum.

Soon after, Tsipras called for new elections, taking his many opponents within and outside of his own party by surprise. Despite the rollercoaster that Greece had gone through between January and September, the election results showed remarkably little changes at the aggregate level. Most shifts were within the one percent range; only the liberal Potami (The River) lost two percent. Still, Tsipras emerged from the elections strengthened, having cleansed SYRIZA of most of his most ardent opponents and with the main opposition party (ND) leaderless for the moment. Once again he chose ANEL as his coalition partner, but this time the logic was much less convincing.

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Having accepted, however reluctantly, the new bailout and its harsh conditions, the new government was going to be seriously constrained on socio-economic policies. Logically, it should have shifted its focus to state reform and socio-cultural issues, which were always important to the party and its supporters. On these issues Anel was among the least likely available partners. However, Syriza was left little choice after months of polarizing the political debate. How could it work with parties like the center-left Pasok-Dimar and the centrist Potami, after accusing them of being part of the "corrupt" and "traitorous" elite? That said, it doesn't seem that Tsipras ever seriously considered an alternative to ANEL. He and ANEL leader Panos Kammenos seemed to have developed a clear and stable working relationship, in which SYRIZA could govern almost unhindered, as long as it stayed away from Kammenos's Ministry of Defence.

What Tsipras seem to have miscalculated, however, is that Anel's passiveness relates primarily to socio-economic issues, which are secondary to that party. When it comes to socio-cultural issues, particularly those central to Syriza, Anel does not only have a different opinion, it has a strong opinion. This is particularly the case with respect to two traditional sensitivities of the Greek left, the powerful position of the Greek Orthodox Church and of the military.

The political power of the Greek Orthodox Church is unlike almost any other within the EU and is perfectly illustrated by the fact that Greek governments are sworn in under the watchful eye of Orthodox bishops. The Syriza-ANEL governments were no exception.

Similarly, the Greek military remains one of the most expensive within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The country spent a whopping 2.4 percent of its GDP on the military in 2015. Despite the fact that the Greek economy has collapsed during the Great Recession, with GDP falling from $355 billion in 2008 to $238 billion in 2014 (a loss of one third!), the Greek military has seen few cuts, and even increased its budget by 0.1 percent of GDP in 2014.

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After one year in power the Church and the Military remain as powerful as ever. As Vassilis Petsinis has shown, SYRIZA has by and large given up on its pledge to reduce their importance, facing strong opposition from ANEL. This has reduced the party's policy agenda even further, even on socio-cultural issues. Among its few successes was the new legislation passed last month, legalizing civil unions of LGBT couples. While far from insignificant, particularly for the couple involved, it is at best a minor victory and hardly puts Greece at the forefront of gay rights in the EU.

The refugee crisis could have given Syriza a chance to regain its standing within the EU and the national and international left. With more than 80 percent of refugees entering Europe through Greece, the country has been at the forefront of the EU's struggle to control the unprecedented influx. But where many ordinary Greeks have gone far beyond the expected by providing emergency services for stranded refugees, despite their own economic plight, the Greek government has mainly failed in its, admittedly very demanding, task to orderly shelter and register them. As Tsipras makes (laudable) normative appeals for a more humane EU refugee policy, his government's practical incompetence undermines the chances of them catching on among his crucial partners in the north. In fact, rather than transforming the refugee crisis from a crisis into an opportunity, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so skillfully done, Tsipras has again made Greece the whipping boy of the EU in general, and Germany in particular. It is now even facing a possible Schengen area expulsion.


Mother Teresa once said, "Love has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me."



This is true for all of us, and sometimes being kind and loving hurts us. For example, one day I was doing my usual grocery shopping. I was in the freezer isle. The isles are narrow. Before I reached to open the freezer door, an elderly man riding a motorized shopping cart stopped me dead in my path. I offered to let him go ahead of me and get whatever he was looking for, thinking I was being polite. But he refused and said his wife just got home from the hospital yesterday, and that he had some free time to shop for the all the things that she needed.



I remarked what a nice husband he must be for taking good care of her. I then began to reach for the freezer door. But before I could open it, he asked if I would play a game with him that he's really good at. I didn't know what to say, but I said okay because I felt sorry for him and I didn't want to turn him away. He said he wanted to guess my age, and that I must be around 50-55 years old. I said thank you for the compliment, but then told him he was way off. I now wasn't sure if he was flirting or just looking for someone to talk to. So I responded and guessed his age to be 67, and he said he was 92. I told him he looked much younger, paying him the compliment he was fishing for. I then reached to open the freezer door and took my ice cream. Then, while I still had one hand on the freezer door and the other hand holding a quart of ice cream, the man drove his shopping-cart into mine, pinned me inside the freezer, then jumped out of the cart, grabbed both my arms, nestled his face into my neck, kissed me on the check and said, 'Wow, what I could do with you!' My whole body trembled and I wanted to shout for someone to help me, but I felt uneasy doing this because of the man's advanced age, guessing he might be senile, so I didn't scream for help. I freed myself, put the ice cream in my cart and swiftly walked away.



Since that incident, I thought about the many times in my life when men came on to me. I also thought about the many times that I took their advances for a compliment, and shrugged-off my trembling. Now, years later, in hindsight, I realize that it didn't matter if those men were married or what their age was. I've also learned that I wasn't the only one they tried to put their hands on. Perhaps, they're not satisfied with just looking because they feel they are entitled to more. After that incident in the supermarket, I wondered just what it takes for any of us to be content with what we already have? How do we remain true to the love that sometimes hurts?



I know my own marriage improved greatly once I vowed to take God as my spiritual husband. I knew I could not keep a family and husband otherwise. Most people don't go around talking about it, but prayer and giving might be the key to their marital success. People making advances might not be aware that we're all confronted with those same temptations, but they have devoted spouses and also hurt sometimes. They may believe they are the only ones who are dissatisfied, that they deserve more and then buy into it, opening themselves up for more temptations. Sadly, that will lead them away from ever finding true love or happiness with the person in front of them.



A couple of extreme examples: I once talked with an acquaintance asking me for help. She who was sorry she'd left her husband for a shoe salesman. She told me that she was minding her own business, just buying a pair of shoes, and couldn't help that the salesman was going crazy over her. Everywhere she went, men would flirt with her, something that turned her head and that led to her making poor choices in her life. She said it made her believe she was more desirable and attractive than other woman, and it wasn't her fault that she drew so many men into her life. I told her that I had the same kinds of encounters, and so do thousands of other women! But something prevented her from seeing the truth and she ended up living a lonely, solitary life.



Another example: A young man who owned a fine restaurant once told me that the men working there would bet on what women they would be able to seduce. He had 10 waitresses working for him, and said it disturbed him that he could make conquests of every one of them, even the married ones! He also told me he was surprised that he could even lure them away from their homes and their own children! This sickened me and broke my heart, but what's even sadder is that he did break up several marriages, including his own, because all those women left everything for him.



When women and men will see through this behavior and egotism and not buy into it, we'll all be better off. In the words of Pope Francis, " Let us never lose hope!" There are also many strong, spirited men and women, a special breed who know better, and I've been blessed in having some around me. I thank them with all my heart for their great examples that they set, and for leading the way for all of us. Their examples helped save my own marriage and family and I'll always be grateful.
Most Americans seem to agree that the world would be a better place without extremist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, rather than having a substantive conversation on solutions, talking heads in the media resort to hateful rhetoric and fear-mongering.



A recent example of this uninformed bigotry comes from Fox News anchor Judge Jeanine Pirro who was "furious" at statements made by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney after an attack on a police officer by a Muslim American. Kenney said "In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam, or the teachings of Islam, have anything to do with what you've seen on that screen. That is abhorrent, it's terrible, and it does not represent the religion in any way shape or form or any of its teachings."



In response to the mayor's comments, Pirro angrily howls, "The man is wearing Muslim garb. He's sworn an allegiance to ISIS. He told the cops he did it for Allah and ISIS. His own mother says he's a devout Muslim. Are you stupid?" The problem here is not that Kenney is stupid but that Pirro isn't really listening to what Kenney is saying.



Nowhere in his statement did Kenney suggest the shooter wasn't dressed in Muslim garb. Nowhere in his statement did Kenney claim the shooter wasn't a Muslim. Nowhere in his statement did Kenney say ISIS isn't a problem.



The only thing Kenney said was that the actions of this man do not represent the teachings of Islam for Muslim Americans.



While there are certainly examples of Muslim Jihadists killing people in America; non-Muslim extremists, some of which were Christian, actually account for more deaths over the past 15 years. In fact Fox News reported that the Department of Defense considers Catholics and Evangelical Christians as terrorist groups similar to Al-Qaeda and the KKK. Ironically, many in the Christian community were offended by this classification and feel that the actions of a few extremists shouldn't sully the reputation of an entire religion. Apparently they feel that the attacks by Christian extremists in no way, shape or form represent the teachings of the Bible.



Despite her irrational response, it's possible that what Pirro is really concerned about here is that, in the edited clip she shows to viewers, the Mayor never addresses the issue of the "war on police". Obviously the attacks on the public servants is troubling and should be taken very seriously; however, data indicates that in spite of the popular narrative, police are not under attack. In fact police deaths from guns is at or near an all-time low.



Of course it should be noted that there isn't some epidemic of Muslims shooting cops across the United States. There was, however, a group in Michigan a few years back that considered themselves "Christian Warriors" who planned on killing various police officers and civilians in the hopes of starting a violent revolt. Oddly, it seems Judge Pirro never felt compelled to use her bully pulpit to express her outrage over these Christian cop killers.



Also missing from Pirro's rant is any mention of the shooter's mother's statements that her son had been hearing voices recently. Gun advocates like Judge Pirro are usually quick to say we don't have a gun problem in the U.S., we have a mental health problem. Yet whenever the mentally ill person is a Muslim, concerns about mental health are replaced with platitudes about Islamic terrorism.



There is no doubt that there are Muslims in this world that would like to do us harm and use Islam as the rationale, but in the U.S. the Muslim extremists are far outnumbered by all manner of other religious and cultural extremists. Castigating an entire religion for the actions of a few is something the Christians wholly reject when it comes to Christian extremism, so why are they so willing to do the same thing when it comes to Muslims?



Fixing religious extremism should absolutely be a priority for the U.S., but expecting people who are willing to die for their God to accept ignorant insults and blind hatred as a call for an honest introspection into their religious beliefs is asinine. Conservatives should also realize that many of the ills of Islam existed in Christianity hundreds of years ago; and while Christians have made great progress, it hasn't happened overnight and it certainly isn't perfect, as there are still those who call for the killing of homosexuals, those who demand women obey their husbands, and those who call for the murder of doctors that honor a woman's constitutionally protected right to abortion.



Islamic extremists may be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but if you live in the U.S., odds are your own gluttony will kill you long before ever even encountering a radical Muslim. Pretending that is not the case doesn't make you a patriot or a protector of the constitution. It makes you a bully. If only these talking head Christian Crusaders were willing to do the same sort of soul-searching they expect everyone else to do.
Nothing irks artists more than criticism and rejection, probably rejection more since criticism implies that someone presumably is taking their artwork seriously whereas rejection means the person isn't taking it at all. A lot of meaning is imputed to what is often a form letter: the art isn't good; the artist is a bad artist; the artist is an idiot for having submitted artwork in the first place; the person who sent the letter is stupid and biased; that person expressed the considered opinion of the entire world.

Handling adverse - or even favorable - reaction to one's work is a learned behavior, the result of maturity, confidence and just experience of how art dealers, exhibition jurors and collectors think. "When I reject an artist, it's generally because the artist and the gallery aren't a good fit," said Franny Koelsch, owner of Koelsch Gallery in Houston, Texas, which receives "proposals and portfolios from artists often." "A good fit" takes in a wide realm of possibilities: It may be that the artist's style or subject matter isn't compatible with other artworks in the gallery, perhaps that prices for the artist's work are too high or too low for the collector base. An artist's work may be too large for a gallery, or the dealer may only show artists who are local or whose work reflects local subjects. Koelsch stated that a standard rejection letter is in her computer, and she may "modify it a little" for different artists.

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One of the artists her gallery does represent, painter Deanna Wood of Denton, Texas, has been affected by rejections enough over the years that she has written about the experience repeatedly on her blog. Wood's blog is intended to offer useful marketing and personal tips, based on her own experience, to other artists at the beginning stages of their careers, but this was a subject more for commiseration than advice.

Personally, I do get a little depressed when I receive a rejection letter from a gallery that I really liked or a show that I really wanted to get into. But I just file it and try to figure out what to do next. Well, that didn't work out, what can I do now?

"I just put all my rejection letters in a folder," she said, adding that she has never counted them all, because "that might make me more depressed." Included in that folder are 44 rejection letters from 2005, when she sent out a proposal for a solo exhibition to 50 nonprofit and university galleries around the country. She also had received six acceptances, showing her collection of paintings in Iowa, Kansas, Nevada and Oklahoma, but it is the rejection letters that haunt her more than the success. "I had a stronger emotional reaction to the rejections. I took it very personally, thinking they were rejecting me and not my work." In yet another posting on the subject of rejection, Wood offers some sample rejection letters to any gallery owners reading her blog in order that they might avoid hurting the feelings of the many artists they inevitably will find themselves rejecting.

She is not the only artist for whom rejection seems a more vibrant subject than more welcome news. Others (on their Web sites) describe creative re-uses of rejection letters, such as wallpaper and Christmas wrapping paper, or their responses to those who rejected them. James Culleton, a Canadian painter living in Winnipeg, turned a stack of rejection letters into an art project, laminating all of the letters he had received over a four-year period and riveting them together into a "suit of armor that will provide protection from future rejection." They include letters from grantmaking agencies, juried competitions, art galleries and art schools (all 10 he applied to for their Masters of Fine Arts programs said no). Suzanne Clements, a figurative painter in Palm Bay, Florida who is represented by galleries in Florida and North Carolina, created a Web site (http://myrejectionletters.blogspot.com) specifically for publishing her rejections.

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Success may mitigate the sting of rejection but not eradicate it. Not being accepted taps very basic emotions of personal connections (mother-child, community-individual), which may be why a single rejection letter sticks in one's craw long after a string of successes should have erased the memory. Probably every artist present and deceased has experienced rejection of some quantity and magnitude, but the story of renowned artists is principally told through their achievements and successess. Only Vincent van Gogh's commercial failures (only one painting sold during his lifetime) is such an important part of his biography, because of his published letters to his brother Theo that detail the adverse reaction he continually faced. Otherwise, successful people and their biographers prefer to discuss what they accomplished, not what didn't take place, because the public display of rejection is a sign of not having achieved much.

Rejections do mount up, particularly in the early years of an artist's career, and a growing number of artists attempt to look at them in a positive light. "In a weird way, 100 rejection letters are a good thing," Wood said, "because it means that I'm putting my work out there for people to see." Perhaps, rejection is a "badge of honor," since it suggets that one has "taken risks, broken taboos," according to Catherine Wald, a writer who created a website that features her own rejection letters and those posted anonymously by other writers and artists. She developed the site as a response to her own experience of having written at novel in 2001 and spending two years trying to interest publishers in it. None were. "The reality that it really wasn't going to be published hampered my ability to do my work" - she earns her livelihood as a freelance corporate report writer. Being rejected so often made Wad feel "ashamed, as though it's a deep, dark secret," but she came to realize her experience was one shared by many others. "I wasn't alone. It's not so shameful." Wald developed "three or four book ideas" on the subject of being rejected, all of which were rejected by publishers, before starting her Web site. A history of being rejected "speaks to your professionalism," she noted, because "you're willing to stick with your art."
It has only been seven decades since the Holocaust and the exodus of Jewish refugees into Western Europe and North America. The images of the Holocaust, the images of one of the worst regimes in history still lives within the minds of many. Millions of Jews and 'social outcasts', were killed under this brutal regime, a regime influenced by a mixture of neo-nationalist ideology and a violent interpretation of religion.

Jews had indeed been persecuted throughout the centuries, but the Holocaust is the most brutal example of this. This mass exodus of Jews escaping the clutches of the Nazis had few places to go, yet they were determined to search for a better life. Many of these Jews tried to reach North America and enter the United States and other perceived safe havens. The United States refused to settle the majority of these refugees for a variety of disturbing reasons, though perhaps most notably that Jews were communists and were bent on overthrowing the Capitalist system of the United States. This bizarre belief system equated Judaism with communism due to the founder of communism, Karl Marx, being Jewish himself.

Americans had an extremely negative perception of Jews, and very few wanted to resettle Jews in the United States. When polled in 1939 on the question of taking 10,000 refugee children from Germany, most of whom were Jewish, the vast majority of Americans opposed an influx of Jewish refugees. Only 30% of Americans polled were willing to accept Jewish children into the United States, German Jewish children who were being slaughtered by perhaps the most brutal regime in history.

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In the 21st century we look back at the inaction of the United States to take Jewish refugees with horror, as indeed we should. There are millions of refugees from countries like Syria, Iraq and Eritrea who cannot return to their home country for fear of persecution. This is not including the countless economic migrants who are seeking a better life in the West, a diverse and wide group who pursue a noble good as well. These refugees are people whose livelihood has been destroyed by brutal governments like in Syria and Eritrea, and the world's most brutal manifestation of theocracy. These are people who have rejected the extreme interpretation of Islam preached by ISIS, Al Nusra, and other Jihadist groups controlling territory in Syria and Iraq (they also control a limited amount of territory in other countries like Yemen, Afghanistan and Lebanon.)

It is important to remember that no one is advocating for the United States to take all economic migrants, nor even all refugees. These are very different groups, with economic migrants coming from poorer countries whom they could theoretically live in without a security threat, while refugees cannot return or live in their home country without a fear of persecution. There are many economic migrants from Albania, Bosnia and Serbia, who seek economic opportunities better than what they have in their home country. That does not minimize their noble pursuit, yet we have to make a distinction between those whom very well may be killed if they refuse to leave their home country and those who seek better economic opportunities.

When politicians advocate for a religious test (which is anti-American, and easy for someone to lie on), they are forsaking the core tenants of this country. One of the most notable symbols of 'Americanism' the Statue of Liberty, has inscribed on it, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Obviously there are limits on this phrase, as the United States just like any country has limits when taking refugees, yet to outright reject the symbolism of this American symbol is forsaking the core values of America.

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Many have taken a hard stance against refugees for fears that there will be terrorists embedded with the refugees, something that is likely true. To simply take over a million refugees without a secure vetting process would be dangerous, and could lead toward straining security systems. Germany has taken over one million refugees thus far, and we can see that while perhaps a noble goal it has had its consequences. It is almost important to note that there have been no terrorist attacks by refugees in Europe despite all the fear mongering, although there has been in Turkey, a nation whom has taken over two million refugees with little to no vetting process.

Beyond the fears of refugees, an immense fear of Muslims has recently taken hold by some Americans, particulary those in the far-right. No one is saying that there are not fundamentalist Muslims who do pose a security threat, yet to generalize about a diverse group is akin toward what Americans did in the 1940s with Jews in their fear of 'Jewish communism.'

Recently leading Republican candidate Donald Trump claimed that American Muslims should wear badges to identify them, and that Muslim refugees are not welcome in the United States.

He has also claimed that mosques should be closed period, without delving into what the different branches of Islam are. The fundamentalist Muslims we see committing violence come largely from a sect of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, not from Shias, Sufis and Ahmadis. He has generalized all Muslims (a group of 1.6 billion) as fundamentalist Sunni Wahhabis, a relatively small group when compared toward the larger Muslim population.

No one is saying that we should let in three million refugees without proper vetting and cultural integration, for this would in fact cause immense problems. American culture is different than the culture that many of these refugees grew up in, and this fact will mean that refugees will take time to integrate. When president Obama encouraged congress to let in ten thousand refugees he received immense scrutiny, despite the fact that this is a very small number who could be feasibly integrated.

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High resolution digital render of United Nations flag.

In a landmark case, Peru has compensated a woman for denying her a medically indicated abortion. In 2001, K.L. was a 17-year-old who was diagnosed as having a fetus with anencephaly at 14 weeks' gestation. As described below, this fetal anomaly is routinely lethal. Although abortion was legal in Peru in this circumstance, a hospital director refused her request for an abortion. She was forced to continue her pregnancy and deliver the doomed fetus, which survived only four days. Working with human rights lawyers, K.L. filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee, based in Geneva. In 2005, the Committee concluded that Peru had violated several articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and it ordered financial compensation to K.L. Fifteen years after the incident, reparations were finally made for Peru's "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." This marked the first time a United Nations Committee had held a country accountable for failing to ensure access to safe, legal abortion.

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Abortions for fetal anomalies

Fetal abnormalities account for a small but important proportion of abortion requests. Indeed, modern prenatal diagnosis is predicated on the availability of legal abortion should an abnormality be detected. Most women who undergo prenatal diagnosis receive favorable news and thus continue desired pregnancies.

Anencephaly: a deadly defect

Anencephaly is an uncommon (1/1000 pregnancies) but devastating neural tube defect. The human embryo starts as a tube, which subsequently closes at both ends at around 4 weeks. If the bottom fails to close, then meningomyelocele (spina bifida) occurs. If the top fails to close, anencephaly results (photo).

In this condition, major parts of the brain, skull, and scalp are missing. Fetuses with anencephaly are doomed. Many die during pregnancy or childbirth, and those born alive usually die soon thereafter. Median survival time after birth in a recent case series was 55 minutes. The mother and family often witness the death of the malformed infant.

Most choose abortion

Most women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of anencephaly choose abortion. In a recent review of the world's literature, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that overall 83% of women in this setting chose abortion, ranging from 59% to 100% in individual studies.

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This CDC study confirmed earlier evidence that most women who learn of serious fetal defects during pregnancy choose abortion. In the figure below, each square indicates the overall percent opting for abortion; the vertical line is the 95% confidence interval for the overall percent. A narrow line indicates good precision. The proportion choosing abortion varied by severity of the fetal anomaly. Among more than 5,000 women in five countries who received a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome (trisomy 21), 92% chose abortion. For anencephaly, the proportion was 84%. For sex-chromosome defects, abortion frequency was lower. With Turner syndrome (45X) and Klinefelter syndrome (47XXY) the proportion who chose abortion was 72% and 58%, respectively. The corresponding figure for spina bifida (meningomyelocele) was 64%.

Risks to the pregnant woman

In settings where legal abortion is not an option, women with a fetal diagnosis of anenecephaly must continue these doomed pregnancies. The risk of maternal complications appears to be high. In a recent report of 26 cases from Ireland, most women had labor medically induced, since pregnancies with anencephaly tend to continue longer than normal. Seven women (27%) had excessive amniotic fluid develop around the fetus, and three of these had to have fluid removed repeatedly by needle in late pregnancy. Four of the vaginal births had mechanical difficulty delivering the fetal shoulders.
It's official. The Downton Abbey world we knew is over.



On Sunday night, in episode four of the sixth and final season, Mary said something complimentary about Edith.



Yup, that Mary. That Edith.

Edith said she wanted a woman to edit her magazine. Mary said she thought that was a good idea.



What next? Will Violet renounce the monarchy?



Oh, Mary tried to downplay it. When Rosamund praised her for making a nice gesture - meaning everyone just about keeled over from the shock - Mary replied, "A monkey could type out the Bible if you leave it long enough."



Truth is, Mary was on a kindness roll. Earlier, when Anna started feeling ominous signs of another miscarriage, Mary hustled them both onto a late train from York to her doctor in London. The doctor said he was "cautiously optimistic" the baby had been saved.



Mary also told Branson it would be fine if they became Downton's joint agents, which would mean handing back half the job she had come to love. Branson said that sounded fine, though he seemed to indicate he also wanted to find something that wasn't specifically Downton-related.



The cosmos rewarded Mary for all this pleasantness by giving her a semi-new potential suitor.



When Violet invited Lady Shackleton to Downton so Violet would have another ally in the hospital fight, it had a pleasant unintended consequence for Mary.



Lady Shackleton brought along her nephew, who turned out to be Henry Talbot, with whom Mary was mildly intrigued when he made a brief appearance last season.



His primary occupation seems to be driving race cars, which leads the family to consider him a bit of a dilettante. He's not exactly a grease monkey, more like a connoisseur and collector of high-end new wheels, but still, it seems vaguely roguish.

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The elders helpfully filled us in on his realistic position in the landed-gentry world, which is that he could become an earl if "40 strong men" ahead of him drop dead. Lady Shackleton summarized his prospects as "adequate but not overwhelming."

Oblivious to this sideline commentary, Henry and Mary had a dance, figurative and literal. Next time she's in London, he said, give him a call.



And hey, how about that, the Anna rescue took Mary to London almost immediately, and also gave her a free evening while Anna rested.



So Mary rang up Henry and they had dinner, during which they resumed their figurative dance. She asked if he were going to make a pass at her and that while she would probably say no, she would enjoy the process.



It might seem ironic that Mary could fall for a car driver considering how Matthew died, but if she can forgive Edith, she can forgive the automobile. There's also the added bonus of a potential top-gear link between Henry and Branson.



In the broader picture Sunday, writer Julian Fellowes scurried all about the room, tending to small and large details the way one does when one wants to tidy up a place before moving out.



Much, however, remains in play.



Lord Grantham, for instance, keeps having those indigestion pangs. He suggested Sunday night that he can no longer drink port, but all of us viewers, being really savvy in such matters, know it's going to be more serious than that. Cora may be catching on, too.



The more unexpected mini-drama Sunday was the visit of Mr. and Mrs. John Harding.

He serves alongside Rosamund on a charity with which Rosamund wants to get Edith involved. So Rosamund invited him to Downton for what seemed like your basic polite luncheon, except that Mrs. John Harding turned out to be Gwen, the former Downton housemaid who learned to type so she could get herself a secretarial gig back before the war.

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When Mrs. Harding was introduced, Mary asked if they had met before. Gwen said she didn't think so, which was technically true because the Crawleys rarely noticed the help back when there were so many of them.

Still, it clearly created a situation that was headed for the ditch, especially since Evil Thomas was also grumbling that Gwen had discarded "her friends" now that she had married up.

Anna pointed out that Evil Thomas and Gwen hadn't exactly bonded back in the day. But that didn't stop Thomas from lighting the fuse. As he was serving at luncheon, he volunteered that Mrs. Harding used to work as a housemaid at Downton.



Just as he hoped, Mary jumped in to wonder why Gwen was being a weasel.



Happily for Gwen, she had a card to play.



She had already confided to Branson - who else? - that she wasn't trying to hide her past from the Crawleys. She was trying to hide it from her husband. She had not told him she was a housemaid when they met because she was afraid it would seem just too lower-class.



Mr. Harding didn't seem bothered when Evil Thomas outed her. But that was nothing compared to the grand slam she scored with the Crawleys when she explained that she owed all her upward mobility journey to the late Lady Sybil, who encouraged and abetted her at every step.



By the time she finished, she had reduced the whole table to a puddle of sad, joyful tears. Forgiving her was easier than anything they'll ever do again.



Moments later, in her room, Mary confessed to Anna that it also made her realize that Sybil was a much better person than Mary is. Anna said Mary was being hard on herself. Anna didn't say Mary was wrong.

Gwen later completed her absolution by going downstairs to catch up with all her old compadres there.



And speaking of downstairs, Branson also helped prevent Daisy from blowing herself up.



The Crawleys had decided they would work the Drewe farm themselves - well, okay, we don't mean Lord and Lady Grantham would be mucking out the pig stalls - rather than bringing in a new tenant farmer.



This reinfuriated Daisy, who saw Mr. Mason being crushed by the ruling class and went on at such length that Mrs. Patmore addressed her as "Madame Defarge" and "Karl Marx."



Daisy appealed to Branson, who said he would "put in a word." He didn't mention that he had previously agreed to the plan even though for Mr. Mason it seemed like a freezeout.



When the Crawleys were finalizing the decision, Branson changed his vote and joined Cora in persuading Lord Grantham that even if it meant a little less revenue, offering the farm to Mr. Mason was the right thing to do.



Daisy, unaware of this eleventh hour reprieve, marched upstairs ready to verbally shove the Crawleys into a wood chipper. Happily, she paused just long enough for them to tell her she had won. It was kind of a buzzkill in a way. But a good way.



If Daisy and Mr. Mason ended up happy, things were not quite so cozy in the hospital fight upstairs.

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Violet's recruitment of Lady Shackleton, for starters, didn't go as planned. Lady Shackleton clearly didn't buy the party line even when Violet briefed her on it, leading Violet to say, "Are you here to help or to irritate?"



Lady Shackleton assured it was to help, but when the full group gathered, she said she couldn't make a decision when she didn't understand all the facts.



Violet snapped, "That's never stopped me," a splendid line if slightly out of character.



Overall, the hospital battle continued to feel like the Hundred Years War. When it came up at dinner, again, it triggered everything short of a food fight. After Isobel reiterated her side and Violet cut her off again and someone said Isobel was entitled to make her argument, Violet said, "Of course she is. She's just not entitled to win it."
Leo Tolstoy might have been surprised by a few of the scenes in the new television adaptation of War and Peace, just as Jane Austen might have been surprised 20 years ago by a few scenes in the 1995 television version of Pride & Prejudice.

But both Tolstoy and Austen very likely would have understood, and perhaps even approved, because the man who wrote both adaptations, Andrew Davies, made those scenes connect so seamlessly to everything else the characters thought, did and were.

That Davies could tweak such iconic works of literature goes a long way toward explaining why this soft-spoken Welshman, who turns 80 in September, has become one of the most accomplished and respected television screenwriters on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Nor is the well-received War and Peace anything like a swan song. He recently adapted Who Speaks for England, and production is currently under way for Davies's new adaptation of Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton.

No word yet on whether James would be surprised by any fresh twists involving antique furniture.

But Davies's stature is particularly impressive considering that we dwell in what's widely considered a golden age of television screenwriting. That's why long-time movie writers like Barry Levinson have joined hundreds of actors in migrating to the small screen, because they find more freedom and opportunities there.

As television passes its seventh decade, it has also developed its own pantheon of writers.

A quick sampling of the top handful might include David Simon, who wrote Homicide and The Wire; Shonda Rhimes, whose current shows include Grey's Anatomy and Scandal; Matthew Weiner, who graduated from writing for The Sopranos to creating Mad Men; Aaron Sorkin, who wrote The West Wing and The Newsroom; and J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost and Fringe.

Nor would fans leave out David Chase for The Sopranos, Vince Gilligan for Breaking Bad or Noah Hawley for the first two seasons of Fargo.



You get the idea.

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Most of Andrew Davies's work hasn't been in the same style as those writers. He has more often operated more in the theater of what are loosely called public broadcasting-style dramas.

Davies's acclaimed House of Cards, of course, is a rather different animal. But you could argue the description fits War and Peace, a four-part, eight-hour adaptation whose second part airs Monday night at 9 on Lifetime, History and A&E. It's a serious, sometimes dark drama about serious matters, and for all its reputation in literature, the story has been a tough sell for decades as a potential television series.

Tolstoy. Russia. Half a million words.

Davies is hardly the first writer invited to take a crack at it. He's just the first to accept the invitation and make it work.

"Actually, it was dead easy," he told a panel in London earlier this month. "It was a huge book and I think the main thing was leaving out all the editorializing, the history and the philosophy and trying to incorporate it somehow into the drama."

Since Davies's dozens of productions over several decades also include two Bridget Jones movies, Mr. Selfridge, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, South Riding, Doctor Zhivago and two Austen novels beyond Pride & Prejudice (Northanger Abbey and Sense & Sensibility), he'd earned that level of confidence.

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So when he started to tackle War and Peace, he saw a subtle reference he felt could help tell the existing story even more forcefully: an incestuous relationship between Helene Kuragin (Tuppence Middleton) and her brother Anatole (Callum Turner).

He told the London Telegraph that the affair was "subtly referenced in the book, absolutely. . . . I haven't felt any need to change War and Peace. Occasionally I have written one or two things that Tolstoy forgot to write."

He had a similar explanation recently for one of the most notorious scenes he has ever written: the wet-shirt swim taken by Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice.

Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennett happens to be walking up at that precise moment, and the result was possibly the most sexually charged fully clothed conversation in modern television history.

Some viewers still haven't gotten over it, including Austen devotees who noted that Jane herself never would have even considered such a scene.

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Davies said it was still perfectly Austenian.

"Because people for years had only been looking at these characters from the neck up," he said, "I wanted it to be quite physical. Remember these are young people.

"Mr. Darcy leads a life where for weeks he spends his life in stuffy dining halls, which he does not enjoy. I thought, what would make more sense when he has a little time off than to swim in his own lake?"

It's also, he said, consistent with Austen's observational wit.

"It's a very funny scene, really," he said. "He and Elizabeth have this very proper, stilted conversation even though he's soaking wet."

In retrospect, said Davies, the only downside was the unexpected resonance of the scene for Firth.

"Colin," he admitted, "has never lived it down."

Truth is, though, Mr. Darcy has been quite good to Firth. That tends to happen when, as an actor, you get words that work.

"My character in War and Peace, Andrei, is tormented and really not all that likeable," says James Norton, one of the leads in the current production. "But it was not hard to play him, because Andrew Davies got that all into the script."

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By Deepak Chopra, MD

At the turn of the new year it feels as if evil is more present and dangerous than ever. One component of worldwide fear is terrorism, and in the minds of religious fanatics who turn to terror tactics, there's a black-and-white conception of evil. This mental picture of God battling Satan, or something on the same absolute scale, tempts us to fight again terrorism from the same basis. But is there absolute evil in the first place?

There are many reasons to say no. "Pure evil" is a tag applied in the media for horrifying acts, but this is far from proving that the people who perpetrate these acts have become possessed by cosmic evil. As several research projects akin to the Stanford Prison Experiment have shown, ordinary people can step into immoral territory very quickly if given the right situation. Abu Ghraib was another shocking example. There is a lethal mixture when you have an enemy under your power along with permission to do what you want with him, absent any repercussions or punishment.



Extreme acts of violence do not constitute absolute, pure, or satanic evil. Outside a religious worldview, there are rational explanations for evil acts, and our response should be based on which of the following explanation we adopt.

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1. Situational Evil is an explanation that holds circumstances responsible for evil actions. The situation of jihadists, for example, includes decades of repressive governments and the secret police, along with ignorance, poverty, illiteracy, and hate instigated from extremist clerics. This explanation is often confused with excusing situational evil, but that's unfair. In some countries a husband can shoot his wife's lover and be let off for a crime of passion, and we all feel sympathy if a women killed a rapist or a parent killed a criminal intruder. In other words, we all switch into the situational model when we feel it is appropriate.



2. The Disease Model of Evil holds that mental illness causes extreme and violent acts by the sufferer. The fact that mass shootings are so closely associated with the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia (e.g., hearing voices, feeling persecuted, developing elaborate conspiracy theories with no basis in reality) is strong support for the disease model. But this is another explanation accused of being an excuse. The application of the disease model should be more straightforward; we should find anyone with a history of mental disease innocent. But public outrage and a thirst for revenge often makes this impossible.



3. Unconscious Evil comes closest to resembling the religious notion that devils and demons lurk inside us, but as a secular explanation, this one simply says that human nature is divided into the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious is the hidden mind, and ever since recorded history, there are eruptions of mass violence known as wars. When wars break out, the unconscious has its day, and "good" societies perpetrate unspeakable acts upon a chosen victim/enemy. World WAR I, which led to mechanized slaughter and poison gas attacks is a prime example. The most civilized countries in Europe went to war with no real political purpose and sustained maximum killing on either side without justification. Eruptions from the unconscious are very real, and there is almost nothing that can be done when there is a full-blown episode.



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4. Existential Evil holds that the root causes of aggression, hatred, crime, and violence are innate, woven into the fabric of human nature. Because this is a fatalistic model it merges with religious explanations about God's will and divine punishment for sin. Many people with a secular world view resort to this kind of explanation when their rational minds are at a loss to explain evil acts, but on closer examination, the explanatory force of existential evil is weak--there's no real reason given except "That's just how it is."



So which explanation is correct? None is right in every case, and all have their valid use. The responsibility for finding an explanation that works falls upon each of us. It's lazy and counter-productive to simply allow rampant public hysteria, fear, and suspicion to be acceptable. Unless you have proof that pure or cosmic evil exists, you can benefit the collective discussion by thinking through where evil comes from.
Andy Borowitz in a satire piece at The New Yorker "quoted" former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin telling an audience at a Trump rally in Iowa that Obama was "single-handedly to blame" for her defeat in the 2008 general election, "just like [Obama] has defeated so many other great Americans."

Saying that Palin feels her family paid the price, Borowitz further "quotes" Palin:



I can't help thinking that, if I had been elected Vice-President, Bristol and Willow wouldn't have gotten into that drunken brawl and Track wouldn't have threatened his girlfriend and whatnot...Thanks, Obama.

While the above piece of satire might be funny, what is not satire and certainly not at all funny, is the regerttable comment Palin made about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), domestic violence and about the President of the United States at a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.



Palin's son, Track Palin, 26, was sent to Iraq by President Bush in 2008 and spent a year there.

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CNN reports that on Monday, January 18, Track was arrested in Wasilla Alaska and "charged with domestic violence assault on a female, interfering with a report of domestic violence and possession of a weapon while intoxicated, according to Dan Bennett, a spokesman for the Wasilla Police Department."

ForeignPolicy.com says that, according to a police report, "Drunk, [Track] allegedly beat his girlfriend, held an AR-15 to his head and threatened to kill himself."

At the Tulsa, Oklahoma, campaign stop, Track's mother linked her son's problem to PTSD and used it as political fodder, blaming President Barack Obama.

"My son, like so many others, they come back a bit different," Sarah Palin said trying to relate to other families who feel "the ramifications" of PTSD and "the woundedness" that our soldiers return with.

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"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.

Palin questioned whether the president knows the sacrifices our military make to "secure America and to secure freedoms" and claimed that she realizes "more than ever" that we need to have "that commander in chief who will respect them and honor them."

Veterans, veterans organizations and mental health experts who know the damaging effects of PTSD have been quick to come down on Palin's use of her son's domestic violence "as a platform to politicize a condition that affects more than 10 percent of the U.S. military."

Brandon Friedman, the former digital media director for the Department of Veterans Affairs says:

Contrary to caricature, those with PTSD - veterans and non-veterans alike - are simply not ticking bombs who could snap at any moment. Research has shown this time and again...Palin's remarks strongly suggest otherwise - that people like her son cannot control themselves. In the process, she's perpetuating an unwarranted stigma that will almost surely cause other veterans with PTSD to hesitate in reaching out for help, especially if they think a diagnosis will hurt their careers.

He also tweets:

Palin said today that her domestic abuser son is a victim of Obama's neglect for vets. Did she mention the actual victim--the girlfriend?

Paul Rieckhoff, the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), also criticized Palin's comments, tweeting: "We need more programs and less politics to battle PTSD."

Calling PTSD a "very serious problem," he told NBC News "It's not President Obama's fault that Sarah Palin's son has PTSD" and added, "I hope this doesn't become a portable chew toy in a political campaign."

Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran & Chairman, VoteVets, notes that Palin is blaming her son's domestic violence charges on his deployment to Iraq. "Even though her son was deployed to Iraq by George W. Bush, Palin decided to take this very serious issue, and turn it into a ham-handed partisan attack on President Obama," he says.

"To use such a serious issue, like PTSD, that too many veterans suffer to try to score political points is a new low...To politicize the matter by using her platform to blame President Obama is just absolutely beyond the pale, and turns what should be a serious discussion into yet another one of her political sideshows," Soltz says.

When press secretary Josh Earnest was asked Thursday about the President's reaction to Palin's comments, Earnest replied:

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I don't know if the President saw the remarks. I can tell you that 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. But 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. And these are issues that this administration is quite focused on. We take them all very seriously.

Even Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush describing the PTSD problem as a "national tragedy" for which "all of us I think have a responsibility to roll up our sleeves," says, "I don't think blaming the president is appropriate."

Lead Image: The National Center for PTSD
FILE- In this Wednesday, July 29, 2015 photo, a Syrian refugee boy plays with a tire at Zaatari refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan. The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015 defended its response to the Syrian refugee crisis in the face of criticism that the country and other oil-rich Gulf states should be doing more to address the issue. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh, File)

Accepting Syrian migrants in America and Europe has become an increasingly divisive political issue. Critics point out that the Gulf States, though mostly majority Sunni, have refused to offer refuge to any fleeing Syrians, also mostly Sunnis. However, Syria's direct neighbors bear a huge burden, with Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey each hosting more than a million refugees.

Many Syrians have dispersed into the larger community, especially in Lebanon. Both Jordan and Turkey host large camps as well. Refugee camps have become a symbol of our violent world, as people seek to flee conflicts which threaten their lives and destroy economic and social life. More than four million people have left Syria and even more have been displaced internally.

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The migrant rush to Europe should surprise no one. Even Syrians who desire to return to their homeland see little reason for hope. The war continues. No political solution can erase the hatreds aroused after more than four years of conflict. When peace finally takes hold, much of the nation's infrastructure will sit ruined, requiring reconstruction.

Moreover, why would anyone want to stay in a refugee camp? Last year I visited Zaatari Refugee Camp, located just a few miles from the Syrian border in Jordan. I was traveling with International Orthodox Christian Charities, which carries out an expansive ministry addressing the many needs of Syrians inside and outside of their country.

Zaatari, just a few miles from the Syrian border, was opened in July 2012 as a tent encampment. Covering about three square miles, it quickly filled and now contains around 80,000 people, making it Jordan's 4th largest "city." It is divided into 12 districts and people are free to move within, as many do, to get closer to desired services. In 2013 a second camp was constructed nearby. Zaatari's population is evenly divided between men and women. More than half of the residents are under 18.

Zaatari has not been the happiest of places. Residents have demonstrated, sometimes violently, to protest poor living conditions and inadequate food, as well as the depredations of the Assad government. Around 430,000 people have spent some time in the camp. Roughly half went elsewhere in Jordan while many others returned to Syria.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has overall authority to care of refugees, but the camp is managed by the Hashemite Charity Organization. A multitude of other governments and NGOs, such as IOCC, my host, support Zaatari's operations.

Camp life is tough. Although the size of a small city, its residents are dependent on the charity of others rather than independent productive actors. Economic life is almost entirely controlled from outside. With foreign help came dozens of mosques, 27 community centers, five schools, two hospitals, and nine health clinics. When there is less aid money, the "city" sputters. Zaatari went without electricity for nine months when UNHCR didn't have the money to pay the Jordanian government.

I visited a health facility which typically serves about 700 people daily. Samer Makahleh, with the Jordan Health Aid Society, coordinates health care programs. "To fill gaps we go to outside partners like IOCC," he explained. The hardest medical cases have to be transported elsewhere, and as many as 100 people are waiting for more expensive operations, such as heart procedures. For these "they need a special donor," said Makahleh. Two people came up to me during my brief visit seeking financial support for operations.

Refugees receive a stipend of roughly $30 a month. Many also work for the camp, NGOS, or in private shops. Most surprising may be the diversity of private businesses, around 2500 in all, many of which line the main street, called the Champs-Elysees. The UNHCR estimates that 60 percent working age refugees are employed to some degree. Even 13 percent of children labor some, a number missing school as a result.

The security manager said 16 of his 28 employees were Syrians. I met 22-year-old Abdul al-Jabbar, who said his family of nine came from the city of Daraa to the camp three years ago. His mother and the kids arrived first and later were joined by his father. Life was difficult, he said, "but at least we are alive. We must adapt." One of his brothers works for a private business and another in their parents' small retail shop.

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Almost anything is available for a price. Shops sell food, cell phones, tools, household supplies, and clothes, including wedding dresses, which are available for rent. There are barbers and hair-dressers. Restaurants and cafes. Residents can buy falafels and order pizzas. There's even a travel agency, though few refugees are in a position go far. I bought a few worry beads to supplement my supply. Many refugees simply took up their old line of work--the owner of a clothing shop said that was his business back home.

Homes are a mix of tents and containers, which can be purchased by residents to gain a bit more protection from the extremes of hot and cold. Most refugees now have their own latrines and kitchens, instead of having to rely on communal facilities. There is little furniture, though cushions are popular.

The landscape is dusty, a bit out of Mad Max World, suggested journalist Mark Haddon of London's Daily Mail. But there are spots of green. Two homes, across from each other, have a few plants growing outside. Both families, from the Syrian city of Daraa, were farmers. They are determined to preserve a little memory of home, and use wastewater to keep the plants alive.

The future weighs heavily. Many refugees want to return to their homes, which may no longer exist. Others would like to try life outside of the camp in Jordan, but cannot go legally without financial sponsorship. The country already is saturated with refugees, inflating rents, filling jobs, and creating resentments. Some residents hope for resettlement elsewhere, an unlikely prospect as political opposition to increased immigration rises.

Still, life goes on. One of al-Jabbar's sisters is now engaged. Starting a family under such circumstances obviously is hard, yet about 80 babies are born every week. Some girls are married off young, yielding a dowry to help the family purchase necessities. Many more are just acting like people elsewhere. The present may be difficult, but who wants to wait for a future which may never come?

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Two researchers at the University of California, San Diego conducted a jealousy study with 36 small dogs. The dogs were all under 35 pounds and/or shorter than 15 inches. This was so the researchers could more easily control undesirable behaviors. In the group of 36 were 14 mixed breed dogs and a variety of purebred toy and small breeds.

Each dog was videotaped in his or her own home while the owner interacted with a barking, whining, tail-wagging animatronic dog, a children's book, and a plastic jack-o-lantern. The owners were told to ignore their dogs while interacting with the other objects. The videos were then evaluated for aggressive, disruptive, and attention-seeking behaviors from the dogs.

The dogs barked at -- and a quarter of them snapped at -- the robotic dog when their owners petted or praised it. About a third tried to get in between their owner and the stuffed dog. The dogs displayed less of this type of behavior when their owners paid attention to the jack-o-lantern or read aloud from the children's book.

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About 78 percent of the dogs tried to push or touch their owner when the owner was interacting with the fake dog, compared to 42 percent that interfered when the owner was handling the jack-o-lantern. And only 22 percent displayed the behavior when the owner read the children's book.

Dogs Are Motivated to Protect Important Relationships

According to the researchers, the dogs' jealousy was triggered by social interaction and not just because their owners were ignoring them to focus on the pumpkin or the book. Also, most of the dogs (86 percent) sniffed the butt of the robotic dog, indicating they viewed it as real.

According to study co-author Christine Harris, a UC San Diego psychology professor, in a news release:

"Our study suggests not only that dogs do engage in what appear to be jealous behaviors but also that they were seeking to break up the connection between the owner and a seeming rival.

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We can't really speak to the dogs' subjective experiences, of course, but it looks as though they were motivated to protect an important social relationship."

These findings are similar to results of human studies in which babies as young as 6 months showed jealousy when their mothers paid attention to realistic-looking dolls, but did not show jealousy when mom read a book.

The UC San Diego researchers theorize that social animals like dogs and humans might be driven by nature to feel jealous in the face of threats to important relationships.

What we do know for certain is that the emotion of jealousy, when acted upon, can have significant psychological and social consequences. The researchers hope future studies will further explore the triggers and internal drivers of jealousy.

Dr. Karen Becker is a proactive and integrative wellness veterinarian. You can visit her site at: MercolaHealthyPets.com



Her goal is to help you create wellness in order to prevent illness in the lives of your pets. This proactive approach seeks to save you and your pet from unnecessary stress and suffering by identifying and removing health obstacles even before disease occurs. Unfortunately, most veterinarians in the United States are trained to be reactive. They wait for symptoms to occur, and often treat those symptoms without addressing the root cause.

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MIAMI, FL - JANUARY 15: Bill Nye attends Magic City Comic Con at Miami Airport Convention Center on January 15, 2016 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Johnny Louis/FilmMagic)

"The first principle [of science] is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, 1965.

When Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") publicly changed his mind recently about genetically modified organisms  he now says they "are an important, and perhaps, essential component of modern farming"  many were quick to pounce.

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Besides attacking his reasoning and his credentials, some of his critics even alleged - with absolutely no evidence or justification - that Bill's change of position must have involved a payoff by my company, Monsanto.

The simple, innocent truth, however, is laid out plainly in the recently published revised edition of Bill's book "Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation." In a new chapter, Bill explains that after publishing the first edition of the book, in 2014, he "has spent a great deal of additional time investigating the issues surrounding GMFs (genetically modified foods)." His investigation, he explains, included a deeper exploration of the scientific literature, as well as a visit to our company.

"I was not there to be charmed," he comments on that visit. "I was there to see if Monsanto scientists had hard data to address the issues about GMFs and the ecosystems in which they grow. I now believe they do."

In other words, Bill dug deeper into the issue and then recognized he'd been mistaken. And then he had the courage to admit it.

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Who else has trod this path? Well, lots of people. After all, to err is human, and scientists and those who, like Bill, study and write about science, are human. For science to move ahead, therefore, it's critical that the people who pursue it be willing to recognize and correct their mistakes. Otherwise science - and humanity - get stuck.

I know I've made mistakes as a scientist - for example, in being slow to recognize the seriousness of climate change. When the data documenting this trend became overwhelming, however, I studied it - and shifted my position - because I knew that for a scientist, the real sin is not in making a mistake, but in refusing to acknowledge it. That's all Bill has done in this case.





And that puts him in some very good company.

Thomas Edison, for example, famously had to work his way through thousands of failures to achieve some of his great technological inventions.

"I have not failed," he once said. "I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

That attitude is typical among great scientists. They know that, as Niels Bohr said, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."

Albert Einstein was one such expert. As a recent article in Scientific American shows, the greatest physicist of the 20th century made several important mistakes. But as the article also shows, he was not unwilling to admit it, most notably in connection with his general theory of relativity, introduced in 1915.

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Consistent with the prevailing belief of the time, Einstein assumed then that the universe was static - neither expanding nor contracting. That circumstance, however, was a problem for him, because gravity dictated contraction. So the great man inserted into his calculations a "cosmological constant" - a fudge factor he thought was needed to ensure a universe in balance.

Some years later, however, evidence began to mount that the universe was not in balance, that it's actually expanding. So Einstein withdrew the constant - and called it "the biggest blunder he ever made in his life."

My final example of mistakes made and acknowledged concerns Stephen Hawking, the British astrophysicist who comes closest, perhaps, to being Einstein's successor in today's world. Hawking, who helped create modern black-hole theory among countless other contributions, is best known to the public as the author of A Brief History of Time and the subject of the movie, "The Theory of Everything."

Like Einstein, Hawking has admitted some big mistakes. My favorite concerns time:

A few decades ago, some of the world's leading theorists speculated that if the expansion of the universe were to reverse itself and things would begin to contract, time's arrow would flip. Instead of pointing forward, it would run backwards, like a movie in reverse. People, if they still existed, would live from the grave to the cradle.

Now, as spectacular as that thought is, what is almost equally spectacular to me is that for a while, Stephen Hawking believed it. Yes, the man who is arguably the smartest person in the world thought time would reverse - which I gather means the Beatles would reunite, the Great Depression would quickly be followed by World War I, and my St. Louis Cardinals would have another chance at winning the 1985 World Series, which they would have won the first time but for a terrible call by the umpire.

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But I digress. As The New York Times reported years ago, Hawking has now "announced that he had changed his mind. Recent research had led him to conclude that time would still march forward, even if the universe began to contract, he told a conference in Chicago on astrophysics."

So too bad for Beatles fans, but good for science. That's how it works. We all have blinders and we all make mistakes, so we keep studying. And when the evidence tells us we've been wrong, we admit it.
UNITED STATES - JANUARY 22: Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign rally at Bedford High School in Bedford, N.H., January 22, 2016. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Here's the big problem for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He will either win outright or make a powerful second place showing in both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary on February 1. Why is that a problem?

Simple: The wins will mean next to nothing.

The two states are two of the whitest states in the country. Democratic voters in both states have a contrarian, quasi-populist streak. They have a history of thumbing their noses at traditional Democratic contenders. That was the case in 1968 when New Hampshire Democrats backed Democratic anti-Vietnam war Senator Eugene McCarthy. This was a major reason that then President Lyndon Johnson dropped his bid for re-election. Iowa Democrats did the same forty years later when they backed insurgent then Democratic presidential candidate Obama over Hillary Clinton.

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The brutal political reality is that numbers and, in this case, tradition, are against Sanders in the states that will determine the Democratic presidential nominee. In the space of three weeks after the New Hampshire primary February 9, eight out of the next 13 open Democratic primaries are in the South. South Carolina kicks off that run. Black voters in that state make up nearly 50 percent of the voters. In Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, Louisiana and Oklahoma, black voters either make-up the majority of Democrats or a sizeable minority.

In the 2014 mid-term elections they voted in greater proportions than white voters. No one knows better than Clinton that black voters can make or break a Democratic presidential contender. In the weeks before the South Carolina primary in 2008, she was the runaway favorite to bag the black vote and win the state primary. She won neither. Obama did. In part because he had a massive ground game there that laser focused on black voters, and in part because he was black and his election was history-making. Hillary had no chance against that. This time, Clinton is determined that there will be no repeat of 2008.

She has practically camped out in the state, courted and got the backing of every black elected official in that state and other Southern states that she could, made blatant race-tinged pitches on police abuse, boosts to Historically Black Colleges, voting rights, blasted disparities in education and health care for blacks, and tightly embraced the civil rights legacy of MLK.

Sanders has scrambled hard and fast to try and make up the ground in the South. He's made a mighty effort to get visibility, traction and endorsements from black organizations and elected officials in South Carolina and other Southern states. He's done much to try and convey his message that fighting wealth and income inequality, and fighting for a single payer health care system, mean much for impoverished blacks. He's hit hard on police abuse and criminal justice reform.

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His efforts have had marginal effect. It's not due to anything Sanders has or hasn't done. His record and history on civil rights and wealth and income inequality is every bit as impeccable as Clinton's. But that record and history hasn't been a central focus of his campaign, nor is it likely to be. It's his relentless assault on Wall Street, corporate greed and the wealth gap that is his political mantra and strength. This isn't a bad thing. However, in a racially tense and polarized nation, where race matters, and matters greatly in politics, this single focus issue and the faces at his crowds haven't been lost on many blacks.

The great irony is that the script for Sanders with a win in Iowa and New Hampshire is the exact opposite of what the two states meant for Obama in 2008. Obama had to win both for two reasons. One was to prove that his candidacy had the political juice, staying power and credibility to attract big donors and pry many of the party traditionalists away from Clinton. The other was much thornier, but no less important for a real run for the White House. As an African-American presidential candidate he had to prove that he could actually get a big percentage of whites to vote for a black presidential candidate.

Sanders' has no such problem in the two states. It's in the South and with black voters that he faces the Herculean task of trying to convince black voters that he is electable and that a senator who represents a state with a negligible percent of black voters can be as sensitive to, and aggressively fight hard against, racial and social injustices. Clinton has the tradition and track record to make that claim. She is working overtime to cement it with black voters.

A win, or a big showing in Iowa and New Hampshire by Sanders, will get tons of media attention, boost his stock even further among his fervent backers and will raise the eyebrows of some in the Democratic Party establishment. It just won't do much to win him the Democratic nomination.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is From Sanders to Trump: A Guide to the 2016 Presidential Primary Battles (Amazon Kindle) He is a frequent MSNBC contributor. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network
U.S. military combat roles are open to women, announced Defense Secretary Ashton Carter just last month. Getting here hasn't been easy. Over 70 years ago, women flew military planes for the first time.

Faced with a dearth of pilots during World War II, the US turned to women to fly military aircraft to release men for combat abroad. The little-known Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASP finished their service with flying records equal to and in some categories better than those of male pilots. In each new military role, women have had to prove themselves overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to make progress.



Former WASP Bernice "Bee" Haydu: present day and 1944. Courtesy of Bee Haydu.

The WASP program generated considerable interest among women. Some 25,000 applied and a little over 1,000 were accepted. WASP flew nearly every kind of military aircraft; they ferried new planes straight from factories to bases, test-flew repaired aircraft and even towed targets for gunnery practice. Although they performed military duties, they were officially civilians, and as such, received no insurance, death or veteran benefits. Thirty-eight died in service, often forcing the WASP to gather donations among themselves to send their colleagues home.

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Today as women break ground graduating from the Army Ranger School for the first time, we need to appreciate how tenuous the initial steps toward progress were. This means grappling with the gender and racial prejudices of the past.

In the 1940s, the WASP first began chipping away at ingrained stereotypes about women's lack of focus and stamina. The head of the program, Jacqueline Cochran, concluded in her final report that WASP were "as efficient and effective" as male pilots and "had as much endurance." The Commanding General of the Army Air Forces at the time, H. H. Arnold, concurred. Despite having wondered "whether a slip of a young girl could fight the controls of a B-17," he announced that it was "on the record that women can fly as well as men."

Unfortunately, the program stopped short of full equality. It was not immune to endemic racism in the United States armed forces. African American women were barred from entry, but despite being denied this opportunity, African American female pilots made their own integral contributions to the war effort. The activism of aviator Willa Brown, for example, was instrumental in launching the Tuskegee Airmen and integrating the Air force.

The WASP program ended in 1944 after only two years in large part due to a smear campaign undertaken by male pilots who felt that women were taking their jobs; the WASP were refused military status by Congress and disbanded.

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Many were eager to continue flying but found it difficult. Not able to get a job in the aviation industry, former WASP Bernice "Bee" Haydu, now 95 years old, realized "I was going to have to do it on my own." She became a freelance flight instructor, established a ferrying business and eventually went on to be co-owner in a flight school, but hers is a rare story.

A few decades after the war, the WASP decided to lobby for military status. As these efforts began, the US armed forces announced in the mid-1970s that women would fly military aircraft for the first time. Angered, the WASP began to lobby forcefully for recognition and military status. In 1977, they achieved it, and in 2010 they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Most recently, the WASP's eligibility to have their ashes laid in Arlington National Cemetery was repealed; a congressional effort striving to reverse this is underway.

Despite the last setback, the Gold Medal inched this story back into view. In 2009, soon after President Obama signed the bill awarding the medal, articles appeared and television series featured the WASP. Though it may seem trivial, popular culture dramatizes history in a way that traditional historical analysis does not. An Army Wives episode entitled "As Time Goes By" featured a WASP as a feisty adventurous character. Cold Case, in the episode "WASP," showcased the sexism female pilots faced, which, in some cases, may have led to the sabotage of their planes by male pilots.

Over the years, however, portrayal of the WASP in popular culture has been rare and uneven. In a 1945 film, Ladies Courageous, the WASP are anything but brave; they fight over men and with each other. In contrast, the 2008 movie Warbirds pays homage to the WASP with accurate details on the women's uniforms and lines like "my girls received the same training male pilots have." But it's a sci-fi flic and oddly devolves into a battle between the WASP and dinosaur-like monsters.

FlyGirls TV Mini-Series Promotional Trailer We are thrilled to present: IN DEVELOPMENT - The Unprecedented Dramatic Mini-Series about the Women Airforce Service Pilots - The Forgotten Fliers of WWII - FlyGirls Scripted TV Mini-Series Trailer - for Promotional Use Only.Our website is coming soon, and please also visit our YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOycA5PXuP_gqA-U4ZKTcmA for all our videos. Please share with your friends and family. Stay tuned and thank you for your support! Posted by FlyGirls on Sunday, September 13, 2015

Fly Girls

TrailerI spoke with Director Matia Karrell and Producer Hilary Prentice of the

Fly Girls

dramatic mini-series. They are in regular touch with former WASP, giving them the opportunity to present their side of the story, but Karrell specified that the show will look, not just at the women who flew, but the women who weren't allowed to fly, like African American pilots. Karrell is aiming to portray the sweeping history in which female pilots played a key role. The US was becoming a world power and with that came the promise of equality, regrettably curtailed by the war's end.
Friday 22 January 2016, the College of Europe, Brugge Campus, welcomed Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama, in what was the first high official visit from Albania. The College of Europe in the past 75 years has critically nurtured the European elites. Its two campuses, the oldest in Brugge and in Natolin (Warsaw) offers post-graduate studies in European Affairs to a pool of international students coming from more than 50 different countries. The College of Europe has a longstanding tradition in offering scholarships to students coming from the Western Balkans and already Albanian students have had the opportunity to study in the known institution.

Edi Rama has been, since 2013, the Prime Minister of Albania. His government has embarked on shock reforms, from that of energy, where the loss or theft equaled 5% of the small nation GDP, to the reform on pensions that was threatening the microeconomic stability of the country, the reforms of law enforcement, education, healthcare and territorial and administrative reform that brought upon significant improvements to the functioning of the second level government.

PM Rama presented his remarks on the dream of an open Europe and the optimism of Albania, one day, to become a member. He as well, expressed his concerns that the failure to keep the open door policy from the EU could foment nationalist politics and religious radicalism in the region of Western Balkans. The 'clash of civilizations', to PM Rama, is to be attributed to the lack of knowledge of young generations of the culture and history of other's religions. Hence, he stressed, that Albania's efforts have been ongoing to increase inter-religious understanding among youth. Indeed Albania has been known of its inter-religious peaceful coexistence.

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The European Commission, in the last November progress reports made clear for all the candidates and potential candidates from the Western Balkans the return to fundamentals. Albania has been praised to have a steady progress across all five key priorities, notably strengthening of fundamental rights, fighting organized crime, eradicate corruption and complete reform of judiciary and public administration. However, the judiciary reform is a thorny issue between the government majority and the opposition. It seems that the political parties cannot agree on the draft to be submitted to the ad-hoc committee of the Albanian Parliament on Justice Reform.

On its part, the opposition, Democratic Party, has voiced its concerns that the government is, allegedly, interested in strengthening its control on the judiciary. The bone of contention seems to be the votes required to elect, for instance, the representatives of the chamber of notaries. The opposition, Democratic Party, is proposing a 2/3 parliamentary majority (93 votes) while the government is suggesting 3/5 presently held by the governing majority. These coupled with the constitutional amendments included in the revised draft of the reform, would give a veto power to the government on the eight institutions established and shaped by the justice reform.

It is clear, that this atmosphere of political obstructionism and lack of political dialogue is harming the process and considering the new and clearer approach of the EC, delaying Albania in starting negotiations like the neighbors Montenegro and Serbia. The Venice Commission has provided its interim opinion on the draft of the Justice Reform with annexed 11 recommendations. The United States, through the Ambassador Donald Lu, have been vocal on the social and institutional difficulties created in the country due to the delay in forcefully taking steps in the right direction.

Indeed, it seems as when it comes to the European future of Albania, the battle of wishes persists. On one hand, the international community stresses the urgency for reforms. On the other, government's official underline that real reforms need years and sacrifices and the opening of negotiations would be extremely valuable to motivate all the parties in the reform process. PM Rama added, that more often than not, the enlargement process has been other than technical with specified EC conditionality, a political one where EU member states have added additional requests to cater to their national political agenda.

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While, it could be agreed that years of solidified state capture by elites, and results of an unfortunate path dependency of nearly five decades of isolation cannot be erased overnight. It cannot be denied that in the past 20 years, have been the Albanians to pay the price: from brain drain, to loss of investment and unemployment, to fostering an utter distrust in state institutions.
By Mark Blessington

In Adam Smith's day, investment of personal savings into business drove economic growth. Most economic activity back then involved small local companies, and nearly all of them relied on individual investor capital for formation and growth. Therefore, he argued, it was imperative to encourage individual investors by awarding them with shares of company stock that held an exclusive claim on company profits.

The world has changed dramatically since Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776. Today's economy, when viewed from an overall or macro perspective, no longer depends on stockholders. The cumulative net value of stock flows in and out of corporate coffers has been negative since 1987 (See chart. Data from the Federal Reserve Board). Between 1987 and 2014, nonfinancial corporations spent $5.8 trillion more on stock buybacks than they gained from issuing stock.

In other words, at the macroeconomic level, stockholders no longer add economic value when it comes to corporate funding. They have been replaced by banks; they now underwrite almost half of all corporate funding. While there are exceptions on a company-by-company basis, the macroeconomic truth is that shareholders are irrelevant to corporate formation and growth. There is a new game in the economic world, and it has nothing to do with that portion of classic economic theory that asserts shareholders are the driving force behind economic growth.

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A different portion of classic economic theory, the principle of supply and demand, can help explain exactly what is behind the avalanche of stock buybacks since 1987. Stock buybacks reduce the number of shares available for active trading on the stock markets, which reduces supply. In general, when markets encounter a reduction in supply for an item with no change in demand, the item becomes more difficult to acquire, which drives up its price. When a company buys back shares of stock, they are trying to increase their stock price by reducing supply. In fact, it would be foolish for a company to buy back stock unless the likely outcome was a stock price increase; there is no better business reason for doing it.

We know for certain that a small portion of U.S. households own the lion's share of wealth associated with stocks. So it stands to reason that the major beneficiaries of stock buybacks are the top 10% of U.S. households. In other words, corporations spent $5.8 trillion to make the top 10% wealthier (see G. William Domhoff).

Does the economy benefit when stock prices rise? In Adam Smith's day, the answer was yes because it encouraged further investing in business expansion. But companies no longer use stocks to fund their investing, so that benefit is gone.

It has been argued, with almost no empirical success, that when wealthy people get wealthier, the whole economy benefits (aka trickle-down economics). The more impressive fact is that the economy benefits to a much greater extent when poor and middle class incomes rise. The reason is obvious and simple: poor and middle class families spend almost everything they earn, which in turn feeds economic growth. In contrast, wealthy households don't spend newfound wealth, they invest it. And, as we now know, investing no longer drives the economy, it only makes rich people richer.

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The picture becomes even more unsavory when considering executive compensation programs. Corporations regularly issue gigantic stock packages as part of their executive compensation programs. When the company's stock price rises due to a buyback, executives can earn more from their stock sales. This is a nasty case of the fox guarding the henhouse. CEOs advocate for stock buybacks because they directly increase personal wealth.

CEOs also benefit from stock buybacks because it makes company performance look better, even if it is only a momentary jump in stock price. If the buyback is well timed, it occurs just before the board assesses top executive performance. High stock prices lead to more favorable assessments, and therefore bigger stock awards.

A third benefit of buybacks is to offset the dilution created by monstrous stock awards for senior executives. These stock grants increase the supply of stock, which puts a downward pressure on price. The buyback offsets this pressure and pushes price back up.

When a company has great ideas, classic economic theory holds that profits are plowed back into the company to generate even more profits. The massive level of buybacks suggests that either Corporate America has run out of great ideas, or CEOs are more interested in personal gains.

William Lazonick goes even further. He argues convincingly that stock buybacks actually hurt everyone except the top 10%. (See Profits without Prosperity, Harvard Business Review, September, 2014). His research shows two important things. First, the magnitude of stock awards is shocking. In 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives named in proxy statements of U.S. public companies received an average of $25 million each in stock and stock options. Second, Lazonick shows that profits from productivity gains are consistently diverted to executives at the expense of other employees. He concludes that stock buybacks are the core engine driving wealth disparity in the U.S., and he proposes sweeping reform of executive compensation practices.

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Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of the last 30 years of stock buybacks involves the damage it does to the classic view of economic risk.

Adam Smith presented a six-step argument:

(1) Workers are paid immediately and fairly for their time at work.

(2) Some workers are more productive than others and earn more money.

(3) Some highly productive workers wisely save and accumulate some of their earnings.

(4) Some savers are brave enough to invest in businesses.

(5) Some investments are successful and create incremental profits.

(6) Incremental profits drive overall economic growth.

Adam Smith held the fourth step to be the only relevant economic risk because it was the essential ingredient in driving economic growth; without it there was none.

If we accept Smith's logic, then what happens when step four becomes extraneous to economic growth? Shareholder economic risk goes to zero. To Smith, there was zero economic risk for the worker and the saver because they were not instrumental to economic growth. Only one risk--shareholder risk--was imperative for economic growth. All other economic risks were zero. Since shareholders no longer create economic wealth, they also represent zero economic risk.

Now for the clincher: Since shareholders have zero economic risk in the classic sense, they have no legitimate claim on company profits. They fall into the same camp as the worker and the saver.

After recovering from the initial shock of this deduction, we see that it is actually a fairly accurate description of what is happening in the U.S. economy. Aren't most stock transactions mere speculation? Aren't shareholders powerless in taming CEO pay? Aren't shareholders upset by the $1.9 trillion currently held in reserve by American businesses rather than distributed as dividends? (See Adam Davidson, Why are Companies Hoarding Trillions? The New York Times, January 20, 2016.)

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In the final analysis, shareholders have lost relevance in today's economy. Our rhetoric needs to catch up with reality. Enormous stock buybacks tell us that today's corporate mandate is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize executive pay.

Our economy is much better served by recognizing the complex role corporations play in society. They serve many masters with overlapping and unique interests. Employees, executives, shareholders, communities, society, and the environment are all valid stakeholders. Shareholders no longer stand head and shoulders above the rest. Today's most pressing economic question is: Why do we let executives curry favor with stockholders about their mutual interest in rising stock prices while minimizing other stakeholder interests? The economic interests of employees, communities, society and the environment seem far more palpable than those of a handful of executives and wealthy stockholders.

The new corporate mantra should be: "The shareholder is dead. Long live the stakeholder."

What do you think? Join the debate. Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Mark Blessington is a sales and marketing consultant and has worked with many of the world's largest corporations. He has written four books, ranging from Deep Economics to Sales Forecasting.
You might know it by now: Patriarch Phil Robertson of the hugely successful reality TV-show Duck Dynasty has a new grandson. The baby is the fifth child of his youngest son Jep, who with his wife Jessica adopted a boy after having four biological kids. This became the past days rapidly news, because adoption is not only de rigueur amongst celebrities, their fans love this specific sign of their idols' humanity. It is almost as if the stars adopt to please their fans. And so they show them off in the popular press: Madonna, Brangelina, Sandra Bullock, Rosie O'Donnell, Viola Davis, Sheryl Crow and Marie-Louise Parker and so many others are all pictured with their kids.

Adoption these days is so hot, that the press is not only following actual adoptive families, but also highlights celebrities who are considering adoption, like Kim Kardashian. Her visit to a Thai orphanage last year where she met 12-year-old Pink, who she 'totally' wanted to adopt - but didn't because the girl didn't want her - was for days 'big' news. And most recently this was the bizarre headline about her sister: 'Khloe Kardashian Reveals She & Ex Lamar Odom Were Planning To Adopt Before Divorce'.

So it is not unexpected that Duck Dynasty - now in its ninth season - gave birth to an offshoot show covering this adoption. Jep and Jessica: Growing the Dynasty will run 8 episodes on the A&E network. Last week was the premiere with two episodes and the second had a big surprise.

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Those who follow the Robertson posse even only a bit may remember the uproar that followed an interview in GC magazine a few years ago with Patriarch Phil. Charles Blow wrote in the New York Times a fine column about it and he quotes the grandfather about his distorted, racist view of the situation of African Americans before the Civil Rights era:

"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field. ...They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people' -- not a word! ...Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."



I imagine that no black person in her or his right mind would have voluntary after this interview other than distant and formal relations with this man. But alas, the Duck Dynasty grows in an indeed surprising way. We, after hanging cliff in Episode 1: The Call, learn in Episode 2: The Homecoming that the boy is black. Was this a cynical choice by the makers of these series? Or was it again ignorance? However, Jules, as the baby is named, has familial relations with this man and one day he will have to confront the worldview of his grandfather. By adoption he is innocently forced in this painful situation.

Son Jep has not to be like his father, of course, but in the first episodes the new parents don't show any enlightenment. Not one word is spilled between the adoptive parents about Jules' race. Race shows up in Episode 1 only once in the person of a black social worker, who talks about the perils of adoption and not about race. In Episode 2 the boy's race is implied at an all-white family gathering where one of the guests who holds the baby, calls out in jest 'Simba', the Swahili name of the Lion King. And then at the end of this episode at an again all-white baby blessing for family and friends Dynasty Patriarch Phil has the last word. Invoking the Lord, he stresses - fully in line with his GC interview - that He sees just one race, the human race.

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It might be that behind the screen Jules' adoptive parents are much more informed about transracial adoption, and are aware of what by now is standard fare in adoptive parent education: the need of supporting the racial identity formation of the adopted child and of creating a racially diverse world around him, where he can be with people who look like him, and learn from them.

After seeing the first two episodes, however, we have to be very concerned, also because the mother of the boy, the biological mother that is, or the father, are not in the narrative of the show. The adoptive parents chose for a - these days very seldom allowed - closed adoption, they told US Weekly: "We just felt like for us, a closed adoption was the best thing that fit our family, and just the protection of our kids and even [Jules]." Biological and cultural heritage are an intrinsic part of Jules Robertson's identity and denying it can only be done temporarily, even in a closed adoption. And, as we know from so many stories by adult adoptees, the denial comes with great emotional costs for the child later in life. To get an idea how life looks for people who started as their son, it might be helpful for the Robertson clan and specifically for Jep and Jessica, to pick up the recent collection of 16 interviews with black Americans on transracial adoptiom by a black transracial adoptee, Rhonda M. Roorda. The book, In Their Voices, was published last year by Columbia University Press, New York. It might be a helpful read for their social worker as well.

Transracial adoption as depicted in this new show is not only hurting this specific child, but it will hurt future transracial adoptees too. Showing transracial adoption in this manner to a huge mostly not informed audience spreads the myth that colorblind parenting of a black child is just fine. Those who went before this couple as parents and those who went before Jules know better.
Tunisian MPs take part in a session at the assembly of the representatives of the people (ARP) on January 11, 2016 in Tunis before a confidence vote to approve the new government. Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid announced a major cabinet reshuffle on January 6, 2016 as his government grapples with a growing jihadist threat and a feeble economy. / AFP / FETHI BELAID (Photo credit should read FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images)

Why has the Arab spring failed? The fragility of civil societies in Arab countries has to be one of the main reasons first and foremost as this has played a major role in the democratic transitions in Eastern Europe while it has also failed to offer a viable alternative in the Arab world.

The World Bank defines civil society as being: "a non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) therefore refer to a wide of array of organizations: community groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, indigenous groups, charitable organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, and foundations".

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Generally, it seems that it is the society that carries the burden as well as responsibility when it comes to the failure of establishing a functioning civil society. However, many Arab leaders have actively used a systematic approach to weaken the civil society with the aim of ultimately consolidating power and controlling societies.

For example, Gamal Abdul-Naser used these exact tactics when he called for the dismantling of all Syrian political parties in order to achieve unity between Egypt and Syria. This was a move that changed the scene of Syrian politics and trajectory of its future for decades as Syrians found themselves unorganized and divided after unity collapse; this then led to instability in the country with consecutive coups d'etat due to conflicts among Syrian fractions. As a result, Arab leaders managed to prevent any attempt to establish a civil society either by force or by applying restrictions on activities such as restricting funding, clearance, and applying tough laws.

Getting the right mechanisms in place to provide counsel, support and guidance and to share best practice will no doubt be essential in building the civil society of the future. Even with the best-intentioned individuals, organizations cannot thrive without sufficient funding and support.

To achieve this, two important things are required; firstly, Arab administrations have to embrace and support a rich and vibrant civil society. Leaders should allow foreign organizations, as well as friendly governments, to help in establishing the vital pillars of a civil society. Arab leaders can no longer look at civil society as a threat. They cannot afford to do that; much of the chaos that has been caused already comes as a result of this happening in the first place. Instead, a civil society should be perceived as a partner in building great nations, as it can bring the society together to achieve growth as well as prosperity.

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I have experienced the power of civil society firsthand here in the U.S. when two of my friends and I felt the need and want to help other Syrians. We started the "Syrian Youth Empowerment" initiative to help Syrian high school students continue their education in the US. Firstly, by educating them about the American educational system and secondly, by offering free TOEFL and SAT classes on the ground in Syria. The program also helped by providing customized one-to-one mentorship to help students apply to scholarships.

The dynamic civil society here in the U.S. has helped tremendously by enabling the whole country to find experienced partners, many that have worked on similar projects previously to offer logistics, training and financial support. Without this dynamic ecosystem, our program, as well as many others, would not have been able to provide bright futures for talented Syrian youths.

Secondly, we need developed countries to pay more attention to the situation and come up with ways to solve Arab and Middle Eastern countries' problems, not that it is their obligation but because it benefits everyone. These countries should look into funding and building those countries' economies, as a strong economy has been proven to be the single most important factor in prosperity and peace. Then, and only then, can a strong civil society flourish with the power to mobilize people to participate in rebuilding countries. Undoubtedly, rebuilding efforts should be coupled with a strong economic appeal which will bring international companies, factories, expats, immigrants and refugees back to these countries.

An equivalent of the Marshall Plan is essential in order to rebuild the Middle East, cleanse it from terrorism, modernize industries, build its human capital, develop resilient economies and give the region hope of a better future and the world hope of perpetual peace. A balanced world order where even developing countries are economically empowered has historically proven to be the only guarantee for peace and prosperity. The collective benefits of rebuilding damaged countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq are significantly higher than its dollar cost.

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Let's think about the evil absurdity of the crisis playing out in Haiti, and the complicity of international forces that set the stage for this looming tragedy five years ago.

President Michel Martelly of Haiti is refusing to leave office on February 7 when his term is up. The former musician was installed by voter fraud perpetrated by the U.S. in late 2010. The fraud was condoned and executed by a "core group" of U.S. and other foreign observers who engaged in creative manipulating of vote tallies to ensure that Martelly was in the run-off.

Pierre-Louis Opont, the president of Haiti's Election Commission (CEP), admitted as much in July 2015 when he confirmed the accusations of Former OAS Ambassador Ricardo Seitenfus about vote fixing. Last July Opont accused the OAS, the United States, and specifically Cheryl Mills, the Chief of State for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the fraud. Opont says he gave the official vote count to the group of OAS international observers and the group then gave results different than what were passed to them.

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In an interview with Radio Television Caraibes this week Seitenfus was blunt. "Since Mrs. Clinton was well involved in the 2010-2011 decisions, if we started badly, we must end well. That is to say, February 7 President Michel Martelly must leave, and (Haiti) should have a new president," he said.

Martelly has such a strong-hold on the country that the current election process was co-opted by real and perceived voter fraud, causing candidate Jude Celestin to refuse to participate in a runoff against Martelly's hand picked successor, the Banana Man, Jovenel Moise. Celestin is standing firm and is encouraging civil society, including business and church leaders, to conclude a vote postponement is in the best interests of Haiti. The Senate also supported a non-binding motion to postpone.

Martelly's henchman and right hand guy, Guy Philippe, a Haitian Senate candidate whose runoff was also delayed, is calling for an uprising if Martelly is forced out. Elections are in chaos and Haiti stands on the brink of civil war.

Here is the kicker, the denouement, and the culmination of this centuries old tragedy.

Philippe is a fugitive wanted by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He was also among the leaders of a 2004 coup that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The New York Times finally reported Philippe's background yesterday. Haitian activists have been saying this for years, but have been ignored.

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The strands of this dangerous farce are being drawn together and it is anyone's guess whether Haiti can survive this very real crisis, which has echoes in history.

In a 2004 Human Rights Watch communique, HRW called on the international community to assert control over Philippe when he took control over government buildings and declared himself the "military chief" of the country.

"The rebel forces entered Port-au-Prince on Monday and immediately took over government buildings, including the former headquarters of the Haitian army," HRW reported. Read this carefully. It happened in 2004!

Can anyone truly believe that the DEA cannot apprehend Philippe when the drug lord was openly running for a seat on the Haitian Senate and was often seen campaigning, arm in arm, with "Sweet Mickey" Martelly?

The DEA was certainly capable of apprehending relatives of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on charges of cocaine smuggling in November 2105. The arrests, conducted by local police, took place in Port-au-Prince, so the argument that the DEA cannot coordinate actions in Haiti certainly falls apart. The same day, the suspects were flown to New York on a DEA jet.

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As Philippe is organizing what could amount to a civil war, the U.S. Department of State is offering a boilerplate presser from Mark Toner, John Kerry's assistant. "The United States supports all efforts aimed at finding consensual and constructive solutions that will conclude the electoral process expeditiously with an outcome that reflects the will of the Haitian people, consistent with Haitian law and the Haitian constitution."

There is no mention of the roots cause of this crisis by Kerry, Toner, or anyone in the U.S. government. Secretary Kerry is in Laos, attending a meet and greet with staff at the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane. Ironic, considering what the U.S. did to Viet Nam from its launching pad in Laos a generation ago.

A half a world away, Haiti could be on the brink of civil war. "We are ready for war," Philippe is saying. "We will divide the country."
Police body-worn cameras are all the rage. Civil liberties groups say they will increase police accountability. Communities of color say they will reduce police violence. Even many cops favor them, saying they will corroborate and justify police action. But as many are learning, cameras pose problems too. What is needed is a set of careful, transparent, and democratically formulated rules governing bodycam recording, access, and use.

Three issues stand out in particular: When should cameras be rolling, how long should footage be maintained, and in what form (if any) should it be released to the public?

One of the biggest questions for bodycam programs is when to record and when not to record. It may seem intuitive that cameras should always be rolling when police are on duty. But what about when police are interviewing informants? What about when they are going into someone's home or taking statements from an underage victim? Should an individual officer have discretion to turn off the camera?

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This question cannot be answered without considering costs -- particularly data storage costs. Consider what would happen if all NYPD patrol officers had cameras rolling whenever they were on duty. With 25,000 patrol officers doing five eight-hour shifts per week, it amounts to one million hours of footage every week. The data costs for such an operation would be astronomical. When Birmingham, Alabama, instituted a bodycam program, the cost of storage ($889,000) was five times the cost of the body cameras themselves (about $180,000), while the entire budget of the Birmingham Police department in 2015 was about $90 million. But even this amount of storage proved to be insufficient: the whole data allotment was used up within two months.

On the other hand, allowing officers too much discretion over when to record is also problematic. In New Orleans, body cameras were an integral part of a consent decree targeting police treatment of minorities. But a review by the independent monitor overseeing the settlement showed that in the first five months of the body cam program, camera-equipped officers only recorded 34 percent of use-of-force incidents. When a bodycam-wearing New Orleans police officer shot a man in the head during a traffic stop, she claimed that she had turned the camera off minutes earlier because she was nearing the end of her shift, despite a department policy requiring recording of all traffic stops. The Police Superintendent called the incident a "snafu," while critics called it a "cover-up." Whatever the truth in New Orleans, the problem is apparent. Selective recording negates the benefits of body cameras, raising the specter in many minds that they will become a one-sided tool that records only those interactions favorable to police.

Another crucial question is how long footage should be maintained, and how to make a system of data retention workable. The ACLU has been adamant that storage times for most types of footage should be measured in weeks, not months or years, because privacy concerns outweigh the advantage to be gained from systematic long-term retention. Retention periods also make a huge difference when it comes to cost, since a well-run system would automatically delete footage that is past the retention date and therefore free up server space for new footage. However, such a system requires detailed rules enabling footage that could potentially be used as evidence of a crime or officer misconduct to be flagged so it won't be deleted.

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Finally, there is the issue of who has access to the footage. Should it be subject to media requests? If so, who should foot the bill for the substantial cost of editing out private material depicting innocent civilians? Should a police officer be able to view footage before creating an incident report? Should a bodycam recording be subject to freedom of information laws? This issue recently came to the forefront after a shooting in Flagstaff, Arizona, where police officer Tyler Stewart's death was recorded by his own bodycam. Because there was no concrete rule in place, the graphic footage ended up on YouTube, much to the dismay of the family and community.

The best solution--indeed the only solution--to these questions is to have careful policies in place, formulated with public input, detailing the who, what, where, when, and how of bodycam recording. These rules need to address when cameras should be rolling, how long footage is stored, and whether and in what form they are available to the public. This is exactly what happened in Carrboro, North Carolina, where the municipal government, the police, and the ACLU worked together to create a bodycam policy, aided by robust debate and community input. The comprehensive draft policy governs recording, retention, and access, while weighing in at only 12 pages. And the Policing Project is working with the Police Department in Camden County, New Jersey to tailor its policy to police needs and community sentiment.
I am not a movie critic, but I enjoy watching a good movie. On a long flight, I can fit in three movies each way. Movies possess power. Movies move us, make us laugh, make us cry, challenge us, and may even at times make us better persons.

The recent announcement of the 2016 Academy Award nominations has stirred a controversy. Many have protested that all the nominees for the acting awards are white. Protests have also focused on the lack of racial diversity within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences boards that makes the nominations.



In light of all the problems facing the world today, one might wonder why the level of concern about Oscar nominations that present no actors of color, and why the rest of the world should care. We are concerned because it may be a symptom of racial discrimination.

We have recently heard from Michael Caine and his advice to black actors and directors, "Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar - years." We also heard from Charlotte Rampling: "It's racist to white people." She continued,"One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list." These are provocative comments from white people who have succeeded, about the lack of success of others.

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Why should this year be so different from previous years when there have also been no African-Americans nominated for acting Academy awards? The answer may lie in the fact that from between 1992 and 2008, there has never been more than a two-year gap between African-American's winning an acting Oscar.

While popular culture and social media rightly discusses and debates the absence of black nominations for the 2016 Oscars, another, largely invisible, subaltern people are routinely disparaged by the motion picture industry and exploited worldwide: Asian Americans.

As we deal with #OscarsSoWhite, what about the Asian American actors who fail to receive Oscar nominations for their fine acting or direction? As happens to black actors and Hispanic actors, Asian American actors are often overlooked for major roles which predominantly go to white actors. Historically, they have too often been ignored by Oscar nominations.



As we examine Oscar history, we find that only three actors of Asian descent have won the award: Miyoshi Umeki, Haing S. Ngor, and Ben Kingsley (whose father was Indian). It is not that Asian American actors are not worthy or good; too often they are not given the opportunity or the roles to become leads in movie. To many, it is inconceivable to have an Asian American male sex symbol or an Asian American female lead in a drama series. Asian American actors are only given roles that are "supposed" to be Asian American characters.

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In addition, white actors have played Asian characters in the past, a practice that still occurs today. How can we forget Emma Stone playing an Asian character in Aloha. While set in Hawai'i, the cast was predominantly white, particularly in the major roles. Such practices make Asian Americans invisible in movies and in turn in society.



In the book, Theological Reflections on "Gangnam Style", my co-author Dr. Joseph Cheah and I do a historical survey of Asian American depiction in American culture that demonstrates how racism is embedded in American historical and cultural identity. At the beginning of the early twentieth century, the idea of Asians as the "yellow peril" was embodied in a fictional character, Fu Manchu who was introduced by British novelist Sax Rohmer. Fu Manchu's evil character was featured in movies, radio, television, and comic strips as a diabolical mastermind and was often laughed at for his eccentricity. This character reinforced the worst of degraded stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans and left an indelible imprint on the collective American memory.

Stereotypical portrayals of Asian males as buffoonish, nerdy, and socially awkward appear throughout films. Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's is a movie version of yellowface in which Mickey Rooney played the part of Mr. Yunioshi, an Asian character with protruding buckteeth, squinty eyes, and an outrageous Japanese accent. The film ridiculed Asian Americans for having an outlandish accent, behavior, and a lack of social grace. In the 1984 film, Sixteen Candles, Long Duk Dong, the Asian exchange student, is depicted as a racist caricature of an Asian person whose lack of self-esteem causes him to humiliate himself and to giggle uncontrollably. Dong perpetuates the worst of Asian stereotypes produced by Hollywood.



Furthermore, Asian and Asian American women are regularly portrayed as hypersexualized beings in Hollywood movies such as Madame Butterfly and Memoirs of a Geisha. These and other movies portray them in subordinate, subservient and hypersexualized roles.

Why is this important when we are confronted with world-wide issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis, climate change, and sex trafficking? Because it is all interrelated. Movies and television influence our identity, consciousness and understanding of others. If we want to welcome refugees, deal with climate change (which most deeply impacts the most vulnerable and the poorest in the world), and work to end sex trafficking, we need to be able to overcome racism and racial discrimination and see each other as brothers and sisters.

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After the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s dismantled explicitly racist laws, racism became colorblind to survive. Today, although no law explicitly allows for racial profiling by law enforcement, it still happens at an institutional level. What's often left out of the discussion about why racial profiling happens is that the highest court in the country has approved it  in more than one case.

Terry v. Ohio (1968)



The Supreme Court's first step to sanction racial profiling was Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), an 8-1 ruling that developed the "reasonable suspicion" standard (also known as the "stop-and-frisk" rule). The Court, whose opinion was delivered by the usually astute Chief Justice Earl Warren, held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" is not violated when a police officer has "reasonable suspicion" "in light of his experience" that a crime has been committed. By opening the door to greater law enforcement discretion with respect to whom to stop and search, the Supreme Court in Terry gave its first approval of racial profiling.



Several studies show that police officers perceive young black boys as violent and older than they actually are. One study from 2007 found that officers display a "robust racial bias in response speed" in a simulated shooting exercise of black and white targets. So when police officers are given greater discretion "in light of their experience" as Terry offered them, it's no surprise that they disproportionately target black people. (That's in addition to police departments institutionally over-policing poor communities of color compared to their presence in white communities.)



Since Terry, police departments  and the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts  have interpreted Warren's decision as carte blanche for police officers, so much so that UNLV constitutional law professor Thomas B. McAffee described Terry's long-term impact on the Fourth Amendment as "truly disastrous." "The Terry stop-and-frisk doctrine has lent itself too readily to supporting law enforcement efforts rooted in stereotypical generalizations and racial profiling," he wrote in the Nevada Law Journal.



United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975)



United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975) might seem on the surface to be an anti-racist decision, a good step in Fourth Amendment law. The Court ruled against law enforcement on the grounds that it violated the Fourth Amendment for stopping a vehicle solely on the basis that the driver looked Mexican.

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But while the Court acknowledged that, by itself, "apparent Mexican ancestry" does not justify reasonable suspicion that occupants of a vehicle are undocumented drug smugglers, it did rule unanimously that "Mexican appearance" is a "relevant factor." Ostensibly to help law enforcement justify a stop, Justice Lewis F. Powell offered several reasons sufficient for reasonable suspicion to stop a car near the border with Mexico: "previous experience with alien traffic," a "heavily loaded" vehicle, a vehicle with "an extraordinary number of passengers," and finally  the part that justifies racial profiling  "the characteristic appearance of persons who live in Mexico, relying on such factors as the mode of dress and haircut."

In other words, a police officer can racially profile a motorist if that officer finds an additional reason to make a stop, effectively deeming race acceptable for reasonable suspicion. As Michelle Alexander wrote in The New Jim Crow, "Because the Supreme Court has authorized the police to use race as a factor when making decisions regarding whom to stop and search, police departments believe racial profiling exists only when race is the sole factor."

The Court in Brignoni-Ponce neglected to recognize what Kevin R. Johnson, a public interest law professor at UC Davis, pointed out in the Georgetown Law Journal: "In fact, people from Mexico run the gamut in terms of phenotypes, with there being persons of both fair and dark complexions of Mexican ancestry. Nevertheless, stereotypes of 'Mexican appearance' persist, and the Brignoni-Ponce Court ultimately appears to have sanctioned reliance on such stereotypes by the Border Patrol."

Whren v. United States (1996)



In Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), the Supreme Court unanimously sanctioned racial profiling by allowing police officers to make "pretext stops," wherein an officer pulls over a motorist for a traffic violation with the specific intention of hunting for drugs. "It does not matter, the Court declared, why the police are stopping motorists under the Fourth Amendment, so long as some kind of traffic violation gives them an excuse. The fact that the Fourth Amendment was specifically designed to prevent arbitrary stops and searches was deemed unpersuasive," Alexander wrote of the decision.



But approving pretext stops wasn't even the most dangerous legal precedent set in Whren. The Court barred victims of a pretext stop from challenging the admission of evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, thus ignoring Whren's argument that police officers may decide which motorists to stop based on factors that should be constitutionally impermissible, such as race. Justice Antonin Scalia ruled, "We of course agree with petitioners that the Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race. But the constitutional basis for objecting to intentionally discriminatory application of laws is the Equal Protection Clause, not the Fourth Amendment. Subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable cause Fourth Amendment analysis."

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Scalia's ruling left people of color with "an onerous evidentiary burden," Johnson wrote. The responsibility for proving racism was once again placed on the oppressed. Pointing out that the Court "failed to cite any cases supporting its conclusion that the Equal Protection Clause offered the exclusive constitutional remedy (or, at least, that it offered a remedy where the Fourth Amendment did not)," Johnson noted how difficult it is to prove discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause:



The Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule bars the use of unlawfully seized evidence against a defendant; there is no counterpart in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The inability to exclude the fruits of a stop based on impermissible factors under the Equal Protection Clause make any such claim of limited utility to criminal defendants like Whren and Brown, who wanted to avoid conviction and imprisonment, not to recover damages in a civil action for a violation of their constitutional rights.

By ruling that the Fourth Amendment offered no protection against a racially motivated traffic stop, the Court gave law enforcement officials its approval to racially profile motorists and "closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias," Alexander wrote.

The law is supposed to protect the rights of individuals against state abuse. But these cases show how the law can be manipulated by those who wield power to uphold a system of racial hierarchy.

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US Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign event at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa, January 24, 2016, ahead of the Iowa Caucus. / AFP / JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

The Guardian has the Chicago police dash cam video of Laquan McDonald's final moments, where the 17-year-old is shot 16 times walking away from officers, and certainly did not continue "to approach the officers," as stated initially by law enforcement. Reminiscent of the death of John Crawford, The Atlantic writes that "Van Dyke opened fire only 30 seconds after arriving on the scene and just six seconds after exiting his vehicle." In a testament to Chicago politics, the officer charged in Laquan McDonald's shooting is also linked to another possible cover-up in a shooting almost one decade earlier.

There's an amazing and courageous analysis of the Laquan McDonald shooting from Tim Black on Tim Black TV, where the culpability of Rahm Emanuel and others involved in the potential cover-up is analyzed. Yvette Carnell also addresses the aftermath of McDonald's death, stating that this tragedy is "about Chicago's corrupt officials, as well as officers, who seek to protect their own at the expense of the citizens they're sworn to protect." Dr. Boyce Watkins believes the police video was tampered with in order to cover-up a murder, and Benjamin Dixon explains that Rahm Emanuel was involved in suppressing the police dash cam video.

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At this point, any presidential candidate linked politically to Rahm Emanuel, as well as prison lobbyists, isn't a good Democratic candidate.

In 2016, voters have two choices for the Democratic nomination. Rahm Emanuel endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

In contrast, Dr. Cornel West, Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, and rap artist Killer Mike have endorsed, and are currently campaigning for a Bernie Sanders presidency.

The choice is clear.

First, why did Rahm Emanuel endorse Hillary Clinton for president two years before the election? Also, why did Emanuel raise money for Clinton?

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In early May of 2014 (months before the Laquan McDonald shooting), Rahm Emanuel hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, as illustrated in an ABC News article titled Rahm Emanuel on Why He's Endorsing Hillary Clinton Over Biden in 2016:

The former adviser to President Bill Clinton and former chief of staff to President Obama will be headlining two fundraisers in early June for "Ready for Hillary," the grassroots Super PAC urging Hillary Clinton to run for president announced today. ...For a "whole host of reasons," Emanuel said he believes Clinton will win if she does run... The two fundraising events will be June 5 at a location to be determined in Chicago. Tickets range from the group's symbolic price tag of $20.16 to $500, according to the invitation.

In addition to prison lobbyists and Wall Street donors, the Clinton campaign can boast of Rahm Emanuel "headlining" fundraisers.

In these fundraisers, Emanuel was "one of the draws," lending his political influence towards the goal of electing Hillary Clinton president. Emanuel's fundraising acumen is highlighted in a Chicago Sun-Times article titled Ready for Hillary SuperPac Chicago fundraisers today with Rahm:

The Ready for Hillary SuperPac holds its first Chicago events on Thursday, in advance of Hillary Rodham Clinton hitting Chicago on June 10 and 11 for a speech and a sit down interview with Mayor Rahm Emanuel at Chicago Ideas Week. Emanuel is one of the draws at the high dollar SuperPac event... All this comes as Clinton's new book, "Hard Choices," is released on June 10. The Ready for Hillary SuperPac is a group cranking up for a 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential bid and encouraging her to run.



Emanuel's ties to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment speak volumes, especially since Bill Clinton's presidency incarcerated more Americans than George Bush and Ronald Reagan combined.

The "love fest" between Emanuel and Hillary Clinton continued in June of 2014, as illustrated in an ABC 7 Chicago piece titled Hillary Clinton Discusses 'Hard Choices' With Mayor Emanuel:

CHICAGO (WLS) --Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resumed her book tour in Chicago Wednesday morning, joining Mayor Rahm Emanuel for a question and answer session as part of Chicago Ideas Week. It was, in every way, a love fest. "This stage is usually graced by the elegance of ballet dancers, and I would say it's never been graced like this moment," Emanuel said during the interview. Rather, the mayor, who is a former Clinton white house adviser, gave the former Secretary of State every opportunity to list her achievements and to begin what appeared, at times, to be a soft launch of a 2016 run for the presidency. In many ways, the event had the all trappings of a campaign event. A large group of so-called independent supporters greeted attendees, passing out "Ready for Hillary" paraphernalia and encouraging folks to sign petitions in support of a Clinton run. This was exactly the right kind of audience for it too.

So, a book tour turned into an event with people "encouraging folks to sign petitions in support of a Clinton run"?

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Furthermore, in December of 2015, Hillary Clinton voiced confidence in Mayor Emanuel, stating "He loves Chicago and I'm confident that he's going to do everything he can to get to the bottom of these issues and take whatever measures are necessary to remedy them."

Regarding political influence, Rahm Emanuel's ties to both Clintons once made pundits wonder if he'd run for the presidency. A 2013 Washington Post piece titled President Rahm? Maybe explains why his Clinton-like ability to raise money made him a viable candidate:

Emails from smart Democratic strategist types started rolling in, all with a similar theme: How could we have left Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel off of our top 10 list? Emanuel has a track record on the fundraising front that few candidates not named "Hillary Clinton" can match... His runs for both Congress and mayor have been defined by his massive financial superiority over his opponents. While he wouldn't enjoy such a big gap if he ran for president, Emanuel would almost certainly be in the top tier money-wise and might even be the leader of the pack.



These are the same "smart Democratic strategists," by the way, who've sold you Clinton's inevitability myth.



Interestingly, none of these "smart Democratic strategists" predicted Clinton's lead in the polls would dwindle faster in 2016 than it did in 2008.

In September of 2015, I foreshadowed what these pundits failed to predict.

Prison lobbyists, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and almost any interest with power linked to financial resources have donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

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But Clinton promised to end private prisons!

Alright, then don't complain about Citizens United if you believe Hillary Clinton is not influenced by her campaign contributions. Either the lobbyists are naive, or Clinton is willing to help their cause; there's a reason special interests donate money to politicians. Lobbyists exist for a reason.

Just ask why Donald Trump donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, or why he contributed money to Hillary Clinton's New York Senate campaigns.

Yes, Donald Trump.

An act of altruism by The Donald?

Doubtful.

Today's Democratic choices consist of a candidate endorsed by Rahm Emanuel, or Bernie Sanders, a candidate endorsed by 2.3 million contributions from American voters.

For Bernie Sanders, the average campaign contribution is less than $30.

At one of Emanuel's Chicago fundraising events for Clinton, admission was $2,500.

In addition to prison lobbyist donations, Hillary Clinton received $159,944 from oil and gas corporations this election cycle. When asked about these donations, Clinton responded, "Well, I don't know that I ever have [accepted donations from the fossil fuel industry] ...Have I? OK, well, I'll check on that."

59% of voters find Hillary Clinton "not honest and trustworthy" for a reason, and I explain why negative favorability ratings make Clinton unelectable in this YouTube segment. Furthermore, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just explained why the FBI doesn't trust Hillary Clinton.

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I highlight why Bernie Sanders will win a landslide victory over Clinton on The Benjamin Dixon Show. In 2015, I highlighted 25 reasons why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders, in addition to a summary of those reasons in a 60 second YouTube segment. I also explained the various reasons Sanders will become president on The Thom Hartmann Program.
Portrait of young woman wearing hijab head scarf

Last year, I was on my way to a fundraiser hosted by the NYU Islamic Center with my friend Heba. Both of us were wearing the hijab along with dabs of blush and lipstick, excited for our first outing after moving to New York City. We were walking single-file under a crowded scaffolding not more than a block away from where the event was being held, when a white frail-looking woman locked eyes with me. Within seconds, she pushed her way through the crowds and body-slammed Heba into the metal walls of the scaffolding. Heba cried out and covered her face with her hands, fearing another round of violence. The woman began to aggressively scream slurs at us, "F*** you! F*** you Muzlims!" This was the first time I realized ideological Islamophobia can quickly transition to physical violence, leaving behind bruises. And unfortunately, this was not the last time.

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Today, Islamophobia is being presented as a religious, political and human rights issue. But in addition to these narratives, there needs to be a more aggressive push to recognize and frame Islamophobia as a public health concern. Bringing Islamophobia onto the health agenda, as we have done in the past with issues such as racism and gender inequality, will allow for more opportunities to garner widespread condemnation against hateful ideology, speech and actions targeting Muslims under a secular and arguably objective platform.

A number of studies have documented the ways in which Islamophobia has left its black and blue bruises on the bodies of Muslim men and women. A literature review published in 2007 found that Islamophobia contributes to health disparities among Muslim minorities due to differential access to health care as a result of religious and ethnic discrimination, and culturally inadequate care. Additional studies have demonstrated that Islamophobia is resulting in poor psychological outcomes among Muslims in response to overt and subtle forms of microaggressions. And in a recent study published in the American Journal of Bioethics that received attention from The Washington Post found that about 25% of Muslim doctors face religious discrimination in the workplace.

Yet, despite the available data, the public health angle to combating Islamophobia has been underutilized in mainstream efforts. And in the public health sphere, research examining nuanced manifestations of Islamophobia has been understudied and regrettably ignored.

Current conversations that dissect the complex global social, political and economic forces resulting in the minority strains of militancy we see on television are difficult for lay-people to understand and comprehend. This is why Donald Trump's overly simplistic, unambiguous, deterministic and xenophobic rhetoric is appealing among his supporters. However, relying on the American values system that celebrates science and powerful institutions of health to understand the adverse health consequences of Islamophobia is much more easily digestible. And in doing so, we are able to use science to discredit policies and agendas that fuel systemic violence against Muslims as a crucial determinant of health.

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To some degree, framing Islamophobia as a public health issue distances itself from controversial, heated and divisive discussions surrounding religion, morality and bipartisan politics. Instead, with a public health perspective, founded on principles of social justice, we are able to focus on the commonality that people from all walks of life bruise.
Refugees welcome as a road sign

By Eleanor Acer

Over the last two weeks, I was in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey assessing the challenges facing Syrian refugees in the region. And to my chagrin, I learned that the political debate in the United States over Syrian resettlement is reverberating on the front lines of the Syrian refugee crisis.

The rhetoric of some U.S. politicians has convinced some refugees that they would not be welcome in the United States. One U.S. based pro bono volunteer flew to Jordan to assure vulnerable refugees that they should continue to work with her to secure safety and not abandon hope in America.

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Aid workers in the region asked me whether I thought the Senate would vote to stop Syrian resettlement. Staff at an organization that counsels victims of torture worried how refugees awaiting resettlement in the United States would survive a halt in resettlement when they already struggle daily in a country where they can't work and receive little aid.



Now let's zoom out to the macro level.

Turkey, a NATO ally, hosts over 2.5 million refugees. It is referring refugee cases to UNHCR, which is then referring eligible and vulnerable cases to the United States or other countries for resettlement consideration. Around 600,000 refugees are registered in Jordan, though the government estimates that there are over one million living in the country. These large numbers are straining Jordan's infrastructure--including water, education, and healthcare--and could impact the stability of this key U.S. ally. A significant portion of the Syrian refugees slated to be resettled to the United States this year will come from Jordan.

While United States plans to resettle only about 10,000 refugees will barely make a dent, it is a start at least. And, with increased resettlement from other countries as well, will help support the stability of Jordan and other front-line refugee hosting states.

Given the massive number of refugees these counties host, what message is the raging political debate in the United States on Syrian resettlement sending?

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In the absence of adequate support from the international community--in terms of aid, assistance, and resettlement--Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have shut their borders to Syrian refugees. Many trying to escape the Assad regime, Russian bombs, or ISIL terrorism, are trapped in Syria. More than 16,000 Syrian refugees, including many trying to flee recent Russian bombing and ISIL brutality, have been blocked from entering Jordan, stranded in a remote "no man's land" in the desert along the Syrian border.

The Jordanian government recently invited other countries to help "absorb" these refugees. Ahead of a February 4 donor conference in London, the Financial Times reported that a Jordanian government spokesperson said, "We hope that the world will step forward and help hosting countries deal with the refugee issue, because otherwise they will have to deal with this problem all over the world -- at the shores of Europe, North America, and elsewhere."



Earlier this month, Turkey imposed a new visa requirement on Syrians aimed at stemming the flow of refugees. As the visa requirement went into effect, Lebanon reportedly deported several hundred Syrians back to Syria after they were denied permission at Beirut airport to board planes bound for Turkey.



After World War II, the United States helped lead efforts to create an international protection regime so that people fleeing persecution would never again be turned back to face horror or death. More than 60 years later we're faced with the greatest refugee crisis since that time. And governments are again preventing refugees from escaping and forcing them to make impossible choices.

Fathers denied permission to work in host countries must decide whether to risk the detention or deportation to Syria that could result from working illegally, or let their school-age children work since they wouldn't face the same consequences if caught. A pregnant mother, stranded with her family at the Jordan border, must decide whether to accept the limited offer to enter the country to have her baby born safely in a hospital, but leave her other young children and husband behind in the desert. And many refugees, after years of suffering and turmoil, are deciding whether to risk their lives to make the dangerous journey to Europe.



Across the region, refugees are no longer able to survive in the face of massive aid cuts and policies that limit their ability to support their families and educate their children. In Lebanon, I met an Iraqi refugee who had worked for the U.S. military for many years. A Christian, he -- like some Syrian Christians -- decided to flee to Lebanon. His family is barely getting by. He works when he can find a job but lives in constant fear. Like many refugees, he is exploited by employers who pay him very little for his work.

Beginning in 2014, and escalating in 2015, the Lebanese government, launched policies that blocked more refugees from entering and detained those caught working. The country already hosts over 1 million Syrian refugees, an estimated one out of four people living in Lebanon. Due to the inability of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut to allocate space, the United States suspended its already limited resettlement operations in Lebanon for an entire year. While some U.S. resettlement will resume, the numbers will be small and U.S. processing is notoriously slow.

I met another refugee, a gay man facing grave risks in Lebanon. Despite some strong U.S. ties, he will likely be resettled to another country. The U.S. resettlement process typically moves too slowly to protect many who face dire risks.

Last Thursday, the Senate took an important step towards restoring U.S. leadership in protecting the persecuted and sent the right message to our allies and the world. By voting to prevent a bill that would halt Syrian resettlement from moving forward, the Senate preserved this country's ability to use resettlement to protect refugees and to support U.S. allies and front-line refugee hosting countries. Not only are Syrian refugees more closely vetted than any population that comes to the United States, but their resettlement also advances U.S. national security interests and reflects cherished American values, as a bipartisan group of 20 top national security leaders recently told Congress.


Christina Jackson plays Sally-Ann on WGN America's Outsiders, premiering January 26th.

Christina Jackson's Twitter.

Photo by KING.

I must say, I love Christina Jackson, and not just because she studied and graduated from the Arts High School in Newark, New Jersey, but because she totally corrected me when I goofed up about her HBO Boardwalk Empire seasons. (You'll recognize Christina Jackson as Chalky White's impressionable teenage daughter Maybelle.)

Yes, that's my shout out to New Jersey, because, you know, I live in Jersey and I'm super sore from shoveling snow for nine hours from the blizzard and I need a massage but instead I'm putting Christina's interview together because she's totally awesome. Hold up -- Christina, will you give me a massage please?! [Wouldn't that be funny if she said yes and actually showed up at my NJ doorstep with an apple pie from Wegmans? Hahaha! Thud.]

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Now, she's on Outsiders, from executive producer Paul Giamatti!

You play Sally-Ann, a townsperson who begins a forbidden relationship with one of the Farrell's. Tell us about your audition.

It started out like every other audition. The email for a Self-Tape with the scenes and pilot were attached. I'd read and memorized and went in for the tape only knowing that Sally-Ann was a "non-white young female from a small Kentucky town who has a fascination with the Farrell's." About a week later my Manager called and said, "They liked your tape, and want to meet you." "They" being Creator Peter Matei and Director Adam Bernstein. I met with them and talked about Sally-Ann and what the show was essentially about. I guess that was the "callback" and then came the offer and contracts -- which was a complete shock to me because from the beginning I knew this was a good show concept and to be a part of it was great. There was no chemistry test, so I didn't meet Kyle Gallner who plays Hasil Farrell until after everything was signed and I was in Pittsburgh. Its Hasil that Sally-Ann is rumored to have the 'forbidden relationship' with and I think people will really be invested in our storyline because it's not as cookie cutter as you'd think.

What was the best and worst thing about being on set of Outsiders?

The best thing was to actually be there in Pittsburgh creating this show. I can't say it enough. To see the work that Thomas M. Wright puts into Sheriff Houghton. To see the world that the actors on the mountain had put in creating this family was amazing. There is no worst part per se, but all the stress that comes with creating can be a lot. There's always pressure that first season to get it right and make it good because there is so much riding on it.

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Being away from family was probably the hardest. You get visits and you try to get home on your down time. Pittsburgh is a great place filled with culture, arts and history.

You were on HBO's Boardwalk Empire for two seasons. What was it like being part of such an acclaimed series? As an actor, what were you able to take away from that experience?

Three seasons. It was three invaluable seasons that I am forever grateful for. The 1920's are my favorite decade so to have a show that chronicles that period as well as HBO did was amazing. With such a large cast and so many stories being told at once to be able to see that first hand and to become a part of the cast was surreal. When you show up and everyone is on top of their game, it pulls better out of you every time. I couldn't wait to get to table reads and see how everything comes together. As an actor, the writing, the prep, the complete art of cohesive storytelling were all things I took away and still hold close. And then once the costumes are on and background was rolling it was truly like stepping back into time.

Boardwalk Empire and Outsiders (from the looks of it) are pretty dark dramas. Do you typically gravitate towards more serious type roles?

Noooooo. (laughing). After Boardwalk, where it's intense period piece and wardrobe and everything else and ending with my character being shot in the face... I wanted to do comedy. Now when Outsiders came along, I still auditioned but I didn't think I'd get it honestly. I'd read the pilot and loved it, but wasn't really sure they'd cast ME. And that's still on the table for me, to be able to do smart, funny projects whether it's movies, plays, whatever.

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I noticed you posting about the movie Creed on social media. Is there any special connection you have to the project?

Just that Michael B. Jordan and I graduated from high school together and I'm immensely proud of him and that Creed is actually an amazing movie. From Fruitvale to Creed, I love the importance of what Michael and Ryan Cooler are doing. There is always room for great work by Black artists.

What did your family say when you told them you wanted to be an actor? Does anyone else in your family have a background in the arts?

There was never really a discussion. It started out with plays here and there in middle school. I then went on to major in Drama and TV Productions at Arts High in Newark, NJ. By the time I was graduating I had a management contract and I just dove head first into it all. My dad used to be a DJ back home in Georgia, but I feel like all dads used to. Lol!

What's your favorite time of year? Why?

My favorite time of the year has to be summer. I was born in the beginning of June and the summer is always synonymous with fun, and warmth and love. And there is nothing like a NYC Summer! [AUTHOR'S NOTE: You got that right!]

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Anything else you'd like to say?
One day recently, the New York Times, following Donald Trump's lead, ran two articles that demonized China -- although the elite newspaper did so much more subtly than the crudities of "the Donald." One article talked about how China, through its trade with and investment in Iran, had allowed Iran to survive Western economic sanctions and now had the advantage over Western companies now that most such measures had been lifted. The article stated that China, to fuel its rapid economic growth, was thirsty for the cheaper oil from Iran (discounted to sell during the sanctions regime) and is also interested in a "silk road" strategy to extend its economic influence westward. The other article reported that the economies of poor African countries, whose exports of raw materials to the growing Chinese economy had allowed them to begin to grow out of poverty, were now crashing because of China's slowing growth. As usual, both of the Times' articles had a subtle odor unfavorable to China.

In U.S. foreign policy, the luxury of being probably the most intrinsically secure great power in human history -- with large ocean moats, nuclear weapons, weak and friendly neighbors that make the probability of an attack from another great power extremely rare -- has allowed the U.S. government and its citizens to be rather sanctimonious in telling other countries that they should improve themselves. In China's case, the United States has repeatedly and publicly told China that it needs to improve its human rights record and has regarded China's "economic penetration" of the developing world with suspicion. U.S. government broaching of the uncomfortable subject of the circumstances of dissidents with authoritarian regimes, such as China, is fine as long it is done behind closed doors. As Jimmy Carter found out during his presidency, publicly scolding such countries about human rights usually leads to a backlash that only harms the dissidents.

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Both of the New York Times articles, as with many other U.S. media outlets, subtly demonize all China's economic activities in the third world. They do so with few other countries, but do so with China because they are already gearing up for China to be the next rival superpower. Thus, all of China's activities, including overseas trade and investment, must be regarded as trying to garner pernicious "influence" in the developing world. However, "economic penetration" (note the scary language), unlike military penetration is not a zero sum game. Economic transactions are mutually beneficial at both ends of the transaction. Thus, Chinese economic activities, even by state-owned enterprises, are much less scary than Soviet military stoking of armed communist rebellions in the developing world during the Cold War, which didn't help the developing country or the United States.

In the aforementioned article on the economic penetration of Iran, the Chinese economic lifeline to Iran during the period of economic sanctions probably merely indicates that sanctions are being given too much credit for Iran's agreement to limit its nuclear weapons. Economic sanctions, even multilateral ones, are often easy to evade, and there are elevated profits to be made in doing so. As for the economies of developing countries sagging because of China's slowing growth, China undoubtedly would like to rectify this situation. And China should hardly be blamed for raising the standard of living in such countries in the first place by importing their raw materials. When China's economy comes out of its slump (if you can call a remaining growth rate of more than five percent a slump), the economies of these developing countries also likely will rebound.

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But what of China's grabbing oil in the developing world? Doesn't that harm the United States and its oil consumers by raising prices. In a study, the U.S. Energy Department said no, declaring that such Chinese activities were neutral to the U.S. petroleum market. In fact, because a worldwide market for oil exists, if anything, Chinese state-owned oil companies exploring for oil in the developing world -- many times in places where private Western companies don't find it profitable to do so -- brings more oil onto the world market and may be a de facto subsidy for U.S. and other consumers of oil.

And what about China's territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas at the expense of Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries in those regions? Although related to oil and natural resources on the seabed, these disputes are mainly nationalistic. One would never know it from American media reports, but other countries besides China have also reclaimed land on remote islands there to support their nationalist claims. Instead, of inserting itself further into this petty regional squabbling by deliberately sending U.S. warships into the contested areas, the United States should stay out of such faraway bickering that doesn't affect America's vital interests. U.S. meddling in such purely regional quarrels, however, could lead to an unnecessary and inadvertent nuclear confrontation with China.
[UNVERIFIED CONTENT] CAIRO, EGYPT - DECEMBER 16: An Egyptian protester on his knees during clashing with army soldiers inside the Cabinet Ministry headquarters that overlooks the Qasr Ainy street, off Tahrir Square. The military soldiers where throwing rocks and marble pieces from the rooftop of the building. On December 16, 2011 military police abducted a protester 'Abboudy' from the cabinet sit-in in Qasr Ainy street near Tahrir square. Abboudy was badly beaten and tortured by military forces. Hours later clashes erupted between protesters and military forces leading to a non-stop battle that lasted for more than 48 hours.More than ten were killed in the clashes. (Photo by: Jonathan Rashad)

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's state is on a mission. It wants the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 25 Egyptian revolution to pass without event. It wants to demonstrate, once again, that everything is fine and completely under control. As the date approached, it frantically arrested activists, reinforced Tahrir Square and even, in yet another surreal scene, broke into random people's homes to check their Facebook posts.

The lengths to which the regime is going only reveals sheer fear. The state is frantically trying to suppress a movement it claims to have already suppressed.

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Even as Egypt's central security chief declared that security forces "will not allow another revolution," the hashtag "the people demand the downfall of the regime" quietly became the top trending topic in the Arab Twittersphere. Tahrir Square, it seems, isn't a geographical location that can be occupied -- it's in an Arab generation's psyche.

Youth protest against the Egyptian regime in the Matariya neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt on June 30, 2015. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

And yet, this Facebook post from an Egyptian young man reflects the situation the youth are in now:

In [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak's days, I was thinking about emigrating. But in your days, [Sisi], I dream of getting asylum anywhere to escape your hell and your injustice. What do you want from the youth? Do you want to kill some more of us? Or do you need us so you can fill the prisons that you're still building? What do you want from us exactly? I hate being a young person now. I hate being a young person living in a country whose leader is you.

This post was in response to Sisi's recent statement, in which the president said to the youth: "Don't emigrate, we need you here." Sisi declared 2016 to be "the year of the youth. "The Egyptian foreign ministry prepared a media campaign titled "Egypt Better Today," which will reportedly highlight the 25 "most important accomplishments of the Egyptian state since 2011."

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Five years since the youth-driven, euphoric, optimistic Arab uprisings, the Arab region has become an inhospitable environment to its own youth. There was a time when young Arabs dreamed that they could have dignity and liberty in their own homelands -- there were even cases of reverse migration by some emigres. But today, our youth "dream of getting asylum anywhere."

The state is frantically trying to suppress a movement it claims to have already suppressed.

It is truly disturbing that after years of targeting, chasing, imprisoning, torturing and killing young activists and journalists, driving them to either silence or exile to escape the worst, Sisi dares to ask them to "not leave" because "Egypt needs them." Is this just a bad dream? How clueless must he be, how utterly obtuse, to not be able to connect the actions of his regime to the snuffing of hope in the hearts of millions of young people?

Egypt has had more than its share of surreal moments over the past two years, as it descended from dark tragedy to tragic comedy. We've seen conspiracy hysteria, including a muppet accused of terrorism and a stork "arrested" for espionage, as well as ludicrous army-sponsored claims of an AIDS and Hepatitis C cure and an amphibious flying vehicle. But Egypt's seemingly inexplicable tragicomedy is actually both predictable and explainable if we know where to look.

SISI AS A PARADIGM

Sisi is more than just a representative of the Egyptian army, the Arab "Ancien Regime" or a counter-revolutionary axis trying to brute-force a return to Mubarak's days. Sisi is all of that but above all, he is a representative of a paradigm built upon the idea that tyranny brings stability and efficiency; that jingoistic nationalism brings social cohesion; and that the backbone of the state is not the people or civil society, but the security establishment.

Perhaps, then, we should look beyond the realm of politics and into the march of ideas to explain the Arab Spring. Paradigms -- worldviews that drive our perception and interpretation of reality -- underlie our status quo, and as social and economic contexts shift, paradigms stress, break and eventually shift as new worldviews replace old ones, eventually forming a new status quo. This shift is neither smooth nor gradual.

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The surrealism that we have witnessed in Egypt epitomizes neither the success of the strongman paradigm, nor its resurgence -- but rather, its breakage. Taking the helm of Egypt with a promise to bring stability, security and economic development, Sisi has instead led it to a paradoxical state of "sustainable instability." The strongman paradigm is broken -- and paradigms break before they shift. We're living through the limbo in between.

SYMPTOMS OF BREAKAGE

Broken paradigms have recognizable signs -- perhaps primary among them is a desperate insistence that everything is fine, that nothing is broken at all and that, in fact, things have never been better. A search for saviors and miracles ensues -- for that heroic, superhuman leader or that epic, supernatural event that can signal eventual victory and make everything go back to the way it was.

It's no surprise, then, that Egypt's kitschy "Sisi-mania" phase, peaking around his election in May 2014, had an Egyptian newspaper literally calling him "the messiah, the savior." The subsequent search for miracles was an undignified search for any success -- from the infamous "AIDS cure" to the now-scrapped "new capital" to the much more expensive "new Suez canal" which, despite costing 64 billion Egyptian pounds ($8.2 billion), has failed to increase revenue.

The Arab Spring today is stuck in the gaping limbo between the broken old and the nascent new.

But the outside world sees through the farce and is neither convinced nor impressed -- much to the chagrin of those committed to the broken paradigm. Conspiracy theories become the go-to way to explain failure, with dissenters bearing the brunt of accusations of treason or subversion. As the establishment fails to relate to the world, it withdraws into a toxic bizarre mix of xenophobia, isolationism and jingoistic supremacism.

But the machismo hides a deep inferiority complex -- a deeply wounded ego. Perhaps this is what makes people within such broken paradigms so hostile to comedians and so sensitive to comedy -- the emperor knows very well that he has no clothes on and absolutely despises whoever dares point a finger and laugh. It's ironic that the regimes that provide most material to comedians are the most threatened by them.

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Egyptians gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square during a rally marking the anniversary of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising on Jan. 25, 2014. (MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)

WHEN THE NEW ARRIVES

Sisi's regime has every reason to be afraid. The old is beyond repair, living on borrowed time, repeatedly trying (and failing) to reassert itself with ferocious brutality and bumbling idiocy, despite the mass hysteria and the billions of dollars of aid. The failure of the old paradigm, and of Sisi, is just a matter of time. The only question is how catastrophic its failure will be, and how many innocent people will be crushed as it inevitably comes hurtling down.

But the new hasn't arrived -- and how can it arrive when its young agents are in jail, in morgues, in exile or silenced under pain of death or imprisonment or torture? "Remember the tomorrow that never came?," asks the Cairo street graffiti. What will it take for it to come? That is the key question of our time and the key historical challenge. It won't be easy and won't be a smooth landing, but we have no choice but to land.

The failure of the old paradigm, and of Sisi, is just a matter of time.

The Arab Spring today is stuck in the gaping limbo between the broken old and the nascent new. Five years ago, "we jumped off a cliff reaching for the moon" but never landed. Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci calls such a moment in history a "time of monsters" -- and how big was the monster that had sprung. The monster that is the so-called Islamic State thrives on instability, and the instability continues so long as we haven't landed.

We won't be stuck forever; sooner or later, we will land. Despite the catastrophic scene, we are the future. Change happens at the precipice, and we're already past the precipice. Those who wish to get on the right side of history should help us land, rather than try to force us back onto the very cliff we jumped off of.

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This post is part of a series focused on the Arab Spring, five years on. The Huffington Post invited people who felt like a part of that revolutionary moment to share their thoughts on what the movement means to them, then and now.
The Kuomintang (KMT) government in Taiwan lost a huge election to the Green Party, called the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led by Tsai Ing-wen. The outgoing Ma government, the Blue Party, fell way short in the 2016 presidential election by chumming up to the government in Beijing, China. This is the usual political split in Taiwan with the Green Party wanting to stay a safe distance from China, while the Blue Party wants to get closer. In this election, the majority of voters in Taiwan clearly want to keep a safe distance from China by giving both the presidency and the majority of the Congress to the DPP for the first time in Taiwan's history.

Mr. Ma did his best to move Taiwan closer to China and absorb the massive human rights violator as kin, maybe even as the same household of government. The young in Taiwan wanted no part of that future. They turned themselves into real freedom fighters to resist a service trade pact with China, railroaded by Ma and his KMT accomplices in Congress to pass the pact in 30 seconds without any discussion. This service pact could have opened a flood gate to let in a human tsunami of Chinese and taken away the future of Taiwan. These young people started a revolution, known as the Sunflower Movement. They occupied the hall of Congress for over a month and successfully nullified that service pact. They also demonstrated and marched, while absorbing the usual pushes and shoves, in forms of police baton and water cannon, from the KMT, the descendants of Chiang Kai-shek. The foreseeable future was seen in the election of mayor of Taipei, plus several other major cities, going to another green brother in November 2014, which turned out to be the beginning of the end for KMT.

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However, the landslide victory of Ms. Tsai may not give Taiwan as clear a path to be recognized as a sovereign country as many pro-independence voters would have hoped. Ms. Tsai's goal seems to be of a caretaker. Just keep the status quo of Taiwan as it is, nearly free but still under USA protection due to the decisions of WWRII and still hold on to the so called ROC (Republic of China) Constitution, in which the territory of ROC still includes the current PROC and Republic of Mongolia; ridiculous but true.

The political trend and direction to move away from China were set firmly when Chen Shui-Bian was elected president of Taiwan in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. He came from the Green Party, the DPP. During his eight years of presidency, other than completing many major projects, such as the high speed train system, all well under budget, his greatest contribution could be his advocacy of 100% freedom of speech and his push toward Taiwan-centric education to teach students about Taiwan's culture and history instead of those of China as KMT had done in Taiwan for over fifty years. As a result, Mr. Chen himself had to endure bombardments of smears and slanders thrown at him and his family almost 24/7 from all sorts of pundits, news media and TV stations, still mostly controlled by KMT at the time. However, those eight years had created an entirely new generation now in their twenties, denoted as twentyish voters by New York Times, and they call themselves, a naturally pro-independence generation. According to the poll, this generation, aged 20 to 29, voted overwhelmingly for the DPP at nearly 90%, while less than 10% voted for the KMT. Their voting rate was near 75% compared with just over 66% for the overall voters.

Despite being a brilliant and clever lawyer, mayor and President, Mr. Chen was immediately sent to prison after his second term was up. The trial was a mix of confusion, controversy, and violation of due process of law, which resulted in Mr. Chen going to prison for a combined sentence of twenty years on seemly uncountable corruption charges.

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But to me and many others, his prison time was set up in such a way as to kill the man. The cell was small, his time out of the cell was short, the lights were kept on, and he shared the cell with another inmate. In addition, all the files he needed for his defense were in that small cell, and thus he slept on the floor, next to a non-flushable toilet and unable to stretch his legs. Due to the powerful smear campaign by the KMT, the country was led to believe that Mr. Chen was corrupt and was embarrassed that their man was such.

He and his case were neglected. He was injured by this treatment. He began to have serious medical problems. A small group of doctors looked out for him. Human rights people visited him, including Amnesty, plus some US congressmen. They all called for a medical release. Even some blue camp people also felt that Ma should let this man out of jail. Finally, after many visits, many blogs, and many procedures, he was given a bed in the hospital. Again, those who cared about justice and the man worked hard, and finally they got him home to recover in January 2015.

A broader community was being built to review his case. Mr. Chen deserves a new trial or complete release/amnesty from the new government. My hope is that he will be given a new trial because I believe he is innocent of any crime. To me, he is innocent until proven guilty. But certainly, the new president might consider washing the slate clean and return Mr. Chen to a full and complete release. For the sake of reforming Taiwan's judicial system to avoid similar injustice, all the abuses or even crimes of the prosecutors and presiding judges should also be reviewed by an independent panel.
Australia, Australasia

We must prevent nationality from being dealt with thoughtlessly and keep in mind its particular nature. It does not belong to the State, which shall not dispose of it. Its possession provides access to citizenship. Nationality is the country of a person's citizenship. And it belongs only to citizens.

It confers a series of rights and duties. Among the rights: to vote, leave the country and return freely and not be expelled or extradited, benefit from social provision and support and receive an education. Among the duties: to serve in the defense of the country. Paying tax, however, is also required of foreign residents.

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Nationality is a possession which can be neither bought nor abandoned. And even when another nationality is acquired, an individual's first nationality is not lost. It is transmitted as a heritage and multiplies itself into as many family members. It is quite a strange possession, whose value does not depend on its rarity, as it can have great value though it can be produced ad infinitum.

The way this concept and its economy have evolved over time is an illustration of the challenges lying ahead. For thousands of years, men were nomads and borders did not exist. Citizenship made no sense, nationality had no value. Then borders came, the inhabitants of each country soon had the duties of citizens. Very few, with the exception of military and merchant elites, had the rights attached to it, granted to all nationals much later, in many countries, but not all - women, for example, are often still denied those rights.

Nationality has thus become essential, an attribute of human beings. It has become common to have several nationalities. Nationality has become a commodity that can be obtained from the State, which has the monopoly over its production, or obtained illegally by the corruption of public officials, or legally by committing to invest a certain amount of money in the country, or just as legally, without paying, after having provided proof of a genuine desire for integration.

Some nationalities are recognized as properties of value; others are such a burden that their holders prefer to give them up and leave their country of origin. An increasing number of people will soon have renounced their nationality without having acquired another one. Therefore, we will see demand being concentrated on a limited number of commodities that their owners will not want to share, even if this does not deprive them of anything. The availability of nationalities that are sought will be reduced for those who cannot afford to pay. Nationality will cease to be essential and will become a luxury commodity.

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An increase in the value of certain nationalities can be expected as well as the total disappearance of many others, many stateless persons will be created in the process.

It is unacceptable that people are left without the protection of an identity in order to guarantee them a recognition of minimal rights and to protect them against exploitation. It is not acceptable, as well, for a State or government, temporary in nature, to be able to take away from anybody such an asset, final in nature and transmissible to descendants. Nationality, in the same way as air, water, health or education, is an attribute of the human condition. Every man should be entitled to this basic service.

In an almost perfect world, and that one day will exist, a stateless person will receive a passport of "citizen of the world" that will confer legal existence, protection under international conventions on the exploitation of human beings and the right to move around. Not a vague stateless person certificate, shameful, but a real passport issued on behalf of the United Nations, that no one can recall. In a world even better, all of us will be able to ask, in addition to one's passport, such a passport. The day will come when half of humanity will carry one. And everything will change.

In a world not quite as good, and in the meantime a refugee or migrant legally present in European territory should have a passport issued on behalf of the European Union. And every citizen of a European country would have automatic right to such a continental passport. We would see signs at airports with "European passport" replaced with "passport of a country of the European Union." The debate on deprivation of nationality would then regain its rightful place: at the Museum of false good ideas, unethical and dishonest.
Last week, the world's leading business, government and civil society leaders gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. This year's theme - the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' - refers to those emerging technologies - from 3D printing to artificial intelligence - that have the potential to breakdown the boundaries between distinct physical, biological and digital spheres. These technologies attest to human ingenuity, and the combined power of the market and governments driving innovation. On the upside, they have the potential to lower barriers to information, generate new jobs, and incubate solutions to long-standing social challenges. On the downside, they could disrupt existing governance, production and management systems in ways that increase disparities and weaken the social cohesion on which accountable government and functioning markets ultimately depend.

The fourth industrial revolution has heralded an era of unprecedented connectivity and inequality, and its effects are far-reaching. The migration crisis is a case in point. Conflict in the Middle East may be the most obvious driver, but the combination of inequality and connectivity exerts a powerful pull for people crossing to Europe. The Syrian refugee in a Turkish camp, or the underemployed youth in the Lagos slum, not only has radically different life chances from the average EU citizen. They are also constantly reminded of that fact - tempted and taunted by an endless stream of images and messages of what others have, and what they are denied. This same mix of connectivity and inequality is a critical factor in many of the conflicts and governance crises we see around the world, from the Arab Spring and subsequent turmoil in the Middle East, to the growing challenges to established political parties in every region.

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For Save the Children, these trends matter both because children are uniquely vulnerable to the disruption created by social and political change, and because childhood is a window in which we can break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and disadvantage. In 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa half the population is under the age of 18, and in these countries the population is getting younger. By focusing on children we are investing in the present to prepare for vast future potential.

Many more children are surviving past the age of five and are better able to fulfil their potential than ever before. The dramatic progress over the last quarter century in reducing child deaths and boosting education outcomes tells us as much. But the review of progress towards the 2015 development goals also highlights that millions of children have been bypassed by these gains, increasingly because of who they are and where they live. This threatens to undermine at the outset the 2030 global goals that were adopted at the UN last September. To take one example, on current trends universal primary education for girls in Africa from the poorest 20% won't be met until 2083 - a full half century after the target date.

The new 'Generation X' is Generation Excluded - the millions of children who will are failing to reach their fifth birthday, or never learn in school because they live in a conflict zone, or belong to the wrong ethnic group, or are a girl. If we want to dismantle the barriers that prevent children and youth from surviving and thriving - and allow them to reap the benefits of technological and economic development - we need to establish meaningful partnerships that boldly challenge exclusion, invest in public goods, and promote access to new technologies. Business as usual will not deliver the change that's needed in the lives of children.

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Every stakeholder has a role in this change. For governments, it means fair financing for essential services and other public goods, removing cost barriers to health and education, guaranteeing a minimum social safety net, and removing discriminatory laws. For the UN, this means putting the needs of excluded children front and centre in the accountability framework for the Sustainable Development Goals, creating a new deal for refugee and displaced children that enables them to learn and be save, and challenging discrimination through the norms they promote and the programmes they run. And for business, it's about creating relevant jobs for young people, responsible behaviour on tax, lowering the barriers to new technology, investing in youth livelihoods for excluded groups, and championing campaigns to stop discrimination.

The fourth industrial revolution's challenges, in that respect, look remarkably like the social, political and moral challenges thrown up by the first. From the beginnings of industrialisation in Britain, it took over one hundred years of political struggle to create a climate in which Save the Children's founder, Eglantyne Jebb, was able to write the Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Today, we face a challenge of equal urgency and significance - by marrying the audacity of business, the legitimacy of government, and the people power mobilised by civil society, we have an opportunity to create a world in which every last child is able to survive and fulfil their potential. And it shouldn't take another hundred years.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Dordt College, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Sioux Center, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I know the fact that Iowa gets to be first in presidential politics is somewhat controversial. Why should this little state in the middle of the country with very few people, relatively speaking, get the first word? I get it... but I'm also happy with the current arrangement. We've been inundated with political candidates, commercials, mailings and the stealing of yard signs -- and it's all good.

Everywhere I go conversations are happening, people are talking -- sometimes arguing -- but most of it is good-natured. Besides, Iowa isn't as homogeneous as people think. I grew up in Mason City, Iowa -- a largely Catholic and Democratic town. Sure, I grew up in a family that tends to have a pinkish hue, but I was also opened up to a broad diversity of political perspectives.

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For the past 10 years I've been a professor at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. The very same Dordt College where Donald Trump recently made a controversial comment -- something about shooting people on 5th ave. I'm not sure because I wasn't there -- I purposely stayed away.

What bothers me about Trump's speech isn't that he was allowed to speak -- an open invitation has been given to every candidate -- it's that the name "Dordt College" is now forever linked with Donald Trump and his asinine statement. Look, I'm no expert in marketing, but this type of publicity can't be good. It presents Dordt in a particular way, one that does not fully represent what makes Dordt College a good place to be a professor and a student.

This is why it's important that I make it clear: Donald Trump does not speak for me.

I realize that most people can make this distinction. What worries me is that there are people who don't know much about Dordt, or who already have certain stereotypes about educational institutions in this part of the country. My purpose isn't to justify my place of employment to the world of social media; it's to make sure that people know about the good people that live in Sioux Center and work at Dordt College.

When people ask me about teaching at Dordt my first response is to talk about my colleagues. The faculty are creative, insightful and diverse. Some of them are politically on the left, and some are politically on the right. Doesn't matter -- we have thoughtful, lively discussions in the hallways, on the sidewalks, and sometimes over beer at The Fruited Plain.

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These are people who take seriously the task of engaging their various fields of study within the context of what it means to live as a Christian. They advocate for the poor and provide counsel for young people who are struggling. They help meet the needs of people in the community. They serve in local positions of city leadership, on church councils, and community organizations that promote the arts. They care for creation by cultivating sustainable forms of practice, and they teach students to seek justice. I can't imagine a better group of scholars, teachers and friends.

Along with the faculty, I also talk about our students. Graduates from Dordt College are a diverse bunch, engaging a variety of careers and involved in many different social and political causes. I remember when we lived in Saint Paul, MN, the Dordt grads we knew were living in the heart of their communities, seeking to live out their faith in the various parts of life to which they have been called. What saddens me is that Trump's comments have the potential to overshadow the commitment and work of many Dordt graduates who faithfully demonstrate their love for God by loving their neighbors.

Donald Trump doesn't speak for me, and his statements do not represent the Dordt College I'm committed to. If you don't believe me, come find us at The Fruited Plain -- you won't be disappointed.
When political reporter Lynn Bartels left The Denver Post last year for a communications job at the Secretary of State's (SOS) office, it appeared she'd left journalism.

But it turns out, maybe not completely--depending on your definition of journalism.

As the communications director for Colorado Republican SOS Wayne Williams, Bartels is writing a blog with some of the same types of stories that you saw her write at The Post and, before that, at the Rocky Mountain News.

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Some of this is good PR for Williams and his office. Some of it is human-interest journalism. Some of it is soft political reporting.

Regardless, it's quickly become part of Denver's journalism mix, in the era of disappearing reporters and starved political junkies.

And Bartels blog comes with a caveat that most other blogging flaks in the world can only dream of, "The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and not of the office."

When she started her new job, Bartels explains, she told her boss, "The Post and the Rocky used to have people assigned to the Secretary of State's office. And they don't have that anymore. It's just part of generic government. Some of this stuff you're just not going to get promoted, if you don't promote it yourself." He signed off on the concept.

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But why all the posts that have nothing to do with the SOS office?

"When I started, someone from the Secretary of State's office said, 'This is going to be solely about the Secretary of State's office, isn't it?' And I said, 'No, who would read it?' And Wayne burst out laughing and said the same thing."

So for those of you who might hate the idea of Bartels doing Christmas-card stories on the taxpayer dime, she makes a good PR case for it, I'd say. And hey, her blog is featured number one on the list of "costumer favorites" on the Colorado SOS home page.

Bartels' blog could possibly be a model for how PR at a state agency could compensate, in an itsy bitsy way, for diminished journalism.

But you run into trouble when a state-sponsored blog is used for partisan purposes. Or even if it's perceived that way. That's yuck bad.

Bartels acknowledged the problem with, "If the secretary of state were Scott Gessler, people would be blowing a rod."

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As it is, Bartels says one of her posts was used by a Democratic candidate for fundraising (without Bartels approval or knowledge, she says). A handful mention candidates, giving them a de facto PR boost.

Bartels wrote a partisan-looking post Jan. 12 titled, Senate Republicans embrace the past and future at pre-session fundraiser. This post is basically a GOP fluff piece, going out of its way to name Republican candidates and saying "at times" Senate President Bill Cadman is "pretty close" to being as funny as Bill Murray.

But if you look at her blog, it's clear Bartels, who says she's a Republican herself, isn't blatantly pushing Republicans over Dems (outside of her boss). She's written favorable posts about Democrats Sen. Kerry Donovan and former Lt. Governor Joe Garcia, for example.

Still, I think Bartels, who worked for 22 years as a Denver journalist, should stay away from mentioning candidates, potential candidates, and highly partisan stuff. Maybe she could assemble a bipartisan group to review the blog every few months to catch any partisan drift. Or maybe nonpartisan staff at the SOS could give her feedback on posts before they go out. In any case, some structural check on Bartels would be good for her and the dignity of the SOS office.

As for breaking news, one of Bartels' tweets broke a story about a GOP candidate entering the governor's race. One blog post broke news about the death of a well-liked Republican consultant.

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"If I wanted to break political news on that blog, I could break it a lot. It's not my goal," she says, adding she's too busy anyway. "I could have broken the Jon Keyser story, but I didn't."

"I've used the blog to promote our office, to promote county clerks, to promote things that we're doing," Bartels says, adding that the blogging results in long hours for her. "The county clerks love it."

"If groups invite Wayne to speak, I'll write something," she said. (But I'm guessing fewer Democrats than Republicans will want to hear Williams.)

It makes you wonder, are PR folk pitching stories to Bartels, like they did when she was at The Post?

Not really, she tells me, sounding a little vague.
Because of the new "Make America Great Again," frenzy, I decided to re-write and enhance a previous blog titled, "The Way We Were," especially considering the current political climate. My first question is a simple one for Donald Trump and his followers, "Could you be more specific about the meaning of the slogan, "Make America Great... Again?"

Do you mean "Make America Great Again," the way it was, prior to the various haplogroups crossing the Bering land bridge? What an amazing place America must have been. The unspoiled beauty and majesty, wow! No traffic, no pollution, no reruns of The Apprentice. Sign me up! Imagine back then, when the original tribe living in America, saw a new tribe arrive that didn't look like them or come from the same cave system? I could hear it now, "We're going to ship all 11 of those illegal nomads back to where they came from and then build a wall with a door in it." The only thing that stopped them was, they didn't know what a door was.

Or perhaps you mean to imply "Make America Great Again," as in the 1500's when the Spaniards settled here. Ah, those were the good ol' days, when you could enslave an entire population of indigenous people and not have to worry about pesky unions or labor laws. Scott Walker would be orgasmic. Could someone really miss the days when people actually tried to force other people into their own religious beliefs? Wait a second, this is sounding eerily familiar?

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Wait, maybe, "Make America Great Again," is about when the Pilgrims came 40 years after the Spaniards, to start Jamestown. That must be it for sure. Imagine, there were no background checks for your guns back then. This place must have been heavenly. Even though the Pilgrims arrived in Jamestown in 1607, I bet by 1610, there were a few outspoken indigenous tribal chiefs grousing, "I don't care that these "Pilgrims," have been here for several years, they're "illegal" and letting them stay, still amounts to amnesty. They're a bunch of criminals and rapists. They're going to completely wreck our health care system, with measles and smallpox and don't get me started about them ruining our financial system with derivatives and stock swaps, just you wait and see." Talk about insensitive and isolationist. Was America so "Great" back then? Maybe not.

Then there's the 1950's America. That surely must be the America, Trump and Ted Cruz are referring to. Most everyone on TV and in films were white (Some things never change; see this years Oscar nominations). Families had dinners at diners, with signs that said, "No Negroes, Mexicans or Dogs allowed." There were cool cars and fun happy go lucky music. That surely must be the "Great America," that everyone is looking for. Then again "The Blacks," "The Hispanics," and "The Gays," were beaten and abused just for looking or being "different." As they would have said back then, "Gee whiz, that's not cool." And here I thought we were doing so swell on our search for the Great America. So I guess it's not the 50's.

Wait a second. Maybe America's Great right now and people just don't realize it. I remember going to a 4th of July parade last summer, in a small suburb near downtown Los Angeles. The scene was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. There were American flags everywhere. A young lanky boy, slurping his ice cream cone, as it melted. Hard working able-bodied men, showing off their muscles to their girlfriends. Two teenagers sharing an awkward moment. A mother and father, walking proudly next to their son, decked out in his Marine Dress Blues.

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The dynamics of patriotism, food, hard work, and especially family, were everywhere. Now that's an America that sounds "Great," to me. Sure there were more people selling burritos than hot dogs, but burritos are probably healthier for you anyway. And of course the usual, corn on a stick was for sale, with a slight enhancement of chili powder. As I think back, I realize that if Norman Rockwell were to return today and repaint his masterpieces, the only real adjustment he would have to make for the "Americans" at the 4th of July parade that I attended, would be a little darker pigmentation in his paint. You see the Americans at the parade were predominantly Latino, African American and Asian by culture, but nonetheless, damn proud Americans. And it's okay to be both. As a matter of fact, it's a good thing.
Nearly every profession in the world has conferences and trade shows that bring together companies in the same industry to share the latest news, services and techniques. CES is where the best and brightest from the tech world comes to Las Vegas each January to premiere the latest must-have gadgets. Annual auto shows in New York, Detroit and LA are the must-attend events for car manufacturers to show off next year's cars.



But there's a unique event each year where the uber elite of the world from across industries and governments meet with the lofty goal of making the world a better place. The World Economic Forum is where movers and shakers from global businesses, world leaders, and celebrities come together to do no less than change the world.



The World Economic Forum, often referred to as Davos - for the city in Switzerland where the meeting takes place each year - is founded on the principle that leaders must gather to share insights and innovations in order to build to a better future.





It's not overstating it to say that Davos is where deals are made that will impact generations of people. It's a place to go if you're looking to reach a wide audience of influencers in a very short period of time. In Davos you can bump into someone like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or actor and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson.



If you're a publicist with a client attending Davos you need to have a firm goal and a detailed plan, but you need to be ready for anything. First you need to have a compelling narrative that tells your story by writing the headline you want told by the media and let that guide your message. Next you need to identify which journalists you want to tell your story, and create a pre-release strategy. For instance, before Davos you may distribute a press release and arrange exclusive interviews under embargo that will release on the date of your choosing. You should know which journalists will be attending Davos so you can arrange for interviews before you arrive. Finally, once you're on the ground at Davos you'll want to be ready for additional interviews that will come your way.



For example, my client UN Women is at Davos now. UN Women has a single focus, to achieve worldwide gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls by 2030. Today, UN Women's acclaimed HeForShe movement hosted a special session at Davos to release a report on the gender makeup of 10 private companies. These corporate IMPACT Champions - including Twitter, PwC, McKinsey, Vodaphone, Koc Holdings, Schneider Electric, Unilever, Tupperware, AccorHotels and Barclays - announced bold, tangible commitments to achieve a gender equal world. This initiative hopes to accelerate change. By reporting the representation of women throughout their career can help promote a gender equal within the workplace.


One of my favorite Malcolm X quotes is, "if you want something, you had better make some noise." And rather than violence, what if we dared to make some noise for something as great as peace?

Violence gets all the attention, and after the chain of violent acts we had last year - Oregon, Iraq, Syria, Paris, San Bernardino - it feels like time to try something different. Even in the advent of the useful protests that have been happening - over race, immigration, or women's issues - it is the resistance, the anger, and the injustice that is crying out.

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What if we got together and made a loud cry because we like each other? What if we made a lot of noise because we celebrate diversity? What if we gathered and told the world that we are spiritual, we take care of the environment, we care for people, we love life and want to see it change for the better? What if there was a loud noise in our world that was not violent, not sad, not angry, but that stood on a platform of love, compassion, and maybe even fun? Would that be newsworthy?

Let's start telling ourselves a different story, not to ignore or belittle situations of injustice, or things that need changing, but let's try starting out with a different agenda.

It is time for all of us peaceful people, who are commonly silent and passive, to stand up and out, and be strong, courageous, and loud. "We want world peace! This is our world and we will no longer stand for all of the violence!"

That is why I am so passionate about the World Culture Festival, a gathering of 3.5 million people, for the purpose of world peace, the celebration of diversity, and caring for the environment. It is expected to be the largest assembly of its kind in world history. It will have world leaders - businessmen, politicians, and academics - from around the globe, as well as common men and women, who work at the grassroots level. In addition to all 3.5 million people meditating together twice per day, there will be conferences on ethics in business and politics, as well as activism and social change.

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Not only will the large gathering of people create hype, but it is believed that this gathering could have a healing effect, due to the large numbers of people meditating at the same time. In eastern Vedantic philosophy, as well as in western psychology, there is the notion of the "collective consciousness", which is the sum total of all the thoughts and emotions of individuals composing a group. It is this collective that governs the activities of our social lives. The more prevalent are the individual stresses within the collective, the more societies will be prone to war and violence. Through meditation and breathing techniques, when individual stresses calm down in large numbers, it is proven that there is an improvement in the quality of life of the surrounding population, as more people get in touch with "pure consciousness", or a state of peace and love, akin to being in the depth of the ocean, as opposed to its churning surface. Vedic science states that we are all born out of it, but due to stresses, it gets covered over. Meditation is a tool that helps us remember it, realign with it, and in doing so, create a more harmonious world around us. Thus, it is the development and strengthening of the individual through spiritual practice that is seen as the key to a harmonious society. Western psychologists such as Carl Jung, Emilie Durkheim, William James, and Gustav Fechner have also made similar arguments, as has Johan Galtung, the founder of the discipline of Peace and Conflict Studies.

"The International Peace Project in the Middle East", a study that was conducted in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, demonstrated a reduction in crime, murder, and war in both Israel and Lebanon, on account of large numbers of people meditating at the same time. "The Global Consciousness Project", an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists and engineers, has created many such studies with data collected over a 15 year period (see global-mind.org). Finally, Dr. Richard Brown, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, as well as Dr. James Doty, Director of Compassion and Altruism Research at Stanford, promote meditation practices due to their positive effects on the overall health of the individual human, and tendency of practitioners to develop greater empathy towards each other.

Whether you are a believer or a skeptic, there is one thing that is undeniable: our current strategy for world peace has been ineffective. Meditation for peace, education in human values, and a celebration of diversity, offers us an alternative way forward.

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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association of Human Values, and the spearhead of the World Culture Festival has said:

"We all have the responsibility of bringing peace to every nook and corner of the world. Unless every member of our global family is peaceful, our peace is incomplete. The previous century has been an era of uniforms and unions. Now let us move to an era of communion. So we need to bring a wave of social transformation, and each one of us here will need to take responsibility."

World Culture Festival 2016. I hope to see you there. Let's make some noise!
Whether it's even part of the sharing economy (barely), Airbnb dominates many of the discussions surrounding how the sharing economy is impacting our travel and our very way of life. Of considerable debate is whether the company's success represents a net gain or a step backward from advances society has made to protect our citizens. In other words, do the benefits to homeowners and travelers outweigh the health and safety risks, the degradation of neighborhoods and the dilution of culture? The jury's still out, but the issues being debated say a lot about the impact innovation is having on individuals' expectations in modern society, including when traveling outside of their home turf.

Airbnb took root in the simple idea of bringing people together through the better use of empty rooms. Brian Chesky, its founder, rented out a couch in his San Francisco apartment as a way to earn extra money and provide an affordable lodging alternative to travelers visiting the city. In an interview with Tim O'Reilly, Chesky admitted that he never expected Airbnb would realize its current level of success. Hosts and guests, for the most part, are almost cult-like in their adoration of the company. Now Chesky and his team are working hard to manage unprecedented growth and society is struggling with how it perceives the changes Airbnb is having on our neighborhoods. Since its launch in 2008, Airbnb has amassed over 2 million listings in 192 countries and grown to an estimated present value of $25 billion.

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The Good

Hosts and Guests love Airbnb, they offer an opportunity for hosts to make money, and for travellers to save money and stay more comfortably.

The company's success has largely been attributed to its elimination of the friction in travel accommodations, saving money for travelers and putting our largest class of idle assets to work, our homes. Much of its success may simply be good timing. Some have suggested Airbnb is a billion dollar company that shouldn't even exist. Whatever the reasons for its meteoric rise, Airbnb has created new opportunities to generate income for homeowners and renters alike. According to Chesky and the Airbnb community, the income generated by Airbnb provides residents in cities across the globe with a means to retain their homes and elevate their standard of living in uncertain economic times.

The Bad

Airbnb has been criticized for changing neighborhood dynamics, disrupting the housing market and avoiding taxes. There's often conflicts between property rights and municipal/HOA regulation.

Homes bought for the sole purpose of generating income have restricted local inventory and inflated real estate markets in major cities such as New York and San Francisco. The fastest growing category of Airbnb rentals are managed by "super hosts", accounting for almost 40% of its revenues. Locals claim they are being squeezed out of their own neighborhoods by commercial landlords. They argue that lodging taxes and regulations in cities like Chicago are often ignored by Airbnb hosts and Airbnb can no longer stick its head in the sand and say it's the responsibility of the host to navigate the tax code. Some states like Vermont have found ways to work with Airbnb, while others like Texas have had more difficulty coming to terms. Airbnb faces taxes issues in almost all countries as a result of lack of transparency and compliance of hosts, and because municipalities depend on the taxes placed on hotels which often fund infrastructure in high tourism zones.

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The Ugly

While probably isolated occurrences, Airbnb was a high flying media darling until horror stories started to come to light.

Airbnb's exponential growth has prompted cries of foul around issues of safety, trust, discrimination, and regulation. It's difficult to determine if specific crises are isolated occurrences sensationalized by the media, but there is no disputing confirmed reports that travelers having been harassed or even attacked by their Airbnb hosts, and guests have both destroyed property and been harmed on properties that weren't safe. Regardless of their frequency, these incidents have stirred an international debate about Airbnb's responsibilities as a company and whether the government should increase its role in ensuring public safety during stays at private homes.

The Reality

It's certainly possible (probable?) that given Airbnb's massive reach that these problems represent a very small percentage of Airbnb stays. The reality is that the company may be in the best position to address these issues, with the capital and a strong incentive to mitigate future incidents, including by posting safety tips, offering insurance to homeowners, and creating safety standards. Airbnb has made its support teams more accessible and enhanced training to handle time-sensitive situations when travelers call the company instead of the local authorities. It begs the question, do we as travelers really need the government as a chaperon when we stay in someone's home?

The fact is peer-to-peer home rentals are not going away. "There is going to be more people doing home-sharing tomorrow than there are today; there is going to be more the day after that," said Chris Lehane, Airbnb's head of global policy and public affairs. With the sharing economy growing every year and more people seeking creative ways to elevate their standard of living, at lower costs, companies like Airbnb will continue to prosper.

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Joseph Schumpeter, the renowned Austrian economist, said that a capitalist economy functions only when it keeps innovating. But he emphasized that the creation of new value will always trigger value destruction. While Airbnb is not perfect, I'm bullish on regions that find ways to work with companies that innovate, stepping in primarily to help smooth the transition from the existing world to the new economy, not Luddites slamming the door closed. Airbnb may not unite the world, but the innovations it has championed are creating new opportunities, improving efficiency when we travel, reducing travel costs for consumers, and reducing waste. Perhaps more importantly, is the increase in cross-cultural interaction, which we all hope will continue to foster a better and more tolerant way of interacting with each other.

What do you think? Please share your comments.

About the author:

Jim Pickell is President of HomeExchange.com, an advisor, angel investor, and frequent guest lecturer. Previously, Pickell founded several companies including OpenEnglish.com, Latin America's leading online language school, and served as Senior Vice President of SONY Connect in L.A., where he led the digital distribution of films, music, and eBooks. His later quest to collaborate with like-minded thinkers and create ideas that influence positive change led him to HomeExchange.com, first as a member and now as a core part of what he calls "a 23-year-old startup." Pickell is a member of the board of the Family Travel Association and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the Argyros School of Business and Economics. He holds a degree in economics from UC Berkeley, a law degree from Loyola Law School, and an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA.

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The passage of a major U.N. Security Council resolution is like a cheap high: the euphoria wears off pretty quickly. Such was last month's unanimous adoption of a "peace plan" to end nearly five years of Syrian bloodshed.

With Monday's start date for a planned ceasefire and the launch of negotiations already put off, it's looking increasingly unlikely that the talks will start any time soon. The major obstacle is deciding who will represent the opposition across the table from the government. And that hinges on the question of who is a terrorist in Syria. It doesn't help that world governments have failed since the League of Nations to agree on a treaty legally defining terrorism.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva on Wednesday and the two were unable to decide who the Syrian terrorists are that should be excluded from the negotiations.

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They agree on the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda) who have already been eliminated from participation. But what about the myriad other opposition groups? A hundred of them were melded together by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh last November. But they want Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down immediately. That's a complete non-starter as the U.N. plan would allow him to stay on for six months making way for a transitional government until a new constitution is written and a general election held in 2017. Kerry has been blasted by neoconservatives for agreeing to this compromise and for allowing Assad to run again in that election.

The U.S. compromised after being spurred on by the refugee crisis and Russia's entry into the war on the Islamic State. But there is so far little compromise on the question of terrorism.

Putin's Challenge

Moscow and Washington's disagreement goes back to the beginning of the Syrian civil war, as I reported more than three years ago. In September, President Vladimir Putin went a step further in accusing the U.S. of supporting terrorists in Syria in his address to the U.N. General Assembly. "The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere," Putin said. "It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes." He said it was irresponsible "to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them."

He made it clear he was speaking of the U.S., when he added: "I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you've done? But I'm afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity."

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Putin did not mention clear evidence he was certainly aware of from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. An August 2012 DIA document declassified by a judge says that Washington, Ankara, and the Gulf States were helping to establish a Salafist principality in eastern Syria to pressure Assad that could team up with extremists on the Iraqi side of the border to form an Islamic State--the document uses that exact phrase. Then DIA chief Gen. Mike Flynn later told Al Jazeera that this was a "willful decision in Washington," not the U.S. merely turning a blind eye to what was happening.

The U.S. has long supported unsavory groups to reach short-term U.S. interests. Washington argues it is vetting what groups it supports, but even the Daily Beast has called this into question, reporting that CIA-backed rebels fight in tandem with al-Qaeda.

In his speech Putin called for a coalition similar to the Soviet-US alliance in the Second World War to fight the most fearsome terrorist force in history. He argued that Syria's military is the only effective ground force (along with the Kurds) against the Islamic State and that all nations who really want to defeat it should work with Assad's army and fight the groups trying to overthrow him. "Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind," Putin said.

Russia tabled a draft resolution at the Security Council that would have authorized such a grand coalition. The U.S. flatly rejected it because it still plots Assad's overthrow with groups Russia says as terrorists. It wasn't a surprise then that two days after Putin spoke Russia's first airstrike was against a CIA-backed group threatening the Assad government. It was a strong message from Moscow to Washington: if you keep supporting extremists in Syria we will strike them.

The U.S., and its corporate media, accused Russia of hitting "moderate" groups instead of the Islamic State (which Russia has repeatedly). They leveled the tired charge that Putin is trying to reestablish the Soviet Empire and takeover the Middle East from the U.S.: a duplicitous case of projecting imperial designs onto another. Perhaps Russia really is worried about terrorism spreading from Syria and really wants to do something to stop it.

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Defining Terrorism

Having an international agreement legally defining terrorism would be useful in this circumstance, but coming up with one codified in a treaty has long bedeviled governments. The League of Nations tried and failed. A month after 9/11 the U.N. General Assembly met to agree on an international convention against terrorism, but failed because it couldn't agree on defining terrorism.

Terrorism is only a tactic. But governments seem to conflate it with a cause. It's okay when their side uses it, but not when their enemy does. This has spawned the cliche, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

If you can objectively isolate the tactic from the cause, an agreed definition may be possible. It would be along the lines of terrorism is an act of violence carried out by non-state actors, targeting civilians for any cause, whether just or not.

The cause of the Palestinians under occupation is just, for instance, but blowing up Israeli civilians in a bus is terrorism. The cause of the Islamic State, as an occupying force, is clearly unjust, and it commits terrorism when it targets civilians. The target is essential to the definition. A non-state actor, even the IS, attacking military targets is using guerilla tactics not terrorism. Some groups, like IS, use both.

The lack of a definition has helped states to continue sponsoring terrorism, though they do not directly commit acts of terrorism themselves, as many people contend. States commit war crimes, which is worse. Only non-state actors employ terrorism, which is not under the jurisdiction of the war-crimes International Criminal Court and could only in some instances be considered a war crime.

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Without a common understanding of what terrorism is and objectively identifying which groups are committing it, it is difficult to imagine agreement between Moscow and Washington to get the Syrian talks started without some extremely deft diplomatic maneuvering. That may still happen.
The war within wars

Over the past four years, the situation in Syria has deteriorated. The current civil war has been characterized as a war of government against the people, a sectarian war between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and lastly, a proxy war--all while facilitating the rise of ISIS.

For the average college student, it's hard enough to juggle classes, exams, job applications, internships, clubs, and sports...let alone keep up with the details of a situation as complex as the Syrian civil war. So, now that we are all finally recovering on winter break (and possibly binge-watching Making a Murderer), here is my best attempt to provide a basic study guide for everything you need to know about the conflict in Syria.

Why are people even fighting in the first place?

For the majority of its existence, Syria has been ruled by the Baathist Party. The party is currently identified as a socialist movement led by President Bashar al-Assad and his secular/authoritative regime.

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Taking office in 2000, Assad's successes relied heavily on the exploitation of age-old sectarian tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims. In return for their devotion, Assad strongly supported the Syrian Shiites (which make up only 10% of the global Muslim population). Because of this, the Shiites were led to believe that, without Assad, they would lose all governmental representation and the Sunnis would take over.

Meanwhile, civilians became increasingly unhappy with the "stagnate" political processes imposed by the regime. In the midst of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, inspired Syrian protestors finally took their displeasures to the streets. In what began as peaceful protests calling for democratic reform, soon unraveled into nationwide unrest after security forces opened fire on several demonstrators.

Without hesitation, civilian rebel forces began organizing and arming themselves for combat against government violence--forming the Free Syrian Army. This pushed the government military powers to destroy entire towns at a time in attempts to regain control. Eventually, these tensions escalated into what is now the current Syrian civil war.

But, don't think that the fighting is limited to only these two players.

Who is fighting?

Fighters from all over Syria joined the rebels in their movement, including many extremists (something that was highly encouraged by Assad).

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Around January 2012, an ethnic group located in the North, known as the Kurds, saw this as their chance to seek autonomy after years of oppression. They de facto seceded from Assad's rule. However, the group was not seeking total independence from Assad, but rather a "local democratic administration."

In the summer of 2012, Iran intervenes on Assad's behalf, sending troops and cargo--Syria officially becomes a proxy war. To counter Iran's influence, Arab Gulf States begin sending money and weapons to the rebels through Turkey. Iran takes it a step further when Hezbollah (a Lebanese Shia group backed by Iran) invades to fight alongside Assad. This causes the Gulf States to send even more money and weapons to the rebels, but this time, through Jordan.

By 2013, the Middle East is distinctly divided between the (generally) Sunni powers backing the rebels (Gulf States, Turkey, and Jordan) and the Shia powers supporting Assad (Iran and Hezbollah). In August 2013, the U.S. publicly establishes its distaste for Assad when his regime uses chemical weapons against civilians in several agricultural districts around Damascus. Prior to this, the Obama administration had only signed a secret order back in April 2013, authorizing the CIA to train and equip Syrian rebels (but the program stalls out at first). Obama declares it a national security interest to respond to the regime through a targeted, military airstrike. However, Russia (a long-time ally of Syria) proposes that Syria surrender control of its chemical weapons instead. The U.S. backs down, but several weeks later the first American training arms finally reach the Syrian rebels--the U.S. is now officially a participant in the Syrian war.

In early 2014, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in Iraq breaks away from the group over internal disagreements, forming ISIS. Fighting mainly against the rebels and the Kurds, the terrorist group begins carving out a mini-state in Syria, in which it calls its Caliphate. ISIS spends the rest of the summer seizing territory in Iraq.

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In July 2014 the Pentagon launches a program to train Syrian rebels, but only the ones that are fighting against ISIS. Although the program fizzles out, it's clear that the U.S. now opposes ISIS more than Assad. That August, Turkey (which backs the rebels) fuels an ancient rivalry by bombing Kurdish groups in Iraq and Turkey (even though most of the Kurds are fighting ISIS). This creates confusion among the Kurds about where the U.S. stands, and deepens tensions over prioritizing Assad or ISIS.

In September 2014, Obama reaffirms our focus on ISIS and moves forward with a campaign of airstrikes against the terrorists. In September 2015, Russia intervenes on Assad's behalf. Russia initially says that it's there to bomb ISIS, but ends up bombing anti-Assad rebels instead (including some that are backed by the U.S.).

So, in summary, we are currently dealing with Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah aiding the Shia-backed Assad regime against the Sunni civilian rebels supported by Turkey, Jordan, and the Arab Gulf States (and at one point the U.S. as well). We also now have the conflict between the Kurds--who only want autonomy from Assad and to fight ISIS--and Turkey. And then of course, we have ISIS. But what about us?

Where does the U.S. stand now?

The U.S. is still hesitant about its stance towards Assad, acknowledging that his regime will need to be removed at some point, but that now might not be the best time. If Assad is overthrown, Syria will be left in shambles and ISIS will take over.


Excerpt from the publication



Dignity and respect are two echoing messages in the call of Grand Mufti Dr. Shawki Allam for dialogue and trust accross faiths. Dignity and respect are the core of our humanity; they are the basis of trust, and an essential step towards a more peaceful world.

It is not surprising that terrorism targets dignity. The brutal beheading of a hostage in front of a camera aims to violate the dignity of the victim, and of humanity as a whole. If we can build dignity and respect, in particular towards the Muslim world, it will bring us a step closer to a world without terrorism.

I come from the Balkans, where respect for others (and the lack of it) has repeatedly represented the narrow line between peace and war, between prosperity and misery. In my lifetime, I experienced this turn from respect to disrespect. In a matter of a few years, during the 1990s, a country where people respected each other, and which was respected by others, turned into a place of unthinkable atrocities.

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We lost the respect of others, and for others. Our dignity was shaken. We experienced this not through harsh words or drastic actions, but during our day-to-day interactions: the cold reception of a consular officer while we were waiting for a visa; the subtle distancing of others, during chance encounters.

After the traumatic experience of the 1990s, the physical infrastructure of the country was re-built quickly, but regaining dignity and self-respect has taken much longer. In this process, it was important to find anchors in our shared history, such as Nikola Tesla, the founder of our electricity-driven era.

Today, the struggle for a more peaceful world coincides with the struggle to ensure respect for the dignity of the Muslim world. It will be a long journey. One anchoring point might be the great Arab thinker Ibn Khaldun. He wrote the Muqaddimah, one of the first texts on sociology, long before the discipline was established by European thinkers such as Durkheim and Weber.

Ibn Khaldun lived in the 14th century, during the last phase of the great cohabitation of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Andalusia. Ibn Khaldun was a diplomat who enjoyed widespread respect, even among his opponents. The Christian monarch, Pedro the Cruel, asked Ibn Khaldun to be his advisor. Ibn Khaldun's impressive life and works, symbolising his great appreciation of dignity and respect for others, inspired me to suggest two activities in response to Grand Mufti Allam's call.

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First, I propose the 'Ibn Khaldun Dignity Award', to recognise acts which respect the dignity of others. Nominations would be open to all people in the world.

Second, I suggest an 'Ibn Khaldun Dignity Scholarship', awarded to young researchers who study dignity and respect.

While the journey towards restoring dignity and respect will be long, the first steps must be taken now. I look forward very much to the forthcoming Geneva Lecture. Both the Grand Mufti and Michael Moller will share the feedback they received not only in Davos, but also in European countries both large and small, afterwards. The journey is not only about good words, but about walking the talk and keeping the spirit of listening and implementing.


Want to successfully champion ideas and spur apt collective action with others at work and home? Read Originals by New York Times op-ed writer and popular Wharton psychology professor, Adam Grant to get the answers to these questions and take this 15-question quiz.

Q. Assuming that parents decide to give children the freedom to be original, what does it take to foster a sense of right and wrong?

Hints: Timing and language are vital: when parents should talk about doing the right thing and the wording should they use when they ask their child to do the right thing. Pages 167 to 174.

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Q. What is a proven way to efficiently involve all employees suggesting and selecting what innovations are most beneficial to implement?

Hint: Eyewear retailer, Warby Parker used this approach in a way that was transparent to all employees, and used a voting process that enabled technology teams to overrule managers at times to work on an idea to prove its value. That way, "they don't wait for permission to start building something," applied psychology expert Reb Rebele, told Adam Grant. "But they gather feedback from peers before rolling things out to peers and customers." Pages 57 to 59.

Q. What collective method of rethinking how to proceed on a project can often avoid a failure and sometimes spur a greater success?

Hint: Rob Minkoff, the director of The Lion King, and Maureen Donley, a producer, serendipitously experienced that method and were then able to rewrite the storyline, turning the movie into the highest-grossing film of 1994, winning two Oscars and a Golden Globe. Stanford creativity expert, Justin Berg, explained to Adam Grant how that illuminating interaction saved the movie. Page 135.

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Q. What is the key value/behavior, often missed, when leaders want their employees to be intensely committed to a shared set of values and norms?

Want to successfully champion ideas and spur apt collective action with others at work and home? Read Originals by New York Times Op-Ed writer and popular Wharton psychology professor, Adam Grant to get the answers to these questions and take this 15-question quiz.

Q. Assuming that parents decide to give children the freedom to be original, what does it take to foster a sense of right and wrong?

Hints: Timing and language are vital: when parents should talk about doing the right thing and the wording should they use when they ask their child to do the right thing. Pages 167 to 174.

Q. What is a proven way to efficiently involve all employees suggesting and selecting what innovations are most beneficial to implement?

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Hint: Eyewear retailer, Warby Parker used this approach in a way that was transparent to all employees, and used a voting process that enabled technology teams to overrule managers at times to work on an idea to prove its value. That way, "they don't wait for permission to start building something," applied psychology expert Reb Rebele, told Adam Grant. "But they gather feedback from peers before rolling things out to peers and customers." Pages 57 to 59.

Q. What collective method of rethinking how to proceed on a project can often avoid a failure and sometimes spur a greater success?

Hint: Rob Minkoff, the director of The Lion King, and Maureen Donley, a producer, serendipitously experienced that method and were then able to rewrite the storyline, turning the movie into the highest-grossing film of 1994, winning two Oscars and a Golden Globe. Stanford creativity expert, Justin Berg, explained to Adam Grant how that illuminating interaction saved the movie. Page 135.

Q. What is the key value/behavior, often missed, when leaders want their employees to be intensely committed to a shared set of values and norms?

Hint: The Bay of Pigs debacle reflects the damage that can happen without that trait. Page 190.

Q. What is the first error that companies make when trying to institute major changes according to Harvard professor John Kotter?

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Hint: Executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out of their comfort zones. Page 232.

Q. If you want people to modify their behavior is it better to highlight the benefits of their changing or the costs of not changing?

Hint: it depends on whether they perceive the new behavior as safe or risky according to Peter Salovey, "one of the originators of the concept of emotional intelligence, and now president of Yale." Pages 233 to 236.

Q. Are agreeable or disagreeable employees more valuable in enabling an organization to make needed changes?

Related insights once you learn how to be more valuable:

 Practice The Exposure Effect: offer several, short exposures to your idea, mixed in with other ideas, with pauses in between those exposures to spur others' acceptance of your new idea.

 See how former deputy director of intelligence at the CIA, Carmen Medina, as she got promoted, faced the wall of the "middle-status conformity" effect.

Pages 77 to 84.

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What most moved me, beyond the research based, actionable insights, buttressed by fascinating real life examples was the underlying opportunity for us to:

 Support others in becoming more original as we do too.

 Recognize specific ways we can accomplish greater things with others in how we interact with people different than us and with whom we sometimes disagree, by finding sweet spots of shared interest.
Members of the Egyptian police special forces patrol streets in al-Haram neighbourhood in the southern Cairo Giza district on January 25, 2016 in order to head off potential protests against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government.Egyptians marked the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak amid tight security and a warning from the new regime that demonstrations will not be tolerated. / AFP / MAHMOUD KHALED (Photo credit should read MAHMOUD KHALED/AFP/Getty Images)

This post was coauthored by Bahey eldin Hassan, Director of Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.

The international community's support given to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's regime is primarily based on the notion that his regime maintains stability in the country. President Sisi keeps assuring that he is leading a successful war on terrorism; however the country is facing more security threats and instability than it did in 2013.

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Terrorist attacks have intensified to an average of over 100 per month in 2015, compared to 30 attacks per month in 2014. The attacks have also spread from Sinai to other cities including Cairo. In addition to documented testimonies of the ongoing radicalization taking place inside Egyptian prisons, other testimonies, such as the one given by a leader of a prominent Sinai tribe, describes how the regime's policy is turning the Muslim Brotherhood into a recruitment pool for ISIS.

Moreover, the claimed counterterrorism efforts are deliberately targeting the wrong groups: the regime's security resources are fully occupied, not with combating terrorism, but with combating the opposition. The crucial role played by independent civil society in the revolution and its aftermath have made it a threat to a regime that rules with unchecked powers.

In January 2016, a security source admitted that the primary targets of raiding 5,000 apartments in downtown Cairo, were pro-democracy young activists. Secular peaceful activists are sentenced on charges ranging from illegal protest or belonging to a terrorist organization to threatening public peace and security. Some are held in pre-trial detention for years, without being charged or seeing a judge.

Through the unprecedented crackdown Egypt is witnessing, the regime, with all its apparatuses, is penalizing all forms of peaceful dissent and gradually shutting down public space in Egypt. Secular youth activists, protesters, members, supporters, or alleged supports of the Muslim Brotherhood, human rights defenders, journalists and average apolitical citizens, are currently languishing behind bars under inhumane conditions.

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Thousands of persons have been sentenced, including death sentences, in kangaroo courts under laws that not only violate Egypt's international human rights obligations but also the 2014 Egyptian constitution. The judiciary has played an instrumental role in sustaining this injustice where it has failed to guarantee the basic rights of fair trial and due process. Civilians continue to be tried before military courts, in violation of international human rights law.

The grim reality of Egypt's full prisons was not resolved by President Sisi's pardon of 100 persons in September 2015. Obviously, the pardoning of arbitrarily-detained persons comes only as a publicity stunt to please the international community, not as a genuine political will to empty Egypt's prisons of wrongfully-imprisoned persons. Despite President Sisi's acknowledgement that there are innocent people behind bars in Egypt, the regime refuses to provide an accurate figure of political detainees in Egypt, but human rights monitors suggest that it exceeds 100,000 detainees at the moment.

Despite the claims of President Sisi that Egypt is witnessing an unprecedented climate of free speech, the current regime has become more repressive than its predecessors whereas it does not tolerate any form of dissent or challenge of the official narrative. At least 23 journalists are currently imprisoned making Egypt now the second worst country jailer of journalists worldwide.

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These policies have led to a total erosion of confidence in the State and the rule of law.

Public figures that criticize the regime are prevented from appearing on TV talk-shows, holding public talks, and getting published in newspapers. The country is also witnessing a wave of labor strikes across the country demanding higher wages. Civil society organizations continue to work in an increasingly shrinking space where human rights organizations face smearing campaigns by the pro-government media, ongoing investigations over foreign funding, and travel bans against human rights defenders.

Between June 2012 and December 2015, the consecutive Egyptian presidents have ruled the country without a legislative body in place. During this time, the executive has issued a vast number of laws, some in flagrant violation of the 2014 constitution. Since, the newly elected parliament has been approving laws by the dozens in mere hours, including draconian ones such as the counterterrorism law, failing to undo the damage and provide a much needed checks-and-balances against the executive.

Several reports (including one by a former adviser to Presdident Al Sisi, Hazem Abdelaziz) have stated that the security apparatus has directly intervened in the engineering of the Parliament.

The regime is also seeking to appear as the "guardian of morality" over Egyptian society. While homosexuality is not illegal under Egyptian law, the judiciary uses charges such as prostitution or debauchery to sentence "suspected" LGBT persons, who are arrested by the police in house raids, or through online dating applications.

The "guardianship of morality" has extended to artists as well. Writer Ahmed Naji and his publisher Tareq Al-Taher published a chapter of Naji's fictional novel in a literary magazine, which the Prosecution argued that it included "immoral sexual content that violates public decency".

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Despite the election of a reportedly high number of women in the Parliament, the adoption of a national strategy for combating violence against women and amendments to the penal code on sexual harassment, there remains a huge discrimination against women in law and practice.

Violence against women remains widespread in public and private spheres. Sexual violence continues to be used by security forces "Guardians of Morality" against women and men as a means of intimidation. However, no case has been brought before justice or even investigated.

The regime's oppressing of peaceful secular activists, peaceful Islamists, and apolitical citizens, as well as closing down legitimate political channels and cultural spaces, is fueling radicalization in Egypt and further complicates the fight against terrorism, leaving very little room for the prospect of long term stability.

In order to address the regime's counterproductive measures leading to mass radicalization and instability, the international community must pressure President Sisi to immediately put an end to the ongoing human rights violations. As President Sisi travels to EU capitals, EU leaders should make it a priority to raise human rights issues with him, publicly and privately, and require the immediate release of those detained for exercising their fundamental human rights.

The lucrative business deals, including arms sales, that the Egyptian government signs with EU-based companies should not make the leaders turn a blind eye to the regime's dismal human rights record. The EU and the US must ensure that the arms sold are used to fight terrorism, not to repress the people, peaceful dissent and activists and should include human rights protection as a bargaining chip for economic deals, and start implementing "less for less" approach with the Egyptian regime.

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The LA art scene is booming. As the LA Art show celebrates its 21st year, more and more celebrities will attend the annual art fair. Last year's attendees included Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Melanie Griffith, Barbara Streisand, James Brolin, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Franco, Lily Collins, Eli Broad, Gayle Rossi, Shepard Fairey, and more. This year's hosts are Anne Hathaway and Adam Schulman with the beneficiary being St Jude's Hospital.



See image courtesy of the LA Art Show; Anne Hathaway and Adam Schulman



In addition to the LA Art Show's contemporary and modern section, this year's art fair will also feature the Los Angeles Fine Art show. Founder Kim Martindale explained, "Both shows will be co-located and take place in tandem, however, the LA Art Show will be curated to showcase modern and contemporary galleries and the Los Angeles Fine Art Show will be curated to include historic and traditional works." He went on to say that this separation creates a more honed curatorial / collector experience, yet still maintains the encyclopedic experience because visitors can still see both shows at the same time.

This year, Littletopia celebrates pop surrealism featuring a variety of galleries such as Thinkspace, Coagula Curatorial, Copro Gallery, etc. A special exhibition featuring new works by Robert Williams will be on view. The LA Art Show in conjunction with the Littletopia section will present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Robert Williams on Thursday, January 28. Founder of Juxtapoz Magazine, Williams championed pop surrealism (originally called low brow art) and brought it to the mainstream art culture.





See image courtesy of the LA Art Show



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Other notable exhibitions featured are: "Days of Future Past" featuring the art of Mari Kim, "From the Streets to Canvas" curated by Isabel Rojas-Williams, and an installation by Catherine Coan presented by the Downtown Art Walk.



Galleries from all over the world will be exhibiting work as well as many local Los Angeles galleries such as Ace Gallery, FP Contemporary, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Timothy Yarger Fine Arts and many more.

PYO Gallery LA will be exhibiting the art of Artnom, Cha Young Seok, Choi Young Wook, Ha Jung Woo, Kim Tschang Yeul, Park Seung Hoon, and Woo Kuk Won. PYO Gallery LA has participated in the event since the gallery opened in 2008. Gallery assistant Rosaline Zhang explained, "We like to use the fair primarily as a way to meet new clientele who may not be familiar with our gallery; and to introduce our artists, who may not be as well known in LA as they are in Asia, to new audiences."



Courtesy of PYO Gallery LA; Park Seung Hoon, New York Public Library, Digital C-Print, 50 x 60 in, 2014



Zhang continued, "Park Seung Hoon is a South Korean artist who creates beautifully complex and intricate film images as a way to memorialize his world travels. The artist takes thousands of film photographs with an 8 x 10 camera, then painstakingly weaves the physical film to recreate the image. A digital photograph is then taken, and the weaving is destroyed - the print becomes the final piece." You can find PYO Gallery LA's booth at 621/720. http://www.pyogalleryla.com

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bG Gallery has participated in the LA Art show for the past five years. Co-owner Om Bleicher said with each year, sales have grown. He has curated an eclectic group of artists which will include Allois, Stephen Anderson, Tatiana Botton, Dan Busta, Brian Cooper, Simone Gad, Ted Gall, Burton Gray, Gregory Horndeski, Michelle Kingdom, Barbara Kolo, Campbell Laird, Susan Lizotte, Christopher Mudgett, Susan Moss, Bob and Marjorie Moskowitz, Stuart Rapeport, Gay Summer Rick, Corey Sewelson, Ellen Schinderman, Linda Smith, Linda Vallejo and Stephanie Visser.

"Barbara Kolo's work impressed me because of the technical skill involved in creating them," explained Bleicher. "Her abstract images are built from nearly perfect paint dots that she applies with a squirt bottle. Despite the precision required in getting the paint on the canvas, Barbara does not plan her paintings and allows them to grow organically. So the resulting symmetry and order are simply her own hand organizing the chaos of hundreds of dots. Her finished paintings can remind me of the natural world, reeds reflected in water, a seismic wave. Her abstractions can evoke an emotion on first sight, from excitement to peacefulness."



See image: courtesy of Barbara Kolo; Life, 2015 Acrylic on Canvas, 18  24 in (45.72  60.96 cm)



Kolo will be showing three recent paintings from three different series. One painting titled Life, is from her On White series. "I was inspired by stark landscapes with strong abstract shapes, but Life is really more than what meets the eye. It has an intentional ambiguous quality." The work is reminiscent of a digital read out. "I would like the viewer to start thinking about Life and what it means to them," Kolo added. "Success to me is when several people tell me quite passionately what the painting means to them and all the stories are different." bG Gallery is located at booth 909. http://santamonica.bgartdealings.com/
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign stop Monday, Jan. 18, 2016, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

What the landscape of American politics has lacked since the summer of 1963 is a grassroots movement with enough momentum to force existing power structures to yield ground. To paraphrase the most iconic part of Lincoln's Gettysburg address: a movement of the marginalized, by the marginalized, for the marginalized. The need for such a movement is manifest to all but those who either benefit from the status quo, are blinded by unquestioning party loyalty or have been fettered by their pathological cynicism.

Why is such a movement required?

By the most conservative of estimates, the richest ten percent of Americans own almost 80% of the total wealth in the country. For the first time in four decades the middle class is no longer a majority. Perhaps the most disturbing and undermentioned statistic is this: the median wealth of the middle class dropped by 40% during the recession and is yet to regain any ground-while the median wealth of the richest one percent returned to it's pre-recession level by 2012 and has since risen steadily. The economic slowdown that wiped out the jobs and savings of millions of hardworking Americans left the affluent untouched-and in some cases wealthier. The ubiquitous slogan of job recovery is a sordid attempt at pacification that does not prestidigitate back the wealth of the middle class squandered by the unchastised sortilege of corporate America. While countless Americans postponed retirements after seeing their savings shrink, the overlords of the banks and mortgage firms that had triggered the economic slowdown retired with bonuses in the tens of millions of dollars.

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There is no "trickle down" happening in this inverted pyramid of wealth, on the contrary wealth is consistently departing the lower and middle class and filling the already overflowing coffers of the rich. Let us also remind ourselves here that the trillions (literally) that should have been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, rejuvenate our failing school system and address the forty million people living below the poverty line have gone to bailing out the "too big to fail" corporate colossi that engineered their own implosions.

There is much that needs to change here. And that is not all.

The same corporations that have caused so much damage to the economy also exert their influence on government to the detriment of the American citizen. We have a lobby for everything under the sun. We cannot import affordable medications from Canada because it harms the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. We cannot have affordable, uncomplicated single-payer health insurance because private Health Insurance is a 900 billion dollar industry that donates generously to Presidential campaigns. Sensible gun laws cannot be legislated when 236 Republican and 75 Democratic congressmen receive donations from the NRA.

Worst of all, war itself seems to have become an industry. We have reached a point in the post-WMD, Halliburton and Blackwater world where there are competing narratives in the media about why and how wars are being fought. In 1961 President Eisenhower warned us that: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

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It seems that the warning was not quiet heeded; today half the political discourse is focused on fear-mongering and many on the Republican side advocate bombing cities and putting "boots on the ground" as if they were talking about a sport. Perhaps war is indeed a sport to them.

Thing is, this long awaited grassroots movement has arrived-in the form of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. Here is a chance to put in the Office of President an individual who is willing to fight for the subaltern and who has proven over and over in his political career his will and determination to do so. Many are yet to realize the significance of what this campaign constitutes. Here is a self-made politician who has built his career from scratch and who is not subservient either to lobbyists or to purblind party loyalties. Here is a candidate who has throughout his career as a congressman and Senator voted according to his conscience. Far more often than not, his vote has landed on the right side of history and the aspirations of the American people.

This is not an opportunity we can miss. Those who are still stuck on "socialism" need to start ignoring the unschooled canards floated by the GOP and Fox News and inform themselves about what the word actually means. Better still, listen to Bernie Sanders define what the "Democratic Socialism" he espouses entails.

There are those who insist that without the cooperation of Congress and Senate the presidency can achieve nothing, that one can only bring change by working "within the system". One could take this argument seriously were it not for the fact that the failure of Congress to pass sensible gun laws, the sabotage of the Affordable Healthcare Act and the immutability of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich are staring us in the face. Unfortunately, what the Obama administration continued to do was to work "within the system" which allowed the GOP to block any legislation that ran contrary to the interest of corporate lobbies. The President of the United States is most certainly not a powerless puppet unless the office allows itself to be as such. In Bernie Sanders we have a candidate who will at least resist the influence of lobbies and use Presidential power to do what he constitutionally can to rid the country of the parasitic oligarchy that currently dictates terms.

Bernie Sanders is more than just a presidential candidate; he is the face of a wave of indignation from within every race, religion and ethnicity. He represents Americans who are tired of an establishment that is perpetually willing to sacrifice their futures at the altar of vested interests. Who reject a dispensation that cannot put aside party loyalty to legislate for the common good. Who are shocked and horrified by the war machine that one administration after another has kept feeding. Who believe that true liberalism does not merely raise slogans of liberty and equality but ensures that these rights are truly made inalienable.
The news that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will double it's number of female and minority members is a welcome and overdue change. Compelled by pressure, controversy and a threatened boycotts of the Oscar ceremony planned for February 28 by a growing list including Spike Lee, Jada and Will Smith and Quincy Jones the Academy had little choice but the act. It's one small step in the right direction but the diversity issues in Hollywood run far deeper than just this year's Oscars.

The history of Oscar ignoring, snubbing or leaving out actors, directors and films focused on people of color is long and painful. The most glaring example in my lifetime was the total shut out of the Color Purple, one of the most exquisite and powerful films ever made. While nominated for 11 academy awards in 1986, it failed to win a single one and lost Best Picture that year to the decidedly mediocre Out of Africa (with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the leads). Even then, the calls of bias among Academy voters was loud yet little changed.

Thirty years later, the problem has barely improved. Not only are groups like the Academy overlooking minority actors, Hollywood directors continue to cast white actors to play blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minorities with shocking frequency. In 2015's Aloha, set in Hawaii, Cameron Crowe chose Emma Stone to play the Asian-American character Allison Ng, a choice that prompted plenty of backlash from Asians and Hawaiians, including a scathing article by critic Jen Yamato titled "The Unbearable Whiteness of Cameron Crowe's 'Aloha.'" Similarly, the Star Trek character Khan, conceived to be of Indian Sikh descent, was played by British Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), while Tony Mendez, a real-life CIA agent who was Mexican-American, was played in the blockbuster Argo (2012) by the film's director, the California-born Ben Affleck. Casting choices like these seem to send a clear but unfortunate message to minority Americans: "Your story may be good enough to tell. But we don't think you're good enough to tell it."

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This year's controversy was not lost on Academy President Cheryl Boon Isaacs, herself African American, who pledged in a post on Twitter a few days ago that "we need to do more, and better and quickly." She seems to be making good on that promise by expanding the diversity of the Academy membership. Today Academy voters are 94 percent white, 76 percent male and average 63 years in age. Actors including Lupita Lyongo, George Clooney, Will Smith and many others have called out the obvious, albeit unconscious bias, of the group and expressed serious concern. The Academy seems to taking the problem, at least this week. The same cannot be said for the rest of the industry.

The diversity problem in Hollywood goes far beyond the Academy and touches every dimension of the industry. For my forthcoming book, The Thinnest Line, I have been looking at the importance of diversity in American life and arguing that for us to thrive economically and socially, we must do better. Hollywood is one area where there remain huge challenges. In its 2015 report on diversity in Hollywood, The Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA examined the demographics of the "gatekeepers" and the "greenlighters" in movies and TV -- that is, the people who make the decisions that shape our national culture. Among the findings:

Film studio heads are 94 percent white and 98 percent male.

Film studio senior management is 92 percent white and 83 percent male.

Television network and studio heads are 96 percent white and 71 percent male.

Television senior management is 93 percent white and 73 percent male.

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Similarly, in its 2015 report on the status on women in the U.S. media, the Women's Media Center found that men accounted for 83 percent of directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors for the 250 most profitable films made in the U.S. during the previous year. None of the year's top 100 films had a black female director. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating the industry for gender bias and many expect the results will be serious and dramatic.

"The problem is systemic and sometimes the only way to change the system is to go out of the system and make change yourself" says Alysia Reiner, star of the Netflix hit series Orange is the New Black. She and her partner Sarah Megan Thomas launched their own production company, Broad Street Pictures to promote great roles for women. Their first venture, the film Equity is produced by, written by, directed by and starring women. It will premier at Sundance this weekend. Sundance has done what the Academy has failed to do -- set an express goal of promoting and supporting women and minority filmmakers and followed through on those committments.
FLINT, MI - JANUARY 23: A water collection device is handed out to citizens of Flint for testing contaminated water on January 23, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. A federal state of emergency has been declared due to the city's water supply being contaminated. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

The people of Michigan hired themselves a GOP businessman to be governor in 2011. And what they got was children poisoned by public water in Flint.

That is, what they got was a government run based on GOP business values.

To line the pockets of CEOs and shareholders, corporations cut corners in ways that frequently end up injuring workers and the public. Think of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster where safety violations killed 29 workers or the Takata airbag fatalities that occurred despite workers voicing safety concerns or the nine deaths and 714 illnesses caused by salmonella-contaminated peanut butter knowingly sold by Peanut Corporation of America.

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So, really, the lead poisoning of Flint children by a government based on Republican business values is no surprise.

Last week, in his state of the state address, GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, formerly a venture capitalist, apologized to the people of Flint who have been drinking water tainted with a known, potent neurotoxin since April of 2014. And then Snyder said, I will fix it.

Lead poisoning is irreversible. It cant be fixed. In addition, now, two outbreaks of Legionnaires Disease that sickened 87 and killed 10 have been linked to the foul water. Theres no fixing dead people.

The GOP businessman-governor also said in his state of the state address last week: Government failed you. Thats exactly what Republicans want. They want government to fail so that they can justify crushing it, eliminating much of what it does for people and turning over the rest to private business, which profits by cutting corners the way Peanut Corporation of America did.

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Then, when it all falls apart like it did in Flint, its amazing how quick those Republicans put their hands out for a federal bailout. Thats what Snyder did. Hes a venture capitalist, after all. Thats the Wall Street way.

Michigan didnt have to poison Flints children. That was a values choice. And Republican Gov. Rick Snyder values big business more than little children.

Immediately after Snyder got elected, he gave his corporate buddies a big fat tax break and raised taxes on individuals, including poor people and pensioners. An analysis by the Detroit Free Press in 2014 showed individuals were forking over a total of $900 million more a year. By contrast, businesses paid $1.7 billion less annually after Snyder cut their tax bills.

If corporations had paid their fair share in taxes over the five years that Snyder has been in charge, Michigan would have an additional $8.5 billion to help struggling cities like Flint afford clean water and struggling school districts like Detroit afford decent education. But giving businesses a tax break was more important to GOP businessman Snyder.

Long before Snyder took office, Flint fell into financial trouble as the auto industry abandoned it. But the Republican governors administration appointed the emergency manager who decided to disconnect Flint from a safe public water source and draw instead from the Flint River to save between $1 million and $2 million a year.

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Almost immediately, the people of Flint began complaining. The Flint River water was yellow, orange or brown. It tasted and smelled bad. It caused rashes and nausea. It produced so much corrosion at a GM plant that the factory switched to another water source.

The public water that had been piped to Flint homes from Lake Huron for nearly five decades had been treated to prevent metals in the pipes and pipe joints from leaching out. The water from the Flint River was untreated, even though it is more corrosive. So lead and iron leached into the water drawn by Flint residents. Both metals are dangerous.

Smelly, foul-tasting orange and brown water was good enough for Flint residents as far as the Snyder administration was concerned. Beyond ignoring the concerns of Flint residents, officials within his administration aggressively mocked and belittled them.

Last year, in February, the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) warned Michigan state officials that lead and other contaminants were leaching into the untreated Flint water. The state did nothing. In June, an EPA regulations manager reported that the state appeared to be deliberately testing the water in a way that would seriously understate the levels of lead.

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Instead of intervening immediately to stop the poisoning, state officials argued that Michigan was not required to treat the water to fix the problem. Months later, when independent studies confirmed high levels of lead, state officials reacted initially by denying the results.

Thats definitely a government run on GOP-business values failing the people. Just like Peanut Corporation of America.

One of those independent studies was conducted by pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha. Last September, she found a spike in blood lead levels in Flint children, some three times higher than those in earlier routine tests.

Among the poisoned is 4-year-old Gavin Walters, who lost 27 pounds after the water switch and who sometimes seemed unable to pronounce words he knew, his mother, LeeAnne Walters, told the New York Times. He is going to deal with the side effects of this for the rest of his life, Ms. Walters said. I dont think theres a word angry enough to describe my anger.

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Last fall, after the state couldnt deny the results of the independent studies anymore, Snyders administration agreed to come up with most of the $12 million needed to restore Lake Huron water to Flint. Had the state given Flint $12 million three years ago, the children of Flint would not have been poisoned.

Then last week, Snyder asked state lawmakers to allocate $28 million to help Flint. And he appealed President Obamas denial of his request to declare Flint a federal disaster area and give him $96 million to fix it.

The President said federal law limited what he could do. He awarded Flint $5 million in response to what could be legitimately described as a federal emergency. But he could not make a disaster declaration because the calamity was man-made.

This was not a Hurricane Katrina or Super Storm Sandy. The tragedy in Flint was a choice. This was a values decision about what was important. Giving a break to big business was the top priority for venture capitalist Snyder. Operating a shoddy government, over-taxing pensioners and poisoning Flints children was the result.

And now Snyder is demanding a $96 million federal bailout. Just like Wall Street. When those capitalists mess up, then all of a sudden they think government works.
Time has been mostly good to Betty, though it is more difficult to understand her she doesn't suffer from anything beyond the usual ailments that come with living 100 years on earth. She has her hair dyed weekly and for her party wore her usual false eyelashes. She is mostly present, as she was on her party day, delighted to have made this milestone. She kept repeating to me "Can you believe it?" When former Los Angeles Times critic and Betty's friend, Kevin Thomas gave a speech on her stature in the burlesque community, she nodded and recalled where she worked, New York to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, for the Minsky family of burlesque impresarios, and all the rest. She looked around the Activity Room of the assisted-living facility she's been living in and asked, "Are the men coming?" I believe her birthday brought back the fun and hard work she experienced for decades on the stage.



(Rowland and author Leslie Zemeckis)

When I first met the petite former dancer, she was living alone in an apartment in Brentwood. Betty was full of stories about her start in vaudeville along with her sisters Dian and Roz Elle. When the Depression descended and vaudeville took a hit, the three young beauties pirouetted into burlesque. Betty was all of 13. "We didn't tell our parents," Betty reassured me, laughing her raucous laugh. She still retains that laugh and matching twinkle in her eyes.



(A young Betty Rowland)

Betty started in the chorus, earning $16 a week. Not surprisingly, given their talent and beauty - they could genuinely dance - all three sisters quickly became stars. In New York they scattered their brilliance across various burlesque houses. Dian, who stripped wearing a cap and gown, holding a diploma, known as "Society's Favorite" was headlining at the Eltinge theatre. Roz Elle performed at the Paradise, called "Goldie" because she danced nude except for a layer of gold paint. And Betty starred at Minsky's where her hot way of dancing - "I use to go as fast as I could" - earned her the moniker the "Ball of Fire."





(Rowland was known as a hot and fast dancer)

Betty's life wasn't all songs and laughter; there was a long drawn out affair with an alcoholic and married comedian, a brief marriage to a developer whom she claims named Rowland Heights after her, no children. There were several lawsuits she initiated, one infamous one against Samuel Goldwyn for stealing much of her act and clothing style for his Barbara Stanwyck film "Ball of Fire." Betty had a particular style of dress. Skirt, with slit of the side and bandeau top.



(Rowland's particular style of dress)





(A couple of Rowland's costumes in Zemeckis' large burlesque collection)

There were numerous arrests starting as early as 1939. In 1952 Betty was sentenced to three months, but escaped with a well-paid fine. Another arrest landed her several weeks in a Los Angeles jail, starting the day at 5 am, pushing a mop and cleaning until lights out at 8 pm. The charge was for an "indecent performance" which I can assure you was not. The arrests of strippers and producers was routine and often politically driven. Some girls tried to get away with more than the law allowed, which was still far tamer than what occurs in a "gentleman's club" today.



(Rowland like other star strippers had their own maid backstage)

Author H.M. Alexander called Betty "a good dancer" and "perfection" yet for all her star billing, Betty never accumulated much wealth. In her retirement years she was still working. This time at a bar in Santa Monica as a hostess. She continued to see the good in every situation. "At least I don't have to take my clothes off," she laughed as an 80-something year old still punching the clock and driving herself to and from work.



(Zemeckis with Rowland in 2010 interviewing her for BEHIND THE BURLY Q the film)

Betty is truly the last living legendary burlesque stripper from the Golden Age of burlesque. She has outlived all her friends, all the greats she worked with like Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, Red Buttons and legendary stripper Lili St. Cyr who Betty tried to coax from her apartment when an elderly Lili turned reclusive. Lili begged off telling Betty she didn't have anything to wear out anymore. Betty outlived sister Dian who was found dead in her apartment at 29 years of age. Dead from heart failure. Scarlet Fever as a child left her with a leakage. However, the most painful loss for Betty was adored sister Roz Elle when Roz Elle was in her late 80s. The two remained close sharing many family secrets. Roz Elle had married two Belgian barons back-to-back and in later years helped Betty financially. They shared weekly Sunday phone calls. They planned to live together someday. Roz Elle met her own tragic end, surrounded in mystery (at least to Betty) when her body was found broken after a "leap" out a window. Through it all Betty retained a cheerful outlook on life and her life in particular. When I asked if there was any stigma to being in burlesque she scoffed, "No. Because everyone was in it." She was proud of what she had done and who she had worked with. She was always in the papers and in fact wrote a column for awhile. Unlike some, she never hid her background. Burlesque wasn't shameful. She had done nothing wrong. She'd supported herself her entire life.



(sister Dian Rowland)



("Goldie" the picture is from Rowland's scrapbooks, now in Zemeckis' collection)

Over her 100 years Betty has seen much change in the world. But Betty was always a survivor, albeit a very glamorous one. She chose to go through her life with brightly dyed red hair and false eyelashes. And her request is to remain that way to the end. I say "Brava to you my beautiful, delightful friend, Betty, a small piece of history who dances amongst us. I hope to see you at your next birthday."



(Once a queen, always a queen)



(A fitting birthday for the "Ball of Fire")



(the last legendary stripper from the Golden Age of burlesque, BETTY ROWLAND)
This is no simple post. It has many moving parts and a few unexpected turns. It takes a while for me to tell it from start to finish, but I can assure you it is well worth telling. Here goes...

My dad served our country for 3 years as a Marine, spending the majority of his time in M Company 3rd Battalion 27th Marine regiment. During that time he served a tour and a half of duty in Vietnam. His time in Vietnam is something he rarely speaks of, but over the years I have pieced together enough small details to understand how scary and complicated his time there was. In my dad's eyes he was just doing his duty. In my eyes he went above and beyond the call of duty to serve our country. My dad will always be a hero to me.

Many years back I went through an old trunk of my father's things at my grandparent's home and found a few old coats and fatigues that were just slightly bigger than my 20-some-odd year old frame. It struck me that my dad was not more than a young undeveloped teenager when he left for Vietnam. He probably weighed just over 130 pounds soaking wet and he had his whole life ahead of him. I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like (and still is like for current soldiers) to head off to foreign soil to fight in wars, where lives will be lost, when you are just old enough to vote and have only a fraction of the emotional equipment in your arsenal that a full-fledged adult acquires over a lifetime of learning. I took my dad's coat and pants as well as a jacket that was worn by my grandfather when he fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. I proudly wore them in the years that followed, and they still hang in my closet today. The discolored name tag is hand stitched inside the collar of one coat and the cuffs of the other are terribly frayed. They are well worn, have seen much wear and tear, and hold great sentimental value to me.

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While my father allowed me to take these pieces of clothing from the trunk he held onto a few smaller more meaningful objects. The dog tags he wore around his neck among them as well as the two purple hearts he earned after being injured in the line of duty. I never bothered to ask if there was anything else he carried with him while deployed. I just assumed he had brought it all back with him when he returned to the US in 1969. It wasn't until my dad forwarded me an email two weeks ago that I realized he had in fact left something behind in Vietnam. The email was from a man living in England and I read it three times before I really understood the magnitude of what was described in the email. In the email a man named Charles reached out to my father and in the subject of the email implored him not to press delete (despite the email coming from a total stranger) before reading it in its entirety. Thankfully my father read on and this is where the story begins.

Charles wrote:

"Last summer, I along with some close friends decided to take the trip of a life time and travel to South East Asia.... I was also fascinated to go in particular to Vietnam, due to the history of the country and the vast cultural impact that the American conflict there had on the planet. That being a piece of history that always fascinated me and one that we are not taught much of at school as Britain played no part in the war.

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I spent two weeks in Vietnam and travelled the length of the country in that time, starting in Saigon and ending in Hanoi. We immersed ourselves in as many activities as possible, including seeing the war museums, tunnels, rural landscapes and cities. We made our way up the coast from Nah Trang to Hoi An and then next we arrived at Hue. I read about the battles that took place along the way and saw the sights and the imperial city, it is here that I made my interesting discovery. A local man was selling artefacts that he had discovered from out in the jungle, I believe that the locals use metal detectors to discover buried items from the war and then try to sell them to tourists. I felt quite saddened by this and believed personally that these items should be left buried and that the thought of handling any artefact from a battle is actually quite gruesome. However, when I saw among his items a rusted dog tag, I immediately felt that I was being given an opportunity and felt a duty to rescue this from the seller and repatriate to the family of the owner.

The Tag says as follows:

TILGHMAN

R.A. JR.

0103014

USMC S

EPISCOPALIAN

When I returned home with the dog tag I immediately set about trying to discover the rightful owner, but ran into some difficulty. You see, I assumed wrongfully that to be departed from the dog tag the owner would have perished like so many sadly did in that surrounding area as a result of what seems to have been a truly horrific encounter. Records were not easily searchable and nothing seemed to appear when searching under the service number.

Time passed before one evening I was regaling my good friend and house mate with tales of my trip. I was explaining where I had been and what I had found, including the Dog Tag. My house mate is a film maker by profession and an investigator by nature, naturally, he asked if I had tried to find out to whom it belonged, we once again set about trying to conclude this.

Having not been able to discover much and beginning to believe perhaps this was a counterfeit; Will managed to learn that the service number was that of an officer, we then searched for R.A Tilghman Jr with officer ranks prior to the name and it was then that we had the breakthrough! A library archive page that took us to St. Paul's School in Concord, NH, where we found a newsletter, the Alumni Horae I believe it's called, from 1983. And, there in the pages of the Alumni newsletter, Richard Tilghman Jr., photographed in 1983, at the 20th anniversary of his school class. We realised this put you at about the correct age for the Vietnam war and after further searching we then managed to find other pages linked to yourself. One link which spoke of your military background as an aerial observer in Quang Tri province, the province home to the city Hue where I discovered the tag!

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We were so delighted to learn that you sir had survived your time served in Vietnam and the dog tag in my possession was not one of that of a fallen soldier. Scarily, it is amazing how quickly you can learn about someone on the internet once you have a lead. We managed to find you in numerous articles on the internet and it seems after sustaining battle injuries you have managed a very successful career in finance and continue to do work for veterans. I was also fascinated to learn of your family history and your father's time in WW2 and with decorations to match your own. We have hugely enjoyed learning a bit about you and piecing together this fascinating puzzle. This has been something that had been on my mind since being in Vietnam, which is an experience that, to this day, has had a huge effect on me. Obviously, this is insignificant to the experience you had as a man of the same age decades earlier.

All that is left is to return you your dog tag, concluding this wonderful strange coincidence. I would love to hear how it came to be that you lost the dog tag and a little of your time spent in the Hue area. I also understand if this represents a difficult part of your life and something you would rather leave behind, on a beach in South East Asia.

Please find an image attached. I can send the item to you secured delivery but I do feel it is something of great value, I see that you work in the New York area... I am there fairly regularly. I would be honoured too hand this to you in person."

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Gorgeous Greece (refugees and bureaucracy included)

Like a typical enneagram type 7, Lynn loves Mykonos and dancing. And the biggest difference from her life in San Francisco is how unstructured the days are. But don't rush to conclusions, as glamor is far from describing Lynn's normality.

"Here I have time to imagine and be creative. To even watch TED talks and think about what I am interested in" she says.

In October, Lynn responded positively to a call from the yoga community for volunteers on the island of Lesvos. She spent a weekend driving newly arrived refugees to the camps -- up to 70 Km away. Her experience with the refugee families made her realize she held many misconceptions about them. Ever since she values experience over information, and she wants to involve more people in the seeing of the reality.

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I was prepared to be very pro-Syrian. They are coming from a war, we have seen the pictures. But I didn't know how I felt about the Afghanis and the Iraqis because it seemed that maybe they had been a little opportunistic here. Then I started driving families and hearing their stories. 'The Taliban were threatening us. We moved twice in Iraq and bombs were still falling. We didn't know where to go.' These were people who were speaking from their heart. So, my feelings completely shifted. If that's what is happening to you, it's bad. And I shouldn't be the one to judge if you should have left your country or not.

As every freelancer who respects themselves, Lynn has different cafes that she calls her office to break the monotony of working in her apartment. The Underdog is one of them -- pet friendly of course.

She confesses being Acropolitan, so in the evenings she meets friends over a glass of red wine in Hitchcocktales bar, in the area of the Acropolis metro station. But Lynn shores everyone up -- they don't fret about the economic crisis or the bureaucracy. Not quite sure whether it's by nature or by practice, but it's easy for her to focus on the good things.

I do live in Greece and I don't have the illusion that it's perfect. When the referendum came, that three-week period when we didn't know what was going to happen, I was depressed like everybody else. But it's like when you meet a person that you really like, and then you see their character flaws. I am not saying that they don't have a character flaws, but they are so much good that I kind of accept the bad and I find a way to work with it.

Fate vs. Destiny



Lynn's focus goes onto being herself, for only when you start to be you, the universe supports you and you do what you are here to do. But it takes a lot of hard work to get to your destiny. According to Kundalini yoga masters, 80% of the entire population are going through their lives asleep by following fate.

But you are on this planet to deliver something only you know about -- a life or even a moment of your life. That's destiny.

If I had stayed in San Francisco, living my very comfortable CPA life, it would have kind of been my fate. No one was going to complain, but it wasn't lighting me up. In my destiny phase, I can deal with a lot of hardship because I have a purpose.

She stays up quite late and gets up late, walks Roxie, makes new friends (often through Roxie), works on her book, builds the yoga community, workouts, goes out, runs yoga classes and online enneagram and yoga 40-day programs. Lynn belongs to Athens -- her chosen home.

But fitting somewhere is also tossed by the community you are trying to fit in.

I felt people here to be incredibly helpful, warm, engaging and willing to bring me into their circles. I haven't felt being left out or people being aloof. Being a single woman must have made it easier because I feel they want to protect me.

Stand as a lighthouse



In November, Roxie was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and she lost use of her back legs. But Lynn found a solution, and Roxie continued her walks by rolling on two wheels instead.

Lynn's answer to the veterinarians is a life lesson we can take with us on our way out from this meaty chat: "Please don't ever again say to me that there is nothing that can be done because we don't talk like that in this house."

Roxie died three weeks after our interview, and Lynn took some time out.

Lynn has overcome herself many times in her life. Being a teacher involves a lot of public speaking - not Lynn's cup of tea. Yet, she had to share with other people the benefits of Kunalini yoga.

For the first three months, while I was figuring out how to practice my teaching skills and not charge people for that, I taught in a homeless shelter in San Francisco. It was draining. There were some people who were extremely messed up -- drug users, mentally ill. And there were some people who were very spiritual. It was a big mix.

Her first official yoga classes were taking place at night in a clown school in the financial district of San Francisco. From there it was onward and upward.

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But it all started with a single breath.
TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES - 2015/12/31: Heavily armed NYPD counterterrorism officers stand at post near the entrance to the restricted zone between 42nd and 43rd Streets. With a heightened degree of security due to the threat of a terrorist strike like those in Paris and San Bernadino, preparations for New York City's annual Times Square New Year's Eve celebration reflect the city's resolve to maintain public safety at such mass public gatherings. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Supporters of license plate readers are fond of saying that unless you're a criminal, you needn't fear the invasive technology. But those who adhere to that argument should consider just a few examples from around the country:

A police officer in Washington D.C. pleaded guilty to extortion after looking up the plates of cars near a gay bar and blackmailing the car's owners.

The DEA contemplated using license plate readers to monitor people who were at a gun show. Since the devises can't distinguish between those who are selling illegal guns and those who aren't, a person's presence at the gun show would have landed them in a DEA database.

A SWAT team in Kansas raided a man's house where his wife, 7-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son lived based in part on the mass monitoring of cars parked at a gardening store. The man was held at gunpoint for two hours while cops combed through his home. The police were looking for a marijuana growing operation. They did not find that or any other evidence of criminal activity in the man's house.

With these stories firmly in mind, the New York Civil Liberties Union's latest license plate reader discovery is all the more chilling.

Last year, we learned that the NYPD was hoping to enter into a multi-year contract that would give it access to the nationwide database of license plate reader data owned by the company Vigilant Solutions. Now, through a Freedom of Information Law request, the NYCLU has obtained the final version of the $442,500 contract and the scope-of-work proposal that gives a peek into the ever-widening world of surveillance made possible by Vigilant.

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The scope-of-work proposal explains how Vigilant vastly expands the NYPD's surveillance capability beyond what was possible with its own license plate database. Known as the Domain Awareness System, it collects the license plate data scanned by the approximately 500 license plate readers operated by the NYPD and combines it with footage from cameras and other surveillance devices around the city. The NYPD holds on to the license plate data for at least five years regardless of whether a car triggers any suspicion.

The Vigilant database raises similar privacy concerns as the Domain Awareness System, but those concerns are greatly magnified because the Vigilant database is massive: It contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day. The database also isn't limited to New York City, which means the NYPD can now monitor your car whether you live in New York or Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles. (See Vigilant's Nationwide Scan Density Map on page 64.) Even more worrisome, the data comes from private license plate readers that scan locations that the police are less likely to scan: residential areas, apartment complexes, retail areas, and business office complexes with large employee parking areas. And, as far as we can tell, there is no limit on how long Vigilant keeps all of this private location data. There is no incentive for Vigilant to delete any data because its business model is to profit off of selling people's data.

The Vigilant database also boasts "full suite data analytics tools." These tools allow police officers to track cars historically or in real time, conduct a virtual "stakeout," figure out which cars are commonly seen in close proximity to each other, and predict likely locations to find a car.

With this volume of private data and these types of tools, Vigilant enables the NYPD to learn intimate details about people's lives with a click of a mouse. Through the "stakeout" feature, the NYPD may learn who was at a political rally, at an abortion clinic, or at a gay bar. Through the predictive analysis, the NYPD may learn that a person is likely to be near a mosque at prayer time or at home during certain hours of the day. Through the "associate analysis," the NYPD may come to suspect someone of being a "possible associate" of a criminal when the person is simply a family member, a friend, or a lover.

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Until now, law enforcement agencies under contract with Vigilant, including the NYPD, have said very little in public about how they use the database and what privacy protections they implement. That needs to change. Fifty police officers at the NYPD's Real Crime Center have access to the Vigilant database and tools every day. The public has the right to know what rules regulate their access and what oversight mechanisms, if any, are in place. They have the right to know when and how the police are using the database and what the consequences are.
Andrew Christian Men's Underwear Model Search See Gallery

Andrew Christian is one of the best-known men's underwear designers in the USA (and around the world, for that matter). The super hot male models who help advertise his colorful and sexy men's underwear are a big part of the attraction for many of his fans. So it was a big deal when he brought his search for the next top model to New York City for the first time.

An impressive group of handsome male models gathered on January 22 first for a VIP pre-party, and then at 42 West, a trendy special event space in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, to take to the stage for Christian. Drag superstar Peppermint was one of the hosts, and a live DJ kept the enthusiastic audience pumped during the presentation of the models, who appeared first fully clothed and then in many-colored (and at times very tiny) men's underwear.

The winner of the Andrew Christian 2016 male model search? JuanFer de la Torre, a handsome male model with a sexy smile and ideal physical form for Andrew Christian's eye-catching underwear. This Ecuadorean and Brazilian male beauty is 24 years old, stands 5'11" tall and weighs 154 pounds -- and his amazing smile (as well as his sexy serious look) could melt any runway.

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LISTEN HERE:

By Mark Green

Matalin-Alter debate the pre-Iowa cage-matches. But while GOP bitterly disagrees who's more loathsome -- Trump (says National Review) or Cruz (says Dole) -- among Dems, it's who's more awesome. Isn't THE variable which Dem likeliest to stop the Far (F)right? Then: Will Flint -- like "Benghazi" -- politically go from a place to a pinata?

On Clinton-Sanders. Is this contest reminiscent of Eugene McCarthy-RFK when liberal Dems for a while had to choose between a poetical idealist leading a "children's crusade," or a tough progressive? Alter notes how relatively civil the Dem contest has been so far and how the Sanders insurgency is likely to get to the convention because he can keep re-soliciting his million-plus small donors to stay in the race. Mary says," I think Sanders = Trump, since both come across as authentic and denounce political BS."

At their debate, NBC's Lester Holt asked the "socialist" question and Sanders replied that party/country needs a 'political revolution' and Hillary took $600k from Goldman. Question: won't a McCarthyite GOP try to smear nominee Sanders as some kind of Communist Horton, and will Democrats understand the goal is to win a possibly national security general election to avoid a President Trump/Cruz?

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Alter agrees that the Republicans would try a re-run of the McGovern campaign against Sanders. "But while I think Sanders would beat Cruz and maybe Trump, for now he's tapping into the marrow of Simon & Garfunkel Democrats. It's too early to make the argument that, in fact, she's stronger in the Fall. In any event, Hillary does her best when she's coming back."

Mary partly agrees: "If she argues electability, that's close to 'inevitability,' which is bad... and citing national security raises other problems [like her vote for authorizing the Iraq war]." Then she tries to argue that Bernie might be stronger in a general election, which doesn't persuade co-panelists skeptical why some Republicans seem to be pushing Sanders. Hmmm.

How about Hillary playing the Obama card again and again in the last debate? Jonathan agrees that's a smart play to motivate African-Americans to stick with her in later primaries "but her real problem is something I said at the time was profoundly stupid -- taking large fees from investment banks."

Last: As John Heileman argues on "With All Due Respect" -- if Sanders wins Iowa and New Hampshire and overwhelms the "fire wall" of South Carolina -- could that spur a panic among Dems and create an opening for a Biden, Warren, Kerry? Mary doubts it because Hillary is scooping up "super-delegates" who are still likely to make the difference. Jonathan agrees that it's probably too late for anyone like that to jump into the contest, BUT if she shows such weakness, it's not inconceivable that a Convention could considers such a big move.

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Host: Q: What's the chance that a person named Clinton would quit to open this door? A. Between zero and no way.

On Trump-Cruz. While there's a Democratic cage match, does the GOP version threaten to blow up the cage given the fractious split between "conservatives" who say they couldn't support Trump and others who say they couldn't support Cruz. Isn't this an unprecedented level of primary antagonism threatening the future of America's conservative party?

Mary says that such splits have happened before citing Ford-Reagan and Reagan-Bush, which the Host rejects since this year's version is going far beyond those polite contests. (Trump: Cruz is a "nasty...maniac"; Dole: Cruz would be "cataclysmic.") Alter thinks there might be a temporary, not permanent, break-up of the GOP alliance if Trump's the nominee since he's against free trade in a free trade party.

Mary sees race benignly as between "authoritarian conservatives" who like Donald and "policy conservatives" who like Ted. Jonathan is less polite, warning that a "crypto-fascist" -- probably referring to Trump and not both -- could become the nominee.

Jonathan then does some serious punditry on whether Kasich could end up as THE "establishment" alternative to Trump if The Donald wins the first two but Kasich come in second or third in NH, encouraging rivals like Rubio/Christie/Paul/Bush to drop out since Trump can win a three-way contest, not a two-way? Our GOP expert Mary thinks that's possible but unlikely since Cruz has the resources to stay in the contest through SC and the Southern Super Tuesday.

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Speaking of speculation, Mary thinks that Sarah Palin is underestimated and could move a few decisive points in Iowa among undecided conservatives. Alter and Host agree, except for the underestimated part. "Isn't she way past her expiration date?", the Hosts asks politely.

On Flint. Did this disaster show the incompetence of government generally or crystallize how ideological GOP governors slash spending regardless of the damage to minorities? (Jeb lauded Gov. Snyder's response, leading one wag to tweet, "Heckova job, Rick!") Mary and Jonathan warn against only seeing this as "environmental racism" -- Hillary said that this wouldn't happen to "a rich suburb of Detroit" -- since there are elements of class bias as well. "But it could help mobilize black voters," says Alter," who understand a pattern of indifference at best in such environmental disasters.
This is a guest post by Dr. Helen Janc Malone, Director of Institutional Advancement and National Director, Education Policy Fellowship Program at the Institute for Educational Leadership.

In his new book, Counting What Counts: Reframing Education Outcomes, Dr. Yong Zhao challenges our current approach to student success measurement and proposes a new paradigm, one that is focused on personalized and authentic learning.

Dr. Zhao posits that the overemphasis on testing has moved the United States away from broader discussions on the purposes of education, the importance of embracing diversity, and the need to cultivate creativity and entrepreneurship. He noted five dilemmas facing the U.S. education as part of the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Educational Leadership lecture series.

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Homogenizing vs. diversifying. Dr. Zhao argues that the existing U.S. accountability system can be characterized as one that is deficit-driven (overemphasizing gaps), standardized in its testing, and prescriptive in its curriculum. It is isolating in its practice, with classrooms continuing to operate as islands with teachers receiving 'just-in-case' teaching support. He argues that the existing assessment system is designed to measure mediocrity, where all students need to meet standardized criteria that do not speak to their unique skills, abilities, competencies, or potential. It is not a system to support greatness. He warns that what the existing accountability system perpetuates is sameness, instead of embracing intellectual diversity and pluralism of ideas.

Short-term vs. long-term. Much of the education reform focus, Dr. Zhao warns, is on meeting short-term outcomes -- have students made progress on their test scores? We tend to be less concerned about the long-term implications of our short-term strategies. Unlike the medical profession, education rarely discusses the intended and unintended consequences of our interventions, or as Dr. Zhao calls them, education side effects. Yet, mounting evidence suggested that overemphasis on testing cuts into holistic curriculum, creativity, and diverse forms of learning and expression. Thus, he asks the education community to closely examine the possible long-term side effects of standardized testing on student engagement in learning, on curiosity, and on students' individual confidence. He challenges us to rethink education with an emphasis on learning, not on test taking skills.

Academic vs. nonacademic. Much of existing education reform, Dr. Zhao explains, has been in service of improving academic outcomes, such as reading, writing, math, and science. However, a growing body of research is widening the conversation to include nonacademic measures. Some have called such measures 21st Century skills, noncognitive, or a growth mindset. Each captures a broader set of 'nonacademic' skills and competences that interplay with academic success, such as teamwork or problems solving. Although the 'nonacademic' skills are not well defined, and there is lack of consensus of what to call these types of skills, there is growing recognition that educators ought to take a strengths-based, asset-driven approach to student learning, emphasizing social intelligence and critical thinking, in addition to the academic content, as both are necessary for postsecondary success.



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Measurable vs. unmeasurable. The existing assessment system emphasizes testing to the lowest common denominator, whether the standardized tests are for K-12 or college entrance purposes. And, what is measured is what matters to policymakers, thus, perpetuating the cycles of testing and emphasis on a narrow, pre-determined set of skills and competences. Yet, Dr. Zhao argues, it is evident from the rising emphasis on nonacademic skills that not everything that counts is measured. We need better and new instruments to capture nonacademic measures that tell us a fully picture about our students.

Instructional vs. educational. Public schools continue to operate in isolated classroom structures, emphasizing instructional outcomes over instilling in students a sense of lifelong learning. What Dr. Zhao calls for instead, is a shift toward educational outcomes whereby teachers become 'curators in a museum of learning.' He argues that education ought to be student-centered and student-driven, with students taking ownership for their learning, and engaging in authentic learning experiences that prepare them for lifelong learning. This is particularly important in the global society, where the pace of change is rapid and career opportunities ever-transforming and evolving.

Dr. Zhao concluded that the purposes of education ought not to be narrowly defined by where we are today, but rather, to prepare students for the [unknown] future -- and for that, we need to engage in collaboration with our students and to nurture their individual potential as authentic learners.

Given that the reauthorization of ESEA includes both academic and non-academic indicators in its accountability framework, how do you see the new law changing the conversation on student success?

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Dr. Yong Zhao, Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education, University of Oregon College of Education, spoke in December 2015 at the AERA/IEL Luncheon Series on his new book Counting What Counts: Reframing Education Outcomes (Solution Tree Press, 2015).
The Constitution:

We Love it; it's Perfect; Let's Change it!

Singing their praises of the Constitution, House Republicans adopted a "requirement that every bill must cite the provision of the Constitution which permits its introduction." Surprisingly, the actual Constitution frequently makes conservatives uncomfortable.

Rick Perry, former Texas governor and former presidential aspirant, offers an extraordinary example of this apparent ambivalence. In 2010 he published Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington, with a foreword by Newt Gingrich. Perry urges repeal of some amendments, and adoption of others. He particularly hates the 16th Amendment that authorizes the despised U. S. income tax. He also wants to repeal the 17th Amendment, which gives the vote for a state's U.S. senators to the people of that state, rather than to its legislature. Strangely, many other conservatives also urge that we deny American citizens the right to vote for their senators. Perry wants new amendments to remove lifetime appointments for federal judges, grant Congress the power to overrule Supreme Court decisions, define marriage and require it to be between one man and one woman (probably that means one at a time), outlaw abortion anywhere in the United States or territories, and of course, he repeats the long-desired (and simple-minded) demand for an amendment that would require the US budget to be balanced.

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Additionally, he believes many accepted programs and practices to be unconstitutional. These include Social Security, any bank regulation, any consumer financial protection, any federal programs relating to education, and any activity that he believes to be inconsistent with "free enterprise."

Of course this is not a book to be taken seriously. It will have no effect, and will be forgotten. It is useful, though, for a look into American popular conservatism.

The Republican website advocates an amendment to require in Congress "a super-majority for any tax increase," and also a cap on overall spending so that governments could never balance the budget by tax increases, only by spending cuts. Many prominent Republicans besides Perry--Ben Carson, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee, for example--would limit the tenure of federal judges. Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Lindsay Graham, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker are among those who oppose birthright citizenship.

The modern Republican obsession with low taxes has superseded its traditional devotion to balanced budgets. This means that they, along with Perry, advocate repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.

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A "super-majority" for tax increases also would require constitutional change. It would empower a minority to thwart the will of the majority regarding taxes. The website advocates such a constitutional amendment.

Eliminating birthright citizenship would mean repealing the Fourteenth Amendment. That would be the first constitutional change that took away a citizen's right because of the parents' status. Repeal would also remove the mechanism that enabled the Supreme Court to apply the US Bill of Rights to the states to protect citizens from state, as well as from national, governments (Justice Clarence Thomas has opposed extending the Bill of Rights to protect against actions by state governments even with the Fourteenth Amendment).

Changing lifetime tenure for federal judges may be popular. It might even be a good idea if done properly, but, again, term limits would require a change of the Constitution's Article III.

Many conservatives around the country have also advocated a "repeal amendment," that would change the Constitution to permit states to veto any action by the U. S. Congress. The Virginia House of Delegates actually passed such a resolution in 2011. Supporters often call this the "Madison Amendment." This is historically ignorant (or duplicitous), because Madison advocated giving Congress had the power to overturn state laws.

Conservatives frequently call for the states to propose amendments, saying that Article V empowers two-thirds of the states to do so. This is a popular misunderstanding, as better-informed conservatives recognize. Only a national body can formally propose amendments, either Congress, by a two-thirds vote of each House, or a national convention. There cannot be a national convention unless two-thirds of the states request Congress to call one. In either case, three-fourths of the states must ratify proposed amendments to make them effective.

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The reason conservatives would like a convention, is their naive belief that it could be limited to proposing only the amendments they desire. Our national experience in that regard is not reassuring. We have only had one national constitutional convention in our history, and that one was strictly limited. It was not to be a constitutional convention at all, but would merely suggest revisions to the Articles of Confederation.

Instead, it immediately disregarded its charge, and proceeded not to place additional limits on the national government, but instead to produce the Constitution designed to increase national power at the expense of the states. In this instance, the outcome was good, but it would be foolish to assume that a successor convention might be equally adept at improving the existing constitutional structure. It could easily do the reverse: throw out the Constitution, and come up with whatever scheme might be popular among zealots at the moment.

Current Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, has produced 90-plus pages of extreme revisions that he would like to see to the Constitution. States could jointly overrule Washington; a supermajority on the Court would be required to overrule legislation (not too smart from his point of view because of the many times the Court has upheld conservative dogma by narrow decisions).

So, many conservatives, really resenting the Constitution, seek its destruction. They praise "federalism," but implicitly advocate something unworkable: a confederacy. The Articles of Confederation failed. The disastrous attempt by southern states to maintain slavery by dismembering the country and creating a confederacy failed even more spectacularly.

Perhaps the most puzzling movement has been opposition to the Seventeenth Amendment, which gave a state's voters the right to choose their United States Senators, taking that power from legislatures. That issue requires more attention than possible in this brief article, and will be the subject of a separate posting.
We should help our children realize that what they want in life... is happiness. We cannot stop television, we cannot stop their exposure to commercials... but hopefully we will be able to give them a strong dose of the other kind of temptation -- the temptation to be good. --Lyonchoen Jigme Y. Thinley, first prime minister of Bhutan

When it was first introduced in a post-war economy more than 70 years ago, gross domestic product (GDP) was intended to measure activities -- including employment, income and physical amenities -- that would prevent another world war. Seven decades is a long time, and today's global economic landscape looks quite different. In the 21st century, escalating global trade has increased the metric of GDP, but also depleted natural resources, polluted air and water, and accelerated social inequities without significantly impacting the GDP. This metric is not only outdated; it provides misinformation about the state of global health. As an example of how outmoded GDP is as a national indicator, Hurricane Sandy was measured as a net contribution to GDP because it boosted the economy through construction and social services. Senator Robert F. Kennedy once said that GDP measures everything "except that which makes life worthwhile."

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The United Nations is tackling the tough challenge of how to update our national economic metrics with a more relevant metric. In 2015, they launched Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to supersede their prior set of Millennium Development Goals. The SDG aspire to create international standards for global well-being that incorporate both economic measures and quality of life, including environmental and social issues. Within the United States, both Maryland and Vermont were early adopters of the Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) that take into account income distribution (not just total income), social costs ranging from divorce to crime, and environmental expenses such as water quality and pollution.

With national indices of happiness instead of manufactured goods, Bhutan is perhaps the world's most forward-thinking country in how it measures the ultimate health and well-being of its population. Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) index embraces economic development, environmental conservation, good governance and cultural priorities. Bhutan prioritizes its traditional values, and only lifted its national ban on television and internet access in 1999. One of the keys to success of GNH in Bhutan is education. Teachers are asked to infuse students with a sense of values that can override today's emphasis on consumerism and materialistic messaging. Because so many teachers are Buddhist, they have personal value systems that inspire ethics in teaching. But Bhutan's leadership is admittedly concerned about the next generation of teachers, and strengthening the future of GNH.

The leadership of Bhutan recognizes that one way to ensure the future of GNH -- along with its unique value system -- is prioritizing access to the natural world for all citizens. Green plants and healthy ecosystems are inextricably linked to human health, a vital part of gross national happiness, and are protected in Bhutan's environmentally conscious constitution. (Of note, a key drawback to America's GDP is that it does not measure the value of healthy ecosystems, known as natural capital.) Recently, the King of Bhutan launched a program to protect natural areas, especially national parks. Royal Manas National Park will feature an innovative construction called BATS (Bhutan Aerial Trail System) that entails a massive canopy walkway complex that includes a treetop scientific research station. An international team will work together to develop one of the world's largest canopy walkway systems to jumpstart research on Bhutan's biodiversity, but also to infuse a big dose of gross happiness into the fabric of Bhutan's landscape.

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Hanna Skandera

At some point in November 2015 (or not too long thereafter), it seems that New Mexico Education Secretary Hanna Skandera replaced Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester as the floundering, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) governing chair.

Even the PARCC website includes no press release concerning the Skandera-Chester switch. However, one press release, dated November 12, 2015, and entitled, "PARCC Introduces New Testing Options for More States," hints that the switch was coming:

States that make up the Governing Board of the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) are expanding their offering in to allow more states to participate in the nations premiere assessment system. Hanna Skandera, New Mexico Secretary of Education, speaking on behalf of the PARCC Governing Board said, "The states worked together to develop the highest-quality test the country has ever had. We now want to ensure that as many educators and students as possible can benefit from the work we've done." [Emphasis added.]

The timing of the PARCC announcement about "new options for accessing high quality testing items" is noteworthy. That same day- November 12, 2015- Chester officially announced his proposal that Massachusetts create a MCAS-PARCC hybrid (as opposed to adopting PARCC and ditching MCAS, which was a bit conflict-of-interest touchy given that he was uh, the chair of the PARCC governing board).

Even though Chester began promoting the MCAS-PARCC hybrid on October 20, 2015, his "official" proposal was announced only five days before the Massachusetts board of ed voted to approve the hybrid on November 17, 2015.

Thus, what did not happen was that Chester did not deliver Massachusetts over completely to PARCC, and however the details of Chester's exit played out, PARCC decided not to contribute to the fanfare and instead quietly slid Skandera into the position of chair.

Even the PARCC governing board page does not notably announce Skandera as chair. Here is the archived page with Chester as chair:

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And here is the current page with Skandera as chair:

Not as much fanfare.

Still, in the press releases it does offer, PARCC is trying to portray the image of success in how it shapes the language of its deciding to become an item vendor out of desperation to survive. Its most recent press release, dated November 13, 2015, is entitled, "Louisiana to Use PARCC Content in This Year's State Assessment." What is comical is that last year's state assessment in Louisiana is still a mystery as far as exactly how the supposed PARCC items were procured, as well as the degree to which those items represent items on PARCC tests that were vended by Pearson (Louisiana's tests were vended in haphazard fashion using a testing contract meant to deliver assessments in the transition to PARCC.) But in its November 13, 2015, press release, PARCC announces that Louisiana will be using almost half of its spring 2016 test items from PARCC.

What the press release does not mention is that in May 2015, the Louisiana legislature put a cap on the portion of PARCC items allowed on the 2016 tests. That cap was 49 percent.

As for the announcement that Louisiana will use Data Recognition Corp (DRC) for its 2016 tests: Louisiana has used DRC for years- and it used DRC for its mystery PARCC tests in 2015.

Still, PARCC nonprofit CEO Laura Slover publicly celebrates the legislated cap as though it is some unexpected gain for PARCC:

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The Louisiana Department of Education will use PARCC content in its statewide assessment during the 2015-16 school year. Louisiana has awarded a contract to Data Recognition Corporation (DRC) to develop its statewide tests. PARCC items will comprise just under half of the test content. "It is great that Louisiana recognizes the value of the PARCC content, which we believe is the highest quality in the country," said Laura Slover, Chief Executive Officer at Parcc Inc., the nonprofit organization that manages the consortium. "PARCC governing states have led the development of the content over the last five years. And we are now offering states the flexibility they've asked for in order to expand participation to as many educators and students as possible. Our goal has always been to improve instruction and assessments for all students, so they can reach their fullest potential."

In other words, PARCC is approaching ghost-town status, and vending items is a grasp at a continued existence.

As for the PARCC states listing, that page continues to live in the world of 2014-15. It has not been updated, for example, to indicate that Mississippi exited PARCC in January 2015, with no plan to use PARCC in 2015-16. And, of course, even though Massachusetts and Louisiana are still listed as PARCC states, they are only item-vended PARCC states at this point.

Note also that the PARCC press releases page offers nothing more current than the November 13, 2015, Louisiana story- not even the November 17, 2015, announcement of Massachusetts' MCAS-PARCC hybrid.

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I guess some steps backward are just too awkward to announce.

The PARCC press release page has no December press releases, and no January press releases as of January 19, 2016.

See the tumbleweeds roll across the lifeless, dusty road.

***

Originally posted 01-19-16 at deutsch29.wordpress.com

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.
What unites Donald Trump's supporters, apparently, is not their racism, their class position, their xenophobic anti-immigrant positions. In fact, according to a University of Massachusetts political scientist, these political positions are actually manifestations of a psychological disposition. What unites Trump's minions is their authoritarianism.

Matthew MacWilliams channels a theory from the 1950s to explain the personality type that are today's Trump Stumpers. And, surprisingly, it has to do with gender.

You might not remember the reams of studies about authoritarianism that followed the end of World War II. How could we explain the fact that an entire nation followed a totalitarian madman to perpetrate the greatest attempt at genocide in history? Surely there was some flaw in the German character that made them, as a people, especially prone to obeying authority, blindly, without question.

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Countless social psychology experiments later, especially those infamous ones by Stanley Milgram, we came to the sad conclusion that Americans were just as likely to blindly follow orders towards terrible results.

What may be more interesting to us today, however, is what, exactly constituted that authoritarianism. According to the authors, including the famed Frankfurt School sociologist Teodor Adorno and the young social psychologists Nevitt Sanford and Daniel Levinson (who would later invent the "male midlife crisis") the authoritarian personality was the psychological disposition that was most prone to racism, anti-Semitism, schoolyard bullying.

And, at its base, it was about gender. Actually, it was about masculinity.

Here's how the explanation worked. Each of us -- well, each man, since women seemed largely immune to authoritarianism -- has two components to our gender identity as men: our inner sense of ourselves as masculine and our external presentation of our selves as masculine. So, in principle, those who are healthily masculine inside and expressed that on the outside would be coded as MM (inner and outer, see?) If you were internally feminine but expressed your masculinity externally, you'd be coded as FM, and if you were internally confident of your masculinity on the inside and expressed yourself in ways typically feminine (emotionally expressive, colorful clothing, whatever), you'd be coded as MF.

So, guess who is the authoritarian personality?

Mr. FM. Internally insecure in his masculinity, he takes to all sorts of loud hypermasculine over-compensation to prevent anyone seeing his cowering little insecure masculine self. The social psychologists thought he doth protesteth too much. These studies were the origins of the idea, for example, that the schoolyard bully was the one who as least secure in his masculinity. As Adorno wrote, the tough guys are the truly effeminate ones, who need the weaklings as their victims."

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(This idea held sway for decades, until recent research found that bullies had relatively higher self-esteem than their victims, and that most bullies had, themselves, been bullied. Today we understand these categorical personality types more as performances of various continua.)

In a masterpiece of psychological reductionism, political authoritarianism was reduced to a gender disorder, insufficient masculinity. (Oh, the MF was the most artistic, creative, and emotionally centered, so the researchers promptly ignored him.)
UNESCO's theme for this year's International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, occurring January 27, is "From Words to Genocide: anti-Semitic Propaganda and the Holocaust." The goal of the debates on this day is to "examine the roots and consequences of hate speech."

UNESCO's page announcing this memorial day states that "The International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was established ... to 'urge Member States to develop educational programs to instill the memory of the tragedy in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again.'"

The organization also quotes Director General, Mrs. Irina Bokova, from September 27, 2015: "The prevention of genocide starts on the benches of schools...Education can help prevent hate speech and undermine prejudice." These truthful words of Mrs. Bokova coincide with the spirit of the words I had heard from her when we met in Paris a few years ago.

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However, these words also underline the real danger of another holocaust happening in the foreseeable future. When you consider the unbridled hate speech against Israel taking place in campuses all over the US and the UK, the biased and often false or twisted "facts" presented there, and compare it to the anti-Semitic atmosphere that prevailed in Nazi Germany, you cannot help thinking that what is happening today is the exact opposite of Bokova's vision for education.

There is bashing of Israel on campuses from California to New York, and "Professors harangue and mock Jewish students in class, and give them bad grades for presenting a diverse view of the Middle East conflict."

In the UK, "Hundreds of British academics have sparked outrage by declaring they will boycott all Israeli universities," and the UK Media Watch reports that "Guardian publishes pro-BDS ad by privileged Britons hostile to Israel's existence."

Jews feel unsafe throughout Europe, especially in the more liberal countries. Just as in prewar Germany, freedom of speech is being used to spread unsubstantiated statements that fuel the hatred toward Israel and toward Jews.

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I have already written why I think that Jews have no future in Europe. But I need to be clearer: We Jews have no future anywhere, at least not one that we would like to deem desirable, unless we do our job.

What is our "job"? It is to unite. One of the comments to my just referenced post, "Why Jews Have No Future in Europe," was "Chosen people...how arrogant is that!" I can understand this comment, but we must remember that we were not chosen to be rulers of the world; we were chosen to offer the world a way to unite above all differences so that people will be able to love one another as themselves.

But to do that, we have to go first. We achieved it before, when we first became a nation, and the task we were given, to be a light for the nations, entails just that: bring the light of unity, since the world is sinking into the abyss of ego wars and pathological narcissism. If we avoid it the world will blame us for the next world war that will result from humankind's ruthlessness and apathy toward our fellow humans.

We are a nation that was forged around the ideology of mercy and brotherly love when strangers agreed to unite and bond as equals. We became a nation when we pledged to be "as one man with one heart." Since then, it has been our duty to keep this connection, this modus operandi of the nation, and this is also when we were given the task to be a light for the nations--not out of enfranchisement, but out of servitude! The service of the Jews to the world is to execute and set an example of loving others as themselves.

Over time, we have abandoned the unique connection we had cultivated and became self-centered. The problem is that now that humankind has discovered that we are all interdependent, it is seeking a way to live together peacefully, but cannot find one. We had it but abandoned it. Until we learn how to be as united as before, the world will not learn how to do this and will continue to blame us for its woes. This is why if we want to prevent the next holocaust, we, Jews, must show the light of unity to the world.

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There might have been "too much" in the bill, the Virginia Democrat said, but it was better than letting the economy unravel.
Grupo IUSA, es una empresa mexicana lAder en el sector elActrico. Hoy se inaugurA la primera fase de la Central Solar Fotovoltaica aDon Alejoa, que ha sido posible gracias a la Reforma EnergAtica.JocotitlAn Estado de MAxico, 15 de Enero del 2016

Those gathering at the UN in New York on Wednesday for the biennial Investor Summit on Climate Risk are facing a new world and a new reality.

The Paris global climate agreement, inked in December, has confirmed that every nation is now on an irreversible path to a low -- perhaps even zero -- carbon economy.

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The challenge now is not the certainty, the direction or the ultimate destination of this transformation: it is the speed and how to scale up the opportunities.

For some -- especially those with significant fossil fuel exposure -- it is the risks of stranded assets and finding a way to navigate across what may be uncharted waters of energy diversification and restructuring businesses and economies.

The winds of change from Paris are already shifting policy and financial flows towards ever cleaner and renewable energies and sustainable infrastructure.

The World Resources Institute concludes that the eight largest emitters -- Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the United States -- will double their renewable energy supplies as a result of their action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions.

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And this is likely to be an underestimate: China, for example, has stated it will peak its emissions around 2030 and generate a fifth of its energy from low carbon sources by 2030.

Many experts expect all this to happen far earlier as a result of the strong signal from Paris, and not just in China, but in many other parts of the world. Among the encouraging signs from all corners of the world:

Brazil has a 254-megawatt solar farm under construction, SoftBank and other companies have committed billions of dollars to solar in India, and Africa will soon have its largest solar power plant operational in Morocco.

The United Arab Emirates, whose wealth has been based on fossil fuels, is drawing up a sustainable development plan 'beyond oil.'

The United Kingdom has announced it will shut down its last coal-fired power station by 2025--currently a quarter of that country's electricity is generated from coal.

The long-term extension of wind and solar federal tax credits in the U.S. will spur an additional73 billion in clean energy investment by 2020 and just this month American Electric Power agreed to install 900 megawatts of wind and solar in Ohio.

Goldman Sachs and the New York State Comptroller's office have announced a new2 billion low-carbon index fund.

Globally, according to new figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, almost330 billion in new clean energy investments occurred in 2015, a record high and up six fold from just a decade ago.

A record42 billion of green bonds were issued last year, up from almost zero in 2007.

In 2015 clean energy investments in low income countries matched investments in the OECD nations.

These underline some of the many positive shifts occurring. However, if we are to keep a global temperature rise below 2 degrees C, and even better 1.5 degrees C, by the end of the century, trillions of dollars will be needed.

The International Energy Agency estimates that $68 trillion will be invested in energy up to 2040. Clean energy, energy efficiency and low or zero emission vehicles need to take an ever increasing slice of this market if the promise of Paris is to be realized.

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Every sphere of the investment community needs to get on board. Of the $329 billion invested in clean energy in 2015, just under $200 billion was asset financing for utility-scale projects such as wind farms, solar parks and biomass plants. The next largest chunk, $67 billion, was spending on rooftop and other small-scale solar projects. Venture capital raised for clean energy was just under $6 billion.

While these numbers may sound impressive, they are still precious little compared to the trillions of dollars that are needed from institutional investors every year to accelerate clean energy at the levels necessary to prevent dangerous climate change.

But, just as importantly in the wake of the Paris deal, investors should also be elevating their focus of better managing climate risks.

The kind of carbon foot-printing analysis done by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the United States' largest public pension fund, is a case in point.

Its analysis showed that 80 companies in its 10,000-company portfolio accounted for fully half of the $300 billion fund's total carbon footprint.

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As CalPERS' Investment Director of Global Governance, Anne Simpson noted in Paris: "This study means we can be laser-focused on where to take our engagement. We want the underlying companies in our portfolio to be aligned with the transition to a low-carbon economy."

Investors, nationally and globally, should also be pressing for stronger company disclosure of the climate risks they are facing in order to better evaluate which companies are well positioned -- or poorly positioned -- to compete in the emerging low-carbon global economy.

Working with Ceres, investors successfully petitioned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require companies to provide such disclosure, but the quality of the disclosure to date is still far short of meeting the SEC's guidance.

Investors also need to form new alliances with progressive venture capitalists, countries, corporations and banks, both private and multilateral, in order to de-risk investments in clean energy and sustainable, low carbon infrastructure.

The actions needed are legion, but so too are the rewards for investors and companies who make the shift early and embed the transition rapidly.

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Paris has built upon emerging shifts towards a cleaner, greener and far smarter development path for the 21st century. It has sent a clear, unequivocal and determined low carbon signal to markets and economic sectors everywhere: The course is irreversible, but the pace and breadth must now be the focus.

It is time for investors to get down to the serious business of transforming the bold ambition of the new global agreement into a low-carbon economic reality that benefits all nations and people.
Having recently got around to watching Leonardo Dicaprio's 'Wolf on Wall Street' I started to ponder on what has really changed since the 2008 financial crisis? Have the images of the wolves like Jordan Belfort really changed? Are the public actually starting to restore their faith in these people/institutions?

Banks have started to act towards addressing this concern by hiring an increasing number of compliance officers. For example, JP Morgan has hired an additional 13,000+ people in the area of compliance since 2012.

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I have to admit when looking at the banking compliance system and how they are evolving policy and regulation I start to glaze over...where do you begin? However I am a customer of a bank, and I pay taxes so surely I must be important enough to understand what they are changing for my best interests right?

I hear more stories about the growing concerns of mental health issues such as depression leading to suicide from employees inside financial institutions, let alone the untold stories. The levels of suicide are also rising with people who are unemployed and dealing with financial struggles just to survive. I know through my own experiences, years of research and talking to others that the banks have overlooked the missing jigsaw piece - benevolence.

Do not get me wrong I believe banks play a vital role in our economy, they are a business set up to provide value to their clients. I am merely asking the question "where has the morality of care gone?"

Research has demonstrated that in order to gain trust you must be able to show three core elements.

Ability (are you competent?)

Integrity (are you honest?)

Benevolence (do you care about my interests?).

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According to David De Cremer bankers don't believe benevolence exists in their profession as it is not necessary! However I definitely agree with David when he refers to trust only being successfully built when clients feel that their best interests are at the heart of the banks actions. It is imperative that banks are able to connect with their clients on a personal level. Unfortunately, banks are increasingly investing in the efficient use of IT applications, and as a consequence are removing the personal element necessary for true benevolent interactions with clients.

A clear example can be seen through a lady I recently spoke to whose mother was the sole survivor of her family during world war two in Poland. Her mother was an inspirational lady who fled to the UK for safety, leaving all her money and possessions behind. The challenge to get a job was proving almost impossible, but she had a skill as a seamstress and decided to set up on her own. All that she needed was a 25 loan and so she walked into a bank to ask. The bank manager invited her to join him for a cup of tea where she had the opportunity to share her story and ask how she could receive the loan to achieve her goal. The manager was very compassionate and believed in her, the result was that the lady was awarded the loan which was paid back very quickly. She went on to be very successful, however she made a decision to never change bank because of the very first conversation with that bank manager. This resulted in the bank winning a very loyal customer for over 60 years.

When speaking to Madan Pillutla, a professor at the London Business School we both agreed that there is a fundamental flaw in judgements made by people in business. Research suggests that when an individual judges themselves, the main focus sits with competencies and integrity, however when judging another person/organisation the main focus of judgement is human behaviour. Therefore measuring X versus Y does not make sense. It tells me that a brand taking more personal responsibility for ones actions is more vital than ever.

So when referring back to the banking sector, observations and questions arose. We made the assumption that the banks have been very successful in recruiting very best of intellectual graduates with high IQ levels, they have the competencies to design complex financial strategies and models that proves to be very attractive to the financial world. I have to be honest I struggle to understand myself, (yet) how many others are thinking like me? Could it be that these highly intellectual employees have forgotten how to communicate with their customers, who may not necessarily understand the financial jargon that they (the financiers) are used to operating on? Is it possible that bankers feel that communicating at the level of their customers would be a waste of time? How are they evaluating their behaviour Has this trail of repetitive behaviour brought about the distance between 'us' and 'them'? If so is it any surprise the banks have failed to earn the trust of the consumer?

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TOPSHOT - A relative of a 2014 Peshawar school attack victim shows her son's pictures to a student victim (L) of the Bacha Khan University attack at a hospital in Charsadda on January 21, 2016. Pakistan observed a day of national mourning Thursday for the 21 people killed when heavily-armed gunmen stormed a university in the troubled northwest, exposing the failings in a national crackdown on extremism. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEED / AFP / A Majeed (Photo credit should read A MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images)

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan may be down, but it certainly is not out. Various factions of the terrorist group have launched and claimed several deadly attacks in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the past months. January was no exception, and the TTP factions struck twice in two consecutive days; first, against a paramilitary border force and then targeting the Bacha Khan University, Charsadda in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's agricultural heartland where Pushkalavati (the Lotus City), the capital of the ancient Gandhara empire, once stood. The attack on the ragtag paramilitary border patrol barely registered on the Pakistani media's radar, but the university assault drew in political and military leadership to the ground zero. At least 20 students and faculty perished in the most brutal assault on this institution named after one of the foremost 20th century torchbearers of nonviolence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Bacha Khan.

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According to reports, a teacher, Syed Hamid Hussain, put up armed resistance to stymie the terrorist attack, or the losses could have been much worse. Pakistani military eventually neutralized the four attackers. While the TTP's main spokesman denied involvement in the ghastly attack, the outfit's splinter group, led by Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed the attack in a detailed video message. The director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, alleged that the assault was masterminded from Afghanistan and the attackers crossed through the Torkham checkpoint on the Durand Line, apparently after duping the Pakistani security detail there. The military spokesman stated that the attackers were receiving phone calls from an Afghan mobile number during the attack. General Bajwa later on played an audio recording of a phone call where a a terrorist leader is ostensibly calling a Pakistani reporter to claim the attack. As General Bajwa did not share the details of which cellular towers the said number was using during the call, it is hard to comment on the veracity of his claims, especially since Afghan-origin cellular SIM cards are used in tribal and some settled areas of Pakistan rather commonly.

The sooner Pakistan realizes that it is not one bad fish but a rotten jihadist ecosystem, almost exclusively of its own making, that has inflicted such incredible misery on the whole region, the better.

Nonetheless, the Pakistani military seems to have laid the blame for the Charsadda attack squarely on Afghanistan's doorstep as it has done on multiple occasions in the past. The Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif again wasted no time in picking up the phone and called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani directly. Whatever the veracity of the claims -- which have been swiftly rejected by the Afghan government -- the general's call was a curious move. The Pakistani COAS was not only completely out of line in calling a foreign head of state but in doing so he also trampled upon the civil-military relations in Pakistan. The call could have been initiated by the civilian government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, especially since the premier was scheduled to meet the Afghan president within hours in Davos, Switzerland. General Raheel Sharif clearly sought to assert his preeminence at home and abroad, painting both Nawaz Sharif and Ghani as weak leaders, and divert attention from the Pakistan army's disastrous jihadist policies and monumental failures to contain the monsters it has created. The Pakistani military leadership has claimed periodically that the TTP rump is now holed up in Afghanistan's eastern and northeastern regions and have been calling for an Afghan campaign against them. The idea seems to be to create a false equivalence between Pakistan's well-thought-out, decades-old strategy of harboring the Afghan jihadists and the ostensible presence of the TTP elements who escaped from Pakistan military operations to the unruly Afghan frontier regions where Kabul's writ is skimpy at best. The military spokesman has conveniently deflected the questions about how, if at all, the terrorists were able to cross a security checkpoint at the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is in line with the military's track record of shoving its own failures under the rug. For example, the inquiry report into the deadly attack on Army Public School in Peshawar that killed over 140 students, has yet to see the light of day.

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It is a well-known fact that the current TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah had first escaped the Pakistani operations in Swat. He has been on the run since and has reportedly been in and out of the areas straddling the Durand Line. Similarly, scores of other jihadists escaped the Pakistani army's Zarb-e-Azb operation in the North Waziristan tribal agency. In fact, not a single terrorist ringleader has been known to have been captured in the Zarb-e-Azb operation while the identity of the some 3,500 jihadist cadres, whom the Pakistan army claims to have killed, has not been made public either. Analysts had been warning that the fanfare before the Zarb-e-Azb operation had given jihadists ample warning to flee and melt away into the population. That several jihadists potentially crossed over into Afghanistan was no surprise either. Pakistani military still sticks to its dangerous definition of the "good" jihadists who fight against the Afghan government and India and the "bad" jihadists who attack Pakistan. The problem is that the good, the bad and the ugly jihadists consort together and share cadres as well as similar sanctuaries, recruiting grounds and training facilities. Chances are that if the TTP elements are in Afghanistan, they are not exactly receiving diplomatic protocol from the Kabul government but hanging out with their Afghan Taliban counterparts. The sooner Pakistan realizes that it is not one bad fish but a rotten jihadist ecosystem, almost exclusively of its own making, that has inflicted such incredible misery on the whole region, the better.

Listening to the about 11-minute video released by the TTP thug Umar Mansoor claiming the Bacha Khan University attack, it becomes abundantly clear that jihadist terror is Pakistan's homegrown problem and a self-inflicted wound. Mansoor speaks Pashto in a dialect typical of Pakistani urban. His diction and idiom are completely free of any Afghan or tribal area language influences. He seems to be a man who has not spent enough time outside Pakistan for his language to absorb any Afghan influence. His frame of reference is quintessentially Pakistani, too. I know this how? Well, because his Pashto is no different than mine, and, like me, he grew up in the Pashtun heartland in Pakistan. According to media reports, Umar Mansoor went to school in Islamabad and then worked with his family in the port city of Karachi. The question is why did he take up arms against the Pakistani state and the army, especially if the latter too has a jihadist bend. The answer simply is that once indoctrinated to conduct jihad, individuals like Umar Mansoor remain ideologically hardwired for good. The niceties of Pakistani army's duplicitous policies where it pretends to facilitate the peace process between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government while continuing to host the new Taliban emir Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in the Quetta suburb of Kuchlak, are lost on the rank and file jihadists. They see even a tactical retreat as the betrayal of their common jihadist cause. What seems lost on the Pakistani army planners is that the jihadist cadres neither have an on/off switch nor do they conduct jihad in the bankers' hours only and take the weekends off. For the top echelons of the Pakistani army, jihadism may be just another tool of prosecuting foreign policy, but for individuals like Umar Mansoor, it becomes both a vocation and a way of life.

The way Pakistan is shifting blame for its jihadist blunder to Afghanistan just reinforces the concern that it is still in no mood to correct its deadly course.

Decommissioning jihadists is trickier than enlisting and unleashing them. And it is not just because of their current motivation to fight, but also because of the ideological milieu that Pakistan has created over the decades to support its jihadist venture. For 68 years of its existence Pakistan has either officially denigrated towering political figures and champions of nonviolent and secular political struggles like Bacha Khan or banished them from the educational and public discourse. In 17 years of my education -- 12 of them at a civilian school run by the Pakistan Air Force -- in Pakistan I was not taught one single line about Bacha Khan and his monumental political struggle against the British and then the military dictators of Pakistan. On the other hand, the Muslim warrior-kings like Mahmud Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb Alamgir filled the pages of our history books. The boys in my school were divided in four houses named after the Muslim warriors Khalid bin Waleed, Tariq bin Ziyad, Muhammad bin Qasim and Salahuddin Ayyubi, while the girls were in the Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Muhammad Iqbal houses. An anti-India or more specifically anti-Hindu curriculum was taught in the name of "Pakistan Studies," and it passed for secular education. I shudder to think about the curriculum of the madrassas that Umer Mansoor and his ilk might have gone through.

The attack on the Bacha Khan University goes to show that there are legions of indoctrinated Pakistanis who are willing to kill and be killed in the name of religion and jihadism, supported logistically by a larger network of fellow travelers and even bigger hordes who condone their brutal, relentless and violent jihadism. The attackers were all Pakistanis as were their accomplices. Unless the Pakistani army planners see the disastrous errors of their ways and decide to roll back both the theory and practice of their jihadist enterprise, there will likely be more attacks like the one on Bacha Khan University. The first step would be to realize "if you break it, you own it." Blaming Afghanistan for the Pakistan army's sins and dereliction may be a good excuse, but it makes for a horrible solution to Pakistan's terrorism conundrum. The way Pakistan has dragged its feet on apprehending the banned terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar blamed for the recent attack on the Indian airbase at Pathankot, it seemed that despite the lip service to the contrary, the Pakistani brass has little or no desire to dismantle its jihadists proxies. And now the way Pakistan is shifting blame for its jihadist blunder to Afghanistan just reinforces the concern that it is still in no mood to correct its deadly course.

Earlier on WorldPost:
There couldn't be a more exciting time to invest in Europe -- the tech scene is booming, digital global value chains are interlocking across the continent and a strong movement of collaboration among entrepreneurs is underpinning this dynamism.

"It's about founders helping founders," according to Niklas Zennstrom.

A role model for entrepreneurs across the globe and recently selected "Person of the Year" by Tech.eu Zennstrom is the Swede behind several high-profile ventures such as Skype and Kazaa, and is currently CEO and Founder of international investment firm, Atomico. The fund has backed over 50 companies in four continents, and with investments including Skype, Supercell, Klarna, Zocdoc, and The Climate Corporation, Zennstrom seeks out and champions the very best in innovation across the globe, helping them scale and grow international successfully.

Zennstrom and Atomico are redefining what it means to run a global fund by focusing on partnership, giving back and creating a collaborative community of creativity instead of one solely based in bottom-lines.

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"Success breeds success," Zennstrom often says and his commitment to sharing his successes with the next generation of entrepreneurs across Europe, and especially in his native Sweden, is an inspiring game-changer.

In this vein, I'm proud to say Niklas has been a leading supporter of Symposium Stockholm -- an effort to capture the future and the forward-thinking energy of Sweden in a week-long collaborative gathering of international luminaries, global decision-makers, and young emerging talents drawn from the worlds of music, technology, fashion, politics, and other creative sectors since its inception.

Brilliant Minds is a carefully curated thought leadership summit at the heart of a week-long festival of ideas in the Swedish capital. As a founding member of our advisory board, the interview below with Niklas is the first in a series focused on the world's Brilliant Minds that leads up to the actual event June 9, 10 in Stockholm.

The element that will separate Brilliant Minds from the bevy of other tech and digital conferences is a values-based approach steeped in collaboration, sharing and sustainability. We will gather together entrepreneurs across sectors that have one thing in common: purposeful leadership, an unabashedly open mind and a higher meaning outside of their own business advancement to everything they do.

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The below interview with Niklas Zennstrom is the first in a series called, "A Brilliant Mind".

What were your thoughts of Symposium Stockholm 2015 and the Brilliant Minds thought leadership forum? Any specific highlights?

I felt very proud to be part of such a vibrant tech scene.

It was great to see ambitious entrepreneurs just starting out, alongside established icons of innovation like Daniel Ek. Success breeds success.

Talk to young entrepreneurs in Sweden and they want to build the next Skype, Spotify, or Klarna. As well as inspiration, these entrepreneurs often provide mentoring to the next generation, as well as attracting talent and capital from outside. This virtuous circle was one of the hallmarks of Silicon Valley, now it is happening across Europe, and beyond. I was excited to see that in action - at scale - at Symposium.

What, in your opinion, is the key to a successful event?

Definitely the people it attracts. What's really interesting about the most successful businesses in Sweden is that they come from many different sectors, like gaming, music, financial services and fashion - which makes for a far more interesting crowd and everyone learns from everyone else.



Any theory about why Stockholm has become such a successful hub for tech startups?

The cycle of success I've mentioned is certainly an important factor, but it's also interesting that companies from Sweden tend to think globally from the outset. With a smaller domestic market, founders must think about internationalizing much sooner than those in America or China, for example. Five billion-dollar tech companies have been founded in Sweden in the last 12 years - three of them went international in their first year.

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The challenge now is to grow companies of the scale of H&M or IKEA, and to ensure that European investors benefit also. As ecosystems across the world and beyond establish themselves as technology hubs, we face fierce competition for the best people and capital. But Stockholm's certainly on the right track!



Which, of the pretty young Swedish tech companies, impresses you right now?

I'm really excited about the levels of entrepreneurship in Sweden in general, and I met so many interesting founders at Symposium - it's incredible that Stockholm now ranks alongside Silicon Valley in billion-dollar companies per capita!

It's not a 'startup' anymore, but I'm really impressed by Truecaller at the moment. They have 200m users and are transforming the way we think about our phonebooks. They're seeing huge growth in Asia, most recently in India, and are an excellent example of a company that's been thinking global from the outset.



When you (Atomico) look at tech companies to invest in: which are the most important qualities? What should an entrepreneur do to impress you?

Great companies can come from anywhere. Today it matters much less where you come from than where you scale into. We look for impressive founders who believe from the start that their company can be a global winner, and who want to disrupt their sector in an original way.

We look for companies with a great product, underpinned by excellent technology; with the potential to become an international category winner, which are truly loved by their users and customers. Passion and confident entrepreneurs are key - we can help with scaling and growth, but we can't fix a poor idea!



Which sectors in particular interest you right now?

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Traditional industries like transport have been transformed by tech entrepreneurs in recent years, but there are many sectors that still represent huge opportunities. I'm excited that trillion-dollar sectors such as healthcare, education and real estate have yet to be seriously disrupted by innovative technology. Some will be harder to crack due to regulations and regional obstacles, but we are seeing newer tech hubs like Stockholm maturing and taking on these bigger problems through innovation. Companies like Transferwise, Knewton and ZocDoc are taking on financial services, education and healthcare.



Is there a company that you chose not to invest in that you regret today?
Ever since the docuseries, Making a Murderer, came out on Netflix, the internet has been abuzz. But I ignored it. When my brother called and told me to watch it, I ignored him. But once he explained what it was about, I was intrigued. I moved to Milwaukee in December 2005, right after Teresa Holbach went missing. It was on the news every day and I followed it closely.

My brother, like a lot of viewers, believes Steven Avery to be innocent, but I knew I couldn't be swayed. I told my brother that I remember the nephew's confession and that was enough for me. My brother laughed and said, "Just watch it."

So I did. I will say the two ladies who made the series did an awesome job. Sure it was one-sided and most likely left out some things that might not have conformed to their narrative, but it certainly made you think. That was their goal after all, and to that end they were extremely successful.

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It turned out I wasn't remembering the nephew Brendan Dassey's confession at all. I was remembering the district attorney Ken Kratz's comments he made at a press conference he held just to tell everyone of Brendan's confession. I even remembered the part about Avery coming to the door of the trailer all sweaty. But Brendan never used those words; Kratz did. In fact, Kratz delivered the confession in his own words as if he was reading it from some historical document.

Was that a tad underhanded? Oh yeah. Did it make it impossible for Avery to get a fair trial? Oh yeah. But if you watch the series, you'll see that pales in comparison to a lot of tactics used by this prosecutor. Seriously, when you watch this guy you can't help but think he's some kind of lowlife degenerate. Then he later proves you right after it comes to light that he sent a bunch of text messages to several young ladies to try to seduce them. Ironically this means that between him and Steven Avery, he's the only one proven to be a pervert.

After watching the actual confession, it was easy to see it was coerced. Brendan is not a very bright young man and the investigators kept telling him if he told them anything at all he wouldn't get into trouble. Sadly Brendan believed them so he told them anything at all. Then after confessing to rape and murder, he explained he needed to be back at school at 1:29.

What became very clear very quickly was that Brendan's confession couldn't have possibly happened. Steven Avery's trailer looked like it hadn't seen a vacuum cleaner or duster since it was parked there, so tying up a person on the bed, raping them, stabbing them, and cutting their throat would have left a smidgeon of evidence. Likewise the garage hadn't been cleaned in forever, so dragging a bloody body there to finish the job would also leave telltale signs.

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Yet the victim's DNA was nowhere to be found in the trailer or garage. The confession was so impossible that the DA decided not to use it at the trial at all. And why should he? The damage was done during the press conference about the confession.

But why would a relative of the defendant make such wild statements and then change them? I don't know. I can't figure that part out. But I can tell you that when it comes to this family, it's not as strange as you think. In fact, three other members of the family did the same thing.

The brother-in-law told the police, which they recorded in their report, that Steven's bonfire was three feet high. On the witness stand, however, he said the flames were ten feet high. That's a huge difference. But then again it would be very difficult to completely burn a human body with a small fire.

Brendan's brother Brad also pulled a fast one. On November 10th a friend of Brad's joked about asking Steven if he needed help hiding a body. This again was documented. But under oath that story also changed. Brad said it was November 3rd (Actually the DA fed him that date), and it was Steven himself asking for help to hide a body.

It gets more bizarre. Brendan's 15-year-old first cousin, a female, had told the counselor at her school, then later the investigators, that Brendan, who had been crying at a birthday party, told her about seeing body parts in the bonfire. When questioned under oath at Brendan's trial, she said she had made it up and Brendan hadn't said anything. Amazingly by this point, that seemed pretty normal for this family and even the prosecutor was like okie dokie.

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Put this all together and all you have is one confusing case and one seriously backwards family. But even the most English language destroying, lowest IQ, probably should reconsider reproducing, backward people in this country deserve a fair trial. Even people who have spent 18 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit deserve a fair trial. And that did not happen.

I'm not convinced of Steven Avery's innocence, but I am convinced of the other side's guilt. The key and bullet were planted. There was no doubt. They were planted right after Brenan's confession and they were planted to coincide with that confession, that impossible confession, to put Teresa Holbach in the trailer and garage.

It was so obvious that the key and bullet were planted that the DA mentioned it in his closing arguments, saying (paraphrasing), "Does it matter if the key was planted?" I couldn't believe my ears. I know it was a rhetorical question, but I'd like to answer anyway. "Hell yes it matters. What freaking country do you think we live in?"

Everyone on the state's side during the sexual assault trial, the civil suit, and the murder trial acted so smugly and unprofessional. Like when the defense tried to question a person from the cellphone company to show that someone two days after Teresa Holbach disappeared had accessed her account using her password and listened to, and possibly deleted, some voicemails. But the DA objected... again. And the objection was idiotic, but the judge, who I like to refer to as the 13th juror, took the DA's side... again. He even said, "I'm having trouble seeing the relevance."

Holy crap. I couldn't help but wonder if this judge was ever an attorney or whether he was simply elected. How could it not be relevant? Not to mention it fit into the defense perfectly, to show that no other leads had been followed upon once they had Avery in their sights.

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The judge later revealed his personal bias at the sentencing when he told Steven Avery that the thing that bothered him the most was that as Steven got older, his crimes got more serious. What? What crimes are the 13th juror referring to? Avery hadn't been convicted of a crime since he was 20 years old, except the sexual assault charge for which he spent 18 years in prison but was later found to be innocent. That crime, Your Honor?

And like when the DA kept complaining about the defense attorneys "accusing" officers of planting evidence and saying they better have proof. Again, does this high ranking member of the courts not understand the law? The officers were not on trial so no proof was called for. And from what I can determine about the authorities in Manitowoc County, an officer being on trial for anything would never happen. The defense attorneys didn't need proof; they only needed to plant doubt. And like the ladies who made this docuseries, to that end they were extremely successful.

Everything regarding all the legal happenings involving Steven Avery in the county of Manitowoc Wisconsin was void of any resemblance of the American judicial system. It was a circus perpetrated and performed by clowns. The police operate much like the Gestapo. My recommendation would to be to build a wall around the entire county and have it require a passport to visit, because this isn't the USA.
MOSCOW -- In 2014-2015, Russia's domestic policy was pushed abroad -- first toward Ukraine, then toward Syria. In 2016, the Russian authorities will have to shift their focus away from shaping the world order and toward putting their own house in order. Otherwise, they will not survive.

Over the last two years, President Vladimir Putin has confirmed his legitimacy through the use of extraordinary measures -- war and the mobilization of public opinion. But that type of legitimacy desensitizes a society that requires ever more frequent and grandiose "feats" to evoke a comparable response. Russia's dealings with Crimea, Novorossiya, Syria and Turkey being the most recent government actions to a rouse public response.

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Ordinarily, officials gain electoral legitimacy simply by winning in fair elections. But a national leader like Putin needs a larger, more commanding mandate. That sort of orchestrated legitimacy is incompatible with competitive elections. That is why the Kremlin has been eliminating the direct election of mayors and has made regional governor elections a foregone conclusion. As well as trying to kill the public's interest in elections, the Kremlin prohibited the democratic opposition from participating in elections in 2015 -- the authorities feared not that the opposition would win too many votes, but that its participation would lead to legitimate criticism of the ruling regime.

Shrinking government coffers have prompted more intense infighting among the ruling clans.

Electoral legitimacy grows from the bottom up, while "forced legitimacy" is imposed from the top down. Those diametrically opposed models are set to collide in 2016.

The internal balance between the ruling elite has changed significantly over the last two years. Russia's foreign wars have greatly increased the influence of the siloviki --a word that refers to "strongmen" officials with roots in law enforcement -- and the military-industrial complex. But the collapse of Russia's raw materials economic model, Western sanctions and the resultant reevaluation of assets has also caused a major shift in the balance of power among the ruling elite.

Most importantly, shrinking government coffers have prompted more intense infighting among the ruling clans as each vies for their place in the sun. The problem is that the current system is based on ever-expanding revenues that provide enough for all. There is no functioning mechanism for resolving conflicting interests and redistributing property and incomes among contending groups. Each new situation requires an executive decision, which increases the frequency of conflict among the elite spilling over into the public eye -- such as the sharp confrontation last spring between the leadership of the Federal Security Service and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who heads his own siloviki force. Such clashes strain the system at the seams.

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The Spoils of the Petro-Budget

The main goal of these struggles is access to the crisis-stricken budget and the chance to curry favor with senior leaders. Therefore, parliamentary elections in September will be held against a backdrop of increased competition among the elite.

The Russian political system is archaic. It was created during a historical period when rulers were awash in petrodollars and there was simply no apparent need for democratic institutions, checks and balances, independent judiciary, strong parliament, federalism, local government and so forth. Without easy money, the ruling regime will not survive without modernization.

Formal institutions such as elections, the courts and so on were already weak, but over the past two years, the accepted rulebook governing their operation -- previously strictly observed -- also has been tossed aside.

Without easy money, the ruling regime will not survive without modernization.

The same trend can be seen in Russian business. Consider, for example, the sudden arrest of Kremlin-loyal oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Neither have the regional elite been spared -- the authorities arrested two regional governors last year alone, and the list of those affected includes the siloviki. Old rules and "understandings" have ceased operating and no one has announced new rules to replace them.

Against this backdrop, Russia will hold early elections in September for the State Duma and almost half of all regional parliaments.

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The previous parliamentary elections in December 2011 sparked mass political protests and the situation has only deteriorated since then. Governors are finding it increasingly difficult to secure the election results they need. Money is running low and the Kremlin more often resorts to various "sticks" rather than "carrots" when managing regional elections. Citizens feel the decline in living standards, and the Russian people now have the memory of the protests in 2011-2012. The only thing making life easier for the authorities is their successful dismantling of the system for the independent monitoring of elections.

Money is running low and the Kremlin more often resorts to various 'sticks' rather than 'carrots' when managing regional elections.

The authorities plan to implement a strategy for the September elections that was tried in the 2014-15 regional elections. That tactic is best summed up as "manipulation rather than falsification." When, for example, leaders were afraid to risk a resurgence of political protests in connection with gubernatorial elections in the Irkutsk region in 2015, the Kremlin weighed the relative costs of possible mass protests against the election of a Kremlin-loyal but communist governor -- and chose the latter. It was the first time since gubernatorial elections were reinstated that an incumbent governor failed to win re-election.

The Duma elections this September will be held according to a new scheme: half of the seats will go to the parties, and the other half will be parceled out among individual candidates -- as was done in Russia prior to 2007. However -- one of the examples of the manipulation -- the Kremlin has cannily delineated misshapen electoral districts that lump independent and protest-minded residents of major cities alongside Kremlin-loyal and conformist rural residents. This will make it all the more difficult for progressive candidates to secure Duma seats.

Preparations for the Duma elections are already underway, and the conflicts that occasionally flare-up between regional governors and pro-Kremlin United Russia party and the All-Russia People's Front movement suggests that the elite are busily horse-trading. This will reach its climax in May when United Russia holds its so-called "primaries."

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The elite are busily horse-trading.

The Duma to be elected this September will look very different from the present Duma. This time, deputies will be much more independent than before -- even in cases where the incumbent is re-elected. These deputies will profess loyalty not only to the Kremlin, but also to the regional elites, business groups and voters. It will prove far more difficult for President Putin to maintain a hard-fisted legitimacy over such a parliament -- if it is possible at all.

The changes that this year will inevitably usher in have already begun, but it is still too early to predict their scale or consequences. As of today, it appears the authorities intend to emulate the Chinese -- that is, to normalize relations with the West on the foreign front and liberalize some aspects of economic policy while keeping or even tightening the screws on the political scene. However, there is no use taking the Kremlin's plans too seriously because there are too many variables beyond its control that could come into play, and Russia's political system is far too unstable to predict how all of this will end.

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In the past week, our small statewide union has added nearly 1,200 new members. One of our organizing victories, at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, was reportedly the largest pro-union vote anywhere in the country in the past year. We won with an 82% majority.

In early February, we'll hold elections through the NLRB for another 400+ nurses at St. Christopher's, one of Philly's renowned children's hospitals. And our staff is fielding calls left and right from other nurses and healthcare technicians who are desperate to win union protections.

Why?

In short, it's because hospitals are increasingly acting like corporations. They're not the same not-for-profit, community-centered organizations that many of us like to remember.

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Hahnemann and St. Christopher's are both owned by Tenet Healthcare, one of the nation's largest for-profit hospital operators. Delaware County Memorial, where we just added another 330 nurses, is set to be purchased by a for-profit called Prospect Medical Holdings.

"We wanted to get back to the foundations of nursing," said ER nurse Mike Winn after the successful union vote. "It should be about patients, not profits or shareholders. We were tired of having management's decisions limit our ability to give the best care."

Other nurses supported the union even after rejecting past attempts to organize.

"I was not a union person. I thought it would impede patient care," said Jane Bryers, a Labor & Delivery nurse. "I did not think that I, as a professional, needed a group of people to help me voice my concerns."

Management had promised improvements, but those changes failed to materialize and nurses saw conditions deteriorate markedly -- not just for them, but also for patients.

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This time, Bryers was a union supporter and a proud yes vote.

The issues we address in our organizing efforts -- and in our contract negotiations -- are different than those you often hear about when it comes to labor unions. The nurses who were trying to win unions at Hahnemann and Delaware County Memorial weren't focused on wages or benefits. Their issues centered almost entirely on management interfering with their ability to provide good patient care. We heard true horror stories about bad equipment, inadequate and unsafe staffing, and a general unwillingness to include nurses in decisions that impact our jobs and our patients.

So, if hospitals are going to act like companies -- cutting corners and employing standard corporate management tactics -- then we need nurses and other medical professionals to act as advocates.

This wave of organizing in the Philadelphia area is certainly a win for the state's labor movement: These days, it's not often that we hear about back-to-back union victories. It's exciting to see hundreds upon hundreds of skilled professionals -- consisting predominantly of women -- banding together to form new unions.

But, beyond that, it's also a win for patients.

These successes have been about nurses resisting an approach to healthcare that puts profits ahead of people. Patients get better care when nurses have a voice in decisions that impact caregiving. That sounds like common sense, but it's a radical idea in some board rooms.

We need to empower medical professionals to speak out and advocate for patients' interests. Our unions give us the voice and the power to do just that.

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Forget curling up with a cat, the most amazing thing in the world is cuddling an orphaned baby rhino. (All photos: Khululu Care for the Wild)

There is almost nothing more heartbreaking in South Africa's war against rhino poaching than seeing a baby pachyderm standing watch over its dead mother, mourning. Many times the babies, too young to survive on their own, are also doomed; others are rescued -- their fate unknown. But now, there is a facility in the north of the country where these babies are, fed, cared for and ultimately released to the wild -- and it's guests (who pay for the volunteer experience) who are doing it.

It's the new hands-on wildlife experience.

At Khulula Care for the Wild, situated on the banks of the Vreek, Noord-Kaap and Queens rivers, in Mpumulanga, South Africa, you can actually cuddle, nurse, wean and play with orphaned rhino babies whose mothers have been slaughtered by poachers.

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According to Ellen Sziede, the marketing manager for African Conservation Experience, which runs Khululu, "there are an estimated 20,000 white rhino and 5,000 black rhino left in Africa. South Africa has by far the biggest population of all African countries, being home to almost 90 percent of all African white rhino. So the current estimated population for South Africa is about 18,000 white rhino and just under 2,000 black rhino."



Related: On the Frontlines of the Rhino Genocide, Saving a Species on the Brink

Viktor Barkas, who runs the Rhino Protrack team, which patrols for poachers on privately owned land outside of Kruger, in Hoedspruit, South Africa, told me last year that in the small area he patrols there are 2,000 rhinos -- 126 of which were slaughtered in the first half of last year, leaving many rhino offspring orphaned.

"it is not a war on rhino," Barkas said. "It is a genocide."

The unlucky orphans (from all over the country, not just Barkas's area) end up at Khululu, where the rhinos are raised and eventually released back into the wild in a program reminiscent of the wildly successful David Sheldrick elephant orphanage, in Kenya.

Volunteers are asked to stay for a minimum of two weeks -- although exceptions are made -- and during this time they rotate in and out of three teams.

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The first team, the Baby Team, looks after the youngest rhinos, which are still fed by bottle. "Travelers in this team spend a lot of time preparing the special milk formula and doing the bottle feeds, mothering the smallest rhinos, as they sometimes need people to stay with them at night when they are very small, and also helping with the veterinary care for new arrivals," Sziede said.

After working with the smallest rhinos, guests move on to Team Rhino, which takes care of the weaned animals, including recording feeding behavior and preparing mud baths for the little guys.

And then there's Team Other -- which isn't as bad as it sounds.

"Care for the Wild looks after a lot of other species as well, not just the rhinos," Sziede explained. "They currently have two hippos, three lions, several birds of prey, various antelope, a baby vervet monkey and mongoose. All of these animals need feeding, enclosure maintenance and enrichment -- from playing with the monkey and mongoose to taking the hippos for a swim."
"Nec Temere, Nec Timide" is a phrase in Latin, which one could translate to "neither rashly nor timidly." These words have been the motto of Gdansk for many years and yet it perfectly describes the way that we see shaping the future of our city.

Our strategic goal is to shape a strategy of development for Gdansk till 2030. Almost 15 years from now, the children born in 2015/2016 will become young adults, able to make their own decisions about their personal future; what university to enter, how to manage their career, whether to stay in Gdansk or move to another city.

We definitely want Gdansk to be a first-choice city, not only for children of people born here but also to be a place attracting new inhabitants. That is why we are currently working out the Gdansk 2030 PLUS Development Strategy and strengthening metropolitan cooperation. We are doing both things in a nec-temere-nec-timide way, seeking the best, sustainable ways of development for Gdansk and the region.

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We are fully aware that we cannot ignore the wider, global context. In the days of globalization and far-reaching interdependence, no area will be able to fully use its potential by acting individually. Cooperation between cities and various levels of government is a must.

Last year we made a great step towards tighter cooperation between the cities of our metropolis. After a long discussion, we reached an agreement which led to the creation of the Metropolitan Area Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot, consisting of 54 local governments, operating on a total area of nearly 6,700km, and inhabited by 1.55 million inhabitants. It was a great success for us!

Among the main goals of our metropolitan area is to ensure our role as one of Poland's leading transportation hubs (the two largest Polish seaports are Gdansk and Gdynia), to ensure stable inflow of companies investing in the area, to foster cooperation between science and business, and to care better about our environment. Simply - our goal is to make living here better.

An ambitious task for us will be running the Integrated Territorial Investments until 2020, a year when the EU budget will end its seven years period. Probably for the last time, Poland and our metropolitan area can expect such generous financial support from the EU, therefore - we need to spend it in the smartest possible way. The most important projects will be:

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Integrated rail and bus transport management system, including better integration of small cities in the region and dealing with the issue of creating a single ticket for various transport companies

System of local centers for career development - 36 such centers are planned

Further improving the quality of bike infrastructure (Gdansk is often called "bike capital of Poland") - building new bike roads, bike parking lots. A great thing will be building a common system of bike sharing, like it is done in Vienna or Helsinki

Building a geriatrics hospital for better care of our seniors

Increasing energy efficiency of buildings belonging to local governments

The upcoming years will be full of challenges and many new projects will enter into the development phase. Although many Western countries have already established their way to cope with metropolitan issues, this is quite a new task for us. I'm sure that the "metropolitanization" process will bring a new boost for Gdansk, its society and economy.

Transport integration in Gdansk. Photo: Jerzy Pinkas

Cyclists of Gdansk. Photo: Piotr Poloczanski
In the thirty years since Tom Wolfe published his manifesto [1973], "The New Journalism," a group of writers has been quietly securing a place at the very center of contemporary American literature for reportorially based, narrative-driven long form nonfiction. These New New Journalists-Adrian LeBlanc, Michael Lewis, Lawrence Weschler, Eric Schlosser, Richard Preston, Alex Kotlowitz, Jon Krakauer, William Langewiesche, Lawrence Wright, William Finnegan, Ted Conover, Jonathan Harr, Susan Orlean, and others-represent the continued maturation of American literary journalism. They use the license to experiment with form earned by the New Journalists of the sixties to address the social and political concerns of 19th century writers such as Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis and Stephen Crane (an earlier generation of "New Journalists"), synthesizing the best of these two traditions. Rigorously reported, psychologically astute, sociologically sophisticated and politically aware, the New New Journalism may well be the most popular and influential development in the history of American literary nonfiction. The New New Journalism explores the methods and techniques these journalists have developed, and looks backward to understand their dual heritagetheir debts to their predecessors from both the 1890s and the 1960s. ...

What this new breed represents is less a school of thought, or rule-defined movement, than a shorthand way of describing the reportorial sensibility behind an increasingly significant body of work.
Bringing more mindfulness into my working days is one of the best things I can do for my enjoyment, productivity and creativity. Rather than spending time counting down the clock, allowing frustration to grow, or taking work stresses home with me, I use several techniques to create a more mindful work environment.

Four powerful ways you can also incorporate mindfulness into your working days include tuning into gratitude, taking short and regular mindful breaks, journaling mindfully at the end of the day and using a mindfulness tool.

1. Tune into gratitude

There's probably a reason why you have the job you have. Perhaps you're learning and growing in your field of employment with people you respect, or you're passionate about what you do and you're making a difference. Maybe, you're simply there to earn an income to support yourself and your lifestyle, or your family. Tune into your sense of gratitude by appreciating your opportunity to be at work for those reasons which are important to you.

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2. Take short and regular mindful breaks

Mindful breaks can be useful for improving our well-being at work and helping us remain fresh, focused and creative. Every few minutes, simply take a long, deep breath, bringing your attention to the journey of the breath as it moves into the body and out, again. Through this short and simple mindfulness technique, you can give your mind a quick break and take a moment to check in with how you're feeling. Are you becoming stressed and overwhelmed? Perhaps, it's time to ask for help. Feeling stuck or uninspired? You could go for a quick walk and create space for a new idea. Are you energised and "in the zone"? Feel free to get back into it!

3. Mindfully journal at the end of the day

This technique is great for anyone who feels like they take work home with them, or can't switch off after work. Keep a journal at work and for a few minutes before you leave each day, simply write down everything that's important to you in that moment. Write down the key tasks on the agenda the next day, how you're feeling, any ideas you might have, what was good about your day, or the main to-dos you ticked off your list over the last few hours. This method of journalling usually helps me to get all my "work thoughts" down on paper, ready for me to read the next day. I can then switch off and enjoy my time at home, without these thoughts circling around in my mind and I can get back into work quicker next time by picking up where I left off!

4. Keep a mindfulness tool with you

A mindfulness tool can serve as a reminder to be mindful and can also support you with your mindfulness practice. For example, my two favourite tools are a necklace and an aromatic body mist. Whenever I touch or see my necklace, I stop and bring myself into the moment with my sense of touch. I spend a couple of seconds rolling the necklace through my fingers and tuning into the feeling of it. With the aromatic body mist, I keep it on my desk and every few hours or so, I'll pick it up and spray it around, taking a few seconds to close my eyes and inhale the lovely smell. Both of these tools help to remind me of my mindfulness practice and also bring me into the moment by allowing me to appreciate the experiences of using them.

I hope you enjoy trying out these four mindfulness practices at work! For more mindfulness inspiration, head to my website here or check out my podcast, The Mindful Kind, here.

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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 athat the stone walls have been literally pulverized,a 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)

The recent destruction of the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq by the so-called Islamic State raises, once again, the question of the protection of the historical memory of humanity in times of conflict and war.

What is beyond doubt is that this decivilizing act of destruction leaves observers with a bitter taste of irresponsibility and meaninglessness. We all believe that this should not have happened. But it did happen, and we cannot reconcile ourselves with it. None of us can.

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What comes to light here is that nothing is more fragile -- nothing easier to destroy -- than a past that is at the mercy of a memory. Historical memory is the door to the human past, but it is susceptible to the diminishment of our sense of civilization as a common fate. As such, looking backwards into the human past is the recognition of something that we owe to history not merely as a courtesy, but because it is necessary to our present survival. Thus humanity's quest for a shared identity is motivated by a permanent need for the preservation and continuity of the concept of heritage.

Unless there is a constant belief among human beings that they are members of a human civilization, there will be constant doubt in our minds about our self-worth and self-esteem.

The ruins of St. Elijah's monastery, also known as Dair Mar Elia, in 2009. ISIS destroyed these ruins sometime in 2014. (MC1 [SCW] Carmichael Yepez/U.S. Army via AP)

However, by turning the timeless and yet fragile records of our past into piles of rocks, ISIS committed an act of heritage cleansing that has been repeated many times in human history. Yet, destroying archeological sites is more than just erasing historical traces of enemies or idolaters. It is an attempt to create a one-dimensional sense of history with no elements of diversity.

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This is far from being the first time in human history that fanatics have targeted human heritage in order to control the future of humanity. Alexander the Great burned down the great palace of Persepolis. The Chinese Tang dynasty destroyed all vestiges of the Korean kingdom of Paekche. Babur's iconoclastic army defaced many Jain statues in India in 1527. In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany destroyed many works of art labeled degenerate. More recently, the Taliban destroyed Buddhist sites in Afghanistan, claiming they were idols being worshipped by infidels and idolaters.

Such hostility to historical memory and to the idea of civilization lies in the fact that our contemporary world has produced a fear of otherness. We are all inclined to think like Goethe's Mephisto -- "The elements conspire with us and destruction is the aim."

Afghan boys play soccer in front of the empty seat of one of two Buddha statues, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, in Bamiyan province, Afghanistan. (SHEFAYEE/AFP/Getty Images)

The standard response to this hostility is that as long as the modern world ensures the permanence of the "civilized world" against the "barbarians," the otherness of "the other" is ensured all over the world. The main weakness of this argument is that those institutions in the modern world that have attempted to ensure the otherness of the other are not only founded on the destruction of the other(s) -- Native Americans, for example -- but continue to invent legal frameworks in order to limit or even abolish the presence of the other(s) in the public life of Western countries. Donald Trump is a good example of this mode of thinking.

All these acts of destruction have a common feature: that the problem of civilization and the problem of evil are intertwined. As such, evil is a reality of human civilization. The rise and decline of civilizations remind us is that there is a responsibility for violence that manifests itself in human history. Within this horizon of violence, which manifests itself in the frailty of human nature, there is a moral horizon that expresses a love of humanity in spite of its brokenness.

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Heritage, therefore, expresses a joy of witnessing the past despite the sadness of historical violence. It is this joy of witnessing the past that becomes foreign to those who disavow the common moral horizon of humanity. In varying degrees, this disavowal withholds them from any awareness and recognition of human heritage as a landscape of memory. And the victory of ignorance over memory is the strongest evidence of the failure of peaceful coexistence between the past and the present.

A view of the ancient oasis city of Palmyra, in Syria, parts of which have been destroyed by ISIS. (JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, the more urgent question of civilization -- are we witnessing a loss of common sense in the world today? -- seems to have been overlooked. This loss of common sense presupposes the decline of a common world into which fits our adherence to a principle of living together. However, this very foundation of togetherness, which gives meaning to our judgments and actions, and more profoundly to our sense of reality, is gone.

A growth of meaninglessness now challenges the moral and political questions of our time. More than ever, it leaves us empty-handed in confrontation with the challenges of the global world. Without this kind of moral compass, we would never be able to take our responsibilities in the world. If we want to be at home in this century, even at a price of living in a topsy-turvy world, we must try to take part in the dialogue with our fragile past.

The continuity of this dialogue in the sequence of generations guarantees a history that can never end because it is the history of beings whose essence is civilizational. As long as we are conscious of this truth, while not being speechless and indifferent to the monstrousness and horror of the destruction of our civilizational past, we have a chance to save the idea of humanity from the incalculable evil that human beings are capable of bringing about.

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Democratically elected officials were displaced and replaced with emergency management people who cut a deal and sent contaminated river water that corroded pipelines and exposed residents to toxic levels of lead. Gov. Snyder's administration ignored this problem since 2014, and in terms of direct action, politics and policies, the Flint crisis might just be even worse than Katrina.



In areas like Flint and Detroit, there is a history of emergency managers taking control of Black cities from local authorities. When that local power is taken away from city councils, mayors, etc., the residents have less input over decisions that directly impact them and their neighborhoods. As the citizens of both Flint and Detroit will often say, the emergency managers are more concerned with cutting costs than with the actual welfare of the community. In Detroit, some schools are still suffering both academically and financially after emergency management failed to resolve issues and failed students and their families. In Flint, drinking water became contaminated with lead in April of 2014 and Gov. Snyder did not declare a state of emergency until Jan. 5 of this year. That is simply outrageous and a grave miscarriage of justice.



I am not certain what Gov. Snyder was hoping to accomplish by equating his failures to the failures of Katrina. If he meant that it was his challenge in terms of dealing with environmental racism and infrastructure neglect, he may have a point. But if he meant to compare egregious government neglect, which undoubtedly existed with levees and the government's inability to protect the ninth ward of New Orleans, to replacing elected officials with emergency management that created a water catastrophe because they wanted to save money, and his administration ignored the issue since 2014, well then, many would argue that the politics and policies could be even worse than Katrina. Because the residents of Flint were largely voiceless, their complaints were ignored for far too long and their so-called leaders thought nobody would notice.



We at National Action Network, through our local chapter under Rev. Charles Williams, started raising concern over the water crisis along with others in 2015, but we were also disregarded and overlooked. Doctors and others on the ground sounded the alarm over elevated lead levels for some time, but were ignored as well until recently. Everything points to a systemic failure from the top down, and it is yet another example of how the poor and disenfranchised can get so marginalized from society to the point where their water is poisoned, and those in power think they can just brush the issue under the rug. We don't think so.



The National Guard began assisting with distribution of bottled water and filters this month. While that is a good development, it is not enough. Many residents are still forced to bathe in the contaminated water, and most are left wondering why they are still receiving bills for toxic water.
Looking out on the Mediterranean Sea from Tel Aviv is a good time for reflection when ending a study tour of Israel-Palestine. Just over two weeks here has made a few issues clear.

First, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex and does not lend itself to easy answers. Those that claim to know ultimate answers about how to end this conflict only make matters worse. It is also clear that most of the people of Israel-Palestine want peace (with peace being defined in different terms) even if political leaders do not. There is also hope here in the midst of fear during a difficult period.

Peace must come to Israel-Palestine because those that live here (Jew, Muslim, and Christian) have fought too long in ways that dishonor our faith traditions, and the situation is deteriorating under the failed policies of Benjamin Netanyahu.

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It is not uncommon now to hear the treatment of the Palestinian people compared with Apartheid during the reign of white supremacy in South Africa. No one can question that Israeli Palestinians, those that hold citizenship, are second-class citizens, and those that live in refugee camps or Occupied Territories like the West Bank have their human rights trampled on daily.

U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro made this point during a speech this week. Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv, Shapiro said: "Too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough investigations... at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."

Shapiro added that the two-state solution is the only way to prevent Israel from turning into a bi-national state, and said a way must be found to preserve its viability. He noted that the American administration is "concerned and perplexed" in wake of the Israeli government's policy on the settlements, "which raise questions about Israeli intentions."

Palestinians, even citizens, have a lack of access to water, electricity and jobs.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the assassination Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of a radical Orthodox Jew. At his memorial, President Clinton said to the Israeli people:

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Your prime minister was a martyr for peace, but he was a victim of hate. Surely, we must learn from his martyrdom that if people cannot let go of the hatred of their enemies, they risk sowing the seeds of hatred among themselves. I ask you, the people of Israel, on behalf of my nation that knows its own long litany of loss, from Abraham Lincoln to President Kennedy to Martin Luther King, do not let that happen to you. In the Knesset, in your homes, in your places of worship, stay the righteous course. As Moses said to the children of Israel when he knew he would not cross over into the promised land, "Be strong and of good courage. Fear not, for God will go with you. He will not fail you, He will not forsake you."

Ultimately, Israel turned away from Rabin's policies, during a time of increased terror attacks carried out by radical Palestinians as determined as the Jew, who killed Rabin to derail the peace process, and the age of Netanyahu was born.

On my trip here - organized by the by the Center for Jewish, Christian & Islamic Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and made possible by Pacific University - we have heard many conflicting narratives about the land and history of this place. Some have said peace will only come from increased engagement between ordinary Palestinians and Israelis while others have implored President Obama and the United States to take a more active role in forging peace. It seems realistic to say both local engagement and international pressure are needed.

Not long ago, President Obama spoke these words:

"[M]y assessment, which is shared by a number of Israeli observers, I think, is there comes a point where you can't manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices. Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel's traditions?"

J Street, the U.S. based pro-Israel, pro-peace organization, is calling on President Obama to now: "...conduct a review of potential executive actions available to you including (but not limited to): giving force to US opposition to settlements; putting forth US parameters to guide future negotiations; promoting economic development and coexistence programming that move the conflict closer to eventual resolution, working from the ground up." Such actions on the part of the president would seem wise and more positive then the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, which has been both lifted up and criticized by Palestinians and Israelis.

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Earlier this week our group from Chicago Theological Seminary sat atop of the Mount of Beatitudes, read the Sermon on the Mount and reflected on the words in the context of our trip to Israel - Palestine. How can we be peacemakers, we asked?

Dr. Ken Stone, CTS's academic dean, noted the passage "Blessed are the meek" and suggested that part of what we should take away from this trip is a sense of humility. The situation in Israel - Palestine does not lend itself to easy answers. Those that claim to know "the truth" or "the way" forward may cause more trouble and difficulty. That doesn't mean we stop seeking peace. We just engage that process recognizing the complexities and that as Americans we have the potential to offer both hope and to contribute to the chaos.
My Fellow Compatriots,

The lifting of international economic and financial sanctions, which were imposed on the people of Iran as a result of provocative and destabilizing policies of the theocratic regime, could be a reason to rejoice.

The regime's track record demonstrates its sole pursuit of self-interest and self-preservation, rather than national interests. Now, after inflicting various calamities on the Iranian people, we are witnessing the regime's retreat, and once again (as Khomeini first said) had to drink poison from the chalice.

It has been the longstanding policy of Islamic Republic to take hostages or exchange Iranian-Americans hostages to win financial concessions from the West, in order to expand the sphere of the Islamic revolution in the region and beyond.

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Today, we may imagine that by the removal of economic sanctions there could be a window of opportunity for the oppressed people of Iran. However, it is obvious to everyone, that the unfreezing of assets belonging to the people of Iran, will be effectively controlled by a regime that has neither the ability to govern nor the nation's interest in mind.

Now, it is time to follow our national aspirations and not to forget that the Iranian people deserve a place among the top twenty nations in the world. Our nation should not be, and is not satisfied with the minimum which the theocratic regime has imposed on it for years.

It is time to look far beyond receiving minimum government subsidies, and at the prospects of 'equality, welfare and security' for all Iranians.

Now, it is time to take significant steps towards the realization of our national aspirations and interests. We shall join forces to continue our shared struggle with decisiveness to rebuild our beloved homeland. At this critical juncture, every Iranian has the obligation to contribute towards protecting our national interests, and to demand our inalienable rights with the intention of forcing the theocratic regime to retreat once again.

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Reza Pahlavi
FILE - This undated file image posted on a militant website on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows fighters from the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), now called the Islamic State group, marching in Raqqa, Syria. More than a month after the slaying of Abdelqader and his friend Fares Hamadi, the media collective that Abdelqader belonged to _ which secretly documents life at the heart of the Islamic Stateas self-proclaimed caliphate _ has been forced into deep hiding. IS claimed responsibility for the murders in a video message warning that aevery apostate will be slaughtered silently.a It was a grim riff on the media collectiveas name _ Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a reference to the Syrian city of Raqqa that has become synonymous with IS and its efforts to build a caliphate. (AP Photo/Militant Website, File)

I used to say, in just the very recent past, "ISIS is coming," but that has become swiftly out of date. ISIS is here.

ISIS is making a fabulous presentation, replete with a techno-expertise, film-making quality, excellent use of YouTube, making us think that they know what is our value system and that they are unstoppable because of their joyous use of nauseating violence. They are paralyzing the West as they come, and now all of Western Europe sits shivering behind their versions of the Maginot Line. I hope that frightens all of us, but not so much that we lose control. That's what they want -- that we let fear rule our behavior. Amazing that twice in the last 100 years, we are faced with enemies as different from one another as can be and exactly the same if we wash their make up off.

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In the late 1930s, one Adolph Hitler told us in detail exactly what he was going to do to the world, which was to return the world to the fifth century. No discussion, no debate, they meant to kill anyone who didn't fit the bill. At first we actually were dismissive of this monstrous concept and insisted, as most thinking people would, that "he couldn't really mean that." But as he continued to move toward the Atlantic, brazenly lying to us all, it began to occur to us that maybe, just maybe... until the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We at first were speechless with rage, and answered the Japanese, as Admiral Yamamoto's worst nightmare would answer, as an awakened and enraged giant. And then we were gifted by Hitler's first real useful geopolitical blunder. He declared war on us before he had to, and every American who would have argued that Hitler had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, stopped arguing. Before Christmas 1941, we had a two-front World War dropped into our laps. We understood immediately. We agreed we would go to Europe and beat Hitler to death first and then go to the Pacific and destroy the Japanese.

ISIS wants to do the same as Hitler; the particulars are different but the end goal is the same. A caliphate is another term for that same fifth century: a barren, corpse-strewn, intellectually dead time and place where is there is no argument to make, no negotiation to put forth. There is only submission and death for all, including a majority of their own Islamic brothers and England, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Us.

After Paris, the French attacked ISIS with planes and bombs, immediately. That's our expensive and futile Maginot line. Does anyone believe that will take care of the problem? Aren't there alternatives to a "military option?'' Can we bomb a movement that has no nation but definitely has a strong belief system, like we used to have? Haven't we learned that every bomb creates terrorists?

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We committed tens of billions of dollars to equip and train the Iraqi army, and watched as they faded and ran for their lives as the first echo of the first barrage came at them. Why? Because they had no belief system to support them, and their opponents certainly do.

It's 1940 people, pay attention.

So what's to do?

We can teach our soldiers what they're fighting for, for one. We can give them ammunition in their heads to know why we fight. We have the most beautiful pearl of how to live on this Earth -- a system of government that was the first and only one to respect each individual. We had it, polished it up, and the whole world began to want it and as their desire became urgent we changed the political goals of the entire world -- until we did the dumbest thing we could and stopped teaching it.

If we don't revive the teaching of civic authority to this and every generation, which is the mandate of The Dreyfuss Initiative, ISIS will behead our infants on YouTube. But if we do revive it, it can create a sturdy platform that we all stand on, left to right. We can learn to think light on our feet, connect the dots and find the way to beat the caliphate-to-be and watch it collapse like a pierced balloon.

If this article were a dialogue held in a bar or tavern at anytime before 250 years ago, it would have to be whispered. For the entire length of our civilization discussions like this would have to be whispered, because if anyone overheard us, we would be lashed, our fingers chopped off, we'd be killed. The gift this country gave the world could be summed up by absence of that fear.

Start teaching the contents of the Bill of Rights; what can you lose?

The United States is at the most critical point in its history. For years our nation has abandoned developing the knowledge, skills and wisdom necessary for each generation to ensure the continued success of our form of government. As Alexander Hamilton said, "What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws." The comprehension and ability to maintain this republican democracy is more of an elemental requirement for the survival of this nation than any other subject. We are a unique and miraculous nation, the only nation held together solely by ideas. If each generation does not understand and appreciate those ideas, the miracle of America will be lost.

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Is ISIS smarter than the authors of the Bill of Rights? We already know they aren't close. Teach our children our values with the honest urgency they deserve: Learn this and you might live; refuse to learn that freedoms are stronger than conversion by the sword, and die on your knees.
Democratic presidential candidate, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley , left, Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, stand together before the start of the NBC, YouTube Democratic presidential debate at the Gaillard Center, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)

Not a day passes that I don't get a call from the media asking me to compare Bernie Sanders's and Hillary Clinton's tax plans, or bank plans, or health-care plans.

I don't mind. I've been teaching public policy for much of the last thirty-five years. I'm a policy wonk.

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But detailed policy proposals are as relevant to the election of 2016 as is that gaseous planet beyond Pluto. They don't have a chance of making it, as things are now.

The other day Bill Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders's proposal for a single-payer health plan as unfeasible and a "recipe for gridlock."

Yet these days, nothing of any significance is feasible and every bold idea is a recipe for gridlock.

This election is about changing the parameters of what's feasible and ending the choke hold of big money on our political system.

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I've known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, she's the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have.

But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he's leading a political movement for change.

The upcoming election isn't about detailed policy proposals. It's about power -- whether those who have it will keep it, or whether average Americans will get some as well.

A study published in the fall of 2014 by Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern's Benjamin Page reveals the scale of the challenge.

Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence on them of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens.

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Their conclusion: "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically insignificant impact upon public policy."

Instead, lawmakers respond to the moneyed interests - those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

It's sobering that Gilens and Page's data come from the period 1981 to 2002, before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in its "Citizens United" and "McCutcheon" decisions. Their study also predated the advent of super PACs and "dark money," and even the Wall Street bailout.

If average Americans had a "near-zero" impact on public policy then, their impact is now zero.

Which explains a paradox I found a few months ago when I was on book tour in the nation's heartland: I kept bumping into people who told me they were trying to make up their minds in the upcoming election between Sanders and Trump.

At first I was dumbfounded. The two are at opposite ends of the political divide. But as I talked with these people, I kept hearing the same refrains. They wanted to end "crony capitalism." They detested "corporate welfare," such as the Wall Street bailout.

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They wanted to prevent the big banks from extorting us ever again. Close tax loopholes for hedge-fund partners. Stop the drug companies and health insurers from ripping off American consumers. End trade treaties that sell out American workers. Get big money out of politics.

Somewhere in all this I came to see the volcanic core of what's fueling this election.

If you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, and who understand that the political-economic system is rigged against you and in favor of the rich and powerful, what are you going to do?

Either you're going to be attracted to an authoritarian son-of-a-bitch who promises to make America great again by keeping out people different from you and creating "great" jobs in America, who sounds like he won't let anything or anybody stand in his way, and who's so rich he can't be bought off.

Or you'll go for a political activist who tells it like it is, who has lived by his convictions for fifty years, who won't take a dime of money from big corporations or Wall Street or the very rich, and who is leading a grass-roots "political revolution" to regain control over our democracy and economy.

In other words, either a dictator who promises to wrest power back to the people, or a movement leader who asks us to join together to wrest power back to the people.

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You don't care about the details of proposed policies and programs.

You just want a system that works for you.
The other day, a colleague was telling me about Sanga Moses, founder of Eco Fuel Africa. He quit a good job as an accountant in Uganda when he saw that his sister had to miss school to gather firewood for cooking, which is what women had to do in his village. People thought he was crazy, but with just $500, Sanga found a way to turn waste from sugar cane into a clean cooking fuel, allowing girls to attend school. Because I don't know what life is like in rural Uganda, I could not have thought up this solution.

Imagine the possibilities of applying technology to solve problems. Imagine that young men and women with no previous experience start creating mobile apps to impact some of their community's most pressing social problems. Imagine turning young women who have developed confidence in STEM skills loose on a massive challenge like decarbonizing our planet?

All this is already happening: what's happening next is whatever you can possibly imagine.

Steve Jobs famously said that "people don't know what they want until you show it to them," so he had his designers design for themselves. While it worked for Jobs, this can't be a blanket approach to problem solving. If you only have designers who share a similar set of life experiences, they can't possibly imagine solutions to problems outside that experience.

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How do we expand opportunities for equitable creativity? First, there MUST be equal access to technology. Then, we need training to show young designers how they can be more than just a user of technology, but also a maker. Only then will we be fully able to tap into the potential and perspective of our whole society, unlocking what students from all backgrounds have to offer.

One program in which I'm involved has shown a way forward. Under our CSR mantle, we give every student and teacher participating in the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program their own mobile tablet and data plan, which give them 24-7 access to the Internet.

Students are taught how to use these powerful tools responsibly and teachers are trained to effectively promote hands-on learning experiences that help students build skills such as creativity, critical thinking and collaboration. And, in these schools the initial results are positive; teachers report that students are more engaged, they work more collaboratively and they are more interested in STEM.

If you give students the opportunities, they can achieve breakthroughs. I've seen it. Middle school students create apps to help blind classmates navigate their schools, provide lab experiences for students at schools without facilities, and identify fellow students who might be experiencing emotional problems and who need help.

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If you're in the technology business, you know that finding qualified people is hard. There's just not enough talent to fill the available jobs. Women and minorities are conspicuously absent from this field, and that means we're all missing out. How do we find "new blood" and fresh thinking?

Mobile access and education programs work. They help us foster next generation workers and innovators who create exciting new ideas. It's absolutely critical that those of us in the business community bring our expertise, CSR resources, and innovation to students in underserved communities to bridge the digital divide, in and out of the classroom.

We are building a movement to ignite every student's entrepreneurial spirit, delivering the promise that the digital world holds for them - the promise of a brighter future. This is extraordinarily exciting for me because I know that technology is a very potent fuel for the flame of creativity and the spirit of innovation, and I know how much we need this next generation's ideas and energy. We are at a moment that allows our children to transform themselves - and their world - into whatever each of them can possibly imagine.

For the second conversation in our Purpose@Work series -- a discussion designed to explore how we can infuse a deep sense of purpose into our work -- we're going to focus on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the theme of this year's World Economic Forum in Davos.
I am a sucker for visiting places that make me forget about the rest of life, places that set the backdrop of a new story that I get to write myself. And, there is a certain magic that happens when a woman follows a major vision into fruition. Bandit Town was just that.....an escape to a different time and land, led by a woman who stumbled into a vision.

I went to Bandit Town, sort of on a whim. I had heard tales of the rad lady who bought an old western town outside of historic North Fork in the exact center of California, and was throwing events there. Many of my favorite artists and musicians had been buzzing about it on Instagram so naturally I was interested. It looked great in photos, and the concept of an authentic but reinvisioned old west experience sounded to good to miss.

The Bandit Town Labor Day Campout had a great ring to it, so a gaggle of friends and I decided to go. I left my kids at home, although I must say that half the time I was there I wished I would have brought them because it would have blown their little wild girl minds.

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I packed up my best western gear, and my hair styling kit, in case anyone wanted country lady hair while we were there. I flew to Fresno that afternoon, met some friends at the airport, and drove through North Fork California and into Bandit Town with a trunk full of leatherwear and camping gear as the afternoon light chased sunset from the smoky hills of Yosemite to the west coast.

My first impression of the place was that I felt like I had walked into a different time. I left my life as I knew it at the front gate, and transported to an old west dreamland. There were wooden buildings scattered around the property, an old church house with a white steeple, a saloon, stables, and animals everywhere. Kittens lounged on porches, chickens clucked about, and horses grazed lazily in the pasture. The country vernacular on that still late afternoon was illuminated by animal sounds and the smell of hot sweet grass. Bandit Town was a story of a time that had passed, and we were ready to help write it in our own words, just for the weekend.

Jennifer McMillian, founder of Bandit Town, came to great us. She welcomed us warmly and showed us around the property. She introduced us to her earless pet pig, who had met an unfortunate fate the week before. The pig had been attacked by dogs and had it's ears chewed off. Jen told the story with humor and the slightest country twang, like it was just another day in the wild west.

Our weekend was spent lounging on the old porch, eating fry bread tacos and ham sandwiches made by grandmas from nearby North Fork, drinking cheap beer, taking photos, perusing racks of vintage clothes and handmade leatherware, two-stepping lessons and great country music, chasing animals and making friends. The vibes were positive among the people of Bandit Town who appeared to be a vibrant mix of city folks, country folks, bikers, war vets, artists, photographers, old timers, and hipsters who had come out to enjoy the labor day festivities in fine country style.

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I almost got a Harley ride from Annette, a true biker queen from North Fork, but it didn't quite pan out. I did learn about why she really loves the Harley (that big vibrating motor that you get to sit on) I had the pleasure of braiding an older mans beard in exchange for Vietnam war stories and a crystal. We met all sorts of different folks that weekend. We felt like a part of something special. We didn't feel like we had to impress anybody and we felt like we had a new outlaw family.

When it was time to go home, I cried a little bit. I wanted to go home, I missed my kids and Husband, but to be honest, I just wasn't quite ready to leave Bandit Town.

On our way out, Jennifer yelled " Y'all come on back, ya hear?" in a completely un-ironic way. 'We Will!' I yelled. Inside, I thought of ways that I could avoid having to leave and drag it out another couple of days. I wasn't quite dusty enough to leave, that was my excuse to myself. Needless to say, I will be back for another country fix.

If you need a good shaking out of the doldrums of daily life. and you love the old west, great country music, the great outdoors, and animals, I highly suggest attending one of Bandit Towns many events, and while you are there, find Jen and introduce yourself to the mayor of Bandit Town.
The best advice I can give on how to be happy is to manage your emotional weight. This means that while you might not be feeling happy all the time (and what a relief to not have the pressure of walking around like little Ms. Sunshine 24/7!), you've at least owned whatever mood you truly are in and feel lighter because of it. And hey, you might end up feeling happy because you're allowing yourself to feel pissed off, sad or anxious.

I came to this understanding in part from something my dad has said to me all my life: "No one can take away your happiness." It took me a long time to really understand the wisdom behind the words, but now, it is has become a mantra that I repeat to myself whenever I'm in doubt or feeling unhappy.

Please enjoy the excerpt below from my new book, The Nalini Method: 7 Workouts for 7 Moods which shares my challenging journey in understanding this now well-used mantra:

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Growing up, I saw disappointments in my father's life. Family took advantage of him, business partners stole from him, and he experienced death of loved ones, betrayal, and countless other challenging situations. And yet, without a hint of doubt in his delivery, he always proudly said, "I'm happy."

Was he lying? Was he in denial? Was he just trying to protect me? Was this his coping mechanism? Where was his doubt? I just didn't understand because it made me question my own feelings. I didn't always feel happy. Was there something wrong with me?

Given time and experience, I finally understood this lesson. I not only deeply believe my father when he says he is happy, but I also constantly and genuinely say it myself. I've learned how to push past my doubts and shut off that little nagging voice that wants so badly to tell me how much I messed up and will continue to mess up!

When I was nine years old, I was upset because I wasn't "cool" at school. I thought that if I only figured out how to achieve coolness, I would truly be happy. "I'm not happy because those girls at school don't think I'm cool," I said to my dad.

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"Honey, no one can take away your happiness," he quickly replied.

"What do you mean?" I retorted. "They already have. Maybe they don't want me to be happy. Maybe they really don't like me. I know I could be cool! I'm just not. I have to do something different."

"So you think if you change who you are you'll be happy?" he asked.

"Yes," I said defiantly. "I'll be more like them and we'll be friends. If I'm cool, I'll be happy and they'll be happy too!"

"Honey, you can't give away your happiness, either."

"But what if I want to?"

"You still can't."

"I do things that make you and Mommy happy, don't I?" I asked, frustrated.

"No. We make ourselves happy."

I went off to my room to cry, crushed by his harsh (yet truthful) words. How could my own father tell me that I didn't make him happy? I felt utterly powerless, insignificant, and confused about being happy ever again. (And I certainly would never be cool!) I knew my father truly loved me, but he was telling me that who I was and what I did didn't change him. I had always thought there was an easy solution for being happy and that I had a direct effect on others' happiness.

For my father, however, happiness and doubt were choices. A choice between embracing your ability to control the way you experience life, thereby allowing yourself to feel an entire range of emotions from the most ecstatically positive to the most painfully negative, and not embracing your ability to control the way you experience life, thereby reacting to both positive and negative emotions.

In other words, my father was telling me to take responsibility. He wanted me to own my moral compass and find the ability to point the magnetic needle due north, in the opposite direction of the doubts that were pulling me down.

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Allowing myself to feel doubt or sadness versus reacting with doubt and sadness may seem like a subtle choice. But in my life, it's been the difference between happiness and unhappiness. Surrendering and accepting my emotions in order to more effectively express and release them is what helped me push past the doubts about being cool in school and move beyond the current doubts that creep up when I'm trying to complete a project or achieve a goal.

My father knows that whatever happens, his reaction is up to him. He chooses to feel happy or unhappy. He was genuinely happy even after getting married without parental approval, coming to America with only $8, working three jobs, and losing all of his hard-earned money in a fire that burned down his first business. It's his resilience and unwillingness to surrender his own happiness to the outside world that have allowed him to create a life without doubt. Now I love it when he says, "Rupa, you are the captain of your soul and the driver of your own life. No one can take away your happiness."
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is not my Khalifa. How can I barter my freedoms for a life of perpetual servitude? The self-styled caliph claims authority on the basis of lineage. Al-Baghdadi claims to be the sovereign on behalf of the Muslims of the world because he is a Qureshi - sharing tribal bonds with the holy prophet . This in itself is an anathema, an insult, to the 1.6-billion-strong Muslim community. How could one pledge allegiance to a person who has no other moral standing besides being a tribal progeny of the prophet? Being a South Asian Muslim, I feel like forever condemned to be a second-class citizen if I were to pledge allegiance.

The Indonesians who carried out the recent attacks in Jakarta (allegedly at the behest of ISIS) are a pawn in the hands of the Qureshi elite. The hundreds of European Muslims, who came flocking to Da'esh's call of establishing an Islamic state, are practically a tool to enforce the superiority of a minority. Those leaving behind their homelands largely comprise of South Asians and Africans - two of the least plausible groups to have Qureshi ancestry. They are left with doing the nasty work, executing innocent people and expanding the reign of terror. Per al-Baghdadi's logic, the bourgeoisie of Da'esh should comprise of the Quresh while the rest should tag along as measly underlings.

That notion could have been accepted fourteen hundred years ago; when Islam was still a religion of the Arabian Peninsula. It can no longer be taken as a given. Arabs now comprise only one-fifth of the global community of Muslims; the Quresh even less. The caliph - if there has to be one - thus logically has to be a non-Arab.

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The claim for superiority and leadership based on race is not new to Islam. It started with the death of the prophet Mohammad when Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, was thought by some to be the most viable successor . The caliph, however, was elected by a council of elders comprising of close companions of the prophet. The notion that Ali had some divine right to caliphate was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Shiites despise the first three caliphs based on this very rejection of (in their view) divine ordination of Ali and his off-springs. Ali ultimately assumed the caliphate after the assassination of his predecessor, Uthman.

The assassination and the subsequent lack of accountability for the killers led Ayesha, the favorite wife of the prophet, to demand an answer from Ali. The caliphate forces met with the army led by Ayesha (yes a woman at helm) in what is now modern-day Iraq. Confusion and internal rifts led to the complete annihilation of Ayesha's army. She conceded defeat, retiring to a life in Medina. While Ayesha distanced herself completely from politics, many still flocked to her to benefit from her knowledge on as varied matters as jurisprudence and social welfare.

That a woman actually led an army and was considered a highly learned person of her times should have been a cause celebre for the Muslims. Far from it. Shiites revile Ayesha for standing up to Ali. Sunnis, despite having an esteemed view of her, tend to overlook her ground-breaking achievements. Noted Muslim feminist Fatima Mernissi, in her book The Veil and the Male Elite, failed to find any divine ordinations to suggest a forbiddance of women leadership , as the latter theologians postulated. The precedent, apparently, didn't suit the chauvinistic, male-dominated kingdoms that emerged after the end of caliphate.

Da'esh enforces the same constricted, deeply-entrenched misogynistic worldview. The organization is just an extension of the extremist groups that tend to overlook the role of women while formulating their repressive policies. The caliphate of Al-Baghdadi is thus not a true reincarnation of the "Golden Age" as it relegates women to a secondary status. And it is deeply racist.

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Da'esh's ambition of winning the obligation of the entire Muslim World will only remain a pipedream. It rose because the Iran-backed Shiite militias and the Iraqi army left no stone unturned in persecuting the hapless Sunnis, who had earlier worked with the U.S. forces to eliminate Al-Qaeda. Da'esh gained ground because the Bashar al-Assad regime was and still is hell-bent on exterminating Syrian citizens. To think of erasing Daesh while retaining the dictatorial regime - and propping up its backers - is a recipe for disaster.
In the middle of the crisis, Krysta Strasbaugh sees the banana trees. Their flat, broad leaves flutter like flags of truce above the barbed wire over the protective wall. She watches them every evening from the front porch where she nestles head to toe with her son on a twin-sized mattress, her toddler daughter on the smaller bed next to her. She listens to Armand and Rose breathe in and out, in and out, as she watches the rise and fall of their bare bellies.

"You are my lullabies," she whispers. "A silent night indeed."

A cockroach twitches in their bed. Out there, beyond the cement rooms and the tall, steel gray gate of the orphanage, lies the sprawling capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kinshasa. A rhythmic mass of 11 million people in burgeoning slums and high rises. Out there, the Kinois are quick to give a greeting and tell her what they need before selling her what they've got. And they've all got something.

"Bana no yo?" (Are they your children?) they ask. "You've taken those children!" they yell. They don't understand her, in the commotion out there.

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Krysta marvels at them from the top step of the porch, Kinshasa's lights flickering different shapes and sizes. More lights than she's seen in months, in the sliver of twinkling city that hovers above the concrete barrier. It occurs to her she'd spent all that time at eye level with her small children.



She snuggles closer to Armand and Rose, cocooned in the mosquito net that hangs from the porch's ceiling and wraps under their mattresses on the floor. She swats the roach with her iPhone and then she prays.

This is limbo.

Krysta's husband, James, is 8,500 miles away in Seattle. To get there, to bring her family together, she waits for one signature. But Congo refuses to let its children go.

"It's at a critical point," Krysta says. "Children need to be with their families."

The Strasbaughs were devastated when Congo finalized the adoption of Armand and Rose, and then informed them that the children couldn't leave. Neither could more than 1,000 other impoverished Congolese orphans, whose adoptive families were waiting for them around the world. The immigration minister wouldn't sign their exit papers. The central African nation brought a sudden stop to adopted children leaving the country, over concerns their new families may abuse or abandon them. The Congolese government later blamed allegedly falsified documents for the delay and told the U.S. State Department that corruption within Congo's adoption system needed reform.

"Okay. Fair enough. But then do something," Ambassador Susan Jacobs, U.S. State Department Special Advisor for Children's Issues, said in a recent telephone interview. "But don't punish children who aren't to blame and not let adoptions finalized by Congolese court go through."

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In September of 2013, Congo's government informed the State Department the suspension would last up to one year while it considered a new adoption law. The issue devolved into diplomatic deadlock that dragged on for more than 2 years. Today, more than a thousand orphans remain stuck in the adoption pipeline.

"We have offered assistance," Jacobs says. "It makes no sense to us."

On January 19, Congo budged. The government rolled out new adoption legislation, saying every international adoption case had been reviewed. Every case. Adoptive parents, exhausted from dashed hope and outrage, whose cases were already approved by Congolese courts, want to believe their children are finally coming home.

"Parents are trying to temper their emotions, but you really can't contain this type of thing," Krysta says, as other adoptive families light up her phone. "Everything in us wants this to be it!"

The new adoption law goes to a vote in March. Adoptive families were informed that exit visas could be approved as early as the next few weeks. But until the government clarifies how many orphans will be allowed to leave the country, adoptive families remain at the mercy of a government that has not kept its word.

Ben, Leseli, Elijah, Glodi, Titus, Josephine and Pal are children who will never meet their adoptive parents, according to Mama Bears on a Mission. The group of adoptive mothers worldwide believes they are among at least 26 Congolese orphans who died waiting for exit visas. Krysta has a picture of the most recent heartbreak, a toddler in a pink bowed blouse and hair in six curly braids, who the organization says died in December.

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Joseph is the name Emma Clement-Wriede is fighting to keep off that list. Emma is a Mama Bear in the Middle East who, with her husband, adopted two children from Congo. Since the suspension was put in place, her son Joseph has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Doctors say even a mild case of Malaria, a rampant disease in Africa, could be fatal to the 3-year-old. The couple has specialists waiting for Joseph, and knows things would be different had he been with his family, receiving proper care over the past year.

"At times it's been more difficult than I can say," Emma says. I'm talking with her on Facebook. It's 1 p.m. on Thursday in Kuwait, another day Emma waits for Congo to approve the medical exit permits she requested 2 months ago for both Joseph and 4-year-old Evie-Grace. She's never met her children, but is determined to communicate with them as often as she can. "Those children are mine, and I am theirs. There is no ocean, mountain, or politician that will break a mother's love for her child."

International law is in place to protect the best interests of children who, like Joseph and Evie-Grace, are being adopted across borders. Congo isn't party to the agreement.

"It's about all of the children." Ambassador Susan Jacobs says families in America are still waiting for 400 Congolese orphans. "We aren't giving up."

When Krysta and James were told to go back to Seattle without her kids, Krysta moved onto the front porch of Armand and Rose's foster home because the garage was being used as a kitchen.

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"I just wanted to be with our kids," Krysta explains. "This was one thing we could control."

The foyer, 10-feet-wide by 20-feet-long, became her family's refuge. She stuffed towels into cracks to keep the cockroaches out, learned how to tuck the net snug and tight to keep Malaria-carrying mosquitoes at bay, draped a decorative scarf on the wall, and called it home. She was a sign-language interpreter in Seattle, but in Kinshasa she became a teacher to 40 children waiting for exit papers. Trading language lessons with the guards, she learned to speak Lingala fluently. She understood when orphans played with her skirt and asked, "Where's my mom?" and "When will my parents come from another place?" Mama Krysta, as they called her, didn't have answers. No one did.

"Many of us believed Congolese leadership wanted what's best for the children, that they were sincere in their efforts to protect them and put safeguards in place," Krysta says. "But as more time went by, it added to a layer of confusion. What is this about?"

The skepticism was mutual. The Kinois took pictures and questioned her at the bus stop when they saw Rose tied to Krysta's back in a liputa, the same way Congolese mothers carry their own children in rectangular pieces of patterned fabric. Establishing who she was, and why she was in Kinshasa, became a frequent and necessary conversation.

"Kitoko!" Beautiful, some said, and offered her a seat on a crowded bus. Sometimes the conversations led to friendship and prayers for her family, free transportation around town, a papaya on her doorstep, ice cream and nail polish on her birthday, and forgiveness for the steepness of her learning curve; speaking sentences in Lingala initially stumped her.

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Other times, heads turned away, shaking disapproval. Strangers, men lining paved roads in the center of town, spewed insults and animosity at her family. Her car couldn't dodge the words fast enough to keep Rose and Armand from hearing them through the cracked window. Krysta wanted to shield her children from the firestorm and to understand the misconceptions.

"It seemed hard for them to accept that a mother from the other side of the world could love an adopted child, especially the way they love a biological child," she says. "Why would a mother do that?"

She and James suffered when their adoption of a 12-year-old girl in China failed. They lost contact with the child, and never fully recovered. The Strasbaughs tried again. They asked Rainbow Kids, an international adoption network, to help them.

"We saw the picture of Armand, and that's all we needed," Krysta says.

Hours after the Strasbaughs sent in their adoption papers, Krysta learned that she was pregnant. She miscarried several weeks later, but emotionally settled on the idea of a family of four. She and James wanted Armand and his sibling to share race and heritage. Krysta was in Seattle, shopping for baby shoes, when she got the call about Rose. She remembers sitting on a bench and cupping the phone in her hand. On it was a picture of their 1-year-old daughter. Their new family seemed within reach.

But in Kinshasa, convincing Congolese leadership of her intentions, was a challenge.

"Love is what makes a family," Krysta says. "We want Congo to know that we love our children, and we love their home country immensely."

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She brought Armand and Rose with her to the offices of politicians, whose names she won't divulge in exchange for their empathy and respect. Inevitably the conversation would pause when she needed to find a coloring book, provide a snack, or make a potty run. This time, diplomatic deadlock would do the waiting.

"You could see countenances change. It was real. I am a mom. My kids need me the same way their children need them," Krysta says of the politicians. "We saw each other, not just the layers of cross-cultural communication, systems, and red tape."

Krysta found allies in Congo's government. Politicians who supported adoptive families reassured her that messages of love and collaboration were helping to make the case for action.

Weeks went by. Months. A year.

"Sometimes it feels like we're living a different iteration of the same day a million times," she wrote. Time was indifferent. Like the Congolese government, it stood by and watched while her children grew up on the front porch, and later in an apartment down the street. Rose's tiny halo of dark mahogany curls began to spiral sunward. And when she hugged Armand close one day, she realized he'd already grown another inch past her belly button. Her husband tried to mark the milestones with her through the computer screen. The kids blew kisses to James, "Papa," and their little dog, Sammy.

James works in Seattle as a project manager at World Vision. Their budget was already stretched, so the Strasbaughs spent just 10 days together in a year. Sending Papa back to Seattle alone, that goodbye, was painful for everyone. The looming wait, the unpredictability, became brutal over time. Other families had had enough. Some became so exasperated, they smuggled their children out of Congo, risking arrest and ultimately losing their kids.

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Congo had continued to quash adoptive families' hopes. The government canceled the opportunity to meet with adoptive families in Washington D.C., a welfare check on Congolese children living in the U.S. Adoption administrators granted some exit visas early on, but to only 62 orphans. They ignored the one-year suspension deadline and blocked any exceptions.

Desperate and divided over their support for hard line or citizen diplomacy, adoptive families became hopeful, again. Last spring, Congo opened the adoption files and began to consider the cases.

"Surrender All" was a hymn Krysta recognized. Music from a nearby church frequently floated over the foster home's wall. Krysta hummed along from the front porch, her emotional incubator, where joy and grief tugged at her. That's where she began to embrace the poetry of the place. Congo became her family's calm, their rocking chair. Back and forth, back and forth. Mama Feza was a regular visitor to the foster home. Her colorful skirt swayed with reassurance, rustling under her bright red shawl and the cassava leaves she carried on her head. On a good day, Mama Feza would slit and fry silver fish, and the kids would strip them of their tiniest bones. Back and forth, back and forth. The nannies swept with "kombos," brooms of bristles collected from the spines of fallen palm fronds and bundled by hollowed tomato paste cans. Scrub, wring, rinse, wring, hang, repeat. Krysta found rhythmic comfort in routine piles of laundry. On days when the home had water, she'd carry bucketfuls up the slanted yard to the steps and look for solace in the soapy bubbles. She'd bathe her children at night, in a corner of the yard where they used flashlights to play with their shadows on the wall.

"There is no place I'd rather be." Krysta wrote in a letter for her children to treasure. "Don't you ever believe them if you hear this was a sacrifice. I want you to remember Congo, not only in your minds but also in your hearts and bodies. Congo is a beautiful part of you, sweet child, and you are a magnificent part of it. Someday our family will live together in the U.S. And as amazing as together will be, please know you don't ever have to close the door on your beginning."

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Krysta felt nauseous in the waiting room at the immigration office. She wasn't sure if was sickness or anxiety. Or both. The Congolese government had begun the review of adoption cases, as promised, but only 100 cases were considered and about 72 approved. It was such a small percentage. Krysta knew how many orphans were waiting, and her emotions were once again split between hurting and healing. Armand and Rose were among those going home.

"I just couldn't believe it all came down to one piece of paper!"

The office staff waved her out with a happy "Bon Voyage," and Krysta's driver congratulated her. She snapped a photo of the paper and sent it to her husband. He was just a few minutes away, past the plaza, over the small bridge, and left of the bread stand, at their apartment, waiting with the kids. She couldn't get there fast enough. She needed to arrange travel details and say goodbye to the many people who had helped her family. Overwhelmed with gratitude and disbelief, Krysta stopped packing to check the folder several times, making sure it was really there, the document that would deliver her family from limbo.



After they checked in at N'djil International Airport, James put his hand on Krysta's shoulder and held her close. They cleared security. All they had to do was walk their children to the gate and board the plane home.

"This is it?" James's voice cracked. No more separation. No more goodbyes.

When I first see Krysta, she's praying. There are small, sweaty hands holding balloon strings, and there are teardrops on cheeks. A mother's eyes closed, her husband's arm around her. Their children's eyes open, peering at the world around them. It's more space than they are accustomed to in this new place called home.

"Merci, Nzambe."

Krysta thanks God in the International Terminal at Sea-Tac Airport, suffused in the love of friends and family she's seeing for the first time in 21 months. Rose and Armand are 3 and 7 years old. They were released just in time to make the 22-hour journey to this Silent Night. Everyone is singing now. It's Christmas Eve and Grandma's house is waiting for them. "Nkoko," as the kids call her, kept all of her Christmas decorations up for an entire year, anticipating this homecoming.

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Krysta buckles her children into the backseat of their car before they leave the airport's parking garage. James, her strength, is by her side. Tomorrow is Christmas. There is a walk in the dog park with Sammy, a stop for frozen yogurt, and a visit to the Space Needle in the days ahead. They are home, and together, at last.

But out there, beyond continents and oceans, diplomatic deadlock, permits and promises, are spears of long grass still streaming against Congo's midnight blue sky. Out there, a thousand children are languishing in limbo under the banana trees, breathing in and out, Congo's precious lullabies.

Photo credits: Strasbaugh Family and Asa Mathat
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pauses while speaking at a campaign event Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, in Independence, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Democrats have such a nasty habit of trashing themselves that it's remarkable they ever win an election. Take the situation right now. They have, effectively, two presidential candidates. One, Hillary Clinton, looked like a sure winner and a shoo-in to be the next president. The other, Bernie Sanders, is unelectable.

Clinton's good prospects were only improved by the emergence of the ignorant, racist Donald Trump and the hated wingnut Ted Cruz as leaders in the Republican race. That's true even though she's far from a really strong candidate, and can't seem to generate much enthusiasm.

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However, Clinton has an unexpected problem: She's currently being tripped up by the unlikeliest of foes: a 74-year-old Jewish senator from tiny Vermont, who really isn't even a Democrat.

Until he got into the race for president last year, Bernie Sanders was the longest serving independent in the history of Congress, with more than a generation in the House and Senate. He calls himself a democratic socialist. But his voting record reads like that of a liberal Democrat, as the New York Times pointed out recently:



Mr. Sanders does not want to nationalize the steel mills or the auto companies or even the banks. Like Mrs. Clinton, he believes in a mixed economy, where capitalist institutions are mediated through taxes and regulation. He just wants more taxes and more regulation than Mrs. Clinton does. He certainly seems like a regular Democrat, only more so.



Despite those facts, Sanders hangs on to his description of himself as a socialist, a word he himself admits makes many Americans "very, very nervous."

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"Socialist" has long been a dirty word in American politics, a slur thrown at liberals that evokes Cold War-era images of bread lines, government-controlled economies and authoritarian regimes.

It still is a dirty word. Not necessarily among members of the Democratic party's left wing, but for fully half the American people. A Gallup poll last June showed 50% of Americans would refuse to vote for a well-qualified socialist candidate for president, a larger negative percentage than for any other category Gallup chose to ask about: including a Jew, gay or lesbian, Muslim or atheist. Clearly, Sanders' repeated description of himself as a socialist is his way of acknowledging that he knows he's not electable, but is running simply to move the Democratic agenda to the left.

In fact, the senator has managed to make the word "socialism" less tainted in New Hampshire, where TPM's composite PollTracker shows him ahead of Clinton by 7 points. In Iowa, the first caucus state, the Real Clear Politics poll average shows him trailing Clinton by only 6. But nationwide, Clinton continues to hold a double-digit lead against him, although that lead has narrowed from more than 25 points in both the poll composites to about a dozen points in recent weeks.

Young Democratic voters favor Sanders, especially because of his endorsement of Medicare for everyone, more emphasis than Clinton on raising the minimum wage, limiting income inequality, climate change and taking a tougher stand against business and for more regulation.

The problem is, as Clinton has been at pains to point out, that the current Congressional realities make those goals unrealistic, and that trying to pursue them, especially expanding Medicare in the present political climate, might not only fail but eliminate Obamacare.

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Today's situation could end up reminiscent of two previous Democratic disasters: The decision of too many liberals to stay home instead of voting for Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968 because they saw him as too supportive of President Johnson's Viet Nam war; and the decision of hundreds of thousands of liberals to vote for Independent candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 instead of Democrat Al Gore.

Humphrey's loss gave this country the criminal President Richard Nixon. And Nader took away enough votes from Gore, especially in Florida, to hand this country over to George W. Bush, arguably the worst president in modern American history.
It's a classic case of "wag the dog." Harvard gets national attention for its report, "Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions," and hopes to inspire a more caring and authentic generation of young people. While certainly a noble assessment lending sound advice to college bound students, this report is a smoke screen distracting from the real issues undermining the integrity of the college application process.

Ironically, days before the publication of "Turning the Tide," the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation released a different report. "True Merit: Ensuring Our Brightest Students Have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities" focused on what colleges can do differently to level the playing field and change a process that has given distinct advantages to students from privileged and well-connected backgrounds.

Without widespread changes from the top down, the idea of a "level playing field" in higher education is a fallacy. Giving students a high-minded outline for becoming better applicants doesn't change the underlying problem. Institutional biases continue to corrupt a process that should be pure and noble. Instead of admitting the best and brightest, elite colleges stick to an arcane blueprint which is drawn with bold lines favoring certain preferred groups.

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Our elite colleges admit and deny at will under the auspices of "holistic admissions." They don't have to explain why certain demographic groups have significantly lower admit rates than others. The public only sees an overall number, not a breakdown of how some groups are favored or not favored.

The fact is, students who know the realities of the college admissions process are afraid to be authentic. They don't want to be "called out" based on their cultural affiliations or, worse yet, share their real names for fear it will be held against them. Until colleges provide transparency with admit rates, this outright discrimination will continue to define college admissions practices.

"Turning the Tide" barely addresses the role of privilege and money in college admissions. In a glancing approach to this, the report suggests colleges should send out different messaging to ensure students understand that expensive activities and exotic service trips do not add value to their applications. But how will they effectively communicate this?

Colleges could rewrite the rules of admissions and access by embracing the very words directed at students in the Harvard report: "Promoting more meaningful contributions to others, community service and engagement with the public good." If elite colleges gave low income students the information they need, they would bear witness to a groundswell of genuinely great and diverse applications.

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But, one look at a college admissions officer's travel itinerary makes perfectly clear which students matter to elite colleges. They visit the same high schools year after year -- those attended by "competitive" students who will drive up application totals and test score averages. The kids at these high schools will seek out elite colleges no matter what. It's the top students at lower performing high schools who won't. They need to see admissions officers in the flesh to believe these institutions truly want them on their campuses.

Harvard's report doesn't address the cost of education, nor does it discuss financial aid. With the exception of a few schools, the majority of the colleges endorsing "Turning the Tide" heavily factor in a student's "ability to pay" when making admissions decisions. At most institutions, applying for financial aid lowers a student's chance of admission.

Finally, "Turning the Tide" overlooks the way elite colleges lower their standards to admit legacies, athletes and well-connected students. We can no longer ignore this common practice that leaves little room for those authentic students the report hopes to cultivate. Until the leadership at elite colleges decides to depart from this practice, the exceptional applicants will need to settle for happy talk and empty encouragement.
At long last, some good news from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It seems all levels of the government are working rather well together, coordinating and synchronizing activities on the comprehensive set of social and economic reforms meant to create a better fiscal and legal framework, to attract more investments, curb corruption, renew economic growth and set the country firmly towards European Union membership. The international community supports the effort, launched by the UK and Germany earlier last year. Twenty years after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, bringing peace to this war-torn nation, the country struggles to reach consensus on how to move forward. Three attempts to amend the constitution to make the country more functional from its current complex structure of 13 governments, 13 parliaments, administration with over 150 ministers, two entities, and ten Cantons within the Federation, have failed. In addition, necessary constitutional reform to guarantee equal rights to every citizen and minority group deprived of possibility to run for the highest elected office, known as the "Sejdic - Finci" European Court ruling, failed as well. Bosnia and Herzegovina's lack of progress resulted in social unrests last February that led in burning of government office buildings in Sarajevo. People demanded an end to political corruption, change, jobs, and equal opportunity for all. While broader political and institutional reforms are needed, effective and productive focus on social and economic reforms is currently a top priority that seems to have brought the country more together than ever before.

Last November, the Center for Transatlantic Relations SAIS at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC brought together all key stakeholders to discuss and advance this effort. Representatives from the U.S. government, European Union, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, experts, academia, and high level representatives from the government and civil society from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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Prime Ministers Fadil Novalic (left) and Zeljka Cvijanovic (right) with Daniel Hamilton (center), Executive Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations SAIS at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC (Photo: Center for Transatlantic Relations SAIS)

One of the panelists was Goran Mirascic, a Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mirascic is also an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Sarajevo of Science and Technology and member of an Expert Body of the Fiscal Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He spoke with firm determination and conviction that the country is finally on the path to eventually becoming a member of the European Union:

"In July of 2015, both entity governments and the Council of Ministers adopted a Reform Agenda for the period 2015-2018 for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This particular document outlines main sectors in which reforms are required and has been completed with the assistance of the EU Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina and in cooperation with international financial institutions. While we in Bosnia and Herzegovina have issues on which we repeatedly fail to achieve consensus, the Reform Agenda is something that we all agree on. It comprises six key sectors, later on developed into an "Action Plan" outlining specific activities and the institutional responsibility for each.

Goran Mirascic, Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Photo: Center for Transatlantic Relations SAIS)These six key sectors are:

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Public Finance, Taxation and Fiscal Sustainability Business Climate and Competitiveness Labor Market Social Welfare and Pension Reform Rule of Law and Good Governance Public Administration Reform

Mirascic concluded:

"The Reform Agenda serves almost as a pre-requisite for the new arrangement with the International Monetary Fund. Bosnia and Herzegovina will be requesting an Extended Fund Facility Arrangement with the IMF as it has a more favorable repayment scheme. Arrangement with the IMF will serve as the base for the Development Policy Loan with the World Bank and hopefully, for Macro-Economic-Assistance of the EU or some other assistance from the EU. Arrangements with the international financial institutions, once finalized, will send a strong signal to potential investors that there is political, economic, and social stability in the country. What this country needs now is economic growth and more jobs. Everything else will follow. We have the momentum, we enjoy the support of the international community, we have consensus within the country, so there is no obstacle to continue implementing structural reforms that will lead to better days in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Over One Million Tourists Visited Bosnia and Herzegovina Last Year - The Booming Tourism Industry is Bracing for More

Bjelasnica - an Olympic mountain near Sarajevo (Photo: BH Tourism)

Both entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, bearing much of the reform workload, adopted a new Labor Law to the applause of the international community. The country, however, must really hurry up and work responsibly, efficiently, and much harder, to catch up much of the lost time. As Mirascic pointed out, improving the investment business climate, providing a stronger support for the robust private sector growth, eliminating political influence on the economy, comprehensive health sector reform, and public administration reform are but a few of the urgent reforms needed.

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DES MOINES, Iowa -- First stop: Beijing, China. Next: Des Moines, Iowa. Thirty Chinese high school and college students are braving the frozen tundra of Iowa to learn about the United States' electoral process and the Iowa caucuses. The group, funded by U.S. Education Without Borders , will stay in Des Moines for two weeks while they attend rallies, forums and help candidates in their campaigning efforts. Twenty-two-year-old Amy Wu, who works for a newspaper in China, said she is eager to experience a system in which people are active and engaged with their political leaders. "Since we can't get into the politics in China, we are really interested in being here," Wu said.

The only direct elections in China occur at the local level. All higher-ranking officials are indirectly elected by the People's Congress, creating a hierarchical electoral system. Trip leader Yuyan Liu, who has a doctorate in physics, said he believes China will develop a more democratic electoral process within the next 20-30 years. "As I told my students, maybe in 20 years' time, China will elect presidents," Liu said. "It's the international trend for every country, not just America. It's already happening. Taiwan was one-party politics but 50 years ago, changed. China will also change." Several students said that though there is room for progress, the Chinese government is working toward an electoral process that is more controlled by the people. "There are many changes I want to see," said Midori Mo, international politics student. "We need to have more chance to know some details about our politics. The government is trying to make that possible. It's a big change and we're glad to see that."



Chinese students hold a banner in State Historical Building of Des Moines, where they attended an immigration forum on Jan. 22. Mashiur Rahaman/Huffington Post.



Zhang Wnxuan, 16, said he sees America as a model for how China can develop in the future.



"America for China is a nearly perfect country...we are a developing country," he said. "I do not mean the Chinese government doesn't think about their citizens. They are trying. They are good. But (America) would be a type of reference so we can learn things."



Wnxuan hopes to attend college in the United States and then return to China and work to reform the education system there.



Though Liu acknowledged many positive attributes of American politics, he said it's also important for Western countries to understand Chinese philosophy, something he said could assuage polarization between the political parties in the U.S.



"Chinese philosophy is good for working on the middle way," he said. "The middle way is better. You don't really have the people on the right or the people on the left...That's called harmony."



While Liu said China should follow the United States in its emphasis of individual rights, he said it must also consider "other people's rights," too.



"We need to modify," he said. "I really want something to emphasize the peoples' individual rights in China, but we also want to consider other people's rights. So there should be compromises."



Swallow Yan, a mentor to the students, said he hopes that they learn about compromise during their time in Iowa.



"I want them to learn that the world is a diversity and that the political candidates have different opinions," Yan said. "None are absolutely wrong or absolutely right. We want them to learn that people have different opinions but we are looking for the common ground."
The idea of a property-owning democracy has long roots in American political thought. In their book, The Citizen's Share, Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman and Douglas Kruse argue that the Founding Fathers wanted everyone (well, everyone who was white and male) to own a small slice of property. Both Madison and Washington praised the relatively equal distribution of property in the United States (compared with Europe). Thomas Jefferson wrote, "It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state." Indeed, the concept is still popular today, even on the right. James Poulos writes, "Without an ownership society, where citizens are prudent stewards of broadly distributed private property, freedom tends to become what it was in revolutionary France -- an abstract ideal that can easily arouse destructive political feelings that know no bounds." But new data suggests America may no longer be such a society, and that has worrying implications for democracy.

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The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of their limited wealth. (The bottom 40 percent have negative wealth.) The Gini coefficient for net worth has increased from 0.803 in 1962 to 0.871 in 2013. (By way of comparison: A Gini coefficient of 1 means that 1 person owns all of the wealth.) As the chart below shows, financial instruments and wealth are far more unequally distributed than income.

The United States is no longer more equal than European nations, but actually deeply more unequal. The chart below shows that the United States has the most unequal distribution of the wealth of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member country examined. Across the OECD, the bottom 60 percent own about 13.3 percent of the wealth. (The bottom 40 percent own only 3.3 percent.) In Canada, the bottom 60 percent own 12.5 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 40 percent own 2.2 percent. In France, the respective numbers are 11.6 percent and 1.8 percent. And in Britain, they are 16 percent and 4.7 percent.

In the United States, however, the bottom 60 percent own a mere 2.5 percent of the wealth and the bottom 40% own negative 0.4 percent of the wealth.

As wealth and stock ownership has become more concentrated, good jobs that lead to a middle class lifestyle are increasingly eroded. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to be noticing.

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Indeed, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that "apps do your chores" -- but the unfortunate reality is that workers, not "apps," are doing those chores. The workers are called "contractors," instead of employees, meaning that they don't get the protections full-time employees do. And examples of exploitation are piling up.

A startup called CrowdFlower Inc. -- which, according to WSJ "breaks down digital jobs, such as data entry, into tiny tasks performed by millions of workers" -- was recently sued for paying some of those workers between $2 and $3 an hour. Industry leader Uber, meanwhile, has been criticized for exaggerating the wages of its contractors. This practice is becoming widespread. A recent study finds that 53 million Americans are doing some sort of freelancing work. Of those, 40 percent are full-time independent contractors, meaning they have no other source of income.

The rich are driven by two main desires: First, to make sure they have more money; and, second, that someone else does the work. There is literally no job the rich are not lazy enough to outsource. Because they cannot figure out the location of their post office, they need "Shyp." With "Luxe," they can get a person to park their car for them. And with "Saucey," they can save themselves a trip to the liquor store. In a recent article for The New Yorker, Patricia Marx describes some of the more absurd tasks that were included on TaskRabbit, including "Lego sorting," locating "a reptile handler who is in legal possession of a rattlesnake" and finding a fake wedding ring that looks just like a real one.

It is not of insignificant concern that the rich may cease to be capable of performing the basic tasks necessary in the modern economy. The result is something like the dystopia described in the recent science-fiction film "In Time," except that the rich elongate their lives by making the poor do their mundane tasks.

Robert Kuttner writes of TaskRabbit:

To get an assignment, an aspiring Rabbit offers to do the chore for less money than he or she thinks other prospective Rabbits are bidding. That's what makes it a metaphor for the new economy, a dystopia where regular careers are vanishing, every worker is a freelancer, every labor transaction is a one-night stand, and we collude with one another to cut our wages.

Together these trends should be worrying: The vast majority of Americans own no assets, but are instead laden with debt. The social safety net is being shredded by plutocrats and their political henchmen. Conservatives say workers should instead get benefits from their (preferably privately owned) employers. But those companies are supporting workers less and less: Defined benefit pensions are a thing of the past, and even basic retirement plans are in decline. And that's just for those who are lucky enough to have jobs with benefits. Many workers are misclassified, or are never employees to begin with, meaning they must manage for retirement and health insurance without all the benefits the government funnels through the employee-employer relationship.

As Matt Bruenig notes, in the United States:

Employers often handle sickness (health insurance, subsidized by federal government), old-age insurance (401k and defined-benefit pensions, subsidized by federal government), survivor's insurance (life insurance, subsidized by federal government), family benefits (paid leave and health insurance for children), unemployment (severance, though more typically rely heavily on public unemployment insurance), on top of providing socially adequate levels of cash income.

That is, government has funneled important social benefits through corporations. This not only makes a corporate job more cushy than otherwise, it also makes freelance work more precarious. Christopher Mims notes that, "Uber isn't the Uber for rides -- it's the Uber for low-wage jobs." A large portion of Americans now have two choices: Become servants to the rich for minimal wages, or starve to death. The idea that low-wage work is merely a short-term part of the rung towards a better life is also largely illusory: Upward mobility has been destroyed.

America has fallen into neo-feudalism: A wealthy capital-owning class exists behind a servile class with no assets, and only a life of drudgery ahead of them. The master-servant relationship will only further degrade social trust and civic values. Americans can't see themselves as equals in the political sphere when large portions are consigned to wait upon the whims of new aristocracy. Conservative politics relies on the middle class making a devil's bargain, believing they have more in common with the rich than the poor. It won't be long before that facade crumbles.
By Eric Huber, Sierra Club Senior Managing Attorney and Stephanie Hsiung, Sierra Club Research Analyst

"The Keystone XL Pipeline would not serve the national interest of the United States." These are the words we waited seven long years to hear and the very same words proclaimed by President Obama in his long-awaited announcement last November. These are also the words that TransCanada - the company behind Keystone XL - refuses to accept.

On January 6, TransCanada revealed that it is fighting the denial of Keystone XL with two legal actions:

1) a lawsuit against the Obama Administration for exceeding the executive powers conferred by the Constitution, which will take place before the U.S. Federal District Court in Houston, TX; and

2) a claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to collect $15 billion in damages from the U.S. (i.e., from the U.S. taxpayers), which will take place before a private arbitration tribunal.

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TransCanada's filings in both proceedings reveal that it is convinced the Obama Administration denied Keystone XL based solely on politics rather than merit. However, Keystone XL has never been and will never be in our nation's interest.

Back in 2013, President Obama put forth his administration's climate action plan and set a climate test for Keystone XL. He declared, "our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."

Contrary to TransCanada's claims, the State Department's Record of Decision (ROD) outlines a long list of issues and factors, including climate impacts, which informed the agency's ultimate decision to deny a Presidential Permit for Keystone XL. The ROD makes it clear that Keystone XL fails the climate test.

It is undisputed that tar sands crude oil is more carbon intensive than the average crude oil refined in the U.S. On a "well to wheels" basis, tar sands crude oil emits about 17% more greenhouse gases (GHG) than average crude oil. The lifecycle GHG emissions associated with the production, refining, and combustion of 830,000 bpd of tar sands crude oil transported by Keystone XL would equal 147 to 168 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Compared to a pipeline of equal capacity carrying average crude oil, Keystone XL would release an additional 1.3 to 27.4 million metric tons of CO2 per year. At the high end, this is equivalent to the GHG emissions from operating almost 6 million cars per year or 7.8 coal-fired power plants per year. See both the State Department's ROD and EPA's Comments. To be clear, this is only the difference in carbon pollution between Keystone XL and an equivalent pipeline carrying average crude oil, not the aggregate amount of emissions from Keystone XL. It is also important to note that this figure does not include additional carbon emissions that would be released from increased tar sands development enabled by the construction of Keystone XL.

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TransCanada has held firm to the belief that the net climate impacts of Keystone XL are insignificant due to the inevitability of tar sands development and tar sands crude oil transport. Their line of reasoning has always been that with or without Keystone XL, tar sands development will continue unabated because the oil will reach the market via some combination of rail, barge, tanker, pipeline, and/or truck. Indeed, over the last few years we have seen this inevitability argument fall flat on its face.

The tar sands industry has recently conceded that tar sands development is slowing as a result of the low price of oil in combination with current pipeline constraints. Other pipeline proposals including Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline, Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline, and TransCanada's Energy East have stalled because of environmental, tribal, and climate concerns similar to those that formed the basis for Keystone XL's rejection. Meanwhile, alternative methods of transportation such as rail have not proven to be a major form of transport for tar sands crude in the absence of additional pipeline infrastructure.

Admittedly, the State Department struggled to quantify the GHG emissions resulting from Keystone XL's impact on tar sands production due to the complexity of such projections. On this matter of inevitability, the EPA's Comments to the State Department provided a crucial point:

So while no one can predict with certainty what the global price of oil will be, or whether oil sands development will be more economic in future years than it appears today, or whether other pipelines for oil sands crude will be built, this one thing is certain: approving this Project ties the US to a significantly more carbon intensive oil for the next 50 plus years.
If you want to build a business that thrives, grows and expands, regardless of market conditions, you will need to find a way to be a disrupter. In today's economy, disrupting the way business is done is an absolute must. You need to be the Uber of your market segment to thrive. Such is the story of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE).

Alexandria is the largest and leading urban office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative science and technology campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations. The firm currently has more than 19 million rentable square feet of operating properties, as well as development and redevelopment projects under construction, with another 11.6 million square feet in near-term and future ground-up development projects. Alexandria was the first to pioneer this niche under CEO Joel Marcus' vision when he founded the company in 1994. Since then, the firm has established a dominant market presence across the industry in locations such as Greater Boston/Cambridge, San Francisco, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland and Research Triangle Park.

Since the beginning, Alexandria has lived and grown by the philosophy that the company is more than just a landlord. As of September 30, 2015 (Alexandria's last earnings release), more than 53 percent of the company's annualized rent is generated from investment grade tenants like Pfizer, Google, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline. Tenants seek out Alexandria, not just for its world-class design, office/laboratory space and thought leadership programs, but also for the collaborative communities and ecosystems Alexandria builds around its real estate. In other words, Alexandria doesn't just lease space; the company plays an integral role in helping its tenants recruit and retain top-notch talent, thereby partnering with them to inspire productivity, efficiency, creativity and success. Tenants rarely leave an Alexandria asset, because the added value they receive in terms of community, talent and collaboration are exceedingly more valuable than the space they are paying for.

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I recently toured Alexandria's life science cluster in the Greater Boston area with Thomas Andrews, Executive Vice President and Regional Market Director of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. Andrews shared Alexandria's mission and vision. He said that all the best companies in the world achieve greatness by building a business that exponentially exceeds the expectations of its core product or service customer. Here are the three simple lessons learned from Andrews and his experience at Alexandria on how to grow your empire by being disruptive and always pushing the needle of innovation:

Intimate Knowledge of Your Client: Andrews gave me and my team a two-hour tour of the company's Kendall Square life science and tech campuses in Cambridge, MA - Alexandria Technology Square and Alexandria Center at Kendall Square. He offered a detailed account of the landscape, including the history of each of Alexandria's buildings, who originally owned the properties, the architects who designed them, and what they are used for today. Not only did he offer an intimate knowledge of each building, but he also shared an overview of each tenant's focus. He talked about Biogen's work with Lupus and Cystic Fibrosis, bluebird bio's transformative gene therapy initiatives, as well as the Ragon Institute's work on viral borne diseases. He shared the history of Nobel Laureates on the campus, as well as the collaborations taking place amongst schools and big businesses. It was clear that this is much more than just a landlord-tenant relationship being fostered at Alexandria's campus. Alexandria is a true partner in the success of each of the businesses within its community. According to Andrews, the success of Alexandria's "Be More Than Just a Landlord to Our Tenants" business model depends on the team truly understanding the wants and needs of its clients in order to not only offer the physical space, but also the true partnership needed to foster collaboration and innovation.

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Stand for Something: Andrews noted that success in any business requires the entire company to stand for something, and that the team understands who and what they represent. He noted that his colleagues at Alexandria were fortunate in that founder and CEO Joel Marcus recognized the importance of standing for something right from the get-go, as is evidenced by the thoughtful and significant name and logo chosen for the firm. Alexandria was named after Alexandria, Egypt, which was the scientific capital of the ancient world. The city was founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great and is the site of the Pharos and the Great Lighthouse (ARE's logo), which is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

It's Not a Work Community, It's a Life Community: Alexandria is the absolute leader in real estate that promotes life science collaboration. It's not unusual to find scientists, teachers, business development teams, students and doctors from any of Alexandria's more than 100 Greater Boston tenants sitting out on the lawn of the common area at Tech Square, sharing ideas and concepts while lounging in neon Adirondack chairs. Such a sight seems to spell success for a company like Alexandria. However, Alexandria is interested in taking this idea of community one step further by enhancing its environments so that tenants can live, work and play all in one location. Hence, Alexandria has developed a new focus toward also adding retail spaces and residential living options to its urban innovation clusters. Andrews shared that some tenants actually bus people in from the suburbs each day, enabling them to access talent outside the city. He said that there's a shortage of housing in and around Kendall Square's ecosystem, and so Alexandria's future growth strategy includes partnering with residential developers to build the much-needed housing for the people who work for its tenants.

While touring Kendall Square, Andrews took us through some of the campuses' upscale restaurants and informed us where more would soon be built. He also showed us the home of a future outdoor concert stand. Andrews said that if he and the Alexandria team have learned anything from building world-class communities for collaboration that bring science, technology and academia together, it's this: urban clusters are not work communities, they are lifestyle communities, and knowing this allows Alexandria to further its own work and mission.
I see it all the time: Imposter Syndrome in a thoughtful and talented seventeen year-old who has barely begun to understand what life will bring; who has racked up but a small fraction of achievements that are sure to follow; who thinks, for no reason at all and for all the reasons he or she has internalized during the unrelenting admissions madness, that he or she is not enough.

I have heard this from a student who can wax philosophical for hours about the meaning of life according to Aristotle and Plato, but whose SAT scores were "under par" for his target schools (mostly Ivies). I have heard it from someone who volunteers to teach English to students in Indonesia via Skype every Friday night, but who earned a C in 11th grade calculus (his least favorite class). The young woman who took care of her siblings while her mother had breast cancer -- who did not have time to join DECA because she was changing her mother's bandages after a double mastectomy? I heard it from her too. What about the pursuit of a higher education makes these students feel inadequate? Part of the problem is how applicants are taught to value and rank colleges. The more troubling component has to do with how colleges have learned to value young minds and motivations.

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A recent study conducted by Harvard and entitled "Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good," confirmed what educators, parents and overworked applicants have been saying for years: The admissions process is broken. While applying to college has always been a stress-inducing affair, over the past decade, the pressure cooker has been set to explode as it overflows with ever more ingredients including test scores, AP classes, near-perfect grades, high-profile internships and extensive volunteer work. Students overextend themselves to the point of exhaustion, working towards the goal of attending elite schools and often considering reputation before fit.

As a college essay advisor with over a decade's worth of experience helping students identify and express compelling personal stories, I have seen this overemphasis on achievement for achievement's sake manifest itself in different forms. Many students undervalue their own interests and accomplishments. A few years ago, a student with a self-cultivated ornithology obsession to which she has devoted considerable time, did not even mention her love of nature until two hours into our first conversation. When I plucked it from amidst her ramblings, her reaction was: "Won't people think that's boring?"

Another student, who spent his afternoons visiting a 100-year-old woman every week for two years, just to keep her company, told me that "service essays are overdone." In a way he was right. Staid personal statements that belie disconnection with a cause often sound cliche and self-congratulatory. But when you have spent hours poring through photo albums with your senior citizen bestie? That is where dreams and dream essays are made.

This proclivity for undervaluing meaningful interests and actions extends to mom and dad as well. Students and their parents are trained to see limitations, not potential. This is part of the damage the current admissions system inflicts.

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On the other end of the spectrum are students trying to conquer the world in their teens; the ones that do so much I wonder when they eat and sleep. These students are in all AP classes and have exemplary grade point averages and SAT scores. They have checked every box, but when they come seeking essay help, they are stumped. When I ask them why they volunteered for a Sloan Kettering walk-a-thon the honest ones tell me, "I thought it would look good on my application." Their answer to, "Why do you want to go to this school?" is, "Because it's the best."

One of my students -- a brilliant, science and politics-minded international candidate -- was so hung up on what she thought colleges wanted to hear ("I need to sound smart"), she was incapable writing anything personal. In conversation, she was descriptive and passionate about righting housing inequalities through architectural innovation. On the page, she was flat and clinical. Though she was a more-than-competent writer, her authentic thoughts and feelings were overrun by her goals and what she thought she needed to do to achieve them.

These stories do not represent all applicants. Plenty of ambitious 17-year-olds work hard, attend top colleges, and are madly successful in their professions. Still, these tales are indicative of a trend in which admission to a top college is the aim, instead of the result of meaningful pursuits. In my experience, very few students in recent admissions cycles -- whether undervalued or over-prepared -- understood what interested them or what they could add to the world around them.

This, to me, is one of the saddest byproducts of the current admissions landscape -- ambivalence. How can we raise responsible citizens when we're teaching students to put themselves first? When will students explore their own curiosity if their actions for four years (or more) are centered around a singular, pre-determined goal?

Up until this point, the admissions essay is one of the only tools students have had to humanize an otherwise robotic application process. A good essay provides an understanding of larger issues and explores a student's true sense of self. But increasingly, before students can even break ground on describing themselves in an authentic way, they need to unlearn what they have been taught -- that small moments don't mean anything. That what they have to offer isn't worthy, unless they won the Olympics. That essays about selflessness and service are overdone and won't be embraced by admissions officers.

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Islands covered in mangrove trees, with their wrangling and tyrannical roots, are not made for walking on or pitching a tent if you get lost among them. They are also very difficult to navigate--even with a nautical map, compass, GPS, and coordinates to guide you.



It's easy to get lost paddling through the mangrove trees in the Everglades... | Credit: Jonathan Irish



We decided our GPS didn't work crossing mile 8 on day one of our four-day backcountry camping adventure that we were forging by canoe. Well, I decided it didn't work, Jon believed that the GPS was working just fine but that the coordinates we were tracking probably hadn't been updated since the mangrove trees relocated with the sway of the winds and tides. In retrospect, Jon was right. At the time, though, I was certain that we were destined to become the reason why the U.S. National Park Service Search and Rescue teams would remain on call that evening. From what I understand, those teams are kept very busy saving people just like us--people who find themselves lost among the mangrove trees. These trees are very deceiving. You think you see an opening which disappears when you finally approach it, you hug the coast until you finally find a feasible route, then the GPS tells you to pull a hard right down a waterway that doesn't actually exist. Awesome.

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By mile 11, our tired arms--so familiar with stroking computer keyboards rather than thick creek water--were feeling the burn. The sun started to fall and the light was perfect, but our desire to get to our site overpowered our desire to photograph our surroundings. Safety first, always. This was the premiere motto we agreed on when we set out on this adventure. In a fortuitous change of events, the sound of campers voices echoed in the distance from our camp spot at Crooked Creek. We followed that sound rather than the GPS. The sound was right. The GPS was wrong.



Traditional "Chickee" campsite in Everglades National Park | Credit: Jonathan Irish

Crooked Creek hosts what is called a "chickee" campsite--one of several traditional stopping points plotted within 1.5 million acres of water that weaves throughout the region. It's really just a simple elevated wooden dock covered with a roof structure that likes to leak in the rain. That's right, rain. After hitching up at the days end of our first brutal (but beautiful) day of paddling, it really started coming down. But not before we took some time to get to know our neighbors on the adjoining chickee--two sets of brothers on their annual camping trip, all set up and seemingly better prepared than we were. They had a hammock pod sleeping tent, a hybrid kayak/standup paddleboard that also served as their mobile pantry, and fancy nets to wear over their heads--a middle finger to the state bird of the Everglades: the mosquito. We talked about gear for a while because that's what gear-heads do, and we learned as much as we could about camping in the area before the rain sent everyone to their tents at 7pm.

We made and ate quickly our freeze-dried camping food, zipped up inside our soggy tent, and rocked with the creaking structure as rain pounded the rooftop until we were fast asleep by 7:30.

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Paddlers head off into Everglades back country | Credit: Jonathan Irish

At 8pm, a large swimming beast slammed our canoe into the dock startling everyone--neighbors included--awake. "Everyone okay over there!?" They drawled. "Fine, thanks!" We were asleep again in no time. At midnight, a half moon shone into our tent like a megawatt flashlight. At 2am, the stars twinkled brightly through the mesh window that one of us had opened in our sleep after the rain had stopped. Then at 3am, 4am, 5am and until we finally rose at 6:45am, a circus of splashing danced beneath the chickee. I thought it was an alligator. Jon thought it was a large fish feasting. The neighbors confirmed it in the morning, Jon was right again!

The next day, we paddled 11-miles into the ocean to Jewel Key where we would camp the next night. The waterway between Crooked Creek and Jewel Key is true estuary formed where Everglades fresh water and Gulf of Mexico saltwater converges. We saw dolphins surfacing, manta rays springing into the sky, sand banks and skies filled with diving birds, fish jumping toward and away from them, and other paddlers looking for campsites inside of the national park. It was completely different experience than the day before.



Jewel Key is an awesome place to go beach camping in Everglades National Park | Credit: Stefanie Payne

As soon as we hit land and set up our tent, the rain flooded in again. It rained night after night during our voyage through backcountry. It's either dumb luck or great luck depending how you look at it--dumb to try to cook food and manage gear in the rain; great that we had the chance at all to set up on dry shores.

Eventually the rain subsided and we met our camping neighbors and worked together to start a fire. I believe that until a campfire is lit, one is not actually camping. They had a hatchet (which we accidentally left behind in our car), and we had fire starter (which they'd used up the day before). It was another fortuitous occurrence. We chatted by until the rain came, skipped dinner out of laziness and fatigue, and again, all were zipped up and fast asleep by the time most back at home in DC are sitting down to watch Sunday night programs on HBO.

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Isolated islands abound in the 10,000 Islands section of the Everglades. | Credit: Jonathan Irish

When we paddled out the next day, we crossed colony of true snowbirds--white Pelicans--gathered on the edge of an Island called Indian Key where they would stay to fatten up all winter. We stopped on isolated peninsula where we picnicked in the sun before starting the monstrous paddle across open water to our last beachfront campsite at Picnic Key. We caught the sunset, built a fire, indulgently ate freeze-dried astronaut food and relaxed until stars filled the night sky. We illuminated our tent with a small lantern and Jon taught me how to shoot astrophotography. I obsessed over Orion's belt--the constellation that NASA's spacecraft, Orion, was named after. Then, the International Space Station flew overhead. I didn't photograph it (sorry space friends!), and instead, reflected my own journey beneath it.



Astrophotography on Picnic Key in Everglades National Park. | Credit: Stefanie Payne

We chose the Everglades as our first park based on seasonality.

We chose backcountry camping because it would bring us to remote places that we otherwise would not be able to access, and also because we wanted to push our bodies from the very beginning of this journey.

We chose a canoe as our mode of transport because it is how these waterways have been traveled by American Indians and Floridians for centuries (a benefit to modern travelers is that they can pack more gear than kayaks and other self-propelled watercraft can.)

We chose the U.S. National Parks because we wanted to celebrate the park system that has brought to each of us so much pleasure and inspiration in our lifetimes during their celebratory centennial year.

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Before we entered our first park, neither of us knew much of what to expect. What we found was land and water as far as the eyes could see--swamps, beaches, coasts--and we barely scratched the surface. I've read mutterings on social media that the idea to visit all of the parks in one year would deprive us the opportunity of truly getting to know any park. While that may be true, our goal is to have one great adventure in each of them, which we did in spades in the Everglades.



One park down, 58 to go! | Credit: Stefanie Payne



Every park has a hiking stick medallion and we intend to gather them all. Aside from the memories we create this year, it will be our most treasured keepsake! | Credit: Stefanie Payne
Most of my writing is typically devoted to the portrayal of the humorous side of parental life; this isn't one of those times. This choice of topic is a departure for me, because it feel unbearably heavy, and I know that for some, it'll feel too morose. But one of the main reasons that I write is not just to make you laugh, but to tackle the realities of parenthood. I want to share various aspects of what it's like -at least for me- to be a parent. And this topic is one of those excruciating realities.

I noticed that after my first daughter was born, news stories began to affect me in ways that they hadn't before. Call it ignorant, or self-centered, or maybe oblivious? But after my daughter was born, any story involving a child or baby was suddenly heart-breaking in a way that I couldn't have imagined. Any story of a child's abduction, or suffering, was immediately painful to read. It had gotten to the point where I tried to avoid combing the daily news stories, because I didn't want to dwell on things I couldn't control. That intensity faded over time.



Cue to this week.

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I caught a headline on a social media platform a few days ago, about a missing 2 year old. Noah Chamberlin. It's hard to even type his name. He had gone on a nature walk with his grandmother and big sister, and in a single moment, had wandered off and disappeared.

Once I read the story, I was consumed by it. Accompanying every update or story was a picture of the beautiful little boy, held in his Daddy's arms. He had been missing for a week as of yesterday, with Tennessee search crews frantically combing every area of their search grid for him.

He was finally found yesterday afternoon. He had passed away, and was found lying in a clearing just outside the search grid. No foul play; it was just a tragic accident. Even the police crew who spoke at the press conference about finding him were in tears.

Hard to read, isn't it?

When I read the update, I didn't just cry- I bawled. I wept. I cried harder than I have in a long time, alone in my car. I sobbed for a child I'd never met, for a mother I didn't know, for a community in a town I'll likely never visit.

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This is the part about being a parent that we don't like to dwell on, that we try not to think about. But this is one of those stories that dug its way deep inside me. I'm writing about it to get it out, because it was one of those moments as a parent that you just feel so much....

...Because you know that it's every parent's nightmare. Losing a child is every parent's greatest fear. And as a mom, when you hear of such a thing, you immediately connect to it, because you know the love that you feel for your child is so strong, so possessive, that you cannot even fathom -or want to fathom- being in those shoes. Every child who gets lost is your child. Every child that is abducted is your child. It's the empathy of knowing that as a parent, you can't imagine anything worse than the death of your child.

Maybe it's because there are similarities between Noah and my own youngest son. Noah was described as a lively, active, runner. He had lightning speed, was always on the go- described as a joyful, speedy two year old boy- just like my own speedy, impish 2 year old.

This is the part about parenting that is the silent, messy, unspoken, part.

Of course these stories usually have that effect. You hear of them, dwell for a moment on the parents, pity them, hug your own child, and then... life goes on. For YOU. Because you can't even imagine such a thing, and more importantly, you don't want to.

Part of why I wanted to share this story is because it IS horrible. It's uncomfortable to read. It's something no wants to think about. We want to steer clear of tragedy, because the world can seem dark enough without choosing to dwell on it.

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THAT'S what it's like to love another human being so much. To be a parent truly does mean wearing your heart outside of your own body, in the form of the tiny (and eventually, not-so-tiny) person that you've been entrusted to care for. And sometimes, it makes you feel more than you ever expected to feel. You feel intensely- not just for yourself and for your child, but for every parent and every child.

As a mother, my heart broke for Noah's mother. My heart hurts for Noah's big sister, and his father, and his dear grandmother. I'm genuinely sad for everyone who loved him and searched desperately for him.

Why this child? Of course, there are countless tragedies like this, or worse, that happen every day. I know this. But for some reason, this story resonated in my heart. Maybe because he was two years old. . Maybe because I know those moments all too well, when my own son has attempted to wriggle his hand from my own to dash forward to explore the world. Maybe because the headline caught my eye at a vulnerable time in my own walk of faith. Tragedies like this remind us that even with faith, we can still experience loss so devastating that it takes our breath away.

Yet...

The outpouring of kind words and honest sorrow for his family from all over the country illustrates the very best parts of us as human beings. His family was so genuinely touched by the way that the search for Noah brought the community together, and how many people offered help, love and support for a child and family that they'd never even met. People have already described how they've seen in this tragedy their need to love more, and to stop forgetting how precious life is.

I think in my draining, chaotic, flu-ridden last few weeks, I've forgotten how precious life is. We all do at times. So maybe that's my intention: to pause and mourn the loss of a precious little boy that I've never met. And to acknowledge that in doing so, it's also a reminder to love my own precious boys and girls with deeper abandon.

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This experience is also a reminder that my tired heart still cares about mothers I've never met who hurt in ways I hope to never experience. It reminded me to FEEL instead of going through the motions in life. My instinct was to do SOMETHING- send a card. Write a note. Anything that shows "I care about your son. I care about your pain. I'm so, so SORRY." As a parent, we get it. Not the immeasurable loss- it's ludicrous for me to say I can even imagine how Noah's parents feel- but the love. It's the love we have for our children that unites us in moments like this.

No, being appreciative of your own blessing(s) doesn't make this tragedy any "better". No, it doesn't make sense, and it never will, in the here and now. Noah's loss is a horrible, unimaginably painful event. But I honor his little life in the only way that I know how- by sharing his name again, and reminding myself how even in the midst of everyday life and it's challenges, we are still capable of loving "our neighbor" so much more than we can imagine.
In the century before the Bill of Rights, men and women were sentenced to death on the strength of spectral testimony. Ironically, it was this affront to justice that led the Rev. Increase Mather to sermonize: 'It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned.' Time no longer sanctifies forensic practices, it deconstructs them. Still it is cold comfort for the victims of fictions that have passed for forensic truth. (Ken Strutin, Forensic Clemency: Using Science to Bend the Arc of Justice, New York Law Journal, 9/25/2012)

Almost seven years ago, on February 18, 2009, in what was thought to be a watershed development for the use of forensic science in the courtroom, the National Academy of Sciences issued a groundbreaking report called Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (2009); the legal community calls it the "NAS report."

In 2012, longtime federal district judge turned Harvard Law professor, Nancy Gertner, described the NAS report in an article for the American Bar Association as "an extraordinary document":

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It questioned whether the underlying research justified the claims forensic scientists were regularly making in courts throughout this country, claims that they had been making for decades. It concluded that for many long-used types of forensic science, including fingerprint identification, firearms identification, handwriting and toolmark identification, experts' conclusions were simply not supported by their methodology or training. There was not an adequate basis for individualization, for linking crime scene evidence to a particular defendant, much less for conclusions that were announced to an exceptional degree of certainty: This bullet matches the gun associated with the defendant 'to the exclusion of anyone else in the world,' as one ballistics expert testified, to my astonishment.

Fast-forward almost 7 years after the NAS report was issued to an article by Spencer S. Hsu on January 22, 2016, called "D.C. Court of Appeals judge faults overstated forensic gun-match claims"; it was buried in the Public Safety section of the Washington Post. Here is some of it:



Claims that forensic experts can match a bullet or shell casing found at a crime scene to a specific weapon lack a scientific basis and should be barred from criminal trials as misleading, a D.C. Court of Appeals judge wrote this week. The opinion, by Associate Judge Catherine Easterly, is not binding on criminal prosecutions in D.C. Superior Court, where firearms and ballistics evidence have been introduced in scores of violent felony cases in recent years.

Easterly's opinion came in response to an appeal brought by Marlon Williams, 36 of Southeast Washington. He argued that his murder conviction in the 2010 fatal shooting of Min Soo Kang, 37, of Fairfax County should be overturned because, among other things, a D.C. police forensics expert improperly declared a "unique" match between bullet slugs recovered from the victim's car and a handgun found in Williams's bedroom.

"Those markings are unique to that gun and that gun only," Luciano Morales testified, according to court filings. "Item Number 58 fired these three bullets," he told the jury . . . .

Hsu's article goes on to note that "the U.S. attorney's office for the District called the error 'regrettable,'" agreeing "that forensic practitioners should not state conclusions to an 'absolute' or '100% [degree of] scientific certainty.'" Judge Easterly was having none of it, according to Hsu, telling the government (and all of us) in her opinion that the erroneous expert testimony in Marlon Williams' murder trial was "more than regrettable. It [was] alarming," akin to "the vision of a psychic" with "foundationless faith in what he believes to be true." Despite Judge Easterly's belief that "[t]o uphold the public's trust," errors like those in Williams' case should not be permitted, Williams did not get a new trial, because his lawyer did not object to the faulty expert testimony.

More importantly -- the whole reason for this blog -- as Judge Easterly's opinion so effectively points out: Not nearly enough steps have been taken (in the District of Columbia, or I respectfully submit, across the country) to address the reliability problems that continue to plague forensic science in the courtroom -- problems identified way back in 2009 by the highly respected NAS report. It is critical to observe that despite Easterly's strong stand against junk science, it will not only have zero effect on the outcome of Williams' case, but also, since it is only what attorneys call "persuasive authority," it may have little or no effect on D.C. prosecutions going forward.

Judge Easterly cannot wage the fight to improve forensic science in our courts by herself. Lawmakers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and forensic scientists, collaboratively working together to implement the reforms the NAS report recommended, have to be the beacon of change. Optimistically, Hsu tells us that Judge Easterly's opinion "continues a nationwide push for heightened scrutiny of forensic techniques and testimony." "But, in fact," as the Honorable Nancy Gertner observed in 2012, "little [had] changed" since the 2009 NAS report's issuance. And now, four years later, despite Judge Easterly's bold stance, it seems the more people talk about improving the use of forensic evidence in the courtroom, the more things stay the same.

About the Author: Stephen Cooper is a former federal and D.C. public defender. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California.

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Political Climate Change is in the Air

Time to Turn on the Bern

"It's called the Greenspan Effect. Thanks to those gangster-banksters, the average American doesn't have the 'green' to span the average month."

-- Swami Beyondananda

A few days ago, I saw a jaw-dropping, eye-popping statistic. I had to re-read it several times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, so here goes. 56% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined. Nearly 25% of Americans have less than $100 in their accounts!

Translated, this means that more than half of Americans are living in financial fear, and a quarter of us in financial terror. And ... because we live in the USA and are exposed to not just Fox, but the rest of main-scream corporate media, we have had it drummed into our heads that ... if we aren't making it financially, it is our own damn fault.

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Too bad about those folks who can't survive on minimum wage, or recently-graduated students who will have to work until they're a hundred to pay off their student debts, or those old folks who lost their pensions in the crash and now have to work at Walmart. Survival of the fittest, you know. That's been the Republican refrain since the Reagan years. It's the same selfish-righteous illogical logic that Michigan's Governor Snyder used to make sure Flint's poorest residents were unfit to survive.

Of course, it's not just Republicans. Mainstream Democrats have earned the right to use the slogan: "Democrats -- the Other Pork Party", as Hillary takes PAC money from key Goldman-Sachs operatives.

Goldman-Sachs???

No wonder our commonwealth is being sacked by the Gold men!

Fortunately, there is an upwising afoot that may well bring the political climate change that got lost in a hopium haze eight years ago.



The one candidate willing to confront the elephant (and donkey) in the living room -- pay-to-play politics where the unchecked, unbalanced, unmitigated power of money rules -- Bernie Sanders, is "berning" it up. For that reason -- and despite him not being up to speed on issues like mandatory vaccination and GMO proliferation -- I am wholeheartedly supporting Bernie, and even doing a benefit for him in March in Santa Cruz, CA.

No, I am definitely NOT smoking hopium ... but I believe 2016 is a year when Bernie Sanders can and will win the Presidency. Here are ten reasons why we should help him, and help him NOW:

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Top Ten Reasons to Support Bernie Sanders

10. He is the ONLY candidate truly confronting corruption. By pointing out and taking on the overwhelming influence of big money in politics, Bernie has tapped a theme that transcends Democrat or Republican. He WILL stand up to the banks and the oligarchy. When he does, he paves the way for every other progressive cause to move forward, and some conservative ones as well -- such as honesty and financial integrity.

9. He is the candidate of change -- not chump change. While progressives had to project progressive values onto Barack Obama, Bernie stands up for his own, thank you. A socialist? Yeah, and so what? Bernie embraces the label, as he stands for such "socialist" programs as Social Security and Single Payer Health Care, favored by 58% of Americans according to the most recent poll. Or, as Swami put it, "If Obama REALLY were a socialist, he would have a 70% approval rating."

8. Sanders thumps Trump in the rump. While a recent poll indicates that Hillary might have a better shot at Trump, this is based on the "likely voter" -- but it will be Bernie, not Hillary who inspires and activates the "unlikely voters" like Millennials who are not inspired by an inside the box, inside the beltway candidate like Hillary. Head-to-head against Trump, the most recent poll has Bernie up 15 points, 56% to 39%.

7. Despite being a "socialist", Sanders will reach across the red blue divide. When Bernie Sanders became the "socialist" mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981, one of his first acts was to enroll the business community through his Community and Economic Development Office, to spark the local economy and offer a "hand up, not a hand out" program to help the working poor. Six years later, the otherwise conservative U.S. News and World Report named Bernie one of the Top 20 Mayors in the country.

6. Bernie will shift the emphasis from identity issues to "identical" issues. For the past generation or so, the Democrats have used "identity" issues -- the rights of women, minorities and other hyphenated Americans -- in a similar way that the Republicans have used evangelicals to fan the flames of divisiveness and emphasize our differences. This mass "pandermonium" where each side panders to its base has kept us divided enough so that we don't together confront the corruption at the core of our system. Bernie has shifted the focus to the identical issue the vast majority of us have in common -- a healthy wealthy commonwealth -- and this portends well for a new political alignment around our shared desire for honest, transparent governance.

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5. Bernie is the only candidate with the backbone to confront the party with way too much "front-bone". Bernie's opposition to wars of empire, and his insistence on accountability from the banking industry have been steady and unchanged. The same is true with his support for Single Payer Health Care, and repeal of Citizens United. Years ago, Swami characterized the difference between the two parties this way: "The Republicans have been playing hard ball, the Democrats have been playing hardly-have-balls." The proactive Bernie campaign is a welcome change, and maybe the Democrats will re-take the hot "red" label, and the Republicans will be left with the blues.



4. Bernie is the "real" feminist candidate. Huh? Astrologers tell us we are entering the Aquarian Age, and while one might imagine that Aquarius (like aquarium) is a feminine water sign, it is actually a masculine air sign. If you look at the symbol for Aquarius, you see the Water Bearer -- a male figure pouring water, i.e., feminine wisdom. The new paradigm isn't one gender dominating the other, it's both genders (heck, ALL genders) working on the same a-genda, thrival for all. Bernie is the closest we have to an Aquarian candidate, a man courageously standing for the feminine values of nurturance and care for Creation.

3. Bernie is REAL, period. The appeal of Donald Trump -- and Ben Carson, before the full depth of his shallowness was revealed -- is that of a "real" person, unswayed by the opinions of others. As Trump's bluster gets further exposed for the bullyshit that it is, and as Hillary finds herself unable to untangle from her own twisted words, Bernie will become the people's choice, and not just the Democrat people. This is an equal-opportunity upwising and libertarian conservatives are awakening as well. Look for at least 10% to 20% of Evangelicals who recognize a true Christian when they see one, even if he is Jewish, to abandon the Republicans this time around if Bernie is the candidate. You don't believe it? Mock my words.

2. This campaign isn't about Bernie. While Hillary's campaign is about "me", Bernie's is about WE. One of the reasons he is getting so much grassroots support is because people recognize his campaign as a movement that goes further and deeper than his candidacy. While the insurgency Tea Party movement was very quickly co-opted by the Koch Brothers and kept alive through cash-flow infusion and Fox "News" impropaganda, the Bernie insurgency will grow and even grow past Bernie. It might even revitalize and reanimate the Democratic Party, so that we have a people's counterbalance to the other, Undemocratic Party.

And the # 1 reason to support Bernie ...

1. Because Bernie winning has been deemed "impossible". That's what conventional wisdom has been telling us all along, and the Hillary trolls on progressive blogs are still insisting. And yes, such an insurgency winning would have been impossible before now. However 2016, a leap year, may actually be a "quantum leap year" where the level of disgust with our corrupt system awakens enough Americans to say ENOUGH. Corbyn won in the U.K., Trudeau in Canada. There is an awakening world wide, and we even have a Pope riding this wave. Trump, and the entire heartless, selfish-righteous culture he and the Republicans represent are obsolete and obsolethal. And sadly, so is Hillary, representing the "other pork party". The sheer "impossibility" of this victory will energize the body politic like nothing before. And unlike 2008, we will have a candidate who, once elected, will stand up to the bullies, and enroll we the people to have his back.

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That's when the real fun will begin.
Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Dutch health and materials group Royal DSM, was adamant as he shifted in his seat at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

"You must be really blind if you don't see that we are at a tipping point and into a transition," he said, referring to the shift from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable one and echoing the words of UK Central Banker Mark Carney, who chairs the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and said at last month's Paris Climate Summit that institutional investors identified "transition risk" as their single greatest fear.

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That's the risk of getting caught flat-footed in a time of revolutionary change, and you'd expect it to be front-and-center in Davos, where leaders from government, industry, and civil society met through Saturday to focus on the most critical issues of our day.

On the eve of the summit, WEF's researchers found overwhelming agreement among 750 leading economists and other experts that climate change is the biggest threat to our economy, and Sijbesma brought it up repeatedly during a panel discussion entitled "A New Climate for Doing Business".



WEF's Global Risks Report 2016 found climate change to be the risk with the greatest potential impact - the first time since 2006 that an environmental risk has topped the chart. Large-scale involuntary migration, however, is the most likely risk this year.

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Few of the more than 300 discussions in Davos touched on climate risk, and many participants expressed a fear that flat-footedness was the norm -- not the exception.

"We are, frankly, very worried about the lack of discussion on the need for new technology," said Lars Josefsson, who heads the WEF's Council on Decarbonizing Energy. "When you look historically, new technology in the R&D area has a lead time of 20-30 years before you have widespread use."

Dragging Their Feet

More than a thousand major companies and investors now advocate a price on carbon, and Sijbesma said his company uses an internal price of $50 per tonne to guide their decision-making. UN climate boss Christiana Figueres said that the signal coming out of Paris was loud and clear.

"The signal is towards long-term transformation that is urgent," she said. "It's long-term, but there is a ticking clock, because we have to be at a certain point, with carbon peaking within five to 10 years, and then a descent."

For many delegates to the WEF, however, the urgency was lost, and scores of participants said only a mandatory carbon price would change that. Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of French energy group Total SA, was one of them.

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"If we don't do anything about carbon pricing, we will have a lot of coal," he said.

Ikea CEO Steve Howard was especially critical of many delegates, who he said were even more lackadaisical in private than they seemed in public.

"Some companies are backing this future with renewable energy or energy-efficient products," he told Huffington Post's Jo Confino. "At the same time, they're still being in the carbon-intensive, fossil fuel economy and they're trying to defend the status quo...so they're saying one thing publicly and then saying another thing behind closed doors."

Oil and Gas: Realism or Apathy?

The oil and gas sector has taken tremendous hits in the past two years - first, when the "climate bubble" burst after shareholders concluded that oil-and-gas companies would have to write off reserves already on their books, and then when prices plunged over the last year.

While many have celebrated the sector's imminent demise, Stuart Gulliver of HSBC warned that much of the developing world would remain dependent on coal for the near future, and urged companies to engineer a thoughtful transition.

"You can't suddenly have a step-jump where you basically isolate these companies because, actually, a lot of the education, healthcare and various budgets of government come from the taxes that these companies pay," he said. "No one is denying the direction of travel, it's a question of doing this in an orderly way."

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Figueres agreed, saying that the expertise and financial muscle of today's energy companies could be leveraged for renewables.

"They actually sit on access to capital, on technology, on a critical mass of engineers - all of which can actually now be moved over to the new economies while they transition out," she said. "They have to focus on their much more efficient products, but at the same time, they need to begin to be the motor behind the transition."
US President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a Clean Power Plan event at the White House in Washington, DC, August 3, 2015. President Barack Obama described climate change as one of the key challenges of our time Monday as he announced the first ever limits on US power plant emissions. As a step to try to adapt, Obama announced power plant owners must cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. AFP PHOTO/JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

This past week, a federal appeals panel rejected an effort to block the Clean Power Rule while the rule is being challenged in the federal court system. Although the latest decision does not mean that the courts will uphold the rule, it does mean that the process of implementation will not be delayed by current legal challenges. In recent months, 27 states and a group of fossil fuel corporations have sued to block the Clean Power Rule. This regulation requires states to meet ambitious greenhouse gas reductions, including a 32% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from a state's power plants. This type of reduction will not be possible unless most of America's coal-fired power plants are shut down.

The rule gives the states fourteen years to make the transition to clean energy and it is a neither radical nor economically dangerous mandate. It would give coal-dependent states the time to make a gradual shift away from coal. It would also signal to businesses that the renewable energy industry is not a passing fad but an economic necessity. While one could easily imagine a better designed policy instrument to bring about this change than the blunt command and control regulation being utilized, our dysfunctional national legislature has left us little choice but to base climate policy on a piece of legislation first enacted in 1970. The Clean Air Act may not reflect the changes in technology and policy analysis of the last four decades, but it was a forward-looking piece of legislation and it will have to do.

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The current policy stalemate reminds me a little of the early 1970s when EPA's first administrator, William Ruckelshaus, regulated water pollution by using a 19th-century law designed to ensure that ships could freely navigate in America's rivers and harbors. But that was a temporary measure. Back then, support for clean water was so strong that by 1972, a huge bipartisan majority enacted the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and then upheld it over the veto of President Richard Nixon. Ah, the good old days. I don't expect the Clean Power Rule to be replaced by a more elegant and modern climate change rule (but it would be nice).

Instead, we will need to defend and implement the Clean Power Rule. Like many environmental regulations, it provides industry and government with plenty of time to adjust to the new reality--but only if they use the time wisely. If the states and businesses fighting the rule are hoping that a President Trump or Cruz would reverse it, they are forgetting that the rule was a response to a Supreme Court decision issued when George W. Bush was president. A number of states had sued EPA to force the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as a dangerous pollutant that was subject to the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court agreed, and though the Bush Administration dragged their feet on developing the new regulation, eventually the Obama Administration embraced it as the heart of their climate change policy. While a Republican administration might slow down and modify the Clean Power Rule, unless they have the votes to amend the Clean Air Act to declare that greenhouse gases are not dangerous, they are stuck with a law that requires federal control of greenhouse gases.

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Hopefully, the courts will uphold EPA's regulation, and if they do, a degree of certainty and permanence will attach to federal climate change policy. This in turn will stimulate investment in renewable energy and speed the transition to a renewable resource-based economy. In the short run, the effort to undermine the certainty of climate policy will continue and intensify. Writing in Environmental Leader on January 21st, Jessica Lyons Hardcastle reported that the:

National Association of Manufacturers senior vice president and general counsel Linda Kelly, said the court's decision today "leaves manufacturers with continued uncertainty, unanswered legal questions and unknown costs. NAM is one of the industry groups that sued to block the Clean Power Plan from taking effect. "Our arguments are strong, the legality of the regulation is questionable, and we will continue to fight for pro-growth, pro-manufacturing regulations," Kelly says.

Of course, the uncertainty and unknown costs are entirely self-inflicted. For NAM and the other interest groups opposing the Clean Power Rule, the artificial sense of hysteria is simply good for the lobbying business. Anti-climate policy lobbyists make their money by convincing businesses that the Administration's climate policy is illegal and illegitimate, when it is neither. If America's business community were willing to accept the Clean Power Rule as a new way of doing business, their decisions would be based on a high degree of certainty. Still, the business of interest group politics is as American as apple pie and not likely to fade from the scene anytime soon. And it is a business. These groups make their money off of real and manufactured conflict. As the renewable energy business grows, so too will the power of the lobbyists they hire. And the two sets of lobbyists will battle each other from the halls of Congress to the boardrooms of K Street.

But it's really time to stop these discussions of "job-killing regulations" that create rules that dampen America's entrepreneurial spirit. Sure, some rules are stupid and harm business. But most rules are simply laws that ensure that we can live together in a growing global economy without harming each other. A traffic light is not an "auto-killing regulation" unless it never turns green. Many businesses and many voters understand the need for government to set and implement environmental rules. Americans who travel to China, Mexico, India and other places without effective environmental regulations see the impact of environmental lawlessness.

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The Clean Power Rule will harm some old businesses, but much of its impact will foster economic growth. The rule will create a wide range of business opportunities: nanotech-based solar cells and batteries, microgrids, smart grids, green buildings, electric vehicles and charging stations, new energy efficient appliances, building materials, and of course consulting services to plan and manage the whole thing. The old industrial coal-fired economy and the entire fossil fuel industry will not just disappear, but will gradually be replaced. The Clean Power Rule gives American industry the opportunity to lead the new renewable resource-based global economy. If the courts uphold the regulation, the transformation will take place with greater speed. If they overturn it, the next president will still be required by law to try again.
I'll be the first to call myself out -- I know for a fact that I've been guilty of jumping on Facebook and claiming to be an ally to one cause or another, as have most of my friends as well. But while we might think we're helping the situation, as Mia McKenzie and a growing minority of voices in social justice work have pointed out, claiming allyship is really quite the opposite.

True solidarity is about more than just making a Facebook status claiming to be an ally. Yes, verbalizing support for a cause is a beautiful thing, but one of the biggest problems with calling ourselves "allies" is that too often, we use it as a means of ridding ourselves of any guilt we may be feeling for unintended complicity in the oppression of those we love. "Ally" has become a cloak that we can put on to absolve ourselves of accountability when we make an off-handed comment or deeply offensive joke. In this way, calling ourselves allies allows us to feel warm and fuzzy inside without actually having to do anything to address our own potentially harmful behaviors and checking and renouncing our own privileges. As a result, the label inherently leads us to get defensive far too easily, putting us and our discomfort at the center of the struggle, rather than the marginalized identity at hand. While this is a problem with white "allies," we cannot ignore that it's also a huge issue for non-Black people of color who call ourselves "allies" as well, but continue to excuse ourselves and ignore anti-Black sentiment in our own communities.

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What's more, calling ourselves allies detracts from the cause at even the most basic linguistic level. McKenzie points out, "'Currently operating in solidarity with' is undeniably an action. It describes what a person is doing in the moment. It does not give credit for past acts of solidarity without regard for current behavior. It does not assume future acts of solidarity. It speaks only to the actions of the present." Whereas McKenzie's example is actively ongoing, "ally" itself is merely an empty, dead-end label -- a stagnant, unmoving noun that doesn't specify what if any action is actually being taken.

This is a massive problem, because it's perfectly contradictory to everything you'd expect the ideal "ally" to be. Just as both the privileges and oppressions we face don't take breaks, neither can true solidarity. Discussions regarding being an "ally" inherently imply choice -- the choice to step back, and not engage. But as Jamie Utt points out, "part of the privilege of your identity is that you have a choice about whether or not to resist oppression." True solidarity involves having the difficult conversations -- starting in our own circles, rather than just scrolling quietly past both blatant racism and microaggressions in our newsfeeds.

It also involves educating ourselves, rather than expecting to be spoon-fed information. It's already a burden for marginalized people to live with their identities; we should not be adding to that burden by demanding they answer questions that could easily be answered with a simple Google search. Can we ask our friends for good resources and clarifications? Of course. But it's up to us to again, key-word actively, lay the foundations for knowledge for ourselves.

With that said, however, we must also recognize that solidarity means that we shouldn't always be involved. While we should always be educating ourselves and working against the various structural forces that work against our loved ones, we also need to recognize that there is a very fine line between solidarity and encroachment.

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"Ally" implies that we are part of the same team as those we are trying to help. But just as claiming to be a fan of the Green Bay Packers doesn't mean you can run onto the field, claiming to be an ally of Palestinian voices doesn't make you Palestinian. And just as your amazing throwing skills still don't mean you can replace Aaron Rodgers, no matter how much literature you read, or how many gender studies or cultural anthropology classes you take, you cannot replace the voices of those who are actually members of a marginalized community, and you cannot better speak about the experiences of someone who is actually living in a situation that you are not.
With every social calamity there is a reaction. The social calamity was not Paris or San Bernardino; it was what followed. Instead of coming together to share in collective grief, we over-ridded two tragedies that produced hundreds of dead and injured bodies with our social stratifications based on fear and hate. The social calamity is that those who suffered in Paris and San Bernardino did not receive the full volume of our emotions; we took the tragedies and created a second group of victims: ourselves.

Those killed and injured in the terrorist attacks should have had our full attention; their suffering should have began and ended with their violent death and pain. Instead, weeks later, we use the dead to satisfy political agendas, hate speeches and fear mongering. "In the name of Paris and San Bernardino..." "For those who died in Paris and San Bernardino..." Their names are tied to speeches tinged with fear, violence and revenge. Their memories are recalled in the same breath as bigotry. Their lives and death are justified by political parties that stratify instead of unite.

The suffering of those on the two fateful days in Paris and San Bernardino should not be treated as any other death; these people were killed, violently, aggressively and for a political purpose. Our response must, therefore be political where the perpetrators of the violence should have to face a political reaction for their action. In order to have a decisive political reaction, we must have a united political body. But we don't have that. Instead of stifling the terrorist's source of power we have added fodder to their flame. We did exactly what they hoped we would do; we have divided amongst ourselves, preventing a powerful response. The social calamity is that people were brutally killed and we let their killers win because they terrorized communities far beyond those who felt the physical impact.

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The power dynamic between ISIS and humanity is in the terrorist's favor. ISIS, as a terrorist group, has terrorized its victims. The term "victim" is a term associated with losing one's power to someone else. ISIS has taken away our power by killing two groups of people and instilling fear across the West, creating victims. My writing isn't going to bridge the political divide amongst the presidential candidates, political bodies and non-government associates; and it shouldn't. We need to maintain diversity in our counter-movement against ISIS. But that diversity should be molded into a unified foundation based on the fact that ISIS is a horrific group of ignorant, violent and inhuman people who need to be stopped. I think we can all agree on that.

To the victims of the terrorist attacks, I am sorry we have used you so poorly. I am sorry you are reminded of your pain and trauma so frequently as we continue to bring up your names for our selfish purposes. I am sorry you have become just another press release to be interpreted, used, and manipulated at the viewer's discretion. I am sorry you lost the right to be the sole social calamity, deserving our undivided attention and unconditional hopes and prayers. I am sorry we removed the painful humanity of your victimization and infiltrated it with ourselves.

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Sumer Shaikh is based in Washington D.C., where she both works in the non-profit sector and conducts research on community-based development. She is currently engaged in advocating for social justice by empowering responsible leaders to cultivate an environment of acceptance and mutual respect between Muslims and all communities. A graduate of Clark University in Worcester, MA in International Development and Social Change, Sumer has experience as a community leader, a researcher on community oriented rural development, and a policy researcher on community-based healthcare. Through her work, she aims to bridge the gap between social stratifications based on religion, politics, race and culture, within American communities.
Women's Policy Institute graduates advocate for women's rights in California by influencing and helping pass legislation that supports women and families.

Feminism is alive and well today. Dare I say it, it's mainstream. Generation Z and Millennial women have embraced the F-word: Pop culture icon, Beyonce, proudly performs with it as her backdrop, while young women publicly celebrate Justice Ginsburg, aka Notorious R.B.G., and are going so far as to tattoo her face on their bodies.

But as feminists and women's rights advocates, we have to stay vigilant. Injustices have not been righted. Discrimination against women has not been legislated away. Equity is not yet our reality. Like Justice Ginsburg in the Roberts Court, we have our work cut out for us.

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At this very moment, on the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, many women's rights are being rolled back, especially women's reproductive rights. Just this past year, we saw 57 new restrictions on abortion, a debilitating Planned Parenthood scandal and the tragic murder of three people at a Colorado Springs clinic.

All around the country, our opponents are busy working to reverse the progress we have made.

They have two cases coming before the Supreme Court that could transform abortion law as we know it and eliminate what remains of the contraception-mandate under the Affordable Care Act. In the last 5 years, they passed 288 new restrictions across the country and we know that hundreds of attempts will be made in 2016.

Many of us feel blindsided by their success. That's because, instead of making big, earth-shattering moves, they've been chiseling away at women's reproductive rights for decades by passing incremental legislationwhat seemed like minor reforms: an extra visit to the clinic, an extra twenty-four-hour waiting period, an extra ultrasound, an extra building requirement. But decades of incremental political and legal gains merged into something huge and terrifying this year.

As a result, in Texas more than half of the state's 41 clinics have been shut down. Some women need to travel 150 miles to get to the nearest clinic. In Mississippi, only one clinic is still open; the doctor flies in from out of state to provide abortion care.

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More than ever, now is the time to make our laws work for women, to ensure that there's true social, political and economic equity between the sexes. More than ever, now is the time that we must work together to ensure that our systems and policies serve all women including women of color, immigrant women, undocumented women, low-income women, elderly women, young women, single mothers, transgender women, lesbians and women with disabilities.

Let us counter our opponents' strategy by winning important incremental victories in senates, assemblies and courts across the nation.

How can we make our laws work for women? One example is the law that was passed in California last year: California became the only state with a law that cracks down on anti-choice pregnancy centers and deceptive practices that such centers have used to prevent or discourage women from having an abortion. This is an incremental victory that we hope will be replicated across the nation.

Another law that needs changing right now is the Maximum Family Grant rule. The Maximum Family Grant rule was passed in 1994 as a way to coerce poor mothers into having fewer children. This law is punishing low-income mothers for choosing to have a child by denying their newborn $122 a month in welfare benefits. However, in the same way we need to protect the women's right to choose to end her pregnancy, we must also protect her right to choose to have a child. Using desperately needed financial assistance as a bargaining chip against women is wrong and deeply unethical.

Senator Holly Mitchell has tried to overturn the Maximum Family Grant rule for three years in a row, and this year, she will be doing it again. She has an incredible group of women's rights advocates working on this bill, among them the Women's Foundation of California's grant partners California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and ACCESS: Women's Health Justice.

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There are many other policies that we must focus on to create greater opportunities and equity for women. We should raise the minimum wage so that the two-thirds of minimum wage workers who are women can actually earn a living wage and support their families; eliminate the wage gap which is particularly high for women of colorin California, Latinas earn 44 cents for every dollar a white man earns and Black women earn 64 cents to a man's dollar; expand our social safety net so that single mothers who are struggling financially can receive enough in welfare assistance to put a roof over their heads and food on their tables; and invest in subsidized childcare so that eligible mothers can work while their children are cared for.
Cuentapropista (a Cuban entrepreneur) is a term that up until a few years ago would not have been used to describe a large sector of Cuba's centralized and still heavily planned economy. But despite heavy odds, I have recently witnessed the proliferation of Cuban entrepreneurship and its positive effects on the Island. As a Yuma (a Cuban term of endearment referring to visiting Americans), I've seen Cuba's "non-state" sector expand considerably, giving testimony to the entrepreneurial successes that everyday Cubans are achieving, and hunger to expand upon.

Engaging directly with Cuba's entrepreneurial sector -- while we push for an end to our pernicious trade embargo -- allows us to remove the U.S. as the Cuban government's bete noir and empower more Cubans to be the masters of their own fates. Some hardliners in the U.S. would argue that engaging any sector in Cuba is helping the monopolistic and undemocratic Cuban government consolidate its power. However, the last 50 years have shown that isolation has only aided the Cuban government in strengthening its monopolies while deflecting blame for its failing economy onto the U.S. embargo. Engagement with cuentapropistas, on the other hand, gives us the chance to begin to build relationships of trust and mutual benefit with the Cuban people.

In the face of constant economic instability and state control, cuentapropistas are the defining social and economic catalyst for Cuba's future. They are men and women who display incredible motivation and creativity in their business ventures, and are willing to take risks, often at great personal cost. As a result, the burgeoning private sector is now one of the most productive areas of an otherwise failing economy.

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In a fact sheet I recently released in partnership with Engage Cuba and the Cuba Emprende Foundation, we found that while Cuba has the most educated, low-cost labor force in the world, private sector opportunities for Cuban professionals continue to be severely limited. As a result, entrepreneurial Cubans have taken their fate into their own hands and are now estimated to be one-third of Cuba's total workforce. The rate of self-employment has surged to new heights in the last five years, rising from just under 150,000 to over half a million cuentapropistas by mid-2015.

A surprising area of self-employment growth is in telecommunications. The chronic scarcities and bottlenecks caused by the lethal combination of state socialist planning and the U.S. embargo have resulted in the incubation of a true "maker" culture. Highly trained but underemployed computer programmers and telecom agents have started launching innovative start-ups like AlaMesa and Conoce Cuba or designing "lean" software and offline mobile apps for both a Cuban and international clientele. Aiming to encourage this dynamic phenomenon, new U.S. regulations issued by the Obama Administration during 2015 now allow the contracting of Cuba's private sector IT and other professionals.

But don't be fooled. There are still drastic internal barriers for motivated, business-minded Cubans. The tax structure is burdensome, the private sector is legally cut off from international trade (apart from imports and exports via "suitcase commerce"), and cuentapropistas enjoy little reliable access to wholesale goods, rental space, credit, or foreign investment. Basic infrastructure is woefully outdated, and Internet access -- the driver of any modern business -- is still very limited and costly. Perhaps this is why despite unprecedented growth over the past five years, the cuentapropista sector contracted for the first time in the second half of 2015, falling to 496,400 by January 2016.

There are also serious structural workforce issues. For example, every year over 4,000 information technology engineers graduate across the country, but there are a limited number of state positions available to them. Therefore, many of these graduates are forced to join the historic exodus of young professionals abroad in order to find an economic return on their educations.

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The possibilities for these young entrepreneurs will be virtually limitless once the island is equipped with a modern telecommunications infrastructure -- something that can be made possible with the help of American investment. But in order for U.S. telecommunication services and other businesses to help bring meaningful change in Cuba, Congress needs to lift the trade embargo.

Because while American entrepreneurs and businesses await an end to the embargo, both Americans and Cubans are missing out. It is estimated that the U.S. is currently forgoing 1.6 billion in potential sales to Cuba annually due to current policy. Americans from across political parties have duly noted this fact. According to a Pew Research Center report, 72 percent of Americans, including 59 percent of Republicans, favor ending the Cuban trade embargo.

It is ironic that many embargo supporters rightly critique the Cuban government for restricting the free market inside the Island while simultaneously supporting an embargo that unfairly restricts American businesses abroad and any benefits they could bring to Cuba's struggling entrepreneurs and its people. By allowing Americans to bring business and investment to the Island, we will grow our own economy while supporting the Cuban people, including cuentapropistas, in the process.

Ted A. Henken, Ph.D., is the President Ex-Officio of the Association for Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) and co-author of the book "Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape." Henken is a member of the Policy Council of Engage Cuba, a bipartisan organization dedicated to mobilizing American businesses and non-profit groups to support the ongoing U.S.Cuba normalization process.

This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series that is revisiting the topic of U.S.-Cuba relations, one year after the thaw in the long-standing tension between two Western Hemisphere foes. The series, produced in partnership with Engage Cuba -- a bipartisan organization working to end the Cuban embargo and normalize U.S.-Cuba relations -- will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.
Stethoscope on white background.

When Tara Benesch began applying for medical school, she thought her longtime mentor would write her a recommendation.

"I was telling them, 'Oh, I identify as queer, and I'd love to keep working with the queer community . . .' and subsequently that person said they couldn't write me a recommendation anymore," says Benesch, an M.D./M.S. student at the University of California, Berkeley/University of California, San Francisco Joint Medical Program.

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Sadly, this story isn't unusual among LGBTQ students vying for coveted spots in medical school. These students are concerned that being open about their sexual orientation and gender identity could influence -- or harm -- their acceptance and future.

And they're probably right.

A Stanford University paper released earlier this year culled information from online surveys to all medical students throughout the U.S. and Canada; of the 912 respondents who self-described as sexual minorities, about 30 percent reported they concealed their sexual identity in medical school and 40 percent reported being concerned they would face discrimination.

"This person was someone who worked at a medical school -- so it was just kind of telling that there is that kind of unwillingness to talk about these things, even if it wasn't outright homophobia," Benesch says.

Luckily, after Benesch decided to disclose her sexuality on applications (in addition to mentioning it casually in interviews for medical schools), she found a program that she felt would be welcoming to her as it included a lot of LGBTQ faculty to mentor her in the future. Unfortunately, this kind of inclusivity, transparency and an eagerness to accommodate new evolutions in sexuality and accompanying curriculum is a pleasant anomaly.

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Medical schools' ongoing discomfort with sexuality and its antiquated notions of how it should be taught -- particularly in regards to LGBTQ issues -- is a serious problem, and one that is affecting patients' health.

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Although the importance of sexual health issues are recognized in medical schools in North America, the amount of time spent on educating students on sexuality -- and the quality of this education -- varies widely from school to school, and most of the focus is on preventing pregnancy and STIs, according to a 2013 paper published in the International Society for Sexual Medicine Journal.

The study also found that sexual health programs in med schools don't spend much time on sexual function and dysfunction, female sexuality, abortion or sexual minority groups and the rare interventions to include these subjects have been student-driven. In regards to LGBTQ-specific health issues, students only received a median of five hours of instruction, according to a 2011 Journal of American Medicine paper, and -- as was also revealed in the 2013 paper -- the quantity and quality of that instruction swung widely from school to school.

When it comes to the amount of time spent on how to properly treat LGBTQ patients, Carl Streed, Jr., MD, a LGBTQ health policy and practice expert at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, said he wants more than just a few hours. He wants the entire curricula across the medical school to address the existence of LGBTQ people and their health needs.

"I don't need hours, I don't need hours set aside. It's not that I need a 'gay day,' it's that I need it mentioned wherever it's appropriate," Streed says.

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Medical schools have a long way to go toward discussing sexuality at all, however, explains Bianca Palmisano, owner of Intimate Health Consulting, a national consulting organization for hospitals, clinics, businesses and non-profits that helps practices grow their LGBTQ and sexual health competency.

"When sex is 'private,' it's rendered invisible, and our lack of skills to address an invisible problem are, unsurprisingly, rarely addressed," Palmisano says.

Benesch echoes these sentiments, explaining that there is a tendency for med schools to paint conversations about sex as uncomfortable before they even begin, which is likely the result of how our larger society views sex -- as something we're not supposed to feel at ease talking about.

"In med school, I've heard 'OK, we'll take someone's sexual history later because that can be uncomfortable,'" Benesch says. "I think that saying that is lot worse. It puts this expectation on it that talking about sex has to be uncomfortable for everyone involved."

Gaps in Research on LGBTQ Health

The squeamishness with which medical schools approach the topic of sexuality is compounded by the fact that research on LGBTQ health issues is often limited, and the reality that schools are hesitant to change the shape of curriculum that has existed for years, if not decades.

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"Curriculum change takes forever -- there is a lot of inertia around changing any part of a professional curriculum, especially ones that are data-driven," Streed says.

According to Streed, although there isn't enough comprehensive research on LGBTQ health issues, that is luckily beginning to change. The National Institute of Health asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to evaluate the medical community's knowledge of LGBTQ populations and identify gaps in the research.

The IOM did find that the overall research on LGBTQ people's health concerns was incomplete, and that information on sexuality and gender identity needs to be as routinely collected as information about race and ethnicity. (Until the '80s and '90s, the health disparities affecting African Americans and other people of color were rarely addressed.)

But, says Streed, there has also been some positive change. "There is now a new requirement for 'meaningful use.' That's a fancy way of saying, 'If you want our money, you have to do what we ask.' So now you have to ask about [sexual orientation and gender identity]. This is so we have medical records, a large national database, that then can be probed for research in the future."

Sexual Health Issues Affecting Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People

Whether you identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer or any other non-heterosexual identity, there are either assumptions made about your sexual practices that are erroneous and/or unhelpful, or health care providers simply don't ask at all, forcing patients to decide whether they want to announce their sexual orientation to their provider. Benesch says she often finds herself in uncomfortable situations with medical professionals because she may "appear straight" to them. When a provider recently asked Benesch about her sexual history, she said she was queer, prompting a wide-eyed stare.

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"I get a lot of wide-eyed stares because that's not what people expect to hear from me," Benesch says. "It just kind of raises a red flag because as a patient I'm like, 'Oh god, this is going to be more awkward than it needs to be.'"

Although concerns about judgment hailing from health-care providers affects a significant swathe of LGBTQ patients, bisexual patients are especially unlikely to disclose their sexual orientation to their doctors. A 2012 study by the Williams Institute found that 33 percent of bisexual women and 39 percent of bisexual men did not disclose their sexual orientation to their health care provider, while only 13 percent of gay men and 10 percent of gay women did not disclose their sexual orientation.

Benesch's experience of shock and stigmatization in regards to her sexuality is not unusual -- many women who identify as queer, bisexual or pansexual hear doctors make assumptions about their sex lives and the number of partners they've had.

"Misconceptions about bi women's health tend to revolve around promiscuity," Palmisano says. "People -- and medical professionals are just people -- love to assume that if you have sex with people of multiple genders, you must be having sex all the time."

Palmisano explains another problem that bi women face is being asked questions that make assumptions about how people should be having sex -- namely that it's "discrete, monogamous and penis-centric." She gave an example of how a doctor may fail to ask the right questions.

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"So if I'm a bisexual woman who performs oral sex with a condom with my male partners, but I get fisted by and give analingus to my female and trans partners, my doctor is probably not asking me the right screening questions to assess my risk," Palmisano says.

When it comes to bisexual men -- who are a lot less likely to identify themselves compared to bisexual women -- they're often targeted for conversations that assume they are exposing straight women to diseases and hiding their sexual practices from women they're in relationships with.

"Even though that narrative has been factually torn to shreds, people still believe it," Palmisano explains. "And that means health-care providers still believe it. And they say nasty, nasty things to that effect when men do disclose. So bi men often get the worst of both worlds: erasure and scapegoating."

In regards to gay men, especially gay men of color, they're often targeted in similar ways as bisexual men are, with doctors emphasizing HIV prevention more than with other groups. There are also a lot of assumptions about gay men's sexual behavior that aren't made about straight men's behavior.

"It's this idea that we are trained in algorithms -- we see that a population that is more at risk requires more screening, but the way in which people approach that fact has to have some finesse and some competency," Streed says.

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Palmisano agrees that the majority of doctors' approaches needs to change, because HIV prevention should be a point of discussion for all patients, not just those with statistically higher risk.

"Yes, prevalence is highest in gay men of color. But that doesn't change the prevention protocol, which is relevant to everyone. We see this across the board for STIs, it's just most dramatic for HIV. Gay men and people of color get the lectures and the behavioral interventions, bisexuals and queer women get erased, and straight white folks get off scot-free."

A Lack of Understanding on How to Treat Trans Patients

For trans patients, the medical establishment has been particularly slow to adjust. Benesch says that all of her textbooks are fairly heteronormative, and fail to acknowledge the existence of trans people at all.

"Science, which we think is really objective, is actually constructed in this very gendered, heteronormative way. They're talking about 'male health issues' or 'women's health issues' when really they're talking about vaginal health issues," Benesch says.

There's also a lack of consensus about how doctors should approach the issue of taking hormones.

"I hear certain providers say, 'Oh, yes, you can't get pregnant [if you're on hormones]' and I've heard other providers say, 'Oh no, it has to be strictly monitored or it could be very damaging' or they're like, 'Oh, you know they're not as harmful as we thought,' so as a medical student that's been really confusing -- what am I supposed to tell my patients?" Benesch says.

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In her consulting work, Palmisano often finds a lack of awareness of how important hormones are to trans patients, because doctors often treat the issue as a minor one, when in fact it's quite dangerous.

"A lot of providers are quick to say, 'You need to come off your hormones' for pretty much any major medical issue, or surgery, without realizing how crucial those hormones are to the well-being of their patient," Palmisano says. "And frequently, stopping the hormones is completely unnecessary for the medical intervention in the first place. But standard procedure is that you stop taking all medications before a surgery, so that's the knee-jerk reaction."

Trans patients also frequently deal with "dead-naming" -- addressing them by birth names and misgendering them.

What's Changing

Smaller medical schools are usually more nimble than larger programs and are able to include more content on LGBTQ health issues as they develop and evolve, Streed says. But that doesn't mean major players aren't making an effort to change. John Hopkins, the University of Washington School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University of Medicine are all making inroads on coverage of LGBTQ health. All three schools were recently named a "Leader in Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Healthcare" by the Human Rights Campaign.

Although medical students still face issues of stigma, there are particularly welcoming options in some areas of California, such as the Bay Area, where Benesch studies.

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"I think at [University of California, San Francisco] we have quite a visible presence of LGBTQ doctors and professors and there's this very liberal gay-friendly space, so it attracts those folks who want to work here," Benesch says.

She recently spoke to a professor who identifies as lesbian and attended an Ivy League school decades ago, and realized how fortunate she was not to face the same resistance.

"She went to school and had a lot of pushback from faculty -- someone outed her and then she turned into the face of the LGBTQ community at that school and faced a lot of backlash from faculty. I remember hearing her story and thinking, 'I'm lucky that isn't how my experience has been.' It was humbling for me . . . med school is hard enough without having to go against people who don't like you for who you are."

This piece by Casey Quinlan originally appeared on The Establishment, a new multimedia site funded and run by women.
By Alex Cequea

Congrats America! Donald J. Trump is making us a wonderful deal: in exchange for our vote for president, he'll go ahead and "make America great again." Fantastic. Mr. Trump is using his business success as proof that he knows how to make this happen. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for us), there's already a different kind of business movement working passionately to make America--and the rest of the world--great. So Mr. Trump, thanks, but no thanks.

This movement is incorporating social missions into traditional for-profit business models. It goes by many names, and it comprises many different factions: social entrepreneurs, social ventures, social enterprises, supporters of conscious capitalism, impact investors, and benefit corporations. No matter what you call them, they're out to make a real difference. And guess what? They're going to end up making a hefty profit as well.

It all started with "greed is good"

Milton Friedman was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. In 1979, when asked about the dangers of runaway greed in the world of business, Friedman defended it by saying, "The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests." He argued that the great achievements of civilization, "didn't come from government mandates," but from individuals being relentlessly selfish with their motivations. In essence, greed is good, and if every man is looking out for himself, then we all benefit.

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Friedman's influence is everywhere you look; from the way politicians talk about the economy, to our cultural glorification of greed and excess. The underlying ideology is that greed is good for business. I mean, seriously. Leonardo DiCaprio almost won an Oscar by playing a Wall Street broker driven by greed and power. Bryan Cranston won several Emmys playing a chemistry teacher on a quest to build an unstoppable drug empire. Apparently, greed is also good for ratings.

You may say I'm a dreamer

Until recently, there's been little room for morality, activism, or revolutionaries in the world of business. The conventional wisdom says that business is for making money, and if your motivation is to make the world a better place, then you should go volunteer at a non-profit. Caring about the planet as well as profits is a relatively new idea in the business world, and it comes with it's own set of challenges. Case in point: Ben & Jerry's.

Ice Cream inspires a business revolution

Ben & Jerry's is an early pioneer of activism-infused capitalism. Since the company's founding in 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield went out of their way to build a socially-driven enterprise. They sourced from regional dairy farms, made fair-trade and organic ingredients a priority, regularly paid almost double the minimum wage to entry-level employees, and committed to donating 7.5 percent of pretax profits to their foundation. Their mission statement was three-fold: to make the world's best ice cream, to run a financially successful company, and to make the world a better place. For over 20 years, Ben & Jerry's danced to its own corporate tune, but the new century was just around the corner, and everything was about to change.

Ben & Jerry's fights acquisition

In 2000, Ben & Jerry's faced the prospect of being acquired by the multi-national giant Unilever. They didn't want to sell the company to Unilever, but as a publicly traded company, Ben & Jerry's had a fiduciary duty (a legal obligation) to maximize shareholder value. If they didn't sell, they risked being sued by their shareholders. If they did sell, they risked losing the socially responsible values and mission they had spent 20 years building. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. Unilever did end up buying Ben & Jerry's, but mostly left the brand alone and helped them grow while staying committed to their socially driven mission and activism.

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However, the legal prospect of not being able to hold on to socially responsible values when faced with a potential acquisition was worrisome. Would it be possible to create a new category of businesses? Would it be possible for this new category to be legally protected if the businesses wanted to pursue social and environmental sustainability along with profit?

A new class of legal entity is born: the Benefit Corporation

Maryland was the first US state to pass Benefit Corporation legislation in 2010. As of 2016, 30 states allow you to register your business as a Benefit Corporation (also known as B Corps), and the denomination allows you to operate as a mission-driven for-profit corporate entity anywhere in the United States.

Put simply, Benefit Corporations include "positive impact on society and the environment" in addition to profit as legally defined goals. This means that they are legally protected if they find themselves in the same precarious position as Ben & Jerry's in the year 2000, and do not want to sell to another company. Shareholders can't sue solely on the basis of failing to maximize profit, and the B Corp can make the legal case that the sale is not in line with their social mission. On the flip side, shareholders can sue a B Corp if they feel the company isn't living up to their stated social missions. Social responsibility becomes a two-way street in terms of accountability.

4 Things You Didn't Know About Conscious Capitalism. Stat sources:http://benefitcorp.net/http://goodmustgrow.com/ccsindex/ Posted by Social Good Now on Saturday, October 3, 2015

Where do we go from here?

Companies like TOMS Shoes, Warby Parker, Kickstarter, Seventh Generation, Ben & Jerry's, and hundreds more have restructured themselves as Benefit Corporations, and many have taken the extra step to become "Certified B Corps," which is an additional certification designation administered by a non-profit called B Labs.

This holistic approach to business draws a sharp contrast to Trump-style winner-take-all business mentality. Greed-driven capitalism is not sustainable in the long run, but if we embrace a triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits, then we'll be better positioned for sustainable growth in the future. Our country will be better off for it, and in exchange for our vote at the cash register, Benefit Corporations can help us make America even greater than it already is.

Now that's a deal that I can get behind.
January through June is awards season for one sector of creative arts. It kicks off with the Golden Globes for film and television in early January and ends in early June with the Tony Awards for Broadway productions. In between there will be SAG, Spirit, DGA, WGA, People's Choice, Obies, Drama Desk Awards, and many more.

I take my voting privilege for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards and for the Tony Awards very seriously. This means that I am at the theater four to six nights a week and watching 4-6 hours of screeners a night. That's a full-time job.

I am not a voting member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, which selects the Oscars. In 2013 the Academy elected Cheryl Boone Isaacs as its 35th president. She is the first Black -- and third female -- president in the Academy's 89-year history. As president, she increased membership by four hundred young people and people of color. However the six-thousand-member organization is still 90% White and 75% male. Thus, this year's host, Chris Rock, has dubbed this year's Oscars "The White BET awards."

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The same pool of films is considered for the SAG and Academy Awards. Having screened many, I find it hard to believe that the nominators did not find any work worthy granting a nod in Straight Out Of Compton, Chi-Raq, or Dope.

Maybe they never saw the films. There is no policing of many of the awards voting. By that, I mean that the organizations have no way of knowing whether the voters actually see the shows they vote on. We self-police. This means you could see everything and vote fairly, or you could see some things and vote fairly for some (and/or for friends for others) and you could even see nothing and vote only for friends or according to what the word on the streets says is the right horse to pick.

My personal experience working in theater, film and television is that evolution and integration are happening, are ongoing. I experienced this on a greater level this past year in film and television than in theater.

I worked on 11/22/63, the Hulu mini-series of Stephen King's critically acclaimed novel starring James Franco as a man who goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. Executive producer Bridget Carpenter (Friday Night Lights) told me she couldn't see an entire series with Blacks only in walk-on roles. So she asked King if she could turn a White character, Miz Mimi Corcoran, into a Black character. I was cast as Miz Mimi and Carpenter charged her writers to create scenes that were not in the novel but which would reflect the experience of a Black woman, in segregated Texas in 1963, encountering a white man from a future 30 years away.

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Brian Shoaf, writer and director of Aardvaark, told me that he read an interview where I questioned why "homeless woman" in a breakdown always says "Black." When he saw that description is his own script, he changed the homeless woman to White and cast me as the "Patrician" book club leader.

Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World) cast me in a pivotal role in The Book of Henry. I am accustomed to having to "look White" for these types of roles and wore a straight-hair wig for the audition. On set, Colin chose to have me wear my natural African American styled locks. And on Gotham, in the role of Ms. Peabody, I work with actors of every race. And I am teamed up with Asian Actor BD Wong (Mr. Robot).

On all of these sets, there were women crew members as well as African American, Latin and Asian crew members. I am seeing greater diversity on set in film and television than I see offstage in live theater.

From what I have seen, the majority of New York theaters have no non-white staff members in decision-making roles. So while there is a plethora of multiculturalism on stage in New York this season (Hamilton, Allegiance, On Your Feet, Eclipsed) the majority of the producing teams and staffs are exclusively white. Which means because the decision makers are all white, next theater season could easily be all white. And yet evolution is trying to make a crack. The New Group hired its first two African American staff members in its 22-year history as a company. Yet Classic Stage Company, which has been in operation for 49 years, has no non-white staff members.

Hamilton's multicultural off-stage and on-stage team is expected to sweep the Tony Awards this year. Off Broadway has a huge selection of multicultural productions which will also be awarded as well, and many have transferred to Broadway. Yet it is hit or miss whether next season will have the same wealth of riches.

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Multiculturalism is riches. Hamilton's syncretism, or the amalgamation of different and even opposing cultures and views, yields high art and huge profit. Calligraphy harks back to Mayan civilization and gives Apple products their unique and highly profitable design. James W. Loewan, author of Lies My History Teacher Told Me, says syncretism is how cultures typically change and survive... "by blending elements of different cultures to make something new."

The largely Muslim kidnapped Africans turned Salah into American Blues and Jazz. Art has a lot to gain from the mixing of cultures. Too often, though, there is misappropriation and theft, of culture as with the Isabel Marant's intellectual property lawsuits against indigenous Mexican women for designs created by their ancestors.

Civilizations survive by blending cultures to make something new. The arts can benefit from inviting other cultural perspectives into the decision-making process. A sharing of power is needed. Progress is slow but it's inevitable. Is it enough?
Last week, we kicked off our #MaternalMonday Stories campaign, sharing the moments that inspired the Wellbeing Foundation Africa team to dedicate their lives to improving reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. Through our #MaternalMonday online advocacy, we seek to create a tool and platform for health education for every woman and every child. However, we also see the need to get offline and into the homes, classrooms, medical centres, and even Internally Displaced Persons camps, to ensure that a high quality health education can reach everyone, in every community. This is why we began our Maternal Monday antenatal education classes in Nigeria, delivered by qualified midwives. The engaging, culturally sensitive, and highly informative antenatal classes are delivered free-of-charge to both mothers and fathers in various communities across the country. In December 2015, we even delivered this class at an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Wassa, Abuja. Read the #MaternalMonday Stories from the #MaternalMonday team below!

Jesse Cheto, Head of ICT and Communications

My moment of obligation came in 2011, when I realized that the excellent work of WBFA needed more visibility in the social media scene. In an increasingly technology driven age, we needed to drive the consciousness of users towards an alignment with health and development priorities. At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, part of my role is developing ways to leverage the influence of social media as a tool for advocacy, as well as, a tool for health education. This has been made evident through WBFA's #MaternalMonday campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. From the inception of this initiative, I have been actively involved in the preparation and dissemination of context-specific and time-relevant information on RMNCAH: the status quo, the challenges, and the way forward.

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I am happy that I am part of a growing wave of Nigerian men who are engaging with issues around women's health and issues on female empowerment as demonstrated in the UN Women HeForShe campaign. As a man, I have welcomed the privilege of learning about women's health, developing messages, and actively participating in health education in order to save the lives of women and children, in line with the United Nations' Secretary-General's Every Woman, Every Child initiative. Researching information on women and children has been at the core of my work and I am extremely passionate about their wellbeing. At WBFA, I am able to use my savoir-faire of communications and media not only for the furtherance of education and advocacy, but to easily collect data on the experiences of mothers and healthcare workers, and, by extension, use their testimonies to reduce stigma and provide peer, social and emotional support.



Yewande Ayoola - Programmes Manager (Nigeria)

My moment of obligation came when I lost a friend and her newborn due to complications in labor. I was distraught but I realized that if this could happen to an educated woman in an urban setting, women in deprived or rural areas would be further disadvantaged in survival during labour. Across Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, we continue to lose pregnant women as a result of causes that could be easily avoided by access to primary healthcare, timely referrals for specialist care, and access to WBFA Personal Health Records to track pregnancy progress and patient history.

Joining WBFA has given me the opportunity to carve a niche for myself in the advancement in RMNCAH and help prevent the death of women and children like my friend and her baby. Through our numerous advocacy engagements like the renowned #MaternalMonday campaign and implementation of projects like the EmONC training for health workers with Johnson & Johnson and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the USAID supported Strengthening Advocacy and Civic Engagement project on basic and inclusive education for the girl child, WBFA continues to advance the cause of women and children and empower them in areas that directly and indirectly improve their health and wellbeing.

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Eunice Akhigbe - Maternal Monday Antenatal Education Class Lead and Midwife

My moment of obligation came in August 2015 when I heard Toyin Saraki speak passionately about the need to empower pregnant women through antenatal health education. As a midwife with a passion to save every mother and child in my care, I did not hesitate to make this vision a reality alongside WBFA and the very same month; I delivered the first antenatal education class at the Medicross Hospitales in Lagos.

The excitement of the class was palpable and the success of the first class led to women inviting their pregnant friends to attend further classes, citing that that they had never had health education as informative as the WBFA antenatal education programme. In the classes, we discuss topics such as minor illnesses in pregnancy, nutrition, signs of labour, coping with labour pains, breastfeeding, immunization, and family planning following birth. The class has grown from strength to strength, with further health centres joining our programme in November. In December, we even delivered a class at the Wassa Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Abuja. It was an honour to empower expectant mothers in the IDP camp as they face serious challenges in accessing adequate care and attention. My hopes are that the Maternal Monday Antenatal Education Classes can reach and empower every Nigerian mother with life-saving knowledge.



Mrs Komolafe, Nigerian Midwife at Wellbeing Foundation Africa
Mr. Bloomberg, 73, has already taken concrete steps toward a possible campaign, and has indicated to friends and allies that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his fortune on it, according to people briefed on his deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his plans. He has set a deadline for making a final decision in early March, the latest point at which advisers believe Mr. Bloomberg could enter the race and still qualify to appear as an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

Edward G. Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a past Democratic National Committee chairman, said he believed Mr. Bloomberg could compete in the race if activist candidates on the left and right prevailed in the party primaries.

"Mike Bloomberg for president rests on the not-impossible but somewhat unlikely circumstance of either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz versus Bernie Sanders," said Mr. Rendell, a close ally of Mrs. Clinton's who is also a friend of Mr. Bloomberg's. "If Hillary wins the nomination, Hillary is mainstream enough that Mike would have no chance, and Mike's not going to go on a suicide mission."

In a three-way race featuring Mr. Sanders and Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Rendell said he might back the former New York mayor.

"As a lifelong Democrat, as a former party chairman, it would be very hard for me to do that," he said. "But I would certainly take a look at it -- absolutely."
Barrack Obama wasn't forced to spend the night in an animal carcass like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant , but the President learned a few other valuable tips from Bear Grylls on his expedition into the Arctic Circle, the first ever by a standing President. The episode ofwas made more to highlight the impact of global warming than it was to show how to survive in the wilderness, with the President and Bear exchanging thoughts and observations over bear-killed salmon.Grylls was pleased as punch to have scored such a huge guest for his show, saying what a down-to-earth guy the President is, something that probably won't sit well with many in his audience, who had petitioned for Bear to make Obama drink his own urine, as others have done on the show. Bear was a little put off by the all the security and press that came along for the ride, but in the end the President put full trust in Bear, and the two had a great time.Of course, it doesn't match the real-life exploits of Sarah's exploits into the wilderness, but it does show the President's willingness to put himself in difficult terrain to prove a point. His excursion into the Arctic was in early September, and he and Bear needed little more than windbreakers. Bear pointed out the receding glaciers and other signs of global warming, contradicting conservative critics who refuse to acknowledge climate change.In fact, global warming has received very little mention this political campaign by either side. I don't think it has come up once in Republican debates, and has received only passing mention in Democratic debates. Like most serious issues, it has been swept under by Donald Trump's outrageous acts. Yet, the President is determined to press the issue. For their part, the Republicans would rather hammer on ISIS, calling the President " naive " to think global warming poses a greater threat than terrorism.However, many others think that what is driving the refugee crisis isn't so much ISIS as it is global warming. A three-year drought in Syria probably had as much to do with so many persons fleeing the country as has the ongoing civil war. Rural farming areas have been particularly hard hit.Relocations have similarly taken place in Alaska, which the President highlighted on this trip. Arctic regions are being even more greatly affected by global warming, where temperatures have risen twice as fast as the global average. Obama visited Kotzebue , offering to provide relief to a town that has been one of the most adversely impacted by climate change.In many ways, Obama is evoking the same message Teddy Roosevelt made a century ago, calling on America to protect its valuable lands and resources for posterity's sake. Teddy was by far the more intrepid outdoorsman, publishing his accounts of his ranch life, hunting expeditions and the time he traveled through the Brazilian wilderness, which nearly took his life. However, you have to hand it to President Obama for staring global warming in the face and calling it to our attention, which I imagine President Roosevelt would have done the same.
"Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them [...]." "What giants?" asked Sancho Panza. "The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long." "Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone." "Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures."  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Six hundred and eleven years ago, Miguel de Cervantes wrote a story about a middle-aged man who dreams up a romantic, ideal world, and believes, against all reason, that it exists. He leaves his village in La Mancha on a quest to "revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote." But the giants he battles are windmills, the damsel he covets is a peasant girl, and he dies disillusioned, in a real world where nothing has changed.

Cervantes was no stranger to that real world. He had been a soldier, and had fought bravely and been wounded in the Battle of Lepanto. Captured by the Turks and imprisoned for five years, he then served as a commissary for the Spanish Armada, where the corruption of others landed him in prison again. Still, this was a man who wrote:

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"To change the world, my friend Sancho, is not madness nor utopia. It's justice."

Cervantes died on the 22nd of April, 1616, not knowing that he had written the world's first best seller. Don Quixote would later be translated into almost every language, be retold in plays, operas, ballets, and movies, and inspire such greats as Gustave Flaubert, Henry Fielding, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Felix Mendelssohn, George Balanchine, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso.

Another man with a similar story would have turned eighty-seven this week. He believed, against all reason, that "all men are created equal." That they should be judged "not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character." That they could "work together, pray together, struggle together, go to jail together, stand up for freedom together," live together.

"Quixotism" is the impractical pursuit of ideals. It is tilting at windmills, chasing the romantically absurd.

As this man did. He went on a mad quest to desegregate a nation of "separate but equal" bathrooms and classrooms, train cars and buses, theaters, juries, and legislatures. He launched an irrational call for racial equality in a black and white society; civic responsibility in the face of unjust laws; nonviolence, even at gunpoint, especially at gunpoint. He went to prison too, and still wrote:



"I have decided to stick with love...Hate is too great a burden to bear."



Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot on the 4th of April, 1968, in a country where racial discrimination and economic inequality were, and still are, quite real. But since then, his birthday has become a federal holiday, the first to commemorate the life and values of a non-white non-president. African Americans have closed the gap with whites in voter turnout and high school graduation rates. Black life expectancy and college graduation rates continue to rise, and there are eight times more African American members of Congress than there were in 1963.

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"History is a war against time, its evolution representing the slow and steady collapse of physical and mental distances within imagination and life. The journey is so easy for us now that we forget the inventions that made such travel possible. [...] We forget that the individuals who developed these forms of relation did so at a great cost to themselves, reconfiguring meaning and communication in societies that were at best ambivalent to the new horizons opening up."

Like Henry David Thoreau, who in 1849 wrote that people should abide by their principles, and stand up to governments whose laws are immoral or unjust. Or Mary Wollstonecraft, who even earlier in 1792 said that in a social order founded on reason, men and women should be treated equally. Or Mahatma Gandhi, who argued that through Satyagraha, the nonviolent commitment to truth, India could achieve independence from Great Britain.

Or the three billion, three hundred and thirty seven million, four hundred thousand people throughout the world who, against all reason and with no weapon, fought for freedom and equality in the last century... and won.

The journey is far from over. Injustice remains, and "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Sometimes it does feel like we are just tilting at windmills. But we still read Don Quixote, the story of a man who chased his ideals across the Spanish countryside. We read it over and over again, hoping that this time around he actually finds them. Hoping he vanquishes those windmills. Hoping he does not give up. And we must never stop.

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At the risk of seeming mad, at the risk of failing, we must never stop seeking, "in a world suddenly too small for existing cosmologies, a reality large enough to contain what we have seen"...

Because "one man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this."
U.S. passport with an Iranian passport on a white background

If it weren't for my Persian nose, I would be practically indistinguishable from any other young American woman.

I was born in Seattle, raised in Scottsdale, and currently work and reside in New York City. My mom was born in Tennessee, and my father in Tehran. Both are originally Iranian, but have proudly called this country home for more than four decades. I personally have stepped foot inside Iran only twice: once in 1997, at age five, to visit my grandfather; and once in 2010, on a family vacation to visit cultural sites in Tehran and Esfahan.

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After our trip, my dad was even more thrilled to be back in the U.S. than I was. He is undoubtedly the most patriotic American that I know, crediting this country -- and all of its glorious freedoms and opportunities -- for every blessing in our lives.

Last month, in response to the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, new restrictions were passed through Congress entitled the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 (H.R. 158). From 1986 until this point, the Visa Waiver Program had allowed citizens of 38 countries, predominantly in Europe, to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa.

H.R. 158 prohibits two groups of people from traveling to the United States without a visa: First, people who have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan since March 1, 2011; and second, those who are considered dual nationals of the above mentioned four countries.

Under reciprocity agreements, these 38 countries are authorized to enforce copycat travel restrictions on Americans with the same dual nationalities. Ambassadors of the twenty-eight European member states wrote an open letter advising Congress to vote against the bill. They rightly warned that the bill would negatively impact more than 13 million European citizens who travel to the U.S. every year.

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Just a few days ago, H.R. 158 was implemented and a prominent Iranian-British journalist working for the BBC was prevented from boarding her plane to the states. If copycat laws against Americans are enacted, I will face similar restrictions when it comes to traveling abroad. I will be forced to undergo grueling, expensive, and invasive security processes to secure a visa for international travel. On the other hand, my friends with Italian, Irish, or Polish backgrounds will face no such obstacles.

Furthermore, the overarching principle behind H.R. 158 is contrary to rudimentary American values. The law discriminates against select groups of people and populations based solely on their national origin-- a deeply disturbing and imprudent measure. As an American - born and raised - I should not be treated differently than anybody else. I should be able to hop on a plane and go to Europe if I feel like it. I should not be treated as some sort of second-class American citizen.

Supposedly, these restrictions were designed to help diminish the threat of terrorism. I concur with the premise behind this idea: the Visa Waiver Program should certainly be reformed, and safeguarding our national security should be top priority. But history has taught us that targeting people based on their national origin is never the solution. In practice, the dual nationality clause of the bill does exactly this.

According to the U.S. Department of State, "The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a national of two countries at the same time. Each country has its own nationality laws based on its own policy. Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice."

Iranian law, for example, asserts that anyone born in the country -- or born to an Iranian father or grandfather -- is an Iranian citizen. In other words, even if I do not consider myself a citizen of Iran, the Iranian government does not see it that way. Moreover, Iranian Americans who wish to visit family in Iran are only allowed to do so if they carry an Iranian passport. Therefore, dual citizenship becomes a necessity rather than a choice. Iraq, Syria and Sudan have similarly troublesome laws in place.

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Ironically, the majority of Iranians living in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere, are the ones who fled the oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic in search of a better life. Their children, and their children's children, were born and raised abroad, and many have never even been to Iran. Yet, H.R. 158 targets them.

The good news is that there is an ongoing bipartisan effort to eliminate the dual national clause of the bill. On January 13, 2016, Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dick Durban (D-Ill.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) led the charge by introducing the Equal Protection in Travel Act.

I urge lawmakers, from both sides of the aisle, to join this movement. To make America safer and more secure, we should avoid sweeping policy changes that target specific population sets. This misses the mark entirely. Instead, the U.S. should evaluate each person entering our country based on the specific threat that he or she may pose, not by where his or her parents came from.

I also call upon my fellow Iranian Americans to step up to the plate. There is no doubt that Iranian Americans are some of the most successful entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, philanthropists and scientists in this country. All of this success is useless, however, if we remain complacent when it comes to civic participation.

This proposed legislation is our opportunity to right the wrongs of H.R. 158. We live in the world's greatest democracy, but it will only work effectively if we are informed and active citizens, voice our interests, and collectively hold our public officials accountable. This is what the America we know and love is all about.


Sean Penn and Raul Castro during the interview held in 2008, brokered by Hugo Chavez.

They say they talked for seven hours, sharing cups of tea and glasses of wine. On one side was the American actor Sean Penn, staunch critic of the system he lives under, and on the other side, Raul Castro, newly-appointed president of a country where just a few people have shaped the political course for almost six decades.

The prominent artist came from a Hollywood that disgusted him and a nation where anyone can yell at the government until they're blue in the face. The general, almost an octogenarian at the time, had seen and approved the downfall of many intellectuals simply for looking askance at power.

Raul Castro must have looked with suspicion and cunning on this wealthy tantrum-throwing progressive. Unable to read aloud without committing innumerable errors, typical of people with few books and many orders, the former Minister of the Armed Forces in Cuba knows that behind every artist hides a critic of totalitarianism who must be neutralized and silenced, or at least an attempt must be made to buy them off.

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That appointment in Havana in 2008, brokered by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, had only one objective: to sweet talk the irreverent Penn so that he would repeat the "virtues" of a system under which eleven million Cubans live. And so, the conversation was entirely a dance of conquest, with no outbursts, no guns on the table. The star of Mystic River must not suspect a thing, must not be afraid.

It is probable that the meeting proceeded amid knowing glances, paused words, in the style of "I never liked the idea of giving interviews," offered by the younger of the Castro brothers. The makeshift reporter had to feel he was accessing the hidden soul of a hardened guerrilla, when in reality he was falling in the web of an adept totalitarian. The trap worked perfectly.

Penn not only left assuring us that "in fact 'Raulism' is on the rise along with a recent economic, industrial and agricultural boom," and also passed on from his interview - without questioning it - the 'fact' that reports about the violation of human rights in Cuba published in the media in the United States "are very exaggerated and hypocritical." A journalist would not have lost the opportunity to slip in a hard hitting question and try to get at the truth.

However, Sean Penn didn't even flinch. His reason for being there was not to question the words of General - as an 'inconvenient' reporter might have done - but to use Cuba as the point of the sword in his personal battle against the United States government. We were nothing more than numbers before his eyes, figures that should explain why the Cuban "model" was superior to that emanating from the White House.

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As a crumb, Penn later admitted that if he "were a Cuban citizen" and had to do an interview like that one, he could "be imprisoned." But he said it as one recites the Lord's Prayer before stealing from a neighbor; he clamors for transparency and then puts on a hood; brays for freedom and shakes hands with a dictator. He says it in a way that is not convincing.

Years later, Penn would repeat the same modus operandi. He would interview, in the back of beyond in Sinaloa, a fugitive from Mexican justice, a blood-stained drug lord, Joaquin Guzman Loera, El Chapo. The caviar-progressive with his private planes would fall again, surrendering at the feet of power, becoming the ventriloquist for a story told by another famous culprit who wanted to clean up his image.

This time, the scene also developed like a mating dance, where the one who was in control the whole time managed his naive prey who believed he was dictating the pace of the encounter. El Chapo also sweet talked the winner of two Oscars, as Raul Castro had done years earlier in Havana.

The actor-journalist gave himself up to the interviewee, joking with him, offering his hand. In their conversation, it is the other who sets the pace and dictates the topics. The idea is presented of the bloodthirsty criminal as a product of a corrupt society, someone who has been shaped by external causes and turned to violence as an act of rebellion.

However, far beyond the adversities and the context, there was a moment when both Raul Castro and El Chapo Guzman could have questioned the harm they were doing, the unhappiness and pain they left in their wake. The greatest failure of the condescending reporter was not to delve into why there was no repentance in either man, only the frigid stubbornness of the caudillos.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images JAIPUR, INDIA - JANUARY 22: Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood during the session 'The Heart Goes Last' at Jaipur literature festival 2016 on January 22, 2016 in Jaipur, India. Ninth edition of ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is set to witness over 360 participants from the fields of literature, history, politics, economy, art and culture debate and discuss on one platform during the course of the next five days. (Photo by Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

JAIPUR -- Okay, roll up, roll up, who do you think today's Big Bollywood Draw was for day four of JLF? If you guessed Gulzar, you win! Your prize: a photo of a fan who climbed a tree just to look at his face while he read out his poetry.

In second and third place, Javed Akhtar and Amish respectively, although it being a lovely sunny day and a Sunday to boot, everyone's sessions were totally packed. I myself experienced a moment of confusion on day three, when I went to attend Margo Jefferson's session on her memoir and found people pushing and shoving to enter. Wow, I thought to myself, There's a revival of interest in the memoir as a narrative form suddenly. Alas, Jefferson never came to the lit fest for mystery reasons, and the crowdseveral shoulders deepwas there only for Bollywood's Javed Akhtar once more.

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Bar bar dekho

Gulzar was also honoured at the Harper Collins publishing party the night before, but many grumblings were heard in the crowd as the bar stopped serving while he was on stage. Ironic, considering a lot of his poetry is about alcohol, quipped a dry-throated Gulzar fan.

The wrong address

Speaking of mystery reasons for not showing up, one's been cleared up anyway. Historian Niall Ferguson was expected to appear this year, and instead he tweeted this:

Very sorry indeed to be missing #JaipurLitFest - blame a combination of bureaucracy, weather and the clash with #WEF16 in Davos. Next year!  Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) January 23, 2016

One hears the bureaucracy at any rate was a result of the Indian Embassy sending the visa to his address at Harvard instead of Davos, where Ferguson is attending the World Economic Forum.

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#omg

The most exciting thing that happened online today was press-reticent Margaret Atwood answering questions on Twitter. Up on the press terrace, the people manning it have a spreadsheet with a list of interview requests on itthe Margaret Atwood ones went into multiple numbers, if not pages.

But sadly (for us who wanted to meet her one-on-one) she said no interviews and was sticking to that stance. A few choice samples from her afternoon's conversation though.

.@WhereDidJennyGo: That's a tough one. Adjective weed? Read Emily Dickinson? Or? Maybe however it's good and you're just too critical!  Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) January 24, 2016

For the rest of it, go check out her Twitter page.

Best Guests

Atwood stayed nice and late at the Elle magazine party in her honour at Samode Haveli. She seemed surrounded by friends, and apart from a few people at the partyokay, everyone at the party going up and saying hello and what an honour it was to meet her, she chatted to her friends, drank champagne and was lovely and gracious to whoever stopped by her table. The party lasted later than most of the publishing ones, and the final guests had to be ushered out gently, with the waiters pointedly folding up table linen in the background.

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Everybody needs good neighbours

At a session called Temples In Pakistan, ZEE anchor Sudhir Chaudhary came in for some flak from an audience member. She said (and I'm paraphrasing): ZEE's job seems to be making money off being anti-Pakistan. She then proceeded to give him a lecture on how relations with our neighbouring country should be improved, and him and his channel should be more positive about it. Considering the whole festival is sponsored by ZEE TV, slightly awkward moment there for them? An aside: two Pakistani diplomats were prevented from attending the lit fest by the Indian government who argued, Permissions and denials are part of the process.

Raking the coals

And here's the controversy of the day, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor had many choice things to say about the PM in a session called Swachh Bharat: The India Story. He said, among other things that the PM's silence on the Dalit students suicide was baffling and on all key issues facing our nation, there has been no communication from the PM. Plus this notable quotable: When you cast a vote, you vote for caste.

You know you love me, xoxo Gossip Girl

I've been trying to pin down the elusive person behind the Twitter handle JLF Insider for the past four days, but no luck. Reading his or her deliciously bitchy tweets have always been fun though, whether or not you're at the festival. I leave you today, then, with a few samples.

What's really the point of Ford Samwad anyway. Apart from being seating arrangement for Chaayos.  JLF Insider (@JLFInsider) January 24, 2016

'What! Kajol ka session khatam? Main itne dur se aayi thi sirf iske liye' Overheard a gaggle of college girls while waiting for Stephen Fry.  JLF Insider (@JLFInsider) January 23, 2016

Stephen Fry is this year's Jhumpa Lahiri. Last seen, he was warding off enthusiastic fans trying to take a selfie with him.  JLF Insider (@JLFInsider) January 22, 2016

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ASSOCIATED PRESS An Indian paramilitary soldier stands guard near a police barricade in front of India Gate, the landmark war memorial on Rajpath, the ceremonial boulevard for Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. Security has been beefed up across India ahead of the Republic Day celebrations on Jan. 26, when French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

NEW DELHI -- In the second such incident in the national capital region, car of an army officer was stolen from a south Delhi area yesterday, sending alarm bells ringing ahead of the Republic Day parade which will be attended by top Indian leaders and French President Francois Hollande.

The national capital is already on high alert as security remains beefed up ahead of Republic Day celebrations following inputs regarding the presence of key members of several terror outfits here. The inputs were received immediately after the Pathankot attack.

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Around 2.30 p.m yesterday, the Santro car of a Colonel rank army officer, who is presently pursuing a medical course at AIIMS, went missing from near the post office in Lodhi Colony, police said.

There are two stickers on the windshield of the car, one pertaining to a premier medical institute and the other of an Army Officers' club in Dhaula Kuan. The car has a Haryana registration number.

"A case has been registered under relevant sections of the law and probe is underway," DCP (South) Prem Nath said.

Following the incident, an alert was issued in all police stations and picketings were intensified, police said.

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This comes close on the heels of a similar incident wherein the car of an IG rank officer with a central security force was stolen from his residence in Noida Sector 23. The vehicle has not been tracked down yet.

On Friday, Delhi Police had issued an alert about a cab whose driver was killed and the vehicle robbed of from Pathankot, reminiscent of the Pathankot attack. The body of the driver was found at a bridge in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra district, police said.

Security was taken a notch higher with the arrival of Hollande, who is the chief guest in this year's Republic Day celebrations, in the national capital yesterday.

At least 10 major heavily-guarded pickets were set up in each police district and commandos were fanned across the city with emphasis on popular markets and vital installations, a senior official said.

Police duty in the city borders has also been intensified and police in UP and Haryana have been informed about the stealing of the army officer's car.

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Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - JANUARY 23: People view an exhibit after Prime Minister Narendra Modi releases the digital copies of 100 declassified files related to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on his 119th birth anniversary, at the National Archives of India (NAI), on January 23, 2016 in New Delhi India. On the 119th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the first set of 100 digitised files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in the public domain, the freedom icon who created the Indian National Army to throw off the shackles of British colonial rule in India. Modi said in a tweet, his bravery and patriotism endears him to several Indians across generations.' Subhas Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 - 18 August 1945), was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India, but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a troubled legacy. (Photo by Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The 100 files released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Netaji's birthday do not contain the smoking gun. The mystery of Subhas Boses fate remains clouded, as ever, in rumour, conspiracy theory and conflicting accounts.

Instead of solving the essential mystery, we have a new mini-mystery. Did Jawaharlal Nehru write a letter to British PM Clement Atlee calling Bose a war criminal? That has been seized triumphantly by the enemies of the Congress as proof of Nehrus perfidy.

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The Congress is crying itself hoarse that this is a desperate attempt by the BJP to poach Subhas Bose for their own purposes. Congress claims the letter is fake. Jawaharlal is spelled as Jwaharlal.

There is no signature. It has too many spelling and grammatical errors and does not carry the National Archives of India watermark. Business Standard writes the letter could have been dismissed as a poor attempt at malicious forgery to whip up passions on the contentious issue of Subhas Chandra Boses death.

Now Kanchan Gupta has tweeted out a Times of India clipping from 1945 where Nehru was asked specifically about Bose being a war criminal.

He said I resent the suggestion that Subhas Bose should be dealt with as a war criminal. And he went on to add in my list there will be many high officials sitting in Delhi who are bigger war criminals than Subhas Bose. Nehru made no bones about his ideological differences with Bose but said I have never doubted his passion for freedom.

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This will not squelch the controversy because it is no longer about the facts anymore. People do not want to solve the mystery as much as they want to score particular political points. The BJP wants to show the Congress in a bad light.

The Congress cannot wiggle around the fact that it never declassified documents in all its years in power but are loath to let the BJP claim any national hero as its icon. In the middle of it is Mamata Banerjee who preempted Modi by releasing a bunch of classified documents in Kolkata and now wants a new sobriquet for Bose.

If Mahatma Gandhi is the Father of the Nation, Bose should be the Leader of the Nation. Political observers believe thats a gambit Banerjee hopes will help her in the coming Bengal elections by stoking some Bengali pride in its great martial hero.

When Amit Shah came to rally in Kolkata a year ago BJP supporters showed up with posters demanding Netajis birthday be declared a national holiday which incidentally was Mamata Banerjees demand as well. Both parties seem to think Bose is one way to Bengal votes.

It is fascinating is that we should even think that. The man would have been 119 years old now. As someone who had no role in post Independence India, its fascinating his name could be used as political currency in 2016.

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It is his mysterious disappearance that has ironically kept him alive and launched countless hypothetical what-if theories about the kind of India that would have happened if he had been a post Independence leader in this country.

What everyone knows, and few acknowledge as they fall over each other in praise of Bose, is that he would have been a very inconvenient political figure for most of them. Ramachandra Guha has written a Bose-led Socialist party would have been to the left of the Congress and more egalitarian than the Congress and more patriotic than the Soviet-inspired Communist Party of India.

That does not sound like a party the political leaders of the BJP now rushing to claim Bose, would have been too enthusiastic about. But his disappearance created a Subhas Bose shaped blank spot which political parties can colour and claim at will.

What is sad is that the 100 files were overshadowed by the mysterious Nehru letter which was not part of the declassified files. However by dint of timing, no doubt deliberate, many think it was something freshly declassified as well. It adds to the fog rather than dispelling it.

Human nature is fascinated by mystery and the disappearance of Subhas Bose is a humdinger of a mystery. But as with everything else it has turned into a BJP-Congress slugfest with a Trinamool occasionally piping in from the side. Bose deserves to be more than a political tool aimed at assembly elections in 2016.

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By viewing his story through the prism of contemporary politics, we ignore the actual history of what happened, which is of greater relevance to India than the disappearance of Bose. For example, Prithvijit Mitra writes in the Times of India that the INA history remains the most unexplored chapter of Indias freedom movement.

A book commissioned by the Nehru administration on this chapter of Indian history was never published and its only known copy lies in the ministry of defence archives. Questions about whether the Japanese left the INA in the lurch in the Northeast have not been answered properly. Or the touchier issue of whether the INA attempt to wage war was an ill-planned misadventure that cost 24,000 lives?

The INA memorial at Moirang in Manipur where the Indian tricolor was first raised deserves to be far more prominent in Indian today than it is. On a recent trip to Manipur, I heard some state residents say the Japanese had put more effort into their war memorial in Manipur than the Indians. How many Indians even know about Moirang?

The release of documents is overdue and welcome and Trinamool MP is right when he says Boses memory and deeds deserve the dignity of closure." But political parties are more interested in scoring points rather than closure. Amartya Sen got it exactly right when he said it was far more important to debate Netajis life and works than his death.

The circumstances of the death are sometimes made the way for producing an element of petty-minded politics said Sen. Bose should be bigger than that. The mystery of Subhas Bose should not be allowed to trump the actual history of Subhas Bose.

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National award-winning actress Kalpana, who appeared in more than 300 films including the recent superhit Charlie, died of a heart attack on Monday in Hyderabad. She was 51.

Born as Kalpana Ranjani, the actress was known for her impeccable comic timing and had received a National Award for her performance in the 2013 film Thanichalla Njan. She was in Hyderabad to shoot for a Telugu film and was scheduled to leave for Kerala later in the day.

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According to a report in The News Minute, Kalpana was rushed to Apollo Hospital early on Monday morning after she was found unconscious. Doctors suspect that she died due to a heart attack, but have not yet decided whether to conduct a post-mortem.

Sister of actors Urvashi and Kalaranjini, Kalpana forayed into the Malayalam films as a child actor in Vidarunne Mottukul in 1977.

Her Malayalam hits include films such as, Ennum Eppuzhum, Karnavar, Dolfins, Bangalore Days and Spirit.

Kakki Sattai, Idhaya Thiruda, Sathi Leelavathi and Chinna Veedu are some of her well-known Tamil films.

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The actress' body is expected to be brought to Kerala later today. She is survived by her 16-year-old daughter Sreemayi.

The Malayalam film fraternity expressed shock at the demise of the actress, who was best known for her comic roles in South Indian films.

Veteran actor Nedumudi Venu told The News Minute, "She used to treat any disease she had very lightly. She was never one of those who would speak about what ailed her. Last week, she acted with Maniyanpilla Raju and he told me that she was very active."

(With inputs from PTI)

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French President Francois Hollande is in India on a three-day state visit. He was greeted warmly by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his arrival. Now, anyone who has seen Modi greeting world leaders would immediately know that he holds nothing back when he welcomes dignitaries. His handshakes are firm, his embraces are warm, and he sometimes even holds hands when posing for the press.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left and French President Francois Hollande greet each other at the Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016. Hollande began a three-day visit to India on Sunday that could push a multibillion-dollar deal for combat airplanes and closer cooperation on counterterrorism and clean energy. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

French President Francois Hollande has said his government was considering an agreement with New Delhi that would clear the way for a long-awaited $9 billion sale of French-built Rafale warplanes to India.

Hollande arrived in India on Sunday. During his visit he will try to close the defence deal and to push forward with nuclear and solar energy agreements, including a plan to build six French nuclear reactors in western India.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to attract French companies to India and to share high technology in defence and other fields as part of a bid to promote local industry and build a domestic manufacturing base.

In the run-up to Hollande's visit, Indian and French negotiators debated the price of the 36 combat planes designed to replace ageing Indian air force jets, officials of the two nations said.

"The idea we have in mind is the one of an intergovernmental agreement between the two countries in order to allow the firms involved to go all the way," Hollande told journalists.

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"It is this intergovernmental agreement that will allow a commercial transaction," said Hollande.

The French leader, speaking in Chandigarh, a city designed by French architect Le Corbusier, said such an agreement was a prerequisite for the Indian side. He did not elaborate.

Hollande will be the guest of honour at India's Republic Day parade on Tuesday, a sign of the deepening political and commercial ties between the two countries.

NUCLEAR REACTORS

During his visit, Hollande will try to kickstart negotiations on a plan for French nuclear company Areva to build six reactors in western India. The talks have recently been stuck over the price of deal, and French utility EDF's recent takeover of Areva's reactor business has also slowed progress.

France and India are expected to lay out a roadmap for nuclear cooperation. India has launched a nuclear insurance pool to address nuclear suppliers' concerns over liability stemming from a 2010 Indian law.

A source at Areva said the firm was waiting to see the details of the insurance cover.

India will also seek French investment to upgrade of its rail system, waterways and mass transit systems planned for 50 cities, Modi said. Formal talks will begin on Monday.

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GLOBAL TERROR

Against the backdrop of major terror strikes in France and India recently, Modi and Hollande also shared concern over the menace, with the Indian leader pitching for a collective fight to defeat the global challenge.

Addressing India-France Business Summit, Modi said the French President "is correct" in saying that terrorism is a challenge just like global warming.

"Fighting against challenge of terrorism is the work for humanity. All those who believe in humanity, they will have to collectively fight against terrorism. India and France believe in humankind. We together along with other countries will eliminate terror forces and terrorism," Modi said.

The day terrorists attacked Paris, that day I decided that the Chief Guest on our Republic day would be from France.

He assured Hollande that India is will stand with France in fight against terrorism.

The comments came against the backdrop of two major terror attacks in India and France in the recent times. While Paris was attacked by ISIS in November, Pathankot in India was struck by Pakistani terrorists on January one.

ALSO READ: Mallika Sarabhai Says Goodbye To Her Mother WIth A Very Special Tribute

Modi used the occasion to hail the French government, people and media of that country for continuing their development agenda even after the dastardly terror attack in Paris last November.

"France has shown the way to the world. Just few days after the attack, France hosted leaders of all countries (for climate summit). This is a brave act. I congratulate the citizens of France, especially the media there, that they supported the their government during the time of crisis," he said, adding said India needs to learn lessons from it.

About 130 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in a coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015.

The Prime Minister also said the "trust and friendship" with France is an asset for India.

Modi, while addressing the business forum meet, said he had decided to invite Hollande as Republic Day Chief Guest the day terrorists attacked Paris.

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"We want to work with France for development. The day terrorists attacked Paris, that day I decided that the Chief Guest on our Republic day would be from France. He has come here and I am very thankful to him," he said.

Hollande is accompanied by the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, economy and culture and dozens of top corporate leaders.

On Sunday, Airbus Helicopters and India's Mahindra Defense, a private company, signed a "statement of intent" in the presence of the two leaders to produce military helicopters in India as a joint venture.

"Mahindra India and Airbus Helicopters have agreed on a blueprint that can put India on the world map for military helicopter manufacturing," said Pierre de Bausset, president of the Airbus Group India. Details were not immediately known.

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Hollande will hold talks with Indian leaders in New Delhi on Monday and be a guest of honor on Tuesday at India's Republic Day parade, celebrating 66 years since the country adopted its constitution.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi, center, contesting in the parliamentary elections speaks during his campaign in Hyderabad, India, Friday, April 11, 2014. Indians voted in the crucial third phase of national elections Thursday, with millions going to the polls in the heartland states that are essential to the main opposition Hindu nationalist party's bid to end the 10-year rule of Congress party. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)

NEW DELHI--Asaduddin Owaisi is no stranger to controversies. The member of parliament from Hyderabad sparked yet another controversy on Monday saying minority communities would have to stop eating beef if his party was defeated in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader asked people to vote for his party if they wanted to continue eating beef.

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"If MIM is defeated in the election, I am telling you - the members of minority community will have to forget about eating beef," Owaisi told a gathering in Hyderabad, according to an India Today report.

Accusing the BJP-led government in Maharashtra of targeting poor Muslims and Dalits by banning beef in the state, Owaisi said beef exports from the country have risen by 17% since the Modi government assumed power. In March 2015, the Maharashtra government banned beef.

Owaisi had met the family of Mohammad Akhlaq who was killed by a mob in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, after they allegedly found beef at his house. The lynch-mob incident had snowballed into a political storm with several celebrities and opposition parties blaming the NDA government of rising intolerance in the country.

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will stop supporting the use of ultralight aircraft to help young whooping cranes migrate from Wisconsin to Floridas Gulf Coast each fall.

Operation Migration, the Canadian-based nonprofit group that has led the migrations for 15 years, has opposed the end of ultralights, saying the program has helped cranes survive. But Fish and Wildlife officials the birds haven't been successful in producing chicks and raising them in the wild.

The effort has spent more than $20 million to establish the flock that's distinct from a larger flock of whooping cranes migrating between the Texas Gulf Coast and northern Canada.

But on Friday, officials announced that this season's ultralight-guided flights to the birds' winter home will be the last, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The final decision to end the public-private effort was made during a meeting of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, according to Pete Fasbender, a Minnesota-based field office supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

"The real short answer is that we felt that this was in the best interest of the birds," Fasbender said.

Nearly 250 whooping cranes have been released in Wisconsin since 2001. Fish and Wildlife officials say about 93 are currently alive, but only 10 chicks have survived to fledge.

Experts in crane biology have concluded that the use of aircraft and other human interaction are having a negative impact. Since 2005, the chicks that fledged and were born in the wild came from only five pairs of adults, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

"Why aren't the others getting it?" asked Fasbender. "The common thread is this lack of parenting skills."

The partnership includes Operation Migration and staff from the Wisconsin-based International Crane Foundation (ICF), the largest crane conservation organization in the world. Barry Hartup, director of veterinary service for ICF, said the crane foundation agrees with the changes, which include limiting human interaction with chicks and minimizing a practice where costumed humans help care for chicks.

"We have to find ways to reduce the element of artificiality," Hartup said.

The decision is a setback for Operation Migration, which has staff in northern Florida, just short of the final destination of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The ultralight migration this year has lasted more than 100 days.

Joe Duff, chief executive officer of Operation Migration, posted a comment Saturday on the group's website that said: "It is sad to see the end of aircraft led migration. There will be many people who will be disappointed, and even a few who will celebrate. But those reactions are all about people and our mantra has always been, it's about the birds."

The Associated Press
Pablo Bartholomew

You have seen them in several places and in several roles. In the Parliament, as 'Gabbar', as the 'Sanskari babuji', as Miss India. But, you may not have have seen them like this before.

Photographer Pablo Bartholomews 60/60--a show that is a collection of his candid photographs of artistes in the 70s and 80s-- is a celebration of memory. "It shows what people were like in their younger avatar," Bartholomew told HuffPost India.

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The series include actress Nafisa Ali looking into the camera, sucking her fingers, Shashi Tharoor playing Anthony to Mira Nairs Cleopatra in a play, a fashionably dressed Alok Nath in rousing form in his theatre days, Smita Patil chilling in Bartholomews Bombay flat, playing with his typewriter--among others.

When Bartholomew decided to do the show, he didn't realise it would have resonance with the younger people. "All I knew was it would be fun to expose people and put it up in a show," he said.

But, the celebrated photographer known for his work on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the Emergency and its aftermath and the Babri Masjid demolition, wanted to do this particular show for a very long time. But, he couldn't. Talks were initiated with exhibitors, but it always failed.

"I have a history of failing," Bartholomew says with a wry laugh.

He then goes on to list his failures.

Two years ago, Bartholomew wanted to showcase his photographs of Northeast tribes, which was a tribute to Prabuddha Dasgupta. But, Delhi photo festival (DPF) rejected his photos. Finally, India International Centre decided to host the show. Incidentally, the show coincided with the duration of DPF. "It was very well received," he said.

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Bartholomew says "rejection kind of propels" him.

The show 60/60 being hosted from January 23 till February 20 at Sakshi Gallery in Colaba, is also a result of those several rejections.

Talking about the show, Bartholomew says that none of these were photographed as an assignment. "Sometimes they were not even aware i was taking a photo," he said. "This was a quiet look at the people," he added.

So, why is it called 60/60?

It has a pretty simple explanation. Sixty, because Bartholomew just turned sixty. And the exhibition includes photographs of sixty people. "Also, it sort of sounds sexy, I think," he said.

Asked how the response has been from the people who have been photographed, Bartholomew shared the conversation he had with Anupam Kher. When Bartholomew told Kher that he has this photograph of his, the actor got really excited. Kher asked me to send the image, so that he can tweet it. He wanted to show off his 6 packs!

Take a look at some of the photographs here:

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Members of the Theater action group rehearsing Oedipus directed by Barry John, New Dellhi, 1982

In the Photo: Top Centre in editor Bharat Kapur, the three women below from left to right are Ein Lal, Ilushyin Dubey and the banker Naina Lal Kidwai. Centre in the bottom is Annie Thomas.

Poet Adil Jussawalla, Bombay, 1980

Anupam Kher in his hostel room, Chandigrah, 1974.

Activist Aruna Roy, New Delhi, 1974. Roy was a student of my mother Rati Bartholomew and seminal influence on me when her husband Bunker Roy and their Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) in Tilonia took me in when I had just left school. Their work with photographic processes and encouraging villagers to make their own filmstrips was revolutionary. Today I see the NGO world and a lot of it is a laugh.

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Artist Eruch Hakim, New Delhi, 1975.

Mira Nair and Shashi Tharoor as Anthony and Cleopatra, New Delhi, 1975.

Shashi was in St Stephens; Mira was in Miranda House. The two colleges had a collaboration. Whenever Stephens would need women actors, theyd get them from Miranda House; whenever MH would need male actors, theyd come from Stephens. Both Mira and Shashi would have been in the early twenties at the time; I must have been 19 or 20. This was a college production of Antony and Cleopatra. Mira acted then; the directing came much later. In the background is Susan Visvanathan, a reputed social anthropologist.

Actress and former Miss India Nafisa Ali, Bombay, 1980

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Designer Rajiv Sethi in his Shanker Market office, New Delhi, 1976.

Curator, activist, photographer Ram Rahman, New Delhi, 1979.

Actor Sayeed Jaffrey relaxes at the Searock Hotel, Bombay, 1981.

Actress Shabana Azmi visits the dancing girls quarters on G.B. Road, Delhi, 1980.

This was shot in the red light area of Delhi. I think, at the time, she was working on a film that needed her to do some research on prostitutes. Shekhar Kapur, not in the frame, was there, too.

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Designer Shona Ray at her residence, New Delhi, 1974.

Shona was a great spirit and such a strong personality. I remember she had had breast surgery for cancer recently and one monsoon afternoon we were walking near her house in Nizamuddin East and it started pouring. We ran to tale shelter under some trees but were drenched. As I lit a cigarette, Shona reached under her blouse and yanked out the sponge falsie she used to wear after the surgery and squeezed the water out of it. We both looked at each other and couldnt stop laughing.

Shobha De with adman Mohamad Khan at Nadish Naoroji's wedding reception, Bombay, 1980.

Actress Smita Patil in Bartholomew's room in Bombay, 1980.

Victor Banerjee in his dressing room on the sets of Shatranj Ke Khiladi, directed by Satyajit Ray, Calcutta, 1976.

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Actor Alok Nath 42 years later in front of his photograph with actress Mona Chawla in Harold Pinters, Lovers directed by Feisal Alkazi for the theatre group Ruchika of which I was a founding member. Delhi, 1974. In the photo also are seen Maya Rao in Bertolt Brechts Mother, directed by Anuradha Kapur in a Miranda House production of the first Hindi translation of the play by Balraj Pandit. and Om Puri in a Kabuki play when he was a student at the National School of Drama both Delhi, circa 1975.

Actor Tinnu Anand with his wife Pushi point to himself 4 decades ago.I worked on many of Tinnus film including Shahenshah.

In the next photograph is the poet, writer Manohar Shetty who now lines with his wife Devika Sequira in Goa and both of them I worked at the Sunday Standard when Dom Moraes was the editor.

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About 60 Detroit teachers protested Monday outside a court where a judge is to hear arguments in a case that could force teachers to stop calling in sick as a form of protest.

A couple dozen other teachers were in the courtroom waiting for the hearing to start. Teachers' sickouts have repeatedly forced Detroit to close public schools in the past two weeks, keeping thousands of students at home. In a bid to stop the absences, the city's school district filed a lawsuit.

The governor and the school district's emergency manager should be put on trial, not teachers, according to Detroit teacher Steve Conn. Teachers are upset over pay, class sizes, building conditions and Gov. Rick Snyder's plan to overhaul the district.

Two schools closed Monday because of a high volume of teacher absences, said the district, which has about 100 public schools and 46,000 students. On Wednesday a sickout shut down more than 85 of the district's schools.

That and other sickouts have angered Republicans in Michigan's Legislature, which they control. Last week they proposed  and promised to quickly pass  legislation to make it easier to deem such work stoppages illegal strikes.

Teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan. The proposed legislation would shorten the deadline for the state Employment Relations Commission to conduct a hearing on complaints from 60 days to two. It also would allow hearings to be held for more than one teacher at a time, empower the state superintendent to revoke their teaching certificates and impose larger fines.

In recent months, Detroit educators have stepped up efforts to protest their low pay, Snyder's plans for the district and its ramshackle finances, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classrooms.

The district is run by an emergency manager appointed by Snyder. Warning of a potential bankruptcy, he has pushed state lawmakers to pass bills to overhaul the school district by splitting it in two.

The Associated Press
A Brief History Of The Record Business: 1965 To 2015

Here we go on a whirlwind journey through the history of music consumption from 1965 to the present day, looking at how it has evolved from the communal listening of LPs to today's personalized streaming playlists.

________________________________________

Guest Post by William Buckley Jr. of FarePlay





Growing up in the sixties and seventies music was everywhere, it was all we talked about. It was the invitation; want to come over and listen to the new Creedence Record? Meet me at the record store?

Status in those days was the guy who had the best stereo and the best record collection. Fans saved their money and purchased records whenever they could.

It was a shared experience, it was communal. People would hang out and listen to music, pass around an album cover, read the liner notes and talk about who played on the record. Music videos would not appear until the eighties and social networking was what happened in the aisles at record stores.

Peer-to-peer file sharing was a ninety minute cassette tape recorded in real time, filled with songs from your favorite artists. Making great mix tapes, that earned you bragging rights, was an art form that took time to master. This is why sharing music in those days wasnt much of a threat to record sales. It took so damn long to make copies.

When I worked in a record store in Berkeley in the early seventies, it wasnt unusual for customers to purchase five LPs and take chances on new artists. Often customers would ask for recommendations based on the artists they were following. In my store we had a contest every day to see how many copies of a record we could sell when we played it in the store.

The introduction of the CD.

By the early eighties the record labels began transitioning away from relatively inexpensive LPs to CDs. Compact Discs were expensive, costing more than twice as much as records. Customers who bought multiple records and once took a chance on new releases, bought fewer titles. The CD was the motherlode of profitability for the record companies. They werent only far more profitable, but people began replacing and repurchasing their music collections.

Unfortunately, the labels rode that horse into the ground. Their focus became more about short term profits as opposed to making the investment to develop new talent. The CD is one of a handful of technology products that never came down in price. Even when the price to produce CDs dropped dramatically as demand spiked and more production facilities were built.

The strategy of keeping profit margins high would eventually backfire two decades later as a generation saw piracy as a justifiable payback for greedy record labels and their overpriced music.

Video Killed the Radio Star.

The other major game changer in the eighties was MTV, launched on August 1, 1981. Within a very short time traditional radio found itself in heavy competition with MTV, as cable television became available in more households. The radio promotion guys working for the labels discovered that having their bands video added to heavy rotation on MTV was like getting airplay on every radio station in the country.

Not surprisingly, MTV became the dominate force for breaking acts and transforming music into music videos, expanding musics popularity by creating even more super stars.

The Record Business meets Wall Street.

Music was now big business with massive profits from compact discs and promotion from MTV. By the nineties the music business was beginning to attract the attention of Wall Street. A business once dominated by music people, was now attracting lawyers and power brokers from other businesses filling high level creative decision making positions.

Respected industry leaders, like Mo Ostin, who had built Warner Brothers Records into one of the most respected and successful record companies would be forced out after twenty-five years as CEO in 1994. The man who forced Ostins resignation, Robert Morgado, who had no experience in the record business, would be fired six months later and Warner Brothers would never regain its former glory.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In 1996 the music business would suffer another setback. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed broadcasters, who up until then could only own a handful of radio stations, were allowed to purchase as many stations as they could afford.

A buying frenzy ensued with corporations like Clear Channel buying up hundreds of local radio stations, eventually stripping them of their individuality.

Thousands of program directors and DJs who once added songs and created playlists that reflected the taste of their local audience disappeared.

Fewer, emerging local artists got airplay and listeners starting complaining that all radio sounded the same.

Napster and the age of artist exploitation.

If you were a college kid and everyone was talking about a new way of getting free music on your computer would you think: No Im not going to do that, how are the bands going to make any money? Hell no. Are you kidding, they flocked to it.

For this generation of Internet users Napster was like finding a bag full of money in the trunk of your car. Students loved the idea of free music and were surrounded by friends who would gladly show them how to use it. Most young people saw nothing wrong in downloading songs for free from Napster. Many believed that they were simply sharing the music; to them stealing a CD from a store and downloading songs for free were totally unrelated.

On the surface it made sense. The record labels perceived by many as corporate gate keepers, manipulating who got a shot at stardom and keeping the lions share of the money.

Piracy was going to give every band a shot at stardom and create opportunities for all musician to get exposure and find new ways to make money. They didnt see it as stealing, they believed they were actually helping new bands. Unfortunately, piracy turned out to be a financial disaster for most artists.

Things were happening so fast that Napsters founder, Shawn Fanning, was being celebrated as a visionary of sorts, a liberator of music. Even the mainstream media didnt know what to make of of Fanning or Napster. He ended up on the cover of Time Magazine and was a presenter at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.

But it wasnt just the media that didnt know how to react to Napster. When Lars Ulrich of Metallica learned of Napster he scoured the site for his bands songs. Ulrich found all of Metallicas songs available as free downloads. He also found an unreleased, unfinished track, I Disappear from the upcoming Mission Impossible IIsoundtrack. He went ballistic.

Not only did Metallica sue Napster, But Ulrich and Roger McGuinn, one of the founders of the Byrds, spoke before Congress about Napsters unauthorized abuse of Copyrighted Songs. Reading the fifteen year old transcripts of Ulrichs testimony before Congress is nothing less than a revelation:

We have to find a way to welcome the technological advances and cost-savings of the Internet. However, this must be done without destroying the artistic diversity and the international success that has made our intellectual property industries the greatest in the world. Allowing our copyright protection to deteriorate is, in my view, bad policy both economically and artistically.

The response to Ulrich from the pirate community was so vitriolic and mean-spirited against this successful, wealthy artist it is still burnished into peoples memories, even today it is folklore. It was a powerful warning as if someone had stuck Ulrichs head on a spike just outside the city limits with a sign that said If youre a musician and speak out for your rights, this is whats going to happen to you.

Ultimately, many of Metallicas fans would turn against them; fellow musicians took notice. Every time an artist would speak out against piracy the negative backlash would be so intense that artists became afraid to say anything, lest their fans turn on them.

After just two years, Napster was ordered to shut down on July 27, 2001:

A federal judge in San Francisco shut down the popular music swapping Web site  saying the online company encourages wholesale infringement against music industry copyrights. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel noted that 70 million people are expected to be using Napster by years end unless the service is halted. ABC News.

But shutting down Napster wasnt the end, it was just the beginning:

What Napster has really done is educated the marketplace that this is a great application, and this is how people would like to hear music in the future, said Gene Hoffman of eMusic.

In 2012 it was estimated that nearly a quarter of all internet bandwidth is used for hosting sharing and acquiring infringing material.

In 2014 a House Judiciary Subcommittee began hearings on copyright, their first formal review of copyright in nearly forty years.

Itunes

In 2003 Steve Jobs finally convinced the record labels that unless they unbundled albums and sold songs for $.99 on iTunes they could not compete with piracy. The music industry that had gone from selling singles in the fifties to selling albums in the sixties, found itself back in the singles business again.

Ultimately, the combination of piracy and the decline in album sales would take their toll and the record business would lose more than half of its value over the next fifteen years.

Interactive Music Streaming

The music business is now facing a new challenge that further threatens the financial stability of an already hobbled industry. Some question if these streaming services, like Pandora and Spotify, can even be profitable. Pandora has been in business for a decade and has never shown a profit.

More importantly, musicians and songwriters are questioning if they can make a living in a business where selling their music is in rapid decline and payouts from streaming their music pays so little.

These are some of the key questions that will be addressed at the panel discussion Is Todays Environment Pro-Creators? on Saturday, May 7th.

William Buckley Jr.

Founder, FarePlay

www.fareplay.org

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by Richard BrownThe U.S. government has suspended new enrolment in Cigna Corps Medicare Advantage health insurance and prescription plans, branding the company a serious threat to enrollee health and safety.The temporary ban prevents Cigna from offering certain Medicare plans to new patients, following a probe into the health insurers methods of operation. Cignas revenue from U.S. insurance plans in 2015 hit $30.4 billion, or 4.1 percent overall market share, according to IBISWorld.Cigna revealed the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had suspended it from enrolling new customers or marketing plans for Cigna Medicare Advantage and standalone prescription drug plan contracts.CMS charged Cigna with denying health care coverage and prescription drugs to patients who should have received them and of widespread and systemic failures. CMS also accused Cigna of maintaining shoddy documentation and neglecting to implement a risk assessment program, among other alleged violations.Cigna is required to appoint an independent monitor to audit its handling of the matter. Last year Cigna had 502,000 patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, or three percent of the market, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.Wyoming is under investigation by regulators for potentially allowing coal mining companies to waive clean-up insurance, putting state taxpayers on the hook for up to $900 million in costs.A federal review by the Interior Departments Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement is looking at two now-bankrupt Wyoming mining companies, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, to see if they have the means to cover several hundred million dollars worth of future clean-up costs.The investigation hinges on self-bonding, permitted under a decades-old mining program, whereby some of Americas biggest coal firms could forego insurance on a portion of future mine clean-up costs.Officials estimate that roughly $3.6 billion in self-bond liabilities could fall to taxpayers and "it is a big issue," Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell told Congress in December.If federal officials find the companies have neglected their responsibilities, the regulators could assume oversight of the industry in Wyoming. Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality said it would respond within 10 business days, as required.Less than 24 hours after Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz publically lambasted Obamacare for leaving his family bereft of health insurance, it seems the opposite was true.Cruz last week bemoaned to college students in New Hampshire that he had no health insurance due to the suffering that Obamacare has caused.In fact, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas had automatically moved him and his family onto a new policy, though it seems his broker had not told the senator the news. The Humana policy is, however, 50 percent higher than the Cruz familys previous health insurance.American International Group Inc is set to off-load a chunk of its mortgage guarantee company, according to a person close to discussions. Bloomberg reports that AIG, under relentless pressure from outspoken investor Carl Icahn, plans a partial spinoff of the unit, though will maintain a significant stake in the business. The unit is worth up to $3.5 billion, according to John Nadel, an analyst with Piper Jaffray Cos.AIG CEO Peter Hancock is set to unveil AIGs new vision for boosting returns and narrowing the companys focus in a presentation tomorrow (26 Jan). Icahn has insisted on an overhaul of the mainly property casualty and life company.Residents of New York shell out the most in the country for basic health insurance, according to a new survey by comparison site GOBankingRates.com. New Mexicans pay the least, the poll found.Comparing the most popular - or silver - plan offered through national or state-level insurance exchanges run via the Affordable Care Act, the survey evaluated the plans monthly premium, deductible, emergency care copay and copay for treatment by a primary physician.
Clarksburg School Hoping for More Chromebooks

CLARKSBURG, Mass.  The School Committee was presented with the need for more Chromebooks for students as the school moves to a more online system.



Graham Coterwas, IT director for the North Berkshire School Union, explained how the school has been moving to the cloud and using the Google document system for sharing projects and papers.



Each student, staff and faculty has an account to use the free Internet-based computing system; how a file or folder is shared limits access.



"It's all centrally managed by me, I work at four different schools," he said, adding no matter where he is, "I can get in and do all kinds of administrative tasks."



Principal Tara Barnes said the online activity is outpacing the use of paper documents, describing the use of Drive as a 24-hour accessible filing system.



"We're doing this all electronically, I hardly get any paper anymore," she said, and described how she and other teachers could document issues with a troubled student, for example, at the same time on a single document.



Student Delaney Babcock, who was there to tell the committee about some of the activities of the Student Council, explained how one of her classes was using a shared folder to work on poems.



The school purchased 35 Chromebooks this year, bringing the total to 70, and has 15 tablets for the primary wing. Coterwas said the preference is for the netbooks over tablets because of their keyboards and sturdiness. The Chromebooks  netbooks with Google's Chrome operating system  last a full day on a charge, are holding up under constant use, and run a very secure system. They cost about $200 depending on the brand.



"They're coveted everyone wants, everyone wants to use them," said Coterwas.



Superintendent Jonathan Lev said the Chromebooks were used for the online Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing.



"They really did [work] and we didn't have any problems and the future is there's going to be a lot more done online," he said.



Delaney Babcock explains some of the events planned for spirit week.

"When you go to meetings and present ideas to groups, it's a very important 21st century skill they're going to need," she said. "Those are the kind of skills they have to develop that's really important."



The dream is to get one for every student, more than 160 at this point. The school is looking into more grants and the Parent-Teacher Group is trying to help, said Barnes.



Lev noted that the school will begin budget deliberations and "we'll see how much there is this year to buy more."



In other business, the committee approved the use of the cafeteria several times a year for the VFW's larger pancake breakfast.



The Veterans of Foreign Wars post is selling its quarters on River Road and has been seeking a place to holds its fundraising breakfasts. It is working with the Senior Center to use that kitchen for its monthly breakfasts but that venue is too small for its larger ones - a fundraiser for school class trips, for the library and for Alzheimer's.



"With the big ones, even in the hall we have now, we were overrun," said VFW member Edward Denault.



The committee approved the use, but not until it could check with the town about liability. Denault said liability insurance had become increasingly onerous for the post and could no longer afford it. Barnes said she had spoken with the cafeteria manager and only asked that the veterans meet with her first.



 Lev reported that the request for proposals for a consultant on school project had not yet been posted. There had been a delay in getting the authorizations in order but it had been submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. He also anticipated MSBA's approval of the School Building Committee.



 Barnes said parents can sign up to get a text alert for school cancelations.



 The committee went into executive session to discussion negotiation strategy.
New Doctor Joins Barrington Family Medicine in Great Barrington

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  Dr. John Paul Hickey has joined Barrington Family Medicine and is accepting new patients.



He joins Dr. Susan Thompson in the primary care practice located at 63 State Road in Great Barrington.



In addition to comprehensive primary care, Hickey brings expertise in HIV, Hepatitis C and addiction medicine.



Hickey is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He received his medical education at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, School of Medicine and his post-doctoral training at Saint Vincents Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. He holds a Master of Public Health degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health.


FAFSA Day Offers Free Help Applying for Financial Aid for College

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Every high school senior, college student and adult student who will be attending college during the 2016-2017 academic year needs to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in order to apply for federal, state and institutional financial aid.



FAFSA Day Massachusetts, part of the national College Goal SundaySM program, provides free help statewide to students and families looking to complete the FAFSA.



The 12th annual FAFSA Day Massachusetts is being held on Sunday, Jan. 31, at 1:15 p.m. at Berkshire Community College. Families are encouraged to visit www.FAFSADay.org to register and to see a list of what to bring.



The services are free and available to anyone attending college for the 2016-2017 academic year; low-income, first-generation students are especially encouraged to attend. A Spanish-speaking financial aid professional will be available.
Two Berkshire School Students Named Talent Search Semifinalists

SHEFFIELD, Mass.  Two students at Berkshire School were selected as semifinalists for the INTEL Science Talent Search (STS).



Since 1942, first in partnership with Westinghouse and since 1998 with INTEL, this program has provided a national stage for the country's best and brightest young scientists to present original research to nationally recognized professional scientists. This year, Berkshire produced two of the 13 semifinalists throughout the state of Massachusetts. A total of 23 students were chosen from across New England.



Shuvam Chakraborty, a senior from Bennington, Vt., and Josiah Tolvo, a senior from Sheffield, were named among the 300 students chosen from 1,750 entrants to the nations oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition. As a result of their work, both will receive a $1,000 award from the Intel Foundation. Berkshire will receive an additional $2,000.



Dr. April Burch, director of Berkshires Advanced Math/Science Research program, said she was "ecstatic" about the honor, even though the two students were not among the 40 finalists chosen to advance in the program.


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

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'Bumrah's Absence is a Big Loss For India But Facing Shami And Bhuvneshwar Will be a Challenge For Pakistan'
In Washington, where a traffic ban was still in effect, the recovery got off to a slower start, with the entire transit system closed through Sunday. The Office of Personnel Management said federal government offices in the Washington area will be closed on Monday, along with state and local government offices and schools.

The last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday, but crews raced the clock all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks before traffic and pedestrians returned in full force.

Ice chunks plunging from the roofs of tall buildings menaced people who ventured out in Philadelphia and New York. Only the high winds on Manhattan's Upper West Side kept the snow from entirely swallowing the tiny Mini Cooper of Daniel Bardman, who nervously watched for falling icicles as he dug out.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars covered with snow all week after a one-day record of 26.6 inches fell in Central Park.

Treacherous conditions remained as people recovered from a storm that dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England. At least 30 deaths were blamed on the weather, with shoveling snow and breathing carbon monoxide collectively claiming almost as many lives as car crashes.

Broadway reopened Sunday after going dark at the last minute during the snowstorm, but museums remained closed in Washington, and the House has postponed votes this coming week  including one on overriding President Barack Obama's health care veto  because of the snowstorm. The House already was planning on a short workweek because Democrats are set to hold their annual legislative retreat beginning Wednesday in Baltimore.

Flying is expected to remain particularly messy on Monday after nearly 12,000 weekend flights were canceled. Airports resumed limited service in New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, which said it got an entire winter's snow in two days. Washington-area airports remained closed Sunday after the punishing blizzard.

Major airlines also canceled hundreds of flights for Monday. Along with clearing snow and ice from facilities and equipment, the operators of airlines, train and transit systems had to figure out how to get snowbound employees to work.

Overall snowfall of 26.8 inches in Central Park made it New York's second biggest winter storm since records began in 1869, and Saturday's 26.6 inches made for a single-day record in the city.
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
European Union interior ministers on Monday urged Greece to do more to control the influx of refugees and migrants, some threatening to exclude it from the continent's prized passport-free travel zone as the crisis increasingly divides the bloc's members.

Greece was the main gateway to Europe for more than a million refugees and migrants who reached the EU last year. But it has been criticized for a failure to control the flow of arrivals, which have shown little sign of falling over the winter months.

The EU has taken various steps to give cash-strapped Athens financial assistance to deal with the crisis, but many member states believe Athens is not using that enough. Of five registration hot spot centers that were due to be set up for migrants arriving in Greece, only one is running so far.

Overwhelmed by the influx, Greek law enforcement officials have often let refugees and migrants through deeper into Europe rather than keep them on Greek soil for proper registration  the first necessary step agreed by the EU before people can move further.

Athens says the numbers are impossible to manage and blames the other 27 EU states for not offering real help. The crisis has put the passport-free Schengen zone  hailed by top EU officials as the greatest achievement of European integration  on the verge of collapse.

If we cannot protect the external EU border, the Greek-Turkish border, then the Schengen external border will move toward central Europe, said Austria's Interior Minister Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner.

Greece must increase its resources as soon as possible and accept help, she said on arriving at informal interior minister talks in Amsterdam.

The Schengen zone comprises 26 states, most of which are also EU members. Germany, France, Austria and Sweden are among several countries that have introduced temporary border checks as they struggle to control the flow of people.

"Speaking about timetables, it's already too late. We have seven countries with border controls," Sweden's interior minister Anders Ygeman told Reuters.

He said migrant registration centers need to start functioning in Greece and Italy as planned.

"In the end, if a country doesn't live up to its obligations, we will have to restrict its connections to the Schengen area. If you don't have control of your borders, it will have consequences for the free movement."

Excluding Greece would require applying Article 26 of the Schengen code. Germany, the main destination for refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, first floated the idea last year.

The Greek minister did not speak on arrival but the EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, himself Greek, sought to talk down the risk of excluding the country from Schengen.

Nothing like this has been proposed or discussed. What we have to do is to better manage our external borders. It's obvious that frontline member states must work more and here we are  to help them to better do their job, he said.

The Luxembourg interior minister was also against leaving Greece outside Schengen, while Germany's Thomas de Maiziere said that he wanted to preserve Schengen but that time was running out.

Berlin hopes a deal agreed with Turkey last November would mean fewer migrants arrive in Greece, but the deal has so far had limited impact.

Top EU officials have echoed Berlin's warnings recently that Schengen will not survive without a dramatic change in the coming weeks in the way the bloc handles the crisis.

However, EU countries, worried about growing anti-migrant sentiment at home, have failed to agree.

As the ministers arrived by canal for talks at Amsterdam's maritime museum, they passed a protest by Amnesty International, a boat packed with mannequins in bright life vests designed to resemble refugees and migrants arriving in Europe.

Leaders of Europe, it's not the polls you should worry about, a sign said. It's the history books.

Reuters
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Syria peace talks meant to begin this week were stalled Monday partly over the question of who would represent the opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected clarity within a day or two and expressed support for The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who has the tricky task of issuing invitations for the first talks in two years to end the five-year-old civil war.

The talks were meant to begin Monday in Geneva but have been held up by international disagreement over which parties among the opposition should be invited. Syrian rebels want an end to airstrikes and government sieges of territory they hold and the release of detainees. The talks have been rescheduled for Friday and are expected to last six months.

De Mistura has said that talks on Syria will push for a nationwide cease-fire for all parties other than the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Jabhat Al-Nusra (the Nusra Front).

"The condition is it should be a real cease-fire and not just local," he said. "Suspension of fighting regarding ISIL and al-Nusra is not on the table. However, [there are] plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place."

Diplomacy has so far yielded no progress toward ending or even curbing Syria's civil war, which has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes.

Since the last peace conference was held in early 2014, ISIL fighters have declared a caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq, and the war has drawn in a slew of world powers. A U.S.-led campaign has led airstrikes against ISIL fighters since 2014, and Russia last year launched a separate air campaign against all enemies of its ally Assad.

The Syrian government and its allies have been encouraged by recent gains carved out with the help of Russian firepower.

Diplomats were given a new push by a U.N. Security Council resolution backed by Washington and Moscow last month calling for talks, but peace efforts are on hold while questions such as whom to invite are resolved.

Russia says opposition figures it calls terrorists should be barred from the talks and wants to include groups like the Kurds, who control wide areas of northern Syria. Regional heavyweight Turkey strongly opposes inviting the Kurds.

The main Sunni Arab opposition groups, which are supported by Sunni Arab governments and the West, say they will not attend unless they can choose their own delegation. Spokesman Salim al-Muslat said the opposition High Negotiation Committee will discuss its position on Tuesday.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups should start by the end of January as planned but that the invitation list remains a sticking point.

The talks in Geneva will come after a set of meetings in Vienna and New York among the international community and regional players. During those meetings, Saudi Arabia was expected to come up with the opposition list to attend the Geneva talks.

Al Jazeera and Reuters
Imperial Valley News Center

Legal analysis shows how untapped Clean Air Act provision can reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Los Angeles, California - A team of law professors and attorneys at three of the countrys leading centers devoted to climate change and environmental law have published a joint paper concluding that an unused provision of the Clean Air Act authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop and implement an economy-wide, market-based program to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions and achieve the Obama Administrations Paris Agreement pledge.

The program could be implemented without further Congressional action and would provide regulators and businesses seeking to mitigate climate change with clear benefits  increased flexibility, heightened administrative and economic efficiency, and greater effectiveness.

Legal Pathways to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under Section 115 of the Clean Air Act was published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law, and the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. The report offers an in-depth analysis of Section 115, titled "International Air Pollution," which authorizes the EPA to require states to address emissions that contribute to air pollution endangering the public health or welfare in other countries if the other countries provide the U.S. with reciprocal protections. The paper examines the legal basis for invoking the provision, and a number of critical legal issues that would confront implementation of a comprehensive nationwide program. The thorough legal analysis and considered conclusions offer a blueprint for federal action, and have been endorsed by prominent scholars at Yale Law School, New York University School of Law, University of Virginia Law School, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and Stanford Law School.

"Under President Obamas leadership, EPAs greenhouse gas regulations have made the U.S. a leader in the global effort to combat climate change, but more is needed if we are to meet our international commitments," said Michael Burger, coordinating lead author of the report and executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. "Section 115 is a powerful but unused tool that can integrate existing and future efforts into a comprehensive national program. While EPA could have used the provision before, the Paris Agreement has refined the coordinated international effort to address climate change. This type of reciprocal relationship is precisely what the statute requires."

"The United States is the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, and there is no question that our emissions have contributed to damages in other countries," said Michael Gerrard, a lead author of the report, founder and director of the Sabin Center and Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School. "Section 115 was designed to address exactly this sort of situation and to help the U.S. be a responsible global citizen."

"Section 115, though passed decades ago, is tailor-made for the global problem of climate change," said Ann Carlson, a lead author of the report, Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at UCLA School of Law. "Congress had remarkable prescience in including a provision in the Clean Air Act that directs the United States to work to tackle international pollution problems as long as other countries are helping solve the problem too. The Paris Agreement demonstrates this collective effort to solve the problem of climate change and Section 115 provides the U.S. with a flexible, creative way to cut its emissions and live up to its Paris commitment."

The paper emphasizes that Section 115 is not only legally defensible but also good policy for regulators, businesses and the public at large.

"Of all existing legal tools to tackle climate change, Section 115 is the most efficient, both for industry and consumers as well as for the government," said Jason Schwartz, a lead author of the report and Legal Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. "It enables the states and EPA to harness the power of the market to identify the cheapest manner of achieving the needed emissions reductions."

"The provision allows states and EPA to coordinate regulation of the transportation sector with other industrial sources, such as power plants," said Jayni Foley Hein, a lead author of the report and Policy Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity. "This is the best way to boost efficiency and save money while reducing pollution."
Ag seeks Silicon Valleys help to satisfy world food demand

Sacramento, California - Though its just an hour south of Californias Silicon Valley, the Salinas Valley - better known for churning out lettuce and tomatoes than the worlds newest tech devices  might as well be a world away. In Silicon Valley, companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Google reign supreme. In Salinas, the biggest names are those of fruit and vegetable producers - Dole Foods, Chiquita, Driscoll Berries, Taylor Farms.

But the distance between the two places could soon seem a little smaller, thanks in part to a new effort on the part of the agriculture industry to attract technology companies to the Salinas Valley. Last month, the Western Growers Association  a trade association representing local and regional produce growers from California, Arizona, and Colorado  opened the Center for Innovation and Technology in Salinas, CA. The space  which has room for 34 startups to work, take classes, and meet with farmers  hopes to serve as a midway point between the innovative ideas of tech companies and the technical know-how of industry experts.

Demand for food is increasing dramatically across the world because of increased population, Tom Nassif, CEO of the Western Growers Association, told ThinkProgress. You also have diminishing natural and human resources, and youve got to increase your production by 70 percent in 40 years to feed the worlds population. How do you do that?

The answer, according to Nassif, is through technology that helps farmers use as few resources as possible to produce the largest amount of food  from reducing the amount of water needed to grow certain crops to reducing the amount of wasted product left in the field.

Nassif and the Western Growers Association are far from the first to suggest that technological innovations could help propel agriculture into the future, nor is this the first time in history that agriculture and technology have entered into a close relationship. In the 1960s, scientists like Paul R. Ehrlich  Stanford professor and author of the best-selling Population Bomb  issued grave warnings of impending mass starvation due to population growth. Instead, thanks to a slew of technological innovations in crop breeding, the world was able to significantly increase the amount of yield per acre for key crops like maize, wheat, and rice. Dubbed the Green Revolution, technological advances helped double the yields of rice and wheat across Asia, sustaining a population that grew over the same period of time by 60 percent. Though not without controversy  especially with regard to the rapid adoption of chemicals in agriculture  over the course of a few decades, the Green Revolution succeeded in steering the world away from earlier predictions of global starvation.

But those predictions have begun to resurface in recent years, stirred by the potential for climate change to disrupt agricultural systems at a time when the worlds population continues to grow.According to the United Nations, the world will need to feed more than 9 billion people by 2050, meaning that food production will need to increase by 70 percent. That creates a huge potential for new technologies that can either boost agricultural production, efficiency, or both.

In the United States, federal funding for agriculture technology peaked in the years following the Dust Bowl and around World War II, when 40 percent of federal research and development expenditures went towards agricultural research. Today, with just 2 percent of federal research and development spending going towards agricultural research, private investment companies are looking to fill a void left by shifting governmental priorities.

All indications are that this is the new industry for investment in high tech, Nassif said. Weve only been open a month, and we already have a number of tenants, more coming in every day, and more people indicating a desire to sponsor the venture as well as invest in agricultural technology.

Created as California looks to leave behind the historic drought that has plagued the state for the past four years, the Center for Innovation and Technology is especially interested in technology to help farmers maintain crop yields in the face of diminishing access to water.

Obviously using less water and using less labor are our highest priorities, Nassif said, citing technology like drones that can map where exactly on a field water is needed most, or technology that can help a crop retain more water in its roots, as examples of the kinds of innovation he hopes to see come from the center.

Jeffrey Orrey, president and CEO of GeoVisual Analytics  one of six start-ups working out of the Center right now  is already engaged in creating technology that would help farmers use drones, as well as smaller manned aircrafts, to create high resolution images of their fields  technology similar to work that he used to do for NASA. By giving farmers a way to better monitor how their crops are grown, Orrey says, farmers are able to use inputs  like water, or fertilizer  as efficiently as possible on their land.

Over time, with resource shortages and increasingly severe changes in weather and climate, its going to become imperative that we are more quantitative and better at monitoring how crops are grown to better understand how to respond to these drastic changes, Orrey told ThinkProgress.

Giving farmers better access to quantitative data in the field also has co-benefits for the environment  the more real-time information a farmer has about their field, the more precise they can be with their application of things like pesticide, fertilizer, and water. That could help reduce the amount of excess fertilizer that ends up degrading water quality as runoff, the amount of water used throughout an operation, or the amount of pesticide needed to treat a field.

Orrey was drawn to the Center, he said, because it allowed his company a chance to interact directly with farmers and industry  a piece of the puzzle that can be missing for some entrepreneurs hoping to create new technology for agriculture.

Unless you come from a farming background, we saw that there was a disconnect between high tech companies that think they have solutions but really dont appreciate the nuance of making them applicable to the farm, he said. [The Center creates] the opportunity to bring the tech together with people who are doing farming and know the complexity.

Nassif said that the Centers location  close to the farmers of the Salinas Valley and within driving distance of both Silicon Valley and San Francisco  makes it an ideal first location, but he hopes that more Innovation and Technology Centers will open throughout the state in the near future.

I think well outgrow the Center very quickly, and thats a good thing, he said. I think that given the appropriate attention and investment, the Center has nowhere to go but up, and to attract more and more innovators through employment and high tech jobs in agriculture.
Untapped region in brain cell offers goldmine of drug targets for new autism treatments

Los Angeles, California - UCLA scientists have discovered that an overlooked region in brain cells houses a motherlode of mutated genes previously tied to autism. Recently published in Neuron, the finding could provide fresh drug targets and lead to new therapies for the disorder, which affects one in 68 children in the United States.

Our discovery will shed new light on how genetic mutations lead to autism, said principal investigator Dr. Kelsey Martin, interim dean and a professor of biological chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Before we can develop an effective therapy to target a gene, we must first understand how the gene operates in the cell.

The UCLA team focused on a gene called Rbfox1, which regulates how the cell makes proteins  the molecular workhorses that perform essential tasks in cells. Proteins also help shape the bodys tissues and organs, like the brain.

Identifying a genes function is critical for molecular medicine, said coauthor Daniel Geschwind, the Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and a professor of neurology and psychiatry at UCLA. My colleagues discovered that Rbfox1 has an entirely new function that other scientists had overlooked.

Earlier studies by Geschwind and others have linked mutations in Rbfox1 to an increased risk for autism, which makes Rbfox1 an especially important gene to study. To better understand how Rbfox1 functions, Martin teamed up with UCLA molecular geneticist Douglas Black. The two blended a cell biology approach with powerful DNA-sequencing technology to reveal the identities of the genes controlled by Rbfox1.

Our results turned up an exciting new set of genetic connections, said Black, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. We found that where Rbfox1 was located in the cell determined what genes it influenced.

First author Ji-Ann Lee, a researcher in Martins lab, compared Rbfox1s function in the cells nucleus, or command center, to its function in the cytoplasm, the gel-like fluid that surrounds the cells nucleus.

Scientists used to think that Rbfox1 worked primarily in the nucleus to allow genes to make multiple proteins. We were surprised to see that Rbfox1 also controls more than 100 genes in the cytoplasm, Lee said. A majority of these genes encode proteins critical to the brains development and have been tied to autism risk.

Furthermore, the genes controlled by Rbfox1 in the cells nucleus were completely different from those it controlled in the cells cytoplasm.

The UCLA teams separation of these two functions revealed that the genes targeted by RBfox1 in the cells cytoplasm were highly enriched in proteins vital to the developing brain. Autism risk increases when these genes go awry.

While some experts have hinted at the role of cytoplasmic gene control by Rbfox1 in autism risk, no one has systematically explored it in nerve cells before, said Martin, who is also a professor of psychiatry at UCLAs Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Our study is the first to discover that dozens of autism risk genes have special functions in the cytoplasm and share common pathways in regulating the brain cells.

To pinpoint new drug targets, the researchers next step will be to learn how Rbfox1 controls genes in the cytoplasm.

This is a fundamental discovery that poses significant treatment implications, Geschwind concluded. Because so many genes are linked to autism risk, identifying common pathways where these genes overlap will greatly simplify our ability to develop new treatments.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. UCLA scientists Andrey Damianov, Chia-Ho Lin, Mariana Fontes, Neelroop Parkshak and Erik Anderson also contributed to the research.
Physicists control electrons at femtosecond timescales

Cambridge, Massachusetts - When you shine a light on a conducting surface like silicon or graphene, that light jump-starts certain electrons into high-energy states and kicks off a cascade of interactions that happens faster than the blink of an eye. Within just a few femtoseconds - a thousand trillionth of a second - these energized electrons can scatter among other electrons like balls on a billiard table, quickly dissipating energy in an ultrafast process known as thermalization.

Now physicists at MIT have come up with a way to manipulate electrons in graphene within the first few femtoseconds of photo-excitation. With their technique, the researchers can redirect these high-energy electrons before they interact with other electrons in the material.

The teams ultrafast control of high-energy electrons may ultimately lead to more efficient photovoltaic and energy-harvesting devices, which capture photo-excited electrons before they lose their energy to thermalization.

Were intellectually excited about whether this will have technological applications, says Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, associate professor of physics at MIT. Its too soon to know, but there are certain angles of looking at this where it's clear there might be ways to engineer energy flow or transfer in ways that are novel. Now we need more people thinking about this.

The groups results are published this week in the journal Nature Physics. Jarillo-Herreros co-authors include lead author and graduate student Qiong Ma, along with Jing Kong, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Nuh Gedik, associate professor of physics.

Directing energy flow

In a previous, unrelated experiment, Jarillo-Herrero and his colleagues fabricated an incredibly thin, sandwich-like device composed of two sheets of graphene, each a single atom thin, separated by an insulating layer of boron-nitride. The group had been subjecting the structure to varying intensities of voltage and light, and observing the resulting current, or flow of electrons, from one layer to another.

They found that, at certain voltages and wavelengths of light, they could produce a relatively strong current across the boron-nitride layer  an indication that high-energy electrons were tunneling from one graphene sheet to the other without losing much energy.

The researchers followed up on their observations to see how the flow of current within their device changed as they varied the voltage and light wavelength they applied. As they shone light onto the top layer of graphene, they were able to tune the flow of current within just a few femtoseconds.

Depending on the voltage and light wavelength applied, the researchers could direct high-energy electrons to either stay and dissipate their energy within the top graphene layer, or tunnel across the boron-nitride layer and into the bottom graphene sheet, where they could then interact with other electrons and scatter their energy.

Typically you can only start doing things after maybe 1,000 femtoseconds, after these ultrafast interactions have already taken place, Jarillo-Herrero says. Were able to  decide whether the electron goes here or there before it interacts with any other electron, within a few femtoseconds.

Getting out of graphene

The teams ultrafast control may stem from the nature of graphene itself. Because graphene is so exceptionally thin, electrons dont have very far to jump if they get the right push.

This femtosecond response is because of the 2-D structure of graphene, Ma says. Its just one atom thick, and the electrons are already at the surface, so its easier for them to jump out and onto another material.

As the team soon found, coaxing electrons to jump from one sheet of graphene to another required the right combination of voltage and light. Ma and Jarillo-Herrero plotted their experimental results and identified combinations of voltage and light wavelength that would direct high-energy electrons to either stay within the top graphene layer or jump to the bottom layer.

Say you tell me, Id like to have these electrons jumping from one layer to another, and I only have blue photons, Jarillo-Herrero says. I can say that at least with blue photons, you have to apply this voltage. If you only have green photons, then you should apply more voltage than this. Thats what were able to map.

Ultimately, he says these results may help to improve solar cells and energy harvesting devices by enabling them to capture and use more photo-excited electrons.

Modern solar cells work such that if a photon comes and can be absorbed by silicon, it contributes to current in your photovoltaic device, Jarillo-Herrero says. If the light consists of lower-energy infrared photons, those are not absorbed by silicon. That limits seriously the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Now with our device, in principle you can absorb many lower-energy photons, those that silicon just lets through, such that the accumulation of that energy can contribute to a current in your electrical circuit. This is a mechanism by which you could think of doing it.

This very exciting work from the MIT team demonstrates a new way to manipulate photo-excited hot electrons in graphene across atomically thin barriers," says Philip Kim, professor of physics at Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. "Their findings lay an important step toward the realization of novel optoelectronic and energy-harvesting devices based on graphene heterostructures.
Stanford researcher creates method to measure resource tradeoffs in times of drought

Stanford, California - Sri Lanka's Mahaweli River is the country's lifeblood. When the river is flowing well, it powers dams and irrigates rice paddy systems to support many of the country's 20 million residents. But in times of drought, the country must manage difficult tradeoffs between energy and food production.

A study released today in Environmental Research Letters examines the relationships among food, energy and water in Sri Lanka, and provides a tool for resource managers around the world to balance tradeoffs during times of water scarcity.

"Water is the driving force behind the interdependence of Sri Lanka food, energy and water sectors," said study lead author Debra Perrone, a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "This trend is not unique to Sri Lanka. In fact, we have found that water often drives the tradeoffs among food, energy and water around the world."

As a developing country with a growing population, Sri Lanka's energy and food demands are ever increasing. During dry conditions, water managers face a choice of diverting water to irrigate paddies for rice production or to let water flow through turbines of major hydroelectric plants. While there is still some paddy production and some hydroelectricity production despite water diversions, these diversions make a large impact.

Determining which tradeoffs to take requires consideration of the costs and benefits of what it means to cut down production of one resource and import it instead. For example, cutting down on hydroelectricity and importing coal is expensive and results in air pollution. Alternately, Sri Lanka's food production is tied strongly to a cultural attachment to paddy irrigation and a political focus on rice self-sufficiency. Choosing to import rice would also make the country reliant on the volatile rice market.

"Often, there's no perfect solution. A tradeoff has to happen," said George Hornberger, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment at Vanderbilt University and co-author of the study.

Modeling costs and benefits

The authors adapt a model called a "tradeoff frontier," often used in economics, to visualize tradeoffs among food, energy and water in times of water scarcity. With a restricted amount of water there is a tradeoff between how much water is used for electricity production and how much is used for irrigation. The model shows that production of energy or food cannot increase without decreasing the production of the other.

In addition to assessing various productions of food and energy, the model is useful in identifying political and social constraints that move production away from what is feasible with existing technology. For example, production of energy and food might not reach maximum output because farmers might be planting less to avoid an economic loss due to crop failure during times of drought.

The researchers' analysis of Sri Lanka's food, energy and water systems indicates that actual water management leans closer to favoring paddy production even though the economic value of rice is very small in comparison to electricity. These results help show how people value water in intangible ways, and may be used to inform future studies that aim to price water.

Applying tradeoff frontiers globally

The agriculture and energy sectors are often the two largest users of water across the globe, making Sri Lanka's food, energy and water challenges reflective of similar problems in other countries. As climate change exacerbates water scarcity and competing demands between food and energy production become more prominent, resource managers worldwide can use the study's concept to assess tradeoffs among these resources.

For example, California has high water demands from both the thermoelectric sector and the irrigation sector, and the state has been facing a multiyear drought. Applying the tradeoff frontier concept would help illustrate how different water management portfolios could influence the productions of food and energy within the state. Comparing where actual productions fall on a tradeoff frontier would provide insight into how the current management scheme values water resources.

"An important takeaway is that there are no specific rules for managing water resources successfully  the insights gained in one location can be different than the insights gained in other cases," Perrone said. "Tradeoff frontiers can help us gain a basic understanding of the main constraints to allocating water, so we can take informed approaches to water management."

The study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and an EPA Science to Achieve Results fellowship, represents some of the latest research in the growing field of the food-energy-water nexus.
Freshwater vulnerability threatens developing nations' stability

Stanford, California - Many nations and regions already facing uncertain political futures must contend with a growing threat to stabilization: freshwater vulnerability.

The finding comes from a new study co-authored by researchers in Stanford's Global Freshwater Initiative that weighed a variety of contributing factors, such as regulatory enforcement, corruption, transboundary competition and water transported "virtually" in agricultural products, as well as traditional constraints like scarcity and infrastructure. Among its striking findings:

Institutional issues are the most common factors generating water supply vulnerability, affecting nearly 40 percent of the 119 low-income nations studied. The most prevalent issue was corruption, which can paralyze water development projects and regulation.

Patterns of vulnerability are often similar in countries that would otherwise seem to have little in common.

A lack of precipitation does not necessarily equate with water supply vulnerability.

By the study's measures, the world's most water-vulnerable countries are Jordan, Yemen and Djibouti. The three countries have much in common, including low rainfall, limited surface water storage, excessive groundwater mining, high dependence on waters shared by neighboring countries and the importation of most food calories.

In light of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, the report provides a roadmap for how influential countries such as the United States could help the region's vulnerable nations steer clear of destabilizing water crises, said co-author Steven Gorelick, the Cyrus Fisher Tolman Professor in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

"Jordan is a peaceful and generous country that has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees," Gorelick said. "The U.S. has an opportunity to help Jordan deal with the consequent stress of inadequate water supply, which will improve its political stability, so it's really in our best interest to do so."

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa are over-pumping groundwater. In Jordan, where people depend on groundwater for 80 percent of their freshwater, levels are dropping 3 feet each year and will likely be depleted by 30 to 40 percent within the next 15 years. Refugee migrations from conflict-torn lands and global warming-related extreme weather will likely worsen the situation. A related Global Freshwater Initiative study finds that 45 percent of major cities solely dependent on surface water will be unable to simultaneously meet human, environmental and agricultural water demands by 2040.

The Global Freshwater Initiative is coordinating the Jordan Water Project, an international, interdisciplinary research effort aimed at developing new approaches for analyzing strategies to enhance the sustainability of freshwater resources in Jordan and, ultimately, arid regions throughout the world. The project, headed by Gorelick, is focused on developing a comprehensive national hydro-economic model to evaluate new supply options and demand strategies.

Water vulnerability is a crucial issue as countries attempt to slake the thirst of growing populations. In the past 50 years, the amount of water withdrawn for human use has tripled. Access to water is a national security matter, crucial to agriculture, industry and ecosystems.

"We have often incorrectly assumed that the lessons of water challenges in one country are not transferable to others," said study co-author Barton "Buzz" Thompson, the Robert E. Paradise Professor in Natural Resources Law and the Perry L. McCarty Co-director of the Stanford Woods Institute.

To the contrary, the study suggests a range of commonalities that decision-makers and aid agencies would do well to consider. For example, Vietnam, Guatemala and Sri Lanka were found to share vulnerability factors such as high population densities, high numbers of species needing protection, low governmental transparency and a lack of water regulation enforcement mechanisms. Many countries of North Africa and South Asia share struggles with water quality threatened by poor sanitation, low volumes of renewable freshwater and high dependency on neighboring countries for freshwater.

Other co-authors of "Assessment of Human-Natural System Characteristics Influencing Global Freshwater Supply Vulnerability," published in Environmental Research Letters, are lead author Julie Padowski of Washington State University, Scott Rozelle of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Scott Fendorf of Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Stanford Woods Institute.
Australia Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "On behalf of President Obama and all Americans, I am honored to congratulate the people of Australia as you celebrate Australia Day, 228 years after the First Fleet sailed into the beautiful and now world-renowned Sydney Harbor, and over 100 years after the flourishing colonies on your continent came together as one nation.

"Over 75 years after we first established diplomatic relations, the United States has no better friend and ally than Australia. The alliance between our two Pacific nations, anchored on the bedrock of shared values and history, has nurtured and maintained peace, prosperity, and democracy in the Asia-Pacific region and around the world.

"The United States and Australia collaborate on a range of important commercial, academic, cultural, and environmental pursuits.

"The recently-concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an important opportunity to further deepen the trade and investment ties between our two countries. The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Australias National Health and Medical Research Council are working together to uncover new ways to understand, treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimers, autism, and epilepsy.

"We also work closely together on countering ISIL and terrorism worldwide, including efforts to address the challenge of foreign terrorist fighters and violent extremism. Australia will continue to be our indispensable partner as we face together, with optimism and firmness of purpose, the challenges and opportunities of 2016.

"Defense Secretary Ash Carter and I discussed a number of these issues when we hosted Foreign Minister Bishop and Defense Minister Payne in Boston last October for the annual Australia-United States Ministerial (AUSMIN) consultations.

"And President Obama welcomed Prime Minister Turnbull as the first official visitor to the White House of 2016. Of course, I look forward to returning to Australia for AUSMIN later in the year.

"Happy Australia Day, and may the year ahead bring peace and prosperity to the Australian people and continued success and fortune to your great nation."
A contract for chronic illness care would facilitate increased general practice capacity, Gary Culliton reports. An IMO seminar heard that such a contract would lead to additional GPs being recruited by practice.

Acute hospital capacity now amounts to 3.5 million bed days yearly. The population aged older than 65 years occupies 50 per cent of all acute hospital beds, and by 2040, additional capacity equivalent to that of the current acute hospital system will be required for this patient group, meaning that an extra 9,000 beds will be needed. Thus, the IMO has said that if chronic disease management is to remain in the hospital setting, at least an additional 400 beds per year will be needed to be added to the public system.

However, hospital-based care for diabetes, heart failure and COPD takes longer, costs more, is more inconvenient for patients and provides worse outcomes. Rather than adopting a community care approach to chronic disease management, the union has questioned why billions extra are set to be spent annually in 25 years time.

The health service will get nowhere if general practice is not separately funded, IMO President Dr Ray Walley told a special IMO seminar on chronic care challenges last week (January 13), which was opened by Minister for Health Dr Leo Varadkar.

Dr Walley pointed to studies by the late Johns Hopkins and World Health Organization researcher Prof Barbara Starfield, which found that the number of GPs a health service had was inversely proportional to morbidity and mortality.

The evidence was heavily stacked in favour of developing chronic disease management in general practice, IMO GP Chair Dr Padraig McGarry told the seminar at Buswells Hotel in Dublin, which was attended by representatives of most of the political parties.

Dr McGarry said that given the inescapable increase in the elderly population and longer life expectancy, the Irish health service was facing a double whammy of a rapid increase in the proportion of people older than 65 years needing expensive healthcare and fewer young, working people to pay for it though taxation. The Irish hospital system  already at breaking point  is unsuited to chronic care management and will never be able to cope with the inevitable increase in demand, he said. The proven international solution requires a strategic resourcing of general practice to take a lead role in chronic care management.

The IMO has called on all political parties, the Department of Health and the HSE to commit to a programme of sustained investment in general practice so that patients with chronic disease may be treated, enabling a modern, quality service for citizens.

The current general practice contract was an acute illness contract, said Dr McGarry, and there was no provision in it for chronic disease management. The evidence is there, said Dr McGarry. Audits from the ICGPs Midlands-based diabetic strategy for structured delivery of chronic disease management make a convincing argument  in terms of outcomes and economics, he said, adding that this model should be extended. Further chronic disease care requires a structured, resourced approach.

Also among the speakers was Kilkenny GP Dr Tadhg Crowley, who said the funding cuts seen by GPs over the past five years did not apply to primary care. GPs could not be expected to remain at the centre of primary care teams if GPs must do more with less and if there are resource cuts on continuing basis, said Dr Crowley. The refusal of political parties to accept the need for ring-fenced funding for chronic disease management was disappointing, he added.

Farranfore GP Dr Eamonn Shanahan said GPs were the only professionals positioned to deal with a looming wave of elderly patients with multiple morbidities, while Dr Declan Connolly said the focus should be on patients in communities.

Cycle of care

Dr Austin Byrne, a GP from Tramore in Waterford, presented an analysis of population changes that were coming down the line and the impact they would have on health services. He said GPs had registered more than 60,000 patients for the diabetes cycle of care. However, he noted that GPs did not yet have consent from those patients to provide data about their illness in a structured cycle of care programme. The Department of Health would be seeking permission from patients to enable this, and a lag time in providing returns was expected.

The cycle of care offers a limited snapshot that includes patient identifier data, disease metrics, height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. Yet true demographic data will not emerge, as only GMS patients but not private patients are measured. A software programme to facilitate this process emerged in January, Dr Walley said, adding that data would be needed before any Government moved toward a full chronic care programme. It would also be a year before preliminary results were available.

Dr Anna Clarke of Diabetes Ireland noted that while some GP training related to the diabetes cycle of care, this extended only to assistance with box-ticking.

Box-ticking

Also a speaker at the Solving the Chronic Disease Problem through General Practice seminar was Dublin GP Dr William Behan, who agreed that there was a focus on box-ticking, which was HSE-led. This diverts activity into administration: the problem is the HSE does not trust us, Dr Behan said.

Structured general practice care for heart disease could reduce hospital admissions by 7 per cent, explained Dr Behan, resulting in 30 million in hospitals savings. Such a model would also apply in regard to other chronic conditions, he added. Dr Behan believed a holistic view was needed, pointing out that research showed that greater access to GPs reduced mortality by 2 per cent in affluent areas and by 6 per cent in poorer areas.

DCU public health academic Prof Anthony Staines  who is running for the next Senate on the TCD panel  said the fact that GP contracts were held by individuals in Ireland was weird. Such contracts should be held at practice level, in his view.

In many countries, general practice ran primary care and GPs led primary care staff  an inversion of the Irish system.

Practice-level contracts would apply very differently, depending on the size of the practice, said Dr Austin Byrne. They do offer greater flexibility in terms of time-sharing and allocation of resources. There is a strong argument for giving a practitioner access to a ring-fenced fund for chronic disease management. The key point in capitation models of healthcare is that the practitioner is allowed to decide what matters and what does not. If there is too much focus on a single disease, benefit is delayed.

There is a total bill of 150 million for the Public Health Nurse (PHN) service. The total professional fees for all GPs is just over twice that amount. PHNs work as best they can within the existing structure  the ad hoc clinics, the drop-in centres, the erratic home visits (there may be up to four repeat visits because the patient was not in). Efficiency is not achieved, said Dr Byrne.

Access to ring-fenced funding  used in a sensible manner at the GPs discretion  would yield value-for-money care, Dr Byrne argued.

The maximum subsidy for a practice nurse is 36,000. Thus the net cost to the practice ranges from 12,000 to 20,000. However, a total of 25-to-30 patient visits per day might result via the nurse  or 6,000 per year. Lower daily PHN activity has been recorded.

Corporate route

Speaking at the event, Dr Mait OFaolain said a real strength of general practice in Ireland was that it was not corporately owned, and he stressed that individual GPs should retain contracts. Medicine delivered purely for profit is not in the interests of patients, said Dr OFaolain. If practices are given contracts, the practices will sell out to corporates.

Corporates cherry-picked, and experience in Canada and Australia suggested they would create serious service shortages in rural and inner city areas, according to Ballygar GP Dr Martin Daly. There was vertical integration, where GPs became the generator of income for the corporates  for example, for radiology or lab services. US hospitals even bought out general practices in order to tie GPs referrals in to one hospital only, the Galway GP added.

There was also a danger of the de-professionalisation of general practice, as it was not professionally rewarding for GPs, and the model eventually had to revert to one where GPs were service leaders and providers.

Dr Daly also described the telemedicine route as a cul de sac. It is going nowhere. It only creates workload. It will not replace the fundamental consultation between GPs and patients in a surgery  taking a history, making an examination and following up the patient. The core of our business is providing continuity of care.

Consultation key

Glenageary GP Dr Richard Fitzpatrick agreed that the GPs role centred on the consultation. General practice is about the doctor and the patient coming together. Primary care is about the structures we need to do the job. It works because patients develop a relationship with the practice nurse. Over years, interventions can thus be made to influence patients to change behaviour, said Dr Fitzpatrick.

However, caring for a population with multiple morbidities could not be done on the cheap, he added. It has to be resourced properly. Otherwise, GPs cannot be expected to do a diabetic check, a Heartwatch check as well as COPD and several other checks, said Dr Fitzpatrick.

Inchicore GP and RCSI Professor Dr Susan Smith believed resources should initially be targeted at those patients who absorbed most GP time and were most difficult to manage. We need support in managing complex patients, said Prof Smith. That is where I would like to see a new contract focused.

Follow the managers

On a positive note, Mallow GP Dr David Molony said chronic disease programmes produces incontrovertible gains for the health service. He said there was a huge issue of trust, as there were now more silos, which included the HSE Primary Care division and the incipient hospital Trusts. Money doesnt follow the patients, it follows the managers, lamented Dr Molony. This has nothing to do with patient care. We can make chronic care work but not by using the old system. We have the only health system in the world that relies on paper-based transactions. How much cash is spent on charts that are running around the place and that no one can access?

Dr Daly remarked that chronic illness, where the burden of care would in future be, needed to be the focus. That might mean whole-population chronic illness schemes. There is value in having chronically ill diabetics looked after in a general practice setting  thus preventing hospital admissions, he said. There is less value in having a well and well off 11-year-old in a GPs surgery with a minor illness.

Dr Daly said a template that would be transferable between different chronic illnesses  diabetes, heart failure, inflammatory bowel disease or rheumatoid arthritis  needed to be developed. An integrated plan was required and resources needed to be put in place, he added.

A contract for chronic illness care would facilitate increased general practice capacity: additional GPs would then be recruited by practices. There would also be better sharing of out-of-hours workload and maternity leave, sick leave and parental leave.

GPs could not be expected to cede parts of their business to nurses and pharmacists before a new contract giving new, expanded and resourced roles to GPs. This would further undermine the ability of GPs to deliver services or to take on new general practitioners.
Can one man push an entire country into a moral crisis? Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump got in front of a cheering crowd last month and declared that he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. In a country that likes to trumpet the election of a black president as a signal of its tolerance and pluralism, polls show that Trumps support went up after he proposed this unconstitutional religious discrimination.

As the leading GOP candidate, Trumps blowhard persona, reality TV background and comically right-wing politics have made him the butt of many jokes in mainstream media circles. Shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show have endlessly parodied Trump and his base of support. But Trump is dangerous, because he reflects, channels and mobilizes a disenfranchised segment of the country thats highly prone to charismatic demagoguery.

Many Trump supporters feel left behind by the U.S. economy and see the countrys electoral process as a sham. They find it increasingly difficult to get ahead in a country that bails out the rich but punishes the poor. But instead of resorting to progressive visions for radical change and a more inclusive politics, Trumps overwhelmingly white base finds it easier to rally around a voice that plunges the country into a deeply disturbing terrain. Its true that many GOP candidates over the years have resorted to racially inflammatory rhetoric, usually euphemistic and deniable, to get votes. But theyve all tended to use this rhetoric as a means to an end. Trump is the first major presidential candidate in the post-9/11 era to present racial and ethnic divisiveness as the end itself.

Its much easier for Trump supporters to blame immigrants for the disappearance of living-wage jobs, to blame Islam for national security threats, to blame African-Americans for crime and to blame gays for what they see as the countrys corroding moral center. By voicing these frustrations so bluntly, Trump has surged ahead of his competitors.

Its easy to blame ignorant voters for giving rise to Trumps newfound political prominence, but the drastic rightward shift of American politics has much more systemic roots. The GOP has a long history of trying to rally a nativist base to win elections. After 9/11, despite an admirable effort by President George W. Bush to not conflate extremism with the Muslim religion in his speeches, Islamophobia has become another way for this kind of political galvanization to take place. This has dragged the entire U.S. political spectrum rightward, with the supposedly progressive Democrats now resembling a standard center-right party in other developed countries.

This is due to Americas failed neoliberal policies of financial deregulation and putting corporate profits over people. The idea that the market can regulate itself properly should have been burst by the 2008 global financial crisis, but President Barack Obamas administration decided to bail out the banks responsible for the crisis at taxpayer expense, even as regular Americans suffered through a recession. The legacy of Ronald Reagans trickle-down economics, which posits that the rich getting richer will allow them to create more jobs for everyone else, has succeeded in extending the social and political disenfranchisement of Americas underclass.
There is funding for 47 new e-Health roles, spread across the country, HSE Chief Information Officer Richard Corbridge has told IMT.

These personnel will have responsibilities for delivery of business change projects primarily, but they will also enable a focus of capacity on key operational functions.

The roles are across all HSE grades and will enable steps towards the implementation of the Knowledge and Information plan published in the spring of 2015.

In 2015, the IT support team was 288 resources, which according to Corbridge was rather tight, given the team supported the technology needs of the whole HSE.

eHealth Ireland is the technology delivery function of the HSE, which was established in January 2015.

Its remit is to bring improved population wellbeing, health service efficiencies and economic opportunity through the use of technology-enabled solutions.

The eHealth Ireland Showcase #eHealth4all event  attended by Minister for Health Dr Leo Vardakar this week  was due to highlight a number of innovative initiatives that are enabling a safer better service for patients.

The showcase featured Temple Street Childrens University Hospitals clinical portal in action, together with the National Epilepsy Electronic Patient Record (EPR), Our Ladys Children Hospital Crumlins Pharmacy in action project, and the various National LightHouse Projects in epilepsy, haemophilia and bipolar disorder.

gary.culliton@imt.ie
MPI Media has appointed Helen Martin as its new Publisher, with overall responsibility for both Irish Medical Times and its sister publication MIMS Ireland.

Hired as Commercial Director last summer, Ms Martin has 25 years experience within the publishing sector, and has held similar positions with Harmonia, Irelands largest magazine publisher, Checkout publications, and the MedMedia Group, Irelands specialist healthcare communications group and publisher of Forum.

A highly accomplished marketing and sales professional, she describes herself as a hard-working and experienced professional with an outstanding record of managing and developing sales strategies.

Ms Martin was appointed Commercial Director for her extensive experience in sales marketing and advertising, her well executed marketing strategies, and her strong visual sense in both print and web publishing.

She has now been promoted to overall Publisher following a very successful second half to 2015.

As Publisher, Helen will have overall responsibility for IMT, MIMS Ireland, the Irish Healthcare Awards, the Irish Medical Careers Fair, and various other new projects being rolled out in 2016.

Commenting on her new role, Ms Martin said: It is a great privilege to become the latest Publisher of Irish Medical Times and MIMS Ireland, given the calibre of those who came before me, right back to the late and great Dr John OConnell. It is a real honour given the excellent reputation both publications have within the medical sector.

She added: I am impressed with MPI Medias ambitious plans for the future and I am looking forward to steering the company towards greater growth in both our established brands and in various new ventures.
Minister of State Kathleen Lynch has turned the sod on the new National Forensic Mental Health Hospital, which will be built on the site of St Itas Hospital, Portrane.

Commenting on the new facility in North Dublin, which was expected to be completed by the end of 2018, Prof Harry Kennedy, Executive Clinical Director at the National Forensic Mental Health (NFMHS), said: This is a welcome development for people with the most severe, enduring and disabling mental disorders. The new hospital will provide a modern, safe and secure therapeutic environment. This will enable the HSEs National Forensic Mental Health Service to work with our patients and their families to achieve their recovery.

When completed, this new facility will replace the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum.

The project has been underpinned by the allocation of 120 million in the HSE Capital Programme 2016-2020. This makes it the third biggest State health capital project in the current capital plan. Anne OConnor, HSE National Director of Mental Health, said the facility would be a critical component to the delivery of the full range of mental health services to the population of Ireland.

The NFMHS hospital will comprise of a 120-bed Adult Forensic Hospital, together with a 10-bed Forensic Child and Adolescent Unit, and a 10-bed Forensic Mental Health Intellectual Disability Unit on the same site within the St Itas Hospital campus.

Planning permission for construction of the new hospital was granted by An Bord Pleanala in June 2015 and enabling works commenced on the site this month.

gary.culliton@imt.ie
Additional support should be provided through the tax system to assist GPs who invest and expand their existing practice premises, the Minister for Health has said, adding that the Departments of Health and Finance were setting up a working group with a view to including a measure to facilitate this in Budget 2017.

Commenting on research conducted by INDECON in advance of the last Budget, Dr Leo Varadkar noted: It was not possible to include hoped-for measures in Budget 2016. My view is that primary care centres (PCCs) are a very good thing, but not everyone has to be in one.

Ninety PCCs have been developed already by the HSE and work or planning is under way at a further 52 locations, and these will be completed by mid-2017.

Construction will also begin on the new Childrens Hospital before the end of this year, if planning permission is issued in February, Minister Varadkar added.

An Bord Pleanala is due to rule next month on the plans for the St Jamess site, which also includes satellite centres for Blanchardstown and Tallaght.

Work will also begin by the end of 2016 on the new National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dun Laoghaire, the Minister added, and the process of co-locating all of the maternity hospitals that are not currently co-located will also begin.

On the move of the National Maternity Hospital to the St Vincents campus, Minister Varadkar told an IMO GP seminar last week: I have no doubt that it will be possible to sort out the governance issues that need to be sorted out between St Vincents and Holles Street.

gary.culliton@imt.ie
Watch: Dog Jumps on Slide, Glides Down Over and Over Again; Internet Loves it
The text came late in the afternoon, like a flare to a group of weary organizers in Minneapolis who had spent the final months of 2015 occupying the 4th Precinct police station to protest the fatal shooting of yet another unarmed black man.

You all have to come now, it read, warning that two City Council members, backed by Mayor Betsy Hodges, introduced a last-minute budget proposal for $605,000 to fortify the station, in the northern part of the city, calling for shatterproof windows and a higher fence around the building in the aftermath of the occupation, all so that the officers could feel safe.

But what about the community where the officers operate with impunity? At the occupation of the 4th Precinct station, the police defaulted to militarized tactics. Officers armed with pepper spray, rubber bullets and batons attacked grieving and peaceful community members, including elected officials and their relatives. One high school student suffered a concussion when the police beat her and dragged her by her hijab. After white supremacist vigilantes shot five black community members, the police took 15 minutes to respond to the scene, less than a block from their headquarters, then pepper-sprayed people helping the victims. Since the occupation ended, many community members have reported police retaliation for their involvement in the protests.

All this state-sponsored violence was funded by taxpayers.

And then some city officials, in a move that demonstrates how out of touch they are, announced plans to reward the police for their punitive law enforcement tactics with a new pot of public money. Dozens of community members flocked to the council chambers to oppose the funding and called for major police reform in Minneapolis, forcing the council to nix the proposal.

It was a modest win for community residents demanding change  which could serve as a blueprint for what transformative justice looks like beyond the police and their use of force.

American taxpayers spend $126 billion a year to fund police departments nationwide. Yet throughout the country, black people are underprotected and overpoliced. North Minneapolis is no exception. The protests at the 4th Precinct station were sparked by the fatal police shooting of Jamal Clark  the final straw in a year that saw unprecedented levels of mistrust between underresourced communities and the police.

While the protests put this tension on display for the world to see, North Minneapolis residents experience aggression by the police every day. An American Civil Liberties Union report in May demonstrated what many in the community already know: that black people in Minneapolis are nine times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses as white people are.

Meanwhile, African-Americans in the Twin Cities region are more than three times as likely as whites to be unemployed. Nationally, black Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed.
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Since the release of Making a Murderer, the shamed district attorney responsible for putting Steven Avery behind bars, Ken Kratz, has had a lot to say to the media.

On several occasions, he has asserted evidence was left out of the Netflix documentary (read about all the evidence left out) while also admitting he was a d*ck during the Teresa Halbach trial.

Now, in what many believe to be a way of cashing in on his new found fame, Kratz has started writing a book based on the case.

He told Action 2 News he is finally grateful to tell the whole story and that he was the one voice forgotten to this point is Teresa Halbach.

Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions Show all 5 1 /5 Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 1985: Steven Avery is falsely convicted of raping a Penny Beernsten She was jogging along the shore of Lake Michigan when she was threatened with a knife and attacked. Ms Beernsten identified Avery as her rapist from a line-up that did not include the actual attacker. AFP/Getty Images Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2003: Conviction overturned Avery's 32-year prison sentence was overturned after DNA testing by the Wisconsin Innocence Project proved his innocence and found a hair from Gregory Allen. He was convicted of the rape and Avery was released. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2004: Avery files federal lawsuit against Manitowoc County police A Wisconsin Department of Justice investigation found police had committed no criminal offences or ethics violations, sparking a lawsuit from Avery seeking $36 million compensation. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2005: Avery is arrested for Teresa Halbach's murder His Avery Auto Salvage business was the freelance photographer's last appointment of 31 October. She was reported missing four days later and police later found her car, bones, teeth and belongings at the site. Avery pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 201: Netflix releases Making a Murderer The 10-episode documentary came after Avery's conviction was upheld in a 2011 appeal.

Of course, if youve finished watching the documentary *spoilers*1 youll remember that Kratz had to resign as Calumet County district attorney after being involved with a scandal in which he allegedly sent sexually-charged texts to a domestic abuse victim he was representing.

Soon after Making a Murderers release, Kratzs law firm was sent thousands of messages via its Yelp page. It should also be noted that he declined to be interviewed for the 10-episode drama, and sent the filmmakers a subpoena.

Meanwhile, with regards the Steven Avery case, the convicted mans new defence lawyer took to Twitter to destroy the prosecution's case. Catch up with all the latest here.

1Can you 'spoil' for a real case?
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Oxford Dictionaries has agreed to review the language used in its definitions after coming under fire for sexism.

The publisher, part of Oxford University Press, currently prints a rabid feminist as a usage example for the adjective rabid, defined as having or proceeding from an extreme or fanatical support of or belief in something.

Canadian anthropologist Michael Oman-Reagan noticed this and tweeted Oxford Dictionaries to complain, while also drawing attention to other explicitly sexist examples such as bossy (a bossy, meddling woman), psyche (I will never really fathom the female psyche), nagging (a nagging wife), shrill, (the rising shrill of womens voices) and grating (her high, grating voice).

Oman-Reagan highlighted the irony of the Oxford Dictionarys own usage example for sexism (sexism in language is an offensive reminder of the way the culture sees women) in a post on Medium, arguing: Shouldnt the usage examples in this dictionary reflect that understanding of sexism in language?

Oxford Dictionaries dismissed Oman-Reagans suggestion at first, sarcastically replying to his tweet: If only there were a word to describe how strongly you felt about feminism

Later posts attempted to clarify its point that rabid is not necessarily a negative adjective and argue that example sentences come from real-world use and arent definitions.

However, the damage was done, and rabid rocketed to the top of the trending words list on the Oxford Dictionaries website, prompting the publisher to apologise for its flippant tone and promise to review the primary example sentence used for rabid.

An official statement released on Monday read: We apologise for the offence that these comments caused. The example sentences we use are taken from a huge variety of different sources and do not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press.

That said, we are now reviewing the example sentence for rabid to ensure that it reflects current usage.

Other examples raised by Oman-Reagan will also be reviewed.
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Each year, the Academys announcement of Oscar nominees leads to an inevitable public outcry. Critiques of the Academy Awards lack of diversity have become a well-rehearsed response to the revelation of nominees. Last year, I wrote an article about the white, male face of 2015s Academy Awards and the frustrations it evoked  and, at first glance, it seems like a very similar story can be told about this years event.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented this years nominees on January 14, we were, predictably, presented with a homogenous group of predominantly white, male contenders across all categories. The all-white line-up of this years acting nominees is perhaps particularly noticeable  but considering that only 8% of nominations in all acting categories have gone to black actors over the past 20 years, this is hardly news.

Following this years announcement, there has been the familiar (white) liberal handwringing, with broadsheet newspapers contemplating the marginalisation of women and racial minorities in particular. But there is also something different going on. Something more profound and potentially punchier.

#OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Show all 19 1 /19 #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Jada Pinkett-Smith Today is Martin Luther Kings birthday, and I cant help but 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 come to a new time and place where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledge, or respect of any group? - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Will Smith "The beauty of Hollywood combined with American ideals is the ultimate dream for humanity: the basis of the American concept of anything is possible, with hard work and dedication, no matter your race or religion, creed, none of that matters in America. I think that diversity is the American superpower. That's why we are great. So many different people from so many different places adding their ideas and their inspiration and their influences to this beautiful American gumbo and for me, at its best, Hollywood represents and then creates the imagery for that beauty. But for my part, I think I have to fight for and protect the ideals that make our country and make our Hollywood community great. So when I look at the series of nominations of the Academy, it's not reflecting that beauty." - Quote from ABC News appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Reese Witherspoon "I really appreciated this article in TIME on the lack of racial and gender diversity in this year's Oscar nominations. So disappointed that some of 2015's best films, filmmakers and performances were not recognized... Nothing can diminish the quality of their work, but these filmmakers deserve recognition. As an Academy member, I would love to see a more diverse voting membership." - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Spike Lee "This whole Academy thing is a misdirection play. We're chasing a guy down the field, he doesn't even have the ball. The other guy's high-stepping in the end zone. It goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers. We're not in the room. The executives, when they have these greenlight meetings quarterly, they look at the scripts and see who's in it and decide what we're making and what we're not making." - Quote from ABC appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say George Clooney "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 dont think its a problem of who youre picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films? There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, were talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, its even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it." - Interview with Variety. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Snoop Dogg Somebody was actually like am I gonna watch the motherf***ing Oscars. F*** no. What the f*** am I going to watch that bulls*** for? They aint got no n***** nominated. All these great movies and all this great s*** yall keep stealing from us. F*** you! F*** you! - Posted on his Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Don Cheadle "Yo, Chris. Come check me out at #TheOscars this year. They got me parking cars on G level." - Posted on his Twitter page, directed at host Chris Rock. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Mark Ruffalo I woke up in the morning thinking, what is the right way to do this? Because if you look at Martin Luther Kings legacy, what he was saying was that the good people who dont act are much worse than the wrongdoers who are purposefully not acting and dont know the right way. - Quote from interview with BBC News. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Lupita Nyong'o "I am disappointed by the lack of inclusion in this year's Academy Awards nominations. It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture. The awards should not dictate the terms of art in our modern society, but rather be a diverse reflection of the best of what our art has to offer today. I stand with my peers who are calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and recognition of the people who tell them." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Tyrese Gibson "This is not us saying we're against the Oscars because we're gonna combat racism. We're just saying, 'Yo, this is not cool.' You can't be doing this in 2016 and act as if no one is gonna notice." - Quote from interview with People. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say David Oyelowo The reason why the Oscars are so important is because it is the zenith, it is the epitome, it is the height of celebration of artistic endeavor within the filmmaking community. We grow up aspiring, dreaming, longing to be accepted into that august establishment because it is the height of excellence. I would like to walk away and say it doesnt matter, but it does, because that acknowledgement changes the trajectory of your life, your career, and the culture of the world we live in. 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." - Speech at gala honoring Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Brie Larson "Thank you @hollywoodreporter for covering this very unique moment in my life! It was wonderful spending time with all of you. Personally, I'm interested in reading their article on #OscarsSoWhite. This is a conversation that deserves attention." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say How many black films are being produced every year? How are they being distributed? The films that are being made, are the big-time producers thinking outside of the box in terms of how to cast the role? Can you cast a black woman in that role? Can you cast a black man in that role? You can change the Academy, but if there are no black films being produced, what is there to vote for? - Quote from interview with Entertainment Weekly. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Charlotte Rampling "It is racist to whites. One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list. Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted... People will always say: Him, hes less handsome; Him, hes too black; He is too white... someone will always be saying You are too [this or that]... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?" - Quote from interview on Europe 1. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Michael Caine Theres loads of black actors. In the end you can't vote for an actor because he's black. You can't say 'I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good, but he's black, I'll vote for him'. You have to give a good performance and I'm sure people have. I saw Idris Elba (in Beasts Of No Nation).I thought he was wonderful. Be patient. Of course it will come. It took years to get an Oscar, years. - Quote from interview with Radio 4 Today programme. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Steve McQueen "This is exactly like MTV was in the 1980s. Could you imagine now if MTV only showed music videos by a majority of white people, then after 11 oclock it showed a majority of black people? Could you imagine that happening now? Its the same situation happening in the movies. Hopefully, when people look back at this in 20 years, itll be like seeing that David Bowie clip in 1983 [of artist critiquing channel for not featuring black artists]. I dont even want to wait 20 years. Forgive me; Im hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right." Quote from interview with The Guardian. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Julie Delpy "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media. It's funny - women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterwards. It's the hardest to be a woman. Feminism is something people hate above all. Nothing worse than being a woman in this business. I really believe that." Delpy has since clarified these remarks, saying, "I'm very sorry for how I expressed myself. It was never meant to diminish the injustice done to African American artists or to any other people that struggle for equal opportunities and rights; on the contrary. All I was trying to do is to address the issues of inequality of opportunity in the industry for women as well (as I am a woman)." Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Clint Eastwood "I don't know anything about it. All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy, and the majority of them haven't won Oscars. A lot of people are crying, I guess." - Quoted by TMZ. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Ellen Page Its awful, and I think what just happened in regards to the nominations two years in a row is a reflection of the industry itself, and the lack of diversity in all positions. Its so upsetting that were still having this conversation. I dont know what to say other than its so disheartening, and I feel like we all have to be doing what we can to make a change, because were supposed to be telling stories that reflect human experience, and we cant just be showing one group of people." Quote from interview with The Wrap. Getty

It is a more overtly angry, activist response from within the industry  from black directors and actors whove simply had enough. Most notably, director Spike Lee and actor Jada Pinkett Smith have announced that they will not attend the main Oscar ceremony in February. Pinkett Smith has also called for a boycott: people of colour should not attend the event in protest of what Lee calls the lily-white awards show.

The president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, even issued a public apology over the lack of nominee diversity. She also announced that steps would be taken to alter the Academy membership in order to address the lack of diversity among the group of people who vote and decide who is nominated.

Mike Blake/Reuters

Changing awards culture

Boone Isaacs is an African-American woman. She became president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2013. As the public face of the organisation, her presence is encouragingly refreshing. It seems to indicate progress, diversity and openness. The overwhelming majority of Academy members, however, are white (94%) and male (77%)  and only 14% of voters are under 50.

 2016 Oscars boycott

One argument goes that a more diverse group of voters will change voting patterns and lead to more diverse nominations, as well as public recognition of a wider range of filmmaking practices. And this may well be true. Awards are not objective measures of excellence. They reflect the values of those whose voices (and votes) count.

But attempting to change the faces of voters and nominees is a bit like treating the symptom rather than the root cause of the problem. It is the make-up of the film industry as a whole that needs to change  and Boone Isaacs has recognised this. Not only has she pushed for more diversity in Academy membership (she removed restrictions on membership numbers, leading to an influx of younger voters from a diverse range of backgrounds in 2014). She has also launched A2020, a new initiative that aims to increase diversity in Hollywood over the next five years.

Changing the industry

Especially when it comes to decision-making, gate-keeping and key behind-the-scenes roles within the mainstream film industry, women and ethnic minorities continue to be severely underrepresented. This is not to say that an increase in black producers and directors, for instance, will automatically lead to more (and more prestigious and diverse) roles for black actors and, eventually, to more awards and other kinds of recognition. But the presence of a wider range of different perspectives and experiences will no doubt, over time, challenge the white, male norm that is intrinsic to Hollywoods institutional structures and practices.

I am cautiously optimistic that the tangible sense of anger and revolt that seems to gather more and more momentum will speed up this process - so, maybe next year, or the year after that, an article like this one wont be necessary anymore.

Katharina Lindner, Lecturer in Film and Media, University of Stirling

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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The question of diversity amongst 2016's Oscar nominees has truly become Hollywood's hot-button topic, with the legendary actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood now wading into the controversy.

When approached by TMZ to offer his own take, Eastwood seemed largely unaware of the issue. "I don't know anything about it," he stated. "All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy, and the majority of them haven't won Oscars. A lot of people are crying, I guess."

Eastwood has won four Academy Awards so far, with Best Picture and Best Director wins for both 1993's Unforgiven and 2005's Million Dollar Baby. He also received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995.

Sure, Eastwood seems to be speaking merely from a position of total ignorance on the subject; but it's questionable as to how someone so ingrained within the industry, as both director and actor, could have so little awareness of its diversity problems. Mixed in with controversial statements recently uttered by the likes of Michael Caine and Charlotte Rampling, it's a bleak reflection of views likely to be all too common amongst Academy members.

Rampling recently labelled the backlash, "racist to white people". Reflecting on the absence of a single non-white acting nominee she continued, "One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list."

She's since then redacted her comments, clarifying; "I regret that my comments could have been misinterpreted. I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration."



#OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Show all 19 1 /19 #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Jada Pinkett-Smith Today is Martin Luther Kings birthday, and I cant help but 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 come to a new time and place where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledge, or respect of any group? - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Will Smith "The beauty of Hollywood combined with American ideals is the ultimate dream for humanity: the basis of the American concept of anything is possible, with hard work and dedication, no matter your race or religion, creed, none of that matters in America. I think that diversity is the American superpower. That's why we are great. So many different people from so many different places adding their ideas and their inspiration and their influences to this beautiful American gumbo and for me, at its best, Hollywood represents and then creates the imagery for that beauty. But for my part, I think I have to fight for and protect the ideals that make our country and make our Hollywood community great. So when I look at the series of nominations of the Academy, it's not reflecting that beauty." - Quote from ABC News appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Reese Witherspoon "I really appreciated this article in TIME on the lack of racial and gender diversity in this year's Oscar nominations. So disappointed that some of 2015's best films, filmmakers and performances were not recognized... Nothing can diminish the quality of their work, but these filmmakers deserve recognition. As an Academy member, I would love to see a more diverse voting membership." - Posted on her Facebook page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Spike Lee "This whole Academy thing is a misdirection play. We're chasing a guy down the field, he doesn't even have the ball. The other guy's high-stepping in the end zone. It goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers. We're not in the room. The executives, when they have these greenlight meetings quarterly, they look at the scripts and see who's in it and decide what we're making and what we're not making." - Quote from ABC appearance. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say George Clooney "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 dont think its a problem of who youre picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films? There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, were talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, its even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it." - Interview with Variety. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Snoop Dogg Somebody was actually like am I gonna watch the motherf***ing Oscars. F*** no. What the f*** am I going to watch that bulls*** for? They aint got no n***** nominated. All these great movies and all this great s*** yall keep stealing from us. F*** you! F*** you! - Posted on his Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Don Cheadle "Yo, Chris. Come check me out at #TheOscars this year. They got me parking cars on G level." - Posted on his Twitter page, directed at host Chris Rock. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Mark Ruffalo I woke up in the morning thinking, what is the right way to do this? Because if you look at Martin Luther Kings legacy, what he was saying was that the good people who dont act are much worse than the wrongdoers who are purposefully not acting and dont know the right way. - Quote from interview with BBC News. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Lupita Nyong'o "I am disappointed by the lack of inclusion in this year's Academy Awards nominations. It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture. The awards should not dictate the terms of art in our modern society, but rather be a diverse reflection of the best of what our art has to offer today. I stand with my peers who are calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and recognition of the people who tell them." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Tyrese Gibson "This is not us saying we're against the Oscars because we're gonna combat racism. We're just saying, 'Yo, this is not cool.' You can't be doing this in 2016 and act as if no one is gonna notice." - Quote from interview with People. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say David Oyelowo The reason why the Oscars are so important is because it is the zenith, it is the epitome, it is the height of celebration of artistic endeavor within the filmmaking community. We grow up aspiring, dreaming, longing to be accepted into that august establishment because it is the height of excellence. I would like to walk away and say it doesnt matter, but it does, because that acknowledgement changes the trajectory of your life, your career, and the culture of the world we live in. 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." - Speech at gala honoring Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Brie Larson "Thank you @hollywoodreporter for covering this very unique moment in my life! It was wonderful spending time with all of you. Personally, I'm interested in reading their article on #OscarsSoWhite. This is a conversation that deserves attention." - Posted on her Instagram page. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say How many black films are being produced every year? How are they being distributed? The films that are being made, are the big-time producers thinking outside of the box in terms of how to cast the role? Can you cast a black woman in that role? Can you cast a black man in that role? You can change the Academy, but if there are no black films being produced, what is there to vote for? - Quote from interview with Entertainment Weekly. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Charlotte Rampling "It is racist to whites. One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list. Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted... People will always say: Him, hes less handsome; Him, hes too black; He is too white... someone will always be saying You are too [this or that]... But do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?" - Quote from interview on Europe 1. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Michael Caine Theres loads of black actors. In the end you can't vote for an actor because he's black. You can't say 'I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good, but he's black, I'll vote for him'. You have to give a good performance and I'm sure people have. I saw Idris Elba (in Beasts Of No Nation).I thought he was wonderful. Be patient. Of course it will come. It took years to get an Oscar, years. - Quote from interview with Radio 4 Today programme. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Steve McQueen "This is exactly like MTV was in the 1980s. Could you imagine now if MTV only showed music videos by a majority of white people, then after 11 oclock it showed a majority of black people? Could you imagine that happening now? Its the same situation happening in the movies. Hopefully, when people look back at this in 20 years, itll be like seeing that David Bowie clip in 1983 [of artist critiquing channel for not featuring black artists]. I dont even want to wait 20 years. Forgive me; Im hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right." Quote from interview with The Guardian. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Julie Delpy "Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media. It's funny - women can't talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterwards. It's the hardest to be a woman. Feminism is something people hate above all. Nothing worse than being a woman in this business. I really believe that." Delpy has since clarified these remarks, saying, "I'm very sorry for how I expressed myself. It was never meant to diminish the injustice done to African American artists or to any other people that struggle for equal opportunities and rights; on the contrary. All I was trying to do is to address the issues of inequality of opportunity in the industry for women as well (as I am a woman)." Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Clint Eastwood "I don't know anything about it. All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy, and the majority of them haven't won Oscars. A lot of people are crying, I guess." - Quoted by TMZ. Getty #OscarsSoWhite: What Hollywood has to say Ellen Page Its awful, and I think what just happened in regards to the nominations two years in a row is a reflection of the industry itself, and the lack of diversity in all positions. Its so upsetting that were still having this conversation. I dont know what to say other than its so disheartening, and I feel like we all have to be doing what we can to make a change, because were supposed to be telling stories that reflect human experience, and we cant just be showing one group of people." Quote from interview with The Wrap. Getty

Caine equally dismissed the notion, urging non-white actors to merely "be patient". "There's loads of black actors. In the end, you can't vote for an actor because he's black," he's quoted as stating. "You can't say, 'I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good, but he's black, I'll vote for him."



These are exactly the attitudes the Academy (and industry at large) will be up against in their attempts to improve diversity. The institution recently pledged to double the number of female and minority members, as well as diversifying leadership.



"The Academy is going to lead and not wait for the industry to catch up," stated Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. "These new measures regarding governance and voting will have an immediate impact and begin the process of significantly changing our membership composition."
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At last week's Brit Awards nominations show, Jack Garratt, the winner of the Critics' Choice prize, took to the stage with flushed enthusiasm and played his 2014 breakthrough hit, Worry, with a skittish, nervous energy. The best thing you could say about the short performance was that it was visually interesting. If you were paying proper attention to the sound, you would have noticed that his singing was off-key and out of time, too.

Garratt is soon to be everywhere. This is partly down to the self-fulfilling prophecy of the two prizes he has just won: the Brits Critics' Choice and the BBC Sound Of poll. They are both king-makers, singling out artists deemed ready for a major marketing push over the forthcoming year. Previous Sound Of winners include Ellie Goulding, who fused folk with electro in a promising, if timid way with her early work, and Sam Smith, who won both prizes in 2014 with his universally appealing if unoriginal neo-soul. The artists selected are never particularly daring or avant garde. Had the prizes existed when David Bowie was starting out he would have been considered too much of a risk to be considered.

Garratt has put in a few years of graft. He finished last in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2005, when he was 14. He has said that he liked being on stage but the experience of losing the contest made him realise that his songs, at that point, were shit. Some might say they have merely been polished since then.

He has been on the BBC books for a few years now. Heavily influenced by both Sam Smith and James Bay (he is a similarly earnest, hat-wearing, soul-influenced solo performer) he first submitted an application to BBC Introducing, which fosters young musical talent, in 2009 and was first played on the radio by BBC Introducing in 2012. In 2014, Garratt was selected by Zane Lowe on his BBC Radio One show as his next hype record. From there things moved up a gear and now here he is on the cusp of fame.

His music is described as neo-modern, a catch-all term meaning everything and nothing. He incorporates lots of genres into his music, often creating an electronic soul sludge. Listen, for example, to the meandering dirge of Lonesome Valley, a knock-down, muddied, soulless version of James Blake's Wilhelm Scream.

That's not to say Garratt isn't skilful. In fact, he is perfect for the modern music industry. He's a one-man band, who writes, produces, sings and plays, which makes him able to respond quickly to the fickleness of modern musical tastes. It also means that fees aren't split between a team of writers and producers.

Comparisons with Ed Sheeran have come about because Garratt is also a chatty showman and because on stage you see him flit between his various instruments the same way Sheeran pedals, loops and runs around like an enthusiastic hamster with too many wheels to play on.

As Garratt's press releases say, Every instrument you hear, both live and on record are produced by him alone. This gives his fans a reason to buy tickets to see him live, and with declining sales of physical music, gigs are where the money is to be made now.

So, yes, he ticks a lot of boxes for record producers. Garratt's soon to be No 1 debut album, Phase, is out in February and is being played with relentless vigour on BBC Radio 6 Music. The limp single Breathe Life is the track that everyone is backing as his next big hit. A lot of his music is already available to stream online. Take a listen, then go away, make a cup of tea and see if you can recall a single lyric or hum any of the tunes. Didn't think so.

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Another example of his exemplary averageness is Worry. It came about because Garratt was having writer's block. According to music site Gigwise, he teamed up with the Danish producer Carassius Gold with the aim of writing a song in the style of Justin Timberlake that could be used in a J Pop track. So the method there is clear. Garrattt has gone into the studio with no ideas and given nothing of himself. And they say this industry suffocates true artistry.

His songs won't stand the test of time, they aren't powerful or moving but that's okay because that isn't what music is about any more. Now it's about finding someone inoffensive. A Gallagher would not survive in this new business. New rockers have media training now.

The monetary demands on the industry mean that the quest to find an artist with a broad commercial appeal has become a quest for blandness. Garratt is the sound of lowest common denominator music. The kind of stuff that can be bashed out in a studio in a day to a regular formula.

Some have said that the success of Ed Sheeran sounded the death knell for original music. I would say that he was the template for the death knell, and he is now being replicated in various slightly tweaked guises across the music industry.

Garratt has won these awards because he has been deemed commercial. He has a broad appeal that fits a tried-and-tested formula. That's what these awards are really about.

If Jack Garratt represents the sound of 2016, be prepared for a year of blandness.
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They are among the most enigmatic creatures of the ocean, the leviathans of the deep. So it's unsurprising that the sight of whales stranded on British beaches has prompted an outpouring of wonderment, angst and even grief.

A decade ago, the sad death of a northern bottlenose in the River Thames sparked hysteria and inspired a 10-year anniversary march just last week. Now, crowds are gathering on the beaches of Lincolnshire and Norfolk to look in wonder upon  and take selfies with  the bodies of five giant sperm whales that washed ashore in a rare mass stranding at the weekend.

People have such a fascination with whales, says Rob Deaville, manager of Britain's cetacean stranding investigation programme, who spoke to The Independent after examining the bodies of the beached whales yesterday. We didn't used to be this benign as a country. We used to be a nation of whalers, but have gone from there to being a nation of conservationists. I've been on the beach today and there are lots of people there taking pictures of these amazing leviathans and even bringing their children. People want to see them and I get that completely. They are creatures that they would never usually see and may never get to see again in their lifetime.

The magnificent, sleek sperm whale was the inspiration behind Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick and was recently brought to the attention of cinema-goers in Ron Howard's whaling film, In the Heart of the Sea. The mass stranding of the five juvenile males off the cost of Britain comes after a dozen others, thought to be from the same pod, were also stranded on beaches in Germany and the Netherlands earlier this month.

I think there's no more freighted symbol of the disconnection between human and natural history than the whale, says author and whale expert Philip Hoare. It straddles creation myth, industrial resource, and environmental emblem. The psychic shift between using whales... and seeing them as a symbol of a threatened world lodges their shape in our collective culture. They are huge but helpless, beautiful but strange, intelligent yet innocent. We recreate them in our own selves, unable to resist anthropomorphising them, even as we know their fates lie in our hands.

While female sperm whales tend to remain in tropical waters all year round, juvenile males migrate northwards to the Arctic and sub-Arctic waters of Norway, Iceland and the British Isles. Deavillle says the whales may have been chasing squid, when they entered the shallow waters of the southern part of the North Sea. Evidence from the bodies suggests they were hungry and dehydrated. Once beached, their internal organs start to collapse and fail.

The gently sloping seabed off the coast can make it very difficult for them to navigate using sonar, adds Dr Peter Evans, the director of the Sea Watch Foundation.They are very social creatures and, if one or two get into difficulties, others may follow their distress call.

Mass strandings are rare but they have been occurring off the British Isles for centuries. In 1762, more than 27 whales were found scattered across North Sea coasts. Eleven whales beached at Orkney in 1994 and another six at Cruden Bay in Grampian in 1996. Investigators will now seek to determine exactly how the whales came to enter our waters. Some conservation groups have expressed concern that this could be the result of behavioural disturbance and disorientation from the use of active sonar, says Dr Evans . However, in this case... it is not the most plausible reason.

He adds: Most people never get to glimpse a sperm whale. They live in very deep waters far out to sea. They are the gentle giants of the ocean, they are intelligent and they are very social creatures. It's very sad when you see something like this happening... because there is nothing you can do to help.
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Despite being made up of 70 per cent desert, Australia has a lot more to offer than just swathes of red, arid land. And with Australia Day on January 26, what better time to round-up some of the works to immerse yourself in the regions culture, history and natural environment.

Many of these books were written by award-winning authors and comprise a wide variety of fictional and non-fictional tales, both from a local and tourist perspective. The continents multicultural history flows throughout these books, so pick one up and come along on an adventure to the land down under.

1. Tracks by Robyn Davidson: 8.99, Stanfords

This memoir documents Davidsons nine-month trek across the Australian outback in 1977, armed only with a detailed map, a compass (theres no sign of GPS here), four camels and a dog. You get a real taste of her relationship with her animal companions, her determination and her struggles along the way, while a small collection of images, taken by National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan who accompanied her for a short time, further illustrate this. Her journey was turned into a film in 2013.

Buy now

2. Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington: from 7.25, Amazon

This book tells the true story of three mixed-race aboriginal sisters: Molly, the mother of author Pilkington, and her two cousins. In 1931, they were part of the so-called Stolen Generation, taken from their parents as attempts were made to integrate aboriginal children into white families. From the early 1900s to the 1970s an estimated 100,000 Aboriginal children were sent from their disadvantaged families to better educated, more loving white families. This is the tale of the sisters two-month, 1200-mile journey from government institution Moore River Mission to home. It gives you a real insight into the plight of Australias original landowners.

Buy now

3. Down Under: Travels in a Sunburned Country (paperback) by Bill Bryson: 8.99, Waterstones

Last year Bryson released his first travel book in fifteen years, The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. But in the late nineties he conquered the burning outback of Australia with a photographer in tow. He travelled by all forms of transport through little-known towns once visited by explorers and the Aborigines. Go along for the ride while Bryson explores everywhere from Melbourne  supposedly the worlds most liveable city  to the Great Barrier Reef, the red dirt of the outback and more. His journey is illuminated by the facts Bryson sprinkles throughout the book.

Buy now

4. Australians  Origins to Eureka by Thomas Keneally: 16.99, Waterstones

Australian author Thomas Keneally is best known for his Booker Prize-winning Holocaust work Schindlers Ark, upon which the Schindlers List film was based on. This hefty paperback, which surpasses the 600-page mark, is the first instalment of a three-part series which looks at the history of Australia through the eyes of all its people, from the European colonisers to the Aborigines. For an all-encompassing view of Australia and how it became what it is today, this should be a go-to book.

Buy now

5. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin: 8.99, Waterstones

It is perhaps easiest to categorise this book as a travelogue, but in fact it so much more. It sees Chatwin trace the songlines, the invisible, indigenous pathways across Australia that are mapped out by traditional Aboriginal art. In doing so, the author offers his thoughts on the existence of man, and why for some this is nomadic, and for others sedentary. He is guided by the Russian-Australian Arkady, a former teacher, who he finds mapping the sacred sites of Aborigines as a bushwalker. The Songlines was a bestseller as soon as it hit the shelves in 1986.

Buy now

6. Australia: A Biography of a Nation by Philip Knightley and R.M. Crawford: 9.99, Waterstones

This book is only 350 pages long, but will leave you with a deeper understanding of Australia and its origins than some others that are double its length. It delves into the history of Australia at war, its white and black populations, its politics and the start of life as a federation. Hugely informative.

Buy now

7. Is That Bike Diesel, Mate? One Man, One Bike and the First Lap Around Australia on Used Cooking Oil by Paul Carter: 9.99, Waterstones

Follow the life of family man and writer Paul Carter as he embarks upon a ride around Australia  on a motorbike powered by used chip fat. Written in a colloquial style, the unmistakably Australian humour and laid back attitude is evident within, while the black and white photographs of the trip are a nice addition. Theres large print too, so its an easy read.

Buy now

8. Mutant Message from Down Under by Marlo Morgan: 9.99, Waterstones

Controversy surrounds this best-selling book. Written in first person, this account of a one American womans time with a group of Aborigines was originally said to be based on a true events  a claim which was later discredited, and renounced by the author. That said, it now stands as a widely acclaimed work of fiction in its own right. It recounts a desert journey with the Real People, a nomadic tribe of Aborigines, their deep, spiritual bond with nature and the lessons that can be learnt from it.

Buy now

9. Possum Magic by Mem Fox: from 4.65, Amazon

One for the kids, Possum Magic tells the tale of the magical Grandma Poss. She turns Hush, another possum, invisible  but cant quite remember how to reverse the spell. Follow their adventure around Australia to find the magic food that will make Hush visible again. The children will adore the cuteness of the hand-drawn illustrations of Australias native animals.

Buy now

Verdict

In Tracks, Davidson managed to conquer lands that many European explorers failed to overcome. You get a sense of the loneliness of the desert and her trek but her determination and triumph are evident throughout.
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Whisky, haggis and poetry recitals are the traditional order of play for a Burns Night supper. For those not in the know, the annual event celebrates the life of the Scottish national poet Robert Burns and has been merrily adopted south of the border. But there is another way to celebrate all things Scottish, namely by coming over all warm and fuzzy with another famed export: cashmere.

Italy is known for its fine leather, India for silks, but for Scotland its all about spinning a yarn  and cashmere, wool and tweed remain a thriving industry. Despite facing increasing competition in recent years as overseas companies produce the luxury fabric at a lower cost, cashmere remains the seventh-largest export from the country and contributes around 200m to the economy.

Its not just the Scots getting in on the act  in 2012, Chanel purchased Hawick-based mill Barrie Knitwear, which has produced cashmere for the luxury label for 25 years, as part of its Paraffection stable of specialist manufacturers. That same year, Chanel took over Linlithgow Palace, the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots, to stage a Highland fling of a fashion show. Since then, Barrie has been transformed into a fashion brand, with its own line, retail stores and ad campaign featuring actress Lily Collins and shot by Karl Lagerfeld. Another fine old establishment is Johnstons of Elgin which dates back to 1797.

The best Scottish cashmere Show all 5 1 /5 The best Scottish cashmere The best Scottish cashmere 249, brora.co.uk The best Scottish cashmere 345, Johnstons of Elgin, johnstonscashmere.com The best Scottish cashmere 464, barrie.com The best Scottish cashmere 59, rosiesugden.com The best Scottish cashmere 59, rosiesugden.com

Brora represents a contemporary approach to cashmere since it was founded in the Nineties and has collaborated with exciting young designers including Eudon Choi, Michael van der Ham and Louise Gray. Pringle of Scotland has updated its 200-year-old brand, too, with its Deconstructed platform allowing customers to customise designs.

A newer name you might not know is Rosie Sugden, who launched her range of accessories in 2011. Her quirky design approach marries classic pieces with outre detailing; think tiger stripes and heart motifs.
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Hacktivist group Anonymous have claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the website of Tokyo's Narita airport over the weekend.

The airport's website went offline between 22 and 23 January, after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack caused it to collapse under the strain of too much traffic.

A number of Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous claimed the cyberattack was in retaliation for the detention of Ric O'Barry, an American dolphin trainer turned animal rights activist, who has been a vocal critic of Japanese whale and dolphin hunting.

Recommended Read more Anonymous launches cyberattack against Nissan in whaling protest

One tweet, purportedly sent by someone who worked on the cyberattack, read: "We support Ric and demand his release now!"

O'Barry, who appeared in The Cove, the Oscar-winning documentary about Japanese dolphin hunting, was detained on 18 January while trying to enter Japan on a tourist visa.

Immigration authorities did not say why he was not let in to the country, but many have speculated it was due to his well-known anti-whaling activism. He is now set to be deported, and is facing a five year ban from Japan.

Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling Show all 5 1 /5 Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling 15404.bin AP Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling 15403.bin REUTERS Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling 15399.bin GETTY IMAGES Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling 15402.bin AP Pictures reveal truth about Japan's 'scientific' whaling 15401.bin GETTY IMAGES

While the attack prevented people from accessing the website, airport officials told the Japan Times that only the customer-facing side of the site was affected - flights continued to operate normally and customers' personal information was not at risk.

The airport cyberattack came just a couple of weeks after Anonymous took down the website of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan, again in protest at Japan's recently-announced resumption of whale hunting in the Antarctic.

The latest round of Anonymous attacks began in November last year, after Japan announced it would resume whaling this summer after a year-long hiatus.

The Japanese Fisheries Agency has limited the number of whales that can be hunted, however - up to 333 whales a year will be able to be killed by Japanese whalers for the next 12 years.
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Whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed that a supposed 'encrypted email' featured in a recent Isis propaganda video is fake.

The latest video, in which extremists make threats against the UK and urge Muslims to fight against non-believers, ends with a scrolling message, which claims to be coded using the PGP encryption program.

Governments and intelligence agencies around the world have long been concerned that Isis could be communicating using encrypted messaging tools like PGP, which would make it almost impossible for spies to listen in on what they are saying.

The plausible-looking encrypted message at the end of the video appeared to confirm this fear - but former NSA analyst Snowden has claimed it is fake.

Writing on Twitter, he pointed out that the ID for the encryption key shown in the video has an incorrect number of characters, and also found that the purported 'starting date' of the Isis operation mentioned in the message came three days earlier than the creation of the key which encrypted it.

Annotating a screenshot from the video, Snowden wrote: "I hope you built a time machine to go with your 'attack plans.'"

Addressing journalists on Twitter, he added: "The Isis video's 'encrypted email' is confirmed fake. If any official responds as if it's real, push back."

He also suggested that by placing these images of "spooky" encryption alongside images of David Cameron, who wants to ban end-to-end encryption in the UK, means Isis sees an advantage in the West "limiting access to strong security."

It is known that members of Isis in Syria have used the highly secure encrypted messaging app Telegram to communicate and spread their message overseas. Similar reports, such as a story which claimed the Paris terrorists had used the PlayStation online gaming network to communicate, led to renewed calls for the government to crack down on encryption.

However, pro-encryption activists believe introducing 'backdoors' into messaging services and devices would jepoardise innocent people's privacy. Others have pointed out that despite speculation, the Paris gunmen communicated through unencrypted text messages during and before their attack.
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A site shows the huge amount of content that can be found on Netflix around the world.

Netflix announced last week that it would be cracking down on unblockers  tools that allow people to see films and TV thats on Netflix in other countries. But there are still plenty of ways to get around that ban  and still huge amounts of videos on other countries catalogues.

A site called the unofficial Netflix online Global Search, or uNoGS, allows people to search through every countrys entire library. Searching for a film  or just selecting from a range of Netflix ratings or release dates brings up all of the countries that are showing that film.

Recommended Read more Netflix VPNs start being banned

Each films page shows a list of every country showing it, as well as details of when the film arrived on the search engine and what audio and subtitles it offers.

Almost every country now has Netflix, with a few notable exceptions. That means that the site will often offer very small countries to view the films in  Donnie Brasco is available in Aruba and Bonaire, for instance, though it has dropped off the UK library.

The site is run by one man called Brian, juggling it as a hobby between work and family life, its owner told TorrentFreak.

I initially built the site just for myself because the few sites that were providing a service like this were extremely limited in terms of search functionality, Brian told the file-sharing news site. I wanted to be able to see what was available in every country, when it was added, when it was supposed to expire and when it actually expired. Once I completed the initial build for myself I decided to share it with everyone and uNoGS went live in early May 2015.

Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Show all 14 1 /14 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 House of Cards - Season Four - 4 March Last time we were in Frank Underwoods White House things werent looking to great for the President, his first Lady having just walked out on him. What will happen next in the critically acclaimed show is anyones guess. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Daredevil - Season Two - 18 March Back in Hells Kitchen things were seemingly getting better. Kingpin is in prison and the crime syndicates should have dispersed - for the meantime at least. Unfortunately for Matt Murdoch, theres a new anti-hero in town: The Punisher. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Flaked - 11 March According to Netflix, Flaked is set in the insular world of Venice, California. It follows the serio-comic story of a self-appointed 'guru' who falls for the object of his best friends fascination. Soon the tangled web of half-truths and semi-b******* that underpins his all-important image and sobriety begins to unravel. Arnett plays Chip, a man doing his honest best to stay one step ahead of his own lies. Netflix Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Season Two - 15 April Following the story of 29-year-old Kimmy Schmidt on her journey through New York, season two is set to start right where the last left us. The Tina Fey created sitcom has already been renewed for a third season, so you know this one has to be good. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Ranch - 1 April A comedy starring Ashton Kutcher. Based on a failed semi-pro footballer who returns home to a Colorado ranch. It also has some of the producers from Two and a Half Men behind it, which just happens to be one of the most successful shows of all time. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Marseille - 5 May Netflixs first French language original is a tale of power, corruption and redemption. Sounding like it could very well be the next Narcos. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Grace and Frankie - Season Two - 6 May The tale of a retired cosmetics mogul and a hippie art teacher living together was a hit across the world, especially in the US. Starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the show has already been renewed for a third season. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Orange is the New Black - Season Four - 17 June Another Netflix powerhouse, Orange is the New Black will see us returning to Litchfield Penitentiary. Prepare for more Piper, Alex and Red come June. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Stranger Things - 15 July Eight-episode series starring Winona Ryder that follows a small community as they look for a young boy who has seemingly vanished. It all sounds quite scary. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Get Down - August 12th "Told through the lives and music of a ragtag crew of South Bronx teens, The Get Down is a mythic saga of the transformation of 1970s New York City. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, this is sure to be as stylish as anything hes done before. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 The Crown - Spring Starring Doctor Who actor Matt Smith, the period drama reveals the political rivalries and romance behind Queen Elizabeth II's reign and the events that shaped the 2nd half of the 20th century." Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Luke Cage - Fall 2016 First appearing alongside Jessica Jones in her Netflix series, Luke Cage will pic up the pieces, seeing Cage come to terms with his super-strength and impenetrable skin. It is unknown whether Kathryn. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 Narcos - Season 2 - Fall 2016 Its back. The Netflix series hyped to match Breaking Bad was an astounding success around the world, apparently watched more than Game of Thrones. Well find out what happens to Pablo Escabar now he doesnt have the protection of all his men. Netflix Inc. Netflix originals to look forward to in 2016 A Series of Unfortunate Events - Fall 2016 Netflix is set to revisit the much-loved childrens novel, putting Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf in a show that looks so much creepier than the 2004 film. Not much else is known - i.e. casting - but Lemony Snicket is on board as executive producer, so get excited.

Netflix has said many times before that it hopes to do away with region-specific licenses, meaning that everyone who uses the service would be able to watch everything that it has. But that is likely to be some time away, and the company has recently announced that it is launching a major crackdown on unblocker services, apparently in response to complaints by film owners.
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The issue of 'killer robots' one day posing a threat to humans has been discussed at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The discussion took place on 21 January during a panel organised by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (CSKR) and Time magazine, which asked the question: "What if robots go to war?"

Participants in the discussion included former UN disarmament chief Angela Kane, BAE Systems chair Sir Roger Carr, artificial intelligence (AI) expert Stuart Russell and robot ethics expert Alan Winfield.

Despite coming from very different sectors, the participants agreed on one thing during their hour-long discussion - autonomous weapons (or 'killer robots') pose dangers to humans, and swift diplomatic action is needed to stop their development.

The panelists were quick to distinguish an autonomous weapon from something like a drone, which is unmanned but ultimately controlled by a human.

Autonomous weapons, which are currently being developed by the US, UK, China, Israel, South Korea and Russia, will be capable of identifying targets, adjusting their behaviour in response to that target, and ultimately firing - all without human intervention.

Sir Carr, the weapons industry representative, said weapons like this would be "devoid of responsibility" and would have "no emotion or sense of mercy."

Davos 2015 in numbers Show all 9 1 /9 Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 1560m The Swiss resort is the highest town in Europe. Getty Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 11,211 The permanent population of Davos. AFP/Getty Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 1971 The year the annual forum was founded by Klaus Schwab, a German-born business professor at the University of Geneva (pictured speaking). It was initially named the European Management Forum. World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 1987 The year the annual forum changed its name to the World Economic Forum. Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 1,700 The number of private jets expected to enter Swiss airspace to fly billionaires and government leaders to Davos. Getty Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 2,500 The number of participants attending the World Economic Forum. AFP/Getty Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 100 Participants will represent more than 100 countries around the world. Rex Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 40 The number of heads of state and government in attendance. Pictured is Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. Rex Davos 2015 in numbers Davos 2015 in numbers 17% Women are far outnumbered by men at the World Economic Forum, representing less than a fifth of all participants. Pictured is Queen Mathilde of Belgium. Rex

"If you remove ethics and judgement and morality from human endeavour whether it is in peace or war, you will take humanity to another level which is beyond our comprehension," he said.

The discussion came after more than 3,000 experts from the worlds of science and robotics signed an open letter calling for a ban on 'killer robots'.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking and technologist Elon Musk were among the signatories to the letter, which was authored by the CSKR.

Currently, the CSKR is lobbying to get the issue of autonomous weapons on the table of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which has previously banned the use of weapons like landmines, booby traps and blinding laser weapons in warfare.

Taking the issue to Davos, where around 2,500 of the world's top business leaders, politicians and intellectuals meet every year, should help their campaign gain more traction among the world's decision makers.

It's not yet possible to build truly 'intelligent' autonomous robots, so the weaponisation of them is still far away. However, some nations already use semi-robotic weapons in their militaries.

South Korea has a network of automatic sentry guns along the border with North Korea, which use cameras and heat sensors to detect and track humans all by themselves. However, they still need a human to tell them to fire.
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The UK is vulnerable to an outbreak of Ebola and other deadly diseases thanks to significant deficiencies in the way the country manufactures vaccines, MPs have warned.

In a warning issued on Monday, members of the governments Science and Technology Committee said Britain lacks the capacity to produce vaccines in enough quantity to protect citizens in the event of a serious outbreak of a deadly and contagious disease such as Ebola.

We are concerned that, in the unlikely but possible event of a domestic outbreak, the UK lacks the capability to go further and manufacture enough vaccines to vaccinate UK citizens in an emergency, the report warned.

 WHO declares Ebola outbreak over as Liberia gets all-clear

Existing facilities are degraded and new plants will take years to build, leaving the UK in a vulnerable position, it adds.

In the event of a global Ebola outbreak, Britain would be heavily reliant on vaccination donations from other countries. The concern is that these countries would almost certainly prioritise their own nationals in the event of such an outbreak and may refuse to release supplies to the UK.

Experts have issued stark warnings over the reports findings.

Speaking to the BBC, Ebola vaccination expert Professor Adrian Hill described the lack of adequate vaccination production facilities as a national security issue. Chief medical office Professor Sally Davies said: We are looking at how we can try and attract companies back.

The reports findings were not entirely negative, however, with the Science and Technology Committee praising the heroic efforts of volunteers who risked their own lives during the recent Ebola outbreak which started in West Africa and peaked in late 2014 and early 2015.

But it did say the governments response to the outbreak was undermined by systematic delay, adding that there were delays were evident at every stage of our response to the crisis.

It also criticised the governments decision to set up Ebola screening stations at UK airports, contrary to recommendations from the World Health Organization.

More than 11,000 people have died in West Africa since the start of the largest-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has now been restricted to sporadic cases in Sierra Leone.
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Women who think they may be pregnant in the weeks before travelling to the Olympics in Brazil later this year should consider abandoning their trip because of the risks posed by the Zika virus to their unborn child, a senior scientist has warned.

An epidemic in Brazil of a congenital birth defect known as microcephaly, when the brain of the foetus fails to grow normally, is probably linked to the recent introduction and widespread transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, said Laura Rodrigues, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

It is an unprecedented epidemic of microcephaly, Professor Rodrigues said. It has never happened before and it was probably caused by congenital infections of Zika virus, caused by pregnant women getting infected and the virus going to the babys brain. It is not known how the Zika virus might cause microcephaly in the womb but it is likely to result from an infection of the developing foetal brain in the first three months, and possibly first few weeks, of pregnancy, said Professor Rodrigues, who is investigating the outbreak in Brazil.

The real risk is for women who are pregnant going to areas where there is Zika transmission. The infection itself is very mild, but for pregnant women to be infected can lead to complications.

My advice is to check whether there is still Zika [in Brazil] during the Olympics, Professor Rodrigues added.

I think it is sensible for women who are either pregnant or maybe pregnant, or planning to be pregnant, to consider very carefully whether they want to go to a place where there is Zika virus and run the risk.

Recommended Read more Zika virus found in UK travellers returning from South America

It is a sensible question, and if a woman thinks she may be pregnant then they should consider the risks.

And Professor Rodrigues warned: We also dont know how long after infection the risk to pregnancy lasts, so it is not impossible for someone who is infected now and then conceives a week later might still have virus there.

Zika virus is transmitted by mosquito bites and is believed to have first crossed the species barrier from wild animals to humans in East Africa.

It has since spread to West Africa and then to Asia and the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Chile in 2014 and Brazil in 2015. The World Health Organisation predicts the virus will continue to spread to much of South and Central America, where mosquito-borne transmission of the related dengue virus has already been documented.

Retrospective tests on pregnant women in French Polynesia who had early terminations showed that many of the aborted foetuses had suffered from microcephaly during 2013-14, when the islands were suffering from outbreaks of Zika virus, Professor Rodrigues said.
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In the world's largest democracy, homosexual activity is still a crime punishable by life imprisonment. A few weeks ago, the Indian Parliament saw MPs of both major parties scurrying for the exits to evade a debate on this anachronistic ban, introduced by the British Raj in the 19th century. The occasion was a failed attempt by a maverick backbencher to introduce a private member's bill legalising homosexuality. Indian politicians are in no hurry to debate a reform that would annoy religious extremists. And yet India, always a land of contradictions, allows Gay Pride marches in most major cities, has vibrant gay pressure groups and publications and officially accepts people who are transgender.

When I grew up in India's most cosmopolitan city, Bombay, in the 1960s, the very mention of homosexuality was taboo, and absolutely no one was out. I remember the frisson when, as college students, we discovered and staged plays with gay allusions and characters by authors such as Tennessee Williams. My own Westernised parents were sexually liberated and tolerant, but they were very much the exception.

Last month, I made a personal journey home for a BBC Radio 4 documentary, to explore how dramatically India's sexual landscape has changed in recent years.

Bombay is India's Big Apple and, like London or New York, is now a magnet for young people wanting to live exciting new lives free of their families. The northern suburbs are home to many of the thriving call centres we love to hate; and the anonymity and freedom they offer has been particularly valuable for young gay jobseekers. How you look doesn't matter in call centres, explains Vikram Doctor, a senior, openly gay journalist with the The Times of India. You can be a butch lesbian or a camp, effeminate gay man, all that matters is how you speak. It's meant that youngsters just out of college can get well paid jobs free of parental pressure. Suddenly you have all these young people earning as much or more than their parents, and that's been a lifeline for lots of young queer people in cities like Bombay and Bangalore. Vikram also points to the liberating impact of the internet, with its dating sites and social media replacing the hazards of cruising and the risks of extortion gangs and police entrapment.

During my trip, I took part in Bombay's annual book festival. I was on a panel about equal rights, along with the prominent human rights lawyer Anand Grover. He explained the muddled legal backdrop to homosexuality  indeed, all sexuality  in India. How many people here have had oral sex? Grover asked our amused audience. Put your hands up! You're all criminals under Section 377. That's the provision of the Indian Penal Code which forbids not just gay sex, but any sexual act other than penile-vaginal intercourse. Grover led a legal battle in the Delhi High Court to get Section 377 declared unconstitutional, because it violates citizens' rights to equality, privacy and dignity guaranteed in India's written constitution.

Zareer Masani at Cathedral School in Bombay where he suffered homophobic bullying

The case dragged on for almost a decade and had a profoundly radicalising impact on gay Indians and on public attitudes to them. When the case began, Grover tells me, no one was willing to come forward openly to say they were gay. Today, because of that case, things have changed completely. The media coverage became ever more sympathetic to the cause of LGBT rights. Debates were being held on television, where mothers and fathers and sisters would say, 'I have a family member who's gay, and that's perfectly OK'. The court judgment in 2009, which lifted the ban for consenting adults, was strongly influenced by arguments that the existing law was a blackmailers' charter and that HIV treatment was being impeded by fear and secrecy among gay people. The judgment was accepted by the then Congress government, and gay Indians across the country celebrated the end of the ban with marches and parties. But it was a short-lived victory, because a motley collection of religious fundamentalists appealed to the Supreme Court, which overruled the Delhi High Court and decreed that only Parliament could change the law.

The position now is that the Supreme Court is mulling over a curative petition to reconsider its own judgment, a process which could take years. Meanwhile, are gay Indians being forced back into a twilight zone of secrecy, fear and extortion? Justice Ajit Shah, the courageous judge who presided over the Delhi High Court case, is confident that the genie is out of the bottle once and for all. Section 377 has no place in modern India, he declares, and it can and must be replaced. Many people present in court when I gave my judgment broke down and wept. The middle class has stopped joking about homosexuals, and the language of homophobia is ebbing away.

As well as evolving middle-class attitudes, global media has had a huge impact on social attitudes across large swathes of middle India. One touching example was a father and son who I met in Bombay. Sushant, aged 24, was chosen as Mr Gay India 2014 in a beauty pageant that's now in its third year. Tall, slim and androgynous, clad in the latest fashions, he would look more at home in Soho than on the streets of Bombay. But he has no qualms about dressing and looking as he pleases. I wear what I want, and I'm the way I want, he declares defiantly. Why should I be scared? I don't want to be a straight-acting gay man. I'm a very flamboyant individual, and when I travel abroad they say: 'Here comes the curry queen'. So what?

Sushant's father, Pradeep, is a middle-aged business executive. His response to his son's sexuality was anything but conventional. When he told me he was gay, he says with a laugh, I told him: 'I love you even more'. After all, he's my child, and I brought him into this world. I always say: 'He's gay, and I'm happy'.

That's a remarkably warm parental welcome, even by Western standards, and a reminder that India's close family structure can at times be supportive, rather than just oppressive. When it comes to family acceptance of homosexuality, it's wrong to generalise about Indian religious or class differences, says Parmesh Shahani, author of an openly gay autobiography and founder of the Gay Bombay pressure group. He's now director of the Godrej Culture Lab, a large centre funded by one of India's biggest business corporations, which hosts many gay events, including Bombay's annual Kashish Queer Film Festival.

My first boyfriend came from a really conservative Muslim family, Parmesh (a Hindu) tells me, and his parents outed him. They sat him down and asked: 'Are you gay, and are you dating Parmesh?' He said 'Yes' to both, at which they said: 'Well, why don't you call him over for dinner?' And so we had this incredible relationship where I would go to his home, have dinner with his parents, and then we'd go out on a date, which was something that most of our heterosexual friends couldn't do.

The citys gay and lesbian parade takes place every year (Getty)

Evidence of changing attitudes is very noticeable at my alma mater, the Cathedral School, founded in Bombay by Anglican missionaries in the 1860s, around the same time that the notorious Section 377 was enacted. As a child there, I was a loner, suffered homophobic bullying, avoided games and escaped into a private world of books, art and history. Today it's a very different world, as I step into the bright and cheerful office of the principal, Mrs Isaacs, who bears no resemblance to the apoplectic English headmaster who caned us when we misbehaved. I expect her to be embarrassed when I ask if homosexuality is discussed in the classroom. Of course it is! she laughs. When I was growing up, we never spoke of such things, but today it's in your face, and children now are very open about it. In fact, some of our children wanted to go out and demonstrate against the Supreme Court judgment.

The Cathedral was and still is Bombay's most elite school. Prima in Indis, gateway of India, door of the East with its face to the West, the opening lines of the school song proudly remind one that this cosmopolitan city has been India's intellectual and commercial hub for almost two centuries. But how representative of Bombay, or indeed of India, is the affluent, internet-savvy, sexually liberated world of the city's Westernised middle class? And can we assume that things can only get better for a younger generation of gay Indians?

Deep in Bombay's less affluent northern suburbs, I find a group of radical, lesbian feminists, called Labia, which describes itself as a queer, feminist, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people's collective. Much of their language and perspective reminds me of militant gay liberation groups in Britain in the late 1960s. Labia argues that what they call privileged voices for gay people are just seeking assimilation into a Hindu, upper-caste hetero-patriarchal status quo. For them, the most oppressive threat to young gay people comes, not just from the state, but from their own family.

I discuss this with Chayanika, a middle-aged lesbian, and her transgender partner Shals. They argue that the traditional Indian family structure results in abuse, torture and forced marriage, especially for young women, who are not even recognised as sexual beings. They point out that traditional family control is being strengthened by new market forces that are making affordable housing impossible to find in most Indian cities. The big difference with the UK, says Shals, is that an abused teenager who runs away from home here has nowhere to go, because there's no entitlement to social housing.

Groups on the left such as Labia argue that Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology of India's ruling party, the BJP, is threatening all Indian minorities, including gays. Other more mainstream gay organisations prefer to remain politically neutral. The largest gay organisation in India is the Humsafar Trust, with a staff of almost 300, located in the Bombay suburb of Santa Cruz. Up a dingy staircase in a rundown tenement, you enter a large open-plan area, partitioned into a dozen smaller cubicles. These are the treatment and counselling rooms where Humsafar (travelling companion in Hindi) provides a wide range of free services from HIV testing and treatment to psychological counselling and legal advocacy.

Humsafar's CEO, Vivek Anand, shows me round and explains how the organisation began in the 1980s as a gay dating club called Bombay Dost (friend) and then expanded through its HIV work, which eventually won it substantial government funding. When I ask if gay causes are being squeezed under the present BJP government, which swept to power in 2014, Vivek points to the gay film festivals and pride marches that the government continues to license and the HIV funding that Humsafar continues to get. But let's be clear, he concludes about the politicians, no one really wants us!

Later I talk to Sonal Gyani, who's in charge of Humsafar's legal advocacy service. She has hands-on experience of representing gay people in police stations and argues that both extortion rackets and police harassment have got worse since the court cases about Section 377. The lifting of the ban, followed by its reinstatement, and all the publicity around it, has made potential blackmailers more aware that homosexuality is a criminal offence. A typical scenario, says Sonal, would be for someone to arrange to meet you for sex, then arrange for their accomplices to turn up and catch you in the act, take photos and threaten to show them to your family, employers or the police. The police themselves, she adds, sometimes join in the blackmail and take their cut.

The day I'm visiting Humsafar is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court judgment reinstating Section 377. There's a community evening to mark the event, with Bollywood-style singing and dancing and individuals taking the mic to share their experiences of being gay as well as to remember how they felt when they heard the court's shock judgment. The crowd of about 100 brings together mostly young gay men from across Bombay's less privileged, northern suburbs.

Among them I also spot a couple of hijras, the very distinctive Indian eunuchs and transsexuals who dress as women. It's a reminder that, in 2014, the same Supreme Court that reintroduced the gay ban reached a remarkably enlightened judgment recognising the right of transsexuals to be treated as male, female or third gender, according to their own individual choice. The court also ruled that transgender people are entitled to positive discrimination by the state in education and jobs.

The legal anomaly that accepts gender change but bans homosexuality cries out for reform, as most of the Indian media has been demanding. One of the most vocal advocates of change has been the veteran television journalist, Karan Thapar, fondly called India's Jeremy Paxman because of his talent for grilling politicians on the popular shows he presents almost every day of the week. I don't think the media has a huge impact on the attitude of politicians, he complains. They're more concerned about their unwillingness to offend voters, and most of those voters continue to be conservative-minded. For politicians to muster both the moral conviction and the political courage to tackle this issue looks unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Looking back on my own decision to settle in Britain as a sort of sexual migrant in the 1970s, I know it would have been impossible for me then to live an open and fulfilled life as a gay man in Bombay. That situation has changed very dramatically for the better, whether in the affluent, downtown Bombay bubble or in the upwardly mobile call centres of the suburbs. The infamous Section 377, banning homosexuality, continues unchanged, and I doubt if Indian politicians will have the nerve to repeal it in my lifetime. But I'm confident that the law is becoming a dead letter. There have been no prosecutions for the past 20 years; police harassment is being reduced; and the scope for blackmail, too, is shrinking as Indian families and employers join the growing global acceptance of gay rights.

Zareer Masani's documentary 'Gay Bombay' is on BBC Radio 4 on 1 February at 8pm
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One of the worlds most respected experts on labour market economics has lambasted George Osbornes imminent increase in the minimum wage and cast doubt on a key claim in David Camerons European Union reform drive.

Sir Christopher Pissarides, who was awarded the Nobel prize for economics in 2010, told The Independent that the new national living wage rate of 7.20 an hour, effective from April for over-25s, would come at the cost of jobs and he was worried about its adverse impact on the less-skilled end of the employment market.

I think it is going to be a threat, he said, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. There are going to be job losses. I would not have done it  Id be worried about what it would do to the lower end of the market.

Sir Christopher said he did not think labour productivity would rise sufficiently to offset the negative impact on businesses bottom lines, and it was vain to hope they would absorb the hit in the form of lower profits. They are not going to redistribute profits within the company, he said. If a job is losing you money you drop it.

The economist said it would be unfair to workers to reverse the policy now, but instead he urged the Chancellor to mitigate its effects by perhaps subsidising affected companies.

Since the Chancellor announced his national living wage in the July Budget a host of major UK companies have come forward to complain about the cost. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that employment will be about 60,000 lower than it would otherwise have been by the end of the decade, when the minimum wage is projected by the Treasury to rise to 9 an hour.

Sir Christopher also said the Prime Ministers claim that limiting new EU migrants access to in-work benefits  which he has made the centrepiece of his EU renegotiation drive  would reduce inward migration flows was false. There is no evidence that it [migrant access to benefits] is a big pull factor, he said.

As part of his efforts to secure a new deal for Britain in the EU, in advance of this years expected referendum, Mr Cameron is pushing for new EU migrants rights to benefits to be restricted for four years.

Other EU states have objected on the grounds that this would be discriminatory treatment of non-UK workers. One proposed solution is that young UK workers could also be barred from receiving in-work benefits for four years.

Sir Christopher said he was not against the idea of limiting new migrants access to benefits on the grounds that they had not made tax contributions but he said it would be unfair if this was applied to young people whose parents had made contributions for many years.

If I have a 20-year-old son who becomes unemployed I would hope that the state would support him, given how much Ive contributed to the state budget, he said. The Government needs to apply this contributory principle across the generations  not only for the individual.

The migrant benefits issue is critical to Mr Camerons EU reform negotiations, and the Prime Minister is hoping to secure agreement with fellow continental governments by next months European Council summit, which would then let him set a date for the membership referendum.
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New rules banning secularist groups from raising objections to faith schools admissions policies are an affront to both democracy and the rule of law, campaigners have said.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) and the National Secular Society (NSS) claimed that the new policy would allow religiously-selective schools to unfairly discriminate against thousands of children while dissenting voices were silenced.

Under the Governments proposals, which were unveiled by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan at the weekend, campaign groups will be banned from making vexatious complaints against the admissions systems of individual faith schools.

The measure is being taken after the Chief Schools Adjudicator, Dr Elizabeth Passmore, said investigating multiple objections from pressure groups was taking too much time and was a waste of public money. Ms Morgan said barring lobbyists and others from making complaints would unclog the system while still allowing local parents and councils to raise concerns about applications procedures.

However, the BHA said that its complaints to the Adjudicator had been sparked by concerns from parents  and had revealed that almost every religiously-selective school in England was failing to comply with the School Admissions Code and unfairly denying access to some children.

Instead of moving to enforce the law, the Government has responded by planning to make it harder to identify future violations of it, said the charitys chief executive Andrew Copson. This is an affront to both democracy and the rule of law.

He continued: It will reduce parents fair choice of state schools in the interests of the religious organisations that run them at taxpayers expense  and demonstrates the Government is more interested in concealing the appalling record of religious schools manipulating their intakes than it is in addressing the serious problems this causes.

A consultation on the proposals will be launched in the next few months. The BHA said it planned to encourage people who believed in a fairer, more transparent, and less discriminatory education system to oppose the changes.

Faith schools are legally allowed to give priority to children who come from particular religious backgrounds if they are oversubscribed. But some campaigners believe they are routinely abusing this power to discriminate against ethnic minorities and pupils from working class backgrounds.

The NSS said some parents did like making personal complaints against schools and relied on larger umbrella organisations and campaign groups to speak out on their behalf. The new rules would allow faith schools to break the Admissions Code with impunity, it added.

Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, revealed the plan to ban vexatious complaints (Getty) (Getty Images)

Its disgraceful to begin with that the law allows faith schools to discriminate against pupils on the basis of their parents faith, said NSS campaigns manager Stephen Evans. Many religious schools have been shown to be been abusing the admissions system and its incredible that the Government now wishes to prevent us from challenging that abuse of religious privilege.

According to a report published last year by the BHA and the Fair Admissions Campaign, objections about 49 religiously selective secondary schools resulted in more than 1,000 breaches of the Admissions Code being identified. Around 1.2 million school places in England are subject to religious selection criteria so the number of children unfairly losing out on places was likely to be significant, it claimed.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: There is a clear and transparent system for parents and local authorities to raise objections or highlight when they believe a school is breaching the admissions code. This will not change. Our proposals are about stopping pressure groups clogging up the system with vexatious complaints solely designed to attack faith schools.
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When it comes to learning, nothing can compare to real-life experience  as a group of prisoners has proved in a ground-breaking new university course. Inmates at high-security Frankland Prison in County Durham have been studying alongside undergraduates from Durham University in a unique criminology programme. And it is the prisoners who are coming top of the class.

The university offers a chance for third-year criminology students to work with a group of inmates for a 10-week module that counts towards their degree. Fiona Measham, professor of criminology at Durham University, says the Inside-Out programme has been potentially life-changing for prisoners and undergraduates alike.

We have gained a deeper understanding of humanity and the inhumanity of the prisoners experiences, she said. The prisoners say they feel like humans again for the part of the week they do the course.

Professor Measham claimed it is often the students inside who score better on parts of the course than their university counterparts. She said some of the prisoners were already studying to university level through Open University and had the advantage of time to commit to research.

But for most of the undergraduates, the harsh reality of prison proved an uncomfortable place to study.

Professor Measham said: Its a real shock to the system and when they walk out of prison, going through the 12 locked gates, it makes them appreciate their liberty.

Durham Universitys alumni include Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and former head of the Army General Sir Richard Dannatt; Frankland Prison is infamous for having held some of Britains most notorious criminals  including serial killer Harold Shipman and child killer Ian Huntley.

But for the past year, the prison has opened its high-security gates along with the lower-category HMP Durham to allow 12 students to join 12 category A inmates in study.

The course gives criminology students an insight into prison life, while for the prisoners it is a chance to turn their lives around through education.

Former Frankland inmate Jermaine James was expelled from school at the age of 13 and later spent 13-and-a-half years behind bars for attempted murder.

Since completing the Inside-Out programme, he has been invited to Parliament and Cambridge University to discuss penal issues and has just got work with the Community Chaplaincy Association helping ex-prisoners.

The 34-year-old, from a tough estate in Luton, has now set up a consultancy called True Heart of the City to mentor others away from crime. He said: It changed everybody. Some students cried at the end because they saw themselves in us, as humans that make mistakes. Likewise we saw ourselves in them as people who make mistakes but had the ability to change their prospects.

During the three-hour weekly sessions, students hold discussions on topics such as What causes crime? and Does prison work? before preparing essays.
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The explorer Henry Worsley has died while attempting a solo crossing across the Antarctic, his family has announced.

The 55-year-old former Army officer was trying to become the first adventurer to cross the continent on his own.

On Friday he was airlifted to hospital after suffering from exhaustion and dehydration 30 miles shy of the finish line. He was 71 days into his attempt to complete Sir Ernest Shackleton's unfinished expedition and had passed the South Pole, covering 913 miles.

His wife, Joanna, issued a statement saying: "It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband, Henry Worsley, has died following complete organ failure; despite all efforts of ALE and medical staff at the Clinica Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile."

 Henry Worsley's final diary entry

She also praised her husband for his fundraising successes during the expedition, which totalled over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund which supports injured service men and women.

"Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass.

"On behalf of myself and family, I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund."

Henry Worsley (John Stillwell / PA Wire/Press Association Images)

The Endeavour Fund is managed by the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as well as Prince Harry.

The Duke of Cambridge, a patron of the expedition paid tribute to Worsley.

"Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him.

"We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavour Fund.

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"We will now make sure that his family receive the support they need at this terribly difficult time.

Worsley, from Fulham, south London is survived by his wife Joanna and two children.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
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Fertility doctors have applied for permission to use a controversial IVF procedure that promises to dramatically improve the chances of women older than 30 having babies by rejuvenating their eggs.

The technique effectively makes older eggs young again by adding a fresh set of batteries transferred from more youthful cells in the ovaries identified by a scientific process pioneered in the United States, scientists said.

A British fertility clinic has applied to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for a licence to use the procedure in a pilot trial involving about 20 women undergoing IVF treatment. If the licence is granted, the trial is likely to begin later this year.

Thousands of women in their 30s and 40s, as well as younger women with fertility problems, could benefit from the technique which involves sucking out the mitochondria power packs from immature stem cells found in the ovary and injecting them into the mature egg cells or oocytes used in IVF.

Recommended Read more OvaScience hopes to circumvent ethical and safety issues in Britain

IVF success rates fall dramatically with age. The chances of a successful IVF pregnancy are about 32 per cent for women under 35, about 21 per cent for women aged 38 to 39, five per cent for women aged 43 to 44 and less than two per cent for woman aged over 44.

The proponents of the technique argue that the failure of a fertilised egg to develop into a viable early embryo that can be transferred into the womb is often due to the decrepit nature of the eggs ageing mitochondria  which can be remedied by adding fresher ones from so-called egg-precursor cells in the ovary.

However, some scientists have questioned whether there is enough scientific evidence to support even the existence of these egg-precursor stem cells. They will want the HFEA to carefully evaluate the proposal which could raise concerns over the health of any children born from the mitochondrial-transfer technique.

Nevertheless, Simon Fishel, professor of human reproduction and founder of Care Fertility in Nottingham, said there is evidence that injecting additional mitochondria into an IVF egg when it is fertilised with sperm improves the chances of the fertilised egg developing into a healthy early embryo.

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. 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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. 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There is a body of scientific evidence suggesting that the mitochondria of eggs from some patients  those over 37, those previously shown to have poor-quality embryos after IVF  is part of the problem in getting viable embryos for such patients, Professor Fishel told The Independent.

Some scientific studies have shown that egg precursor cells can be harvested for their mitochondria, and if obtained they are healthy mitochondria, in contrast to the problematic eggs. Previous scientific studies have shown that donor mitochondria in such cases gives better quality and therefore more viable embryos with higher chances of pregnancy, he said.

Care Fertility has applied for an HFEA licence using the egg-precursor and mitochondrial-transfer technology developed by OvaScience, a Boston-based company set up by fertility scientists in the United States. The technique, called Augment, is not however yet allowed in the US because it has been defined as a novel drug in need of extensive testing by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Professor Fishel said the fact that the Augment technique has not been allowed in the US should not influence whether it is given a licence in the UK otherwise we are left with some big questions that will not advantage patients in the long run.

If Augment works it could be as big a revolution in fertility treatment as ICSI, or intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where individual sperm cells are injected directly into unfertilised eggs with dramatic improvements in fertility rates, he said.

It may provide new, revolutionary options for women to have their own genetic child. Its a potential paradigm shift. But we have to get to the point where it does work to make it a more cost-effective solution, Professor Fishel said.

Other experts were not convinced, however. Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, a specialist in mammalian reproduction at the Crick Institute in London and an HFEA adviser, said that the basic premise of the Augment approach is that there are germline stem cells within the ovary which can be used to supply fresh mitochondria.

My view based on the science is that its difficult to believe. There is lots of evidence to suggest there are no germline stem cells remaining in the ovaries of mice, certainly from a week after birth. There is certainly no good evidence in any animal model that there are germline stem cells that actually give rise to oocytes, Professor Lovell-Badge said.

 World's first IVF puppies born

It all seems rather remarkable and a lot of people are sceptical. The HFEA may have a problem with that if there is not a robust scientific basis for the proposal. They [Ovascience] are charging at lot of money to do it and there is not much evidence that it does anything. They may have some information claiming to show that it does, but Ive not seen this, he said.

A representative of OvaScience was unavailable for comment.
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The idea of boosting a womans fertility by rejuvenating her eggs with fresh mitochondria  the power packs of the cell  goes back several years and there are, in fact, several successful pregnancies and births that have resulted after fertility doctors transferred mitochondria from donor eggs.

About 30 IVF babies are estimated to have been born around the world after an experimental procedure developed in the late 1990s where cell cytoplasm containing mitochondria from the donor egg of one woman was transferred into the egg of the woman undergoing IVF treatment.

One of these children is Alana Saarinen, 15, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, who mother Sharon underwent cytoplasmic transfer of her IVF eggs in 2000 when she was 36 after four failed IVF cycles.

However, the big difference between these early attempts at mitochondrial transfer, which were stopped by the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in 2002, and the present proposal before the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was that they involved a donated egg from a second woman.

This means that Alana and the other children born from the technique could now be carrying the genetic information of three people  DNA from both her parents and much smaller amounts of DNA from the second woman who donated additional mitochondria  mitochondria have their own DNA.

Two years ago, Sharon Saarinen explained to The Independent why she and her husband agreed to such a radical IVF procedure, carried out by a private fertility clinic after the couple had been convinced that it was a way of boosting their chances of a baby.

I think it was the only thing that helped me. If there were risks, it didnt matter. I wanted a child too much at that point. It was definitely the right thing to do, Mrs Saarinen said.

However, the FDA soon blocked the technique of cytoplasmic transfer in IVF, and the field went quiet. That changed around 2012 when Jonathan Tilly of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston published a study indicating that human ovaries contain egg precursor cells that are effectively germline stem cells that can develop into mature egg cells.

This seemed to challenge the long-established doctrine that women are born with a full complement of eggs cells that mature as they grow older. If true, Professor Tillys work meant that it might be possible to take the egg-precursor cells and use them to improve a womans chances of a successful IVF pregnancy.

One way of doing this is to take fresh mitochondria from these juvenile cells and inject them into fully mature IVF eggs when they are fertilised by sperm injection. This would also circumvent the ethical and safety issues attached to using mitochondria from the donated eggs of a second woman  the technique used in Alaanas case.

Professor Tilly went on to set up a fertility company, OvaScience, to exploit this technique, known as Augment. However, the FDA ruled in 2013 that Augment is effectively a novel drug in need of extensive and expensive safety testing.

Now OvaScience is hoping to effectively circumvent this requirement in Britain once it gets an HFEA licence.
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A former adviser to David Cameron appeared in court accused of paying a 13-year-old schoolgirl to be his sex slave after meeting her on a sugar daddy website.

Douglas Richard, 57, who also appeared on the BBCs Dragons Den, spanked the teenager in front of her friend at a rented apartment, before taking her alone into the bedroom for sex, a court heard.

Mr Richard, who once advised on entrepreneurial policy for Mr Cameron, has admitted to having sex with the girl but said that he believed she was aged at least 16.

The US-born millionaire met the girl via a US website called Seeking Arrangement, where profiles are created for sugar daddies, sugar mummies or sugar babies, the Old Bailey heard. The girl, who weighed less than 6st and was barely 5ft tall, described herself on the site as a sugar baby while he said he was a sugar daddy, the court heard.

The pair had explicit online conversations and Mr Richard encouraged her to send naked photographs, the court heard. Think of this as your first test for your new daddy, Mr Richard allegedly wrote in a message to her. Get it wrong and I will just have to spank you.

After further exchanges, the girl allegedly told him: Youre my new daddy. I will do anything to make you happy. The court heard that he responded: Good answer.

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. 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Mr Richard paid 360 in total to the girl and her friend, then aged 15, who travelled by train from their home town of Norwich to London on 2 January last year, the court heard.

The jury saw CCTV footage of the girls arriving at Liverpool Street station where they met Mr Richard. The 13-year-old told him that she was aged 17 and her older companion was aged 16, the court heard.

Mr Richard took them to a nearby flat where the older girl was asked if she wanted to be his slave, the court heard. I told him I wanted to die a virgin and he laughed at me, the girl said during her police interview. Mr Richard then spanked the younger girl and ordered her to give him oral sex while the second girl watched, said Gino Connor, prosecuting. The jury was told that Mr Richard then took the 13-year-old into the bedroom where they had sex.

Mr Richard allegedly then gave both girls 60 and hailed a taxi so they could go to the shop American Apparel. The incident came to light when the older girls mother noticed 120 had been paid into her daughters account and was used to buy train tickets.

Mr Richard was arrested at a hotel three days after the alleged sexual activity. He told officers: As you can see I am in a lot of trouble. He later added: Can I ask you a question, a hypothetical question? What if I thought she was over 16 but she was in fact under 16?

Mr Richard, from Islington, north London, denies five charges related to child sexual activity.

The case continues.
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A government contractor reportedly forcing asylum seekers to wear brightly coloured wristbands in exchange for food is set to replace the controversial policy with a photographic identification system, an MP has said.

Refugees housed by Clearsprings Ready Homes  a private firm contracted by the government to care for those seeking asylum  were allegedly told they would not be fed if they did not wear the brightly coloured wristbands at all times. The Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) said the wristbands echoed the yellow star that Jewish people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

Speaking on Sky News Jo Stevens, the shadow justice minister and Labour MP for Cardiff Central, said she had contacted the company and expressed her grave concerns. She added the company accepted that there were concerns the wristbands, theyve taken that onboard and theyve told me that they will be withdrawing them and replacing them with a photo ID card system, which people dont have to show when theyre outside of the hostel.

Eric Ngalle - who lived at a house run by the company until he was granted refugee status in November 2015 - told the Guardian refugees would sometimes receive abuse from passerbys if they were spotted wearing the wristbands as they walked down the street.

He said: "My time in Lynx House was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. I hated wearing the wristbands and sometimes refused to wear them and was turned away from food. "If we refused to wear the wristbands we were told we would be reported to the Home Office. Some staff implemented this policy in a more drastic way than others. I made a complaint about the wristbands to Clearsprings but nothing was done".

The wristbands entitled the asylum seekers to three meals a day provided by the company. People seeking asylum are not allowed to work and are only entitled to a 36.95 weekly payment card from the government.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

The Welsh Refugee policy officer Hannah Wharf said: "We raised the matter many times with the Welsh GovernmentIt harks back to the Nazi regime with people being forced to wear a Star of David and stand out.

"It's absolutely appalling; it is treating people like lesser beings. It is treating them like animals lining up to feed."

In a statement issued today Clearsprings Ready Homes said: Asylum seekers who spend their initial few weeks at our full board accommodation in Cardiff have been provided with wristbands since May 2015 to ensure they receive the services they are entitled to and to make sure those more vulnerable asylum seekers have access to their specific requirements. As in numerous such establishments where large numbers of people are being provided with services, wristbands are considered to be one of the most reliable and effective ways of guaranteeing delivery.

"We are always reviewing the way we supply our services and have decided to cease the use of wristbands as of the Monday 25th of January and will look for an alternative way of managing the fair provision of support. Clearsprings Ready Homes have been providing accommodation services to asylum seekers on behalf of the Home office for over 15 years and are always grateful for feedback to help improve the safety and effectiveness of their services".
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More than 50 UK council workers have been suspended after being accused of breaking social media rules, according to Freedom of Information request by BBC Radio 5 live.

At least 51 workers were suspended last year for breaching social media guidelines - an increase from 2014 - and 11 of these were related to accessing pornographic sites while at work.

Orkney Council said one case of suspension involving alleged pornography had led to a related criminal investigation and Redbridge Council said an employee had stored grossly offensive material in council systems.

Only a minority of the people suspended were later dismissed or resigned, according to the FOI response.

St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council suspended the highest number of workers. It revealed it took action against seven people last year, several of which involved Facebook.

East Riding of Yorkshire Council said it suspended two teachers for befriending pupils on Facebook, among other issues. In one case a teacher attempted to arrange a meeting with a child over the social network, the council said.

Leeds Council took action against two employees over racial comments made online.

Swindon Borough Council suspended a worker for making threatening comments towards colleague on Facebook.

Cheshire West and Chester Council suspended a worker for posting rude messages about the public on Facebook while on duty and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Council said one worker had been forced to take six days off after posting an inappropriate photo on an unnamed site.

Last year, 114 council staff were issued with warnings about breaching social media guidelines  a four per cent fall from 2014. However, as a higher of proportion of people were suspended as a result, there was a 19 per cent rise in the number of people forced to take time off.

The number of people suspended over allegations involving pornography fell from 27 per cent on the previous year.

An Local Government Association spokesperson said: All councils have their own internet and social media usage policies which their staff will be expected to adhere to.

Some staff will use social media as part of their day-to-day job but for all staff, councils are clear that while some personal use of social media at work is acceptable, it must be reasonable and appropriate in terms of both the time spent and the content.

The vast majority of council employees abide by that.

Councils take very seriously any misuse and, as these figures show, will deal robustly with cases that are unacceptable.

The exact number of people suspended is not known as some councils did not specify how many people had been suspended in the FOI request.

It must be noted not all councils included school staff in the data they submitted and some councils based their numbers on the calendar year, while other used the April to March financial year.

Only 169 councils provided data to the FOI  22 refused and 27 did not reply.
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Four towns and cities have been given a share of a 40m fund to promote the uptake of plug-in electric cars.

Local authorities in Nottingham, Bristol, Milton Keynes and London successfully bid for money to invest in the technology, the Department for Transport announced.

They set out a number of proposals, such as building street lights that double as charge points and making 25,000 parking spaces free for plug-in car owners, saving commuters up to 1,300 a year.

Other suggestions as part of the Go Ultra Low City Scheme include ensuring ultra-low emission vehicles (Ulevs) have privileges such as access to bus lanes.

Recommended Read more The shocking truth about electric cars

In 2015 sales of alternatively fuelled vehicles rose by 40 per cent from the previous year to 72,775  a market share of 2.8 per cent  according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. This included plug-in hybrid sales more than doubling, while pure electric cars were up by around 50 per cent.

The Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick McLoughlin, said the winning bids had proposed exciting, innovative ideas that will encourage drivers to choose an electric car. He added: I want to see thousands more greener vehicles and I am proud to back this ambition with 40m to help the UK become pioneers of emission-cutting technology.

The UK is a world leader in the uptake of low-emission vehicles and our long-term economic plan is investing 600m by 2020 to improve air quality, create jobs and achieve our goal of every new car and van in the UK being ultra-low emission by 2040.

The Go Ultra Low City Scheme is also providing 5m development funding for initiatives in Oxford, Dundee, York and the North-east.

BMW Group, which builds Mini cars in Oxford, has promoted the use of street lights as charging points and supported the city in its successful bid.

Recommended Read more Zac Goldsmith says he would scrap bus lanes in the capital

Frank Bachmann, managing director of the Mini plant, said the so-called light and charge technology has huge potential to increase the uptake of electric vehicles across the UK.

London was awarded 13m to prioritise Ulevs in several boroughs, such as introducing charging infrastructure to over a dozen streets in Hackney.

Milton Keynes will get 9m to build a centre for providing consumer advice about electric vehicles (EVs) and offer short-term loans. The town also proposes to open its 20,000 parking bays for free to EVs.

Some 7m will go to Bristol for the introduction of free residential parking for Ulevs, access to three car share lanes and over 80 fast chargers.

Nottingham and Derby will use 6m to install 230 charge points and pay for a programme to enable local companies to try Ulevs with a view to buying them.

Poppy Welch, head of Go Ultra Low, said the money would help put the UK at the forefront of the global ultra-low emissions race.

The funding complements other initiatives to support low-emission vehicle schemes, including 400m of plug-in car grants and investment in low-emission buses and taxis.

Press Association
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The mother of a young British man dubbed "Jihadi Jack" says reports he is a terrorist are "absolutely ridiculous" and that he has travelled to Syria to help refugees.

Jack Letts, 20, left his home more than a year ago and has since travelled to the war-torn region.

Over the weekend, it was widely reported that Mr Letts had become the first white British male to join the jihadist group and that he had married a woman from Fallujah and may have had a child.

Now, friends and family have angrily rejected the claims and accused the "right-wing" press of reporting misinformation about him.

His mother, Sally, says that she spoke to her son on Sunday: "He is not a member of Isis, he is very probably not the first white convert that has gone out there. He does not have a son and is not known as Abu Mohammed," she told the Standard. We spoke to him yesterday and he said he had never had a weapon in his life. He went out there for humanitarian purposes to help kids in Syrian refugee camps.

It is not as if he is hiding - he tells us what he has for breakfast. All this is absolutely ridiculous, it is shocking.

Jack Letts wearing a hood in a picture he posted to Facebook. (Facebook)

Somehow he is supposed to be a global jihadi? It is absolutely ridiculous.

She added that police had been investigating them for more than a year but had found no evidence he had done anything wrong.

Describing him as "kind, funny and gentle", John and Sally Letts said they felt "betrayed" by the media coverage of their son in the press.

"The things they have written about him are completely false", they told the Oxford Mail.

In photos posted to Facebook, Mr Letts can be seen posing with a single raised index finger in front of what has been said to be the Tabqa Dam in Syria, an area under Isis control.

An anonymous close family member told the Mirror: There has been an avalanche of misinformation. We dont want to comment on all of this, but what I will say is that 95 per cent of what has been published is incorrect, it is desperately wrong.

The only truth is that Jack is a Muslim and he is overseas. But everything else is made up and it is just getting worse.

The source also said that the right wing press were most interested in a snappy line like Jihadi Jack and Jihadi John that rolls off the tongue, but it is all wrong, the Mirror.

Mr Letts comes from a secular middle class background; his mother is a books editor and his father is a farmer who once won appeared on the TV programme Countryfile.

Some former school friends from Oxford dubbed him 'Jihadi Jack' (Image taken from Facebook)

A friend told MailOnline: 'I feel like he has been exploited. No one wants to fight in Isis unless they've been brainwashed. It's really alarming how powerfully he has changed.

He was always an atheist, pretty liberal, typical middle-class kid. At school he was the class clown but didn't take it too far, he was still smart and got fair grades."

Thames Valley Police said to The Independent: We are unable to comment on any specific cases in relation to individuals. However would say that anyone who knows of someone who may be potentially vulnerable to being drawn into terrorist-related activity, including travelling abroad to conflict zones should contact local police for advice and support on 101.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said he did not comment on active cases. It told the Standard: What is important, and would be expected, is that we do all we can to keep people safe and investigate everyone who returns to the UK to establish if any crimes have been committed and if they are a threat to the UK.
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Mohammed Emwazi, the terrorist known as Jihadi John who was killed by a drone strike last year, had warned his brother not to follow in his footsteps before leaving for Syria.

Emwazi told his younger sibling Omar, 22, that his own encounters with the British security services had wrecked his life in Britain and had ended his plans for marriage and work in his homeland of Kuwait.

In an interview last year before his brothers death in November, Omar described Emwazis turmoil while he was under surveillance by MI5 and Scotland Yard between 2009 and 2012.

 ISIS killer dubbed new 'Jihadi John'

Omar recalled: He wasnt the type of guy to complain... but he would say: Dont be like me. He was always saying: Learn from other peoples mistakes. He would basically say: Look where I am. I cant get married and I cant get a proper job. I cant travel and I cant go nowhere.

Omar says his brother had made several attempts to return to Kuwait but was blocked each time by the security services. But in late 2012 Emwazi did finally manage to find a way of escaping Britain, leaving via the port of Dover. He entered Syria through Turkey before joining a group of foreign fighters allied to al-Qaeda.

When a section of these fighters decided to give an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, Emwazi followed. In 2014 and 2015 Emwazi took part in at least seven beheadings of hostages, including two Britons and three Americans, and became one of the most reviled terrorists in modern times.

Omar Emwazi believes his brother, who was 27 when he was killed last year, must take ultimate responsibility for all his actions. But he also believes that the role British and foreign security services played in preventing his brother from leaving Britain for a new life in Kuwait was a key radicalising factor. The thing is they would never leave him alone, he claimed. When it happens constantly it becomes the norm.

He said his brother rarely appeared angry about his situation. Its not like he is suddenly going to get frustrated again. So this was how it was for him and he just carried on.

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

MI5 and Scotland Yard viewed Emwazi very differently. They believed he was part of a dedicated network of Islamist extremists who were supporting terrorism activities in the UK and Somalia.

This group of west London Islamist extremists were led by two older Muslim men who had mentored Emwazi  Bilal al-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr. They were killed in Somalia while fighting with the terror group al-Shabaab. But their influence on the more impressionable Emwazi was confirmed last week by Isis when it published an obituary in the latest edition of the terror groups online magazine.

The article claims that, after Berjawi was killed in a US drone strike in 2012, Emwazi took over his dead friends fatherly duties by taking Berjawis son on regular visits to London Zoo. The surviving west London network of young Islamists were regularly involved in debating the atrocities witnessed in Syria by the terror groups who would later emerge as the Islamic State.

A source who spoke to Emwazi at the time said that his London group was split down the middle as to whether it was right to murder innocent people to further the jihadi cause. According to the source, Emwazi was one of those who believed such atrocities could be justified on the basis that Western powers were responsible for killing Muslims.

But it has now emerged that in 2009 Emwazi had embarked on a new life in Kuwait  and may never have returned to the UK and set off on his murderous path had it not been for painful toothache.

Unable to find a dentist in Kuwait to fix his teeth, he flew back to the UK in early 2010 to seek out his family dentist in Maida Vale, west London. But when he tried to return to Kuwait in June the same year, he found his path blocked by the security services.

His friends say that Emwazi had not been interested in practising his religion while he was at school. But after 2009, he was praying four or five times a day according to Islamic custom. By all accounts he was diligent in his studies and made good progress  and on one occasion broke down in tears during a lesson. He admitted to his teacher that he was upset about leaving the hospital bedside of a respected member of the Islamic community who died while Emwazi was in the canteen.

Recommended Read more Isis threatens attacks on Spain in latest propaganda video

His interest in religion had taken over from his academic endeavours and his final university results reflect this, as he failed one of his modules and scraped through his other courses with low marks.

According to friends, Emwazi was still determined to leave the UK. He was looking for marriage and really wanted to live abroad, a friend said. But he had a fiancee in London and I think had sat down with her family. I told him he should marry her.

Emwazis fiancee, like his mentor Berjawis, was a Somali woman. When her family was contacted by the security services, he believed a line had been crossed.

Robert Verkaiks Jihadi John: The Making of a Terrorist is published on Thursday 28 January by Oneworld
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The jailed former President of the Maldives promised to return to the troubled islands to continue his fight for democracy in his first public comments since his temporary release and flight to London for medical treatment.

Mohamed Nasheed sat beside his lawyers, including Amal Clooney, who renewed their calls for targeted sanctions against the Maldives government, while also criticising Cherie Blair for her support of the regime.

The former president, who ended 30 years of dictatorship when he won the Maldives first democratic elections in 2008, was sentenced last year to 13 years in prison after a terror trial later deemed by the UN to be politically motivated.

Let me be clear, I will go back to the Maldives theres no doubt about that, Mr Nasheed told a press conference at Mrs Clooneys legal chambers. The only question is how and when. For now, I just want to spend some time with my wife and family.

He said that he hoped that the political climate would change so that he might return without walking back into jail, and later run for office again. I think Ill have to do it, he said.

Mrs Clooney is part of a legal team working pro bono to secure the permanent release of Mr Nasheed and that of 1,700 other political prisoners they say still languish in Maldives jails.

The luxury tourism destination is led by President Abdullah Yameen, the step-brother of former dictator Maumoon Gayoom. Mr Yameens government employed Mrs Blairs legal and communications firm Omnia Strategy to do draft its response to the UNs conclusion about Mr Nasheeds trial.

It is very sad that a Labour former Prime Ministers wife has decided to work against the people of the Maldives, Mr Nasheed said, recalling his good relations, while he was president, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

After stating that the case for sanctions remained urgent, Mrs Clooney accused the Maldives government of flouting its international legal commitments and instead hiring a series of expensive PR agencies to paper over its human rights abuses.

As international pressure and the potential for sanctions mount against them, Maldives ministers last week agreed to allow Mr Nasheed to travel to Britain for 30 days for surgery to treat a chronic back condition. He blames the pain on the torture and solitary confinement he suffered as an activist under the old regime.

Recommended Read more Maldives fears for its future as emergency deepens

But in a statement timed before the press conference in London, the Maldives foreign minister Dunya Maumoon accused Mr Nasheed, who met David Cameron at Downing Street on Saturday, of misleading the government about his health.

It is now clear his primary goal was to court publicity in the United Kingdom. This is not medical leave, but media leave, said Ms Maumoon, who is the daughter of the former dictator. She has employed the London PR firm BTP Advisers in addition to Omnia Strategy.

Mr Nasheed also expressed concern for failing democracy in The Maldives, as well as the rise of religious extremism and the reversal of the internationally praised steps he made as president to tackle climate change on the sinking islands.

Its easy to topple a dictator, but not so easy to uproot a dictatorship, said Mr Nasheed, who has been nicknamed the Mandela of the Maldives. As in so many Islamic countries since the Arab Spring, the flame of democracy in the Maldives burned only for a short time. But we must keep the hope alive. With so many people having sacrificed so much, we cannot give up, and we will not give up.
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British anarchists are among agitators who are stirring up trouble in Calais, where migrants and protesters stormed the port and boarded a ferry on Saturday, according to reports.

A number of Britons are said to be in Calais with No Borders, an anti-capitalist protest group accused of acting as agitators in the camp dubbed "The Jungle" that is home to an estimated 4,000 asylum seekers.

The port was forced to close for several hours and security forces were drafted in on Saturday evening when a crowd of around 350 people, said to be refugees and supporters, infiltrated secure areas at the quayside.

A group of migrants are believed to have tried to board the ferry (Image taken from Twitter)

A group of around 50 people, said to have been a mix of migrants and protesters, managed to board P&O's Spirit Of Britain passenger ship after breaching a chain link fence, interrupting services between Dover and Calais for around five hours.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 35 people, including 26 migrants and nine activists, were eventually arrested for trespass and disorder offences.

Xavier Bertrand, the mayor of Saint-Quentin, said on twitter that the attitude of No Borders was scandalous and that they should be punished. He also called on the French government to hold a crisis meeting.

A migrant runs away from tear gas thrown by police forces near the Channel Tunnel in Calais (AP)

According to The Sun one of the activists detained was a British man who was later released without charge.

Calais deputy mayor Philippe Mignonet called on British police to help French authorities identify any troublemakers.

"It's frustrating having the anarchists and activists from England here to stir up trouble," he was reported as saying.

"I think the English police forces know who they are and should come here. It is too easy for these people to leave their country."

As the protest unfolded on Saturday there were ugly scenes when a small breakaway group, said to have been refugees and their supporters, descended on a residential property in Calais.

Video posted online shows a stand-off between the chanting group and two French men who come close to trading blows before being pelted with missiles.

Inside the camps in Calais Show all 20 1 /20 Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais A Kurdish child and her father get out of their tent in the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Kurdish migrants works around the tents of the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Volunteers from Holland set up a bridge of fortune over the mud using pallets of the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Refugees walk among tents in a makeshift camp as containers (rear) are put into place to house several hundred migrants living in what is known as the "Jungle", a squalid sprawling camp in Calais Inside the camps in Calais A makeshift camp is seen in front of containers (rear) put into place to house several hundred migrants living in what is known as the "Jungle", a squalid sprawling camp in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais The camp near Calais harbour where refugees from the Middle East and central Asia congregate to attempt the crossing from France to the UK Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or the Kurdish administered regions Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Camp residents cook and share food at their site just outside Calais Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A group walk through the camp near Calais Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or the Kurdish administered regions Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A 16 year old immigrant from Eritrea tries to brace himself against the rain and cold by sheltering under the road bridge Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Rubbish strewn on the ground near one of the campsites Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A man stands among the tents at the campsite just outside Calais, France Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A camp near Calais harbour where migrants from the East africa congregate to attempt the crossing from France to the UK. Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Eritrea. Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Graffiti depicting the dangerous journey trying to smuggle onto a lorry to the UK

At one point during the footage a man with a British accent shouts from behind the camera "Nazi scum". The protesters only back away when one of the men appears with an air rifle.

A local police chief claimed the No Borders group is predominantly made up of British activists.

Gilles Debove is reported as saying: "Ninety percent of the people involved with No Borders are from Britain. They stir up the migrants and cause us a lot of problems, they are political agitators."

Around 2,000 locals and business owners staged a demonstration in Calais town on Sunday in protest at the impact the crisis is having on the local economy.

The crowds waved "I love Calais" flags and a banner reading "My port is beautiful, my city is beautiful" was seen.

Local official Jean-Marc Puissesseau has estimated passenger numbers in the port have fallen by 40,000 compared to a year ago and the town's shops and restaurants are suffering, with blame pointed at the squalid refugee camp and repeated interruption to ferry and rail services.

Road Haulage Association chief executive Richard Burnett said Saturday's protest at the port was a "shocking breach of security" and called for the French military to be deployed.

PA
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Poisonous chemical lead has been found in paint decorating British playgrounds.

Research by scientists at Plymouth University tested the paint of playground fixtures in 50 parks in south west England.

It found the paint used on many contained much more than the 0.25% of lead recommended by European guidelines, with red or yellow tending to have the highest concentrations.

One park in Plymouth built in 2009 was found to have paint using 10% lead.

Dr Andrew Turner, who conducted the study, said the levels were "completely avoidable."

"You'd expect the older playgrounds to be more dangerous as people have become more aware of the dangers of lead, but our findings suggest that this isn't the case," he told the BBC.

The research, which also found evidence of other dangerous chemicals like cadmium in playground paint, was carried out in Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire and Somerset. Dr Turner said he expected the results would be similar across the country.

Parents have been warned to be vigilant and ensure children are washing their hands after using playground equipment.

"Some children tend to experience the world through putting things in their mouth so parents have to be on the lookout for that too," Dr Turner said.

The World Health Organisation says there is no known level of lead exposure that is considered safe.

Experts say lead poisoning can have serious implications for child health.
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The police watchdog in Northern Ireland is probing claims that the senior IRA operative who planned the 1993 Shankill Road bombing was an informant who passed on details that could have allowed the security forces to prevent the atrocity.

Nine civilians, including two children, were murdered in the attack on a fish shop in Belfasts loyalist heartland 23 years ago which became one of the most notorious incidents of the Troubles and led to a wave of sectarian reprisal killings.

Highly-sensitive documents stolen by the IRA during a break-in at the fortified headquarters of the then Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in 2002 have now been claimed to show that the terrorist who plotted the bombing was a British agent known as AA.

Leaks from the stolen papers suggest AA had extensively briefed his MI5 or Special Branch handlers on the aim and likely timing of the attack, which was designed to inflame sectarian tensions by killing the leadership of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) terror group as they met above Frizzells fish shop on a busy Saturday in October 1993.

In the event, the UDA leaders escaped unharmed after rescheduling their meeting at short notice. The bomb, made with the powerful Semtex plastic explosive, instead killed Protestant shoppers and one of the bombers, IRA man Thomas Begley, as they carried it into the shop at lunchtime.

The extraordinary allegations concerning AA, first reported by the Belfast-based Irish News newspaper, raise the highly damaging prospect that British intelligence knew of the attack but failed to act quickly enough to prevent it; or even actively allowed a botched bombing of civilians to take place to place pressure on a faction of IRA still intent on pursuing violence and push its leaders towards accepting the peace process.

The IRA commander in Ardoyne was known to the British as AA. He is seen here in a propaganda video in the late 80s (Irish News)

The Independent understands that AA, who was identified by the IRA from the Castlereagh papers in 2003 but escaped retribution from its notorious punishment squads and still lives in Belfast, may even have had custody of the bomb the night before the attack, allowing time for the device to be rigged to blow up his comrades.

The original plan had been to set a fuse just long enough for shoppers to be evacuated and for the bombers, disguised as delivery men, to escape. Instead, the device exploded as Begley reached the counter while surrounded by customers.

The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has confirmed that it was formally assessing a complaint received last week from a relative of one of the victims of the bombing asking for AA and his relationship with either the RUC Special Branch or MI5 to be investigated.

In a statement on behalf of the ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, his office said: We have received a complaint. It centres on two concerns: Did the RUC have information which would have allowed them to prevent the bombing and was the subsequent investigation compromised; [and] did the police fail to deliver justice to the families of those who lost their lives in the bombing?

We will seek to establish if this is something we should investigate, and if so, when we could begin this work.

The allegations add to an already heavy caseload for the watchdog concerning claimed collusion between the security forces and terror groups on both sides during the Northern Ireland conflict. They include the killings in the 1980s and 1990s of at least 20 alleged IRA informers whose relatives in some cases believe their loved ones were used as scapegoats to cover the tracks of the security forces most important IRA agents.

Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Show all 9 1 /9 Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Against the wall: A mural in the Bogside depicts the events of 30 January 1972 GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday The Hands Across the Divide statue symbolises a more peaceful era GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Headstones in Derry City Cemetery GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Sign of the times: A street sign reveals the politics of the city's name GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Visitors cross Shipquay Street GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday A river runs through it: The River Foyle marks the segregation of the city GETTY IMAGES Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday A mural depicting a British soldier knocking down the door of ahouse with a sledgehammer REUTERS Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday Former Bishop of Derry Father Edward Daly talks to Sinn Fein MP MartinMcGuinness in 2002 REUTERS Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday St Patrick's Day souvenirs on sale this year GETTY IMAGES

The burglary on St Patricks Day 2002 at the ultra-secure Castlereagh police headquarters was one of the most embarrassing and flagrant security breaches suffered by the RUC, since re-named the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The raid on the Special Branch offices netted files giving the codenames of British agents in Republican terror groups and records of information provided by them to their handlers. Millions of pounds was spent re-housing many of the informants and their handlers to ensure their security.

In order to reveal the true identities of the British agents, the IRA set up a special unit to pore over the informant messages and match them with the terror groups own intelligence records. It took more than a year before the mole hunters were able to pinpoint AA, who was then stood down by the IRAs ruling Army Council but allowed to remain living in the nationalist Ardoyne area of north Belfast.

Sources have disputed reports that AA, who is now in his mid-50s, had been the commanding officer of the IRAs Ardoyne brigade and suggested he had in fact been its intelligence officer, in charge of plotting dozens of attacks, including the Shankill Road bombing.

The Castlereagh documents are understood to show that in early 1993 AA was passing back to his handlers details of the IRA plot to target senior UDA figures, including leader Johnny Adair, and the chosen location of the room above Frizzells fish shop as well as likely dates for the bombing.

Investigators will want to establish whether information from AA could have been passed to the UDA leadership to ensure their meeting was rescheduled on the day of the attack; and, crucially, whether there is any evidence that his handlers allowed the bombing to proceed to protect their source and ultimately strengthen the hand of those such as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams inching towards a cessation of the campaign of violence.

Relatives of the victims called for a full investigation. Charlie Butler, who lost three members of his family, said he and other families would be devastated if the allegations were proved to be correct.

He told BBC News: Collusion is not a nice word for anyone but when it is collusion with innocent people losing their lives to protect someone else there has to be a line drawn to say that is wrong.

[The security forces] were there to do a job, to protect people. If they knew about [the bombing] then they should pay.
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The London Tube strike planned for Tueday has been cancelled, union bosses have announced.

National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said the scheduled industrial action for London Underground workers was suspendedbut that it remained in dispute with TfL over pay, the planned Night Tube service and station staffing.

General Secretary Mick Cash said strike action planned for February was still in place.

"RMT's executive has agreed to suspend tomorrow's action over pay and night tube to allow for further consideration and consultation on the current offer," he said.

"The union makes it clear that we remain in dispute and the strike action scheduled for February remains on.

"RMT also remains in dispute over station staffing and the week of action on that issue, scheduled to begin from the seventh of February, also remains on and the union is finalising the details for the continuation of that industrial campaign and the on-going fight over the threat to jobs, services and safety."

The strike was set to take place for 24 hours, and was expected to have caused widespread disruption in the capital.
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Jeremy Corbyn has called for refugees based at camps on northern France to be let into the UK if they have ties to Britain.

The Labour leader, who visited the refugee areas in northern France at the weekend, said many refugees had British passports but were being denied access with their families to the UK.

Im not saying all 9,000 should come in, Im saying start with those that have a British connection and a British passport, thats an obvious one. he told ITVs This Morning programme on Monday.

The Home Office could let up a bit and be reasonable.

I cant put a figure on it, but what I would say is there are a number of people who have British passports, they want to come to Britain with their families, the Home Office isnt allowing them in, for reasons I can only speculate, but maybe to do with the income of the family, possibly because theres a more distant relative involved, an uncle or something. It seems to be there has to be a process.

He described the camps, which are mainly inhabited by people who want to come to the UK, as a public health hazard and said the French authorities should do more to improve the dreadful conditions there.

Mr Corbyn recounted his experience at one of the camps at the weekend, saying he had met a young boy living in a tent whose British resident mother was bringing him weekly food parcels from the UK.

The young man, who the Labour leader said would make a fantastic fist of his life in the UK, was not allowed to join his family, however.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

A young man like that surely deserves to come in, he argued.

David Cameron has said Britain will take 4,000 refugees a year from Syria, but that they would be sourced from camps near the conflict

People who have travelled to Europe are expected to be excluded from the scheme. The Government has previously voiced concerns about safe passage to the UK acting as an incentive for people to make the journey to Europe.

Ministers this weekend suggested a possible U-turn on the policy of excluding people who had travelled to Europe, however.

International Development Secretary Justine Greening told Sky News on Sunday that Britain could take child refugees from nearby camps.

The northern France camps, whose residents number under 10,000, have relatively few residents compared to the total number of refugees coming to Europe.

Germany has said it expects to take around a million refugees this year, while by far the most refugees are living in neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.
In addition to creating figures for museum exhibition, artist historian George S. Stuart also produces commissioned figures for serious collectors. One of his collectors requested this figure of a Roman legionary. Gaius Marius is recognized for totally restructuring the Roman Army and introducing new training regimens. He changed the army from a voluntary militia to a professional force, allowing men from all classes of Roman society to join and make a career of military service. See a full length view of this amazingly detailed figure at the Gallery of Historical Figures
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The Scottish Labour party is seen as indistinguishable from the Conservatives to voters north of the border, a leaked report commissioned by the party has found.

The previously unreleased Mattinson Report, commissioned by Labour and leaked to ITV News, says voters in England do not know what the party stands for.

In Scotland, however, the party is said to face different problems, some of which appear to stem from the decision to campaign shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories during the 2014 independence referendum.

There, the party is seen as an incompetent version of the Tories by voters, who have switched from once-dominant Labour to the SNP en masse.

Under former leader Jim Murphy Scottish Labour lost all but one of its Westminster seats to the Scottish National Party.

The party is expected to do just as badly at the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections in May.

Labour's former interim leader Harriet Harman commissioned the new report into why Labour lost, titled Emerging from the Darkness, but it has yet to be officially released.

It was produced by Deborah Mattinson of the consultancy BritainThinks and based on a series of focus group interviews. It was produced entirely before Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.

The 10 focus groups focused around Watford, Croydon, Nuneaton, Edinburgh and Glasgow  major marginal areas Labour failed to win either from the Conservatives or SNP.

Those included in the focus groups were Tory or SNP voters in 2015 but had backed Labour in 2005 and 2010.

The party was said by the switchers to be seen as in denial about the last Labour governments appalling track record on the economy.

Scotland goes to the polls Show all 20 1 /20 Scotland goes to the polls Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Piper Ryan Randall leads a pro-Scottish independence rally in the suburbs of Edinburgh Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A "No" campaigner bursts into song as the BBC's Nick Robinson walks past Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Chris McAleese holds a Saltire flag as he speaks with Gerrard Corrigan, left, and Robbie Devine outside Bannockburn Polling Station in Scotland AP Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides George Mackay and his daughter Anne Mackay run a polling station from their caravan at Coulags near Lochcarron PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters arrive at the polling station in the village hall in the remote Highland area of Lochcarron, Scotland PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A No campaign supporter and Yes campaign supporter debate with each outside the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, Scotland AP Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Martin Greenhouse arrived at Partick polling station wearing a Scottish football jersey with the number 14 - for 2014 - on the back. Martin said that he'd lived in Scotland for years and would be remaining north of border regardless of the outcome tonight. "Westminster does London very well. But not the rest of Britain. Devolution works, independence will work better and the regions of England will take note. That's why my wife and I are voting YES." James Cusick/The Independent Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A supporter of the 'Yes' campaign stands outside a polling station Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides A yes supporter talks with a man and a woman with a Union flag in George Square, just a few hours before polling stations will close in the Scottish independence referendum Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Chris McAleese at Bannockburn Polling Station, as voters go to the polls in the Scottish Referendum PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Fashion makes a point on voting day in the Scottish Independence referendum in Stirling EPA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters come to Notre Dame Primary School polling station as the people of Scotland take to the polls to decide their country's fate Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Voters come to Notre Dame Primary School polling station as the people of Scotland take to the poles to decide their country's fate in a historic vote Getty Images Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond chats to school children at Strichen Primary School in Strichen PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown with No campaigners outside the polling station at North Queensferry Community Centre as polls open PA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond gives the thumbs up after voting in the Scottish referendum in Aberdeenshire, Scotland EPA Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Residents take part in a "short walk to freedom" march in Edinburgh Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides Young voters leave a polling station in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh Reuters Scotland goes to the polls Scotland decides David Aguilar, left, and Aleix Sarri from Catalonia, who are visiting Scotland to support the Scottish independence referendum, gesture and hold up a placard supporting a Yes vote at passing motorists in Edinburgh, Scotland AP

Furthermore, voters are said to see Labour as nice but in thrall to the undeserving  an idea related to tabloid stories about so-called benefit scroungers.

Voters from England and Scotland alike decry Labours dismal track record on the economy, the report reads. Its become an incontrovertible truth: wasting money and spending money on the wrong things, money focused on people on benefits rather than hard-working families, bailing out bank with taxpayers hard-earned money.

Its important to understand that the banking crisis is conflated with overspending. Voters describe the banking crisis as a curtain pulled back to reveal terrible truth.

Another report into Labours defeat by Dame Margaret Beckett was described by Ms Mattinson as a whitewash in an interview with the BBC at the weekend.

That report said Labour lost because of the perceived weakness of Ed Miliband, fear of a pact with the SNP among English voters, and an association with causing the economic crash.

The party was also said to have failed to win over voters concerned about immigration and welfare issues.

The Beckett Report, released last week, said that perceptions of Labour were wrong and needed to be changed.

The Mattinson report however take a stronger line, recommending that the party atone for its past.
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Leaving the European Union will not stop immigration to the UK, the leader of the campaign to keep Britain in the bloc has said.

Stuart Rose, the chair of Britain Stronger in Europe, said that immigration was not simply a product of being in the EU and that it would continue even if Britain votes to leave.

The UK is set to have a referendum on membership of the EU by the end of 2017, and immigration policy is set to be one of the main points debated.

Migration is one of the great things that is happening in the world today. It's an event or it is a phenomenon worldwide which is not just a UK issue, it's a worldwide issue, Lord Rose told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

Politicians are going to have to grapple with that. Immigration isn't going to go away if we were outside the EU. This is something we have got to deal with.

Its a crisis, it's a European crisis and it's a world crisis. And it's a terrifying crisis.

Lord Rose, the former chair of Marks and Spencers, also said the UK could effectively decide who came into the country already because it was not a member of the Schengen area.

Schengen abolishes border controls between countries during normal times, though they can be re-instated under the agreement under special circumstances.

Lord Rose launches the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign (PA)

EU citizens can still come to the UK under current arrangements but must have their passports checked. The UK can bar EU citizens who it believes are a threat to security.

The UKs referendum will be conducted after David Cameron has renegotiated the terms of EU membership with other member countries.

Though the Prime Minister has previously hinted at wanting to introduce curbs on EU freedom of movement, in practice he has said he only wants a four-year waiting period for EU migrants before they can claim in-work benefits.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

The effect of leaving the EU on immigration has been unclear. Net migration to the UK last year hit a record high of 330,000, with 183,000 from the European Union.

Increased restrictions on EU migrants could be counteracted by other factors, however.

French Government minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said that France might stop helping the UK police its channel tunnel border on the French side if it left the EU.

Large numbers of British people also go to live abroad in the EU. Those that could no longer travel abroad might stay in the UK, increasing net migration further, it has been suggested.

Last week Leave.EU, one of the campaigns to leave the EU, said Mr Camerons renegotiation of EU membership would do nothing to reduce anxiety about immigration

His negotiation will do nothing to solve the migration crisis, the steel crisis, the flooding crisis or whatever the next inevitable EU crisis may be. Only through Britain regaining control of its laws, its borders and its taxes can we begin to avoid those EU crises and solve their problems we inherit, said Leave.EU chief executive Liz Bilney.
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Margaret Thatchers government reportedly tried to stop Nelson Mandela receiving an honorary degree at the University of Lancaster from a member of the royal family.

According to documents shown to the Times, Richard Luce, a former foreign office minister and now a crossbench peer, lobbied the university to quietly drop proposals in 1982 for Princess Alexandra to honour Mr Mandela. The manoeuvring was kept secret at the National Archives until now.

Baroness Thatcher had previously dismissed the African National Congress (ANC) as a typical terrorist organisation and refused to back sanctions against the South African government that pursued the notorious policy of apartheid.

Despite pressure from the Conservative government the university went ahead with its plans and awarded Mr Mandela  who, at the time, was 22 years into his jail term on Robben Island  with the honorary doctorate in law in 1984.

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According to the Times, a confidential note between diplomats said Mr Luce agrees with the recommendation that we should advise Princess Alexandra that on balance she should try to avoid conferring the honorary degree. Moreover he thinks that ideally the proposal that such a degree should be conferred on Mr Mandela should be quietly dropped since in any event it could cause embarrassment to Princess Alexandra.

David Cameron will today honour three ANC veterans in recognition of their contribution to the end of the apartheid in South Africa. Denis Goldberg, Ahmed Kathrada and Andrew Mlangein, were all political prisoners convicted at the 1963 Rivonia Trial for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid state through sabotage.
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A controversial policy reportedly forcing asylum seekers in Cardiff to wear brightly coloured wristbands has been axed after a public outcry.

Refugees housed by Clearsprings Ready Homes - a private firm contracted by the Home Office to care for those seeking asylum - were allegedly told they would not be fed if they did not wear the wristbands at all times.

The wristbands entitled the asylum seekers to three meals a day provided by the company.

People seeking asylum are not allowed to work and are only entitled to a 36.95 weekly payment card from the government.

But Cardiff Central MP Jo Stevens tweeted on Sunday evening that she had spoken to the director of the company, who agreed to cease enforcing the policy.

Eric Ngalle - who lived at a house run by the company until he was granted refugee status in November 2015 - told the Guardian refugees would sometimes receive abuse from passerbys if they were spotted wearing the wristbands as they walked down the street.

He said: "My time in Lynx House was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. I hated wearing the wristbands and sometimes refused to wear them and was turned away from food.

"If we refused to wear the wristbands we were told we would be reported to the Home Office. Some staff implemented this policy in a more drastic way than others. I made a complaint about the wristbands to Clearsprings but nothing was done".

He said the wristbands were not resealable once they had been removed so had to be worn at all times.

The policy provoked outrage on Twitter with several comparing it to the way the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany:

The fresh controversy comes just days after another private firm responsible for asylum seekers in Middlesbrough, G4S, was criticised for allegedly painting the doors of every refugees home red, so making them a potential target.

The Independent was unable to reach Clearsprings Ready Homes for comment but the company's operations director defended the policy to the Guardian when the news first broke.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

He said: Clearsprings has taken steps, agreed with the Home Office to increase capacity in line with this demand in the form of additional self-catering accommodation.

Those clients in the self-catering units receive a weekly allowance in the form of supermarket vouchers and those in full-board accommodation are issued with a coloured wristband that bears no other logo or text identifying its use or origin.

Full-board clients are required to show their wristbands in order to receive meals in the restaurant.
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The Government minister with responsibility for tax collection has said he cannot tell the public whether search giant Google has broken any tax laws.

The US multinational reached a settlement with the tax authority HMRC to pay 130m in so-called back taxes after an open audit of its accounts.

The company has admitted to no wrongdoing as part of the deal, which relates to taxes HMRC says were due since 2005.

David Gauke, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, told MPs that ministers were not engaged in and not informed about particular cases and that he would not be making more information public.

Asked specifically by an MP whether any laws were broken by Google, he said: I cannot comment because I am not privy to information that is not in the public domain. I cannot comment on that.

What I can say is that there has been an inquiry that has been in place for some years, that inquiry has now reached a conclusion.

The consequence is Google has stated of that inquiry is that an additional 130m is being paid to the Exchequer.

Despite ministers apparently not knowing knowing the details of the case, the Chancellor George Osborne at the weekend said the settlement was a "major success".

David Gauke, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Crown copyright)

Mr Gauke made the comments during an urgent debate in the House of Commons called by Labours shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Mr McDonnell warned that independent experts had estimated Google was only paying a 3 per cent rate of tax in the UK. He called for the National Audit Office to check the deal.

The Chancellor has managed to create an unlikely alliance between myself, The Sun newspaper, the Mayor of London and according to reports even Number 10 this morning, Mr McDonnell said.

All of us think this deal is not the major success the Chancellor claimed at the weekend. The statement offered today left a number of questions unanswered.

5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Show all 5 1 /5 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Facebook Facebook paid 4327 in corporation tax in 2014, after it made a pre-tax loss of 28.5 million, according to filings at Companies House. That's less tax that new average UK employee pays on their salary. 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Amazon Amazons UK business paid just 11.9m in corporation tax last year, even though the online retail giant took 5.3bn in sales from British shoppers. 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Google So well known for avoiding tax that it had the 'Google tax' on multinationals that move profits to low-tax countries named after it. Alarm bells started ringing in 2012, when Google revealed it payed only 11.6 million to the Treasury, despite taking 3.4 billion in the UK. 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Uber Uber paid 22,134 in UK corporation tax last year despite making an 866,000 profit. 5 tax avoiding companies in the UK Starbucks In October, the European Commission ruled that Starbucks' tax deal in the EU was illegal, ordering it to pay pay between 20-30 million to the Netherlands.

He also criticised the Chancellor for not coming to the House of Commons to take part in the debate, noting that he had announced the tax settlement with a tweet at the weekend.

Mr Gauke defended Google, said it was not paying a special rate of tax, and said the three per cent rate figure was based on the searchs giants UK sales.

He warned there were severe dangers to asking companies to pay taxes on their UK sales and said corporation tax should remain calculated on where economic activity occurred.

During the debate a number of MPs, including Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, called for a fundamental redesign of the system of corporation tax.

This morning a Downing Street spokesperson said the Prime Minister believed the deal was a step forward, but stopped short of hailing it as a major success.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson today wrote in his column for the Daily Telegraph newspaper that companies should pay more tax, though he said they could not be blamed for trying to pay as little as possible.

Googles tax deal, announced on Friday night was the result of a six-year inquiry by HMRC. Matt Brittin, head of Google Europe, told BBC News: Today we announced that we are going to be paying more tax in the UK.

The rules are changing internationally and the UK government is taking the lead in applying those rules so we'll be changing what we are doing here. We want to ensure that we pay the right amount of tax.
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An estimated 350,000 babies are expected to be born into Ethiopias worst drought in half a century over the next six months, campaigners warn today, amid calls for the United Nations to urgently raise the global alarm at a crisis gripping the African nation.

The drought will leave an estimated 10.1 million people in need of food aid, after two consecutive failed rains, the last one triggered by the El Nino which hit the globe last June. Save the Children has categorised the situation as the second worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world, behind only to Syria, with some 400,000 children suffering severe acute malnutrition as a result.

The scale of the drought in Ethiopia is like nothing Ive seen in the 19 years that Ive lived in this country, said Save the Childrens Ethiopia director, John Graham.

This is a code red emergency, yet I have never seen such a small response to a drought of this magnitude from the UN or the international community.

There is serious concern for the most vulnerable people  in particular newborns and their mothers.

At the Mender health centre in the northern Afar region, parents bring children suffering from hunger-related illnesses. Meron, 30, brought her one-year-old son to the centre after he began vomiting and wouldnt eat.

We had almost 100 goats before the drought, but now we have just five left, she said. We currently have no food, not even fruits. We have nothing.

Giving birth in a desperate situation where there are already serious food shortages and where livestock have died en mass, is extremely dangerous for both newborns and their mothers, Mr Graham said. There are an increasing number of pregnant and lactating mothers suffering from malnutrition.

The drought has prompted fears of a repeat of the devastating famine in 1984, when nearly 1 million people died. Western governments were criticised at the time for ignoring warning signs during a drought three years earlier.

Since then, Ethiopia has seen significant economic gains and development and the government has allocated $300m (210m) to deal with the crisis. But aid agencies say much more is needed. Only around a quarter of the $1.4bn required has been pledged, according to the UN.
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Sister Kate calls herself an accidental nun. At age 16, she tried marijuana for the first time inside a friends car during one cold Wisconsin winter. But that was when she was a good mid-western Catholic girl, and the drug did nothing for her.

Years later, after her first marriage had come and gone, after she moved to Atlanta to work for General Electric, Kate tried weed again (not to mention cocaine.) This time was different, she wrote on her blog: I learned that weed goes better with wine, that weed is calming, that weed left me with no side effects  I gave up the powder and partying, but kept the weed and the wine, in moderation, like medicine.

Cannabis became the beginning and end of Kates prescription list. It was not just her drug of choice  it was the only drug she used, according to her blog.

Thirty years later, she sells her favorite kind of medicine under the brand Sisters of the Valley, an Etsy business devoted to medicinal products infused with cannabidiol (CBD), one of two main ingredients inside marijuana plants. While the venture is just a year old, all of the Sisters offerings  from tonics to salves  have already sold out, and Kate has recently become one of the loudest voices opposing California Governor (D) Jerry Browns Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act.

Enacted last October, the act gives cities a choice: develop local marijuana regulations by March 1, or yield control to the state. The city of Merced, where Sisters of the Valley is based, voted last week to ban medical marijuana cultivation pending further deliberation. The decision has prompted Kate to start a Change.org petition addressed to her Brothers and Sisters.

A video shows Kate in a uniform closely resembling a Catholic nuns habit and condemning the Central Valley legislators with their heads up their butt who have reacted to Gov. Browns regulations by prohibiting medical marijuana cultivation in their jurisdictions.

We believe that one day science will prove that theres actually a transference of energy where we do our prayers with the medicine, and that travels with the medicine to the people, Kate says, ending her video spot with a political endorsement: We are very much fans of Bernie Sanders. In fact, I doubt that a sister could become a sister with that commitment in her soul.

The catch to all this, of course, is that Kate (whose real name is Christine Meeusen) and her apprentice, Sister Darcy, arent really nuns  even if they look the part.

They espouse spirituality over any religion, and they see cannabis as an outlet for their healing energies rather than an object of worship. After all, Kate is a vegan and former resident of Amsterdam who once wrote a book of sex tips for men.

She explained to the Daily Beast that she grew up attending Catholic schools, and remains attached to the religions nurturing undertones after having long eschewed its doctrines.

Our culture of sisterhood isnt just about the cannabis plant, Kate told VICE. Spirituality is about following ancient wisdom, planting by moon cycles, and harvesting by moon cycles, and participating in what is nourishing to the soul.

She added: The stoner culture is kind of offensive to those of us who have held a pipe up to a shaking Parkinsons patient, and seen how [with] one hit out of the pipe, his shakes can go away, and he can actually get up and make tea and act like a normal person.

While the Sisters are honest about being neither Catholic nor traditionally religious, they are rather coy about their relationship to nunhood. We spend no time on bended knee, but when we make our medicine its a prayerful environment. Its a prayerful time, Kate told ABC.

Their uniforms ensure that prayer is never far from their customers minds. The Sisters of the Valleys social media accounts are filled with photos of Kate and Darcy dressed in their nun habits while tending to their marijuana plants, refilling their medicine cabinets and meeting fans.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Kate said her Sister persona was born after she wore a nun outfit to an Occupy protest. She noticed that people would automatically come up to her, telling her their worries and asking for prayers.

Inspired by the level of comfort her nun identity evoked, the Daily Beasts Abby Haglage wrote, she decided to keep it.

So far, the Sisters spiritual sales pitch appears to be working. Their Etsy page has an average rating of a perfect five stars across 129 reviews, with numerous customers thanking Kate and Darcy for curing them of their aches and pains.

I have had chronic pain for years and have tried everything, one reviewer wrote of the multi-purpose CBD salve. This salve worked so quickly I ordered the larger size within an hour of receiving it! The sisters are amazing and sweet.

Another reviewer called the product a godsend. And another, simply magical.

But under Californias new marijuana legislation, Sisters of the Valley may have to either move to another jurisdiction or shutter its doors. According to the Associated Press, many cities across California have prohibited commercial (and sometimes, personal) cultivation due to the time pressure of the March 1 deadline, even as they are unsure about whether bans are the most appropriate way to proceed.

As for Sister Kate, she has pledged to go valley town to valley town preaching the powers of cannabis until California lawmakers acknowledge that marijuana is Mother Natures most effective medicinal plant.

Her operation continues to grow. As of early Monday, a notice on the Etsy page announced that orders were coming faster than the Sisters could meet them. Despite the moratorium in Merced, Kate refuses to voluntarily stop selling.

[The Merced City Council] could shut me down, Kate told VICE. But Ive already made it clear to all of them that theyre going to have to shut me down.

Washington Post
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An American woman has been violently murdered while on holiday with her husband on the idyllic Caribbean island of Grenada.

The as-yet-unnamed 39-year-old was found dead approximately 12 miles outside the capital St Georges early on Sunday, having allegedly arrived from the US state of Georgia the previous day.

She is understood to have suffered multiple stab wounds, with police investigating the possibility she was raped and then killed by a man armed with a cutlass-style sword.

Local website the SpiceIslander Talk Shop said the victim and her husband were walking less than half a mile from the world-famous La Sagesse beach -where dozens of holidaymakers would have been sunbathing - when the man carried out the attack at around 11:30am local time.

The womans husband was able to flee the scene and raise the alarm but the woman was found dead in a nearby mangrove a few minutes later.

The website suggested local police have already identified their main suspect  an ex-convict who was recently released from prison.

Holidaymakers said news and rumours about the murder had spread throughout tourist resorts on the island.

British journalist Sue Hardy, 63, told MailOnline: Gradually we put the story together. It appears the American woman tourist - described as 'very beautiful' by one member of the staff I spoke to - had gone off for a stroll along the beach with her husband.

I was told she had been raped too. They said she was lying on the edge of the water. I don't know how she was killed - maybe the attacker, or attackers, held her down in the water and drowned her, I just don't know, she added.

Grenada, which is known as the Island of Spice thanks to its extensive mace and nutmeg production.

At just 133 square miles in size and with a permanent population of 110,000 Grenadas economy is reliant on tourism. It has become a popular stop-off point for those touring the Caribbean islands, with approximately four cruise ships stopping off near St Georges every day.
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With just one week to go before voters in Iowa decide the first contest of this years by turns exhilarating and exasperating US presidential election, another wild-card billionaire is weighing whether to step in or stay home.

Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, could disrupt the campaign momentum of rivals on both sides. Yet some Republicans and Democrats have rushed to welcome the 73-year-old to the race. Id love to compete against Michael, Donald Trump, the Manhattan real-estate magnate and Republican frontrunner, told CBSs Face the Nation, adding: I think he might very well get in the race and I would love to have him.

John Kasich, Governor of Ohio and a more mainstream GOP hopeful who has surged to second place in the New Hampshire polls, told reporters Mr Bloomberg would stimulate the debate should he run. Im all in favour of that, Mr Kasich said. Maybe we could have a more serious debate instead of, you know, some of the things we see.

Thanks to the financial and media empire that bears his name, Mr Bloomberg is worth an estimated $36.5bn (25.6bn), a personal fortune more than eight times the size of Mr Trumps. Originally a Democrat, he was twice elected mayor of New York on the Republican ticket, but declared himself an independent before serving his third and final term. Since leaving office in 2013, he has spent millions of his own money on progressive causes, in particular backing political candidates who favour gun control.

Discomfited by the direction of the presidential primaries, Mr Bloomberg has had plans drawn up for a potential tilt at the White House, The New York Times reported at the weekend. If Mr Trump or his closest rival, Ted Cruz, takes the Republican nomination from the right, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders scrapes past his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton on the left, Mr Bloomberg believes there may be room for a run up the political centre. He is said to be willing to spend $1bn on a campaign.

Mr Sanders said that he believed a Bloomberg candidacy would clear his way to the White House. Speaking to Face the Nation, the socialist Senator said that in a three-way contest between himself, Mr Trump and Mr Bloomberg, the two billionaires would fight each other to a standstill. So far, so theoretical.

Ms Clinton, meanwhile, told NBCs Meet the Press she intended to relieve Mr Bloomberg of the obligation to run by winning the Democratic nomination herself.

Mr Bloomberg also came close to running in 2008, the last time a dominant Ms Clinton was faltering in the primaries. The two are thought to have a mutual respect, if not a close personal friendship; Mr Bloomberg was New Yorks mayor when Ms Clinton was a New York senator. In 2012, Mr Bloomberg reportedly attempted to recruit Ms Clinton to run as his successor.

Primary season kicks off with the Iowa caucuses on 1 February. Mr Bloomberg is expected to make a decision on whether he will run no later than March, by which time the Republican and Democrat races may at last have begun to take recognisable shape. The most successful independent candidate of recent times was businessman Ross Perot, who had 19 per cent of the popular vote in 1992. However, he received approximately that proportion of the vote in each state, and thus won none of the electoral college votes.

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

In December, Mr Bloomberg reportedly commissioned a poll to see how he would fare in a match-up with Ms Clinton or Mr Trump. It remains unclear whether, as a centrist candidate, he would attract more votes from the left or the right. With his close ties to the financial industry and his staunch support of socially liberal causes, he could put off voters from both sides of the partisan divide.

Mr Cruz recently attacked Mr Trump for having so-called New York values, a charge Mr Trump has strenuously denied. Mr Bloomberg, by contrast, wears his New York values with pride, and even Republican voters who despise The Donald might find it difficult to vote for the former mayor, whose views on gun control, abortion and immigration are so opposed to their own.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, thought of as a Republican moderate, took care to put political distance between himself and Mr Bloomberg: Hes much more liberal than I am, Mr Bush said on ABCs This Week, but hes a good person.

According to the New York Times report, a Bloomberg campaign would position him as a technocratic problem-solver and self-made businessman, who understands the economy and who built a bipartisan administration in New York.

However, none of that appeared to interest Florida Senator and GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, who told Fox News Sunday: If [Mr Bloomberg] becomes a candidate, then well have a conversation about our differences. If hes just someone out there talking about running for president, well theres a lot of people that have done that. As of now, hes just a private citizen who owns a big company.
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Anthony Ruelas watched for what seemed like an eternity as his classmate wheezed and gagged in a desperate struggle to breathe.

The girl told classmates that she was having an asthma attack, but her teacher refused to let anyone leave the classroom, according to NBC affiliate KCEN. Instead, the teacher emailed the school nurse and waited for a reply, telling students to stay calm and remain in their seats.

When the girl fell out of her chair several minutes later, Ruelas decided he couldnt take it anymore and took action.

We aint got time to wait for no email from the nurse, a teachers report quotes him as saying, according to Fox News Latino.

And with that, the 15-year-old Gateway Middle School student carried his stricken classmate to the nurses office, violating his teachers orders.

The teenager later texted Ruelas to let him know she was fine, according to KWTX, but that didnt stop officials at the alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District from punishing him: Ruelas was written up by his teacher and eventually suspended for two days, according to KCEN.

I was like what? Ruelas told the station. Im suspended for this? Like, I was trying to help her.

A teachers report documenting the incident appears to correspond with Ruelass version of what transpired:

During 5th period another student complained that she couldnt breathe and was having an asthma attack, the report states. As I waited for a response from the nurse, the student fell out of her chair to the floor. Anthony proceeded to go over and pick her up, saying f that, we aint got time to wait for no email from the nurse. He walks out of class and carries the other student to the nurse.

Mandy Cortes, Ruelass mother, told KCEN that she assumed her son  who has been disciplined by school officials in the past  was to blame when she was informed that he had been suspended again.

I wasnt trying to hear it, she said. I was like, No, they already told me what happened  you walked out of class. And he was like Okay, forget it. But I can tell  you know, you know your kids  I could tell he was upset.

Cortes told KCEN that when she found out what prompted her son to walk out of class, she was proud of him but frustrated by the schools response.

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Especially with it being an alternative school I feel like the kids hear enough of theyre bad or their behavior, she added. For them to not be rewarded for really something that is brave, you know, he is a hero to me.

He may not follow instructions all the time, but he does have a great heart, she said, noting that she was now considering home-schooling him.

John Craft, superintendent of the Killeen Independent School District, said in a statement that he could not discuss the suspension.

The District is unable to provide details related to the matter as it pertains to information involving student discipline and/or health records, the statement said. In an effort to protect students rights to confidentiality granted under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the details of the investigation and/or disciplinary actions may not be provided by the district at this time. The Killeen ISD maintains the safety of our students, staff and campuses as a priority and applauds the efforts of students who act in good faith to assist others in times of need.

Ruelas told KCEN that hes more concerned about his classmates health than his suspension. Asked whether he would make the same decision again if he was given the chance, he sounded confident.

Most definitely, he said.

 Washington Post
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Donald Trump settled into a fifth row pew of an Iowa church for a lesson in humility on Sunday, a week before primary voting begins in the race for US President.

Religious voters are a major factor in Iowa, the opening contest on the presidential nominating calendar, where Trump's chief challenger in the Republican race is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative preacher's son who's made deep inroads with evangelicals.

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Trump has appeared to struggle to affirm his Christian credentials and during an hour-long service at Muscataine's First Presbyterian Church, the Rev Dr Pamela Saturnia also indirectly questioned some of his policy positions.

"Jesus is teaching us today that he has come for those who are outside of the church," she said, preaching a message of healing and acceptance for "those who are the most unloved, the most discriminated against, the most forgotten in our community and in our world."

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

Among those she cited were "the Syrian refugees" and "the Mexican migrants." Trump has advocated barring all Syrian refugees from entering the country because of potential security risks and deporting all of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. He's said he wants to create a safe zone for refugees instead.

"I don't know if that was aimed at me ... perhaps," Trump said after the hourlong service.

As a candidate, the thrice-married New Yorker has worked to foster relationships with Christian leaders. He received a glowing introduction last week from Jerry Falwell Jr, president of one of the country's most prominent evangelical Christian universities, and on Saturday he campaigned with the Rev Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, a megachurch.

AP
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Only two countries in the entirety of the Americas are likely to escape the reach of the mosquito-borne Zika virus - suspected of causing brain damage to babies.

Officials on Monday said they believed only Canada and Chile would escape the spread of the virus as it extends its spread in south, central and north America. It has already been detected in 21 countries and territories of the region since May 2015.

So far, there have been no confirmed cases of anyone being infected with the virus in the US. However, a baby born with an usually small head in Hawaii has triggered a national alert, while Los Angeles County public health officials issued their own warning last Friday after reports of several patients with Zika-symptoms.

A pregnant woman waits to be attended at the Maternal and Children's Hospital in Tegucigalpa. The medical school at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) recommended that women in the country avoid getting pregnant for the time being due to the presence of the Zika virus. If a pregnant woman is infected by the virus, the baby could be born with microcephaly. (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)

Zika has historically occurred in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. But it is normally a mild disease and there is little scientific data on it, so it is unclear why it might be causing microcephaly in Brazil, the WHO has said.

Zika has been isolated in human semen, and one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission has been described, the WHO said in a statement.

However, more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission.

Battling the zika virus - in pictures Show all 19 1 /19 Battling the zika virus - in pictures Battling the zika virus - in pictures A worker of the Salvadorean Ministry of Health fumigates a house in Soyapango, 6 kilometers from San Salvador, El Salvador. Salvadorean authorities have began a three days campaign of fumigation to reduce the presence of the mosquito that transmit the Zika virus. EPA/Oscar Rivera Battling the zika virus - in pictures A Health Ministry employee fumigates a home against the Aedes aegypti mosquito to prevent the spread of the Zika virus in Soyapango, six km east of San Salvador. Health authorities have issued a national alert against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, because of the link between the Zika virus and microcephaly and Guillain-BarrE Syndrome in foetuses. AFP PHOTO/Marvin RECINOSMarvin RECINOS/AFP/Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures A pediatric infectologist examines a two-months-old baby, who has microcephaly, on 26 January 2016 in Recife, Brazil. Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures A woman walks through the fumes as Health Ministry employee fumigate against the Aedes aegypti mosquito to prevent the spread of the Zika virus in Soyapango. Marvin RECINOS/AFP/Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures A health ministry employee sprays to eliminate breeding sites of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which transmits diseases such as the dengue, chicunguna and Zica viruses, in a Tegucigalpa cemetery on January 21, 2016. The medical school at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) recommended that women in the country avoid getting pregnant for the time being due to the presence of the Zika virus. If a pregnant woman is infected by the virus, the baby could be born with microcephaly. AFP PHOTO/Orlando SIERRA Battling the zika virus - in pictures A man walks away from his home with his son as health workers fumigates the Altos del Cerro neighbourhood as part of preventive measures against the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases in Soyapango, El Salvador REUTERS/Jose Cabezas Battling the zika virus - in pictures A three-months-old, who has microcephaly, in Recife, Brazil. Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures A pregnant woman waits to be attended at the Maternal and Children's Hospital in Tegucigalpa. The medical school at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) recommended that women in the country avoid getting pregnant for the time being due to the presence of the Zika virus. If a pregnant woman is infected by the virus, the baby could be born with microcephaly. ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures Army soldiers apply insect repellent as they prepare for a clean up operation against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is a vector for transmitting the Zika virus in Sao Paulo, Brazil. AP Photo/Andre Penner Battling the zika virus - in pictures Workers disinfect the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro to fight the spread of the Zika virus Battling the zika virus - in pictures Dr. Vanessa Van Der Linden, the neuro-pediatrician who first recognized the microcephaly crisis in Brazil, measures the head of a 2-month-old baby with microcephaly in Recife Battling the zika virus - in pictures Mother Mylene Helena Ferreira cares for her son David Henrique Ferreira, 5 months, who has microcephaly, on January 25, 2016 in Recife, Brazil. In the last four months, authorities have recorded close to 4,000 cases in Brazil in which the mosquito-borne Zika virus may have led to microcephaly in infants Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures U.S. women who are pregnant from traveling to many South American countries Battling the zika virus - in pictures In the last four months, authorities have recorded close to 4,000 cases in Brazil in which the mosquito-borne Zika virus may have led to microcephaly in infants. Getty Images Battling the zika virus - in pictures Dr. Vanessa Van Der Linden, the neuro-pediatrician who first recognized the microcephaly crisis in Brazil, examines a two-month-old baby with microcephaly on January 27, 2016 in Recife, Brazil Battling the zika virus - in pictures Washington Post Battling the zika virus - in pictures Battling the zika virus - in pictures Battling the zika virus - in pictures

Reuters said that WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told the WHO executive board that she had asked Carissa Etienne, head of the WHO in the Americas, to brief the board later this week on the WHO's response to the outbreak.

Although a causal link between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly has not, and I must emphasise, has not been established, the circumstantial evidence is suggestive and extremely worrisome, Ms Chan said.

An increased occurrence of neurological symptoms, noted in some countries coincident with arrival of the virus, adds to the concern.

Brazil has reported 3,893 suspected cases of microcephaly, the WHO said last Friday, over 30 times more than had been reported in any year since 2010.

Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica last week recommended women delay pregnancies until more was known about the virus.
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More than 60 people have died as a band of extreme cold weather spread across eastern Asia, stranding tens of thousands of tourists and bringing some regions their lowest temperatures for half a century.

While much international attention has been focussed on the heavy snowfalls in the eastern US, another cold snap has descended over Korea, China, Hong Kong and Japan.

Temperatures dropped across Asia on Sunday due to a deep depression pulling cold weather down from the north. Major Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing hit -4/-5, while -18 was recorded in Seoul, South Korea.

Taiwan saw some of the worst impacts, however, because its subtropical geography means most homes are without central heating.

City officials in Taipei said on Monday that temperatures had hit a 16-year low of 4C,well below the average of around 16C. The cold had caused heart trouble, shortness of breath, strokes and hypothermia and accounted for the deaths of at least 57 people in the wider city area.

Up to 3.5 inches of snow blanketed the islands tallest peak, Jade Mountain. Authorities warned people to keep warm out of the cold after a 56-year-old man was found dead on the street.

In Hong Kong, a low of 3C was recorded  the lowest temperature there in almost 60 years. News headlines about Asias polar vortex saw hundreds visit mountains around the city expecting snow.

Cold snap takes Asia Show all 5 1 /5 Cold snap takes Asia Cold snap takes Asia Shandong province, China A ferry ship docks in the iced-covered sea port in Penglai city in east China's Shandong province, China, EPA Cold snap takes Asia Zhejiang province, China A tourist takes photos of the ice in a mountainous resort in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province, China. A weather station on Tianmu Mountain recorded minus 19.9 degrees Celsius Sunday, setting a record low in the provincial observatory history. EPA Cold snap takes Asia Lebanon Snow covers the historical ruins of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon Reuters Cold snap takes Asia New Taipei City, Taiwan A young boy enjoys the light snowfall on a tea plantation in the Pinglin mountain area of New Taipei City, Taiwan. An unusually cold weather front that caused sudden drops in temperatures has been blamed for killing as many as 57 people in Taiwan's greater Taipei area. AP Cold snap takes Asia Seoul, South Korea A passenger ship (bottom) navigates through the ice flow in the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. A cold snap hit South Korea on Sunday with the temperature in Seoul falling to minus 18 degree Celsius. Reuters

According to the South China Morning Post, the mountains ended up covered not with snow but with underprepared hikers. Police reportedly had to block off roads up to the hills because so many people refused to heed warnings, and some had to be rescued by fire crews.

We came here to watch snow, a young man said on NOW TV news. We are a bit disappointed and freezing.

A sixth person was reported to have died on Monday after heavy snows left five people dead over the weekend in western and central Japan, including a woman who fell from a roof while removing snow.

Kyodo News service and other local media reported an 88-year-old woman in western Japan's Tottori prefecture died after a landslide hit her house before dawn.

The bullet train service was delayed, while there were flight cancellations across the country.

In South Korea, more than 500 flights were cancelled to the internationally-renowned holiday island of Jeju, known for its year-round balmy weather and beaches.

The mercury there hit -6C on Sunday, while heavy snow closed the airport entirely. An estimated 60,000 tourists were stranded there in total, the BBC reported, though officials said they hoped the runway would be cleared for use by Monday night.

Most parts of mainland China experienced their coldest weather in decades over the weekend. The southern city of Guangzhou, which has a humid subtropical climate, saw snow for the first time since 1967 on Sunday, the city's meteorological service said.

The cold led to at least four deaths  strawberry farmers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning when they turned up heating in a plastic greenhouse, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The National Meteorological Bureau forecast that temperatures in southern China would drop another 3-8 degrees Celsius on Monday.
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Pro-Isis slogans and threats of an imminent terror attack have been daubed on a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in a small village in north-western India.

Images from the scene showed the face of the white statue had been smeared with brown paint, while the rest of the statue was covered in crude writing, including the word Isis.

Local reports suggest the rest of the writing included a warning about a terror attack scheduled to take place during Tuesdays nationwide Republic Day celebrations, although these claims could not be independently verified.

The incident took place in the small village of Dudu, which is near Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan.

The CNN bureau in India tweeted that security teams have been deployed in the area following the vandalism, suggesting that the matter is being taken seriously by officials.

First India News described locals as being tense and angry over the incident, adding that they are demanding the police do everything possible to find and arrest those who were responsible.

The graffiti and its warning of an imminent attack come as widespread celebrations are predicted throughout India to celebrate Republic Day on Tuesday.

Even before the threats were made the country was placed on high alert after intelligence officials detected chatter between senior Isis commanders in Syria and a group of Indian sympathisers about carrying out an Isis-inspired attack disrupting Tuesdays festivities.

On Sunday a car with military number plates was stolen in the capital New Delhi raising concerns that it could be used by potential terrorists to gain access to otherwise restricted locations.

This was the same technique used just last week when terrorists kidnapped a senior police officer in Punjab and used his car to enter a local air base where they opened fire.
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An interview with two amateur Australian crime fighters has been hailed"the most Aussie interview ever".

James Ross-Munro and Kane Wiblen had news presenters from Australias Channel 9 hooting with laughter as they described the night they foiled a robbery at a chicken shop.

My Wiblen had filmed their initial efforts to thwart the crime, in video shown before the Gold Coast pair's interview.

Mr Ross-Munro told presenters they had been at a stubbies and singlets party at a local bar - stubbies being a 375ml bottle of beer, popular in Australia, while a singlet is an Australian term for a sleeveless vest. He said the pair had gone to buy food when they noticed something at the petrol station - or "servo - was amiss.

James Ross-Munro seize a key thought to belong to a getaway car involved in a robbery. (Kane Wiblen/Facebook)

I thought something was a bit sus [suspect] so went to go check it out, said Mr Ross-Munro in the interview. It then became apparent a robbery was in progress nearby.

A shirtless Mr Ross-Munro can be seen removing keys from the ignition of the presumed getaway car.

Nothing says an awesome Friday like beers, mates, laughs, oh and this burger shop robbery gone to shit. Interesting night to say the least! Posted by Kane Wiblen on Friday, 22 January 2016

There was no plan, just go with it, he told Channel 9.

Mr Ross-Munro prompted shrieks of laughter as he informed presenters he did all this with a "busted plugger", or broken sandal. However, he reports he has had a few donations to replace his old pair.

Asked if he went to the gym by a presenter, he replied: Mate I dont go to the gym, I aint been to the gym in years. Only gym I go to is Jim Beam.
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Denmark has defended a plan to remove asylum seekers' cash and jewellery from them, saying it puts refugees on an "equal" footing with other Danes.

Amid media scrutiny and UN condemnation of a number of migration-related reforms, the Danish government is on the brink of passing a law to seize cash and items worth more than about 1,000 from refugees, according to The Local.

Yet ruling right-wing party Venstre and anti-immigration coalition partners the Danish People's Party (DPP) have said claims the measure is a violation of international commitments and human rights shows the law has been "grossly misunderstood."

Anders Vistisen, an MEP from the DDP, said Danish citizens who suddenly become unemployed are also expected to sell their most valuable possessions to receive state support.

"The new law is about creating equality between migrants and Danes, so that everyone under the welfare system has the same possibility to receive public benefits," he told The Local.

Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has come under fire for his government's anti-immigration reforms (Reuters)

Other proponents of the bill say Denmark is "expensive" and the seizing of cash and valuables amounts to the high taxes imposed on all citizens to ensure a strong welfare state and free education for all.

The move mirrors similar measures in southern Germany, where valuables are also being taken from refugees on arrival in Bavaria, according to Bild.

But even the unemployed would never have their property searched and their goods seized in Denmark, say critics.

Zachary Whyte, an asylum and intergration researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said the bill did not make asylum seekers equal to native Danes - and other parts of the reforms were even more worrying than the plans to seize cash and items.

"Human rights organisations have focused more on other elements of the bill," he told The Local.

"These include a delay in processing family reunification for some refugees."

A Danish policeman plays a game with a refugee girl - who under new measures could have to wait three years to be granted asylum (Reuters)

The bill, which went through its final reading on January 21 and is expected to be passed in a parliamentary vote on Tuesday, will lengthen the amount of time it takes for refugees to win asylum to three years.

This could mean refugees might have to wait five years or more before their spouses and children can join them in safety in Denmark.

Representatives of prime minister Lar Lokke Rasmussen's party, which received less than one-fifth of the 2015 general election vote, and the Danish People's Party, which received 21.1 per cent, will face the EU parliament and the UN to explain its decision.

Human rights and freedom-of-movement principles were not applicable when situations changed, said Venstre's foreign affairs spokesman.

"The conventions that Denmark and many other countries signed many years ago, we signed based on a global situation that was not the global situation of today," he said.

The Social Democrat party, Denmark's centre-left opposition, has hit a 50-year low over the refugee crisis, according to a major poll in Denmark.
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The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has opened the way to the erosion  but not the abolition  of the countrys 35-hour working week.

Exceptions to the 35-hour rule should no longer be seen as a transgression, Mr Valls said after receiving a long-awaited report on reform of Frances Kafkaesque employment laws.

The report, drawn up by a former justice minister Robert Badinter, calls for the rewriting and simplificaton of the Code du Travail or labour code, which runs to nine volumes and over 3,000 pages.

The report, which will form the basis of a draft law in March, makes no direct attack on workers rights, like permanent employment contracts, the minimum wage and the 35-hour week introduced by a Socialist government 16 years ago.

It calls, however, for more flexibility and the possibility of more, local union-employer agreements to circumvent rules, including the 35-hour week.

On Friday, Frances Economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, promised the de facto end to the limit on the number of hours. Such agreements are already possible. The principle of a 35-hour week has been much chipped away over the years. The the average real working week in France is now 37 hours.

The report and proposed law will, nonetheless, be contested by left-wing politicians and hard-line trades union federations who see them as a liberal attack on acquired labour rights.
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French Jews are fleeing the country at an unprecedented rate amid rising anti-Semitism and fears of more Isis-inspired assaults and mass casualty terror attacks.

More than 8,000 Jews left France for Israel in 2015  a rate far higher than anywhere else in Europe but consistent with what over the past few years has become the largest mass movement of Jews since the formation of Israel in 1948.

The overriding reason Jews cite for leaving France as a steady rise in the rate of anti-Semitism over the past 15 years.

A 2013 EU poll found that 74% of French Jews are now so scared of being attacked for their religion that take steps to prevent themselves being identified as Jewish.

There have been three allegedly Islamist-inspired knife attacks on Jewish citizens in the French city of Marseilles since October alone. The most recent was against teacher Benjamin Amsellem, 35 (pictured) (Getty Images)

The rise of Muslim migration to France and Isis' calls for an increase in lone wolf style attacks on Jewish citizens in particular has only added to the fear.

As a result the number of Jews leaving France for Israel has doubled and then doubled again since 2010 - hitting 8,000 last year up from 1,900 in 2011.

In the southern city of Marseilles alone there have been three knife attacks on Jewish citizens since last October  the most recent against teacher Benjamin Amsellem, 35, whose life was only saved when he used a copy of the Torah to fight off his allegedly Isis-inspired teenage attacker.

Four Jews were also killed when Islamic extremists targeted a Kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015  just days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The Jewish Agency, which handles aliyah (the formal name for Jewish migration to Israel), has always insisted that any Jew wanting to move to the country would be welcomed.

While this offer has attracted thousands of European Jews every year for decades, the rate of acceptance is growing dramatically, with French nationals by far the most popular applicants.

 Deadly shooting at Charlie Hebdo in Paris

In fact the number is so high that in Ashdod - a southern Israeli city popular with new arrivals  French is heard as often as Hebrew and dozens of French-style cafes give its neighbourhoods a distinctly Parisian feel, according to CNN.

In comparison Britain has the second highest number of Jews leaving for Israel but the figures are still one tenth lower than France with just 774 departures last year.

The news comes as it was revealed that Jewish people no longer feel safe living in Germany thanks to 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.

Speaking to the the Jerusalem Post, the leader of Hambergs Jewish community, Daniel Killy said: "We no longer feel safe here."
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Centre-right candidate Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa won Portugal's presidential election on Sunday - despite a dramatic swing to the left in October's parliamentary ballot.

In his victory speech, Social Democrat Rebelo de Sousa, 67, said he will work to promote consensus and repair divisions created in the aftermath of the previous election when the left ousted a centre-right administration that imposed tough austerity under an international bailout in 2011-14.

Portugal's president is a largely ceremonial figure but he plays an important role at times of political uncertainty - as have gripped the country since last October's inconclusive parliamentary election. He has the power to dissolve parliament and fire the prime minister.

Portugal is likely to need all consensus possible as a shaky government of moderate centre-left Socialists dependent on far-left parties for support in parliament tries to reconcile its election pledges to end economic austerity with budget deficit cuts promised to the European Union.

With nearly all votes counted, preliminary results showed Rebelo de Sousa, a former journalist and one-time leader of the centre-right Social Democrats, winning 52 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff.

Mr Rebelo de Sousa's closest rival Antonio Sampaio da Novoa conceded defeat after picking up just 23 per cent of the vote (AFP)

His closest rival, Socialist Antonio Sampaio da Novoa, conceded defeat after picking up around 23 percent of the vote.

Left Bloc candidate Marisa Matias had 10 percent.

Many political analysts do not expect the Socialist-led government to serve a full four-year term and the new president could play a key role, either as mediator between the parties or using his power to dissolve parliament and call new elections.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. 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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. 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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. 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Rebelo de Sousa will succeed President Anibal Cavaco Silva, a fellow conservative who said he only swore in the Socialist government as he was barred by the constitution from calling a new parliamentary election in his last six months in office.

The leftist parties have said Rebelo de Sousa may seek a return to unpopular right-wing economic policies, but he struck a conciliatory tone during his election campaign, saying Portugal needs "more social justice along with minimum financial equilibrium" - a stance similar to that of the Socialists.

Barely half of registered Portuguese voters cast their ballot in Sunday's election, though turnout was up slightly from the previous presidential poll in 2011.

Reuters
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A Swedish doctor who locked a woman in an underground bunker drew up a sex contract which would reduce the time he kept her imprisoned if she obeyed.

Martin Trenneborg, 38, has gone on trial in Stockholm accused of drugging his victim by lacing strawberries with Rohypnol in her home before allegedly raping and abducting her.

She was driven 350 miles to a house close to Kristianstad in southern Sweden where she was locked up in an underground bunker for six days.

He has denied raping her but admitted the other charges.

The contract included a list of sex acts and behaviours which - if she agreed - would give her "discounts" on the amount of time she would have to stay in the bunker, Mail Online reports.

Under the terms, she would be required to give him the "GFE"(or "girlfriend experience") by kissing him during sex and would be required to shave all her body hair, pierce her navel and let him film and photograph her.

The contract - written in English - also said she would be punished with additional time in the soundproof bunker if she refused sex, masturbated or tried to escape.

The document - found on Trenneborgs computer after his arrest in September last year - suggested he was planning to keep her prisoner for ten years.

A courtroom sketch of Trenneborg (left) and his lawyer (AFP)

But Trenneborgs plan unravelled when he found police at her apartment a week later when he returned to collect some of her belongings.

He forced the woman - believed to be in her 30s - to go to the local police station to call off the search for her but officers became suspicious of her fake story.

The woman told police that Trenneborg - dubbed "Swedens Josef Fritzl" - had not raped her again while she was in the bunker but she lived in fear of what he may do.

The entrance to the soundproof bunker (AFP/Swedish police authority)

She said: "Every time he came I didn't know what was going to happen, whether he would rape me or torture me or murder me.

"At one point he told me that if I were to try to escape, he would punish me by chaining me to the bed and I would get nothing to eat but crisp bread.

"He only said that he would keep me there a few years and that he would release me after that."

She also said he planned to bring another woman to the bunker "possibly a celebrity" or the victims own mother.

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

Documents found on Trenneborgs computer showed he had been planning the kidnap for years and had scouted out at least ten women before settling on his eventual victim.

He said: "She was suppose be my girlfriend for years, that was the purpose. But now that I am imprisoned she will not be my girlfriend in the ordinary sense, even I can understand that.

"She was not suppose to be a punching bag or something. We were suppose to be kissing, hanging out, having sex and stuff that normally people do".

The trial continues.
About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypts Sinai Desert. Carved in stone, they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs, archaeologists say. They reveal new information on the early pharaohs. For instance, one inscription the researchers found tells of a queen named Neith-Hotep who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago as regent to a young pharaoh named Djer.Archaeologists estimate that the earliest carvings at Wadi Ameyra date back around 5,200 years, while the most recent date to the reign of a pharaoh named Nebre, who ruled about 4,800 years ago. The "inscriptions are probably a way to proclaim that the Egyptian state owned the area," team leader Pierre Tallet, a professor at Universite Paris-Sorbonne, told Live Science. He explained that south of Wadi Ameyra, the ancient expeditions would have mined turquoise and copper. Sometime after Nebre's rule, the route of the expeditions changed, bypassing Wadi Ameyra, he said.The inscriptions carved by a mining expedition show that queen Neith-Hotep stepped up as ruler about 5,000 years ago, millennia before Hatshepsut or Cleopatra VII ruled the country. While Egyptologists knew that Neith-Hotep existed, they believed she was married to a pharaoh named Narmer. "The inscriptions demonstrate that she [Neith-Hotep] was not the wife of Narmer, but a regent queen at the beginning of the reign of Djer," Tallet said.An inscription found at Wadi Ameyra shows that Memphis, an ancient capital of Egypt that was also called "the White Walls," is older than originally believed. Ancient Greek and Roman writers claimed that Memphis was constructed by a mythical king named Menes, whom Egyptologists often consider to be a real-life pharaoh named Narmer, Tallet explained. The new inscription shows that Memphis actually existed before Narmer was even born."We have in Wadi Ameyra an inscription giving for the first time the name of this city, the White Walls,and it is associated to the name of Iry-Hor, a king who ruled Egypt two generations before Narmer," Tallet said. The inscription shows that the ancient capital was around during the time of Iry-Hor and could have been built before even he was pharaoh.
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Norway could become the latest country to seize refugees valuables, according to a new proposal by a local branch of the ruling Progress Party.

Party leaders in Troms in the north of the country have suggested all refugees arriving in the country should be stripped of any of their possessions worth more than 10,000 kroner (802).

Local party spokesman Geir Are Winther told the broadcaster NRK, according The Local: If we think about the elderly who move into an institution, where we take up to 85 per cent of their income to finance [the stay], it is only fair and reasonable that we would also collect money from those who come with a lot of it."

The proposal by the anti-immigration party - whose national arm has been the junior party in a coalition government with the Norwegian Conservative Party since 2013 - is similar to a plan put forward in Denmark last month.

But the Danish plan has under fire from human rights groups, international media and even from within its own government.

Despite the criticism, it is expected to pass through the countrys parliament this week.

Kristine Larsen, from the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), compared the Norwegian plan to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

She told NRK: What frightens me is that this is a cold gust from the past that weve actually experienced before with the Jews and others who were stripped of their belongings not so long ago."

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

Troms, which is in the Arctic circle, has come under strain from the number of refugees exploiting a loophole which allows them to cycle over the border from neighbouring Russia in recent months.

It is illegal for refugees to cross the border on foot or in someone elses car if they do not have the correct papers - but they can cycle over.

The Progress Party also wants the Norwegian government to close this loophole and withdraw from the Schengen agreement.

Norway is not a member of the European Union but is a signatory to the free movement agreement.
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David Nott, probably the worlds most experienced war surgeon, has grown used to loss.

As he looks back over photos of his last visit to Aleppo, Syria, he pauses for a moment over a picture of two young doctors, smiling at the camera in their blue scrubs.

He was an anaesthetist I knew. He was killed two weeks ago last year. An air-to-ground missile, Dr Nott says, sad but matter-of-fact, pointing to one of the pair. And he was killed not long before, he says, indicating the other. Doctors are targeted.

In the grim logic that has taken hold among the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, healthcare is seen as a weapon, he says. You take out one doctor, you take out 10,000 people he or she can no longer care for.

Dr Nott is known in the press as the Indiana Jones of surgery, a title he has never liked, but which attaches itself somewhat inevitably to a man who has saved lives in most of the worlds major conflicts since Bosnia in 1993.

Still holding down a day job performing three different kinds of surgery at three different London hospitals, he is one of the countrys leading surgeons  and last week it was announced he was this years recipient of the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award.

Every year he takes up to three months leave to work in conflict or disaster zones. Sometimes in ramshackle clinics, sometimes with rudimentary instruments, he has operated in Sierra Leone, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was with the Defence Medical Services in Basra, Iraq, in 2007 and has served at Afghanistans Camp Bastion.

More than 170,000 people have been killed in the three-year war, one third of them civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (Getty)

He has made headlines saving the lives of a baby retrieved from the rubble of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and of a Congolese man whose infected shoulder he amputated in 2008, with instruction from a British colleague over text message  it being the first time hed ever carried out the procedure.

But nothing has compared to his experiences in Syria where, he says, the work and lives of healthcare workers like him are under threat as never before.

In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrian boys cry following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Konashenkov strongly warned the United States against striking Syrian government forces and issued a thinly-veiled threat to use Russian air defense assets to protect them AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrians wait to receive treatment at a hospital following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Alepp Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov speaks at a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia. Antonov said the Russian air strikes in Syria have killed about 35,000 militants, including about 2,700 residents of Russia AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Jameel Mustafa Habboush, receives oxygen from civil defence volunteers, known as the white helmets, as they rescue him from under the rubble of a building following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civil defence members rest amidst rubble in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A girl carrying a baby inspects damage in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members look for survivors at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Volunteers from Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, help civilians after Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria The aftermath of Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Smoke billows from buildings in Talbiseh, in Homs province, western Syria, after airstrikes by Russian warplanes AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Air Forces carry out an air strike in the ISIS controlled Al-Raqqah Governorate. Russia's KAB-500s bombs completely destroy the Liwa al-Haqq command unit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia claimed it hit eight Isis targets, including a "terrorist HQ and co-ordination centre" that was completely destroyed In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A video grab taken from the footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A release from the Russian defence ministry purportedly showing targets in Syria being hit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia launched air strikes in war-torn Syria, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with regime aircraft as Putin seeks to steal US President Barack Obama's thunder by pushing a rival plan to defeat Isis militants in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria, a thousand kilometres away. The targets include ammunition factories, ammunition and fuel depots, command centres, and training camps A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

Nearly nobody is reporting this, the direct attacks on healthcare and healthcare workers, he told The Independent last month, citing figures from the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which recorded 23 attacks on medical facilities in Syria in October and November last year  all but one by Syrian government or Russian forces.

The United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that 20 health facilities were struck or damaged by aerial bombs dropped by the Assad regime or its allies in October and November, and that many aid organisations have had to scale back or suspend their operations as a result of increasing attacks. In December, Amnesty International said Russian air strikes had killed hundreds of civilians  and hit medical facilities.

Aid workers believe the increasing frequency of such attacks suggest a strategy. Nott has long been convinced that both Syrian  and now Russian  forces are intentionally hitting hospitals: a view that is shared by the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who accused the Russians of deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and ambulances after speaking to Syrian civil defence workers in Southern Turkey earlier this month.

The nature of the bombing has changed so completely in the past few months. It has to be the Russians, Dr Nott says. Russian jets fly very high up. Syrian jets fly lower, firing rockets and missiles. The Russian planes tend to be 10,000ft up and you dont see it, you just see the weapon hitting the hospital, he says.

 Syria: Homs lies in ruins after years of urban warfare

Hospital workers, supported by charities, have had to dig out new wards underground to escape the bombings. Now, Dr Nott says, because of the attacks, they are being driven to set up clinics in caves outside cities.

He has not been back to Syria himself since October last year, but has been in direct contact with colleagues in Aleppo and elsewhere in rebel-held northern Syria. Until a few weeks ago, he was regularly giving surgical advice and reviewing X-rays over WhatsApp messenger. But then the internet was cut off in Aleppo, and the messages stopped.

Dr Notts last memory of Syria is of a desperate journey from Aleppo to the border, in October 2014, after an aid visit in which barrel bombing by government forces was a constant threat.

I was hearing every day the roads would close. If I didnt leave then the road would be blocked  and youd never see me again.

There were Syrian jets circling around, there were people being shot at I remember the route. You had to put your foot down until you got 10 miles out of Aleppo.

Since then he has stayed in touch, and in April went to Gaziantep in Turkey to train Syrian colleagues in specialist trauma surgery.

Recommended Read more UN accused of allowing Assad regime to censor humanitarian aid plan

He has grown increasingly frustrated that Western governments  fixated on the threat of Isis  have forgotten about the humanitarian disaster in rebel-held areas such as Aleppo.

The healthcare workers I work with are not fighters, they dont carry weapons, theyre just there to help, he says.

What is happening to them is totally against international humanitarian law  hospitals should be protected and they are being targeted. Targeted to ensure the destruction of the healthcare system.

Opposition fighters fire a heavy machine gun towards government forces helicopters reportedly dropping barrel bombs near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo (Getty)

The British are fighting Isis  fair enough  but this is happening daily and has been forgotten about.

In 2013, he called for humanitarian corridors to be set up to support populations trapped in conflict zones. Now, he says, a no-bombing zone is urgently needed over Aleppo and Idlib provinces, which the international community should set up, even if it meets with Russian opposition.

It has to be achieved. Somebody has to stand up and say, The humanitarian situation is so bad that this has to be achieved. It is a systematic destruction of the healthcare system: a weapon of war which Syria and Russia are using at the moment. That has to stop.

Make it an area refugees could come back to, protected by a peacekeeping force  Im sure Assad and Russia would not start attacking any Americans that were there.

The only reason Dr Nott did not go back to Syria himself in 2015 was an unanticipated but very welcome event  the birth of his first child.

Dr Nott was married in January to Elly, who used to work for the Institute of Strategic Studies in Bahrain and now leads the newly formed David Nott Foundation, which raises funding for the training of conflict surgeons. Their daughter Molly was born in July.

However, Dr Nott does not think fatherhood spells an end to his humanitarian work  though he may cut it down to six weeks in the year.

Elly knew who she was taking on. She knew what this is all about and she loved that person, he says. The world is very dangerous, no matter where you go to do this. You can reduce the risk by thinking about the places you go to. I probably wouldnt go to Syria at this moment in time or to Afghanistan. But the rest of the world is out there to be helped.

I cant withdraw from it. Im probably the most experienced war surgeon in the world. I cant stop doing it now I have a family. I wanted to have one, I wanted to have things other people had. But it would be a shame to withdraw now because theres so much still to offer, and a new generation to teach.
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Israel is to resume the building of its controversial settlements in the West Bank after a lengthy moratorium, according to local news reports.

Following 18 months with no new housing developments, Israels Supreme Planning Council of Civil Administration is understood to have last week approved the construction of 153 new units.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank - deemed illegal by most countries - are a significant issue in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process and have been used by some Palestinians as attempted justification for a recent wave of shocking knife attacks on Israeli citizens.

The last time new settlements were approved was in 2014, according to Haaretz.

The newly approved projects include dozens of new housing units in in the West Bank settlements of Alon Shvut, Etz Efraim and Carmel Rahelim.

The news comes just months after the US reportedly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if new settlements are declared Washington wont come to Israelis aid and veto a UN Security Council resolution declaring the West Bank housing units illegal.

While he has spent months rejecting calls for further settlements purportedly out of concern that the US will follow through on its threats, Netanyahu now appears to have given in to the demands.

In November the US reportedly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured with his wife) that it would not veto a UN Security Council resolution declaring the West Bank housing units illegal if more were built (Getty)

On Sunday he appeared to make the first such concession, saying he would allow Jewish settlers evicted by the Israeli army to return to their houses in the West Bank city of Hebron to return once proper permits were in place.

About 80 settlers were removed from Hebron on Friday a day after Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon withheld his required approval of their occupancy in apartments in a city where tensions between Israelis and Palestinians run high.

The settler group said it had bought the homes from Palestinian owners. But Yaalon said the settlers had failed to seek permission from Israeli authorities to move in and were trespassing.

Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank for several decades, although the number of settlements has dramatically increased over the past 10 years.

 Obama, Netanyahu discuss Gaza, Isis

Several forces have converged to encourage this growth.

The first group are religious Zionists and others on the ideological right who believed in a greater Israel stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and that the West Bank  or Judaea and Samaria, as they invariably call it  had been liberated by the Six Day War.

There are also elements in the military establishment who believed it would enhance Israeli security and a large number of politicians who believe that it made sense to grab as much territory as possible for Jewish residents, to improve Israel's bargaining position in any future peace talks.
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Libya's internationally recognised parliament has voted to reject a unity government proposed under a United Nations backed plan to resolve the country's political crisis and armed conflict.

Of 104 members attending the session in the eastern city of Tobruk, 89 voted against backing the government proposed by Libya's Presidential Council last week.

Since 2014, Libya has had two competing parliaments and governments, one based in Tripoli and the other in the east. Both are backed by loose alliances of armed groups and former rebels who helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The unity government proposals and agreement were the result of months of negotiations, and were backed by some members of both rival factions.

Lawmaker Mohamed al-Abani told Reuters that the proposed administration also did not represent the interests of the Libyan people but had been formed "according to the demands of militia leaders".

The UN and Western diplomats had urged Libyans to back the agreements as a step towards ending the turmoil that has gripped the country since the toppling of Gaddafi. The chaos engulfing the country has enabled the so-called Islamic State to expand its influence rapidly. In recent weeks the extremist group has launched attacks from its stronghold in the city of Sirte on facilities in the oil crescent along the countrys northern coast.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Intense Russian and Syrian bombing raids that have bolstered the flagging regime of Bashar al-Assad are claimed to have killed scores of children and civilians in recent days.

Backed by Russian airstrikes, Syrian government troops seized Rabiya in Latakia province on Sunday, a key rebel-held town which will allow them to cut off supply lines to groups fighting to topple the Assad regime.

But to the east, reports from the town of Deir ez-Zor indicated that in recent days as many as 164 civilians have been killed in the countryside around the town amid Russian and Syrian bombing raids. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said scores of people, including 43 children, were killed after three days of intense bombing targeting Isis positions.

Isis has been fighting for control of the area near its de facto capital in nearby Raqqa, about 60 miles away, and on routes towards the Iraqi border. The attacks follow claims that Isis has overrun the area in recent weeks, gaining several villages. There have also been unconfirmed reports of hundreds of residents of Deir ez-Zor being killed or kidnapped by the Islamist group.

To the west, the capture of Rabiya, along with the nearby town of Salma which was taken earlier this month, allows Syrian troops to push north towards the Turkish border where opposition groups muster many of their supplies. The government has made gains in the area  one of its key objectives  since Moscows warplanes began bombing anti-Assad groups in September.

The SOHR described Rabiya as the second-most important base for [opposition] fighters in the northern Latakia countryside. It said the victory came after violent clashes against Islamic battalions backed by Jabhat al-Nusra amid aerial bombardment by Russian and Syrian warplane[s]. The fall of Rabiya comes days before multilateral peace talks on Syria are due to begin in Geneva. They were scheduled to start today, but have been delayed amid arguments over which groups are represented.

The negotiations are designed to work towards a long-term settlement for the war-torn country, but will be complicated anger expressed at the ever-growing number of civilian casualties.
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When the men and women who worked at Shiara hospital heard the explosion, there was little surprise. Just half an hours drive from the border with Saudi Arabia, in Yemens mountainous northern region, they were used to the sound of shelling.

What they did not expect 10 months into the Saudi-led campaign of airstrikes was that it would be their own hospital that had been hit. The bombing on 10 January left six people dead, including three staff members. Many more were injured.

The wounded were hit by shrapnel from the missile, and also by shards of metal from the fence [around the hospital]. The injuries were brutal, said Teresa Sancristoval, the head of the emergency desk at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which operates in the hospital.

The attack was among 130 on health facilities hit in Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition began its bombing campaign in March last year. It was the fourth on a facility supported by MSF  which says it gives detailed co-ordinates for its hospitals to both sides of the conflict.

The attacks have left a healthcare system barely functioning. In the latest bombing, on Thursday, an MSF ambulance driver was killed in a strike on the northern town of Dahyan, blamed on the Saudi-led coalition. The driver had already put his life at risk to work for MSF, Juan Prieto, an MSF project co-ordinator in the capital, Sanaa, said. He had no idea that Thursday would be the last day of his life.

MSF has called for an independent investigation into the attacks on its facilities and said the conflict in Yemen was being conducted with total disregard for the rules of war. The comments were the most strongly-worded yet from the charity which has asked the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC), the independent body with a mandate to investigate suspected violations of international humanitarian law, to conduct an investigation.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, has said attacks on MSF hospitals may amount to war crimes. Under international law, hospitals and medical units must be respected and protected in all circumstances, Rasha Mohammed, Yemen researcher at Amnesty, told The Independent.

MSF also reserved criticism for the British government which has supported Saudi Arabias involvement in the war, and provides arms to the country, for its offensive and irresponsible response to the attacks. The Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond had said there have been no deliberate breaches of international humanitarian law.

UN official Jamie McGoldrick inspects damage to a hospital in Taiz, Yemen (Reuters)

Increasingly, we are seeing attacks on medical facilities being minimised, labelled mistakes or errors, said Raquel Ayora, MSF Director of Operations. This implies that mistakenly bombing a protected hospital would be tolerable. This logic is offensive and irresponsible.

An FCO spokesperson said: We are aware of reports of alleged violations of international humanitarian law by the Coalition in Yemen and take these very seriously. The Government regularly raise the importance of compliance with international humanitarian law with the Saudi government.

The war in Yemen, which began in earnest after Saudi Arabia launched a military campaign in support of ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi last March, has left 5,800 people dead, half of them civilians, and it shows no signs of easing. Yesterday, the Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and his Cabinet returned to the volatile port city of Aden in an attempt to establish a stable government presence in the south.

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

But swathes of the country are still under the control of Shia Houthi rebels, who Saudi Arabia charge are being backed by Iran. Sunni Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition along with nine other Gulf states, has rejected claims of responsibility for the hospital attacks. In October, the government admitted a mistake had been made when it repeatedly bombed a hospital in the northern Saada province, but said MSF had failed to provide accurate co-ordinates.

In this climate, people have become too afraid to go to hospital. In the immediate aftermath of the 10 January attack, two of the wounded refused to be treated, fearing a so-called double tap attack, when the same targets are hit twice in succession. Since the attack, pregnant women in the area have chosen to give birth in caves. Staff at hospitals have become too afraid to work.

People ask to spend the minimum time possible in the hospital, Ms Sancristoval said. This is the opposite to the many wars I have worked in over the last 25 years, when staff would ask to sleep at hospitals at night because they are considered the safest place.

Yemen has been devastated by the civil war, with an estimated two million displaced and in need of food and water. But, Ms Sancristoval said, fear of becoming a target has begun to override basic needs. They can be a target at any time and they dont know what to expect. They are always afraid, she said. We tried to do a distribution in Saada. People were so afraid they might have to queue and become a target, they said they would rather not receive the aid.

With four attacks on its facilities since October, MSF says it fears hospitals are beginning to be considered a legitimate target. Its president, Joanne Liu, said: Is this the new normal: an MSF hospital bombed every month?"
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Two major airlines have suspended all flight services to the island of Vanuatu following concerns over the conditions of the countrys international runway, though Virgin Australia has decided to keep services running.

The island nation of Vanuatu has had a tumultuous year; it was forced to hold snap elections last week to instate a new parliament after 14 MPs were jailed for corruption and in March last year it was left devastated by Cyclone Pam, which destroyed homes and crops affecting more than 180,000 people.

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Now Air New Zealand has suspended flights in and out of Vanuatus Port Vila International Airport due to the deteriorating runway. Executives on Friday decided to take preventative action before the situation becomes unsafe, general manager of flight operations Stephen Hunt told news.com.au.

The airline runs a weekly service between Auckland and Vanuatu and codeshares with national carrier Air Vanuatu.

Qantas has also suspended its services through its codeshare agreement with Air Vanuatu over the runway concerns.

Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Show all 6 1 /6 Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam People walking along a seaside with waves splashing on land on Vanuatu island, South Pacific region EPA Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu EPA Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam People on a dock view yachts damaged in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Saturday, March 14, in the aftermath of Pam AP Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam People walk along the shore where debris is scattered in Port Vila, Vanuatu on Saturday AP Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam People scour through debris damaged and flung around in Port Vila, Vanuatu on Saturday AP Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu island Cyclone Pam A satellite image of the cyclone NOAA

Virgin Australia is still running services however, as is Air Vanuatu, after a team of safety experts carried out a review of the airports runway over the weekend.

Following this review, we have concluded that currently our aircraft can continue to safely operate in and out of Port Vila, a Virgin Australia spokeswoman told the Sydney Morning Herald.

We continue to monitor the condition of the runway and Virgin Australia will immediately cease all operations between Australia and Port Vila if we are not convinced the runway is suitable for on-going operations.

Air Vanuatus chief executive, shareholder representatives, senior management and pilots met with the countrys civil aviation authority over the weekend to implement a plan to continue jet operations at the airport.

The national carrier said several extra safety precautions have now been put in place until permanent repair at the aerodrome begins, including daily sweeping of the runway and regular inspections prior to and after take-off. A total of 200m of runway is to be marked for urgent repair.
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Potentially noisy neighbours and an early wake-up call shouldn't put you off a night at The Lodge. In fact, they're the main selling points. This cosy apartment (formerly zookeeper's quarters) within Bristol Zoo is in earshot of species such as the Asiatic lions and vociferous gibbons, offering a taste of the jungle on the edge of the city.

This venerable zoo is the fifth-oldest in the world, and celebrates its 180th anniversary this year. The Lodge opened in late 2015. It enables parties of up to six to stay onsite overnight, with after-hours and before-opening private tours of the zoo. You do, necessarily, become a caged animal yourself: guests are locked in to prevent them from roaming about at night, unsupervised. But this is captivity at its most comfortable and, well, captivating.

The bed

The Lodge has been revamped by Clifton Village-based Bracey Interiors, whose aim was to celebrate the zoo, its animals and environment. This means a hint of the safari: rustic textures, natural stone, earthy greens, floral and animal-print fabrics, wildlife artworks, a cuddly gorilla. The result is bright and comfortable, rather than five-star boutique.

There are two double bedrooms  best is the Rainforest Room, with its Rousseau-style mural; there's also a sofa bed in a communal hall. The homely lounge has a big TV and Blu-ray with animal-themed movies (Finding Nemo or Fierce Creatures, anyone?). Dinner is served in the contemporary dining room, or on the large roof terrace overlooking the enclosures  too chilly to use during my December visit, but a tantalising prospect.

The breakfast

You'll have enjoyed fancier breakfasts in your time, but probably not while a 200kg silverback eats his own morning meal a few metres away. After a behind-the-scenes tour (ours included feeding the meerkats), a keeper leads you to the gorilla house before the zoo opens. A table and picnic hamper await in the state-of-the-art enclosure: heavy-duty glass offers views up to the gorillas stomping above. Breakfast is a big bap filled with your choices of bacon, eggs, veggie sausages, mushrooms and the like; tea or coffee is in a flask. But the joy is tucking in while the gorillas bomb about.

A bedroom

The hosts

Unsurprisingly, every staff member here is passionate about wildlife. As curator John Partridge led us between the meerkats and golden tamarin, he explains the zoo's commitments to conservation and education. He also ignites our interest in the zoo's less glamorous species  he's particularly excited about a batch of stick insect eggs that had just arrived, part of an attempt to save one of the world's rarest bugs. Touring with an expert, without any other people, is the highlight of the stay.

The weekend

The zoo overlooks Bristol's grassy Downs in Clifton, the city's most desirable suburb. The streets here are lined with Georgian and Victorian piles, plus independent shops and restaurants. Nose into Clifton Arcade (built in 1878) to browse amid the boutiques and eat homemade cake at Primrose Cafe. Or gaze down on the Avon Gorge from Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge (cliftonbridge.org.uk); free tours run at 3pm on weekends and Bank Holidays, Easter to October.

Around five miles north, but included in the zoo stay, is the Wild Place Project (wildplace.org.uk), a new, hands-on extension of the zoo. Here, you can meet lemurs, see zebras grazing the Bristolian savannah, follow a Barefoot Trail through the woods, and  as of 2015  visit cheetahs at the Mahali Pori National Park exhibit.

The pit-stop

A four-course dinner, cooked in The Lodge kitchen by a private chef, is included, along with two bottles of wine. Portions are generous, from the meze starter (homemade grissini, charcuterie, dips) to the mains (25-day dry-aged beef rump, baked cod, spiced cauliflower and garlic dhal). A platter of mini desserts is followed by a West Country cheese board, which you can nibble at leisure after the chef leaves. Ingredients are sustainable and locally sourced where possible.

Off-site, nearby Wallfish (01179 735435; wallfishbistro.co.uk) is an excellent choice for local dishes, heavy on seafood, such as Cornish hake with cockles and clams (16.50) or lamb with marmite-glazed sweetbreads (19).

The essentials

The Lodge, Bristol Zoo, Clifton, Bristol BS8 3HA (0117 974 7328; bit.ly/BristolZooLodge). Sleeps up to six from 750 a night, including after-hours zoo access, animal feeding, welcome hamper, four-course meal with wine, breakfast with the gorillas, and entrance to Bristol Zoo and Wild Place Project.
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Almost two years after one of its Boeing 777s went missing, Malaysia Airlines is grounding its remaining fleet of the aircraft - and cancelling the route on which one of the planes was shot down.

The Malaysian carriers last 777 operation is scheduled to take off from Amsterdam just before noon, local time, today. It ends 19 years of flying the twin-jet - and four decades of the route between the airlines hub, Kuala Lumpur, and the Dutch capital.

At about the same time, another Malaysia Airlines 777 is due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur from Guangzhou in China. While that route will continue, the plane is being downsized to a Boeing 737-800 - a predominantly short-haul jet with about half the capacity.

The move comes as Malaysia Airlines seeks to move on after the two tragedies involving the 777 in 2014. On 8 March, flight MH370 vanished while on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. Analysis of satellite data showed that the plane was probably flown to the southern Indian Ocean.

While theories about its fate proliferated, the only fragment of the missing plane so far discovered is a flaperon - part of a wing - which was washed up on Reunion Island last July.

Following the discovery, Malaysia Airlines said: We expect and hope that there would be more objects to be found which would be able to help resolve this mystery. But an Australian-led search of the Indian Ocean sea bed in the area where MH370 is predicted to be has so far failed to find any evidence of the jet.

In pictures: MH17 final report Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: MH17 final report In pictures: MH17 final report Getty Images In pictures: MH17 final report Getty Images In pictures: MH17 final report Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov, center, looks at the screen during a news conference in Moscow. Almaz-Antei air defense consortium, the builder of Buk missiles, presented its vision of the MH-17 air crash based on a new modeling of the disaster they recently conducted AP In pictures: MH17 final report A graphic and a skin element of a passenger airplane which was used in a full-scale experiment by Almaz-Antey simulating shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine is displayed during a Russian missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey news conference dedicated to the MH17 crash in Moscow EPA In pictures: MH17 final report Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov, seated center, attends a news conference in Moscow AP In pictures: MH17 final report Projectiles with thecharacteristic "double tee" formation of components of the warhead of a Buk missile 9?38?1, are displayed during a news conference in Moscow AP In pictures: MH17 final report Almaz-Antei director Yan Novikov, attends a news conference in Moscow AP

Four months after that search began, another Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down. Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers and crew lost their lives.

The twin tragedies were unrelated, but shook public confidence in the airline. As passenger numbers dwindled, losses rose to the equivalent of 20 per person per flight. A massive restructuring is under way, involving job cuts and route losses. The airline is now government-owned and led by a team recruited from low-cost airlines in Britain and Ireland.

John Strickland, the aviation consultant, said: Malaysia Airlines faces challenges but it's in the hands of a very well respected CEO, Christoph Mueller, known for successful turnarounds. It's in a very buoyant market with room for growth at its Kuala Lumpur hub.

 MH17 Reconstruction Timelapse

Mr Mueller, former Chief Executive of Aer Lingus, recruited a former easyJet and Flybe executive, Paul Simmons, as Chief Commercial Officer.

Malcolm Ginsberg, Editor of Business Travel News, said: People have short memories. If the management can be allowed to manage, then Air Asia and Singapore Airlines might quickly find they have real competition on their hands.

Malaysia Airlines is still flying twice-daily between Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur, using Airbus A380 aircraft. But last week Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways parent company, IAG, hinted that he may be interested in leasing the superjumbo planes from the Malaysian airline.

Mr Walsh told an aircraft finance conference that the airlines options on new A380s were too expensive, adding: We see the option of leasing them secondhand as an attractive opportunity.

BA currently has 10 A380s, with two more on order.
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Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives' campaign manager for the 2015 election, spoke at the Centre for Opposition Studies last week. His ostensible subject was: "Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them." But his main purpose was to settle a few scores with "commentators", which he pronounced with as much disdain as Jeremy Corbyn did the "commentariat".

He said that Labour had fallen for five "truisms" offered by commentators who told them the Conservatives couldn't win. He didn't name the authors, but as he quoted four of them it was easy to look them up. Here are Crosby's five truisms and the commentators guilty of perpetrating them:

1. The Conservatives couldnt win because constituency boundaries were unreformed. "If the boundary changes are abandoned, it is no exaggeration to say that a Tory majority, difficult to achieve at present, becomes impossible." George Eaton, New Statesman, August 2012.

2.  because of Ukip. Imagine ... the impact on the Tories next year if Ukip win eight, nine, even 10 per cent, in a general election which, by common consensus, will be even closer than the 2010 contest. Farage could turn out to be the Ross Perot of British politics  splitting the anti-Europe, centre-right vote and thereby handing victory to the pro-Europe, centre-left. Mehdi Hasan, Huffington Post, May 2014. Ukip won 13 per cent of the vote and the Tory share of the vote increased.

3.  because they are viscerally loathed in the north. My hunch is that the anti-Tory bias in the North is in danger of becoming part of Northern identity  which is why the Scottish parallel should worry Tory strategists. Tim Montgomerie, Conservative Home, November 2013. The Tories increased their share of the vote in the north. (Crosby digressed rather entertainingly on the word "strategy" too.)

4.  because Labour had gained a large number of 2010 Lib Dem voters who didn't like the Tory coalition. Ed Miliband is finding it very hard to persuade voters to switch from Mr Camerons party to his. But he doesnt need to do so in order to nudge Labours poll share, come 2015, into the mid-30s or higher: all he must do is to hold on to those Lib Dem defectors. Paul Goodman, Daily Telegraph, December 2012. In the end, 26 per cent of 2010 Lib Dems voted Labour and 19 per cent of them voted Tory. Not such a big deal.

5. "Given that the Tories could not win in 2010 with Gordon Brown at the height of his unpopularity and the economy in ruins they could never win again. The days of Conservative majority government are likely over." That was Croby's paraphrase of a common view. He didn't attribute it to anyone, but there were many commentators who said governments never increase their share of the vote: I remember pointing out that this wasn't true in 1951, 1955, 1966 or October 1974, although only 1955 was after a full parliamentary term.

The rest of Crosby's talk was educational too: it is summarised here.

 My column for The Independent on Sunday was about our next prime minister: I think it is hard to see who can stop Boris Johnson, another of Crosby's clients (Crosby was his campaign manager for the mayoral elections in 2008 and 2012). A subject to which I hope to return this week.

 The Top Ten in The New Review, the Independent on Sunday magazine, was Original Band Names. I didn't have space for The Angry Young Teddy Bears, which is what the Stone Roses were nearly called, according to Danny Webster.

 And finally, thanks to Simon Blackwell for this:

"Ordered a book from Random House and they've delivered it to some guy in Carlisle."
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Prominent intelligence officer, veteran of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Gohar Vardanyan, who made a big contribution in acquisition of the needed information for the countrys national interests and safety, celebrates her 90th birthday jubilee on January 25, Armenpress reports.

Gohar Vardanyan was born on January 25, 1926 in Leninakan (Gyumri) city. In the early 1930s, her family moved to Iran. At age 16, she entered her future husband and comrade-in-arms Gevorg Vardanyans anti-fascist group along with which she lead an active intelligence work.

In 1943 she participated in the operation for assuring security during the conference of the leaders of the "Big Three" Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.

Attempted murder of Hitler's special services against the leaders of "Big Three" Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt was prevented during that time.

In 1951, Vardanyan couple returned to the USSR and in 1956 graduated from the Yerevan Institute of Foreign Languages. Then Gohar and Gevorg Vardanyans, under Anita" and "Henry" pseudonyms, worked in private conditions in many countries. The spies returned to their homeland in 1986.
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The Chancellor, George Osborne, has been quick to claim the tax deal that HMRC reached with Google is a major success  fruit of the Tory governments determination to get tough on multinationals ducking their taxes by shifting profits round the globe.

In the cold light of day, coaxing 130m in back payments out of Google over a period of 10 years looks less impressive. Indeed, it smacks of more than a little desperation on the part of HMRC and the Treasury to come up with some kind of figure that it can claim it squeezed out of a terrified giant. After all, this is no high-street chain but a global corporation with an annual turnover of about 40bn, around 10 per cent of which is generated in the UK. However you tot up the profit margins, Google seems to have emerged remarkably lightly compared to ordinary taxpayers. The fact that we also have no idea how this figure was reached vindicates the demand of the shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, for the National Audit Office to look at how it came about. There is a distinct lack of transparency here.

No one doubts that getting cash out of the multinationals is tough  and the aggrieved tone that Mr Osborne has adopted in response to Labours criticism suggests he genuinely believes he did well in getting any back money out of Google at all. These giants excel at avoiding tax and  whatever their appealing-sounding mantras about saving and uniting the world  are utterly unscrupulous when it comes to going about it. Facebook has long channelled most of its profits, wherever they are generated, first to Ireland and then on to tax havens such as the Cayman Islands in the form of royalties.

What is just as inexcusable as these companies behaviour is the way governments in Europe have relentlessly undercut each other when it comes to taxing multinationals, competing to cut so-called sweetheart deals with the giants in order to lure them to their own turf. Starbucks has benefited from one such cosy deal on tax levels with The Netherlands since 2008. Fiat reached a similar arrangement in 2012 with Luxembourg, a notorious offender on the tax front and home, among others, to Amazon. It is thanks largely to these and other arrangements that Google was able innocently to tell the US Senate last year that, if it paid a derisory figure on its profits, it was because of the way the global tax system is working.

Life may be getting a little tougher for the accounting wizards shuffling profits round the world on behalf of the multinationals, however. This is not down to Mr Osbornes efforts so much as those of the EU competition authorities who for some years have been taking a closer look at the arrangements used by Amazon and Fiat in Luxembourg, Apple in Ireland and Starbucks in Holland.

Last October, the Competition Commissioner, Denmarks Margrethe Vestager, ordered the Dutch to recover an extra 20m to 30m (15m to 23m) from Starbucks and told Luxembourg to extract a similar figure from Fiat. The figures sound symbolic but the rulings are still an important first blow struck at the system of profit-shielding. Six months earlier, the EU unveiled another reform, the Tax Transparency Package, which obliges all member states to exchange information on tax deals they reach with multinationals every three months.

From that perspective, there must be concern that Britain is undermining the Europe-wide drive to get these giants to pay more in tax by unilaterally cutting yet another mysterious-looking deal. Mr Osbornes victory talk will sound more plausible once Britain and its European partners resist the temptation individually to reach such agreements in favour of a Europe-wide approach based on transparency in tax affairs. Then, the giants really will have cause to worry.
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It has been almost 10 months since the war started. On 26 March a coalition of states led by Saudi Arabia launched a joint military campaign in Yemen. A campaign that many, including me, only learned of hours after being knocked out of bed by earthshaking explosions from surprise airstrikes in Sanaa.

The airstrikes have lasted 44 weeks now. I expected to be desensitised, grow numb and lose track of things after months of war. But my sense of time wasnt one. There are battles, bombs dropping, buildings collapsing, people screaming in the chaos of a raging war. Time is gradually lost because everyday life as we know it has almost come to a stop. Our city is slowly being choked to death.

When schools, businesses, and most other institutions shut for months, days are all the same. It no longer matters what day it is when your sole focus is survival. You still need water, food and shelter.

You adopt a new dynamic  War oclock  where you track hours and days according to the amount of time it takes to secure basic life-sustaining necessities.

By last Wednesday it had been 300 days of war. That was 7,200 long hours queuing for petrol, food and water. Surviving the eternity of one hour at a time with the false hope that your misery wont be extended by another. That was 432,000 minutes, many spent praying for self and loved ones not to be killed by a bomb, shell or stray bullet. Praying that you will be able to secure the necessities of life. Praying that war is over soon. Praying that your prayers will be answered.

That was 25,920,000 seconds. Seconds you and your children held your breaths during airstrikes and shelling. Seconds where your hearts skipped beats when the whooshing sound of a projectile was followed by an explosion. We have, luckily, survived. For now.

Hisham al-Omeisy is a Yemeni political analyst
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Just over six months ago, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, told the armed forces that they needed to speed up the promotion of members of ethnic minorities. The campaign does not seem to have got far.

New data show that as Britain becomes ethnically ever more diverse, the officer class is going in the opposite direction. The number of non-whites in senior posts has fallen from 750 in 2009 to 630, with no sign of the promised about-turn. The proportion of non-white officers in the Army, Navy and Air Force combined stands at an embarrassing 2.3 per cent, down from 2.5 per cent in 2009.

To be fair to Mr Fallon, he has laid down that by 2020 at least 10 per cent of all new joiners must come from a non-white background.

Recommended Read more Military officer class becoming whiter despite calls for BAME recruits

The problem is that recruitment of non-whites has been neglected for so long that it could be years before the pool of ethnic minority troops is large enough to make it practical to promote more of them. The Army is least at fault here; about 9.4 per cent of its personnel come from ethnic minorities. But matters are very different in the still lily-white Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, where the figures are 3.4 and 2.1 per cent respectively.

Possibly, members of some communities feel averse to joining the military and will not sign up however welcome they are made. Britains military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have all been unpopular among British Muslims and may well have created an antipathy to the armed forces among many who would not otherwise see themselves as radical. Such barriers will be hard to overcome, but the effort must be made. The armed forces will be that much more effective if they properly reflect the country they serve.
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If theres one thing that David Cameron needs to learn from the buffoon Donald Trump, it is to be honest about religious profiling in the fight against extremism.

Whilst the Donald states publicly that he believes that Muslims should be targeted as they are more predisposed to terrorism, a view rightly ridiculed by many politicians at home, the British government has thus far maintained the position that it is not targeting Muslims. It argues that it is fighting all forms of extremism  whoever it comes from, and regardless of faith.

Yet this pretence was left in tatters after a series of statements this week by ministers on the topic, tacitly admitting the targeting of Muslims, whilst retaining the facade of faith neutrality.

On Channel 4 News, when asked if recent and rapid conversion to a new religion, one of the warning signs of radicalisation list on the new government sponsored website, applied to young children converting to Christianity, the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan replied: No, of course not. Mrs Morgan clearly acknowledges that the language of the site was actually targeted at converts to Islam and was not intended to be faith-neutral in its scope.

Similarly, the Prime Minister denied the claim by Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw that the out-of-school education settings proposal will be used to regulate Christian groups and Sunday schools as well as Muslim madrasahs. His reasoning was that the faith-neutral language in the proposal specifically targeted schools providing education for at least six to eight hours a week, which would exclude Sunday schools.

When asking why Northern Ireland (which like the broader international threat has an MI5 threat rating of severe) was not included in the counter-extremism strategy, Gavin Robinson MP claimed he was told by a government official, I assume on the condition of anonymity: Dont push the issue too far. It is really a counter-Islamic strategy.

This view of the government targeting Muslims in particular, is also supported in how the governments documented Counter-Extremism Strategy targets Sharia courts  but not Jewish Beth Din courts, which work in a remarkably similar way.

Even in counter-terrorism prosecutions, there are fears that Muslims have been targeted. For example, EDL member Ryan McGee received a two year sentence and avoided a terror charge after building a workable nail bomb as he was not a terrorist but an immature teenager, yet Runa Khan charged with promoting terrorism on Facebook was sentenced to six years and Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed received 12 years apiece after returning from Syria.

This perception has been supported by government rhetoric, including for example, when the Prime Minister claimed that Muslim communities quietly condone Isis. Such inflammatory language is also found in the Prime Ministers Munich speech on radicalisation and Islamic extremism and Lord Chancellor Michael Goves Celsius 7/7.

Taken together, one cannot help but feel that this is less to do with tackling the terrorist threat and more to do with meeting the insatiable demands of the moral panic against Muslims generated in some sections of the media.

The government has previously argued that such accusations of targeting Muslims do not paint a fair picture of their approach. Ministers point to the faith-neutral language of the terrorism legislation and how neo-Nazis as well as Islamists are targeted, a claim they justify using figures which show a small proportion of Prevent cases are from far-right groups. The stock response to the burgeoning number of cases of young Muslim children at schools being referred to counter-radicalisation teams for often spurious reasons is that it is merely a problem of poor training and implementation.

But this position is no longer tenable. It is now clear that it is not just the implementation of the law which causes a perception that Muslims are being targeted  it is the very intent of the legislation itself, as Nicky Morgan and the Prime Minister divulged this week.

The government now needs to be honest and explicitly admit it is intentionally targeting Muslims. It can then try and justify its position, not only with public opinion but also with the courts who are likely to have something to say on an issue of explicit discrimination. To abide by the Human Rights Act, for example, the government would have to provide the objective or reasonable reason why it is discriminating (Article 14), demonstrating why it is necessary and proportionate given the impact on freedom of religion (Article 9). Failure to do so leaves the government open to a judicial review, the culmination of which could result in the legislation itself being declared unlawful.

Theres little doubt counter-extremism policy will be at the heart of national debate over the coming years. My hope is that David Cameron will remove this pretence of non-discrimination once and for all so the issue can be publicly debated and its legality understood once and for all  but Im not holding my breath.



@miqdaad
Members of the Garda sub aqua unit at the Grand Canal in Fonthill, Dublin

Suspected body parts have been discovered by gardai investigating the murder of a 33-year-old man.

Kenneth O'Brien was reported missing on Friday January 15, a few weeks after returning from Australia, and his torso was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal near Celbridge, Co Kildare, the following day.

Gardai said " potential evidential items" had been found in different locations along the canal.

"These items need to be forensically examined before any definitive conclusions can be made in respect of their evidential value," the Garda press office said.

It is believed one bag with human limbs was recovered from the water near Sallins in Co Kildare and a second bag in the Fonthill area of Dublin.

Mr O'Brien, who had a partner and was a father, was last seen early on January 15 when he left his home on the Lealand Road in Clondalkin, saying he was going to work.

He was identified using DNA analysis after his killers decapitated him and cut off his arms, hands and feet.

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 O'Brien was murdered elsewhere.
Clickandgo.com has won the Irish Travel Industry Award for Most Innovative Marketing Campaign in 2015, for its "1 deposit" offer.

The five-year-old, Irish-owned business, whose chief executive is Paul Hackett, estimates the business will sell approximately 50,000 holidays in 2016, making it the fastest growing holiday company in Ireland.

Pictured above, left to right, are president of the Irish Travel Agents Association Martin Kelly, ClickandGo.com chief executive Paul Hackett and American Airlines country manager Caitriona Toner.

The winning campaign allows customers to reserve flights, accommodation and transfers for a holiday anywhere in Europe or the Canaries, with just a 1 deposit.

Established in 2010, ClickandGo employs 30 people in its Dublin office and is also the official holiday partner to Aer Lingus. "We obsess about making it easy to book on our site or over the phone with ClickandGo and making the payment easier was the next logical step," said Mr Hackett. "We have doubled the size of our business since we introduced the 1 holiday deposit, so it definitely deserves this award! It was a significant commercial risk to the business, but we wanted to make it easy for customers to buy our holidays and to stagger payments."

The Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) is reporting an unprecedented level of booking enquires to its member agents in the first few weeks of 2016.
The front page of this morning's Irish Independent business section

Here are the business stories you need to know about this morning:

Irish Independent

*The wholesale price of gas fell another 4pc in January and is now 29pc lower in comparison with January 2015, according to the latest business energy report from gas and electricity supplier Vayu Energy.

Strong supplies, mild weather conditions this winter and a healthy storage outlook have all pushed the wholesale price of gas down.

This in turn has pushed down the wholesale cost of electricity. The average January wholesale price of electricity in the Irish market is down 1.2pc on December and 18pc compared with January 2015.

*Global insurance firms are circling Iran for business opportunities following the lifting of sanctions - and the first test of their appetite could come in March when some Iranian companies seek new cover.

Insurers, the reinsurers that share their risk and the brokers that forge deals are exploring ways to tap a market worth $7.4bn (6.9bn) in premiums after a nuclear accord between world powers and Tehran led to the removal of restrictions on financial dealings with Iran this month.

Allianz, Zurich Insurance, Hannover Re and RSA said in recent days that they would evaluate potential opportunities in the country.

*Members of family-owned property group Rohan Holdings enjoyed a dividend windfall of 2.4m in 2014.

The 2.4m dividend pay-out in 2014 follows dividend payouts of 3.25m in 2013 and 1.1m in 2012.

The group's developments include Grand Canal Plaza in Dublin City Centre.

The Irish Times

*Google won't pay as much tax to the Irish exchequer after it reached a settlement with the UK tax authorities.

Britain had been investigating the internet giant's arrangements since 2009, and Google has now agreed to a one-off payment of 130m, and to pay higher taxes to the UK in future.

The extent to which Google's Irish tax payment will be reduced remains unclear.

*Air passenger numbers between Dublin and London rose 9pc in 2015 - underscoring the route's position as one of the world's busiest international routes.

Nearly 4.5 million people flew between the two capitals - making it the second busiest international route after Hong Kong-Taipei.

*Tech firm VT Networks has raised 1.2m to roll out Ireland's first internet of things network.

Suretank founder Patrick Joy is among the investors in the company.

The network will enable objects to be connected to each other anywhere in the country, VT Networks founder Mark Bannon said.

Irish Examiner

*Irish small and medium businesses are paying more than twice the average rate for credit in the Eurozone, according to ECB data.

The average rate on SME loans of 250,000 or less is 6.56pc - more than one percentage point greater than in the next most expensive country.

French SMEs have the cheapest average rate at 2.28pc.

*The European Commission has pressed the United States to make a decision on a licence application on which the first transatlantic flights out of Cork hinge.

Norwegian Air International wants to launch flights out of the city in 2017.

But the licence has not been granted over a year after Norwegian's application.

*China and Iran have outlined a 25-year plan to expand trade and improve relations.

Chinese president Xi Jinping met his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani at the weekend, a week after sanctions on Iran relating to its nuclear programme were lifted.

Iran is looking to attract $50bn in foreign investment a year to boost its ailing economy.
Some 160 jobs are to be created with the expansion of companies in Galway and Cork.

Some 100 new jobs have been announced for Galway after two technology companies announced their plans for merger and expansion.

Galway based companies Ice Cube and Tec support, made the announcement this morning. The 100 new jobs will be created over the next three years.

The expansion will see the companies open the third office in early Spring, with immediate recruitment for this posts.

It will also include strategic acquisitions and planned growth at international and national level.

The companies this morning unveiled the umbrella brand for their newly merged status: Intuity.

At the announcement, Gerard Cox, CEO said the past year had been an exciting time.

Together, ice cube and tec support now form Intuity  one larger stronger business delivering intuitive 360 solutions with added value to our clients. We are looking forward to a busy 2016, with a number of strategic acquisitions already identified, key international partners in place and the addition of a third office here in Ireland planned for the coming months, he said.

The IT companies currently have over 50 staff.

Ice cube provides software solutions, IT consultancy and support primarily to the Credit Union, Marts and Quarry Industries for over 40 years. Tec support is an IT support and maintenance business delivering IT consultancy and project management across myriad business sectors nationwide for almost a decade.

Hortonworks, the the Santa Clara-headquartered data firm, is to add 50 new jobs at its Cork base.

The move is the latest sign of international growth following recent openings in London and Sydney while new jobs will become available in a range of sectors including tech support, finance, HR, marketing, IT and operations backgrounds

Hortonworks' Cork office will provide space for an expanded global technical support team for its more than 800 customers as well as space for other operational professionals.

"Our presence in Ireland is yet another step towards making Open Data Platforms as widely available as possible," said Andy Leaver, vice president of international operations, Hortonworks.

"Hortonworks will also be working towards the recruitment of up to 50 new employees for our new Cork facilities to continue to meet the significant uptake in Hadoop across Ireland and the rest of Europe.""Our presence in Ireland is yet another step towards making Open Data Platforms as widely available as possible," said Andy Leaver, vice president of international operations, Hortonworks. "Hortonworks will also be working towards the recruitment of up to 50 new employees for our new Cork facilities to continue to meet the significant uptake in Hadoop across Ireland and the rest of Europe."

In addition, another technology company - Fortuity - is to double in size by taking on 10 staff at its offices at Carrigtwohill in Co Cork.

It is a cloud and data analytics firm.
'Im a terrible photographer, admits Marne Levine, the boss of Instagram. I feel all this pressure to post, but my photos just arent that great.

She may lack photographic talent, but Levine runs the most powerful visual social network in the world. The fast-growing company, based in Menlo Park outside San Francisco, now has 400m users worldwide.

This month, she celebrates a year as chief operating officer. Under her stewardship, the company has ramped up its revenues, rolling out its advertising platform across 200 countries last September.

By 2017, Instagrams global mobile ad revenues will reach $2.81bn. It is still a minnow compared to parent company Facebook, which turns over $4.5bn in three months.

Nevertheless, Instagram is now growing faster than its owner. Facebook has grown its monthly active users by 50pc to 1.5bn in the three years since it acquired Instagram from founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger for a cool $1bn. But Instagrams user base has quadrupled over the same period.

Commentators said at the time of the deal that it was a classic example of keeping friends close but enemies closer. However, Facebook claimed that the two businesses would be run as separate entities. Thats already begun to change, Levine reveals. Weve integrated with Facebooks system, she says. We use its self-serve auction platform for our ads.

Facebook was the only social network to experience a decline in the rate of people actively using the site each month in 2014, according to GlobalWebIndex research, but Levine is keen to dodge any suggestion that Instagram might be cannibalising Facebooks users.

People come to Instagram for a specific reason, she says. They come to experience the world through imagery.

When Levine doesnt want to respond to a question, shell change the subject or deny knowledge of the issue. One example: have the recent Twitter outages driven users to Instagram? I dont know, because Im paying attention to Instagram.

She no doubt picked up this tactic as a policy wonk in the White House, working for Bill Clinton and later for the Obama administration. This is how she landed a job at Facebook, as the social giants global policy head.

She keeps her finger on the political pulse now, for good reason. Political candidates have embraced Instagram as a way to show other sides of themselves and connect with voters, she says. Its not enough to say where they are on issues, people want to know what they had for breakfast, what they do before they go on stage for a debate.

Could Instagram follower numbers be an indication of a candidates chances of winning the presidency? Donald Trump has 900,000 followers to Hillary Clintons 710,00 and Jeb Bushs 50,000. This election will be the most visual election weve had to date, says Levine.

She may have been in the tech industry just five years, but Levine is being hailed as the new Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer and author of the hit business book Lean In, which boasts a linked charitable organisation, of which Levine is a director.

In 2013, just 26pc of tech jobs in the US were held by women, down from 35pc in 1990, according to the American Association of University Women. On being a rare woman at the top in tech, Levine says: I feel really fortunate to have this experience. Its been fantastic and my hope is that well get lots more women working in Instagram.

The world of technology offers women the opportunity to have so many interesting careers. I joined Facebook to lead global policy after a career in government.

If seeing me in my role can encourage other women to think more broadly about the opportunities available to them, then thats fantastic.

Around 75pc of Instagrams users are based outside the US and Levine is on the last leg of her whistlestop tour of Germany and the UK, where she is preaching the gospel of Instagram to Europes small businesses.

This is the new sweet spot for the company, she reveals. Businesses have always been part of the Instagram community but when we first launched ads, it was only to a handful of big brands, Levine says. Small companies used it to grow their businesses organically but this is the first time ads have been available to them.

Instagram used to be a shop window where you could admire products but never buy, she explains.

Shes preaching to the converted in many cases. We were desperate to try Instagram advertising when we heard it was coming out, says Aron Gelbard, founder of London flower delivery firm Bloom & Wild.

Instagram is the network we invest most in as a visual brand. When we trialled an ad, we acquired thousands of customers, although its relatively expensive. If it were cheaper wed do more.

Instagram has 14m users in the UK and the increasing popularity of the app in far-flung places has proved tricky for the company, which still employs only 300 people. Its been a little challenging, Levine says. There are people in the Middle East, for example, who are loving Instagram and I want my team to have the resources to serve that community. Its a challenge to move fast enough with so few people.

Facebook isnt sharing too much of its 5bn cash pile with its stablemate. Were limited by the size of our team, admits Levine.

Over the next year, Levine is focusing on launching more tools to help users tell their stories.

Boomerang, which Instagram launched late last year, allows users to make one-second videos. It was number one in the App Store for more than 70 countries, Levine says. The line between photo and video is blurring and people are using motion more and more. We need to give them those tools. Levine claims that there is a significant overlap between her roles at Instagram and in government.

Working in government was a chance to be mission-driven and use policy to make peoples lives better, she says. What I hear about Instagram is that it is also making peoples lives better. Thats a big deal.

Would she ever consider returning to politics? I wake up every day excited and daunted by all we have to do here at Instagram, she replies.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Metal Gear Solid fella Hideo Kojima is out on his own after the Konami debacle and working with Sony playstation on something exciting

Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Pain was a pretty wonderful game in every way imaginable but the behind the scenes issues were far less positive. Creator and game director Hideo Kojima was marginalised towards the end of development and eventually severed ties with publisher Konami. We may never know exactly what happened but it seems all but certain that he won't work on an MGS title again.

On a happier note, that leaves the veteran game maker with the freedom to pursue other projects with different companies, and he's hitched his wagon to Sony PlayStation for the time being. We still don't know exactly what project he's going to work on but he's certainly getting around, with the latest photo suggesting it could be something in the realm of Virtual Reality.

PS4 architect Mark Cerny posted this photo to Twitter of Kojima getting to grips with the PlayStation VR headset and dual PS Move controllers. There's a lot of concentraion going on.

Visiting London VR team. Blurred out part of photo is the plan for their next VR experience -- sorry! January 25, 2016

The boards behind them are maybe even more interesting, as they've been blurred out to hide some sensitive material. Of course we have no way of knowing if Kojima is working on a VR project or if he was just around for a presentation, but the possibilities are very exciting.
Global insurance firms are circling Iran for business opportunities following the lifting of sanctions - and the first test of their appetite could come in March when some Iranian companies seek new cover.

Insurers, the reinsurers that share their risk and the brokers that forge deals are exploring ways to tap a market worth $7.4bn (6.9bn) in premiums after a nuclear accord between world powers and Tehran led to the removal of restrictions on financial dealings with Iran this month.

Allianz, Zurich Insurance, Hannover Re and RSA said in recent days that they would evaluate potential opportunities in the country.

Insurance and reinsurance specialists regard the marine and energy sectors as among those offering the best opportunities in oil-producing Iran.

Alongside commercial cover, life insurance is a potential growth area as it represents less than a tenth of overall Iranian premiums, compared with more than half globally.

At first, international companies are likely to link up with Iranian firms to capitalise on their local knowledge and to reinsure local insurance in the international market, according to industry experts, with international brokers helping foreign firms get that business.

However, despite the lifting of sanctions, hurdles still remain which are making companies cautious about a speedy entry.

The US curbs still in place exclude American nationals, banks and insurance industry players from trading with Iran, including dollar business, so concerns remain on whether other foreign insurers can transact without the risk of penalties.
When Apple chief executive Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs four years ago, he probably had in his head a bunch of priorities for his time heading the company.

We can hazard a guess at what those priorities might have been: come up with a new product to help him escape the legacy of Mr Jobs, get a much stronger foothold in China, and make Apple's platform more secure in the face of snooping by the US government and other organisations.

In all three cases, mission accomplished.

Apart from keeping an eye on the operation in Cork, our Emerald Isle was probably not on his list of "big things".

That has changed drastically, however. With the EU investigating Apple's tax arrangements, there is now the very real possibility that the tech behemoth will have to pay out 17bn in back taxes to an Irish government that really, really, does not want them. It may seem bizarre, and it is, but as the EU's investigation of Apple's tax arrangements here draws closer to a conclusion, it is becoming a very real possibility.

Last Thursday, Mr Cook flew into Brussels to meet the EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, apparently to discuss the investigation. Details of the meeting were not disclosed, but we may get an update from Mr Cook when his company unveils its results for its first quarter on Tuesday.

Strange as it may seem, there seems to be an air of gloom around Apple at present. For all the hype, the Apple Watch has yet to take off while there is a sense among analysts that the iPhone 6S is struggling compared to previous versions of the device.

A note last week from UBS discussed the problem Apple faces. In essence, the bank believes the 6S has not differentiated itself enough from its predecessor. As a result, more buyers are choosing the 6, which is now a lot cheaper but delivers close to the same performance of the 6S.

Another issue is the MacBook, which was launched earlier this year. The 12-inch notebook is revolutionary in some ways but is almost ahead of its time. With only a single USB-C port, it is akin to the concept cars displayed at motor shows. Beautiful to look at but not realistic for the ordinary person on the street.

Apple remains a giant of a company, but Mr Cook will be under pressure to deliver some unexpected good news on Tuesday.

Tim Cook
Metro AG is a German wholesale and retail foods giant, which proves if there is the energy, determination and an accommodating bank manager, no amount of growth or global scale is impossible.

Though scarcely more than 50 years in existence, it has powered along during that half century, earning its status among the legendary retailers such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco.

And while it is challenged by the many eddies of shifting power in global retail, it has proven itself as an effective deal-maker which will stand it in good stead. Based in Dusseldorf, it employs over 200,000 staff around the world, with global sales of 59bn.

The company focuses on cash and carry shops, supermarkets and consumer electronics. Up to recently it also owned Galeria Kaufhof, the department store chain that was a symbol of the post-reunification changes in Berlin in the 1990s. Last summer it was sold to the Canadian giant, Hudson's Bay Company. The company is the oldest company in North America with roots back to the fur trade. It is also making its first foray into the European market where it is anxious to introduce its Saks Fifth Avenue brands.

Metro was able to pocket 2.2bn as part of the deal and the market quite liked to see the company's debt alleviated in this way.

At the moment Metro is restructuring as it attempts to transform itself amid the changing business conditions, as technology and low cost competition challenges. Its home market in Germany is its largest, with sales of 23bn, or 38pc of total sales. Sales outside Germany amount to 36bn of which Western Europe accounts for almost half. It generates sales of 4bn in Asia-Africa and is hanging in there despite seeing Carrefour and Tesco beat a retreat from these markets.

Metro's cash and carry business, with sales of 30bn and 760 outlets, is the company's most important division, accounting for almost half of group sales.

However, sales in the cash and carry business declined last year, as did earnings, largely due to the negative currency effects in Russia. Political tensions have also forced the company to shelve its plans for a stock listing of its Russian cash and carry business. Metro is one of Europe's biggest retailers of consumer electronics through its Media Markt and Saturn chains, having 1,000 stores in 15 countries.

Sales last year increased to 22bn and with earnings improving, thanks to the company's cost reduction programme.

Like most retailers in this sector in the developed world, Metro is in the process of a transformation from bricks and mortar to a multi-distribution operation.

Interestingly, internet sales jumped 20pc and now stand at 1.8bn, or 8pc of Media-Saturn sales. However, it faces formidable competition not just from Amazon but from big German mail order companies like Neckurman.

The company's food division has 300 supermarkets and hypermarkets. Unfortunately this is not an attractive space as it's under severe pressure from the low-cost retailers, Aldi and Lidl, as well as internet shopping and convenience stores.

Sales plunged 8pc last year to 7.7bn and earnings hit 88m. It is no surprise the number of outlets declined last year.

Revenue for 2015 fiscal year fell 1pc to 59bn and while the company admits to 'challenging' conditions, investors once again loved to see the dividends rise. The share price is just up from its yearly low of 25 but way off its 10-year high of 65 back in 2007. While Metro sales have held up, its shares have lost half of its value in the last five years.

The company is currently valued at 8bn and its latest figures saw earnings at 435m above analysts' expectations. The group debt, which was much alleviated by the judicious sale of the Galleria Kaufhof chain, still has a considerable 2.5bn worth of borrowings nestling in its balance sheet. Many investors would rightly be wary of this sector and I can understand why.

Nothing in this section should be taken as a recommendation, either explicit or implicit to buy any of the shares mentioned.
YouTube star Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, who has become the fastest selling debut novelist since records began, outselling the likes of JK Rowling and Dan Brown.

pictured at the launch of Clayton Hotels Vitality Breakfast hosted by top Irish model and food blogger Roz Purcell. The breakfast event was organised by the hotel brand as they launch as the newest name in hospitality in Ireland and the UK. Picture Andres Poveda

The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland is releasing guidelines to align Ireland's blogging standards with the UK and the US.

The ASAI revealed that they are cracking down on bloggers talking about a product without disclosing any sponsorship that might be involved.

The rules follow those introduced in the UK two years ago, after complaints were made about a number of videos made by popular vloggers that were not disclosed as paid advertisements.

Chief Executive Orla Twomey told the Sunday Business Post that bloggers must adhere to the rules, which apply to "all media".

"The ASAI code requires advertisers not to mislead consumers, not to offend them, make sure advertising is truthful and that consumers know when theyre receiving marketing material".

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"As digital and online develop, new people come into those industries that do not have a background in traditional media and the understanding that codes apply. Its not that we are reinventing the rules, because the rules apply to all media".

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If a blogger has worked with a brand or advertiser around a piece of content, this needs to be clear 'from the start' of the piece of content. This means bloggers must reveal this at the beginning of a blog post or video and use the #sponsored or #ad hashtags on social media. In the UK, the word 'Ad' must be included in the title of the blog or video.

One notable exception is in the event of a blogger receiving no payment but free product from a brand or advertiser. As no money has changed hands, the blogger is not required to flag any ensuing content as 'marketing communications'.

The ASAI plan to work with a number of groups to ensure that bloggers understand their responsibilities online.

Where the body discovers 'incorrectly labelled marketing communications', the blogger will be required to remove or amend the content. If they refuse, the ASAI will hold a formal investigation which will go in front of the complaints committee.

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Twomey explained that the ASAI expect brands to uphold the code.

"The majority of brands set out to be responsible. They want to be code-compliant and they dont want to be at the end of an upheld adjudication that they have misled their consumers".

The new edition of the code of standards - the seventh edition - will come into effect in March 2016.
A refreshing alternative to the stack of 1916 centenary publications on the Irish market is 1956, The World in Revolt by Simon Hall. It's not a year that features prominently in the Irish calendar - in 1956 it was barely 20 years since a referendum approved the Constitution, with its aspirations for nationhood and goodwill to all men, in which we replaced the imperial neighbour with the clergy as god of all things.

Elsewhere in 1956, movements of disenfranchised people gathered in streets and city squares, spearheading protests against totalitarianism. It was post-war Europe and pre-moon America. Hall's historic survey is necessarily chronological; starting in January in Montgomery, Alabama, and the bomb assault on the home of Martin Luther King.

At this time the US was the most powerful country in the world; consumerism had surged in the post-war boom, pandering to a new, suburban middle class. But millions of others lived as second-class citizens, cut off from prosperity and oppressed beneath white supremacy.

Hall handles this period with a very engaging narrative, honing in on the greater impact of local events, a device he carries through each chapter. In February he charts the uprisings against the French in Algeria and the condemnation of Stalin by Khrushchev in his four-hour speech 'On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences'. The ensuing riots with thousands jailed for "crimes against the state" in hindsight proved to exact a far higher cost on the Soviet Union's European empire.

In March 1956, Hall takes us back to the American South where violence has broken out over desegregation at the University of Alabama and the new Massive Resistance movement develops. Still to come were the two events that most Europeans consider the defining moments of 1956: the Suez crisis and the doomed Hungarian uprising. Those students resisting Soviet oppression in Budapest, who may have been inspired by Khrushchev's "secret speech", saw their fight aligned with that waged by their Polish counterparts in Poznan.

This is a vivid history written with the benefit of TV footage, interpreted through a broad analysis of memoirs and contemporary journalism. There is texture and depth, rarely found in such a sweeping survey of our times. While there is little hitherto unknown about this year in history, the novelty is in the way Hall lays it out.

I believe that the literature of a given period best reflects the rhythm of discontent. Fittingly, Hall has included Allen Ginsberg's masterpiece, Howl, published that year. The epic poem marks the birth of the Beat generation and 1960s counterculture.

Hall's emphasis is on social history - and there are other creative events of the period that link it closer to the present. Ian Fleming's Diamonds are Forever was published in 1956, Arthur Miller's View from the Bridge and our own Hugh Leonard's The Big Birthday. Hall also discusses Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and the emergence of the 'Angry Young Men'. Even more resonant today is the music born in 1956, when the pulsating rhythms of Fats Domino and Elvis Presley set off rock'n'roll riots. The new freedom of expression in dance and movement gave birth to the adolescent, a new psychological age between childhood and adulthood that had been traversed without question until the wars - 1956 was all about questions.

The author is a lecturer in American history at the University of Leeds, and sees 1956 as the year "that would transform the post-war world".

The unsettled but collective will of peoples in Africa, America, western Europe and the Soviet bloc unshackled itself from the will of political masters, always ending in bloodshed, more often resulting in a further degree of autonomy. Much of it is a sad reminder that thousands are still crossing seas in search of freedom and safety.

The book is an essential reference point for contemporary racial violence and police brutality in the US. It even highlights the relatively short distance we have come in the quest for female equality today. It proves that in many ways we have not come that far, yet in other innovations we have surpassed the wildest imaginings of the time, other than that dreamed of by of Alan Turing, who died in 1954, and Steve Jobs, who was born in 1955.

Hall's book is a welcome tribute to heroes and heroines of all faiths who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of others.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. The statement made by the OSCE MG is the defeat of the Azerbaijani diplomacy, political scientist Gagik Hambaryan told Armenpress when commenting on the OSCE MGs statement ahead of the anti-Armenian resolutions to be discussed at PACE. According to him, the co-chairs clearly showed the response to which Azerbaijani attempts of moving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict to other platforms may lead.

PACE must consider the OSCE MGs statement. The co-chairs have understood that the structure in question has no powers of making statements connected with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. It was also emphasized that adoption of resolutions would greatly harm the negotiation process. The Armenian party, the Armenian diplomacy must give impetus to this statement, Gagik Hambaryan said.

The political scientist also noted that the statement by the MG co-chairs must influence the upcoming discussion of the anti-Armenian resolutions at PACE.

As Gagik Hambaryan points out, the statement by the OSCE MG has a great significance ahead of anti-Armenian resolutions to be discussed at PACE on January 26. He added that the Azerbaijani party already showed hysterical behavior expressing its discontent with the co-chairs statement.

The co-chairs statement shows that all the efforts of Azerbaijan to transfer the Nagorno Karabakh issue to other platforms will fail, Hambaryan concluded.
Emily Maitlis, the Newsnight presenter, has disclosed how a BBC manager once told her that she would need to appear on Strictly Come Dancing if she wanted her career to progress.

The 45-year-old British journalist, who also presents bulletins for BBC One and the BBC News Channel, said she thought the unnamed executive was joking, but soon realised he was deadly serious.

Maitlis has spoken openly about experiencing sexism and ageism in journalism and said she often struggled to be taken seriously.

When she joined Newsnight in 2006, the Cambridge-gradate was criticised by viewers for flashing her legs and giving out all the wrong messages" while veteran broadcasters complained that it as one more example of the rise of the autocutie.

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The former BBC Director-General, Mark Thompson, was accused of sexism after using her as an example of the corporation providing political reporting opportunities for older women, when Maitlis was just 40.

But when asked by the Mail on Sunday what the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, she replied: A BBC manager once said that  as a woman  if I wanted my career to go to the next step I would have to do Strictly Come Dancing. I thought he was joking. He wasnt.

In 2006, Maitlis said she would never appear on reality television but in 2011 was persuaded to take part in a charity pastiche of Strictly to raise money for Children In Need. By that time, Fiona Bruce and Natasha Kaplinsky had already taken to the floor and Maitlis said she had nothing to prove.

#But she says women still have to fight to be taken as seriously as men.

Speaking to the National Union of Students last year she said: A woman can ask the same question and a man will be called robust and a woman will be called shrill.

There is still a perception as an interviewer that you have to be politer, you have to know when to stop and I think quite often a mans good work is recognised much more easily than a womans.

Men are much better at saying look at this, look at this, I did this and women wait for other people to notice it.

But she has admitted that her good looks are an advantage.

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"If two people go for the same TV job and they're both journalists but one looks better, of course you're going to give the job to the better-looking one, she added.

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Cast members Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny pose at a premiere for "The X-Files" at California Science Center in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Reuters

While Ireland might be well known for leprechauns, another variety of little green men have also captured the imagination of many across the country.

A cloudy and rainy island on the edge of Europe may not seem like the best place for flying saucers, but UFO spotters (or Ufologists) believe Ireland has not been exempt from encounters with beings from other planets.

And believers hope the return of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in a brand new season of 'The X-Files' could rekindle interest in visiting spacecraft.

Yvonne McConnell, a member of the Northern Ireland UFO Society, said she hopes the return of the iconic American series will draw more attention to otherworldly phenomena.

"You had Mulder and Scully, and the amount of coverage it got was huge," she said.

"We think anything that brings people into it and creates awareness is great.

"We are very serious about Ufology, but we are hoping 'The X-Files' gets more people in to it - or even gets them looking up at the sky," she said.

She told the Irish Independent that the society has been holding UFO-watching tours, but is now trying to get a database to collate all sighting reports in once place.

"There's no cross-referencing of data - so, in that case, it's very hard to place anything that's reported," she added.

"It should be treated like all investigations - and this is an investigation."

While Yvonne acknowledges that sightings have been scarce recently, numerous reports of close encounters exist online.

In 1997, UK newspaper 'The People' reported that a group of British SAS troops allegedly met some extra terrestrials while on an assignment in south Armagh some years earlier.

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The soldiers were planning to ambush IRA gunmen on a hillside at night, but their mission was said to be thwarted by "up to four small grey figures" who appeared in front of them.

The article says the figures approached the undercover soldiers on a hillside in 1993, stood facing them for one minute, and then disappeared.

In 2008, a senior garda said he filmed unusual light formations in the sky above Dunboyne, Co Meath.

Meanwhile, UFOinfo.com received nine reports of sightings in Ireland in 2014. According to the international website's statistics, 2009 and 2010 were the biggest years for sightings, with 40 and 70 reports respectively.

However, the UK's National Archive, which stores some correspondence of UFO activity in the UK, notes a similar spike in British sightings in 2009 could have been due to a Chinese lantern fad at the time.

It comes as the UK's Ministry of Defence said it planned to release confidential UFO files by March this year.

Meanwhile, the German government was ordered by a court to release its files on extra-terrestrial incidents last year.

In Ireland, however, the Department of Defence said it did not maintain a file on UFO sightings and has not done so since 1984.

Just five Freedom of Information requests have been sent to the department on the topic, but all have been refused. The reason given for all five refusals was that "records do not exist".

Meanwhile, the Irish Aviation Authority stated it had never received any reports relating to unidentified objects spotted in Irish airspace.

'The X-Files' begins on RTE 2 at 9.55pm tomorrow.
A married Kerry father who intimidated a sex worker into withdrawing criminal allegations against him has been sentenced to three years with the last 18 months suspended.

The 40-year-old man sent the woman texts messages and emails calling her a whore, and threatening to tell her family and neighbours that she was a prostitute if the charges were not dropped.

A character witness described the offender as a straight and decent man who he was prepared to stand by him.

After a six day trial last December a jury found the man guilty of two counts of threatening or putting in fear a witness in a garda investigation on dates between April 29 and May 28, 2010.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to the charges.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy previously adjourned the sentence having heard evidence.

He said he couldn't ignore the seriousness of offences of this kind which undermine the administration of justice while also noting the direct impact the man's actions had on the victim.

He read from her victim impact report that she was left alone, terrified and with no support. She was in constant fear of what would happen next and didn't know who she could turn to.

Mr Justice McCarthy said because the man had made it clear he knew where the woman lived she moved her family to a different area of the country to feel safe.

He took into account the fact that the man had no previous convictions, a good employment record, that he has a number of small children and that he was otherwise of good character.

Mr Justice McCarthy sentenced the man to three years in prison. He suspended the last 18 months on strict conditions including that he make no contact or attempt to make contact with the victim in any way.

The trial heard that the woman was working as an escort or prostitute on the weekend and had come to Dublin to meet a number of men for sex. She advertised herself as a well-educated former model on the Escorts Ireland website.

The accused man contacted her on this website and an arrangement was made for them to meet in the hotel room.

The woman said that she had agreed to meet the man for a girlfriend experience service but she said he became rough and didn't pay her. After he left she contacted gardai and made criminal allegations against him.

His real identity was unknown to the woman or gardai as he used a pseudonym on the Escorts Ireland website and an unregistered mobile to arrange the meeting.

The court heard that as gardai made efforts to identify the accused, he began sending intimidating texts to the woman from two other unregistered mobile phone numbers.

The texts told the woman to withdraw false allegations or her neighbours in a small rural town-land would be informed she was working as an escort and would be shocked and ashamed.

Another text stated: I assume your family know you are a prostitute. Ive passed on your messages.

An email sent from another fake email address to the woman on May 28, 2010 referred to a whore from that same village in a Limerick style rhyme referencing a video of you fucking the dog.

The email ended: Never ride a guy who keeps his jacket on, they always record it on their mobile.

The woman told the trial that she was terrified when she received that email. I was not sleeping, not eating. I was terrified he would come after me. I didnt know how far he was going to take it, she testified.

A childhood friend of the accused told Thomas Creed SC, defending, that the accused man was a straight and decent person who he continued to have regard for. He said he was very shocked by this offending but he was prepared to stand by the man.

The married man has no previous convictions. Mr Creed described his client as a much loved husband and father whose wife depended on him as the only breadwinner in the house.

The court heard that the accused man was eventually identified after investigating garda Detective Ronan Conway tracked down 250 IP addresses linked to his Escorts Ireland pseudonym. This led gardai to a former employer who identified the accused from CCTV footage from the hotel.

The accused told gardai that the texts were not threatening and denied that he had threatened or intimidated the woman.
A feral youth glassed an innocent passer-by in the face when he overreacted to seeing an altercation involving his sister in Dublin city centre, a court has heard.

Dylan Murphy (20) told gardai he had hit the victim with a pint glass because he was the first man he'd seen after the incident with his sister.

He later admitted he had snapped and overreacted out of pure rage.

Garda Elaine Murtagh said the victim, who now has facial scars and suffers flashbacks, had forgiven Murphy but hoped he didn't assault anyone else in future.

Murphy, of Marrowbone Lane, Dublin , pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting Jonathan Cooley causing him harm at Dame Court on May 24, 2015.

He also pleaded guilty to possessing a stolen iPod at the same location on the same date.

He has 24 previous convictions, including four assaults.

Gda Murtagh agreed with Justin McQuade BL, defending, that Murphy could be described as a feral youth who had had a very difficult upbringing with periods of homelessness as a teenager.

She told Ronan Kennedy BL, prosecuting, that Mr Cooley had been walking through Dame Lane in the early hours of the morning, when he saw an incident involving two males and a female. Murphy then ran up and glassed Mr Cooley in the face.

Gda Murtagh said Murphy initially evaded arrest and ran off after he had been pointed out to her by the victim, who was bleeding from cuts to his neck, lip, nose and between his eyebrows.

Murphy was chased down a short distance away and taken to a garda station, where he made admissions.

He was also found with an iPod which had been taken from a bag belonging to another male at Dame Court. Murphy had handed this bag back to the man at the scene.

He told gardai he had been cruising around town that weekend and hit the man after he had seen his sister being picked up off the ground.

He accepted he hadn't seen his victim touch his sister, but at the time he had thought he was standing up for her.

Mr McQuade submitted to Judge Melanie Greally that his client had no addiction problems but would need to do anger management.

He said Murphy was crying out for supervision and that he was quite bright and engaging despite his difficult and tragic background.

Judge Greally adjourned the sentence till March pending a probation report.
Final legal submissions are being made by lawyers at a special inquiry set up to examine the death of a civilian and a garda sergeant which could have serious implications for the future conduct of inquiries by the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC).

The Clarke Inquiry, which has been sitting in Dublin since last September, was set up Justice Minister Francis Fitzgerald following the suicide of Sgt Michael Galvin at Ballyshannon Garda Station last May.

Sgt Galvin had been questioned by GSOC investigators following the death in a road traffic collision in Ballyshannon of Sheena Stewart in the early hours of New Year's Day last year.

The father-of-three had come into contact with Ms Stewart on the night of her death.

Mr Justice Frank Clarke of the Supreme Court has heard evidence from gardai and GSOC investigators over how the case was handled.

There was uproar last June when the Irish Independent was told by GSOC that Sgt Galvin had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the days before he took his own life.

His widow Colette, speaking at his funeral in Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim, had hit out at the GSOC probe.

Rank and file gardai want a change in how gardai under investigation are told of any inquiries and a new system put in place to tell them of GSOC decisions as soon as they become known.

The Galvin family haven't made any comment on the case whilst the Clarke Inquiry continues.

Recommendations and a report from Mr Justice Clarke are expected before the summer.

Ms Fitzgerald ordered the inquiry after meetings with senior gardai and GSOC representatives.

Meanwhile, former Justice Minister Alan Shatter yesterday accused GSOC of "incompetence" over its handling of the 2014 bugging row.

Writing in a Sunday newspaper, Mr Shatter said he had been vindicated by a report by Mr Justice John Cooke six weeks after he had been forced to resign.

"When I raised questions about GSOC's competence, its understanding of its own technology, its rushing into its own 'public interest' investigation, and its failure to inform me as minister of these events, it was depicted as an outrageous attack on a worthy independent agency," said Mr Shatter.

"It wasn't until publication of the Cooke Report that GSOC's incompetence was clearly established, as was its legal obligation to inform me of its public interest investigation, which it failed to do."

Mr Shatter welcomed the fact GSOC is now chaired by the "very able" High Court judge Mary Ellen Ring but added that "two of its then commissioners surprisingly still remain in office".

He also said it was "unfortunate" that former Chief Justice John Murray's review of the role of the Ombudsman was not given a broader remit.

In a pointed ending to his article in the 'Sunday Business Post', Mr Shatter went on: "It is no harm that we remind those who, in recent days, launched into instant condemnation and referenced GSOC activities as 'sinister', that until now, no commentator, TD or senator queried the desirability of extending additional powers to GSOC or that body's entitlement to access data under the 2011 Act."

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was forced to field new questions yesterday on the continued fall-out from the resignation of former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

Asked on RTE's 'This Week' programme if he regretted his role in the affair, Mr Kenny refused to answer the question, instead insisting he had been cleared by the Fennelly Commission interim report on the matter.

"The Fennelly Commission is reporting on a whole series of things over very many years of calls to garda stations from members of the public," said Mr Kenny.

"One element of that was an issue that was required to be examined or recommended to be examined quickly by an Oireachtas committee on justice and opposition members.

"I agreed to that and Justice Fennelly dealt with that and that matter is closed, and I look forward to seeing the completed report, whenever it comes, from Justice Fennelly on the other work that he and his commission of investigators are doing on those very important and sensitive issues."
EvoFIT image of a man who assaulted an au pair in Templeogue, Dublin

January's edition of Crimecall calls on the public to examine an EvoFIT image of a man who assaulted an au pair in Templeogue, Dublin.

The programme, airing on RTE One at 9.35pm, outlines the incident which occurred at a house in the Osprey Estate on the south side of the city on October 5 2015.

The au pair was at the family home when a man called to the door.

The family were out for the day but the fathers business meant that colleagues would drop by the house to collect things at times. Believing this was the case, the young woman let the man in.

He grabbed her and threw her to the ground, covered her mouth and tried to strangle her. She fought him back until eventually he gave up and hurried from the house.

The au pair worked with the Garda Photographic Unit to create an EvoFIT, computer generated image of her attacker.

He is described as 40-50 years old, 5'7" - 5'9" in height with a narrow, pointed nose and scars on his face. He has blue eyes.

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Also on the programme tonight, gardai launch an appeal for information on the murder of Darren Kearns on Blackhorse Avenue, Dublin 7, December 30, 2015.

Darren (34) was shot dead in the car park at the back of Comiskeys Pub on Blackhorse Avenue.

Darren and his wife had just left the restaurant over the pub and were driving out of the car park when a lone gunman fired several shots at them.

The gunman made his getaway in a light coloured BMW, which was later found burned out at Regal Park.

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Gardai will also release CCTV of the raiders responsible for an aggravated burglary at a service station on the Garra Road in Mornington, Co Meath on Monday December 7 2015 at 9.40pm.

The petrol pumps were closed for the night and the staff was locking up when two raiders forced their way in, one pointing a gun at the staff. The men tied the staff up and emptied the safe. They spoke English to the staff but spoke in another language to each other.

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Anyone with information on any of these crimes can contact Crimecall on 1800 40 50 60
Grim find: Members of the gardai inspect the suitcase containing the torso of Kenneth O'Brien which was found in the Grand Canal in Ardclough, Co Kildare Photo: Collins Dublin, Gareth Chaney

The scene on the Grand canal in Clondalkin where possible body parts were found last night

The scene on the Grand canal in Clondalkin where possible body parts were found last night. Picture; GERRY MOONEY

A Garda protects the scene on the Grand canal in Clondalkin where possible body parts were found last night. Picture; GERRY MOONEY

A Garda protects the scene on the Grand canal in Clondalkin where possible body parts were found last night.

Garda divers search the scene in the Grand canal west of Sallins in Co. Kildare where it is believed human remains were found in the water. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Garda divers search the scene in the Grand canal west of Sallins in Co. Kildare where it is believed human remains were found in the water. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Gardai seal off the Grand Canal in Sallins Co. Kildare upstream from where possible human remains were found. Picture; Gerry Mooney

Body parts recovered in the Kenneth OBrien murder investigation were discovered by a shocked member of the public along the Grand Canal.

Gardai were called yesterday evening after a person out walking near the Digby Bridge in Sallins, Co Kildare noticed a bag in the water.

The member of the public pulled the bag towards the bank and immediately notified gardai after realising its contents.

Detectives preserved the scene and members of the Garda Water Unit conducted searches of the canal, recovering more evidence this morning.

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They (member of the public) were out using facilities and noticed a bag. They brought the bag to the canal side and they reported it to us yesterday evening and we dispatched the technical team to the scene and they immediately initiated a preservation of the scene for evidence. This morning the Water Unit carried out further searches. They were able to find further evidence for us, said Supt Gerry Wall of Leixlip garda station.

All of that has been taken to the mortuary at Naas and that will take a little time of us to assess the importance of that information. They managed to see this and bring it across its exact depth Im not able to tell you. Suffice to say they acted with public interest in mind and brought this suspicious package to the side, he added.

A separate part of the canal was also sealed-off near the Fonthill area of Clondalkin west Dublin. However, Supt Gerry Wall of Leixlip garda station said that no further information was currently available on what was recovered from the water.

Tonight, there are DNA tests being carried out on the body parts discovered in the canal.

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It is hoped that if the DNA tests positively identify Mr O'Brien, there may be a breakthrough on how the JCB driver was murdered.

Supt Wall also outlined how gardai have to date followed over 300 lines of inquiry during their murder investigation, and continued to appeal for anyone with information to come forward.

A further site of interest to us is along the Maynooth Road, the walkway between Leixlip and Maynooth, its a tarmac walkway. For landmark purposes it is opposite the entrance of Carton Estate.

There is a third site, I just have no appeal information on that at the present time. Again I want to re-iterate appeal. The family have asked me to say to you they want to say their thanks to the public and the press in the manner which they have reported this most gruesome murder. You can understand they are in bereavement and they are helping us in anyway possible with our inquiries.

Chief Supt Barry McPolin of the Kildare Division said that he was very satisfied with progress of the investigation so far.

We have a very large number of detectives from Kildare division supported by both national and regional units working hand in hand and it is our speed and determination to bring the perpetrators of this brutal murder to justice and before the courts.

We will treat every iota of information that we receive with the strictest of confidence. We are conscious of that fact and maybe that they have some comprehension that theyre may be some difficulty in that respect. They can be assured that we will treat it so sensitively and comprehensively going forward.

Meanwhile , Supt Wall said the family of Mr O'Brien is enduring a very stressful time.

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Mr O'Brien was reported missing on Friday January 15, a few weeks after returning from Australia, and his dismembered torso was found the following day.

Supt Wall said: The family are very stressed. They are enduring a very serious, stressful time in their lives that no one would wish on anyone.

Theyve lost a loved one.

"You can understand they are in bereavement and they are helping us in anyway possible with our inquiries," he said.

Chief Supt Barry McPolin of the Kildare Division said that he was very satisfied with progress of the investigation so far.

We have a very large number of detectives from Kildare division supported by both national and regional units working hand in hand and it is our speed and determination to bring the perpetrators of this brutal murder to justice and before the courts.

We will treat every iota of information that we receive with the strictest of confidence. We are conscious of that fact and maybe that they have some comprehension that theyre may be some difficulty in that respect. They can be assured that we will treat it so sensitively and comprehensively going forward."

Before he was killed, Kenneth OBrien had told his family that he was taking a trip to the country. Gardai say information from members of the public has been key so far in helping them in their investigation.

Gardai said "potential evidential items" had been found in different locations along the canal.

"These items need to be forensically examined before any definitive conclusions can be made in respect of their evidential value," the Garda press office said.

The partial remains of Mr O'Brien (33) were discovered on January 16 in the Grand Canal near Ardclough, Co Kildare.

One theory being looked at by gardai is that the father of one became involved with criminals he grew up in west Dublin.

A source there explained how O'Brien was persuaded by the organised crime outfit to hand over cash sums to fund their drug-dealing network with the promise of a prosperous return on his investment.

"It appears this gang persuaded him to part with big cash sums on the promise of a return on his investment. This may have worked out once or twice before but something went wrong along the way this time," a source said.

"Kenneth was not a gangster. He wasn't into drugs or violence, but he was taken advantage of by people who grew up around him and knew he was making money in Australia," they added.

"He got into something he thought he could handle. He thought it was the quickest way to turn a profit on his money and provide for his family's future, but something went wrong somewhere," they said.

Another source revealed how a line of inquiry being "strongly" looked at by gardai is that the victim was betrayed by someone he trusted on the day he disappeared.

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"One thing that is becoming apparent is that Kenneth O'Brien was meeting with a person he felt he could trust, and did not believe his life to be at risk," a source said.

"Unfortunately it seems there was a double-cross of sorts and he was basically betrayed by this person, who may have either given up his location to his killers or even driven him directly to them for a meeting' that ended in his death," the source added.

Gardai have continued searching the area of Ardclough since last Saturday, when Mr O'Brien's partial remains were discovered.

Investigating detectives attached to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) also discovered 50,000 worth of ecstasy tablets in a farmyard, which sources said may be connected to the murder gang. No arrests have been made in the case.
Galust Sahakyan congratulated State Youth Orchestra of Armenia over 10th anniversary of its foundation

12:27, January 25, 2016

Galist Sahakyan: " I am confident that the orchestra will continue to have a beneficial impact on the cultural environment.."
When it comes to sending students on to third level, the past seven years have seen seven schools in five counties managing to deliver an extraordinary 100pc record.

Given the size of its population, it's unsurprising that three of the country's best-performing schools are located in Dublin. The other four members of the '100pc club' are to be found in Cork, Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary.

You can explore the data on each school by clicking here and registering

While all seven schools have maintained a perfect record in terms of placing their students in third-level institutions every year since 2009, further analysis of the data based on the percentage who were admitted to a course of study at a university makes it possible to rank them accordingly.

With 81pc of Leaving Certificate students securing a place at university between 2009 and 2015, Presentation Brothers College in the Mardyke in Cork emerges as the best performing school in the nation. The school, which charges annual fees of 3,500, also bears the distinction of having had the greatest throughput of students during the period (of those schools in the '100pc club') with a total of 767 boys sitting the Leaving Certificate. Looking more closely at the figures, one finds the majority - or 542 of those graduating from the school - went on to study at University College Cork (UCC).

Coming in at number two is Mount Anville School in Goatstown, south county Dublin. The all-girls school, which charges yearly fees of 5,350, has placed 80pc of its Leaving Certificate students in universities between 2009 to 2015.

Some 381, or just over 52pc of the 726 students graduating from Mount Anville, went on to study at UCD while 147 (20pc) secured places at Trinity College.

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Third is Glenstal Abbey in Limerick. While the all-boys boarding school, which charges yearly fees of 10,600 for day boarders, has equalled Mount Anville's record of sending 80pc of its 260 graduates to university between 2009 and 2015, it comes in behind the south Dublin girls' school on our list owing to its lower throughput of students. With an average of 37 students sitting the Leaving Certificate compared to the average of 103 who sat the exams each year at Mount Anville, Glenstal Abbey's students could be seen to enjoy a relative advantage in terms of the individual attention they might receive.

Between 2009 and 2015, 60 of Glenstal's Leaving Certificate students took up places at Trinity College Dublin, while 68 went to UCD, 32 went to UCC and 18 attended NUIG.

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The fourth-placed school on the list merits special mention by virtue of the fact that it is non fee-paying. According to our analysis, 78pc of students at the all-girls school, Colaiste Iosagain, in the south county Dublin suburb of Stillorgan, progressed to university between 2009 and 2015. The most popular destination for its students is UCD with 246 or over 44pc of the 552 girls who sat the Leaving Certificate during that time going there.

In assessing Colaiste Iosagain, it is worth noting that its students learn through Irish and benefit from the bonus marks awarded to those candidates who do their Leaving Certificate examinations through the language.

Fifth on the list is the 13,150 all-boys Cistercian College in Roscrea, with 71pc of its students placed in university between 2009 and 2015. UCD proved the most popular destination with 74 or 24pc of the Tipperary boarding school's 303 leaving certificate students taking up places there between 2009 and 2015.

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St Mary's College in Rathmines, which charges fees of 5,250 a year, came in sixth place. Some 59pc of students from the fee-paying, all boys' school secured a place in university between 2009 and 2015.

The seventh member of our '100pc club' is Tralee Community College in Co Kerry. While the non fee-paying, co-ed school sent just 3pc of its Leaving Certificate students on to university between 2009 and 2015, it has placed 100pc of them in third-level institutions. 142 of the 159 students who sat the state exams at the school went on to study at Tralee Institute of Technology.
For many students, going to university or college offers the first real opportunity to assert their independence and move away from the family home.

An analysis of data compiled by the Sunday Independent, however, suggests that the vast majority of those who progress to third level tend to gravitate towards universities and institutes of higher education in close proximity to the secondary school in which they did their Leaving Certificate.

A good example of this tendency by students to stay close to home arises with the schools located in the Dublin 14 postal code.

According to the statistics for the years 2009 to 2015, 83pc of those who sat their Leaving Certificate in schools such as Mount Anville, De La Salle College in Churchtown and Loreto Beaufort in Rathfarnham went on to university or another third level institution in Dublin.

A further breakdown of the figure shows that 32pc of Leaving Certificate students from Dublin 14 took up a university place in the same postal code by deciding to pursue their third level education at UCD.

The picture is much the same for those who attended a secondary school in Dublin 4, with 74pc of those who took up places in third level education following their Leaving Certificate opting for a university or other institute of technology in the capital.

Once again, UCD proved to be the biggest draw with 31pc of college goers from top flight boys' schools such as St Michael's and St Conleth's and girls' schools such as Muckross Park College hopping on the number 10 or 46A, or increasingly, taking the short drive to the Belfield campus.

In the Dublin 18 postal code area, which includes schools such as the all-girls' Loreto Foxrock, Cabinteely Community School and St Laurence's College in Loughlinstown, 60pc of those who advanced to third level following their Leaving Certificate exams went to a university or college in Dublin.

The lion's share, or 35pc of this cohort, took up places in UCD (27pc) and Trinity College Dublin (8pc).

This tendency to stay close to home is replicated outside Dublin with 58pc of those students in Cork entering third level education opting for UCC (34pc) or the Cork Institute of Technology (24pc).

And 48pc of those who progress to third level from schools in Galway meanwhile choose to study in either NUI Galway (30pc) or the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (18pc).

Outside of the country's major centres of population, the preference of students to remain at home while pursuing their third level education is also evident.

In Donegal for example, 26pc of students who pursued further studies upon completion of their Leaving took up places in Letterkenny Institute of Technology in the years between 2009 and 2015.

In Co Louth, 29pc of students who progressed to third level enrolled at the Dundalk Institute of Technology.

One notable exception to what would appear to be an accepted rule elsewhere is the Dublin 17 postal code. Here some 47pc of students progressed to third level education between 2009 and 2015. It should be noted that these statistics are somewhat distorted by the fact that they are based solely on the results of one school - Colaiste Dhulaigh in Coolock.

It is nonetheless interesting to find that 31pc of students who sat the Leaving Certificate there went on to pursue third level studies in Britain.

Explaining this, Colaiste Dhulaigh's principal, Neil Dunphy, said a number of the school's students progressed to Colaiste Dhulaigh's College of Further Education which allows for final year entry into honours degree programmes at the University of Ulster, University of Wolverhampton and other third level institutions.

You can explore the data on each school by clicking here
The UK Ambassador to Ireland has conceded a so-called Brexit from the European Union is likely to be felt more profoundly here than in other member states.

Dominick Chilcott made the remarks at the Fine Gael ard fheis ahead of Taoiseach Enda Kenny's visit to London today where he will meet Prime Minister David Cameron.

The pair will discuss the EU/UK negotiations and review developments in Northern Ireland. Mr Kenny will also address Irish and British business leaders at an event organised by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and the Irish International Business Network.

The British government is hoping to secure a deal on change and reform of EU rules by the European Council meeting next month. Mr Chilcott said reforms would be sought on sovereignty, competitiveness, economic governance and to migration rules, which he said is the "most difficult, most politically sensitive" to achieve.

He said if Britain voted to exit the EU, Ireland would be one of the countries most affected.

"Ireland is by almost every measure right at the top of the list of the UK's closest and most important neighbours," he said.

"The consequences of change in Britain's EU status are likely to be felt more profoundly here than in other member states."

Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said a Brexit would be "a leap into the unknown".
Former Minister Mary ORourke with Cllr Cormac Devlin and his daughter Torah (2) at the launch of his campaign. Photo: Justin Farrelly

Fianna Fail's political dynasties are lining up to give their backing to Mary Hanafin's running mate.

Former ministers Mary O'Rourke and David Andrews both attended the campaign launch of Dun Laoghaire councillor Cormac Devlin over the weekend, with Ms O'Rourke confirming she urged voters to give him their number one.

There has been intense party rivalry in the Dun Laoghaire constituency since Ms Hanafin's re-emergence before the last local elections.

On that occasion, she entered an often bitter battle with newcomer Kate Feeney - although both ended up getting elected to the council.

Ms Feeney's mother, Geraldine, a former senator, also attended Mr Devlin's launch on Saturday. She is a cousin of ex-taoiseach Brian Cowen's wife, Mary, who last week launched an online attack on Ms Hanafin, saying party leader Micheal Martin "better watch his back" due to Ms Hanafin's lack of loyalty.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms O'Rourke said she attended the event in the Royal Marine Hotel in a "very open sense".

She predicted that Fianna Fail could take one of the three available seats in the constituency, where the sittings TDs include Fine Gael's Mary Mitchell O'Connor and People Before Profit's Richard Boyd Barrett.

"I said there are two candidates running and people should give their number one to Cormac Devlin - and for Fianna Fail supporters they should ask that they continue their preference for number two," she said.

Ms O'Rourke said there was a marvellous crowd at the event, which is just one of many that she is attending around the country in advance of the election.

She is helping a significant number of Fianna Fail female candidates, but has also backed a number of men - including Paul McAuliffe in Dublin North West, Jim O'Callaghan in Dublin South East and Jack Chambers in Dublin West - and said: "I like being involved."

Mr Devlin said he was delighted to have the support of the Fianna Fail stalwarts at the event in the Royal Marine Hotel.

"Obviously, I was delighted to have two political giants, as they are, come out and endorse my candidacy," he said.

Ms Hanafin was added to the election ticket after initially losing out to Mr Devlin in a tight selection convention.
Fine Gael strategists are furious with their Coalition partners after "a stunt" by Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin saw them compared to Britain's cost-cutting Tory party.

Senior Fine Gael figures believe the Labour Party minister chose the weekend of their ard fheis to publicly create a divide between the two parties.

His suggestion that Enda Kenny's party could not be trusted to run the country without Labour's "balancing role" caused huge annoyance after a string of Fine Gael ministers spent the weekend talking up the relationship with Labour.

The Taoiseach even took the unusual step of sharing credit for the economic recovery with Joan Burton's party in his televised address on Saturday.

MEP Brian Hayes told delegates the image of Mr Howlin and Finance Minister Michael Noonan was one "of success, of achievement and partnership".

However, hours later Mr Howlin was quoted in a Sunday newspaper saying voters only have to look to Britain if they wanted to envisage a Fine Gael government without Labour.

"The Lib Dems are now out of government and in the first years of the Tories having a single-party government, they have introduced draconian trade union legislation and they have produced taxation measures that certainly inflict the greatest harm on the weakest," he told 'The Sunday Business Post'.

Reacting to the comment, a senior Fine Gael source said: "Labour are all over the place at the moment. They feel they have to bang that drum to get support back from us. (Siptu chief) Jack O'Connor was at it as well before Christmas."

They suggested that Labour would "probably pull a number of those stunts in the run up to their conference this weekend".

A Labour Party spokesman sought to play down the significance of Mr Howlin's remarks, stating that the next Government will be about "finding the right balance between spending increases and tax reductions while maintaining sustainable public finances".

Asked if she knew about Mr Howlin's interview in advance, Tanaiste Joan Burton said: "Well,everybody has been doing interviews pre- and post-Christmas, all of the ministers from both parties have been doing it but I just want to emphasise, as Brendan did in his interview, that the emphasis is on getting this overnment elected because it's good for the country and it will get more people back to work.

"But also then emphasising Labour's unique input into government, which is to bring balance and focus, particularly around employment and around sharing the benefits of the recovery for everybody."
Fine Gael has a plan alright and it's beyond simplistic: bore the electorate into putting them back in office.

Giving an ard fheis speech is much like being best man at a wedding. Everybody, well almost everybody, in the room wants you to do well.

They expect you to plant a few jokes, tell some stories about how the marriage/coalition came about and predict there are very happy times ahead for all involved.

Of course there are a few ways to approach that scenario - you can be the over-the-top joker who pushes the limits, you can get it just right or you can be the shy, retiring type who won't upset the grandparents.

Enda Kenny clearly went for the latter in his speech on Saturday night.

He preached that voters shouldn't take risks and he led by example with a dull - but many in the party will argue effective - speech.

Mr Kenny took the 'humble statesman' approach, heeding the advice of his political strategists not to make any unnecessary journeys into policy areas or over-zealous attacks on the Opposition.

It's all part of the plan. Not the three-step plan that you will be tired of hearing about before the election date is even announced - but the Fine Gael plan to keep Mr Kenny to one central message only - namely 'Let's keep the recovery going'.

What TV viewers won't have seen was the series of speeches in the hour before the Taoiseach entered the room to Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop'.

They were uplifting and, in some cases, even bordering on entertaining.

Had people at home seen Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald's contribution it might have warned their hearts with a bit of feel-good factor.

"Our nation is our nation once again," she declared.

"Many who left in despair will return in hope and confidence."

Finance Minister Michael Noonan spelled out the message in ordinary language: "We are not writing a blank cheque here. We'll only spend what we have."

And Brian Hayes had feet stomping with a rousing attack on Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein.

But when it comes to Mr Kenny, the policy is play it safe. Why take a risk that could backfire?

The Fine Gael approach is to a large extent based on the one brought to the UK Conservative Party by Australian Lynton Crosby.

A story goes that, at meeting in Downing Street early last year, senior Tories wanted to brainstorm about more imaginative ways of getting their economic message across to voters.

As they tossed about ideas Crosby is said to have cut them off at the ankles, stating: "All very fascinating, but voters only need to know two things about the economy: it was broken five years ago by the other lot and it's OK again now under us."

And that same message punctuated Mr Kenny's speech. He used the word 'recovery' 24 times.

He told us the recovery was real. The recovery was hard-won. The recovery was not a political prize. The recovery belongs to the people. The recovery must be strengthened and secured.

The recovery will get us an extra 10,000 gardai, teachers, doctors, nurses and other front-line staff by 2021.

And in case you didn't realise it Fine Gael's long-term plan is to keep the recovery going. Got the message yet?
Dublin is to be pitched to technology leaders as 'the ideas capital' as part of a plan to create 66,000 new jobs.

Jobs Minister Richard Bruton (right) will today launch the Government's 'Dublin Action Plan for Jobs', which is heavily focused on the financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, tourism and retail - as well as 'smart cities' and the creative industries.

It includes funding to establish a 'Start-up Space Dublin' initiative that will facilitate networking and co-working space for entrepreneurs across the city.

The Irish Independent understands the plan will also include measures for mobile start-ups, and it projects that the number of new businesses will grow by 25pc. If the target of 66,000 new jobs is reached, the number of people working in Dublin will surpass the Celtic Tiger era.

Dublin lost 90,000 jobs during the economic downturn, Minister Bruton will say at the launch today.
Sinn Fein is answerable to the republican criminal underworld with "their boiler suits and balaclavas", Fine Gael's director of elections has claimed.

In the strongest attack yet by the main government party on Gerry Adams, Brian Hayes questioned who really runs the Sinn Fein.

And he said: "Sinn Fein presents itself as something new despite the fact that Mr Adams has been around as long as Robert Mugabe."

Mr Hayes's comments, made during a speech at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis in Citywest, were met with roars of approval from up to 3,000 delegates.

The MEP also described Mr Adams as "that well-known economic guru from west Belfast" and said if the Coalition had followed his advice, the country would be facing 30 years of austerity.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny made no mention of Sinn Fein during his speech from the conference but Mr Hayes used his contribution about 10 minutes before Mr Kenny's televised address to rise the crowd.

"This party isn't fooled by Sinn Fein. We know what they are. The Irish people don't want Sinn Fein next or near the government of this Republic," he said.

"But the crucial question for Sinn Fein is who do they answer to? Is it the people or the republican criminal underworld - with their boiler suits and balaclavas?

"Their deputy leader, Ms McDonald recently described one Thomas Slab Murphy as 'a very typical rural man'. Mary Lou - with friends like that who needs enemies." He also hit out at Fianna Fail and referenced its controversial attack poster on Fine Gael's record on health, saying the party "can't even get a proper poster campaign right these days".
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. The involvement of anti-Armenian reports in the agenda of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) speaks about the fact that Azerbaijan does not want to look for ways to compromise and peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, political scientist Alexander Iskandaryan expressed such an opinion during the meeting with journalists on January 25. Azerbaijan played a great role in the preparation of reports and this speaks of the fact that this country does not want to find ways of peaceful settlement. They understood they cannot resolve the issue by military means so try to fight the war on other platforms, by non-military methods, Iskandaryan emphasized, as Armenpress reports.

According to the political scientist, Azerbaijan makes use of different platforms for its goals including PACE. Azerbaijan tried to use also the EU and UN platforms to achieve any success against Armenia. Sometimes it works but sometimes it does not, Iskandaryan mentioned.

According to him, Azerbaijan, which initiated that game, does not exist at this moment. "Azerbaijan is a completely different state at this moment. Very serious structural changes occurred in this country. And taking anti-Armenian steps on different levels and involvement of several reports cannot help Azerbaijan to achieve a success against Armenia. Azerbaijan is completely other state now and it is very important to understand and catch it, Alexander Iskandaryan concluded.
When I was a child, I had a small ceramic plate that would hang on my bedroom door. It had a picture of a dancing clown with balloons in bright reds and blues. "Fiona's Room" was carved out in jet black ink. I found that plate in a box the other day and I counted the number of doors that it had hung on. I stopped counting when I got to 16 because the realisation profoundly upset me. Let me tell you why.

In total, I have had 24 different bedrooms. I have had 19 different groups of friends. I have never had a place I have called home, that place that others have, their family home that is always there whenever they need it. I am envious of these people because they have walked through the same front door all their lives. They have had one bedroom that will always be theirs and the little ceramic plate that hung on that bedroom door is probably still there, faded with time and forgotten because it has been there so long. It was fixed to that door once, and it remained there.

There are 12 different pieces of Blu Tack on the back of my ceramic plate, from all the times it was carefully taken down by a confused heartbroken little girl and dutifully replaced in a new place, on a new door. My memories are hazy now, so many years later, but I can still see the cardboard boxes that lined the walls and the familiar things in unfamiliar places.

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I remember the musty basement flats that my mother would bring me to, all her pitiful budget could afford, the ways she would try to make it exciting, like an adventure. In truth, it was exhausting, for us both. In some of these places, I did not hang my little ceramic plate on the door, because I shared the room or the bed with my mother. In these places, I saw the plate as a lie, because I didn't have a room.

There were other places, dark, damp places where my mother had neither bedroom nor bed. She slept on a fold-out couch that touched the cold tiles of the floor. She tried to give me the bedroom. I slept in a windowless room that had no light or air. The door was one that had been taken from a horse's stable and wouldn't close properly. Sometimes I could hear my mother crying at night. I know she heard me.

What becomes of those who live within the limbo of poverty? Those unlucky people who are left to the mercy of the State, who earn a decent wage to survive, to pay bills and put food on a table but never enough to ensure that one roof will be all you see over your head.

If I feel unlucky or hard done by, I think of my mother, a survivor who did all she could to provide for her only child. She was a warrior who stood against 22 landlords and lost every time. A simple notice of termination meant that she was back at square one. How many times can you start all over again without losing all hope? Frightened, worried and alone, she did it all. She was faced with uncertainty and insecurity at every turn because she was dealing with the most ruthless and corrupt professional and legal corporation in this country: the private landlords. She settled for anything she could get, simply because she had to. Because she had no choice. There were no such things as standards or environmental inspection officers.

Those were the 80s and 90s and now, at the age of 35, I can see that nothing has changed. My mother is still at the mercy of landlords. She is 65 years old and she will never own her own home. It is 2016 and there are more people sleeping on the streets and facing homelessness than ever before. Landlords can evict tenants at will and these tenants have very little comeback within the careful confines of the law. There are promises of new legislation that will give tenants more rights and landlords less power, and yet these legislations are merely whispers on the wind.

It is still the 1600s in Ireland and landlords are still getting the last laugh.

I have a degree and an MA, I am well educated despite the unsettled feeling that I struggle to live with every day. I suffer from depression, panic attacks and an overall feeling of sadness. I have never belonged anywhere, and now I don't think I ever will. I will never own a home; I simply do not have the financial capability most lenders require. I can afford to pay a decent rent each month, but am I prepared to pay 1,000 for a place where I can reach the cooker from my bed?

I put the little ceramic plate back into the box where I found it. It was an odd moment, filled with grief and an overwhelming loss. But I realised that the little plate was a lie all along - deceiving a small child into the belief of a better future some day. Fiona's Room never really existed at all.
Even drugs deemed to be 'soft' can have profound effects on young users, a GP has warned.

Dr Ide Delargy of the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) urged people not to underestimate the influence of cannabis on teens who may have underlying psychological problems.

Dr Delargy (inset) is director of the ICGP's substance misuse programme, and said some adolescents may use drugs like cannabis and alcohol to manage an undiagnosed mental health issue.

"You have a chicken-and-egg scenario going on, where young people use these substances to self-medicate a mental health problem," she said.

"It's important to rule out any mental health issues when treating young drug users, as some of these softer drugs can make things worse.

Cohort

"There are a lot of young people who experiment with drugs and get away with it without any short-term consequences, but there is a cohort of people who can be profoundly affected," she added. "We can't know who they are, and you won't know until you start using the drug.

"Every child is different and often there may be an underlying problem there."

Dr Delargy also expressed concern about legalising cannabis, saying research had shown that long-term use of the drug could lead to increased risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.

She said young people with drug issues don't tend to present to GPs - and those who do are often brought by concerned family members.

"What tends to happen is the young person runs into an acute event and ends up in the A&E department, because of an accident, fall or public order issue," she added.

Dr Delargy advised parents to "be vigilant, and try to keep calm in what can be a very difficult situation".

"It's very important to keep the channels of communication open," she said.

She also recommends seeking professional advice and considering the help of local drug services.
Head shops have closed down around the country but there are more than 700 online shops selling these dangerous products, according to an expert.

Bernie McDonnell, director of services with Community Awareness of Drugs (CAD) in Dublin, revealed that the problem hasn't gone away.

Legislation to ban the sale and supply of such substances took effect in 2010, with research showing that consumption of so-called legal highs fell sharply after the Government crackdown.

"Banning them certainly did reduce the amount, but the online shops are still there," said Ms McDonnell.

"There are networks of people who are distributing them around the place. But the laws have helped. How we know the laws have helped is the numbers attending for treatment have gone down considerably, so we know that there is an improvement," she said.

The drugs being sold online mimic illegal drugs, so there is a substitute for drugs like heroin and ecstasy. However, Ms McDonnell warns that by taking them "you are still doing damage".

CAD delivers drug education and training programmes for parents, guardians, carers and community workers, and Ms McDonnell is involved in the design and delivery of the programmes.

"We go into the school or the community centre once a week for six weeks and the parents get a chance to update their drug information, and explore any attitudes that they have. And, very importantly, to develop a prevention strategy that would suit their family, because not everybody will suit all suggestions," she said.

"But there are things that people can take from it and certainly use with their young people," she said.

"A lot of people would say to a parent, 'you have got to talk about drugs', but what we found even back in the '80s when we were first set up, was parents don't have that information," Ms McDonnell said.

Ms McDonnell said a number of communities are talking about solvent misuse again.

"Age 14 seems to be the peak age of experimenting with solvents and that's a really high-risk practice. Death can happen the first time they do it, or the 51st time they do it," she pointed out.

"We thought that had gone away for a few years, but what we suggest to parents is to do a safety audit in your house.

"If we could get parents to do that basic safety check - are there any sleeping tablets, tranquillisers, morphine-based tablets? Is there too much paracetamol in the house?

"People are telling us that parents are the last to find out...[young people] can cover it up because they are going through money that the parents are not realising."
Jenny Drake and Baby Zoe pictured flying into Nashville on an Air Med International critical care hawker jet

Premature baby Zoe Ireland Drake has arrived safely in Tennessee after an anonymous donor pledged the remaining 30,000 needed for her special medical charter flight home.

Her mother, Jenny, unexpectedly went into labour on a transatlantic flight when she was just 25 weeks pregnant last October.

Jenny yesterday told the Irish Independent the family were thrilled to be home.

"Zoe did great on the flight. Please thank the Irish people again for taking us in as their own," she added.

The pair are pictured flying into Nashville on an AirMed International critical care hawker jet on Saturday evening.

Zoe was then brought to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, and is expected to be discharged home next week.

Jenny and her husband, Gavin, were originally flying from Paris to North Carolina when the flight was diverted to Dublin Airport. Mrs Drake gave birth just four minutes after arriving at the Rotunda Hospital.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Britain will spend 500 million pounds ($700 million) per year for the next five years to try and end deaths caused by malaria, the British government said on January 25, announcing a partnership with Microsoft founder Bill Gates worth a total of 3 billion pounds.

As Armenpress reports, citing Reuters, Finance Minister George Osborne announced the spending, which will be funded from the country's overseas aid budget, at an event with billionaire Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will also contribute around $200 million per year to the package.

"Across the globe over a billion people are infected with malaria and it's a cause of both untold misery and lost economic potential," Osborne said in a statement.

"That's why, working with Bill Gates, Im determined that Britain leads the world in the fight against this disease."

In December, the World Health Organization's annual malaria report showed deaths falling to 438,000 in 2015 - down dramatically from 839,000 in 2000 - and found a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards the elimination of malaria.

The Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 by Bill Gates and wife Melinda to fight disease and poverty around the world.
Gardai have recovered a major haul of stolen jewellery that had been taken by travelling gangs from victims' homes in three provinces.

The jewellery was seized from a wholesale second-hand gold merchants during a three-month operation by officers from the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau.

Most of the organised gangs involved in nationwide burglaries trade mainly in cash and jewellery and the special operation was set up to target the receivers of their nightly hauls.

The number of burglaries has dropped by around 10pc since the launch of the garda's new initiative, Operation Thor, in November.

Most of the garda divisions have recorded a drop over the past three months.

But two major blackspots remain in Dublin west and in the southeast of the country.

The bureau's breakthrough against the jewel burglars arose out of an interception of items being handed over by members of a gang to a receiver.

The handover took place outside a fast food premises in west Dublin.

Undercover detectives had placed some of those involved under surveillance for several weeks and moved in when they spotted the haul being moved from one vehicle to another.

It was later established that the intercepted haul had been stolen two hours previously in a burglary in south Co Dublin.

Gardai raided a business premises and recovered documentation relating to over 1,000 items, which were later valued at over 1.7m.

The business was unable to account for the jewels in its paperwork and inquiries are currently under way to establish how many of the items were stolen.

The positively identified items were taken in 20 separate burglaries by travelling gangs from households in Galway, Limerick, Kerry, the Midlands, Dublin and Wexford.

Gardai have arrested and questioned a number of suspects.

In tandem with the investigation, inquiries are under way by the Criminal Assets Bureau into the financial affairs of those suspected of receiving the stolen jewellery.

Last month, the Irish Independent disclosed that the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is also focusing on the kingpins of half a dozen travelling gangs, believed to be responsible for a large portion of the attacks that have terrorised urban and rural communities.

The bulk of the members of the targeted gangs operate out of bases in south and west Dublin, although some have moved into counties Wexford and Kildare.

Senior garda officers say Thor has had a very significant impact on what they describe as IRTCs (inter-regional travelling criminals) by disrupting their use of the network of national roads to launch nightly sprees into rural areas from their Dublin bases.
Pictured at The Open The Garda Station Rally at Stepaside yesterday were; Kate Morrison (10) and Blaithin McCarthy (10).

Former Justice Minister Alan Shatter was met by a chorus of jeering and catcalls as he spoke at a public protest about the ongoing closure of a south Dublin garda station.

Mr Shatter, pictured right, who was Justice Minister when his local Stepaside station was closed in 2013, told the Irish Independent that the decision was an operational one made by then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and said it wasn't his place to engage in "special pleading" on behalf of constituents.

Around 500 people from the Stepaside area, which currently has a population of 22,000, attended a public meeting to discuss the closure of the station in April 2013.

The closure of the station, along with 138 others across the country, was signed off by then Justice Minister Shatter. The closures are saving the State 556,000 per year, according to figures released by Frances Fitzgerald last year.

Yesterday, angry locals described how they are living in fear as a result of a spike in the number of burglaries in the area.

The latest CSO figures show a 34pc increase in burglaries across the Dublin Eastern division, which covers Stepaside.

Former deputy director general at RTE, Bobby Gahan, who lives next door to Stepaside Garda Station, described how he has had burglars enter his property on two occasions since the closure, while another resident told of how her property has been targeted three times.

"It was an operational decision of the Garda Commissioner to close 139 stations," Mr Shatter told this newspaper.

"It wasn't for me as minister to engage in special pleading on behalf of constituents in circumstances where the operational advice was we would be better off with gardai doing regular policing work, rather than sitting at a desk in Stepaside."

Mr Shatter also hit out at a promise made by other speakers at yesterday's event, including Independent TD Shane Ross and Fianna Fail Senator Mary White, that the decision to close Stepaside station could be reversed, describing it as "seriously misleading".
Tributes have been pouring in for 18-year-old Alex Ryan, who lost his life after taking the psychoactive drug N-Bomb

The 18-year-old student who died after taking a psychoactive drug at a Cork house party may have bought a particularly strong dose of the synthetic substance N-Bomb.

Alex Ryan was one of six party-goers hospitalised in the early hours of Tuesday morning having consumed the hallucinogenic drug.

Five other people who swallowed the same powdered drug were also rushed to hospital, but were later discharged.

A medical expert last night said the dose taken by Alex may have been "particularly strong".

He also pointed out some people are more susceptible than others to its psychedelic, mind-altering effects.

"2CB and N-Bomb are from the same hallucinogenic group," the source explained.

"Snorting, smoking, or injecting intravenously would give a faster, more intense effect, compared with being absorbed through the stomach.

"But it's also possible this young man may have been more susceptible than average to its more deadly consequences. This means it can enter the bloodstream much more quickly.

"While there have been very few cases reported involving N-Bomb, some people can be particularly at risk to the physical and psychological effects of such a dangerous drug.

"It really depends on the individual," the source added.

He pointed out that since this is a "street drug", the amount consumed by each of the party-goers may have been different.

"The quantities taken by each person could have varied, and the strength in each case may also have been different," he said.

"There's no quality control in terms of what's in a particular dose - dealers just cut it down."

Meanwhile, tributes to the popular young teenager from Millstreet, north Cork, continued to pour in yesterday.

Aine Collins, Fine Gael deputy for Cork North-West, said the area has been plunged into "deep mourning" following the tragic death of the young student.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, she said existing laws governing the sale and supply of psychoactive drugs need to be reviewed.

"I understand that there are over 100 different types of drugs on the market that are in different cuts and mixes," she said.

"I don't think young people are fully aware of what can happen as a result of taking these substances.

"As a parent, and as someone who represents the public, we as politicians certainly need to look at this whole area again to see what can be done."

Fr John Fitzgerald, the Millstreet parish priest, said people are in shock at the death of the teenager, who was a student at Millstreet Community School.

"It's very, very sad news. There is a lot of shock and sadness among his peers. It's such a tragic loss of a precious young life," he said.

The N-Bomb drug can have lethal psychological consequences, and has already made users try to chew pavements, attempt to fly and punch solid fixtures such as cement walls.
TRIBUTES poured in following the tragic death of the son of socialite Jackie Rafter and hairdresser David Marshall.

Daniel Marshall's body was found in the toilets of the Fitzwilliam Hotel in Dublin at 4am on Saturday.

Gardai are not treating his death as suspicious but a post-mortem is due to be carried out.

The 25-year-old had been fighting a lengthy battle with drug addiction.

Last year he was charged with selling heroin. He had been previously warned by a judge that he wouldn't live to see 50 unless he "got his act together".

Jackie Rafter is a former model and socialite who previously worked in the Wright Venue in Swords, Dublin and set up children's charity the Bubblegum Club. David Marshall is one of the country's best-known hair stylists.

Friends paid tribute to their son describing him as a "hilarious" guy and said that news of his death still hadn't sunk in.

"He was the funniest person I ever knew. He was great fun. He was just an unbelievable guy. What's happened is so sad. Everyone is still in shock," said one friend.

RIP Danny only 25 yrs .......GBNF (gone but not forgotten) .....13-7-14, one friend wrote on Facebook.

Pleasure knowing you Danny R.I.P god takes the best, another said.

He spent years battling personal issues and had speech-and-language difficulties as well as Attention Deficit Disorder from a young age. He appeared in court last year, accused of assault and selling heroin.

The judge directed that a drug treatment place be made available for him, after being told he had struggled with heroin addiction for three years.

He had been seeking help for his problems and was trying to rehabilitate himself, the court heard. He had 40 previous convictions, mostly for theft and public order offences, but also for assault and criminal damage.

'Devastated'

A former student of St Michael's in Ballsbridge and Rockwell College in Tipperary, his court appearances started in 2009 when he was ordered by Dun Laoghaire District Court to pay a donation of 500 after throwing a can of beer at a garda car.

Speaking afterwards, his mother said she was "completely devastated" at what happened and that he had been going through some personal issues.
Entertainer Twink has vowed that the thieves who ransacked her home, stealing jewellery, handbags and cash, will be caught.

The stage and TV star (pictured), whose real name is Adele King, returned to her home in Knocklyon, south Dublin, at the weekend to find it had been hit by burglars.

She branded the culprits "scumbags" and "parasites" and appealed to anyone with information on the burglary to contact Rathfarnham Garda Station.

She said she was determined to see the thieves are caught, adding: "I will be like a dog with a bone."

Writing on her Facebook page, Twink said: "The sight that greeted me was beyond what the word 'shock' implies.

"The room was four feet deep in clothes, every drawer was pulled out."

She said "every birthday, Christmas, anniversary gift" she had ever received was gone.

"All my beloved mother and grandmother's jewellery, my wedding rings, my baby rings, the girls' precious baby bracelets, my old charm bracelets from the sixties.

"One garda said it was the worst destruction he'd ever seen in a break-in.

"The house was stripped bare of anything they could carry."
New video released by Islamic State shows the extremists who carried out the terror attacks in Paris committing atrocities in IS-controlled territory while plotting the slaughter in the French capital that left 130 people dead.

The 17-minute video shows the extent of the planning that went into the multiple attacks in Paris, which French authorities have said from the beginning were organised in Syria.

The video was provided online by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, and in it IS - also known as Daesh - also threatens to attack Britain.

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US president Barack Obama says he would not run for a third term even if he could.

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He says the presidency takes a toll on family life, and the office "should be continually renewed by new energy and new ideas".

Mr Obama says in an interview airing on CBS he is not yearning for a third term is because he is confident that things are lot better in the United States than when he came into office.

Mr Obama says the thing that makes him happiest about his presidency ending next January is a chance to get out of what he calls the "the bubble."

Read for a cuteness overload? The image of a tiny sloth, stuck on the central reservation of a motorway and clinging to the crash barrier for dear life, has tugged heartstrings around the world.

It was spotted in the city of Quevedo, Ecuador, after becoming trapped by traffic passing on either side at high speed.

Pictures of the forlorn animal were posted on Facebook by the Ecuadorian transport commission after it launched a rescue operation.

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The Irish Independent leads with an election story this morning. Under the headline 'Lowry's Return: the price Kenny will pay for power', it is revealed that Taoiseach Enda Kenny has left the door wide open for his old friend, disgraced former minister Michael Lowry, to support a minority Fine Gael government.

The Herald leads with a shocking story of children as young as 9 are taking cocaine in Dublin. A drugs worker has made the shocking warning and said she has heard from children that they first started using at such a young age.

Gemma Collins is the manager at the Crinan Youth Project in the north inner city, which provides day services to drug users. Ms Collins said that a young person she encountered in her work had first used heroin when they were only 11.

The Irish Times also leads with an election story, stating that Fine Gael favours public spending over tax cuts. The lead story also reveals that the party will commit to using resources and infrastructure if they win re-election.

The Taoiseach has also defended Michael Noonan's plan to abolish USC, which would cost 4bn.

The Star reports that more parts of a body - believed to be that of Mr Kenneth O'Brien's - have been located as part of the probe into his murder. The grisly find was made at the Grand Canal near Sallins, eight days after 33-year-old's Mr O'Brien's torso was found stuffed into a suitcase.

The Irish Daily Mirror leads with the story of 'Ireland's luckiest shop sells 13.8m ticket. The paper reveals that it is the store's fifth big money winner as search begins to find mystery punter.

Twink's home break-in makes the front page of the Irish Sun.

The entertainer has revealed that "everything I own and love" was taken when burglars raided her home over the weekend.

The Irish Daily Mail also leads with a lottery story, as it states Co Mayo's shop Careys appears to be the luckiest family in the Lotto history - with just three members of the clan selling winning lottery tickets totalling some 33million.
Prime Minister David Cameron (left) with Taoiseach Enda Kenny during a press conference following a meeting at No 10 Downing Street in London. Matt Dunham/PA Wire

BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron has apparently backed the Fine Gael/Labour plan for recovery in Ireland.

In a press conference in Downing Street, the Tory leader said Enda Kenny's coalition vision for the country appeared to be working.

The Taoiseach had been outlining plans to "make work pay" and keep the economic recovery afloat under a stable, continued government.

Asked by independent.ie if he had any advice for Mr Kenny in securing an outright majority in the imminent general election, Mr Cameron said: "I wouldn't give advice, but that last part sounded to me like a long-term economic plan that is working for people in the Republic."

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The Conservative leader added: "We work very closely together, but the Irish elections are a matter for the Irish electorate.

"All I know is we work closely together and we're looking forward to doing that in the months and years to come."

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Mr Kenny said a strong and stable government was needed that bridged the progress of the last five years to where the coutry wanted to be in the next five years.

"I would say to people, when they reflect, when the election is actually called and they start to deal with the issues here, we know where we can be and our plan is to set out opportunities for further employment, to make work pay and to keep the recovery moving, now that it's heading in the right direction," he said.

"The first opportunity for people to reflect on that will be when they go to the ballot boxes and if they want a strong stable and coherent government, they can vote for the candidates of the Fine Gael party and the Labour Party."
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has finally produced figures to back up her claim of a drop in burglaries.

Last week, the embattled minister claimed the fight against burglary was being won but was unable to provide any statistics to support her claim.

Suddenly, at her party's Ard Fheis at the weekend, she revealed new figures suggesting the number of burglaries is down 34pc since gardai set up Operation Thor. She said Fine Gael have "always been the party of law and order".

The minister defended the efforts to tackle crime, saying gardai were now prepared for the digital era and paperwork had been cut down so they can spend more time on the beat.

Ms Fitzgerald now says she has been briefed on the provisional figures by Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan.

The minister said she was told that since Operation Thor began last October, the number of burglaries nationwide dropped by more than 2,300 cases, to 4,449 instances from 6,776 over the same period in 2014/2015.

"It's still too many but these provisional figures show a reduction of 34pc in that period," Ms Fitzgerald said. "It's important to recognise that when the gardai focus on this area [and] put the resources into place, we are getting the results. It's because we've given them the resources and will continue to do so, so that we can confirm that downward trend and deepen that downward trend."

Official statistics show a year-on-year rise in burglaries of 6.2pc to the end of September 2015. Figures for the last three months of the year won't be published by the Central Statistics Office until March.

Ms Fitzgerald's officials pointed to a 6.8pc reduction in the number of burglaries between July and September last year, compared to the same three months in 2014.

The minister has for the first time revealed the provisional analysis of Operation Thor. The anti-burglary initiative has seen more than 8,000 additional patrols by gardai and around 11,700 checkpoints. There have been 496 arrests since November, mainly relating to burglary, Ms Fitzgerald said.

The minister was speaking at an Ard Fheis session entitled 'More Gardai, Tougher Sentences'.

The minister pledged to recruit new gardai at a rate of at least 600 a year until numbers are back to 14,000 "and beyond".

She that 1,300 new Garda vehicles have been bought since 2012.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Two Armenians Mher Poghosyan and Hakob Mirzoyan were injured in a terrorist bombing in al-Wasati neighborhood in Qamishli city, Hasaka province, Kandzasar newspaper informs, as Armenpress reports. According to preliminary data, there are 3 vicims and 6 other injured.

A source at the Police Command told that terrorists detonated an explosive device placed on a bicycle parked near a shop in Miami Street in the city, claiming the lives of two civilians and injuring ten others who were rushed to Qamishli Hospital, in addition to causing material damage to properties.

Later, the source said that one of injured civilians succumbed to his wounds while receiving treatment, raising the death toll to 3.
TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has invited the British Prime Minister David Cameron to Ireland as part of the commemoration of the centenary of the 1916 Rising.

Mr Kenny announced the invitation after a meeting with Mr Cameron in Downing Street today.

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Top of the agenda for the meeting was the so-called 'Brexit' referendum that will see the British public vote on whether or not to stay in the European Union.

However, developments in the north were also discussed and both leaders emphasised the strength of relations between Dublin and London.

Mr Kenny told reporters that he has asked Mr Cameron to visit Ireland this year.

"We also discussed.... 1916 centenary commemorations. We have a very comprehensive, inclusive, sensitive whole series of [events] this year .

"I've invited the Prime Minister to come over himself at some time during the course of the year if that's appropriate and obviously he'll consider that in due course."

Earlier Mr Cameron also spoke of this year's centenary.

"Of course 2016 also marks the centenary of some important events in our shared history. We will mark them as we should in a spirit of mutual respect, inclusiveness and friendship," he said.
'The murder investigation intensified yesterday as gardai sealed off a section of the banks of the Royal Canal, at Carton House, outside Maynooth, Co Kildare' Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire

A sadistic serial killer for hire, believed responsible for three other murders involving dismemberment, is now one of the main suspects in the macabre murder of Kenneth O'Brien, whose torso was found in the Grand Canal last Saturday.

Senior sources believe that Mr O'Brien (33) was murdered because he may have been suspected of passing information to gardai about the activities of a west Dublin gang whose criminal enterprises involve stolen vehicles and the drugs trade.

The murder investigation intensified yesterday as gardai sealed off a section of the banks of the Royal Canal, at Carton House, outside Maynooth, Co Kildare.

The new search area is 20 minutes' drive away from the site of last Saturday's grim discovery of Mr O'Brien's body at Ardclough.

The suspected killer has been linked to the November 2013 murder of Christopher Gaffney (37), whose body parts were scattered on farmland near Clonee, Co Meath; and the murder and dismemberment of Dun Laoghaire man, Mark Burke (37) whose partial remains were discovered at Thornton's waste plant in Ballyfermot in July 2014.

A fourth murder fitting the pattern of the O'Brien, Burke and Gaffney killings cannot be mentioned for legal reasons.
Prime Minister David Cameron (left) greets Taoiseach Enda Kenny outside No 10 Downing Street in London. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny is this afternoon meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London with the upcoming so-called 'Brexit Referendum top of the agenda.

Mr Kenny has previously raised his concerns about the prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union warning such a move could see the return of the border in the North.

Mr Cameron has committed to holding an in/out vote on EU membership by the end of 2017.

He is currently seeking reforms by the EU including on issues such as sovereignty and migration that he can take to the electorate ahead of the vote.

He hopes to have a deal in place by next months EU Council meeting.

The British Prime minister greeted Mr Kenny upon his arrival at 10 Downing Street at 3pm.

Developments in Northern Ireland are also on the agenda for this afternoon's meeting.

Earlier Mr Kenny addressed Irish business leaders in London and asked them to publicly support Britain staying in the EU.

"In Ireland, we are not disinterested observers. Nor should we be," he told them.

"Britain and Ireland are more than neighbours; we are friends.

"We are rivals at times of course. We compete on the global stage whether for economic investment or sporting success. "Yet we work closely together within the European Union as like-minded colleagues.

"We share a broadly similar vision for Europe.

"We want to see a Union that is globally competitive, internally efficient and outwardly coherent on trade, innovation and world affairs, including migration," Mr Kenny said.
A family's home has been targeted by thieves after they were taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Police are appealing for information after the family's home was burgled between 2pm and 11pm on Wednesday January 13 while the residents were out.

The thieves took jewellery and a games console.

It happened at a house on Silverstream Road in north Belfast last week.

Detective Sergeant Keith Wilson called the incident "despicable" as the residents were at hospital.

He said: "What makes this incident even more despicable is that the residents were actually at the Royal Victoria Hospital during this time, having been taken there by ambulance that morning

"We believe the callous people responsible for this break-in may have seen the family leaving in the ambulance and saw it as an opportunity to strike.

"They have been left understandably very upset."

"We are appealing to anyone with information that could assist our investigation to get in touch with Musgrave Reactive and Organised Crime on 101.
Anita O'Donnell and her partner, Mark Kelly, have literally been to hell and back.

For 18 months, they lived on an emotional precipice, day in, day out, not knowing if their little girl would live or die. They witnessed her distress, her pain, her valiant struggles, and they felt powerless to help her. Today, they are totally motivated by that terrible time, to raise funds for research, so other children will be spared that pain and anguish.

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Anita grew up in a charming old farmhouse in the Ballyhoura Mountains in Co Limerick. She graduated from the University of Limerick in 2000. She then spent two years in hedge-fund administration in Dublin, before going to Bermuda to work in finance. "That's where I first met Mark," she volunteers. "He's from outside Galway. We got together in 2005."

Soon after, the couple moved to New York and became part of that band of ambitious, hard-working young executives populating the world of high finance. Nonetheless, they were delighted when Anita became pregnant in 2013. During her first scan, twins were detected. At the next scan, concerns were raised that one of the twins was smaller than the other. Shortly after, Mark and Anita learned that the smaller baby was suffering from intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). This occurs when the foetus is not getting enough oxygen and nutrients from the placenta.

The baby was also diagnosed with tricuspid atresia, which is a life-threatening congenital heart condition, where the tricuspid valve between the right atrium and the right ventricle does not develop properly. Anita says one particularly blunt doctor told her that, given the baby's severe problems, they had "choices".

Anita volunteers that although she is pro-choice, she definitely did not want a termination. The doctor then pointed out that the possibility existed that the baby would simply "self reduce".

Anita took this to mean the baby would wither and die. "I threw up when I heard that," she says, "and I couldn't go back to the office that day." By now she was terribly frightened, but she says Mark was unbelievably caring and supportive. She also got comfort from a sympathetic paediatric cardiologist, who assured them the prognosis for the smaller baby was good, in spite of the problems.

Not long after, Anita and Mark moved close to New York Presbyterian Hospital because of its excellent reputation for treating babies with cardiac conditions. When the smaller baby stopped growing at 34 weeks, both infants were then delivered by Caesarean section on December 11, 2013.

Abbigael (Abbie) weighed a respectable 4lbs 7oz, while her little sister Annabel (Annie) weighed only 2lbs 7oz, with the additional disadvantage of having a "massive" heart condition.

Just eight days later, Abbie was already home, while Annie's battles were just beginning. At six weeks, she had her first open-heart surgery, when a band was put on her pulmonary artery to slow blood flow. It went well. But soon after, Annie started to deteriorate.

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"She was turning blue, and she was inconsolable," says Anita. "So when she was about 10 weeks, they operated again. This time they put in a shunt, to increase blood flow."

Annie was in theatre for several hours, and was on a ventilator for five days. Yet again, she failed to rally. "Her heart rate and oxygen levels were going down, but they didn't know why," says Anita. "Eventually they discovered she was in withdrawal from her medication, so they had to wean her off more gradually."

The goal then for the medical team was to increase Annie's weight to a point where it was safe to perform a Glenn shunt, to override the undeveloped section of the heart. However, she wouldn't take a bottle, so a tube was inserted for feeding purposes, with limited success.

Then, one Sunday morning, when she was almost five months old, a near-catastrophe occurred when the original shunt failed, causing a clot, which prevented blood getting to Annie's lungs and oxygen to her body. She almost died. Anita and Mark dashed to the hospital. "They were trying desperately to resuscitate her, but nothing was working," she recalls. "They needed to stabilise her urgently for surgery. They let us see Annie before she went into theatre. There were probably 40 medical people in the room; many of them crying. I was pleading 'fix her'."

Miraculously, Annie survived having another, bigger shunt inserted. In the meantime, her parents were warned that she was likely to have suffered irreparable brain and multiple organ damage due to oxygen deprivation. They just didn't know what to expect. But test after test showed no significant long-term damage from the episode.

Anita believes it was prayer that saved this very special little girl. "So many, many people in Ireland and the US lit candles and prayed for Annie," she says. "I honestly believe she is with us thanks to the power of prayer. I believe she pleaded with God when the doctors were trying to revive her, and said she had a lot more to do on this Earth, and that he should let her come back. And he did. There wasn't any doctor that thought she could survive and be normal."

However, Annie was still extremely sick, and in need of further heart surgery. When she was nine months old, she finally had her Glenn shunt operation. This major reconstruction helps compensate for the faulty valve. The doctors anticipated Annie would require months of in-patient rehabilitation after the Glenn, but to everyone's surprise, just two weeks later, she went home. She will require further surgery in the future, but for now, she is doing exceptionally well. An old photo of Annie post-surgery, shows her lying buried beneath a maze of wires (inset, above left). However, recent videos reveal a gorgeous little girl, running around like any other two-year-old.

"Cognitively, Annie is doing fantastic. However, she is still a little weak physically, so she has regular occupational, speech and physical therapy, which has made a huge difference," Anita says.

There is no doubt Annie owes her life to her nurses and doctors, and to the devotion of her parents and supportive extended families who fought for this brave poppet.

Anita and Mark are establishing the Annabel Rose Kelly Foundation to raise funds for research into congenital heart disease. All proceeds will be donated to the Children's Heart Foundation.

For more information, see facebook.com/annabelrose.kelly, or see childrensheartfoundation.org. To make a donation, see weblink.donorperfect.com/NewYorkAnnabel
Celebrity chef Clodagh McKenna is moving her restaurant from Dublin's Blackrock with plans to launch a "new dining experience" in the coming months.

The Dublin-based chef, who opened Clodagh's Kitchen in the southside suburb in 2013, confirmed that she has removed her branding from the venue.

The restaurant temporarily closed at the end of last year to undergo renovations, and was reopened this week under a new name.

"Clodagh has removed her brand from Blackrock and is opening in another Dublin location this year," a spokesperson for the chef confirmed to the Herald.

Speaking about the move, Clodagh said: "With great thought I have decided to move location and to create and develop a new dining concept.

"The exact location will be announced over the next couple of months. I am very excited and so grateful for the support from all of our loyal customers over the years," she added.

The Ballymaloe-trained chef also runs a Clodagh's Kitchen restaurant in Arnotts in Dublin's city centre and used to run the Homemade by Clodagh Food Court at the store before terminating her contract by mutual contract.

Speaking recently about the opening of her standalone restaurant in Blackrock, Clodagh described it as "the hardest six months of my life".
2016 brings direct flights to Jamaica. Thomas Breathnach laps up the stereotypes and spontaneity of a Caribbean haven.

The modern traveller is meant to carry an open mind. But sometimes, nothing welcomes you to a destination like the first flash of a national stereotype.

As I touch down to a fireball sunset in Montego Bay, border officials welcome me with a melodic Creole lilt, a billboard of Usain Bolt festoons the arrivals hall, and Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier is testing the subwoofer of my airport transfer. Nowhere seems to have trademarked relaxation quite like Jamaica, and with the Caribbean nation coming within direct reach of Ireland this year, I was set for a slice of the action.

No sooner has Marley reached his first middle eight, than my jovial driver, Jermaine, is briefing me with the local lowdown. First up is the holy trinity of the Jamaican patois. I learn that 'yeamon' means 'yes', that 'irre' means 'alright' and that the Jamaican linguistic panacea of 'no problem' seems to culturally translate to 'it'll be grand'.

At this point, I wasn't sure how the local lexicon spelled "tourism paddywhackery", but who was I to argue with the capital of cool - a country where strangers high-five you on the street, and business emails are signed off with "One Love"?

The second largest island in the Caribbean (roughly the size of Cork plus Kerry), Jamaica's tourist scene hubs around the resorts of Montego Bay, Ochio Rios and Negril. The vibe of all three generally mirrors their predominant clientele: a fun-worshipping demographic, zip-coded somewhere between Ontario and the Jersey Shore.

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With that, you can expect Margaritaville cocktail bars (think Starbucks for Pina Coladas), coconut-white beaches and luxury catamarans boarding a continuous cargo of booze-cruise chasers - not to mention full-moon parties, die-hard dolphin parks and Cool Runnings-themed toboggan rides.

I find my refuge in Negril's super-luxe Rockhouse Hotel (rockhouse.com; 100pps). Its dreamy cluster of luxury, straw-roofed villas sees me waking up feeling like I've won the reward challenge on Survivor. As a true Caribbean utopia, my own private pool ladder sinks into a cove of coral.

At Jamaica's most western point, sunsets offer stellar screensaver moments, and the vistas are even more dramatic off-shore at The Pelican Bar, an iconic watering hole set on stilts a mile out at sea. I arrive there with the aid of a local fisherman, while pelicans and frigate birds sail the skies like modern-day pterodactyls. Patrons are few, cocktails are mean and driftwood makes the perfect sun-lounger.

Another journey takes me upstream along the Martha Brae, an exotic riparian heaven best known for its river rafting. This isn't white-water country, however, but rather home to Jamaican-style gondoliers who row eco-romantics down the river's lush rainforest banks (jamaicarafting.com; $30pp).

I mount my bamboo vessel aided by one Mr Cee Walker, a salt-and-pepper bearded gent who welcomes me with a door-step smile.

"Oh you're Irish," he notes, before relaying the historical ties between our islands. It's said that up to 80,000 Irish slaves were shipped to Jamaica during the colonial age, and the Jamaican accent is said to be related to the Irish brogue - particularly that of Cork. With a little imagination, I could have been in a taxi to Shandon.

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While all Jamaican tourist activities deliver a craic-filled atmosphere, the national don't-worry-be-happy sentiment isn't likely to extend to your wallet. A widespread dual pricing system means most tourist attractions offer concessions for locals while hefty US Dollar rates apply to foreign tourists.

A tip? Bring a supply of Greenbacks if you plan on doing the circuit.

Beyond the turnstiles, Jamaica's Afro-Caribbean inspired cuisine is a huge draw. Fragrant goat curries, spicy jerk marinated chicken and cured salt-fish are just some of the highlights. For the best culinary buzz on the island, I strike for Stush in the Bush (stushinthebush.com), a Rastafarian organic restaurant set in the vulture-guarded hills overlooking Ochio Rios.

It calls for an inland detour via vibrant scenes of rural Jamaica: stray goats grazing amid hibiscus blooms, ramshackle tractors motoring through sugar cane plantations. As I pass a chapel in the village of Freehill, scores of churchgoers are cooling down around an ice-cream machine. Sundae service, Jamaican-style.

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Driving up the mountain roads, a dread-locked dude in a Bob Marley tee grinds up next to me in his Jeep. It's Chris Binns, who opened Stush in the Bush together with his wife Lisa. "We've created a piece of heaven up here," Binns explains.

Sublime sweet potato gratin, fresh banana flambe and clinking jam jars of divine rum concoctions follow. With real food, real conversation and real people, this rugged pocket of the island is the Caribbean haven at its best. The stereotypes are sunny, but it's when I turn a little away from them that I really find my Jamaican dream.

How to do it:

Prices with Falcon Holidays (falconholidays.ie) start from 1,589pps for the three-star Holiday Inn Resort in Montego Bay, while 2,809pps with Thomson (thomsonholidays.ie) will buy you the five-star Couples Tower Isle in Ochio Rios.

Both packages are all-inclusive, with flights on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and transfers included, and are based on a 14-night stay.

For more to see and do in Jamaica, see visitjamaica.com.

What to pack:

A water-resistant camera.

Considering much of your time in the Jamaica will most likely be spent snorkelling, diving or simply swimming to the pool bar, investing in plunge-proof tech will easily double your photo memories and undoubtedly add to your Snapchat cred.

For sweet options, Pixmania.ie offers a handy Nikon Coolpix for 89 while to capture even more action, entry level GoPros start from under 140.
Who will save our towns? A simple but pertinent question to ask all candidates in the forthcoming General Election. The demise of rural Ireland since 2008 has been as acute and as palpable as the national economic and social slide. The rural recovery, however, has not been as equal.

As An Taoiseach waxes lyrical about how we might reboot a global economy, perhaps more thought should focus on who will revive middle Ireland. It's all very well rebooting at Davos, but who is going to reboot Drumlish?

As the east coast and its upwardly mobile urbanites prepare to go once more into the breach of boom, social sectarianism is becoming more and more evident south of the border. As the pace of recovery east of the Shannon increases and we begin to creep back towards a tentative confidence, there is a myopia to the understandable concern enveloping rural Ireland.

Manifestly silent until now, it may yet make itself heard through the ballot box in the General Election - a quiet threat hanging over every political party.

By default or by design, societies change. Unless there is a direction driving the change, the road is precarious and unpredictable. While the very survival of some towns and villages hangs in the balance, we look to civic leaders for guidance. Indifference is a guarantee of social decline. The wilful blindness that seems to have taken hold of the political establishment regarding the slow death of our small towns could be a serious issue for the Government parties come the election. Realistic and achievable policies are urgently needed.

Serious strategic attention has never really been paid to the long-term consequences of disappearing high streets in our towns. A Post Office, a Garda Station, a credit union, a church, a school, the pub, the local grocery shop, a hotel and a GP were all given fixtures in every town in Ireland - even in the dismal period of the 1980s. What were missing then were jobs and employment prospects, and we saw entire families emigrate with every factory closure.

Throughout that period, however, the basic infrastructure of society remained intact - the amenities which afford a lifestyle. This time around, those amenities have also been dismantled and services closed. In a cloud of depression, businesses became punch-drunk trying to cope with the onslaught of mounting bills and silent tills. Left unchecked for so long, the revival of our vibrant high streets seems too misty a memory to grasp - a development not conducive to the longer-term social health of rural Ireland.

This country has a unique history in relation to rural development and how our society is structured. Attachment to parish, club and county is enduring - and sometimes even paramount. It's a cherished bond that should not be ignored in national policies.

It's understandable that, as each community looks to its own, vocal Independent candidates who are prepared to stick up for their own areas become very appealing. During the epic social and economic whirlwind we have lived through, people have come to realise that communities are important. Local support is important. Local business is important. Once considered outdated and old-fashioned, communities and community leaders have delivered what was needed in a time of national flux.

Those local leaders have gained credibility and political traction. Communities are cool again. Whatever the reason, this willingness to 'look local' is going to have a huge bearing on the make-up of the next government. People have slightly selfishly, but perhaps understandably, begun to look again to themselves and to what can be delivered by politicians for them locally.

Lying beneath the surface of those community leaders in rural Ireland are people from the voluntary sector, an altruistic army that has been vital in economic, cultural, social and infrastructural development.

A lot of our economic recovery has taken place due to the voluntary efforts of thousands of selfless people. Perhaps enhancing the role of voluntary effort in rural Ireland should be looked at as a way to assist progress in a more structured and embracing way?

If we were to compare the demise of our economic and social fortunes between urban and rural Ireland, and look at them as two sick patients who presented themselves to hospital at the same time and with the same symptoms, the results would be very different indeed. Why it is that one patient is sitting up in the bed drinking their tea and preparing to leave hospital while the other lies flatlining on life support? The answer is simple - they have received different treatment.

It's almost as if cities enjoy private healthcare while our towns languish in the waiting area of a public A&E unit - their destinies down to luck as much as any actual plan. Government investment and attention has been centred on the large urban cities, with multinational and capital investment being steered in a very deliberate way.

For years, the commentariat scoffed at the late Jackie Healy-Rae for his unashamed 'parish pump politics'. Perhaps he was ahead of his time.

The body politic has done all it can to convince us that we have moved beyond local concerns, but they are all at it now. If opinion polls are borne out, the next government may make the efforts of Jackie Healy-Rae appear demure. In this election, if you cannot think of a question to ask a politician who knocks on your door, try this - ask them not what they will do for you, but what they will do for your community.
This disastrous flood season is hopefully now coming to an end, but, regretfully, it leaves in its wake thousands of financially ruined people in all categories of life wondering how to recover from their plight and what their future holds for them.

This flooding also leaves in its wake thousands of acres of habitat destroyed by the effects of the lingering flood water, both terrestrial and aqueous, which will take many years of slow natural regeneration to rectify.

Every flooded area has its own specific causes for flooding and the remedy is to remove the flood water as quickly as possible. The big question is how to remove this flood water.

In the case of the River Shannon and its catchment area, it is well known that modifying the river basin by dredging or otherwise will not alleviate the problem. Flood defences in all areas are impossible and where erected only serve to exaggerate the flooding problem further downstream.

The only permanent solution to the Shannon flood problem is to construct a properly designed flood water relief canal that takes away all the flood water. This constant water flow canal with the water flow rate controlled by gates and sluices would leave the Shannon north of Athlone in the Bogganfin area. The flood water would be diverted into it, by a gate control system across the Shannon so that no flood water would reach Athlone town.

The canal would run from the east to West crossing the River Suck, north of Ballinasloe in the Ballygill area. Here, the flood water from the River Suck would be diverted into the canal by a gated system whereby no flood water would reach Ballinasloe.

The water relief canal would then take the most suitable surveyed route towards Loughrey and through the Dunkellin River catchment area and out to the sea in the Clarinbridge/Kilcolgan area. Here it would alleviate the flooding in the Dunkellin River catchment area.

This Shannon flood relief canal would guarantee no more flooding of Athlone, Ballinasloe and other flood-prone towns and villages caused by Shannon flooding. It would decrease the flood water pressure on Shannon areas north of Athlone by having a sustainable flood water release exit.

As well as controlling Shannon flooding and preventing the destruction of livelihoods, properties and habitats, such a canal would open up a potentially huge water-based tourist industry, as well as creating its own environmental habitat.

Of course, there would be detractors and objectors to such a Shannon flood relief canal, based on EU habitat directives, habit interference and cost. Any such objections must be weighed against the habitat destruction caused by Shannon flooding and especially against the most important habitat of all - that is the habitat of affected people living in those flooded areas.

To conclude, if such a project could be implemented by the powers that be, it would prevent future Shannon flooding, save on local flood defence schemes, stabilise insurance costs, save the cost of the relocation of affected people and, most of all, give those people peace of mind.

Brendan White

Roscommon

Giving voters the soft soap?

Were Fine Gael canvassers told not to knock on doors during soaps in case people are watching Eastenda?

John Williams

Clonmel, Co Tipperary

Left behind by the 'recovery'

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the only question voters will be asked on election day is whether they want to risk the economic recovery.

He states that this is something that must be felt by every citizen of our republic, because it's "our recovery."

Mr Kenny also outlined his three steps to heaven, which is two steps short of his last election promise, the five-point plan.

This so-called economic recovery may be felt by the Taoiseach, his Cabinet, banks, bankers, and other elite members of society - but the man is totally deluded if he believes that the normal people of Ireland can feel any kind of a recovery.

Seamus McLoughlin

Keshcarrigan, Co Leitrim

Irish Army's roots in 1916

I am perplexed by the lack of understanding shown by John Bruton regarding the use of members of the Defence Forces in visiting primary schools in relation to the 1916 commemorations (Irish Independent, January 23).

The Irish Defence Forces trace their history back to the foundation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913.

The current uniform of the Irish Army still has the initials 'IV' on the buttons, representing its origins. Of the 2,000 plus people who took an active part in the 1916 Rising, the majority were members of the Irish Volunteers, so it would be most unusual not to include them in as many aspects of the commemorations as possible.

In addition, WT Cosgrave, the founder of Mr Bruton's own political party, was one of the "minority" who took part in the fighting on Easter week.

Like most people of the present day, I abhor violence, just as Mr Bruton does. However, we cannot cast modern-day aspersions on a different era.

Just like Britain, which was willing to send its soldiers to kill or be killed to protect/expand its empire, Ireland's "small minority" were willing to do the same for the freedom of their country.

Judging by Mr Bruton's contribution, I would not like to see politicians "explaining the Proclamation", as he suggested.

Eoin Swithin Walsh

Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny

Use your vote wisely

Ireland is now in the midst of a "phoney election", with the actual election date still to be announced.

It will, potentially, be the second most historically important election in Ireland since the famous 'Treaty election' held on June 16, 1922. Hopefully, there will be a great turnout of voters, who will tick all the boxes on the ballot paper, according to their preference.

May I suggest to voters that there is one method of voting that will send a strong message to the four main political parties that the majority of people are sick and tired of 'gombeen politics'.

For instance, where a household has more than one voter, if one voter per such house would opt to vote the four main parties last, in the order of their choice, what a strong message this would be.

First, it would prove the power the voter has with their vote, and secondly, it would show how the voter can empower themselves for future elections.

Declan Foley

Berwick, Australia
Daisy Lowe has been working on her acting career

Daisy Lowe finds it funny when people have the wrong perception about her.

The British beauty may be the offspring of former singer Pearl Lowe and Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, but that doesn't mean she's had help on her way to the top.

She's an accomplished model in her own right, but admits people often get the wrong idea about her.

"It's funny the amount of people I've met who are surprised by my personality," Daisy told Britain's The Metro newspaper. "They expect me to be entitled. Or that I don't work - I hate that!"

Expand Close Daisy Lowe attends the GQ Men Of The Year Awards at The Royal Opera House on September 8, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Daisy Lowe attends the GQ Men Of The Year Awards at The Royal Opera House on September 8, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

As well as modelling, Daisy is also trying her hand at acting. She's followed in the footsteps of the likes of Cara Delevingne, Suki Waterhouse and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley by courting a Hollywood career, and admits acting is currently keeping her smiling.

"I'm the happiest bunny (on set) hopping around everywhere," she confessed.

Expand Close (L to R) Cressida Bonas, guest, Gemma Chan, Dominic West, Daisy Lowe, guest and Alicia Vikander attend Harvey Weinstein's BAFTA Dinner in partnership with Burberry & GREY GOOSE at Little House Mayfair / Facebook

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Whatsapp (L to R) Cressida Bonas, guest, Gemma Chan, Dominic West, Daisy Lowe, guest and Alicia Vikander attend Harvey Weinstein's BAFTA Dinner in partnership with Burberry & GREY GOOSE at Little House Mayfair

She's even managed to bag a part in Cara's new film Tulip Fever, which also stars Christoph Waltz, Jack O'Connell and Alicia Vikander.

"(Cara's) brilliant and fearless," Daisy smiled. "I've done a film with her called Tulip Fever. I literally have three lines - depending on if they cut me out! - but I'm still a named actress."

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While her famous last name may open doors for Daisy, it doesn't always work in her favour.

"(My name) can be a massive hindrance because you really have to prove yourself," she sighed.

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Daisy has previously been labelled an It Girl by the media, but it's a title she hates. The 26-year-old is determined to win everyone over with her hardworking mentality, and banish the label forever.

"(I want to be known as a model). It's just... the idea of an It Girl. Either it can be seen in a Parisian way, which is very complimentary, like a Jane Birkin or a Brigitte Bardot, or it can be seen in a very British way, which is, 'You don't work hard for your money - you just get paid to go to parties.' I work really hard," Daisy previously said to the Britain's InStyle magazine.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. January 27 is the remembrance day of Holocaust victims. In over 30 countries of the world, including Armenia, numerous memorial events are organized on that day. The Jewish community of Armenia, together with the UN office in Armenia, will organize a memorial event on January 27. The Head of the Jewish Community of Armenia Rima Varzhapetyan told about this at Armenpress media hall.

Like the previous years, this year again we will gather at the memorial dedicated to the Genocide of the Armenian people and the Holocaust, and put flowers to pay tribute to millions of Jewish martyrs, Rima Varzhapetyan said.

Referring to the developments in the Middle East and other parts of the world, Rima Varzhapetyan mentioned that today Nazi forces are emerging, maybe forgetting the vicious realities of the 20th century.

We are witnessing painful developments in the Middle East and other countries. And if we do not say today never again, recurrence of Holocaust years cannot be ruled out, Rima Varzhapetyan said.

In the words of the deputy head of the Jewish community in Armenia Karen Hovhannisyan, unfortunately, the world took no lessons from the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and later the Holocaust. Inhumane developments go on. We witnessed what happened in a number of African countries, today the situation is tense in Europe. I think all these must foster sober-minded people to recall the past and do everything to exclude the black pages of the past to reoccur, Karen Hovhannisyan said.

To the question why Israel has not recognized the Armenian Genocide till now, Karen Hovhannisyan mentioned that politics matters here. According to a survey conducted in Israel, the majority of the public favors Armenian Genocide recognition. Unfortunately, often the opinion of the public and politicians differs. Many politicians promise during their pre-electoral campaign that they will recognize the Armenian Genocide in case of being elected, but as soon as they are elected, they forget their promise, Karen Hovhannisyan said. The representatives of the Jewish community highlighted the role of public diplomacy for that issue.
Star of the stage and TV Twink has described how her family is beyond consoling after her Knocklyon home was torn asunder by thieves.

The star, also known as Adele King, came home on Friday night to discover her bedroom four-feet deep in clothes ... Bags ...Rails ... Every drawer pulled out ... Trunks and dog beds torn asunder.

In a Facebook post this evening, the star appealed to the public to report any sign of her stolen wares if they resurface.

Every item of decent jewellery and masses of my beloved good quality costume jewellery ... that I have collected all over the world... All over the years ... in Turkish bazars...... trips out to the USA to Chloe....Gifts given by grateful promotors at the end of long successful runs .... All treasured ... So very appreciated ....and kept lovingly all this time ... Gone.

Expand Close The thieves tried to open Twink's unused safe by hosing it down in the bath. / Facebook

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Whatsapp The thieves tried to open Twink's unused safe by hosing it down in the bath.

The memories attached to all of them ... Gone forever.

Absolutely everything I own and love .... And worked hard for. Gone, she said.

In an impassioned post on Facebook, the star described her horror as she discovered her home was ransacked.

The beautiful little glass perfume bottles I got all over the Middle East whilst working there .....either taken or smashed.... An exquisite "cut glass "perfume bottle that my beloved Maureen Grant [ from Maureen's bar at the Olympia Theatre ) gave me for my 50th  Gone. Little Silver frames with my baby children in them, gone.

All my bags and wallets emptied .. ..contents all gone .. Cards ...money for the bills on Monday ... And the ..." good bags " and luggage with it.

I raced from room to room crying Jesus no .... Jesus no ... Not MORE theft  What in hell's name is going on ???

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Just 15 months ago, Twinks beloved dog Teddy was stolen but was found again after a massive media appeal.

Twink said she also had items stolen from her cake stall at Terenure market some time ago.

What is going on in our dear country ??? We are under attack from a myriad of gangs of ruthless thoughtless mindless thugs.

And to the scoffers and the cynics out there  You may be laughing at this tonight ....( Bless you )

But  Watch out ... You're probably next.

The star said she was told by gardai that there are up to ten burglaries a day occurring in the neighbouring Rathfarnham area.

The star ended her statement with a quote from Rudyard Kipling:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster ...

And treat those two impostors just the same ...

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves ..

To make a trap for fools....

Or watch things you gave your life to .... Broken ...

And stoop ..

And build'em up

With worn out tools" ...!!!!!

( " Then you'll be a man my son ")
Donald Trump has boasted he is so confident about the loyalty of his supporters that he predicts they would stick with him even if he shot someone.

The Republican presidential frontrunner was speaking at a rally nine days before the Iowa caucuses open voting in the 2016 campaign.

He was speaking to an enthusiastic audience at a Christian school in Iowa, and said: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."

The tycoon attacked conservative commentator Glenn Beck's support of rival Ted Cruz and welcomed a figure from the Republican establishment, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

Mr Beck campaigned for Mr Cruz and held little back in going after Mr Trump.

"The time for silliness and reality show tactics has passed," he said, and warned a Trump victory in the February 1 caucuses could have lasting consequences.

"If Donald Trump wins, it's going to be a snowball to hell," he said.

Mr Trump called Mr Beck a "loser" and a "sad sack".

He demonstrated the extent to which some in the Republican establishment have begun to accept a potential Trump nomination when Mr Grassley introduced him at an event.

The senator did not offer an endorsement, but his presence underscored Mr Trump's enduring position at the top of the polls as voting approaches.

Mr Cruz, running close with Mr Trump in Iowa polls, was almost entirely focused on the billionaire in his event in Ankeny, Iowa, yesterday.

He professed core conservative values and drew a sharp contrast with Mr Trump on issue after issue, without using his name.

He claimed one Republican candidate "for over 60 years of his life" supported so-called partial-birth abortion and a "Bernie Sanders-style socialised medicine for all". Mr Trump is 69 and is unlikely to have had positions on abortion and healthcare as a child.

Mr Sanders, a liberal senator, is mounting a strong challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr Cruz blasted Mr Trump's past reluctance to strip money from Planned Parenthood and cast the billionaire's plan to deport more than 11 million people who are in country illegally as "amnesty", because he would then let many of them return.

But Mr Cruz shrugged off Trump's shooting comment, saying: "I will let Donald speak for himself. I can say I have no intention of shooting anybody in this campaign."

He added that he would keep his criticism focused on issues, adding: "I don't intend to go into the gutter."

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she'll save former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg the trouble of deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race - by winning her party's nomination.

"The way I read what he said is, if I don't get the nomination, he might consider it," Mrs Clinton said. "Well, I'm going to relieve him of that and get the nomination, so he doesn't have to."

The 'New York Times' reported at the weekend that Bloomberg is uncomfortable with the rise of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's principal Democratic challenger, and of the prospect of real-estate mogul Trump being the Republican nominee. The 73-year-old billionaire has asked advisers to draw up plans for a potential independent campaign, the newspaper says.

Mrs Clinton described Mr Bloomberg as "a good friend". The former first lady and US senator from New York is in a tight battle with Sanders going into the first nominating contests of 2016.

Mr Sanders said Mr Bloomberg's entry into the race would help make his point about the outsized influence of wealth in the US political process.
A girl is throwing snow balls on the banks of Financial District with Brooklyn in the background on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

A man clears his car with a shovel near Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

A man cleans a street covered in snow in New York on January 24, 2016. Millions of people in the eastern United States started digging out Sunday from a huge blizzard that brought New York and Washington to a standstill, but the travel woes were far from over. The storm -- dubbed "Snowzilla" -- killed at least 18 people after it walloped several states over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, affecting an estimated 85 million residents who were told to stay off the roads and hunker down in doors for their own safety. / AFP / KENA BETANCUR (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images)

A woman walks next NYPD cars covered by snow in New York on January 24, 2016. Millions of people in the eastern United States started digging out Sunday from a huge blizzard that brought New York and Washington to a standstill, but the travel woes were far from over. The storm -- dubbed "Snowzilla" -- killed at least 18 people after it walloped several states over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, affecting an estimated 85 million residents who were told to stay off the roads and hunker down in doors for their own safety. / AFP / KENA BETANCUR (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 24: Motorists dig out their cars on West 8st 1 and Central Park West Sunday morning on January 24, 2016 in New York, City. Most of New York's streets were cleaned up over night after a huge snow storm slammed into the mid Atlantic states including New York. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

TAKOMA PARK, MD - JANUARY 24: A municipal truck outfitted with a plow attempts to clear an intersection of almost 20 inches of snowfall January 24, 2016 in Takoma Park, Maryland. Blizzard Jonas blanked the East Cost in snow, leaving 18 people dead, near-record snowfall from Arkansas to New York and heavy flooding along the coast. The storm, dubbed 'Snowzilla,' lasted into early January 24. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

TAKOMA PARK, MD - JANUARY 24: Marshal Webster digs his cars out of almost 20 inches of snowfall January 24, 2016 in Takoma Park, Maryland. Blizzard Jonas blanked the East Cost in snow, leaving 18 people dead, near-record snowfall from Arkansas to New York and heavy flooding along the coast. The storm, dubbed 'Snowzilla,' lasted into early January 24. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

TAKOMA PARK, MD - JANUARY 24: Children play on top of a six-foot-tall pile of snow after almost 20 inches fell over the weekend January 24, 2016 in Takoma Park, Maryland. Blizzard Jonas blanked the East Cost in snow, leaving 18 people dead, near-record snowfall from Arkansas to New York and heavy flooding along the coast. The storm, dubbed 'Snowzilla,' lasted into early January 24. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 21: New York Fire Department firefighters stock up on salt before New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio speaks about the city's preparedness for an upcoming snowstorm at the Spring Street salt shed on January 21, 2016 in New York, NY. Winter Storm Jonas is expected to hit New York City between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning and the National Weather Service recently included New York City on a blizzard watch. (Photo by Bryan Thomas/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 24: People slid down the hill in Central Park in the morning on January 24, 2016 in New York, City. Most of New York's streets were cleaned up over night after a huge snow storm slammed into the mid Atlantic states including New York. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 24: People slid down the hill in Central Park in the morning on January 24, 2016 in New York, City. Most of New York's streets were cleaned up over night after a huge snow storm slammed into the mid Atlantic states including New York. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 24: People sled in the snow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park following a blizzard on January 24, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The day long blizzard caused the shutdown of roadways in New York City and parts of the subway system as heavy snow and high winds paralysed parts of the city. The storm left 26.8 inches in Manhattan, the second most recorded since 1869. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A women walk carrying a dog in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

A girl plays in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

A woman is pulling a child on sledge in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

Children slide in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / Don EMMERT (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

Children slide in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / Don EMMERT (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

Children slide in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / Don EMMERT (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

Mother and child slide in the snow in Central Park on January 24, 2016 in New York. A massive blizzard that claimed at least 16 lives in the eastern United States finally appeared to be winding down Sunday, giving snowbound residents the chance to begin digging out. / AFP / Don EMMERT (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

#Blizzard2016 trended on Twitter as New Yorkers shared photos and videos of the blistering snowfall across in the city.

Storm Jonas hit in major parts of America on Friday and is expected to hit Washington, Philadelphia and more before it's through.

New Yorkers took to social media over the weekend to share their pics of the blizzard as the city ground to halt amid a state of emergency.

People shared timelapse videos showing the extent of the snow, selfies and shots of empty shop shelves as panicked shoppers cleaned out the aisles.

Glee star Dianna Agron was among those sharing snow selfies, posting a picture in which she's wrapped up in a large coat, covered in snow.

The New Jersey Governor tweeted that he "officially signed a state of emergency" for the State on January 23rd while CNN's Miguel Marquez attempted to give Theresa Mannion a run for her money with a snowy, windy weather report from Baltimore, Maryland, on the "hazardous" driving conditions.

See the best of #blizzard2016 below and share yours by tweeting with #IndoSubmit.

Storm Jonas will makes its way to Ireland in the coming days.

However we will not experience snowfall - as the US is on the colder side of the Atlantic weather system.
People walk across the Brooklyn Bridge during a snowstorm in the Manhattan borough of New York January 23, 2016

A 37-year old Brooklyn man was killed on Saturday night in the New York's only recorded homicide of the blizzard when a friend accidentally shot him, according to police.

Zdzislaw Golabek was with Gorecki Maciej, 32, when a shot accidentally went off at around 8pm.

The victim was found dead at the scene with a gunshot wound to the head.

Maciej has been arrested and charged with manslaughter. He has also been brought up on a charge of criminal possession of a weapon. According to the Mail Online, the suspect told NYPD that the pair were playing Russian roulette in the moments before the shooting occurred.

The incident happened in an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

It has emerged that Mr Golabek lived in the building but not in the apartment where he died, while Maciej lives in the area.

Andrzej Golabek, the victim's brother, told the New York Post that he heard about the fatal accident through his brother's wife, Bozena.

My feeling was like, I cant believe it, said Mr Golabek. I still cant believe it.

He was really quiet, he added. He never got into trouble.

The investigation is ongoing.
A man lays a tribute at the scene of the shootings in La Loche Photo: AP

A 17-year-old boy has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting in a remote community in western Canada.

The male suspect, who cannot be named because of his age, is accused of shooting nine people at a school, including a female teacher's aide who died at the scene and a male teacher who died in a hospital.

Seven people wounded in the attack in the aboriginal village on Friday remain in hospital.

Two brothers, 17-year-old Dayne Fountaine and 13-year-old Drayden, were shot and killed in a home before the gunman headed to La Loche Community School for pupils aged from seven to 12.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commanding Officer Brenda Butterworth-Carr said when officers arrived at the school they saw the front door had been shot open. They entered the school, spotted the suspect and gave chase before apprehending him.

The boy is due in court next week but police say they have been unable to determine a motive. The school is in the remote Dene aboriginal community of La Loche in Saskatchewan Province.

La Loche is a community of less than 3,000 where just about everybody knows everybody else.

"This is a significant event for Canada," said Supt. Grant St Germaine.

"It's a huge impact on the community of La Loche. It's a part of changing times. We are seeing more violence."

Residents lit candles and placed flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the school.

Shootings at schools or on university campuses are rare in Canada. However, the country's bloodiest mass shooting occurred on December 6, 1989, at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, when Marc Lepine entered a college classroom at the engineering school, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself.

The educational assistant killed at the Saskatchewan school was identified as 21-year-old Marie Janvier.

A second victim was identified as 35-year-old Adam Wood, a new teacher at the school.
Sir Ian McKellen is set for a temporary career change when he becomes a tour guide as part of a Shakespeare film festival.

The actor, who will host public bus tours of the London locations used in Richard III which he starred in more than 20 years ago, also suggested that Shakespeare should probably never be taught.

The event is part of BFI Presents Shakespeare on Film - billed as the biggest ever programme of Shakespeare on screen in the UK and across the world.

It will explore how filmmakers have adapted, been inspired by and interpreted Shakespeare's work for the big screen.

Sir Ian is spearheading the project and will travel around the world to present and discuss the great writer's work on screen.

He starred in and co-adapted Richard III in 1995, directed and co-adapted by Richard Loncraine, alongside a glittering cast including Dame Maggie Smith, Annette Bening and Jim Broadbent.

With the film set in the 1930s and shot largely on location in London, Sir Ian will be hosting public bus tours of the locations in the film - from St Pancras station and Tate Modern, to Battersea Power Station and Hackney's haunting gas holders.

When asked what he would say to people who find Shakespeare boring due to unpleasant school day memories, Sir Ian said a lot of people are "put off" Shakespeare by the way it is taught in schools.

He told the Press Association: "I feel the same about chemistry you know, but it would be ridiculous to deny that chemistry is an important part of human existence.

"And I think the same is true of Shakespeare. Yeah, an awful lot of people are put off Shakespeare by the way it's taught in schools.

"And I think probably it should never be taught. If you want to come into contact with Shakespeare you should go and see a play in the theatre and discover the delights of being in the presence of actors who are telling the story, and what story, and what language to tell the story.

"And professional Shakespeare actors spend their lives working out how to make the text clear, and understandable and exciting.

"And it's only in that way I think that you can get to the heart of what is very, very special about Shakespeare."

Sir Ian said one of his favourite screen adaptations is Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

He said to modernise the setting, which is what Luhrmann does in his film, is "extremely helpful" and also what Shakespeare would have liked.

Richard III will be simulcast across UK cinemas on April 28 with a post-film on-stage discussion between Sir Ian and Loncraine live from BFI Southbank.

The BFI's programme, which launches on March 31, will feature an international tour - with screenings in Cuba, Iraq, Russia and the USA.
Malaysian military personnel and policeman stand guard outside a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul)

Strict security laws are crucial to fighting terrorism, Malaysia's leader warned as the Islamic State group vowed revenge over a crackdown on its members.

Prime Minister Najib Razak says the terrorism threat is "very real" and that the laws are vital to ensure Malaysia is not open to infiltration.

Opening a two-day counter-terrorism conference, Mr Najib said "the best way to uphold civil liberties is to ensure the safety of the nation".

Human rights activists have slammed a law implemented last year that revives detention without trial.

Another law approved last month that gives sweeping powers to a council led by the prime minister has also been criticised.

Police earlier said IS, also known as Daesh, had posted a video that warns of attacks over the arrest of its members.
A Malaysian official (C) takes pictures of a piece of suspected aircraft debris after it was found by fishermen on January 23, at a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat on January 25, 2016

A large piece of metal that washed up on a beach in Thailand is probably part of a rocket launched by Japan, not a missing Malaysian plane, according to a Japanese rocket maker.

The discovery of the metal sparked speculation that it might be from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared almost two years ago.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said that the metal piece is highly likely to be part of a Japanese H-IIA or H-IIB rocket that was launched from southern Japan, based on an initial examination of photos and videos of the object.

Flight MH370 lost communications and made a sharp turn away from its Beijing destination before disappearing in March 2014.

It is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, far away from Thailand.

Company spokeswoman Sayo Suwashita said officials are trying to determine which rocket and its launch date.

Rocket debris falls into the ocean after every launch and most is collected, but sometimes pieces can be found some distance from the launch site, including in foreign waters, she said.

Japan has launched H-IIA and H-IIB rockets since the 2000s. The most recent H-IIA launch was in November 2015.

The debris was found on the eastern coast of southern Thailand's Nakhon Si Thammarat province, about 370 miles (600 kilometres) south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand.

Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said the search for the missing jet, which carried 239 people, is ongoing in the Indian Ocean and that its second phase is expected to be completed by June. Australia has led a multinational search that has so far cost more than 120 million dollars (84 million).

Aviation experts from Malaysia visited Nakhon Si Thammarat to inspect the metal piece, after which the Thai air force flew it to Bangkok for further examination.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau announced on Monday that the search of 120 square kilometres (46,000 square miles) of seabed where the Boeing 777 is thought to have crashed has been set back after a ship lost its sonar equipment.

The Fugro Discovery, one of three ships conducting the search, towed its side-scan sonar unit on Sunday into a mud volcano that rose 2,200 metres (7,200ft) from the sea floor, the bureau said in a statement.

The ship lost the sonar unit plus 4.5 kilometres (14,800ft) of cable.

The ship is now making a six-day journey to the Australian port of Fremantle to collect new cable and will continue the search with spare sonar equipment, it said.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. The office of the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan informed today that the first President of Armenia underwent colorectal cancer surgery in Glendale Memorial Hospital, Glendale, U.S.

As Armenpress reports, the surgeons were Petar Vukasin (Colorectal Surgery Institute) and the oncologist Kalust Ucar (Pacific Shore Medical Group): After post-surgical treatment Ter-Petrosyan checked out of hospital on January 24 and is recovering at the home of his relatives.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his family express their deepest and heartfelt gratitude to the doctors for the professional medical care, special attention and warm attitude.
Workmen begin to cover up a new artwork by Banksy, depicting the girl from Les Miserables affected by tear gas, opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge, London. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire

A new artwork by Banksy, depicting the girl from Les Miserables affected by tear gas, opposite the French embassy in Knightsbridge, London. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire

A mural by British graffiti artist Banksy highlighting the alleged use of tear gas on migrants from the "jungle" camp in Calais has appeared on a hoarding near the French embassy in London.

The stencilled image mimics the logo of the musical "Les Miserables" but in Banksy's depiction the character Cosette is engulfed by clouds of gas. A bar code links to YouTube footage that claims to show police raids on the camp earlier in January.

The artist, whose identity has never been confirmed, last month painted a mural of late Apple founder Steve Jobs as a refugee on a wall at the Calais camp, referencing Jobs' heritage as the son of a migrant from Syria to the United States.

Other works in the French town that homes thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa who want to enter Britain also appeared on Banksy's website.
Jack Letts, in a picture thought to have been taken near the Taqba Dam in Syria, and his parents John Letts and Sally Lane (inset)

The family of a man feared to be Britains first white convert to join Isil last night claimed he is the victim of a right wing conspiracy.

Jack Letts, 20, has been dubbed Jihadi Jack by friends after leaving his Oxford home and travelling to Syria, where he is suspected of having joined the terror group.

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He has posted photos of himself on social media, thought to have been taken near the Taqba Dam in Syria. In one he is wearing combat-style clothing.

But a man who identified himself only as a close family member insisted there had been an avalanche of misinformation about him in the media.

Mr Letts father, John, is a leading organic farmer who has appeared on BBCs Countryfile and won a Prince Charles grant to help preserve crop biodiversity.

John Letts is an archaeobotanist and a leading light in organic wheat as well as being a master thatcher and baker.

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Neighbours said he and his family were left devastated and depressed after Jack ran off to Syria in 2014 aged just 18.

One said he first converted to Islam after being encouraged by Muslim classmates but was later radicalised by local extremists.

But speaking at the family home last night, the close family member said: There has been an avalanche of misinformation.

"We don't want to comment on all of this, but what I will say is that 95 per cent of what has been published is incorrect, it is desperately wrong.

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"The only truth is that Jack is a Muslim and he is overseas. But everything else is made up and it is just getting worse.

The man, who refused to confirm his identity, said the right wing media were only interested in a snappy line like 'Jihadi Jack' and 'Jihadi John' that rolls off the tongue, but it is all wrong.

Mr Letts, now 20, was once a keen sportsman and Liverpool FC fan who had been the class clown when a pupil at Cherwell School in Oxford, according to former classmates.

But he converted to Islam and friends fear was then radicalised by local fanatics in discreet prayer meetings.

It is believed he lied to his parents before leaving for Syria and told them he was moving to Kuwait to study Arabic.

Since arriving in Syria, he is thought to have married and had a son.

His father, who is Canadian, is a leading figure in reviving traditional crops that were in common use hundreds of years ago.

He produce heritage flour from wheat grown around Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and feature on BBC Countryfile last year.

In 2011, he was a co-recipient of 25,000 from the Princes Countryside Fund.

Neighbours on the terraced street where the family live in Oxford spoke of their "utter sadness" that the "polite and lovely" boy they had seen grow up had allegedly joined Isil.

One woman Muslim neighbour, who asked to remain anonymous, told how she became concerned after his conversion to Islam.

He told me he had started visiting a Wahhabi mosque. I believe he started going there with his classmates and I knew this could be bad as Wahhabi is not Islam, it is very bad, she said.

"I spoke with his father who became very worried when he converted to Islam. I sat with him and told him not to worry.

"To hear that he has gone away to Syria brings me utter sadness. I feel very depressed, and I feel bad for him.

"His father was very depressed when we last spoke, it must be terrifying for him to have a son going into a war zone.

"I fear Jack has been brainwashed.

Another neighbour said: "[Jack's] father is a very good man, but now he is depressed because of all of this.

"He grows unusual varieties of rye experimentally and breaks it down into flour in a mill, which he sells on to health food shops.

"John would sell the bread from his house, so quite often I would see people knocking on his door and buying bread right on the doorstep.

"We barely see the family now. I know with his line of work he can quite often work night and day, but the family don't seem to come out of their home as much as they used to.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
A Swedish doctor went on trial in Stockholm on Monday on charges of kidnapping and raping a woman whom prosecutors said he planned to hold prisoner for years in a specially constructed soundproof bunker.

Martin Peter Trenneborg, who held the woman for six days, has admitted to kidnapping her but denies the rape charge, according to police reports made available to journalists.

His plan went awry when he went to the woman's apartment to get some things for her and discovered the lock had been changed. He brought her to the police with instructions to say she was not missing and get the new key, the documents showed.

But the woman seized the opportunity to seek protection from the police and they arrested Trenneborg. The documents did not indicate why he thought she would not try to break free.

The documents said the doctor, 38, had given the woman strawberries spiked with a "date rape" type sedative in Stockholm and brought her to the bunker in his isolated house in southern Sweden, about 550 km (340 miles) away.

"He said he was planning to hold me there for a couple of years and then I panicked and my whole body started to shake," the woman in her 30s told police during questioning.

She said that told her: "You can scream as much as you like, but no one is going to hear you."

In an interview at his office, chief prosecutor Peter Claeson said: "This man is charged with drugging a woman in Stockholm, he has had sexual intercourse with her while she was unconscious or slept, and abducted her to his residence outside Kristianstad.

"The man has told us that he intended the woman to become his girlfriend and she was to stay there for several years."

Prosecutors believe he also planned to kidnap other women.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres is "doing great" after spending the night in hospital, a doctor treating the 92-year-old has said.

Mr Peres was rushed to hospital on Sunday night with chest pains, days after he suffered a mild heart attack.

Doctors detected an irregular heart rate and Mr Peres was monitored in hospital overnight as a precaution.

Mr Peres's personal physician, Raphi Walden, told Israeli Army Radio on Monday that the ex-leader's heart rate had returned to normal. He said it is not yet clear when Mr Peres would be discharged.

Mr Peres, a Noble Peace Prize laureate, completed his seven-year term as president in 2014. He remains active through his non-governmental Peres Centre for Peace, which promotes co-existence between Arabs and Jews.

In his seven-decade political career, he also served three brief stints as prime minister.
Mohammed Emwazi, the terrorist known as Jihadi John who was killed by a drone strike last year, had warned his brother not to follow in his footsteps before leaving for Syria.

Emwazi told his younger sibling Omar, 22, that his own encounters with the British security services had wrecked his life in Britain and had ended his plans for marriage and work in his homeland of Kuwait.

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In an interview last year before his brothers death in November, Omar described Emwazis turmoil while he was under surveillance by MI5 and Scotland Yard between 2009 and 2012.

Omar recalled: He wasnt the type of guy to complain... but he would say: Dont be like me. He was always saying: Learn from other peoples mistakes. He would basically say: Look where I am. I cant get married and I cant get a proper job. I cant travel and I cant go nowhere.

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Omar says his brother had made several attempts to return to Kuwait but was blocked each time by the security services. But in late 2012 Emwazi did finally manage to find a way of escaping Britain, leaving via the port of Dover. He entered Syria through Turkey before joining a group of foreign fighters allied to al-Qaeda.

When a section of these fighters decided to give an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, Emwazi followed. In 2014 and 2015 Emwazi took part in at least seven beheadings of hostages, including two Britons and three Americans, and became one of the most reviled terrorists in modern times.

Omar Emwazi believes his brother, who was 27 when he was killed last year, must take ultimate responsibility for all his actions. But he also believes that the role British and foreign security services played in preventing his brother from leaving Britain for a new life in Kuwait was a key radicalising factor. The thing is they would never leave him alone, he claimed. When it happens constantly it becomes the norm.

He said his brother rarely appeared angry about his situation. Its not like he is suddenly going to get frustrated again. So this was how it was for him and he just carried on.

MI5 and Scotland Yard viewed Emwazi very differently. They believed he was part of a dedicated network of Islamist extremists who were supporting terrorism activities in the UK and Somalia.

This group of west London Islamist extremists were led by two older Muslim men who had mentored Emwazi  Bilal al-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr. They were killed in Somalia while fighting with the terror group al-Shabaab. But their influence on the more impressionable Emwazi was confirmed last week by Isis when it published an obituary in the latest edition of the terror groups online magazine.

The article claims that, after Berjawi was killed in a US drone strike in 2012, Emwazi took over his dead friends fatherly duties by taking Berjawis son on regular visits to London Zoo. The surviving west London network of young Islamists were regularly involved in debating the atrocities witnessed in Syria by the terror groups who would later emerge as the Islamic State.

A source who spoke to Emwazi at the time said that his London group was split down the middle as to whether it was right to murder innocent people to further the jihadi cause. According to the source, Emwazi was one of those who believed such atrocities could be justified on the basis that Western powers were responsible for killing Muslims.

But it has now emerged that in 2009 Emwazi had embarked on a new life in Kuwait  and may never have returned to the UK and set off on his murderous path had it not been for painful toothache.

Unable to find a dentist in Kuwait to fix his teeth, he flew back to the UK in early 2010 to seek out his family dentist in Maida Vale, west London. But when he tried to return to Kuwait in June the same year, he found his path blocked by the security services.

His friends say that Emwazi had not been interested in practising his religion while he was at school. But after 2009, he was praying four or five times a day according to Islamic custom. By all accounts he was diligent in his studies and made good progress  and on one occasion broke down in tears during a lesson. He admitted to his teacher that he was upset about leaving the hospital bedside of a respected member of the Islamic community who died while Emwazi was in the canteen.

His interest in religion had taken over from his academic endeavours and his final university results reflect this, as he failed one of his modules and scraped through his other courses with low marks.

According to friends, Emwazi was still determined to leave the UK. He was looking for marriage and really wanted to live abroad, a friend said. But he had a fiancee in London and I think had sat down with her family. I told him he should marry her.

Emwazis fiancee, like his mentor Berjawis, was a Somali woman. When her family was contacted by the security services, he believed a line had been crossed.

Robert Verkaiks Jihadi John: The Making of a Terrorist is published on Thursday 28 January by Oneworld
U.N. mediator for Syria Staffan de Mistura gestures during a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Reuters/Denis Balibouse

Peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups are to start on Friday, the UN special envoy on Syria said.

The talks in Geneva are expected to take six months and the sides will not talk directly to each other to begin with.

Staffan de Mistura said the priorities would be creating a broad ceasefire, stopping the threat from the Islamic State (IS) group and clearing the way for humanitarian aid.

"We want to make sure that when and if we start, to start at least on the right foot," he said. "It will be uphill anyway."

Turkey's foreign minister warned that any participation of Kurdish forces in the Geneva talks would be dangerous and would spell the end of the initiative seeking to end the nearly five-year conflict.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces "terrorists", accusing them of co-operating with Kurdish rebels who are banned in Turkey. He said they have no place among the opposition at the Geneva talks.

Geopolitical tensions between countries including Turkey, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia have weighed heavily on efforts by negotiators.

The initiative has run into delays and disputes notably over the invitation list. Fierce ongoing tensions have also led negotiators to decide that the opposing sides will not initially meet face-to-face - a sign that even minimal progress is far from certain.

The Geneva talks are the first since discussions collapsed two years ago.

Russia has called for the inclusion of Kurdish representatives, and the US and others have supported the Kurds in the fight against IS in Syria. But Turkey is strongly opposed.

"There are efforts among some countries to water down the opposition. We oppose this," said Mr Cavusoglu. "To insist that terror groups such as the YPG (the main Kurdish militia) are included within the opposition would lead to the failure of the process. We have to insist that this is extremely dangerous."

But European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who spoke to reporters alongside Mr Cavusoglu, said that "from the European perspective, we attach an extremely high value on the fact that the process in Geneva will be inclusive".

The UN Security Council passed an ambition resolution on the Syria crisis that set a target for the peace talks to start this month. That resolution also aims to produce credible governance and a schedule for drafting a new Syrian constitution.

But air strikes by Russia - a key backer of Syrian president Bashar Assad - against rebels have altered the military situation on the ground.
Israeli seecurity forces stand guard next to an ambulance carrying the body of a Palestinian following a stabbing attack in the Jewish Beit Horon settlement in the West Bank. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Two Palestinians stabbed Israeli women in a mini-market in a West Bank settlement before being shot dead, Israeli police have said.

The assailants entered the shop in Beit Horon, north-west of Jerusalem, and began stabbing Israelis inside, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

A security guard fatally shot the attackers outside the shop, Mr Rosenfeld said.

Two Israeli women were wounded in the attack, one critically, he added.

The last four months have seen near-daily Palestinian stabbing attacks that have killed 25 Israelis and an American student.

At least 149 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 104 of them identified by Israel as attackers. The rest have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. An earthquake registering 6.1 on the Richter scale has struck the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Morocco. Buildings have been damaged by the quake, which was felt in Spanish cities, including Seville and Malaga.

The earthquake struck in the early morning around 160km south east of Malaga and 62km north of the Moroccan city of Al Hoceima, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reports, as cited by AFP.

The quake was followed by a 5.3-magnitude tremor.

Armenpress informs, citing Russia Today, El Mundo reported that 15 people received light injuries and were given medical treatment, though no one needed to be taken to hospital.

Local media in Melilla say that power is being restored after a blackout occurred following the earthquake.

Spanish emergency services in the southern region of Andalusia said they had received around 250 calls from worried residents. Schools have also been closed as a precautionary measure to allow inspectors to check whether any of the buildings have suffered structural damage.
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Many of God's people have been made to feel worthless, useless and less than anybody else by mean-spirited individuals. So this is written to build up the downtrodden, those who feel rejected, hated and despised; for the ones that were told as a child, "You're going to be like your no good daddy. He ain't nothing, and you're not going to be nothing either." Or, as a little girl, your grandmother who raised you would look at you and say, "Look at you. Just like your mother who was an alcoholic or addict."

This is for all of you born-again, baptized believers and saved folks who have accepted those lies that were told about you, and all of you that see yourself as that, or have accepted the ignorance of things spoken from pulpits that made you feel dirtier more than it made you feel blood-washed.

I'm here to inform you if you have not guarded your heart according to Proverbs 4:23, then you allowed, not the devil, but you allowed those things to dominate your life. Child of God you must make a decree and declaration that, "I will not be robbed of loving me any longer."

Jesus commanded us to love ourselves. "Thou shalt love thy neighbors as thyself." (Matthew 22:39) Jesus simply was saying love your neighbor as if you were your own neighbor. Now let's be honest, you have to see yourself as lovable to love yourself. Nothing mentioned above was lovable, not even for you.

But when you realize who you really are and begin to see yourself as God sees you, then others will see you for who God says you are. In the Old Testament: "I shall make you the head and the tail, thou shalt be above and beneath."

In the New Testament it is reinforced: "Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." You must see yourself as not defeated, but victorious, more than a conqueror.

"Look who's talking now!"

The Word declares: "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." (Matthew 12:34) "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." (Proverbs 18:12) Child of God speak death to defeat, failure and grief.

"Look who's talking now!"

But speak life to love, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

"Look who's talking now!"

Last but not least, love yourself so you can love everybody else. But you must say with courage, confidence and conviction. "I am the righteousness of God as recorded in 2nd Corinthians 5:21.

"Look who's talking now!"

For those that know who Jesus is, ask him to come into your heart now, and accept him as your lord and savior.

Norman Davis serves as an elder for High Calling Ministries International in Anderson and is a former contributing writer to a Christian publication based in New Jersey.
SHARE KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Justus Cox (right) shakes hands with Tommy Seigler, a security officer at Anderson Countys historic courthouse in downtown Anderson. KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Justus Cox is an Anderson University student, a mentor and an intern at Anderson County government offices. KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Justus Cox answers a call in his office at the historic county courthouse in downtown Anderson. KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Justus Cox plans to be an elementary school teacher.

By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail

For years, Justus Cox has kept a secret.

By all accounts, Cox, a senior at Anderson University, is a successful student. When he is not in class, he is an intern at offices of Anderson County government, running errands, shadowing leaders and filing paperwork. That last task makes him groan good-naturedly.

"It never ends," he says. "Files multiply when you're not looking."

When he talks about his future  how he knows he wants to make a difference but hasn't quite figured out his whole path  he sounds like a typical college student.

He isn't.

He used to be homeless.

"We lost our house; we bounced around," he said. "We ended up staying in a motel room for a few months. But I went to school every day, and I put on a mask. No one knew I was what you would consider homeless. Even now, even as I encourage other people to share their stories, I've shied away from sharing mine."

Cox took a deep breath. The story he has been holding onto came tumbling out, because now he's not afraid to tell it.

"I grew up with a single mom," he said. "My father has never been in the picture. It was just my mom, my sister and me. Then, when I was in about the second grade, I got a stepfather. That was weird for me because I hadn't had a father figure in my house. Here's where it gets touchy: He eventually got into drugs.

"My mom did all she could  she is a teacher and she worked two jobs then  but his trouble affected us. We couldn't make the payments to keep our house. I know firsthand that drugs can tear a family apart."

In those difficult years, when Cox was attending middle and high school in Greenville, it would have been easy, he said, for him to start a life controlled by illegal drugs. He credits the congregation of his longtime Greenville church, Evangelistic Temple, for showing him he did not want that life.

Mark Joseph, an Anderson University professor, was a member of the church and a mentor to Cox.

"I think he was able to overcome because he always understood that God had a plan and purpose for his life," Joseph said. "He has always wanted something better, not just for himself, but for other people. He is one of the most selfless young men that I know. He always has been."

After Cox graduated from high school, he applied to several universities. Anderson University was the last.

"It was God who put me there," he said. "I said I would go wherever accepted me first. Anderson University got back to me within two weeks. I know now that was God's timing."

Today, Cox belongs to Call Me MISTER, a program that provides scholarships and training for minority men to become teachers. MISTER stands for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models. The program was established at Clemson University more than 15 years ago, and has since gained national attention, expanding to more than a dozen other colleges in South Carolina and other states. At Anderson University, Joseph is an adviser for the program.

While in that program, Cox, 22, served as a mentor for third-graders at Flat Rock Elementary School in Anderson.

"I tried to run from being a teacher, and I especially tried to run from teaching kindergarten through fifth grades, because I didn't think that would be where I would fit," he said. "But those kids stole my heart. I have to be in a classroom."

Cox is also a leader on the Anderson University campus, participating in a student-driven group called Connect. The group celebrates the diversity found in the student body, he said.

"We all have differences, but we have similarities, too," he said. "When we are sensitive to one another, the world is made better."

Anderson County Administrator Rusty Burns calls Cox one of the most driven men he knows.

"He works hard, he's determined, and we know he will go far," Burns said.

Cox says his family life is stronger now than it was years ago. He credits his mother, Wanda Lykes, for never giving up. Cox's stepfather is in recovery now, and his mother recently bought a new house.

He's not sure what his life will look like in five years.

"I may want to work on the policy side of education at some point, because South Carolina's system doesn't get high marks, and I'd like to see that change," he said. "But right now, I can't imagine not being in the classroom. Whatever I do, I know it will be in education. I know that I want to send every kid who is like me a message: Your circumstances don't define who you are. Your choices do."

Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter @NikieMayo
SHARE FRANCES PARRISH/INDEPENDENT MAIL Larry and Barbara Budreau of Anderson dance at the Winter Night Gala at the Anderson County Museum. FRANCES PARRISH/INDEPENDENT MAIL Megan Rosener, an Anderson University freshman musical theater major, poses as the Roman goddess Diana for the ancient Rome-themed Winter Night Gala.

By Frances Parrish of the Independent Mail

Greeted by Neptune, Diana and Mercury, Anderson County Museum guests traveled back in time Sunday to ancient Rome as they walked under a stone facade arch.

Slightly more than 300 patrons enjoyed food, music and friends at this year's Winter Night Gala at the museum.

This year, the gala's theme corresponded with the Anderson International Festival theme: Italy. The gala committee incorporated Roman history into the event, taking guests back to the time of gods and goddesses.

Jean Niles, chairwoman of the Winter Night Gala committee, worked for months organizing the event. But Sunday night, she planned to have fun and celebrate a successful evening.

"We thought it would be interesting," Niles said about the decision to have tables with themes of various gods and goddesses.

The committee didn't want to go with gondolas and red-checkered cloths, she said.

Waiters served Italian-style appetizers, while guests roamed the museum serving themselves fruit and various recipes of chicken and pasta from buffet tables scattered among museum exhibits.

Guests also were intrigued by "human statues," three Anderson University students who stood as still as they possibly could and struck new poses every few minutes.

"It's been a blast," said Cam Johnston, a freshman musical theater major who posed as Mercury. "It's a good way to give back to the community."

He even managed to startle a few of the guests as they walked past him.

"I like to catch them off guard with a wink," Johnston said with a smile.

The gala is the biggest annual fundraising event for the museum.

The museum raised more than $32,000 in sponsorships and presold tickets, but museum director Beverly Childs said she hoped to raise about $40,000 by the end of the night.

This year marks the start of fundraising for a new permanent exhibit.

"There are so many stories to tell in Anderson County," Childs said.

The exhibit is expected to open in 2020 and to showcase all the wars in which people from Anderson County have played a part, from the American Revolution to current conflicts, Childs said.

Some guests Sunday attended the gala for the first time. Others said the food is one of the highlights that has kept them coming back each year for multiple years.

"It's the best party in town," said Jane Friedman of Anderson, who said she had been coming to the gala for four years. "It's the best food, the best music and lots of fun people to talk to."

Follow Frances Parrish on Twitter @frances_AIM
Calvin Jacob Davis

By Independent Mail

An Anderson man who authorities say led them on a chase is charged with attempted murder and strong-arm robbery.

Calvin Jacob Davis, 57, was arrested Friday, according to an Anderson County Sheriff's Office statement released Sunday.

A customer was outside the Ingles supermarket on S.C. 24 in Anderson at 11:30 a.m. Friday when a person grabbed her purse, which caused the customer to fall and hit her head on the pavement.

The assailant jumped into a small, black car and initially could not close the door because the victim had fallen between the open car door and the body of the car, according to the Sheriff's Office.

The car door struck the victim's leg several times before the victim was able to move out of the way.

As the assailant fled, a witness drove up to the victim, who asked the witness to follow the black car.

The witness called emergency dispatchers and was able to provide information about the location of the black car while pursuing the assailant, said Lt. Sheila Cole, spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office.

While first responders headed to help the victim, other deputies caught up with the assailant and try to conduct a traffic stop. The assailant refused to stop and nearly struck one deputy who was setting up stop sticks at Dobbins Bridge Road and Hillhouse roads, according to the Sheriff's Office.

The pursuit continued for between 20 and 25 minutes, at low speeds at some points and high speeds at others, until the black car struck a set of stop sticks at S.C. 187 South and U.S. 29 South. As the car's tire deflated, the assailant pulled into a parking lot, where he was taken into custody.

Authorities said they identified the assailant as Davis

While Davis was being taken to the Anderson County Detention Center, he started coughing and gagging. The deputy who was driving pulled over to offer assistance. Davis made it known that he had taken a handful of pills during the pursuit and didn't know what type of pills they were. Davis was then taken to AnMed Health Medical Center, where he was treated and released, according to the Sheriff's Office.

He now is in custody at the Anderson County Detention Center. The attempted murder charge against him is related to his nearly striking a deputy during the pursuit, and he also is charged with failure to stop for blue lights.

A date for a bond hearing for Davis had not yet been set as of Sunday.

The victim's purse was retrieved from the black car and returned to her at AnMed Health Medical Center, where she was treated for head and leg injuries before being released, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Anderson County Sheriff John Skipper said, "I was informed by our patrol sergeant that deputies did one heck of a fine job on this case, but he also mentioned that without the assistance of our civilian witness, the suspect may not have been apprehended.

"This is a good example of our CATCH philosophy in action. CATCH stands for Criminal Apprehension Through Citizen Help. We can't be everywhere all of the time, but with the help of our citizens we can make a combined effort to help those in need and catch the individuals who choose to break our laws."
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.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a phone talk on January 25, agreeing that UN's Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura should hastily announce the date of intra-Syrian peace negotiations in Geneva, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Armenpress reports the aforementioned, referring to sputnik International.

"The minister and the state secretary called on UN's Special Envoy de Mistura to hastily announce the start date of intra-Syrian negotiations," the ministry said in a statement.



Lavrov also underscored the importance of creating a united front against terrorism and work out political reforms in Syria based on agreements between the country's government and opposition.

The phone talk was initiated by Washington.

January 25 was initially set as the target day for the first round of intra-Syrian talks, with January 27 later offered as a possible date of the first sit-down.

The UN Office in Geneva announced on January 22 the much-anticipated talks were likely to be postponed for a few days.

The following day, Lavrov held phone talks with Kerry. Both diplomats agreed the intra-Syria talks should not be postponed beyond January, despite pressure from various opposition members to stonewall the negotiations.
Addressing a gathering of business leaders of France and India, along with French President Francois Hollande, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that retrospective tax is thing of the past, and assured them that the government is working on the modalities to ensure that such steps are not taken in future.Retrospective tax is a matter of past. That chapter will not be opened again. We are ensuring that neither this government nor the future governments can open this chapter, Mr. Modi told the India-France Business Summit.Talking about the importance of a stable government and a transparent taxation structure, two things investors closely monitor before putting their money in a country, Modi said, I am for stable governance and predictable taxation system. The government is taking various steps to ensure this stability. This government is known for stable and predictable tax regime.French President Hollande is on a three-day trip to India, and is expected to sign a host of MoUs furthering the already healthy relationship between the two countries. Amongst $10billion investment planned for India stands the Rs. 60,000 crore deal for the purchase of 36 Rafale jets.We are very happy that we have formed an agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale aircrafts with France, said PM Modi.PM Modi and French President Hollande also inaugurated the International Solar Alliance Secretariat and jointly lay foundation stone of ISA Headquarter in Gurgaon.
The heady, hectic deliberations at WEF 2016 have drawn to a close, and the curtain settled to an overture that was both upbeat and somehow ominous. As I stood at the snow-filled kerbside waiting for my transfer to Zurich in sub-zero cold, I had lots to ponder about. In the play of global expectations unfolding on a stage staggering with actors who may just be guessing at their lines, India has a very complicated role to play.What are implications of the fourth industrial revolution on emerging markets? Will it bridge the gap between developed and developing countries? Will Indias demographics be able to adapt to increased automation, and how will our manufacturing evolve? One thing is certain - all Indian industries, including our semi-opaque real estate, will mature into more transparent ones with cutting-edge technology becoming an increasingly important part of our lives.As Colin Dyer wrote, technology will make strong, and established businesses even stronger, as we embrace the change. And its still just early days yet  we are just at the cusp of the E-evolution'. Looking at it from todays standpoint, it is almost impossible to predict in just how many ways  and to what extent  our world and we will change. I obviously hope its only for the better, but we hold a massive and unpredictable tiger by its digital tail.On the last day at the WEF, the overall mood upbeat, but I attribute that to humankinds undying pursuit of optimism. So what if the first three weeks of 2016 have been the worst start ever for the global economy, ever? So what if the US is definitely slowing down, and the chase to the White House this year may slow them down even more? Almost every Hollywood film tells us, America always comes good smelling like roses in the end. God help us if they dont. Stock markets are currently overreacting to China, even though may be headed for a softer landing than expected. But China will need to transition from industrial to services and exports to consumption if it is to reclaim its former glory.Lets face it - the current low oil prices are good for the seven billion people that our blue planet supports. The IMF estimates that the world economys GDP growth is 3.1% in 2015, 3.4% in 2016 and 3.6% in 2017. Its growth nevertheless. Among the others, India is the flavour of today and will likely see 7.5% growth, provided our politicians continue to roll out ground-altering reforms at the expected pace. Russia and Brazil, the favourites of yesteryears, have lost out in the popularity sweepstakes because of their domestic issues.The European Union remains a major area of concern, and Christian Ulbrich leaves with a few more furrows on his brow. The EU definitely has its hands full with the challenges of Brexit and the refugee crisis. George Osbornes remark that UK wants to be in EU but not run by it may be a sign of things to come if so, will I see the British breaking away from the EU in this lifetime? With millions of refugees pouring into Europe, having free borders is definitely being questioned. It is also hard to also ignore the brewing crisis in Middle-Earth.According to IMF, India remains a bright spot. It has achieved escape velocity from the BRICS bloc and is off on its own growth trajectory. However, a lot  if not everything  depends on FM Jaitley delivering swift implementation of Indirect Tax reforms (read: GST), passage of the Bankruptcy Policy, lowered Corporate Tax rates and overall enhanced ease of doing business. Im not certain whether all this can be done in the short term, but plodding optimism is still better than cynical despondency. One thing is for certain - India has reached the Bus Station and just needs to get on (and stay on), even while many other nations have yet to reach the terminus.The author is Chairman & Country Head, JLL India
With increasing cases of different types of Cancer reported in India, a Mumbai-based leading clinical genomics company, Positive Bioscience, has launched RNA sequencing test for cancer patients. With PositiveSelect, the company is the first to launch the alternative to conventional method of DNA sequencing for diagnosing Cancer. On March 1, 2016 the RNA sequencing will be made available throughout India.Speaking at the launch, Samarth Jain, Chief Executive Officer, Positive Bioscience said, Each year 1 million cases of Cancer are reported and nearly 700,000 Cancer patients die every year as nearly 80% patients are diagnosed in last stage (i.e. Stage-4). RNA sequencing test offers 99% accuracy and it tests 25,000 genes.On the key role of RNA sequencing technology, Jain further added, Currently, 1 in 12,000 Indian goes for RNA sequencing, while in the US 1 in every 10 Americans prefer this test for diagnosing Cancer. However, in next 2-3 years India can also see 1 in every 10 people prescribed for RNA sequencing, if the awareness regarding this technology is spread quicker and wider.According to Jain, in case of lung Cancer merely 6-9 genes are tested to diagnose, but RNA sequencing tests 25,000 genes, which takes to accurate diagnosis. In India nearly 75,000 new lung Cancer cases are reported each year.While diagnosing lung cancer with conventional diagnosis of Cancer, majority of the patients are prescribed for ALK tests and out of which 30% fails. This means, nearly 22,500 lung Cancer patients are expected to diagnosed wrong this year, noted Jain.On cost efficiency, Jain informed, DNA sequencing of 1 gene costs around Rs. 6,000, so testing 9 genes takes the cost to Rs. 54,000 and still chances of misdiagnosis are still loom. On the other hand, the RNA sequencing costs Rs. 49,000.PositiveSelect is a comprehensive genomic solution for solid tumors (Lung Cancer, Breast Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Sarcoma, etc.) as well as Hematological Cancers (Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma, etc.), designed to provide oncologists with clinically actionable report, which can identify the molecular alterations in a patients tumor and match those alterations with relevant targeted therapies and clinical trials.
The Republic Day Parade is attended by nearly 2 lakh people from all across the country every year. For a few days before the parade, India Gate and surrounding area turns into a virtual fortress. With thousands of army personnel taking active part, there's an equal number of people working behind the scenes to make the parade function like a clockwork that it is. The Ceremonial Division of the Ministry of Defence is in-charge of organising the parade and coordinates with no less than 70 different organisations. The preparation for the event begins around March and culminates a year later in January. Here's what goes on behind the scenes.

1. The parade starts when the President arrives and the horse mounted unit of the President's Body Guard gives him a salute. Just at that instant, the national anthem plays and a 21 gun salute starts. But did you know that there are not actually 21 guns firing off? There are 7 artillery guns of the Indian Army, called the '25 pounders' that fire off the moment the CO of the President's Body Guard salutes the President. The firing of the gun matches the first note of the national anthem, and finishes with the last, exactly 52 seconds later. These guns were built in 1941 and take part in all ceremonial functions of the army.

Reuters

2. Security is the biggest concern for a mega event like the Republic Day Parade. There are close to 35,000 security cordon off the area, and all buildings on the Raisina Hill are vacated a day before and Delhi Police personnel posted. Security officers in plain clothes are also placed strategically at important points all along the path of the parade. Sniffer dogs are also employed to sensitise the area.

Comyan

3. The day begins early for the marching contingents. They're up by 2 am and by 3 am, they're already at Rajpath. But the preparations had begun in July last year, when they were notified of taking part in the parade. Till August they practise their drill at their respective regimental centres before coming to Delhi back in December. By the time they are ready for the final event, they have already had 600 hours of hard drill practice. They repeat the same drill over and over, till it becomes muscle memory.

Comyan

4. For the state of the art equipment like tanks and Armoured Personnel Carriers that showcase India's might, a special camp is created within the India Gate complex. Each weapon system then undergoes 10 stages of checks and paints to prepare for the final day.

Comyan

5. It's a long parade. Everyday, during the practice and the full dress rehearsal, each contingent will march for 12 km. The final parade though is 9 km long. There are judges sitting all along the path, closely monitoring them on 200 parameters. There's a 'best marching contingent' award to be had. The pride of the unit is on the line, so while they get tired, they continue to march on for the entire course of the parade.

Comyan

6. Everything at the Republic Day Parade is regimented. Down to the last second. Any delay at the beginning, will have a cascading effect.

Comyan

7. Every single soldier that participates in the parade, has to go through four levels of security screening. They too go through strict scrutiny and every single weapon is checked to see that it is not carrying a live round before it reaches Rajpath.

Reuters

8. In this year's Republic Day Parade 36 canines, 24 Labradors and 12 German Shepherds of the Remount and Veterinary Corps are also taking part. Did you know that each dog has its own profile in the Army Headquarters and each one is even posted to different locations. Even these guys are soldiers, participating in anti-terrorist operations in forward locations like Kashmir valley.

Reuters

9. Each tableau drives at the speed of 5 km/h so that the dignitaries can have a good look at it. Wonder how they manage this? See the Army soldier marching next to the tableau? He is marching to the beat of the music and the driver of the tableau is keeping him in his sights through the small window. Isn't that smart?

Reuters

10. This time around, there will be 136 French soldiers marching alongside their Indian counterparts. As the Indian Army discovered, they march at a much slower pace of 106 beats per minute compared to 120 beats per minute that the Indian contingents will march at. The French have been asked to put in extra practice sessions.

Reuters





11. The best part of the parade is the flypast. The Western Air Command takes charge of the flypast, in which 41 planes will take place. What you don't realise is that real time monitoring of the weather is conducted and it determines whether the helicopter and planes will actually fly or not.

Reuters
26th January 2006 wasn't just Republic day for India. While the whole country was smeared with colors of orange, green and yellow and the spirit of patriotism, a film was released that became a perfect republic day treat for years to come.

Calling Rang De Basanti a classic or an unforgettable piece of cinema will surely be an understatement. It was more than that. Much more.

Since the launch of RDB's trailer, Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra made one thing clear, calling it a 'contemporary film', ROM had said: "No, it's not something I'd call patriotic. It's a contemporary film. We are not at war right now to make a patriotic film. And this isn't a war film; it's a film about peace. Being global citizens today, patriotism is not the key element in our lives as such. The need of the hour is to participate in the way things are going on, rather than sitting on the fence and pointing fingers. It's a very proactive, step forward attitude. It's not preachy at all."

RDB was a complete spot-on then, isn't it? The film wasn't in anyway preachy nor did it tell you to turn rebellious towards the system. Rather, it reflected the grim reality and showcased the exact picture without any sugar-coating. Being one of Indias first successful thought-provoking entertainers, RDB till today remains as an unforgettable cinematic gem. As RDB turns 10 tomorrow, we give you 10 reasons why RDB leaves us teary-eyed and emotional even today.

ROMP & UTV Motion Pictures

Unlike other historical and autobiographical films which are preachy and full of factual information, RDB was a film which we thoroughly enjoyed. It is one of those rarest films which could be watched 'n' number of times. The film managed to swipe a lot of awards including some of the major Filmfare awards of 2007 including:Best Film, Best Director, Best Music, Best Cinematography and Best Editing)

2. A.R Rahmans unforgettable and absolutely riveting music. Only Rahman could have managed to create gems like Khoon chala, Tu bin bataaye and Khalbali!

ROM Films & UTV motion pictures

Not many know that Rahman worked for three good years on RDB's music. Prasoon Joshi's lyrics and Rahman's tune surely made RDB one of the most successful music albums. Even till today, RDB's jukebox can manage to send chills down your spine.

Listen to all the tracks and revisit the memory lane right here:

3. Only a film-director like ROM could've had the guts to create a film that became a perfect ode to the spirit rebellion that fighters like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil, S Rajguru and Ashfaqullah Khan possessed.

What a well-deserved tribute it was, isn't it? The heroes certainly deserved a cinematic tribute and RDB was surely the perfect one.

4. The storyline was subtle yet the transformation of happy go lucky college students from being carefree spoilt brats to politically apathetic citizens was highly captivating.

ROMF and UTV motion pictures

The film manages to sail through from 'funny' and 'happy-going' to 'serious and patriotic' in such a beautiful manner that it leaves you totally hooked.

5. RDB redefined the idea of 'freedom'. It was a film that gave a loud and clear message which for a change wasn't Utopian but to the point!

ROM Films and UTV Motion pictures

Remember the dialogue: No country is perfect. You've got to make it perfect"! It was perfect and realistic in every sense of the word. Isn't it? The film didn't over-dramatize the idea of change.

6. Even when some parts of the film hinted at anarchism, in no way did it pass out a message about promoting violence.

ROMF and UTV Motion Picture

The film received a severe backlash from some people because they thought the film promoting anarchism and it passed on the wrong idea of taking the system in hands. But as a film, Rang De Basanti managed to address relevant issues. From rampant communal disharmony, corruption to the incapability of the Indian government to react promptly, RDB's attempt to reflect these issues were too honest to forget!

7. ROM managed to bring together one of the most talented ensemble cast, where detailing of each and every character was done so beautifully!

ROMF and UTV Motion Pictures

Actors like Aamir Khan, Siddharth Narayan, Soha Ali Khan, Kunal Kapoor, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni and British actress Alice Patten together gave their career best performances. How can we ever forget the scene where Ajay (Madhavan)'s body is brought home? No words were said but still the scene managed to make us weep, isn't it? That's how ensemble cast manages to add depth to the script.

8. For the first time ever, a film didn't over-dramatize a love-triangle. Rather, it handled with utmost maturity and emotions

ROMF and UTV Motion Pictures

Remember the song 'Tu Bin Bataye'? Karan (Siddharth) hugs Ajay(Madhavan) and Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) and she gets all emotional. Even when Karan is heart-broken, sullen and lost, he gracefully backs off from participating in pranks the gang pulls off. Did we ever see such a sweet gesture in any of the films? Karan wasn't a sore loser, rather he chose to be happy for Sonia. A surprisingly good change, isn't it?

9. This thought provoking film didnt just spark off political thought and discussions, it acted as an eye-opener for many.

ROMF and UTV Motion Pictures

While other films over-emphasized on patriotism and missed the exact point, RDB didnt have any unnecessary jingoistic overtones. On a contrary, youngsters could well relate and empathize

10. " Zindagi jeene ke do hi tarike hote hai ... ek jo ho raha hai hone do, bardaasht karte jao ... ya phir zimmedari uthao usse badalne ki.." All thanks to Prasoon Joshi who penned down some of the most thought-provoking yet gripping dialogues.

HT

Most magical part of the film were the dialogues. Renowned Indian lyricist, screenwriter and ad guru Prasoon Joshi who doesn't just pens down ad jingles, he sings most of them too. After venturing into dialogue-writing for films like Hum Tum and Black, Joshi's dialogues turned RDB into one cult-classic!

RDB was one hell of an audacious film which remains unforgettable for reasons more than one, isn't it? Why do you still love RDB? Tell us in comments below. :)
When it comes to career choices, Bollywood actress Nandita Das has never played safe. She has always believed in taking chances and she proved it by doing a opting for a film like 'fire' which surely wasn't a cakewalk for actresses of 1990's. Homosexuality was still a 'taboo' in films.

However, according to Nandita, showcasing homosexuality in her previous films surely planted the seed for change towards the LGBT community. But currently, she feels that India is back to square one when we talk about Section 377 of the Indian Penal code.

But she is one hopeful woman and she sure is "optimistic about a positive move in the near future. Calling the LGBT community "minuscule", the Delhi High Court had decriminalised homosexuality in 2009, but the Supreme Court overturned it when it upheld Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2013. The court even refused to read it down to exclude same-sex relationships between consenting adults.

Nandita, who's a social activist too gave her piece of mind on the same and she said: "The fact that Section 377 is being discussed and that Delhi High Court wanted to repeal it... for all that, 'Fire' did somewhere plant the seed."

Pinterest

She added: "Our country is such a country of contradiction, we take two steps forward and sometimes three steps backwards. So, when the Delhi High Court ruling happened, we celebrated, and the Supreme Court, which has otherwise given such landmark decisions, passed the buck on to parliament and we're in a way back to square one."

"It's a tough battle, but I'm an optimist. You can see that slowly people are talking about it and making it more mainstream it more." The actress-director, who was cast in Deepa Mehta's 'Fire' with Shabana Azmi, spoke at a panel discussion for the Best Of Kashish festival, which is set to be held in May.

Talking about the problems which she faced because of the same-sex content in her films, she said: "I'm not sure if we're mature. In many ways, 'Fire' was a landmark film because there was not a single cut. Even after the attacks, when it was given back to the censor board, they upheld their verdict. Even while we were shooting, we thought they might cut one or two scenes, but look at the kind of content they're trying to ban or censor right now. So we have regressed in some ways."

Nandita will also share her views on child marriage in an upcoming panel discussion called "Dialogue Derivatives 2016" which will be held in Goa this month.

(With inputs from IANS)
Bollywoodlife

Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn is one of the 148 recipients who have been honoured with the prestigious Padmashri award. Being the fourth highest civilian award of the country, it definitely is a very big thing for Devgn. He is humbled and touched. Despite being a little late it is well deserved, isn't it? I mean after performances like Omkara, Drishyam, Gangajal to name a few, Ajay has only refined himself as a performer. From comic roles to serious action thrillers, Ajay has always managed to ace them.

After getting the big news, Ajay Devgn told media how this win has definitely made him more responsible and accountable towards his fans.

Ajay is shooting for his upcoming film Shivaay in Bulgaria but in a media statement, he said:

I feel deeply humbled yet elated to receive such honour from my own country. This announcement today makes it special for me when Im filming abroad for my new film Shivaay . Id like to acknowledge that Padma Samman puts an extra responsibility on me and I promise to serve my country for as long as I can.

Kajol too is a proud wife and she said: "I am very proud and very happy for Ajay.

Well, congratulations Ajay!
Acelebrated photographer has sold a picture of an Irish potato for 750,000 (Rs 97 Crore).

TOI

Kevin Abosch, 46, confirmed he had sold the photograph of an organic potato shot on a black background to an unnamed European businessman.

The photograph, which was taken in 2010, sits alongside shots of Steven Spielberg, Michael Palin, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Malala Yousafzai in the sought-after photographer's portfolio.

Abosch's portraits are typically commissioned for at least 200,000.

TOI

There are three versions of the potato print in existence - one belongs in his private collection, another was donated to an art museum in Serbia and the third was sold to the unnamed businessman.

He told the Sunday Times:"It's not the first time that someone has bought the art right off my wall.

"We had two glasses of wine and he said, 'I really like that'. Two more glasses of wine and he said: 'I really want that.'

"We set the price two weeks later. It is the most I have been paid for a piece of work that has been bought [rather than commissioned]."

The Irish photographer's trademark portraits on a black background have been highly sought after among the rich and famous - last week he was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Abosch said he is not sure what happened to the potato in question - called Potato #345 - as he photographed many for a special series.
Last time I was in Udupi, it was for the yummy food apart from a visit to the ashthamathas!

But now tourists will surely have more reasons to cheer as the famous Malpe beach in Udupi district- which is also one of the main tourist attractions in southern Karnataka, is now the first beach in India to have Wi-Fi connectivity.

Indiatourism4u

The facility will be available to tourists free of cost for 30 minutes at any time of the day during their visit, an official release said.

Udupi MLA Pramod Madhwaraj launched the 24x7 facility at a function at the beach yesterday.

He said the duration of free WiFi access would be extended later.

The service is being provided by BSNL, supported by the Centre's Digital Drive Initiative.

Madhwaraj said the Malpe beach committee had spent Rs 80 lakh for beach development works last year. Work on road development had also been taken up at a cost of Rs five crore over the years, he said.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. A firm providing meals for asylum seekers in Cardiff demands they wear wristbands as a condition for receiving food. Armenpress reports the aforementioned, referring to BBC News.

The coloured bands were given to asylum seekers staying at Lynx House.

But some said it was dehumanising and made people targets for abuse.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, said: "I find it very hard to understand how a system like this could ever be deemed appropriate and frankly I'm shocked and appalled."

Clearsprings Ready Homes said asylum seekers who spent their initial few weeks in its full-board accommodation in Cardiff had been provided with bands since May 2015.

This was to "ensure they receive the services they are entitled to and to make sure those more vulnerable asylum seekers have access to their specific requirements".

"As in numerous such establishments where large numbers of people are being provided with services, wristbands are considered to be one of the most reliable and effective ways of guaranteeing delivery," a spokesman said.

"We are always reviewing the way we supply our services and have decided to cease the use of wristbands as of 25 January and will look for an alternative way of managing the fair provision of support."
Scientists have been wrong before!

In fact 99 per cent of the times, they are wrong with the rest of the 1 per cent changing the world.

But this time their prediction may just be too damn honest to take a chance.

A Russian scientist has predicted that space junk - the man made objects surrounding our exosphere - may have reached such density, that it can trigger a war between nations.

ESA

According to a report published in The Guardian, these scientists have claimed that little space debris floating around earth have enough power to destroy satellites and if such damage is induced to military satellites, conflict is unavoidable.

Here is a video which shows the real spurt in the growth of space debris in the past 70 years:

As you see, those of us waiting for some higher intelligence beings to land in Area 52 or even Gorakhpur - must expect them to first spot us and then try to clear their way to us. Which they may not; if they are really intelligent!

In his paper, soon to published in the Acta Astronautica journal, Russian Scientist Vitaly Adushkin says that such debri posed a special political danger and may provoke political or even armed conflict between space-faring nations.

The owner of the impacted and destroyed satellite can hardly quickly determine the real cause of the accident.

Adushkin adds that in recent decades there have been repeated sudden failures of defence satellites which have never been explained. But there are only two possibilities, he claims: either unregistered collisions with space debris, or an aggressive action by an adversary. This is a politically dangerous dilemma, he calls them.

The Guardian also noted that NASA and Roscosmos track more than 23,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 cm but there can trillions of smaller particles out there which cause a great threat when they combine and travel together at speeds exceeding 30,000 mph.
Soon after the December 'brace yourself...' jokes died down, India came to accept that winter might not really show up this year.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had recorded the hottest December in the last 114 years

According to Arvind Kumar Srivastava, director at the Meteorological Centre in Jaipur and former director, National Climate Centre, India was "under the influence of a jet stream" (strong atmospheric winds, located 12 km above earth), restricting the flow of extra tropical colder air from Siberia into the Indian region.

"The jet stream, which is located over the central and northern parts of the country, explains the less snowfall in December. Even the number of fog spells was less in December as the jet stream has made the atmosphere unstable." Blame was also cast on global warming and El Nino, the eastwards movement of warm water from the western Pacific Ocean.

And then winter hit

The weather in North India is a perfect example of Tequila hitting hours after drinking it.  Sana (@High_Dives) January 24, 2016

On the 15th of January, North India was cold, touching a low of 11.4 degrees Celsius, with fog causing train cancellations. The dry weather led to falling temperatures across the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh region, and Kargil reached minus 13.8 degrees.

bccl

The winter persisted 2 days later, with flight cancellations, and Leh touching minus 13.0 degrees.

IMD confirmed that the biting cold across central and north India resulted from a "cold blast from the Arctic" i.e. cold Siberian winds were coming to India, travelling from Europe and Russia via Afghanistan and Pakistan to enter northern India. Previously, these bitterly cold weather remains confined to the Arctic region.

A man carries his son to school wrapped in a shawl on a cold #foggy morning in New Delhi. @AFPphoto #india #weather pic.twitter.com/kFPZPVNqkZ  Prakash Singh (@PrakashAFP) January 22, 2016

D Sivananda Pai, the head of the National Climate Centre, India Meteorological Department (IMD), told the Times of India that during the positive phase of the Arctic oscillation, bitterly cold weather remains confined to the Arctic region.

bccl

"When this pattern becomes negative, which is the situation at present, a reversal of winds takes place and the cold travels southwards. These cold winds have now begun to enter the regions south of the Arctic, including India, resulting in a drop in temperature."

New York snowed in, with almost 27 inches of snow

ap

Around the same time, a record breaking blizzard hit Americas East Coast, bringing the entire region (from North Carolina to New York) to a standstill. All flights cancelled, coastal flooding with tides as high as 9 feet.

Mid-Atlantic coastline flooded by blizzard's storm surge. 'This is worse than Sandy.': https://t.co/8FPq83rUjc pic.twitter.com/Abg8WfJfMm  Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) January 24, 2016

It came up really fast! Posted by Jason Pellegrini on Saturday, 23 January 2016

People were stranded on interstate highways, rescued by the National Guard, who provided them food and water. This was storm Jonas, which had rolled in Washington, DC-area Friday afternoon and moved northeast toward New York early Saturday, bringing with it heavy snow, punishing winds, and icy conditions.

So, what caused the weekend's monster snowstorm nicknamed Snowzilla?

Pretty much the same storm system that chilled India - Cold air from the Arctic combined with a jet stream wind, and it travelled through the Gulf of Mexico, hitting a below-zero layer of air over Washington DC. This created the snow.

businessinsider

As the storm generates precipitation, rain falls through this freezing-cold air layer, which transforms the rain to snow. But the worst part of it all, which makes this storm so epic, is that it's drawing from "nearly infinite reservoir of high humidity air," the Washington Post reported. Moving from the south is a pocket of humid air that will help fuel the storm. That means lots and lots of snow. Simultaneously, an unusually strong El Nino - a natural weather pattern caused by surface heating in the Pacific Ocean, powered East Coast snowstorm.
Follow us on combined losses for flipkart amazon snapdeal breach rs 5 000 cr mark

Mumbai: Cumulative loss figures of Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, the biggest e-commerce players in India, have breached the Rs 5,000 crore mark and currently stand at Rs 5,052 crore on the back of steep discounts offered by the companies in an attempt to rope in more customers.

According to reports, Amazon India's net loss widened to Rs 1,724 crore in the year ended March 2015. This despite its Indian business registering a six-fold increase in sales to Rs 1,022 crore in 2014-15 from Rs 169 crore a year earlier. Losses for Amazon Inc.'s India business stood at Rs 321 crore.

Meanwhile, two main entities controlled by Flipkart, India's largest ecommerce firm, reported a loss of about Rs 2,000 crore in the year ended March 2015 as compared to a loss of Rs 715 crore in the previous year.

Jasper Infotech, which runs ecommerce marketplace Snapdeal.com, also reported a loss of Rs 1,328 crore for the year ended March 2015.

The race between the three giants for their share in the market has seen the companies incur huge expenses on employees, marketing and promotions, leading to the situation.

Amazon India's spokesperson said its portal was the most-visited commerce site in the country and also had the fastest-growing shopping app among all ecommerce companies in 2015.

"At the end of Q3-2015, we saw an approximately 500% Y-O-Y growth in volume, and in Q4-2015 we sold more than we did in all of 2014. We are committed to investing aggressively with a long-term horizon and transforming the way India buys and sells," Amazon India's spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.

Amazon may invest about $5 billion in India, up from $2 billion pledged earlier by founder Jeff Bezos. It expects India to overtake Japan, Germany and the UK to become its largest overseas market, besides becoming the quickest to reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value.

However, credit rating agencies face competitive dynamics which may lead companies to witness losses despite India's sizeable market opportunity.

Most e-commerce segments have severe competitive dynamics and the current strategy seems to be to build a moat around themselves by scaling up and outsizing their competitors and in this process, incurring heavy losses, a Credit Suisse report.

India's ecommerce market is expected to grow to $103 billion by March 2020 from $26 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. The number of Internet users in India has quadrupled to over 400 million now, of which about 300 million access the Internet at least once in a month and 40 million have engaged in online shopping.

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Follow us on economy moving in right direction to achieve 8 growth ficci president

New Delhi: Harshavardhan Neotia, the new President of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry), is a man full of optimism. Despite all the challenges that Indian economy is facing presently, Neotia believes that a GDP growth of 8% is very much achievable in the next financial year 20016-17.

In an exclusive interview with indiatvnews.com, Neotia opened up on a wide range of issues that are crucial to the growth of Indian economy.

The new FICCI President does not believe that policy paralysis' has returned once again to haunt either the government or the industry. He points out that except for GST which has become a headline issue, we have witnessed action on many other fronts and it includes both administrative as well as legislative measures.

On GST stalemate, Neotia agrees with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that a delayed GST is better than a flawed GST. He exudes confidence that a political consensus will emerge soon on GST that will address concerns raised by everybody.

Interestingly, the new FICCI President believes that we should be ready for some delay in legislation and decision making because we have opted for the best way to govern India i.e. democracy which entails many voices and many conflicting ideas.



Here goes the full text of the interview:

HEALTH OF INDIAN ECONOMY

Q: What is your perspective on the state of health of Indian economy? Is the economy really growing by 7.4% as the data suggests or is it primarily because of the new GDP series that this government has introduced, as pointed out by the opposition parties?

H Neotia: Well, I would say we are not growing as fast as we want to grow but we are certainly growing. We are one of the brightest spots in the world, if you look at how things are, across the different countries. And I do see that we are moving towards 8% mark this year. We may not reach 8%, but we would be close to it. Therefore, in an overall sense, we are in the positive direction but we could always get there faster.

The new GDP series is more in line with the way the world calculates it. So, I think that's a good idea. What is actually the difference between the old series and the new series is hotly debated, whether there is 1-1.5% difference between the two. So let's not get into that. This is the comparable GDP basis for most of the economies in the world.

Q: There are at least 3 major areas of concern as far as Indian economy is concerned. Exports are falling, manufacturing sector is under-performing and private investment is not gaining pace. What is your reading of the problems that we are facing in these three crucial areas?

H Neotia: Let's look at the private sector first. The private sector had built up capacities on the basis of 7-8% growth that they had hoped to happen in last 5 years. It didn't happen. As a result, a lot of excess capacity got built up into the system. Now, it will take a few years to get back into investment cycle because once you built up capacity and you are unable to use it, naturally, your profitability comes under stress as well.

There is an overhang of NPAs (Non-performing Assets) as we all know. That is another factor. The interest costs are high. RBI has taken some steps to moderate it but it has fully not been passed through from commercial banks to borrowers. So, I think all these things are some of the factors that contribute to the private sector situation.

As far as exports are concerned, we are interlinked to the global economy. World affairs will certainly impact our own performance. As you can see, there has been cataclysmic fall in oil prices, from a high of $120 to $27. This is almost a disruptive kind of price-fall. It has given us some temporary advantage but naturally it has put a lot of countries under stress. So, all these factors will naturally impact the exports to some extent. I think the government is taking some measures to see that we can shore it up. I do hope and believe that India has competitiveness in many areas. So we should be able to do it reasonably well.

Coming to manufacturing sector, it's not that it is not performing. It's not throwing up profits because the economy has been moving slowly over these years. It has only started picking up, of late. So, it's going to take some time by when the capacity that we have built up will get utilised. And when these capacities get utilised, the prices will hopefully firm up a little bit and that will allow the companies to have better margins. And that will then allow them to have investment surplus. So, it's all part of the economic cycle we all have to go through. Some ups and downs do happen and this down has been a little longer drawn and we are certainly feeling the pain of it.

Q: Do you have specific suggestions to boost the exports?

H Neotia: Not specifically for exports but generally for the economy. We have recommended that they should continue with the public investment that they have been doing, particularly roads, railways have taken off pretty well. There are other areas like defence where a lot of Make in India' is to happen in the country. We, of course, want GST to be rolled out as quickly as possible. I'm sure it will bring in much better compliance and also add some numbers to GDP. More than anything, it will unify India as one market instead of being fragmented as it is presently. We also feel that disinvestment should carry on. Banks need to be recapitalised as they have an overhang of NPAs. These are some of the suggestions we have made.

Q: In the run up to the general elections, a lot of expectations were raised regarding economic reforms in the country. Are you happy with the pace of economic reforms undertaken by Modi government?

H Neotia: The way I would answer this is that I'm happy with the direction of the reforms. We can always argue the pace and industry would feel that you can do more but we have to remain mindful of the fact that we live in a democracy. In a democracy there are many voices, many conflicting ideas. And we have chosen that because we all believe that democracy is the only right way to govern our country.

Having said that, we do believe that there is an overall convergence that reforms are necessary, that the economy has to grow, and that India is having an opportunity to find its place in comity of nations at the top table. There is a general consensus across political parties on all of this and hopefully, we will find solutions but yes, there will be some delays in this process.

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Follow us on retrospective tax chapter will never be opened again pm modi

Chandigarh: Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday announced that the controversial retrospective taxation is a thing of the past and the chapter will never be opened again in India, a statement aimed at addressing the concerns of foreign investors over predictability in the tax regime.

Addressing the business leaders of France and India in Chandigarh in presence of French President Francois Hollande, PM Modi said his government wants to ensure that foreign investors are clear about tax systems that will prevail in India over the next 15 years.

"I am for stable governance and predictable taxation system. The government is taking various steps to ensure this stability. This government is known for stable and predictable tax regime," he said.

Referring to plans of introducing retrospective tax in 2012 through amendments in the Income Tax Act, a step which had led to an outcry and anxiety among the investors, particularly the foreign one, he said, "retrospective tax is a matter of past."

"That chapter will not be opened again. We are ensuring that neither this government nor the future governments can open this chapter," he said.

"Whosoever makes investment in the country should know about the taxation system in the country over the next five years, 10 years, 15 years," he said.

The French President, who began his three-day visit from Chandigarh on Sunday, is accompanied by a large delegation of CEOs.

Inviting French companies, especially those in the defence sector to manufacture in India and take advantage of low costs involved, the Prime Minister said India provides huge business opportunity for them.

"India wants to enter the field of defence manufacturing. I assure French companies present here, especially in the field of defence manufacturing that we can do a lot in the area of defence manufacturing," the PM said.

"We are working towards improving quality of life. We are working on good governance. These are the two initiatives that world is attracted towards," PM Modi said.

Latest Business News
Follow us on akshay kumar s airlift mints rs. 44 crore in the opening weekend

New Delhi: Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar is over the moon these days.

The actor has just completed 25 years in the industry and his recent release Airlift' is doing wonders at the box-office.

Helmed by Raja Krishna Menon, Airlift' also starring Nimrat Kaur in the lead, received a phenomenal opening on its day of release.

And the movie is trending excellently with each passing day.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh, took it to Twitter to share the opening weekends report of Airlift' as he tweeted, #Airlift went from strength to strength with each passing day. Fri 12.35 cr, Sat 14.60 cr, Sun 17.35 cr. Total:  44.30 cr. India biz. FAB!

Airlift' is a movie based on the real life incident of largest human evacuation when around 1, 70,000 Indians were airlifted after Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Akshay Kumar is seen playing the role of Ranjit Katyal, a Kuwait based wealthy business man, who plays a key role in evacuating Indians from the war-torn Kuwait.

The movie will give you a feeling of pride on being an Indian.

Latest Bollywood News
Follow us on 8 best moments of india s most loved show comedy nights with kapil

New Delhi: Comedy Nights With Kapil', which shot Kapil Sharma to instant popularity, aired its last episode on Sunday. The show, which Kapil also co-produced, saw a rather emotional end with all its participants reported to have been in tears over its abrupt end.

It is highly speculated that the tiff between Kapil and the channel Colors was one of the biggest reasons the show came to a halt. Nevertheless, Kapil doesn't regret it and says he feels blessed with the love viewers have showered upon him.

As the curtains are drawn on the show, we take you down a memory lane to relive some unforgettable moments. The combined effort of these punches made CNWK the show it was. Let's walk the lane together:

When Kapil welcomed the celebrities:

Kapil had a peculiar way of welcoming stars to his house. He used to first sing praises for the star and they add, To kya aapne kabi socha tha ki aapko Comedy Nights With Kapil me aane ka mauka milega?

Daadi's kiss:

Ali Asgar, who played Daadi, did not spare any male star who entered the house. Just like Kapil's sense of humour, Daadi's pappi on the cheeks of all male stars made it a worth-watch.

Guthi's introduction:

Sunil Grover aka Guthi made sure no one was left unaddressed. Guthi introduced each and every member of the family to the stars and sometimes did not even leave objects.

Guthi's song:

If you know, Aap aayein hai humare ghar me, phool khile hai gulshan gulshan' by heart; you know what we are talking about.

Palak's weight:

Actor Kiku Sharda played many roles on CNWK, but Palak was the most loved one. One has to give it to Palak for sportingly taking all the jokes hit at her.

Manju's lips:

Before superstar Salman Khan dedicated minutes on television talking about Gizele Thakkral's lips on Bigg Boss 9, Kapil had already done it with his on-screen wife Manju played by Sumona.

Sidhu's shayari:

Navjot Singh Sidhu who was seen laughing his heart out in every second of the show, kept the enthusiasm high with his punches, most of which he prepared impromptu.

Viewers:

It is worth mentioning that CNWK would not have been half as lively it was in the absence of the viewers. With the show, fans got a chance to interact with their favourite celebs. They asked questions, danced and even sang for them; making the show a memorable one.

Latest Bollywood News
Follow us on kabir bedi s fourth wife parveen dusanj reacts on step daughter pooja s allegations

New Delhi: The Valentine's Day is around the corner but it seems that the cupid has gone weak in B-town because all we hear these days are celeb couples getting separated or divorced.

However, amidst all these break-ups, there is this one relationship that is grabbing a lot of eyes.

Not its not of Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh.

Instead, we are talking about the newly wed couple Kabir Bedi and Parveen Dusanj.

Kabir married Parveen a day before he celebrated his 70th birthday this month and their wedding became the talk of the town because of war of words. Kabir's daughter Pooja Bedi started a battle with her father after he wed Parveen.

Pooja had accused Parveen of ruining the father daughter relationship and has presented her as an evil step-mother'.

But it seems that Parveen has decided to clear the air about these allegations and stated that she has nothing to do with the ongoing fight between Kabir and Pooja Bedi and that she is being made a scapegoat.

Although Parveen is quite hurt with Pooja's comment on her, she has decided to ignore it as much as possible.

If one person wants to rain on my parade, I choose to ignore it. It's hurtful, of course, but I have been raised to be grateful for what I have, and that is helping me ignore this, Parveen told a leading daily.

Parveen also opened up on the couple's sudden announcement of their wedding stating, It was Kabir's 70th birthday on January 16. His son Adam [from his second wife, British-born fashion designer Susan Humphreys] and his wife Melissa came down from Los Angeles, his sisters were there and my whole family was down from London too. Since Kabir had asked me to marry him on bended knee at the Spanish Steps in Rome almost five years ago, and I had said yes then, we decided to make everyone happy and take the plunge spontaneously. Though we didn't need to... We were happy just the way we were.

Parveen is Kabir Bedi's fourth wife and married him after dating him for around a decade.

Latest Bollywood News
Follow us on bomb threat on jet airways flight passengers evacuated

New Delhi: A Kathmandu-bound Jet Airways flight was stopped from taking off and its passengers and crew were evacuated following a bomb threat.

Flight 9W260 was about to take off at 1.25 p.m. from New Delhi when an anonymous caller telephoned the police at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, saying a bomb had been placed in the plane.

"All the passengers were safely evacuated. A thorough search of the plane is being conducted," Deputy Commissioner of Police Dinesh Kumar Gupta told IANS.

A police officer earlier said that the plane belonged to SpiceJet.

A Jet Airways statement said: "All the 104 guests and seven crew members have been taken to the departure waiting area at the airport."

Latest India News
Follow us on cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets president

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee today addressed the nation ahead of the Republic Day tomorrow, and made a strong pitch against the evils of terrorism and the harm it has inflicted upon India and the entire world.

In a tough worded message to the nation, Preident Mukherjee said that there was no notion such as good terrorism or bad terrorism' and that it was only evil'. Terming terror as a war inspired by insane objectives, motivated by bottomless depths of hatred, instigated by puppeteers'; the President said that terrorism was a cancer that must be operated out with a firm scalpel.

The President also took note of the rising instances of terror emanating from Pakistan's soil, saying that terrorists sought to undermine order by rejecting the very basis of strategic stability, which are recognised borders.

If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards an age of chaos, he said.

In an apparent reference to Pakistan and the peace process initiated by India with the neighbour, the President said, Dialogue is the civilized way to bridge disagreement; ideally, should be a continual engagement. We cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets.

Here are the highlights of the President's Address to the Nation on the eve of the 67th Republic Day:

* The President paid tributes to brave soldiers who made supreme sacrifice of their lives in defending India's territorial integrity.

* January 26, 1950, saw the culmination of heroic struggle of an extraordinary generation of leaders: President Mukherjee

* Delay not, delay not, a new age dawns. With feet of glory, you shall cut out your own path. Move ahead, the roll of drums announce your triumphal march: President Mukherjee quoting Tagore

* The generational change has happened; youth have moved centre-stage to take charge: President Mukherjee

* Through an open-minded approach to the wider spectrum of ideas, our academic institutions must become world-class. It must breed a culture of deep thought and create an environment of contemplation and inner peace. It must instil a spirit of reverence towards women that will guide social conduct of an individual throughout his life: President

* Education, with its enlightening effect, leads to human progress and prosperity, the President said.

* Love for one's motherland is the basis of all progress. Permanence of such changes can be ensured only if people own these changes: President Mukherjee

* Innovative solutions of urban planning, use of clean energy etc call for active participation of all stakeholders

* Climate change and pollution: Multiple strategies and action at various levels is necessary to address pollution. Climate change has acquired real meaning with 2015 turning out to be the warmest year on record. Each of us has the right to lead a healthy, happy and productive life in India. This right has been breached, especially in our cities, where pollution has reached alarming levels

* We must invest in mutual prosperity; our example can be its own message to a world in anxious need of amity. Human beings are best defined by a humane spirit; not their worst instincts: President Mukherjee

* On Terrorism: There is unprecedented turbulence across vast regions, with alarming increase in regional instabilities. The scourge of terrorism has reshaped war into its most barbaric manifestation. No corner can now consider itself safe from this savage monster. Terrorism is inspired by insane objectives, motivated by bottomless depths of hatred, instigated by puppeteers. They have invested heavily in havoc through the mass murder of innocents. This is war beyond any doctrine, a cancer which must be operated out with a firm scalpel.

* On Indo-Pak relations: There is no good or bad terrorism; it is pure evil. Nations will never agree on everything; but the challenge today is existential. Terrorists seek to undermine order by rejecting the very basis of strategic stability, which are recognized borders. If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards an age of chaos.

* There will be disputes among nations; the closer we are to a neighbour the higher the propensity for disputes. Dialogue is the civilized way to bridge disagreement; ideally, should be a continual engagement. We cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets. We must resolve complex edges of our geo-political inheritance with neighbours through peaceful dialogue. We on our subcontinent have a historic opportunity to become a beacon to the world at a time of great danger.

* Delays in decision-making and implementation can only harm the process of development.

* For revitalizing the forces of growth, we need reforms and progressive legislation. A spirit of accommodation, cooperation and consensus-building should be the preferred mode of decision-making. It is bounden duty of the law makers to ensure that such legislation is enacted after due discussion and debate.

On Intolerance: We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason. When grim instances of violence hit at established values which are at core of our nationhood, it is time to take note. Our finest inheritance, institutions of democracy, ensure to all citizens justice, equality, & gender & economic equity. Let us applaud what our democracy has achieved. Let us continue to complain; demand; rebel; this is a virtue of democracy. There will be, amongst us, occasional doubters & baiters.

* On Economy: This year, with an estimated growth rate of 7.3 percent, India is poised to become the fastest growing large economy. India is building and implementing strategies to solve these problems. Year 2015 has been a year of challenges; during this year, the global economy remained subdued. Unusual weather conditions impacted our agricultural production. While large parts of India were affected by severe drought, other areas reeled under devastating floods.

* On drought: In 2015, we were also denied the bounty of nature. India's economy also had to face the blowback. In such troubled environment, no one nation could be an oasis of growth.

* India a rising power: India today is a rising power, a country fast emerging as a global leader in science, technology, innovation & start-ups. The enduring democratic institutions they established have given us the gift of continuity on the path of progress. They pulled together India's amazing diversity to build national unity, which has brought us so far.

Latest India News
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS.Isis jihadists are planning "large scale" terror attacks and focussing primarily on European targets, Europol said on January 25, as Armenpress reports.

The police agency launched a new Europe-wide counter-terror initiative, and warned that the threat from Isis was the worst the continent has faced in more than 10 years.

Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said militants had developed a new combat strategy to attack major European cities, and the agency also cited the growing number of Isis foreign fighters as a posing new challenges for EU member states.

But amid growing attempts to link such challenges to the intake of more than one million refugees into Europe last year, the police agency said in a report that there was no concrete evidence to suggest this was the case.

Europol said that, after the Paris attacks, there is every reason to expect that Isis will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population.
Follow us on with 1000 snipers 49000 securitymen delhi turns into fortress ahead of r day

New Delhi: In the wake of the Pathankot airbase attack and the arrest of a dozen terror suspects, Delhi has been placed on high alert.

As many as 1,000 snipers along with 49,000 security personnel under the close watch of 15,000 CCTV cameras will guard the capital on the Republic Day to ensure a safe visit of the chief guest, French President Francois Hollande.

Five alleged terrorists, who were reportedly radicalised into joining the ISIS, were arrested by the police amid rising security threats from terror outfit.

On Sunday, police issued photographs of all terror suspects and pasted them across railway and Metro stations and inter-state bus terminals requesting citizens to be alert.

The National Security Guard (NSG) snipers will maintain hawk-eye vigil from high-rise buildings within a two-km radius of Rajpath, the spacious central vista of the capital from where the French President along with President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be watching the parade.

President Hollande will be the fifth French president to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi over the decades.

Police said the 49,000 security personnel - around 15,000 from the paramilitary forces and 34,000 from Delhi Police - will be deployed on the streets of the capital starting at 5 a.m. on January 26.

Sources said the central, north and New Delhi districts will be manned by over 20,000 security personnel.

Around 20,000 personnel have already been deployed at specific locations from Sunday to provide impenetrable security to the French president, who arrived here on a three-day official visit.

Delhi Police set up WIPA system

Delhi Police have set up a wireless integrated public address (WIPA) system to enhance security at crowded places and popular markets in the city amid a high security alert ahead of the upcoming Republic Day celebrations.

"WIPA is a centralised public address system now installed at 31 crowded places and markets in Delhi, and also in 13 major metro stations. Through this system, announcements can be made centrally from the police control room to be heard at all the places simultaneously, or even selectively, with a provision to make announcements if the situation warrants," a senior Delhi Police official said.

Around 15,000 newly-installed CCTV cameras will be used to keep watch over the parade route starting from Vijay Chowk at the foot of the Raisina Hill, atop which the Central Secretariat complex sits, to the 17th century Red Fort through Rajpath, India Gate, Tilak Marg, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and Netaji Subhash Marg.

The parade will start at 9.50 a.m. and last till 12.30 p.m. on January 26.

Rajpath, the three-km stretch which is the main venue of the parade, has nearly 160 CCTV cameras. One camera has been installed every 18 metres.

Officials said that as part of heightened security arrangements, the city will be declared a no-fly zone, covering a radius of nearly 300 km, for civilian aircraft during the parade.

A seven-layer security ring will guard the enclosure that would be used by French President Hollande, President Mukherjee and PM Modi.

India Gate and Rajpath have already been shut to people and the area is under constant guard by security personnel.

The airspace over the capital will be monitored by special radars, the officials added.

Traffic Restrictions for R-Day Parade

Vehicle movement from Vijay Chowk to India Gate on Rajpath will be restricted from 3 p.m. on Monday till the parade is over on Tuesday (January 26) afternoon.

Traffic on some major arterial roads in New Delhi like Rafi Marg, Janpath, Man Singh Road will be stopped from 11 p.m. on Monday till the end of the parade.

Vehicles, barring those with control and duty lables, will not be permitted to ply in some other New Delhi area, including South Avenue, Thyag Raj Marg, K. Kamraj Marg, Sunheri Masjid, Maulana Azad Road, Akbar Road between Man Singh Road and C-Hexagon, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road, Red Cross Road, Sansad Marg, Imtiaz Khan Road, Rakab Ganj Road, Pt. Pant Marg and Church Road.

Only labelled vehicles of the invitees and vehicles of bona-fide residents of the restricted area shall be permitted to enter.

Delhi Metro rail service will remain available for commuters at all stations during the parade.

The entry and exit at Patel Chowk and Race Course stations, however, will remain closed from 8.45 a.m. to 12.30 p.m., and the Central Secretariat station will only be used for interchange of passengers.

Entry and exit at the Central Secretariat and Udyog Bhawan stations will remain closed from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. on January 26, officials said.

Latest India News
Follow us on ex cji am ahmadi asks muslims not to vote under rss intimidation

Ahmedabad: In a veiled attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), former Chief Justice of India A M Ahmadi asked Muslims to not vote under "intimidation" of those who wear half-pants and carry lathis", the conventional dress code of the organisation.

"Do not get frightened from those who come out on roads wearing half-pants and carrying lathis in their hands. They come out during elections only to inject fear among people. It is part of the election process," Ahmadi said yesterday without taking name of RSS while addressing a function organised by state Congress here in the Muslim-dominated Sarkhej on the outskirts of the city.

Ahmadi requested Muslims not to vote out of fear.

"After elections get over, they disappear. But, in between that election process do not get intimidated by them. It will be a problem if you give your vote out of fear," said Ahmadi who had served as CJI from October 1994 till March 1997.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel and state unit Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki were present during the function.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the event, Patel slammed the BJP-ruled state government on the issue of education and employment opportunities.

"The focus should be on quality of education. Setting up new factories and schools is not a solution. Government needs to focus on filling up vacant posts of teachers. In Gujarat, there is not a single teacher in 60 schools while there is only one teacher each in more than 800 schools," he alleged.

On Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's statement yesterday that Parliament keeps on extending the reservations for another ten years despite Babasaheb Ambedkar initially putting the cap on quota for ten years, Patel said it was the prerogative of Parliament to review the reservation system and give extension if needed.

"Parliament, that is Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, regularly review this decision (reservation) and grant extensions. There cannot be any other review. There is no institution superior than the Parliament," he added.

Latest India News
Follow us on in india to improve economic relations and strengthen cooperation against terrorism hollande

New Delhi: French President Francois Hollande today said his visit to India was aimed at strengthening and reinforcing "the cooperation against terrorism between our two countries".

"Today, there are all kind of terrorist threats that are hovering around countries such as India and France and one of the main aims of my visit here is to reinforce and strengthen the cooperation against terrorism between our two countries," Hollande said.

He also said India and France will "work to improve economic relations in the field of agriculture and space".

The French president was given a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on the second day of his three-day visit to India.

Hollande said he was honoured to be the chief guest at the Republic Day in India.

Hollande began his visit on Sunday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke protocol to welcome him at Chandigarh.

Latest India News
Follow us on bihar once again in news for wrong reason 30 year woman shot dead in patna

Patna: Bihar has once again grabbed the media headlines for all wrong reasons, especially after the massive victory of 'Grand Alliance' in last year's Assembly poll.

First it was an engineer and a contractor, working on a project of the Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam, who were shot dead at a construction site in Baheri, Darbhanga in December. Few days later, an engineer working for Reliance Group was found in a pool of blood in Vaishali. Then it was a Patna businessman who was shot dead near Rajapur Bridge after refusing to pay extortion money.

The latest in the series is a 30-year-old woman who was shot dead in a broad daylight in capital. The woman, who has been identified as Shriti Jain, hailing from Indore, was killed in Jakkanpur area of Patna today.

According to locals, the site of incident is very close to a police station. On the other hand, police suspect the case is related to a love affair.

This incident took place a day after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar dismissed Opposition charges of 'jungle raj' in the state and asserted that 'rule of law' prevailed in the state pointing to the action taken against JD(U) MLA Sarfaraz Alam in a case of misbehaviour and abusing a couple in a train.

"There is neither jungle raj in Bihar nor will it ever come. There is rule of law and it will continue to exist," Kumar said.

Police said they had a strong case against the MLA, who had used abusive language against the woman complainant.

The government is keeping a close watch over all the incidents of crime and initiate prompt action over them, he said, adding, 'police is doing its job by arresting the culprits'.

The rise in number of crimes in the Nitish Kumar-led alliance government is a stark reminder of return of 'jungle raj' of the 90s when kidnapping, extortion, and murder were considered the only thriving industries in state.

Latest India News
Follow us on rohith vemula s mother admitted in icu due to chest pain

Hyderabad: Mother of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit research scholar who allegedly committed suicide on the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) campus on January 17, was shifted to a hospital on Sunday night in view of her health conditions.

Radhika (Rohith's mother) was shifted from the protest camp on the campus and taken to a private hospital after she complained of chest pain...heart pain, and she is in ICU, Rohith's brother Raja told PTI.

Rohith, one of the five research scholars suspended last year in connection with an attack on a ABVP leader, had allegedly hanged himself in a hostel room on the varsity campus last Sunday.

Latest India News
Follow us on ttp s leader mullah fazlullah executed in joint operation report

Dubai: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) leader Mullah Fazlullah, the mastermind behind the Peshawar school massacre that killed 148 people including schoolchildren, along with the commander Qari Hedayatullah, were reportedly killed in an air strike in Afghanistan.

As per the reports by a Dubai's leading daily, Fazlullah was assassinated during a joint-operation of Pakistan army and US-led forces in Afghanistan. This execution is being touted as a big blow' that will break the back of TTP terrorists.

Although no official statement has been issued till yet, confirming Fazlullah's death, but the source that has made this revelation is said to be highly reliable. The source has also claimed that the big news' will be soon made public.

However, the killing of Taliban commander Hedayatullah has been confirmed by an Afghan News agency on its Twitter feed.

This joint operation was conducted when Raheel Sharif, Pakistan Army Chief General rushed to Afghanistan immediately after the school massacre on Friday and demanded Afghan government to take action against TTP's most feared leader.

The army chief shared intelligence details with the Afghan officials which showed Fazlullah giving directives to terrorists from his hideout in Afghanistan.

Pak President Mamnoon Hussain had said, Peshawar tragedy has united the nation and people are now seeking the complete elimination of terrorists to make the country safe.

PM Nawaz Sharif was informed about the joint operation on Saturday, sources said.

Latest World News
Follow us on pathankot attack examining fresh leads provided by india says nawaz sharif

London: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday said India has given fresh leads relating to the Pathankot terror attack and Islamabad was verifying the facts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"I have received fresh leads from India on the Pathankot attack and we will look and examine those evidences given by India. We could have hidden it or forgotten it but we asserted that we have received the evidences," Sharif said here on his arrival from Davos after attending the World Economic Forum.

"We are probing and verifying that. Once we are done with that we would definitely bring the facts forward. Along with that, we have also formed a special investigating team, they would go to India and collect more evidence," Sharif added.

Sharif also said that his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi has offered to extend full cooperation regarding the investigation.

"I had a word with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he had offered every help possible from their side in bringing the perpetrators to justice. We are going on the right lines and I hope the perpetrators will be brought to justice soon," he said.

The Pakistani Premier, who promised further Pakistani action to combat militants, however, conceded that progress had often been slow.

Pak's probe team to visit Pathankot?

Sharif further mentioned that the probe team from Islamabad will soon visit Pathankot Air Base in Punjab and the findings of the investigation will be put in the public domain.

However, Minister of State (MoS) for Defence Rao Inderjeet Singh had clearly stated earlier that the Pakistan Special Investigation Team (SIT) won`t be allowed to visit the Pathankot IAF airbase.

Earlier, India had welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan to investigate the antecedents of the terror strike in Pathankot allegedly by the the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and pledged to extend all help to the former`s special investigation team

India gave "specific and actionable information" to Pakistan soon after the Pathankot attack reportedly carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists on the intervening night of January 1 and 2 that killed seven Indian soldiers.

Pakistani National Security Advisor Lt Gen Naseer Khan Janjua on January 5 called up his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval during which they discussed "specific and actionable information" related to the Pathankot terror strike.

Doval and Janjua talked about various information and leads, like the Pakistani numbers which the attackers had called and their intercepts with India asserting that an effective action on part of Pakistan was important.

Sharif was speaking days after a deadly attack by heavily armed gunmen on a university near Peshawar killed 21 people.

The attack bore a chilling resemblance to the December, 2014 Peshawar school attack in which over 150 people, mostly children, were killed, prompting the government to launch a National Action Plan (NAP) cracking down on militancy. Sharif said Pakistan would continue the fight against militants.

"We will fulfil this responsibility," he said.

With PTI Inputs

Latest World News
Follow us on arunachal pradesh crisis cong moves sc over centre s decision to impose president s rule in state

New Delhi: The Congress party on Monday moved the Supreme Court against the BJP government's recommendation to impose President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, triggering the possibility of a continuing political impasse in the crisis-ridden north-eastern border state.

"We have filed the petition before the apex court registry," Congress leader and senior advocate Vivek Tankha told PTI. He said the petition has been filed by the state Congress Chief whip Bamang Felix and an urgent hearing has been sought.

"We are waiting to hear from the Deputy Registrar who will place the petition before the Chief Justice of India," another lawyer said.

In the petition, there has been a challenge to the report and the recommendation of the Union Cabinet for promulgation of President's Rule in the state.

Earlier in the day, the Congress party decided to urge President Pranab Mukherjee to thwart any attempt to impose central rule in the state. The filing of the fresh plea assumes significance as the five-judge bench is examining constitutional provisions on the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor, amid continuing month-long impasse over Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.

In an earlier plea filed by Nabam Rebia, who was allegedly removed from the post of Speaker by rebel Congress and BJP MLAs in an assembly session held at a community hall in Itanagar on December 16, has listed out legal questions, including the Governor's power to convene the assembly session without the aid and advice of the government for adjudication by the apex court.

It was also alleged that the Governor had advanced the assembly sitting from January 14 to December 16 without the aid and advice of the Chief Minister and his council of ministers. Congress party, which has 47 MLAs seats in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The Governor then called assembly session on December 16 in which Deputy Speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of Speaker. This sitting was held in a community hall in Itanagar.

Various decisions of the Governor and the Deputy Speaker were challenged by Rebia in Gauhati High Court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance these decisions till February one.

(With PTI Inputs)
Follow us on india france ink accord on purchase of 36 rafale jets

New Delhi: India and France today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) regarding the purchase of 36 Rafale combat aircraft, though the financial modalities such as cost are yet to be worked out.

This development is a step ahead from the position so far. Addressing a gathering during the presentation of the joint statement issued by the two countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that India had agreed to purchase the 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.

Negotiations between India and France over the financial structure of the purchase from Dassault Aviation have been on since the announcement of the deal by PM Modi during his visit to France in April last year.

"The Rafale is a major project for India and France. It will pave the way for an unprecedented industrial and technological cooperation, including 'Make in India', for the next 40 years. Agreeing on the technicalities of this arrangement obviously takes time, but we are on the right track", French President Francois Hollande said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary S Jaishanker said that the current development was a step away from the deal finally being done. This is an MoU. Once financials are settled, an Inter Governmental Agreement will be done, he said.

French President Hollande arrived in India yesterday as part of his three-day state visit to the country. He will be the Guest of Honour at the Republic Day parade on Tuesday. He was accorded a ceremonial reception at the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhavan this morning. President Pranab Mukherjee formally welcomed his French counterpart at a grand ceremony. Hollande was given Guard of Honour and a 21-gun salute.

Prime Minister Modi and several of his Cabinet colleagues were present at the occasion. Minister for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar, who is President Hollande's minister-in-waiting during the visit, was also present at the occasion. There is a wide set of engagements for the President as part of his visit.

Here are the live updates:

* Although headquartered in India, the ISA is a global institution meant for the benefit of mankind: PM Modi

* Our ancestors have taught us to love nature, we see god in a plant, this is our tradition: PM Modi

* We are the people who taught the world how to love Nature, we were taught that God resides in a plants: PM Modi

* The 3 nations took joint initiative to promote innovation that is sustainable, affordable and accessible: PM Modi

* Energy has become an integral part of a nation's development journey: PM Modi

* Three nations-USA, France and India took the initiative of 'Innovation': PM Modi

* World has been discussing global warming for the last one year and how to mitigate it: PM Narendra Modi

* Today, a new chapter opens for nations to utilize the power of the sun- French President Francois Hollande

* PM Modi & France Pres. Hollande inaugurate the interim Secretariat of International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gurgaon. . Both leaders took the Delhi Metro to reach the destination.

* France reaffirmed its support for India's candidature for a permanent membership of the UNSC: Joint Statement

* French President Francois Hollande terms inking of IGA for Rafale as a "decisive" step, says there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in couple of days.

* From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power: These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership

* Thanks to the leadership of President Hollande at COP-21, the world witnessed the emergence of a new Climate framework: PM Modi

* Our joint statement on counter terrorism underscores our determination to combat all forces that sponsor, shelter & support terrorism: PM Modi

* From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism: PM Modi

* From locomotives to satellites, arch'l excavations to smart cities; solar energy to nuclear power; our decisions have touched all domains: PM Modi

* We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible: PM Modi

* Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets: PM Modi

* France would be one such country whose military troop will be marching tomorrow along our troops shoulder to shoulder: PM Modi

* I am honoured to welcome you as our guest for the Republic Day celebrations in Delhi. India is privileged to share one of its oldest and most trusted strategic partnerships with France: PM Modi.

* India France exchange 13 agreements cutting across a wide variety of sectors

* PM Modi hosts a working lunch for President Hollande

* French President and PM Modi now holding delegation level talks at Hyderabad House in New Delhi

* EAM Sushma Swaraj calls on President Francois Hollande

* We will take measures that are required to protect democracy and therefore the decision that was taken to extend the period of emergency in France so that we can take all necessary measures: Francois Hollande

* France will not be deterred by the threat of ISIS. Our full effort is to eradicate them: Francois Hollande

* Once again it underlines our shared values that we aim to protect and also represent across the world. We are going to follow up on all the decisions that were taken at the COP21 as far as action against climate change is concerned but in addition to that we will be further strengthening our economic relations in all areas from agriculture to space: Francois Hollande

* These are areas which are of interest and there is immense cooperation between our two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi played a very important role in the success of COP21: Francois Hollande

* India and France will work to improve economic relations in the field of agriculture and space: Francois Hollande

* Today, there are all kind of terrorist threats that are hovering around countries such as India and France and one of the main aims of my visit here is to reinforce and strengthen the cooperation against terrorism between our two countries: Francois Hollande

* I am honoured to be the chief guest at India's Republic Day function: Francois Hollande

* French President Hollande accorded ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan

* French President Francois Hollande plants a tree in Rajghat

* French President Francois Hollande pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat

Hollande arrived in Chandigarh yesterday where he was received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The two countries signed 16 agreements including an agreement between Airbus Group and Mahindra for manufacture of helicopters and three MoUs under the 'Smart City' theme.

On Tuesday, the French President will witness the Republic Day parade at Rajpath as the Chief Guest. This is the fifth time that a serving President of France will be the Chief Guest at India's Republic Day function.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. President Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message to Gohar Vardanyan, widower of legendary intelligence officer Gevorg Vardanyan on the occasion of her 90th birthday anniversary.

Your life is an exceptional example of selfless service to the Motherland. You, together with your late husband and comrade-in-arms, Gevorg Vardanyan, have been legendary heroes since long before, and you inspire numerous young patriots by the path you have crossed, your faithfulness and nature.

We are proud of our compatriots like you.

Bowing in front of your achievements, I once again congratulate on your jubilee, wishing you health and happiness, reads the congratulatory message of the President.

As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Staff, the President of the Republic had a telephone conversation with Gohar Vardanyan, congratulated her conveying his best wishes.
Follow us on eco friendly push modi hollande take a metro ride to gurgaon

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande today made a statement promoting eco-friendly modes of transport when they took the Delhi Metro to travel to Gurgaon to inaugurate the interim secretariat of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).



PM Narendra Modi's official twitter handle PMO India' tweeted the images of Modi-Hollande's metro ride. On board the Metro, headed to Gurgaon, the tweet said.

A special train was arranged to facilitate movement of PM and French President in close coordination with security agencies. They boarded the train from Race Course to Arjangarh station at 3:16pm and then again boarded the train back from Gurudronacharya to Jorbagh station at 5:20pm. Normal train operations were not affected during this to and fro movement.



The ISA is an initiative launched by Hollande and Modi at the Climate Change summit that was held in Paris last year. It seeks to expand the use and development of solar energy all over the world. PM Modi expects ISA to work like a giver to mankind.

French President Francois Hollande, who is on a three-day visit to India, will be the Guest of Honour at the Republic Day parade at Rajpath tomorrow. A slew of deals promoting cooperation between the two sides across sectors have been inked during the visit so far.
Follow us on need laws to deny salary to mps who disrupt parliament says pj kurien

Gandhinagar: With the last two sessions of Parliament witnessing near washout, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien has pitched for laws to deny salary and allowances to members who do not allow the Houses to function.

Expressing concern that Parliament is "failing" in discharging its duties because of such obstructions, Kurien also said Parliament and Assembly secretariats should inform people through media about names of the members who disrupt proceedings.

The Constitution needs to be amended to ensure Parliament sits for at least 120 days and state Assemblies 60 days in a year, Kurien said.

According to a statement by the Rajya Sabha secretariat, Kurien's hard-hitting remarks came almost a month after the Winter Session of Parliament was marred by frequent disruptions with the Opposition cornering the government over a number of issues as a result of which the legislative agenda particularly of Rajya Sabha, could not be completed.

The Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman was addressing the two-day 78th Conference of Speakers and Presiding Officers of Legislative Bodies, which concluded in Gandhinagar yesterday.

Kurien said although India is in the forefront of parliamentary democracy in the world, its Parliament is failing in discharging its duties.

"Because of continuous disruptions, the Parliament is often not functioning properly. As a result, the Parliament is unable to hold the government accountable and also to remind the government about its responsibilities," he said.

He said laws should be framed to "deny salary and allowances to those members who do not allow Parliament to function through disruptions".

Kurien lamented that said the number of sittings of Parliament and state Assemblies has been decreasing every year.
Follow us on pranab mukherjee seeks govt clarification on prez rule in arunachal

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee has today sought the government's clarification of the Union Cabinet's decision to impose President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh on Sunday.

The President has reportedly asked the Home Ministry to explain the legal and constitutional position behind such a move. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh is expected to visit Rashtrapati Bhavan today afternoon to discuss the same, sources said.

According to sources, the government is expected to cite deteriorating' law and order situation in the state as reasons behind the move. Besides, the unconstitutional' behaviour of the Congress government in the state is also likely to be cited as one of the reasons behind the decision.

The decision to impose Presidents rule in the state follows a political crisis. The government's recommendation also comes in the backdrop of the Supreme Court hearing petitions linked to the political crisis in the state.

Trouble in the north-eastern border state began on December 16 last year after 21 rebel Congress lawmakers joined hands with 11 BJP and two independent members to "impeach" Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue. Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and the 26 lawmakers on his side in the 60-member assembly boycotted the session calling it illegal and unconstitutional.

A day later, the rebels and opposition lawmakers gathered at a hotel to "vote out" the Chief Minister and elect his replacement. A no-confidence motion moved by BJP and independent lawmakers was adopted in proceedings chaired by Deputy Speaker T Norbu Thongdok, who is also a rebel.

The Congress, meanwhile, has said it will move court to challenge the Centre's decision. Former union minister Kapil Sibal has alleged that the Prime Minister, (BJP chief) Amit Shah and the RSS are involved in the "conspiracy to destabilise Arunachal Pradesh."

A Congress delegation including Arunachal Chief Minister Nabam Tuki is also expected to meet the President this evening. The Congress has alleged that Governor JP Rajkhowa acted as a "BJP agent" and helped its rebel lawmakers by calling an assembly session a month ahead of time.

The Gauhati High Court had earlier put on hold the decisions taken at the rebel "session". After the High Court dismissed the Speaker's petition, he moved the Supreme Court, which has referred the case to a Constitution bench.
Follow us on strong political will needed to stop india from becoming syria shiv sena on isis threat

Mumbai: After arrest of several suspected ISIS operatives, Shiv Sena has urged Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to take concrete steps to stop the terror group from spreading its radical ideology.

The saffron party also urged for a strong political will on part of government while asserting that it is the responsibility of the state government to stop ISIS from turning India into Syria'.

In its mouthpiece Saamna, the right wing party marked caution that Islamic State has made Maharashtra its remote control from where it wants to expand in the entire nation.

ISIS has deeply penetrated Maharashtra and it is a great threat for the state as well as for the nation. Their intention to raise the ISIS flags is an attempt to destabilize and create a sense of insecurity in Maharashtra. The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), along with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested many suspects of ISIS in the state which is commendable, the editorial said.

Shiv Sena also cited the proactive action taken by Britain to curb the expansion of the deadly terror outfit.

Even though many tolerant Indian Muslims are against the ISIS, still the attitude of the majority against the terrorist organisation is not clear. They have been raising their voice against the terror outfit but it is not enough. British Government has made it mandatory for the Muslim women to learn English. They have also been trying to prohibit religious teaching in Madarsas, it said.

The BJP allies in the state also said that despite Home Minister Rajnath Singh's assertion that the Indian Muslim community has not been affected from the ideology of the terror outfit, it is a fact that ISIS has become a huge threat for the nation.

Last week, Indian security agencies have arrested over a dozen of suspected ISIS operatives who were planning to launch terror attacks in several cities ahead of the Republic Day.
Follow us on uphill task ahead for bjp president amit shah in 2016

New Delhi: Amit Shah, elected the BJP president for a full three years on Sunday, faces an uphill task as four major states go to the polls this year - and he will have to prove that the electoral setbacks of 2015 were an aberration.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's rout in Delhi and defeat in Bihar last year are widely seen as having dented the image of Shah, 51 -- as a general who always leads his army to victory.

Shah, who took charge of the party in August 2014 from now Home Minister Rajnath Singh, was widely lauded for the way he oversaw the BJP's massive win in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha election.

He was also credited for the BJP wins in the later Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls.

But the Bihar defeat ignited a revolt against Shah's working style by BJP veterans including L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, who on Sunday kept away from the event where he was elected the party president.

BJP leaders who have worked with him closely say Shah, a confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has his strengths and weaknesses.

"Undoubtedly, Amit Shah is a master strategist and has a long term vision for the party. But he will have to change his working style. Rather than neglecting senior leaders, he will have to re-engage with them," one party leader told IANS on the conditions of anonymity.

Shah's real test will come when West Bengal, Pudduchery, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala elect new assemblies in 2016. Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are set for elections in 2017.

In Assam, the BJP is making a determined bid to snatch power from a weakened Congress. But the saffron party does not seem to have much of an appeal in the other four places.

But Shah is determined to make a mark in West Bengal and open the BJP's account in Kerala, the only major state where it has never won either an assembly or a Lok Sabha seat.

The BJP does have a following in Tamil Nadu but is unlikely to upset its relationship with Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. Puducherry is not viewed as a major state politically.

To win in 2016, Shah, credited with making the BJP the world's largest political party with over 11 crore members, will have to re-energize party cadres after the morale-shattering defeats of Delhi and Bihar.

While Shah is said to have a perfect equation with Modi and senior party leaders, BJP sources say this is not so with many others, particularly the second-rung leadership.

"His manner of speaking can at times put off those used to the more suave Advani and Rajnath Singh," another party leader said.

There was a time when the BJP -- "the party with a difference" -- prided on knowing what people felt because of its cadre strength. Under Shah's leadership, some complain the BJP is run more like a corporate.

Modi had handpicked Shah to take charge of Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Modi himself contested both from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Vadodara in Gujarat, won from both, but retained the Varanasi seat.

Shah picked candidates in Uttar Pradesh with a determination to win. In the end, the party got a whopping 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. Ally Apna Dal got two more seats.

After that, Shah, anointed the BJP president, led it to victory in Maharashtra even after snapping ties with long-time ally Shiv Sena. It was swept to power in Haryana though it had never won even 10 seats. Jharkhand fell into the BJP kitty, and it took office in Jammu and Kashmir - though as a junior ally - in the country's only Muslim-majority state.

2016 will show if Shah still has his winning credentials in tact.

IANS
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YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Kurds have organized a protest rally in front of the UN office in Geneva against the activities of the Turkish authorities directed against the Kurdish people. Armenpress informs about this, citing Ria Novosti.

We have been here for already three days in order to draw the attention of the institution on what is going on in Turkey: blockade, massacres of innocent people, including children and women, one of the Kurdish activists said.

Participants of the rally demand the international society and the European Union to show an active position and a peaceful solution to the issue.
Media More Outraged by Possible Murder by Putin Than Definite Murder by Obama



By Matt Peppe January 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - The British government, whose foreign policy is overtly hostile to their Russian counterpart, declared last week that their investigation into the killing of a former Russian intelligence agent in London nearly a decade ago concluded there is a "strong probability" the Russian FSB security agency was responsible for poisoning Alexander Litivenko with plutonium. They further declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably approved" of the act. The British investigation, which was likely politically motivated, seemingly raised more questions than it answered. But American corporate media were quick to use the accusations against Putin to demonize him, casting him as a pariah brazenly flaunting his disregard for international conventions.



The Washington Post (1/23/16) editorial board wrote that "Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination... Mr. Owen found (Andrei) Lugovoi was acting 'under the direction' of the FSB in an operation to kill Mr. Litivenko - one that was 'probably approved' by the director of the FSB and by Mr. Putin."



Actually, Owen did not find that former KGB operative Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB to kill Litivenko. He found there was a "strong probability" this was the case. This means that even in Owens's view, there is not near certainty, which would meet the legal standard of reasonable doubt that would preclude a guilty judgement. There is even more doubt that even if it were the case the FSB ordered the murder, they did so on Putin's orders.



The New York Times editorial board (1/21/16) finds the investigation's results "shocking." For the Times, this confirms a pattern of Putin's rogue behavior. They claim Putin's "deserved reputation as an autocrat willing to flirt with lawlessness in his global ventures has taken on a startling new aspect."



Both of the prestigious and influential American newspapers argue that the British findings impugn Putin's respectability in international affairs. The Times says:

Mr. Putin has built a sordid record on justice and human rights, which naturally reinforces suspicion that he could easily have been involved in the murder. At the very least, the London inquiry, however much it is denied at the Kremlin, should serve as a caution to the Russian leader to repair his reputation for notorious intrigues abroad. The more hawkish Post says: "This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Mr. Putin as if he is just another head of state?"



Putin's alleged "sordid record on justice and human rights," which is taken for granted without providing any examples, is seen as bolstering the case for his guilt in the case of the poisoning death of Litivenko. This, in turn, adds to his "notorious" reputation as a violator of human rights.



The Post draws a line between the lawless Putin and the respectable Western heads of state, such as Obama. Though they frame their call to treat Putin as an outcast as a question, it is clearly intended as a rhetorical question.



It is curious that The Post draws a contrast between Putin and Obama, whose government is supposedly above such criminality. The newspaper does not mention the U.S. government's drone assassination program, which as of last year had killed nearly 2,500 people in at least three countries outside of declared military battlefields. Estimates have shown that at least 90 percent of those killed were not intended targets. None of those killed have been charged with any crimes. And at least two - Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdul Rahman - were Americans.



Obama himself is personally responsible for those killed by missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over the skies of sovereign countries. Several news reports have indicated that Obama is presented in meetings each week by military and national security officials with a list of potential targets for assassination. Obama must personally approve each target, at which point they are added to the state-sanctioned "kill list."



The British government has also assumed for itself the power to assassinate its own citizens outside a declared battlefield. Last fall, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the deaths of two British citizens in Syria, who were subsequently disposed of in a lethal drone strike.



The Washington Post editorial board (3/24/12) claimed that Obama was justified in carrying out lethal drone strokes that kill American citizens "to protect the country against attack." Their lone criticism was that "an extra level of review of some sort is warranted."



After it was revealed that an American hostage was inadvertently killed in a drone strike in Pakistan, The Post (5/1/15) said that the issue of whether the American government continues to conduct drone strikes should not be up for debate. "(T)here is little question that drones are the least costly means of eliminating militants whose first aim is to kill Americans," they wrote.



While they tacitly accept the legal rationale for Obama's assassination program, the New York Times editorial board at least demonstrated some skepticism. In "A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings" (6/23/14), they called the memo "a slapdash pastiche of legal theories - some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law - that was clearly tailored to the desired result." They say that "the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care."



Yet they do not chastise Obama for his "intrigues abroad" nor do they condemn this as an example of his "sordid record on justice and human rights," language they used for Putin. The idea that relying on what are transparently inadequate legal justifications for killing an American citizen without due process would merit prosecution is clearly beyond the limits of discussion for the Times.



Recently Faheem Qureshi, a victim of the first drone strike ordered by Obama in 2009 (three days after his induction as President), who lost multiple family members and his own eye, told The Guardian that Obama's actions in his native lands are "an act of tyranny. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program."



Surely both The New York Times and Washington Post disagree with Qureshi, because they believe the U.S. government is inherently benevolent and its motives are beyond reproach. But based on their editorials about the British investigation of the Litivenko poisoning, if Putin was responsible and was described by Qureshi in the same way, they would wholeheartedly agree.



The U.S. government and its allies in NATO, like Great Britain, have a clear agenda in vilifying Russia and its President. The US-NATO alliance supported the government that came to power in Ukraine in 2014 through a coup. After provinces in Eastern Ukraine - the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking - refused to recognize the NATO-backed coup government in Kiev, the Russian government supported them.



It should be easy to see how, from Russia's perspective, the Ukranian conflict can be understood as an extension of NATO encroachment towards Russia's borders that has continued unabated since James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 NATO would move "not an inch east."



"We're in a new Cold War," Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and politics, told Salon. "The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia's borders, within its own civilization: That's dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules."



Additionally, Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 throughout that country's civil war, and more recently its direct military intervention in the conflict that has turned the tide against US-backed rebels, has strongly rankled Washington.



The language used by top government officials to describe Russia has been astoundingly combative. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the man in charge of the entire US military, claimed Russia is responsible for aggression and is "endangering world order."



The U.S. government's hyping of the Russian "threat" has been used to justify massive spending on the U.S. space program and other military expenditures, such as $1 trillion to upgrade nuclear weapons.



One could even argue that the narrative of an aggressive and belligerent Russia is the principal justification for the continued existence of the NATO itself, two and a half decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The alliance allows the US military to be stationed in hundreds of bases throughout Europe under the guise of a purely defensive organization.



The U.S.'s most prominent media organizations should demonstrate the strongest skepticism towards the policies and actions of their own government. At the very least, they should hold their own country's leaders to the same standards as they do others. But time and again, the media choose to act as a mouthpiece to echo and amplify Washington's propaganda. They do the government's bidding, creating an enemy and rallying the public towards a confrontation they would otherwise have no interest in, while allowing the government to avoid accountability for its own misdeeds. Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.
January 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - teleSur - Saudi Arabia is bombing civilians with U.S.-made bombs, which violates both U.S. and international law.

Saudi Arabia has engaged in war crimes, and the United States is aiding and abetting them by providing the Saudis with military assistance. In September 2015, Saudi aircraft killed 135 wedding celebrants in Yemen. The air strikes have killed 2,800 civilians, including 500 children. Human Rights Watch charges that these bombings have indiscriminately killed and injured civilians.

This conflict is part of a regional power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are bombing Yemen in order to defeat the Houthi rebels, who have been resisting government repression for a long time. Iran has been accused of supporting the Houthis, although Iran denies this. Yemen is strategically located on a narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea. Much of the worlds oil passes through this waterway.

A United Nations panel of experts concluded in October 2015 that the Saudi-led coalition had committed grave violations of civilians human rights. They include indiscriminate attacks; targeting markets, a camp for displaced Yemenis, and humanitarian aid warehouses; and intentionally preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The panel was also concerned that the coalition considered civilian neighborhoods, including Marra and Sadah, as legitimate strike zones. The International Committee of the Red Cross documented 100 attacks on hospitals.

Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the targeting of civilians. It provides that parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.

Saudi Arabia is also engaging in serious individual human rights violations.

OPINION: The Crisis in Yemen Demands Humanitarian Non-Intervention

In January 2016, the Saudi government executed 47 people, including a prominent pacifist Shia cleric, who had been a leader of the 2011 Arab Spring in Yemen. Many of those executed were tortured during their detention and denied due process. Most were beheaded. This horrifies us when ISIS does it. Yet State Department spokesman John Kirby protested weakly, We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences.

Also in January 2016, Palestinian artist and poet Ashraf Fayadh, a Saudi citizen whose family is from Gaza, was sentenced to death by beheading. His alleged crimes: apostasy, or renouncing Islam, and photographing women. Throughout this whole process, Amnesty International UK found, Ashraf was denied access to a lawyer  a clear violation of international human rights law.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United States are parties to the Geneva Conventions, which define as grave breaches willful killing, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and torture or inhuman treatment. Grave breaches are considered war crimes. Also prohibited are the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Although neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia are parties to the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, that statute sets forth standard aider and abettor liability provisions. It says that an individual can be convicted of war crimes if he or she aids, abets or otherwise assists in the commission or attempted commission of the crime, including providing the means for its commission.

The U.S. government is the primary supplier of Saudi weapons. In November 2015, the U.S. sold $1.29 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia. It included more than 10,000 bombs, munitions, and weapons parts manufactured by Raytheon and Boeing, as well as bunker busters, and laser-guided and general purpose bombs. A month earlier, the United States had approved a $11.25 billion sale of combat ships to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. also provides intelligence and logistical support to the coalition. During the past five years, the U.S. government has sold the Saudis $100 billion worth of arms. These sales have greatly enriched U.S. defense contractors.

Why has the United States usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports as the Saudi royal family cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists, in the words of New York Times David Sanger? In return, Sanger writes, Saudi Arabia became Americas most dependable filling station, a regular supplier of intelligence, and a valuable counterweight to Iran. Saudi Arabia, and close U.S. ally Israel, opposed the Iran nuclear deal.

In April 2015, the U.S. government prevented nine Iranian ships loaded with relief supplies from reaching Yemen. President Barack Obama also sent an aircraft carrier to the area to enforce the Saudi embargo on outside supplies. According to UN estimates, 21 million people lack basic services, and over 1.5 million have been displaced. UNICEF notes that six million people dont have enough food.

Moreover, the U.S. government seeks to prevent scrutiny of Saudi human rights abuses in Yemen. In October 2015, the United States blocked a UN Security Council sanctions committee proposal that would have required the committees chair to contact all relevant parties to the conflict and stress their responsibility to respect and uphold international humanitarian law and human rights law.

The U.S. government is also violating domestic law by providing the Saudis with military aid. The Leahy Law prohibits U.S. assistance to foreign security forces or military officers if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), for whom the law was named, told Foreign Policy: The reports of civilian casualties from Saudi air attacks in densely populated areas [in Yemen] compel us to ask if these operations, supported by the United States, violate the Leahy Law.

Furthermore, 22 U.S.C. section 2304 provides that no security assistance may be provided to any government which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

The Arms Trade Treaty obligates member states to monitor exports of weapons and make sure they not end up being used to commit human rights abuses. Although the U.S. has not ratified the treaty, we have signed it. Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a signatory is prohibited from taking action inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty.

The U.S. government should immediately halt arms transfers and military support to Saudi Arabia and support an independent investigation into U.S. arms transfers and war crimes in Yemen. The United States must stop participating in and call for an end to the de facto blockade so that humanitarian assistance can reach those in need, engage in diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, and ratify the Arms Trade Treaty.

In an interesting twist, the Saudis contributed $10 million to the Clinton Foundation before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. In 2011, the year after the State Department had documented myriad serious human rights violations by Saudi Arabia, Hillary oversaw a $29 billion sale of advanced fighter jets to the Saudis, declaring it was in our national interest. The deal was a top priority for Hillary, according to Andrew Shapiro, an assistant secretary of state. Two months before the deal was clinched, Boeing, manufacturer of one of the fighter jets the Saudis sought to acquire, contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary now says the U.S should pursue closer strategic cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
I Assumed Putins Russia Had Litvinenko Killed  Then I Looked for Myself





By Washington's Blog

January 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - January 22, 2016 - " Washington's Blog " - Ive always assumed that Putins KGB (now called the FSB) killed Alexander Litvinenko.

But todays announcement by the British that Putin probably approved Litvinenkos murder made me curious enough to take a look for myself.

Initially, Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium as he sipped tea in an upscale London hotel. The report makes it sound like only Russia had access to polonium, but its actually available online to anyone.

Antiwar notes:

If the Russians wanted to off Litvinenko, why would they poison him with a substance that left a radioactive trail traceable from Germany to Heathrow airport  and, in the process, contaminating scores of hotel rooms, offices, planes, restaurants, and homes? Why not just put a bullet through his head? It makes no sense. But then conspiracy theories dont have to make sense: they just have to take certain assumptions all the way to their implausible conclusions. If one starts with the premise that Putin and the Russians are a Satanic force capable of anything, and incompetent to boot, then its all perfectly logical  in the Bizarro World, at any rate. The idea that Litvinenko was a dangerous opponent of the Russian government who had to be killed because he posed a credible threat to the existence of the regime is laughable: practically no one inside Russia knew anything about him, and as for his crackpot truther theories about how Putin was behind every terrorist attack ever carried out within Russias borders  to assert that they had any credence outside of the Western media echo chamber is a joke.

*** The meat of the matter  the real evidence  is hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Lord Owens inquiry was for the most part conducted in secret closed hearings, with testimony given by anonymous witnesses, and this is central to the evidence that is supposed to convict Kovtun, Lugovoy, and the Russian government. Lord Owen, explains it this way: Put very shortly, the closed evidence consists of evidence that is relevant to the Inquiry, but which has been assessed as being too sensitive to put into the public domain. The assessment that the material is sufficiently sensitive to warrant being treated as closed evidence in these proceedings has been made not by me, but by the Home Secretary. She has given effect to this decision by issuing a number of Restriction Notices, which is a procedure specified in section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005. The Restriction Notices themselves, although not, of course, the sensitive documents appended to them, are public documents. They have been published on the Inquiry website and are also to be found at Appendix 7 to this Report. In other words, the evidence is not for us ordinary mortals to see. We just have to take His Lordships word for it that the Russian government embarked on an improbable assassination mission against a marginal figure that reads like something Ian Fleming might have written under a pseudonym.

So who killed Litvinenko ?

Well, Mario Scaramella met with Litvinenko during the meal when Litvinenko was poisoned. Scaramella didnt eat or drink a thing during the lunch, and then himself came down with a mild case of polonium poisoning.

La Republica (one of Italys largest newspapers) wrote in 2006 (English translation) that Scaramella was a bad guy who may have worked with the CIA:

Mario Scaramella is suspected of arms trafficking. Earlier this year, the public prosecutor of Naples has written for this offense to the docket and, soon after, had to stop the investigation. [He was convicted in Italy for selling arms (original Italian).]

*** Sources found to be very credible by the prosecutor recalled that investigators suspected that Scaramella was actually in close relationship, if not actually working for, the CIA and that his ECPP could be a front company of the agencys Langley.

Antiwar notes:

As I pointed out here: Litvinenko was an employee of exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky  whose ill-gotten empire included a Russian syndicate of car-dealerships that had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Chechen Mafia  but was being slowly cut out of the money pipeline. Big-hearted Boris, who had initially put him on the payroll as anti-Putin propagandist, was evidently getting sick of him, and the out-of-work dissident was reportedly desperate for money. Litvinenko had several  business meetings  with Lugovoi in the months prior to his death, and, according to this report , he hatched a blackmail scheme targeting several well-known Russian tycoons and government officials. Indeed, Litvinenko, in the months before his death, had targeted several well-known members of the Russian Mafia with his blackmail scheme. That they would take umbrage at this is hardly shocking.

Alternatively, Litvinenko may actually have accidentally poisoned himself. Antiwar again:

Furthermore, there are indications that Litvinenko was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials. That he wound up being contaminated by the goods he was peddling on the black market seems far more credible than the cock-and-bull story about a vast Russian plot originating in the Kremlin,. Apparently Lord Owen has never heard of Occams Razor.
Geneva Talks Delay Exposes US Terror Links By Finian Cunningham January 25, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " American Herald Tribune " - As is often the case, you have to read between the lines to parse the truth about Syria or indeed many other issues as reported in the Western mainstream media. With a discerning eye the truth can be found. But thats why it is played down, sanitized, half-told or frosted with banality. Because the truth is pretty shocking. This week, UN-backed political talks were scheduled to begin in the Swiss city of Geneva between the Assad government and various so-called opposition groups. The talks did not take place as planned on Monday, January 25, and it is unclear if they will even go-ahead this week. The stumbling block is finding agreement on which opposition groups are to be admitted to the negotiations. The Western news media wont spell it out. But the main problem resides with the United States and Saudi Arabia both insisting that two militant groups should be part of the opposition to the Syrian government. Those groups are Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) and Ahrar al-Shams (Nation of Syria). Both are connected logistically and ideologically with Al Qaeda terror groups, including the so-called Islamic State. They are bankrolled by the like-minded Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab dictatorships, and supplied with weapons and training by the American CIA. The delay in the Geneva talks getting underway is because the Syrian government and its foreign ally, Russia, stipulate that neither Jaish al-Islam nor Ahrar al-Islam are allowed at the negotiating table. Because they are terrorist organizations. Thats an objective definition for these groups. Their Wahhabi ideology has justifiedbrutal violations of Syrias civilian population, whether Muslim, Christian or Druze, simply on the basis of being labelled as infidels. Beheadings, crucifixions, kidnappings, rape are standard means of terror for the militants that Washington and its Saudi ally want at the negotiating table. The purpose for their inclusion is to expedite Washingtons agenda of regime change in Syria, and has nothing to do with finding a genuinely peaceful settlement. Jaish al-Islam is linked to the East Ghouta chemical weapons atrocity carried out in August 2013, in which several hundred civilians were killed in a district outside the Syrian capital Damascus. The atrocity was wrongly blamed on the Syrian army and nearly served as a pretext for American military intervention in the Syria conflict. But it was a false flag event aimed at prompting US intervention. East Ghouta remains under control of Jaish al-Islam although it is undergoing evacuation in a siege-breaking deal with government forces, as are several other locations under the control of militants. On December 25, a Russian air strike on East Ghouta killed the militantscommander Zahran Alloush. Alloush had previously called for the exterminationof those whom he considered infidels. He personally carried out executions during the Adra massacre in December 2013 against Alawites and Druze. On December 29, four days after the Russian air strike on East Ghouta, the Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir publicly criticized Russia for the assassination of terror commander Alloush. The other group mentioned above, Ahrar al-Shams, has an equally repugnant track record of violations. It is currently involved in holding the northern Syrian towns of Foua and Kefraya under siege in a reign of terror, where the civilian population are kept as human shields to prevent the Syrian army from liberating the locations. Steffan de Mistura, the UN envoy to Syria who is convening the talks process, last week briefed the Security Council on why the negotiations were being delayed. The envoy said it was the Saudis who were trying to sabotage the process by insisting on which groups would comprise the opposition. Drawing up negotiating parties is De Misturas official mandate, but the Saudis are undermining him, according to a report in Foreign Policy. None of the Western media outlets will tell you any of this in plain language. For instance, Voice of America reported on the talks impasse thus: There is widespread disagreement over which opposition groups should take part in the UN talks, and officials say the meetings [this] week cannot proceed until there is a mutually acceptable list of which anti-Assad factions will take part. Note how VOA is careful to not specify who the problematic opposition groupsare and who their backers are. Meaning is sterilized, as in all Western mainstream media outlets. What the media should be saying is that the political talks on Syria are being held to ransom by the insistence of including terrorist groups in the negotiations. And the people insisting on the terror groups partaking are Washington and its regional Arab allies. That truth is far too grim to admit to public knowledge and discussion. For such truth would indict Washington as a terror sponsor, answerable to international law. And so the Western media fulfill their assigned function of concealing damning truth and keeping the public oblivious. That makes them equally complicit in the criminality of their government. Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. For over 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
Anti-government protesters defied a security crackdown and took to the streets as Egypt marked the fifth anniversary on Monday of the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptians demonstrated late Sunday against the military-led government in Alexandrias Al-Qaed Ibrahim Square, which was a major site of 2011 protests, as well as in Nasr City and Shobra district in the capital, Cairo.

Residents reported the build-up of security forces which, along with recent crackdowns on activists and arbitrary raids into homes, reflected the governments resolve to prevent marking the anniversary with popular demonstrations similar to those in 2011.

In a televised speech on Sunday, Egypts leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi argued his government was continuing the aspirations of the 2011 uprising, in spite of the documented human rights violations under his rule, as well as the worsening economy.

ALjazeera.
The Nigerian Police has sent a delegation from the force headquarters led by Deputy Inspector General of Police Operations, Mr Sontonye Wakama to the Mobile Police training camp in Gwoza, Borno State as normalcy returns gradually to the area which has for several months been struck by Boko Haram insurgency.

It was the first time a senior official would be visiting Gwoza since its recapture by the military.

Before the hoisting of the flag of the Nigerian Police, DIG Sontonye Wakama recounted the sacrifices of gallant officers in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency.

Some time ago we lost this place, but with the help of our colleagues in the military and even our own policemen, we are now back here and we are here to stay.

We are going to bring our men back here in very short time  maybe three weeks from now, and we are going to dominate this area again. In league with the military we shall sort out this area and there shall be no infiltration and then we will rebuild.

The fact that our property has been destroyed does not mean that life has ended. We shall continue, the Police force remains, the Nigerian Army remain and the good people of Nigeria will still remain, he said.

Also speaking, the Commanding Officer of the 143 Rangers Battalion, Lt. Col. Kolawole Oyebanji, said that this was the beginning of the process of handing over of civilian authority to the Police after clearing insurgents off the area.

We have done our best and I think that it is most appropriate the civil authority is coming so that they can also assist.

I pray the civil authority come in very early so that we can also forge ahead and perform our military duties, he said.
British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, made his first visit to Kano State from 19-21 January, during which he engaged with key leaders and civil society organisations, as well as witnessing the work of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) during which he expressed his gratitude to Governor Abdullahi Ganduje for the vital support of the Governor for the widespread DFID work in the State.

The High Commissioner was treated to the great honour of a formal reception at the Palace of the Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II where they discussed the Nigerian economy, DFIDs development work, and the state of interfaith relations in northern Nigeria.

The High Commissioner also visited two DFID programmes operating in Kano State, one supporting maternal and child care, and the other focusing on primary education. Over 200 clinics in Kano State alone benefit from DFID programme support in conjunction with the State Government. Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) is one of the DFID funded programmes in Kano supporting Kano State Government in improving access, quality of education, and efficient utilisation of Kano State resources at the state, community and school levels. The programme is currently supporting over 5,842 public pre-primary and primary schools with over 2.9m pupils in 44 LGAs with School Improvement Programme (SIP) which consists of Teaching Skill Programme (for teacher professional development, Head Teacher training), School Base Management Committee (SBMC) training, and piloted school infrastructure programme (provision of borehole water and toilets)

The High Commissioner also visited Bayero University Kano (BUK) and the Active Citizens Project, supported by British Council, a social leadership training programme that trains participants in the skills and knowledge needed to affect social change in their communities. Active Citizens is running at universities across Nigeria and in 30 other countries.

During the visit the High Commissioner also visited the Gidan Makama museum, which holds historical records of the Kano Emirate.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Employees of Investigative Service of Georgias Ministry of Finance have detained Vahan Tadevosyan, citizen of Armenia. Armenpress reports, citing Georgia online, lawsuit has been filed on him for smuggling gold to Georgia.

Investigation revealed that the accused secretly entered Georgia by a car belonging to him with a large quantity of golden jewelry. Criminal case has been initiated in accordance with article 214 of Georgian criminal code which provides for imprisonment from 3-5 years.
The Buhari led government had promised that fighting corruption was part of its core obligations and with the spate of arrests by the different anti-graft agencies, no one can doubt its commitment to this. Senator Joshua Dariye, former governor of Plateau State is one of those answering charges of corruption brought against them. Dariyes trial started since 2007 following a petition received by the then Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) in May, 2004 and resumed today after it was stalled for such a long time. If you have no idea why Dariye is in court, INFORMATION NIGERIA brings you everything you must know about the man Dariye and the crime he is being alleged to have committed

 During his time as governor, he was arrested in London, England on 20 January 2004, with large sums of money.

 Based on Nigerias constitution, serving governors have immunity from criminal prosecution therefore the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), had to wait till 2007 when he was out of office to charge him to court for money laundering.

 In early October 2006, eight of the twenty-four state assembly members issued an impeachment notice against Dariye and his defence was that the notice was invalid as the eight did not form a quorum of the assembly.

 At the thick of moves to impeach him as governor, crowd of Dariyes supporters tried to prevent the assembly members from entering the state assembly building. To disperse the crowd, riot police fired into the crowd, killing two protesters.

 With unsolved criminal charges hanging on his neck, Dariye was elected Senator for Plateau Central on the Labour Party platform in April 2011.

 The EFCC on July 13, 2007, arraigned Mr. Dariye on a 23-count charge of money laundering and other corruption charges involving billions of Naira belonging to the Plateau State Government.

 The EFCC accused the former governor of diverting about N1.2 billion of the states ecological funds into the account of Ebenezer Ratnen Venture, which is one the companies through which he allegedly siphoned public funds.

 The case resumed today before Justice Banjoko sitting at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Gudu, in Abuja. The case resumed today after it was stalled for almost a decade.

 The star witness in the case, Detective Musa painted a vivid picture of how Dariye instructed the All States Trust Bank to lodge the N1.2 billion ecological fund for Plateau State into accounts that does not belong to the Plateau State government.

We will bring you more details as the case unfolds
New reports emerged today (January 25) that Mercy Johnsons husband, Prince Odi Okojie is planning on running for the position of Deputy Governor of Edo state under the platform of the People Democratic Party.

Prince Odi Okojie has now released a statement concerning his political ambition, and the slot of Deputy Governor of Edo state.

My attention has been drawn to various campaigns on-going online about the upcoming election in Edo State later this year said Prince Odi Okojie in his statement.

The campaign mainly by young people (youths) and students from Edo State and my local government, is that I should vie for the position of Deputy Governor in the state. This is based on the premise that since the party zoned deputy governorship slot to Edo Central where I am originally from, I should represent various interests in the area.

This is a gesture I appreciate; it is a good thing for people to recognize your good work and want you to serve especially when one has been supportive without being in government.

I want to make it clear that the position of deputy governorship is not a position one campaigns for, the party leaders alongside members chose who flies the partys ticket alongside the governorship candidate. However, I am available to serve in whatever capacity the party wants me to serve. I am a loyal party member.

Most importantly, the people of Edo State deserve much more than what they are getting from the present government.

Good governance is not what is seen on the pages of newspapers, good governance reflects in the lives of the governed. People of Edo State can testify themselves if they have gotten the best from the present government. The people know they got the wrong end of the stick. Good governance is not PR, it is value-adding.

In whatever way things swing in Edo State, I am an interested stakeholder in the happenings in my state and a visionary individual who believes good leadership coupled with youthfulness can turn the whole of Nigeria and Edo State around without unnecessary noise.

I will continue to engage relevant stakeholders in Edo State regarding this matter.

I once again appreciate the various youth associations, students union, all the higher institutions in Edo State and women who want me to show interest in the upcoming election.

I will continue to help my people with or without political power as I have always done without being in government. I believe in the popular saying that, ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country read the statement.
A Bursary staff of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Malam Uba Musa, was yesterday killed alongside his wife and two children, in a fire disaster.

A witness said the four family members were burnt by the fire which broke out in their house at the ABU Site II staff quarters, along the Zaria-Sokoto Road.

A friend to late Musa, Umar Bala, who is also a staff of the university, told Daily Trust that they received reports that the fire was caused by an electrical fault.

We saw fire trucks and men moving out of the university main campus in Samaru around 7am. At first, we did not know where they were going, but we later found out that they were going to Uba Musas house. This incident is very shocking, as I saw the wife and the children on Friday. I also met Uba on Friday and he was full of life. We pray Allah to grant them eternal rest, Bala said.

The four family members were buried at Shika cemetery in Zaria.

The Bursar of ABU, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman was among the management staff sighted at the funeral prayers, as the VC, Professor Ibrahim Garba, was out of town.

Source: Dailypost
Former governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmed Yerima has faulted the allegation of corruption brought against him by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC). The ICPC, last week arraigned Yerima, who is a chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC) for mismanaging a N1bn loan meant for the repair of Gusau Dam in 2006. Yerima, however through his lawyer, Mahmoud Magaji refuted the allegations. INFORMATION NIGERIA puts together in this piece the reasons provided by Yerima to prove his innocence

 Yerima says the money in question was an internal loan of N1bn, which was approved as part of the consolidated revenue fund to be used to finance the budget by the State house of Assembly.

 The ex-governor said the state agriculture ministry in its reply to a letter dated February 6th, 2007 by Yerima turned down the request to buy 50,000 metric tonnes of grains and instead decided to buy 20,000 metric tonnes.

 The letter according to him was from the federal ministry of Agriculture approving the purchase of the grains from Zamfara state was on July 17, 2007, about two months after he had left office.

Yerima is contesting the allegation contained in the charge that he sold the grains!!!
More controversy has continued to trail the upcoming Oscar awards for refusing to nominate a black actor despite several good performances from them.

TV host, Nick Cannon, though black has something very different to say.

The 35-year-old Americas Got Talent host voiced his opinion on the debate that has angered everyone from Will and Jada Pinkett Smith to Lupita NyongO with a poem that not only presents a new outlook on the issue, but also disses the rest of the Oscars boycotters!

In the poem, Nick says complaining about the discrimination for a simple award is silly when there are so many other issues that could be addressed in the black community.

Read his entire piece, which he shared on his Facebook page: 

Damn! Look what they did to Oscar.

Nah, not another trophy rant.

Im talking Oscar Grant, Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray.

Why we trust what the news say anyway?

Its blasphemous, dont get distracted by these lottery tickets and statues.

Its just fake gold and plastic.

We come from Pharaohs with no masters.

What happened? We went from golden tombs to closed caskets.

The Black Plague, they want us to catch it.

Just ask Magic, Malcolm, Martin, Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby.

Its tragic.

How the enemy can tear down our community and rewrite the history by highlighting our flaws.

But let he who cast the first stone, who constitutes the new laws.

Nah, I aint never seen Empire but I serve my own throne.

What I look like begging them to let royalty into they home.

As for me and my house, well serve the Lord!

We crying for votes but how many of us is on the board.

Better yet, whens the last time you showed up and supported the NAACP Awards?

I want whats mine, not yours.

Fuck getting my foot in.

Im building my own doors.

Hollywood mainstream dont validate me, yo.

Like Hov say, Save the accolades, just the doe.

You in this show for the business, or this business for the show?

Talent and brilliance? Hands down, man we got that shit.

Thats why I told Chris, man go head and rock that shit.

You got the Juice now. Fight the Power.

Hell yeah, Im gonna watch that ceremony where they gonna let a black man be the Master for at least two hours.

So dont waste your voice, dont waste your prayers.

Saveem for the thousands killed in Nigeria, Kenya, The Philippines, Syria or right here in our urban areas.

Low America. Nah, now no one cares.

What about my mother raising a son while working three jobs and still equating to less than minimum wage?

What about me being placed on medication before my system could age?

What about that prison industrial system turning Brothers into new slaves?

Wheres the outrage? Where the complaints at?

Overcoming obstacles, definition of Black. Hashtag #facts.

But I guess they dont make no awards for that.

Real talk. Real Kings dont need no pats on the back.

#Dontbedistracted
Nollywood actor, Charles Okocha is about the luckiest person on earth, and very grateful to James Louis Okoye, an event manager and chief executive of Jalou Events Limited, who twice helped to save his life.

Okochas incredible run of good luck began on December 27, when a drunken policeman pumped a fusillade of bullets from an AK47 rifle into his stomach at a traditional wedding ceremony, held in Uruagu, Nnewi, Anambra State. The hail of bullets also hit another person, Sam Belonwu Dim, a Lagos-based businessman, who died on the spot.

Doctors at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH), Nnewi, Anambra State performed surgery on him, but the stomach later burst, allegedly because the wrong surgical material was used. But the prompt and cool-headed reaction of Okoye in the hospital once again saved the actors life.

The twice lucky actor is now recuperating following the corrective surgery that was still done at NAUTH, though the tertiary hospital debunked the allegation of improper handling of the case.

Okoye, who mobilized other people to save the actors life, recounted to Sunday Sun reporter what transpired on the fateful day: I am not just worried but Im mad about what happened as we tried to save Okochas life. I was at Dandukos house on December 27, 2015 for the traditional wedding of his daughter. What really happened was that the trigger-happy police officer saw an actor he recognized and in excitement he said, Look at this my guy, let me throw one in air for him (meaning to give him gun salute). As some people said, he was drunk and apparently forgot that he had previously set the gun on rapid fire. His intention was to fire one shot into the air. He pulled the trigger, but could not control the gun again because up to eight or nine bullets flew out. The bullets hit two people, Sam Belonwu Dim and Charles Okocha. But I didnt see the other guy (Sam) and there was a noise at the other end.

When I rushed out of Dandukos compound, I saw Charles Okocha lying helplessly on the ground. People started shouting, Hey, ewoo, it is that actor oo. Some people even brought out their camera phones and started taking pictures of him without doing anything to save his life. Here was somebody who was dying and needed help. I shouted at them. So many cars that were parked outside blocked the way. My own car was parked at a primary school some metres away from the scene of the incident. Okochas intestines were already coming out, but he was strong enough to hold them.

Okoye immediately got some people to help him carry the actor to the primary school where his car was parked. Continuing the tale, he said: With two other guys accompanying me, we sped to Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH), Nnewi. But what we experienced was a nightmare. Okocha was crying, Please help me, I dont want to die, Jesus help me.

At the hospital, the conduct of the nurses and doctors was so annoying. The other people who helped to bring the actor to the hospital were angry and started shouting at the medical personnel. I told my friends that making trouble or even shouting at them could make our friend Charles to die unattended to. I had to beg the nurses and all that. They were just telling us, go here, go there, sign for this, sign for that. I was obediently doing all that even faster than they expected.

It was over two hours and thirty minutes before the doctor that was to conduct the surgery came. Then I was told to go and sign approval for transfusion of blood. I told them to check if my blood could match his, and said that I was willing to donate blood to save his life. They said it would take longer time, that they already had blood in their bank. But they said what they had in their blood bank would have to pass through test one, two and three for HIV/AIDS. They said they were waiting to do the last one. For the fact that the case was urgent, they said that if I had no objections, I could sign that I approved for them to use the one they were not very sure of being HIV free. They said they are waiting for the last confirmatory test that the blood was HIV-free.

At this point I said to myself, between this guy dying now and dying many years later for HIV/AIDS if at all the blood will be HIV positive, that the option is to save his life now. Today HIV positive patients sometimes live longer than those who do not contract it. It can now be controlled. But that will not be the portion of my friend, Charles Okocha. When I went to the person managing the blood bank, she said: Ahha what can I do for you and she continued eating her food. She expected me to wait for her to finish eating when someone was dying. But when she saw my red eyes, she dropped the food and covered it to attend to me.

After the issue of blood transfusion was settled, Okoye said that the simple act of moving the patient from the emergency ward to the theatre by the two female porters became another hindrance to the effort to save the actor, as he said that they were very sluggish. His offer of assistance to help push the wheeled stretcher was rebuffed.

His words: At the end of the day I was just pleading, petting and begging and they were able to move the young man in a stretcher to the theater door. Then an argument ensued between them. Friends and my brother who came along with me wanted to shout but I pleaded with them to calm down so that the matter would not get worse. From what I observed, they dont really care about people, whether they make it or not. After all, they did not cause the accident and, therefore, not interested in whether the person lives or dies. That is the impression people have about the hospital.

All through the duration of the surgery that lasted for four hours, Okoye waited anxiously. When it was completed, Okocha was wheeled into the male special ward.

I dont want to mention how many people that gave up as I was waiting on the same night as I was at the emergency unit. I dont want to talk about an accident victim brought in there and was not treated because those who brought him could not pay N500 for him. And I had to pay for him. I am not talking about another accident victim who was brought in that night and what a nurse could only say was, Imagine the kind of alcohol smell that is coming from his mouth, look at what he has done to himself, while the guy was bleeding profusely, Okoye said.

Even after the surgery had been done, it was as if the devil was still determined to harvest the actor. More trouble came his way after he returned to the hospital to have the external stitches removed. What happened immediately after the stitches were removed was shocking, as Okocha further narrated.

His words: He was just sitting down and all of a sudden we heard a noise like a balloon burst. Behold, everything in Okochas stomach came out. You know it was a major operation.

Nurses rushed over, looked at him and ran away. Anybody who looked at his dangling intestines could not behold the sight. It was a gory sight. But Okocha was courageous enough to hold his intestines from dropping on the ground and he turned his face away from his hands so that he would not faint at the sight of his own intestines coming out.

After about 25 minutes the so-called surgeon came in again. He went back to start all over and Charles began to go through the pains he had a few days ago. It was an annoying thing. When they came to the ward they said openly that they were supposed to have used nylon three for the stitching but what was available was nylon one and they had to use what they had at least to save his life that day. Why I am angry is that they could have told us to rally round and get the right material and any other thing they needed. Any drug given to a patient at the teaching hospital is paid for before it can be administered.

Is it not a reasonable step that they should have sent us to get the right stitching material, that is, nylon three, to avoid the bursting? They were bold to tell us why the stomach burst. That is the reason Im mad. I have never seen a thing like that before. And we heard that the nylon is only sold for N700.00.

I know that Im nobody, just a young man who is trying to survive. But I have contacts through my business as an event planner. I have been sending text messages to important people I know, pleading with them to get the federal government to conduct investigation into the way the teaching hospitals operate. This thing must be investigated. People are undergoing bad moments in some of these government-owned hospitals.

Sunday Sun reporter met with the Chairman, Medical and Advisory Committee, NAUTH, Nnewi, Dr Evaristus Ede Afiadigwe, who stood in for the Chief Medical Director (CMD), Professor Anthony Igwegbe, and he dismissed the claims of Mr Okoye even though he admitted that there was an incident of a burst stomach involving the Nollywood actor, Okocha. He said there was no negligence in the treatment of Okocha. He noted that the bursting of a stomach was a medical experience that could occur any time.

His words: I heard about the eruption, stomach burst. The doctor wanted to use Nylon 2 Defilon but what was available was Nylon 1. It is not possible that everything you need, the number and quality will be available at every given time. And you know that was on a Sunday. But the Nylon 1 is used and one still gets a perfect result. I dont know why this should be made an issue. I investigated the incident by myself and discovered that there was no negligence. The Nylon 1 and Nylon 2 are of high quality not even the 3 you are talking about. Life and death are actually in the hands of God. We did everything humanly possible to save Charles Okochas life. And this is what one should be grateful for instead of painting the hospital black.

We do conduct audit on how our doctors and nurses work and we have a disciplinary committee, which handles erring medical personnel. There is no negligence in this matter. Some doctors even use Nylon 1 ordinarily. It is just that the doctor said he wanted to use Nylon 2. Nylon 2 was available in the hospital but it wasnt available at the time the doctor was doing the surgery. There was a repeat surgery and it was successful, Afiadigwe said.

He later took the reporter to the theatre where he showed him the Nylon 1 and 2, still arguing that either of them could be used in the absence of the other. He also took him to the male ward to see Okocha whom, he said, would soon be discharged, even though Okocha could not react to questions put him as he was still in pains.

Source: Sun News
At least 63 people, including nine children, have died in air strikes believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes on a town in eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said. The raids on Khasham near the city of Deir Az Zor on Saturday were among a series of strikes that also hit two other towns in the past 48 hours, killing scores of people, the monitoring group said on Sunday.

Russian jets have been bombing around Deir Az Zor as Syrian pro-government forces clash with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters, who control most of the province. The group has besieged remaining government-held areas of the city since last March and last week launched new attacks.

The strikes on Deir Az Zor come as forces belonging to President Bashar al-Assads troops, backed by Russian strikes, recaptured a town from a loose coalition of rebels in the western coastal province of Latakia on Sunday. The advance in Rabiya, reported by both government media and opposition activists, paves the way for a push by pro-government forces right up to the Turkish border.

ALjazeera.
On this day in 1905, the worlds largest diamond was found at the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa

The 3,106-carat diamond was discovered during a routine inspection by the mines superintendent, Frederick Wells. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the Cullinan, (after the owner of the mine, Sir Thomas Cullinan).

Cullinan then sold the diamond to the Transvaal provincial government, which presented the stone to Britains King Edward VII as a birthday gift.

Edward entrusted the cutting of the Cullinan to Joseph Asscher, head of the Asscher Diamond Company of Amsterdam, who studied the stone for six months before attempting the cut. On his first attempt, the steel blade broke, with no effect on the diamond. On the second attempt, the diamond shattered exactly as planned; Asscher then fainted from nervous exhaustion.
A young, unmarried couple have been jailed for a month and will be deported after completing the sentence after they were convicted of living together for three weeks and kissing. The man, 20, and woman, 19, both Pakistani, were initially charged with having sex out of wedlock, but a medical examination found that they had not, Ajman Criminal Court was told.

The man told the court the couple had been in a relationship for four years. On November 30 last year, he asked his girlfriend to leave her family home in Ajman so they could get married. She left at 1am while the rest of the family was asleep and after some hours, her father reported her missing. Other family members told police she had left home under duress because her boyfriend had threatened her.

After three weeks, the couple handed themselves in to a police station and told officers that they were together by mutual consent. I have known her for four years, and she is my love and I want to marry her, the man told police. We did not have sex, I just kissed her. The woman said she wanted to marry her boyfriend and had run away from home because my father wants me to marry someone else.

The couple were sentenced to a month in jail and fined Dh1,000 each. Both will be deported after serving their jail terms.
From the time of King Pharaoh of Egypt to Queen Sheeba of Ethiopia; from Anwar Sadat to Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana; from King Chaka (c 1788-1828) founder of the Zulu Empire to Uthman Shehu Danfodio, from El-Kanemi Sheikh Muhammad El-Amin (c 1779  1835) of Borno to the founder of the Swazis kingdom King Sobhuza (c 1795  1836), that Africa in particular and the black race in general has never lacked great minds who defined their generation. And in so doing they became so special that we have no alternative than to elevate them to the position of African heroes.

If truth be told, the greatest challenge that Africa is facing in this 21st Century is leadership. From Egypt, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, Cameroon, Ethiopia down to Congo; good leadership is what each and every citizen of every nation of Africa aspires to. And over the years, African sit tight syndrome by her leaders wasnt helping matter. But, in the mist of all these bad examples, We equally have in abundance those whose activities in the past put Africa in a good light like Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyereye of Tanzania, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana and few others who by putting the peoples interest first carved an inch in the history of Africa alongside the likes of Kwame Nkruma of Ghana (1902-72), King Abu Hassan 1 of Morocco (1836-94), Paul Hazoume of Benin Republic (1890-1980), Richard Abrom Henries of Liberia (1908-80), Leon Mba of Gabon (1902-67) to mention but few.

The leadership challenge was carried over to this generation and it was the desire to encourage good leadership in Africa that made Mo Ibrahim to set up the yearly Mo Ibrahim Leadership Award with a reward of $5m USD. These are great minds Frantz Fanon had in mind when he said, Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it. Thats where the unavoidable mention of Goodluck Jonathan comes in, for here is a leader who discovered the greatest need of Africans today and did not out of the glory that goes with power betray the mission.

The question today should be, in trying to move democracy forward what should Africa learn from Jonathan? In attempt to answer this question the Commonwealth Observer Group recently send him to Tanzania as Head of Commonwealth Tanzanian elections observer. Coming out the elections in Tanzania, in one of his speeches and his experine he thundered,

I know people would really want to know how we can progress as a continent.

First and foremost, let me commend African countries because our democracies are still very recent. Most African countries gained independence between 1960 and 1965 although Ghana was the first African country South of the Equator or South of the Sahara that gained independence in 1957. But most countries for instance, Nigeria gained independence in 1960 and others 1965. Zimbabwe was the last in 1980.

So you can see that we are very young democracies. At the beginning at independence, governments were not very stable  with military interventions, territorial activities and so on. Now democracy is stabilizing in Africa and at the beginning of everything there must be issues. And if you read about the democracies of many countries, what they passed through, you will see that were even moving faster. Of course we have the advantage because you should think about the concept of not rediscovering the wheel.

The point is that African leaders need to refined leadership in Africa by establishing institutions away from their selves. So that after office they will have a global applause; this will force highly respected organizations and institutions to fall over themselves to recognize and honour them. By only going round the world honouring invitations and delivering speeches on how to make democracy work in Africa or their tenure experience they will make lots of money to run their foundation. The sit tight syndrome African leaders are exhibiting is dehumanizing the people in their selfish quest for power.

Talking about building institutions, its important to note that democratic principles are not just defined by conducting election. Building institutions away from the leader and having access information are part and parcel of it. Like under Jonathan for five good years there was no single political detainee in Nigeria under any excuse, even when it was noted that he was the most criticized president in the world, he still allow freedom of expression to flourish. This is how democracies are built.

These are some of the positives African leaders can learn from him.

Achieving this is not suppose to be so difficult once our leaders put self apart be like he pointed out, we have the advantage because you should think about the concept of not rediscovering the wheel and continuing in that line of thought after his Tanzania election monitoring he said, The wheel is already there, so we can now just observe what others do and then modify to suit ourselves. Others discovered the wheel and it is left for us to follow what they do. We cannot go and re-invent the wheel. So thats what is giving us the advantage. Basically from my experience in government, I think I will share with other governments in the continent and in fact in the country because you did mention of local elections and Nigerian general election.

Election observation has two components. What makes a good election is not what happened on Election Day alone. Most people talk about the election on the voting day. The pre-election activities, election activities and post-election activities give whole concept of election observation. The first thing is have you registered your voters? Make sure that some people have not been disenfranchised. Are you sure 100% of the people who are supposed to vote, who have reached the adult suffrage which is 18 years have been registered? If an election process does not register all the people who are supposed to vote, we have an issue!

These observations coming from a leader whose main philosophy about power is that the blood of one single citizen is not worth his quest for power. And went on to live by the examples of his advocacy and by so doing refused to be another big embarrassment to Africa, if he had chosen to remain in office by all means. In a polity where in no distance history a leader once thundered that elections are do-or-die affairs, the believe in some circle that President Jonathan chose to build a legacy in Africa is not out of place. As a result, the suggestion that he has taken a noble step like Nelson Mandela is not farfetched. And, in line with his noble step that saved bloodshed in other West African nations like Togo, Ghana, Benin Republic, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Loan, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Liberia has made some institutions to suggest a Noble Peace Prize nomination.

This is against the background of how the refusal to relinquish power led Ivory Coast to a Civil War that devastated the nation and caused thousands of avoidable deaths. This is exactly where and why the Jonathan lesson for Africa comes handy.

This is coming in a continent where the Prime Minister who has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979 is still holding firmly to power, just like that of Angola. In a continent where the president of Zimbabwe has been in power in since 1980, and that of Cameroon since 1982.

One of the most disappointing is that of Uganda who has ruled since 1986.While in the bush as a rebel fighting the government of the day, a BBC reporter came to interview him, he wondered what was wrong with African leaders that they want to die in office. He hid his face in-between his legs in shame for such an attitude but, today, he adjusting their constitution each time his tenure expires.

Do we then talk about Omar Hassan Al-Bashir of Sudan who has been in office since 1989 or Blaise Compare of Burkina Faso who fled after failing to extend their constitution after 27 years in office? Look at President of Rwanda, who came to power in 1994, he is now trying to amend their constitution to remain in power. The same power bug is biting President Pierre Nurunziza who after ruling Burundi for 10 years extended their constitution to contest again. One can count how many lives that has been lost in Burundi to help you appreciate President Jonathan the more.

Since elections are the main bane into all these problem after observing the Tanzanian election President Jonathan rightly suggested, During their campaigns, are all the parties should be well exposed through the government media? Unless where there are restrictions? And also how do you do your campaigns? Back home here there are certain things we do and we take them for granted. Internationally, they are not right. For example in most of our campaigns, politicians give gifts to people such as matches, biro pens and so on. Internationally these are regarded as inducements to the people. Its not the best global practice.

So most of our electoral bodies need to come up with guidelines so that political parties and those who do rallies should not go to rally grounds and start distributing items thereby inducing the electorate. Then of course what happens on the Election Day, the election procedure? Well, of course in Tanzania it was quite clear and neat. Then in the post-election process having processed the result we expected any aggrieved person to go to court and get justice.

The post election period and what happens in the courts are very important because if people think there were anomalies in the elections then the courts are the last resort. So the package is total. African countries are moving and I believe they will continue to improve.

Coming home after the Tanzania experience to meet the Kogi and Bayelsa election, when is opinion was sought he said,  Kogi elections, I wasnt there but in Bayelsa elections I was involved. But I was not too pleased because of the security challenges that they couldnt conclude elections in Southern Ijaw local government. That election was inconclusive and even elections elsewhere what I heard wasnt too pleasing as well, people were killed, people died in the process.

Why should governorship elections cost the blood of innocent Nigerians? Why should local government elections cost the blood of Nigerians. My take here is that no election is worth the blood of Nigerians. So when I see people with gunshots, even traditional ruler of Peremabiri Community in Southern Ijaw LGA in Bayelsa is in critical condition in hospital with bullets lodged in his brain! Thats definitely not the right thing to do. So in subsequent elections we need to work very hard to make sure that some of these atrocities dont come up again.

International observers always comment on these issues whenever they observe elections but unfortunately they dont have the powers to curtain these in a sovereign nationality and to do what they want to do to stop all these.

These few things I raised are critical in declaring elections as credible, free and fair. So the good news is that African countries are really improving everyday. Even in Nigeria right from 1959 elections till date, INEC or whatever name the electoral body bears at a particular time is improving wit every election. Theres indeed good hope and I believe that it will get better especially as all African countries are democratized.

There may be differences in standards  democracy is not just all about elections. Who and how the election is conducted matters so much. The size and the stability of our democracies in Africa are improving and thats the only way to stimulate economic growth. Investors will not be willing to invest in an unstable economy. Even in ECOWAS when I was there we emphasized that our states must be very economically and politically stable- so that foreign direct investors will be encouraged to come calling. To get this foreign direct investment, first there must be a stable government which in turn will attract these foreign investors. Thats it, so than you.

These are some of the issues and actions that made some international scholars to suggest that indeed Jonathan is in a class of his own in a continent where a former democratic president once publicly boasted that elections are a do-or-die affair. And, where leaders are living true to that boast.

And then you have a President who came and said my ambition is not worth the blood of any citizen. According to some global circle such a man should be appreciated.

According to some school of thought, if President Jonathan had behaved like some other African leaders there would have been no peace in Nigeria and to a larger extend West Africa today. Courtesy of his selfless leadership democracy has gained a solid foot in one big African family. And looking at it from the point of a continent where millions has been killed in quest for power, this single soul that never allowed his personal ambition to put the lives of 160 million people in jeopardy deserves, to a very reasonable extend, any accolades being poured on him to globally.

It is against this back ground that some international observers has proclaimed President Jonathan not just an asset to Nigeria but, to the entire African continent that is in need of a heroic figure that will step into the giant shoes of Mandela.

Peter Agba Kalu  author, journalist, social critics & human rights activist.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. President Serzh Sargsyan and Mrs. Rita Sargsyan attended the concert dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia which took place at Aram Khachaturian Grand Concert Hall.

Armenpress was informed about this from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Staff.

The Youth Orchestra of Armenia was founded in November 2005, with the efforts of the students of the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory. Sergey Smbatyan, violinist and prize-winner in international competitions, is the chief conductor and artistic director of the orchestra. In the concert programme of the Youth State Orchestra are included the works of Armenian, Russian and West-European composers of different epochs. In 2008 on the special decision of the Government of the Republic of Armenia the orchestra was granted the title of State Orchestra for their high professionalism and expansion of contemporary music.

Since 2009 SYOA has been a member of European Federation of National Youth Orchestras (EFNYO).

Starting from 2010 the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia has been holding the Armenian Composers Art Festival under the high patronage of the President of the Republic of Armenia.
Allstate Stocks analysis - Short-Term Pressure The Smart Investor - 30 minutes ago Background: Allstate is a US-based leading insurance services provider catering for a diversified clientele from the commercial to the retail segments. The company has developed a long line of insurance... ALL : 135.15 (-1.62%)

Ukraine's utilities threatened by Russia in war's new phase AP - 1 hour ago KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  When a missile struck a power station less than a mile from his apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv, Oleksander Maystrenko didnt panic, run to a bomb shelter or consider evacuating,... $SPX : 3,695.16 (-0.67%) $DOWI : 30,423.81 (-0.33%) $IUXX : 11,103.38 (-0.40%)

Japan's imports, exports balloon on energy costs, cheap yen AP - Wed Oct 19, 11:36PM CDT TOKYO (AP)  Japan marked a trade deficit for the 14th month in a row, government data showed Thursday, with exports and imports ballooning to record highs, as the declining value of the yen added to... $SPX : 3,695.16 (-0.67%) $DOWI : 30,423.81 (-0.33%) $IUXX : 11,103.38 (-0.40%)
[Q] What has led up to Russias corporation action reform plans?

Corporate action processing and voting systems in Russia involved significant paper-based workflow. Documents had to be translated, notarised and then mailed directly to the issuer. That was costly and time-consuming. The changes in frames of the corporate actions reform are designed to reduce direct and indirect costs, mitigate risks, grow the investor base and simplify processes for getting access to corporate information, regardless of the location of the issuer or the asset holder, hence, to improve the reliability, quality and speed of communication. This reform will improve the conditions that would encourage foreign investors to enter the local market rather than rely on depositary receipts.

[Q] How does this work?

Simply put, e-proxy voting is conducted in two stages. At the first stage, an issuer sends its agent, or registrar, a notification of an upcoming meeting of securities holders using electronic channels, including key dates and issues to be considered at the meeting. The issuer sends materials for the meetings with the notification, and also provides instructions to create and send an electronic ballot for those issues to be put to a vote. NSD sends this electronic message to its clients, while materials for the meeting are uploaded to a protected server, and the link to the server is added to the notification.

At the second stage, once the notification of the meeting has been received, depositories collect information from their clients both on their intentions regarding inclusion in the list of persons entitled to take part in the meeting and the voting procedure, which will have been established in an agreement earlier. The depositories then transfer this information to a registrar, so in order to vote at the meeting, securities holders just have to inform the depository of their intention. The depository transfers the information to a superior record keeping institution, for instance, to the CSD, which in turn passes the notification to a registrar.

[Q] What are the benefits of e-proxy voting? Does a shareholders representative need to submit a power of attorney?

E-proxy voting lets investors from around the world exercise rights on their securities remotely, using electronic technologies. Securities holders do not have to personally attend a shareholder meeting, they can receive all documents and inform a custodian or a depository of their opinions and votes. There is no need to prepare a power of attorney or other documents for a shareholder representativethe right to take part is determined by an entity that keeps record on securities rights. E-proxy voting assumes the use of international standards and electronic channels of interaction. It significantly facilitates investors participation in shareholder meetings conducted by Russian issuers.

[Q] When will investors be able to use the service?

Many participants in the Russian market have already implemented the service, or are working on implementing it. For instance, in 2015, 79 issuers, including major players such as Sberbank and Gazprom, conducted their meetings using e-proxy voting through NSD. If an investors custodian or depository supports the e-proxy voting technology, they will already be able to use all the advantages of the service.

However, starting 1 July 2016, Russian issuers will have to provide an opportunity to take part in shareholder meetings via e-proxy voting.

[Q] How much does it cost?

The fee charged by NSD for participating in a shareholder meeting is US$2 [1] per voting instruction on items on the agenda (for each security). The cost of participation in a shareholder meeting using the e-voting service includes the NSD fee and the fee charged by the final depository. Taking into consideration that previously foreign investors were required to issue a power of attorney for their representative and to reimburse expenses for personal attendance at the meeting, e-proxy voting should be more convenient and less expensive for investors. The fee for participating in corporate actions related to securities and cash transfers (for instance, securities buyback) is less than US$8 [2] per instruction.

[Q] Can I be sure that my vote is received and registered by the issuer?

NSD uses straight-through-processing (STP) in the e-proxy voting, and receives an instruction to vote from a depository, which has formed it on the basis of an instruction received from an investor. NSD then transfers that to the issuer in electronic form, and at the same time sends a report back to the depository confirming each stage of the documents transfer. Therefore, the depository can inform its client, the investor, on the status of the instruction sent, and the investor can be sure that his or her decision is sent to the issuer on time.

[Q] On which issuers shares is e-proxy voting available?

There are limitations until 1 July 2016. Currently, the e-proxy voting service should be used only by joint stock companies that have opened a CSD account, which investors can clarify with their custodians or depositories. From 1 July 2016, the e-proxy voting technology should be supported by all Russian joint stock companies with securities in nominee accounts opened with the depository.

[Q] How will NSD disclose information in view of e-proxy voting?

The new legislation that will come into effect in July 2016 will introduce a new procedure for disclosing information on corporate actions. The issuers registered with NSD will have a nominee account and will have to submit information to NSD on corporate actions, including all required materials. This means that information from NSD will prevail over information published by other sources.

If investors do not wish to take part in a corporate action, they may not submit information about themselves, meaning that information about those investors will not be put in a list of those entitled to take part in shareholder meetings.

[Q] Which channels and formats are used for transmission of voting instructions?

E-proxy voting by NSD uses the ISO 20022 format for interactions with clients and registrars. NSD also converts messages in the ISO 15022 format used by many custodians and depositories. Voting instructions can be transmitted simultaneously via several electronic channels, including SWIFT and other special online services.

More information on corporate actions reform and the e-proxy voting service you can find at corpactions.ru/en

[1] At the official exchange rate of the Bank of Russia as of 19 January 2016.

[2] At the official exchange rate of the Bank of Russia as of 19 January 2016.
Is this mega case really over?
The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance ( ANZIIF ) is calling for nominations for its Honorary Life Membership award that recognises the outstanding contribution made by insurance professionals.The annual honour is awarded to an ANZIIF member who has demonstrated an extraordinary level of service to the industry, the Institute said in a statement.The award also recognises up to two other nominees with Service Awards, which are given to members who have made a significant contribution to professionalism and education on a national and international level. Prue Willsford , CEO of ANZIIF, said the awards give ANZIIF an opportunity to celebrate the best of its members and celebrate the industry as a whole.ANZIIF is fortunate to have many outstanding insurance professionals among its membership, Willsford said.Honorary Life Membership and Service Awards are an opportunity for us as an organisation to recognise the contribution our members make to both ANZIIF and the industry as a whole.Nominations close at 5:00pm on Friday 12 February and the awards will be presented at the ANZIIF AGM on May 19.
Nothing says Australia Day more than Triple Js Hottest 100 and a couple of cold beers in the esky and Brooklyn Underwriting are reminding brokers of a challenging cover that is perfectly suited for the holiday.The Expanded Polystyrene Foam (EPS) cover offers protection for property risks with an element of EPS in their construction and the cover can either be in a property package of ISR policy.To help highlight the coverage, Brooklyn released a social media campaign alongside the hashtag #ProtectYourEsky as, Toby Salmon, manager of property at Brooklyn said the innovative campaign is not something a broker would expect with the cover.It was just a bit of fun really and we thought it was catchy, current and a bit different, Salmon told Insurance Business.Instagram and Twitter are such prevalent social media platforms these days and people can relate to them. Most people wouldnt usually associate an EPS facility with these platforms but by making a correlation between your portable esky and a cold store we have managed to do this.Our product has been available for over 5 years now but its important for us to remind the broking community that we have this facility as this is often considered a challenging class of business for brokers to find a home for.Salmon noted that the industry could use more innovative, outside-of-the-box advertising in a bid to catch the attention of clients.Unfortunately, I think product advertising in the industry can be a bit bland, Salmon said.One thing Brooklyn has always done well is to be innovative and creative in our approach to marketing. As the agency space is very competitive, you need to differentiate yourself from your competition and what better way than with your media releases.If you dont have someones attention instantly its very easy to be forgotten or overlooked.Salmon said that social media is a great tool for both brokers and underwriters, and said that he hoped the hashtag is well received.We want the hashtag to be used and remembered, Salmon continued.Of course we want to bring more attention to our EPS product but we would also love to see people posting pictures of their Eskys and having a bit of fun with it.We see this as the start of a larger campaign given the fantastic response weve received since sending out the marketing release.
Seymour Midwest, a Warsaw, Ind., hand tool manufacturing company, will pay $100,000 and furnish other relief to resolve an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced.

According to EEOCs suit, Seymour Midwest selected Steve Maril from a pool of applicants for its senior vice president of sales position to participate in an initial, email-based interview. In addition to questions about Marils experience and willingness to relocate, Seymour Midwest asked if he was within its ideal age range of 45-52. When Seymour Midwest learned Maril was older than their ideal age range, Seymour Midwest refused to hire him.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits age-based discrimination against individuals who are at least 40 years of age. The EEOC filed suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana (EEOC v. Seymour Midwest LLC, Case No. 3:15-cv-350) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

Under the consent decree, Seymour Midwest also must stop collecting age information about applicants before making a job offer, train its hiring personnel, issue and post a notice from its president of its commitment to federal nondiscrimination laws, and periodic compliance reporting.

Topics Lawsuits Indiana
In mid-January, the Missouri Department of Insurance issued a bulletin to insurers reminding them that the rating practice generally known as price optimization is prohibited in the state.

Price optimization is the practice of measuring and modifying insurance prices based on an individual consumers predicted response to rate changes, the department said.

An example of this would be if a policyholder did not complain about a previous rate increase or cancel the policy due to such an increase. An insurer could potentially use this data to justify additional rate increases.

Conversely, the same data could result in a consumer not receiving a rate decrease for which they might otherwise qualify. In either scenario, the consumer may unfairly pay more.

Using price optimization in insurance is high-tech price gouging.

Missouri Department of Insurance Director John M. Huff, who is president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), said the NAIC has issued a white paper analyzing the practice of price optimization and identifying the following practices and characteristics as potentially violating insurance laws that prohibit unfair discrimination:

How much a consumer might be willing to pay before they shop around for a better price;

Whether or not a consumer has a history of shopping around for a better deal;

Whether or not a consumer is likely to renew; and

The likelihood of a consumer to ask questions or file complaints.

Insurers collect and analyze Big Data to predict these consumer behaviors. But Missouri law requires rates to be based on an insurers expected claims, cost of doing business and policyholder risk  not on what an insurer believes a consumer is willing to pay, according to the insurance departments announcement.

Huff said under the price optimization rating model, seniors are most at risk to pay more because they tend to be more loyal to their insurance companies. He said the insurance department is particularly sensitive to practices which harm our states more vulnerable populations.

High-Tech Price Gouging

Other Midwest states such as Ohio and Minnesota have banned the practice.

Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman called it an anti-consumer practice that unfairly discriminates by charging different premiums for consumers who otherwise have similar risk profiles.

Using price optimization in insurance is high-tech price gouging and its unfair to insurance consumers, Rothman said in a November 2015 bulletin.

Lieutenant Governor and Department of Insurance Director Mary Taylor in February 2015 warned Ohio insurers against the use of price optimization.

As in Minnesota and Missouri, Ohio law requires premiums to be based on the risk that the consumer brings to the company and prohibits unfair discrimination, Taylor pointed out.

The Consumer Federation of America has urged all states to bar the use of price optimization both in setting rates and in underwriting.

In a Jan. 13 media release, the CFA praised Huff for issuing the order banning the practice in Missouri. But earlier in the month, the group chastised Acting Illinois Insurance Director Anne Melissa Dowling for what the CFA called her do-nothing stance on price optimization.

CFA cited an article in Crains Chicago Business in which Dowling allegedly said that while the insurance department is aware that insurers in Illinois are using price optimization to set rates, the department is not prepared to stop the practice.

An email to the Illinois Department of Insurance for a response to CFAs comments went unanswered.

The CFA has called on Huff and other state regulators to also make it clear the use of price optimization is not allowed in underwriting, as well as pricing.

Over the past 20 years, insurers have blurred the line between underwriting (accepting or rejecting an applicant) and pricing in an effort to avoid regulatory and public scrutiny over rating practices, the CFA said in its Jan. 13 statement.

Eighteen jurisdictions have notified insurers that the use of price optimization is against the law. In addition to Missouri, the practice is banned in Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Washington, D.C., according to the CFA.

Topics Carriers Ohio Missouri Illinois Minnesota
A group of Edmond residents filed a lawsuit on Jan. 11 against 12 energy companies, claiming that their saltwater disposal wells were partly to blame for earthquakes in central Oklahoma.

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction to stop the use of 16 disposal wells operated by the companies.

The lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma County District Court. Nine homeowners claim that the companies acted negligently and their use of disposal wells constituted an ultrahazardous activity, which contributed to the earthquakes of magnitudes 4.3 and 4.2 in the Edmond area on Dec. 29 and Jan. 1 that damaged their homes. No injuries were reported.

Some of the companies named in the lawsuit include affiliates of Devon Energy Corp. A spokesman for the company said it could not comment on pending litigation.

About 1.5 billion barrels of wastewater was disposed underground in Oklahoma last year.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) asked operators of five nearby injection wells to reduce disposal volumes in response to the Edmond-area earthquakes. The commission said that none of the disposal wells in Edmond were the type of high-volume wells, which inject more than 25,000 barrels of saltwater per day, that were targeted in previous regulatory directives in areas of increased earthquake activity.

According to the commission, some wells operated by both Devon Energy and Pedestal Oil have agreed to suspend operations.

Sandridge Energy

The OCC is still working to resolve a dispute with another oil and gas company  SandRidge Energy Inc.  that has neglected to shut down some of its saltwater disposal wells.

The commission had issued a voluntary directive to a dozen energy companies on Dec. 3 after the Medford and Cherokee areas were hit with a swarm of earthquakes, including a 4.7-magnitude temblor. Regulators asked the companies to shut down, reduce volumes or be aware of future actions at 140 saltwater disposal wells.

SandRidge was asked to shut down six disposal wells in the Medford/Cherokee region by Dec. 9, but as of early January had not complied, according to media reports.

Commission spokesman Matt Skinner says if a settlement isnt reached, officials will ask the commission to modify the companys existing permits for saltwater disposal in Alfalfa and Grant counties.

SandRidge spokesman David Kimmel said in an email to The Oklahoman that the company is committed to addressing the issue.

The Wichita (Kansas) Eagle reported that SandRidge Energy is the largest user of saltwater injection wells in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Earlier Lawsuit

In late December, an Oklahoma judge rejected a request from two energy companies to throw out a lawsuit previously filed by a woman who claims she was injured in an earthquake caused by the injection of wastewater.

Lincoln County District Judge Cynthia Ferrell Ashwood overruled the motions to dismiss by Oklahoma-based Spess Oil Co. and New Dominion LLC.

The lawsuit by Prague resident Sandra Ladra alleges the companies are liable because they operated wastewater disposal wells that triggered the largest earthquake in state history, a 5.6-magnitude temblor in 2011.

Ladra claims the quake crumbled her fireplace, causing rocks to fall on her knee.

Earthquake-Prone

Oklahoma has become one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, with the number of quakes magnitude 3.0 or greater skyrocketing from a few dozen in 2012 to more than 800 in 2015. Many of the earthquakes are occurring in swarms in areas where injection wells pump salty wastewater  a byproduct of oil and gas production  deep into the earth.

About 1.5 billion barrels of wastewater was disposed underground in Oklahoma last year, according to statistics released by the governors office. Over the past year, OCC directives resulted in 197 wastewater disposal wells reducing the depth of their operations and 14 wells reducing disposal volumes by half, according to the commission.

Some industry representatives and oil and gas producers acknowledge that some of the earthquakes in Oklahoma are caused by human action, but warn against generalizing that all of them have been triggered by their practices.

Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil & Gas Association, which represents many of the larger drillers in the state, said further study is needed and a way found to strike a balance of injecting and producing without an increase in seismic activity.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Catastrophe Natural Disasters Energy Oil Gas Oklahoma Earthquake
The surplus lines stamping fee rate in Texas increased at the beginning of year to 0.15 percent of the gross premium amount of surplus lines insurance policies. Its the first change in the stamping fee for many years, according to Surplus Lines Stamping Office of Texas Executive Director Norma Essary.

The increased rate applies to new or renewal surplus lines policies with an effective date on or after Jan. 1, 2016. The previous rate was .06 percent, which will apply to policies effective on or before Dec. 31, 2015, until they are expired, are cancelled or until the next annual anniversary date (for multi-year policies).

This includes any subsequent endorsements, audits, cancellations, reinstatements, installments, and monthly or quarterly reports.

Essary said the stamping fee was reduced in 2007 to ensure that the quasi-governmental agency was operating with an appropriate amount of revenue. We didnt want to hold on to a lot of cash, Essary said in a presentation at the Texas Surplus Lines Association annual meeting in November.

What has happened since 2007 is that SLSOT reserves are now well below the allowed maximum funding balance.

The stamping fee rate is determined by the Texas Department of Insurance. Since 1988 the fee has kind of been all over the place, Essary said. Were not going to hesitate to drop it back down if the need arises. Wed like to try and be as stable as we possibly can but  we are in an industry that has hard times, soft times and flat times.

Essary took over from longtime executive director, Phil Ballinger, at the beginning of 2015. She said the agency, in addition to evaluating its performance in terms of compliance and regulatory responsibilities, is also looking at its financial, operational, technological and customer service capabilities.

Technology improvements are a priority, she said. A director of information technology services was hired in 2015 and the agency expects to make investments in technology this year.

Technology continues to change, it continues to evolve, as well as the information and how we use it, Essary said.

Topics Trends Texas Excess Surplus
Results of Mississippis Clarity Act Data Call are in and they confirm what insurance experts in the state say they already knew: insurers are not overcharging coastal residents in Mississippi. In fact, many Mississippi homeowners insurers are actually losing money in both the coastal and inland regions of the state, according to data released by the Mississippi Insurance Department (MID).

MID released its analysis Dec. 16 based on data submitted by homeowners insurers in the state under the new Mississippi Property Insurance Clarity Act. The Clarity Act was passed by lawmakers in 2015 as a way to obtain a geographic comparison and market analysis of homeowner insurance premiums and losses in the state.

Proponents of the Clarity Act said coastal residents in Mississippi have been forced out of the private market and into the state-run windpool because their homeowners insurance rates are too high.

The summary of the MID Report states the findings were that no one particular region is subsidizing another, and in actuality, costs for homeowners insurers in the state are higher than the premiums they are charging.

Mississippi insurers costs are more than premiums earned.

Insurers return on net worth in the Mississippi homeowners insurance market has been comparatively unattractive over the last 25 years, and in both coastal and inland areas premiums are lower than costs, the report states.

Insurers operating in Mississippi were required to submit rate info and other pricing details from 2005 through 2014 to MID by Oct. 1, 2015. The required information included: direct incurred losses; direct earned premiums; policy limits; reinsurance; allocated loss adjustment expense; and the number of policies in force by earned house years by policyholder zip code. The data was reported in three policy categories: homeowners policies that include windstorm coverage; homeowners policies that exclude windstorm coverage; and all policies that only include windstorm coverage.

The report, compiled by data collected and analyzed by MID and independent global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal Insurance and Risk Advisory Services, found that the Mississippi homeowner insurance industrys returns on net worth over the past 10 years (-26.8 percent), and 25 years (-9.6 percent) are far lower than both the national homeowners insurance industry and other industries.

Even excluding the year of Hurricane Katrina (2005), the Mississippi homeowner insurance industrys returns are still far below the average returns of other industries, the report states.

The report also examined the combined ratio for both coastal and inland homeowners policies and found that the combined ratio for the actual and modeled approaches in both regions is greater than 100 percent, which indicates that insurance companies incurred costs are more than premiums earned.

In the coastal region the report found that combined ratios indicate premiums have been less adequate than the inland region over the past 11 years when compared to actual costs. Unsurprisingly, the report says coastal costs have been higher than inland costs because of the increased hurricane risk on the coast. As a result, coastal residents have paid higher premiums than inland residents. The majority of Mississippi zip codes have also had an average combined ratio greater than 100 percent.

The results are in line with what industry experts predicted.

Rates are decided by actuarial determinations and losses, which take storms into account. They arent going to find that coastal residents are paying more than they should be, said Joe Woods, vice president of State Government Relations for the Property Casualty Insurers of America (PCI) after the Clarity Act was passed last year.

Woods says now that the report shows that Mississippi is not a profitable market for the insurance industry, either in coastal or inland areas.

The whole purpose of the [data call] was the political charge from coastal legislators that they are subsidizing the rest of the state, Woods said. I think [the findings] put that assertion to rest.

PCI said in a statement the results prove the industry has supported policyholders in the state, despite unfavorable conditions, including severe storms and Hurricane Katrina, which devastated portions of Mississippi.

The report also shows that across the state premiums are lower than actual costs, which demonstrates how insurers are trying to control costs for consumers, Woods said.

Woods said the industry has also supported legislation recently enacted to strengthen building codes in Mississippi.

Mississippi State Representative Scott DeLano, who authored the bill that ultimately became the Clarity Act, said last year the goal was to see how Mississippi homeowners rates differ based on where they live so policymakers could understand how policies are being written by private insurers versus the state run pool in certain geographical areas.

He said the hope was the data would help the state improve rates for coastal homeowners so they can move out of the state windpool program and back into the regular insurance market, which would in turn provide more business to insurers in the state.

By giving data by geographical area we can look at this longitudinally and see what gains we are making in getting private insurers to write in these higher risk areas, DeLano told Insurance Journal last year.

DeLano did not respond to a request from Insurance Journal to comment on the results.

Woods said insurers were confident before the report came out that their rates were fair, and he doesnt expect insurers will take a knee-jerk reaction and raise rates as a result of the Clarity Act report. And while right now they are covering properties that arent profitable, there are years where they do make a profit.

They wouldnt be writing coverage and taking the losses they are taking here now if they werent taking a long view of the market, Woods said.

Topics Carriers Market Homeowners Mississippi
West Virginias attorney general has accused one of the nations largest pharmaceutical drug wholesalers of flooding the state with tens of millions of prescription pills in violation of state law.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Jan. 8 announced a lawsuit against San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges violations of state consumer protection laws and the Uniform Controlled Substances Act.

Morrisey said the company failed to detect, report and stop the flood of suspicious prescription drug orders into the state, contributing to widespread drug abuse.

This failure is one cause of many for the states prescription drug overdose rate, decreased worker productivity and the wasteful expenditure of precious state resources, Morrisey said.

In a statement, McKesson said: While we dont comment on pending litigation against us, we share the view that the substance abuse epidemic is a serious problem and we will continue to work with our supply chain partners in support of our prevention efforts.

Morrisey said in a statement that an investigation by his office found that McKesson delivered about 99.5 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to West Virginia between 2007 and 2012.

The companys shipment of 10.2 million doses to Logan County alone in southern West Virginia would have provided more than 276 doses to every resident in the county, he said. In Mingo County, McKesson shipped 3.4 million doses in 2007.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia leads the nation in the rate of fatal drug overdoses. The states rate was 28.9 overdose deaths per 100,000 people in 2010, most of those involving prescription drugs. In 1999, the states fatal overdose rate was 4.1 per 100,000 people.

Former state Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed a lawsuit in Boone County Circuit Court in 2012 accusing multiple distributors of sending excessive amounts of prescription painkillers to southern West Virginia pharmacies. The lawsuit remains active, and Morrisey said hed like to merge it with the complaint against McKesson.

The flooding of prescription pills into our state is a very serious problem that involves all parts of the pharmaceutical supply channel, Morrisey said. No one group or industry sector is solely responsible for this problem; a solution must involve many actors, including doctors, pharmacies, wholesalers, manufacturers and government bodies.

In 2012, McKesson agreed to pay $151 million to West Virginia, 28 other states and the District of Columbia to settle a lawsuit alleging the company inflated prices of hundreds of prescription drugs, causing state Medicaid programs to overpay millions of dollars in reimbursements. The agreement settled allegations the company deliberately inflated drug prices by as much as 25 percent from 2001 to 2009.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Flood Virginia Drugs
Vermont licensed 33 new captive insurance companies in 2015, according to data released by the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation.

2015s new licensees bring Vermonts overall total licenses to 1,062 with 588 active captive insurers.

Vermont is the largest captive domicile in the U.S. and the third-largest in the world.

The new captives in 2015 were made up of 12 pure captives, seven risk retention groups, seven sponsored captives, four special purpose financial insurers, two industrial insured captives, and one association captive.

There were 11 redomestications, which is when an existing captive moves from another domicile to Vermont. That is the largest number ever to occur in a single year in Vermont. There were three redomestications each from South Carolina and Arizona, two from Bermuda, and one each from Cayman Islands, Nevada and Kentucky. Six of the 11 redomestications to Vermont were by risk retention groups.

Vermont officials said growth in 2015 was up significantly from 2014 when 16 companies were licensed. Officials also said growth is impressive especially when considering the added competition by other U.S. states.

Dan Towle, Vermonts Director of Financial Services, said its encouraging that a record number of captives redomesticated to Vermont last year.

Companies that have an established captive insurance company are often among the most knowledgeable and sophisticated when it comes to doing proper due-diligence on domicile selection, Towle said.

New captives were licensed in industries including insurance, healthcare, construction, real estate, professional services, education, transportation, agriculture and retail. Officials said the strong diversity of licenses was highlighted with seven in the healthcare sector.

The continued formation of hospitals and doctors groups setting up captives in Vermont has been a very positive trend that we expect to continue, said Towle.

Topics Carriers Vermont
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signaled a shift in New Yorks oversight of Wall Street, tapping a longtime corporate lawyer to run the state banking regulator previously overseen by an aggressive career law enforcer.

Cuomo on Jan. 21 nominated Maria Vullo, a 52-year-old attorney, to run the states banking and insurance regulator, the Department of Financial Services.

That came more than six months after the exit of the regulators first chief, Benjamin Lawsky, whose shadow continues to hang over the office. In four years, Lawsky extracted $6 billion in settlements from financial institutions, threatened to pull the charters of some of the worlds biggest banks and broke ranks with other enforcers by aggressively pursuing settlements.

Vullo spent about a year in government under Cuomo starting in 2010, when he was New York Attorney General and she led his economic justice division. She spent much of her career at law firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York, where her clients have included Citigroup Inc. and other corporations.

Citigroup, which isnt regulated by the DFS, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

The debates going to be, will she be the next Ben Lawsky? said Sean Coffey of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, whos known Vullo for several decades. No, shes going to be Maria Vullo. And thats a great thing for the taxpayers of New York and the people that are regulated by DFS.

Protect Investors

Vullo declined to comment on her nomination, which requires approval from the state senate.

I look forward to working with the talented men and women at DFS to strengthen our markets and protect investors and consumers from unlawful business practices, Vullo said in a statement on Jan. 21.

A representative from Cuomos office didnt immediately comment. In a statement, Cuomo said Vullo has the right combination of public and private-sector experience needed to lead the Department of Financial Services. He added that he believes she will be a strong and tireless advocate for the people of New York.

Vullo would bring stability to an office in flux. Lawsky announced in May that he would step down, and he was replaced the next month with an interim superintendent, Anthony Albanese, who stayed through November as the search for a replacement dragged on. Coffey declined to comment on reports last fall that hed been approached by Cuomos office to discuss the DFS position.

Financial Windfall

After becoming governor in 2011, Cuomo created DFS by combining the states banking and insurance departments. While the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regulates national banks, the DFS regulates those chartered in New York, including many of the biggest international banks. Cuomo named Lawsky as its first superintendent.

Over four years, Lawskys DFS took a lead role in a string of settlements with European banks over violations of U.S. sanctions laws against Iran and other states. The $6 billion Lawsky racked up in fines and penalties became a financial windfall for Cuomo and the state legislature.

However, as multibillion dollar settlements started to lose their bite, Lawsky found ways to tailor punishments to the crimes, including forcing banks to terminate executives and agree to operational bans for units responsible for misconduct. He also insisted on inserting monitors at banks to curb repeat offenders. He upstaged fellow regulators in 2012, when he broke ranks with local and federal enforcement officials over settlement negotiations with Standard Chartered Plc for sanctions violations.

Lawskys reputation for aggressive enforcement was such that last summers nuclear agreement with Iran contained a paragraph that appeared to warn state regulators against deviating from U.S. goals, a reference that several lawyers said was directed at him.

Aggressive Practices

Several representatives of New Yorks financial community voiced concerns to Cuomos office over what they characterized as Lawskys aggressive enforcement practices, people familiar with the matter have said. These people warned that some of the fines levied on banks led to job losses in the city and cast a cloud over the states reputation as an attractive location for business.

When Lawsky stepped down in June to start his own consulting business and Albanese was named as interim head of the office, Lawsky said he was pleased that it would be business as usual at DFS after he left.

Over the past decade some of the states regulatory authorities had been unduly harsh in their enforcement actions against businesses, sometimes for political reasons, said Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for New York City, a network of chief executive officers.

I dont think anyone would think of Maria Vullo as someone who will follow a political agenda, said Wylde. Thats all the industry can ask.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics USA New York
A massive winter storm that dumped as much as 3 feet of snow on the eastern United States raised flood waters in communities up and down the Atlantic Coast Saturday, closing roads and prompting evacuations.

The first round of flooding came with the morning tide. As water began overflowing into streets in some towns again Saturday night, officials said the nighttime flooding wasnt expected to be as severe.

A string of resort towns was temporarily isolated Saturday morning by floodwater that inundated homes and restaurants.

A lot of properties have water in them. But it may not be until later Sunday that they can assess the damage, said Diane Wieland, a spokeswoman for Cape May County, New Jersey.

Officials in other states, from North Carolina to New York, expressed similar concerns. By late Saturday morning, some people already had seen enough havoc.

When the water just started rushing down, it was as impressive as some of the videos you saw of Japan during the tsunamis, said Jason Pellegrini, owner of Steak Out restaurant in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, who was trapped inside by floodwaters. It came in that fast.

Another restaurant, The Lobster House, was partly submerged by the rising tide more than 20 miles away in Cape May, New Jersey.

It touched everywhere, said Keith Laudeman, the third-generation owner of the nearly century-old establishment on Cape May Harbor. It even got to the equipment we moved and never thought would get touched.

The water quickly receded and Laudeman said he has a crew of people preparing to clean the place so they can reopen in the coming days.

In Delaware, flooding closed a popular route to the states beaches and forced about a dozen people to leave the low-lying community of Oak Orchard. In Ocean City, Maryland, Delmarva Power cut electricity to hundreds of customers as storm surge flooding submerged equipment used to power the downtown area.

Officials in New Jersey were assessing damage caused by the flooding. Firefighters went into a flooded area of Sea Isle City to battle a blaze at another restaurant that may have been linked to the high waters.

Finley reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporters Randall Chase in Dover, Delaware, and Ed Donahue in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood New Jersey
USI Insurance Services announced Monday that it has acquired CBDI Inc., an employee benefits wholesale brokerage operation based in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

CBDI will become part of Emerson Reid LLC, USIs employee benefits wholesale brokerage division.

USI said CBDI will enhance Emerson Reids position in the employee benefits wholesale market in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

More than 26 staff members at CBDI have transitioned over to Emerson Reid and USI as part of the transaction. The staff members will remain at their current Mount Laurel location.

Based in Valhalla, New York, USI is an insurance brokerage and consulting firm with over $1.0 billion in revenue and more than 4,400 employees. USI operates out of nearly 140 local offices across the U.S.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions New Jersey
Global insurance firms are circling Iran for business opportunities following the lifting of sanctions  and the first test of their appetite could come in March when some Iranian companies seek new cover.

Insurers, the reinsurers that share their risk and the brokers that forge deals are exploring ways to tap a market worth $7.4 billion in premiums after a nuclear accord between world powers and Tehran led to the removal of restrictions on financial dealings with Iran this month.

Allianz, Zurich Insurance, Hannover Re and RSA, for example, said in recent days that they would evaluate potential opportunities in the country.

Insurance and reinsurance specialists regard the marine and energy sectors as among those offering the best opportunities in oil-producing Iran. Alongside commercial cover, life insurance is a potential growth area as it represents less than a tenth of overall Iranian premiums, compared with more than half globally.

At first international companies are likely to link up with Iranian firms to capitalize on their local knowledge and to reinsure local insurance in the international market, according to industry experts, with international brokers helping foreign firms get that business.

American insurance industry players are still banned from doing business in Iran, however, due to separate U.S. sanctions that remain in place.

The insurance contracts of some Iranian companies expire when the Persian calendar year ends in late March  similar to the January renewal season in Western countries  and they will be looking to strike new agreements. This could include insurance firms themselves seeking new reinsurance cover.

Mohammad Asoudeh, vice chairman and managing director of Iranian Reinsurance Co, told Reuters he had already been contacted by foreign insurance players looking to forge tie-ups with his company and enter the market.

They have been waiting for Implementation Day, said the 30-year industry veteran, referring to the day this month when the U.N. atomic agency confirmed Tehran had met its commitments under the nuclear deal. We have had enough visits (from foreign firms) resuming business could be quick but will depend on the terms and conditions they offer us.

There are some market renewal dates in two months time. This will be a good point to start.

Sasan Soltani, regional business development manager at Dubai-based but majority Iranian-owned Iran Insurance Co., said his firm had also been approached about tie-ups by British and Japanese brokers and insurers.

Hurdles Remain

Foreign players have been awaiting the lifting of sanctions for months; eight out of 11 established Western and Middle East insurance and reinsurance firms who responded to Reuters questions last year said Iran was an attractive market, especially in the marine and energy sectors.

However despite the lifting of sanctions, hurdles still remain which are making companies cautious about a speedy entry.

The U.S. curbs still in place exclude American nationals, banks and insurance industry players from trading with Iran including dollar business, so concerns remain on whether other foreign insurers can transact without the risk of penalties.

London-headquartered United Insurance Brokers (UIB) said it was active in Iranian reinsurance before the imposition of international sanctions and planned to reopen its Tehran office as soon as we can, according to chairman Bassem Kabban.

Under the sanctions we ceased to operate, but we have maintained the salaries of our people there for the past five-and-a-half years, said Kabban, adding that firms could be wary due to concerns about having U.S. shareholders or subsidiaries.

People will be very careful what to do. If they are not sure, they would rather not do it.

He said, though, that French and Japanese players were likely to be quickest off the blocks in providing reinsurance as they had large presences in Iran in the past, adding that sectors such as aviation, power generation and energy would require large amounts of cover.

Reinsurers help insurers shoulder the burden of large losses in return for a proportion of the premiums.

Another London-based broker said his firm had decided against opening an office in Tehran for now, preferring not to take the risk of being a frontrunner.

While Iran has 27 direct insurance companies and two reinsurance firms, most established in the last 10 years, they lack international credit ratings because they have been shut out of markets.

This could also deter foreign firms and their penalty-wary compliance departments from doing business with them.

Iranian Reinsurance Co. is now working to obtain a rating and has held discussions with two rating agencies for this purpose, said Asoudeh, declining to name them.

Because of sanctions they couldnt price it, so this is first in our agenda. Several insurance companies in Iran are also waiting to be rated.

Currently around 4 percent of total Iranian insurance premiums are ceded to reinsurers, which would amount to an estimated $300 million of reinsurance business in the country, said Asoudeh. Reinsurance volumes are expected to pick up with wider access to foreign players, he added.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Gould; editing by Pravin Char)

Related:

Topics Carriers USA Agencies Reinsurance
Just two months ago, researchers in China identified a gene that can make bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic called colistin. It was a bombshell discovery for people who follow superbugs. Now that gene has been detected in at least 19 countries, and scientists are alarmed.

Colistin is what doctors give you in the U.S. when nothing else works. Because its toxic, it can have some harmful side effects, but colistin can help defeat infections that shrug off every other antibiotic in their arsenal. If bacteria resist everything, including colistin, youre out of luck.

Since the paper identifying colistin-resistant E. Coli in China was published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Nov. 18, the gene has been detected in 19 countries in bacteria from farm animals, retail meat, or humans, according to a new tally by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for reducing the use of antibiotics in farm animals. It is in Southeast Asia, Europe, Canada, and Japan.

That doesnt mean the gene, known as MCR-1, has spread to all those places in two months. Scientists are finding it retrospectively in older samples of bacteria now that they know what to look for. In Denmark, for example, the gene was found in bacteria from food inspections as far back as 2012, when the current system of monitoring was started.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria sicken 2 million Americans each year and kill 23,000, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control. These are such bugs as CRE (Carbapenum-resistant Enterobacteriaceae) or MRSA (Methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Its not clear how many people are affected by colistin-resistant strains. The gene hasnt been identified in samples from the U.S. yet.

But scientists fear that colistin-resistant bugs will become more widespread. The bacteria themselves can travel on people, live animals, and food. The gene that makes a bug resistant to colistin is particularly slippery because it can jump easily from one type of bacteria to another.

I say its shopping for a home, said Lance Price, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. The thing that really frightens a lot of us is that its going to find its way into a bacterium thats resistant to everything but colistin, he said.

Thats a dark scenario. Colistin is used to treat the kind of infections that the CDC calls nightmare bacteria, which kill half the people who get them. These bugs typically spread in health-care settings whose patients are already vulnerable, though healthy people can carry the bacteria in their gut without knowing it. Add to the mix colistin-resistance, conferred by a gene thats easy to spread, and the nightmare gets worse. We have the fuel to set off a fire, Price said.

I asked him how worried we should be. I dont want to be a fearmonger, he said, but the November paper sort of ruined my Thanksgiving.

Drugmakers used the World Economic Forum in Davos this week to call for more investment to develop new antibiotics. The NRDC says widening resistance to a last-resort medicine is the latest urgent warning that the world needs to use the medicines we have more carefully, particularly in raising livestock. The drugs are widely deployed on industrial-scale farms, not just to treat sick animals but to prevent disease and promote faster growth.

Price agrees. When you misuse antibiotics in food animal production, there are major potential risks to human health, he said. Colistin isnt used in farm animals in the U.S., but it is used in China and elsewhere.

The U.S. government and food companies responding to pressure from consumers have taken some halting steps to curbing antibiotic use in American livestock. The challenge of drug-resistance, though, is similar to climate change: It requires big, coordinated actions on a global scale. A superbug fostered by one countrys loose practices can arrive in another in a shipping container of beef or in the gut of a traveler getting off a plane.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics USA Agribusiness China
XL Catlin announced it has strengthened its Brazilian team with two appointments. Patricia Britto has joined as property underwriter and Luiz Carlos Dos Santos as senior casualty underwriter  both based in Sao Paulo. These two appointments are part of the companys strategic expansion to move into new markets and niches in the country.

Despite the economic recession in Brazil, the local insurance market is still growing, XL Catlin said in a statement.

The company quoted CNseg, the countrys insurers association, which said that in 2015 the Brazilian market increased 12,5 percent and is expected to grow more than 10 percent over the next 12 months.

Brazil is a market with huge potential to develop casualty and property insurance products. Both Patricia and Luiz are valuable additions to the team here in Sao Paulo. Their role will be to apply their skills to serve the needs of local risk managers as well as multinationals in need of global expertise, said Renato Rodrigues, country manager of XL Catlins insurance operation in Brazil.

Patricia Britto joined XL Catlin in 2009. Previously she worked at Itau Seguros for three years and she holds a degree in chemical engineering.

Luiz Carlos Dos Santos is a law graduate and holds an MBA in Business Management from New York and Boston University. He has more than 25 years of experience in the insurance sector.

Source: XL Catlin

Topics Underwriting Property Casualty AXA XL
The Block Island Factor

Late Starts and Missed Opportunities

Offshore Wind Stalling in China

Leveraging the European Model

Proposed Solutions

What Lies Ahead

It is an auspicious time for the U.S. offshore wind industry. Driven by the fact that a present count of offshore wind farms in the United States amounts to nil, there is a great push underway to leverage one of the countrys most abundant and untapped natural resources for the production of clean energy. A wave of recent conferences, including a White House summit on the matter, have served to spark serious discussion on what remains to be done to create a robust U.S. offshore wind industry.At center stage is the Block Island Wind Farm, a 30 MW installation currently under construction in the waters some 15 miles off the southern coast of Rhode Island. If all goes according to plan, Block Island will begin commercial operations in 2016, becoming the first operational offshore wind farm in the United States. Small though it may be, Block Island represents a crucial first step that has served to invigorate the proponents of offshore wind development following a decade of stagnation.Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski, whose company is spearheading the projects development, said he believes Block Island is just the start of something much bigger, and added he is more optimistic now than ever that offshore wind will take hold as a transformative means of shaping the future of the U.S. renewable energy mix, while also revitalizing the local economies that will benefit from these installations.InKeith Martin of Chadbourne & Parke said Block Island serves as an example of the importance of scale when tackling early offshore wind efforts. Block Island demonstrates it may be better to make the first project a small project as proof of concept before moving to a larger scale, Martin wrote. He added that that the significantly higher number of financially responsible parties involved in large-scale projects could increase the difficulty of holding everything together.Although the U.S. appears poised to take concrete steps in the direction of offshore wind energy, many share the opinion it should have been much further along by now. In a paper titled, professors from the University of Delaware (UD) suggest the U.S. offshore wind industry may actually be worse off today than it was 10 years ago following the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.Jeremy Firestone, School of Marine Science and Policy professor and lead author of the UD paper, called the embryonic state of the offshore wind industry in America disheartening and said the past decade was an era of missed opportunity.Compared to Europe, the U.S. has far to go. There are now over 10 GW of installed offshore wind capacity throughout 11 European nations, with another 26.4 GW of projects already consented and 98 GW of offshore wind farms in the planning. In the UK alone, there are 1,452 offshore wind turbines accounting for 5.1 GW of capacity. The UK is also home to the worlds largest offshore wind farm, London Array, which alone has a capacity of 630 MW.Adding perspective, Grybowski drew comparisons to the early days of the European offshore wind market and where the U.S. is today. What were going through in the U.S. is not really surprising, because the same thing happened in Europe, Grybowski said at a recent briefing held by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI). It took a long time for the industry to take off in Europe, and then it exploded.The result of nearly a quarter century of continued deployment and investment, the European offshore wind industry saw exponential growth in the decade between 2004 and 2014, adding almost 7.5 GW of capacity. Current in-construction projects in Europe will bring cumulative capacity to 10.9 GW by 2016.Bruce Bailey, CEO of AWS Truepower, said much of that success is owed to broad support of renewable energy initiatives among policymakers and the public. There has always been a greater appetite in European for renewable energy, Bailey said, pointing also to the fact that European offshore wind has enjoyed a greater than 20-year jump on the U.S.The U.S isnt the only world superpower having trouble launching an offshore wind industry. Things are rocky in China, too, where a recent report states the country has fallen behind by three years on its bid to develop 5 GW of offshore wind capacity.Shi Pengfei, honorary chairman of the Chinese Wind Energy Association, cited high risk and cost as the main reasons behind Chinas failure to achieve its goal  although the country does have a modest number of operational offshore wind farms at just under 660 MW.In response, the National Energy Administration in China has issued directives to get the industry back on track, which involve coordination between various agencies to put supporting policies and technologies into place.In the UD paper, Firestone and associates identified a combination of political will, price and policy support, and spatial planning as the driving forces that propelled the European offshore wind industry to great success  leading to the natural presumption that Europe could serve as a model from which all other lagging nations, including the U.S. and China, might learn a great deal.European technology and experience in the arena may also serve as the catalyst to jumpstarting the fledgling U.S. industry. Grybowski said that continued development of offshore wind projects in the U.S. will rely heavily at first on the importation of the existing European supply chain. He said this will gradually lead to the creation of an established stateside infrastructure capable of operating on its own.Paul Rich, director of project development for US Wind, said at the EESI briefing that leveraging European technology will enable offshore wind developers to finally begin to establish an industry, a source of workforce development, and centers of excellence in the United States.According to Firestone, one of the key stumbling blocks that has handicapped offshore wind efforts is the perception that development should follow the path laid by offshore oil endeavors. Emphasizing the great differences that exist between the two industries  including the fact that oil can be shipped across vast distances and sold, whereas offshore wind power generation relies on an established local grid  Firestone said comparing the two is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.Firestone and associates propose a number of solutions that will serve to pave the way forward. These include the establishment of a long-term tax credit that takes into consideration offshore winds long planning horizon; greater emphasis on loan guarantees that put developers on more solid footing; and focus on interstate collaboration, rather than policy they caution may end up reinforcing competition among states when cooperation is needed.Likewise, Bailey emphasized the critical need for the installation of an investment tax credit, stating, If nuclear power receives tax incentives, so should offshore wind.Beyond Block Island, a handful of initiatives loom encouragingly. Neighboring state Maryland is in the process of performing survey work and pursuing financial incentives for offshore wind. Meanwhile, US Wind has begun the planning stages of a proposed 500 MW project to be located just off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland.Further up the food chain, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) plans to auction some 350,000 acres of sea off the coast of New Jersey in November. The BOEM also teamed with the Department of the Interior for an environmental assessment and discussion of offshore wind development in North Carolina.At the recent Summit on Offshore Wind, the White House announced the establishment of an Interagency Work Group whose purpose will be to aid in the coordination of efforts between federal agencies devoted to offshore wind development. Additional commitments announced include the creation of a multi-state project funded by the Department of Energy to develop a roadmap for large-scale deployment, and the establishment of an international forum to exchange best practices between nations.Taking all of this into account, it would be easy to declare that growth of the U.S. offshore wind industry is imminent. However, its not a foregone conclusion. Whether the industry takes off in the U.S., and how fast growth will occur when those steps are taken, remains to be seen.The technology is there, Bailey said. But its the establishment of long-term policy that will have the greatest influence on how quickly the offshore wind industry develops in the United States.
President Barack Obama approved a major disaster declaration for 33 Missouri counties damaged by severe weather and flooding in late December and early January.

The declaration makes assistance programs available to eligible residents for such things as temporary housing and repairs for losses caused by the flooding. Residents are encouraged to document any losses through photos, receipts and other means.

The unusual winter flooding, prompted by three straight days of torrential rains, left 16 people dead and significantly damaged nearly 1,000 homes in eastern and southern Missouri.

Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency on Dec. 27. He asked the president for the disaster declaration Jan. 15.

This was a significant disaster that did widespread damage, and its impact continues to be felt in communities across the state, Nixon said in a statement. This federal declaration will help affected residents and businesses rebuild and recover, and I thank the president for granting our request.

Counties eligible under the program are Barry, Barton, Camden, Cape Girardeau, Cole, Crawford, Franklin, Gasconade, Greene, Hickory, Jasper, Jefferson, Laclede, Lawrence, Lincoln, Maries, McDonald, Morgan, Newton, Osage, Phelps, Polk, Pulaski, Scott, St. Charles, St. Francois, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Stone, Taney, Texas, Webster and Wright.

Crews from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be in Missouri to offer registration help and assess needs from damage that occurred during the storms that hit the state in late December and earlier this month. The agency says inspectors also will verify damage for residents whove applied for federal assistance.

Those seeking assistance can register at www.DisasterAssistance.gov , or call the Federal Emergency Management Agencys registration line at 1-800-621-FEMA (3362).

The deadline for most individual assistance programs is 60 days after the disaster declaration.

Nixon said assessments are continuing to determine the damage to public infrastructure and flood-related emergency response costs for state and local government agencies and nonprofit agencies.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood Missouri
Grange Insurance, based in Columbus, Ohio, announced that Tim Cunningham has joined the company as vice president, chief information officer.

Cunningham will lead major technology investments across all lines of business.

With nearly 30 years of experience managing technology systems and processes at Bank One. Following Bank Ones merger with JPMorgan Chase, he served as chief technology officer, managing director, retail technology services, where he was instrumental in developing digital and mobile strategies. Cunningham most recently served as chief technology officer, managing director, centralized technology operations at JPMorgan Chase.

Grange and its affiliates offer auto, home, life and business insurance protection Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Source: Grange Insurance

Topics Tech Human Resources
A judge concerned about public safety sentenced a 62-year-old North Texas man to life in prison for his 10th drunken driving conviction since the 1980s.

Ivy Ray Eberhardt, of Weatherford, Texas, would be eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

Part of my job is to protect the citizens of Parker County, and the only way that I can think of to do that from somebody that has 12 DWI arrests and 10 DWI convictions is to put you in a place that you cant drive for as long as I possibly can, Judge Craig Towson told Eberhardt.

The case involved an April 2014 driving while intoxicated stop in Parker County in which Eberhardts blood alcohol level was almost four times the 0.08 legal limit for driving in Texas.

While free on bond in that DWI case, Eberhardt cut off an electronic ankle monitor and fled to Colorado, where he was again arrested for drunken driving, prosecutors said.

Eberhardt also had drunken driving conviction in Tarrant and Runnels counties in Texas, records show, and he served three prison terms for the convictions.

Weatherford is 25 miles west of Fort Worth.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Texas Personal Auto
The 2016 National Tornado Summit, the 5th annual event, will be held Feb. 29-March 2 in Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Insurance Department announced.

The National Tornado Summit is an educational forum that provides attendees with the knowledge they need to excel in their field. The conference includes dedicated tracks for insurance producers, insurance adjusters, emergency managers and meteorologists. Insurance professionals who participate in approved sessions may receive 10 hours of continuing education credit if it is requested.

For the fourth straight year, the Summit includes the National Severe Weather Workshop organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The summit also includes tours of the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla., and the state of Oklahoma Emergency Operations Center in Oklahoma City which serves as a command center during disasters.

Confirmed presentations include:

Drones: The Future of Disaster- Charlie Mondello, president of the Property Drone Consortium, delves into emerging drone technology and explains how drones are being used for search and rescue, damage assessments, evaluation of hard-to-access areas and more.

Safe from the Storm: New Research and Developments in Tornado Protection  Experts from FEMA, the National Storm Shelter Association and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program will unveil the latest developments in tornado protection.

Predicting the Unpredictable: Keeping People Safe from the Storm During Sporting Events, Concerts and Other Outdoor Activities  Oklahoma Climatological Survey Director Kevin Kloesel will explain how the University of Oklahoma keeps fans and athletes safe during severe weather events.

Answering the Call: Advanced Wind Resistance Structures  After the 2013 tornado in Moore, engineers discovered the need for advancements in high-wind resistant structures. Experts from Texas A&M will discuss the technologies, building codes and policies needed to build safer structures.

Measuring the Social Media Response  This session will explore the increasing ways social media is being used in response, recovery and restoration after disasters.

Source: Oklahoma Insurance Department

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Windstorm Oklahoma
The Florida Department of Financial Services Division of Insurance Fraud (DIF) announced the arrest of two unlicensed clinic owners from Miami-Dade County. Noel Ruiz of Miami and Alberto B Franco of Hialeah were accused of being involved in a straw owner scheme that defrauded numerous insurance companies, resulting in more than $650,000 in financial losses.

An investigation led by DIF revealed that in the time between December 2012 and September 2014, Franco and Ruiz both failed to carry the proper licensing required to own a rehab clinic and allegedly used a straw owner to bypass Floridas licensing requirements.

A straw owner is a person who owns a business or property on someone elses behalf. By portraying legal ownership of the property or business through legal documentation, the actual owner of the business is essentially left off of the books. In some cases, this scenario would occur as a legal way to keep the identity of the actual owner of the entity hidden. In other cases, a straw owner would act as a pawn to establish a business in order for unlicensed agents to conduct nefarious or illegal transactions under a legitimate license.

DIFs investigation revealed that Ruiz was the actual owner of Rehab and Wellness Inc., a physical therapy clinic in Miami. Franco was the actual owner of Magic Hands Rehabilitation Center Inc., another physical therapy clinic in Miami. Unbeknownst to their straw owners, Ruiz submitted dozens of claim files to insurance companies for fictitious rehabilitative services totaling over $361,880 and Torres also submitted dozens of claim files to insurance companies for illegitimate rehabilitative services totaling $297,677.

Both Ruiz and Franco were arrested on January 14, 2016, and booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on charges of operating an unlicensed clinic, insurance fraud, grand theft, and an organized scheme to defraud.

These cases are being prosecuted by the office of Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and if convicted, Franco and Ruiz face up to 30 years in prison.

Source: Florida Department of Financial Services

Topics Carriers Florida Numbers
Water loss claims, exacerbated by assignment of benefits, are driving higher rates in South Florida and increasingly across the state, according to a just released analysis conducted by Citizens Property Insurance Corp. for state insurance regulators. The insurer says the data confirms that the state is facing a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

The analysis further indicates that the frequency and severity of claims filed under an assignment of benefit is growing at a disturbing rate, Citizens said in a statement.

The state-run insurer of last resort conducted its analysis in response to an October mandatory data call from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR). The issue has become increasingly controversial since Citizens highlighted the problem in its 2016 rate filing, which called for overall rate increases. The insurer said last summer that water damage claims, particularly in South Florida, were the main reason the insurer needed to increase rates for 2016.

Citizens actuaries further analyzed data for both litigated and non-litigated claims, with and without an assignment of benefits, or AOB, under which homeowners sign over control of their claim to water remediation companies, contractors and/or attorneys. Citizens said it reviewed the non-litigated claims, which wasnt required by OIRs data call, to improve the effectiveness of its response.

According to Citizens, the analysis found that cases in which customers assigned benefits to contractors or remediation companies were almost twice as expensive on average, and more likely to lead to litigation. The average litigated assignment of benefits claim cost for 2014-2015 was $37,677 statewide and $38,544 in the southern portion of the state  more than double that of a non-litigated claim, Citizens said. Claims where benefits werent assigned and there was no litigation averaged $8,507 statewide.

The insurer said the data shows that AOB and litigation work both separately and together to drive average claims costs more than four times higher than that of a simple non-assigned, non-litigated claim.

Consumers are losing control of their claims by transferring their authority to contractors and attorneys under the current assignment of benefit system, said Chris Gardner, chairman of Citizens Board of Governors. This analysis shows clearly that AOB is raising water claims losses. Those higher costs are paid by all policyholders. We have a dual obligation of protecting our policyholders while keeping premiums as affordable as possible.

Citizens said its analysis reaffirms earlier studies showing that water loss claims are the leading cause of higher insurance rates, especially in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade counties. The insurer raised its 2016 rates by an average of 8.1 percent increase for Miami Dade customers.

Water claims are being filed at double the rate of just two years ago in the Tri-County area and triple the rate of two years ago across the rest of the state, The Citizens statement said.

The Citizens analysis also looked at the age of the home to evaluate if the claim risk was higher because of the life expectancy of certain types of pipes. Citizens said the study concluded the age of the home was not a significant cost driver for claims.

Citizens expects that the trend of recent claims increasingly being represented by third parties under an assignment of benefits indicates a likely spike in costs going forward. By Florida law, predicted costs must be fully reflected in the rates established for Citizens by OIR.

The skyrocketing frequency of claims both inside and outside the Tri-County region, coupled with the demonstrated effect of both AOB and litigation as massive cost drivers, is an ominous sign, said John Rollins, Citizens chief risk officer. As a result, Citizens customers all over Florida can expect a round of rate hikes in 2017 unless we can work with the Legislature and the Office of Insurance Regulation to achieve reforms and changes that will lower predicted future non-weather claims costs.

Citizens said it has joined a coalition of consumer, business and agent groups to educate the public and other stakeholders about the need to make changes to state law regarding assignment of benefits.

The Consumer Protection Coalition will work to educate consumers and lawmakers over the next several weeks as they address potential changes to the AOB process, Citizens said.

The full analysis can be found on Citizens website. OIR said in an e-mail to Insurance Journal Jan. 12 it has received the required water loss claims information from all data call participants and hopes to have a compilation of the aggregated results available soon.

Related:

Topics Trends Florida Legislation Claims Profit Loss
Call it the tale of two storms: Just as about 2 inches of snow was about to fall in northern Mississippi, two tornadoes tore through parts of south Mississippi.

The National Weather Service in Jackson confirmed Friday that at least two tornadoes tore through Lamar and Simpson counties as a result of Thursday nights storm. No injuries were reported.

Meteorologist Brad Bryant said an EF-2 tornado touched down in Lamar County while experts ranked the one that hit Simpson County as an EF-1. Bryant said the Lamar County tornado left a 6.6 mile-path of destruction, while the Simpson County one was shorter at 3.9 miles.

Both tornadoes damaged homes in the area, uprooted trees and downed power lines.

Bryant said survey crews were in the areas Friday to get a better handle on what happened.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said storm damage was reported in six counties. In addition to Lamar and Simpson, the other counties are: Clarke, Lauderdale, Smith and Yazoo.

National Weather Service Meteorologist John Sirmon in Memphis said most of the heavy snowfall remained in Tennessee.

Sirmon said Oxford received about 2 inches, downtown and on the University of Mississippi campus. The university and many rural school districts closed Friday, citing travel problems.

A webcam focused on the universitys Quad area showed a blanket of snow Friday morning, but only a couple of people walked across the campus.

In downtown Oxford, the William Faulkner statue in the citys square was covered in light snow. Children at the citys Avent Park screamed with delight as they played in the snow.

Sgt. Joey Miller of the Mississippi Highway Patrols Troop E said seven weather-related accidents were reported. He said there was one minor injury.

Troopers in Millers area were been placed on 12-hour shifts to put more officers on the highways.

National Weather Service forecaster Allen Campbell said 10 to 12 homes were damaged near the rural Improve community in Marion County when Thursdays storm system moved over the state. No injuries were reported.

He said 11 other counties reported tree and power line damage.

___

Associated Press photographer Rogelio Solis in Oxford contributed to this story.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Windstorm Mississippi
Long before a natural gas storage well sprung a disastrous leak near Los Angeles, Calif., utilities and national industry groups were raising alarms about the danger of aging underground storage infrastructure.

The leaking wells owner, Southern California Gas Co., warned state utility regulators in 2014 of major failures without a rate hike to pay for comprehensive inspections of 229 storage wells.

Twenty-six of its wells were high risk and should be abandoned  even though they complied with state regulations, the utility wrote in a rate filing.

The previous year, Pacific Gas & Electric pointed to an absence of safety standards for storage wells as reason to launch its own monitoring program that went beyond state rules, according to an internal document obtained by Reuters.

The industrys rising concern underscores the scant oversight of 400 underground natural gas storage facilities in 30 U.S. states. Most storage fields are regulated by states, but national industry groups have pushed for federal oversight  unusual in an industry better known for fighting regulation.

Jurisdiction over facilities storing gas to be transported across state lines falls to the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. But the agency has never written rules for gas storage despite two decades of sporadic calls for regulation  and at least two deadly explosions.

We agree that federal regulations would improve safety in this area and are working through our options to develop regulations, agency spokeswoman Artealia Gilliard said.

Under state oil and gas regulations, Southern California Gas faces a maximum penalty of $25,000 for the leak near Los Angeles, which is unprecedented in scale. The well has spewed methane  a potent greenhouse gas  since October and displaced thousands of people in nearby Porter Ranch.

A bill introduced Tuesday by State Senator Fran Pavley calls for penalties of up to $25,000 per day for active leaks. It would also require the installation of automatic shutoff systems on all wells and continuous monitoring of wells within 10,000 feet of homes and schools.

Utilities and regulators have been gambling with wells that in many cases were drilled in the 1950s, Pavley said. She described their standard practice as, Dont fix it until it leaks or cracks or breaks.

Southern California Gas, a division Sempra Energy, said it has inspected wells more rigorously since 2014, even though state utility officials have not approved a rate hike to cover the cost, said company spokeswoman Kristine Lloyd. The inspections, she said, exceed traditional industry practices and regulatory requirements.

Lloyd said she did not know if the leaking well in Aliso Canyon was among the 26 wells the company said should be abandoned because they are too old or mechanically unsound, as the rate filing described them.

A month before the well failed, the nations leading oil and gas lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, published 60 pages of guidelines for monitoring and maintenance of storage wells. Other industry groups have supported having the API standards adopted as federal regulation.

Its telling that the industry is inviting more oversight, said Tim OConnor, director of California oil and gas programs for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Up and down, the general consensus is that the regulations that exist in California are wholly insufficient.

The fracking boom has intensified pressure on the nations aging system of underground storage. About 20 percent of gas used in the U.S. during winter now comes from storage fields, according to the American Gas Association.

Many of the facilities are depleted oil or gas reservoirs that have been converted to store natural gas, which is then pulled from the ground by wells.

The Aliso Canyon leak increased the states methane emissions by 25 percent in its first month, estimated the California Air Resources Board. Methane is 72 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the 20 years after it is emitted, according to CARB.

Initial efforts to plug the well with mud and brine failed. The utility is now drilling two relief wells more than 8,500 feet below the surface and planning to pump in water and cement. The utility said on Monday that it expects to stop the leak by late February.

In its 2014 rate filing, the utility sought $180 million in rate increases over six years to evaluate its storage wells. The California Public Utility Commission has made no decision in the rate case.

The CPUC also has not decided on a request from PG&E for more than $1 billion in rate increases to finance maintenance of its gas pipeline and storage infrastructure.

The commission did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

PG&E, in a 2013 internal document, expressed little faith in state monitoring of gas storage wells, noting an absence of industry standards.

The company said it was working to fill this gap by helping API develop its guidelines. The industry groups recommendations go into minute detail on matters including how storage facility data should be collected, how staff should be trained and how emergencies should be handled.

PG&E is working to incorporate those practices into its operations, spokesman Greg Snapper said.

Concerns about the nations natural gas infrastructure have intensified since 2010, when a PG&E pipeline exploded, leveling an entire neighborhood in San Bruno, California and killing eight people.

The National Transportation Safety Board later blamed PG&E for lax pipeline safety and faulted both the California PUC and the federal pipeline regulator for weak oversight.

Californias oil and gas regulator  the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources  acknowledged problems with oversight but pointed to an effort launched before the leak to update regulations.

The industry also has an incentive to police itself, said agency spokesman Don Drysdale.

Regardless of the regulations, its in an operators interest not to have leaks, because that means theyre losing their product, he said.

Earlier this month, Governor Jerry Brown ordered the agency to issue emergency safety regulations for underground gas storage. Last week, it proposed requiring facilities to submit plans for inspections and leak detection and to test all safety valve systems every six months.

The lack of federal oversight has been debated sporadically for more than two decades.

Federal regulators declined to assume authority over gas storage facilities after three people were killed in a 1992 explosion at an underground cavern operated by Seminole Pipeline Co near Brenham, Texas.

That decision was criticized after a 2001 gas leak in underground salt caverns in Kansas caused explosions that killed two people.

The facility fell under federal jurisdiction, but federal and state regulators hit legal snags when they explored how to penalize the facilitys operator, El Paso Corp, which sent its gas across state lines.

Kansas was forbidden from regulating interstate commerce  and the federal agency had not written rules it could enforce.

A decade later, in 2011, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration asked industry groups whether they supported federal regulation of storage facilities in such cases. The industry supported oversight, but the agency has still not crafted regulations. New rules on the safety of gas transmission pipelines, which may or may not encompass gas storage facilities, are expected to be finalized by the agency this year.

Last year, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, introduced a bill targeting a dangerous lapse in the oversight and proposing that states take over regulating all stored gas, even when it is slated for interstate transport.

A separate safety bill including the same provision passed a key Senate committee in December. It also directs the federal government to craft national safety standards for underground gas storage within two years.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Terry Wade and Brian Thevenot)

Related:

Topics California USA Legislation Energy Oil Gas Kansas
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones on Monday asked all insurance companies doing business in California to voluntarily divest from their investments in thermal coal as part of a nationwide call to reduce carbon emissions to do battle with climate change.

To comply with this request would mean making no new investments, not renewing existing investments and selling or withdrawing from existing investments in thermal coal, according to the California Department of Insurance.

Commissioner Jones also announced that in April he will initiate a data call that requires insurance companies to disclose annually their carbon-based investments including those in oil, gas and coal.

These required financial disclosures will be made public and will be used by the CDI to assess the degree of financial risk posed to insurance companies by their investments in the carbon-based economy.

Today I ask insurance companies doing business in California to voluntarily divest from investments they hold in thermal coal, Jones said in a statement. I am also announcing that insurance companies doing business in California will be asked to provide to the Department of Insurance detailed and specific financial disclosures of their investments in the carbon economy including coal, oil and gas. We will make this new information public so that investors, policyholders, regulators and the general public can know the extent to which insurance companies are invested in the carbon economy.

Jones said his decision to ask insurance companies to divest from thermal coal and to require insurance companies to disclose investments in the carbon economy arises from his responsibility to make sure insurance companies address potential financial risks in the reserves they hold to pay future claims.

The movement away from coal and the rest of the carbon economy poses a potential financial risk to insurance companies investing in coal and the carbon economy, Jones said. The potential risk of continuing such investments is that they lose value over time or that they lose value quickly. In either case, such investments pose a potential financial risk to those who invest in them.

Related:

Topics Carriers California Climate Change
Claudio Ranieri, allenatore italiano del Leicester, nonche campione della scorsa stagione della Premier League, si aggiudica il premio The Best 2016 della Fifa. Un trionfo non cosi scontato, visto che gli avversari erano il tecnico del Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane e il ct del Portogallo e Campione dEuropa, Fernando Santos. Il trofeo gli e stato consegnato nel gala di Zurigo dallex giocatore Diego Armando Maradona.

E fantastico per me essere qui con tutte queste leggende, ora ho anche vinto questo grande premio  dice Ranieri, visibilmente emozionato, sul palco durante la cerimonia -. Ringrazio chi mi ha votato, la mia famiglia, mia moglie, i miei giocatori senza i quali non avrei potuto fare niente, il mio presidente. Quello che e accaduto lo scorso anno in Inghilterra e stato veramente strano, nessuno si sarebbe mai aspettato che vincessi il titolo. Dani Alves  conclude scherzando il ct del Leicester  ha detto che a 30 anni deve iniziare a fare qualcosa di serio io ho 65 anni ed ho iniziato adesso a vincere qualcosa quindi devo andare avanti.

Nessuna sorpresa per la categoria Miglior Giocatore: dopo un anno di dominio, sia con il suo club che con la sua nazionale, e dopo aver conquistato il suo quarto Pallone dOro, Cristiano Ronaldo si aggiudica anche il titolo di The best player del 2016. Il fuoriclasse lusitano, vincitore degli Europei con il Portogallo e della Champions League con il Real Madrid, ha battuto largentino Lionel Messi e il francese Antoine Griezmann. Sono molto felice e ringrazio innanzitutto chi ha giocato con me, il Real Madrid e la nazionale portoghese, poi la mia famiglia, i miei fratelli, mia madre, mio figlio e il mio staff  afferma Cr7 nel ricevere il premio dal presidente della Fifa, Gianni Infantino -. Credo che il 2016 sia stato uno degli anni migliori della mia carriera. E stato duro, difficile, ma mi ha comunque portato grandi trofei.

Non e mancata una frecciatina ai giocatori del Barcellona, non intervenuti al gala per decisione della societa, che ha preferito tenerli in Spagna per preparare il ritorno degli ottavi di finale di Coppa del Re, contro lAthletic Bilbao, in programma mercoledi 11 gennaio. Una scelta che ha provocato numerose polemiche e che Ronaldo commenta cosi: Mi dispiace che non ci siano i colleghi del Barcellona. Poi, conclude: Ringrazio le persone che hanno deciso di votarmi ed assegnarmi questo trofeo, non posso volere nulla di piu.

Va al giocatore malese Mohd Faiz Subri, giocatore del Penang, il Fifa Puskas Award 2016, trofeo per il gol piu bello: un destro calciato da una posizione impossibile che prende una traiettoria imprevedibile per terminare la sua corsa in rete, li dove il portiere non puo arrivare. I votanti non hanno avuti dubbi, visto il divario inflitto al secondo classificato, il brasiliano Marlone, autore di una splendida sforbiciata dal limite dellarea in Corinthians-Cobresal. Il terzo posto si tinge di rosa, e va alla giovanissima venezuelana Daniuska Rodriguez, autrice di un gol in Venezuela-Colombia nella categoria Under 17 femminile.

Lacrime e commozione al momento dellassegnazione del premio Fair play, andato allAtletico Nacional di Medellin. I colombiani avrebbero dovuto affrontare nella finale di Copa Sudamericana la Chapecoense, la squadra brasiliana scomparsa nella tragedia aerea dello scorso 28 novembre; allindomani dellincidente dichiararono di voler lasciare il titolo agli sfortunati avversari. Dal pubblico presente in sala un lungo applauso.

Nella miglior formazione del 2016 dominano i giocatori della Liga. Nella FifPro World 11 trovano spazio cinque giocatori del Real Madrid, quattro del Barcellona piu Dani Alves e Manuel Neuer del Bayern Monaco, con il seguente schieramento: Neuer; Dani Alves, Pique, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo; Modric, Kroos, Iniesta; Messi, Suarez, Ronaldo.

Per quanto riguarda il Best Fifa Womens Coach, ad aggiudicarselo e la tedesca Silvia Neid, ct della Germania, vincitrice di una medaglia doro alle Olimpiadi di Rio 2016. Tra le giocatrici, preferenze per la statunitense Carli Lloyd, che ha preceduto la brasiliana Marta e la tedesca Melane Behringer. Per la Lloyd un cerimoniere deccezione, Gabriel Omar Batistuta. Infine, assegnato un inedito Fan Award. A portarsi a casa il nuovo trofeo i tifosi del Borussia Dortmund e del Liverpool, autori di una straordinaria e magica coreografia nel doppio confronto di Europa League che ha visto protagoniste le loro squadre.
Get $100 when you open a new, eligible Fidelity account with $50 or more. Use code FIDELITY100. Limited time offer. Terms apply. Offer Disclosure.

Top Rated For:

Our Take

In addition to remaining our top overall choice for best online broker and our favorite low-cost broker, Fidelity also unseated Charles Schwab in the category of Best Broker for ETFs this year. Fidelity has excellent market platforms available for customers to use on their computers and mobile devices. In addition, the company leverages its strong market position to improve an already stellar product offering while maintaining very low fees and administrative costs. Fidelity does not charge a fee or commission on stock or ETF trades. Fidelity also offers its customers access to mutual funds, options, currencies, OTCBB (penny stocks), and fixed income products, including treasury, corporate, agency, municipal bonds, and CDs.

Fidelity also supports its users with excellent resources and tools for investors and traders, such as very strong educational materials, portfolio analysis tools, reports, calculators, and excellent screeners for identifying individual securities in an asset class. However, some traders may want to look elsewhere because Fidelity does not offer futures, options on futures, commodities, or cryptocurrencies.

Introduction

Fidelity is the largest U.S. brokerage firm and continues to be our first choice for both the best online broker and low-cost broker. Founded in 1943 in Boston, Fidelity has 40 million individual investors, $11.3 trillion in assets under administration, $4.3 trillion in discretionary assets, and accounts for 3.1 million trades daily. Take intelligent risks rather than follow the crowd, has been the firms guiding principle since its founding. It continues to impact Fidelity, as seen by current Chairman and CEO, Abby Johnsons comment that the reason why we exist hasnt changed since our foundingto strengthen and secure our clients financial well-being.

The company continues to invest in its systems and innovate within its online trading platforms, such as adding an enhanced investor dashboard that remembers where you were when you closed the program, so you start at that page on the next login. It also has added thematic baskets and customizable indexes that can be rebalanced for individuals.

Pros Low costs

Great trade executions

Excellent research and asset screeners

Extensive educational content

Top-notch portfolio analysis tools and calculators Cons No access to futures, commodities, or crypto trading

Accounts are restricted to the U.S. and main island residents

High broker-assisted trading fees

Options fees higher than competitors

Pros Explained

Low costs: Fidelity has low costs. It offers free stock and ETF trading and has eliminated most account fees, such as transfers, account closing, and wire and check fees. Options result in a $0.65 fee per contract traded.

Fidelity has low costs. It offers free stock and ETF trading and has eliminated most account fees, such as transfers, account closing, and wire and check fees. Options result in a $0.65 fee per contract traded. Great trade executions: Fidelity obtains great trade execution by using proprietary trade execution algorithms that route orders to up to 50 market centers, such as exchanges, market makers, and automated trading systems. Fidelity is able to capture the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) quote, and often gets even better price execution. Fidelity obtains an average of $0.0121 in net price improvement for stocks and ETFs, and $0.0525 for options. With the exception of options, unlike many online brokers, Fidelity does not accept payment for order flow (PFOF) for stock and ETF trades, so it always will be looking for the best price execution without any conflicts. Should they want to, traders can route their own orders.

Fidelity obtains great trade execution by using proprietary trade execution algorithms that route orders to up to 50 market centers, such as exchanges, market makers, and automated trading systems. Fidelity is able to capture the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) quote, and often gets even better price execution. Fidelity obtains an average of $0.0121 in net price improvement for stocks and ETFs, and $0.0525 for options. With the exception of options, unlike many online brokers, Fidelity does not accept payment for order flow (PFOF) for stock and ETF trades, so it always will be looking for the best price execution without any conflicts. Should they want to, traders can route their own orders. Excellent research and asset screeners: Research offerings and asset screeners at Fidelity are excellent, with users having screeners for stocks, ETFs, options, and fixed income. Screeners have many available criteria (more than 100 for the stock screener), themes like cloud computing, drones, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and watch lists that can be created from search results. A new feature of Fidelitys screeners includes the ability to see all ETFs that contain a specific stock. Users also have free access to both Fidelity research and third-party research from more than 25 sources, including Zacks Investment Research, Standard & Poors, and Moodys Investor Service, Inc. Screeners are available for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, fixed income, and for environmental, social, and governance and socially responsible investing (ESG/SRI).

Research offerings and asset screeners at Fidelity are excellent, with users having screeners for stocks, ETFs, options, and fixed income. Screeners have many available criteria (more than 100 for the stock screener), themes like cloud computing, drones, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and watch lists that can be created from search results. A new feature of Fidelitys screeners includes the ability to see all ETFs that contain a specific stock. Users also have free access to both Fidelity research and third-party research from more than 25 sources, including Zacks Investment Research, Standard & Poors, and Moodys Investor Service, Inc. Screeners are available for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, fixed income, and for environmental, social, and governance and socially responsible investing (ESG/SRI). Extensive educational content: Fidelity makes multiple educational offerings available to its customers in multiple formats, including articles, videos, live and recorded webinars, and infographics. Customers can also speak with professionals with trading experience to discuss their trading ideas as they learn how to invest or trade in various products.

Fidelity makes multiple educational offerings available to its customers in multiple formats, including articles, videos, live and recorded webinars, and infographics. Customers can also speak with professionals with trading experience to discuss their trading ideas as they learn how to invest or trade in various products. Top-notch portfolio analysis tools and calculators: Fidelity has many tools and calculators to use against a portfolio or for specific trades. For options, it has calculators to see the probabilities of options trades ending in the money. Fidelity also has calculators for determining investment goals and tracking portfolio results.

Cons Explained

No access to futures, commodities, or crypto trading: Fidelity does not support trading in futures, options on futures, commodities, currencies, or cryptocurrencies, even though you can exchange currencies on the platform. While most Fidelity customers may not have interest in these products, more active traders may want to trade these markets and would generally prefer to have all their trading products on a single platform rather than needing multiple platforms.

Fidelity does not support trading in futures, options on futures, commodities, currencies, or cryptocurrencies, even though you can exchange currencies on the platform. While most Fidelity customers may not have interest in these products, more active traders may want to trade these markets and would generally prefer to have all their trading products on a single platform rather than needing multiple platforms. Accounts are restricted to the US and main island residents: Fidelity accounts are only available to people who are residents of the U.S. or one of its main islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Fidelity accounts are only available to people who are residents of the U.S. or one of its main islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. High broker-assisted trading fees: The broker-assisted trading fees, at $32.95, are one of the highest in the brokerage industry. Investors and traders looking for broker-assisted trading would be better off looking for brokers that charge less.

The broker-assisted trading fees, at $32.95, are one of the highest in the brokerage industry. Investors and traders looking for broker-assisted trading would be better off looking for brokers that charge less. Options fees higher than competitors: Fidelity charges customers $0.65 per options contract traded on both the open and closing sides of the trade, with no cap on cost. This means you pay commissions on both the open and closing for both legs of multi-leg options trades. Since there are brokers, such as Webull, that dont charge anything for options, or tastyworks that caps commission and only charges for one side of the trade, high volume options traders may look elsewhere for options trading.

Usability

It is easy to set up an account at Fidelity following the process that is standard to most brokers - mailing address, Social Security number, employment information, and then account creation. Existing customers can open a new account even quicker and you can have multiple account types with Fidelity for different purposes. Like other brokerage accounts, those looking to trade options or on margin will have to fill out additional forms and receive approval.

There are three platforms available from Fidelity that can be used simultaneously. All platforms provide stock quotes and news, but the web platform does not stream this information in real time. The basic web-based platform is simpler to use and meets the needs of more passive investors, but it is unlikely to appeal to more active investors and traders. Active investors and traders will lean towards Fidelitys downloadable trading platform, Active Trader Pro. Active Trader Pro has many more tools and features than the web platform and is highly customizable. Sophisticated traders that want to utilize tools to analyze options, as well as advanced features such as conditional orders, will find all those functions on Active Trader Pro.

The mobile app, available for Android, iOS, Amazon, and Google Assistant-enabled devices, is designed to be similar to Active Trader Pro, but the mobile app does not support fixed income trading or conditional orders.

Overall, navigation is reasonably intuitive across Fidelitys platforms, although the website has many sub-menus that can take some time for newer users to get used to. Fidelity also has a watch app that allows users to see quote history, and detailed, real-time quotes for stocks, options, ETFs, and mutual funds. The watch app also can provide notifications for orders, including price triggers.

Trade Experience

The trading experience with the Fidelity website is pretty straightforward, and the navigation intuitive. While there is an option to see streaming quotes on the website, news has to be manually refreshed as it does not stream. While you can set some trading defaults on the website, users will have to re-enter most information for each trade. The web platform supports buy, sell, and stop orders, including trailing stops and market-on-open or close.

Options trading on the web platform is not as strong as other offerings. The platform supports four-leg options strategies, and there is a drop-down that allows the user to select the type of trade, such as spreads, butterflies, condors, strangles, straddles, and spread trades. However, there were no diagrams of the commonly used payout graph. After making the selection on the options trade desired, blank input lines are brought up for each leg created based on the trade type selected. Traders would then have to put all the trade information in manually, whereas other brokers have a more interactive way to change strikes and maturity dates.

The Active Trader Pro platform is much more robust than the web and mobile offerings. The trading platform is customizable, including the ability to personalize the layout. Traders are able to set up trade defaults, create shortcuts, and assign hotkeys for navigation and trade entry. The Active Trader Pro platform works better than the website for options trading, but again, the less automated interface is not as easy to use as whats available at other brokers. Active Trader Pro is the only Fidelity platform that supports conditional orders. Also, while you can see an open order, you only have the option to cancel the trade; there was no option to modify the trade, such as changing the price from the open order window.

Mobile Trade Experience

The powerful mobile app is also intuitive. Users can see news and fundamental information about a specific security, and place an order while on the go. The mobile app has some of the same issues as the website, however, such as the less user-friendly option order form outlined for the web platform. The mobile app does not support conditional orders, similar to how conditional orders are not available on the website. Moreover, drop-down menus for options left all the ticket details for the trader to manually input specifics, such as maturity and strike, directly. This is not as easy to use as other online brokers where the legs are displayed and can be changed by moving the strike on the profitability graph. Although elements of the Active Trader Pro workflow do appear in the mobile app.

Fidelity mobile is somewhere in between the web platform and the desktop platform rather than an attempt to mirror the robust desktop platform. It will easily serve the needs of less active investors but isnt full-featured enough to allow active traders to operate independently of Active Trader Pro.

Range of Offerings

Fidelity offers a good selection of assets, including stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and mutual funds. Fidelity supports currency exchange, but not forex trading. The mobile app has all the same asset classes as Fidelity's web and Active Trader Pro platforms, with the exception of fixed income. Missing from Fidelity's range of offerings are futures, futures options, currency trading, and cryptocurrency.

Regarding cryptocurrencies, Fidelity launched Fidelity Digital Asset Services for institutional investors as it anticipates trading in crypto will increase over time. Fidelity is, however, planning to offer Bitcoin as an investment option for retirement accounts if the plan sponsor approves it for their plans. While Fidelity does not support outright cryptocurrency trading for retail accounts, Fidelity has also developed an ETF called Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments (FDIG). FDIG provides exposure to the companies providing technology and service to the cryptocurrency sector; it does not involve trading in actual cryptocurrencies.

Fidelity's product lineup includes:

Stocks long and short (2,800 on the easy-to-borrow list, and 6,500 securities available for shorting)

OTCBB (penny stocks)

Mutual funds (about 3,500 no-load, no transaction fee)

Bonds: corporate, municipal, treasury, CDs

Single and up to four leg options strategies

Robo-advisory integrated into the website and mobile app

International (access to 25 countries in 16 different currencies)

Forex (16 pairs), but it is not clear if this is true currency trading or a currency exchange program for funding foreign purchases.

Fractional shares

Other securities include ETPs, IPOs, foreign ORDs, foreign ADRs, preferred shares, rights, warrants, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), municipal reset bonds, high yield corporate bonds, precious metals, and principal-protected notes.

Order Types

Fidelity supports numerous order types, but availability is based on the platform. The web platform supports only market, limit, stop loss, and trailing stops. The mobile app supports all of the orders on the web but does not support conditional orders like one-cancels-the-other (OCO) and one-triggers-the-other (OTO) plus orders that are supported on the Active Trader Pro desktop platforms.

Fidelity also allows traders to trade stocks by share amount or by dollar amount. It is also easy to close a position or roll an options order directly from the positions page. Fidelity's basket trading services allow users to select a customized basket of up to 50 stocks they can monitor, trade, manage, and rebalance as one unit.

Account owners also can choose a tax lot preference for their accounts, such as first in, first out or last in, first out, or average cost. They also can select the specific tax lot when closing a position.

Trading Technology

Fidelity has strong trade execution through the use of proprietary smart order routing and Fidelity Dynamic Liquidity Management (FDLM), seeking the best location and price available for customer orders. Fidelity also utilizes its CrossStream, which is an alternative trading system that anonymously matches brokerage clients buy- and sell-side orders against the massive order flow from Fidelity.

The average execution speed at Fidelity is 0.05 seconds, and 87.99% of trades are price improved, 98.20% of trades fall within the national best bid and offer (NBBO), and the average price improvement for a 1,000-share equity trade is $19.24, more than four times the industry average.

For options, traders can direct orders to any of eight available exchanges, and order routing can be done through a representative. Fractional share trading in both stocks and ETFs is also supported by Fidelity, and traders are able to trade after the market closes.

Another trading technology offered by Fidelity is the ability to back-test trading strategies with Wealth-Lab Pro. This is a premium offering available to investors in households that place 120 commissionable stock, bond, or options trades in a rolling 12-month period, and that also have an account balance in excess of $25,000. These thresholds have been lowered from at least 500 trades per year and account assets in excess of $100,000.

Costs

Fidelity has ranked highly in our Best for Low Cost category every year. It offers commission-free online trading in U.S. stocks and ETFs, and there are no account fees or minimums to open a retail brokerage account. Fidelitys fees are as follows:

Fidelity charges no commissions for online equity, ETF, options, and OTCBB trades.

The per-contract options fee is $0.65.

An order for 50 options contracts is $32.50, but to open and close 50 options contracts would result in costs of $65 - you pay on both sides of the trade.

A covered call trade of 500 shares plus five contracts would cost $3.25.

Mutual fund commissions for funds outside the no transaction fee program are $49.95 on the buy and no charge on the sell.

Margin interest is 10.575% for accounts with a balance under $25,000; then breakpoints of 10.075% for accounts with a balance under $50,000; 9.125% for balances under $100,000; 9.075% for balances under $250,000; 8.825% for balances under $500,000; 6.50% for balances under $1 million; and 6.25% for accounts with $1 million or more.

There are no fees for software, inactivity, account closure or transfer, exercise/assignment, domestic wires, checks, or paper statements and trade confirmations.

Most orders incur exchange fees, typically fractions of a penny per share or contract, which Fidelity passes along to customers.

Certain mutual fund families, including Vanguard, CGM, Dodge & Cox, and Sequoia funds, are charged $75 on the initial purchase.

The live broker fee is $32.95 per trade.

International trades incur various fees, so take a careful look at those commissions before entering an order.

How This Broker Makes Money From You and for You

With fewer brokerages charging commissions these days, it's less obvious how they stay in business. Here are some behind-the-scenes ways Fidelity makes money both from you and for you.

Interest on cash: Fidelity clients are automatically enrolled in cash sweep programs that pay nominal interest rates. Fidelity makes money from the difference between what it pays you on your idle cash and what it earns on customer cash balances. The automatic enrolment is an advantage to customers, however, as many brokers still do not share any interest on idle cash.

Fidelity clients are automatically enrolled in cash sweep programs that pay nominal interest rates. Fidelity makes money from the difference between what it pays you on your idle cash and what it earns on customer cash balances. The automatic enrolment is an advantage to customers, however, as many brokers still do not share any interest on idle cash. Margin interest: Fidelity's margin interest rates are below average for the industry, but not as low as brokers that compete on margin as a key feature. The rate is 10.575% for accounts with less than $25,000, and 9.075% for accounts between $99,999 and $250,000.

Fidelity's margin interest rates are below average for the industry, but not as low as brokers that compete on margin as a key feature. The rate is 10.575% for accounts with less than $25,000, and 9.075% for accounts between $99,999 and $250,000. Payment for order flow (PFOF): Some brokers earn money by accepting payments from market makers for directing equity and options orders to them, in a practice called payment for order flow (PFOF). Fidelity does not accept PFOF for equity trades, but it receives an average of $0.11 per options contract in PFOF. This is far lower than brokers that have PFOF as a core part of their model.

Some brokers earn money by accepting payments from market makers for directing equity and options orders to them, in a practice called payment for order flow (PFOF). Fidelity does not accept PFOF for equity trades, but it receives an average of $0.11 per options contract in PFOF. This is far lower than brokers that have PFOF as a core part of their model. Stock loan programs: Fidelity earns revenue by loaning stocks in your account for short sales, with your permission, and it shares that income with you. Fidelity has told us that for two months of lending certain hard-to-borrow securities, 38% of accounts earn $100 or less, 37% earn between $100 and $1,000, and the remaining 25% earn more than $1,000.

Fidelity earns revenue by loaning stocks in your account for short sales, with your permission, and it shares that income with you. Fidelity has told us that for two months of lending certain hard-to-borrow securities, 38% of accounts earn $100 or less, 37% earn between $100 and $1,000, and the remaining 25% earn more than $1,000. Price improvement: On average, equity orders receive $0.0121 per share in net price improvement; options orders receive $0.0525 per contract.

On average, equity orders receive $0.0121 per share in net price improvement; options orders receive $0.0525 per contract. Portfolio margining: Fidelity clients who qualify can apply for portfolio margining, which computes real-time margin for stock and options trades based on risk instead of fixed percentages.

Account and Research Amenities

Fidelity offers many high-quality amenities or accounts, which you would expect to see from a large broker. The breadth and quality of these features help separate Fidelity from some of its competitors. These amenities include flexible screeners, trade idea generators, charting, access to research and fundamental data, and more.

Stock Screeners

Fidelitys stock screener has over 140 criteria with customizable values, such as volume, implied volatility, and order flow. In addition, Fidelity has different themes that the user can choose, including data services, drones, and SRI/ESG scores. The various thematic screens can be further customized by the user, including a recent enhancement that allows users to separate out what happened overnight before regular trading hours begin. Screener results can also be used to create a watchlist.

ETF and Mutual Fund Evaluator

The ETF and mutual fund screeners are superb and consist of 88 criteria to choose from. This screener also has themes the user can select and then further refine. Examples of themes for this screener include market cap, fixed income, or SRI. In addition, Fidelity has also developed the ability to identify ETFs and mutual funds that contain a specific security. As with Fidelitys other screeners, results can be used to create a watchlist specific to the criteria used with the screener.

Options Screeners

LiveVol powers Fidelitys option screener. Like Fidelitys other screeners, users can choose from built-in scans or use their own criteria, such as volume, implied volatility, time spreads, and order flow. There are more than 25 predefined filters in Active Trader Pro, and there are nearly 200 individual criteria that can be incorporated into a search.

Fixed Income Screeners

The screener for fixed income will help users identify a secondary market offering from over 120,000 options to choose from. The yield table will update every fifteen minutes, and clicking a yield value will return all bonds or CDs meeting the criteria selected, such as product type, ratings, and time to maturity. There is also a tool to create a bond ladder to help stagger fixed-income securities.

Tools and Calculators

Fidelity has a comprehensive set of tools and calculators. There are calculators for just about any financial subject, which can be filtered by product, such as 529 plans, annuities, bonds, charitable giving, and exchange-traded funds, to name a few. These tools also can be filtered and chosen by topics, such as estate planning, college planning, retirement, and other life events. There are 38 different calculators available at Fidelity, which are conveniently grouped together on a tools and calculators webpage.

Charting

Charting on the website is straightforward, with the ability to change the type of bar or price indicator, add one or more of more than 70 indicators, and draw trendlines and channels, but there does not appear to be a way to trade directly from the chart.

Charting on the mobile app, similar to the offerings of other brokers, is limited by the small screen. Although the mobile app does not allow users to both draw on and trade directly from a price chart, the overall mobile experience is still a step up from that of many other brokers.

Active Trader Pro, a powerful platform, has the best charting of the three platforms, allowing for drawing, indicators, and the addition of a comparison chart. Traders can open a trade ticket directly from the chart, even though these orders do not appear on the chart. Order tickets are automatically created when you click on a specific option. Open orders are not shown on any Fidelity charting method. Active day traders will also appreciate key tools for capturing price inefficiencies, such as the ability to place statistical bands on the volume-weighted average price (VWAP) study.

Trading Idea Generators

Fidelity offers idea generators to help identify potential options trades. The options idea generator can be used to determine trade ideas, and provides users with real-time data on specific trading ideas based on the following criteria entered by the user:

Bullish, bearish, or neutral sentiment

Limited, substantial, and unlimited profit potential

Limited, substantial, and unlimited risk potentials

Alternatively, the user can pick a specific trading strategy. The idea generator will provide information about the specific trade and its characteristics. In addition to the options idea generator, Fidelity also provides third-party content, including Bulls/Bears of the Day by Zacks Investment Research and technical events from Recognia.

News

Fidelity provides users with news on all its platforms, although only the Active Trader Pro platform shows streaming, real-time news. News sources available on Fidelity include Reuters, PR Newswire, Briefing.com, Business Wire, and Market Wire. News can also be shown for individual stocks or specific market sectors.

Third-Party Research

Fidelity offers a great deal of third-party research for free, including but not limited to I/B/E/S from Refinitiv, Integrity Research Associates, Investars, ISS-EVA, Jefferson Research, McClean Capital Management, MSCI, Recognia, Social Market Analytics, The Hightower Report, Trading Central, Zacks Investment Research, BlackRock, and PIMCO. Also, there is also MSCI data and standing against peers, as well as other qualitative and quantitative research available. Simply put, there is no shortage of research content on Fidelity.

Cash Management

Clients at Fidelity are enrolled automatically in a cash sweep program, where the customer chooses between a choice of money market mutual funds. While the interest paid on this cash is minimal, at 1.19% as of August 17, 2022, this still compares favorably with many of Fidelitys peers, since they often dont pay any interest on cash balances. As U.S. interest rates move higher, the difference between the rate Fidelity pays may become an even more positive differentiator for Fidelitys cash sweep program.

Fractional Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP)

Fidelity offers its customers the option to enroll in a dividend reinvestment plan that would automatically reinvest dividends into the company. If the dividend is less than what is required for a whole share, a fractional share will be added to the account rather than putting the payout into idle cash. If you choose to sell your holdings, you put the whole share amount in and any fractional shares will be liquidated on settlement.

SRI/ESG Research Amenities

Socially responsible investing (SRI) and environment, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are available as a theme in stock, ETF, and mutual fund screeners. Fidelity also has a number of SRI/ESG funds on its platform and produces a stewardship report that shows Fidelitys values, process, and commitments to SRI/ESG investing.



Portfolio Analysis

Fidelitys portfolio analysis tools provide information about a portfolio by giving graphical views of account assets, showing asset allocation and industry weightings, and displaying comparisons of industry sector weightings within your portfolio. Fidelity also offers customers the Fidelity Portfolio Quick Check, which will analyze your portfolio, and help optimize your investment strategy. The tool helps advisors improve outcomes and frees up time.



Education

Fidelity does an excellent job providing its customers with educational materials and delivers that content through articles, videos, webinars, and live events and seminars. Fidelity also provides life stage planning tools for marriage and divorce, starting a business, a new home, or college costs. In addition, there is also third-party educational content, including courses customers can take. Education topics can be searched with a few keywords.

Fidelity also hosts sessions where you can speak with someone on a Trading Strategies Desk to discuss trading questions with an expert in an interactive format. There is an actively managed Reddit community for Fidelity with 36,000 users.

Fidelity also provides users with an extensive glossary of investing terms, and a comprehensive frequently asked questions section.

Customer Service

Fidelity has several options for getting in touch with customer service in addition to physical Investor Centers spread across the United States.

24/7 phone line

Online chat with a live agent

You can talk to a live broker (there is a surcharge for any trades placed via the broker)

A chatbot (Fidelity Virtual Assistant)

Customer support email

Walk-in branches

Security and Reliability

Fidelity's security is up to industry standards:

Two-factor authentication is offered on all platforms.

Higher-risk transactions, such as wire transfers, require two-factor authentication.

Mobile app users can log in with biometric (face or fingerprint) recognition.

Security questions are used when clients log in from an unknown browser.

Fidelity carries excess Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) insurance with a $1.9 million limit on uninvested cash. According to Fidelity, this is the maximum excess SIPC protection currently available in the brokerage industry.

Fidelity's Customer Protection Guarantee protects you against losses from unauthorized activity in covered accounts that occur through no fault of your own.

Fidelity reported no widespread or serious platform outages during 2022.

Transparency

Fidelity does a very good job with transparency. For one thing, it does not accept payment for order flow for stocks and ETFs (it does accept payment for order flow on options). Fidelitys commissions, fees, and margin rates are all very clearly outlined. ETFs and stocks have no commissions or fees and, unlike many brokers, Fidelity has eliminated most of its fees for wire transfers, minimum balances, account closings, and other miscellaneous fees.

Available Account Types

Fidelity has the full range of commonly used accounts and much more. You can open a wide variety of accounts, including:

Taxable brokerage account

Rollover individual retirement accounts (IRA)

Traditional IRAs

Roth IRAs

Inherited IRAs

Simplified employee pension (SEP) IRA

Self-employed 401(k)s,

SIMPLE IRAs

Custodial accounts

529 accounts

Health savings account (HSA)

Youth account (these are not custodial accounts, as investment decisions are made by young investors)

Trust and estate accounts

Fully managed accounts

Fidelity is also working on a Digital Asset Account where, if a 401(k) plan approves, participants can direct a portion of their contributions into a digital asset account, which will hold bitcoin.

The wealth of options can be intimidating, but Fidelity does a great job of grouping the accounts by your goal with the account and provides a concise description of the purpose of the account type. Clicking "Saving & investing for a child" for example, will take you to the custodial, Roth IRA for kids, youth account, and 529 account section. The key features of the accounts are in the description and you can quickly find the right one for you.

Final Verdict

Fidelity continues to be a strong all-around broker and has been our top pick in multiple categories over the past few years. The different technology platforms fit the needs of passive investors who are likely to use the website or mobile app, as well as more active traders who can benefit from the Active Trader Pro platform. In combination with a broad array of tools and content to help analyze both individual trades and a broad platform, Fidelity also has low costs, excellent trade execution, multiple educational offerings, and portfolio analysis tools, as well as robust screeners to help identify opportunities. Fidelity also offers its customers their proprietary research, along with top-notch third-party research content.

All that said, active and high-volume traders looking for exposure to commodities, futures, and cryptocurrency markets will likely look elsewhere to prevent having multiple trading platforms. Those traders focusing on options trading may consider other platforms that offer lower costs for options trading and better options analysis tools. For most investors and traders, however, Fidelity is an ideal investment platform.
Everybody wants to gain an edge on the markets, and social media has become a key ingredient in the mix. Major names like Facebook and Snapchat have evolved to become sources of information and breaking news. But Twitter (TWTR) stands out among social media sites as a valuable source of breaking news, alerts, and tips that can inform trading decisions.

Key Takeaways: Social media has changed the way news is reported and consumed.

The most respected financial journals have Twitter feeds that follow the news, and often break it.

You can use major financial Twitter accounts to get up-to-date information as well as analyst commentary, trader chat, and more.

Consider using a social media dashboard app to streamline posts.

Some of the major business Twitter feeds include @CNBC, @Bespoke, and @WSJDealJournal.

The Best Twitter Feeds for Investors

There's no doubt that social media has changed the media landscape, from the way we gather and distribute information to the way we consume news. According to a Pew Research Center study, 55% of Americans who use Twitter get their news from the site. Another study suggests that as many as 80% of institutional investors monitor social media during their workday30% of whom use the information they gather from these sources to influence their decisions.

And it isn't unusual for stories to pop up before or alongside a media's own in-depth reporting of the news, including these:

Consider the death of Kobe Bryant in 2020, which was first reported by TMZ. The outlet sent a tweet about the athlete's death in a helicopter crash before filing a report on its website.

The outlet sent a tweet about the athlete's death in a helicopter crash before filing a report on its website. Former President Donald Trump tweeted that he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13, 2018. The announcement caused uncertainty in the oil market, leading to speculation that increased risk could disrupt supplies.

The announcement caused uncertainty in the oil market, leading to speculation that increased risk could disrupt supplies. The 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster also broke on Twitter feeds in the U.K. before it was widely reported elsewhere.

The news that Greece had an economic reform deal with the European Union (EU) was reported by a reputable news outlet on its Twitter feed before the news hit the wires. Business Insider used a chart of the euro's price to show how some savvy traders grabbed the chance to make money before most others got the news.

It's not easy to find that one useful tweet among millions of constantly updating feeds. Some money managers use TweetDeck or another social media dashboard app to filter their results. If you're an individual investor who's looking for the latest in financial news, be sure to check out and follow these 10 Twitter feeds.

Social media is a great way to get information but should only be used as a guide.



The financial news network provides real-time business information to 355 million households worldwide per month. Its 14-hour live coverage is geared toward individual investors as well as trading professionals. The outlet's Twitter account has more than 4.3 million followers.

Benzinga provides real-time coverage of financial news, analyst upgrades and downgrades, and technical events like price breakouts or unusual volume. The site was launched in 2010 and boasts more than 25 million readers every month. It has more than 200,000 Twitter followers.

The active trading community monitors Stocktwits' feed, which has almost 930,000 followers. Stocktwits is a real-time service that allows investors from all over the world to post what they are seeing and how they are trading at any given moment. The Twitter feed has highlights from those conversations.

The @BreakoutStocks Twitter feed, produced by TopBreakoutStocks.com, tracks stocks that demonstrate unusual price or volume changes, or both. The account has about 84,000 followers.

Bespoke Investment Group is a respected Wall Street research firm with about 130,000 Twitter followers. You can check its website for its easy-to-read reports and follow it on Twitter for alerts to new stories.

Don't take the information you obtain from social media as sound advice. Always consult a trained financial professional who can guide you in the right direction before you make any decision about your investments.

Nobody needs an introduction to The Wall Street Journal. But you may not know that among its many Twitter feeds is @WSJMarkets, which provides real-time finance, economic, and market news as it happens. The account has more than 715,000 followers.

If you're a fan of Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) you'll also appreciate the contributions of Stephanie Link, former director of research for his charitable trust, Action Alerts Plus. She's a frequent contributor to CNBC and a prolific tweeter. She's also the chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower Advisors and boasts almost 100,000 followers.

The New York Times business feed provides up-to-the-minute market news and other notable events. Financial news reporting is a fiercely competitive business, so having several of the best feeds is a good plan. Following this business feed means you'll join the other 825,000 people looking for the latest business news.

Investors Business Daily is a well-known daily publication intended for individual investors. Its Twitter feed focuses on the latest new trade-worthy ideas and has more than 262,000 followers.

This is another feed from The Wall Street Journal. If you're interested in mergers and acquisitions, this is the one for you. It includes news and commentary on private equity activities and initial public offerings as well. There are about 8,200 followers on the Twitter feed.
Retirement planning is a multistep process that evolves over time. To have a comfortable, secureand funretirement, you need to build the financial cushion that will fund it all. The fun part is why it makes sense to pay attention to the seriousand perhaps boringpart: planning how youll get there.

Retirement planning starts with thinking about your retirement goals and how long you have to meet them. Then you need to look at the types of retirement accounts that can help you raise the money to fund your future. As you save that money, you have to invest it to enable it to grow.

The last part of planning is taxes: If youve received tax deductions over the years for the money that youve contributed to your retirement accounts, then a significant tax bill awaits when you start withdrawing those savings. There are ways to minimize the retirement tax hit while you save for the futureand to continue the process when that day arrives and you actually stop working.

Well get into all of these issues here. But first, start by learning the five steps that everyone should take, no matter what their age, to build a solid retirement plan.

Key Takeaways Retirement planning should include determining time horizons, estimating expenses, calculating required after-tax returns, assessing risk tolerance, and doing estate planning.

Start planning for retirement as soon as you can to take advantage of the power of compounding.

Younger investors can take more risk with their investments, while investors closer to retirement should be more conservative.

Retirement plans evolve through the years, which means portfolios should be rebalanced and estate plans updated as needed.

Your career, family size, age of retirement, and post-retirement goals will all factor in to retirement planning.

How Much Do You Need to Save for Retirement?

Before anyone starts crunching the numbers on their retirement goals, they will need a good idea of how much money they need to save. Naturally, this will depend on many situational factors, such as their annual income and the age when they plan to retire.

While there is no fixed rule about how much money to save, many retirement experts offer rules of thumb such as saving about $1 million, or 12 years of one's pre-retirement annual income. Others recommend the 4% rule, which suggests that retirees should spend no more than 4% of their retirement savings each year in order to ensure a comfortable retirement.

Since everyone's circumstances are different, it is worth sitting down to calculate the ideal retirement savings for your own situation.



Order your copy of the print edition of Investopedia's Retirement Guide for more assistance in building the best plan for your retirement.

Factors to Consider

As you begin to think about retirement, it is worthwhile to consider some of the factors that will affect your retirement goals. For example: what are your family plans? For many people, starting a family is a central life goal, but having children can also put a large dent in your savings. For that reason, the type of family you hope to have will play a factor in your retirement planning.

Likewise, it is also worth thinking about your plans for retirement, including any changes to your home or residence. Many people dream of travel during retirement, and while it can be an exciting adventure, extensive travel will eat away at your retirement savings faster than staying at home. On the other hand, moving to a country with an extremely low cost of living may allow you to stretch out your savings while enjoying a high living standard.

Finally, one should also consider the different types of tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Most Americans qualify for social security, but those benefits are rarely enough to support all of their expenses in retirement.

While pension funds were once the norm for skilled professionals, they have largely been replaced by self-funded plans like 401(k) or IRA accounts. Since these have a maximum contribution limit, your retirement strategy will depend on what types of tax-advantaged accounts are available to you.

Once you have thought these factors through, these are the next steps for planning your retirement:

1. Understand Your Time Horizon

Your current age and expected retirement age create the initial groundwork for an effective retirement strategy. The longer the time from today to retirement, the higher the level of risk that your portfolio can withstand. If youre young and have 30-plus years until retirement, you can have the majority of your assets in riskier investments, such as stocks. There will be volatility, but stocks have historically outperformed other securities, such as bonds, over long time periods. The main word here is long, meaning at least more than 10 years.

Additionally, you need returns that outpace inflation so you can maintain your purchasing power during retirement. Inflation is like an acorn. It starts out small, but given enough time, can turn into a mighty oak tree, says Chris Hammond, a Savannah, Tenn., financial advisor and founder of RetirementPlanningMadeEasy.com.

Weve all heardand wantcompound growth on our money, Hammond adds. Well, inflation is like compound anti-growth, as it erodes the value of your money. A seemingly small inflation rate of 3% will erode the value of your savings by 50% over approximately 24 years. Doesnt seem like much each year, but given enough time, it has a huge impact.

In general, the older you are, the more your portfolio should be focused on income and the preservation of capital. This means a higher allocation in less risky securities, such as bonds, that wont give you the returns of stocks but will be less volatile and provide income that you can use to live on. You will also have less concern about inflation. A 64-year-old who is planning on retiring next year does not have the same issues about a rise in the cost of living as a much younger professional who has just entered the workforce.

You should break up your retirement plan into multiple components. Lets say a parent wants to retire in two years, pay for a childs education at age 18, and move to Florida. From the perspective of forming a retirement plan, the investment strategy would be broken up into three periods: two years until retirement (contributions are still made into the plan), saving and paying for college, and living in Florida (regular withdrawals to cover living expenses).

A multistage retirement plan must integrate various time horizons, along with the corresponding liquidity needs, to determine the optimal allocation strategy. You should also be rebalancing your portfolio over time as your time horizon changes.

You might not think that saving a few bucks here and there in your 20s means much, but the power of compounding will make it worth much more by the time you need it.

2. Determine Retirement Spending Needs

Having realistic expectations about post-retirement spending habits will help you define the required size of a retirement portfolio. Most people believe that after retirement, their annual spending will amount to only 70% to 80% of what they spent previously.

Such an assumption is often proven unrealistic, especially if the mortgage has not been paid off or if unforeseen medical expenses occur. Retired adults also sometimes spend their first years splurging on travel or other bucket-list goals.

For retired adults to have enough savings for retirement, I believe that the ratio should be closer to 100%, says David G. Niggel, CFP, ChFC, AIF, founder, president, and CEO of Key Wealth Partners LLC in Litilz, Pa. The cost of living is increasing every yearespecially healthcare expenses. People are living longer and want to thrive in retirement. Retired adults need more income for a longer time, so they will need to save and invest accordingly.

As, by definition, retired adults are no longer at work for eight or more hours a day, they have more time to travel, go sightseeing, shop, and engage in other expensive activities. Accurate retirement spending goals help in the planning process as more spending in the future requires additional savings today.

One of the factorsif not the largestin the longevity of your retirement portfolio is your withdrawal rate. Having an accurate estimate of what your expenses will be in retirement is so important because it will affect how much you withdraw each year and how you invest your account. If you understate your expenses, you easily outlive your portfolio, or if you overstate your expenses, you can risk not living the type of lifestyle you want in retirement, says Kevin Michels, CFP, EA, financial planner, and president of Medicus Wealth Planning in Draper, Utah.

Your longevity also needs to be considered when planning for retirement, so you dont outlast your savings. The average life span of individuals is increasing.

Actuarial life tables are available to estimate the longevity rates of individuals and couples (this is referred to as longevity risk).

Additionally, you might need more money than you think if you want to purchase a home or fund your childrens education post-retirement. Those outlays have to be factored into the overall retirement plan. Remember to update your plan once a year to make sure that you are keeping on track with your savings.

Retirement planning accuracy can be improved by specifying and estimating early retirement activities, accounting for unexpected expenses in middle retirement, and forecasting what-if late-retirement medical costs, explains Alex Whitehouse, AIF, CRPC, CWS, president, and CEO of Whitehouse Wealth Management in Vancouver, Wash.

3. Calculate After-Tax Rate of Investment Returns

Once the expected time horizons and spending requirements are determined, the after-tax real rate of return must be calculated to assess the feasibility of the portfolio producing the needed income. A required rate of return in excess of 10% (before taxes) is normally an unrealistic expectation, even for long-term investing. As you age, this return threshold goes down, as low-risk retirement portfolios are largely composed of low-yielding fixed-income securities.

If, for example, an individual has a retirement portfolio worth $400,000 and income needs of $50,000, assuming no taxes and the preservation of the portfolio balance, they are relying on an excessive 12.5% return to get by. A primary advantage of planning for retirement at an early age is that the portfolio can be grown to safeguard a realistic rate of return. Using a gross retirement investment account of $1 million, the expected return would be a much more reasonable 5%.

Depending on the type of retirement account that you hold, investment returns are typically taxed. Therefore, the actual rate of return must be calculated on an after-tax basis. However, determining your tax status when you begin to withdraw funds is a crucial component of the retirement planning process.

4. Assess Risk Tolerance vs. Investment Goals

Whether its you or a professional money manager who is in charge of the investment decisions, a proper portfolio allocation that balances the concerns of risk aversion and returns objectives is arguably the most important step in retirement planning. How much risk are you willing to take to meet your objectives? Should some income be set aside in risk-free Treasury bonds for required expenditures?

You need to make sure that you are comfortable with the risks being taken in your portfolio and know what is necessary and what is a luxury. Dont be a micromanager who reacts to daily market noise, advises Craig L. Israelsen, Ph.D., designer of 7Twelve Portfolio in Springville, Utah.

'Helicopter investors tend to overmanage their portfolios," Israelsen adds. "When the various mutual funds in your portfolio have a bad year, add more money to them. The mutual fund you are unhappy with this year may be next years best performerso dont bail out on it.

Markets will go through long cycles of up and down and, if you are investing money you wont need to touch for 40 years, you can afford to see your portfolio value rise and fall with those cycles, says John R. Frye, CFA, senior advisor at Carnegie Investment Counsel. When the market declines, buydont sell. Refuse to give in to panic. If shirts went on sale, 20% off, youd want to buy, right? Why not stocks if they went on sale 20% off?

$12.06 million The 2022 ceiling for assets in an estate that are exempt from federal estate taxes. Amounts above that limit are subject to estate taxes.

5. Stay on Top of Estate Planning

Estate planning is another key step in a well-rounded retirement plan, and each aspect requires the expertise of different professionals, such as lawyers and accountants, in that specific field. Life insurance is also an important part of an estate plan and the retirement planning process. Having both a proper estate plan and life insurance coverage ensures that your assets are distributed in a manner of your choosing and that your loved ones will not experience financial hardship following your death. A carefully outlined plan also aids in avoiding an expensive and often lengthy probate process.

Tax planning is another crucial part of the estate planning process. If an individual wishes to leave assets to family members or a charity, the tax implications of either gifting or passing them through the estate process must be compared.

A common retirement plan investment approach is based on producing returns that meet yearly inflation-adjusted living expenses while preserving the value of the portfolio. The portfolio is then transferred to the beneficiaries of the deceased. You should consult a tax advisor to determine the correct plan for the individual.

Estate planning will vary over an investors lifetime, says Mark T. Hebner, founder and president of Index Fund Advisors Inc. in Irvine, Calif., and author of Index Funds: The 12-Step Recovery Program for Active Investors. Early on, matters such as powers of attorney and wills are necessary. Once you start a family, a trust may be something that becomes an important component of your financial plan.

Later on in life, how you would like your money disbursed will be of the utmost importance in terms of cost and taxes, Hebner adds. Working with a fee-only estate planning attorney can assist in preparing and maintaining this aspect of your overall financial plan.

What Is Risk Tolerance? Risk tolerance is how much of a loss youre willing to endure within your portfolio. Risk tolerance depends on a number of factors, including your financial goals, income, and age.

How Much Should I Save for Retirement? One rule of thumb is to save 15% of your gross annual earnings every year. In a perfect world, savings would begin in your 20s and last throughout your working years.

What Age Is Considered Early Retirement? Age 65 is typically considered early retirement. When it comes to Social Security, you can start collecting retirement benefits as early as age 62. But you wont receive full benefits as you would if you wait to collect them at full retirement age instead.



The Bottom Line

The burden of retirement planning is falling on individuals now more than ever. Few employees can count on an employer-provided defined-benefit pension, especially in the private sector. The switch to defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, also means that managing the investments becomes your responsibility, not your employers.

One of the most challenging aspects of creating a comprehensive retirement plan is striking a balance between realistic return expectations and a desired standard of living. The best solution is to focus on creating a flexible portfolio that can be updated regularly to reflect changing market conditions and retirement objectives.
24 January 2016

From the section Asia

South Korea and Hong Kong shiver as snow disrupts travelImage copyright Reuters Image caption Flights have been cancelled for a second day at Jeju airport

The South Korean island of Jeju has seen its biggest snowfall in three decades, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled.

Jeju is a popular holiday destination and thousands of visitors are reported to have been left stranded.

All 517 flights scheduled for Sunday were cancelled, as well as about 60 on Monday, following 11cm (4.3in) of snow.

In Hong Kong, residents shivered in three degrees Celsius, the lowest temperature there in nearly 60 years.

"It is very cold and windy over Hong Kong. People are advised to put on warm clothes and to avoid prolonged exposure to wintry winds," read a statement on a city government website.

Some of the more intrepid ventured out to climb the territory's highest mountain, Tai Mo Shan.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Passengers have been stranded at Jeju International Airport Image copyright Reuters Image caption Hikers in Hong Kong going up Tai Mo Shan were covered in ice

"From the weather report it sounded like there might be frost here, so I came to check it out," said one man. "There was no rain at first, but at around 4am it rained quite heavily and I couldn't go further up."

Another man said: "It's not so bad if you wear enough clothes."

A third said: "It's far too cold for me. Hong Kong is supposed to be warm. This is not Hong Kong."

China has issued its second highest weather alert amid the coldest weather in decades.

The state-run People's Daily said on its Weibo social media account that the city of Guangzhou had recorded its first snowfall since 1929.

In Japan, the Kyodo news agency said five people had died and more than 100 had been injured in weather-related accidents across the country in the past 24 hours.

Transport services continue to be disrupted.

The agency also said it had sno wed in Amami Island, a subtropical island 380km (235 miles) south-west of Kagoshima City, for the first time in 115 years.

Source: South Korea and Hong Kong shiver as snow disrupts travel
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One of Irelands most senior Islamic clerics has backed the deportation of refugees who get involved in illegal activity.

Shaykh Dr. Muhammad Umar al-Qadri issued the call as he warned that sinister elements were now trying to stoke dangerous divisions between the Muslim and Christian communities in Ireland.

His warning in a speech to students at Bandon Grammar School in Co. Cork came as Catholic Bishop of Cork and Ross, Dr. John Buckley, issued a special plea for compassion and kindness towards refugees.

Al-Qadri, a lifelong campaigner against fundamentalism, warned that migrants who get involved in crime deserve to be punished.

Refugees involved in illegal activity should be deported. They do not appreciate the host society and ruin it for others, he said.

Read more: British extremists may try to radicalize Irish Muslims

Ireland is now preparing to welcome the first groups of Syrian refugees accepted as part of the EU response to the Mediterranean migration crisis.

Al-Qadris comments came as senior Islamic leaders slated as fake a website, hijra2ireland.com, which hailed a new golden age of Islam through encouraging Muslims to migrate to Ireland.

Dr. Mudaffar al-Tawash, director of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland, contacted gardai (Irish police) about the website after their contact details were included.

It is fake... and it is not right. We dont know anything about it. The gardai are trying to find out what happened, he said.

In Cork, Bishop Buckley reminded Irish Christians that St. Patrick was a refugee and a slave, and that Irish migrants were once treated harshly in the Britain, the U.S. and Australia.

We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life around the Mediterranean as desperate migrants attempt to enter the EU. They are in search of a better life. Some will be coming to this country and they are hoping that Ireland will be a place where they are safe and can begin rebuilding their lives, Buckley said.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Muslims-in-Ireland-plan-to-gather-in-Dublin-to-protest-ISIS-atrocities.html
Kathleen Kick Kennedy, sister to President John F. Kennedy, lived a tragically short yet rebellious life.

The story of Kathleen Kick Kennedy, the rebellious fourth daughter of Rose and Joseph Kennedy who defied her family for love, was unpublicized after her untimely death at the age of 28.

She was the only rebel of the family, says Lynne McTaggart, author of 1983's "Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times."

If you look at all nine [Kennedy] children, she was the only one who didn't march down the prescribed road.

Her story was featured in the series "Million Dollar American Princesses" on the Smithsonian Channel, the Daily Mail reports. The documentary was narrated in part by Kicks namesake, Robert F Kennedy Jrs daughter.

When I was little, I wondered why I had a funny name, Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy, told the New York Post. I was named after my great-aunt, who was a lot of fun. She was a 'kick!

Read more What is the Kennedy family curse?

The elder Kick, who was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1920, was a charmer who never failed to catch the attention of the opposite sex.

She dated friends of her brothers  red-blooded American jocks, says McTaggart.

When Joe Kennedy was appointed US ambassador to the UK, he and his family departed for London. There, 18-year-old Kick was named debutante of the year.

She was idiosyncratically charming, says her namesake niece. She would call the Duke of Marlborough Dukie Wookie and chewed gum walking down the streets of London.

At a party, she met William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, who was set to be the future Duke of Devonshire. Kick called him Billy.

He was a great catch, and a sweet guy, McTaggart said, adding that he was rather shy compared to Kick.

Billy and Kick soon fell in love.

However, after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Joe Kennedy sent his family back to the United States. Although the 19-year-old Kick begged to stay so she could be with Billy, she returned to America.

Kick stayed in the United States for the next four years but was determined to make her way back to the UK. She joined the Red Cross, which was sending volunteers to England.

Read more Secrets about the Kennedy family you didnt know

She finally made it back to London, and she and Billy, who was in the British Army, picked up where they had left off. Rose Kennedy, however, was not happy that her daughter was with a Protestant.

Marrying outside of the church was probably the worst sin one could commit, Kick Kennedy explains. It meant living one's life in mortal sin and eventually going to hell.

Kick ignored her mother and married Billy in a civil ceremony in May 1944. Kick's older brother Joe Jr was the only Kennedy in attendance.

Four weeks later, Billy was sent to the Belgian front.

In August of the same year, Joe Jr was killed when his plane exploded while he was over France on a secret bombing mission.

Less than a month later  four months after Billy and Kick wed  Billy was shot through the heart by a German sniper.

I can't imagine anything more devastating, says the younger Kick. But the rule is, Kennedys don't cry.

Read more Amazing photos from early Kennedy family trips to Ireland

After mourning Joe in the United States, Kick returned to England as Lady Hartington. She soon found love again with Peter Fitzwilliam, a wealthy Protestant who was also a married man.

Fitzwilliam was in the process of divorcing his wife when Kick and he began a relationship, but her parents were still horrified and threatened to disown their daughter.

When you've seen so much tragedy during the war, it makes you feel that you'd better live for the moment, said McTaggart.

Fitzwilliam had a lot of money and was a lot of fun, she added. I think the chances of him being faithful to her were zero.

While traveling to France to meet up with Kick's father, the couple boarded a plane for a stop on the Riviera. Storms caused the plane to crash in the mountains and all passengers and crew were killed.

Kick's father Joe was the only Kennedy at the funeral.

The Kennedy family kept the death quiet due to the scandalous circumstances surrounding Kicks death and because of JFKs burgeoning political career.

She was buried in a small churchyard in Edensor, England as Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington. Her husband Billy was buried in Belgium where he was killed.

The times she lived in necessitated bravery and a strong ability to carry on in the face of tragedy, said the younger Kick Kennedy. Her decisions were informed by her own moral compass, not that of her parents or society.

She says she cherishes a photo of her great aunt dressed in a Red Cross uniform.

[My great-aunt] looks quite beautiful and you can feel her vigor, she said of the photo. I find her story powerful and her spirit-inspiring.

* Originally published in January 2016. Updated in November 2021.

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Gardai are examining if they can take a reckless endangerment case against HSE employees over alleged foster care home abuse.

It comes after

Read More:

It is claimed the person remained in the home for 13 years after all other minors were removed and a warning was issued from authorities in the UK.

In a statement, the whistleblower claims the motive of the HSE Local Health Office was not in dealing with these issues, but rather a desire not to expose their failings from the past 20 years.

CEO of Barnardos, Fergus Finlay, says the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has to intervene.

"For my money and in my view this is something the Minister for Health has to personally take charge of.

"He has to find out what happened, why it happened and he has to tell us what happened and why it happened."
The Prize and the Anthology are a written record of the Papua New Guinean condition has viewed through the eyes of writers who live through these times.

If social media is PNGs new fireplace where people gather and tell stories, the Crocodile Prize and its accompanying Anthology represent an attempt to record and preserve those "fireplace" stories.

Named after Sir Vincent Eri's epic novel The Crocodile, the prize seeks to unearth PNG's emerging story tellers.

SINCE its emergence 2011 as PNG's preeminent literary award - the Crocodile Prize - has spurred a growth in the recording of Papua New Guinean stories.

They represent the logic, passion, disappointment and hopes of a nation in transition.

They represent the confusion and the clarity of those who struggle with modernity and those who have engaged with it.

They represent a nostalgia of the independence rhetoric of the 1970s but also the embracing of the new age of information technology and the internet.

This diversity of experiences reflects the richness of the Papua New Guinean experience has filtered by its cultures, its landforms and seascapes.

Through the written word are minds taken on a journey of what Albert Maori Kiki would describe as Ten thousand years in a lifetime.

From the fireplace to Facebook, great stories are being told that need to be preserved. The Crocodile Prize and the Anthology serve as a repository of contemporary PNG culture and experiences.

The Crocodile Prize Anthology is also an historical source document from which future generations of Papua New Guineans can learn from the experiences of their forbears.

In 2016 the Crocodile Prize and Anthology seek the support of everyone who calls PNG home or has benefited from the abundance of this beautiful nation.

And so if you are hearing this calling from the forested mountains to the lowland plains and across the coral seas, I hope you may be able to raise your hand in support of the Crocodile Prize.

Please contact the chairman of the Crocodile Prize Organising Committee, Baka Bina via email here, should you wish to assist in this quest to preserve PNG's stories.
Irish Water has warned that members of the public are being targeted by an online scam.

They say two fake emails are being sent around with the aim of collecting bank details.
A Dublin court has ordered a man wanted in connection with an alleged sex attack on a woman in England to surrender himself to the UK authorities.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested last year on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the British authorities.

His extradition was sought on charges of sexual assault and assault causing harm to a woman.

The alleged incident is said to have occurred at a house in Swindon, Wiltshire in England during the night and early hours of the morning of December 20 and December 21, 2013.

If convicted, the man could face a life sentence.

At today's High Court sitting in Dublin, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly ordered that the man be extradited to the UK.

The man's defence counsel, Anne-Marie Lawlor BL, had objected to his extradition.

Delivering her judgement, Ms Justice Donnelly said there was "no valid objection" to surrendering the man and she made the extradition order, which does not take effect for 15 days.

After the order was made, the court heard that the man, who was on bail, wanted to apply for continuing bail, until the order comes into effect.

Giving evidence, he told the court that he was a native of Ireland who, at the time of the alleged offences, had been living in England for 12 years.

The man was questioned by British police about the alleged offences in February, 2014, the court heard.

That June, he returned to Ireland to look after his parents, he told the court.

Ms Justice Donnelly granted the man bail on an independent surety of 5,000 and his own bond of 2,000.
President Xi Jinping met with his counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Saturday, a week after the lifting of international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

The Chinese leader is the first head of state of the six-country bloc that negotiated the historic deal to visit Iran.

Mr Rouhani said the meeting marked the beginning of an important era in Iran-China relations, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The visit was the first by a Chinese president in 14 years, official Iranian media reported.

Today we discussed the strategic relationship between both countries, setting up a comprehensive 25-year plan and also promoting bilateral relations of up to $600bn (555.6bn) over the next 10 years, Rouhani said.

The two countries signed 17 documents and letters of intent, IRNA reported, including treaties on judicial, commercial and civil matters. Long-term contracts in the energy and mining sectors were also discussed, Rouhani said.

Iran is seeking to attract $50bn (46.3bn) annually in foreign investment for the countrys ailing $400bn economy.

China is Irans biggest trade partner, purchasing oil from Iran while sanctions over the countrys nuclear program blocked U.S. and European competitors from the market.

Trade between the two countries stood at some $52bn in 2014, before the plunge in oil prices.

The US and European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions and released billions in assets after international inspectors concluded Iran had complied with the agreement to dismantle much of its nuclear program.

Separately, China also announced that it is targeting further cuts in crude steel production capacity by as much as 150 million tons and large-scale reductions in coal output as part of supply-side measures aimed at curbing overcapacity and excess labor in state-owned industries.

The country has lowered steel production by about 90 million tons in recent years and will push to cut a further 100 million to 150 million tons, while strictly controlling steel capacity increases and halting new coal mine approvals, according to a statement on the Chinese governments website, citing a State Council meeting last Friday chaired by Premier Li Keqiang. No time line was mentioned.

China has vowed in the past to curb capacity in industries such as coal and steel as the worlds second-largest economy slows amid a shift towards consumer-led growth.

Bloomberg
Heineken scooped the large business category award at the ceremony in Corks Clarion Hotel attended by 250 or so of the citys business leaders, while family business J Barter Travel picked up the medium category award.

Cork Business Association (CBA) awards committee chair James OSullivan commended the winners and the calibre of the finalists.

There was a huge amount of competition this year and all the shortlisted companies should be extremely proud. J Barter Travel is celebrating an incredible 150 years in business.

Over four generations, the Barter family business has managed to continue to thrive and grow, said Mr OSullivan.

In 1983 Heineken International acquired all the assets of Murphys Brewery, resulting in a new lease of life for the brewery and protecting its valued traditions for the future.

Heinekens involvement and work within the Cork community to promote Cork Inc has been commendable.

They employ more than 200 people in the greater Cork area and provide 550 jobs nationwide, and are currently working with BAM to provide a new 6,000- seat events centre for the city, he said.

The other shortlisted entries included Brennans Cookshop, Kennys Jewellers, and TW Murray & Co in the medium category.

Bus Eireann, The River Lee Hotel, and Cork Convention Bureau were the other finalists in the large category.

The awards dinner also marked CBA president Claire Nashs final annual gala in the role.

The Cork Business of the Year Awards are sponsored by OCallaghan Properties and the Irish Examiner.

Entries for the 2016 awards are now being accepted by CBA.
The housewife in the kitchen is an endangered species, according to the organisers of Green Week in Berlin, the international exhibition for the food, agricultural and horticultural industries, which ended yesterday.

Some 1,660 exhibitors from 65 countries, including Ireland, attended the event which attracted more than 400,000 visitors from around the world.

Since being first held in 1926, Green Week has hosted close to 85,000 exhibitors from 128 countries who presented their wide-ranging products to over 32m trade visitors and the general public.

Over those 90 years, the event has seen dramatic changes in food production, marketing and consumer attitudes.

This year it drew attention to the growing trend of consumers cooking less.

The everyday world of consumers is unstructured.

They are pressed for time and constantly on the move.

This all has a significant influence on their cooking and eating habits.

Only one third of the 29-49 age group in Germany eat their midday meals at home, and only four out of every 10 children aged between three and five have lunch at home.

Apart from the time aspect, there is frequently little motivation to cook a meal.

A recent study revealed only 34% of German consumers now cook regularly, and 42% of them hardly cook at all.

But an increasing number of those who cook regularly are choosing high-quality food.

Germanys experience of fewer people cooking their own food is not an exception, as the findings of a consumer attitudes study conducted by PERIscope for Bord Bia revealed last year.

It found that the majority of adults across Ireland and Britain continue to eat their lunch at home.

But in Britain there has been a 5% increase in those eating at work since 2013.

A growing trend was noted in people buying their lunches more often, both in going out to eat and in bringing something back to the office to eat.

Eating out of home has always been more popular in Britain than in Ireland. Some 37% of British adults are now visiting food service outlets weekly, compared to 31% in Ireland.

However, adults in Ireland appear to be eating out with increasing frequency. The type of restaurants frequented varies slightly between the two markets.

Middle-of-the-road restaurants in Britain, such as Chinese, cafe style and pub grub, are showing increasingly popularity, but these outlets are marginally more popular in Ireland.

Adults in Britain are also becoming increasingly more interested in restaurants which provide healthy menu options, showing a 7% increase in 2015.

Eating in a restaurant/pub/cafe remains the most common activity. In fact, this records an increase in weekly incidence for both markets.

Over half of Irish adults now claim to have eaten in a restaurant/pub/cafe in the previous seven days.

In addition to this, the frequency of eating out in Ireland has increased to 2.2 times per week.

Green Week, however, is more than just a showcase for food and drink. It is also a forum for discussing the state of agriculture in the EU and across the world.

Irish farmers would have identified with the focus on the difficult economic pressure on German farmers, which has led to an average decline in incomes of around 35%  with some individual producers suffering a 50% cut.

German Farmers Union president Joachim Rukwied described falls in prices over the past year, especially for pig and dairy farmers, as drastic.

One example that graphically illustrates this fact is that farmers retain just 12 cents from each sausage that they sell.

The Russian embargo alone has cost some 1bn, and this is one of the main reasons for the collapse in agricultural prices.

Despite this current economic crisis our countrys agribusiness is being presented at Green Week as confident, highly competitive and efficient.

With sales totalling some 433bn, it forms an important mainstay of our national economy, he said.

Mr Rukwied, addressing the challenges facing the industry, said political attention and societys appreciation for nutrition, food, agriculture and the cultivated landscape are one aspect.

The other aspect is the economic perspective and, from the viewpoint of many farming families, economic survival.

Currently, we are at a low point, and this applies not only to agricultural markets but also to the entire worldwide structure of the commodity markets.

This has serious consequences for incomes, the creation of value and the future prospects for agriculture in Germany, he said.

Mr Rukwied said the entrepreneurial abilities of farming families to cope with this situation are being seriously challenged, and in some cases too much is being asked of them.

At the present time the social and economic appreciation of good, sustainable agriculture are two diametrically opposed aspects.

Resolving, or at least mitigating this contradiction, is a task that must be tackled jointly by farming families, agricultural policy, the food industry, the food trade and consumers.

Failure to do so would deprive agriculture and rural areas of the basis for earning a living, he said.

Mr Rukwied said the refugee crisis, growing international tensions and climate change have placed the social debate about agriculture and food in a different framework, but have not removed it from the agenda.

For this reason change remains the key word for the domestic market. What is needed are the implementation of social demands in line with market requirements, and new trends in demand.

Farming families are prepared to make these changes, and they want to play their part in structuring such changes, developing them further and ensuring that they are viable.

We are ready to meet the changes, but this means that we need added value and we expect an appreciation of our worth, he said.
ON New Years Day, 1916, Ireland was involved in what John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, had described as a test to search mens souls. That test was the war being waged to decide the future of Europe.

As the year began, Irishmen serving in the ranks of the British and imperial armed forces were fighting on the battlefields of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They were also fighting in the skies above those battlefields and on the high seas.

Since Britain had declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, 158,900 British servicemen had died and countless others had been horrendously injured. Thousands of Irish servicemen were among those casualties and every town and parish in the country had lost someone in the war. As 1916 dawned, families were struggling to come to grips with their losses.

In his message to the armed forces on Christmas Day, 1915, King George V said: Another year is drawing to a close as it began, in toil, bloodshed and suffering and I rejoice to know that the goal to which you are striving draws nearer into sight. Sadly, he was wrong. As 1916 dawned, the stalemate continued on the Western Front, with no end in sight. At sea, the royal navy was maintaining its economic blockade of Germany. Although the German high seas fleet remained at its bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, German U-Boats were waging an effective campaign against British merchant shipping.

Fighting continued, even as people in Ireland were marking New Years Day: 158 British servicemen died that day. Among them was Private Timothy Brosnahan, of the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards. He was the son of Michael and Ellen Brosnahan, of Churchtown, Buttevant, Co Cork. Private Patrick Donegan, a native of Dublin and member of the 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, also died. Donegan was one of 252,000 Allied servicemen  including 4,000 Irishmen  who died in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which was drawing to a close that January with victory for the Ottoman Empire.

A British army First World War recruiting meeting at St Patricks Street, Cork, on October1, 1915

Having suffered such high casualties and with the number of volunteers diminishing, the British government was forced to ensure that the army would be kept at the required strength. A military service bill was introduced in parliament that January.

This legislation provided for the conscription of single men aged 18 to 41. The inclusion of Ireland in the provisions of the bill was considered, but, after much heated debate, the government decided against it.

When their decision became public on January 4, John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party welcomed it, but Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionists were outraged. They said they considered the exclusion of Ireland to be an insult and humiliation to the loyal and patriotic population of the country and an abandonment of the principle of equality of sacrifice in time of war on the part of His Majestys subjects in the United Kingdom. Redmond, however, was happy that Ireland was already playing its part in the war. In January, 1916, he said that 90,000 men had already volunteered and he was confident that more would do so.

The motives of Irishmen who enlisted in the British armed forces varied. Some did so out of patriotism, more for economic reasons. Others responded to the appeals made by politicians, or were influenced by the call to fight for the freedom of small nations.

Some joined out of a sense of adventure. Among those was an 18-year-old native of Killorglin, Co Kerry, by the name of Thomas Bernadine Barry. After the war, Barry would join the IRA and win fame as the leader of the West Cork Flying Column. In his autobiography, he stated that I was not influenced by the lurid appeal to fight to save Belgium or small nations. I knew nothing about nations, large or small. I went to the war for no other reason than that I wanted to see what war was like, to get a gun, to see new countries and to feel a grown man.

Artillery of the Irish Division marching past King George V, during an inspection parade, in October, 1915.

In the weeks following the outbreak of the war, the thousands of Irishmen who enlisted were put in one of three divisions raised in Ireland for the New Armies being formed by Lord Kitchener, the British secretary of state for war.

The 10th (Irish) Division was formed in August, 1914, and placed under the command of Lt Gen Bryan Mahon, a native of Co Galway.

Comprised of Irish nationalists, it took part in the landing at Suvla Bay, on the Gallipoli Peninsula, on the night of August 6, 1915. This was the final attempt by British forces to break the deadlock on the peninsula, but it, too, failed.

In September, 1915, the division was moved to Salonika. On December 6 to 12, it took part in the battle of Kosturino, where it was defeated by the Bulgarian Army and it would spend the next few months refitting and preparing for its next battle.

After the Irish Volunteer movement split in September, 1914, over the issue of taking part in war, thousands of John Redmonds National Volunteers flocked into the ranks of the British Army. These men joined the regiments that formed the 16th (Irish) Division, which had been established in September, 1914.

In December, 1915, the division moved to France, under the command of Major-General William Hickie, and was deployed in the vicinity of Bethune. As the new year dawned, it still hadnt received its baptism of fire.

In Ulster, 13 battalions of Edward Carsons Ulster Volunteer Force moved straight into the 36th (Ulster) Division, when that unit was formed in September 1914. It deployed to France in October, 1915, under the command of Major-General Oliver Nugent, and in January, 1916 it was undergoing intensive training in Abbeville.

For Irishmen serving in the ranks of the British or Imperial armed forces in January, 1916, the war would continue to be a test to search mens souls.

Before the year was out, the men whose soul-searching led them to enlist in the British Army would take part in one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war. Hundreds of Irish sailors serving in the Royal Navy would also find themselves tested in the largest naval battle of the conflict.

However, back home in Ireland, there were those whose soul-searching didnt lead them to enlist in the British armed forces.

Instead, they took part in an armed rebellion to establish an independent Irish republic.

Whether in the trenches of France, on the North Sea or on the streets of Dublin, the actions taken by these individuals, all Irishmen, all volunteers, would ensure that 100 years later the events of 1916 are still inscribed on the hearts and minds of the people of Ireland.

Gerry White is a military historian, and co-editor, with Brendan OShea, of A Great Sacrifice: Cork Servicemen Who Died In The Great War (Echo Publications, 2010), and co-author, with Brendan OShea, of Baptised in Blood: The Formation of the Cork Brigade Of Irish Volunteers 1913-1916 (Mercier Press, 2005) and The Burning of Cork (Mercier Press, 2006).
That gives them some peace, a source close to the family said last night.

Dozens of his friends held a poignant memorial for him at the weekend.

They gathered in Millstreet in north Cork just hours after his death in Cork University Hospital (CUH) on Saturday, and released Chinese lanterns into the night sky in his honour.

They also took to social media sites to express their grief after Alexs family agreed to allow doctors turn off his life support machine in CUH on Saturday with his mother Irena and his sister Nicole at his bedside.

One close friend, who said Alex once saved her life by using CPR, posted a photograph of the gathering on Facebook, and said: Look how much support you had behind you through your hard time.

You fought all you could. Never did I expect this day to be beside you, holding your hand and sharing my goodbyes. We went through hell together but thats what made us better friends. No words can describe how much were going to miss you, you absolute legend.

Friends of Alex Ryan release Chinese lanterns into the night to honour the teenager who died after taking a deadly hallucinogenic drug at a house party in Cork City

Players at Alexs former rugby club in Kanturk also observed a minutes silence in his honour before an underage game on Saturday.

Alex, from Liscahane in Millstreet, a former student of Millstreet Community School, had been in a critical condition since taking the potent hallucinogenic stimulant at a house party in the Greenmount area of Cork city in the early hours of last Tuesday.

He was among six people were rushed to hospital after snorting the deadly substance. While the other five were released from hospital, Alex, 18, remained in critical condition until his life support was turned off on Saturday. Its understood four patients in Ireland and the UK benefited from his organs.

Gerard Banks, who came upon the party goers at around 4am last Tuesday, and who described horrific scenes, including seeing blood-spattered party goers behaving erratically, said the events of the last week have had a deep effect on him. My heart goes out to the people and family who were affected. Lets get behind and support these families in their time of need and make sure no other families have to experience this, he said.

North Cork TD Aine Collins described it as hugely tragic.

People are just so traumatised. Its horrific for everyone involved, she said.

In an ideal world, it would be best if everybody stayed aware from all drugs. But we dont live in an ideal world.

This serves as a warning to people of the dangers of drugs, particularly the newer forms that are being produced.

Gardai and medical experts initially believed the group had ingested, 2C-B, after some of the party-goers told them that was the drug they thought they had taken.

Alex Ryan

However, the results of toxicology tests, which emerged on Friday, confirmed they had consumed 25I-NBOMe, or N-bomb  a synthetic derivative of the 2C family of drugs.

Sources said 25I-NBOMe is highly dangerous, particularly when taken in powder form, as it was at the Cork house party. The drug was linked to the hospitalisations of six UCD students in May 2014. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which highlighted the dangers of 25I-NBOMe in a risk assessment in 2014, has also linked the drug to four deaths.

The incident prompted the HSE to issue specific warnings last week about the dangers of the 2C family of psychedelic designer drugs  whose street names include N-bomb, Smiles, Solaris, 25-I, INB-Meo, and Cimbi-5  which can be sold in liquid, powder, and tablet form.

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, it said.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan led attacks on Fianna Fail, saying their claim of responsibility for the economic recovery was akin to Comical Ali claiming victory in Iraq when the tanks were coming into Baghdad.

Mr Noonan also said there was not a hope of voters giving Fine Gael a majority in the election.

Promises of 600 new gardai, tax equalisation for the self employed, the abolition of USC over a five-year period, a second free pre-school year, and increases in the state pension were among the pledges that voters will hear, delegates were told.

Several ministers reiterated Fine Gaels promise to overhaul the welfare system. Outlining the main change planned, if the party is returned, junior finance minister Simon Harris said: Working parents with two children will benefit by more than 1,500 per year under Fine Gaels plans to replace family income supplement with a new working family payment.

"Well offer every parent working at least 15 hours per week a better off at work guarantee and ensure they earn at least 11.75 per hour. This will be the biggest shake-up in social welfare policy in a generation.

Mr Noonan took issue with Fianna Fail laying claim to being part of the recovery:

This claim reminds me of Comical Ali in Baghdad claiming victory while the American tanks rolled in behind him.

Mr Noonan said Fine Gaels plans would, by 2020, move 70,000 long-term unemployed people into a job, and cut the national unemployment rate to 6%.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar said Fine Gael would introduce the next phases of universal healthcare, including free GP care for all children, a scheme to lower medicine costs, a focus on managing chronic disease outside of hospitals and better care provision to keep people in their own homes for longer.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said Fine Gael would continue recruiting gardai at a rate of at least 600 a year until we get the strength of the force back up to 14,000 and beyond.
In mid-1972, while listening to Radio Wewak, he heard a Toksave from the Commanding Officer of Boram Corrective Institution that there would be a recruitment drive for high school leavers.

This caused much ire and annoyance in his parents who said they had struggled to pay his school fees and he must look for a job instead of lazing around and doing nothing.

He was reluctant to take up the offer and decided to remain at Urip village near Dagua Catholic Mission.

AFTER completing Form 4 (equivalent to Grade 10) at the Marist Brothers run St Xaviers High School on Kairuru Island, East Sepik, in 1971, my father Joseph Muso Sigimet was accepted for teacher training at Kaindi Teachers College, near Wewak, the following year.

As told to me by my father, Chief Inspector Joseph Muso Sigimet (retired)

Interested persons were requested to report to Boram with their Form 4 certificate.

The announcement sparked Josephs interest. He left for Wewak, dropping off at Dagua market and walking all the way to Boram. After his certificate was sighted by the Commanding Officer, he was told to go back and await further notices on the radio.

In less than a month, sometime in June, he heard on Radio Wewak that he and other successful applicants were to report to Boram.

When he got to Boram, he was requested to sign an Application for Entry into Corrective Institutions - Personal Particulars.

He was taken on at Boram as a new recruit, working there until early January 1973.

At that time, he left for the Bomana Staff Training Centre near Port Moresby for six months training with the rank of Assistant Correctional Officer.

There, he was one of four Form 4 trainees who passed the Cadet Officer Psychological Test for handling senior roles.

Peter Debesa from Dagua, East Sepik, was the Deputy Commander of the Bomana Correctional Service Staff Training Centre. The Correctional Service Commissioner was John Purcell, an Australian.

The Correctional Service Officer Cadet training was supposed to be for three years but, because of the urgent need to get indigenous Papua New Guineans into the public service, the training was shortened to six months.

After six months officer cadet training at Bomana, Joseph with the other officer cadets went to Erap DPI station in Lae for a three months animal husbandry course as part of gaol management training. At that time, many gaols in the then territory had farms.

It was at Erap where he heard news of the declaration of self-government by Chief Minister Michael Somare. The animal husbandry training ended in December 1973.

When he returned to Bomana, he was informed that he with the other 12 cadet officers had been selected for a three months middle management course in Australia.

In February 1974, the group left for Sydney via Brisbane on a Trans Australian Airways jet out of Port Moresby. They were met at Sydneys Mascot Airport by their course director, Dr Peter MacLaren, a New Zealander.

Do not think for one minute that I am new to your people, Dr MacLaren reassured them. Do not see me as a foreigner. I once worked in Madang as an anthropologist. I know your every custom and your way of life.

They received their settling-in allowance of $200 for each member, which was a lot of money at that time. The money was for rental, meals, stationery, bus fares and living costs.

In his first days at Sydney, my father was at a hotel in Neutral Bay. He later moved to a guest house owned by a Russian immigrant family in Neutral Bay.

For the theory part of their training, he with the other members of the group found themselves at the International Training Institute (formerly ASOPA) at Middle Head.

To travel to ITI, he got on a bus at Neutral Bay and travelled to Neutral Bay Junction. He changed buses at Neutral Bay Junction and travelled to Mosman Junction. He changed buses again for the final leg of the trip to Middle Head.

The three month (February-May) middle management course at the International Training Institute was specifically designed for the Correctional Service. Some of the subjects were law, psychology, management, drugs and the court system.

During lectures, he recalled a course lecturer saying: At the moment, the country is not facing any problems with marijuana but in future you will face a lot of problems.

While at ITI, some members of the group took part in a local suburban rugby league competition. They also visited a number of famous landmarks, gaols and rehabilitation centres including Long Bay, Silverwater, Parramatta, Goulburn and Newcastle Rehabilitation Centre.

They also visited a winery at Newcastle (see picture), Parliament House in Canberra, the Australian National Museum and the Australian Mint.

After returning from Australia, he was given six weeks leave to visit his parents. He graduated after returning from leave with the rank of Correctional Officer Grade 1 and was posted to Buimo Gaol in Lae in September 1974 to take up the position of Deputy Gaol Commander. He was made Gaol Commander in 1975.

After Buimo, Joseph went on to serve at Kavieng, Lakiemata, Beon, Vanimo, Laiagam, Giligili and Keravat gaols, mostly in senior management roles as Gaol Commander or Deputy Gaol Commander.

For his commitment and service to Correctional Service, he was awarded two independence medals, the first in 1975 and the second in the early 1990s.

He served from 1973 to 1993, reaching the rank of Chief Inspector within the service.

I dont recall ever meeting Joseph, but I was Deputy Principal of the International Training Institute, also lecturing in communications, at the time he was there - KJ
Fresh testimony obtained by the Irish Examiner, relating to the handling of the case involving the disabled victim, between 1989 and 2009, roundly rejects claims by the HSE that such an apology was given.

One of the whistleblowers involved in the case, said they attended a meeting with the HSE in early December, but was adamant no apology was offered.

There was no apology made by the HSE to my client for the HSEs failings in her care nor was there any admission of HSE failings in this case expressed to my client.

My client was merely informed that recommendations from a report into her care had been released that day. This was the purpose of the meeting and once this had taken place, the meeting ended. It was a very brief meeting lasting less than 10 minutes, said the whistleblower.

Last week, the Irish Examiner revealed how the HSE finally accepted liability for failings in standards of care involving the woman who suffered horrendous abuse at the foster home.

The HSE has attempted to claim both to this newspaper and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that an apology was given, but this has been strongly contested by not one but two separate sources close to the victim.

PAC vice-chair John Deasy has accused the HSE of concocting a version of what happened. He said he had been made aware of the exact the tenor and content of the meetings.

It didnt occur. Ive had it checked out, he said, claiming the HSE has concocted a version of what happened.

PAC vice-chair John Deasy

It is understood one of the social workers involved has made a statement to the gardai accusing HSE employees of criminal negligence for the leaving the victim in the home for 13 years after fears of abuse were first raised.

This warning followed a raising of alarm from UK authorities that another former resident in the house alleged sexual assault by one of the foster parents.

Last Thursday, the PAC referred the matter to the office of the Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan and the office of Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

The Director of Public Prosecutions has already decided against pressing charges in relation to five garda investigation files dealing with alleged negligence and abuse in the home.

One of the foster parents was alleged to have raped victims, who were unable to speak, with instruments.

Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan

Over two decades the individual, it is alleged, suffered savage sexual, physical and financial abuse including being sexually assaulted with a blunt instrument resulting in damage to her internal organs.

Between 2010 and 2014 the HSE commissioned three investigations costing almost 300,000, while the Department of Health last year commissioned a senior counsel review.

The HSE has repeatedly said it cannot publish its investigations due to ongoing Garda investigations, hampered by the fact the alleged victim cannot speak.
BIG data. The internet of things. The cloud. These buzz words are abstract concepts to most of us but they power the turbo-charged technological world we now live in, with almost every electronic transaction we carry out resulting in a data record being created and stored somewhere.

Technology giant Intel is one of the companies at the forefront of the move towards a device-centred society and driving this part of its operations is Cork woman Margaret Burgraff. She is visiting the city this week in her role as chair of the Industry Advisory Board at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, a joint initiative between UCC, UCD, NUIG, and DCU, which was established in 2013 by Science Foundation Ireland.

In her position as vice president and general manager at Intel Services Division, Burgraff is a passionate advocate for technology and the benefits it can bring.

As human beings we have been constantly evolving anyway and I think throughout the history of time people have always been concerned about machines taking jobs. I dont think it is something we should be afraid of; our personal security and privacy are always things we are concerned about but a lot of data analytics research will actually lead to humans having longer and healthier lives. We are going to have huge sustaining issues with regards to food, water, and natural resources. All of this technology will lead to solutions to those problems, she says.

Burgraff grew up in a family of six on a farm in Berrings, Co Cork, attending UCC and working in Apple in Cork before moving to the firms headquarters in Cupertino, California in 1998, as part of the launch of the first iMac. She rose quickly through the ranks, joining Intel as director of quality for the companys phone and tablet products in 2011. In the US, she found a culture that was a lot more welcoming to an ambitious young woman with a desire to succeed.

Im Irish to the core and very proud of that but I noticed a huge difference when I went to the United States. I used to think these people are bragging about themselves, theyre talking about something thats common sense and acting as though its rocket science. I realised, this is American culture, and this is an American company, and if Im to be successful, Id better learn what Im good at and Id better be the one out there talking about it. If I dont believe Im good enough to lead a team, nobodys going to follow me. We do have a cultural thing in Ireland that it is not good to brag about yourself, so you have to wait for other people to identify you as being good.

I tell her it reminds me of a common refrain from my youth about girls who were seen as too confident: Shes full of herself.

Yes, Ive heard through back channels that people have indicated that about me  too much success, who does she think she is, she grew up on that farm in Berrings, almost as if thats where I should stay. But I dont allow those negative forces hold me back.

Burgraff, a mother of two young boys, is highly aware of the gender and diversity gap in technology and is strongly committed to Intels efforts to address this.

When you look at women being in control of the finances and being the bigger consumers, especially for electronic purchases, it makes sense that we have more womens voices in the room contributing to the solutions of the future.

A lack of diversity in leadership in all roles, including politics, has led to far more testosterone-based decision making which hasnt necessarily led to a world that has more empathy and compassion. We need to step up and take what is ours too. A lot of us, as females, we kind of sit back and wait to be asked to take a seat at the table rather than putting ourselves up there and leaning in to take it.

Does Burgraff ever tire about her gender being a constant talking point?

Actually, I see so many women struggle that its very important for me to keep shoving my neck out. I know when I do so it can lead to someone wishing Id pull it back in, but its important now that I have a little bit more visibility that I do it for the next generation, so its not as hard for them. Being the only female in the room isnt necessarily a bad thing, because you do have that visibility, and I wouldnt be where I am today if I werent aware there were advantages and disadvantages.

As a successful and high-profile figure in Silicon Valley, what advice would Burgraff have for any young men and women aspiring to a career in technology?

First of all, have courage. Know what you want, what you dont like, and be true to yourself. Always keep learning and dont be afraid to ask for help from others  thats the greatest form of flattery. Know what youre good at and promote that. Keep challenging yourself  I still have that voice inside me about not succeeding sometimes, but I just turn down the volume.

Burgraff is also eager to give something back to Ireland, and as well as her role as chair of the Industry Advisory Board at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, she is on the board of the Irish Technology Leadership Group, which promotes connections between Ireland and Silicon Valley.

I love my Irish roots and I feel a responsibility to reach back. Ireland has huge advantages  its small enough to test something but big enough to prove something. I see a lot of entrepreneurs coming out of Ireland.

Does she ever see herself returning?

I never saw myself moving out of Ireland to begin with. I am in a constant mode, even now as a fortysomething, of opening doors and creating opportunities for myself. I am open to any possible future. Who knows? Im only just beginning. Im not done yet.
STABILITY, recovery, and growth. Expect these slogans to be stuffed into letterboxes, voiced over the airwaves, and repeated ad nauseam by Fine Gael in the weeks ahead.

With an election looming, the Fine Gael faithful met over the weekend, with leader Enda Kenny rallying the party grassroots and parliamentarians.

We learned little new at the two-day event at CityWest Dublin, but that was the plan. Its about the message now and the ard fheis was primarily about putting Mr Kenny at the centre of that during his televised speech on Saturday night, one of the only times he wont be surrounded in public by quizzing media before polling day.

Its going to be a low-key campaign, especially with the dark evenings which will be short. It will be fought on the airwaves and simple in message, confided one minister privately.

In between coffees and talks on policy, election candidates smiled and did their best to seem interested. But they are eager to get the bit between their teeth, and many left directly after Mr Kennys speech on Saturday to return to constituencies.

So whats different for Fine Gael since before the last general election? This time, instead of Kennys five point-plan, its about a three-point, sorry, three-step plan: To create more jobs, make work pay, and improve public services. But, as has been said, this will be no coronation for the Mayo man  despite many predicting he will likely be crowned Taoiseach once again.

Unlike the aftermath of the 2011 election where Fine Gaels Brian Hayes said parties were fighting over the carcass of Fianna Fail, the outcome of this election is relatively difficult to predict. Parties could end up carving up chunks of votes borrowed by Labour last time. With Labours support falling, the question now is how will Fine Gael make up the numbers for government if its intended coalition partner has been left with much fewer TDs.

Fine Gaels Brian Hayes

Two polls last weekend highlighted Fine Gael and Labours predicament. The Red C poll saw Fine Gael fall by two points to 30%, while the Behaviour and Attitudes poll left the party unchanged at 31%. Labour was worse off, with the junior coalition partner with just 6%. A joint score of 36% would leave the coalition with just 57 seats, well short of that needed to control a new Dail.

This is Kennys problem. Despite talking up changes that might emerge as the new year began and as pay packets tickened a little, this has not come to fruition.

Debate is now turning to what will happen now. The Taoiseach was quick to dismiss speculation at the weekend that Fine Gael has begun secret talks with Independent TDs about coalition options after the election.

As polling day draws closer, the unpalatable question though for Fine Gael will have to be addressed. Lacking the numbers for government, they will have to look at alternatives and the option of support from a number of Independent TDs or even a completely different alternative besides Labour. Other options are to go in as a minority government or with a small majority, likely leading to a very short-term administration.

Fine Gael TDs know this too. A number used the ard fheis to warn about this. Dublin South Central TD Catherine Byrne said there could be a second election in six months time.

Dublin South Central TD Catherine Byrne

Ministers, privately and publicly, are now realistic and concede Fine Gael and Labour will obviously not come close to the joint 113 seats or combined 68% of the vote last time.

Speaking to UTV Ireland, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said the outgoing coalition was more likely to just make the 50% mark.

I believe on the day we will be in and around the 79 seats required to form the Government. I dont believe there will be any surplus figures at the end of the day. The target will be to reach 79, that in itself will be extremely difficult, he said.

Irish voters did their rioting and protest at the ballot box in 2011 by throwing out Fianna Fail. The redrawing of constituencies, particularly in Dublin, the midlands and the mid-west, makes the outcome even less predictable this time.

Election slogans and statements about the future spilled out of CityWest on the weekend, as you would expect. The Fine Gael mantra of lets keep the recovery going hopes to move on from the austerity that has haunted this coalition.

But voters are likely to remember the water charges, which brought support for the Government to an all-time low in 2014 in the mid-term local elections. The sense of injustice when medical card entitlements were taken off families, as a saving measure, will also not be easily forgotten.

Coupled with this is the sense of hubris which has hung around Fine Gael like a bad smell, especially during the garda whistleblower scandal as well as the way in which the former garda commissioner was dispensed with by the Taoiseach.

Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan

Mr Kenny, fond of an old blunder or two, will likely be shielded by his handlers during the election campaign and kept out of view and away from TV debates.

But Fine Gael, looking for that second term, will have to answer questions about the creaking health service, the housing crisis, homelessness and fresh concerns about the global economy.

Its promises to cut taxes, including the USC, have also been the subject of criticism and warnings from the European Commission among others.

Mr Kenny is hoping for a short election campaign, with the likely date to be announced next week. But he and Fine Gael can expect an awful lot of questions and frustrations as they bring their slogans and promises to the doorsteps of Ireland.
Enda Kenny did it. He managed it. He got through his party conference without controversy, without a gaffe, without incident.

Well almost.

On Saturday night, thousands of delegates queued for over an hour to get into the main hall at the Citywest Hotel to hear his vision for the future.

It was some contrast to Fianna Fail the week previous, who at the same hotel had to close the bar for a short time in order to ensure the hall was full for their leaders address.

Endas most impressive feat, however, was that he managed to speak for an entire half an hour live on national TV and radio without saying anything.

He certainly wasnt about to reveal the date of the general election, as some had hoped.

Having entered the hall to the sounds of Fleetwood Macs Dont Stop, the Glorious Leaders ambitions for his speech were quite clear.

Thankfully, in terms of character and morals, Enda is no Bill Clinton (who also used the song on his campaigns), but at least the former president could deliver a speech.

Give nothing away, say nothing controversial and get through it as quickly as possible without putting people to sleep.

Kennys wooden oratory skills meant even a good speech would struggle to land effectively, but the insipid address meant even die-hard supporters struggled to stay with him.

So bland was the speech, Enda did his best to make Peter Mathews seem exciting.

Fine Gaels Five-Point Plan is now the Three-Step Strategy

Surprisingly, he didnt even take a shot at Sinn Fein once, which is always good for getting the troops riled up. A sign that a deal with Sinn Fein is not really that far-fetched, perhaps?

Throughout his address, there were 27 mentions of recovery, 25 mentions of the economy, and 24 mentions of plan.

It would seem that Enda and Fine Gael had learned some lessons from 2011 and over-promising. The Five-Point Plan is now a Three-Step Strategy, the economy will continue to grow but not as much next year, and there will be no return to boom and bust and so on and so on.

But then again, maybe they havent.

In side sessions throughout the day on Saturday, we heard promises to continue to cut taxes. We heard a promise to create 200,000 more jobs. Then further promises to cut inheritance taxes were leaked to the biggest selling Sunday newspaper yesterday.

All sounds very auction politics to me.

But throughout the weekend, a strange mood swept through CityWest. On one hand, the party knows it is heading back into Government, but it realises it will be reduced in numbers and therefore weaker.

Undoubtedly, the atmosphere was more positive than many previous Fine Gael gatherings when the party was in Opposition, and couldnt help but shake that smell of being in opposition.

A confidence that at times bordered on arrogance could be sensed, even in the highly controlled messaging from the partys leading figures.

Time and time again we heard the rather patronising tone of ministers and TDs tell us that it was the peoples efforts which saved the country.

Reward us for your hard work is how it came across, which is a rather bizarre message.

Gerry Reynolds TD, Roscommon, with councillor and general election candidate Josepha Madigan, Childrens Minister James Reilly, and Olivia Mitchell TD

But it was also a tale of the two Michaels for those gathered.

On one hand you had another outpouring of gushing appreciation for Michael Noonan, the veteran finance minister.

He was greeted to a standing ovation on Saturday morning by delegates eager to show support to the former leader just days after the death of his brother and his recent illness.

But Noonans stock is very high in Fine Gael and when you consider the wilderness years he had to endure after his disastrous stint as leader, his comeback is simply remarkable.

During a valuable contribution on childcare, Dublin South Central TD Catherine Byrne in her most non-Fine Gael accent, went off script to eulogise that great man.

Speaking from the back of the main stage, while on national TV, with the man himself sitting directly in front of her, Byrne said Noonan had grabbed the country by the scruff of our necks and saved us from eternal damnation and has led us to everlasting glory.

Well, not quite, but almost.

But the other Michael to loom over the conference wasnt even there.

Michael Lowry, a once darling of the party who has been dogged by adverse tribunal findings and repeated run-ins with the Revenue, also featured heavily on the lips of delegates.

Would the party turn to the bold Michael for support to prop up a Government if need be? Enda was asked about a possible Lowry deal by the pesky media, only to fudge his answer.

You see the Lowry force is strong with Kenny. They were in Cabinet together, they remain friends.

Enda joked at Phil Hogans birthday party about Lowry rejoining in 2010.

Last year, I revealed how Lowry slipped a note to the Taoiseach in the Dail to get his not bad looking either associate Valarie OReilly reappointed to a state board.

But most importantly, Endas chief of staff, Mark Kenneally, who earns 156,380 a year, was Lowrys special adviser back in the day.

We have not heard the last of this, I feel.
EU economics experts still worry Ireland is wasting the economic upturn and fear the Government is putting a return to power ahead of the national interest.

The latest figures show that the countrys debt as a proportion of its GDP is falling faster than anywhere else in the EU.

It fell from 112.4% in the third quarter of 2015 to 99.4%  bringing us under 100% for the first time since the crash  the total debt now stands at 204.2bn.

This should be good news, but then the experts look at house prices rising the third fastest in the EU  and worry.

Ireland is always an outlier, defying predictions, not behaving like any of the other EU economies.

And while Ireland points to the highest growth in the EU, others think it is a natural

rebound after a crash.

App to predict market crashes

Nature can hold the answer to the most complex of problems, including stock market crashes, a joint research project between NUI Galway and Bangalore in India has proven.

Using research on forecasting natural disasters, they produced 16 indicators they believed should warn that a crash was highly likely.

They tested it against every major crash in American market history and found nine of their indicators would have given fair warning.

They have now developed a web-app to show basic market trends around the globe. Those involved are Dr Srinivasa Raghavendra, lecturer at the JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics, Galway; Prof Vishwesha Guttal, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Nikunj Goel, physics doctoral student at Yale University, and Quentin Hoarau, masters student from Ecole Normale Superieure of Cachan, France.

Be on guard for funny money

You still need to look, feel and tilt your 20 and 50 notes to make sure they are not forged, warns the European Central Bank.

They took 445,000 counterfeits off the market in the second half of last year, this was 2% fewer than in the first six months.

But, they say, the number is in fact very low when you consider there are more than 18bn in circulation.

Commission confident over Apple deal

The mood around the outcome of the European Commissions investigation into the tax deal between Ireland and Apple has changed perceptibly over recent weeks.

Danish Competition Commissioner, Margarita Vestager, and her team are looking a lot more confident, even to the point of holding off their decision until after the general election.

The publically unannounced private meeting between Ms Vestager and Apple chief executive Tim Cook suggests that the worlds biggest IT company is taking matters into its own hands and dealing directly with the Commission.

Some suspect its to see what kind of sum Ms Vestager would find acceptable for Apple to do a Google-style payout to the Irish exchequer  wonder if such a windfall would be kept

secret until after the election also.

Tracking data of fishing vessels

The EUs joint research council has come up with a new tool which will show precisely how much fishing is taking place around member states coasts, by charting where boats are clustered.

It has produced maps showing all the details for 2014-15 thanks to tracking data of fishing vessels using the worldwide automatic identification system to identify and locate vessels.

The tool uses around 150m positions from EU fishing vessels longer than 15 metres.

They say it is not sufficient to control illegal fishing but will help with management strategies to boost blue growth.

Entrepreneurship call from Kelly

Former teacher and MEP for Ireland South, Sean Kelly, has been promoting a parliament report calling for more emphasis on education, SMEs, and entrepreneurship in schools.

He says entrepreneurship should be added to all school curriculums so students can learn practical business skills, and be inspired to start their own companies, with the help of

local mentors.

He points out that the percentage of unemployed young people below the age of 25 in Ireland fell to 19.4% in November  the first time it dipped below 20% since 2009, and down a third from a high of 31% in 2012.

EC bailout role under spotlight

While the focus of Irelands bailout has been on how the country has used the money to pay its creditors, tomorrow promises a different perspective when the European Court of Auditors reviews how the European Commission did.

Ireland and seven other countries needed help and this study by the auditors looks at Ireland, Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Portugal, but focusing on how the commission managed the financial assistance programmes.

In Irelands case, the commission borrowed 22.5bn on the markets using the EU budget to guarantee the repayment in case Ireland failed to do so.

The auditors have also examined the commissions co-operation with the ECB and the IMF  the other troika members.

That should be fun, especially if they consider why the Irish loved the IMF so much.

MEPs to investigate emissions scandal

A European Parliament committee of 45 MEPs begin investigating dieselgate next month into who knew Volkswagen and other car makers were cheating on their emissions.

Dublin MEP Nessa Childers pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people die and suffer ill health because of car emissions, especially from diesel.

Ms Childers also asked whether the farce of emissions tests that allowed manufacturersto rig their cars before testing was a testament to the car manufacturing lobby or lack of seriousness with which environmental regulation is implemented by member states.

Just why member states agreed to let the companies test in conditions that were so far removed from the reality of driving on public roads is not on the agenda however.
Sorry, what? Has someone broken Google translate? Lumps of words all stuck together and chewed up, then kind of randomly spat out? No, its worse than that. Its Sarah Palin, who has been allowed in front of a microphone again.

Just when you thought Donald Trumps campaign couldnt get any more horror-show, he wheels her out, unleashing an incoherent gibberish of jingoism, albeit presented slightly more telegenically  ice rink botox and brown fake tan  than an orange faced ranting toupee ever could. Although at least with Trumps raging cab-driver schtick, its a stream of unpleasant consciousness. His fear-mongering hatespeak is at least semi-coherent. Kind of.

With Palin, there is no such consciousness. Just fascist-lite bar room rhetoric, mangled into nonsensical mush. Is she high? Trump, she says, is all about to keep the main thing, the main thing isnt he known for being able to command, fire! Um, yes, if you say so, scary lady.

Obviously I realise its too easy to poke fun at her, to take Mrs Palin out of context, to misunderestimate what shes trying so terribly hard to say. So lets have an unbroken chunk of her endorsement speech, this time focusing on next year when the current US president is leaving the White House.

Here she is, word for word: He packs up the teleprompters and all that hopey, changey stuff and he heads on back to Chicago, where Im sure he can find some community there to organise again. There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, hell be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower. Yes, Barack, he built that, and that says a lot.

Yes, it says that Donald Trump likes paying for buildings with his name stuck on them in giant letters. Obama on the other hand, has not been erecting any towers to himself, because he was been busy reforming healthcare  a sure sign of communism  which means that not all impoverished Americans are forced to operate on each other on the kitchen table with the aid of a sewing kit and the cutlery drawer.

More hopey changey stuff has been being polite to Iran, reforming Wall Street, reforming the domestic economy, reforming school dinners, avoiding scandal more than any president in decades, and vastly improving Americas image abroad. Yet Sarah Palin, fearless shooter of polar bears and wolves from a helicopter, refers to none of this; for her, Obama is a community organiser from Chicago.

And Trump could be the next president, with her endorsement. Imagine  President Trump and Vice President Palin. I like to think of it in terms of an asteroid strike  highly unlikely, but should it happen, utterly catastrophic for the entire planet. Although manufacturers of fake tan and assault rifles would be ecstatic.
Y company gets a constant stream of applications for internships, from transition year students and those at third level. They want to work for us for a week. Two weeks. A month. Three months. Exposure to the glamour, excitement, and pressure of our best-in-class business will  they tell us in their begging emails  set them up for life.

They approach it in quite different ways, which had escaped us until we thought, in the last week, that we should do a little research into it. Transition year, you see, is the least documented social experiment in Ireland. Its all anecdotal. Binary. Yes/no. Black and white. At least as far as parents are concerned.

On the one side is the group who think its a way of postponing the hour when idlers should be exposed for what they are and forced to earn a living for themselves, a year-long excursion into playtime, where teenagers who would be better off with their heads in their homework are allowed to play-act being entrepreneurs or sit in their uncles solicitors firm pretending to be interested in tort.

On the other side is the group of parents who think its the ultimate in maturation. Better than leaving squelched grapes to ferment into good wine, Transition year, as far as this bunch of parents is concerned, facilitates their offspring in becoming rounded and responsible adults. This bunch does an all is changed, changed utterly anthem about transition year. It is wonderful. The breakthrough. The catalyst.

Now, we hate the word stakeholder, because it is a lazy term letting a writer off the hook of specifying the people being written about. That said, it must be noted that teachers and other stakeholders tend to be in lockstep with the parents who think transition year is the best thing since the sliced pan. But they would, wouldnt they? Transition year has to be easier than Leaving Cert year from any teachers point of view.

Lots of highly contrasting opinions, then, but not much in the way of objective measurement of transition year. Its the same with internship, which tends to happen either as part of transition year or when a young person is a third- level student. Lots of opinions. Not that much objective research.

We thought it would be fun to examine our experience with interns, but it turned out to be way more trouble than it was worth, mainly because we have no category under which to keep records of interns. Pay can go under P for Paltry or N for Non-existent. Location happens depending on who, through being ill, injured or giving birth, has left an empty chair. Language is usually English, although we did have a six-month- long visit from a young German woman who would, if required, make phone calls in that language.

We did think of having her call the German speaking clock whenever clients were in the lobby, so that they might overhear and be impressed by our international reach, but we never got around to it. To hell with the speaking clock: That girl chewed up real work like it was going out of style. She was, we agreed, one of two exceptions in that regard. The other was a secondary school student so ethereally beautiful, and gifted with such gentle manners, that it took us a week to realise that she not only wrote perfect prose, but went through tasks like the old PacMan: Gobble gobble, gobble.

Other than those, I have to tell you, our experience with free slavery provided by students has been akin to the curates egg: Good in parts, bad in parts. The good ones, whenever we could, we sucked into our permanent staff. The bad ones we talk about through gritted teeth and with gestures.

Do you remember the one with the hair? we ask, instinctively shaping ourselves to self-consciously toss our locks in imitation, even if were bald. Do we remember? shrill the others. Will we ever forget? She was always rushing out to answer the door if someone famous was arriving, but her posterior was chair-glued if a client who is not a household name came to the door. Plus, she thought loading the dishwasher was beneath her.

In amid all the generalised gossip, one factor emerged which was interesting. The initial contact point with our company was a surprisingly accurate predictor of the success of the intern, whether they were students coming from second or third level.

The ones who emailed, phoned, or did in person make contact with one of our younger staff tended to do markedly better  with us, during their internships, in college, during their post-internship year or years and in career terms  than those whose parents did the contacting and who reached out to me or another of our directors. They did better and they sensibly stayed in touch with us.

Why was the initial contact significant? I asked, genuinely puzzled.

OK, heres a teenager whose mother once kind of knew you, a staff member said, in a tone implying that the mother had probably known me back in the day when dinosaurs roamed freely through Montenotte. The mother makes the contact with you.

Whats wrong with the mother making contact with me? Doesnt suggest their kids are filled with get-up-and-go. Oh, come on, Ireland is a small place that operates on contacts. Maybe so, but the kid should be doing the work, not the mammy. These are adults, like? Sixteen, 17-year-olds, and their mammies are making the running for them?

I pointed out that the PacMan girl had been introduced by a parent contacting me. And got shot down. She, I was told, was the shining exception that proves every rule. But for the most part, this informal and invalidated piece of research revealed that the kids who made their own contacts, reached out to people of their own age or slightly older, and sold themselves hard enough for those people to push for them to get an internship, did much better than those whose parents took their placement on as a project.

This is not to suggest that uncaring parents are what every kid needs. Abandonment on the side of a hill in a nappy has its limitations, as a child-rearing approach and is also a bit illegal. But it is to suggest that the capacity to stand back and say go for it yourself is an important gesture of parental empowerment.

Every time we rescue, hover, or otherwise save our children from a challenge, we send a very clear message: that we believe they are incompetent, incapable, and unworthy of our trust, says Jessica Lahey in her wonderful recent book, The Gift of Failure.

Further, we teach them to be dependent on us and thereby deny them the very education in competence we are put here on this earth to hand down. But heres the truth, what research has shown over and over again: Children whose parents dont allow them to fail are less engaged, less enthusiastic about their education, less motivated, and ultimately less successful than children whose parents support their autonomy."
Julia Kloeckner, leader of Merkels Christian Democrats in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, was careful to style her proposal as a Plan A2 rather than a Plan B, adding that the chancellors push for a European solution to a large influx of asylum seekers into the continent was still right.

We want to complement it, she wrote in a paper setting out her position. In the paper, Kloeckner proposed that: On the German-Austrian border, border centres will be set up.
Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, has been under pressure in recent years over its practice of channelling most profits from European clients through Ireland to Bermuda, where it pays no tax on them. In 2013, the company faced a UK parliamentary inquiry after a Reuters probe showed the firm employed hundreds of salespeople in Britain despite saying it did not conduct sales in the country.

Google said the 130m would settle a probe by the British tax authority, which had challenged the companys low tax returns for the years since 2005. It said it had also agreed a basis on which tax in the future would be calculated.
Hilal al-Hilal, a senior official in Syrian president Bashar Assads ruling Baath party, made the comments to state media ahead of talks due to take place in Geneva to work on ending Syrias nearly five-year conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people.

The talks, which were to begin today but will likely be delayed, are part of a UN plan that envisions an 18-month timetable for a political transition.

The Syrian opposition says Assad should have no role in Syrias future, even during a transitional period. Assad, whose family has governed Syria for over four decades, has said he will only step down if voted out.

US secretary of state John Kerry said he was confident the talks would proceed, after he held talks with Gulf Co-operation Council states in Saudi Arabia.

We are confident talks can get going and that the UN representative special envoy, Staffan De Mistura, will be convening people in an appropriate manner for the proximity talks that will be the first meeting in Geneva, he told reporters in Riyadh.

Kerry said major countries would convene after the first round of negotiations.

I wont announce a date, but we all agreed that immediately after completion of the first round of the Syria discussions, the International Syria Support Group will convene, and that will be very shortly, because we want to keep the process moving, he said.

Peace efforts face huge underlying challenges, among them disagreements over president Bashar al-Assads future and worsening relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Tensions between the two regional rivals escalated this month after the Saudi execution of a Shiite Muslim cleric. That triggered an attack by Iranian protesters on the Saudi embassy in Tehran embassy, leading the kingdom to cut diplomatic ties.

None of us are under any illusions that obstacles dont still exist to trying to seek a political settlement in Syria, Kerry said. We know its tough. If it were easy, it would have happened a long time ago.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said his country was working with the US to find ways to remove Assad from power. He downplayed any change in US-Iran relations after an agreement with world powers on Irans nuclear programme led them to lift sanctions.
Among the important matters discussed was the 2016 Simbu for Literary Excellence Program  an annual debate, quiz and literature competition for provincial high and secondary schools  which was started in 2014.

Re-elected president Jimmy Drekore, vice president Jimmy Awagl, treasurer Francis Nii and newly elected secretary Angela Kaupa spent three hours reviewing the achievements and hiccups of 2015 and planning for 2016.

AT its first meeting for 2016 held in the Mt Wilhelm Tourist Hotel last Friday, Simbu Writers Association executives developed strategies for the organisations 2016 activities.

The final program will be presented to the SWA members for endorsement at a general meeting scheduled for Monday 1 February.

This years award event will be held in June atop Papua New Guinea at Mt Wilhelm Secondary School in the shadows of PNGs highest mountain. If things work out okay, we might be honoured to have someone from one of the foreign missions in PNG as guest of honour.

The other important matter discussed was purchasing land at a cost of K20,000. The executive resolved that SWA must make money to sustain its programs in the long term and to do that it must have land of its own on which income generating activities can happen.

The objective is to erect a multi purchase auditorium, an idea that was floated in SWA and Crocodile Prize circles last year.

A temporary place has to be arranged before the arrival of the container of books that Murray Bladwell and his team of Brisbane Rotarians will send us. Given the land shortage in Kundiawa, the executive discussed the possibility of securing mobile storage by placing the container on a wheeled frame.

The executive has resolved that only schools with a library will receive the donated books. No library no books.

Simbu has been selected as the venue for the 2016 highlands think tank quiz and SWA is responsible for event preparation. The executive resolved that the venue should be the Kundiawa Lutheran Day High Schools auditorium.

The production of a biography of prominent Simbus was the other important matter discussed. Many names for insertion were floated at the meeting including musical icon Tom Lari, rugby league legend Bal Numapo and politician Wera Mori.
Asia Malaysia Detains 7 Suspected IS Members Plotting Attacks

Malaysian police detain seven men suspected of being an Islamic State militant cell that was plotting attacks, authorities say.

KUALA LUMPUR  Malaysian police have detained seven men suspected of being an Islamic State militant cell that was plotting attacks, authorities said Sunday.

The seven Malaysians were detained over the past three days in a follow-up operation after the Jan. 15 detention of a man who was planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said.

Among the items seized were 30 types of bullets, jihad books and Islamic State flags and videos, he said.

All the suspects are members of the same [terror] cell, which is responsible for planning to launch terror attacks in strategic locations across Malaysia, Khalid said in a statement.

The suspect thought to be the cell leader is a 31-year-old assistant housekeeping manager at a hotel in southern Johor state, Khalid said. He said one of the suspects, whom he didnt identify, received orders from Bahrom Naim, an Indonesian based in Syria who had a role in planning the Jakarta attacks.

Malaysia raised its security alert level following the attacks on Jan. 14 in neighboring Indonesia.

More than 150 people suspected of having ties to the Islamic State group have been detained in Malaysia over the past two years, including some accused of plotting attacks in Kuala Lumpur.
Burma A Kachin Leaders Legacy Lives On Through His Daughter

The eldest daughter of former KIO leader Maran Brang Seng will enter the Kachin State parliament on Feb. 8 to pursue her fathers struggle for a federal Burma

MYITKYINA, Kachin State  For much of the first 20 years of her life, Maran Ja Seng Hkawn was raised by her grandmothers in Kachin, Burmas northernmost state, without her parents or siblings by her side and under the scrutiny of military intelligence.

Her crime? She was born into a revolutionary Kachin family.

Decades on, the 50-year-old daughter of a late rebel leader is poised to enter the Kachin State parliament as an elected member when it reconvenes in early February. She is one of only five representatives from Kachin parties to have won a seat in the Nov. 8 elections, which saw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) sweep the board.

Im happy that Id be able to work in a legal and official capacity Of course, I dont know whether I would be able to do [everything] I wish to but Im going to work to achieve a federal union that is fair and based on the wishes of the ethnic people, she said.

When Ja Seng Hkawn was six months old, her father left to join the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the insurgent Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which was fighting for independence. Her mother followed him to rebel-held territory with her older brother when Ja Seng Hkawn was three, and gave birth to five more children there.

I grew up in the arms of my grandmothers from both sides of the family. I couldnt even remember what my parents looked like, she told Myanmar Now, sitting on the terrace of her riverside home in a quiet suburb of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State.

We couldnt go 10 miles beyond the city without permission. We were constantly questioned. But I never felt scared or humiliated, she added, her slightness and soft-spoken manner belying a political steeliness.

Ja Seng Hkawn said she knew by instinct she would be joining her family, which she did, 30 years ago, abandoning her teaching job and joining the KIO struggle for Kachin self-determination.

By then, the dream of independence had been revised to a federal union after her father, Maran Brang Seng, was elected KIO chairman in 1976. Ja Seng Hkawn lived among the insurgents from 1986, working closely with her father, and bore witness to a period of upheaval and change.

There was heavy fighting between the Burma Army and the rebels, resulting in the loss of numerous KIO strongholds including their headquarters in Pajao. But the KIO also managed to find western allies sympathetic to their cause.

Brang Seng was the first Kachin leader to reach out to the outside world in a broader, non-partisan sense, Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist and author of books on Burmas ethnic insurgencies, told Myanmar Now.

Rebel to Activist

Brang Seng suffered a stroke in October 1993 and passed away in 1994, months after his deputy signed a ceasefire with Myanmars junta, an accord that lasted 17 years.

Ja Seng Hkawng stayed in rebel ranks for 16 more years, before returning to Myitkyina in 2010, intending to participate in the countrys elections. But the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), founded by Dr. Manam Tu Ja, another former KIO stalwart, was not allowed to register.

When I first came back here I was very surprised. People were so scared and didnt even dare speak to each other, she said. Over there, it was much freer. You could be honest with everyone and speak your mind, whether its the chairman or the army chief.

She began her political career in Myanmar by bringing together women to advance the rights of the Kachin minority.

We started Kachin Womens Union at my house, bringing two women with some influence from each township. We would meet here, get hold of whatever documents we can find on human rights, womens rights, democracy, and read and discuss them. We were like kids, she recalled.

Then the ceasefire broke down in June 2011 and fighting erupted, displacing tens of thousands of people.

There are so many issues in Kachin. The government was talking about national reconciliation but constantly increasing the number of troops. There are environmental issues, including the Myitsone dam. Theres land grabbing. Theres also rape of ethnic women many cases that people have not heard of, she said.

When President Thein Sein suspended the controversial Chinese-led Myitsone dam project in September 2011, a group of Kachins, including Ja Seng Hawn, decided to hold a celebration. They tried to get some kind of support from Aung San Suu Kyi, another famous soldiers daughter, but there was no response.

Suu Kyi visited Myitkyina on the same day, not to attend the Myitsone event, but to rally support for the NLD ahead of by-elections.

Everyone was sad. Of course, wed like her to give the event some respect, she said. Still, she went on to organize several other events, emboldening the local civil society.

NLD Dominates

Like many ethnic leaders, Ja Seng Hkawn believes Kachin States interests would be best served by Kachins managing their own affairs.

Yet her views did not seem to be shared by the electorateout of a total of 70 elected seats in the state, only five candidates from two Kachin parties won. She blamed the result on a divided vote and the fact that voters main motivation was to throw out the military-backed government.

In 2010, we werent allowed to form a party. That turned upside down in 2015 when lots of political parties were set up, she said.

There were attempts to merge or form alliancesshe believes the Kachin people should be united if they are to achieve federalismbut nothing materialized, and before the election, everyone was over-confident of their prospects, she said.

Ja Seng Hkawn ran under the banner of Kachin State Democracy Party (KSDP), another party founded by Dr. Tu Ja, for Injangyang (2) constituency. Her husband, also a former KIO officer, ran with a different party. He lost.

Theres much that weve done in Injangyang, but much more needs to be done. Farming is the only livelihood and its not secure. When it was time to register for the elections, I decided to go with Injangyang and a party that I know well, she said.

Due to insecurity, elections were held in just one of the 35 village tracts in her constituency. She won 203 out of only 386 votesa little more than 50 percent.

I ran for the state parliament because theres so much to be done here. I didnt want to go to the national Parliament and spend five years yawning. At least here, you can use whatever opportunity you have to change things [on ethnic and womens rights and Kachin self-determination] on the ground, said Ja Seng Hkawn.

She is, however, worried about the implications of a single-party dominating the Parliament.

If its like the NUP [Ne Wins party] being substituted by the USDP and now USDP would be substituted by the NLD, I dont think that should happen, she said.

Mulit-Hyphenated

Ja Seng Hkawn is one of a number of passionate and prominent Kachin women who are shaping the states social and political landscape, from Lahpai Seng Raw, winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asias equivalent of the Nobel Prize, to champions of peace, womens rights and land rights.

She has many strings to her bow. The MP-elect is also chairwoman of Kachin State Public Company Limited, which runs utilities and other businesses together with the governmentin what the Economist called a novel private-public partnership.

We wanted to show other Kachins that theres more to economy than extraction and selling timber, she said. Another motivation was to push reform of Burmas overburdened and inefficient public sector, instead of just criticizing from the outside.

So far, the company has signed contracts with the state government to run two small hydroelectric plants and provide ticketing and other services for the Mandalay-Myitkyina train.

She also continues to campaign for the scrapping of the Myitsone project at the source of the Irrawaddy River, also known as Ayeyarwady. In 2013, she visited China to lobby for its cancellation but nearly lost her cool in a meeting with officials from the Commerce Ministry and the Export Import Bank of China, which has provided Burma with multi-million dollar loans.

They kept wanting to talk about how to re-start the project. I got so tired of explaining that I said, Theres no way [to continue]. If you kill the Ayeyarwady, youre killing the whole country.

A devout Christian, Ja Seng Hkawn is frustrated by the breakdown of the ceasefire and resumption of hostilities.

In the 50 years of conflict in Kachin, this is the first time the villagers have been displaced for this long. The weapons are now much more powerful and create much more damage, she said.

The solution, she says, lies in a federal system that promotes the rights of Burmas minorities.

My father worked to achieve the peoples desire for a federal Myanmar and Kachin self-determination. I will continue to work for this.
Burma Buyers Remain Cautious as Condominium Law Approved By Parliament

Burmas outgoing Union Parliament approves a new Condominium Law, clarifying some property regulations and making 40 percent of units available for foreign purchase.

RANGOON  Burmas outgoing Union Parliament on Friday approved a new Condominium Law, clarifying some property regulations and making 40 percent of units available for foreign purchase.

Three years in the making, the law is expected to breathe new life into a stagnating real estate market, though industry professionals predict foreign investors still await more reform.

Under the new law, foreigners will be able to buy units on the sixth floor or higher, but are not allowed to manage properties. Buyers will acquire shared ownership of the land on which the condos are built, viewed as an improvement over previous property laws favoring landowners over apartment owners.

The law also outlines criteria for condominiums, detailing the number of floors, units, parking places, facilities and security required. Condominiums must be more than ix stories high with a footprint of at least 20,000 square feet.

Lower House lawmaker Khine Maung Yi, of the National Democratic Force party, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the bill had been passed by both houses and that details will be announced after the President [Thein Sein] approves it.

Real estate professionals expect to see an uptick in sales, especially in the commercial capital Rangoon, where supply has exceeded demand amid a construction boom in recent years. The property market has also slowed since 2014 due to skyrocketing prices and concerns over political stability.

There are many condos waiting to be sold in Rangoon, but the market has cooled down as many investors take a wait and see approach to the countrys political situation and laws, said Than Oo, vice chairman of the Myanmar Real Estate Association.

But now I expect many developers will be happy, as foreign investors will come, he added.

Some investors still remain cautious because of Burmas as-yet incomplete tax reform agenda, according to Zin Min Swe, managing director of Mandalay-based CAD Construction. A number of lawmakers have proposed raising property and sales taxes, and enforcement is expected to become more stringent in the years to come.

I am concerned that the government will try to control the property market with the tax laws; they will reassess the property taxes for these buyers, Zin Min Swe said, explaining that until investors see a clear and fair tax policy, they are unlikely to rush in and buy residential properties.

In addition to vague and likely impermanent tax laws, investors want to see a number of other refinements to related policies.

Tony Picon, managing director of the US-based real estate firm Colliers International, said that buyers will be waiting for a clearer land titling system and changes to parking requirements, which are hindering the condo sector.
Burma Letpadan Detainees Facing Life-Threatening Illnesses: Report

Three groups release a report highlighting the ailing health of 53 student demonstrators and supporters detained since March and urging their immediate and unconditional release.

RANGOON  A coalition of three groups released a report on Monday highlighting the ailing health of 53 student demonstrators and supporters detained since March and urging their immediate and unconditional release.

In the report, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), Justice Trust and the Letpadan Justice Committee said some of the Thayawaddy Prison detainees are suffering from life-threatening medical conditions without access to proper treatment services.

The poor health of the students is a result of the brutal crackdown at Letpadan [in Pegu Division]. They were kicked, punched, as well as beaten in the face and head with batons, said ABFSU spokesperson Aung Nay Paing.

The report released Monday said unsanitary conditions at Thayawaddy Prison had contributed to detainees deteriorating health.

Protests against Burmas controversial National Education Law went on for months before police eventually clamped down on demonstrators at Letpadan on March 10 of last year. Of the 127 students initially detained, 53 have since been released. The remaining students have been charged with various sections of Burmas Penal Code.

Nineteen of the remaining students were granted bail and two were released after they were found to be minors.

Thet Min, the medical practitioner who led the research team for the report, said prison authorities had barred many of the ailing students from being transferred to private hospitals to receive treatment, despite his urging.

Thet Min examined 34 of the remaining 53 detainees for the report and found that some are suffering from gastrointestinal illnesses, chest infections and tuberculosis (TB). He recommended that the student who has contracted TB, in particular, be separated from other detainees to prevent spread of the infectious disease.

Overall, the report stated that some 70 percent of the students who were involved in the Letpadan protests had received internal injuries as a result of the crackdown.

Aung Nay Paing said that, nine months on, only a single witness out of the 49 who have submitted statements in the cases had actually made it to the courthouse.

It [the trial] can take up to three years, he said. These cases shouldnt lead to imprisonment. We demand that the government drop the case.

Aung Nay Paing added that the current government should resolve the Letpadan controversy, rather than leave it to the new government when power is transferred in late March.

Khin Khin Htwe, mother of detained student Min Thwe Thit, said she had gone to court hearings several times but that some parents had been unable to attend due in part to financial hurdles.
Burma New Mon Language Curriculum Ready for Government Schools

The training of 400 teachers in a new child-centered curriculum for the instruction of the Mon language begins in the Mon State capital Moulmein.

RANGOON  The training of 400 teachers in a new child-centered curriculum for the instruction of the Mon language began this week in Moulmein.

Regional volunteers and civil servants who work as Mon language instructors in government schools will attend the training in the Mon State capital. Participants are from Mon and Karen states, and Tenasserim Division.

Min Aung Zay, a team leader on the Working Committee for Curriculum Drafting, said the training will be delivered as a four-day workshop to two batches of 200 teachers. He explained that these teachers will then try out the new curriculum when schools re-open. Through student-centered methodology, he hopes children will be able to learn the language easily.

The Mon Language Curriculum Committee within the Mon State government has finished drafting primary-level textbooks, a basic Mon language book and a teachers guide for the upcoming school year. The materials were adapted from Burmas national curriculum and are based on mother tongue-based multilingual education, an approach in which students are instructed in their first language as a way to both preserve non-dominant languages and build confidence in learning.

New Mon-language textbooks for kindergarten up to grade five are currently being printed with Unicef funds, and are expected to be ready at the end of April or early May.

With support from the Mon State government, the Mon language teachers will be provided a salary of 30,000 kyats (US$23) per month. The Irrawaddy reported in May that, due to a lack of funds and national support, teachers had previously only received one-third of this.

There are approximately 50,000 students in Mon State and 100,000 students countrywide currently attending schools where the Mon language is taught.

Most schools that teach Mon language classes are in Mon villages where there are no Burman students, Min Aung Zay said. Seven of Mon States townships are home to 382 such schools.

The language is not taught in some cities where Burmese is spoken more. But in cities where there are more Mon, we have to teach it, he added.

In 2014, the Mon State parliament approved a bill allowing ethnic language instruction during school hours, yet access to Mon language classes still varies by school. Beginning in 2011, ethnic educators and lawmakers proposed the inclusion of local languages in government schools. It was permitted one year later, but only outside of regular school hours, and did not receive state funding.

For 50 years, Burmas military governments banned ethnic minority language education from public schools, requiring that all instruction take place in Burmese, the language of the countrys ethnic Burman majority. Minority languages were instead taught in non-government schools run by the administrative divisions of non-state ethnic armed groups.
Burma Suu Kyi, Military Chief Meet Again as Power Transfer Nears

Military commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and Aung San Suu Kyi hold talks for the second time since her National League for Democracys election victory.

RANGOON  Burma Army leader Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and Aung San Suu Kyi held talks on Monday for the second time since the National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman and her party emerged victorious in a Nov. 8 general election, according to the commander-in-chiefs office.

The two-hour sit-down in the capital Naypyidaw came more than a month after the two leaders first met on Dec. 2.

Also present for Mondays meeting were Min Aung Hlaings deputy Snr-Gen Soe Win and other high-ranking generals, as well as NLD central committee members Win Htein, Win Myint and Zaw Myint Maung, and Suu Kyis personal physician Dr. Tin Myo Win, the statement said.

The two sides frankly discussed matters related to a peaceful transition in the post-election period, parliamentary issues, formation of the next government and measures to be taken to build permanent peace after the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement [NCA], the statement read.

Suu Kyis NLD won nearly 80 percent of seats contested in November, and will hold the parliamentary supermajority it needs to choose Burmas next president.

With Suu Kyi barred from assuming the presidency and the military controlling three powerful ministries, relations between the NLD chairwoman and Min Aung Hlaing are seen as a critical indicator of the extent to which the party will be able to govern effectively over the 2016-21 period.

A second meeting between the two had been tipped in recent weeks. Unlike Mondays gathering, their first encounter was a private one-on-one.

The NLD will take power on April 1.
Burma Thai Court Orders Prison Transfer of Burmese Pair Implicated in Ranong Murder

A Thai court ordered Monday that two Burmese minors allegedly involved in killing a Thai student last year be moved to a juvenile prison in Surat Thani.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  A court in Thailands Ranong province on Monday ordered that two Burmese minors accused of involvement in the fatal stabbing of a Thai student in September last year be transferred to a juvenile prison in Surat Thani province, some 200 km south of the Ranong juvenile facility in which they had been detained.

Four Burmese fisheries workersincluding Moe Zin Aung and Kyaw Soe Win, both 15 years oldhave been in detention since October 2015 in connection with the stabbing death of a 19-year-old Thai woman the previous month.

The two minors appeared in court on Monday after a judge accepted the case against them on Jan. 22. The pair are being tried in separate proceedings from the other accused, Wai Lin and Sein Kadone, as the former are adolescents.

I told my son to stay safe at the Surat Thani juvenile detention centre, said Ei Ei Moe, the mother of Moe Zin Aung. I am worried about him as they are moving him to a place further from us.

She said Moe Zin Aung received minor injuries after he was assaulted by another detainee in the juvenile detention center in Ranong on Jan. 15.

Ei Ei Moe added that the defendants lawyers and the migrant rights group, Foundation for Education & Development, pledged to assist the family to arrange future prison visits.

Family members of the accused have alleged their sons were tortured by police in detention.

The next court hearing for the two Burmese minors is scheduled for Feb. 29. Wai Lin and Sein Kadone appeared in court on Jan. 18 and their next hearing is set for March 14.

The case is expected to be closely scrutinized after a Thai court sentenced two Burmese migrant workers to death last month for the murder of two British backpackers on a Thai resort island in September 2014. The verdict prompted days of protests outside the Thai Embassy in Rangoon.
Burma Three Children Reported Injured After Burma Army, TNLA Clash

Three children were reportedly wounded by an artillery shell in Shan States Namhsan on Saturday, during fighting between the Burma Army and Taang troops.

RANGOON  Three children were wounded by an artillery shell in northern Shan States Namhsan Township on Saturday, local sources said, during a clash between the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and government troops.

Ba Kyaw, of the Taang Literature and Culture Association in Namhsan, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that three children from one family, aged seven, 10 and 12, were injured when an artillery shell landed on their house in Namhsan town during clashes in the area. It was unclear which side had fired the shell.

They were hit by the explosion, said Ba Kyaw, who described the fighting as a rare occurrence in the town. Many of us were afraid.

TNLA troops reported that they attacked a Burma Army base of Light Infantry Division 77 just after midnight on January 23. They allegedly exchanged fire for 30 minutes.

Tar Bong Kyaw, TNLA general secretary, told The Irrawaddy last year that increased aggression from the Burma Army could lead the armed group to consider a more offensive strategy.

We will change our military tactics if they chase our troops into the jungle, he said in October. We will attack their base in the town instead of letting them come to fight us.

The TNLA have recently accused Burma Army troops of partnering with soldiers from the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) and jointly attacking them, a charge which the SSA-S leadership denies.

Since November, clashes between the TNLA and the SSA-S have reportedly occurred in several northern Shan State townships, including Namkham and Manton. Both groups have traded blame over the cause of the fighting.

The SSA-S was one of eight armed groups to sign a so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement with the government in October, while the TNLA was one of three armed groups excluded from signing. Several major ethnic armed organizations opted out of the agreement on the basis that it lacked inclusivity.
Business Market Launched in Muse Business Zone

The Mingalar Market in the Muse Central Economic Zone at the Sino-Burmese border opens, with rental spaces commanding up to 1 billion kyats per unit.

RANGOON  The Mingalar Market in the Muse Central Economic Zone at the Sino-Burmese border opened last week, with shop rental spaces commanding up to 1 billion kyats (US$770,000) per unit.

The 192-unit market, built on 15.5 acres of land, is the first phase of the Muse Central Economic Zone project, a joint venture between the Shan State government and New Star Light Co., which is being built over six phases near the Shweli River along Shan States northern border with China.

The shops will be leased out on 30-year terms, with rents ranging between 300 million kyats and 1 billion kyats for the three-decade period.

Shops are housed within a three-story compound and leases can be renewed twice, meaning a maximum lease length of 90 years. More than 60 percent of the shops have been leased out so far, according to a New Star Light official in charge of the sales.

More than 200 acres of lands were confiscated for the business district project and a compensation of 24 million kyats was given for each acre of land, Sai Kham Hein, one of the farmers whose land was confiscated, told The Irrawaddy.

Sai Myat Aung, a member of the Shan Literature and Culture Committee in Muse, told The Irrawaddy: Farmers are not yet satisfied with the compensation they have been given. They want to claim more in compensation.

Construction for the project began in 2013 and the entire project was originally scheduled to be completed last year.

The projects first phase will also include offices, banks, an exhibition center and specialty shops for gems and jade, the Myanmar Times reported.
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="105158,105159,105160,105161,105162,105163,105164,105165,105166,105167,105168,105169,105170,105171,105172,105173,105174,105175,105176,105177,105178"] RANGOON  Myat Kyawt has been making art for decades, but he never seems to run out of new ideas and ways to approach his craft. When he began his career, he tried to emulate other artiststhe traditional, the figurative, the highly skilled strokes of experienced paintersuntil he finally arrived at his own very distinct style. In my early days as an artist, I used to imitate the styles of the artists I admired, such as Paw Oo Thet, Myat Kyawt told The Irrawaddy. But when I moved to Rangoon and began curating exhibitions, I realized how important it was to have my own style. Its not as though you can invent your own style immediately, just because you want to; its about how satisfied you are with the way you present your feeling in drawings, he explained. Myat Kyawt made a name for himself through a solo exhibition called Trees, which was on view at Rangoons Sule Shangri-La Hotel, then called Traders, in December 2004. The works looked like abstract expressionism at first glance, but upon further inspection were representational. Many artists stick to the approach that made them successful, but Myat Kyawt wasnt satisfied. He wanted to keep trying new things, regardless of how well-received his Trees were. Yes, he recalled, those pictures were well-liked at home and abroad, but I have a habit of needing to transform immediately, as soon as I have a new idea. Im not crazy about money or success. Im not trying to keep a hold on anything, thats why I have to keep creating. By the time he had his eighth exhibition, in Rangoons Thamada Hotel in October 2007, his artistic approach had already undergone a number of transformations. This time his works were more representative, impressionistic portraits. Titled People of Grace, the show featured a variety of subjects with halos around their heads, drawing on European religious imagery. Anyone who has a heart of goldrich or poor, educated or uneducatedhas influence, he said of the works, which seemed to elevate everyday people to a saintly status. This is the message I want to give through my paintings. If that was a departure from his earlier works, the years since have brought even more experimentation. Myat Kyawt has even organized a number of performance art events. He said he is interested in forms beyond drawing and painting, to see if they can offer a way to express concepts in a different way. Art is a single thing; all forms are connected with each other. Stationary and mobile, rich and poor, hot and cold are not separate things, he said, explaining that dichotomies create meaning as opposites inform each other. You can really see this when you create art. I cant help liking performance art because I am keen on discovering new things, but Im not a brilliant performance artist. Myat Kyawt had his 15th solo exhibition in Rangoon late last year. The featured series of paintings, titled Love in Adversity, reflect how Burmese people responded to severe flooding that struck the country in late July and early August. He wanted to show how communities came together to overcome a devastating natural disaster, fighting bad luck with love and sympathy.
Monday, January 25th, 2016 (1:59 pm) - Score 2,185

Residents and local businesses in the Cheshire (England) village of Ollerton, which sits just 2 miles south of Knutsford and is home to over 330 people, have clubbed together in order to pay BTOpenreach some 35,000 so as to get a working fibre broadband connection installed.

At present the local street cabinet (PCP 10) is already listed as supporting fibre broadband connectivity via Openreachs Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service, although the cabinet is more intended to serve part of Knutsford and the village resides too far away for it to deliver fibre. Similarly the local ADSL2+ services are painfully slow (around 1.5Mbps to 5Mbps).

On top of that the regional Connecting Cheshire project, which is currently working to make FTTC/P connectivity available to 98% of premises in the county by summer 2017, looks set to miss Ollerton out of its current plans (here). However it should be said that there is talk of eventually reaching universal coverage (here), although villagers arent willing to wait any longer.

As David Malkinson, a resident of School Lane, said (here), We can either sit and wait and see if we get internet, or grab the bull by the horns and that is what we have elected to do. I started leaflet dropping in December and it got a great reaction, so now it is full steam ahead.

Instead a number of local businesses and residents have setup the Connecting Ollerton campaign, which has agreed to co-fund the build of a new all-in-one (Phone and FTTC) Street Cabinet with Openreach.

Ollertons Plan The plan is to run a new fibre-optic down the Chelford Road from Knutsford, and install a new superfast-enabled cabinet on the corner of School Lane and Chelford Road. The existing copper wiring will be reconnected to this cabinet and will be a short enough distance to enable superfast to all households in the catchment area. Our scheme will be the first one of its kind in Cheshire, but not far behind us is the neighbouring Peover Parish, who have the exact same issue as us: the distance from the cabinet is too far to carry a superfast signal. The price for the works is expected to be in the region of 35,000, which covers around 65 households and and handful of businesses. BT are currently in the process of performing a detailed survey after which they will produce a contractual, fixed price for the work.

Its possible that some surrounding areas may also be included into the project, although this is still being investigated. However finding 35,000 from such a small community is no easy task and certainly wont work everywhere.

At this stage its unclear how much has been raised, although the campaign has support from 5-6 local firms and this suggests that more than half of the target may have already been achieved (i.e. businesses have been asked to contribute between 2k and 5k each).

Assuming the money is found then the network should take around 12 months to build and could then be completed by January 2017. Mind you the project is somewhat bitter-sweet in the sense that a community felt so overlooked that it ended up having to pay for itself to get vital infrastructure installed. Its unclear if they asked any altnet ISPs, such as Gigaclear, to give a counter quote.
The Best Security Advice from Leading Experts

The health care sector is an especially attractive target for cyberattacks, and especially vulnerable due to its weakest link: the supply chain.

Thats the conclusion I drew following a recent interview with Al Berman, president of Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) International, a non-profit organization in New York that helps companies prepare for and recover from disasters. Berman explained the health care supply chain problem this way:

The thing that you start to look at with more sophisticated cyberattacks is the number of vendors that theyre using. If you go back to the Target attack, which was really perpetrated by infiltrating one of their vendors, you start to look at the number of people who are attached to health care providersall of the pharmaceutical houses, all of the medical suppliers, hospital centers. Its a lot easier target, because all you have to do is find a vendor that tends to be very vulnerable, and is not putting the same emphasis [on security] that you see in health care.

According to Berman, all of this speaks to the importance of properly vetting suppliers:

More and more vulnerabilities are coming from suppliers, so you need a really good vetting process to understand exactly what the vulnerabilities are. I think youre seeing that coming out in HIPAA regulations compliance, which has put this as one of the key issues in risk management for health care organizations in general.

Berman went on to explain why the health care sector is a particularly attractive target for cyberattacks:

If you look at whats at stake, health care records tend to have more information than almost any other kind of records. For example, if you were to attack an HMO or a hospital, not only are you likely to get the persons name and address, but youre also likely to get their social security number; youre likely to get their date of birth, names of relatives, a lot more information. The value of stolen cyber information really depends on how thorough the information isthe more thorough the information is, the more valuable it is on the open market for selling this information. When you steal from health care records, you get almost everythingthe medication they take, all the illnesses. So if you really are trying to sell that information for somebody else to use for identity or financial theft, you get a really complete package that you dont get from a lot of other places.

If theres any good news, its that health care organizations are taking the issue seriously, Berman said:

If you look at the regulatory requirements of HIPAA and CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services], for example, there are severe fines for breaches of electronic patient history information. So I think they do take it very seriouslyI just think its a difficult battle for hospitals, probably more so than HMOs, simply because theyre more vulnerable. Its a financial issuehow much money can you spend on this? Whereas a brokerage house may spend $350 million protecting its financial assets, its hard to believe a hospital or HMO would do the same.

Berman wrapped up the conversation by stressing the essential nature of recognizing and dealing with risks associated with the insider threat:

We tend to look at this as high tech used by really sophisticated people, but a lot of these threats are coming from inside. A lot come from pure stupiditysome of the earliest cases of vulnerabilities stemmed from people losing laptops with information on them. Weve seen this where its just been pure carelessnessa lack of concern for the information. So I think theres a need for education, to talk to people about protecting informationmaking employees aware of the importance of not using corporate computers for private means, where somebody is out there phishing and gets some information, or somebody uploads a virus, especially through social media, which everybody knows is becoming a real vulnerability.  I know its something that health care organizations are working on.

A contributing writer on IT management and career topics with IT Business Edge since 2009, Don Tennant began his technology journalism career in 1990 in Hong Kong, where he served as editor of the Hong Kong edition of Computerworld. After returning to the U.S. in 2000, he became Editor in Chief of the U.S. edition of Computerworld, and later assumed the editorial directorship of Computerworld and InfoWorld. Don was presented with the 2007 Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity by American Business Media, and he is a recipient of the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for editorial excellence in news coverage. Follow him on Twitter @dontennant.
Writers Karen White (The Sound of Glass), Lauren Willig (The Pink Carnation series of historical fiction) and Beatriz Williams (Along the Infinite Sea) are all successful romance novelists on their own. Recently, they teamed up to write a book together, The Forgotten Room, in which the authors each take a different time setting then connect their stories together.

It begins in 1944, where young Dr. Kate Schuyler races to an incoming ambulance to find a seriously injured soldier. Capt. Ravanel was injured in Europe in the war and placed on a boat to set sail for New York City to a hospital there for better care.

The hospital on East 69th Street that Dr. Schuyler works in used to be a familys mansion during the Gilded Age, when money flowed freely until the Great Depression hit, and the familys mansion was sold and eventually became a hospital.

Capt. Ravenel is delirious with fever, calling Dr. Schuyler by the name Victorine, and recognizes the ruby necklace that Kate wears around her neck. Kate doesnt know Capt. Ravenel, although his last name sounds familiar.

In 1892, we meet young Olive Van Alan, who works as a maid in the mansion on East 69th Street for the wealthy Pratt family. While it appears that Olive is just another poor young working class woman, she has ulterior motives.

Olives father was the architect who built the Pratt mansion. It was his masterpiece, a showcase that he hoped would make his career and get him many more jobs. But Mr. Pratt was a dishonest man, and he refused to pay Olives father for his work, bankrupting him and resulting in her fathers death.

Olive was determined to find vindication for her father in Pratts paperwork. She would find proof that her fathers work was not unacceptable and poor, as Pratt claimed. She would get justice for her father.

But Olive didnt count on falling in love with Pratts artistic son Harry. Olive was warned to stay away from the young master of the house, that it would only mean trouble for everyone, but Harry became infatuated with Olive, and a torrid affair began.

In 1920, Lucy Young takes a room in the attic of a mansion on East 69th Street, the former Pratt Mansion. She secures a job at the firm that handles the affairs of the Pratt family. The junior partner in charge of the Pratt account is the stepson of Prunella Pratt, the last remaining member of the famous Pratts, and sister of Harry.

Before long, Lucy is now working closely with Phillip Schuyler, Prunellas stepson. Lucy cant believe her luck. She got the job at the firm hoping to get an answer to a very important question: Could Lucy be the illegitimate daughter of Harry Pratt?

Harry Pratt disappeared a long time ago, and his family had no idea where he went or if he was still alive. Lucy hopes that if she can find Harry Pratt, she can find the answer to her real heritage.

Lucy becomes Phillip Schuylers valued assistant, and when he asks her to entertain a client, a Mr. Ravenel from Charleston, we have a connection that will be repeated in 1944, in the Pratt mansion that is now a hospital.

White, Williams and Willig do a masterful job creating three distinct worlds that intersect in the end. Each takes a storyline, and immerses the reader in their time period. We can feel the distinct delineation between the classes in Olives story, as the opulence of the Pratt family contrasts with Olive and her widowed mother, who tries to marry Olive off to the nice bakery owner.

Lucy Young is a career woman living in a room in a womans boarding house in 1920 under the watchful eye of a woman who deems it her goal in life to keep her boarders' virtue intact. Lucy came from a family who owned a small shop, but she uses her education to make a better life for herself.

And then we get to Dr. Kate Schuyler, a doctor in 1944, an unusual occupation for a woman at that time. Kate has to put up with the sexual harassment of her boss, and back then the only method to handle that was to avoid the man at all costs.

The way the authors seamlessly weave their stories together is beautifully done, and when the resolution to the story comes, it is a satisfying conclusion. The Forgotten Room is the perfect book to curl up with on a snowy day and lose yourself in a wonderful story.
The great temple of Apollo stands at Delphi on Mt. Parnassus. Centuries ago, an elder priestess at this temple, yclept Pythia, was an oracle, offering prophecies to those able to correctly interpret her words. Today, Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is IBMs largest shareholder, is called the Oracle of Omaha. Buffett looks the part, resembling a benign grandma. He has more money than all of Greece, although right now plenty of people enjoy that distinction. Like Pythia the Oracle, Buffett can be baffling; less gifted people cannot understand why Buffett is up to his ears in IBM stock. Its been nearly five years since early 2011, when Berkshire Hathaway took a big stake in Big Blue. Currently, Buffetts outfit is IBMs largest shareholder, with close to 9 percent of the companys shares, acquired at a cost of more than $13 billion. In November 2015 those shares were worth more like $11 billion. Buffetts company had, on paper, lost around $2 billion or 15 percent of its stake. Undeterred by what the investor must believe is a temporary downturn in the stock price, Berkshire Hathaway bought another million shares during this years third quarter, even as it was selling other holdings to raise cash for a planned acquisition of Precision Castparts. A skeptical observer might say that Buffett is in a trap. If he tried to lighten up on IBM shares, other investors might overreact, causing the stock price to plummet. In addition, Buffetts company, deservedly known for its astute investment strategy, would have to tell its own shareholders that it seems to have made a big mistake. By contrast, during the most recent quarter Berkshire Hathaway reported a gain of $4.4 billion on one deal alone, its stake in Kraft Heinz, which soared in value as food giants Kraft and Heinz merged their interests. That gain is real money, and it is more than twice the hypothetical loss Buffetts company has taken on its IBM investment. As an investor, Berkshire Hathaway is almost always in it for the long haul, so if IBM shares spend a couple of years in the doghouse Buffett wont get rattled. He has apparently braced for the poor performance expected to be reported by IBM during the remainder of 2015. Its probably too early for anyone, even Warren Buffett, to guess how IBM will do in 2016. But right now its seems fair to say that Berkshire Hathaway is not only IBMs biggest investor, but also one of the companys most optimistic. Buffett has said hes happy that IBM shares have fallen, giving his company a chance to build its stake at a lower price and reduce its average cost per share. Whether outsiders take that literally or figure theres not much else Buffett, always in the public eye, can say not matter what hes really thinking remains a complete mystery. This makes Buffett, even though he is not a priestess, some kind of oracle, and just as inscrutable. The real Oracle of Delphi is justifiably renowned for her legendary wisdom. From well before 500 BC, perhaps as far back as a thousand years earlier, everyone who was anyone visited Delphi to get at the wisdom of Pythia the Oracle. The priestess who took on that role is said to have reeled off her prophesies while in some kind of trance. Her throne was said to be above a crevice in the earth, and volcanic fumes rose all around it. The fumes may have included vapors of ethylene, which can produce vivid visions and hallucinations. This theory is in some ways consistent with the tales of Pythia written or carried via oral history for the past 3,500 years. Its completely a matter of conjecture just what the Oracle of Delphi actually said, but some of the mythical or apocryphal statements attributed to her have been passed down through the ages to intrigue, amuse and inform us to this very day. Among other things, around 450 BC the Oracle of the day said Socrates was the wisest of all the Greeks. This didnt help the great philosopher live to a ripe old age, but reinforced the immortality he achieved by virtue of his sheer brilliance. Another divination, said to have been offered some 50 years later, was advice to the great Spartan general Lysander, warning him to watch out for a dragon. Lysander might have dismissed this prediction as completely preposterous, at least until he was slain by a soldier who had a dragon painted on this shield. And some 40 years after that, Philip II of Macedon consulted Pythia and was told that whoever could ride a very difficult colt Philip happened to own would conquer the world. The horse seemed to get along with only on person, Philips son Alexander, who was called the Great when he conquered the known world. Alexander was the last Westerner to hold power in Afghanistan; the name of the city Kandahar is derived from Alexanders moniker in the language of its ancient time and place. The Oracles role lasted for a long time thereafter. The Roman Emperor Hadrian is said to have visited Delphi around 100 AD to get some advice. Its clear that the sobriquet Oracle isnt applied lightly, particularly in the case of Warren Buffett, arguably one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Buffett generally doesnt comment on the practices of companies in which he invests, nor on the postures or proclamations of their chief executives. But in the case of IBM, whose chief executive Ginny Rometty has wound down nearly all the companys remaining manufacturing operations, intending to replace the revenue from this dwindling segment with intake from software and services, Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, IBM customers and other interested parties might well wonder what the Oracle is thinking. It has become increasingly difficult to avoid wondering whether IBM can prevail in the equipment business, notwithstanding the extraordinary quality of its hardware products and the loyalty of customers who have been with IBM not merely for computer generations, but for human generations. The part of IBM that manufactures computing equipment, these days confined to mainframes, Power servers and storage subsystems look to be in a precarious position. The current line of big iron began reaching customers at the beginning of 2015. But the end of the year, IBM will have delivered new machines to most of its best customers and the rate of shipment will decline. IBM hopes to boost sales by adding new models, such as dedicated Linux servers, to the mainframe line and it could yet add additional configurations aimed at its smaller customers. IBMs small mainframe users are still pretty substantial companies by any reckoning, so if IBM really hit its target, it would enjoy a boost in revenue even as sales from the largest boxes it makes tails off. A similar pattern may be occurring in the Power market, where IBM has fleshed out its Power 8 line and already picked a lot of the low hanging fruit. While IBM continues to enrich its Power range, particularly in the case of high performance systems, and regularly announces innovative improvements in its hardware, it is not getting great results. Lately, the best IBM seems to be able to do is to sell as much equipment as it did a year ago or perhaps a little more. The portion of the Power market running IBM i software remains loyal, but IBM doesnt seem to have a marketing strategy that might bring it significant growth. In disks, IBM has been suffering lately. And now that Dell is planning to absorb EMC, the situation will only get more difficult. Privately held, Dell can compete on price in ways that are pretty much impossible for any publicly held company, such as IBM. At the same time, Hewlett-Packard, having bisected itself, will probably be given a lot of latitude by investors, at least for the next year or so. IBM cannot avoid conflict with Dell and HP Enterprise, among others. Having abandoned the market in ubiquitous X86 servers and related equipment, IBM is obliged to share the glass house with its most ardent adversaries. These rivals may not enjoy IBMs profitability, which shareholders like Berkshire Hathaway are bound to admire, but they have a lot more to offer when it comes to the size and scope of their hardware. IBMs customers, whether loyal because they admire Big Blue and its products or because they feel they are irretrievably invested in their mainframe, Power or IBM i apparatus, are increasingly concerned about their future in computing. They wonder if they can continue to rely on IBM, and if so for how long. A lot of them used to count on IBMs X86 servers and IBMs help integrating these machines with IBMs bigger iron. Some of them remember IBM printers, or IBM PCs, or even IBM computer terminals. Even if IBM mainframes, Power boxes and IBM i platforms might last quite a while, as did the institution of the Oracle of Delphi, it used to be that customers believed IBMs hardware lines would last not merely a long time but forever. Its kind of like this: A tourist driving through the countryside realized he had gotten completely lost, so when he came to a farmhouse, he decided to stop and ask directions. As he walked toward the front door of the house, a pig with two real legs and two wooden legs ran in front of him, went to the door and, using its nose, vigorously knocked. When the farmer answered the door, the wanderer explained he needed directions. But first, he said, he was curious about the clever two-legged pig that had welcomed him. That pig is the most amazing pig in the land, son, the farmer said. Last year, our house caught fire when we were all asleep. That pig ran in and woke us all up one by one and saved our lives! The visitor was surprised. That sure is one special pig, he said. The farmer replied, Thats not all. This past summer that pig jumped into the pond and dragged my drowning son to the shore. Why does the pig have only two legs? the tourist asked. Is it from the fire? No, son, responded the farmer. A pig like that you just dont eat all at once.
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Libyan LPTIC Chairman meets the Telecommunication Minister of Ivory Coast in Abidjan to Discuss a Restructuring Plan for Oricel

Abidjan, Ivory Coast, (22 Jan 2016) Chairman of Libyan Post, Telecommunication and

Information Technology Holding Company Dr. Faisel Gergab has held a meeting earlier

this month with the Minister of Telecommunication and Information Technology of the

Republic of Ivory Coast Mr. Kone Bruno at the headquarters of the ministry in the Ivorian

city, Abidjan.

This meeting comes as part of a comprehensive strategic plan developed by LPTIC in

order to improve and develop its subsidiary company ORICEL. The main goal of this

meeting was to discuss the current operational and regulatory challanges facing the

company and provide a comprehensive action plan to the Government of the Ivory

Coast aimed at restructuring the company and improve its competitive position in the

local market, in addition, to secure the renewal of the license and obtaining new

universal integrated telecom license to improve and provide new services.

Importantly, As part of the restructuring of the telecommunications investment in Africa

last August, ownership of Lap Green was transfered from Libya Africa Investment

Portfolio (LAIP) to Libyan Post, Telecommunication and Information Technology Holding

Company (LPTIC), LPTICs strong home position will enhance the value of its new African

based assets, develop growth opportunities and create synergies with its Libyan

operations and other global infrastructure investments.

After the meeting, Dr Faisel Gergab said: The meeting with Mr. Kone Bruno was

important and successful, all indications were positive. With the help of integrated

global consulting firms, a strategic plan was presented and discussed thoroughly to

restructure and improve Oricels position in the market by offering new and diverse

services for the Ivorian market, this will enhanc the competitiveness of the company in

the domestic market and achieve investment returns.

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Jan. 25, 1936

Tuesday, Jan. 14, 20 members of the Junior High School Business Club accompanied by Mr. Harrington visited the local telephone exchange building in Clark Street, where they were conducted through the various parts of the building by telephone officials.

The Junior Nurse's Club planned a trip to the Auburn City Hospital last term after making arrangements and an appointment. A student nurse explained the features of the hospital to the members of the club, starting with the operating room on the top floor and ending with the ice machines in the basement. During the year the pupils made scrap books with interesting colored pictures. These were given to the children in the children's ward.

Jan. 25, 1961

Auburn Radio Station WMBO will carry the first Kennedy presidential press conference at 6 p.m. today. It will be the first such conference ever to be broadcast or telecast "live," and is expected to last from 35 to 40 minutes. WMBO will give its regular 6 p.m. newscast immediately following the Kennedy conference.

Jan. 25, 2006

The Auburn Enlarged City School District Board of Education is paying close attention to low attendance district-wide, and plans to present an updated attendance policy at its next meeting on Feb. 7. Charles Beck, who serves on the board's Policy Committee, opened general discussions with Superintendent John Plume and the board regarding overall attendance.

Members voiced particular concern with absent and tardy students in the upper grades, especially at Auburn High School. Plume said that during one month this year, 2,000 unexcused absences were recorded. He did not say whether one school alone was responsible for that count, or whether the number reflected district wide data.

Jan. 25, 2011

Cayuga County has secured $40,000 in federal funds for a feasibility study on the proposed biogas pipeline, touted by county officials as an important green energy project. The grant, announced Thursday, comes from the Rural Energy for America Program, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture. It will cover a technical analysis of the project, including a clearer picture of the price tag, timeline and economic and environmental impacts the pipeline would bring.

Chairman of the Legislature Peter Tortorici said he and the county planning department have been working on the grant application for several months. Cayuga County was one of 68 REAP grant recipients in the country and one of two in New York.

The proposed 40-mile pipeline would connect to seven large dairy farms in the southern part of the county. Those farms have their own digesters that extract gas from manure. The pipeline would take that gas to the county industrial park in Aurelius where the county would purchase it, convert it to energy and sell it to industrial consumers.
Australian honey is safe natural product says Honey Bee Industry Council

The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council has reassured consumers that Australian honey is safe despite the publication of a study that suggested otherwise.

In the study out of Ireland and conducted by Luckhart et al and published in Volume 33, Issue 1 of the academic journal Food Additives & Contaminants: Part A, stated it found 41 out of 59 Australian honeys sampled contained by pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA), a liver damaging toxin. PA can occur naturally in honey but it is considered to have serious health consequences for both animals and humans when consumed in high quantities.

The average daily exposure, based on the results of this study, were 0.051 micrograms per kilograms of bodyweight per day for adults and 0.204 for children, which is below the Australian recommendation of 1 microgram. The authors suggest a cause for concern since they are above proposed European Food Safety Authority maximum daily PA intake limit of 0.007 micrograms per kilograms of bodyweight per day.

Australian Honey Bee Industry Council response

The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council has responded to the study saying it is misleading.

The Council said research from some time ago had identified honey from the Patersons Curse weed found in Australia to contain natural PA. The council however said that modern farming techniques have dramatically reduced the amount of honey produced from the weed over the last decade.

Referring to the study published last week the council stated:

A recent study out of Ireland has driven an alarmist headline which ignores key facts, the council said.

The study is misleading in that it overstates consumption of honey and underestimates body weight creating a misleading conclusion completely out of touch with reality, the council stated.

The Irish research uses a figure for the average adult of 60kgs when considering toxicity. The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the average Australian male weighs 85.9kgs and the average female 71.1kg. Thus the research exaggerates the toxicity likelihood, said the council.

The council further pointed out:

No new studies have been done surrounding the health risks of PAs in the global food system. It should be noted, that there is not one single case documented of human health being unfavourably affected as a consequence of the consumption of honey containing very low levels of alkaloids. It should also be noted that the alkaloid found in Patersons Curse is mainly echimidine, which has been shown to have significantly less toxicity than the other plant alkaloids found in European plants, the council stated.

Despite this, there remains no scientific evidence illustrating that consuming such honey leads to unfavourable clinical human health concerns. Australia has a rigorous risk averse food safety system and consumers of Australian honey have nothing to fear and they should continue to enjoy our great Australian honeys, the council said.

FSANZ response

In response to the study Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) have updated its publicly available information on natural contaminants in honey stating that Australian and New Zealand Honey is unlikely to pose a health risk.

FSANZ is aware of the recent reports on total PA levels in Australian and New Zealand honey. However, based on the type of PA present and honey consumption levels in Australia and New Zealand, they are unlikely to pose a health risk, FSANZ stated.

FSANZ has not reviewed the paper by Luckhart et al on the effects of PAs on cells in culture. However, it should be noted that caution is required in extrapolating from cells in culture to a risk in humans, FSANZ said.

FSANZ further stated that it has been working with honey producers in Australia and New Zealand to characterise the toxicities of PAs in honey and from this had found that the predominant PA in local honey had lower toxicity that the PA used as a standard by some authorities.

FSANZ is taking account of recent research conducted in Australia and New Zealand on the presence and toxicity of these substances in honey and is waiting on the outcomes of the international risk assessment of PAs by JECFA (the WHO expert group with responsibility for assessing food contaminants), FSANZ said.

It is anticipated that the WHO will complete a risk assessment this year and then the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food will consider if there should be an internationally agreed maximum level for PAs in honey or other foods, FSANZ concluded.
The Centers for Disease Control revealed that a listeria outbreak has occurred in six states resulting in the death of a person in Michigan. A Dole facility in Ohio that produces packaged salads is linked by the CDC to the spread of the disease.

The health agency reported that there are already 12 people in six states that have been hospitalized since the start of the outbreak in July. Apparently, these people were infected with listeria after consuming salads packaged with several Dole brand names including President's Choice, Simple Truth, Fresh Selections, The Little Salad Bar, Marketside and Simple Truth.

The outbreak was linked by the CDC to the said salad packages after listeria was detected by Ohio agriculture officials in one bag sold at a retail outlet. These officials revealed that the bacterial strain is highly related to the listeria that makes people sick.

Dole has started withdrawing the said packages from supermarket shelves in Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario and in 20 additional states to avert further listeriosis outbreak.

Paul Simon, Senior Communication Specialist of Schnuck Markets Inc. said that their stores have already pulled the affected products. "If a customer purchased any of the affected products from Schnucks, they may return any unused portion for a refund," he said.

The CDC also revealed that Dole had stopped producing these packages at its plant in Springfield, Ohio. For outlets who have not yet recalled these products from their shelves, the CDC recommends shoppers to look for the "A" mark on the package. If they see this mark, it means that package is contaminated with listeria.

Listeria can cause muscle aches and fever. If it causes gastrointestinal symptoms and the condition is not corrected, it could lead to death. Listeriosis can also cause death in newborn babies, stillbirth, miscarriage and premature labor.

Those who are at the highest risk of contracting listeriosis are pregnant women, infants and young children, those with compromised immune systems and the elderly.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seem to be taking different roads on their way to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

While Clinton is using the rubble of ground zero to attract delegates to the party's convention in Iowa, Sanders, on the other hand, is humming the harmonies of Simon and Garfunkel's music hit "America."

Their political ads are no more different than each other's personalities. One is in a fighting mood against the enemy, while the other is content in staying home.

Sander's commercial features Americans working on their farms while Clinton is pictured staring down at Vladimir Putin, the Russian President.

His support seems to be coming from the progressive communities located in Iowa's largest universities. However, it appears that those numbers will not be enough to win him the ticket in the caucus come Feb. 1.

This is perhaps the reason why he spent considerable time last Tuesday to rally voters in the state's most conservative localities.

The senator from Vermont appears to have a very simple goal: to drum up support in the western areas of the state, despite the impression that the statewide polls have been hiding - that of the possible weakness of these territories.

Clinton's ad is in stark contrast to the serenity implied in Sander's. Her commercial is more belligerent in tone. It showed videos of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the Republican presidential contenders in their unsavory moments. Cruz is shown firing an assault weapon, while Trump is shown shouting at one of his political rallies.

The ad of the former U.S. first lady seems to imply that the country will be in dire straits if the party will not choose her as its presidential candidate.

After months of trailing, Sanders seems to be catching up and is now nearly neck-to-neck with Clinton. The effectiveness of their campaign approach will be tested in the first week of February.
The U.S. government, through the National Highway Traffic Safety, has recently issued the recall of another 5 million Takata airbags. This was announced by the NHTSA after another driver died because of a faulty airbag bearing the same brand.

According to safety officials, it was the ninth U.S. death linked to the airbag. The particular airbags are those installed on the driver's side. Cars manufactured by Audi and Volkswagen are now also involved in the mishaps.

This move brings a total of 28 million Takata airbags that are being recalled for defects. It has increased the number of vehicles in the U.S. that are affected, and involved additional carmakers to those which have been previously given recall orders. The NHTSA says the number of vehicles could be as high as 24 million.

The recent announcement was triggered by the death of a Ford pickup truck driver, in addition to the tests the agency has conducted on suspected defective air bags. Faulty airbags have inflators that erupt and project shrapnel into the driver and the front passenger causing physical injuries or death.

To date, Takata, a Japanese company, has been ordered to recall approximately 28 million airbags all over the world for the same problem. The company has been accused of attempting to hide this safety issue.

Gordon Trowbridge, NHTSA spokesman, admits that this is a serious problem. "This is a massive safety crisis," he explained.

Previously, the NHTSA fined Takata for an unprecedented $200 million for misleading the safety agency with inaccurate and inadequate information about its airbags, as well as for not recalling their airbags when the company was informed about their safety issues.

According to NHTSA, there is also a possibility that additional millions of vehicles with inflators that contain ammonium nitrate will be recalled by 2018 if Takata is not able to prove that they have no safety issues.
Charlotte Rampling has recently issued statements implying that black artists and others who plan to boycott the coming Oscars are themselves racist. Placing herself in the center of the present controversy, she says this action of black artists and celebrities is "racist to white people."

The 69-year old Rampling is nominated for Best Actress in this year's Academy Awards for her role in the movie "45 years." She is competing for the same award with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Brie Larson, Saoirse Ronan and Jennifer Lawrence - all of whom are white.

"One can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list," the 69-year old said in an interview with Europe 1, a radio station in France. She added that the list of Oscar nominees contained only white actors and actresses because of legitimate reasons.

The current issue has sparked controversy regarding Oscars' failure to nominate not even one non-white actor or actress. This was condemned by movie celebrities such as Spike Lee, George Clooney and others.

Speaking his mind concerning the issue, Michael Caine, veteran British actor, advised black artists to be patient because, in time, their recognition will come. In an interview with BBC, he noted that there are many strong performances made by colored actors which were not recognized by not being included in the list of nominees. He mentioned Idris Elba of the "Beasts of No Nation" as an example.

Caine, who won two best supporting actor Oscar awards advised colored artists to be patient. "Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar, years," he emphasized.

But Rampling's words seem to be not as kind as those of Caine's. She said in the Europe 1 interview "...but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list."
Drinking yoghurts are rising in popularity

Drinking yoghurts and fermented beverages have been flagged for a global resurgence in a new report released last Friday 22 January by Innova Market Insights.

With the drinks accounting for 8.5 per cent of all dairy launches in the 12 months to the end of October 2015, Innova listed a couple of reasons for the possible growth after years of industry decline.

There are now indications that the market is moving forward, with a particular focus on yoghurt and fruit blends in a smoothie format, while there has also been the rising interest in yoghurt-style fermented drinks that has brought products such as kefir, lassi and ayran into mainstream markets in non-traditional regions, the report stated.

Lu Ann Williams, Director of Innovation at Innova Market Insights, said the change in direction comes after some turbulent years for drinking yoghurt and fermented beverage producers.

The drinking yoghurt market has enjoyed mixed fortunes in recent years, reports, Lu Ann Williams said.

A positioning that falls between traditional spoonable yoghurts, milk drinks and other soft drinks has proven to be a mixed blessing, with high levels of competition in all these areas, she stated.

Drinking yoghurts and fermented beverages experienced strong growth in the first half of the 2000s with consumers growing interest in healthy but convenient options.

The wide range of traditional yoghurt-based and fermented beverages are however now spreading across the globe.

Popular international yoghurt drinks and fermented beverages

Skyr: An Icelandic cultured dairy product. It is becoming increasingly popular in the US. Popular international brands include Siggis and Arla.

Lassi: A yoghurt-based drink from the Punjab region of India

Kefir: A fermented milk drink made with kefir grains (a yeast/bacterial fermentation starter). It originates from the Caucasus Mountains region which is on the boarder of Russia and Georgia.

Ayran: A cold yoghurt beverage mixed with salt. It is traditionally popular in Turkey, Iran and other Arab countries.

Calpis: An uncarbonated soft drink consumed in Japan. It consists of water, zero-fat dry milk, lactic acid and is produced by lactic acid fermentation.

Yakult: Another Japanese drink, it is a fermented mixture of skim milk and a special strain of the bacterium Lactobacillus casei. The product has been sold internationally since 1966 using Yakult as the brand name.

Buttermilk: Includes a range of fermented milk drinks common in warm climates, for example the Middle East, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan and colder climates such as Scandinavia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Major Australian dairy brands such as Pauls and Dairy Farmers sell Buttermilk in Australia.
WASHINGTON  Give President Obama credit. His Iran nuclear deal may be disastrous but the packaging was brilliant. The near-simultaneous prisoner exchange was meant to distract from the Jan. 16 official implementation of the sanctions-lifting deal. And it did. The Republicans concentrated almost all their fire on the swap sideshow.

And in denouncing the swap, they were wrong. True, we should have made the prisoner release a precondition for negotiations. But that pre-emptive concession was made long ago (among many others, such as granting Iran in advance the right to enrich uranium). The remaining question was getting our prisoners released before we gave away all our leverage upon implementation of the nuclear accord. We did.

Republicans say: We shouldnt negotiate with terror states. But we do and we should. How else do you get hostages back? And yes, of course negotiating encourages further hostage taking. But there is always something to be gained by kidnapping Americans. This swap does not affect that truth one way or the other.

And here, we didnt give away much. The seven released Iranians, none of whom has blood on his hands, were sanctions busters (and a hacker), and sanctions are essentially over now. The slate is clean.

But how unfair, say the critics. We released prisoners duly convicted in a court of law. Iran released perfectly innocent, unjustly jailed hostages.

Yes, and so what? Thats just another way of saying we have the rule of law, they dont. It doesnt mean we abandon our hostages. Natan Sharansky was a prisoner of conscience who spent eight years in the Gulag on totally phony charges. He was exchanged for two real Soviet spies. Does anyone think we should have said no?

The one valid criticism of the Iranian swap is that we left one, perhaps two, Americans behind and unaccounted for. True. But the swap itself was perfectly reasonable. And cleverly used by the administration to create a heartwarming human interest story to overshadow a rotten diplomatic deal, just as the Alan Gross release sweetened a Cuba deal that gave the store away to the Castro brothers.

The real story of Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016  Implementation Day of the Iran deal  was that it marks a historic inflection point in the geopolitics of the Middle East. In a stroke, Iran shed almost four decades of rogue-state status and was declared a citizen of good standing of the international community, open to trade, investment and diplomacy. This, without giving up, or even promising to change, its policy of subversion and aggression. This, without having forfeited its status as the worlds greatest purveyor of terrorism.

Overnight, it went not just from pariah to player but from pariah to dominant regional power, flush with $100 billion in unfrozen assets and virtually free of international sanctions. The oil trade alone will pump tens of billions of dollars into its economy. The day after Implementation Day, President Hassan Rouhani predicted 5 percent growth  versus the contracting, indeed hemorrhaging, economy in pre-negotiation 2012 and 2013.

On Saturday, the Iranian transport minister announced the purchase of 114 Airbuses from Europe. This inaugurates a rush of deals binding European companies to Iran, thoroughly undermining Obamas pipedream of snapback sanctions if Iran cheats.

Cash-rich, reconnected with global banking and commerce, and facing an Arab world collapsed into a miasma of raging civil wars, Iran has instantly become the dominant power of the Middle East. Not to worry, argued the administration. The nuclear opening will temper Iranian adventurism and empower Iranian moderates.

The opposite is happening. And its not just the ostentatious, illegal ballistic missile launches; not just Irans president reacting to the most puny retaliatory sanctions by ordering his military to accelerate the missile program; not just the videotaped and broadcast humiliation of seized U.S. sailors.

Look at what the mullahs are doing at home. Within hours of implementation, the regime disqualified 2,967 of roughly 3,000 moderate candidates from even running in parliamentary elections next month. And just to make sure we got the point, the supreme leader reiterated that Iranian policy  aggressively interventionist and immutably anti-American  continues unchanged.

In 1938, the morning after Munich, Europe woke up to Germany as the continents dominant power. On Jan. 17, the Middle East woke up to Iran as the regional hegemon, with a hand  often predominant  in the future of Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Gulf Arab states and, in time, in the very survival of Israel.

And were arguing over an asymmetric hostage swap.
The administration building at the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center center is shown in Tomah in March 2015. The medical center came under scrutiny when whistleblowers claimed that a doctor was overprescribing opioid painkillers. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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It's been a year since the scandal over the overprescribing of opioids at the Tomah VA Medical Center first broke, but Wisconsin federal lawmakers are still being asked the same questions:

When did they learn about the problems, and what did they do about them?

Both Wisconsin senators  Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, and Ron Johnson, a Republican  have spent a year trying to make up for their early inaction by leading the effort to correct the problems at the VA hospital.

Now Republican Party officials are releasing audio of an interview in which a top union official said to a sheriff's detective in 2009 that she believed unspecified members of Wisconsin's congressional delegation were aware of "unreported, unexpected deaths" at the VA hospital.

Authorities have identified numerous veterans who died under suspicious circumstances at the facility, which became known as "Candy Land" for its wide distribution of narcotic painkillers.

In the two-minute audio, Lin Ellinghuysen  president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 900 medical and support staff at the Tomah hospital  talked to a Juneau County sheriff's detective about the problems at the facility on July 31, 2009.

She said in the interview that she had taken her concerns to Washington about the "horrendous things" going on at the hospital. Republicans say the audio ties former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat challenging Johnson later this year, more directly to the troubled facility. Democrats deny the link.

"I do believe that, though, the walls of Jericho are shaking a little bit right now because April of this year I wrote a letter to congressmen and senators," Ellinghuysen told Detective Ben Goehring during the 2009 interview.

This is a reference to her much-debated memo to another union official outlining the overprescription of narcotics to veterans at the Tomah hospital. The memo is marked as being hand-delivered to Feingold, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind and then-U.S. Rep. David Obey, all Democrats. Ellinghuysen has since said the document  featured now in two anti-Feingold attack ads  never actually made it to them.

In her interview with the detective, Ellinghuysen then said, "And I talked with them last summer also because horrendous things were coming down with people who had worked there 30 years, 25 years, and I just had to go external because nothing else was working.

"And I  they know enough now about what's going on at the Tomah VA, and they have found out  I do believe -- that there have been unreported, unexpected deaths. We must, we have a process where there's unexpected deaths at our VA. We have a process we have to go external and report to our bosses, and sometimes we have to go to joint commissions, surveyors, sometimes all the way to Washington."

But who exactly did Ellinghuysen talk to in D.C. about the "unexpected deaths"?

Republicans say it's clear that Feingold was among those in the conversations. They point out that he is one of three politicians named in Ellinghuysen's memo.

"Senator Feingold received repeated warnings about the problems at the Tomah VA as early as 2008, but time and time again he failed to act," said Pat Garrett, spokesman for the Republican Party.

But Feingold's Democratic allies note that the audio doesn't identify the former senator by name, leading them to suggest that the GOP is hyping the audio to divert attention from Johnson's failings.

"Senator Johnson did nothing when informed of the terrible problem at the Tomah VA, and instead of doing his job to protect our veterans, he's misled the public, blamed his staff and refused accountability," said Brandon Weathersby, spokesman for state Democratic Party.

Last year, No Quarter reported that Johnson office staff referred whistleblower complaints about the hospital to Johnson's committee aides, but no one took them to the then-chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Federal Contracting Oversight or her staff so they could authorize a probe.

Kind's office said he was not alerted by Ellinghuysen to the Tomah drug problems until last year.

Amanda Sherman, communications director for Kind, said he and his staff have met and talked many times with the union rep about labor-management problems at the Tomah facility and they have helped veterans having problems with their care there. But that, she said, is as far as it got.

"The office has no record of Ms. Ellinghuysen bringing the problem of over-prescription of opiates to Rep. Kind's attention prior to 2015," Sherman said.

Reached Sunday, Ellinghuysen said she had a foggy memory about her 2008 meetings with Kind and Feingold.

She said the main focus of her discussion with Feingold was on nursing shortages at the VA hospital and that she talked with Kind about David Houlihan, the former chief of staff at the facility who was dubbed "the candy man" by patients. She said she was upset with Houlihan for his authoritarian manner and treatment of staff and for writing prescriptions for patients he had not seen. He has since been fired.

Ellinghuysen said the issues were related primarily to "administration and personnel." She said she doesn't remember bringing up the narcotics problem or the unexpected deaths with Kind or Feingold in 2008.

"If I did, it was a secondary issue," she said. "Out of fear, we didn't get specific about patients."

Ellinghuysen said she did give detailed accounts about all of these issues to the Office of Inspector General six or seven years ago, but nothing came of it. She also complained to the detective about what led the Tomah clinical psychologist to commit suicide in 2009. But, again, she said her complaints were ignored.

Over the past year, Ellinghuysen said she has worked closely with Johnson and Baldwin to help correct the problems at Tomah. But she said she disliked that she is the focus of attacks on Feingold, whom her union has endorsed in the past. It also gave $9,000 to the Middleton Democrat from 2005 to 2010.

"I feel used," she said. "I feel used by Sen. Johnson."

But Garrett, the GOP spokesman, accused Ellinghuysen of playing politics by trying to modify what she told a sheriff's detective six years ago.

"Now (Feingold's) political allies are revising history and covering up Feingold's inaction in order to protect his political reputation," Garrett said Sunday.
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It's all puppies (and other animals) all the time at the Great Lakes Pet Expo on Saturday. Well, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. anyway.

Root for the puppies in any of the three Puppy Bowls held during the day. Applaud animal acts including some that have been featured on television. Walk through exhibits featuring companion animals available for adoption.

Highlights include a chance to interact with more than 50 species of reptiles in Wisconsin's Largest Educational Reptile Display or cheer on 911AG South Milwaukee firefighters as they compete in an agility competition with star canines.

The Great Lakes Pet Expo is held at the Wisconsin Exposition Center at State Fair Park, 8200 W. Greenfield Ave., in West Allis.

Admission is $6 for adults and free for children under 13. Veterans with military identification also are free.
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A Wauwatosa man is under federal investigation for selling guns without a proper license, buying more than 500 firearms from an outdoors store and then selling them through a website or at gun shows, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The guns, primarily used firearms, were purchased from 13 Gander Mountain stores across Wisconsin and sold through the website Gunbroker, according to a search warrant unsealed in federal court in Milwaukee last week.

The suspect, who is 60, recruited Gander Mountain employees to watch for used firearms and call him when they came into the store, according to the affidavit. He paid the employees a kickback for the referrals, it said.

The suspect, who is not being named because he has not been arrested or charged, could not be reached for comment through email or phone messages.

The case remains open, according to Martin Siebenaler, spokesman with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is investigating the matter.

Siebenaler said he was unable to comment further because it is an ongoing investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret Honrath, who is handling the case for the U.S. attorney's office in Milwaukee, declined to comment.

Dealing guns without a license is a federal crime, but such cases are rare and time-consuming for federal agents to prove. Agents have to show that selling guns is a "principal objective of livelihood and profit" for a person. If someone is engaged in the business, he or she must obtain a federal firearms license, which requires the seller to perform background checks on gun sales.

The law does not require that background checks be done by individuals who privately sell a gun to another person. Individuals have used this private sale exception to sell firearms at gun shows.

In an effort to crack down on rogue gun sales, President Barack Obama in January directed the ATF to step up scrutiny of people selling guns without a license along with other efforts intended to address gun violence. Those efforts are being challenged by the gun rights lobby and its supporters in Congress.

According to the search warrant, the suspect obtained a collector of curio and relics license in 2014 from the ATF. The license allows the sale of guns that are at least 50 years old but does not allow the holder to be a general firearms dealer.

Records obtained by the ATF show the suspect has bought 531 guns from Gander Mountain from 2003 to 2015, spending nearly $170,000 on the guns; 513 of the guns were used. Some 428 of the guns were purchased from 2010 to early 2015, records show.

A Gander Mountain store manager said the suspect has been using a $25-off-for-every-$100-spent coupon for eight years.

The coupon mistakenly was printed without an expiration date and can be used repeatedly, the manager said. It's unclear why the store allows the coupon to be used over and over.

The ATF agents found he had 487 transactions for guns and accessories through a website called Gunbroker.

The site is an online auction for gun sales. It is unclear from the search warrant if there were background checks performed on the sales made. Gunbroker directs buyers to use a federal firearms license holder to broker the sale, adding, "For most firearms, the buyer must be able to pass a background check."

According to the search warrant, ATF agents found several circumstances where the suspect sold guns through Gunbroker, making a profit from $69 to $380 per gun. Records from Gander Mountain and Gunbroker show the suspect sold four guns in a one-week period in December 2014, earning $673 in profits.

The search warrant sought to search the email records of the suspect. ATF agents obtained the records in May 2015. The warrant was sealed in June 2015 for six months and that expired last week.
Cory Wells plays cards with his father, Dan Wells (right), as his stepmother, Liz Wells, looks on at Browns Living assisted living residence in South Milwaukee, where Cory lives after moving out of the long-term care unit at the county Mental Health Complex in 2013. Credit: Mike De Sisti

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Cory Wells is a 33-year-old Packers fan, lover of old cars, video game enthusiast and accomplished card player  now that he has moved out of the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex.

Outside those walls, Wells said he enjoys frequent family visits, shopping at a Walmart or Goodwill and bowling with friends.

In 2013, he was among the first wave of residents with chronic mental illness to be moved out of long-term care units at the troubled institution and into group homes in nearby communities  a three-year process that ended this month with the closure of those units.

Wells was ready, and happy to make the move from those institutional wards with long corridors, monitoring stations and heavy medications to an adult group home in a South Milwaukee residential neighborhood, said his father, Dan.

All other long-term care residents have followed him out the door and into communities in Milwaukee County in a historic resettlement of about 150 people.

The county's era of long-term institutional care for mental illness, dating to the 1880s, has ended. One person who moved out last year had lived in a unit at the institution since 1980, fully 35 years.

Planning for the moves out of the institution began in 2012  a year in which there were five patient deaths at the Mental Health Complex. In 2011 and 2012, there were 19 reported patient sexual assaults.

In February 2013, County Executive Chris Abele set a deadline of three years to place all the 150 people in long-term care there into group homes or other residences.

At that time, the county's psychiatric hospital was one of the last remaining in the United States.

Milwaukee County's institutional approach trapped patients in a cycle of emergency care, as chronicled by the Journal Sentinel's investigative reports on the troubled mental health system.

Even with the closing of long-term care units, Milwaukee County remains outside of common practice by continuing to provide emergency and acute care for people with mental illness. Most other counties across the country and the state contract with private organizations to provide care. A similar shift is being studied in Milwaukee County.

Sixteen years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court required states to eliminate unnecessary segregation of people with disabilities. In its Olmstead decision, the court ordered states to provide care in the least restrictive setting.

No one at the county institution was "tossed into the street" to comply with the law, Abele said Friday. "Every move was planned and approved" by patient guardians, advocacy groups, state and county officials and community care organizations, he said.

The planning process "developed individualized support and services for each person," said Barbara Beckert, manager of the Milwaukee office for Disability Rights Wisconsin.

The advocacy group participated in transition planning for about 100 people  all the former institution residents under age 60, she said.

The resettlement would not have been possible without Family Care, the state's Medicaid management program, she said. Family Care pays for about 75% of those people because they have multiple disabilities, according to Beckert.

Since 2012, the county has spent nearly $20 million to create or enhance community services so the resettlement would succeed, county Department of Health & Human Services Administrator Hector Colon said.

An additional $20 million in state and federal funds was awarded to boost the county's investment and help pay for housing and services, Colon said.

Rehab Central, the last long-term care unit at 9455 W. Watertown Plank Road, closed this month after its final four residents moved to a group home on W. Uncas Ave. on Milwaukee's south side.

Rehab Central was the residence for people with mental illness and complex medical problems.

The long-term care unit known as Hilltop closed in January 2015. Hilltop cared for people with developmental disabilities and mental illness.

A change for the better

Cory Wells had bounced in and out of the Mental Health Complex several times over the years, spending a few days there at a time, in response to behavioral problems caused by his mental illness, his father said.

But he was moved into the Hilltop long-term care unit in the summer of 2008 and was told he would not be released anytime soon.

The institution became his home for more than five years. His father and stepmother, Liz, recalled seeing him there so heavily medicated that he would be drooling and sleeping, or in restraints.

He also is prone to infections and was sick frequently while packed into the ward with other residents, his father said.

"I can't tell you how big of a deal it was to get him out of there," Dan Wells said. His son's friendly, outgoing personality has re-emerged since moving out in November 2013, he said.

The assisted-living group home owned by Marshfield-based Browns Living is now his home. He shows a visitor the Packers posters and old car photos in his bedroom. And the Play Station 2 on a shelf.

He interrupts talk about his favorite car-racing videos and other games when he remembers to show off the two Hot Wheels cars he had tucked into his socks.

"As long as he is moving and doing something, he is happy," said Liz Wells.

His favorite games include Monopoly and UNO. "He's beaten me at UNO so many times," said Ericka Bailey, an employee of Community Care Inc. She is manager of services funded by Family Care for 45 people, including 11 former Hilltop residents.

Brookfield-based Community Care manages disability services for 33 of the former long-term care residents from the county institution.

"Keeping Cory busy decreases the chance of misbehavior," she said. This group home provides extra staff with the expectation that Cory needs activities.

"His severe behaviors can endanger him and other people," she said. "So the staff here prevents escalation of those behaviors. This home will preserve his freedom."

Cory Wells smiled when inviting his father to play a hand of poker. "Dad's going down," he warned as he carried cards and chips to a kitchen table.

He has an unsteady gait but enjoys walking in stores or in the neighborhood, said staff at Browns Living.

"We've heard a lot of stories about people getting their lives back," Colon said. "Research shows they have better treatment outcomes in a community setting. It's the right thing to do."

The final four long-term care residents at Rehab Central had waited since last fall for their new home on Milwaukee's south side to open. It received its state license to operate this month, and the four men moved to the home on a cul-de-sac at the west end of Uncas Ave.

In July 2015, the Mental Health Board awarded a $4.6 million contract to Matt Talbot Recovery Services Inc. to operate one group home in Milwaukee and one in the suburbs. One was built in Franklin and the other was built on W. Uncas Ave.

Matt Talbot representatives invited nearby residents to tour the Uncas Ave. home in December after several neighbors alleged county officials had misled them about their intent to place two sex offenders there.

While two of the men are in the state's registry for sex offenders, city restrictions on where certain sex offenders can live in Milwaukee do not apply to the two men.
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Madison  Republican legislators are pushing a bill aimed at preventing drone operators from flying contraband into Wisconsin prisons as they have in other states.

Under the bill, anyone who flies a drone over a state correctional institution would face a $5,000 fine. The bill also would allow municipalities and counties to establish areas where drones cannot be flown. Local governments could impose fines up to $2,500.

The bill follows a series of cases across the country in which smugglers flew drugs, pornography or other contraband over prison walls. In August, a drone dropped a package of marijuana, tobacco and heroin into a prison yard in Ohio, sparking a fight among inmates. In October, a drone carrying drugs, blades and other contraband crashed into an Oklahoma prison yard. Other cases have surfaced in Georgia, Maryland and South Carolina.

Wisconsin has not yet reported similar issues with smuggling, but a drone that lost contact with its operator did land inside the walls of a state prison in Waupun in late December.

"This is really going after people and as a deterrent for people who want to commit crimes using drones," said Shawn Smith, a staff member in the office of the bill's author, Sen. Richard Gudex (R-Fond du Lac).

Besides a fine, the bill would let police seize any pictures or video taken by a drone and turn it over to the Department of Corrections.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been developing regulations for drones, or unmanned aircraft systems. Almost 300,000 drone owners have registered with the FAA since it started requiring registration on Dec. 21.

But some local and state lawmakers across the country believe the federal rules are too lax and have been stepping in to regulate drones themselves.

"The FAA has been coming out with the rules slowly but surely," Smith said. "We don't know what they're going to come out with, so we wanted to give the local authorities the ability to do so."

Under current Wisconsin law, there is no express authority granted to municipalities or counties to establish no-fly zones.

This bill expressly grants that permission and includes a provision that no political subdivision may enact an ordinance inconsistent with federal law, in order to fit with FAA regulations.

The bill has a public hearing in the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety Wednesday.
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Madison A Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinic in 2010 provided heart and brain tissues from aborted fetuses to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers for studies aimed at understanding the growth of babies with and without birth defects.

Anti-abortion activists released documents on the research at UW-Madison as they try to salvage a bill to prohibit this sort of tissue transfer before the close of the Wisconsin Legislature's session.

UW-Madison officials have already acknowledged doing this kind of biomedical research, but the documents make clear in addition that Planned Parenthood clinics in the state formerly helped to furnish some tissues involved.

Both UW and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin officials said that there was no reimbursement for the tissues, that the mothers agreed to the tissue use and that the university is no longer receiving tissues from these state clinics.

The studies provide insight into the moral argument at the heart of the legislation, known as AB 305.

Supporters say the bill would protect against profiteering from, and an improper reliance on, the remains of fetuses, while opponents say there is no profiteering and there are humane reasons to use tissues for bettering the health of all, including the unborn.

UW-Madison spokeswoman Meredith McGlone said the studies seek in part to understand why fetuses with an abnormal number of chromosomes don't grow normally, which can lead to Down syndrome and other medical challenges that have no treatment.

"We currently don't understand why these fetuses don't grow normally," McGlone said. "These chromosomal abnormalities lead some families to seek abortion. Many of these fetuses survive after birth but continue to suffer harmful effects because of their abnormal growth."

The legislation was highlighted last year after the release of videos that were secretly recorded of Planned Parenthood officials in other states purportedly discussing the cost of providing fetal body parts for medical research with anti-abortion activists posing as tissue buyers.

On Monday a grand jury in Texas indicted two anti-abortion activists involved in making videos, and Planned Parenthood's national arm has filed a lawsuit alleging that activists broke the law to misrepresent the practice in the recordings.

Anti-abortion opponents focused on different aspects of the UW-Madison studies, specifically graphic details of how the hearts and brains were removed from the fetuses, which were aborted at between 10 and 18 weeks for reasons that were not related to the research.

The studies were published in 2014 in the journals Molecular Human Reproduction and Prenatal Diagnosis.

The records on the research were obtained through an open records request by Alliance Defending Freedom, a social conservative group opposed to abortion.

An alliance official said the transfer contradicted previous Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin statements that their clinics in the state don't supply any tissues for research.

"Planned Parenthood has once again demonstrated its willingness to cover up its role in the gruesome baby parts trade," said Matt Bowman, an attorney for the alliance.

Iris Riis, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said that what her group said is true  the group's clinics no longer supply the tissues.

"Our opponents are desperately trying everything they can to get this fetal tissue bill to the floor," Riis said. "There is no ongoing research project, and the truth remains that Planned Parenthood does not currently offer tissue donation services to our patients. Our focus is on delivering essential health care to all those who are in need."

Lisa Brunette, a spokeswoman for the UW Health, said a study nurse from the university was on hand in 2010 to provide assistance such as collecting the mothers' consent. That eliminated the need to reimburse Planned Parenthood, she said.

Chelsea Shields, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Right to Life, said the documents showed that Planned Parenthood clinics in the state had participated in the "harvesting of baby body parts."

"It's becoming more apparent that legislative action must be taken to end this practice in Wisconsin," Shields said.
Wilson's ice cream parlor is a longtime favorite stop in the scenic town of Ephraim, where classic Door county buildings cling to the hillside. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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At least for now, the strongest beverage on the menu at the Chef's Hat Cafe in Ephraim is espresso.

Over at the Old Post Office Restaurant, an Ephraim venue known for its fish boils, coffee is the drink with the most kick. Same goes for Joe Jo's Pizza and Gelato in Ephraim  coffee packs the biggest punch  although its menu lists some non-alcohol beers.

Ephraim, a picturesque village near the top of the Door County peninsula, is a dry town  believed to be the only alcohol-free community left in Wisconsin.

But that could change this spring as voters decide whether it's time to end Ephraim's 163-year-old prohibition on alcohol sales.

Last week, the village certified petitions seeking to put two referendum proposals on the April 5 ballot. One, in essence, asks whether the sale of beer, for consumption on the premises or packaged, should be allowed in the village. The other asks whether it should be OK to sell wine in restaurants.

To proponents like Hugh Mulliken, an Ephraim businessman and commercial property owner who started the petition drive and quickly collected enough signatures to put the referendum on the spring ballot, serving beer or wine is just a matter of keeping up with the times and could promote new business in Ephraim.

"I think the businesses of Ephraim, like a restaurant, are hampered by not being able to serve beer or wine with their supper," Mulliken said. "I think that's pretty much expected."

But to opponents of the beer and wine proposals, such as Ephraim Historical Foundation member Tony Beadell, alcohol isn't necessary to enhance the local economy and would, he said, undo "the collective wisdom of thousands of villagers over multiple generations."

"We take the cultural past seriously," Beadell said.

Residents have tried twice before to change the ban on alcoholic beverages in Ephraim, a village with a population of about 300. They failed each time. In a 1932 referendum, the idea of allowing alcohol was voted down 78 to 54. In 1992, residents voted 141-50 to keep Ephraim dry.

"Things change," said Mulliken, who gathered about 100 signatures for each referendum question.

Mulliken said he might consider opening a grocery store if he could sell beer along with food and other items.

If the proposals win approval, licenses would be issued by the village so restaurant owners would be able to serve beer and wine, just like their competitors in other Door County communities.

"Don't want a tavern. Don't want hard liquor. Just want what would commonly be served with a meal today," said Mulliken, who runs the Lodgings at Pioneer Lane  an inn, he notes, that can't even offer up alcoholic beverages as part of a honeymoon package.

But Beadell, a Mequon investment manager who owns a permanent home and log cabin in Door County, likes the no-alcohol tradition brought to Ephraim by its Moravian-faith founders in 1853, even though he himself isn't a teetotaler.

"Everybody who's ever come to Ephraim and wanted to do business as a restaurateur knew the ordinances well in advance. It wasn't like somebody changed them on them. They came into town knowing that they couldn't serve beer or wine or hard liquor," Beadell said.

Beadell added: "We are slow to give into the social ebb that has overwhelmed so many other tourist destinations. We champion our past, but encourage thoughtful change."

Mulliken said he actually found more residents interested in signing the petitions, but he stopped collecting signatures when he almost tripled the number required to put a referendum on the ballot. With two referendum questions, it's possible voters could approve licensing both beer and wine sales, reject both or approve only one.

Whether 100 signatures on petitions will translate to actual votes when election day rolls around is anyone's guess. But someone will be toasting the outcome with some type of beverage.

"There are people on both sides of the aisle on that one," Ephraim Village Administrator Brent Bristol said. "You sit down and they could explain their side of it for hours on end."
The Murr family cabin sits on the bank of the St. Croix River in St. Croix County. Credit: Murr family photo

SHARE Members of the Murr family pose for a photo last summer at their cabin on the St. Croix River. Each year, the family chooses a state theme for its big gathering and last year it was Kentucky. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take the familys case in which it argues St. Croix County and the state are wrongly preventing it from selling a vacant lot adjacent to the summer home. Murr family photo

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Wisconsin is full of stories about cabin owners at odds with shoreland conservation and development rules.

But only one has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the justices agreed to hear the Murr family's claim that St. Croix County effectively took its property without compensation.

The case started 11 years ago when regulations from the 1970s derailed four siblings' plans to finance improvements to the cabin their parents built on Lake St. Croix in 1960 by selling their vacant lot next door.

Donna Murr said she already feels like the family has won, just getting to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We felt so strongly about this for so long and look where we are," she said. "I guess we were right!"

Murr, the youngest of her siblings at 52, said they almost had to give up their fight after the state Supreme Court last year declined to review a Court of Appeals decision against them, and their longtime Hudson attorney was appointed a circuit judge.

But searching the Internet, they found the Pacific Legal Foundation, a California nonprofit that advocates for property rights. It said the Murrs' case was perfect to get clarification of how courts should value distinct but adjacent parcels owned by the same people when they claim the government has taken value without compensation. And the foundation would represent the Murrs for free.

John Groen, who wrote the brief that persuaded the court to take the case, said it's unusual to get review of a dispute not heard by a state's highest court, or a federal court.

"Obviously, that's a very small door to get through," he said. "It shows the court recognizes these are very important issues."

"This litigation asks whether government can get away with telling property owners, in essence, 'The more land you own, the less we'll allow you to use,'" Groen said.

Family roots

William Murr ran a plumbing business in South St. Paul when he and his wife, Margaret, bought a 11/4-acre lot in 1960 and built a three-bedroom cottage along the St. Croix River. In 1963, they bought an adjacent lot "for investment purposes."

The Murrs and their seven children, and later grandchildren and great-grandchildren, enjoyed the property for years. In 1994 and 1995, the Murrs gifted the two parcels to their children.

In 2004, the four children began exploring a plan to sell the extra lot and use the proceeds to upgrade the old cabin.

Donna Murr explained that the cabin had flooded five times over the years. They wanted to raise it and move it back toward the bluff.

None of her siblings is rich, she said, so they decided to sell the long vacant lot to finance the fix-up.

That's when they ran afoul of 1976 regulations that require any lot have an acre of developable area. Each of the Murrs' lots are 1.25 acres, but the vacant lot's net buildable area is only 0.5 acre, after deductions for slope preservation, floodplain, right of way and wetlands.

The Murrs were denied the special exceptions and variances needed for their planned project by the county and the state Department of Natural Resources. That stretch of the St. Croix is protected under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Here's what irks the Murrs and their lawyers: The 1976 law grandfathered prior owners, allowing them to build on just 0.5 acre of usable land  unless they owned abutting property as the Murrs do. In that case, the lots would "merge" into a larger parcel for sale or development purposes.

They sued, saying the regulations effectively take the value of their vacant lot without compensation.

Lengthy legal battle

Wisconsin courts sided with St. Croix County, finding that for purposes of determining whether a taking occurred, the two lots must be considered as one parcel.

The combined 2.5 acres can easily support construction of a modern new home on either parcel or straddling them both, officials say. An appraiser set the 2006 value of the single parcel at $698,000, and the combined value of separate lots at $771,000. The difference is less than 10%, which courts have ruled does not amount to a taking. The year 2006 was when zoning officials denied the Murrs' plans.

The Pacific Legal Foundation says the determination of which lot is affected  the individual lot or the combined plot  is critical to deciding takings claims under the Fifth Amendment, and that the "parcel as a whole" concept has been inadequately developed, leading to inconsistent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and state court interpretations.

The county points out that when the Murr children got the land from their parents in 1994, they knew "it was highly protected by federal, state, county and local (i.e., town) regulations intended to preserve the area's beauty and significance."

The family could have deeded the lots in such a way that they were not owned by the same parties, and therefore preserved the right to develop the vacant one under the grandfathering clause of the 1976 ordinance.

The county also says the Murrs could have modified their "grandiose" plan to redevelop the cabin in a way to win regulatory approval. For instance, they could build a new home on the bluff without a variance, or flood-proof the existing cabin in ways that would not require filling and grading in the slope.

State also a defendant

Donna Murr laughs at the "grandiose" description. She said the biggest home allowed, even atop the bluff, would be 1,500 square feet. But she says the family never considered building away from the beach, where the cottage has been for 45 years, noting the bluff site is 13 stories of steps above the water.

In the county's brief opposing Supreme Court review, Milwaukee attorney Remzy Bitar argued that the courts have already clearly held that anyone who claims a government taking must show a significant loss in value to the whole parcel.

Bitar concedes there is no categorical rule for a case like the Murrs, involving residential lots, but argues that is for the best because fairness requires consideration of the peculiarities of each case, not application of a formula.

The state is also a defendant, and though it didn't file an initial brief opposing the petition for Supreme Court review, it plans to have Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha Tseytlin do the oral argument in the case.

Donna Murr said the dozens of family members who use the cottage really have no Plan B, and would probably just stick with the status quo if they can't sell the empty lot or get compensated by the county.

A resident of Eau Claire, she lives the farthest from the cottage, and most of her other relatives live in the Twin Cities area, less than 30 minutes away. Her parents died more than 15 years ago.

Each summer, the siblings, their children and some grandchildren gather for a group photo on the beach. She said the cottage has helped keep the family close.

"We're all paying our share, six families," she said. "That all helps. If it was just myself, I'd have given up a long time ago."
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Maan News Agency |  

BETHLEHEM (Maan)  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his governments support of illegal settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem at any time on Sunday when discussing the case of settlers who took over two buildings in Hebron this week.

Israeli forces evicted more than 80 Israeli settlers on Friday from two buildings believed to belong to Palestinians in Hebrons Old City, a day after the settlers forced their way into them under the protection of the Israeli army and police forces.

According to Israeli far-right news site Arutz Sheva, the settlers claimed to have purchased the buildings from Palestinians.

The settlers eviction caused a row among Israeli politicians, with members of the Knesset, Israels parliament, threatening to leave Netanyahus coalition if the buildings remain evacuated.

The government supports settlement at any time, especially now when it is under terrorist assault and is taking a courageous and determined stand in the face of terrorist attacks, Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

With the same breath, we are a nation of law and we must respect the law, he added. As soon as the procedures regarding the purchase are approved, we will allow the two homes in Hebron to be populated, as indeed occurred in similar instances in the past.

Netanyahu said the procedure to determine the ownership of the buildings started on Sunday and would occur as quickly as possible, likely within a week.

The decision by Israeli courts regarding the status of the homes comes as Hebrons Old City continues to stand at the heart of tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The area  known as H2 and under full Israeli military control  is home to an enclave of Jewish settlers living in the center of the West Banks largest Palestinian city.

The flashpoint Old City was declared a closed military zone in November following the recent wave of unrest, and Palestinian residents have come under higher-than-average restrictions by the Israeli military that Israeli rights group BTselem has called draconian.

Via Maan News Agency

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Israeli Squatters assault homes in Hebron and Palestinian youth oppose them
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

A frequently met-with Western political and often journalistic narrative of the 2011 youth revolts in the Arab world is that idealistic young people came out into the streets and managed to overthrow four dictators, but then the essential Arab nature (violent, fanatical, tribal and sectarian) came out and derailed any move toward democracy. The Arabs then fell back into dictatorship or spiraled down into civil war. In other words, the revolts were about democratization and the WOGs just arent up to it because of flaws in national character.

Social scientists dont think there is something peculiar about Arabs. Rather, they do big studies of lots of instances of countries moving from authoritarian to more democratic forms of government and try to discover the (non-racial) reasons for failure and success. Theyve put their finger on some important correlates.

Larry Diamond points to an acceleration of the breakdown of democracy since 2006, after the four-decade 3rd wave in which the number of democracies tended to increase and human and civil rights improved. But since 2006, not only have a lot of democracies regressed toward authoritarianism but the rate at which they are doing so has increased. In short, the Arab worlds regressions are not unusual in the contemporary world. One thinks about the excitement about post-Soviet eastern Europe, and how disappointing Hungary and even Poland are, not to mention Ukraine.

Adam Przeworski finds a strong correlation between successful democratic transitions and relatively high per capita income. Conversely, such attempts to move from dictatorship to more open forms of governance have a high rate of failure in poor countries. For twenty years Mali was extolled as one of Africas rare democratic successes. Then in 2012 abruptly democracy ended in Mali and the country fell to pieces. The countrys nominal per capita annual income is $672, so the odds were always stacked against it.

The nominal per capita income of the countries where there were significant 2011 youth revolts are as follows:

Bahrain $23,899

Libya $4,745

Tunisia $3,985

Egypt $3,436

Morocco $3,077

Syria $1,821

Yemen $1,235

These countries just werent very promising candidates for democratization, with the exception of Bahrain. Of the non-Gulf countries where there were substantial demonstrations, Libya had the highest per capita income. But it was an oil state and most of the oil income went to the Gaddafi family and the state bourgeoisie. Dividing it by the 6.5 million Libyans is silly. Ordinary people in Libya, especially in the east, were often not well off. When I was there in 2012 I was shocked at how little it looked like an oil state. Benghazi isnt as nice as Amman in Jordan, and Jordan has very little income.

Syria and Yemen are poorer than Vietnam and Uzbekistan, neither a beacon of democracy. Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco are poorer than Belarus, Thailand and Iran, all authoritarian states.

Bahrain failed despite its income because the Sunni Arab monarchy and elite could not make a bargain with the Shiite majority. Factions within the nation have to be able to trust one another in order to risk having an election. Moreover, the oil wealth isnt exactly equitably shared with the Shiite peasants.

Related book:

The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East



Some poor countries manage to keep having regular elections India is the most significant example here. But it has a long tradition of elections going back to the early twentieth century and one of its main political parties, which still has substantial grassroots, i.e. Congress, was founded in the 19th century. No Arab country has a parliamentary party with a continuous history of campaigning and grassroots organizing at all analogous to Congress. (Egypt only had one party from the 1950s through the 1970s, the Nasserist Rally. Syria only really has had the Baath since the late 1960s. Etc.)

Not only does a low per capita income make it less likely that a transition to democracy will be successful, but Diamond points out that where the economy turns down during the transition, that raises the chances of failure.

The economy turned down in all the Arab revolt countries in 2011-2015 with the exception of Morocco. Tunisia and Egypt got a lot of income from tourism, which declined steeply after the revolutions. So that Tunisia managed to have a relatively successful transition despite poverty and despite a slowing economy is a testament to its peoples and its politicians dedication and willingness to compromise.

Another issue is the relationship of the military to the state in each of these countries.

Tunisia has almost no military, only something like 35,000 men under arms. deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali came to power in a coup, so he kept the army small to make sure some other officer did not do that to him. The sheer smallness of Tunisias military and its unavailability for repression of large public gatherings is probably a major reason for its relative success in moving toward democracy.



(Adapted from Wikimedia with thanks )

Egypts military in contrast is enormous (some 450,000 men), and in some ways it has been in power since 1952. The 2011 overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak (himself a former Air Force officer) took the form of a military coup. In 2013, the Egyptian military, having watched the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood government adopt a whole series of unpopular policies, intervened in conjunction with massive street rallies to make a coup.

In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the military was an arm of the regime, commanded by relatives of the president for life. In each case it was deployed to crush the revolutions. The NATO intervention stopped the Gaddafi tank corps from wiping out rebellious cities such as Benghazi, but the downside is that the army collapsed when the regime did. Libya has no national army and this situation has contributed to its chaos.

In Syria the army was deployed against the people. It drove them to arm themselves and provoked a civil war.

In Yemen the overthrown president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, still had a lot of units of the military who were loyal to him. He persuaded them to ally with the Houthi rebels of Saadeh, Zaydi Shiites, to overthrow Salehs successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, last year this time. An aggressive intervention against Saleh in favor of Mansour Hadi was launched by the Saudis and their allies.

In Bahrain, the army is a Sunni instrument of Sunni power.

The revolutions in the Arab world were in some part derailed by deep divisions between nationalists and religious fundamentalists. Some of the supposed sectarianism actually has this character. This struggle has been prominent in Libya, Egypt and Syria.

Finally, the right wing authoritarianism of many of the Gulf oil states, especially of Saudi Arabia, meant that they were willing to bankroll extremist authoritarian groups, whether officer corps or religious fundamentalists in preference to democrats, and were willing to pay officer corps to crush populist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Looked at in the light of these social science findings, the failure of most Arab states to transition to democracy is unsurprising. Poor countries in Africa, Asia and Central America have had the same difficulties. It is nothing to do with Islam or Arabs (Arab is just a speaker of a language, not an ethnic group). It is everything to do with lack of development.

The good news is that development will eventually take place in the Arab world, and a rising standard of living will impel people to take more control over their lives. Moreover, just as 1968 in eastern Europe was a proving ground for the later Velvet Revolution, so Arab youth now have experience in mobilizing.
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By Brian Glyn Williams | (Informed Comment) |  

It was the sort of invitation that causes both excitement and trepidation, an invite to visit the autonomous mountain enclave in northern Iraq known as Kurdistan to carry out field research. It was exciting because we were being given an inside track to a moderate sanctuary inhabited by a pro-American Muslim people known as the Kurds, but frightening for the fact that this sliver of land they inhabited abutted the expanding Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) Caliphate which threatened them every day. Tens of thousands of legendary Peshmergas (i.e. Those who Face Death, a volunteer Kurdish fighting force that had fought Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to create this autonomous zone) manned a thin defensive line stretching 650 miles along Kurdistans tenuous border with the Daesh state based in nearby Mosul and were under constant attack.

But our Kurdish hosts, Diyar Jamil and Abdulkarim Karim, assured us that life in this fragile enclave was normal and even peaceful, despite the daily assaults on the Peshmerga front line by fanatical Daesh fighters. In this mountain refuge for the Kurds, an ancient Aryan people related to the Persians, life went on and we were promised the opportunity to safely travel the length and breadth of a beautiful land that few outsiders get the chance to visit. Ignoring the gloom-and-doom U.S. State Department travel advisories which seemed to apply more to rest of Iraq proper, which was inhabited by Arabs, my travel companion from a previous trip to visit the pagan Kalash descendants of Alexander the Great in the remote mountains of Pakistan, Professor Adam Sulkowski, and I set out to visit the front line of the war on the Daesh terrorists in January 2016. What we saw in Kurdistan gave us cause for hope not only for the Kurds, the largest nation in the world without their own internationally recognized state, but for the greater Middle East.



Peshmerga women fighters, courtesy Brian Glyn Williams

No Friends but the Mountains.

The Kurds are victims of history. When the Ottoman Empire disintegrated after World War I, they were not given their own state like the Arabs and Turks were. Instead, the victorious British and French divided them up amongst Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Those Kurds living in northern Iraq fought for decades for independence from this Arab-dominated state and suffered a genocidal assault from Saddam Hussein in the 1980s that saw 182,000 of their people massacred. The long-suffering Kurds of Iraq were largely ignored by the international community and, to this day, have a saying We have no friends but the mountains that captures their sense of isolation. Their chance for freedom from oppression and opportunity to construct autonomy came with the overthrow of Hussein in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Since then, the Kurds have built a de facto state complete with its own flag, army, democratic government, and an industry based largely on oil.

When we arrived in the Kurdistani capital of Erbil, located at the foot of the Zagros Mountains, we found a boomtown that had everything from KFCs (Krispy Fried Chicken, a local imitation of the American chain) to modern universities and newly-built skyscrapers. Our goal was not, however, to stay in the capital, which had been temporarily evacuated in 2014 when Daesh conquered Mosul (a mere fifty miles away) and threatened to overwhelm Kurdistan. Our main intention was to see the surrounding countryside. With the skilled Karim driving us deep into the snow-capped mountains, we explored this terrain that was as beautiful as any landscape I had seen in Switzerland or the Himalayas. The gem of the mountains was Rawanduz, a scenic village precariously perched above the deepest canyon in the Middle East. Standing on the rim of the canyon watching a waterfall cascade down the side of the green valley walls with snow-capped mountains surrounding us we felt as if we were in a veritable Shangri La.

Our journey ultimately took us from near the Iranian border down to the scenic valley of Lailish which overlooked the plain of Gaugamela where Alexander the Great defeated the Persian King of Kings Darius in the 300s B.C. In Lailish, we found the holiest shrine in the world for the Yazidis, a long-persecuted pagan people who adhere to a syncretic faith that combines the ancient beliefs of Mesopotamia with the worship of angels, such as Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel.

Deep in the passageways of their stone enclosure built in the mists of time, we watched Yazidi worshippers tie knots in scarves hanging from fire-blackened pillars and make wishes. The Yazidis believe that when the scarves are untied by other believers their wishes come true. We also visited the grave of Sheikh Adi, a miracle-performing Yazidi saint who was buried in the site roughly 900 years earlier.

Tragically, the Daesh fanatics had conquered the Yazidis second most important holy spot known as Mount Sinjar in August 2014 and destroyed their ancient shrine there, enslaved their women, and killed their men as devil worshippers. The second highest ranked priest of the Yazidi faith, Baba Chawish, explained to us that his peoples religion was nonviolent and his small people did not have a tradition of defending themselves. Fortunately, the Kurdish Peshmerga, working with the U.S. Air Force, had liberated their shrine in Mount Sinjar a few weeks before our visit and many Yazidi refugees were returning to their homes to the west.

But this small return movement of Yazidis was a drop in the bucket of the approximately two million refugees that Kurdistan, a land of just five million people, has given sanctuary to. The Kurdistan Regional Government proudly offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Arabs, despite the bad blood between their peoples (the U.S. by contrast has only accepted 2,000 Syrian refugees).

We visited a sprawling camp for thousands of Syrian refugees near the Syrian border and our hearts were touched by the sense of pride and hospitality these displaced people, who had experienced unimaginable horrors, displayed. One Syrian woman showed us around the bare, concrete hut that provided shelter for her and her four children and jokingly told us that she would love to bite Daesh fighters if she had the chance. When Adam asked her beaming children what they dreamed of being when they grew up, they responded that their only dream was to return home.

Female Peshergas.

All the refugees we met were grateful for the protection that the Peshmergas offered them and we decided to visit these famed fighters who were the most effective fighting force against Daesh. Our dream in particular was to meet the legendary female Peshmergas who had made headlines across the globe in 2015 when they played a key role in the rout of Daesh in their first setback during the siege of the Kurdish town of Kobane.

It was with great trepidation that we traveled to the front lines near Mosul to a hilltop command outpost facing Daesh known as Base Rosh (Sun). There, we met General Bandal Bande who warmly greeted us and half jokingly told us that Kurdistan wished to be Americas 51st state. He told us that his war-weary troops were constantly low on ammunition, that they were in daily clashes with Daesh who killed his fighters with I.E.D. explosives or sniper rifles, and that the enemy had heavier weapons than his own soldiers. But they were determined to protect their peoples enclave and wanted Americans to know that they were fighting the enemy that threatened both peoples.

After our discussion, General Bande led us to the sand-bagged walls of his exposed outpost and introduced us to a platoon of female Peshmergas. These camouflage-clad fighters armed with assault rifles appeared to be young and the beauty of many of them seemed to belie their fierce reputation. But their commanding general assured us that these warriors were the bane of the Daesh fighters and had repulsed many an assault. Seeing these female soldiers boldly manning the front line with an enemy that had created something akin to ISISphobia among distant Americans, I realized they stood for everything the misogynistic terrorists hated. Whereas DAESH wanted to drive women back to the stone ages, these women were fighting for the future of their nation and its principles of pluralism, equality, and moderation. As we left the exposed base with an undisguised sense of relief, my heart went out to these brave female Peshmergas who always left one bullet in their weapons to kill themselves should they be overrun by the Daesh fanatics.

Our next visit was to a man who waged a different kind of war against DAESH terrorists trying to infiltrate Kurdistan, Masrour Barzani. Barzani was the son of the Kurdistan Regional Government president and served as the Chancellor of the Kurdistan Security Council. He invited us to his heavily-guarded, hilltop headquarters overlooking the capital and spoke with us about his efforts to disrupt Daesh sleeper cells trying to carry out terror attacks in his relatively peaceful land. Thus far, his agents had been incredibly successful in disrupting Daesh plots and Kurdistan had only experienced one major terror attack, even as the rest of Iraq and neighboring Syria descended into chaos. When combined with the ubiquitous Peshmerga checkpoints that are found every few miles on Kurdistans roads, Chancellor Barzanis security apparatus created a sense of security that made us feel as safe in his lands, if not safer, than in our hometown of Boston.

Our next visit was to the man who shaped Kurdistans foreign policy in this dangerous neighborhood, the Kurdistan Foreign Minister Falah Mustafa Bakir. He explained to us that the Iraqi government had cut Kurdistan off from its payroll in 2014 to punish it for directly selling its oil to Turkey. When combined with the collapse in oil prices worldwide and flight of foreigners who had been working in Kurdistan due to the Daesh conquests, the freezing of Kurdistans share of the national budget had led to an economic collapse. As a result, no government employees were being paid and even the legendary Peshmerga were now fighting without receiving salaries. But Mr. Bakir summed up the situation with the sort of optimism I found throughout this de facto country We have survived worse and we will survive this. At least now our oil is not being used by the Iraqi government to carry out genocide against our people.

It was only later, after we said a fond goodbye to our travel companions Karim and Diyarwho had proudly shown us their homeland and refused to let us pay for anything from meals to the gas that fueled our daily journeysand we flew back to Istanbul, Turkey, that were able to make sense of everything we had seen in this scenic land. In Kurdistan we had found a moderate people that protected pagans and ancient Christian minorities (we also met the Bishop of Dohuk who spoke highly of the Kurds sense of inclusiveness for Christians), empowered women, were democratic, and were actively fighting Daesh at a time when many in America were asking where the moderate Muslims were in the war on terror. But the greatest lesson we learned from our journey among this welcoming people was that, in a time when some American politicians seek to tar whole religions in broad brushstrokes, Islam is not a monolith, it is a mosaic. And, as the case of Kurdistan vividly demonstrates, some of our greatest allies in the war on terrorist groups like Daesh are themselves Muslim.

For photographs from the journey to the Yazidi shrine at Lailish, female Peshmergas and scenery in Kurdistans mountains, see the authors website .

Dr. Brian Glyn Williams is Professor of Islamic History and author of The Last Warlord. The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior who Led U.S. Special Forces to Topple the Taliban Regime. http://www.thelastwarlord.com/
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By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com)

One of the charms of the future is its powerful element of unpredictability, its ability to ambush us in lovely ways or bite us unexpectedly in the ass. Most of the futures I imagined as a boy have, for instance, come up deeply short, or else I would now be flying my individual jet pack through the spired cityscape of New York and vacationing on the moon. And who, honestly, could have imagined the Internet, no less social media and cyberspace (unless, of course, you had read William Gibsons novel Neuromancer 30 years ago)? Who could have dreamed that a single countrys intelligence outfits would be able to listen in on or otherwise intercept and review not just the conversations and messages of its own citizens  imagine the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century  but those of just about anyone on the planet, from peasants in the backlands of Pakistan to at least 35 leaders of major and minor countries around the world? This is, of course, our dystopian present, based on technological breakthroughs that even sci-fi writers somehow didnt imagine.

And who thought that the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street were coming down the pike or, for that matter, a terror caliphate in the heart of the former Middle East or a Donald Trump presidential run that would go from success to success amid free media coverage the likes of which weve seldom seen? (Small career tip: dont become a seer. Its hell on Earth.)

All of this might be considered the bad but also the good news about the future. On an increasingly grim globe that seems to have failure stamped all over it, the surprises embedded in the years to come, the unexpected course changes, inventions, rebellions, and interventions offer, at least until they arrive, grounds for hope. On the other hand, in that same grim world, theres an aspect of the future that couldnt be more depressing: the repetitiveness of so much that you might think no one would want to repeat. Im talking about the range of tomorrows headlines that could be written today and stand a painfully reasonable chance of coming true.

Im sure you could produce your own version of such future headlines in a variety of areas, but here are mine when it comes to Washingtons remarkably unwinnable wars, interventions, and conflicts in the Greater Middle East and increasingly Africa.

What Victory Looks Like

Lets start with an event that occurred in Iraq as 2015 ended and generated headlines that included victory, a word Americans havent often seen in the twenty-first century  except, of course, in Trumpian patter. (Were going to win so much  win after win after win  that youre going to be begging me: Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We cant stand it any more. And Im going to say: No way. Were going to keep winning. Were never going to lose. Were never, ever going to lose.) Im talking about the victory achieved at Ramadi, a city in al-Anbar Province that Islamic State (IS or ISIL) militants seized from the Iraqi army in May 2015. With the backing of the U.S. Air Force  there were more than 600 American air strikes in and around Ramadi in the months leading up to that victory  and with U.S.-trained and U.S.-financed local special ops units leading the way, the Iraqi military did indeed largely take back that intricately booby-trapped and mined city from heavily entrenched IS militants in late December. The news was clearly a relief for the Obama administration and those headlines followed.

And heres what victory turned out to look like: according to the Iraqi defense minister, at least 80% of the city of 400,000 was destroyed. Rubblized. Skeletized. City may be what its still called, but its hardly an accurate description. According to New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard, who visited Ramadi soon after the victory, few inhabitants remained. Of an Iraqi counterterrorism general there with him, Hubbard wrote:

In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes. Homes? he said. There are no homes.

Hubbard also cited the head of the Anbar provincial council as estimating that rebuilding the city would require $12 billion. (Other Iraqi officials put that figure at $10 billion.) Thats money no one has, including an Iraqi government increasingly strapped by plummeting oil prices  and keep in mind that thats only a single destroyed community. The earlier, smaller victories of the Kurds at Kobane and Sinjar in Syria, also backed by devastating U.S. air power, destroyed those towns in a similar fashion, as for instance has Bashar al-Assads barrel bombing air force and military in parts of the city of Aleppo and in the now thoroughly devastated city of Homs in central Syria. The Russians have, of course, entered the fray, too, in the American style, bombing and advising.

Lets add one more thing before we write our future headlines. The day after President Obama gave his final State of the Union address, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visited the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Eighteen hundred of that divisions members are soon to be deployed to Iraq to aid Iraqi military units in their drive to retake parts of their country from the Islamic State. For those future advisers, Carter elaborated on the presidents plans, laying out in some detail how he (and presumably Obama) saw the conflict playing out. Favoring the image of the Islamic State as a metastasizing cancer, he said:

The ISIL parent tumor has two centers  Raqqa in Syria, and Mosul in Iraq. ISIL has used its control of these cities and nearby territories as a power base from which to derive considerable financial resources, manpower, and ideological outreach. They constitute ISILs military, political, economic, and ideological centers of gravity. Thats why our campaign plans map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqqa. We will begin by collapsing ISILs control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations through other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria.

In fact, such a campaign would give elimination operations new meaning, since it would clearly involve quite literally eliminating the urban infrastructure of significant parts of the region. Three cities are, in fact, at present targeted: Fallujah (population perhaps 300,000), the other major IS-controlled city in al-Anbar Province, Mosul (the second largest city in Iraq, with a population presently estimated at 1 to 1.5 million), and Raqqa, the Syrian capital of the Islamic State, now reportedly stuffed with refugees (population 200,000-plus). Put them together and you have a 2016 plan for a U.S.-backed set of campaigns in Iraq and Syria based on the same formula as the taking of Ramadi: massive American air power in support of heavily trained and advised Iraqi special ops forces and army units or, in Syria, Kurdish peshmerga outfits and assorted Kurdish and Syrian rebels. Add in the Islamic States urge to turn the urban areas it holds into giant bombs and what you have is a plan for the rubblization of yet more cities in the region.

There has, of course, been much talk about an offensive to retake Mosul since relatively small numbers of Islamic State fighters captured the city from tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops in June 2014. There was, for instance, a highly touted spring offensive against Mosul that was much discussed in early 2015 but never happened, so its impossible to be sure that the overstretched, generally underperforming Iraqi military will even make it to Mosul in 2016 or that there will be any non-American boots available to take Raqqa, especially since that city sits well outside any imaginable future Kurdistan. Still, assuming all went well, we essentially know what the future holds: Ramadi-style victories.

As a result, the end of the year headline for American/Iraqi/Kurdish/Syrian rebel operations  adapted from an infamous 1968 line by an anonymous American officer in Vietnam after U.S. planes had pummeled the provincial capital of Ben Tre  would be: We Destroyed the Cities to Save Them.

Based on Ramadi, you could then perhaps offer these ballpark (not that any stadiums would be left standing) future estimates for rebuilding: Falluja, $10 billion; Raqqa, $7 billion; Mosul, $20 to $25 billion. Those are obviously fantasy figures, but the point is that success against and victory over the Islamic State would undoubtedly leave much of the region a modern Carthage. And who would pay for a new Ramadi, or Mosul, or Fallujah, or Raqqa, no less all of them and more?

Put another way, victory would mean that Iraq will have far fewer habitable cities and a far larger number of displaced people whose resettlement will undoubtedly be subject to the ethnic tensions that helped fuel the Islamic State in the first place. This represents a reasonably predictable future, one that should be obvious enough to anyone who took a half-serious look at the situation. It certainly should be obvious to Ashton Carter, as well as to American planners at the Pentagon and in the Obama administration. And yet the planning goes on as if victory were a meaningful category under the circumstances.

And heres the thing: you can join the Islamic State in blowing up the physical plant of Syria and parts of Iraq and then eject its fighters from the rubble, but youll be destroying the means of existence of a vast, increasingly unsettled population. What you may not be able to do in the process is destroy a movement that began in an American military prison in Iraq and has always been a set of ideas. You may simply create a legend.

Unleashing the Special Operators and the Drones

Now, lets consider another set of potential future headlines linked to present planning and past experience. Secretary of Defense Carter claims that the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State is focused on creating sustainable political stability in the region, by which he means not just the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, but all of the Greater Middle East. As he said to the members of the 101st Airborne:

Next, let me describe the fight outside of Iraq and Syria. As we work to destroy the parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, we must also recognize that ISIL is metastasizing in areas such as North Africa, Afghanistan, and Yemen. The threat posed by ISIL, and groups like it, is continually evolving, changing focus and shifting location. It requires from us, therefore, a flexible and nimble response with a broad reach.

For this, he clearly plans to let loose American Special Operations forces not just in Syria but elsewhere on assassination missions against key Islamic State figures or those heading their distant franchises. Hes also intent on sending in the drones across the region in counter-terror operations and strikes on high-value targets to act decisively to prevent ISIL affiliates from becoming as great of a threat as the parent tumor itself.

As with the future taking of cities in Iraq and Syria, there is an experiential baseline for such operations across the region. In his book Kill Chain, Andrew Cockburn has called this approach to the enemy the kingpin strategy. It was first used in the drug wars in Latin America and Central America in the 1990s and then, after 9/11, adapted to the weaponized drone and special operations forces. The idea was to dismantle drug cartels or later terror outfits from the top down by taking out their leadership figures.

In fact, in both the drug wars and the terror wars, as Cockburn shows, the results of this strategy have been repetitiously calamitous. The drone, for instance, has proven remarkably capable of eliminating both the top leadership of terror groups and key lieutenants as well as other influential figures in those organizations  with the grimmest results: under the pressure of the drones and those special ops raids, such organizations (like the drug cartels before them) simply replaced their dead leaders with often younger and even more aggressive figures, while attacks rose and the groups themselves, instead of folding up, spread across the Greater Middle East and deep into Africa. The drones, bringing with them relatively widespread collateral damage, including the deaths of significant numbers of children, have terrorized the societies over which they cruise and so proved an ideal recruitment poster for those spreading terror groups.

Hence, first in the Bush era in a seat-of-the-pants way and then in the Obama years in a highly organized fashion, drone assassination campaigns in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia killed leadership figures while functionally helping to spread the terror organizations they directed. They have, that is, been engaged not in a war on terror, but in a war for terror. When you look at the expansion of those terror outfits, including the growing numbers of franchises of the Islamic State, it should be obvious that, from special ops missions to drone assassinations, from full-scale invasions to the destruction of cities, the 14-plus years of varied American strategies and military tactics have repetitively contributed to one horror after another, sucking much of the region into the vortex.

Whats striking when you listen to Secretary of Defense Carter is that, obvious as this may be, none of it seems to truly penetrate in Washington. Otherwise how do you explain the lack of any serious recalibration of American actions, the only debate being between those in the Obama administration, including the president, who favor a version of mission creep and their Republican critics who favor doing more in a bigger way? In other words, in 2016 were clearly going to witness further rounds of the utterly familiar with  somehow  the expectation that something different will happen. Since thats not likely, for the next set of future headlines just reach into the familiar past, substituting, when necessary, the future terror kingpins name: AQAP [al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula] announces death of [fill in name] in U.S. drone strike, U.S.: ISIS no. 2 killed in U.S. drone strike in Iraq, Army elite Delta Force kills top ISIS official, [fill in name], in daring Syria raid, Pentagon says senior al-Qaeda leader killed in drone strike, and so on more or less ad infinitum.

The Arc of Instability

Recently, with Ashton Carters strategy for stability on my mind, I caught a phrase in a news report that I hadnt heard for quite a while. A journalist, perhaps on NPR, was discussing the recent al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terror attack on a hotel in Burkina Faso, a previously relatively stable country in West Africa, where at least 30 died, mainly foreigners. He spoke of a spreading arc of instability in the region.

Back in the early years of the century, officials of the Bush administration and supportive neocons regularly used that phrase to describe the Greater Middle East, from Pakistan to North Africa. Strangely enough, it disappeared in the post-Iraqi invasion years and remained largely absent in the Obama years as the disastrous Libyan intervention, presidentially orchestrated drone assassination campaigns, and other actions helped further transform the Greater Middle East into a genuine arc of instability.

Today, in a way that would have been unimaginable back in 2002-2003, the region is filled with failing or failed states from Afghanistan and Syria to Libya, Yemen, and Mali. While Iraq may not quite be a failed state, it is no longer exactly a country either, but something like a tripartite entity. And so it goes, and so it evidently will go if the U.S., as in 2015, drops another 23,000 bombs and thousands of additional munitions on the region  or far more, as seems likely under the mission-creep pressure of the war with the Islamic State.

We cant, of course, know just what countries will fail next. However, its safe to assume that, as long as the Obama strategy  and the Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or Marco Rubio one that may follow  involves more (or much more) of the same, more (or much more) of the same is likely to happen. As a result, similar predictable headlines will appear, as countries dissolve in various ways and the Islamic State, groups like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or newly founded terror outfits gain footholds amid the chaos. In that case, you only have to look into the recent past for headlines-to-come and adapt them slightly: ISIS Is Building Little Nests in [name of country here], U.S. Defense Secretary Warns, ISIS Is Gaining Ground in [name of country here], Competing with al-Qaeda, Islamic State Gained Strength in [name of country] by Co-opting Local Jihadists, and so on.

Amid the grimly predictable, there are, of course, many unknowns. Above all, we have no idea what it means at this point in history to turn a region, city by city, country by country, into something like a vast failed state and then continue to bomb the rubble. How do we begin to imagine what could emerge from the ruins of such a failed region in such a world, from an arc of instability far vaster than anything we have contemplated since World War II? I wouldnt want to predict the headlines that could someday emerge from that situation, but whatever surprises are in store for us, the mere prospect of such a future should make your blood run cold.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

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 Tom Engelhardt

Via Tomdispatch.com

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VANCOUVER, Jan. 25, 2016 /CNW/ - Freegold Ventures Limited ("Freegold" or the "Company") (TSX: FVL) is pleased to announce positive results of its Preliminary Economic Assessment (the "PEA") prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43101 (NI 43101) for the Company's 100% controlled Golden Summit Project (the "Project") located 32 km northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.

The PEA evaluates a two-phase, 24-year open pit mine generating two gold ore streams, each operating at 10,000 tonnes per day (tpd). Processing operations for the oxide and sulphide mineralized materials are heap leach and bioxidation respectively.

The PEA Technical Report was prepared by Tetra Tech, Inc. with Mark J. Abrams, C.P.G. and Gary H. Giroux, P.Eng. of Giroux Consultants Ltd.

Kristina Walcott, Freegold President and CEO commented: "The Golden Summit Project has a number of competitive advantages including existing infrastructure, a favorable permitting climate and proximity to Fairbanks. The site is within five miles of Kinross Gold's Fort Knox mine, a heap leach and milling operation, which has done tremendously well for Alaska. We have ready access to an available, seasoned labour pool." She further noted, "For this Project, we can offset early costs with a phased approach, and can take advantage of the Alaska DNR exploration incentive credit program and believe we can quickly grow the oxide Mineral Resource with more drilling, while utilizing the infrastructure and labour readily available in the area."

Based on a gold price of US$1,300/oz, highlights of the Golden Summit Project PEA include:

A post-tax NPV 5% and IRR of $188 million and 19.6% respectively;

A mine life of 24 years with peak annual gold production of 158,000 ounces and average annual gold production of 96,000 ounces;

2,358,000 ounces of dore produced over life of mine;

Total cash cost estimated at US$842 /oz Au (including royalties, refining and transport);

/oz Au (including royalties, refining and transport); Ability to execute Phase 1 with low initial capital ; initial and sustaining capital costs, including contingency, estimated at $88 million and $348 million respectively;

; initial and sustaining capital costs, including contingency, estimated at and respectively; A payback of 3.3 years post-tax; and

Favorable geopolitical climate; completion risk is offset through strong legislative and financial support at state and federal levels.

Golden Summit PEA Assumptions and Economic Results and presented in US $:

The following assumptions were used in the PEA evaluation:

Table 1: Principal Assumptions Description Parameter Unit General Assumptions Pre-Production Period 4 Years Mine Life 24 Years Operating Days 365 days/year Production* 3,650 Ktpy Market Assumptions Price Gold $1,300 $/oz Payable Metal Gold 2,308 Koz Deductions Gold Deduction 0.1% Transport & Insurance $4.00 $/oz Refining $3.00 $/oz Financial Assumptions Private Royalty 2.0% (average) Federal Income Tax 35.0% State Income Tax 9.4% Property Tax 1.3% Mining Licence Tax 7.0% Alaska Production Royalty 3.0% Technical Assumptions Diesel $3.00 $/gal Electric $0.13 $/kWh Recovery Heap Leach 80% Bioxidation 90% *Applicable to each phase individually (oxide and sulphide).

The following operating costs were developed for the Golden Summit Project:

Table 2: Golden Summit Operating Costs Description $/t-moved $/t-ore $/oz-gold Mining $3.04 $10.56 $441.68 Mining Lease - $1.06 $44.53 Crushing Circuit - $0.91 $38.10 Heap Leach (Oxide) - $1.20 $50.18 Process Plant (Sulphide) - $4.44 $185.59 Tailings Storage Facility - $0.12 $4.96 Infrastructure - $0.31 $13.09 Direct Operating Cost - $18.60 $778.13 Property Tax - $0.15 $6.10 Mining Licence Tax - $0.57 $23.74 Total Operating Cost - $19.31 $807.97

The following capital costs were developed for the Golden Summit Project and are presented in US $:

Table 3: Golden Summit Capital Costs Description Initial

($000s) Sustaining

($000s) LoM

($000s) Direct Costs 10 Mining $39,744 $110,784 $150,528 20 Crushing & SAG Mill Circuits $3,921 $9,884 $13,805 30 Heap Leach (Oxide) $11,410 $23,723 $35,133 40 Process Plant (Sulphide) $0 $27,894 $27,894 50 Tailings Storage Facility $0 $67,774 $67,774 60 Infrastructure $10,131 $11,000 $21,131 70 Construction $12,095 $56,903 $68,998 Direct Costs $77,301 $307,962 $385,263 Indirect Costs 800 Construction Indirects $456 $2,232 $2,688 810 Spares & Inventory $342 $1,674 $2,016 820 First Fills $342 $1,674 $2,016 830 Freight & Logistics $799 $2,789 $3,588 840 Commissioning & Start-Up $342 $1,674 $2,016 850 EPCM $1,369 $4,184 $5,553 860 Vendor & Consulting Assistance $228 $1,116 $1,344 Indirect Costs $3,879 $15,342 $19,221 90 Owner's Costs $7,240 $24,984 $32,224 Total Capital $88,420 $348,288 $436,708

Based on the assumptions and costs above, the following cash flow results are presented:

Table 4: Economic Results Description Value Unit Net Present Value (0%) $533,613 $000s Net Present Value (5%) $187,742 $000s IRR 19.6% % Payback 3.3 Years

Opportunities to Further Optimize Economics and Enhance Value

Value-enhancing opportunities, such as leased mine equipment, improved metallurgical performance through additional testing, liquid natural gas, local labour surveys, power generation sets, and local power contracts will be further investigated as the Project moves towards the Preliminary Feasibility stage. Additionally, there is potential for immediate resource expansion with continued drilling efforts within the oxide zone. Work completed to date which includes geophysical, geochemical and geological studies, indicates that there is a very strong possibility of being able to expand upon the known resource. A similar geochemical and geophysical signature over the known resource appears to extend both southwest and to the west over distances in excess of one (1) kilometre.

Golden Summit PEA Study Major Components

Metallurgy

Ore sample composites from five different rock types were taken from various drill core for metallurgical testing. The five composites were subjected to over 60 cyanidation tests to investigate gold recoveries using various methods of sulphide oxidation and cyanidation. A total of 36 coarse bottle roll tests were also completed to define parameters for a single column leach test to simulate heap leaching conditions for the Oxide material. In addition to the leach tests, the five composites had Bond Ball Mill Work Indices conducted to determine comminution requirements. Head analyses for gold, silver, and sulphur were also conducted. Major conclusions from the test program include:

Golden Summit oxide material leaches rapidly and achieves good recoveries under standard heap leaching parameters;

Sulphide material responds favorably to multiple methods of oxidation and cyanidation;

Gold recoveries greater than 80% were observed from the column tests; and

Gold recoveries greater than 90% were observed from sulphide oxidation testwork.

Geology and Mineralization

Gold mineralization on the Golden Summit property occurs in three main forms, including 1) intrusive-hosted sulphide-quartz stockwork veinlets (such as the Dolphin gold deposit), 2) auriferous sulphide-quartz veins (exploited by historic underground mines), and 3) shear-hosted gold-bearing veinlets. All three types are considered to be part of a large-scale intrusive-related gold system on the property. The Dolphin gold deposit is hosted in the Dolphin stock, which consists largely of granodiorite and tonalite, similar to the Pedro Dome pluton. It is the only large intrusive body known on the property at this time. The Dolphin stock is approximately the same age as the nearby Fort Knox pluton, which hosts Kinross Gold's Fort Knox gold mine. Freegold made the initial discovery of widespread low-grade gold mineralization in the Dolphin stock during the initial drilling campaign on the prospect in 1995; however resource definition drilling only commenced in 2011. A total of 87 holes have been drilled within the resource area since 2011 totaling 24,156 metres.

Mineral Resource Estimate

An update of the resource reported in December 2012 (Abrams and Giroux, 2012) was estimated incorporating an additional ten drill holes completed in 2013. The update also subdivides the resource into oxide and sulphide portions. The effective date for this resource is May 31, 2013, the date that the data was received. There were three drill holes completed since this date which do not have a material effect on this resource and as a result this resource remains current. The three new holes were compared to the estimated blocks they pass through and found to correlate well. Of the total 330 drill holes on the property, 185 penetrated the three dimensional geologic Dolphin Stock solid and were used for the estimate. The gold grade distribution identified multiple overlapping lognormal populations present. Erratic gold assays were capped at 88 g/t. Uniform down-hole composites three m in length were formed to honour the solid boundaries. The gold distribution of three (3) metre composites also identified overlapping lognormal populations and an indicator approach was used for the estimate. Semivariograms for the high grade gold indicator and low grade background were produced and used to define and orient the various search ellipses. Grades for gold were interpolated into blocks 10 x 10 x 5 metres in dimension by a combination of Indicator and Ordinary Kriging. A total of 66 specific gravity measurements showed no correlation to gold grades and as a result an average value of 2.51 was used above the oxide surface and 2.67 below this surface to convert volume to tonnage. Estimated blocks were classified based on geologic and grade continuity into Indicated and Inferred. As part of the 2015 PEA a conceptual open pit, based on $1300/oz Au, has been produced by Tetra Tech. As a result only blocks falling within this pit are now reported as a Resource within the following Tables.

Table 5: Dolphin Zone Indicated Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes >Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 82,650,000 0.58 47,610 1,531,000 0.25 71,140,000 0.63 45,030 1,448,000 0.30 61,460,000 0.69 42,410 1,363,000 0.35 53,460,000 0.74 39,770 1,279,000 0.40 46,690,000 0.80 37,260 1,198,000 0.50 35,590,000 0.91 32,320 1,039,000 0.60 26,720,000 1.03 27,440 882,000 0.70 20,030,000 1.15 23,110 743,000 0.80 15,030,000 1.29 19,390 623,000 0.90 11,450,000 1.43 16,350 526,000 1.00 8,870,000 1.57 13,910 447,000 1.10 6,990,000 1.71 11,940 384,000 1.20 5,560,000 1.85 10,300 331,000 1.30 4,490,000 2.00 8,960 288,000

Table 6: Dolphin Zone Inferred Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes >Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 95,920,000 0.58 55,350 1,779,000 0.25 82,910,000 0.63 52,400 1,685,000 0.30 71,500,000 0.69 49,260 1,584,000 0.35 61,640,000 0.75 46,050 1,480,000 0.40 52,690,000 0.81 42,730 1,374,000 0.50 38,800,000 0.94 36,510 1,174,000 0.60 28,710,000 1.08 30,980 996,000 0.70 21,700,000 1.22 26,450 850,000 0.80 16,910,000 1.35 22,880 736,000 0.90 12,890,000 1.51 19,460 626,000 1.00 10,090,000 1.67 16,820 541,000 1.10 8,350,000 1.80 15,000 482,000 1.20 7,050,000 1.92 13,500 434,000 1.30 5,880,000 2.05 12,050 387,000

Tables 7 and 8 show the resource present above the oxide surface, within the Conceptual Pit while Tables 9 and 10 show the resource present below the oxide surface again within the Conceptual Pit.

Table 7: Oxide Zone Indicated Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes >Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 22,520,000 0.55 12,270 395,000 0.25 18,960,000 0.61 11,490 369,000 0.30 16,180,000 0.66 10,730 345,000 0.35 13,990,000 0.72 10,020 322,000 0.40 12,160,000 0.77 9,340 300,000 0.50 9,180,000 0.87 8,000 257,000 0.60 6,850,000 0.98 6,730 216,000 0.70 5,030,000 1.10 5,550 178,000 0.80 3,700,000 1.23 4,560 147,000 0.90 2,800,000 1.36 3,790 122,000 1.00 2,100,000 1.49 3,130 101,000 1.10 1,650,000 1.61 2,660 85,000 1.20 1,330,000 1.72 2,290 74,000 1.30 1,040,000 1.86 1,930 62,000

Table 8: Oxide Zone Inferred Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes >Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 14,660,000 0.47 6,950 223,000 0.25 11,810,000 0.53 6,310 203,000 0.30 9,620,000 0.59 5,700 183,000 0.35 8,120,000 0.64 5,220 168,000 0.40 6,910,000 0.69 4,770 154,000 0.50 4,940,000 0.79 3,890 125,000 0.60 3,360,000 0.90 3,020 97,000 0.70 2,330,000 1.01 2,360 76,000 0.80 1,690,000 1.11 1,880 61,000 0.90 1,160,000 1.23 1,430 46,000 1.00 720,000 1.41 1,020 33,000 1.10 510,000 1.57 800 26,000 1.20 360,000 1.75 630 20,000 1.30 270,000 1.91 510 17,000

Table 9: Sulphide Zone Indicated Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes

>Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 60,130,000 0.59 35,360 1,137,000 0.25 52,180,000 0.64 33,550 1,079,000 0.30 45,280,000 0.70 31,650 1,018,000 0.35 39,470,000 0.76 29,800 958,000 0.40 34,530,000 0.81 27,930 898,000 0.50 26,410,000 0.92 24,300 781,000 0.60 19,870,000 1.04 20,720 666,000 0.70 14,990,000 1.17 17,550 564,000 0.80 11,330,000 1.31 14,820 476,000 0.90 8,650,000 1.45 12,550 404,000 1.00 6,770,000 1.59 10,780 347,000 1.10 5,340,000 1.74 9,280 298,000 1.20 4,230,000 1.89 8,010 257,000 1.30 3,450,000 2.04 7,030 226,000

Table 10: Sulphide Zone Inferred Resource within Conceptual Pit Au Cut-off

(g/t) Tonnes

>Cut-off

(tonnes) Grade > Cut-off Au

(g/t) Contained kg Au oz Au 0.20 81,260,000 0.60 48,350 1,554,000 0.25 71,100,000 0.65 46,070 1,481,000 0.30 61,880,000 0.70 43,560 1,401,000 0.35 53,520,000 0.76 40,840 1,313,000 0.40 45,780,000 0.83 37,950 1,220,000 0.50 33,860,000 0.96 32,610 1,048,000 0.60 25,360,000 1.10 27,970 899,000 0.70 19,360,000 1.24 24,080 774,000 0.80 15,210,000 1.38 20,990 675,000 0.90 11,730,000 1.54 18,040 580,000 1.00 9,370,000 1.69 15,810 508,000 1.10 7,840,000 1.81 14,200 456,000 1.20 6,700,000 1.93 12,900 415,000 1.30 5,610,000 2.06 11,530 371,000

Mining

Due to the pit containing both sulphide and oxide ore, there will be two ores provided for processing. Two sets of cut-off values were calculated; breakeven cut-off and the internal cut-off were calculated using $1,300/oz Au price for both the oxide material and the sulphide material. The oxide mine plan used a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.182 g/t Au, and an internal cut-off grade of 0.132 g/t Au. The sulphide mine plan used a breakeven cut-off grade of 0.611 g/t Au, and an internal cut-off grade of 0.566 g/t Au. The oxide will be processed via heap leach, while the sulphide ore will be processed through a plant. The mine has been scheduled to provide up to 3.5 million tonnes per year (Mtpy) of each ore type. Oxide ore is mined in the early years, as it forms a cap over the sulphide ore. Years in the middle of the production schedule have an overlap of oxide and sulphide ore production prior to completion of oxide mining. A detailed pit design was created using the pit optimizer cones as guidelines. The phases within the ultimate pit were developed to enhance the Project by scheduling higher-value material earlier in the mine life.

Oxide ore will be mined and processed exclusively for the first eight years of the mine production. A small amount of sulphide material will be mined before year eight, this sulphide ore (approximately 800,000 tonnes) will be stockpiled until the end of mine life. In year nine, sulphide ore comes online for production. Mining of the oxide material will continue through year 14 of the 24-year mine life. Mining of sulphide material will continue from year nine through the end of the 24 -year mine life.

During production, both oxide and sulphide ore material will be transported from the pit to the primary crusher located near the pit exit. After primary crushing, oxide and sulphide material will be transported by conveyor to its respective process area. The oxide will be leach processed in an area to the southeast of the pit, while the sulphide will be processed northwest of the pit.

Waste will be hauled by truck to the Mine Rock Storage Facility (MRSF). The MRSF has been designed to permanently contain the overburden and waste material associated with the pit. The current MRSF design, located to the northeast of the pits, is built around the hill. The MRSF was designed with a buffer around the nearby creeks. The total MRSF design will contain 100% of the expected waste material planned to be generated - approximately 239 million tonnes of swelled material.

The mine has been planned using diesel blasthole drills, large haul trucks and rope shovels. Primary mine production is achieved using 64 Mt payload rope shovels along with 227 Mt payload haul trucks. The drills, shovels and haul trucks selected for the Project are scheduled to operate around the clock and require four crews on 12 hour shifts for complete shift coverage.

Processing

Gold recovery from the Golden Summit deposit will come from two separate processing methods. Oxide material will be crushed prior to loading onto a 10,000 tpd heap leach facility. The crushed oxide material will then be leached with a sodium cyanide solution. Gold from the pregnant leachate solution will then be recovered onto activated carbon and further refined in an elution/electrowinning circuit. The product from the electrowinning cells will be further refined into gold dore. Oxide gold recoveries of 80% are expected during operation.

Sulphide material containing gold will be processed in a 10,000 tpd bio-oxidation plant. The sulphide material will be processed by crushing and grinding the material prior to flotation and bio-oxidation of the sulphide concentrate. The oxidized slurry will be sent to a carbon-in-leach (CIL) circuit for cyanide leaching and recovery onto activated carbon. Gold loaded onto the activated carbon will then be recovered in the same elution circuit used for the oxide material, to produce gold dore. Sulphide gold recoveries of 90% are expected during operation.

Infrastructure

The following key infrastructure will support the mine and process facilities:

From Fairbanks, Alaska the Project lies approximately 32 km (20 miles) northeast via State Highway 2 and State Highway 6 (the Steese Highway). The site holds a series of gravel roads which allow access to most areas of the property on a year-round basis. Fairbanks is served by the Alaska Railroad, and is connected to Anchorage and Whitehorse, Canada by well-maintained paved highways.

the Project lies approximately 32 km (20 miles) northeast via State Highway 2 and State Highway 6 (the Steese Highway). The site holds a series of gravel roads which allow access to most areas of the property on a year-round basis. is served by the Alaska Railroad, and is connected to Anchorage and by well-maintained paved highways. Heap leach pad and solution storage;

Conventional slurry tailings storage facility to serve the sulphide processing facility;

Processing, truck shop, warehouse, and administration buildings;

Substation and power distribution; and

Potable water, fire water and sewage treatment systems.

Fairbanks serves as the regional service and supply center for interior Alaska and comprises a total population of nearly 90,000. Labour will come from the Fairbanks area where there is ready access to trained personnel. In addition the State of Alaska allows $20M of exploration expenditures to be carried forward and recovered against State taxes due.

Contributors

The Golden Summit PEA was led by Tetra Tech, Inc., under the direction of project lead, Vicki J. Scharnhorst. The following consultants contributed to the PEA:

Name Title, Company Discipline Mark J. Abrams, C.P.G. Consulting Geologist

Independent Consultant Geology Jackie A. Blumberg, P.E. Surface Water Hydrologist

Tetra Tech, Inc. Surface Water

Management Gary H. Giroux, P.Eng. Geological Engineer

Giroux Consultants, Ltd. Geology & Mineral

Resources Chris Johns, M.Sc., P.Eng. Geotechnical Engineer

Tetra Tech, Inc. Geotechnical Tailings &

Heap Leach Design Edwin C. Lips, P.E. Principal Mining Engineer

Tetra Tech, Inc. Mine Design Nick Michael, QP Principal Mineral Economist

Golder Associates Technical Economics Dave M. Richers, PhD, PG Geochemist, Geologist

Tetra Tech, Inc. Geochemistry Vicki J. Scharnhorst, P.E. Principal Consultant

Tetra Tech, Inc. Infrastructure D. Erik Spiller, QP Principal Metallurgist

Tetra Tech, Inc. Metallurgy & Process Keith Thompson, CPG, PG Hydrogeologist

Tetra Tech, Inc. Hydrogeology

Next Steps

Given the results of the PEA, Freegold will begin advancing the Project to the Preliminary Feasibility stage. Additional drilling, metallurgical testing, environmental analyses, other permitting and property confirmation activities will need to be undertaken as part of this next level of study. Freegold's disclosure of a technical or scientific nature in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Alvin Jackson of Freegold Ventures Limited, who serves as a Qualified Person under the definition of NI 43-101.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Freegold

Kristina Walcott

President and CEO

Freegold Ventures Limited

www.freegoldventures.com.

Neither the TSX Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The technical information in this Press Release for the Golden Summit Project is based on the following Technical Report to be issued on or before March 10, 2016: NI 43-101 Technical Report, Golden Summit Project, Preliminary Economic Assessment, Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, USA, 2016, Tetra Tech, Inc. Authors of the PEA are independent of Freegold Ventures Limited and are Qualified Persons in accordance with NI 43101.

Cautionary Notes:

The term "Mineral Resource" used in this news release is defined per NI 43-101. Though Indicated Resources have been estimated for the Project, this PEA includes Inferred Mineral Resources that are too speculative for use in defining Reserves. Standalone economics have not been undertaken for the measured and indicated resources and as such no reserves have been estimated for the Project.

Please note that the PEA is preliminary in nature, that it includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them. There is no certainty that the PEA will be realized. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization and resources, exploration results, and future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various risks. Actual results could differ materially from those projected as a result of the following factors, among others: changes in the price of mineral market conditions, risks inherent in mineral exploration, risks associated with development, construction and mining operations, the uncertainty of future profitability and uncertainty of access to additional capital. See Freegold's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31st, 2014 filed under Freegold's profile at www.sedar.com for a detailed discussion of the risk factors associated with Freegold's operations.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, Freegold expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

About Freegold Ventures Limited

Freegold is a TSX listed company focused on exploration in Alaska and holds the Golden Summit Gold Project, near Fairbanks as well as a 100% lease interest on the Shorty Creek Copper  Gold  Molybdenum Project near Livengood.

SOURCE Freegold Ventures Limited
MONTREAL, QC--(Marketwired - January 25, 2016) - Falco Resources (TSX VENTURE: FPC) ("Falco" or the "Company") is pleased to report an updated mineral resource estimate for its wholly-owned Horne 5 gold project located in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Gold equivalent resources have increased significantly as a result of the update. The estimate combines the results of the 2015 surface confirmation drilling program and the historic drilling data collected by Noranda Inc. between 1924 and 1976. The majority of the Noranda drilling was conducted as radiating "fan drilling" on 15m spacing from 40 underground working levels developed throughout the deposit. New Indicated and Inferred Resources have been estimated for the Horne 5 deposit. This new mineral resource estimate contains 5 high grade zones.

Highlights

At a C$65/tonne net smelter return ("NSR") cut-off

Horne 5 currently hosts an Indicated Resource of 5,361,000 gold equivalent ounces ("oz AuEq"), including 3,418,232 oz Au hosted in 58.3 million tonnes averaging 2.86 g/t AuEq (1.82 g/t Au; 15.60 g/t Ag; 0.20% Cu; 1.00% Zn).

("oz AuEq"), including 3,418,232 oz Au hosted in 58.3 million tonnes averaging 2.86 g/t AuEq (1.82 g/t Au; 15.60 g/t Ag; 0.20% Cu; 1.00% Zn). Horne 5 also currently hosts an Inferred Resource of 1,254,000 oz AuEq , including 854,534 oz Au hosted in 12.7 million tonnes averaging 3.08 g/t AuEq (2.10 g/t Au; 26.26 g/t Ag; 0.22% Cu; 0.57% Zn.

, including 854,534 oz Au hosted in 12.7 million tonnes averaging 3.08 g/t AuEq (2.10 g/t Au; 26.26 g/t Ag; 0.22% Cu; 0.57% Zn. The Indicated Resources represent 81% of the total resources . The recently completed drilling program confirmed Au, Cu and Zn grades in historical drill holes and provided the data to upgrade a large portion of the Inferred Resource into the Indicated category.

. The recently completed drilling program confirmed Au, Cu and Zn grades in historical drill holes and provided the data to upgrade a large portion of the Inferred Resource into the Indicated category. The significant increase in Indicated Resources together with the increase in global resources provides further confidence in the quality and predictability of Horne 5 as the project moves towards preliminary economic assessment and feasibility study stages.

An initial Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) using the updated Horne 5 resource has been commenced and is planned to be completed by the end of the second calendar quarter of 2016.

Ongoing work on the PEA is focussing on refining the mining method, mining rate and production costs. Ongoing work on rock mechanics (using information from drill core collected during the confirmation drilling program) was used to determine stope dimensions. New parameters from this work in progress were used for the calculation of the cut-off grade of C$65/tonne.

The confirmation drilling program results also confirmed silver grades from the historical metallurgical test work done by Noranda, and silver values were included in the mineral resource estimate. The historical metallurgical testing was done on 54 lots from more than 75,000m of core (representing 2,112 drill holes), coming from an area of 920m vertical and 730m horizontal in the Horne 5 deposit.

Luc Lessard, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated "We are very pleased with the significant increase in resources at our Horne 5 project. In 2015, we conducted a successful drill program and made substantial progress at the project. With the release of today's updated resource, another milestone has been reached, as we have now outlined a prospective large bulk-tonnage underground resource. Our ongoing PEA and future feasibility work will be directed towards outlining the economic criteria necessary to see the Horne 5 deposit become Canada's next significant new gold mine."

Horne 5 Resource Estimate

The Horne 5 resource estimate is based on 4,384 underground drill holes (305,788m) drilled by Noranda between 1924 and 1976 and 18 new confirmation drill holes (17,300m) drilled by the Company in 2015. The resource estimate also includes silver assays from exhaustive metallurgical test work completed by Noranda (comprising 2,112 drill holes representing 75,540m) grouped in 54 lots.

Falco's confirmation drill holes were collared from surface. They successfully confirmed previously drilled areas between 650m and 2,035m below surface. The historic Noranda holes were collared at depths ranging from 600m to 2,300m below surface across a strike length of up to 1,000m. The majority of drilling was conducted as radiating "fan drilling" on 15m spacing from 40 underground working levels developed throughout the deposit. The 15m spacing is significantly closer than standard drill spacing used in resource estimation work today providing a very high level of confidence in the data. Falco sampled at 1m intervals, Noranda dominantly sampled at 3m core lengths (which homogenizes individual higher grade results), generating the more than 87,000 assays that were used in the 2015 resource estimate.

Table 1 - Horne 5 Deposit - Mineral Resource Estimate

Resource Class Cut-off (NSR $C) Tonnes (Mt) AuEq (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Zn (%) Contained AuEq (Moz) Contained Au (Moz) Contained Ag (Moz) Contained Cu (Mlbs) Contained Zn (Mlbs) > 50 82.2 2.53 1.59 14.49 0.18 0.90 6.694 4.212 38.293 328.1 1,638.4 > 55 74.1 2.64 1.66 14.87 0.19 0.94 6.273 3.959 35.397 306.2 1,531.8 > 60 66.0 2.74 1.74 15.26 0.19 0.97 5.823 3.691 32.378 283.1 1,412.1 > 65 58.3 2.86 1.82 15.60 0.20 1.00 5.361 3.418 29.273 260.4 1,284.8 > 70 51.1 2.98 1.91 15.93 0.21 1.02 4.893 3.142 26.163 237.7 1,152.6 Indicated > 75 44.2 3.11 2.01 16.20 0.22 1.04 4.421 2.865 23.048 215.2 1,017.0 > 80 38.0 3.25 2.12 16.46 0.23 1.06 3.962 2.592 20.086 193.4 886.7 > 85 32.3 3.39 2.25 16.69 0.24 1.07 3.525 2.332 17.331 173.0 761.7 > 90 27.5 3.54 2.37 16.88 0.25 1.08 3.129 2.095 14.902 154.0 652.4 > 95 23.3 3.70 2.50 17.04 0.27 1.09 2.775 1.878 12.780 136.8 558.6 > 100 19.7 3.86 2.64 17.25 0.28 1.09 2.452 1.679 10.948 121.1 474.3 > 50 19.2 2.62 1.72 22.47 0.21 0.56 1.616 1.060 13.841 86.6 237.2 > 55 16.6 2.78 1.85 23.78 0.21 0.57 1.483 0.985 12.692 76.6 208.6 > 60 14.5 2.92 1.97 24.99 0.21 0.57 1.367 0.920 11.688 68.6 183.0 > 65 12.7 3.08 2.10 26.26 0.22 0.57 1.254 0.855 10.705 61.7 158.1 > 70 10.9 3.25 2.25 27.60 0.23 0.55 1.139 0.788 9.670 54.7 133.1 Inferred > 75 9.1 3.47 2.46 28.48 0.24 0.53 1.013 0.716 8.307 47.5 106.1 > 80 7.6 3.71 2.69 28.92 0.25 0.50 0.904 0.655 7.055 41.5 83.4 > 85 6.4 3.94 2.91 29.77 0.26 0.47 0.814 0.601 6.146 36.4 67.1 > 90 5.4 4.21 3.15 30.82 0.27 0.46 0.733 0.549 5.372 32.0 54.9 > 95 4.8 4.42 3.35 31.48 0.27 0.45 0.678 0.514 4.835 28.9 47.4 > 100 4.3 4.60 3.51 32.28 0.28 0.45 0.636 0.485 4.460 26.6 42.6

Resource Estimate Notes:

The effective date of the resource estimate is January 8, 2016. The Independent and Qualified Persons for the Mineral Resource Estimate as required by National Instrument 43-101 are Carl Pelletier, B.Sc., P.Geo. and Vincent Jourdain, P.Eng., Ph.D., both employees of InnovExplo Inc. Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and have not demonstrated economic viability. While the results are presented undiluted and in situ, the reported mineral resources are considered by the Qualified Persons to have reasonable prospects for economic extraction. These estimates include four (4) low grade gold-bearing mineralized zones. The principal low-grade gold-bearing mineralized zone includes five (5) high-grade gold-bearing zones, one (1) high-grade copper-bearing zone, one (1) high-grade zinc-bearing zone and two (2) high-grade silver-bearing zones. Resources were compiled at NSR cut-offs of C$50, C$55, C$60, C$65, C$70, C$75, C$80, C$85, C$90, C$95 and C$100 per tonne. The official base case resource is reported at a C$65 per tonne NSR cut-off. The appropriate NSR cut-off will vary depending on prevailing economic and operational parameters to be determined. NSR estimates are based on the following assumptions: exchange rate of $C1.27/$US, metal prices of (all $US): gold $1,165/oz, silver $15.77, copper $2.53/lb, zinc $0.89/lb (One-year trailing average as of December 14, 2015). Net recoveries of 84.0% for gold, 75.3% for silver, 71.8% for zinc and 66.5% for copper. Smelting cost (including transportation) C$7.73 per tonne. Gold equivalent calculations assume these same metal prices. Inferred resources are separate from Indicated Resources The quantity and grade of reported Inferred Resources in this estimate are uncertain in nature and there has not been sufficient work to define these Inferred Resources as Indicated or Measured Resources. It is uncertain if further work will result in upgrading them to an Indicated or Measured mineral resource category.

Resource Modeling Notes:

Densities within ENV_A were estimated from Noranda drill hole iron assay data and Falco density data using a 3-pass ID2 interpolation method. Limited density data was available for zones ENV_B to D and a fixed density of 2.88 t/m3 was assumed for these zones which represent the median of the available data. Compositing was done on drill hole sections falling within the mineralized zones (composite = 3.0 metres). The resource was estimated using Geovia GEMS 6.7. The estimate is based on 4,411 diamond drill holes (323,087 m). For silver the estimates also uses the results of an exhaustive metallurgical test comprising 2,112 diamond drill holes assayed for silver over a total length of 75,540 meters. A minimum true thickness of 7.0 m was applied, using the grade of the adjacent material when assayed, or a value of zero when not assayed. Only the silver interpolation in the Inferred resources does not use the material when not assayed. The estimate was based on a three dimensional block model (5x5x5 metre blocks). Within ENV_A. Wireframes of high grade zones were used as hard boundaries to constrain the interpolation of gold, silver, copper, zinc and density into the block model. Interpolation parameters were derived based on geostatistical analysis conducted on 3 metre composited drill hole data. Block grades have been estimated using Inverse Distance Squared (ID2) interpolation method and the mineral resources have been classified based on proximity to sample data and the continuity of mineralization in accordance with CIM best practices. Capping of high grade gold values was done on raw assay data and established on a per zone basis: HG_A: 35 g/t, HG_B: 35g/t, HG_C: 25g/t, HG_D: 35g/t, HG_E: 25g/t, ENV_A: 35g/t, ENV_B: 25g/t, ENV_C: 25g/t, ENV_D: 25g/t and for high grade silver SG_HG:100g/t, HG_D: 165 g/t, ENV_A_SG_Low: 110 g/t, ENV_B: 100 g/t, ENV_C: 100 g/t, ENV_D: 100 g/t. No upper capping was applied to copper and zinc data. Tonnage estimates were rounded to the nearest hundred tonnes. Any discrepancies in the totals are due to rounding effects. Rounding practice follows the recommendations set out in Form 43-101F1. CIM definitions and guidelines were followed in estimating mineral resources. InnovExplo is not aware of any known environmental, permitting, legal, title-related, taxation, socio-political, marketing or other relevant issue that could materially affect the mineral resource estimate. The mineral resources presented herein are categorized as Indicated and Inferred based on geological and grade continuity. A maximum distance to the closest composite of 25 meters was used for indicated Resources. The average distance to the nearest composite is 8.3 meters for the Indicated resources and 35.2 meters for the Inferred resources. Metal contained in ounces (troy) = metric tonnes x grade / 31.10348. Calculations used metric units (metres, tonnes and g/t). Metal contents are presented in ounces and pounds.

Modelled Zones

For the purpose of the mineral resource estimate, four mineralized envelopes (ENV_A, ENV_B, ENV_C and ENV_D) were identified, defined, and modelled from 600 meters to 2,600 meters depth. The deposit is vertical with a width of 500m to 800m and a thickness varying from 7m to 120m. The principal envelope (ENV_A) consists of a disseminated to massive sulphide body hosted by a rhyolite unit. The ENV_A interpretation takes into account the gold (approximate cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t Au), copper and zinc assays, the specific gravity which correlates precisely with the presence of sulphides and the geological mapping of underground workings which locates the disseminated and massive sulphide facies. ENV_A shows zonation in gold, copper and zinc as well as a zonation in the sulphide content. ENV_B, ENV_C and ENV_D consist of low grade gold-bearing zones defined using an approximate cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t Au. ENV_B and ENV_C are concordant to ENV_A and located north of it while ENV_D is located at depth and is slightly discordant to ENV_A.

High Grade Zones

Within ENV_A, high-grade zones were defined for gold (approximate cut-off grade of 2.5 g/t Au), copper (approximate cut-off grade of 0.2% Cu) zinc (approximate cut-off grade of 0.75% Zn) and specific gravity (approximate cut-off grade of 3.5 t/m3). Wireframes of high grade zones were used as hard boundaries to constrain the interpolation of gold, silver, copper, zinc and density into the block model.

There is no established correlation between the current high grade zone nomenclature and historical Au-rich lenses as defined by Noranda, which were based on a higher gold cut-off of approximately 6.0 g/t Au.

Table 2 - Horne 5 Deposit - C$65/t NSR Cut-off - Mineral Resource Estimate Per Zone

Resource Class Zone Tonnes (Mt) AuEq (g/t) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(%) Zn

(%) Contained AuEq (Moz) Contained Au (Moz) Contained Ag (Moz) Contained Cu (Mlbs) Contained Zn (Mlbs) ENV_A 36.6 2.59 1.51 15.93 0.17 1.15 3.053 1.780 18.768 141.2 931.5 ENV_B 0.1 2.23 2.13 -- 0.06 0.02 0.010 0.010 -- 0.2 0.1 ENV_C 0.1 2.75 2.65 -- 0.06 0.03 0.011 0.011 -- 0.2 0.1 ENV_D -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Indicated HG_A 6.6 3.12 2.15 15.71 0.12 1.09 0.664 0.458 3.345 18.0 159.2 HG_B 10.9 3.10 2.15 15.48 0.30 0.54 1.083 0.754 5.416 71.9 130.6 HG_C 2.2 3.79 3.17 8.95 0.24 0.28 0.263 0.220 0.621 11.3 13.1 HG_D 1.8 5.48 3.79 21.30 0.46 1.36 0.312 0.216 1.210 18.0 53.1 HG_E 0.4 3.30 2.60 11.82 0.32 0.13 0.047 0.037 0.167 3.1 1.2 ENV_A 11.8 3.10 2.08 27.89 0.23 0.59 1.179 0.789 10.593 59.3 154.6 ENV_B -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ENV_C -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ENV_D 0.9 2.70 2.36 4.09 0.12 0.19 0.075 0.066 0.114 2.4 3.6 Inferred HG_A -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- HG_B -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- HG_C -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- HG_D -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- HG_E -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Resource Distribution By Level

As previously disclosed in the November 6, 2015 press release, the Company conducted a preliminary assessment of the existing infrastructure at the Horne 5 project and recognized that the existing Quemont #2 shaft could be used as its main production shaft. The Quemont #2 shaft will need to be rehabilitated to current production standards, however it will not have to be widened to accommodate larger skips. The Quemont #2 shaft has a depth of 1,200m (Level 33) and will have to be dewatered. The Company estimates that 44% of the Indicated mineral resources are located between Level 17 and Level 33, which are accessible with the current shaft depth.

Table 3 - Horne 5 Deposit - C$65/t NSR Cut-off - Mineral Resource Estimate Per Level

Resource Class Elevation Range AuEq Proportion Tonnes (Mt) AuEq (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Zn (%) Contained AuEq (Moz) Contained Au (Moz) Contained Ag (Moz) Contained Cu (Mlbs) Contained Zn (Mlbs) Lvl 17 - Lvl 33 44.30% 26.8 2.76 1.68 16.84 0.17 1.13 2.374 1.446 14.498 101.7 667.7 Indicated Lvl 33 - Lvl 49 47.00% 27.5 2.85 1.88 15.07 0.21 0.87 2.521 1.661 13.340 127.5 525.8 Lvl 49 - Bottom 8.70% 4.1 3.59 2.39 11.03 0.35 1.02 0.467 0.310 1.435 31.1 91.2 Lvl 17- Lvl 33 0.10% 0.0 2.58 1.61 10.42 0.40 0.45 0.001 0.001 0.006 0.1 0.2 Inferred Lvl 33 - Lvl 49 7.00% 1.1 2.44 1.55 5.12 0.16 1.14 0.088 0.056 0.185 3.8 28.2 Lvl 49 - Bottom 92.90% 11.5 3.14 2.15 28.34 0.23 0.51 1.165 0.798 10.515 57.7 129.8

Density Model

A specific gravity model was based on 34,337 iron assays and 3,191 density measurements. The method for density calculation from iron assays was developed by Noranda. The high density portion of ENV_A shows an average density of 3.68 t/m3. The low density portion ENV_A shows an average density of 3.23 t/m3. Limited density data was available for zones ENV_B to D and a fixed density of 2.88 t/m3 was assumed for these zones which represent the median of the available data.

Low Mining Dilution

As it advances towards the release of the initial PEA, the Company has conducted extensive work in regards to the mining methods, backfill type and consequent resource dilution. The Company expects to use transverse longhole as the primary mining method and will favor the minimization of dilution to resource recovery. The Company believes the resource dilution will be below 4%.

Qualified Person

Carl Pelletier (P.Geo. Geo., B.Sc.) and Vincent Jourdain (P. Eng., Ph.D.) are the qualified persons as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for the mineral resource estimate Data in this release as it relates to the technical information related to the 2014 Horne 5 Project Resource Estimate and they have reviewed and verified the technical information contained herein. Messrs. Pelletier and Jourdain are consulting geologists with InnovExplo Inc. and fulfill the requirements to be "qualified person" for the purposes of NI 43-101.

Claude Bernier, Exploration Manager, (P.Geo. Eng.) is the qualified person for this release as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and has reviewed and verified the technical information contained herein. Mr. Bernier is an employee of Falco and is non-independent.

The scientific and technical information regarding the dilution evaluation and engineering set out in this news release has been approved by Francois Vezina, Director - Mining Development of Osisko Mining Group. Mr. Vezina is a Eng. with the Ordre des ingenieurs du Quebec and P.Eng. with the Professional Engineers of Ontario, and is a "qualified person" as defined by NI 43-101.

The scientific and technical information regarding the Cut-off evaluation set out in this news release has been approved by Francois Girard, Director - InnovExplo Inc. Mr. Girard is a Eng. with the Ordre des ingenieurs du Quebec, and is a "qualified person" as defined by NI 43-101.

QA/QC

Falco has implemented a strict quality-control program to comply with best practices in the sampling and analysis of drill core. As part of its QA/QC program, Falco inserts certified external mineralized standards. In the mineralized zones, each shipment is comprised of 27 samples. Every shipment is composed of 23 samples, a standard, a blank, a pulp duplicate and a reject duplicate placed randomly every 15th sample to test the laboratory analysis methods and precision for each shipment of samples. Blanks and standards are inserted within the normal sample number sequence. Assay results and certificates of analysis are interpreted and reported on a regular basis. If anomalies are detected, the laboratory is advised and the entire batch of samples is re-assayed. In non-mineralized zones, every shipment is composed of 27 samples, which includes a standard and a blank. In non-mineralized zones, if anomalies are detected, the laboratory is advised, but the batch of samples is not necessarily re-assayed.

About Falco

Falco Resources Ltd. is one of the largest mineral claim holders in the Province of Quebec, with extensive land holdings in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Falco owns 74,000 hectares of land in the Rouyn-Noranda mining camp, which represents 70% of the entire camp and includes 13 former gold and base metal mine sites. Falco's principal property is the Horne Mine, which was operated by Noranda from 1927 to 1976 and produced 11.6 million ounces of gold and 2.5 billion pounds of copper. A maiden 43-101 mineral resource estimate for the Horne 5 deposit delineated an initial inferred resource of 2.8 million oz AuEq at 3.41 g/t AuEq (25.3 million tonnes grading 2.64 g/t Au, 0.23% Cu and 0.7% Zn, for 2.2 million oz Au -- see March 4, 2014 press release for details).

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "plans", "expects', "estimates", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" and includes, without limitation, completion of a Preliminary Econimic Assessment by the end of the second quarter of 2016, the scope of future feasibility work and the final determination of the mining method to be used. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include the reliability of the historical data referenced in this press release and those risks set out in Falco's public documents, including in each management discussion and analysis, filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although Falco believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed times frames or at all. Except where required by applicable law, Falco disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Cautionary Note Concerning Mineral Resources

This press release uses the term "inferred" resources and "indicated resources", we advise investors that while this term is recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize it. "Inferred" resources and "indicated resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of measured or indicated mineral resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable.9

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 25, 2016) - Copper North Mining Corp. ("Copper North" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:COL) announces the expansion of oxide and sulphide copper-gold-silver mineral resources at the Carmacks Project, Yukon Territory as a result of the updated mineral resource estimate ("Updated Mineral Resource"), which has been prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") by Independent Qualified Person, Dr. Gilles Arseneau, P.Geo. The Updated Mineral Resource supersedes the technical report entitled "Carmacks Project - Preliminary Economic Assessment of Copper, Gold and Silver Recover" dated July 10th, 2014 (the "2014 PEA").

Dr. Harlan Meade, President and CEO, is pleased to report that "the 2015 exploration program has defined a large increase in both oxide and sulphide mineral resources in the southern extension of the Carmacks Deposit that could potentially double the life of the proposed mine. In addition, the 2015 exploration indicates that there is potential for further expansion of the Updated Mineral Resource as the deposits are explored along strike and to depth."

Dr. Meade also states that "the expansion of the oxide mineral resource is an important step in increasing the attractiveness for project financing for the Carmacks Project. Furthermore, the expansion of the near-surface sulphide mineral resources warrants evaluation for leaching of sulphide mineralization, taking advantage of new advancements in leaching of copper sulphides, such that the copper may be extracted using the same SX-EW technology proposed for oxide mineralization."

Highlights:

The Updated Mineral Resource consists of the Maiden Resource on zones 12, 13 and 2000S combined with the previously defined mineral resource for the Carmacks Project as set out in the 2014 PEA.

Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (zones 12, 13, and 2000S)

Oxide and transition mineral resources:

Measured and Indicated of 3.7 Mt grading 0.50% Cu, 0.35% acid-soluble Cu, 0.132 g/t Au and 2.011 g/t Ag

of 3.7 Mt grading 0.50% Cu, 0.35% acid-soluble Cu, 0.132 g/t Au and 2.011 g/t Ag Inferred of 0.8 Mt grading 0.42% Cu, 0.28% acid-soluble Cu, 0.119 g/t Au and 1.910 g/t Ag

Sulphide mineral resources:

Measured and Indicated of 3.7 Mt grading 0.60% Cu, 0.128 g/t Au and 2.288 g/t Ag

of 3.7 Mt grading 0.60% Cu, 0.128 g/t Au and 2.288 g/t Ag Inferred of 4.4 Mt grading 0.55% Cu, 0.123 g/t Au and 2.081 g/t Ag

New Updated Mineral Resource Estimate

Oxide and transition mineral resources:

Measured and Indicated of 15.7 Mt grading 0.94% Cu, 0.74% acid-soluble Cu, 0.379 g/t Au and 3.971 g/t Ag; an increase of 31%.

of 15.7 Mt grading 0.94% Cu, 0.74% acid-soluble Cu, 0.379 g/t Au and 3.971 g/t Ag; an increase of 31%. Inferred Resources of 0.9 Mt grading 0.45% Cu, 0.30% acid-soluble Cu, 0.119 g/t Au and 1.900 g/t Ag; a tenfold increase.

Sulphide mineral resources:

Measured and Indicated of 8.1 Mt grading 0.68% Cu, 0.178 g/t Au and 2.332 g/t Ag; an increase of 86%.

of 8.1 Mt grading 0.68% Cu, 0.178 g/t Au and 2.332 g/t Ag; an increase of 86%. Inferred resource of 8.4 Mt grading 0.63% Cu, 0.150 g/t Au and 1.994 g/t Ag; an increase of 108%.

Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (zones 2000S, 12 and 13)

Zones 2000S, 12 and 13 are located to the south of the previously proposed open-pit that would encompass zones 1, 4 and 7. The expansion of mineral resources reported in this news release is the result of a maiden resource estimate on zones 2000S, 12 and 13. The oxide mineral resources occur from surface and have been estimated to shallow depths that would be amenable to mining with a low strip ratio. The sulphide mineral resources in zones 12, 13 and 2000S occur to depths of as little as 50 metres below surface, which is much shallower than the depth of the sulphide resource in zone 1. This opens up the possibility of mining copper sulphide resources at relatively shallow depths in an open-pit.

The discovery and definition of the measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources in zones 2000S, 12 and 13 represents a significant expansion of mineral resources for the Carmacks Project. With a modest amount of additional drilling, Copper North anticipates that the inferred resources could be converted to the measured or indicated categories. Copper North has drilled-off only approximately 60% of the length of the mineralized trend and each zone is open along strike and to depth. The Company believes that additional exploration on the property may reveal additional mineralization along the trend and in sub-parallel zones.

Table 1: The Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate (zones 12, 13 and 2000S).

Class Tonnage (t) Total Cu (%) Acid-soluble Cu (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu sulphide (%) Zones Measured 2,453,040 0.47 0.35 0.128 1.883 0.13 2000S+12+13 Indicated 1,257,343 0.56 0.36 0.140 2.259 0.20 Oxide & ME+IN 3,710,383 0.50 0.35 0.132 2.011 0.15 Transition Inferred 822,614 0.42 0.28 0.119 1.910 0.14 Zones Measured 686,329 0.48 0.07 0.108 1.785 0.41 2000S+12+13 Indicated 3,041,922 0.63 0.06 0.133 2.402 0.58 Sulphide ME+IN 3,728,252 0.60 0.06 0.128 2.288 0.55 Inferred 4,375,835 0.55 0.04 0.123 2.081 0.52

Further details of the location of the zones 12, 13, and 2000S with drill intercepts can be found on the Company's website at www.coppernorthmining.com and in its news releases dated August 4th, 2015, September 10th, 2015, September 23rd, 2015, October 22nd, 2015, and January 11th, 2016.

Updated Mineral Resource

The Maiden mineral resource estimate on zones 12, 13 and 2000S combined with the previously defined mineral resource for the Carmacks Project comprise the Updated Mineral Resource and has resulted in a significant increase in overall tonnage for the Carmacks Project (Table 2). Oxide and sulphide measured and indicated mineral resources have increased from 16.3 Mt to 23.8 Mt, an increase of 45% tonnage. In addition, overall oxide and sulphide inferred mineral resources have increased from 4.1 Mt to 9.3 Mt, an increase in tonnage of 125%.

Copper North is progressing with a new preliminary economic assessment (the "New PEA") that reflects the leach and development plan. The New PEA in progress will be based on the mineral resources in zones 1, 4 and 7 and indicate an approximate 7 year mine life. The expansion of the measured and indicated mineral resources in the new oxide and transition mineral resources provides an opportunity for extension of mine life. Additional drilling is warranted for zones 2000S, 12 and 13 for inclusion in subsequent development plans. Furthermore, the substantial increase in sulphide mineral resources, at shallow depth, warrants additional metallurgical testwork for the processing of sulphides to produce either concentrate or cathode copper, the latter utilizing the same leach and SX-EW facilities used to process the oxide material.

Table 2: The Updated Mineral Resourcefor the Carmacks Project, including Zones 1, 4, 7, 2000S, 12 and 13:

Class Tonnage (t) Total Cu (%) Acid-soluble Cu (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Sulphide Cu (%) Oxide and Measured 6,484,040 0.86 0.69 0.414 4.235 0.17 Transition Indicated 9,206,343 0.97 0.77 0.357 3.796 0.20 Mineral ME+IN 15,690,383 0.94 0.74 0.379 3.971 0.20 Resources Inferred 912,614 0.45 0.30 0.119 1.900 0.15 Sulphide Measured 1,381,329 0.64 0.05 0.185 2.166 0.59 Mineral Indicated 6,686,922 0.69 0.04 0.172 2.344 0.65 Resources ME+IN 8,068,252 0.68 0.05 0.178 2.332 0.65 Inferred 8,406,835 0.63 0.03 0.150 1.994 0.61

Mineral resources for zones 1, 4 and 7 were previously disclosed in the 2014 PEA and are reported at a 0.25% total copper cut-off for oxide, transition and sulphide mineralization. Mineral resources for zones 2000S, 12 and 13 are reported at a 0.15% acid-soluble copper cut-off for the oxide and transition mineralization and at a 0.25% total copper for the sulphide mineralization.

Resource Estimation Methods

The mineral resource estimate for zones 12, 13 and 2000S, was based on drilling carried out in 2006-2007 by Western Copper and Gold Corporation and additional drilling in 2014-2015 by Copper North. Copper minerals in the oxide resources largely comprise the acid-soluble minerals malachite, azurite and tenorite. The sulphide mineral resources are located at depth and comprise chalcopyrite-bornite mineralization. In zone 13, a transition mineral resource has been estimated, where chalcocite-native copper mineralization is developed between the sulphide and oxide zones. Oxide, transition and sulphide zones were assessed visually during core logging and validated by the ratio of acid-soluble to total copper assays. Sulphide zones largely comprise material with less than 20% of total copper as acid-soluble.

Wireframes for the mineralized zone were built in 3D from the geological interpretation along and between cross sections made up of fences of drill holes. Inverse distance to the second power was used to estimate grade in zones 2000S and 12. Ordinary kriging was used to estimate grade in zone 13. The influence of anomalously high copper and silver assays was restricted by the capping of high values. The estimates were run in two passes: firstly at 50x50x20 m, then at 100x100x45 m. A minimum of two drill holes with a minimum of three composites and a maximum of twelve composites were used to estimate resources. Blocks were classified as measured mineral resources if they were estimated with four drill holes during pass one. Blocks that were estimated with two or three drill holes during pass one were classified as indicated mineral resources; all other blocks were classified as inferred mineral resources. A cut-off grade of 0.25% total Cu was used for the sulphide mineral resources. A cut-off grade of 0.15% acid-soluble Cu was used to estimate oxide and transition mineral resources. An average density of 2.74 t/m3 was used to estimate tonnage for sulphide mineral resources. An average density of 2.70 t/m3 was used to estimate tonnage for Zones 12, 13 and 2000S oxide mineral resources. An average density of 2.68 t/m3 was used to estimate tonnage for the Zone 13 transition mineral resource.

The previous mineral resource for zones 1, 4 and 7 was estimated in 2007 ("Previous Mineral Resource") and the total mineral resources for these zones remains unchanged. The mineral resources present in each zone of the Carmacks property are summarized in Appendix 1. The Updated Mineral Resource comprises the Previous Mineral Resource in addition to the Maiden resource estimate on zones 12, 13 and 2000S. Further details of the Previous Mineral Resource can be found in the NI 43-101 technical report for the Carmacks property, dated July 10th, 2014.

QA/QC

A combination of HTW and NTW sized core were drilled by diamond-drilling. Quality assurance and quality control procedures include the systematic insertion of duplicate and standard samples in to the sample stream. Drill core samples were sawn in half, labelled, placed in sealed bags and were shipped straight to the preparatory laboratory of ALS Minerals in Whitehorse. All geochemical analyses were performed by ALS Minerals in North Vancouver. Total copper assays were performed by four-acid digestion with an AAS finish. Soluble copper assays were carried out by sulphuric acid digestion with an AAS finish. Gold was analysed by a 30 g charge fire assay with an AAS finish. Silver was analyzed by four-acid digestion and ICP-AES finish.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements as set out in NI 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Dr. Gilles Arseneau, P. Geo. of Arseneau Consulting Services, a qualified person within the meaning of NI 43-101. The mineral resource estimate for zones 1, 4 and 7 was prepared in 2007 Dr. Arseneau, while employed at Wardrop (now Arseneau Consulting Services) and is disclosed in the 2014 PEA. The mineral resource estimate for zones 12, 13, and 2000S was also prepared by Dr. Arseneau in 2015-2016.

New Mineral Resource Report

The Company will file the New Mineral Resource Report within 45 days of the date of this news release.

The 2014 PEA is now considered to be out of date such that it can no longer be relied upon. Investors are cautioned that the Carmacks property is no longer considered an advanced property under NI 43-101 as it is no longer supported by a preliminary economic assessment, pre-feasibility study or feasibility study. A New PEA report is being prepared which will reflect the proposed change in the leach plan for the Carmacks Project. The New PEA will be preliminary in nature and will include the use of inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Dr. Harlan Meade, President, CEO and Director

About Copper North

Copper North is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company. Copper North's assets include the Carmacks Project located in the Yukon, the Redstone property located in the Northwest Territories, and the Thor property in British Columbia. Copper North trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol COL.

This news release includes certain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements for the purposes of applicable securities laws. These statements include, among others, disclosure regarding possible events, conditions or financial performance that is based on assumptions about future economic conditions and courses of action; the timing and potential for future activities on the Company's properties; statements with respect to the success of exploration activities; and proposed exploration and development activities and their timing. Disclosure concerning mineral resource estimates may also be deemed to constitute forward-looking information or statements to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that may be encountered if the Company's properties are developed. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include, among others, the timeliness and success of any required future regulatory approvals in respect of the Company's properties, the timing and success of future exploration and development activities, exploration and development risks, market prices, exploitation and exploration results, availability of capital and financing, general economic, market or business conditions, uninsured risks, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of personnel, materials and equipment, unanticipated environmental impacts on operations and other exploration risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators. In making the forward-looking statements, the Company has applied several material assumptions including, but not limited to, the assumptions that the proposed exploration and development of the mineral projects will proceed as planned, market fundamentals will result in sustained metals and mineral prices, and any additional financing needed will be available on reasonable terms. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

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.

Appendix 1

Updated Mineral Resource: Inferred, Indicated and Measured mineral resources for oxide, transition and sulphide mineralization in Zones 1, 4, 7, 12, 13 and 2000S.
Vancouver, Canada / TheNewswire / January 25, 2016: Redstar Gold Corp. (TSX.V: RGC) ("Redstar" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Peter A. Ball as President & CEO of the Company effective January 25, 2016. Mr. Ball will also join the Redstar Board of Directors. Mr. Ball will succeed Ken Booth, who has been Interim President and CEO since late February 2015. Redstar would like to thank Mr. Booth for his diligent and dedicated efforts to lead the Company during this period. Redstar is pleased that it will continue to benefit from Mr. Booth's counsel in the future as a member of our Board of Directors.

Mr. Ball, with over 25 years of extensive experience and leadership as a mining professional, is known to have an intense drive, passion and energy required to deliver on the market's expectations. He is joining Redstar from Columbus Gold, where he was Senior Vice-President, Business and Corporate Development. Columbus Gold controls 100% of the multi-million ounce Paul Isnard Gold Project in French Guiana, and also multiple projects in Nevada, Throughout Mr. Ball's career, he has held various senior management roles with international precious metals mining companies in corporate finance, securities trading, mine engineering, business development, corporate communications, public relations and marketing functions throughout North and South America, Asia, and Europe. Mr. Ball began his career in the late 1980s working as a mining engineer, a technical representative, and in various management and senior executive roles for numerous companies including Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting, Echo Bay Mines Ltd., RBC Dominion Securities, Eldorado Gold Corp., Adriana Resources Inc., and Argentex Mining Corp. Mr. Ball is a graduate of the Haileybury School of Mines, Georgian Business College, UBC's Canadian Securities Course and is a member of CIMM.

Jacques Vaillancourt, Executive Chairman of Redstar, "We are very pleased that Peter is joining Redstar's management team. We know and look forward to Peter bringing the same energy, professionalism and diligence that he contributed to Columbus Gold, which helped make it one of the best performing gold companies in the Canadian equity markets in 2014 and into 2015. The Redstar portfolio of projects, including our district scale Unga Gold Project, are very encouraging and require the type of leadership that Peter is capable of offering. We believe that Unga, with its dual trends of epithermal low to intermediate sulphidation mineralization and gold showings over 19 km (2 x 9.5 km), is currently amongst the most exciting and prospective gold projects in North America. The Unga property also hosted the Apollo-Sitka Mine, which was Alaska's first underground gold mine from 1886-1922, and historical reports indicated production of approximately 150,000 gold ounces at a grade of approximately 10 g/t.

Additionally, but not least, I would like to personally, and on behalf of the board, thank Ken Booth for stepping-in as our interim President and CEO, where his contribution was very valuable and appreciated at a critical time for the Company."

The Company also wishes to announce that it has granted incentive stock options to purchase up to 2,500,000 shares to Mr. Ball as part of his compensation package. The options are exercisable at a price of $0.05 for a period of five years.

About Redstar Gold Corp

Redstar is a junior exploration company focused on high-grade gold exploration in North America. In Alaska, the Company is exploring the 100% owned high-grade Unga Gold Project, which was initially acquired in 2011. The Unga Gold Project contains several high-grade gold/silver vein systems, two of which, Apollo & Sitka were sites of historic high-grade gold production and hosts Alaska's first underground gold mine. The Company completed an eight hole, 1,500 metre diamond drill programm in May 2015 on the Shumagin Gold Zone which yielded several very high gold grade intersections, such as 202g/t Au over 1.9 m and 35.3g/t Au over 2m. This drill program demonstrated continuity of the Shumagin Gold Zone at depth and along strike.

Redstar has a portfolio of eleven (11) properties in Nevada located along and within many of the gold producing trends. In 2005 Redstar acquired AngloGold Ashanti's entire Nevada database after AngloGold redirected its exploration focus from North America to South America. Following the purchase of the database and over several years Redstar assembled the current portfolio of properties. Redstar will be seeking suitable partners to advance its Nevada portfolio.

Redstar also owns 30% of the Newman Todd Gold Project, in Red Lake, Ontario, Canada. Newman Todd is a high-grade gold discovery along a 1.8 km corridor within the Newman Todd Structure (NTS). The gold mineralization in the NTS remains open along strike and at depth.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

Jacques Vaillancourt

Executive Chairman

To additional information please contact:

Peter A. Ball, President and CEO

E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Paul Durham, Investor Relations

T: 604.245.5861

TF: 877.310.3330

E: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information 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 events or developments that Redstar Gold Corporation (the "Company") expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. 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 may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, and 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 actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Benedict, while the "father of the new liturgical movement" (in my estimation at any rate), is not the new liturgical movement; as such the new liturgical movement does not die with the end of his papacy.



- Shawn Tribe, New Liturgical Movement
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
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Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo visited European Parliament in Strasbourg earlier this week (19 January) to defend her governments position on controversial laws it recently approved. She is from the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party which won the majority during the elections in October last year. Poland is under increased scrutiny by the European Union since the European Commission commenced dialogue surrounding the fundamental aspects of rule of law a week ago. The new government in Poland, led by Conservative Law and Justice Party passed restrictive laws at the end of 2015 that put Polish social rights in danger. A reform to the Constitutional Court majority raises the bar for court rulings with five of the fifteen judges being replaced, provoking several demonstrations in Warsaw. Another reform is about the media which allows directors of public broadcasters to be chosen by the Ministry of Treasury. Public media are called national media and will be under the supervision of persons appointed by the National Media Council. Several journalists have been recently fired.

However, during her speech in Strasbourg, Szydlo called for the support of the European Union. She also asked for Polands sovereignty to remain untouched. She legitimized the reforms of her government insisting that the government respects the rule of law. In the European Parliament, PiS is part of the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR), mainly composed by British Conservatives. According to a recent analysis by the NGO VoteWatch Europe, ECR is likely to back PiS reforms at the European level. Both PiS and British conservative MPs are indeed eurosceptic. Hungarian MEPs who are members of the Fidesz party within the European Peoples Party (EPP) also support PiS. However, Szydlo insisted that Poland will remain faithful to the EU. The fact that Poland is the biggest beneficiary of EU funds may justify her claim.

A day before Szydlos speech, Polish president Andrzej Duda (PiS) was in Brussels to visit the European Council president Donald Tusk (from conservative Civic Platform party), who is also a Pole, to try to calm the debate. Tusk said that the dialogue started by the Commission would be an opportunity to lower the tone between EU and Poland and to take time to examine the facts rather than overreacting.

Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, raised concerns last week (13 January) and initiated a structured dialogue with Poland under the Rule of Law Framework.

Both Szydlo and Duda seem to have important roles in Polish government. They speak at the international level and try to justify the measures in front of EU leaders. Meanwhile, Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the leader of Law and Justice Party. He lost his twin brother, the president of Poland at that time, in a plane accident in 2010. In the government, Kaczynski is simply an MP, but as political leader, he seems to act behind the scenes.
Facing an operation is like being pulled over by a customs official in a foreign country. You know that itll probably be just fine, and that for the person in charge, its a matter of procedure. They do this every day. Yet youre frightened, uncertain about the outcome and, even with people bustling around you, entirely alone.

My very dear young friend Krissy Dolce is going into the hospital for a detached retina. She said I could write about her. Krissy is remarkably brave and matter-of-fact about the surgery shes facing; Im the one frantically trying to figure out what to do.

I made lasagna she can heat up when she returns to her apartment. Im filling in for her classes during those few days shell need to miss. Im attempting to be of use, but I know its insufficient. Im overwhelmed by the need to be reassuring, soothing and, above all else, wise.

But what can I say thats wise about heading into surgery? Its easy to state the obvious, although its calming to know that the obvious is true: For example, the anesthesia theyre using now is simply marvelous. Its entirely different from what they gave me in 1962 when I had my tonsils out. That remains one of my earliest and most terrifying memories. I recall with uncanny vividness the physical sensation of having a large mask placed over my face and being told to count backward from 10. I was 5  I could barely count forward to 10.

Since then, I have tossed a bunch of body parts out the car window and onto the side of the road, including a few major organs as well as one minor digit. (The operations have always worked and I cant even be accused of littering. Everything, after all, was biodegradable.) This much I can promise: During their removal, the anesthesia got better every time.

Platitudes come trippingly off my tongue. I announce, It will work out, and Life will be easier and better. You will feel stronger and more in control by the end of the week, when you have recovered.

But here is what a really wise person would be able to address: Why you?

There are people who could use a little more character building in their lives  but youve already had plenty. Youve even had this operation before.

Im trying to think of what you need to hear from me. When you came into work this morning, your makeup  which is always admirably applied  was particularly perfect. You looked like Lauren Bacall. When Im nervous, my makeup makes me look like Bette Davis from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? When I commented on it, you explained, I am fighting my anxiety through aggressive glamour. And I thought, Thats my girl.

So, Krissy, Im trying to think of what I might say with some authority. Im not a surgeon; I have a doctorate, not an M.D. Im a caregiver only insofar as Im your older friend and mentor. Having said that, I absolutely know in my heart you will be fine. I know  because you come, as I do, from good strong Italian peasant stock  that nothing is going to take the wind out of your sails, the laughter from your voice, or the light out of your eyes for very long.

I also know that the astonishingly large community of people who love you are all going to be doing whatever we can  beseeching, bribing and praying for the universe to hold you with particular care in the palm of its hand. Uneasy unbeliever that I am, I will ask every person I know of strong faith to send prayers your way. Ill light candles in a small re-enactment of the ritual of the church in which I was raised. Having no shame, Ill ask Virginia Woolf, Florence Nightingale, Emily Bronte and David Bowie to look after you. Ill play your favorite songs until I know youre better.

If going into the hospital is like entering another land, being in exile from ordinary life, your passport is clearly stamped and your paperwork is in order. Youll come through this brief sojourn and emerge to find us all waiting at the arrival gate cheering, yelling your name, and saying, Welcome back!

Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant.
Tourists take pictures with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, and U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Bill Heidt, left, as they visit the waterfront in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Kerry is in Cambodia on the fourth leg of his latest round-the-world diplomatic mission, which will also take him to China. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2015, file photo, a woman is evacuated from the Bataclan concert hall after gunmen attacked the venue in Paris. New video released Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, by the Islamic State group shows the extremists who carried out the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris committing atrocities in IS-controlled territory while plotting the slaughter in the French capital. The video shows the extent of the planning that went into the operation, which French authorities have said from the beginning was planned in Syria. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
A Gage County District Court judge with more than 20 years on the bench announced that hes retiring.

Paul Korslund, 66, has served as the District Court judge since 1998, and was previously the County Court judge. He said spending time with his wife and five grandchildren were driving factors in his decision to retire.

I have really enjoyed my career as judge and as a lawyer, he said. I just felt that the time had come. Ive had 21 years on the bench including my County Court judgeship. I think its just time to turn the page and embark on a new chapter in life.

From custody to criminal cases, every decision Korslund makes can have a major impact on peoples lives. To whomever his successor may be, Korslund offered a piece of advice: Find the right pace to keep things moving, while taking enough time to make the right decision.

You have to be very patient, and at the same time, you have to keep the docket moving, he said. You have to find that balance. If you need some time to think things over, you should do that.

Im one that likes to ponder a little bit. I dont make as many rulings from the bench as other judges. I dont have any quarrel with the ones that do. Everybody has their own style, but I think its important to be patient and to really listen to both sides of the case.

One of the biggest advances in the criminal court system, Korslund said, is the Drug Court program, which provides an alternative to prison for drug offenders.

The intensive program has been generally successful, but its difficult when an offender fails, leaving few options other than prison.

Korslund said prison sentences are especially difficult when the offender is a younger person.

One of the sad things is the family backgrounds of so many of the criminal offenders, he explained. They many, many times come from very dysfunctional families. You can feel sorry for people, but theres people that come from tough backgrounds that dont break the law, also. At some point they have to be held accountable. That can be tough, but it has to happen.

Korslund graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 1974.

After a stint as an attorney in Ravenna, he came to Gage County to serve as the city attorney in 1975.

He became the County Court judge in 1977, and left for private practice in 1980. He returned to the court system as the District Court judge in 1998.

Korslund also served as the mayor of Beatrice for a single term from 1994-1998.

Over the years, Korslund said the court system has changed in many ways. Primarily, he noted the increase in protection orders requested and that more people want to represent themselves, both decisions he warned shouldnt be taken lightly.

I think people need to be very cautious about thinking they can do it all on their own, he said. I wouldnt try to do my own dental work. There are some things people can do on their own, but I think they need to be cautious about it. In domestic cases, especially, a lot of times theres a lot of emotion involved.

Reflecting on his career, Korslund said the obvious change has been the development of technology and its role in how cases are researched, as well as presented before the court.

When I have a motion to suppress evidence, often times Ill have a video to look at from a body cam or an in-car camera, he said. Issues are raised usually regarding the legality of a traffic stop, and its really helpful to have those videos. When issues are raised regarding a confession or statement, theres a video of the interview. I think its good for the officers, too, to have that record as well as for defendants.

There are 11 counties in the First District Court district of Nebraska, including Gage.

The district has three District Court and three County Court judges. Korslund serves both Gage and Jefferson counties. He has the smallest area of the three judges, but the highest caseload.

He noted Jefferson County criminal cases have especially been on the rise in recent years.

Jefferson County has been very busy, he said. We had almost 60 felony cases in 2015. Im not sure why, but many of them are drug cases.

In 2008 Korslund received the Nebraska Supreme Courts Outstanding Judge Award for service to the community.

Korslund, who has been a strong supporter of allowing a media presence in the courtroom, said the award was prompted by a 2008 murder trial.

The case, in which Richard A. Griswold was found guilty of second-degree murder, was the first in the state to allow still and video cameras in the courtroom.

Korslund will retire April 1, but noted hes likely remain active in District Court to some degree until the end of June, as the replacement process can take months.

The first step will be for the Judicial Resources Committee to determine based on workload statistics if his retirement creates a judicial vacancy.
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In the fall of 1980, in my final year of medical school, I sat in the main ward of Saint Vincents Hospital, Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Filling the vast space were twenty-four beds, in four rows, with twenty-four patients. The prow of the open nursing station thrust from one wall into the center. A high ceiling vanished above. Yellow light filtered through ancient rippled glass windows and distant fluorescent bulbs made skin colors strange.

To sit at the station was to survey the sight, sound, and smell of human suffering. Cancer, heart failure, mysterious infection, stroke, and just plain old, displayed in a zoo of disease. If you understood this room, you understood medicine.

I was shaking. My senior resident had just berated me for deserting Mr. Cooper, a 67-year-old bus driver with advanced cancer and pneumonia. There was a shortage of a critical antibiotic; it looked like we would run out. Therefore, I had stopped Mr. Coopers medicine too soon. I was concerned that if we ran out, then we would have nothing to treat the next Mr. Cooper who crawled into that ghastly room.

The resident had not concealed his contempt.

Mr. Salwitz. Mr. Cooper is your patient. When you see Mr. Cooper, he is your only patient. If you are going to be a doctor  and I do mean if, then you will care only for that patient  that one patient in front of you. You will give medical care, one patient at a time. It is not your place to worry about the next patient, or the patient down the hall, or the patient in another hospital. It is not ethical, it is not moral, and it is not your job to worry about cost or shortages. That is the job of society. Of politicians! Your job  your only job, is to fight, with everything, for that one patient!

So it was, and so it had been for thousands of years. A physicians duty was to that one person, that one relationship, before him at that moment. The patient depended on the doctor to be the absolute warrior for their cause. No dedicated doctor worried about the other guy. Like an attorney, like a father, like a general in war, the doctor had only one client, one cause and that was one patient at a time.

The beauty of this argument, this belief, this calling, is that each patient has an absolute health ombudsman. In theory, it should work, not only for that one patient, but if every doctor across the country advocates for many one patients, it should create a balanced competitive environment, which ideally distributes resources. Free market medicine. The reality is that such a system, carried out across a nation, across the world for that matter, concentrates vital medicines in the hands of a loud few, gives the best care to those that shout, has the affect of emphasizing individual monetary gain, accelerates cost, and, most importantly, removes doctors from careful and compassionate discussion of how to distribute vital, but limited resources.

Therefore, ethics and reality are changing. The senior resident, who berated me 35 years ago for compromising care, looks at those 24 patients as a physician leader, and knows she is steward of all. Today, I might be castigated for giving the last of a vial of antibiotic to a man dying of cancer, and sentencing the next patient to greater suffering and perhaps death.

Physicians are beginning to understand about that there is a need to shift some of their focus of care from the one to all. When the United States spends 18 percent of GDP on health care and half of American families destitute themselves paying for medical treatment, it is not just a problem for the medical profession, but their fault. Therefore, we must balance, some would say ration, by true need, true availability, and maximum benefit. Build efficient systems. The best care for the many is the best care for the one.

The paradox is that there are no more wards. We do not see large groups of patients in one room, as a group, sort of natural population medicine. Now, the rooms are single. We jealously protect the health privacy of each patient. We talk about personalized and precision medicine responding to the needs of the individual. The patient is more private, but the doctor must see each in the context of a complex public world.

Medical students are beginning to learn that they will not practice in isolation, but that they are part of a great societal effort to improve health. Experienced physicians worry that this change, this sharp intrusion into the medical relationship and health care ethics, threatens each patient. Are we deserting our basic obligation as healers? Will the youngest clinicians come to believe that they serve not Hippocrates, but their employers, data metrics, and centralized care systems? Will the cheery insurance precertification phone line voice, be the only patient champion?

The best defender, the ultimate warrior for each patient, must be their physician. This healer understands not only illness, but the context of a patients life. The doctor knows how disease will change each patient and which treatment the patient will understand, tolerate and accept. This must remain a physicians ultimate calling.

However, it is critical that doctors accept that the individual care they give affects the many, and that the resources expended to treat the many, affect the one. A broader view of real world health economics, a financial altruism, is required. Physicians must never again retreat into silos and allow any other part of our society, no matter how well intended, to make massive resource decisions without the professional medical voice. Part of being a doctor must be involvement at every level of government, finance, industry, and health leadership. We must have a commitment to the systems and institutions upon which health care is built.

Physicians have one patient to whom they must commit their lives, careers, and souls. That patient is us.

James C. Salwitz is an oncologist who blogs at Sunrise Rounds.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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I run a dilator program for women with rectal or anal cancer where I educate patients about the need for and correct use of vaginal dilators to mitigate the effects of radiation on the vaginal wall. Many women dont understand the need for dilators after radiation for this cancer, so I always start with a description of the anatomy and the rationale for the use of dilators. I provide the women with two dilators (small and larger) and a booklet explaining the why and how to do this. It also affords the women an opportunity to talk about their quality of life at or near the end of their radiation treatment and to ask about sexual activity after treatment. These visits are usually relatively brief, and the patients are happy to be almost done with this phase of treatment.

One woman stands out for me among the many I have seen over the years, and her journey with me has just begun. She was referred to me by one of the nurses in our gynecology group because during a meeting with the nurse to discuss her treatment plan; she became very distressed. She told the nurse that the thought of using dilators was terrifying to her, and she was not sure she was going to be able to manage. She had not yet begun her lengthy course of radiation treatment and the nurse correctly anticipated that this might not be a routine case.

I met with the patient and her husband a short time after receiving the referral. I could immediately see that she was extremely anxious and within moments of sitting down, she was in tears. And I hadnt even started asking questions yet! She disclosed that she had a history of childhood sexual abuse, and this had impacted on each and every aspect of her diagnosis and treatment. She was having flashbacks and was extremely anxious and emotionally reactive with every additional piece of information provided to her. She repeated over and over to me, between sobs, that she did not think she was going to manage to use the dilators and that her flashbacks had increased since this was mentioned.

I took a deep breath and told her that she did not have to use the dilators at all if even the thought of this was causing her so much distress. I hoped that this small piece of information could help her feel like she had some sort of control. While we recommend the use of dilators, we dont know with any certainty if the patients use them as prescribed or at all. We dont have good evidence that they help to prevent stenosis, yet we still prescribe them, hoping perhaps that they may help some of the time or for some of the women. I had discussed my plan with her radiation oncologist and we had agreed that using a small dilator was better than no dilator at all, but that ultimately it was her choice and if she couldnt or wouldnt use it, or if it caused her so much distress that it was unbearable for her, then she did not have to use it.

She looked at me and stopped crying. I started to talk to her, pausing often to ask her if I could continue giving her information. I explained the rationale for the use of dilators, as well as our limited evidence about when to start and how long to continue. She listened, and her breathing slowed.

Have you ever seen a dilator? I asked, not knowing if this was going to precipitate more sobbing.

Her green eyes glistened with the beginning of tears, and she shook her head.

How do you imagine a dilator to look? I asked.

She couldnt articulate this in words but used her hands to suggest something large and frightening.

Would you like to see one? I asked gently. You may be surprised by what it looks like

With a brief nod, she indicated that she could perhaps have a look at one.

When I first started working at this cancer center, I asked to see the dilators that they were providing to patients. My reaction was one of shock; they were hard plastic rods, about 12 inches long with flat ends. I could not imagine anyone inserting one of those anywhere, much less into a vagina that had been exposed to radiation or surgery. I started asking questions and found someone who worked in the medical devices department who turned out to be one of the most engaging and helpful professionals I have met. When I explained that the dilators his department was making were, for want of a better descriptor, not great (and that patients were probably not using them because they were scary to look at and uncomfortable to use), he asked me to tell him how he could make them better. So we talked and involved one of the radiation oncologists who does high-dose radiation to the vaginal vault, and before too long we had a prototype and then a steady supply of dilators that we could provide free of charge to our patients. He used a 3D printer to make the molds and could keep making them for as long as we needed them. They are flexible, come in three sizes, have a base that the woman can hold onto as she inserts it, and are not that scary!

So I took one of the small dilators out and showed it to her. She looked shocked, and while I wanted to ask what she was thinking, I did not want to start the tears again.

Would you like to touch it?

She hesitated for a moment and then gingerly put out her hand. I placed the dilator across her palm, and her fingers closed round it; it bent a little, and she started to laugh.

Her laughter was almost as intense as her sobs had been just 20 minutes earlier. She moved the dilator from hand to hand, she bent and twisted it (they are made of rubber and urethane and have some flexibility, enough to be inserted without bending, but are not completely rigid), and the look on her face showed amazement and surprise. I will ask her one day what she imagined it was going to look like  I think that in her mind it was like something out of a horror movie. But in her hands, it was just a small thing: 3 inches long and 1 inch in diameter, a piece of rubber with a rounded tip and a flat base. She took it home with her even though she had not yet started her radiation therapy. I wanted her to have it so that she could look at it as it really was and not let her imagination or memory run wild. I wanted her to get used to its presence in her post-treatment life and perhaps, even to befriend it.

For me, this is a story of how small things really can make a big difference. The nurse anticipating that using the dilator was going to be problematic for the patient  and then challenging for her health care team  was the first step. Even before that, the willingness of a biomedical engineer to work with us to create something that patients would actually use and not avoid was a small step with big impact. And while trying to not be self-serving, my gentle and incremental work in exposing her to this small thing that in her mind was huge, made a difference too.

Anne Katz is a certified sexual counselor and a clinical nurse specialist at a large, regional cancer center in Canada who blogs at ASCO Connection, where this post originally appeared. She can be reached at her self-titled site, Dr. Anne Katz.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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In last weeks offering, Brien Lundin and I posted a comprehensive report on uranium and listed a variety of North American-focused exploration, development, and mining companies that stand to prosper as the price of uranium increases (Mercenary Musing January 18, 2016). Today, I document significant changes over the past ten years in both where and how primary supplies of uranium have been mined.

Many of these changes can be directly attributed to the wild swings in the price of uranium from 2004-2014.

The uranium spot price soared from $10/lb U3O8 in 2004 to a peak of $135 in the spring of 2007 and then collapsed back to $40. The exponential rise and fall was driven by hedge funds, utilities, and traders competing in a speculative frenzy for physical supplies of yellowcake over nearly two years. Uranium price volatility foreshadowed the parabolic rise and fall of oil, copper, gold, and all other world-traded hard commodities that culminated late in the global economic crisis of 2008-2009.

The spot price began moving up from $40/lb in the summer of 2010 and briefly reached $73 in February of 2011 immediately prior to the Fukushima incident. It fell to as low as $28/lb in the summer of 2014 before settling in the $35-$38 range for most of 2015.

In the series of tables and charts below, I present the top ten uranium producing countries and ten largest mines in 2004, 2009, and 2014, document significant changes, and offer factors contributing to the rapidly changing world of uranium mining. Data sources are the World Nuclear Association and the International Atomic Energy Association.

First up are the top ten producing countries and the nine largest mines for 2004. Note that production figures for individual mines in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were not available until the late 2000s. Given Kazakhstans position as the worlds third largest producer in 2004, it is likely that one Kazak mine would make the list. Therefore, I only list nine large mines for the year.

Also note that only three mines made the list over the entire ten-year period; they are highlighted in the charts below:

In 2004, Canada and Australia dominated world production with a combined 51% and five of its ten largest mines; Kazakhstan, Russia, Niger, and Namibia were also significant producers.

Canadas Athabasca Basin had two of the worlds largest mines, Australia had three mines of diverse geological types, and Niger had two giant sandstone uranium mines. If I were to include a tenth largest mine, they would account for about 60% of world production.

Next lets look at the top ten lists from 2009:

By 2009, world output had increased by a whopping 26% as the nuclear energy revival was in full swing with several hundred new reactors commissioned, under construction, planned, or proposed in many countries.

Kazakhstan had taken over as the leader in world production while Canada and Australia dropped to a combined 36%. US production was up 65% with most of that coming from small ISR operations.

Eight of the nine largest mines in 2004 remained the same, most had significant production increases, and they accounted for about the same percentage of production despite the huge world increase. Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, and Niger each had two of the worlds giant uranium mines.

Lastly, here are the top ten lists from 2014. The changes over just five years are astounding:

Three years after the Fukushima incident in 2014, world uranium production still increased another 11%. Driving factors include the continuing nuclear build-out continued and the end of secondary supply from Russian weapons conversion. Production was increasingly dominated by ISR operations in Kazakhstan at 41% of world total and five of the ten largest mines.

Canadas production decreased 11% with most of its uranium coming from the worlds largest and highest-grade mine at McArthur River, Australian production was down 37%, and US production increased by another 32% to reach its highest level since the late 1980s.

High operating costs and low prices combined with weather issues, industrial accidents, and/or environmental opposition and permitting difficulties resulted in the worlds second and third largest mines, Rossing in Namibia and Ranger in Australia, dropping completely off the top ten list. One large mine in the Athabasca and another in Niger are also missing. The other in Niger had recurring problems with terrorism and resource nationalism. As a result, the worlds large mine production dropped a bit but still contributed more than half of primary supply.

The way uranium has been mined over the past ten years has also undergone major changes. This table shows tonnages of uranium and percentages by type of mining method in 2004, 2009, and 2014:

In-situ leaching and recovery increased by over 250% in just ten years. The vast majority of that increase was from new mines in Kazakhstan. With exception of the Athabasca Basin, Niger, Russia, and small high-grade mines in the Arizona Strip of the United States, underground mining has become largely uneconomic because of its high cost and the current low price of uranium.

The relative decline of open-pit mining can be attributed largely to much lower production from Ranger and Rossing, but that was offset somewhat by production from Langer Heinrich in Namibia. Co-product uranium comes mostly from the copper-gold-uranium operations at the unique Olympic Dam deposit in South Australia and is largely dependent on the price and demand for copper.

The ongoing worldwide nuclear build-out.

Wild and unpredictable swings in the spot price.

Financing difficulties for large capital expenditure underground projects.

The phenomenal increase in low-cost ISR production from Kazakhstan.

The major changes in mined sources of uranium and mining methods employed from 2004 to 2014 can be attributed to four factors:

Over the past ten years, annual world mine production has increased by over 16,000 tonnes, a gain of nearly 40%. All this growth and more has been has been attributable to Kazakhstan, which produced over 19,000 tonnes more in 2014 than in 2004. Besides having large sandstone uranium deposits ideally suited for in-situ mining, operations in that country have benefitted from a command economy, simple environmental regulations and permitting, the use of sulfuric acid as a lixiviant (a reagent that is banned for ISR in most other places) and a weak currency that was significantly devalued in 2015.

With 66 nuclear reactors under construction and another 158 in the planning stages across the world, the demand for uranium will continue to grow. And with its low cost and environmentally-benign footprint, ISR mining will continue to gain in market share.

That said, Kazakhstans production has leveled off for the past four years, and it is equivocal whether that country can continue to satisfy the worlds growing demand for yellowcake.

And that folks, is one of the many reasons Why I Remain a Uranium Bull.

Ciao for now,

Mickey Fulp

MercenaryGeologist.com

Contact@MercenaryGeologist.com
(Kitco News) - Gold has been proven to work as a hedge for investors and often as a refuge in times of economic uncertainty.

However, two researchers in Ireland turn their attention towards gold stocks to see if they too can offer the same type of safe-haven characteristics to investors.

Based on a research paper released Jan 22 entitled "Are Gold Bugs Coherent?", researchers Brian Lucey of the Trinity College in Dublin and Fergal O'Connor of the University of Dublin suggest that gold stocks' safe-haven appeal isn't as strong as that of gold.

Citing past studies, they noted that "the gold price leads production costs suggesting that an examination of gold mining companies as alternatives is not a useful path."

Similar results were found in another study published in 2013 by Nelson Areal, Benilde Oliveira, and Raquel Sampaio, who noted "little benefit from a safe haven perspective of investing in gold mining companies," the researchers continued.

Investors wishing to gain gold exposure through other forms often look to gold mining stocks, but it isn't that simple, suggested the researchers.

"A complicating factor is that first, there are limited numbers of gold miners, and second in many cases it is impossible to obtain a pure mine substitute, as gold is frequently extracted in conjunction with other minerals," they noted.

Lucey and O'Connor used "wavelet models" to surface the correlation between gold miners stock prices and the price of gold, comparing the gold price with the NYSE ARCA Gold Bugs index of gold miner share prices over a 17-year long time span -- a total of 4668 observations  the paper said.

"The period under examination in this paper covers the bottoming of the gold price at just over $250 in 1999 through to its nominal high at $1879 in 2011. This paper finds that gold prices in general lead the NYSE ARCA Gold Bugs index of gold miner share prices when we look at periods of 1 year or greater," they said.

"However as it is gold that leads the relationship the ability of gold miners stocks to provide the diversification or safe haven benefits that have been attributed to gold, by studies...is again called into question."

By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com

Follow me on Twitter @SdBenali
(Kitco News) - Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO) reported Monday that 2015 output exceeded guidance but that the company is facing a potential impairment charge of more than $1 billion to write down assets in Greece, where Eldorado has been in a fight with the government over necessary permits.

Eldorado has mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, China, Greece, Romania and Brazil.

Eldorados preliminary data showed production of 723,532 ounces in 2015, exceeding guidance of 640,000 to 700,000 ounces of gold. All-in sustaining cash costs averaged $841 an ounce. Cash operating costs averaged $552, which was lower than original 2015 guidance of $570 to $615.

Gold production in 2016 has been estimated by the company to be 565,000 to 630,000 ounces of gold at an average cash cost ranging between $585 and $620 per ounce, with all-in sustaining cash cost between $940 and $980.

As of Jan. 13, the company suspended development work at Skouries in Greek as a result of a stalemate with the government on required permits and licenses. The Greek government last summer revoked the companys mining license, although news reports last week said the countrys top administrative court has annulled that government decision.

Eldorado said Monday that the overall Skouries budget for 2016 is expected to be $33 million, including care and maintenance costs averaging approximately $1 million per month, and the rest for ongoing costs and some demobilization costs.

The company also said it is conducting its annual impairment review and preliminary analysis indicates an impairment expense of approximately of $1.2-1.6 billion (after-tax) primarily related to its Greek assets.

As for company-wide output, Paul Wright, president and chief executive officer, reported that all of Eldorados operating mines met or exceeded original production and cost guidance for the third year in a row.

"Looking at Eldorado's long-term plan, the company remains committed to its portfolio of Greek assets and the realizable benefits to all of the stakeholders involved, he said. Our operations in Turkey and China remain on track and on budget to continue operating for years to come. Finally, we will continue to slowly advance our development projects in Brazil and Romania, while remaining financially prudent in today's challenging metal price environment."

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
Harmony Gold Mining Co. (NYSE: HMY) reports that gold production for the quarter ending in December increased for the third consecutive quarter. Underground grade was up close to 7% and overall gold production was 2% higher quarter-on-quarter. The production teams kept their momentum, with the majority of the operations delivering both higher kilograms and higher grades, says the companys newly appointed chief executive officer, Peter Steenkamp. Combined with the current higher R/kg (rand/kilogram) gold prices, the past quarter has been very rewarding for Harmony.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Detour Gold Looks For Higher 2016 Production, Announces New Mine Plan

Monday January 25, 2016 10:12



Detour Gold Corp. (TSX: DGC) looks for 2016 gold output at its Detour Lake mine in Ontario to rise to between 540,000 and 590,000 ounces. The company projects total cash costs per ounce of $675 to $750, with all-in sustaining costs of $840 to $940. "The Detour Lake mine is expected to have a second strong year of production growth with a further decline in costs as optimization of the operation continues, says Paul Martin, president and chief executive officer. Building on the momentum of 2015, gold production is expected to increase by 12% and all-in sustaining costs to decline by 15% using the mid-point of the guidance." The company also announced a new life-of-mine plan. Highlights include proven and probable open-pit reserves increasing to 16.4 million ounces of contained gold, with annual average annual gold production of approximately 655,000 ounces over the life of the mine. Average annual gold production of approximately 617,000 ounces is projected for next three years.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Primero Mining Reports Record Production For 2015

Monday January 25, 2016 10:12

Primero Mining Corp. (TSX: P; NYSE: PPP) says it achieved record annual production of 259,474 gold-equivalent ounces in 2015, which was 15% higher than in 2014 and within guidance. Gold-equivalent production is expected to increase by up to 8% in 2016 to between 260,000 and 280,000 ounces. Primero reports 2015 consolidated total cash costs are expected to be $637 per gold-equivalent ounce with preliminary all-in sustaining costs of $972 per gold ounce, both below guidance. Meanwhile, Primero expects a 10% reduction in all-in sustaining costs to between $850 and $900 per gold ounce during 2016 due to a combination of increased cost controls and improved economies of scale with higher throughput rates. "We completed 2015 with production momentum, low costs and financial strength from our two mines in stable Americas-only jurisdictions," says Joseph F. Conway, chief executive officer.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Gran Colombia Gold Increases Board Size, Seeks Another Change

Monday January 25, 2016 10:12

Gran Colombia Gold Corp. (TSX: GCM; OTC PINK: TPRFF) reports that the board of directors has increased from six to eight, as previously announced. Effective Friday, Peter Volk has resigned from the board. Rodney Lamond, Mark Ashcroft and Mark Wellings have been appointed to fill three board positions. Meanwhile, the company has called for a special meeting on March 14 to seek approval to increase the board from eight to 10 and elect new members. The company also reports production for 2015 of 116,857 ounces of gold and 147,817 ounces of silver, up 18.5% and 17.4%, respectively, over 2014.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

B2Gold Corp. Reports Casualty At Otjikoto Mine

Monday January 25, 2016 10:12

B2Gold Corp. (TSX: BTO; NYSE MKT: BTG; NAMIBIAN: B2G) reports the death of a worker at the Otjikoto mine in Namibia. A machine operator was injured in December and died Friday from injuries sustained in the accident, the company says. The company and the Namibian authorities are both conducting an investigation of the accident, B2Gold reports.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
(Kitco News) - The latest trade data suggests that all the excitement in the precious metals market was in silver last week as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed silver short positioning fell by more than 50%.

The most recent report covers the week through January 19. During that period, Comex March silver futures rose by nearly more than 2.4%, as short-covering pushed prices back above $14 an ounce.

However, the market is still not attracting significant investments on the buy side. According to the disaggregated Commitment of Trader Report (COTR), money managers dropped their speculative gross long position of Comex silver futures by 1,222 contracts to 49,199. Shorts fell by 9,122 to 32,750 over the same period. The latest data shows the silver market is now let long 16,449 contracts,



Analysts at Commerzbank noted, in a research note Monday that silvers net positioning has reached their highest level in 10-weeks.

Bart Melek, head of commodity trading at TD Securities, said hedge funds pared back their short bets because of shifting expectations for aggressive monetary policy action from the Federal Reserve in 2016.

Global equity jitters, fleeting economic data, and China devaluation concerns all diminish rate hike expectations and add safe haven appeal for the precious complex, he said.

Compared to silver, gold was a relatively boring trade during the latest CFTC survey period. Comex February gold futures showed a miniscule gain of 0.2%as prices remained trapped below $1,100 an ounce.

The disaggregated COTR showed money-managed speculative gross long positions of Comex gold futures rose by 1,146 contracts to 84,054. At the same time, short contracts rose by 799 contracts to 83,615. Despite the subdued activity, the gold market still managed to expand its net length to 403 contracts, from the previous 92 contracts.

Commerzbanks analysts said that they expect hedge funds took a break last week. After doing their heavy lifting in the previous week, noting that net positioning shifted to the long side for the first time in more than nine weeks.

Analysts at UBS said that the latest trade data shows some reluctance among hedge funds to make aggressive positions ahead of the first Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting of 2016.

According to Bloomberg data, no rate hike is priced in for the upcoming meeting. Nevertheless market participants are likely wary of headline risks, the analysts said in their report Monday.

By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com

Follow Neils Christensen @neils_C
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By Rachel Seymour of the Kitsap Sun

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND  A year after Bainbridge Island settled a public records lawsuit, half of about $350,000 has been divided among nonprofits on the island.

Althea Paulson and Bob Fortner, who sued the city in 2013, confirmed they would receive $350,000 in a settlement, along with $137,790 in legal fees, after a Kitsap County Superior Court judge ruled in 2014 that Bainbridge officials didn't perform an "adequate" search for documents on personal computers for two council members, David Ward and Steve Bonkowski.

Paulson said she and Fortner split the settlement in half, and she spent a year figuring out where she would donate her portion, which came to about $175,000.

She declined to say which specific organizations received money from the settlement, although she did say she focused on helping the "most vulnerable in the community" by funding programs for low-income residents, youth and domestic violence victims.

"People are often under the impression that there isn't much need on Bainbridge Island, but that is not true," Paulson wrote in an email.

With some of Paulson's donations, she provided supplemental funding to organizations who did not receive full funding for their programs or proposals during the city's annual grant process.

"It was a very humbling experience," Paulson said.

Some funding, "small amounts," went to a couple of nonprofits that are not directly involved in human services, she added, although they have programs for low-income residents.

Fortner did not return phone calls for comment about his half of the settlement.

Any of Paulson's portion that did not go directly to organizations was donated to the Bainbridge Community Foundation with the stipulation it be used for human services, she said. The foundation allocated city grants to local organizations in 2015. According to the foundation's website, it invests contributions it receives and "distributes funds back into the areas of greatest need in the community."

Under the settlement with Fortner and Paulson in 2014, Bonkowski did not have to turn over his personal computer and Ward resigned.

Ward returned the computer to his employer, which owned the machine, and its hard drive was wiped.

Bonkowski's term ended at the end of 2015, and he did not seek re-election.

He and Ward were elected in November 2011.
KPS building in Bremerton. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN

SHARE Gary Gartin, of Bradley Scott Inc., enters the office space of Life Cycle Engineering Inc.Friday inside the KPS building in Bremerton. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN Gary Gartin, of Bradley Scott Inc., gives a tour Friday of the KPS building in Bremerton. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN The directory in the lobby lists the tenants of the KPS building in downtown Bremerton. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN

By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  New ownership likely will bring a new name for Bremerton's glass-paneled KPS building.

For starters, KPS Health Plans was absorbed by Group Health Cooperative, its owners for a decade, at the end of 2015. Group Health has put the building at Fourth Street and Warren Avenue on the market for $5.3 million.

The building's future is unclear, but it maintains a healthy list of tenants that include accountants, lawyers, federal contractors and, of course, health care professionals in the four-story building. The new owners could take over the entire building or continue to manage the building with a number of tenants, according to commercial real estate experts at Bradley Scott, whose offices are located inside as well.

The building's location, design and functionality give the real estate professionals confidence it will fare well in the coming years.

"This building was the newest and nicest building downtown for decades," said Vic Ulsh, who has worked inside its walls since 1981. "It still seems to me like it's ahead of its time."

The robust building includes a concrete core, an inconvenience only when hanging art on its walls, said Gary Gartin, also of Bradley Scott. Steel cables reinforce its stability, as do circular concrete pilings that line its exterior.

"There is not another building as functional and as solid as this one," Gartin said.

Two-thirds of its roughly 45,000 square feet of office space is rented. Peninsula Community Health Services, which took over much of the space once used by KPS, has the biggest share, with almost 11,000 square feet.

The newest tenant is Life Cycle Engineering. The Charleston, South Carolina-based company is bringing 50 employees to Bremerton as part of a three-year, $53 million contract it was awarded by the federal government in December. Employees here will support the Naval shipyard in Yokosuka, Japan, with planning and engineering. In layman's terms, they'll provide plans and designs for repair work and other services to the Navy so that they can keep "the ships out to sea where they belong," said Peter Thomas, program manager for shipyard support services for the firm.

"We're excited to be here," Thomas said. "And we're still hiring."

The company, with a presence at many shipyards around the country, is increasing its allotment in the building to 6,800 square feet from about 900.

The property, which once housed an elementary school, was developed by Land Title Associates of Kitsap County. In 1993, Kitsap Physician Service bought the building for $3 million. Parking was added in 1995 following the purchase and demolition of some neighboring homes.
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By Chris Henry

BREMERTON  Tessie Goheen's pursuit of a master's degree took her to the zoo.

Goheen in December completed a two-year program through Miami University that included classes at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, along with online coursework. Last summer, as part of her studies, Goheen traveled to Belize, to study conservation efforts there.

Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, has joined with eight zoos in major metropolitan areas around the United States, including Woodland Park, to offer master's degrees for teachers and people working in public arenas. The goal is to promote teaching of environmental preservation, habitat restoration and sustainable living.

The university's Project Dragonfly offers tracks for in-the-field coursework at zoos and around the world. Goheen, who earned a master's in teaching biology, said the unusual nature of the classes attracted her to Project Dragonfly's Advanced Inquiry Program, which is "based on the principle that education should extend beyond the classroom, and that students should make a difference."

In one of Goheen's classes, for example, students studied carnivores, going "behind the scenes" to talk to zookeepers who care for these animals. Students then were asked to research conservation efforts that supported different carnivorous species.

Coursework in Belize took Goheen around the country to meet people heading up zoos and wildlife refuges that have helped improve the relationship between humans and wildlife in that country.

The "inquiry based" approach of classes requires students to learn through asking questions. "Really, it's seeking your own answers," Goheen said.

Woodland Park Zoo's partnership with the university dovetails with the zoo's mission, which is getting people to "learn, care and act" to save animals around the world, said Katie Remine, of the zoo's education department.

Remine had a role in helping launch the partnership with Miami University. Since 2011, about 30 people who took classes through Woodland Park Zoo have graduated, with 40 people currently enrolled.

Back in her own classroom, Goheen didn't wait for graduation to apply her knowledge. Last year, as she was teaching Montessori students at West Hills STEM Academy, Goheen had her students make a compost bin and take part in a water conservation project.

Kids formed teams and developed their own projects. Some picked up trash around the school; some took up a campaign for a one-day lights out experiment, in which teachers agreed to turn off half the lights in their classroom. Another group collected recyclable classroom and lunchbox materials.

By the end of the year, students were spontaneously doing things like pouring leftover water in their cups on classroom plants.

"I saw a big change just in everyday habits," Goheen said of her kids. "It just brings more awareness of their own actions."

This year, Goheen is teaching Montessori students at Kitsap Lake Elementary, as the district has moved the Montessori program.

The cost of the AIP program is approximately $3,671 per year for basic courses and fees, according to Woodland Park Zoo. The program is accepting applicants for summer enrollment. The deadline is Feb. 28.

For information, go to Miami University's Project Dragonfly, aip.projectdragonfly.org, or the Woodland Park Zoo, www.zoo.org/education/teachers/aip#. VqLezfFzC1k; 206-548-2581; email aip@zoo.org.
Stuff writes about Brad:

This is the situation facing 33-year-old Brad, who did not want to reveal his last name due to the distress it may cause himself and his family. Brad said he left New Zealand for Melbourne in 2007 due to a lack of employment opportunities, after gaining a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in performing arts. His loan is now at $108,000, with interest accounting for more than half of the debt.

Its hard to verify this as we dont know when he finished studying but if in 2007 you owed $62,000 then in 2016 you would owe around $108,000 if you have made no repayments ever. So only one third would be interest.

Brad said he made an arrears payment of $500 each month, an arrangement made with IRD, but cant afford the $5000 minimum annual repayment. This means his debt keeps building.

$500 a month exceeds the minimum annual payment so he is complying with IRD and does not need to fear arrest. If he pays $6,000 a year then his interest is $5,724 so his debt should not be building.

The Whanganui-born expat said while he earned $60,000 a year, at least 30 per cent of that went towards living costs.

Which means he has 70% left over. 10% is going on his student loan. He could decide to make that 20% and start reducing the balance.

Brad said his loan had caused him considerable stress. I have been diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety; the thought of my crushing student loan debt is constantly on my mind, and there are basically no options I have to remedy the situation.

Pay back more?

Return to NZ and work here, so you get zero interest on the loan?

While he has been in contact with IRD, constant threats to detain borrowers has made Brad too scared to return to New Zealand most of the time. I have returned to New Zealand twice in the last four years and each time I have had to seek anti-anxiety medication from my doctor simply to board my flight, and almost did not return last time, all because of the thought of my loan and being detained at Customs.

I am sure he is distressed but on the basis of what he is doing (making repayments) he has nothing to worry about.

The borrower said he believed interest should be frozen to help people like him get ahead.

It is  if you live and work in NZ.

I am supposed to be out here in the world representing New Zealand, promoting it, and instead I feel like Im being punished for that, and I am deeply resentful of my nationality as a consequence

No Ambassadors represent NZ. Youre in Australia presumably for reasons of employment of lifestyle. Thats fine, but it means you are not paying tax in NZ or contributing directly to NZ, so you are expected to pay back your student loan.

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I saw (the rusting skeleton of a Metro van) sitting in a field, said P.J. Burchett of the vehicle he transformed into the Cruisin' Cone. He bought it from the farm owner, and had to pull it out of the field with a tractor. SUBMITTED PHOTO

SHARE I wanted to do something that my family can have fun with, said P.J. Burchett of the decision to modify the 1950 International Harvester Metro van into an ice cream truck. He is pictured here with the Cruisin' Cone truck and his wife, Cheryl, son Joshua and daughter Lydia. (Photo by Shane Rively/Bloom Photography/Special to the News Sentinel P.J Burchett and his son, 3-year old Joshua, have matching vintage-inspired costumes to wear when they are out in the Cruisin' Cone. P.J. Burchett rebuilt a 1950 Metro van into Cruisin' Cone to hire for special events. He will hand out ice cream treats and even play music through the vans speakers when he arrives. (Photos by Shane Rively/Bloom Photography/Special to the News Sentinel)

By Ali James of the Knoxville News Sentinel

When P.J. Burchett takes to the road in his retro-inspired ice cream truck, people are so excited to see him they swerve toward him.

"I'm always white-knuckled," he said. "I look out of the corner of my eye and they're taking pictures and smiling, not realizing they're running me off the road."

Burchett said he is a "man with a plan and a Metro van," speaking of the fully restored, completely tricked out 1950 International Harvester van, which he has turned into an ice cream truck he calls Cruisin' Cone. It's also his new business.

Burchett works alongside his father building hot rods, but he decided to build the Cruisin' Cone in his spare time to take to car shows and to rent out for special events.

"I was on one of those county back roads two years ago, and I saw van sitting in a field," he said.

"Everyone tried to buy this old thing, and no one could get it from him," Burchett said of the van and its owner.

So with a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Burchett set out to approach the owner and make a deal.

"He refused to sell it at first because it was being used to store hay for his animals," Burchett said. He offered a trade -- he would build a shed for the hay in return for the old truck.

"We had to have a tractor pick it up out of the mud; it had sunk down a good 10 inches," Burchett said. "Then I brought it home and began evaluating how rough it was. I was going to do something quick and cheap, but then I realized that I had to make a whole new truck from the beltline down.

"I wanted to do something that my family can have fun with," Burchett said of the decision to restore and modify the Metro van, a new kind of project for him. In the past, he'd only built two-seater cars and hot rods, he said.

"He came home and he said, 'You're going to think I'm crazy, (but) I want to turn it into an ice cream truck,'" said his wife, Cheryl Burchett.

"It's perfect for us because I'm a teacher," she said. "It's something we hope to take to parties and weddings during the summer. It's something the whole family can join in with."

The Cruisin' Cone can be driven to all sorts of spring and summer events, she said.

"We're flexible and open to ideas," said Cheryl Burchett, who will serve as a party planner with the truck as a prop.

The price to rent the truck is $100 an hour, plus the cost of any chosen treats. The couple will also offer face painting, balloon animals and even ice cream-themed art projects for an additional cost.

The Burchetts see the van as a photo background for events, a "getaway vehicle" for weddings, or even a unique way to make a Valentine's Day wedding proposal.

"We have been contacted by schools and assisted-living facilities for events," Cheryl Burchett said. "It's got lots of potential."

Burchett has unearthed a little of the van's history. The last time it was legally driven was 1964, according to the license tags. And he discovered a sign for Jewel Tea, a company that used to drive around supplying housewives with everything from grocery items to cleaning supplies, linens and cookware.

Using extra parts lying around his shop, Burchett started rebuilding the frame and motor. Then he decided that since he had come so far, why not take it to another level? A Corvette suspension and fuel-injected engine were added, and he lowered the whole van.

A year into it. word had spread about his project. Axalta Coating Systems offered to donate the paint if Burchett would take the finished van to SEMA, the premier automotive specialty products trade event held each fall in Las Vegas.

"I was going to finish putting it together across the states," Burchett said.

He loaded it on a trailer and headed for Nevada. In Texas, a wheel came off the trailer, forcing him to replace all of the wheels. In an Albuquerque hotel parking lot, his tools were stolen. Then he spent the entire night before the show finishing the van.

"It was phenomenal, and everybody went mad about it," Burchett said of the response to the van on display at the Las Vegas show.

The paint company even arranged for Burchett to hand out ice cream treats; in one day he gave away 3,000 in just three hours, he said. On his return to Knoxville, there was a flurry of people inviting him to car shows and benefits.

Burchett even dresses the part of an ice cream truck man.

"From the beginning, he was out in the field and insisted on wearing a makeshift costume of a paper hat and bow tie," Cheryl Burchett said.

Unable to find a vintage costume, his mother made him a white jacket, then at Christmas she made one for his 3-year-old son, Joshua, and had them embroidered with the Cruisin' Cone logo. She also made matching aprons.

"We wanted to get outfits that matched how nice the truck looks," Cheryl Burchett said. "It's all about the overall ice cream experience."

And the inspiration for the name?

"We will be taking it to car shows, so (we thought) let's do "Cruisin' Cone," P.J. Burchett said.

It's a play on hazard cones, and the three-scoop ice cream cone on the roof also reflects the colors of a traffic signal.

Retro, ice-cream-themed jewelry has been handmade for Cheryl Burchett's Etsy store, as well as branded children's and adult's t-shirts they can sell at car shows.

Cheryl Burchett suggested a two-foot ice cream cone for the top of the truck, but P.J. Burchett had his heart set on something a little bigger. They finally found it on Amazon, and a FedEx driver delivered the seven-foot cone to his door.

Right now, the Cruisin' Cone is available only for special events and to hand out pre-packaged treats. The Burchetts on't drive the streets with children chasing after them for ice cream.

P.J. Burchett is rebuilding a 1946 Coca-Cola refrigerator to serve as a freezer later. They hope soon to begin making their own "Rocky Road" ice cream.

Follow the restoration process on Cruisin' Cone's blog at http://cruisincone.com/
By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

The former treasurer of St. George Greek Orthodox Church is behind bars after surrendering Friday to begin serving part of a 10-year sentence for stealing nearly $400,000 from church coffers.

Constantine D. Christodoulou, 48, of Knoxville, reported as ordered Friday to the Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility on Maloneyville Road to begin a one-year jail term as part of a plea deal in a felony theft case in which he also must serve nine years on probation following his time behind bars.

Christodoulou can earn credits for things such as behaving well, taking educational courses and working around the jail to reduce the actual amount of time he spends behind bars, but the amount of time he may shave off his sentence has not been calculated.

Christodoulou pleaded guilty earlier this month in Knox County Criminal Court to stealing from the church, where he worked as treasurer, from Dec. 30, 2010, to Feb. 21, 2015. Defense attorney Mike Whalen struck a plea deal with Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen for the 10-year split confinement punishment.

The case became public on Feb. 26, when the Rev. Anthony Stratis informed church members through a letter that the former treasurer had been stealing from them for years. Church officials did not report the theft to police until two months after the News Sentinel published a story on the embezzlement. Stratis had initially written in the letter that the church would not seek prosecution.

Christodoulou "wrote checks to himself from church accounts that were not authorized by church officials," Allen stated in a news release on the day the plea was announced. He placed the money into "business and personal accounts," she said.

Allen placed the total theft at $415,950. Christodoulou has repaid $145,000 of the pilfered money, Allen said, and the church's insurance company paid $50,000 on the claim.

Allen said the church spent $3,725 internally investigating the theft.

The church filed a civil complaint on Dec. 29 against Christodoulou and his two businesses, World Ventures, Tours and Travel and KNC, asking for compensatory damages of $274,675 plus pre-judgment interest as well as court costs and other expenses.

In that complaint, the church said Christodoulou transferred $38,250 to World Ventures and $441,000 to KNC from the church operating account for a minimum of $479,250 in stolen funds.

Attorney Lynn Tarpy said he has prepared a response and sent it to the church's lawyers.
SHARE Jordan Aaron Wilson (Knox County Detention Facility) Douglas Alexander Merrick Jr. (Knox County Detention Facility)

By News Sentinel Staff

KNOXVILLE  Two Knoxville men have been charged in connection with a pair of armed holdups committed at local hotels within the past week, according to arrest records.

Douglas Alexander Merrick Jr., 28, and Jordan Aaron Wilson, 24, were being held in lieu of $100,000 bond each Monday.

Both men were arrested overnight following an armed robbery reported just after 11:30 p.m. Sunday at the Best Western, 5317 Pratt Road, in North Knoxville.

Merrick and Wilson were among a group of four people taken into custody for questioning after a Knoxville Police Department officer spotted a vehicle parked at a Titus Way residence that matched the description of the suspect vehicle, according to KPD.

Police seized clothing and a BB gun as evidence at the residence.

The two men also are charged in connection with a Jan. 18 armed robbery at the LaQuinta Inn & Suites, 7534 Conner Road, in North Knox County, which as investigated by the Knox County Sheriff's Office.

Merrick told investigators he drove the getaway vehicle in both holdups, while Wilson committed the robberies, according to warrants.

More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel.
Commissioner Sam McKenzie wants a discussion on race and minority needs tonight as the panel considers building two new middle schools. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Gerald Witt of the Knoxville News Sentinel

A Knox County commissioner wants a discussion on race and minority needs tonight as the panel considers building two new middle schools  one in Northeast Knox County's Gibbs community and one in West Knox County's Hardin Valley.

But Sam McKenzie doesn't expect it to happen.

"It's become taboo to even talk about race these days," McKenzie said. "You can't separate the issue. You can't do it, because race mattered in the initial decision-making. You can't have this conversation without talking about it from a racial standpoint."

The commission meets at 5 p.m. at the City County Building in downtown Knoxville.

The Gibbs middle school build was planned with Hardin Valley's under a 2015 agreement between the Knox County school board, the County Commission, Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre and County Mayor Tim Burchett.

It's the Gibbs school that primarily concerns McKenzie.

McKenzie and others argue building the school would upend a school desegregation plan instituted in 1991 that closed the previous Gibbs Middle School in the rural, primarily white section of the county and bused those students to Holston Middle School in McKenzie's East Knoxville district. That plan resulted from an investigation by the U. S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

The proposal to build the new school has led to another OCR investigation after the local chapter of the NAACP filed a complaint last year, arguing that Knox County has a history of building new schools only in mostly white communities.

Proponents of the middle schools, and of the Gibbs school especially, have said the argument is about long bus rides and having a community middle school. Studies by school system showed a need based on student capacity for a new school in fast-growing West Knox County, but not in Gibbs.

Last week the NAACP asked county commissioners to postpone votes on building the new schools until the OCR completes its study.

McKenzie, the commission's only black member, says building the Gibbs school and rezoning students from Holston would be a step backward for diversity.

"It puts me at a time before I was born that I don't want to go back to," he said. "It rings to me as backward, as monocultural."

He said he hopes for a discussion tonight on the needs for diversity in schools and serving minority communities.

McKenzie, however, believes minds are made up among commissioners supporting the schools.

"There is going to be every effort to have everyone have their say, and (school supporters) will have no engagement, and they'll make a vote," he said. "They'll allow me to talk and there will be no dialogue."

Commission Chairman Dave Wright, whose district includes the Gibbs community, said he will support the vote to build the schools. He would not comment on race-related concerns and instead deferred to the federal probe.

"Those are answers that will have to come," he said, "from someone other than me."

Commissioner Brad Anders represents the West Knox County district that includes Hardin Valley.

He wants to hear the results of the Office for Civil Rights investigation, but backs building both schools.

"A school board and a commission voted to build two schools," he said, "and now you have a group of folks who want to undo that. I think it's appropriate that both schools are built."

McKenzie said countywide officeholders such as the two at-large commissioners need to consider the needs of the entire constituency.

"They represent my people, they represent black people, they represent my district," he said. "I don't think they're looking at it through all the appropriate lenses, or all lenses."

At-large Commissioner Bob Thomas said he hasn't made up his mind completely on the contracts for the schools, but doesn't see them being halted.

"These schools have gone through a process, and unless it's anything less than a court order, I don't see how it would stop the process," he said.

Thomas said he's not heard anything about race in discussions about building a Gibbs middle school and that no decision in politics makes all people happy all the time.

"I don't look at it as a race situation, but what's best for Knox County as a whole," he said.

Commissioner Ed Brantley, the commission's other at-large member, was unavailable for comment late last week.
OREAs Mapping Tennessee Education.

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By News Sentinel Staff

Two new interactive maps fearing a wide range of education data at the school and school district levels are now available.

The Comptroller's Offices of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) created the maps which illustrate the House of Representatives and Senate legislative districts overlaid with school district and school level information, according to a news release from the OREA.

The legislative profile maps are both clickable and searchable. A user can search by legislator, school district, and school name.

The maps include demographic information, accountability and performance, and financial data.

Some specific data points include the number and type of schools (e.g., traditional, charter, etc.), school designation, average ACT score, per-pupil expenditure by average daily membership, and average classroom teacher salary.

"These maps offer a simple and unique way for General Assembly members to learn more about the schools in their districts," Comptroller Justin P. Wilson said in the release. "This interactive map is also useful to any Tennessean who wishes to learn more about public education achievement and spending in our state."

In addition to the release of the legislative profiles maps, OREA has updated its Higher Education Attainment map, and Mapping Tennessee Education page.
The prospect of a student threatening a mass shooting at a Knox County high school, as alleged by a teacher, is chilling enough; also disturbing is the school system's response to the teacher's lawsuit contending she was improperly fired.

Emi Marie Ellison, a former South-Doyle High School science teacher, claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that Knox County Schools violated her First Amendment right of free speech by firing her after she had reported the student's threats and asked why the student was allowed to remain in school.

Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan recently rejected the school system's attempt to have the case dismissed, and set an April 24, 2017, trial date.

While the court will determine the facts in the case, the filings made thus far are cause for concern.

According to the lawsuit, a female member of the school's ROTC program and its rifle team "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 subsequently reported the threats to school administrators. She alleges they did nothing to remove the student. Ellison then took a week of sick leave. When she returned, the student "renewed her threats," according to court records. Principal Tim Berry told her "the administration was handling the issue," but based on the tone of that conversation, Ellison hired an attorney. Ellison says she was fired 10 days after talking to Berry.

In the school system's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Knox County Deputy Law Director David Sanders did not dispute that Ellison reported the threats and remained in class while the investigation was underway. Knox County Schools contends Ellison quit of her own accord.

The school system's handling of such a serious, detailed threat raises questions, but officials are not giving answers. Schools spokeswoman Melissa Tindell declined to comment to a News Sentinel reporter about the episode, though she said that "when there are threats made against a school or schools, an assessment is conducted to thoroughly evaluate any potential safety risk."

Also troubling is the legal argument made on behalf of the schools. Sanders argued the threats were not a "matter of public concern" under the law.

That assertion is stunning, especially when it is made on behalf of a district that has seen bloodshed in its schools more than once in recent years. To his credit, Varlan cut down that argument and also ruled Ellison did not violate the student's privacy rights because she reported the threats to her superiors.

Regardless of the outcome of Ellison's lawsuit, the school system will need to address its response to threats of violence. The idea that a local school could be added to that list of tragedies that includes Columbine and Sandy Hook is dreadful to contemplate. The safety of students is of paramount importance and certainly is a matter of public concern.
By Choi Sung-jin



The total savings rate has risen for four consecutive years, indicating that Koreans are not loosening their purse strings, preferring instead to prepare for an uncertain financial future, officials said Monday.



"Unlike in the past, the rising savings rate is not so welcome," said an official at the Bank of Korea. "At a time when the nation has to worry about the low growth becoming a new normal, the rising savings rate and shrinking consumption could dampen the economy further."



According to the central bank, the total savings rate rose from 34.2 percent in 2012 to 34.3 percent in 2013, 34.7 percent in 2014 and 35.8 percent on average until the third quarter of last year. The total savings rate is a sum of all saving rates in the country  total disposable income minus consumption expenditure - by government, businesses and households.



The biggest increase was in the household savings rate, which more than doubled, from 3.4 percent in 2011 to 7.1 percent in 2014, according to the report.



Korean families are trying to watch every penny amid stagnant income growth and increasing nervousness about their financial future, it said. Heavier burdens to repay principals and interests for bank loans have also helped to increase their savings.



"The rise of the household savings rate is no doubt a positive factor because it helps to raise potential growth rate," said Lim Jin, a researcher at Korea Institute of Finance. "The recent increase of the savings rate, however, reflects in part the uneasiness felt by households, possibly leading to shrinking consumption and slumping domestic demand."



To perk up the dormant demand, the government went all out to enliven it last year, formulating an extra budget, holding a Korean version of a Black Friday event and lowering individual consumption tax, reversing 0.2-percent drop in consumption growth in the second quarter to 1.1-percent increase in the third quarter.



However, the consumption growth was followed by a proportional increase of debt. The outstanding amount of credit sales, such as credit-card sales and installment purchases of cars, in the third quarter rose by 3.9 trillion won ($3.25 billion), nearly four times higher than the 500 billion won in the second quarter. The total savings rate even increased from 35.3 percent to 35.8 percent during the same period, meaning that families have increased their consumption mostly by extending debt.



Yet there are clear limitations to the government's bolstering of domestic demand through temporary policies and one-off events while household incomes are recording small or no growth, according to financial professionals. "Without the backup of income growth, consumption is bound to fall again widening only the fluctuations of demand," said an analyst at a local brokerage.



Others are more pessimistic and have expressed concerns about a possible"consumption precipice," which is a plunge of private spending after a short-lived increase mostly owing to government's artificial boosting.



In order to boost consumption fundamentally, the government should implement policies to enhance household incomes. "In the case of low-income families, the government ought to help them accumulate income considering their debts and post-retirement living costs," said the analysts. "In the case of high-income families, policymakers need to induce them to increase their spending at home rather than abroad."




By Choi Sung-jin



Whatever government officials may say, its new "employment guidelines" _ which adds workers' "performance" to reasons for dismissal _ will make it far easier for managers to sack employees, labor experts say.



The rules, which the Ministry of Labor and Employment announced on Friday, allow employers to fire underperforming workers, as in the U.S. and Europe.



Although the guidelines limit the targets of such "general dismissal" to workers delivering exceptionally poor performance that they are a burden to their colleagues, personnel management officers within corporations can decide the criteria, union officials said Monday.



Too many workers, except those whose jobs can be quantified, such as sales, could lose their jobs through subjective assessment, the officials said.



The rules also call for first providing on-the-job retraining for such underachievers before firing them, but this would also have considerable ill-effects. Not only would it stigmatize such workers, it would take away time that could be used to improving their performances at their old jobs by being forced to spend too much time learning new skills.



LG Electronics, for instance, has offered training programs for low scorers in man-rating every year. This year, it has selected employees who have received C or lower marks for three years, causing complaints among trainees that the training itself could serve as a prior notice for dismissal, the sources said. "The training only of underachievers seems to stress the need for restructuring," said one such employee on an in-house SNS site.



But a company official said, "The program is aimed at helping low-raters successfully come back to their current jobs, and has nothing to do with restructuring. Among those who completed the course, none have left the company."



By industry, the banking sector is most vulnerable to new rule, amid the rapid spread of fintech and Internet banking, labor experts said.



KB Kookmin Bank, for instance, recently realigned its business network of 1,138 branches in 33 regional headquarters to 148 regional headquarters in 30 regional business groups. Shinhan Bank and NH Bank are also considering combining several small branches into one large outlet, in what experts say is part of their efforts to merge and integrate small stores.



"Although there are no specific plans about manpower trimming, there are talks about restructuring," a banking executive said. "If and when the government's new employment rules are put into practice in earnest, some downsizing will likely be inevitable."



Meanwhile, article 23 of the Labor Standard Act warns against firing a person without a justifiable reason.




By Lee Hyo-sik



Creditors of Dongbu Steel are having a hard time in finding bidders for the struggling steelmaking unit of Dongbu Group amid the prolonged global steel industry slump.



POSCO, Hyundai Steel and other local steelmakers have expressed no interest in acquiring Dongbu, while companies in China, India and other countries have also shown a lukewarm response, according to industry analysts, Monday.



If the state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB) and other creditors fail to find a buyer this time, they may have to retain Dongbu Steel under their management for quite some time, the analysts said. The troubled steelmaker could end up like Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, which has been under creditor management for the past 15 years.



KDB holds a 25.98 percent stake in Dongbu, followed by Nonghyup Bank with 9.36 percent and Shinhan Bank with 5.17 percent. The company came under a creditor-managed workout program last October after failing to pay maturing debts.



To dispose of Dongbu, KDB has contacted POSCO and Hyundai Steel, while on behalf of creditors, Nomura Securities have been talking to multiple steel mills in China and India. But none of them have reportedly expressed interest.



Creditors initially planned to hold a bid later this month, but will likely be forced to delay it.



"POSCO, Hyundai Steel and their foreign rivals have been struggling to deal with the worldwide industry slump," said an analyst, who declined to be named. "All of them are scrambling to dispose of noncore units and assets to raise cash amid deteriorating financial health. Acquiring Dongbu Steel is certainly not an option for them."



While attending an event at the COEX on Jan. 6, POSCO Chairman Kwon Oh-joon said it was highly unlikely for his company to find synergy with Dongbu Steel, indicating that the world's fourth-largest steelmaker was not keen on buying a smaller rival.



"As our chairman recently indicated, we aren't even considering taking over Dongbu," a POSCO spokesman said.



The steelmaker has been struggling to bolster its deteriorating bottom line over the past few years as it has failed to generate much in profits. POSCO has been selling real estate and other non-essential assets to secure much-needed cash, while shutting unprofitable subsidiaries.



Hyundai Steel, the steelmaking unit of Hyundai Motor Group, also said it is not in a position to acquire Dongbu. It was earlier speculated that the company might purchase it to expand its size to better compete with industry leader POSCO.



At the gathering of CEOs of steel companies here, Jan. 11, Hyundai Steel Vice Chairman Woo Yu-cheol also said the company never considered acquiring the troubled steelmaker.



"As our vice chairman indicated, we do not seek to acquire Dongbu," a company spokesman said.



Worse, Dongbu Steel creditors are also facing a difficulty in finding potential bidders abroad.



"The Chinese steel industry has been undergoing drastic downsizing to reduce its overcapacity," the analyst said. "India has also been grappling with excessive oversupply amid falling demand."




Ian Callum, design director of Jaguar Cars, speaks during the launch event for the company's flagship luxury XJ sedan at Dongdaemun Design Plaza, in Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Jaguar Korea



By Park Jin-hai

Jaguar has launched its full-size XJ sedan, seeking to expand its presence in the segment where the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7-Series dominate.

Ian Callum, design director for Jaguar cars, who is regarded one of the world' s top three car designers, is visiting the country to introduce the flagship luxury saloon to Korea.

Calling the new XJ his favorite, he said the car revolutionized Jaguar design. The eighth generation sedan, six years in development, was inspired by the first XJ series model from 1968.

Callum said heritage is not about simply copying the elements of legendary cars. "When we create a car like this one here, the values are around the excitement, the beauty of line and interior, which is the authenticity of materials. If you stick to the values, the heritage will see you through. It is not about copying," he said during a launch event at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul, Monday.

With a sleeker shoulder line and more sculptural body, the newest XJ boasts a stronger Jaguar image and greater profile. Its interior is luxurious yet simple, and features the high-tech infotainment system Incontrol Touch Pro with an eight-inch touch screen that the company says is one of the most advanced in the business.

Callum stressed the importance of consistency in designing cars.

"In terms of design cue details, the grill we created is consistent and demonstrates Jaguar's face. It is distinctive enough to be Jaguar and the grill was instantly inspired by the very first XJ 1968. Consistency of the brand is the point, because it is a huge element in luxury," he said.

The new XJ comes with 10 different outlays depending on the engine, transmission and wheelbase. The 3-liter V8 supercharged can deliver 510 horsepower and break 100 kilometers per hour from a standstill in just 4.9 seconds.

The price for the latest XJ ranges from 109 million won to 227 million.

Celebrating the launch of the car, Jaguar Korea is holding a Jaguar Brand Design Studio at DDP. The exhibition will display the sketches of Callum and the first generation XJ model manufactured in 1968. It will be open until Jan. 29 to the public free of charge.

On Tuesday, there will be a special class where Callum will meet university car design students and mentor them.
By Kim Jae-won



Shinhan Bank employee Yoo Mi-ra was promoted to a managerial post last week for her performance in wealth management. She joined the lender in 2001 as a contract teller, but outperformed other permanent employees in the competition thanks to her ability to draw rich customers.



Yoo is one of eight employees at Shinhan who enjoyed special promotions at the lender's performance evaluation conference on Saturday. The lender doubled the number of employees benefiting from special promotions, seeking to spread meritocratic culture in its office.



"We promoted employees who performed excellently and practiced Shinhan Bank's core values to establish meritocratic culture in the office, which made us more dynamic," said Shinhan Bank CEO Cho Yong-byung at the conference. "We will continue to offer these opportunities to employees who are leading change and innovation."



Banks are rushing to adopt performance-based pay and promotion systems, turning away from their old seniority-centered culture. This is happening because the financial regulator is pushing for the banks to implement meritocratic evaluation systems as part of its financial reform agenda.



Financial Services Commission Chairman Yim Jong-yong has emphasized the implementation of meritocratic systems at financial institutions, criticizing the local banks for failing to keep up globally due to their outdated office cultures. He stressed that it is critical for local lenders to leap forward as global players by adopting new technology and changed business cultures as quickly as possible.



Earlier this month, KEB Hana Bank promoted six employees who showed outstanding performance. Five employees were promoted to management positions while one contract worker was given permanent status.



Woori Bank also vowed to promote employees who show better performance compared to their co-workers. Woori Bank CEO Lee Kwang-goo selected merit promotions as one of the lender's top 10 priorities this year.



Market watchers said that it is surprising to see that conservative banks are adopting performance-based office culture and destroying their seniority-based promotion systems. They said it is a big change from a few years ago when the trade unions at the banks fought with management over implementing evaluation systems based on merit.



In 2011, the trade union of Standard Chartered Bank Korea had staged a tug of war with management as the local unit of the U.K. lender sought to implement a performance-based pay system for the first time in the industry. Unionists had protested strongly against the plan, conducting an all-out strike at a resort in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, for two months.




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
By Kim Jae-won





Korea Eximbank CEO

Lee Duk-hoon

The head of the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank) said the state-run lender has set its eyes on the Iranian market, as the Persian country is expected to offer more business opportunities to local exporters now that economic sanctions on the country have been lifted.

Korea Eximbank CEO Lee Duk-hoon said he would spare no efforts to support Korean companies reaching the Iranian market.

"We will turn our eyes to Iran where economic sanctions are loosened. Iran has been close to us in the past and we are continuing our good relationship," said Lee in a luncheon meeting with the press. "We have been closely cooperating with the Iranian government on finance issues since last year."

He said that he visited the Middle Eastern country with Korean business leaders in October, paving the way for better economic cooperation. The lender announced last week that it was seeking a 5 billion euro basic loan agreement with Iran's central bank.

Kim Young-ki, a director at the bank, said that they will invite Iranian officials to Korea as part of their marketing activities. He said that Iran will supplement Korean companies' dwindling orders from oil-rich countries, helping them overcome the current weakened market.

"We are leading in negotiations with Iran with the October marketing trip," said Kim. "It gave a big impact to the market."

Korea Eximbank chief Lee said that he will also focus on new revenue sources, helping local companies in the medical, ICT and culture businesses go abroad.

"We are strong in the fields. We will do our best to help them set foot in the global market."
Ahn Myoung-ock, left, head of the National Medical Center, poses with Ma Young-sam, Korea's ambassador to Denmark, at the Korean Embassy in Denmark. Behind them is seen Jutlandia Hall within the embassy which commemorates the service of a Danish medical ship during the Korean War.

/ Courtesy of National Medical Center



By Yoon Ja-young

Ahn Myoung-ock, chief of the National Medical Center, paid a special trip to Denmark to meet veterans of the MS Jutlandia, a Danish medical ship which was deployed to save lives during the Korean War (1950-53).

After the outbreak of war, the Danish government decided to help by deploying a medical ship to support Korea  its only contribution, but one that made a huge difference. It borrowed a private ship and outfitted it into a medical ship with four operating rooms and 365 beds.

Jutlandia left for Busan from Copenhagen in January 1951, with a crew of 187 as well as 91 doctors and nurses. It treated around 5,000 soldiers and more than 6,000 civilians including war orphans during its three-year tour of duty around Korea.

Ahn was invited to the 65th anniversary commemorating the deployment of the ship. She also met with the veterans of the Jutlandia to hear their stories and thank them.

"It was an opportunity to show our gratitude for Denmark's dedication during the Korean War," Ahn said.

She also pointed to the special tie the National Medical Center has with Denmark. The center was established in 1958 following an agreement between the Korean government and three Scandinavian countries  Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They promised to set up a medical center to help the war-torn country treat patients as well as nurture and train doctors and nurses.

Ahn, who was inaugurated as the chief of the National Medical Center in December 2014, has been actively promoting its historical background. Such effort led the hospital to open its Scandinavia Memorial Hall within the hospital last April.

Ahn majored in obstetrics and gynecology at Yonsei University and studied public health at UCLA. She said that one of her core values is contribution to the public. "Both my parents were doctors, but my father was more proud of being a government worker than a doctor. I also had a passion to play a role for the public good. That's why I started studying public health," she said. She served as a lawmaker between 2004 and 2008.

"The National Medical Center started its history thanks to the three Scandinavian countries back in 1958," she said. "Now, it is time for us to expand the values of universal fraternity and the love for mankind. The efforts will go on both domestically and overseas."
A narrow walkway along Deoksu Palace in downtown Seoul will be restored 132 years after it was cut off by the construction of the British Embassy in Korea, a Seoul City Council member said Monday.



The council member said the Seoul Metropolitan Government will restore the 170-meter-long sidewalk along the stonewall of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) palace at the embassy compound at the expense of 2.8 billion won (US$2.34 million).



The capital city will finish the 3- to 6-meter-wide walkway, commonly called "doldam-gil" in Korean, by the end of the year after compensating the British Embassy, according to council member Choe Pan-sul.



In 1884, the British Embassy purchased the land site for the soon-to-be restored walkway, cutting it off from the present tree-lined sidewalks, famed for their seasonal beauty.



Talks for the restoration of the stonewall walkway started in October 2014 between the city administration and the British Embassy.



After a series of negotiations, they reached a memorandum of understanding in May last year to push for the restoration project.



The Seoul city government plans to use the sidewalk as a sightseeing destination to show the coexistence between the Korean and British cultures.



Deoksu Palace is one of the capital's five palaces. The others are Gyeongbok, Gyeonghui, Changdeok and Changgyeong.



Representing remarkable architectural achievements, the palaces were turned to near ruin during the Japanese invasion (1592-98) and colonial occupation (1910-45).



In the late years of the Joseon Dynasty, Jeongdong, where the Deoksu Palace and its sidewalks are located, comprised the residences and embassies of Western powers and foreign missionaries. (Yonhap)




Park Hae-jin, above, and Kim Go-eun star in the drama "Cheese in the Trap" / Courtesy of tvN



By Kwon Ji-youn

The temperature in Seoul dropped to minus 18 degrees Celsius on Sunday, but its summer going on fall in "Cheese in the Trap," which airs on Monday-Tuesday evenings on tvN.

This is because the filming for the hit drama series, featuring Park Hae-jin, Kim Go-eun and Seo Kang-jun, began in the second half of last year, and is now in its final production stages. The seventh segment of the 16-episode drama aired Monday.

"Cheese in the Trap" is among many drama series for which the greater part of the shooting took place, or will take place, before the first episode airs, or is set to air. SBS's "Saimdang: the Herstory," in which actress Lee Young-ae will make a comeback to the small screen as Shin Saimdang (1504-1551), a noted artist, poet and the mother of Confucian scholar Yulgok, will be filmed in its entirety before being broadcast later this year.

The filming for Song Hye-kyo and Song Joong-ki's "Descendants of the Sun" wrapped up in December last year, and is set to begin airing on Feb. 24.

Kim Woo-bin and Suzy's "Uncontrollably Fond" (working title) and the Korean version of the 2011 Chinese time-travel hit "Scarlet Heart" based on the novel Bu Bu Jing Xin by Tong Hua will also begin filming early.

Producers and actors have time and again complained of poor working conditions in the production of drama series. Actress Han Ye-seul in 2011 made headlines for a no-show while filming KBS's "Spy Myeongwol," forcing the broadcaster to air re-runs, and veteran actor Lee Soon-jae called on broadcasters to overhaul its current system of issuing scripts just a day prior to filming and editing being left until a few hours before an episode is due to air.

Beginning filming early for a drama series is convenient for the producers and for the actors. The actors don't need to pull all-nighters and can buy enough time to understand and build a character, as well as get their lines down pat. It also provides producers with enough time to make sure every scene is of a high quality, which in turn reduces the risk of making mistakes in editing.

Song Joong-ki, left, in a scene from the drama "Descendants of the Sun," which finished filming last December and is set to begin airing on Feb. 24 / Courtesy of KBS

But there are pitfalls.

The reason broadcasters film the greater part of a drama series before it is aired is because China regulates Korean drama imports. Each drama series must pass a preliminary review for it to be aired there. This has raised concerns that the industry is putting too much of an emphasis on the Chinese market amid uncertainty regarding when China's regulation standards will change and what the criteria for its evaluations are.

The actors are also unable to reference viewer feedback regarding their performances.

Fans of "Cheese in the Trap," based on a popular webtoon of the same name, say that Lee Sung-kyoung's acting isn't up to scratch, and that her character is not an accurate reflection of the role as depicted in the original webtoon. As most of the filming has already been completed, viewers will need to put up with Lee's under-par performance for the remaining nine episodes. Likewise, the producers and writers are unable to take constructive criticism and apply this in their work.

This also affects the number of product placement (PPL) advertisements a drama series can secure. It is standard procedure for producers to enter discussions regarding PPL advertisements four or five months before a drama series goes on air, but if filming takes place too early, advertisers, who must keep up with ever-changing trends, will no longer find PPL deals attractive, especially if the filming and broadcasting of the series occur in different seasons.

"It's true that the new system has been implemented to increase drama exports to China," said an official at one of the three major broadcasters. "But this isn't causing any major problems in the production of quality drama series, and it's a change we need to adapt to. Still, no matter how fast the market in China grows, meeting the needs of our Korean audiences will always remain a priority."
Boys in the Kitchen, winner of the 2015 K-Rookies program / Courtesy of KOCCA



By Jon Dunbar

Garage rockers Boys in the Kitchen emerged victorious as six bands wrapped up the 2015 K-Rookies program with a battle of the bands, Saturday.

The program by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) concluded its fourth run with the final concert, held at AX-Korea in Gwangjin-gu, eastern Seoul on Jan. 23. Each year since 2012, the government-backed program has incubated six talented Korean bands every year before squaring them off in a final competition.

"Korean music is mainly known for K-pop stars," said Kim Jung-seok, a member of KOCCA's music team, "but we know there are many less-well-known competent musicians in Korea."

The six bands in the 2015 program were Boys in the Kitchen, all-girl jazz/funk act A-FUZZ, female-fronted blues rockers Billy Carter, rock duo Dead Buttons, brass hip-hop band NP Union and pop-rockers the Stray.

The top three bands played for cash prizes, with the top winner receiving 5 million won, followed by 3 million won for the runner-up and 2 million won for third place, respectively. The winners were selected by two groups of judges _ the concert audience and a group of music experts, based on stage presence, musical endeavor and potential.

The mood among the bands was spirited but hardly competitive, with A-FUZZ members saying "We did root for each other inside."

The winning band, Boys in the Kitchen, had earlier won runner-up in the Hello Rookie finals last year and their track "Bivo" was nominated for Best Modern Rock Song at the 2015 Korean Music Awards.

About what they'll do with their prize money, bassist Nam Na-ri said, "I'm going to Thailand in a few weeks, going to buy some shots for random people there and get wasted myself as well!"

NP Union took second place and third went to A-FUZZ, who'd previously beaten the Boys at Hello Rookie 2015.

The six participating bands were selected from among hundreds at an open audition held last July.

"Unfortunately Korea has too many great bands even more than the audience," said Kim Ji-won, vocalist of Billy Carter. "I respect all those good musicians and their own way to be musicians."

To qualify for the incubation program, bands must not have released any full-length albums more than a year before auditioning. They must also not have ranked top in previous K-Rookie programs.

All six bands were provided various benefits by KOCCA, including recording opportunities for albums and music videos and four hours weekly of free rehearsal time in a studio.

"It's a great opportunity to take part in more activities through this program," said Kim. "We had to save a lot of money  for us!  to record our first EP and it was absolutely exhausting. But we didn't need to worry about money at all during recording the second one."

Billy Carter released a music video for their song "I Don't Care" and will put out a new album Jan. 30, through the program's support.

"It would have been almost impossible to do it on our own, but we are grateful for the opportunity," said members of A-FUZZ, who had a new EP "Moonshine" and a music video for their song "Rescue Me" produced through the program.

The final concert, recorded by OBS TV, will be broadcasted next month through Naver's V App. The program also opens other doors for the bands, offering support for them to play overseas music festivals and other future opportunities.

"We make efforts to provide musicians with better industry environments based on care and incubating programs." said the KOCCA representative. "Finding talented musicians is the most important step."
The leaders of two minor opposition parties, Ahn Cheol-soo and Chun Jung-bae, agreed Monday to merge their respective organizations in preparation for the general election scheduled for April 13.



The decision to merge the recently formed Ahn's People's Party and Chun's National Congress was announced at a joint press conference at the National Assembly.



"The integration comes as a move to prevent a sweeping victory by the Park Geun-hye administration and the Saenuri Party in the upcoming general elections," the lawmakers said.



The latest move is bound to increase rivalry with Moon Jae-in's main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK).



Ahn, former co-chairman of the party with Moon, formerly named New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), left after disagreements with Moon over how to reform the party. A string of other lawmakers have left the party following Ahn's departure. Ahn had been laying grounds for a new opposition party.



Meanwhile, Moon has been attempting to rebrand the MPK and recruit new members ahead of the general election.



Chun Jung-bae, an independent lawmaker, had also been pushing for a new opposition party with major support from voters in the southwestern Jeolla provinces.














South Korea, the United States and Japan plan to hold talks among their military chiefs in February, an official here said Monday, in the aftermath of North Korea's fourth nuclear test earlier in the month.

The three countries are pushing to hold a video conference next month among Gen. Lee Sun-jin, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and his American and Japanese counterparts -- Gen. Joseph Dunford and Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano -- a JCS spokesman said during a regular briefing.

Details of the conference, including how and when it will be carried out, are still under review, the spokesman said.

North Korea conducted on Jan. 6 what it claims was a successful hydrogen bomb test, escalating military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Since then, South Korea has played loudspeaker broadcasts along the tensely fortified inter-Korean border, criticizing the North Korean regime in retaliation.

Four days after the test, the U.S. flew a B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber in the skies of South Korea in a major show of force aimed at deterring the communist country from further military provocations.

Military collaboration among the three nations will likely dominate the conference as the countries are scrambling to contain any escalation of military tensions in the region. (Yonhap)
/ Korea Times file



Jeonju District Court has sentenced a man in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province to four months' jail  suspended for a year  for groping another man at a sauna, Yonhap reports.

The man, 29, identified only as "A" was also ordered to spend 40 hours at a class for sexual offenders and to having his personal information disclosed for a year.

"A" was indicted for intimately touching a man, 20, who was sleeping at a sauna in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province on Oct. 25 last year.

The court said it handed down a light sentence because although the defendant was guilty, the victim did not necessarily want him punished.
By Yi Whan-woo



President Park Geun-hye vowed Monday not to tolerate illegal protests in what is viewed as a warning intended for the country's largest umbrella labor union, which threatened last week to take to the streets to protest the government's labor reforms.



"An act that leads to social chaos is no good for the government or individuals," Park said during a meeting with her senior secretaries at Cheong Wa Dae. "I'll take stern measures against those who will be held responsible for mobilizing and stirring up illegal demonstrations."



She cited the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) which has been debating whether to organize a general strike after deciding on Jan. 19 to walk out of trilateral talks involving the government and management.



The FKTU, the country's umbrella labor union represented the labor sector at the three-way meeting but has stepped out of the talks.



"The FKTU refuses to engage in a dialogue and instead plans to have its members take to streets until its demands are met," Park said.



"To avoid a possible financial crisis (as in the late 1990s), it's critical to stay away from such collectivism.



"We should not falter and continue to pursue reforms for the future generations," she added.



FKTU President Kim Dong-man said that the union will no longer participate in future talks, claiming that the Park administration has acted "unilaterally" while pursuing its stated aim of making the labor market more flexible.



He opposed the government's draft guidelines introduced in December that will allow companies to formally sack underperforming employees and amend employment rules more easily without the consent from workers.



According to the President, the guidelines are aimed at sharing jobs between young job seekers in their 20s and 30s and those aged 50 or older.



Arguing that such policies are a breach of a trilateral deal agreed on Sept. 15, 2015, Kim said the FKTU will battle against the government.



The FKTU has been debating whether to join forces with the Korean Confederation of Trade Union (KCTU), the country's second largest umbrella union, to call an indefinite general strike.



The FKTU and KCTU have 843,174 and 631,415 members, respectively. The total number accounts for 77 percent of the labor unionists nationwide.



Meanwhile, the United Nations has been investigating possible violations of freedom of speech in Korea.



Maina Kiai, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, has been meeting government officials and a range of interest groups, including human rights activists and representatives of labor unions since he arrived in Seoul on Jan. 21.



Kiai will hold a press conference and share his findings before his departure on Jan. 29.




Top officials from Korea, US, Japan to discuss NK nuclear test



By Jun Ji-hye



The chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from South Korea, the United States and Japan will hold a video-link meeting next month to discuss how to respond to North Korea's fourth nuclear test earlier this month, officials here said Monday.



The agenda may include joint drills and strengthening deterrence against the North's missile and nuclear threats, they said.



Col. Jeon Ha-kyu, spokesman of the Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), said at a media briefing, "Working-level talks are underway to hold a trilateral meeting next month. The method of the meeting under consideration is a video teleconference."



The top military officials of the three countries are Gen. Lee Sun-jin, chairman of Seoul's JCS; Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of Washington's JCS; and Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of the Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Staff.



Col. Jeon noted that the meeting would consider ways of enhancing security cooperation and military readiness in the wake of the North's claim on Jan. 6 that it detonated a hydrogen bomb.



Col. Jeon denied some media reports that claimed the three countries had not been able to decide where to hold a meeting while considering their respective relations with China.



"It is not true that Japan is being cited as a possible venue, either," he said.



The three countries' top leaders in the military chain of command held their first meeting in July 2014 in Hawaii when the biennial U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) was taking place there. At the time, they met in person and discussed Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.



Meanwhile, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Kim Min-seok denied speculation, also on Monday, that South Korea was moving to join the U.S.-led missile defense (MD) system. The speculation comes as the ministry is planning to share military intelligence with the U.S. in real time.



"The establishment of the real-time information-sharing system and the adoption of the U.S. MD are unrelated," he said. "Information regarding the North's nuclear and missile threats will be shared between allies, but all judgments regarding our security and defense will be made by the Republic of Korea without being influenced by other countries."



In its report on how to deal with the North militarily Friday, the ministry told President Park Geun-hye that South Korea would install a new military network, called Link16, which connects the Korea Interface Control Center (KICC) with the United States Forces Korea's (USFK) Joint Interface Control Center (JICC), both in Osan, south of Seoul.



The military tactical data exchange network will allow the allies to share text and imagery intelligence on a nearly real-time basis. The move means the South will also share a real-time military data link with Japan, given the USFK's JICC is connected with the U.S. Forces Japan, which reportedly has set up the information-sharing system with Japan's Self-Defense Forces.



Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye








Ohio is becoming known more and more as a hotbed for bigfoot activity. The state produces numerous sightings a year, has a plethora of researchers, and hosts arguably the largest bigfoot conference in North America. In the following article a couple of very well known researchers, Marc DeWerth and Paul Hayes, are both featured as they discuss encounters in Northeast Ohio.

Dateline: June 24, 1980; Bellefontaine, Ohio- I was unloading eight pigs I had bought about 11 p.m. I shut off the light in the barn and went around the corner to see what my two dogs were raising Cain about. So starts the Ohio Daily Newss account of police officer, Ray Quay. Quay was dumbfounded and surprised to find a seven-feet tall, hairy animal lurking in the corners of his barn. Other officers were sent to corroborate his account, but to Quays frustration, nothing was found. Tales like this are as apocryphal as they are abundant for Northeastern Ohio.



According to local Bigfoot researcher, Marc DeWerth, the Allegheny mountain range, which spills into Northeastern Ohio, possesses an abundance of water, a huge deer population, and lacks of any natural predators like cougars and wolves. The Sasquatch are on the top of the food chain, he contends, and Ohio has an abundance of food that they may take advantage of with little or no competition. Dewerth coordinates his investigations through the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO), which claims to be the only scientific research organization exploring the Bigfoot/Sasquatch mystery. According to the sites database, aside from Northern California and the Florida Everglades, there is no other state with more recorded sightings than Ohio. So replete are Bigfoot sightings in Eastern Ohio that famed cryptozoologist and founder of the Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, Loren Coleman, has stated in his book, Mysterious America, Besides California, I dont know of another state that has as many Big Foot investigators.



I held a conversation with a person whose 2013 case prompted an independent investigation. Suzy did not want her real name revealed, but shortly after moving to the rural area outside of Loudonville, she encountered a lumbering figure in thick black fur leaping before her car as she passed some grazing horses. Her family was quick to assure her that it must have been a bear, but the spark had been lit. It changed my life, she admitted. The months following her experience found her descending into rabbit holes of personal research and meetings with members of the BFRO as well as the team from the television series, Finding Bigfoot. I spent the next two and a half years trying to figure out what happened  the only thing that really saves my sanity is the science. It was not long before her burgeoning obsession would begin to raise eyebrows. Both sides of my family were just like, Wow, what happened to Suzy?



Paul Hayes, of Stark County, had a similarly profound experience in 2011, which led him to create his own Bigfoot investigative branch known as the Genoskwa Project. He told me that it all started on a regular night, one of those sleepless nights. Stepping out for a midnight smoke, Hayes was met with a thunderous guttural howl erupting from the nearby pines. Intrigued, Hayes took his son into the woods in search of the sounds origin several days later. My son was standing in a small clearing. The grass is ten inches tall, degraded. Hayes described the fateful night, the event still fresh in his mind these years later. There were still leaves on the trees. I hunched down and there he was  I couldnt even tell you how long the sighting even lasted. You were just in a shock where time stood still. It was amazing. His tone went from sensational to somber when he added, It changes you drastically. When you walk into the woods, youre constantly looking over your shoulder, jumping at every twig snapping.



Both Hayes and Suzys encounters are listed in the BFRO database, but the sites primary function is its hotline. Here, people can call or email reports of potential sightings, not only in Ohio, but throughout the country. From there, researchers, like DeWerth, are dispatched into the field to follow up alleged sightings with a discriminating eye. Despite ruling out ninety percent of the cases he has investigated as either misidentification, a prank or hoax, when pressed, DeWerth contends that the remaining ten percent have proven compelling enough to keep the faith.

For the rest of the article, click here.
By Chung Ah-young







By Chung Ah-young

chungay@ktimes.com



Two Chinese transfer passengers who illegally entered into the country on Jan. 21 were caught by officials of the Korea Immigration Service in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, Monday.



According to the Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC), the two passengers _ a man and a woman _ were found to have illegally entered the country on Jan. 21 after slipping through security inspection points at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul.



They were supposed to transfer to a flight to Beijing at 8:17 p.m. on Jan. 21 after landing at Incheon from Honolulu, Hawaii at 7:31 p.m. a day earlier.



The airport said that they allegedly broke the safety latches on a gate installed in the duty free shopping area and escaped from the airport undetected.



"They might have passed through the immigration section which was closed at that time. We are looking into why they illegally entered the country and how they opened the gates and escaped the detection of the security guards on duty," an airport official said.






A Seoul court on Monday sentenced a man to eight months in prison for spreading rumors about the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship.



Still, the Seoul Central District Court suspended the sentence for Shin Sang-chul for two years, meaning that he will not have to serve prison time if he stays out of trouble during that period.



The court ruled that Shin defamed military officials by posting false information on the Internet that South Korea delayed the recovery of its warship the Cheonan to buy time to fabricate the cause of the sinking.



Shin, who had operated a Web site carrying columns and commentaries on political issues, has claimed that the ship ran aground and sank.



Shin could not be immediately reached for comment.



In 2010, the Cheonan sank near the disputed western sea border with North Korea, killing 46 South Korean sailors aboard.



A South Korean-led international investigation has found that North Korea torpedoed the warship, though Pyongyang has denied responsibility. (Yonhap)




By Jhoo Dong-chan



The Park Geun-hye government's campaign for new administrative guidelines allowing employers to dismiss underperforming employees is accelerating conflict with unions.



President Park warned Monday that any illegal protest activities against labor reform will not be tolerated.



In opposition to the government's move, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the nation's second-largest umbrella union, called for an indefinite all-out strike Monday.



The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), another umbrella union, has declared the guidelines "null and void," threatening legal action and rallies against the government for breaching the tripartite deal between labor, management and government on labor reform.



"We will stage all kinds of activities against the government's labor reform campaign," an FKTU spokesman said. "We will soon fix the details of actions to nullify the government's guidelines on dismissals."



Concerns are growing over the effect on the labor market of the guidelines on dismissals and regulation changes at worksites, as both went into effect Monday.



On Jan. 22, the government announced the guidelines, which allow companies to dismiss "noticeably underperforming workers" and to arbitrarily change the rules of employment without the consent of employees.



Unlike labor bills that require approval at the National Assembly, the government can unilaterally implement the two administrative guidelines without legislation.



However, labor circles and experts expressed concerns over the guidelines which may be abused by companies to more easily fire workers without just cause.



Experts point out that the guidelines conflict with the Labor Standards Act. Under Article 94 of the act, employers are required to seek approval from workers when changing employment rules unfavorably to workers.



The government, however, claims that employers can unilaterally change employment rules if the new rules are based on a "socially accepted rationale."



Guidelines for firing underperforming workers are also not stated in the Labor Standards Act. But the government claims, based on precedents, that it is acceptable to fire such workers when the company provides enough opportunities for self-improvement by education or transfers to a different posts.



Opposition parties also oppose the government's move to implement the new guidelines.



Rep. Lee Sang-min of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), said, "Such ambiguities in the guidelines may cause legal confusion in the labor market."



Lee said the guidelines will cause numerous legal disputes between companies and workers since they are not legally compulsory.



Hanyang University Law Professor Park Su-keun also voiced his concern about the impact of the guidelines.



"It has been almost impossible for companies to fire workers based on their performance because the current law has seldom allowed employers to lay off underperforming workers," said Park. "Under the new guidelines, however, companies will be able to arbitrarily evaluate workers' performances to fire them."



Certified labor attorney Lee Hoon also strongly disapproved the government's move, saying the guidelines will cause confusion in the labor market.



He said they might give the wrong signal to management, encouraging companies to fire underperforming workers at will.



"The government's move would also influence court decisions in the future. There is no doubt that layoffs will be prevailing under the new guidelines."



However, the government claims that the guidelines will help give more job opportunities to young adults in the long run.



"I will make sure that the guidelines are not about making it easier to fire workers," said Employment and Labor Minister Lee Ki-kweon in a press conference at the Sejong Government Complex.



"The guidelines are, however, vital to establish a performance-based employment system, boosting the flexibility of the labor market. There are already a number of precedents protecting workers from unreasonable layoffs."




A Seoul court sentenced a South Korean executive of Deutsche Securities to five years in jail on Monday for involvement in a case condemned as a manipulation of the country's stock market.

The Seoul Central District Court handed down the ruling on the executive, identified only by his family name Park. The court also fined Deutsche Securities 1.5 billion won (US$1.2 million) and ordered it to forfeit 1.18 billion won.

The court also ordered Deutsche Bank to forfeit 43.6 billion won.

The ruling came more than five years after an incident known here as the "Nov. 11 Options Shock" caused heavy losses among investors.

Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Securities sold 2.44 trillion won worth of local stocks just 10 minutes before the market closed on Nov. 11, 2010, leading the KOSPI 200 Index to plummet nearly five points to 247.51.

Deutsche Securities is presumed to have pocketed about 44.9 billion won from the incident.

Deutsche Bank offered an apology over the incident and said it is committed to compliance with applicable laws and regulation in all jurisdictions.

"Deutsche Bank respectfully acknowledges the court's decision regarding its Korean subsidiary Deutsche Securities Korea and regrets and apologizes for the circumstances that led to this verdict," the bank said in an English-language statement.

Deutsche Bank said it will decide whether to appeal the ruling after consulting with its lawyers.

It remains unclear whether three Deutsche Securities employees at the firm's Hong Kong branch will stand trial in Seoul for their involvement in the case.

The three later quit the company and their whereabouts remain unknown.

South Korea has requested that Britain, France and Hong Kong hand them over to Seoul for prosecution, though Seoul has yet to locate them. (Yonhap)
Passengers crowd a terminal to get tickets for flights back to their home after Jeju International Airport resumed operations, Monday, after a 42-hour suspension due to heavy snowfall and strong winds since last Saturday. / Yonhap



By Lee Kyung-min

Jeju International Airport resumed operations Monday afternoon, ending a 42-hour suspension due to heavy snowfall and strong winds that caused more than 800 flight cancellations and stranded some 90,000 people.

The Korea Airports Corp. (KAC) said that it resumed flights shortly before 3 p.m., Monday. Eastar Jet 236 (a B-737) carrying 149 passengers marked the first departure from the airport in three days at 2:48 p.m.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport ordered the resumption of flights eight hours earlier than the initially set 8 p.m. after the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), lifted its nationwide cold weather advisory at noon.

KAC said it will operate Jeju, Gimpo and Gimhae airports round the clock to better meet the need of passengers until Tuesday. Usually, operating hours ends at 11 p.m to 6 a.m. to reduce the noise for residents.

The ministry said that a total of 190 aircraft with 39,000 seats in all started carrying the stranded travelers to their destinations.

For Tuesday, 215 flights providing 38,700 seats are scheduled. All 90,000 people stranded on the southern island are expected to be returned home in three days at the most, the ministry said.

KAC officials removed snow and ice from the runways, the aircraft and terminals in an effort to speed up the flight schedule.

The ministry said it plans to increase the operation hours of airport railways, subways and limousine buses departing from Incheon International and Gimpo International Airports in an effort to facilitate transport of the affected passengers.

The ministry advised passengers planning to use such public transport to set up their schedules after confirming reservations and operating hour schedules to keep traffic congestion to a minimum.

The KAC said it set up a booth at airport terminals to help those who might be in need of emergency medical attention.

Of the 90,000 stranded, more than 1,400 people stayed in the airport, and some 85,600 others found temporary lodgings around the island.

Since last weekend, the nation has experienced this winter's record lows, with temperatures plummeting to minus 18 degrees Celsius in Seoul, the first time this has occurred in the capital since 2001.

On Saturday, the KMA issued a winter weather advisory for Seoul and the surrounding capital region including Incheon, for the first time in six years. Ulleung Island off the east coast experienced a record 1 meter of snowfall over the past six days.
By Lee Kyung-min



Two leaders of North Korean defectors' rights groups were booked for misappropriating some 135 million won ($113,000) in government subsidies, police said Monday.



According to the Dongdaemun Police Station, Kim Yong-hwa, head of the North Korean Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea (NRHRAK), 63, and a woman, 54, whose identity is being withheld, are suspected of misappropriating a total of 135 million won received from the unification ministry-supervised Korea Hana Foundation (KHF) between 2012 and 2014.



Of the 115 million won NRHRAK received to help North Korean defectors settle here, 75 million won was not spent on the project, police said.



The group received an additional 60 million won to set up a shelter for female North Korean defectors, but Kim never carried out the project.



Police suspect that the combined 135 million won was spent for buying a home and a car.



Kim, himself a defector from the North, also faces a charge of violating the relevant law for campaigning for donations or holding a fundraising event without receiving city approval.



Police said that Kim denies the allegations.



Police also booked the woman over her suspected involvement in falsifying accounts for the scheme.



The woman denied the allegation saying that she had no knowledge of and therefore had no accountability over Kim's misappropriation.



"I am not in any way involved in Kim managing his group. All the money was transferred directly to his bank account, and I only did what he asked of me as his subordinate," she told police officers.



The KHF said it will ask Kim to forfeit the subsidy in full if the court finds him guilty of the charges.



Kim is best known for his highly perilous time living as a vagabond in China, Vietnam and Japan before finally settling here 14 years after defecting from North Korea.



Police plan to refer the case to the prosecution with the recommendation for indictment on charges of fraud.



Police launched investigation into the case at the request of the woman, who left him to set up another North Korean defectors' rights group after arguing with him over how to manage the group's affairs.




By Jun Ji-hye



Defense Minister Han Min-koo Monday cited the need for the nation to review a U.S. plan to deploy an advanced missile defense system on the Korean Peninsula to better deter North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile threats.



"We should deal with the issue of the terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) system from the perspective of national security and defense," he said during a news program. "Militarily speaking, it is necessary to review the deployment as we have limited capabilities."



The comments come at a time when debate over whether to deploy THAAD on Korean soil has been reigniting both in Seoul and Washington in the wake of the North's alleged hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6.



Han's remarks followed President Park Geun-hye's nationally televised address on Jan. 13, where she underlined the need to review the issue of deploying THAAD here based on security and national interests given the North's nuclear and missile threats.



The possible deployment of THAAD has been a bone of contention among regional powers, especially between the United States and China.



The statements by Park and Han apparently showed a subtle change in the position of the government, given that Seoul had been reluctant to openly approve of THAAD deployment due to the objections of China, the South's biggest trading partner.



The U.S. government has been hoping to deploy THAAD batteries here, with the Kim Jong-un regime modernizing its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. In 2014, the U.S. conducted a site inspection for the missile interceptor system.



The missile shield system is intended to protect U.S troops stationed here, but Beijing strongly opposes its presence, out of concerns that its controlling radar system could potentially compromise its national defense.



Recent comments made by Seoul on THAAD deployment are also seen as a measure to get China to swiftly rein in the Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, with Beijing, traditionally an ally of the North, largely seen as maintaining a lukewarm stance on the North's nuclear development.



This has raised speculation that China, a veto-holding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, is seeking to water down the U.N.-led sanctions -- in a familiar pattern -- following the North's previous nuclear and long-range missile tests.



The THAAD system, with a range of 150 kilometers, is regarded as an indispensable element of the U.S. missile defense (MD) system.



Regarding Pyongyang's submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability, Minister Han assessed that the North is believed to be on the path toward completing its capability of launching ballistic missiles from underwater, which is regarded as the second stage of development.



"The development of an SLBM requires four steps _ the test launch of missiles on the ground, the test of launching them from under the water, their test flights and finally deployment," he said. "Given that the North has conducted tests launching missiles from under the water several times, it is believed to be completing that stage."



He added that countries in general deployed SLBMs three to four years after the test-fire of missiles from underwater.



"I expect the North to follow this. If the regime concentrates all its capacity possible into the development, they could possibly do it faster," he said.




A checkpoint on the road to the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea / Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



President Park Geun-hye's "unification bonanza" initiative seems to be losing momentum, especially as inter-Korean relations became tense again after North Korea's fourth nuclear test.

What's worse, the decreasing public support for the vision, as well as neighboring countries' policies toward the repressive state is not helping her push ahead with the ambitious plan.

In her New Year's News press conference in 2014, Park said Korean unification would be an economic bonanza not only for the two Koreas but also for allies and neighboring countries. Since then, accompanied by her trust-building process on the Korean Peninsula designed to help pave the way for unification, the initiative has served as the backbone of her unification policy.

However, Pyongyang's unexpected nuclear test on Jan. 6 has strained relations between the two Koreas and holding up inter-Korean humanitarian cooperation. In addition, her little remaining time in office is casting a cloud over the unification vision amid growing tensions. She has just entered her fourth year in office, and her tenure is scheduled to end in early 2018.

"The North Korean nuclear test has made inter-Korean reconciliation during Park's term impossible," said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, a local think tank.

"The nuclear test is also the North's rejection of President Park's unification program and diplomacy, urging the South Korean government to give up on its efforts and come forward for unconditional dialogue with the North."

Seoul has used a "stick-first, carrot-later" policy to urge the Kim Jong-un regime to show its commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons program before receiving the South's economic support.

However, the nuclear provocation has left the Park government with few options for bettering its ties with its northern neighbor. The nuclear test dealt a heavy blow to Park's initiative as well, especially as the alleged hydrogen bomb test was conducted one day after Park called on Cabinet officials to make efforts to improve inter-Korean relations.

"The nuclear test is a disaster caused by the unification bonanza initiative," said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.

"The initiative depends on the collapse of the North Korean regime and the absorption of its political and economic systems; but it is not a good idea to just wait for the North to crumble without doing anything, such as inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation," he said.

"Such an approach, which is similar to the U.S. strategic patience policy, has led to the nuclear test. As part of its preventive measures, the South should have taken a strategic approach to the North, but it just stood idly by."

He added: "Under the current situation, where a peaceful coexistence is required between the two Koreas, Korean unification appears to be moving further away."





President Park Geun-hye writes on a railroad sleeper during a ceremony at Baengmagoji Station in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province, in this Aug. 5, 2015, file photo, to launch a project to restore the South Korean section of the 223.7-kilometer Gyeongwon Line, a disconnected inter-Korean railroad. / Joint press corps



Van Jackson, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, also said, "Park announced a unification bonanza for domestic political purposes and did not consider the foreign policy implications. Naturally, North Korea views talk of unification as a threat because when South Korea talks about this, people naturally imagine absorption of the North."

Pyongyang has denounced Park's unification drive as an attempt to absorb the reclusive country.

Unlike in her New Year's addresses in 2014 and 2015, Park did not mention "unification" and "dialogue" with the North in her New Year's press conference earlier this month.

In the wake of the nuclear test and the steady escalation of cross-border tensions, South Koreans are becoming less supportive of the unification vision. According to a poll by the independent think tank East Asia Institute, Monday, support for President Park's unification bonanza initiative has fallen across the board as of last year.

Among people in their 20s, support fell to 32.4 percent in 2015 from 45.6 percent the year before. For those in their 50s, support backtracked 11.2 percentage points to 50.5 percent. Numbers for people in their 40s and 30s were down about 7 percentage points during the one-year period to 49.7 percent and 37.7 percent, respectively. Even among people in their 60s, who generally agree with Park's initiatives, support for her vision for unification and its possible benefits dropped 1.9 percentage points to 60.5 percent.

The survey also showed that 41 percent of respondents believed the North to be the South's enemy, a big increase from 15.3 percent in 2005 and 31.9 percent in 2010.

Some say the U.S. pursuit of strategic patience, which entails no engagement with the reclusive state, prevents the South Korean government from reaching out to the North.

Analysts said the nuclear test is the North's way of urging the U.S. to give up its strategic patience policy and return to dialogue.

In addition, after South Korea reached a deal with Japan with regard to the "comfort women" issue late last year, the trilateral alliance between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington in handling the North Korean nuclear tests got back on track.

"In a situation where the U.S. government has not done much to change the current course of the North's nuclear program, it is not easy for the South to hold talks with the North first," said a diplomatic expert who requested anonymity.

In addition, a U.S. expert on Northeast Asian affairs challenged Park's theory that the unification will economically benefit the two Koreas and neighboring countries.

"China will want to continue to own all of the property Chinese companies have purchased in North Korea, which will undermine President Park's bonanza," said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corp., in November.
By Andrew Hammond



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top officials in Beijing, Wednesday. Top of the agenda is the potential imposition of international sanctions against North Korea following its latest nuclear test this month.



While Pyongyang will be centre stage in discussions, other issues forming the backdrop to the session include the fall-out from the recent Taiwanese presidential election won by the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP); regional security issues beyond North Korea, including in the South China Sea; Asia-Pacific regional economic integration; and the prospects for the global economy given international concerns about China's 2016 outlook.



The US-China bilateral session caps off a long trip for Kerry that has seen him visit the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Laos (which has taken over the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and Cambodia. During this intensive shuttle diplomacy, he has discussed the future of Syria and Ukraine with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov; met Saudi and other Gulf Cooperation Council ministers to try to reassure them about the thaw in US-Iran ties; and also planned the upcoming US-ASEAN Summit in California which takes place in the context of some of these same countries starting legislative ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.



However, the China leg of the trip is potentially the most important for Kerry with the key decision pending about how to respond to North Korea's latest provocation with its fourth test of an atomic weapon since 2006. The stage is set here for potentially difficult dialogue, and Washington is also considering a suite of unilateral measures, as it is encouraging Beijing to do.



The United States and some of its Asian allies, including Japan and South Korea, have made clear that they also want to see tough UN sanctions levied against the regime of Kim Jong-un. However, despite its criticism of North Korea's latest actions, China remains reluctant to take sweeping measures against its erstwhile ally, including potentially cutting shipments of oil and food, for instance, or blocking access to banks.



The talks in Beijing over the scope and severity of any international sanctions could thus prove taxing. Ultimately, any agreement, which US officials assert is not close at the moment, is likely to centre around China approving only a limited version of what Washington is seeking.



Concerned as Beijing is about Pyongyang's actions, it does not want to push the regime so hard that it becomes significantly destabilised. From the vantage point of Chinese officials, this risks North Korea behaving even more unpredictably, and/ or the outside possibility of the implosion of the regime which would not be in Beijing's interests, not least as it could lead to instability on the North Korea-China border, and ultimately the potential emergence of a pro-US successor nation.



While a US-China breakthrough on this issue is thus by no means guaranteed, prospects for narrowing of differences are somewhat increased by the fact that overall bilateral ties are, currently, in relatively positive shape, despite numerous irritants, including continuation of alleged cyber attacks on US interests by Beijing. The resilience of relations reflects, in part, the personal commitment of Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping.



Both recognise the super-priority of bilateral ties and, under Obama, Washington has pursued a strategy with Beijing that promotes cooperation on issues like energy and climate change, while seeking constructive engagement on vexed issues like the South China Sea.



Meanwhile, Xi has outlined, rhetorically at least, his desire to fundamentally redevelop a new type of great power relationship with the United States to avoid the conflictual great power patterns of the past. This is an audacious goal which still lacks any obvious definition, although it clearly reflects a desire to try to take unnecessarily confrontation off the table.



While there remains fragility and disagreements in bilateral relations, with potential set-backs on the horizon, the outlook for 2016 is thus relatively positive. There are multiple reasons for this from the vantage points of both Washington and Beijing.



While China continues to build its influence on the international stage, it has softened its stance on some issues since the first 18 months of Xi's presidency when Beijing's foreign and military positions and rhetoric had become significantly more pugnacious. This was showcased by the near-collision between a Chinese warship and the USS Cowpens in the South China Sea in December 2013 which the then-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel blamed on "incendiary" and "irresponsible" Chinese behaviour. And also in August 2014 when a Chinese military fighter jet carried out what the Pentagon termed a "dangerous intercept" of a US surveillance aircraft, again over the South China Sea.



While assertiveness will not disappear from Chinese policy, there has been a greater reversion to more diplomacy and defusing of tension. For instance, unprecedented meetings have been held between the two nation's defence policy planning staffs to promote greater understanding and dialogue. In part, this reflects the influence and changed calculations of Xi, now almost three years into his presidency, who has gradually extended his writ, including over the military.



Nevertheless, even in this relatively cooperative context, there are still potential icebergs on the horizon that could freeze relations. Firstly, China's animus toward US sea and air manoeuvres near its borders remains high, and last October it tracked a US Navy warship that came close to reefs claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea, calling the incident a "very serious provocation, politically and militarily". As with the 2013 and 2014 naval and air incidents, further (potentially more serious) spats cannot be ruled out in 2016.



There is also potential of greater tension being introduced into the relationship through a regional ally of the United States, including Japan, or Taiwan following the election of DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen. The prospect of a downturn in China-Taiwan relations in 2016 concerns Washington, with Chief of the US Navy Admiral John Richardson asserting last week "it's going to be a factor in that theatre for sure".



Taken overall, however, the short-term outlook for China-US relations is relatively positive, and this may help narrow key differences on North Korea. Significant downside risks remain in bilateral ties, but both parties appear to have resolved to manage tensions better, whilst cooperating more in areas, such as climate change, were there are potentially significant overlapping interests.



Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics




U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he thinks about the situation on the Korean Peninsula "every single day" as "a very large war" could break out there at any time.



"The DMZ on the Korean Peninsula is a place where we have to be ready to fight tonight. Every single day I think about our posture on the Korean Peninsula," Carter said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" over the weekend, referring to the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas.



"It's something that we have to watch every single day," he said.

Carter said the United States and South Korea maintain narrow communications with North Korea across the DMZ in order to avoid accidentally coming into conflict that he said "would be a very large war that we would wage with our allies in South Korea."

"We would win; I have no doubt about it, but it's a very unpleasant war to have to wage, so we'd like to avoid it if we can. And the only way to do that is to have some form of communication," he said.



Carter also said the biggest worry about North Korea is its nuclear program.

"There are talks in which we do participate, and not the Defense Department, but Secretary Kerry does of the so-called six party talks, which are China and Russia and South Korea and Japan and the United States and North Korea," he said. "They haven't gotten anywhere yet, but you can keep hoping that they will."



Meanwhile, Carter told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos that the U.S. military has played a key role in maintaining peace and stability in Asia.

"I'll just say one thing about Asia -- it's terribly important for this audience, because it's a big business market. It's half of the world's economy, half of its population. For 70 years, peace and stability have been kept in Asia, because of the American military. We aim to keep that going," he said.



Carter also noted that an invitation for North Korea to the World Economic Forum has been canceled because of the country's nuclear test.



"I know you had an invitation to the North Koreans, which by taking the self-isolating step, which seems to be their habit of testing a nuclear weapon, they're not here," he said. (Yonhap)




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Pressing China to use more of its leverage over North Korea as its "lifeline" and "patron" will be a key topic for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's upcoming visit to Beijing, a senior State Department official said Sunday.



The official made the remark during a conference call with reporters to preview Kerry's trip to Beijing set to begin Wednesday, stressing the need for presenting a united front to the North in the wake of the communist nation's fourth nuclear test.

"The pre-eminent issue ... is the question of how China, in tandem with international partners and on a bilateral basis -- or I should say perhaps a unilateral basis -- can convince the DPRK to reverse course, to come into compliance with its international obligations and its own commitments, and to be in the process of rolling back its nuclear and its missile program," the official said on condition of anonymity.



Kerry has made no secret of his conviction that there is "much more that China can do by way of applying leverage," the official said, adding that the top American diplomat will be looking for practical and effective steps on the part of the Chinese.

The U.N. Security Council has been discussing sanctions on the North, and those negotiations will likely "play out for a little longer," the official said. Kerry and his Chinese counterparts will "compare notes on where that stands and what we can do by the Security Council," the official said.



But as important as U.N. sanctions are "what China on a unilateral basis, as North Korea's lifeline, as North Korea's patron, will choose to do, both to cut off avenues of proliferation and retard North Korea's ability to gain the wherewithal to advance its nuclear and its missile programs" is even more important, the official said.

It is also important to "send an unmistakable message to Kim Jong-un that his strategy is meeting with real resistance from China," the official said.



China has made efforts to prevent illegal activities and proliferation from the North via "Chinese soil, Chinese ports, Chinese banks and Chinese companies," but there is still much more room for more efforts, the official said.



"North Korea is still engaged in illicit and proliferation activities. They have very few avenues for conducting business with the international community that don't in some fashion involve transiting China," the official said.



"Despite the determination and efforts of the Chinese government, clearly there is more that they can do. And I certainly hope that in the aftermath of this latest nuclear test that the Chinese are examining those conduits and avenues and looking for ways to intercept and restrict North Korean proliferation activities," the official said.



The official also emphasized that the U.S. has tried to hold negotiations with the North, but it is the communist nation that walked away and keeps "saying no to proposals from all quarters that we negotiate, as they committed to, to eliminate their nuclear missile program."



"We want them to walk back, and it's both pressure and incontrovertible evidence that the international community isn't going to change its mind and decide that we're good with a nuclear North Korea. That's not going to happen, and the Chinese don't want it either," the official said.



On the issue of American citizens detained in North Korea, the official said the U.S. is working hard to secure their release through the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which serves as the protecting power for the U.S. The U.S. also conveys its concerns directly to the North, the official said. (Yonhap)








South Korea raised its cyber alert level following the influx of malicious e-mails presumed to have originated from North Korea amid a spike in cross-border tensions after Pyongyang tested a fourth nuclear device early this month, the government said Monday.



The country's cyber alert was marked up one notch to "yellow" from the normal "blue," the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said. It said authorities detected an increase in e-mails that impersonate government organizations, including the presidential office and the foreign ministry, as well as Internet portal managers.



"North Korea has attempted cyber attacks previously to spark public anxiety and hostility against the government," the ICT ministry said, adding that the latest series of e-mails could be part of North Korea's broader provocations following what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6.



The government said the e-mails seem to be targeting people working in key infrastructure areas and their partner firms that can have considerable repercussions throughout the country's web ecosystem. It urged South Koreans to install antivirus programs on their PCs and smartphones, and to refrain from opening suspicious e-mails.



Policymakers have asked local computer antivirus firms and system integration companies to be on guard against attacks and take steps to respond effectively to them.



In December 2014, the state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. suffered a series of cyber attacks, and an anonymous anti-nuclear group posted a series of documents and operating manuals for a number of South Korean nuclear reactors on the Internet.

South Korean investigators concluded the attack is believed to have been caused by North Korean hackers, although Pyongyang denied involvement. (Yonhap)




Progress has been slow in drawing up a new U.N. sanctions resolution to punish North Korea for its fourth nuclear test as the U.S. and China disagree over its content, a South Korean official said Monday.



Washington has presented a draft resolution to Beijing for review, hoping to impose tougher and more extensive sanctions on Pyongyang for its Jan. 6 nuclear test.



"The Chinese side, as has been the case in the past, is extremely slow at first," the official told reporters on the condition of anonymity as the talks are still under way.

Beijing's cooperation is essential in drawing a strong sanctions resolution from the U.N. Security Council because it is one of five veto-wielding permanent members, along with the U.S., Russia, France and Great Britain.



China, however, has been reluctant to push the North too hard out of concerns for its own security interests.



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to visit Beijing later this week to step up pressure on China to exercise more leverage over Pyongyang.



Quoting the words of U.S Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, the official said Washington and Beijing have so far failed to narrow their gap over the details of the resolution.



Beijing showed an "initial response" to the U.S. draft last week and talks have begun in earnest, but progress has been slow, he added.




South Korea called on Japan Friday to drop its reckless claim to sovereignty over a pair of rocky islets in the East Sea.



It was responding to a Tokyo speech by Japan's top diplomat Fumio Kishida. He reiterated that Dokdo belong to Japan and said his government will deliver the position constantly.



In a statement, Seoul's Foreign Ministry said it can't help deploring Kishida's repeat of such an "unfair claim."



"(We) urge the Japanese government to immediately abandon its reckless claim to Dokdo, which is South Korea's indigenous territory," it said.



It showed that a territorial row remains a thorn in their ties despite a landmark deal on the issue of Korean women coerced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War II.



Under the agreement, Japan admitted its "responsibility," pledging to pay 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million) in compensation to the 46 surviving victims.



In a separate policy speech in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called South Korea his country's "most important neighbor that shares strategic interests."



(Yonhap)




As the recent opinion article titled, "Defending Kim Jong-un," written by Donald Kirk in The Korea Times may have caused some misunderstanding among readers of an article contributed by former U.S. Amb. Donald Gregg and published by the East Asia Foundation Policy Debate, this discussion platform would like to clarify the following:

1) The article of Amb. Gregg was written and submitted to the desk on Nov. 25 and published on Jan. 12, which means that it was written prior to the fourth nuclear test conducted by North Korea.

2) This matter has been covered by several news outlets. Amb. Gregg also expressed regret that he didn't foresee North Korea's latest nuclear test, which was also mentioned in several news articles.

Rhyu Sang-young

Editor of the East Asia Foundation Policy Debate
By Deauwand Myers





The recent nuclear test by North Korea left all of the DPRK's neighbors uneasy. Unlike in the past, North Korean officials did not notify China of its planned test, which angered the Chinese government. As per usual, South Korea, Japan, and the United States lodged condemnations against the North's surprise test.

Further, as a show of force and solidarity, an American B-52 Stratofortress bomber, a powerful, long-range plane with the ability to drop conventional and nuclear weapons, flew over the demilitarized zone (DMZ), escorted by two South Korean fighter jets. This particular response was unique in its unveiled warning to the North and the brevity by which it was deployed.

Some experts have speculated that the nascent, bloody reign of Kim Jong-un, the young, corpulent and untested dictator of North Korea and son of the late Kim Jong-il, marks a new era of heightened instability on the Korean Peninsula, one accented with unpredictability and possible miscalculations in the parry and thrust of diplomatic intrigue and geopolitical maneuvers between the North and everyone else.

Maybe. Yet, Kim Jong-il proved to be violent and unpredictable in his dealings with the world, particularly with South Korea. The bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 (November 1987) resulted in the death of 115 people; the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan (March 2010) killed all 46 sailors on board; and the bombing of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island by the North (November 2010) that killed two soldiers and two civilians. Kim Jong-il ordered all of these.

Nothing nearly as violent has taken place under Kim Jong-un, at least not yet. Experts then point to the constant proscriptions and purges of Kim, wherein vast swaths of senior and powerful North Korean officials have been assassinated, sometimes for the slightest offenses, as an ominous sign of a paranoid leader: amoral, cruel, passionate and, worst of all, unsophisticated in wielding power.

Really? Kim Jong-il, like his father before him, practiced purges, albeit less vigorously than his son. We cannot be sure of this because, as with much that happens in North Korea, intelligence about the isolated state is hard to come by and often impossible to verify.

Further, to be a dictator, particularly in North Korea, is to be amoral, cruel and full of malice. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Other authoritarian regimes: China, Cuba, Vietnam, Russia, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, do actually care about the well-being of their citizens, insofar as keeping a plurality of their people at an acceptable standard of living ensures the legitimacy and survival of their governments.

North Korea suffers from no such affliction. Bone-crushing sanctions over generations have left much of North Korea in various states of abject poverty and starvation, wherein even soldiers desert their posts from sheer hunger. Unless one is part of the elite within Kim's inner circle, or the surrounding oligarchy (and have not been purged), being a North Korean citizen is to be relegated to misery, malnutrition and premature death.

In short, Kim Jung-un has benefited from his father and grandfather's reign. The population has lived in poverty and decrepitude for so long, their condition has become normalized. Subsistence living has weakened the North Korean citizenry to the point that rebellion is unlikely, certainly from the masses.

Kim and company do not care so much about their people's well-being as they do about their obedience. A well-oiled machine inculcating the masses on the omnipotence of the state and the cult of personality surrounding the Kims as godlike and noble shores up the legitimacy of Kim, et al, since the government has miserably failed at economic growth for many decades.

So is this a "new" North Korea? Not so much. The DPRK is a nasty government whose grip on power is facilitated by casual brutality, mass imprisonment, summary executions and any horror one can imagine in between.

What has changed is South Korea's and the United States' response to North Korea. For years, North Korea behaved badly, came to the denuclearization bargaining table, got aid and international concessions, reneged on its obligations and restarted its nuclear proliferation once talks failed, repeating the cycle off and on. Thankfully, this cycle has been broken.

President Park Geun-hye's steely resolve to engage China and forcefully deal with North Korea, never conceding aid or answering bluster and bad behavior with calls for talks, coupled with President Barack Obama's policy of non-engagement while the North proliferates, are smart strategies.

Unfortunately, as I have stated before, North Korea will never give up its rudimentary nuclear arsenal. It has said as much. The DPRK sees this as its only insurance policy for survival. North Korea will either collapse from within, or be defeated in a short, bloody war. But let us not be confused. The shenanigans of Kim Jong-un are more of the same.



Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
By Lee Min-hyung

SK Telecom said Monday it plans to commercialize a data uplink system that is twice as fast as the existing one in the first half of this year.

The company plans to adopt "Uplink Carrier Aggregation (CA)" technology for its network base stations nationwide.

The move comes amid the rise of the multi-channel network (MCN) industry here. The company said it decided to introduce the new technology to meet the growing needs of online users to post personal images or videos faster and more efficiently.

"Users need to have mobile devices equipped with a chipset to enable the Uplink CA technology," said an SK Telecom official. "We expect devices with the Uplink CA chipset to be released as early as June."

The company will start installing the technology at its base stations in Seoul and Gyeoggi Province by the middle of next month. It will then expand coverage nationwide until March.

"Once all the base stations in the nation are fully equipped with the technology, mobile devices will be rolled out," the official said

Users now can upload online content at 25 mega-bits-per-second (Mbps) on a 10 megahertz (Mhz) frequency bandwidth. But the Uplink CA technology will enable users to upload at 50 Mbps, the official said.

SK Telecom said it could theoretically offer a network environment with a four-times-faster uplink speed by taking advantage of other frequency-related solutions.

The carrier expects the technology to boost industrial expansion in areas such as MCN or user-created content (UCC) or social networking service (SNS) related business sectors.

Lee Jong-bong, chief of the company's infrastructure division, said: "We will lead the upcoming fifth-generation (5G) network era with the Uplink CA technology."

He said the company would also display more technologies to improve users' data networking speed.
Seo Byung-sam, senior vice president at Samsung Electronics' appliance division, speaks at a press conference at its headquarters in southern Seoul, Monday. The company unveiled its new premium air conditioner and refrigerator at the event. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Lee Min-hyung

Samsung Electronics said Monday it was committed to leading the world's premium consumer electronics market, addressing concerns over the potential threat posed by Chinese electronics giant Haier's recent acquisition of General Electric's appliance business.

"The recent takeover will have a limited impact on us at the moment," said Seo Byung-sam, vice president at Samsung Electronics' consumer electronics division, in a press conference at its headquarters in southern Seoul. "The competitive landscape can change all the time. We are seeking to tackle such issues through fundamental and disruptive innovation."

The remarks came about two weeks after the Chinese white goods manufacturer announced its takeover of the U.S.-based tech giant's appliance unit for $5.4 billion (6.4 trillion won).

"We will compete in the global consumer electronics market with our two-track strategy, focusing both on premium and diffuse models," he said. "Toward that end, it is very important for us to stay away from product stereotypes and keep investing in developing innovative products."

The nation's leading electronics company held the press conference to unveil its new premium air conditioner and refrigerator models.

Samsung said its new Q9500 breeze-free air conditioner, unveiled for the first time at the event, comes with metal cooling panels and a micro hall-based air current passage system.

In particular, the company stressed the product's 135,000 microscopic halls, which generate air flow channels, provide more effective cooling than existing air conditioners.

The company also unveiled its new Chef Collection Refrigerator equipped with metal cooling covers. The metallic covers minimize temperature changes within the fridge, which the company says is the key to keeping foods fresh.

The company said it has focused on ways to minimize freezer burn which occurs when foods are damaged by dehydration and oxidation. The freshness of stored foods is determined by freezer burn, which the new model is designed to minimize with its own temperature-management technology.

Samsung shed light on its sales expectations for the new appliances, pledging to reach more than 55 percent of local market share for both appliances this year.

"The Q9500 has destroyed the conventions people have had on air conditioners for the past 100 years," the Samsung executive said. "Both new products offer innovations that will make people's lives more healthy and comfortable."
By Kim Yoo-chul



Samsung SDI, the battery affiliate of the major conglomerate, said it will retain its employees in its chemicals unit even after Lotte Chemical assumes management control of SDI's chemicals business.



"There won't be massive layoff just because of our division unloading the company's chemicals business to Lotte," SDI said in a statement, Monday.



Earlier, Samsung SDI signed an agreement with its chemicals unit workers who had requested the company guarantee their job status and compensation even if the deal is successful.



New owner Lotte Chemical said it has no plans to cut its workforce and added that Lotte is keen to acquire SDI-owned patents and develop its business knowhow for external growth.



The decision came after Samsung SDI shareholders agreed to spin off its chemicals unit and establish a new affiliate, named SDI Chemical.



Starting on February 1, SDI Chemical will separate from Samsung SDI which currently owns a 100 percent stake.



After due process by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) to determine whether the SDI-Lotte deal breaks the country's competition laws, the deal will be closed within the first half of this year with Lotte holding 90 percent of SDI Chemical, according to both companies.



"The plan to set up SDI Chemical was unilaterally made at a meeting with Samsung SDI shareholders held in The K-Hotel, southern Seoul," said SDI spokesman Seo Hae-su.



Samsung SDI plans to invest the money saved from the sale of its chemicals business into lifting the scale of its battery and energy businesses.



While Lotte will pay about 2.58 trillion won to acquire the management rights of Samsung SDI's chemicals business, Samsung SDI CEO Cho Nam-seong said it will invest more to transform itself into a global leader in the battery segment.



"I am grateful for the decision by shareholders to sell SDI's chemicals business to Lotte. This decision was inevitable for the company. Over the last few years, Samsung SDI has been focusing on bolstering the company's presence in batteries and battery-oriented businesses," CEO Cho said in a press release.



SDI plans to invest up to 3 trillion won in batteries by 2020, according to the release.



Samsung, the country's biggest conglomerate, has strived to improve the productivity of the group's mainstream businesses by unloading unprofitable units or acquiring new ones which have growth potential.



Samsung's de-facto leader Lee Jae-yong, the only son of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, is known to be leading the changes, after his father was hospitalized in a hospital in May 2014 after heart surgery.



Samsung identified electronics, biotechnology and finance as its new revenue streams, and officials say the ongoing corporate overhauls have been focusing on boosting the productivity of these "three target" businesses, said officials.



Samsung earlier dropped its defense business and spun off its food business. Samsung C&T was acquired by Cheil Industries to create a new holding company named New Samsung C&T.



Market watchers say Samsung SDS, the group's IT solutions unit of which Samsung Vice Chairman Lee holds the biggest share inside the affiliate, will be acquired by Samsung Electronics to help the de-factor leader Lee gain more control over the group's consumer electronics unit.



They say Samsung Engineering may be integrated with Samsung Heavy after the completion of a fundraising campaign by the group's engineering unit to sell 1.2 trillion won worth of common shares.




/Screen capture from Twitter

A conspiracy website says a mysterious flying object seen in Bulgaria seems like a "saucer-shaped UFO," the British Daily Mail reports.

Bulgarian paranormal website Portal 12 has posted pictures of the UFO with a caption that says several people saw the mysterious object near Nova Zagora in Bulgaria's southeastern plains.

"The craft was flying at very low altitude in the area above the villages of Gaz, Zagortci and Han Asparuhovo," the website said.

According to the website, military planes chased the object for five minutes.

The UFO then abruptly changed direction and disappeared.

Some people suspect the object was a military drone, saying drones are increasingly being mistaken for alien spaceships.
In the days before casinos and karaoke, teen clubs were thriving across Montana and the rebellious spirit of rock sprouted from basements and garages as dozens of bands formed in the 1960s.

Bands with names like The Missing Lynx, Beauregard Mansion, the Chosen Few and The Frantics were rocking hard as players emulated the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Doors. Many of those Montana bands have been forgotten, but thanks to Havre disc jockey Dave Martens, their music is back and sounding better than ever.

A two-album set, Long Time Comin: Lost Sounds from the Treasure State will make its local debut Feb. 6 at Smiling Dog Records, 2702 Minnesota Ave. It is already available for purchase online.

Musicians featured on the album are invited to be introduced at the event, which is the grand opening of the record store.

Martens became interested in 1960s bands when he worked as a volunteer DJ in Missoula in 2011. Locating Billings recording engineer Larry Faught and Billings musician David Weyer helped boost his project, especially when he got his hands on a 1958 recording of Chan Romeros Hippy Hippy Shake.

Faught, who still lives in the same Clark Avenue home where he recorded Romeros hit song, remembers enlisting his daughter, Kyle, to clap on the recording. Faughts son, Lon, stood outside the basement recording room, too young to be trusted to keep quiet during the recording. Faught had session guitarist Thumbs Carllile play backup on the song. Carllile later played with Roger Miller.

That really helped Chan out, having Thumbs play backup. That gave him a bigger sound, Faught said.

Faught opened Faught Recording Studio in the mid-1950s, using a portable recorder he bought for $750. He charged musicians like Romero and Kostas $10 an hour for studio time and used his own equipment to cut the grooves in the 45 rpm records, selling them for 98 cents each. A square dance caller since the early 1950s, Faught taught himself how to use all the electronic recording equipment.

Kostas was 15 and his voice hadnt yet changed when he recorded Something We Call Love at Faughts studio.

Kostas would sell the 45s from his locker at Senior High, and if he made some good sales, hed take his buddies out to lunch.

Without the 45s and reel-to-reel tapes that Montana musicians provided, Martens said there would be no two-album set.

The title of the album comes from Missoula band Initial Shocks first 45, Youve Been a Long Time Comin, and a picture of the band, which formed under the name The Chosen Few, is on the cover of the album.

To make the music more accessible, when you purchase the album, youll also get the CD. Some musicians say they are saving the vinyl records as souvenirs.

National scene

The amazing part of the musicians featured on the album is that some of them had the talent to get noticed on the national level. The Billings band The Frantics, formed in late 1964 at Eastern Montana College, toured with the Yardbirds when Jimmy Page, who later co-founded Led Zeppelin played bass, and Jeff Beck played guitar. Kostas and Romero also got national attention and continue to write music and perform. The Great Falls band The Missing Lynx, had one of their singles played on American Bandstand.

It was awesome, absolutely awesome, said Dean Snow, who performed with The Missing Lynx. "'American Bandstand' was a big thing. My cousin called me and said, You just missed your record on American Bandstand. 

Turns out the Helena recording engineer who produced the record sent it to Dick Clark, who took a liking to it. It made the rate a record portion of the show and won.

One thing is, it sure boosted the sales, Snow said.

Musicians, most of whom are now in their 60s, are thrilled to hear their songs remastered and available again on vinyl. The extensive liner notes tell the history of each of the 17 artists featured in the set. Pearl Jams Jeff Ament, who is originally from Big Sandy, praised the music and the project, saying, Who knows what might have happened if any one of these bands had moved to L.A.

But heading to New York or Los Angeles to record, even with an invitation from a record label, was a scary proposition for a Montana teenager.

When The Missing Lynx got an offer to record with MGM, after they recorded a demo at Helena's Valtron Studio, they turned it down.

All they said was come to New York, you passed the audition, Snow said. We thought, How are we going to get there, it takes money. It was sad; we were close. I wasnt going to risk it.

'Beatle maniacs'

Not everyone appreciated the loud music coming out of basements and teen clubs and the long hair that went with it.

Snow said the administration at Great Falls High School made him cut his hair when it grew long enough to touch his eyebrows and rejected his senior picture for the yearbook. A bandmate shaved his eyebrows to avoid the hair cant touch the eyebrows rule.

The school officials hated us  long-haired Beatle maniacs, Snow said. We thought, Fine, well never play your school. Then, senior year came up and guess who they asked to play at their school? We told them we were booked.

Martens wanted to showcase the 60s in his project, but when he discovered Hippy Hippy Shake, recorded in Billings in 1958, and later covered by the Beatles in the 1960s, he changed the parameters. So the period he featured became 1958-1969, even though most of the recordings on the album are from the 1960s.

Montana doesnt have a recorded history of bands, Martens said. You either had to be in a band or have a family member in one or you were unaware.

Martens said his motives were partly selfish  he wanted to find these 60-year-old records so he could play them on his Tuesday radio show at KNMC in Havre.

We dont have a station library, so Im always looking for old Montana stuff.

Martens also works as a speech pathologist for rural schools across the Hi-Line.

Billings, Great Falls and Missoula were hotbeds for rock bands, Martens said. Billings had three teen clubs where up and coming bands would play. That was important. As the venues faded away, so did the bands.

But there were other factors, too. The drug scene was escalating, alienating some band members, and teenage players were being drafted to serve in Vietnam. The social revolution kicked up the rebel-side and some of the bands began incorporating more revolutionary lyrics, like Missoulas The Gross National Product, which formed in 1967. The band disbanded just a few years later when member George Crowe was drafted into the army.

The Billings band Beauregard Mansion developed a reputation for tight vocal harmonies and an incredibly loud sound. Bruce Jensen, a member of Beauregard Mansion, remembered playing the Whats Happening club in the Heights and being inspired by the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album to write music.

A lot of us high schoolers were caught up in the movement of the 60s and there was some great music coming out. We wanted to be rock stars, Jensen said.

Jensen went into radio and became the first program director for Kat Country in Billings.

In 1964, The Billings Gazette covered a show by the Missoula band The Vulcans in the Hart Albin parking garage. The reporter, Addison Bragg, wrote, The point to remember is that five college students in red coats kept 2,000 teenagers happy for three hours and sent them home tired  with no comment from grown-ups standing around except that they were a well-behaved bunch of kids  no matter how raucous their music sounded, no matter how strange their dancing appeared.

Two years later, The Vulcans opened shows for Paul Revere and the Raiders and Gary Lewis and the Playboys before they disbanded.

As the 1960s came to a close, many of the Montana rock bands ended as well. Some of those musicians still question whether they could have been the next big thing.

But its hard to cut and run when you have no visible means of support, other than a paid-for 48 Hudson, Jensen said.

Audio clips from "Long Time Comin'"

Kostas - "Something We Call Love" - 1966

The Initial Shock - "You've Been a Long Time Comin'" - 1967

The Beauregard Mansion - "Having a Sale" - 1966

The Fugitives - "Message from the Dead" - 1965

The Missing Lynx - "To Be Like You" - 1967

Chan Romero - "Hippy Hippy Shake (Demo)" - 1958

The Chosen Few - "Baby Don't Do It" - 1966

The Vulcans - "The Witch (Live)" - 1966

The Frantics - "La-Do-Da-Da" - 1966
As fashion week begins in Paris, Big Bang's T.O.P will participating in the event as he flew out to the city of love.

On Friday, Jan. 22, Big Bang member T.O.P left for Paris to attend the Dior Homme's 2016-2017 Winter fashion show.

T.O.P was spotted at incheon International airport wearing a sky blue shirt with a jacquard knit and slim fit pants all under a navy cashmere long coat.

Dior Homme is the menswear division of Christian Dior SA, the French clothing retailer and is under the creative direction of Kris Van Assche since spring/summer 2008.

Aside from T.O.P attending the Dior Fashion Show, him along with the other Big Bang members are currently finishing the Japanese leg of their MADE world tour.
The calendar year may have already started, but the Lunar New Year is still to come in Korea.

As with any new Lunar New Year, K-pop fans can look forward to celebrations from their favorite artists. This time around SBS has planned a special competition for the holiday entitled "Watching You." The special will air at some point during the Lunar New Year celebrations that last from Feb. 7 to Feb. 10.

Korea Herald reports that 20 idol groups (about 100 or more idols in total) and their CEOs from companies big and small will make appearances. According to Kpopfighting, EXO, EXID, AOA, BTOB, BTS, Super Junior and TWICE have all been confirmed to compete in activities for the program until an eventual winner is crowned.

"There's a staggering line-up of 140 people on the program, including the artists and their CEOs. The idols will be giving their all, under the watchful eyes of their CEOs. Viewers will derive joy from watching them working together on the program," said an SBS producer.

Company CEOs that have been confirmed for the SBS Lunar New Year "Watching You" event includes Shinhwa's Andy and Brave Brothers. The CEOs that attend the event will give real-time advice to their groups as they show off their talents in the program.

For those interested in other planned Lunar New Year celebrations, KBS2TV has announced several guests for its "National Idol Signing Contest." The confirmed guests include BTOB's Eunkwang, AOA's Chanmi, and Sonamoo's Euijin.

The "National Idol Singing Contest" program will be hosted by Kang Ho Dong and Kim Shin Young, with the final round set for Jan. 23.
MISSOULA  The ringleader of a conspiracy to transport methamphetamine from Seattle and sell it in Missoula was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison with no eligibility for parole  the mandatory minimum  in U.S. District Court on Friday.

Albert Pedro Jaquez, 36, a married father of a 1-year-old girl, will also have to undergo drug treatment in prison and complete five years of supervised release.

In 2000, Jaquez was convicted of second-degree murder for his role in helping a Seattle man kill another man during a robbery. He served 12 years in prison for that crime.

On Thursday, Jaquezs accomplice in the drug conspiracy, Lavelle Cotton, 34, received five years in prison.

In 1995, when Cotton was 14, he was convicted of murdering a 7-year-old girl during a drug money collection gone awry. The girl, Angelica Robinson, was caught in the crossfire when a gun battle erupted in a flop house after Cotton came to collect a $100 drug debt.

In the meth case, both men pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance in agreements with prosecutors.

According to charging documents, the men were involved in the drug conspiracy from December 2014 through April 2015. Jaquez would supply the meth in Seattle and Cotton would transport and sell it in Missoula.

When Cotton tried to sell drugs to a confidential informant in a parking lot on Reserve Street last April 30, Missoula police officers arrested them and found a plastic container with 1 pound of meth in it and another with 2 ounces of cocaine.

Trittnie Von Rogers, who was dating Jaquez and accompanied Cotton to Missoula, was also arrested in the case. She received a three-year deferred sentence for cooperating with investigators.

At his sentencing Friday, Jaquez admitted he had made poor decisions and apologized for his actions. He said he started selling drugs after he got out of prison for the murder conviction because he couldnt get a job.

I sent out between 90 and 100 job applications and didnt get a single call back, he said. Thats not an excuse for what I did, but I decided to transport drugs to provide for my wife and my child. I know what I look like on paper, but thats not who I am.
The United States government would continue to assist Sri Lanka with their negotiations with the IMF and the debt restructuring

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The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

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City and county planners have been awarded $115,000 from the Montana Department of Transportation to identify the areas most pressing transportation safety issues and develop strategies to address those issues.

We are looking for innovative ways to engage the public, said Sarah Nicolai, transportation planning manager for DOWL Engineering, which is writing the Community Transportation Safety Plan with input from the Billings/Yellowstone County Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The study launched Thursday with the first meeting of a steering committee to shepherd the study through its completion, expected this fall.

The most visible innovation will be an interactive website to be launched Feb. 8, a website that Nicolai hopes that hundreds  maybe thousands  of Billings-area residents will use to help guide the study.

Heres how the website will work: the first screen will offer an overview of the study, and the second will ask respondents to share their ideas about cutting the rate of fatal and serious crashes, which totaled at least 224 people across the state in 2015, a 17-percent increase over the 2014 death toll.

From 2005-14, 202 people died in Yellowstone County crashes, the most of any county in the state. Of those 202 deaths, 52 percent involved at least one impaired driver and 66 percent were attributed to seat belts not being used.

Next, people will be asked to rank safety priorities  should officials pay more attention to inattentive or distracted driving, young drivers, or occupant protection, including child restraints and seat belts? What role should enforcement and education play? Theyll be asked to rank their top four concerns.

During the fourth step, participants will respond to ideas and safety strategies and will also be asked, according to Nicolai, Is there something we missed?

The final screen thanks respondents and asks them to answer some demographic questions to make sure we are getting good representation, Nicolai said.

On Feb. 8, project officials will release the websites address.

Engineers plan to use the feedback they receive to focus on ways to reach Vision Zero, MDTs campaign to eliminate all traffic fatalities.

A video produced by Rhode Island officials addresses the presumed impossibility of eliminating every traffic fatality, according to Nicolai. When Rhode Islanders were asked what traffic fatality goal the state should set, they responded with about 100, she said. But when asked how many people from their community or their family should be involved in a serious crash, the number fell to zero.

Each number, she said, represents a life.

Lora Mattox, a transportation planner who serves both Billings and Yellowstone County, said the study will identify strategies to improve safety in the areas of highest concern among residents incorporating the four Es of safety: Education, Enforcement, Emergency Services and Engineering.

An interdisciplinary group including law enforcement, emergency medical responders, educators, insurance providers and the AARP has come forward to work on the project, she said.

It will all be data driven, Mattox said. We will take the data and drill down to three or four chief issues.

Organizers hope that some champions will take control of their area and identify corridors and policies for, for example, how intersections are developed, or what role enforcement can play.

The local strategy will follow the model of the statewide Comprehensive Highway Safety Plan, Mattox said, with focuses on behavioral and transportation infrastructure safety issues.

We might get 20 or 30 people to attend a public meeting, Nicolai said, But this could engage hundreds of people from Billings. This way well hear more voices and get more feedback.
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About 250 Christians marched through downtown Billings to protest abortion Sunday afternoon.

The Billings March for Life is part of a national movement that began in Washington, D.C., to protest the 1973 legalization of abortion. The Sunday procession worked its way from St. Patricks Church to the Yellowstone County Courthouse lawn, where speakers shared personal experiences with unplanned pregnancy and how their decision affected their lives.

The crowd included children and the elderly praying for the end of abortion and singing hymns and patriotic anthems. People displayed signs with slogans like Women Deserve Better Than Abortion and Lord Forgive Us and Our Nation while drivers in passing cars honked their horns.

Amy Seymour, of Joliet, organized the march as part of Yellowstone Valley Christians for Life, an interdenominational organization in opposition to abortion. The event is in its ninth year in Billings, and Seymour said the crowd was its largest yet.

Each year when we do it a little more people come as we get word out a little better, she said. Unless theres a blizzard out like there was in Washington, D.C., for their March for Life.

Seymour, a member of St. Johns Catholic Church said the crowd included Christians from protestant churches as well as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox congregations, mostly from the Billings area. She sees the movement gaining momentum, especially with young people.

The Yellowstone Valley Christians for Life will hold a speech writing contest for students in grades six to 12 on Feb. 28. Seymour said the event offers cash prizes and will strengthen participants ability to articulate the pro-life message.

The 2017 Billings March for Life is already planned for Sunday Jan. 22, the 44th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade United States Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
In the wake of the Jan. 14 announcement of this years Oscar nominations  which, for the second year in a row, included no actors of color  the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences quickly became swept up in a controversy as intense as any it has faced in its nearly 90-year history.

Amid allegations of systemic racial bias and calls from some like director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith for a boycott of this years telecast, the academy moved quickly last week to enact sweeping new membership rules aimed at doubling the number of women and minorities in its ranks by 2020. As part of the changes, some older members who are no longer actively working in the business may lose their voting privileges.

The Times reached out to scores of the 1,138 members of the academys actors branch  the largest by far and the one responsible for selecting the acting nominees  to try to get a sense of how the rank-and-file (which, according to a 2012 Times analysis, is predominantly older and white) sees the #OscarsSoWhite backlash and what it has felt like to be in the eye of this storm.

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Many argue any allegations of racial bias are misplaced. Others say the academys demographics do inevitably skew the nominations in some ways. Some welcome the debate and the changes it has spurred, while others are clearly angered by them.

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Following on the story The Times ran Sunday, here are some more perspectives from inside the academys actors branch. (Some interviewees asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.)

Maud Adams, 70, best known as a Bond girl in the films The Man With the Golden Gun and Octopussy:

Yes, it is unfortunate that some very worthy acting performances do not get nominated, but it has always been so. The nominations are not an exact science and I do not believe that race was a factor. With only a few slots to fill and an abundance of great performances, especially this year, the acting nominations however, can become somewhat of a lottery. Todays academy, although largely white, consist of some of the most liberal-minded and tolerant members of any group, as shown in recent years nominations and Oscar winners.

Jennifer Warren, 74, whose credits include the films Night Moves and Slap Shot and who now heads the directing track at the USC School of Cinematic Arts:

I voted for Straight Outta Compton for best film, at the top of the list. And I happen to think Creed, the director [Ryan Coogler] and the leading man [Michael B. Jordan] should have been nominated. It got all those reviews but I dont think people saw it. Its too black.

I dont think [Oscar voters] are prejudiced  I just think theyre slow and they dont have enough time to see all the films, and the ones that are going to get left behind are the ones that are not the most like them.

When you see the reviews for Creed and Compton, they are so much more ecstatic than most other films that have come out that its not about the quality of those films. Its about the fact that people didnt see them before they voted. And there are all those white people out there.

An actor in his 40s, still actively working:

Its an unfortunate situation. But its not the academy  its the industry. The academy can only sort through what theyre given and the industry isnt giving them much. Studios need to do better. The culture has to change before the Oscars can change.

David Huddleston, 85, best known for playing the title role in The Big Lebowski:

I think [the backlash] is unfortunate and a bit unwarranted. I feel choices were made based on roles and performances. Many times, regardless of color, good performances are not included due to numbers. Not everyone who delivers a wonderful performance can secure an Oscar nomination in a given year.

If more choice roles are available to women or men or people of color or seniors or young people, more nominations will be reflected in nominations worthy of the academy. The focus should be put on developing better scripts and training better actors, not complaining after the fact, even if a given film was a blockbuster or promoted with lots of publicity.

Robert Walden, 72, best known for his work on the TV series Lou Grant:

Im a New Yorker, raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. So I grew up in what Id consider the United Nations, there were so many different nationalities and races. But I dont believe thats true for so many academy members. Especially the older ones.

Many of them view the films at home, with their mates and children. Im guessing but my intuition tells me that Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation and Chi-Raq might not feel comfortable for them to share with family members. Thats my guess. Because there were several excellent performances by actors of color that did not make the cut. And it bothered me.

An actress in her 60s, still actively working primarily in television:

Race wasnt a factor in my voting. The whole thing just stinks. Its bad for everyone, but really unfortunate for the movies and artists nominated this year. It completely overshadows the ability to honor their work. I feel terrible for them.

Carole Wells, 73, who worked primarily in television in the 60s and 70s:

I do think a lot of the older members really watch most of the films, as I do. I watch them more than once if I like someone in it or [the screenwriter] and again after the nominations come out. But I do also think most of the old guys are too set in their 50s mentalities to even want to watch Straight Outta Compton or Room because of the subject matter.

Also my generation is appalled by the comedians who are such potty mouths. We remember Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Johnny Carson and Steve Allen, who never used rank humor. Amy Schumer wouldnt even get a watch.

Jerry Hardin, 86, known from films like The Firm and as Deep Throat on TVs The X-Files:

Race had nothing to do with any of my votes. The academys Oscar is an effort to honor and recognize excellence in film and storytelling. Race and political correctness has no place in the process, nor should it have.

Whatever anybody else thinks, I believe the academy should continue to recognize those who bring excellence and unusual talent to film and the vote falls where it falls. The industry is filled with talented people who are not recognized with Oscars and the notion that the vote for excellence must be filtered through race and gender to be valid is absurd.

Asa Maynor, 79, who worked in film and television from the 50s to the 70s:

I loved Straight Outta Compton. I thought it was terrific, but I guess not enough people did... I wouldnt necessarily be out to change the academy. If people want to make a difference, they should talk to the studios.

An actress in her 70s, still actively working:

I think it is an outcry that doesnt take demographics into consideration. Are we to have a quota system now? I dont think it can be prevented nor should changes be made. Some movies dont appeal to a lot of people. Some actors dont appeal to a lot of people. Some nominations for people of color in the past have not been worthy, in my consideration.

I judge on the acting alone  many of my nominations are not in sync with the body of voters, who seem to go on whos famous or already a star rather on the actual work itself. Different stories appeal to different people. It will always be the case.

Ron Masak, 79, best known for his role as a sheriff on Murder, She Wrote:

The fact that [the rule changes] came so quickly, to me, makes me feel like weve been bullied. Let the fire go out and let the smoke settle. The fact that it happened so fast feels like intimidation set in.... Youre telling [older members] now their opinion doesnt count, that they cant judge talent. Thats silly.

An Emmy-winning, Golden Globe-nominated actor in his 50s:

Movies that have to do with ethnic and racial subject matter, many times when its been something more nuanced and of-the-moment, its been overlooked. You only have to go back to Driving Miss Daisy versus Do the Right Thing. What film had a bigger effect on people? Theres no comparison.

I thought Straight Outta Compton was a terrific film but youve got to be interested. You have to be curious about other cultures and other races. People will sometimes shy away from certain things. So many times we see things that are soft, that are reassuring and have kind of this cachet [get nominated]. There are a lot of great actors from England but I feel like there is almost this inferiority complex that you have here. I feel like sometimes people would rather vote for Masterpiece Theater than Straight Outta Compton.

This is bigger than the Academy Awards  way bigger. You see it in everything. You can see it in the language of the politicians on the stump. You see it in the police issues. You see it in whats happening in Flint, Mich. People are polarized. This is part of society. Whats happening with the academy is a reflection of it.

Times staff writers Marisa Gerber, Mark Olsen and Glenn Whipp contributed to this report.

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A Billings boy and his family will get a long-deserved vacation after years of treatment for a rare heart condition.

Malachi Hosa turns 4 on Feb. 22 and will get an early start on the celebration this week with a trip to Disneyworld and Lego Land, courtesy of the Montana Hope Project. It will be the Hosa familys first vacation since Malachi was born with a rare heart defect known as hypoplastic right heart syndrome.

Malachi can now run and play like most 3-year-olds, but Sarah Hosa said that wasnt always the case. Her son had his last surgery in March 2015. Before that, he couldnt get enough oxygen and grew tired quickly.

Between running and playing for a while, hed turn purple, Sarah said.

Malachi received treatment in Denver and the family made frequent trips, always driving because of the uncertainties of how he would handle air travel. The trips came at both a financial and personal cost with Sarah and her husband, Jeff, forced to spend extended periods of time away from their other two children, 7-year-old Evelyn and 5-year-old Eli.

Then before Malachis last surgery, Dave Evans, eastern Montana coordinator for Montana Hope Project, approached the family and asked if they were interested in some time away to spend together as a family.

Dave had come to (Malachis) benefit last year, Jeff Hosa said. We didnt even know about Montana Hope Project, and he just kind of showed up and handed him a bear and some cash. And we were just like whos this guy?

The Montana Hope Project grants wishes to critically ill children in Montana, mostly sending families to Walt Disney World and the other theme parks located around Orlando, Fla. Evans said Malachis wish is the 421st granted by the organization since it began in 1984.

I feel like we were gifted already with the fundraiser, and to find out we were going to get to go anywhere that he wanted to after his last surgery was unbelievable, Sarah Hosa said.

Evans, a retired member of Yellowstone County Sheriffs Office was joined by his son, Undersheriff Kevin Evans of YCSO, Sgt. Riley Finnegan of Billings Police Department, and four Montana Highway Patrol Troopers in a Sunday presentation for Malachi and his family.

Malachi said he's excited to meet Buzz Lightyear and Woody from the Toy Story movies. Sarah Hosa will simply enjoy seeing him run around, unburdened by health issues.
For many people, the JT Leroy scandal of a decade ago was a passing headline, a story that had lasting resonance to a few publishing insiders at best.

But as the indie-film director Jeff Feuerzeig discovered, the Leroy affair was much more than we know -- a strange, existential and ultimately thrilling story of a woman donning identities with a degree of spy-novel ambition (and, sometimes, Mel Brooks absurdity).

Feuerzeig is the director of Author: The JT Leroy Story, a new documentary about the nearly decade-long invention pulled off by the writer Laura Albert. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend ahead of playing on A&E and likely in theaters later this year. With vast access to Alberts copious archives and thoughtful on-camera remembrances, Feuerzeig constructs a tightly woven and almost unbelievable yarn.

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If I didnt live through making the movie, I dont know if I would have believed what happened, Feuerzeig said in an interview at a condo here shortly after the film premiered this weekend.

Albert, the film tells us, was a depressed person struggling with body image and a penchant for calling phone-help lines when she decided to seek out the experimental writers Bruce Benderson and Dennis Cooper in the mid-1990s. Albert had been noodling with some gritty experimental fiction, and soon enough she had accrued some allies and, eventually, a publishing deal.

She also created a rather rich biography. Rather than the 30-ish woman living with her boyfriend in San Francisco she actually was, Albert claimed she was Terminator (later Jeremiah Terminator, later JT, later JT Leroy), a 20-year-old, gender-questioning boy who grew up in truck stops with a prostitute mother, a young man who had struggled with drugs, suffered from HIV and flived 100 lives in just a few years.

Soon her (his) celebrity grew, Leroys fiction (and back story) attracting a raft of famous fans--not just in the publishing world but superstar musical acts like U2 and global celebs including Asia Argento.

What follows is the kind of identity-swapping scheme that a Hollywood producer would reject as too fantastic. At first Albert just pretended Leroy was a recluse (in one of several remarkable bits of video, she attended a reading in which other authors read from the work as she sat anonymously in the audience).

1 / 196 Imogen Poots, from the film Frank and Lola, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 196 Imogen Poots poses for a portrait at the Sundance Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 196 Imogen Poots and director Matthew Ross from the film Frank and Lola pose for an L.A. Times photo at the Sundance Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 196 Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, filmmakers from the film Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, in a portrait taken at the L.A. Times studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 196 Chris Hegedus, left, Steven Wise and D.A. Pennebaker of the film Unlocking the Cage pose for a portrait in the L.A. Times studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 196 Chris Hegedus, director of Unlocking the Cage, in a portrait at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 196 Jon Shenk, left, subject Daisy Coleman and Bonni Cohen, director from the film Audrie & Daisy, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 196 Vincent Piazza from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 196 Daisy Coleman, subject from the film Audrie & Daisy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 196 Director Clea DuVall from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 196 Michael Shannon from the films Complete Unknown and Frank and Lola. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 196 Melanie Lynskey from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 196 Michael Shannon from the film Complete Unknown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 196 Ben Schwartz from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 196 Michael Shannon from the films Complete Unknown and Frank and Lola. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 196 Jason Ritter, left, Ben Schwartz, Natasha Lyonne, Vincent Piazza, Clea DuVall, director, Melanie Lynskey from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 196 Ben Schwartz, left, and Jason Ritter from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 196 Jason Ritter from the film Intervention. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 196 Aaron Brookner, director from the film Uncle Howard. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 196 Executive producer/narrator Katie Couric, right, and filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig from the film Under The Gun. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 196 Executive producer/narrator Katie Couric from the film Under The Gun. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 196 Michael Shannon from the films Complete Unknown and Frank and Lola. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 196 Amandla Stenberg from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 196 Michael Chernus, left, Michael Shannon and director Joshua Marston from the film Complete Unknown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 196 Michael Chernus, left, Michael Shannon and director Joshua Marston from the film Complete Unknown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 196 Danfung Dennis, filmmaker, and Casey Brown, producer from the virtual reality experience Condition One. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 196 Ciro Guerra, writer-director from the film Embrace of the Serpent. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 196 Josh Fox, director from the film How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Cant Change. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 196 Christopher Waldorf, left, Chi Chi Mizrahi,, MikeQ, Twiggy Pucci Garcon, co-writer/subject, Sara Jordeno, writer-director, Gia Marie Love, Kenneth Symba McQueen Soler-Rios from the film Kiki. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 196 Kahane Cooperman, showrunner/executive producer from the film The New Yorker Presents. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 196 Frankie Shaw, director-writer stars in Too Legit. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 196 Dawn Porter, director from the film Trapped. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 196 Keith Fulton, director, Lou Pepe, director, Jennifer Coffield and A.J. Wright from the film Bad Kids. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 196 Lou Pepe, left, and Keith Fulton, directors from the film Bad Kids. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 196 Jennifer Coffield and A.J. Wright from the film Bad Kids. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 196 Michael Villar from the film Carnage Park. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 196 Mickey Keating, director from the film Carnage Park. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 196 Rebecca Hall from the film Christine. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 196 Tahir Jetter, director from the film How to Tell Youre a Douchebag. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 196 Alex Ross Perry from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 196 Jenny Slate from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 196 Thomas Middleditch from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 196 Nick Kroll, left, Brett Gelman, Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, Jenny Slate, Jeff Baena, director, and Lauren Weedman from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 196 Jeff Baena, director, from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 196 Paulina Garcia from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 196 Diego Luna, director of Mr. Pig. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 196 Maya Rudolph, star of Mr. Pig (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 196 Actors Danny Glover, from left, Maya Rudolph and Mr. Pig director Diego Luna. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 196 Writer-director Richard Tanne, from left, Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers, from Southside With You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 196 Tika Sumpter from Southside With You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 196 Actor Waleed Zuaiter from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 52 / 196 Writer-director Jason Lew, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 53 / 196 Boyd Holbrook, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 54 / 196 Elisabeth Moss, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 55 / 196 Elisabeth Moss, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 56 / 196 Boyd Holbrook, from left, Octavia Spencer, writer-director Jason Lew, Elisabeth Moss and Waleed Zuaiter, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 57 / 196 Octavia Spencer, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 58 / 196 Octavia Spencer, from The Free World. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 59 / 196 Bobby Naderi, from Under the Shadow. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 60 / 196 Bobby Nader, from Under The Shadow. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 61 / 196 Jeff Daniels Phillips, right, and Richard Brake from the film 31. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 62 / 196 Ashley Bell, left, Pat Healy, Mickey Keating, Michael Villar and James Landry Hebert from the film Carnage Park. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 63 / 196 Ashley Bell from the film Carnage Park. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 64 / 196 Rebecca Hall from the film Christine. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 65 / 196 Rebecca Hall and director Antonio Campos from the film Christine. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 66 / 196 Dylan Gelula from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 67 / 196 Writer-director Kerem Sanga from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 68 / 196 Brianna Hildebrand, left, Kerem Sanga, writer-director, Brianna Hildebrand, Dylan Gelula and Mateo Arias from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 69 / 196 Brianna Hildebrand, left, Kerem Sanga, writer-director, Brianna Hildebrand, Dylan Gelula and Mateo Arias from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 70 / 196 Brianna Hildebrand from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 71 / 196 Mateo Arias from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 72 / 196 Mateo Arias from the film First Girl I Loved. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 73 / 196 Thomas Middleditch from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 74 / 196 Lauren Weedman from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 75 / 196 Brett Gelman from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 76 / 196 Adam Pally from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 77 / 196 Nick Kroll from the movie Joshy. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 78 / 196 Maya Rudolph from the film Mr. Pig. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 79 / 196 Maya Rudolph from the film Mr. Pig. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 80 / 196 Danny Glover from the film Mr. Pig. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 81 / 196 Haerry Kim from the film Spa Night. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 82 / 196 Haerry Kim, left, director Andrew Ahn and Joe Seo from the film Spa Night. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 83 / 196 Director Andrew Ahn from the film Spa Night. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 84 / 196 Joe Seo from the film Spa Night. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 85 / 196 Asif Kapadia, filmmaker from Ali & Nino, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 86 / 196 Alysia Reiner, left, and Sarah Megan Thomas from the film Equity. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 87 / 196 Alysia Reiner from the film Equity. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 88 / 196 Sarah Megan Thomas from the film Equity. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 89 / 196 Steven Caple Jr., writer and director for the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 90 / 196 Jorge Lendeborg Jr. from the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 91 / 196 Moises Arias from the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 92 / 196 Rafi Gavron, left, Ezri Walker, Steven Caple Jr., Moises Arias and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. from the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 93 / 196 Ezri Walker from the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 94 / 196 Moises Arias from the film The Land. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 95 / 196 Yoshiki from the film We are X. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 96 / 196 Stephen Kijak, left, and Yoshiki from the film We are X. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 97 / 196 Co-directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg from the film Weiner. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 98 / 196 Penelope Ann Miller from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 99 / 196 Armie Hammer from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 100 / 196 Gabrielle Union from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 101 / 196 Gabrielle Union, left, Aja Naomi King, Armie Hammer, Nate Parker, director, Penelope Ann Miller and Jackie Earle Haley from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 102 / 196 Nate Parker, director from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 103 / 196 Jackie Earle Haley from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 104 / 196 Aja Naomi King from the film The Birth of A Nation. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 105 / 196 Jessie Kahnweiler, star-director-producer, from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 106 / 196 Illeana Douglas, star-producer, left, Jill Soloway, executive producer, Rebecca Odes, executive producer, Jessie Kahnweiler, star-director-producer, and Andrea Sperling, producer, from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 107 / 196 Jill Soloway, executive producer from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 108 / 196 Jessie Kahnweiler from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 109 / 196 Rebecca Odes, executive producer from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 110 / 196 Illeana Douglas from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 111 / 196 Illeana Douglas from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 112 / 196 Andrea Sperling, producer from the film The Skinny. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 113 / 196 DeWanda Wise from the film How to Tell Youre a Douchebag. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 114 / 196 Jenna Williams, from the film How to Tell Youre a Douchebag. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 115 / 196 Alano Miller, left, DeWanda Wise, Tahir Jetter, Charles Brice and producers Julius Pryor IV and Marttise Hill from the film How to Tell Youre a Douchebag. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 116 / 196 Jennifer Ehle, from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 117 / 196 Jennifer Ehle, left, Michael Barbieri, Mauricio Zacharias, Paulina Garcia, Ira Sachs, director, Theo Taplitz and Greg Kinnear, from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 118 / 196 Greg Kinnear from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 119 / 196 Michael Barbieri, left, and Theo Taplitz from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 120 / 196 Director and co-writer Ira Sachs, left, and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias from the film Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 121 / 196 Ira Sachs, director/co-writer from the film, Little Men. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 122 / 196 Mary Stuart Masterson from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 123 / 196 Miles Joris-Peyrafitte from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 124 / 196 Amandla Stenberg from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 125 / 196 Scott Cohen from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 126 / 196 Owen Campbell from the film As You Are. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 127 / 196 Parker Sawyers from the film Southside With You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 128 / 196 Tika Sumpter from the film Southside With You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 129 / 196 Richard Tanne, writer-director from the film Southside With You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 130 / 196 Jeff Feuerzig, director from the film The JT Leroy Story. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 131 / 196 Robert Jumper, left, director Tim Sutton, Anna Rose and Maica Armata from the film Dark Night in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 132 / 196 Director Pieter-Jan De Pue from the film The Land of the Enlightened. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 133 / 196 Michal Huszcza, left, Michal Marczak, director, and Kris Baganski from the film All These Sleepless Nights get cozy. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 134 / 196 Abigail Spencer from the series Rectify. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 135 / 196 Director Robert Greene and actress Kate Lyn Sheil from the film Kate Plays Christine. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 136 / 196 Actress Kate Lyn Sheil from the film Kate Plays Christine. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 137 / 196 Executive Producer Jim McNiel from the film Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. ( L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 138 / 196 Werner Herzog, director of the film Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. ( L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 139 / 196 Laura Albert from the film The JT Leroy Story. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 140 / 196 Jeff Feuerzig and subject Laura Albert from the film The JT Leroy Story. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 141 / 196 Jason Benjamin, director from the film Suited. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 142 / 196 Jenni Konner, producer, left, Jason Benjamin, director, and Lena Dunham, producer, from the film Suited. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 143 / 196 Jared Harris from the film Certain Women. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 144 / 196 Jared Harris from the film Certain Women. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 145 / 196 Q., director of the film Brahman Naman. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 146 / 196 Q., director of the film Brahman Naman. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 147 / 196 Naman Ramachandran, left, Q., and Shashank Arora with Werner Herzog. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 148 / 196 Tanmay Dhanania, left, Shashank Arora, Naman Ramachandran, Steve Barron, producer, Q., director, Sid Mallya, screenwriter, from the film Brahman Naman. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 149 / 196 Ralph Rodriguez, left, Brian Sene Marc, Morgan Saylor, Adrian Martinez, India Menuez, Justin Bartha, Elizabeth Wood, filmmaker, and Anthony Ramos from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 150 / 196 Brian Sene Marc from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 151 / 196 Morgan Saylor from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 152 / 196 Anthony Ramos from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 153 / 196 Adrian Martinez from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 154 / 196 India Menuez from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 155 / 196 Justin Bartha from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 156 / 196 Elizabeth Wood from the film White Girl. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 157 / 196 Gavin Free for Lazer Team levitates. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 158 / 196 Anne Fontaine, director from the film Agnus Dei. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 159 / 196 Chloe Sevigny, left, Danny Perez and Natasha Lyonne from the film Antibirth. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 160 / 196 Chloe Sevigny from the film Antibirth. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 161 / 196 Chloe Sevigny from the film Antibirth. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 162 / 196 Natasha Lyonne from the film Antibirth. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 163 / 196 Rachel Grady, co-director from the film Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 164 / 196 Heidi Ewing, co-director, Norman Lear, Rachel Grady, co-director, from the film Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 165 / 196 Norman Lear from the film Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 166 / 196 Heidi Ewing, co-director from the film Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 167 / 196 Heidi Ewing, co-director from the film Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 168 / 196 Kenneth Lonergan, director from the film Manchester by the Sea. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 169 / 196 Lucas Hedges, left, Kenneth Lonergan, director, and Casey Affleck from the film Manchester by the Sea. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 170 / 196 Lucas Hedges, left, and Casey Affleck from the film Manchester by the Sea. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 171 / 196 Lucas Hedges, left, and Casey Affleck from the film Manchester by the Sea. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 172 / 196 Lucas Hedges from the film Manchester by the Sea. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 173 / 196 Casey Affleck from the film Manchester by the Sea. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 174 / 196 Casey Affleck from the film Manchester by the Sea. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 175 / 196 Writer-director Sian Heder from the film Talullah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 176 / 196 John Benjamin Hickey, left, Allison Janney, Ellen Page, Sian Heder, writer-director, and Tammy Blanchard from the film Talullah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 177 / 196 Ellen Page from the film Talullah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 178 / 196 Director Roger Ross Williams from the film Life Animated. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 179 / 196 Allison Janney from the film Talullah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 180 / 196 John Benjamin Hickey from the film Talullah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 181 / 196 Tammy Blanchard from the film Talullah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 182 / 196 Brooklyn Decker from the film Lovesong. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 183 / 196 Jena Malone from the film Lovesong. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 184 / 196 Jena Malone, left, and Riley Keough from the film Lovesong. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 185 / 196 Director Roger Ross Williams from the film Life Animated. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 186 / 196 Jonathan Freeman, left, Owen Suskind, Gilbert Gottfried and director Roger Ross Williams from the film Life Animated. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 187 / 196 John Krasinski from the film, The Hollars, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 188 / 196 John Krasinski, left, Charlie Day, Margo Martindale, Sharlto Copley and Josh Groban from the film The Hollars. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 189 / 196 Josh Groban from the film, The Hollars, in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 190 / 196 Sharlto Copley from the film, The Hollars, in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 191 / 196 Margo Martindale, from the film, The Hollars, in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 192 / 196 John Krasinski from the film, The Hollars, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 193 / 196 David Wheeler, left, Nicole Hockley, Mark Barden from the film Newtown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 194 / 196 Kim Snyder, left, director, and Maria Cuomo Cole, producer, from the film Newtown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 195 / 196 Nicole Hockley, David Wheeler, Maria Cuomo Cole, producer, Kim Snyder, director, and Mark Barden from the film Newtown. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 196 / 196 Todd Solondz, director of the film Wiener-Dog, poses for a portrait in the L.A. Times photo & video studio at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. ( Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Soon, though, Albert needed more characters to feed the beast. Savannah Knoop, the sister of Alberts husband, was enlisted to pose as Leroy in public appearances, in sunglasses and colorful headwear.

Sound crazy? It gets wilder. Albert herself started becoming different people too, including Speedie, an assistant who was always accompanying Leroy. This was as complicated as it sounded--not only because Albert had to find ways to pull the strings, puppeteer-style, with her sister-in-law when Leroy appeared in public but because she had to keep track of who was saying what to whom. When Savannah met, as Leroy, with Gus van Sant over a planned film adaptation, Albert had to line up that conversation with what she was saying to Van Sant on the phone as Leroy.

This became even more complicated when Savannah, as Leroy, had an affair with Argento.

My reaction to this story was the same as everyone elses, Feuerzeig said. Its a great literary hoax, and that was that. But as I started reading all these stories I thought, Theres more here; theres something were not hearing.

Albert had never told her story in full before, and might have turned down Feuerzeig if he hadnt directed The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a Sundance standout from a decade ago about another notable but tortured artist, the titular songwriter. That had helped convince her, Fuerzeig said, that he would give her fair hearing and her tale full weight. (Albert also said at the screening that she was won over by the fact that he was Jewish and he was punk rock, which, she said, meant he rejected certain societal norms.)

The movie offers some intriguing theories about why Albert, who had an exceedingly difficult childhood, was so prone to creating these personae. (As a teenager she was using other people as avatars in the real world, which is as unusual as it sounds.) But it also raises universal questions about identity and selfhood. After all, who hasnt adjusted or even created guises depending on context? Was Albert fundamentally different from the rest of us, the movie asks, or just more ambitious and public about it?

Albert did mislead a lot of people, and the sight on-screen of publishing stalwarts, like the agent Ira Silverberg, coming to terms with what she had done is pointed and wont win Albert any sympathy.

But as the director said, its also clear the story was not as simple as that of a con man -- as seen here, Albert was less a fame-hungry opportunist than a confused person and artist who, in struggling to figure out who she was, fell backward into fame.

This wasnt something she was looking for. The books stood on their own. and the fans -- including the celebrity fans -- came to her, Feuerzeig said.

Noted Albert at the screening: My motives were not the motives that were attributed to me.

(Most of her celebrity relationships, it should be said, were of the superficial sort--with two major exceptions. She formed a close relationship with Deadwood creator and resident Hollywood philosopher-poet David Milch, even working on an episode of the HBO show, as well as Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. Long before journalists began uncovering her deceptions, she spilled all her secrets to both of them; they maintained her confidence.)

Whether her books would have been as successful without the Leroy biography is a question the movie leaves open. Certainly its fair to think they fueled her success.

But Albert was also, in the end, a fiction writer. Her books, especially bestseller The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, garnered attention because of the quality of its prose. Her biography, mattered, but only partly.

Author also implicitly raises the question of whether our demands from fiction writers are unfair and contradictory. On the one hand, we want them to possess the flair for wild imagination that leads to great work, but we want that imagination to stop short in every other realm of life.

The film provides no easy answers, choosing instead to become a more complex exploration on the nature of self and story. I dont blame anyone on the receiving end of what Laura was doing, Feuerzeig said in the interview. But I dont want to judge and I dont want to moralize. I just want to show what this woman did, and what she went through.

Whatever ones conclusions, its clear that categorizing the Leroy affair as a simple huckster tale is insufficient. Im not a hoax, Im a metaphor, Albert says in the film to a skeptical reporter. She may be splitting the atom. Or she may be engaging in one more brilliant creation.

Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT
Thursday night at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, a packed crowd got its comedy ripped from the headlines.

A showcase sponsored by CBS to spotlight diversity and expose almost two-dozen diverse performers was just getting underway when the shows director, Rick Najera, as he welcomed the crowd, was interrupted by a crew member telling him that the cast had mysteriously disappeared. Are they boycotting the Oscars? Najera deadpanned. Within moments, the stage was swarmed by almost two dozen performers singing, dancing and celebrating people of color.

As the uproar raged over the absence of people of color in this years Oscar acting categories, diversity was a laughing matter at the annual sketch comedy that CBS sponsors to help find actors from nonwhite, unconventional or disadvantaged backgrounds (the brief run ended Friday). The showcase at the El Portal is timed for January because thats when the broadcast networks begin the process of casting shows for their pilot lineups.

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Organizers this year auditioned 2,500 performers who were then winnowed to a cast of 23 for the performance. Then the doors are thrown open for managers, agents and creative executives from major networks and studios to sample the wares. The humor is raw and definitely not for the easily offended and is flavored by an abundance of sexual humor and pokes at stereotypes.

In one sketch  a black version of Seinfeld  Kramer, played by the protean Lucas Hazlett, isnt just twitchy, he suffers from a serious cocaine problem, complete with a white powder ring around his nose and mouth. And the sketch concluded with a topical zinger aimed at the police: Shoot a black guy, get promoted; shoot a white guy, get fired.

The audience of movers and shakers seemed to eat it up, laughing and applauding the low-frills hourlong production, which moved at a rapid-fire pace. On a stage with no real set, the performers raced through numerous costume changes with charged comic electricity.

We probably have four- or five-hundred casting directors come, and the rest are agents and managers, development executives, said Fern Orenstein, a senior vice president of casting at CBS who serves as producer for the showcase. Everyone comes.

The showcases timing this year fell smack in the middle of the furor over the lack of diversity in the Oscar nominees, giving it an added relevance as the movie industry became embroiled in a nationwide controversy. #OscarsSoWhite became a familiar hashtag. Several celebrities, including Spike Lee and Will Smith, have said they will not attend the ceremony in protest, and pressure mounted on host Chris Rock to back out of the job. Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, last week promised to double academy membership of women and minorities by 2020.

Damian Gomez and Katie Malia perform at the CBS diversity showcase. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

Interviewed minutes before the curtain went up, Najera, a noted Latino playwright and performer, said the showcase has been successful because it takes a comprehensive approach. Its a diverse team behind the show as well as the people in front, he said. Thats the difference.

Indeed, the organizers spend a lot of time working with minority writers as well, developing hundreds of sketches to find the two dozen or so that make the final cut.

Thursdays show was a mix of the topical and the evergreen. But the sketches that drew the biggest laughs often had the newsy punch lines.

One performer, Ego Nwodim, earned plenty of applause for her turn as a black woman who declaimed that, Black Lives Matter movement notwithstanding, the no-good life of her neglectful black boyfriend actually doesnt matter. (An added punch line was that her smooth-talking player boyfriend was played by a white actor, Brett Maline.)

The opera Carmen was redone with the heroine harassed by men in hard hats and work vests who sang a refrain asking why she didnt smile at their offensive remarks. And Peter Pan was caught off guard when one of his child followers expresses an earnest desire for a wall to keep out Mexicans and squashes Tinker Bell because she might be an immigrant.

Trump 2016, the children chirped in unison.

Television programming has not faced such a polarizing national moment a la #OscarsSoWhite  yet. But activists have complained for years about poor representation of nonwhites in TV programs, and experts have said that despite years of work, minorities remain underrepresented in virtually all facets of the industry.

Blair Beeken, left, Kaitlyn Tanimoto and Brett Maline perform at the CBS diversity showcase. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

Some believe that outreach efforts like the diversity showcase are one of the best tools the industry has to address the issue. CBS is not the only network to use showcases as a diversity tool; NBC and ABC have discovered talent through similar means. Past shows have helped launch the careers of Justin Hires of CBS upcoming Rush Hour, Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live and Randall Park of ABCs Fresh Off the Boat.

Casting directors have gotten the message. After the show wrapped, the lobby of the El Portal was so crowded that attendees and cast members stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a packed-to-capacity reception, where additional networking was taking place, assuming anyone could actually be heard above the din.

But this years show has in fact already achieved impressive results. CBS sitcom Two Broke Girls has cast about a half-dozen of the performers who were onstage last week, according to casting director Julie Ashton.

I constantly need to find funny, new, fresh people since we have already used hundreds if not thousands of actors for the show, Ashton said. And because its so important to Michael Patrick King, our shows creator, to represent the diversity that exists in Brooklyn, it is very organic to cast a lot of these people.

So for me to see all these wonderfully diverse, funny people in less than 90 minutes, Fern is doing me a huge favor by giving me comedy gold in what would have taken me hours and hours of pre-reads to find, Ashton added.

They want to find the best diverse cast they can to show Hollywood that diversity is needed, its a good thing, cast member Maline, who trained with the Groundlings comedy troupe and has scoliosis, said backstage just before the curtain. Its missing, and we need more of it.

Londale Theus Jr., who played the black Seinfeld in the aforementioned sketch, agreed: Im glad I got to be part of this, because I feel like Im part of the future that will change things.

There needs to be change, Maline said. And to be in a show in a time like this is amazing.

Twitter: @scottcollinsLAT


You know nothing, Thomas Barrow.

Downton Abbey gets a blast from the past when Mrs. Harding, nee Gwen, returns more than a decade after leaving her job as a maid to fight with the free folk beyond the wall -- wait, sorry, wrong show -- to pursue a career as a secretary.

The fact that barely anyone upstairs recognizes Gwen, even though she worked at the house for several years, is eye-opening, as is her reluctance to reveal her ties to Downton. Its not that Gwen is shifty, as Thomas would like everyone to think, but rather that its super-duper awkward.

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After leaving service, Gwen moved up the ranks, married well and is now receiving invitations to dine in great homes, rather than clean them. But, one suspects, theres a part of her that probably feels out of place, which is why she doesnt immediately announce herself. Leave it to Thomas to sense that insecurity, and attack like a shark smelling blood in the water. But his malicious plan backfires when Gwen explains how she owes everything to the late Lady Sybil, turning what could have been a humiliating moment into a bittersweet memorial for everyones favorite harem pant-wearing suffragette. So there, Thomas!

Gwens upwardly mobile trajectory does more than just annoy Thomas, whos temporarily serving as butler in Carsons absence. It becomes yet another way for Downton Abbey to explore the central questions of this final season, during which everyone above and below stairs alike is contemplating his or her future prospects in a rapidly changing society.

At the same time, this episode feels weirdly defensive of the upper classes, insistent on reminding us of the Crawleys generosity at every turn. Daisy (or Madame DeFarge, as Mrs. Patmore calls her) comes perilously close to confronting Cora over Yew Tree Farm, but learns at the very last second that its going to Mr. Mason after all. Fearing that Anna is experiencing another miscarriage, Mary travels with her to London in the middle of the night and pays for her doctor to make a house call (who makes sure to mention how much this will all cost).

Even Branson, once the socialist firebrand, seems unable to resist the creature comforts of Downton. Hes also softened his political rhetoric. I dont feel the same about capitalism, he explains as clunkily as ever, noting that in America a hard-working man can go right to the top.

Gwens story notwithstanding, the idea of class mobility is still a little foreign in England. Lady Mary wryly observes how people have taken to strange occupations to make money. I once met a man who spent his time importing guinea pigs from Peru, she says in conversation with Henry Talbot, who has his own curious little hobby: cars. I cant imagine anyone making money off of those!

While hes certainly dashing, Henry, it turns out, is not exactly rolling in the dough. Nor does he have a fancy title to make up for his merely adequate financial prospects. About 40 strong men would have to drop dead for him to become an earl, says Lady Shackleton. This is cause for concern for Violet, who says that Mary needs more than a handsome smile and a hand on the gear stick.

Apparently not. Over dinner in London, the two flirt shamelessly. But if Im being honest, Im far less interested in Marys sex life than whats happening on Carson and, um, Mrs. Carsons honeymoon. It seems a bit odd given all the worry about having a real marriage that Julian Fellowes completely skipped over the honeymoon, but something -- maybe it was that parting shot of Carson looking a bit sad to leave his single room behind -- tells me the show isnt done with this story yet.

The bickering over the hospital continues, and I still cant really bring myself to care about this storyline. Violet explains that she opposes the merger, despite the likelihood it will lead to higher quality care for local patients, because she fears it will lead to less control by the people and more control by the state until the individuals own wishes count for nothing. Suddenly sounding like a Republican presidential hopeful, the dowager countess says that the point of being in a great family like the Crawleys is to protect our freedoms, presumably by maintaining local control of institutions like hospitals. Violets always been a sharp-tongued defender of the status quo, but it is a little strange to hear her being quite so political, isnt it? Lets just be glad Miss Bunting wasnt around to fight back.

Speaking of hospitals, all seems to have gone well on Annas visit to London, but I am still worried. Fellowes doesnt quite seem to know what to do with the Bateses other than completely reversing their fortunes from episode to episode with a speed and severity that is whiplash-inducing. (Anna is totally going to prison for Greens murder! But wait, someone confessed and everything is fine! Anna cant have babies! Oh wait, yes she can, if she just has this very simple procedure!)

One more thought before I go. What are we to make of Lord Granthams tummy troubles? Call it the law of Chekhovs Belly: When someone on television, especially in a period drama, complains about physical discomfort, it will always factor into the narrative later on. Make your predictions, dear readers. Does his lordship simply need some Pepto, or is something more dire in store?

Follow @MeredithBlake on Twitter.

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At a packed hearing at City Hall more than a year ago, South Los Angeles residents argued that oil drilling had caused foul smells, thunderous noise and other nuisances in their neighborhood west of USC.

They urged the city to examine whether the oil company had been violating decades-old city rules before allowing additional drilling on the Jefferson Boulevard site. And they pushed for the city to impose stricter conditions to protect neighbors, including enclosing the drilling equipment in a building, as oil producers have done elsewhere in the city.

Residents say they are still waiting for the city to take action. How does the Planning Department hear all these health and safety concerns  and then just walk away as if it never happened? asked Richard Parks, president of the nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership.

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The company now running the Jefferson Boulevard site, Freeport-McMoRan, disputed their nuisance claims. It ultimately withdrew its plans to drill one well and redrill two others, but neighborhood activists said that even if nothing new was planned, they still wanted the city to examine whether the company had been following the rules.

The demand for action at the Jefferson Boulevard site is part of a growing push for the city to step up its oversight of oil drilling.

Roughly 1,000 active oil and gas wells are scattered across the city, many near homes and schools. As L.A. politicians demand action to protect Porter Ranch residents displaced by a natural gas leak just north of the city, on county land, environmental and neighborhood activists are pressing them to reexamine their own power over oil and gas facilities within city limits.

Youth and environmental groups recently sued the city, arguing that the Planning Department had been improperly rubber-stamping drilling applications and had required fewer protections for neighbors around drilling sites in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods than those in white areas.

The lawsuit singled out the Jefferson site as an example. The facility, which sits next to apartments in a largely Latino and black stretch of South Los Angeles, is closer to homes and other sensitive sites than any other L.A. drilling facility, according to the nonprofit Community Health Councils.

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In their letter to the city last year, community groups said they wanted an annual review of city conditions on the drilling site, the installation of air and noise pollution monitoring equipment that operates around the clock, and other changes to protect neighbors.

Industry groups have been skeptical of the push for city action, stressing that a number of state, county and regional agencies also regulate drilling. Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the California Independent Petroleum Assn., said that calls to reexamine city rules for the Jefferson site were veiled attempts to stop operations that will hurt the local community through job loss and reduced revenue and royalty benefits.

The Planning Department, which has been the focus of the criticism, has downplayed its role in overseeing drilling. Department head Michael LoGrande declined to answer questions about the Jefferson site because the facility is mentioned in the recent suit against the city.

But at a Planning Commission meeting in October, LoGrande said that enforcement of any kind of site-by-site conditions is generally handled by another city department  Building and Safety  and that enforcing any conditions tied to oil drilling is more of a state issue.

Environmental and community activists counter that the city has a unique and broad role compared with other agencies that regulate specific aspects of oil production, such as air quality.

The city is the one that fundamentally allows that facility to exist where it exists, said Angela Johnson Meszaros, a staff attorney with the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice.

Johnson Meszaros and community activists point to the Los Angeles Municipal Code, which says the city can change or revoke approvals by the Planning Department for a number of reasons, including if the resulting activity jeopardizes the health or safety of neighbors, creates a public nuisance or violates local, state or federal law.

But city codes do not spell out how severe the problems must be to trigger action. Ed Renwick, an attorney who represents oil producers and royalty owners, said the city used to have a highly skilled, knowledgeable, well-respected-by-all-parties petroleum administrator to help weigh such claims, but it no longer has an expert filling that role full time.

That puts the Planning Department in a tough position because it could also be sued for interfering with the rights of the oil company, Renwick said.

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As drilling expanded across the city decades ago, Los Angeles set out site-by-site rules to protect neighbors. But city officials say L.A. has no system to proactively and regularly check whether oil companies are hewing to city conditions. Instead, it responds to complaints.

For instance, at the AllenCo Energy Inc. drilling site on 23rd Street, neighbors said they endured headaches and nosebleeds for years. After environmental officials investigating noxious odors fell ill while visiting the site, the company suspended operations. City Atty. Mike Feuer sued to prevent AllenCo from reopening the site, saying it had created a public nuisance.

But amid the uproar, the city did not scrutinize whether AllenCo was following a long list of requirements that officials had imposed before allowing drilling at the South L.A. facility.

In the AllenCo case, neighbors took their complaints to the South Coast Air Quality Management District  not to the city  which was one reason why L.A. officials didnt immediately get involved. At the Jefferson site, residents complain that they have gone to the city Planning Department, yet still not spurred action.

In addition, environmental activists complain that rather than strengthening protections at the Jefferson site, L.A. has weakened them.

When the Jefferson site was first approved in 1965, the city insisted that the company operating it should hang on to neighboring buildings as a buffer. But city officials altered that rule in 1999, allowing then-empty buildings to be sold off and used as housing. When they were sold, the deed stated that oil operations next door could cause noxious fumes, loud noise and safety hazards.

Richard Parks, president of the nonprofit Redeemer Community Partnership, and others protest at the Freeport-McMoRan oil drilling site on Jefferson Boulevard. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Across the street from the drilling site, Edna Roberts says noise routinely sends her to the back of her South Los Angeles apartment. Its noisy and dusty, Roberts, 92, said one summer afternoon last year, gesturing at the yellow walls of the facility visible from her front porch. You can dust 50 times and it doesnt do anything.

More than four years ago, oil droplets drifted from the drilling site onto one of the neighboring buildings  an episode Parks and other activists say shows L.A. should have never allowed them to be occupied. In a letter, they said Freeport-McMoRan should be required to relocate tenants out of the buffer buildings.

Freeport-McMoRan spokesman Eric Kinneberg said the buildings had already been rented out to tenants years before the change in the conditions, though he was unable to provide documentation to show that. He said the city had designated the building as a buffer to require disclosure to prospective occupants that the buildings were located next to a facility with 24-hour continuous operations.

The company has argued against changing the conditions imposed on the site, contending that any problems there have not risen to the level of a health or safety threat.

South Coast Air Quality Management District records show that the Jefferson site had two violation notices in the last two years for excessive emissions from a unit that treats water, which the company characterized as minor. The facility has not had any violations from the state Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources for a decade, according to state records.

And the company said it hadnt been cited for noise violations since it acquired the facility. Freeport-McMoRan told the Planning Department it had fixed sidewalks, replaced missing bricks and repainted building eaves to address community concerns. And it stressed that the site generated more than $2 million annually in royalties.

The push for a review, it said in a letter to the city, was simply a harassment tactic.

Residents have pointed out that the Municipal Code states that a planning official  the chief zoning administrator  has the power to impose added conditions on urban drilling sites if needed to protect neighbors. So do the rules specifically imposed on the Jefferson Boulevard site.

Your hands are not tied, West Adams resident Michael Salman wrote in a letter to the planning official who handled the recent Jefferson case, arguing that the Planning Department had both the power and responsibility to impose added conditions to protect neighbors. In fact, the opposite is true.

City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents the area around the drilling site, said he believes it is time for L.A. to reexamine the city requirements there.

The Planning Department should take a hard look, he said.

emily.alpert@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATimesEmily

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Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise across the nation, but the problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles County.

Not only does the county have the most cases, it also has some of the highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in California and the nation.

Some public health experts have blamed the heavy use of online dating apps, arguing that they lead to more casual sex among people 25 and younger, who are the most likely to be infected and also the least inclined to seek testing.

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Though the precise cause of the increase is not clear, some entrepreneurs and public health officials are trying to tackle the problem with technology.

Dozens of organizations now offer STD tests that can be ordered online and mailed to homes. The customer provides a sample, sends it back to a lab and receives results within a few days.

But as these tests become more popular, experts warn that they may not always be accurate.

We dont know  they could be doing [the testing] in their garage, they could be doing this on their kitchen table, said Dr. Charlotte Gaydos, an STD expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Gaydos was one of the first to offer these kits in 2004 to high schoolers in the Baltimore region. She collects data on how well the tests work, with the hope that a company will eventually cite the research to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell similar tests in stores. As it is now, the tests do not need to be cleared by the FDA to be sold online.

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Still, Gaydos thinks theres a public health opportunity in the tests ability to target young people, many of whom do almost everything on their smartphones.

People do want this kind of thing, she said.

STDs spread in large part because people dont get tested enough, so undiagnosed infections are unknowingly transmitted from one person to another.

As technology improves, Gaydos thinks people will eventually be able to pick up an STD test from a drugstore and get results immediately, much like a pregnancy test. But in the meantime, they need to be tested.

Several years ago, a testing campaign launched by the L.A. County Department of Public Health showed how difficult it was to get people to go to one of the countys 12 STD clinics, said project coordinator Harlan Rotblatt.

Many STDs dont have any symptoms at first, so people must first decide to get tested, and then find the time and a way to get to a clinic. Youre not being driven by a physical issue, he said, so all the logistical barriers become an extra thing on top of you dont really want to do this anyway.

So in 2009, L.A. County started offering kits online that test for chlamydia and gonorrhea for free to women under 25.

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Sexually active women under 25 are supposed to have annual screenings for the two infections, because theyre considered high risk and bear the brunt of the consequences of most STDs. Each year, at least 24,000 women become infertile because of complications of STDs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just exhorting people to get tested, as we had been doing, wasnt going to be effective for everyone, so we thought this was a really good way to take advantage of the new technology of testing, Rotblatt said.

Using Gaydos program as a model, the county began providing testing kits and have since mailed about 9,000, he said.

Across the country, the number of companies selling similar tests is growing. Last year, Planned Parenthood launched an app in California through which men and women can order chlamydia and gonorrhea tests. A paper found that in 2009 there were already 27 such services, and a Google search now yields hundreds of results.

One such start-up, based in Hollywood, began as a way to try to make sex safer, especially for people who might be using apps to find new partners.

Three years ago, Lora Ivanova and her friend Ursula Hessenflow were sitting at a coffee shop in L.A., swapping stories about dating. Soon, they started discussing the best way to broach the topic of sexual health with a new partner, Ivanova recalled.

We were just kind of thinking, Why is it so difficult to have these conversations? Ivanova said. And then it shifted very quickly to, It would be so much easier to have that conversation if people actually got tested.

Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in the U.S. had been fluctuating for several years, but all surged in 2014. A particularly staggering statistic, the 1.4 million chlamydia cases reported that year, marked the highest number of annual cases of any condition ever reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In California, the per-capita incidence of the three diseases is higher and has been climbing since 2010.

Ivanova and Hessenflow, both entrepreneurs, researched available STD testing options and decided to add one to the market.

In 2013, they launched myLAB Box, which sells test kits online for chlamydia and gonorrhea, HIV, trichomoniasis and hepatitis C. The kits  which cost $79 to $189  require a urine sample, a vaginal swab or blood from a finger prick to send to the lab.

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a Harvard Medical School professor, said the at-home testing kits are part of a convenience revolution thats sweeping the healthcare industry.

You can buy anything online all the time. Almost everything we can do instantaneously, said Mehrotra, who studies innovations in healthcare delivery. Theres an expectation in our society for things to happen more quickly.

Catering to this 24/7 demand, many pharmacies have opened in-store clinics where people can drop in for a checkup or a flu shot. Telemedicine, in which patients can video chat with a physician or a nurse, is also an option for many.

At-home testing offers similar convenience, Mehrotra said. Plus, it saves patients a conversation with their doctor about STDs that they might find embarrassing. The anonymity of this is a really important factor, he said.

But AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein worries that as these tests become more popular, it will be difficult to make sure people are getting treated once theyre diagnosed.

Already, there are problems following up with patients who order tests online. In the program run by L.A. Countys Health Department, only about half of the 9,000 kits mailed out were returned for testing, which is in line with other programs results.

Weinstein said that at the foundations testing sites, people often dont come back after their results show theyre infected.

You have to figure out a better way to ensure that people are linked to care, he said.

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com

Twitter: @skarlamangla

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Five years ago, Los Angeles County child welfare officials teamed up with criminal justice experts in the hope of stemming the flow of foster kids into the juvenile justice system.

They developed a risk assessment designed to spot youths in the child welfare system who were most likely to commit crimes and be arrested. Once a juvenile was identified as high risk, social workers and administrators with the Department of Children and Family Services were supposed to provide the youth extra counseling, mentoring and other services.

A new study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found that the effort, which ended in 2014, was inconsistently implemented, didnt get enough resources and suffered from drift after structural and leadership changes within the child welfare agency.

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Not all kids designated high risk were provided the available services, the council report said, and often information about their cases was not tracked.

Still, researchers said the program showed promise. High-risk juveniles who received extra services had a lower arrest rate six months later compared with those who did not.

Among a group of children who didnt get extra help, 9% were arrested within six months of being flagged as high risk. Seven percent were arrested in another group of youths, which included some members who received added services. In a third group, where the program was implemented more fully, none was arrested.

Preventing crossover before it happens means substantial cost savings, but also brings incalculable benefits to children, families and communities, said Kathy Park, chief executive of the crime and delinquency council, which developed the risk assessment.

Despite holes in the data and problems with the programs implementation, Park said, the project certainly demonstrates the significant potential that exists in using this type of approach.

The county child welfare agency oversees about 35,000 children. Some are in foster care, and some, whose cases are monitored after a report of abuse or neglect, live at home.

Numerous studies have pointed to the link between child abuse and delinquent behavior later on. The county does not track how many youths cross over from the child welfare system to the juvenile justice system each year. But a recent study of outcomes for youths in the juvenile probation system found that about a fifth of them were involved in the countys child welfare system at some point.

The program to flag high-risk youth was launched in late 2012 at Child and Family Services offices in Compton, Glendale, Palmdale and Lakewood.

The risk assessment tool relied on information about each juvenile that was entered by social workers into the agencys case management system. The risk factors included the number of times a childs family had been investigated on suspicion of abuse or neglect, histories of substance abuse or mental health issues and whether the youth was ever placed in a group home.

When a child was identified as high risk, the system automatically alerted case workers. At that point, officials were supposed to determine which extra services were needed and then track the childs progress.

Researchers found, however, that the process was not consistently implemented. In part, they said, the issues stemmed from already overloaded social workers who had trouble getting the information they needed from schools and other outside agencies.

The report also found that in the spring of 2013, the child welfare agency underwent significant organizational, structural, and staffing changes. Researchers said the crossover prevention programs transfer to a different bureau resulted in a period of drift.

The effort was briefly resurrected in 2014, with more thorough implementation and tracking, the report said. During that period, the program showed positive results.

Diane Iglesias, senior deputy director of children and family services, said Friday that the agency is interested in relaunching an expanded prevention program using the risk assessment tools of the previous effort.

But, she said, the department first would need to get information-sharing agreements in place with the probation department and other outside entities, train new social workers and possibly develop a dedicated and targeted unit to deal with high-risk juveniles.

One of the most important things before considering it being department-wide is ensuring success, Iglesias said.

Denise Herz, a criminal justice professor at Cal State L.A. who studies crossover youth and helped to develop the prevention project, said the county should incorporate the risk assessment tool into its regular programs and train social workers to identify the risk factors for delinquency.

What L.A. did in terms of the tool and the programming has been watched across the nation, she said.

Michael Nash, who formerly oversaw the Los Angeles juvenile court system and now heads the countys new Office of Child Protection, said county officials should keep trying.

The goal of the child welfare system is for children to grow up in safe, healthy, permanent, loving homes, he said. Anything short of that is essentially a failure. When youth  leave through the juvenile justice door, the system has failed one of its primary missions.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

Twitter: @sewella

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Investigators have fanned out across Southern California on Monday searching for three inmates who pulled an elaborate escape from the Central Mens Jail in downtown Santa Ana three days ago.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were discovered to be missing about 9 p.m. after a nightly inmate count at the Orange County Sheriffs Departments maximum security facility. Deputies are still searching for the men, who have not been seen since the escape.

 Lt. Jeff Hallock with the Orange County Sheriffs Department updates the investigation on the three inmates that escaped from the facility.

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Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock said authorities are looking throughout the region for the men, who were being held in connection with serious, violent offenses including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and torture. A $50,000 reward has been offered for any information on the mens whereabouts.

The men slipped behind beds inside the jail, then disappeared into a hole in a wall before navigating through the jails plumbing system and cutting through half-inch steel bars.

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After making it to the roof, the men rappelled down four stories using spare cloth and bedsheets and fled. The inmates, who were last seen wearing orange jumpsuits, were presumed to be armed. It is unclear whether they received help after breaking free.

The mens escape was the first getaway at the facility in nearly 30 years. Built in 1968, the concrete compound houses more than 900 inmates.

Authorities are investigating how the men planned the move and escaped undetected, but they believe a fight that occurred about 8 p.m. Friday might have been a distraction to help hide the escape.

The three escapees, Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu, and Bac Tien Duong, are dangerous criminals, Sheriff Sandra Hutchins said in a statement.

Tieu is charged with murder that was possibly gang-related. He had been held since October 2013 on $1 million bond.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Duong, who has a lengthy criminal history and multiple convictions, had been held without bail since last month in connection with attempted murder.

Duongs mother, Lu Ann Nguyen, and sister Tiffany Tieu told KABC-TV they feared for him and urged him to turn himself in to authorities.

Please just turn yourself in, his sister pleaded. Dont let this drag on.

Nayeri and three other men are accused of kidnapping and torturing a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012. They drove the owner to the desert, where they believed he had hidden money, and severed his penis, authorities said.

Nayeri fled the U.S. to his native Iran and was later arrested in Prague, Czech Republic, in November 2014 while changing flights from Iran to Spain to visit family.

Authorities asked anyone with information to call the hotline at (714) 628-7085 or to call 911 with any sightings of the men.

Staff writers Tony Barboza and Frank Shyong contributed to this report.

For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA

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Sen. Bernie Sanders defended his call for higher taxes to fund an expansion of safety net programs and Hillary Clinton downplayed concerns about her rivals surprising strength in the nomination battle as the leading Democrats made their final major pitch Monday to Iowa voters one week before the nations first presidential nominating contest.

Rather than a traditional debate format, Sanders, Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley held separate extensive question-and-answer sessions in what amounted to a final prime-time job interview before the leadoff Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.

The forum hosted by CNN, in which Sanders led off, presented the Vermont senator with some of the most pointed questions to date about the details of his broad call for a political revolution. That rallying cry has helped position him within reach of a major upset in the first voting contest of the Democratic presidential nomination fight.

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Clinton, meanwhile, presented herself as a champion for the nations struggling middle class but one with a track record of success, even working with Republicans to achieve her goals.

Answering a young voters question about the seeming lack of enthusiasm for her campaign, Clinton insisted she had been on the front lines of change throughout her career.

She also referred multiple times to a new interview in which President Obama praised his 2008 rival for the nomination as a good, smart, tough person up against a bright, shiny new alternative, Sanders, who hasnt been as fully tested.

Its a tough campaign, and it should be because its the hardest job in the world, she said. Im really having a good time.

In what has become an increasingly contentious period of the campaign, with polls showing a tight battle in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton has put her resume up against the Vermont senators in arguing she is the candidate most qualified to serve as president.

Asked about that Monday, Sanders responded that he not only had the background, but also the judgment required of the job.

He pointed to his 2002 vote against authorizing the Iraq war as an example of his good judgment. Clinton, he noted, had voted in favor of allowing President George W. Bush to go to war.

Answering questions from voters about his philosophy and proposals, Sanders largely stuck to familiar arguments against a government dominated by the billionaire class.

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What this campaign is about and what I believe in is creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top, he said, citing his standing in the polls as evidence he was touching a nerve with the country.

The town hall format required Sanders to give a more complete explanation for his plans to fund a Medicare-for-all healthcare system and free college education.

We will raise taxes; yes, we will, he said of his health plan, while insisting that most Americans would still save overall because they wouldnt pay health insurance premiums.

He also said Americans would rise up to support his call for new revenues from Wall Street to pay for his plans.

I believe that after the working families of this country bailed out Wall Street, maybe its their time to help the middle class of this country, he said.

Polls show Sanders is locked in a tight battle with Clinton. The pair offer somewhat similar visions but contrasting strategies: Clinton has pitched herself as a pragmatic progressive who will build on President Obamas efforts, while Sanders has had unexpected success with his calls for a political revolution to fight inequality.

OMalley has struggled to draw support in whats essentially become a two-candidate contest, though his supporters could tip the balance in the Iowa caucuses next Monday.

By contrast to Sanders, who received mostly gentle questions from the audience, OMalley, who spoke second, was hit by a tough challenge at the start. A young black woman asked him about his record as a tough, anti-crime mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007, which she said led to arrests of more black residents.

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

OMalley defended his record, saying that when he took office, the city was burying 300 young, poor black men each year. Black lives matter, he said, telling the story of a family whose home was firebombed by a drug dealer to retaliate against their reporting illegal activity to the police. While he was governor, his state had succeeded in reducing crime and cutting imprisonment rates at the same time, he added.

OMalley was also asked what advice he would give his supporters if they fall short.

In Iowas caucuses, a candidate must get support from 15% of voters to gain any delegates. Asked what he would tell his backers about which other candidate to support if they fail to hit the 15% level, OMalley declined.

My message to the OMalley supporters is this, he said. Hold strong at your caucus.

In recent weeks, Clinton has been struggling to blunt an unexpectedly strong showing from Sanders, who has gleefully recounted his months-long journey from fringe candidate to close competitor during his stump speeches.

Dissatisfied Democrats have gravitated toward his relentless criticism of the countrys inequality, the result of what he calls a rigged economy and the outsize influence of wealthy campaign donors.

Clinton has repeatedly tried to demonstrate her wide experience on domestic and foreign issues, saying shes the one who would be able to get results in Washington.

Shes also portrayed Sanders as a risky bet, especially when it comes to healthcare. Clinton has said it would be unwise to reopen a venomous debate over the issue in an attempt to enact the dramatic overhaul Sanders has proposed.

Clinton has faced criticisms from Sanders that shes too cozy with Wall Street, including taking speaking fees from investment banks. And Republicans have hammered her decision to use a private email server while secretary of State, saying she failed to protect classified information.

But Clinton got a boost from no less than Obama himself in an interview Monday with Politico.

She can govern and she can start here, Day One, more experienced than any non-vice president has ever been who aspires to this office, he said in the interview, which was the latest example of ways in which the White House has seemed to signal a private preference in the race.

Asked about Republican investigations of the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton insisted it would not prove a liability in the campaign.

My best defense is the truth. And that is what you will hear, now and until Im elected president, she said.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

Twitter: @chrismegerian

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Any concerns at the White House about a potentially divisive Democratic primary seemed put to rest when Vice President Joe Biden took himself out of the running last fall.

But with the first votes being cast in a week in Iowa and an eye toward preserving his own legacy, President Obama came off the sidelines Monday and inserted himself into the increasingly bitter nomination fight between his former secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the populist insurgent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Obama abandoned almost all pretense of disengagement by suggesting in an interview that Clinton is a good, smart, tough person up against a bright, shiny new alternative who remains less tested than her, a reminder about picking a nominee who can win a tough general election.

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She can govern and she can start here, Day One, more experienced than any non-vice-president has ever been who aspires to this office, he told Politico.

Obama stopped far short of expressing an endorsement or even a preference. Still, his willingness to step personally into 2016 politics reveals how deeply he believes Clinton is the candidate best suited to build on his achievements, even as the White House has had to scramble to maintain a veneer of detachment in the surprisingly competitive primary fight.

Obamas public comments reflect a long-held belief in his world that Clinton would carry on the work he started. Early last year, a flow of administration aides headed from Washington to Brooklyn, home to Clintons campaign headquarters. And four members of Obamas Cabinet and two former members have endorsed her.

The White House has insisted Obama would remain neutral during the Democratic primary, though he has signaled he wont be a bystander in 2016, most notably in his State of the Union address.

The speech came a week after Obama made an initial, inadvertent foray into the race. In an op-ed in the New York Times as he promoted his new executive actions to limit gun violence, Obama wrote that he wouldnt support any candidate who didnt agree with him on common-sense solutions to the issue -- listing firearms manufacturers virtual immunity from lawsuits, codified into law a decade ago, as an example of the industrys outsized influence in Washington.

It was precisely an issue Clinton had been hitting Sanders on for weeks. A White House official said the administration had not anticipated the way in which the essay would play in the primary until the Clinton campaign drew attention to it.

After facing repeated questions about the issue, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the White House welcomed Sanders statement that he would support undoing the 2006 law that he had supported, and rejected questions about whether he and others at the White House were trying to help Clinton.

I spent the last 90 seconds saying good things about Sen. Sanders commitment to common-sense gun laws, so I have a feeling Im more likely to hear from my friends in the Clinton campaign than my friends in the Sanders campaign right now, Earnest said at one point.

Obama aides dont deny that Clinton campaign officials have quick access to their White House counterparts, given how many are former colleagues. But both sides insist no messages or agendas are coordinated in a way that would influence the primary campaign. John Podesta, the Clinton campaign national chairman and a former senior White House advisor, said that in the case of the op-ed, for instance, they only read it when it was first posted online.

If we are going to do something that we think they need a heads-up on, if you will, Jennifer [Palmieri] or Ill call up our former colleagues and let them know we are going to do it, said Podesta, referring to himself and Palmieri, the former White House communications director who now holds the same role for Clinton. But we dont consult on our policy positions. I dont think that would be appropriate and probably they dont think that would be appropriate.

Lots of Democrats are happy to see the spirited primary back-and-forth. Its nothing but good for the party as a whole and the eventual nominee, in their view.

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

No way is there a downside to the Clinton-Sanders match, said Donna Brazile, the longtime Democratic strategist who led then-Vice President Al Gores campaign in a similar primary fight against liberal outsider Bill Bradley.

We can use a dose of passion and an ounce of fever to get voters ready to participate, she said.

As the first contests near and the polls tighten, Clinton has only seemed to draw herself closer to the president. Campaigning in Iowa on Sunday at a Baptist church, for instance, Clinton spoke at length about how she and the president forged a close bond after a difficult campaign against each other in 2008.

And I am so grateful for this opportunity that I now have to run, to be your president, to build on the progress that he has accomplished because thats really whats at stake, she said.

Clinton has met with Obama at the White House multiple times since leaving the State Department, most recently in December for an informal lunch. The White House insists that Sanders has also had at least one-on-one meeting with Obama, though aides have not identified the date or circumstances of that encounter. The time Sanders appears on the White Houses public visitor logs for a private meeting was in December 2014, before he launched his campaign.

Sanders campaign officials say they interact with the White House on occasion. They also note that Sanders met privately with Biden in recent months but dont expect the president to take a position in the race.

Hed be very comfortable supporting Bernie Sanders, spokesman Tad Devine said. If Bernie is successful and becomes the nominee, I see President Obama, the vice president as well, as being two of the leaders who can help to pull the party together behind them.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Evan Halper in Charleston, S.C., contributed to this report.

Twitter: @mikememoli and @cparsons

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Mark Lindquist needed just 66 seconds. That was all it took to persuade a judge to sentence William Grisso to prison for the next 31 years.

Grisso, 43, had a complicated love life  a wife, a fiancee and a girlfriend, the prosecutor told the court. He could have unraveled that web any number of lawful ways. Instead, he chose murder.... This was not a crime of passion, but a crime of impatience.

The same day Grisso had filed for divorce from his wife so that he could be with his girlfriend, he took his fiancee, 45-year-old Nancy Gardner, to a state park and shot her twice in the head.

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But thats not all. As Gardners brother Rick told the court during Grissos November sentencing, he even tried to frame his own son. Who would do such a thing? The son was a teenager at the time.

But thats still not all. Because this is crime and punishment in Pierce County, home of Washington states strangest lawbreaking  some hilarious, some breathtakingly stupid, some in which weirdness is trumped only by heartbreak.

This is a place where sheriffs deputies raided a meth lab and found a 4-foot alligator named Wally. Where a thirsty baby drank moms bong water and died of acute methamphetamine poisoning. Where not one but two men were accused of waterboarding children younger than 7.

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Where a high school teacher had sex with a student and was caught when she wrote an apology to the boys girlfriend. Where two men high on meth got into a chainsaw fight, and the winner sewed up the losers wounds with fishing line.

Its also where a fictional tweaker, or meth addict, with a chainsaw  a plot point based on that real crime  became the antihero of a 2007 novel. The King of Methlehem was written by none other than Lindquist, who is working on his fifth novel  working title The Queen of Cannabis  while prosecuting criminals, gathering material and facing a recall effort.

I had to tone down reality to make it believable fiction, said Lindquist, 56, Pierce Countys chief prosecutor.

He was talking about the flesh-and-blood, power-tool-wielding meth addict. But he could have been describing a wide array of crimes here in Tacoma and environs.

Sometimes its not that the crime itself is that odd. Its just that theres always a Pierce County twist.  Mark Lindquist, chief prosecutor in Pierce County, Wash.

Sometimes its not that the crime itself is that odd, Lindquist said. Its just that theres always a Pierce County twist.

Like an alligator in a meth lab.

::

Lindquists first novel, Sad Movies, was published in 1987. It drew on his time as a copy writer for a movie studio, where he worked after graduating from USC.

Another Hollywood-based novel followed in 1990. Shortly thereafter, he returned to his home state of Washington and went to law school. He eventually joined the prosecutors office and started writing about law, order and the Pacific Northwest.

The King of Methlehem was inspired by a time when the proliferation of meth labs put Pierce County in the same company as Californias Inland Empire, which federal authorities once considered the methamphetamine capital of the United States.

The 21st century had just dawned. The reality crime show Cops had seemingly set up residence in Tacoma, Seattles much-maligned blue-collar stepsister, 30 miles south and a world away. At a meth conference in 2000, then-Gov. Gary Locke described Pierce County as having the dubious distinction of being the meth capital of Washington.

Howard Schultz  Lindquists antihero, not the Starbucks owner  was more poetic: If you want to make movies, you go to Hollywood. If you want to play poker professionally, you go to Las Vegas. And if you want to be the meth king, you go to Pierce County, Washington.

Schultz desperately wanted to be the meth king, to reign over a region that Lindquist described as famous for its crime and with very good reason.

Serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy lived in Tacoma, as did serial killer and rapist Robert Yates, Lindquist wrote. Gary Leon Ridgway, the Green River Killer, is said to have buried bodies in Pierce County....

David Brame, the Tacoma police chief, murdered his wife and shot himself in a Pierce County strip mall parking lot in 2003, the prosecutor continued, weaving stranger-than-life fact into fiction that struggles to keep up with reality here. What his book did not mention was that the estranged couples children, ages 8 and 5, watched from Crystal Brames car.

Why some places are more snakebit than others is the big question. Seattle has its own crime problems, mostly clustered in its downtown core. But the Emerald City is big, affluent and sedate by comparison.

Det. Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriffs Department, blames what he calls the Pierce County crime warp.

In Pierce County, we have Western State Hospital, the biggest mental hospital in the state of Washington, Troyer said, ticking off what he considers crime warp components. We have the womens prison, Washington Corrections Center for Women.

Add to that Joint Base Lewis-McChord, he said, and halfway houses and a dumping ground for sex offenders who get convicted all over the state and end up here. Mix in the blue-collar towns, the dependents left over from years and years of military from our area. It just creates this craziness.

And dont forget about meth.

::

Historian Michael Sullivan would add the Port of Tacoma to Troyers crime warp catalog. In its early years, the port brought soldiers, sailors, loggers and dockworkers, young men with disposable income and a penchant for trouble.

The University of Washington Tacoma adjunct professor was driving past Opera Alley, once notorious for bars, bordellos and a madam named Amanda Truelove.

Sullivan wended his way past downtowns Winthrop Hotel, where crime boss Vito Catone ran a pinball machine protection racket out of the coffee shop. And the street where 9-year-old George Weyerhaeuser, son of a prominent lumberman, was kidnapped in 1935.

He pulled into what is now part of the University of Washington campus, all clipped grass, red brick and crisp purple awnings.

When Dashiell Hammett was here, he began, there was a terrible shooting.

In 1920, the nascent master of detective fiction was being treated for tuberculosis at what was then a U.S. Public Health Service hospital. His stay coincided with a burst of violence in Pierce Countys biggest city.

On Dec. 14, 1920, a man named Samuel Hamblet was walking through Tacomas sketchy warehouse district to visit a son who ran a newsstand. A young beat cop ordered him to halt. Terrified, Hamblet ran. The officer shot into the air, then into the ground.

They were supposed to be warning shots. But one ricocheted off the pavement and hit the father of six in the ribs. He fell.

The randomness of that death stayed with Hammett and ended up in a much-discussed snippet of The Maltese Falcon known as the Flitcraft Parable: A young father in Tacoma escapes death when a beam falls off a building under construction. He walks away and disappears. Sam Spade, Hammetts fictional detective, is hired to find him.

::

Kimmie Daily, 16, went missing on a hot August day in 2010. Her body was found five days later, naked, buried beneath her bicycle and a tangle of blackberry bushes in a vacant lot not far from her home. Her T-shirt and bra were tied tightly around her neck.

At the 2013 trial of the young man accused of raping and killing her, Lindquist told jurors that Tyler Savage had lured the developmentally disabled teenager to the lot, digitally raped her, strangled her and threw her away. Then he went home and played video games.

Daily was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and clubbed feet. She weighed 94 pounds, Lindquist said, and had the mental capacity of an 11-year-old.

Defense attorney Les Tolzin told a far different story, of consensual relations between a girl with an interest in sadomasochistic sex and an 18-year-old who is legally an adult but still in all sense of the word is a child.

Tolzin described the encounter as Fifty Shades of Grey gone terribly awry. Did he digitally penetrate her? Yes, Tolzin told the jury. But at that time, he believed she was already dead.

Second-degree manslaughter, max, he said.

Then it was Lindquists turn.

Fifty Shades of Grey, as you all recall, is a novel, a work of fiction, the chief prosecutor began.

Objection. Overruled.

I think that what is appropriate, Lindquist continued, is that what you heard from the defendant on the stand and what you just heard from defense counsel is also fiction.

Savage was convicted of aggravated murder and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

::

These days, Lindquist is living his own Pierce County twist.

In August, Superior Court Judge Jay Roof ruled that a recall effort can move forward against the novelist-turned-prosecutor, although he threw out 11 of the 12 charges that Lindquists opponents filed as reasons to toss him out of office.

The charge that Roof let stand alleged the abuse of authority, through vindictive prosecution and obstruction of justice, in a convoluted case involving a woman who was prosecuted twice for child sex crimes only to have all charges dismissed.

She spent more than seven months in jail and later sued the county. The case is continuing.

Lindquist insists that his office acted in the interest of protecting children, and that if his opponents gather enough signatures to put a recall on the ballot, he will easily prevail.

Of the accusations that led to the recall, the novelist said, most are just fiction.

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More Montana students are graduating from high school than ever before thanks to the unprecedented community and public school partnership, Graduation Matters Montana.

Now in 53 communities, Graduation Matters is placing an emphasis on the importance of graduating from high school and working alongside students and their families to turn that goal into a reality.

Earlier this month, my office released its 2015 Graduation and Dropout Report that boasts Montanas highest graduation rate ever recorded  86 percent. The states dropout rate has been cut by a third since 2009. We can all be proud of these statistics, I certainly am. Still, I know there is more work to be done to ensure all Montana students, no matter their zip code or family income, have the same shot at walking across the graduation stage with a diploma that has prepared them for college, careers, or military service.

Data shows that American Indian and low-income students are more likely to drop out. Young men are more likely to drop out than young women. High school seniors are more likely to dropout than freshmen. We know that for many of these students, the warning signs that lead to dropping out can be identified and addressed.

Thats where all of you come in.

Graduation Matters Montana is rooted in the idea that all Montanans benefit when our children succeed. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates Montana will see a $6 million annual boost to the states economy because 540 more students graduated in 2015 than in 2009. Those graduates will contribute an additional $10.3 million in spending on homes, and $700,000 in increased auto sales.

Students across this state often tell me that the difference between graduating and dropping out comes down to one meaningful connection with a caring adult. I was fortunate to have two parents and a community of teachers who stood beside me, encouraging me along the way. Im urging all of you to make and develop those connections so our students have a caring community willing to make a positive difference for our young people.

Together, we have made tremendous strides over the last seven years. I am certain we are on the right path, and I cant wait to see where our future graduates lead us.
In a drumbeat that gets more insistent every week, viewers in early primary states have been subjected to a ceaseless cycle of ads for presidential candidates, courtesy of the big checks donors pour into super PACs and dark money groups.

Whats less clear: How much of it is getting through to voters?

In this strange primary season, there is little relationship between money spent on ads and poll numbers for candidates, at least on the Republican side. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, the top two spenders, have spent about 10 times as much on ads as have the two polling leaders in Iowa, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas  who until recently bought far fewer ads than their rivals.

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At this early stage of the race, the negative correlation between spending and support appears to be the result of the ever-evolving media landscape and a few other factors, some unique to 2016: a celebrity front-runner, a crowded field, questionable campaign strategies and voter burnout.

Its a complete waste of money, and I think people are starting to figure that out.  Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist

Its a complete waste of money, and I think people are starting to figure that out, Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist, said of the expensive strategy of outside groups blanketing the airways with advertising at premium rates. Bennett, former campaign manager for Ben Carson, now is advising Trump.

Even at its best, television is a blunt tool for reaching the relatively small numbers of people who vote in small-state primaries. The money spent per actual voter is huge, said Joe Fuld, a Democratic campaign consultant. Its like trying to kill a fly with a sledgehammer.

Some suggest that the problem isnt the medium but the message; the ads arent working as well because they simply arent very good. No one has come out with a standout ad that generates its own buzz. And this year, ads that tout a candidates credentials or attack opponents with grainy footage arent getting through.

Some of the explanation also lies with which candidates were doing the advertising. Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Bush, raised more than $100 million before the campaign got underway and paid for a bombardment of ads in an attempt to jump-start his sputtering candidacy. After at least $60 million in spending, Bush remains stuck at about 6% in polls.

Guys like Jeb Bush are spending more than anybody and he has absolutely nothing to show for it, said Justin Holmes, a politics professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

If they dont like what youre selling, it wont matter how much you try to sell it.

Trump, Bushs antagonist, meanwhile, didnt advertise at all until recently. But he stormed to the top of the field and has stayed there while dominating news coverage and speaking directly to millions of followers on Facebook and with a Twitter feed full of insults, incendiary statements and promises to restore Americas swagger.

For Trump, riding a wave of television celebrity and media fascination, buying commercials would have been overkill. Trump has been mentioned about 195,000 times on news shows since he entered the race, according to an analysis by the Internet Archive  more than twice the coverage of Bush, the next most-mentioned GOP candidate.

Whenever someone on television mentioned a Republican candidate, 4 out of 10 times it was Trump.

Thats swamping some of the ad spending, Holmes said, explaining that Trumps free media exposure was more valuable than others paid airtime.

For candidates without Trumps news saturation, an increasingly fractured media landscape also is making it tougher for them to get their messages across.

You have more media outlets today than youve ever had, and the audience is more and more splintered, said Dominic Caristi, a professor of telecommunications at Ball State University. Its made anything less effective, whether were talking about an ad for Jeb Bush or an ad for Crest toothpaste.

A recent Gallup survey found that fewer people than ever said that watching television was their favorite way to spend an evening. They might still be looking at some kind of screen, but the days of gathering around the set to watch a network show is on the wane, said Frank Newport, Gallups editor in chief.

Now its dispersed, Newport said. With so many different kinds of screens and different ways of watching, its more complex to try to reach them.

Millions of dollars worth of ad spending blended into the background cacophony, with more than a dozen voices in the Republican field struggling to differentiate themselves and to be heard at a time when many voters simply werent paying attention.

Until January, most people in Iowa werent thinking about this, said Travis Ridout, a politics professor at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and studies campaign advertising.

I think a lot of early advertising was wasted, in terms of trying to get votes on caucus day, he said.

Burnout also might be a factor. With most states going safely Democrat or Republican, all the commercials are going to the relatively few places that are really competitive. For the last few cycles, that means the same viewers have been hammered in successive waves of political advertising.

If you turn on your TV over the last few weeks, its one ad after another after another, said Andrew Smith, a University of New Hampshire professor. It just becomes wallpaper.

Even with all the changes, most campaigns still regard broadcast as the most effective way to reach the most eyeballs. The volume of Republican presidential ads on the air for 2015 was up by nearly 45% over the same period four years ago  with outside groups, not campaigns, responsible for 81% of the spending, according to an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project, using data by Kantar Media CMAG, a media tracking firm.

Kantar is predicting about $4.4 billion spent on television this election, with most of it going to local broadcast stations.

The ads that are doing better, in a time of deep dissatisfaction with anything that smells of old-school politicking, offer a promise of authenticity and an aspirational, idealistic message, according to Ace Metrix, a company that measures ad effectiveness. Mark Bryant, a vice president at Ace, said the firm had shown each ad released this year to focus groups of 500 voters from different parties and demographic groups.

Among Republicans, Cruz seems to be getting the most bang for his bucks; three of his ads were the highest-scoring among GOP voters, Bryant said.

But the ads getting the best overall response so far are from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is seeking the Democratic nomination. He has the four highest-scoring spots and seven of the top 10. Fairness, equality, an economy that works well for all  these are themes that are resonating with Democrats and independents, Bryant said. They love his stuff.

joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

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Clinton argues her foreign policy experience is more than one vote to support Iraq war

After being needled by Bernie Sanders over her 2002 vote in favor of war with Iraq, Hillary Clinton pointed to her work as secretary of State to argue that she has a far broader range of foreign policy experiences that show how she would lead if elected president.

I have a much longer history than one vote, Clinton said during a Democratic candidates town hall at Drake University here.

Among the examples Clinton cited was helping to create the coalition that imposed sanctions on Iran that eventually led to last years landmark nuclear deal.

Its imperative you do your very best  to avoid military action, Clinton said in response to a question posed by an audience member. It should be the last resort, not the first choice.

She said the U.S. must pursue diplomacy, even if its slow, boring, hard, to continue to persist and be patient to get results.

Clinton noted that when she became the nations top diplomat, the Iranians were on a path to developing nuclear weapons. Many allies just wanted to end that program by bombing them, she said.

We got the negotiation successfully done, she said.

So we have to be leading, that means weve got to be smart about how we try to assert our power so it is constructive, makes a difference and does lead to greater peace and prosperity, Clinton said.

The three Democratic presidential candidates appeared individually onstage for about half an hour each. Sanders spoke first and hammered Clintons vote for war as a key difference in their records. Clinton has acknowledged that her vote was a mistake.
When household budgets are tight, people tend to put off expensive maintenance projects. So a leaky roof gets patched instead of replaced, or paint is left to peel for a season or two or three longer than a homeowner (not to mention the neighbors) would like.

Government agencies do the same thing. And now, after years of putting off less-crucial repairs because of insufficient funding, the National Park Service has an $11.5 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects  about four times the departments annual operating budget (and part of a $159 billion overall federal backlog). About half of the parks backlog involves roads and bridges, and the rest covers wastewater treatment plants, buildings, water systems, campgrounds and other facilities.

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FOR THE RECORD:

National Parks: A Jan. 25 editorial on deferred maintenance in national parks described Yosemite as the nations first national park. It was Yellowstone. 

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To leave these maintenance issues unresolved just sets the stage for more expensive fixes down the road.

Thats an astounding amount of work, and while its not as popular with park users as habitat restoration, its crucial for ensuring public safety and the quality of the parks themselves. Fortunately, Congresss recent budget nearly doubles the money to $116.3 million  for projects deemed by the Park Service to be critical for the well-being of visitors and workers, or for environmental restoration. The new five-year highway transportation bill also includes $1.4 billion for roads and bridges in national parks. While the increased spending is good news for the parks and those who visit them, its far less than whats required to address the need.

Later this year, the National Park Service will celebrate its centennial, which marks more of a bureaucratic benchmark than a true birthday, since Yosemite was designated the worlds first national park in 1872. By early 1916, the nation had 14 national parks, 21 national monuments and two protected reservations at Hot Springs, Arkansas, as well as the Casa Grande ruins in Arizona. But the parks had no central administration, which led to inconsistent policies; in August of that year, the National Park Service was founded.

Hoping to capitalize on the centennial spotlight, the Obama administration has asked Congress to allocate $900 million more over three years to reduce the parks deferred maintenance backlog, and another $300 million over three years for restoration projects, making energy and water use more efficient and improving outdoor recreation facilities in parks as well as on land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and other agencies. Neither of those proposals have gained traction with Republicans because they dont include cuts to offset the new spending.

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The Park Service also wants Congress to create a new National Park Centennial Challenge Fund which would match private donations for park projects with federal money, including but not limited to deferred maintenance. The concept of a public-private partnership has bipartisan support but, not surprisingly, theres a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon on funding. The administration proposes as much as $100 million over each of three years in matching funds. A Republican counter-proposal would bump the price of a lifetime senior pass from $10 to $80, the same price as a regular annual parks pass, with the new revenue going to the matching fund. Republicans also want to raise money for a new National Park Endowment with a 5% lodging fee on park guests. They estimate both fees would bring in as much as $37 million a year, which they argue should be the limit of the governments contribution.

Thats quite a divide. But to leave these maintenance issues unresolved just sets the stage for more expensive fixes down the road. The backlog includes more than $500 million at Yosemite alone, some $100 million of which is considered critical (Californias national parks account for a total of $1.7 billion in deferred maintenance). While nonprofit conservancy groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on restoration, preservation, wildlife management and similar projects in national parks, they generally dont address infrastructure issues.

We hope we arent misplacing our trust in the ability of Republicans and Democrats to compromise on this issue. Even in Washington, the city of eternal discord, there ought to be room for shared vision, and shared commitment, for a national park system that author Wallace Stegner once described as the best idea we ever had.

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In the small town of Newtok, Alaska, a Yupik village of about 350 people, children once played on endless fields of frozen permafrost. Now, they splash in salt water pools and teeter on boardwalks as the permafrost below thaws and the Ninglick River chips away at the community. Soon even the boards will be swallowed by the rising tides.

In 2017, it is projected that the highest point in Newtok  the school building  will be underwater. For these Alaskans, climate change is not just a global temperature trend; it is happening under their feet. Shoreline erosion is forcing residents to abandon their community as rising water inundates the lives they once lived. Twenty years ago, the signs were already in place and Newtok made the difficult decision to relocate. Since then, it has been slowly rebuilding its school, homes, and lives inland to escape the ever-encroaching waters.

Newtok residents will be among our countrys first climate refugees  but not our last.

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Along Americas most fragile shorelines, [thousands] will embark on a great migration inland as their homes disappear beneath the waters surface.

In the decades to come, thousands more from along Americas most fragile shorelines will embark on a great migration inland as their homes disappear beneath the waters surface. Over the last 10 years, the Isle de Jean Charles community in Louisiana has lost two-thirds of its residents to dislocation. In the Chesapeake Bay, Tangier Islands shoreline recedes by about 14 feet a year. On Washingtons Olympic Peninsula, the Quinault Indian Nation relies on a 2,000-foot-long sea wall for protection until it can complete its move uphill.

For them and the residents of dozens of other American towns and ultimately cities, the question is no longer what will be lost to climate change, but what will be saved.

Over the last seven years, President Obama has built a legacy of action on climate change. He negotiated a bilateral agreement with China to reduce greenhouse emissions, lowered tariffs on clean technologies to encourage their spread, and set new rules to cut carbon at home with the Clean Power Plan. With the climate change agreement in Paris successfully negotiated in December, he is set to use his final year in office to continue his commitment to reduce Americas greenhouse gas emissions, to try to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources, as he said in his State of the Union speech.

While it is essential to mitigate the sources of carbon in the United States, it will not help citizens on the front lines of climate change right now. In order to alleviate the most extreme consequences of a shifting climate, the president must give equal attention to helping communities adapt to a rapidly changing homeland.

As they stand today, federal programs for disaster assistance are limited and mostly unavailable to towns that require climate-induced relocation. Relief programs focus on sudden natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, and on rebuilding in place, not on financially supporting the relocation of towns facing gradual inundation.

Because of this, coastal communities across the country must rely on ad hoc federal and state grants, and attempt to rebuild and relocate in bits and pieces, in the hope that the work will be done before an emergency evacuation is needed.

Some steps have been taken to provide support adaptation specific support, but they fall short of any real impact. In September 2015 during the first presidential visit to the Arctic, Obama pledged $2 million to help with voluntary climate-induced relocation efforts in Alaska. This covers less than 2% of the cost to relocate one town, estimated at $100 to $200 million.

In Alaska alone, climate change flooding and shoreline erosion already affects more than 180 villages, 31 of which are in imminent danger of becoming uninhabitable.

To truly make a lasting climate change legacy, Obama must take seriously the issue of climate relocation. This means creating a legal and financial structure that can adequately respond to communities in need.

The first step is simple: Convene local, state, and federal stakeholders to draft a framework for relocating all climate refugees within the United States. The difficulty will be in the details, especially determining the source of the financial resources that will be required. The debate over who will fund relocation and which agencies will lend technical assistance will be intense. But those negotiations must begin in order to protect the lives of our most vulnerable citizens.

In September during his visit to Alaska, Obama told the country, Climate change is no longer some far-off problem. It is happening here. It is happening now. He must recognize American climate refugees today and use his last year in office to inaugurate the process of saving them from Americas eroding edges.

Victoria Herrmann is director of the Arctic Institute. In 2016 she is traveling across America for a National Geographic funded book on climate change stories, Americas Eroding Edges.

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In her first days on the job, L.A. Unifieds new Superintendent Michelle King suggested that single-sex education might attract more families to the district and improve student achievement. She wouldnt be the first district leader to vest hope  not to mention public funds  in all-boys and all-girls schools. But LAUSD should be wary of segregating its students by sex.

The notion of boys and girls schools conjures rosy images of elite private institutions, but the history of single-sex education in the United States is rife with misguided prejudice. In the 1870s, retired Harvard professor Edward H. Clarke ignited popular interest in single-sex education  by arguing that exposing adolescent girls to the rigors of a standard education would cause their reproductive organs to wither. In the 1950s, after racial segregation was declared unconstitutional, sex-segregated public schools were created across the South to keep boys and girls of different racial backgrounds apart.

Yes, there are some terrific boys-only and girls-only public schools out there. But are they great schools because they are single-sex?

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Today, in a major reversal, single-sex education has found political champions among supporters of gender equality and those who believe that black and Latino boys in particular will benefit from being educated apart from their female peers. In 2001, then-Sen. Hilary Clinton co-sponsored a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that provided federal funds to fledgling single-sex public schools, spurring local school districts across the country to experiment with sex segregation.

A few years later, however, a government-commissioned study noted a lack evidence proving that single-sex education improved student performance. The Bush administration decided to press forward anyway, and in 2006 issued guidelines signaling it wouldnt go after single-sex public schools for violating laws against sex discrimination in education. Today, there are nearly 80 single-sex public schools in the U.S., up from just a handful three decades ago. Hundreds more schools separate boys and girls during academic instruction, though the campuses are technically coed.

So, hows it going?

Supporters point to a few carefully chosen examples to prove single-sex education raises test scores and boosts students confidence. But the larger story is the overwhelming number of single-sex public school programs that havent produced any positive results. In 2014, researchers Erin Pahlke, Janet Shibley Hyde, and Carlie M. Allison published a meta-analysis of existing studies on single-sex instruction. Their exhaustive review found no significant advantage, for boys or girls, over coeducation.

Yes, there are some terrific boys-only and girls-only public schools out there. But are they great schools because they are single-sex? The evidence suggests not. Research shows that successful schools do certain things  such as creating strong mentoring relationships and keeping class sizes to a manageable level  that benefit students whether boys and girls learn together or apart.

Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that single-sex education can do real harm by perpetuating limiting gender stereotypes. In single-sex schools across the country, girls classrooms are decorated in pastels while boys are surrounded by bold colors; girls are assigned to read romantic fiction, while boys are given non-fiction books; boys are subjected to frequent drills and timed tests, while girls are assigned group work and non-competitive activities  and on and on.

These gender-sensitive teaching methods sometimes are dressed up in the legitimating jargon of neuroscience, but the popular notion that boys and girls are hard-wired to learn differently rests on gross generalizations about sex differences in the brain. Today, much of the so-called science of sex difference has been debunked, but that hasnt kept public schools from modeling programs on bogus theories. As a result, boys are being deprived of the opportunity to develop crucial social skills, such as working collaboratively and thinking creatively, while girls are being denied the opportunity to build test-taking skills and learn how to succeed under pressure.

Past mistakes dont prove that single-sex schools can never work in public education in the future. But unless LAUSD takes a critical look at the facts and research on single-sex education, it hardly can be expected to do any better moving forward.

Juliet A. Williams is a professor in the UCLA Department of Gender Studies, and the author of the forthcoming The Separation Solution: Single-Sex Public Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality.

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Block retiring: Democrats avoid intraparty battle

State Sen. Marty Block, left, consults with Rep. Alan Lowenthal during a legislative hearing. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

State Sen. Marty Block of San Diego surprised his colleagues by announcing Thursday that he would not seek reelection, sparing the Democratic Party a contentious battle that started brewing last fall when Toni Atkins, the state Assembly speaker, announced that she would run for his seat.

Blocks Senate floor announcement came shortly after the California Nurses Assn. endorsed Atkins in the race to represent the 39th Senate District.

Block said he decided not to run for re-election this year to avoid unnecessary intraparty fighting that would use up resources better put into competitive races against Republicans.

In an interview with the Times, Block said he reached the decision after he and Atkins squared off in three debates last week in San Diego.

While we were debating, it became infinitely clear that we both believe in the same things, we both have the same progressive agenda, Block said. It just made it seem much smarter that we could do a much better job of moving ahead our agendas by working together than fighting.

Block, 65, said he has no interest in another elected office. But given he is a former professor and dean at San Diego State University, he would definitely be interested in that field, possibly as an appointment as a college chancellor.

Blocks decision to back out was praised by California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton. Avoiding expensive endorsement battles when we have two highly qualified and progressive candidates in the race helps all Democrats win on Election Day, Burton said.

The senator surprised some colleagues with his announcement.

Ive decided instead to pursue other opportunities, Block said on the floor Thursday morning. I have greatly enjoyed every moment on the Senate floor and before that the Assembly. Having said that, change is always a pretty good thing and I am looking forward to what lies ahead.

Atkins decided against running against Block in 2012 and said this bid came because he had indicated he would serve only one term.

Atkins had recently won some big endorsements from figures including Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who called her a trailblazer and a leader who is committed to greater community participation in our government.

Block was elected to the Assembly in 2008 before winning the Senate seat in 2012.

Atkins, in an interview with the Times, said the race against a fellow Democrat could be trying.

When you both want to serve, you both feel like you have a lot to give, and yet you are really similar in a lot of respects...[it was] difficult on both of us personally, she said.

With the prospects of a bruising rivalry behind her, she said there was still much to focus on--both in the Capitol and securing a win in the Democratic-leaning seat in November.

The plate was full before. The plate continues to be full, she said.

This post has been updated with remarks from Atkins. Melanie Mason contributed to this report.
Ted Cruz was 31 and working in the George W. Bush administration, yet he felt his career had flat-lined. The Ivy Leaguer with the superstar pedigree and no shortage of confidence had figured hed be a top presidential advisor by then, but by his own later admission, he had alienated too many colleagues.

Thats when Cruz got a call that would return him to Texas for a career reset. Over the next five years, he turned the relatively obscure position of state solicitor general into a political launchpad so powerful that today, at 46, he is a senator and has become Donald Trumps main rival for the GOP presidential nomination.

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During his tenure as Texas chief appeals lawyer, from 2003 through 2008, Cruz demonstrated the qualities that have made him loved and loathed on the national stage. He showed how to distill complex legal issues in a way that attracted public attention -- and often won cases. He drew hard ideological lines that pushed the limits of conservatism and foreshadowed his own partys turn to the right. He showed drive, creativity and entrepreneurial energy.

He also displayed an ego and talent for self-promotion that expanded the influence of his office even as it drew resentment from some colleagues and subordinates, who say he was petty and inflated his role as he lusted for the cameras.

Cruz appeared nine times before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning praise for his legal skills. Assessments of his interpersonal skills are more varied. Some who worked closely with him liked Cruz and considered him a mentor. Other former attorneys in his office offered harsher accounts, calling Cruz an arrogant and vindictive boss who never hid the belief that he was the smartest person in the room. Most were unwilling to speak on the record, citing fears of retribution.

Critics pointed to Cruzs propensity for putting his cowboy boots on their desks, forcing them to stare at his heels instead of his face as they talked. He reserved a prime office for himself on the seventh floor, where his subordinates worked, but kept a primary office with fellow executives on the eighth, they said. They disputed his campaign claim of having authored more than 80 Supreme Court briefs, saying he left the unglamorous legal writing to others.

Cruzs campaign spokesman, Rick Tyler, called questions about who authored briefs a silly point, noting that judicial opinions are also often drafted by clerks.

Cruz was lead counsel so he was responsible for the briefs and he outlined the strategy and how they were written and edited and signed off on them, Tyler said in an email.

In large private firms and government agencies, the top attorney typically leaves legal writing to subordinates, editing and managing, not drafting. Usually, however, such executives publicly frame their role as an overseer, rather than claiming authorship.

Tyler did not challenge the specifics of other criticisms aimed at Cruz, but attributed them to the very high standards he set for the office.

That challenges everyone around him to rise to the occasion, Tyler said. Candidly, some people dont like that. Some people prefer a 9-5 job.

One point beyond dispute is the latitude Cruz had to shape the job. Cruz has said several times that his boss, the man who appointed him, then-state Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, gave him an amazing mandate to look across the country to defend conservative principles, even in cases far from Texas.

The office had been created only a few years earlier, part of a trend in which state attorneys general sought to take more active roles in influencing the Supreme Court by creating specialized teams of appeals lawyers. Cruzs office, however, was notable for its aggressive approach of mining appeals courts across the country in search of hot cases in which they could file so-called friend of the court briefs.

We ended up year after year arguing some of the biggest cases in the country, Cruz told the Texas Tribune during his 2012 Senate campaign. He made, he said, a concerted effort to seek out and lead conservative fights.

Unlike many state solicitors, who hold ambition in the legal world, Cruz was squarely focused on a career in politics.

The state attorney general is usually the one seeking political office, said Neal Devins, a professor at the College of William & Mary who has studied state attorneys general and state solicitors. The theory of the creation of these [solicitors] offices is that you want to have really good lawyers with lawyers sensibility as opposed to politicians.

James C. Ho, a friend of Cruzs who followed him in the job, said, however, that the task was perfectly suited to the man.

He has known what his beliefs are and his desire to further them in public service his entire life, Ho said.

Cruz built a legal record that would touch almost every conservative hot button: defending the public display of the Ten Commandments and the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting to expand the death penalty to people who rape children, defending the states Republican-drawn congressional districts. In some cases, such as a gun control dispute from Washington, D.C., Texas had little or no direct interest.

Other issues in which the state did have direct interest pushed the envelope further, including his attempt to pull back a settlement the state had made with a group of mothers to improve the Medicaid program for children, and his opposition to releasing a man who, after a sentencing error, had served six years for stealing a calculator from a Wal-Mart store.

Youve conceded that this sentence is unlawful? Justice Anthony M. Kennedy demanded when Cruz argued the case. Well, then why are you here? Is there some rule that you cant confess error in your state? Ultimately, the man was released, although the justices sidestepped the sentencing issue.

In some other cases, Cruz suffered clear-cut losses -- including on Medicaid and the death penalty for rapists of children. But he was often in the thick of major debates.

Those who argued with and against him say he could show a surprising pragmatism, when it helped his case.

I didnt have the perception that he was on an ideological crusade, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal who is dean of the law school at UC Irvine. Chemerinsky took the other side on the Ten Commandments case, the one Supreme Court case in which Cruz took the second chair and watched Abbott deliver arguments.

Ernest A. Young, a Duke University law professor who taught in Texas during Cruzs tenure and worked with him, said he was often categorical in his judgments, but not because he failed to understand the other sides arguments.

Some people dont do nuance because they dont understand the complexity of the way the world works, he said. Some people dont take nuanced positions because they really just sincerely believe in a more categorical approach. And I think thats Ted, in politics at least. But he does understand.

Cruzs most important case was also his most complex: a fight against Bush, his former boss, that involved the rights of foreign nationals, international treaties and the death penalty.

The Bush administration took the side of a Mexican citizen sentenced to death for two rapes and murders in Houston. The convict, Jose Medellin, argued that he deserved a new trial because he had not been given a chance to contact the Mexican Consulate after his arrest -- a right guaranteed by a treaty the U.S. had ratified during the Nixon administration.

After Mexico won a case against the U.S. in the World Court for violating the treaty in the cases of Medellin and dozens of other defendants, the Bush administration tried to order Texas to reopen his case. The state would not give in and the issue went to the Supreme Court.

This is a very curious assertion of presidential power, Cruz argued to the justices.

Texas won the case, 6-3, in a decision saying the treaty could not be enforced against domestic law. It was a huge legal victory but did not seem like an easy sell on a campaign trail, given its complexity. Abbott, when he ran for governor in 2014, chose not to highlight it.

Cruz framed it as a victory for U.S. sovereignty over the World Court.

Even amid such victories, however, Cruz left little doubt that he had other goals in mind. Midway through his tenure, he was featured in a front-page profile in the Austin American-Statesman, with a headline proclaiming his star is rising.

In it, Cruz suggested that there were ways other than legal briefs to influence the world.

Im a strong believer in judicial restraint, he said. If you want to change public policy, run for president.

Staff writer David Savage contributed to this report.

Twitter: @noahbierman

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Julian Castro, a rising star in the Democratic Party, was stumping for Hillary Clinton in southeastern Iowa on Sunday when a union leader extended a hand and a question in Spanish.

I heard Clinton might pick you for vice president, said Jose Pulido, who represents workers at a hog slaughterhouse that has helped draw thousands of Latinos to this small city straddling the icy Des Moines River.

Castro flashed a toothy smile. Quien sabe, he answered, shaking his head. Who knows?

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As the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio, Castros ethnic roots, up-from-the-bootstraps story and quick ascent in politics have earned him comparisons to President Obama. He is frequently mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick for Clinton, should she prevail as her partys nominee.

In something of a test of Castros campaigning abilities, he barnstormed Iowa in the final days leading up to the states Feb. 1 caucus. He visited several small cities with growing Latino populations and warned voters about the dire consequences of a Clinton loss and the possible return of the White House to Republican control.

We absolutely cant afford to hand over the presidency to the Republican Party, Castro told a crowd in Fairfield, his second stop of the day. Can you imagine what would happen if you have Speaker [Paul] Ryan, Senate Majority Leader [Mitch] McConnell and President Trump?

Weve seen what theyve done when theyve had that kind of power, he added, hinting at the kind of attack-dog sensibility that presidential candidates often rely on in a running mate.

In recent months, several leading Latino leaders, including former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, have called on Clinton to add Castro to her hypothetical ticket. The national Hispanic Chamber of Commerce issued a formal endorsement of Castro for vice president Saturday, even though it hasnt yet endorsed a candidate for president.

Pollsters and pundits agree that any presidential ticket could benefit from a qualified Latino to help win votes from the nations fastest-growing demographic. And at 41, Castro would provide a generational contrast to 68-year-old Clinton.

Here in Iowa, a rapidly expanding Latino electorate mirrors the United States as a whole, where a record 27.3 million Latinos will be eligible to vote this year. The states Latino population grew 110% between 2000 and 2014, and Latinos constitute 10% or more of eligible voters in 11 of the 99 counties here.

The rise of Latinos in U.S. society is also reflected in Castros story, which he repeated often in Iowa.

Castro and his identical twin brother, Joaquin, were raised in San Antonio by their Chicana activist mother and Mexican immigrant grandmother. They graduated together from Stanford University and Harvard Law School before launching parallel political careers.

Joaquin was elected to the Texas Legislature and is now a Democratic member of Congress representing part of San Antonio.

Julian, who was born one minute earlier and jokes that he is older  and wiser  than his brother, was elected at age 26 to the San Antonio City Council, becoming its youngest-ever member. He went on to win three terms as mayor, where a key initiative was the passage of a sales tax increase to help pay for an expansion of prekindergarten, part of a wave of similar proposals among Democrats around the country in recent years.

In 2014, President Obama offered Castro a position in his Cabinet. Castros short tenure as Housing secretary will end when Obama leaves office in a year.

Castro says he decided to endorse Clinton in part because she has the deepest ties and the longest track record of working for the Latino community, citing her work registering Latino voters in south Texas in the 1970s.

Clinton has said she would look hard at Castro for any position in her campaign or administration. Other names floated as possible Clinton vice presidential picks include Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Both campaigned in Iowa for Clinton over the weekend as well.

For his part, Castro has become practiced at ducking questions about the vice presidency, saying he is focused on winning her the nomination.

And a lot of work lies ahead. While Clinton won a coveted endorsement from the Des Moines Register on Saturday, polls show Sen. Bernie Sanders slightly ahead in what is shaping up as a closely fought battle in this state.

Sanders and third-place Democratic contender Martin OMalley are challenging Clinton for the Latino vote, with the Sanders team opening a campaign office in one of Ottumwas many empty storefronts, and OMalley visiting the city Sunday evening.

Julian Castro greets Sister Irene Munoz, a Hillary Clinton volunteer, at a campaign event in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Sunday. (Kate Linthicum / Los Angeles Times)

The Clinton campaigns Latino outreach efforts here are led by Irene Munoz, a Roman Catholic nun who has watched the town change in recent years as Latinos have moved in to take low-paying jobs at the pork processing plant on the southern edge of town.

Munoz, who wore a gold cross around her neck and a Clinton sticker on her sweater, leads a weekly Spanish phone bank for Clinton and asks Latinos to sign bilingual pledge cards committing to caucus for her. She said she expects record Latino turnout at the precincts in her area but said some voters are wary of caucusing, telling her, I dont speak much English. How will they understand me?

Munoz clapped excitedly when the telegenic Castro arrived at Clintons headquarters, posing with him for several pictures and speaking to him in Spanish about his familys roots.

Oh, hes handsome, isnt he, a friend of hers cooed.

Castros campaign trail duties have not been limited to Latinos. During a stop in Fairfield, a liberal city known for its large number of adherents to transcendental meditation, he told a mostly white crowd that Clinton is the only candidate with the vision and the energy to keep the country safe and to create opportunity for advancement for all.

Holly Moore, a Clinton volunteer in Fairfield, came away impressed. She said she liked Castros politics, especially his work to expand education opportunities for young children.

His ethnicity, she said, is a nice bonus. I dont think anybody can be president anymore without a diverse ticket, she said.

For more campaign coverage, follow @katelinthicum

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Elaine Harmon was one of about 1,000 female pilots who served stateside during World War II to free up male pilots for combat. After the war, she fought to persuade Congress to recognize the women's service and grant them veteran status and benefits.

Harmon died last year at 95. Her ashes are sitting in her daughter Terry's closet in Silver Spring, Md., because the Army has said she and other Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, aren't eligible to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

"She would feel like, 'Really, we need to fight this battle again?'" said her granddaughter, Tiffany Miller of Walnut Creek. "It's 2016 and we're still having to prove that we are real veterans?"

Arlington is run by the Army. Other veterans' cemeteries are run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Army says that even though the WASP have legal status as veterans, that alone doesn't make them eligible for burial in the nation's best-known veterans' cemetery, which is quickly filling up.

Miller, 37, says she won't give up.

"It was her last wish," Miller said. "She wouldn't have let this drop. She would have seen this through to the end."

The remains of 17 of Harmon's fellow WASP are at Arlington. But in March 2015, about a month before Harmon died, Army Secretary John McHugh issued a memo stating that a previous cemetery administrator had misread federal law and that the female pilots don't meet the requirements to be buried there.

Now, a Change.org petition filed by the Harmon family has collected more than 54,000 signatures, and legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to overturn the Army decision and allow Harmon's remains to be inurned -- stored in an urn in a crypt-- at Arlington.

Eleven California members have signed on to a bill sponsored by Reps. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Susan Davis (D-San Diego) that would allow WASP to be inurned at Arlington. Earlier this month, a group of House members from both parties discussed the pilots and Arlington on the House floor for nearly 40 minutes.

In all, 97 House members have co-sponsored the bill. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) sponsored similar legislation in the Senate.

What happened?

With thousands of male pilots fighting overseas in World War II, 1,074 female pilots joined the short-lived WASP program. They flew more than 60 million miles domestically, test-flew and repaired military aircraft and ferried male officers around the country. They even towed targets during live-ammunition training. Thirty-eight died while serving.

Congress granted them military and veteran status in 1977. In 1984, they each received a World War II Victory Medal and in 2010, the pilots were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal (an effort also sponsored by Davis).

In 2002, Arlington's administrator said that WASP were eligible for full military honors when being buried at Arlington, and that they'd been eligible for burial there since 1977. In March, McHugh rescinded the decision in a memo, saying that the 1977 law declaring them to be "active duty designees" applied only to programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Since the Army, not the VA, runs Arlington, WASP aren't eligible unless the Army says so, he said in the memo.

They are eligible for burial in cemeteries managed by the VA.

Davis, who called WASP the "spunkiest people I've ever met," said when they were granted veteran status in the 1970s, it was understood to include all the benefits of being a veteran, including the chance for a spot in Arlington.

"We felt like that promise needed to be respected," Davis said. "We have a special place in our hearts for Arlington Cemetery and for the service of the men and women who fought for their country. We all feel that they have earned these honors."

The Army maintains that the female pilots were never eligible for burial at Arlington, cemetery spokeswoman Jennifer Lynch said.

Of the 17 WASP interred or inurned at Arlington, 15 would have been eligible for other reasons: Some were buried with a spouse or served the country in other ways after their WASP duty.

The two considered "otherwise ineligible" will not be moved, because "that was no fault of theirs," Lynch said.

At the current burial rate of 160 people a week, space in Arlington is expected to be exhausted by mid-2030, Lynch said. There are 50,600 burial plots and 35,548 inurnment spaces left.

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"We're looking at the cemetery as stewards," Lynch said. "We're running out of space." She said while WASP service was commendable, "it does not itself reach the level of inurnment at Arlington National Cemetery."

Harmon's family takes issue with the space argument. About 100 of the pilots are thought to still be alive and not all would want to be buried there, Miller said.

"The WASP are not going to fill up Arlington by themselves," she said.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) said if the issue is space, then more space should be found for the cemetery, but the military shouldn't "pick winners and losers" in deciding who deserves to be buried at Arlington.

"They were brave pilots that served our country proudly," Denham said. "We're not going to take no for an answer. These families deserve to have these women buried in Arlington, and we're not going to stop until that happens."

Denham, whose grandparents met in the Army Air Corps, spoke on the House floor about the bill just hours before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Jan. 12.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) said it isn't right for the federal government to extend inurnment in the country's best-known military cemetery to a group of veterans and then take it away.

"It's better if Congress just makes a decision," she said. "We should set it if it's going to be set by one director and then changed by the next and then changed by the next."

Not giving up

WASP Jean Landis, 97, of El Cajon said after fighting so long for recognition, the Armys decision leaves a bitter taste.

A veteran is a veteran, Landis said. If you are a veteran, dont you have the honor and the privilege to be buried in one of our national cemeteries?

One of the first 28 pilots recruited, Landis was stationed at a manufacturing plant in Long Beach and flew P-51 Mustangs around the country.

That is the fastest, hottest most advanced fighter at the time and we were flying them, I was flying them, she said. What an airplane.

Landis said she wants to be buried with family in her hometown, but WASP should have the option of inurnment at Arlington if they want it.

Elaine Harmon was one of more than 1,000 pilots who joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. (Harmon family)

This is discrimination. Im rather bitter about it, she said. The WASP proved themselves in every capacity, but I feel we pretty much got the shaft.

Harmon, who lived in Silver Spring, Md., was proud of her WASP service, and played an active role in ensuring the women's role in the war wouldn't be forgotten, said Miller, her grandaughter. After receiving her Congressional Gold Medal, she donated it to a local aviation museum.

"She wanted to be part of the WASP legacy," Miller said. "My grandmother considered Arlington to be not just a cemetery but also a museum. She wouldn't have given up on this. Our grandmother was very tenacious."

"I don't want my mom to have to keep her mom's ashes in the closet," Miller said. "We want to make this right for my grandmother."

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of California's delegation at latimes.com/politics

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Im Christina Bellantoni, rested and ready to go as your Essential Politics host after a little vacation.

Im back stateside after eight days in South Australia, and it turns out Donald Trump is the hottest political story in the Land Down Under, too.

Just about every Aussie I met wanted to know if Trump will be Americas next president. I had conversations with expats who plan to vote and government workers who could conceivably work with our politicians in the years to come.

The locals boasted that Californias lawmakers visited late last year to observe desalination plants and study the lessons Australia learned from its own struggle with crippling drought.

But mostly the discussion in both political circles and among people following international news turned to the presidential primary season, cranking up in full with next Mondays Iowa caucuses.

People were singing  and mocking  the Trump jam, a video that went viral abroad just as it caught fire in the States.

I even got a question on the conspiracy theory of the moment, about the springtime Bill Clinton-Trump phone call before the real estate mogul jumped into the race.

There was plenty of curiosity about Bernie Sanders as well, with  surprise  more young people expressing interest in the Vermont senators chances and several Aussie Facebook groups pushing his message.

Whatever ends up happening this election season, you can bet it will be, to borrow a South Australian phrase, heaps good.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRAIL

Our team is fanned out across Iowa and tracking every moment. Follow along every day with Trail Guide.

Chris Megerian examines how Sanders and Hillary Clinton presented competing visions in the Hawkeye State over the weekend, while Michael Finnegan looked at Sen. Ted Cruzs and Trumps contrasting television strategies.

Joseph Tanfani explains why its not clear how much television advertising actually gets through to voters, despite the rapid growth of super PACs and dark-money groups that cater to wealthy donors.

Is HUD Secretary Julian Castro under consideration as a potential Clinton running mate should she be the nominee? "Quien sabes," the Democrat told a voter in Iowa over the weekend. Who knows. Kate Linthicum has more on the man getting attention on the left.

Clinton earned the Des Moines Register endorsement, along with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Sanders called for swifter federal action on a critical issue in California  the gas leak at Porter Ranch. The candidates also had their say on the potential independent candidacy of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Dont miss David Lauters detailed explainer about why the polls are all over the place.

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis had choice words about Trump during a visit to Cal State L.A. over the weekend.

"I've been around a while and Trump reminds me so much of a lot of the things that George Wallace said and did," Lewis said in an interview with Javier Panzar. "I think demagogues are pretty dangerous, really. ... We shouldn't divide people, we shouldn't separate people."

"Sometimes I feel like I am reliving part of my past. I heard it so much growing up in the South," he added. "I heard it so much during the days of the civil rights movement. As a people, I just think we could do much better."

CLINTONS CALIFORNIA CASH

Get ready for a host of Clintons to descend on California to raise money, according to invitations obtained by The Times.

Monday, Chelsea Clinton will appear at a Newport Coast fundraiser at the home of Michael and Sholeh Chegini. Then she will raise money in the evening at an event hosted by famed architect Frank Gehry and co-hosted by Maria Camacho, Elsa Collins and Michael Kives. Both events are $250 per person, or for $1,000, the donor can take a photo with the former First Daughter.

She will appear Tuesday morning at the Lantern House in Venice for a $150-per-person event hosted by Scott Mayers.

Former President Bill Clinton will be in the Bay Area on Monday, at a Hillsborough event hosted by Rep. Jackie Speier, Joe Cotchett, Nanci Nishimura and Barry Dennis. That event is $1,000 or $2,700 for a photo.

And the Democratic presidential hopeful herself will appear again in Los Angeles for a Feb. 22 evening fundraiser hosted at the home of Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Jon Vein.

The base contribution is $2,700, or people who raise $10,000 as a co-host can take a photo with Clinton. Those who raise $27,000 get to attend a private reception before the event.

STATE OF THE STATE

As Sacramento bureau chief John Myers outlined in last Thursdays newsletter, our team was all over Gov. Jerry Browns State of the State address.

Myers reports Brown was asking lawmakers to better balance the cyclical nature of the states economy, and purposely stopped short of proposing new state government projects, leaving the impression he was more interested in raising awareness than sparking action.

And the speech seemed grounded in the realization that governing is less about waving the banners of idealism than grinding through to an acceptable finish, Cathleen Decker writes.

Or if you prefer your analysis by the word, check out our annotation of the speech text.

You can always track whats happening in Sacramento and in California politics via our Essential Politics news feed.

POLITICS PODCAST: BROWN, LOBBYING, AND MORE

Myers discusses the governors State of the State and what it portends for the statehouse battles of 2016 in this weeks California Politics Podcast.

This weeks episode also examines a push for more disclosure of lobbying expenses by state regulators, and a little of what the podcast calls "side dish" talk on the U.S. Senate race and a bipartisan alliance in the suburbs east of San Francisco. A reminder: you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

-- More about the aforementioned State of the State: George Skelton writes in his Monday column that Gov. Brown's speech lacked punch. Skelton also argued earlier in the week that Clinton, and Los Angeles County supervisors, are wrong on gun control.

-- Decker focuses her Sunday column on Tom Steyer, the nation's largest individual political donor in 2014. Opponents have cast the 58-year-old-old San Francisco billionaire as the Democratic equivalent of the Koch brothers  will he run for governor in 2018?

-- Sarah Wire continues our extensive reporting on fights over drought legislation as another proposal surfaces in Washington.

-- Wire also tells the story of some 1,000 female pilots who served stateside during World War II to free up male pilots for combat, but who have been denied the ultimate veterans benefit: burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Several California members are trying to change things.

-- Find out what First Lady Michelle Obama urged the nations mayors as she addressed homelessness, and what Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin had to say during her visit to the White House.

-- Melanie Mason reports lawmakers representing the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, the heart of California's water system, have introduced a bill that would make Brown's controversial $15-billion twin tunnels project subject to statewide voter approval. She also notes some lawmakers want to allow for sales of cellphones that could be unlocked for law enforcement, setting up a battle with tech companies and privacy advocates.

-- Faced with plummeting gasoline tax revenue, state transportation officials have announced plans to cut funding for road and transit projects by $754 million over the next five years, the greatest reduction in two decades, Patrick McGreevy reports.

-- Robin Abcarian looks at the Sarah Palin-Trump endorsement and sees a pair of narcissists.

LOGISTICS

Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our 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.
In handwritten letters to hundreds of supporters and curiosity seekers, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski expressed shock over the 9/11 attacks and wrote that he preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential race.

Kaczynski also wrote to pen pals from federal prison in Colorado asking for more information about Osama bin Laden and the origins of al-Qaida. He has asked others to inform him about the rise of the Internet and social media.

The correspondence was described in a report published by Yahoo News early Monday. Yahoo News reporter Holly Bailey spent several weeks looking through Kaczynski's letters, which now fill more than 90 boxes at the University of Michigan Library.

The Labadie Collection, a special division of the library that documents the history of social protest movements, contacted him after his arrest to see if he would consider donating his writings. Kaczynski did not respond to a letter from Yahoo News asking why he has maintained the archive through the library.

Kaczynski's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto was published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995. He was arrested in April 1996 and convicted in 1998 after planting or mailing bombs that killed three people and injured more than two dozen others over several decades.

Now 73, he is imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colo. In 2010, Kaczynski engaged in a long back-and-forth with students at Huntingdon College in Alabama about the power of Facebook and how public figures like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and the late conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart used the Internet to gain influence. But he admitted he didn't know what YouTube was or what it meant to go "viral."

The papers reveal that Kaczynski remains strongly opposed to technology. Yahoo News reports that he is not allowed access to the Internet, but he still solicits email addresses from letter writers to share with others as part of his efforts to create an anti-technology movement.

The letters also show he fell in love with one of his early pen pals, Joy Richards, and they suggest Kaczynski and Richards explored the idea of getting married. Richards died of cancer in late 2006, and Yahoo reports that some of the most anguished letters in the collection deal with the pain Kaczynski felt over her illness.
Signing day, Feb. 3, when USC solidifies its 2016 recruiting class, cant come soon enough.

On Saturday, a day after Saraland, Ala., receiver Velus Jones decommitted from USC and pledged to Oklahoma, Jones changed his mind and committed, again, to the Trojans.

I have made my final decision to attend the University of Southern California and I'm ending my recruitment FIGHT ON!  Velus Jones Jr. (@VelusJr) January 23, 2016

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I have made my final decision to attend the University of Southern California and Im ending my recruitment, Jones wrote in a Tweet.

He made his first commitment to USC in April.

Friday, in a tweet that has since been deleted, Jones thanked Tennessee and USC for recruiting him, but said that he would attend Oklahoma.

The 5-foot-11, 180-pound Jones made an official visit to USC this month. He also made official trips to Oklahoma, Michigan and Tennessee.

USC has commitments from five receivers in the 2016 class.

Josh Imatorbhebhe from North Gwinnett High in Suwanee, Ga., and Michael Pittman from Westlake Village Oaks Christian have enrolled in spring semester courses.

La Puente Bishop Amats Tyler Vaughns and Trevon Sidney are expected to sign letters of intent Feb. 3.

Questions or comments about USC? Email me at LNThiry@gmail.com or tweet @lindseythiry and I will respond to select messages in a weekly USC Now mailbag.
Question: We are planning a trip to Cuba. Is there a particular bank you recommend to exchange euros?

Ricki Vancott

Los Angeles

Answer: No.

But sorry, readers. Thats not the end of this column.

In fact, it opens the door to many, many questions readers have about money in Cuba, which continues to be a hot destination.

In 2014, about 90,000 Americans visited the island nation; by the end of 2015, that number had jumped to 150,000, CBS This Morning reported last week, a 60% increase. And if travel restrictions are ultimately lifted, as many as 1.5 million people may visit, CBS reported, citing Reuters and Marriott.

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So let us state the obvious: Cuba is hot, hot, hot.

But changes to the infrastructure tourists deal with? Not, not, not. At least, not thus far.

Much has changed since President Obamas December 2014 announcement about normalizing relations with Cuba.

Normalizing is a bit of an overstatement. Yes, a U.S. Embassy has reopened after more than 50 years. Yes, travel to Cuba now requires only that it falls into one of 12 categories that make it allowable there. In Obamas recent State of the Union message, he asked Congress to reconsider the half-century embargo against Cuba.

It seems likely that politics will get in the way of travel pleasures  at least in the short term. So for now, travel to Cuba is different, beginning with the proviso that we, as travelers, must not go there to lie on the beach but to learn about the culture. Not that people to people travel, one of the 12 categories, is a bad thing. Returning home with knowledge of the place you visited, and not just a new tan line, is a win-win.

But travel to Cuba is still quirky, beginning with money. First you will need to carry cash; credit cards are not yet widely accepted.

To Vancotts question about euros, many travelers believe that youll get a better exchange rate if you convert European currency instead of U.S. dollars.

Doing so has has become quite popular, said Cecilia Utne, president and chief executive of Cross Cultural Journeys, which has been arranging trips to Cuba since 1998. Check on the exchange rate on the day that youre making the transaction and what your bank is charging, she said. If youre sitting on a wad of euros or Canadian dollars, it might be a little more beneficial.

But might is the operative word. Cuba, Utne noted, is not an inexpensive destination, and although you never want to waste money, the amount you save may be disproportionate to the effort to do so.

How much cash should you have? Unless youre planning to buy an expensive piece of art, you can do just fine with about $100 a day, said Amanda Bradshaw, trip coordinator for Distant Horizons, a Long Beach travel agency that has led scores of trips to Cuba for nearly 20 years. That should cover lunches and dinners (breakfast is usually included at your hotel) and cab fares, depending, of course, on how far afield youre going.

Dont convert all your cash, she added. Youll lose money when its time to convert it back, which youll do before you leave. Also, dont walk around with large amounts of cash. If you lose it and dont have a reserve stash, youll be up the proverbial creek, absent automated teller machines.

Cuba will continue to evolve as a travel destination, but probably not as quickly as we both fear and hope. The fear? Every corner will have a U.S. fast-food joint or a coffee purveyor. The hope? The accommodations, restaurants and other mainstays of serving tourists will improve.

One of Utnes challenges, she said, is making sure the expectations of her well-educated clientele meet the reality of todays Cuba. Its not yet a five-star experience, she noted, and she works to help her travelers understand that Cuba is a work in progress.

The progress also means that to serve the expected influx of visitors  ferry service and regular (not charter) air service by U.S. carriers is expected this year  more and sometimes better hotels and restaurants are needed.

Cuba is not ready for prime time. In an interview in Havana, Janet Moore, owner of Distant Horizons, recently painted this picture for CBS This Morning: If you came to me tonight and said, Janet, I need a hotel room tonight, Id have to say, I cant give you one.

Fifty years of isolation wont disappear in the blink of an eye. Might Cuba become Caribbean Disneyland one day? Possibly. But even the Magic Kingdom wasnt built in a day.

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com. We regret we cannot answer every inquiry.
The man suspected of killing his two nephews in Arcadia last week and fleeing to Hong Kong appeared in court in the Chinese territory Monday and said he was eager to return to the United States as soon as possible to clear his name.

American officials have initiated an extradition request for Deyun Shi, 44, who arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday on a flight from Los Angeles and was taken into police custody.

At Mondays hearing, Shi  who apparently dismissed his Hong Kong attorney and spoke for himself during the proceedings  told Chief Magistrate Clement Lee he was not running away from the United States.

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The allegations are not true. I dont plan to give a rebuttal here, but I believe Ill restore the truth in the U.S. with supporting evidence, Shi said. Thats why Id like to go back as soon as possible.

As for the flight Saturday, I came through a legitimate route in order to handle my business matters in Shenzhen, added Shi, referring to the mainland city of 18 million people a subway ride from Hong Kong.

Shi requested to be freed on bail while the extradition process moves forward. I can offer a high amount of bail money. The company jointly owned by me and my wife in the U.S. is worth $20 [million] to $30 million, Shi asserted.

Lee denied Shis request to be released on bail, noting that Shi is a citizen of mainland China with no appreciable ties to Hong Kong. Theres no special circumstance to justify bail, the judge said. And you have a high risk of absconding.

Shi is expected to appear back in court Feb. 1 to appeal the bail decision. The next hearing on the extradition proceedings is set for Feb. 11.

Anthea Li, deputy principal government counsel with Hong Kongs Department of Justice, which is responsible for handling Shis case, said the Hong Kong government so far has received only a provisional arrest document from U.S. authorities. Hong Kongs government needs a full surrender request to execute the extradition in accordance with a 1997 treaty.

Right now its still too premature for Hong Kong authorities to make any decision, she told reporters at the court. The U.S. has 60 days to submit the full request.

Shi apparently moved to Southern California in 2014 with his wife and two children. Recently, Shis wife had told him she wanted a divorce.

Shi had moved out of his familys La Canada Flintridge home but broke into the residence Thursday night and attacked his wife with a wood-cutting tool, said Lt. Eddie Hernandez of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Their 15-year-old son intervened, and Shi left.

Investigators believe Shi later drove to his wifes brothers town house in the 400 block of Fairview Avenue in Arcadia where his two nephews, aged 15 and 16, lived with their parents. Police were unsure when Shi got to the residence. The teenagers were found by their mother on Friday. The sheriffs department said both teens suffered blunt-force trauma to their torsos and were pronounced dead at the scene.

At Mondays hearing, the diminutive Shi appeared calm and wore a pressed charcoal gray suit, a black shirt and wire-framed glasses. He was flanked by a police officer and stood behind stainless steel bars.

Hong Kong is a former British territory that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and now is a semi-autonomous territory with its own legal system apart from mainland Chinas.

Most Hong Kong court cases are heard in English or Cantonese; Shi requested that his be conducted in Mandarin. When addressing the court, he spoke softly to the court interpreter, his head slightly bowed and his hands clasped.

About 10:30 a.m., an hour before the hearing began, Shis lawyer, Christopher Morley, left the courthouse. Hes going to represent himself, Morley said, without commenting further. Morleys office did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

When the hearing resumed around 12:50 p.m., after some documents were interpreted for Shi, the judge asked him: The first issue is: Whether you consent to the surrender, or not. Do you?

I consent, as soon as possible, said Shi, speaking through the court interpreter.

Later, though, Shi showed some hesitation and asked the judge some questions, including about the possibility of facing a life sentence in the United States.

If you have legal questions, you should consult a lawyer, said Lee, who also reminded Shi he could seek the assistance of a public defender.

After asking Shi to confirm his consent, Lee added: Your consent must be unconditional. Do you understand?

Yes, said Shi.

Even if Shi is willing to return to the U.S. immediately, a full surrender request is required to satisfy the 1997 extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Jonathan Close, the Interpol liaison officer with the Hong Kong police, said the documents contained in the request must be able to show the judge theres sufficient evidence to expedite him to trial.

If, and when, the [Hong Kong] chief executive signs the extradition order, U.S. Marshals can take him back in 30 days, Close said.

Barry Greenhalgh, an Encino attorney working on Shis behalf, said that Shi would likely remain in Hong Kong for up to eight weeks as the U.S. files the necessary paperwork and the Hong Kong government signs off on it.

The documents have actually been prepared, and theyll be available very soon, he said by phone Sunday night from Los Angeles.

One question hanging over the extradition process is whether prosecutors in L.A. would seek the death penalty. Hong Kong has no death penalty, and it would be highly unlikely authorities in the territory would extradite a suspect without some assurances he would not face capital punishment.

Greenhalgh said he believed L.A. prosecutors had already determined over the weekend that they would not seek the death penalty in the case.

Law is a special correspondent. Staff writers Makinen and Kaiman reported from Beijing.

Follow @JulieMakLAT for news from China

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Nearly 80 years later, Liu Suzhen could still recall her ordeal. And when she did, her ruddy cheeks burned. She shielded her face with chapped, swollen fingers as though Japanese bombers were zooming down as she spoke.

My neighborhood was among the last to fall. When the sirens sounded, my aunt and Id run and duck inside the bunker, said Liu, now 84, leaning on her dragon-head walking stick. This is the history that my granddaughter has been passing on to her son.

Liu is determined that people other than her descendants know the history of the Nanjing massacre, the bloodiest episode in the Chinese theater during World War II. After neatly printing her name, the widow consigned her memories of how she survived the siege to the archive of the Shoah Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California.

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This is probably the last time we can interview the survivors directly, said Karen Jungblut, the foundations director of research and documentation, who tried to connect with and console Liu across the language barrier. The least we can do is let them know the world is interested in them.

Established in 1994 by director Steven Spielberg to record survivors of the Holocaust (called the Shoah in Hebrew), the foundation has since branched out to delve into more recent genocides, in Cambodia and Rwanda.

In China, the task of documentation is made all the more challenging by the time lapse  nearly 80 years, during which the massacre came to be called the forgotten holocaust. The two-month rampage by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38 was also known as the Rape of Nanking.

China puts the death toll at 300,000; some Japanese historians claim much lower figures.

Beginning in late 2012, the foundation and the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall joined forces to track down survivors and videotape their recollections. So far, recorded, Chinese-language interviews with about 30 survivors have been included in the foundations video archive.

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Only 200 survivors are believed to be alive, most in their late 80s. Liu lost her husband, a fellow survivor, a few years ago. The oldest survivor interviewed is 94. Last month, the foundation recorded 20 more, including Liu, and still hopes to hear from an additional 50 survivors.

This race against oblivion comes on the heels of a recent revival of commemorations for Nanjing.

In December 2014, Chinas parliament instituted the countrys first memorial day  not just for the victims of Nanjing but for all those who perished during the Japanese invasion, which was marked by the 1932 founding of the puppet state of Manchukuo in northeastern China. And last November, China applied successfully to inscribe the massacre in UNESCOs Memory of the World register. A few weeks later, a 70-volume compilation of Nanjing archives was produced inside the warren of research offices down the hall from where the oral history of Liu and others were recorded.

All this stands in sharp contrast to four decades of official silence  largely borne out of diplomatic expediency and geopolitical calculations, according to many historians who are versed in Communist China and its diplomacy.

China wants to have moral authority over Japan and can use something that can be called the history card, said Yang Daqing, associate professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University.

To the extent that the smothering and rekindling of memories over Nanjing were mostly the Chinese states doing, ideological forces in Japan  which included both revisionist denial and remorseful soul-searching  only served to complicate the politics of commemoration.

Shortly after the war, China hosted two war tribunals  in Nanjing and in Shenyang in the northeast. But the country was too embroiled in political movements to settle scores with former foes.

In 1972, Japan recognized the Peoples Republic as the one and only China, and Chinas premier agreed to relinquish all war claims.

During that time, historical research on the massacre was banned from public circulation, said Yang. And when a Chinese justice who had been at the 1946 Tokyo war tribunal later called on historians to study the massacre, he was accused of inciting hatred against the Japanese.

Chinas about-face came in the 1980s. Attempts in Japan to revise textbooks to downplay the Nanjing atrocities and visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni shrine, which memorializes some war criminals, stoked public resentment in China.

Around the same time, a mass grave from the massacre was discovered in Nanjing, on the site of the present-day memorial hall. Excavation of the remains of several hundred corpses culminated, in 1983, in the first public commemoration  45 years after the fact.

And after the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing in 1989, when a student pro-democracy movement was brutally crushed, the Chinese leadership exploited a sense of nationalism to mend its legitimacy. Japan, the invader turned investor, became a handy target. In 1998, on the first visit to Tokyo by a Chinese head of state, Jiang Zemin demanded, but failed to receive, a written apology for the wartime atrocities from his Japanese counterpart.

Meanwhile in Nanjing, the memorial hall opened in 1995, and the mass grave, a tomb-like enclosure displaying full skeletons of the slaughtered, was made a permanent exhibit by 2007. Surrounded by reflecting pools and a peace park with pines planted by Japanese pacifists, the site is both meditative and funereal.

However, in early December, a new, more tendentious wing celebrating Chinas victory in the anti-fascist war and the trials of Japanese war criminals was unveiled. Marking the new addition are banners festooning lampposts that read: Forget not the nations shame. Fulfill the China Dream.

Unfortunately, there are many people fighting over the memories, said Takashi Yoshida, a historian at Western Michigan University who wrote a doctoral thesis tracking the responses to the massacre over the decades. He harbors no illusion about Nanjing entering the annals of settled history.

The dispute over Nanjing will continue, he said. There will be no end.

Law is a special correspondent.

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Long before she married, at 14, Sushila Sunar had stopped going to school. She never learned to read. After her two children were born, she broke rocks at a construction site for a few dollars a day, the only work she could find.

Then a woman approached Sunar with a job that paid nearly $6,000, a sum so large she and her husband felt she could not refuse. She became a surrogate mother, delivering a light-skinned baby for a foreign couple she never met.

Three years later, with her own childrens school bills piling up, she has decided to become a surrogate for a second time.

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I didnt study; I cant do any other work, said Sunar, now 28 and six months pregnant. This is my only option to make a living.

Chasing dreams of financial independence, thousands of poor Indian women have found work as surrogate mothers, helping to turn this country into a favored destination for foreign couples who cant become pregnant on their own.

Now Indias government is taking the first significant steps to rein in commercial surrogacy, citing fears that the women are being exploited by a mushrooming industry that pays them a fraction of what surrogates earn in the West.

In October, authorities barred foreign couples from hiring Indian surrogates, following an earlier ban prohibiting single people and gays from contracting with Indian surrogates. The government has proposed a law allowing surrogacy only for married Indian couples, or those recognized by the government as being of Indian origin.

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The new legislation, which has yet to be taken up in Parliament, also would prevent women from becoming surrogates multiple times, or after they pass age 35.

Indias low medical costs, lack of regulation and large numbers of women willing to carry someone elses child have long fueled concerns about corruption and malpractice by doctors eager to satisfy foreign clients. A surrogate birth in India can cost between $15,000 and $20,000, one-tenth of what some clinics in California charge.

Medical groups say the industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year in India, but there are few reliable statistics. In the two decades since the countrys first surrogate birth heralded a lucrative new frontier for medical technology, clinics have popped up so fast that authorities have lost track of how many are operating or how many babies have been delivered.

In India we believe that motherhood is sacred, not something that can be traded to anyone with money, said Jayashree Wad, a lawyer who has filed suit in Indias Supreme Court to abolish commercial surrogacy.

The way this is being practiced in India amounts to sale of motherhood, in my view.

Studies suggest Indian surrogates lack a detailed understanding of the contracts they sign with fertility clinics, which include sometimes risky medical procedures to ensure the paying couple gets a child.

The gestational surrogacy practiced in India involves transferring a fertilized embryo from a commissioning couple into the uterus of another woman. Doctors often implant multiple embryos to increase the chances of pregnancy and carry out most deliveries by caesarean section.

Both procedures are generally safe, but experts say surrogates are not fully aware of potential complications.

Many of these women are from the poorest social classes and they come to this line of work due to poverty, said Manasi Mishra of the Center for Social Research, a womens rights advocacy group that has studied the practice extensively.

Most have had only normal deliveries before, so they dont have any knowledge about the procedures involved in a surrogate pregnancy. Some were only told halfway through.

At the Origin International Fertility Center in Thane, a booming suburb north of Indias financial capital, Mumbai, doctors schedule C-sections for surrogates after they are 37 weeks pregnant, earlier than is typical in the United States. Clinicians said this reduces the risks that can arise if a woman goes into labor when medical staff isnt immediately available.

Every baby is a precious baby, but these are extra, extra, extra precious, said Sandeep Mane, the British-certified doctor who directs the clinic. Its important you deliver the baby when all the help is available.

Mane, who delivers about two dozen babies from surrogates each year, said the womens health and nutrition are closely monitored. The clinic operates a temporary home where surrogates stay for the duration of their pregnancy, in a nondescript office building with a bank and Dominos Pizza on the ground floor.

On a recent afternoon, Sunar and five other surrogates sat around a glass dining table as cooks served a lunch of vegetables, chapati and rice. The women sleep three or four to a room, with air-conditioning and satellite televisions that are almost always tuned to Indian soap operas.

To critics, the comfortable arrangements reinforce a sense that the surrogate pregnancy is more valuable than the womens earlier pregnancies.

Sunar, smiling and wearing a lavender medical gown, said she was well looked after. She said she misses her children, ages 8 and 6, but her husband brings them to visit on Sundays when he has the day off.

His job as a security guard pays less than $100 a month, she said, which barely covers the cost of the childrens school. Her last surrogacy payment ran out after they made repairs on their one-room home in a tumbledown slum.

He was supportive of me doing this again, she said of her husband. We both agreed to the contract.

In the next room, Laxmi Bhalerao, 30, said she became a surrogate after her alcoholic husband left her alone to care for their two children. She was recruited by a neighbor who had been a surrogate herself, a common practice; clinics often pay referral fees of several hundred dollars.

If I can buy a small apartment and take care of my childrens education, it will be worth it, Bhalerao said.

There is desperation, too, among couples who saw India as their best hope of becoming parents.

After suffering a miscarriage in 2014, one Simi Valley couple decided to hire a surrogate from the Origin clinic and had just obtained medical visas for India when the ban was announced. In a letter, they described the shock and disappointment of learning that months of tests and planning had been wasted.

We are extremely saddened by this decision and cannot comprehend why the Indian government has made such a dramatic decision, after helping infertile couples for so many years, they wrote to Mane, who shared the letter on condition the couple not be named.

By banning foreigners  who account for the vast majority of the industrys clients and usually are charged higher fees  the government is trying to end Indias reputation for what critics call rent-a-womb services. Mishra and other experts oppose the blanket ban, saying the government should instead set up a national registry of fertility clinics and enforce stricter rules.

Mane said the restrictions would harm Indian citizens who have benefited from the industry.

There are a lot of ladies who need this for their financial security, Mane said. And who are we to decide how many births a lady can take? In the Middle East, they are having five babies and eight babies.

But he was not worried about the future of his practice. More Indian couples are turning to surrogate pregnancy, he said, and the number of women willing to carry their children seems limitless.

Many women would still come forward to become surrogates, Mane said. There are so many more out there.

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A British adventurer attempting to become the first person to cross the Antarctic alone and unsupported has died after collapsing from exhaustion within miles of his goal.

Former army officer Henry Worsley was just 30 miles from the end of the almost 1,000-mile trek when he called for help and was airlifted off the ice Friday.

His family said Monday that Worsley, 55, died following complete organ failure at a hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile. He had undergone surgery a day earlier for bacterial peritonitis  an infection of the tissue lining the abdomen, which can lead to septic shock.

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Pulling supplies on a sled, Worsley was trying to complete Ernest Shackletons attempt of a century ago to cross the Antarctic via the South Pole. Shackletons journey turned into a desperate survival mission after his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and sunk by pack ice in 1915, leaving his team stranded.

His successful bid to reach help at a remote South Atlantic whaling station and rescue his men is considered a heroic feat of endurance.

Worsleys ancestor, Frank Worsley, was skipper of the Endurance on Shackletons voyage.

Henry Worsley decided to abandon his journey Friday after being unable to leave his tent for two days.

The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journeys end  so close to my goal, he said in a final statement from Antarctica.

Shackletons granddaughter, Alexandra Shackleton, said Worsleys death was a huge loss to the adventuring world. Outdoorsman Bear Grylls said he was devastated at the loss of one of the strongest men & bravest soldiers I know.

Prince William, a patron of the expedition, said he and his brother, Prince Harry, had lost a friend.

We are incredibly proud to be associated with him, William said.

Worsleys wife, Joanna, said the expedition had raised more than 100,000 pounds ($140,000) for wounded troops.

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Five years ago, Tahrir Square became the watchword for change in the Middle East. On Monday, it echoed with the voices of the status quo.

Hundreds of people gathered in the square on an unusually cold and rainy day to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 25 uprising that led to the ouster of autocratic President Hosni Mubarak. But these werent the protesters who had risked their lives in those heady days -- far from it.

Oh, Sisi, we love you! they chanted, offering their ode of support to a new strongman, President Abdel Fattah Sisi. And, perhaps more remarkable: The Interior [Ministry] is precious to us!

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No words could have been more unthinkable during the Arab Spring protests of 2011, when Egypts Interior Ministry was reviled for its ruthless repression of dissent.

The Tahrir Square uprising led to Mubaraks ouster and ultimate imprisonment, and the democratic election of Mohamed Morsi, a leading member of the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi was toppled by a military coup led by Sisi in July 2013.

Sisis rule has been so far marred by mass and arbitrary arrests of both Islamist and liberal dissidents alike. While foreign human rights organizations, such as the Britain-based Amnesty International, put the detentions toll at 16,000, local rights advocates claim that arrests have surpassed 40,000.

But Sisi enjoys substantial support from Egyptians who believe the country needs a strong hand at the helm.

I am here to show support to both Sisi and our police forces, who have suffered the most of late, Hussein Metwally, a 56-year-old shop owner said. Those who are objecting to Sisi and are still calling for protests against him are mere traitors who want to disrupt Egypts stability.

Aside from the pro-Sisi demonstrators, there were few signs that Monday was anything but an ordinary day. Many stores remained open and traffic was as usual around the square. A few police vehicles stood by while supporters snapped souvenir photos with Special Forces officers. Scenes of the 2011 revolt seemed far and long gone.

The revolution has brought us nothing but the rule of Morsis Muslim Brotherhood group. Those who carried out the uprising had no clear vision for Egypts future. They just brought chaos, Mohamed Ibrahim, 30, said while touring the square carrying an Egyptian flag.

We want ... the rule of the army, he said. The military is the only standing institution that can manage Egypt now.

Since 2009, Jan. 25 has been a national holiday in Egypt: Police Day. On that day in 2011, a nationwide uprising began in Tahrir Square, the main square in central Cairo, demanding democratic change.

On that day, the square was sealed off with security cordons aimed at barring protesters from reaching the area, which overlooks some of Cairos most important sites, including the Egyptian Museum and the nearby parliament and Interior Ministry headquarters.

Scores of police conscripts, higher ranked officers and state security informants had scattered across the spacious square in their overtures to protect Mubaraks grip on power, which had begun in 1981.

Shops were closed in anticipation of trouble. The usual Cairo traffic jams in and outside the square were nonexistent.

Supporters of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi wave posters with his image in Cairos Tahrir Square on Monday. (Amr Nabil / Associated Press)

Late in the day, thousands of marchers managed to temporarily occupy the square after minor confrontations with security officers in areas leading to the square. More violent and deadly marches ended with the total crippling of police forces three days later.

Twenty-one days after the demonstrations began, Mubarak was forced to leave office.

Today, most of those who launched the 2011 rebellion are disillusioned with the path the country has taken. None of them was seen in Tahrir Square on Monday.

Hopes of a post-Mubarak civilian rule were shattered by the election of former defense minister Sisi as president in 2014. Under Sisi, thousands of dissidents have been arrested and persecuted; protests have been harshly put down.

More recently, Sisis government has intensified its crackdown, arresting more than 200 people over the last four weeks on suspicion of harboring intentions to carry out demonstrations on the revolts anniversary.

On Saturday, a joint statement issued by 27 public figures, including prominent satirist Bassem Youssef and novelist Alaa el-Aswany, demanded the immediate release of activists arrested over the last two weeks.

The statement condemned what it called the states efforts to induce a state of fear and panic, and emphasized the publics right to protest.

The government did not respond.

Hassan is a special correspondent.
Once the epicenter of the revolt that brought an end to Hosni Mubaraks rule of Egypt, Cairos Tahrir Square looks very different from the way it looked five years ago.

A national holiday that since 2009 commemorates Police Day in Egypt, Jan. 25 in 2011 marked the start of the nationwide uprising during which Mubaraks mighty police succumbed to the anger of thousands of protesters, before the president was forced to cede power 21 days later.

On Monday, Tahrir Square hosted none of those who aspired to a democratic Egypt on the same day five years ago.

What was once the scene of defiance against police brutality and regime injustice became on Monday a place for police officers to surround a number of Egyptians who are willing to show their unconditional support for the state under Abdel Fattah Sisis rule.

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Tahrir Square
Forty inmates have escaped in a massive prison breakout in Brazil.

The Globo news site reported from Pernambuco state justice authorities that 40 prisoners have escaped and that 36 had now been recaptured, two killed, one hospitalized, and one still remained at large, according to AFP (via Yahoo! News).

The prisoners escaped on Saturday by using explosives to blast a hole in the main wall around the Frei Damiao de Bozanno facility, located in the northeastern city of Recife, AFP further reported.

After a cloud of dust and debris settled, a group of men donning ordinary clothes poured into the narrow streets before police officials responded to the scene, the news outlet added.

Authorities spent hours before providing figures of the breakout, AFP noted. Brazilian media initially reported that as many as 100 prisoners could have escaped.

Police said on Globo television that one of those killed was shot after entering a local home, AFP wrote. A video footage showed the man lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor.

This was the second mass prison breakout from the same region in a week, AFP reported from the G1 news site. On Wednesday, 53 inmates broke away from the Professor Barreto Campelo prison near Recife. Only 13 of them had been caught by Sunday.

Another breakout also occurred on Jan. 12 in Natal, where 46 inmates dug a tunnel through the facility's walls, according to teleSUR.

According to a study by the Human Rights Watch conducted in 2015, jailbreak attempts often occur at Pernambuco prisons, the most overcrowded facility area in Brazil. Jails intended for 10,500 inmates maximum detain around 32,000 people. Plenty of prisoners have to sleep on the floor and "there are so few guards that officials turn day-to-day control over to selected inmates who are given keys to the prison's interior," AFP reported.

Prison authorities in Brazil have complained of a lack of resources to manage inmates, teleSUR noted. Over the weekend, Secretary of Resocialization Joao Carvalho told a newspaper in Recife that the latest jailbreak came after a chain of attempts to escape the facility.

"We need more investment in security in penitentiaries," Carvalho said, as quoted by the news outlet. Carvalho added that only 10 guards were in charge of overseeing more than 2000 inmates.

The country's national prison population has increased in recent years, now reaching over 500,000, teleSUR added. President Dilma Rousseff's administration is seeking to strengthen security while developing Brazil's justice system.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Pope Francis will visit Colombia in 2017.

The news was announced by the South American nation's Catholic Episcopal Conference on Saturday after a meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican, according to the Associated Press (via Yahoo! News).

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on his official Twitter page that his country "will receive him with enthusiasm and peace."

The dates of the trip do not have an official schedule yet, the AP further reported. Pope Francis has also expressed his desire to visit Brazil's 300th anniversary of the Virgin of Aparecida.

The pontiff is already preparing to visit Mexico next month, which is expected to draw a crowd of 2.3 million at the main event on the outskirts of the country's capital, according to a separate report from the AP (via Fox News). Government officials will deploy 10,000 state police officers to maintain the peace and ordinance at a 5.5.-mile (8.8 kilometer) motorcade and rally scheduled on Feb. 14.

Pope Francis' Mexico trip will be from Feb. 12 to 18, the news outlet noted. He will also visit the states of Chiapas, Michoacan, and Chihuahua.

"The pope has called for no extraordinary measures," Alberto Suarez Inda, the archbishop of Morelia, said at a news conference earlier this month, as quoted by the Guardian. "On the contrary," he added, the pontiff intends "to be near the people."

"He would not come if he did not have his confidence in God, in the goodness of the people," the archbishop continued, as reported by the news outlet. "We're all mortals, but as far as I know there has been no change in politics to necessitate more protection."

Pope Francis will visit Morelia on Feb. 16 and will meet with young people and visit the city's cathedral, the Guardian further reported. He will give a speech at a stadium there afterwards. A day later, the pope will head to Ciudad Juarez, the border city that has experienced years of disappearances and violent murders. He is also expected to discuss migration while in the city.

"He is thinking of Mexico as a kind of cradle of (the Americas), looking north and south and (at) Mexican immigration and Mexican emigration in both directions," said Peter Casarella, a theology professor and director of the Latin American/North American Church Concerns Project at the University of Notre Dame, as quoted by AZ Central.

Pope Francis has often reiterated his defense of the human rights of migrants since he became pontiff in March 2013, AZ Central noted. He is expected to speak about drug cartel violence in his Mexico visit as well.

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After being on display for at least a decade in a Washington, D.C., museum, the cabin where Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski lived outside Lincoln is set to return to the possession of the FBI  unless the state historical society can bring it back to Montana.
At least 13 people were reported dead when a Nicaraguan tour boat sank off the coast of the Central American country on Saturday, authorities said.

The tour boat, called the "Reina del Caribe" or the "Caribbean Queen," was carrying two Americans, two British, three Nicaraguans, 25 Costa Ricans and a Brazilian when it capsized under bad weather conditions, some 43 miles off south-eastern coast of Nicaragua.

According to the El 19 Digital news outlet as cited by CNN, the boat was travelling between Nicaragua's Little Corn and Big Corn Islands, a famous tourist destination, when the incident occurred.

According to ABC News, the 13 people found dead were all Costa Ricans, most of whom were women.

The outlet further revealed that the tour boat's captain will undergo investigations. He is currently being detained for ignoring weather warnings, thereby putting the lives of his passengers at risk.

"There was a warning that the weather conditions would be bad, but it appears that was ignored and this tragedy happened," Nicaraguan navy commander for the southern part of the Caribbean Mario Berrios explained.

Apparently, the launching of sea vessels was suspended prior to the incident. This was due to strong winds that reached about 25 to 30 knots or 29 to 35 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan government spokesperson Rosario Murillo expressed President Daniel Ortega's thoughts on the incident.

"This is a great tragedy, truly painful, because they were our Costa Rican, Central American brothers and sisters who were vacationing in the waters of the Nicaraguan Caribbean," she said in a statement cited by ABC News.

Because of this, Ortega ordered a probe of the boat's captain, Hilario Blandon, and his assistant Hellon Absalon Pratt Carter, to determine if they have liabilities for what happened.

"Everyone is honestly moved and consternated by what has happened, but we also must make sure this doesn't happen again. Those to blame for this tragedy must be processed ... all the established penalties must be applied to those responsible," Murillo told ABC News.

The owner and captain of "Reina del Caribe" remains at a Nicaragua detention facility, the outlet added.

Furthermore, rescuers continue efforts to retrieve the missing passengers after successfully rescuing two Americans, 12 Costa Ricans and three Nicaraguans as well as two newlywed British tourists, The Guardian reported.

However, they are still trying to get hold of the remains of four dead Costa Ricans.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A banana fungus affecting fruit production in Asia is feared to enter the Americas and have a "devastating" impact on production across various regions.

Independent reported that a wipeout of crops in the American continent is possible due to the severe damaging effect of this fungus, called Tropical Race 4.

It claimed that there was notable damage in the Philippines, which alarmed growers in the Americas. No reports of the fungus hitting the continent have been noted.

International coordinator for a group of banana growers and farmers in the world, Alistair Smith, said that the potential for devastation from this fungus is high.

With the dangers of this banana disease, global plant production expert Gert Kema mentioned in the Independent report that there is a pressing need for a variety of a banana that can resist a fungus like this.

It was noted that one of the most affected banana variety is the Cavendish banana, which is a famous kind in many countries in Europe, United Kingdom, North America and Asia.

"I try to avoid dramatizing this story but look at what happened previously with the Gros Michel," Kema told BBC.

The latter was a popular banana variety, which was famous during the 19th century. However, it got wiped out by the Panama disease, which affected all banana plantations in South and Central America.

It has become extinct since then.

Kema also explained that the world would be faced with a serious issue if the same scenario happens.

However, he said that the possible phase out of this variety of banana will not happen in a week or two.

"This is going to take some time but that time is extremely pressing; we have nothing to replace the Cavendish right now," Kema added.

At present, BBC reported that about 100,000 hectares of Cavendish banana plantations have already been affected by the fungus, and is expected to get worse if the disease will not be stopped.

CNN highlighted that Cavendish bananas have no genetic diversity -- they are the only variety planted by growers yearly.

It claimed that once the plant it infected, the fungus can infect all of the bananas of that variety.

Asked for a solution to this, Kema told BBC that the epidemic should be contained, though he claimed that this would require a lot of effort.

The other option is to develop a resistant variety, which can be explored through various breeding programs of the growers.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Common knowledge dictates that Mount Everest is the Earth's highest point. This piece of trivia is indisputably true, but only when talking about its height from the ground up. From another point of reference, a summit in South America is technically taller, but also steeper to climb than the Himalayan mountain.

Chimborazo is an inactive stratovolcano situated in the Ecuadorian section of the Andes mountain ranges. It is widely-regarded in the hiking circles as the highest mountain in the world, when measuring from the Earth's core.

Earth is best considered as an oblate spheroid, a bit flat on the top and bottom, while slightly bulgier around the Equator. As indicated on Amusing Planet, Chimborazo is situated one degree below the Equator, while Mt Everest is almost 28 above the imaginary ring.

Via Daily Galaxy, Issac Newton theorized that the Earth's rotational force has caused its poles to flatten and its sides to become more bloated. Technically speaking, people living close to the equator are standing higher than those living near, or along, the Arctic and Antarctic circles.

Even though Chimborazo is just 20,565 feet above sea level, compared to Mount Everest's height of 29,028 feet, the former is still 1.5 miles higher than the latter, due to the Earth's peculiar shape.

Kevin Rushby of The Guardian recently came back from climbing Chimborazo. He said newbie mountaineers will be glad to know that the South American peak is not as daunting a climb as Mount Everest, both from a physical and financial stand point.

En route to the summit, climbers can bike their way through certain areas of the Intag Valley, which greatly speeds up the grueling hiking process. Rushby said climbers can also visit a coffee plantation, where they can refuel on much needed caffeine.

Rushby and his tour guide Estalin had to ascend in the evening in order to get closer to the peak at dawn. It was also customary to climb at night to avoid sudden rock falls. The duo never really did make it to the top of Chimborazo because of the dangerous weather that day. However, they did reach the summit of its neighboring mountain Cayambe, which in its own right is 18,864-feet tall.

"All below was white cloud, all above was blue," said Rushby upon conquering Cayambe. "It seemed likely we were higher than anyone else on the planet at that moment -- an exhilarating thought."

Rushby warned that even though Cayambe and Chimborazo were shorter than Mount Everest in terms of sea level height, both mountains still have suffocating altitudes. He and his team had to dedicate one week to acclimatize for the climbing expedition.

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Actress Kate del Castillo may be at the center of news for money laundering, but, while money is a big deal, it is actually the connection with Hollywood star Sean Penn and her role in helping him score the interview with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman that may be the reason why the Mexican government wants to "destroy her."

The actress said, "I have no reason to give explanations to the press. If I don't talk its because my lawyers told me not to because the government wants to destroy me."

According to Reuters, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez previously said that there were "indications" that the actress was able to help out Penn because of her own connection with the drug lord: he may have been the one to finance her tequila business.

An official from the office of the attorney general did not comment on the remarks. However, it has been noted that as with every justice system, she will be presumed innocent unless proven otherwise.

Not all ended with the accusation, however, as Gomez had a few other details regarding the actress. He told Mexican Newspaper El Universal that del Castillo previously discussed going in to business with the drug lord. In 2014, a company named Tequila Honor LLC was registered in the US. The brand, Honor Del Castillo, was promoted by the actress on her website.

The Telegraph UK said that the US Treasury Department forbids American citizens and companies from making financial transactions with drug suspects. Del Castillo, who has a joint American-Mexican citizenship, will be charged with money laundering if such accusations are proven.

As for del Castillo, her father previously said that she will testify at the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles, and will present proof that "she is clean" from the accusations made against her.

The Mexican government also admitted that the actress, as well as Penn, were essential in the capture of the drug lord. Rolling Stone magazine published the interview just a day after El Chapo was apprehended.

As early as last week, Mexican publications addressed the issue between the actress and the government. Latin Times noted that some were already saying that the Governmental Institutions and Authorities are afraid that Del Castillo and Penn, as well as the drug king pin himself, could exposed the links between narcotraffic and the country's politicians.

Del Castillo's friend and journalist Lydia Cacho noted that the actress is currently fearing for her life, saying that "She is clearly very scared, she doesn't understand why the Mexican Government is attacking her this way," per TVyNovelas.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The United Nations World Travel Organization has released its 2016 Travel Barometer, and it's featuring countries that are fast becoming tourist attractions. Topping the list is the South American nation Paraguay, with a 97 percent increase in tourist arrivals in 2015. It is now the eighth most visited country in Latin America, according to The Daily Mail.

Paraguay, which is located between Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, has large areas of swamp lands, but is also home to subtropical forests and rivers.

If you want to visit this country, here is a list of things to do for you to fill your time:

Experience culture in Concepcion -- Located on the river north of the country, Concepcion city is an interesting place, with a bustling market scene that showcases the rural Paraguayan culture.

Connect with Nature at Granja El Roble -- Experience the nature of Paraguay in a farm near the city of Conception. Time Travel Turtle mentioned that the German biologist who runs the place, Peter Gartner, offers day trips and adventures to see the area. It even has a small private zoo on the premises, perfect to kick back and just relax, with none of the city bustle to disrupt you.

Enjoy the light show at Trinidad del Prana -- Set just 28km northeast of Encarncacion, Trinidad is the best-preserved Jesuit settlement in Paraguay. Lonely Planet mentioned that it has a Spanish-speaking guide who can give you a tour of the area. You can also wait until dark for an atmospheric light show that informs tourists of the history of the site, which is projected onto the walls of the ruins. The ruins are considered to be one of only two UNESCO sites in Paraguay. The other one, Jesus de Tavarangue, is also a Jesuit settlement.

Parque Nacional San Rafael -- This is considered Paraguay's last great tract of the Atlantic forest. The place is a paradise, with over 430 species of birds amongst the beautiful wilderness.

Learn a piece of history at Fortin Boqueron and Fortin Toledo -- Boqueron is the site of the Chaco War, which plagued paraguay in 1932-1935. To commemorate, Paraguayans constructed a museum in the area, and also erected a graveyard of the fallen. A gigantic monument was also constructed out of the original defenses and trenches, which makes for an interesting view.

While these things can fill up most of your days during your visit, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out more things to do in Paraguay via the World Travel Guide website.

What do you think of Paraguay as your next tourist destination?

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Guillain-Barre Syndrome Definition, Signs & Symptoms: Zika Outbreak Also Linked to Rare Nerve Disorder in Latin American Countries

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 25, 2016 05:30 AM EST

The Zika outbreak is posing great health concerns across Latin America nowadays, especially among pregnant women whose babies are at risk for microcephaly, a birth defect linked to the mosquito-borne virus. And now there's one more thing to worry about.

Health officials from some countries in the region are now looking into the possible association of the dreaded Zika virus with yet another rare condition that could lead to serious health risks such as muscle weakness, paralysis and even death.

A jump in the number of Guillain-Barre syndrome cases among patients who are more likely to have been infected by the Zika virus were reported in countries like French Polynesia, Brazil and El Salvador. Health officials said that more research has to be conducted in order to establish whether the Zika virus infection, indeed, has something to do with the surge in Guillain-Barre syndrome cases, according to a report from the CBS News.

"Guillain-Barre syndrome is an autoimmune disorder in which the body usually is responding to another infection. It has an immune response that destroys the covering of nerves and interferes with the ability of nerves to function and survive," said Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an infectious diseases specialist at North Shore University Hospital, in Manhasset, New York.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are about 3,000 to 6,000 people, on the average, who develop Guillain-Barre syndrome in the country every year. While most patients recover completely from the condition, there are instances where it is not without long-term adverse effect, such as nerve damage. And, in rare cases, death is also a possibility as a result of difficulty in breathing.

There is no single cause for Guillain-Barre syndrome and as people grow older, they become more prone in developing the condition, particularly after reaching the age of 50. The symptoms may develop after a couple of weeks and up to a month after an infection like cold and sore throat occurs. It starts in a person's feet and hands before spreading to the arms and legs. Patients can experience pain, tingling, numbness, progressive muscle weakness and inability in walking on one's own, says NHS.

"What's disturbing to me as an infectious diseases doctor is that until yesterday, my understanding of Zika is that the only risk was if you're a pregnant woman, and now there's a risk to anyone if this association [to Guillain-Barre] turns out to be substantiated," Hirsch also added.

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About 300 Patients who had Colonoscopy in Baystate Noble Hospital Possibly Exposed to Hepatitis C, HIV

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Writer Jan 25, 2016 06:37 AM EST

Around 300 patients may have been exposed to HIV and Hepatitis due to lapse in cleaning and disinfection protocols after undergoing colonoscopy in Baystate Noble Hospital.

Patients who have colonoscopy procedures from June 11, 2012 to April 17, 2013, may have been exposed to blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis. According to the hospital's officials, the disinfection protocol was not met because they have been using new equipment in 2012. Lack of proper training and practices may not have properly disinfected the equipment.

A colonoscopy is a procedure where the inner lining of the large intestine including the rectum and colon will be examined using a thin tube called a colonoscope. According to WebMD, the test helps determine if a patient has tumors, polyps, ulcers, inflammation or bleeding.

The issue specifically was "the disinfection of those endoscopes between procedures did not adequately expose the devices' single water irrigation channel to high-level disinfection during the last phase of cleaning," Fox61 notes.

According to Tech Times, the officials from Baystate Noble Hospital sent notifications by mail to all affected patients. The patients were invited for precautionary screening for which the hospital will shoulder. They also released a formal apology regarding the mishap in a press release.

"On behalf of Baystate Noble Hospital and Baystate Health, I apologize to all those affected by this failure in safety," said hospital president Ronald Bryant. "The safety of our patients is our very highest priority, and we take full responsibility for our part in allowing these patients to have potentially received unsafe care."

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health notified the hospital in December 2015of the risk after a site visit, National Daily Press reports.

"As soon as we became aware of the issue, we took steps to respond to the situation and notify those affected," the news release stated.

Although the risk of infection is small, precautions will be made.

"Due to the function of the water irrigation channel and the phase of disinfection at which the failure occurred, the risk to patients is very low," said Dr. Sarah Haesslar, head epidemiologist at Baystate Noble Hospital. "However, that risk is not zero, so we're taking the necessary steps to address these issues and provide patients with the resources they need."

The interim chief medical officer of the hospital, Dr. Stanley Strzempko states that they are working closely with the Department of Public Health with regards to the issue. Affected patients will be given full support in any way that they can, reports Mass Live.

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MERS Virus Thailand: Officials Confirm 2nd Case, 37 People Monitored

staff@latinoshealth.com By Monica Antonio Jan 25, 2016 06:00 AM EST

Thailand's Health Minister Piyasakol Sakolsatayador has confirmed on Sunday the existence of another case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS) in Thailand, Reuters reports.

According to the news outlet, Sakolsatayador confirmed in a conference that the second patient infected with MERS virus was a 71-year-old Omani man who was traveling to Bangkok.

Bangkok Post reports that the MERS patient was previously hospitalized for almost a week in Oman for cough and fever before he headed to Bangkok. He was detected with MERS at Bamrungrad and Chulalongkorn hospitals.

The man underwent a couple of tests over the weekend at Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute and Medical Science Department, which both confirmed that the Omani man is positive with MERS.

"After taking a taxi to a hotel, he was checked for the virus at a hospital and the MERS virus was found. This case was found quickly, so the public should not panic," Sakolsatayador said as quoted by Reuters.

Sakolsatayador further told the Bangkok Post that the Omani patient is currently being held under quarantine at the Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute of the Diseases Control Department.

It can be remembered that the first case of MERS was also detected in an Omani businessman last year. The said patient survived the disease, per Reuters.

Thailand's Public Health Ministry has identified the people who might have contact with the second MERS patient and is actively looking for them. They will be under quarantine for 14 days for observation to see if anyone of them has been infected, according to the Bangkok Post.

These individuals include everyone who might have encountered the Omani man during his travel to Bangkok, including the 218 crew and passengers who are in Thailand, the taxi driver who drove him upon arrival to the country, a hotel staff and 30 hospital employees. Also included is a relative of the patient who accompanied him. The Public Health Ministry identified 37 of these people to be high risk.

According to Medical News Today, MERS is a viral respiratory disease that might have originated from an animal. The first case of MERS in humans happened in Saudi Arabia back in 2012. MERS has similar symptoms like pneumonia and has similar symptoms like the Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Most common symptoms of MERS include fever (100 degrees Fahrenheit and up), cough, chills, chest and body pain, difficulty in breathing, headache, diarrhea, sore throat, to name a few.

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U.S. Senate Democrats are criticizing the Obama administration's deportation raids targeting Central American immigrants.

In a letter addressed to President Barack Obama, 22 senators agreed that they have "serious reservations" about the immigration raids, which were carried out shortly after New Years Day through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

"We are deeply concerned that in its eagerness to deter additional arrivals from this region, the [DHS] is returning vulnerable individuals with valid protection claims to life-threatening violence," read the letter signed by Democratic senators including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bob Menendez of New Jersey. "This is not hyperbole. There have been multiple reports of individuals, including children, being killed within days or weeks of their deportation."

The senators believe they disagree with the notion that deporting these individuals would deter families or children back in Central America from fleeing the area.

Senators, including Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota, said it's important to evaluate the situation as a humanitarian and refugee crisis. The letter noted the deportation raids have caused widespread fear in immigrant communities, damaged trust with local law enforcement and stirred trauma on children.

"We ask that you stop these aggressive raids against children and their families and rely on more appropriate approaches to fulfilling court orders," the 22 senators wrote, adding they are aware of multiple reports concerning lack of due process or access to legal counsel.

According to the senators, the lack of competent counsel or due process undermines the legitimacy of the U.S. immigration court system, thus, they called for the DHS to slow down the expedited immigration process in order for families to obtain full and fair hearings.

Further, the senators urged Obama to designate El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras for temporary protected status.

The Senate letter comes as 146 House lawmakers also called for the end of the deportation raids.

As Latin Post reported, Johnson defended the deportation campaign and said further raids may occur under his discretion. Johnson said the latest deportation campaign focused on families or individuals apprehended for illegally crossing the southern U.S. border after May, 1, 2014, issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, exhausted appropriate legal remedies and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under current U.S. laws.

"This should come as no surprise," said Johnson in early January. "I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed."

To read the full Senate letter and signatures, click here.

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
California officials have launched an intense manhunt to track down three "dangerous" inmates who escaped from a maximum-security jail in Southern California on Friday.

The men cut through half-inch steel bars and used plumbing tunnels to access an unsecured roof at the Orange County Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana -- about 40 miles from Los Angeles, reports The Chicago Tribune. They then rappelled from the roof to the ground using a makeshift rope.

"It was very well-thought-out and planned," Orange County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said Saturday at a news conference.

The three inmates, which includes a murder suspect, were last seen at 5 a.m. on Friday. Authorities then noticed that they went missing later that night during a head count around 9 p.m.

During a press conference on Sunday, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens urged people not to approach the men if they appear in public.

"Each of the three should be viewed as very dangerous. We don't have any specific information that they are armed, but I think the public should expect the worst if they're encountering them and call 911," Hallock said, according to authorities told CNN affiliate KABC.

The men have been identified as 37-year-old Hossein Nayeri, 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, and 43-year-old Bac Duong.

Hossein faces charges for kidnapping, aggravated mayhem, torture and burglary. He has been in custody since September 2014.

Tieu is accused of murder, shooting at an inhabited home, gang activity and attempted murder. He was held on a $1 million bail and had been in custody since October 2013.

Duong also faces a host of difference charges, the most serious being attempted murder. He was taken into custody last month and held without bail due to an immigration hold.

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens released a statement ensuring that her team was working around the clock with the district attorney's office, the probation office, U.S. marshals and the FBI to find the men.

"I am confident that this collaborative effort will result in returning these inmates to where they belong -- behind bars," she said. "We are utilizing every resource available to ensure these inmates are brought back into custody as quickly as possible," she added.

The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of any and all escapees. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marshals Service is offering an additional $30,000 for info leading to the arrest of the accused felons, reports The Orange County Register.
The Wyoming Legislature should consider fewer education bills this year, according to Jillian Balow.

The superintendent of public instruction said her staff and the Wyoming Department of Education have worked hard to streamline legislation related to K-12 education. Data security, privacy and scholarships are just a few of the subjects that will be debated.

With the 2016 legislative session just a few weeks away, the Casper Star-Tribune spoke with Balow to see which bills the superintendent is following.

HB 15 would create a statewide safety and security plan and install a new tip line. Whats your opinion on the Safe2Talk/Safe2Say tip line that lawmakers say is preferable to the current one, WeTip?

Ive been generally supportive of this bill in terms of what it accomplishes, and anytime we can have an infrastructure that creates a culture of prevention, and especially provides an opportunity for students to make anonymous tips, to remain anonymous when they are reporting different issues and concerns they may have, it's a good thing. And anytime that can be followed up on its even better.

What was the issue with WeTip  why did it not achieve what we hoped it would? Is it a good idea to put the tip line in the hands of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation instead of the Department of Education?

Were just allotted a very small amount of money to put that forward. With the issues that would come through on the tip line, the Department of Education is perhaps not the best entity to field those calls. To have this in partnership with DCI, to have this in partnership with Homeland Security, obviously makes it a more robust tip line where we can offer more support to those students.

The bottom line is this that its time for that type of structure to grow beyond a call-in service. We know that our kids communicate in a lot of different ways, and its typically not picking up the phone and making a phone call. So the Safe2Tell/Safe2Say also has the social media component.

Senate File 14 would protect students' online profiles like Facebook and Instagram from teachers and school administrators. Is that a bill you support?

There are very few discipline issues today that take place in schools that dont have a social media component to them. So, we always need to not necessarily have an invasive way to take care of that, but as parents and teachers and school administrators it is our job to constantly be teaching kids how to be responsible on social media.

Does the bill strike a good balance?

I think this is a good starting point. The wonderful thing about our legislative process is that it will have public debate. It will have debate on the floor if its introduced, and that is where we will see that debate.

Theres an interesting change regarding testing in 11th and 12th grades. We still have the mandatory college preparatory test for 11th graders. But we also have the addition of a career readiness examination in House Bill 19. What is that, and do you support that addition?

I support the concept that within our accountability bill we have some options for career readiness. However, Im not sure that we hit the mark on that. And Im not sure that we are going to right now. So, this is a good place to start. But, as I always say, education is about continuous improvement. I think we need to find better ways to ensure that our kids are ready for the next steps in life, whether that be college or career or some other kind of work force training. We want to make sure that they have the executive skills, the employability skills, the technical skills and the academic skills to succeed and there is no one assessment that can catch all of that.

In more general terms, what will you be watching closely in Cheyenne?

A couple of things. Since this is a budget session, of course recalibration is going to be on the front burner. As is funding for every single thing in our state. Ill continue to advocate for our current or increased funding.

There is a bill right now that increases the Hathaway Award, very incrementally and at a very small amount, and I am very supportive of that.

The Hathaway Scholarship Program is almost a decade old and weve made very few changes, and I think that that is a wise path so far. We needed to really get a good base line on who, what, when, where and how on the Hathaway. Its time for the Hathaway to grow and evolve a bit.

At one time (last legislative session), we counted 40 pieces of education-related legislation, not all of those obviously were introduced. But, we were at a point in Wyoming history where a lot of people felt they needed to step in and provide solutions to some pretty significant issues in education.

This last year, we have really spend a lot of time and energy working with legislative committees and working with our stakeholders across the state to kind of boil it down to these really important bills. Its a much different look to where we were a year ago.

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Saturday continued to attack his 2016 rival Donald Trump on immigration, accusing the real estate mogul of being a supporter of "amnesty."

Although Trump's campaign has been centralized around his hardline stance against immigration, Cruz as of late has been accusing the GOP front-runner of actually embracing "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants.

The Texas senator first began making this claim last week when he told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump's position on illegal immigration would ultimately amount to amnesty. Cruz also accused the billionaire businessman of publicly supporting amnesty in a tweet he sent back in 2013 as well as the 2013 "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, which included a pathway of citizenship for undocumented residents.

While campaigning in Iowa on Saturday, Cruz reiterated his charge that the reality TV star has a soft approach on immigration. He also portrayed Trump as an advocate of "amnesty" who is pretending to opposed to illegal immigration just to win the Republican primary.

"Even right now today, Mr. Trump supports amnesty," Cruz said at an event hosted by his super PAC not far from Des Moines, reports CNN. "He doesn't get to pretend it's not amnesty when he's making 12 million people here illegally into 12 million U.S. citizens."

Cruz went on to remind voters about Trump's tweets supporting the "Gang of Eight" bill during a campaign stop in Dike.

"Mr. Trump, at the time, was sending tweets publicly supporting amnesty," Cruz said at a local pizza shop. "That's what was happening when the fight was being fought."

The congressman also dismissed Trump's proposal to deport millions of undocumented immigrants as just a "touchback" program, which would allow unauthorized immigrants to cross back over the border after they've been deported.

If you want to know which candidate will "burn" you on immigration, then look at Trump, Cruz told voters in Iowa.
Three men have been arrested due to their ties to the 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican students who went missing in the state of Guerrero.

As the Associated Press reports, Renato Sales, Mexico's security commissioner, announced that the suspects have links to an organized gang that authorities say took the the students from Iguala authorities.

A year ago, Mexican attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam announced that all 43 of the students were dead, citing confessions as well as forensic evidence.

According to the official story, on Sept. 26, 2014, about a hundred protesting students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College were arrested by police and then handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos cartel who then killed them and incinerated their bodied at a nearby dump.

Before this occurred, six people were killed in a shoot-out. One of the six victims, a student named Julio Cesar Mondragon, was found the next morning with his eyes gouged out and the skin peeled from his face.

Announcing the arrest of the three suspects on Jan. 22, Sales said that one of the arrested men was the prime suspect in Mondragon's death.

So far authorities have arrested 113 people in the case, a number which includes the ex-mayor of Iguala, as well as 44 police officers.

The Independent reports that Sales suggested that the three suspects were members of the Guerreros Unidos crime syndicate.

As previously reported, Mexicos murder rate has increased dramatically in 2015, rising to almost 9 percent.

Government data informs that around 17,013 murders were reported last year. The year before there were 15,653 reported homicides.

In 2014, as a reaction to the missing 43 students, Pena Nieto proposed to dissolve the nation's 1,800 local police forces and unify all officers into 32 state forces. In theory, unifying the authorities would make it more difficult for drug gangs to infiltrate or influence the officers.
Although Bernie Sanders has made tremendous progress in the Democratic presidential race, a new poll suggests that 2016 hopeful Martin O'Malley may actually be cutting into his base of support.

A new Zogby Analytics poll of likely Democratic caucus and primary voters shows that Hillary Clinton has a strong nationwide lead with 49 percent, while Sanders came in second with 27 percent and 10 percent back O'Malley. Meanwhile, 1 in 7 Democrats said they are still undecided.

According to veteran pollster John Zogby, Clinton's lead may be bolstered by O'Malley's bump in polls, which, in turn, may be comprised of voters who would lean towards Sanders if the former Maryland governor were not in the race.

Clinton also has a big lead among male voters with the support of 49 percent of men compared to 29 percent who stand with Sanders and 14 percent backing O'Malley.

Similarly, more women are voting for the former first lady: 49 percent in comparison to the 25 percent who support Sanders and 7 percent who back the former governor.

However, the survey shows that Clinton's lead is not as wide when it comes to Millennial voters. According to the polling data, 40 percent of 18-29 year olds favor the former secretary of state, while 33 percent back the Vermont senator and 23 percent support O'Malley.

The Democratic frontrunner has also maintained a commanding lead among African-American voters, as a whopping 72 percent said they support her, while only 13 percent are for Sanders and just 2 percent for O'Malley.

Forty percent of Hispanic voters are behind Clinton, 32 percent back Sanders and 20 percent support the former Democratic governor.

A large majority of Democrats - 61 percent - support Clinton, compared to 22 percent who are for Sanders and 7 percent for O'Malley. On the other hand, Sanders, an Independent congressman, tops Clinton by 25 points when it comes to Independent voters: 45 percent back him, 20 percent support Clinton and 13 percent support O'Malley.
Immigration rights activists held a rally in Chicago over the weekend in protest against the White House deportation raids targeting Central American families.

Pro-immigration advocates gathered at Daley Plaza on Saturday before marching through the Loop, a central business district in Chicago, to denounce the raids being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport newly arrived immigrants who entered the country illegally. This month, the agency has apprehended 121 Central Americans across multiple states, causing a firestorm of backlash from Democratic leaders, reports The Guardian.

Nevertheless, the White House has publicly supported the raids, while the Department of Homeland Security announced that they may be expanded to include minors who entered the country without a guardian.

According to government officials, the raids are being used to deter immigrants from illegally crossing the border. However, immigration activists argue that many of the immigrants migrated to the U.S. in a desperate attempt to escape ongoing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. As a result, sending them home would put their lives in jeopardy, they say.

"We are here because President Obama declared the war of terror against the immigrant community," said one speaker named Carlos at the rally, according to WBBM. "We are here because President Obama would rather deport three million people. He doesn't help enough. We are here because President Obama declared a war against Central American community," he added.

Carlos also took time to denounce 2016 Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

According to the Reverend Jose Landaverde, who helped organize the protest, the Obama administration and ICE should "focus on criminals" rather than harassing undocumented workers.

"Leave working families alone," he said. "They are just working to raise their children to give them a better life."

During the demonstration, speakers also promised to hold voter registeration drives and warned that they will organize a major immigration rights march in Chicago this spring.
Alaska was rocked by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck early Sunday morning.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake hit around 1:30 a.m. local time in south-central Alaska and was centered 53 miles west of Anchor Point in the Kenai Peninsula, which is 162 miles southwest of Anchorage. It was about 50 miles deep, reports CNN.

About two hours later, a magnitude-4.3 aftershock hit the Cook Inlet, in addition to another smaller earthquake with a 3.2 magnitude.

Although the quake sent a jolt of fear to residents in the region, it fortunately caused no fatalities and minimum damage.

"When it hit, it was just soft at first, and it just kept getting bigger," said Joshua Veldstra of Homer, who said the earthquake lasted about 30 seconds, reports NBC News. "It was one of those moments where you didn't' know if it was going to get worse or if it was going to calm down."

Meanwhile, 30 homes in Kenai had to be evacuated due to a gas leak in the community. According to Kenai Police Chief Gus Sandahl, there was a fire at a home shortly after the earthquake hit, which was extinguished by the fire department.

"Residents smelled gas so police and fire evacuated residents in surrounding homes," Sandahl told NBC News. "Hours after that, between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., there was an explosion at a different residence."

"They're still trying to resolve the gas issue," she said.

The earthquake was also widely felt miles away Anchorage by residents like Ron Barta, who said his home shook around 1:34 a.m. when the earthquake hit.

"I was sitting here with the dogs getting ready to go to bed about 1:34 local time. ... I felt a little rumble that didn't quit for about 30 to 45 seconds. It felt like the house moved," said Barta.

Likewise, Vincent Nusunginya, 34, of Kenai described the frightening moment as "unsettling" when he felt the violent shaking.

"It started out as a shaking and it seemed very much like a normal earthquake. But then it started to feel like a normal swaying, like a very smooth side-to-side swaying," said Nusunginya, director of audience at the Peninsula Clarion newspaper. "It was unsettling. Some things got knocked over, but there was no damage."
With the current wave of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. borders, several reports have surfaced claiming that for the past two years, some of the minors have been subjected to illegal acts and are smuggled as slave laborers, the Associated Press reports.

According to Fox News Latino, several unaccompanied minors were reportedly smuggled to be slave laborers in an egg farm in Ohio. The publication says that the said minors came to the U.S. to flee violence from their countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

However, their search for refuge and political asylum have led them to an unfortunate state. The minors, per the publication, are forced to work long hours in the belief that their employers will help them by to have U.S. citizenship.

The authorities said, via the news outlet, that 23-year-old Pablo Duran, who is accused of creating a company that aims to hire undocumented minors in farms, has already pleaded guilty. This announcement came with the news that such practices started in 2014 and the influx of migrants entering was getting out of hand.

Furthermore, the news outlet revealed that the migrant situation was then taken advantage by certain people like Duran and another accused Guatemalan Aroldo Rigoberto Castillo-Serrano. The latter was accused of scheming minors to come to the U.S., promising them education, which will never be given to them.

Meanwhile, the news comes after the Associated Press also reported that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have been under speculations of loosening their security and standards in light of the wave of minors from Central America coming to the U.S. borders.

According to the publication, the agency has let undocumented minors stay in sponsors' homes without making sure of their safety and well-being as some minors experience sexual assault, forced labor, domestic violence and abuse.

There were numerous cases investigated by the news outlet, including that of 14-year-old Guatemalan Marvin Velasco, whose sponsor deprived him of food. "He told authorities that he was going to take me to school and help me with food and clothing, but it wasn't like that at all," Velasco told the news outlet. "The whole time, I was just praying and thinking about my family."

Velasco, according to the publication, has since then been granted special legal status for young immigrants. The news agency urged that the problem is that the HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement let go of their previously strict standards of doing background checks, taking fingerprints and other necessary means to ensure the safety and well-being of undocumented minors who are sent to sponsors.

However, HHS spokesman Mark Weber believes the opposite. "We are not taking shortcuts," he told the news outlet. "The program does an amazing job overall."
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced some very embarrassing news for Venezuela. Addressing the U.N.'s General Assembly in a letter, the secretary-general stated that the Latin American nation, together with 14 other countries, would have their voting rights temporarily revoked as a result of unpaid annual membership dues to the international organization, according to FOX News.

With Venezuela's voting rights suspended, the Latin American nation would not be allowed to vote, unless the exceptional circumstances arise. The loss of its voting rights is extremely embarrassing to Venezuela, most especially since the country is currently serving as a member of the U.N.'s Security Council.

In fact, Venezuela is actually set to take over the U.N. Security Council's presidency next month, with ex-Finance Minister and state oil company PDVSA head Rafael Ramirez set to serve as Venezuela's Ambassador to the U.N. and Maria Gabriela Chavez, daughter of the late Hugo Chavez, set to serve as the Deputy Ambassador, reported The Latin American Herald Tribune.

The suspension of voting rights has not been confined to Venezuela alone, however, as even prominent oil-producing nations have been sanctioned by the U.N. due to their unpaid dues. Even Iran, one of the Middle East's primary exporters of oil, used to have its voting rights suspended.

With the country's economic sanctions being lifted, however, Iran was quickly able to pay its annual dues to the international organization, effectively restoring its voting rights, according to The Himalayan Times.

Other nations that are currently suspended include the Dominican Republic, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Venezuela has been embroiled in an economic crisis for some time how, with the country's economy contracting 10 percent during the previous year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has further stated that the Latin American country's inflation is running well into the triple digits, registering at 275 percent.

Analysts from the IMF are also not optimistic about the country's prospects of bouncing back this year, expecting the troubled OPEC member's inflation to rise as much as 720 percent and that its GDP would fall about 18 percent in 2015 to 2016.

With its economic problems emerging left and right, Venezuela's lack of funds is quite understandable.

If it wants to get its voting rights back, Venezuela would just need to make a payment of $3 million to the United Nations, according to the organization's secretary-general.

With Venezuela's current economic status, however, even such a relatively basic amount might very well be a bit too much.
In a rather unprecedented move, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro got the endorsement for the vice presidency from the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The group announced the endorsement last Jan. 23, Saturday, during an event held in San Antonio, Texas, where Castro served as the mayor for five years.

According to Javier Palomarez, the group's president and CEO, "Millions of people living in this country look to Julian as the gatekeeper of American dream." He said that the group is happy with endorsing Castro as the Democratic vice president, as they have seen his work for years and felt that he has done a great job serving as the mayor of San Antonio.

Among the many achievements Castro accomplished, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce noted his heavy involvement in the pre-K program for all the children in San Antonio, add to his other accomplishment of creating 2,700 housing units in the city.

The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce have yet to endorse a presidential candidate, but Castro is noted to be one of the most prominent Latino Americans to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

In fact, according to a report by Trail Blazers Blog, Castro even went to Iowa himself to campaign for the former U.S. first lady, which fuelled speculations about him running for VP. According to him, "Hillary has the experience, the energy and the vision to make sure that there's great opportunity in this country for everyone."

However, Castro himself has yet to formally announce his intention to run as vice president and even denied that he is running for the position. As for him, being the second most powerful person in the America is something that he does not believe is going to happen.

Still, the noise surrounding Castro's almost inevitable run as vice president grows louder every passing day. According to Fox News, Hillary herself was reported to have said that she's "going to really look hard at him [Castro] for anything, because that's how good he is, and he deserves the accolades he's receiving."

Many political analysts such as Richard Gambitta think that having Castro on your side would be a good move either for Clinton or her rival Bernie Sanders.

He reasoned that key states such as Iowa, Texas or New Hampshire will largely depend on the huge number of Latino voters, which Castro seems to strongly draw.

But for Castro, he expects that a year from now, he will back in Texas doing his current job.
There are many misconceptions and stereotypes about Latin America. While there may be truths in some, most of these mistaken beliefs are totally wrong.

Fallacies can change the way the world looks at a country and its people. This is because, the beliefs distort perceptions and make people judge something differently from what they really are.

Although some misbeliefs about Latin Americans are not that bad, they must be set straight since only the truth can free Latinos from false impressions and concepts. So, what are the most common misconceptions about Latinos and their countries? Here are the top eight examples:

1. Latinos are Catholic

It was the Spaniards who established Catholicism in South and Central America. They even brought the religion in other countries like the Philippines so it is widely believed that Latinos strongly practice the Catholic faith.

This is not the reality now. Latin America is going astray from Catholicism as its influence in the zone is slowly losing its grip. Many churches like the Protestant have emerged and Latinos are being drawn into these religions. In addition, there are also Mormons and Jewish faithfuls.

2. Latinos are Spanish speakers

Citizens of most Latin American countries speak Spanish, however not all them. For instance, Brazilians are mainly Portuguese speakers while other regions such as Venezuela and Guyana speak English and Guyanese creole. Also, nowadays, many Latinos do not even have a chance to learn Spanish.

3. Latino Food Consist of Tacos and Burritos

When Latin cuisine is mentioned, people usually think of tacos and burritos. While these are commonly served in Latin America, Latinos have diverse selections of dishes and they are not just fried foods dripping with fat.

In an article in Cosmopolitan, it was stated that Latinos don't just serve meats and fried dishes but many meals are actually vegetable-based. Additionally, typical staples like beans, rice and quinoa are healthy options in a Latam's menu.

4. Latins are Hot Salsa Dancers

When one is speaking of Latin people, what comes to mind first are those couples dancing in hot and sexy salsa or samba numbers. Generally, Latins are sensual and fiery but not all are into salsa and dancing hotly in clubs. Women are also not always dressed in skimpy outfits.

5.Latinos have the Same Appearance

Latins' looks varies. They are not just white, brown or black people. Many people also assume that Mexicans are dark with black hair while in truth, many are white just like the Europeans.

6. Latinos love to Drink Tequila

Tequila is an alcoholic beverage originated in Mexico. It has become popular worldwide but Latins don't really drink it that much. This is because they prefer other drinks like cocktails, beers, bourbon, gin, vodka or whisky.

7. Latin Countries' Weather are Not Always Hot

Latam is a huge region so its weather differs. Though there are parts that are indeed hot and offer that desirable tropical weather, many areas are cold since it also snows at times.

8. Latin America is Drug Den

It is true that there are Latam countries where drug related activities are rampant. In particular, the north regions are well-known for drug cartels and the people there are the one that suffers.

Despite this, most of the drug activities are only concentrated in a few Latin states. There are actually many countries in Latin America that are safe and drug-free.
Eight museum employees are facing disciplinary charges for damaging King Tutankhamun's mask that left scratches on the 3,300-year-old artifact. Prosecutors said in a statement on Sunday that they will also persecute the former head of the Egyptian Museum and the Restoration Department for failing to properly repair the pharaoh's mask back in 2014, per the Associated Press.

"In an attempt to cover up the damage they inflicted, they used sharp instruments such as scalpels and metal tools to remove traces of adhesive on the mask, causing damage and scratches that remain," the statement said.

The beard on King Tutankhamun's mask was damaged two years ago and was repaired using epoxy. When it dried up, one of the museum employees used a spatula to remove the excess epoxy around the damaged area, causing scratches to arguably one of the most important objects from ancient Egypt.

The mask was recently repaired by a team of restoration specialists from Germany and Egypt by removing the dried epoxy and using beeswax to reattach the beard. According to Antiques World, natural beeswax is the best way to preserve artifacts and is mainly used as adhesives in very old objects.

In a report by The Telegraph, King Tutankhamun was making headlines towards the end of the year after a British Egyptologist at the University of Arizona, Nicholas Reeves, proclaimed that Queen Nefertiti's tomb was behind the 19-year-old king's tomb. He theorized that there are two passages in King Tutankhamun's tomb that lead to a store room and Queen Nefertiti's burial place.

He has based his theory on several high-resolution images of the interior of the pharaoh's tomb, saying that the two secret rooms are seen through cracks and crevices. However, former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said that Reeves' theory was unjustifiable.

"Mr. Reeves sold the air to us. I confirm that there is nothing at all behind the wall. He succeeded in saying something exciting. The tomb of Nefertiti is inside the tomb of Tutankhamun, but his theory is baseless," Hawass said.

"I will not allow neither would any archeologist allow making a hole in Tutankhamun's tomb. The tomb is very vulnerable. Any hole may expose the paintings to complete collapse," he added.

The Associated Press noted that King Tutankhamun's mask was discovered by several British archeologists in 1922 inside a tomb. The finding of the mask and other artifacts created the interest of the world to archeology and ancient Egypt. It is displayed inside Cairo's Egyptian Museum that attracts tourist from all over the world.
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The foreign leaders from the member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) were gathered Sunday to discuss and prepare for the 4th upcoming summit in Ecuador Wednesday next week.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino announced last Friday that, since then, everything was ready for the 4th Summit of CELAC and for Ecuador to "open its arms" to Caribbean and Latin America. The meeting will be on Wednesday, Jan. 27, which will be held at the Union of South American Nations Headquarters in the Middle of the World City which is about 15 k.m. north of Equador's capital, Quito.

According to the website Plenglish, 22 heads of state or government have confirmed their attendance in the IV CELAC Summit. Some of those who will attend are the Brazillian President Dilma Rousseff, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Argentinian President Mauricio Macri.

Patino confirmed that the presidents of El Salvador, Cuba and Uruguay have sent their excuses and will not be able to attend the summit due to health concerns. Unfortunately, Quito has an altitude of about 2,800 meters above sea level which can possibly cause harm to their health.

The main topics of CELAC's meeting are expected to be the continuation of the 2016's deliberation of the regional bloc's priorities. That includes the unfinished 2020 Agenda's five points: science's development; innovation and technology; inequality and extreme poverty; financing for development and establishment of connectivity and infrastructure.

As stated by TeleSUR TV, other issues which will be discussed in the summit include regional integration, security, region's position toward terrorism, bilateral relations and migration. The leaders will also talk about their brokerage agreement with China, South Korea, India and Russia and their future plans about it.

The focus of the meeting has always been to improve the relationship between the members.

"We have advanced with respect to inter-regional relations," Patino told teleSUR, putting emphasis on the recent meetings of CELAC with China and the European Union. He also added that it is better to replace the Organization of American States (OAS) with CELAC so that the regional alliance and its operations especially in the international arena will be empowered.

In 2010, headed by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, CELAC was created. The birth of the organization happened during the Unity Summit of Caribbean and Latin America which was held in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
A bomb was used to blast a hole in an external wall in Frei Damiao de Bozanno prison in the city of Recife in Brazil. Forty inmates attempted to escape but were recaptured. Two were killed while one is still at large.

BBC reported that the incident was the second mass prison break in the area in just a span of one week. Most of the 40 inmates who escaped were caught after a manhunt was immediately conducted on the local streets. Two of the prisoners who resisted were killed and one remains free. Thirty-six were caught after they got out while one has been hospitalized.

Fox News Latino revealed that Pedro Eurico, Pernambuco Justice and Human Rights Secretary, shared in an interview that the two deceased prisoners were shot by police while the former were fleeing. One prisoner was already dying during the actual breakout while the other succumbed to his wounds while trying to escape.

On Jan. 20, 2016, 53 prisoners also escaped from another jail on the outskirts of Recife. Only 13 were captured.

Social media photos of the prison break showed how the bomb was set up to create a whole in the external prison wall. Minutes before the explosion, a man in the street went near the prison wall and left a package before immediately walking away. After the huge blast, dozens of men rushed through the hole and immediately spread into the residential streets. Many entered homes.

Based on the same BBC report, the prison guards union previously cautioned authorities that the breakout was expected. They warned that there was a planned escape via explosives on Jan. 9 or 10, 2016. During the explosion, only half of the monitoring towers at the prison had actual guards due to a shortage of staff. According to the union, the state of Pernambuco where Recife is located only has over 1,500 prison guards for penitentiaries. The required number was at least 5,000.

Jails in the state are usually operated by electing inmates to maintain security together with the guards. Frei Damiao de Bozanno prison was severely overcrowded, holding four times more inmates than its expected capacity, the union stated. The wall is currently being rebuilt and military police Special Forces have been provided to boost security around the prison walls.

The captured inmates will be subjected to disciplinary measures. More updates and details on the Brazilian prison break are expected soon.
There are rumors that Argentina is gearing to host the Formula One Grand Prix in the near future. Tourism Minister Gustavo Santos hinted at the possibility.

PlanetF1 revealed that Argentina last hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix in 1998. The event was held at the Buenos Aires Autodromo with Michael Schumacher of Ferrari winning the race. Due to financial difficulties at the time, the event was removed from the calendar before the 1999 F1 season.

The BBC reported that in 2015, F1 head Bernie Ecclestone cited that he was engaged in a discussion with the ministers about the potential of Argentina joining the list again. Ecclestone said that the return can, not will, happen.Gustavo Santos recently confirmed that the government will proceed with its plans to have the F1 return to Argentina.

Crash revealed that Santos said how these are challenges that could entail cost and complications but they chose to still pursue it. He continued that hosting a Grand Prix would boost the image of the status of Argentina on a worldwide scale.

The BBC also wrote that Latin America holds two Grand Prix at present: in Brazil and Mexico. The latter also comes back for the first time after 23 years near the end of January 2016. Ecclestone commended the returning countries for fixing their financial woes and getting back into the action.

This is when some of our people in Europe, who complain about things, realize what people like these do to promote the race and make it happen and compare it with what they do, Ecclestone said in the same BBC report.

State funding has also been provided to several new countries that joined the F1 calendar in the past few years, namely, China, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Mexico and Russia. Germany was absent in 2015 due to financial difficulty. The Monza circuit in Italy has yet to enter into a contract beyond 2016.

BBC revealed that as for Mexico, its status on the F1 calendar was guaranteed in the meantime. Ecclestone reportedly talked with Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto and said that their deal will be long term, just like before.

Joining the F1 calendar can be quite expensive, and the European government cannot actually fully justify the exorbitant race charges, which range from $40 million to $50 million each year for a number of newer races. Others, like Britain, raise their fees from private funds, which are smaller but still cost about $20 million each year.
The current leader of the Roman Catholic church will be heading to the country recently named the happiest in the world in 2017.

The affable pontiff's future destination appeared to fit his jovial nature as it was revealed that he will be visiting Colombia next year, which had previously been reported months before the recent confirmation. However, the visit apparently stems from the pontiff's deep concern for a rather somber side of the country's state of affairs.

In response to the announcement, Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said via Twitter that the citizens will "receive him with enthusiasm and in peace," as translated by Fox News Latino.

While no specific dates have been mentioned yet, the trip is believed to coincide with the pontiff's plan to visit Brazil in time for the Virgin of Aparecida's 300th anniversary.

In April 2015, as per Reuters, the Vatican had said that Pope Francis will be visiting Colombia during a Latin American tour. No date had been mentioned then.

This report emerged after the Vatican sent Colombia a letter regarding the visit, inviting the nation's leaders, who are Catholic, to "be collaborators in the construction of peace," as stated in the letter.

The reference to peace was connected to the negotiations the Colombian government had undertaken with the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). As such, it is understood that the pontiff's visit will touch on this issue.

Late last year, Pope Francis had spoken about the long-running war between the Colombian government and the rebels, saying that failure is not an option in the negotiations, which has reached its third year. The ongoing war is considered the longest ever in Latin America, having killed at least 200,000 people since it began in 1964.

"We do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure," he was quoted by The Guardian as saying during his visit to Cuba last year. "May the bloodshed by thousands of innocent people during long decades of armed conflict... sustain all the efforts being made, including those on this beautiful island, to achieve definitive reconciliation."

Despite the fact that Pope Francis had not met with the rebels, Farc leaders are said to be hopeful that the pontiff's call for peace will give a boost to the negotiations.

"We're sure many people (in Colombia) now see the peace-building process with more hope," noted Pastor Alape, a senior rebel commander.

The Colombian president, during his Vatican visit last year, had been told by Pope Francis of the latter's continued praying for the peace process.

WATCH:
Samsungs next flagship, the Galaxy S7, is drawing near, and much of its rumored features have already come out in the open. While Samsung has remained mum about the possible release date, a new report suggested that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will hit the market on March 11.

It is highly anticipated to debut as early as February, probably even before the 2016 Mobile World Congress which kicks off on Feb. 22 in Barcelona.

Samsung will be holding its annual Unpacked event on Feb. 21, which means that folks eagerly awaiting the new flagship can catch their first glimpse of the Samsung Galaxy S7 earlier.

That is less than a month away but the next thing folks would want to hear is when the device would be available in the market.

China Mobile hinted back in December that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will be available starting March. Several images were put up over Weibo to support the claim, showing the roadmap of the company, which included several other upcoming Samsung devices.

Aside from the Galaxy S7, the Galaxy A5 and A7 were among the other models in the said post. It was, however, the Galaxy S7 that drew more interest overall.

Now, there is another one who has supported that possible March release  ever reliable Evan Blass or @evleaks.

Blass has been a reliable tipster who has been known to belt out pretty accurate calls per Forbes.com.

In this case, he bares via Twitter that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will be released on March 11 in the United States, which is in line with previous forecasts. It also affirms earlier belief that Samsung has decided to release its next flagship a month earlier.

Looking back at the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S5, each launched on April 10, 2015 and April 11, 2014. Therefore, if March 11 is indeed the day, everything seems to fit in perfectly as scheduled.

Starting to look like a Friday, March 11th Galaxy release in the U.S.  Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 22, 2016

Of course it would be best to leave some room for error. It may not be that large but the thing is, Samsung still holds the key to when the Galaxy S7 will actually hit the market.

With regards to the specs of the Samsung Galaxy S7, Sam Mobile reports some of the latest leaks courtesy of an alleged Samsung employee.

That includes the next flagship sporting a black chassis to perk up that premium feel as well as the ability of its 12 MP main camera to take photos even in low-lit conditions. Though the megapixel count may not be that high, Samsung has opted to enhance the main camera with a larger sensor and improved lens to offer better image captures.

Aside from that, the Galaxy S7 will be dust and water resistant. It is also expected to have a microSD card slot. Other rumored features are Iris scanner, USB Type-C and a pressure-sensitive display similar to Apples patented 3D Touch.

There is also a belief that it will make use of two processors  an Exynos 8890 or a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820.

With all that, the list is still not official. With about a month away from its official debut, the actual specs of the Samsung Galaxy S7 should be made official pretty soon.
A huge number of bird carcasses were found on Alaskan Coasts, leading to the federal government to conduct an investigation.

According to the Washington Post, thousand of dead common murres, a bird native to Alaska, have been found off the state's sea coasts.

With the death toll reaching an alarming rate, the National Wildlife Health Center finally issued a bulletin regarding the the rising incident of common murres deaths over the past 11 months. Apart from that, the Alaskan sea bird deaths are also drawing the attention of other federal and state agencies.

As noted by Julie Lenoch, deputy director of the wildlife center, she and her team are looking for alleged large-scale events that may have poisoned the birds. The agency is also investigating whether the cause of death can also affect other species of animals.

The common murre is noted to be North America's most abundant sea bird species, which can be usually found residing all throughout the Artic. Dead bodies of these birds ranged from dozens to thousands since March and have been found on beaches of Alaska and east of Aleutian Islands.

But apart from the common murre, other sea bird species such as the thick-billed murres, black-legged kittwakes, horned and tufted puffins, murrelets, glaucous-winged gulls and short-tailed shearwaters were also found dead on the coasts.

As of current press time, no evidence of poisoning has been found, which led to researchers to theorize that the sea birds are dying of starvation.

According to a similar report by KUAC,org, the ocean's unusually warm waters may have caused the fishes, which are the usual food of sea birds, to disappear, leading to the common murre to die of starvation.

Experts explained that warm waters have sharply decreased the number of fishes that these birds eat in the sea, due to the fact that there's less "upwelling" and circulation on warm waters, resulting into planktons going up from the lower depths of the ocean for the fish to feed on.

Robb Kaler, a migratory bird expert said that this has never happened before and added that, "At many colonies in the western Gulf of Alaska, murres completely failed reproductively, and that's really unusual."

Kaler noted that they have also never seen a complete abandonment of a bird colony, which they attributed to lack of food source.

The researchers said that the murres have been going back and forth searching for a viable food source, and have died simply to a combination of hunger and exhaustion.
The calls for the Obama administration to stop its deportation raids campaign continues to grow as more than 270 organizations came together urging temporary protective status (TPS) for Central American immigrants.

On Monday, the 275 organizations, ranging from civil rights, faith-based, labor rights, humanitarian and legal-based groups, requested U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, with consultation from Secretary of State John Kerry, to give Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadorian immigrants, currently in the U.S., with TPS as a result of the growing violence in their native countries.

Citing section 244 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the 275 groups acknowledged that El Salvador and Honduras are already categorized for TPS but only for environmental disasters.

In a letter to Obama, the groups noted that Johnson can adjust a TPS designation based on if "there exist extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state that prevent aliens who are nationals of the state from returning to the state in safety, unless the [Secretary] finds that permitting the aliens to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States."

The groups believe El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras fit the aforementioned requirement of INA section 244(b)(1)(c).

Although the Obama administration recently made adjustments to its refugee processing policies, the belief is more has to be done. The groups, however, said the administration's latest refugee policy is an "explicit acknowledgement" of the Central American countries' worsening conditions.

"Designation of a country for TPS should be premised on whether country conditions meet the statutory requirements set by Congress and must not be impacted by unfounded fears of increased refugees arriving at our nation's border. TPS eligibility is strictly limited to individuals who are physically present in the United States prior to designation," the letter read, signed by groups such as the Detention Watch Network, Fair Immigration Reform Movement, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Mi Familia Vota, National Council of La Raza, National Immigrant Justice Center, United We Dream and We Belong Together.

As Latin Post reported, Johnson defended the deportation campaign, which occurred shortly after New Years Day, and said additional raids may occur under his discretion. Johnson said the raids focused on families or individuals apprehended for illegally crossing the southern U.S. border after May, 1, 2014, were issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, exhausted appropriate legal remedies and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under current U.S. laws.

Johnson disclosed 121 individuals were taken into custody and were in the process to be deported. Most of detainees were residing in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

Lawmakers from the House of Representatives and Senate have also respectively written letter to Obama to halt the deportation raids.

Must Read: 750,000 Undocumented Immigrants Eligible for Temporary Protection Against Deportation Raids: Report

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio scored a highly coveted endorsement from The Des Moines Register, the largest and influential newspaper in Iowa.

The endorsement was made Saturday, just a little over a week before the Iowa caucuses kick off the primary elections on Feb. 1.

Although neither Clinton nor Rubio are projected to win the Iowa caucuses in recent polls, the newspaper proclaimed that each candidate would be the best nominee in their respective parties. The paper also said that it is backing the candidates because each offers qualities that their rivals lack: for Clinton, it was her political longevity and expertise, and for Rubio, it was his ideas and potential.

"Democrats have one outstanding candidate deserving of their support: Hillary Clinton," the Register editorial board wrote. "No other candidate can match the depth and breadth of her knowledge and experience."

The paper also upheld the former secretary of state as a well-qualified candidate of "pragmatism," while dismissing Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders as a candidate of "lofty idealism."

"For some, this will be a choice of whether to vote with their hearts or their heads," wrote the prominent paper.

"Clinton has demonstrated that she is a thoughtful, hardworking public servant who has earned the respect of leaders at home and abroad. She stands ready to take on the most demanding job in the world."

In another editorial about Rubio, the newspaper said the "whip smart" Florida senator has the potential to "chart a new direction for the Republican Party.

"Republicans have the opportunity to define their party's future in this election. They could choose anger, pessimism and fear. Or they could take a different path," the board wrote about Rubio, who is currently polling in third place in Iowa behind Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz. "The party could channel that frustration and pursue true reform. It could renounce its fealty to the economic elite and its fixation with tax cuts for the wealthy."

Although the paper acknowledged that he faces questions over his experience and ability to unite the party, it maintained that he offers "an uplifting message 'of a new American century.'"

Politics strategists, however, say that being endorsed by the paper might actually backfire on Rubio since his rivals could argue that he has ties to a mainstream media outlet with a moderate-to-liberal slant.

"The Register's endorsement is like being endorsed by The Washington Post or NY Times, if you're a conservative," said former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, reports Politico. "For Trump and Cruz it will give them a chance to sound off - to diminish any potential positive impact the endorsement could have - against the 'establishment' endorsing one of their own. In short, it's like a car accident: 'Move along, nothing to see here.'"

Meanwhile, El Latino, one of the most widely read Spanish-language publications in Iowa, endorsed Democratic candidate Martin O'Malley for president over the weekend. According to the newspaper, the former Maryland governor is "the most pro-Latino and pro-immigrant candidate in the history of this country."

In an editorial, the paper also wrote that O'Malley "was the first one to put forward the boldest and most humane immigration plan in this race. He was also the first one to call for an end to the mindless deportations that are separating our community."
President Barack Obama is having a hard time not taking sides as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battle for the Democrats' presidential nomination and, potentially, a chance to succeed Obama in the Oval Office.

Obama revealed his "obvious affection" for Clinton, his former secretary of state, in a 40-minute interview with Politico, the Washington publication reported. His preference may have to do with Clinton's experience and Obama's assessment that she is best prepared to tackle the unique demands of the presidency, Politico speculated.

"(The) one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing" as president of the United States, Obama mused.

While he refused to name a personal favorite, the president was prepared to analyze the Democratic race and point to the strengths and weaknesses of both Clinton and her main challenger.

'Luxury of being a long shot'

"Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose," Obama noted about the Vermont senator. "I think Hillary came in with the both privilege -- and burden -- of being perceived as the front-runner. You're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven't seen before -- that's a disadvantage to her," he explained.

In the critical early-caucus race in Iowa, Clinton and Sanders are virtually tied in the polls as of now, CBS News reported. But Sanders will eventually have to prove that he does not only have an appealing message but is also prepared to lead the free world, the president suggested, according to Politico.

Presidency comes with 'dramatic' moments

"I don't want to play political consultant, because obviously what he's doing is working. I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you're going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you," he said.

"I was sitting at my desk there just a little over a week ago ... writing my State of the Union speech, and somebody walks in and says, 'A couple of our sailors wandered into Iranian waters. That's maybe a dramatic example, but not an unusual example of the job," Obama concluded.
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is making a last-minute push to try to triumph in the key early-caucus state of Iowa, a race which his rival Ted Cruz has long been favored to win.

The real-estate tycoon, on Jan. 24, urged his backers to turn out to vote in the Feb. 1 caucuses, though, true to his style, he was already predicting victory, CNN reported. And one by one, he ripped his Republican competitors in a Muscatine, Iowa, campaign rally, the news channel noted.

Addressing ethanol production, a critical issue for Iowa's agricultural community, Trump alleged that the Texas senator was more interested in backing one of his home state's key industries.

Trump: 'Forget' Cruz support for ethanol

"Cruz is getting oil money," Trump said. "He is so against ethanol, you can forget it," noting Cruz's position in favor of phasing out the mandated ethanol fuel levels in gasoline, which have long served as a boon to Iowa's economy.

And referencing the poor poll numbers of Jeb Bush, often seen as the GOP's main "establishment" candidate, Trump proceeded to offer some advice to the former Florida governor.

"It's time to give up, Jeb. It's time to give up," he said. "In life, sometimes you have to admit it when you don't have it."

Key newspaper endorses Rubio

Iowa's largest and most influential newspaper, the Des Moines Register, meanwhile, is urging GOP voters to back Florida Sen. Marco Rubio -- and not Trump -- in the Feb. 1 caucuses.

As it endorsed the Cuban-born senator, the paper's editorial board urged Republicans not to back the "anger, pessimism and fear" it says Trump has peddled during his campaign.

Nevertheless, a Jan. 21 survey conducted by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) suggested that Rubio is currently only backed by 14 percent of likely caucus-goers, while Trump is supported by 37 percent and Cruz by 26 percent.
North Dakota State University faculty will conduct research that could make wind power more widespread, reliable and efficient.

One of the key aspects of this study is to research the possibility of using DC (direct current) grids, said Nilanjan Ray Chaudhuri, assistant professor with the North Dakota State University electrical and computer engineering department who will run the research project. With that, well be able to increase wind energy penetration.

The United States is lagging when it comes to direct current power transmission technology, missing on the benefits DC provides  benefits that could one day transform how the nation gets its power, according to Ray Chaudhuri.

Most U.S. wind energy potential is located in the Midwest, where less power is in demand, said Ray Chaudhuri, adding that requires longer transmission lines to get the power to more highly populated areas. In the case of long distance, he said DC transmission technology is more economical. Switching transmission will require more infrastructure to be built but, in the end, it will be more reliable and efficient than alternating current.

A DC system also can help overcome the problem of fluctuating power that plagues wind today, allowing the power to be moved longer distances when the wind is blowing one place but not another, Ray Chaudhuri said.

North Dakota is particularly well-positioned to take advantage of the industry, according to Ray Chaudhuri, adding that the state has so much wind potential that industry could shut its fossil fuel power plants nationwide and supplement it only with North Dakota wind power, according to Colorado-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory data.

Ray Chaudhuri said North Dakota also has the advantage of being home to two high-voltage DC transmission lines owned by Great River Energy and Alletes Minnesota Power. He said there are not a lot of these lines in the U.S., most of them are on the West Coast, but more are being built.

Focused research

While DC connection to offshore wind power is being studied in Europe, Ray Chaudhuri saw the opportunity to focus on integrating the U.S.s onshore wind power. The National Science Foundations Division of Electrical, Community and Cyber Systems awarded the five-year, $502,810 grant for the research. He and his students will use the funding to focus on addressing four key aspects.

First, Ray Chaudhuri said there has not been computer modeling done on how a hybrid DC grid system would work. Within that grid system, different technologies for onshore and offshore wind power will have to be integrated.

No one has worked on any such hybrid system; that's where we have some challenges, he said.

Next, the study will take on power sharing. Power generated by wind turbines and the power needed to run everything, from industrial machinery to home appliances, is AC. So, conversions will need to take place from AC to DC and back to AC.

Ray Chadhuri said AC grid does not handle disturbances in power supply well when connected to the DC grid, so he and his students will have to devise a solution for if a converter goes down.

That becomes a huge problem, he said, so they will develop a way for other converters still online to share the burden, causing less disturbance to the AC system.

Another problem researchers will need to solve relates to generators currently used on the AC system that kick in when there are power disturbances. The conversion from DC to AC can sometimes block the generators from turning on and providing support.

Finally, because wind farms are typically in rural areas, AC generators are not nearby, making the AC system weak, something the researchers are aiming to combat.

The research for making such a DC system reality will likely take 30 years or more to perfect, Ray Chaudhuri said. Ultimately, he would like to see North Dakota become home to a Center of Excellence for HVDC research.

Integrating research and education

In addition to study of a developing technology, Ray Chaudhuri said the NSF Career Award grant, a competitive and prestigious award in the scientific community, will allow him to achieve his life-long goal of integrating research and education  developing new ideas through research while also educating the next generation and creating a pipeline of potential new scientists to help move the industry forward.

Graduate students working on the project can spend a summer at the Manitoba HVDC Research Center on a bi-annual basis to gain international research exposure. Also, Ray Chaudhuri said no schools in the U.S. offer HVDC curriculum, so his program will open the door for those students involved.

For undergraduate students, there will be summer research opportunities.

And, at the grade school level, there will be Science Technology Engineering and Math workshops held in the West Fargo School district and a summer camp at NDSU to pique students interest in the field.

Ray Chaudhuri has been working within the school district, conducting engineering workshops that included projects such as building a wind turbine model. He said these new workshops may allow him to take things a step further, presenting students with engineering questions related to testing and data interpretation.

Changes have been made to this story in relation to ownership of HVDC transmission lines in the state.
Although Hillary Clinton has not secured a public endorsement from President Barack Obama, she has stacked up a number of endorsements from his administration.

Earlier this year, Obama declared that he will not weigh into the Democratic primary race with an endorsement and will instead only campaign for the elected Democratic nominee, as long as they support "common-sense gun reform."

"There is no question that when it comes time, the president will be out there pounding the pavement for the nominee," White House Communications Director Jennifer Psaki told The New York Times. "But right now his focus, publicly and privately, is not on one candidate over another; it is on engaging the American people and about reminding them what is at stake."

In turn, Clinton has tuned to his administration's top officials for support in her run for the White House.

Back in October, the former first lady landed a major endorsement from U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro. He also joined her at a campaign launch event for "Latinos for Hillary" in Texas, where he praised Clinton as the best candidate to tackle immigration reform.

In addition, Clinton recently accepted an endorsement from Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and made an appearance in South Carolina with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Meanwhile, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Labor Secretary Tom Perez have also publicly declared their support.

"As someone who has had a front row seat, I sure as hell don't want to see the progress we made go backward," Perez said during a visit to a Las Vegas union office in December, according to The Associated Press. "And that's why, folks, I'm going to say I'm proud as hell of the fact that I have had the privilege of working for Barack Obama and I'm proud as hell to endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States."

Experts say that the Clinton campaign is strategically leveraging these high-level endorsements to boost her appeal to Obama loyalists. She has also tried to depict Democratic rival Bernie Sanders as anObama adversary by pointing out that he suggested Obama face a second-term primary challenge in 2011. Sanders has also publicly criticized Obama for taking donations from Wall Street, notes Clinton.

Sanders, in turn, has said he understands why White House officials are backing Clinton. But as long as Obama and Vice President Joe Biden don't chime in, he's appears to be okay with it.

"There are Clinton people in the White House who clearly would like to see Hillary Clinton nominated," said the Vermont senator. "I understand that, and I simply hope that they will be as fair-minded as they can be," he said, adding, "I take President Obama and Vice President Biden at their word, they're not going to be tipping the scales here."
Brazil has experienced its second mass prison break in a single week.

As the BBC reports, 40 prisoners escaped from a jail in the eastern Brazilian city of Recife on Jan. 23 when a bomb blew out a hole in an external wall.

Although most of the prisoners were recaptured, two were killed during the ensuing manhunt and one still remains at large.

The incident follows another prison break on Jan. 20, when 53 men escaped from another jail along the outskirts of the city. Out of this group of escaped inmates, only 13 were recaptured.

Video footage captured the moment the external wall of the Frei Damiao de Bozanno prison blew up, and the images were later broadcast on Brazilian TV. Immediately before the explosion, a man was seen walking up to the prison wall and leaving a package. Moments after the explosion, dozens of men were seen escaping.



Newsweek reports that because of staff shortages only half of the prisons observation towers were being manned when the explosion occurred.

According to the prison guard's union, a breakout was inevitable. The union asserted that the state of Pernambuco, where Recife is located, employs only around 1,500 prison guards when the number should be closer to 5,000.

The union added that Frei Damiao de Bozanno in particular is an extremely overcrowded prison.

Last year, 26 prisoners escaped from a prison in the small city of Nova Mutum. Two women donned erotic police officer outfits and succeeded in seducing the guards, distracting them from the ensuing breakout.

As CNN reports, Willian Fidelis, a spokesman for Brazil's Justice Secretariat, said that officials discovered bottles of spiked whiskey, as well as a pair of skimpy police costumes, next to the prison guards, who were found handcuffed and unconscious.

"We assume that is what the women were wearing when they seduced the guards," Fidelis said.
In addition to dumping record-breaking amounts of snow across 16 East Coast and Mid-Atlantic states this weekend, winter storm "Jonas" is also responsible for the deaths of 36 people.

For many, the monster snowstorm arrived on Saturday, bringing as much as 3 feet of snow to some parts of the East Coast. With Central Park receiving 26.8 inches, New York City recorded its second-largest snowfall since 1869, which was just 0.1 inch short of tying the record 26.9 inches set in 2006, reports NBC News.

Due to the storm, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shutdown the "City That Never Sleeps" by issuing a travel ban Saturday afternoon that prevented all motorists outside of emergency vehicles from driving in New York City and Long Island. New York City buses and certain subways were also closed to the public. The travel ban was then lifted Sunday morning.

The deadly snowstorm also brought the nation's capital to a standstill, with 22.4 inches of snow, while Baltimore received 25.5 inches of snow, breaking an 81-year-old record.

Meanwhile, other places reported snow accumulations that topped two feet, including Roselle Park, New Jersey, which received 28.2 inches; Philomont, Virginia, which got 39 inches; and 42 inches in Glengary, West Virginia, reports The New York Times.

In addition to immobilizing entire cities, the Associated Press reports that three dozen people were killed in snowstorm-related accidents.

In Washington, DC, an 82-year-old man died after going into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in front of his home. Likewise, a 44-year-old Capitol Police officer, died of a heart attack after shoveling snow at his home in Magnolia, Delaware.

The mammoth snowstorm took the lives of six people in North Carolina who died in car accidents during the storm, including a 4-year-old boy.

Tennessee saw two snow-related fatalities in seperate car accidents.

Meanwhile, a 23-three-year-old mother named Sashalynn Rosa and her one-year-old son died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow. Her 3-year-old daughter remains hospitalized in critical condition.

In New York, Al Mansoor, 66, was struck and killed by a snow plow clearing his driveway Sunday afternoon. Plus, 3 people died while shoveling snow in New York City.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) announced on Jan. 24 that it has reached a temporary deal with some of its creditors that will protect the agency from litigation through Feb. 12 and thus secure time needed to continue restructuring talks with bondholders.

The U.S. commonwealth's main electricity provider and its bondholders are in the midst of negotiations on how to restructure almost $9 million, Bloomberg recalled. The talks come after PREPA filed failing to meet a deadline on Jan. 22, which in turned had caused a tentative agreement reached last month to be terminated.

Analyst: 'Too many caveats' in long term

Daniel Hanson, an analyst at Height Securities, a Washington-based broker dealer, wrote in a report released on Jan. 25 that the utility's restructuring support agreement (RSA) will help all sides assess the situation in a calmer fashion, according to Bloomberg.

"PREPA's expired RSA contains too many caveats to hold up over the medium term," Hanson noted, "but in the short term, it is likely to be renewed in a bid to promote compromise on more contentious issues throughout the commonwealth's debt structure."

PREPA deal key for Puerto Rico

Resolving the electricity provider's outstanding obligations is seen as critical to solving Puerto Rico's problems at large, Reuters explained. The island's numbers are currently upside down, as the commonwealth is facing $70 billion in debt and, at the same time, a poverty rate of 45 percent.

If PREPA administrators are creditors failed to restructure the utility's debt, the effects on the Puerto Rican economy would be devastating, the newswire predicted. It would probably pave the road for years of expensive and uncertain litigation from bondholders and suggest to investors and federal lawmakers that Puerto Rico is incapable of getting its house in order, Reuters noted.

Lisa Donahue, the agency's chief restructuring officer, meanwhile, noted in a statement that she appreciated bondholders' continued willingness to proceed with the talks. "We are grateful to our ... lenders for their support as we continue our efforts to transform PREPA," Donahue said.
A photo of an adorable little sloth clutching a traffic barrier in the middle of a road has gone viral, tugging heartstrings around the globe.

The Ecuador Highway Commission released the photos of the tiny sloth on Facebook after the animal was rescued from the newly opened Quevedo highway in Los Rios, Ecuador. The post quickly caught fire, with the pictures of the "beautiful sloth" being shared over 14,200 times.

Officials suspect the poor animal became trapped by the high-speed traffic on both sides, although how the slow-moving creature got to middle of the road unharmed has not been answered.

Commentators were particularly fond of one close-up pic where it looked as if the sloth was smiling at the camera. Although judging by its close proximity to the rushing traffic and how it clutched the steel beam, it was likely frightened to death.

According to 9News, the tree-dwelling mammal may have ventured down to the road to relieve itself, which they typically do once a week.

The Highway Commission on Facebook confirmed the sloth was later safely returned to its home.

"Esteemed friends, we are grateful to all for your concern. Be advised, the sloth bear rescued by our units was checked by a veterinarian, and determinedit was in optimal conditions to be returned to its habitat. We are grateful to all those who were interested in the health of the animal. We will continue to support these kinds of cases along with the collaboration of the citizens. Greetings to all," read the Facebook response.

Sloths are sharp-clawed, but mostly harmless mammals that sport an incredibly slow metabolism. Despite this, they manage to avoid predators by staying relatively unnoticed and rarely leaving their home amongst the tree branches above.

Check out another cute video of sloths below!
North Carolina's 2013 law is going to court this Monday to test its constitutionality. The Republicans passed the law in 2013 to prevent voter fraud from happening. However, some people think the law is too much especially to the minority groups.

The law requires voters to present any form of ID to prove that it is them written at the polls' list. As Inquisitr stated, this law is blocking the rights of minority groups to vote as it is hard for them to get an ID. Civil rights' activist are protesting the law because they said it is 'immoral and unconstitutional" plus it is trouble to voters. North Carolina N.A.A.C.P. president William Barber said they are ready to challenge the law in court. They added that this law is moving backwards as it segregates the blacks and other minorities from the whites again.

TWC News reported that Rosanell Eaton, the 94-year-old black woman, is the main complainant of the lawsuit. When Rosenall was a kid, she went through many difficulties just to have her right to vote. Now, at this age and time, she does not want that to happen again because of this new law. Furthermore according to her, it was very stressful to acquire an ID just to do what is rightfully declared to you. The plaintiff also said that she will not come back again just to do the same things over and over again and then everything gets worse.

According to Washington Post, this law was under scrutiny even before it was passed. North Carolina is one of the nine states that need further approval from the federal courts to pass voting laws because discrimination was rampant in the state before. It was approved because of a Supreme Court rule in 2013 as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was ignored.

U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Schroeder is the one to decide about the new rule. He will decide about the Photo ID requirement that was added in the amendment of the new law. NC's governor, Pat McCrory, who initially sided with the rights activists' ID not comment this time.
Police officers in Kenya have arrested a prominent blogger and former NTV journalist. According to sources, Yassin Juma has spent his second night at the Muthaiga Police Station in Nairobi, Kenya. Apart from putting the blogger in prison, detectives have grilled him for over five hours.

The blogger was arrested in Donholm on Saturday night. The reason for Juma's arrest was related to his social media posts about the terror attack that occurred in KDF camp in El-Adde, Somalia. The attack left an uncounted number of soldiers dead.

Shortly after his arrest, the blogger was picked up by ATPU detectives and brought in for questioning at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters. The police officers that interrogated Juma threatened him that he would be arraigned at Kiambu Law Courts this morning. Juma is currently facing a charge related to the misuse of a telecommunications gadget.

A senior police officer spoke to MediaMaxNetwork and revealed the blogger's condition inside his cell at Muthaiga Police Station. The source revealed that the case Juma was facing was involved with CID headquarters. Cyber Crime Unit detectives are also working in the investigation.

The arrest done on the blogger came just a week after police Inspector General Joseph Boinnet spoke to the media that they had already identified individuals responsible for posting the gruesome images of the remains of the KDF soldiers believed to be the victims of the attack. True to his word, Boinnet spoke about arresting these "persons of interest" and taking them to court. He further request the media to be responsible with their duties and not be an "unwitting voice" of the terrorists. Apart from the media, Kenyans are also warned against circulating or posting the images.

Before Juma was taken to the Muthaiga Police Station, police conducted a search in his house.
More than 200 Moroccans are halted by the Algerian authorities after there has been an unusual increase in the quantity of Moroccans trying to cross. Moreover, the Moroccan envoy was called and summoned to give an explanation regarding this crossing to Libya.

Couple hundred of Moroccans were detained on the Algiers airport on Saturday night after Algerian authorities observed an anomaly in their increase according to Reuters. There has been no information regarding the charges or reasons on why these Moroccans are being held. But nonetheless, it is speculated that diplomatic relations between the Algeria and Morocco are being considered due to their regional influence and cooperation. It should be noted that Libya is a regional concern after the Islamic State militants have gained the ground for their operations and now has called for foreign recruits from the North Africa.

News also surfaced that Algerian Foreign Ministry has released a statement with regards to the issue of Moroccans crossing. In the article of The News Hub, they indicated that the massive unusual overflow of Moroccans migrating from Casablanca and are heading to Libya. They added that since these alleged militants are using Algeria, this was the reason for discussion with the ambassadors of both parties. In contrast, the Moroccan officials haven't released and are not available to comment with regards to these detentions.

Moreover, Telegraph indicated that Islamic State are building a new caliphate in the place where these Moroccans are trying to travel. One of the reasons they're being detained is due to being considered suspicious after not having a legal residence in Libya but it's unclear whether they have ties with the militant group. The Islamic militants has been a presence in Libya which prompted Tunisia to increase security with the borders. Furthermore, it's important to know that the Islamic group has taken over Sirte last week and was reported to have gained thousands of jihadists' sign-ups.

Around 270 Moroccans have been arrested Saturday night in the Algiers airport and were being considered as suspect due to unable to present a valid residence in their destination, Libya. Algerian authorities have released statements on the situations while the Moroccan envoy still unable to provide details. Many are looking on the possibility that these Moroccans are journeying their way to become jihadists of the Islamic State militants group.
After being a victim of a brutal crime, Gloria Kankuda, expressed her concerns on the justice that acid attack victims are receiving and the legal hope that they're looking for. Moreover, latest reports detailed on how their campaign has been going for the past 3 years.

Acid attacks are becoming more common now and is a brutal way to punish someone as they're being left badly scarred and traumatized, and now, Uganda victims campaigned their way to put a stop to these attacks. The Reuters wrote an article detailing the experience of a woman named Gloria Kankuda after she was attacked and determined herself not to let others share the same fate. The 33-year old is now campaigning to clamp down the sale of acid and to instigate heavier sanctions to those involve. Kankuda is a victim in 2012 after being attacked just outside her home which disfigured her face, blinded her in one eye and lastly, scarred the 70% of her whole body. Due to this, she's gone to more than 20 operations in just the past two years in a hospital in South Africa.

Though Kankuda wasn't given justice in court, her story won a national attention due to its nature and being one of the wives of Uganda's deputy attorney general as indicated by Daily Mail. Kankuda's statement over this kind of ruling was if her story didn't proved justifiable, what then others can do before adding "These scars will stay with me forever. No amount of plastic surgery will remove them." Now, activists are blaming the Uganda's legal system for the increase in acid attacks within the eastern district of Africa. While most common reasons on why these charges are being dropped are insufficient evidence and lack of concern with the victims.

Due to proving a lost cause in the legal system, Kankuda made an organization to let others be aware on the issues being detailed. In Thompson Reuters Foundation, Kankuda established the Centre for Rehabilitation of Survivors of Acid and Burns Violence (CERESAV) in 2012 to support other victims which are attacked over domestic disputes and rejected marriage proposals. Also, an online petition attracted atleast 300,000 signatures. Due to her campaign, the Toxic Chemicals Prohibition and Control bill was passed in November that will classify acid as a controlled substance and should regulate its sale. Kankuda is hoping that the bill will force the attackers to pay medical costs and serve stiff sentences.

Kankuda is one of the Uganda campaigners hoping for the legal hope to solve the numerous acid attacks in Uganda. Herself being a victim to this tremendous act, has started an online petition and organization to aid the passing of Toxic Chemicals Prohibition and Control act that would be a big step toward doing things right for the victims.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday last week that the Japanese regulatory body for nuclear and radiation safety should strengthen staff compentency and increase technical equipment at nuclear power plants in the country.

Japan has improved its nuclear safety regulation since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit northeastern Japan, followed by tsunami that flooded four out of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima power plant and disabled their cooling system. The disaster became the largest nuclear-related accident in 25 years, according to Sputnik News.

The country's government, parliamentary and private investigations blamed the failure of nuclear safety standards and regulations for the disaster. In 2012, Japan established the improved Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to replace the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which promoted the use of nuclear energy.

The IAEA held the Integrated Regulatory Review Service (IRRS) mission in Japan to review the improved NRA. The 12-day inspection that started on Jan 11 included the wrecked Fukushima power plant.

According to ABC News, the IAEA experts team said that the NRA demonstrated independence and transparency, which are the crucial elements lacking before 2011 disaster. But the team urged the NRA to enhace inspection competence.

The IAEA said in a statement that the Japan's NRA should work to attract competent and experienced staff, and enhance staff skills relevant to nuclear and radiation safety through education, training, research and enhanced international cooperation.

The agency also urged Japan government to amend its nuclear safety law to allow the authority to perform more effective inspections of nuclear and radiation facilities.

Inspection leader Philippe Jamet, said Japan's inflexible inspection rules do not allow inspectors to move freely at nuclear facilities or respond quickly when there is a problem. Jamet said at a news conference that the team found the system regulating, defining the framework of inspection as very complex and very rigid.

The IAEA also recommended the NRA and nuclear licenses to continue strengthening the promotion of safety culture by fostering a questioning attitude, according to World Nuclear News.

NRA's chairman Shunichi Tanaka said that the authority will seriously consider the IAEA findings to further enhance nuclear safety and security in Japan.

The IAEA's final report will be delivered to the Japanese government in about three months. A review on progress in implementing the IAEA's suggestions and recommendations will be carried out within the next four years.
The entire student body of St. Mary's Central High School braved Monday's snowy weather to offer a long-awaited homecoming celebration for classmates stranded 20 hours in the East Coast blizzard.

Two buses carrying 57 students rolled into the school's parking lot at 1:15 p.m. Their arrival marked the end of a 70-hour journey from the nation's capital. The students left Washington, D.C., on Friday afternoon following the annual anti-abortion March for Life.

The trip home should have lasted 26 hours, but the buses got trapped on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for nearly an entire day as snow piled knee high.

Students and staff waiting outside for the buses' arrival Monday cheered and waved as the vehicles turned into the school parking lot.

Chaperones Nick Emmel, a religious studies teacher, and the Rev. Jared Johnson stepped off one of the buses and high-fived their high school travel companions as each departed with pillows and blankets in their arms.

Emmel, holding his 3-year-old daughter, Julianna, for the first time in nearly a week, took a microphone and addressed the energetic crowd.

"It's good to see you all," he said. "I think that's the greatest welcome I've ever had."

He thanked everyone for their prayers and said those on board the buses had "a great adventure."

"And I want to thank the students," he said. "They're the best. I wouldn't want to be with anyone else throughout all of this."

Meanwhile, parents stood on tiptoes trying to spot their children as they came off the buses.

Rhonda Scheetz left work temporarily to greet her two sons at the school.

"Oh, there you are!" she said as she embraced one of them, Jacob, with a hug and kiss.

She said she loved that her kids were back but knew they were in good hands during the trip.

Her other son, Mathew, said he and his brother planned to drive home while his mom returned to work.

"It was a long ride," he said, adding that students spent more hours on the bus than in Washington.

Once crews managed to clear the turnpike Saturday afternoon, the buses carrying St. Mary's students drove to a hotel in nearby Somerset, Pa. The passengers spent the night there before hitting the road again Sunday.

Meanwhile, 60 University of Mary students also stranded on buses along the turnpike arrived back on campus at 8 p.m. Sunday.

In total, 250 high school and college students from the Catholic Diocese of Bismarck were stranded on the turnpike as they returned home from the march.

Students passed the time playing cards, singing, talking, praying and reading  and by starting a few friendly snowball fights.
A Belizean law student of University of Guyana was shot repeatedly at the East Coast of Demerara. The victim is still in coma at a city hospital as police continues to investigate the said attack on Thursday night.

According to 7 News Belize, Glenn Dennison, a 31 year old Belizean law student in University of Guyana was shot two times while he dropped off his girlfriend, who was also a law student. The victim was about to ride off when the suspect with a gun approached him and began to shoot him. Dennison sustained two shots on his stomach and left arm.

The attacked occurred around 9:00 pm on Thursday night on the victim's Cumming's Lodge in East Coast Demerara residence, Stabroek News reported. Sources also said, police suspects Dennison's former girlfriend to have a lead regarding the Thursday's night attack.

Dennison's relatives reportedly heard the gunshots and when they check it outside, they saw the victim lying on the ground with blood. According to the Reporter, Dennison was rushed to the Georgetown Hospital, where he was still in critical condition, in an induced coma on a ventilator. His family and friends also made no comment regarding the attack.

The bullets also struck him in his chest that punctured his lungs, and grazed his liver. Dennison's mother is also asking for financial support in order to be with her son in Guyana. His family is also desperate for answers and hope that the police authorities of Guyana solve the crime.

Police authorities are investigating the second shooting of a Belizean in the past couple of years. They have ruled out robbery as a motive for the attack since he was found with all his belongings. Glenfield Dennison is a prominent student at the university. The law student was also active in student politics and championing several social causes within the student community.
About ten thousand Poles gathered and rallied in the streets of Warsaw on Saturday to object against the government's proposed Poland surveillance law plan. The planned changes are feared to restrain the people's privacy and freedom.

Poland surveillance law plan will give the government the freedom to gain access to digital data. This also allows the police to interfere and have greater surveillance over the citizens, Reuters reports. The protesters waved flags that shout "illiberal democracy" as they believed that Poland is following the footsteps of Hungary. Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party took over in November and since then, it has taken power over of the media and the judiciary.

"Our privacy, intimacy is under threat, we can be followed, watched over both in our homes, and online," said Mateusz Kijowski, one of the leaders of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy.

The Poles demanded the withdrawal of the changes to Poland surveillance law plan. The presiding party claimed that they needed to change the law to execute a constitutional court ruling. Critics believed that the Poland's government is following Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban's rule of limiting the democratic freedom of the citizens. The European Union (EU) has since been alarmed that it started investigating if Warsaw is threatening the EU democratic principles, Press TV.IR reported.

According to Canadaka.Net, the EU is assessing the current incident, whether the Poland government has violated the bloc's principle of the rule of law. Just this week, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo claimed that her government had not violated any EU or Polish laws. However, if the EU finds any infringement, Poland's voting rights will be suspended in the 28-nation bloc. She also said that there's a mandate to revamp the Poland's laws.

The protest is the most recent among the series of rallies after the right-wing government that was elected last November. Critics believed that the Poland surveillance law plan is one of the anti-democratic policies being introduced by the present government.
A Chinese national who's suspected of the Los Angeles double murder and attempted murder of a third person was apprehended by the Hong Kong Police on Sunday.

The Chinese is a 44-year-old man who was being sought by the U.S. authorities for the L.A. double murder case. The Chinese police claimed that they received a formal U.S. extradition request before they arrested the suspect. The Chinese national is requested to appear in court on Monday, Reuters reports. The U.S. authorities have identified the suspect as Deyun Shi. He allegedly killed two of his nephews, ages 14 and 15 in Arcadia, an L.A. county by beating them to death.

"Hong Kong Police will continue to take strong enforcement action against overseas fugitives fleeing to Hong Kong," Sunday's police statement said.

Shi is also wanted for attacking his wife just a day before the brutal L.A. double murder took place. He was labeled as armed and dangerous when he was arrested. Shi was taken to North Lantau Hospital for medical check up. He was detained immediately in Hong Kong after his Cathay Pacific flight from L.A. arrived at the at Hong Kong International Airport, reported by SCMP.

Meanwhile, the remains of the two teenagers were found on Friday afternoon. The boys were identified as William and Anthony Lin who suffered "blunt force trauma," according to CNN. "We are beyond saddened to learn of the death of the Lin brothers, William and Anthony, who attended Arcadia High School," the school's statement reads. While this tragedy did not happen on campus, it will undoubtedly have an enormous impact throughout all our schools."

Hong Kong has extradition treaty with the U.S. that permits the transfer of fugitives between two countries since 1998. It is believed that Shi is trying to hide in China where there's no extradition treaty with the U.S. On Monday, a vigil will be offered to the two students who were killed.
Family planning program is making a comeback in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ten years ago, the country was known for its two-child policy and has gained international recognition.

The International Conference on Family Planning is set to be opened by President Joko Widodo to address current issues like contraceptives and reproductive health. Jakarta is the world's 4th most populated country, and they are making a move to lower the birthrate to energize its economic growth. The government is planning to provide more funds into education and information dissemination as for the importance of family planning as this issue puts a strain on water, education, housing, and employment needs as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Former autocrat Suharto's program on population helped Indonesia gain its economic growth which last until 1998. But after ten years since the year 2000, the country's population program stopped and caused its detriment.

According to Hari Fitri Putjuk, a representative from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center, there was no sufficient effort, accurate information, no promotion during those times and now younger people are not aware that there is such a program. Jose Oying Rimon, Director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institution, fewer children increases the working age and leads to a more sustainable development.

A few years ago, Indonesia tried to bring back the population program but because of lack of funds and commitment from the local government, the progress has been slow. Now President Widodo is committed to reviving the program. He started the campaign in a village in The West Java. Services are provided for free under a universal health program. Clinics and training of health workers have also been improved to increase the program's success rate.

According to The Daily Mail, the national population conducted a survey last 2015, Indonesia's fertility rate has dropped from 2.6 to 2.3 children per woman and the goal is to decrease it further to 2.1 by 2025. Head of the National Population Family Planning Program, Surya Chandra Surapatry said that the family planning program is geared towards ensuring that the population growth doesn't affect the benefits of economic expansion.

The program still has a lot of loop holes that needs improvement. One issue related to this is that it targets only married couples due to the regulatory restrictions in the Muslim-majority country. Experts say that there are still cultural and religious barriers that need to be addressed so that it will be a sustainable program for the well-being of Indonesia's people and economy.
The legality of acquiring a valid photo identification requirement in the 2013 North Carolina law will go on a trial before the federal court on Monday. A decision must be reached before the March presidential primaries.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a trial is set to begin on Monday regarding an amendment in the 2013 law signed by Republican Gov. Patrick McCrory that prohibits people without one of the six required ID to vote. Such law reportedly earned lawsuits from U.S. Justice Department, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and others claiming that the law affects minority voters who are less likely to have the requirements that are needed to get the required IDs.

The lawsuits were eventually consolidated into one case which is closely being watched by the state. As reported by News Observer, an attorney for the state NAACP, Denise Lieberman. said that the move burdens the voters of color in the state,

"There's no doubt that the ID requirement disproportionately burdens the right to vote for voters of color in North Carolina", Lieberman said.

According to The Washington Post, the law also included several changes in the voting system such as the reduction of number of days of early voting, prohibition of registering and voting on the same day, invalidation of the ballots cast in the wrong precinct and prohibition of pre-registering teenagers before they turn 18.

Gov. McCrory and North Carolina Department of Justice asserted that the passing of the bill in 2013 was in order to keep prevent voter fraud. It was also stated that an amendment was made in June last year called the "reasonable impediment" which voters can use provided that they sign a form and provide their identification information at the polling location.

However, the amendment is still being questioned as state officials haven't properly educated the voters on the "reasonable impediment" and it will depend on the poll worker's discretion. U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder gave both sides of the case until February 11 to provide further records for the lawsuit before he give the final decision.

Schroeder is also yet to give the final decision on other provisions of the law that were put on trial last year.
An official in Mexico urges the government to legalize both medical and recreational use of marijuana.

According to reports of Telesur TV, President of Chamber of Deputies Jesus Zambrano said on Sunday that Mexico should move ahead with entirely permitting marijuana usage. The statement was shared in front of legislative body as they started a month-long discussion on the drug war.

The source mentioned Zambrano saying that Mexico should follow the example of Colombia and Italy in pursuing policies to weaken organized drug syndicate. He cited between 2007 and 2014 alone, more than 164,000 homicides were reported related to organized war on drugs in Mexico. Narcotics traffickers are more equipped with weapons than the national army thus border control should be one of the main concerns to limit the traffic of arms. Inequality and poverty are also central to any policy addressing gang violence.

The lawmaker stressed that the topic about marijuana legalization has international components. Mexico and United States should combined efforts on the matter. The two countries should have common rules though each with its own modalities, the news source stated.

"But the United States must help our country apply, for instance, legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use," said Zambrano as quoted by Telesur TV.

In November last year, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that growing, possessing and smoking marijuana for recreation is legal under the right to freedom, Desert Sun wrote. The ruling however covers a single case of plaintiffs who wanted to form a pot club. The ruling of the Supreme Court of Mexico did not favor the sale or commercial production of marijuana nor does it imply a general legalization.

Mexican lawmakers will continue discussing the possible legalization of marijuana use until February 17 following the endorsement of the states of Washington, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon to decriminalize marijuana use.
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Reaction is mixed in communities and among other water providers in western North Dakota over the impact of a major regional water supply project and efforts to weather a recent slowdown in industrial water sales.

Theres been a reduction in industrial sales in the last six, eight months, said Jaret Wirtz, executive director of the Western Area Water Supply Authority. In order to weather the storm, we think we need to make some adjustments.

When communities and water districts joined WAWS, they turned over infrastructure to the organization so communities would not be directly competing for industrial water sales, according to Wirtz. In return, monthly payments based on 2010 industrial water sales levels are passed along to the communities.

Possible adjustments to those payments may occur in the near future. These adjustments could consist of an across-the-board reduction in monthly payments or paying in months only when theres sufficient dollars to do so.

The possibility of adjustments follows a move in December when the North Dakota Industrial Commission authorized WAWS to let the approximately $12.3 million that has been prepaid on loans be drawn down through July 31, 2017.

By allowing the prepaid amount to be drawn down, it would save WAWS about $590,000 per month in payments on the principal of the loans, according to Wirtz, who said the purpose is to relieve payment pressure temporarily during a time of decreased industrial water sales. It also is to allow WAWS to avoid restructuring its loans through the Bank of North Dakota.

As to the possible adjustments in industrial water payments, Wirtz said most of the communities that are project members arent selling much, if any, industrial water anyway so any changes should be workable.

The communities understand that. I dont think theres going to be big blowback, said Wirtz, adding that any move made would be lifted once industrial water sales increase again.

Tioga Mayor Drake McClelland said he is unsure of the plan. He didnt know what the potential budget impact would be, but the city will need to take a second look at this years budget.

Any changes would hurt the smaller communities, including Tioga, that budgeted infrastructure repairs with those dollars in mind, according to McClelland, adding he has a mixed reaction overall to the WAWS project.

McClelland said one positive is that the WAWS set a priority for adding a major water line to the city to supplement an existing one. On the other hand, he said communication from WAWS on its actions has been lacking.

Its more of (announcing) were going to make these changes, McClelland said.

Communities need to know sooner rather than later whats being done in order to review budgets, according to McClelland, who said it would help in prioritizing projects because the longer the wait to put projects out to bid the more likely the cost increases.

Watford City Mayor Brent Sanford described the project as "a godsend to the area, which previously didnt have quality water nor enough to supply a population thats grown rapidly in recent years.

I think its still a very solid plan, Sanford said. It could become a concern to us if the cost of water  gets significantly higher.

Sanford said he understands the temporary moves WAWS is making, adding its just a matter of when oil prices rebound and the project begins to see more cash flow again.

WAWS was originally a $150 million regional water supply project approved during the 2011 legislative session. Since then, the cost has ballooned to an estimated $479.5 million to complete over the next few sessions.

Residents of a five-county service area will get water from the Missouri River once the project is completed. The initial plan was to provide service to 48,000; in 2014, this had grown to an estimated 160,000 by 2035. That population estimate is now down to 125,000.

Mike Ames, with the Independent Water Providers group in the region, said the size and scope of the project has long been a concern.

We sure dont wish any ill will on anyone but, in some ways, people were thinking too big, Ames said of the project.

He said the focus of the project should be on the water to residents not to industry.

When the industrial water went down, it affected all of us, said Ames, adding that the independent companies in water sales dont have state investments backing their projects.

Overall, about 400 miles of pipeline were laid in 2015 for the project, mostly for extensions to new rural residential customers, according to Wirtz, who said about 600 more miles of pipeline are planned for this year.

He said, despite the December actions, hes still confident the project is in good shape.

I think thered be a whole lot more concern if we were at $60 or $80 oil, and we werent making payments, Wirtz said.
After months of watching all sorts of political polls, we are finally just a few weeks away from actually beginning to see some voting in primary elections. Polls let people vent their emotions. But elections are held to actually accomplish something.

The big question is whether the voters themselves will see elections as very different from polls.

If Republican voters have consistently delivered a message through all the fluctuating polls over the past months, that message is those voters' anger at the Republican establishment, which has grossly betrayed the promises that got a Republican Congress elected.

Whether the issue has been securing the borders, Obamacare, runaway government spending or innumerable other concerns, Republican candidates have promised to fight the Obama administration's policies  and then caved when crunch time came for Congress to vote.

The spectacular rise, and persistence, of Republican voter support for Donald Trump in the polls ought to be a wake-up call for the Republican establishment. But smug know-it-alls can be hard to wake up.

Even valid criticisms of Trump can miss the larger point that Republican voters' turning to such a man is a sign of desperation and a telling indictment of what the Republican establishment has been doing for years  which they show pathetically few signs of changing.

Seldom have the Republicans seemed to have a better chance of winning a presidential election. The Democrats' front-runner is a former member of an unpopular administration whose record of foreign policy failures as secretary of state is blatant, whose personal charm is minimal and whose personal integrity is under criminal investigation by the FBI.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have fielded a stronger set of presidential aspirants than they have had in years. Yet it is by no means out of the question that the Republicans will manage to blow this year's opportunity and lose at the polls this November.

In other times, this might just be the Republicans' political problem. But these are not other times. After seven disastrous years of Barack Obama, at home and overseas, the United States of America may be approaching a point of no return, especially in a new age of a nuclear Iran with long-range missiles.

The next president of the United States will have monumental problems to untangle. The big question is not which party's candidate wins the election but whether either party will choose a candidate that is up to the job.

That ultimate question is in the hands of Republicans who will soon begin voting in the primaries.

Their anger may be justified, but anger is not a sufficient reason for choosing a candidate in a desperate time for the future of this nation. And there is such a thing as a point of no return.

Voters need to consider what elections are for. Elections are not held to allow voters to vent their emotions. They are held to choose who shall hold in their hands the fate of hundreds of millions of Americans today and of generations yet unborn.

Too many nations, in desperate times, especially after the established authorities have discredited themselves and forfeited the trust of the people, have turned to some new and charismatic leader, who ended up turning a dire situation into an utter catastrophe.

The history of the 20th century provides all too many examples, whether on a small scale that led to the massacre in Jonestown in 1978 or the earlier succession of totalitarian movements that took power in Russia in 1917, Italy in 1922 and Germany a decade later.

Eric Hoffer's shrewd insight into the success of charismatic leaders was that the "quality of ideas seems to play a minor role," What matters, he pointed out, "is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."

Is that the emotional release that Republican voters will be seeking when they begin voting in the primaries? If so, Donald Trump will be their man. But if the sobering realities of life and the need for mature and wise leadership in dangerous times is uppermost in their minds, they will have to look elsewhere.

(Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. His syndicated column appears Mondays.)
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The Masai Mara in Kenya is one of the worlds greatest places to go on safari. The lush plains are home to millions of animals and provide for a beautiful setting for photos. On my recent trip to Kenya, after staying at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club, I was fortunate to stay at the Fairmont Mara Safari Club; which is a tented camp in the middle of the Masai Mara. The Masai Mara is unforgettable.



You can reach the Masai Mara either by driving from Nairobi about 3 hours or so or you can fly to small remote landing strips throughout the Mara (as the locals call it). I flew from Nanyuki via Meru; which is also an option if youre touring around the country a bit.



Africa has several great national parks for going on safari. Amongst the best is the Masai Mara, which is a smaller extension of the massive Serengeti in neighboring Tanzania. Also, Ngorongoro Crater; which is also in Tanzania. Kruger Park in South Africa and several great parks in Botswana including Chobe National Park in the beautiful African four corners region. These are the places you want to go.



The best thing about going on safari these days is that you can actually stay in the bush. Luxury tented camps and lodges are sprouting up all over and are amongst the best places to stay in the world. Literally, these lodges win all the awards for best hotels in the world each year. The Fairmont Mara Safari Club actually set us up with a barbecue bush dinner; which was pretty amazing especially with a Masai Warrior dance by firelight. It was a truly memorable experience!



The Fairmont Mara Safari Club is a lovely property with 51 tents and a main lodge. Its location right on the river inside the Masai Mara means theres literally hippos right below your tent at all times. Hippos make a lot of noises!



The tents themselves are pretty nice as you can see with a large bed and bathroom facilities. Whats also cool is that it really is a tent so you can hear all the nature noises going on all night. Some people might feel nervous but I think its wonderful.



From the Fairmont Mara Safari Club we did both afternoon/sunset and morning game drives. This way you get multiple opportunities to see the animals and also you get to see the Masai Mara at different lights, temperatures and vistas.



Sunset cocktails are a staple of late afternoon game drives. This is one of my favorite things to do in the world. The safari guide/driver will set up a small table with cocktails and appetizers where you can watch the sunset in a glorious location.



Its always a little awkward because youre in the bush and theoretically animals could come to where you are. Ive never had that happen in some 50 game drives Ive done around the continent but its always in the back of your mind; which adds to the experience in my mind!



The Masai Mara is part of the great wildebeest migration and depending when you go you can a lot of animals or you can see millions of animals-literally. The lush plains and watering holes are stunning and driving through it is like driving through an animal kingdom. I can never get enough of going on safari. No matter how many times Ive done it, I never get tired of seeing these magnificent creatures in their natural environment.



If youre planning on doing an African safari, and I hope everyone does at some point, I recommend going in a few different parks if you can swing it. But definitely include the Masai Mara in your itinerary, as its one of the most beautiful of all the great parks of Africa.



Disclaimer: My stay at the Fairmont Mare 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.



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Ford Ranger to get Raptor's twin-turbo V6?

Jan 25, 2016, 2:24pm ET

The Ranger\'s rumored homecoming could be bigger than first expected.

Ford is reportedly considering a high-performance Ranger pickup that could serve as a smaller sibling to the F-150 Raptor.

Speaking to Australia's Motoring, Ford Performance global PR manager Paul Seredynski dismissed a Ford Fiesta RS but acknowledged a Ranger Raptor was "a fascinating idea."

The comments suggest the Ranger's long-rumored homecoming may be more spectacular than expected.

The Blue Oval has already made a push toward performance positioning for the model, building a Ranger-bodied racer to compete in the Dakar Rally. The 2013 truck was outfitted with a 5.0-liter V8 capable of delivering 348 horsepower and 413 lb-ft of torque.

A production model could be a bit easier to build as the 2017 F-150 Raptor switches from a V8 to an EcoBoost V6. Despite its smaller displacement, the V6 is expected to generate more power -- perhaps above 450 ponies. The midsize Ranger would likely come in below the top-spec F-150, however the report points to around 400 horsepower as a likely figure.

With or without a Raptor variant, the Ranger is expected to return to the US market within the next few years.
After initially rejecting a plea deal, an Allentown man accused in a gruesome hit-and-run crash that killed one woman and injured her sister admitted his role Monday.

Jose Santiago, seen here being led to court on April 17, 2015, pleaded guilty Monday to a gruesome hit-and-run crash on Airport Road that left a victim dismembered. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

"I don't recall ever being in an accident. I know that makes it hard to believe. It's the truth," Jose Santiago said in court, later adding, "I am so, so sorry."

The statement brought out anger from the families of Anna Lewis, who was dismembered and killed in the crash last March 15 on Airport Road, and her sister, Rosalie Carlo, who was severely injured.

Many began crying as Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Bernardino III began describing the women's injuries. But when Santiago spoke, one woman whispered incredulously, "You're sorry?" Another woman left the courtroom in tears.

Although he said he couldn't remember, the 33-year-old Santiago pleaded guilty to homicide by vehicle while DUI, aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI, and driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol content of 0.11 percent.

Santiago also pleaded guilty in an unrelated case to two counts of possession with intent to deliver marijuana.

It was the same deal offered earlier this month -- a deal Santiago initially rejected.

Santiago, of the 800 block of West Chew Street, faces a maximum of 10 to 20 years in the hit-and-run case, and a maximum of eight years for the probation violations.

After the hearing, defense attorney Gavin Holihan said he didn't know why Santiago says he can't remember the crash, or whether it was due to his intoxication, the trauma from the accidents or something else.

Pennsylvania State Police said after hitting the pair with his car, Santiago drove away with part of Lewis' body in the passenger side, after it fell through the broken windshield. Police found Santiago's Saab 9-5 in West Bethlehem about 90 minutes after the crash.

Troopers also found blood and body matter on Santiago's clothes, as well as numerous parts to the Saab at the crash scene, according to state police.

Authorities said speed, alcohol and drugs were factors in the cash. Police estimate Santiago was driving at least 66 mph in the 50-mph zone when he hit the women on the eastern shoulder of northbound Airport Road.

A blood test early the following morning showed Santiago's blood-alcohol content was 0.11 -- penalties begin at 0.08 for most drivers -- and was positive for marijuana, authorities said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Recently, Congress sent to President Barack Obama's desk legislation that overturns the Waters of the United States rule. This rule is an effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly expand federal jurisdiction over virtually all waters and wetlands in the nation.

Our vote in the House of Representatives Jan. 13 approved S.J. 22, a joint resolution of disapproval that had been passed by the Senate in November. Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can overturn an agency's rule if a joint resolution of disapproval is passed by both chambers and signed by the president. S.J. Res. 22 would vacate the rule and prohibit the issuance of any new rule substantially similar to the WOTUS rule published in June 2015.

Less than a week later on Tuesday (Jan. 19), the president vetoed the resolution. WOTUS is opposed by a bipartisan coalition in both the House and Senate. We believe it is an example of how the Obama administration is sidestepping the will of Congress and imposing its extreme environmental agenda through executive order and agency rulemaking.

Two years ago in March the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers released their proposed rule to grant the government unprecedented regulatory authority over nearly all bodies of water. This includes small ponds, creeks, ditches and other occasionally wet areas, including those found on private property. In both the 2001 and 2006 cases, a plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the EPA's broad interpretation of the WOTUS. Legislation to establish far-reaching authority on federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act was attempted, but stalled in the 107th, 108th, 109th, 110th and 111th sessions of Congress.

But not to be deterred by defeats in previous Congresses and Supreme Court rulings, the Obama administration has refused to let go of this unconstitutional power grab. The final rules published by the EPA last June threaten the livelihood of producers and businesses across North Dakota and the region. They also significantly undermine the role of the states as partners and co-regulators of the nation's waters.

I have been one of the most vocal critics of this rule because of how punitive the impacts of these far-reaching regulations would be on North Dakota producers and businesses. Much of our land is used for agriculture production and yet, our state has not drained its significant wetlands. In addition to feeding a hungry world, this has made North Dakota critically important as one of North America's premier prairie pothole regions. Our agriculture producers have been good stewards of the land and have helped maintain these crucial wetlands. With these WOTUS regulations in place, every puddle, stream and ditch in the state could be subject to federal regulations, creating unneeded obstacles for producers and small businesses.

The EPA has been deceitful throughout the process of developing this rule. It was charged by officials at the corps with manipulating data to support the rule. The EPA did not comply with the Regulatory Flexibility Act and complete the required study on the impacts this rule would have on small business. And the New York Times uncovered illegal activity by the EPA in using outside organizations to generate positive comments through social media which has since been confirmed by the Government Accountability Office.

Many others oppose this land grab as well, including national agriculture, business, energy and property rights organizations concerned at how WOTUS threatens the livelihood of their constituents. For now, a temporary injunction issued in August by Judge Ralph Erickson and a nationwide injunction in October by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has stalled the implementation of the WOTUS rule.

If the court challenges are not successful in preventing the implementation of this rule, I will work with my colleagues to kill this rule once and for all.
An Upper Saucon Township man accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl told township officers he was checking on the child because she was having a nightmare, police said.

Upper Saucon Township police say a man molested a 10-year-old girl. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

Joshua Freeman, 25, of the 4400 block of Old Bethlehem Pike, was arrested Saturday and charged with indecent assault of a person under the age of 13.

Freeman was sent to Lehigh County Jail in lieu of $20,000 bail.

Freeman and the accuser are acquainted, police said.

In an interview with township officers, Freeman said he went into the room, saw the girl was asleep, but that he believed she was suffering a nightmare, police said.

Freeman said he placed his hand on the girl to "check her well being," but later said his hand was in the area of her genitals, police said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Late-week snowstorm unlikely for now, but bears watching

Better keep the snow shovel handy.

The Eastern Pa. Weather Authority issued an update on Facebook warning of a potential snowfall Thursday night or Friday for the Lehigh Valley.

Not to be a debby downer, and believe me, after 32" of snow that I just now finished clearing, I want NO PART of any... Posted by Eastern PA Weather Authority on Sunday, January 24, 2016

The European model is calling for snow, but the Canadian one isn't, according to the post. Regardless, the system is looking "close enough (for the Valley) to be concerned."

The same thing happened after the great bizzard of 1996 -- a second snowfall came five days later.

"So no rest for the weary. We may be right back at it this week," the forecasters said.

The weather authority meteorologists take no joy in delivering that message.

"Believe me, after 32 inches of snow that I just now finished clearing, I want NO PART of any snow for awhile," the meteorologist posted.

Brian Clavier, meteorologist with WeatherWorks in Hackettstown said as of now, the threat of another snowstorm looks minor, but meteorologists will monitor it.

"Right now, what we're looking at is a clipper system coming in," Clavier said. "Anything at this point looks minor, but it's definitely something we're keeping our eye on."

The National Weather Service is calling for mostly sunny skies on Thursday in Easton, Allentown and Hackettstown with a mostly cloudy Thursday night.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
After working over the weekend winter storm to clear more than 30 inches of snow, Lehigh Valley road crews were facing another challenge Sunday night.

Temperatures were expected to drop into the teens and freeze wet roads into sheets of compacted ice, said Brian Clavier, a meteorologist with WeatherWorks in Hackettstown.

"That means anything that is wet from the melting that occurs is going to turn to ice," Clavier said.

Clavier said the Monday morning commute will prove to be tricky all week as temperatures will rise during the day into the 40s and 50s, then plummet into the 20s each night.

"This could actually be a problem all week," he said.

In Bethlehem, city public works Director Mike Alkhal said he's concerned about icy road conditions Monday.

"Work is nowhere near done yet," he said of the cleanup effort.

"It's going to slow us down more and cause more problems for us," Alkhal said. "We keep trying to keep up. It's just keeps going back and forth."

Bethlehem has a snow emergency in effect until 7 p.m. Monday, as does Easton.

"We'll be around the clock for at least a few more shifts," Alkhal said. "We'll still be plowing as much as we can and treating as much as we can."

In Easton, Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said salt trucks would be out all night to prep the streets in time for the morning commute.

"This was a plowable event," Panto said, noting no salt had to be used until now. "The main roads are all water now."

By Sunday night, Panto said most major city streets were cleared.

Easton brought in bigger equipment to supplement the plows with snow removal on the major roads. More narrow streets with vehicles parked on them, however, were challenges to clear.

"They created a tremendous problem for us," Panto said.

The city is offering free meter parking Monday and Tuesday because both Downtown parking garages are nearly full, he said. The city opens the garages free to city residents during snow emergencies.

Police on Monday plan to shut down portions of Cattell Street on College Hill; Berwick Street on South Side; and Butler Street in the West Ward. Also closed will be portions of Wood Avenue.

Panto said the roads will remain closed until they are passable.

"They need a lot of attention tonight and tomorrow," he said.

Nazareth Mayor Carl Strye Jr. urged residents to be patient as public works crews move from street to street.

Crews have been scraping roads to remove slush and pushing back whatever they can. A cinder/salt mixture is expected to be spread overnight to help with freezing, he said.

Residents need to be reminded to push snow into their yards and not back onto the streets, Strye said.

"This inhibits the cinder/salt mix to work properly," he said.

Warren County Emergency Management Director Frank Wheatley said there were no catastrophes reported during the storm.

Car crashes were minor; about 1,300 people were without power for just a short time Saturday in White and Knowlton townships, he said.

No roads are closed and most are passable, according to Wheatley.

"(Saturday),we went relatively unscathed," he said. "There was nothing serious to speak of."

Wheately said crews are ready for "round two," already treating roadways and planning to work around the clock.

"We'll be back on top of it tonight," he said.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
FARGO -- The 9,000-hog farm planned in rural Cass County is allowed under current laws, but advocates contend large livestock operations will mushroom unless voters reject newly passed exemptions in a law restricting corporate farming.

Pipestone Holdings' Rolling Green Family Farms seeks approval for a 9,065-sow facility near Buffalo, which is 43 miles west of Fargo. The farm would include barns and concrete waste pits.

More than 100 residents packed a community meeting last week to voice concerns that a large pig farm would bring environmental problems, including those involving air and water quality. A permit application is pending before the North Dakota Department of Health, which has not yet decided whether to hold a public meeting but is accepting written comments.

Jeri Lynn Bakken, a member of the Dakota Resource Council who farms and ranches in Adams County, said big livestock operations of the kind planned near Buffalo will proliferate if the state's recent loosening of its ban on corporate farming stands.

"We're going to see bigger operations and more of this kind of thing happening," she said. "People who think this can't happen in their area need to keep their eyes open."

North Dakota lags significantly behind neighboring states in livestock production. The state Legislature last year passed exemptions in the state's restrictive corporate farming law to promote dairy and swine production.

The law is being challenged and voters will decide in the June 14 primary whether to uphold or reject the changes.

Before the exemptions were granted, North Dakota was the only one of nine states with noncorporate farming laws with no exemptions, a legal constraint that proponents of the law argued was hampering livestock agriculture.

The North Dakota Farmers Union is one of the groups pushing to overturn the law at the ballot box.

Mark Watne, the group's president, said current state law allows significant livestock operations -- and cites the application for the sow farm near Buffalo as an example.

"At North Dakota Farmers Union, we're not opposed to operations coming in, but we do hope that they follow the law of the land," he said. "If it qualifies" -- and meets environmental and zoning standards -- "then it should be allowed to happen."

North Dakota already allows for farming entities including limited liability partnerships -- which is how Rolling Green Family Farms is organized -- and family farm corporations, Watne said.

"Farming partnerships have been allowed in North Dakota for a long time," he added. "There's no real reason to change the laws."

North Dakota Farmers Union opposes exemptions to allow corporate farms because it opens the door to nonresident owners, such as hedge funds, pension funds and other large corporations, Watne said.

"That does not serve the interest of the state of North Dakota," he said. "It's about asset ownership."

Bakken agrees the state doesn't need to loosen its restrictive corporate farming law to grow animal agriculture in North Dakota.

"We believe more smaller operations are better economically for a state and community than a very few large operations," she said.

North Dakota has 77 active large concentrated animal feeding operations, according to figures from the state Department of Health, including two active large beef operations in Cass County.

Statewide, 54 involve beef cattle, 13 raise swine, seven dairy and three turkeys.

Figures compiled by the North Dakota Department of Agriculture, which supported the exemptions for swine and dairy operations, show that the state lags significantly behind neighboring states in livestock operations of all kinds.

North Dakota had 16,000 dairy cows as of 2014, the most recent figures available, compared to 97,000 in South Dakota and 460,000 in Minnesota. North Dakota had 44,000 cattle on feed last year, far short of the 385,000 in South Dakota and in Minnesota.

Similarly, the 138,000 head of swine last year in North Dakota were far short of the 1.3 million in South Dakota and 7.9 million in MInnesota, according to the tally by the North Dakota Department of Agriculture.

"It's absolutely amazing how we're trending down in all aspects of animal agriculture and other states are trending up," said Tom Bodine, deputy agriculture commissioner. "That bill" -- to allow the exemptions for dairy and swine -- "was to make a competitive playing field with all the surrounding states," he said.

Also, developing a bigger livestock industry would create a better market for feed grains in the state, Bodine said

"Really, this was producer-driven by the industry," he said, referring to the push for the corporate farming ban exemptions now headed for the June ballot.

The situation is especially dire for the North Dakota dairy industry, which now is down to two processors and about 88 dairy operations, Bodine said.

"We're losing dairy and we're having to import milk to keep our processors going," he said.
Mountmellick Community School student Daniel Williams has plenty to say on the internet, and it has won him the title of U18 Europe Direct Soapbox Winner.

Mountmellick Community School student Daniel Williams has plenty to say on the internet, and it has won him the title of U18 Europe Direct Soapbox Winner.

The leaving cert student beat seven regional finalists with his passionate three minute argument that the internet is only as much harm as the people using it, and he stands behind his views.

The internet has exploded in the last few years. Its a great tool but it depends on the way you use it, it merely reflects society today, everything on it was made and placed by people. its like that saying that guns dont kill people, people kill people, he said, adding that data protection software and regulations must work harder to keep up.

The internet is a very free place to be, and its here to stay, he said.

Daniel only began debating last year, at the suggestion of his teacher Fiona Behan.

He won the regional final in the Dunamaise Theatre in October, going on to represent his school and region in the final in the plush surroundings of Farmleigh House, facing a six person judging panel

I enjoyed it, my confidence has grown by talking to a crowd. I did speech and drama from an early age, and debating is nearly like playing a part, I watched other public speakers and developed my own style. I was very surprised to win, it was a tough competition. It will be great to have on my CV, said Daniel.

He had a bus load of supporters with him, including his parents Helen and John, sisters Amy and Niamh, his grandmother, aunt and a big group of students from Mountmellick CS.

His prize is a trip to Brussels to visit to the European Parliament, sponsored by MEP Matt Carthy.

It is a brilliant opportunity, I can decide when I want to go, to see different meetings in session. I will wait till next year to go, I can buy my debs suit and use it for Brussels, said Daniel with a smile.

A political career may lie ahead. I am not too sure, I will see after the trip, he said.

His school were thrilled with Daniels success.

It is a great success for Mountmellick Community School and the Europe Direct centre based in Mountmellick, said teacher Fiona Duffy.

She thanked Breda Connell, Manager of Mountmellick Library and staff in the Europe Direct centre in Mountmellick, who organised the Regional round of the Soapbox competition.
Newbridge College has topped the table of Kildare secondary schools when it comes to sending the most students to third level institutions.

Newbridge College has topped the table of Kildare secondary schools when it comes to sending the most students to third level institutions.

127 students sat the Leaving Cert at the fee paying school this year with all its pupils starting college this September. The largest number of students opted to attend UCD with 26 enrolments, while 23 chose to go to DIT.

Salesian Secondary School in Celbridge came second in the county according to the Irish Independents Feeder School supplement which was published last Wednesday November 21. 91% of their students went on to third level and Clongowes Wood College ranked third with 90%.

St. Conleths Vocational School, Newbridge came bottom of the table with 30% of its students going on to university while 38% of pupils at St. Pauls Secondary School, Monasterevin enrolled in third level institutions this September.

However, it should be noted the figures do not include school leavers who went into further education, such as PLC courses and apprenticeship.

They dont include figures for mature students or for those who accepted places on courses in the UK.

Not all third level institutions are included. The tables only record those in attendance at the seven universities in the Republic of Ireland as well as Queens University in Belfast and the University of Ulster. The table also includes those who sat their Leaving Cert in recent years but deferred their place until this year.

The data, supplied by the colleges to the Irish Independent is provided for administrative purposes only and the colleges say they cannot stand over the accuracy of the information, if used for any other purpose, such as a league table. St. Wolstans College, Celbridge and Naas CBS featured in the top half of the table with 88% of their students going on to university this September. The rest of the list reads as follows: Holy Family Secondary School, Newbridge (84%); Cross and Passion, Kilcullen (82%); Scoil Mhuire, Clane (79%); St. Marys College, Naas (79%); Patrician Secondary School, Newbridge (76%); Colaiste Lorcain, Castledermot (75%); Maynooth Post Primary School (74%), Ardscoil na Trionoide, Athy (74%); Gael Cholaiste Chill Dara (73%); Scoil Dara, Kilcock (70%); Colaiste Chiarain, Leixlip (70%); Ardscoil Rath Iomghain, Rathangan (64%); Confey Community College, Leixlip (62%); Pipers Hill College, Naas (61%); St. Farnans Post Primary School, Prosperous (60%); Athy Community College (46%); Kildare Town Community College (39%); and the Curragh Post Primary School (38%).
Generous party members have already contributed nearly 5000 to the Conference Access Fund  and Im proud to say that included a donation from Lib Dem Voice. The bulk of the fund has now been allocated to around 20 members to help them with the costs of attending conference and to pay for the BSL interpreter.

Last month I wrote about How you can help to send someone to party conference. I had been asked by Federal Conference Committee to convene a working group to look at Financial Inclusion. Conference already managed an Access Fund to support members with any additional costs relating to their disability needs, but we decided to broaden it so it could be used to support anyone who would find it difficult to afford to attend Conference for any reason.

Its too late to apply for a grant from the Access Fund for York, but after Spring Conference we will be reviewing it and then thinking about how we can improve it for Autumn Conference. Please send any feedback or ideas to me via the comments below or directly to [email protected].

Please continue to donate to the Access Fund  you will be asked when you register for Conference. The fund is ring-fenced so any surplus from one conference will roll over to the next.

If you still want to go to the Conference in York but are not sure whether you can afford it, do consider volunteering as a Steward. There is also a Facebook group Lib Dem Conferences on a shoestring where party members exchange tips and ideas.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Foynes Port and the Shannon Estuary has an unprecedented opportunity" to become a centre of international trade with the potential for up to 3,000 jobs in the coming years.

That is according to MEP Sean Kelly who is urging the European Union to recognise the ports strategic importance.

The Fine Gael MEP recently attended a meeting in Brussels with port company chief executive Pat Keating and the European Commissions Mobility and Transport Directorate.

Shannon Foynes is one of a limited number of terminals with deep water facilities in Europe - facilities that no other Irish port enjoys. With the Panama Canal set to double its capacity in 2016, there is an unprecedented opportunity for Europe and for Ireland to capitalise as Shannon Foynes can cater for the huge new vessels that will be coming through, said Mr Kelly.

We are asking the Commission to strategically extend the North Sea - Mediterranean Core Network Corridor under the Trans-European Transport Network to Shannon Foynes Port.

The landscape has changed since these corridors were put in place and the port has become more connected with important transport infrastructure being put in place with the new motorway and extended rail line, he said.

Being listed as part of this strategic corridor will bring increased funding and investor confidence to the local area and ultimately lead to significant job creation. Super tanker trade alone has potential to generate more than 3,000 jobs on the Shannon Estuary.

He added that the future for the Shannon Estuary was increasingly bright after the Shannon LNG terminal was identified as being part of a key European energy strategy.

Similar recognition for Shannon Foynes port can see the region become a centre of international trade as Chinese and US links intensify, and Europe seeks to diversify energy sources away from Russia.

Meanwhile, work is progressing on a new subsea cable which will span the estuary, linking Moneypoint and Kilpaddoge electricity substations. When complete, it will support growth and development in the region and enhance security of electricity supply.
THE organisers of the Right2Water protest which was held at the weekend are urging people from across Limerick to attend a national demonstration ahead of the upcoming General Election.

Despite cold and windy weather, around 400 people from across Limerick and Clare took part in Saturday afternoons protest march through the city centre.

A number of people  including election candidates Cllr Maurice Quinlivan and Cllr Cian Prendiville  addressed the crowds outside City Hall as did former Mayor, Cllr John Gilligan.

Irish Water is a monster which is out of control  even the political parties that think they can control it are now scared of what these people are doing, he said adding that 25 years ago, this year, he and other members of the then Limerick Corporation voted out water taxes.

As the protest made its way through the city centre, there were chants of Enda Kenny, not a penny and Jail the bankers not the people.

Grandmother Marie Keogh from Fr Russell Road, Dooradoyle took part in Saturdays protest.

The water charges are abominable, the amount of money that is being wasted by our government is unacceptable, I feel so strongly about it I feel ill to be honest about it, she said.

Ms Keogh, who has three grown-up children, warned she will not be opening her door to any election candidates unless they are against water charges. Its a disgrace, how dare they show their faces, she said.

William ONeill, 50, from Old Cork Road says he wont be paying water charges. I think its an unfair tax, water should be free  people are entitled to it and its being taken off us, said the William who has three grown up children.

Its them (my children) I am thinking about, not me. Down the road they are going to have to pay for it and its going to get dearer, he said.

The Right2Water campaign says a national demonstration will take place in Dublin on the Saturday before the General Election.
AFTER nine-and-a-half years as parish priest of Southill, Fr Pat Hogan is looking forward to a new chapter in his religious life.

Last Wednesday was Fr Hogans last day officiating in the parish. He intends on taking some time off before continuing his work in the citys regeneration areas.

Ive had some deeply enriching experiences. I have met some of the most wonderful people living in Southill. We have also gone through some terribly, terribly difficult times but the great thing is we are not in the headlines anymore for any murders or anything like that, said Fr Hogan.

He was speaking on Thursday morning from Dublin Airport as he prepared to depart on a charity trip to Calcutta with a group of 14 from Limerick, Cork and Longford.

Following the two week trip, Fr Hogan intends on taking some time off before departing for Calcutta again, with another group of younger people from Moyross and Southill.

They will experience Calcutta for a while and it will be an educational programme for them. They are going to come back some time mid-April and I will come back a couple of weeks after that.

While he said he was immensely enriched by his time in the parish of Southill, Ive been there nine-and-a-half years and that has been very full on so I just want to sit back for a little while.

I certainly would like to be working with regeneration areas again as a priest.

Fr Hogan will remain in his house in OMalley Park. Reflecting on his time in the parish he said the strategy of shrinking the communities has had a devastating effect on areas.

He said at the moment the people of Southill are in limbo land.

 Hopefully next year they plan to begin the building of 80 houses. That will take a lot of management and we dont want the forces that destroyed the past to destroy the new.

The capacity for those forces are still there, he stressed. I think there are signs of hope but they are not seen on the ground yet. I think there is goodwill in the council to do something to get Limerick right and I would like to see that.
THE family home of a former hotelier is to be sold after he and his wife reached agreement with Bank of Ireland Mortgages over the sale of the property.

Shamrockville on North Circular Road has been the subject of a legal dispute for several years as the bank sought to repossess the property over unpaid borrowings of 1.6million.

Belonging to Brendan and Hilda Dunne, the three-storey property, which is around 4,600 square feet in size, is set on 1.3 acres and features five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a games room, library, study, conservatory, drawing room, dining room, living room and coat room.

In 2010 Shamrockville was placed on the market with an asking price of 4.5m but this was later reduced to 1.5m as the effects of the recession continued.

Last July, Judge Tom ODonnell was told an offer has been received for Shamrockville but that agreement has not been reached with Bank of Ireland Mortgages in relation to the sale.

Limerick Circuit Court was told Bank of Ireland Mortgages did not accept the Dunnes valuation of the property (at that time) and had indicated it would rather sell Shamrockville on the open market in a transparent fashion

However, during a review of the case on Friday, Pat Barriscale BL, representing the Dunnes, indicated the matter had been settled.

Derek Sheahan BL, representing Bank of Ireland Mortgages confirmed a resolution had been agreed and a signed copy of the settlement was submitted to the court.

While the exact terms of the settlement were not disclosed in open court, it has been confirmed the house is to be sold within the next three months.

Noting a settlement has been agreed, Judge ODonnell adjourned the matter to early May to allow the sale to finalised.
FRESH from rave reviews on Manhattan, a best actor award and the top civic offer Limerick can bestow, Myles Breen is preparing to don the frock of one his greatest creations in his hometown again.

Breen and Bottom Dog Theatre Company return with hit show Language UnBecoming A Lady, taking to the stage in Friars Gate Theatre, Kilmallock on January 29 and in the Belltable the following night.

The return caps a glorious period for Breen and his tale of ageing drag queen ranks among his finest performances. Originally performed as part of Limerick Pride in 2009, the actor poured his heart into the loosely autobiographical story of one gay mans life growing up in Ireland.

I did indeed and it was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. There was nowhere to hide really, said Myles recently.

The company brought Language to New Yorks Cell Theatre in for the Origin 1st Irish Theatre Festival and its international debut in September of last year.

Breen duly picked up the best actor award handed at the festival  itself founded by Limerick man George Heslin  after a triumphant run in Manhattan.

Bottom Dogs Liam OBrien directs the one man play, which is simply unmissable. See www.bottomdogtheatre.com.
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Amid tropical reserves across the globe, a network of motion-activated cameras monitored by conservationists captured millions of photos of unsuspecting wildlife, helping scientists to glimpse the big picture of worldwide biodiversity in these protected areas.

In a study published Jan. 19 in the journal PLOS Biology, scientists wove together threads of a global biodiversity story, told in photos triggered by animals in 15 tropical forests in South America, Africa and Asia.

Approximately 2.5 million "selfies" of unknowing mammals and birds were gathered from 1,000 camera traps, covering 244 animal species. Then, the photos were analyzed by scientists with the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network, a coalition of researchers representing a number of groups working to preserve animal diversity in the wild, including Conservation International, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. [Photos: see the animal "selfies" captured by the hidden cameras]

They found that diverse communities of ground-dwelling mammals and birds were showing notable success in protected areas, with 17 percent of the monitored populations increasing and 22 percent remaining stable. About 22 percent showed some decline, and 39 percent were not detected often enough for their populations to be calculated, the researchers reported.

Encouragingly, the study authors further noted that overall species distribution and numbers in the protected areas did not decline during the 3- to 8-year evaluation period.

The study represents groundbreaking use of a specialized analytics system, applied across a network of camera traps to evaluate biodiversity seen though the cameras' eyes, said Jorge Ahumada, executive director of the TEAM Network and a study co-author. "For the first time, we are not relying on disparate data sources, but rather using primary data collected in a standardized way across a range of protected areas throughout the world," Ahumada said in a statement.

A camera trap in Tanzania, part of the largest system of camera trap arrays in the world, monitored by the TEAM network to evaluate bird and mammal diversity. (Image credit: Benjamin Drummond)

Although the study did show declines in some animal populations, it still presents a generally positive outlook for the role of protected areas in preserving not only individual species threatened by human activity, but also the complex webs of diverse animal communities. And species living in tropical forests are especially vulnerable to extinction, Lydia Beaudrot, a professor at the University of Michigan and a study co-author, said in a statement. This makes it even more critical for scientists to track and evaluate the success of protected areas, which Beaudrot called "the cornerstone of species conservation," in maintaining animal populations over time.

In fact, the study's results have already helped officials in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to identify the impact of park visitors on a particularly vulnerable species, the African golden cat. When photo analysis showed that the cats were appearing less frequently in certain areas, the park management evaluated recent changes to visitor traffic in that area, and found that it had increased significantly. After they diverted visitors to other trails in the park, sightings of the African golden cats went up.

Tropical forests also serve an important role for the planet, producing oxygen and scrubbing excess carbon from the atmosphere. The balance of species they contain  plants as well as animals  is part of an intricate global infrastructure that contributes to the support of ecosystems beyond the forests' boundaries, the researchers said in the study. This suggests that this type of standardized monitoring can be used alongside established methods to assess threats to vulnerable animal populations and ecosystems, and assist in the creation of conservation plans, they added.

"With this data, we have created a public resource that can be used by governments or others in the conservation community to inform decisions," Ahumada said.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
To the editor:

Cronyism is the practice of partiality in awarding jobs to friends or colleagues regardless of qualifications.

When someone hires friends or former colleagues to do a job, regardless whether or not they are the best candidates or qualified, that is cronyism.

This was in play during the last city council meeting. Agenda item No. 24 dealt with awarding a construction contract for the Galveston Street Waterline Project to Qro-Mex Construction from Granite Shoals, Texas.

The project consists of the installation of a 16-inch diameter water line and will cover approximately 23 city blocks along Galveston from Arkansas Avenue to Milmo Avenue as well as segments between Arkansas Avenue and Smith Street.

Crane Engineering Corp. designed the project and based on their expertise was also tasked as a consultant with reviewing the four bids that were submitted in order to make a recommendation to the city.

They, as well the citys own staff, recommended Qro-Mex Construction for the project.

However, the motion by District III Councilman Alex Perez Jr., in whose district the project will be worked on, failed by a 5-3 vote.

Councilman Esteban Rangel then made a motion to award the contract to Altus Construction of Dallas, Texas.

That motion was approved 5-3 with the same five members that voted against Qro-Mex voting in favor of Altus.

A point of order in was raised since no discussion on the item had taken place and the following debate revealed just how badly our hard earned tax dollars are being misappropriated by five irresponsible council members.

Addressing the city council, the projects engineering consultant pointed out the following deficiencies in regards to Altus: failure to complete previously awarded projects, inability to provide proof of the necessary equipment inventory, hiring of subcontractors with unverifiable experience and requesting $200,000 upfront, more than four times as Qro-Mex.

As a result of all of this and other lingering concerns, the consultant recommended that the city disqualify three out of the four bidders, including Altus.

Besides the engineering consultant, the citys own staff, as well as the city attorney and city manager, made repeated attempts to impress upon the council that they should not go with Altus but with the "lowest responsible bidder," Qro-Mex, who had clearly demonstrated both the experience and ability to complete the project.

Yet, Councilman Rangel either failed or refused to acknowledge the facts and proceeded to "call for the question."

In the end Councilmen Gonzalez, Rangel, Narvaez, Vela and Balli decided that they would not listen to reason and awarded the bid to Altus anyway.

Councilmen Perez, San Miguel and Altgelt voted against this act of cronyism.

Why cronyism? Altuss spokesman admitted that two of the consultants on their payroll were none other than Tomas Rodriguez, former city waterworks director, and Jorge Vera, former district 7 councilman.

Sincerely,

Diana Torres
What is the Flint water crisis?



Earlier this month Rick Snyder, the governor of Michigan, declared a state of emergency in the County of Genesee and the City of Flint because of elevated levels of lead found in its general water supply. The governor declared the emergency because the contaminated drinking water poses a serious health risk to the residents of that area. The adverse health effects of lead exposure in children and adults are well documented, notes the Centers for Disease Control, and no safe blood lead threshold in children has been identified.

The crisis has been blamed on a failure of government at all levels. As Washington Post reporters Lenny Bernstein and Brady Dennis wrote, Local, state and federal officials  including the top Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the Midwest and Michigans Republican governor, Rick Snyder  are accused of ignoring, denying or covering up problems that left thousands of children exposed to toxic lead in their drinking water for about 18 months.

To date, four government officialsone from the City of Flint, two from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and one from the Environmental Protection Agencyhave resigned over the mishandling of the crisis.

What caused the water crisis?

According to the U.S. Census, 40.1 percent of the population of Flint, Michigan is living in poverty, making it the second most poverty-stricken city in the nation for its size. The poverty of its residents combined with mandatory spending on former city workers (retirees from the city government are taking 20 percent of all city spending) has led to a financial crisis that has put the city into emergency receivership.

In an attempt to save money, the city council voted in 2013 to purchase water from the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) rather than from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). KWA was not expected to be completed until the end of 2016, so the city decided to rely on its backup, the Flint River.

The Flint River, though, contains high levels of chlorine, which is highly corrosive to iron and leadmaterials used widely in the pipes carrying water in Flint.

How did the lead get into the drinking water?



Since the late 1960s, Flint purchased its water from the DWSD, which treats the water with orthophosphate, a chemical that, as Time magazine explains, essentially coated the pipes as water flowed through them, preventing lead from leaching into the water supply. The water from the Flint river, however, was not treated with orthosphate, even though it contains eight times more chloride than Detroits water.

When was the contamination discovered?

According to Shikha Dalmia, area residents started complaining about the taste and color of the water right after the switch in April 2014.

In January 2015, hundreds of residents attended a public meeting to complain that the citys water was causing skin problems for some children. The state-appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley told the crowd the city can ill-afford to switch course by returning to purchasing the water from Detroit. That fall, General Motors announced it was discontinuing use of Flint water in one of its plants, because the high level of chlorides found in the Flint River could corrode engine parts.

In September 2015 an independent research team from Virginia Tech (a group that paid for some of the research out of their own pockets) released the Flint Water Study, which found that at least 25 percent of homes in Flint had levels of lead that was well above the federal level and nearly every home had water that was distasteful or discolored.

That same month the Hurley Medical Center in Flint released a study confirming that the proportion of infants and children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source.

Authorities initially disputed the findings of both studies, but local and state officials finally acknowledged the crisis in October 2015, and Flint returned to using water from Detroit.

Why wasnt the lead detected sooner?

According to the Detroit News, a water expert with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified potential problems with Flints drinking water in February 2015, confirmed the suspicions in April, and summarized the looming problem in a June internal memo. But the EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman did not release the information, claiming her hands were tied in bringing the information to the public. The EPA was in conflict with Michigans Department of Environmental Quality over not only what to do about the crisis, but what to tell the public.

Marc Edwards, an expert on municipal water quality that led the Virginia Tech study, said that the situation essentially amounts to a cover-up.

It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or shouldve known after June at the very latest of this year, that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered. Rather than address the legitimate science questions, they mounted a public relations campaign to discredit the residents, to discredit us. I have never seen this level of arrogance and incompetence. It was mostly confined to a few key individuals, but other people are guilty of being far too trusting of those individuals, and not listening to the people who were drinking this water.

Could the crisis have been prevented?

As Shikha Dalmia notes, the problem could have potentially been avoided by simply adding phosphorous to the water. That fix would have only cost the city a mere $50,000 a year.

What happens now?

Gov. Snyder announced last week that the state of Michigan would provide Flint with $28 million in aid to pay for things like filters, replacement cartridges, bottled water, more school nurses, and additional intervention specialists.

The U.S. Attorneys Office is also investigating the contamination of Flints drinking water supply to determine if government officials committed any criminal wrongdoing.
SCHOOL UNIFORMS

SCHOOL UNIFORMS

We invite parents of students in the primary and secondary schools in Mohill to donate old school uniforms to the Mohill family support centre. The uniforms will be passed onto families in need. Please drop the uniforms into the Canon Donohoe Hall. For more information phone us on 071 9631263.

ESLIN SUMMER CAMP

An important meeting will take place in Eslin Community Centre on this Wednesday 8th June at 9pm.We need parents to get involved . Dont leave it up to one or two. No parents , no camp.

PRIESTS RETREAT

Priests of the diocese will be on retreat this week. In these very difficult days for laity and clergy it is important to take time out and rediscover the call of the Gospel. Pray for us that we may be true to our calling and faithful in our shepherding. Thank you.

CONGRATULATIONS

Our warmest congratulations to Oriel Cox Anfield and Garret Glancy Kilmore who were united in matrimony in St Marys Church Annaduff last week. Following the ceremony a reception for family and friends was enjoyed at Lough Rynn Castle. Their many friends here in Mohill join with me in wishing Garret and Oriel good luck good health and every blessing now and in the future.

THANK YOU

The organising committee of Gorvagh Community Centre wish to congratulate the Lough Rynn Players on their brilliant presentation of Anyone Can Rob a Bank which they staged at the centre last Friday night. It was an enjoyable and a great success. Some of the proceeds went to fund the centre for which the committee are most grateful and we take this opportunity to thank the Lough Rynn Players for bringing their production to Gorvagh. It was thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended . Keep up the good work.

JOSEPHINE ROWLEY (FLYNN)

On the 24th May 2011 the parish of Annaduff lost one of its oldest most respected ladies when Josephine Rowley Drumcree Drumsna Mohill died in the loving care of the doctors nurses and staff at St Patricks Hospital Carrick on Shannon. Jodie as she was most affectionately known was a wonderful lady who had a wealth of knowledge from yesteryear, a great sense of humour whom it was always a joy to meet. A most caring and obliging neighbour and above all a loving wife mother and grannie sadly she was predeceased by her husband and grandson RIP. Remembering back the years when she was a native member of Annaduff ICA and Annaduff Legion of Mary she never missed a meeting and was an inspiration to us all. Her removal took place from the residence of her son Mel to St Marys Church Annaduff and was representative of all sections of the community as was the attendance at her con-celebrated Mass on Friday which was a celebration of Jodies life. Our sympathies are with her sons daughters sons in law daughters in law grandchilden and their extended families neighbours & friends. May her dear soul rest in peace.

ABBEYLARA FIELD DAY

All roads will lead to Abbeylara on Sunday 12th June for their annual field day which will commence at 12noon with a vintage parade and display of cars tractors and motor bikes auto jumble sponsored by Kanes of Granard and in association with motorsport Ireland there will be midget car racing also tractor / trailer reversing wellie throwing donkey derbies, dog show bouncing castles go karts grand prix style, fun fair, food stalls etc and last but not least a prize for the best dressed lady. Toilets on site free car parking and children free. Proceeds in aid of parish centre. Please support.

SYMPATHY

The people of Mohill wish to join with me in sympathising with Mrs Mary McCauley Dromard Mohill ad the family of Nellie Higgins on the death of a dear mother and sister. Her burial took place following requiem mass in Cloone Cemetery last week. May she rest in peace.

JAMES DOONER

His many friends here in Mohill Bridge Club were very sad on hearing of the death of one of their esteemed members James Dooner Ballinamore who died at Cavan General Hospital on 23rd May2011 after a long illness which he bore with dignity. James was a born gentleman very caring and understanding. He was a noted barber brilliant bridge player and great family man who will be very sadly missed but fondly remembered by his family customers bridge players and friends. His removal took place from his residence to Ballinamore Church where members of Ballinamore and Mohill Bridge Clubs formed a guard of honour for one of their most dedicated embers and where a large crowd gathered to sympathise with his dear wife,son brothers sisters nephews nieces and their extended families and to whom we offer our most sincere sympathy. His burial took place on Thursday following requiem Mass where again people from all sections of the community gathered to pay their final respects. May his gentle soul rest in peace.

SILVER JUBILEE

Congratulations and Gods blessings on Fr John Leogue PP Fuerty and Athleague Co Roscommon and originally from Station Road Mohill who celebrates the Silver Jubilee of his ordination today June 8th. Youngest son of the late Maura (Diffley) and Joe Leogue of Station Road , Fr John was ordained for the diocese of Elphin on Sunday June 8th 1986. Fr John and his fellow priests who were ordained in1986 and 1951,1961 will celebrate this big occcasion in Maynooth college on June 14th with con-celebrated Mass will be at 3pm on Union Day when the college will honour the Diamond , Golden and Silver Jubilarians. We wish Fr John and all his fellow jubilarians every blessing as they continue their ministry.
This was a truly historic storm, and while we have made good progress we are not done working yet, Governor Cuomo said. The travel ban has been lifted, but New Yorkers should still avoid unnecessary travel  please use caution, plan ahead and stay safe. I want to thank the incredible people who worked around the clock responding to this storm. Many of them are still out there trying to clear the tracks and get full service restored across our public transit systems. Whether it was our thousands of state and local workers shoveling snow or the individuals who checked on their neighbors and offered a helping hand, this was a great example of how New Yorkers come together in times of need.

Power: There are approximately 172 customers currently without power throughout the downstate region  although thousands lost power at different points during the storm  and the Public Service Commission is making sure that utility companies are doing everything they can to restore power as quickly as possible. The PSC is also offering extended hours on its helpline for people to report outages and get more information. The PSCs Call Center Helpline will be available from 7:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. on Sunday and Monday to assist consumers in their storm preparation and restoration efforts. The Helpline can be reached by calling 1-800-342-3377.

Airports: While LaGuardia and JFK airports are open and flights are arriving and departing, many flights have been cancelled and more are expected to be cancelled, so passengers are urged to check with their airlines before heading to the airports. So far today, approximately 85% of flights have been cancelled at LaGuardia, and more than 50% have been cancelled at JFK.

MTA

Earlier this morning, Governor Cuomo announced an update on MTA services throughout the downstate region. That update is available here, but travelers are urged to visit www.mta.info for the latest information.

Governor Cuomo holds storm briefing with senior state officials. Photo by Governor Andrew Cuomo, via Flickr.

Travel ban lifted/Service restorations: As of 7:00 a.m., the travel ban in New York City and Long Island was lifted, MTA buses had resumed service, and bridges and tunnels were opened without incident. As of 9:00 a.m., limited service returned to most of the MTAs outdoor subway lines. Some lines required additional snow clearing work due to extensive accumulation, and the MTA will provide additional updates throughout the day.

Metro-North: MTA Metro-North Railroad will begin restoring service at outlying stations after 12 noon, and will be fully operational in and out of Grand Central Terminal by 3 pm, operating on a Sunday schedule. Grand Central Terminal will open for retail customers at 8 am. Specific line information is available at www.mta.info. Pascack Valley Line service is restored with the 1:58 p.m. departure out of Hoboken. On the Port Jervis Line, NJ Transit has announced service to Suffern, N.Y., begins with the regularly scheduled 12:25 p.m. departure from Hoboken. The first train from Suffern will depart at 1:06 p.m. Metro-North and NJ Transit are still working to restore service deeper into New York State beyond Suffern.

LIRR: Many of the railroads yards are still buried in more than two feet of snow, as is the Harold Interlocking in Queens, where all lines intersect before entering the tunnels to Manhattan. Tracks are still impeded by stranded trains in some locations, while frozen switches prevent the railroads snow-clearing equipment from moving through the system to reach the areas they are needed. To support the MTAs snow removal efforts, multiple DOT crews, plows and other equipment has been shifted from Upstate locations to help out. Crews will work throughout the day to restore the railroad, focusing on the most heavily-traveled branches first, with a goal of bringing back service for the Monday morning rush. Updates on progress will be made available throughout the day.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Legislator Anker's Office Published: January 25 2016

As the newly appointed chairwoman of the Seniors and Consumer Protection Committee, Legislator Anker announced several major initiatives on January 22nd at the Rocky Point VFW Post 6249.

Legislator Anker at the Rocky Point VFW Post 6249 to announce major senior initiatives for 2016 to provide financial relief to seniors struggling to remain on LI and improve their quality of life.

Rocky Point, NY - January 25, 2016 - Since entering office in 2011, Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker has put improving the quality of life for seniors at the top of her list. As the newly appointed chairwoman of the Seniors and Consumer Protection Committee, Legislator Anker announced several major initiatives on January 22nd at the Rocky Point VFW Post 6249. Her goal is to provide financial relief to seniors struggling to remain on Long Island and improve their quality of life.

The rising cost of living on Long Island has taken a toll on all residents and families in Suffolk County, but especially on our senior population, many whom have a fixed income, said Legislator Anker. I look forward to advocating on their behalf. I will continue to work with all levels of government to develop senior programs and find solutions to the financial strain imposed on our seniors.

Legislator Anker is also creating a Senior Advisory Panel for her legislative district, which includes Mt. Sinai, Miller Place, Sound Beach, Rocky Point, Shoreham, Wading River, Ridge, Middle Island and Coram. The Senior Advisory Panel will include representatives from the community and will work to address concerns such as access to public transportation, utility rates, and government services. Legislator Anker will coordinate with several organizations, including AARP, to advance these initiatives.Outlining her senior initiatives for 2016, Legislator Anker said her first priority is to work with the New York State Public Service Commission, an entity of the Department of Public Service, to appoint a senior representative as an adviser. The Public Service Commission regulates and oversees utilities in New York State, such as gas, water, electric and telecommunication. The initiative was developed after Legislator Anker was informed that some seniors living in all-electric communities within her district pay up to $1,000 per month for electric. To combat rising utility costs, the senior representative on the commission would be a voice for all seniors living on Long Island. In addition, Legislator Anker will continue to advocate for a special discounted electric rate for seniors with PSEG.

Legislator Anker is also creating a Senior Advisory Panel for her legislative district, which includes Mt. Sinai, Miller Place, Sound Beach, Rocky Point, Shoreham, Wading River, Ridge, Middle Island and Coram. The Senior Advisory Panel will include representatives from the community and will work to address concerns such as access to public transportation, utility rates, and government services. Legislator Anker will coordinate with several organizations, including AARP, to advance these initiatives.

For more information about Legislator Ankers initiatives for 2016 or for information about the Seniors & Consumer Protection Committee, please contact Legislator Ankers office at (631) 854-1600. The committee schedule for the Suffolk County Legislature can soon be found online.

Senior residents may also acquire Senior Identification Cards, discount lists, and Suffolk County service information at Legislator Ankers office, located at 620 Route 25A, Suite B, in Mount Sinai.
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Columnists Press Releases
The terrorists responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 coordinated assaults in Paris are featured in a new Islamic State video.

A new video released by the Islamic State (titled Kill Them Wherever You Find Them) features the terrorists responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris. Several of the jihadists are shown executing captives in Iraq and Syria. They threaten the West and implore Muslims to join the caliphates cause as they behead or shoot their victims from behind. The footage was filmed in the months before the coordinated assault in Frances capital city.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadis men claim France deserves to be terrorized because of its role in the anti-Islamic State coalition. But their grisly executions of helpless victims undermine their attempt to offer a moral rationale for their terrorism. The Islamic States sadistic videos have also likely played a role in shaping public opinion in the West.

The first Islamic State member to speak at length is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Umar al Baljiki. European officials have identified Abaaoud, who was killed during a counterterrorism raid after the Paris massacres, as a key figure in the plot. The Islamic States English-language Dabiq magazine published an interview with Abaaoud in early 2015.

I have a message to these disbelievers who are fighting the Muslims, and to all the nations taking part in the coalition, Abaaoud says in a clip played over news footage. You are the ones who dared to come to the lands of the Muslims to fight them. By Allah! By Alllah! By Allah, you have declared a war that you have lost before even starting it. (A screen shot can be seen on the right. Abaaoud is in the lower right hand corner.)

After threatening to kill Westerners in their homes, Abaaoud says the Islamic States terror is a result of their governments policies.

All this is a result of your policy  your policy of war  or I should say, the policy of your rulers, Abaaoud claims. Indeed, you voted for these rulers, and this is the result. The result is that your rulers have declared a war whose consequences they will not be able to bear.

Abaaoud refers to the Western-led coalitions airstrikes, arguing that the jihadists attacks have been carried out in retaliation. By Allah, as long as you continue to direct airstrikes against us, and as long as you continue to declare war and fight the Muslims, we will not stop fighting you in every part of the world, regardless of whether you are on a tourism trip or a work trip, or are fast asleep in your homes.

You, along with more than 70 other nations, formed a coalition to fight the Islamic State, Abaaoud says. But you will not be able to stop it. By Allah, this is just the beginning.

After Abaaouds appearance, the video shows several of his accomplices in succession. Some of them execute bound victims before or after they address the camera.

I was sent by Amir ul-Muminin [Emir of the Faithful] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husayni al-Qurashi (may Allah safeguard him) to cleanse the earth of disbelievers, whoever they may be and wherever they may be, a jihadist known as Abu Qital al Faransi says.

Al Faransi continues: By Allah, we have come to you with slaughter, and indeed our knives come closer to your throats day after day. And by Allah, we will fight you  with Allahs permission  in the heart of Paris and at the corner of the Eiffel Tower.

Although al Faransi refers to the heart of Paris and the Eiffel Tower, he may not have had the specific Nov. 13, 2015 plot in mind. His threat may have been only a general one at the time he spoke. Al Faransi goes on to criticize the Muslims in France who have not joined the Islamic States cause.

Another member of the Paris terror cell, identified as Dhul Qarnayn Al Baljiki, also addresses the French directly. This is a small message to all those who voted for[French President Francois] Hollande, the dog of the White House, Al Baljiki says. Francess hands have been tainted with blood, he claims, because the people elected a president who today bombs our Muslim brothers in Mali, Sham, and Iraq.

The video confirms that all of the jihadists who took part in the Paris attacks fought for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria beforehand. Although they do not say that they were acting under Baghdadis orders on the night of Nov. 13, that is the clear implication of their testimony. One of the final jihadists to speak, known as Abu Rayyan al Faransi, explains it is an order from Amir ul-Muminin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (may Allah safeguard him) to fight you in your lands.

The propaganda production ends with a threat to Britain. An onscreen caption (shown above) warns that whoever stands with the disbelievers will be targeted. British Prime Minister David Cameron is shown standing in the background.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

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The Taliban recently claimed it does not allow its territory to be used to harm others, a patently false statement considering they recently permitted al Qaeda to run large training camps on their Afghanistan property and the Talibans leader accepted an oath of allegiance from al Qaedas emir.

The Taliban made the claim in a news release on its propaganda website entitled Summary of the Statement by Representatives of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan reportedly given at the Pagwash Conference in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend. Pagwash is an international non-governmental organization that seeks to facilitate the resolution of local conflicts.

Our Jihad is focused on ending the occupation and bringing about Islamic system, the Taliban statement claimed. We do not want to interfere in others affairs, nor do we use our soil to harm others, nor allow others to interfere in our affairs.

The Taliban has maintained close ties to al Qaeda, even after the jihadist group launched the September 11, 2001 attack on the US and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. And despite repeated claims that the Taliban seeks to sever ties with al Qaeda over the past decade, in fact the opposite has happened.

Two glaring examples of the strengthening relationship between the two jihadist organization came to the fore within the past six months.

First, in August 2015 after the Taliban confirmed that its founder and first emir, Mullah Omar, had died, al Qaedas leader Ayman al Zawahiri pledged allegiance to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, Omars successor. Mansour accepted Zawahiris oath just one day after it was given.

In addition the Taliban to accepting Zawahiris pledge, the organization appointed Sirajuddin Haqqani as one of his two top deputies. Sirajs dossier is filled with ties to al Qaeda. For instance, files recovered in Osama bin Ladens Abbottabad compound show that he was working closely with bin Ladens lieutenants in the months leading up to the al Qaeda masters death. Sirajs father, Jalaluddin, is a legendary jihadist figure and was one of Osama bin Ladens most important backers in South Asia. US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal that Siraj is a member of al Qaedas Shura Majlis, or top council, and has actively recruited foreign terrorists to serve in the Haqqani Network. [See LWJ reports, The Talibans new leadership is allied with al Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladens Files: Very strong military activity in Afghanistan.]

Second, the Taliban has permitted al Qaeda to run at least three training camps inside Afghanistan in the past year. Knowledge of these camps was made public after US forces attacked two camps, one which was 30 square miles, in the Shorabak district in Kandahar province in October 2015. The camps were well equipped, stocked with weapons, ammunition, and supplies. US forces took four days to clear the camps, and more than 100 al Qaeda fighters were said to have been killed during the fighting. [See LWJ reports, US military strikes large al Qaeda training camps in southern Afghanistan and Al Qaedas Kandahar training camp probably the largest in Afghan War.]

General John F. Campbell, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, noted that the camps were run by al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, the global jihadist organizations newest branch.

This was really AQIS, and probably the largest training camp-type facility that we have seen in 14 years of war, Campbell told The Washington Post.

Campbell explained to the Post that the Shorabak camps were discovered after a raid this summer [of 2015] on another al Qaeda facility in the Barmal district of eastern Afghanistans Paktika province. Abu Khalil al Sudani, one of al Qaedas most senior figures, was killed in the Barmal district in July 2015.

The Taliban attempted to provide cover for al Qaedas activities in Shorabak. Days after US forces destroyed the Shorabak camps, the Taliban released a statement claiming that civilians were killed in indiscriminate attacks where chemical weapons were used.

In the past, the Taliban has made similar statements about wanting peaceful relations with its neighbors and not allowing Afghanistan to be used for attacks outside its borders. But the Talibans actions do not match its words, as it continue to shelter, support, and encourage al Qaeda.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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St. Regis Hotels & Resorts to Debut on Dubai's Palm Jumeirah

Owned by Dubai master developer Nakheel, the hotel will be part of The Palm Tower, a 52-story mixed-use luxury development and the centerpiece of Dubai's world-famous, award-winning Palm Jumeirah island.The St. Regis Dubai, The Palm will offer 289 guest rooms and suites, spanning the first 18 floors of Palm Tower, while the upper floors will comprise 504 luxury apartments. The hotel will feature two swimming pools, including one of the world's highest infinity pools which will be located on the 50th floor, some 210 meters above ground and bordering all four sides of the building for a 360-degree view of the Palm Jumeirah, Arabian Gulf and Dubai skyline. Set to become one of the most desirable addresses on The Palm, the hotel will also offer distinct dining experiences, including a signature restaurant with sweeping city views on the 51st floor and an all-day restaurant.Guests at The St. Regis Dubai, The Palm will get to experience renowned hallmarks of the St. Regis brand such as the signature St. Regis Butler Service that provides anticipatory service and customizes each stay according to specific tastes and preferences. The hotel will offer easy access to Al Ittihad Park, Palm Jumeirah's 1.1 million square feet green oasis that features more than 60 varieties of plants indigenous to the UAE and a 3.2 km looped running track. The Palm Monorail, which is connected to the Dubai Tram and Dubai Metro, is also easily reached.The Palm TowerOne of 10 new hospitality projects by Nakheel that are underway in Dubai, St. Regis is the latest in a growing list of world-famous luxury hotel brands on Palm Jumeirah, which also includes Starwood's W Dubai  The Palm that will open in 2017.The Palm Tower will feature a public rooftop viewing deck on the 52nd floor. The tower will be connected to the new Nakheel Mall that spans 4.4 million square feet with 350 shops, a 15-screen Vox cinema, 12 fine dining restaurants on its roof terrace, as well as a medical center and fitness complex. Construction is ongoing and completion is due in 2018. The Palm Tower Residences will feature 504 furnished studios and one, two and three bedroom apartments with uninterrupted panoramic island, sea and skyline views.St. Regis made its debut in the Middle East in 2011 with The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi and has rapidly grown its portfolio in the Middle East with The St. Regis Doha, The St. Regis Abu Dhabi, and now, the newly opened St. Regis Dubai. In 2017, the brand will enter Jordan with The St. Regis Amman and will also open its first polo resort, The St. Regis Dubai Al Habtoor Polo Resort and Club.Visit website:Photo: The Palm Tower's rooftop 360 degree infinity pool, restaurant and viewing deck.
Kobe J. Augustine.jpg

Gulfport murder suspect Kobe Jaquan Augustine

(Gulfport Police Department)

GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A 15-year-old Gulfport resident, already under arrest for aggravated assault stemming from a Saturday shooting, has had his charge upgraded to 1st degree murder after the 16-year-old victim died Sunday afternoon.

According to Gulfport Police Sgt. Damon McDaniel, patrol units responded to the 4700 block of 19th Street just before 8 p.m. Saturday after a call of a shooting.

Upon arrival, officers found the 16-year-old male victim, later identified as Nigel Deandra Poole, with a gunshot wound to the head. Poole was transported by ambulance to an area hospital and later airlifted to the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile, where he died around 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

Investigation found that a physical altercation had taken place between Poole and Kobe Jaquan Augustine, during which Augustine pulled a handgun, shot Poole and then fled on foot.

After developing Augustine as the suspect, he was located at his residence and arrested at approximately 12:15 a.m. Sunday morning.

The original bond of $300,000 for aggravated assault was increased to $1 million for the murder charge by Harrison County Justice Court Judge Louise D. Ladner. Augustine remains incarcerated in the Harrison County Adult Detention Center.
Damen Shipyards Group is constructing a Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger (TSHD) 650 for Australian client Gippsland Ports.

The TSHD will be the first Damen dredger to operate in the country. The client will use the dredger to maintain entry to the port of Lakes Entrance and the Gippsland Lakes system, in Victoria, which is used by recreational, fishing and supply vessels. Currently, the client contracts a dredger annually to carry out the necessary dredging to maintain port access. However, after analysing the situation it became clear that there was a case for investing in their own vessel. Having their own dredger will, over time, reduce the maintenance costs and ensure year-round availability, for example in the event of weather related shoaling events.



Having decided to make the investment, Gippsland Ports put the project out to tender in 2014. Following evaluation of proposals in December 2015, Damen was awarded the construction contract. The vessel is currently under construction at Damen Yichang Shipyard in China and will be delivered in Q3 2017.



We had close contact with Gippsland Ports in order to answer all their questions and explain our designs to them, comments Damen Sales Manager Asia Pacific Vincent Maes. We were able to make all the adaptations the client required to the standard TSHD 650 design.



One of the key adaptations to the design involved increasing the installed propulsion power to cope with the strong currents characteristic of the harbours entrance.



Another feature takes into account the environmental sensitivity of the operating area. The client specified the installation of an anti-turbidity valve on the overflow. This reduces air bubbles and, therefore, visible plumage in the water.



Capable of dredging to depths of 15 metres, this dredger will be built with self-emptying capabilities, with bottom doors for dumping and either bow connection or rainbow extraction for beach reclamation work.



In order to increase the vessels payload capacity when dredging sand with a high specific density, Damen will reduce the freeboard of the vessel and apply a dredge mark.



Taking advantage of the numerous available options, Gippsland Ports also selected an indication package to measure soil density. This allows the suction pipe to be angled precisely for efficient operations. The dredging process will be made even more efficient by the installation of the navigational dredging aid, NavGuard, indicating the area and quantity of substrate dredged.



This particular contract further illustrates the Damen Shipyard Groups experience with building hopper dredgers. In 2015, deliveries included a 2,500m3 hopper dredger. In addition to this particular vessel, Damen is currently busy with the construction of five further TSHDs. These include two with a 2,000m3 capacity and three with a 1,000m3 capacity. A number of these projects are being executed in cooperation with local yards as part of the Damen Technical Cooperation (DTC). With DTC, Damen can provide assistance, such as engineering, materials, technical support and training, so that Damen vessels can be built in any yard around the world.



Accompanying client representatives on a visit to Damen Yichang Shipyard, Mr Maes took the opportunity to demonstrate the yards excellent production quality management systems, in keeping with Damens quality standards applied globally. The client was particularly impressed with Damens team that supplemented the yards own comprehensive quality management processes.



Gippsland Ports is very pleased to have executed a contract with Damen to build this dredger, states Gippsland Ports CEO Nick Murray. This is a critical investment decision for Gippsland Ports and we had quite specific criteria we needed to satisfy. We selected Damen because the TSHD 650 together with other attributes of the Damen proposal best met our requirements. We are looking forward to delivery of our new TSHD in 2017.
ABS, a leading provider of classification and technical services to the global marine and offshore industries, announces the realignment of its Americas Division operations to create two new regions  Canada and Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

This realignment strengthens localized leadership to help ABS members and clients take advantage of expanding opportunities. ABS recognizes that the expansion of the Panama Canal, increased Arctic operations and growth in LNG markets present pivotal opportunities for our members and clients, and we are proactively realigning operations to strengthen our world-class service delivery to support them, says ABS Americas President and COO James Watson. Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean are areas of tremendous potential. In realigning our resources, ABS is better leveraging our global network and leading technology programs to assist owners and operators in these regions.



Joseph Rousseau will serve as the Regional Vice President for Canada. Based in Ottawa, Rousseau will be the first ABS executive responsible for leading operations across the entire country, overseeing seven offices within Canada. He also will serve as the main liaison between ABS and Transport Canada, working closely with the ABS Harsh Environment Technology Center at Memorial University to align ongoing research efforts with Canadian industry needs.



During Rousseaus 18-year career with ABS, he has served as Vice President of ABS Europe and held senior engineering positions across the organization, bringing a strong global background in the marine and offshore industries to his new role. Rousseau is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns. He began his career as a Naval Architect for a number of notable Canadian design firms focusing on both commercial and Canadian government vessels.



Homero Guerra will serve as Regional Vice President for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In this role, he will oversee all company operations in Mexico, Central America, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Caribbean Islands. Guerra will be responsible for better leveraging ABS global experience to serve the companys expanding member and client base in the region.



Guerra joined ABS 23 year ago as a Surveyor and has held numerous international leadership assignments in engineering, technology and operations. Guerra holds a Bachelor of Science in Marine Engineering and a Masters of Business Administration in Technology Management.
Thailand and the United States will co-host the annual, multilateral Exercise Cobra Gold in various areas throughout the Kingdom of Thailand Feb. 9-19, 2016.



Exercise Cobra Gold, one of the largest multilateral exercises in the Asia-Pacific region, has taken place annually for more than 30 years. Cobra Gold 2016, the 35th version of the military exercise, will bring together more than two dozen nations to address regional and global security challenges and to promote international cooperation and stability within the region.



This year, Cobra Gold will strengthen regional cooperation and collaboration, increasing the ability of participating nations to work together on complex multilateral operations such as counter-piracy and the delivery of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.



The exercise will improve the capabilities of participating nations to plan and conduct combined, joint operations; build relationships across the region; and improve interoperability across a wide range of security activities. This years Cobra Gold will consist of three primary events: a command post exercise, which includes a senior leader seminar; humanitarian civic assistance projects in Thai communities; and a field training exercise that will build regional relationships.



For more information, photos, and stories about the Cobra Gold exercise, including past iterations, please visit the official Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ExerciseCobraGold.



Additional information regarding major exercise events open to the media will be made available the first week of February.




For more than 239 years, Navy corpsmen have been known as the enlisted force which has supported Marine operations and training both garrison and the field.



These corpsmen carry out their responsibilities in harsh conditions alongside Marines. They are required to complete a secondary, more rigorous course which furthers their abilities to function in high stress situations and field conditions in addition to the basic medical training required of all corpsmen.



The additional training is crucial, because corpsmen attach to operational units to provide continuous care to service members within, according to PO1 Morty Ervin, a hospital corpsman with the Yokosuka Naval Hospital, Japan, who is assisting corpsmen with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment; currently assigned to 4th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force under the unit deployment program.



Working directly with Marines in less-than-ideal conditions provides corpsmen with a greater understanding of the real-world application of their training, said Ervin, a Denver, Colorado, native. It allows corpsmen to build a better relationship with Marines through shared experience.



The interoperability of corpsmen and Marines is exemplified in training exercises such as Exercise Fuji Samurai, which is held annually at Combined Arms Training Center Camp Fuji during the month of January.



The exercise includes countless fire and maneuver drills and other combat-based training evolutions which take place over two weeks. During this time, Marines and corpsmen face the challenges of CATC Camp Fuji, as they spend night after night subject to the winter elements.



This place gives my corpsmen a chance to endure the same training, cold weather and natural elements the Marines undergo here in Japan, said Navy Lt. Christopher Rossetti, the assistant battalion surgeon attached to 3rd Bn. 5th Marine Regiment. Knowing that they are able to scale the challenging terrain alongside the Marines and do as they do makes me confident they can stand ready to serve in any place in the Asia-Pacific region.



During most training evolutions, corpsmen are present to ensure procedures are carried out safely and immediate medical evaluation and care can be provided immediately, in case of emergency.



It has been a great experience working closely with the green side corpsmen, said Lance Cpl. Christopher Welch, motor transport operator, CATC Camp Fuji, serving as an ambulance driver for the exercise. Before working out here on Fuji, I didnt know how involved they are in our training. Whenever we have ranges or any kind of live-fire training, the corpsmen are there right by our sides.



Among the many training events, Marines and corpsmen participated in combat marksmanship drills, during which shooters must show proper weapons handling, combat-style shooting and confidence with the M16A4 service rifles and M4 service carbines.



Corpsmen carry rifles and participate in training just as Marines do, said Rossetti, a Willowbrook, Illinois, native. When corpsmen attach to Marine units in the field, they get more specific experience and training with line companies and infantry assets. They are almost indistinguishable from Marines when they are participating in Marine operations. It is this ability to engage in training and operations in less-than-ideal conditions which fosters the strong relationship between Marines and corpsmen.



Exercise Fuji Samurai is scheduled to continue until Jan. 15 and encompasses training with artillery, convoy safety, fire and maneuver, and offensive combat tactics.



"It's a rite of passage to serve with the Marine Corps and to be able to carry the Eagle, Globe and Anchor on my chest," said Ervin. Going through training with Marines serving alongside them has given me a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood and alliance with the Marines. I love my Marines and I'd do anything for them."



CATC Fuji continues the work of Marine Corps Installations Pacific through its training facilities to stand as the strength behind Americas ability to respond quickly to crisis in the Indo-Asia-Pacific Region. MCIPAC strengthens power projection with our allies and partners; enables strategic launch and recovery of military capabilities to save lives and to preserve regional peace, stability and security; and enables operational force readiness to guarantee victory.





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Ron Paul Warns Congress is Writing the President a Blank Check for War

While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.

President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.

It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.

The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn't al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?

The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch's power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people's branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.

Let's be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.

Dr. Ron Paul

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Inmates Escape

This Jan. 23, 2016 photo provided by the Orange County Sheriff's Office shows a closeup view of a vent screen that had been cut and removed inside a cell at Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., from which three inmates escaped sometime Friday, Jan. 22. Investigators are pursuing several leads in their search, and in the meantime a separate probe was launched into how the inmates managed to obtain the tools to cut through the steel bars and plumbing tunnels to make it to the roof.

(Orange County Sheriff's Office)

LOS ANGELES -- It was a daring and elaborate escape. Three inmates, including a man suspected in a killing, cut through metal, crawled through plumbing tunnels, climbed a roof and rappelled down four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets.

It wasn't a Hollywood movie. The real-life breakout left authorities struggling Monday to find the men and to figure out how they managed to escape the maximum-security jail in Southern California.

The priority was finding the men who could be armed and dangerous, but a probe also was underway to see if they had any help from inside or outside the Orange County Men's Central Jail, authorities said.

Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trials for unrelated violent crimes. They vanished early Friday from a dormitory they shared with about 65 other men.

Authorities said Monday they believe Tieu and Duong may still be in the region that has a large Vietnamese-American community.

"We feel that they may be imbedded somewhere in the community," said Orange County sheriff's Lt. Dave Sawyer.

A Vietnamese-speaking deputy appealed for public help during a press conference.

Officials noted that Tieu and Duong are alleged to have gang ties.

Sheriff's officials said 30 search warrants have been executed in the investigation of the escape.

Somehow, the men obtained tools, cut through a quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall and got into plumbing tunnels.

Cutting through additional half-inch-thick steel bars, they made their way to an unguarded area of a roof atop a four-story building, moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using the bed linen.

The escape wasn't noticed for 16 hours, until a nighttime head count that had been delayed about an hour because of a fight involving other inmates who might have been part of the escape plan.

Clearly, the plan was a long time in the making and carefully thought out, sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

"We're talking about breaching, in some places, significant amounts of steel, rebar and metal," Hallock said.

The Mexican border is only a couple of hours south of the prison, but authorities said they had no evidence that the men had left the country.

Federal authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information leading to their recapture.

"What I can assure you is that the compromises in security have been shored up," Hallock said.

He didn't provide details.

"Escapes do occur from time to time," Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. "We learn from the mistakes. I can tell you that this is a very sophisticated-looking operation. People in jail have a lot of time to sit around and think about ways to defeat our systems."

There were two previous escapes from the jail decades ago, but nobody had managed another in more than 20 years -- until Friday.

The aging jail was built in 1968 and houses some 900 men. Its design allows inmates to move through different areas more easily than modern jails, making it difficult to get daytime head counts.

"We have people going to court, we have people going for medical treatment, and you can't leave them locked down 24 hours a day. There are requirements that they get out and exercise from time to time," Hutchens said.

Tieu had been held on a $1 million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling.

On Sunday, his mother and sister said they hadn't heard from him and tearfully pleaded for him to surrender.

"I for sure know he wasn't the one who orchestrated this. I feel he was manipulated or tricked into doing this," his sister Tiffany Tieu told KABC-TV.

"Just turn in yourself in. Don't let (it) drag on," she said.

Nayeri had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. He and three other men are accused of kidnapping a marijuana dispensary owner in 2012, driving him to a desert spot where they believed he had hidden money, and cutting off his penis, authorities said.

Duong has been held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges.
A Stanleytown man waived his preliminary hearing Thursday in Henry County General District Court on a charge of felony assault and batter a law enforcement officer.

Richard Lee Sloan, 43, of 148 Azalea Street is accused of assault and batter of Lt. M.L. Davis of the Henry County Sheriffs Office on Dec. 19, 2015.

A criminal complaint alleges that in an incident that began outside the magistrates office, a man swung to hit Davis, cursed at him, drew back both fists and kicked Davis with his left leg. Davis sprayed the man one time with pepper spray and told him to get on the ground.

The complaint also alleges that the man cursed Davis and approached him. Davis told the man to stop or Davis would spray him again. The man cursed Davis again. Davis sprayed a second time, and it went to the right of the mans face. Another officer placed the man on the ground, where he continued to resist. The officers finally got him in handcuffs.

The case was certified to the grand jury.

Also in General District Court on Thursday, Judge Edwin A. Gendron Jr. set bond at $25,000 for Walter Arthur Puckett, 25, of 367 Chatelaine Ave., Danville, who is charged with enter dwelling at night with intent to commit assault with possession of firearm.

Gendron ordered that Puckett not leave Virginia; have no contact with the alleged victim, Kelsie Hatcher; to live with his mother; not possess firearms, alcohol or illegal drugs; be of good behavior; and other conditions.

A criminal complaint alleges that on Jan. 14, 2016, Hatcher, of 4010 Appalachian Drive, stated that Puckett, her ex-boyfriend, came to her home and entered without permission. She alleged that Puckett entered her bedroom, began arguing with her, pushed her to the ground, put her in a headlock and punched her in the head.

Hatcher alleged that Puckett went downstairs and that she followed him to lock the door. She alleged that Puckett pushed her in the corner and hit her in the face multiple times. Hatcher alleged that Puckett was in possession of a pistol in plain view on his right hip in his waistline.

In another case, a preliminary hearing was held and Gendron certified to the grand jury a charge of felony shoplifting against George-Ann Doman Roberts, 60, of 126 Ramble Road, Collinsville.

According to testimony, she is accused of shoplifting $427 worth of merchandise from Walmart on Oct 28, 2015.

Also in General District Court on Thursday, a preliminary hearing was held and Gendron certified to the grand jury a charge of embezzlement against Mark Wayne Mcglocklin, 54, of 5608 Nine Mile Road, Richmond. The incident is alleged to have happened on Nov. 6, 2015.

According to testimony and a criminal complaint, Mcglochlin is accused of, after being hired as a driver for Rising Son Transport in Axton, not returning a tractor-trailer and $75,000 worth of Gatorade  together worth $120,000  after he got into a disagreement with the owner of Rising Son Transport over Mcglochlins effort to get a $200 cash advance to transport the Gatorade from Wytheville to Texas.

Instead of returning the tractor-trailer and load of Gatorade to Rising Son Transport in Axton, Mcglochlin left everything at a different location. The keys were left inside the vehicle, the tractor and trailer were not damaged, and none of the merchandise was missing, according to testimony.
MCCOMB, Mississippi -- McComb police say a man accused of robbing a convenience store told investigators that people he knew had robbed him of the stolen cigarettes and cash.

Detective Shannon Sullivan says an investigator recognized 27-year-old Wallace Tompson from surveillance video and arrested him.

He tells the Enterprise-Journal that when asked about the stolen items, Tompson said he'd been held up, and named two people. Sullivan says one was found with the stolen items, and the gun used at the store.

Sullivan says that pistol leads investigators to think all three may have planned the store holdup.

He says 40-year-old Darrick Bolden was arrested on a robbery charge, and police want 29-year-old Eric Carroll on the same charge.

An online database had no phone numbers for any of them. It was not clear whether they had attorneys who could comment.
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The regional elections of December 6th and 13th accentuated trends already observed in recent municipal (March 2014), European (June 2014) and departmental (March 2015) elections. Faced with the economic crisis, a soaring unemployment rate and the austerity policies of a "socialist" government, the frustration of millions of voters has expressed itself mainly in two ways: abstention and voting for le Front National.

Considering the 3 million "non-registered" potential voters on the electoral list and the 900,000 blank or spoiled votes cast, the real abstention rate was well above the 50% announced on the evening of the first round. This almost seems to be the rule when it comes to these elections. Abstention is very high - over 70% amongst young people and the poorest of workers. These abstention statistics are enough to refute the propaganda of the bourgeois media that "youth and workers vote FN."

The breakthrough of the FN is nonetheless real. In the second round of the regional elections it won 6.8 million votes, 400,000 more than in the first round of the 2012 presidential election. This marks their record for number of votes. Yet, abstention was at 20% in April 2012, compared to 41.5% on December 13, 2015. The FN could therefore expect to garner even more votes during the presidential election of 2017. Marine Le Pen would then likely be qualified for the second round of said election.

As we already know, this conclusion engenders cynical calculations amongst the leaders of the Socialist Party and the Republicans: faced with Marine Le Pen, the victory of her opponent in the second round of any election, be the opponent from the PS or the Republicans, would be virtually guaranteed. This idea was reinforced by the jump in participation in the second regional round (+ 8.5%), which was essentially directed against the FN.

However, the electoral progress of the FN has another, more profound, consequence. It supports the cause of those who desire an alliance of some sort between the right-wing of the PS (which heads said party) and the so-called moderate wing of the right (The Union of Democrats and Independents, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, etc.). After all, they all seek the same things: the intensification of austerity and the destruction of social gains brought about by the labor movement. This is what the French bourgeoisie needs. But to achieve its goals, the bourgeoisie needs a government with a strong majority in the National Assembly. However, the PS and LR-UDI are so discredited that neither one of them can guarantee itself the ability to win a solid majority.

The need to invoke Article 49-3 [1] of the Constitution for the Macron Law has already highlighted this problem. But since right-wing MPs agree with this kind of reactionary law, why bother getting worked up over some "rebels" in the PS? The more the PS swerves to the right, the more it sets the stage for a "centrist" alliance with the right. However, this cannot be done without causing a serious crisis on the right and in the PS. We are now beginning to see the first signs of such political problems.

The possibility of a future coalition between the right and the extreme right cannot be ignored. But for now, such a merger is not supported by the decision-makers in the ruling class. The intervention of Pierre Gattaz against the FN, on the eve of the first round, proved this and also included a message to the right. Gattaz' problem is not only the demagogic program of the leaders of the FN, as they will abandon this evil upon the threshold of Parliament in order to implement policy in full conformity with the interests of the French bourgeoisie. What Gattaz and the capitalists do fear are the mass mobilizations against the FN. They have not forgotten the explosive situation created by the qualification of Jean-Marie Le Pen for the second round of the 2002 presidential election. And despite the efforts of Marine Le Pen and the bourgeois media to "normalize" the FN, this party always evokes a visceral rejection by much of the youth and working class.

The crisis in the Left Front

It is these perspectives that generally inform the manoeuvres of the leadership of the Socialist Party, of the right, and of the FN. However, the supposition that the anger and frustration of the people will continue to express itself primarily through abstention and votes for the FN is not the only possible scenario. Is it inevitable? Not at all. The crystallization of a political mass against austerity  like we have seen in Greece, Spain, and in the UK, would completely change the situation in France, including electorally. Votes would come from abstainers to be sure but would also come from other parties, particularly from the FN and the Socialist party. Many of the votes that are today for the FN would just as easily tomorrow go to a party, on the left, if that party shows a determination to fight the system.

The aforementioned process would have already started if the Left Front had not been hindered by its own leadership following their success in 2012. There was no objective reason to explain why the party went from 4 million votes in the 2012 Presidential elections to 1.4 million votes (according the most liberal estimate) in the 2015 regional elections. On the contrary, the crisis of capitalism and the failures of the socialist government should have produced a climate conducive to the development of a left opposition. The problem is thus solely tied to the errors of the Left Fronts leadership.

A frank and serious analysis of these errors is of crucial importance, yet the leadership of the French Communist Party refuses to undertake such an analysis. As an example, let us look at the case of Olivier Dartigolles, spokesperson for the French Communist Party. In a recent interview with Marianne, he stated The Left Front is a failure Why? Because we went off the path we had set for ourselves and did not achieve our goals such as doing politics differently. The fact that our political divisions had us scattered all over the place also played a role. Also, because of the last episode in the regional [elections], with lists of other lefts as diverse as the regions themselves, we clearly lost something in terms of visibility and credibility.

All this is fair, but far too general - and begs the question, why is the Left Front divided? On what subjects are they divided? How do the parties of the Left Front diverge from one another? On these questions Dartigolles says nothing. Thus, the journalist of Marianne asks Did the alliance of one of the parties of the Left Front, notably the French Communist Party, with the Socialist Party contribute to the lack of visibility? This is a very good question, to which the answer is evident: the alliance of the French Communist Party and he Socialist Party was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe compounded by the mistake of the Left Party forming an alliance with the Greens, particularly because they were in government. But this is not the opinion of Dartigolles, instead, he brushes aside the question, saying I think that if our political debate boils down the simple question of electoral alliances, it would represent an impoverishing debate that doesnt necessarily put the wind in our sails to be able to come up with the major proposals we are capable of, for it is out of such proposals that alliances emerge and not the other way around.

What major proposals emerged from the alliance between the French Communist Party and the Socialist Party in the first round of the municipal elections in March 2014 or in the second round of the regional elections? Dartigolles could not cite a single one. He circumvents a question about the problem of the past by talking about the future. This pitiful jargon is well known by activists of the Left Front. The real leadership of the French Communist Party has been unable to break with the Socialist Party. One day they softly protest the reactionary politics of the government, the next they are forming an alliance with them, despite the masses growing rejection of the government. The only real justification for such a suicidal alliance is to ensure the maintenance of a certain number of privileged seats by French Communist Party officials. In the end, the French Communist Party will lose a lot of seats because the Socialist Party is linked to the electoral debacles. Yet the leadership of the French Communist Party is content with saving the best layers of its elected apparatus. Floating along on a melting iceberg, they are merely navigating by sight and are incapable of conceiving an alternative to this strategy. With this the reality, these major proposals and recurring appeals to start anew are nothing but wind, to quote Dartigolles.

The leadership of the French Communist Party depends so much on the Socialist Party that they cant even any other salvation outside of a left turn of the Hollande government, which continues to veer further to the right under the pressure of the ruling class. For example, Dartigolles believes to have found a glimmer of hope in a declaration by the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Cambadelis, regarding a link between unemployment and votes for the FN. Dartigolles explains this by saying We absolutely need to understand the vote for the FN. Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, following the night of the results, has begun to address this fundamental question, giving the impression that he has joined the PS rebels. Will the government finally change its policies that have not succeeded in winning the most important battle, that of the fight against precarious work and unemployment? It is essential that this issue is on the table. Since 2012, the leadership of the French Communist Party has done nothing but this, advocating the necessity that left government policies be put on the table. Meanwhile, also since 2012, the government has governed in an increasingly pro-capitalist and pro-business manner, which is to say increasingly to the right. Today, the government puts Jean-Pierre Raffarin on the table. In taking Cambadelis platitudes seriously, Olivier Dartigolles quite clearly gives the impression that he is mocking the readers of Marianne. But once more, the French Communist Party cannot conceive of an alternative to their current strategy, which keeps the door open to future alliances with the Socialist Party.

The crisis of capitalism accelerates all processes. To the extent that the leadership of the French Communist Party clings to the Socialist Party, it is subject to making even bigger errors as the latter moves ever rightward. These errors are not only limited to alliances. For example, the French Communist Party deputies voted to prolong and strengthen the state of emergency and later abstained on the question of bombing Syria (which caused civilian casualties and solved nothing). Following this, the leadership of the French Communist Party appealed for a vote for the right  confronted with the FN - in the second round of the regional elections which all plays into the hands of the FN. The result of this is three major errors in three weeks. All of this further alienates the most conscious elements of workers and youth, those that should serve as the natural base of the party.

The Left Party

On all of the fundamental questions that have arisen since 2012, the Left Party has appeared as the left wing of the Left Front and the French Communist Party its right wing. Unlike the French Communist Party, the Left Party is not linked to the Socialist Party through decades of electoral alliances. Since 2012, Jean-Luc Melenchon systematically denounced (more firmly than the French Communist Party leadership) the submission of the leading socialists to the demands of the largest business federation of France (MEDEF). Consequently, Melenchon has maintained his position as the most well known (by a long shot) and most popular leader of the Left Front at least in the eyes of the most militant layers of the population.

All that being said, Melenchon and the leadership of the Left Party have their share of responsibility for the crisis in the Left Front. Since 2012, they have not stopped putting the Greens at the centre of their strategy for growth of the Left Front, as if the growth could come from the mathematical addition of the votes for the Greens to the votes for the Left Front. Differences between the Left Front and the Greens have been minimized in a very opportunistic fashion. Yet up until March 2014, the Greens participated in government and condoned the Socialist Partys reactionary politics. In this context, the never-ending manoeuvres of the Left Party to attract the leaders of the Greens or their supposed left wing could not amount to anything but confusion. This strategy offers a new combination of political forces without principles and allows the leadership of the Greens to do what they love doing, being all things to all people, which we analyzed in June 2014.

Following the regional elections, Melenchon said that he had taken note of the failure of this strategy. For example, in his December 19th blog entry he writes The greens have changed direction under the leadership of Cecile Duflot. This means a return to working with the government in exchange for jobs for youth and two or three other similar concessions. The fact is that the departure of elements such as Vincent Place, Barbara Pompili, etc., does not change the inherent electioneering and opportunism of the Greens. To win the majority of the electorate and Green Party activists, one shouldnt make manoeuvres amongst leaderships, what is necessary is to directly address the rank-and-file with clear and provocative language, underlining capitalisms overwhelming role in environmental problems and unmasking the leadership of the Greens as supporters of an impossible green capitalism.

This is not only the case with the environment but for the all issues affecting the masses. On the question of jobs, working conditions, housing, and public services, the Left Front must be the most resolute adversary of the politics of austerity and the caste which defends it, including the big businesses, the right wing politicians as well as left wing journalists. The Left Front needs to energetically and incessantly be defending the interests of workers, the unemployed, and the poor against the attacks from the supporters and profiteers of the capitalist system. We are told that talk is out-dated, but this is false  it is well received by capitalisms victims. For example, when Jean-Luc Melenchon vigorously defended the workers of Air France after the rally on October 5, he received a favourable echo amongst a great many workers. On the other hand, when Melenchon loses himself in tortuous considerations of the alleged destinies of France and Germany, the same workers are at the very least sceptical. Melenchon points to the fact that his book sells well, but this doesnt really mean much as a lot of bad books do well financially.

The Left Front will only be really well understood and popular when they firmly take a strong stand in favour of a struggle of the workers against their adversaries and when they call it by its real name, the class struggle. In Spain, the resurgence of Podemos in the polls, ahead of the elections on December 20th, was largely due to Pablo Iglesias and his comrades putting the class struggle and the revolutionary traditions of the Spanish workers at the forefront. The Left Front needs to learn these lessons.

Perspectives

In the aftermath of the regional elections, some have announced the death of the Left Front, including some of its founders. Yet, as Melenchon underlines in his December 19th blog entry, it is unreasonable to jump overboard if we do not have an alternative. From Olivier Dartigolles, among others, the leadership of the French communist party proposes starting anew and to work with all sections of society, associations, unions, personalities from civil society, and intellectuals. In reality, this is nothing new. The Left Front was already doing this, adding, unfortunately, the leadership of the Socialist Party and the Greens to this list of sections of society with whom they were working.

The question of coming together, upon which the leadership of the French Communist Party insists on, neednt be posed in such an abstract fashion. Here, the experience in Greece and Spain prove one thing: the crystallization of a mass left opposition requires: 1) a clear and bold opposition to the politics of austerity. 2) A clear break with all the forces which defend or implement austerity. It is on this basis that viable coming together can happen and from which a mass movement can develop. In the current configuration of the Left Front, this presupposes that the leadership of the French Communist Party breaks with the Socialist Party. This is one of the biggest difficulties the Left Front faces. If it is not overcome, it not just the Left Front, as it stands, which will be condemned but the French Communist Party itself.

The Left Front faces a paradox: it is weaker than ever, but its potential has never been greater. Three and a half years of Hollandes government has destroyed the illusions that millions of workers had in the Socialist Partys leadership. The youth would like nothing betther than to be able to support a movement determined to fight against this corrupt system which robs them of their future. There is therefore no reason to be pessimistic. The anger and frustration of the masses will culminate by expressing itself on the left of the political spectrum. The coming Presidential election campaign can provide such an opportunity. For now, activists with the Left Front need to make a serious assessment of the last three years and come to an understanding of what happened in Greece, Spain, and the UK. In so doing, they can more solidly pursue the fight against capitalism in crisis and all of its apologists on the right as well as the left.
Dear-Sarah-Slider.jpg

Learning about history from someone who experienced it firsthand is always exciting.



Visitors to Storrowton Village on Friday evening can learn almost firsthand about the Civil War when the museum hosts its annual First Person Presentation, which this year is entitled "Dear Sarah...Letters Home during the Civil War."



The special presentation by historian Carolyn Ivanoff of Seymour, Conn., will be held in the Village's historic Meetinghouse. She will speak about life during the Civil War by following the wartime experiences of Pvt. F.H. Smith of Derby and Burlington, Conn., who served with the 20th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.



"A community member, who I never met, began sending letters in Ziploc bags to Shelton High School, where I was working at the time. I transcribed them, researched them, and did genealogical research on this Connecticut soldier," Ivanoff said.



The Connecticut educator/historian noted Smith left quite an interesting record behind him.

"He built his house with his own hands and it still stands today in Derby. He also lost a child just before entering the service. You had to be really strong to cut it in the service in the old days. Smith stood six feet, two inches tall in an army where the average man was about five feet, seven inches and was about 24 or 25 years in age. Smith was in his 30s," Invanoff said, noting the Civil War soldier was seriously wounded in battle.

"Smith was wounded in the second-to-last battle of Sherman's army before the treaty was signed. It was a very out-of-the-way battle in Averasboro, North Carolina, just before the last great Battle of Bentonville. He was shot in the back of the neck under his left ear, breaking his jaw. He came home and spent time in a New Haven soldier's hospital, ultimately surviving his wounds and making it back to his home on Olivia Street in Derby," she added.



"Dear Sarah..." will feature excerpts of these letters written by Pvt. Smith to his wife, in which he describes life in the Union Army, his feelings about the war and the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I will be dressed in Civil War period clothing and will tell his story in the third person. -I won't be reading from his letters per se, but using his words to talk about the lives of Americans and what is was like to live during those years. I'll be talking about his wife and the interaction between them throughout the war. Unlike today, letters were the way people communicated back and forth in those days," Ivanoff said.

Through this correspondence, period documents and records of the town of Derby, Conn., Ivanoff reconstructs Pvt. Smith's time in the Union Army to tell the story of why a man would leave his home and family in 1862 to fight in the war, and the trials and events that the men and women of the Civil War generation faced in order to preserve the Union.

Ivanoff, assistant principal at Shelton Intermediate School in Shelton, Conn., is a versatile educator with more than 25 years in the industry. She collaborates with local, state, and national historical, preservation and educational organizations to provide academic and civic involvement opportunities for the community. Ivanoff is a past recipient of the Civil War Preservation Trust's Civil War Preservationist Teacher of the Year and assisted in the development of the Civil War Trust's national Civil War curriculum.



"Dear Sarah..." admission is $5 per person. Space is limited and reservations are encouraged but not required. Tickets will be available at the door. The program, which begins at 7 p.m., contains content that may not be suitable for young audiences.
The Dave Matthews Band has announced plans for a summer tour that includes a stop at the Xfinity Theatre in Hartford on June 11. The group will also play the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, MA on June 10.

The tour was announced through Matthews' Twitter account.

We are excited to hit the road this summer & celebrate our 25th anniv! Full list of dates: https://t.co/IvOSicRs3R pic.twitter.com/1SWprOFQrB  dave matthews band (@davematthewsbnd) January 25, 2016

The tour will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the band that was formed in Virginia in 1991.

Dave Matthews has said the band will break from touring in 2017 so the 45 U.S. shows listed will mark the last time fans can catch the band for some time. The band will play two full sets at each stop.

Tickets will go on sale Friday, Feb. 19 through livenation.com and all Ticketmaster outlets.
Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more.
Eich created JavaScript, the worlds most widely used programming language. As the co-founder of Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, he helped end Microsoft Internet Explorers reign as the worlds most popular way to navigate the web.

Now he hopes to shake things up with Brave https://brave.com/ , a startup developing a browser for desktop and mobile that blocks ads and replaces them with, well, other ads. If successful, Brave could essentially flip the traditional advertising model on its head. Instead of paying publishers or advertising networks, advertisers will pay the browser maker.

Klint Finley

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-creator-of-javascript-wants-to-blow-up-the-ad-industry/
Companies are working to ensure millennials are prepared to step into leadership roles.

"Millennials bring data and analytics, but boomers have experience they can rely on when data isnt sufficient." Vikram Ravinder, Deloitte senior consultant

Jeff Green

Full Story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/as-boomers-retire-companies-prepare-millennials-for-leadership-roles
It comes with games and activities meant to especially interest youngsters. When youre at a site click on "History Hunters" at the top of the home page, http://mineralmthistory.com/

It prompts you to answer trivia questions and play a scavenger hunt to earn points for Mineral County Badges, much like the National Park Services Junior Ranger program.

KIM BRIGGEMAN [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/mineral-county-digital-initiative-digs-up-st-century-history-nuggets/article_09d1d60a-6bf9-5977-8755-2b07b441e4cd.html
Montana offers a variety of opportunities to help you make a difference in your community and further your career. We offer competitive benefits, work-life balance, and family friendly policies. As a service-oriented employer, we seek employees with a passion for customer service. Explore the links below to apply for a state job or learn more about our career opportunities and the benefits of working for the state.

Over 200 Opportunities: https://mtstatejobs.taleo.net/careersection/200/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en#
"We were truly blindsided by the sale," said Chairman Brad Johnson.

"Have these people taken leave of their senses?" asked Commissioner Travis Kavulla.

"Of course, they jumped the gun," Commissioner Bob Lake said of the parties to the sale.

This month, The Carlyle Group https://www.carlyle.com/ sold Mountain Water Co. to the subsidiary of a Canadian company without consideration by the Montana Public Service Commission.

KEILA SZPALLER [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/blindsided-psc-seeks-answers-on-sale-of-mountain-water-co/article_2b65d294-7731-55e9-bb3b-cffc36fb8479.html
Joe Cardona

New England Patriots long snapper Joe Cardona speaks while cleaning out his locker as the football team wraps up its NFL season, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Foxborough, Mass. The Denver Broncos beat the Patriots 20-18 in Sunday's AFC Championship in Denver. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

(Elise Amendola)

FOXBOROUGH -- For many of the New England Patriots, the offseason is a time to rest, recover and train for next season. For long snapper Joe Cardona, the offseason is when his full-time job begins again.

While most Patriots are heading off to rest and recover, Joe Cardona will resume his fulltime job with the Navy in a few days.  Jeff Howe (@jeffphowe) January 25, 2016

Cardona is an ensign in the Navy. He'll eventually report to the USS Zumwalt DDG-1000 in Maine to work fulltime throughout the offseason.  Jeff Howe (@jeffphowe) January 25, 2016

Cardona said he thinks the Patriots have a lot to be proud of about their 2015 season. Now that the year is over, however, he will rejoin his fellow members of the U.S. military.

"The people I work with down there, the other sailors and the marines down there, they'll be mostly proud," Cardona said Monday. "They have been excited for me all year. You have all these people who are probably fans from teams all over the country, and I think they all converted to be New England fans with me down there."

As the long snapper, Cardona is a key part of the field goal unit -- meaning he spends a lot of time with kicker Stephen Gostkowski. The 31-year-old kicker took the blame for Sunday's loss, citing his missed extra point, and Cardona said that was an instance of great leadership from Gostkowski.

"Steve is a great man, without a doubt," Cardona said. "He is a great mentor and he is the best in the world at what he does. ...The way that he came out and owned it, that's really inspiring to me, a true example of leadership and something I'll never forget."

Like last year when he was drafted by the Patriots, his future with the team is dependent on whether or not the Navy allows him to delay his active service. There is a good chance he will be back with the Patriots in 2016, however, and continuing to help the Patriots as they look to make it further in the postseason than they did this season.
A Marion man who set his wifes residence ablaze last month faces a new charge of arson as well as child abuse.

Detective Billie Brown of the McDowell County Sheriffs Office charged Jonathan James Stroud, 30, of Hicks Chapel Loop in Marion, with felony breaking and entering a motor vehicle, misdemeanor injury to personal property, misdemeanor larceny and misdemeanor child abuse.

Fire Investigator Craig Walker of McDowell County Emergency Management charged Stroud with felony arson.

Stroud was charged in December for setting fire to a camper on U.S. 70 West after ongoing domestic issues with his estranged wife, who owns the camper. She was not home at the time.

That incident led authorities to other crimes they also believe were committed by Stroud.

Ashley Stroud reported that, on Nov. 26, 2014, her husband set fire to the same camper while it was parked on Pebble Stone Drive in Marion. At the time of the incident, Ashley and the couples 1-year-old son were inside but escaped uninjured.

Brown said Jonathan abused that same child in February 2015, when the boy was 2, by hitting him on his back, buttocks and inner thigh, leaving multiple bruises.

It is also believed that Jonathan broke into a 1999 Toyota SUV while it was parked in a church lot. Dana Banister, of Homer, Ga., reported that the suspect stole $135 worth of items, including cash and a purse and its contents, and caused $500 worth of damage to a window.

He was taken into custody under a $112,000 bond.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
by Felicia Greiff , January 25, 2016

block "all the greed and ugliness on

the Web that slows you down and invades your privacy."

The Internet is atwitter over a new browser called Brave that claims to

If the name "Brave" isn't enough to stir up emotions, then the backdrop and context of the browser is. Brendan Eich, Brave CEO and president, stepped down as Mozilla CEO after making a contribution to Californias controversial anti-gay Proposition 8.

Along with Eich supporters and critics, there are also many who feel strongly about ads (particularly pre-roll). People tweeted their excitement for the product and brought up questions.

What's the idea behind the new browser? It's an economic solution to ad blocking. Mozilla founder and former CEO Brendan Eich told Real-Time Daily that revenue from the product is not only shared with the publishers, but a small slice will go to users as well. They, in turn, can give that money to publishers to support content they consume.

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But the idea doesn't appeal to everyone.

"Either I've massively misunderstood the business model of #Brave, or this is an entirely illegal swipe at content providers," said one disenchanted Twitter user. Eich himself told TechCrunch that white lists that let certain advertisers through the blocker can look like kind of a shakedown," adding that Brave's hope is that users will form a "valuable enough audience that our browser-side anonymous targeting will get ads from the buy side organically."

Another Twitter user said, "Brave looks pretty cool. If someone can prove that privacy-preserving advertising is possible, that would be a big step forward." Eich retweeted the sentiment, along with some other well-wishers and privacy enthusiasts.

Another possibly prescient Twitter user: "Gut-reaction prediction on brave browser: someone (in ad-tech) releases tool for sites to block that browser, possibly by user-agent."

The reaction to Brave might be a sign consumers want to push back on Internet privacy, as Federal Trade Commission commissioner Julie Brill said at AdExchanger's Industry Preview last week: "Truthfully, it is surprising to me that the ad tech industry hasnt been more motivated to offer consumers better tools to protect their privacy, because it has always been the case that consumers could take matters into their own hands."

Earlier this month, Pew Research found 91% of American adults said consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies. Almost 200 million people globally now regularly use ad-blocking software, according to an August 2015 report from PageFair and Adobe.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, January 25, 2016

Microsoft plans to purchase a piece of real estate it has been leasing for the past 15 years in Mountain View, California -- expanding the office park by 515,000 square feet, according to one report.

The redesigned building that puts Microsoft in Google's backyard will accommodate up to 1,000 more employees. The division working from the Bay are focused on Xbox, Outlook, Skype, Yammer, and search.

RNS Studio in San Francisco will design the 6.2-acre complex. The architect's Web site also features designs for Airbnb's headquarters and an Adobe campus in Utah, according to USA Today.

In a letter to Microsoft employees, EVP Qi Lu explains how sustainability, collaboration, and health and wellness are at the center of the design, incorporating features such as team courtyards, easy access to the outdoors, and an onsite gym.

The company still needs to go through Mountain View's permitting process. When approved, construction will begin in 2017 and take three years to complete.
by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 24, 2016

Well-known Montreal-based ad agency Sid Lee has agreed to be acquired by Tokyo-based holding company Hakuhodo DY Holdings. Terms, as always, were not disclosed. Hakuhodo is the second-largest marketing-focused holding company behind Dentsu.

Sid Lee is known for its work on Absolut, Axe and the Toronto Raptors. Hakuhodo was interested in Sid Lee so that it could expand its presence in North America and to extend service to its clients Toshiba and Nissan.

Sid Lee will continue to operate under its own name but be housed under the New York-based Hakuhodo subsidiary Kyu, which is also home to Digital Kitchen and Red Peak Group. Sid Lee currently has offices in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Amsterdam.

As for why Sid Lee agreed to the acquisition, Chairman Betrand Cesvet said, Our goal is to serve clients globally. Our clients are asking it from us. There are some RFPs where not being in Asia is a non-starter.

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And on the added Asian presence this deal provides the agency, Cesvet added: For Absolut, the biggest market for them is the U.S. but the fastest-growing is China. For these guys, its going to be important to be there. We work a lot with Intel in New York. For them, the Asian market is hugely important. We work with BNP Paribas in France. They are really interested in growing in Asia. So its going to be really interesting.

On the similar note of aspiring to a more global presence, Canadian agency Cossette sold an 85% stake in the agency to Chinese public relations firm BlueFocus Communications Group. And in 2013, Toronto-based John St. was acquired by UK-based WPP.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, January 24, 2016

The Interactive Advertising Bureau names a new chair each year. This year, the IAB appointed Lauren Wiener, president of buyer platforms at video advertising company Tremor Video.

The news kicked off the IAB Leadership meeting in Palm Desert, California, where executives gathered to talk about where the next $50 billion in advertising will come from -- this year's theme.

Wiener takes the reins from CBS Interactive CRO David Morris. Jim Norton, global head of Media Sales at AOL, takes the position of vice chair, which was formerly held by Wiener.

During her opening remarks, Wiener said that political campaigns will take addressable TV from $500 million in 2015 to more than $1 billion in 2016. She added that overall growth and revenue will come from respecting the wishes of consumers, along with their time, intelligence and privacy.

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The political agenda in 2016 will also drive ad spending up. According to the IAB, more than one third, or 35%, of registered voters in the current election period look to digital as the most important channel to get information on political candidates. This group is more likely to be react to an online political ad by taking action, at 71% versus 53% total. They are also more likely to stream political debates (at 30% versus 20% total) and to vote in the primary elections (at 90% versus 85% total).

While industry growth signals good news, the bad news is a major talent shortage across the board, she told attendees, estimating the need for about 10,000 candidates to fill new job spaces in the next few years.

IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg told attendees that this year's leadership meeting will become "a more intimate gathering." Most who signed up have managed to find their way to the sunny West Coast.

Bad weather in the East did stop Oracle CEO Larry Ellison from delivering the opening keynote, but Rothenberg says he will speak on Monday.
by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, January 25, 2016

Google has, of course, done nothing wrong, just as its mantra states it never should. It's just a pure coincidence that in doing no wrong it feels it owes the British tax authorities GBP130m over the past decade. This is, of course, for tax it wasn't liable for and so didn't owe. It's just that it's kind of gone back and decided maybe the authorities could be thrown a few pounds to get them off the corporation's back. Anyone out there ever given anyone $185m that they didn't actually owe them but just felt maybe they should give them? Thought not.

The whole thing stinks of a so-called "sweetheart" deal. The best figure the American tech giant can keep on pointing to is that it did actually pay GBP20m in corporation tax on GBP3.8bn worth of UK sales in 2013. To do so, under normal accounting rules, the likes that you and I share with the corner shop and the local plumber, would have meant the giant only made around GBP100m profit. That would mean its cost Google GBP3.7bn to sell GBP3.8bn worth of ads to UK buyers. Unless order confirmations are currently being delivered carved out on gold ingots delivered by Beyonce personally in a private jet, it's hard to imagine quite how the company could be making such a tiny profit on massive sales.

So, the GBP130m backdated tax, which of course it didn't owe but volunteered to pay, is pretty much in line with this ridiculous type of accountancy. I'm no expert, but usually when you see these kind of figures that don't make sense to the average person it's for the very reason that they just don't make sense. Typically a huge corporation will set up in the lowest tax regime possible and then ensure that profits are minimal by paying licencing fees to use its own name. As I remember, Starbucks was importing a whole load of coffee for European use through Switzerland, a country famous for mountains, secret bank accounts, opaque corporate tax relationships -- and not to put too find a point on it, being a land-locked country. One can only presume they have a very clever way of mooring cargo ships through chains that can span across several other EU countries or perhaps a teleportation device?

The end result is that typically Ireland's capital, Dublin, is used as a base. Ireland then runs out of money, despite have every tech giant imaginable base there, and has to be cap in hand to the European Central Bank for a bailout. To think there was actual widespread pressure on the British government to bail out the very country that sits next to our shores, offering a low tax haven through which the giants can reach our consumers without paying our taxes.

It leaves Europeans in a quandary. Do we hate the American tech giants more than our own politicians who got us into this mess? Facebook is top of the tax avoiders but it's so useful to see how successful our friends' kids are and share funny dog videos. Apple is about to be clobbered with an absolutely massive backdated tax bill which the Irish government will be forced to levy via Brussels, against which it has already said it will appeal, but the iPhone is pretty cool. Then there's Google. We know it's been doing all it can to somehow avoid UK tax, but how else are you going to find out what's out there on the Web?

I have a distinct feeling that brand image is starting to play a role here. The American tech giants are starting to feel they've taken candy from the baby for too long now and so Google has thrown a sum widely termed "derisory" at the tax authorities at the same time as its EU antitrust investigation rumbles on toward some conclusion this year. It will then, of course, be survived by its Android antitrust investigation. The wheels are very slow to turn in Europe, but they are most definitely turning. However, so too is public opinion. Europeans are simply fed up with having no EU equivalents to the American tech giants who flood our markets with stuff we love but which they should at least be taxed for. It's this change in public attitude that Google is just starting to tap into and thought it could buy off for GBP130m to represent ten years of tax apologising it claims it has never had to be sorry for.

The tide is turning. The relatively new European parliament is taking a far tougher line of American technology tax avoiders, and hence the European Commission is expected to take a tougher line than some might have expected when it eventually rules on its Google search case. Whenever I questioned Google execs on tax, they would always grimace and say they pay what they have to and that the company does great things for communities. It was always BS -- they knew and so did the public. Now at long last they could be on the verge of recognising it themselves.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, January 25, 2016

Milwaukee, Wisc.-based Johnson Controls, which will primarily make car batteries and heating and ventilation equipment once a pending spin-off goes through, has acquired Tyco, the fire protection and security products company that found a corporate domicile in Cork, Ireland, where tax rates are more favorable than they would be out of its U.S. headquarters in Princeton, N.J.

Under the terms of the agreement, Johnson Controls will own about 56% of the merged company. The new firm will be renamed Johnson Controls PLC and maintain Tycos Irish legal domicile, write Dana Mattioli, Dana Cimilluca Lisa Beilfuss for the Wall Street Journal at 7:38 this morning. The companies said the merged entity would save at least $150 million a year on taxes and at least $500 million in costs over the first three years after the completion of the deal.

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In breaking news of the discussions yesterday, the WSJ pointed out that Johnson Controls CEO Alex Molinaroli, who has led the company since 2013, has been pivoting the company away from low-margin automotive markets to try to become a more profitable multi-industrial company. He has planned to spin off its Automotive Experience automobile-seating business  its largest unit and the worlds biggest competitor in that segment  into a new publicly traded company.

Whether those plans will be altered is not clear, they wrote.

Molinaroli is trying to refocus the company on its other product lines  namely batteries and energy management for buildings, Automotive News David Sedgwick reported when the spin-off plans were announced last summer.

If the deal is completed, points outFortunes Michal Addady before it was, it would be Johnsons largest in its more than century-long history and the merged company is expected to be headed by its Molinaroli.

A deal between the Johnson Controls and Tyco would provide the clearest indication yet that the recent market volatility has not derailed strategic mergers from advancing, writes Reuters Greg Roumeliotis.

Tycos fire protection expertise will complement Johnson Controls building solutions division, write James Fontanella-Khan and Robert Wright for Financial Times. The current Tyco International was created in 2012 after a spin-off that created Tyco, Pentair  specializing in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems  and ADT, a specialist in building security.

The company was broken up by turnaround expert Edward Breen, who took over after his predecessor, Dennis Kozlowski, was convicted of looting nearly $100 million from Tyco, for which he served six and a half years in prison, as the New York Times David A. Kaplan put in an a piece last year. (I was piggy, the once imperious Deal-a-Day Dennis, tells Kaplan. But Im not that person anymore.)

Breen was named CEO and chairman of DuPont in November and is expected to be CEO of DowDupont, if and when that pending merger closes. He is still chairman of Tyco, however; George R. Oliver succeeded him as CEO in 2012.

Todays transaction could be one of the biggest so far this year, as market volatility has slowed the pace of mergers and acquisitions, leaving would-be buyers on the sidelines, Leslie Picker wrote for the New York Times before it closed. Tycos shares have slumped almost 30% over the last year, driving its market value down to less than $13 billion, while Johnson Controls stock has fallen to a market value of $23 billion.

Tyco currently employs 57,000 people in nearly 50 countries, providing safety and security services for more than three million companies worldwide. The merger may result in a tax inversion for Johnson Controls, although it is not clear if that is part of the plans.

By relocating the combined company to Ireland  which would theoretically be possible after a merger  the company would lower its tax expenses dramatically. Ireland's 12.5% tax rate is substantially lower than the tax rate Johnson Controls' is paying, Jonathan Weber points out on Seeking Alpha.

Tyco moved its headquarters from Switzerland to Ireland in 2014 after the Swiss enacted laws that capped executive pay and tightened immigration laws, as Reuters reported at the time.
If you put out a couple feeders and fill them with fresh seeds anywhere in Pennsylvania, you'll probably encounter many of the same common bird species as everyone else with a couple feeders in their backyards.

Bird counts, feeder studies and surveys all point to the same bird species most often spotted at feeders in backyards.

Here are the top 15 species:

The northern cardinal, particularly the bright red male, seems to find its way onto every birder's list of favorite backyard birds. The highly territorial bird's penchant for doing battle with its reflection proves both fascinating and disconcerting to many.

Attracting cardinals is as easy as hanging or pole-mounting a feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds. Increase your odds by adding a second handing feeder filled with safflower seed, a favorite with cardinals, and by planting evergreen trees and shrubs within 15 feet of your feeders. Cardinals also prefer a backyard edged with heavy shrubs and brambles.

The mourning dove, which is found in nearly every backyard, tends to spend relatively long periods at feeders, or in shrubs or trees within a quick flight of a feeder. They eat as much as 20 percent of their weight each day. It's one of our most common and widespread birds, with a U.S. population estimated at 350 million birds.

Mourning doves are ground feeders that also will take advantage of large platform feeders. Cracked corn and millet are the preferred foods among mourning doves.

The dark-eyed junco is one of the most common woodland birds of North America, particularly in Canada, the western U.S. and the mountains of the East. The birds migrate late each fall, showing up in our backyards for the winter.

Black oil sunflower seeds on the ground, in bin-type feeders or on platform feeders will draw every dark-eyed junco in the neighborhood.

The downy woodpecker in winter usually band together with chickadees and nuthatches in the common mixed flocks at nearly every feeder. Even without spotting the bright red patch on the back of the heads of male downies, in winter males and females can be distinguished by their feeding behaviors. Males feed on smaller branches and weed stems, while females tend to stick to larger branches and tree trunks.

Suet is the primary attractant for down woodpeckers at backyard feeders, where they are the woodpecker species most likely to be spotted, but they also take their share of black oil sunflower seeds.

Most male American goldfinches have faded quite a bit by this time of year and won't be recovering their brilliant lemon-yellow plumage until after many of us have taken down our bird feeders for the year. The brightness that they bring to the backyard is often cited as a primary reason for keeping a nyjer seed feeder filled and fresh throughout the spring and summer.

Nyjer seed in a specially designed tube feeder, with openings below the perches, will bring the American goldfinch to your backyard feeders. The goldfinch has evolved to pluck seeds while hanging from a dangling seed head, like on the thistle plant.

Blue jays often are seen as bullies at backyard bird feeders and egg-thieves during the nesting season, but research has yet to support the anecdotal evidence in more than a minimal way. The large bird generally visits feeders in small flocks on a fairly regular schedule, hitting the same feeder at about the same time each day.

Peanuts in the shell hidden in the nooks and crannies of trees, shrubs, flower pots, rock walls and the like about the backyard will keep blue jays busy for hours, as they seek out the nuts, crack open and eat some of them, and hide the rest in new locations.

The black-capped chickadee's active, inquisitive nature generally makes it the first bird to find any new feeder in the backyard, as well as most other new features in the backyard. The chickadee also prefers to roost in vacant nest boxes on especially cold nights, often in small groups huddled tight together.

Most types of feeders filled with black oil sunflowers will attract black-capped chickadees, which also are eager eaters of suet.

Often mistaken for the purple finch, the house finch is much more common, widespread and likely to show up at our feeders than its cousin. The house finch was originally native to the western U.S. and Mexico, but when an attempt to sell them as cage birds in New York City failed in 1940 and the birds were released into the wild, a new breeding population was launched. The population of house finches is now estimated at 1.4 billion across the entire continent.

Hanging feeders filled with black oil sunflower seeds will attract house finches, the first of which could soon by joined by many more of their kind.

Tufted titmice tend to remain in and travel as mated pairs throughout the winter rather than joining in mixed flocks like many other species of small backyard birds. They are active feeder visitors and usually will show up with their mate at feeders in the same neighborhood where they nested in the spring. It's not uncommon for one of the young-of-the-year birds to accompany its parents right up to the next nesting season.

Black oil sunflower seeds in hopper-type and tube feeders will attract the tufted titmouse, and suet will encourage them even more.

The white-breasted nuthatch, which is easily recognized for its habit of foraging upside down on the trunks of trees and approaching feeders by descending the trunks of nearby trees. The species is a common part of the mixed flocks of small birds that roam our backyards and visit our feeders throughout the winter.

While black oil sunflower seeds in nearly any feeder will attract white-breasted nuthatches, but the birds have almost a calling to snatch up nuts and larger seeds and fly off to stash them for future use. Nuthatches also make liberal use of suet feeders.

Red-bellied woodpeckers are common in the forests of the eastern U.S., but in the winter regularly venture into adjoining and nearby backyards for the easy food of our feeders. The woodpeckers often wedge nuts and larger seeds in tree crevices and hammer on them to crack and open them. They also stash a lot of nuts and seeds in those crevices and leave them there for later.

Suet is the primary attractant for the red-bellied woodpecker, although the bird will busy itself with peanuts and peanuts in the shell.

The white-throated sparrow is a bird of forest openings in Canada and the northern U.S. through most of the year, but in winter moves into backyards, city parks and hedgerows throughout the eastern U.S. They are not closely related, but white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos sometimes mate and produce hybrid offspring that look like a pale sparrow.

White-throated sparrows are ground feeders and will spend most of their time under your feeders, snatching up any fallen seeds knocked out of the feeders by other birds. Millet is the primary seed for white-throated sparrows, but they also won't pass up black oil sunflower seeds. To enhance your backyard for these birds, add a brushpile.

Song sparrows inhabit most of North America, but vary widely in appearance and size from one region to the next. For example, song sparrows in Alaska are about a third larger and twice as heavy as those living here in the East. Despite that range of physical traits, song sparrows readily move from one region to another and breed with resident birds there.

The song sparrow feeds mostly on the ground or on platform feeders, where it prefers black oil sunflower seeds and cracked corn.

The house sparrow is a European species that was intentionally introduced into New York City in 1851 and into San Francisco and Salt Lake City in the early 1870s. The species multiplied and spread quickly across the continent and today the species is one of the most abundant in North America. The house sparrow is almost exclusively found in close proximity to human buildings, where they out-compete native species like bluebirds for available cavity-nesting spaces.

House sparrows will visit nearly any type of feeder for any type of seed. Many birders consider them a major nuisance species threatening native species and do what they can to thwart house sparrows at their feeders.

The European starling is another European species intentionally introduced to North America (100 birds in New York City in the 1890s) that has spread across nearly the entire continent and become one of the most abundant species in North America (estimated 100 million birds). Starlings are both strong competitors against native cavity-nesting species and occasional nest parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds and leaving them there for the other birds to hatch and raise.

European starlings will visit nearly any type of feeder for any type of seed. They also are voracious at suet feeders. Many birders consider them a major nuisance species threatening native species and do what they can to thwart house sparrows at their feeders.

Do you have other birds regularly at your feeders? Share your observations in the comments below.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, January 25, 2016

Siding with Facebook, a federal judge in Illinois has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the company's use of facial recognition software.

U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso ruled that Facebook can't be sued in Illinois for allegedly creating a "faceprint" database because the company doesn't have enough connections with the state.

"Because plaintiff does not allege that Facebook targets its alleged biometric collection activities at Illinois residents, the fact that its site is accessible to Illinois residents does not confer specific jurisdiction over Facebook," Alonso wrote in a ruling issued on Thursday.

The opinion stems from a lawsuit filed in August against Facebook by Frederick William Gullen -- a non-Facebook user. He alleged that his photo was uploaded to Facebook last May by someone else, who then tagged the photo with Gullen's name.

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His complaint alleges that Facebook scanned the photo and extracted "data relating to the unique contours of his face and the distances between his eyes, nose and ears," and then incorporated his faceprint to the company's database.

Gullen said this activity violates a 2008 Illinois biometric privacy law that requires companies to obtain written releases from people before collecting a "scan of hand or face geometry" and other biometric data. The statute also requires companies that gather biometric data to notify people about the practice, and to publish a schedule for destroying the information.

Alonso said in a 6-page opinion that Facebook didn't take any actions in Illinois that would allow Gullen to bring his case in that state. "Facebook uses the tag suggestions and facial recognition software on all uploaded photos, not just those uploaded in or by residents of Illinois," Alonso wrote. "Plaintiff does not, and could not plausibly, allege that Facebook knew an Illinois resident would upload a photo of him and tag his name to it, thereby (allegedly) giving Facebook access to plaintiffs biometric information."

But a different judge in Illinois recently came to the opposite conclusion in a lawsuit against Shutterfly, which also is facing a lawsuit for allegedly violating the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Norgle refused to dismiss that case, writing that there was "a strong interest in adjudicating the matter locally," given that Shutterfly offers photo-sharing and photo-printing services to Illinois residents, and is accused of violating an Illinois law.

Alonso's decision appears to leave Gullen free to bring his lawsuit against in California, where Facebook is headquartered.

Facebook is still facing a separate lawsuit in California for allegedly violating the Illinois law. Facebook argues in that case that the Illinois law doesn't apply to data extracted from photographs. That matter is pending before U.S. District Court Judge James Donato in San Francisco.
by Aaron Baar , January 25, 2016

The Y (known to most as the YMCA) has an enviable position of near-total brand recognition. But dig a little deeper and many who have heard of the organization are unclear on what it actually does.

When we did some research, we learned that people know the Y and they feel good about it, but when asked to articulate the cause and the charitable focus, people had a harder time, Donna Bembenek, vice president of marketing communications for Y-USA, tells Marketing Daily. We want to drive awareness around the extensive programs we have beyond our pools and gymnasiums.

To foster a deeper understanding, the Y this week is launching its first-ever national marketing campaign, highlighting the services it provides, particularly in underserved communities. The effort, from agency Droga5, includes two television commercials, social and a keyword-based digital partnership with the New York Times.

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One commercial, Idle Hands, depicts youth sitting around aimlessly bored or in groups apt to get into trouble (like running around junkyards or challenging each other to duels with sticks), while a voiceover explains: Give idle hands something to do, a place to go, a purpose, and theyre capable of amazing things. The visuals change to show kids working in classrooms together, ending with one diving into a pristine swimming pool. A graphic reveals the organizations logo, and text reading: For after school. For safe spaces. For creativity. For a better us.

A second commercial, Places, depicts a rundown, underserved community, with boarded-up buildings and altercations with police. It feels like this whole place is invisible, says a voiceover. If it werent for the nightly news, no one would even know of this place. As the visuals shift to kids playing together and socializing amid smiles, the voiceover asserts: Down here, our spirits are bright, our dreams are vivid. And if given a chance, thats what the world would see. The visuals shift to the community center as onscreen text reads: When communities are forgotten, the Y remembers.

We wanted to find something that was authentic and talked about the relevance of the Y, Bembenek says. The things we do strengthen our community and the collective us of society.

The television ads, which will run on networks including MSNBC, CBS and TBS, will be supported by digital and social efforts. One program with The New York Times will use keyword data to pair online banner ads with news stories about issues that can be resolved by the Ys programs.

Well connect with the story, and align it with a Y program, Bembenek says. Its intended to connect the news of the day [to the Y]. It gives people a way to engage in the solution.
by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 25, 2016

Against all of my better instincts, I have to admit that Foxs Lucifer exerts some kind of life force that makes it likable.

Call it charm or charisma, its the same effect the shows title character has on almost everyone he meets -- which is the point of the show. This Lucifer (full name Lucifer Morningstar) has a way of persuading people to reveal their deepest secrets to him -- which is very helpful in his pursuit as a man about town and amateur sleuth.

In the premiere of Lucifer Monday night on Fox, he joins forces with an attractive LAPD detective to find the person who hired someone to gun down a pop music star. However, despite this premiere-episode plot line, its unclear whether hell go sleuthing in subsequent episodes.

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Heres hoping that he does. This might seem like an obscure reference, but when I watched a preview DVD of tonights Lucifer premiere, the voice of the British actor who plays the title character -- Tom Ellis -- reminded me of George Sanders, the British movie actor who played the suave, crime-fighting heroes in The Falcon and The Saint series in the 1930s and 40s that you can still watch on Turner Classic Movies.

If memory serves, those two characters had various, hard-to-define powers beyond those of ordinary men. So does Lucifer Morningstar. He is actually a real devil -- the spawn of Satan -- but he apparently grew tired of the drudgery of hell and decided he would join the human race in Los Angeles, where he runs a nightclub, sleeps with a succession of pretty women and drives a vintage Corvette convertible from the 1950s. Hes immortal too, so he can beat up bad guys, and even get shot by them, with impunity.

The show is a young mans fantasy, of course, aimed at 20- and 30-something males who imagine that if they only looked like Lucifer and drove a car as cool as his Corvette, that all heads -- especially female ones -- would turn to gape at them as soon as they enter a bar or nightclub.

In a side story that is hinted at twice in the series premiere, Lucifer is visited by an emissary from hell -- apparently a brother of his, or at least someone else who is a spawn of the same father -- who demands that Lucifer return to the underworld and behave like a real demon.

This emissarys gripe is that Lucifer is becoming too sympathetic to the humans of L.A., even as he uses his devilish charm to manipulate them. Among his victims in the premiere are an L.A. traffic cop who Lucifer persuades to accept a bribe, and a psychiatrist (played by Rachael Harris) who agrees to violate the confidentiality of one of her patients by revealing the identity of the patients secret lover.

So whats wrong with Lucifer? Not much really, but only if you buy into the shows high concept about a resident of Hell gone rogue who goes around righting wrongs instead of causing them.

For such a show to work, it needs a charismatic star on the order of Tom Ellis, who you come to believe in the role of Lucifer in spite of the fact that the premise of this show is far-fetched at best or, at worst, completely nonsensical.

Sometimes, though, these far-out ideas have a way of working. Compare Lucifer to another show that premiered recently on Fox -- Second Chance  about a man who died but was then brought back to life in some sort of modern-day Frankenstein process.

In Second Chance, this 21st-century Frankenstein is charmless, while Lucifer has loads of it. Whats next on Fox? A nice, 21st-century Count Dracula, perhaps?

Lucifer premieres Monday night (Jan. 25) at 9 Eastern on Fox.
by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, January 25, 2016

WPPs BAV Consulting, U.S. News & World Report and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have created what the groups are calling the inaugural "Best Countries" report that assesses countries over a range of economic, environmental social criteria including business-friendliness, entrepreneurship, green living, and up-and-coming economy.

Germany was deemed the best overall country, followed by Canada, the U.K., the U.S. and Sweden, respectively.

The rankings evaluate 60 nations across 24 rankings lists. The U.S. is cited as the most powerful country, and India has the top up-and-coming economy. Germany is the best country for entrepreneurship, while Luxembourg is the most business-friendly. Brazil is the number one nation to visit, while Canada tops the list of countries with the best quality of life.

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The study was created to capture how nations are perceived on a global scale, and the rankings are the centerpiece of a new web portal called "Best Countries," launched last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"Best Countries is a product of the most extensive data set ever collected on how nations are perceived globally," said John Gerzema, CEO of BAV Consulting. "These perceptions contribute to a greater narrative about future drivers and deterrents of economic prosperity in nations and shape powerful brands that impact a country's bottom line."

The study and model used to score and rank countries was developed by WPPs brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and The Wharton School in consultation with U.S. News & World Report.

A set of 65 country attributes -- terms that can be used to describe a country and that are also relevant to the success of a modern nation -- were identified. Attributes by nation were presented in a survey of more than 16,000 people from across the globe where participants assessed how closely they associated one with the other. More on the methodology can be found here.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 25, 2016

The current chaotic state of online ads is one of the factors driving consumers to install ad blockers, Interactive Advertising Bureau President and CEO Randall Rothenberg suggested today.

"Multitudes of could-be formats and wannabe standards crowd screens, interrupt consumers activities while impeding the delivery of desired content, create supply chain vulnerabilities, generate privacy concerns, and drive fears about data security," Rothenberg said today at the IAB's annual leadership meeting.

"Ad-blocking has been a consumer plebiscite," he added. "The software offered consumers a vote -- and they have voted no on chaos, opacity, and slowness."

Despite this acknowledgment, Rothenberg had some sharp words for several ad-blocking companies, including AdBlock-Plus, the startup Brave -- launched last week by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich -- and the Israeli company Shine.

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AdBlock-Plus is run by an "unethical, immoral, mendacious coven of techie wannabes," who are engaged in "stealing from publishers, subverting freedom of the press, operating a business model predicated on censorship of content, and ultimately forcing consumers to pay more money for less -- and less diverse -- information," Rothenberg said.

Eich's business model for Brave "not only strips advertisements from publishers pages -- it replaces them with his own for-profit ads," the IAB leader said.

He added: "This is the true face of ad blocking. It is the rich and self-righteous, who want to tell everyone else what they can and cannot read and watch and hear -- self-proclaimed libertarians whose liberty involves denying freedom to everyone else."

He also said that some ad-blocking companies' business models "are undoubtedly illegal," although that assertion does not appear to have been tested in any U.S. courts. In Germany, courts sided with Adblock Plus when the company was sued by publisher Axel Springer.

Rothenberg specifically accused Shine of using a model that might violate net neutrality principles. Shine -- which recently began working with the Jamaica-based network operator Digicel -- reportedly automatically blocks all ads on the Digicel network.

Any U.S. carrier that attempted to prevent companies from serving ads to its customers almost certainly would be in violation of the net neutrality rules, which prohibit broadband carriers from blocking or degrading content. But those rules apply only to carriers, not to software developers.

For his part, Rothenberg is pushing the industry to adopt new "consumer-friendly rules of the road that regulate how we will operate our sites, our advertising, and our delivery."

He also praised publishers that detect ad blockers and prompt users to turn them off -- although it's not clear how many people do so. Rothenberg asserted that those publishers see "high percentages of consumers making mutually beneficial choices to maintain their access to desired content," but didn't offer specific numbers.

Meanwhile, at least one company had a well-publicized snafu with that approach. Earlier this month, Forbes asked visitors to turn off their ad blockers; those who did so were promptly served with pop-under malware.
Leaders of the Syrian-American Medical Society describe their efforts in bolstering what remains of the Syrian healthcare system and the health care context in which those efforts take place in their article, "War is the Enemy of Health: Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in War-torn Syria." The article is published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Share on Pinterest This is a field hospital.

Credit: ATS

The Syrian-American Medical Society was formed shortly after the war began to help Syrian refugees in Turkey. Since then, it has grown into a $25-million enterprise that has helped more than two million people, according to lead author Mohammed Z. Sahloul, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care physician in Oak Lawn, IL, who served as its president for four years.

The Society provides 24/7 telemedicine consulting to nine Syrian ICUs. It has conducted 17 "train-the-trainer" webinars for 850 doctors, nurses, paramedics and technicians on such topics as how to resuscitate trauma patients, the fundamentals of critical care and triaging surgery patients. And in classrooms in Turkey and Lebanon, it has trained Syrian doctors in the use of, and equipped them with, portable ultrasound to diagnose bodily injuries. Powered by rechargeable batteries, this technology has proved especially helpful in the war-torn region prone to power outages.

By all accounts, the health care situation in Syria is grim. The authors cite statistics that they and other organizations have compiled:

In the first four years of the conflict, 75,000 civilians died from war injuries; 25 percent of those killed were women and children.

More than twice that number have died from chronic and infectious disease because of inadequate medical care.

There is growing incidence of TB among Syrian refugees in Lebanon. 2014 British Medical Journal article found a 27 percent increase in TB.

By 2013, 70 percent of the health care workforce had left the country. In Syria's largest city, Aleppo, only 70 of the 6,000 physicians who once practiced there remain.

Syrian life expectancy has plummeted by 20 years since war broke out.

Responding to this health care crisis has been made much more difficult by the targeting of hospitals and health care workers, primarily by the government but also by the rebels, according to the authors.

"The Syrian conflict is unprecedented in the scale and gravity of the attacks on medical neutrality, which was something that was agreed upon 150 years ago in Geneva," Dr. Sahloul said. "Nearly 700 medical workers have been killed in this war, and more than 300 hospitals attacked, according to Physicians for Human Rights."

Dr. Sahloul decried the absence of a forceful response to these war crimes by physicians and international medical organizations. Medical neutrality, which is designed to protect civilians and the health care professionals who treat them during a war, is something "sacred among medical professionals," he added.

"The medical community is very late in responding to the situation in Syria," Dr. Sahloul said. "As physicians, we not only have an obligation, we have a powerful voice to insist that policy makers ensure that populations under siege have access to care."

The Syrian-American Medical Society has also documented the use of chemical weapons, another war crime, by the Syrian armed forces. Since December 2012, the group reports that there have been 152 attacks using toxic gases, including 8 using sarin, which paralyzes respiratory muscles, and 92 with chlorine gas, which dissolves lung tissue.

Dr. Sahloul said that most people have only heard of the 2013 sarin attack that killed 1,400 people and injured 10,000 others. The Syrian-American Medical Society has trained Syrian health care workers in how to treat patients exposed to chemical agents.

Despite the makeshift conditions under which medical care is provided in Syria, the authors argue that the efforts of the Syrian-American Medical Society and other groups supporting the health care workers remaining in the country should be subject to evaluation and measurement. "A retrospective survey of 527 health care workers trained in portable ultrasound found that 87 percent had incorporated the technology into the daily management of violent conflict," Sahloul said. "This technology should be studied in areas of war. It has the potential to save thousands of lives."

Sahloul's observation captures the animating principle of the Syrian-American Medical Society implicit in the journal article: even in humankind's darkest moments, caring and rational people can provide light.
Historical pathogens survived for more than 4 centuries in Europe.

Black Death, mid-fourteenth century plague, is undoubtedly the most famous historical pandemic. Within only five years it killed 30-50% of the European population. Unfortunately it didn't stop there. Plague resurged throughout Europe leading to continued high mortality and social unrest over the next three centuries.

With its nearly worldwide distribution today, it's surprising that the once omnipresent threat of plague is all but absent in Western Europe. Plague's abrupt disappearance from Europe leaves us with many unanswered questions about the disease's history. Where did the outbreaks begin? Where was plague hiding between outbreaks? What would cause a resurgence of the dreaded plague?

Archaeology holds many of the answers to these questions if you know where to look for clues. An international team of scientists led by members of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, has taken one important step forward to understanding the European plagues of our not-so-distant past. In the online journal eLife they report the reconstruction of complete pathogen genomes from victims of the Great Plague of Marseille (1720-1722), which is conventionally assumed to be the last outbreak of medieval plague in Europe. Using teeth from plague pits in Marseille, the team was able to access tiny fragments of DNA that had preserved for hundreds of years.

"We faced a significant challenge in reconstructing these ancient genomes," comments computational analyst Alexander Herbig. "To our surprise, the 18th century plague seems to be a form that is no longer circulating, and it descends directly from the disease that entered Europe during the Black Death, several centuries earlier". Being distinct from all modern forms of plague, the scientists believe they have identified an extinct form of the disease.

Kirsten Bos, a lead author of the publication, cautions that the geographical source of the disease cannot be identified yet. Marseille was a big hub of trade in the Mediterranean, so the Great Plague of Marseille could have been imported from any number of places by ship and cargo. But she concedes that it equally could have been close to home. "Our results suggest that the disease was hiding somewhere in Europe for several hundred years".

"It's a chilling thought that plague might have once been hiding right around the corner throughout Europe, living in a host which is not known to us yet" explains Johannes Krause, director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the MPI in Jena, and he adds: "Future work might help us to identify the mysterious host species, its range and the reason for its disappearance".
CDC is working with other public health officials to monitor for ongoing Zika virus transmission. CDC has added the following destinations to the Zika virus travel alerts: Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Guyana, Cape Verde, and Samoa. On January 15, CDC issued a travel alert (Level 2-Practice Enhanced Precautions) for people traveling to regions and certain countries where Zika virus transmission is ongoing: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory; Brazil; Colombia; El Salvador; French Guiana; Guatemala; Haiti; Honduras; Martinique; Mexico; Panama; Paraguay; Suriname; and Venezuela. Specific areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing are often difficult to determine and are likely to continue to change over time.

As more information becomes available, CDC travel alerts will be updated. Travelers to areas where cases of Zika virus infection have been recently confirmed are at risk of being infected with the Zika virus. Travelers to these areas may also be at risk of being infected with dengue or chikungunya viruses. Mosquitoes that spread Zika, chikungunya, and dengue are aggressive daytime biters, prefer to bite people, and live indoors and outdoors near people. There is no vaccine or medicine available for Zika virus. The best way to avoid Zika virus infection is to prevent mosquito bites .

Some travelers to areas with ongoing Zika virus transmission will become infected while traveling but will not become sick until they return home. Symptoms include fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes. Other commonly reported symptoms include muscle pain, headache, and pain behind the eyes. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Severe disease requiring hospitalization is uncommon and case fatality is low. Travelers to these areas should monitor for symptoms or illness upon return. If they become ill, they should tell their healthcare professional where they have traveled and when.

Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, CDC continues to recommend that pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant take the following precautions:

Pregnant women in any trimester should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing. Pregnant women who must travel to one of these areas should talk to their doctor or other healthcare professional first and strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites during the trip.

Women trying to become pregnant should consult with their healthcare professional before traveling to these areas and strictly follow steps to prevent mosquito bites during the trip.

Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) has been reported in patients with probable Zika virus infection in French Polynesia and Brazil. Research efforts will also examine the link between Zika and GBS.
Researchers at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital London, in collaboration with colleagues in the Czech Republic, have discovered a new genetic cause of corneal dystrophy.

Corneal dystrophy is a group of inherited disorders that affect the transparency of the cornea and can lead to severe sight loss or blindness. The only currently available treatment for most individuals who are severely affected is corneal replacement by a transplant.

For two types of dominantly inherited corneal endothelial dystrophy, congenital hereditary corneal dystrophy (CHED1) and posterior polymorphous corneal dystrophy (PPCD1) the genetic basis has remained unknown until now.

In a landmark paper, published in the international journal American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers describe alterations in the DNA sequence that affects regulation of a gene called OVOL2 in over 100 individuals with CHED1 and PPCD1. The more severely affected individuals have symptoms at birth, with corneal haze evident as early as 1 year of age. These individuals almost always require corneal transplantation surgery.

The research team was led by Professor Alison Hardcastle and Mr Stephen Tuft at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital and the associated National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). They used new technological advances in sequencing the human genome to discover the genetic cause.

Professor Hardcastle said: "It was a challenge to identify the DNA alterations causing these conditions because they influence how the OVOL2 gene is regulated, rather than affecting the 'coding' sequence of the gene like most other changes in previously identified genes implicated in eye conditions."

Dr Dolores M Conroy, Director of Research at Fight for Sight, said: "This study is not only important for understanding the cornea in health and disease, but also represents an important major advance in the field of human genetics, enhancing understanding of the 'non-coding' regions of the human genome that dictate where, and when, a gene should be switched on or off."

Mr Frank Larkin, Director of the NIHR Moorfields Clinical Research Facility for Experimental Medicine, said, "This study marks a significant step along the translational pathway. By confirming the origin of genetic corneal dystrophy, the group has paved the way for targeted research that could ultimately result in better therapies for patients."

Fight for Sight PhD student Cerys Evans is joint first author of the study and is a working on dominantly inherited corneal dystrophies. Dr Alice Davidson is joint first author and was supported by funding from the Lanvern Foundation, Moorfields Eye Charity and Moorfields Special Trustees. Dr Petra Liskova trained at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital and led the research in the Czech Republic. Dr Alice Davidson is now a Fight for Sight funded Early Career Investigator.

Their discovery paves the way for further studies to understand the biological processes leading to corneal dystrophy and to develop new treatments, with the future hope of replacing the need for corneal transplants in this group of patients.
Deaths from malaria could be nearly eliminated in the next 15 years thanks in part to a landmark 3 billion funding commitment announced today by the Chancellor and Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Speaking at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, George Osborne, Bill Gates and International Development Secretary, Justine Greening revealed a significant funding package to ramp up efforts to fight Malaria, centred on a 3 billion commitment over five years and a mission to support the World Health Organisation's goal of reducing malaria deaths by 90% by 2030, on a path to malaria free world.

The Chancellor George Osborne said:

I am determined that our overseas aid budget is spent on the challenges people in Britain want to see addressed - and those that threaten global and national security.

Across the globe over a billion people are infected with malaria and it's a cause of both untold misery and lost economic potential.

That's why, working with Bill Gates, I'm determined that Britain leads the world in the fight against this disease.

Already we've made great progress. Now, together with the Gates Foundation we are announcing 3bn over the next five years to start the work on eradicating malaria altogether.

Some of that money will be spent here in the Northern Powerhouse, and the brilliant science we want to see here. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is the oldest such institution in the world and is at the cutting edge of the war against malaria.

Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates said:

Britain is a global leader in the fight against deadly diseases like malaria - a disease that still claims the life of a child every minute. From the strength of its scientific community, to the bravery of the ordinary men and women who go out to fight these diseases, the UK's commitment to global health is building healthier futures for people living in the world's poorest places and making the world a safer place for all of us.

Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening said:

We can be incredibly proud of Britain's contribution to the battle against malaria. Thanks to the efforts of the UK and others over the past 15 years, more than six million lives have been saved.

However, malaria still causes one out of ten child deaths in Africa and costs Africa's economy billions every year. Our new commitment will save countless more lives and build a safer, healthier and more prosperous world for us all which is firmly in the UK's national interest.

Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), Professor Janet Hemingway CBE said:

As the world's oldest Tropical Medical Institution dedicated to improving health, LSTM is delighted to see the growing partnership between the UK government and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, providing leadership and support to the fight against the global health challenges of malaria and NTDs.

These diseases are indicators and drivers of poverty, and this partnership will help increase know-how, advocacy and funding, making a significant contribution to rapidly reduce the disease burden imposed by these infectious diseases and improve the quality of life for many of the world's poorest populations.

The funding announced today will mean 500 million a year invested by the UK government for the next five years.

The Gates Foundation will spend $200 million in 2016 to support R&D for malaria and to accelerate regional malaria elimination efforts, with a similar amount over each of the following four years.

Together this amounts to a minimum 3 billion commitment from the two partners to support global efforts to fight malaria.

The announcement builds on the new 1 billion Ross Fund announced by the government and the Gates Foundation in November - named after Sir Ronald Ross, the first-ever British Nobel Laureate who was recognised for his discovery that mosquitoes transmit malaria.

The Ross fund aims to develop, test and deliver a range of new products (including vaccines, drugs and diagnostics) to help combat the world's most serious infectious diseases in developing countries.

The Ross Fund will target drug resistant infections including malaria and TB, outbreak diseases such as Ebola, and neglected tropical diseases.

The Gates Foundation has committed to a five year partnership with the Ross Fund, aligning efforts with the UK Government to fight infectious disease in developing countries.

Today's commitment also delivers on the pledge, first made by George Osborne on a visit to Uganda in 2007, to spend 500 million a year battling malaria.

Bill Gates also announced today that his foundation would partner and invest in the Global Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) Research Innovation Fund announced by the Prime Minister and President Xi of China in October 2015.

Malaria Consortium welcomes five-year 3 billion commitment to fight malaria

"Malaria Consortium welcomes the recommitment from the UK Government to spend 500m a year to fight malaria," said Chief Executive, Charles Nelson, following the announcement today by the UK Chancellor, George Osborne and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "The UK has shown strong leadership in global health and malaria over the past decade and it is encouraging to see this continue. We look forward to understanding in more detail how this fund will be governed."

Today's announcement comes two months after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK government announced a new partnership to fight malaria. The Ross Fund - named after Sir Ronald Ross, the British scientist who won a Nobel Prize in 1902 for proving that mosquitoes transmit malaria - was set up in November 2015 to invest in global health research to support the fight against the disease as well as other neglected and emerging infectious illnesses. In addition to the UK Government's pledge, the Gates Foundation has committed a $200 million spend for 2016, with more contributions to follow. In total, the fund will cover a five-year 3 billion budget.

According to the World Health Organization, there were 438,000 malaria deaths in 2015. Most were children under five years, and the majority of them were in Africa. Strong efforts to control the disease have meant significant progress in the last 15 years, but this is being threatened by the spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs and to insecticide.

Malaria Consortium Development Director, Dr James Tibenderana, welcomed the news but also urged caution. "There is still a dramatic shortfall in the activities and consequent funding required funding to see an end to this disease and it is now crucial that we see other countries and donors following the UK and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation lead. Otherwise this devastating disease has previously demonstrated that it will resurge with a vengeance."

In addition to research, other life-saving approaches are needed, including health system strengthening, capacity building, harmonisation of local and international partners' efforts and improved malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment. "Otherwise we may never see an end to this devastating disease," concluded Dr James Tibenderana.


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The concept of a new "cold war" and a "sanctions war" that has been ongoing between Russia and the U.S. in recent years are hot topics in the Russian mass media, and among experts and the academic community. In an article in the Russian business daily RBC, Victoria Zhuravleva, a professor of history at the Russian State University for the Humanities, analyzes the future of Russia-U.S. relations at the start of the new year.

Zhuravleva notes that Russia clearly rejects a U.S. domination of the "post-bipolar world," despite the evident discrepancy in the "economic weight" of the two countries. She also observes that there is an asymmetry in the two countries' mutual hostility. Whereas in Russia, anti-American sentiment and emphasis on national pride are ingrained in society and are used by the authorities to unite the people, in the U.S. the "Russian card" is used mainly in political infighting.

At the same time, Zhuravleva is seeing first signs of cooperation between the two countries since the Russia-U.S. confrontation of recent years began. Examples, she says, are their cooperation in promoting the nuclear deal with Iran and their joint support for the latest UN resolution on Syria. Nevertheless, she emphasized that these signs definitely do not portend a "reboot" in the relationship.

The following are excerpts from her article:[1]



Victoria Zhuravleva (Image: Russia-direct.org)

Negative Outcomes In Recent Years

"By the end of 2015, Russian-American relations can finally be termed an ongoing confrontation. The deep crisis of confidence is causing problems even in the areas where cooperation is possible (for example, fighting jihadists in Syria). Furthermore, this crisis can cause unintentional international conflicts, even between Russia and the U.S. themselves...

"Within each country's national media, the 'image war' is expanding. Anti-American sentiment in Russia and anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S. have reached their highest level since the collapse of the bipolar system in international relations."

"Emphasis On National Pride Is Widely Supported In Russian Society"

"The crisis in the relationship between the U.S. and post-Soviet Russia is directly connected to the latter's actions in the Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine, which violated the standards of international law. More generally, the crisis is caused by [a general] mismanagement of global and regional processes since the end of the cold war... By its activities in the Ukraine and Syria, Russia has shown its unwillingness to accept the asymmetry in Russian-American relations [that is] based on global U.S. domination... Such an emphasis on national pride is widely supported in Russian society. However, the question is, how long will this consensus hold while the economic crisis deepens and living standards fall within the country...

"The U.S., for its part, will not consider returning to the former status in its relationship with Russia. America believes there is no basis for such ambition on the part of a regional power like Russia, which has a GNP lower than that of Spain...

"As a result, the new formula of Russian-American relations is 'asymmetric confrontation'... At the same time, the media war between the U.S. and Russia has demonstrated that there is a demand for anti-American attitudes in Russia, where authorities are using this 'enemy image' to unite society."

Anti-Americanism And Russophobia

"2015 was marked by a new round of the 'witch-hunt after foreign agents.' The MacArthur Foundation and the American Cultural Center attached to the U.S. Embassy have become new targets. All criticism against Russia and Russian activities is referred to as 'machinations by Washington' - and so are the Ukrainian hostilities, the drop in oil prices, the corruption scandal in FIFA and the charge that Russian track athletes used performance enhancement drugs.

"The enemy is known to all, easy to hate, and opposing him leads to an increase in Russian national self-pride. Moreover, this enemy has problems in his own house: from domestic racial tensions to foreign policy failures such as Iraq, the 'Arab spring,' and Syria... At the same time, Russian national conservatism is contrasted with American universal liberalism. This fundamental difference in values was evident in the speeches of Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama before the UN General Assembly in September. They demonstrated absolutely opposite views on the global situation in general and on the Ukraine and Syria in particular.

"The 'Russian card' is just as intensively used in American politics, especially by Republicans in the current Presidential race. In the new U.S. military doctrine, Russia is called one of the main threats to U.S. national interests, and a revisionist power that is violating the rules of international law..."

Positive Outcomes In Recent Years

"However, 2015 was also noted for a number of positive achievements. Russia and the U.S. were able to work together on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and [the Russian space agency] RosCosmos and NASA agreed to build a new space station after 2024.

"Thanks to the Russian military campaign in SyriaOC, Russia is much less isolated at the end of the year than it was at the beginning of it. Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama were in contact many times during the last few months, and permanent contacts between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov are continuing. Secretary of State [Kerry] said that the U.S. is not aiming to isolate Russia... and discussed a draft resolution on Syria with Mr. Putin that was adopted three days later by Russia and by the other UN Security Council members. Previous resolutions had been blocked by Russia. Thus, the year 2015 has demonstrated a disparity between public rhetoric and diplomatic practice..."

"Should We Expect A 'Reboot' Of The Relations?"

"Should we expect a 'reboot' of the relations? There are certainly no talks underway about any strategic partnership between the two countries. The U.S. will not build any joint military coalition in Syria with Russia, like the one they had during World War II against Hitler, and it is not going to change its position on the Ukraine. The lifting of sanctions from Russia will depend on whether it keeps the terms of the [February 2015] Minsk II agreement [on Ukraine, signed by Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany]... However, the normalization we have witnessed in the top-level negotiating process is already a great achievement, even a victory. But the fact that this is the best achievement was can point to clearly demonstrates the depth of the crisis in Russian-American relations at the end of 2015."

Endnotes:
Despite having earned much critical acclaim, the film Manjhi, The Mountain Man was nowhere at most of the film awards this year. Nor was there any recognition for the stellar performance given by actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Most of the Bollywood awards were bagged by blockbusters like Bajrangi Bhaiijan, Bajirao Mastani and Piku.

But the talented actor couldnt care less. He said he is no longer worried by the lack of recognition of his critically acclaimed movies at commercial awards.

 Facebook

The Manjhi actor was being felicitated with an award at the 22nd Lions Gold Awards, where he spoke to the media. "Commercial awards don't affect me anymore. Those who get the awards, feel happy and those who dont, feel upset [] I value the Lions Gold Award as they give awards to only those actors whose performances are worthy, compared to other awards functions."

Nawazuddin further added, "Nobody gave me an award for 'Gangs of Wasseypur' except Lions Gold Award for the character of Faisal Khan, which became iconic. Now, I am receiving an award for 'Manjhi', which went unnoticed in all award events even after audience liked the movie".

 Viacom 18 Motion Pictures

The actor, known for adding stark realism in his performances , summed it up in an interview with The Times Of India when he said that his mantra in life was: Kaam karo aur dafa ho jao.

H/t  TNN
The unspoken Rajput code of honour is that of valour and loyalty. The Rajput cult has never fallen short of stories of valour and sacrifice. So has Rajputana Rifles, the senior most rifle regiment of the Indian army. With the traditional Rajasthani moustache as their trademark style and Raja Ramchandra Ki Jai as their battle-cry, the Rajputana Rifles has been serving the country since more than two centuries now. Their insignia is the katar, a Rajput weapon, and a bugle.

The regiment has been part of various challenging and crucial operations, but the bravehearts of the rifle regiment have mainly been involved in cross-border conflicts with Pakistan.

 Reuters

The Rajputana Rifles traces its roots back in the year 1775 when the British noticed the exceptional bravado and skill of Rajput warriors and recruited them to fight for them. It was formally assembled in the year 1921 to fight as part of the British Indian army.

The list of honours earned by its brave soldiers is endless. Over the years, the regiment has received 41 Vir Chakras, 10, Maha Vir Chakras, 6 Victoria Crosses, 25 Shaurya Chakras, 1 Param Vir Chakra, 1 Ashoka Chakra, and 1 Padma Bhushan, among many other awards.

 Wikimedia Commons

During the Kargil War of 1999, RR was called upon to capture Tololing Top, the highest peak in the Dras-Kargil sector that overlooked the Srinagar-Leh highway. The extreme rugged terrain of the peak claimed half of the total causalities in the entire Kargil war. Capturing this peak was not only highly challenging but also very crucial and a game-changer in the war.

 Indiatimes

Led by Major Vivek Gupta, the teams went ahead determined to defeat the enemy or die in battle. Maj. Vivek Gupta managed to capture two challenging posts in a single day, before he fell down after a ruthless round of firing by the enemy.

Another team of 10 officers of 2nd Rajputana Rifles were ordered to capture Point 4590 on Tololing Hill. Among them was Havildar Digendra Kumar. He was assigned the task of targetting the first and last of 11 Pakistani bunkers on the Hill. During the assault, he was shot in his left arm. But the brave soldier, determined to pull down the enemy, kept firing with his machine gun. He received 18 bullets on his armour. His fierce attack allowed his men to rush to the enemy bunkers and take them down.

He is said to have killed 48 Pakistani soldiers single-handedly and was awarded the Mahavir Chakra for his bravery.

 Dailymail (dot) co (dot) uk

On 20 June, Colonel Ravindra Nath sent a message on the radio to his brigade commander: The objective given to my battalion has been achieved in full. We have captured Tololing sir."

The bravery and sacrifice of the jawans of the 2nd Rajputana Rifles was so exceptional, that they were the first among the 7 Indian Army units to receive an honourary citation by the army chief.

 shekhawat (dot) com

Another of the most legendary tale of bravado that adorns the hall of fame of Rajputana Rifles is that of Havildar Piru Singh during the Jammu & Kashmir operations in 1948. When Pakistan militants had occupied a major part of the river Kishanganga in the Titwal sector, 6 Rajputana Rifles was called to contain the situation. Two teams set out to capture two areas that had been occupied by the enemy.

The Indian army was suffering heavy casualties due to a medium machine gun through which the enemy was firing. Without fearing for his life, Piru Singh rushed forward to take down that machine gun post. Indian armys official website recounts the incident of how grenade splinters ripped open his clothes and his body parts but he continued to rush forward yelling the Rajputana Rifle battle-cry of Raja Ramchandra Ki Jai. Without giving a damn to his bleeding wounds, he jumped on the machine gun and opened fire on the enemy crew.

He continued his attack despite being hit with a grenade in the face and finally succumbed to his injuries. He was posthumously awarded by Param Vir Chakra.

 Twitter

The stories of valour and sacrifice of our army jawans are many, be it any regiment or battalion. These men have been protecting us with their blood, sweat, and lives. We salute them and will always be indebted to them. The nation is proud of them. Salute!
We all know why Republic Day is celebrated. To mark the implementation of our Constitution after which India formally became a republic. But do you know why the date of 26th January was chosen to celebrate it?

 BCCL

The day was chosen as on this day in 1930, the Declaration of Indian Independence i.e. Purna Swaraj (which means complete self-rule) was declared by the Indian National Congress. Yes, the decision that India was to be a completely independent nation was taken on 26th January, 1930. The Indian flag was hoisted across the Indian subcontinent by people and nationalists alike, with the Indian National Congress urging the nation to celebrate 26th January as Independence Day. We all know that independence did not happen for the next 17 years. But the Purna Swaraj movement sure did lay the seeds of a revolution to attain total independence.

 The Hindu

When India gained independence in 1947, we did not have a formal constitution. So, on 28 August 1947, just 13 days after Independence, a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to draft Indias Constitution.

 Wikimedia Commons

On 26 November 1949, the draft of the constitution was passed by the first constituent assembly of independent India. 284 members signed the document at this time. This day is celebrated as national Law Day or Constitution Day. The assembly conducted sessions over a period of almost 3 years discussing the draft of the Constitution, and finally, on 24 January 1950, all 308 Assembly members signed the two copies of Constitution. And Republic Day was announced to be celebrated on 26th January to mark the anniversary of Purna Swaraj.

Happy Republic Day!
Zakir Hussain is Indias iconic tabla maestro. Speaking with Sugandha Indulkar, Hussain discussed the highvolume tolerance debate, why he feels media should temper its tone  and being the first heart throb of Indian music:

Were seeing considerable debate on tolerance currently  is India a tolerant nation?

Yes, India is a tolerant nation. Indians know how to live peacefully with each other. We are a diverse country and in our diversity, weve found peace and compassion.

I am proud to be an Indian. My wife is an American. I can get an American passport  i never went for it. I believe i am an Indian, my father believed it, because there is a deep-rooted connection with the culture and art of India that we are constantly aware of.

At the time of Partition, many people went to Pakistan but we stayed here because we knew we were Indians. It really is unique, this beautiful, culturally rich nation of ours.

We are peace-loving  and we need to hold on this harmony.

We should not give anyone an opportunity to pit us against one another.

 BCCL

But we are hearing many contrarian views. Have you faced any intolerance yourself?

Not at all. I am the quintessential Mumbai boy. I was brought up in Mahim. My father was the best tabla player i knew. His discipline and dedication were very inspirational. My parents were staunch followers of Islam. At home, after my morning prayers and riyaaz, i would go to a madrasa and pray.

From there, id go to St Michaels school, before which i would go to the chapel and say my hymns and novenas. In the evening, i used to go to a temple and then come home to learn tabla again.

No priest or mullah prevented me from doing what i did  i was welcomed into every house of God and i felt blessed in each place. I grew up with this multireligious faith imbibed in me.

Harmony is within us  only when we allow the outside world to disturb our inner peace, do we feel distanced from each other.

Ghazal exponent Ghulam Alis concert in Mumbai was thwarted though  should political parties lay down boundaries for music?

Music is global  it is actually beyond the boundaries of religion or nation.

Political parties do have scores to settle and sadly, sometimes people beyond the ambit of petty politics also have to bear the brunt.

Today, times are tough because certain segments of society are pitting one Indian against another  that is absolutely wrong. The media often adds fuel to this fire in order to increase its TRPs  that is where things need to be corrected.

 BCCL

What role does religion play in your life?

Religion is a way of life. Music is the way of life for me  therefore, it is my religion. And this religion encompasses all religions in the world.

My father used to say, I am a worshipper of Maa Saraswati. I love her and she loves me, that is it. He introduced me to Lord Ganeshas pakhawaj, to

Lord Shivas dumroo.

Every religion preaches, Love thy neighbour. I believe if you are kind to the people around you, you have practised your religion.

Youve taken your art to a global stage. What are the challenges youve overcome in your professional life?

Well, the first challenge every artiste has to overcome is staleness in art. Tabla is about spontaneity. Sometimes, there is a creative block though which can be difficult to overcome.

Being selfless on stage is another challenge  you know the audience has flocked to hear your rendition but its equally important to allow your fellow artiste to present his best.

Another challenge for accomplished artistes is to know that you are not the best  i constantly strive to better myself.

You were the original heart-throb of Indian classical music  is there anyone as cool as you now?

What do you mean by were? I am the original heart-throb of Indian classical music even today!

I wouldnt want any young musician to be like me  they have to be better than me. I offered my best to audiences the world over. Today, im sure there are many young players out there who can play better than me  Indian music gives each an opportunity to create their own identity.
Last Independence Day, PM Narendra Modi took his security detail unawares when he broke the cordon to meet children on his way out of Red Fort. This did not go unnoticed by Islamic extremist groups who have been planning to target Modi, according to well-placed sources.

The special Protection Group (SPG) that protects the PM is in a tizzy over an intelligence alert that terrorist groups, including Islamic State adherents, could be preparing teens to carry out a fidayeen attack on the PM. The inputs are understood to have said that boys aged 12-15 and trained in weapons and explosives may have sneaked into the country, triggering a high level of preparedness. The alert was issued on Friday and circulated among SPG, police and intel units in NCR.

Following intelligence inputs of potential child squads targeting PM Modi on Republic Day, the SPG and senior advisers have been briefed and it has been urged that the PM not breach the security cordon.The Delhi police has been asked to keep a watch for possible suspects on R-Day. The special cell too has been alerted and asked to carry out search operations. The cell has received an anonymous communication related to the present threat, a source said.

 BCCL

The IS has recently released videos showing children learning to use machine guns and rocket launchers apart from rigorous physical training. PoK and Af-Pak-based groups are also learned to have children in their camps. One of these is Ansar-ud Tawhid (AuT), which has been helping IS spread its wings in India.

TOI had reported earlier that security threat assessment has been on an all-time high. The French foreign intelligence unit, directorate general of external security and Indian agencies, assisted by CIA, have been finalising the security detail of dignitaries and across Delhi.

(This article originally appeared in The Times Of India)
Should I be writing this at all? I wonder. Will I be declared unpatriotic or an anti- national? Never mind. I will stand for what Ive always stood for  the freedom of expression, of believing in the idea of India and yes, the national anthem.

It was almost anti-climactic when in the middle of a TV studio, Id stand up as the national anthem was played out while we covered the Republic Day celebrations on January 26 or the Prime Ministers speech on August 15. But then, seeing me, some of my colleague started and in my last organization, no matter how pressing the assignment, the entire newsroom was on its feet wherever they were for that minute when the national anthem played out.

Yes. I believe respecting the national anthem or our flag is respecting the idea of India. The anthem isnt words  otherwise why would we sing with great gusto Punjab, Sindh  most of these areas as known to the composer of this anthem  now lie in another country. Should we then change these words too? Not in the very least. Because inherent in these words is the idea that India was, is and, I dearly hope, will remain.

That includes tolerance for those who dont stand up for the national anthem. Personally, I have no idea why the national anthem needs to be played at a theatre before a Bollywood pot-boiler is about to be screened. It just doesnt add up. What is sillier still is that you are thrown out of a theatre for it?

WATCH: Muslim family forced to leave theatre for not standing during national anthem https://t.co/OkEDFJLEuv pic.twitter.com/dvXkkfq7FM  Times of India (@timesofindia) November 30, 2015

To spit in public  OK. So is urinating. But not standing up for national anthem  sacrilege! Cat calls and lewd comments directed at women in a theatre  OK. But not standing up for the national anthem would have you thrown out. It doesnt add up, does it?

Our flag, our anthem, our country are a source of pride for all of us but cant be objects of forced veneration. Who are these self-appointed conscience keepers in the society who decide where and how I express my patriotism?

As I understand, there is noting that constitutionally mandates that as an Indian citizen, I stand up when the National Anthem is being played. People do it as a mark of respect. There is, however, a law that states that disrupting an assembly engaged in singing the National Anthem is a punishable offence. So as long as Im not screaming expletives, Im free to sit down or lie down or crawl or do a headstand.

When Rabindranath Tagore wrote the song in Bangla in 1911, little did he know that the 1st of the 5 stanzas would be selected as the national anthem of India. Im reproducing the last 2 stanzas which I believe lend themselves to the idea of India that the poet had when he composed this:

Ghoro timiro ghono nibiro nishithe, pirito murchhito deshe

Jagroto chhilo tabo abicholo mongolo, natonayone animeshe

Duhshopne aatongke, rokkha korile ongke

Snehomoyi tumi maata

Jano gano duhkho trayoko jayo he, bharoto bhaggo bidhata

Jayo he jayo he jayo he Jayo jayo jayo jayo he.

Ratri probhatilo udilo robichchhobi, purbo udoyo giri bhaale

Gahe bihongomo punno somirono, nabo jibono rosho dhaale

Tabo korunaruno raage, nidrito bharoto jage

Tabo charone nato matha

Jayo jayo jayo he, Jayo rajeshworo bharoto bhaggo bidhata

Jayo he jayo he jayo he Jayo jayo jayo jayo he.

This is Tagores translation in English of his own work  as the Morning Song of India- that clearly speaks of dispelling darkness, of light, of compassion, of awakening.

The darkness was dense and deep was the night; my country lay in a deathlike silence of swoon.

But thy mother arms were round her and thine eyes gazed upon her troubled face

in sleepless love through her hours of ghastly dreams.

Thou art the companion and the saviour of the people in their sorrows,

thou dispenser of Indias destiny!

Victory, victory, victory to thee.

The night fades;the light breaks over the peaks of the Eastern hills,

the birds begin to sing and the morning breeze carries the breath of new life.

The rays of the mercy have touched the waking land with their blessings.

Victory to the King of Kings,

victory to thee, dispenser of Indias destiny.

Victory, victory, victory to thee.

I wish the people who threatened those who did not stand up to the national anthem in a theatre in Mumbai read these lines for in this compassion, in this enlightenment lies the idea of India.
As we celebrate our Republic Day with French President Francois Hollande being hosted by Indian PM Narendra Modi, perhaps it's a good time to look at some of the most important Prime Ministers India has had so far and their role in developing the country. Here are five of the best from the 14 PMs we have had so far.

Jawaharlal Nehru

 BCCL

It is easy to tarnish his legacy by invoking the lost war with China but let there be no doubt that Jawaharlal Nehru had the toughest job any Indian Prime Minister has had till date. From defining the role of a newly-founded India to the world to settling millions of referees and bringing about social and economic growth in a largely illiterate country is a task most able men would have succumbed under. Jawaharal Nehru, with the aid of fantastic colleagues such as BR Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel to name a couple, quickly sorted through the most pressing issues during Indias early years and earned the title of Chacha from his affectionate populace.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

 BCCL

Lal Bahadur Shastri had a short tenure as Indias PM but his uprightness and leadership qualities have stayed on all these years. He sowed the seeds of Indias green revolution with the phrase Jai Jawan Jai Kisan and also led the White Revolution that led to enhanced milk production in the country. His leadership during the 1965 war with Pakistan is also regarded as one of the best examples of statesmanship.

Indira Gandhi

 BCCL

Indira Gandhi was responsible the countrys only Emergency and it remains a blot on our democratic nation. But under her the country also grew from strength to strength. For the first time, the Green Revolution during her rule ensured that Indians had enough food. India also recorded a victory over Pakistan in 1971 under her command and led to the creation of Bangladesh. Her foreign policy was so spot-on that Lee Kuan Yew, father of Singapore, said that Indira Gandhi was more ruthless and determined than even Margaret Thatcher.

PV Narasimha Rao

 BCCL

Perhaps the most cunning Prime Minister ever, PV Narasimha Rao was responsible for ushering in Indias golden age after liberisation in 1991. From daring to hold elections in Punjab at the height of the states separatist movement to exposing Pakistans dual-handed behaviour in Kashmir on the world stage, Raos internal and external policies were always on point. His leadership while the USSR was disintegrating and Indias major oil exporters Kuwait and Iraq were fighting a war is something we need to acknowledge more.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee

 BCCL

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Indias first non-Congress PM to serve his full tenure. Vajpayee introduced a slew of development measures from primary education to opening up the telecom sector to road connectivity and brightened Indias name on the world stage. He is most well known for ordering nuclear tests in 1998 that told the world and Pakistan that we were capable of nuclear strikes as well.
Heres a little weird but totally cool tradition of Swedenwhen someone screams outside their window at night, Sweden screams back!

Its known as The Flogsta Scream and is apparently an Uppsala university town tradition. A Redditor, who goes by the name of BuffPigy, first introduced this phenomenon to the world. He posted the video and literally demonstrated it, and its all so wonderful and freaky at the same time.

So, screaming into the dark is one of those totally legitimate Swedish things that make no sense to the outsiders but is actually a source of pride to the native peeps. There is a wiki page to The Flogsta Scream that explains why this goes down every night at 10 pm.

Legend says the screaming actually started in the 1970s by a University student as an outlet to blow off some steam. Once started, it never stopped! Others say that the screaming started in the honour of a student who committed suicide, but who knows actually.

This is what the wiki page states:

Flogsta is a neighbourhood in the western outskirts of the Swedish city of Uppsala. Most of its inhabitants are students attending Uppsala University or the SLU. A couple of hundred international exchange students give the area an international atmosphere.

Every evening at 10 p.m. the "Flogsta scream" may be heard, when students scream collectively from windows, balconies and roof tops. There is controversy over how the tradition started. Some locals say it was simply a stress reliever, which started during exam times and then became a daily occurrence. Others say it started in remembrance of a student who committed suicide in the 1970s. A similar tradition exists in one of the student dormitory neighbourhoods in Lund, as well as in the student area of Lappkarrsberget in Stockholm."

Its cool and all now since you know, but imagine walking around as a tourist and not knowing wtf is happening.
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Metropolitan News-Enterprise

Monday, January 25, 2016

Page 1

C.A. Orders New Hearing in International Abduction Case

Panel Says Due Process Requires Chance to Present Evidence in Hague Convention Controversy

By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer

An Orange Superior Court judge deprived a mother of due process when it ordered her daughter returned to her father in Denmark without holding a full evidentiary hearing on the mothers claims that both she and the child had been abused, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

Div. Three Friday certified for publication its Dec. 16 opinion in the case of Tammy and Christian Noergaard regarding their daughter Mia, now 12 years old. Orange County sheriffs deputies removed Mia from her mothers custody in January 2014, and returned her to her father with the approval of county social workers.

Christian Noergaard had petitioned the superior court to order his daughters return under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The treaty requires a signatory country to honor the child custody and visitation orders of another, if the latter is the country of the childs habitual residence, unless the other parent establishes one of the affirmative defenses recognized by the treaty.

Some of those defenses, such as that the parent seeking the return of the child was not exercising custody rights, or that a child of adequate age and maturity objects to returning, may be established by a preponderance of the evidence. Others, such as that the return would violate human rights or fundamental freedoms, or that it would cause grave risk to the childs mental or physical well-being, must be established by clear and convincing evidence.

Tammy Noergaard alleged grave risk in her response to her ex-husbands petition. Case law holds that evidence that the petitioner has physically abused the other parent in the presence of the child may be sufficient to prove grave risk.

Earlier Abuse Allegations

According to news accounts of the case, the Noergaards met in 2000 in California. Christian Noergaard was a computer science engineer at the time and Tammy Zied was a software engineer. They married a year later, and their two daughters were both born here before the family moved to Germany, and later to Denmark.

The couple eventually separated after accusations that Christian Noergaard had been violent toward his wife and daughtersallegations he denied. In 2012, Danish courts granted him custody of both children. Tammy Noergaard claimed that Mia began running away from home to escape violence being perpetrated on her and her younger sister.

Superior Court Judge Linda L. Miller, after reviewing declarations and documents and interviewing the child for an hour, concluded that the mother failed to establish grave risk and ordered the child returned to her father, who promptly returned to Denmark with the child.

Justice Richard Aronson, writing for the Court of Appeal, acknowledged that the practical impact of the courts decision may be dependent on proceedings in Europe.

With its international law dimension and fraught issues of a family torn apart across borders, this case is undeniably complex, he wrote. But that complexity, if the parties are unable to resolve their differences, is all the more reason not to short-circuit the adjudicative process.

Ruling Called Puzzling

Miller erred, Aronson said, in considering the evidence submitted by the father without allowing the mother to present evidence that would have painted a very different picture of the case. In particular, the justice said it was puzzling for Miller to decide that she would not hear testimony from the parties or their technology experts regarding the authenticity of an email purportedly sent by Christian Noergaard in which he threatened to kill his ex-wife.

Instead, the justice explained, Miller essentially found the issue unresolvable and abdicated her responsibility to decide it. That was critical error, Aaronson said, because it was the judges function to resolve even the most complex issues of disputed material fact, and because the judge should not have determined in advance what the testimony would or would not have shown.

The email, postdated the Danish court decisions that were the basis of the trial judges ruling, Aronson noted, adding that it was unclear whether those courts considered the mothers claims of similar threats in the past.

There are two manifest flaws in simply leaving the issue of death threats and other unresolved material facts for Danish authorities potentially to address, the justice wrote. The Hague Convention, he emphasized, mandates that the court ruling on a petition for a childs return consider allegations in support of affirmative defenses such as grave risk, and does not relieve the courts of the rendering country of their responsibility for a childs safety.

Aronson went on to summarize the evidence that the trial judge erroneously excludedincluding a report by a Danish expert claiming that Mia reported being abused, the testimony of a Danish child welfare worker who attempted to find housing for Mia away from her father and testimony from social workers who interviewed the child after she was taken from her mother in Orange County, along with their report, which the mother claimed would show the inadequacy of their investigation.

Based on these and similar examples from the record, the trial court could not simply ignore or decline to hear mothers evidence or proposed testimony and deem the matter fully heard and fairly resolved, the justice wrote. The court, he clarified, was expressing no view on the merits of the parties claims, but simply requiring a full and fair presentation of their evidence.

The case is Noergaard v. Noergaard, 16 S.O.S. 455.

Copyright 2016, Metropolitan News Company
The Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Nikos Xydakis, met at the Foreign Ministry today with the Alternate Minister for Tourism, Elena Kountoura, with whom he discussed the Foreign Ministrys actions regarding the matter of issuing entry visas.



Mr. Xydakis briefed Ms. Kountoura on the timely planning and implementation, by the Foreign Ministry, of the necessary actions regarding the new and very demanding system for issuing visas with biometric data (VIS).



The Foreign Ministry has already taken the necessary steps to have the system ready to serve third-country (non-EU) nationals planning to visit Greece in the coming tourist season, contributing to the countrys economic growth during this critical time. Special mention was made of the projected increase in arrivals from Russia.



Mr. Xydakis met subsequently with tourism sector agencies, in a meeting attended by L. Tsilidis, President of the Hellenic Association of Travel & Tourist Agencies (HATTA), G. Vernikos, the Secretary General of the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), G. Tsakiris, President of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, G. Amvrazis, the Director of SETE, G. Paliouras, member of the HATTA board of directors, and G. Zacharatos, Secretary General of the Tourism Ministry.



Mr. Xydakis briefed those in attendance on the preparations that have been made regarding visa issuing, with the goal of the smooth functioning of the new system ahead of the new tourist season. The representatives of the agencies thanked Mr. Xydakis for the timely actions of the Foreign Ministry services.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Konstantinos Koutras response to journalists questions regarding statements from the Austrian Minister of the Interior, according to which the external borders of the European Union should be moved towards Western Europe if Greece does not improve control of its borders with Turkey:



We would advise the Austrian Minister of the Interior to weight her words more when referring to the refugee issue and to the supposed responsibility Greece has for it. Austrian Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner should think with a more European spirit and vision, and not based on the domestic political balance in Vienna. She could thus contribute towards continuation of the political and democratic integration of Europe, the logic of which does not allow for quarantines or exclusions. The cold war is over.
Last year, lawmakers completed the ultimate assignment, as far as the National Education Association is concerned: a long-awaited reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The new lawthe Every Student Succeeds Act paves the way for states to de-emphasize test scores in accountability and focus more attention on factors like school climate and teacher engagement. And it gets rid of evaluations that take student outcomes into account, both big NEA priorities.

Maybe thats why some in Congressparticularly Republicansseem to have done a little better on the NEAs report card from the union this year.



Overall, 50 senators and 200 representatives earned As, while 39 senators and 201 representatives got a D or an F. But 59 Republicans got grades of A, B, or C in 2015, compared to 46 in 2013, 41 in 2011-12, and 18 in 2009-10.

And three out of ESSAs four sponsorsSens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., got As. (The other major architect, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota got a C.)

But ESSA seems to have helped GOP education leaders in Congress rise in the unions estimation. Alexanders grade jumped from a C in 2013-14 to a A this year. And Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who worked with Murray to create an early-education program for the first time in this version of ESEA, also saw his score go up, from an F to a B.

The NEA gave good grades to Dems who bumped heads with the union on accountability provisions as Congress was working on the ESEA rewriteSens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Corey Booker of New Jersey, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

How did the presidential candidates in Congress fare? The NEA flunked both Republican contenders in the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. And Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an Independent who is running for the Democratic nod, got an A, even though NEA has endorsed former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Tiffany Anderson, who leads the Jennings, Mo., school district in St. Louis County and has spearheaded a number of programs to address the out-of-school-needs of children in poverty, will become the new superintendent of Topeka, Kan., schools.

Anderson starts the job on July 1, and will remain in Jennings until then to help train her replacement. She has been in Jennings, a high-poverty community that borders Ferguson, for less than four years.

Under Andersons team, the district regained its accreditation in 2015. The district also started a food pantry for many of the communitys low-income families; put washers and dryers in schools; and added a clothing boutique that provided things like jackets and socks to students. Late last year, the district started a foster home to provide shelter for homeless students.

Anderson, who was one of Education Weeks 2015 Leaders to Learn From, has received national attention for her approach to educating children in poverty.

She will be paid $215, 000 to lead the 14,000-student Topeka school district $55,000 more than the districts outgoing superintendent.

The Topeka districtwhere the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka originatedis predominantly African-American and Hispanic and faces challenges similar to the ones Anderson tackled in Jennings. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Anderson will be the first African-American woman to hold the superintendents job in Topeka.

The job will cut Andersons commute. She frequently drove from her home in suburban Kansas City, Kan., to Jennings.

Although I love my Jennings family, expanding services to the underserved in Kansas is a necessary step in contributing to making a better history for all children, Anderson said in announcing her impending departure.

Photo caption: Tiffany Anderson. Photo by Swikar Patel/Education Week
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday made retroactive its decision of four years ago barring life-without-parole sentences for murders by all but the most incorrigible juvenile offenders.

The 6-3 decision will mean some 1,000 juvenile offenders sentenced before the 2012 decision will likely be paroled. Some of those offenders have spent most of their lives in prison, including the one at the center of the new decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana (Case No. 14-280). The case was watched by some in education and juvenile-justice circles because of the courts larger jurisprudence on juvenile offenders.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama , which held that mandatory life without parole for those under 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendments prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, is retroactive because it meets the courts tests for being a substantive new rule of law and not merely a procedural one.

Because Miller determined that sentencing a child to life without parole is excessive for all but the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption, it rendered life without parole an unconstitutional penalty for a class of defendants because of their statusthat is, juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect the transient immaturity of youth, Kennedy said. As a result, Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law.

The courts ruling will not require states to relitigate sentences, let alone convictions, in every case where a juvenile offender received mandatory life sentence without parole, Kennedy wrote. Instead, a state may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, he said.

Kennedys opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Writing in dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority had found a devious way of eliminating life without parole for juvenile offenders, which the Miller decision claimed not to eliminate for the worst offenders.

Instead, Scalia said, the majority merely makes imposition of that severe sanction a practical impossibility. And then, in Godfather fashion, the majority makes state legislatures an offer they cant refuse: Avoid all the utterly impossible nonsense we have prescribed by simply permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole. Mission accomplished.

His dissent was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas (who also wrote a separate dissent) and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Half a Century in Prison

Montgomery was a 17-year-old high school junior in East Baton Rouge, La., in 1963 when he murdered a sheriffs deputy.

Montgomery, now 69, was convicted and sentenced to death under Louisiana law. But he later won a new trial, was convicted again, and this time sentenced to life without parole. After the Miller decision, he sought to have it retroactively applied to him.

The Louisiana Supreme Court denied Montgomerys plea for reconsideration of his sentence, consistent with its ruling in another prisoners case that the Miller decision was procedural rather than substantive in nature. It was one of seven states that had declined to apply Miller retroactively, even though a number of other states had agreed to do so.

The Supreme Court ruled on a day when most of the rest of official Washington was closed due to the heavy snow that struck the region over the weekend. Five justices took the bench for the short opinion session, while the other members of the court were believed to be traveling.

Henry Montgomery has spent each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison, Kennedy wrote. Perhaps it can be established that, due to exceptional circumstances, this fate was a just and proportionate punishment for the crime he committed as a 17-year-old boy.

But in light of what the high court has said in recent yearsin Miller and other decisions on the sentencing of juveniles about how children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability, Kennedy said, prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.
Actor Matt Damon and Gary White, co-founders of the nonprofit Water.org, came to the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday to call attention to the desperate need for clean water in impoverished regions around the world.

"Imagine this outrage we feel about Flint  this justified outrage, I should say, because that should never happen in the United States of America, ever," Damon said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But there are people for whom life is such a desperate struggle, that they're faced every day with the choice of giving their children dirty water or no water at all."

Damon and White appeared alongside Todd Allen of Stella Artois to discuss the global water crisis and to announce their "Buy a Lady a Drink" campaign  so named because water shortages disproportionately affect women, who spend hours each day searching for water for their families.

The beer maker is introducing a limited-edition collection of decorated glass chalices representing water-poor countries such as Ethiopia, Haiti, India and Honduras. The sale of each $13 goblet will provide a woman in one of these countries with five years of clean water.

The partnership began last year and has provided water for 290,000 people so far, Allen said.

"Obviously, we're hoping to do even better this year," Damon said. Some 663 million people around the world lack access to clean drinking water.

The water crisis in Flint shows how heartbreaking and horrifying life without clean water is, Damon said. He recalled a trip to Ethiopia several years ago where he witnessed schoolchildren filling bottles with water "the color of chocolate milk." Their parents knew the water would make the children sick, but without it, they would have nothing to drink.

"I have four daughters," Damon said. "When you start having kids, it's hard not to see other kids as your own ... It's incumbent upon me to do whatever I can within my sphere of influence" to help.

Though Christian Bale's character in the Oscar-nominated film "The Big Short" bet on water as the hottest future commodity, White said enough clean water exists to satisfy the thirst and needs of everyone on the planet.

"It just becomes where is the water and where are the people, and where are the financial resources to be able to treat it and move it," he said. "The water is there, but it's the finance  it's poverty that's keeping us from solving the problems."
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LOS ANGELES (AP)  It was a daring and elaborate escape: cutting through metal, crawling through plumbing tunnels, climbing a roof, rappelling four stories to freedom using ropes made from bedsheets.

But this wasn't a Hollywood movie; it was a real-life breakout that left authorities struggling to find three escapees  one an alleged killer  and put together the pieces of how they managed to thwart security at a Southern California maximum-security jail.

The priority was finding the men  whom are possibly armed and considered dangerous  but a probe also is underway to see whether the men had any help from inside or outside the Orange County Men's Central Jail, authorities said Sunday.

Jonathan Tieu, 20; Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were all awaiting trial for violent crimes but their cases were unconnected. They vanished from a dormitory they shared with around 65 other men on Friday shortly after the 5 a.m. inmate head count, county sheriff's officials said.

Somehow, the men obtained tools that allowed them to cut through the quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall, then got into plumbing tunnels. Cutting their way through additional half-inch-thick steel bars, the trio made their way to an unguarded area of the roof of the four-story building, where they apparently moved aside some razor wire and rappelled to the ground using elaborately braided ropes made from linens, authorities said.

The escape wasn't noticed for 16 hours, until a nighttime head count that was delayed about an hour because of a fight involving some other inmates that may  or may not  have been part of the escape plan.

Clearly, the plan had been long in the making and carefully thought out, sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

"We're talking about breaching, in some places, significant amounts of steel, rebar and metal," Hallock said.

As federal and local authorities staged a round-the-clock manhunt, there remained a lot of questions about the escape itself. How did the men get the cutting tools? When did they make the rope and where did they stash it? How did they know the jail layout so well? Did they have outside help, maybe a car waiting after they ran off on foot in their orange jail jumpsuits?

And perhaps most importantly: did other inmates or jail employees help them?

"We're going to take a look at everybody who may have been assigned there," Hallock said. "What I can assure you is that the compromises in security have been shored up."

He didn't provide details.

"I've been in law enforcement for 37 years, always working for sheriff's departments that manage jails. And escapes do occur from time to time," Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. "We try and limit that. We learn from the mistakes. I can tell you that this is a very sophisticated-looking operation. People in jail have a lot of time to sit around and think about ways to defeat our systems."

There had been two previous escapes from the jail but they were decades ago. In fact, nobody had managed it in more than 20 years.

But the aging jail, built in 1968 and housing some 900 men, does have some vulnerabilities. Its design allows inmates to move through different areas more easily than more modern jails.

And inmates do move, which makes it difficult to get daytime head counts.

"We have people going to court, we have people going for medical treatment, and you can't leave them locked down 24 hours a day. There are requirements that they get out and exercise from time to time," Hutchens said.

The inmates include 20-year-old Jonathan Tieu, who had been held on a $1 million bond since October 2013 on charges of murder, attempted murder and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. His case is believed to be gang-related.

On Sunday, his mother and sister said they hadn't heard from him and tearfully pleaded for him to surrender.

"I miss you... I want my son back," his mother, Lu Ann Nguyen of Santa Ana, told KABC-TV.

"I for sure know he wasn't the one who orchestrated this. I feel he was manipulated or tricked into doing this," said his sister, Tiffany Tieu.

"Just turn in yourself in. Don't let (it) drag on," she said.

Hossein Nayeri, 37, had been held without bond since September 2014 on charges of kidnapping, torture, aggravated mayhem and burglary. Nayeri and three other men are accused of kidnapping a California marijuana dispensary owner in 2012. They drove the dispensary owner to a desert spot where they believed he had hidden money and then cut off his penis, authorities said.

After the crime, Nayeri fled the U.S. to his native Iran, where he remained for several months. He was arrested in Prague in November 2014 while changing flights from Iran to Spain to visit family.

The third escaped inmate, 43-year-old Bac Duong, was being held without bond since last month on charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at an inhabited dwelling, being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm and other

While the Mexican border is only a couple of hours south of the prison, authorities said they had no evidence that the men had left the country. Their alleged victims, as well as prosecutors and detectives involved in their cases, have been warned and investigators also are reaching out to family and acquaintances of the escaped inmates.

Federal authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information leading to their recapture.

"We're in a position where we absolutely need the public's help," Hallock said. "There's people out there that know who these people are, who may have seen them. We're asking for phone calls, whether it's any piece of information you may have."

"We're exhausting every lead that we currently have," he said.
In a Friday interview with "The Wrap," the actress said that she "sometimes wished she were African American because people don't bash them afterwards." She was referencing a time when she complained about the Academy being very male and white two years ago and was harshly criticized for her views.

Her comments on Friday were viewed as inflammatory by many and came after the Academy announced plans to increase the diversity of its membership.

In a statement to EW.com, Delpy said that she never meant to diminish injustices to African American artists or anyone else and that she can't stand inequality or injustice of any kind.
The military magic act in trying to make the 30,000 troops of U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) look like the 300,000 of the Cold War requires constant movement and results in constant logistics headaches for the 16th Sustainment Brigade posted in Baumholder, Germany.

There are the mismatched rail gauges, plus the mismatched gear, plus the growing heaps of red tape involved in crossing borders that the brigade has to overcome, Col. Michelle M.T. Letcher said last week at a briefing with her unit leaders at the Pentagon.

Take the nozzles, for instance. It may seem that the U.S. and its allies would have figured out a way by now to refuel each other's trucks after 66 years of working together in NATO, but such is not the case.

Capt. Nicholas Greco, commander of the 515th Transportation Company, went for the fix last October in Spain during the Trident Juncture exercise, NATO's largest in 10 years involving 36,000 troops from 30 countries.

"The thing is, there's no standard NATO logistics kind of brigade," Greco said at the roundtable briefing by the brigade leaders. "So it's a team effort when we come together. We don't all have the same standardized equipment, the same size hoses."

Greco said he and his troops took a couple of U.S. adaptors, a couple from the British set and a couple from the Spanish set, with the idea being "to push fuel from one bag form (Modular Combined Petroleum Unit) for the Italians, say, into a Polish truck. "We identified a lot of lessons learned and we found a couple of different adaptors we're working on purchasing and procuring now," Greco said.

In an Army release, Sgt. Arthur Kreft, one of Greco's troops in the 515th Transportation Company, said "We researched the fuel adaptors for months before the exercise to find the correct NATO adaptor so that we can now fuel almost any other country here."

Letcher echoed Lt. Gen. Hodges in putting Greco's problem in perspective. At the height of the Cold War, USAREUR had 300,000 troops in Europe and "now we're down to about 30,000. One of our missions is to kind of have the same effect but with less. So what we have to do is make 30,000 look and feel like 300,000. One way is to empower junior leaders."

A prime example of junior leader empowerment was the posting of a young sergeant from the 16th as the logistics advisor to Ambassador Jeffrey Levine at the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia.

"In Estonia, we have a sergeant who sits in the embassy and advises the ambassador on freedom of movement and coordination in that country -- a very young leader in the U.S. Army with really a very strategic mission," Letcher said. "We don't have schools that prepare a sergeant to sit in embassies."

The overall mission of the brigade was "to deter Russian aggression," Letcher said, which means meeting Hodges' need for speed.

At a Pentagon news conference last month, Hodges said he had to keep his troops in constant motion to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin at bay.

"So, it really is about speed," Hodges said. Putin "has freedom of movement on interior lines because he's moving inside of Russia, whereas the alliance is moving across multiple sovereign borders. You know, how fast can you get soldiers and equipment, either by rail or road movement, to assemble somewhere?"

"So that means that we have to show up, units have to assemble on very short notice and plug in and be interoperable," Hodges said.

The rail movement can be problematic, said Lt. Col. Steven Dowgielewicz, commander of the 39th Transportation Battalion. "We always assume that it's a universal rail gauge and any rail car can ride on any rail track," he said.

But it doesn't work that way with some allies. Lithuania has a wide gauge and "you cannot put a German or Polish rail car onto a wide gauge track" to move gear into Lithuania or other former Soviet bloc countries, Dowgielewicz said. "We either have to trans-load the equipment or you have to change the wheels under the flatbed of the rail car so that you can continue moving that equipment," he said.

Despite the rail gauge problem, the 39th Transportation Battalion has managed to boost rail movements dramatically. In 2014, there were 33 rail movements by USAREUR and last year there were 233, Dowgielewicz said.

Then there's the red tape involved in border crossings, each of which requires a Transportation Movement Clearance form. "Last year, we processed over 23,000 of them -- that's 23,000 movements across the European theater," compared to 15,000 in 2013, Dowgielewicz said.

Letcher, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, said that in a way it was easier to do her job in a war zone. "In Iraq and Afghanistan, you had freedom of movement," as opposed to the multiple boundaries, multiple languages and multiple currencies in Europe, she said.

Letcher's 2,200 troops have responsibility for supply and distribution for USAREUR from Bulgaria on the Black Sea to Estonia on the Baltic Sea. In addition to backing up USAREUR, the brigade also has supply and distribution responsibilities for Africa Command and, on occasion, for U.S. Central Command.

"Right now we are able to fulfill the missions we are asked to do," but it involves a lot of improvising. Letcher noted that in Afghanistan there were three sustainment brigades. In Europe, she has one.

--Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
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...
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has again addressed the controversial issue of U.S. "boots on the ground" in Iraq and Syria, saying that more American troops would be deployed in an "enabling" role.

"Boots on the ground? We have 3,500 boots on the ground" in Iraq and "we're looking for opportunities to do more," Carter told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Carter acknowledged there are about 50 U.S. Special Forces troops serving as advisers in Syria to local forces opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in addition to the 3,500-3,600 American troops serving as trainers and advisors to the Iraqi Security Forces.

"We're not looking to substitute for local forces in terms of governing the place and policing the place," Carter said. "That's why we put Special Forces in Syria. They're tremendous force multipliers. They're the ones who connect them to the great might of our military. The strategic concept is not to substitute but to enable" local forces, he said.

Carter also referred 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 a similar number of troops from the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division in the training role. The 1st BCT will return to Fort Drum, New York.

In his meetings last week in Switzerland and in Paris with allied defense officials, Carter said that the number of U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq would "increase greatly as the momentum of the effort increases."

Carter said the main focus would be on routing militants affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, from Mosul, the main stronghold of the insurgents in Iraq, and from Raqqa, the self-proclaimed ISIS capital in Syria.

"We need to destroy them in those two places, and I'd like to get on with that as soon as possible," he said.

However, in a briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon last week, Army Col. Steve Warren, chief spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said "We don't have a solid number yet" on how many additional troops will be deployed as trainers to join the estimated 3,550 U.S. troops now on the ground in Iraq.

"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 build-up, he said.

In an editorial for Politico last week, Carter said, "We are gathering momentum on a number of fronts and are determined to put ISIL on an irreversible path to lasting defeat. Now is the time to do even more. As we accelerate our campaign, so must every one of our coalition partners."

President Barack Obama has ruled out ground combat for U.S. forces and also to date barred American forward air controller from the frontlines to guide airstrikes, but the debate has continued in Congress over the definition of "boots on the ground" and whether military personnel have been engaged in "combat."

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James frequently refers to the "boots in the air" of U.S. pilots flying missions in Iraq and Syria.

At a Pentagon news conference last October, Carter attempted to explain how a U.S. soldier could die heroically in a combat raid while the nation was still not involved in "boots on the ground" combat.

Carter hailed 39-year-old Delta Force Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler as an exemplary hero who "ran to the sound of the guns" in a helicopter assault with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters that freed 70 ISIS hostages. He was the first U.S. combat fatality of the campaign against ISIS.

"This is combat," Carter said of the raid on an ISIS prison compound east of the town of Hawija in northern Iraq, and "we expect do to do more of this kind of thing."

However, he added "things are complicated" when asked if the policy against U.S. troops engaging in direct combat was still in effect.

"Americans are flying combat missions, thousands of combat missions, over Syria and Iraqi territory," Carter said in rejecting accusations of "mission creep."

"There are Americans involved in training and advising Iraqi security forces around the country," he said, but "we do not have combat formations there the way we had once upon a time in Iraq, or the way we have had in years past in Afghanistan."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Oregons dismal graduation ratedead last for white students and second to last for black students, according to the U.S. Department of Education--MBhas rankled politicians and educators in the Beaver State for years.

Now, according to an interview that her staff conducted with the Oregonian newspaper, Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, says she will task the next education innovation officer with figuring out why the states overall 72 percent graduation rate is so low and come up with ways to fix it.

Its a big task, and the states record of hiring and keeping education chiefs isnt so great. Oregon has struggled to figure out who should oversee the states public school system and what their tasks are. Brown hopes to hire someone this spring.

Ive written a bit about the evolving role of state chiefs and their departments under the recently passed federal Every Students Succeeds Act. In the coming years, state education agencies will be tasked with creating their own accountability systems, certifying and evaluating teachers, and intervening in their worst-performing schools.

But there are some structural issues states will have to address first. In most states, its more financially lucrative to be the superintendent of a large urban district than it is to lead all of the states school districts. And most education departments for decades now have been focused on making sure schools comply with federal regulations rather than helping solve some of the problems that plague them. The new law will usher in a big culture shift.

Oregon is no exception.

The states new education innovation officer will oversee Oregons department of education, public colleges and the Chief Education Office, a research leg of the government that sets goals and which spots and helps duplicate best practices.

But the innovation officer wont manage any staffers, wont have money to hand out and is expected to listen to Oregon school districts and communities, not order them around, according to the Oregonian.

The average salary of the top 30 officials in the states education department is just $110,000, according to the Oregonian. The last chief made $225,000 a year.

The states first governor-appointed chief education officer, Rudy Crew, the former chief of New York City and Miami-Dade schools, resigned in 2013 after just a year on the job after racking up thousands of dollars in travel expenses. As chief education officer oversees public higher education, early childhood and the department of education.

The next chief education officer, Nancy Golden, a homegrown superintendent, had lofty goals but not much time to accomplish them after Gov. John Kitzhaber abruptly resigned early last year.

The legislature last spring dialed back the role of the state education chief and abolished the board that oversees that position. Golden soon retired and former teachers union leader Lindsey Capps has been filling the seat on an interim basis.

The new education innovation officer, instead of attempting to fix everything thats wrong with education in the state, including its funding formula, will work on smoothing students entry to kindergarten, getting more students to graduate high school with the skills they need for college, and improving students transition into postsecondary education, according to the Oregonian.

Nationally, the average tenure of education chiefs is just 3.2 years .

The Oregonians Betsy Hammond has done an impressive job writing about the states chronic absenteeism and abysmally low graduation rate . A lot of the states education troubles can be partly attributed to the plight of the timber industry, which mostly collapsed in recent years, leaving a high unemployment rate and entrenched poverty in the rural parts of the state.
A Marine who fought off an Afghan insurgent assault despite painful shrapnel wounds to the leg said his bravery under fire was all in a day's work.

Staff Sgt. Robert Van Hook, a critical skills operator attached to 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, received the Silver Star on Jan. 15 during a ceremony at the headquarters of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or Marsoc, near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for heroism in battle during a 2013 deployment to Herat province, Afghanistan.

In an interview days after receiving the military's third-highest award for bravery, Van Hook recalled the events of that day of action.

Van Hook, a 27-year-old native of Nokesville, Virginia, had been serving as the element leader for Marine Special Operations Team 8224, Special Operations Task Force West. A former reconnaissance Marine, Van Hook had been to Iraq once and was on his third deployment to Afghanistan.

His team had begun its operation late at night Aug. 14. They planned to clear a village of insurgents in preparation for a visit by local Afghan National Army, or ANA, leaders to the region the following day. As they moved into the region around 2 or 3 a.m., Van Hook said, the team spotted two who appeared to be "walking with intent" and exhibiting other suspicious behaviors.

On Van Hook's order, the Marine team took cover and maneuvered closer to observe the men, eventually watching them link up with eight others at the back of a building. All were armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons he said, and as they communicated in Pashto over their radios, Van Hook could make out words like "bomb."

Taking advantage of the element of surprise, he "executed a hasty ambush" on the men, according to his medal citation, killing four and wounding two more. Then he and his team cleared the building from which the insurgents were operating, using their own guns and hand grenades. One more insurgent was taken hostage inside, and two more were detained.

Despite the intensity of this ambush under cover of darkness, Van Hook said he was able to keep a cool head as he aggressively charged into an enemy position.

"We train like we fight here," Van Hook said. "Our training is as realistic as we can possibly get it. It's almost second nature at this point."

Daybreak found Van Hook and his team in a building providing over-watch defense for a sister Marine Special Operations Team as they brought in ANA officials for a key leader engagement with elders from the region.

"The area was highly destabilized. We wanted to get high-ranking leaders with the Afghan army to show their presence," Van Hook explained. "We knew the area had a lot of insurgents in it and they had freedom of movement."

The engagement went as planned, with little more than sporadic "pop shots" at the Marines while the leaders were present. But as the ANA detachment pulled away, all that changed.

"You could almost see their tail lights crossing the horizon when the attack started to kick off," Van Hook said.

A sniper on the ground started targeting the two Marine teams. As Van Hook's team began returning fire with recoilless rifles and machine guns, the insurgents directed the bulk of their fire at them. As the onslaught became overwhelming, Van Hook ordered a Marine who had been manning an MK-19 grenade launcher on the roof to take cover.

"If your head was just over the wall, you were getting shot in the Kevlar," he said.

Later, though, when Van Hook got word from the other Marine element that it was being targeted on three sides, he grabbed another Marine and charged back out to take control of the MK-19 once more.

As he fired the big gun, Van Hook successfully drew the brunt of the enemy attack onto his position, taking the pressure off the other element and allowing them to regain their advantage. He fired on the insurgents until one of them shot an RPG into the rooftop position, knocking Van Hook and the other Marine unconscious and wounding them with shrapnel.

When Van Hook regained consciousness, he saw that the MK-19 had rolled over his leg, which had been pierced by shrapnel and had blood pooling under it. The other Marine had been apparently wounded in the back, and Van Hook moved to put pressure on the wound, and push the Marine to cover, despite the pain in his own leg.

Then, he manned the gun once more and continued to fire on the enemy fighters. When he looked down and saw that the pool of blood under his leg had grown larger, he applied a tourniquet to the leg and kept on fighting.

Finally, one of MARSOC's special amphibious reconnaissance corpsmen convinced Van Hook to leave the roof for a medical examination. At this point, the Marine was in intense pain and couldn't feel anything below the ankle of his wounded leg due to a nerve injury.

But, Van Hook said, "I could still think, and I realized there were gaps in my security, so I wanted to support as much as possible."

With two Marines wounded and an ANA soldier who was fighting with them in bad shape from being shot in the face, the decision was made to organize a casualty evacuation. Instead of laying back and resting, Van Hook teamed up with another Marine who had a recoilless rifle, identifying insurgent targets so he could shoot at them.

Then, with the medical evacuation, or medevac, chopper approaching, he began calling in "danger close" suppressive 120mm mortar fire around the landing zone to allow the bird to land safely. Once on board, Van Hook said he felt not relief, but frustration.

"The last thing a Marine wants to do is leave other Marines behind and I was pretty irritated at that point," he said.

But the day wasn't over; while aboard the aircraft, the Afghan soldier collapsed, and Van Hook and the other Marine provided triage care, taking advantage of their extensive medical training.

Looking back on the day, Van Hook was unassuming about his accomplishments.

"This is the job we signed up for," he said. "Everybody understands the positions you're going to be put in once you become a [Marine] Raider. Once I found out that the award went through, it was the biggest dose of humble pie I've ever experienced."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Valentine's Day is that special time of year to remind your loved ones how much you care. But saying "I love you" in creative and romantic ways can get costly.

So this Valentine's Day take advantage of some military discounts to help Cupid cut costs. (And remember not all military discounts are advertised, so make sure you ask wherever you go.)

Flowers

Flowers may be cliche and predictable, but they are still one of the most popular gifts for Valentine's Day. However, sending flowers to your Valentine isn't cheap. Luckily, stores like 1-800-Flowers, FTD and From You Flowers can help you out with military discounts on their beautiful flower arrangements and other gifts.

Jewelry

You can't go wrong with jewelry on Valentine's Day. Helzberg Diamonds offers a 10% military discount off their collection of jewelry, and Blue Nile offers a 15% military discount off regularly priced items.

Have you found that perfect partner and plan to pop the question? Tiffany & Co. offers a 10% military discount on engagement rings and wedding bands. Genesis Diamonds offers a 10% military discount on engagement rings. And Alpine Rings offers a 15% military discount to all active-duty, veterans, retirees and their families.

Homemade Gifts

Are you the crafty type? Want to get the kids involved? Homemade cards and crafts are fun Valentine's gifts that add that extra personal touch. Stock up on craft supplies at Michaels and JOANN with their military discounts.

Massages

Give your Valentine the gift of relaxation with a professional massage. Massage Envy offers a military discount program to active-duty service members. When you call to book an appointment, ask if they offer couples' massages too.

Sweet Treats and Gift Baskets

Chocolate and other sweets are also standard Valentine's Day gifts.

Sending sweets to a service member overseas? Send cookies and other gift baskets filled with treats from Cheryl's Cookies, who offers free shipping on gifts sent to anyone serving on APO/FPO military bases.

Hickory Farms also offers free shipping to APO/FPO addresses. They have all sorts of gift baskets and goodies to choose from.

Date Night

Valentine's Day is the perfect excuse to head out for a date night.

If you're celebrating with dinner and a movie, make sure to ask for military discounts. Some restaurants, like Bonefish and Carrabbas, as well as some movie theaters, like Cinemark and Regal offer discounts for military members.

If you're looking for something a little different than dinner and a movie, get some ideas about local events from your ITT office on base. (Visit our Base Guide to find info about the base near you.)

Celebration at Home

Want to have a mellow family celebration at home? Go to Kirkland's where you'll find fun decor for Valentine's Day, as well as a 10% military discount. Kohl's also offers a 15% military discount on Mondays. Cook or order-in your favorite meal, snuggle up for a movie and enjoy your festive decorations.

Stay Up-to-Date With Military Discounts

Want the scoop on military discounts? From travel to phones and everything in between, troops, military families and veterans can stay on top of military discounts. Become a Military.com subscriber and get full access through our newsletter.
Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country
Min Win Bo of the Local Resource Center (LRC) said: This meeting gave us more than just hope. CSOs are not influenced by issues of religion, nationality or politics. They are independent. So, the Hluttaw representatives and the government have become aware that the CSOs are working for the public. Weve gained more trust from them.

At the meeting, civil society members introduced topics of concern including public safety in the streets and hospital conditions. The Mon State Hluttaw members reportedly discussed issues related to their work and responsibilities.

Dr. Aung Naing Oo, a re-elected State Hluttaw representative said: As I did during my last five-year term [in parliament], I will stand for the public regarding their desire for justice in the [state] administration. I will also work to halt projects in Mon State when requested by the public if the projects cause negative impacts.

The meeting drew about 100 residents and representatives from local businesses, CSOs, and the Wholesale Center. Only three out of 45 new state Hluttaw members attended.

[New] Hluttaw members who joined were U Min Aung Mon of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), Dr. Aung Naing Oo of the All Mon Regions Democracy Party (AMDP), and U Zaw Zaw of the National League for Democracy (NLD).

The meeting was held at the Wholesale Center Hall in Moulmein, the Mon State capital. It was the second gathering of new Hluttaw members and CSOs and followed an earlier meeting at the LRC in Myaintharyar Ward, Moulmein, earlier this month.

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
The co-founder and CTO of Guesty, Koby Soto, tweeted this graph of his heart rate when he broke up with his partner. The data was captured on his fitbit.

A couple of days later, Soto followed up with a tweet to let folks know that all was well.
Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates portraits from DNA samples, usually working from found samples -- chewing gum, cigarette butts -- of people she's never met. But this year, she's done a pair of extraordinary portraits of Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower currently serving a 35-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth for her role in the Wikileaks Cablegate publications.

Dewey-Hagborg's first portrait was a still image, but she followed this up with a full-sized, color 3D model called "Radical Love: Chelsea Manning," that debuted at Davos, as part of the Victoria and Albert exhibition Future Design.

The title of the piece, "Radical Love" comes from Chelsea's resistance to the idea that she or her ideas are radical  a term she sees as polarizing and alienating. Instead, she points to how incredibly common it is to love and to simply want to be oneself. "Radical Love" points to a hope of moving past divisive political boundaries, to build community and new forms of knowledge and policy guided by compassion and empathy. The work is generated using the technique of "forensic DNA phenotyping," to create a 3 dimensional life sized "portrait mask" that is printed in a 3D printer. This "forensic DNA phenotyping process" is a problematic, yet increasingly common police practice of generating a likeness of a suspect from their DNA alone, based on traits it contains, such as eye color and skin color.

I interviewed Ms Manning in Fort Leavenworth through an intermediary, coordinated by her support network.

Tell me your thoughts on the exhibit. Why did you consent to it? What do you think it says about our society? What is the role of DNA in art? If you could undertake your own genetic art, what would it be?

Heather was asked to analyze my DNA for a portrait of me for Paper Magazine last year. I was already somewhat familiar with some of Heather's previous projects involving DNA, so, when I was asked whether or not I wanted to do this project, I immediately said yes!

A sculpture based on a portrait is the natural progression of this project. It projects a presence that I don't think very many three dimensional artworks are able to do. Our society's dependence on imagery says a lot about our values. Unfortunately, prisons try very hard to make us inhuman and unreal by denying our image, and thus our existence, to the rest of the world. Imagery has become a kind of proof of existence. Just consider the online refrain "pics or it didn't happen."

The use of DNA in art provides a cutting edge and a very post-modernalmost "post-post-modern"analysis of thought, identity, and expression. It combines chemistry, biology, information, and our ideas of beauty and identity. I would love to do some DNA art that examines the other people who are cast aside from society's visibilitylike prisoners, or victims of genocide. There are some ethical and moral questions that this might raisebut, I think it would be very important for us to ask these questions.



Chelsea Manning digital rendering from DNA  gender parameter excluded  photo credit Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Where are you at now? What are your prospects as you understand them?

I am still appealing my court martial conviction before the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the first court that hears appeals for military convictions in the U.S. Army. I have hired a stellar appeals team out of Albuquerque, New MexicoNancy Hollander and Vince Ward of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward, P.A. I have also been appointed a military lawyer by the Army. They have gone through thousands of pages of the records in my case in order to map out its most serious flaws.

Due to several complications in this process, we have been delayed in filing our brief before the court. However, it is almost certain that we will be filing before summer of this year.

The U.S. Government has refused to confirm or deny that there is any ongoing investigation in to your matter, but it looks like they spilled some beans to you? Can you explain what happened, and what it means?

Nearly two years ago, I requested a copy of the FBI files related to their role in the investigation of my case. After going through a lengthy FOIA process, I finally filed a lawsuit to compel the FBI and the Department of Justice to turn over these records.

The basis of their denial is that there is still an ongoing investigation into my case. They have admitted as such before the court in a joint filing. This is the reason that they won't turn these records over. However, their response is still vague. The government has not acknowledged who they are investigating, or whyjust that it is directly related to my case and court martial.



Chelsea Manning digital rendering from DNA  gender parameter assigned female  photo credit Heather Dewey-Hagborg

What are your views on big data, data mining, transparency, and fairness? What role do algorithms have to play in society  criminal justice, war fighting, finance, etc.?

The ability to collect and store vast amounts of information is the predictable result of exponential increases in automated data output; the storage capacity of information mediums, such as memory cards and hard drives, the number of connections between connections of computers on networks, and the bandwidth over these networks.

Algorithms are used to try and find connections among the incomprehensible "big data" pools that we now gather regularly. Like a scalpel, they're supposed to slice through the data and surgically extract an answer or a prediction to a very narrow question of our choosingsuch as which neighborhood to put more police resources into, where terrorists are likely to be hiding, or which potential loan recipients are most likely to default. Butand we often forget thisthese algorithms are limited to determining the likelihood or chance based on a correlation, and are not a foregone conclusion. They are also based on the biases created by the algorithm's developer. These biases can be further reinforced by a feedback loop created by the algorithm itselfbecause without a careful meta-analysis, these algorithms can strengthen future results without considering their own impact on the outcome.

We should consider the lesson of the discovery of Google's own "racist algorithm." In this case, people with "racially associated names" in America, would pull up ads related to criminal records, while other names' results lack such ads. This was not a benign discovery. Such subtle biases in results can slowly nudge an advantage or disadvantage of the daily lives of large numbers of people over time.

These algorithms are even more dangerous when they happen to be proprietary "black boxes." This means they cannot be examined by the public. Flaws in algorithms, concerning criminal justice, voting, or military and intelligence, can drastically affect huge populations in our society. Yet, since they are not made open to the public, we often have no idea whether or not they are behaving fairly, and not creating unintended consequenceslet alone deliberate and malicious consequences.

Your own hearings before the disciplinary board were held in secret, without access to counsel. I understand that you have been doing research toward "secret justice." What have you foundis it on the rise? If so, how?

Last year, in the run up to and during my disciplinary hearing over four charges by the prison, I requested that the hearing be made available to the public. Yet, what I encountered was a system that thrives on opacity and secrecy. For many weeks, I did not know what I was being charged with. Later, I was surprised by the prison with charges that I didn't fully understand. I then found out that the prison had recently changed the rules to disallow people access to an attorney to explain the charges, or to prepare a case for the board. Worse still, this is increasingly the case in prisons all across the country.

In the last half century, the entire justice system has been nudged further and further into secrecy. New court rules have been imposed requiring ever-more documents to be sealed. Prisons are more closed to outsiders than ever before. New and draconian communication rules and laws have been passed barring prisonerseven prisoners that haven't been convicted of anythingfrom being able to speak with or write to the outside world.

The rise in secrecy has created a number of legal and political black holes for the public consciousness. Prosecutors, judges, and prisons have been viewed more favorably simply because there are fewer chances for members of the publiclet alone prisonersto examine their decisions. These systemic problems are starting to come into the foreground of the public consciousness only now, following a rise in the understanding of solitary confinement, and the number of police shooting incidents that have been scrutinized and found to be nothing more than high tech executions. But, this is only after the system has become so vast and complicated that it is nearly impossible for the public to comprehend.

This is why we need laws that actually promote openness. We need transparency laws. Such laws would not be the Orwellian, ironically named "Freedom of Information" laws that local, state, and the federal governments regularly use to deny information. Instead, these would be open records laws that would allow the public to quickly and efficiently examine what is going on in their government in their own neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states.

What's your call to arms for people who care about the issues that sent you to jail? What should they be doing? What would you be doing, if you were free?

Read everything. Ask your own questions. Be your own filter. Nobody is going to look at the world around you and tell you what important things are happening that affect you and the ones you love.

They will sell you things. They will ask you to vote for them. They will offer their services to you. They have an ambiguous agenda that doesn't really involve your interests as a citizen. There is a difference between a consumerwho passively receives the information that they are spoon fedand a citizenwho engages with society, asks questions, does research, and works towards making a difference in their neighborhood, city, and country. This is what I try to bewhether I'm in prison or outsideI keep reading and asking questions as a citizen.

What gives you cause for optimism, or at least hope from where you are?

I receive tons of letters and cards and online messages from people all over the world, every single day. I wish I could answer every single one. I want to tell people how much I love and appreciate their well wishes and support. I am endlessly grateful for the fact that, even so long after my trialnearly three years ago nowI still get the same love and support that I had on day one. This gives me more optimism and hope than anything else ever could. I am so thankful.

(Images: Header by Monika Flueckiger; renders Heather Dewey-Hagborg; all others by Thomas Dexter)


Protonmail is a Swiss pro-privacy email provider that offers end-to-end encyption to its customers. When the Swiss government proposed the Nachrichtendienstgesetzt  a bill to create a "mini NSA" with the power to effect warrantless mass surveillance, including hacking residents' computers  the company called on its users and supporters to petition the government for a referendum on the law.

The Swiss Constitution allows the electorate to force a national referendum on proposed legislation by gathering 50,000 signatures. Protonmail worked with CCC Switzerland, Digitale Gesellschaft Switzerland, and the Pirate and Green parties to collect more than 70,000 signatures. The law can't take effect until and unless the government holds and wins a referendum.

It's a major event on the world's political stage. As the UK, US, France and other countries contemplate laws that expand state surveillance and hacking, ban crypto, and reduce accountability, the Swiss people  very private to begin with  are being directly asked for their views on the subject.

The new law is the first of two surveillance laws that have been circulating through the Swiss Parliament. The NDG law was fully passed in September, but can't take full effect until after the referendum vote in June. The NDG would "create a mini NSA in Switzerland," Yen wrote  allowing Swiss intelligence to spy without getting court approval. It would authorize increased use of "Trojans", or remote hacking tactics to investigate suspects' computers, including remotely turning on Webcams and taking photos, as well as hacking abroad to protect Swiss infrastructure. It would legalize ISMI catchers, or Stingrays, which sweep up data about cellphones in the area. The second law, known as the "BUDF", might come up for a vote in the Parliament's spring sessionbut may be revised or delayed. The BUDF would expand the government's ability to retain data for longer, including communications and metadata, as well as deputize private companies to help spy on it users, or face a fine. "What I have heard from insiders is that they will reduce its scope now that they know we have the numbers to also force a vote on that law," Yen wrote in an email to The Intercept.

How a Small Company in Switzerland Is Fighting a Surveillance Law  And Winning [Jenna McLaughlin/The Intercept]
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.
[January 25, 2016] Fitch Affirms Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad at 'BB+'; Outlook Negative

Fitch Ratings has affirmed Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad y Subsidiarias' (Grupo ICE) foreign- and local-currency Issuer Default Ratings (FC/LC IDRs) at 'BB+' and its National Scale ratings at 'AAA(cri)'. The Rating Outlook remains Negative. A complete list of rating actions follows at the end of this release. Grupo ICE's ratings are supported by its linkage to the Sovereign rating of Costa Rica (FC and LC IDRs rated 'BB+'/Negative Outlook) which stems from the government ownership and government's implicit and explicit support. ICE's Negative Outlook reflects the Negative Rating Outlook on Costa Rica's Sovereign rating. The company has strategic importance for the government given the growing demand for electricity in the country and the government's plans to increase renewable generation and reduce exposure to fluctuations in fossil fuel prices. The ratings also reflect the company's diversified portfolio of assets, adequate financial profile, aggressive capital expenditure program oriented toward increasing renewable generation capacity and maintaining a strong market share position in the telecommunications business. KEY RATING DRIVERS DIVERSIFIED ASSET PORTFOLIO Grupo ICE is a vertically integrated monopoly in the electricity industry and the incumbent player in the telecommunications industry in Costa Rica. ICE's mobile market share in terms of subscribers was approximately 60% at the end of 2014. The ratings reflect the company's low business risk resulting from its business diversification and positive characteristics as a utility service provider. The company recorded an installed capacity of 2,338 megawatts (MW) as of August 2015, including plants of its subsidiary, Compania Nacional de Fuerza y Luz (CNFL). ICE is the exclusive owner of the national transmission grid. The National Electric System (SEN) is composed of Grupo ICE, CNFL, two municipal companies, and four rural electrification cooperatives. There are also private generators that sell energy to Grupo ICE. The SEN installed capacity is 3,013MW as of August 2015. For the LTM ended September 2015 the company generated CRC397,458 million in EBITDA (2014 EBITDA: CRC419.282 million). The company's electricity segment represented approximately 56.7% of total revenues as of September 2015 (2014: 57.7%) and the telecommunications division contributed with 43.1% (2014: 42.1%), supplemental services represented 0.2% (2014: 0.2%). Fitch expects ICE's electricity business to increase its contribution given the current and future expansion projects, as well as relatively stable results in the telecommunications segment. LEVERAGE DRIVEN BY CAPEX Grupo ICE's ratings reflect the company's leverage, adequate interest coverage and exposure to foreign exchange risk. In the last few years, the company's leverage has weakened as result of the ongoing large capital expenditure program, which has been financed mainly with debt. Debt related to electricity projects represents approximately 90% of the total debt and the remaining funds are allocated to projects in the telecommunications sector. The 305MW Reventazon project (currently financed through Reventazon Finance Trust) is expected to begin operations in 2016. Reventazon project will represent close to 10% of Costa Rica's electricity installed capacity matrix. The Reventazon asset and the associated debt will be incorporated in ICE's financial statements when operation begins. Fitch forecasts a peak leverage calculated as adjusted debt / EBITDAR of 5.9x during 2016 due to Reventazon's incorporation to ICE's balance sheet. Fitch expects the company will be able to reduce leverage in 2017 to 5.4x absent of new large generation projects, and tariff recognition of the debt service of the generation plants that will start operations. Grupo ICE's consolidated debt as of September 2015 was CRC1,947,006 million. The debt adjusted for operating leases was CRC2,515,566 million for the same period. The leverage ratio for the last 12 months, as of September 2015 was 5.4x (2014: 5.2x, 2013: 5.8x). Approximately 85% of total financial debt is denominated in US dollars, which exposes the company to fluctuations in the exchange rate. The company benefits from a very favourable debt schedule, as approximately 48.6% of its balance debt as of September 2015 matures after five years, 40.2% between two and five years, and 11.2% in less than two years. The Costa Rican government guarantees some loans from international development banks, which represent approximately 12% of total indebtedness. The figures consider consolidated debt with the group's subsidiaries. Grupo ICE recorded charges for currency exchange losses of CRC3,411 million during the nine months period as of 2015, hich is well below the annual figure of CRC151,577 million during fiscal year 2014. A devaluation of the local currency would generate an increase in debt service payments and the debt service coverage ratios could deteriorate. The debt service coverage ratio measured as EBITDA/debt service was 1.6x for the LTM ended as of September 2015 (2014: 1.8x).



AGGRESSIVE CAPITAL EXPENDITURE PLAN Grupo ICE's capex investment plan is considered aggressive and could weaken the company's financial profile, absent increased cash flow generation and adequate tariff adjustments. The company's capex plan considers investments by approximately USD3.2 billion during 2016-2020 in order to increase renewable generation capacity and maintain its leadership position in telecommunications in Costa Rica, if all the planned projects are executed. Grupo ICE expects to finance its investments with a combination of internal cash flow, debt, Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) transactions, and special purpose vehicles.

Fitch expects the company will be able to reduce leverage as capex requirements decrease in the medium term (2016-2018), absent large new generation projects, and tariff recognition of the debt service of the generation plants that will start operations in the next few years. During the nine months period as of September 2015, capital expenditures of CRC208.930 million represented 21% of revenues. During the years 2010 through 2013, this ratio was 44.2% per year on average, which indicates that the largest investment phase of the projects has been completed. Fitch forecasts that capex investment for the years 2016 - 2018 could average 21% of total revenues. Going forward, leverage could increase consistently to over 6x if the company finances its capex investment plan heavily with debt and the revenues associated with these investments are delayed beyond the expected ramp-up timeframe or do not received the tariff adjustments opportunely. HIGH EXPOSURE TO REGULATORY AND POLITICAL INTERFERENCE Grupo ICE is exposed to regulatory interference risk given the lack of clear and transparent electricity tariff schedules. The company annually proposes to the regulator electricity tariffs for end-users; in previous years, the regulatory and political interference affected the tariff adjustment process. Electricity tariffs are set using two mechanisms: through the quarterly adjustment of variable costs of fuel (CVC) in place since 2013, and the ordinary tariff review that considers the operating costs. ICE cash flow benefits from the tariffs adjustments to recognized expenses from previous years related to fuel expenses, exchange rate difference for fuel oil purchases, and energy import expenses, through deferred quarterly adjustments. The funding requirement of working capital by ICE Group depends on the lag in cost recognition that may arise in both tariff reviews. The telecom regulatory framework considers the price ceiling methodology in tariffs, and grants operators authority to review and adjust rates for some services in order to promote competition. Despite the regulatory risk, Grupo ICE has managed to maintain a relative stable cash flow generation. Also, the company is exposed to political interference given that the government appoints and removes ICE's directors and executives, sets and approves the company's tariffs, and regulates its budget. KEY ASSUMPTIONS --The strong linkage between the Sovereign of Costa Rica and ICE continues; --Grupo ICE remains important to the government as a strategic asset for the country; --Fuel variable-cost tariff revision and ordinary tariff adjustments are in place; --The Reventazon project begins operations by the end of 2016. --The 2016 tariff review considers the debt service and revenue from Reventazon hydroelectric project; --Grupo ICE will continue to support its subsidiaries in terms of its financial obligations, and as advisor on operational or technical issues, when is needed or required. RATING SENSITIVITIES --Grupo ICE's ratings could be negatively affected by any combination of the following: sovereign downgrades; weakening of legal, operational and/or strategic ties with the government; or regulatory intervention that negatively affects the company's financial performance; --Grupo ICE's ratings could be positively affected by an upgrade of Costa Rica's sovereign rating. Fitch has affirmed the following ratings: Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad y Subsidiarias' (Grupo ICE) --Long-term FC IDR at 'BB+'; Negative Outlook; --Long-term LC IDR at 'BB+'; Negative Outlook; --Senior unsecured debt at 'BB+'; --Long-term national scale (Costa Rica) at 'AAA(cri)'; Stable Outlook; --Short-term debt at 'F1+(cri)'; --Senior unsecured domestic long-term debt (Costa Rica) at 'AAA(cri)'. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com Applicable Criteria Corporate Rating Methodology - Including Short-Term Ratings and Parent and Subsidiary Linkage (pub. 17 Aug 2015) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=869362 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=998342 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=998342 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 (News - Alert) 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/20160125006188/en/

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Akwaaba! Or welcome to my gorgeous readers! I promised I would do a continuation of the first Ntoma article I wrote a while ago so here is me actually sticking to that promise. In case you missed the first article on the Ntoma Patterns and their Symbolism, just click "here". Anyways...this time around, your girl here decided to go a bit in-depth on the Kente fabrics. As a fashion aware individual that I am, I absolutely adore Kente fabrics. The material is of exquisite quality (feels heavy) and the colors are so insanely bright and popping! Kente fabrics also play a huge part in the core characteristics of the beautiful Ghanaian culture so here we go! (Photo below credits: Nyani Quarmyne "source").

So this is how the legend goes...Kente, also known as Nwentoma, actually originated in a village called Bonwire in Ghana approximately 375 to 400 years ago (17th century = 1600's upwards). According to literature, 2 brothers called Ameyaw and Kurugu went to hunt and they came across a spider weaving its web. Completely in awe, they decided to try to replicate this pattern and so they made the first cloth consisting of white and black fibers coming from a raffia tree. Up till today, the village Bonwire is still the center of Kente production. Now this cloth was presented to the Ashanti king, Nana Osei Tutu (reigned in early 1700's) at the time and he fell completely in love with the cloth. However, he believed that it would even be more breathtaking if there were actually colors in the cloth (in addition to the black and white). So, because there was no dye back then, Akwasi Opoku Agyeman (an outstanding popular weaver at the time), came up with the idea to use bark and seeds from local trees to create dyes. And this is how the key Kente colors came to life : black, green, red and yellow.

Yellow stands for gold, black stands for Africa, green stands for nature (forest) and red stands for the blood of our ancestors (forefathers). The first colorful Kente that was produced was called "Oyokoman" cloth and this was worn by Otumfuo Nana Prempeh I, an Ashanti King. Oyokoman was the name of the clan the former king belonged to. Kente was initially produced to be worn by the royals and the elite, simply because its manufacture was time consuming, tedious, and quality thread that was used to make this cloth is simply expensive (silk and cotton). However over the years, Kente has been made accessible to everybody (Photo below credits : Nyani Quarmyne "source").

MPUANKRON / COUNCIL OF ELDERS / 9 HEADS ARE BETTER THAN 1

Now this pattern you see down in the picture below, is a typical pattern that you'd find in a whole lot of "Fatia Fata Nkrumah" designs of Kente. Fatia was the wedded wife of the 1ste president of Ghana, Dr.Nkrumah. The Kente fabrics that were designed and produced in her honor, had democratic patterns to it. Council of elders also stands for 9 heads are better than 1, or 1 person cannot rule a land alone etc... Beautiful political tint. The color pink and violet stands for feminine characteristics such as calmness, tenderness, peace, humility, wisdom and patience. If you look at the inner square of the cloth, you'll notice it contains 5 mini yellow squares and 4 mini pink / violet squares, summing up to 9 squares in total (source image "here").

ATWEDE3 / LADDER

The design of this cloth is called "Edwene Si Edwene So", which means double wisdom. As you'll notice in this cloth, you'll see a pattern, the atwede3 that is woven here, looks more like a staircase than a ladder, and each pattern box contains 4 atwede3 symbols, they can be presented in 2 different colors at a time per pattern box. So atwede3 placed diagonal from each other are in the same color. Atwede3 should also not be confused with the Adinkra symbol Owuo Atwede3 which comes from the proverb "Owu Atwede3 Obako Mfro" which basically reflects on the mortal nature of human beings, at a certain point in time, everybody will climb the ladder of death (article on Adinkra symbols will come soon). This particular Adinkra symbol literally looks like a ladder, so that is not the symbol woven here in this Kente cloth. What you see here is more of a staircase looking atwede3.

NIATA / TWO EDGED SWORD

A two edged sword symbolizes the presence of both sides of a thing or a situation. Everything in life has its up but also its down sides, its favorable but also its unfavorable side. There's no such thing as "one side", both sides need to be present to come to one truth (the good and the bad). When you look at the pattern carefully, you'll see swords sliced in half and then placed opposite each other. This design strongly resembles the "Kyemfere" design, which comes from the proverb "Kyemfere Se Odaa Ho Akye, Na Onipa A Onwene No Nso Nye Den?" Translated this means: The Potsherd claims it has been here since forever, but what does the molder have to say then, the one that actually created the potsherd to begin with. That design symbolizes wisdom, patience, heirloom, knowledge and experience. The biggest difference in the designs is that with "Kyemfere", the parallelogram that connects the 2 sliced "swords" is not in the same color as the sliced swords. And in the "Niata" design, the half swords and the parallelogram connecting it are all in the same color. In this picture, you see the "Niata" pattern.

NKYIMKYIM / ZIG ZAG

This pattern symbolizes the dynamic characteristics of life. Nothing in life is static, everything and everybody is subjected to change. And change is not necessarily a bad thing. That goes without saying that there will most likely be storms along the way of this change, but it's supposed to be worth it at the end of it all. Change is good for growth. Truly love this symbolism, made an oversized bow from this cloth and just so I can pin it to any overall white or black dress for the perfect color block effect (as in top picture).

NTABON / OARS

This pattern was designed to express the following wise statement: a boat cannot move without united action of oarsmen. So it means that people need to work together to achieve progress, perseverance and unity.

FATIA FATA NKRUMAH

"Fatia Fata Nkrumah" literally means Fatia is a befitted wife for Nkrumah. This design was actually created in honor of the very First Lady of Ghana, wedded wife of president Dr.Nkrumah. This design was made very colorful and bright and is nowadays used for wedding ceremonies. Simply because it symbolizes good wife, unity, good marriage...etc. All in all, perfect for weddings.

ADWINASA

Adwinasa in this context means that all the motifs are messed up. The way this design came to life is quite an interesting story. The designer of this cloth back then wanted to create an unique motif that was not yet know to weavers at the time for the Asantehene... and so in his attempt to do so, he ended up using all motifs known to weavers and made a remark to the king that all the motifs known are exhausted. Therefor this design was held in quite a high esteem by the royals and elite. This design stands for royalty, excellence, creativity, wealth and elegance.

EMAA DA

"Emaa Da" means "It has never happened before". According to sources, when this design was created for an Asante king, he was in such awe that he literally named it just that. A design so beautiful that has never been created before.

SIKA FR3 MOGYA

"Sika Fr3 Mogya" means that money attracts blood, or could also be interpreted as money strengthens family bonds. When a member in a family becomes prosperous, it automatically becomes a responsibility of theirs to help the core and extended family.

ABUSUA Y3 ADOM

"Abusua Y3 Adom" means family is like a force. This design was created to celebrate the positive characteristics of a family union. Every member of a family is responsible for the physical protection, material & spiritual well-being and social security of the rest of the family members.

Well my dear readers, we have come to the end of this article. I realized when researching about the Kente fabrics, it was quite hard to find useful sources or even stores that could help me out. However if you are located in The Netherlands, there is a cozy little store in The Hague called Africa Sky where you can find a lot Nwentoma/ Kente and regular Ntoma, just click "here" to go to their website with contact details. And many thanks to Mr Charlie for the time and information offered. I and all my readers appreciate it! Do let me know which ones you like best xoxo.

Originating at www.eclectickyeiessa.com
King Lagazee, host of Lagazee Soundz Show on Hitz FM has hit back at international reggae musician Luciano over his comments that Ghanaian reggae and dancehall artistes are copy-cats.

The radio show host said Lucianos claims are unfounded because, in his view, Ghanaian reggae and dancehall artistes do authentic and original music.

Luciano in an interview with Winford William on the OnStage show in Jamaica claimed that most Ghanaian dancehall artistes go on the internet and try to copy what the Jamaican artistes do instead of being original.

These young artistes now are emulating what is going on in Jamaica, instead of making the Jamaicans popular in Ghana they are making their own popularity, they look on the internet and steal every move going on in Jamaica, he said

King Lagazee, in a debate with dancehall radio presenter, Mr. Logic on the issue on Hitz @ 1 on Hitz FM, said the Ghanaian reggae/dancehall songs are unique because they are fused with local dialects.

What we are doing in Ghana is original. Artistes like Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale, if you listen to their music, they are fused with Ewe and Ga so I dont think what Luciano is saying is right.

We are even promoting the genre here more than the Jamaicans, look at Ghanaian celebrated dancehall artiste winning BET and winning the Ironman over Alkaline from Jamaica, it tells you that what we are doing over here is the real thing, he said passionately.

Mr. Logic on the other hand shared the same view with Luciano saying that the Jamaican artistes words have been misinterpreted.

Logic said, If a man like Luciano who is a top reggae star from Jamaica comes to Ghana and hears a Jamaican terminology that belongs to a certain brand, he will definitely speak like that.

He further indicated that, Ghanaian reggae/dancehall artistes are glorifying most of the Jamaican content without acknowledging Jamaicans.

Dancehall artiste, Shatta Wale also reacting to Lucianos comments in an interview on Personality Profile on Joy FM, said, even though Ghanaian dancehall artistes share the same vibes as Jamaican artistes, he believes Ghanaians are rather promoting the music genre more than the Jamaicans do.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Whilst the former PRO of Ghana Film Producers Association of Ghana FIPAG, Socrates Sarfo, is moving from one radio station to the other campaigning for the opposition NPPs 2016 Presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, the current PRO of FIPAG in the person of Mr. Ola Michael, has come public, calling on players in the creative art sector to support and campaign for the NDCs 2016 Presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama.

Speaking to GhanaPoliticsOnline.Com on his intention to fully and actively campaign for John Dramani Mahama, he stated that though hes a Kumasi based film producer and the NDC government is on records, has low votes from Kumasi, he has come to realize that the NDC government has done a lot for Kumasi compared to NPP.

With NPP because they know Kumasi people will always vote for them they do little for the region and you can go into history of development in Kumasi  you will realize that major projects were done by NDC he claimed.

According to him, JDM by far is one president who has done great works for the region and has the right to be supported for a second term in office to finish what he has begun.

He disclosed that a group called Ashanti Faithfuls For Mahama has been formed by some movie makers and stars in kumasi and very soon, a press conference would be held ahead of the Nov 7 national polls where all the projects and full reasons why every Ghanaian and every Ashanti needs to vote for John Dramani Mahama shall be made known.

Speaking about the creative arts where he belongs, he said when John Mahama was the Deputy Minister for Information during the NDC regime under Ex-president Rawlings, JDM as he has come to be called, single handedly saw to the drafting of the Film Bill.

As Vice President he saw to a budget allocation of 2million to the creative arts industries which wrongly got into the hands of Musiga because of their pro-activeness. As a president, he has given his presidential accentuation to the Film Bill to be sent to parliament for passage in spite of all the commotions Ola stated.

He continued, Hes seeing to the building of a theatre in Ashanti region and soon will establish a film village in Ashanti region to make it home of the Ghana film industry. He created a ministry for the creative industry; at least for the first time in our lives we have a ministry.

He also gave 1million Ghana cedis to the creative industry this year. Which president apart from Nkrumah has ever had the film industry at heart than president Mahama? The only time president Kufour remembered us was when he was sharing gold chains from 50cent (giggled)

Political animal as Ola is, he used the opportunity to clamor for votes for candidate Mahama, stating, If you are a film person and wants to see the industry built properly, you cant deprive JDM your vote. You now know I am interested in the growth of the film industry?

Clarifying why he participated in the eve-famous #Dumsor Vigil last year against the NDC government and now turning around to endorse John Mahama, he told GhanaPoliticsonline.Com that the #Dumsor Vigil was just a condition they were going through and as a good citizen, he decided to join but that doesnt take the fact that the president deservers another chance.

For so many years we have gotten a president who have said that he will solve and fix the dumsor and not manage it, and considering the conditions its clear that hes solving it  he ended proudly.
An Accra Circuit Court has given state prosecutors February 5 to provide evidence that hiplife musician Wisa exposed his manhood during a performance on stage.

The court gave the order after Detective Edward Agyei Odame of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) failed to present any evidence in court Monday when the case was called.

Detective Odame told the court that he failed to present the evidence, which was a video of the incident, because the lady in charge of the evidence room where they keep the exhibits was unavailable.

The rapper, born Eugene Ashie, allegedly showed his manhood whilst performing at this years Decemba 2 Rememba concert organised by Accra-based Citi FM on December 24, 2015.

Midway through his performance on stage, the musician while wiggling his waist behind a voluptuous lady drew down his white boxer shorts which was already showing in his saggy jeans and pulled out his manhood, rubbing it behind the lady.

Wisa had personally, as well as his management in a statement, apologised to Ghanaians for his behaviour.

Detective Odame told the court that the CID saw a video of the incident on December 25, 2015 and consulted the artistes manager. Wisa was subsequently invited.

Wisa, after meeting the police, was given a caution statement and was arraigned before court after investigations into the incident.

Wisa was in court Monday without his counsel.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Ernest Dela Aglanu (Twitter: @delaXdela / Instagram: citizendela)
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Algiers (AFP) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika returned home Tuesday from a trip to France where he underwent medical checks, his office said.

Bouteflika suffered a stroke in 2013, weakening his mobility and forcing him to work from his residence in Zeralda, west of Algiers.

The 79-year-old flew to the southeastern French city of Grenoble on November 7 and returned to Algiers on Tuesday "at the end of a private visit during which he undertook periodic medical checks," the presidency said.

The statement, carried by the APS news agency, gave no further details about the results of the medical examinations.

In April this year, Bouteflika also underwent "routine medical checks" in Switzerland, the APS news agency reported at the time, again citing a presidency statement.

There are regular rumours in Algeria about the state of the president's health, with opposition leaders quick to evoke the idea of a "power vacuum".

Bouteflika has led Algeria for the past 17 years.

In 2014, his decision to seek a fourth mandate sparked criticism from those who questioned his ability to rule.
24.01.2016 LISTEN

Jordanian border guards have shot dead 12 people who tried to cross into the country from Syria, the military says.

It says some of the infiltrators were armed and several of them managed to return to Syria.

About two million drug capsules were seized by the border guards.

The military says it often stops people trying to cross the Jordan-Syria border which runs through remote desert. But it described this as the worst incident in recent months.

It did not say where Saturdays exchange of fire took place.

The kingdom has tightened controls on its border with Syria, which has been ravaged by a bloody civil war and a jihadist insurgency led by the so-called Islamic State.

Jordan is hosting 633,000 of the 4.39 million Syrians registered as refugees with the UN.

The number of Syrians stranded on the Jordanian border has recently risen sharply to about 17,000 people, according to the UN.

-bbc
Former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, says a suit challenging the Supreme Courts ruling that ordered Alfred Woyome to return 51.2 million cedis to the state has no legal standing.

Mr Amidu, believes commonsense should have warned the Plaintiff that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to set aside the earlier ruling or review same.

The former Attorney General is the 3rd Defendant in the suit that also involves the current Attorney General, Marietta Brew-Oppong (1st Defendant), and Alfred Woyome (2nd Defendant).

Abdulai Yusif Fanash Muhammed, a resident of Hohoe Zongo in the Volta Region wants the Supreme Courts decision asking Mr Woyome, a businessman, to return 51.2 million cedis to the state declared null and void .

The Hohoe Zongo resident filed a writ two weeks ago in which he argues the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case involving Mr. Woyome and to make the orders it made.

Mr Muhammed wants a "Declaration that the financial engineering claims by Alfred Agbesi Woyome arising out of the tender bid by Vamed Engineering GmbH/Waterville Holdings during the procurement process from June 2005 until its wrongful abrogation in August 2005 is not an international business transaction within the meaning of Article 181 of the Constitution, 1992."

After the Supreme Court ruling, Mr Woyome promised to pay back to the state the 51.2 million cedis. The Court ruled the money was obtained fraudulently through a judgment debt.

Alfred Woyome

However, a week to the self-imposed deadline for payment of the money, Abdulai Yusif Fanash Muhammed, went to the Supreme Court arguing the court was wrong, scuttling a process to commence retrieval of the money.

Mr Muhammed is believed to be doing the bidding of the embattled businessman, Mr Woyome.

According to Mr Amidu, the timing of the suit, the lax attitude of the Attorney General and Mr Woyome  with regards to their delayed response the court action  is nothing but a smokescreen aimed at impeding the retrieval of the fraudulently obtained money.

His responses to the Abdulai Yusif Fanash Muhammeds suit (published in full below) states in part that:

the commencement of this incompetent action by the Plaintiff on 22 December 2015 provided the 1st Defendant through His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama the shameless cover behind which to tell the public (for whose benefit the judgment debt in Amidu (No 3) (supra) was given and ordered on 29 July 2014 inures) on 12 January 2016 at a media encounter broadcast to the whole world that the 1st Defendant was unable to execute the ruling and orders in the said Amidu (No 3) because of this pending action: the 2nd Defendant on his part used it as a cover to purport to apply to this Court for a suspension of the ruling and orders in Amidu (No 3) (supra) pending the hearing and disposal of this incompetent action as a means of buying time to prevent the 3rd Defendant from bringing any action against him for disobedience to the orders of this Court under Article 2 of the 1992 Constitution.

Click to read Mr Amidu's full statement against the suit by Mr Muhammed.

Mr Amidu commenced the process that got the Supreme Court to declare that Mr Woyome obtained the 51.2 million cedis fraudulently.

The Citizen Vigilante, as he has come be known, argued that the contracts on the basis of which Woyome made the claims against the state were international business transactions that were not laid before Parliament for approval as required by Article 181 of the Constitution.

He said to that extent, the contracts contravened the constitution an therefore, "null, void, and without operative effect."

The Supreme Court in a June 14, 2013 ruling, agreed with Mr Amidu that the cotracts with Waterville Holdings were international business transactions that ought to have been laid before parliament for approval.

To the extent that this was not done, the Court held, the contracts were null and void and of no effect.

After a persistent battle in court, he obtained a favourable judgment on July 29, 2014, which asked Woyome to return the money to the state.

Click to read Mr Amidu's full statement against the suit by Mr Muhammed.

The Supreme Court has set February 2, 2016 for preliminary objections against the matter.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
25.01.2016 LISTEN

If it is true that Cousin Samuel Atta-Akyea said that the location of the proposed public University of the Environment, or whatever it is called, at Somanya, in the cultural heartland of the Krobo sub-region, was wrongheaded and that it ought to have been earmarked for Akyem-Abuakwa, then, indeed, the New Patriotic Partys Member of Parliament for Akyem-Abuakwa South, must have overreached himself.

On the other hand, the members of the group calling itself Krobo Youth who signed the press release calling on Lawyer Atta-Akyea to offer an unqualified apology to the man whose leadership of the country has only brought untold hardship and deliberate and systematic material deprivation to the people of Akyem-Abuakwa and, indeed, Akyem-Mansa, in general, inexcusably insults the intelligence of not only the man accused of making an ethnically denigrating statement or remarks against the Krobo people, it actually sets the Krobo people on a collision course with Okyeman, an event the blame for whose likely devastating consequences must be squarely put on the doorstep of President John Dramani Mahama.

The Krobo Youth, or Organized Youth of Krobo, as they call themselves, would be making an unforgivable and irreparable mistake if they think, as clearly indicated in their press release, that they have an inviolable and an inalienable right to securing a fair share of their so-called National Cake but implicitly, somehow, the people of Okyeman have absolutely no right to their commensurately fair share of the same (See Krobo Youth: Akyeas University Comments Divisive Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/23/16).

Indeed, the revoltingly provocative statement published by the Krobo Youth, or at least the signatories of the same, makes these youths rather appear like the ethnic supremacists and/or chauvinists of which epithet they virulently accuse Mr. Atta-Akyea. Needless to say, whatever material achievements these Krobo Youths believe Okyeman to possess which they had hitherto lacked, were not gained or achieved at the expense of the Krobo people or other longtime residents of the Eastern Region. And the establishment of the so-called University of the Environment in Somanya is among the least of the collective worries of the Akyem people.

The Krobo Youth may not know this, but it was Dr. J. B. Danquah, a bona fide scion of Okyeman, who almost singularly championed the cause for the establishment of the University of Ghana, Legon. A generation earlier, Danquahs elder brother, Sir Osagyefo Nana Ofori-Atta, I, had equally almost singularly championed the development causes that culminated in the respective establishment of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and Achimota School. Needless to say, Danquah and his associates, both of Akan descent and non-Akan-descended alike, could have agitated for the establishment of Legon on Okyeman land, which historically constitutes more than half of all the lands in the present-day Eastern Region. We could also talk about Akyem suzerainty over certain parts of the present-day Greater-Accra Region, if the Krobo Youth wanted to.

I must also promptly note that I am perfectly comfortable with the present location of the capital of the Eastern Region, formerly Accra, by the way, at New Juaben. But here, too, if the Krobo Youth want to get into the history of how New Juaben came to be located where it is presently, we could get comfortably into that too, although that would be tantamount to unnecessarily deviating from the issue and subject at hand. If the Krobo Youth want the rest of the nation and the global community to know how indescribably grateful they are to President Mahama for bringing them some well-needed development projects, what makes these same Krobo Youth believe themselves to reserve the right to impugn the equally inalienable and inviolable right of the Akyemfo to demand the same?

I personally disagree with Mr. Atta-Akyea that the proposed University of the Environment ought to have been earmarked for Akyem-Abuakwa and not Somanya or Kroboland. I personally have a couple of maternal aunts and several relatives who attended Krobo Girls School in Odumase and speak/spoke fluent Krobo. I also have one or two uncles who attended PRESEC when it was located at Krobo-Odumase. To be certain, the latter name is of Akan provenance, perhaps originally settled by the Akwamu people. And so historically speaking, there are not many fundamental cultural differences between Akyems and Krobos.

But, of course, if President Mahama thinks that he can cavalierly insult the intelligence of the Okyenhene and Okyeman by dubbing Kyebi-Ahenkro as the The Galamsey Capital of Ghana, then it goes without saying that responsible leadership demands that he help to clean up the mess that successive National Democratic Congress governments, beginning with Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, have created in Okyeman.

If, indeed, as the Krobo Youth claimed in their press release, the Krobo people and their Akyem neighbors and relatives have forged an intimate bond going back to time immemorial, then they may do well to also critically review their collective ideological suasion and voting patterns. Needless to say, there are far more Krobos who have chosen to make their homes among the Akyem people than vice-versa. And so if they are truly invested in peaceably coexisting with the Akyem people, or Okyemfuo, the Leopards, then the Krobo Youth had better behave like the relatives and in-laws they claim to be with the Akyem people.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
25.01.2016 LISTEN

The length of the period during which postcolonial Ghanas first leader ruled the country continues to be hotly debated. Those who date his leadership from 1951, when he first won the election that saw him being released from prison and crowned Leader of Government Business by the British colonial Governor (LGB), claim that Mr. Kwame Nkrumah ruled the country for some 15 years. He would shortly petition the colonial authorities to have his position and title re-designated as Prime Minister.

It is debatable because during this transitional period, which did not actually end until 1961, when the Governor-General departed the shores of Ghana as Her Majestys local imperial representative, Prime Minister Nkrumah had absolutely no control over the countrys foreign policy and defense; and I strongly suspect the British colonial administrators also wielded a lot of power and influence over the financial affairs of the country.

It is rather paradoxical, to speak much less about the inescapably ironic, but it was during this period that the countrys full-suit of seminal development projects was laid. This was also quite a turbulent period in the political culture of the country, with the polar centers divided between those who believed in Soviet and Chinese styles of socialism and communism, respectively, and those who staunchly believed that the healthiest path to the countrys socioeconomic development lay in the dogged pursuit of a free-market economy.

The latter group was spearheaded by Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, who believed in the indigenous adaptation of capitalist economic policies and an equally dogged pursuit of democratic accountability and what he termed as the Liberty of the Individual or Individual Liberty. On the other hand, Kwame Nkrumah championed the pro-China and pro-Soviet brand of State Capitalism, erroneously called Socialism, in which an elite class of bureaucrats and political party machine operatives presumed to be best positioned to look towards and after the interests of the collective membership of the polity.

Well, global economic events during the last 30 years have vindicated the group fiercely championed by the University of London-trained Dr. Danquah. Which may clearly explain why Prof. Stephen Adei, the retired Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), strongly believes that one great drawback to Nkrumahs otherwise progressive agenda for the development of the country inhered in the fact of Nkrumahs having unwisely allowed himself to be sidetracked by socialist philosophies (See Nkrumah was one of Ghanas Worst Leaders, Prof. Adei Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/9/15).

The fact of the matter is that it was not essentially his inordinate penchant for socialist ideology that hobbled or militated against the agenda of the Ghanaian leaders development agenda; for even Ghanas imperialist overlord, Britain, had a socialist-oriented government, represented by the Labor Party, at the helm of its affairs. Rather, it was Nkrumahs oversized ego that motivated him to want to immediately cannibalize and politically dominate the leadership of the rest of the African continent that ensured that Ghana would not realize its fullest potential, in terms of a well-focused development agenda.

In other words, Nkrumah had put too much chunk of political meat on his plate than he was capable of chewing. And with the latter tack towards his leadership orientation went quite a remarkable percentage of the countrys economic resources. The dictatorial culture of silence created and harshly fostered by the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) leadership, also meant that the creative talents and the entrepreneurial acumen of the Ghanaian citizenry would be myopically stifled.

This approach to leadership would be pursued by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings for most of the two decades that he literally ruled the roost. This, in essence, is the narrative of the epic chain of disappointments that has characterized the greater bulk of postcolonial Ghanaian political history.

Regarding the decidedly scandalous nature and temperament of African leaders, this is what Prof. Adei, among a host of other equally damning things, has to say: They are worse than iron fists. They may not be harsh and brutal in their killing of people, but they are stealing money and doing everything else. In fact, our people [i.e. leaders] are [often too] strong in the wrong direction.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
25.01.2016 LISTEN

The Ghana Maritime Authority [GMA] has hinted that over 1million job opportunities are going to be made available to our 4000 Ghanaian seafarers who are currently not employed.

Rev. Dr. Peter Issaka Azuma, Director General, Ghana Maritime Authority [GMA] said the Ghana Maritime Authority together with the sector Minister and the technical staff has signed a Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] with the Danish Maritime Authority at the International Maritime Organization to employ Ghanaian Seafarers.

He indicated that mostly, the challenge of the numerous Ghanaian seafarers who have been trained at the Regional Maritime University are unemployed simply because we do not have deep sea ships in the country.

He noted that this came after they travelled to Denmark to discuss bilateral issues on how to promote development and establish a mutual relationship with both countries in order to assist each other particularly, to have the benefit of some assistance from Denmark to develop the Ghana Maritime industry.

Late Last year, I went with the deputy minister of transport and my technical staff to Denmark after the Danish government had send to us a draft memorandum for us to sign so that at the end of the day we will be able to promote the engagement of Ghanaian seafarers onboard Danish vessels, he stated.

According to him, incidentally, not knowing Denmark was employing not less than 1.5million seafarers a year from Nigeria whose certificates where bearing his personally signature acquired from the Maritime University.

If they acquired the skills and competences from the Maritime University and from our professional examinations and were able to demonstrate their competencies and skills out there, that goes without saying that Ghanaians can perform even much better, he stated.

Dr. Azuma said, in terms of conduct and behaviour, Ghanaians have always comported themselves unlike the sister country.

According to him, he made a strong argument which later brought the matter to bear giving him the opportunity to make reference to the Parliamentary document of European Union.

r. Azuma added that this alluded to the fact that Ghana is one of the first countries to have met the International Standards of Training and Certification of watch-keeping of seafarers which was widely circulated to 177 countries and all European Countries.

He added that apart from the European counties, they had earlier on signed an MoU with several other counties including open registry of countries which have relatively larger vessels.

According to him, Denmark is one such that it has 2000 large deep-sea going with tankers and ships, and over 3000 fishing vessels making Denmark a major shipping nation that can actually employ a lot of our Ghanaian personnel.

I insisted on that and at the end of discussions we agreed for the MoU to be prepared which a copy was sent to us for final comments and then we forwarded it back them, and finally it was accepted, he intimated.

According to him, a team of Danish is in the country to meet the technical staff of the Ghana Maritime Authority and other institutions and organisations to discuss specifics issues on Ghana 's maritime sector.

He noted that a committee has been set up to come out with a working programme and timelines to achieve this as quickly as possible.

According to Dr. Azuma, matters relating to piracy and armed robbery incidences in the Maritime sector have been dealt with.

He added with the support of the National Security, Navy and proper surveillance, incidence of armed robbery and piracy has been reduced in the sub-region from 74 to 42 and then to 31 annually.

This was made possible because those vessels who easily pass through other countries and could not be detected however, were all detected in the Ghanaian barrier.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Ghana, my beloved country, is in a state of major trauma. For the past few years, Ghana has suffered intentional socio-economic violent attacks masterminded and spearheaded by her political leaders.

To bring the country back to her normal self, she will need specialized persons who have the expertise to rid her of the problems that have catapulted her into her current traumatic comatose.

What is trauma? Trauma as used in this publication is (a) severe injury, usually caused by a violent attack or an accident.

Before proceeding further with what I have to share with fellow Ghanaians today, I shall plead with the reading public to be very objective, disabusing their minds of obvious partisanships and biases which to some, may look innocuous but are in fact poisonous for the collective well-being of Ghanaians.

Let us first familiarise ourselves with the following analogy that may throw light onto the message I have for you as a discerning and a responsible Ghanaian today. A woman left her daughter in the care of her friend that she trusted most. She decided to spend a week away with her work colleagues abroad. Knowing her friend very well, she had no second thoughts about the possibility of her friend maltreating her daughter while she was away.

She returned only to discover that her daughter has been admitted to the intensive care of the local hospital the day before. The daughter had suffered major trauma and was in a coma. From the mothers inquiries, it was established that her friend had been mistreating and starving her. Little did she know that her best friend could do that to her daughter?

Now, do you think if the child recovers from her illness the mother will ever leave her again with this friend of hers? If you were the mother, would you ever again ask your daughter to stay with the same friend even for hours let alone, for a week?

Coming back to the main issue for this write-up, all Ghanaians will bear me out that Ghana was correctly or wrongly entrusted into the management care of President John Dramani Mahama and his NDC party in 2013 after the 7th December 2012 general elections which results were questionably confirmed by the Atugubas 9-member Supreme Court panel.

President Mahama like the best friend in the story above has by his policies, actions and inactions, thrown Ghana into a socio-economic abyss, in which case I shall prefer to say, into a major trauma. The country has suffered years of power outages or load shedding, collapse of small, medium and large scale industries, seen unprecedented increase in joblessness across all the age groups of the Ghanaian citizenry and an extremely killer price hikes in utility bills and petroleum products with absurd unannounced increases in transport fares and food products.

Financially, about 99.5% of the home population are out of pocket. They can hardly make ends meet let alone, save money for precautionary motives, thus, against unforeseen future eventualities like sicknesses, deaths, etc., in their family.

The hardships facing Ghana today have been brought about as a direct result of the deliberate acts of incompetence, corruption, tribalism in the appointment of people to responsible positions in Ghana where they are selected not on merit but on pure tribal basis and lack of foresight on the part of the President and his government.

Will you vote to maintain him and his government in power if they came to canvass for NDC this year? If you will, then you are NOT like the woman who after leaving her daughter with the best friend came to find her in major trauma and VOWED NEVER again to entrust her daughter in the care of that same friend.

I hope you will turn your back to them if you would rather not give them a kick in the teeth. Until we learn to learn bitter lessons from our experiences, Ghanaian politicians will always take us for fools, allegedly saying, Ghanaians for a short memory. With us having a short memory, which in fact to them is Ghanaians are inhibited persons; they will always take us for big fools. They will maltreat us with impunity.

As any person in a major trauma surely requires specialized doctors and machines to treat them, so should a country in major economic stress. Are Ghanaians able to meet their crazy price hikes in utility bills, transport fares, food products and petroleum products all brought about by the official thievery in perpetration by President Mahama and his government? NO!!!!!!!!!!

Subsequently, we need a change of government to bring in the incorruptible, competent, dynamic and dedicated servant, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, the Gods anointed one who holds the key to unlock the gates of prosperity to shower blessings of justice and peace upon Ghanaians through the ever plentiful mercies of God Almighty. Amen!

Rockson Adofo
Victim Madam Dagmar & Fraudster's Family George And Grace Yeboah

25.01.2016 LISTEN

A serial internet fraudster based in Kumasi and Sunyani, Frederick Kwadwo Boahen Yeboah, according to reliable information has been seen in Takoradi, Western Region of Ghana.

Further checks have also revealed that the fraudster is in a move to invest his looted funds with a credit and loans company owned by his close pal who operates in Takoradi.

Frederick Kwadwo Boahen Yeboah is presently back to his base Sunyani and Kumasi, according to information.

Frederick Kwadwo Boahen Yeboah has defrauded a lot of foreigners by posing as a gay lover (one example at the gaysite Planet Romeo, he is shown under the nickname blackboi; see photo), as a gold dealer among others with stolen funds running into severalthousands of USD Dollars and Euros.

One of such multiple cases is the one that involved a German woman Madam Dagmar, who lost Euros 300,000 to the fraud operatives of the Yeboah family, Frederick, Joseph, Richard and their father George.

Meanwhile, the Ghana police has agreed to release a Toyota Tacoma SUV belonging to the Madam Dagmar which was impounded late last year around October.

Madam Dagmar, who is on a mission to fight back to reclaim her stolen money has therefore welcomed the decision of the Police.

The Toyota Tacoma Black colour with registration number GX 583  13 was impounded in Kumasi on Tuesday 20th October, 2015.

The bank transaction statement for this purchase has been handed over as well as to the police and also to ModernGhana.

This is how Madam Dagmar explains the new twists to the issues.

Well with the police in Accra, the CID: They said that they are ready to release the car.

...Nothing went on, the car seems to rest in peace and getting more and more rotten at the Police Headquarter Kumasi. I have beenwriting many messages, no replies. So my friend, the retired police officer in Kumasi went directly to the head of the CID.

He was told that they (CID) are waiting for money for me to send to pay for the fuel to move the car to Accra for release.

After sending the money, still nothing was moving. All of a sudden, the Police (CID) requested a Power of Attorney from me.

I was lucky to find a Notary in Germany during the holidays to get this document done and appropriate lawyers who worked on it. Nowfinally the car is handed over in Kumasi.

Even though Frederick Kwadwo Boahen and his family sold all machines belonging to the victim illegally, Madam Dagmar is still on theirasses to get justice.

She told ModernGhana that she will not give up.

"The family Yeboah should be aware of this. And they should tell their friends to stop threatenening me because I don't take their stupid talk for serious in anyway," she angrily warned.
In preparation of the 26th African Union (au) Summit billed for 30 and 31 January 2016 at the AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the AU Commission is organising a ministerial retreat of the Executive Council in Mekelle, Ethiopia from 24 to 26 January 2016. During the retreat, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs/External Relations and other ministers or authorities duly designated by their Government will brainstorm and exchange views on the implementation of Agenda 2063.

The Mekelle local Authorities and the Foreign Affairs Minister of Ethiopia are expected to deliver welcome remarks during the official opening of the retreat, on 24th January 2016 as from 3:00 pm, followed by the opening statement of the Chairperson of the AU Commission and that of the Chairperson of the Executive Council. The opening ceremony will be opened to interested media willing to cover the event.

Later, the Ministers will reconvene in close session to discuss different items on their agenda including updates on Agenda 2063 Ten Year Implementation Plan, its domestication and flagship projects as well as the accountability framework. They will be briefed on the status of free movement of people and the state of the African tourism sector, among other issues of relevance to the development and integration of the continent.

Worth recalling that the theme of the 26th AU Summit is: 2016: African Year of Human Rights with a particular focus on the Rights of Women.
The 31st Ordinary Session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) officially kicked off today 21 January 2016, at the headquarters of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa in the presence of the AUC Deputy Chairperson, Mr. Erastus Mwencha, AU Commissioners representatives from AU Organs, the RECs and invited guests.

During the opening ceremony, the Chairperson of the AU Commission, H.E. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma expressed satisfaction to the existing good working relationship between the PRC and the Commission. She said this fruitful relationship will go a long way to ensuring strong and effective institutions, towards our vision of an integrated prosperous and peaceful Africa that is driven by its own citizens and takes its rightful place in the world. The AUC Chairperson began by wishing a prosperous, peaceful and healthy year 2016 to all the participants. She thanked the host of the AU Headquarters, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia for the measures taken to ensure conducive working conditions for this Summit. She also lauded the efforts of the PRC and its subcommittees for their dedicated preparatory work over the last two months aimed at ensuring a successful and fruitful Summit. The AUC Chairperson particularly commended the Chairperson of the PRC, Ambassador Albert Chimbindi from the Republic of Zimbabwe, for so ably steering the PRC during his term of office, and for his excellent cooperation with the Commission. We sincerely appreciate the dedication, wisdom and the spirit of Pan Africanism he brought to his leadership of the PRC, she noted.

Dr. Dlamini Zuma highlighted some of the achievements of the Commission in 2015 including the progress made in the implementation of the AU Agenda 2063 and the process of domestication to ensure that the AU's major priorities are taken into consideration. She said the AUC Annual report that will be presented during the Summit will underline all the areas of interest including the African skills revolution, health and nutrition; infrastructure that connects the continent, its citizens and that spur social and economic development; agriculture and agro processing; economic diversification, job creation and industrialization; peace, security and democratic governance . Flagship projects of the Agenda 2063 such as the Pan African Integrated High Speed Rail Network, the Continental Free Trade Area and Commodities Strategy, on Agriculture and Agro-businesses, on the African Economic Platform, Silencing the Guns, the Single African Aviation Market, on the Free Movement of People and the African Passport, will also be presented in the Commission's report.

During 2015 we ensured a renewed focus on the emancipation of girls and women, as a critical success factor, and indeed a precondition for the realization of Agenda 2063.... The issue of African integration, as the raison d'etre of our Union remained high on our agenda and that of the Regional Economic Communities. Underscored Dr. Dlamini Zuma. She explained that the majority of democratic transitions and elections on the continent, with some notable exceptions, went well and should be used as a platform to build inclusive and effective institutions that involve citizens in governance, not only during elections but as we implement Agenda 2063 in our national context. She added that, as we celebrate this year of Human Rights we must continue to strengthen the culture of democracy, peace, security and human rights, of political tolerance, inclusion and the management of the rich diversity of our beautiful continent...., we should also continue to build a Union of the People, working with civil society, the private sector, the Diaspora, the African citizens, women and youth, and the media in the implementation of Agenda 2063.

The AUC Chairperson called for a minute of silence, in memory of the soldiers who died while exercising their duties in peace keeping mission of the AU. While wishing a successful deliberation to the PRC meeting, Dr. Dlamini Zuma reaffirmed the commitment of the AU Commission to work with the PRC, the RECs and all AU Organs during 2016, to build our Union and towards a better life for all Africans, she concluded. (See complete speech of the Chairperson of the AUC on the AU Website: www.au.int ).

H.E. Ambassador Albert R. Chimbindi, Chairperson of the PRC, expressed his appreciation to the AUC for the excellent facilities provided to enable the participants effectively contribute in the PRC meeting through the new E-Conferencing System put in place to facilitate the work of the policy making organs of the AU during this Summit. This should inspire us and also transform the way we do business. The PRC Chair further applaud the efforts of the members of the PRC and members of the PRC Bureau for their excellent accomplished and their cooperation throughout the preparatory process ahead of the 26th AU Summit.

Ambassador Chimbindi called upon all the PRC members to be concise but also to be comprehensive and clear when taking decisions and recommendations on the various reports so as to facilitate the work of the policy organs. (See complete speech of the Chairperson of the PRC on the AU Website: www.au.int ).

The 31st Ordinary Session of the PRC ends on 23 January 2016 with the adoption of their report to be submitted to the 28th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council scheduled to hold on 27 and 28 January 2016
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Since the early 1960s, the miracles of some East Asian economies have become part of the stories and proverbs of a culture of development economics. The fast rise of Japan as a major economic power after world war II, the meteoric development of South Korea who are now a powerhouse in electronic gadgets, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong as super- industrial exporters seem to fully justify economists increasing interest in the study of these economies. These countries have been so successful in a short time to the extent that they have given rise to a new economic model or theory of development.

Economic development in various parts of East Asia began since the demise of the World War II. The first and foremost country that saw the need for industrialization as a very important apparatus to propel its economy to greater heights was Britain. During the British industrial revolution era, industrial development took a longer time since it was the first time a country experienced such a revolution. The likes of Germany and France went ahead and followed a similar path.

However the industrial development among the Asian tigers notably Singapore, South Korea among others which was spearheaded by Japan can nowhere be compared to that of the western countries since the development among the Asian tigers was very quick and hugely effective to the extent that it raised the eyebrows of people who turn to ask questions of what were the cause of their successes, what lessons are there to be learnt and whether the East Asian experience can be replicated in African countries .The Idea is that countries whose economies developed later learned from those that had developed earlier and it made their development quicker. The interest on the East Asian experience has further been increased because those economies have grown fast, undertaken deep economic, social and technological changes.

After the World War II, Japan had so much rebuilding to do. The war hit Japan massively since atomic bombs had flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japans recovery occurred mostly because of strong leadership from the countrys central government. The government through its trade ministry negotiated for loans for the Japanese companies and also provided them with subsidies in order to cut down the cost of production.

The central government also encouraged mergers between companies to make them larger and more competitive domestically and internationally. The government through its foreign affairs ministry implemented protective foreign policy measures, which protected the infant industries in Japan from external competition through the imposition of higher tariffs on imports.

This allowed Japan to build their economy on an export-led industrialization. Japan also shifted from the production of simple products like textiles and other basic industrial products, which required a simple technical know-how to the production of more lucrative products like automobiles and specialized electronic equipment. The Japanese government began to invest in education and made the Japanese workforce more resourceful and competitive. Japan was able to come out with high level engineers and foreign investors who came to invest employed the Japanese natives to work for them. This went a long way to cut down unemployment and also imparted the Japanese idea and culture into foreign businesses. This huge success of Japan bred imitators; the most successful were Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

Critics may say that there are high levels of human right abuse in most Asian countries but then the Asian tigers conceived a national agenda and therefore decided to surrender their political power in the hands of a single individual or a group of people without limits to their reign who they think can lead them to achieve their agenda. The governments main focus was to ensure that there is equitable distribution of national resources. The Asian economies believe in a socialist policy whereby the welfare of the poor and marginalized are of great concern. Among the Asian tigers, democracy has been redefined and that they do not believe in the western democracy or the values of the west because the Asians believe in the type of democracy where the central government is able to provide for the masses in terms of affordable education, good transport system, healthcare and not the type of democracy which widens the gap between the rich and the poor. Moreover since their governments has no limits to their terms office there is continuity of policies and projects unlike the democratic states where incumbent governments tends to terminate long term policies that were put in place by previous governments.

The African continent as a matter of fact needs the industrial type strategy that transformed the Asian democracy in their quest to develop since African states need their own form of democracy just like the Asian tigers, to develop. Although Malaysia and Singapore are democratic states however they still prefer a single party who will govern for so many years provided the party is visionary and is in line with their national agenda.

As Chang stated in his book entitled Kicking away the Ladder the polices and institutions the west felt were the best way developing countries could develop is not supposed to be so because they themselves did not adopt those policies to develop instead they used unfriendly policies like Infant industry protection, export-led industrialization and so on. Africa as a continent needs to come to terms with the fact that western democracy carries western values therefore will be difficult for those values to flourish on an African soil. Moreover the chieftaincy system which was widely practiced during the pre colonial era where the king make rules, take decisions for the community is more or less like the authoritarian regime practiced in those Asian countries so the practice of such system of government will not be so new to Africans. African governments must be central to the economic progress and development of the country and in this way there is equitable distribution of resources and will largely improve the masses welfare.

Also, African states should migrate from the production of primary products to manufactured goods. In this way we are able to add value to our products on the international markets. We should also adopt export -led industrialization in order to protect our infant industries from global competition by imposing higher tariffs and providing significant subsidies.

This type of industrialization brings foreign investors into the country since there is access to labour, a strong admiration for exports. This will vastly increase GDP, reduce unemployment rate and so on. African governments just the Asian states must supply public goods including affordable education, transportation, healthcare system, eliminate price distortion, redistribute income so the poor can meet their basic needs

To sum it up, in my optimum view Africa needs the industrial strategies of Eastern Asian countries to achieve remarkable economic success and not the western democracy since Obama once said the development of Africa lies with Africans themselves. Africa therefore should set its own agenda in their quest to develop and not to be dictated to by the westerners. Like the Asian, Africa needs to set its own agenda, develop achievable policy frameworks and work relentlessly towards any working goals.

Bernard Osei- Asibey ([email protected])
Mahama Ladies is an organization that supports the women front of the ruling National Democratic Congress. We are upbeat and focused on seeing H.E John Dramani Mahama re-elected President on November 7, 2016.

We are confident that Ghanaians will reward H.E John Dramani Mahama with a second term bid giving the numerous infrastructural developments he has embarked on that has brought respite to all and sundry despite the grueling challenges his administration has faced.

While we take solace in the words of H.E John Dramani Mahamas words that there are still a lot of work to be done to lift the country from the doldrums, we are not oblivious of the momentous roles women have played, especially in the 21st century, towards the growth and development of their countries.

Indeed election demographics and census project women as the deciding factors in election. In the light of this, we are poised to support any woman contesting the impending parliamentary election on the ticket of the NDC.

As a group made up of mainly women, we are motivated by the aforementioned premise to take a stand and solidarized with Dr. Zanetor Rawlings as she scales through the ugly jaws of politics to get elected as the first female Member of Parliament for the Korle Klottey constituency.

As an astute medical doctor, we know her capabilities which she has so far demonstrated since she acquiesced to calls on her to lead the NDC into the 2016 election as parliamentary candidate. We will like to assure her that we stand by her in the midst of the stiff battle being waged against her candidature.

The NDC has a flagbearer and First Lady that have development and growth of women at heart and we are motivated by this reality to stand with her till the battle is won. We call on our ever supportive men to join hands with us in solidarity with Dr. Zanetor for change in Korley Klottey.

Dr. Zanetor, Korley Klottey game changer, Korley Klottey symbol of hope, and a model to many young women. You have our support to give JM and NDC another victory.

Vote Dr. Zanetor for Korley Klottey

Vote H.E John Dramani Mahama

Vote NDC.

#ChangingLives, #TransformingGhana

Eye Zu, eye Za

Long live Ghana,

Long live Ghanaian Women, Long live Mahama Ladies.

Signed

Hajia Tawa Zakari-Raji

Chairperson

Belinda Adadevoh

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25.01.2016 LISTEN

Recently at a one day forum organized by the Governance Commission on policy dialogue with support from African Development Bank held in Monrovia under the topic reaffirming commitment to a common future through elections, in which Finance and Planning development Minister Amara Konnah raised some serious age old issues that has and continues to affect the African Continent including the following:

Tribal politics which could stunt the democracy of the country, leaders often exploit tribal loyalty to advance their personal gain. Leaders often exploit tribal loyalty to advance personal gain, parochial interests, patronage, and cronyism,

Minister Konneh warned that Liberias democracy is at risk from tribal politics. Tribalism could Stunt Liberian Democracy during the pending 2017 elections. I would begin with a reference to Kenya's 2007-08 post-election violence that revealed the extent to which tribal forces could quickly bring a country to the brink of civil war.

He says the challenge to democracy in Africa, according to a professor of Harvard University, is not prevalence of ethnic diversity but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests and the challenges to democracy in Africa according to Professor Calestus Juma of Harvard University, is not the prevalence of ethnic diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests. He calls it tribalism, Minister Konneh adds.

Minister Konneh says there are those who argue that tribalism is a result of arbitrary post-colonial boundaries that force different communities to live within artificial borders which, according to him, suggests that every ethnic community should have its own territory, which reinforces ethnic competition.

H said the last 20 years Somalia have shown the dangers of ethnic competition and underscore the importance of building nations around ideas rather than clan identities; much attention over the last two decades has been devoted to removing autocrats and promoting multiparty politics, he disclosed

In my understanding, as a stick holder in the Liberian body politic these concerns raised by the outgoing Finance in the Unity Party led government must and should be taken seriously in the pending elections come 2017 which is decided in term of revolutionize the minds of the people which their Country is referred to as the 5th poorest Country in the World from abject poverty, transpirancy, reduction in corrupt activities and total regard for all in providing their basic human rights!

Well deliberated on, Mr. Konnah but in our governance system from the time of accepting democracy which transition Liberia into the holding of elections as a Nation the issues of tribal, cronyism just to name a few are what that characterized our the political landscape.

Again, lets retrospect into the regime that led this nation for hundred and twenty years the True wing party it was very clear that almost all of those holding public offices either were of the so-called upper class known as the Congo or Masonic craft members!

This system live up to the so-called military junta which despite their coming to power through some dubious means with the assistant of an unknown power, said practices were very prevalent in their midst with visibility of the entrench tribal association to the detriment of the Nations enfant democracy!

The war days came Liberians and foreign mercenaries again killed people from other tribal groupings because of perceive notions of their ethnic association and up to the first pre-war elections the tribal games had it fair share in the electoral processes and of course the Congo scenario were part of the activities!

Then more regrettably, when this present regime took over the mantle of the leadership of the Nation where in Liberians were of the expectation that these vices that has damage this Liberia is about to be things of the past! But to their utmost surprised, these ugly vices took a dramatic turn with each tribal officials of government whether elected or appointed decided to draw barricade around themselves with their tribal people!

Let go down memory link, beginning with the Ministry of finance planning and development my survey shows that the outgoing minister cluster that place too with his tribal people mostly in directors positions and other low levels ones!

Frankly speaking, some officials of this regime from other agencies of government strategically placed their familys members to positions that they dont merit but again as Mr. Konnah indicated saying there are those who argue that tribalism is a result of arbitrary post-colonial boundaries that force different communities to live within artificial borders which, according to him, suggests that every ethnic community should have its own territory, which reinforces ethnic competition.

Then to the first branch in most cases at the capitol building most of the personal staffer are either family members or girl friends associates again to keep their rears safer in reinforcing ethic competition and building artificial borders for their personal benefits!

So if Liberians are to go with what the outgoing Minister alluded to he must first of all cross check with his creation at the Minister he been managing for the pass years of which he give scholarships to people of his tribal grouping, strategically placing them to lucrative positions are that paying off in the political quest!

If Mr. Konnah felt that he was drawing his analogy from the Kenyan scenario and was warning that Liberians learn from it my information to him is that he too has and continues to play to the same tune that was dance in that East African Country of Kenya just a forth night ago!

Liberians must realized that sometimes ago outgoing Minister Konnah openly confessed to Liberians his employer regarding how their tax monies was expended but majority members of the populace refused to properly digest this information until the smart ones within governmental circle play politics with it and it died a natural death!

Today, he again informing us of their creations in our governance system and no attention is giving this! If Liberians want to see a Nation they cherish men and women of values must rise up to the occasion now and see reasons to called a space a space as the future of the youth and the unborn generation is in serious danger!

The author is a Liberian broadcast Journalist and can be reach at +231886224134/+231776590725 or Email: [email protected]
David Russell volunteered in Africa with elghana in july 2008. In his memoirs, he touches on many perspectives fascinating to explore

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In summer 2008, David Russell, A teacher of more than two decades in Massachusetts, the state with the best education system in the United States of America arrived on the land of Ghana for the first time to volunteer in Africa with our organization. Sem-Fronteiras, the organization I work for has provided volunteer opportunities and mission trips for international travelers, tapping into their energies to promote growth in poor and deprived communities in Africa. It was sunny but it had just stopped raining so the smell of the earth was all in the skies, such a wonderful fresh breath, which was quickly overcome by the aroma of many spices and foods and the bustling music from corners of streets and from cars as we rode from the airport trying to get out of the city and make our way to Kumasi. David influenced both teachers and students during his stay. One month later, David was done and I asked him to write and send me a memoir of his experience in Ghana. Below, I present you the part I of a three part series of David Russells memoirs from Africa. Very fascinating, inspiring and thought provoking for all of us.

David Writes:



David Russell volunteered in Africa with elghana in 2008. Here he shares his experience

"Bruni! " At least 100 timesand perhaps as many as 200that single word or its translation, sometimes in brief phrases, was addressed to me during my stay in Ghana. "White man!" "Bruni! Buy something!" Reliably from young kids, basically as an exclamation of surprising discovery, several times followed by a daring touch of my arm and escape. From adults rarely, but when used usually presented with some edge. "White man, how's your life, white man?" probed a woman around my age as I passed her on the street near my house. "Run faster, bruni!" I was admonished as I whisked along with the 25 or so Ghanaians of the Neoplan Fitness Club that I had been invited to join on Sunday mornings. Sometimes most matter-of-factly. The friendly primary school headmaster at St. George's, the school where I taught during my stay, once offered, "Good morning, bruni. I didn't greet you yet today." My Ghanaian colleague Joe Mensah chuckled at the choice of address.

One afternoon Awuraa Abena, a 17-year-old from the house that I stayed in and with whom I spent a lot of time, asked, "Why when people greet you as 'bruni' you don't greet them back?" I was taken aback. Had I seemed rude? I didn't think so. Yvonne, an 18-year-old cousin from the apartment next door offered something of a defense for me. "When you're out with me you usually wave." Harriet, her older sister, concurred.

I thought that the way I had been handling it made sense. When a little kid came up to me with a big smile and shouted, "Bruni! Bruni!" I smiled back and said, "Hello!" When a call came from a long distance, sometimes I pretended not to hear. Mostly, yes, I turned and lifted my hand in a pleasant wave of acknowledgement. "Yes," I intended to communicate, "I hear you." The corners of my mouth were usually raised a bit. The shouting of the single word didn't feel like it required a verbal response.

I was vigilant at trying to be non-offensive. I was, like it or not, a representative of Americans and, especially for people I didnt get to know, of white people. Since contact with the likes of me is almost nonexistent for most Ghanaians, I wanted to make sure the impressions I left were positive.

As I moved around, I didn't look for any special attention. I relaxed and kept my eyes mostly ahead of me, careful to avoid any impression of staring. Especially when someone from my host family took me off the streets, through alleys and such where my appearance was the most startling, I just tried to mind my business. Mostly I think it worked very well, though I'm sure there were times that people felt invaded or exposed by my sudden appearance.

The elephant in the room of this discussion is the stark reality of racial inequality. Why is it that I was ambling through their communities and not they through mine? Per capita GDP is currently something like $40K in the US and $500 in Ghanamaybe 80 times higher in the US! The gulf in what is normal in standard of living is stark. In my middle class household in Kumasi there was no sink; dishes and clothes were washed in basins. "Bucket showers"washing and rinsing with water taken cup-by-cup from a bucketare the rule. At my private school, when I went to the office as directed to get a red pen for correcting papers I was required to sign it out. When I was given four thumbtacks to display a map, I was expected to return them. In my Sunday morning fitness club my two-year-old sneakers were among the best.

"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living," wrote a famous 19th century philosopher; I certainly felt this weight during my month in Ghana. For three centuries the European slave trade robbed Africa of untold millions of people in their prime years. This was followed by colonial conquest. Though Ghana chose the slogan "celebrating 50 years of African excellence" to celebrate its anniversary of independence last year, the gap that took so long to build is not in danger of disappearing. A determined citizenry, years of political stability, and the recent discovery of oil notwithstanding, our realities remain as different as black and white. How many people told me they want to come to the United States?

Read the part two of the three part memoirs of David Russell next. David talks about the first thing he saw when he arrived in Ghana, day to day interactions and discussions the people in the big house he lived in, including his host family, what he came to know was the Ghanaians' perspectives of an "Obruni"... you will not want to miss that.

I am Agyapong Gyamfi, the head of projects for Sem-Fronteiras, an organization with best volunteer experience which is promoting growth in five countries in Africa. If you wish to explore opportunities to work together or volunteering with us, please use this link to visit our website https://www.elghana.com
When President Mahama says he would not accept counsel from people who have not been president, he believes he knows better than Ghanaians who dare to criticize his performance. Mahama goes on to say he would much rather take counsel from former Presidents Rawlings and Kufuor. Somehow, Mahama thinks Ghanaians do not understand the burden of being president yet; they elect presidents?

But instead of the critics being ignorant, could it be that it is Mahama who lacks the ability to perform? Former President Rawlings, despite his military history, was heavily criticized, but he never once called Ghanaians ignorant. Presidents Kufuor and Mills were similarly criticized for their stewardship. So, what is different Mahama?

It appears Mahama is aware of the incompetence of his administration. While former presidents were guilty in my view of underperformance, nonetheless they tolerated criticism because they understood their responsibility to Ghanaians. Unlike his predecessors, Mahama is resentful of legitimate criticism of his job performance. Here is the difference; President Mahama does not appreciate his responsibility to the people nor the burden of leadership.

The primary mandate of leadership includes vision, finding and motivating the right mix of people to execute. Far from hyperbole, Mahamas administration does not appear to have a vision for the country. Indeed, the absence of vision is manifest in the recent fuel levy increases in a contracting economy. Reduction of taxes is preferable to stimulate a stagnant economy.

Former U.S President Theodore Roosevelt underscores the importance of vision to leadership success when he says the best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done." Subtle in this observation is the expectation that, a leader demonstrates vision and delegatory abilities. Since Roosevelt is a former president, it is safe to suggest that Mahama would agree with his statement.

By Roosevelts standards, Mahama is less than a good executive when he gave Ghana, Ms. Victoria Hammah, who mistakes public service for business. The absence of vision and underperformance of the Mahama administration includesthe rapid decline of the economy, massive public sector waste and widespread youth unemployment among others.

Apparently, Roosevelt would say that Mahama is incompetent or less than a good executive because his administration wants vision and a performing cabinet. Perhaps, President Mahama does not think of himself as an incompetent executive, but President Roosevelt thinks otherwise. For, the failure of the presidents cabinet and appointees are his failures.

By discounting his critics and well-meaning Ghanaians who seek to hold him accountable, Mahama discounts not only the critics but reveals his leadership shortcomings. By ignoring legitimate criticism, Mahama shows he is unaware of the core responsibility of leadership which is vision and performance or result. By this action, the president reveals his disdain for the economic pain of his critics.

Whatever name Mahama prefers to describe his performance thus far, the truth remains that, Ghanaians are experiencing economic difficulties under this president. And from all indications, the president appears to lack both the vision and the personnel to make things better for Ghanaians. Now, that is not exactly a sign of a good executive.
Members of African Union (AU) Executive Council converged in the Tigray region of Mekelle, on 24 January 2016, within the framework of their third Ministerial Retreat, holding under the theme: Implementation of Agenda 2063. The Ministerial Retreat was chaired by Hon. Simbarashe S. Mumbengegwi, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Zimbabwe and Chairperson of the Executive Council, in the presence of H.E. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commissioners, H.E Mr. Erastus Mwencha, Deputy Chairperson of the AUC. Hon. Dr Tedros Adhenon Ghebreyesus, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, H.E Abay Weldu, President of the Regional Authority of Tigray, representatives from AU Organs, the UNECA, NEPAD, RECs AfDB, AU Commissioners , the AUC Secretary General, and the Legal Counsel of the AUC, and invited guests.

President Weldu welcomed the participants in the city of Mekelle and presented the historical background of the region which he qualified as courageous and privileged population who inherited the most archeological objects and sites of humanity. He said the agenda of this retreat has a significant meaning to the Tigray tribe/people of Ethiopia. He appreciated the vision of the Union aimed at creatiing an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa.

In her opening remarks, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, AUC Chairperson, recalled the first retreat in the city of Ethiopia Bahir Dar in 2014, where she introduced the Dream of the African People in the e-mail from the future, among others. Two years ago, as we concluded the 50th anniversary of the OAU/AU, we met as in retreat in the city of Bahir Dar, to discuss the core responsibilities of this important organ, the Executive Council. It was then when I spoke about our dream of the Africa we want, in the e-mail from the future.

Two years later, as we gather here in Mekelle, Tigray region we can report that we have made some headway. As discussed at this retreat, we now have Agenda 2063 as our clarion call for action, supported by all sections of the African society, stated the AUC Chairperson. She explained that, we are now clear on the priorities of Agenda 2063, investing in our people, especially youth and women; in agricultural modernization and agro-businesses; in manufacturing and industrialization; the development of our infrastructure; democracy and developmental governance, as well as the need of silencing the guns by 2020.

Our Agenda 2063 flagship projects - such as the free movement of people, the Commodities strategy, the Pan African Integrated High speed Rail network - is taking off, and should help towards our vision of an integrated, peaceful and prosperous Africa, driven by its own people and taking its rightful place in the world, underscored Dr. Dlamini Zuma.

Referring to the song on Agenda 2063 composed by a group of artists from Zimbabwe, played during the opening ceremony of the retreat, the AUC Chairperson called on other artists within the continent to emulate the good example.  I would like to thank the Zimbabwean artists who came up with that song on Agenda 2063, and I challenge all of us to encourage our artists to compose as many songs as possible. Of course as the Chair of the Union, Zimbabwe led from the front. She thanks the Mekelle authorities for hosting the AU Ministerial retreat and wished the Ministers fruitful deliberation. (See complete speech of the AUC Chairperson on the website: www.au.int ).

The Chairperson of the Executive Council on his part, recalled the high moments and priorities on Agenda 2063 saying our Agenda is centred in the review of implementation of decisions taken during the 2nd Ministerial retreat and update on the implementation of the 1st ten year plan of Agenda 2063, the free movement of goods and persons, the issue of Immigration and tourism and wild life preservation. Minister Mumbengegwi stressed that as we continue streamlining and improving the working methods of our Union, we also need to consider how best we can align our bi-annual Summits in order to improve the effectiveness of our organisation and to give ourselves ample time to implement our decisions. He expressed satisfaction to the fact that notable success has already been achieved in this vein, hence the need to proffering new and innovative ideas that will take the organisation to greater heights. (See complete speech of the Executive Chairperson on the AU Website: www.au.int) .

Speaking earlier, Hon. Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, stressed on the importance of holding the ministerial retreat which he said will enhance friendly and convivial relationship between the ministers. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia said such gathering will enable the participants to express themselves freely while socialising with one another. He called on his pars saying, We have a number of important issues to deliver including exchanging views and best practices on how to domesticate and enhance the implementation of agenda 2063 and its flagship projects.

Organized by the African Union Commission (AUC), the third Ministerial Retreat aims at brainstorming and exchanging ideas on critical issues related to the implementation of the Africa Agenda 2063 so as to give clear direction and guidelines on devising best ways and means for its domestication to help improve the living conditions of the African citizens.

The Ministers will among other things consider AU Commission Restructuring Project, the free movement of people, African tourism, wild life conservation, and state of the African tourism sector and its opportunities and challenges.

At the end of its deliberations, the Ministerial Retreat will adopt the Mekelle Ministerial Retreat draft Outcomes document to be tabled during the Executive Council meeting scheduled to hold on 27 and 27 January 2016 for adoption. The AU Ministerial Retreat ends on Tuesday 26th January 2016.
The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, and the Chairperson of SOBEK Trade and Investment (Egypt), Mrs. Manal Abdel Moneim, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in support of an initiative to launch a Pan African Agribusiness Holding Company.

The MoU signed on Tuesday 19 January at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, aims at developing women's agribusinesses by mobilizing investments and providing capacity to such businesses in different parts of the continent.

During the signing ceremony, the AU Commission Chairperson expressed her excitement about this initiative of the private sector, which, she noted was in line with Africa's Agenda 2063. I am very pleased that women in the private sector who are doing so well have not forgotten to support and pull other women along. I am very much inspired. Dr. Dlamini Zuma remarked.

The Pan African Agrobusiness Holding Company initiative was inspired by the AU's annual themes of Year of Agriculture and Food Security (2014); Year of Women's Empowerment and Development toward Agenda 2063 (2015), as well as the African Agribusiness Strategy.
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A flashback to my elementary agriculture science text book reminds me of some terms used in the book such as horticulture, mix-farming, animal husbandry etc., with the basic definition that: Agriculture is the production of crops and the rearing of farm animals.

In the various text books, we read that agriculture is the backbone of the countrys sources of income with respect to notable crops such as cocoa and cotton. Indeed, agriculture has supported the economy, as well as provided a lot of job opportunities for the youth. No wonder the government of Ghana in connection with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) currently runs an initiative called, Youth in Agriculture Programme (YIAP) with the objective of motivating the youth to accept and appreciate farming as a commercial venture, thereby taking up farming as a life-time career. Despite these interventions by government, one dire issue persists gender discrimination, which I believe must be critically examined in the agricultural sector.

Women are mostly involved in both crops and animal production at subsistence or commercial level, working either on their own as unpaid workers on family lands, or as paid or unpaid labourers on some agricultural enterprises. They are just as efficient as male farmers, however due to lesser control over resources such as land, women farmers tend to produce less yields.

Obviously, access to land is a basic requirement for farming, and control over land is usually synonymous with wealth, status and power, especially in our part of the world.

Women in food basket regions - parts of Ghana where agriculture is the mainstay - are sometimes marginalised in the equitable distribution of land, causing them to have little access and control. Strengthening womens possibilities to own and access land is as important as raising their status and influence within households across communities.

We can have a direct impact on farm productivity when we improve the level of access to and security of land tenure for women. Unfortunately, some negative cultural practices are inhibiting women from owning or having direct access and control over land.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) women across all developing regions are consistently less likely to own or operate land. They are less likely to have access to rented land, and where they do have access, the lands are of poorer quality and very small in size.

One important thing to note is that the worlds population is increasing steadily. The FAO estimates that the global population increases by 90 million annually, with majority of growth occurring in developing countries such as Ghana.

With this increase, food insecurity will only continue to worsen with more people likely to suffer from malnutrition and hunger.

According to the FAO, food production will need to double to meet the exponential population growth. Therefore, now more than ever, there is the need to invest extensively in food production to be able to feed the worlds rapidly increasing population.

Increasing crop production is very crucial to achieving food security, rural development and the conservation of natural resources amidst threatening climatic challenges. FAO addresses this in their new strategic objective; calling for sustainable intensification of crop production and its contribution to food security and rural livelihoods through sustainable farming practices. Increasing the overall productivity of food production can only be possible if both men and women are given an equal playing field in the sector.

Discrimination against women in agriculture, especially smallholder women farmers, is a serious injustice which must be eschewed. There is a widening gender gap that exists in land acquisition, access to modern inputs, seedlings, education, livestock, financial and extension services that are against women. Women therefore have the least access to these means of increasing yields and find it impossible to move from the stone-aged subsistence farming to market-oriented production. This gender inequality hinders productivity and reduces womens contribution to the agriculture sector and to the achievement of broader economic and social development goals.

Farming in Ghana, unfortunately, has remained a male dominated occupation with women playing very limited roles in the sector. Although the Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD), one of the technical directorates of MoFA, is doing well to fulfil its mandate of mainstreaming all agricultural policies, programmes and projects through the implementation of the Gender and Agricultural Development Strategy (GADS) for the sector, I believe they have more work to do in order to make this great strategy a reality. In some parts of our country, especially the Northern part, it is culturally unaccepted for a woman to own a piece of land, making it difficult for them to possess and control their own farms. In recognition of this, ActionAid Ghana has supported 3000 smallholder women farmers in northern Ghana under its Womens Rights to Sustainable Livelihood Project. The project has benefitted women farmers in the Nanumba North and South districts, as well as Talensi and Nabdam districts of the Upper East region, and helped to boost their capacities for productive and large scale farming.

Through sensitisation, these smallholder women farmers now demand from stakeholders the attention that would enhance their participation in agriculture.

Using women like Marimah Seidu, ActionAid Ghana has formed a Female Extension Volunteers (FEV) project to supplement MoFA in some of the rural communities to carry out their extension services. These farmer networks and Community Listeners Clubs, located in the Upper East Region, give information to farmers, especially women, in remote areas through radio programmes with the aim of educating these women farmers on methods that can lead to increased productivity such as introduction of compost farming instead of fertilisers.

The new Country Strategy Paper V of ActionAid Ghana also further highlights the importance of prioritising the growth and empowerment of women farmers, as captured in its first mission objective; To promote Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA) and womens secured access to and control over land and other productive resources.

Key results areas for the next 5 years will involve supporting 100,000 smallholder women farmers to secure and obtain direct backing from government and its policies and programmes to improve food security.

It is in light of this that I humbly call on WIAD and other agencies interested in developing women in agriculture to intensify their support for our women. Eradicating gender discrimination is key to increasing the supply of food and income for development.

Foster Adase-Adjei

Marketing Officer

ActionAid Ghana.
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Irbard Ibrahim

The young man who prides himself as security expert, Irbard Ibrahim, is shying away from what qualifies him to bear that title.

He has been described by some media houses as not only a security expert, but also Islamic cleric and international relations expert  a claim that has given him the opportunity to share his opinions on very sensitive matters because of his supposed expertise.

Sometime last week, DAILY GUIDE approached him over the subject after some people, including Islamic scholar, Shaykh Mustapha Hamid, a senior lecturer at the Cape Coast University, had questioned his credentials; but Irbard declined to comment because he claimed he was under no obligation to respond to the enquiries, even though he enjoys the fame that comes with them (credentials).

That was after his defence of government's decision to bring in two former detainees from the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp had sparked rage in the country amidst wide condemnations.

A day after DAILY GUIDE's publication, the young man, who sources said works with one of the Islamic embassies in Ghana, ran away from a similar question on Accra-based Okay FM in an attempt to save his credibility.

On the question of how he should be addressed in view of the doubts raised about his credibility, he said he is just Irbard Ibrahim and that he does not need to write a dissertation on security or international relations before he can speak on issues bothering on same.

How many dissertations or thesis I have written on such topics or the years of experience have I gotten working is a non-issue and I'll not glorify it, he told host of the radio programme.

Interestingly however, this time round he indicated, I'm a security person; there is no need telling you I work with the M16.

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Like a man with a punctured ego, he stated with some level of bitterness that if Ghanaians do not value the quality of information I have because of my interaction with people across the world and people in security circles don't ask me how old I am, then we would keep whatever information we have to our chest.

You don't know me, you don't know what diplomatic missions I'm working with and yet you write such things about me on facebook. Irbard bluffed, I'm a patriotic young man who wants to serve my nation in the best capacity. We judge people by their competence and not age. Where America and France among others have gone wrong, I have lambasted them; the international press cover my opinionI sit on panels with renowned people, nobody asked me a question of how old I am because the world has moved on. You can't be living in the stone age.

He said, Where the current government has gone wrong, I have descended heavily on it; I have called this government names based on the high unemployment rate among the youth.

Irbad had found himself in a quagmire over his open pronouncement that the main opposition leader, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was consulted by the United States officials six months before the Guantanamo Bay suspected Al-Qaeda detainees were deported to Ghana for a two-year stint.

It has however, turned out that Nana Akufo-Addo was only informed on January 6, 2016  a day before the arrival of the Al-Qaeda foot-soldiers, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby in Ghana.

Irbad had refused to provide further and better particulars about his allegation since aides to Nana Addo rubbished his (security expert) claim, leaving the unfounded allegation to hang.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu


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Daniel Aidoo and Frank Amenuku in police custody

TWO MEMBERS of an armed robbery gang, who often rape their female victims after robbing them, have been sentenced to 20 years with hard labour by an Ashaiman Circuit Court.

The two, Daniel Aidoo, 18 and Frank Amenuku, 19, both unemployed, who reside at Gbetsile in the Kpone-Katamanso District of the Greater Accra Region, pleaded guilty to the charges preferred against them.

The court presided over by his Lordship Gabriel Mate-Teye sentenced them to 10 years each on the robbery charge.

Prosecution told the court that the accused persons were arrested when they attempted to rape a woman after robbing her of her personal effects.

Police received a distress call from an informant and rushed to the scene at Gbetsile TMA Cluster of Schools, where they caught the two robbers in the act.

Daniel, according to prosecution, was arrested immediately together with a man who had sustained some injuries but Frank managed to escape upon seeing the police advancing towards them.

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The prosecution explained that investigations revealed that Daniel and Frank accosted the female victim, who had closed from work at about 11:00 pm on January 15, 2016, and robbed her of her personal effects including phones and an unspecified amount of money.

According to prosecution, the victim screamed in the course of the robbery, attracting the attention of a passerby who rushed to the scene to rescue her, adding that the robbers, wielding a machete, inflicted wounds on the arm of the Good Samaritan before the police appeared on the scene to arrest Daniel.

Daniel admitted the offence during interrogations and said they rape their victims after robbing them. He later led police to the hideout of Frank who was also arrested in a kraal which serves as their hideout.

Police said the injured rescuer was given a police medical report form to attend hospital for treatment and is responding to treatment.

From Vincent Kubi, Ashaiman




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Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that is right is to get by, and the only thing that is wrong is to get caughtJ.C. Watts.

My heart is heavy today. I'm saddened by the demise of Solomon Sampah, one of the most versatile actors ever to grace the shores of this country. He embarked on the journey to Samanfoland last Friday at the age of 70.

Paa Solo, as some of us affectionately called him, was a very good friend. Despite the age difference, he treated me like a co-equal. One unmistakable characteristic of his was honesty. He was a man one could trust and confide in. It's sad to note that this column has lost an avid reader; and even sadder to note that a man with such a good heart has left us.

Abusuapanin, trust is very key in every human relationship. Whether friendship, family relationship, business or personal partnership, the bonding process is built on trust. Without trust, the relationship is doomed to fail.

This being an election year, two institutions of state that need the trust of the citizenry are the Police and Electoral Commission (EC). The Police, with help of the Armed Forces and other security agencies, have the responsibility of maintaining law and order without fear or favour. The EC is also expected to be an impartial referee in the upcoming electoral contest.

The question, therefore, to ask is; do Ghanaians trust these two institutions? In other words, can the heads of these two important bodies be trusted to be impartial? A careful study of their previous professional actions would give us a clue as to whether they would be impartial or not.

I honestly want to trust John Kudalor's pronouncement that party vigilante groups would not be tolerated in this year's election. But his previous conduct and that of the police service in general, makes it difficult for me to do so. Was he not a member of the police leadership when the Agbogbloshie massacre took place in August 2009? What did he do to help apprehend the matchete-wielding Taliban Boys who butchered four young men to death in broad daylight? Nothing, absolutely, nothing!

The Chief Jihadist from Akwatia rode on the back of violence to become a Member of Parliament. The Jihadists vandalized properties and beat innocent persons in the full glare of the police. Did they not walk free because they wore umbrella embossed shirts?

We woke up one morning in 2009 to be greeted by the news of a guerilla training centre in the northern part of the country. We saw pictures of recruits wielding G3s and AK47s. The son of a Zu-za regional chairman was said to be among the recruits caught on camera. (Refer to the September 7, 2009 edition of the Daily Guide, if you doubt me.) Did Kudalor and his ilk not read or hear of the guerillas?

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The Chereponi shooting saga also comes to mind. Despite being caught on camera, the so-called BNI operative who shot at a crowd of Osono sympathizers is still walking a free man because of his links to the corridors of power. For the umpteenth time the police say they are still investigating.

The Atiwa brutalities and the Talensi violence cannot pass without mention. That a minister of interior could be so callous to subscribe to the violence-begets-violence principle is ample testimony that our police would do anything to protect criminals who work for their political masters.

The last straw was when, as Director of Operations during the ill-fated ''Let My Vote Count demonstration, Kudalor justified the police brutality on demonstrators. Overseeing a demonstration which went sour is bad enough; but gleefully justifying the unprovoked police brutality that led to the loss of a citizen's eye is simply unpardonable.

Indeed, I would only begin to have an iota of trust in Kudalor and his charges if they apprehended the BNI operative, the Jihadists, the Guerillas and the Taliban Boys. But we all know that is only a mirage, don't we?

As for Madam Charlotte, I trust her as much as I trust a cat with my fish. When I said the formation of the five-man committee was a Kwaku Ananse antics, many doubted me. Did my prediction not come to pass? Again, did the deliberate manufacturing of double registration figures for the Ashanti Region on Newsfile not expose her?

Granted the 200,000 figure she mentioned was a mistake. Isn't it surprising that she singled out Ashanti Region out of the ten regions in the country? Was it to create a certain impression in the minds of the populace? Certainly, I smell mischief!

I trust Kudalor and Charlotte to be impartial just as I trust Adolf Hitler to be a saint. I'm not politically correct so I will not shy away from commenting on the poisonous seeds the two institutions are sowing. I therefore expect the opposition parties, especially Osono, to shine their eyes; for the price of victory is vigilance.

See you next week for another interesting konkonsa, Deo volente!
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The British Government has acknowledged that Ghana's controversial voters' register is bloated by at least 10 percent.

According to a correspondence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a copy of which is available to DAILY GUIDE, the British Government was adequately informed about the trend in the country regarding the register.

We are fully aware of the concerns regarding the electoral register. We note that the average population percentage in Ghana of those eligible to vote is approximately 52%, which is 10% higher than continental average, the letter from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, addressed to some concerned Ghanaians who had petitioned Prime Minister David Cameron, indicated.

The correspondence, dated December 23, 2015 and signed by Vicki Morley, Desk Officer for Ghana, said the British High Commission in Accra was in regular contact with all political parties and civil society groups as well as the Electoral Commission.

We stand ready to assist the Electoral Commission in ensuring that concerns can be addressed, the letter pointed out.

The British Government's position tallies with the report of the panel composed by the EC to look into the petition of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) over the alleged bloated register.

The results of the analysis as captured on page 9 of the VCRAC Crabbe Panel report says, There is some evidence that the register of voters possibly contains a substantial number of names of people whose records are currently not valid. By all indications, the number of registered voters is not only unusually high, but it may be in excess of the potential number.

The panel suggested that the register was bloated by about 13%.

A London-based community newspaper, The Echo, had claimed in its current edition that Ghana's Biometric Voters' Register is over-bloated by 1.3 million, using a voter population of about 13,878,861 as suggested by the Crabbe committee.

The newspaper, which targets the African Caribbean community in the UK, published the sensational claim in its January 22 to February 4, 2016 edition, quoting the British officials.

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The claim is likely to spark another round of heated political debate in Ghana following the Electoral Commission's decision not to compile an entirely new electoral roll after the five-member panel chaired by Justice VCRAC Crabbe had submitted its report on the issue, even though the report conceded that there are fundamental flaws in the current register.

According to The Echo, it 'intercepted' a correspondence between the Office of the British Prime Minister, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK, and the tone of the letter was an expression of concern about an over-bloated Ghana electoral register.

These letters have been written in response to a petition by some concerned Ghanaians in Britain who have expressed grave concerns about potential electoral violence in this year's elections, The Echo claimed.

The concerned Ghanaians had submitted a petition to the Prime Minister on 6th November, 2015 after a peaceful demonstration at the forecourt of the seat of the British Government  10 Downing Street. Mr Cameron received the petition and directed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to respond to the petitioners and to state the official position of the British Government on the subject matter, the paper said.

It added that a letter conveying the British Government's response to the coordinator of the concerned Ghanaians in UK, Mr Damoa, was authored by Vicki Morley stating, Thank you for your letter of 6 November to the Prime Minister regarding voter registration in the build-up to the December 2016 General and Presidential elections in Ghana. I am replying as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Desk Officer for Ghana.

The letter suggests that per the British Government's independent assessment, Ghana's current electoral register is not fit for the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The Echo newspapers understanding of the British Government's assessment is based on a voter population of 13,628,817. This is the total number of registered voters recorded by Ghana's Electoral Commission for the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. The 10% equates to 1,362,882, which the British government claims is above continental average, the newspaper posited.

It said that the EC's approval rating had reduced from 75% to fewer than 45 after a protracted electoral dispute in 2012 according to a barometer survey completed in 2014.

The Echo said Mrs Charlotte Osei, who in mid-2015 took over from Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, had made public pronouncements about her unwillingness to compile a new voters' register.

By William Yaw Owusu


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The former presidential candidate of the Peoples National Convention (PNC), Hassan Ayariga, has made good his intention of forming a political party following his defeat in the recent congress of the PNC in Wa in the Upper West Region.

Ayariga was defeated by veteran PNC leader, Dr Edward Mahama, who used the opportunity to stage a comeback to the political limelight.

His new party, the All People's Congress (APC), shares both logo and name with President Muhammadu Buhari's APC in Nigeria  a conglomeration of other political parties.

Ayariga is described as the Supreme Leader of the yet-to-be-launched party.

It is not known why Hassan Ayariga decided not to be ingenious with his choice of name for his party and even a logo  still the broom  which was lavishly used in a symbolic sweeping away of the Goodluck Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria. It is not clear if he wants to use the broom to sweep away the National Democratic Congress' (NDC's) rot since it's believed he's being funded by the ruling party.

The December 12, 2015 PNC congress in Wa saw Dr Edward Mahama emerge as the flagbearer of the PNC, a victory which incensed Hassan Ayariga immensely.

When Ayariga was alleged to be undertaking visits to various constituencies, many, especially his party people, suspected that he was going to unfurl something sinister.

Joy News yesterday reported that its checks suggested that Mr Ayariga had picked the necessary forms for the certification process of his APC, adding that he would be issued with a provisional certificate on Friday, January 29, 2016.

However, party national chairman, Bernard Mornah, says he was doing everything possible to bring Ayariga back. I have sent messages to our former flagbearer. I have tried to call him but he has not been able to respond to the calls and I do hope that he returns them so we can talk, Bernard Mornah told Joy Fm.

Hassan Ayariga is set to launch his own political party this week to contest in the 2016 presidential race.

Mornah insists that as far as he is concerned, there is no new political party formed by Ayariga.

I see PNC in him. As far as I am concerned, there isn't any new political party being formed; but if there is any idea or sort of forming one, I think that it is ill-advised and it is time to work together, he stated.

Hassan Ayariga gained notoriety for coughing each time Nana Akufo-Addo was making his presentation during the 2012 Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) presidential debate series.

Many PNC supporters described as embarrassing his performance on the political turf, vowing to ensure that he does not show up as the party's flagbearer. This brings to 26, the total number of political parties licensed by the Electoral Commission.

By A.R. Gomda
The NPP Parliamentary Candidate for Agona West constituency in the Central Region, Mrs. Cynthia Morrison last Sunday feasted over 500 persons with disabilities with a call on Ghanaians to respect their rights as citizens.

The disabled persons made up of the blind, deaf and physical challenged were drawn from all the communities in the Agona West Municipality and beyond were feasted at Agona Swedru.

The NPP Parliamentary candidate noted that the time has come for all hands to be on deck to assist and respects the Rights of disabled Persons. The feast which concise with her 52nd birthday saw supporters and sympathizers of the NPP and supporters of other political parties joining the celebration. The 2016 parliamentary candidate lauded the Federation of the Disabled for honouring her invitation stressing that if given the nod, she was going to better the lot of persons with disabilities.

"Its time we all come together especially of us who are aspiring for leadership positions and those who have been entrusted with political, religious and traditional position to ensure that we assist and encourages the valuables like persons with disabilities, widows widowers and the aged .

> If given the nod as Member of Parliament for Agona West constituency and Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo, we would team up to ensure the welfare of persons with disabilities and other such people in the constituency. I would like to call on members of the Ghana Federation of the Disabled to vote massively for me as your Member of Parliament for Agona West constituency and Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo as President on November 7,2016"

Mrs. Morrison was not happy that persons with disabiolity have been sidelined blaming President John Dramani Mahama led NDC government for the present plight of persons with disabilities. She record that during the NPP regime under former President John Agyekum Kuffour, enough funds were made available to better the lives of Ghanaians including the disabled persons in the society.

The Agona West constituency 1st Vice Chairman of the NPP, Mr. Tanko Toye stated that the NPP government under Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo would eradicate corruption that has engulfed the country thus making the people poorer and poorer as a results of bad governance.

"Those of us in the Agona West constituency knows the track record of Mrs. Cynthia Morrison so there is no doubt that she will recapture the seat for the NPP come November 7, 2016. I will therefore call on NDC supporters and sympathizers who are disappointed in President John Mahama and the NDC government to vote massively for Mrs. Morrison and Nana Addo to help reshape the economic situation of the country.

...It is an open secret that Ghanaians are crying for Nana Addo and the NPP to come and rescue them from their economic woes. Everything has become too expensive. People can't pay for utility bills left alone have three square meals for their families left alone pay expensive school fees The only option for now is to vote President Mahama and the NDC government out of power" Mr Tanko Toye indicated.

Mr. Kofi Asante, the Chairman of the Agona West Municipal branch of the Ghana Federation of the Disabled on behalf of the Federation lauded Mrs. Cynthia Morrison for the kind gesture.
The US Secretary of State, John Kerry has pledged American support for the Buhari administration and other governments across the world in the fight against the scourge of corruption.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kerry stated corruption complicates every single security, diplomatic, and social initiative we undertake.

We have to acknowledge in all quarters of leadership that the plagues of violent extremism, greed, lust for power, and sectarian exploitation often find their nourishment where governments are fragile and leaders are incompetent or dishonest, Kerry said in a keynote address to the forum.

It has been reported that over 50 people including government officials stole over $9billion in Nigeria.

The fact is there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more demoralizing and disempowering to any citizen of any nation than the belief the system is rigged against them and that people in positions of power are  to use a diplomatic term of art  crooks who are stealing the future of their own people; and by the way, depositing their ill-gotten gains in ostensibly legitimate financial institutions around the world, Kerry said.

The bottom line is that its everybodys responsibility to condemn and expose corruption, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to replace a culture of corruption, Kerry said.

Never forget: the impact of corruption touches everyone, he said. We all pay for it. So we have to wage this fight collectively  not reluctantly, but wholeheartedly by embracing standards that make corruption the exception, not the norm.
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Gunmen believed to be ethnic Fulani herders have killed a policeman and 19 civilians and torched homes in Nigeria's northeastern Adamawa state in a spat over grazing rights, the police said Monday.

They said it appeared to be revenge attacks following a row over destroyed crops.

"We lost a DPO (Divisional Police Officer) and 19 civilians in his area of jurisdiction when they came under attack by Fulani herdsmen in Girei district," police spokesman Othman Abubakar told AFP.

The senior police officer with his team were "responding to a distress call from the communities under attack to restore calm following an invasion by the armed herdsmen", he said.

Local media reports gave a much higher death toll of 30, including the police officer following the raids on Sunday morning.

The herders attacked the farming hamlets of Demsare, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo following a feud between some herders and farmers over destruction of farm crops, Abubakar said.

The villages are in Girei municipality, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from state capital Yola.

The raiders looted food supplies and set fire to homes before fleeing, Abubakar said. One suspect was arrested and an investigation has been launched, he added.

Adamawa is one of three states in the northeast apart from Borno and Yobe worst hit by attacks from Boko Haram Islamists whose insurgency has claimed more than 17,000 lives and displaced more than 2.6 million since 2009.

The state which borders Borno, Boko Haram's spiritual home and stronghold, has seen a drastic drop in Boko Haram attacks in recent months after sustained military campaigns against the group.

However, the raids on the four communities had nothing to do with Boko Haram insurgency, the police spokesman said.

"This is purely a communal unrest between farmers and herdsmen," he said.

Disputes between nomads and farmers over grazing and watering rights are common in northern and central Nigeria leading to frequent deadly flare-ups.

The problem has persisted despite interventions by state governments and community leaders who tried to broker truce between the two sides and ending the cycle of deadly attacks and reprisals.
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President Mahama's recent reshuffle has caused bitterness among some tribes up North with their chiefs openly expressing their displeasure and demanding answers from the presidency.

Information reaching DAILY GUIDE indicates that some loyalists and non-party residents across the Bunkpurugu constituency under the command of some displeased chiefs angrily stormed the NDC Constituency chairman's house to register their frustrations on the failure of the NDC administration to consider any Bimoba man or woman for a position in the John Mahama administration.

The President as empowered by the constitution last week made some changes in his government and among the changes, the President appointed a Mamprusi man and former PNC parliamentary candidate, Abdullai Abubakari as the Northern Regional minister designate.

The Bimobas, after hearing the announcement questioned the process and wondered why Bimobas are never appointed into government.

Speaking to DAILY GUIDE the NDC Chairman of Kpemali branch near Nakpanduri, Robert Nunifant said There are a number of issues that are of concern, but the most prioritized that we need immediate answers to include the road from Binde-Bunkpurugu and the appointment of Bimobas in governance.

According to Robert the President stated clearly during his 2012 campaign that, the road will not be in the same condition before the next election; we have also noticed with keen crosschecking that, Bimobas, since independence had never been put into any Ministerial appointment of any government, what exactly is the test, such that, Bimobas cannot pass it? He asked.

We, however, remain committed to the President's vision of changing lives and transforming Ghana and wish to assure him of our support to complete his eight (8) years in office.

The Chief of Bunkpurugu, Naa Alhaji Abuba Nasinmong told DAILY GUIDE that various Bimobas like Yandam Gbia-Laar and Dr Benson Konlan and many others were mentioned for presidential appointments but none of them materialized.

All of these names were just a few of the many potential people from the Bimoba land who can perform the same duties as others do in the various Ministries and government's offices, he lamented.

FROM Eric Kombat, Bunkpurugu


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Rebert Dwemena, acting ECG MD

Contrary to the approved 59.2 percent increase in electricity tariff by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC), consumers have been slapped with a 75 percent increase.

This is due to a directive by the PURC to Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to charge additional costs.

A group calling itself Pre-paid Demonstrators has threatened to hit the streets if the ECG does not resolve the technical challenges that have resulted in the undue charges.

In December 2015, PURC announced increases in utility tariffs, with 59.2 percent increase for electricity and 67.2 percent for water. But since then, some consumers have complained that their electricity credits run out rashly.

The group, in a statement sighted by BUSINESS GUIDE, blamed the situation on unpardonable and unrealistic technical challenges.

Consumers with the pre-paid meters are currently experiencing difficult times with many being cheated as we may put it. The situation has been blamed on technical challenges which for us is unpardonable and unrealistic because we strongly believe that while authorities announce increment in utility, it should take steps to enhance the delivery and quality of services rendered to Ghanaians, the statement signed by Kwabena Berima, Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the group said.

Pre-paid Demonstrators called on ECG to withhold the increment of electricity tariff until the technical challenge was rectified.

We also wish to call for the refund of monies consumers may have lost in view of the so-called technical challenge. We will soon hit the streets to protest against this burden on us. Any well-meaning Ghanaian affected by this should support this laudable initiative to demand accountability, equity and quality of services from our providers.

Exorbitant charges

Consumers are paying extra 5 percent for a streetlight levy and another 5 percent increase for the national electrification charge. Furthermore, consumers pay a regular monthly service fee ranging from GH6.33 to about GH60 depending on the quantum of consumption and user classification.

.

This simply means if for instance a consumer buys GH20 worth of power, which initially could last averagely for about two weeks for a regular household, it may now take less than a week.

Meanwhile, John Jinapor, Deputy Minister of Power, has admitted that some deductions were wrong and that the ECG would rectify the problem.

The system was configured to rise from the 1st of every month but they informed me that the tariff adjustment took effect on the 15th so it calibrated as if it was charging customers on the 1st. I have asked them to work on their systems and to rectify that so that we do not have a repeat of that problem, he said.

From the information ECG gave to me, they have a prepayment meter customer base of 531,014. Out of that, they have credited back to about 333,902 so they are in the process of rectifying that, the deputy minister added.

[email protected]

By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh


The Government together with the United Nations and humanitarian partners today launched the 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan for Cameroon. On the same occasion, the 2016 Regional Response Plans for Nigerian and Central African refugees were also presented.

The 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan for Cameroon aims to raise US$282 million to provide protection and assistance to 1.1 million people affected by the triple crisis in the country. The intensification of the violence that continues to plague the northeast of Nigeria, cross-border raids, and suicide bombings in Cameroon have caused the arrival of over 70,000 Nigerian refugees and forced 124,000 Cameroonians in the Far North from their homes. Moreover, the significant increase in 2015 of vulnerability to food insecurity, malnutrition, protection and epidemics were compounded by flooding and recurrent drought. The ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic also has forced thousands of refugees to flee in East, Adamaoua and North regions of Cameroon. "This plan intents to respond to the issues of mass displacement of Nigerian refugees and Cameroonians, food insecurity and malnutrition, the challenges of protecting civilians and help people better access basic services such as health, education, water, hygiene and sanitation. Girls and boys, women and men, aspire, as we all do, to have the chance at a better future, safer for themselves and for their families," said Najat Rochdi, Humanitarian Coordinator for Cameroon. In 2016, some 2.4 million people in Cameroon are food insecure. The Far North region concentrates 55 per cent of all the humanitarian needs of the country, nearly 1.5 million people. In this region, 2.2 per cent of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, exceeding the emergency threshold of 2 per cent. Mounting humanitarian need in Cameroon is the most visible consequence of the combined effects of growing insecurity, climate change and extreme poverty that have been challenging the region, noted Toby Lanzer, the Assistant Secretary General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel. The poorest families have been hit the hardest, and despite this, have shown outstanding solidarity in hosting thousands of their displaced peers. The international community must step up its - short and long-term - support and match the generosity of the people and Government of Cameroon, and ensure the stability of the region. The regional refugee response Plans for 2016 aim to mobilize $346 million for more than 476,000 Central African refugees and more than 289,000 people among the host communities in Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and also, $200 million for 230,000 Nigerian refugees and almost 285,000 vulnerable people among host communities in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. These two plans enable the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to cover priority needs for basic protection and services and improve the living conditions of refugees and host communities. "This is, on one hand, to meet the needs of vulnerable refugees, and secondly, to promote self-sufficiency. We can't achieve this without close cooperation between the asylum countries: Cameroon, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Chad, and humanitarian and development partners," said Liz Ahua, UNHCR Regional Refugee Coordinator for the Central African Republic and Nigeria.
British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, made his first visit to Kano State from 19-21 January, during which he engaged with key leaders and civil society organisations, as well as witnessing the work of the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

On Tuesday January 19, he paid a courtesy call on His Excellency the Executive Governor of Kano State, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, at Government House. The discussions were wide ranging, covering the breadth of UK involvement in Kano State and northern Nigeria, and the High Commissioner expressed his gratitude for the vital support of the Governor for the widespread DFID work in the State.

In keeping with the strong UK-Emirate relationship, on the same day the High Commissioner was treated to the great honour of a formal reception at the Palace of the Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II. The High Commissioner and the Emir discussed the Nigerian economy, DFID's development work, and the state of interfaith relations in northern Nigeria.

The High Commissioner visited two DFID programmes operating in Kano State, one supporting maternal and child care, and the other focusing on primary education. Over 200 clinics in Kano State alone benefit from DFID programme support in conjunction with the State Government. Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) is one of the DFID funded programmes in Kano supporting Kano State Government in improving access, quality of education, and efficient utilisation of Kano State resources at the state, community and school levels. The programme is currently supporting over 5,842 public pre-primary and primary schools with over 2.9m pupils in 44 LGAs with School Improvement Programme (SIP) which consists of Teaching Skill Programme (for teacher professional development, Head Teacher training), School Base Management Committee (SBMC) training, and piloted school infrastructure programme (provision of borehole water and toilets)

The High Commissioner also visited Bayero University Kano (BUK), where he was received by the Vice Chancellor who stressed the role of the UK in BUK's founding. The Vice Chancellor informed the High Commissioner of the continued importance BUK places on its links to the UK, where many of his staff are pursuing PhDs. The High Commissioner also visited the Active Citizens Project, supported by British Council, a social leadership training programme that trains participants in the skills and knowledge needed to affect social change in their communities. Active Citizens is running at universities across Nigeria and in 30 other countries.

During the visit the High Commissioner also visited the Gidan Makama museum, which holds historical records of the Kano Emirate. There was also a courtesy call on Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, Dan Masanin Kano, an elder statesman and former minister, and now chair of the Northern Elders Forum.

The High Commissioner was accompanied on his visit by staff from the Political section of the British High Commission Abuja and the DFID northern Nigeria team.
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Introduction

The supporting documents for visitors are divided into four different sections. Section 1 is documents you must submit with your application. Section 2 is documents you may submit with your application. Section 3 is documents you must submit with your application if you are applying for a specific type of visa. Section 4 is documents you must not submit with your application unless you are specifically requested to do so.

You must provide original copies of all documents and not photocopies. However, submitting all required documents will not guarantee that a visa will be issued. It is for the officer to examine your documents and assess whether on the evidence you meet the requirements.

Documents You Must Submit With Your Application

Documents you must submit with your application are a valid passport or other travel document and one passport-sized photograph. In practice, your application will normally not be accepted without them.

Documents You May Submit with your application

These are documents you may submit with your application to show that you meet the requirements for the visa. They are not mandatory. However, you are unlikely to be granted a visa if you fail to provide them. For example, you may provide financial documents to show that you have sufficient funds to maintain yourself for the duration of your stay. Though not mandatory, your failure to provide them may cause the officer to refuse your application since they will be unable to assess your ability to maintain yourself in the UK.

For example, you may provide evidence of previous travel in the form of previous passport or other travel document, financial documents in the form of bank statements, proof of earnings such as a letter from your employer showing start date of employment, salary, role, and company contact details. If your friend or relative in the UK is providing you with financial support, they must provide documents to show they have sufficient resources to support you in addition to themselves and any dependant.

If you are employed, you must provide documents of your employment including a letter from your employer on company headed paper, detailing your role, salary and length of employment. If you are a student you must provide a letter from your school on headed paper confirming your enrolment and leave of absence. If you are self-employed, you must provide registration documents of your business showing your name as the business owner and the date the business started trading.

If your reason for visiting the UK is to to undertake activities relating to your occupation or employment, you must provide documents showing what you will be doing in the UK, including any letters from inviting organisations, a letter from your employer outlining the reason for your visit, who you will be meeting and details of any payment or expenses.

Additional Requirements for Specific Types of Visas

These are documents you must submit with your application if you are applying for a specific type of visa. For example, if you are applying for private medical treatment, you must provide a letter from your doctor or consultant in the UK showing details of the condition requiring treatment or consultation, estimated costs and likely duration of treatment, and details of where the treatment or consultation will take place.

Documents You Must Not submit with your Application

These are documents you must not submit unless you are specifically requested to do so. These includes bank statements or letters issued more than 1 year before the date of your application, driving license, photographs (other than passport-sized photographs), notarial certificates, business cards, hotel bookings, flight bookings, photocopies of bank cards and credit card statements. In addition you must not submit evidence of car ownership, travel insurance, sponsors utility bills and educational certificates. If you are applying as a family or group you do not need to provide multiple copies of the same documents.

Though hotel booking is listed among the documents you must not submit with your booking, we will encourage you to submit one if you propose to stay in a hotel or other lodging facility.

Emmanuel Opoku Acheampong

Disclaimer: This article only provides general information and guidance on UK immigration law. The specific facts that apply to your matter may make the outcome different than would be anticipated by you. The writer will not accept any liability for any claims or inconvenience as a result of the use of this information. The writer is an Immigration law advisor and a practicing law attorney in Ghana. He advises on U.S., UK, and Schengen immigration law. He works part-time for Acheampong & Associates Ltd, an immigration law firm in Accra. He may be contacted on [email protected]
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The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Spain Branch, is scheduled to hold a crucial National Conference on the 30th day of January 2016, at VIC (Barcelona), Spain.

The meeting seeks to provide an opportunity for all Chapter executives to meet, network and interact with each other while promoting the need for members to come together in supporting activities that will bring the party back to power.

The executive members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) from all the chapters in Spain, will be attending the meeting with a special guest from Belgium Gant Mr. Adjei Nakansh, a council member of the Belgium New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Francis Kwesi Asamoah, a council member too from Barcelona will be at the conference national conference, to deliberate on issues on the up-coming general elections in Ghana 2016.

Please for further information: [email protected]

Kukurudu  Eshie!!!

Kukurudu  Eshie!!!

Kukurudu  Eshie Rado Rado!!!

NPP ARISE FOR CHANGE!!
25.01.2016 LISTEN

The National Youth Organiser of the Progressive Peoples Party Divine Nkrumah, says the abuse of social media is very dangerous to the stability of the country especially as we enter into the general elections.

Divine Nkrumah has called on the National Media Commission to as a matter of urgency step up their game in order to control the kind of information that is churned out into the public domain.

He was speaking to ATV news to deny the news making rounds on social media platforms that Dr. Nduom has rejected Salinko as a parliamentary candidate to run on the ticket of the PPP.

 Salinko is far better than Akua Donkor and Kwame Dzokoto, PPP have no problem with him he noted.

Website Screwlife.com has made a publication claiming that DR. Nduom founder of the Progressive Peoples Party has rejected Salinko who has filed for nomination as MP on the partys ticket. Divine Nkrumah debunked the issue as false and said it was a ploy of their political detractors to tarnish the image of the Progressive Peoples Party.

Dr. Nduom never called a press confab as was published by the website and so I dont know their source of the information they published

According to the Youth Organizer the PPP he tried to get in touch with publishers of screwlife.com but to no avail. Weve tried to contact them but even on their website they dont have an address or telephone number

He described social media as a very good tool for development but its abuse is security threat to the stability of the country.

We are in the election year and spreading rumors on social medial can be deadly. Somebody could even spread rumours of planting bomb somewhere during these times and cause fear and panic. That doesnt auger well for our stability.

Divine Nkrumah says its pathetic for Ghanaians to seem to have a problem with Salinko running for political office because of his career as a comedian.

He cited Maame Dokono, Abeiku Santana and Kwame Dzokoto as examples of comedians to run for political office.

Parliamentarians duties are not extensions of their professions, if Salinko is what the people want then so be it. The PPP dont have any problem with Salinkos candidature. Even Akua Donkor that people think is not serious is vying for presidency

He called on media Commission to ensure that the media practitioners exercise professionalism in their reportage. Salinko the comedian in real life is known as Abraham Davies. He is campaigning on the ticket of the PPP as parliamentary candidate for Atwima Kwanwoma constituency in the Ashanti Region.
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Over 10 billion Ghana Cedis has been allocated to the social sector to consolidate progress on pro-poor initiatives in 2016. The effectiveness of this planned spending, however, hinges on two things. Firstly, proper targeting and capability of initiatives to shield poor segments of the population from the harsh repercussions of fiscal interventions and economically transition them to productive employment. Secondly, the sustainability of these initiatives. [1]

The main driver for the leap in the 2016 budgetary allocation for the social sector is compensation which went up by 4.7% (close to GHS 300m) compared to the 2015 allocation. Further, goods and services from government funds decreased by 74% (about GHS 78m) partly because government expended more in the previous budget. Capital expenditure in the sector is to be funded through retained internally generated funds (IGF) and grants. In a nutshell, the 2016 budget is not different from previous budgets except noticeable reduction in government spending on goods and services and significant retention in IGFs.

Fig. 1Allocations to Social Sector 2016Source: 2016 Budget StatementBut what is the state of key programs and projects that the budget seeks to fund?

The LEAP (Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty) program, which seeks to provide a safety net for the poorest and most marginalized groups comprising 3.7 million of the country's population[2],, is having challenges with implementation yet government plans to scale it up to 250,000 beneficiary households in 2016 and strengthen the institutional arrangements for social protection afterwards.[3] This is a classic case of putting the wagon before the wheel. The program, launched in 2008 with a coverage of over 71,000 households as of June 2013, is facing unsteady flow of cash transfers to beneficiaries, poor household consumption and utilization of health services. These have to be fixed before expansionary measures are taken and also, for the program to truly deliver on its outcomes.[4]

A recent study by the African Development Program revealed that 80% of LEAP beneficiaries do not know the amount due them whilst 85% are not aware of the number of times they should receive transfer. The study further showed that some beneficiaries were not aware that being on LEAP grants them the opportunity to be automatic members of the NHIS, hence these beneficiaries use their transfers to access healthcare leaving little for consumption on other necessities. [5]

Though government increased cash grants from GHS 36 to GHS 44, the health of the economy also matters for it has a bearing on the impact of LEAP. Further worsening of economic conditions will trigger a spurt in cost of living reducing the purchasing power of LEAP beneficiaries. This will eventually defeat the goal of the program, which is, poverty reduction. Besides these challenges, the extension of the program to cover over 400 lepers and 751 persons in witch camps is worth commending.

Government is also investing heavily in infrastructure in the health sector. The University of Ghana Teaching, Ridge and Upper West Regional Hospitals are beyond 50 percent complete whilst district hospitals in Takoradi, Fomena, Kumawu and Abetifi are still at their initial stages.[6] An allocation of GHS 33m from the annual budget funding amount (ABFA), derived from oil proceeds, was also made to the sector.

Investment in primary healthcare interventions is also important. The country loses GHS 2.7b to malaria (US$735m)[7], GHS 420m (US$110m) to poor sanitation[8], and 1.6% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to vehicular accidents.[9] It will cost less to reduce these gruesome statistics by simply promoting community hygiene and sanitation, enforcing road regulations and reengineering our cities especially drainage and waste systems.

In the Education sector, government has started the progressively free secondary education programme at Ekumfi Otuam in the Central region. Three of the 200 community day senior high schools have been completed at Otuam, Bamianko and Nkwanta. Government also awarded capitation grant to 438,000 candidates who wrote their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) exams this year.

The sad reality is that we are putting so many children into school but we are not educating them. It is frustrating to see all these outputs not translating into the desired outcome of quality education delivery to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country. The Northern Regional Director of Eucation, Paul Apanga described Ghana's educational system as quantity producing, not quality. The basis for his description is that when about 80 to 120 pupils were assigned to a teacher in a classroom, there would be no quality education[10]

In a reaction to OECD's (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) global rankings on Maths and Science education in which Ghana ranked 76th out of 76 countries, Anis Haffar, an Educationist, said, I've taught outside the country and I can tell to the quality of teaching in Ghana; even the environment in which learning takes place; I mean look at our schools here, we don't even have toilets; we don't have water flush toilets; we don't even have facilities for girls.

In other words, what these gentlemen are saying is that an educational system built on a weak foundation saturated with teacher absenteeism, inadequate textbooks and writing tools, poor student motivation, congested classrooms and of course, absence of toilet facilities, is indeed a terrible system.

In conclusion, there are too many loose ends in the social sector for the 2016 budget to tie. To dissuade public thinking that the attempt to scale up the numerical coverage of programs such as LEAP is to boost electoral fortunes and garner slush funds, government has to fix the gaps inherent in the implementation of said programs. On LEAP, we have ensure timely release of funds to beneficiaries, monitor and evaluate spending of grants to identify areas of high expenditure and examine if it is on the path to poverty reduction.

On Education and Health, we have to sustain spending on the basics. The foundations of these sectors are quite weak. Lip service at the creche and kindergarten levels explains the disaster at the subsequent levels of Education. We can spend less to achieve more in our educational system. We have a lot to learn from Finland, a country that spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States[11] and still rank tops in OECD's global ranking in math and science.

How much does it cost to enforce bye laws on community sanitation compared to morbidity, mortality and treatment of filth induced diseases such as cholera and malaria? Far less. We have to strictly enforce existing laws on community health and continue investing on public sensitization workshops.

Finally, we have to pay attention to the countless monitoring and evaluation reports highlighting bottlenecks in the implementation of pro-poor initiatives. The stability of these interventions guarantees their sustainability and lasting impact on lives. We should not allow politics to get in the way of pro-poor policies.

Ernest Armah is the Head of Programs and Social Policy Research at IMANI. Contact: [email protected]

References

Abbey, C.O., Odonkor, E. and Boateng, D. (2014). A Beneficiary Assessment of Ghana's Cash Transfer Programme (LEAP) in May 2014. Accra  Ghana.

Citifmonline. (2015). Accident cost Ghana 1.6% of GDP - Road Safety Commission. Retrieved from http://citifmonline.com/2015/08/31/accidents-cost-ghana-1-6-of-gdp-road-safety-commission/

Essabra-Mensah, E. (2015). Malaria costs economy over US$735m annually. B&FT Online. Retrieved from http://thebftonline.com/business/economy/16236/malaria-costs-economy-over-us735m-annually.html

Hancock L. (2011). Why are Finland's schools successful? Smithsonian magazine. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?c=y%3Fno-ist

IMANI. Ghana's education producing 'quantity,' not 'quality' - Education Director. Retrieved from http://imanighana.com/must-read-ghanas-education-producing-quantity-not-quality-education-director/

Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. (2015). National Budget Statement 2016. Accra

Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. The Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) Program - Reducing Poverty and Promoting Growth in Ghana. Accra

Myjoyonline. (2015). We don't take education seriously in Ghana - Anis Haffar laments. Retrieved from http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/We-don-t-take-education-seriously-in-Ghana-Anis-Haffar-laments-358022

Park M, Handa S, Osei-Akoto I, Osei Darko R, Diadone S & Davis B. (2013). Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty Program Impact Evaluation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Price Waterhouse Coopers. (2014). 2015 Budget Highlights. Accra

Water and Sanitation Program. (2012). Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa. Accra.

[1] PWC. 2015 Budget Highlights - Commentary.

[2] LEAP Briefing Paper. http://www.unicef.org/ghana/gh_resources_LEAP_briefing_paper.pdf

[3] Key Highlights of the 2016 Budget

[4] LEAP Impact Evaluation. October 2013

[5] LEAP-Monitoring-Beneficiary-Assessment_May-2014.pdf

[6] National Budget Statement 2016

[7]Malaria Costs to Economy http://thebftonline.com/business/economy/16236/malaria-costs-economy-over-us735m-annually.html

[8]Economic Impacts of Poor Sanitation in Africa. http://www.zaragoza.es/contenidos/medioambiente/onu/825-eng-v5.pdf

[9] Accident cost Ghana 1.6% of GDP - RSC. http://citifmonline.com/2015/08/31/accidents-cost-ghana-1-6-of-gdp-road-safety-commission/

[10]

[11]Why Are Finland's schools successful? http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?c=y%3Fno-ist
Financial analyst and anti-corruption crusader, Sydney Casely-Hayford, has argued for the total removal of the regional minister role, claiming their functions have become obsolete.

He made these remarks while commenting on the recent presidential reshuffle which saw new ministers assigned to the Ashanti, Central and Northern Regions, among others.

When you read all the various changes and things that you have done, the biggest changes that have come up are the ones to do with regional ministers and deputy regional minsters, he noted on Citi FMs news analysis programme, The Big Issue.

What do regional ministers do in this country apart from ceremonial things? There is no need to have a regional minister, They dont do anything. Mr Casely-Hayford claimed.

He went on to highlight what he believes are problems with the administration of regions and constituencies in Ghana, citing a disconnect between the running of the two.

We have a peculiar problem in this country, he stated. The regional administrations are very different from your constituency administration unit.

So you have certain places that are not represented under the district administration because we have this ridiculous thing where you have 275 people in parliament and then you have about 230 odd people who are supposed to be administrative representatives.

According to him, the solution to this problem will be to have all the District Chief Executives (DCEs) in one region coming together to elect one person to represent them.

The way to solve this problem is to have the equal number of districts represented up to your municipality or up to your metropolitan assembly, he explained

Out of all your district chief executives, they need to come together and elect one person

Still commenting on the presidential reshuffle, the anti-corruption campaigner said the president owed it to citizens to give his reasons for moving minsters around.

I say, despite the fact that the president has the constitutional mandate to hire and fire at will, the president owes us the obligation to tell us why he is changing people and moving them around.

Mr Casely-Hayford intimated that common sense should guide the president to explain his reasons despite the constitution not requiring him to do so.

You might have a written down constitution. It doesnt mean that your common sense shouldnt tell you that it will good governance if I let the people know why I am doing what I am doing.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Alex Segbefia

Officials of the Health Ministry and the Ghana Health Service today [Monday] had a tough time explaining to members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) circumstances under which over a million Ghana cedis was used to buy condoms to control the spread of HIV-AIDS.

The Committee members did not see why the Ghana Health Service and the Health Ministry paid such a huge amount for what they described as people's pleasures.

I want to be educated because I wonder why a huge sum of 1, 450,000 will be spent on male condoms as if we are sponsoring people's pleasures etc. 14 billion old Ghana cedis, why should such an expenditure be part of your budget. It's a huge amazement to me.

I want to find out if this expenditure has decreased or increased since 2011.

I am very very curious in coming into terms with it because I don't understand why the state should pay 14 billion old Ghana cedis to buy condoms, the Chairman of PAC, Kweku Agyemang said. Officials of the Health Ministry sought to explain that the GHC 1 million was not from the coffers of government but from global fund. But the PAC Chairman was dissatisfied with the explanation, saying the education from the Ministry was not sufficient.

I think your education is not very very adequate. It's for control of AIDS programme, do you supply to AIDS patient free or they buy? the Chairman queried.

The Chief Director of the Ministry in response said : It is free. We give to everybody. It is to prevent people from getting HIV AIDS.

The same Ministry was in hot waters on Friday when it appeared before PAC to answer questions surrounding the purchase of some vehicles for the Ministry. PAC reprimanded Health Minister, Alex Segbefia for his inability to recoup over GHC 37,000 from the sale of a vehicle belonging to the Ministry.

Source: Citifmonline


25.01.2016 LISTEN

A Former Attorney General, Martin Amidu is praying the Supreme Court to throw out a suit by one Abdulai Yusif Fanash Muhammed who is seeking to quash an earlier decision by the apex court which ruled that business man Alfred Woyome should pay up the GHc51 million cedis he owes the state.

Abdulai Yusif Fanash Muhammed, a Hohoe resident sued Martin Amidu, the Attorney General and Mr Woyome claiming the Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction to rule over the matter.

Mr Muhammed wants a Declaration that the financial engineering claims by Alfred Agbesi Woyome arising out of the tender bid by Vamed Engineering GmbH/Waterville Holdings during the procurement process from June 2005 until its wrongful abrogation in August 2005 is not an international business transaction within the meaning of Article 181 of the Constitution, 1992.

President John Mahama, at a recent meeting with some journalists, said Abdulai Muhammed's action literally prevented government from taking the money from Mr Woyome.

But Martin Amidu has described the latest suit as a smoke screen to prevent Mr. Woyome from paying the money, and asked the court to disregard it.

The commencement of this incompetent action by the Plaintiff/Respondent on 22 December 2015 provided the 1st Defendant through His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama the shameless cover behind which to tell the public (for whose benefit the judgment debt in Amidu (No 3) (supra) was given and ordered on 29 July 2014 inures) on 12 January 2016 at a media encounter broadcast to the whole world that the 1st Defendant was unable to execute the ruling and orders in the said Amidu (No 3) because of this pending action: the 2nd Defendant on his part used it as a cover to purport to apply to this Court for a suspension of the ruling and orders in Amidu (No 3) (supra) pending the hearing and disposal of this incompetent action as a means of buying time to prevent the 3rd Defendant/Applicant from bringing any action against him for disobedience to the orders of this Court under Article 2 of the 1992 Constitution.

I believe that the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ and Statement of Case are frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the process of this Court for lack of locus standi and/or any cause of action vested in the Plaintiff/Respondent against the 3rd Defendant/Applicant or any of the Defendants pursuant to Articles 2(1)(b) and 130(1)(a), and Rule 45 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (CI 16) to warrant the invocation of the original jurisdiction of this Court, he added.

Full writ from the former Attorney General is below

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF JUDICATURE

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE

ACCRA  AD 2015

SUIT NO J1/2/2016

BETWEEN:

ABDULAI YUSIF FANASH MUHAMMED

BL 1- L166, ZONGO, HOHOE PLAINTIFF/RESPONDENT

AND

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE 1ST DEFENDANT

MINISTERIES

ACCRA

ALFRED AGBESI WOYOME

HOUSE NO. 327/7 2ND DEFENDANT

COMCAN CRESCENT, KOKOMLEMLE

.

ACCRA

MARTIN ALAMISI AMIDU

PLOT NO 355 NORTH LEGON 3RD DEFENDANT/APPLICANT

RESIDENTIAL AREA, ACCRA

AFFIDAVIT OF MARTIN ALAMISI AMIDU THE 3RD DEFENDANT/APPLICANT IN SUPPORT OF THE APPLICATION HEREIN

I, Martin Alamisi Amidu of Plot No 355 North Legon Residential Area, Accra, make oath and say as follows:

I am the 3rd Defendant/Applicant and deponent herin.

The Plaintiff/Respondent herein on 22nd December 2015 commenced this action invoking the original jurisdiction of this Court against me as the 3rd Defendant claiming the following reliefs:

1. A declaration that the financial engineering claims by Alfred Agbesi Woyome arising out of the tender bid by Vamed Engineering GmbH/Waterville Holdings during the procurement process from June 2005 until its wrongful abrogation in August 2005 is not an international business transaction within the meaning of article 181 of the Constitution, 1992.

2 A declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of article 2(1), article 130 and article 181 of the Constitution, 1992 the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to pronounce on the financial engineering claims between a citizen of Ghana and the Government of Ghana which does not fall within the ambit or purview of article 181.

3 A declaration that the review decision of the Supreme Court in Suit No. J7/10/2013 intituled (sic) Martin Alamisi Amidu v The Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Limited and Alfred Agbesi Woyome dated 29th July 2014 is wrong in law for excess of jurisdiction as same was obtained in violation of the Constitution, 1992.

4 A declaration that the consequential orders in Suit No. J7/10/2013 intituled (sic) Martin Alamisi v The Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Limited and Alfred Agbesi Woyome dated 29th July 2014 given in the review decision by the same Court are wrong in law, null and void ab initio and accordingly ought to be set aside in exercise of the powers of this Honourable Court to set aside its own void judgments.

I was served with the Writ of Summons and the Plaintiff's Statement of Case on 6th January 2016 and I filed my Statement of 3rd Defendant's Case on 18th January 2016 in response thereto.

A casual reading of the four reliefs endorsed on the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ of Summons purporting to invoke the original jurisdiction of this Court leaves one in no doubt that none of those reliefs raises any issue of interpretation or enforcement of the Constitution to cloth the Plaintiff/Respondent in this action with any locus standi to commence this action under Articles 2(1), and 130 of the 1992 Constitution  See the analogical reasoning and binding force of this Court's ruling in Adjei-Ampofo v Attorney-General [2003-2004] SCGLR 1.

The 1st relief endorsed on the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ of Summons is in substance and in form seeking an advisory opinion of this Court and also to reargue an issue which was in dispute between the then Plaintiff ( now the 3rd Defendant/Applicant herein) and the then 3rd Defendant (Alfred Agbesi Woyome referred to in the endorsement and now the 2nd Defendant herein) before the ordinary bench of this Court in the case of Amidu (No 1) v Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Ltd & Woyome (No 1) [2013-2014] 1 SCGLR 112 and which was conclusively determined in the review ruling of this Court in Amidu (No 3) v Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Ltd & Woyome (No 2) [2013-2014] 1 SCGLR 606.

The reference in the 1st relief endorsed on the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ of Summons to Alfred Agbesi Woyome without indicating that the said Afred Agbesi Woyome is the same person as the 2nd Defendant herein shows that in substance and in form this action of the Plaintiff/Respondent is only a camouflage and intended to give the 1st Defendant, and particularly, the 2nd Defendant herein another opportunity to reopen and reargue the review decision of this Court in Amidu (No 3) (supra) the subject matter of the Plaintiff/Respondent's 3rd and 4th reliefs endorsed on his Writ of Summons as quoted supra.

The 2nd relief endorsed on the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ is also in substance and in form asking not for interpretation and/ or enforcement of the 1992 Constitution as mandated under Articles 2 and 130 thereof but for an advisory opinion of this Court on the extent of its jurisdiction on Article 181of the Constitution as the reliefs 6, 7, 10, 13 and 14 claimed, endorsed on the Writ, and quoted by the Court in Amidu (No 1) (supra) and Amidu (3) (supra) show that the restitutionary claims on the international business or economic transaction were made by the 2nd Defendant herein (then as the 3rd Defendant), a Ghanaian citizen, jointly with Austro-Invest Management Ltd (a foreign registered and resident company subsequently liquidated abroad on 26 July 2011).

The pith of the plaintiff/Respondent's action is the 3rd relief endorsed on the Writ of Summons invoking the original jurisdiction of this Court and challenging the jurisdiction of this Court for reviewing its own decision in Amidu (No 3) (supra) as though this Court did not consider the question of its jurisdiction before admitting, deciding and granting the review application. The 3rd relief endorsed on the Writ of Summons states that:

3. A declaration that the review decision of the Supreme Court in Suit No.J7/10/2013 instituled (sic) Martin Alamisi Amidu v The Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Limited and Alfred Agbesi Woyome dated 29th July 2014 is wrong in law for excess of jurisdiction as same was obtained in violation of the Constitution, 1992. (Emphasis supplied).

It is clear from the foregoing that the Plaintiff/Respondent does not seek an interpretation or enforcement of any provision of the Constitution pursuant to Article 2(1)(b) and 130 thereof but as stated in the 4th relief endorsed on the Writ, for the simple and erroneous reason that the consequential orders dated 29th July 2014 given in the review decision by the same court are wrong in law, null and void ab initio and accordingly ought to be set aside in the exercise of the powers of this Honourable Court to set aside its own void judgments. (Emphasis supplied).

I am of the firm belief that the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ of Summons and Statement of Case disclose no locus standi or cause of action vested in him against me or any of the defendants herein under the original jurisdiction of this Court.

The averments contained in the Plaintiff/Respondent's Statement of Case provide no basis for invoking the original jurisdiction of this Court.

Commonsense should have warned the Plaintiff/Respondent that an ordinary bench of this court hearing his Writ of Summons and Statement of Case will have no jurisdiction to declare the ruling of the review bench in Amidu (No 3) v Attorney General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Ltd & Woyome (No 2) [2013-2014] 1 SCGLR 606 null and void or in any other manner attempt to review same under the smokescreen of exercising any original jurisdiction in this action.

The Plaintiff/Respondent was warned or ought to have been warned by this Court's decision in Okudzeto Ablakwa (No 3) & Another v Attorney-General & Obetsebi-Lamptey (No 3) [2013-2014] 1 SCGLR 16 at page 21 in which this Court decided that while it may depart from its own previous decision in terms of Article 129(3) of the Constitution, until it had done so it would be incorrect to argue that the Supreme Court is in error in following its own previous and unchallenged decision and an applicant would face a difficulty in persuading this court that there was fundamental error in the judgment., when the alleged error is based on the court following its own previous judgment such as Hanna Assi (No 2) v Gihoc Refrigeration & Household Products Ltd (No 2) [2007-2008] SCGLR 16 in Amidu (No 3.

The Plaintiff/Respondent knew that the 2nd Defendant and any other interest for whose benefit he purported to have initiated this incompetent action did not and could not have applied for a review of this Court's binding review ruling in Amidu (No 3) almost one and half years after the decision because they were cognizant of the fact that there was no right under the Constitution to have same reviewed or directly varied by any other Court under the Constitution and the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (CI 16) for any reason whatsoever and that cannot be circumvented by this incompetent action of the Plaintiff/Respondent.

I am of the sincere belief from the conduct of the 1st and the 2nd Defendants, in unconstitutionally creating the judgment debt giving rise to and determined in Amidu (No 3) and the subsequent conduct, actions and public pronouncements of the 1st and 2nd Defendants, particularly since the commencement of this action, that the Plaintiff/Applicant who resides in Hohoe in the Volta Region with his firm of lawyers in Kumasi is just a smokescreen behind whom the 1st and 2nd Defendants together with other interests (responsible for a mysterious document of over 400 pages referred to and quoted variously in the Statement of Case of the Plaintiff/Respondent as the Attachment without being exhibited) are deliberately seeking to have a second bite at the cherry, to continue to delay, and justify the non-execution and payment of the judgment debt ordered by this Court in Amidu (No 3) more than one and half years ago.

The commencement of this incompetent action by the Plaintiff/Respondent on 22 December 2015 provided the 1st Defendant through His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama the shameless cover behind which to tell the public (for whose benefit the judgment debt in Amidu (No 3) (supra) was given and ordered on 29 July 2014 inures) on 12 January 2016 at a media encounter broadcast to the whole world that the 1st Defendant was unable to execute the ruling and orders in the said Amidu (No 3) because of this pending action: the 2nd Defendant on his part used it as a cover to purport to apply to this Court for a suspension of the ruling and orders in Amidu (No 3) (supra) pending the hearing and disposal of this incompetent action as a means of buying time to prevent the 3rd Defendant/Applicant from bringing any action against him for disobedience to the orders of this Court under Article 2 of the 1992 Constitution.

I believe that the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ and Statement of Case are frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the process of this Court for lack of locus standi and/or any cause of action vested in the Plaintiff/Respondent against the 3rd Defendant/Applicant or any of the Defendants pursuant to Articles 2(1)(b) and 130(1)(a), and Rule 45 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (CI 16) to warrant the invocation of the original jurisdiction of this Court.

It is my firm conviction that this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ and Statement of Case or in any other manner declare the binding decision of this Court in Amidu (No 3) v Attorney-General, Waterville Holding (BVI) Ltd & Woyome (No 2) [2013-2014] 1 SCGLR 606 null and void for lack of or excess of jurisdiction.

In addition to the foregoing I have raised preliminary legal objections in my said Statement of the 3rd Defendant's Case filed in this Court which also contains detailed submissions on law on the preliminary legal objections upon which I intend to rely at the hearing of this application.

I accordingly pray this Court to dismiss the Plaintiff/Respondent's Writ and Statement of Case in limine with punitive costs in favour of the 3rd Defendant/Applicant on the foregoing grounds and also on the ground that this action is without any merit whatsoever under the 1992 Constitution and Rule 45 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (CI 16).

WHEREFORE I swear to this affidavit in in support of my application raising preliminary legal objection to the jurisdiction of this Court in this action.

SWORN at Accra this 

day of January, 2016 .

(DEPONENT)

BEFORE ME

COMMISSIONER FOR OATHS


Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

25.01.2016 LISTEN

Farmers at Ejura Sekyedumase in the Ashanti Region, one of the major food baskets in the country, have complained bitterly about their inability to secure subsidized fertilisers for their farms.

The farmers say the fertiliser subsidy policy, which was introduced by the New Patriotic Party administration under President John Agyekum Kufuor, has for several years now been rendered ineffective, resulting in difficulty in acquiring some of the products.

In situations where the products are made available, they are sold at exceedingly higher prices, whilst in some cases they are given to them during off-seasons, thus making it unprofitable to the farmers. The farmers said the situation has resulted in lower yields in products such as cocoa, maize, beans and other cereals produced locally in the community.

The farmers made the appeal when the flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, together with his running mate, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, as well as other party bigwigs, visited the area to interact with them.

The Ejura Sekyedumase constituency, predominantly noted for its robust farming activities, used to be a stronghold of the ruling NDC, until the 2012 elections when the NPP snatched the seat from them.

The opposition party, in their bid to hold on to the seat, has intensified its campaign in the area, with the running mate, Dr. Bawumia, frequently visiting the constituency to join hands with the MP, Mohammed Salisu Bamba.

Nana Addo assured the farmers that the NPP administration would restore efficiency in the fertiliser subsidy programme and also create the enabling environment for businesses to thrive. The NPP presidential candidate further pledged that his administration would promote industrialization in the agriculture sector and enhance the market value of their produce.

He said the NPP under former President Kufuor had done it before, stressing that the next NPP government would make farming a lucrative and profitable venture in the country.

KINGLY RIDE IN KUMASI

Meanwhile, what was expected to be a simple donation and sympathetic visit to the Kumasi Central Market by the NPP leader to console victims of the recent fire outbreak turned out to be a mini rally, after scores of supporters ambushed the NPP flagbearer and his entourage that visited the market.

Nana Akufo Addo brought business activities at the main market to a standstill on Friday, as market women and traders took over the major streets to welcome the NPP leader to the market.

The NPP flagbearer also received similar mammoth welcome at Dagomba Line in the Oforikrom Constituency, when he visited the area to console with head porters, popularly known as Kayayes, whose structures were also razed down by fire few weeks ago.

Nana Akufo Addo, on behalf of the party, made separate donations to victims of the fire incidents and pledged his readiness to support and improve their lives when elected in the November 7 elections.

He was accompanied by party bigwigs including Freddie Blay, Acting NPP National Chairman; John Boadu, Acting NPP General Secretary; Otiko Afisa Djaba, NPP National Womens Organiser; Ashanti Regional NPP Chairman, Bernard Antwi Boasiako; Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, former presidential aspirant and former Minister of Trade and PSIs under President Kufuor; Francis Addai Nimo, former presidential aspirant and MP for Mampong; Stephen Asamoah Boateng, former presidential aspirant and former Minister of Information; Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, MP for Kwadaso; Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, MP for Tafo and Patricia Appiagyei.

From Issah Alhassan, Kumasi
Last week Friday, this paper reported that a Tarkwa-Prestea-based alleged galamsey operator had dragged Golden Star Wassa Limited (GSWL), a mining conglomerate operating in the Tarkwa District, to court for allegedly refusing to pay an amount of US$1.6 million, being the cost of gold tailings supplied to it.

Paul Willisey Company Limited is praying the court to recover the US$1.6 million and interest on the money from November 20, 2015 to date, and any other cost the court deems payable.

The mining giant, on July 1, 2014, reportedly entered into a business agreement with Paul Willisey Company Limited to supply it with 626 trucks of gold tailings, estimated at a cost of US$1.6 million, for its operations.

Gold tailing, per mining terms, is the sand that has already been processed by illegal miners or galamsey operators to extract the precious mineral. Investigations conducted by The Chronicle indicate that Paul Willisey Company Limited was to supply the mining giant gold tailings by truck, with a minimum cut-off grade of 4.00g/t at its operational site.

According to the agreement, a copy of which is in the possession of The Chronicle, 'the Mine Geology and Mettallurgy team of GSWL shall conduct a comprehensive deep auger drilling and regolith mapping on the gold tailings to establish the true source and average grade before it is accepted.'

The mining giant shall not accept any tailing that does not meet the minimum cut-off grade of 4.00g/t, the paper gathered. Also, 'the mine Geology team of Golden Star shall also confirm or deny any tailing brought to its operational site if the actual grade has been diluted.'

To cut a long story short, Paul Willisey has gone to court because Golden Star, after accepting the products, is dragging its feet on payment. A couple of months ago, Okogyeman Kwaku Gyamprah III, Omanhene (Paramount Chief) of Chirano in the Western Region, accused multi-national mining companies operating in Ghana of promoting pollution of water bodies and degradation of forest lands through illegal mining operations.

According to the Chief, whose story was carried as a front page banner by The Chronicle, though these mining giants were not directly involved in illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey, they benefit from it through the buying of gold tailings from the galamsey operators.

It is believed that because the galamsey operators are not using sophisticated machines, they are unable to extract all the gold from the sand. The mining giants, therefore, go in to buy the leftovers and reprocess them to extract more gold.

But when The Chronicle published the Omanhene's accusation, the Chamber of Mines through its Public Relations Department came out strongly to deny that mining companies were buying gold tailings. The cat is, however, out of the bag, now that it has been confirmed that Golden Star is deeply involved in the 'crime.'

On Saturday last week, The Ghanaian Times quoted officials of Ghana Water Company Limited as having complained bitterly about the pollution of the Pra River through illegal mining activities, resulting in the reduction of water supply to the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis.

The galamsey operations have put the entire nation in danger, yet a properly registered mining company with huge international reputations is indirectly promoting the pollution of our water bodies, destruction of our forest cover and the environment as a whole, with careless abandon.

The Chronicle does not believe the license granted to Golden Star Resources by the Minerals Commission permits the Canadian-owned company to buy tailings from galamsey operators, yet this is what the company was secretly doing until the expose by The Chronicle.

We are, therefore, calling on the Ministries of Environment, Science and Technology and that of Land and Natural Resources to investigate Golden Star, and if found culpable, punished according to the laws of the land. Buying tailings from illegal miners is certainly an abominable act which must not go unpunished. The Chronicle will keenly follow this story to see how officialdom would be handling it.
Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Kaoru Yoshimura

25.01.2016 LISTEN

The Japan Embassy in Accra has released US$357,000.00 as grant to three assemblies and one charity organization in the country.

The beneficiary assemblies are; Tamale Metropolitan Assembly which received US$89,500 for the construction of school at Datoyili, Sekyere Afram plains District Assembly, which had US$89,395 for the construction of Health Centre at Hamid and Kintampo Municipal Assembly which also had US$89,283 for the construction of Community Based-Health Planning and Service (CHPS).

The embassy also gave out US$89,091 for expansion project of a Community Centre for Women and Children (GGHSP) at James Town, a suburb of Accra. The grant agreement was signed between the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Kaoru Yoshimura and the four institutions in Accra recently.

The ambassador indicated that the amount was funded from the Japan Grant for Grassroots Human Security Project (GGHSP) scheme to support health, education, agriculture, public welfare, human security, basic infrastructure, capacity building and empowerment.

He said since GGHSP scheme inception in 1989, it has supported over 250 projects across the length and breadth of Ghana. However, the US$357,000 was purposed for development projects in the health and educational sectors.

I am confident that the hard work invested into this venture will go a long to improve the public welfare, health and educational status in these respective communities and environs, and also benefit generations to come, he stated. The Chief Executive of the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, Hanan Gundaadow thanked the ambassador for the immense support of providing decent education environment for the children of Datoyili.

I also wish to assure him that, all the resources shall be put to good use and the people will be the ultimate beneficiaries. Chief Executive of Kintampo Municipal Assembly, Justice Baffoe, on his part, thanked the embassy for the support, as nurses and other health professionals sit under trees to render invaluable services to the people of Kodeda No. II.

The Sekyere Aram Plains District Chief Executive, Donkor Fuseini also expressed his appreciation for the support, saying that though the area had over 40,000 population, mainly farmers, it cannot boast of a single hospital catering for their health needs. As a result, residents of the area have to travel to other sister districts before they can access health care which is a bother to the people.

He was grateful that the grant would go a long way to provide decent CHPS compound for people in the area, pledging that the fund would serve the purpose it was meant for.

Paul Semeh, Founder/Executive Director of GGHSP thanked the ambassador and also promised that the grant would be used strictly for the expansion project it was meant for.

By Bernice Bessey
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) has been directed to put on hold, renewal of all expired or expiring contracts pending thorough evaluation.

Brigadier General I. B. Quartey (Retired), the Board Chairman, said the move was to ensure that the Authority took on some of the jobs that could be performed by its own staff instead of giving these out to third parties. Flowing from this, he announced that, 128 additional personnel  mostly technicians were going to be employed.

This comes amid steps by the government to grant operational autonomy and wean the DVLA and other agencies that are doing well financially off its support. Brig-Gen Quartey, addressing the opening session of a two-day workshop at Fumesua near Kumasi, said it needed to adopt a proactive approach to its operations to remain in business.

If we have to survive  to be able to pay ourselves, meet other capital and administrative expenditure, then we need to change the face of the DVLA. The workshop, attended by national, regional and district officers from across the country is discussing the Authority's 2016 work plan and budget.Changing the face of DVLA towards self-sustenance and reliability of service was the theme.

Brig-Gen Quartey called for complete elimination from its system, corrupt practices and middlemen, popularly referred to as 'goro boys', to rake in more revenue without compromising safety. He told the workers to adopt new work ethics to regain public confidence and warned of swift and decisive action against acts of indiscipline.

Mr. John Noble Appiah, the Chief Executive Officer, underlined its determination to invest in the human resource and technical operations to deliver quality services to the public. He vowed to wage war on corrupt practices and encouraged the regional and district managers to show strong leadership to achieve desired results.

Source: GNA
The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin, has said a report published by some newspapers, which suggested that the British government has said Ghanas register of voters is bloated by 10 per cent is false.

The report said: "The British Government has acknowledged that Ghana's controversial voters' register is bloated by, at least, 10 per cent."

The reports cited a copy of a letter it said emanated from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, addressed to some concerned Ghanaians, who petitioned Prime Minister David Cameron, indicating that: "We are fully aware of the concerns regarding the electoral register. We note that the average population percentage in Ghana of those eligible to vote is approximately 52%, which is 10% higher than continental average."

The reports also said the correspondence, which bore the signature of Vicki Morley, Desk Officer for Ghana, said the British High Commission in Accra also stated that: "We stand ready to assist the Electoral Commission in ensuring that concerns can be addressed."

An official statement from the commission has condemned the newspapaer indicating that, "Ghanas voter register is a domestic issue for Ghanas Electoral Commission to consider with political parties"

The statement which was released on Jan 25 also said that Britain will not interfere with the political processes in the country adding that , "we (Britain) will remain entirely neutral and happily work with any democratically elected government.

In a reply to the authenticity of the reportage through a tweet, the UK High Commissioner earlier indicated that : "This is yet more inaccurate reporting. The voters' register is a purely Ghanaian domestic issue."

The issue of the register of voters has been a hotly debated topic as Ghana's biggest opposition, New Patriotic Party (NPP), has requested for the compilation of a fresh register ahead of the 2016 elections due to some 76,000 individuals the party identified as Togolese nationals in the register.

But the Chairperson of the Electoral Commissioner (EC) has indicated that the country will not adopt a new voter roll after a committee constituted to investigate the claims of foreigners on the register advised against the move.

We are disappointed that certain media outlets continue to report inaccurately the British Governments views, and have wilfully misrepresented what we have said. Ghanas voter register is a domestic issue for Ghanas Electoral Commission to consider with political parties. There has been a full and public debate on the current register and the Electoral Commission recently published a report on this.

The British Government is clear that the forthcoming elections in Ghana are a sovereign, domestic Ghanaian issue. We will remain entirely neutral and happily work with any democratically elected government.

Below is the full statement by the commission:

We are disappointed that certain media outlets continue to report inaccurately the British Governments views, and have wilfully misrepresented what we have said. Ghanas voter register is a domestic issue for Ghanas Electoral Commission to consider with political parties. There has been a full and public debate on the current register and the Electoral Commission recently published a report on this.

The British Government is clear that the forthcoming elections in Ghana are a sovereign, domestic Ghanaian issue. We will remain entirely neutral and happily work with any democratically elected government.
Savelugu (N/R), Jan. 25, GNA - Residents of Savelugu and its surrounding communities in the Northern Region, have received their share of Vodafone Ghana Foundation's free medical screening, as part of the company's efforts to keep the citizenry healthy.

The screening exercise dubbed: 'Healthfest,' has so far visited communities including Alajo, Ashaiman, Glefe, Accra New Town, Tema New Town, La, Nungua, Teshie, in the Greater Accra Region, Sogakope, Betom in the Volta Region, Koforidua, Eastern Region and Duayaw-Nkwanta, Brong Ahafo and other communities across Ghana.

Since the establishment of the foundation six years ago, more than 20,000 Ghanaians have benefited from the health programme.

Aminatu Fuseini, a 56 year old resident of Savelugu expressed her gratitude to Vodafone Ghana Foundation for coming to her aid.

'I have not been feeling well for quite some time; I am unable to go to the hospital because of the money involve but Vodafone has offered me free medical screening and now I know what is wrong with me and I have been given medicine for free,' she said.

She urged the Vodafone Foundation to sustain the initiative to be able to cater for the health needs of people, especially the poor.

GNA
Paris, Jan. 25, GNA - The African Union, United Nations and other international bodies have been urged to act against the increasing violence that the government of Djibouti is unleashing on its opponents as the country prepares for a presidential election in April.

The Paris-based Collective for Solidarity with Social and Political Struggle in Africa, worried about the actions of the regime of President Omar Guelleh, who is going for a controversial fourth term, also sent its open letter to the European Union and French President Francois Hollande.

The letter was prompted by the December 21 killing by members of the government's Special Forces of 19 people who were preparing to celebrate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, but whom the regime claimed were opposition members planning trouble.

It has now emerged that one of those killed was a six-year-old girl, which was confirmed by Djiboutian Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, who spoke to the French News Agency.

In writing to the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, and President Hollande, opponents of President Guelleh appear to have decided that the time is right to act against a leader who they have accused of taking brutal action over the years to derail the democratic process in Djibouti.

The Collective for Solidarity with Social and Political Struggle in Africa, which has provided electoral assistance in Africa since 2009, accused the Guelleh regime of electoral fraud throughout his rule.

'After 16 years in power, after removing presidential term limits in 2010 by use of a rump parliament resulting from an election boycotted by the opposition, a few weeks before the presidential election, President Ismail Omar Guelleh has just blocked the process of democratisation and the establishment of the rule of law in Djibouti,' the letter said.

The Collective said that at the end of last year, the government excluded members of the opposition to renew a two-month state of emergency. 'The state of emergency has put a stop to political life,' the group noted.

It argued that the December 2014 Framework Agreement - signed by the government and opposition parties to end the democratic crisis resulting from the 2013 parliamentary elections - had been effectively killed.

Now President Guelleh 'is heading towards another presidential election in which, if it is not boycotted, he will again have to overturn the actual result,' the Collective said

'The real results of the 2013 parliamentary elections showed that his electoral base is small. He is preparing to impose an electoral process that will operate outside international democratic standards, through repression of the opposition and the population and by the hijacking of a state of emergency decreed for personal purposes,' the open letter said.

So far, President Guelleh has relied heavily on the strategic position of Djibouti, close to the Middle East and Somalia, and on the importance of US, French and, now, Chinese foreign military bases in the country.

The Collective claimed that in 2013, 'the EU compromised itself diplomatically in Djibouti by signing off on a reversal of the results of the parliamentary elections, so as not to endanger its military actions against rampant piracy off the coast of Somalia, which were vital to the initiation of its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)'.

But the EU position later changed 'when faced with the disapproval of the European Parliament'.

'The implications for the international community of President Guelleh's decision to halt the process of democratisation are that it has once again found itself a powerless witness, driven to endorse the regime.

'International actors, especially those countries with a military base or who are partners in development, are once again challenged by the need to affirm strong support for democratisation in Africa and to act to prevent a shutdown of democracy in Djibouti,' the Collective said.

It made a number of recommendations to the various international bodies on how to rein in the excesses of the Djiboutian government.

To the AU, the Collective urged the Peace and Security Council to 'get involved and take responsibility for stopping violence and repression, and demand a resumption of the electoral process in accordance with the Framework Agreement of 30 December 2014'.

Referring to the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, the Collective said the AU should 'affirm more strongly the need to respect constitutions and the need for democratic change in countries without presidential term limits, as well as the need for democratic change obtained through the good quality of electoral processes'.

The Djiboutian government began 2016 as it ended 2015 with further repressive actions; this time against two journalists, Kadar Abdi Ibrahim, a writer, and Mohamed Ibrahim Waiss, a radio journalist, who were arrested last week, but had not been charged.

"Journalists should not be jailed for reporting or commentating on events as they see them, even if they are deemed to work for politically aligned publications," said Sue Valentine, Africa Progamme Coordinator at the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

"Djibouti authorities must either explain why these journalists are detained or immediately release them."

The government's opponents appear to be rallying themselves to take on President Guelleh and to internationalise the campaign against his regime.

Last weekend members of the opposition Union pour le Salut National (USN) held demonstrations outside the White House and the embassy of Djibouti in Washington, and in Brussels, to protest against the Guelleh regime.

In Washington, Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter said: 'President Guelleh's recent announcement of his intention to seek an unprecedented fourth term followed by a violent crackdown on political opposition is just more evidence of his oppressive tactics that have continued for too long.'

Mr Hunter urged the US government to ask President Guelleh to step down after his third term expires this year and that he should 'no longer obstruct Djibouti's pro-democratic movement'.

Internationalising the anti-Guelleh campaign is in line with the call made by the Head of External Relations for the USN, Abdourahman Boreh, after the December 21 killings: 'We at the USN call on international organisations and observers - United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others - to step in and actively facilitate an independent inquiry into what has happened.'

GNA
Sirigu (U/E), Jan 25, GNA - The Sirigu Women Organisation for Pottery and Arts (SWOPA) has appealed to the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to help facilitate the rehabilitation of two dams in the Sirigu Community.

That they said would help improve the livelihoods of the people in the Kassena-Nankana West District in the Upper East Region.

SWOPA is working with 400 women who are into pottery, basket weaving, wall painting, tie and dye and leather works, and depends heavily on water from the Nyangolingo and Gunwoko Dams for their work.

Addressing a stakeholders' sensitization forum, sponsored by the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund, the Director of SWOPA, Ms Bridget A. Akasise, stressed that not only were the two broken dams affecting the activities of the women at the centre, but was also hampering activities mapped out by the community to help address the issue of climate change.

Ms Akasesi indicated that the rehabilitation of the two dams would not only lead to re-forestation of the area, but would also help to empower the community members to do dry season farming.

'As it stands now people in the community who have the desire to go into dry season farming and animal rearing cannot do that since they lack water to undertake such viable activities. Our women and children have to travel far distances in search of water for communal and other social needs such as building of houses and washing of clothing in the dry season,' the Director lamented.

She therefore appealed to the Regional Coordinating Council, District Assembly, the Ghana Social Opportunity Project (GSOP), the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Forestry Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and Non-Governmental Organisations to come to the aid of the area and restore the dam.

Assembly members for Nyangolingo and Gunwoko, Mr. Atanga Robert and Mr Aduko Banabas, reiterated that the rehabilitation of the dams would help create employment, reduce the rural urban drift, reduce poverty as well as create wealth for the people.

The Consultant of BUSAC, Mr Joseph Awantuugo, explained that the phase two advocacy programme of the BUSAC Fund aimed at empowering SWOPA and other stakeholders to build alliances with state agencies responsible for public infrastructure development and concerned development partners to facilitate the rehabilitation of the two dams in the area.

Among the stakeholders who attended the forum included representatives from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Forestry Department, the District Assembly, Assembly Members, Water Resource Commission and NGOs. GNA
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Tamale, Jan. 25, GNA - Farm Radio International, an NGO using radio to improve food security through innovative e-extension in Ghana has supported North Star Radio, a local radio station in Tamale with equipment to be used for its programmes to improve farming in the Region.

The equipment included some recorders, laptops, tablets and a desktop computer to be used to gather and produce radio agriculture interactive programmes to benefit farmers in the Northern Region for increased yields.

The presentation formed part of the many initiatives, which aimed at reaching out to farmers with good agricultural practices to increase yield, ensure food security and sufficiency as well as reduce malnutrition in the north.

Mr Musah Taylor, Technical Director, Feed the Future Ghana Agriculture Technology Transfer Project, who funded Farm Radio for the presentation, said integrated soil management was necessary in farming practice, hence the need for sponsoring some radio stations to use the medium to educate farmers to increase yield.

He said North Star Radio was among three other radio stations from Upper East and Upper West Regions, which reach out to some 100,000 farmers in the three northern regions to gain access to information about appropriate and relevant agricultural technology on rice, soy and maize.

He said under the cooperate agreement being funded by USAID there was a broadcast of variety of radio programmes, which started in December 2015, and would run till September 2016.

He said aside radio, the project in collaboration with Digital Green was developing and screening community videos produced in the various local dialects with local actors and farmers, aimed at teaching small scale holder farmers good agriculture practices.

He mentioned the recently introduced Urea Deep Placement Technology to complement government quest to increase rice production and reduce importation as one of the areas the farmers acted and recorded videos, which benefited over four thousand farmers in the three northern regions.

He mentioned specifically farmers from the Botanga and the Golinga Irrigation schemes in the Northern Region who benefited directly from the use of video-based extension services.

Mr Taylor said aside the Digital Green, the project in partnership with Country Wise Communication, had screened relevant videos, which had been produced by Access Agriculture to over eleven thousand viewers in the three northern regions so as to help increase yield.

Mr Haruna Abubakari Saddique, acting Managing Director of North Star Radio who received the equipment, stressed the need to foster stronger collaboration with Farm radio and partners to achieve the desired results.

Farm Radio uses radio, video, text messaging, mobile apps and other information communication technologies (ICTs) to reach more farmers more frequently with quality agricultural advice to complement traditional extension services. Using ICTs, the project aims to extend the reach of agricultural information, improve the efficacy of local extension services and promote lasting behaviour change among small-scale farmers to increase yields and improve food security.

GNA
Ho, Jan. 25, GNA - Mr George Blankson, Commissioner General, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has urged trainees at the Kpetoe Training Academy to minimise complaints on the toughness of training at the Academy.

He asked them to develop the 'Yes, I can spirit' and mental toughness to come out successful and well prepared for the job.

Mr Blankson was addressing the trainees, when management of the Authority, visited the Academy to inspect work on the Academy's administration block, hostel facilities and lecture halls.

The visit was on the sidelines of a Management Retreat in Ho, on the theme, 'The Implementation Status of Strategic Plan 2015-2017 and Operational Plans-The Way Forward.'

He said 'run-outs', drills and other workouts are required standards and asked the trainees not to take 'training issues personal'.

'Training builds your system. It is nothing personal. We all pass through this system so just put in your best,' Mr Blankson stated.

A few trainees, with identification haircuts, told the GNA that physical training at the Academy was normal.

Last two years, a trainee reportedly collapsed and died after a dawn run- out.

Meanwhile, Mr Blankson has described progress of work on the projects as encouraging and was hopeful the facilities would be commissioned for use by the end of this year.

He assured that the Academy would soon be converted into a Revenue University to train tax administrators for the sub-region.

GNA
Tigo Business is giving a new lease of life to Small businesses across the country with the launch of SME PowerPack, a new product that will help them make the best investment in communication and access Tigos talent pool of world-class digital/technology experts.

The all-inclusive package is a unique proposition that combines Calling Plans, Data Bundles and Advisory Services. It is flexible, allowing over 3,000 minutes of local and international calls and enough data to cater for their business needs. Additionally, team members can call each other for free and Value Added Services (VAS) including 'Business Ring Back Tone' and others can be included based on the needs of their business.

It has 7 prepaid business plans with different price points ranging from a minimum of GHS1 to GHS35. They are categorized into Lite, Standard and Premium value buckets with daily, weekly and monthly subscriptions.

Speaking at the launch of the product in Accra, the Ag. Director for Tigo Business, Stephen Essien, said SMEs play a crucial role in furthering Ghanas growth, innovation and propensity agenda.

We know from various studies that access to finance remains one of the biggest challenges facing SMEs. And to be able to grow and increase profit, they need to manage cost and improve efficiency and our SME PowerPack has been specifically designed to help them manage their communication needs, he explained.

He added that the product will guarantee communication with speed and ease among their teams and customers.

The product also comes with Business Advisory Services. All small businesses that do not have the means to hire digital expertise will have unfettered access to Tigos world-class digital/technology experts.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumawu

THE SEKYERE Kumawu District has recorded no cholera in the last three years, the District Director of Health, Mr. Justice Thomas Sevugu has announced and attributed the situation to effective disease prevention and surveillance by his outfit.

He said the vision of the district health management team is to create a district health model with systems that ensure a healthy and productive population.

Mr. Sevugu said the Kumawu Health Centre had been branded category C by the National Health Insurance, and upgraded to a polyclinic status with two permanent medical officers.

The District Health Director made these disclosures at the Annual Performance Review Meeting to assess its performance last year. It was also to deliberate on achievements, challenges and strategies to improve service delivery in the ensuing year.

The meeting, held under the theme: Improving Health Services Delivery: the Role of Stakeholders attracted participants from the various health centres and institutions in the district as well as heads of department, religious leaders, traditional authorities, assembly members and youth groups.

The Health Director told participants that there were expansion of infrastructure and facilities at health centres at Kumawu, Woraso, Banko and Sekyere last year, and added that two more CHPS Compounds under construction at Akrofoso and Temate are about 95 percent complete, pending inauguration in February this year.

According to Mr. Sevugu, as part of measures to motivate the staff and also to provide effective and efficient health delivery, a number of training programmes were organised for the staff in the year under review.

He mentioned high teenage pregnancy/birth rate, absence of an ambulance, inadequate transport (only one weak pick-up and four motorbikes) and laboratory services, and inadequate residential and office accommodation as some of the challenges faced by the district directorate.

Mr. Sevugu, however, indicated that certain key strategies used to address some of the challenges, included effective collaboration with traditional leaders, philanthropist, the district assembly and NGOs.

Dr. Fred Adomako Boateng, a Medical Officer from the Regional Health Directorate, entreated the participants to always regard CHPS Compound as a very important component of the health delivery system. CHPS are for the community, and therefore you must show interest in its operations, Dr. Boateng advised.

He commended the district directorate for their commitment and dedication to duty indicating that as a model district, the regional directorate would continue to monitor their activities closely.

Mr. Ntow Kyeremeh, the Deputy District Coordinating Director who deputized for the DCE, Emmanuel William Amoako said the assembly would continue to collaborate effectively with the district health directorate to provide quality health care to the people.

He said the assembly is vigorously pursuing the government's agenda of providing adequate and quality health facilities to Ghanaians, hence the construction of CHPS across the length and breadth of the district. The District Annual Performance Review Meeting programme was chaired by Nana Baffour Okyere, chief of Amanfrom.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale

The Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVSU) of the Ghana Police Service has arrested a former teacher of the Evangelical Presbyterian Primary school in Tamale, David Ananga, for allegedly defiling a 14 year old student of the same school, resulting in pregnancy.

David Ananga is also alleged to have defiled 9 other students, but they fortunately escaped pregnancy.

After committing the crime, Ananga allegedly forced the 14 year old girl, who was over 4 months pregnant to abort the pregnancy, resulting in some complications. The suspect went into hiding after the incident, but the police picked him up from his hiding place after a tip off.

He now faces two charges of defilement and unlawful abortion, while his accomplice, Frederick Akoto, also a teacher at the same school, has been charged with permitting defilement on his premises.

The third accused person  the medical doctor  who performed the illegal abortion is on the run and the police are seriously looking for him. The Northern Regional Coordinator of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit, ASP Emmanuel Holortu, who confirmed the story, said his outfit was working around the clock to arrest the doctor for him to face prosecution.

When The Chronicle visited the little girl, she was in serious agony and was still bleeding as a result of the abortion. She was found discharging some liquid fluid from her breast.

Alhaji Mohammed Haroon Cambodia

Meanwhile, the Northern Regional Director of Ghana Education Service, Alhaji Mohammed Haroon Cambodia has publicly declared war against the continuous indiscipline and act of sexual assaults or immoralities against some primary and junior high school girls by some teachers in the region.

The situation is said to be the worst in Senior High Schools with some teachers openly dating female students, under the guise of using them for domestic or household chores.

The teacher-pupil sexual relationship, according to the Regional Director of Education was becoming more rampant in most of the schools in the Northern Region, with some of them resulting in unwanted pregnancies, complicated abortions and withdrawal of such girls from school for early marriages by some of those teachers.

Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle in Tamale, in response to a pending court case involving two primary school teachers who were arrested for defiling 9 primary school girls and impregnating one other in the same school, Alhaji Haroon Cambodia described it as an abhorrent act for any teacher entrusted with the responsibility of shaping the future of the young people to abuse their rights or engage them in sexual misconducts.

According to him, it was very common these days to see teachers impregnating innocent girls even at the primary level and that some of the girls were between the ages of 12 and 15 who barely understood what sex was about.

Alhaji Haroon Cambodia, who is one of the pioneers for the promotion of Girl child education in Northern Ghana, emphasized that he would not tolerate the increasing school based gender violence and high level of indiscipline among some teachers in the region, which also impacts negatively on the performance of the students.

This gender violence is meted out to the children, especially the females, by the male teachers. When a teacher approaches a girl in a class for sexual favours and the girl refuses, the teacher turns to hate the girl and starts to punish her at the least provocation.

For instance, if the teacher is canning the whole class and he is giving each student two strokes of the cane, he intensifies the punishment and he can even give that girl five strokes instead of the two.

Others also set difficult question in class and mention the name of a particular girl to answer and if the girl is unable to answer, it is an opportunity for the teacher to punish the girl for refusing him sex. This is just to ensure that the girl yields to his demand for sex and we must condemn this kind of behavior, he said.

The Northern Regional Director of Education, who is fuming with rage with the kind of embarrassment being caused and the disgrace being associated with the teaching profession by some few miscreants, said that he would personally ensure that any teacher who indulges in such sexual misconduct and unnecessary abuse of girls in school was punished or faced the full rigours of the law.

He encouraged all school girls who fall victims to the bad sexual behaviours of teachers to report them to their parents or District Directors of Education for immediate arrest and prosecution. He asserted that some head teachers were also not to be trusted because they sometimes collude with those teachers perpetuating the indiscipline acts in school.

Alhaji Haroon Cambodia could not comprehend why a teacher who is gainfully working and receiving salary can not find one of the numerous beautiful ladies looking for husbands and marry, but would rather ruin the future of innocent girls who were still in school.

I will like all the teachers who are involved in such acts but not yet exposed, to stop it or I will pray that they are exposed, arrested and prosecuted, because their place is not in the community or society, but in the prison.

He was optimistic that the arrest and prosecution of David Ananga and Fredrick Akoto would serve as deterrent to other undisciplined teachers in the Northern Region and Ghana as a whole.

According to Alhaji Haroon Cambodia, the Ghana Education Service and for that matter the government had gone a long way in ensuring the enrollment of girls into school, therefore, it would be unacceptable for any teacher to try to derail the effort and jeopardize the future of such girls

He said that the outcome of the independent investigations by the Tamale Metropolitan Directorate of the GES had been studied and forwarded to the Director General of the Ghana Education Service for the necessary advice or sanctions against the two arrested teachers, in line with the GES's code of conduct.
From Isaac Akwetey-Okunor

([email protected]), Awugugua

The Assembly Member for Awukugua Electoral Area in the Akuapem North Municipality of the Eastern region, Mr. Kwabi Frank, popularly known in media circles as Kwaku Dawuro has accused the Ghana Education Service (GES) of distorting the Akuapem Twi language.

According to the Emak FMs political talk Show host, by allowing the non-indigene teachers to teach Akuapem Twi in their various schools, has twisted the Akuapem language.

He explained that, these teachers are not conversant with the language, hence cannot apply it appropriately. This development, according to the Awukugua Assemblyman, has corrupted and misshaped the language.

Hon Kwabi was addressing the media on Thursday, after donating exercise books, reading books and 40 pieces of Friday wear to Awukugua Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Junior High School.

Acknowledging a directive by the Education Minister, Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who has asked heads and teachers of basic schools to desist from the use of the English language as the sole medium of instruction in the classrooms, he called on the GES to have a second look at the situation.

Hon. Kwabi, therefore, urged teachers to use the local languages as medium of instruction in the classroom and gradually introduce the English language after the local language had been fully developed.

But introducing children to Asante Twi at school and speaking Akuapem twi at home confuse the children and, therefore called on the chiefs and elders of Akuapem to stand up against the posting of non Akuapem to teach the Akuapem twi in the area.
Dr. Zanetor

25.01.2016 LISTEN

The Womens Wing of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said people seeking to scuttle Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings parliamentary ambition by engaging in peripherals should bow down their heads in disappointment and shame.

Dr Rawlings won the partys November 21, 2015 primaries to represent the NDC in the parliamentary polls in November. Since her victory, she has been confronted with several court cases  challenging her voter eligibility  from party members including incumbent Nii Armah Ashitey, whom she defeated.

A statement signed by Womens Organiser Hajia Zaynab Joyce Mahama, however, said the Womens Wing is displeased with the calculated efforts by some individuals within the NDC to create disunity in the Klottey Korle constituency. Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings legitimately won the just-ended NDC parliamentary primaries in November 2015 to represent the party at the Klottey Korle constituency.

The Womens Wing said although it recognises the efforts and contributions of Mr Ashitey towards the NDC and Ghana as a whole, it is nevertheless of the view that the former Greater Accra regional Minister should accept the results in good faith, since the right procedures through which he was elected to represent the party were the same channels through which Dr [Rawlings] has been duly elected.

The good people of Klottey Korle have spoken and the voice of the people is the voice of God and should be respected. One should not destroy the party he helped build.

Dr Rawlings is the legitimately elected parliamentary candidate of the NDC for the Klottey Korle constituency. We also call on all pro-women empowerment NGOs and civil societies not to stay neutral in these times of trial on a fellow female who wants to take the mantle of leadership and deliver a selfless and committed service to her people, the NDCs Womens Wing added.

Mr Ashitey recently filed a suit praying the High Court to prevent Dr Rawlings from holding herself out as parliamentary candidate-elect for the constituency on the ticket of the NDC.

Mr Ashitey joined the NDC and the Electoral Commission (EC) to the suit as first and third respondents respectively, with Dr Rawlings being the second.

The MP is being represented by Mr Gary Nimako.

A copy of the suit said: This honourable court will be moved by Gary Nimako Marfo ESQ., counsel for and on behalf of plaintiff/applicants herein praying for an order of interlocutory injunction to restrain defendants/respondents, whether by themselves, agents, servants, workmen, hirelings, privies or any person claiming under or through them or howsoever described, from holding out the second defendant/ respondent, [as] the parliamentary candidate-elect for Klottey Korle constituency.

Mr Ashiteys suit came days after Dr Rawlings voter eligibility was affirmed by an Accra High Court on Friday January 15.

Three plaintiffs: Joseph Narku Botchway, Jacob Amin, and Reverend Michael Kwabena Nii Adjei Sowah, who are all from the constituency, had filed a suit and prayed the court to declare Dr Rawlings election as parliamentary candidate null and void on grounds that she was not an eligible voter.

But the court said the plaintiffs did not demonstrate, with their arguments, how Dr Rawlings election violated their rights.

The three, in their suit prayed the court for answers to the following:

1. Whether or not Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings is a registered voter.

2. If so, when was the name entered on the National Biometric Voters Register.

3. The name of the Registration Officer.

4. The date of registration.

5. The time on which the name was entered on the roll as shown on the print out.

6. The registration centre name.

7. The registration code.

8. The constituency within which the registration took place.

9. The Voters Identify Card number of Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings.

10. Biometric finger print.

11. The type of identification document used in the registration process.

12. Copies of Form 1C that captured the data.

13. Copies of Voter Register Form 1A

14. Whether Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings name has been publicly exhibited on any provisional Voters Register.

15. If so when?

16. Please furnish the Court with the said Voters Register.

17. If the registration was during the limited registration period in 2014, a copy of the voter registration identification guarantee form.

18. Copies of the registration team details Form 2A.

19. Please furnish the Court with the final Biometric Voters Register showing Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings name.

Similar concerns about Dr Rawlings eligibility had been expressed in the past by law firm Safo & Marfo @ Law, which wrote to the Electoral Commission seeking to ascertain whether Dr Rawlings was a registered eligible voter in Ghana.

Despite winning the primary, Dr Rawlings was unable to vote in last years polls because her name could not be traced on the register of voters.

That development raised issues about her eligibility as a voter, since the partys Greater Accra regional chairman, Ade Coker, said the non-existence of ones name on the register meant that person was not a registered voter since, according to him, the source of the NDCs register of voters was the national register of the Electoral Commission.

Safo & Marfo @ Law, therefore, wanted the EC to ascertain her electoral eligibility. The private law firm made the following demands:

1. Whether or not Dr. Ezanator (Zanetor) Rawlings is a registered voter within the meaning of Article 94 (1)(a) of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.

2. If so when was her name entered into the electoral register?

The law firm also wanted a certified true copy of the voters register.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Ghana-January 2016---Ghana's leading Pizza Company, Papas Pizza has struck a different chord this year. After years of excellent services delivery in the food and beverage industry, Papas Pizza is set, for the official opening of its fourth branch on Valentine Day 14th of February, 2016 at Circle on the Vodafone lane, opposite the Sawam Link.

As a new innovative addition to the various branches at East Legon, Spintex-Kotobaabi Junction and that of Osu Ring Road opposite the fire service station, Papas Pizza is proud to inform the general public that, doorstep delivery services is available, so for the best in breakfast, lunch and dinner chose Papas Pizza.

In an exclusive interview with the CEO of Papas Pizza, Kwame Osei Owusu Ansah, indicated that even though the brand already boasts by far the fastest speed of service delivery in the pizza industry, the business is still improving the costumer experience through the quarterly management training for its staff.

The CEO further suggested that the company is challenging the food industry to invest in providing quality training for their employees as this augurs well for the whole sector.

Kwame Osei Owusu Ansah emphasized that as a company that believes in Corporate Social Responsibility, we thought it wise to partner Ghanas finest celebrity and entrepreneur John Dumelo to produce a charity pizza known as Jmelos pizza that has a specific percentage of the proceeds for orphans.

It is our fervent hope that as Papas Pizza continues to be the leading name in the Pizza industry, our efforts of shaping the food and beverage industry motivate others in the sector to produce excellent services and products for customers who will Taste it and Love it.

For delivery and further enquiries please contact Papas Pizza on 0248820535.
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Minister of Finance-Seth Terkper, has stated that the attainment of a middle income status has brought in its wake a huge challenge that makes it difficult for government to contract concessionary loans to prosecute the development agenda of the country.

According to him, the time has, therefore, come for government to generate resources from within its internal sources, hence the need for the untaxed segment of the population to be brought into the tax net.

Mr. Terkper pointed out that the nation cannot underestimate the role of taxes in the lives of the people, no matter how unpopular it may sound, adding that taxation is the price people pay to live in civilized societies.

The Minister explained that it was against this backdrop that government is introducing the new Income Tax Act, 2015, (Act 896) to progressively expand the tax base, widen the tax net and rope in people earning income, but are currently outside the tax net.

He noted, however, that it was not the intention of government to unduly burden Ghanaians with excess taxes, but to raise the required revenue to meet the ever increasing legitimate demands of the people.

Finance Minister Seth Terkper

Mr. Terkper made the statement in a speech read on his behalf by his Deputy, Mrs. Mona Quartey, at the opening of a three day national retreat of the management staff of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in the Volta Regional capital of Ho, under the theme; The Implementation Status of the Strategic Plan 2015-2017 Operational Plans, The Way forward.

Mr. Terkper explained that in spite of the cogent reasons for the recent tax policy measures, government was unaware of the concerns and criticisms of the public arising out of the implementation of these tax policies, it has therefore taken steps to address those concerns.

He said for instance, that government has sent proposals to the Speaker of Parliament to withdraw the one percent tax on interest for individuals and reduce to 7.5 percent the withholding tax on services, which was increased to 15 percent.

The Minister has therefore appealed to the GRA to deepen its educational activities to ensure that it interacts often with taxpayers and receive their concerns to enable government incorporate them into its policy making, stressing the need to carry the public along for them to appreciate the need to contribute more to government purse.

Mr. Terkper also asked GRA to work hard to block leakages in tax collection in the country, especially in areas such as tax evasion by sections of the public, perceived corruption by officials, poor awareness of tax laws and increase awareness for the implementation of the new Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896).

The Commissioner General of the GRA, George Blankson commended the staff and management of his outfit for exceeding the revenue target of GH 21.57 billion, saying at the end of 2015, a total of GH22.17 billion was collected, indicating a growth of GH5, 024billion.

Mr. Blankson attributed the reasons for the achievement of the revenue target for 2015 to effective strategies adopted by management, which include increasing the number of audits, regular external visits and inspection of taxpayers businesses to retrieve outstanding taxes, roping in many operators from the informal sector, monitoring by the operational offices and the great work done by the Revenue Task Force.

The GRA Commissioner said having completed and evaluated the first strategic plan in 2012-2014, GRA successfully put in place the second strategic plan 2015-2017 and the three day retreat would review the status of the projects of the plan from which operational plans would be derived for effective revenue collection in 2016.

He disclosed that GRA for 2016, has earmarked a total of GH 27.59 billion, which has been broken as follows; GH 11.513 billion-domestic tax and GH 5.916 billion-domestic indirect tax.

Out of the figure, he said Customs Division is expected to generate GH 10.159 billion, urging all staff to prepare for the task ahead to ensure that the target would be met at the end of the year.

The Board Chairman of GRA, Mr. Ralph Tufour noted that revenue mobilization would not be successful if there was no collaboration between the taxpayer and other relevant stakeholders and called on the revenue organization to persuade tax payers and stakeholders through stakeholder education and engagement rather than through compulsion.

Mr. Tufour assured the management and staff of GRA that the Board was closely working with top management and the Ministry of Finance to ensure that policies do not demoralize any one of them or make them worse off noting that the staff, particularly opinion leaders should ensure that there is peace on the labour front.

The Paramount Chief of the Kpenoe Traditional Area, Togbe Kotoku XI called for the introduction of tax payment education at both basic and second cycle institutions across the country to ensure that children cultivate the habit of tax payment from childhood and when they grow; they would not depart from it and contribute meaningfully towards national development.

From Samuel Agbewode, Ho
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Award winning Journalist with the Multimedia Group Limited Joseph Opoku Gakpo, has launched the Revolutionary Minds project with the objective of highlighting the good works of individuals engaged in radical stuff in their communities but remain unnoticed.

The focus of the project is to tell the stories of people, particularly, young persons, engaged in activities they would ordinarily not be doing in their communities.

On the last Monday of every month, Joseph will publish the story of one Revolutionary Mind on his personal blog www.josephopokugakpo.wordpress.com , and other websites including www.myjoyonline.com , and aggressively share the story on social media to the reach of as many people as possible.

The objective of the project is to inspire all young people to do something daring and ground breaking in their communities.

Persons engaged in unique varied activities from civil society practice, to entrepreneurship, to agriculture, to education, among others are targeted in the project.

The project will also feature ordinary people in rural and deprived communities doing extra-ordinary stuff worth emulating.

Last year, the project published the story of a Masters Degrees Graduate from the University of Reading - UK, David Asare Asiamah, who soon after completing his course returned to Ghana to start a poultry farm in Kumasi, turning down numerous other job offers both home and abroad.

http://www.myjoyonline.com/opinion/2015/February-19th/meet-david-asiamah-a-new-breed-of-ghanaian-farmer-entrepreneurs.php

On Monday, 1st February 2016, the story of another young person engaged in something radical will be published by the project.

Joseph assured the project will do the best it can to draw national attention to the heroic story of the REVOLUTIONARY MINDS.

Today, before God, before the people of Ghana and before you all, we launch this project, Revolutionary Minds, promising to take the stories of these extra-ordinary folks as far as we can, he said.

As young people, we can make things happen on our own. But when young people revolutionize, it usually doesnt happen by chance. Its the result of painstaking efforts, and they deserve to be commended, Joseph said.

He encouraged all friends on social media to support the project by helping share the stories of the Revolutionary Minds forcefully on social media when they are published.
Oil prices tumbled again on Monday, eroding last week's gains, as Opec called for co-operation from oil-producing nations outside the cartel.

Brent crude fell 4.1% to $30.86 a barrel following a 10% rise on Friday, while US oil shed 4.7% to $30.68.

The slide came as the head of Opec called for all oil-producing nations to work together.

Abdullah al-Badri said both Opec and non-Opec oil producers needed to tackle oversupply to help prices rise.

"It is vital the market addresses the issue of the stock overhang. As you can see from previous cycles, once this overhang starts falling then prices start to rise," he told a conference in London.

Despite the ongoing refusal of Saudi Arabia, the dominant Opec member, to cut production, Mr al-Badri nevertheless blamed countries outside the cartel for the huge global oil glut.

"Yes, Opec provided some of the additional supply last year, but the majority of this has come from non-Opec countries," he said.

Opec accounts for almost 42% of the world's oil production.

If you're Opec, that means asking non-members, such as Russia to join in with curbing production.

It must be said that the prospects of any co-operation from outside Opec are weak at the best of times.

But it has got harder in the last decade.

The surge in US shale oil means it is much more difficult to manage the market without American co-operation, which would never be forthcoming.

The US government wouldn't want to work with Opec, and in any case private companies are the ones taking the decisions.

They will cut if makes commercial sense to them and their shareholders. 'Future at risk'

The Opec secretary-general said all major producers should agree on methods to reduce stockpiles and thus help prices recover.

"The current environment is putting this future at risk. At current price levels, it is clear that not all of the necessary future investment is viable," Mr al-Badri said.

Prices briefly fell to less than $28 a barrel earlier this month.

HSBC has lowered its forecast for the average price of Brent crude in 2016 from $60 to $45 a barrel, while UniCredit lowered it from $52.50 to $37 a barrel.

The prospect of Opec members cutting production remains unlikely. Indonesia's Opec representative said that only one member of the cartel supported calling an emergency meeting to discuss ways of boosting oil prices.

The chairman of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, said on Monday that prices would ultimately rise to a moderate level as global demand increased.

The Iraqi government said on Monday that oil output reached a record high in December, producing as much as 4.13m barrels a day.

Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro in Amsterdam, said: "The news that Iraq has probably hit another record builds on the oversupply sentiment. The oversupply will keep markets depressed and prices low."

Iran, which has the world's fourth-biggest oil reserves, is also preparing to resume exports now that sanctions have been lifted.

A fall in the number of oil rigs in the United States, one of Opec's biggest production rivals, could reduce output, with Goldman Sachs predicting a decline of 95,000 barrels per day this year.

Analysts at Energy Aspects said global oil inventories would continue to rise in the next few months, but should start to decline by the summer.
London, Jan. 25, GNA - A small British printing company has been fined 2.2 million for making corrupt payments of about 400,000 to public officials in Kenya and Mauritania.

The bribes were paid by Smith & Ouzman Ltd - which becomes the first UK company convicted for overseas bribery - in exchange for contracts to print ballot papers.

Smith & Ouzman was fined earlier this month at a court in South London after the company and two of its former directors, Christopher Smith and Nicholas Smith, had been found guilty in December 2014 under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, which applies to acts before the UK's Bribery Act 2010 came into force in July 2011.

In a comment on the case, CMS Cameron McKenna, a London-based multinational law firm, noted: 'This case is significant because it is the first UK conviction of a corporate for overseas bribery offences following a contested trial and it provides helpful guidance as to how the courts will apply the relevant sentencing guidelines for fraud, bribery and money laundering offences going forward.'

Investigations into the matter by the UK's Serious Fraud Office took four years, and in the end it became a milestone for the SFO, which managed to get the first UK company to be convicted of corruption by a jury.

Cameron McKenna explains: 'The SFO's success in securing a conviction of Smith & Ouzman was in part due to the fact that as a small, family-owned printing company, corporate attribution was easier to establish than it would have been in the case of a larger corporate.

'This is because the English identification principle - the need to attribute guilty knowledge to the directing mind of the company - means that the involvement in the corrupt conduct of the directing mind is easier to establish when small companies are involved.

'In the case of Smith & Ouzman the chairman, Christopher Smith, and sales and marketing director Nicholas Smith, were both convicted as well.'

The law firm noted that David Green, the Director of the SFO, had frequently complained about the inadequacy of English law on corporate criminal liability.

But Cameron McKenna said that despite this, the UK government shelved plans to review a section of the Bribery Act 2010 to see whether it should be extended to encompass a wider range of economic crimes.

The court did not award compensation to Kenya and Mauritania, which Cameron McKenna said was unusual.

'While the judge acknowledged that the people of Kenya and Mauritania were victims in this case, attempts to liaise with their respective governments as to compensation had not provided satisfactory evidence that any compensation would be delivered into the 'right hands',' Cameron McKenna said.

The judge's decision, the law firm explained, was based on the fact that there had been no formal request for compensation from either Kenya or Mauritania.

GNA
Accra, Jan 25, GNA - The FPSO Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, which will produce and store oil from Ghana's Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) offshore oil fields, began its voyage to Ghana on 23rd January 2016.

The floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which was officially named in memory of the late President Atta Mills, has been under construction in Singapore since October 2013.

A statement from Tullow Oil said the departure of the vessel on schedule indicates an important milestone for the TEN Project, which is now over 80% complete and remains on track to start producing oil in July or August 2016.

The vessel departed the Tuas shipyard in Singapore at 2.00pm and sailed into the Malacca Strait. Her voyage to Ghana will see her sail westward across the Indian Ocean before rounding the southern tip of Africa and sailing up the West African coast.

The FPSO is expected to arrive in Ghanaian waters in early March, where she will be stationed above the TEN fields, around 60 kilometres from the coast of Ghana's Western Region.

Upon her arrival, the FPSO will be attached to nine anchor piles which will maintain her position above the oil fields. These 21 metre high steel cylinders were built in Ghana by Group Five Construction Ghana Ltd. They were completed on time and are already installed in the seabed, awaiting the arrival of the FPSO.

Other Ghanaian contributions to the FPSO include her module support stools, which sit on the deck and support heavy equipment. These were fabricated by Ghanaian companies Seaweld Engineering Ltd and Orsam Ltd.

The FPSO has a nominal production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil per day and a storage capacity of 1.7 million barrels. She is 350 metres long and can accommodate 120 people.

Managing Director of Tullow Ghana Ltd, Charles Darku commented: 'We are delighted that the TEN FPSO has departed Singapore on schedule, keeping us on track to achieve our first oil target of July - August 2016.'

The development of the TEN fields is being led by Tullow Oil along with its partners the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Kosmos Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and Petro SA.

The construction of the FPSO has been led by global supplier and operator of offshore floating platforms, MODEC Inc. The FPSO will be operated and maintained by MODEC Ghana Ltd.

The TEN fields (Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme) lie in the deep-water of Tano block, around sixty kilometres offshore Ghana. The reservoirs are spread over 800 square kilometers, and lie in water depths of between 1,000 and 1,800 metres. Development of the TEN Project is being led by Tullow Oil, with partners Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Kosmos Energy LLC, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and PetroSA.

The TEN Development Plan was approved by the Government of Ghana in May 2013 and requires the drilling and completion of up to 24 development wells. These will be connected through subsea infrastructure to a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel currently under construction in Singapore.

First oil from the TEN fields is scheduled for July - August 2016, and the nominal production capacity of the FPSO is 80,000 barrels of oil per day.

GNA
25.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra , Jan. 25, GNA - The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) says it has issued an order to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), to correct the metering and billing anomalies resulting from implementation of the 2015 Major Tariff Increase.

A statement from the PURC signed by Dr Simons Akorli, Director, Regulatory Economics and Research reiterated that the percentage increase across board for all categories of electricity consumers as announced by the Commission is 59.2 per cent.

It said the Commission would publish for the benefit of electricity consumers and the public, the electricity tariffs as gazetted, effective December 14, 2015 and published in The Ghana Gazette of December 11, 2015 as well as the tariffs published in Ghana Gazette of July 8, 2015.

The statement said the ECG had also been directed to develop and implement detailed Communication Plan for engaging the public on the impact of the December, 2015 tariffs and measures put in place to resolve implementation challenges arising from the tariffs.

'The PURC wishes to reassure all consumers that the Commission is monitoring all the feedback arising from the recent tariff increases and will not relent in ensuring that the ECG discharges its obligations to consumers,' it added.

GNA
Bongo (U/E), Jan 25, GNA - The Bongo District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Alexis Ayamdor, has assured the people of the District that the Assembly would furnish all new schools so as to provide a conducive atmosphere for effective teaching and learning.

The DCE gave the assurance in Bongo, during the handing over of two basic school projects to the Bongo Directorate of Education.

He observed that education was one of the critical tools for addressing poverty and improving lives in the northern parts of the country.

The three unit classroom block at Tarongo was built with resources from the District Assembly Common Fund at the cost of GHC145,000.00 Ghana cedis, while the other three unit classroom block, built at Bongo Soe with resources from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) cost GHC145,000.00.

The DCE said the Assembly and GETFUND had provided similar educational infrastructure dotted across the District and furnished them.

He stated that government was supporting some selected schools under the School Feeding Programme while the Assembly and the World Bank were sponsoring some brilliant but needy students in selected Senior High Schools in the area.

Mr Ayamdor entreated parents to invest in their children's education instead of investing in ferocious things and urged the management of the new schools to ensure the proper maintenance of the facilities.

The Planning Officer of the District Education Directorate, Mbela Padmore, gave the assurance that there would be proper monitoring and supervision of the projects to ensure a long lifespan.

Naba Abelenzi Ayetah, the chief of Tarongo, who blamed the failure of many projects and programmes on the partisan nature of most assemblies, impressed upon the Assembly, Unit Committee Members and the political heads of the District to bury their political differences when it comes to development issues.

GNA
Kumasi, Jan. 25, GNA - The Ashanti Regional Kayayei Association, a group committed to the cause of head porters (Kayayei), has appealed to corporate institutions to come to their aid to help resettle their affected members.

The porters were displaced in the recent fire outbreak at the Afful-Nkwanta Dagomba -Line, Kumasi.

More than 150 porters were displaced as their structures and other personal belongings got burnt in the fire outbreak at the Dagomba-Line, home to the majority of the Kayayei.

It took firefighters more than six hours to bring the raging fire under control. There was no casualty, but the development had caused a big blow to the porters, most of them losing their property in the process.

A statement signed by Mr Osman Ziblim, Regional Chairman of the Association in Kumasi, described the situation of the affected members as pathetic.

'Our mothers, brothers and sisters have nowhere to sleep now. We are counting on the public to come to our aid to improve the situation of these unfortunate ones,' the statement said.

It lauded the National Disaster Management Organisation for donating some relief items to the affected members, saying much as this gesture had alleviated some of their plight, a lot more is needed to improve their general wellbeing.

The statement reminded the government of the need to work harder to improve the living conditions of the members in the areas of education, health, accommodation and their general wellbeing.

It cautioned politicians not to use issues concerning the Kayayei for their own selfish gains.

'The Kayayei Association has no political affiliation. We do not want any party to use us as a propaganda machinery to advance its own cause.'

The statement denied reports that the Association contributed GHa5,000.00 to the recent fund-raising by the New Political Party in Kumasi, noting that it had also not made such contribution to any political party in the past to advance their cause.

'Most Kayayei have been amongst the poorest of the poor in the country since time immemorial, but all that we hear from government to government are empty promises,' the statement noted.

It reminded political parties not to take advantage of their vulnerability to use them for political gains.

The statement urged members of the Association to focus on their mission statement.

GNA
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Investing in a bull market is pretty easy. Pick a stock, and watch it go up. As the saying goes, an incoming tide lifts all boats.

Markets are enjoying a relief rally late last week. Its really just a short-covering rally though.

Dont even think about picking the bottom hereunless you realise its a complete punt. It will take months of bottoming before you can get more confident about the bear market in resource stocks being over.

Bear market rallies are good at luring people in. They make you think the worst is over. They make you think stocks are cheap. And then when you do buy back in, the market turns back down again

On the other hand, investing in a bull market is pretty easy. Pick a stock, and watch it go up. As the saying goes, an incoming tide lifts all boats.

The reality is that most people attribute strong performance in a bull market to their own stock picking nous.

Its only when a bear market comes along that they realise the limits of their stock picking skills. They probably also receive a brutal lesson in the role that emotions can play in investment markets.

Let me tell you, emotions will lose you more money in the market than bad stock picks.

If you pick a dud stock, the obvious and unemotional thing to do is to dump it when it moves against you. But most people stick with it. They want to be proved right.

Then it falls a bit more. Its cheap, you think. Ill buy some more and average down.

It falls again. Ok, you say, I got it wrong. Ill just wait for a bounce, then Ill sell.

But the bounce doesnt come. You get a profit warning instead. The stock plunges.

Now youre stuck. You dont want to take such a large loss. This is probably the bottom, you think to yourself. Ill kick myself if I sell and then it starts to take off.

So you hang on against your better judgement. You end up with the same dud stock you bought a year ago, only its worth 70% less than what you paid for it.

I dont know if youve had a similar experience. I know I have. My stupid emotions have cost me plenty, especially in the early years.

But this experience was a valuable one. It cost me money but I learned from it. Unfortunately, theres really no easy way to learn this lesson. You simply have to experience the pain of it to benefit.

Having said that, I realised a few years ago that Port Phillip didnt have a product that removed all emotion from the investing equation.

So back in early 2014 I decided to do something about it. I felt that the next few years in investment markets probably wouldnt be as kind as the previous few. I wanted Port Phillip readers to have access to a product that would steer them through such a period, without letting their emotions dominate their decisions.

So I got in touch with an old mate of mine, Jason McIntosh. You might be familiar with his work.

Jason was a former trader who retired at 37. I knew he was still actively involved in the markets though, so I asked him if he could design a system for our readers.

After some negotiating, we came to an arrangement. Jason spent the next six months or so building a system that incorporated everything hed learned in his 20 year trading career.

This involved designing algorithms to generate buy and sell signals. He did extensive back testing to make sure the system was a robust one. That is, a system that could generate solid results no matter what the underlying market conditions were.

The results from back testing told us the system would work. We just had to put it into practice.

By late 2014 we were ready to go. Quant Trader was ready to start generating live signals.

Now, were more than 12 months into the Quant Trader service. Despite 2015 being a tough year for many investors, Im pleased to report that Quant Trader did ever better than back testing said it would.

This is exactly the type of product I wanted to have for you in Port Phillip Publishings stable. Quant Trader tells you exactly when to buy and when to sell. It doesnt think, it acts. Its judgement isnt clouded by emotions. Its driven purely by the share price data.

The easiest way to describe Quant Trader is that it buys into share price strength and sells into share price weakness. It lets winners run and cuts losers early.

This sounds ridiculously simple but most investors do exactly the opposite.

Why?

Our emotions screw with our rational thinking.

Take them out of the equation and see what happens

Heres a snapshot of how Quant Trader has performed from inception on 17 November 2014 to 31 December 2015. This was a time where the All Ordinaries lost value, and showed plenty of volatility in the process.

The average winning trade (including open and closed positions) generated a return of 34.8%, while the average losing trade (open and closed positions) lost just 10.4%.

Look at those numbers again

Your wins average at 34.8%. Your losses average at just 10.3%.

Many people would be happy with those numbers in a bull market. But Quant Traders signals did that during the worst year since 2011.

Thats the Quant Trader advantage. Its an algorithmic trading system designed to latch onto winners early and stick with the trend. When the trade doesnt work out, it dumps the stock. No questions asked, no ego involved.

How does it find the winners?

The systems algorithms scan around 2,000 stocks on a daily basis looking for share price movement. Specifically, the algorithms have an advanced filtering process that distinguishes everyday volatility from share price movements that hint of a major move ahead.

This filtering process enabled Quant Trader to put out buy signals on stocks like Blackmores [ASX:BKL] (up 542% at 31 December 2015) Hub24 [ASX:HUB] (up 211%) and AMA Group [ASX:AMA] (up 154%).

Chances are youve heard of Blackmores. It was the ASX 200 best performer of 2015. But Id guess the other two stocks arent so well known.

Thats the power of Quant Trader. It finds stocks at the beginning of a major move BEFORE the rest of the market knows about it.

Theres plenty more I could tell you about the service. Thats because Im proud to have played a small part in bringing a product like this to Port Phillip subscribers.

But Im running out of time, and I need to wrap up this edition of Insider.

If you like the sound of what Quant Trader can do for you though, keep your eyes peeled for a special four part video series starting next week. In it, Quant Trader designer Jason McIntosh goes through the first years results in detail, and explains more about how the system works.

Stay tuned for that early next week. With 2016 looking like it will be another rough year for markets, the discipline of Quant Trader might be exactly what youre after.

Cheers,

Greg Canavan

Ed Note: This is an edited extract, first published in Port Phillip Insider.

From the Port Phillip Publishing Library

Special Report: You probably already sense that stocks might be in for another bumpy ride in 2016. But that doesnt have to mean that you have to miss out on making great money. Because, according to small-cap analyst Sam Volkering, certain stocks could rise hundreds of percent no matter what happens in the next 12 months. In this special report, Sam reveals the simple principle behind that success. And youll also discover his top three small-cap picks for 2016, which could bring you gains as high as 338% over the next 12 months. (more)
Telstra Corporation [ASX:TLS] has entered into a strategic investment that will enhance mobile web surfing for customers.

If you surf the web on your phone, youll know things can get a bit frustrating. I know when I surf the web I go down all sorts of rabbit holes, in the form of article links. But then I run into some problems. When I click on a new web page to see what its about the waiting starts. Instead of loading the web page quickly, my white screen is white. Leaving me to wait for the entire web page to load.

If youve ever had this problem dont worry, it will be a thing of the past. Telstra Corporation [ASX:TLS] has entered into a strategic investment that will enhance mobile web surfing for customers.

Telstra has invested in Instart Logic, an application delivery service. Its a smart move for Telstra. They can see a trend emerging. A trend of individuals switching the device they use for web browsing.

Instart Logics platform downloads only the relevant aspects of a webpage said Mark Sherman, managing director of Telstra Ventures. Therefore youre not waiting with a white phone screen to browse web pages.

Mr Sherman went on to state the service enables users to view and interact with a page before all elements have finished loading. These techniques are highly beneficial in a mobile first world as they can reduce the download size of a typical application by more than 30%.

So not only can you browse web pages faster, it uses up less mobile data. Thus a fatter wallet for customers each month.

Instart Logic is expecting to expand their business into Asia. CEO of Instart Logic, Manav Mital stated:

Asia has emerged as a global hub for mobile app businesses and we do see a lot of opportunities for us in the region by leveraging Telstras rich experience and footprint in the Asia-Pacific region.

Asia would be the most logical next step for mobile applications. And whats even move obvious is Telstras interest in Asia.

Telstra executive, Darrin Webb, revealed the companys plans for a fibre optic network in Asia. Telstra bought out Asian telco, Pacnet last year and now expect returns on their investment. Major projects include a tighter integration between Pacnet and Telstras cable network.

Telstra sees China as its next big market. And theyre expecting the combined Telstra and Pacnet networks will be their competitive edge. Mr Webb stated.

Asia is an important focus for us, not only because of strong growth in the region, but it is also because we now control more assets here as a result of our acquisition of Pacnet last year. We are investing in opportunities to integrate our network in China and other priority markets.

But before they capitalise on the growing Asian market, Telstra will address the issue of security.

Telstra takes PMs challenge head on

Last year in November, Malcolm Turnbull demanded more innovation from Australian companies. Telstra has taken on the challenge, sending senior executive, Kate McKenzie, off to Estonia. There she would meet with key players in one of the worlds fastest growing tech hubs.

McKenzie was expected to seek out cyber security services. Potentially for Telstra to offer more services to domestic governments and companies.

Telstra is also planning to invest US$1 billion into a Philippines joint venture. But with all these new investments some shareholders are concern about capital for future dividends.

Thats the big challenge for us. Our investor base love their dividends, love their returns and why wouldnt they? But at the same time as doing that if we dont invest in the future its not going to be sustainable in the long term, McKenzie said.

What to do about Telstras shares

Since their announcement on Thursday, Telstras shares have climbed 2.79%. The jump has almost put shares into positive territory for the year. But shareholders are still seeing a negative return for the first three weeks of 2016.

Source: Yahoo finance

A major reason for the majority of Australian stocks performing poorly at the start of 2016 is China. Each time fears surface of Chinas declining growth, Australian shares take a beating.

So far the S&P/ASX 200 has experienced negative returns for 11 days out of 14. But doesnt this mean everything is cheap? Shouldnt you buy cheap stocks?

Well, currently its unknown how long Chinas turmoil will be a focal point. It will also depend upon what you are doing in the market. Are you speculating or investing?

The reason I ask the question is because it may determine whether you would buy/sell a certain stock. The difference between the two can be skewed, but generally the amount of risk can determine which category you might fit into.

Speculating forces you to take on higher risk, but you can be compensated with higher returns. Investing is based on fundamental analysis, taking on less risk and generally seeing smaller returns.

So should you speculate or invest when it comes to Telstra? Right now it looks like more of a speculation play. China continues to play havoc with our markets. But as to which way Telstra might head towards for the future is anyones guess.

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Telstra might not be classified as a beaten down blue chip, but there are some out there in the market. According to Money Mornings Publisher Kris Sayce, there are five blue-chips that are a must buy.

Kris has close to 20 years experience in analysing stocks. His experience ranges from brokerage houses to a 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 Kriss report he explains how moving some of your capital into beaten down blue chip stocks is a good idea. There is one common denominator that makes these five blue chips a buy. And Kris shows you how to identify this for future investments.

To get your free copy of Kriss report today, click here.
For four decades, Nancy Raneys family has raised crops  mostly alfalfa hay right now  on wide-open land near Big Spring, about 40 miles northeast of Midland. She and her husband Hugh have run the farm for 16 of those years.

But if certain troubles persist, the couple may have to stop growing hay. Theirs, however, is not a story of drought, weevils or other typical West Texas scourges.

This familys bank-breaking trouble: skyrocketing electricity costs.

Running pumps to irrigate their fields from January to November sucks up plenty of energy along with the water. But the Raneys were flummoxed in mid 2014 when their electric bills began running thousands of dollars a month higher than the year before. That August, for instance, their farm and home electric bills totaled more than $8,500.

You have a bale of hay thats $10, and your rates double. What are you going to do? Nancy Raney said over the phone, standing outside a local stock show. Its not like you can sell that same bale of hay for $20.

The soaring rates werent for the electricity itself. Rather, they were paying vastly higher bills to the company whose distribution system and transmission lines bring it to their farm.

The Raneys are among more than 50,000 Sharyland Utilities customers  in homes, businesses and churches in rural West and North Texas  that are contemplating tough budget choices after nearly two years of paying the highest electric transmission and distribution rates in Texas.

Delivery rates for Sharyland residents are more than twice the state average for regulated utilities. While locals  like many Texans  can choose retail electric providers on the competitive market, theyre stuck with Sharylands power lines.

Ironically, the best bet for relief may be if Sharylands owner  the Ray L. Hunt family of Dallas  can win control of a much larger share of the state's electrical distribution system.

Hunt is trying to buy another utility: Oncor, the states largest. But the familys $18 billion bid is drawing heavy scrutiny, including from Sharyland folks themselves.

Im very skeptical of it, said Raney. Its hard to be fleeced for two years, and then the people who are doing the fleecing say, 'Its okay  youre going to be all right.'

A power outrage

Sharyland ratepayers have complained to the utility and organized on social media (a private Facebook group for aggrieved customers has united more than 1,400 members). Theyve flooded Texas lawmakers and the Public Utility Commission with letters and copies of their bills.

That includes the 50-member Champion Baptist Church, in Roscoe, which is wondering if it could go off-grid to ditch its high bills. And Christian Fellowship Church in Colorado City is holding off on repairing its House of Refuge for displaced people, citing high rates.

I had somebody tell me the other day that politicians shouldnt mess with churches or farmers, said Janey Burke, who helped organize a letter-writing campaign for the Champion Baptist Church. And this is a church full of farmers.

The West Texas groundswell has triggered a commission investigation and promises from regulators and utility officials to find a fix.

Theres no doubt that Sharylands residential ratepayers are looking for rate relief, and we support trying to find a solution, said Jeanne Phillips, a Hunt spokeswoman.

Hunt officials said any owners would have struggled to keep rates low under the mix of economic and regulatory conditions Sharyland faces.

The company's biggest challenge, experts say, is that it has too few customers scattered over too many miles.

On top of that, in 2010, it acquired electric co-op CapRock Energy and struggled to bring its customers into the state's competitive market. In 2013, a cheap long-term power contract expired. And in 2014, the utility commission approved a new rate structure that lowered rates for industrial consumers but raised residential rates. Under the old system, industrial users had essentially subsidized the residents. The change also bumped up some customers to a more expensive rate class.

Sharyland points out that it warned the commission of potential rate shock and asked it to approve more gradual changes.

Any fixes would need approval from the three-member commission, which in October approved an adjustment that could save residents just a few dollars per month, and is expected to consider a new Sharyland rate case  a full-scale re-evaluation  this spring.

But even that move would not change the fundamental economics at the utility.

Big fix for little utility?

Something could help fix the problem: Hunts mammoth proposal to buy and reshape Oncor, which delivers power much more cheaply to more than three million Texas homes and businesses in North and West Texas  including Raneys across-the-street neighbor. (His rates, she said, are half of hers or less).

Hunt officials suggest that combining certain Oncor and Sharyland operations would allow scale to ease the tiny utilitys troubles.

This Oncor proceeding presents a very real and significant opportunity  and thats what it is, an opportunity  to bring some significant relief for Sharyland customers, said Paul Schulze, a Sharyland spokesman.

On Thursday, Hunt filed a commitment to prepare a proposal for a possible business combination of the utilities, including addressing rate disparities, if the Oncor deal is approved.

The commission appears open to some sort of merger, though nothing is guaranteed.

It would be relatively simple to merge the two operating companies, Commissioner Ken Anderson said last week during hearings on the plan, which is the lynchpin of efforts by Oncors parent, Energy Future Holdings, to emerge from one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in American history.

Still, the Hunts' broader bid for Oncor has faced fierce pushback from consumer advocates, big industrial power users, staff experts at the utility commission, Oncor officials and even former Gov. Rick Perry.

To save on federal income taxes, Hunt wants to reorganize Oncor into a real estate investment trust, essentially dividing it into two companies: one owning the assets (power lines, trucks and transformers, for instance) while the other rents the equipment, operates it and deals with customers.

That financial structure has long served the real estate world. Shopping malls, for instance, commonly use it, as investors back a broad entity that rents space and other assets to individual stores.

The structure would initially help Oncor borrow money at lower rates, which Hunt says would help keep the utility financially healthy and potentially lead to lower rates in the long run.

But its nearly unprecedented in the energy world. The only other U.S. example? Little Sharyland.

Several aspects of the structure make critics nervous, and Sharylands troubles have done nothing to raise confidence.

The Hunts have pushed back, calling the concerns alarmist and misguided. The company also points out that Sharylands real estate investment trust structure drew no mention in the utility commission analysis of the rate troubles.

The commission is expected to rule in late March.

Meantime, Sharyland ratepayers  folks who never had reason to follow such in-the-weeds proceedings  are closely watching.

Every night I come home, I follow the stories and everything, Raney said.

Disclosure: CenterPoint is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune. Oncor and Energy Future Holdings were corporate sponsors in 2012.

--

What Texans Pay to Have Their Power Delivered

Source: Public Utility Commission of Texas (Sept. 2015)

Average Residential Delivery Charges (1,000 kilowatt-hour use; Doesn't include retail charges)

Sharyland (excluding tiny McAllen division) $90.39

Oncor $38.59

CenterPoint Energy Houston $45.78

Texas New Mexico Power $41.01

AEP Texas Central $49.07

AEP Texas North $43.56
CYPRESS  The brisket at Brooks Place arrives with a deep smoky bark that the grill master here lovingly refers to as black gold.

The line outside the barbecue joint, little more than a trailer and a few picnic tables parked outside an Ace hardware in this Houston suburb, starts building midmorning. Customers need only bring a solid appetite and a bit of time.

And a gun, if youre looking for a discount.

Out back, a generator hums rhythmically and post oak logs are piled next to an upright barbecue pit, enveloped in a haze of savory smoke. There are signs banning pets, short shorts and sagging pants, and another with a picture of a handgun. Firearms welcome, it reads.

We felt a need to tell gun owners you dont need to worry about being judged, said owner and chef Trent Brooks, sitting near another sign that said, Thank you for carrying your gun today.

Brooks is so gun-friendly, he affixed stickers to the walls of the trailer with pictures of targets saying, Nothing inside worth dying for and If you can read this, youre in range. He advertises concealed handgun classes on the restaurants menu and website, and has offered numerous discounts to gun owners and first responders during his seven years running what Texas Monthly rated among the 50 best barbecue joints worldwide.

After Texas became the nations most populous state to permit gun owners to carry handguns openly, or open carry, Brooks offered a 25 percent discount to those who took advantage of the law, which took effect with the new year.

Brooks, 45, a sturdy, bearded man who was raised by a father who kept a gun at home for protection, has a concealed handgun license and became a gun rights proponent after two break-ins at his restaurant.

In Texas, we have a saying: Its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, he said as he sat at one of the picnic tables on a weekday morning, wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat (hes a big fan) and red chefs smock.

Brooks supported the new open carry law for practical reasons: He said it protects gun owners from being charged with a crime for accidentally exposing their guns.

He rejects concerns that, as an African-American man, openly carrying a firearm might put him at risk, especially with police.

Ive stood up here hand in hand with police, he said.

Although he doesnt plan to carry a gun every day, Brooks said he wanted the flexibility.

Before the open carry law took effect, if the wind blew and your gun was exposed and someone saw it, you get accused of a crime, he explained. Now, if I go into Lowes and I reach up to a shelf and my shirt comes up, Im not charged with a crime.

Not everyone sees it quite that plainly. Soon after Brooks offered the open carry discount, his wife noticed a threat posted on their Facebook page.

Ill shoot up the place on Saturday (New Years Day), one person wrote. Lets see how your gun toting patrons will stop me.

Brooks had received his share of Internet criticism, including some posts by people who vowed never to dine at his trailer because of his stance, but this was his first threat. Determined to stay open, he contacted the sheriffs office and hired two off-duty constables to stand guard.

When the day came, no attacker materialized. Instead, Brooks fed 300 people, including about 200 gun owners carrying openly on their hips.

We had people walk up here just to shake my hand and say thank you for standing up for our rights, Brooks said as he prepared to serve lunch, including ribs, deer sausage, brisket, smoky barbecue-infused baked beans, cranberry almond coleslaw, and bacon, onion and garlic potatoes.

Jake West, 38, of Cypress, a pipe maker, arrived with his wife and ordered generous plates of brisket and deer sausage.

I came because its pro gun. You know youre going to be protected, West said, noting that lists posted online show which businesses do and dont allow open carry.

Texas3006.com tracks businesses that have posted signs banning open carry. So does the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

I dont like to give my business to ones that wont let me have them. I see the signs, I just go the other way, West said.

Nearby sat Branden Eagle, 28, a Realtor, weekly customer and gun owner who opposes open carry. What hes not opposed to are Brooks ribs.

I dont think we should be living like the Wild West, Eagle said. I think a law enforcement officer should be the only one with access to open carry. On the first day, I saw people trying to show off with .45s on their hip.

But at another table, oil field worker and gun owner Vincent Facundo, 32, of Houston said he supported open carry precisely because thats how things were done in the frontier days.

It takes us back to the Wild West. If you go into a business and try to rob them and theres three guys with guns, youll think twice, he said.

As the lunch hour wore on, dozens of customers slathered heaping plates with jalapeno-infused barbecue sauce and two white-haired women arrived, both wearing handguns on their hips. Most patrons didnt even turn to look, though one asked to snap a cellphone photo.

We wanted to show our support for the restaurant, said Mary Shelton, 67, a retired product manager at nearby Hewlett-Packard. She and her friend had heard about the discount  and the threat  and decided to make their first trip to Brooks Place.

Her friend, Sherry Dickson, 69, a retired elementary and middle school teacher, glanced at Brooks various warning signs and smiled.

I also appreciate his sign for pants, she said.

---

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Things just got a little bit brighter for Bill Cosby. The famous comedian, actor and author has been having some really rough past few months, but Cosby has just gotten a glimpse of positivity. He has won the defamation lawsuit against the alleged victim, Renita Hill.

Hill was one out of eight accusers that filed defamation cases against Cosby. They all filed their cases in October stating that their reputations had been damaged after Cosby called them liars and extortionists. According to CNN, Judge Arthur Schwab dismissed the case, explaining that the statements "do not support a claim for defamation as defined by Pennsylvania law." Judge Schwab also stated that the claims were "pure opinion" and a "far cry from labeling [Hill] (and the other women who have made similar public assertions) as liars or extortionists."

Back in December, Cosby and his lawyer, Monique Pressley, countersued his sexual assault accusers.

My statement re today's lawsuit filed by @BillCosby against all 7 accusers in Massachusetts lawsuit. pic.twitter.com/XRYoV4gXpC  Monique Pressley (@MoniquePressley) December 14, 2015

Cosby has been accused by 60 individuals of sexual misconduct and, in late December, he was charged with the 2004 sexual assault case. He has since been freed on a million-dollar bail and was due back in court on January 14th. If he loses this case, Cosby can face up to ten years in prison. But his lawyers are fighting their hardest not to let that happen. According to Complex, Cosby's attorneys released this joint statement: "Make no mistake, we intend to mount a vigorous defense against this unjustified charge and we expect that Mr. Cosby will be exonerated by a court of law."

Cosby is due back in court again on February 2nd to see what will happen next with this case.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tinashe has been prepping the release of her sophomore album, Joyride, and from the looks of it, the LP may be receiving contributions from some big names. In recent days, she hinted at new music with the likes of Miguel, Big Sean, Skrillex and Diplo.

The 2 On singer shared a photo of the musical crew accompanied by Chicago songstress, Njomza, on Instagram. She captioned the photo with, Making music somewhere in Malibu.

Making music somewhere in Malibu A photo posted by TINASHE (@tinashenow) on Jan 21, 2016 at 6:57pm PST

No word on what the group of artists are working on in particular, but judging from a photo posted by Miguel, they may have joined forces as a writing camp.

deathsquad A photo posted by Miguel (@miguel) on Jan 21, 2016 at 8:44pm PST

Back in November, Tinashe was featured on the cover of Dazed magazine. The publication reported a January release date for Joyride with contributions from Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Hit-Boy, Travis $cott, Dev Hynes, Nic Nac and Boi-1da, as well as Chris Brown, who appears on the lead single Player.

I want it to be exciting, I want it to keep you on your toes, I want people to not know what to expect, Tinashe said. Its the perfect title for this point in my life I feel like Im on a joyride all the time. Its dangerous, its an adventure, its emotional.

Tinashe previously revealed that she has 30 tracks recorded for her forthcoming LP. She has not announced who to expect feature wise, aside from Brown, or whether or not the project will actually drop this month. Her critically acclaimed debut, Aquarius, included guest spots from ScHoolboy Q, Future and A$AP Rocky. The album dropped in October 2014.

Check back with with us for more updates on what these musical heavy weights are working on. If you haven't already, check out Tinashe's tour itinerary here.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Controversy has surrounded the 88th annual Academy Award nominations ever since they were announced earlier this month and more celebrities are voicing their opinion on the matter. During the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday (Jan. 23), actor Danny DeVito spoke with the Associated Press about the Oscar's lack of diversity, calling America a "racist country."

Some of Hollywood's biggest names headed to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah over the weekend to debut their films and to screen others. With award season still fresh on everyone's mind, many stars talked about their new movies hitting the big screen and added their opinions on the #OscarsSoWhite discussion.

The It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of the latest actors to address the diversity issue in Hollywood, citing the country's histroy with racism. DeVito shed light on the unfair practices performed in the industry and explained how many people in the business are overlooked.

"It's unfortunate that the entire country is a racist country," DeVito said. "This is one example of the fact that even though some people have given great performances in movies they weren't even thought about."

Following the uproar of complaints, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced they will be implementing new guidelines in order to ensure changes are made, including a significant increase of diversity within their organization and with their voting members.

The video also included short interviews with House of Lies star Don Cheadle and Peaky Blinders star Sam Neill, who both shared similar sentiments about the scarcity of diversity. Cheadle believes there are fewer opportunities available for marginalized groups.

"We are living in a country that discriminates and has certain racist tendencies so sometimes it's manifested in things like this and it's illuminated," DeVito continued on Saturday. "But just generally speaking we're racists. We are a bunch of racists."

The 2016 Oscars are scheduled to take place on Sunday (Feb. 28) at 7 p.m. ET on ABC.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Last month, we'd heard rumors and speculation around Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat quitting his other job, executive producer of Doctor Who, after the upcoming season 10 episodes. This has, unfortunately, been confirmed in a new announcement from BBC and the writer, marking an end of an era for the popular series. Whether or not series star Peter Capaldi will leave the show too has not been confirmed, though we've heard rumors of that as well, especially since Jenna Coleman just departed the series in 2015. We won't have to say goodbye to Moffat any time soon though, because season 10 airs in 2017 after a 2016 Christmas special. So we'll meet Moffat's replacement, Chris Chibnall, in 2018! Read more on this below.

You can check out more buzzing news coverage from Music Times right here!

"Feels odd to be talking about leaving when I'm just starting work on the scripts for season 10, but the fact is my timey-wimey is running out," Moffat announced in the official BBC press release, according to Gamma Squad. "While Chris is doing his last run of Broadchurch, I'll be finishing up on the best job in the universe and keeping the TARDIS warm for him. It took a lot of gin and tonic to talk him into this, but I am beyond delighted that one of the true stars of British Television drama will be taking the Time Lord even further into the future. At the start of season 11, Chris Chibnall will become the new showrunner of Doctor Who. And I will be thrown in a skip."

In the same press release, the premiere window for the newest episodes of the series was announced. 2016 will only see the coveted Christmas special, which is 11 months away, and then season 10 will air in the Spring of 2017.

There are a lot of questions about whether or not Capaldi will stick with the series after 2017, especially since a new showrunner has always started with a new lead, but only time will tell - a statement that Whovians know too well!

Steven Moffat will step down after Series 10 Chris Chibnall to take over. FULL STORY @ https://t.co/7tjdSIGWO2 pic.twitter.com/1AU0neJQSR  Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) January 22, 2016

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Early Monday morning Blac Chyna sent rumors into overdrive when she posted a photo that had people wondering if Rob Kardashian was now dating Tygas ex? The rumor got some weight to it as his older sister Khloe Kardashian posted cryptically on Twitter with messages that seemed to indicate she agreed that they seemed to be dating. This would definitely provide a strange plot twist as Tyga is now dating Kardashians youngest sister, Kylie Jenner, while he apparently looks to be moving on with The Gold Album rappers baby mama.

Chyna sent tongues wagging after posting a photo of herself snuggled up in the arms of tattooed man with the sample caption, the beginning paired with a three-leaf clover emoji. Although normally people wouldnt think twice about the caption or the reference, fans and followers began to put two and two together after images of Kardashians sleeve tattoo begin to circulate which was exactly identical to the arm in Chynas photo op. The three-leaf clover was also a dead giveaway as Kardashians birthday is Mar.17th, also known as St. Patricks Day.

A photo posted by News With A Side of Tea (@thacelebritea) on Jan 25, 2016 at 7:03am PST

It didnt take anytime for Kardashians BFF and sister, Khloe, to chime in with what most viewed as a direct response to Chyna and her brother cozying up.

You can do anything. But never go against the family  Khloe (@khloekardashian) January 25, 2016

However, in a series of tweets Khloe reveled that she was initially referencing a different family member, but after seeing the photo of her brother and Chyna together, it could definitely be applied that situation as well.

You guys do know I have about 100 family members correct? I was referring to a family member who just bailed out of doing my talk show today  Khloe (@khloekardashian) January 25, 2016

But hey, maybe my quote can go towards a few people today.  Khloe (@khloekardashian) January 25, 2016

Well now I know what all my family members are doing lol. Thanks Twitter  Khloe (@khloekardashian) January 25, 2016

Some would view the youngest Kardashians blossoming relationship with Chyna as a personal affront to the family, as they have had bad blood between them ever since Tyga dropped the Rich $ex starlet for Jenner. However, it appears that the former Keeping Up With the Kardashians star could care less as he has been battling his own health issues over the last few years.

Some say the revelation could have been the reason why Jenner posted the below photo to her Instagram, and then quickly deleted after thinking twice about it.



WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

A photo posted by The Shade Room (@theshaderoominc) on Jan 24, 2016 at 9:51pm PST

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
It is wicked to place political ...
Sonora, CA  While $70-million is coming to Tuolumne County for post Rim Fire efforts, there is uncertainty as to what specific projects it will fund.

The State of California submitted an application seeking $117-million for Rim Fire resilience projects, and with $70-million coming, it is unclear what of the $47-million was eliminated. Tuolumne County Administrator Craig Pedro notes that the press release put out late last week by HUD notes that a community resilience center will receive funding, but the application proposed two centers, one in Groveland and another in Tuolumne. Pedro says the verbiage leads the county to assume that only one has been funded, but which one is unknown. Assuming that this is the case, there are still additional cuts that had to be made to total the $47-million.

The HUD announcement also specifically notes that a bioenergy and wood products facility will receive money, and programs that will help watershed health through strategic thinning and biomass removal.

As to why it has been difficult to attain the specifics, Pedro says an assumption is that it could be related to the massive winter storm system that has hit the Washington DC area, closing several offices and making travel difficult. Ive been talking with the folks up in Sacramento who were the leads in putting the application together at the state level. They are as anxious as anyone to learn, but they have not been able to contact anyone.

Pedro notes that as soon as the state leaders receive the details, they have agreed to pass them along to local officials.
Don't you hate it when somebody is blasting their horn in traffic for seemingly no reason? Here's another question: Is that even legal?

Diane from Winter Park writes in this week:

"Are there any repercussions for people who use their horn way too much? There is nothing worse than sitting in stopped traffic while somebody is blasting their horn in your ear behind you."



How often do you use your horn?

Brian Kravin, a Eustis resident, says, "I reserve it for the most serious infractions, someone truly cutting you off or doing something where they may not be aware of your presence."

Our own meteorologist Mallory Nicholls added, "I think my biggest problem is when the light turns green. They don't stay green for long, so I want people to start going at that point."

So, is it possible that honking your horn could turn into an expensive ticket?

Florida law is fairly vague when it comes to the topic of honking your horn. In fact, there are only three guidelines mentioned:

FLORIDA STATUTE 316.271

1. Each vehicle is required to have one, and it has to be capable of emitting a sound audible from at least 200 feet away.

2. The horn cannot be unreasonably loud or harsh or a whistle.

3. The horn should be used when "reasonably necessary to ensure safe operation."

Receiving a ticket for this would be considered a non-moving violation which, for example, in Volusia County, would be $116.

View our Real Time Traffic Map and check cameras on Central Florida's major roads.

If you have a traffic question, Ryan Harper can answer it. Send him your question.
Four Orlando women have been arrested and charged in the theft of more than $3,200 worth of Victoria's Secret merchandise from a Lake Wales mall store.

On Friday, employees of the Eagle Ridge Mall Victoria's Secret reported to police that a former employee and another mall worker alerted them that they had been robbed just before they closed for the night, according to a Lake Wales Police arrest affidavit.

The two said they saw several women running from the store with armloads of Victoria's Secret merchandise, then fleeing in a dark-colored Volvo SUV. One of the women dropped a car key fob for a Volvo, the affidavit said.



The suspect vehicle was found in Lake Hamilton, where police say $3,217 worth of merchandise was inside, the police report said.

Witnesses identified the four women inside the vehicle as Kiana Thomas, 18; Donetta Hester, 20; Cyntoria White, 26; and and Patkiya Tukes, 22, all of Orlando. The women were charged and booked into the Polk County Jail.


TOKYO (AP)  Toyota remained the top-selling automaker for a second year in a row, beating U.S. rival General Motors by some 270,000 vehicles in 2013, and set an ambitious target to sell more than 10 million vehicles this year.

That would mark a milestone as no automaker has ever topped annual worldwide sales of 10 million.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it sold a record 9.98 million vehicles worldwide last year, up 2 percent from the previous year.

The Japanese automaker has made an impressive comeback from an earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan in 2011, damaging auto suppliers and hobbling production.

Toyota also outlined plans to sell 10.32 million vehicles and produce 10.43 million vehicles in 2014.

General Motors Co. sold 9.71 million cars and trucks worldwide last year, outselling Volkswagen AG of Germany at 9.5 million.

Toyota recaptured the global sales crown in 2012 from GM, which had been the top-selling carmaker for more than seven decades until being surpassed by Toyota in 2008.

Toyota, which makes the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models, had strong sales growth last year in overseas markets, although sales fell in long stagnant Japan.

Toyotas U.S. sales totaled nearly 2.24 million vehicles, up 7 percent from the previous year. Its China sales were also strong, surging 9 percent to 917,000.

Toyota remained optimistic about prospects this year for both regions, expecting sales to grow 3 percent in the U.S. to 2.3 million vehicles, while adding 20 percent in China sales to 1.1 million.

The company was typically low-key about the bragging rights for being No. 1, reiterating its comments from previous years that it was merely making one car at a time to appeal to global consumers.

GM has also expressed similar sentiments, but being the top seller is a key morale booster for the employees and related companies. The healthy results at the three rivals reflect the momentum of growth in the auto industry.

Toyota has undergone tough times in recent years, such as a massive recall fiasco in the U.S. involving more than 14 million vehicles for sticky gas pedals, faulty floor mats, problematic brakes and many other defects, spanning several years from 2009.
TEXLINE - A Sunflower Production Program has been scheduled for Jan. 26 at the Texline Community Center, 100 S. 3rd St. in Texline, by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

Sunflowers can be an alternative option for low water and dryland production. Also, they can be a late planting option if a previous crop gets extensive hail damage, said Mike Bragg, AgriLife Extension agriculture and natural resources agent for Dallam and Hartley counties.
AUSTIN - The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) encourages employers to review the workplace poster requirements in Texas and to be sure that all posters are up-to-date and displayed correctly. TWC also urges all employers to be aware of solicitors who may try to coerce employers to purchase required workplace posters from them.

TWC has investigated reports of vendors claiming to be state contractors, implying that employers are not in compliance with state law and urging employers to buy workplace posters from the vendor. TWC advises employers to disregard these vendors and consult with TWC directly to determine which posters are needed.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)  Federal law enforcement agencies are working more closely with big-city police departments in Connecticut to fight violent crime, the states top U.S. prosecutor said in an interview.



Cooperation has been particularly effective in New Haven, where the police department has begun regularly sharing intelligence, U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly said. Representatives from Dalys office, federal and state agencies, New Haven police and other local departments huddle together daily in meetings that began this month.



The idea that these folks would be getting together every day to talk about most recent occurring violence and what connections can we make, and who are the players, and what proactive steps should we take, is from my perspective extremely exciting, Daly said.



Daly, who has led the office since May 2014, said she hopes to set up similar arrangements in Bridgeport and Hartford.



Homicide rates have been at historical lows in the states biggest cities, although violent crime, fueled partly by criminal gangs and the drug trade, remains a persistent challenge. Last year, there were 18 homicides in Bridgeport and 14 in New Haven, while Hartford saw a spike with 31.



Violent crime traditionally has received special attention from federal prosecutors in Connecticut, Daly said, because state prosecutors do not have the benefit of a grand jury system with investigative powers.



The federal grand jury system has been key to solving cold-case homicides in particular, she said. A racketeering investigation of a New Haven gang called the Red Side Guerrilla Brims led to the indictment last year of 12 people charged in seven homicides, most of them dating to 2011.



The intelligence sharing and regular meetings at New Haven police headquarters grew out of Project Longevity, a cross-agency program that encourages at-risk community members to turn away from guns, offering job training and other incentives along with a promise to come down hard on law breakers.



New Haven Police Chief Dean Esserman said it took time to develop the trust for his investigators to share their leads with federal authorities, but the city has benefited from the closer relationship thats grown over the last few years. Each gun arrest, he said, is now reviewed jointly by state and federal prosecutors to determine which is best positioned to take the case.



Assistant Police Chief Achilles Generoso said the regular meetings keep all agencies updated on developments across the city.



Everybody involved has agreed to share their information, not to hold back on a crime or a piece of intelligence.






CHESHIRE  A juvenile was arrested recently in connection with vandalism in town.



The juvenile, whose name is not being released due to his age, was arrested on Jan. 15 and charged with five counts of second-degree criminal mischief and one count of sixth-degree larceny.



Police made the arrest after investigating a recent rash of vandalism in the Spring Street area of town, according to police spokesman Lt. Jeffrey Sutherland. The vandalism was to multiple motor vehicles and the larceny stems from a theft from a vehicle, Sutherland added. The juvenile was released to his mother. He was scheduled to appear in Waterbury Juvenile Court on Jan. 19.



Lauren Sievert






It's been tough for long-term incumbents in the quick-service restaurant, or QSR, industry. For years, customers concerned about food nutrition and quality have been defecting to the slightly more upscale fast-casual restaurant concept. More recently, a combination of a slowly improving economy and lower inflation due to falling energy prices have also given Americans a stealth tax cut, allowing former cash-strapped consumers to pay the higher prices associated with fast-casual restaurants.

Against that backdrop of a highly competitive industry with many operators and substitutes, where the consumer's purchasing decision is considered multiple times a day, brand perception is important. And that's where the YouGov BrandIndex ranking comes into play. For 2015, here are the QSRs that had the highest brand perception.

No. 3: Chick-Fil-A

Although only coming in at No. 3 with a score of 14.0, it can be argued that no company had a better year than Chick-Fil-A. In addition to nabbing the third spot, the company also claimed the title as the most-improved restaurant this year in terms of perception. In 2012, the company had been a lightning rod for what its detractors called hostile anti-LGBT stances, and for the funding of non-profits that detractors allege promote anti-LGBT agendas.

Although Chick-Fil-A's position also won supporters, with a quickly arranged Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day setting records in sales, the company released a statement vowing to "leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena." With the attention turned strictly toward its food, the company appears to be winning over converts.

The company has been successful with its unconventional franchising model that stresses the fit of business franchisees over liquid assets, and rolls out new stores on a prudent basis to maintain product quality. It also limits most franchisees from purchasing multiple units, forcing owners to be involved with the day-to-day operations of each restaurant.

Competitors have noticed Chick-Fil-A's success, and have responded with new products. Recently, both McDonald's and Shake Shack have launched high-end chicken-sandwich offerings to compete with the brand.

No. 2: Wendy's

Wendy's occupies the second spot on the YouGov BrandIndex, with a score of 14.3. Although the restaurant is in the "Big 3" of burger chains, alongside McDonald's and Burger King, Wendy's has proven to be adept at creating and marketing new products targeted to taste-discerning millennials. More recently, the company has sought to occupy a space in-between traditional fast-food, like its fellow brethren, and new items like the Gouda Bacon Cheeseburger and Bacon Fondue Fries, to compete with high-end purveyors like Shake Shack.

Wendy's Gouda Bacon sandwich. Source: Wendy's.

Going forward, Wendy's is hyper-focused on this unique value proposition. During the company's third-quarter earnings call, the company outlined its plans to become a "new QSR" that emphasizes consumer experience more than price competition. If 2015 is any indication, the company is succeeding in the execution of this idea.

No. 1: Subway

Although it's been a tough year for privately owned Subway, the company still takes top place with a 17.2 score. Last year, the company's high-profile pitchman, Jared Fogle, pleaded guilty to child-pornography charges, and brought considerable negative press to the company. In the wake of the revelations, the company parted ways with its long-term ad agency to focus less on its previous message of weight loss, and more on its fresh ingredients and history.

This new marketing approach may be complicated by the prior-year's controversy: In 2014, the company removed azodicarbonamide, a substance also present in yoga mats, from its bread due to negative attention from food activists. While the substance in the amounts Subway used was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the company quickly removed it to avoid the public-relations fallout.

Although the company is No. 1 in the rankings, there's little doubt that it's looking to turn the page on these incidents to focus on its food. In the long run, great food is what should drive consumer perception.

The $15,978 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook

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The article Youll Never Guess Which Fast-Food Restaurant Is the Most Loved originally appeared on Fool.com.

Copyright  1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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It is the city's largest capital improvements project and part of a push to revitalize downtown, the newly expanded and digitally updated Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center will be revealed Tuesday.

The $325 million renovation rewired the facility for multi-gigabyte speed and redesigned it to attract bigger and more lucrative meetings.

It increases the centers exhibit space by more than 20 percent to 514,000 square feet and allows it to host big-league events it couldnt handle before, officials say.

In addition to boasting Texas largest ballroom, it has a new, sleek three-story atrium for the main entrance and modern high-tech touches throughout.

City officials consider the expansion a linchpin in their redevelopment plans downtown, which include improvements to the adjacent Hemisfair Park, the Alamodome and Alamo Plaza. The convention center renovations were projected in a 2012 study to boost economic activity by about $50 million a year.

It means incredible opportunities for us to be able to accommodate larger and more varied convention events, Mayor Ivy Taylor said. But also, it allows for us to continue the redevelopment of Hemisfair Park and Alamo Plaza.

The expansion, which began construction in February 2014, will host its first convention Feb. 10, for the Texas Music Educators Association, officials said.

Click through the slideshow to get an exclusive first look at the renovated Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

rwebner@express-news.net

@rwebner
Saint Death or Sante Muerte, the cult religion followed by millions can be found almost anywhere in the Americas. For 14 years people have publicly celebrated their devotion to this skeletal figure when before this reverence was only done in the shadows.

While Santa Muerte is worshiped by people involved in narco gangs it's not just something that criminals are in to.

Santa Muerte may look scary, but the appeal is much wider. Sometimes followers are just looking for protection from harm and those looking for help making miracles happen.

RELATED: San Antonio fugitive arrested in Mexico

"The first public display of Saint Death marks the transition from what used to be an occult veneration unknown to the great majority of Mexicans to the public devotion that it is today, claiming some 10 to 12 million devotees among Mexico, the U.S., Central America and beyond," reports the scholarly website skeletonsaint.com. It was a quesadilla vendor who changed perceptions about Santa Muerte when a shrine was set up in front of her home in Mexico City.

Thousands flock to the spot to pay homage around the time of Day of the Dead when followers celebrate the anniversary of worshiping the grim reaper like figure. And besides that street corner in Mexico, you don't have to go far to find Santa Muerte devotion in Houston.

RELATED: These communities are where most U.S. citizens go to retire in Mexico

One shop in Houston Heights has a shrine celebrating the figure. Flores Spices on Airline Drive is a shop that sells herbs and essentials in religious practices such as Santeria and spiritual cleansings, as well as items used in other syncretic religions. Along the side of the store is a shrine holding dozens of Santa Muerte figures and a giant statue.

Click on the slideshow above to see the images from a Santa Muerte shrine in Texas and elsewhere.
Bexar County Sheriffs deputies are searching for a gunman who opened fire on a car last year after being bumped into at a convenience store in China Grove.

According to the Sheriffs Office, a man stopped at a 7-Eleven on Highway 87 East on July 23 and accidentally bumped into a man while walking into the store.
SAN ANTONIO A man suspected of ramming the vehicles of two Bexar County Sheriffs deputies during a high-speed chase Thursday morning is expected to face felony charges when he gets out of the hospital.

According to the Sheriffs Office, deputies tried to pull over a stolen truck with a broken tail light around midnight near Von Ormy.
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A 24-year-old Austin man previously convicted of sexual assault of a child faces charges of having sex with an underage boy he met at a LGBTQ+ group.

Ever Jose Medrano has been charged with sexual assault of a child, according to a Travis County arrest affidavit.

Medrano was first placed on the Texas Department of Public Safety's registry of sex offenders in 2010 for aggravated sexual assault of a child.

RELATED: Neighbors defend Austin-area piano teacher accused of inappropriately touching 2 girls under 10

Austin police officers responded to a sex crimes call on Nov. 3 during which the alleged victim told police that he and Medrano had carried on a consensual relationship after meeting at Out Youth, according to a Jan. 22 arrest affidavit.

The alleged victim told police on Nov. 10 that he met Medrano when he was 14 years old. Medrano was 20 at the time, he told investigators.

The relationship turned sexual after a game of "truth or dare" in December 2012, according to the affidavit.

Medrano and the teenager then had multiple sexual encounters between December 2012 and January 2014, the teen told police.

RELATED: Ex-South Texas teacher who had sex with 17-year-old student sues him for filming encounter

The 24-year-old initially denied having a sexual relationship with the alleged victim during a Dec. 18 interview with police.

However, Medrano told police that he would stay at the teenager's house overnight, sleep in his room, brother's room or on the couch.

According to the affidavit, Medrano told police he did not have sexual contact with the alleged victim during that time but did say there was some "spooning."

Medrano later told police that he had engaged in sexual activity with the victim once he had turned 17 years old, the legal age of consent in Texas.

RELATED: NEISD elementary teacher arrested on aggravated sexual assault of a child charge

According to its website, Out Youth is an organization that "serves the Central Texas LGBTQ+ (lesbian/gay/bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) youth and their allies with programs and services to ensure these promising young people develop into happy, healthy, successful adults."

Out Youth told news station KEYE TV: "The person mentioned in the affidavit was never an employee or volunteer at Out Youth. Nor did the alleged incident occur on Out Youth property. Because there is a pending investigation, Out Youth is unable to comment further on the situation."

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports
Having been the only U.S. federal agent to have detained and arrested the predecessor of Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sean Penns Rolling Stone article about Guzman.

But I find the media attention that Penns actions and words have generated perplexing. Professional journalists, and present and former law enforcement agents have been taking shots at him, criticizing everything from the morality of the interview to the legal issues arising from that.

With journalists, there is perhaps reporter envy wish I could have gotten that interview  or pride in what Penn wrote. Maybe they were not accustomed to the lyrical rhythm of Penns writing.

Law enforcement types have ingrained in them the urge to combat illicit drugs. Yet in our careers, hypocritical situations arose in which we had to work and co-exist with obviously corrupt Mexican comandantes and corrupt U.S. port of entry officials.

We know the dilemmas Penn faced on a far more gritty level.

Penns interview and interaction with Guzman did not take place in the safety of a newspaper office or a holding cell. These are settings more amenable to playing the hard-nosed journalist, peppering a subject with tough questions  and for the federal agent, more amenable to true interrogation, trying to get incriminating evidence.

As for the morality of it all, let us consider a flip side.

Guzman specialized in sending us a weed, among his other commodities, that grew wild in much of Mexico. Later, others cared for and harvested it as a good to be shipped to the United States.

This is a weed that someone down the line declared a Schedule I controlled substance. And it gets shipped to us as a result of our demand for it.

Is there a moral question in that?

Now, of course, the concern about Guzman is more than just about marijuana. Violence, pernicious cartel influence on Mexican institutions and those other substances  heroin and methamphetamines  come to mind.

But there is value in what Penn shared, if only to discern the origins of the malady.

Yes, most of these old-time drug traffickers grew up harvesting a crop demanded by and consumed in the U.S.

El Chapo came off to Penn much as cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes came off to me  a humble, uneducated, country gentlemen. These are people who were ranchers and farmers at one time.

What I and my colleagues knew, however, was that their initial gentlemanly ways and demeanor in no measure justified their brutal methods of taking care of business.

But even then there is a matter of comparison. Lives arent generally lost, but what about hostile corporate takeovers or mergers that result in the loss of livelihoods when the inevitable downsizing occurs to pay the debt? Or how about the lives affected because of the greed on Wall Street that resulted in the Great Recession?

What many obviously dont appreciate about Penns interview with Guzman is that he did not act either as a professional journalist or law enforcement agent would have. Penn isnt either of those things.

He was simply acting as a man meeting another man  one who happened to capture the imaginations of many in the Americas with his persona as the biggest drug trafficker in the world, and the mythology that accompanies that.

Throughout most of Guzmans trajectory up the drug trade, the groups operated under the old rules and political agreements. These amounted to no dead bodies in the streets; no drugs at the schools; no scandals in the press; periodic seizures and arrest of small significance; economic gain in the communities; no proliferation of gangs; no dealing with police or judicial officials; errors paid for by prison time, not with death; respect and order in the territories; and investing profits in the country.

I write this not to excuse the savagery that occurs in the drug trade nor to excuse Guzmans outsized role in it. I seek only to bring a balance to the debate. I come to this with perspective honed by dealing with these issues on the front line, up close and personal.

I note the thread of hypocrisy in this debate. Dont shoot the messenger.

The United States is the consumer country, and we demand, coerce and threaten Mexico, saying it must lop off the head of the snake  the insatiable appetite we as Americans have for these illicit substances is left unmolested.

Penn is an actor and director, but I see some theatrics in demands that Mexico hand over the head of the snake, as if this ceremonial act will end the trafficking of illegal drugs into the U.S.

David G. Ramirez, now retired, was an assistant special agent in charge at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He is author of Beneath the Same Sky, which told of his 30-year career as a U.S. federal agent.
Samsung Galaxy A9 is a recently-unveiled, high-end addition to its makers Galaxy A series, decked out to deliver impressive performance. Packing a humongous Full HD display, the handset features an octa-core Qualcomm processor, enormous battery and a fingerprint scanner, amongst other cool features.

Where to Buy Samsung Phones Jumia.com.ng from 49,000.00 Buy Now

Design and Display

Samsung pioneered the use of metal for its devices with those in the A series range, so it is not really all that surprising seeing the Galaxy A9 sporting an all-aluminium design. The smartphone ranks among the biggest from its Korean maker yet, but its thickness is manageable at just 7.4 millimetres.

Its 6-inch Super AMOLED display features slightly curved 2.5D glass and Full HD resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, which is a bit low for a screen this huge. Samsung Galaxy A9 has a fingerprint sensor nestled in its home button.

Camera and Storage

In the camera department, the Galaxy A9 packs an impressive pair. There is a 13-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilisation (OIS) on the rear for high quality shots. This is paired with a generous 8-megapixel front-facing snapper for all you selfie lovers.

Samsung Galaxy A9 has very ample onboard storage of 32 GB, further expandable by another 128 GB using a microSD card.

Power and Performance

Samsung Galaxy A9 is ready to serve up awesome performance with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, previously known as Snapdragon 620, running under the hood.

The CPU delivers speeds of up to 1.8 GHz and receives support from 3 GB of RAM and an Adreno 510 graphics processor. The level of performance to expect from the large handset has been put in the same range as those of two rival flagships, HTC One M9 and Sony Xperia Z5.

The smartphone will run on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop operating system  a tad disappointing given the phone is coming several months after the release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It will be accompanied by a massive 4000mAh battery that should deliver around one and a half day in talk time.

Pricing and Availability

Samsung Galaxy A9 is not yet available in Nigeria. When available, you can buy it at leading online stores in the country. Samsung Galaxy A9 Price in Nigeria is expected to range from N80,000 to N100,000 depending on your location in Nigeria.

You may also be interested in the Samsung Galaxy M01, the Samsung Galaxy M11

Samsung Galaxy A01, the Samsung Galaxy A20s, and the Samsung Galaxy A90 5G.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.



Readers, Im afraid that the epic Clinton post  and arent they always?  meant that I had to give Water Cooler short shrift. Sorry about that, and I will return with a full ration tomorrow.

2016

The Voters

Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Hillary Clinton When Leaders Decide The Intercept I stumbled across this old photo on the Twitter: French Soldier #WW2 carrying a donkey up a hill? c.1942 pic.twitter.com/Rly3p7cEnb  OTO & O (@photosandbacon) May 30, 2014 Which gives me the chance to tell this old joke: The Democratic Party is like a horse that refuses to take commands from its owner and stubbornly refuses to carry him. The owner does not go out and get a new horse, but picks up the horse and carries it around in the belief that, eventually, the horse will change its mind. Years later, the horse is thinking, Im a genius!' Its the years later part that kills me.

The Trail

Obama weighs in on 2016: Hillary Clinton campaign is more prose than poetry' [WaPo]. And he gives our famously free press a few tips on how to take down Sanders. Clinton needs an Iowa victory to blunt the momentum of Bernie Sanders [WaPo]. That wont be enough. Sanders, Clinton cool to Bloombergs possible entry into 2016 race [Reuters]. No doubt.

Stats Watch

Dallas Fed Mfg Survey, January 2016: Manufacturing data from the Dallas Fed, along with that of the Kansas City Fed, have been offering the most striking evidence of oil-related contraction. Dallas general activity index came in at an extremely negative score of minus 34.6 for the January report which is the lowest reading since the beginning of the recovery in 2009 [Econoday]. And: Of the three Federal Reserve districts which have released their January manufacturing surveys  all are in contraction [Econintersect].

Honey for the Bears: Deep in the bowels of the system all manner of financial flows are switching course [Gillian Tett, Financial Times]. In some ways this is what we would expect: capital flows are fluid; but the real problem for investors and policymakers is that it is often fiendishly hard to track the scale and pace of these stealthy shifts since the data are so patchy. Indeed, the workings of Chinas shadow banking system are as opaque as the US subprime mortgage sector was in 2007.

Honey for the Bears: Talk of a downturn is in the air, and the numbers are squiggly [Bloomberg].

Honey for the Bears: Financial apocalypse: Ex BIS chief economist William White warns of epic debt tsunami worse than 2007 [Business Insider].

Do Payrolls Have A Measurement Problem Leading To Strong Numbers? [Big Picture].

Taking a cue from Chipotle, Wal-Mart should shut its stores off for 24 hours, so it can redesign its layout and train its employees to improve customer service [Forbes]. They could make a movie by that name.

Todays Fear & Greed Index: 17, Extreme Fear (previous close: 13) [CNN]. One week ago: 10 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed).

Health Care

A different kind of doctors office: Patients pay directly, keeping insurance out of it [Tampa Bay Times (JM)].

Employee Wellness Programs Use Carrots and, Increasingly, Sticks [New York Times]. I seem to recall that wellness programs have no demonstrable health benefits, even though ObamaCare funds them, so ka-ching. Readers?

Water

Disposability, Abortion, and Crisis As Usual in Michigan [Language Matters]. Must read.

Gaia

In three months, one failed well at Southern California Gas Co.s Aliso Canyon storage field has spewed more greenhouse gases than any other facility in California. At its height, the leak more than doubled the methane emissions of the entire Los Angeles Basin and surpassed what is released by all industrial activity in the state [Los Angeles Times].

Gunz

Stranded Motorist Kills Man Trying to Help Him, Sheriff Says [New York Times].

An Allegedly Drunk Gun Owner Went to the Benghazi Movie. You Wont Believe What Happened Next. [Esquire].

Police: Son, 14, shot dead by dad who says he mistook him for intruder [CNN].

Congressional Staffer Arrested After Loaded Gun Found In Bag [Talking Points Memo].

An armed society is not necessarily a polite society, and an armed citizen is not always a prepared citizen [HuffPo]. I would have thought that was obvious by now?

Militia Watch

Militants Bring Young Children To Stay At Occupied Refuge [Oregon Public Broadcasting].

Class Warfare

Correlation between education and democracy: average years of schooling in the 15+ population in 1970 and political regime 2013  Max Roser  [Our World in Data]. Hence the importance, to squillionaires, of capturing the school system.

Exclusive New England Prep School Rocked by Sex Scandal [Time].

News of the Wired

4 Game of Thrones products we really wish existed [Daily Dot].

The Decline of the Drivers License [The Atlantic].

The Next Social Media We Want and Need! [Medium].

Twitter users suspect US government hacked into their social media accounts [Raw Story].

Does sex in virtual reality feel like real sex? [Slate].

Animated map shows the undersea cables that power the internet. Cool!

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And heres todays plant (pq):

Ice on Fisher Pond. Thought it was Hong Kong for a moment, because of the chill in the air

* * *

If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. Winter has come, I need to buy fuel, keep the boiler guy and a very unhappy and importunate obstreperous plumber happy, and keep my server up, too.
Yves here. This post provides a clear-eyed and sobering discussion of the numerous political conflicts that stand in the way of European countries making progress on, much the less resolving, the migration crisis. It also, refreshingly, does not mince words on key issues. For instance, it depicts the Greek and Italian government as being sensible in foot-dragging in building refugee holding tanks which in bloodless Eurocrat speak are called hotspots. The author, Jacob Kirkegaard, points out that these hotspots would have to be de facto prison camps to work as envisaged, which in turn means that Northern European countries could continue to renege on their promise to take refugees and leave them interned in these supposed waystation.

I anticipate some readers will be unhappy that I am featuring a piece from a Peterson Institute fellow. I am indeed loath to do anything even in a small way to promote that organization, but this article has nothing to do with their pet topic of deficit hawkery. In addition, Ive been on a panel with Kirkegaard, and even though he was there to tout the neoliberal party line, he was far more careful with evidence and narrower in his claims that Ive found his fellow travelers to be. And in general, I think its important to guard against Manichean thinking, of seeing people as black or white. So while anything produced by the Peterson Institute should be read with a great deal of skepticism, one should allow for the possibility that it can occasionally be on the mark, particularly on issues distant from their main agenda.

Note the Kirkegaard does not stick his neck out all that much; he merely points out that Europe will continue to fail to manage the refugee crisis into the medium term, which in light of how badly things are going is a sensible call. Moreover, he describes the set of conflicts and explains why there is no mechanism for forcing resolution. Its not hard to see that gridlock will continue unless there is an external change, such as improved conditions in the Middle East so that emigration falls off, or alternatively, word getting back that Europe is so hostile to migrants that it is not worth the risk to try to gain entry. That is already starting to happen. From Euronews, Migrant crisis: Iraqis return home, disenchanted with life in Germany:

Heval Aram is waiting for a flight to Iraq. He says he and his family travelled for 12 days to reach Germany, but the poor conditions they experienced in refugee camps pushed them to return home. They gather people in horrible camps with no space to sleep, bathe or relax. There is no hope here in Germany. I hope nobody will leave their home to come here, he said. Others claim the food is too expensive for the amount of money they receive from the state. There are also complaints the asylum process is too slow. Some pawn jewellery in order to buy a ticket home, returning, they say, with less than they had on arrival in Germany. Alla Hadrous owns a jewellery shop and runs a travel agency. He says: A lot have left already. I dont have the exact figure, but its a lot. Some have had to sell their valuables  for example, in the jewellery shop next door  in order to buy a ticket back to Erbil or Baghdad. For some, returning to conflict-torn Iraq is preferable to the reality of life as a refugee. Others, however, are taking a chance on life in Germany.

This at a minimum may mean that the EU countries are starting to succeed, whether by accident or design, in deterring economic migrants, those leaving because theyve taken a hit in their living standards and hoped to better themselves in Europe. But there are still plenty who are leaving due to survival risk, and they have every reason to still take the gamble.

By Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics. Originally published at VoxEU.

The migrant crisis will continue to top headlines in 2016. This column takes a detailed look at the EUs response to dealing with migration, concluding that everything points towards failure as the likely outcome. Unlike the most critical aspects of the Eurozone Crisis, the main drivers of the current migration emergency are external factors such as war. These circumstances are highly unlikely to change in the medium term. The hardball politics and threats that proved extraordinarily effective in coercing member states into accepting domestic political conditionality in return for financial aid during the Eurozone Crisis are doomed to fail when it comes to migration.

Following the ultimately overwhelming rejection by Greek voters of euro exit, the sudden rise in migrant inflows in the autumn quickly rose to the top of the European political agenda towards the end of 2015. Migration replaced Greece as the topic for special meetings of the EU Council in September (European Council 2015a) and November (2015b), which also included a meeting with Turkey (2015c). Migration was also top of the agenda for the regular EU Council meetings in October (2015d) and December (2015e), European justice and home affairs ministers replaced finance ministers in the media spotlight (2015f), and the European Commission presented a new reform package to allegedly solve the crisis (European Commission 2015a). Yet, reminiscent of the futile efforts by European leaders early in the Eurozone Crisis, this initial flurry of political and diplomatic initiatives will likely not solve the dangerous political crisis currently facing Europe. Left unaddressed, the migration crisis is as politically potent as the Eurozone Crisis itself in its capacity to undermine current mainstream politics in the region. Yet, as in 2010-12, publics will in all probability have to steel themselves for an even deeper crisis to force the political wheels of Europe into motion towards solutions possible only in the direst of emergencies. I made a comprehensive set of such solution proposals with the introduction of a European Mobility and Migration Union in early December 2015 (Kirkegaard 2015). The State of Play in the Migration Crisis Response at the End of 2015 The EU Council conclusions on migration from 17 December 2015 correctly stated that for the integrity of Schengen to be safeguarded it is indispensable to regain control over the external borders (European Council 2015g). Leaders, however, completely failed to agree on measures to actually achieve this outcome. As pointed out in the latest European Commission state of play review (European Commission 2016a), member states still do not contribute adequate personnel to the existing common European border management institutions, Frontex (European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the EU) and EASO (European Asylum Support Office). Frontline states  Italy1 and Greece2  especially, hence remain largely on their own with respect to controlling what in the Schengen Area is a common European external border. Of 750 personnel requested, even in mid-January 2016 EU member states have only pledged 447. This perpetuates the current situation, where registration and fingerprinting of new arrivals remains partial. Given the obvious national security implications, EU leaders lack of immediate commitment of adequate new member state resources is concerning. The Deal with Turkey: Lack of Trust Undermines Effectiveness The EU in late November further struck a deal with Turkey (European Council 2015h) to try to control the EUs external border by getting its governments help to stem the flow of refugees into especially Greece in return for up to 3bn in financial aid and a host of other political incentives offered to Ankara. How this deal will be implemented, however, remains unclear, as trust and verification issues loom large. A reduction in migrant inflows through Turkey to about 4,000 per day in December (from 5-6,000 per day in November) has been registered (2015i), though it is uncertain whether worse seasonal weather or actual Turkish government measures can be attributed. As Figure 1 from the European Commission (2015b) illustrates, the effects on the ground of the agreement with Turkey have to date not been self-evident. Figure 1. Daily inflows of migrants and refugees into Greece Source: Frontexs Daily Regional Overview reports. Unless new concrete Turkish government actions lead to additional significant reductions in migrant inflows into the EU, it seems implausible that member states will actually release any of the promised 3 billion to Ankara. Given how Turkey  at considerable fiscal expense  already hosts millions of Syrian refugees, a lack of up-front EU cash is highly unlikely to incentivise the Erdogan administration to take effective actions in the short term. Lack of mutual trust hence creates a classic chicken-and-egg situation between the EU and Turkey, suggesting that the current bilateral agreement will likely not yield concrete results in the near term. Only direct engagement by the top EU leaders with Turkish president Erdogan can likely in 2016 change the status quo.3 The Hotspot Focus A key component of the EU response to the migration crisis has been the focus on hotspots (e.g. supposedly temporary refuge camps in the frontier countries of Italy and Greece), relocation and returns. Given how the EU Council Conclusions merely calls for more urgent implementation of this strategy, its current failure will continue in 2016. The glaring problems are numerical, logistical and political. Numbers wise, it is apparent that a hypothetical solution that even in principle covers only a fraction of the actual problem is in reality no solution at all. Up to 160,000 refugees can be potentially relocated among EU and Schengen member states, despite almost 1.1 million asylum seekers arriving in the 28 EU member states from January to November 2015, of which over 400,000 were from evidently war-torn Syria and Iraq alone (UNHCR 2015). Frontex similarly estimates that approximately 880,000 refugees arrived in just Greece and Italy from January to early December 2015. Under current policy, Greece and Italy would  in the case of a successful EU migration response where the 160,000 relocation target is met  be implicitly expected to continue to host over 80% of the actual number of new arrivals. This is an obviously totally untenable situation, particularly in light of the fact that to date (mid-January 2016, see European Commission 2015c) just 272 migrants have actually been relocated to other EU countries. Despite the EU Council Conclusions noting that hotspot construction must be accelerated, it should therefore be no surprise that Athens and Rome have to date appeared reluctant. As of mid-January 2016, only one of a planned six hotspots was fully operational in Italy and one of five planned in Greece (European Commission 2016b). Critiques of the lack of Greek or Italian hotspot camp construction from Northern European non-frontier states is therefore both misguided and self-serving. It is clear that they would prefer the vast majority of refugees to remain incarcerated in Greece and Italy  something the governments here of course well understand will be a near political certainty, should adequate hotspot and shelter facilities be built by them in the first place. A more basic logistical problem with hotspots is the fact that that almost none of the arrivals wishes to remain in Italy or Greece, but they instead want to continue onwards to Germany, Sweden or other EU members. Hence any such hotspots camps would have to be de facto prison camps, equipped and guarded to prevent newly arrived refugees from simply slipping out in the middle of the night to continue their journey north. Unless refugees own preferences for their final destination are somehow changed  something only far reaching changes in national regulations or populist political sentiments can likely engineer, the hotspot strategy appears futile and fundamentally at odds with basic European values. The EU Commissions proposals for, among other things, a new European Border and Coast Guard (European Commission 2015d) are correct in terms of aspiration, but suffer from the inevitable constraints of originating from an organisation (e.g. the EU Commission) without its own fiscal resources and whose budget is already largely fixed until 2020. The European Border and Coast Guard proposal to establish a 1,500-strong pool of experts to be deployed in under three days by 2020 (!) is hardly a credible external border control organisation, recalling how in the ongoing emergency almost half of that number of Frontex/EASO positions are currently unfilled in Greece and Italy. Likewise, is the proposed new right of intervention of the EUs Coast Guard potentially against the wishes of member states, if the Coast Guard deemed the member state to have failed to properly manage an external border? It may on paper and in constitutional law terms be a big step towards, for the first time, equipping an EU institution with elements of a member states monopoly on violence. But in reality, the envisioned Coast Guard will never have the manpower, equipment or institutional capacity to secure an external EU border unless it does so at the explicit request of, and in assistance of, the member state in question. Imagining the Coast Guard as some sort of invading army that swoops in to do Europes border control business is hardly credible, especially as it must be presumed that any EU Coast Guard personnel would have to adhere to the national laws of the member state in question. And the European financial commitment to credibly carry out these tasks simply isnt there. As I noted in my December 2015 proposal for an migratory and mobility union, external border control is quite costly  the US federal government spends up to 30bn annually on external border control tasks. In comparison, the proposed Coast Guard is expected to be implemented through an EU budget allocation of just 239 million in 2016, rising to 270 million in 2017 and adding 602 positions by 2020. Even considering the fact that member states will of course continue to devote substantial national resources towards external border control, such miserly funding for a flagship European policy proposal to address a critically important problem cannot credibly hope to make a difference. What Might be Next in 2016? Unlike the most critical aspects of the Eurozone crisis, the main drivers of the current migration emergency are external factors, such as demographics, war and abject poverty in the regions bordering Europe  circumstances that are highly unlikely to change materially in even the medium term. What this means is that the hardball politics and threats that proved extraordinarily effective in coercing member state governments into accepting domestic political conditionality in return for financial aid during the Eurozone Crisis are doomed to fail when it comes to migration. Syrian refugees contemplating fleeing to Europe via Greece are just not going to care much about whether Greece is being threatened with suspension from the Schengen Area by the other member states unhappy about how the Greek government is living up to its previous commitments. The key political driver of the migration crisis is the level of actual inflows into Europe. Here, historical asylum data suggest that inflows seasonally decline from Q4 to Q1 in any given year, likely due to adverse weather, are relative stable from Q1 to Q2, and then rise significantly from Q2 to Q3. If this pattern proves to be the case also in 2016, relatively little political activity should likely be expected on this issue early in the year, as during the Dutch EU presidency EU leaders will comfort themselves with the fact that at least things arent as bad as in the autumn of 2015. Only once such complacency is punctured by renewed rises in migrant inflows in the summer of 2016 does it appear possible that Europe may politically reconsider its current inadequate approach. At that point in time, when more effective solutions will likely have to be launched to counter public dissatisfaction, it will likely become clear that migration  given its obvious political potency and difference in degrees to which countries emphasise it and their historical experiences  is simply not a political topic fit for action at the 28 member state level. Instead, necessary solutions to the migration crisis will have to be initiated among a smaller group of like-minded member states. As I have discussed in my proposals, such solutions will have to include at least partial surrender of national sovereignty over border control issues, the establishment of an entirely new comprehensive common border control and coast guard organisation in Europe, and agreement to pool very substantial new fiscal resources to pay for this at the European level. German Finance Minister Schables recent proposal for a new pan-European fuel surcharge (Suddeutsche Zeitung 2016) to pay for the current refugee crisis in Europe is a potentially very positive development, suggesting that the realistic financing needs of the current emergency are gradually being grasped at the highest political levels in Europe. What role the synchronised French and German election cycles in 2017 will play is an open question. Certainly, the political window for incumbent governments to do something effective about migration at the European level will, by mid-2016, be rapidly closing. Hopefully, the prospects of either severely undermining decades of European integration or facing national electorates politically naked in 2017 will generate the political will in Paris and Berlin. A far-reaching Franco-German summer initiative in 2016 would be sure to be quickly joined by at least the Mediterranean EU members and the Benelux countries. And were it  as my proposals suggest  to be replete with the surrender of relevant national sovereignty, commitment of adequate national fiscal resources and the vision to establish a credible common European external border control organisation, it would offer Europe the best option to solve the migration crisis next year. Footnotes 1 The European Commission estimates that Italy needs about 60 additional Frontex officers. See http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/securing-eu-borders/legal-documents/docs/communication_-_progress_report_on_the_implementation_of_the_hotspots_in_italy_annex_en.pdf. 2 The European Commission estimates that Greece needs about 600 additional Frontex officers, see http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/securing-eu-borders/legal-documents/docs/communication_-_progress_report_on_the_implementation_of_the_hotspots_in_greece_annex_en.pdf. 3 The fact that Turkey was at the November summit represented instead by Prime Minister Davutoglu was an ill omen. It was in a way reciprocated by the EU Council Conclusions, which rather than immediately committing the new resources to Turkey instead tasked COREPER to rapidly conclude its work on how to mobilise the 3 billion euro for the Turkey Refugee Facility  e.g. hardly a priority.

See original post for references
SHARE Beer taps bearing the Riptide Brewing Company logo line a wall of taps in the brewery's taproom on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in Naples. The commercial brewery and taproom opened in late November 2015 at the corner of Third Avenue North and Tenth Street North. (David Albers/Staff) Customers look over a beer menu at the Riptide Brewing Company on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in Naples. The commercial brewery and taproom opened in late November 2015 at the corner of Third Avenue North and Tenth Street North. (David Albers/Staff) Riptide Brewing Company owners Bob Menzies, Norm Scherner and Scott Alexander, left to right, met at a local brewing club, began brewing beer in their garages, expanded to an office-warehouse and have most recently opening a commercial brewery and taproom at the corner of Third Avenue North and Tenth Street North. (David Albers/Staff) The Kraken, a new double IPA at Riptide Brewing Company. (David Albers/Staff)

By Ryan Mills of the Naples Daily News

Like many great ideas, Riptide Brewing Company started in a man cave.

After meeting at a local brew club several years ago, three friends  attorney Bob Menzies, general contractor Scott Alexander and Norm Scherner, a former Realtor  started brewing together, first in their garages and then in a rented office-warehouse "man cave" off Jaeger Road in North Naples.

They hosted parties for friends. Their beer received rave reviews. They developed a following. The next step, logically, was to open their own commercial brewery and taproom.

"We've always wanted to do something like this," Menzies said. "We finally quit talking about it and just did it."

In late November  Black Friday, to be exact  the three friends, now business partners, opened Riptide in a converted shop at the corner of Third Avenue North and 10th Street North in Naples.

It's the first brewery in the city limits, but at least the ninth to open from Punta Gorda south in the last few years. Naples Beach Brewery opened on Enterprise Avenue in unincorporated Collier County in 2012.

The Riptide brewery and taproom have an industrial feel, mixing cool metals with warm woods. The 10-barrel brewing system is located behind the U-shaped bar so customers can watch the brewing process.

To make it homey, there's a couch, TVs and board games available for patrons. And in keeping with their nautical theme, the walls are lined with surfboards and a metal mermaid, and the taphandles feature Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea.

They have 10 to 12 of their own beers on tap at any time in addition to guest taps from other Florida breweries and a short wine list. They brew everything from light wit beers and blonde ales to hoppy pale ales and dark porters and stouts.

Their beers sell for $3 to $4 for a 9-ounce glass to $5 to $7 for a 16-ounce glass.

In an effort to get things right out of the gate, Menzies said, he and his partners took a road trip to craft breweries around Florida to get ideas and advice. They hired a couple of brewers associated with the highly-regarded Funky Buddha Brewery in Broward County to help them make the jump from a 20-gallon home-brew system to a 300-gallon commercial system.

They also reached out to other Southwest Florida brewers.

"We've talked to them all," Menzies said. "They've given us advice, tips, help, 'Hey, try this, do this, do that.' It's not a competition because there's plenty of people that like it. I like going to (Walt Costello's) place at Point Ybel, and he likes coming here, and Brian (Hahn) at Momentum and vice versa.

"They've been down that road. They've got experience. You can't pay for that."

After getting a slow start in the sunshine state, craft beer has taken off in Florida over the last four or five years.

Today there are 111 craft breweries in Florida, according to the Brewers Association, an industry trade group. That's good enough for ninth most in the country, and a jump from fewer than 40 in 2012. But with less than one brewery for every 100,000 adults 21 and older, Florida only ranks 43rd in the country for breweries per capita (Vermont leads the nation with 8.4 breweries per capita). So there's room to grow.

Menzies said they started putting the business together about a year ago, and had hoped to open by October. But getting their state and federal permits was complicated, delaying their plans. Locally, getting their zoning approved was the biggest hurdle, Menzies said, because Naples codes don't mention breweries.

Still, they're happy to be open for season, building name recognition and generating a buzz.

"Half the people who come in here are locals," Menzies said. "The other half know about craft beer and look for us on websites, Trip Advisor, Yelp, and things like that."

Steve Ross, who was visiting Marco Island from Denver, stopped by Riptide for a flight of IPAs on his way to the Fort Lauderdale airport Tuesday afternoon. He said he liked what he tasted.

"I've been to a lot of new breweries, and a lot of times they taste kind of watered down; they still have part of their process to catch up on," he said. "I'm actually very impressed by what they have here. The IPAs are on point. They're very hoppy."

In the coming weeks, Menzies said, they plan to start kegging and distributing their beer to local restaurants. Down the road, they want to start a canning line in another facility.

"We do want to grow," he said. "People like our beer. I think we can sell as much as we can make."

For information, call 239-228-6533, or go to riptidebrewingcompany.com.
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When the publisher of National Review magazine, Jack Fowler, called and asked me to write 300 words on why I oppose Donald Trump for president of the United States, my first thought was about the derision that was sure to come from Trump supporters.

I was not disappointed, or rather I am disappointed that no one who reacted negatively rebutted any of the arguments I, or the other contributors, made about why we think a President Trump would not pursue conservative goals.

Sounding like Trump, I was called a "loser" and someone for whom one writer said he had "lost all respect." Sure, there were some who called me "brilliant" (I'm filing those away), but the name-callers resembled their political master. Trump also refused to address our arguments. Instead, he mislabeled the magazine a "dying newspaper" and said it had lost circulation and no one reads it. Many are reading this issue.

One friend said he is convinced that Trump is "teachable and we can move him in the right direction." On June 14, Trump will be 70 years old. By then, most people have long been settled in their worldview. Trump likes to cite Ronald Reagan, who was a Roosevelt Democrat before he famously said he didn't leave the Democratic Party, the party left him. But Reagan spent many years honing his conservative principles in speeches, articles and radio commentaries. He did not have, as some nominees to high office experience, a "confirmation conversion."

Quoting myself would be redundant (read us all at National Review.com), so here is the key paragraph from the lead editorial:

"Trump's politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with 'winning,' regardless of the means  a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power."

In the Feb. 1 issue of The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes writes: "The Republican front-runner is a longtime liberal whose worldview might best be described as an amalgam of pop-culture progressivism and vulgar nationalism. His campaign rallies are orgies of self-absorption, dominated by juvenile insults of those who criticize him and endless boasting about his poll numbers. He's a narcissist and a huckster, an opportunist who not only failed to join conservatives in the big fights about the size and scope of government over the past several decades but, to the extent he was even aware of such battles, was often funding the other side, with a long list of contributions to the liberals most responsible for the dire state of affairs in the country, including likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton."

What is the counterargument to these substantive opinions? Anger against the "Washington establishment" is not one. Those who worship Trump have an obligation to say why he is worthy of their faith. Given his liberal background and poor explanations of why he now believes differently, how do his supporters know he will govern conservatively should he win the White House? He once said his sister, who is pro-abortion, would be an excellent nominee to the Supreme Court. His story of how he supposedly became a pro-life convert lacks credibility.

Electing a president, especially in a dangerous world, is important work. Anger and emotion should not govern the choice. Considered judgment should. Trump appeals to the former, but not the latter.
Ava Crossan, age 9 of Naples, competes in the Buzzardlope Princess competition at the 30th Annual Mullet Festival at Stans Idle Hour in Goodland, on Saturday, Jan. 25. Brian Tietz/Special to the Eagle

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1. Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 32nd Annual Mullet Fest

In Goodland, people set their calendars by the Mullet Festival at Stan's Idle Hour, always held the weekend before the Super Bowl. This three-day event has music, dancing, craziness and the crowning of the Buzzard Lope Queen.

From 6 until 10 p.m., Friday, Jan. 29; noon until 6:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 30 and Sunday, Jan. 31 at Stan's Idle Hour, Goodland.

Information: stansidlehour.net or 239-394-3041.

Friday: 6-10 p.m., Ultimate Kick-Off Party with Shane Duncan Band

Saturday: 1 until 6:30 p.m., Hot Damn Duo; 3 p.m., fish cleaning contest; 4 p.m., Princess Buzzard Lope

Sunday: Noon until 6:30 p.m., Fakahatchee; 4 p.m., Buzzard Lope, best costume award, dance contest

Marco Island Fire Fighters will be serving up hot dogs on Saturday and Sunday.

2. Thursday: Lunch with the Chief

The Marco Island Police Foundation will host its next "Lunch with the Chief" on Thursday, Jan. 28 at the Hideaway Beach Club on Marco Island. Lunch will begin at 11:30 a.m. Joining Marco Island Police Chief Al Schettino, foundation president Curt Koon, Marco Island police officers and foundation members and guests. Guest speaker Lieutenant Colonel Tom Di Tomasso will speak about how to protect yourself from terrorism.

Lt. Colonel Di Tomasso served in the Army for 20 years, earning the Silver Star and Purple Heart as a Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993.

Those wishing to attend should call Joe Granda at 389-2823.

3. Wednesday: Canadian Club Welcome Back

The annual 'Welcome Back Party' this year is from 5 to 7 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 27, at the Marco Island Center for the Arts. The evening features time for fun and networking, a play by AR Gurney called "Love Letters" along with Champagne and chocolates. Sponsors are providing the Champagne and chocolates and are asking those attending to donate $20 each to the Marco Island Center for the Arts located at 1010 Winterberry Drive. You can use a credit card, check or cash.

Call Debbie Kuindersma, business manager at the Center for the Arts at 239-394-4221 or send her an email at debbie@marcoislandart.org to let her know you are coming and how you want to make your donation. Seating for the performance is limited.
At lunchtime, the line stretched around the parking lot. Thousands turned out for the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Winterberry Drive. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent

SHARE Chairperson Estie Karpman, Bernie Seidman his grandson Marcus Seidman. Thousands turned out for the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Winterberry Drive. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Robert Snyder of Bonita Springs fills up his tray. Thousands turned out for the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Winterberry Drive. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Patrons load up on a smorgasbord of pastries. Thousands turned out for the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Winterberry Drive. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Elliott Mascoop stirs vats of soup in the kitchen. Thousands turned out for the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Winterberry Drive. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent

By Lance Shearer

Apparently, when it comes to lunch, everyone is a little Jewish.

Thousands thronged the third annual Jewish Deli Fest, held Sunday at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island. Around noon, the line snaked around inside the sanctuary, with room dividers thrown back to create one large space, and out into the parking lot.

Patrons sat at long tables consuming sandwiches, soups and pastry, or loaded up bags full of white Styrofoam containers to take home. Or both. The delicatessen side of the operation, known as "Bernie's Deli" after Bernie Seidman, one of the lead cooks, and "because it sounds Jewish," said Bert Thompson, another of the organizers, is more straightforward, with a limited palette of foods.

You want a sandwich? You have two choices  pastrami or corned beef. The bread of choice is rye, and each sandwich, piled high with your meat, is served with a dill pickle, Gulden's spicy brown mustard, Deep River potato chips (slogan: "Because we give a chip") and coleslaw. The soup selection is equally limited, with a choice between beef barley soup and chicken with matzoh balls.

But sometimes, less is more, and no one seemed inclined to quibble about the selections, or demand a nice chicken salad. They were too busy eating.

Milton and Claire Gottlieb, visiting from New Jersey with their daughter Marla Noby, went with the corned beef, and pronounced it delicious. Robert Snyder also traveled from the north, down from Bonita Springs, and loaded his tray with two of each sandwich, both kinds of soup, and a generous selection of pastries.

And it was with the selection of pastries that the choices became more difficult. The ladies of JCMI made a bewildering variety of desserts, from cheesecake covered with rich fruit toppings, to strudel in a multitude of flavors, all manner of cookies, pound cake, carrot cake, apple cakes, lemon bars, brownies, poppy seed cakes, prune cake, and rugelach, a rolled-up pastry dough with fruit filling. Additional offerings at "Bubbie's Bakery" included mandel bread and babka, stuffed bread filled with prunes, nuts, chocolate and cinnamon sugar. Many of the recipes are 100 years old or more, passed down from Jewish grandmothers, who would be delighted at being honored and remembered through their creations.

Cashiers including City Councilor Larry Sacher and JCMI cantorial soloist Hari Jacobs served as cashiers, collecting cash or happy to take credit cards.

"My husband's coming," one patron told Sacher. "Who's got the money?" he asked, cutting to the chase. Asked if she would be singing, Jacobs demurred, saying "today, I'm a 'working goil'" in an assumed Brooklyn accent.

For one day, Bernie's Deli was the most popular eatery on Marco Island, although as a "pop-up restaurant," it had vanished the next day. As patrons left the temple, though, they passed the sign inviting the public to their Monday evening bingo, complete with kosher hot dog included.
Island Plaza proposed

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By Alexi C. Cardona of the Naples Daily News

After almost 11 hours of discussion over the last two Marco Island Planning Board meetings, Hendricks Commercial Properties, which owns the Island Plaza Shopping Center, and Progressive Auto Storage withdrew a joint petition for the development of a planned unit development (PUD).

Patrick Neale, a Naples attorney representing both parties during the application process, announced his clients' decision during the last eight minutes of the four-hour-long meeting on Friday.

"The core reason is that when we came into this process a little over two years ago, my clients believed they were bringing a significant benefit to the city," Neale said. "Unfortunately, what's happened over the last few months and the extensive and significant opposition from members of the community has caused my clients to believe this is no longer the appropriate route for them to take."

Neale said that Island Plaza will submit their building permit applications for the renovations there and that Progressive Auto Storage will continue to operate as it has been.

"And we're just going to move on," he said.

Planning Board Vice Chairman Irv Povlow said he was disappointed about the withdrawal because of the time and money the city spent on considering the PUD.

"I'd like to ask you to pay  "

Neale cut in.

"Well then I'd like you to pay my client's costs," he said. "They have spent well over $100,000 on this process. They invested deeply in this community and spent a lot of time and money. They are not prepared to move forward."

In other business, the Planning Board also voted 6-0 to submit a fertilizer ordinance for City Council approval with some recommended changes and clarifications. Planning Board member Frank Mulligan was absent from the meeting.

The ordinance would regulate the use of fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphorous to minimize negative impact on Marco Island's bodies of water. Naples, Collier County, Sanibel and Punta Gorda have adopted a state model of the fertilizer ordinance.

Proposed changes include changing the fee structure for violations, adding a paragraph that requires city landscapers are state-certified and city-registered, including condos and individual homeowners in the ordinance and creating an educational and outreach program to notify the community about the ordinance.
By Ryan Mills and Jessica Lipscomb of the Naples Daily News

Twice a day Karen Lehmann walked her dog around her home in the Iona Lakes Apartments complex in south Fort Myers. And twice a day she saw the same little girl standing in the window, in front of the tattered blinds at Building 39.

She looked lonely, leaning against the window, her dark hair unkempt. She usually wore pajamas. Lehmann considered notifying authorities. She wishes she had.

I never saw an adult with her. I never saw anyone with her, said Lehmann, 69. She would lean against the window. I would try waving at her because thats who I am.  When I would wave, she would sit down. I thought maybe shes not supposed to be waving at strangers.

That little girl, Jeanne Carlopoli, 3, her mother, Tammy Modlin, 37, and her sister, Montana Modlin, 16, were killed inside their apartment early Sunday, along with their dog. Jeannes father, Patrick Carlopoli, 27, was arrested in connection with the killings after he called 911 to report three dead bodies inside his apartment, according to an arrest report.

When deputies arrived, they found Patrick Carlopoli standing in front of the door at 15224 Iona Lakes Drive with blood on his body and clothes.

Theyre in there, he told deputies, according to an arrest report, pointing to the apartment.

Deputies found Tammy and Montana Modlin on a bed in the master bedroom with a gun between them, reports said. Jeanne Carlopoli and the familys dog were found stabbed to death elsewhere in the apartment.

Deputies detained Carlopoli, who told them he shot his wife, according to an arrest report. Investigators said the couple were never officially married.

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott did not release details about a possible motive, saying the investigation was ongoing.

Thats the first question we all ask: Why? Why this? Why that? I dont know that anything could ever answer that question in this case, he said.

Carlopoli faces one count of second-degree murder in connection with Tammy Modlins death, two counts of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse in connection with the childrens deaths, and one count of felony animal cruelty in connection with the dogs death. Scott did not elaborate on the difference in charges for Modlins death versus her childrens.

Weve got a chain of events that, you know, may or may not have led up to that, the sheriff said. Obviously we have to look at pre-events, what was going on in these lives, in the adult lives.

Carlopolis younger brother, Noah Carlopoli, said Monday that he couldnt believe his brother was responsible for the crimes for which he is accused.

He wouldnt hurt his daughter, the younger Carlopoli said.

Noah Carlopoli described his brother as the perfect father figure to both girls, but said Patrick Carlopoli and Tammy Modlin had been having problems with their relationship and their finances. The couple got together around 2010, he said.

Noah Carlopoli said he lived with the couple at the end of 2014 when they were in the Ormond Beach area. The couple moved to Fort Myers last fall, he said.

Noah Carlopoli described Montana Modlin as a fun-loving, artistic teenager.

She was bright. She had a bright future, he said. She was just cool. She was artistic, she was fun to be around. ... She didnt deserve it.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families said the agency had no prior involvement with the family.

Investigators continued working Monday at the crime scene inside the sprawling 350-unit complex filled with shady trees. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the brown and beige apartment building with a large American flag blowing near the front door. A maroon Jeep Grand Cherokee and a black Chevrolet Cruze with a faded Baby on Board sign in the back window were roped in behind the tape.

The complex is about a mile west of McGregor Boulevard. Neighbors described it as a safe and friendly community where people walk their dogs and talk.

Few people knew anything about the family on the first floor of Building 39, but neighbors did hear the couple fighting, sometimes loudly and viciously.

Neighbors Ric Jaeggi and Charles Hammond, who live in separate units across the parking lot, said they heard Patrick Carlopoli and Tammy Modlin yelling and cursing at each other regularly. Jaeggi said hes seen the family on a couple of occasions over the last year, including once when they were cooking out on the sidewalk. But even then they didnt seem happy, he said.

They were jawing, Jaeggi said.

Jaeggi and Hammond said they found it suspicious that the family had a bright flood light shining out of their back lanai, lighting up part of the parking lot. They also had several video cameras sticking out of the blinds, as if they were trying to monitor outside. There was still a Zmodo camera looking out the back window Monday afternoon next to an ADT sticker.

Hammond said he once received mail addressed to Carlopoli. He walked it over to their unit, and gave it to Modlin who took it without a thank you.

You could see inside and it was total chaos in there, he said. I came back and told my wife it looked like a tornado or cyclone went through there.

A manager at the Outback Steakhouse in Fort Myers confirmed that Carlopoli had worked there as a server. A corporate spokeswoman said the company doesnt share information about its current or former employees in order to protect their privacy.

Hostess Virginia Gundelach said she never felt anything was amiss with Carlopoli.

"He was sweet. He always talked about his little girl and would show pictures of her," she said. "I think everyone was shocked to see him on the news. When I first saw the article my first thought was that someone had hurt him and his family, not that he had hurt anyone."
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By Daily News staff

Passengers in two vehicles were seriously injured in a crash Sunday night in Lee County.



Three children were injured in one vehicle and a woman was critically injured in another in the two-vehicle crash that occurred at 8:23 p.m. near the intersection of Lee and Sunniland boulevards in Lehigh Acres, the Florida Highway Patrol reports.



Daryn Pagan Figueroa, 22, of Lehigh Acres, was critically injured in the crash. In a second vehicle, a 5-year-old Lehigh boy was seriously injured and a 1-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy received minor injuries. All injured passengers were taken to Lee Memorial Hospital, FHP reports.



The three children injured were passengers in a Dodge Caravan driven by Danielle Brantley, 22, of Uvalda, Georgia. The minivan turned left from Lee Boulevard onto Sunniland Boulevard in front of a Honda Accord driven by Marisa Butcher, 26, of Lehigh. Brantley was cited for making an improper left turn in front of approaching traffic, FHP reports show.



Brantley was not injured in the crash, but another passenger, Cynthia Kruse, 47, of Mount Vernon, Georgia, had minor injuries. Figueroa was in the car driven by Butcher, who also sustained minor injuries. All involved were wearing seatbelts or in child restraints.


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By Arek Sarkissian of the Naples Daily News

TALLAHASSEE  Counties and cities would have a limited say in how oil companies go about fracking, but a proposed amendment would not allow local governments to prevent the drilling process.

The amendment, which is scheduled to be heard Monday by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government, would allow local governments to apply local land use rules to industrial areas where fracking would occur. The change means cities and counties could enforce ordinances on fracking sites, such as hours of operation, lighting and proper barriers to the areas, so long as they do not prevent the drilling process. The current version of SB 318 makes no mention of land use requirements, and it still pre-empts fracking bans passed in 2015 by cities and counties across the state.

"Is it exactly what I wanted? No, but that's part of the process of negotiations," said Rebecca O'Hara, a lobbyist for the Florida League of Cities. "We started from the get-go knowing that there would be some predetermined terms, like we wanted some sort of say but we knew we wouldn't get an all-out ban."

The change needs a majority vote from Monday's seven-member Senate committee. One Republican on the panel is state Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, who voted in favor of a change to the bill filed by state Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, during a committee meeting last week that would have completely removed the pre-emption language, but it failed.

Senate bill sponsor Garrett Richter, R-Naples, said the proposed change should allow local governments to have some say in the process without impeding the proposed statewide regulation.

"I think it provides the intended zoning authority to local governments but it keeps the regulatory responsibility with the (Florida Department of Environmental Protection)," Richter said. "And it doesn't permit local communities to arbitrarily establish a moratorium and infringe on property owners' rights."

State Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, said his version of the bill, HB 191, will include the same proposed change when it heads to the chamber floor in the coming weeks. Rodrigues' own city of residence  Estero  and Bonita Springs passed ordinances last year, and 64 other cities have passed resolutions opposing the process.

The change was written to assume DEP already forbids fracking in nonindustrial areas.

"I've never seen DEP issue a permit in a residential area or where it would not be appropriate," Rodrigues said.

The bill also calls for a $1 million study to be conducted by DEP that the Legislature would use to write policy that governs fracking. A moratorium on the drilling method would be issued until the study is done.

Current law makes DEP responsible for issuing permits for fracking, which is a drilling method that injects chemicals into the ground at high pressure to push out oil and natural gas. The proposed legislation was first introduced by Richter last year after members of the Collier County Commission raised concern that DEP was unable to halt drilling performed by the Texas-based Dan A. Hughes Co. The company began to frack on the western side of Collier on the edge of the Everglades and refused to heed orders from the state agency to stop for an environmental evaluation. The Hughes drillers eventually ceased, and the company was fined $25,000 and ordered to install groundwater monitors around the site.

Two Collier County commissioners were not pleased that the pre-emption language would remain in the bill. Commissioner Penny Taylor said she does not want fracking in Collier, but she recognizes the need for statewide regulation. The amendment would settle some of her concerns.

"I'm still interested in at least having a say in when they drill and how they handle those harmful, toxic chemicals they use to drill with that high pressure method," Taylor said. "I guess the amendment would leave me somewhat relieved."

Collier Commissioner Tim Nance said he would accept the limited say local governments would have with the proposed change.

"I hope there are some home rule elements that survive the legislation, but if not we have to support the regulation overall," Nance said. "I think this is just the beginning of what will be a finished product."

Contact Daily News reporter arek.sarkissian@naplesnews.com or 850-559-7620
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Gary Lefebvre, Naples

Where's the support?

Having served in the Marines for five years and working alongside with members of the Navy, I find it difficult to believe the official report by the current administration regarding the riverine assault boat seizure incident and the capture of 10 U.S. sailors.

Pictures of our sailors on their knees, hands over their heads, displayed all over the world by our enemies, is insulting and demoralizing. We were told by the administration that the engines of the boats malfunctioned. Why wasn't a call made and support dispatched?

There would have been support for recovery for these two boats. It is hard to believe these two heavily armed boats with the most advanced weapons and guidance systems in all the world's navies were boarded without resistance from our vessels. Why weren't these weapons manned? An immediate defensive position is to secure themselves until recovery by our Navy.

The Code of Conduct for members of the United States armed forces: I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.

Is this another stand-down order from the White House just like the Benghazi, Libya, incident? I think it is.
SHARE Dave Trecker

By Dave Trecker

Water is back in the news. With Florida's population growing at the rate of nearly 1,000 people a day  second fastest in the country, behind only Texas  the state's water supply is coming under scrutiny.

And well it should. The Environmental Protection Agency says Florida will need $16.5 billion in funding over the next 20 years just to maintain its current drinking water infrastructure. Even with that funding, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam estimates the state will face a billion-gallon-a-day freshwater shortfall by 2030.

The warning signs are here already. The U.S. Geological Survey reports groundwater levels have dropped nearly 7 feet in Lee County in the last 20 years. Many shallow aquifers are tapped out.

In Collier County, with water usage expected to jump from 40 million gallons a day to 60 million by 2035, officials plan to ban potable water for irrigation and boost capacity for cleaning up waste streams. Large amounts of the reclaimed water  critical for crops, as well as lawns and fairways  will be needed to keep up with the explosive growth forecast for Naples, the 10th fastest-growing area in the country.

The problem is not limited to Florida. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reports 21 of the world's 37 largest aquifers are being depleted faster than they are being replenished. Reversing the trend, we are told, would take hundreds of years.

And as the aquifers are drawn down, particularly those near the shore, there is a risk of saltwater intrusion. (Many years ago, in my working life, I came to Naples to discuss the use of chemical gelants to seal off the aquifers from encroaching seawater. It was not, as you might imagine, a practical solution.)

Disappearing groundwater isn't the only problem. We are misusing our surface water as well, polluting it with abandon. Agricultural waste and fertilizer runoff are serially fouling our lakes and streams and will eventually contaminate our estuaries. The Gulf of Mexico is not immune, already registering the largest dead zone in the world, affecting millions of acres of marine life.

And recycled water aggravates the problem. Because the cleanup leaves behind huge amounts of nutrients (dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus), the reclaimed water can foul streams and lakes as badly as fertilizer itself.

What's the answer? Nothing simple. We can try to shame people into better behavior, into conserving water and reducing pollution. But that's never worked in the past. Local mandates are unenforceable or, at least, unenforced. We can always hope for better government policies. Or we can do a better job cleaning up the water we have.

What about better policies? Don't expect much. The feds bumbled away attempts to strengthen the Clean Water Act, and Tallahassee has shown little interest in conservation. The Legislature just passed a water-policy bill (SB 552), but it's of limited value since it does nothing to restrict groundwater removal.

State lawmakers can always buy land with Amendment 1 money to protect water sources. But I wouldn't count on that either.

The real solution is cleaning up what we have  wastewater, water from deep wells and seawater. And we have the technology to do it: filtration, aeration, bacterial treatment, ion-exchange, distillation, reverse osmosis, disinfection.

The kicker, of course, is that these cleanups aren't free. They're expensive and require heavy capital outlays, all of which could double or triple the cost of drinking water.

In time, as technology advances, these costs will come down. And progress is being made. For example:

 Electronic-wave equipment now on the market has been shown to disinfect brackish water.

 A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is piloting a shock electrodialysis technique that removes 99.99 percent of salt from seawater.

 The Department of Energy is working with a Massachusetts company to develop a wave-driven energy converter to power RO desalination at the seashore. That's a green dream: fresh water from wave energy.

These are promising advances, and there are others. But there will be no easy fix. The fact is we have a serious water problem compounded by an indifferent Legislature and a burgeoning population.

Cheap, plentiful freshwater will soon be a thing of the past.

__ A chemist and retired executive of Pfizer, Trecker serves on a number of local boards.
Valeries House for Grieving Families, a new not-for-profit organization devoted to helping children and families work through grief following the death of a loved one is now enrolling children in its 2016 program. Support groups and activities began Monday, January 11 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Valeries House located at 1618 Avalon Place in Fort Myers historic Dean Park. Online participant pre-registration is now open at www.valerieshouseswfl.org/our-programs/.



Valeries House is a safe, comfortable place for families to share, grieve and heal together after a death in their family. Bi-weekly sessions begin with a potluck dinner, followed by small breakout groups, engaging children in age-appropriate activities to help them learn to talk about their grief, heal and bond with other children going through similar kinds of losses. Caregivers of the children also meet together. Activities include monthly family outings and group events to help participants support one another. Personal, one-on-one weekday support is also available, as needed.



Founded by Angela Melvin, Valeries House is named after her mother, Valerie Melvin, a 31-year old nurse and mother of two daughters who was killed in a car accident in 1987 as she drove to pick up her girls from summer camp. Following her heart, Angela founded Valeries House in Southwest Florida to help grieving children heal together and go on to lead fulfilling lives.



Valerie's House is fully supported through generous donations from the community.



We estimate that we may serve as many as 200 family members over the upcoming year, said Melvin. We are grateful for donations of any amount to help us meet that need.



Ongoing support and donations can be made online at www.valerieshouseswfl.org or send checks to Valeries House, Inc., PO Box 1955, Fort Myers, FL 33902. For more information or to register for programs, submit a contact form at www.valerieshouseswfl.org/contact-us/ or call 239-478-6734 or angela@valerieshouseswfl.org.
Isis

Hello,

I wanted to write to you regarding an issue I have had and have heard of others having the same issues.

Im a single mom; I have a twelve year old daughter in middle school whom has been getting bullied because her name is Isis. She already had low self-esteem and emotional child. Its really sad that kids are so mean.

She has come home crying, because of the words kids have been using. I have tried to educate her on how her name was around before the terror group, and how its not even pronounced the same but others are uneducated. I have been to the school complaining about the problems and issues as well.

Isis has gone from a name on the rise to a forbidden list because of the extremist terror group ISIS, an acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Isis was the fasted names in 2014. Isis means woman of the Throne.

My daughter wants to change her name. I think it is a very pretty and powerful name. People just need educated on it. Will the name ever be as beautiful and powerful as it was when she was born?


Valeries House for Grieving Families, a new not-for-profit organization devoted to helping children and families work through grief following the death of a loved one is now enrolling children in its 2016 program. Support groups and activities began Monday, Jan. 11 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Valeries House located at 1618 Avalon Place in Fort Myers historic Dean Park. Online participant pre-registration is now open at www.valerieshouseswfl.org/our-programs/.



Valeries House is a safe, comfortable place for families to share, grieve and heal together after a death in their family. Bi-weekly sessions begin with a potluck dinner, followed by small breakout groups, engaging children in age-appropriate activities to help them learn to talk about their grief, heal and bond with other children going through similar kinds of losses. Caregivers of the children also meet together. Activities include monthly family outings and group events to help participants support one another. Personal, one-on-one weekday support is also available, as needed.



Founded by Angela Melvin, Valeries House is named after her mother, Valerie Melvin, a 31-year old nurse and mother of two daughters who was killed in a car accident in 1987 as she drove to pick up her girls from summer camp. Following her heart, Angela founded Valeries House in Southwest Florida to help grieving children heal together and go on to lead fulfilling lives.



Valerie's House is fully supported through generous donations from the community.



We estimate that we may serve as many as 200 family members over the upcoming year, said Melvin. We are grateful for donations of any amount to help us meet that need.



Ongoing support and donations can be made online at www.valerieshouseswfl.org or send checks to Valeries House, Inc., PO Box 1955, Fort Myers, FL 33902. For more information or to register for programs, submit a contact form at www.valerieshouseswfl.org/contact-us/ or call 239-478-6734 or angela@valerieshouseswfl.org.


John Blaine is a Connecticut native and a graduate of Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He is Nova's Vice President of Marketing and Development.

Blaine has been involved in the Naples real estate and construction business for over 17 years. His strength in building relationships based on trust and mutual respect has made him one of the area's highest volume real estate brokers. He was drawn to work with Nova Homes by his amazement at the quality product being produced at a very low price. Blaine was so fascinated by Nova's business model that within days of first meeting Nova founder Frank Arcia, they made an agreement to partner in growing Nova Homes into one of South Florida's premier construction companies. Blaine continues in both the real estate and construction fields with the assistance of his sales team. This is helpful in that he can help Nova prospects find a home site if they don't yet have one. His goal and philosophy is one that the company has adopted as a slogan, "Nobody builds a better home at a better price."



Nova Homes, a Custom Home Builder, building single-family homes in Naples and Marco Island offers fifteen stock home designs to select from ranging in size from 1,318 3,312 sq. ft. under air. They will customize existing plans to fit customers needs. Principal Frank Arcia says,  We also build many custom homes from plans customers either bring in or plans we help them design from scratch. No matter what size and location, including Marco Island, Golden Gate Estates, and Naples, we design and build Personalized homes that reflect our customers lifestyles. Our homes include many features most builders charge extra for.



Home prices range from the $200s to over $2 million. To contact Nova Homes call 239-307-6116 or visit their website, www.novahomesbuilder.com.
A New Jersey man has been sentenced to six years in prison for running a scam that victimized distressed homeowners and private investors.

Randy Poulson, 44, of Woolwich Township, N.J., was accused of netting about $3 million in illegal profits from his fraudulent scheme, according to a Justice Department news release.

Poulson, working through his businesses Equity Capital Investments, Poulson Russo LLC and South Jersey Real Estate Investors Associates, lured victims into attending his paid seminars on real estate.

His scheme also included promises to pay the mortgages of homeowners who faced foreclosure, if they sold him their homes. After obtaining the deed, he would then stop making mortgage payments, causing the loans to default.

He also conned his seminar attendees to make investments in his firms, telling them their money would be used to acquire and rehabilitate property, which he would then rent out and later sell for a 10% to 20% return on the investment.

The properties were those that he obtained from the distressed homeowners. But instead of using his seminar attendees' funds to rehab the properties, he used the money on personal expenses.
Admission to the museum is FREE and there is NO CHARGE for parking.

The museum is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week. The museum is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

The 8th Air Force Control Tower and Nissen Hut, located in the Air Park, are closed until further notice.
Forcing diversity in the workforce actually causes increased discrimination

(NaturalNews) The harder we try to promote diversity in the workplace, the more controlling the situation becomes, exacerbating the discrimination we were trying to eradicate in the first place. A new study finds that, when pro-diversity programs are implemented in the workforce, white men are threatened the most, while no benefit is provided to minorities or women, because the group that feels threatened will naturally bind together to keep control."Groups that typically occupy positions of power may feel alienated and vulnerable when their company claims to value diversity," said the study's authors."This may be one explanation for the lackluster success of most diversity management attempts: when people feel threatened, they may resist efforts to make the workplace more inclusive."On the surface, it seems noble to try and make women equal to men in all aspects, but biologically men and women are inherently different, in anatomy and hormonal structure. When women are hired out of obligation to artificially create diversity in the workforce, men are threatened and a natural resistance occurs. When the focus of hiring becomes dependent on diversifying the workforce, the minorities actually become favored, increasing the force of discrimination. These diversity programs don't create equality as intended; they create further polarizing conditions, prompting white men to bind together, resist and defend their positions that they perceived themselves as having earned through hard work, regardless of skin tone.These programs may also cause employees to walk on eggshells in their company as they try to include everyone. Since they are forced to include everyone based on their race or their gender, who they hire and how they give out raises for work production changes. Afraid they might offend a minority or a woman, the white man is actually suppressed in how he does his job, how he manages and makes decisions. He may feel obligated to cater to a woman instead of treating her the same as a man would be treated.Pro-diversity programs function as weapons of intimidation that can be used by minorities and women who are practically encouraged to feel discriminated, even when they are more catered to. The blame is always thrust on the white man in instances that seem unfair because the woman or minority is conditioned to feel this way in these pro-diversity work environments. In these all-inclusive environments, women or minorities may victimize themselves and vindicate themselves by pointing at the white man and calling out that they've been discriminated against.In the end, pro-diversity programs in the workforce are more divisive than anything, not helping women or minorities get ahead honestly and fairly. Thefound out that the programs only protect companies against discrimination claims when minorities or women cry out that they've been discriminated against."Currently, diversity initiatives' strongest accomplishment may actually be protecting the organization from litigation  not protecting the interests of underrepresented groups," write the study's co-authors, Cheryl Kaiser, Tessa Dover and Brenda Major.The study also found that "diversity initiatives also seem to do little to convince minorities that companies will treat them more fairly."Pro-diversity programs send the message to white male employees "that they might be undervalued and discriminated against," the study found."We found evidence that it not only makes white men believe that women and minorities are being treated fairly  whether that's true or not  it also makes them more likely to believe that they themselves are being treated unfairly."Larger companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon are currently being pressured to balance the ratio of white men to minorities and women. Kaiser, Dover and Major found out that the pro-diversity push is creating more problems among workers than it solves."Compared to white men interviewing at the company that did not mention diversity, white men interviewing for the pro-diversity company expected more unfair treatment and discrimination against whites," they reported."They also performed more poorly in the job interview, as judged by independent raters. And their cardiovascular responses during the interview revealed that they were more stressed."
Local, sustainable cultivation plan spreads wealth among villagers, preventing Big Pharma from cashing in on rare medicinal fungus

Village roll calls prevent over harvesting, while sacred conservation measures help sustain the fungus breeding population

(NaturalNews) High up in the Himalayan mountains, hidden in the quiet pastures, grows a rare medicinal fungus. Speculators from around the world have heard what the fungus can do. (It's a powerful aphrodisiac.) They have learned how valuable it is. (It's more valuable than gold in the Chinese markets.) It's an understatement that Big Pharma's eyes are getting big - their greedy grin widening. The rush for the rare medicinal fungusis on.Nicknamed Himalayan Viagra(Ophiocordyceps sinensis) is harvested in early spring from the mummified bodies of caterpillars. When ghost moth caterpillars burrow into the ground, the rare fungus invades their cocoons. The fungus, appearing as dime-sized spores, is collected from the grasslands in early spring from mummified caterpillar bodies high up in the Himalayan Mountains across the Tibetan Plateau. The rare fungus is more valuable the gold in the Chinese markets. That's why speculators come from far and wide to claim their share.The Himalayan locals, however, have prevented Big Pharma and other speculators from pillaging the mountains and taking over the spring harvest of Yartsa gunbu. Two isolated Tibetan communities have come up with a plan to keep Yartsa gunbu sacred and protected. New Research fromin St. Louis has found out how the local communities are keeping the pharmaceutical industry off their mountains and away from their valuable resource.Co-author of the research, Geoff Childs, PhD said, "There's this mistaken notion that indigenous people are incapable of solving complicated problems on their own, but these communities show that people can be incredibly resourceful when it's necessary to preserve their livelihoods."The small communities of Nubri and Tsum, located high up near Nepal's northern Gorkha District border, have put together a plan locally to cultivate Yartsa gunbu sustainably and share its wealth among its villagers. The villagers, whose annual incomes only amount to hundreds of dollars on average, usually get by doing farm work, timber sales, or grazing. Harvesting Himalayan Viagra provides a more lucrative business opportunity.Those who register with the village to harvest the fungus have gone from poverty to riches. Average annual incomes have been multiplied by eight. Villagers who used to earn hundreds of dollars a year now earn up to $4,000. For some, collecting Yartsa gunbu provides 80 percent or more of their income for the entire year.In his research, Geoff Childs reveals the strategic and innovative resource management plan created by the Tibetan locals. The local's regulatory plan is authoritarian but it appears necessary to keep merciless crony imperialist pharmaceutical speculators off the mountains, away from the rare fungus . The small communities don't want to be exploited and have found a way to protect the natural pasture lands in the Himalayan Mountains. In fact, during the harvest season, the strategic management plan requires that all locals, including any visiting speculators from the outside, to show their faces four times a day at mandatory roll calls. The roll calls help the villages make sure no one is off harvesting the rare fungus for their own gain.The sustainable plan restricts harvest to all members of all local households, requiring all harvesters to register and pay a small tax. The plan enforces penalties on those who harvest out of the community-enforced season. At 7 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. during harvest season, all villagers must meet for a roll call. Some areas considered sacred are to be left alone, allowing for conservation to preserve the fungus breeding populations for the future.The plan has kept speculators out and has improved the local's quality of living. New business ventures have brought more opportunity and greater education resources for children."In the case of Nubri and Tsum, management practices that were devised independent of state interference may prove to be sustainable over the long-run," Childs said. "Although many observers have called for more government intervention in the harvesting and sale of yartsa gunbu, our research demonstrates that, at least in some communities, it is better to allow locals to manage the resource and reap the benefits on their own terms."
(NaturalNews) One of the goals of the federal government's Affordable Care Act is to universally implement the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR). What this means is that federal health authorities have begun a push toward converting all Americans' health data and medical histories into a digital format which can be easily accessed and shared by doctors, insurance providers, scientific researchers and the patients themselves.The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which outlines the goal of advancing the "collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research."Under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was introduced in 2009, a majority of doctors and hospitals have already begun to convert patient data into digital form.Proponents of the plan argue that it will improve healthcare for Americans by making it easier for doctors and hospitals to access and share vital patient info, and through creating a database to be used in medical research.Although there would seem to be some merit in creating such a system, many are voicing concerns over privacy -- part of the plan includes making these electronic records available to more than 35 federal agencies.These agencies include the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and even NASA.Although the creators of the plan state that one of their first concerns will be the protection of patient privacy, critics are skeptical -- pledges to "anonymize" and "de-identify" the data are likely to fall short of the mark.A 2009 report by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) stated, regarding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA):It is far too easy to re-identify data which has been de-identified, and that's just one of the potential ways in which patient privacy may be breached. The federal government has done a sloppy job of protecting personal info -- the security breaches which occurred during the rollout of the Obamacare website is just one glaring example.As the CDT report noted:One might understandably wonder exactly why all these agencies require access to health records. Does the Bureau of Prisons, for instance,need to be able to look at your medical history -- especially if you are not a criminal?Digitizing records is one thing -- of course it might prove useful for a doctor to be able to easily share a patient's records with a surgeon, for instance. But making this information available to dozens of federal agencies seems an obvious step too far, even with the promises of anonymization -- which appear to be relatively empty in the first place.If you'd like to voice your own concerns about the plan, the HHS is seeking comments from the public before it is implemented. Public comments will be received until February 6, 2015 -- below is the website address for submission:
A Guadalupe fur seal, rare and far out of its normal range, was recently rescued in British Columbia, Canada. It is now resting at the Vancouver Aquarium. Its normal home is in Baja California, Mexico.

The seal had been spotted twice off western Vancouver Island, in the southwest part of the Canadian province, as the Times Colonist newspaper reported.

Having been corralled on a beach in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, the seal was taken to the Marine Mammal Rescue Center at the aquarium. It is dehydrated and emaciated.

This seal species, Arctocephalus townsendi, breeds on Mexico's Guadalupe Island and is not usually seen in B.C., as Martin Haulena, head veterinarian at the center, said in the article.

In the U.S., Guadalupe fur seals are listed as threatened. Last fall, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared an "unusual mortality event" because seals of this species began washing up sick or dead on the California coast.

Warmer waters off the West Coast -- called "the blob" -- could be associated with the animals becoming stranded, scientists have noted. It's possible that fish species the seals favor may have moved north to escape warmer waters. In California, scientists have said they are not yet sure whether the seals are moving north because of climate or are simply returning to their former range, which went as far up the coast as central California at one point.

These seals formerly lived as far north as Point Conception, California, but were hunted to extinction in that state by 1825. Currently the only breeding colony of the seals is on Guadalupe Island, Mexico, according to California's Marine Mammal Center website.

Guadalupe fur seals have external ear flaps and long front and hind flippers, so they can walk on land. Males grow to six feet long and 300 pounds; females to four feet and 100 pounds.

For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).

-Follow Catherine on Twitter @TreesWhales
Two Chinese citizens have been killed and one injured in a suspected bomb attack in central Laos, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, a mountainous area that in recent months has seen an increase in violence and in years past was the scene of clashes between government forces and the Hmong ethnic minority.

The incident took place about 8:00 a.m. on Sunday in the province of Xaysomboun (pronounced Sai-sum-boon) when the victims, one of whom was employed by a Chinese mining company, were riding in a vehicle, Xinhua reported.

Chinese diplomats have visited the survivor, identified by the surname Zhou, and have requested a swift investigation, Xinhua said. An official contacted at the Lao Embassy in Vietnam, the country's closest ally, said he was unaware of the report.

China is a major investor in Laos' rich abundance of minerals and other natural resources and shares its one-party form of authoritarian communist government. A special Chinese presidential envoy, Song Tao, is due to visit the country this week, Xinhua said.

Since November, there has been an increase in violence in the province, though the perpetrators have not been identified, nor has the tightly controlled state press provided any details.

In a notice posted on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Laos in November prohibited its employees from traveling to Xaysomboon province due to what it described as nighttime shooting attacks by unidentified assailants. It said one person was killed on Nov. 17 and another wounded on Nov. 18.

The Hmong fought on the side of a pro-American regime during the Vietnam War, and after the communist Pathet Lao took over in 1975, many fled abroad or hid in the jungle. Until a few years ago, there were several small bands of Hmong resisters who continued to hide in the jungle and occasionally clash with security forces, but most eventually surrendered.

The U.S. government-funded news service Radio Free Asia has reported additional attacks in November, December and January, citing unnamed police and other sources. In the latest reported attack, a bus came under fire on Jan. 14, leaving about a dozen passengers hurt but none killed, said RFA.

While RFA's reports could not be independently confirmed, it has a record of being well-informed about Laotian affairs.

In a report forwarded to The Associated Press earlier this month, Hmong sympathizers gave their own version of the recent violence, saying that from mid-November until the end of December, there had been six attacks by government forces on groups of Hmong, killing at least seven and wounding 21.

The report, which came from a source which has provided accurate information in the past, also said that 13 Hmong villagers had been arrested in November for contacting people in the jungle, meaning Hmong who are hiding from the authorities. The source declined to be named because of fears for his personal security.
East Coast residents clobbered by the weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalks after some cities got an entire winter's snow in two days.

The death toll from the storm that battered the East Coast rose to 41 on Monday. Deaths occurred in 13 states and were attributed largely to shoveling-related heart attacks, car accidents and carbon monoxide poisoning. In New Jersey, a carbon monoxide from a blocked tailpipe killed a woman and her 1-year-old son and left her 3-year-old daughter in critical condition. The children's father was steps away shoveling out the car, authorities said Sunday.

Closed schools and shuttered government offices thwarted the start of the week for many. The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with near-record snowfalls tallied from Washington, D.C. to New York City.

Still, for many, Monday brought signs of normalcy.

In Brooklyn, only one teacher at the Bedford-Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School called out, despite more than two feet of snow across New York City.

"A lot of teachers are taking the train instead of driving," said Wanda Morales, director of operations at the school, standing outside while maintenance workers spread salt and parents dropped off their children.

In Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, shops were open, and main roadways were mostly cleared, dotted with large piles of snow. Matthew Mason, 29, was riding the train into Washington to go to his job at a hotel. The part-time law student said he figured he should be there, though things would likely be a little slower.

"I've sat in my house too much already," he said.

Dave Lenowitz was perched on a snowbank in Philadelphia near what's normally the stop for the bus that takes him to his job as the director of a nonprofit.

"Normally I bicycle, but it's a little too slippery," he said. "There's not enough snow, otherwise I'd ski. It's only seven miles."

Flying remained particularly messy after airlines canceled nearly 12,000 weekend flights and hundreds more Monday. Airports resumed limited service in New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In the Washington area, Reagan National Airport saw its first flights Monday, and Dulles International Airport expected to resume flights late in the day. But delays reverberated around the country.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin was on a rescheduled pre-dawn flight from Springfield, Illinois, to Chicago while on the way to Washington on Monday morning. The Illinois Democrat said he's been through this before.

"Most of us who spend part of our lives in Washington know to expect the worst when it comes to snow," he said. "I knew the forecast was enough to cause a problem."

Tom Aloi, who works in construction management, was at Chicago O'Hare trying to get back to New York City after a business trip to Germany. His rescheduled fight to Newark Liberty was already delayed several hours.

"Yes, we are frustrated. We are aggravated," Aloi said. "It's a ripple effect. It affects the whole world."

Amtrak operated a reduced number of trains on all its routes, serving many people who couldn't get around otherwise, spokesman Marc Magliari said. But bus and rail service was expected to be limited around the region into Monday.

The snow began Friday, and the last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday. In its aftermath, crews raced all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks devoid of their usual bustle.

Sunday's brilliant sunshine and gently rising temperatures provided a respite from the blizzard that dropped a record 29.2 inches on Baltimore. The weekend timing could not have been better, enabling many to enjoy a gorgeous winter day.

It was just right for a huge snowball fight in Baltimore, where more than 600 people responded to organizer Aaron Brazell's invite on Facebook.

"I knew people would be cooped up in their houses and wanting to come outside," said Brazell, who was beaned by multiple blasts of perfectly soft but firm snow.

But one day of sunshine wasn't enough to clear many roads. Cars parked in neighborhoods were encased in snow, some of it pushed from the streets by plows. In downtown Philadelphia, some sidewalk entrances were blocked by mounds of snow.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars all week after a one-day record of 26.6 inches fell in Central Park.

That advice came too late for Bob Raldiris, who tried shoveling his Nissan Maxima out of a spot in Ridgewood, Queens, before passing plows and trucks spoiled his labor. "This is terrible," he said, pointing to a pile of snow three feet high.

In Queens, which got hit with with 30 inches of snow in some neighborhoods, residents were fuming Monday, as a lot of the snow still remained on the streets.

In Woodhaven, a man was trying to dig his car out of the snow Monday at 2 a.m. He had been there since 10 p.m.

"If you ask me they could have done a better job with it," the man said.

Federal, D.C., Maryland and Virginia government offices will be closed Monday to allow blizzard cleanup to continue. Schools from Washington to the Jersey Shore gave students Monday off; In the D.C. suburbs, classes also were canceled for Tuesday.

Things were especially bad in Newark, where one commuter described the majority of city streets as being covered in snow on Sunday, with some streets completely impassable, NBC New York reported. Twenty-eight inches of snow that buried the city forced schools to close Monday and residents to wonder how theyre going to travel to work.

New York's transit authority said partial service on the Long Island Rail Road was restored on three of its 12 branches and diesel train service was operating on three other branches. New York City subways, buses and Metro-North Railroad service were operating on a normal schedule.

Broadway reopened after going dark at the last minute during the snowstorm, but museums remained closed in Washington, and the House of Representatives postponed votes until February, citing the storm's impact on travel.

Overall snowfall of 26.8 inches in Central Park made it New York's second biggest winter storm since records began in 1869, and Saturday's 26.6 inches made for a single-day record in the city.

Some of the blizzard's heaviest snow bands wound up over New York City and Long Island, sending snow totals spiking higher than the 12-18 inches forecasters predicted Thursday.

Washington's records were less clear. The official three-day total of 17.8 inches measured at Reagan National Airport was impossibly short of accumulations recorded elsewhere in the city. An official total of 22.4 inches landed at the National Zoo, for example.

The zoo remained closed through Monday but a video of its giant panda Tian Tian making snow angels got more than 48 million views. Joining the fun, Jeffrey Perez, of Millersville, Maryland, climbed into a panda suit and rolled around in the snow, snagging more than half a million views of his own.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has another honor to add to his resume.

Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Institute has named the Emmy-award winner its 2016 Man of the Year. The festivities to honor the "500 Days of Summer" star will take place on Feb. 5, 2016, where he will accept his Pudding Pot at the famous Farkas Hall, the home and headquarters of the group.

Before he can take home his special award, however, he'll have to sit through the traditional celebratory roast from the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

"No emoji can express how excited we are about having Joseph Gordon-Levitt as our 50th Man of the Year," said Bobby Fitzpatrick, President of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, in a press release. "We anxiously await Mr. Gordon-Levitt's arrival, as he begins his slow journey to the Hasty Pudding Theatricals on a small rope from LA to Cambridge."

PHOTOS: Amy Poehler Gets roasted and kissed by men in drag at Hasty Pudding ceremony

The hitRECord director and founder couldn't believe he was selected, either.

"Perusing the impressive list of past Hasty Pudding Men of the Year, I'm simultaneously struck with intense delusions of grandeur and mild waves of humility," Gordon-Levitt said in the release.

Actress Kerry Washington was named this year's Woman of the Year. She'll be honored on Jan. 28, 2016.

"We are so excited to honor Kerry Washington as the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Woman of the Year and welcome her to Cambridge to celebrate her many achievements. Kerry is an amazing actress with many fans in the company, and the perfect choice for this honor," said Kennedy Edmonds '17, producer of teh groups forthcoming show. "But we also feel a bit nervous as we set out to coordinate a perfect event for legendary PR whiz Olivia Pope!"

READ: Kiefer Sutherland wears a bra at Hasty Pudding award ceremony

"If Kerry is anything like her on-screen character, she may turn the tables on us during her roast!" added Bobby Fitzpatrick '16, President of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

Chris Pratt and Amy Poehler, co-stars in "Parks and Recreation," received the award in 2015. Jason Segel, Neil Patrick Harris, Claire Danes, Meryl Streep, Justin Timberlake, Anne Hathaway, and Bruce Willis are just some of the other stars who have been lucky enough to be named Man or Women of the Year by the group.

PHOTOS: Oscar nominees you may have forgotten about
During previous winters, it has been a challenge for Jasmine Sullivan, a mother of three children, to pay her energy bills.

Gas companies, they dont really care if you have no income or you cant afford, if youre working or not, Sullivan said. Sometimes, I even had to use other peoples electricity to help, lots of blankets, if I have electricity through the stove boiling water, its terrible, because the kids are cold, Im cold.

For several years, Sullivan has relied on the assistance she applies for through the Community Action Agency of New Haven.

It definitely helps keep us out of the cold, especially around this time when its snowing, it really does help, she said, Its a life saver, it definitely is.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) listened to Sullivans story during his visit Monday to the Community Action Agency. Now, he plans to share it with colleagues in Washington, D.C. as he fights for more federal funding for the low income energy assistance program.

This is really a matter of life and death and here in Connecticut, Sen. Murphy said. Were going to get flat funding this year compared to last year for our low income heating assistance program, but thats simply not enough.

Murphy said with more recipients in the program, they are receiving less of the benefit, which means a lower percentage of what it costs to keep warm in the winter.

Even with falling home heating oil and natural gas prices, a recent study by the non-profit Operation Fuel found more than 313,000 Connecticut residents cant afford their energy bills.

The people that we serve are working class families and they dont often get pay raises for the last 5 to 10 years, in fact most of them still struggle with paying their bills, said Amos Lee Smith, the President and CEO of the Community Action Agency of New Haven.

Applicants this year for home heating assistance at the Community Action Agency are up 10 to 12 percent, Smith said. He added they have slowed down the number of daily appointments to keep up with processing applications.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders expressed confidence Sunday in their ability to beat former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg should he enter the race as an independent, while Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said he would welcome a Bloomberg bid with open arms.

Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that as she understands Bloomberg's statement, he'll consider running if Clinton does not win the nomination. She said Sunday she'll "relieve" him of that decision by winning the nomination.

People familiar with his plans said Bloomberg is taking preliminary steps toward an independent run and has set a March deadline for the decision. The sources told The Associated Press that if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, the former mayor is not likely to challenge her in a general election.

Sanders also spoke Sunday on Bloomberg's possible candidacy, saying he'll win if Bloomberg enters the race. The Vermont senator told CBS' "Face the Nation" that a battle between Bloomberg and Donald Trump, two New York billionaires, would favor Sanders' upstart Democratic campaign in a general election.

First, Sanders would have to win the Democratic presidential nomination against Clinton, Trump would have to triumph over his Republican rivals and Bloomberg would have to actually launch an independent bid for president, something he threatened to do on Saturday.

Trump, for his part, told "Meet the Press" he "would love to see Michael Bloomberg run."

"I would love that competition. I think I'd do very well against it," he said Sunday morning, adding that the two have been friends in the past.

The voting in the major-party nominating contests begins in a week, with the Feb. 1 Iowa Caucuses.
North Texas based American and Southwest Airlines will try to get back on schedule with flights after the deadly East Coast blizzard of Jan. 22-24, 2016.

American Airlines

Fort Worth-based American Airlines told NBC 5 it canceled 2,100 flights Friday and Saturday. They canceled 1,600 flights Sunday.

As of Sunday, the airline resumed service to Charlotte Douglas International Airport and limited service to Philadelphia International Airport.

The airline plans to resume flights in/out of all three New York City and all three Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area airports Monday.

CLICK HERE for how to change your trip with American Airlines.

Southwest Airlines

Dallas based Southwest Airlines told NBC 5 it canceled 550 flights on Sunday and 40 flights Monday.

As of Sunday, the airline resumed service to airports in Albany, Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg, Hartford, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Norfolk, Pittsburgh, Providence and Raleigh/Durham.

The airline plans to resume flights in/out of all three New York City and all three Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area airports on Monday.

Also, Southwest plans to resume service Philadelphia and Richmond, Virginia.

CLICK HERE for how to change your trip with Southwest Airlines.

The massive cancellations were caused by a record breaking Blizzard across the east coast. In all, 12,000 weekend flights were canceled.
For the passengers on a cruise ship heading back to snowy Baltimore from the Bahamas, one more day at sea doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

The Maryland Department of Transportation said Friday that a blizzard means the port won't be ready for the Royal Caribbean International's Grandeur of the Seas until Monday. The ship was to return Sunday from an eight-day trip to the Bahamas, said Cynthia Martinez, a Royal Caribbean spokeswoman. But plans changed after forecasters said the storm could dump more than 2 feet of snow.

Meg Ryan of Hamilton, New Jersey, one of the cruise ship's passengers, said she learned about 1 p.m. Friday of the postponement from the cruise line's website.

"I was not totally surprised and, frankly, happy to be delayed," Ryan wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "First, it is an extra day of vacation, but more importantly, safety comes first and travel Sunday would be difficult, if not impossible."

Ryan, 51, is an assistant manager of a luggage store in New Jersey. She is also a Master Cruise Counsellor, a certification from the trade organization Cruise Lines International Association. She works with a company called eCruisenet, which provides consulting services to passengers planning trips. Ryan said she was traveling with a group of eCruisenet clients.

Ryan said she expected the cruise line will have activities to entertain passengers, and the shops and casino will be open, "ready to separate guests from their money."

On the downside, Ryan said passengers were trying to rebook transportation from Baltimore to their homes. Also, the Grandeur of the Seas was to begin another cruise Sunday to the western Caribbean, so a fresh set of passengers will grapple with a delay. Ryan said the cruise line was helping passengers returning to Baltimore with free calls and Internet access; she took a photo of a line of people waiting to make calls.

Still, an on-board indoor solarium and pool presented an idyllic contrast to what awaited Ryan at home.

"I will return to Hamilton (near Trenton), N.J., to 2 feet of snow, and probably an irate cat, who I am sure will not be happy that I am delayed," she wrote.
A 94-year-old South Bay resident went from a prisoner of war to a hospital volunteer.

Wanda Damberg has lived a very full life, and through it all, she's felt a connection to medicine.

Damberg started volunteering at the Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance in 1980 and she's been at it ever since.

Damberg rarely lets the phone ring more than once or twice. She's quick and she's computer savvy.

"She's sharp as a tack," Lou Knox, a volunteer, said. "That's the thing I enjoy: When people come up to her and they have a first impression  as soon as she starts talking they say, 'Oh OK, you're with it. You know what's going on."

There may not be anyone else who knows the hospital like Damberg does after 35 years as a hospital volunteer.

Her connection to medicine began long before this chapter. Damberg's father was stationed in the Philippines in 1937.

Not long after, her whole family was taken captive by the Japanese. At 20 years old, Damberg was a prisoner of war.

"That's the most important picture because that's when we did the smuggling in prison camp," Damberg said.

In prison camp, she risked her life to smuggle medicine to the camp infirmary.

Was it dangerous? Yes. But it was Damberg's connection to helping others that compelled her to do it.

She has plenty of stories, like the one that earned her the nickname "Wow."

"I call her 'wow' -- which was a response from the judge," Knox said.

It was in Tokyo when Damberg caught the eye of a judge. She was one of the few women to testify during the war crimes trials. His whistle was mistakenly heard through the courtroom when he saw her.

"He had the gavel, and he said, 'Miss Werff, I am sorry if I embarrassed you but I meant every whistle of it!" Damberg said.

Her daughter writes about the lighthearted incident and so many of her mother's life stories in a book called "Courage and Deliverance."

But Damberg's spirit and energy proves she has many more chapters to go.

"I can't just sit and do nothing," Damberg said. "I mean, I gotta do something with my hands."

These days, she keeps busy as the hospital's longest-term volunteer, and on her days off, she knits blankets for babies, which she gives to the hospital gift shop to sell.

Damberg's colleagues say they learn so much from her.

"She's a great lady and a real great inspiration," Knox said.

They say her compassion is her greatest chapter of all.

"I feel very comfortable in a hospital," Damberg said. "While I can, I'm still at it."

Damberg says she prefers the excitement of the emergency room, but they needed her at the hospital information desk because out of all the volunteers, she has the sharpest computer skills.
A third alleged victim has come forward accusing a 28-year-old registered sex offender of sexual assault, and police believe there may be additional victims, officials said on Monday.

Richie Esquivel Corvera, 28, of Whittier, was arrested Friday on suspicion of rape by force or fear and for violation of probation, according to the Whittier Police Department.

Corvera is accused of luring two girls, ages 14 and 15, into his car on separate occasions before taking them to motels and sexually assaulting them, Whittier detectives said.

On both occasions, which occurred on Wednesday and Thursday, Corvera allegedly parked in the Sierra Vista alternative High School parking lot during daytime hours to make contact with the girls, who are students at the school, police said.

Corvera was arrested during a traffic stop on Friday, just hours after the teen girls reported the assaults.

Authorities revealed Monday that a third victim came forward after media reports. The teenage girl, who is not a student at Sierra Vista, was taken to a motel in October and sexually assaulted, Whittier police Officer John Scoggins said. Details on the assault were not immediately available but police said it was believed the victim was either walking to or from school.

"It certainly sounds like he's been very active. And he's certainly been targeting young females in the area for at least several months," said Scoggins said.

Police added an extra layer of security near the Sierra Vista on Monday, and school officials were making calls to parents to inform them of the incidents.

Whittier Union High School District Superintendent Sandy Thorstenson said the predator never entered the Sierra Vista campus and assured parents the district will continue to maintain a "safe and secure" environment.

"We ensure all visitors must sign in with campus security at the entrance of the school. Our campus security teams which include a school police officer, dean, campus security staff, counselors and administrators on each campus work diligently to maintain campuses that are safe for students, staff, parents and community members. We are also working with our teachers and staff to remind students of the care and precautions," Thorstenson said in a released statement.

A 14-year-old student who saw Corvera's mug shot in media reports came forward Sunday night to say the accused man tried to lure her into a car on her way to school on Jan. 7. The Whittier High School freshman said Corvera was persistent, and offered to give her a ride to school but she declined and was not a victim of assault.

Corvera is on the sex offender registry for annoying or molesting a child under 18, authorities said. He is due to be arraigned in court on Tuesday and is being held without bail.

Police believe Corvera may have additional victims and are asking anyone with information to call the Whittier Police Department at 562- 567-9255.
Authorities say a police pursuit turned into a rescue mission after two men fled into a wooded area of El Dorado County and later called 911 for help, saying they were freezing.



The El Dorado County Sheriff's Office has identified the men as Triston Crossland, a 30-year-old parolee from Eureka, and Derrick Dionno, a 32-year-old probationer from Hayfork who had four outstanding warrants for his arrest.

The pursuit began after the men decided to run away from their car when it was stopped by a California Department of Fish and Wildlife officer, authorities said.

During the chase, one of the men dropped a firearm, which was picked up by officers, who also found illegal drugs in the vehicle they abandoned.

Crossland and Dionno barreled into the snowy canyon off Highway 50 and crossed the frigid American River to flee from El Dorado County Deputies and California Highway Patrol officers, who quickly joined the search.

El Dorado County Sheriff's Office

According to a news release, a Forest Service officer spotted the men a few hours later. He yelled out a warning to the duo that they were in danger of freezing and should surrender. Dionno and Crossland, however, decided to flee further into the forest area.

Authorities say Crossland called 911 around 8:40 p.m. Friday, saying they were afraid of freezing to death.

The El Dorado County Sheriff's Office immediately pooled personnel from its SWAT, dive and search-and-rescue teams to find the pair, authorities said.

Authorities canvassed nearly seven miles in the dark, amid freezing temperatures, rocky terrain and driving rain and snow, and stumbled across Crossland and Dionno around 9:20 a.m. Saturday.

This time around, the men, who were suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, voluntarily gave up, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials used a river crossing, which had been built during the night by their El Dorado County Sheriff's Office colleagues, to transport the suspects into an ambulance.

After being treated at a hospital, both men were handed over to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for arrest and prosecution, according to authorities.

"You will never see two men so happy to go to a warm, dry jail cell," the release concluded.
Tri-state residents on Monday fought unplowed streets and massive snow mounds along with mass-transit delays left in the wake of the historic blizzard that dumped nearly 3 feet of powder on parts of the region and left at least 17 people dead.

Snow cleanup continues to mixed reviews across the tri-state, and officials are cautioning drivers to watch out for black ice as temperatures through the week are expected to melt the snow during the day, then drop at night to re-freeze it. A black ice advisory has been issued in New York City through Friday night.

Transit issues persisted into the evening rush Monday, with several LIRR lines still offline after most rail and subway service were suspended over the weekend. The MTA says the rail should be fully restored systemwide for the Tuesday morning rush.

The region's three airports were open, but travelers still had to fight with delays and cancellations as airlines were continuing to clear a backlog of more than 12,000 flights that had been canceled nationwide over the weekend. It created an especially severe backup at LaGuardia Airport, where road traffic was gridlocked into the night, with people waiting up to two hours to get into or out of the airport.

The death toll from the blizzard, meanwhile, inched up in the tri-state Monday for a total of at least 17 so far. One death in Brooklyn was suspected to be related to carbon monoxide poisoning from a warming car. The victim, 44-year-old Angel Ginel of Brooklyn, was found in his car after his wife called 911 when he didn't return home from shoveling.

His death may be similar in nature to those of a New Jersey mother and child who died over the weekend from carbon monoxide poisoning as they sat in a car the child's father was digging out, authorities said.

And in Mahwah, New Jersey, police were also investigating the death of a 64-year-old woman found partially covered in about a foot and a half of snow, shovel in hand, outside her home on Sunnyside Road Monday afternoon.

Authorities said the body of the woman, identified as Mary Wall, was discovered by a group of middle-aged school children when they saw a coat sticking out from the snow. Police believe Wall had a medical emergency while shoveling out her car.

Most of the other local storm deaths were also related to snow shoveling,

The storm dropped a jaw-dropping 26.8 inches of snow on Central Park -- just one-tenth of an inch away from the all-time highest snowfall -- and the 26.6 that fell Saturday was enough to mark the heaviest single day of snowfall since recordkeeping began in 1869.

Other areas of the city saw even more; Jackson Heights, Queens, saw the region's highest snowfall total with a whopping 34 inches while large swaths of New Jersey and Long Island saw totals approaching the 30-inch mark.

But conditions are continuing to improve. Plows have been seen through most of the region clearing of streets slowly but surely, and just one New York City teacher called out Monday morning.

Many residents in large swaths of Queens, however, woke up to streets that had been untouched by the city's fleet of plows. Mayor de Blasio said Sunday in an exclusive interview with NBC 4 New York that it amounted to "two realities" for the borough as he vowed to have the city work harder on clearing out the streets in the city's most diverse borough.

Monday morning, residents were still fuming over unplowed streets that were so hard to navigate even plows got stuck.

They should have made a couple of passes and it would have never got to this point, one Corona man said.

Mayor de Blasio acknowledged Monday that there hasn't been enough progress with plowing strets: "I want more."

When pointed out that one street in Elmhurst was untouched since the snow stopped, de Blasio said, "That's not acceptable to me. During the storm is one thing. The day after, every street should have been touched."

As plow work continued, de Blasio reminded drivers in the city that they didn't have to move their cars until Feb. 1 and pleaded that if they had to drive, not to put snow that had piled up around their vehicles back into the streets.

Black ice and snowy choke points remained a threat to drivers Monday, and officials have warned residents to refrain from any unnecessary driving. Numerous roads remained impassable, from the city to surrounding suburbs, and commuter trains will be delayed or canceled for many despite crews working around the clock to clear tracks and roads.

Here's a breakdown of current conditions:

MASS TRANSIT

SCHOOLS

New York City Schools were open on Monday .



. Check all school closings and delays here.





Newark public schools will be closed on Tuesday .



. Hundreds of other school districts announced delays and cancellations.

ROADS
A southwest Missouri woman has admitted to plotting with a daughter to fatally poison her husband and son with antifreeze and attempt to kill another daughter over a 14-month period.



Diane Staudte, 53, of Springfield, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree assault, The Springfield News-Leader reports. Another daughter, 25-year-old Rachel Staudte, pleaded guilty earlier to helping with the poisonings at her mother's insistence.



As part of a deal with prosecutors, Diane Staudte will avoid a possible death sentence. She faces a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.



Staudte told investigators that she poisoned her 61-year-old husband, Mark Staudte, with antifreeze because she hated him, and that she killed her 26-year-old son, Shaun Staudte, because he was "worse than a pest," according to the probable cause statement. She also admitted poisoning her daughter Sarah Staudte over four days because "she would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid," investigators said.



A medical examiner initially ruled that her husband's April 2012 death was from natural causes and her son's September 2012 death was from prior medical issues. But a tip led authorities to re-examine the deaths in June 2013 following the hospitalization of Sarah Staudte, who was then 24.



Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson told the judge that Sarah Staudte suffered physical and brain injuries after being poisoned. He said the college graduate has a guardian and lives in an assisted living facility.



In a statement that Sarah Staudte read in court, she said she forgave her mother.



"Not only she took away my dad and brother, she also took away my livelihood and my independence," the statement said. "I prefer to be a survivor than a victim."



Diane Staudte admitted under questioning that she poisoned her family by putting antifreeze in their soda and Gatorade. She originally told police she was the only one involved. But after Rachel Staudte admitted to taking part in the poisonings, Diane Staudte told investigators that the pair had planned, researched and committed the crimes together.



Rachel Staudte's plea deal said she did not want to poison Shaun and Sarah, but she did so because of her mother's instructions.



A poem that was found in Rachel Staudte's purse when she was arrested was read during the sentencing. It ended with the line: "Only the quiet ones will be left, my mother, my little sister and me."



A third daughter in the Staudte family, 11, was not harmed and was placed into foster care, according to The Springfield News-Leader.
After decades of neglect, San Diego's broken and unfinished infrastructure is being targeted for $5 billion worth of upgrades.

The spending plan, unveiled in Skyline Hills Monday by city leaders, ultimately will have to be approved by the voters.

For campaign purposes, the ballot measure has been branded "Rebuild San Diego."

"It will help us do more project like the one right behind us, the first new branch library in seven years, said Mayor Faulconer, gesturing toward construction behind him at noon news conference.

And this new Skyline Hills branch library will be a place for students to learn, for residents to access technology and broadband internet," he said.

From libraries to police and fire stations, parks, streets, sidewalks and water utilities, the ballot initiative is aimed at catching up with more than $4 billion worth of deferred maintenance and building projects.

No new taxes or municipal bonds will be needed.



Money for the 30-year series of projects will come from existing city revenue stream  sales taxes, general fund growth and pension payment savings.

"But this is about much more than just a dollar figure, said Councilman Mark Kersey, the councils Infrastructure Committee chairman who spearheaded the legislative effort. Rebuild San Diego provides a certainty of resources that are necessary to maintain a high capacity, 21st-century infrastructure program.

The city hasn't been able to afford the basic investments since the start of the century because of the pension crisis and Great Recession.

As a result, scenes of water main breaks, sinkholes and dilapidated thoroughfares have become all too commonplace in older parts of the city.

Finally, money has just started flowing into street and sidewalk repairs.

But it's not nearly enough to tackle the broad scape of crumbling infrastructure and capital improvements.

Skyline Hills residents told us they'd be only too happy to cast a vote for "Rebuild San Diego" -- hoping it starts with their neighborhood.

On Tuesday, the city council is scheduled to cast the first of two votes -- directing the city attorney to prepare the necessary documents -- required to put the measure on the June primary election ballot.

The San Diego County Taxpayers Assn. is offering a cautionary series of recommendations that includes limiting the timeline to 15 or 20 years instead of 30.

Among the SDCTAs policy recommendations were the following:

The measure should be able to be suspended with a supermajority vote of the City Council, to enable flexibility in crises or emergencies

Baseline programmatic expenditures should be allowed to increase along with the Consumer Price Index

The proposal must include a narrow, concise definition of infrastructure

The proposal must contain a maintenance of effort clause to prevent newly gained funds from being diverted to other budgetary items

Council should consider limiting the duration of the ordinance to 15-20 years

The performance of the ordinance should undergo regular evaluation by the city

The full policy brief can be read by clicking here.

NBC 7's Gene Cubbison will have a live report on the news at 4, 5 and 6 Monday.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is no longer being updated. Go here for the latest.

Federal, D.C., Maryland and Virginia government offices will be closed Monday as officials encourage residents to stay off the roads and allow the blizzard cleanup effort to continue.

The Office of Personnel Management announced federal offices in the D.C. area will be closed Monday, but emergency and telework employees required to work must follow their agency's policies.

We want to have tomorrow to continue to keep cars off the road so that we can clear those major arterials and also clear the places where many people who come to our downtown would normally park, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said.

This storm will easily rank among the region's five worst, and the cleanup is likely to take days, Storm Team4 said. Temperatures across the area plummeted overnight, creating icy conditions on many of the region's roads.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said crews will continue to open up roadways. He said all interstates were open, and secondary streets were being hit very hard to get them open as soon as possible.

He said 13,000 pieces of equipment and 39,000 workers have been clearing roads, pushing snow away from travel lanes. However, he stressed eventually, the snow would have to be picked up and moved.

McAuliffe said the costs of cleaning up the snowstorm would run $2-$3 million per hour, easily making it the most expensive snow event in the state's history.

"Please stay of the roads," the governor said. "Give us the time to do what we need to do."

He said there were more than 1,200 vehicle accidents and five fatalities attributed to the storm.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan also ordered all state government offices closed Monday, but emergency and essential personnel should report as scheduled.

Bowser also announced public schools in the District of Columbia will be closed on Monday. The school system is responsible for almost 49,000 students.

Governments are doing what they can to help. Hogan closed interstates 270 and 70 on Saturday so that plows could clear the roads. They reopened shortly after 7 a.m. Sunday, but officials urge drivers to stay off the roads, if possible.

Hogan said at a news conference late Sunday morning that even though the storm has passed and the sun is shining, roads remain "extremely treacherous."



He says all mass and public transit remain offline and said he would decide later Sunday whether state employees will need to report to their jobs on Monday.



Hogan says Maryland has fared well so far, with no traffic fatalities in the storm and fewer than 300 customers still without electricity from a high of 10,000 during the height of the storm.

Virginia and D.C. officials also asked people not to walk in the roads so crews can more easily get the streets cleared. All areas expected major roads to be made passable Sunday, but they said work on side streets and smaller roads could take a couple of days.

Vehicles parked or abandoned on any snow emergency route, or considered to be road hazards, will be removed at the owner's expense. Cars that are in the lane of traffic on any road, and deemed a hazard or a barrier to snow removal, may also be towed.

Metro extended free overnight parking at its garages until Tuesday. Parking gates will remain open through 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, and parking fees will go back in effect after that.

Emergency personnel are reassured that there were relatively few power outages. As of early Monday, there were no major outages in northern Virginia, Maryland and D.C.

But the storm wrought other damage. It's possible that heavy snow led to the collapse of a roof at an apartment building in Manassas, Virginia.

In Frederick County, Maryland, some places saw an astonishing 38 inches of snow, the National Weather Service reported. Jones Springs, West Virginia, had 39 inches.

But places closer to the metro area saw feet of snow as well: More than 36 inches of snow fell in north Potomac, Maryland. More than 29 inches fell in Centreville in vehicles County, Virginia

And more than 22 inches of snow fell at the National Zoo in northwest D.C.

In Virginia, state police received calls for 1,374 crashes and 1,883 disabled vehicles between midnight Friday and 10 p.m. Saturday across the commonwealth.

Three people with ties to the area died shoveling snow. A Fort Washington, Maryland, resident died Saturday, Prince George's County fire department spokesman Mark Brady said. The death happened moments after the department published a warning about the dangers ofshoveling snow on Twitter.

An 82-year-old man died of an apparent heart attack in D.C. Sunday, police said.

And a U.S. Capitol Police officer suffered a heart attack at his home in Delaware Saturday.

No other storm-related deaths have been reported in the region at this time.

In Stafford County, a baby boy was born at home. A 911 dispatcher talked the father-to-be through the delivery over the phone after the family's' midwife wasn't able to get to their home through the snow.

The blizzard closed runways at Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport through Sunday, but one runway at each airport is expected to open Monday.

More than 200 flights departing from Baltimore Washington International Airport have been canceled, according to flightaware.com. Washington Dulles International Airport and Reagan National Airport are reporting 194 and 188 canceled flights, respectively.

In total, airlines have now cancelled more than 10,000 flights for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, according to FlightAware.com.

A Massive, Historic Blizzard

The storm began quietly, with the first flakes arriving around noon Friday in Manassas and Gainesville, Virginia.

Storm Team4 said projected snowfall totals could put this storm firmly in the top five biggest snowfalls of all time for the region.The biggest snowfall on record is the deadly 1922 Knickerbocker blizzard, during which 28 inches fell and the weight of the snow collapsed an Adams Morgan movie theater, killing 98 people inside.

For reference, the December 2009 and February 2010 snowstorms, popularly called "Snowpocalypse" and "Snowmageddon," clocked in at 16.4 inches and 17.8 inches, respectively.

Public Transportation Shut Down

The entire Metro system was closed for the weekend, with Metrorail service ending at 11 p.m. Friday. Metrobus service shut down at 5 p.m. Friday, and MetroAccess service ended at 6 p.m. Limited service will be restored Monday.

County bus services also closed. Arlington County's ART bus service and Montgomery County's Ride On system will stay closed through the weekend. In Prince George's County, TheBus service has been suspended.

States of Emergency Declared

D.C., Maryland and Virginia leaders all declared states of emergency, and a snow emergency is also in effect in the district, allowing transportation workers to clear snow emergency routes curb to curb. Violators face a $250 ticket, a $100 tow and a $25-per-day fee until they pick up their vehicles. By Friday afternoon, D.C. had already issued more than 2,700 tickets and towed 187 vehicles.

A state of emergency declaration authorizes state agencies to assist local governments in response to the storm.

Maryland's state of emergency began at 7 a.m. Friday. The Maryland National Guard is on standby, Gov. Larry Hogan said. A snow emergency for the entire state began at noon Friday.

Help for Those Needing Shelter

Be on the lookout for homeless people, who could get hypothermia during this cold spell. If you see someone in the D.C. area who needs shelter or warmer clothing, call the following numbers:

The District: 202-399-7093 or 311 if calling within the city

Arlington County: 703-228-1010 (24 hours)

Fairfax County: 703-691-2131 (police non-emergency line)

Montgomery County: 311 if calling within the county

Prince George's County: 888-731-0999

[NATL] Blizzard Pushes Snow, Wind Through East Coast
A former prosecutor and a retired head of the Detroit FBI will play key roles in an investigation into Flint's water crisis as part of an effort to seek answers and prevent potential conflicts of interest in the ongoing probe, Michigan's attorney general announced Monday.

Bill Schuette said Todd Flood, a former assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, which includes Detroit, will spearhead Schuette's investigation and serve as special counsel. He'll be joined by Andy Arena, who led Detroit's FBI office from 2007 until 2012.

"We will do our job thoroughly and let the chips fall where they may. ... This investigation is about beginning the road back, to rebuild, regain and restore trust in government," Schuette said in a statement ahead of a news conference scheduled for Monday morning.

The attorney general's office represents both the people of Michigan and state government, so Schuette said the move will prevent conflicts between him and his investigation team and the team defending the governor and state departments against water-related lawsuits.

Lawsuits against Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and the state will be supervised by Chief Deputy Attorney General Carol Isaacs and Chief Legal Counsel Matthew Schneider. Schuette noted there was a similar effort during Detroit's bankruptcy case to ensure that conflicts of interest were avoided.

Flood, who currently is a lawyer in private practice handling both criminal and civil cases, said it's a "privilege to have this opportunity to serve." Arena currently heads the Detroit Crime Commission, a nonprofit aimed at reducing criminal activity. Both will report to Schuette.

"Flint families and Michigan families will receive a full and independent report of our investigation," Arena said.

Schuette, a Republican, announced Jan. 15 he would investigate what, if any, Michigan laws were violated in the process that left Flint's drinking water contaminated with lead.

The financially struggling city switched from Detroit's municipal water system and began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. The water wasn't properly treated to prevent lead from pipes from leaching into the supply.

Residents have been urged to use bottled water and to put filters on faucets.
Police are asking for the publics help this week after a store clerk in New Hampshire was attacked and stabbed in the hand by an armed robber.

The clerk told investigators that the man came into the Concord Mart Convenience Store at 242 North Main Street in Concord, brandishing a knife and asking if the clerk wanted to die. He then demanded cash from the register.

The clerk said he opened the drawer and that the suspect began to collect money. Moments later, the clerk returned with a stick from behind the counter in an attempt to scare the robber off.

During the ensuing struggle, the clerk was stabbed in the hand by the suspect, who fled the store with an undisclosed amount of money.

Police described the suspect as a man, possibly in his 40s, with grey facial hair and wearing a dark-colored, hooded jacket. He was also sporting white and black sneakers and light-colored blue jeans.

Anyone with information about the attack is encouraged to contact the Concord Police at (603) 225-8600.
Just days after an alleged drunk driver damaged a famous gazebo on the town green in Townshend, Vermont, the community has started the process of seeking an insurance claim to repair the structure built for a Hollywood movie set.

The gazebo is from the 1988 Chevy Chase comedy "Funny Farm," which is about the many challenges a couple has relocating from a big city to rural Vermont.

The movie makers filmed on location in Townshend, and in other spots around southern Vermont, and decided to build a gazebo for their outdoor scenes in Townshend.

The town ended up adopting the gazebo, and made improvements to the set piece to enable it to become a permanent fixture on the village green, several longtime residents remembered.

Vermont State Police said a drunk driver crashed into the gazebo Friday night. According to Trooper Travis Valcourt, David Page III, 71, of Noank, Connecticut, drove his 2008 BMW sedan off Route 30 and onto the town common, travelling approximately 158 feet on the green until crashing into the gazebo and stopping.

Valcourt wrote in a news release that Page's breath alcohol concentration was .181 percent, more than twice the legal limit. Page was cited to appear in criminal court in Brattleboro on February 9 to face a drunk driving charge.

"He's fortunate he didn't get hurt," Townshend resident Ken Hoffmann said of Page, while expressing disappointment about the damage to the gazebo. "It's a feature that the town takes great pride in."

Ted Redfield, a math teacher at Leland & Gray Union Middle and High School in Townshend, appeared as an extra in "Funny Farm," and told necn that since then, the gazebo has become a popular spot for photos and town events.

"We never had [a gazebo] until the movie came," Redfield recalled. "When they built that and decided to keep it, I think it really enhanced the town."

Craig Hunt, the Townshend Select Board assistant, told necn by phone Monday that the community has already started the ball rolling on filing an insurance claim for repairs to its cinematic landmark.

Hunt said significant repairs will be needed to fix the gaping hole in the side of the gazebo, and to move the structure back onto its foundation, but described the work as doable.

Redfield said he was glad to hear planning was already underway to repair Townshend's cinematic landmark. "It'll be as good as new, I hope," Redfield said.
Vermont state police say a Massachusetts driver was killed when his car struck a large tree in Londonderry.



Police say 24-year-old Michael Hazel of Harvard, Massachusetts, was driving on Middle Town Road at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday when he failed to negotiate a sharp corner and went off the road, striking the tree on the driver's side of the car. He was pronounced dead at the scene.



A passenger, 25-year-old Peter Duckett of Harvard, Massachusetts, was taken to Springfield Hospital for treatment of facial injuries.



The crash remains under investigation.
A federal court in California has banned the sale in the U.S. of Samsung smartphones that have features that infringe three patents owned by Apple.

On Monday, Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that the permanent injunction would come into effect 30 days after the entry of the order. The ban covers the implementation of features like the "slide-to-unlock" and auto word correction capabilities in some of Samsung's earlier phones.

The smartphones covered under the order include Samsungs Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy S III, and Stratosphere products, which are Samsung's older smartphones.

Judge Koh's order also banned from sale "software or code capable of implementing any Infringing Feature, and/or any feature not more than colorably different therefrom."

The court had earlier issued a summary judgment that Samsung infringed the patent relating to the autocorrect feature. A jury then found that Samsung also infringed two other patents, including one that covered the slide-to-unlock feature, and awarded Apple damages of US$119.6 million for all infringed patents.

The decision by Judge Koh is significant as Apple has just begun to get benefits from its litigation against Samsung in the California court. The Judge had earlier refused to issue a permanent injunction saying that Apple had not shown it would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, however, vacated her decision and remanded it back to the lower court for further proceedings.

In another patent infringement lawsuit in the same court, Samsung has paid up conditionally $548 million, which is a part of the damages award by a jury in another case in the California court for infringement of both Apple's utility and design patents. Samsung contested the damages after the claims of one of the patents, the 'pinch-to-zoom' patent that Apple has asserted, was found invalid by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to a Samsung filing.

Samsung is also asking the Supreme Court to review the principle for award of damages on design patents and has got support from some tech companies on this issue. The award included all of Samsungs profits from infringing products even though the patented designs are only minor features of those products, the company has argued.

An earlier decision of the Federal Circuit "gives the inventor of a 'discovery' claimed in a fairly narrow design patent the right to the profits made on a complex device that is the result of literally thousands of separate, patented, innovations," industry trade body Computer & Communications Industry Association pointed out in its filing to the Supreme Court on Friday.
While most iPhone announcements tend to come in the fall, Apple this year will be shaking things up a bit. According to a number of varied sources, Apple will reportedly be holding a special media event this March where it will unveil a brand new iPhone, alongside a minor refresh to the Apple Watch.

Now, before you get too excited, Apple won't be announcing an iPhone 7 anytime soon. Rather, the company plans to unveil a souped-up version of the iPhone 5s. The underlying strategy here is for Apple to provide users with a more advanced smartphone in a 4-inch form factor. Ever since the iPhone 6 hit the scene, Apple has all but ignored users who prefer using a smaller iPhone. In an effort to address these users, Apple will soon introduce what 9to5Mac claims will not be an iPhone 6c as much as it will be an iPhone 5se, which is to say an enhanced version of the iPhone 5s.

Adding some more detail to the rumored device, the typically reliable Mark Gurman relays a few interesting tidbits about the upcoming iPhone.

First off, Gurman reported the design of the iPhone 5se will reportedly be closer to the design of the iPhone 6/6s, which is to say that the edges will be slightly more curved than they were on the original 5s.

That aside, users can look forward to a number of bolstered internals, including the inclusion of an NFC chip for Apple Pay, an A8 processor (which was originally introduced on the iPhone 6), an M8 processor, support for Live Photos, and, last but not least, "Bluetooth 4.2, VoLTE, and 802.11ac WiFi chips from the iPhone 6s."

Of course, given how fluid Apple's plans tend to be, Gurman's original report was subsequently updated to reflect that the iPhone 5se may very well include an A9 processor and an M9 coprocessor, which would enable always-on "Hey Siri" functionality.

As for features that the iPhone 5se won't include, well, the camera will sadly remain the same as it was on the 5s. What's more, the iPhone 5se won't support 3D Touch, hardly a surprise given that Apple prefers to keep the iPhone's flagship features exclusive to its flagship and higher-margin devices.

Price-wise, Gurman notes that the new iPhone 5se will assume the price point of the 5s, meaning that it may be extremely affordable for users looking to upgrade.

As a final note, it's believed that the device will launch sometime in April.
Data theft is a very real and growing threat for companies that increasingly use cloud services, says a security firm.

Workers who widely share documents stored in the cloud with clients, independent contractors, or even others within the company are creating a Swiss-cheese of security holes, a study by Blue Coat Systems has found.

In some cases, cloud documents were publicly discoverable through Google searches, the researchers say of their analysis.

'Broadly shared'

The study found that 26% of documents stored in cloud apps are shared so widely that they pose a security risk. Compounding the issue is that many organizations aren't even aware of it.

"Equally alarming," says Blue Coat in a press release, is that it reckons its research shows that 10% of documents "shared broadly are sensitive and or are subject to compliance regulations."

That data includes source code (48%), Personally Identifiable Information (33%), health information (14%), and Payment Card Industry data (5%).

Financial risk

The study estimated that the "potential financial impact on the average organization from the leakage of its sensitive cloud data was $1.9 million."

The study was conducted by Elastica, a cloud app security company that Blue Coat acquired in 2015. To carry out the study, Elastica used its own cloud security program to get "insights" into "63 million enterprise documents within leading cloud applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive, Salesforce, Box and others," Blue Coat says.

Elastica specializes in "shadow" data security, otherwise referred to as "shadow IT." That's the data that employees store in the cloud through services which an enterprise IT department do not necessarily control, support, or even know about.

The detail

However, not only the organizations with shadow IT are vulnerable to the risks.

Theft of data (also called data exfiltration), data destruction, and account takeover were the three principal threats facing enterprises that use both unsanctioned and also agreed-upon cloud apps, the report said. Elastica found that data exfiltration was the most prevalent threat.

How it's done

Anomalous frequent sharing, downloading, and previewing of the documents are allowing the theft to take place. Previewing might make data vulnerable to being captured through screen shots while it's on the screen, for example.

Frequent sharing is the worst, they found.

The company includes both hackers and users as culprits, and emphasizes that it's the indiscriminate sharing internally and externally that's the main problem.

Who's doing it?

Not all users are responsible for the leaks.

"Two percent of cloud users were responsible for all data exfiltration, data destruction, and cloud account takeover attempts detected," the study found.

"The more broadly documents are shared, the higher the likelihood that someone they don't know or trust will delete or leak data," the report says.

What to do?

And IT needs to get more on top of the broad use of cloud services.

"IT should increase their own knowledge and insight into what documents their employees are sharing and how broadly they are being shared," the report continues.

Indeed, the consensus from the report isn't to simply lock down documents on in-house servers, but to use the cloud with appropriate cloud monitoring security. It also just so happens that Blue Coat's Elastica can conveniently supply these services, it explains in its press release.
In many ways, security awareness training exemplifies the way information security is seen and tackled by senior management.

A once-a-year, classroom-based approach may be traditional, with security updates and warnings posted on walls and the Intranet, but it is also a sign of a tick-box, compliance-driven approach to security. It is often done to appease industry regulators, PCI and data protection authorities, and the training can offer relatively basic  arguably condescending- advice.

But times are changing. The threat landscape is growing with the arrival of millions of mobiles and wearables, each with their own IP address, while organized crime and nation-state APT groups are looking at new ways of compromising victims. From exploit kits and Trojans to ransomware, phishing and social engineering scams  the criminal game has moved on.

[ ALSO ON CSO: 9 tips, tricks and must-haves for security awareness programs ]

The information security industry has recognized this, calling for an end to prevention-focused defenses, and more focus on response. But surely that means that security training must change in turn?

Still a low priority

Theres a debate to be had on how seriously Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) or Chief Security Officers (CSO) are taking security training  and how well theyre doing it.

One study, commissioned by ClubCISO last year, found that 21 percent of CISOs had never given security training, with a further 21 percent indicating that they only did so when new staff joined the company. Thirty-seven percent said they carried out training on an annual basis and another 21 percent agreed that this was carried out frequently.

More than half (52 percent) of the surveyed CISOs admitted that their security awareness training programs had no measure of effectiveness', while 24 percent said that they relied on online testing. A further 14 percent said they had an after-training test, with a well-prepared 10 percent measuring incident and support call volumes before and after training.

Pete Wood, CEO of infosec consultancy First Base Technologies, says training programs have to change, top-down.

Business are finally understanding they need to make staff part of the defensive posture, rather than just throwing money at product. Historically, its been something that staff members have to attend, that they hate doing, and almost do with the same mind-set as health and safety training. This is not really a 21st century solution.

Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of security awareness training provider KnowBe4  Kevin Mitnicks company, agrees that this old-school, compliance check-box training, usually done over PowerPoint, is fading out.

Thats not hacking it anymore, because two days later everyone has forgotten everything.

Board buy-in is a must

It is clear that establishing a positive training program must start with board backing.

Wood says that it is pivotal to establishing a security culture to get training right, while independent pen tester and social engineering expert Richard De Vere calls for a more direct approach. Get the board involved and shout until you are blue in the face because it's what they are paying you for.

Sjouwerman agrees: This need to be driven by the CEO and COO down.

[ ALSO READ: Does security awareness training even work? ]

Some take bolder steps; one company sent simulated email attacks to board members before presenting to them on the same topic. Several of the board clicked on the links, and the bold CISO got his approval to send these links to end users - and provide follow-up training as required.

Others, however, are not so forthcoming, and it goes back to the importance of CEO-CISO communication.

Red-teaming, gamification and more

Getting board support is crucial for funding, resources and the right culture. But how should training take form? Should it be online, in-person, and how do you shape this program in the first place?

Wood says proactive companies should first do red teaming exercises to work out their potential areas of compromise, so they can shape the program and address the specific risks to the business.

He tells CSO Online the story of one UK-based life sciences company, whose head of information sector hired First Base to build a storyboard of an attack. Woods pen testers researched the company, found out that one threat actor would be organized crime, and discovered how these hackers would try and get information. From phishing emails and malware to on-site attacks via USB dongles, Wood says there were numerous weak points in the organization.

What came out at the end wasnt just a set of recommendations of how to fix this, but we also made sure to film it so they had visual evidence of us wandering around where we shouldnt have been. They took this and made a training awareness program out of it, and they delivered it to the staff across the world as a story.

That sort of imaginative approach to the problem is whats needed, rather than taking a classroom-based approach.

[ ALSO ON CSO: 6 tips for your security awareness training ]

De Vere urges: Training shouldn't be patchy. Pick a good platform and provider and stick to it. Staff have a hard enough task as it is learning all the ways in which they pose a risk to security without misinformation or gaping holes in knowledge. If you don't have a social engineering training platform yet, get one.

Staff should be considered 'responsible' for a breach in security but in return you have to bend over backwards to provide everything they need for support. If they fail, pat them on the back and sign them up for more training.

Sjouwerman says its three-step process from establishing a baseline test, finding the results and training everyone from the mailroom to the boardroom. Tests, he says, must be done on a regular basis to keep employees interested and learning.

The experts are mixed on the new trend for gamifying training, though. Sjouwerman says that phishing games between departments can drive lower click rates, but Wood stresses that it must not be a gimmick, and must be joined up with an existing program.

Next year his firm is working with a UK charity to build red teaming exercises into their annual conferences. People do enjoy it, he says.

Incentive the users

Wood admits that the biggest challenge is continuing the program, making it year round, something he says requires time and money. In the ideal world, he says each business should have security evangelists keeping up with the threats, and thinking creatively how training should take place.

Media reports can be used to keep a buzz around security, especially if breaches are local or industry-relevant.

The experts argue too that you can incentive employees on training. Some say if you use a phishing reporting tool, or have some other way of measuring end-user security awareness; you could award top employees with a gift at a company gathering. It's a positive way of recognizing excellence and reinforcing behavior.

Sjouwerman sees advantages to both the carrot and the stick approach, but advises CISOs to enlighten employees on how this knowledge can be used at home for their own personal security.

Richard Starnes, CISO at the Kentucky Health Cooperative, agrees and tells CSO: In my companys awareness program, we break down the skills and relate them to things you would do to protect yourself at home.

Show someone how to keep their children safe online at home and those skills easily translate to make your company safer at work.

Starnes, who urges CISOs to establish KPIs to establish training effectiveness, adds: There cannot be a culture of blame. I would rather have someone recognize they have made a mistake and notify security. If they do not notify security because they are concerned they may be punished, your awareness program has failed at the worst possible time.

This story, "CISOs should take security training seriously" was originally published by CSO .
The Dutch Consumers' Association (DCA), or Consumentenbond as it is known in its native land, is suing Samsung for not providing timely software updates to older models of its Android smartphones. The move was driven in part because Samsung has such a strong presence in Holland, and because Samsung is pretty bad about supporting old phones, as I've learned through personal experience.

According to DCA's own research (PDF file), at least 82% of Samsung smartphones available in the Dutch market examined had not received any software updates to the latest version of Android in two years.

The DCA is demanding that Samsung provide its customers with clear and unambiguous information about how long they will receive updates to their particular phone. The group also feels Samsung provides insufficient information about critical security vulnerabilities and wants more transparency concerning updates. Finally, the DCA is demanding that Samsung actually provide its smartphones with updates.

In particular, the DCA noted the nasty Stagefright bug, which was discovered to have affected over 1 billion Android devices worldwide this past summer. Stagefright forced Samsung to implement a security update process to fast-track security patches over the air when security vulnerabilities are uncovered and push the security updates once per month. However, the group said Samsung isn't doing that, especially for older handsets.

The DCA said it contacted Samsung to discuss the matters in December but got nowhere, which led to the decision to go to court.

Samsung's Benelux office did respond to a Samsung enthusiast site's request for comment with a fairly bland statement:

At Samsung, we understand that our success depends on consumers trust in us, and the products and services that we provide. That is why we have made a number of commitments in recent months to better inform consumers about the status of security issues, and the measures we are taking to address those issues. Data security is a top priority and we work hard every day to ensure that the devices we sell and the information contained on those devices are is [sic] safeguarded.

Now, the Dutch have a pretty good point. Samsung is terrible at providing updates. Android "Marshmallow" has been out since October and still isn't on any Samsung device, even the Galaxy S6. Many mid-range, low-level and older Samsung devices never got the Stagefright patch. And their support for Windows Phone is even worse.

A few years back I took a chance on the Samsung ATIV SE, which was a vaguely similar phone to the Galaxy S4 that ran Windows Phone 8. But while Lumia owners had version 8.1 pushed out as soon as Microsoft released it, ATIV SE owners were left wondering when it would arrive. It didn't happen until months later.

On the flip side, I can see how, with the rapid advances in mobile tech, companies don't want to be stuck supporting older phones. At least Apple gives its phones a few years. It also has a much smaller ecosystem to support. Samsung has a ridiculous number of phones out there. Perhaps the ease of supporting the phones will come with fewer models.

Also, Samsung puts its own software on top of Android, which undoubtedly slows the process of adopting new versions of Android. The much-lauded Google Nexus 5X and 6P just run plain Android. That makes it easier to keep current.

All excuses aside, Samsung has gotten away with shoddy support for a long time. I'm glad the Dutch finally called them on the carpet, and hopefully a few more dominos will fall.
This week on January 28 we will celebrate Data Privacy Day, which has a theme of "Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data and Enabling Trust." We'll get back to that...

Qualcomm reportedly partnered with First Response to develop "the world's first smart pregnancy test, which connects through a mobile device to alert clinicians a patient is pregnant."

It's just the first such home test to "capture electronically" and "then transmit that data to the clinicians," Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Mault told CRNtv. He added that for IoT to do well in medical verticals, it will "require connectivity infrastructure that can enable the data capture from a variety of devices and diagnostics and therapeutic instruments and allow that data to flow into the hands of clinicians of any type."

The First Response Bluetooth smart-enabled pregnancy test comes with an app, which on Google Play, requires the following permissions:

Personally, I would have less of a problem with app permissions if a company were giving me a product for free. With IoT devices, which are not inexpensive, they are practically worthless without an app to control them. Yet most have overreaching permissionssuch as accessing camera, microphone, reading your contacts or calendarthat are not actually needed for the app to function. It's like paying twice, as StaySafeOnline pointed out when prepping for Data Privacy Day, your "personal information is like money. Value it. Protect it."

First Response said "it's not sharing your information with anyone but you." In the case of the pregnancy app, Church & Dwight's privacy policy discusses the possibility of opting-out of some of the ways it uses and discloses your information, but opt-in means your personal info is shared "with third parties for third party marketing purposes." It also includes a security disclaimer as it would be silly to guarantee that "sensitive personal information" will be "absolutely safe from intrusion by others, such as hackers."

I'm not picking on the app, as it was just one of many examples of connected health products announced at CES. It seems like everyone is in a rush to develop IoT devices, and too often security is not a developer's priority in that rush to get the product and app to market. That is likely the reason so many IoT devices are easy to attack, although it's not nearly so easy to find out who is to blame for the loss of your data, explained The Scotsman.

If your smart TV tells your thermostat to kick on the heat in the middle of July, or if a hacker bypasses your phone's encryption and steals your personal information, who is to blame? If a smart device malfunctions, and it is automatically talking to other devices, who is liable? The Scotsman even asked, was the machine acting on your behalf? IoT devices are everywhere, in your home, in your car, on your wrist and "all other areas of a customer's life," providing "a consolidated x-ray view of consumer data." Not only does that raise privacy concerns, but from a security standpoint "there's plenty of evidence to indicate IoT devices are particularly vulnerable to vindictive attack."

Yet we bravely march on toward "smart" apartments outfitted with smart devices and available for renters; biometrics are thrown into the IoT mix, and auto manufacturers want to add iris scanners, fingerprint sensors, and wearables that could monitor health info and talk to a car. Gary Strumolo from Ford Research and Advanced Engineering explained, "Wearable technology integrated with the vehicle allows for more accurate biometric data to stream continuously and alert active driver-assist systems to become more sensitive if the driver shows signs of compromised health or awareness."

An article on the IoT council stated that, "in 2016 an operational definition of Internet of Things (IoT) is the seamless data flow between BAN (body area network): the ambient hearing aide, the smart t-shirt, Glass; LAN (local area network): the smart meter as a home interface; WAN (wide area network): Telematics, ITS, Connected Car; and VWAN (very wide area network): the smart city as e-gov services everywhere no longer tied to physical locations."

Kate Bevan added:

Whoever ensures traceability, sustainability and security linking up the gateways is able to offer the best possible feedback on physical and mental health, the best possible household decisions based on real time monitoring for resource allocation, the best possible decision making based on real time data and information from open sources and the best possible alignments of local energy providers with the global potential of wider communities.

Where does "Respecting Privacy, Safeguarding Data and Enabling Trust" come in? After all, Greg Shannon, formerly chief scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, and currently assistant director for cybersecurity strategy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told MIT Technology Review that it could take "two decades" to fix our infrastructure. Anyone following security knows our infrastructure is woefully insecure, so can all the players in IoT be trusted to respect privacy and safeguard our data?

Shannon, who is working on the draft for a national cybersecurity strategy to be released early this year, told Technology Review:

The emergence of an Internet of thingsinterconnecting billions of devicesprovides an opportunity to do things correctly from the start. Networked devices in cars and homes, and wearable devices, could introduce a multitude of new attack vectors, but if we get things right with these devices and cloud-based technologies, we can make sure the next generation of technology will have security built in.

That's a great thing to hope for, but IoT isn't emerging...it's here. Let's hope it's not too late for our privacy in regard to those billions of Internet-connected devices.
Councillor under fire for deciding casting vote

SHOCK waves reverberated around a borough council chamber last Wednesday after an Ashford Hill councillor used his casting vote in favour of a controversial housing development in the village  just five minutes after he had voted against the scheme.

The approved application for 35 houses on a greenfield site opposite Ashford Hill Primary School  jointly submitted by Vortal Properties Ltd and Charles Church  went before Basingstoke and Deane borough councillors.

As one of two Conservative councillors for the ward, during a tied 5-5 vote, Donald Sherlock, voted against the application, situated outside the settlement policy boundary.

As chairman of the development control committee, his casting vote was then called on to decide the application and, after hesitating, he voted in favour  followed by gasps from some 40 Ashford Hill villagers at the meeting, with comments including our own councillor!.

Mr Sherlocks deciding vote took place shortly after the other Kingsclere ward councillor, Cathy Osselton, presented a strong case against the development.

She pointed out it would be situated on a dangerous road outside the school, with deep concerns about flooding and sewage effluent to be pumped into Burghclere Brook.

Why should the people of Ashford Hill have this obviously unsustainable site imposed on them because of our boroughs land shortage? said Mrs Osselton.

Representing the 92 per cent of opposing villagers, Nicola Loxton and Andy Colquhoun said nine reasons to turn down the application included that a proposed car park opposite the school would create queuing traffic close to the brow of a hill, in a known speeding spot.

Representing the developers, Laura Graham said, after consultations, planners had recommended the application be approved.

She said it would deliver much-needed housing to the borough, including 40 per cent affordable.

After the meeting, Mr Sherlock said he could understand there was a lot of feeling in the village about the application.

He said: When I cast my first vote against, I viewed the application as a local ward councillor from a local residents perspective.

Unfortunately that was not enough to give a majority and the outcome was a tied vote, he said.

I was then required to vote in my separate role as chair of the committee, where I have to consider planning policy, the evidence in front of me and my overriding duty, under our constitution, to the borough as a whole to meet its housing and planning objectives.

Afterwards, Mrs Osselton said she was extremely disappointed at the result and upset for villagers, who had put forward a very good case.


The Massachusetts College of Art + Design last week opened its new three-story, $40.4 million Design and Media Center at 621 Huntington Avenue. Gov. Charlie Baker was officially the guest of honor at the ribbon-cutting, but, unofficially, it was the building's architecture. Susan T. Rodriquez of New York-based Ennead Architects crafted out of an old gymnasium an airy, open presence for Huntington Avenue, one that the exterior intentionally and inescapably accentuates. According to an explainer from Ennead: "[T]his triple-height exterior glass envelope, supported by a series of four king-post trusses and punctuated by an entry vestibule along the eastern edge, extends into a new public plaza that blurs the distinction between interior and exterior space."

This, too, was intentional. The 40,000-square-foot Design and Media Center is the new "front door to the entire MassArt campus," connecting the school's existing buildings and providing additional classroom, gallery and studio space. The public will be welcome, too, beginning with the three-story atrium.

It's but the latest collegiate spot of construction in Boston and another project unafraid of the power of glass.

 Boston's Dorm-Construction Boom, Mapped [Curbed Boston]

 Greater Boston's Most Inescapable Architectural Trend of 2015 [Curbed Boston]

 Our Debuts archive [Curbed Boston]

[Photos by Richard Barnes via MassArt]
220116 ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER VISITS BOUGAINVILLE.

By WINTERFORD TOREAS



THE PNG Chief Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato last week visited the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.



AND his delegation was welcomed in a Bougainville Traditional way.



This ceremony which took place on Monday in Buka will now see the ABG providing manpower support to PNGEC especially in relation to activities concerning the staging of the 2017 National Elections in Bougainville.



Mr Gamato added that apart from the MOU signing, his trip was also to familiarize himself with Bougainville so that come the 2017 National Elections he will already have a fair idea of the region if any situation arises.



Soon after the MOU signing on Monday afternoon, Mr Gamato, his team and the acting Bougainville Electoral Commissioner George Manu traveled to Arawa in Central Bougainville and the next day travelled to Buin.



Mr Gamato and his team left for East New Britain on Thursday to participate in another MOU signing between PNGEC and the East New Britain administration.



END


Reporter/Columnist

Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth).
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Partly cloudy skies. High around 65F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low near 40F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia.

Mefenamic Acid Consumer Medicine Information

What is in this leaflet This leaflet answers some common questions about PONSTAN. It does not contain all the available information. It does not take the place of talking to your doctor or pharmacist. All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you taking PONSTAN against the benefits they expect it will have for you. If you have any concerns about taking this medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again.

What PONSTAN is used for PONSTAN is used to relieve the symptoms of period pain and treat heavy periods. It also provides short term relief of pain in conditions such as: muscle and joint injuries such as sprains, strains and tendonitis dental pain. PONSTAN containing mefenamic acid belongs to a group of medicines called Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (or NSAIDs). These medicines work by relieving pain and inflammation. Although PONSTAN can relieve the symptoms of pain and inflammation, it will not cure your condition. Your doctor may have prescribed PONSTAN for another reason. Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why PONSTAN has been prescribed for you. PONSTAN is not addictive.

Before you take PONSTAN

When you must not take it Do not take PONSTAN if: 1. you have an allergy to: mefenamic acid or any of the ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet aspirin any other NSAID medicine including COX-2 inhibitors. Many medicines used to treat headache, period pain or other aches and pains contain aspirin or NSAID medicines. If you are not sure if you are taking any of these medicines, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Symptoms of an allergic reaction to these medicines may include: asthma, wheezing or shortness of breath swelling of the face, lips or tongue which may cause difficulty in swallowing or breathing hives, itching or skin rash fainting. If you are allergic to aspirin or NSAID medicines and take PONSTAN, these symptoms may be severe. 2. you had diarrhoea with this medicine in the past. Diarrhoea may recur if you take PONSTAN again. 3. you have a gastric ulcer (i.e. stomach or duodenal ulcer), a recent history of one, or have had gastric ulcers before. 4. you have or have had inflammation and/or ulceration of the lining of the stomach or bowel. Some examples of these conditions include Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. 5. you have kidney disease. 6. you have severe heart failure. 7. you have liver failure. 8. you are about to have coronary artery bypass surgery. 9. children under 14 years of age. Do not take PONSTAN if the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering. Do not take PONSTAN if the expiry date (EXP) printed on the pack has passed. If you take this medicine after the expiry date has passed, it may not work as well. If you are not sure if you should start taking PONSTAN contact your doctor or pharmacist.

Before you start to take it Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you have any allergies to: any other medicines including aspirin or other NSAID medicines any other substances, such as foods, preservatives or dyes. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you have or have had any medical conditions, especially the following: vomiting blood or bleeding from the back passage heart failure, heart attack, stroke heart disease. Use of PONSTAN may increase your risk of developing cardiovascular events (e.g. heart attack) even if you don't have a history of heart disease. high blood pressure blood clots a tendency to bleed or other blood problems such as anaemia heartburn, indigestion, stomach ulcer or other stomach problems bowel or intestinal problems such as ulcerative colitis diarrhoea asthma pinkish, itchy swellings on the skin (also called hives) or any other skin rash. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are using an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD). Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. PONSTAN may affect your developing baby if you take it during pregnancy. Pregnant woman taking PONSTAN should be closely monitored by their doctor. Tell your doctor if you are breastfeeding. PONSTAN passes into breast milk and may affect your baby. Your doctor will discuss with you the benefits and risks of taking this medicine. If you have not told your doctor or pharmacist about any of the above, tell them before you take any PONSTAN.

Taking other medicines Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are taking any other medicines, including any that you buy without a prescription from your pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Some medicines may interfere with PONSTAN. These include: aspirin including low doses of aspirin used to prevent your blood from clotting in certain heart conditions warfarin or similar medicines including Eliquis, Xarelto or Pradaxa that are used to stop blood clots some medicines used to treat high blood pressure corticosteroids, medicines used to suppress the immune system or reduce inflammation some medicines used to treat diabetes lithium, a medicine used to treat mood swings in patients with bipolar disorder cyclosporin or tacrolimus, medicines used to suppress the immune system selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, medicines used for depression methotrexate, a medicine used to treat arthritis and some cancers. These medicines may be affected by PONSTAN, or may affect how well it works. You may need to take different amounts of your medicine, or you may need to take different medicines. Your doctor will advise you. Your doctor and pharmacist may have more information on medicines to be careful with or avoid while taking PONSTAN.

How to take PONSTAN Follow all directions given to you by your doctor or pharmacist carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet. If you do not understand the instructions on the pack, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help.

How much to take The usual dose of PONSTAN is 2 capsules (500 mg) three times daily with meals. Your doctor may recommend a different dose. This may depend on your age, your condition and whether or not you are taking any other medicines. Take PONSTAN exactly as your doctor has prescribed.

How to take it Swallow PONSTAN capsules whole with a full glass of water. Do not chew them. Take PONSTAN with or after food. This may help reduce the possibility of stomach upset.

How long to take it Do not take PONSTAN for longer than your doctor says. Do not exceed the dosage recommended by your doctor. If you are not sure how long to take PONSTAN, talk to your doctor or pharmacist. If you need to take PONSTAN for a long time, see your doctor for regular check-ups so that he/she can monitor your condition and treatment.

If you forget to take it If it is almost time for your next dose, skip the dose you missed and take your next dose when you are meant to. Otherwise, take it as soon as you remember, and then go back to taking your capsules as you would normally. Do not take a double dose to make up for the dose that you missed. This may increase the chance of you getting an unwanted side effect. If you have trouble remembering to take your medicine, ask your pharmacist for some hints.

If you take too much (overdose) Immediately telephone your doctor or Poisons Information Centre (telephone Australia 13 11 26 or New Zealand 0800 POISON or 0800 764 766) for advice, or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital, if you think that you or anyone else may have taken too much PONSTAN. Do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning. You may need urgent medical attention. If you take too much PONSTAN, you may experience pain or tenderness in the stomach, diarrhoea, muscle twitches, seizure (fit), confusion, dizziness or hallucination.

While you are taking PONSTAN

Things you must do If you become pregnant while taking PONSTAN tell your doctor immediately. If you are about to start taking any new medicine tell your doctor and pharmacist that you are taking PONSTAN. Tell all of the doctors, dentists, and pharmacists that are treating you that you are taking PONSTAN. If you are going to have surgery, tell your doctor you are taking PONSTAN. If you get an infection while using PONSTAN, tell your doctor. PONSTAN may hide some of the signs of an infection and may make you think, mistakenly, that you are well or that it is not serious. Signs of an infection may include fever, pain, swelling and redness. If you need to have any medical tests while you are taking PONSTAN, tell your doctor. PONSTAN may affect the results of some tests.

Things you must not do Do not give PONSTAN to anyone else, even if they have the same condition as you. Do not take PONSTAN to treat any other complaints unless your doctor tells you to.

Things to be careful of Be careful driving or operating machinery until you know how PONSTAN affects you. As with other NSAID medicines, PONSTAN may cause dizziness or light-headedness in some people. Make sure you know how you react to PONSTAN before you drive a car, operate machinery, or do anything else that could be dangerous if you are dizzy or light-headed. If this occurs do not drive. If you drink alcohol, dizziness or light-headedness may be worse. Be careful drinking alcohol whilst taking PONSTAN. As with other NSAID medicines, alcohol may increase your risk of developing gastro intestinal complications.

Side effects Tell your doctor or pharmacist as soon as possible if you do not feel well while you are taking PONSTAN. All medicines can have side effects. Sometimes they are serious, most of the time they are not. You may need medical treatment if you get some of the side effects. It can be difficult to tell whether side effects are the result of taking PONSTAN, effects of your condition or side effects of other medicines you may be taking. For this reason it is important to tell your doctor of any change in your condition. If you are over 65 years of age you may have an increased chance of getting side effects. Do not be alarmed by the list of side effects. You may not experience any of them. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to answer any questions you may have.

Tell your doctor if... Tell your doctor if you notice any of the following and they worry you: stomach upset including nausea (feeling sick), vomiting, heartburn, indigestion, cramps loss of appetite constipation, diarrhoea, pain in the stomach, wind fluid retention, swelling dizziness, light-headedness drowsiness nervousness headache sleeplessness. These are the more common side effects of PONSTAN.

Tell your doctor as soon as possible if... Tell your doctor as soon as possible if you notice any of the following: severe dizziness severe or persistent headache severe pain or tenderness in the stomach severe diarrhoea eye problems such as blurred vision or loss of colour vision ear pain fast or irregular heartbeats, also called palpitations excessive sweating signs of frequent or worrying infections such as fever, severe chills, sore throat or mouth ulcers bleeding or bruising more easily than normal, reddish or purplish blotches under the skin worsening blood sugar levels in patients with diabetes signs of anaemia, such as tiredness, being short of breath, and looking pale a change in the colour of urine passed, blood in the urine a change in the amount or frequency of urine passed, burning feeling when passing urine bulky, grey or pale coloured stools yellowing of the skin and eyes, also called jaundice unusual weight gain, swelling of ankles or legs. The above list includes serious side effects that may require medical attention.

Go to hospital if... Tell your doctor immediately or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital if any of the following happen: vomiting blood or material that looks like coffee grounds bleeding from the back passage, black sticky bowel motions (stools) or bloody diarrhoea swelling of the face, lips or tongue which may cause difficulty in swallowing or breathing asthma, wheezing, shortness of breath sudden or severe itching, skin rash, hives fainting, seizures or fits pain or tightness in the chest fever, nausea, vomiting, headache, stiff neck and extreme sensitivity to bright light severe blisters and bleeding in the lips, eyes, mouth, nose and genitals. These are very serious side effects. You may need urgent medical attention or hospitalisation. These side effects are rare. Other side effects not listed above may also occur in some patients. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice anything else that is making you feel unwell. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you don't understand anything in this list. Some of the other possible side effects can only be found when your doctor does tests from time to time to check your progress.

After taking PONSTAN

Storage Keep your capsules in the pack until it is time to take them. If you take the capsules out of the pack they will not keep well. Keep the capsules in a cool dry place where the temperature stays below 30C. Do not store PONSTAN or any other medicine in the bathroom or near a sink. Do not leave it in the car or on window sills. Heat and dampness can destroy some medicines. Keep PONSTAN where children cannot reach it. A locked cupboard at least one-and-a-half metres above the ground is a good place to store medicines.

Disposal If your doctor tells you to stop taking PONSTAN or the capsules have passed their expiry date, ask your pharmacist what to do with any that are left over.

Product description

What it looks like PONSTAN capsules have an ivory opaque body and an aqua blue opaque cap, and are marked in black with "Parke Davis" on the body and cap. PONSTAN comes in blister packs of 50 capsules. This presentation is available only with a doctor's prescription.

Ingredients Active ingredient: Each PONSTAN capsule contains 250 mg mefenamic acid. Inactive ingredients: lactose monohydrate titanium dioxide iron oxide yellow brilliant blue gelatin carbon black. PONSTAN does not contain sucrose, gluten, tartrazine or any other azo dyes.

Distributor PONSTAN is supplied in Australia by: Pfizer Australia Pty Ltd Sydney NSW Toll Free Number: 1800 675 229 www.pfizer.com.au

Australian Registration Number AUST R 225658 - blister pack of 50
Recent clinical trials conducted in South Africa have established that babies born with HIV should be treated with antiretroviral therapy (ART) as early as possible, since earlier treatment significantly decreases their mortality and morbidity rates. However, scientists were unsure whether infants treated with ART eventually develop a "normal" immune system. Knowing how an infant reacts to ART could help determine how to design curative strategies, but studying these infants can prove challenging due to inconsistent adherence to the study's schedule and the difficulty of collecting sufficient specimens in infants.

Now, scientists from The Wistar Institute, in collaboration with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University, have demonstrated that the issue of missing data can be successfully overcome using appropriate statistical methods, and as a result, they were able to show how early initiation of ART in infants preserves an expansion of naive T-cells and allows the infant's immune system to be properly reconstructed.

The results of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Children born with HIV who do not receive treatment with ART experience progressive immunodeficiency that can lead to death, and if they do survive, their immune cell levels can be permanently offset. These children have low levels of naive CD4+ T-cells and other immune effectors. Studying the levels of immune cells in these infected infants could help scientists develop better treatment strategies.

Scientists struggle with the frequent issue of missing data when it comes to studying these infants. Blood samples taken from these infants are routinely used for monitoring their health and response to treatment. However, it is often difficult to collect larger volumes of blood for immunological studies. Additionally, in resource-constrained settings, many infants miss visits because their caregivers may be unable to get them to a central location where samples can be routinely taken.

"Despite the best efforts of pediatricians and pediatric nurses, insufficient samples and missed visits have been the norm for pediatric studies in developing countries," said Luis J. Montaner, D.V.M., D.Phil., Director of the HIV-1 Immunopathogenesis Laboratory and Herbert Kean, M.D., Family Professor at The Wistar Institute. "Loss of data lead to loss of statistical power, so it's extremely important to develop methods that allow us to analyze data sets where data are randomly missing."

To solve this issue, Dr. Montaner teamed with Dr. Russell Barbour from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University and an international team of scientists to determine which methods could successfully overcome data missingness in a dataset collected in the course of a study on HIV-infected infants. While numerous methods have been suggested to address this issue, many have intrinsic problems like not being able to anticipate change over time and artificially reducing standard error. The team settled on two approaches that they believed would effectively address missing data. The first, called the Multiple Imputation (MI) method, uses the observed values as well as different imputations - values that are substituted for missing data - to fill in these gaps while not changing anything else about the data. The second approach was based on a Bayesian model, which was used to create 5,000 "alternative" instances of the dataset based on the observed data.

A total of 66 HIV-infected or seronegative infants born of HIV-infected mothers were recruited at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa. These infants were enrolled in the Children with HIV Early Antiretroviral Therapy (CHER) trial and randomized to receive ART either as soon as they were enrolled or when their CD4+ T-cell count dropped below 20 percent. Blood samples were taken once every six months.

The use of these statistical methods allowed Dr. Montaner and his collaborators to demonstrate that early ART treatment results in higher CD4+ T-cell frequency, lower cellular activation, and had higher proportions of naive T-cells. These results suggest that in infants with perinatal HIV infection early treatment may improve the chances of developing a functional immune system.

"Our study offers a field-based proof of concept that certain type of data missingness can be tolerated without affecting the integrity of a study," Montaner said. "We hope this will encourage other scientists to target hard-to-reach populations, particularly in resource-constrained settings."
220116LOUTA COMMITS FOR NISSAN

By Aloysius Laukai



The member for North Bougainville, LOUTA ATOI last week committed over FOUR MILLION KINA worth of funding for project on Nissan Island.



This Projects have been identified as, ONE MILLION KINA for Health, ONE POINT FIVE MILLION KINA for School projects and ONE POINT NINE MILLION KINA for a Fast Ferry that will make runs between NISSAN island and Buka.



This was revealed by the ABG member for HAGOGOHE, ROBERT HAMAL SAWA after returning from a one-week trip to Nissan with the member, LOUTA ATOI.



MR. SAWA said that they were able to visit all the 19 Village Assemblies on the island.



He said that another commitment by the member was to give TEN THOUSAND KINA each to all the 19 Village Assemblies.



Member LOUTA ATOI said that he would fund another bigger vessel for all the Atolls islands and the remote areas of Bougainville.



New Dawn FM understands that the ABG has budgeted funds for a bigger vessel to serve the atolls and the remote areas of Bougainville in the 2016 budget.



Ends


Umrah is a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and it can be done any time of the year. However, for Haj people travel to the same place, but only during Eid-ul-azha. (IANS)
As Poonam Pandey gears up for her debut film 'Nasha', the model went to Allahabad to be a part of Maha Kumbh mela.
250116BOUGAINVILLE POLICE CONTINUE TRAININGS

By Aloysius Laukai



The training section of the Bougainville Police Service has been praised for its sustenance of the Bougainville Community Auxiliary Police concept after it was handed back to the Bougainville Police Service by the New Zealand Police last year.



ABG minister for Police, Correctional Service and Justice, WILLIE MASIU revealed this when speaking to the 35 CAPS recruits at the Police Training centre in Hutjena today.



MR. MASIU said that he was happy that the Bougainville Police Service continues to sustain the CAPS project in the region.



He said that Community Auxiliary Police are the first Government representatives in the communities and must be supported to continue operating.



The Bougainville Community Auxiliary Police project was established under aid from the New Zealand Government through its New Zealand Police Advisors who are still assisting the Bougainville Police Service on Bougainville.



They are currently operating in Buka, Arawa and Buin.



Ends


Somdev Devvaraman was well on course to record his best performance at the Grand Slams but frittered away a two-set lead to go down 7-6(10) 6-3 1-6 0-6 5-7 against 24th seed Jerzy Janowicz.
As 2020 and the anticipated closure of the Central Virginia Training Center in Madison Heights draws closer, the Amherst County Board of Supervisors has expressed interest in what will eventually happen to the property.

County Administrator Dean Rodgers said the countys main interest is being able to play a part in what becomes of the 391-acre campus.

We dont want to own it, Rodgers said. What we want is that it be turned into something and not that they just walk away and leave a bunch of crumbling buildings.

Ideally, Rodgers said, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services would declare the unused property of the training center as excess and turn it over to the Virginia Department of General Services as soon as possible.

With no effort going into preparing it for future use, the property deteriorates further every day, Rodgers said.

Currently only 50 to 75 acres of the campus are occupied, according to Sharon Bonaventura, facility director of CVTC.

DGS is the real-estate arm of state government and its function is to get the property ready to sell and to market the property to potential buyers, Rodgers said.

Rodgers said one way the property can be made more marketable is to take care of the rundown buildings by either gutting them or completely razing them.

The county is hopeful the state will allocate the necessary money to make the property ready to market, Rodgers said.

With the consideration of what the future holds comes the question of how Amherst County will react to the loss of jobs at CVTC, an issue the countys Economic Development Authority will address in a strategic plan.

The EDA received $122,000 in grants to develop a strategic plan that will look at the top economic opportunities for the county, including expanding employment development. The estimated completion date is May 2017.

During a recent meeting of the Amherst County Economic Development Authority, Victoria Hanson, executive director of the EDA, said the work will include four initiatives that will give the county the biggest bang for your buck.

We know we need to get moving on economic development because of everything thats happening at CVTC , Hanson said. This plan is not designed just to talk; its designed to be implemented, [and] to be smart by doing the deep dive into the data.

With initiatives in hand, the EDA can go before the board of supervisors with a plan and ask which initiative supervisors would be willing to fund first, Hanson said.

[The land] is an absolutely great resource, specifically for our EDA, Supervisor Claudia Tucker said. There are a number of ways it could be marketed and used to bring businesses into the county.

Tucker said the county is open to a number of options for how to use the property, but echoed Rodgers statement the county doesnt want to own it.

Its not so much about ownership as it is about influencing how the property will be used, Tucker said.

Chairman John Marks, who represents the Old Town Madison Heights area where CTVC is located, said in his opinion closing the facility is a mistake and ideally it would stay open.

However, we must face the reality that there is a probability that closure will occur, Marks said. In such a situation the desire to restore the facility for the benefit of the area must be tempered with the reality of the cost of such an effort.

Supervisor David Pugh also acknowledged the cost of the aging infrastructure, saying the price tag is astronomical.

We want the county to be involved in the marketing, Pugh said. We want the county to have a hand in future use and be part of the negotiation.

Like the supervisors, EDA members are also concerned about the marketability of the land in the event that CVTC closes in 2020.

 Were here in 2016 right now and there are some things we need to get moving, said Lee Cobb of the Amherst EDA. We need to do some things that are going to put us in a position here in Amherst County, that this property can be marketed as soon as possible, assuming that it is going to be closed.

One of the major concerns the EDA recently raised was the necessity of an environmental study of the grounds.

Cobb said because of the potential of major environmental factors, a study has to be done. Otherwise it will be harder to market the property, he said.

Among the possible issues, Cobb mentioned a closed landfill and work being done at the fertilizer plant that could also apply to the CVTC property.

The study is ultimately the states responsibility, Cobb said.

Were not taking the position that the state should fully close the training center , Cobb said. What were trying to do is position ourselves now in the event that all of it or part of it is closed. We must keep moving.

The EDA board unanimously decided earlier this month to take the need for an environmental assessment in the 2016 calendar year and the desire for the state to help the county and region in the event of closure to the board of supervisors and ask for its support.

Cobb said the EDA will ask the supervisors and Region 2000 to take the same position and present these requests to state legislators.
Concord-based Gleaning For The World is involved with efforts to provide safe drinking water to the people of Flint, Michigan.

Ron Davidson, president of the organization, said Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort in Nashville contacted GFTW for assistance, after getting a request for help from a local church.

GFTW ordered more than 23,000 bottles of water from Sams Club, he said. People with the Church of Christ picked them up at a Sams Club in the Flint area, and took them to their church in Flint on Thursday for distribution.

The charity expects to have a second shipment of about 24,000 bottles available for the church in Flint to pick up today.

Under state management, Flint began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014, a move officials claimed would save money for the financially struggling city. That water was not properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the supply. Even though the city has switched back to water from Lake Huron, the danger from damaged pipes remains. Some childrens blood has tested positive for lead, a potent neurotoxin linked to learning disabilities, lower IQ and behavioral problems.

Davidson said there is a need for continued bottled water shipments. The damage to pipes means drinking unfiltered water from taps in the city can be hazardous. Theres currently a mass government effort going on to distribute filters and bottled water and address the unsafe conditions. Nonprofits and other groups are pitching in, too.

The people there are getting pretty desperate, Davidson said. They dont know when the water pipes will be cleaned out to where they will have a decent piece of water to drink.

Gleaning For the World is a faith-based humanitarian organization involved in both domestic and international relief efforts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Almost 18 years after Virginia passed a law allowing charter schools in the charter-hungry sweep of the 1990s, there are only nine public charter schools in the state, only two of which were launched by independent groups.

But members of the state House of Delegates and Senate hope to change that, by sending a constitutional amendment to voters this year. A measure giving the state Board of Education authority to create charters within divisions  something state board members themselves are not sure they want  passed the House and Senate last year, and was reintroduced last week.

What we have found is that what was intended to be local input, local control, has become a local veto, said Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, who originated the House version. After 18 years, youve had an entire generation of students go through where students had few more choices than their parents had before them.

If the versions pass both chambers again, the constitutional amendment will come to voters as a referendum on the November ballot.

The state Board of Education did not take a position on the legislation, but members speaking at a Nov. 19 meeting said they had a lot to think about.

I think the real question is, do we want to take away the prerogative of local school systems to decide whether they want charter schools or not. To me thats really the key issue here, said board member James Dillard, who serves on the state Department of Education charter school committee. I would think that each of us individually would want to make a decision on whether or not we support this  and then perhaps either individually or collectively go the bold step of actually taking a position on something.

This week also is National School Choice Week, during which as many as 16,000 events are held nationwide to highlight options in education from charters to homeschooling, according to organizers.

But a personal choice for parents and children is a political one for the state and school divisions. Proponents argue that individual students are different, and should have the option of the best education for them, rather than suffer for the needs of a group; that charter schools are actually more accountable than public schools, because when they fail, theyre often closed compared to public schools, which rarely are; and that charter schools promote innovation that divisions can emulate.

Opponents, on the other hand, fear that charters punish schools and communities by splitting resources and focus because of the needs of the few; add layers of administration that obscure accountability; and have the potential to be elitist enclaves, a fear that for some hearkens back to the race academies of the 1950s.

A weak law

Virginias charter school law, passed as a bipartisan compromise in 1998 after almost five years of wrangling, is considered toothless.

I think we need to acknowledge that Virginia has one of the weakest charter school legislations in the country, state Board of Education member Diane T. Atkinson said by way of providing context at the Nov. 19 meeting.

Shortly after Virginias law was passed, the U.S. Department of Education denied $6.8 million in funding to the states charter schools because it deemed the states law too restrictive, according to a University of Virginia study of the issue in 2000.

Educational options have gotten wide support in Virginia, with the state granting generous protection for homeschooling and religious exemption options, making the resistance to charter schools surprising to some.

The study attributed the weak law to Virginias troubled desegregation history; lack of support and even opposition from Northern Virginia and some education associations; and lack of a perceived crisis in education. It also named as a factor a strong Democratic majority in the state until the last several decades, citing a larger-scale national study that found Republican strength contributed to the passage of charter legislation, as did a weak teacher union, high median income, a moralistic political culture and  contrary to support in Virginia  an urban population.

The UVa study compared Virginias law with privileges granted in other states, such as exemption from state regulations like testing and local policies, or the ability to hire non-certified teachers, and found the law gave few options to charters.

An entity interested in establishing a charter school at the local level has no ability to appeal a denial of that to the state, Atkinson said.

The state constitution gives that authority to the local school boards, which is why legislators believe a constitutional amendment is necessary to open the pathway, she said.

If it passes through the houses, it still needs to be voted on in the commonwealth. I appreciate that you feel its a done deal, but I think we need to be educating the public through this process, Atkinson said.

Public charter schools are defined under Virginia law as public, nonreligious, non-home-based alternative schools located within a public school division, which can be created as a new public school or conversion of an existing public school, but not through conversion of an existing private school or nonpublic home-based program.

Any person, group or organization can submit an application to a local school board to establish a charter school, but the requirements for those applications are thorough, including evidence that an adequate number of parents, teachers, or students support the formation of the school and a statement of need that establishes the value of the program.

Public charter students are considered as part of the local division for state funding purposes; the amount of per-pupil funding provided by the local board is negotiated for the charter agreement, though per-pupil funding, meant for instructional costs, does not include the cost of infrastructure creation and maintenance, which is usually borne by localities.

Currently, the decisions of local school boards on charter school applications are final. Changing that is the only object of the proposed constitutional amendment, although future proposals for amendments to the law could follow.

Choice or control?

For Bell, the issue is existential: Should there be public charter schools, or not?

Since the existing law has not resulted in more charters after almost two decades, he said, its clear that its not going to, and its time to provide an alternate route to their creation.

We would hope that once the local schools recognize that the charters were going to come  that we could work with them to help manage the schools, he said. The local school boards have absolute authority. Theres been application after application.

Albemarle, Bells home district, has two, one of which was launched by an independent group. If every school division had that many, he said, there would be no need for the change.

Gary Hostutler, Bedford County school board chairman, said that he wasnt sure exactly how the change would affect Bedford, but that the division prioritizes the opportunity to make its own decisions.

I believe our stance would still be we think its a local decision, and not something controlled by the state, he said. Generally the consensus with charter schools [is]if its not new money then its just taking away from general public education schools.

Just taking money from one pocket and moving it to another doesnt move education forward, he said, and he doesnt feel its been a popular concept in Central Virginia.

Bell acknowledged that acting to give the state greater control appears to conflict with conservative calls for smaller government.

[Divisions] dont want to be run out of Richmond and frankly, neither do we, he said.

If even a quarter or a third of the states school systems boasted a charter school, he said, hed believe the law worked and some wanted charters and others didnt. As it is, he feels the lack is a result of opponents of charters, not a lack of interest.

If the local school boards believe that every parent is satisfied with the local system, I dare to say that theyre not listening very well, he said.

Flexibility on both sides

For Scott Brabrand, Lynchburg schools superintendent, the issue is one of flexibility for existing divisions.

Charter schools have been about flexibility and freedom from government rules and regulations, he said via email. I would to like to see this flexibility given to existing schools and school divisions.

Some argue that the low number of charters in Virginia is due to areas flexibility has been exercised and the wide variety of options that already exist.

Lynchburg has two schools for innovation, which are not public charters but operate in a similar fashion. The region also has two regional science and technology schools  the Central Virginia Governors School and the STEM Academy  as well as the LAUREL Regional School for special needs students, and a growing variety of dual enrollment options.

Bell said that he supports any and all of these options, and his support for expanding charters is not opposed to any other choice. Frequently citing charter schools in Washington, D.C., especially their lottery system for admittance, Bell said he feels that more charters would level the playing field, not splinter it.

Im one of the people that think there should be additional options for parents and shouldnt be limited to rich parents, he said. I think any choice is good. Any time you tell a parent you can have more than a single local school as an option, I think its a good thing.  I support everything.

The money would follow the kid

Schools greatest concern about splitting enrollment is often the impact on funding. Many divisions, especially in rural or suburban areas like Bedford and Campbell, have seen dropping enrollment in recent years, due to factors from lower birth rates to lower economic development. Officials say that in many cases lower enrollment is patchwork across schools and grades, and doesnt result in lower costs.

School board and administrations also cite similar concerns about the pressure homeschooling and private school puts on enrollment, although its hard to determine clear numbers for those populations.

A rough estimate taken by comparing 2014 census projections of the school-age population to school enrollment in local divisions for that year suggests that the large majority of eligible students in the region attend public schools, with a low of about 78 percent in Lynchburg and 81 percent in Bedford, and a high of 93 percent in Campbell and 91 percent in Appomattox and Nelson. Amherst falls in the middle with likely about 87 percent of eligible students enrolled in public school.

Per-pupil funding for charter students still would go through public divisions, but the divisions would be contracted to provide that funding to the charter schools.

But Bell feels that the concern is overstated.

I understand that if you pull one student out, literally one student out, that does not significantly decrease the costs of the school, he said. But were not talking about taking one student out  you are taking an appreciable number of students out.

Similarly, Bell said, adding one student adds almost nothing to a divisions costs, but the state still sends the money when that student shows up. The per-pupil funding is intended for instruction, while localities are expected to provide and maintain facilities.

We would hope that the money would follow the kid, he said.

Funding is also a major question for the state Board of Education as it prepares for the strong possibility that the amendment will pass both chambers of the General Assembly and come directly to voters in November.

The whole issue of charter schools certainly  has a history in Virginia thats quite different from other states, said Billy K. Cannady, Jr., the state board president, in November. I dont want to speak for all of our board members, but certainly we have embraced choice.

The real issue is, what does accountability look like and how is it financially supported? I think well have to give some thought to that whole topic  do we want another responsibility?
The Lynchburg area welcomed the sunshine and warmer temperatures Sunday but some public works crews still had much work on their plates.

A National Weather Service special statement Sunday warned residents of black ice Sunday night into this morning as warm temperatures melted some snow but froze due to temperatures dropping at night.

From Friday to 3 p.m. Sunday, Virginia State Police responded to 7,236 calls for service  including 1,464 crashes and another 2,214 disabled vehicles, according to Spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

As of 5:15 p.m. Sunday, VSP were on the scene of 12 crashes and 15 disabled vehicles across the state, Geller said.

According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, there have been five confirmed storm-related deaths in Virginia outside of the Greater Lynchburg area.

In an email, Geller said one death was a traffic fatality and the other four were hypothermia-related.

Two other fatal traffic crashes were reported in Virginia Beach.

According to VDOTs website, roads in Amherst, Appomattox, Campbell, Nelson counties and the city of Lynchburg had icy patches with minor conditions by Sunday afternoon; bridges and ramps were considered moderate.

For road conditions and closures, residents are reminded to call 511. Call 911 and #77 for emergencies.

Lynchburg Public Works crews were cleaning up primary roads, including intersections and working their way to residential streets, Emergency Operations Center Supervisor Stacy Reyn-olds said Sunday.

Secondary roads are roads that connect to primary roads such as Memorial and Fort avenues and Wards Road.

Reynolds said residents should stay off the roads as much as possible and advised parking on the odd-numbered houses side of the street to ease the way for plow trucks. We face our own challenges with the equipment, she said. Were slipping and sliding, too.

In the town of Bedford, D.W. Lawhorne, of the public works department, said Sunday roads are perfect.

All primary, residential, and secondary roads had been cleared so crews were moving on to public parking lots and sidewalks in the downtown area, he said Sunday afternoon.

Many across the region hoped the sunshine Sunday would melt some of the snow and improve road conditions by today.

Today is expected to be mostly sunny, with a high temperature near 44 degrees. A calm wind heading south around 6 miles per hour will appear in the afternoon. At night, temperatures will have a low around 30 degrees and partly cloudy, according to the National Weather Service.

Tuesday will have a 30 percent chance of showers, mainly after noon, and is forecasted as mostly cloudy with a high near 48 degrees. Rain of less than a tenth of an inch is possible. Tuesday night will also have a 50 percent chance of showers with a low around 34 degrees.

Wednesday will have an about 40 percent chance of rain showers before 8 a.m., then a chance of rain and snow showers during the day; temperatures will have a high of 40 degrees.

Roads were not much of a problem Sunday in the town of Altavista but a water main break on Ogden Road, near Avondale Road was a big problem.

A 10-inch pipe snapped and public works were alerted to the problem Saturday morning, said Public Works Director David Garrett.

It was draining a one-and-a-half-million gallon tank. We had to shut it off for last night and first thing this morning, he said Sunday.

The snow did not help crews, he said. It was challenging to locate the water main valve and it took crews almost 24 hours to find the leak, he said.

Garrett estimated the cause was the change in temperature and ground settling.

A boil water notice will be in effect for a couple streets in the area, near the break because the residents lost water pressure and for bacterial testing.

Water was restored to affected residences by about 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Garrett said.

All schools in Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Campbell, Nelson counties and the city of Lynchburg will be closed today. Private schools Holy Cross Catholic School, Liberty Christian Academy, and Timberlake Christian Schools are also closed today.

In Amherst, Lynchburg, and Appomattox, custodians were asked to still report at 8 a.m. today, according to closure announcements.

Lynchburg College, Randolph College and Central Virginia Community College are closed. Liberty University planned to open at noon Monday.








by Bill Vint





PBA: CHICAGO  January 24, 2016 - The Professional Bowlers Associations regional program, founded in 1970, has provided young bowlers with a proving ground to develop their skills in high-level competition against some of the sports established stars. That mix of PBA Tour stars and emerging young talent was evident when John Weber, Director of PBA Regional and PBA50 Tours, announced the 2015 PBA Regional Awards winners Tuesday.





Recognized in the eight PBA Regional awards programs are Players of the Year, Rookies of the Year, PBA50 Players of the Year and Pat Patterson Award winners, which are presented to an individual or company for significant contributions to the success of the regional program. Award winners are selected by the PBAs regional managers: Russ Mills, East Region; Sam Zurich, South Region; Bob Jakel, Central Region; Rich Weber, Midwest Region; Pete McCordic, Southwest Region; Gary Mage, West and Northwest Regions, and Junia Yoshida, Japan Region.





Heres a summary of 2015 PBA Regional award winners:





East Region: Patrick Allen of Mount Kisco, N.Y., a four-time winner in the region in 2015, was selected as Player of the Year. Josh Schmehl of Seaford, Del., earned Rookie of the Year honors after cashing in all five events he entered. Brian LeClair of Albany, N.Y., won twice and had top-five finishes in all six events in his PBA50 rookie season to win PBA50 Player of the Year honors. Richard Byrd of Parkville, Md., was the East Regions Pat Patterson Award winner.





South Region: Jason Sterner, who now resides in Cocoa Beach, Fla., had five top-five finishes in the eight tournaments he entered, including three titles, to earn Player of the Year honors. Brandon Curtis of Manson, N.C., had two top-five finishes in his four events, including a fourth-place finish, to capture Rookie of the Year honors. PBA Hall of Famer Tom Baker of King, N.C., was named PBA50 Player of the Year for the fourth time after 10 cashes in 10 events, including three titles and four top-five finishes. Ed Tenan of Hayes, Va., was selected as Pat Patterson Award recipient.





Central Region: Ryan Ciminelli of Cheektowaga, N.Y., won once and had five top-five finishes in capturing the Central Region Player of the Year award. Anthony Kennard of Wapakoneta, Ohio, won his first PBA Regional title and cashed five times in nine events to earn the Central Regions Dan Ottman Rookie of the Year award. Lennie Boresch Jr. of Kenosha, Wis., won PBA50 Player of the Year honors with four top-five finishes including two titles in four events. Jim Bryant of Hubbard, Ohio, was the Pat Patterson Award honoree.





Midwest Region: Mitch Beasley of Clarksville, Tenn., won twice and had six top-five finishes while earning $21,295 to win Midwest Region Player of the Year honors. AJ Johnson of Oswego, Ill., won his first PBA Regional title and had four top-five finishes in seven events to earn the Rookie of the Year nod. Harry Sullins of Chesterfield Township, Mich., repeated as Midwest PBA50 Player of the Year, winning one title and finishing in the top five eight times in nine PBA50 events. Ted Baer of Omaha received the Midwest Region Pat Patterson Award for the second time.





Southwest Region: Two-hander Shawn Maldonado of Houston racked up four wins in 14 tournaments to earn his second consecutive Southwest Region Player of the Year honor. He also had one runner-up two thirds and two fifth- place finishes. Will Barnes of Austin, Texas, completed his Rookie of the Year campaign with five cashes in 10 events, including his first regional title. David Scardaville of Houston won one of the two events he entered to earn PBA50 Player of the Year honors. Jimbo Evans of Lubbock, Texas, won his second Southwest Pat Patterson Award.





West Region: Scott Norton of Mission Viejo, Calif., won four titles in seven PBA West Region events to earn Player of the Year honors. Jakob Butturff of Chandler, Ariz., earned West Region Rookie of the Year with the help of four match play finals in the five tournaments he entered. Two-time PBA50 Player of the Year Ron Mohr of Las Vegas made it a double by earning PBA50 Player of the Year honors in both the West and Northwest Regions. In the West he had two wins, two second-place and one third place finish. Ted Hoffman of Dublin, Calif., who won the West Regions inaugural Pat Patterson Award 43 years ago, in 1972, won it again in 2015.





Northwest Region: Two-time PBA Tour winner Josh Blanchard won Northwest Player of the Year honors with three top-five finishes that included one win, a third and fourth. Newcomer Cameron Weier of Federal Way, Wash., earned Region Rookie of the Year honors with five top-five finishes in five events including his first title. Ron Mohr of Las Vegas earned PBA50 Player of the Year honors in both the West and Northwest Regions. In the Northwest he had one win and two second-place finishes in the three events he entered. Grants Pass, Ore., proprietor and PBA50 competitor Kevin Croucher was recipient of the Northwest Regions Pat Patterson Award for the third time.





Japan Region: Pat Nolan earned PBA Japan Region Player of the Year honors as the regions leading player in competition points. Japan Bowling Promotion, under the leadership of managing director Shinichiro Kinoshita, was the winner of the Pat Patterson Award. Rookie and PBA50 awards were not presented in Japan in 2015.

The PBA conducted approximately 170 regional events during the 2015 season, including standard events, PBA50 and PBA60 events for players 50 and/or 60 years and older, challenge events for players who had not previously won PBA titles, and PWBA-PBA Womens Regional events. The leading players in competition points in standard and PWBA-PBA Womens events from each region were awarded paid entries into GEICO PBA World Series of Bowling VII in Reno, Nev., in December, and were invited to compete for berths in the PBA Regional and PWBA-PBA Womens Regional finals as part of the ESPN-televised PBA Challenge Finals.




A Campbell County man is charged with second-degree murder following a fatal shooting Sunday night, authorities said.

Franklin Lee Thomason Jr., 37, of 6559 Richmond Highway, was arrested in connection with the death of Douglas Wayne Grubbs Jr., 27, according to a news release from the Campbell County Sheriffs Office.

Basically it was a dispute at a home between two subjects, and one of them was shot and killed, Sheriffs Maj. L. T. Guthrie said in a phone interview Monday.

Thomason already was wanted on an unrelated charge of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle stemming from an incident in Campbell County, according to the Sheriffs Office.

Deputies went to Thomasons Richmond Highway address at 10:15 p.m. Sunday in response to a report of a person with a gunshot wound.

Once there, they found Grubbs dead, the victim of a single gunshot.

Information gathered at the scene, led to Thomasons arrest, according to the release.

Grubbss body was taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Roanoke.

Guthrie said Grubbs had been staying at Thomasons house for a few days. He was unsure of Grubbss permanent address, though he thought Grubbs was from the area originally.

One other person was in the house during the incident, but Guthrie declined to identify that person.

Guthrie said investigators do not expect to charge anyone else in connection with the incident.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Campbell County Sheriffs Office at (434) 332-9580.
Spending from the state fund tapped by governors to lure business to Old Dominion has hit a two-year high under Virginias dealmaker-in-chief, Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

But a deal gone bad is drawing lawmakers scrutiny to the agency that administers the discretionary development money drafted by McAuliffe and a half-dozen governors before him.

More than $36 million has been spent from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund since McAuliffe took office Jan. 11, 2014. Thats roughly one-third higher than the previous two-year spike of $27.1 million in fiscal years 2011 and 2012 under Gov. Bob McDonnell.

One of the McAuliffe grants went to a Chinese-owned business venture in Appomattox that received $1.4 million from the fund but produced no jobs or investment. An investigation by The Roanoke Times published Jan. 17 found that state officials tasked with vetting the deal relied on false information posted to a company website that listed a physical address where the business never had been located.

The governor and others are quick to point to the opportunity funds successes. In the cases of more than 500 grants paid since the funds inception in 1992, companies have delivered on their promises to create jobs and invest capital.

Opportunity fund money, usually paid up front before the project occurs, has gone to roughly 100 other projects, about 15 percent of the total, that did not hire as many workers or invest as much capital as pledged, or produced no results, Virginia Economic Development Partnership records showed. In those instances, the state sought repayment of the grant money.

The latest venture to falter was the one in Appomattox. The disclosures in The Roanoke Times about the partnerships failures in vetting the deal triggered dismay last week during the General Assembly session under way in Richmond.

Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, said the deal confirmed the need for a previously planned audit of the partnership, the state agency that advises the secretary of commerce and trade and governor on where to invest opportunity fund dollars.

The planned study is expected to also focus on the states economic development incentives programs and the wide discretion given to Virginias governors to manage the opportunity fund, which is replenished annually. The current appropriation is nearly $21 million, up from $10 million in 1995.

Under the program formerly known as the Governors Opportunity Fund, the states chief executive approves grants with the money first going to a local government agency to pass on to a company planning to locate or expand in a Virginia community.

The grants purpose is to induce economic growth by defraying corporate expenses related to infrastructure and worker training. Local governments, which must match the grant, often tie their contributions to the companies meeting jobs and investment objectives.

McAuliffe, who pledged to make economic development a cornerstone of his administration, has announced more than 60 opportunity fund grants two years into his four-year term.

He has said he sees expanding private industry as an antidote to shrinking federal spending in Virginia. The McAuliffe administration has given preliminary, nonbinding approval for an additional 38 opportunity fund grants totaling $50 million, according to partnership records.

That exceeds the $22 million now available in the fund. The state can commit more than the fund actually holds because about 40 percent of preapproved grants do not result in a payment, officials said.

Five of the preapproved grants are for $5 million and earmarked for potential business deals with companies in the health care, energy, automotive, services and manufacturing sectors, according to partnership records.

Lindenburg Industry, which announced plans in November 2014 to hire 349 workers and invest $113 million in an idled Appomattox furniture plant, is, so far, the only recipient of a grant paid during McAuliffes term to not perform.

There is a lag of up to several years between the issuance of grants and the states accountability process, meaning that sometimes deals dont turn sour until after a governor leaves office. The state originally gave Lindenburg until 2018 to achieve its targets. After 13 months, state officials determined the project was unlikely to go forward and directed the company to repay the $1.4 million by March 7.

Neither the town nor the county in Appomattox gave Lindenburg money. The localities had conditioned their support of Lindenburg on the company meeting its hiring and investment targets. Had Lindenburg performed as expected, the company was in line to receive total incentives worth $12 million.

All told, $227 million in grant money has been issued from the opportunity fund. Officials have recovered $20.8 million from 76 grant recipients who did not perform as expected. Of those, 26 repaid their grants in full after producing little or no jobs and investment. Fifty made a partial repayment after they produced some jobs and investment but fell short of their targets, according to partnership records.

The recipient companies have generated more than 120,000 jobs and invested more than $20 billion, according to the partnership, whose data covers only state-funded incentives.

When companies that receive opportunity fund money perform as pledged, the grants can be offset by new taxes in later years. The partnership said $12.57 in new state tax revenue is generated for every dollar spent on the agencys budget and the incentives programs it manages.

Virginia for years has made a point of trying to recover opportunity fund money when companies miss their targets. By policy, the state treats the failure to meet jobs and investment targets as a broken contract and requires repayment of opportunity fund money.

The process isnt foolproof. Since it began giving out opportunity fund grants, Virginia has been unable to recover $5.8 million from 25 companies involved in failed ventures, according to the partnership. Bankruptcy is among the reasons companies did not fulfill repayment demands, the partnership said.

Steven Chu, a Lindenburg official, said by email that the company asked for more time to repay. Virginia officials have said the March 7 deadline is firm.

The Roanoke Times investigation found that staff at the partnership did not properly vet Lindenburg before recommending the company receive an opportunity fund grant.

When told by a reporter that Virginia relied on false website information, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones said the partnership would reduce its reliance on outside information, such as corporate site consultants, and the agency would do more independent vetting. That will include the requirement that private foreign companies submit audited financial statements for state review, Jones said.

The commerce secretary told lawmakers this past week that his review of the Lindenburg deal found evidence of human error in the partnerships preparation of the offer and incentives contract. In addition, he said, the deal would be reviewed for possible fraud.

The General Assembly is considering a bill to ask the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to audit the partnership. Such a review could be completed between October and December.

The McAuliffe administration has proposed keeping the opportunity fund budget level at $20.75 million a year but raising the partnerships budget by 43 percent to $27.6 million during the upcoming two fiscal years.

Administration officials said this would fund more efforts to attract businesses from overseas, support growth in international trade among businesses and expand Virginias ability to compete with other states for new business locations and expansions.

The Lindenburg project shouldnt be something that clouds the investment that we still need to make in economic development to keep the state moving forward, Jones said.

Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, said lawmakers will consider the budget request carefully. Even without the questions the Lindenburg project raised, the proposed increase for the partnership will trigger scrutiny because of its size and the fact that it is part of an 11 percent overall state spending hike sought by McAuliffe at a time when revenue is fairly flat, Garrett said.

The McAuliffe administration must present the proposed budget increase to the House Appropriations Committee, which is chaired by Chris Jones. House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, shares the concerns of the committee chairman regarding the Lindenburg deal, said Howell spokesman Matthew Moran.

Howell believes we need to carefully review not just this individual deal but the entire process, Moran said.

The General Assembly session runs until mid-March.
First look - JMS returns to Thor as the Thunder God prepares to battle Thanos in Death Notes special

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HELL ON EARTH

What is happening here is hell on earth, the Mayor said.

Speaking with journalists after the visit he said the Port-of- Spain City Council will hold a caucus meeting today to discuss the murders of schoolboys Denilson Smith and Mark Richards who were pulled out of a taxi and shot dead by unknown gunmen last Thursday while travelling home from school. The boys were killed while still wearing the uniforms of their school, the Success Laventille Secondary School. Their murders have traumatised the country and, in an address to the nation on Friday, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that the army will move into the area and set up a base there on a permanent basis.

Tim Kee said the meeting will take decisions to help the people of Sogren Trace in whatever way possible.

One thing I am sure about is that most of our councillors are from East Port-of-Spain so there is a passion and commitment to assisting all citizens in East Portof- Spain. At this time I think Sogren Trace and this area take preference over others in the East because of what is happening here now. The Mayor was accompanied by Councillor Hillan Morean, the councillor for the district of St Anns River North; Councillor Nedra McClean, the representative for East Dry River and Councillor Jennel Young among others.

Funeral arrangements for both boys were still being finalised yesterday.

Education Minister Anthony Garcia is expected to visit the families this morning.

After listening to the hardships of the affected residents, Tim Kee said The worst thing is when you are involuntarily imprisoned.

To get into a taxi is a problem.

To walk a hundred metres from their households to get a taxi to go to work is a problem because I understand the miscreants come and look into the taxi and identify who is and who is not and choose to put to sleep those who they do not like for whatever reason. He said it was a serious situation and he expected that the Prime Minister will keep his promise to concentrate on the area by having the security agencies spend some time there. He said he wasnt talking about a two or three week stay but something fairly permanent until the area returns to a state of normalcy. He said even then a reduced complement of manpower might still be needed.

He said he hoped there could be a permanent police/army post in the area especially at the area playground where he said so many things were being lost. You cant take advantage of a playfield as wonderful as it is because everybody is afraid to go out and even play.

Were talking about children who have nothing to do with all the criminal activity. He also said there was a community centre or handicraft centre in the area which was not in use and he would hold talks with the Parliamentary representative for the area, Fitzgerald Hinds, to have the centre functioning for the use of the residents so they could be doing things to make a living. Tim Kee said what the residents were experiencing was more than poverty but tyranny from the gangsters who were terrorising the area so they were caught in a double problem of poverty and violence.

Its really heartbreaking. Im sitting there and I am feeling the pain  not physical, of course  the emotional pain that they must be enduring at this time and what makes it even more disturbing to me is that I understand that some of the people that were held were people from right around here who were the victims like one of the children that were killed. Following the shootings of the schoolboys police arrested nine persons from the Sogren Trace area but by yesterday afternoon it was reported that all but one had been released.

One resident told Tim Kee that there needed to be a police post in Sogren Trace itself to protect the residents because he feared that after the police and army leave the violence would return. He said they did not want any sporting programme but something that would bring employment to the area. Another resident commented that the violence had been going on for 17 years. Others stated openly that they were afraid to leave home to attend school or go to work today and some parents said they were fearful about sending their children to school.

The Mayor was planning to visit the home of 81-year-old Morsley Phillip on Sogren Trace but had to call off that visit as he was informed that relatives of Phillip were not at home. Phillip was shot dead on Friday night by two men who broke down the front door of his home at about 10pm.
Hinds: Parents mind your children

The nation was shocked by the killings.

The youths were, dragged from a PH taxi and gunned down, reportedly to traumatise a community in a borderline row between gangsters Hinds, Laventille West MP and former Minister in the Ministry of National Security, lamented these killings.

I am very, very concerned about recent developments as have transpired in my community and environs. He said many youths have done well by making use of opportunities provided by the Government, but others have not done so, but have instead taken up too-easily- available, illicit firearms.

I cant say the socalled war has any serious or meaningful root or cause, he said. It appears to be simply based on ego and borderline and who badder than who. It very often involves young men, sometimes children 16 or 17, under the influence of adults unfortunately, and sometimes parents, who encourage them, and who may be afraid or unwilling to correct them. Hinds was confident that even in a recession enough avenues exist for youngsters to earn a livelihood.

He also espoused the efforts being made by the police against crime, by both soft-policing and hard-policing.

They are trying to interface with the community to encourage them back to civility, said Hinds. Hinds appealed I am calling on the community to assist itself by rejecting that kind of criminal behaviour from those who perpetrate it, he said.

There is no winner in all this, only pain, sadness and trauma. He called on parents to be judge, police officer and teacher to their children.

Restrain your youngsters. Institutions will assist you, including the Government, Milat and MyPart .

Some parents tell the magistrate, my son is out of control.

Be not afraid. Do the right thing. Sometimes tough love is necessary in these cases. He said he has interacted with local schools and that the area is to get extraordinary support from the Government, given its peculiar features and challenges, as promised in the 2015 General Election.

Hinds said the area had produced top students including in 2005 a Presidents Medal winner, and more recently, a young woman who is deputy commander of a newly-acquired Coast Guard ship.

So children do well, but a loud and violent minority are causing a lot of grief in this country, he said.

Saying pupils at Success Laventille Secondary School are now severely traumatised by last weeks two killings, Hinds said he and Education Minister, Anthony Garcia, will visit the school today at 9 am.
US Military Really Didn't Want

You to Know What's in New

Washington Post Investigation
(Newser)  "For 58 years, no one asked me about the Struma," David Stoliar told the New York Times in 2000, "and I felt that no one cared." But experiencing the worst civilian maritime disaster of WWII never left him: "I carried the memories in my head as if it happened yesterday." The Times on Saturday published an obituary for Stoliar, who died May 1, 2014, at his home in Bend, Ore. The Times had prepared an obituary, but it just learned of Stoliar's death on Friday. On Dec. 11, 1941, Stoliar, then 19, was aboard the Struma as it left the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanza, bound for British-controlled Palestine, with more than 790 Jews fleeing persecution. The 150-foot steamer was "a squalid, leaky former cattle boat," the Times writes. The engines failed. They were repaired, then failed again. Turkish tugs towed the Struma into the Bosporus, the strait dividing Europe and Asia.

The Struma was interned offshore for more than two months as Turkish officials, worried about angering the British or the Germans, decided what to do. Ultimately, the Turks towed the boat back out to the Black Sea and set it adrift. The next day, a Soviet sub torpedoed the helpless vessel. Stoliar was the lone survivor, clinging to debris in frigid waters for 24 hours before being rescued by a Turkish ship. The ordeal continued: After being hospitalized with frostbite, Stoliar spent six weeks in a Turkish prison. Stoliar finally reached Palestine. He fought in the British Army in Egypt and Libya, then with the Israeli army in the War of Independence. He was an oil executive in the 1950s, and later, per the Oregonian, he and his wife, Marda Stoliar, created a successful shoe-manufacturing business. "He went on to have an amazing life," she tells the paper. Read Stoliar's fascinating story here. (Read more Struma stories.)
(Newser)  The majority of newborns with brain damage weren't born that way, meaning a medical mishap during their birth didn't cause the damage. Researchers at Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago report in the Journal of Perinatology that of the 32 full-term infants whose records they examined after the newborns developed "severe" cerebral palsy and mental retardation, 18 had an infection called chorioamnionitis and 14 had severe anemia. The infection occurs when bacteria attack the amniotic fluid and membranes that surround the baby in utero, while anemia results from low blood levels following birth, reports Science Daily. (More broadly, between one and three of every 1,000 full-term newborns experience encephalopathy, i.e. brain disease or damage.)

In addition, the gases in the newborns' umbilical cord blood were normal, the brains' deep gray matter didn't appear injured, and other signs suggest their brains were actually not damaged at the time of birth. It's the hours immediately following delivery that appear key, the researchers write: "All too often in cases of professional liability, the focus is on the last two hours of a normal 7,000-hour term pregnancy. This study would support closer scrutiny of the first two hours [following birth] as a possible [cause] for non-preventable adverse neurological outcomes in newborns." Essentially, the babies simply weren't able to cope with their own conditions once out of the womb and tended to suffer "devastating outcomes," even with the best resuscitation efforts, reports MD Magazine. Example: Most with chorioamnionitis developed sepsis, an extreme immune response that can lead to organ failure, brain damage, and even death. (One emerging virus causes such a severe form of brain damage that some countries are asking women to avoid getting pregnant altogether for a couple of years.)
(Newser)  Police in Hong Kong on Sunday arrested a Chinese national suspected of killing his two teenage nephews at their Southern California home on Friday and then fleeing to Beijing. US authorities also believe Deyun Shi, 44, attempted to kill his wife, Reuters reports. Police say Shi learned Thursday that his wife planned to divorce him, the Los Angeles Times reports. That night, Shi returned to the family home in La Canada Flintridge, which he had moved out of, and attacked his wife with a woodcutting tool. He left after his son, 15, stepped in. Police think he later drove to the Arcadia home where his nephews lived, per the Times. The boys had been left sleeping while their parents visited Shi's wife at the hospital. Later, the mother discovered one of the boys bleeding and unresponsive. Both boys suffered blunt-force trauma and were pronounced dead at the scene.

While Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, the Times reports, the proceedings could be complicated if Shi will face the death penalty, which Hong Kong does not have. "Any possibility of execution will be a reason for Hong Kong not to surrender," one expert tells the Times. A US lawyer providing legal assistance to Shi says he's "interested in looking into" using that to delay or stop extradition. Before moving to the US about a year ago, Shi, who appears to have run an importing business here, had several businesses in Shenzhen, China, the Times reports, citing Chinese media reports that say Shi was a "central figure" in at least four bribery cases that ended with three officials going to prison. It is unclear, the Times reports, if Chinese authorities are interested in having Shi sent back to them. (Read more murder stories.)
(Newser)  When North Face founder Doug Tompkins died in December in a kayaking accident, it seemed as if his South American conservation efforts had come to a premature end. But his widow is looking to carry on his philanthropy, with the BBC reporting she has offered a huge chunk of land to Chile to be made into national parks. Kristine McDivitt Tompkins says she offered close to 990,000 acres to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in a meeting the AP says took place last week, with negotiations expected to take about two years. Tompkins also reportedly met with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in December to offer his country 370,000 acres. "We want people from all over the world to be able to visit these places," Tompkins tells the BBC. "With the donation of these parks, Chile will be able [to] offer a historic legacy to the world."

Doug Tompkins was a well-known adventurer who fell off the grid in the early 1990s, cashing in his shares for both North Face and his other company, Esprit, and ditching the corporate world for a more remote lifestyle in southern Chile, the AP notes. He met and married Kristine, his second wife and ex-CEO of the Patagonia clothing company, and together they invested about $375 million in South American conservation efforts, scooping up large pieces of land to protect and then donating them to Chile and Argentina to use as national parks. At first they aroused suspicionsome feared the "gringo" and his wife were trying to appropriate Chilean water or that he was even a CIA spybut by the time Tompkins died, those fears had mostly dissipated. "It's very hard to imagine a life without Doug as my husband, but I know that the work that we started we're going to finish," Tompkins tells the AP. (The Zuckerbergs also have headline-making philanthropic plans.)
(Newser)  When an eighth-grader at Texas' Gateway Middle School started suffering an asthma attack Tuesday, 15-year-old Anthony Ruelas at first did exactly what his teacher told him to do: stay seated while the teacher waited for the school nurse to email back about what to do, the Washington Post reports. But when the girl kept "wheezing and gagging" for several minutes and finally fell out of her chair, Anthony decided he'd had enough, per KCEN. Per the teacher's report, Anthony said, "F--k that, we ain't got time to wait for no email from the nurse" and, against the teacher's directive, carried his classmate to the nurse's office (she texted him the next evening to say she was OK). But instead of a pat on the back, Anthony ended up with a two-day suspension from the alternative school in Killeen.

"I was like what? I'm suspended for this? Like, I was trying to help her," he says, per KCEN. Anthony had been suspended before, and even his own mom rolled her eyes when Anthony tried to explain what happened. "I wasn't trying to hear it," Mandy Cortes tells the station. She dismissed her son, "and he was like, 'OK, forget it.'" But Cortes could tell he was upset, and once she got the whole story, she was upset, too. "I feel like the kids hear enough of 'they're bad' and for them to not be rewarded for really something that is brave  he is a hero to me," she says, adding her son has a "great heart." The Killeen Independent School District's superintendent did say Wednesday that the district "applauds ... students who act in good faith to assist others in time of need," per KCEN. Would Anthony do it again? "Most definitely," he says. (A Florida teen got detention for hugging a classmate.)
(Newser)  Canada has its maple syrup thefts, California its walnut capers, and now Wisconsin joins the ranks with not one, but two cheese heists. The first happened two weeks ago in Marshfield, when bandits made off with $90,000 worth of Parmesan from a storage facility, reports CBS58. Then on Friday, thieves used a semi-trailer to haul away $70,000 worth of unspecified cheese in Germantown. It's not clear whether the two cases are related. On Monday, police announced that detectives had tracked down the latter batch in Milwaukee, though no arrests have been made. No word yet on the missing Parmesan. WTMJ adds a little ominously, "Police are still trying to determine what the thieves are doing with the cheese." (Read more weird crimes stories.)
(Newser)  David Axelrod has been among those dismissing Donald Trump's candidacy as a joke all these monthsuntil now. In a New York Times op-ed, Axelrod writes that it's dawned on him that Trump's run is very much like Barack Obama's 2008 campaign in one vital respect. He sums it up thusly: "Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent," he writes. "Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive." A decade ago, Obama's deliberate, cerebral approach proved to be just the right antidote to George W. Bush, writes Axelrod. But now those same qualities are viewed as "hesitancy," "weakness," and "appeasement."

So who better to play the role of this election's anti-incumbent than Trump? "Relentlessly edgy, confrontational and contemptuous of the niceties of governance and policy making, Mr. Trump is the perfect counterpoint to a president whose preternatural cool and deliberate nature drive his critics mad," Axelrod writes. What's interesting is that in 2006, then-Sen. Obama asked Axelrod to assess his chances if he were to run, and Axelrod laid out the broad strokes of this theory in a "bullish" analysis for the long-shot candidate. He just failed to apply it anew to Trump. "It's so obvious, I'm embarrassed I missed it," he notes. Click for the full column. (Read more Donald Trump 2016 stories.)
(Newser)  Florida State University is shelling out $250,000 to a former student who says the school shrugged off her accusations that star QB Jameis Winston raped her, reports the AP. The woman's lawyers will get another $700,000, making this the biggest Title IX settlement in a case involving a school's alleged indifference to a reported sex assault, reports USA Today. Winston, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, did not face criminal charges over the 2012 incident after the state attorney examined the case. He has said the sex was consensual, and the university itself cleared him of any wrongdoing.

"I will always be disappointed that I had to leave the school I dreamed of attending since I was little," said his accuser, Erica Kinsman, in a statement. "I am happy that FSU has committed to continue making changes in order to ensure a safer environment for all students." With the settlement, FSU admits no wrongdoing but says it felt the legal fight would have been too protracted and expensive. As part of the deal, it agreed to put into place a five-year program on awareness and prevention of campus sexual assault. A separate federal investigation continues by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. (Read more Jameis Winston stories.)
(Newser)  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday criticized Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, accusing him of placing a "time bomb" under the state and sharply denouncing brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government. The harsh criticism of Lenin, who's still revered by communists and many others in Russia, is unusual (though not unheard of) for Putin, who in the past carefully weighed his comments about the nation's history to avoid alienating some voters. Putin's assessment of Lenin's role in Russian history during Monday's meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in Stavropol follows on attacks last week on the anniversary of Lenin's death, notes Newsweek. He denounced Lenin and his government for brutally executing Russia's last czar along with his family and servants, killing thousands of priests, and placing a "time bomb" under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines.

As an example of Lenin's destructive legacy, Putin pointed at Donbass, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russia separatist rebellion flared up weeks after Russia's March 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. He said that Lenin and his government whimsically drew borders between parts of the USSR, placing Donbass under Ukrainian jurisdiction in order to "increase the percentage of proletariat" in a move Putin called "delirious." Putin also blasted the Bolsheviks for losing World War I in their quest for power. Putin's recent criticism of Lenin could be part of his attempts to justify Moscow's policy in the Ukrainian crisis, but it also may reflect the Kremlin's concern about possible separatist sentiments in some Russian provinces. Despite his remarks, Putin signaled that the government has no intention of taking Lenin's body out of his Red Square tomb, warning against "any steps that would divide the society." (Read more Vladimir Putin stories.)
(Newser)  Plan on visiting the US side of Niagara Falls? Better plan ahead, if you want to see actual fallsbecause New York state officials want to temporarily stop the water from flowing, Discovery reports. They plan to direct water away from Bridal Veil Falls and American Falls, two of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls, while a pair of aging bridges are demolished and replaced. Water would be diverted away from the two falls for six to nine months while the two-year construction job is completed, the Buffalo News reports. Projected cost: $21 million to $37 million. The stone arch bridges, built in Niagara Falls State Park 115 years ago, were shut down in 2004 for being unsafe; now authorities say they're unattractive and can never be restored.

The plan is to build a "cofferdam" (a collection of rock and dirt) to divert water from the two US falls to Canada's Horseshoe Falls, where over 80% of Niagara Falls already runs. It's been done before, back in 1969, when the water was curbed to analyze rock buildup and erosion at the falls' base (they found two bodies and millions of coins, but nothing to suggest changes at the site). As for the current plan, it hasn't been approved, has no funding, and will take up to seven years to get started, an official tells the Toronto Star. Niagara Falls historian Paul Gromosiak is not a fan. "The sun baking down on the rock isnt good for the falls and it also affects the appearance of the falls," he tells the Buffalo News. "Im very concerned about the long-term effects." (These two people went up the falls.)
Daniel Radcliffe's new movie project, Swissy Movie, received some obvious snobs from this year's Sundance Festival audience.

Hollywood Reporter said that hundreds of moviegoers, some of them are executives of the film event left their seats during the showing of the indie film on Friday afternoon at the Eccles Theater.

It was said that during the showing of the film, lots of audiences stood up from their chairs and bolted to the door with some leaving the theater. Though some remained but the audience is totally divided, according to Toronto Sun.

The movie is said portray a weird friendship between a lost man played by Paul Dano and Radcliffe who acted as a corpse. The two met in an isolated island with Dano talking to a farting, dead corpse with an erection to fight his loneliness.

It also engages in long, philosophical discussions about life, masturbation and loneliness that ended up with actors kissing each other.

Amidst, the audience' discouraging reaction, the 26-year old actor said that he loves playing the part of a dead corpse, Independent reported.

"I loved seeing how painful I could make things look," he said.

As to the corpse' defining character as 'farting' and aroused, the actor praised it saying 'it's perverse and mad.'

"It's exciting, to be honest, using farts other than comedy, like using them for plot and emotion and making some people super uncomfortable. There is something wonderful about it."

Filmmakers, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were also proud of their work.

"If you read the headlines, they're just amazing. I couldn't have written them better myself," director Kwan said.
Californian authorities are searching for the three inmates from the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana who carried out an elaborate escape plan that involved cutting through wire and metal.

The men, Jonathan Tieu, 20, Bac Duong, 43, and Hossein Nayeri, 37 are considered to be dangerous and could possibly have weapons. Tieu was held since October 2013 on a $1 million bond for a murder charge that could have been gang-related. Duong was being held without bail since last month for the possibility of being tied to an attempted murder and Nayeri was accused of kidnapping and torturing a man back in 2012.

The authorities are offering $50,000 in rewards for information that can help them recapture the men. People with information should call the hotline, (714) 628-7085. To report any sightings of the men, call 911.

"There's people out there that know who these people are, who may have seen them. We're asking for phone calls, whether it's any piece of information you may have," Orange County sheriff's LT. Jeff Hallock said, reported by ABC News "We're exhausting every lead that we currently have,"

The authorities are also in the midst of an investigation with the hopes of uncovering how the men were able to escape and whether or not they had help from inside and/or outside of the prison.

"We're going to take a look at everybody who may have been assigned there," Hallock said. "What I can assure you is that the compromises in security have been shored up."

According to the county sheriff's officials, the men are believed to have vanished after the 5 a.m. head count at the maximum security facility on Friday. The guards, however, did not realize that the inmates were missing until later that night at around 9 p.m. when they were doing their nightly headcount, which was conducted later than usual due to an earlier inmate fight. The authorities do not know if the fight was tied to the breakout.

The officials stated that the three men first cut through the grill on their dormitory wall to enter into the prison's plumbing tunnels. They all lived in the same dormitory, which also housed 65 other inmates.

They then used tools to cut through steel bars that were half-an-inch thick and ended up on the roof of the building, which is not guarded. The men moved aside the razor wire and used linens that they had carefully tied together to lower themselves onto the ground floor.

"We're talking about breaching, in some places, significant amounts of steel, rebar and metal," Hallock said.

"Escapes do occur from time to time," Sheriff Sandra Hutchens explained. "We try and limit that. We learn from the mistakes. I can tell you that this is a very sophisticated-looking operation. People in jail have a lot of time to sit around and think about ways to defeat our systems."

The jail, which was built in 1968 and houses about 900 inmates, has dealt with two escapes before. These escapes, however, occurred more than decades ago and none of the staff that was working then is currently at the jail.
Prince William has paid tribute to his friend, British explorer Henry Worsley, who died during his journey across the Antarctic.

"He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we're incredibly proud to be associated with him," William said reported by PEOPLE. "Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women by undertaking this extraordinary [Ernest] Shackelton solo expedition on their behalf."

Worsley, a father of two, died from "complete organ failure" at the age of 55 after being airlifted to a hospital located in Punta Arenas Chile for severe exhaustion and dehydration. The British Army Officer was attempting to become the first man ever to cross the Antarctic without any assistance.

Worsley undertook the journey, which was inspired by Ernest Shackleton, a British explorer who tried to cross the Antarctic in the early 1990s, to raise money. According to Worsley's wife, Joanna, via CNN, he had "achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over 100,000 ($142,000) for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass. A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition -- his lifelong hero."

Worsley lasted 71 days and had about 30 miles left to go before he called for medical assistance on Friday.

His final message read, "The 71 days alone on the Antarctic with over 900 statute miles covered and a gradual grinding down of my physical endurance finally took its toll today, and it is with sadness that I report it is journey's end -- so close to my goal."

Donations have since totaled to more than $150,000.
New Delhi :

High-voltage political drama involving Governor Jyoti Prashad Rajkhowa capped an eventful year in Arunachal Pradesh.

Resurfacing of contentious Chakma-Hajong refugee issues, controversy on construction of green field airport project, a chopper crash, alleged financial mismanagement and protest against Chinas move to depict Arunachal Pradesh as part of its territory, were some of the other issues that hogged limelight during 2015.

The Congress government in the frontier state faced the heat of rebellion from 21 party MLAs out of total 47 during the year. 21 MLAs including six ministers joined hands with former Finance Minister Kalikho Pul to try and topple Chief Minister Nabam Tuki.

Controversy erupted in the state when Rajkhowa on December 9 advanced the winter session of the assembly to December 16 from January 14, 2016 which evoked strong protest from the Tuki camp and also several mass-based organisations.

The governor called the session with directives to Deputy Speaker T Norbu Thongdok to preside over it and take up the impeachment motion notice served by 11 BJP and two Independent MLAs against Speaker Nabam Rebia.

Tuki supported by his nine cabinet ministers along with 16 Congress members including Rebia decided not to attend the three-day session terming it as arbitrary and against the Constitution.

Surprisingly, the Speaker on December 15 in an order disqualified 14 rebel MLAs including Thongdok from the House on the clause of anti-defection.

However, during the first day of the session, the rebel group of Congress MLAs accompanied by BJP and Independent members went to the Assembly but they were prohibited entry as the district administration on directive of the Speaker sealed the assembly premises for three days apprehending serious law and order problem.

With no option left, the rebel group convened the session in two makeshift venues and impeached Rebia and elected dissident leader Pul as the new leader of the house through a composite floor test brought by BJP and Independent members.

The rebel group was prohibited to go to the Raj Bhawan by Youth Congress cadres who resorted to road blockade for nearly five hours.

Providing a breather to Tuki, the Gauhati High Court on December 17 stayed all the proceedings of the assembly and governors order till February 1 next year.

Tuki on October 7 recommended to the Governor dropping four senior ministers from the state cabinet. A few days later another minister was also axed from the cabinet.
New Delhi :

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande pitched for a collective fight against the menace of terrorism. In the backdrop of Paris attacks and Pathankot terror strike, both the statesman took came clear with an objective to combat extremism.

PM Modi in Chandigarh on Hollandes arrival said the day when Paris was hit by terror attacks, I had decided that the guest at the R-Day parade must be from France."

While addressing the India-France Business Summit French President said "We have to take humanity further. We have to combat terrorism and have to work together in this regard, whether it is military equipment or cyber security, so that security can be enhanced... We have to provide security to the world together by working together in the field of defence."

PM Modi reiterating the commitment to fight terrorism together praised the way France responded to the deadly November 13 terror attacks in Paris.

"Terrorism is a challenge for entire humanity. France has shown that at a time when people were being killed, the country did not shake from the path of development. President Hollande is correct that terrorism is a challenge, just like global warming. India and France are two countries who have a deep faith in humanity and we are committed to wipe out terrorism and India is completely with you (France) in this regard," Modi said at the summit.

Both the countries are also eyeing to seal a deal of 36 Rafale jets. The announcement for the Rs 60,000-crore deal was made by Modi last April during his visit to France but it is yet to be finalized. Hollande will be the chief guest on Republic Day.

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Chandigarh:

Taking forward the memorandum of understanding signed in July, Mahindra Defence and Airbus Helicopters today inked a pact to form a joint venture to produce military helicopters in India.

The statement of intent was signed today by representatives of both companies in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande.

We have made significant progress in setting up the joint venture and together the companies are creating a world-class advanced helicopter production facility in India, Mahindra and Mahindra Group President for Aerospace and Defence S P Shukla said in statement.

Mahindra Defence and Airbus Helicopters have already stared working on steps to produce helicopter parts locally and are defining additional work packages to be industrialised in India.

Simultaneously, both sides are evaluating potential industrial sites and are screening the existing local supply chain while moving ahead with the setting up of the JV.

Through this partnership, we target building several of our globally leading helicopter models in India. This will lead to the transfer of state-of-the-art technologies, development of manufacturing activities and creation of high-skilled jobs in India, said Airbus Helicopters President and CEO Guillaume Faury.

The companies are proposing to set up a final assembly line in India, develop tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers and make extensive transfer of technology, with the intent to ultimately achieve 50 per cent indigenous content.

Mahindra Defence and Airbus Helicopters have agreed on a blueprint that can put India on the world map for military helicopter manufacturing, President of Airbus Group India Pierre de Bausset said. The JV formation will be subject to customary regulatory approvals.

The helicopters we are proposing are of proven designs. We are laying the groundwork with the objective to ramp up quickly, Mahindra Defence Naval Systems CEO Devendra Bhatnagar said.

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New Delhi :

French President Francois Hollande today made common cause with India on the issue of fighting terrorism, underlining that the purpose of his visit was to reinforce and strengthen the cooperation between the two countries to tackle the menace.

Hollande, who is on a three-day visit to India, praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for playing an important role in Paris COP21 and said that the two countries are going to follow up on all decisions on the climate change front as well as areas of economic cooperation.

The French President, who will be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations here tomorrow, made the remarks at Rashtrapati Bhawan where he was accorded a ceremonial welcome in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee and Modi.

There are all kinds of threats that are hovering around countries such as India and France and one of the main aims behind my visit is to reinforce and strengthen the cooperation against terrorism between our two countries, Hollande, who was flanked by Mukherjee, said.

Once again it underlines our shared values that we aim to protect and also represent across the world. We are going to follow up on all the decisions that were taken at the COP21 as far as action against climate change is concerned but in addition to that we will be further strengthening our economic relations in all areas from agriculture to space.

These are areas which are of interest and there is immense cooperation between our two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi played a very important role in the success of COP21, Hollande said.

The French President also paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi by placing a wreath at the memorial of the Father of the Nation at Rajghat this morning.

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Bangkok:

Thailand today said the plane wreckage found on the countrys southern coast will be examined to see if it is from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared mysteriously in 2014 with 239 people, including five Indians on board.

The metal wreckage, covered in barnacles and measuring two metres wide and three metres long, is suspected to be part of a plane, was washed ashore yesterday on the southeast coast to Bangkok, triggering speculation it could be from the missing plane.

Police official Paijit Pongkaew told Malaysian state-owned Bernama news agency that the suspected wreckage would be brought to the Pak Phanang district police station for the experts from the aviation sector and the countrys air force to inspect it.

We are in the process of contacting the relevant authorities, especially from the aviation sector and also the air force, to enable them to better inspect the suspected wreckage of the plane, he said.

Meanwhile, Malaysias Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai appealed to the media not to speculate on the plane wreckage, as it would put more undue pressure on the families and relatives of the missing plane passengers.

At present there is no official word on whether the wreckage is from MH370, but the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has been instructed to check with their Thai counterparts, he said.

Experts online commented that the chunk of metal was not immediately identifiable as a piece of Boeing 777-200ER, the type of passenger jet that went missing.

Yesterday, local villagers living off the coast of Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand, had reported the discovery of a large metal object, suspected to be part of a plane.

Investigators believe MH370 ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, sparking one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.

In July 2015, a two-metre-long flaperon wing part washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and was confirmed to be from the flight, marking the first concrete evidence that it crashed.

Nothing has been found since, despite more than 80,000 square kilometres of the seafloor being searched, based on satellite analysis of the jets likely trajectory after it diverted from its flight path.

Speculation on the cause of the planes disappearance has focused primarily on a possible mechanical or structural failure, a hijacking or terror plot, or rogue pilot action.

The MH370 plane vanished on March 8, 2014 while on a regular flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. There were five Indians on the plane.

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Kolkata:

Amidst the debate over rising intolerance in the country, celebrated author Ruskin Bond today said the world has always been full of intolerance.

The world has always been a world full of intolerance. So all I can say is that if you are tolerant towards others they will be tolerant towards you, Bond said while interacting with readers at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet here.

He said, Just as intolerance breeds intolerance, tolerance also breeds tolerance.

Bond was asked to comment by a reader on how books on children should have much needed values like tolerance.

If its a work of fiction, it has to be imaginative. You can always weave into your stories the message you want to give to the world, but dont make it too obvious, the 81-year-old said.

Bond, who has penned over 500 short stories, essays and novels, has already refused to join the Award Wapasi campaign and return his Sahitya Akademi Award to protest against the alleged rising intolerance in the country.

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New York:

Parents, take note! Night-time texting habits of teenagers may be to blame for their falling grades and increased yawning in school, a new study has found.

Researchers from Rutgers University in US distributed survey to three New Jersey high schools and evaluated the 1,537 responses contrasting grades, sexes, messaging duration and whether the texting occurred before or after lights out.

They found that students who turned off their devices or who messaged for less than 30 minutes after lights out performed significantly better in school than those who messaged for more than 30 minutes after lights out.

Students who texted longer in the dark also slept fewer hours and were sleepier during the day than those who stopped messaging when they went to bed. Texting before lights out did not affect academic performance, the study found.

Students tend to go to sleep late and get up late. When we go against that natural rhythm, students become less efficient, said Xue Ming from Rutgers University.

Although females reported more messaging overall and more daytime sleepiness, they had better academic performance than males.

I attribute this to the fact that the girls texted primarily before turning off the light, Ming said. The effects of blue light emitted from smartphones and tablets are intensified when viewed in a dark room, she said.

This short wavelength light can have a strong impact on daytime sleepiness symptoms since it can delay melatonin release, making it more difficult to fall asleep - even when seen through closed eyelids, she said.

When we turn the lights off, it should be to make a gradual transition from wakefulness to sleep. If a person keeps getting text messages with alerts and light emission, that also can disrupt his circadian rhythm, Ming said.

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is the period during sleep most important to learning, memory consolidation and social adjustment in adolescents. When falling asleep is delayed but rising time is not, REM sleep will be cut short, which can affect learning and memory, she said. The findings were published in the Journal of Child Neurology.
New Delhi:

After the recommendations of the union cabinet, Presidents rule has been imposed in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The Union Cabinet on Sunday recommended imposition of Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, which is facing a political turmoil.

Arunachal Pradesh was rocked by a political crisis on December 16 last year as 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 of BJP and two independents to impeach Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue, in a move branded as illegal and unconstitutional by the Speaker.

Further inputs are awaited.

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Bengaluru:

Congress leader M Mallikarjun Kharge today said that his party would raise the issue of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemulas suicide in Parliament, while its student wing NSUI has decided to hold a one-day hunger strike across all state capitals tomorrow.

Karge, the Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, visited the HCU campus today along with Telangana party unit leaders.

The Vice-Chancellor and the (NDA) government have killed the scholar and they have denied human rights, that is why we want to take this to Parliament and tell the entire country how injustice is being done in the HCU, Kharge said.

Definitely we will take this issue, but at the same time we will formulate strategy (on this issue) for the session, because we have to consult with other political parties also. This is not only in the interest of this university, but in the interest of entire Dalit community and also in the interest of the country, he said.

The Lok Sabha MP from Karnataka said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi always gives emotional and attractive speeches according to the situation.

Modi is not practical and does not want to look towards the poor people, he said.

Meanwhile, demanding removal of HCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile and Rs 50 lakh compensation to Vemulas deceaseds family, a fresh batch of seven students resumed the indefinite hunger strike today.

Earlier, NSUI national president Roji M John, who visited the agitating students on the campus, said the organisation would hold one-day hunger strike in all the state capitals tomorrow in support of the ongoing agitation of the HCU students.

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Mumbai:

Going by her onscreen persona Sunny Leone comes across as a bold and outgoing woman in real life but the actress says she is a shy person.

When I am at an event or at a function or award show I get really shy. I am sure it is hard for people to believe that I am shy in real life. Sunny in real life is not outgoing always as people see on television, Sunny told PTI.

I feel like saying hi, Hello but I get shy... People might think I am pretentious, snobby but that is not the case. I am shy and I have always been like this whole my life. I have never been a party like kid, she said.

When the 34-year-old actress was new to the Hindi film industry, it was not that receptive towards her. But now things have changed as A-list celebs are responding to her messages on social media platform.

I dont know about acceptance. I think they have accepted me that she is not going anywhere. What I have noticed is that I tweet and A-list celebrity responds, she said.

What has happened in the last six months is that people have either followed me or replied to me on social networking platforms which was not the case before, she added. Sunny would be seen next in adult comedy Mastizaade alongside Tusshar Kapoor and Vir Das. The film is scheduled to release on January 29.

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New Delhi :

Seeking to address concerns of investors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that the controversial Retrospective taxation is a thing of the past and this chapter will never be opened again as his government was putting in place a predictable tax regime.

He also announced that France would immediately start investing USD 1 billion in India annually which will be scaled up later. The two sides also signed 16 MoUs, including one for manufacture of helicopters in India.

Addressing business leaders of the two countries here in presence of French President Francois Hollande, Modi said his government wants to ensure that foreign investors are clear about tax systems that will prevail in India over the next 15 years.

I am for stable governance and predictable taxation system. The government is taking various steps to ensure this stability. This government is known for stable and predictable tax regime, he said.

In this context he referred to the Retrospective tax imposed in 2012 through amendments in the Income Tax Act, a step which had led to an outcry and anxiety among the investors, particularly the foreign ones.

Retrospective tax is a matter of past. That chapter will not be opened again. We are ensuring that neither this government nor the future governments can open this chapter, Modi told the India-France Business Summit.

Whosoever makes investment in the country should know about the taxation system in the country over the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, he said.

The amendments in the I-T Act were brought to undo the Supreme Court judgement on British telecom major Vodafones tax liability case which was to the tune of Rs 11,000 crore.

Hollande, who began his three-day India visit from here today, is accompanied by a large delegation of CEOs.

Modi, who also attended the bilateral CEOs forum along with Hollande, said the French President informed him that his country will immediately invest over USD 1 billion annually in India and scale up the amount later.

Hollande said France has full trust on growth of Indian economy and the two countries can work in areas like solar energy, technology transfer, transport, roads, space industry, health, agro, and nuclear energy.

He said the agreements signed should be implemented and turned into reality.

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New Delhi :

Twitter is losing at least three top executives, in a major shakeup at the social network, reports have said.

Those departing the company include Alex Roetter, the head of engineering, product chief Kevin Weil, and Katie Stanton, the head of media, the Wall Street Journal and tech news website Re/code reported yesterday citing unnamed sources.

This represents a third of the executive team listed on the Twitter site next to chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

The Journal reported that Twitter planned to bring two new board members on board as early as this coming week, at least one of whom it said was a high-profile executive in the media industry.

The newspaper reported that as a condition of returning as chief executive last year, Dorsey had told Twitter that all board members must eventually by replaced.

The panel includes fellow co-founder Evan Williams, one of the largest individual owners of company stock, according to the Journal.

Twitter declined to respond to an AFP request for comment.

The social network is currently going through a rough patch amid persistent concerns over its growth prospects.

Twitter stock hit a new record low several days ago and the number of users is only increasing slowly. At the end of September, it had 320 million active usersjust four million more than three months earlier.
New Delhi:

The governments move to recommend Presidents rule in Arunachal Pradesh was termed as unconstitutional by the opposition.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi called it an effort to trample the democracy.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal cited the recommendation as against the Constitution and murder of Constitution on the eve of Republic Day.

Constitution doesnt allow you to suspend an elected government and enforce the Presidents rule in any state, the Aam Aadmi Party chief said. It is against the Constitution, he added.

Another AAP leader, Ashutosh tweeted, Centre should have waited for courts to decide on Arunachal.

Arunachal Pradesh has been placed under Presidents Rule after President Pranab Mukherjee signed the order on Sunday night.

On Sunday the Union cabinet recommended Presidents rule in crisis-hit Arunachal Pradesh , a move that triggered a fresh slugfest with the Congress which ruled the northeastern state calling the decision an act of political intolerance.

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New Delhi:

A bomb threat call today forced Jet Airways to ground its Kathmandu-bound flight carrying 104 passengers just before it was to take off from the IGI Airport here.

Officials said the plane has been taken to the isolation bay at the IGIA and all passengers de-boarded for a through anti-sabotage check.

The call was received at the airport terminal just before the scheduled departure time of the flight 9W260 at 1325 hours, they said.

The Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) has been activated, they said, and a final clearance for the flight is awaited.

There were 104 passengers and seven crew members on the flight.

Security is at an all-time high in view of the Republic Day celebrations tomorrow.

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New Delhi:

India and France today inked an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) on the sale of 36 French fighter jets, Rafale, but were unable to sign the final deal due to some financial aspects, which are expected to be sorted out in couple of days.



This agreement was among the 14 pacts signed between the two countries after extensive talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande which focused ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.



...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible, Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.



Terming the signing of the IGA as a decisive step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in couple of days.



The two countries are in negotiations for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away conditions since the announcement for the deal was made by Modi in April during his visit to France.



However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price which is estimated to be about Rs 60,000 crore. A high-level team from France is here and carrying out last minute negotiations.



Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.



From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.



We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support, Modi said.



The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

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Ankara:

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini today called for an immediate ceasefire in Turkeys Kurdish-dominated region where the Turkish army is waging a relentless campaign against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.



We call for an immediate ceasefire in the southeast and strongly condemn all kinds of terrorism, Mogherini told a joint press conference with Turkish ministers in Ankara.



We are ready to contribute with regards to the Kurdish peace process. We have an imminent interest on that because it can affect the security in the region, and in the broader sense, the EU, added European Union Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn.



After a more than two-year ceasefire, fighting resumed last summer between Turkish security forces and the PKK, dashing hopes of ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.



But Turkeys EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir vowed no let-up in the campaign against the PKK, which has since staged a string of attacks against security forces.



As a sovereign state, Turkey will continue its struggle against all terrorist organisations, including the PKK, which are threatening its national security, he said.



In doing so, we try to protect the rights of our citizens.



Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkeys urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks enforced curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians.



Prosecutors have launched a vast investigation into over 1,200 academics for engaging in terrorist propaganda by signing a petition urging Ankara to halt its deliberate massacres in the Kurdish-majority region.

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New Delhi:

President Pranab Mukherjee today said the country should guard itself against forces of violence, intolerance and unreason.



In remarks that come against the backdrop of debate on intolerance in the country, he said reverence for the past is one of the essential ingredients of nationalism.



Our finest inheritance, the institutions of democracy, ensure to all citizens justice, equality, and gender and economic equity.



When grim instances of violence hit at these established values which are at the core of our nationhood, it is time to take note. We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason, he said in his address to the nation on the eve of 67th Republic Day.



The President said there will be occasional doubters and baiters who will continue to complain, to demand, to rebel.



This too is a virtue of democracy. But let us also applaud what our democracy has achieved. With investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, health, education, science and technology, we are positioning ourselves well for achieving a higher growth rate which will in the next ten to fifteen years help us eliminate poverty, he said.



The President said January 26, 1950, when the Republic was born and Constitution was adopted, it saw the culmination of heroic struggle of an extraordinary generation of leaders who overcame colonialism to establish the worlds largest democracy.



They pulled together Indias amazing diversity to build national unity, which has brought us so far. The enduring democratic institutions they established have given us the gift of continuity on the path of progress, he said.

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Kolkata:

Fresh from his re-election, BJP President Amit Shah today accused the Mamata Banerjee government of practicing vote bank politics and also alleged it had turned West Bengal into a safe haven for anti-national elements and fake currency racket.



Shah while making a reference to the multi-crore Saradha and Rose valley chit fund scams also said that chit fund was the only industry that is flourishing in West Bengal.



The ruling Trinamool Congress hit back saying BJP will not be able to see any development in the state as they themselves are losing each and every election since last year.



TMCs vote bank politics has turned Bengal into a hub for anti-national elements. Regular bomb blasts have proved how anti-national elements and fake currency rackets have turned it into a safe haven. Infiltration is encouraged for the sake of vote bank politics, Shah said virtually sounding the bugle for the state Assembly poll due a few months away.



Like union Home minister Rajnath Singh, he too attacked the TMC government on the issue of violence in Malda and alleged It was mishandled by the TMC government.



The entire country is worried about Malda violence but the Chief Minister is saying it is a result of scuffle between BSF and locals. It is not true. The morale of police has been brought down. The police station was attacked and police vehicles were burnt.



I want to ask are you chief minister of the entire state or only for those goons? Shah asked.



The BJP president did not spare the Banerjee government on the chit fund issue and said The 17 lakh people who have been duped by Saradha and Rose valley chit funds want to know what happened to the money that was siphoned off. In Bengal all industries are closed and only one industry is flourishing that is chit fund, he said.



The people may know her as CM, but the chit fund owners know her as a great painter, whose paintings were bought for crores (by them).



The people are not fools didi (Mamata), they know very well that chit funds are running in connivance with TMC, he said.



Urging the people to give BJP a chance in the coming Assembly poll, Shah said, We will take Bengal on the path of development. We dont practice vote bank politics.



Infiltration from Bangladesh would be checked if BJP is voted to power in Bengal, he added.



Reacting to Shahs comment, TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said he should first look into various corruption charges agaisnt the BJP government at the Centre.



We have taken action in the Chit Fund case and are looking into all chit funds since 1980, Chatterjee said.
Bengaluru:

Karnataka Cabinet today gave its approval to conduct global investors meet here next month with a budgetary outlay of Rs 40 crore, official sources said.



Invest Karnataka 2016, a three-day event, will begin here on February 3 where Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony.



Among industry leaders who have confirmed attendance at the meet are Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani, Anand Mahindra, Sajjan Jindal, Narayana Murthy, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Devi Prasad Shetty, Kris Gopalkrishnan, Gautam Adani and Kumar Mangalam Birla.



Invest Karnataka website lists out Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Venkaiah Naidu, Suresh Prabhu and also Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi among the dignitaries attending the investors meet.



Organisers had earlier said that partner countries that have confirmed their participation in the summit include France, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, the UK, Italy and Germany.



Karnataka will be showcasing 145 projects to investors during the event.



The government has also approved Rs 110 crore to provide underground drainage system in 110 villages that come under the limits of city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), officials said.



The Cabinet also agreed to release 120 life convicts who have completed 14 years of imprisonment without remission and 255 convicts who have completed 14 years imprisonment with remission on account of Republic Day for their good conduct, officials said.



These convicts are lodged at jails in seven different districts of the state, out of whom 13 are women, they said.
The Nigeria Army has said that the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), Gen. Tukur Buratai will not be distracted by evil machinations, which w...

The Nigeria Army has said that the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), Gen. Tukur Buratai will not be distracted by evil machinations, which will surely fall back on the bearers.In the light of the ongoing probe into the abuse of the $2.1 billion meant for procurement of arms, which has seen the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, indicting some eminent Nigerians, a group, Save the Nation Movement (STNM), had called for the probe of Buratai, saying he was the Director of Procurement at the Defence Headquarters (DHQ), between 2012 to 2015.Responding however to the call for the EFCC to probe Buratai, Army spokesman, Sani Usman, in a statement described the allegation as mischief.He referred to STNM which made the claim, as a faceless group and called on the public to disregard the message being passed across.Usman said Buratai has never been involved in any questionable act all through his military career.The statement read: The Nigerian army has noted with dismay the attempt to rubbish the hard earned name and reputation of the chief of army staff, Lieutenant General and the Nigerian army by a faceless group that called itself Save the Nation Movement (STNM).In a release signed by Steven Chilaka, its National Secretary on Sunday, they wanted the chief of army staff to be included among those indicted in the ongoing probe of abuse of funds meant for the procurement of arms simply because he was the director of procurement at the defence headquarters (DHQ).Unfortunately, the movement could not get their facts right as has always been the case with people with dubious intents.Contrary to their mischief, it should be noted that General Buratai was director of procurement at defence headquarters from March 2014 to May 2015, not from 2012 to 2015 as they wished to mislead the public.Furthermore, there is the need to educate the ignorant group that, defence procurement in Nigeria is decentralised each service is responsible for its procurement.It is advisable for the group to look elsewhere if they want to attack the chief of army staff. For the avoidance of doubt, the chief of army staff has never been involved in any questionable act throughout his career as military officer let alone when he was at the DHQ.The statement described Buratai as a role model for officers, adding that he has been able to enforce discipline in the army.As a matter of fact, the chief of army staff has always been a reference point in exemplary conduct, probity and integrity, the statement read.It is on record that he voluntarily declared his assets both as commander MNJTF and as chief of army staff. In addition, he has directed all Nigerian army officers to do so. One wonders what the faceless groups motive is and why they are in a hurry to rubbish the good name of the chief army staff and the Nigerian army, when there is a presidential panel already working selflessly.Why is the group trying to jump the gun? Let these mischievous elements which Steven Chilaka represents, allow the panel to discharge its duties dispassionately as it is doing.It is advisable also that the faceless group should get their facts right and not just merely speculate or disturb us with their wishful thinking. They should further understand that whatever mischievous intentions they have against the chief of army staff and indeed, the Nigerian army, both would not be deterred, we shall remain focused and never to be distracted.Consequently, the public is please requested to disregard the so called movements evil machinations which would surely fall back on them.
Justice James Tsoho of a Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed Friday for ruling on a bail application filed by leader of the Indigenous ...

Justice James Tsoho of a Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed Friday for ruling on a bail application filed by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra and founder of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, and two others with respect to the charges of treason preferred against him by the Federal Government.Justice Tsoho adjourned for ruling after both the defence and the prosecution made counter submissions on the bail application on Monday.The judge had on January 20 shortly after Kanu was arraigned along with two others  Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi  ordered the Department of State Service to release the accused persons for remand in Kuje Prison.Kanu was until January 20 in the custody of the DSS since he was arrested in a Lagos hotel on October 14, 2015 with respect to his agitation and radio broadcast for the secession of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria.
The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Chief Olu Falae, has said the anti-corruption campaign by the President Muhammadu ...

The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Chief Olu Falae, has said the anti-corruption campaign by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government is beginning to look selective.Falae, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was recently named as one of the beneficiaries of the $2.1bn meant for arms procurement, which was allegedly diverted by former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki.He has, however, repeatedly denied having any contact with Dasuki since the 80s, insisting that he had no case to answer.Asked to assess the ongoing anti-corruption campaign, he told newsmen, It is getting out of hand. They know that there is no charge they can bring against me, that is why smear campaign is used as a substitute so that over time people will say I am a bad man.I read some articles in the paper that talked about the increasingly controversial anti-graft war. It is truly becoming controversial because it is no longer reasonable; it is beginning to look selective. How could you link me with Dasuki? The person I have not seen for more than 20 years. The man I had no dealing with whatsoever.He explained that while it was important for the country to fight corruption, the current administration ought to consider a different approach to the campaign, adding that the current approach was similar to what happened in 1985 when Buhari was the Head of State.He said, There are two models to clean up a society: the sampling model and the total revolution, like the French Revolution. The one that might be suitable for our situation is for the government to take cases that are unambiguous and take such people as an example; take the money from them and send them to jail as examples to the system. Then, put that behind you and go ahead with the development of the society.But if you take all the time looking for every criminal to send to jail, that will be an endless journey. At the beginning, the people will hail you because they like to see big men fall, but as more and more people are destroyed, then, more and more members of the general population will be affected.For some, their brothers or fathers or friends have lost their jobs and at the end of the day, the tide will turn and people will turn against that government.To avoid such a situation, he said the best thing to do was to focus on some people who had clear cases to answer and leave security operatives to take care of the rest.On this occasion, my advice will be those people who are the criminals in this system, whose crimes are unambiguous and documented, take them, apply the law, confiscate the loot they have taken, try them, and let them go to prison, he said.Do that for a couple of months and leave the rest for the police to do their jobs in a normal way. This omnibus anti-graft campaign phase would have been over but the police would continue to monitor the system and catch thieves and criminals. Then the government would focus on the development of the society.Falae, who admitted that his party collected N100m from the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Partys Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih, of the Peoples Democratic Party,insisted that neither the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission nor any individual has asked him to refund the money.He added that it was not the SDPs place to investigate where the PDP got money from, saying, It is not our duty  either legal or moral duty  to begin to find out where PDP was finding money to pursue its campaign.We took no money from Dasuki; the money given was for the party, not for me. It was delivered to the party and the party has acknowledged receipt in full in a press conference.
The scheduled judgment in a suit filed against the Attorney General of the Federation by a former Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Odua...

The scheduled judgment in a suit filed against the Attorney General of the Federation by a former Minister of Aviation, Mrs. Stella Oduah, could not be delivered on Monday owing to the transfer of the presiding judge, Justice Okon Abang, from Lagos to the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court.Justice Abang, who was moved from Lagos to Abuja early this month, had on December 1, 2015 fixed Monday for judgment in the case after taking arguments from all the parties in the suit.Erstwhile registrars to the judge, however, told our correspondent on Monday that Justice Abang would return to Lagos on February 2, 2016 to deliver the judgment.In the suit, which she filed in July last year, Oduah is praying the court to bar the Federal Government from investigating her over two armoured BMW cars reportedly procured at N255m in 2013 by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority during her tenure as Aviation Minister.Justice Mohammed Yunusa of the same court, who has now been moved to Enugu, had on August 26, 2015 made an order of interim injunction barring the defendants from taking any action against Oduah pending the determination of the suit.Apart from the AGF, also joined as respondents in the suit are the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission; and the Inspector General of Police.Oduah alleged that the ruling All Progressives Congress government had perfected plans to use the EFCC, ICPC, the AGF and the police to persecute and humiliate her under the guise of fighting an anti-graft war.She also alleged that the APC government had perfected plans to prosecute prominent members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, including herself, on trumped-up charges in a Lagos State government-controlled court.She urged the court to stop the defendants from being used against her by the Federal Government.But the AGF and the Inspector General of Police, in their preliminary objection to the suit, described Oduahs suit as hypothetical, saying she had not established any cause of action against them, as she did not prove that she had been invited, arrested or detained by the AGF and the IGP.Their lawyer, Mr. T.A. Gazali, also challenged the courts jurisdiction on the grounds that the alleged violation of Oduahs right did not take place in Lagos.From the whole of the applicants averments, there is nowhere she mentioned that her right was or is being breached by the respondents within the territorial space called Lagos, Gazali argued.On its own part, the EFCC, through its counsel, Mr. G.K. Latana, also described Oduahs suit as baseless and speculative, urging the court to dismiss it.But Oduahs lawyer, Mr. Ajibola Oluyede, urged the court to discountenance the defendants preliminary objections, insisting that the respondents cannot choose for the applicant where to file her application if she has a choice.
The Economic and Financial Crimes has again arraigned a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency...

The Economic and Financial Crimes has again arraigned a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Patrick Akpobolokemi, on 13 counts of alleged N754.7m theft.Akpobolokemi was arraigned alongside six others on Monday before Justice Raliat Adebiyi of a Lagos State High Court in Igbosere.The fresh charge marked LD/2181C/15 bordering on stealing and forgery was the fifth that the EFCC would be filing against Akpobolokemi between December 3, 2015 and Monday.Akpobolokemi had first been arraigned alongside nine others on 30 counts of alleged N3.4bn fraud before Justice Saliu Saidu of a Federal High Court in Lagos on December 3, 2015.He was again arraigned on December 4, 2015 along with five others on 22 counts of alleged N2.6bn fraud before Justice Ibrahim Buba of also of the same court.There is a pending 40 counts of alleged N34bn fraud against him before Justice Buba, where he is expected to take his plea on February 8, alongside a former Niger Delta militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo and eight others.Only on last Friday, the EFCC filed another 22 counts of alleged N22.7bn fraud against Akpobolokemi, Tompolo and 11 others.In the new 13 counts before Justice Adebiyi, Akpobolokemi was charged alongside six others.His co-accused, with whom he was arraigned on Monday, are Ezekiel Agaba, Ekene Nwakuche, Governor Juan, Vincent Udoye, Adegboyega Olopoenia and Gama Marine Nigeria Limited.Among other things, the EFCC alleged that the accused fraudulently converted to their personal use a sum of N346,844,680 released to them by NIMASA for the implementation of Voluntary International Maritime Organisation Member State Audit Scheme (VIMSAS).
Witness: Gangbe Afrobeatsfollows the exuberant Gangbe Brass Band as they set off on a pilgrimage from their homes in Benin to perform wi...

Witness: Gangbe Afrobeatsfollows the exuberant Gangbe Brass Band as they set off on a pilgrimage from their homes in Benin to perform with Femi Kuti at The Shrine in Lagos, Nigeria. The famous club is a symbol of Afrobeat, pioneered in the 1970s by Femis father, the late and legendary Fela Kuti.Gangbe Brass Band have been touring the world for 15 years and have released four albums, but playing at The Shrine is the highlight for them. Normally, African bandsseek recognition in Europe, says one of the band members. But in our case, it's the complete opposite. The Gangbe Brass Band's greatestfeat is to play in Nigeria. In the home of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Femi Kuti, and Seun Kuti. It's moments like this, when we play at The Shrine, a place of worship, a mystical place, that is the greatest recognition for us.Arnaud Roberts documentary had its world premiere in competition at Visions Du Reel, who called it an exciting journey in a contemporary Africa that re-invents itself with each piece of genius-like improvisation.Witness: Gangbe Afrobeats screens on Al Jazeera on 27 January 2016 at 2100WAT/2000GMT, with additional screenings on 28 January at 1300WAT, 29 January at 0200WAT, and 30 January at 0700WAT.
Former President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, will on Wednesday, hold a world press conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The press conferen...

Former President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, will on Wednesday, hold a world press conference in Geneva, Switzerland.The press conference, which holds at 3pm local time, is part of activities lined up by the Circle of Diplomats (Circle Diplomatique), Geneva in honour of Jonathan, which would be concluded with a dinner same day.According to a statement by Guy Mettan, Executive Director, the Geneva Press Club, Jonathan will address two most crucial topics in Nigeria and West Africa at the press briefing.Mettan said the former Nigerian president will talk about security and civil peace in Nigeria and West Africa, on one hand, as well as improvement of health and education of children, on the other.He said accredited United Nations correspondents and Swiss journalists are expected at the press conference, which will most likely see Jonathan talking about Boko Haram activities in Nigeria and the fight against insurgency.The Circle of Diplomats will also host a dinner in honour of Jonathan on Wednesday night at the Intercontinental Hotel, Geneva.Since leaving office on May 29, 2015, Jonathan has engaged in peace missions and election monitoring on behalf of the United Nations. He has also received global awards and acclaim for peacefully relinquishing power after losing the presidential election last year.Jonathan had conceded defeated to President Muhammadu Buhari last year even before the final results of the 2015 Nigerian presidential election was announced.
A suspected drug addict arrested by the Lagos State Command of the Rapid Response Squad, RRS, has disclosed that he made over N300,000 mon...

File Photo: Corporate beggar in Lagos

A suspected drug addict arrested by the Lagos State Command of the Rapid Response Squad, RRS, has disclosed that he made over N300,000 monthly from begging in Ikeja.Kehinde Olatubosun, 56, from Ibadan, Oyo State, was arrested along with 18 other drug addicts at a joint in Ipodo, Ikeja.Nigerian-PoliceA decoy team of RRS officers, last Friday, traced a stolen phone to the joint, leading to the arrest of 17 suspects: a mobile phone thief, three drug peddlers and 13 drug addicts.Olatubosun said he made over N10,000 daily begging at Mobolaji Bank Anthony Roundabout, beside Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Toyin Street and Opebi, all in Ikeja.He said: Every day, I make over N10,000 doing corporate begging. All days of the week, I am always in Mobolaji Bank Anthony Roundabout, Toyin Street Roundabout and Opebi.At times, I collaborate with other beggars. Whatever we make, we share. But I get a larger share.What I do is that I get LASUTH drug prescription papers from their waste bin. With this in my hand, I convince motorists, passengers and passers-by that I have a relative who is in need of money to buy drugs and I show them the prescription papers.Germany deporteeThis is what I have been doing since I was deported from Germany in 2004. Before the deportation, I was working as Electrical Engineer in Bauhusa, Cologne, Germany. I was in Germany for 12 years before I was deported.I was in possession of drugs when I was arrested in Germany, so they deported me. I have four children. Two are in Germany with my wife. One is in Texas in the United States and another in Nigeria. Unfortunately, all the money I make from this begging goes into drugs.I am always there, seven days a week. I make more money on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I make more than N10,000 on weekends.As I speak with you, I am not on drugs, but I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms. That is the effect of not taking drugs for some time. I was at Ipodo drug joint, Ikeja, when I was arrested. I was on drugs.I have never been arrested for any offence before. I am praying that RRS releases me. I promise I will not go back to drugs again. Where I live presently was given to me by my in-law.Drugs cost me my familyAJAYIMeanwhile, another drug addict, who was arrested at the same drug joint with Olatunbosun and several others, has said that drug addiction destroyed his life. Dada Ajayi, 48, noted that his hopeless condition was as a result of his drug addiction.Ajayi emphasized that for more than 17 years he was hooked on drug, adding I am trying to get over it now. Drugs have been the cause of my stagnation in life. I frequent that joint because I have nowhere to go. I have lived the better part of my life consuming drugs.As I speak with you, the remains of my wife is in Ikeja mortuary. She was taken to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja. I was asked to bring N150,000 for surgery but I did not have N50,000 on me then. She died in the process.Right now, I have lost my family because of my drug addiction. I do not know where to start my life again. I cannot stop going to that drug joint because it is the only place where I get consolation.It is the only place I am at peace with myself. If anybody wants to help us, they should arrest the drug barons or dealers. Arresting us will not solve drug problem because without the sellers there will not be the takers.When you arrest the dealers, I mean the merchants, then you have cut the supply and thus saved us from getting drugs. Without that, we will always find our way there whenever we are released.
Inmates in one of Brazils roughest prisons used explosives to destroy a wall and escape en masse into surrounding streets, prompting a ...

Inmates in one of Brazils roughest prisons used explosives to destroy a wall and escape en masse into surrounding streets, prompting a frantic manhunt, the AFP reported.Media footage of the brazen breakout on Saturday in the northeastern city of Recife showed the blast ripping a hole in the main wall around the Frei Damiao de Bozanno facility.After a cloud of dust and debris clears, a stream of men dressed in ordinary clothing can be seen dashing into the narrow streets before police arrive on the scene.Pernambuco state justice authorities were quoted by Globo news site saying Sunday that 40 inmates escaped and that 36 had now been returned to custody, two killed, one hospitalized and one remained at large.It took hours for officials to give figures, with Brazilian media initially reporting that as many as 100 prisoners could have got out.One of those killed was shot after breaking into a local home, police said on Globo television. Footage showed the man lying in a pool of blood on the floor.This was the second mass breakout in the same area in a week. Fifty-three inmates fled Wednesday from the Professor Barreto Campelo prison, near Recife, and by Sunday only 13 of them had been recaptured, G1 news site reported.Escape attempts are frequent at Pernambuco prisons, the most overcrowded in Brazil. Facilities designed for 10,500 inmates maximum hold around 32,000 people, according to a 2015 study by Human Rights Watch.Many prisoners have to sleep on the floor and there are so few guards that officials turn day-to-day control over to selected inmates who are given keys to the prisons interior, the report said.AFP
Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Worldwide, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari not to cancel the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, Delt...





His Excellency,

Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR,

President and Commander in Chief,

Federal Republic of Nigeria,

Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.

Your Excellency Sir,

PROPOSED CANCELLATION OF MARITIME UNIVERSITY, OKERENKOKO, DELTA STATE

Your Excellency, we write to protest against the proposed cancellation of the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, Delta State as announced by the Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi while briefing the Senate Committee on Marine Transport about the activities of his Ministry on Tuesday, the 19th of January, 2016.

According to the Minister: We are not going ahead with the university project proposed by NIMASA because we have 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.

Mr. Amaechi is not finished yet, he went further to state: Who will attend the University? How many parent will allow their children to go to such place where it propose to site the University?

Mr. President, the reasons advanced by your Minister of Transportation are not only weak, mischievous and misleading, but also highly provocative and inciting. If there is any statement or action that has painted your administration in negative light in Nigeria, especially in the Niger Delta region, it is this statement.

Beyond the fact that the university would greatly contribute to the development of high class manpower in the maritime sector in the light of your administrations efforts to diversify the nations economy beyond oil; it would also go a long way to address the aged long marginalization suffered by the people of the Niger Delta Region. The university would no doubt open up the area where it is sited which is in the hinterland of the Niger Delta and help in positively impacting on the life of the people of the area concerned, especially the youths. We cannot be talking of addressing problems of militancy and other associated challenges in the Niger Delta region without giving the people education.

ijaw-udengs-eradiriThe Maritime University, Okerenkoko is part of the post amnesty development plan of the Niger Delta region. The reasons advanced by the Minister for wishing to cancel the university are not tenable. The fact that there are maritime institutes in Zaria and Oron should not be used as excuse to cancel the university at Okerenkoko. The existing institutes in Zaria and Oron and the university in Okerenkoko have their different roles to play in the development of the very rich but underdeveloped maritime sector in Nigeria. The institutes in Oron and Zaria are meant to train medium class manpower in the maritime sector while the Maritime University, Okerenkoko would train world class technical and managerial manpower.

This would obviously address the problems of capital flight in Nigeria where Nigerians are sent to universities in countries like Philippines, Romania, Egypt and other countries to train at great cost to the country. The existing institutes and university are expected to play complimentary roles in the development of the maritime sector. If this was not the case, then Polytechnics would not have being existing side by side with universities in Nigeria and most importantly, the Petroleum Training Institute, Efffurun, Delta State would no longer exist for the training of medium class manpower in the oil and gas sector with the establishment of the University of Petroleum Resources, Ugbomro, Delta State.

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARIMr. President, the most ridiculous reason advanced by the Minister is the assertion that parents would not send their children to school at Okerenkoko because of the terrain. This comment is not only ridiculous but also highly provocative and inciting. It would interest your Excellency to note that Okerenkoko Community, Gbaramatu Clan, Delta State is surrounded by several oil installations and platforms such as Egwa 1 Flow station owned by NPDC, Abiteye owned by Chevron, Makarava, Odidi 1 & 11 owned by NPDC, the Chevron Escravos Terminal and several other oil installations. And these oil installations and platforms have several oil workers including foreign expatriates who have been working for several years in that environment even during the period of hostilities in the Niger Delta region. The question is, if oil workers can go to this same environment to explore and exploit oil, why cant the same place play host to a university that would develop the people and environment?

Contrary to Mr. Amaechis assertion, the Okerenkoko environment is a natural location for a maritime university. It is ridiculous for the Minister to suggest that one of the Maritime institutes in Zaria be upgraded to a maritime university.

Is Mr. Rotimi Amaechi saying that the Niger Delta environment is only good for oil exploration and exploitation but not good enough for education and infrastructural development? Is Amaechi saying that the people in the creeks of the Niger Delta region unlike other Nigerians have no right to acquire education and live a decent life? Whose interest is Mr. Amaechi serving or promoting?

Mr. President, Mr. Amaechi is obviously not promoting the interest of your government! He has only succeeded in painting your government as an anti-Niger Delta administration. We of the IYC are shocked that a suggestion not to build a university in the hinterland of the Niger Delta is coming from Mr. Amaechi who is from the same region. We wish to also point out that if allegations of alleged corruption are one of the reasons for the decision, such issues be handled in accordance with the law. It should not be a reason for cancellation of a laudable project.

Mr. Amaechi also stated that the only thing on ground in the Maritime University, Okerenkoko is the feasibility studies and that no work has been done. This is obviously very far from the truth. Apart from the temporary site at Kurutie Community with completed structures, a lot of work has been done at the permanent site of the Maritime University at Okerenkoko.

We hereby attach pictures of work done so far (see pictures on right side of this page). Pictures do not lie and these facts are verifiable and we call on you to set up an independent team comprising of different stakeholders to verify these facts.

CONCLUSION

The tragedy of this nation has been facilitated and often repeated by politicians driven by sectional, ethnic and other primordial sentiments. The policies and decisions needed in the march to greatness have been sacrificed on the altar of personal, narcissistic and egoistic indulgence to the detriment of the greater good of the nation. We should realize that the elections are long over and it is now time for nation building.

Mr. President, we call on you to reject the proposed decision of the Ministry of Transportation to cancel the Maritime University, Okerenkoko. If it is decision that already has your blessing, we appeal for the reversion of the decision. It is not in the interest of the country and your administration. The decision would only provide justification for hostility in the Niger Delta region towards your administration.

Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Worldwide, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari not to cancel the Maritime University, Okerenkoko, Delta state.The Council disclosed this in an open letter to the president, arguing, that the cancellation will be a disservice to the people of Niger Delta. The letter was signed by its president, Udengs Eradiri and Spokesman, Eric Omare, Esq.,Read letter below:
Managing Director of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, Ahmed Kuru, has lamented that rich Nigerians who are indebted to the ...

Managing Director of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, Ahmed Kuru, has lamented that rich Nigerians who are indebted to the agency are still living big and fly around the globe in their own private jets.Kuru stated this while briefing the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions on efforts being made by AMCON to recover N5.4tn meant for corporate entities.Kuru, who led a delegation of the corporation to the senate, held an executive session with members of the committee. He told journalists after the closed session that President Muhammadu Buhari and the Senate had expressed their preparedness to ensure that the debts owed the agency were paid.According to him, the upper chamber assured AMCON management that it would use all legal means to recover the funds.He lamented the extravagant lifestyle of the debtors despite owing huge amount of money.He said, We have seen that most of the debtors in AMCON are big men that fly in private jets, live in big mansions. They have taken money and they are not paying back.The Senate is really disturbed and ready to do anything under the law to ensure that the N5.4tn that is outstanding obligation of AMCON is repaid the Corporation.He said after reading the body language of the President, some of the debtors are currently in talks with the Corporation to repay the debts.He said, The passion the Senate has shown to us is unprecedented because we showed to them in its raw form the challenge that we are having, particularly now that the economy is not doing very well.A situation where you have less than five percent, less than 300 people, accounting for more than 80 percent of the outstanding obligation of AMCON. That is very disturbing.
Ex-Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Emeka Ihedioha, has described the recent dismissal of over 3,000 workers by Gov...

Ex-Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Emeka Ihedioha, has described the recent dismissal of over 3,000 workers by Governor Rochas Okorocha, as most reckless, insensitive and completely lacking in economic sense.Chief Ihedioha, who reacted through his media aide, Mr. Chibuike Onyeukwu, equally condemned the scrapping of 19 government parastatals, agencies and departments.There is no doubt that the Nigerian economy is facing a downturn as a result of dwindling oil revenue but the solution is not arbitrary disengagement of workers and scrapping of key parastatals, such as the Hospital Management Board, Imo Water Corporation, Imo State Investment Promotion Agency, Imo State Library Board, Agricultural Development Programme and others, Ihedioha said.It was the considered opinion of the former Deputy Speaker that having anchored his election campaign mantra on job, industry, factory and employment, Imo people looked forward to more jobs, employment opportunities and improved working conditions instead of disengaging the already demoralized workers.He condemned Governor Okorochas penchant for sacking thousands of workers as the only alternative to addressing economic issues facing the state.Choosing to sack thousands of workers as the only viable option to tackling the states dwindled economic base is unfortunate, senseless, uncharitable and anachronistic, Chief Ihedioha said.
The acting National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, has said that some of the 55 Nigerians identified b...

The acting National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, has said that some of the 55 Nigerians identified by the Federal Government to have stolen N1.34 trillion are presently part of Muhammadu Buharis cabinet.Secondus, in an interview, however, accused the All Progressives Congress, APC-led administration of turning a blind eye to the misdeeds of its supporters and faulted the handcuffing of PDPs National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, during his recent court appearances.Secondus, who reiterated that PDP was not against Buharis anti-graft war, stressed that it must not be selective, adding that the government must adhere strictly to Rule of Law, adding that those involved, even if they are in the present government, must be brought to book. He said: This involves both APC and PDP. Those involved are still in the government of Muhammadu Buhari, serving as ministers, some holding ranking positions even in security agencies.He should bring them to book; we are not against his fight against corruption, but it should be holistic and there must be Rule of Law. Look at the handcuffs on PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh. It is wicked and vindictive. Nigerians should see what is happening in a democracy because Metuh is the spokesperson of opposition party.Now, no one can speak freely. We are operating under threat and a Police state; our families now live under threat and they are being asked questions at the airport.
The Federal Government has hailed the U.S. endorsement of its anti-corruption fight, calling it an incentive to continue with the battle...

The Federal Government has hailed the U.S. endorsement of its anti-corruption fight, calling it an incentive to continue with the battle that must be won for the Nigeria to achieve sustainable growth.Recently, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, at the World Economic Forum, WEF, Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, commended the President Muhammadu Buhari administration for its effort at combating corruption in Nigeria.Mr. Kerry related how money meant to buy arms for Nigerian soldiers to combat Boko Haram was stolen by public officials; and how the Buhari administration was making moves to prosecute such persons.On Sunday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, told media executives in Lagos that the acknowledgement of the effort by the government could not have come at a better time.The Federal Government is delighted that the anti-corruption war being led by President Muhammad Buhari has been acknowledged and applauded on a global stage.It is particularly gratifying that in that speech, Mr Kerry made the link between corruption and terrorism. We agree that corruption is indeed a radicaliser because it destroys faith in legitimate authority.Let me remind you, gentlemen, that radicalisation is a key causative factor of terrorism, the minister said.Mr. Mohammed said that he would soon kick-start a series of town hall meetings across the country to take the sensitization campaign, which he launched in Abuja last Monday, directly to Nigerians.The town hall meetings, he said, would be in addition to using the National Orientation Agency, NOA, and the relevant units of the Ministry of Information and Culture to reach every part of the country.We know that those who stole us dry are powerful. They have newspapers, radio and television stations and an army of supporters to continuously deride the governments war against corruption.But we are undaunted and will not relent until corruption is also decimated, the minister said.Mr. Mohammed said that corruption was responsible for the endemic poverty in the country today, noting that whereas Nigerias national budget has increased from just over N900 billion in 1999 to over N6 trillion in 2016, poverty has also increased almost by the same proportion.The reason is not far-fetched: Appropriated funds have mostly ended up in the pockets of a few looters, he said. When the money meant to construct roads is looted, the end result is that the roads are not built and the people suffer and even die in avoidable road accidents.When the money meant to provide electricity is looted, we all are perpetually sentenced to darkness. When the money meant for healthcare is pocketed by a few, we are unable to reduce maternal and infant mortality. These are the costs of corruption, he said.According to Mr. Mohammed, whereas the sum of N51.829 billion was appropriated for 1,278 projects in the Zonal Intervention Projects for 2015, a total of 21 individuals and companies benefited from the Dasukigate to the tune of N54.659 billion.The implication is that the amount received by 21 individuals and companies is more than the 2015 Zonal Intervention Project budget by N2.829 billion! Furthermore, the value of what the beneficiaries of Dasukigate contributed to development is zero, compared to how the lives of Nigerians would have been transformed, poverty reduced and livelihoods improved, by the Zonal Intervention Projects which  as we have shown  would have cost N2.829 billion less than Dasukigate, the Minister said.He said that contrary to what was being said in certain circles that the government was dwelling too much on the war against corruption to the detriment of other areas of governance enough time could not be devoted to the fight.The situation is very grim indeed, as far as corruption is concerned. That is why the Federal Government is embarking on this sensitization Campaign.Our approach  which is to count the cost of corruption  is not to vilify anyone but to use facts and figures to give Nigerians a sense of what corruption has done to their lives, the minister said.(NAN)
About two weeks after Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court, Lagos, issued a bench warrant for the arrest of former Niger Delta...

About two weeks after Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court, Lagos, issued a bench warrant for the arrest of former Niger Delta militant, Government Ekpemupolo (a.k.a Tompolo), the police have yet to get the order from the bailiff.The Force Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Kolawole told our correspondent on Monday that the police had yet to arrest Tompolo because they have not been served the court order.We have not received the court order on Tompolo till now and that is why we have not effected his arrest, she explained.The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had charged Tompolo and a former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Patrick Akpobolokemi, alongside eight others for N34bn fraud.Following his failure to appear in court on January 14, 2015, the presiding judge ordered the arrest of the ex-militant leader to answer the 30 counts of alleged N34bn fraud.The judge issued a bench warrant against Tompolo and ordered that he must be produced in court on February 8, 2016 by all means to answer the charges.Justice Buba had earlier in chambers made an order compelling Tompolo to unconditionally appear before him to answer to the charges.But while all the other accused, including Akpobolokemi who came on crutches, were in court with their lawyers, Tompolo was absent and did not send a representative.When the matter was called, the EFCC prosecutor, Festus Keyamo, informed the court that despite the fact that the summons was issued in Lagos, the EFCC successfully pasted it on the wall of the 1, Chief Agbanu DDPA Extension, Warri, Delta States house of the ex-warlord.He furnished the court with a photographic evidence of the pasting of the summons, noting that despite the summons being served on Tompolo as directed by the judge, the accused did not appear in court.Keyamo applied for a warrant of arrest for Tompolo, pursuant to Section 131 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015.
The Gunners boss has once again taken issue with the striker, blaming him for what seemed an easy decision for the referee early on in t...

The Gunners boss has once again taken issue with the striker, blaming him for what seemed an easy decision for the referee early on in the London derby.Costa had been sent clear through by Willians pass in the 18th minute, with Mertesacker chopping the striker down as the Spaniard sped towards goal. Still, Wenger took issue with what appeared to be an easy decision for referee Mark Clattenburg.He got him sent off  you cannot say its not true, Wenger told Sky Sports. Costa has had two of our players sent off in two games so he is clever.In the first game he got Gabriel sent off, today he got Mertesacker off. Was the tackle irregular or not? Did he touch him? Ill have to watch it again  but a fact is a fact.I am not accusing him (Costa) of anything  its just what happened.minutes after the sending off, Costa got on the end of Branislav Ivanovics cross at the front post, finishing first time to score what would be the only goal of the match in a feisty encounter.
Something sad has happened and is happening, and is getting worse in our society: the decline of public intellectualism. And so I ask, w...

Something sad has happened and is happening, and is getting worse in our society: the decline of public intellectualism. And so I ask, where are the public intellectuals? Once upon a time in this country, the public arena was dominated by a ferment of ideas; ideas that pushed boundaries, destroyed illusions, questioned orthodoxies and enabled societal progress. Those were the days when intellectuals exerted great influence on public policy, and their input into the governance process could not be ignored. Ideas are strong elements of nation building, and even where interests are at play, you know the quality of a country by the manner in which a taste for good thinking propels the leadership process.Public intellectuals are at the centre of this phenomenon: they include academics who go beyond their narrow specialisations and university-based scholarship to take a keen interest in public affairs and who use their expertise and exposure to shed light on a broad range of issues. They also include journalists, writers and other professionals who question societys direction, and offer alternative ideas. The beauty of public intellectualism is that the intellectual at work is a disinterested party, he is interested in ideas not for his own benefit, but for the overall good of society, and he does not assume that his opinions are the best or that he alone understands the best way to run society and its organs. The product of this attitude is that discourse, a culture of debate, is encouraged and in the cross-pollination of ideas, a good current of thought is created; truth is spoken to power.We have had glimpses of this in Nigeria, and without trying to sketch a history of public intellectualism in our country or attempt a ranking of public intellectuals, let me just say that between the 60s and the 90s, there was so much fascination with ideas in this same country, it was as if the public mind was on fire. Academics from various disciplines took a keen interest in the prospects of the new Nigeria, and they went to the public arena to project ideas. Journalists became revered as sages, so much that certain newspaper columnists almost single-handedly sold newspapers.Public lectures were organised which attracted persons who were just interested in ideas. Writers did a lot more than the professional task of producing novels, poems and plays and wrote public essays. The vendors stand every morning attracted not just buyers and free readers, but also young Nigerians who every morning debated major topics of concern. On television also, there were debates and those in the corridors of power also took ideas seriously. So influential were intellectuals in the public space that they soon got invited to be part of government and although the military had always opposed intellectualism, at least one government, the Babangida government had the largest collection of intellectuals in office since independence. Many who lived during that era will remember the debates over the IMF/Structural adjustment Programme.As the years went by however, public intellectualism began to decline. In 2006, Jimanze Ego-Alowes published a book titled How Intellectuals Underdeveloped Nigeria and Other Essays, an allusion to the complicity of intellectuals in the crisis that had by then engulfed the country. Four years later, Rudolf Okonkwo in an article titled The Comedy of Our Public Intellectuals observed as follows: the world of the Nigerian public intellectual is a zoo. It is a zoo full of nihilists. Some are sectarian in their outlook and others are humourless. Some are eccentric while others are comical. But one thing they all have in common is an over-inflated ego of their importance in the scheme of things.I dont know about over-inflated ego, but I do know that the flame of public intellectualism in Nigeria is now almost a flicker. There are extremely few new significant voices, saying anything of consequence, the soldiers of old have become old, the fire in their belly, now subdued. It is as if our academics have lost interest in public affairs, as only a few of them maintain a column or write an occasional piece or take on public issues in the manner of the likes of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Segun Osoba, Claude Ake, Bade Onimode, Ola Oni, Mokwugo Okoye, Mahmud Tukur, Yusuf Bala Usman, Ayodele Awojobi, Biodun Jeyifo, Femi Osofisan, Stanley Macebuh, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Chinweizu, Kole Omotoso, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Bode Sowande, Patrick WilmotThe opinion pages of the newspapers are no longer vibrant. There is so much opinionitis, but debate is rare and rejoinders are always self-serving.What has happened is that politically neutral intellectuals have now become scarce; the typical intellectual of today is not public in the sense in which that word is used; he is in reality affiliated to partisan and sectional interests. The intellectual influence in Nigerias affairs is thus diminished because of obsession with individual interests: academics are now at best acadapreneurs: the intellectual as an entrepreneur. Business and partisan interests have compromised media houses; those once vibrant platforms are no longer offering vibrant ideas. Within the cultural sphere, there is a total dumbing down. Where are the creative writers? They are still writing, but few want to get involved in the issues of the day and offer ideas.The effect is that we are in the age of cliches, of jargon writing, of mundane, unimaginative commentary. Whatever appears intellectual is written off as arrogant and there is no quality debate on anything because people have resorted to making fashionable statements that suit the moment and every one is locked in their own little corner, not willing to listen to the other side of the story. The reading public, whatever is left of it, is also not interested in ideas or anything that requires rigorous thinking. We have thus lost a critical element of public intellectualism: an audience. The people are interested in easy stuff, in fashionable opinions that align with their own partisan interests. Nobody wants to read any long commentary; there is an obsession with short thinking, and whereas brevity may be a good technique, there are certain ideas that just cannot be reduced to a tweet. It is really sad that today, intellectualism is seen as a threat.Where are the inorganic public intellectuals to guide public thought? Who are those thinking for government, the opposition and indeed the public space?Even when corporations and politicians in power draw intellectuals close, they end up usurping the powers of the intellectual, compelling him to hold his intelligence within the scope of the definition of his assignment. Intellectuals can be inside or outside, and there are classical cases of intellectuals in power making a difference, but that age appears ended; the disdain of intellectualism has turned politicians and corporate gurus into wise men that they are not, and the intellectual into an organic element of power. The greatest power of the intellectual lies in his freedom; when he is denied that under any circumstance, society turns off its energy source and gradually, it is the self-imposed wisdom of clowns that prevails.The gap that has been created seems to have been easily filled by internet gladiators who spend the day shuffling from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter and other social media threads. These new culture activists project a democratic impression of public intellectualism  and yes, there is a sense in which everyone is an intellectual, from the village priest to the village idiot  but I dont see the rigour, the breadth and depth and the aesthetic alienation that can elevate this genre and its promoters to the grade of public intellectualism. For the most part, social media in Nigeria is predominantly at the level of tabloid sensationalism, and it accommodates and offers the same degree of freedom to the ignorant and the mischievous, as well as the entrepreneur and the uncouth. There is no doubt however that its content and the quality can be raised, but that will require innovation, the intervention of thinkers and the creation of new audiences that will be interested in something more than the quick and formulaic.What we have lost is not the intellectual, as there are many educated Nigerians who are experts in their narrow fields; what we have lost is active intelligence as a tool for social progress. The rub is in the intelligence part of being intellectual. Being intellectual is about living a life of ideas and using those ideas to engage society intelligently in a committed manner.In addition to other reasons, it may well be that our intellectuals are tired of engaging Nigeria. Having tried over the years to engage the governance elite with ideas and to show that only good ideas should govern society and having been spurned by the politicians, Nigerias intellectual elite seems to have become so frustrated, it has retired largely into a state of indifference and inertia. What is the point knocking ones head against a wall? But intellectuals in society cannot take such a stand. That will amount to an abdication of responsibility: when intellectuals do no more than make righteous noises, the harvest in the long run, is counter-productive.Another factor is the emergence of a climate of fear, and a culture of silence/co-optation/acquiescence. Politicians distrust intellectuals; they cant tolerate anyone around them speaking truth to power or raising disturbing questions. The intellectual is expected to keep his ideas to himself and respect constituted authority. He is expected to enjoy his freedom in his head and dare not go public with it. Ideas cannot thrive if the man of ideas is afraid to think, and whisper or speak. Rather than insist on the freedom to differ, many academics, journalists, writers and thinkers have since dropped the baton, and surrendered the public space.But that is unhelpful cowardice. Those who know better must continue to engage the public vigorously with ideas about governance and public policy, and encourage open debates, for the good of the entire society. Those ideas must however, be relevant for them to be of any value; they must not be abstract theories that disconnect with the peoples realities, but ideas that offer intelligent solutions to practical problems.Right now, there are critical areas where such intervention is needed: budgets, economic planning, handling a currency crisis that is fast turning into a nightmare (France has declared an economic emergency and yet was not in as bad a position as we are inArgentina made changes to its export taxes to address its own dilemma). We have had schizophrenic interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria and yet where are the intellectuals to come up with analysis and desired alternative views, beyond bellyaching? Where are the inorganic public intellectuals to guide public thought? Who are those thinking for government, the opposition and indeed the public space?
Nelly Sachs Banquet speech

English German

Nelly Sachss speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1966

(Translation)

In the summer of 1939 a German girl friend of mine went to Sweden to visit Selma Lagerlof, to ask her to secure a sanctuary for my mother and myself in that country. Since my youth I had been so fortunate as to exchange letters with Selma Lagerlof; and it is out of her work that my love for her country grew. The painter-prince Eugen and the novelist helped to save me.

In the spring of 1940, after tortuous months, we arrived in Stockholm. The occupation of Denmark and Norway had already taken place. The great novelist was no more. We breathed the air of freedom without knowing the language or any person. Today, after twenty-six years, I think of what my father used to say on every tenth of December, back in my home town, Berlin: Now they celebrate the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. Thanks to the choice of the Swedish Academy, I am now in the midst of that ceremony. To me a fairy tale seems to have become reality.

In der Flucht

welch grosser Empfang

unterwegs  Eingehullt

in der Winde Tuch

Fusse im Gebet des Sandes

der niemals Amen sagen kann

denn er muss

von der Flosse in den Flugel

und weiter  Der kranke Schmetterling

weiss bald wieder vom Meer 

Dieser Stein

mit der Inschrift der Fliege

hat sich mir in die Hand gegeben  An Stelle von Heimat

halte ich die Verwandlungen der Welt 

(An English translation by Ruth and Matthew Mead appeared in Nelly Sachs collection O the Chimneys [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., I967.)

Prior to the two speeches, Ingvar Andersson of the Swedish Academy made the following comments: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs  This years literary Prize goes to you both with equal honour for a literary production which records Israels vicissitudes in our time and passes on its message to the peoples of the world.

Mr. Agnon  In your writing we meet once again the ancient unity between literature and science, as antiquity knew it. In one of your stories you say that some will no doubt read it as they read fairy tales, others will read it for edification. Your great chronicle of the Jewish peoples spirit and life has therefore a manifold message. For the historian it is a precious source, for the philosopher an inspiration, for those who cannot live without literature it is a mine of never-failing riches. We honour in you a combination of tradition and prophecy, of saga and wisdom.

Miss Sachs  About twenty years ago, through the Swedish poet Hjalmar Gullberg, I first learned of your fate and your work. Since then you have lived with us in Sweden and I could talk to you in our own language. But it is through your mother tongue that your work reflects a historical drama in which you have participated. Your lyrical and dramatic writing now belongs to the great laments of literature, but the feeling of mourning which inspired you is free from hate and lends sublimity to the suffering of man. We honour you today as the bearer of a message of solace to all those who despair of the fate of man.

We honour you both this evening as the laurel-crowned heroes of intellectual creation and express our conviction that, in the words of Alfred Nobel, you have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind, and that you have given it clearsightedness, wisdom, uplift, and beauty. A famous speech at a Nobel banquet  that of William Faulkner, held in this same hall sixteen years ago  contained an idea which he developed with great intensity. It is suitable as a concluding quotation which points to the future: I do not believe in the end of man.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

Copyright  The Nobel Foundation 1966

To cite this section

MLA style: Nelly Sachs  Banquet speech. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Thu. 20 Oct 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1966/sachs/speech/>
See which Louisiana community is the most educated in the state
Yes, all women have reason to fear turning a man down: Jarvis DeBerry
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.
Canadian Minister of National Defence visits NORAD N-NC

Jan. 20, 2016  PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colorado  Defence Minister Harjit S. Sajjan paid his first visit

to the North American Aerospace Defense Command Headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base

in Colorado today. During his visit, he met with Admiral Bill Gortney, Commander of NORAD

and U.S. Northern Command and Canadian Lieutenant-General Pierre St-Amand, Deputy

Commander of NORAD. Discussions focused on a number of issues important to the Canada-

U.S. defense relationship, including continental defense, new challenges to North American

aerospace defense and NORADs continuing evolution to meet those challenges.



The Minister toured the NORAD facilities and had an opportunity to speak with a number of

Canadian and American military personnel who serve at its headquarters. Minister Sajjan

released the following statement at the conclusion of his visit:



My visit to NORAD was a great opportunity to discuss the important work being carried out by

this unique binational defence partnership to protect North America from potential airborne and

seaborne threats. I want to thank Admiral Gortney and Lieutenant-General St-Amand and their

dedicated team for their ongoing leadership and cooperation, which is essential for the defence

and security of North America now and for the future.



NORAD is the binational Canadian and American command that provides maritime warning,

aerospace warning and aerospace control for Canada and the United States. The command

has three subordinate regional headquarters: the Alaskan NORAD Region at Joint Base

Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; the Canadian NORAD Region at Canadian Forces Base

Winnipeg, Manitoba; and the Continental NORAD Region at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.



-30-



For more information about NORAD, refer to http://www.norad.mil/

Follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/noradnorthcom
Time to get moving on Maley Drive: Sudbury chamber

Dear Mayor and Council, RE: Maley Drive Extension As you are aware, the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce has been active in advocating for the completion of the Maley Drive Extension for several years now.

The Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce has sent an open letter to city council calling for them to get behind the Maley Drive Extension. File photo.

Dear Mayor and Council,



RE: Maley Drive Extension



As you are aware, the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce has been active in advocating for the completion of the Maley Drive Extension for several years now. Our members have consistently identified road infrastructure and congestion as a priority for the City of Greater Sudbury.



We would like to reiterate our support for the Maley Drive Extension.



The chamber believes that the construction of the extension will create positive ripple effects in the community in terms of economic growth, infrastructure, reduced traffic congestion, road safety, and new jobs. A third east-west arterial road will also lessen business disruptions, redirect large slurry trucks reducing wear and tear on our roads and will result in improved efficiencies in the transportation of supplies.



The time to act on Maley Drive is now and we encourage council to make a swift decision to prioritize the advancement of the extension. With the new federal government currently undertaking pre-budget consultations, we believe that there is a short window of opportunity for our community to secure very important funding that will boost our economy in a time when we are facing challenging global growth conditions that are impacting us locally.



The federal government is looking for shovel ready projects to fund and it is our understanding that they will move quickly to get dollars out the door to stimulate the economy. There are many factors that are currently working in favour of the Maley Drive Extension: the provincial nod to commit to the project, the provincial prioritization of the project under the new Building Canada Plan, as well as the current federal and provincial political alignment.



Further, we have two federal representatives at the local level on the government side seeking to represent the needs of Greater Sudbury on the national stage. The city has also invested significantly in maintaining Maley Drive in a construction ready state.



This type of alignment is rare; it is not known if and when we will come across an opportunity of this magnitude again. We are confident that these provincial and federal infrastructure dollars will be allocated elsewhere, likely in Southern Ontario, if we do not urgently move forward with our own funding request in support of the extension. We also remind council that although there are many worthy projects requiring funds in Greater Sudbury, these specific provincial and federal funds have been earmarked and therefore cannot be easily transferred to other initiatives.



As a city with a renewed long-term economic plan, we need to think about what will further position us as the regional hub of the North. The completion of the Maley Extension will help position Sudbury to take advantage of future investments and projects. This project will not only benefit Greater Sudbury but will also be critical to enhancing regional economic development - providing easier access to provincial highways, improving Canadian public infrastructure, and benefitting our globally-significant mining sector.



We would like to see these valuable infrastructure dollars being spent in our community to bolster economic growth in our region.



Enclosed please find a copy of a 2014 motion advanced by the chambers Maley Drive Task Force and approved by our Board of Directors that outlines the chambers position on Maley Drive.



We would be happy to discuss this further with you. If interested, please contact us at policy@sudburychamber.ca.



We look forward to your response on this matter.



Yours truly,



Debbi M. Nicholson

PRESIDENT & CEO



David Boyce, Chair

MALEY DRIVE TASK FORCE
LEAF donates Canadian trans doc to public library

LEAF Sudbury (Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) recently donated the documentary "She's a Boy I Knew" to the Greater Sudbury Public Library.

LEAF Sudbury (Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) recently donated the documentary She's a Boy I Knew to the Greater Sudbury Public Library. From left are Vincent Bolt from TGInnerselves, Jessica Watts from the library and Kaija Mailloux and Rita O'Link from LEAF Sudbury. Supplied photo.

LEAF Sudbury (Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) recently donated the documentary "She's a Boy I Knew" to the Greater Sudbury Public Library.



Vancouver filmmaker Gwen Haworth documents her male-to-female gender transition partially through the voices of her anxious but loving family, best friend, and wife.



Under Haworth's sensitive eye, each stepping stone in the process of transitioning becomes an opportunity to explore her community's and our own underlying assumptions about gender and sexuality.



The documentary explores the frustrations, fears, questions, and hopes experienced by Gwen and her family as they struggle to understand and embrace her newly revealed identity.



LEAF Sudbury screened the documentary in Sudbury back in October, at its Person's Day 2015 event.
Robbie Burns night: an evening of haggis, bagpipes and poetry

Beloved Scottish poet Robbie Burns was born on this day, Jan. 25, in 1759. On Saturday, Jan. 23, about 100 Sudburians got together at the Lockerby branch of the Royal Canadian Legion to celebrate his birthday a little earlier.

On Saturday, about 100 Sudburians got together at the Lively branch of the Royal Canadian Legion to celebrate the birthday of Scottish poet Robbie Burns, whose actual birthday is today. Darren MacDonald photo.

Beloved Scottish poet Robbie Burns was born on this day, Jan. 25, in 1759. On Saturday, Jan. 23, about 100 Sudburians got together at the Lockerby branch of the Royal Canadian Legion to celebrate his birthday a little earlier.



Performers included Andrew Lowe and the Laurentian University Pipe and Dance Band, who performed as the traditional haggis was brought in for all to see.



"Haggis is good, laughed Derek Young, organizer and bagpiper with the LU band. I was watching (talk show host) Craig Ferguson one night and he said it was the only food that hasn't been banned by the World Health Organization.



"And they say if you tell people what's in it, they're not going to eat it ... So at a Burns dinner, we would serve the haggis in a sampling bowl, so those who wish to try it can, and those who don't want to have any don't have to."



Young said there are a number of reasons why the Scottish poet is still honoured on his birthday centuries after his death. He had both tremendous talent and a connection to common people of his day.



"If you look at Burns overall, the kind of person that he was, his poetry, we really sort of relate to that when you look at his kind, caring nature, Young said. He wrote a poem to a mouse, he wrote poems about rebellion, about love and war. I think these are things we can all relate to.



"And you don't necessarily have to be Scottish to appreciate Burns. Every year on New Year's Eve, we all sing his song 'Auld Lang Syne.' You wouldn't necessarily think of it as a Burns song, but it was written and composed by Robert Burns."



To kick off the evening, Dianne Cameron recited the Selkirk Grace, a version of grace before meals that Burns popularized when he recited it before a meal at Lord Selkirk's castle.



The grace is as follows: Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it. But we hae meat, and we can eat, sae let the Lord be thankit.



"To me, it really reflects the character of Burns, that he had a very tough life, Cameron said. He started out life living on a farm with seven brothers and sisters and barely scraping out a living. It was hard for him as a child, it was hard for him all through his life. He understood the common labouring man. He understood not having meat on your table."



Among those in attendance was Mayor Brian Bigger and CBC Radio's Markus Schwabe, who hosted the event. It was the ninth edition of Robbie Burns night put on by the LU pipe band. Member Ray Young said the kilts worn by the band display the official university tartan.



"It's the Laurentian University tartan, Young said. It's registered with the Scottish Tartan Authority. They determine the authenticity of a tartan."



With their 10th anniversary next year, Young said they were planning on a larger celebration for Burns Night 2017. They're also looking for new members for the LU pipe band.



"You don't have to be Scottish to pick up the instrument, he said. We have highland dancers, we have drummers, we have bagpipers. And the fact we're associated with the university, we take part in a lot of on campus events.



Things like the convocation ceremonies, we've played for former prime ministers, governors general. So it's a really fun group of people to be a part of."
Just in case you havent ventured outdoors yet today, things are a little slippery in Greater Sudbury and area this morning. Environment Canada has issued an advisory, warning that freezing drizzle is expected or is occurring in the area.

Just in case you havent ventured outdoors yet today, things are a little slippery in Greater Sudbury and area this morning.Environment Canada has issued an advisory, warning that freezing drizzle is expected or is occurring in the area.Be aware that surfaces such as highways, roads, walkways and parking lots may be icy and slippery.When driving, slow down and watch for tail lights ahead. Be sure to maintain a safe following distance and take extra care when walking or driving in affected areas.Freezing drizzle advisories are issued when drizzle falling in sub-zero temperatures is expected to freeze on contact, and over time create icy surfaces. Monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada.To report severe weather, send an email to storm.ontario@ec.gc.ca or tweet reports to #ONStorm.
'He is the happiest person on this planet'

Emotion and pure joy was on display at the Greater Sudbury Airport on Monday afternoon, when Sudbury's first family of refugees from Syria were reunited with their grandfather.

A little more than three weeks after starting their new life in Canada, Sudbury's first family of Syrian refugees were reunited with their grandfather Monday at the Greater Sudbury Airport. Photo: Darren MacDonald.

Emotion and pure joy was on display at the Greater Sudbury Airport on Monday afternoon, when Sudbury's first family of refugees from Syria were reunited with their grandfather.



The Quarquoz family arrived in the city on New Year's Eve, excited to be starting a new life, but torn because they had to leave their grandfather behind in Lebanon.



The delay was related to issues with travel documents, then his arrival was delayed because of health concerns. But the elder Quarquoz was finally able to leave, arriving in Toronto late Saturday and in Sudbury on Monday. He was greeted by a throng of well wishers and media at the airport.



He is newborn," he said, speaking through a translator Monday, moments after his arrival. "He's very happy to have his grandchildren and his son and his daughter-in-law, but he's also so happy to see all these people here, and all these cameras and flashes. He's really excited."



"He is the happiest person on this planet because he is with his son and his family. He left his home, and now he is in his second home."



While it was stressful to be left behind in Lebanon when everyone else was able to travel, the grandfather said he wasn't afraid he would never make it to Sudbury.



"Any person who has a strong faith, he's not afraid of anything, he said through the interpreter. He is one of those people. And thank God, he is here."



For his part, the father said when left for Sudbury without his dad, they left half their hearts in Lebanon. But they were able to keep in contact with him, and gave him an idea of what life here was like.



"They sent him pictures every day of the snow," he said through the interpreter. "And now that he's here, they are very, very happy and very grateful. Before he made it here, they knew the people in Canada they are the greatest people on this Earth."



"Thank you, Canada!" he said in English. "And thank you, Sudbury!"



Joanne Ross, who speaks for the group at St. Andrew's United Church that sponsored the family of five to come here, said Monday that the whole family has really embraced life in the North. And it has been fun to watch them try things most of us grew up with for the first time.



"Yesterday they went tobogganing for four hours, Ross said. And came in and they said, 'Skating? Skating?' They just want to savour everything.



"They've really been dying to go skating. I had my skates in the trunk of the car and I showed them to them. And they were so fascinated by them.



They wanted to touch the blades and I told them, careful, it's sharp! It is really neat to see first-time events like that, things that we take for granted."



Ross said a big step in integrating them into the community is learning English and for the dad to find work. There's progress on both fronts, she said.



"They're working so hard to learn English, and dad has a job interview on Wednesday, which is very exciting for him and for his family," she said.



"That's a big part of integrating, and certainly in the patriarchal society that they come from, being able to provide for your family is a very big part of defining who you are.



"We're really happy that things are coming together. It's a lovely family. We're lucky to have them."
Iroquois Falls Mayor Michael Shea remembers his first meeting with Justus Veldman in the Porter Airways lounge in Toronto on Dec. 22, 2014. It was the same day the last roll of newsprint was coming off the No.

Iroquois Falls Mayor Michael Shea remembers his first meeting with Justus Veldman in the Porter Airways lounge in Toronto on Dec. 22, 2014.

It was the same day the last roll of newsprint was coming off the No. 8 paper machine at Resolutes soon-to-be-shuttered mill in the northeastern Ontario town of 4,500.

Earlier that month, the Quebec forest products giant had decided to permanently pull the plug on the mill, putting 180 out of work.

Prior to a meeting with Resolutes corporate heads in Montreal, Shea extended a cold-call invitation to Veldman to ask if he was interested in joining him which the Sault Ste. Marie-based brownfield redeveloper enthusiastically accepted.

Since that day, weve had a good relationship, said Shea in finding a kindred spirit. I think hes like a brother somehow.

Shea was well aware of Veldmans growing body of work in Northern Ontario, beginning with the demolition the former St. Marys Paper mill site in the Sault, and preservation of its century-old sandstone administrative buildings and machine shops into vibrant community gathering places.

A years worth of confidential negotiations that followed between the two companies finally culminated with a Jan. 19 announcement before a packed house at the Iroquois Falls Community Centre that the mill and more than 300 acres of Resolute property in and around the town were being transferred to Riversedge and the municipality in an asset sale agreement.

The ebullient mayor was painting the transaction as a dawn of a new day in Iroquois Falls.

Veldman said his company, operating under the project banner of Abitibi Riversedge, picks up 115 acres, including the mill and a trestle bridge built during the Abitibi Paper Company days to haul wood into town.

Exact details of the sale remain unclear and its unclear how much acreage the Town of Iroquois Falls will inherit. Officials at Resolute Forest Products were not immediately available for comment.

Shea said the municipality acquires several acres of wooded and cleared land, some on the banks of the Abitibi River, along with an historic company guest house.

In reaching out to Veldman, Shea was drawn by his expansive thinking on what the region can become.

I think he, much like myself, has a vision for what Northern Ontario is going to look like. It may not happen tomorrow or the year after, but one has to be assured that Sault Ste. Marie, Iroquois Falls and all these small towns arent going to disappear any time soon.

Veldmans award-winning company is taking on other restorative projects with the demolished Northern Breweries site in the Saults downtown, plans to create a mixed-use Canal District development along the citys waterfront, and finding a new industrial use for the former Norampac mill in Red Rock.

To exclusively manage the Iroquois Falls project, Riversedge inked a partnership agreement with MHPM, one of Canadas largest project management firms.

Its a big step for us as a company, and much needed.

For the mill site remediation, Veldman said tenders are being written  and will be awarded in early February for asbestos abatement, soil remediation, and demolition, starting this spring.

He estimates theres probably a good two years of cleanup work to make it shovel-ready, while he consults with the community to brainstorm for ideas to readapt the site for a next generation of business opportunities.

The local people have the best knowledge of what could happen there.

As a 100-year-old heavy industrial site with rail access, theres potential to reshape it into a commercial-industrial park, or, Veldman suggests, possibly a greenhouse complex, using inexpensive steam heat generated by Northland Power.

I have a passion for local food and I wonder out loud, could we grow food for the Far North?

Given the state of many small Northern towns, Veldman said new-era thinking is needed to better utilize the natural resources and revitalize the economy.

I think that if we can get sites like this ready for the reindustrialization of the North  which is going to happen  the industry and the economics at one point are going to make it work to again harvest the largest fibre basket in the North.

But before all the mill buildings dissolve into dust, Veldman has his eyes on preserving a three-storey train shed built in 1914, an architecturally significant structure seldom seen by many in the community.

Also high on his agenda is addressing the 90-year-old trestle bridge which was closed by Resolute due to unsafe structural conditions, forcing angry cottagers and outdoor enthusiasts to re-route their travels through Cochrane.

Those small businesses in Iroquois Falls missed out on a lot of (cottage) activity because of the closure of that bridge, said Veldman, who intends to roll out a repair plan in conjunction with a local working group.

Shea senses great relief in town now that the mill site ownership has changed hands and a course of action has been set.

Many in this largely retirement town had mentally turned the page on those jobs returning, but were also nervous and inquisitive about the eerie silence surrounding the sites future.

Shea said it was tough to keep a lid on the highly sensitive negotiations over several months, but there were no signs of a panicky mass exodus from the community.

People are moving here as opposed to moving out. Were not feeling outmigration as we speak and this has been over a year (since the closure announcement).

About 13 or 14 homes have been sold to new arrivals that commute to jobs in Timmins, a 35-minute drive to the southeast, thanks to the draw of lower property taxes, a pair of grocery and hardware stores, and more restaurants than we need, said Shea. Its very cost-effective to live here.
The United Steelworkers union wants to send the message that members want a fair contract from ArcelorMittal, and they want it now.

The union is planning a major rally at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday at the ArcelorMittal North America headquarters at 1 S. Dearborn St. in downtown Chicago. The USW hopes to show the company that workers and retirees remain united in their opposition to concessions that would lower their standard of living.

Thousands of steelworkers marched, chanted and waved signs at rallies across Northwest Indiana in the late summer before their contracts with steelmakers expired on Sept. 1.

U.S. Steel reached a deal with the USW near year's end, and union members are now voting on it. The union expects an announcement on whether it was ratified on or around Monday. Workers would get no pay raises for the next three years, but they will get greater profit-sharing and their health care benefits will be largely preserved.

While U.S. Steel may be close to a new deal, more than 13,000 workers at ArcelorMittal mills in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Minnesota, South Carolina and Louisiana have been working under the old contract with no settlement in sight.

ArcelorMittal does not comment on specifics during negotiations. But the Luxembourg-based steelmaker has said it's essential to cut labor costs after losing $1.3 billion through the first nine months of this year.

ArcelorMittal recently dropped a demand that workers start paying monthly premiums for their health insurance, but the company is still demanding significant concessions.

"While USW negotiators have reported some progress in recent weeks, ArcelorMittal persists in demanding drastic changes to active and retiree benefits plans, including a proposal to triple the amount retirees already contribute in healthcare premiums," the union said in a press release.

The union is planning other solidarity actions across the country on Wednesday and in coming weeks.
INDIANAPOLIS  Gov. Mike Pence's weak leadership on civil rights issues and strong fundraising by his Democratic opponent makes the Indiana governor's race a "toss-up," according to Governing Magazine.

The nonpartisan, national publication on Monday downgraded the chances that the Republican incumbent will win a second four-year term in November, saying Pence still is hobbled by last year's "religious freedom" controversy which remains unsettled.

"Pence can't seem to make anyone at either end of the spectrum  and even those in the middle  happy. (His) highly billed State of the State address, intended to turn a new page, doesn't appear to have changed minds," according to the magazine.

At the same time, Governing notes that Democrat John Gregg "isn't considered a great campaigner, but he raised $2 million during the last half of 2015" and "has coalesced Democratic support."

Governing rated the rematch between Pence and Gregg as "lean Republican" in October.

One year ago, the publication declared the race "safe Republican."
INDIANAPOLIS  A Gary community leader who was defeated in a 2012 primary challenge to state Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, will try again this year now that the veteran Region lawmaker is retiring.

Darren Washington, president of the Calumet Township board and former president of the Gary school board, last week filed paperwork with the secretary of state to run for the Democratic nomination in Senate District 3.

He said his goal, if elected, is to promote economic development, public safety and equality in education in the district, which includes Gary, Lake Station, New Chicago, Hobart, Merrillville and Crown Point.

"We must also preserve and create new employment opportunities by supporting our unions through continuous construction projects and supporting existing small businesses with revenue generation possibilities," he said.

Washington, who works as a family case manager for the Indiana Department of Child Services and previously taught courses at Ivy Tech Community College, said any Region lawmaker must put the interests of Region residents first.

"If we want effective legislation that will improve the quality of life for Northwest Indiana residents, we need legislators working for (us) the people, not just corporate interests while in Indianapolis," he said.

Washington said Rogers always has done just that, which he got to see up close as her former legislative intern and through his work as former executive director of the Indiana Commission on the Social Status of Black Males.

"Due to the path that was paved by (state) Sen. Rogers, and others like Sen. Carolyn Mosby and Sen. Katie Hall, I am prepared and ready to take on the mantle of leadership in the Indiana Senate that she has graciously decided to pass on to the next generation," he said.

NIPSCO executive Eddie Melton, a member of the State Board of Education, also is running to succeed Rogers.
INDIANAPOLIS | Hoosier elementary school students may soon find themselves literally minding their P's and Q's after the Indiana Senate voted 36-13 Tuesday to mandate cursive writing instruction.

The Indiana Department of Education dropped its cursive requirement in 2011 in favor of typing instruction. Senate Bill 120, which now goes to the House, restores the cursive requirement.

The sponsor of the proposal, state Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said studies show the ability to write in cursive is an essential component of a child's cognitive development.

State Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, who voted against the measure, said each school corporation should be allowed to decide on its own whether students need cursive instruction.

A similar measure was approved by the Senate in 2012 but died in the House.
HAMMOND  Don't expect everyday to be like a typical episode of CSI on television but Hammond Police crime scene investigators and detectives say a day of investigation can be painstaking, tedious and overwhelmingly sad.

"We're not all dressed in suits or having a cup of coffee like you see on TV," Det. Jason Gonzalez said.

Hammond Master Sargeants Allan Retske and Robert Vaught, who share responsibilities in charge of the department's crime scene unit, Sgt. Butch Logan, Community Affairs, and Gonzalez spoke to more than 150 Bishop Noll Institute students Thursday to give them a better picture of how they gather evidence.

This is an entry-level STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology and Math) offered to freshmen students as they explore STEM topics. The students also have done projects on drones, website design and energy-efficient housing.

Three BNI teachers are involved including Rebecca Dostatni, Paul Douglass and Anthony Hoolihan.

Dostatni said the STEM class has eight different projects. She wanted the Hammond police to talk to students about the importance of problem solving, and how police have to think critically on a daily basis to solve a crime.

BNI Principal Craig Stafford said the high school offers a STEM elective to students in grades 10 through 12.

"Over the next three years, we will be developing a 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade STEM class," he said. "The current freshmen will take a STEM course every year they are enrolled at BNI. The curriculum has been (and will be) developed by teachers representing all departments, including myself, and Dr. Carla Johnson from Purdue (West Lafayette). She is a professor and STEM expert."

Dostatni said the students are collecting data on the City of Hammond and other communities in Northwest Indiana and the Chicago suburbs, looking at the crime rates and creating data.

The Hammond officers brought numerous items to show students including casting for footprints and a fingerprint kit. The police authorities said a laser projection of bullet trajectories is one of the latest innovations in crime scene investigation. The kit contains all of the tools necessary to provide vital information about the flight of the bullet.

Retske and Vaught said after the evidence has been collected, they go back and diagram the crime scene.

Gonzalez said his work is to investigate the case, and he told students the first 48 hours are critical.

"It's important to talk to witnesses, neighbors, the family and the suspects," he said.

"A lot of them are willing to come and discuss with me what happened, how it went down. what the beef was and why everyone was angry," Gonzalez said. "When I was in patrol working at high schools as a resource officer, I often talked to kids. The next thing you know, they may be sitting in a box and we're talking about why he or she had a situation that turned violent and someone was killed."

Noll freshmen Alejandra Wedryk and A.J. Vazquez said the students are collecting data, and putting together statistics about various types of crime in Hammond and neighboring cities.

Wedryk said she is interested in forensic science and thinks that could be an interesting career. Vaqquez said he has been watching CSI, and is more interested in it after listening to the Hammond officers.

Stafford said Bishop Noll has a total enrollment of 536 students, a 14-year high for the Catholic school. He said about 48 percent of the students use a voucher. A voucher or Indiana Choice Scholarship allows a family to use public school tax dollars to enroll in a private school.
LOWELL  Christopher Allen Buckley is the new Lowell Town Judge.

Buckley, the third judge in the town's history, was approved by a local Republican caucus Jan. 11, then sworn in by departing judge Karen Coulis before the Lowell Town Council.

"Getting this invitation is one of the more exciting things in my life," Buckley told caucus members. He said Lowell Town Council President Chris Salatas, R-4th, told him there was "a desperate need in Lowell."

Buckley said the town's interests and his skill set are a good match.

"It is a great opportunity for Lowell and a great opportunity for me," he said.

The future of Lowell's town court was jeopardized in September when the Lake County Board of Elections found Joshua Holt, a Democratic party pick, was ineligible to be a judicial candidate. The Indiana Roll of Attorneys now shows Holt on active status.

With neither Democrats nor Republicans slating a candidate for the November election, the 15-year old town court was in limbo.

Lowell Republican Chairwoman LeAnn Angerman, also the town's 2nd Ward council member, said she and the Republican organization worked hard to find a suitable candidate. The town judge must reside in Lowell. As a former employee of the town court, she said, "It is near and dear to my heart."

Buckley said he chose to relocate to Lowell to serve as judge. He has lived in the town for less than a month. "I know I have big shoes to fill," he said respectfully of Coulis.

Angerman presented Coulis, who is moving to Texas, with a commemorative clock from the town in appreciation of her "four years and 11 days" of honorable service.

"I had some big shoes to fill from Tom Vanes' shadow," Coulis said, referencing the town's first judge.

A 1998 graduate of Chesterton High School, Buckley entered the U.S. Marine Corps following his graduation and received numerous awards and medals during his four years. Notably, He received the Navy/Marine Corps Medal (of Heroism).

Buckley graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and public administration from Valparaiso University. In 2009, he received his law degree there. He is certified by the Veterans' Administration as a Veteran's Claims attorney and has served as judge pro tem in Lake and Porter Counties.
CROWN POINT  A Gary man sentenced to death after being found guilty of killing his wife and two stepchildren has begun seeking post-conviction relief, according to court records.

Attorneys for Kevin Isom, 50, recently filed in Lake Criminal Court a petition to seek post-conviction relief in the capital case.

Acceptance of the petition was taken under advisement pending the filing of notarized affirmation of the documents, according to online court records.

In the petition, Isom claims his attorneys did not effectively argue to exclude his statement to police, nor did they effectively present a plea agreement the state had offered that would have resulted in him being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

He also alleges the attorneys didn't argue effectively that he wasn't competent to stand trial, because he had no memory of the homicides.

The petition argues that Isom's attorneys during the penalty phase of the trial didn't effectively present his social and mental history, didn't present a mental health expert and didn't object to comments made by the prosecutor.

Isom was represented by private and later by public defense attorneys the nearly six years the case was pending in Lake County Criminal Court before the five-week trial started.

Isom's current public defense attorneys note the petition is likely to be amended, because they are still reviewing the large volume of documents and evidence associated with the case.

A Lake County jury in 2013 took two hours to find Isom guilty of killing Cassandra Isom, 40; Michael Moore, 16; and Andria Cole, 13, in their home in the 5700 block of Hemlock Avenue in Gary. Isom allegedly told officers after his arrest, "I can't believe I killed my family, this can't be real."

The Indiana Supreme Court last year affirmed Isom's murder convictions and the jury's recommendation that he be sentenced to death.

Post-conviction relief is one of three types of reviews that capital cases can be subject to, according to the Indiana Public Defender Council website. Capital cases can also be subject to a federal review to determine if a defendant's constitutional rights were violated.

Isom is one of 13 men on Indiana's death row. Debra D. Brown, 53, was sentenced to death in 1986 by a Lake County jury, but she is currently being held in Ohio, according to the Indiana Department of Correction website.
INDIANAPOLIS  An Indiana State Board of Education member expressed concern about the lack of heat at Gary Roosevelt College and Career Academy causing 670 students to miss school this week.

Eddie Melton, of Merrillville, a new member to the board, said every Hoosier student has the right to a quality education in a suitable learning environment.

"The ongoing situation involving lack of heat and adequate facilities at Roosevelt is extremely troubling," he said in a statement released Thursday by the State Board of Education's office.

"This simply cannot continue," Melton said. Melton also is a NIPSCO manager of governmental and community relations.

"I am in communication with Dr. Cheryl Pruitt (Gary school corporation superintendent) and have been assured the school will be ready to reopen sometime next week. I also stand willing to work with all parties, including the State Board of Education and state lawmakers, to ensure the best interests of Roosevelt staff and students are met moving forward.

Melton, a Democrat, is seeking the state Senate seat held by Earline Rogers, who is not seeking re-election.

The school is not scheduled to reopen until Jan. 27.

Gary Roosevelt is operated by Tennessee-based EdisonLearning Co., a private management company appointed by the state about five years ago due to poor academic performance under the Gary Community School Corp.

The Gary school system still owns the building, and EdisonLearning is considered a tenant.

Gary Community Schools Corp. Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt said they don't manage the day-to-day operation of the school. She said the school corporation is willing to assist if there are things that need to be done. She said some sections of the building are closed off.

"That building has more than 407,000 square feet and sits on 17 acres, and they have fewer than 700 students," she said.

"The building was built for 4,000 students. It's a matter of figuring out what parts of the building are being used. I can't speak to the day-to-day operation of that building."

She said the district tries to ensure all children are served properly, but "there are also financial issues with the district."

Pruitt said traditional public schools, charter schools and others are facing issues, but she is willing to work with EdisonLearning to find solutions.

EdisonLearning spokesman Mike Serpe said the school was not scheduled to be open Thursday and Friday due to teacher development, and the staff and teachers were not at the building. He said the Gary school district contracted with Artic Engineering to do the heating repairs, and they hope to reopen Jan. 27.

A statement was posted on the school's website that read: "The Gary Community School Corp. has assured us that they are giving this matter the serious and urgent attention it deserves.

Parents are concerned. Elliott Carswell has a sophomore daughter, who told him they sit in classrooms with their coats on because it's so cold inside.

"It's getting to the point of being ridiculous with kids missing so many days of school," he said.

Carswell said he and his wife are discussing whether to transfer her to another school for the next academic year.

Grandparent Madeline Williams said she thinks the situation is terrible. Williams, who has two grandchildren at the school, said, "I don't know who is responsible, but this is happening every winter.

"I passed the kids outside protesting, and I told them to keep fighting because the adults are not doing what they are supposed to do. When the grownups don't do what they are supposed to do, the kids have to fight for themselves," she said.

Roosevelt senior Cary Martin said Wednesday there are many problems besides the cold building, including an inability to use the showers in the gym area, spoiled food and few working water fountains.

"Some of my colleagues and friends stink after gym class, because they can't wash up," he said.

Gary Roosevelt students and teachers protested the frigid temps inside the building earlier this week. Every year, there have been problems with the boiler system, and students have lost multiple days of learning.

In January 2014, due to the heating failures, a number of pipes burst causing the hallways near the gym to flood with up to 2 inches of water. In June 2014, Indiana American Water Co. turned off the water due to a lack of payment on the bill.
GARY | Earline Rogers remained cautiously optimistic Tuesday before declaring herself the winner of the 3rd Indiana Senate District seat.

"The way the numbers are coming in, it looks as though I have another four year term ahead of me. I look forward to serving the 3rd Senate District residents," Rogers said.

Her campaign workers, some of whom were still crunching numbers back in what she called her "war room," hugged Rogers and offered her congratulations.

Rogers' challengers were David Vinzant, a Hobart city councilman, and Darren Washington, president of the Gary School Board.

Vinzant said he defeated Rogers in his hometown of Hobart and in nearby Lake Station, but she handily won in Gary.

"We ran a good campaign, but Earline got the big numbers in Gary," Vinzant said.

The 3rd Indiana Senate District includes Gary, Hobart, Lake Station, New Chicago and parts of Merrillville and Crown Point.

Rogers said during her campaign voters should re-elect her because she consistently wins approval of legislation in the Republican-controlled Senate, including early childhood education programs and child abuse prevention measures in 2012.

The 77-year-old veteran legislator said she believes her experience and across-the-aisle friendships can help enact the ambitious 2013 legislative agenda of Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, including a land-based casino, improved public transportation and a Gary teaching hospital.

"I'm exciting and thankful and appreciative of the voters putting confidence in me again," Rogers said.

No Republicans were on the primary ballot for that seat Tuesday.
INDIANAPOLIS | The five justices of the Indiana Supreme Court reacted skeptically Thursday to claims that judicial and prosecutorial mistakes allegedly made during Kevin Isom's death-penalty trial rise to the level of fundamental error and warrant a new trial.

Last year, a Lake County jury found Kevin Isom, now 48, guilty of three counts of murder for the 2007 shootings of his wife, Cassandra Isom, 40; and stepchildren, Michael Moore, 16, and C'Andria Cole, 13, in the family's Gary home.

Lake Superior Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr. condemned Isom to three consecutive death sentences, which the jury recommended. Isom's execution is on hold while his appeal is pending.

Mark Bates, the Schererville attorney representing Isom, argued to the Supreme Court that Stefaniak erred during testimony in the penalty phase of the trial by not asking Erica Washington, Cassandra's sister, a question submitted by a juror about whether the family had forgiven Isom.

"I suggest that is a powerful mitigator," Bates said, adding that the jury might not have unanimously approved the death penalty, and, instead, recommended life without parole or another sentence, if the victims' family had forgiven Isom.

But Justice Steven David and Justice Robert Rucker, a Gary native, both noted that's a pretty big "if," since no one knows whether the family forgave Isom. The other justices appeared to agree.

David also pointed out that the juror's question really can't be answered because no one person can speak for the victims' family; different people understand forgiveness differently, and even if the family forgave Isom they still might believe he deserves the death penalty.

Bates then argued the prosecutor "crossed the line" during the penalty phase when he described the brutal nature of Isom's shootings, instead of limiting his remarks to proving Isom was death penalty-eligible.

While David admitted that was unusually tough talk for a prosecutor, he believed it was a fair response to the defense's portrayal of Isom as a man who loved his family.

In any case, David said he doubts the potential error was a fundamental error that made it impossible for Isom to receive a fair trial.

Bates acknowledged the failure of Isom's trial defense counsel to object to either the judge's or prosecutor's actions -- thus waiving them for appellate review -- required him to try to meet the much higher standard of proving fundamental error.

Nevertheless, Bates argued those two points, combined with six more in his written arguments to the court, require the justices to reduce Isom's sentence, or order a new trial.

Deputy Attorney General Kelly Miklos told the justices the actions of the judge and prosecutor were proper throughout the trial.

She said the potential errors Bates identified in no way rise to the level of fundamental error, and urged the court to respect the death sentence recommended by the jury.

The Supreme Court likely will issue its ruling by the end of the year.
SCHERERVILLE  Police are reporting the capture of a man wanted for a robbery and an attempted robbery earlier this month at two bank ATMs.

Kyle Holmes, 25, of Schererville, is named in armed robbery, attempted armed robbery, intimidation, theft, attempted theft and possession of drug paraphernalia counts filed in Lake Criminal Court.

Police said they arrested him late last week after members of Holmes' family recognized him from photos they publicly released last week of the two holdups.

A 37-year-old Merrillville woman told police she was attempting to deposit money into her account at a drive-up ATM at Chase Bank, in the 1800 block of Kennedy Avenue Jan. 15 when she saw a man approach the side of her vehicle. She said she was able to speed away before he could take the money.

A 53-year-old man said he was outside his car the same night, attempting to withdraw money from an ATM at First Financial, in the 400 block of West Lincoln Highway, when he was approached by a man who pulled out a black handgun and ordered the victim to withdraw money or he would shoot him.

According to the affidavit, Holmes allegedly told the man he needed the money to get high.

Both victims described the suspect as a white or Hispanic male, approximately 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, and wearing a tan coat with a hood, bluejeans and a black or blue bandanna over his face. The suspect was believed to be driving a Toyota RAV4 with the left rear taillight not working.

Police said the suspect's brother saw photos of the suspect while watching a Chicago television newscast. The brother and the father came to the Schererville Police Department Jan. 21 to say they recognized the jacket, bandanna and gun in the photos as the suspect's and believed the vehicle described by police belonged to the family.

The brother took officers to the home where they recovered a .40-caliber handgun and a bandana.

The family said Holmes has a heroin addiction, and they didn't want him to get hurt or killed, according to the affidavit.

Officers later found the suspect hiding in the back seat of a friend's vehicle outside a Schererville restaurant and took him into custody without incident and lodged him in the Lake County Jail. Officers found drug paraphernalia in his possession during the arrest.

Holmes maintained his innocence and told police he didn't commit the robberies, and that he had not driven the family car for two weeks.
VALPARAISO  A coyote took off extra fast Saturday night after it attempted to enter the Valparaiso Kohl's store, became stuck in a vestibule and eventually found its way out with some help from police, an official said.

The coyote initially was seen wandering around in front of the Kohl's, 350 Silhavy Road, said Indiana Conservation Officer Nicole Baumann, of Indiana Department of Natural Resources' District 10.

Baumann responded to the store about 7:30 p.m. after the coyote entered the first set of doors at the west entrance and employees locked a second set of doors, trapping the animal in a vestibule area, Baumann said.

When she arrived, the animal was hiding behind a trash can in a corner of the vestibule. The first set of doors remained open, but the coyote did not understand it could escape that way, she said.

The coyote was very scared, she said.

"He wandered in there and realized, 'This is not where I want to be at all,'" she said. "It was just a matter of trying to direct him."

Baumann and two Valparaiso police officers worked to steer the coyote out the first set of doors. A crowd of onlookers gathered, many snapping photographs of the animal, she said.

"We got some stuff in there and almost pushed him out," he said. "He ran out of there very fast and ran across the parking lot and was gone."

The coyote was not a threat to anyone during its ordeal, she said.

It likely lives in the woods around the shopping area. Coyotes are highly adaptable, Baumann said.

"With so much development, they get forced out and they don't really have a place to go," she said.

The coyote was not harmed in the incident, conservation police said.

A manager at Kohl's declined to comment Sunday.
VALPARAISO  Husband and wife Kenneth and Sonia Kincaid teamed up to present information on Peru at the Valparaiso International Centers Fourth Friday series Friday evening.

Kenneth Kincaid, a history professor at Purdue North Central and a VIC board member, talked about the economy and the upcoming 2016 Peruvian election, while Sonia Kincaid, who was born and raised in Peru, focused on the countrys food.

Sonia Kincaid said Perus gastronomy has become a source of national pride, and has been influenced by the native Incas, as well as Spain, Italy, China and West Africa.

I learned to talk and walk in the kitchen, Sonia Kincaid said. We identify with food. Every time you turn around, we are talking about food.

Kincaid referenced Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio, who has restaurants in several countries  including Tanta in Chicago. Acurio is considered the ambassador of Peruvian cuisine, Kincaid said.

Because of him, Peruvian food is so well known around the world, Kincaid said.

Mistura, a food festival that celebrates the regional cuisines of the country, is held every September in Peru and draws 600,000 visitors.

Peruvians are proud of the fact that since 2011, the country has banned genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, so anything that comes from Peru is organic, Kincaid said.

Corn, quinoa, peppers and more than 3,000 varieties of potatoes are grown in the country.

A few years ago, nobody knew what quinoa was, Kincaid said. Its packed with everything you need. Its a powerful food.

Some special Peruvian dishes include ceviche, a fish stew; chupe de camarrones, or shrimp stew; chicharrones, or deep fried pork; and Perus national non-alcoholic drink, chichi morada, which is made from purple corn.

Perus economy is growing much faster than its neighbors in Chile and Bolivia, said Kenneth Kincaid. However, while unemployment is only 5.9 percent, wages are low. Kincaid referenced a family practice physician who makes only $3 per hour.

Kincaid said Peru has become very green, which is evident in a movement to limit tourism at Machu Picchu to preserve the site and limit the volume of people.

Because Kenneth Kincaid was recently on sabbatical and performing research for a book, the couple and their children have lived in Peru for the past seven months.

Its always a treat for us to talk about a place that we love and hope to retire there someday, Kincaid said.
HAMMOND  Don't expect every day to be like a typical episode of "CSI." Hammond Police crime scene investigators and detectives say a day of investigation can be painstaking, tedious and overwhelmingly sad.

"We're not wearing suits and drinking a cup of coffee like they do on TV," Hammond Detective Jason Gonzalez said.

Hammond master sergeants Allan Retske and Robert Vaught, who share responsibilities in charge of the department's crime scene unit, Sgt. Butch Logan (Community Affairs) and Gonzalez spoke to more than 150 Bishop Noll Institute students Thursday to give them a better picture of how they gather evidence.

This is an entry-level STEM  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math  course offered to freshmen students as they explore STEM topics. The students also have done projects on drones and energy-efficient housing.

There are three BNI teachers involved including Rebecca Dostatni, Paul Douglass and Anthony Hoolihan.

Dostatni said she wanted the police officers to talk with students about how solving a crime is problem solving. She wants them to learn how to think critically on a daily basis, and how that leads to a solution.

The Hammond police officers brought in materials they use to cast footprints and fingerprint kits, and showed students how crime scene investigators chart the trajectory of a bullet. Once all that's done, investigators diagram the crime scene.

The officers said only the Hammond Police Department and the Lake County Sheriff's Department have crime scene investigators who process their own crime scenes. Vaught said a crime scene investigation can take as long as three weeks because technicians often go back and forth to the scene to get as much information as possible.

Gonzalez said his role begins with the investigation, and he said the first 48 hours is critical.

"It's very important to work the leads and work them into the ground," he said. "It's very important to build a relationship with the person you are dealing with whether it's a murder case or a drug case."

Noll freshmen Alejandra Wedryk and A.J. Vazquez said they learned a lot from the presentation. They said they are collecting crime data from the city of Hammond and other Northwestern Indiana communities.

Wedryk said she finds forensic science interesting and may consider that as a college major.

In addition to the STEM class for freshmen, Noll principal Craig Stafford said the high school offers a STEM elective class to students in grades 10 through 12.

"Over the next three years we will be developing a 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade STEM class," he said.

Bishop Noll has a total enrollment of 536 students, a 14-year high. Of the total number of students, 48 percent use a voucher, also called an Indiana Choice Scholarship, which allows families to use public school tax dollars to attend a private school.
Through 25 conversations hosted by Lake Area United Way, 210 Lake County residents identified three issues as top priorities for the community  children and youth, education and public safety.

Lake Area United Ways role in these conversations was not to interject its opinions or beliefs but to create a space in which residents would feel safe in sharing their hopes for the future and candidly discussing the concerns and challenges they face today.

First and foremost, residents are deeply concerned about our children and youth.

Strong supports for children and youth are necessary to ensure they have the best chance to succeed. Residents fear children in communities across the county are not afforded the same opportunities necessary to grow into self-sufficient, productive adults that make positive contributions to society. Poverty, disparities in the quality of public education, unsafe neighborhoods, and disengaged and, in some cases, uncaring parents jeopardize the safety and well-being of our children.

Residents expressed sadness and dismay over the fact that many children in their communities are seemingly unloved and lack positive, caring adult role models in their lives. Many shared anxiety over two-parent and single-parent households struggling to survive and often working two or three jobs to make ends meet. These financial stressors on the family exhaust parents emotionally and physically and limit their ability to be actively engaged in raising their children.

Additionally, working families that cannot access safe and affordable childcare are forced to have their children become latchkey kids. These children and youth are unsupervised and as such are at higher risk of engaging in unhealthy and unsafe behaviors.

Residents specifically spoke about the following challenges and barriers impeding progress:

Financial instability: Many children are being raised in families that are in financial crisis. This impairs the ability of these children to excel in academics, leads to poor physical and mental health, and increases their likelihood of future poor life choices. Generational cycles of poverty and teen parents exist in many communities across the county.

Many children are being raised in families that are in financial crisis. This impairs the ability of these children to excel in academics, leads to poor physical and mental health, and increases their likelihood of future poor life choices. Generational cycles of poverty and teen parents exist in many communities across the county. Parental engagement: Residents feel there is a strong need for parents to become more actively engaged in their childrens education. Parents, especially those who had children at a young age, lack the necessary support systems and skills needed to successfully rear their children.

Residents feel there is a strong need for parents to become more actively engaged in their childrens education. Parents, especially those who had children at a young age, lack the necessary support systems and skills needed to successfully rear their children. Child abuse: There is a concern that some children and youth are being physically and/or emotionally abused by their parents or caregivers. Residents fear there aren't enough foster homes.

There is a concern that some children and youth are being physically and/or emotionally abused by their parents or caregivers. Residents fear there aren't enough foster homes. Safe havens before and after school: There is a shortage of safe and affordable alternatives that are easily accessible for children and youth to participate in before and after school. Most youth programs focus heavily on sports related activities and do not offer a diverse set of opportunities for non-athletic youth.

There is a shortage of safe and affordable alternatives that are easily accessible for children and youth to participate in before and after school. Most youth programs focus heavily on sports related activities and do not offer a diverse set of opportunities for non-athletic youth. Bullying: Bullying among youth is a growing concern. Few resources are aimed at supporting and equipping parents in helping children respond appropriately appropriately. Also, increased education in responding to and eliminating bullying is needed.

Bullying among youth is a growing concern. Few resources are aimed at supporting and equipping parents in helping children respond appropriately appropriately. Also, increased education in responding to and eliminating bullying is needed. Safety net for older youth: There is a concern middle to high school students lack access to safe places before and after school.

There is a concern middle to high school students lack access to safe places before and after school. Engaging in volunteerism: Children and youth are not being afforded the opportunity to realize the importance and benefit of volunteerism. By providing these experiences at an early age, children would be more likely to continue to volunteer as adults.

Children and youth are not being afforded the opportunity to realize the importance and benefit of volunteerism. By providing these experiences at an early age, children would be more likely to continue to volunteer as adults. Lack of transportation: Lack of transportation prevents children and youth from participating in extracurricular activities and programs.

Lack of transportation prevents children and youth from participating in extracurricular activities and programs. Increased support for single mothers: Single mothers often raise their children without the support and aid of their fathers. There is a growing concern that single mothers lack a support network struggle to meet the needs of their children.

Single mothers often raise their children without the support and aid of their fathers. There is a growing concern that single mothers lack a support network struggle to meet the needs of their children. Making poor life choices: Children and youth are unaware and uninformed of the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. It is perceived an alarming number of young people are making poor life choices and engaging in risky behaviors such as gangs, drug and alcohol use, and criminal activity.

Residents also offered ideas that can drive solutions. They strongly encourage leaders and citizens to build a community culture that makes the physical, mental and emotional well-being of our children a top priority. Toward that end, residents support the expansion of safe, quality and affordable before- and after-school programs that provide a diverse array of activities including sports, fine arts and music.

They strongly urge schools and community organizations to consider developing programs that specifically target older youth and young adults. Ideally, these programs should include activities that older youth would find attractive and should leverage the power of technology and social media.

Summer break presents a unique challenge for working families and parents who struggle to keep their children and youth active and away from unsafe activities. Government, community-based organizations and schools should work together to create summer programs that are affordable and engaging. Additionally, residents recommend summer job programs for high school youth that will provide a safe alternative to hanging out on the streets. Residents call for the expansion of mentoring and tutoring programs to meet the needs of struggling children and at-risk youth.

Finally, residents recommend stronger support systems for single parents and families. Preferably, these systems would include comprehensive parent education and training programs, support groups for children of single and divorced parents, and extensive community resources for both parents and children.
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday praised the city's agencies in their handling of this weekend's near-record snowfall and pledged to double up efforts to clear any remaining secondary and tertiary roads, particularly in Queens.

The mayor says 920 plows are now being focused on the borough as well as 170 frontend loaders.

Sunnyside, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Corona still had many unplowed streets as of Monday morning.

"No one's saying mission accomplished around here. What we're saying is a lot of good work has happened. You can get around the city by and large today. We're not giving up until it's over," De Blasio said.

With New Yorkers headed back to work for the first time since the blizzard, the city is urging people to leave their cars where they are and use mass transit wherever possible.

The Sanitation Department says it's aiming to resume residential garbage collection on Thursday.

Public schools were open Monday, a decision many parents are not happy about.

Speaking to reporters, Mayor de Blasio says despite the backlash, he still believes it was the right call.

"We make one decision for our school system of 1.1 million kids," De Blasio said. "Overall, there was no question the city could get school off effectively and safely. And we owe it to our kids, we want them in the classroom. And we owe it to our parents, many of whom work. We have a lot of parents, if school is suddenly off they don't have an alternative for their kid. So this was a decision we made very carefully but I'm convinced it was the right one."

Alternate side parking is suspended until next Monday, although if you can find a spot at a meter you will have to pay.

Cars that are currently parked in No Standing zones near schools can stay where they are until Wednesday.

A reminder that residents can track the progress of the city's snow plows online.

PlowNYC shows how recently plows have passed on a street-by-street basis in all five boroughs.

To see the map, visit nyc.gov/plownyc.

Subways and buses are running, although there are some service disruptions.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says planned service changes on all lines are canceled through 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Nostrand Avenue 2 Line "Fastrack" work is also canceled this week.

The agency is reporting good service on most of its subway lines, and the Staten Island Railway.

Buses are running with delays.

Long Island Rail Road service has been restored on the Babylon, Ronkonkoma, and Huntington branches with express trains making local stops until they are filled.

Train service has also been restored in diesel territory - Oyster Bay and Port Jefferson branches - between Greenport and Ronkonkoma and west of Speonk on the Montauk Branch.

Metro North has resumed service in and out of the city, but riders are advised to check schedules for delays, as snow removal continues.

For the latest, visit mta.info.

The Staten Island Ferry is running on a normal weekday schedule.

PATH service is suspended between Newark and Journal Square.

New Jersey Transit will cross-honor PATH tickets at Newark Penn Station.

Meantime, the city is asking for help cleaning up the snow.

Mayor de Blasio says more workers are needed to remove snow and ice from bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants and steps.

The pay starts at $13.50 an hour and increases to $20.25 after 40 hours of work.

Those interested must be at least 18 years old and must be able to work legally in the U.S.

Those interested can register at any sanitation depot around the city from Monday through Saturday.
A day after the Walt Disney Company disclosed that it was ending apparel production in Bangladesh, that countrys garment manufacturers expressed alarm that other Western corporations might follow Disneys lead. They feared that could bring about a potential mass exodus that would devastate Bangladeshs economy and threaten the livelihoods of millions of people.

Mohammad Fazlul Azim, a member of the Bangladesh Parliament and an influential garment factory owner, implored brands not to leave Bangladesh, noting that many factories did comply with safety standards.

The whole nation should not be made to suffer, he said. This industry is very important to us. Fourteen million families depend on this. It is a huge number of people who are dependent on this industry.

Factory owners in Bangladesh as well as Western apparel retailers have faced intense pressure from governments, consumers and labor groups to improve workplace safety there after a building containing five garment factories collapsed last week outside the nations capital, killing more than 430 people.
LA CHAUX-DE-FONDS, Switzerland  Alain Monteagle unfolded his blue chair and set up a white table at a vegetable market last weekend, covering it with brochures titled The Looting of Art in War. As a baker nearby peddled croissants that morning, Mr. Monteagle tried to sell his version of justice.

We will tell our story to people in twos and threes, if thats the only way we can get it back, Mr. Monteagle, 67, a retired history teacher from outside Paris, said.

It is a painting by John Constable that was seized from his family, French Jews, during World War II and now hangs a few blocks away at the Musee des Beaux-Arts, a landmark salmon-colored Art Deco building in the center of town.

Swiss museum officials do not dispute that the painting was looted  they acknowledge the fact on a plaque below it. But they say that the museum accepted it in good faith, and that Swiss law does not require restitution in such circumstances.
Season 10, Episode 1: My Struggle

When I heard that The X-Files was coming back to TV, it was like hearing that I would see some dear old friends again. I spent every Friday night of my young adulthood with Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. News of their coming six-week mini-series started me on a mega rewatch  I mainlined the original episodes in five-hour chunks.

Despite the problems with this episode, which may have been more evident to me because I tend to like the stand-alone story lines as opposed to the mythology arcs, it was thrilling to hear Mark Snows spine-tingling theme and to see the opening credits unchanged from their original form. And the connection between Mulder and Scully, though it has frayed through the years, is still strong. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have moved on to other roles, but they have not been able to completely shed these skins.

Scully was still sporting her small gold cross and improbable heels. Mulder was still cocooned in the Kaczynski-esque existence in which we last saw him in X-Files: I Want to Believe, the grim 2008 movie that focused on a clairvoyant pedophile priest. From that film, we confirmed that Mulder and Scullys professional relationship had grown into a personal partnership and that they had a son together. Here, we learn right away that they are no longer a couple.

Scully and Mulder are now in an uncomfortable place. And so is this unsatisfying episode. When young Mulder was spouting his conspiracy theories, those ideas were rebellious and exciting. He made a skeptical Scully want to believe because he did. And he believed because he had seen the most incredible things, and they didnt make him afraid, only more determined to find the truth, which (let us not forget) was out there.
No scandal in recent years has hung over the art market as heavily as the Knoedler & Company forgery case.

At its heart lies a mystery. Was Knoedler, the distinguished old gallery that sold more than 30 fake paintings said to be by Pollock, de Kooning and other titans of Abstract Expressionism, in on the scam? Or were the gallery and its longtime director, Ann Freedman, cruelly hoodwinked along with collectors who together paid around $63 million for the bogus works?

This week the puzzle may start to unravel: The first trial to arise from the sales, in a lawsuit involving the 2004 purchase of a fraudulent Rothko, is to open on Monday in United States District Court in Manhattan. A parade of witnesses from the art world are to testify, just possibly including Glafira Rosales, the former Long Island dealer who, for 15 years, consigned fakes to Knoedler, passing them off as masterworks from a mysterious collection based in Zurich and Mexico City.

All of them had actually been painted by a Chinese immigrant in Queens.

Its a unique opportunity for a public hearing of the machinations of the art world, which are usually very discreet, said Nicholas M. ODonnell, an art lawyer in Boston.
The moody hero, Quentin Coldwater, is played by Jason Ralph, who was fun to watch as a jittery small-time drug dealer in NBCs Aquarius. Here hes more doe-eyed and earnest but still holds your attention, bringing some charm and resonance to both Quentins initial diffidence and his growing enthusiasm as he learns the ropes at Brakebills.

Quentin and his new friends do not apply to Brakebills but are drawn there, stepping through unmarked city doorways and emerging in sylvan quadrangles. Once there, they quickly (within the two episodes provided to critics) discover that the school is under threat from a creature known as the Beast, introduced in a genuinely creepy and disturbing scene with a high body count.

Theres a certain didacticism to The Magicians, a common feature of the young-adult fantasy genre. Doing magic, were told more than a few times, is a matter of letting yourself go and getting in touch with your true feelings and desires. The misfits, like Quentin, finally have an advantage: Magic doesnt come from talent. It comes from pain.

That the show doesnt stop there, and manages to be more engaging and credible than the usual basic-cable genre drama, probably can be credited to Sera Gamble, a longtime writer and showrunner on Supernatural, and John McNamara, a producer on shows like Aquarius and In Plain Sight, who are executive producers of The Magicians.

The series works well enough as a straightforward coming-of-age tale that the stock scenes of magic  a windblown sheet of paper leading Quentin to the proper doorway, a deck of cards forming castles in the air  can feel like cheesy intrusions. More reflective of the shows approach is a fleeting, sly shot in which Quentin tries to pull off his sweater and, ever the doofus, becomes stuck for a moment with his head inside the garment  looking just like one of the faceless, depression-sowing Dementors from Harry Potter. Its a very minor but honest variety of enchantment.
Second, Ms. Marchant has chosen very moving characters to show us the importance of the research she discusses  we forget that those who turn to alternative medicine are often people in extremis  and she possesses an equal flair for finding inspirational figures. I will always like a book, at least a little, if it mentions a 102-year-old Costa Rican woman who can recite a six-minute Pablo Neruda poem from memory.

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My favorite chapters of Cure come mostly at the beginning, when Ms. Marchant discusses the placebo effect. It, too, is a topic some readers may consider old hat, but the studies are irresistible, and they come in an almost infinite variety.

Did you know, for instance, that there are placebo trials involving fake surgery? Surgery! (Not with a general anesthetic. But still.) Or that large-pill placebos work better than small ones? (Which is funny if you think about it, considering they are equally inert.) Or that placebos sometimes work even when we know theyre placebos? (There is, correspondingly, a niche market for placebos online.)

And thats just the kid stuff. Theres also evidence suggesting that placebos affect the immune system, not just the subjective experience of pain.

It isnt trickery, wishful thinking or all in the mind, Ms. Marchant writes, when explaining the biology of the placebo effect. It is a physical mechanism, as concrete as the effects of any drug. What we are swallowing with any pill is essentially an idea: That we will feel better. This belief alone is often enough to trigger the release of our bodys natural endorphins, or dopamine, or whatever other chemical our body was expecting to make or consume if wed taken an actual drug.

After placebos, Ms. Marchant looks at how researchers are trying to harness the powers of the mind to fight chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and intractable physical pain. The biological origins of each condition may differ. But what most of the treatments she examines have in common, whether they involve hypnosis or cognitive behavioral therapy or virtual reality, is that they divert our attention away from our ailments.
Tyco International, the remnant of the industrial conglomerate that was marred with corporate scandal and later broken up, is in late-stage discussions to merge with Johnson Controls for as much as $20 billion, a person briefed on the discussions said on Sunday.

The deal, which might be announced as soon as Monday, could still fall apart, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are were private. The exact terms of the deal could not be learned.

With the planned spinoff of Johnson Controls automotive seating and interior unit in October, a deal with Tyco could help buttress its remaining building-products division.

Johnson Controls diversified portfolio of products includes heating and air conditioning, and industrial refrigeration, while Tyco makes security and fire safety systems. Based on figures from the 12 months through September, the combined company could produce almost $50 billion in annual revenue, according to data provided by S&P Capital IQ.
It may be an offer employees simply can no longer refuse.

Workers increasingly are being told by their companies to undergo health screenings and enroll in wellness programs, as a way to curb insurance costs. Many employees now face stiff financial penalties  often in the form of higher premiums  if they do not have their cholesterol checked or join programs to lose weight or better manage diabetes.

And a ruling late last month by a federal judge in Wisconsin is likely to further embolden companies to prod workers to join these programs, despite growing concerns over employee privacy and health management.

The court decision is the latest setback for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which in the last few years has pursued legal action against programs it says violated federal antidiscrimination laws.

The agency has argued, unsuccessfully in some cases, that employers have wellness programs that violate laws prohibiting them from demanding medical information from workers. In addition to bringing several lawsuits, the agency has also issued proposed regulations that would forbid companies to make health screenings a condition of insurance coverage. The standoff will need to be settled by the courts unless the agency revises its rules.
Broadway Panhandler, a packed-to-the-rafters kitchen store that opened in Manhattan 40 years ago and is beloved by home cooks, celebrities and restaurant chefs, will close by the spring when its owner and founder, Norman Kornbleuth, retires.

Ive been in this business for 40 years, Mr. Kornbleuth said on Thursday. Im now 72; my wife has health issues. Its time.

Mr. Kornbleuth said that his two daughters were not interested in running the business and that his efforts to sell the company fell through. He has yet to decide the date when the store will close its doors for good.

Outfitted with towers of industrial shelving overstuffed with pots, draped with gadgets and stacked with cookware, Broadway Panhandler has a customer base that includes the chef Jody Williams, who owns Buvette and is an owner of Via Carota, and the actors James Spader, Uma Thurman and Daniel Craig. Knives, a store specialty, are displayed in a rear corner, where Mr. Kornbleuth freely dispenses advice. He said he might open a small knife shop sometime after Broadway Panhandler closes.
Tom Porton is used to drama: Since arriving at James Monroe High School as an English teacher 45 years ago, he has taught and staged plays. Outside, in the Bronx River neighborhood where the school is, there was plenty of drama in the 1980s, when AIDS and crack ravaged the area. His response then was to establish a group of peer educators who worked with Montefiore Medical Center to teach teenagers about H.I.V. prevention. His efforts earned him awards, including recognition from the City Council and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and led to his induction into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.

Now he is at the center of drama: Last month he clashed with Brendan Lyons, the schools principal, who disapproved of his distributing H.I.V./AIDS education fliers that listed nonsexual ways of Making Love Without Doin It (including advice to read a book together). This month, he said the principal eliminated his early-morning civic leadership class, which engaged students in activities such as feeding the homeless, saying it was not part of the Common Core curriculum. Mr. Porton was already skeptical of that curriculum, saying it shortchanged students by focusing on chapters of novels and nonfiction essays rather than entire works of literature.

So, next month Mr. Porton  a 67-year-old educator whom students praised as a lifesaver and life-changer  is walking away from teaching. He handed in his retirement papers on Friday.

My career has always been based on the emotional and social well-being of the child, he said, inside an office whose walls were decorated with awards, proclamations and photos of him alongside several school chancellors; Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor at the time; and the rapper DMC. Now, I dont know where teaching is headed. I just know I cant anymore. I find it torture. Id rather separate myself from the classroom doing something that is distasteful and try to spend my days doing things that are important.
Ioannis Amanatidis  known to his customers as Johnny the Greek  would drive to his busy corner of Northern Boulevard in Bayside, Queens, in the morning with his food cart in tow. Lunch was still hours away, but every day for six or seven years, he said, an older man would be waiting when he arrived.

The name of the man, in his 70s, was Robert, and he lived on the streets.

Mr. Amanatidis, 48, said he would buy Robert a cup of coffee from a neighboring cart and they would shoot the breeze while he set up for the day. Obama, politics, whatever. Robert would pick up litter around the cart and help push it through snow in the winter. He would run to a gas station to make change when Mr. Amanatidis, busy slinging the souvlaki, was low on quarters. In return, Mr. Amanatidis would give him a few dollars.

Two years ago, Roberts corner spot stood empty one morning, and the next, and every day since. Mr. Amanatidis was told of his whereabouts last week. He shook his head in disbelief. Hes a good guy, he said, even as he learned otherwise.

Roberts full name is Robert Krah. As Mr. Amanatidis spoke of him, Mr. Krah, born in 1937, was almost 70 miles away, at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y. He had been locked up since Jan. 27, 2014.
Last winter, as a storm descended on New York City, the authority shut down the entire subway system, the first time it had taken such action for a snowstorm. But the agency did not consult with City Hall, and that snub of Mayor Bill de Blasio, coupled with the storms modest impact, led to criticism of the agency and Mr. Cuomo.

Since then, the authority had been preparing plans for how to offer partial service during a storm like the one over the weekend that covered Central Park with more than 26 inches of snow, the second-largest snowfall on record in the city.

Its a plan we worked on over the past year in order to provide service where we could, and we will continue to fine-tune it, Mr. Ortiz said. Well look at how things worked during the storm and adjust it accordingly.

As the full subway map began to come back to life on Sunday morning, transit advocates praised the decision to maintain underground service during the storm. The move also got a stamp of approval from Mr. de Blasio, who had bristled at how the closing was handled last year.
The southern end of the Jersey Shore, which was largely spared by Hurricane Sandy three years ago, had the most severe flooding in the state during the weekend blizzard, as high tides sent icy water rushing into darkened homes and businesses.

In Cape May County  the southern tip of the shore  tides as high as 10 feet flooded garages and ground floors. Some coastal residents who chose not to evacuate were stranded without power for more than 24 hours.

The barrier islands to the north that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy in late 2012 fared better than many had feared. After a high tide on Saturday morning caused moderate flooding on those islands, the winds shifted and kept the water from rising any higher, emergency managers said on Sunday.

By late morning, Frank Donato, the emergency management coordinator for Ocean City, said he was sweeping about eight to 10 inches of water out of his garage, half as much as he had to contend with after Hurricane Sandy.
IN New York State, both the former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and the former Senate majority leader Dean Skelos have recently been tried and convicted on numerous federal charges of corruption. They share another distinction: Since their trials, they have both applied for their state pensions. Sadly, they have every right to do so.

Under current law in New York, a former public official sitting in prison for a felony conviction for misconduct in office can still receive his or her pension checks. In the cases of Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos, those payouts could easily total millions of dollars each.

And they will join a host of other former public officials, including but not limited to elected lawmakers who have been convicted of crimes related to their jobs but who are nonetheless receiving pensions. This is not only a waste of taxpayer money, but it also conveys the message that Albany tolerates  and is even willing to bankroll  those proved beyond any reasonable doubt to be corrupt.

Changing this situation for state and local officials requires an amendment to the New York State Constitution, which at present mandates that pension benefits not be diminished once someone enters the state pension system. (In 2011, a statutory change fixed this problem for new public employees, but it has no effect on a vast majority of New Yorks public officials, who served in some state or local capacity before the end of that year.)
Congress has historically treated drug abuse as a malady afflicting mostly poor, minority communities, best dealt with by locking people up for long periods of time. The epidemic of drug overdose deaths currently ravaging white populations in cities and towns across the country has altered this line of thinking, and forced lawmakers to acknowledge that addiction is a problem that knows no racial barriers and can be best addressed with treatment.

This realization is driving bipartisan support in Washington for saner, less punitive drug policies, some of which Congress had steadfastly resisted for decades.

Recently, Congress effectively lifted a destructive, longstanding ban that prevented state and local governments from using federal money on needle exchange programs. These programs have been shown to slow the spread of H.I.V. and other infections by giving intravenous drug users ready access to clean needles. A similar shift in attitude is reflected in bills like the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which is pending in both houses of Congress. Its purpose is to expand and improve drug treatment services nationwide.

The need for such services was underscored in a recent Times analysis based on data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows that drug overdose deaths driven primarily by addiction to prescription painkillers and heroin had increased in nearly every county between 2002 and 2014, a year when more than 47,000 people  an average of about 125 a day  died of overdoses. Some medical experts likened the toll to the H.I.V. epidemic in the 1990s, but with this difference: Then, H.I.V. deaths were mainly centered in urban centers; now, rural areas have higher drug overdose death rates than large cities.
The government of Myanmars departing president, Thein Sein, oversaw the systematic persecution of the countrys Rohingya Muslim minority  a human rights debacle that one study has described as genocide. Mr. Thein Sein also signed four bills into law last year regulating interfaith marriage, birth spacing and religious conversion that clearly targeted Myanmars Muslim minority.

By the hundreds of thousands, Muslims in Myanmar have been stripped of their citizenship, sent to concentration camps where they are deprived of basic medical care, jobs and even food, and held prisoners in villages they are not allowed to leave. Thousands more have fled the camps by risking their lives at the hands of criminal syndicates that traffic them to Malaysia and Bangladesh or force them into servitude on fishing boats.

The question now is what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will do to ease their plight. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the revered winner of the Nobel Peace Prize whose National League for Democracy party won a majority of seats in Parliament in November, was herself persecuted and held under house arrest. But during the campaign she remained stubbornly silent on the fate of the Rohingya, clearly a political calculation in a country where anti-Muslim sentiment had been whipped to a fever pitch.

Now that her party has won, as Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed out at a meeting with leaders in Myanmar on Jan. 18, there is an urgent need to make sure the new government respects the human rights of all people when it takes power in March. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is already taking action to end festering conflicts between Myanmars military and armed ethnic groups, and promises to strengthen fragile democratic institutions and bring economic opportunity to Myanmars people.
Language, notes the filmmaker and artist Wu Tsang, is always present in my work. And as her first monograph, Not in My Language (Walther Konig, $50), makes clear, how we say things extends beyond simply the words we use. Intended as a companion to Tsangs 2015 group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf and the Migros Museum in Zurich, the publication surveys the artists prodigious output and highlights themes recurrent throughout her work. Combining stills and reproduced screenplays from six of her films  including DAMELO TODO, 2010, centering on the story of an El Salvadorian teenage refugee who finds sanctuary in L.A.s transgender community, and her documentary Wildness, 2012, which profiles the habitues of Silver Lakes legendary trans bar the Silver Platter and was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial  Not in My Language foregrounds Tsangs interest in communities and subcultures often relegated to the margins of society.

Taking its title from the YouTube video In My Language, posted by the autism-rights advocate and blogger Amanda Baggs, Tsang notes that all of her films acknowledge what she views as the limits of language. Indeed, says Tsang, who self-identifies as trans, finding and connecting with other queer people is not always done on the basis of verbal communication  even given the ubiquity of hook-up apps and chat rooms. On the flip side, Tsang continues, the experiences of gender nonconforming people and people of color have a lot to do with language and how personhood is defined. To that end, she views her films, and in particular the performances she documents, as an attempt to challenge and reinvent the ways in which we communicate with each other.
The Team, a Brooklyn theater company, will have its first full production at the Edinburgh International Festival, and, perhaps appropriately, the show will examine the national myths of Scotland and the United States.

In Anything That Gives Off Light, a Scottish man and an American woman set off on a journey through the Highlands, trying to determine the next steps during transitional moments in their lives. Created collaboratively by the Team and the National Theater of Scotland, the show, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812), with Davey Anderson of the National Theater of Scotland as associate director, will have its premiere in August.

The Team, which has been represented several times at the larger but scrappier Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is well known to Edinburgh International Festival regulars, and some prior Team productions, including Mission Drift (2011), have fared better in Scotland than in New York. The reviews for that show in New York were middling, not stellar, while in Edinburgh the show won numerous awards.

Our work was received much faster and with more immediate celebration abroad, Ms. Chavkin, the Teams artistic director, said in a telephone interview. One big reason, she said, it that there is something exotic about American companies there. In addition, the Team focuses on American mythology and the experience of living in the United States today, and sometimes that critique resonates a different way there, she said.
CHICAGO  A former deputy superintendent of the Chicago Police Department who left to lead two major police departments is returning as a senior adviser to help guide the police force in civil rights reforms, Mayor Rahm Emanuels office announced on Sunday.

The adviser, Charles H. Ramsey, was appointed to help a Police Department that is trying to regain public trust in the wake of the release of a video showing a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager.

Mr. Ramsey has twice invited federal reviews of police departments  first in Washington and most recently in Philadelphia  similar to the civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department that the Justice Department announced last month. He has said shootings involving the police in Washington and Philadelphia subsequently declined.

Protests have called for Mr. Emanuel to resign over the release two months ago of the video of Laquan McDonalds shooting death by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The video sparked the biggest crisis of Mr. Emanuels administration and cost the police superintendent, Garry F. McCarthy, his job last month.
MARION, Iowa  For months, it was the biggest question nagging at the Rubio campaign here: Wheres Marco?

His schedule was not packed with 16-hour days spent rolling across Iowas hinterlands in a bus. As an Iowan, you were probably more likely to see him on Fox News or hear about him visiting New Hampshire or South Carolina. Other candidates like Ted Cruz and Donald J. Trump had the support of more high-profile conservative leaders.

But something appears to be shifting for Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. It is a change evident in his growing crowds; a string of endorsements; a friendly nod from a popular Iowa senator, Joni Ernst; and the cautious confidence he is starting to express.

Im very optimistic about the energy were gaining, the endorsements, the support and the turnout on a day like today, Mr. Rubio told a crowd of more than 300 people who came to hear him speak here at a Best Western.
NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa  From universal health care and paid family leave to college costs and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders challenged each others priorities and courted female voters on Sunday as they began the final week of their increasingly hard-fought campaign to win the Iowa caucuses next Monday.

As hundreds of volunteers for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders fanned out across the state to knock on doors and to hold mini-rallies with supporters, the Democratic candidates campaigned in vote-rich counties in eastern Iowa where Barack Obama performed well in his victorious campaign in the 2008 caucuses. Of the two, Mr. Sanders made the sharper and steadier attacks on his rival, while Mrs. Clinton mixed praise for President Obama with criticism of Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Sanders took repeated shots at a core part of Mrs. Clintons political message: that she would be the strongest advocate for the needs of women and families. At a rally with 2,270 people in Decorah, Mr. Sanders noted that he, unlike Mrs. Clinton, supports proposed Senate legislation that would ensure three months of paid family leave for Americans, financed by a small increase in payroll taxes.
DES MOINES  The race between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, which voters will begin deciding a week from Monday, is not just about the White House anymore. It has intensified into an epochal battle over their vastly different visions for the Democratic Party.

Mr. Sanders, a New Deal-style liberal from Vermont, last week became the partys first top-tier candidate since the 1980s to propose broad-based tax increases. He argues that only muscular government action  Wall Street regulations, public works jobs, Medicare for all  will topple Americas rigged economy.

Something is grotesquely wrong in America, he said Thursday in New Hampshire, urging voters to deliver a landslide in November that would cow Congress into enacting his agenda.

Mrs. Clinton, a mainstream Democrat, has started contrasting herself with Mr. Sanders by championing a sensible, achievable agenda and promising to build on President Obamas legacy in health care, the economy and national security. She is the classic continuity candidate: seeking support from blacks, Hispanics, women, union members and suburban voters, and proposing policies that are friendly to families and businesses  strategies that have defined the party since President Bill Clintons election in 1992.
BERLIN, N.H.  Expectations are not always high at Jeb Bushs campaign events, where impressions of his halting performances in debates and other TV appearances often precede him.

He comes off on television as being boring, said Robbie Munce, 38, an undecided Republican who owns a portable-toilet company and who came to see Mr. Bush speak here last month. But after watching Mr. Bush field questions for more than an hour on issues as diverse as banking regulation and homegrown terrorism, Mr. Munce left impressed.

I think he really listens to what people have to say. He doesnt just pick the one term in someones question and turn it into a talking point, he said. Hes answering the questions that people are asking.

The frequency of that assessment  that Mr. Bush is a lot more compelling in person than on TV  suggests a possible, if challenging, path toward reviving his faltering campaign. And as he makes his way from veterans halls to high school gyms in New Hampshire, a state that typically rewards retail campaigning in presidential races, he is not only surprising voters with his skills on the stump, but also winning over many of them.
WASHINGTON  The Pentagon has asked the American Psychological Association to reconsider its ban on the involvement of psychologists in national security interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay prison and other facilities.

The Defense Department reduced its use of psychologists at Guantanamo in late 2015 in response to the policy approved by the association last summer.

But in a letter and accompanying memo to association officials this month, Brad Carson, the acting principal deputy secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, asked that the group, the nations largest professional organization for psychologists, revisit its blanket prohibition.

Although the Department of Defense understands the desire of the American psychology profession to make a strong statement regarding reports about the role of former military psychologists more than a dozen years ago, the issue now is to apply the lessons learned to guide future conduct, Mr. Carson wrote.
CHEVY CHASE, Md.  In Washington, there was a massive snowball fight in Dupont Circle, and on Capitol Hill, families went sledding. But in suburban Rosslyn, Va., Lila Hertz, 22, fell down in the snow Sunday as she struggled to find transportation to her job at a popular lunch spot two blocks from the White House. She was rescued by a passing cab  and was the only person who showed up for work.

Im everything today, she told customers, who were startled to find anyone there at all.

As the mid-Atlantic region began to dig out Sunday from a blizzard of historic proportions, it was clear that the return to normalcy was going to be lurching at best.

Federal offices will be closed on Monday; Washingtons regional subway system, shuttered during the storm, is to reopen with limited underground rail service. Reagan National and Dulles International airports are expected to reopen, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia said, but state government in Virginia will be closed. So will state offices here in Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan warned that it would take days to get back to normal.
BEIJING  As a bloody offensive by the Taliban spreads in Afghanistan and with American combat operations there officially ended, anxious Chinese leaders find themselves under pressure to take a more active role in the long-stalled peace process, according to scholars and current and former diplomats.

For observers of Chinese diplomacy, that kind of commitment is surprising since China often tries to take a hands-off approach in regions and nations at war.

The big backdrop is that the United States will have withdrawn most of its troops from Afghanistan with the antiterrorism mission unfinished, which is leaving the country a mess, said Du Youkang, who worked in Islamabad, Pakistan, as a diplomat and is now the director of the South Asia Studies Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. Bombings have never stopped, even in the capital. Afghanistan shares a border with China, so in this case China must get involved to promote the talks and to secure the stability in the region.

Yet if China is to play a productive role in peace talks with the Taliban, the officials and scholars say, it will have to convince its ally Pakistan that an Afghanistan at peace and engaged politically and economically with all regional powers, including India, is in Pakistans interests.
YARRABAH, Australia  This remote stretch of coastline in north Queensland has much to offer: pristine beaches dotted with mango and palm trees, tropical breezes, an azure ocean.

But the lush surroundings belie a troubled history. Yarrabah was settled as an Anglican mission in the 1890s, and Aboriginal and some South Sea island natives were forcibly relocated here from their traditional lands. Under mission rule, they toiled in agriculture, working on sugar and coffee plantations, for meager rations.

Children were separated from their parents and sent to church-run dormitories, their native languages banned and their freedom of movement curtailed and the Aboriginal community still struggles with this grim history.

There is, however, one aspect of the mission days that many older residents here remember fondly: the Yarrabah Brass Band. Established in 1901 to accompany hymns, it was one of eight indigenous brass bands in Queensland (brass, unlike string instruments, can survive humidity and heat). When the mission closed in the 1960s, the Yarrabah band also fizzled out.
Hurricane Sandy was the last straw for many residents of Ocean Village, a housing project in the Rockaways. Heralded as state of the art when it opened in 1972, this beachside campus of high-rises and four-story townhouses had, over the years, taken a nose dive, the victim of bad management, crime and rot. Sandy left homes flooded, and poor tenants bereft of electricity and hot water. Residents who could, fled.

I visited the project not long ago. Rechristened Arverne View, the place is almost unrecognizable: Apartments are occupied once again. Hallways, kitchens, bathrooms and electrical systems are refurbished; lobbies opened up with big windows; a floodwall installed; the landscaping upgraded, with a broad promenade to the beach; and leaky facades clad with new, waterproof, energy-efficient panels. (Energy bills have dropped 30 percent.)

What happened? A new owner, L&M, a developer of subsidized housing, closed on a deal to buy the property two weeks after the storm, when one-third of Ocean Villages 1,093 apartments were vacant. The company poured $60 million into a renovation.

Residents dependent on public subsidies worried theyd face higher rents or be pushed out. L&M guaranteed that they could stay and that their rents wouldnt rise. Heres the deal: The company makes its money back partly through federal funds that cover the difference between existing rents and market rates. Swapping out old kitchens and bathrooms, sprucing up lobbies and hallways and redoing electrical and plumbing systems raise property values. After renovation, the government pays the developer more, and L&M can also rent out vacant apartments at market rates.
Donny McCaslin dedicated an untitled new song at the Village Vanguard on Sunday night to someone he said had been a great influence in his life, someone who recently passed away. The song, which began in a hush, sounded faintly familiar: The brooding dignity of its melody, carried by Mr. McCaslin on tenor saxophone against a spooky stir of keyboards, bass and drums, evoked the mood of David Bowies last album, Blackstar.

The picture soon widened as Mr. McCaslin and his crew turned the piece into a rugged expedition, its heavy momentum tripped up only by the occasional molasses glob of dub rhythm. By the end of the tune, the band had ratcheted up to a heroic exertion, prompting a full-throated cheer from the capacity crowd.

Blackstar, stylized as , has been endlessly parsed and pored-over since its release on ISO/Columbia this month, two days before the shock of Mr. Bowies death. The album, which opened at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, features Mr. McCaslins lithe, combustible quartet, with Jason Lindner on keyboards, Tim Lefebvre on electric bass and Mark Guiliana on drums  a rare instance of a pop album that not only enlists jazz musicians but also locks into their wavelength.

Mr. McCaslin has been an agreeable spark plug in New York jazz circles for the past two decades, with his own groups or in the employ of composer-bandleaders like Dave Douglas, with whom he played the Vanguard a handful of times, and Maria Schneider, who was in the audience on Sunday. It was the final night of Mr. McCaslins first week as a leader in the club, and his band combined exultant energy with an underlay of poignant tribute.
Dov Charney, the ousted founder of American Apparel, on Monday lost an 11th-hour bid to return to the troubled retailer, clearing the way for the company to exit from bankruptcy as early as next week.

Judge Brendan L. Shannon of the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware gave his blessings to a plan backed by a majority of the companys creditors that would cut about $200 million in debt.

I confirm the debtors plan, Judge Shannon said, adding that a swift decision was necessary to allow American Apparel to emerge from bankruptcy and start on its turnaround.

The transaction offered as an alternative doesnt provide sufficient reason to reject the bid, he said, referring to Mr. Charneys proposed plan with a separate set of investors.
Centerview Partners, one of the top boutique investment banks around, has poached yet another senior deal maker to fill its ranks.

The firm has hired Kenneth T. Berliner, a retail specialist who was most recently the president of Peter J. Solomon Company. An official announcement is expected soon.

The addition of Mr. Berliner comes as Centerview continues to lay claim as one of the busiest and most successful boutique investment banks  which advise corporations on deals but shun trading and lending  at a time when such smaller firms have gained more and more prominence.

(Centerview, along with Barclays, advised Johnson Controls in its merger with Tyco.)

At Peter J. Solomon Company, where he spent 23 years, Mr. Berliner advised on a range of transactions, including the proposed merger of Staples and Office Depot, Walgreens takeover of fellow drugstore chain Duane Reade and the $2.4 billion sale of GSI Commerce to eBay.
One of the first big mergers of the new year resembles a number of other deals in recent years in one crucial respect: It will allow an American corporation to move its headquarters to a country where corporate taxes are lower.

Johnson Controls, which introduced a device that could control room temperature some 130 years ago, has agreed to combine with Tyco. With the deal, Johnson Controls will relocate its headquarters from Milwaukee to Cork, Ireland, where Tyco is domiciled and where corporate taxes are lower than in the United States.

The move, known as an inversion, will enable the combined entity to save at least $150 million in annual tax payments, the companies said in announcing the deal on Monday.

Inversions were supposed to become harder to do after the Treasury Department issued new rules in September 2014 and even tougher ones in November. Presidential candidates on the campaign trail pilloried Pfizer in November, when it announced a $152 billion deal with Allergan that involved an inversion.
Congressional committees usually insist that witnesses who intend to assert the Fifth Amendment appear before them and refuse to answer questions in public. This leads to a bit of meaningless political theater of members of Congress haranguing the person and decrying the unfortunate state of affairs caused by the use of a constitutional right  unseemly, to be sure, but it usually makes the evening news.

Howard B. Schiller, the interim chief executive of Valeant Pharmaceuticals who was also scheduled to testify at the committee hearing, said at a JPMorgan Chase health care conference recently that you survive these things and then you move on.

So the law allows Mr. Shkreli to assert the privilege against self-incrimination, but he will have to endure the slings and arrows sent his way on Capitol Hill.

Congress could grant Mr. Shkreli immunity to allow him to testify, but the lessons learned almost 30 years ago in the Iran-contra investigation show the dangers of following that path. The convictions of Oliver L. North, the former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and National Security Council aide, and others were set aside because the prosecution violated the immunity given to allow them to testify on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Shkreli also received a subpoena from the Senate Select Committee on Aging issued on Dec. 24, requiring him to produce documents from Turing related to the Daraprim price increase as part its investigation of pharmaceutic pricing. He has asserted the privilege against self-incrimination and refused to turn over any records. On the floor of the Senate last week, Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine and the committee chairwoman, said that absent a valid justification of the grounds for invoking the Fifth Amendment, Mr. Shkrelis assertion could hinder our important investigation.

The law is less clear about when a former corporate employee can assert the Fifth Amendment to refuse to turn over business records. The privilege against self-incrimination does not protect the content of voluntarily created documents, so an individual cannot refuse to turn over incriminating correspondence just because it might help the government prove a violation. Nor can a corporation refuse to comply with a subpoena for its records because the constitutional protection does not extend to a collective entity, according to the Supreme Courts decision in Braswell v. United States.

But the Fifth Amendment can protect the act of turning over records by an individual because that conduct communicates information about the existence of the documents, who possesses them and that they are covered by the subpoena. This is known as the act of production aspect of the privilege against self-incrimination, and it can be used to keep records away from the government because an individual cannot be compelled to communicate incriminating information.
Airbus said Monday it was in talks with Iran toward the sale of dozens of new commercial aircraft  part of a number of international business deals likely to flow toward Iran since it agreed to curtail its nuclear ambitions.

It represents the first wave of a broad rethinking of the Iranian market by Western businesses after they were banned from doing business there for nearly two decades. The nuclear deal led to the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on Iran that have left Tehran with a long shopping list, from planes to cars to oil-field equipment.

Irans transportation minister, Abbas Akhoondi, announced the Airbus developments at an aviation event in Tehran, saying that the country had been in talks for nearly a year to buy planes ranging from 100-seat turboprops to the 555-seat twin-deck Airbus A380 superjumbo. However, there was no way to pay for them because of banking sanctions, Mr. Akhoondi said, according to state news media.

Companies have long been anticipating returning to Iran, with its 81 million, mostly young consumers who have already shown an avid taste for smuggled Western cigarettes and Apple electronics. Bootleg versions of Western restaurants abound in Iranian cities, from Pizza Hat to Mash Donalds.
WASHINGTON  A far-reaching trade pact binding a dozen Pacific Rim nations would increase incomes, exports and growth in the United States but is unlikely to add to overall employment, according to an independent analysis released Monday.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obamas biggest economic priority of his final year in office, would not cost overall employment either, the report said, but inevitably some work, especially in manufacturing, would be lost even as export-industry jobs are created  a downside that political opponents in Congress and in both parties presidential races have been emphasizing for months.

The pact would liberalize trade from Canada to Chile and Australia to Japan. Other parties to the accord are Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

The Obama administration quickly endorsed the analysis from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics to buttress its uphill fight for Congresss approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, completed last October after years of negotiations. An earlier analysis for the World Bank likewise underscored the regional as well as global benefits of the accord, if ratified. Yet both organizations, as champions of international trade, are unlikely to sway the skeptics at a time of widespread economic uncertainty for many American workers.
The Guardian said on Monday that it intended to cut its costs sharply in an effort to reduce its losses and break even at an operating level in three years time.

The Guardians editor, Katharine Viner, and the chief executive of The Guardian Media Group, David Pemsel, outlined a three-year plan with the goal of reducing the news organizations $380 million annualized costs by 20 percent.

The Guardian Media Group, which is supported by a trust worth more than a billion dollars, said in its annual report for 2015 that its operating losses had been 45.3 million pounds, or more than $64 million in current dollars. A recent report in The Financial Times suggested that the company would require a 9 percent annual return to sustain that kind of loss.

Against the backdrop of a volatile market, we are taking immediate action to boost revenues and reduce our cost base in order to safeguard Guardian journalism in perpetuity, Mr. Pemsel said in a statement.
PARK CITY, Utah  A couple of years ago, Jessie Kahnweiler was interning at Bad Robot, the movie and television company owned by J. J. Abrams. But she found herself wanting something else. Finally, all around her in Hollywood, or so it seemed, were intrepid women making boundary-pushing shows: Girls, Broad City, Transparent.

How could she be one of them?

Ms. Kahnweiler, now 30, used Facebook to connect with Jill Soloway, who created Transparent, which examines gender and sexual identity. We met for lunch, and it kind of changed my life, Ms. Kahnweiler said. Jill looked at me and said, Quit your job, and do your art. I know youre afraid. We all are. Just make your art. Do it.

One result is The Skinny, a comedic web series about a feminist YouTube star (Ms. Kahnweiler) who struggles with bulimia. Ms. Soloway is among the projects executive producers. Six 10-minute episodes of The Skinny will have their premiere at the Sundance Film Festival here on Tuesday; starting on Wednesday, the series will be available on the lifestyle website Refinery29. After a delay of a few months, episodes of The Skinny will also appear on Ms. Soloways video hub, Wifey.tv.
PARIS  The City of Light was plunged into darkness on a mild night last November, when 130 people were killed in terrorist attacks across Paris. Two months later, France is still in a state of emergency, with security barriers and increased patrols of police officers and soldiers carrying automatic weapons a common sight, even though residents say the fear that hung over the city before Christmas is less palpable now.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for Federation Francaise de la Couture, the organization responsible for coordinating the twice-yearly couture shows, which began on Sunday night, informed attendees that it would take added safety precautions this season. Guests, who were told to bring identification to every show, girded themselves for long lines and searches.

And then the IDs sat, unused, in their bags.

At Versace on Sunday night, checkpoints were staffed solely by pretty public-relations girls; clutching a paper invitation seemed more than enough verification for them. The same applied at Schiaparelli on Monday morning as the street-style photographers went wild for Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the former French first lady, or the actress Kate Bosworth, though a few unmarked police cars were parked nearby on the Rue de la Paix.

I cant say Ive seen tighter security measures than usual, Stefano Tonchi, the editor of W magazine, said from the front row of Miu Mius mini-show on Monday. In high-profile locations or government buildings they have been checking bags I suppose, but then that has always been the policy in those types of show locations.
The scientists used an inactive virus to inject the human MECP2 gene into eggs of female monkeys and then artificially inseminated the eggs and implanted the embryos into surrogate monkeys. They ended up with eight carrying the gene in the cortex and cerebellum of their brains.

The monkeys did not all have two copies of MECP2, as in the human syndrome, but most had more MECP2 than normal, an overexpression of the gene. The genetic change and the social deficits were also transmitted to a second generation of monkeys, Dr. Qiu said.

These monkeys were more likely than normal ones to run in circles in their cages, which the scientists considered an example of repetitive behavior. They showed more stress and defensive behavior, grunting more when people gazed at them, which the scientists said reflected autism-like anxiety. And they were less likely to be social by sitting with, touching or grooming other monkeys. As the monkeys got older, males showed more social disconnection, just as MECP2 syndrome is more common in boys, the researchers said.

But the monkeys also had significant limitations as models for MECP2 duplication syndrome and for autism in general, said Dr. Huda Zoghbi, professor of neuroscience and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Zoghbi, who helped discover that mutated forms of MECP2 cause Rett Syndrome, a type of autism that affects mostly girls, said the monkeys carried MECP2 only in neurons, not throughout the brain, as happens in humans. She questioned whether circling the cages was akin to repetitive behavior in autism and noted that the monkeys did not exhibit some crucial features of MECP2 duplication syndrome, like seizures and cognitive deficits.

Genetically engineering monkeys is much more costly and time-consuming than making transgenic mice, said Dr. Anthony Chan, whose research involves transgenic Huntingtons disease monkeys at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Producing enough monkeys to test therapies takes years, he said, adding that an experiment like the Chinese one would cost a few million dollars and would be more expensive in the United States because of labor costs and less availability of monkeys, which are indigenous to China. Also, some animal rights advocates here are more troubled by research on monkeys than by research on rodents.
Does any modern American doctor or patient get through a day without thinking wistfully of simpler times? The process of providing or securing even basic health care is so endlessly complicated now, so perilous and frustrating, so entrepreneurial and expensive. Everything was so much easier in the old days. Just beam us back, someone, please.

Well, we can all blame our inner Norman Rockwell for that little fantasy: As the historian Nancy Tomes outlines in a seamless and utterly fascinating narrative, the good old days never really existed. (Read an excerpt). For more than a century now, American health care has been a fraught marketplace, hosting a power struggle among consumers, providers and regulators that may have escalated over the decades but is otherwise remarkably unchanged.

Medical historians who focus on the conquest of dire diseases serve up narratives of progress and triumph. Not Ms. Tomes, a professor of history at Stony Brook University, who has chosen to examine instead the health care experience of average healthy citizens, the great silent majority whose lives are punctuated by a variety of minor ills and only the occasional major calamity. These are the people seeking wellness in the doctors office and the drugstore, often inspired by the irresistible new and improved slogan that motivates other shoppers.

We like to think that present-day wellness hunters, informed by the Internet and armed with their insurers cash, are uniquely well-educated and empowered consumers. But it turns out they are neither so empowered nor quite so unique.
Zika virus has already been linked to brain damage in babies and paralysis in adults. Now scientists are facing another ominous possibility: that on rare occasions, the virus might be transmitted through sex.

The evidence is very slim; only a couple of cases have been described in medical literature. But a few experts feel the prospect is disturbing enough that federal health officials should inform all travelers, not just pregnant women, of the potential danger.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, say the evidence is insufficient to warrant such a warning. While the two instances suggest a theoretical risk of sexual transmission, they note the primary vector is clearly mosquitoes.

Dr. Marcio Nehab, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Fiocruz, a research institute in Rio de Janeiro, said that much more research was needed to be done to definitively prove that Zika can be transmitted during sex.
A lot of us are sick of the whining, said Dr. Rosanne M. Leipzig, a geriatrician and professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is experimenting with a two-year program that combines geriatrics and palliative care.

And there is an emerging emphasis on training many different health care professionals  nurses, pharmacists, internal and family medicine physicians, physician assistants, and physical and occupational therapists  to see older patients through a geriatrics lens rather than focusing solely on creating more geriatricians. Mini-fellowships at teaching hospitals to train practicing physicians in geriatrics have sprung up around the country. Cardiology, urology, emergency medicine and other specialties are promoting geriatrics training and research within those disciplines.

Acknowledging an older persons need for dignity is an important part of Dr. Eckstroms practice. When talking with a patient about giving up driving, she refers to it as retiring from driving, casting it as an act of liberation, as if driving were a job to be freed of.

It is that kind of perspective that drew the attention of trainees already attracted to the human side of medicine. Dr. Kathleen Drago grew to love geriatrics while training under Dr. Eckstrom. I got caught in Elizabeths web, she said. You meet people who have walked these incredible paths, and are starting to reflect on their lives and focus in on whats important in the time they have left.

Dr. Drago, 31, left medical school with a debt of around $270,000. I made a decision that was distinctly against my own financial interests, she said. But I come to work every day, and I get to deliver the patient-centered care that I dreamed of as a med student.

She now works as a geriatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, seeing only hospitalized patients. Recent evidence about care provided by geriatrics teams shows that with the care of such teams, the hospitalization of older adults runs shorter, costs less and results in fewer complications, including falls, pressure ulcers and urinary tract infections.

While making her rounds in the hospital one recent afternoon, Dr. Drago introduced herself to a 79-year-old woman in the intensive care unit. The patient, who has dementia, had been found lying on the ground the previous night a quarter-mile from her home, bruised and bloodied, with three cracked ribs and bleeding in her brain. She had left the house with a Bible in one hand and an American flag in the other.

Dr. Drago sat down and began a frank yet gentle conversation with the patient and her daughter about the next steps. The doctor stayed for two hours.
PARK CITY, Utah  Were hearing a lot about diversity, the director Ava DuVernay, steadfast champion of diversity in film, told a roomful of people gathered for lunch Sunday in a restaurant here. I hate that word so, so much.

Filmmakers, actors, playwrights, directors, up-and-comers and industry insiders sat before her, and before them sat salads, wilting from Caesar dressing, untouched as Ms. DuVernay spoke, holding everyone rapt. A little while later, Ms. DuVernay made the rounds, and explained to the Bagger why the D word irked her so.

I feel its a medicinal word that has no emotional resonance, and this is a really emotional issue, she said. Its emotional for artists who are women and people of color to have less value placed on our worldview.

Better words? Inclusion, she said, or belonging. Theres a belonging problem in Hollywood, Ms. DuVernay said, Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.
The de Blasio administration also came under fire from some parents for its decision to open the schools on Monday, a move the mayor defended, saying the commute was manageable for the vast majority of students. The attendance rate on Monday for the public schools was about 74.2 percent. By comparison, the citywide attendance on Friday, before the storm hit, was about 90 percent.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department, Devora Kaye, said the attendance rate on Monday was fairly typical for school days immediately following massive storms. The lowest rate was registered on Staten Island, with 70.4 percent, and the highest in Manhattan, with 80.7 percent. In Queens, it was 71.1 percent.

Julissa Polano, who was walking her 5-year-old daughter to school in Corona, said she did not think the roads were safe for buses or the sidewalks safe.

I dont think its fair to the kids, she said. As she spoke, a boy slipped and fell in front of her, losing a shoe in the slush.

But some in Queens, even in the hardest-hit areas, adopted a more pragmatic view.

You cant make everybody happy, said Louie Biasi, a retired driver for Coca-Cola. If you live in the Northeast, you got to get used to this stuff. Move to Florida or Arizona.
The warnings had been dire, and they mostly came to pass: a blizzard blanketing New York with near-record amounts of snow, greatly exceeding initial forecast models and, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio, reflective of the new norm in an age of extreme weather.

There were five deaths in New York City directly attributed to the storm, officials said Monday morning, from overexertion while shoveling snow. (Another death, of a man found in a car parked in Brooklyn, was being investigated on Monday night.) But the blizzard, in the citys five boroughs at least, left no grand tales of stranded drivers or train passengers stuck in motionless cars, as had previous storms.

Schools opened. Commuters slushed through their daily routes. And elected leaders expressed relief that a direct hit from an epochal storm had been weathered, for the most part, without major struggles.

The mayor, in a news conference on Monday, emphasized that no one is saying mission accomplished,  and he acknowledged the different realities in some parts of Queens, where scores of plow trucks became overwhelmed during the storm and howls rose up soon after from elected officials over snow-blanketed streets.
On Monday, the trial of Officer Liang began before Justice Danny K. Chun, and Ms. Lopez was called as the second witness. Officer Liang, 28, is charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Mr. Gurley, 28, who was walking unarmed with Ms. Butler in the stairwell of the housing project in Brooklyn.

Akai Gurley is dead today because he crossed paths with Peter Liang, who is sitting here, Marc J. Fliedner, a prosecutor who is the chief of the civil rights bureau at the Brooklyn district attorneys office, said in his opening statement, which at one point found him on his knees, demonstrating how Ms. Butler had bent over Mr. Gurleys body.

Both sides agree that while Officer Liang was on patrol on Nov. 20, 2014, he fired his gun down an unlit stairwell, and the bullet killed Mr. Gurley.

The prosecution argues that Officer Liang was reckless and violated his training by having his gun out, pulling the trigger with no reason, and neglecting to help Mr. Gurley once he realized the man had been shot. The officer was worried only about himself, Mr. Fliedner said, adding, Instead of calling for help he just stood there, whined and moaned about how he would get fired.
Cherubs danced at the feet of muses as they plucked lyres on the domed ceiling of the old Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan. Their joy was reflected in the face of Marci Clark, who stood below them last week, expounding on the grandeur of the 91-year-old room.

Done in the neo-Classical style, with marble columns, pilasters and cornice in a range of hues, this double-height octagonal space was the work of Walter L. Hopkins, who did some of Warren & Wetmores most distinguished work, Ms. Clark explained, referring to the buildings architects. The painting is believed to be mimicking the 18th-century Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman.

As an architectural historian, Ms. Clark, 30, has studied buildings throughout New York City in pursuit of her doctorate. Yet her research at Steinway Hall has a very different end: selling apartments. As she spoke, buzz saws and blowtorches growled in the background, preparing the foundations for a 1,428-foot tower to rise from what was once one of the worlds finest piano shops.

Just over two years ago, Ms. Clark traded her mortarboard for a hard hat to work in the marketing department of JDS Development Group, where she is now a director. Her job involves putting together sales brochures, managing brokers and publicizing projects, but she prefers to spend her time in libraries and the dusty archives of architectural firms. There she unearths the blueprints, photos, maps and documents that guide JDS projects, whether or not they involve historical buildings. Old topographies might lead to better engineering; a salvaged grille could become a motif in a new kitchen.
To the Editor:

Re Whos Taking on Ethics in Albany? Not the Ethics Panels (news article, Jan. 20): Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, when asked about my Dec. 12 New York Times Op-Ed essay, How to Save Albany, questioned why I had not made my concerns about beneficial reforms public earlier.

Last January, within days of the announcement of charges against our former speaker, Sheldon Silver, my letter to my colleagues on the need for immediate ethics reform was widely published.

It is my lament that Mr. Dadey was apparently unaware of my published observations of Jan. 29, 2015.

CHARLES D. LAVINE

Albany

The writer is chairman of the State Assembly Ethics Committee and co-chairman of the State Legislative Ethics Commission.
I stood backstage at a rally in Minnesota in October 2008 where Senator McCain took the microphone from a woman in the crowd who spoke about her fears, including that Barack Obama was an Arab. Senator McCain said, No, maam, and explained that Mr. Obama was a good and decent family man and an American with whom he simply disagreed on policy matters. This interaction will go down as one of the finest moments from one of the countrys finest men. But it was also an early warning that the Republican base was profoundly agitated.

To some in the news media, voter anger seems like a new phenomenon. But they attended the same Palin rallies I did  we all should have seen this coming. The Alaska governor whipped the crowds into a frenzy with her fiery attacks on the media and the establishment politicians that she had gleefully upended in the Alaska statehouse. When her rallygoers shouted crude comments from the stands, as the woman at the Minnesota rally had done, there was no confrontation between Ms. Palin and the offender. When the press started to report on the angry rhetoric coming from those Palin crowds, I remember Senator McCains concern. The growing furor in the Republican Party was something that we, as a campaign, failed to address, but to the crowds, Sarah Palin proved the more satisfying politician on the ticket because of it.

Ms. Palin owned the resentment voters in the Republican Party. They became her cause. And when the campaign concluded, she became the poster politician for the Tea Party movement. She was its first star, and hers became a coveted endorsement. Ms. Palin typically picks candidates who are trying to unseat incumbents and more experienced politicians, an ironic development considering that she was selected as a running mate to reinforce Mr. McCains brand as a maverick  but a maverick who worked within the Senate and the Republican Party.

She has now turned the institutions in which he has proudly served into liabilities for the candidates running against her mama-grizzly-approved outsiders. The party bears some responsibility for her success. Our base has grown increasingly exasperated with Washington Republicans who, despite historic victories in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, seem incapable of reversing President Obamas legislative agenda or asserting themselves in the countrys foreign policy debates.
The actress Monique Sanchez, illuminated by audience members cellphones at a performance of the Drunk Shakespeare Society at Roy Arias Stages.

Credit... Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.  The bitter dispute about North Carolinas elections laws returned to a federal courtroom here on Monday as the states voter identification requirement went on trial.

The weeks proceedings will affect election practices in North Carolina, a state that has been closely contested in recent years and where voting rules could play a part in deciding tight elections, from local races to the 15 electoral votes for president. Court rulings here could also provide an early glimpse at how the federal courts might examine balloting laws in the wake of the United States Supreme Court decision that, in 2013, upended a significant component of the Voting Rights Act.

The North Carolina litigation is the leading litigation in the post-Shelby world, said Edward B. Foley, an elections law expert at Ohio State University, referring to the Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County, Alabama, v. Holder. Its the test case, the battleground case more than any other.

The trial about North Carolinas identification standard, which requires voters to produce one of six accepted credentials or to submit a provisional ballot, is included in a broader challenge of the election law changes that the states Republican-dominated legislature first approved in 2013. Then, as now, supporters of the alterations to voting procedures described them as safeguards against potential fraud, but critics condemned them as thinly veiled efforts to throw up barriers, particularly to black and Hispanic voters.
It demonstrates that we must integrate an even higher level of diversity education into cadets daily activities, General Rosa said, and into the already extensive leadership and ethics curriculum.

Of those punished, seven were freshmen and seven were juniors. One junior was dismissed, meaning the cadet must spend two semesters away from campus, and two juniors were suspended, which requires them to spend one semester away from campus. Eleven cadets were given punishments of hourlong marches; such punishments can number from 40 to 120 marches.

The episode began as part of an annual tradition at the Citadel in which freshman cadets sing carols to upperclass cadets. There were four nights of such singing in early December, a college spokesman, Brett Ashworth said. On three nights, the freshmen used whatever materials they could find to dress as reindeer, elves or other Christmas icons.

But on the fourth night, cadets used what they had close at hand to dress as Ghosts of Christmas Past, the statement said, and donned the pillowcases.
The storm is over. But as millions of people from North Carolina to Massachusetts tried on Monday to dig out from the weekends massive snows, it was clear that for many of them it could still be several days before life returns to normal.

That was true in big cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia, where many streets remained unplowed, and in a rural, mountainous area that includes eastern West Virginia, western Maryland, Northern Virginia and southern Pennsylvania, where more than three feet fell in places.

I think were basically trapped at home until the weekend, said Sandy Clendening, who lives with her husband, Jim, near Glengary, W.Va., an unincorporated village that recorded 40 inches of snow. Its going to take us that long just to clear our driveway, which is pretty long, and even if we got down to the road, that hasnt been plowed yet. Our dogs are having a really hard time  they want to go out.

In Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., in particular, many government offices and schools remained closed, many roads had not yet been cleared, trash pickup was postponed, and some people were still unable to excavate cars buried first by the storm and then by snowplows. Mass transit systems lurched back to life for the morning commute, though with limited service.
COLUMBIA, Mo.  A University of Missouri assistant professor who called for some muscle as she tried to remove journalists from a campus protest last year was charged on Monday with misdemeanor assault, court documents showed.

A university police department warrant, filed in municipal court by the Columbia city prosecutor, Steve Richey, said that on Nov. 9, the assistant professor, Melissa A. Click, assaulted a videographer by grabbing at his camera with her hand and attempting to knock it from his grasp and by calling out and asking for other people in the area at the time to forcefully remove him.

Ms. Click, 45, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Henry C. Foley, the schools interim chancellor, dismissed calls for Ms. Clicks immediate firing, but said the charge would be one factor in a review of her application for tenure.

He said she was teaching from home this week on the recommendations of Michael OBrien, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Mitchell S. McKinney, the chairman of the department of communication.
Mr. Schuette declined to provide an estimate of how long the state investigation might take, but said it would be thorough and exhaustive.

Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, and his administration have been criticized for failing to recognize the scope of Flints water problems and playing down warnings from scientists and residents for months. Governor Snyder has since apologized and declared a state of emergency in Flint.

Mr. Schuette said he hoped his investigation would help rebuild trust in government, but the Michigan Democratic Party denounced the decision to hire Mr. Flood, who has contributed to the governors campaign. Mr. Schuette said there would be no favoritism in the investigation.
Yet his initial venture into presidential politics is by turns a confirmation of and a complication for the professed Cruz image.

The race installed Mr. Cruz as a creature of the Republican establishment  but also helped start his divorce from it. He made plenty of enemies among party operatives, according to interviews with over a dozen former colleagues, though for reasons that had little to do with ideology.

I was far too cocky for my own good, Mr. Cruz wrote in his book, A Time for Truth, explaining how the burned bridges probably cost him a desired job in Mr. Bushs White House, and that sometimes caused me to overstep the bounds of my appointed role.

On this point, Mr. Cruz and his detractors agree.

By the end of five bleary-eyed weeks of hanging chads and butterfly ballots, Mr. Cruz had aggressively worked his legal connections, chafed when he felt sidelined by party veterans and  even in the view of some who disparage him  helped ensure Mr. Bushs victory in the courts, to a point.

In fact, former colleagues say, the Ted Cruz of 2000 is entirely recognizable in the candidate now aspiring to the presidency himself, fusing hyper-intelligence, crackling ambition and a laundry list of impeccable insider credentials that he once ticked off more readily.
Asked last fall why Mrs. Clinton was not running the way she did when she was losing in 2008, her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, would reply matter of factly: Because shes not losing.

But in the last week, something shifted, as Mrs. Clinton faced sagging poll numbers and the reality that she could endure another loss in the caucuses, this time to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

On Thursday, when the microphone cut off and Katy Perrys Roar blared from the speakers at a skating rink in Vinton, Iowa, Mrs. Clinton yelled over the music: I will spend my time here going down the line, she said. I will answer anybodys questions about anything because I really want you to know where I stand on all these issues.

She then displayed a breezy, agreeable manner making her way down the rope line. How are you? she said, stretching the you out for several syllables, to an Iowa voter who reminded her that they met in Waterloo in 2008 and showed her the photo to prove it. I remember you!

Another Iowan showed her an old photo he had with her, from the White House years, Oh, look at us! We look great, dont we? she asked, gently jabbing shoulders with the man.

In August, after former Senator Tom Harkin endorsed Mrs. Clinton, he said, She just needs to come out and meet Iowans and the rest will flow into place. But that has proved difficult at times.
WASHINGTON  President Obama said in an interview released Monday that politics in America had become meaner than when he took office, but expressed hope that Republicans would eventually turn away from the expression of frustration and anger that Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz were offering to voters.

Speaking to Politicos Glenn Thrush for the sites Off Message podcast, Mr. Obama said the Republican candidates for president were more outside the mainstream than Senator John McCain was during the 2008 campaign.

John McCain was a conservative, but he was well within, you know, the mainstream of not just the Republican Party but within our political dialogue, Mr. Obama told Politico. The president said voters would have to judge the degree to which the Republican rhetoric and Republican vision has moved, not just to the right, but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable.

The presidents comments came one week before voters in Iowa gather to caucus in the first presidential voting of the 2016 campaign to succeed him. In the interview, he expressed hope that voters in Iowa and in later contests would steer back towards the center.
Despite the controversy, Mr. Errante said he believed that the citys decision had been vindicated. In just a few weeks, hundreds of families caught up with their late payments, in one case paying 5,800, he said.

And after the initial protests, the city adopted an installment plan allowing families to pay what they could, even as little as 10 a month.

So far, the city has recovered just under half of the 1.2 million in overdue fees, through repayments and installment settlements. The remaining unpaid fees mainly concern families whose children have moved on to middle school, and the city has pledged to take action and is considering withholding a percentage of the parents salaries or confiscating vehicles.

The mayor said he would set up a fund to assist the neediest families. But he also said that the no-food provision would be enforced in the case of families who do not make future payments.

Phase 2 begins in February, he said. If you dont intend to pay, your kid doesnt eat.

But in a country where fussing over meals is a national pastime, mothers and teachers are determined to make sure no child goes unfed.

Mothers really collaborated after the rule went into effect, said Francesca Vitali, a fourth-grade teacher at the Curiel, where about half of the schools 90 students had outstanding payments after the Christmas break. Most have begun installment plans to pay the fees.

Once they found out what the mayor wanted to do, they protested by bringing sandwiches for all, she said. We all agreed that the furbetti had to pay, but that children should stay out of it.
AMSTERDAM  European Union interior ministers clashed on Monday over how to check the flow of migrants across their countries borders amid growing concern that the Continents commitment to the free movement of people within the bloc is at risk of collapse.

Some of the wealthy northern nations that are the preferred destinations of many migrants suggested that much of the solution should rest with their neighbors to the south, especially Greece, the main entry point into the European Union for refugees arriving from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan via Turkey. At a meeting here, Germany told Greece to do its homework to stop the flow at its borders, and Austria suggested that Greece could be excluded from the Schengen area, which allows border-free travel across much of the European Union.

Ioannis Mouzalas, a Greek minister for immigration policy, criticized the focus on his country, saying that the bloc had not made good on its pledges of more assistance in managing the flow of people  nearly 1.1 million arrived last year in the European Union  and that some European politicians were spreading lies about the crisis and the role of the government in Athens.

There is a blame game against Greece, Mr. Mouzalas said.

The larger question hanging over the ministers two-day meeting in Amsterdam is whether the European Union can agree on a collective approach to limiting the influx of migrants at Europes external borders  or whether that approach becomes an every-country-for-itself scramble to harden individual borders in response to domestic political, social and economic pressures.
Henry Worsley himself had made two previous journeys on the continent. The first, in 2008 and 2009, was in commemoration of Shackletons journey a century earlier. Mr. Worsley retraced the original route through the Transantarctic Mountains and across the Beardmore Glacier. The party arrived at Shackletons farthest point south  97 miles from the South Pole, where he shot his bolt  exactly 100 years to the day after Shackleton did, and then proceeded to finish what Shackleton did not.

Mr. Worsleys second trip, leading a team of six in 2011, celebrated the centennial of the journeys led by Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, who reached the pole within five weeks of each other. Mr. Worsley, traveling with others, followed the Amundsen route from the Bay of Whales across the Ross Ice Shelf.

An undertaking requiring enormous physical strength and stamina, Mr. Worsleys final journey was a feat of endurance never before achieved, as he described it. (A Norwegian explorer, Borge Ousland, crossed Antarctica alone and unsupported in 1996-97, but he used a kite to pull his sled. In 2012, a British woman, Felicity Aston, skied alone across Antarctica, but she had two supply drops.)

Mr. Worsley began his trek in November on Berkner Island, which is surrounded by an ice shelf. Braving temperatures of 40 degrees below zero and attenuated air at elevations above 9,000 feet, and buffeted by sometimes brutal winds, Mr. Worsley wore mountaineering skis and hauled a supply sledge with gear  including a tent, electronic communications equipment, climbing apparatuses for ascents and enough food for 80 days  that weighed over 300 pounds. He walked on a normal day for 13 hours.

On Jan. 2, Day 51, he reached the pole and was greeted by staff members of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the first people he had seen since his departure. He had to resist taking any food or supplies from them, he said, to maintain the integrity of his unsupported and unassisted journey.
BUCHAREST, Romania  Frustration with the political establishment is boiling over again in Moldova, where more than 15,000 people took to the streets of the capital on Sunday to vent their anger at the new government that was sworn in just last week.

Opposition groups from both the pro-European and pro-Russian sides of the countrys political divide united in the frigid weather to shout antigovernment slogans and demand new elections. The protests in the capital, Chisinau, were the latest to rack Moldova, an impoverished former Soviet republic between Ukraine and Romania, since November 2014, when an immense bank fraud with political implications came to light.

The trigger for the latest wave of protests was the appointment of Pavel Filip as prime minister late Wednesday night, leading the countrys third government in less than a year.

The deeply divided Parliament had been wrangling for months over how to replace Valeriu Strelet, who lost a vote of no confidence and was forced to resign as prime minister in October after three months in office.
The police identified Mondays assailants as a Palestinian man and teenager, about 22 and 16. The older one, they said, was a resident of the Palestinian village of Beit Ur al-Tahta, near Beit Horon.

The two women were stabbed outside a grocery store in the settlement, according to the police. The assailants then headed for the store. Security camera footage appeared to show two men in dark hoodies trying to enter with knives in their hands as the store owner blocked them with a shopping cart. As they ran further into the settlement, a security guard shot and killed them.

About 25 Israelis, an American student and one Palestinian bystander have been killed in the attacks since Oct. 1. About 150 Palestinians have been killed during the same period. Up to two-thirds of them have been described by Israel as assailants. Others have been killed during protests and clashes with the Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and along Israels border with Gaza.

An Israeli mother of six, Dafna Meir, was stabbed to death in the doorway of her home in the settlement of Otniel on Jan. 17, and a pregnant woman was wounded in a separate attack in a secondhand clothing charity store in Tekoa, another settlement, a day later. In both cases the suspects, who are under arrest, are 15-year-old Palestinian boys. Israels Shin Bet security agency said the Otniel attacker told his interrogators that he had been influenced by Palestinian television broadcasts that cast Israel as a killer of young Palestinians.

Israels leaders attribute much of the violence to what they describe as incitement in the Palestinian news media and on social networks. Palestinians say the frustrations caused by the Israeli occupation are at the root of the outburst of violence.
GENEVA  The United Nations announced on Monday that it would aim to start Syria peace talks on Friday, as Syrian military forces, aided by Russian air power, made new gains on the battlefield, suggesting that even these still precarious diplomatic negotiations would bring little respite in the fighting for the next several months.

The United Nations envoy here, Staffan de Mistura, in his announcement of the postponed start date, declined to say who would be invited to represent the opposition  a major sticking point  or mention what would happen to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the lightning rod of the conflict.

Speaking on the day the talks were intended to start, he told reporters that he would only send invitations on Tuesday, and shuttle among various groups of Syrian representatives until they can agree to meet face to face. That could go on, in a staggered fashion, for six months.

We will be holding those proximity talks until we can hold direct talks, Mr. de Mistura said. We will remain adaptable and creative.
Fifteen or so years ago, by her recollection, a woman named Robin Chapman made a pot roast in her slow cooker. Now known as Mississippi Roast, it would eventually become one of the most popular recipes on the web, an unlikely star with unlikely ingredients, a favorite of the mom-blog set.

Ms. Chapman lives in Ripley, Miss., but she did not call her pot roast Mississippi Roast, not then and not now. She just calls it roast. She used beef chuck to make the dish that first time, she told me in an interview, and put a packet of dry ranch-dressing mix on top of the meat, along with a packet of dry au jus gravy, a stick of butter and a few pepperoncini. It was an on-the-spot variation of a recipe she had learned from her aunt, which called for packaged Italian dressing. Ms. Chapman wanted something milder, she said, so she swapped out the Italian for the ranch.

She set the slow cooker to low and walked away. Some hours later, her family dived into their meal with glee. She has made the roast ever since. And largely unnoticed by food writers and scholars, the recipe has slowly taken on a life of its own.
Im afraid to clean them, Anne Serrano-McClain said, cautiously touching the lacquered surface of one of the hundred-year-old Japanese wooden trays on her dining table.

They were gifts from her mother, who calls them everyday use trays, regardless of their vintage. This is in keeping with the Japanese principle of yo no bi, translated as beauty through use: the idea that the objects of daily life should be both functional and exquisite, subject to  and more beautiful because of  the erosions of time.

For Ms. Serrano-McClain, 34, the founder of MCMC Fragrances, a small-batch perfume company in Brooklyn, the trays are a reminder of a childhood spent half in Japan and half in Providence, R.I. Wherever she was, she would come home from school to find a snack instantly conjured on a tray. One thing I could rely on: My mom would be home and there would be food, she said.
DOTHAN, Ala. (AP)  Alabama senator Del Marsh says legislature is considering a raise for education employees with a performance-based model for teachers.

Marsh said the amount of the raise has yet to be determined, but there is an emerging consensus that education employees should receive a raise, the Dothan Eagle (http://bit.ly/1RZxHii) reported. The last time Alabama teachers got a raise was in 2013, the same year their contributions to retirement increased.

"Cost of living is inching up," Dothan City School Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter said. "Our teachers are going backward by staying in the same place."

Educator salaries are a cause for concern among education advocates in Alabama, who reason that stagnant pay will be a turn-off to people seeking a career in education.

The average pay for a teacher in Alabama is $48,720, while the national average is $56,610. The starting salary for teachers in Alabama is $36,867.

Single educators contribute $15 per month for health insurance, while the family rate is $177 per month and the family plus spouse rate is $202 per month.

Teachers receive step increases about every three years, until they reach their 27th year of service.

Melissa Bailey, a teacher at Highlands Elementary School, said she believes a lack of wage growth will deter people from pursuing a career in education.

"It's hard for me to encourage people to go into education considering the amount it costs to go to college," she said. "You don't do it for the money, but not receiving a raise makes you feel unappreciated."

For every one percent educator salaries are increased, it costs the state between $35 million to $40 million. Salary increases don't just cost the state money. Many systems hire more teachers than their allotted state funding by using local tax revenues to fund the positions.

When educators get a raise, these teachers get one too and the money must be found to fund these salary increases.
UPDATED Thursday, Jan. 28, at 11:32 a.m.

One of the three men involved with the murder of an 85-year-old man in Cusseta on Jan. 19, was released from East Alabama Medical Center after suffering from gunshot wounds during the home invasion.

Wiggins was shot by 85-year-old Curtis Bennie Rudd on Jan. 19, while participating in a home invasion, attempted robbery pf Rudd's residence on Lee Road 177, Cuessta, AL.

Robert Jamal Wiggins, 20, of Columbus, Ga., was taken into emergency surgery early on Jan. 19. A deputy has been stationed outside of his room for 24 hours a day.

Wiggins and his two co-defendants, Khaleef Jevante Marshall, 20, and Devonte Travon Mike, 20, both of Opelika, are being held in the Lee County Detention Center without bond.

------------------------------------------

A third man was arrested in connection to a Cusseta home invasion that left an 85-year-old man dead last week.

Khaleef Jevante Marshall, 20, of Opelika faces a charge of capital murder in the shooting death of Curtis Bennie Rudd. Marshall turned himself in on Friday, and formal charges were filed Monday. He is being held in the Lee County Detention Center without bond, along with co-defendant Davonte Travon Mike, 20, also of Opelika.

He was developed as a suspect during the investigation last week. We, at this point, felt confident in bringing capital murder charges today, Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said.

Marshall is expected to have a hearing within the next few days.

Co-defendant Robert Jamal Wiggins, 20, of Columbus, Ga., is recovering from a gunshot wound at East Alabama Medical Center. A deputy has been stationed outside of his room for 24 hours a day since Wiggins was taken into emergency surgery early on Jan. 19.

We anticipate that he will be released in the next day or so, Jones said. Upon release, Wiggins will be immediately transferred to the Lee County Detention Center.

Along with his department, Jones credited the Auburn Police Division, Opelika Police Department, Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and Lee County Coroner Bill Harris with aiding the investigation. The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Task Force also played a key role, particularly in Marshalls connection to the case.

The charges against Marshall, Mike and Wiggins were developed as suspects following an attempted home invasion that resulted in Rudds death early Jan. 19 in his Cusseta home.

When first responders arrived to the scene, Rudds wife reported the couple was awakened by a noise at their front door, which was being forced open. Two males wearing ski masks and armed with a handgun entered into their house and immediately fired multiple gunshots at them.

The wife stated her husband was able to return fire on the intruders before they fled the scene. LCSO officials said Rudd was armed with a medium-caliber handgun.

First responders transported Rudd to East Alabama Medical Center, where Coroner Bill Harris pronounced him dead.

At this time, LSCO officials believe the most likely motive for the crime was burglary.

The crime is being investigated in conjunction with another home invasion attempted robbery and burglary of an elderly female living roughly two miles from Rudds home. The woman reported a lone black male entered her home on Lee Road 390 about 4  hours before the home invasion at Rudds home on Lee Road 177. The women reportedly fought off the intruder with her walking stick. LCSO officials reported Monday the investigation has revealed evidence linking Mike and Wiggins to that crime.

At a press conference last week, Jones said home invasions are not common in the county.

This particular type of event is not a common occurrence. We do have on a constant basis, unfortunately, burglaries, he said. The homeowners are not present; they occur in the daytime rather than the evening.

The cases are still under active investigation and may result in additional arrests and charges.

Anyone with information about these cases or any other case is asked to contact the Lee County Sheriffs Office at 1-334-749-5651 or Lee County Crime Stoppers at 1-888-522-7847.
WILLIAM FRANKLIN TINKLER William Franklin Tinkler was born on September 15, 1931 in Spartanburg SC., the son of the late Jack H. and Gladys M. Tinkler of Columbus Ga. "Bill" as he was known, graduated from Central High School in Phenix City AL., in 1948. Bill would then serve honorably in the United States Navy for almost 4 years. After the Navy he used the G.I.Bill to earn a teaching certificate from Auburn University. Bill then began a career in education that would span 46 years. Bill first taught mathematics at Columbus High School in 1958. He would then teach in the Phenix City School System during the 1960's. In 1968, he and Ann moved to Ogden, Utah, where he taught at Roy High School. They would return to Alabama a year later to Phenix City, where Bill would teach in the Auburn Aabama School District. During this time, he would earn a Master's in Education degree from Auburn University. Bill and Ann returned to Utah in 1973, where they would remain for the next 20 years, living in Ogden, and Kaysville. Bill worked at North Davis Jr. High School as a mathematics teacher and as a school counselor. In 1993, they would move back to Alabama and settle in Smiths Station. Bill then taught math at Beulah High School in Lee County until he retired in 2006, at age 75. During his years in local education, Bill was actively involved in the Lee County chapter of the Alabama Education Association, serving for many years as President. Bill's favorite hobby was visiting railroads and watching trains. He visited numerous railroads and railroad museums throughout the country. He also enjoyed traveling, and visited many National Parks and other places of interest throughout the South and West. Bill was a member of St. Luke United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ga. Bill was also a long time member of the Auburn Alabama Kiwanis Club. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Ann Gamble Tinkler of Smiths Station AL; daughter and son-in-law, Lee and Jeff Sauerwine of Salem AL; brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Geraldine Tinkler of Columbus Ga; grandsons, Clay and Wade; and several nieces and nephews. Funeral services will be held 1:00 P.M. ET Tuesday, January 26, 2016 in Lakewood Hall at Striffler-Hamby, Phenix City. Burial with military honors will follow at Fort Mitchell National Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 12:00 unitl 1:00 P.M. Tuesday at the funeral home. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Open Door Community House in Columbus Ga. Please sign the online registry at www.shphenixcity.com
YAOUNDE, Cameroon  Four suicide bombers attacked a market and town on Monday in Cameroons Far North region near the border with Nigeria, killing at least 28 people and wounding 65 others, officials said.

Two attackers targeted the market in Bodo and two others detonated explosives in town, said the regions governor, Midjiyawa Bakari. The wounded have been taken to hospitals in Kousseri, he said.

We have information the four bombers came from Nigeria. We are investigating where they spent the night before attacking the market, Bakari said.

A Cameroon troop commander, Gen. Jacob Kodji, confirmed the attack and said Nigerias Islamic extremist group Boko Haram are suspected. He said some accomplices may still be in hiding.

We have deployed soldiers to the area to assist the local defense group because we are informed a few fighters may have escorted them (the bombers) to Cameroon from Nigeria, he said.

Suicide bombers are suspected to be crossing the border from Nigeria to stage their attacks, killing dozens in the region in the past month, officials said. On Jan. 18, a 14-year-old suicide bomber attacked a mosque in the region, killing four  the fifth attack on a mosque in Cameroon in less than a month.

Boko Haram militants began stepping up attacks early last year on neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, countries contributing to efforts to crush Boko Haram.

Boko Haram joined the Islamic State group In March. On Monday, the IS-linked Amaq News Agency posted a message reporting suicide bombings in northern Cameroon, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites. The message said the attacks on Bodo village targeted gatherings of the militias allied with the army operating on the border with Nigeria.

Boko Harams six-year insurgency has killed about 20,000 people and displaced 2.3 million, according to Amnesty International and the United Nations.
At least 30 people have died as a result of the mammoth snowstorm that pounded the eastern U.S. The deaths occurred in car accidents, from carbon monoxide poisoning, and from heart attacks while shoveling snow:

WASHINGTON, D.C.

 An 82-year-old man who died after going into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in front of his home in Washington is the first person whose death is related to the snowstorm in the city. The District of Columbias Chief Medical Examiner, Roger A. Mitchell Jr., announced the mans death Sunday. Mitchell did not release the mans name or say when he died or where in the city he lived. He encouraged people shoveling to take breaks and make sure that they keep hydrated.

DELAWARE

 A U.S. Capitol Police officer died of a heart attack after shoveling snow at his home in Delaware. Nicole Alston says her husband, 44-year-old Officer Vernon Alston, collapsed Saturday afternoon outside their home in Magnolia after hed been shoveling snow for about an hour. She says he died within seconds. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Alstons death on Sunday, calling him a fixture on the Capitol grounds. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine says in a statement that Alston was a 20-year veteran of the force.

KENTUCKY

 A Kentucky transportation worker died Saturday while plowing snow-covered highways, officials said. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet identified him in a statement as Christopher Adams. The statement says Adams called a supervisor about 5:50 a.m., saying his plow slid into a ditch. When the supervisor arrived, Adams was slumped over, unresponsive in his seat. A cause of death has not been released.

 A man died in southeastern Kentucky when his car collided with a salt truck Thursday, state police said. Billy R. Stevens, 59, of Williamsburg was pronounced dead at the scene on state Route 92 in Whitley County.

MARYLAND

 Two people have died from heart attacks while shoveling snow in Maryland. A 49-year-old man suffered cardiac arrest while shoveling in Abingdon on Saturday, County Executive Barry Glassman said Sunday. Officials in Prince Georges County said a man collapsed and died Saturday while shoveling snow in Fort Washington. Bob Maloney, director of Baltimores office of emergency management, said not one life was lost due to the storm in the city.

NEW JERSEY

 A 23-year-old New Jersey mom and her year-old son died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow, The Record reported, citing Passaic police. The womans 3-year-old daughter was also hurt and was hospitalized in very critical condition, police said. Authorities believe they were watching other family members shovel snow and didnt realize what was happening.

NEW YORK

 Police say a 66-year-old man was struck and killed by a snow plow while he was standing in front of his home on Long Island. Nassau County Police say the private plow was clearing snow from the mans property in Oyster Bay Cove when it happened just after 2 p.m. Sunday. The victim was identified as Al Mansoor.

 Three people died while shoveling snow in New York City, police said. The New York Police Departments Chief of Department Jim ONeill told reporters Saturday one person on Staten Island and two people in Queens died. He released no further details on the deaths. A police spokesman said the medical examiners office will determine exactly how they died.

NORTH CAROLINA

 Six people have died in car accidents during the storm, authorities have said, including a 4-year-old boy who died Friday afternoon after the pickup truck carrying his family on Interstate 77 near Troutman spun out of control and crashed.

OHIO

 A teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed Friday, the State Highway Patrol said. The truck failed to yield at a traffic light and hit the sled, which the ATV was pulling in Wheelersburg, the highway patrol said.

PENNSYLVANIA

 Authorities in eastern Pennsylvania say a man died of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently after his car was buried in snow by a passing plow. David Perrotto, 56, was pronounced dead less than an hour after he was found Saturday night in Muhlenberg Township, according to John Hollenbach of the Berks County coroners office. Hollenbach says Perrotto was apparently trying to dig out his car. Investigators believe he either was in the car with the motor running to take a break or to try to get out of the space when a snow plow went by and buried the car, blocking the exhaust and preventing him from exiting. Another person trying to dig out their vehicle found the running car. Perrotto was pronounced dead at a hospital emergency room.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Three people have died in South Carolina:

 Authorities say an elderly couple in Greenville died of probable carbon monoxide poisoning. Ruby Bell, 86, and her husband, 87-year-old Robert Bell, were found dead at home by their son over the weekend, Greenville County Coroner Parks Evans said in an email. He said the time of death was believed to be Friday night. Russell Watson, the Duncan Chapel Fire District chief, told The Greenville News that the couple had lost power during the storm and a relative had set up a generator in their garage. Watson said the relative left the garage door propped open with a ladder, but it somehow closed and the generator filled the house with carbon monoxide.

 The South Carolina Highway Patrol says a 44-year-old man was killed after being struck by a vehicle that slid out of control after hitting a patch of ice. The crash happened Saturday afternoon in Greenville County, the highway patrol said in a news release.

TENNESSEE

 A car slid off the roadway due to speed and slick conditions, killing the driver and injuring a passenger, the Knox County sheriffs department said.

 A couple in a vehicle slid off an icy road and plummeted down a 300-foot embankment Wednesday night, killing the woman who was driving, said Carter County Sheriff Dexter Lunceford. Stacy Sherrills husband, a passenger in the car, survived the crash. It took him several hours to climb the embankment and report the accident.

VIRGINIA

 The number of storm-related deaths in Virginia has risen to five. A man was killed on Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in Virginia Beach that police blamed on speed and icy road conditions, and Virginia Tech filmmaker Jerry Scheeler died Friday while shoveling snow outside his new house in Daleville, local news media reported Sunday. On Saturday, the state medical examiners office confirmed three other storm deaths. They included a single-vehicle crash in Chesapeake and deaths in Hampton and southwest Virginia from hypothermia.
The international community called on Haitis government and opposition over the weekend to quickly reach an agreement on the political impasse that forced postponement of Sundays presidential and legislative elections.

The United Nations, European Union and the Organization of American States asked the two sides to resolve their differences and allow the elections to proceed.

The EU and OAS observer missions condemned the acts of violence across the country that Provisional Electoral Council President Pierre Louis-Opont cited Friday as the reason for postponing Sundays election. No new date has been announced.

The appeals for a consensus on when elections can take place  and how Haiti should be governed after the departure of President Michel Martelly on Feb. 7  come as a political crisis, triggered by accusations of widespread voter fraud in recent elections, risks deepening.

Opposition leader Assad Volcy said that while the elections postponement is a victory, the demands have now changed. Micheal Martelly cannot be part of the solution. He will leave power.

At a news conference Saturday, government-backed presidential runoff candidate Jovenel Moise criticized the decision to delay the elections.

What I dont fully understand in the decision of the Provisional Electoral Council is that they postponed the election of the 24th of January just like they postponed the elections of the 27th of December without saying when the elections will take place, Moise said.

Mose accused the opposition of using the democratic process to satisfy their own personal interests.

Haiti expert Robert Fatton said with the cancellation, Haiti is likely to see a new political configuration.

The result of the bad October elections is greater political uncertainty and fluidity. We do not know either whether Michel Martelly will remain president after Feb. 7. This may have significant implications for the political survival of Jovenel Moise; can he continue to be a significant force without the assistance of the president?

For days, negotiations involving Martelly and the presidents of both chambers of parliament have taken place. The latest proposal calls for Haiti to be governed by a consensus prime minister under a transitional government lasting no more than 120 days.

Martelly would still leave office Feb. 7, as mandated by the constitution, but he would be allowed to swear in a new president who would take office no later than April 14.

Neither Moise nor Celestin would be a party to this proposal. A new nine-member Provisional Electoral Council would be charged with looking into the results and decide the next steps in determining when runoff elections will be held and who would be on the ballot.
Waves as high as 60 feet pounded the U.S. Coast Guard lifeboat CG-36500 as it slowly made its way to the S.S. Pendleton, its stern section grounded on a sand bar off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., 63 years ago.

Engineman Second Class Andy Fitzgerald, along with three others, were on board the wooden lifeboat trying to accomplish what the Coast Guard later called the most daring and heroic rescue of 32 sailors from that ship, broken in half by the extreme storm conditions.

You can read more about the rescue here.

Sunday, Fitzgerald was honored by Disneyland at its Flag Retreat Ceremony.

We had a job to do and we did it, he said after the ceremony.

During the trip out to the stricken ship, Fitzgerald received several burns as he scrambled to keep the 36-foot wooden lifeboats engine running in the driving wind and rain, even as water from the high waves would frequently kill the engine  attempting to thwart their rescue attempt.

But even with those driving seas, Fitzgerald said he was glad to be part of the service that he joined at the age of 18..

In other services, people are trained to kill people, he said. The Coast Guards trained to save people, so I thought that would be a better way to go.

The story of Fitzgerald and his three shipmates, Coxswain Bernard Webber (in command of the lifeboat), Seaman Irving Maske and Seaman Richard Livesey, is being told in a new movie, The Finest Hours, which will premiere next week.

Contact the writer: meades@ocregister.com
ZARRINABAD, Iran  Rising from the yellowish, treeless plains so typical for central Iran stands a square, three-dimensional labyrinth of pipes and conveyor belts, topped by a silver chimney that glitters in the summer sun.

Sanctions against Iran failed to halt the construction of the complex, a steel mill that went into operation in September and now churns out ingots and billets. The sanctions also did not stop Sheng Kuan Li, a wealthy Chinese businessman, from pouring $200 million into the project.

Li is one of many Chinese investors who in recent years worked around the sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and other Western powers over Tehrans nuclear program. His steel mill and other similar endeavors are the result of a strategic pact that gives China a much-needed western gateway to Middle East markets and beyond, and that has saved Iran from international isolation and economic ruin.

On Saturday, both countries agreed to increase trade to $600 billion in the coming decade.

That agreement was made during a meeting between Irans leaders and Chinas president, Xi Jinping, who late last week became the first foreign leader to visit Iran after most international sanctions were lifted. China has relied on Iranian oil and views the country as a vital link in Xis so-called Silk Road strategy, an ambitious agenda that seeks to extend Chinas economic influence westward.

Westerners visiting the capital often wonder how we managed to pull off such ambitious projects during the heaviest sanction regime in history, said Mohammad Reza Sabzalipour, Irans World Trade Center representative. Well, we did it with the help from our Chinese friends.

Thirst for cheap crude oil and enthusiasm for the Silk Road project, which incorporates the goal of unlocking Chinas isolated western provinces, brought the Chinese to Iran, the only country in the Middle East where the United States had no presence.

Iran had long welcomed the relationship, but after sanctions started to squeeze the economy at the end of the last decade, the country gained a special status, and Chinas slow but steady advance here began.

We are Irans biggest trading partner for six years in a row, Xi wrote in an open letter to the Iranian people, Xinhua, Chinas state news agency, reported on Thursday, a day before his arrival on a Middle East tour that would also take him to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

During the Iran-Iraq war, China sold weapons, including Silkworm missiles, to Iran.

China looked the other way when the Iranians sought to advance their missile technology, and assisted in developing the countrys nuclear energy program.

After the revolution we exchanged the Western frowns with the smiles from the East, said Asadollah Asgaroladi, one of Irans wealthiest businessmen and the head of the Iran-China chamber of commerce. They continue to smile at us.

So the two countries, which were connected by the old Silk Road, have embarked on establishing a new one.

On Saturday, the Chinese president sat down with Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told him that Iranians had never trusted the West. That was why Iran was seeking more cooperation with independent countries, Khamenei said, clearly indicating China.

China took the opportunity the sanctions offered, said Sabzalipour, the Tehran World Trade Center representative. Of course, for outsiders, it seems as if the Chinese have ignored the economic cordon against Iran, he said.

On the other hand, I think it was never the intention to destroy our economy, just make us feel pain, he said. So perhaps the Americans intentionally looked the other way when China threw us this lifeline.
AMMAN, Jordan  Faced with a chronic shortfall in Syria aid, the World Bank and other donors are promoting new ideas, including interest-free development loans for the hard-hit Middle Eastern countries that are hosting most refugees.

The idea was discussed at a meeting with top officials from regional host countries on Monday, ahead of next weeks Syria pledging conference, where aid agencies and regional governments are expected to seek close to $9 billion for 2016.

The appeal at the Feb. 4 conference in London would include $3.18 billion to alleviate suffering inside Syria and $5.75 billion for close to 4.3 million war refugees and their regional host countries, among them Jordan and Lebanon, according to U.N. figures.

Last years aid request of more than $8 billion was only half-funded, a gap that forced cuts in vital food and cash aid for refugees in regional host countries and was seen as one of the triggers for the influx of hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians to Europe last year.

The shortfalls have led to a search for a new approach, including shifting from what has largely been humanitarian relief to funding development programs, such as building schools, hospitals and water networks in overburdened host countries.

The London conference is also expected to discuss ways to put more refugees to work and make them less dependent on aid  a hot-button issue in Jordan and Lebanon, where unemployment is high.

On Monday, representatives from the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the U.N. met with top officials from refugee host countries to gauge the response to the idea of loans, potentially with zero interest, to Jordan and Lebanon to help narrow funding gaps.

The idea was first raised last year, but more details were presented at Mondays closed-door meeting in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

We are faced with a reality that grants are not infinite, Ferid Belhaj, the World Bank director for the Middle East, told The Associated Press. In such a climate, inexpensive loans are the next best option for Jordan and Lebanon, he said on the sidelines of the meeting.

Belhaj said he expects vigorous debate over how much Jordan and Lebanon would be expected to borrow.

The politics of it are very heavy, he said in a separate phone interview last week.

So we need to wait for all the stars to get aligned and  the donors showing how much they are ready to put on the table, and based on that see what the Lebanese and the Jordanians will be willing to accept in terms of borrowing, he said.

The two countries have argued that they pay a high economic price for providing a global public good  hosting large numbers of refugees  and that the world must do more to help them.

About 1.2 million Syrian refugees have been registered in Lebanon and about 630,000 in Jordan.

Imad Fakhoury, the Jordanian planning minister, said Monday that he expects the international community to step up in London and provide substantively more support and resources for countries that are about to enter the sixth year of the crisis.

Jordan welcomes potential offers of concessionary financing, including for development programs that the country had to put on hold after the 2011 start of the Syria crisis, he said.

However, Jordan expects grants  not loans  to address the needs of refugees and of host communities in Jordan that had to absorb large numbers of displaced Syrians. We will not borrow, as a country, to fund priorities related to the Syrian refugees, Fakhoury told AP.

Meanwhile, the head of the International Labor Organization, Guy Ryder, is visiting Jordan later this week to talk to government officials about labor rights for refugees  a key component of the aid debate.

Largely barred from working legally, many Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon work in informal day jobs for low wages.

As an interim step, the ILO has called for work permits for Syrians in sectors that have trouble attracting locals, such as agriculture and construction in Jordan.
SACRAMENTO  An additional $24 million that was supposed to end the backlog in a unique California firearms seizure program has reduced the waitlist only about 40 percent, according to a report released Monday.

That leaves a backlog of nearly 13,000 gun owners who bought firearms legally but were later convicted of a felony or a violent misdemeanor, became subject to a domestic violence restraining order or were determined to be mentally unstable.

Officials said the extra money in 2013 would let Attorney General Kamala Harris office end a backlog of nearly 21,000 people within three years.

The remaining backlog of nearly 12,700 gun owners is the lowest its been since 2008, Harris said. The report she released Monday cites recent expansions of the states gun control laws for the continued backlog.

Harris, a Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate this year, called the results historic reductions and historic achievements in the face of an increased workload, but lawmakers of both political parties expressed frustration at a hearing last year.

Shes taking a victory lap and she should be holding her head in shame, Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, said Monday. They seem to think its a good thing and I think its outrageous.

The additional money runs out in May, and Harris now wants lawmakers to make permanent the funding that was initially given her office after a series of mass shootings, including the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre.

Her office had spent about $14.4 million of the $24 million by October, but she argued the 9-year-old program needs the budget extended past three years because of an increased workload.

That includes a state law that took effect this month that lets family members ask judges for restraining orders if they question a relatives mental stability. Harris projected the law could add as many as 3,000 people to the state databases.

The state also added rifles and shotguns to state databases that previously only included handguns, she said. Harris state Department of Justice cross-matches five databases to identify those whose guns may be seized. Including the long guns since 2014 roughly doubled the number of individuals who might face ownership prohibitions as the department sorts through more than 930,000 firearms sales each year.

We gave them a great deal of money a few years ago. We were initially disappointed in the results, said Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, who heads the Senate Public Safety Committee and the budget committee that oversees public safety spending. The department may be improving, she said, but lawmakers will examine whether permanent funding can come from within its existing budget.

Sen. Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, said Harris hasnt shown she can deliver the promised results.

Just to open up the checkbookthat doesnt do it for me, he said.

Harris reported that nearly 19,000 investigations were conducted under the program in the last 2 1/2 years, resulting in the seizure of 335 assault weapons along with about 9,400 handguns and long guns.

The department previously said the temporary nature of the jobs meant that many agents trained for the program soon left for other permanent jobs. Now agents must stay in their original job two years before they can transfer, according to Harris report, but about a quarter of agents jobs remain vacant.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that its 2012 decision banning mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile killers must be applied retroactively, granting a new chance at release for hundreds of inmates serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for murders they committed in their youth.

The vote was 6-3, and the majority decision was written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the courts leading proponent of cutting back on the death penalty and other harsh punishments for entire classes of offenders. His opinion strengthened the 2012 decision, which merely required new sentencing where life without parole had been imposed automatically, without taking into account the defendants youth.

Mondays opinion indicated that life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders should be exceedingly rare. Kennedy also gave states a second option  instead of resentencing the affected prisoners, they could make them eligible for parole.

The case, Montgomery v. Louisiana, No. 14-280, concerned Henry Montgomery, who was 17 in 1963 when he murdered an East Baton Rouge police officer. He is now 69.

Kennedy said there was evidence that Montgomery deserved to be released, describing his evolution from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community and noting that he was a coach on the prison boxing team, had worked in the prisons silk-screen program and had offered advice to younger inmates.

There are more than 2,000 people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were not yet 18. Many of them automatically received those sentences for murders, without individualized consideration of their youth and other factors.

In the 2012 decision, Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that automatic life sentences for juvenile offenders violated the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Life-without-parole sentences would remain permissible, the court said, but only after individualized consideration. But the court did not say whether the decision was merely prospective or whether it required new sentencing hearings or other review for offenders who had already exhausted their appeals.

The decision followed two others concerning harsh penalties for juvenile offenders. In 2005 in Roper v. Simmons, the court eliminated the juvenile death penalty. In 2010 in Graham v. Florida, the court ruled that sentencing juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole was also unconstitutional, but only for crimes that did not involve killing.

The question of whether the 2012 decision should be applied retroactively turned on whether it was substantive or procedural. New substantive decisions apply retroactively, while new procedural ones generally do not.

There was some reason to think the 2012 decision was procedural, because it required new sentencing procedures rather than banning the punishment of life without parole for all juvenile killers.

But Kennedy said the decision had been grounded on the diminished culpability of all juvenile offenders, who are, he said, immature, susceptible to peer pressure and capable of change. Very few, he said, are incorrigible. But he added that as a general matter the punishment was out of bounds.

A sentencer might encounter the rare juvenile offender who exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible and life without parole is justified, he wrote. But in light of childrens diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change, Miller made clear that appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.

As a result, Kennedy wrote, Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law.

He added that complying with Mondays ruling should not be especially burdensome. A state may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing them, he wrote. Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity  and who have since matured  will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Prisoners like Montgomery, Kennedy wrote, must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Kennedys majority opinion.

Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Thomas filed a separate dissent.

Scalia wrote that Kennedy had twisted the language in the Miller decision to make it sound categorical when it merely required a new sentencing procedure. To say that a punishment might be inappropriate and disproportionate for certain juvenile offenders is not to say that it is unconstitutionally void, Scalia wrote.

He added that it would be very difficult for juries and judges to decide if defendants were incorrigible many years after their crimes.

But have no fear, Scalia wrote. The majority does not seriously expect state and federal collateral-review tribunals to engage in this silliness, probing the evidence of incorrigibility that existed decades ago when defendants were sentenced.

What the majority expects (and intends) to happen, he said, is for all states instead to allow the affected prisoners to apply for parole.

Scalia added that Kennedy had contradicted a passage in his 2005 majority opinion in the Roper case, which did away with the juvenile death penalty.

One of the justifications the court gave for decreeing an end to the death penalty for murders (no matter how many) committed by a juvenile was that life without parole was a severe enough punishment, Scalia wrote. How could the majority  in an opinion written by the very author of Roper  now say that punishment is also unconstitutional?
When you live so close to Disneyland, where do you go on vacation? Sure, you could choose a national park, exotic beach or some big-city getaway, but local theme park fans shouldnt let their familiarity with Disneyland and Knotts lead them to rule out a trip to some of the other top theme parks around the world.

Just dreaming about a visit to some of these parks is a great way to spend some time on cool, and sometimes rainy, January days. Here are five dream theme park destinations that fans ought to think about visiting someday.

Tokyo Disney Resort

Interested in seeing what could have been built just down the freeway in Long Beach? Then hop on a plane to Japan. Tokyo DisneySea park was one of the concepts Disney considered building instead of California Adventure, back when Disney owned the Queen Mary and was looking for ways to leverage that investment.

Youll find an erupting volcano in the middle of DisneySea, anchoring a Jules Verne-themed Mysterious Island thats home to what might be the worlds best Disney attraction, Journey to the Center of the Earth. The parks Magellans restaurant might also be the worlds best theme park restaurant, and over at Tokyo Disneyland, its trackless and wildly entertaining Poohs Hunny Hunt ride puts the much-cheaper version at Disneyland to shame.

Efteling

This Dutch park might be the most charming theme park in the world. Designed and inspired by the late artist Anton Pieck, Efteling offers several legendary dark rides, including Dreamflight and Fata Morgana, an Arabian Nights-themed indoor boat ride that, like Mr. Toads Wild Ride and the pre-Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean, concludes with a wickedly dark finale. Visitors rave about the landscaping, decor and service in this independently owned park thats been inspiring Disney Imagineers for generations.

Universal Orlando

Yes, local theme park fans ought to make a trip to Orlando, Florida, some day. Walt Disney World offers four theme parks spread across thousands of acres, but if you wanted to spend all your time commuting across long distances, youd have stayed home. Consider instead Universal Orlando, where you can ditch the car and just walk throughout the resort.

If you stay in one of the three Loews-operated hotels at the resort, your room key allows you to skip the lines on almost all of the rides, as well. In the parks, you will find two versions of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter: the original Hogsmeade (a version of which will open at Universal Studios Hollywood in April) and Diagon Alley, featuring a life-sized fire-breathing dragon atop Gringotts Bank.

Dollywood

Looking to get away from the traffic and hassle of living in Americas second-biggest metro area? Consider a trip to this rural park, nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee. Dollywood not only offers the beauty of the Smokies, but also some of the nations top roller coasters, including Wild Eagle, Firechaser Express, and new for 2016, Lightning Rod  the nations first launched wooden coaster.

The Dolly in the parks name is Dolly Parton, so the park also is known for its top-quality live musical productions, even if Dolly herself only shows up a couple times a year.

Roller Coaster Road trip

If you are a roller coaster fan, you owe yourself a summer road trip to some of the top seasonal coaster parks in the Midwest. Book a flight to Chicago, then rent a car to drive up to Six Flags Great America, located just north of the city, in Gurnee. Dont miss Raging Bull and Goliath, which is not like the ride of the same name at Magic Mountain. This Goliath is the fastest and steepest wooden roller coaster in the world (at least until Lightning Rod opens).

After Great America, drive east on I-80 to Cedar Point, located west of Cleveland in Sandusky, Ohio. Must-rides at Knotts sister park include Millennium Force, Maverick and 2016s new coaster, Valravn, which will be the worlds tallest and fastest dive coaster.

Wrap up your trip with a drive down to southern Indiana to visit Holiday World, in the delightfully named small town of Santa Claus. When there, be sure to ride its trio of world-class wooden roller coasters (The Raven, The Legend and The Voyage) before enjoying the parks free, all-you-can-drink sodas.

Robert Niles is the founder and editor of ThemeParkInsider.com.
CHIOS, Greece  In the inky nighttime blackness, a small red dot appears on the radar screen, moving fast.

Thats a smuggler, the captain of the coast guards lifeboat says, swinging the vessel around and opening up the throttle, the boat cutting through the water on a frigid January night.

But the lifeboat, designed for search-and-rescue operations rather than high-speed chases, is no match for the smugglers speedboat. The smuggler ignores the searchlight, the shouts and the warning shots fired by the Greek coast guard, deftly navigating his small white vessel onto a tiny patch of beach among rocks.

There he disgorges his human cargo  men, women and children risking their lives in a quest for safety and a better future in Europe. They use ropes to scramble up a cliff, heading toward a lighthouse on an island they are soon to discover is deserted save for an army outpost. They will spend a cold, wet, uncomfortable night there until the coast guard can send boats in the morning.

Hour after hour, by night and by day, Greek coast guard patrols and lifeboats, reinforced by vessels from the European Unions border agency Frontex, ply the waters of the eastern Aegean Sea along the frontier with Turkey. They are on the lookout for people being smuggled onto the shores of Greek islands  the front line of Europes massive refugee crisis.

Although smugglers are often arrested, the task is mainly a search-and-rescue role. Hours spent on patrol shows the near-impossibility of sealing Europes sea borders as some have demanded of Greece, whose islands so near to Turkey are the most popular gateway into Europe.

Some European countries  notably Hungary and Slovakia  have blasted Greece for being unable to secure its border, which also forms part of the external limits of Europes borderless Schengen area.

We have been saying all along that if the Greeks are unable to protect the borders of their country, we should jointly go down south and protect them, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in November, with his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico echoing the thought.

But such calls ignore the realities at sea.

No matter how many patrol boats are out in Greek waters, attempting to force a vessel of asylum-seekers back into Turkish waters is both illegal and dangerous, even in calm seas. So unless a Turkish patrol stops a migrant boat and returns it to Turkey, there is little Greek or Frontex patrols can do once it has entered Greek territorial waters but arrest the smugglers and pick up the passengers or escort the vessel safely to land.

Greece is guarding the national and European borders, Greek Alternate Foreign Minister Nikos Xydakis said in a statement Sunday. What it cannot do and will not do  is to sink boats and drown women and children, because international and European treaties and the values of our culture forbid it.

The sheer numbers have been overwhelming.

More than 850,000 people, most fleeing conflict in Syria and Afghanistan, entered Greece by sea in 2015, according to the UNHCR. Already in 2016, 35,455 people have arrived despite plunging winter temperatures and days of stormy weather.

The Greek island of Chios, second in the number of arrivals after the island of Lesbos, has three coast guard vessels and Frontex reinforcements.

But when you have 50 or 60 (migrant) boats daily, you understand that these vessels cant cope, said Chios coast guard deputy head Commander Christos Fragias. Both the crews and the vessels are strained from the overwork.

Those reaching Chios have been lucky. The island has seen few deaths  about four or five, Fragias said, out of 118,000 arrivals in 2015.

Others have not fared so well. Two smuggling boats sank Friday off the tiny Greek islets of Kalolimnos and Farmakonissi, drowning at least 42 people, including 17 children. In all, more than 700 people have died or gone missing in the Aegean Sea, in both Greek and Turkish territorial waters, since the start of 2015.

The crew of Chios lifeboat has performed dozens of rescues.

We make superhuman efforts. The five of us pick up 50, 60 people in 10 minutes, says its captain. Last year, they rescued nearly 3,000 people, he said. Coast guard crews cannot be cited by name as they are not authorized to speak on the record.

Racing across choppy seas to check on a dinghy sighting as the weather turns for the worse, the captain of one of the islands patrol boats described dramatic scenes of plucking struggling refugees out of stormy seas, where waves can hide victims from sight and maneuvering a pitching vessel in a sea full of people becomes precarious.

Its very difficult to save people in bad weather, he said. If there are incidents at sea, we only have a limited capacity, so we have to prioritize which boats are in danger.

The dinghy he was called on to check arrived safely on a beach on southern Chios, so the captain turned the patrol boat north, heading to the deserted island that the smuggler was ferrying passengers to the previous night. By morning, 283 people, including dozens of children, a disabled elderly woman and an amputee await rescue. They will be transported to Chios, which will have received 1,026 people by the end of the day.

The patrol vessel and a Dutch Frontex speedboat take turns ferrying people in batches of about 25 to the nearby island of Oinousses, from where a large privately owned tug converted into a rescue boat will take them to Chios.

Among the new arrivals was Faysal, a middle-aged man from Damascus who would only give his first name after fleeing Syria following kidnapping threats.

It was a horrible, horrible trip, he said of the boat ride from Turkey, crouching on the patrol boats deck, his hood pulled up to ward off the rain. They told us it would take 15 minutes, but it took 2 1 / 4 hours.

The smuggler waited at sea for an hour to evade a coast guard boat, Faysal said. We have no sea in Damascus, we are not used to this. We were all sick, and the boat was full of water.

Once on land they lit fires, burning their lifejackets to keep warm. Next to him, tears of pain trickled down the soot-blackened face of a woman who had hurt her leg on the rocks getting off the smugglers boat.

Faysal ran a successful heating business in Damascus, but said he no longer had the option of staying.

There is no safety. I left everything behind; my business, my home, he said.

He hopes to reach Holland, where his sister lives. But the onward journey will have to wait a day or two.
CHICAGO  A former deputy superintendent of the Chicago Police who left to head departments in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia is returning to the city to help reform a force thats trying to regain public trust in the wake of a video showing a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager, Mayor Rahm Emanuels office announced Sunday.

Charles Ramsey, one of the nations most respected law enforcement figures, has twice  first in Washington and then in Philadelphia  invited federal reviews of those agencies similar to the civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department that the Justice Department announced last month. He has said that police-involved shootings in both of those cities subsequently declined.

Ramsey, an African-American from the citys South Side, returns to Chicago amid protests that have called for Emanuel to resign over the release two months ago of the video of Laquan McDonalds shooting death by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The video sparked the biggest crisis of Emanuels administration and cost Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy his job.

The situation in Chicago is not unlike many cities across the country, but the people of Chicago should know that their leaders are working hard to restore trust where it has been lost, Ramsey said in a statement.

What kind of recommendations he will make is unclear, but last month he said that he wanted state police in Pennsylvania to head investigations of police-involved shootings in Philadelphia.

The 65-year-old Ramsey joined the Chicago Police Department as a cadet in 1968, rose through the ranks over three decades and had a key role in the establishment of community policing in Chicago. Since he left in 1998 to head Washingtons force, his name has come up repeatedly as a candidate for Chicago superintendent. He has applied a number of times, including in 2011, before Emanuel selected McCarthy.

Ramsey retired this month as Philadelphias police commissioner, and following Emanuels firing of McCarthy in the wake of the McDonald videos release, had said he was not interested in the job. In fact, earlier this month, the mayor of Wilmington, Delaware, announced that Ramsey had been hired as a public safety consultant.

Dashcam video released Nov. 24 of the shooting more than a year earlier shows Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times as he walks away from police officers with a knife at his side. Van Dyke is charged with murder and has pleaded not guilty.

The shooting has turned a spotlight on longstanding concerns about a code of silence in the Chicago Police Department, in which officers stay quiet about or even cover up possible misconduct by colleagues. Police Board President Lori Lightfoot has said the 39 applicants for the superintendent job will be asked for creative solutions to motivate officers to come forward when they see misconduct.

Lightfoot says she hopes to present Emanuel with the names of three finalists by the end of February.
Diego Rivera was known more for his murals than his watercolors. Popol Vuh: Watercolors of Diego Rivera at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana is interesting for that reason, but also for a few more.

Its not a big show, filling just two rooms and a screening room for a short video. But despite the small size, there are several layers. Theres the story of the Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the Quiche Mayan people, centered in Guatemala. But theres also the story of the story  how that oral tradition was written down, translated, sent across an ocean and back and nearly lost for good again and again. Then, of course, there are the watercolors by Rivera, imaginative illustrations that blend the Mexican artists distinctive style of robust figures with the Mayan symbols and designs echoed in the pottery  some of it more than 1,000 years old  that round out the exhibit.

Head first for the screening room to watch the 10-minute animated video, in Spanish with English subtitles, that tells the story of the Popol Vuh. That will give you a better context for perusing the rest of the exhibit.

The tale starts with the gods creation of the universe, land, animals and, after a few failed attempts, humans. From there, it continues, but not chronologically, with the story of the Hero Twins, their exploits in the underworld, some treachery, humor, revenge and ballgames  which were a major element of Mayan cultural life.

Once you take in all of this, its interesting to consider that the Popol Vuh story was almost lost to history.

For the Mayas, the Popol Vuh is an important story, their equivalent of the Bible. Its not known when the story began circulating, but it was perhaps as early as 1800 B.C., making the Popol Vuh nearly 3,000 years old. The arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s marked the beginning of a series of translations, with the source texts being lost again and again, seemingly transcribed in the nick of time so the Popol Vuh was not lost altogether.

The Spanish began their conquest of Mayan lands in Guatemala in the 1520s. Any written copies of the story the Mayas may have had then were probably destroyed around 1555 by Spanish priests, according to the Bowers exhibit. But around the same time, the Popol Vuh in the Quiche language was recorded in Latin script. That manuscript, or manuscripts, went missing for the next 150 years.

Around 1701, according to the exhibit, Spanish priest Francisco Ximenez traveled to Guatemalas highlands and befriended the Mayas. Village elders showed him books that had been hidden from the Spanish, including the Popol Vuh. Ximenez made a copy, and the manuscript he copied was lost or hidden. Ximenezs copies didnt resurface for more than 100 years. When they were found, the ink was almost faded. They were transcribed, translated and published. One Ximenez copy disappeared. Another is now in the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Enter Diego Rivera. Throughout his career, Rivera had an interest in Mexicos history, starting with its Mayan roots. While in San Francisco working on murals commissioned by that city, Rivera met American author John Weatherwax. Weatherwax wanted to make the first popular published version of the Popol Vuh, and Rivera agreed to illustrate it. Weatherwaxs version was never published, but Riveras watercolors from 1931 remain.

Riveras illustrations are highly stylized, with colorful forms of birds, fish, dragons, monkeys and underworld gods  all characters in the story. The illustrations cover imagery from ancient Mayan culture, including of human sacrifice. But Riveras arrangements are modern, like a panel filled with headless bodies and limbs that look like parts of jumping-jack dolls, illustrating the gods failed attempt to make worthy humans out of wood.

The tale after the creation of the universe is a little difficult to follow, since it skips around chronologically. This is the first time these watercolors  still remarkably vivid  have been shown in the United States, according to the Bowers Museum. Its an interesting look at an imaginative story that has lasted so long and at Riveras creative vision.

Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
Marco Rubio had been in Washington just five months when Jonathan Farrar, a career Foreign Service officer, stepped into a Capitol Hill hearing room and into the senators crosshairs.

Farrar, as the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, had overseen some of President Barack Obamas first steps toward easing Washingtons 50-year-old diplomatic and economic freeze with Cuba. A giant ticker that streamed news and political statements that irritated Cubas communist government was dismantled at the U.S. compound in Havana. Offending Christmas decorations were taken down, too.

At the 2011 hearing, Farrar told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that Cold War-era policies had failed and that it was time to come up with new programs for dealing with the island of 11 million.

Rubio just shook his head. He described the long-standing policy toward Cuba as adversarial and aggressive and said he saw no reason to soften it. Why should our country budge, he argued, when there was no improvement to Cubas human rights record?

The Florida Republican, the son of Cuban immigrants, was determined to do more than rail against the change. He had decided to block Obamas nominees to key diplomatic posts in Latin America, starting with Farrar, who needed Senate confirmation to become the new U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua.

I have to be honest, Rubio told Farrar. I am concerned about some of the decisions that you made at the Interest Section in Havana. Nicaragua, he said, is a place headed in the wrong direction in a hurry, and America needs a forceful presence there.

Farrar had stepped on Rubios highly electrified third rail, and his appointment was quickly incinerated.

Today, as the 44-year-old Rubio campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, he holds fast to the same hard-line view on Cuba he offered in a quiet fourth-floor Senate hearing room five years ago. Driven by a political philosophy shaped by his Cuban roots, he is now holding an even more important Obama nomination hostage: the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

At a time when most Americans support a landmark shift in U.S. policy on Cuba, Rubio has positioned himself as that moves biggest foe. He champions a Cold War approach that many think is outdated, even as it runs counter to his image as the youthful leader of a new generation.

I said, Marco, how can you hit Hillary Clinton for being the candidate of yesterday when you are supporting policies that date to the 1960s?  said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee with Rubio.

But his intense focus on Cuba explains a lot about who Rubio is  and how, as a potential commander in chief, he sees the United States role in the world.

Cuba is personal for Rubio. His parents were born there, and his grandfather  the single greatest influence on his political thinking  despised what Fidel Castro did to his homeland. In his memoir, Rubio wrote that as a child, I boasted I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba.

He would sit at the feet of his grandfather, a Ronald Reagan-loving, cigar-smoking shoemaker named Pedro Victor Garcia, and listen to him describe how communism destroyed lives in Cuba and how the United States had a unique role to play in the world as the enforcer of freedom.

Pap, as he called him, spoke to Rubio with reverence for Reagans strength and reach, including his controversial funding of the contra rebels fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua. In fifth grade, Rubio wrote a paper praising Reagan for restoring the U.S. military. His grandfather kept it in old red suitcase, a little treasure the senator found a few years ago.

He was a huge influence on me, Rubio said in a phone interview with The Washington Post while campaigning in New Hampshire. He felt that more countries would become like Cuba if America wasnt the strongest country in the world. So that was instilled in me from an early age.

Today, Rubio often echoes his grandfather when he talks about his support for the use of U.S. military might and his belief in American exceptionalism.

Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, who also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Rubio believes it is crucial that other countries know how tough you are and how willing you are to use (force). And if either of those are gone, you got a problem.

Risch said that Rubio is a leader in the Senate on foreign affairs and that his knowledge and interest in the world stems from growing up in Miami, where what is happening in Latin America is considered local news.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is also Cuban American and shares Rubios hard line on Cuba, said everyone is informed by the people who surround them. In Rubios case, it is not just that Rubio comes from a state with more than 1 million people of Cuban descent but also that many of those he talks to fled modern-day oppression.

In West Miami, where Rubio first got elected as a city commissioner at the age of 26  and where he still lives  he is surrounded by Cuban immigrants and their children. They were the donors and supporters who helped put him in the statehouse and who piled into a chartered flight to Tallahassee to witness him becoming the first Cuban American elected as speaker of the House in Florida. Last year, in a symbolic gesture, Rubio announced his run for president in front of Miamis Freedom Tower, where the U.S. government once processed Cuban immigrants fleeing the Castro regime.

But in much of the country and even in Miami, attitudes about Cuba shifted as decades of diplomatic and economic sanctions proved ineffective. Polls show more than 70 percent of Americans support Obamas decision to restore relations and promote other efforts to open up the island nation.

In recent months, Airbnb, a seven-year-old U.S. website that allows people to find and rent lodging, has signed up hundreds of Cubans eager to rent rooms in their homes to the new flood of American visitors.

Even most Cuban Americans support normalization of relations with Cuba  and 77 percent of those younger than 50 support Obamas policy, according to Miami pollster Fernand Armandi. He said those who remain opposed are a shrinking group: older, Florida-based Republicans born in Cuba.

And Marco Rubio.

Nothing gets Rubio going like Cuba. Foreign policy should not be crafted by looking at polls, he declared. I am going to do whats right, not whats popular, he said in the Post interview.

He is not against change, he stressed, bristling at criticism that he is the young guy stuck in the past. Its that Obama cut a bad deal. Cuba remains a dictatorship and all the United States got, Rubio said, is the hope that a flood of American tourists will one day lead to a democratic opening, which I know it will not because it never has anywhere in the world  and it will not now.

When Secretary of State John Kerry raised the flag on the U.S. Embassy in Havana in August for the first time in 54 years and called it a historic moment on the evening news, Rubio took to the airwaves himself.

Obama, he told reporters, was rewarding oppression and bestowing international legitimacy on a nation that continues to jail dissidents. Sanctions should be re-imposed, Rubio said, and the embassy shut until there is improvement on human rights.

In his interview with The Washington Post, he also noted that Cuba still harbor fugitives from U.S. justice and plays host to spy stations from China and Russia.

Some wonder whether Rubio decided to stick with being the lead voice in the Senate critical of the new Cuba policy rather than risk being called inconsistent, especially after being slammed for helping craft an immigration-reform bill and then retreating from it. But many believe he doesnt want to turn his back on the donors and supporters who launched his political career.

Maybe its just an emotional blind spot for him, Armandi said.

His friends say he just believes it.

There has been no U.S. envoy in Mexico City since August because Rubio is holding up the nomination of Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, who led negotiations with Cuba as the United States moved toward more engagement.

He is trying to stick a finger in the eye of the president over Cuba by blocking her, said Flake, the Arizona Republican.

Flake thinks its a mistake. So do 19 Latino members of Congress who signed a letter to Rubio protesting his hold on her nomination. They argue it has nothing to do with her qualifications and is a slight to Mexico, a key ally and trading partner.

Rubio critics say issues come up every day  including the possible extradition of recently recaptured drug lord Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn  that underscore the price of an empty chair in Mexico City. They note that Pope Francis helped broker the new Cuba policy. And they complain that Rubio has a poor record of attending Senate hearings while he is stonewalling Jacobson and running for president.

While I understand Senator Rubio has his own ambitions to serve, he should let the Senate vote and get an ambassador in Mexico, said Rep. Linda Sanchez of California, one of the Democrats who signed the congressional letter.

Rubio said he will delay Jacobsons nomination until he gets answers to his questions about several troubling issues, including what role she played in some of these new arrangements with Cuba.

So she remains in Washington as an assistant secretary of state. Farrar, who couldnt pass muster with Rubio to be tough enough on the left-leaning government in Nicaragua, ended up becoming the U.S. ambassador to Panama.

At the State Department, Foreign Service officers with ambitions to land a post that needs Senate confirmation have hesitated or avoided work on Cuba because they know it can draw fire from Rubio.

If you did, you were playing roulette with your career, said Carl Meacham, who worked for then-Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., on the Foreign Relations Committee. For Rubio, Cuba was a litmus test. It was either thumbs up or thumbs down.

Asked how he makes decisions on foreign policy, Rubio talked about the importance of prioritizing threats and spotting trouble early.

The majority of presidential energy and detail needs to be spent on issues that have direct impact on both our economic security and national security, he said. That means big geopolitical threats and smaller ones that could grow.

Its not just the ability to see what is in front of you now, he said, but to see what something can become.

Rubio said he saw Libyas civil war was going to create a power vacuum and become a magnet for jihadists, so he voiced support for a bigger U.S. effort there.

The same was true in Syria, he said. I argued that if we didnt find non-jihadists and make sure they were the strongest group on the ground, jihadists would be the strongest group.

Rubio promises that if elected president he will rebuild the military. He tells crowds that Obama has been too weak, too willing to negotiate with dictators, from Cuba to Iran.

The world is a very different place than when he listened to his grandfather as a kid, he said in the interview. But just as in the Cold War, and in World War I and II, he said, the United States remains the only nation on Earth capable of taking the lead against global threats and building coalitions to fight them.

Force should always be the last resort, Rubio said. But sometimes its the only resort.

Elliott Abrams, an adviser to President Reagan who gained notoriety for his role in the funding of the contras in Nicaragua, has spoken with Rubio about foreign affairs. He is clearly an internationalist, Abrams said. He is more willing to use American power than, lets say, (Ted) Cruz.

Abrams said Rubio is particularly interested in defending human rights, from Venezuela to Bahrain. One can postulate that it comes from being a Cuban American, Abrams said.

It was telling, he said, that Rubio brought up Cuba in the final question during the Republican debate in September at the Reagan Presidential Library, where Reagans retired airplane served as the backdrop.

CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked each candidate, How will the world look different once your Air Force One is parked in the hangar of your presidential library?

Rubio said he would fly to our allies  Israel, South Korea and Japan. Then on to China and Russia, not just to meet with our enemies but to meet with the people in those countries who aspire to freedom and liberty.

And ultimately, Rubio said, I hope that my Air Force One, if I become president, will one day land in a free Cuba, where its people can choose its leaders and its own destiny.
BEIRUT  The United Nations on Monday set a new target date of Jan. 29 for the launch of a downgraded version of the Syrian peace talks that have already been delayed by squabbles over the guest list and the ultimate goal of the negotiations.

The talks had been due to begin in Geneva on Monday and were intended to bring President Bashar Assads government and his opponents together to discuss ways to end the bloodshed in Syria and reforms that would lead to a new system of governance.

Instead, the launch date has been postponed until Friday and the rival factions will not meet face to face, the U.N.s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva.

Rather, he plans to host what he called proximity talks, in which the factions will sit in different rooms at the U.N.s headquarters in Geneva, and he will shuttle between them.

The new format and the delayed start underscore the enormity of the challenge of bringing together the parties to the Syrian war, which is believed to have killed over 250,000 people, displaced nearly 12 million, sent a surge of refugees flooding into Europe and given rise to the expansion of the Islamic State.

De Mistura said there is still no consensus over who should be invited, and he will not issue the invitations until Tuesday, leaving a question mark over who will attend  and whether the talks will be able to begin at all on Friday.

But he also said it wasnt necessary for everyone to show up by Friday. There will be no opening ceremony, he said, and the talks are expected to continue for six months  considerably longer than the three to five months diplomats had previously estimated, pointing to the steadily dwindling expectations for their success.

What matters is starting the talks with some kind of minimum understanding, de Mistura said.

The United States, Russia and regional powers had seemingly united behind the call for peace talks to be based on a formula drawn up in Geneva nearly four years ago and endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution in December.

But as the date approached, fierce disagreements erupted over the composition of the guest list and notably who should comprise the opposition delegation. Russia objected to the inclusion of the Islamist Jaish al-Islam rebel faction, which it labels a terrorist group. Moscow also insisted on the inclusion of other individuals and groups, such as the Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party that is fighting a separate war in northeastern Syria.

Turkey said it would withdraw its support if the Kurds were included, while the opposition demanded that there should first be progress toward confidence building measures outlined in the U.N. resolution, such as a halt to attacks on civilians and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged towns where people have been starving to death.

The fighting in Syria has only intensified as the talks have drawn closer, with gains by government forces against the rebels in several parts of the country calling into question whether Assad will feel under any pressure to make concessions at the negotiating table.

A further snag developed Sunday after reports from unnamed members of the opposition suggested that Secretary of State John Kerry had warned the Syrian opposition delegation during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the United States was reneging on its commitment to press for an outcome that would lead to Assads departure.

Kerry on Monday told reporters that he did not make those comments. Its just not what was said, he told reporters during a visit to the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

The position of the United States is and hasnt changed, that we are still supporting the opposition politically, financially and militarily, he said.

Kerry added that he also told the opposition that its up to the Syrians to decide what happens to Assad. Thats in the U.N. resolution. And they are the negotiators, so they will decide the future.

The last time peace talks were held in Geneva two years ago they collapsed within weeks after it became clear the government was not willing to offer any concessions to opposition demands for an end to Assads rule.

This time around, de Mistura said, he wants to be sure not to launch peace talks prematurely.

Ive been very much aware of the danger of what happened in Geneva 2, he said, referring to the earlier talks. Thats why we are being careful and extremely thorough in wanting to make sure that when and if we start, we start on the right foot.

It will be uphill anyway, he added.
BEIJING  A Chinese journalist traveling across Thailand on a frantic quest for political refuge messaged his wife to say that he would soon reach the border with Laos. Then, two weeks ago, the journalist, Li Xin, disappeared.

Now, Lis wife, He Fangmei, and his supporters suspect he has joined a growing list of people at odds with Beijing who have been spirited into China across borders, especially from Thailand.

I havent heard any word from him, He said Monday after deciding to speak out about her husbands disappearance. Now, Thailand and China are kicking the ball back and forth.

Security agencies in Beijing appear increasingly determined to extinguish the idea that citizens who defy the Chinese government, including dissidents and corrupt officials, can easily find safety abroad, and the examples of secretive handovers to China from Thailand are multiplying.

Thailands military rulers, for their part, appear to be seeking economic and political backing from Beijing in return for security and police cooperation, including over secretive extraditions, analysts say.

The government is desperate to make friends with a powerful player, said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher on Thailand for Human Rights Watch who is critical of the deportations because they bypass the legal system. This is a very spine-chilling precedent set by the junta. Thailand is no longer a safe haven.

The recent acceleration of deportations to China from Thailand began in July, when the Thai government returned about 100 members of the Uighur ethnic minority, a largely Sunni Muslim people whose homeland in northwest China has become increasingly riven with tensions and violence. The Uighurs who were handed over by Thailand had traveled there hoping to be settled in third countries, and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called their deportation a flagrant violation of international law.

In October, Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong book publisher who specialized in scurrilous potboilers about Chinas Communist elite, disappeared from his vacation home in the Thai coastal town of Pattaya. He emerged on Chinese television this month offering a confession for having left China in 2003, violating probation after an automobile accident in which the car he was driving struck and killed a young woman.

In November, two Chinese dissidents seeing sanctuary in Thailand, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guanping, were sent back to China despite having been recognized as refugees by the U.N. refugee agency. The Chinese police later said that the two men had been in Thailand without authorization and were suspected of crimes involving illegal border crossing.

The transfer procedure for the two was in accordance with a cooperation mechanism between Chinese and Thai police, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said, citing the police.

The spokesman for the Thai government could not be reached Monday.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, an adviser to the deputy prime minister, said he was not aware of the disappearance of Li, the journalist.

Speaking more generally about deportations, he said Thailand had to be aware of and responsive to Chinas rising influence in trade, investment and tourism.

Several years ago, the number of Chinese tourists here was not even 1 million, Panitan said. Now its approaching 10 million.

He emphasized that Thailand must continue to rely on the United States for security cooperation. In the military sphere, The U.S. is still No. 1, he said.

Yes, we are holding military exercises with the Chinese, but its very small, he said. Its 10 pilots compared with 10,000 U.S. Marines. Its not comparable.

The Chinese government has said that suspects of crimes who return from abroad, including officials and their relatives accused of graft, have often come voluntarily, offering extravagant contrition for their misdeeds. But critics say the secretive operations are likely to involve coercion and threats, if not outright force, and they point to the far-fetched accounts that detainees have given in the Chinese state-run news media.

Lis wife said she had reservations about his trip to Thailand. He had said before his disappearance that he feared that if he was forced to go back to China, he would be punished for having publicly recounted the intense pressure that state security officers had used to recruit him as an informant against his colleagues and friends, and for having described censorship he witnessed in his job as an editor.

Many, many people have been brought back to China, He said. I didnt want him to go to Thailand.
RUIDOSO, N.M  Although Laura Jean Schneider comes from four generations of Midwest farmers, she is uncertain sometimes about her agricultural acumen.

For the past two years, she has ranched cattle across 100,000 acres on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico with her husband. It is, she said, dangerous work, compared with the farming she once did in Minnesota with her family. For one thing, should either she or her husband need immediate medical care, it would be a hard ride over 27 miles of uneven dirt roads that flood during monsoon season.

And at age 31, she suffers from debilitating migraines, back pain and ongoing dental work following a near-fatal car accident a decade ago. There are bank loans, and the Wests ongoing drought, that weigh on her. Yet she has learned the ropes, as it were, keenly observing how cattle learn the landscape they live in, and how not all of them are naturally good at rearing their young.

I rope, ride and build fence, she says matter-of-factly. This is what I do. Its my job.

As unique as Schneider seems, she is far from alone. According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, the number of women-operated farms increased from 5 percent to 14 percent between 1978 and 2007. Today, counting principal operators and secondary operators, women account for 30 percent of all farmers in the United States, or just under 1 million.

As striking as those numbers are, particularly when considering the financial risks and physical demands that accompany the work , researchers say they would like to learn more about the full contribution these women make, and what it means for the future of farming and ranching in the United States.

Researchers have observed possible reasons why more women are farming and ranching. Some women regard themselves less as entrepreneurs and more as gentle stewards of the land, or bulwarks against corporations overtaking family farms and developers sweeping in with seductive offers. Others are drawn to the farm-to-fork movement, where locally grown produce and meat hold much greater appeal. Also, more women are inheriting farms and ranches.

Downsizing and mechanization have also made the work more affordable and less physically demanding  although smaller parcels tend to require more physical labor because they are typically managed using hand tools and practices, said Breanne Wroughton, program assistant for the California Farm Academy at the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters, California.

To that end, Green Heron Tools in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, is part of a burgeoning niche industry that customizes farm equipment for women, including a tractor rapid hitch, because the traditional tool for attaching and detaching parts is at best difficult and at worst impossible for women (and many men) to safely manage on their own, according to the companys website.

None of this much matters, however, to Megan Brown, as she leans over her squealing Red Wattle pigs with a fork in her hand so that she can poke and stroke their backs, which, she claims, soothes them and stimulates their appetites. Born and raised on her parents sprawling ranch at the base of Table Mountain near Oroville in northern California, Brown, 34, has made a name for herself raising her heritage pigs and selling their savory meat to local residents and gourmet San Francisco restaurants.

With a swashbuckling demeanor that has attracted a loyal following to her Twitter account (@MegRaeB) and made her a regular fixture at agriculture conferences, she emphatically calls for more women to, so to speak, enter the field.

My mother taught me to develop as many marketable skills as possible, so its not just the ranching with me, said Brown, as she swerved her Polaris ATV across the rocky plateau skirting her parents ranch. I cure olives, make beef jerky. Ive planted tobacco, I can skin my own deer. I got a tractor, and I can lift heavy things with it myself. . . . I really believe any woman can do what Im doing.

According to the USDA, the women who identified themselves as earning their primary income from farming or ranching run the gamut in terms of what they produce. They raise cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs and goats in the West and Midwest. They are viticulturists  or, as they refer to themselves at times, vit-chicks  who nurture malbec and pinot noir grapes in California, Washington and Oregon. They grow lavender, melons and seemingly every other delicacy under the sun. Some have taken on teaching roles and find that more and more women are joining their ranks.

(Womens) enrollment in the classes has been fairly consistent throughout the last four years of the program, said Wroughton, and 51 percent of our graduates have been women.

And then there are women like Donna Schroeder, who at 77 was never schooled in ranching but was clearly born to the land and still ranches it in Shonkin, Montana.

She says she has no plans to retire, despite admitting to a small profit margin along with plenty of bank debt and machinery upkeep. If someone wants to do ranching these days, she said, basically someone has to get out so you can get in. Theres only so much to go around.

One of the few women to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Schroeder is wizened and walks with a slight limp. Her husband died more than 30 years ago; neither of her two children live nearby nor plan to take over the ranch when she no longer can run it.

Cheryl Cosner, 52, who runs a sheep and cattle ranch with her husband in northeastern Oregon, speculates that one of her two daughters could eventually take over. She studied agriculture economics and animal science at a time when, she estimates, about 30 percent of her fellow students were female. She later taught business administration in China and took art classes that proved helpful when she started marketing her farm products.

Last year, Brenda Kirsch Frketich prepared to take over her familys Oregon farm. When her father retired, he appointed her to work this 1,000-acre Willamette Valley farm that has been in the family for four generations.

She had proved her mettle: When she was pregnant with her first child, she was out in the fields  long days, long nights, she recalled, when she had to swath and cut the grass into rows so that the dew would hold the seed on the straw stems for when the combine came through. She is now 32 and has a business degree. In taking over the farm, she oversees three employees, seasonal workers and the planting and harvesting of perennial rye and tall fescue grass, wheat, crimson clover, hazelnuts, green beans, Swiss chard, peas, cabbage and radishes.

When I started with all this, I was 11 years old, she said. My feet couldnt reach the tractor pedals.

While moving some records and files into her new makeshift office, she came across a weathered leather-bound ledger book, with orderly figures and notes marching across the pages. She marveled at the detailed, pristine penmanship, now fully aware of her grandmothers essential role in the familys business and legacy.

You can learn the dirt, learn the soil, you can learn the tools, Frketich said, but you also need to understand the business. She did.
Parents in Fullerton, Calif., Ashland, Mass., and other cities are demanding relief from Wi-Fi in schools. Fox 5 did a segment on cellphone dangers Jan. 21. Topic is a key one for PR people who are heavy cellphone and computer users.

The 3:14 Fox 5 segment on the 6 p.m. newscast, hosted by Ernie Anastos, told users to keep cellphones at least ten inches away from the head, dont carry them in a front pocket, and restrict childrens use of the phones.











The segment is a mild warning compared to all-out campaigns being conducted by parents in some schools and libraries.

Parents of students at Troy high school, Fullerton, Calif., on Dec. 18, 2015 sent a formal demand to the Parent Teacher Student Assn. of the 2,800-student school calling for removal of wireless equipment from classrooms.

The letter to PTSA president Kim Cusick said classrooms have industrial size routers, enough for each student, all emitting microwave radiation within the physical confines of a single classroom.

Further radiation exposure comes from cellphone and other wireless devices used by students, the letter says.

The letter said the PTSA actively and deliberately worked to bring RF-radiation into our childrens school environment. It notes that the PTSA donated $19,241 for the purchase of wireless Chromebooks for use by students.

Ashland, Mass., Exposes Wi-Fi Threats

The public library of Ashland, Mass., is conducting a six-part series of lectures running from Oct. 8, 2015 to Feb. 11, 2016 on the health hazars of computers, cellphones, wireless routers, tablets, baby monitors, smart utility meters, and cellphone towers.

The initial program provided a documentary video on how hundreds of local governments are standing against the multi-billion rollout of smart utility meters. It provided evidence of in-home privacy invasions, systemic over-billing, extortion, health and environmental harm, fires and unprecedented hacking vulnerability.

The Jan. 26 program is Mobilize: A Film About Cellphone Radiation. It explores the potential long-term health effects, including cancer and infertility, from cellphone radiationexamines the most recent scientific research, follows national legislative efforts, and illuminates the influence that technology companies have on public health.

Discussions that follow the presentations are often lively and thought-provoking, says the library.



Hickey

Westhampton Officials Notified

Diane Hickey, co-founder of the National Assn. for Children and Safe Technology, sent an email on Jan. 22 to Mayor Maria Moore of Westhampton Beach, trustee Ralph Urban and former trustees Patricia DeBenedetto and Hank Tucker, asking them to consider the demand letter of parents to the Troy High School PTSA.

The email was addressed to the Westhampton Library Board Trustees which is a different board. Also, Hickey was not aware that DeBenedetto and Tucker have been replaced on the WHB board by Rob Rubio and Brian Tymann.

Hickey can be forgiven for mixing up the library and WHB boards. Sometimes library and WHB trustees are the same people. Joan Levan and Hank Tucker were on the library and WHB boards in 2010. Mayor Moore was on the library board for several years until last August when citizens pointed out this compromised the independence of the library board.

Things are back to square one since Thomas Moore, husband of Maria, was named president of the library board last year after four of its five members resigned.

The ODwyer Co. has forwarded the Hickey letter to the board of the library and library director Danielle Waskiewicz. There is no publicized program by the WH library on the hazards of Wi-Fi radiation.

NACST Says No Doubt About Danger

NACST, conducting a campaign about the health hazards of electromagnetic radiation under theme, Turn It Off 4 Kids, says latest scientific evidence removes any doubt that the radiation is dangerous. It quotes studies by Prof. of Oncology Lennart Hardell, M.D., and statistician Michael Carlberg of Orebro University Hospital, Sweden.

NACST wants all new school technology to be hardwired and the replacement of existing systems with hardwired systems, and an educational campaign to alert people and especially children and pregnant women about the hazards of EMF.

NYTs Coverage Faulted

The Environmental Health Trust has rapped the New York Times for allegedly leaving key information out of its article Saturday, Jan. 1, 2016 on Centers for Disease Controls deletion of a passage on cellphones that had said, We recommend caution in cellphone use.

Placement of the article, which ran in the business section rather than on page one of the general news section, has already drawn criticism. Saturday is known as a day when minimal exposure is wanted for a story. The story was of interest to the general readership of NYT and not just those interested in business news.

EHT says that NYTs article left out the fact that information about the health risk of radiation to children had been removed.

EHT obtained CDC documents via the Freedom of Information Act that detail how the information on the risk to childrens health was deleted, information on cell towers never saw the light of day, and a scientist well known for affiliations with the wireless industry came on as a consultant to CDC.

Wi-Fi on TW Modem Must Be Disabled

Time Warner is replacing modems used by its New York and other customers with a new and more powerful Arris TG1672 modem that automatically radiates a home or apartment 24-7 with Wi-Fi signals.



Not only must an Ethernet cable be used with it plus a wired keyboard and wired mouse, but TW must be called and asked to turn off the Wi-Fi. We did that last week since we had made the conversion several weeks ago. It took about ten minutes but it is a call well worth made. Two of the seven lights on the modem went out including the 5G light meaning Fifth Generation.

Electro-Hypersensitivity Affects Some

Jeromy Johnson, Silicon Valley executive, tell how Wi-Fi and other sources of electromagnetic radiation turned his life upside down.

He came back from vacation and suddenly found he was afflicted with intense headaches, heart palpitations, tinnitus and insomnia. While he was away, the local utility installed a bank of wireless smart meters below his bedroom designed to measure electrical use.

Johnson learned from doctors that he had become electro-hypersensitive. He must avoid wireless technology and electrical pollution or suffer severe physical symptoms.

For the past few years, Johnson has spent several months each year living in a tent. He and his family had to move from their home in San Francisco which he calls one of the most heavily-EMF polluted cities in the world.
A major function of PR in a jumpy economy is to protect management and aid the public by communicating important realities.

Management should be cautioned that the public  in pain and fear due to losses  is looking for someone to blame.

Companies typically face one of three accusations.

Accusation #1: Making too much money on the public from deceptive advertising, charging too much, exporting jobs or being overly optimistic with investors.

Accusation #2: Endangering the public through pollution, inadequate product safety or discrimination in hiring, promotion or termination.

Accusation #3: Employing a person guilty of drugs, gross alcohol abuse, violence against women or children, theft or another serious crime.

The public should be informed, ideally before the accusations are made, of key truths that will help them make informed decisions about the company.

Key truth #1: This company is saving the public money. The company is innovating ingenious production and testing equipment, they provide bright employees with advanced education opportunities and they help their community by pumping into the economy millions in payroll and taxes.

Key truth #2: This company is protecting the public by fighting pollution, employing dedicated home economists and safety engineers, having company experts give lectures to community groups and students at high-schools and colleges, and contributing to medical research and other organizations that help the public's heath and happiness.

Activist groups who attack companies and corporate executives are inclined to go after the most vulnerable, not those who are known for fighting diseases and helping the public achieve more enjoyment out of life. Lions attack not other lions but zebras, and activists, not surprisingly, go after companies that neglect doing anything important to protect the public's health, money and opportunities. Given this, heres some reputation-protective counsel that night help management:

1. A jumpy economy is making it increasingly likely that companies may be accused of wrongdoing by activists.

2. Accusations can not only be unfair, but can seriously injure companies among customers, dealers, employees, investors plus government regulators and legislators who can enact rules that hit our bottom line.

3. If companies become known nationally as a public benefactor that protects human life sponsoring protective heart disease research at Johns Hopkins and Cleveland Clinic, anti-cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, or anti-Alzheimer's research at a team of great universities  theyre less likely to be attacked by activists or hurt in an attack, because activists commonly go after companies not known for protecting the public.

4. To minimize vulnerability that could cost serious money and result in calls to replace management, we should consider adding assignments to the PR firms we have now. In this economy, given that health and money are often the public's top concerns, we need expert financial communications pros, expert Washington PR and expert health PR. We especially need a PR firm's experience and guidance on winning national acclaim that protects the public admiration that we have earned.



* * *

Ronald N. Levy is a communications pro who has specialized in Washington-related public policy contests.
NEA/COM(2011)4

Paris, 8 June 2011 Francais

Nuclear regulatory authorities decide on follow-up to the Fukushima Daiichi accident

The nuclear regulatory authorities of the G8, OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) member countries and associated countries including Brazil, India, Romania, South Africa and Ukraine, met today in Paris to discuss insights gained in relation to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident and to decide on appropriate follow-up actions at the international level.

The Forum on The Fukushima Accident: Insights and Approaches constitutes an important step in the international efforts being undertaken to learn from, to share and to implement the lessons learnt as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. At the opening of the Forum, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing, provided the key messages that the governments of 33 countries had agreed upon at the Ministerial seminar which took place at the OECD on the preceding day.

According to the Forum's Co-chairs from France, the United Kingdom and the United States, "There have been excellent discussions today on what we are learning' and what actions we are taking'. That being said, regulatory authorities recognise the ongoing seriousness of the situation at Fukushima Daiichi and the continuing efforts of Japanese workers and authorities. Further follow-up actions will continue to be taken and the Forum has focused our attention, as regulatory authorities, on these key issues and priorities."

Forum participants agreed on a number of priorities and recommendations in terms of collective learning, sharing insights and approaches, and implementation of what regulatory authorities have learnt from the Forum. The Forum's full text of final conclusions and recommendations are available.

Highlights include the following:

In line with the communique of the G8 summit held in Deauville on 26-27 May 2011 and the Ministerial seminar held at the OECD on 7 June 2011, nuclear safety authorities aim to continue to secure the highest levels of safety through continuous improvement of safety. In this context, they remain committed to seek ways to continue making operating and new reactors even safer by learning from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

Significant in-depth reviews and analyses of nuclear power plant safety have been or are being undertaken following the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The Forum participants invite all regulatory authorities responsible for nuclear facilities to launch similar reviews and analyses as soon as possible.

Regulatory authorities will continue to systematically advance the necessary knowledge needed for all plant designs and post-accident situations. Priority areas include extreme external natural events and resilience to external shocks, including combined risks, plant design and the ability of safety systems to withstand severe accidents, emergency response and management capabilities, crisis communication, and site recovery plans and their implementation.

Regulatory authorities will continue to increase their co-operation through the NEA Committee on Nuclear Regulatory Activities (CNRA) to improve the continuous release of reliable information they provide to the public and governmental institutions, both nationally and internationally. Further, they will reflect upon the adequacy and challenges of the tools currently being used to communicate openly and transparently with the public on accident severity, including the INES scale, a common tool defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

Regulatory authorities also highlighted the need for an early response to the management of such accident situations.

Regulatory authorities stressed that the prime responsibility for nuclear safety rests with licensed operators. In this regard, they welcomed the commitments of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) and its members to increase their efforts on nuclear safety through enhanced peer reviews, transparency and international co-operation among operators.

The NEA was recognised as providing an efficient expert network to ensure co-ordination among the regulatory authorities of NEA and associated countries and to disseminate nuclear safety best practices. Regulatory authorities have requested that the NEA standing technical committees, including the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) and the Committee on Radiation Protection and Public Health (CRPPH), carry out additional technical analyses following this Forum and share the outcomes internationally..

The regulatory authorities of the G8, NEA member countries and associated countries stated their commitment to continue working together internationally. They believe that the current situation, although very unfortunate, will in time strengthen international nuclear safety. The IAEA Ministerial conference, to be held at the end of June, is the next important step of many that will enhance global nuclear safety.

Media enquiries:
NEA/COM(2011)5

Paris, 16 September 2011 Francais

Top nuclear regulators meet to discuss safety of new reactors

Over 120 nuclear regulatory and industry experts met in Paris on 15-16 September to discuss the accomplishments of the Multinational Design Evaluation Programme (MDEP) and the future of global nuclear safety. The conference comes at a challenging time following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Participants at the Second MDEP Conference on New Reactor Design Activities included senior management from national regulatory authorities, new reactor vendors and licensees, industry groups and nuclear standards development organisations.

Mr. Luis E. Echavarri, Director-General of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), which acts as the secretariat for the MDEP, outlined the progress accomplished since the programme was established five years ago as well as "the concrete path to convergence in nuclear safety practices among regulators that this unique initiative is building".

Mr. Andre-Claude Lacoste, Chairman of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (Autorite de surete nucleaire, ASN) and MDEP Policy Group Chair, highlighted the benefits and added value that participation in the programme has brought to its members as well as to nuclear safety more generally.

Participants discussed progress made by the MDEP design-specific working groups examining AREVA's EPR and Westinghouse's AP1000 designs, and the issue-specific working groups on digital instrumentation and control safety systems, mechanical codes and standards, and vendor inspection co-operation.

Common positions have been produced on digital instrumentation and control safety systems as well as certain aspects of the EPR and AP1000 designs. The programme has also issued a vendor inspection protocol, which is made available to vendors subject to such inspections, and a review of The Structure and Application of High-level Safety Goals.

Representatives from the World Nuclear Association's (WNA) working group on Co-operation in Reactor Design Evaluation and Licensing (CORDEL) led a discussion on industry initiatives and standardisation.

The potential expansion of MDEP membership was considered, as national regulators from India, the Netherlands, Turkey and Vietnam have expressed interest in joining. The MDEP Policy Group will consider countries pursuing near-term safety reviews and construction of new reactors for inclusion in MDEP activities. Decisions on individual country candidatures will be made in the coming months.

All participants concurred that this Second MDEP Conference has been crucial for sharing information internationally, across the public and private sectors, and for receiving input from the main stakeholders on the next steps of this unique multinational initiative.

Background information

The Multinational Design Evaluation Programme (MDEP) was launched in 2006 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) with the aim of developing innovative approaches to leverage the resources and knowledge of national regulatory authorities reviewing new reactor power plant designs. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) acts as the Technical Secretariat for the MDEP.

Current members include the regulators from Canada, China, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. The MDEP pools the resources of these ten nuclear regulatory authorities to harmonise the safety evaluation of new reactor designs and constitutes an important programme for new nuclear reactor projects.

Related links

Multinational Design Evaluation Programme (MDEP)

Programme of the Second Conference on New Reactor Design Activities

Proceedings from the First Conference on New Reactor Design Activities

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To modern eyes, the classic trio of Disney princess films  released in 1937, 1950, and 1959  can seem painfully retrograde. Why are characters so obsessed with Snow White's looks? Why doesn't Cinderella have any talents or hobbies? And why doesn't Sleeping Beauty do anything besides get drugged and await rescue?

A generational gap divides Disney's princess franchise. After 1959's "Sleeping Beauty," it took 30 years for the studio to produce another animated princess feature. The intervening decades saw dramatic change. Walt Disney died. Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique." Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington.

In 1989, when Disney finally released "The Little Mermaid," critics praised this modern new heroine. Unlike her predecessors, "Ariel is fully realized female character who thinks and acts independently, even rebelliously," Roger Ebert wrote. The New York Times called her "a spunky daredevil."

And yet, in one respect, "The Little Mermaid" represented a backward step in the princess genre. For a film centered on a young woman, there's an awful lot of talking by men. In fact, this was the first Disney princess movie in which the men significantly outspoke the women.

And it started a trend. The plot of "The Little Mermaid," of course, involves Ariel literally losing her voice  but in the five Disney princess movies that followed, the women speak even less. On average in those films, men have three times as many lines as women.

These data come from linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer, who have been working on a project to analyze all the dialogue from the Disney princess franchise. Since so many young girls watch these movies  often on constant repeat  it's worth examining what the films are teaching about gender roles.

"We don't believe that little girls naturally play a certain way or speak a certain way," says Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College. "They're not born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls."

The Disney princess research is still in its preliminary stages, but a few weeks ago, Fought and Eisenhauer gave a preview during the nation's largest conference of linguists. Their goal is to use data to shed light on how the male and female characters in these films talk differently. They started by counting how often the characters spoke. That's when they hit upon a surprising irony.

In the classic three Disney princess films, women speak as much as, or more than the men. "Snow White" is about 50-50. "Cinderella" is 60-40. And in "Sleeping Beauty," women deliver a whopping 71 percent of the dialogue. Though these were films created over 50 years ago, they give ample opportunity for women to have their voices heard.

By contrast, all of the princess movies from 1989-1999  Disney's "renaissance" era  are startlingly male-dominated. Men speak 68 percent of the time in "The Little Mermaid"; 71 percent of the time in "Beauty and the Beast"; 90 percent of the time in "Aladdin"; 76 percent of the time in "Pocahontas"; and 77 percent of the time in "Mulan" (Mulan herself was counted as a woman, even when she was impersonating a man).

Part of the problem is that these newer films are mostly populated by men. Aside from the heroine, the films offer few examples of women being powerful, respected, useful or comedic.

"There's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her, but there are no women doing any other things," Fought says. "There are no women leading the townspeople to go against the Beast, no women bonding in the tavern together singing drinking songs, women giving each other directions, or women inventing things. Everybody who's doing anything else, other than finding a husband in the movie, pretty much, is a male."

The older princess films had fewer speaking roles in total, and more gender balance. But "The Little Mermaid" pioneered a new style of Disney movie, modeled after Broadway musicals, with their large ensemble casts. As the number of characters grew, so did the gender inequality.

"My best guess is that it's carelessness, because we're so trained to think that male is the norm," says Eisenhauer, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State. "So when you want to add a shopkeeper, that shopkeeper is a man. Or you add a guard, that guard is a man. I think that's just really ingrained in our culture."

The chatty sidekick is another good example of a role that goes to men by default. This is a staple character in more recent Disney films, and he  yes, he  often gets some of the best lines. There's Flounder, Sebastian, Lumiere, Cogsworth, Iago, Genie and Mushu. Why can't any of them be women? Mrs. Potts, the teakettle from "Beauty and the Beast," is the only example of a female sidekick, and she's overshadowed by the other castle staff.

After "Mulan" (1998), Disney took a 10-year break before releasing its next series of princess films. These newer films are better at giving lines to men and women equally. In "Tangled," women have 52 percent of the lines, and in "Brave," a film about a mother-daughter relationship, they had 74 percent.

"Frozen" breaks with that trend, though. Despite being a story about two sister princesses, men claim 59 percent of the lines in that film.

It's of course incomplete to judge a film just by the number of words that women say. What the characters say is equally important. So far, Fought and Eisenhauer's analysis has focused on compliments. They have categorized every bit of praise in every Disney princess film to see how the way that women are talked about has changed over time.

Here is where the trend is positive. The classic Disney princess films were focused on looks. More than half of the compliments that women received  55 percent  had to do with their appearance. Only 11 percent had to do with their skills or accomplishments. (People could also be complimented for other reasons, like their possessions or their personality.)

Some psychologists counsel parents not to compliment children, especially young girls, on their looks. Even positive comments may lead to body-image problems because they reinforce the idea that appearances are important. Furthermore, studies suggest that it's better to praise children for their efforts or accomplishments rather than their traits  better to say "you aced that test!" than "you are really smart!"  because children are more motivated when complimented on their efforts.

The "Renaissance"-era princess films, from the '90s, have a better record in this regard. About 38 percent of the compliments given to women had to do with their looks, while nearly a quarter of the compliments had to do with their abilities or deeds. In the latest batch of films, starting with "The Princess and the Frog," the pattern is finally reversed. For the first time, women are praised for their skills or achievements more often than they are praised for their looks.

Part of this may have to do with the people at the helm of these films. "Frozen" and "Brave" were conceived, written and directed by women or a team that included women. Brenda Chapman, who created "Brave," has said that she specifically wanted to smash the stereotype of the Disney princess movie. "Merida was created specifically to break that mold," Chapman told an online parenting website. "She was created to turn the regular Disney princess on its head."

"I think that Disney has responded very well to calls that, frankly, have been a long time coming," says Dawn England, a Ph.D. student at Arizona State who has published research on how men and women behave in Disney princess movies. She says there needs to be more research on how children process these films, to understand how these portrayals of gender affect them  though that's hard to do because the images are so widespread.

The studio, at least, has been making a visible effort to make its movies a little more feminist. "There's a long way to go, but there's been an undeniable shift toward these more androgynous princesses," England says.

Belle, from 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" for instance, was designed as a feminist role model. Disney executives brought in Linda Woolverton, the first woman to write the script for an animated Disney film. Woolverton told the L.A. Times in 1992 that she modeled Belle on Katharine Hepburn in "Little Women"  "both strong, active, women who loved to read," she said.

"If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentaries, there's so much explicit discourse on what the princess is going to be like, and always it's a feminist discourse in some way," Eisenhauer says. "They want her to be powerful. But the discourse never, ever, seems to have gone beyond the princess."

Fought and Eisenhauer's research reminds us that it's not just how the princesses are portrayed. It's also important to consider the kinds of worlds these princesses inhabit, who rules these worlds, who has the power  and even, who gets to open their mouths. In a large number of cases, the princesses are outspoken by men in their own movies.

"The Renaissance-era movies starting with 'The Little Mermaid' and 'Beauty and the Beast' were talked about as being not your average frilly princess films," Fought says. "They have 'active women who get things done.' "

"That's fine, but are these movies really so great for little girls to watch? When you start to look at this stuff, you have to question that a little bit."

_____

"Mulan" youtube:

"Beauty and the Beast" youtube:

"Little Mermaid" youtube video:
Amanda Kriener considers herself lucky, even though she was walking directly above the explosion that triggered the fire at Ms Pub on Jan. 9.

Its a movie that keeps replaying in your head, Kriener said  the boom, the floorboards pushing up, the fireball visible beneath her feet, the picture windows blasting outward, the flames shooting up from a stairwell just outside the front door, people quickly exiting the building.

Like the others in the Old Market that Saturday afternoon, she survived. Like many of the fire-displaced employees, she has found other work, as a server at the nearby Le Bouillon restaurant.

And like many, her wages were interrupted by the fire. She hasnt heard whether insurance coverage will replace her lost income, and shes saving to finish her college degree starting in the fall.

Even if insurance provides some relief, it likely wouldnt be much, because Kriener  like scores of other workers from Ms Pub, Market House and other restaurants affected by the fire  relies on tips for most of her income.

And business interruption insurance typically doesnt cover tips.

The coverage is intended to keep businesses afloat until they can resume normal operations. Coverage can apply to salaries and hourly wages paid by businesses. For tipped workers in Nebraska, thats $2.13 an hour.

Ms co-owner Ron Samuelson declined to comment on his insurance, saying he is still figuring out what it will cover.

Market House co-owner Nick Bartholomew said his Travelers Insurance policy is designed to cover salaries, including a years wages for the chef and manager, but not tips received by about 15 of his former staff.

Thats why he has helped his staff find other jobs, and why fundraisers are aimed at helping displaced servers, hosts and others who rely on tips for most of their income. A workers assistance fund is open at youcaring.org, under Old Market.

If youre lucky enough to be a server who kept a record of their income each night and had that declaration to back up the record, I believe that insurance companies would be much more willing to work with that, Bartholomew said. But most of the time the record doesnt exist, so they cannot justify covering what a tip employee makes beyond $2.13.

But maybe theres hope.

Drew Olson, a director with the forensic accounting firm BDO Consulting in Chicago, said businesses can include reasonable earnings  say, $80 a night  by their tip-dependent employees when they file information for a claim on their interruption insurance.

The argument in favor of covering tip income is that being able to pay a wage will keep those staff members available when the business reopens, Olson said. That would save money in the long run over having to hire and train new employees because the original employees left for other jobs.

Language in most policies lets a business keep its staff for a number of days, and servers getting only $2.13 an hour from insurance would have to leave quickly, he said. You can show that this is what you need to pay them, so theyre around when you reopen.

Reopening quickly can save the insurance company money, too, by reducing total claims, Olson said.

Thats the argument you need to make, he said.

Will the argument succeed?

I cant see that flying with an insurance company, said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute.

Business interruption insurance is intended to cover business expenses and provide income to keep the business alive until it reopens, and tips arent an expense of the business.

Rather, Worters said, tips are a voluntary payment from the customer to the employee.

Tips are not documented, she said. Its what theyre making on their own depending on the service they provide to their customers. Its discretionary income. It has no bearing on what the payroll is.

Some business interruption policies dont cover employee salaries at all, or only a few key people who must be kept on payroll for the business to resume operations, said Chris Hackett, a director with the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America in Chicago.

Because businesses needs are so varied, he said, owners usually customize their policies, talking with their agents or brokers to balance the premiums they can afford with the coverage they need, he said.

If a business owner wanted to pay for coverage that would include employee tips, that would be a matter to discuss with an insurance agent or broker, he said. If there is a claim, any payment for tips would be clear.

If the policy says theyre going to cover your 15 employees for their base salary, that would not include tips or bonuses or anything else that might be above and beyond that, he said.

Workers displaced by the Ms Pub fire may be eligible for state unemployment and dislocated worker benefits.

Unemployment benefits are based on quarterly wage reports filed by employers, Nebraska Labor Commissioner John H. Albin said. Employees should report tips to their employers, who then report wage information to the Internal Revenue Service.

Tips not reported for tax purposes wouldnt count toward unemployment benefits, Albin said.

Bartholomew, the Market House co-owner, said his experience in business showed me that insurance is a valuable, valuable thing.

He specifically included wage protection for key employees in the insurance policy because they are important to the restaurants future. For those not covered, he worked with other restaurants to help them find new jobs.

Hes also supporting efforts to raise money to benefit workers who lost income because of the fire and hopes to reopen the restaurant at the same location within a year.

Amanda Kriener, the former Ms server, said shes not seriously concerned about her lost income and is more focused on learning about her new restaurant and paying bills.

Im not a greedy person, she said. I dont look for handouts. Im just fortunate to be out with my life and able to go on and continue working.

The sad part is we had thoroughly enjoyed working with each other (at Ms). It was kind of like being in a family and having guests come over for dinner and entertaining them.

Maybe someday, she said, that family and its guests will come together, and guests at Ms will be leaving tips again.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com
When Louisiana, one of the nations biggest energy-producing states, decided how much tax money the government would have to spend this year, it forecast that the price of oil would be almost $50 a barrel. Its since tumbled below $30, casting economic ripples that helped create a $750 million budget shortfall.

The price of crude, now at a 12-year low, has emerged as a major source of fiscal strain on the nations oil-patch states, none of which predicted how swift or deep the drop would be. Thats prompted a reversal-of-fortune in capitals that once reaped revenue windfalls from Americas energy-industry renaissance and are now racing to adjust.

Theyre playing catch-up in getting their estimates in line with whats happening with spot prices, said Gabriel Petek, a municipal-bond analyst in San Francisco for Standard & Poors whos been tracking the fiscal impacts, speaking of energy states revising price forecasts. It doesnt look like prices are coming up soon, so if the prices stay low it could pressure their budget positions.

A report released last week by S&P said the energy rout is a main culprit in at least five of the 11 states that are facing financial pressure this year as jobs and counted-on tax collections disappear. The price of oil, which traded for more than $100 less than two years ago, has been cut in half since June amid concerns about the slowing pace of overseas economies.

Besides Louisiana, its being felt largely in Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and North Dakota, the credit-rating company said. But its also cropping up elsewhere: In Texas, the largest producer, the impact has crimped sales-tax collections and increased the cost of public-assistance programs for those out of work. In states with the big energy industries, payrolls expanded by 0.9 percent in the year through November, less than half the rate for the United States, according to S&P.

For Louisiana, the lower prices  along with rising health care costs  are a driver of the projected $1.9 billion deficit for the year that begins in July. To help close the gap, Gov. John Bel Edwards proposed raising the sales tax by 1 percentage point to 5 percent. That would give the Gulf Coast state the highest average state and local sales-tax rate in the country, according to the Tax Foundation in Washington.

Edwards has also proposed tapping reserves, cutting spending by about 10 percent and drawing on compensation Louisiana received for the BP oil spill.

The decline in oil prices certainly isnt helping us, said Julie Payer, the governors deputy chief of staff. Its a factor in layoffs that are affecting industries in the state.

Oklahoma expects tax collections to fall short of its initial estimates by 7.7 percent in the current budget year and by 13 percent in the next, which led Gov. Mary Fallin to implement across-the-board spending cuts, according to S&P. Similar reductions are likely in North Dakota.

Alaska, with 79 percent of its operating revenue drawn from oil, lost its AAA rating from S&P this month after its deficit widened. The state assumed prices of more than $67 a barrel when it passed its budget last year, only to cut it later to about $50. The rating outlook remains negative, indicating another downgrade could come if the state fails to curb its deficit during this years legislative session.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar revised his revenue estimate for fiscal 2016 and 2017 down in October to $110.4 billion from $113 billion. Even so, the states vast economy has left it better buffered than other states: The revised figure still exceeds the $106 billion in the current two-year budget, said Chris Bryan, spokesman for Hegar.
HDRs new downtown Omaha global headquarters is to be lined on its northern edge by street-level retail shops and services  a move that aligns with the citys goal to turn Capitol Avenue into a lively, pedestrian-friendly corridor.

In addition, a public plaza with outdoor seating is to be created on 11th Street, HDR Chairman and CEO George Little said Tuesday.

The features should complement the $205 million Capitol District hotel, office, retail and entertainment zone project that is under construction just to the north of the future HDR home base.

Capitol Avenue is intended to be a retail, public pedestrian- oriented avenue, Little said.

Littles comments followed HDRs release a day earlier of its proposed design of a 16-story, 290,000-square-foot headquarters that will fill the block between Dodge Street and Capitol Avenue, 11th to 12th Streets.

The groundbreaking is expected this summer; completion is anticipated by the end of 2018.

Various details have yet to be approved by the Omaha Planning Board and City Council.

Asked to elaborate on the headquarters features, HDR responded with a written statement by Little. He said the facade of the future corporate base is primarily glass with metal design elements. At the street level, brick masonry will be used to create a plinth, or base, for the tower that will front Dodge Street, and for the attached seven-story parking structure to the north that will contain 1,150 stalls.

The retail bays will be continuous along HDRs Capitol Avenue side, in what HDR described as a retail liner building.

Little said the new HDR building also will feature shading and other environment-conscious elements. Among those: metal fins on the east and west facades; a glass shingle facade on the south; a north wall that incorporates both vision panels and solid elements.

He said the building reflects HDRs commitment to be energy efficient and to incorporate solutions to reduce water consumption.

Including HDRs international sites, the private, employee-owned firm has expanded from 1,569 workers in 1996 to nearly 10,000 today, with about 900 workers based in Omaha.

Founded locally in 1917, HDR says it has outgrown its campus at 8400 Indian Hills Drive, where it has been since 1972.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1224, cindy.gonzalez@owh.com

Read more: Coverage of HDR headquarters and Holland Center expansion plans
COUNCIL BLUFFS - Council Bluffs has no shortage of school spirit if its cheerleading teams are any indication.

The Iowa Western Community College cheer team took the top spot in the world, after winning a national championship title last weekend, while Lewis Central High School is sending its first team to nationals at the high school level this weekend.

Iowa Westerns young men and women showed off their world championship routine Wednesday evening during the halftime of the mens basketball game. They were also recognized Monday afternoon at the colleges Board of Trustees meeting.

The Reivers team took first place in the coed premier division of the World University Cheerleading Championships held at Disneys ESPN Wide World of Sports in Orlando last Sunday. Iowa Western was the first two-year school in history to win, beating out well-known Division I schools including the University of Iowa.

With the highest score in the Universal Cheerleaders Associations competition, Iowa Western was also the representative for the United States in the international level. The teams score was the highest among other teams at that level, earning the Reivers the world championship for the 2015-16 season.

That is the highest score given in the world this year that they got for that performance  thats a pretty big deal, Iowa Western President Dan Kinney said Monday.

Coach Jeff Snow said the result was pretty phenomenal and represents the first time a non-Division I school had taken the top titles at the Orlando contest. He said Iowa Western has built such a strong program with the support of the college administration  which goes well beyond what most universities would offer for cheer and dance  as well as the dedication of the team members.

The kids just in general have really bought into the culture that were trying to develop, Snow said. Its a culture of hard work and dedication to school and your craft, and it has really paid off.

In addition to the championship, Iowa Western also had two couples compete in the individual partner contest, where Wesley Joshua and Skyler Creasman finished seventh and Collin Johnson and Shannon Mohesky finished 12th. That contest was last Friday, and 15 duos were accepted from across the country on an invitation-only basis across all divisions.

That was a really big deal, Snow said. The first time in school history, and it is very rare that a junior college is represented at that level, let alone to have two.

The team also competed Saturday in its divisional national competition, earning a No. 2 finish against the other junior and community colleges across the U.S.

We got second due to some performance errors, Snow said. We had a couple things that didnt go correctly that have in the past.

On the world stage, Iowa Western bested teams from Costa Rica, Mexico, China, Canada and Australia, just to name a few, Snow said. This was the third year for the team to compete at the World University Cheerleading Championships, and Iowa Western finished third in 2015 and fifth in 2014.

Lewis Central going to nationals for first time

At Lewis Central, a team of 16 girls will travel to Dallas today to compete in the National Cheerleaders Associations National Cheerleading Championship.

Coach Kendra Hollenbach said this was the first time in 12 years the school was given a bid to nationals. Its also the first time the school will make the trip, she said.

In order for them to receive a bid to nationals, they had to perform a series of elite level skills, Hollenbach said.

One part of the routine has the girls spin one and half times from the bottom to the top as part of a stunt. Other stunts include tumbles and black flips, going beyond what might be found at other area high schools.

Its a really talented team, Hollenbach said, noting that 13 of the girls were named All-Americans at a regional camp.

While in Dallas, the team will perform on Saturday for 25 percent of its overall score and then again on Sunday for a final, worth 75 percent overall. The split allows for some forgiveness if the first routine is not perfect, as most of the girls on the team have never competed at that level in the past.

Only two other Iowa schools  Waukee and West Des Moines Valley  will make the trip with Lewis Central, Hollenbach said. She said the girls are looking forward to a new level of competition, and they had to raise $10,000 to pay for the trip through fundraising and local sponsorships.

During a recent practice, the team worked on a few cheers: Dont take your eyes off L.C.H.S. Heading to the top, fighting for a win, Lewis Central is back again.

Anyone who wants to watch how nationals go can tune in on ESPN, Hollenbach said. CBS Sports Network will also broadcast the contest a couple weeks later, she said.

Team captains Hannah Smith, a junior, and seniors Kaci Hohenthaner and Gabbi Rasmussen were all excited to be making the trip, which Gabbi called an once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Lewis Central has never done anything like this before, she said. Kaci added, I think well do really good.

The captains said they have a routine that maximizes their scoring potential. Hannah said they have been working to fine tune their stunts: It is the little things, she said.

Ultimately, Kaci said theyre excited for their trip because, as a team and a program, It is about time.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A small university press that holds the publishing rights to a historical novel on mountain man Hugh Glass is seeing a spike in sales, thanks to the success of the film The Revenant.

Staff members at the University of Nebraska Press say physical copies of Frederick Manfreds Lord Grizzly have surged nearly eightfold in the past few months, and that e-book editions have similarly fared well.

Manfreds 1954 novel tells the story of Glass, who was mauled by a bear in northern South Dakota and survived, then set off across dangerous terrain to seek vengeance on the men who left him behind.

The story of Glass is recounted in the hit movie The Revenant, which is based on Michael Punkes 2002 novel, The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, has 12 Oscar nods.
Just asking 

Since we now know that Hillary Clinton private email server was virtually insecure and contained both sensitive and classified data, is it possible that the terrorists learned about the vulnerability of the Benghazi compound from Muslim hackers? Possibly in Iran or even Saudi Arabia? Or even from the mischief-makers in North Korea?

Thats the problem with unsecured systems, you just never know.

Inspector General: Clinton emails had intel from most secretive, classified programs 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). <Read more>

Has anyone noted that high-ranking government officials have claimed that their "personal" email accounts we hacked -- but not their government accounts? We are so screwed.

-- steve
Mystery behind threat letter to French consulate in Bengaluru solved?

Bengaluru

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Jan 25: The mystery behind the letter that was sent to the French Consulate in Bengaluru threatening attacks may have been solved.

The National Investigating Agency which is probing a case relating to alleged ISIS recruiters and sympathisers in India has learnt from the police, that the letter may have been sent by a person called Rafeeq Ahmed.

Ahmed was arrested in Bengaluru last week. He is also said to have stabbed a constable while attempting to evade arrest. He was allegedly a recruiter for the ISIS and was planning a series of strikes, the investigators have claimed. It has also been learnt that he may have been the one who sent the letter to the consulate last week.

The French Consulate had received a letter under the name of the al-Qaeda in which it was stated that if Francois Hollande, the French President visits India, there would be attacks. Although the letter was received on January 11, the police only registered a case last week.

Investigators say that the Ahmed may have got the letter posted from Chennai. During the initial round of investigations it was found that the letter had originated from Chennai.

The letter contained a map of India and was signed al-Qaeda. The police say that when they raided his house in Bengaluru, they had found similar maps and hence suspect that he could be the one behind the letter to the French consulate.

OneIndia News
How India and France can fight terrorism

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

India and France have signed several pacts and one among them is fighting terror together. Both India and France share a common problem where terrorism is concerned and security experts say that the joint cooperation will go a long way in combating the problem.

While France has been fighting in Syria against the ISIS, India may not join the war along with the rest of the nations. India has made it clear that it would only be part of a coalition fighting the ISIS if the United Nations passes a resolution.

Intelligence sharing will be crucial

For India and France the sharing of intelligence will be extremely crucial. Both nations depend very heavily on concrete and actionable intelligence to battle terror. Although India is not as badly affected as France where the ISIS in particular is concerned, the threat can however not be ignored.

Only last week there was a letter sent to the French consulate in Bengaluru threatening to carry out an attack protesting the visit by Francois Hollande the French president to India. The ISIS does not fight a country specific war. It is a global outfit and will look to recruit from across the globe.

It has been found during the investigations that are being conducted by the National Investigating Agency that attempts were being made to recruit youth to carry out attacks on other nations including France. With France, India can enhance intelligence sharing so that a threat perception can be countered immediately.

Moreover the threat from the ISIS is largely online and in this regard the cyber security cooperation between the two countries will also be crucial. India has faced problems in the past when it comes to cyber security.

While Indian agencies have managed to track down activities online, it has not been able to convince the mail service providers to share more details as they have often quoted privacy issues. France could help India in this aspect, security officials point out.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, January 25, 2016, 9:00 [IST]
Indo-Pak talks: It may be best to delay dialogue until dust has settled over Pathankot, says Daily

Feature

oi-Jagriti

Islamabad, Jan 11: It may be best to delay India-Pakistan peace talks scheduled to take place on January 15 until the dust has settled over Pathankot attack, says an editorial, published in Pakistan's popular daily.

The editorial titled Engaging India" appeared on Dawn online Monday.

A group of terrorists attacked the Indian Air Force (IAF) air base in Pathankot on January 2. Seven soldiers were martyred and six militants were killed in the attack.

The attack was later claimed by the United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella grouping of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan.

"After an initially mature' response to the attack on the Pathankot air force base, the Indian government has reverted to its familiar stance and made the foreign secretary talks contingent on Pakistan's action' against the Kashmiri groups who have claimed responsibility for the attack."

Pakistan-based outfit United Jehad Council claims Pathankot attack

Pakistan will be blamed if the scheduled dialogue process is called off and this will be a no-win situation for Islamabad, added the editorial.

On condition of failure of the dialogue India will blame Pakistan for inaction and complicity.

"If the talks go as per the schedule, the Pakistan leadership will be viewed, domestically, as having given in to Indian bullying. Under the circumstances, it may be best to delay the dialogue until the dust has settled over Pathankot," it added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's diplomats and officials should develop a set of principles and clear objectives to be followed whenever the Comprehensive Dialogue is commenced.

It said that Indian government led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, agreed to resume dialogue only after the Pakistan prime minister refused to play by the Indian rulebook.

"Policy should first seek to advance national interest and only secondly seek to find compromises. The measure of success is not the accolades of the West but the value added to the national interest," it added.

Timeline of Pathankot terror attack

Political leaders change; state interests rarely do so do not personalise policies.

"Know the issues. Each item on the agenda has a long, often convoluted, history with which our negotiators must be fully familiar. Do not accept the vocabulary of the adversary. For example, Kashmiri freedom fighters' cannot be equated with terrorists', it added.

It also suggests to refrain from advertising internal differences, like, between the military and civilians, or between the Foreign Office and politicians. It weakens the national negotiating position.

Linguistic trap should also not hit the dialogue process. Indians (and Pakistanis) are very adept at manipulating the English language to secure gains at the negotiating table.

The Ufa communique is a painful example.

"Changing the composite' dialogue to 'comprehensive' dialogue is not without significance. Composite' was designed to connote the interlinkages between the two plus six agenda. Comprehensive' loosens the linkages; it also enables the inclusion of terrorism as a new item on the agenda."

Pakistan's negotiators should also be clear about the objectives like Kashmir, terrorism, peace and security, trade and economic cooperation, Siachen and Sir Creek which can be realistically promoted at this stage in the Comprehensive Dialogue.

There are some new' issues like transit, water, Afghanistan which may assume considerable importance in the coming years.

"Even if the Comprehensive Dialogue starts, progress in addressing the agenda will be difficult and uncertain. Despite the yearning of our elites, the animus between the peoples of Pakistan and India is palpable and cannot be overcome by chapati diplomacy or song and dance routines," concludes it.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, January 11, 2016, 11:30 [IST]
Netaji Bose mystery: How authentic is the letter written by Nehru to Attlee?

Feature

oi-Vicky

A letter dated 26th December 1945 said to be written by Jawaharlal Nehru to then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee regarding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has been in circulation. The Congress has dismissed it as fake and several researchers too contend that the authenticity of the letter is in doubt.

In the letter, Nehru states that Bose your war criminal has been allowed to enter Russia by Stalin. This is treachery and betrayal of faith by the Russians. The Congress has been quick to dismiss this letter as fake and within government circles at New Delhi, none have vouched for the authenticity of this letter.

Shocking Revelation: What Gandhiji told Netaji's family members just after the plane crash

While the entire issues is about whether Netaji Bose was alive after 1945 or not, it would be more important to take into account the deposition on oath made by Shyamlal Jain, the stenographer of Nehru before the Khosla Commission of inquiry.

Jain had told the inquiry commission that he had typed out a letter written by Nehru to Stalin in 1945 in which he admitted knowing of Netaji's captivity.

How authentic is the letter written to Attlee?

Anuj Dhar, a leading researcher on Bose who was an invitee at to the event in New Delhi on Saturday where 100 files were de-classified says that what needs to be taken more seriously is the deposition made by Jain to the commission of inquiry. The letter which you talk about written to Attlee has been in circulation for sometime and there is nothing to suggest that it is authentic.

Dhar tells OneIndia that he had written to the British Prime Minister's office and they had given a blanket denial about such letter. No serious researcher believes that letter in circulation. There may be other communication which speaks about the knowledge of Bose being alive after 1945, but I highly doubt that it would ever be shared fearing straining of foreign relations.

However I would like to bring your attention to the deposition made by Jain. This has weight and it clearly indicates that Nehru had knowledge of Bose being alive. The final report of the Khosla commission does not deal with it at all. What is interesting is that the statement by Jain was made on oath.

The commission has neither accepted it nor rejected it and hence I feel that there is weight in that statement.

5 days after aircrash, British Raj analysed how to treat Netaji

The letter in circulation appears to have been made on the basis of what Jain had deposed before the commission. During my years of research on this subject I have got access to various letters and communications.

However never once have I used this letter and one cannot vouch for its authenticity. If one wants concrete proof of Bose being alive after 1945 then you should go seriously into the Jain deposition, Anuj Dhar also adds.

Will the mystery be solved?

There have been a lot of expectations from the de-classified files. However the first installment of 100 files gives clues, but no real proof of Netaji being alive after 1945. Dhar says that one can look for clues. These are all Congress files after all and one cannot expect that they would have towed a line other than what Nehru had taken.

This is however just the beginning and there are many more files that are to be de-classified. I do not think there would be anything which would directly mention that Netaji was alive as I pointed out earlier that all these files were prepared when the Congress was in power.

However I still feel that some of the files with the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing will have to be de-classified if the actual truth were to come out.

OneIndia News
Watch: 1st-time cockpit view from fighter jets at Republic Day flypast will give you goosebumps

Alert in northeast over rebel shutdown call on R-Day

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Imphal, Jan 25: A security alert has been sounded across four northeastern states after separatists announced a boycott of the Republic Day celebrations, officials said on Monday.

"There are intelligence inputs that rebels are making attempts to disrupt the Republic Day celebrations in Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya. Therefore, we have directed these states to put security forces on high alert to thwart the rebels from disrupting the celebrations," a home ministry official told IANS.

Four separatist groups have called for a shutdown on Republic Day and also a general strike from 12 midnight to 6 p.m. on January 26.

Rebel groups in the northeast have for years boycotted national celebrations.

"We are on full alert and shall see to it that we are able to prevent any attempts by rebels to attack," an Assam Rifles official said.

Four rebel groups announced their boycott through a joint statement e-mailed to media houses.

They are the United National Liberation Front of WESEA (UNLFW) -- comprising the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), Kamtapur Liberation Organisation, and the Coordination Committee (CorCom), an umbrella group of separatist outfits fighting for an independent state for the majority Metei community in Manipur.

The other two are Meghalaya-based outfits, the Garo National Liberation Army and the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council.

Thousands of army, police and paramilitary personnel were on standby in other northeastern states to ensure that militants are not able to indulge in violence ahead of the Republic Day celebrations.

"We have launched a massive flush-out operation to nab rebels who are planning to disrupt the celebrations. Police across Manipur have been put on high alert and we are determined to thwart any subversive activity by the militants," Manipur's Inspector General of Police Clay Khongsai told IANS.

IANS
Sitting with Congress in lust for power: Amit Shah's dig at Nitish Kumar

Could not care less: Nitish on Amit Shahs jibe

Launch of Hindi version of MBBS course books will bring positive change in country: PM

News flash: I never said India is intolerant, was misquoted: Aamir Khan

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, Jan 25: Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's mother admitted in ICU due to 'chest pain'.

Get all the latest news updates of the day:

11.00 pm: I never said India is intolerant, nor did I say I want to leave the country. I was misunderstood: Aamir Khan.

I love my country. I can't stay away from the nation for more than two weeks. I start feeling homesick: Aamir Khan pic.twitter.com/Acd1jpEdYy  ANI (@ANI_news) January 25, 2016

10.40 pm: In last few months many people have returned their awards, I feel this is not a wise thing to do. It's an insult to nation: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

This year situations have changed, so I'm very happy to accept it- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar #PadmaVibhushan pic.twitter.com/EQmVFjhetW  ANI (@ANI_news) January 25, 2016

10.30 pm: Second year nursing student allegedly commits suicide by hanging herself in her hostel room in Chennai's Stanley Medical College.

10.00 pm: Pakistan media reports TTP leader Mullah Fazlulah killed in a drone attack in Afghanistan

9.50 pm: Padma Vibhushan awarded to Dhirubhai Ambani is an honour to indomitable spirit of Indian entrepreneurship, innovation and ambition to always do better than the best in the world: Mukesh Ambani on Padma Vibhushan awarded to Dhirubhai Ambani.

9.40 pm: President Pranab Mukherjee hosts banquet for French President Francois Hollande at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

9.00 pm: Extra precautions have been taken while making security arrangements: NS Megharikh, Police Commissioner.

8.35 pm: 3 NSCN-K terrorists surrendered with arms to Assam Rifles in Nagaland

8.20 pm: 2 Al Qaeda terrorists have been arrested in Jamshedpur, says Jamshedpur SSP Anoop Mathew.

8.10 pm: It is a great honour, wasn't expecting it. I am very happy and proud: Saina Nehwal on Padma Bhushan.

8.05 pm: Negotiations on Rafale jet deal will take 2-4 weeks. Terms of advance payment for jets will be decided by Union Cabinet not MoD: Sources

7.55 pm: Price of Rafale fighter jets right now is near Euro 9 Billion, govt negotiating to bring price down to under Euro 8bn: Sources

7.50 pm: Imposing President's rule in Arunachal is a blatant bid to topple a duly elected Government: Rahul Gandhi.

7:45 pm: Vice President Hamid Ansari meets French President Francois Hollande in New Delhi.

7:35 pm: No good or bad terrorism; it is pure evil. If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards age of chaos: President Pranab.

7:22 pm: At least 25 dead in Cameroon suicide attacks, says Police AFP

7:15 pm: Dialogue, ideally, should be a continual engagement. But we cannot discuss peace under a shower of bullets, says President.

7:16 pm: No good or bad terrorism; it is pure evil. If outlaws are able to unravel borders, then we are heading towards age of chaos, says President

7:00 pm: We must guard ourselves against the forces of violence, intolerance and unreason, says President ahead of Republic Day.

6:57 pm: Prima facie,it seems there was a personal tiff b/w the 2 parties. Police is looking into the matter, says Sunil Kumar,ADG.

6:52 pm: The fight will continue till HRD Minister, Bandaru Dattatreya and VC are removed from their position, says Roji John, NSUI Pres on Rohith Vemula case.

6:51 pm: Chairman of SVS College Vasuki Subramanian has been given 15 days judicial custody in Villupuram suicide case.

6:34 pm: Centre gives fresh green clearance to Rs 11,370 cr Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project

6:14 pm: It's a joke. People are talking about intolerant India, that's a joke, says Actor Anupam Kher

5:54 pm: Feel honoured, happy & ecstatic. Want to thank my country India for giving me biggest award of my life: Anupam Kher

5:33 pm: Congress delegation meet President Mukherjee over Arunachal crisis

5:19 pm: So we are launching a structured plan inviting people's suggestions on OddEven idea, from tomorrow, says Arvind Kejriwal.

5:00 pm: PM Narendra Modi and President Francois Hollande at interim Secretariat of International Solar Alliance (ISA).

4:59 pm: 13 more Hyderabad University faculty members have resigned from their administrative posts, protesting against the interim VC.

4:54 pm: Post Mortem says death due to drowning, no visible external injury on 3 women medical students found dead in a well in TN.

4:51 pm: Although headquartered in India, the ISA is a global institution meant for the benefit of mankind, says PM Narendra Modi.

4:50 pm: We are the people who taught the world how to love Nature, we were taught that God resides in a plants, says PM Modi.

4:49 pm: French President Francois Hollande speaking at interim Secretariat of International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gurgaon.

4:20 pm: PM Modi and France Pres. Hollande inaugurate the interim Secretariat of International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Gurgaon.

4:15 pm: Constitutionally, they did not call assembly session for last 6 months: Sudhanshu Trivedi, BJP on Arunachal Pradesh

4:00 pm: Pakistan Marines have detained 30 Indian fishermen, 5 boats off the coast of Gujarat

3:45 pm: Matter is sub-judice, GoI should have waited for Court's order, says Arunachal Pradesh CM Nabam Tuki on President's rule.

3:30 pm: We hope that French companies would be the leading companies to take advantage of MakeInIndia, says S Jaishankar, Foreign Secretary.

3:00 pm: FS Jaishankar, says France is the original strategic partner of India.We have very strong convrgence of views with France.

2:45 pm: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose 's grand nephew Chandra Bose joins BJP.

2:30 pm: CBI raid on Delhi Principal Secy's office case, says Delhi HC asks CBI to submit two copies of documents seized (for the court & the respondent).

2:15 pm: Two more professors (Dr.Anupama & Sowmya Dechamma) resign from their administrative posts in Hyderabad University.

2:11 pm: DG ISPR (Pakistan Army) Asim Bajwa says "speculations about extension in service of Chief of Army Staff are baseless."

2:09 pm: Villupuram (TN): Protest inside the Villupuram medical college over suicide of 3 medical students

2:00 pm: Let me join first then I'll tell you exactly why I joined, says Netaji's grandnephew Chandra Bose after meeting Amit Shah.



1:43 pm: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's grandnephew Chandra Bose to join BJP

1:32 pm: Peter Mukerjea's judicial custody extended till February 8 by Mumbai court.

1:25 pm: Want to encourage Indian Govt to continue the reform movement it has launched: Michel Sapin,French Finance Minister

1:19 pm: 12 terror suspects arrested from different parts of the country have been sent to police custody till February 5 by NIA Court

1:11 pm: BA student raped and murdered in Ballia(Uttar Pradesh), Police register case

12.58 pm: Filed a petition in Madras HC that post mortem should be done again in Chennai, says Father of one of the suicide victims.

12.45 pm: Arunachal Pradesh CM Nabam Tuki to meet Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi today.

12.42 pm: Exercise of constitutional power by the Cabinet is a murder of democracy in ArunachalPradesh, says Ashwani Kumar,Congress.

12.40 pm: 12 terror suspects arrested from different parts of the country have been sent to police custody till February 5 by NIA Court.

12.15 pm: SVS Medical College (Viluppuram district, TN) suicide case: Suicide note allegedly written by the three victims

12.12 pm: French President Francois Hollande meets PM Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House.

12.00 pm: Woman shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Jakkanpur area of Patna. More details awaited.

11.44 am: Students in Hyderabad protest over suicide of University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula.

11.10 am: French President Francois Hollande given ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan

French President Francois Hollande given ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan pic.twitter.com/TMU4cXFcdq  ANI (@ANI_news) January 25, 2016

11.05 am: I am honoured to be the chief guest at India's Republic Day function-French President Francois Hollande.

10.54 am: French President Francois Hollande pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat

French President Francois Hollande pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat pic.twitter.com/DPpc5n5v4B  ANI (@ANI_news) January 25, 2016

10.20 am: BJP President Amit Shah to call on former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi tomorrow.

9.48 am: Dalit engineering student hangs himself at college hostel in Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh.

8.52 am: B-Tech student studying at Chennai's Anna University fell from terrace last night, dies.

8.15 am: Unique HR initiative by Ministry of Railway to convey birth day wishes to 13 lakh employees .



8.00 am: Police recovers cash worth 29 lakhs from a car during search operation from Madhav Nagar area of Ujjain, probe on.

OneIndia News
BSF jawan Rocky gets 'Shaurya' for taking on militants in JK

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: Raw grit and supreme sacrifice of life by 25-year-old BSF jawan Rocky while taking on militants in Udhampur last year has made him the lone recipient of 'Shaurya Chakra' among all paramilitary forces this Republic Day.

Rocky has been awarded the medal posthumously, the third-highest gallantry award in peace times after 'Ashoka' and 'Kirti' chakras, posthumously for thwarting the terrorist attack on a Border Security Force (BSF) convoy in Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir last year along with his other colleagues.

Constable Subhendu Roy, driver Daljit Singh and constable Godhraj Meena, all occupants of the BSF bus that came under attack, have also been decorated with gallantry medals with Roy being the lone recipient (posthumously) of the top medal-- the Presidents Police Medal for Gallantry (PPMG).

The incident took place early morning near 'narsoo nullah' area of Udhampur district on August 5 when terrorists suddenly intercepted the dark-green bus of the force and started indiscriminate firing in an attempt to kill unarmed BSF personnel who were on a routine movement.

Rocky, his citation read, "without caring for his injuries effectively engaged the militants by firing bullets from his personal weapon.

"He (Rocky) was constantly shouting and asking the occupants of the bus to duck down and remain low to avoid causalities," it said.

While Rocky took on the two militants, driver Singh exhibited exemplary presence of mind and halted the vehicle by undertaking a smart manoeuvre to avoid falling down in the hilly terrain and subsequently Roy and Meena took positions, unarmed, at both the gates of the bus to thwart the militants from getting in and spraying bullets on the men of the border guarding force.

The four personnel, led by Rocky, literally saved the lives of 44 unarmed BSF men on the fateful day. Rocky and Roy succumbed to their bullet injuries.

The troops have been decorated on the eve of the Republic Day this year "in recognition of their conspicuous gallant action, combat audacity, camaraderie and devotion to duty exhibited during ambush laid by militants," their citation said.

Rocky, of the 59th battalion of the force, had emptied his entire magazine containing about 40 bullets when the two heavily-armed militants attacked. The young trooper, a resident of Haryana's Yamunanagar, kept his tactical firing on as the reinforcements reached the spot only after 20 minutes.

Rocky had joined BSF in 2012 while Roy in 1999. BSF Director General, while talking to PTI last year after the encounter, had lauded his men saying: "Had it not been the raw and daring courage of Rocky, we would have suffered more casualties. He sustained initial bullet injuries but kept on firing till he succumbed."

PTI
TS EAMCET 2022 Seat Allotment Result 2022 for round 2 on Oct 16: How to check and more

Dalit scholar's death: Protesters allege attack by RSS men

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Jan 25: Protesters holding a march to express solidarity with Hyderabad University student Rohit Vemula were allegedly assaulted by RSS activists, leading to a clash at Dharavi here. Following the incident yesterday, an FIR was registered against a dozen people for rioting, police said today.

The protest was held by many groups of Dharavi including the Nationalist Forum under the banner of 'Justice for Rohith Joint Action Committee Mumbai'.

According to protesters, RSS members allegedly attacked them with stones and sticks which left at least a dozen demonstrators injured. However, BJP leader and local MLA Tamil Selvan alleged the students from Nationalist Forum stopped at RSS office and started making unpleasant remarks about the organisation and its leaders.

Enraged RSS volunteers asked them to leave, failing which both groups clashed, said Selvan.

"We received cross complaints from both the sides and have slapped relevant sections of rioting against the accused. One group of complainants has alleged that attackers belonged to RSS, which we are investigating," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Mahesh Patil. Patil, however, did not reveal the identity of the alleged attackers and just said that police has registered a case.

The case was registered after protesters gathered outside the Dharavi police station last night demanding action against the culprits. The injured are recuperating at a nearby hospital, said a police official. When contacted, a senior associate of RSS said, "We are not aware about the incident. Let us get the details first."

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), that supported the protesting students, too alleged that RSS members resorted to violence and thrashed some of the protestors including women and demanded that the accused be charged under the Act against atrocities on dalits.

If strong action was not taken, it would give miscreants a free reign to foment trouble in the city, AAP spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon said.

PTI
Ex-CAG Vinod Rai named for Padma Bhushan

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 25: Former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Vinod Rai is among the 19 personalities named for the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in India, on Republic Day this year.

A 1972-batch Kerala cadre officer of Indian Administrative Service, Rai is credited with bringing to the fore financial irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocation, coal mines allotment and 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games during his stint as the 11th CAG between January 2008 and May 2013.

His report on the issue of licences and allocation of 2G spectrum by the then United Progressive Alliance government created a major controversy as the CAG estimated a presumptive loss of Rs.1.7 lakh crore to the exchequer in the spectrum sales.

On February 2, 2012, the Supreme Court declared the spectrum allotment as "unconstitutional and arbitrary" and quashed all 122 licences issued in 2008 by the then communications minister A. Raja.

IANS
Make In India: 'French companies to invest $10 bn in India'

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 25: French companies will be investing $10 billion in India over the next five years mainly in the country's industrial space, France's Finance Minister Michel Sapin said here on Monday.

In India to strengthen cooperation against terror, says Hollande

"Over the past five years, French companies invested more than $1 billion per year in India. In my assessment, they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years," Sapin told a business meeting at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

The minister, who is in India accompanying President Francois Hollande on his official visit with a large business delegation, also said the bulk of the investments would go towards India's industrial sector as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" campaign.

Earlier in the day, Hollande said India and France will continue to improve economic ties in a host of areas. "We are particularly stressing on our economic ties in the field of agriculture and space," he said, after being accorded an official welcome at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

IANS
Govt working to address issues Dalits face: Suresh Prabhu

India

oi-PTI

Panaji, Jan 25: In the backdrop of the suicide by dalit student Rohith Vemula at the Hyderabad University, Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday said the Narendra Modi government has been working on addressing various issues the community faces.

"We (the government) are addressing various issues faced by dalits in the country. We are celebrating 125th birth year of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Prime Minister has formed a committee to commemorate the year," Prabhu said while addressing a gathering organised by the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), in the Vasco town.

"Few days back, dalit youths started Dalit Chamber of Commerce, like the way you have Goa Chamber of Commerce. The Prime Minister inaugurated it. There was a huge crowd at the function," Prabhu said.

"The youths expressed their wish to become entrepreneurs. They wanted to start their own businesses. They were not looking for jobs. This is beginning of a revolution. These people are not asking for jobs. They want to become industrialists," the Minister added.

PTI
Himachal govt announces remission in sentence of 402 convicts

India

oi-PTI

Shimla, Jan 24: Four convicts undergoing sentence would walk free while 398 others would get remission of seven to 45 days in their sentence in Himachal Pradesh from the Republic Day.

The state government today announced remission in sentence of these convicts, which would be effective from the Republic Day on January 26. The convicts undergoing life imprisonment or sentence of more than ten years would get 45 days remission, subject to good conduct while convicts sentenced for more than five years and between three to five years would get remission of 30 days and 21 days respectively.

The convicts undergoing imprisonment of one to three years and between three months and one year would get remission of 15 days and one week respectively.

PTI
India, France to boost anti-terror ties; asks Pak to bring perpetrators of Pathankot to justice

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: India and France, having suffered repeated terror strikes, today decided to step up their anti- terror cooperation including intelligence sharing and called on Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of Pathankot to justice.

During their extensive talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande asked for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayibba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

"From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism...I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

"We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Agreeing on the imperative of having a comprehensive approach to address terrorism, the two sides resolved to step up their bilateral cooperation, under the supervision of annual strategic dialogues and joint working group on counterterrorism meetings, to counter violent extremism and radicalization, a joint statement said.

It further said that India and France will cooperate to disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists, "To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police.

They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts," it said. They aslo stressed that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed.

"Condemning the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India, the two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future," the statement said.

The two sides noted that terrorist activities and proxies supported from safe havens across Afghanistans borders pose a grave threat to peace, security and stability of Afghanistan.

In this regard, they emphasized the need to address this challenge by dismantling terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens and disrupting all financial and other support for terrorist groups and individuals.

PTI
India-France to build six nuke reactor units at Jaitapur

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: In a significant boost to their civil nuclear cooperation, India and France today encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of the year for the construction of six, instead of two, nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur.

During the talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Francois Hollande reassured reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants while acknowledging India's need for the same.

"The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017," a joint statement after the talks between the two leaders said.

They also favoured conclusion of techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur while giving due consideration to its cost and transfer of technology, besides cost-effective localisation of manufacturing key components in India.

France also reaffirmed its strong support for India's candidacy to international export control regimes and in particular to the NSG. France was the first country with which India established a strategic partnership in 1998 after New Delhi had conducted nuclear tests.

France is also the first country with which India entered into a civil nuclear energy cooperation in 2008 after obtaining the NSG waiver.

"France is among those few first countries with which India has signed agreements in the field of civil nuclear cooperation," Modi said at a joint press event.

"In pursuance of the 2008 Agreement on the Development of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between India and France, the two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur."

PTI
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Indias military might to be on display during Republic Day Parade

India

oi-Oneindia

By OneIndia Defence Bureau

New Delhi, Jan 25: The historic Rajpath is all decked up to showcase India's military might and other achievements on the occasion of 67th Republic Day celebrations tomorrow.

This year's R-Day Parade has many firsts, making it unique for the viewers and participants.

For the first time ever, a 76-member French Army contingent (military band consisting of 48 musicians) by Lt Col Paul Bury is marching on Rajpath.

An Army dog squad drawn from the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC) will also be taking part after 26 years.

In another first, an Ex-Servicemen Tableau with Army veterans and their float will pass the saluting dais.

The eye-catching BSF Camel Regiment consisting of 56 camels will be led by Deputy Commandant Kuldeep J Choudhary will.

Ministry of Defence says that Indian Army's T-90 Bhishma tank, Infantry Combat Vehicle BMP II (Sarath), Mobile Autonomous Launcher of the BrahMos Missile System, Akash Weapon System, Smerch Launcher Vehicles and Integrated Communication Electronic Warfare System (ICEWS) will be part of the mechanised columns.

The marching contingents of Army will include horse-mounted columns of the 61st Cavalry, the Parachute Regiment, the Corps of Signals, the Rajput Regiment, the Garhwal Rifles, the Assam Regiment, 11 Gorkha Rifles and Remount Veterinary Corps Dog Squad.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is hitting Rajpath with the theme Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations by IAF: In Service of the Nation and Beyond'.

The IAF tableau showcases its role in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Yemen and Nepal rescue and relief operations.

The Indian Navy's tableau will display flight deck operations on the new aircraft carrier Vikrant' under construction and the indigenously constructed submarine Kalvari.'

The marching contingent of Navy (144 young sailors) will be led by Lieutenant Commander Anil Raina, while the IAF contingent (144 men) will be led by Flt Lt Ashish Mann.

This year's R-Day Parade will be commanded by Lt. General Rajan Ravindran, General Officer Commanding, Delhi Area. Major General Rajesh Sahai, Chief of Staff, Headquarters Delhi Area will be the parade Second-in-Command.

The Paramilitary and other auxiliary civil forces will include contingents from the Border Security Force, Assam Rifles, Indian Coast Guard, an all women contingent of Central Reserve Police Force, Railway Protection Force, Delhi Police, National Cadet Corps and National Service Scheme.

Three IAF Mi-35 helicopters will be flying in Vic' formation, followed by the Hercules' formation comprising three C-130J Super Hercules aircraft. Trailing them will be the Globe formation' comprising one C-17 Globemaster flanked by two Su-30s.

Five Jaguars too will fly in their now-famous Arrowhead formation, while five MiG-29s will fly in Fulcrum style.

Finally, the three Su-30 MKIs would fly over the Rajpath in Trishul' formation and later would split upwards once they reach once they reach the saluting dais. The sky party would end with a Su-30 MKI carrying out a Vertical Charlie' manoeuvre over the saluting dais.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, January 25, 2016, 21:01 [IST]
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Jaya appeal: A well settled point of law will be debated again in Supreme Court

India

oi-Vicky

Chennai, Jan 25: The day to day hearing on the appeal filed by Karnataka in the J Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets is set to commence on February 2.

While the Karnataka government will stick to the appeal, the legal team for the Tamil Nadu chief minister may commence arguments by questioning Karnataka's locus standi (right) to file an appeal.

If Jayalalithaa's legal team decide to challenge the locus standi of Karnataka in filing the appeal, there is bound to be a hearing that may span over a week or two which ultimately will delay hearing the original appeal itself.

Karnataka has decided to distance itself from the statements made by Jayalalithaa recently in which she challenged the right of the state in filing an appeal.

A well settled point of law:

In the Karnataka legal department, the statements by Jayalalithaa have been seen as an attempt to delay the appeal.

It is a well settled point of law and has been dealt with by both the Supreme Court and the High Court in the past, Karnataka would contend.

It may be recalled that the issue had come up for hearing in the Karnataka High Court where the right of Karnataka to appoint a special public prosecutor had been challenged.

Moreover, it is also questioned as to why Jayalalithaa and three others convicted by the trial court had decided to challenge that decision before the Karnataka High Court.

Even when the appeal was being heard in the High Court, the special prosecutor B V Acharya who made written submissions was appointed by the Karnataka government.

Karnataka contends that the state appointing the special public prosecutor is automatically the prosecuting state and hence only it has the right to file an appeal.

Further an interpretation of the Code of Criminal Procedure also states that a special public prosecutor is appointed for a case and not for a court. Special Public Prosecutor of this case, B V Acharya that this issue has cropped up in the past as well.

It has been settled that it is Karnataka which has the powers to prosecute and also the Supreme Court too had given the state the powers to appoint the SPP, he also added.

Karnataka feels that there will be some amount of delay before arguments on the appeal would commence.

Karnataka in its appeal has pointed to several errors in the verdict of the High Court which acquitted Jayalalithaa and others. It has also argued that the SPP was not given any time to argue the case and instead had to file written submissions.

OneIndia News
#JusticeForRohith: Chalo HCU movement to turn massive

India

oi-Oneindia

By Maitreyee Boruah

Bengaluru, Jan 25: The voices demanding justice for Rohith Vemula is growing each day. If the protest continues, it is likely to turn into a civil movement in the coming days.

In fact, the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, University of Hyderabad (UoH) is hosting a special session-Chalo HCU (Hyderabad Central University)--at the university campus on Monday (January 25).

The session is special--as it will see intellectuals, writers, filmmakers, activists, students and anyone who supports the struggle for justice for Rohith--come together under one roof.

The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, UoH is in the forefront protesting against expulsion and boycott of five Dalit research scholars at the university.

26-year-old Rohith was one of the five scholars who were expelled, after a scuffle broke out between Ambedkar Students' Association (ASA) (Rohith was a member of ASA) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in August last year.

Rohith committed suicide on January 17. Rohith's tragic death has become a rallying point for all those who have long been saying that there exists a systematic discrimination of Dalit students in the higher educational institutions across the country.

The e-mail invite of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, UoH, says, "The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, UoH, has given a call for all people supporting the struggle for Justice for Rohith Vemula to come to the University of Hyderabad in solidarity on 25th January."

"Today 24th (January 24) marks one week of Rohith's death with no response from the University administration, no action on the SC/ST atrocities case filed, and not even one condolence visit from the Vice Chancellor of the University. It is the fifth day of indefinite hunger strike and three hunger strikers have developed serious complications. Our demands for justice remain unfulfilled.

"Please join us at University of Hyderabad campus, Gachibowli, Hyderabad on 25th January (all day). In case you can't come on 25th, still please do visit us anytime. We want our struggle and the struggle against Brahminism across the country to stay strong and for that we need continued solidarity," the e-mail adds.

Some of the prominent people going to be part of the day-long protest are journalist P Sainath, Prakash Ambedkar (grandson of BR Ambedkar) and writer and activist Meena Kandasamy. The Facebook page of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, UoH, posted a picture of students from the Calicut University (Kerala), who were in the Hyderabad University to join the protest on January 24.

Moreover, students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University on January 24 launched an indefinite hunger strike demanding justice for Rohith. Three students of the varsity -- Suchishree, Lenin Kumar and Shubhanshu -- have decided to sit on the fast to express solidarity with the seven students who are continuing their indefinite hunger strike at Hyderabad University for a week now.

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Story first published: Monday, January 25, 2016, 8:57 [IST]
Kant's statement on Aamir Khan irresponsible: K C Venugopal

India

oi-PTI

Kochi, Jan 25: Congress deputy chief whip in the Lok Sabha, K C Venugopal today termed as "totally irresponsible" senior IAS officer Amitabh Kant's statement on actor Aamir Khan and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action against the official for "violating" service rules.

Days after Kant, the newly appointed NITI Aayog CEO, made a statement defending Khan's exit from the 'Incredible India' campaign, Venugopal said the officer "stooped to such a level to appease his political masters who have granted him a new post in the NITI Aayog."

Kant, a Kerala cadre officer, is currently posted as the secretary of Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. "I urge the Prime Minister to take action against the officer for violating central government's service rules. As a serving bureaucrat, he has no right to join a debate on a controversial issue and make public statements. His statements against Khan is totally irresponsible," the former Union Minister said here.

Kant was referring to Aamir Khans remarks last November when he had said there were rising instances of "intolerance" in India and his wife even asked if they should move out of the country as "she feared for the safety of their children".

Kant had said the actor "damaged" the brand India while being the brand ambassador of the 'Incredible India' campaign. Kant, who had been a key driver of the 'Incredible India' campaign as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, had said that by terming India "intolerant", Khan had worked against his role as the brand ambassador.

"If the brand ambassador says India is intolerant, he surely is not working as brand ambassador," Kant had said. "

The brand ambassador must be the best brand ambassador for promoting and marketing India. He cannot be the destroyer of the brand." Khan had late last year stirred a controversy after he expressed "alarm and despondency" over rising instances of "intolerance" in India.

PTI
Paramilitary veterans protest over exclusion of their contingents from R-Day parade

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: An association of ex-paramilitary forces' officials has registered its protest against non-inclusion of ITBP, CISF, SSB marching contingents from the Republic Day parade and alleged "discrimination".

The confederation of ex-paramilitary forces welfare associations has expressed its dissatisfaction over "throwing out" of the squads of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) from the annual national event held at the historic Rajpath in central Delhi here.

"One can feel the pain of the paramilitary forces where they used to display their strength, status and achievement while marching on Rajpath and at the same time they used to celebrate their glorious historical achievements also," the association said in a statement.

The association claims to have support of paramilitary forces veterans from across the country and had also staged protests last year demanding One Rank One Pension and other service benefits for the personnel of these forces which also include the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Border Security Force (BSF).

The Republic Day parade this year has undergone many first-time changes like introduction of the army dogs squad after many years, a maiden marching contingent of French soldiers, replacement of CRPF male marching team by their womens' personnel unit, first-ever air display by the military chopper 'RUDRA' and reduction in the number of tableaus and cultural pageants.

The BSF camel contingent was also called in the last moment to practice for the event and be a part of the parade. The about 8-lakh strong paramilitary forces, also called the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), are deployed to guard Indian borders and carry out a variety of internal security duties including conducting anti-Naxal operations, guarding VVIPs and securing vital installations like civil airports and agencies working in the nuclear power and aerospace domain.

French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest of the event with President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other dignitaries and common people in attendance at Rajpath.

PTI
Rafale deal: India, France ink MoU, to sort out 'financial aspects'

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: India and France today inked an MoU for the purchase of 36 French Rafale aircraft but persisting differences over the pricing of the fighter jet came in the way of final multi-billion dollar deal being concluded.

This MoU was among the 14 pacts signed after wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande which focused on ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

"...Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible," Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Terming the signing of the IGA as a "decisive" step, the French President said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in a "couple of days".

The two countries are in negotiation for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away condition since the deal was announced by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price. The deal is estimated to cost about Rs 59,000 crore. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said, "What was signed today was an MoU and, when the financial part of it is settled, then obviously the IGA in its entirety will be concluded".

Top government sources said an IGA will be signed once the prices have been finalised which they hoped would take another four weeks. Sources said the price for 36 Rafales, as per the UPA tender, keeping the cost escalation and dollar rate in mind, comes to a little over Rs 65,000 crore.

This includes the cost involved in making changes India has sought in the aircraft, including Israeli helmet mounted display and some specific weaponry, among others.

"The effort is to bring down the price to less than Euros 8 billion (Rs 59,000 crore)," the sources said, adding the actual price negotiations only started from January 21.

Another point under discussion is the payment of advance which India will have to make.

"At least 50 per cent advance will have to be made including 15 per cent immediate payment," the sources said, adding the French government will stand guarantee.

PTI
Republic Day: India gears up for celebrations amidst tight security

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 25: Elaborate security arrangements were in place across the country for the Republic Day celebrations on Tuesday, Jan 26, with police in the national capital and neighbouring states keeping an eye out on "drones", which have been perceived as a major threat.

The national capital is already on high alert ahead of the official celebrations here -- where French President Francois Hollande is the Chief Guest -- after inputs were received about the presence of key members of several terror outfits in Delhi.

In the national capital, as many as 71 high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Rajpath will be shut down either partially or completely tomorrow in view of the Republic Day parade.

Delhi Police Chief B S Bassi had 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, according to a senior police official.

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.

State capitals and major cities across the country have seen security being beefed up at vulnerable places and key installations . In Punjab, which was recently shaken by the strike at the Pathankot air force base, additional personnel have been posted at bus stands, railway stations and government buildings, officials said.

Similar arrangements are in place in Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Both states and Chandigarh are on high alert following the terror attack at Pathankot. In Jammu and Kashmir, security has been stepped up across the Valley to thwart any plan by militants to disrupt the celebrations.

Police and paramilitary CRPF personnel have been deployed in Srinagar and at entry points to the summer capital of the state, police said, adding that barricades have been erected for carrying out random searches of vehicles entering the city.

Police personnel have been carrying out area domination exercises in the areas around Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar, where the Valley's main parade will be held on Tuesday, and around the venues at district headquarters, they said.

All check-posts along the inter-state borders of Punjab and Haryana have been put on maximum alert, officials said. Dog and bomb squads have been deployed at vulnerable spots across the two states.

In Kolkata, security has been increased at Victoria Memorial, Kalighat temple, Indian Museum and other iconic structures as well as at buildings housing government and non-governmental offices, shopping malls, etc.

"Security has been increased at entry and exit points to the city. There will be 93 police pickets all over Kolkata and 13 QRTs at strategic locations for fast response," an officer said. Leaves of all senior officers have been "cancelled" and they would be on duty during this period and would continue till this weekend, he added.

The NIA and other central security agencies arrested 14 persons last week for allegedly planning to carry out attacks in the country ahead of Republic Day.

The arrests were made following simultaneous searches and raids at 12 locations in six cities -- Bengaluru, Tumkur, Mangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Lucknow -- on January 22 with the support of local police.

PTI
Surat: Husband chops woman into pieces over domestic quarrel

India

oi-Pallavi

Surat, Jan 25: In a horrifying incident in Surat, a man murders his 30-year old wife and chops her into small pieces in Amba Nagar on Udhna Magdalla Road. The gruesome murder came to light when police raided the man's house.

Shyam Bahadur Verma (33), following a series of disputes murdered wife Kirandevi by slitting her throat on Friday. He later, severed the head and the limbs with a knife. He dumped some of the body parts in a rivulet from a bridge in Udhna. Remaining of the parts were kept in a plastic bag at home. Bur before he could dispose them off, his house was raided by the police.

His neighbors had alerted the police after they observed suspicious movements in the residence. The accused had however escaped before the police reached the spot. The remaining parts of the body were recovered and sent for post mortem.

P K Patel, police inspector, Khatodara police station said,"Preliminary investigation revealed that the husband murdered wife out of repetitive disputes. On Thursday also they had a heated argument."

It is said that the couple had fought over going to a marriage and that Verma doubted that his wife was having an extra-marital affair.

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Story first published: Monday, January 25, 2016, 12:08 [IST]
Why the money minded terrorist is easier to convict than the ideological one

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Jan 25: The National Investigating Agency probably carried out one of its biggest operations in recent times when it rounded up over a dozen persons alleged to be linked to the ISIS.

Maharashtra cops block 94 websites used to radicalise youth about ISIS

While various angles pertaining to the modus operandi of these persons have been spoken about, what is key in this investigation is that probably for the first time in an ISIS related case in India has a financial transaction come to the fore.

A financial transaction of Rs 6 lakh of which Rs 2.37 lakh has been recovered by the NIA from the account of Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh holds the key to the investigations.

It has always been a problem for investigators in the past while attempting to prove a link of a person to a terrorist organisation. Most of the cases were based on jihadi material found on some youth who are alleged to have either read it or forwarded it.

ISIS used a corporate style of recruiting in India

Cases normally do not stand before the court of law if it is solely based on the argument that these persons were viewing jihadi material and forwarding it. Investigators say that many cases in the past have failed when the argument is solely on such a basis.

Hence in this recent bust, the NIA feels confident of building up a strong case as there are financial transactions available which indicate that a proper recruiting mechanism was underway with the lure of money.

Ideology vs finances:

While the ideological terrorist is far more dangerous compared to the finance minded one, the latter is always a better bet when it comes to arguing before a court. This is especially true in the cases relating to the ISIS as there is a lot of activity that takes place online. Mere forwards or re-tweets do not always hold before a court.

Going by the bare law, it is very difficult to convict persons who are re-tweeters or just reading up propaganda material. The prosecution will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt to the court that the person indeed was involved in recruiting persons for the ISIS and for this a financial transaction is extremely important.

The questions that normally would come up for arguments in cases relating to online propaganda is if there was any financial transaction. If the investigators are able to find that the accused person had been paid money to carry out a recruitment, then prosecuting such a person becomes extremely easy.

Moreover in such cases, the information that such persons put out is in public domain and this is another factor that makes it very difficult for the prosecution to argue on when the trial is on.

Officers say that in such cases, they normally look for a financial transaction.

If this is not available they would look for propaganda material that are sent out either through direct messages or emails. If such information is found in a private space, then it becomes clear that the person is seriously recruiting for a terrorist organisation.

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Story first published: Monday, January 25, 2016, 12:43 [IST]
Even if not contesting 2020 polls, Hillary Clinton will not be entirely out of scene

Hillary Clinton says Julian Assange must 'answer for what he has done'

Boston Globe endorses Hillary Clinton

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Jan 25: In yet another boost to her presidential campaign, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton received endorsement from a popular US newspaper which described her as "seasoned" and "grounded".

"The best reason to support Clinton isn't the weaknesses of her opponents; its her demonstrated strengths and experience. Even her most dyed-in-the-wool opponents ought to take a second look at her," Boston Globe said in an editorial, explaining the reason for it endorsing Clinton against her nearest rival Bernie Sanders.

"While Sanders has made an important contribution to the Democratic primary campaign, it's Clinton who would make a better president," the editorial board said. The paper, which backed then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008, wrote that Clinton is "more seasoned, more grounded, and more forward-looking than in 2008."

According to the editorial, few Americans lack an opinion of Hillary Clinton, who has served as secretary of state, a senator from New York and as the first lady during the presidency of her husband Bill Clinton. "She's long been the bete noire of conservatives.

Their cartoonish conspiracy theories  remember Vince Foster?  and unfounded attacks against her have, at times, triggered so much sympathy for Clinton that some of her actual weaknesses have been allowed to slide," it said.

"Clinton is not perfect  especially on issues of financial regulation while she represented New York. Her vote in the Senate to authorise the war in Iraq was a mistake, as Sanders has taken every opportunity to point out," the Globe argued.

As per Real Clear Politics, which aggregates all major opinion polls, Clinton leads Sanders by 13 points at the national level.

In Iowa, which would kick off the presidential primary season on February 1, Clinton is leading Sanders by over seven percentage points, but in the next destination of New Hampshire she trails by more than 12 percentage points.

In an interview to NBC's 'Meet the Press', Clinton said she is enthusiastically pursuing the opportunity to reach every single voter in Iowa.

"I feel good about where we are," she said. "I want to build on the progress that President Obama has made and he has a different approach.

And that's what voters are trying to determine, which they prefer," she said. The endorsement came just a day after Clinton won the endorsement of the largest newspaper in Iowa, The Des Moines Register.

PTI
Pakistan declines joint grilling of JeM chief with India

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Islamabad, Jan 25: Pakistan has turned down India's proposal to jointly interrogate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and other suspects linked with Pathankot airbase attack, official sources said.

Authorities in Pakistan have detained Masood Azhar after the January 2 terrorist attack at Pathankot airbase. Several other suspects were arrested and authorities closed down a number of JeM-run madarsas (seminaries) in different cities, The Nation reported on Monday.

Azhar, who was released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for 155 passengers of the Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, was quizzed by the investigators. The JeM chief's brother Mufti Abdul Rehman Rauf was also detained, officials said on Saturday.

Pakistan is likely to send a special investigating team to Pathankot in consultation with the Indian government for further investigations.

On January 2, heavily armed militants, suspected to be from Pakistan, attacked the Pathankot airbase. A total of six terrorists and seven security personnel were killed in the operations.

Following the attacks, Indian and Pakistani governments agreed to postpone scheduled diplomatic talks till the end of January.

French President Francois Hollande on Monday said India was "fully justified" in asking Pakistan for justice against the perpetrators of Pathankot attack.

PM should clarify India's policy towards Pak: Salman Khurshid

Hollande said India and France were "united in their determination to act together against terrorism".

India wanted to send investigators to interrogate Masood Azhar and his brother but Pakistan "politely refused" it, a senior official said.

Pakistan assured India that Islamabad was seriously investigating the case and will not hesitate to act if anyone was found guilty, the official said.

"India wants us to hand over Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed and as we have declined a number of times, they want us to at least give access to the investigators to interrogate them. We have told them it was not possible," he added.

Another official said investigators were interrogating the suspects arrested in the Pathankot case.

He said the authorities were in contact with India and keeping them updated. Pakistan has already submitted initial report to India regarding Pathankot attack.

The cell numbers used by the attackers, according to the report, were not registered and could not be traced in Pakistan.

Pakistan had been working on the Indian leads to find out if at all Pakistan's soil was used in the plot, he said.

Analyst Brigadier (retd) Agha Hussain Ahmed said the basic motive of terrorists behind this attack was to derail the recently initiated peace process between Pakistan and India.

"Pakistan has assured the Indian government of its full support in this regard and demanded India to hand over the proofs and evidence against any Pakistani involvement to take further action. Investigation of our citizens must be held in Pakistan," he added.

Defence analyst Mohammed Khan said the two countries needed to see who was behind the attack on Pathankot airbase in India.

"Pakistan warmly welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his arrival to Lahore. The international community appreciated the meeting between the two premiers and stressed to resolve all matters by using the option of dialogue. After the Pathankot incident, Indian media said the military establishment of Pakistan is against the talks between India and Pakistan," he said.

Mohammed Khan said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Raheel Sharif both have stressed that Pakistan will fully cooperate with India in eliminating and countering terrorism.

He said Pakistan could not hand over its citizens to India or any other country for investigations.

IANS
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"Rob Kall has been the center of a vast, decentralized conversation for years, letting us hear in interviewees' own words the power of connection in every realm. His new book brings it all together, showing us that the old order is broken and fast being replaced from the bottom up. The old power elite may not know it yet, but millions of us -- organizers, artists, thinkers and doers -- have gotten the message. So should you, by reading Bottom-Up."



Arlene Goldbard, author of The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future


President Bashar Al Assad

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The Syrian government will not make any new concessions in future peace talks at a time when the Syrian army is making progress in different parts of the country, a senior official in President Bashar Assad's ruling Baath party said in remarks published Sunday. The Geneva talks, which were to begin Monday but will likely be delayed, are part of a U.N. plan that envisions an 18-month timetable for a political transition. The Syrian opposition says Assad should have no role in Syria's future, even during a transitional period. Assad, whose family has governed Syria for more than four decades, has said he will only step down if voted out.
Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton began 2016 with a bang: she confirmed that her campaign had raised over $100 million. Only one other candidate has done that and that is the brother and son of former Presidents, Jeb Bush.

Unlike Bush, Hillary has consistently led in national and local polls, yet not one vote has been cast. That is about to change very soon when the primary and caucus season begins in February (February 1, 2016 for the Iowa Caucuses and February 9 for the New Hampshire Republican and Democratic Primaries).

Meanwhile, at the same time as the Clinton Campaign celebrated its fundraising milestone, Jerry Oppenheimer's tell-all book, State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton was resurrected in the press. That resurrection came as a result of Oppenheimer penning a bombshell article describing events as told to him by Bill Clinton's other love, a beauty queen by the name of Marla Crider.

Oppenheimer writes in an exclusive Daily Mail Online article that Hillary stalked Crider, even frightened her, in order to make sure that Bill would leave Crider alone. According to Oppenheimer, Crider related the saga to him before her death in 2014 from breast cancer.

While scintillating, the details have nothing to do with the important issues that a Presidential campaign ought to be discussing. But Donald Trump opened the salvo by saying that both his and Bill's extramarital affairs are OK for campaign fodder. This, in my opinion, is because real issues are prohibited from being discussed, and the current crop of candidates will not go off script. I can almost guarantee that without new, more independent entrants into the Presidential campaign, hence destabilizing to the status quo, the current cast of players will never get around to discussing the issues that weigh heavily on the minds of the people of the U.S.

Unfortunately, American voters are sure to even be treated to more of Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions" as they have been called. The movie, Weiner, will soon debut at the Sundance Film Festival. It is about Hillary's assistant, Huma Abedin's husband, my former colleague, Anthony Weiner, who lost his job in the Congress on the heels of a sexting scandal.

Hitting a little closer to a bona fide issue is the movie release of 13 Hours, the story of the murder of a US Ambassador in Libya while Hillary was serving as Secretary of State. Donald Trump rented a theater and gave free tickets to moviegoers. The assessment is that Clinton is not necessarily hurt by the movie, but it does give voters some information about US policy that they ought to be questioning a lot more.



Still, even in the midst of a Presidential campaign, the real scandal is that truly important policy discussions are avoided; for example, what activity was being carried out at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya and what do current events in Syria and Libya have to do with that policy. Not even an eight-hour long Congressional hearing pierces that veil, which I discussed in my article , "Clinton and Benghazi Committee: Dancing on a Tightrope." Such questions are never even posed in this Presidential campaign season -- not by the press and not by the candidates. That is why I have made no endorsement of any current candidates yet and still call for truly independent contenders -- truth seeking and truth tellers -- to enter the race.

I might just get my wish partially fulfilled because of what seems to be barreling down the pike. Fox News and Catherine Herridge broke a story that "the crown jewels" of US intelligence were housed on Clinton's private e-mail server that was located in her home bathroom. The breach is startling. While I was in Congress, I studiously avoided such information when I could because I didn't want in any way to be accused of compromising US "secrets," many of which could be found in the US press, purposely leaked, anyway.

I remembered the prosecution of my former colleague, Representative Robert Torricelli, who told that it was a paid C.I.A. agent who killed a US citizen during the US-backed genocide in Guatemala. Torricelli had accused the intelligence agencies of protecting an individual who had killed a US citizen. I watched as Torricelli soon paid the price for that.

The Fox News revelation about Hillary's private server is serious. The Intelligence Community Inspector General just confirmed that information with a more secret classification than top secret was stored on Hillary's private and unsecured server.

Stunningly, in a letter dated January 14, 2016, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community wrote, "To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one IC element. These declarations cover several dozen e-mails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, TOP SECRET/SAP levels."

One e-mail, purported to be a "smoking gun," Hillary asked an employee to remove the classification and send the information to her "nonsecure." And just a few days earlier, on January 11, reports surfaced that Clinton Foundation donations were being investigated by as many as 150 agents for their intersection with State Department contracts. The Foundation already had to file amended tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.

I remember, during the politically turbulent headwinds created when I was asking important questions about what happened on September 11, 2001, that Sandy Berger, President Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, went to the National Archives and Records Administration in 2002 and again in 2003 and stole important papers relating to questions he had been asked by the 9/11 Commission. Berger pleaded guilty to his crime in 2005. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to community service. More recently, General David Petraeus avoided jail, but the Pentagon is now considering demoting him as a result of his scandal of sharing secret information with his mistress. Like Berger, Petraeus pleaded guilty, was put on probation, and was fined $100,000. C.I.A. whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling had one e-mail missing from his official account and was charged with and convicted of obstruction of justice (among other things)!

I have long said that Hillary could very well become the jilted bride left at the altar by the very special interests that she served so loyally against even the priorities of the people Hillary was sworn to protect, both in her role as Senator as well as during her tenure as Secretary of State. She served other interests fully and memorably gloated in glee at the crime against humanity that resulted in the total and complete destruction of Libya and the war crime that resulted in a targeted assassination.

Despite amassing a fortune in her campaign coffers, the Presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton are beginning to rest on shaky ground. These are only tremors so far, but any one of them could completely remove the earth underneath her once-a-sure-thing campaign. Any out-of-control spiral could leave Hillary standing at the altar all alone.


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Let's think about the evil absurdity of the crisis playing out in Haiti, and the complicity of international forces that set the stage for this looming tragedy five years ago.

President Michel Martelly of Haiti is refusing to leave office on February 7 when his term is up. The former musician was installed by voter fraud perpetrated by the U.S. in late 2010. The fraud was condoned and executed by a "core group" of U.S. and other foreign observers who engaged in creative manipulating of vote tallies to ensure that Martelly was in the run-off.

Pierre-Louis Opont, the president of Haiti's Election Commission (CEP), admitted as much in July 2015 when he confirmed the accusations of Former OAS Ambassador Ricardo Seitenfus about vote fixing. Last July Opont accused the OAS, the United States, and specifically Cheryl Mills, the Chief of State for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the fraud. Opont says he gave the official vote count to the group of OAS international observers and the group then gave results different than what were passed to them.

In an interview with Radio Television Caraibes this week Seitenfus was blunt. "Since Mrs. Clinton was well involved in the 2010-2011 decisions, if we started badly, we must end well. That is to say, February 7 President Michel Martelly must leave, and (Haiti) should have a new president," he said.

Martelly has such a strong-hold on the country that the current election process was co-opted by real and perceived voter fraud, causing candidate Jude Celestin to refuse to participate in a runoff against Martelly's hand picked successor, the Banana Man, Jovenel Moise. Celestin is standing firm and is encouraging civil society, including business and church leaders, to conclude a vote postponement is in the best interests of Haiti. The Senate also supported a non-binding motion to postpone.

Martelly's henchman and right hand guy, Guy Philippe, a Haitian Senate candidate whose runoff was also delayed, is calling for an uprising if Martelly is forced out. Elections are in chaos and Haiti stands on the brink of civil war.

Here is the kicker, the denouement, and the culmination of this centuries old tragedy.

Philippe is a fugitive wanted by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He was also among the leaders of a 2004 coup that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The New York Times finally reported Philippe's background yesterday. Haitian activists have been saying this for years, but have been ignored.

The strands of this dangerous farce are being drawn together and it is anyone's guess whether Haiti can survive this very real crisis, which has echoes in history.

In a 2004 Human Rights Watch communique, HRW called on the international community to assert control over Philippe when he took control over government buildings and declared himself the "military chief" of the country.

"The rebel forces entered Port-au-Prince on Monday and immediately took over government buildings, including the former headquarters of the Haitian army," HRW reported. Read this carefully. It happened in 2004!

Can anyone truly believe that the DEA cannot apprehend Philippe when the drug lord was openly running for a seat on the Haitian Senate and was often seen campaigning, arm in arm, with "Sweet Mickey" Martelly?

The DEA was certainly capable of apprehending relatives of Venezuelan President Nicola's Maduro on charges of cocaine smuggling in November 2105. The arrests, conducted by local police, took place in Port-au-Prince, so the argument that the DEA cannot coordinate actions in Haiti certainly falls apart. The same day, the suspects were flown to New York on a DEA jet.

As Philippe is organizing what could amount to a civil war, the U.S. Department of State is offering a boilerplate presser from Mark Toner, John Kerry's assistant. "The United States supports all efforts aimed at finding consensual and constructive solutions that will conclude the electoral process expeditiously with an outcome that reflects the will of the Haitian people, consistent with Haitian law and the Haitian constitution."

There is no mention of the roots cause of this crisis by Kerry, Toner, or anyone in the U.S. government. Secretary Kerry is in Laos, attending a meet and greet with staff at the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane. Ironic, considering what the U.S. did to Viet Nam from its launching pad in Laos a generation ago.

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Reprinted from Reader Supported News

For 40 years now, Leonard Peltier, leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has been imprisoned as a result of the armed raid by the federal government on Indian land at the historic Wounded Knee in 1973. Bill Means, veteran of the Vietnam War and the standoff at Wounded Knee, said, "The Feds didn't serve us coffee and pizzas. They came heavily armed, ready to do battle, and opened fire before they asked the first question." Means is a co-founder, along with Leonard Peltier, of AIM, and is now on the board of the International Indian Treaty Council.

"The laws are recast and enforced in order to suppress any type of minority movement," said Means, "to shift all the power of recognition to the white community. So that when the posse comitatus or bunch of racist ranchers take over a piece of land, they do it in the name of their country, and they become immune to the criminal laws of the United States."

Means reflected on how this scenario might have played out quite differently, if it had been AIM that decided to lead an armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. "We know exactly what they'd do. We experienced that back in 1973," Means told me in a January radio interview. "We were immediately surrounded by over seven or eight federal jurisdictions: FBI, U.S. marshals, U.S. Border Patrol, BIA police. I'm missing a few, but you can understand the type of response we get as Indian people."

Far from the history of his ancestors, who walked across the Bering Straits many thousands of years ago to discover North America, these descendants of white culture are "violent newcomers," Means said. "These are modern-day colonizers. I mean, we already went through this era of homesteading which was, you know, back in the days of 1887 or so. So this is a scary type of uplift in the posse comitatus-type people. I experienced this, as well, back in Wisconsin."

"It was 1987 when I moved here to the Twin Cities," said the Native American leader. "There was a struggle for fishing rights going on. And that's where we were surrounded, again, by law enforcement and vigilantes who were trying to stop our people from fishing, which is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. They actually made a social event out of it, where they would go every weekend, get drunk, and harass the Indian fishermen and women. That was just back in the 80s. And, of course, Wounded Knee in the 70s. Now what's going on over there is being condoned and almost celebrated, and these people are being portrayed as heroes for standing up to the federal government. But, in fact, when we try to defend our land, and our fishing rights, hunting rights, what do we get? We get the opposite. We get the rednecks, we get the racists, we get the crooked politicians, who are all stepping forward to be a part of this action against Indian people. So we have a complete, shall we say, contradiction from the response of law enforcement. When they're white, they are alright. If they're Indian, if they're Black Lives Matter, then it's a whole other process."

Confederate Flags Over Indian Land

Morningstar is a Native American activist and a member of the International Indian Treaty Council. She is also a member of the Pit River Tribe in Southern Oregon. Her tribe shares a boundary with the Paiute, whose land has been "occupied again by armed white people," this time white ranchers and cattlemen, she says, claiming "sovereignty" over land that has been inhabited by these tribes for thousands of years.

"It's really laughable that these armed militia have come in and are claiming that they're the original caretakers of the land," she said in an interview on January 20th. "We see it so much within these rural communities. They've really appropriated the language of sovereignty and caretaking. I live in a very rural community where there are a number of cattle ranchers. And they have stated, 'We're the caretakers here. It's our sovereign right to be here. This is our land.'"

To Morningstar and the people she stands for, Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan are not heroes. They have zero claim to the land and present "a direct threat" to the local Native American community. She herself has often felt directly threatened while walking in isolated parts of the countryside.

"It's not a very welcoming atmosphere," said Morningstar, "as I do wear my sweatshirt that says 'Got Land?' on the front, and 'I'm thinking Indian' on the back. And I don't get a very warm response. Confederate flags are very common, the state of Jefferson flags. But these are tribal lands. We've been here since time immemorial. And so when the lands were homesteaded, when they were opened up for cattle ranchers, and for farmers, that wasn't the beginning of U.S. history. We've existed for many thousands of years and so it's very much a concern with the Bundy group and their supporters as well."

Morningstar is deeply troubled by the takeover of the Malheur Refuge area, which she said contains sacred burial grounds of their ancient ancestors, and extensive personal records about the community and its people. She bristles at the claim by the Bundy brothers that they are acting on behalf of everyone in the area, including the Native American tribes. "They are absolutely not acting on behalf of the local tribes within the area," she said unequivocally. "The Paiute have 420 members enrolled, half of whom live on and near the reservation. And so they have essentially taken over the bird refuge. The main concern right now is that there are over 4,000 artifacts. There are maps within the BLM offices. These are maps that are not disclosed to the public, and so we're hearing stories now of the militia members, Bundy's faction, you know, going through personnel files of the staff members there, many of which include tribal members. They have access to this classified material, and to the 4,000 artifacts."

Morningstar added that her concern is not only with the potential damage the armed ranchers might do inside the formal structures of the refuge, but with what they have already done as a result of their driving large herds of cattle over sacred Indian land. "When it comes to sacred place protection, it's definitely an issue, because the cattle are consistently stepping over sacred sites and burials," she said. "They are contaminating our springs, our waterways, our creeks. They're inside the rivers and stream ways. We're having to do a lot of restoration work along the creek ways because we have cattle that are just pushing the soil and dirt into the water."

The affected tribes have reached out directly to law enforcement and to the Feds, but unlike Wounded Knee in 1973, said Morningstar, when the government responded with massive firepower on the same day as the takeover, here the Feds have been slow to act. "The tribe is working directly with BLM and with law enforcement on it," she said, "but they are very slow to respond, and there's irony, of course. When the Wounded Knee takeover took place in 1973, the very same day there was response. There was paramilitary response from the U.S. government. We all know that there were tankers that were brought in. There were air bombings that occurred. And the fact that this takeover has been going on for over three weeks now, and the Feds are taking this 'let's sit back and wait' approach, is very concerning."

The Danns and the Bundys: The Racist Double Standard at Ruby Valley

In the mid-nineties, there was a similar standoff between Native Americans and federal authorities over grazing rights in Nevada. But as Bill Means is quick to point out, in rural Nevada where this played out, the Native Americans were on solid legal grounds and took the Feds to court. "They stood behind the rule of law, as Indian people, when they took action," said Means. "Indian people stood behind the rule of law, and they were violently attacked."
Tens of thousand of protesters in the streets of Haiti and their supporters abroad want U.S. puppet Haiti president, Michel Martelly, out of the country by or before February 7, 2016. The G8 opposition have released a proposition for his exile/removal. This is it. If time permits we'll summarize that also. Matters are developing as I write. Below is the G8 proposition. I am putting it here for now to get a quick link. You all know the Ezili Network website has been taken down by traditional enemies of liberty and the dangerous idiots who want the people's voice silenced. But victory is for the people today. We will not be silenced. (See, New York Times, Jan 24, 2016: Protesters in Haiti Demand That President Quit.)



Haiti lawyers, grassroots organizations, civil society and pro-democracy activists are demanding for US superpower accountability. For the US-EU-UN-OAS to stop supporting and emboldening drug dealers and death squad leaders like Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain, paramilitary groups like FRAPH, Lame Timanchet, the Ninjas and Martelly's legal bandit crew while simultaneously waxing lyrically to the public about urging good governance, non-violence, democracy and justice.



***

Photo of US plane Haitians hope will take U.S. puppet president, Michel Martelly, out of Haiti. But Martelly wants to extend his term.



Copyrighted Image? DMCA





Haiti photo - Wanted DEA fugitive, Guy Philippe, campaigns with handpicked Michel Martelly candidate, Jovenel Moise. But neither the DEA nor the UN can find Philippe!





(Guy Philippe campaigning with Martelly candidate, Jovenel Moise, 2015)

Guy Philippe, the death squad leader, hired by US intelligence to take out the democratically elected Aristide-Neptune government in 2004, is reported to say in a recording, he will go to war with the people and political opposition to stop the Duvalierist-Martelly's immediate resignations.



Philippe's Dominican Republic-launched death squads helped return dictatorship to Haiti. It was returned under an electoral facade.



Today, the Duvalierists' rule, with US occupation behind a UN front, has been in Haiti since 2004. Philippe was campaigning for a Senate seat and for Martelly's replica, Jovenel Moise, to take the presidential office. His authoritarian dreams have gone up in Haiti resistance smoke.



2016 is not 2004. Martelly and Guy Philippe are livid. Say they won't bow to the people's democratic will as expressed through the massive demonstrations and the people clamoring for US imperialism with Martelly and foreign militaries to end. This is a real popular rebellion, not the fake one created by Empire and its media forces back in 2004. Guy Philippe is desperately threatening the use of his bosses' weapons to stop the people's resistance to occupation. These US-supported Haiti government forces are reportedly using the state treasury to sponsor militarized police attacks on the people, to fund violent infiltrators to sabotage the democratic sector demonstrations and to fund violent counter-demonstrations to keep the corrupt Martelly crew in office. (See, The ABCs of Election Violence in Haiti: The Colonial Game is Called "killed the bandits".)



This is the same Guy Philippe, that, in 2007 the DEA attempted to arrest in Haiti for drug dealing and money laundering. In the broadcast, it appears that the death squad leader says he will take over Grand Anse as a separate nation. He won't accept the will of the Haiti people to remove Martelly. This one guy's interference falls right into the hands of the imperialist who already want Haiti Northern, Central and Southern resources and have pushed nearly 129,000 deported Haitians from the Dominican Republic into the border areas for exactly this purpose of division to plunder Haiti riches in the North, the Artibonite and the South. We can't let that happen.



The absolute impunity of the Imperialist and their Haiti minions should not continue. Haiti oil, gold, iridium, are why the United States pushes fake aid, fake elections, dictatorship, chaos and the likes of Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chambain terrorists on the defenseless Haiti majority.



Free Haiti appeals to law abiding U.S. congressional members, to US citizens to use their influence. Demand to know why the DEA and the UN mission in Haiti allow a wanted US fugitive, with a sealed drug and money-laundering indictment in Miami, to freely run for office in elections, paid for, by $30 million U.S. tax-payer dollars?





This is a red alert. Guy Philippe, the US-trained and ISIL-like death squad

leader, is threatening to separate parts of Haiti, wage war to stop the

resistance to dictatorship and imperialism.




Reprinted from Jonathan Cook Blog

Supreme religious body faces growing backlash as critics compare Israel's religious freedoms to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan





Israeli citizens cannot get married in Israel unless an ultra-orthodox rabbi decides if they are .Jewish enough..

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More than one in 10 Israeli Jews cannot marry legally in their own country, Israeli legislators heard last week, as Israel's religious authorities face a growing backlash against their wide-ranging powers.

Campaigners for religious freedom in Israel presented data showing that some 660,000 Israeli Jews were denied the right to marry. More than half -- 364,000 -- are immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose Jewishness is not officially recognized.

According to government figures, Israel's Jewish population stands at about 6.3 million.

The Chief Rabbinate, the supreme religious authority in Israel for the Jewish population, has exclusive control over a range of personal status matters, including conversion, marriage and divorce.

It also restricts opening times for businesses and the operation of public transport on the Sabbath, the Jewish weekend, and its inspectors control food production through the issuing of kosher licences.

Uri Regev, a rabbi who heads Hiddush, an organization promoting religious pluralism that presented the statistics to the parliament, said Israelis were fed up being "shackled" to the Chief Rabbinate.

"The rabbinate's monopoly not only undermines Israelis' religious freedoms but it increasingly makes the general public come to resent, even hate, Judaism," he told Middle East Eye.

The rabbinate represents a strict stream of Judaism known as Orthodoxy. Other, more liberal trends within Judaism have no official standing.

But Regev said the rabbinate has become more extreme, with recent chief rabbis drawn from the fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox movement, or Haredim. They are distinctive for wearing black head-coverings and jackets based on dress codes from 18th century Europe.

Ofer Cornfeld, head of Havaya, an organization that conducts civil marriages in Israel, said: "The Chief Rabbinate is stuck with a worldview from 200 years ago, when being a Jew was simply a religious identity.

"But the reality in Israel today is different. Many Jews here have a very strong secular identity," he told MEE. "The rabbis think they can continue burying their heads in the sand, but they are wrong."

According to a global map of marriage rights produced by Hiddush, Israel's policies are in line with those of states like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and North Korea.

Problems facing those denied the right to marry have grown so acute in recent years that one in five marriages is reported to be conducted abroad, typically in Cyprus or Prague, said Cornfeld.

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This current presidential primary campaign is turning out to be like no other in recent American history. As they watch it unfold the American people must feel like they are a part of the audience at a "three ring circus", i.e., something spectacular, tumultuous, entertaining, and full of confused action; all of which is going on simultaneously.

We hear the ringmaster utter the familiar words, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, let me direct your attention" to the 2016 presidential primaries and the candidates currently taking part. This election, the debates, the candidates, their political ideologies, and the massive infusion of funding from the masters of Corporatism might accurately be described as a three ring circus.

Here is what is happening right now in each of these rings:

In ring #1 we have Trump and Cruz performing to see which one can utter the most venomous, insulting remarks against anyone who doesn't embrace with their views. Trump, the billionaire, with the colossal ego and an attack dog mentality and personality, is still leading the pack in advance of the upcoming New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina primaries. But "The Donald" is getting a bit worried because Cruz is gaining on him, especially in Iowa where Cruz' menacing demeanor seems to have a great appeal to the state's militant right wing evangelicals.

Cruz has, of late, stopped acting as Trump's buddy and has gone on the attack by saying that Trump does not possess the temperament to be president and that "I think the American people are looking for a commander-in-chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe." Contrast that remark about stability and calm with this statement Cruz made recently: Speaking of how he would deal with ISIS he said, "We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion", totally ignoring the fact that carpet bombing includes the mass slaughter of civilians.

Trump didn't hesitate to retaliate with this remark about Cruz: "But he's a nasty guy. Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him." And then he goes so far to say, "He's a total hypocrite." And then Trump challenges his right to be a U.S. president because he was born in Canada and had a Cuban father.

As Trump sees Cruz as a threat he decides to bring in extra reinforcements. We see the brilliant and highly-respected Sarah Palin come onto the scene, fresh from her various failed TV reality shows. Palin promptly delivers a blistering attack on President Obama, while singing the virtues of Trump in her usual shrill, screeching voice and obnoxious manner. Trump might be wise to keep her on a leash if he remembers how she helped to sink John McCain's political ship in the 2008 presidential election.

But who really knows in this strange primary race, Palin's involvement could very well help Trump by adding the support of many Tea Party members and evangelicals to his candidacy and, thereby, assure that he will become the GOP's standard bearer in the presidential election.

In ring #2 there is the panic-stricken GOP leadership, together with Trump's various rival candidates, none of whom trust the man, don't think he is a real conservative and, in fact, is some form of liberal masquerading in Republican clothing to cleverly take control of the party. They wonder how, if Trump would succeed and become president, they would even begin to co-exist because they possess totally different political ideologies. Would Trump try to "liberalize" or move the Republican Party away from the right and closer to the political center? To these true conservatives that would be a fate worse than death.

In ring #3 we see Hillary Clinton moving into an attack mode as she watches the polls indicating that Bernie Sanders has caught up and is passing her in New Hampshire and closing the gap in Iowa and, therefore, she has decided that it's time to put him in his place. So she teams up with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, aka "the big dog", to launch a series of attacks on Bernie and try to take him down before he gains further momentum.

Hillary strongly attacked Sander's proposed single-payer health care system, contending that it is unworkable; also that his foreign policy positions are highly faulted, in particular, on how to fight against the ISIS terrorists. Sanders has not responded in kind by attacking Clinton's positions to any significant degree but that could change in a hurry if she continues to go after him.

These attacks are actually a big gamble for Hillary and Bill since they could very well backfire. But the Clinton team is obviously very worried about Sanders growing popularity and support and the Iowa caucuses are right around the corner. They sense that Sander's calls for a political revolution are beginning to take root and pay off and that is very worrisome.

The Clintons also know that if the investigation into her highly questionable use of her personal computer server indicates a very serious misuse of highly classified government information then the party's all over for her; and Sanders will walk into the nomination. So the stakes could not be higher at this point in time.

Watching as this race unfolds is both fascinating and very troubling. When I look at the overall quality of a great many of these candidate, their less than impressive credentials to become president, and what they say and don't say about America's plethora of unaddressed problems I keep asking the question: shouldn't America, a nation of over 320 million, be able to come up with a far better class of candidates? Aren't we better than this? Or are these candidates actually a reflection of what America has now become?

Yes, on the surface, this primary campaign may resemble a three-ring circus but just below the surface something extraordinary may be happening. We may be witnessing a political revolution in the making. We are seeing both Trump and Sanders using a strategy of tapping into the anger and frustration of the American people. However, they are doing it in distinctly different ways.

Trump's message is one that creates unrest and dissension between various segments of this society; whites, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and others. It is designed to challenge the status quo and is highly critical of Washington's failed political policies and actions. But it is largely negative, not at all constructive, and provides no specific remedies to turn things around. Anyone can rant and rave about America's problems.

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Have you heard about Flint, Michigan's contaminated water, poisoning thousands of residents? Children are sick, their future health is compromised from irreversible lead poisoning and there's been a spike in cases, some fatal, of legionnaires disease. The water pipes of the entire city have been destroyed by corrosion such that they must be replaced.



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How can this happen, you may ask? The answer is destruction of the deliberative processes of democracy at the local level. Too many of Michigan's citizens stayed home on Election Day and there came into power an extremely conservative legislature that sealed their power in place by gerrymandered districts. While cutting taxes for corporations, that legislature enacted a provision allowing the State to take over cities in financial distress, install a financial manager accountable only to the autocratic Governor, and leave elected city officials completely powerless.

Michiganders rightfully hated that law so much that they passed a citizen's initiative to repeal it. However, due to gerrymandered districts, they re-elected the same State legislators who immediately passed the financial manager law again, now with a provision that it couldn't be repealed by the citizens.

Flint lost its auto manufacturing tax base and fell into bankruptcy. Almost half its population is gone. The Governor appointed a financial manager who in April 2014, thinking only of cutting costs, changed the source of Flint's drinking water from the clean waters of Lake Huron to the notoriously contaminated (with automotive waste) Flint River.



As the contamination became evident, State agencies of environmental quality and public health, also under the control of the Governor, failed to act. And the Governor ignored the reports of illness and death for many months. Elected city officials held office in name only and couldn't do a thing to save their own people, though they tried. It took out-of-state researchers and a courageous doctor who treats the children to force the issue.

It gets worse for Flint. Residents now have their contaminated water shut off for not paying the high bills for water they cannot drink. State lawyers cite State sovereignty to block accountability lawsuits.

YOUR tax dollars are paying for bottled water to be delivered to Flint residents by that "intrusive" Federal government so many love to hate, because that "over reaching" President Obama sent the National Guard to directly help the people.

The Michigan Governor asked the President to use funds for natural disasters to rebuild Flint's infrastructure. The President had to refuse. The same old awful Federal government is investigating the failure of Michigan state government to meet drinking water standards. Meanwhile, our US Senators and Representatives (also from gerrymandered districts) are passing bills to roll back surface water quality standards implemented by the EPA.



If you can hardly stand the tediously slow and often contentious battles your local elected officials go through on issues like streets, water, schools and sewage, such that you cannot stand to vote in local elections; if you only vote in years of Presidential elections, if you vote at all, and do not know about or do not care enough to vote for your State and Federal Representatives and Senators"; think of Flint, Michigan.

Similar things are happening now in Texas, a direct result of historically low voter turnout in 2014 and gerrymandered districts. Laws to further suppress the vote have been implemented. Texas has NO provision for citizens' initiative to override an off-the-rails State legislature. Legislation was passed blocking cities from limiting fracking within their boundaries. Texas leads the nation in polluting discharges. Texas State government has refused to properly fund public education, its single highest responsibility. They refuse to expand Medicaid to provide millions with health care. The Texas Governor brags about suing the Federal government, promoted scare propaganda that the President would use military exercises to take over the state, and is now pushing a scheme (fortunately going nowhere) whereby states would override Federal laws. Austerity is being imposed with the blessings of corporate wealth all too content with THEIR low-taxes and OUR low-service economy.

Elections have consequences. We can only survive as families, communities, as a state and a nation, if we become informed on the issues and use that information to vote in local, state and national elections. Millions have died and millions more are struggling now to achieve what so many of us take for granted and ignore, our citizenship right to vote. Your vote is your voice (su vota es su voz).

Use it or lose it!
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

One of the charms of the future is its powerful element of unpredictability, its ability to ambush us in lovely ways or bite us unexpectedly in the ass. Most of the futures I imagined as a boy have, for instance, come up deeply short, or else I would now be flying my individual jet pack through the spired cityscape of New York and vacationing on the moon. And who, honestly, could have imagined the Internet, no less social media and cyberspace (unless, of course, you had read William Gibson's novel Neuromancer 30 years ago)? Who could have dreamed that a single country's intelligence outfits would be able to listen in on or otherwise intercept and review not just the conversations and messages of its own citizens -- imagine the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century -- but those of just about anyone on the planet, from peasants in the backlands of Pakistan to at least 35 leaders of major and minor countries around the world? This is, of course, our dystopian present, based on technological breakthroughs that even sci-fi writers somehow didn't imagine.

And who thought that the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street were coming down the pike or, for that matter, a terror caliphate in the heart of the former Middle East or a Donald Trump presidential run that would go from success to success amid free media coverage the likes of which we've seldom seen? (Small career tip: don't become a seer. It's hell on Earth.)

All of this might be considered the bad but also the good news about the future. On an increasingly grim globe that seems to have failure stamped all over it, the surprises embedded in the years to come, the unexpected course changes, inventions, rebellions, and interventions offer, at least until they arrive, grounds for hope. On the other hand, in that same grim world, there's an aspect of the future that couldn't be more depressing: the repetitiveness of so much that you might think no one would want to repeat. I'm talking about the range of tomorrow's headlines that could be written today and stand a painfully reasonable chance of coming true.

I'm sure you could produce your own version of such future headlines in a variety of areas, but here are mine when it comes to Washington's remarkably unwinnable wars, interventions, and conflicts in the Greater Middle East and increasingly Africa.

What "Victory" Looks Like

Let's start with an event that occurred in Iraq as 2015 ended and generated headlines that included "victory," a word Americans haven't often seen in the twenty-first century -- except, of course, in Trumpian patter. ("We're going to win so much -- win after win after win -- that you're going to be begging me: 'Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We can't stand it any more.' And I'm going to say: 'No way. We're going to keep winning. We're never going to lose. We're never, ever going to lose.'") I'm talking about the "victory" achieved at Ramadi, a city in al-Anbar Province that Islamic State (IS or ISIL) militants seized from the Iraqi army in May 2015. With the backing of the U.S. Air Force -- there were more than 600 American air strikes in and around Ramadi in the months leading up to that victory -- and with U.S.-trained and U.S.-financed local special ops units leading the way, the Iraqi military did indeed largely take back that intricately booby-trapped and mined city from heavily entrenched IS militants in late December. The news was clearly a relief for the Obama administration and those headlines followed.

And here's what victory turned out to look like: according to the Iraqi defense minister, at least 80% of the city of 400,000 was destroyed. Rubblized. Skeletized. "City" may be what it's still called, but it's hardly an accurate description. According to New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard, who visited Ramadi soon after the "victory," few inhabitants remained. Of an Iraqi counterterrorism general there with him, Hubbard wrote:

"In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes. 'Homes?' he said. 'There are no homes.'"

Hubbard also cited the head of the Anbar provincial council as estimating that "rebuilding the city would require $12 billion." (Other Iraqi officials put that figure at $10 billion.) That's money no one has, including an Iraqi government increasingly strapped by plummeting oil prices -- and keep in mind that that's only a single destroyed community. The earlier, smaller victories of the Kurds at Kobane and Sinjar in Syria, also backed by devastating U.S. air power, destroyed those towns in a similar fashion, as for instance has Bashar al-Assad's barrel bombing air force and military in parts of the city of Aleppo and in the now thoroughly devastated city of Homs in central Syria. The Russians have, of course, entered the fray, too, in the American style, bombing and advising.

Let's add one more thing before we write our future headlines. The day after President Obama gave his final State of the Union address, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visited the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Eighteen hundred of that division's members are soon to be deployed to Iraq to aid Iraqi military units in their drive to retake parts of their country from the Islamic State. For those future advisers, Carter elaborated on the president's plans, laying out in some detail how he (and presumably Obama) saw the conflict playing out. Favoring the image of the Islamic State as a metastasizing cancer, he said:

"The ISIL parent tumor has two centers -- Raqqa in Syria, and Mosul in Iraq. ISIL has used its control of these cities and nearby territories as a power base from which to derive considerable financial resources, manpower, and ideological outreach. They constitute ISIL's military, political, economic, and ideological centers of gravity. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL's control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations through other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria."

In fact, such a campaign would give "elimination operations" new meaning, since it would clearly involve quite literally eliminating the urban infrastructure of significant parts of the region. Three cities are, in fact, at present targeted: Fallujah (population perhaps 300,000), the other major IS-controlled city in al-Anbar Province, Mosul (the second largest city in Iraq, with a population presently estimated at 1 to 1.5 million), and Raqqa, the Syrian "capital" of the Islamic State, now reportedly stuffed with refugees (population 200,000-plus). Put them together and you have a 2016 plan for a U.S.-backed set of campaigns in Iraq and Syria based on the same formula as the taking of Ramadi: massive American air power in support of heavily trained and advised Iraqi special ops forces and army units or, in Syria, Kurdish peshmerga outfits and assorted Kurdish and Syrian rebels. Add in the Islamic State's urge to turn the urban areas it holds into giant bombs and what you have is a plan for the rubblization of yet more cities in the region.

There has, of course, been much talk about an offensive to retake Mosul since relatively small numbers of Islamic State fighters captured the city from tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops in June 2014. There was, for instance, a highly touted spring offensive against Mosul that was much discussed in early 2015 but never happened, so it's impossible to be sure that the overstretched, generally underperforming Iraqi military will even make it to Mosul in 2016 or that there will be any non-American "boots" available to take Raqqa, especially since that city sits well outside any imaginable future Kurdistan. Still, assuming all went "well," we essentially know what the future holds: Ramadi-style "victories."

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A friend of mine recently raised a problem with a recent post on my blog ("In Defense of Isis"). My argument, she said, didn't account for ISIS atrocities like the son who shot his mother for "apostasy" while a crowd watched approvingly. Tell me that's not psychopathic, she implied.

Good observation. So let me first elaborate my article's reasoning a bit and then address the question of "apostasy," matricide, and U.S. responsibility for the son's action.

In my posting I had left aside the obvious -- namely, that the United States has only itself to blame for ISIS' coalescence.

Obviously, the group is a direct product of U.S. intervention. It is the result of "our" country's fostering and directly supporting Islamic fundamentalism during the Russian war in Afghanistan. I'm talking about the Taliban and Mujahedeen.

ISIS also grew out of the complete dissolution of the Iraqi army in the wake of the absolutely illegal and criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its recruiting efforts are fueled by the relentless bombing campaign of the United States and its allies (especially Saudi Arabia) and by "America's" (again) illegal extra-judicial drone assassination program which amounts to nothing less than an automated death squad. Recruits join because of Fallujah, Haditha, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the Torture Report, Gaza, and images of U.S. soldiers urinating on corpses and the Holy Koran. Recruitment is inspired by America's efforts to reverse the Arab Spring as it's done so successfully in Egypt.

All of that should be obvious to anyone paying the least attention.

No, my argument was sociological and historical. ISIS, I said, is not simply a 20-30 thousand member gang of pathological killers who "hate our freedom." The organization is much more complicated. It is composed of super-patriots, the unemployed, adventure-seekers, directionless youth -- and yes, of medievalist anti-moderns, mentally ill psychopaths and of those inspired by fanatical Imams misinterpreting Islam's religion of peace.

In other words, mutatis mutandis, ISIS is just like the U.S. armed forces or any other military you care to name. All of them behead, have "chaplains" that motivate them religiously, and commit atrocities. The difference between U.S. forces and ISIS is one of scale with the U.S. easily winning the grim competition for sponsoring and implementing the most atrocious acts.

Instead, I argued that ISIS is the latest embodiment of a 1400 year struggle by inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula to secure Arabia for Arabs. Their efforts took on special urgency after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and the subsequent colonial balkanization of Arabia led by England and France and later insured by the United States.

It's that U.S. insurance and the Arab resistance it evoked that is intimately connected with the son who executed his mother for "apostasy."

First of all, deal with the question of apostasy. Here readers should check out the Atlantic Monthly article published last March. It was called "What ISIS Really Wants," and turned out to be the most read article in the recent history of the magazine. The article pointed out that "apostasy" is really ISIS' term for collaboration. So the son might not have been simply a religious zealot, but a patriot who put "the cause" ahead of his mother's welfare. We don't know.

Secondly, sons kill their mothers all the time -- for many reasons. It's not that unusual; our dictionary even has a word for it. I used it earlier, matricide. In our country, angry, out-of-control sons just shoot their mothers too. Or they stab them or they poison them. Mental illness is often involved. Sometimes the mothers are just too controlling. We don't know what was going on with the Muslim son in question. In any case, he chose to take advantage of community hatred for collaborators with a U.S. supported regime.

And that brings me to my most important point here. It's simply this: people in feudal, pre-modern, undemocratic societies ruled by anachronistic unelected monarchs act accordingly. Before the Enlightenment and during feudal times, good European (and American!) Christians burned witches and apostates at the stake. They fought holy wars (the Crusades) against infidels and to recover religious sites they considered especially holy. (And I'm sure angry sons, daughters, husbands and wives motivated by their faith turned over family members to authorities for torture and execution.)

Bottom Line: if you support a feudal order you shouldn't be surprised if a lot of people end up acting like pre-modern medievalists or like Christians in Salem.

The cure for all of that is democracy and education. And that's exactly what the United States and its allies have been thwarting in Arabia since 1918. The country needs to stop supporting medieval potentates and their feudal order. In effect, we should be dropping schools and hospitals on ISIS rather than bombs.
The passage of a major U.N. Security Council resolution is like a cheap high: the euphoria wears off pretty quickly. Such was last month's unanimous adoption of a "peace plan" to end nearly five years of Syrian bloodshed.

With Monday's start date for a planned ceasefire and the launch of negotiations already put off , it's looking increasingly unlikely that the talks will start any time soon. The major obstacle is deciding who will represent the opposition across the table from the government. And that hinges on the question of who is a terrorist in Syria. It doesn't help that world governments have failed since the League of Nations to agree on a treaty legally defining terrorism.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva on Wednesday and the two were unable to decide who the Syrian terrorists are that should be excluded from the negotiations.

They agree on the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda) who have already been eliminated from participation. But what about the myriad other opposition groups? A hundred of them were melded together by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh last November. But they want Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down immediately. That's a complete non-starter as the U.N. plan would allow him to stay on for six months making way for a transitional government until a new constitution is written and a general election held in 2017. Kerry has been blasted by neoconservatives for agreeing to this compromise and for allowing Assad to run again in that election.

The U.S. compromised after being spurred on by the refugee crisis and Russia's entry into the war on the Islamic State. But there is so far little compromise on the question of terrorism.

Putin's Challenge

Moscow and Washington's disagreement goes back to the beginning of the Syrian civil war, as I reported more than three years ago. In September, President Vladimir Putin went a step further in accusing the U.S. of supporting terrorists in Syria in his address to the U.N. General Assembly. "The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere," Putin said. "It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes." He said it was irresponsible "to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them."

He made it clear he was speaking of the U.S., when he added: "I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you've done? But I'm afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity."

Putin did not mention clear evidence he was certainly aware of from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. An August 2012 DIA document declassified by a judge says that Washington, Ankara, and the Gulf States were helping to establish a Salafist principality in eastern Syria to pressure Assad that could team up with extremists on the Iraqi side of the border to form an Islamic State--the document uses that exact phrase. Then DIA chief Gen. Mike Flynn later told Al Jazeera that this was a "willful decision in Washington," not the U.S. merely turning a blind eye to what was happening.

The U.S. has long supported unsavory groups to reach short-term U.S. interests. Washington argues it is vetting what groups it supports, but even the Daily Beast has called this into question, reporting that CIA-backed rebels fight in tandem with al-Qaeda.

In his speech Putin called for a coalition similar to the Soviet-US alliance in the Second World War to fight the most fearsome terrorist force in history. He argued that Syria's military is the only effective ground force (along with the Kurds) against the Islamic State and that all nations who really want to defeat it should work with Assad's army and fight the groups trying to overthrow him. "Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind," Putin said.

Russia tabled a draft resolution at the Security Council that would have authorized such a grand coalition. The U.S. flatly rejected it because it still plots Assad's overthrow with groups Russia says as terrorists. It wasn't a surprise then that two days after Putin spoke Russia's first airstrike was against a CIA-backed group threatening the Assad government. It was a strong message from Moscow to Washington: if you keep supporting extremists in Syria we will strike them.

The U.S., and its corporate media, accused Russia of hitting "moderate" groups instead of the Islamic State (which Russia has repeatedly). They leveled the tired charge that Putin is trying to reestablish the Soviet Empire and takeover the Middle East from the U.S.: a duplicitous case of projecting imperial designs onto another. Perhaps Russia really is worried about terrorism spreading from Syria and really wants to do something to stop it.

Defining Terrorism

Having an international agreement legally defining terrorism would be useful in this circumstance, but coming up with one codified in a treaty has long bedeviled governments. The League of Nations tried and failed . A month after 9/11 the U.N. General Assembly met to agree on an international convention against terrorism, but failed because it couldn't agree on defining terrorism.

Terrorism is only a tactic. But governments seem to conflate it with a cause. It's okay when their side uses it, but not when their enemy does. This has spawned the cliche, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

If you can objectively isolate the tactic from the cause, an agreed definition may be possible. It would be along the lines of terrorism is an act of violence carried out by non-state actors, targeting civilians for any cause, whether just or not.

The cause of the Palestinians under occupation is just, for instance, but blowing up Israeli civilians in a bus is terrorism. The cause of the Islamic State, as an occupying force, is clearly unjust, and it commits terrorism when it targets civilians. The target is essential to the definition. A non-state actor, even the IS, attacking military targets is using guerilla tactics not terrorism. Some groups, like IS, use both.

The lack of a definition has helped states to continue sponsoring terrorism, though they do not directly commit acts of terrorism themselves, as many people contend. States commit war crimes, which is worse. Only non-state actors employ terrorism, which is not under the jurisdiction of the war-crimes International Criminal Court and could only in some instances be considered a war crime.

Without a common understanding of what terrorism is and objectively identifying which groups are committing it, it is difficult to imagine agreement between Moscow and Washington to get the Syrian talks started without some extremely deft diplomatic maneuvering. That may still happen.

Without out it there is no prospect in sight of an end to the Syrian war until one side wins it.


Ted Trump or Donald Cruz

(Image by DonkeyHotey) Details DMCA



We can begin with Trump as a flagrant piece of a much bigger picture.

Consider what it means that the British parliament lately debated the question of whether Donald Trump should be banned from Great Britain. Britain-- perhaps the United States' greatest friend, our "special relationship" for the better part of a century. And Donald Trump-- the front-runner of one of America's two major political parties.

That such a debate would occur sends an inescapable message: Something has gone seriously wrong with the Republican Party.

How should we understand what's gone wrong?

That Trump is the frontrunner tells us we must look past Trump as an individual, for if he weren't getting massive support from the Republican base, his candidacy -- however distasteful -- would be of no importance.

The support Trump gets from the base demonstrates that he is expressing what they feel and how they think. So, in excavating what's gone wrong, the next level down lies in the thoughts and feelings of the base.

Trump's basic message is, "Let's beat our enemies." And they applaud his belligerence because they feel besieged and filled with rage. That Trump's pronouncements are detached from reality reflects that this base doesn't think hard to distinguish what's true from what's false, or what makes sense from what's nonsense.

But the answer can't stop at the base. The question, "How did the base get that way?" takes us to a bigger picture in which many of the components of the political right play a major role.

We can go back to Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich who demonized "librels" and taught that defeating "enemies" -- and not finding ways of working together to achieve a common purpose -- is what the political drama is all about.



We can go back to the emergence of Fox News and the rise of the GW Bush presidency, both of which cultivated fear in their followers, and worked assiduously to detach their followers from reality. With phony issues like "the war against Christmas" -- right-wing media taught their people to perceive the world as filled with forces hostile to their basic values. With the denial of climate change, they rendered even scientific knowledge impotent to challenge a political orthodoxy based on lies.

We can look to the continuous Republican effort to stir up resentments and fears directed against undocumented immigrants -- even while the influx of such people stopped and even reversed -- and to inflame old racial hostilities by peddling an image of President Obama as a Kenya-born "food stamp president."

We can look to the Republicans in Congress whose across-the-board obstructionism led their followers to care only about the struggle for dominance, and not about achieving results to improve the nation.

So if Trump is a mirror of the base, and the base has been shaped over decades by a whole network of forces comprising the political right, what's gone wrong in the Republican Party is something much larger and deeper than the man our best friends have found so offensive to basic values of democratic civilization.

It is bigger not just because almost the entire rest of the Republican field has vied with each other to tap into the same rage and resentment and fear and lack of constructive orientation as Trump. And not just because the other candidate now seriously in the running -- Ted Cruz -- is a man (disliked, it seems, by most everyone he works with) who has shown no loyalty to anything but his own quest for power.



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A former Midland area resident is bringing his new film to his former high school next week.

Road to Revelation will be shown in the Bullock Creek Auditorium on Saturday, Jan. 30. Show time is 7:30 p.m., and doors open at 6:45 p.m. Tickets are $10. The auditorium is located at 1420 S. Badour Road in Midland.

Paul Cochran, of Lincoln Park, wrote the script for the movie that hopes to retell the biblical story of Job. Job, a man in the Old Testament, was subjected to severe hardships, like the death of his entire family, his livestock and the loss of all of his possessions. Throughout the ordeal, his faith in God never wavered, although he questioned his circumstances. At the end, he was rewarded for his strength. But instead of Job, Cochrans version involves a police officer whose faith is tested through tragedy in his life and family.

He (God) took everything away from Job, but he never lost his faith, Cochran said, his voice deep and booming.

Cochran is a man of many talents, and he wants to use those gifts to help create faith-based and family friendly films. For his day job, he is a sergeant with the Lincoln Park Police Department. He is approaching his 25th year with the department.

I still work the street but mostly I work as a shift commander, Cochran said. He said he supervises a patrol unit of six to seven officers.

If that wasnt enough, he also is a preacher and likes to make music. He even tried out for the Denver Broncos in the early 1990s.

Now Cochran can add screenwriter, sound track writer and performer, as well as director credits to his resume.

It was a lot of work but it was fun, he said.

Cochran said the story has been a labor of love he has been working on for years.

I had originally wanted to write a story book, he said, but the tale evolved, and finally came to life in the form of a screenplay.

The Bullock Creek grad and Ferris State University alum said he has always had a heart for preaching and music ministry in particular, but law enforcement called to him early on.

My dad was a cop in Midland for 23 years, he said. His name was Bill Cochran.

A Lincoln Park resident, Cochran serves as an associate pastor at Heritage Park Church of God in Taylor.

Ive had my (pastoral) credentials for six years, he said.

His church created its own production company, and hired his friend, Bill Butler, to work for them. Butler holds the main directors credit for the Road to Revelation. Butler also is a musician, and along with long-time friend Cochran, the two created 10 of the 11 songs on the films sound track.

Although Cochran did some directing, he said Butler was the main director. Cochran is quick to point the spotlight, or rather movie camera, at others in the project.

Im an instigator. Thats the way I look at it, he said. Bill directed and I assisted. We are good collaborators. But Bill is a photographer, so he has a better vision for the camera.

For actors and crew, Cochran and his team enlisted friends from his church and other area churches, as well as co-workers from his police department.

Like a lot of professionals who see their work portrayed in film, Cochran knows when something is accurate or fake when it comes to police portrayals in the movies.

That drives me nuts, he said laughing. So we did our best to make the cop stuff as accurate as possible. He said a scene that involves a police dog tracking a subject, as well as officers clearing a room of potential dangers, was written and filmed in an attempt to make it as close to actual police procedures as possible.

We worked with the actors to make things as realistic as possible, he said. I hope that shows.

As for some of the props, Cochran and his production team were fortunate enough to get some help from some people in the business  the law enforcement business.

We used some people from our department, and the city (Lincoln Park Police Department) were very good about us using their patrol cars, he said. They were very supportive.

So, does Cochran make an appearance in his own film?

We do an Alfred Hitchcock in the film, he said, laughing. Cochran referred to the legendary directors cameos in many of his classic films, whether it be sitting quietly in the background or walking by during a scene. Cochran and Butler can be seen sitting in a background during one scene.

It was fun, but I am not an actor, he said.

Cochran said the film has had one showing so far down state, but he is excited to bring the movie back to the Midland area for friends and family to see.

I get to go to Midland and show this movie to people up there and see if it can help anybody up there, Cochran said.

As for the premiere, Cochran said everyone was surprised at how well the film did.

We did a showing down here in November, he said. We sold out. We turned people away.

So how did the movie do?

We didnt have one bad comment about the film, he said, laughing.

And Cochran said there was another audience the faith-based film managed to impress.

A lot of non-church members enjoyed the film, too, Cochran added.

The policeman, preacher, musician and filmmaker said that this is a good time for people to embrace faith-based films.

It is about understanding the times we are living in, Cochran said. We have to tell people the truth and we cant water it down. God tells us to do things one way.

Cochran said he is already working on a second film, but things may get a bit darker in terms of story.

It will still be a Christian film, but I am going to push the envelope a bit, is all he would say.

As for the future, Cochran said he is open to life outside of law enforcement and has hopes as to where he may end up, but he added that it is not up to him.

I am waiting for God to open a church. But it is all in where God leads me, he said.

For advanced tickets, as well as information on buying a DVD of Road to Revelation as well as the soundtrack, contact Cochran at rosie615@wowway.com.
A 44-year-old Lansing man was apprehended Sunday after a pursuit including one round fired at law enforcement officials on U.S. 127, Mount Pleasant Police report.

About 11 a.m., officers responded to a be-on-the-lookout report of a vehicle headed north on U.S. 127 and driving erratically. The suspect exited at Pickard Street.
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam -- Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III and wife, Betty, visited Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to thank Airmen and discuss the importance of their mission in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

During an all call, Welsh spoke about Air Force matters and shared personal stories about himself and his service.

Im really proud to be an Airman and am really proud of the Airman I grew up with  my dad, Welsh said. He is just one of many who made the Air Force such a huge success story. It is not because of airplanes or technology, but because of [the Airmen]. Every now and then take a step back and pat yourself on the back.

Welsh also discussed budget changes, future of benefits, readiness and the modernization of the force.

Im not worried about the last 50 years; Im worried about the next 50 years. Hanging on to things that made us great will not make us great in the future, Welsh said. We have got to modernize  Air Forces that do not stay in front of technology fail.

Welsh assured the Airmen in attendance he continuously fights for their best interests. As the budget and benefits are being worked and discussed by Congress, the chief of staff constantly works to defend Airmen and their ability to complete the mission.

When the nation calls, we send you, and if you are not ready to go, we have an issue, Welsh said. We will continue to fund training, education and professional development, so that you are ready, willing and able to do your jobs.

After the all call, Welsh opened the floor to questions, and spoke about helping Airmen and morale, by doing what he can to alleviate long hours and ensure a healthy work-life balance.

He emphasized how important everyone is to the fight and how it is impossible to fly, fight and win without Airmen.

Airmen here live in a place that proves geography matters, Welsh said. Thank you for the way you represent the Air Force, the way you serve our nation and the way you take care of each other and your families. Never forget how critically important each and every one of you are to the mission.
WASHINGTON, January 23, 2016  China as a rising power is a major factor in Asia and the South China Sea thats welcomed by the United States in almost every way, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday.

The secretary spoke in the forums global security panel with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore.

While Carter said he does not believe conflict between the United States and China is inevitable, he added, Its certainly not desirable. I don't think it's likely.

More Nations on the Rise

China's rise is not the only one going on in Asia, he said, noting that India and Japan also are rising military powers, while other nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines also are expanding.

The U.S. point of view is the same one we've had long-standing, which is we welcome that, Carter said. I think we were the pivotal factor in making [an environment] in which over seven decades essentially everybody could follow their own destiny towards prosperity.

Carter said the United States has never tried to obstruct China's economic rise and the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

We've welcomed that, he added.

At the same time, the United States wants the region to maintain a system of peace and stability, the secretary said. We are not separate, we are not dividing the region, [and] we don't seek to ask people to take sides, he told the forum audience. We do know people are coming to us increasingly,  because China is taking some steps that I think are self-isolating [and] driving people toward us.

U.S. Firmly Against Claims, Outposts

The United States has said nations in the Asia-Pacific region should not militarize, Carter said. To be clear, he added, China is not the only one making claims we do not agree with, and they are not the only ones [with] military outposts. We oppose all of that.

The United States will continue on the same path its taken in the Asia-Pacific region, the secretary said.

We will fly, sail, operate everywhere international law permits in the South China Sea, [and] we will make investments that are intended to sustain our military position, despite these developments, Carter said.

The United States helps countries in the region who seek assistance with maritime security, he said, adding that U.S. alliances are continuing to strengthen with nations that include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, India and Vietnam.

Dialogue is Key With China

It's not our preferred course to see self-isolating behavior by China, and yes, dialogue is the way  [toward] good results, Carter said.

I look forward to working with all my colleagues in the region, including the Chinese, to get an outcome that's win-win-win-win for everybody, he said. That's what we've always stood for. Everybody rises. That's our philosophy.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand and the United States will co-host the annual, multilateral Exercise Cobra Gold in various areas throughout the Kingdom of Thailand Feb. 9-19, 2016.

Exercise Cobra Gold, one of the largest multilateral exercises in the Asia-Pacific region, has taken place annually for more than 30 years. Cobra Gold 2016, the 35th version of the military exercise, will bring together more than two dozen nations to address regional and global security challenges and to promote international cooperation and stability within the region.

This year, Cobra Gold will strengthen regional cooperation and collaboration, increasing the ability of participating nations to work together on complex multilateral operations such as counter-piracy and the delivery of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

The exercise will improve the capabilities of participating nations to plan and conduct combined, joint operations; build relationships across the region; and improve interoperability across a wide range of security activities. This years Cobra Gold will consist of three primary events: a command post exercise, which includes a senior leader seminar; humanitarian civic assistance projects in Thai communities; and a field training exercise that will build regional relationships.

For more information, photos, and stories about the Cobra Gold exercise, including past iterations, please visit the official Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ExerciseCobraGold.

Additional information regarding major exercise events open to the media will be made available the first week of February.
Coco Austin's most recent photo of her with baby Chanel might be her most revealing to date. The actress and model uploaded a snap on her Instagram account, which shows her breastfeeding her and rapper Ice-T's 2-month old daughter. However, not long after, the photo was taken down.

According to the Daily Mail, the image, which would some say, leaves little to the imagination, was captioned, "Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do in when feeding time comes up..oh,the trials and tribulations!" The new mom continued to say that she wishes to begin a trend and also took to Twitter to call on moms to share pictures of the crazy things they do for their little babies.

I think us mom's should post pics of the wild stuff we do for our little ones ...(the crazy world of momhood) #trendstarter #MomsLife  Coco (@cocosworld) January 22, 2016

Chanel, Coco's first child with her husband of 14 years, Ice-T, was born in November of last year. Coco has since shared multiple baby pictures and never shied away from talking about breastfeeding.

Just this month, she tweeted about how she has "mastered the art of breastfeeding," boasting that she can vacuum or curl her hair while doing so. She said, "I got skills!" along with the hashtags, #HiddenTalents and #StrongBiceps.

Though Coco took down her breastfeeding photo, which can still be seen on In Touch Weekly, she now joins the increasing number of female celebrities who have shared their own breastfeeding pictures on social media. These celebrities, along with other women, intend to normalize the act of feeding their babies in public.

One Instagram user appreciated Coco's photo and thanked her for "normalizing breastfeeding!" as reported by E! Online. Another person also told Coco to tag talk show host Wendy Williams, who, in early January, had a heated conversation with "Mistresses" star Alyssa Milano, a breastfeeding advocate.

Williams candidly told Milano about not needing to see a mom breastfeeding in public. Milano, however, drew cheers and applause from the crowd when she closed the show and said that had she brought her baby, she would feed him right on her show.
The long-running "Days of Our Lives" show has given viewers high drama episodes for the past few years and everyone is loving it! Now, "Days of Our Lives" will bring more drama for their end of the month episodes. In a teaser trailer released, it shows some riveting instances and revelations. So, what's the deal in Salem this week?

According to the trailer, it seems like Andre (Thaao Penghlis) pieces together some important components on Stefano's disappearance and that Andre is attempting to convince Chad (Billy Flynn) that Hope (Kristian Alfonso) murdered Stefano (Joseph Mascolo), their father. However, Chad has his doubts on Andre and is torn between believing him or not. Andre, on the other hand, has found proof he needed after checking out an abandoned warehouse Rafe (Galen Gering) passed by a couple of times.

While Philip (John-Paul Lavoisier) goes behind his father's back Victor (John Aniston) by working together with Deimos (Vincent Irizarry), Philip wants out on the business but Deimos says there is no turning back. Victor also didn't like the fact that Philip brought Belle (Martha Madison) on his business trip to Vegas.

Jennifer (Melissa Reeves), on the other hand, is struggling with her pain from the accident and many of the characters in Salem will come together for Daniel's (Shawn Christian) funeral coming this week. Eric (Greg Vaughan), who was blamed for the accident and the death of Daniel, will stay away from the funeral and will pay tribute to Daniel in his own way.

Hope is ready to leave Salem after what happened, together with Ciara (Vivian Jovanni) and Chase (Jonathon McClendon). Belle is trying to be won over by Shawn (Brandon Beemer). Chase will reveal something to Ciara after having a few drinks, could it be that he will finally tell her his feelings?

It's going to be drama, drama, drama in Salem this upcoming week. "Days of Our Lives" airs on NBC Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. EST.
Pets, especially dogs, often times like to play with small objects. However, there might be high risks that they tend to swallow these foreign objects accidentally. This poses a major health hazard for your pets.

According to Globe Newswire, the La Concepcion Animal Hospital is now providing a minimally invasive endoscopy for pets that have swallowed foreign objects or some things that have stuck in their esophagus or throat.

"We are pleased to now have on-hand technology that extracts foreign objects in a minimally invasive manner. Our system is a less intrusive alternative to surgery for pets that have swallowed foreign objects. It is safe and less stressful on the animals' physical health than surgery. We are grateful to be able to bring relief with this technology," Dr. Joseph Dalo Jr., a veterinarian from the said hospital, explained.

The professionals at La Concepcion Animal Hospital are committed to providing optimum healthcare for your pets whether they swallow foreign or toxic objects. Restoring the well-being of your pets in such cases, they are also experts in treating pets that are diagnosed with certain conditions.

La Concepcion Animal Hospital serves the community of Goleta, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Santa Maria areas. It is located at 7126 Hollister Avenue, Goleta in California.

The UF Small Animal Hospital, College of Veterinary Medicine defines endoscopy as the used of specific video cameras to assess the areas inside the body in a minimally invasive manner. It can also be used for therapeutic purposes or also known as the interventional endoscopy, which involves utilizing the endoscopy equipment to do therapeutic procedures in any part of the body.

Some of these procedures are the Foreign Body Retrieval, Feeding Tube Placement, Balloon Dilation of Strictures, and the Bladder Polyp Removal or Stone Retrieval. These procedures are executed after giving anesthesia once the evaluations of patients are done.

Warning: This video contains graphic and disturbing images that may be upsetting to some people.
Former BBC presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, has sparked outrage after he discussed his point of views about gender identity on his latest column for The Sunday Times. The 55-year-old didn't back down and was said to accuse the parents of trans children that they were "poisoning the minds" of their kids by "indulging their whims."

Clarkson, who was sacked by BBC last year after he disputed with a producer, said that parents of the trans children were living a "lunatic life" and "they must not be allowed to poison the mind of a child." He then pointed out that children who are experiencing gender crisis at the early age must not be taken seriously by their parents.

"You don't actually take them seriously. You don't take them to a hospital when they're 10 and say, "He wants to be a girl, so can you lop his todger off?" the activist wrote.

He also took the opportunity to talk about the nine male prisoners in the Isle of Wight. Clarkson said they are just groups of people pretending to be trans so they will be transferred to a women's prison and said it's "every man's dream."

After Clarkson ranted over the gender issues, many netizens fired back at him, accusing him of being "disgusting" and "offensive." Some even tagged him as someone who is "desperate" and just using the issue to gain the spotlight while others think that he's the male version of Katie Hopkins. More so, other netizens believe that a lawsuit should be filed against him.

This is not the first time the gender community faced major criticisms. Just earlier this month, social media was also flooded with adverse response after the 81-year-old, Australian comedian, Barry Humphries, who said that people who underwent a transplant are "mutilated men" and that Caitlyn Jenner is nothing but a merely "publicity-seeking ratbag."

After Humpries' drunken remarks, many people, including BBC star Rebecca Root, expressed their anger through social media and asked for the actor's termination from his BBC series. The station, however, refused to do so.
Oral sex can dramatically increase the risk of head and neck cancers, a new study has declared. While the disease has been traditionally known to affect smokers and heavy drinkers later in life, oral sex has been linked to the common human papillomavirus (HPV).

The study also revealed that oral sex has been the main way cervical cancer has ended up in the mouth. HPV typically affects the skin and moist membrane that line the body, including the anus, cervix, mouth and throat. While the disease will not directly trigger cancers, it can cause changes in the cells that it has infected which can then become cancerous.

HPV-16 is the most popular cause of oropharyngeal tumor, which affects the middle part of the throat, including the soft palate, tongue and tonsils. It is the 11th most common cancer as half a million patients are diagnosed with it in a year.

The new study is the first to conclusively show that HPV-16's presence in the mouth can lead to the development of oropharyngeal cancer. The study was published in the journal JAMA Oncology and was carried out at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, as cited by the Daily Mail

"It's already established that the HPV is linked to some types of mouth and throat cancer and this research adds an important part to that evidence," Dr. Jana Witt, Cancer Research UK's health information officer said.

In the United Kingdom, the HPV vaccine is routinely given to adolescent girls because it is known that nearly all cervical cancers are HPV-related. The vaccine also protects them from vulvar, vaginal, anal and oral cancer.

Adolescent boys are not routinely given the HPV vaccine in the UK because they do not need to be protected against cervical cancer. Men who have sex with men, however, may have an increased risk of anal cancer, which is linked to the HPV infection.

As the HPV vaccine reduces the number of cases of women infected with HPV, the disease will be less common in the general population and will, therefore, affect fewer women and men. This demonstration already happened in Australia where cases of people with genital wars drastically fell after four years since the start of the campaign.

Oral sex can be made safer by using a condom on a man's penis, according to NHS. The condom will act as a barrier between the mouth and the sexual organ.
A small town in Spain celebrates its annual festival, not with lights and sounds, but by throwing turnips at a masked figure on the street. The "Jarramplas" is a two-day festival in Piornal, Spain held during Saint Sebastian Day.

Every Jan. 19-20, Piornal's streets are filled with hundreds of people, each holding a turnip to throw at the masked "Jarramplas," a figure resembling the evil one. People pelt him with turnips from the moment he comes out of the church, beating the drum.

In a report by Yahoo News, a resident of the town would volunteer each year to play the role of "Jarramplas." This year, 30-year old Armando Valencia got the opportunity to become the masked "Jarramplas."

He wore thick colorful swatches of protective clothing and a horned mask to resemble the evil creature. He was then chased down the street while people continuously threw turnips at him.

Bloomberg mentioned that the "Jarramplas" is being punished by the townspeople and must endure the punishment until he can no longer bear it. The festival is a symbol of purging everything bad from the little town.

Local farmers would supply a total of 18 tons of turnips that will be used for the festival. This does not include the ingredients that will be utilized for the food to be prepared during the two-day celebration.

A similar type of fiesta in Valencia, Spain is also celebrated yearly. In the "La Tomatina" Festival, instead of turnips, residents throw tomatoes. Farmers had to prepare approximately 240,000 pounds of mostly red and ripe tomatoes, which the people will be throwing to celebrate the fiesta.

Other notable fiestas celebrated in Spain include the San Sebastian Drum Festival celebrated in San Sebastian, Basque Country and the Fiesta de Moros y Cristianos which is celebrated in Alicante Valencia.
Doctor Who is so much more than the title of a British science-fiction show. It is a loaded question that has spanned the history of the series. Decades after the time traveling alien known as The Doctor and his TARDIS made their debut, the answer to the oldest question in the Whoniverse is still up for debate. What is The Doctors name? And whats morewho is he? Is he a cape-less superhero who makes split-second, tough decisions to save millions? Is he a toxic antihero who forges a path of ruin across time and space? Perhaps he is nothing more than an evergreen and enigmatic lunatic wandering about in a stolen spaceship.

The Doctors real name may always be a mystery to the Doctor Who fandom, but his persona is much easier to decode. Over the past 10 years of the modern series, several Doctor Who characters have given perfect descriptions of Gallifreys rebellious child. Here are 10 quotes that tell us everything we need to know about The Doctor.

After Roses chance encounter with the mysterious Doctor, she did what any normal human would do after meeting a weirdo: a good old-fashioned Internet search. The Doctor Who? question led her to the home of a Doctor scholar named Clive Finch. Clive was no stranger to The Doctors travels and he gave Rose (and the new Whovians) a CliffsNotes summary about The Doctor. In short, this is the man to call when evil threatens the past, present, or future. But in the midst of him waging war against injustice, his battles often include many casualties and martyrs. Poor Clive met Death before he met Nine, but his quote continues to live on as a haunting reminder of what happens when The Doctor makes a house call.

Traveling with The Doctor seems like a sweet gig. But, as Martha knows, being a member of a TARDIS team can be an emotional rollercoaster. Martha offered this bit of advice to Donna Noble (AKA her successor) as a fair warning about the dark side of being a companion. For all companions (and wannabe sidekicks), The Doctors pure energy and intelligence is addictive, but becoming too wrapped up in The Doctor never ends well.

This schoolboy gets an A++ for his plea to the human version of The Doctor, John Smith. When it was time for John Smith to return to being The Doctor so he could save the world, Timothys compelling description of the Time Lord hit the bullseye. The quote paints a portrait of a classic troubled mana perfect storm of rage, wisdom, passion and painyet it is a reminder that he is NOT an ordinary man. The Doctor is immortal and damn near omnipotent with experiences and knowledge beyond human comprehension. He holds the power of time and the hearts of millions in the palms of his hands.

By the end of season one, Rose Tyler went from an unfulfilling life as a clothing shop worker stuck in the daily grind, to a young woman blazing across time with The Doctor. Rose was living a dream filled with adventure and danger. But, she discovered something even better than the experience of seeing foreign planets and days from the distant past. As she sat in a London restaurant with her mom and boyfriend Mickey (while The Doctor fought for his life millions of years in the future), she knew she had to take action. Rose defended her decision to help The Doctor by explaining how he helped her tap into her own power as a person. Her time with The Doctor introduced her to the concept of living fearlessly as an agent of change. Fully aware of her mortality, Rose knew she couldnt do everything, but it was her responsibility to try and make a difference.

No one knows The Doctor as well as his enemies. The sinister scientist known as Davros and his infamous Daleks have been fighting a never-ending battle against The Doctor for thousands of years. So its no surprise that Davros knows the right words to hit The Doctor right in the feels. During this particular battle, the Tenth Doctors companions banned together to help him save the universe. As they were all united in one room with The Doctor, Davros took note of how companions change as they travel in the TARDIS. Martha went from a bubbly young medical student, to a UNIT badass, dressed in all black and ready to destroy a planet. Roses time with Torchwood hardened her personality, and she eventually started rocking a leather jacket and packing heat. Even skittish Mickey Smith went from a kitten to a lion, after helping destroy the Cybermen on parallel Earth. The Doctors influence is so strong that he brings out both the best and the worst in his comrades.

If The Doctors enemies know him best, then River Songs knowledge of The Doctor comes in second place. His wife and intermittent companion showed up at Demons Run when the Eleventh Doctor was quite busy saving Amy, witnessing the death of allies and devising a plan to recover baby Melody from Madame Kovarian. When The Doctor lashed out at her for not helping him, she reminded him that the whole thing is actually his fault, because of his infamous reputation across the stars. Yes, he started out as a wayward traveler in a blue box, but over time he has stepped a bit too far from his heroic roots, and moved toward being a feared man who scares others into destruction.

Amy Pond may have waited 14 years to see The Doctor again after he crash-landed into her backyard, but she seemed to get a pretty good grip on his personality. After hanging out with him for one day and watching him run the Atraxi off by simply telling him to run, Amy realized this alien man may be a little more than a kooky dude with a magical machine. But, instead of giving her a valiant Im The Doctor speech, Eleven agreed with her and told her she must understand that he is indeed a madman with a box. Only a crazy man jabbers on in technobabble, takes bananas to parties, and dances around the console of his spaceship. This may be the simplest statement about him, but it is 100% true.





After Jackson Lake had the memories of The Doctor infused into his mind through an infostamp, he found himself face to face with the Tenth Doctor as they confronted each other. Jacksons description of The Doctor is completely legit because he actually believed he was The Doctor. There may be a lot of Time Lords, Gallifreyans and aliens in the universe, but there is only one Doctor and he is arguably the best of them all.

Donna Noble got way more than she bargained for on her wedding day. After dematerializing while walking down the aisle, being drawn into the TARDIS, and finding out her fiance was working for a giant evil spider, she was understandably too freaked out to hop on board the TARDIS when Ten asked her to come with him. But before she went home, she asked him to find someone to keep him from going too far. On the surface, it seems like he really doesnt need anyoneafter all, hes a geniusbut companions are much more than an audience waiting to bask in his awesomeness. Companions are there to provide balance by reminding him to be empathetic, showing him different ways to love and keeping him from wreaking irreversible damage.

As the Eleventh Doctor died from old age, Clara Oswald gave this valiant speech to convince the Time Lords to save The Doctor. The Impossible Girls speech must have struck a major nerve, because he was granted a new regeneration cycle and allowed to make his transition to his next incarnation. Claras answer to Doctor Who? is perhaps the best answer of all. He is The Doctor, he is loved. And nothing else matters.
I feel, as they say in therapy, that I need to unpack my feelings about Edith.

Two weeks ago, Im ranting about how Im on #TeamMrsDrewe and then last week Im rooting for Edith to find true love (with someone who isnt married, dead or super old).

Why is it that I root for Edith, the perennial sad sack? I realized it comes down to the fact that Im more anti-Mary than I am pro-Edith. Exchanges like this one help explain why: After Mary tells Edith she thinks its a good idea that Edith is hiring a woman editor for her magazine, Aunt Rosamund compliments Mary on being nice to Edith. And what does Mary say? A monkey will type out the bible if you leave it long enough. Mary can just be so downright nasty. So, no matter what awful things Edith does, I still root for her to succeed over Mary.

That being said, Mary was in fine form during this episode, rushing Anna to her doctor and saving her pregnancy. Mr. Bates finally knows the truththat Anna is pregnant and the pair, who are usually so steeped in their own misery, actually seemed genuinely happy. Will the show let that last? I certainly think theyve been put through enough at this point.

Matthew Goode finally showed up to romance Mary (Its about time. The only reason I tolerated him not being on The Good Wife is because I knew he would show up here.) Henry Talbot and Mary exchange witty and flirty repartee.

The show does seem to be going through a checklist of things to wrap up before it signs off. Gwen Dawson, the maid Sybil helped get a secretary job way back in season one, returns. Shes now married to a man whose treasurer of a charitable organization. Shes moved up in the world and none of the Crawleys recognize her. But Thomas outs Gwen and gets admonished by Robert. Gwen recalls how much Sybil helped her, telling the Crawleys, Her kindness changed my life. It was a lovely moment and a nice way for the show to remember the still-missed character.

The drama also returned to the whole business of Baxters previous bad relationship which landed her in jail. It seems that the louse who conned Baxter is conning other women and ruining them. Sergeant Willis (who definitely gets around) asks Baxter to testify against him. Shes reluctant, but Mr. Mosely is insistent that she should do this and Baxter eventually comes around.

Daisy, as hot-headed as ever, gets her wish and Mr. Mason gets the Drewe farm. Its against Marys wishes, but the whole family votes on it while Mary is away helping Anna. Im really curious to see where the show leaves Daisy. She certainly hasnt matured that much during her time at Downton.

Elsewhere, Robert is still having his indigestion issues so Im officially worried (seriously it seems like the most obvious foreshadowing ever). Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes return from their honeymoon and, to everyones great relief, say they would prefer to go on being called Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes at work. Meanwhile, the fight over the hospital continuesand frankly its beyond repetitive. But it is giving Violet some wonderful lines. When Violets friend wonders how she can present herself as an expert when she doesnt know all the facts, Violet responds, That never stopped me.

Other thoughts on Season Six, Episode Four:

I think Im going to miss Violet and Isobel most of all. When the entire family descends to the servants quarters to celebrate the return of Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, Violet says, I havent been into the kitchen for at least 20 years. Do you have your passport? Isobel responds.

Now that Toms back, I wonder if the show is going to give him a story line, or if hes just going to smile and talk about how happy he is to be home for the remaining episodes.

What other storylines do you want wrapped up before the end? What else has the show left lingering? I still would like more closure on Mr. Gregson (beginning to accept the fact that hes probably not secretly still alive).



Amy Amatangelo is a Boston-based freelance writer, a member of the Television Critics Association and a regular contributor to Paste. She wasnt allowed to watch much TV as a child and now her parents have to live with this as her career. You can follow her on Twitter or her blog.
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Prominent Iranian cleric arrested for role in attack on Saudi embassy

01/25/16

Source: Radio Zamaneh

Hassan Kurdmihan, an Iranian cleric, preacher and director of religious institutions in Tehran and Karaj, has been arrested by Iranian authorities for guiding the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.





Hassan Kurdmihan



ILNA reports that according to Mohammadreza Mohseni Sani, a member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Affairs Commission, Kurdmihan was involved in the attack on the Saudi embassy.

Kurdmihan had been in Syria and, according to Mohseni Sani, he was arrested upon his return to Iran.

Kurdmihan is linked to Ansar Hezbollah and is often referred to as the "young preacher" who established several religious committees in Tehran neighbourhoods.

Mohseni Sani said a number of institutions have supported Kurdmihan but he refused to name any particular office.

The spokesman for the judiciary also announced today that an arrest was made in connection with the attack on the Saudi embassy.

The judiciary added that 100 people have been arrested so far in connection with the attacks on Saudi diplomatic buildings and some have been released.
SEPARATING FACTS FROM FICTION: Truths, Myths, and Outright Lies

01/25/16 By

The P5+1/Iran nuclear agreement is a done deal and sanctions against Iran are lifting, much to the chagrin of the war parties here and the Wahhabis there.

Significantly though, Israeli regimes objection to the agreement is a calculated strategy for blackmail and extortion against its old patron and benefactor, the United States. As expected, the Israeli PM, Netanyahu, has already begun his well-choreographed routine of We need more, give us more, or well screw it up for you!

Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party presidential candidate suggests a guarded degree of rapprochement toward Iran, while his rival, the more likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, flat-out opposes this idea! Why?

Ten American Marines on two small military crafts end up in Irans territorial waters and are detained by the Iranian Navy overnight and returned to their boats within hours on the night before President Obamas State of the Union Address. The Republican presidential hopefuls, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, refer to the incident as an example of unlawful Iranian aggression! Why?

Five or six prisoners with dual Iranian/American nationalities are released in exchange for six or seven Iranian and dual nationals held in American prisons. Most media pundits here refer to those who were held in Iran, not as prisoners, but as hostages accused of trumped up charges. The hardliners here call this exchange outrageous and disgraceful! Why?

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama takes pride in the monumental achievement of reaching the nuclear agreement with Iran, which he said would prevent or delay Iran from developing the capability of making atomic weapons. He chose his words carefully, he did not say preventing Iran from making the bomb, which would have implied that the Iranians had the intention of doing so clandestinely! Why?

These days it is the news of Iran testing its ballistic missiles (not intercontinental in range, by any means) that is the subject of outrage in the US Congress. They seem outraged that Iran dares to strengthen its defensive arsenal against continuous threats by both the warmongers here and the ill-wishers surrounding it?! Why?

Finally, why is such a large majority of our Congressional representatives, and every Republican presidential hopeful, opposed to what they claim is giving Iran something like a 100 to 150 billion dollars, which they all believe will be, at least partially, used to support Irans terrorist proxies?

Lets find some answers to these Whys:

Why did Hillary Clinton reject any suggestion to welcome an opening with Iran? Well, she is already showing signs of alarm as her lead over Mr. Sanders is shrinking in some circles. Sanders is a liberal-minded socialist democrat, with some of whose views I do happen to agree. But he is fully aware that his candidacy is simply serving as a vehicle to awaken the public to the corruption of the political system under the prevailing predatory capitalism that has plagued the country. Had he been seriously after the job of the President of the United States, he would never have offered his views, such as the merits of a rapprochement with Iran, so fearlessly and frankly; but under the current circumstances hes got nothing to lose by voicing his views.

Hillary, on the other hand, is a consummate politician, she says what she knows will get her the support she must have in her campaign. Under the prevailing political atmosphere presenting any position that might appear conciliatory toward Iran, the pariah state, would play in the hands of her warmongering Republican rivals and even rob her of the voting publics support. It matters not what Mrs. Clinton truly believes in private, what matters is winning the upcoming elections; and she would never risk that.

Regarding the ten American Marines lost at sea, what is so shocking that, with all the open expressions of hostility against Iran, they were not welcomed with open arms when they showed up uninvited in Iranian territorial waters (not in the open seas or international waters) near a very strategic Iranian naval base?! No, they were not forced to kneel down at gun point or humiliated in any way as our brave, patriotic campaigners portray; they were treated with accepted standard military protocol, and quite respectfully; and were released just in time to avoid yet another, perhaps even well-planned, politically motivated scandal.

So why do the likes of Cruz and Rubio portray the incident as an example of Iranian aggression? Well, both, along with a majority of the members of the US Congress, are bought and paid for and, therefore, beholden to the powerful special interest lobbies. Rubio is in his political adolescence. He might even truly believe in what he says and feel that exaggerations and hyperbolae would make him more appealing to his handlers and enhance his chances in his future political career. Cruz is not as innocently ignorant; he is a shrewd, scheming charlatan who is trying to appeal to a fear-driven bovine public. He is not a stupid man, but he must be thinking of the public he tries to reach as stupid. I remember Mr. Cruz openly fantasizing about the possibility of Iran launching a missile from the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey shorelines and detonate some electro-magnetic device over the East Coast that would disrupt the nations communications systems! He was addressing a crowd of supporters that he must have regarded as no more than impressionable, unsophisticated, elementary school children. Is Mr. Cruz, or Donald Trump, for that matter, making the right assumptions?!

Now, about the exchange of prisoners:

There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners, tens of thousands visiting or resident dual citizens, and literally many hundreds of American tourists or businessmen in Iran, and the numbers are increasing; and thanks to our media barrage, Jason Rezaian was perhaps the highest profile one among them. He was held on charges of collecting information that the Iranian version of our Homeland Security considered classified; information such as the identity of Iranians who might have been involved in activities that violated the sanctions regimes imposed by the United States against Iran.

Whether the national security regulations in Iran, or right here in the United States, are overly draconian or subject to abuse remain a bona fide issue to address. But similar charges could be brought against American Homeland Security regulations that allow for the arrest and imprisonment of people who violate our laws and regulations, laws against activities such as attempting to send to Iran items which might potentially have both civilian and military applications, which might include materials with the chosen flavor of the day as the authorities see fit!

Other cases were not that different. One man, a former US Marine, who under the Iranian law is considered a citizen of that country regardless his dual citizenship status, had served in the military of a foreign regime hostile toward Iran. What would we do here in the United States if a US citizen joins Al Qaeda or ISIS and returns home to America? So the issue here is whether his serving in the military of another country should have automatically revoked his Iranian citizenship, as would be the law here. Of course we do make exceptions here; the Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, had served with the Israeli Air Force! But we all know that Israel is just different; dont we!

Why did the United States under Mr. Obamas presidency finally begin steps to mend fences with Iran? Was it really the honest concern over Irans atomic energy programs which, if not dealt with, would have posed a real threat to the safety and security of the region and ultimately to the West? Hardly.

Every country that has nuclear power plants also has the capacity to gain the knowledge and technology of developing nuclear weapons if it so choses. Having the will to actually pursue the production of atomic bombs is another matter. Both the American and the Israeli intelligence agencies have been in agreement that Iran has not been after producing an atomic bomb, at least in the past twelve years, and highly questionable even before 2003. However, Iranian ambitions to develop nuclear weapons has been a myth that the Israelis have successfully sold the American people as a horrible reality, which first and foremost, presents an existential threat to Americas dear friend and ally, the Jewish state. The public has bought into that nonsense without a second thought as to why would Iran use such a weapon against a trigger-happy state that possesses a large nuclear arsenal and is protected by the might of the United States, and risk an assured total devastation.

The truth is that the animosity between the United States and the Islamic Republic that has been sustained for far too long owes it longevity to the political powerhouses that continue to thrive on this mutually counterproductive entanglement. The problem is that the public mindset here has become so polluted against the Islamic Republic of Iran for such a long time now, which would require a proportionately long period to recover even through the most constructive dialogue between the two governments.

Clearly, if Irans most powerful center of authority, Ayatollah Khamenehi, had not been agreeable to resolving the nuclear issue, the P5+1/Iran negotiations would not have taken place. And, similarly, the Obama Administration must also have felt that continued hostility toward the Iranian regime was not serving Americas best interests. Mr. Obama had to wait until half-way through his second and final term in office to challenge the Congressional establishment and the press for resolving the issues that had prevented any conciliatory rapprochement with Iran. Both the White House and the various rightwing-dominated House and Senate Committees dealing with foreign affairs were fully aware of the politics of pressure and coercion, principally by the Zionist camps, against any deal with Iran.

Mr. Obama simply had to cloak his approach in such a way that it would appear to the American public as the best way to prevent the rogue state of Iran from attempting to even learn how to make a nuclear bomb, in exchange for lifting the crippling economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. He couldnt very well say, and the American public would never have believed, that years of bowing under the Zionist yoke to pressure Iran into submission and the abandonment of its revolutionary zeal for independence was not serving Americas best geopolitical and economic interests. Neither Mr. Obama, nor his replacement as the next President, whoever it might be, would or could ever openly declare that not only has Israel not been a trusted friend and ally of the United States, our relation with Israel has always been that of a parasite and the host. While Israel has been a bottomless hole sapping Americas money and undue sympathy, and giving in return nothing other than disastrous, costly involvements in that region by dragging the United States into the mayhem and quagmires that it has been creating to serve Israels own aggressive purposes, Iran as the largest potential economic and trading power has been effectively equated out of consideration for decades. But even hinting at this reality would be catastrophic for the political futures of anyone in American politics.

So, we should not be surprised that President Obama, or his likely replacement, Hillary Clinton, so often sound hawkish when referring to Iran and use tough, deceptive language that appeals to the general public and appeases the hardliners in the Administration.

We have a similar situation in Iran. The Iranian leadership is also understandably concerned with the established mindset among the lay people or public opinion. The Supreme Leader cannot possibly turn around and proclaim to the general public that he might be sensing a change away from hostility and toward moderation in Americas policies toward the Islamic Republic. He also has to deal with the Iranian Parliament with its many hardliners who, just like their counterparts here in the United States, take pride in their bullheaded opposition to any rapprochement between the two countries.

In Iran, however, overcoming this obstacle is not as difficult as it is in the United States. The Iranian educated, liberal-minded white-collar professional class, even the younger generation, is much more inclined toward an opening to the West, provided it is under mutual respect and equal terms. The general population that is simply too preoccupied with daily chores and lack the interest or the time to devote to international affairs or politics is, however, dedicated strongly enough to the ethos of the Islamic Revolution to follow the proclamations and mandates of the Supreme Leader. Therefore, any opening with the United States that does not violate Irans security, independence and legitimate national interests would be welcomed by Iran.

The process of normalization of relations between the United States and Iran will not be as easily managed as it is within the Iranian society. We do not have a charismatic Supreme Leader here who could sell an idea, no matter how logical and advantageous, to a long-indoctrinated public. The process will be long and arduous and in stages. President Obama has taken the first steps along that path; but whether his vision will be carried on after he leaves office remains to be seen.

Next topic is the concern, even the alarm, about Irans ballistic missile tests that seem to agitate so many of the members of Congress, the presidential candidates and the news media. Missiles, ballistic or guided, are part of any countrys defensive arsenal. All military experts seem to agree that the Iranian armed forces need to modernize in equipment and technique to meet the nations defensive needs in todays hostile environment. One of the most effective deterrent weapon systems in the absence of adequate numbers of fighter and bomber aircrafts is the unmanned airborne drones and ballistic missiles. Irans ballistic missiles do not have and do not need long-range capabilities beyond a couple of thousand miles to worry our Congressional fearmongers!

Finally, the very deliberately and maliciously propagated story about the 100 to 150 billion dollars that might be given to Iran as part of the G5+1/Iran nuclear agreement is being repeated by our concerned politicians who believe, or want us to believe, that the Obama Administration has capitulated and granted way too much to the Iranian regime.

In reality, only a tiny fraction of that money was being held by the United States. The rest is money, in the form of accounts receivable, owed to Iran for the purchase of oil, etc. by other countries who, under pressure and coercion by the United States and through the UN Security Council had withheld those payments, pending the implementation of the nuclear agreement. So, we are not talking about American taxpayers moneys that we are concerned about, it is Irans own money that must be repatriated, with interest.

And about the prospects of Iran funding its terrorist proxies with that money; well, who are we do decide who is a terrorist, a state supporter of terrorism or a terrorist state?

Please allow me to get into this subject in another article.





About the author:

Kam Zarrabi is the author of In Zarathushtra's Shadow and Necessary Illusion.He has conducted lectures and seminars on international affairs, particularly in relation to Iran, with focus on US/Iran issues. Zarrabi's latest book is Iran, Back in Context.










Iran's President Travels To Europe To Drum Up Business

01/25/16

Source: RFE/RL

Iranian President Hassan Rohani has arrived in Rome on the first leg of a European tour, his first trip abroad since a nuclear deal with world powers took effect. Rohani is being accompanied by Iranian entrepreneurs as well as the oil and gas minister and other government officials during the five-day visit to Rome and Paris.



Iranian President Hassan Rohani (left) is welcomed by Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale presidential palace in Rome on January 25.

(source:

Iranian President Hassan Rohani (left) is welcomed by Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale presidential palace in Rome on January 25.(source: Islamic Republic News Agency

The Islamic republic is emerging from international isolation after the easing of economic sanctions on January 16 under a deal between Tehran and global powers to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The move opens the door for Tehran to reach deals with companies in Europe and Asia.

"This is a very important visit," an Iranian official was quoted as saying. "It's time to turn the page and open the door to cooperation between our countries in different areas."

"Trust needs to be built. It's like love. It is only the proof of love that counts," a French diplomat said.





Joint meeting of Iranian and Italian Presidents and their some of their cabinet members in Rome on January 25. (photo by



Joint meeting of Iranian and Italian Presidents and their some of their cabinet members in Rome on January 25. (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency

In the Italian capital on January 25, the Iranian president is scheduled to hold talks with his Italian counterpart, Sergio Mattarella, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

He will also speak to a business group and meet Pope Francis during the visit.

On January 28, Rohani will travel to Paris for talks with President Francois Hollande.

Ahead of the trip, Iranian officials said Tehran planned to buy 114 aircraft from the French-based Airbus consortium.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoondi told journalists on January 24 that Tehran would discuss details with Airbus this week.

Tehran has long said it will need to revamp an aging fleet, hit by a shortage of parts.

During a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran on January 23, Rohani said Iran and China agreed to expand bilateral relations and boost trade to $600 billion over the next 10 years.

The sides signed 17 documents and letters of intent, including on nuclear cooperation and reviving the ancient Silk Road trade route.

The Iranian president has said Iran needs up to $50 billion a year in foreign investment to meet its economic growth target of 8 percent.

With reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg

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
Facebook Tweak Could Evade Chinese, Iranian Censors

01/25/16 Source: VOA

Many Facebook users in China and Iran may be able to access the world's largest social network on their smartphones without fear of surveillance, thanks to a software adjustment that links them to an "anonymizer" that hides their location and identity.

Facebook's app for smartphones that use the Android system has the new feature. It links Facebook to the Tor Project, which allows users to circumvent censorship and effectively shield their privacy.

Tor software is free, maintained by volunteer privacy advocates. Facebook users with Android phones can install a mobile Tor app called Orbot, tap a button in the Facebook app and be automatically connected to Facebook through the Tor network.

Apple's iPhones, which use a different operating system, cannot link to Tor, and no counterpart to the Android app is expected.

Facebook says the "tweak" to its app was not designed with China and Iran in mind. Since much of Facebook's growth - there are currently 1.4 billion users worldwide - is occurring outside the United States, industry analysts see the "anonymizer" feature as a tool to expand the social network's audience even further, especially among cellphone users.

"It's really about making the experience better for people who are already connecting to Facebook over Tor," Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Ensign told CNN television.

A spokeswoman for the Tor Project echoed those sentiments, emphasizing the importance of privacy.

"Everybody in the world needs more privacy online and almost everybody is on Facebook, Tor's Kate Krauss said in an interview with Reuters. "This will allow people to choose whether to share their location or not. For some people, this is convenience. For others it is lifesaving."

Tor originally was created by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees as a way to protect secret data sent over the Internet. As the service has grown it has been criticized by some for complicating the work of U.S. intelligence agencies that extensively monitor Internet traffic.

Using Tor is no guarantee of free access for Facebook users in China, Iran or other relatively closed societies. The Chinese government, for example, has long been engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Tor and other privacy advocates looking for new ways to get past the so-called Great Firewall of China.

A technology industry analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, sees the latest development primarily as a way to increase Facebook's "share" of cellphone users worldwide.

"They want to make sure they get everyone in the world connected to Facebook, and this is the only way they'll get people to do it," Hall told CNN.
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
Every modern Windows installation comes with free antivirus protection from Microsoft built in. We've never advised users to rely on the built-in Windows Defenderthe best third-party antivirus applications are significantly more effective. Even the antivirus testing labs treat Microsoft as a baseline, rather than as a competitor. Lately, though, Microsoft has been faring better and better in tests, which puts the pressure on other vendors to match or beat the baseline.

Just a few years ago, Microsoft routinely tanked third-party tests, sometimes earning a below-zero score. Microsoft's own security experts argued that their telemetry shows the product really works, and therefore they don't need independent tests to validate its efficacy. Even so, current events suggest that perhaps the Microsoft team is now working to score big both in their own telemetry and in independent tests.

Testing Methods

AV-Test Institute(Opens in a new window) is one of the labs that treats Microsoft's test results as a baseline. They don't come out and say this, but if a product doesn't beat the baseline, it's not doing very well.

The test in question rates products on protection, performance, and usability, with six points possible in each area. To pass the test, a product need only attain a total score of 10 points, with a non-zero score in each of the three categories. It's been a while since any product failed to reach that minimal level of success.

In last November's report, Microsoft scored 14.0 points. Of the 20 tested products, 14 scored better than that baseline. Avira, Bitdefender(29.99 3 devices / 1 year  50% off at Bitdefender)(Opens in a new window), Kaspersky, and Norton managed a perfect 18 point score.

ThreatTrack Vipre and Chinese antivirus Quick Heal didn't beat the baseline, though. Comodo, G Data, and K7 scored the same as Microsoft, no better.

Raising the Bar

In the latest results report(Opens in a new window) from AV-Test, things look quite different. Microsoft scored a very decent 15.5 of 18 possible points. This time only 9 of the 20 products beat the baseline. Avira, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky stayed at the top, with 18 points, but Norton dropped to 17.

Vipre and Quick Heal also stayed the samebelow the baseline. They're joined by AhnLab, Comodo, ESET($27.99/Year at ESET)(Opens in a new window), and Panda($19.99 at Panda Security)(Opens in a new window). Four others merely matched the baseline, F-Secure, G Data, K7, and MicroWorld eScan.

So, antivirus vendors, you're on notice. Microsoft is raising the bar. This current success and other triumphs like a AAA rating from Dennis Labs mean that third-party antivirus products must up their game, or be left in that dismal spot below the baseline.

Image (modified) courtesy of Flickr User Alexander Mueller(Opens in a new window).
Facebook is opening its first data center in Ireland.

Located near Dublin, in Clonee, County Meath, the new high-tech venue will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, thanks to infrastructure designed and built as part of the industry-wide Open Compute Program.

"This will help us reach our goal of powering 50 percent of our infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018," Facebook's Tom Furlong wrote in a blog post(Opens in a new window).

"Ireland has been our international headquarters since 2009, and our new Clonee data center will continue Facebook's significant investment in the country and in Europe," Furlong said. It "will become part of the infrastructure that enables billions of people to connect with the people and things they care about on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and more."

Facebook's first European data center, in Lulea, Sweden, went live in 2013.

The news comes three months after the invalidation of a U.S.-EU "safe harbor" data transfer deal. Set up 15 years ago to help companies conduct business, the deal ensured that 4,000-plus European and American tech and non-tech businesses would treat data moving between countries with the same privacy protections as inside the region. But it came under fire following the mass surveillance revelations in the Snowden documents.

In November, the European Commission said it intends to wrap up discussions on a new deal within three months.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is donating some serious cash to take on malaria.

Over the next five years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the U.K.'s overseas aid budget, will donate about $4.2 billion to help researchers combat malaria, Gates and British chancellor George Osborne announced(Opens in a new window) today.

"When it comes to human tragedy, no creature comes close to the devastation caused by the mosquito," Gates and Osborne wrote in an op-ed(Opens in a new window) in The Times on Monday. "It transmits diseases that claim more than 700,000 lives a year. The worst of these is malaria. A billion people are infected with malaria parasites and it kills a child every minute."

According to the World Health Organization, malaria caused the deaths of nearly 500,000 people in 2015, and the majority of those individuals were children. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says 3.8 billion people live in areas where malaria can affect the population, though the majority of deaths occur in Africa, where access to reliable healthcare is often difficult to find.

The Gates Foundation, which has been working at combating malaria for the last several months, is part of a broader philanthropic effort led by Gates and his wife Melinda. Together, their foundation battles a wide range of illnesses and issues around the world, including HIV, clean water, and more. Last week, Gates said he would donate $100 million to fight malnutrition in Nigeria.

According to Gates and Osborne, the money will be dispersed to researchers over a five-year period. Those researchers will work on insecticides to kill mosquitoes that could infect people with malaria.
The Samsung Galaxy S7 is the worst kept secret in the mobile world.

A flood of rumors has been flowing in, and now, new images reportedly show the long-rumored device and its components.

GSM Arena on Saturday published(Opens in a new window) images of what appears to be manufacturing parts for the Samsung Galaxy S7. The first is a board of cameras marked with the SM-G930F name, which is believed to be the one used by Samsung for the Galaxy S7. The second image shows a developer version of the Galaxy S7 cloaked in a rig to disguise its exact design.

Rumors about Samsung's Galaxy S7 plans have been circulating for months. Just last week, PhoneArena published(Opens in a new window) benchmarks for a Samsung handset with the same SM-G930F codename. That benchmark mentioned that the smartphone features a 5.1-inch screen with a resolution of 2,560 by 1,440, as well as a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and 4GB of onboard RAM. It was running Samsung's Exynos 8890 processor.

Prior to that, rumors said that Samsung would launch three versions of the Galaxy S7, including one with a bevel around the screen, and two models with screens that extend to the edge. Samsung is believed to be launching the U.S. model with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, but there has been some debate over whether it'll feature a 12-megapixel or 20-megapixel camera.

All signs as of this writing point to a release at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona towards the end of February.
Microsofts Cortana virtual assistant is digging deeper into users email accounts in hopes of creating more useful reminders.

With the latest Windows 10 Insider build, Cortana will scan for commitments that users make via email, and then offer to create a reminder. For instance, emailing Ill get you this report by the end of the day to your boss will create a reminder card in Cortanas main menu.

As The Verge points out, this reminder process isnt completely automated. Users will still have to click a button in Cortanas menu to set the reminder, so they wont be unnecessarily pestered by reminders they didnt intend to create. And because the email scanning happens locally on the device, Microsoft wont store any email data unless users click the set reminder button. Users can also disable the feature entirely if they dont want email-based reminder cards to appear.

Beyond email reminders, Cortana is also getting a bit more proactive with calendar appointments. Users will get an alert if someone sends a last-minute meeting request, or if a request falls outside of the users typical meeting times. The idea is that users can quickly reschedule or adjust their routines in response to these requests.

Email reminders are launching today in the United States for Windows 10 Insiders, and the new calendar alerts are available in the United States and United Kingdom. The new features should roll out to all Windows 10 users soon, but Microsoft is still figuring out how to bring them to Cortana on iOS and Android.

Why this matters: Microsoft says its goal with Cortana is to mimic a real-life personal assistant, and says these new features are just the beginning. Compared to Google Now and Apples Siriboth of which have ramped up their own proactive features in recent monthsthe focus for Microsoft seems to be more on productivity. That focus could help Cortana stand out as Microsoft expands its virtual assistant beyond Windows devices.
If secretive new hardware from the big dogs in PC graphics gets your mouth watering, the VRLA virtual reality event in Los Angeles was the place to be this weekend. Both Nvidia and AMD were at the event, showing off unreleased VR-related gear to attendees.

The most surprising appearance came from Nvidia, which whipped out a more refined prototype of the Light Field Display prototype headset that was first revealed at Siggraph 2015 in August with an almost View Master-esque design. The version revealed at VRLA looks much more appealing.

A user goes eyes-on with our Light Field Display prototype at @vrlosangeles. #VRLA pic.twitter.com/fbt4LWbw37  NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) January 24, 2016

Sadly, that single tweet from the GeForce account is the only publicly available information about the new Light Field Display prototype. When pinged for comment this weekend, Nvidia representative Bryan Del Rizzo would only say the following:

What we showed at VRLA is a research prototype built in collaboration with Stanford University to explore how future lightfield technologies can improve the VR experience. Nvidia regularly conducts research on future technologies to help the industry find solutions to tough visual computing challenges. The prototype was first shown at Siggraph 2015, and based on interest from the industry, we showed it again at VRLA. We arent disclosing any additional information at this time.

Bummer.

Dual-Fiji strikes again

The most powerful graphics card AMDs ever created put in an appearance of its own at VRLA. A Radeon graphics card built around not one, but two high-bandwidth memory-powered Fiji GPUs was supposed to be released last year, but AMD pushed back its launch to coincide with the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive sometime around March/April. (Driving a VR headsets dual displays is a natural use case for a dual-GPU graphics card.) The beast nevertheless made an appearance at VRLA to drive various VR experiences from inside one of Falcon Northwests diminutive Tiki PCs.

While Nvidia made a point of pushing its Light Field Display prototype in front of a camera, AMDs forthcoming GPU never once appeared in the wild. With its launch presumably looming later this quarter, however, dont expect dual-Fiji to stay hidden for much longer.
For years, Jewish students have reported being harassed and intimidated on University of California campuses. Fortunately, at a recent meeting, the UC Board of Regents finally acknowledged this problem and formed a committee to address bigotry. It is imperative that this committee focus on bigotry against Jews and on educating the UC community about how anti-Semitism is being expressed today.

Much of the anti-Semitism we see on campus today is not legitimate political discourse. It is vicious anti-Israel rhetoric that crosses the line into anti-Semitism and feels threatening and intimidating to many Jewish students. The threat to Jewish students does not exist on just one UC campus. The problem is endemic throughout the system.

When swastikas appear on a Jewish fraternity house, thats clearly anti-Semitic. When the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine group invites a speaker to campus who likens the Arab-Israeli conflict to the systematic genocide of 6 million Jews in extermination camps during the Holocaust, that is a comparison also rooted deeply in anti-Semitism.

How can you compare the Jews, who were victims of the Nazis, to Nazis themselves?

This kind of hateful rhetoric is deeply offensive, and it is having a harmful impact on students. Jewish students are fearful to show their support for Israel on campus, to wear Star of David necklaces and even to wear a kippah, the skullcap worn by observant Jewish males.

The UC leadership must start educating the campus community about anti-Semitism and how it can be expressed. There is a useful tool available to the UC Regents in identifying anti-Semitism: The U.S. State Department has done an excellent job defining anti-Semitism and identifying its contemporary manifestations.

The State Department recognizes that, while not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, some anti-Israelism crosses the line into anti-Semitism. When Israel is demonized by comparing it to the Third Reich, when double standards are applied to Israel by requiring of the Jewish State a behavior not demanded of any other country, and when Israel is delegitimized by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and the right of Israel to exist, these are ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself with regard to Israel.

Of course, the pope, President Obama, and the British and French prime ministers all agree. All have recently stated that denying Israels right to exist and calling for Israels destruction is anti-Semitism.

Some of the most vocal opponents to the State Department definition of anti-Semitism contend that adopting the definition would stifle free speech. Nothing could be further from the truth. Adopting a university-wide definition would lead to a better understanding of anti-Semitism, which is the first step to addressing the problem.

Significantly, some of the opponents to the State Department definition also are the perpetrators and enablers of the very behavior on campus that falls within the State Departments definition.

The SJP, for example, has interrupted Jewish and pro-Israel events. The SJP has also tried to shut down pro-Israel voices in influential positions; at UCLA, the SJP tried to force student government candidates to sign a pledge that they would not go to Israel with Jewish organizations.

Those who are engaging in or enabling the harassment of Jewish students on the UC campuses cannot be the ones who define what anti-Semitism is. That would be akin to allowing the KKK to define racism.

The UC Regents must exercise leadership by educating the UC community about the many strands of anti-Semitism, in the same way that the UC system has educated the community about other forms of discrimination based on race, gender and sexual orientation. In addition, Jewish students must be afforded the same protections from harassment and discrimination that other targeted groups receive.

Leore Ben-David is the West Coast campus coordinator for the Zionist Organization of America.
Justice may be one of the casualties of San Bernardinos bankruptcy. As things currently stand, the citys plans for recovery involve shorting those owed settlements in excessive force lawsuits, possibly giving plaintiffs just 1 percent of what they were supposed to receive.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal told the story of Terry Wayne Jackson, who died March 1, 2009, after San Bernardino police officers scuffled with him. A taser was used on Mr. Jackson, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and under the influence of drugs at the time, either two or three times. In 2011, his mother filed a lawsuit and was promised $686,000. But it now appears that she may only receive $6,860.

Attorneys for Jacksons mother and others owed money by the city in cases involving use of force by city police argued in court documents filed in December that the city entered into settlements fraudulently and in bad faith. The filing notes that the settlements were made at a time when the city knew that its finances could never fund these settlements, and that the city is now trying to ditch the debts for which it had represented it would pay.

That certainly appears to be the case. In 2012, an attempt by attorney Dale Galipo to collect money owed to the families of three men killed by police, including Jackson, prompted the city to file its bankruptcy early in order to avoid having to pay the settlements. Years later, the city has yet to right these wrongs, as though the passage of time would undo its obligations.

While we understand the citys bleak financial position, profound pain and suffering nevertheless has resulted from the actions of the officers. [T]he claimants and decedents are and were individuals whose lives have been forever changed by the actions of employees of the debtor that were either determined to be violations of their civil rights or settlement where it was obvious that liability was clear, the attorneys objection notes.

For victims to be shorted because of the mismanagement and irresponsibility that led to bankruptcy is morally reprehensible. Whether this has any chance of being corrected isnt clear, as city officials failed to respond to repeated requests for comment.
It was in the predawn hours on Friday, shortly after the 5 a.m. head count, when three inmates charged with violent crimes made their bold escape, Sheriffs officials confirmed Sunday.

By Monday morning its likely Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong had been on the loose for 72 hours.

Local and federal officials were still searching Monday across Southern California in hopes of finding the men considered to be armed and very dangerous, sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

Theres no information to indicate theyve left Southern California, Hallock said.

UPDATE:

Inland jailers tell how they stay a step ahead of inmates

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

Tips coming in, but very dangerous inmates still on the loose Sunday

Inmates rappelled from roof to escape Orange County jail

Authorities at this point are relying heavily on community tips and vilgalence to help them find the suspected criminals.

An interpreter was expected to help with a 10 a.m. statement to the Vietnamese community, or areas densely populated by that demographic, since Duong  who does not speak English  and Tieu are both Vietnamese.

They may be ingrained in that community, Hallock said.

The trios jail break is forcing sheriffs officials to re-evaluate jailhouse security, which also has been questioned by county watchdogs in recent years.

The trios breakout  which may have taken weeks or months to plan  has forced sheriffs officials to re-evaluate jailhouse security, which also has been questioned by county watchdogs in recent years.

The Orange County grand jury in its yearly reports on the state of the jails has criticized what it described as inadequate video equipment. In the 2015 report, grand jurors noted that upgrades had been delayed due to a lack of financial resources.

A year ago, the Sheriffs Department informed the grand jury that it had a five-year, $10 million plan to install 1,500 to 2,000 new cameras at local jails.

Officials did not immediately know how many cameras are currently operating within the Orange County Jail, Hallock said Monday.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, in a written response to the grand jury in August, indicated that her department was slated to receive about $2 million a year from the county for the new cameras. However, the sheriff warned, that depended on continued funding.

Sheriffs department officials did not comment about whether the surveillance upgrades were installed yet.

The 2015 report echoed the grand jurys concerns over jail video surveillance in previous years.

Sheriffs officials on Sunday released a blurry video that they believe shows an escapee preparing to rappel down from the roof of the jail. He was inadvertently captured on a camera designated to record activity in a nearby recreation area, said Orange County Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock.

Also Sunday, the U.S. Marshals Service kicked in $30,000 for information leading to the re-arrest of the escapees, adding to the $20,000 reward already offered by the FBI.

Tieus mother and sister appeared on ABC7 Sunday night and said he had not contacted them. Despite the murder charges against Tieu, his family members said they didnt think he could hurt anyone.

I feel like he was manipulated or tricked into doing this, his sister, Tiffany Tieu, tearfully told reporter Greg Lee, urging her brother to Turn yourself in. Dont let this drag on.

Hutchens, calling the escapees very dangerous, warned the public they could be armed. Neither she nor other law enforcement officials would specify the cities in which they are focusing their search.

Weve gotten a number of what I would call very good tips that have got us on the right track, Hutchens said at a news conference. As far as actual sightings of the individuals, we have not received any information.

In addition to the video, the Sheriffs Department on Sunday released photos showing a cut screen in a holding tank and a makeshift rope left behind by the inmates.

The three men were housed in a jail mod shared with 65 other inmates, all of whom are suspected of carrying out violent crimes.

The trio cut through half-inch steel bars, forced their way into a plumbing tunnel and got onto an unsecured part of the jailhouse roof, Hallock said. The inmates then used an improvised rope made of bedsheets to get around barbed wire and rappel four stories to the ground.

It took nearly 16 hours on Friday for officials to learn the men were missing, and an additional three hours to confirm they escaped.

It appears to be a very sophisticated operation, where they were allowed to go through security access points and had some tools that allowed them to do that, Hutchens said. Where they got those tools and how that occurred  we are still looking into that.

Officials are investigating whether a fight, which occurred around 8 p.m. just before the second scheduled head count of the day, was staged, Hallock said.

(The fight) may have been a ploy to distract staff to further delay the 8 p.m. physical body count, Hallock said.

Investigators want to know whether the escapees had help from inside or outside the jail. There is no indication that any jail workers were part of the escape plan, Hallock said, but all possibilities are under review.

Hutchens said the older design of the imposing Central Jail complex, which was built in the 1960s, forces officials to allow movement within the jail of inmates in need of services. In comparison, staff in newer jails bring the services to the inmates.

After learning about the escape, sheriffs officials say they warned those people the escapees are accused of hurting, as well as the detectives who investigated the alleged crimes and the deputy district attorneys who are prosecuting them.

Investigators are tracking down known relatives or anyone who had relationships with the men. They are also reviewing security footage from cameras inside and outside the jail.

Hutchens said it isnt possible to conduct more head counts at the jail throughout the day.

We are handicapped in that this is a jail where a lot of movement occurs, the sheriff said. We have people going to court, we have people going for medical treatment, and you cant leave them locked down 24 hours a day. There are requirements that they get out and exercise from time to time.

There were no obvious ties among the three inmates.

Nayeri is one of four people accused of kidnapping and torturing a marijuana dispensary owner.

Prosecutors allege they burned the dispensary owner with a blowtorch and cut off his penis before dumping him and his girlfriend on the side of a desert road. He has been held without bail in the Orange County Jail since September 2014.

Tieu is facing a murder charge for a gang-related killing and has been in jail since October 2013 in lieu of $1 million bail.

Duong is accused of shooting a 52-year-old man in the chest shortly after 1:35 p.m. on Nov. 18. The wounded man and others later identified Duong as the shooter.

Duong was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder in November and was ineligible for bail due to an immigration hold.

He was previously released from lockup on an early-release program for two narcotics charges out of Garden Grove, Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.

Duong has also been charged previously with crimes including burglary, evading, firearm possession, domestic violence, criminal threats, attempted robbery and carjacking, according to Santa Ana police records.

He has no permanent address in Santa Ana, but was known to stay in various houses within the city when he was not housed at Orange County jail, Bertagna said.

Like jail officials, neighbors were left wondering how such a brazen breakout could be pulled off.

How does something like this happen, especially with that caliber of inmate? said Susann Podolak, who has lived in the area for 14 years. Its not like they were petty theft. They were violent crimes.

Others now feel less comfortable having a maximum security jail as a neighbor.

People have said, You live right by the jail and its like, Ah, who cares, said Kitty Taylor, who has lived in the area for about 25 years. Nobody breaks out. But now three violent criminals have broken out, and thats not good.

These are very dangerous inmates, Hallock said. Its important that the public realizes that.

Anyone who spots the escapees should call 911, authorities said. Anyone with information about their whereabouts can contact the Orange County Sheriffs Department at 714-628-7085.
Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine, will visit Mt. San Jacinto College on Tuesday, Jan. 26. He will talk about his educational experiences, social change and personal empowerment.

The event is from 12:30 to 1:50 p.m. in the San Jacinto Campus Theatre, 1499 N. State St. It is free and open to the public.

Roberts and eight other students integrated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957.

Information: Maria Lopez at 951-487-3690 or mlopez@msjc.edu or Christina Yamanaka at 951-487-3522 or cyamanaka@msjc.edu.

Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com
It was in the predawn hours on Friday, shortly after the 5 a.m. head count, when three inmates charged with violent crimes made their bold escape from an Orange County jail, sheriffs officials confirmed Sunday.

The escape by Hossein Nayeri, Jonathan Tieu and Bac Duong  which may have taken weeks or months to plan  is forcing sheriffs officials to re-evaluate jailhouse security, which also has been questioned by county watchdogs in recent years.

The Orange County grand jury in its yearly reports on the state of the jails has criticized what it described as inadequate video equipment. In the 2015 report, grand jurors noted that upgrades had been delayed due to a lack of financial resources.

UPDATE: Inland jailers tell how they stay a step ahead of inmates

A year ago, the Sheriffs Department informed the grand jury that it had a five-year, $10 million plan to install 1,500 to 2,000 new cameras at local jails.

Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, in a written response to the grand jury in August, indicated that her department was slated to receive about $2 million a year from the county for the new cameras. However, the sheriff warned, that depended on continued funding.

Sheriffs department officials were not available Sunday night to comment about whether the surveillance upgrades were installed yet.

The 2015 report echoed the grand jurys concerns over jail video surveillance in previous years.

Sheriffs officials on Sunday released a blurry video that they believe shows an escapee preparing to rappel down from the roof of the jail. He was inadvertently captured on a camera designated to record activity in a nearby recreation area, said Orange County Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock.

Also Sunday, the U.S. Marshals Service kicked in $30,000 for information leading to the re-arrest of the escapees, adding to the $20,000 reward already offered by the FBI.

Tieus mother and sister appeared on ABC7 Sunday night and said he had not contacted them. Despite the murder charges against Tieu, his family members said they didnt think he could hurt anyone.

I feel like he was manipulated or tricked into doing this, his sister Tiffany Tieu tearfully told reporter Greg Lee, urging her brother to Turn yourself in. Dont let this drag on.

Hutchens, calling the escapees very dangerous, warned the public they could be armed. Neither she nor other law enforcement officials would specify the cities in which they are focusing their search.

Weve gotten a number of what I would call very good tips that have got us on the right track, Hutchens said at a news conference. As far as actual sightings of the individuals, we have not received any information.

In addition to the video, the Sheriffs Department on Sunday released photos showing a cut screen in a holding tank and a makeshift rope left behind by the inmates.

The three men were housed in a jail unit shared with 65 other inmates, all of whom are suspected of carrying out violent crimes.

The trio cut through half-inch steel bars, forced their way into a plumbing tunnel and got onto an unsecured part of the jailhouse roof, Hallock said. The inmates then used an improvised rope made of bedsheets to get around barbed wire and rappel four stories to the ground.

It took nearly 16 hours on Friday for officials to learn the men were missing, and an additional three hours to confirm they escaped.

It appears to be a very sophisticated operation, where they were allowed to go through security access points and had some tools that allowed them to do that, Hutchens said. Where they got those tools and how that occurred  we are still looking into that.

Investigators want to know whether the escapees had help from inside or outside the jail. There is no indication that any jail workers were part of the escape plan, Hallock said, but all possibilities are under review.

Hutchens said the older design of the imposing Central Jail complex, which was built in the 1960s, forces officials to allow

movement within the jail of inmates in need of services. In comparison, staff in newer jails bring the services to the inmates.

After learning about the escape, sheriffs officials say they warned those people the escapees are accused of hurting, as well as the detectives who investigated the crimes and the deputy district attorneys who are prosecuting them.

Hutchens said it isnt possible to conduct more head counts at the jail throughout the day.
San Bernardino County sheriffs deputies arrested a 47-year-old man who is suspected of threatening another man with a screw driver in an attempted robbery, authorities said.

James Juarez was arrested and booked at Central Detention Center Saturday, Jan. 23, on suspicion of attempted robbery, according to a San Bernardino County Sheriffs news release. Online jail records show that his bail was set $50,000 and that he had not been released yet.

A man told Sheriffs deputies that Juarez had demanded money from him in the area of Palm and Highland avenues in unincorporated San Bernardino County. He told them that when he refused to give Juarez money, he was threatened by the 47-year-old, according to a news release.

The man was able to run away, call 911 and later identify Juarez as a suspect after Juarez had been detained by police.

Police had originally stopped Juarez for an unrelated incident. He appeared to be intoxicated as he walked along a stretch of roadway, according to the release.

Deputies learned about the robbery and Juarezs possible involvement not long after they detained him, the release says.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693, agroves@pressenterprise.com or @AlexDGroves on Twitter.
Itll be easy to build up an appetite over two months  especially when your favorite restaurant is involved.

That will be the case for the many loyal customers of Zacatecas Cafe, a mainstay Mexican eatery for the past 53 years on Riversides University Avenue, which closed its doors  temporarily  on Sunday. The owners plan to open up again by the end of March in a larger location a couple of miles up the street.

UC Riverside police Officer Mario Cortez said he was glad to be able to order his favorite meal one last time before the two-month closing. Cortez has been a regular since he was a student at UC Riverside in the 1980s.

UPDATE: PRATTE: Zacatecas fans can head east

What do I always get? Cortez asked owner Jon Medina. The No. 15?

Thats the small special burrito, Medina said. You used to get the No. 14, the regular special burrito.

But Im older now, and I have to watch it, Cortez said.

The afternoon hours of closing day were busy, with all tables occupied and customers lined up out the door for their favorite tacos, burritos, menudo and enchiladas.

A cocktail while you wait? offered server Liz Medina, balancing a tray of glasses down the line. Theyre coconut rum and orange juice  very tasty.

Part of the restaurants third generation  the daughter of Jon Medina and his wife, Vicky, who serves as general manager  Liz Medina and several of her siblings grew up in the business and have been working in the cafe for decades, she said. Over the years, they have all learned all the jobs.

Its a family tradition, she said. My father cooked beans every day after school with his mother, and she taught him all her recipes.

Her grandparents, Oscar and Josie Medina, opened Zacatecas Cafe at University and Park avenues in Riverside 53 years ago.

They made their reputation on traditional recipes and friendly service, owner Jon Medina said. It was a good combination  people kept coming back.

After about 20 years, the cafe outgrew its first location and moved to larger quarters a couple of long blocks east to University and Sedgwick avenues.

The next move is a couple of miles east, to the former Shakeys restaurant at 3737 Iowa Ave., across from University Village: Well be able to seat about 150 customers there, Jon Medina said.

He said he expects the new Zacatecas Cafe to open by the end of March.

A new Zacatecas Cafe opened recently in Banning, Medina said, and the family plans to open several more in the Riverside area.

For my kids, and my grandchildren, Medina said. Like I promised my mom  Weve got to keep this place going. And she said to me: Youre the one with all the recipes.

Contact the writer: Laurie.editor@gmail.com
Public pensions are a disaster, and rely on idiotic accounting, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Sharpe told the Financial Analysts Journal last year. California is no exception, with unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities officially estimated at $220 billion  and, in reality, likely much higher.

Over the past decade, the California Public Employees Retirement System has gone from having two active workers per retiree to 1.3, and this trend is expected to continue for another 20 years, with retirees eventually outnumbering active workers, according to CalPERS latest annual report.

[F]or the first time in the pension funds history, we paid out more in retirement benefits than we took in contributions, wrote CalPERS CEO Anne Stausboll. And CalPERS fell from a 76.3 percent funding ratio to 73.3 percent, largely because of a poor year for the pension systems investment fund, which saw a 2.4 percent return in the last fiscal year  far short of the 7.5 percent assumed rate of return.

Californias public pension system cries out for reform, but reform will have to wait at least a couple of more years, as efforts to put one or more ballot measures before voters have been postponed for the third time in five years. Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, who have been leading pension reform efforts in the state after successfully pushing reforms in their respective cities in 2012, announced that they would be refiling one or both of the measures they have proposed, with a new goal of making the November 2018 ballot.

One measure would cap pension contributions by governments at 11 percent of salary for miscellaneous workers and 13 percent for public safety workers such as police and firefighters. The other measure would shift new employees to 401(k)-style plans like those common in the private sector. Both could be overridden at the local level by a public vote.

While acknowledging that the timing of the measure or measures might be better in two-years time, Mr. Reed and Mr. DeMaio nonetheless stressed the importance of acting soon. Every year we delay serious pension reform, public employers make more unsustainable promises to new employees, and public retirement debts grow, they said in a joint statement. We need pension reform to protect our education system and vital public services from these fast-growing burdens.

The latest delay is frustrating, but understandable. Even though such pension reforms do well in polling, formidable union coffers, slanted descriptions of the ballot measures imposed by Attorney General Kamala Harris and the sheer amount of money, organization and time required to launch a statewide initiative campaign are all sizable obstacles. But as public retirement liabilities continue to mount, and pension funding status seems destined to be significantly worse going into the next recession than it was at the start of the previous one, the sooner these liabilities are dealt with, the better.
Re: Let net metering continue shining for homeowners [Opinion, Jan. 20]: Nathan Millers opinion piece concerning the Net Energy Metering system was very interesting. However, the repayment for surplus produced energy is very poor, and in our case, makes it almost not worth having the installation in the first place. Considering the price of our part of the installation, and the fact that our monthly bill was only about $130, the advantage over the life of the system will be marginal.

Not only that, but the compensation for surplus electricity is very poor. Last year, for example, after switching to low-consumption pumps and L.E.D. lighting in the house, we amassed a dollar surplus of over $450. (This is shown as a negative dollar value on each months bill.) Imagine our surprise when we get a check for $69 and were told that, in accordance with the Net Energy Metering bill, the $450 was forfeited.

Now, the newest move by Edison is to charge everyone an extra $10 to cover infrastructure maintenance. This, in spite of the fact that, last month, for example, we had a $23 surplus shown on our bill. The shareholders must be very happy! Im sure that the surplus energy we generate is being sold at regular rates, and Edison doesnt even have to spend money generating it, which they would have to do if they werent able to resell ours.

If I knew then what I know now, my decision might have been different. Since I am already almost 87, the system will probably outlast me anyway and thats even without any maintenance. (The system, not me, although Im sure Ill need maintenance during that time, as well.)

Don Bennett

Grand Terrace

Pot makes streets unsafe

Re: Legalizing pot would only worsen problem [Letters, Jan. 19]: Ken Cables letter should be a wake-up call for the citizens of California. I watched one of my younger brothers turn into a babbling idiot after he went from pot to harder drugs. Do we hear gateway?

Even then, as a young adult I tried pot and rode motorcycles. After a night with friends and smoking some pot( weak stuff back then), I rode home, stopping a half block before every signal, because my depth perception was not working. I gave up pot as I had already been in one bad wreck.

Would you vote for a law that will turn a bunch of potheads loose on the streets of California? I hope not.

Jim Buchanan

Hemet
A Riverside man who died Sunday morning, Jan. 24, in a single-vehicle crash into a dry riverbed in Moreno Valley has been identified.

Tito Antonio Orosco, 37, was pronounced dead shortly after 2 a.m., at the crash scene near Indian Street south of Superior Avenue, according to a Riverside County Coroners Office news release.

Orosco was one of two people in the car that veered off the roadway and crashed into the riverbed, authorities said. Orosco was found dead outside of the vehicle, while the other person was trapped inside the vehicle with non-life-threatening injuries.

Firefighters performed an extrication on the person inside the vehicle. That person was taken to a hospital to be treated for the injuries, a Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department news release said.

The Riverside County Sheriffs Department is asking anyone who may have seen the crash, or who may have information about it, to contact Officer Loucks of the Moreno Valley sheriffs station at 951-486-6900 or dispatch at 951-776-1099.
NEW YORK (AP)  East Coast residents clobbered by the weekend blizzard trudged into the workweek Monday amid slippery roads, spotty transit service and mounds of snow that buried cars and blocked sidewalks after some cities got an entire winters snow in two days.

In Brooklyn, only one teacher at the Bedford-Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School called out, despite more than two feet of snow across New York City.

A lot of teachers are taking the train instead of driving, said Wanda Morales, director of operations at the school, standing outside while maintenance workers spread salt and parents dropped off their children.

In Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, there were signs of normalcy; shops were open, and main roadways were mostly cleared, dotted with large piles of snow. Matthew Mason, 29, was riding the train into Washington to go to his job at a hotel. The part-time law student said he figured he should be there, though things would likely be a little slower.

Ive sat in my house too much already, he said.

Dave Lenowitz was perched on a snowbank in Philadelphia near whats normally the stop for the bus that takes him to his job as the director of a nonprofit.

Normally I bicycle, but its a little too slippery, he said. Theres not enough snow, otherwise Id ski. Its only seven miles.

For others, the weekend extended into Monday because of closed schools and government offices. The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with near-record snowfalls tallied from Washington, D.C. to New York City. At least 31 people died as a result of the storm; the deaths occurred in car accidents, from carbon monoxide poisoning, and from heart attacks while shoveling snow.

Flying remained particularly messy after airlines canceled nearly 12,000 weekend flights and hundreds more Monday. Airports resumed limited service in New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In the Washington area, Reagan National Airport saw its first flights Monday, and Dulles International Airport expected to resume flights late in the day. But delays reverberated around the country.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin was on a rescheduled pre-dawn flight from Springfield, Illinois, to Chicago while on the way to Washington on Monday morning. The Illinois Democrat said hes been through this before.

Most of us who spend part of our lives in Washington know to expect the worst when it comes to snow, he said. I knew the forecast was enough to cause a problem.

Tom Aloi, who works in construction management, was at Chicago OHare trying to get back to New York City after a business trip to Germany. His rescheduled fight to Newark Liberty was already delayed several hours.

Yes, we are frustrated. We are aggravated, Aloi said. Its a ripple effect. It affects the whole world.

Amtrak operated a reduced number of trains on all its routes, serving many people who couldnt get around otherwise, spokesman Marc Magliari said. But bus and rail service was expected to be limited around the region into Monday.

The snow began Friday, and the last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday. In its aftermath, crews raced all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks devoid of their usual bustle.

Sundays brilliant sunshine and gently rising temperatures that had snow and ice falling off skyscrapers in New York City as melting began, provided a respite from the blizzard that dropped a record 29.2 inches on Baltimore. It was just right for a huge snowball fight there, where more than 600 people responded to organizer Aaron Brazells invite on Facebook.

But one day of sun wasnt enough to clear many roads. Cars parked in neighborhoods around the region were encased in snow, some of it pushed from the streets by plows.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars all week. Some didnt have a choice.

I cleaned this two or three times and they keep blocking me in, Peter Quamina, 51, said as he shoveled out the front of his driveway in Brooklyn. This storm was bad as we get.

Federal offices were closed Monday, and Virginias state workers were told to stay home. Schools from Washington to the Jersey Shore gave students Monday off; In the D.C. suburbs, classes also were canceled for Tuesday. Schools were open in New York City.

New Yorks transit authority said partial service on the Long Island Rail Road was restored on three of its 12 branches and diesel train service was operating on three other branches. New York City subways, buses and Metro-North Railroad service were operating on a normal schedule.

Broadway reopened after going dark at the last minute during the snowstorm, but museums remained closed in Washington, and the House of Representatives postponed votes until February, citing the storms impact on travel.

Overall snowfall of 26.8 inches in Central Park made it New Yorks second biggest winter storm since records began in 1869, and Saturdays 26.6 inches made for a single-day record in the city.

Some of the blizzards heaviest snow bands wound up over New York City and Long Island, sending snow totals spiking higher than the 12-18 inches forecasters predicted Thursday.

Washingtons records were less clear. The official three-day total of 17.8 inches measured at Reagan National Airport was impossibly short of accumulations recorded elsewhere in the city. An official total of 22.4 inches landed at the National Zoo, for example.

The zoo remained closed through Monday but a video of its giant panda Tian Tian making snow angels got more than 48 million views. Joining the fun, Jeffrey Perez, of Millersville, Maryland, climbed into a panda suit and rolled around in the snow, snagging more than half a million views of his own.
PEDESTRIAN.TV has partnered with CommBank to highlight some of the unsung, spectacular people making Australia great. Theyve been doing this for over 35 years through the Australian of the Year Awards, which gives remarkable Aussies the recognition they deserves, as well as providing a platform for them to further their causes. Wanting to spread more good-feels, they created the Australian of the Day initiative to give attention to those whod normally fly under the radar  yknow, everyday folks doing their bit for our country. We spoke to Arman Abrahimzadeh, domestic violence advocate and winner of South Australias Young Australian of the Year (+ nominee for Young Australian of the Year) about all the impressive work hes been doing. If his story has made you feel warm and/or fuzzy, then head to the Australian of the Day website HERE to feel even more warm and/or fuzzy.

He stuck to his word  he always said he was going to make history out of her death and thats what he achieved.

Naturally, most of us are speechless when someone presents their harrowing circumstances with neutral candidness  one that aids, in a factual manner, to the understanding of the horrors theyve endured  and it was no different when Arman Abrahimzadeh spoke of his mothers murder.

Seeing as he was just shy of completing a months worth of 20-hour days, keeping energised by willpower and caffeine, the clarity with which he spoke was remarkable. Within two minutes of talking to him it was easy to appreciate why Arman had been nominated for, and announced the winner of, South Australias Young Australian of the Year.

The violence suffered by Armans family came to a head in 2009 when his father, Zialloh, threw his mother, Zahra, into a window  as well as threatening to set their home ablaze with all of them in it, including Armans sisters Atena and Anita. These were especially heinous actions and threats made by Zialloh whod subjected his family to similar violence their entire lives.

I grew up with abuse and violence being a normal thing, says Arman.

After the events in early 2009, however, they knew they needed to flee.

It made us draw a line and leave home  we felt like he was going to kill us all, like he was going to burn us all alive in our house.

I thought to myself, this has gone too far.

We packed our bags, chucked them all in the car and went to the police station to report it  from that point a new chapter in our lives started.

Homeless, they lived out of their car before being placed in a motel until they were assigned a safe-house. It was in the safe-house that Zahra not only came to find, but took ownership of her independence.

Nearly a year after theyd fled, Zahra decided that she wouldnt be held back by the threats of her husband. In March 2010, she attended an event for the Persian New Year at which Zialloh was present. Zahra, suffering multiple stab wounds, was murdered in front of a crowd exceeding 300 people.

The only family available to Arman and his sisters was their fathers side whod all chosen to support Zialloh. For three years they endured the court proceedings unraveling around them completely alone  their thoughts on the state of domestic violence in Australia, as well as their views on where the justice system had failed their mother, were kept restrained so as to not interfere with the proceedings.

We couldnt say or do anything during the court proceedings when they were happening  that I found extremely frustrating because I could see flaws within the legal system, I could see where things had gone wrong.

When the sentence against his father had been handed down, that of 26-years with no parole, Arman was finally able to express his criticisms.

I came outside of the court and I told them exactly how I felt, I told them what needed to be said and I told them since day one  and I still stand by that comment  I said this murder could have been prevented.

He continued to probe the system  sending letters to the Premier, relevant State cabinet MPs, as well as South Australias Police Commissioner. The State Coroner launched an inquest in June 2013 that investigated assault charges filed against Zialloh prior Zahras murder, and the measures police made in dealing with those allegations.

The outcome: a large report filled with several recommendations made by the Coroner, some of which have been implemented.

Arman became a White Ribbon Ambassador and has spoken in front of varying groups on the state of domestic violence in our nation. On the back of this work, he and his sisters  in conjunction with the Central Domestic Violence Service and a host of other support networks  established the Zahra Foundation Australia.

The foundation aims to assist women who have been threatened and abused in the hands of their partners. And mothers that want to save their children from violent homes. The goal of the foundation is to empower these women to stand on their own feet. This foundation will also be a tribute to women who sadly lost their lives in search for hope of a better life for themselves and their children, says Atena Abrahimzadeh.

The Foundation hopes to help provide women and children a life without fear of violence, while also providing services to attain economic independence.

These courses arent just about finances  theyre about life skills as well, says Arman.

These women have had all elements of control taken away from them  were trying to give them the control back. Once they do, theyre in their element.

Arman wants to use the platform hes been given by winning South Australias Young Australian of the Year  and a nominee for Young Australian of the Year  to honour all those whove aided the state of domestic violence in the country.

You can make a donation to the Zahra Foundation Australia by following the link HERE.

If you feel distressed by this story, or if you or someone you know has been affected by sexual or domestic violence, you can speak to a friendly counsellor at 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

Armans story is inspiring, as are the other profiles covered 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.
On a stormy night in Canberra, David Morrison AO has been announced as Australian Of The Year for 2016, following his tireless work fighting for equality for Australias female soldiers. In the ceremony on Federation Mall, flanked by PM Malcolm Turnbull, Morrison said the continual inequality present in Australia remains totally unacceptable.

Morrison came to public prominence after releasing a video lead the charge against discrimination in the military. In it, he said the standard you walk past is the one you accept, defining the simple  but profound  stance the nation needs to take on the issue. His work has only progressed the cause since then.

Other nominees for the award represent a broad range of Australian excellence. They include:

Western Australias Anne Carey , a nurse who assisted emergency efforts during Sierra Leones Ebola crisis;

, a nurse who assisted emergency efforts during crisis; Victorias Julian McMahon , a human rights advocate, and the barrister who defended Myuran Sukumuran & Andrew Chan against their death sentences;

, a human rights advocate, and the barrister who defended & against their death sentences; Queenslands Catherine McGregor AM , a powerful public advocate for transgender Australians;

, a powerful public advocate for transgender Australians; The NT s Will MacGregor, for tackling youth drug and alcohol abuse in the Territory;

s for tackling youth drug and alcohol abuse in the Territory; Tasmanias conservationist Jane Hutchinson for helping to protect 65,000 hectares of vital flora and fauna;

conservationist for helping to protect 65,000 hectares of vital flora and fauna; New South Wales Elizabeth Broderick for her former Sex Discrimination Commissioner role;

for her former Sex Discrimination Commissioner role; and South Australian burns surgeon Dr John Greenwood AM, who leads a nation-first mobile burns response unit.

Morrison takes the position left vacant by anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, whose impact in the role over 2015 has been monumental. Her stint as Australian Of The Year was the catalyst for mainstream awareness of family violence and its ramifications, and her activism has also instigated systemic changes. Just today, the Federal Government green-lit a $500,000 grant towards the Luke Batty Foundation, with the aim of supporting its efforts for gender equality and its advocacy against violence against women and children.

Professor Gordian Fulde was also honoured as Senior Australian Of The Year. Fulde has been the Director of the Emergency Department at St Vincents Hospital for over thirty years, and has used his experience to stand up for prominent public health issues like alcohol and drug abuse.

Professor Gordian Fulde from NSW awarded the Senior Australian of the Year for 2016 #AusoftheYear #ozdayABC pic.twitter.com/Lewy2m6S9L  ABC News 24 (@ABCNews24) January 25, 2016

Young Australian Of The Years recipients are Nic Marchesi and Lucas Pratchett, founders of Orange Sky Laundry, a free initiative offering laundry services to the homeless.

#BREAKING: Nic Marchesi, Lucas Patchett  Young Australians of the Year for vans offering free laundry to homeless pic.twitter.com/AogobAQfRl  ABC News (@abcnews) January 25, 2016

Australian Local Hero was awarded to Dr Catherine Keenan, for her foundational role at Sydney Story Factory, a creative, volunteer-run education outlet for youth in inner Sydney.

Youth educator Dr Catherine Keenan from NSW has been awarded Australias Local Hero 2016 #AusoftheYear #ozdayABC pic.twitter.com/MTwkttQbUG  ABC News 24 (@ABCNews24) January 25, 2016

From PEDESTRIAN.TV, congratulations to Morrison and every single other nominee  thanks for helping to make Australia what it is.



Source: Australian Of The Year Awards / ABC.

Photo: Ed Giles / Getty.




Principle Design is an award winning graphic design and photography that is passionate about assisting organisations in building confidence through the design of their visual media. The folks at Principle specialise in crafting innovative visual communications for brand, print, digital and environmental messages. An awesome opp has arisen for an epic Junior Marketer Manager (MELB), with 3 years worth of experience to join the Principle guys and gals. As the Principle Designer Junior Marketing Manager, you will be strategically minded, as youll be developing, monitoring and evaluating killer marketing plans. You will need to be a natural at relationship building and communicating with clients, and not get frazzled from working in a fast paced environment. If you froth on marketing, have some sneaky social media skillz up your sleeve and always carry that can do attitude, then get to it, and apply HERE.

A wicked opening has come up at one of the fastest growing youth publishers in the country (yours truly,PEDESTRIAN.TV)* humble brag*. This one goes out to anyone who physically/physcologically struggles from refraining to scroll through their Insta feeds on a daily basis, or Snapchat every goddamn minute of their lives (guilty). As Pedestrian Instagram & Snapchat Editor (SYD), you will be paid just to do that. Apart from this, you will be helping develop and drive strategy and content creation across other platforms including Podcasts, Apple News and YouTube. You will not only be helping grow numbers and brand awareness across these channels but you will also be playing an integral part in the editorial side of things. You will be far from shy being in front and behind the camera, consider yourself highly creative and live and breathe all things social media. Sound like your dream gig? Then dont delay! We want to hear from you! Apply HERE.

The team at Doughnut Time & Mister Fitz Finest Ice Cream is looking for a Group Community Manager (BRIS) to join the drool worthy cause that is nutella-freaking-filled doughnuts and the finest fruit loop covered ice cream. As the Group Community manager, you will be in charge of the conjuring and implementation of creative content through all of their already killing it social media channels  so you have some preeetty big social shoes to fill. You will ideally have a few years of agency experience under your belt, and be a pro at analyzing audiences and posts, and not be fazed by managing multiple big ass name brands at once. If you enjoy dabbling in the occasional doughnut, and youre passionate about social media, and youre potentially, already having a sneaky scroll of one of their pages now as you read this, then shoot your CV through HERE.



Beginning Boutique is a Brissie based online fashion platform that is killing it, helping gals all over the globe dress a little better, one crop top at a time. A rare opportunity has arisen for a Receivables Coordinator (BRIS) to join the Beginning Boutique squad. To be perf for the role, youll need to be one organized individual who considers the customer in every aspect of dat customer journey. The role will see you apply some stellar attention to detail, as you will be receiving all incoming stock, implementing quality control of garments and being on top of any stock issues when they arise (lets hope they dont). If you wanna join a strategic and forward thinking fashion platform, shoot your CV through HERE.



Pacific Magazines is one of Australias leading forces in the magazine publishing realm, operating and publishing more than one in four mags sold in the country, including New Idea and thats life! A rad opening has come up for a Senior Account Manager (MELB) to join the Pacific Magazines sales team based in Docklands. The role will see you responding to briefs, developing new business and working with brand teams to take opportunities to market. To be suited to the role youll see yourself as a pretty experienced account manager. Youll need to be of the strategic sort, who is smooth at sales and negotiation, as well as not mind the sound of your own voice, as youll be giving the occasional preso. If this sounds like your kinda gig, get applying HERE.

All deets courtesy of Pedestrian Jobs.

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Former federal Greens leader Bob Brown has been arrested in Tasmania, apparently for participating in a protest against logging operations in Lapoinya, a tiny town in the states north-west.

Bob Brown has just been arrested at Lapoinya in NW Tas, site of community protests over logging. Being taken to Burnie Police stn. #politas  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 25, 2016

Reports are coming in that he and three other people walked into the Lapoinya Forest exclusion zone this morning; Brown and one other were arrested, while the other two were fined.

Rally at Tas parl to protest destruction of Lapoinya forest, home of worlds largest freshwater crayfish. #politas pic.twitter.com/WDNepbToPF  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 21, 2016

The area has been embroiled in conflict with logging companies for a while, but anger flared up when Forestry Tasmania announced just before Christmas last year that logging was scheduled for January 2016, a move which campaigner Michael Buky said was to limit any action with the media and lawyers over the holiday period.

The local community of Lapoinya have been trying to protect their local forest, home to the worlds largest freshwater crayfish, from destruction by clear fell logging, a statement on his Facebook page read. Last week, 2 members of the Lapoinya community were arrested. Bob was visiting Lapoinya to support their campaign and stand with them against this needless destruction of their forest.



Bob will likely speak with media later today after being processed and released from police custody at Burnie Police station. #politas  Bob Brown (@BobBrownFndn) January 25, 2016

Hes scheduled to address media later today, but well say this for now: what a fucking legend.

Updated at 1:37pm.

Greens MPs / Senators are tweeted their support:

Well done to @BobBrownFndn, arrested at Lapoinya Forests where community are protesting logging. Still fighting. Thanks Bob.  Senator Lee Rhiannon (@leerhiannon) January 25, 2016

More to come.

Photo: Twitter.
If you werent aware, Invasion Day is what many Indigenous Australian people call January 26th. Instead of sitting next to pools, drinking beer, having a BBQ, and listening to the Triple J Hottest 100, some people instead think about tall ships docking, and genocide consequently happening. Cultures being stripped; and atrocities happening to loved ones.

Star of Black Comedy Nakkiah Lui wrote an incredible article for The Guardian on why for her, and other Indigenous Australians, January 26th is a day of mourning, not celebration:

We do not celebrate the coming of the tall ships in Sydneys harbour. Instead, we mourn the declaration of Australia as terra nullius (land that belongs to no one) as well as those who have died in massacres, those who were dispossessed of their land and homes, those were denied their humanity, those who were shackled, beaten, sent to prison camps, and made to live in reserves. We mourn those who have died in the resistance.

We also mourn the affects of genocide and colonisation which persists to this day. Aboriginal people die younger (an Indigenous male born in 2005-2007 is likely to live to 67.2 years, 11.5 years less than a non-Indigenous male); the number of Aboriginal children in out of home care is staggering; imprisonment rates for Indigenous Australians are around 12 times those of the rest of the Australian population; and people in the Northern Territory are still being oppressed under the Northern Territory intervention, a policy which Amnesty International described as blatantly disregarding human rights. We mourn whilst the rest of the country celebrates around us.  And as I watch people around the country celebrate the myth that is Australia, I am given the option to either join in or shut up. Well I refuse to celebrate, and every Australia Day my heart is broken as I am reminded that in the eyes of many, I am not welcome on my own land.

While this kind of devastation is impossible to comprehend if you are not an Indigenous Australian, it is possible to be an ally. And today, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes from The Presets have given their fans the best possible example of how to be a good ally to First Nation people on Australia Day: dont celebrate it at all.

They put up a lengthy Facebook post today, which highlights their reasons for not wanting to support Australia Day. They actively mentioned that they wont be pressuring anyone else to follow suit, and everyone can make their own decisions, but this was their choice.

Tomorrow, as you all know is Australia Day. To all our friends and fans out there who are gearing up to celebrate it, we Posted by The Presets on Sunday, 24 January 2016

Despite a smattering of the standard YOU UN-PATRIOTIC DICKHEADS type of comments, the reception has been pretty good. When theres historical (and modern) evidence of violence and murder, people generally dont like being reminded of it.

But hey: we all have the chance to be a part of a generation that makes serious change if you want to.

Here are some of the Invasion Day protests and marches that are happening around the country:

SYDNEY  10am, beginning at The Block in Redfern.

MELBOURNE  10am, at Parliament House steps.

ADELAIDE  11am, at Parliament House steps.

PERTH  2:30pm, beginning at Heirisson Island Carpark.

BRISBANE  11am, at Parliament House steps.

HOBART  11:15am, beginning at Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (198 Elizabeth St).

Source/Photo: Facebook.
Not content with absolutely insisting Australian politics bears the Tony Abbott brand from here until, presumably, the end of time, the former Prime Minister will be having a poke around American politics too when he drops by tomorrow.

Fairfax reports Abbott is appearing in the U.S to deliver a speech to one of the nations most prominent religious right-wing bodies, the Alliance Defending Freedom. For those blissfully unaware of said groups existence, theyre preeetty much in line with the typical American right mindset weve come to know and love: anti-abortion, anti-gay, and against the ever-encroaching boogeymen aiming to steal their religious liberties.

Those factors seem pretty squarely in Abbotts wheelhouse, and hell be dropping his knowledge with a speech on the importance of family. Thats an awfully nebulous title, considering the somewhat discriminatory leanings of the ADF.

As the lead-up to the U.S Presidential elections grinds along, Republican candidates will be looking to secure the support of the right-wing community, and throwing our ex-PM into that heady mix of religion and opportunism is an interesting development indeed. It comes after his chatty dalliances in Europe, too.

Moreso, it may bolster his street cred amongst Australias own right-wingers, who remain mortified at Malcolm Turnbulls existence  and apparent success. Terminator or no, its pretty bloody apparent he hasnt taken the hint, and moves like this are pretty opaque attempts to dig himself in with the hard Australian right.



Source: Fairfax.

Photo: Stefan Postles / Getty.
The annual day of the year when we gather round the barbie, crack open a cold one, and argue merrily about the best 100 songs to hit our airwaves the previous year is almost upon us.





Yep, Australia Day is right around the corner, and that day has come to be defined  along with the annual but v. v. important Invasion Day conversation  with Triple Js Hottest 100.

And now that the votes are in (all 2,094,350 of them), Triple J is being an all-mighty tease with the results.

In a press release designed to invoke mass-anticipation sent out this morning, they revealed that:

Aussie artists make up 54% of the Hottest 100

26 artists are making their Hottest 100 debut

More than 16,000 songs were voted for

If youre in a gambling mood  which Triple J has condemned, btw  and also happened to be particularly good at maths, that might help you make a few wagers. Right now, Kendrick Lamars King Kunta and Major Lazer and DJ Snakes Lean On (ft. M) are battling it out as the favourite for #1. Weirdly, it looks like Tom Waterhouse has taken down their Hottest 100 betting page, but others appear to be up-and-running.

Triple J also confirmed what we all suspected (if we thought about it enough): 2015 was the year of the banger. The average BPM of the Hottest 100 is 123, an increase from an average BMP in 2014 of 121 (when Chet Fakers Talk Is Cheap won) and 116 in 2013 (won by Vance Joys Riptide).

They also took a swipe at Buzzfeeds #tay4hottest100 campaign, proudly claiming that the number of successful troll campaigns / songs disqualified equalled a big, fat zero.

Photo: Tame Impala at Lollapalooza in Berlin in 2015 / Frank Hoensch / Getty.
FILE - In this Aug. 10, 2015 file photo, Effie Brown attends The Project Greenlight Season 4 premiere of "The Leisure Class" at The Theatre At The Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. Women and people of color have been complicit, at some level, in taking a back seat in Hollywood. Thats what film and television producer Brown told a rapt audience Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, at annual Women at Sundance brunch, saying, Somehow, we co-signed this. Somehow, we participated. (Photo by Paul A. Hebert/Invision/AP, File)
Mark Marek is shown in a handout photo, released on Thursday July 25, 2013. A trial is to start today for an Edmonton website owner accused of posting an infamous video of Luka Magnotta dismembering a Chinese university student in Montreal. Mark Marek, who founded bestgore.com, was arrested a year after the 2012 killing of Jun Lin. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Edmonton Police
Former police officer Steven Zelich sits in court in the first day of his trial Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Kenosha, Wis. Zelich pleaded guilty in the death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, whose body was found in a suitcase along a Wisconsin highway in August 2012. He will be sentenced in March, and could spend as many as 55 years in prison. (Kevin Poirier/Kenosha News via AP)
FILE - This is a Oct. 19, 2015 file photo dated 19/10/15 of former Army officer Henry Worsley, right, with Britain's Prince William as they hold the British flag in London. A British adventurer Henry Worsley has died after suffering exhaustion and dehydration while attempting to cross the Antarctic alone. Former army officer Worsley was just 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the end of the almost 1,000-mile (1,600 kilometer) trek when he called for help and was airlifted off the ice Friday Jan. 22, 2015 . (John Stillwell/PA via AP) UNITED KINGDOM OUT NO SALES NO ARCHIVE
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.
Merck & Co has signed a clinical trials pact with German biopharma Affimed that will test a combination of two immunotherapies for Hodgkin lymphoma.

Under the deal, Affimed will fund and conduct a Phase Ib clinical trial to assess the potential of combining Merck's anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda (pembrolizumab) with Affimed's experimental AFM13 for the treatment of patients whose disease has relapsed or is refractory to chemotherapy.

The aim of the trial, which is on track to start in the first half of this year, is to establish a dosing regimen for the combination therapy and assess its safety and efficacy.

AFM13 is a bispecific antibody targeting CD30, an antigen specifically expressed in a variety of T- and B-cell lymphomas and targeting CD16A, an antigen expressed on natural killer cells, which are key to activation of the immune system and subsequent killing of tumour cells. Keytruda, an approved treatment for melanoma and lung cancer, is a humanised monoclonal antibody that works by increasing the ability of the body's immune system to help detect and fight tumour cells.

In patient-derived xenograft models, AFM13, in combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody, demonstrated impressive synergy with up to 90 percent of the tumour eradicated, sparking hope that the coupling could offer a future treatment option for patients.

Additional details of the deal were kept under wraps, but it was noted that the collaboration agreement can be expanded to include a subsequent Phase III clinical trial.
NHS England is widening access to a form of chemotherapy shown in clinical trials to extend survival in advanced prostate cancer by more than a year.

Patients will now be able to get treatment with docetaxel as soon as they are diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer, rather than having to wait until it was determined that existing, hormone-based treatments had stopped working, as per previous National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

The move follows the outcome of two randomised clinical trials published last year which found that, compared to androgen deprivation therapy alone, adding docetaxel to treatment improved overall survival by up to 15 months.

More than 38,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 9,000 men die from the disease every year in England. At diagnosis, around 4,560 of cases are advanced, or metastatic. There is no cure, but hormone therapy can keep it under control, sometimes for several years.

Rigorous new evidence shows that this drug brings significant benefits for patients with advanced prostate cancer. So working closely with patient groups and cancer specialists, NHS England is now pleased to be fast-tracking its wider availability, said NHS Englands Director of Specialised Services, Jonathan Fielden.

This fast-track response to new evidence indicates what can be achieved when there is the will in the system, said Angela Culhane, chief executive at Prostate Cancer UK, welcoming the news. It must set a precedent for other treatments that demonstrate clear clinical benefit when used in different ways.

The policy, which has been developed by NHS Englands Clinical Reference Group for Chemotherapy with support from clinicians and patient representatives, will be reviewed later in the year in line with all policies approved outside of the annual specialised commissioning prioritisation process.
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China plans a busy future in robotic space exploration. As Emily has mentioned on this blog already, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) has finally confirmed the plan of sending Chang'e 4 to the far side of the moon by 2020. Chang'e 5 is in production, according to CLEP. And an ambitious 2020 mission to Mars is currently under consideration. The mission may consist of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. Meanwhile, according to Liu Jizhong (deputy commander, CLEP), as of January 14, Chang'e 3 is still doing science and sending back data.

Besides the scientific merit (which is evident), what interests me most about the upcoming Chang'e 4 mission is their intention to get the public involved. With the previous Chang'e missions, there was some public interaction, mostly the posting of pictures taken by the probes or interacting with netizens through cutie social media accounts. But there will be more on Chang'e 4.

On January 8, 2016, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) released an unusual "Call for Proposal" to the general public, for a small payload that may go on-board the Chang'e 4 lander and/or the planned relay satellite at Earth-Moon L2 point. The details of the call are available here (in Chinese). The payload is limited to 3 kilograms in mass and 20 watts of power. It seems CLEP is most interested in a payload that is useful for public outreach, although scientific merit and technical feasibility are also important. Proposals are due in late March. The winners will be announced some time in mid-2016. Unfortunately, the competition is only open to Chinese nationals (excluding personnel associated to the mission). CLEP notes that although "international contributions are welcome as usual", it is already considering proposals from international partners, therefore they are reserving this competition for Chinese nationals.

But this does not mean that you are hands-off everything from Chang'e if you are not a Chinese national. In fact, I am seeing China make effort to make robotic space mission information available to the public, but they are just not advertised much. Here are some resources I have collected over time that may be of interest to some.

1. Science Achievement Series of China's Lunar Exploration Program, which consists of three books at the moment (free e-books):

At the beginning of each book you will find a good amount of the information about Chang'e 1 and 2, from probe design, control system, to data reduction, etc. Hard copies are also available for purchase from Sino Maps Press (with a steep price tag -- $200 each).

2. Chang'e 2 zoomable map: (seems down at the moment; but alternative data access given below). The map was stitched from the 50m/pixel data from Chang'e 2.

3. Global mosaics from Chang'e 1 (DOM/DEM) and Chang'e 2 (50m/pixel)

These are a number of compressed files (TIFF or PDS format for Chang'e 1, PDS only for Chang'e 2) indexed by quadrangles. The PDS-format data (*.03 files) can be opened directly with NASAView. [And also with IMG2PNG. -ed.] The 50m/pixel Chang'e 2 data is used to construct the zoomable map described above.

4. Collections of processed/annotated images in JPG format: Chang'e 1, Chang'e 2, Chang'e 3 and Yutu. As these have been widely circulated already. You probably have already seen most of them.

5. China's Planetary Data System (PDS): (overseas connection may be unstable)

[Note from the editor: If you have trouble with these instructions, have no fear; I will be posting some of the camera data from the Chang'e 3 mission in the future. --ESL]



China has its own Planetary Data System, maintained by the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC). At the time of writing, most (all?) calibrated data (defined as "level 2" and "level 3") from Chang'e 1, 2 and 3 have been released (the raw data is still proprietary). The web interface does not have an English version, but it is not difficult to figure out how it works with some assistance from online translate tools. Note that the service may be unstable at times, especially for overseas users.



First, you need register an account. It is very easy! Just make sure to check your spam box for emails from NAOC (likely to be incorrectly encoded). Once you are logged in, you should be able to see all Chang'e 1, 2 and 3 products listed in the sidebar on the left (under a tag like "lunar exploration data release"). Note that there is another tag that might be incorrectly translated as "the whole month of web data download" -- it actually means "download global mosaic data" which we have already covered.



(In case you are wondering, the service agreement states that you can use the data as long as the purpose is for research or education and is non-commercial.)



You can choose any mission and there will be a webpage listing all the instruments. Find your favorite one, and look for "PDS" icon to the right. Click it. You will be redirected to a form for data selection. All the button labels are in Chinese, but there is a helpful page with text and graphic directions telling you which button to hit. The only thing that the help page does not cover is about the drop-down menus; there are three of them on the left and three on the right. The first (the upmost) one on the left is again the instrument; if you have previously choose which instrument you want to use, you don't need to alter this one; the second one is the level of the product, you need to choose either level 2 or level 3, or whatever is available. You probably don't need to alter other drop-down menus (the last one on the left is the sub-level of the product; the three on the right is the time window and result sorting).



After all, it is a bit like online shopping: you need to put interested items in the cart, and click "process order" before you can download them.



Have fun playing with the data. Ohh, this post wouldn't be completed without an image or two. Here is an image of the Tycho crater taken by the stereo CCD camera on-board Chang'e 2:
First, some background. Unlike Congress, which only appropriates money on an annual basis, budgets proposed by the Presidents budget officers (in consultation with NASAs managers) project out five years, with the first year the actual request for the next years funding from Congress and the subsequent years being notional, but indicative of the agencys planning. For NASA to issue the multi-year contracts needed to develop a mission, there has to be a clear, long-term commitment from the agency that is reflected in the official budget request. It is very rare for a spacecraft to successfully come to fruition without appearing in the official Presidents budget.

We will soon see if there is agreement for the Planetary Science budget to increase to accommodate this new mission. The Presidents FY2017 budget request will be released in early Februarywe will see if it contains the larger proposed funding to include a Europa mission launch in the early 2020s.

But if the overall budget of planetary science doesnt increase, there are several alternatives that the Administration could pursue:

Delay the launch of the Europa mission to the mid-2020s to push out its spending bulge well after the Mars program needs

Delay the smaller Discovery and New Frontiers missions and use that funding for Europa, which would result in an unbalanced planetary program with just two Flagship missions launching in the next decade. And this wouldnt provide all the funding needed for the two Flagship missions.

Take the additional funding from elsewhere in NASAs budget (which would result in either hurting the human spaceflight program that has strong political backing, or hurting one of NASAs other science programs such as the Earth Science program (the latter of which has been proposed by various members of Congress, but which I opposewe are rapidly modifying our planet and need satellites to identify and monitor the changes))

Any of these alternatives represent solutions typical of those made in budget negotiations, which assume a flattish overall budget with the individual line items being traded off.

Im hoping that this year represents a new possibility. The public has repeatedly shown its interest in planetary exploration through its avid following of missions in the press and the internet. Congress has noticed that interest and been willing to support increases in the NASAs planetary program for several years. Several key members of Congress also are personally interested in planetary exploration specifically and space science in general and have consistently added money for Europa over the past few years. Congress has also consistently increased NASAs budget since 2013, providing a surprising (and welcome) 7% increase in 2016.

This seems to be the year to attempt to create a political consensus for a new higher spending rate for NASAs planetary program. The set of proposed missions is compelling. Congress is willing. For the next year, before the next President changes the players with the resulting delay in dealing with new policies, we have stable management teams in the Presidents budget office and at NASA. And public interest groups like The Planetary Society have shown that they can demonstrate the publics support for increased funding and build the political case for the needed funding.

These budget issues arent unique to the Europa mission. They occur with any large mission as NASAs budgets are planned. In a zero-sum game, something has to give. In recent years, though, Congress has shown its willingness to increase the size of the budget to match the vision. Perhaps it will be possible to have a dream line of up missions in development: Mars 2020, Europa, two or more Discovery missions, and a New Frontiers mission. Its worth working for.

Appendix: Estimated Europa mission costs

I have seen just one official cost estimate for the Europa multi-flyby mission (previously called the Europa Clipper) in a mission definition update. That estimate was for $2.1B without the launch (and was made by the Aerospace Corporation, which NASA uses to provide independent mission cost estimates). To estimate total spending that must be done before a possible 2022 launch, we need to add in the possible costs of the newly required Europa lander and the launch vehicle. We should also subtract the costs of post launch operations (which seem to run $50M to $70M a year for Flagship missions) and money already spent or appropriated through FY16.

Heres what the budget swag looks like:

+$2.1B Multi-flyby spacecraft

+$0.5B SLS launch vehicle*

+$0.7B Europa lander*

-$0.3B Post launch operations*

-$0.4B Already spent/appropriated

This back of the envelope calculation results in approximately $2.6B remaining spending before launch. If launch is in 2022, then that leaves six years after FY2016, for an average spending rate of $440M per year. More likely, there will be a higher peak spending rate for a couple of years with lower spending in the beginning and end of this period (based on spending patterns of other missions). A possible average, though, is as far as I can push this thought experiment.

*SLS cost estimate from another Europa mission presentation; lander costs from a press account and may not be firm; operations costs assume a five year prime mission at a swag of $60M per year.
Jonathan Tieu, left, Hossein Nayeri and Bac Duong. The three escaped the Orange County Mens Central Jail by cutting through half-inch steel bars, authorities say. (Photo: Orange County's Sheriff's Department)

Investigators fanned out across Southern California Monday searching for three inmates who pulled an elaborate escape from the Central Mens Jail in downtown Santa Ana three days ago.

Jonathan Tieu, 20; Bac Duong, 43; and Hossein Nayeri, 37, were discovered to be missing about 9 p.m. after a nightly inmate count at the Orange County Sheriffs Departments maximum security facility. Deputies are still searching for the men, who have not been seen since the escape.

Sheriffs Lt. Jeff Hallock told the Los Angeles Times that authorities are looking throughout the region for the men, who were being held in connection with serious, violent offenses including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and torture. A $50,000 reward has been offered for any information on the mens whereabouts.

The men slipped behind beds inside the jail, then disappeared into a hole in a wall before navigating through the jails plumbing system and cutting through half-inch steel bars.

After making it to the roof, the men rappelled down four stories using spare cloth and bedsheets and fled. The inmates, who were last seen wearing orange jumpsuits, were presumed to be armed. It is unclear whether they received help after breaking free.
Omaha K-9 Kobus with his handler, Officer Matthew McKinney. Kobus was killed in a standoff Saturday. (Photo: Omaha PD)

A man held Nebraska law enforcement in a standoff that lasted 26 hours and shot and killed an Omaha Police K-9 before his arrest Saturday night.

The K-9, named "Kobus," had been with the department since 2008.

Mark L'Heureux, 59, surrendered to law enforcement shortly before 7:00 p.m., after walking out of a house near 83rd and Keystone Drive.

During the lengthy standoff, L'Heureux allegedly fired at Douglas County Sheriff's deputies.

Deputies initially went to the home Friday afternoon to serve a mental health warrant. L'Heureux locked himself alone in the home and refused to come out, according to Chief Deputy Tom Wheeler.

Investigators said L'Heureux had several guns and ammunition inside the home so SWAT officials, negotiators, and the Omaha Police Bomb Squad were on the scene.

Kobus was going to be retired in the next several months, KETV reports.
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KENOSHA, Wis.  Former West Allis police officer Steven Zelich pleaded guilty today to killing an Oregon woman during a sexual encounter in 2012 and ditching her body in a suitcase along a highway in Walworth County, where it was discovered in June 2014.

Zelich, 54, also is charged with killing a Minnesota woman in Rochester in similar fashion in 2013. Her body was found in a second suitcase along with the Oregon victim. Jury selection in the Kenosha case had been scheduled to begin today.

Wisconsin authorities told Olmsted County District Attorney Mark Ostrem's office Sunday that Zelich would enter the plea this morning.

"Our understanding is the strength of our case added to the strength of the Wisconsin case, which led to the plea," Ostrem said this morning, but "the issue for us is he doesn't have an attorney on the Minnesota case yet, so we really can't talk to him."

In a plea deal that had been extended early in the Wisconsin case, Zelich agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon (a rope used to choke the victim for erotic purposes), and prosecutors agreed to dismiss the original charge of first-degree intentional homicide, which carries a mandatory life sentence upon conviction.

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Zelich now will face a maximum prison sentence of 45 years, plus up to five more years for hiding a corpse, to which he also pleaded guilty today before Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder. Zelich's sentencing is set for March 30, and he'll be committed to a Department of Corrections facility in Wisconsin.

Once that happens, Ostrem said, "he'll be done in Wisconsin and we'll do some sort of writ to get him over here. As soon as he appears here, he'll hire an attorney or be assigned an attorney, and at that point, we can enter discussions with him."

The Kenosha County charges were for the August 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Ore. Zelich is also charged with murder in the killing of 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, the following year. She died in Minnesota, so the charges were filed there.

A key ruling in the Wisconsin case came weeks ago when a judge allowed prosecutors to tell jurors about Simonson's death.

Zelich also has a charge of hiding a corpse pending in Walworth County, where the women's bodies were found. His attorneys, Jonathan Smith and Steve Kohn, said they expect that would be resolved soon.

According to court records and testimony, Zelich met Gamez online and invited her to Wisconsin. He picked her up at the Milwaukee airport and they drove to a Kenosha hotel, where they spent several days.

Zelich told investigators they played a sexual game in which he would choke Gamez. On the last day, he lost control and choked Gamez until she died, according to the criminal complaint.

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Zelich told investigators that he put Gamez in her suitcase and took it to his West Allis apartment and stashed her body in his refrigerator.

Simonson, of Farmington, Minn., died in similar circumstances in November 2013. According to court documents, Zelich said he met her online and killed her while playing the same choking game at a Rochester hotel.

He drove home to Wisconsin with her body and later put both bodies in suitcases in his car's trunk. When they began to smell, he dumped them on the roadside, where highway workers mowing grass found them in June 2014.

Zelich has been charged in Olmsted County District Court with one count each of first-degree murder, second-degree intentional murder and second-degree unintentional murder.

In Minnesota, a grand jury is required to seek a life sentence, Ostrem said, which hasn't occurred in this case. He declined to say whether that's a possibility.

"We've got a strong case," he said. "I would hope he would consider entering a (guilty) plea in our case, too."
KENOSHA, Wis.  Former West Allis police officer Steven Zelich pleaded guilty today to killing an Oregon woman during a sexual encounter in 2012 and ditching her body in a suitcase along a highway in Walworth County, where it was discovered in June 2014.

Zelich, 54, also is charged with killing a Minnesota woman in Rochester in similar fashion in 2013. Her body was found in a second suitcase along with the Oregon victim. Jury selection in the Kenosha case had been scheduled to begin today.

Wisconsin authorities told Olmsted County District Attorney Mark Ostrem's office Sunday that Zelich would enter the plea this morning.

"Our understanding is the strength of our case added to the strength of the Wisconsin case, which led to the plea," Ostrem said this morning, but "the issue for us is he doesn't have an attorney on the Minnesota case yet, so we really can't talk to him."

In a plea deal that had been extended early in the Wisconsin case, Zelich agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon (a rope used to choke the victim for erotic purposes), and prosecutors agreed to dismiss the original charge of first-degree intentional homicide, which carries a mandatory life sentence upon conviction.

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Zelich now will face a maximum prison sentence of 45 years, plus up to five more years for hiding a corpse, to which he also pleaded guilty today before Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder. Zelich's sentencing is set for March 30, and he'll be committed to a Department of Corrections facility in Wisconsin.

Once that happens, Ostrem said, "he'll be done in Wisconsin and we'll do some sort of writ to get him over here. As soon as he appears here, he'll hire an attorney or be assigned an attorney, and at that point, we can enter discussions with him."

The Kenosha County charges were for the August 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Ore. Zelich is also charged with murder in the killing of 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, the following year. She died in Minnesota, so the charges were filed there.

A key ruling in the Wisconsin case came weeks ago when a judge allowed prosecutors to tell jurors about Simonson's death.

Zelich also has a charge of hiding a corpse pending in Walworth County, where the women's bodies were found. His attorneys, Jonathan Smith and Steve Kohn, said they expect that would be resolved soon.

According to court records and testimony, Zelich met Gamez online and invited her to Wisconsin. He picked her up at the Milwaukee airport and they drove to a Kenosha hotel, where they spent several days.

Zelich told investigators they played a sexual game in which he would choke Gamez. On the last day, he lost control and choked Gamez until she died, according to the criminal complaint.

Zelich told investigators that he put Gamez in her suitcase and took it to his West Allis apartment and stashed her body in his refrigerator.

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Simonson, of Farmington, Minn., died in similar circumstances in November 2013. According to court documents, Zelich said he met her online and killed her while playing the same choking game at a Rochester hotel.

He drove home to Wisconsin with her body and later put both bodies in suitcases in his car's trunk. When they began to smell, he dumped them on the roadside, where highway workers mowing grass found them in June 2014.

Zelich has been charged in Olmsted County District Court with one count each of first-degree murder, second-degree intentional murder and second-degree unintentional murder.

In Minnesota, a grand jury is required to seek a life sentence, Ostrem said, which hasn't occurred in this case. He declined to say whether that's a possibility.

"We've got a strong case," he said. "I would hope he would consider entering a (guilty) plea in our case, too."

Post-Bulletin reporter Kay Fate contributed to this article.
ZUMBROTA  Zumbrota officials are expecting to meet this week with new management at the city's dairy plant, which was recently renamed after an industry acquisition.

Rich Bauer, Zumbrota's longtime mayor, said Saturday that Dairy Farmers of America informed the city last February that the Zumbrota plant would likely become part of DairiConcepts, a subsidiary of DFA. That news became official in November, according to a DFA press release. But city officials have yet to meet the facility's new management.

DFA spokeswoman Monica Massey said previously that the change in ownership would not affect local employees. Instead, DairiConcepts has been seeking room to expand, and Zumbrota offers that opportunity.

It could be a tricky conversation for both sides.

The DFA plant in Zumbrota has been fined more than $100,000 by the city since 2014 over a smelly wastewater discharge. The dispute between the city and DFA eventually landed in the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Repeated wastewater violations prompted the city to increase its fee and fine schedule for the third time since 2009, which led to the legal challenge by DFA.

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Bauer said Saturday that the local dairy plant, which processes about 8 million pounds of milk each week, has continued to be fined in recent months, though the new fines pale in comparison to the $90,000 fine that was issued in the summer of 2014 ; exact totals were not available.

"It has been better," Bauer said of the city's relationship with the dairy plant. "However, there are still fines that are happening periodically. They are doing a much better job of staying within their limits, but we'd prefer to have them stay within their limits all the time. It's certainly not perfect yet."

Zumbrota City Administrator Neil Jensen and Public Works Director Mike Olson are among those expected to meet with DairiConcepts' new manager this week, though it's not immediately clear who replaced former DFA manager Lucy Schwartz.

DairiConcepts was formed in 2000 as a joint venture between DFA and Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited, but it became wholly owned by DFA on Dec. 31, 2015. According to DFA's press release, "DairiConcepts is a manufacturer of cheese, dairy ingredients and dairy flavor systems with eight facilities across the United States. It works with customers both in the United States and around the world as a value-added supplier, committed to creating appropriate lower-cost, quality dairy ingredient solutions. Its dedicated team of professionals focuses on product formulation, testing and packaging, and has proven success in these areas."

The company has expanded globally to serve markets in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, while aspiring "to become the number one supplier of ingredient solutions in select markets by consistently delivering high-quality products and services."

Under DFA direction, the Zumbrota facility employed more than 100 people while contributing more than $100 million annually to the local economy, according to a recent economic study.

It's unclear how many jobs were impacted by the ownership transition, or what the potential expansion of the existing dairy plant would mean for the city. However, a number of job openings have been posted within the last month; it's unknown if those are new jobs or vacancies created after the change in management.

"We just want to keep that communication open so everybody knows everyone else," Bauer said of the renamed dairy plant.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is a smart fellow and a perfect spokesman for Hillary Clintons interests. Slippery and willing to say anything, he can add a vague threat of harm when he thinks the occasion calls for it. Yesterday Schiff appeared on FOX News Sunday for a segment with Senator James Lankford to discuss last weeks revelations about the information found on Hillarys Clintons unsecured private server for her official State Department emails. FOX News has posted a report on the segment (transcript here, video below). Sarah Westwood also covered the segment for the Washington Examiner.

Last weeks news was generated by the letter of Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough, III to Senators Burr and Corker. McCullough was appointed by Obama and was enthusiastically supported by Democrats. As Paul facetiously wrote last week, he is an unlikely member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Catherine Herridge embedded a copy of McCulloughs letter to the Senators in her FOX News report breaking the story last week and posted it here. McCullough responded to the Senators inquiry on the classification determination process used within the Intelligence Community (IC) for reviewing former Secretary of State Clintons emails. McCulloughs response included one dry paragraph that made all the news (on FOX and online, anyway):

To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one IC element. These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECREt, and TOP SECRET/SAP level. According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC sources. Due to the presence of TOP SECRET/SAP information, I provided these declarations under separate cover to the Intelligence/oversight Committees and Senate and House leadership. The IC element is coordinating with State to determine how these documents should be properly treated in the FOIA litigation.

FOX News host Chris Wallace wound up with this question to Schiff yesterday:

WALLACE: Congressman Schiff, I want to pick up on one thing that Senator Lankford said, the inspector general, Charles McCullough, who sent this information, and he wasnt offering it, he was simply reporting what the intelligence community was saying, appointed by Barack Obama, confirmed unanimously by a Democratic-controlled Senate. He hardly seems like the right person for a political hit job. SCHIFF: Well, I would say this, Chris, youve got several Republican chairs who are actively campaigning against Hillary Clinton and doing investigations of her at the same time. One of which went to a  WALLACE: Charles McCullough isnt. He was a  he was an Obama appointee. SCHIFF: No, no, no. No, let me finish. One of which went to a Trump rally and said his purpose is to defeat Hillary Clinton. These are people who are conducting investigation in Congress of the secretary during the presidential campaign. So I think the inspector general has to be very careful not allow  not to allow him to be used by one political party against another during the presidential race. And I think the inspector general had to know or should know that when you put an unclassified form letter, you have to reasonably expect its going to be leaked. And that letter, I have to say, was gratuitous in the information it included. It could have transmitted the information from the intelligence community without commentary in it. But by putting that commentary in it, knowing its going to be leaked, I think the inspector general does risk his reputation. And once you lose that as inspector general, youre not much good to anyone. So I think the inspector general has to be very careful here.

Translation: Thats a nice name youve got there. I wouldnt want anything to happen to it.

Reading McCulloughs letter against Schiffs description of it, we see that Schiff is parsimonious with the truth and liberal with falsehood. Add the threat to McCulloughs reputation leveled by no one other than Schiff himself, and Schiff proves himself Clintonian through and through.
Anti Aging Skin Treatment - 7 Tips On Looking Younger

PR-Inside.com: 2016-01-25 07:19:34

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James Matthew

1.888.870.5581

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James Matthew1.888.870.5581

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:James MatthewMiracle Alternatives, LLC .Phone: 1.888.870.5581.support@ hgllc.co New Lenox Il, 60451 USA.01/24/2016.We are the biggest holistic equipment firm around the world!(C)Copyright 2016 Miracle Alternatives, LLC .Do you desire to look more youthful? Once it was merely stars and also those in the public eye that fretted regarding looking older everybody else expanded old beautifully! Currently 40 is the brand-new 30 and also males as well as females care regarding their look, there is also a fad in culture to differentiate versus the older generation.What can you do to remain looking more youthful? 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A tan could look great for a while yet you will certainly mature as well as crease rapidly and also be much more vulnerable to skin illness such as cancers cells.Smoking cigarettes will certainly mature you as chemicals in the smoke are maturing to the skin and also will certainly reverse your anti aging skin treatment procedure. Alcoholic beverages have several contaminants which are dangerous to your wellness. Too much consuming will certainly indicate your liver no much longer deals with freing your physical body of these contaminants.Look for skin treatment items which are anti aging (those having the active ingredients Vitamin C, retinol as well as ceramides are really excellent). Attempt various anti aging skin treatment items to see which functions finest for you as well as moisturise daily.Currently allow us present an all brand-new anti-aging like equipment! It is called the Wellbox!With Wellbox , bid farewell to hostility. Greetings to the age of mobile excitement. Thanks for visiting the brand-new period of health as well as much better living!The only Wellbox  could do the adhering to.Cellulite Action.Decreased cellulite as well as quantity in dealt with locations. Enhanced the shape of number. Minimized cellulite (orange peel impact).Firming Action.Target drooping skin as well as lower creases and also great lines.Circulatory Action.Enhance regional flow, the skin, as well as the gentleness of the skin. Lighten your allows and also enhance the blood circulation of blood.Leisure and also Wellness Action.Launch muscle mass stress as well as get rid of discomfort.Smoothing Action.Improve and also soften the skin flexibility.Wellbox  on your whole physical body to live much better in your physical body, for you as well as your family members.To get more information concerning the Wellbox go to item internet site for an extensive summary, consumer reviews, video clip endorsements as well as video clip demos!
A Nigerian movie actor,Rotimi Popoola, known also as Ilu, has threatened to sue telecoms company, Globacom for allegedly using his work for advertisement, without his consent.

The actor, through his lawyer, A.H Adesanya of Toye Coker Chambers in Abeokuta, accused the network provider of using his work on its SIM pack tagged, Lisabi Special Sim Pack, as well as its outdoor advertisement.

The solicitor, in a letter to the company, titled, Gross Misconduct and Unfair Treatment of Our Client, said the companys action was an infringement of his clients rights, and advised the company to pay N100million as compensation.

Similarly, the actor asked Globacom to desist from the advertisement in question, and also demanded that it should tender an apology.

Failure to comply with our demand will necessiate the necessary legal action against your company and we would also engage the service of the media just to reveal to the society at large, the unconsciousness act of your company, the letter said.

However, when PREMIUM TIMES contacted the corporate affairs department of Globacom, the company refused to comment on the allegation five months after promising to do so.

The company told this newspaper on September 30, 2015 that investigation was ongoing.

Five months after, the company merely said, With respect to your mail, we write to inform you that it has been forwarded appropriately. Please note that investigation is still ongoing on the allegation,we will get back to you once we have a conclusive feedback,the letter reads.
Turkish police on Monday arrested 10 people in the capital Ankara, accused of being recruiters for the Islamic State extremist group.

The police said in Ankara that the arrests followed a crackdown on Islamic State in the country, amid growing concerns over terrorist activities.

Turkey blamed Islamic State for a suicide bombing this month in Istanbul, which killed 10 German tourists.

The group is also being held responsible for a twin attack in Ankara in October, which left more than 100 people dead. Islamic State has not claimed either attack.

(dpa/NAN)
Bothered by how government at the federal, state and local government can effectively work to ensure that the people benefit in a democracy, scholars from all walks of life will gather at a conference in Ibadan next week.

Under the aegis of Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy, the organisers of the conference said they hope to reconnect effectively with the people again as it used to in the decade before and after independence as facilitator of development beyond the ritual of policy declarations.

According to a release issued by the schools Director of Strategy, Christopher Edeimu, the conference will hold February 1 and 2, 2016 at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan.

Mr Edeimu said the conference will also seek to discuss how government can bond with the people.

Is it not time to go back to the basics of government and see how government can be made to effectively bond with and tap from the energies, resources, commitment and needs of its citizens to govern all of its peoples again? These concerns touch on aspects of the notion of governmentality, he said.

The conference will also, according to the release, initiate moves away from rhetoric and false starts toward concrete, cumulative and comprehensive public policy thrusts for change.

Some of the issues to be addressed at the conference include topics like The Economy: What is to be Done?, Infrastructure, National Asset Management and National Productivity, Education, Health, Human Capital and Social Policy, Taxation, Governance, Democracy and Development, Intergenerational Discourse on Getting Government to Work for Development and Democracy in Nigeria.

Also included among issues to be discussed are topics like Inclusive Development: Nigeria in African and Global Contexts, The Elite, Public Policy and the Political Economy of Identity Politics, The Political Economy of Party Politics, Elections and Election Management, as well as Federalism, Intergovernmental Relations and the role of Public Bureaucracy, Civil Society and the Legislature in Reforming Government for effective Policy Making and Execution.

Expected at the conference to deliver papers are Kayode Fayemi, minister for solid minerals development and former governor of Ekiti State; Osita Ogbu, professor of Economics and former chief economic adviser to the president; Prof Akin Iwayemi, former president, Nigerian Economic Society (NES); Dr Ayo Teriba; Prof Pat Utomi; Omobola Johnson, former minister of information and communication technology, among others.
The Nigerian government is set to retrieve one of Africas richest oil blocs from oil giants, Shell and Eni, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt.

Not only will the two oil giants lose OPL 245, should President Muhammadu Buhari approve the recommendations, they will also be fined billions of dollars for illegal activities, including paying money to fraudulent public officials and private citizens in order to secure the bloc.

The retrieval of the controversial oil bloc, estimated to contain about 9 billion barrels of crude, as well as placing heavy fines on the oil giants, is contained in a far-reaching recommendation by the office of the Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Mohammed Diri.

The recommendation was at the instance of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who is set to advise the federal government on how to proceed on a controversial deal that is being investigated by authorities in four different countries.

In arriving at its recommendations, the DPP committee, which included lawyers from his office, called for the cancellation of the settlement agreement that ceded the oil bloc to Shell and Eni.

Summary of OPL 245 history. Source: Global Witness

The Settlement Agreement

Made on April 29, 2011, the settlement deal is made up of three different Resolution agreement signed by the parties involved in the OPL 245 saga.

The first, titled BLOCK 245 MALABU RESOLUTION AGREEMENT was signed between representatives of the federal government and those of Malabu, which was represented during the discussions by a former petroleum minister, Dan Etete.

The second agreement, titled BLOCK 245 RESOLUTION AGREEMENT was between the Nigerian government and officials of Shell and Eni/AGIP; while the third agreement, titled BLOCK 245 SNUD RESOLUTION AGREEMENT, was signed by officials of the Nigerian government and Shell.

The immediate past attorney general of the federation, Mohammed Adoke, and immediate past petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke signed all the agreements on behalf of the federal government. Both are among officials being investigated by Nigerias foremost anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, for their roles in the scam.

The agreements saw the transfer of OPL 245, first from the Malabu to the Nigerian government and then from the government to Shell and Eni. The agreements also effectively cancelled all previous law suits and judgements related to the case.

It was based on these agreements that Shell and Eni paid a total of $1.3 billion into Nigerian government accounts, which as stated in earlier reports by PREMIUM TIMES, largely ended up in accounts of phoney companies and shady characters.

Cancel the agreement

The committee empanelled by the Attorney General Malami recommended that the agreement be cancelled, describing it as null and void, and saying it should not be given any legal effect by the FGN (Federal Government of Nigeria) as doing so would amount to the FGN condoning and perpetuating illegality.

One of the reasons the panel consider the agreement illegal is that the ex-convict, Mr. Etete, had no legal authority to negotiate the agreement on behalf of Malabu as he was not a shareholder of the company nor had the permission of the shareholders to do so.

Also, the oil bloc was awarded to Malabu in furtherance of Nigerias policy to encourage local companies and part of the conditions for the award was that foreign participation interest in the blocks (OPL 245 and 214) shall not exceed 40%, i.e. 60/40 indigenous to foreign; a fact Shell was aware of but chose to ignore.

The committee also sought the cancellation of the agreement based on a resolution by the last House of Representatives, which called for the cancellation and demanded that Shell becensured or reprimanded for its lack of transparency and full disclosure in its bid to acquire OPL 245.

Also, although Shell and Eni claimed they only struck an agreement with the federal government and that they did not know, before the agreement, that the money they paid was going to Malabu, evidence by investigators in Italy and the Nigerian anti-graft agency, EFCC, shows that the oil firms knew the payment was eventually going to Malabu accounts controlled by Mr. Etete, a man once convicted for money laundering in France.

Apart from calling for the cancellation of the agreement, the DPP panel also recommended the full recovery of the money paid by Shell and Eni, describing it as proceed of crime.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the Federal Government paid over $800 million of the money into accounts controlled by Mr. Etete and how Justice Edis of the Southwark Crown Court in England refused to release $85 million of the remaining sum to Mr. Etete in December.

In refusing the to release the money, the judge questioned the actions of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency on the OPL 245 saga saying I cannot simply assume that the FGN which was in power in 2011 and subsequently until 2015 rigorously defended the public interest of the people of Nigeria in all respects.

Apart from recommending the withdrawal of the OPL 245 from Shell and Eni and calling for the retrieval of the money, the panel also asked the federal government to collaborate with all foreign agencies investigating the deal as well as prosecute all individuals and firms that violated local and international laws in the process.

In its recommendation, the panel also stated that the Federal Government can make close to $10 billion from the scandal.

Making money for Nigeria

To make the money, the panel recommended that Shell and Eni be fined at least $6.5 billion (five times the $1.3 billion Shell and Eni originally paid in 2011 the block).

This, the panel stated, should be done in accordance with the relevant provisions of our laws in conformity with international best practices via the appropriate courts (at) home or abroad as the case may be.

In other words, from the fine and the amount to be retrieved of the $1.3 billion, the government could make about $8 billion.

Also, in asking that the oil bloc be returned to Malabus original owners, the panel asked that the necessary licensing fees, transfer fees, signature bonus, and tax be paid by the firm; while 50 per cent of the rights to the bloc should return to Nigeria after three years based on original intent of awarding the bloc.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Malabu was awarded the oil block in 1998 with its shareholders being Mohammed Abacha, son of late military dictator, Sani Abacha, (50 per cent); Kweku Amafegha (the fictional character created by Mr. Etete, 30 per cent); and Wabi Hassan (wife of Hassan Adamu, former Nigerian ambassador to the U.S. 20%).

Human rights lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, had argued that the oil bloc ought to return to Nigeria and Malabus registration cancelled since it was based on falsehood.

Section 190 and Section 436 (b) of the Criminal Code Act is applicable to the conduct of the promoter of Malabu, in that a false representation or declaration was made to induce the Corporate Affairs Commission to issue an incorporation certificate, Mr. Ogunye said.

Owing to the false representation, the Corporate Affairs Commission can approach the Federal High Court under Section 563 of CAMA to seek the withdrawal and cancellation of the Certificate of Incorporation of Malabu.

Awaiting Malami, Buhari

The DPP report was to be sent to the Attorney General last week, a source at his office told PREMIUM TIMES, but was delayed due to Mr. Malamis trip with President Muhammadu Buhari to the United Arab Emirates.

The report is to be sent this week to both the Solicitor General of the Federation, Taiwo Abidogun, and Mr. Malami, with the latter expected to advise President Buhari on the next steps based on the recommendations.

A source at the presidency told PREMIUM TIMES that the president was keenly following the matter and recently received a report on it from the office of the Vice President, who is coordinating the actions of the AGF, EFCC and Petroleum ministry on the matter.

Both the DPP and the Attorney General, in separate phone interviews, confirmed their offices were working on resolving the OPL 245 issue, but would not comment on the details.

Malabu is a very sensitive issue and if theres any resolution, I will have to get clearance before I can speak to the press on it, the DPP, Mr. Diri, said.

Also, PREMIUM TIMES learnt that Shell was already aware of the governments moves to cancel the agreement, and was lobbying against it.

However, the oil giants spokesperson, Precious Okolobo, declined comments on the matter.
The trial of a former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, who is being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, on a 23-count charge bordering on money laundering and diversion of funds, continued on Monday with the anti-graft agency presenting its witness before Justice Adebukola Banjoko, of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja.

Mr. Dariye is accused of diverting about N1.2 billion from the states Ecological Fund, to private companies and individuals.

Led in evidence by prosecuting counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, the EFCC witness, Musa Sunday, a detective with the EFCC, provided details into the findings of the investigative team that probed the allegations against Mr Dariye.

Mr. Sunday told the court that the EFCC had in September 2004 received a petition from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, regarding a request by the UK Metropolitan Police for the investigation of some companies linked to Mr. Dariye.

The petition of the UK Metropolitan Police was sent by the AGF to the EFCC, and it was subsequently referred to my team, he said.

He told the court that the team immediately swung into action to investigate the banks  All State Trust Bank, Lion Bank (now Diamond Bank), companies and individuals allegedly involved in the fraud.

At the All State Trust Bank, we discovered an account whose signatory was Haruna Dariye, but upon further investigation, we found out that the signatory was actually the defendant (Joshua Dariye), he said.

According to him, it was discovered that the mandate of the account at the bank, had no passport photo on it, but upon interrogation of the bank manager, it was discovered that Mr. Dariye owned the account and had on opening it, requested for a waiver, which enabled him to open it without following the due process of affixing his passport photo on the mandate form.

We obtained the instruments used to open the account with the bank and upon forensic examination, it was confirmed that the signatory to the account was Dariye, he said.

Report of the forensic unit, confirming the signature to be that of Mr. Dariye was accepted as exhibit by the court.

Mr. Sunday further told the court that investigations revealed that Mr. Dariye instructed the bank to disburse the money meant for the states Ecological Fund into private companies that included Ebenezer Ratnen Ventures and Pinnacle Communications Limited, instead of paying the money into the Plateau State Government account.

We studied the accounts linked to Ebenezer Ratnen Ventures with the bank, and discovered financial inflows including money from the Ecological Fund, he said.

The handwritten instruction asking the bank to disburse N1.162 billion to the companies was tendered as exhibit in the court.

Although G. S. Pwul, SAN, counsel to Mr. Dariye contended the admissibility of the handwritten instruction, Justice Banjoko overruled and accepted it as exhibit.

Justice Banjoko thereafter adjourned till January 26 for continuation of the trial, expressing her determination to ensure a speedy determination of the case.

Since his first arraignment on July 13, 2007 at the Federal High Court, Abuja, Mr. Dariye had denied any wrongdoing and had his legal team had filed several motions to delay the trial.

Following his plea of not guilty to the charges preferred against him, the court had set aside November 13, 2007 for the prosecution to open its case.

On the date fixed for trial to commence, Mr. Dariye filed a motion before the court praying for an order to quash the 23-count charge preferred against him on diverse grounds, including lack of locus standi to prosecute him and jurisdiction to hear and determine the case.

Mr. Dariyes application was dismissed by the court on December 10, 2007. He proceeded on appeal, which also suffered the same fate on June 17, 2010.

Not satisfied, the former governor proceeded to the Supreme Court on July 13, 2010.

The Supreme Court, in its judgment delivered on February 27, 2015, found the appeal to be lacking in merit and consequently dismissed it and ordered the court to commence expeditious trial of the former governor.
President Muhammadu Buhari said Monday in Abuja that poverty, injustice and the lack of job opportunities were mainly responsible for inter-communal and intra-communal conflicts in Nigeria.

Speaking while receiving a delegation from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, an organization active in the promotion of peace in Nigeria, President Buhari said to achieve enduring peace in the country, greater effort must be made to eradicate poverty and injustice.

The president described ethnic and religious conflicts in parts of the country as outward manifestations of underlying problems of joblessness, injustice and poverty.

On conflicts between farmers and herdsmen, President Buhari said that a plan to map out grazing areas will soon be presented to the Nigerian Governors Forum as a temporary solution to the frequent conflicts until cattle owners are persuaded to adopt other means of rearing their cattle.

Repeated clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers have led to thousands of deaths.

On Sunday, the Divisional Police Officer, DPO, in charge of Vunokilang Police Station in Girei Local Government Area of Adamawa State was killed alongside 30 other people in an attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

The suspected herdsmen raided four villages: Demsare, Wunamokoh, Dikajam and Taboungo in what is believed to be a vengeance mission over an existing feud with farmers in the area.

Several houses and other property in the villages were also burnt in the attack.

The DPO, Okozie Okereofor, a Chief Superintendent of Police, who was deployed to the state about two months ago, was said to have been ambushed when he was leading police officers to the disputed area. He was killed in the eventual shootout with his assailants.

The Police in Adamawa have confirmed the killing of Mr. Okereofor.

The DPO and his team were attacked while on official duty in the affected villages where he was killed by suspected Fulani herdsmen, the spokesperson of the Adamawa State Police Command, Othman Abubakar, said.

Mr. Buhari commended the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue for the relative peace that had returned to Plateau State as well as their on-going activity in Southern Kaduna.

He agreed with the centre that dialogue was always preferable to the use of law and order mechanisms and force in the resolution of conflicts.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, David Harland, told President Buhari that following their success in facilitating the settlement of the inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Plateau State, the group had moved to Kaduna State.

He expressed the hope that the techniques used in bringing peace to Plateau State can soon be deployed to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency and other conflicts in Nigeria.
A youth group within the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, known as PDP Youth Frontier, PDPYF, has called on leaders of the party to earnestly consider merging with smaller parties and changing its name.

The group made this position known in a communique on Monday in Abuja, after a meeting of its National Working Committee.

The communique, signed by the groups national coordinator, Austin Okai, said if the PDP is to make any headway in the 2019 elections, it must put its house in order.

The PDP youth said that in the past 2 months, several consultations and shared ideas have pointed to the fact that for the PDP to regain power at the federal level come 2019, a total overhaul of its entire system must occur. Ensure discipline and expel the members undergoing criminal investigation including NWC and BoT members.

The group said the national headquarters of the party must in its overall interest provide such a playing ground for all aspirations to thrive within the party.

Nigeria is currently at a crossroad such that only a strong sense of leadership with purpose can return the country to the path of economic prosperity, progress and unity which it may have deviated from, they said.

The group also said the ongoing war against corruption and graft by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, is wholly a welcome development that is long overdue. However the war must be executed with regards to the constitutions of the Federal Republic of Nigeria above anything else.

The youth called on Mr. Buhari to widen the scope of the war against corruption and make it all inclusive.

The EFCC and President Muhammadu Buharis led federal government must engage Nigerians and update them on how much of our looted patrimony have been recovered so far. Dedicated accounts wherein the funds are deposited for safe keeping should also be disclosed be it in the custody of the CBN or EFCC.

That there is an essential need for proper separation of powers. The Judiciary is urged to stand firm and defend the right of Nigerians according to legal provisions without resorting to technicalities to protect unpatriotic citizens from punishment.

The Chief Justice of the Federation must therefore charge legal practitioners to abide by the ethics of their profession as there is enormous danger in impunity and human rights abuses including the ones perpetrated by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The legislature must live up to its bill in checking the excesses of the executive at all times as the 2016 budget saga has shown that there is an urgent need to closely guide and monitor the activities of the presidency and some political greenhorns serving as aides holding sensitive posts, the group said.
Former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has reacted to a call by senior lawyer, Femi Falana, for her prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Mr. Falana had written to the International Criminal Court urging the trial of past and serving military and civilian Nigerian officials, indicted in an ongoing investigation into the diversion of billions of money meant for purchase of arms to fight Boko Haram.

The failure of a former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to prevent widespread and systematic corruption including the re-looting of the Abacha loot amounts to complicity under the Rome Statute, and therefore fits the legal requirements of a crime against humanity, Mr. Falana, a senior advocate of Nigeria wrote.

In her reaction Monday, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala dismissed the call as a desperate joke by an integrity challenged charlatan.

Read full statement:

The malicious attempt by Lagos Lawyer, Femi Falana to mix Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala up in issues that have nothing to do with her in his letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a desperate joke by an integrity challenged charlatan (ICC).

This misadventure shows that the so-called learned lawyer does not have any idea of what the mandate of the ICC is about.

He has resorted to this action because his previous efforts to tarnish her name  through his discredited NGO, SERAP and petitions to the EFCC  failed because they were lacking in credibility.

This latest effort to try to attach her name falsely confirms that Femi Falana is nothing but a tool of corrupt elements whose interests were hurt by the work Dr. Okonjo-Iweala did in fighting corruption while she was in office.

These elements have now made a habit of making false allegations against Dr Okonjo-Iweala whenever she receives any national or international recognition for her work. The pattern is clear and Nigerians should be alert to it. But Dr Okonjo-Iweala will not be intimidated from going on with her life and performing her duties. She will not give in to cowardly and unmanly bullying.

Falanas latest attempt to implicate Dr Okonjo-Iweala falsely suggests that he is suffering from an ailment that may be described as Chronic Cerebral Amnesia (CCA) because he simply has no grasp of the facts.

Here are the facts:

FACT NO 1: OKONJO-IWEALA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE $2.1 BILLION ARMS CONTROVERSY

Contrary to Falanas lies, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged misuse of $2.1billion by the office of the former National Security Adviser. Falana and his sponsors are simply trying to invent a connection where there is none.

The January 20, 2015 memo in which Dr Okonjo-Iweala sought and received the approval of former President Jonathan for the release of part of the newly returned Abacha funds to the NSA for purchase of arms is totally separate from the $2.1 billion issue.

The memo which is now in the public domain speaks for itself. The release of the resources was in response to an approval by the former President following a meeting chaired by him after a committee had considered the request.

The memo clearly documented Dr Okonjo-Iwealas insistence that the proper procedure be followed, subject to appropriation and according to financial regulations. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala went further to state that the former NSA should account for the funds to the former President since she is not a member of the Security Council. The attempt to link Okonjo-Iweala to the $2.1billion issue is therefore dead on arrival.

FACT NO 2: OKONJO-IWEALA WAS NOT IN GOVERNMENT WHEN MOST OF THE ABACHA FUNDS WERE RECOVERED

Falana and his sponsors have claimed that billions of dollars of Abacha funds were recovered and that Dr Okonjo-Iweala should account for the recovered funds.

The fact is that some of the funds recovery was done under the regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar and the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo when Dr Okonjo-Iweala was not even in government.

During the time Dr Okonjo-Iweala was Finance Minister in the second Obasanjo administration, $500m was recovered. As documented by the Field Study conducted by the World Bank with the assistance of national and international NGOs, this amount was properly applied.

Falanas insistence on the contrary shows how despicable he is and how he is ready to ignore facts and concoct a fiction in the service of his sponsors.

FACT 3: OKONJO-IWEALA LEFT STRONG LEGACIES AS A CHAMPION OF TRANSPARENCY AND THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION WHILE IN GOVERNMENT

It is on record that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala championed transparency and vigorously fought corruption during her two terms as Minister. Among other actions, starting from the second Obasanjo administration, she, for the first time in Nigerias history, published monthly revenue allocations to all tiers of government for Nigerians to see.

While serving in the Obasanjo administration, she requested the assistance of the World Bank and DFID, the UKs development agency to build institutions and systems that could block leakages from the treasury. This work stalled after she left office in 2006. In August 2011 when she returned under the Jonathan government, with the assistance of the Ministry of Finance Team, she re-invigorated the establishment and use of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Management Systems (IPPIS), the Government Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) and the Treasury Single Account (TSA), all of which saved the country billions of naira by drastically reducing avenues for corruption in the public service. These facts are well documented in successive World Bank, DFID and IMF Article 4 Reports.

It is gratifying that the present government has adopted and is further building on these systems for the benefit of the country.

FACT NO 4: DR. OKONJO-IWEALAS MOTHER WAS KIDNAPPED AND ALMOST KILLED BECAUSE OF THE FORMER MINISTERS STANCE AGAINST CORRUPTION

Falana is callous beyond belief for ignoring a fact of recent Nigerian history: the kidnap of Professor Kamene Okonjo, the then 83 year old mother of Dr Okonjo-Iweala by agents of fuel subsidy fraudsters who were angry that the former Minister had blocked them from defrauding the country further.

The kidnappers had told the traumatised old woman that they were sent to punish Okonjo-Iweala for refusing to pay some oil marketers. It is on record with the State Security Services that the kidnappers initially demanded the resignation of Dr Okonjo-Iweala in return for the release of her mother. Thank God Professor Okonjo is still alive to tell her story today and she will not be silenced.

It is extremely insensitive and, in fact, inhumane for Falana and his sponsors to level false accusations against someone like Dr Okonjo-Iweala who went through this kind of searing personal ordeal for her principled fight against corruption.

CONCLUSION

Falanas attempt to implicate Dr Okonjo-Iweala falsely is a disservice to law, justice and the image of the country. It is sad that a person who had earned some prominence as a human rights lawyer now tramples on the human rights of others as a political jobber.

He and his sponsors are engaged in nothing but media harassment, cyber bullying and intimidation against innocent persons like Dr Okonjo-Iweala for political and pecuniary gain. That is why Nigerians should not give in to Falanas self-imposed Chronic Cerebral Amnesia (CCA).
A Federal High Court in Abuja has adjourned ruling on the bail application filed by the embattled leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.

Mr. Kanu is facing a six-count charge bordering on allegations of treasonable felony, maintaining an unlawful society and illegal possession of firearms, among others.

The Biafran agitator was brought to court by the Nigerian Prisons Service officials in handcuffs on Monday.

During the hearing, Mr. Kanus counsel, Vincent Obeta, told the court that the offences for which his client was brought before it was bailable.

He cited sections section 158 and 162 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), stressing that the sections contain his clients statutory right to bail since he (Mr. Kanu) was not charged for a capital offence.

He said the offensc borders on civil right issues, adding that the right to agitate is guaranteed in a democracy.

But the prosecution counsel, Mohammed Diri, argued that the application did not meet the conditions stipulated in section 162 of the ACJA.

Mr. Diri, the director of prosecution in the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, expressed fears that Mr. Kanu would escape trial if granted bail.

He stressed that the defendant had dual citizenship.

The counsel therefore urged the court to deny the bail application and proceed with accelerated hearing into the matter.

In his ruling, after accessing the arguments of both counsel, Mr. Tsoho said the application for bail would be decided on January 29.

Shortly after the session, Mr. Kanu, along with some of his supporters, engaged in an argument with the prison officials as he was led out of the court premises.

Mr. Tsoho had on January 20 ordered that Mr. Kanu be remanded in Kuje prison pending hearing on his bail application.

Mr. Kanu was arrested in October 2015 by officials of the State Security Service, shortly after he returned to the country.

Calls for his release have resulted in violent protests in some parts of the country.
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, John Odigie-Oyegun in an interactive session with journalists at the APC headquarters in Abuja on Monday spoke on several issues in the polity including the fight against corruption, the economy, Kogi state deputy governorship, mass defections to the APC, the partys Anambra Central Senatorial candidacy and party funding. Excerpts:

On the economy

Our party is very aware of the hardships that the mis-governance of the last 16 years has plunge this country. We are very aware of the hard and tough times that a lot of Nigerians are going through. Apart from the party, let me also say that it is the main concern of Mr. President. He is fully aware of the tough times that people are going through. And I want to give the assurance that everything is being done to better the economy and ameliorate the deprivation that people are going through.

I think that many Nigerians understand why things are the way they are and that the Buhari administration has inherited a prostrate economy. Not just that, nobody envisaged that there will be a near total collapse of the price of crude and when you juxtapose that with our consumption habit, when we tend import everything in quantity from toothpicks to the choicest champagne, all these products do put pressure on the foreign exchange stock of the nation and all of this has given rise to all the issues that are being dealt with by the presidents team.

But one needs to emphasize that as a nation, we got used to excessive consumption. We are not a producing nation. Virtually everything we have is imported, there is even a joke that some of our elites order pizza and such other things all the way from London. So, all these things come from the same stock of foreign exchange that we have and they are quickly depleting given the collapse of crude oil.

We have to turn from a consuming nation to a producing nation. We consume because oil was there at a hundred plus naira per barrel so money was all over the place but that is no longer the situation and so we must have to adjust to the new reality as a people and as a nation.

The president inherited a collapsed economy. You cannot start rebuilding a collapsed economy without clearing the debris and what we are doing today, is clearing the debris and at the same time; because when we listen to the radio, they say that all that is being done is war against corruption, but at the same time, the work of rebuilding and reconstruction of the Nigerian economy is rapidly in progress and I want to assure you that there will be plenty of successes in the next few months. But I keep underscoring this that there is no quick fix, there is no automatic solution but the project are being concluded and things will get better in the next few months. The party is aware and very conscious and sympathetic but it is a situation we did not create, it is a situation the government is managing but the good news is that there will be smiles tomorrow but we must be able to put up with current deprivation which has become inevitable.

On the partys Anambra Central Senatorial candidacy

It has long ceased to be an issue because the party after due process of our constitutional requirements had been followed, the process threw up Barr Sharon Ikeazor as the candidate for the party in that election and that is an issue that has since been decided.

I dont understand this rather excessive concern of respected Senator Uche Ekwenife she is a loyal party member, she went through the processes, it is in the constitution of the party to have procedures, screening processes, primary committees all of these are there.

It happened that there were two ladies of stature vying for that position, she has just come into the party straight into the process of nomination. Whether it was in the partys constitution to disqualify her? Of course it is there otherwise, we wont have procedures, screening and appeal committees, it just happened that she was just coming into the party and those who processed the nomination had their score chart and we have a cutoff mark of 51 percent and she happens to score less than that is it.

On Kogi state deputy governorship

All I can say also is as a party, we are prepared for every contingencies in the Kogi situation. So, whatever happens in the next few hours, we are ready for it there is no question and doubt about that. I am not to pre-empt what may happen, that is for the legal authorities.

I dont want to go into the details of what is likely going to happen, that is still between INEC and legal authorities.

On party funding

There has been this talk in the media but that goes to tell you that just like the economy, the party too is suffering from the stresses and strains of funding just like every institution in our polity. That also goes to tell you that we are not a party that withdraws money from security votes or from any government agency. We are working on plans to raise money from within the memberships. That plan has matured and will soon put it into operation. I saw reports that we have written to the president to rescue the party. That is not part of his national duties and he has no intention because there are no funds from which he can draw from.

The party has to come up with fresh and innovative ways as to how to raise resources for its operations and that, we have done. The plan is ready and will go into operation in the next one month or two.

On the alleged missing budget

I will want to say here that the issue about the budget was totally overplayed, the budget was never missing , the main document was totally intact and when the President presented the budget given the nature of the load of work they have to do and in the circumstances at which they were done they were likely to be a few corrections to be made in this process and all Mr President effected were the necessary corrections at this point in time and there may still be more corrections as the process continues in the House of Assembly. I just see the criticisms surrounding the budget as one by the opposition to take a bash at the government, what happened is nothing more than suggested corrections to the addendum to the budget that had earlier been presented.

On mass defections to the APC

It is freedom of association and I think everybody is free to join. The essential fabric of APC is strong enough to withstand any attempt by anyone to undermine it from within. In any case, you cannot join the APC without subscribing to its goals and objectives and when you join the party today, you do not expect to take over reign of power because there are people there already, you still have to prove yourself that youre loyal and reliable member of the party, you cannot just come and become a leader of the party in one day, you have to earn your way to become trusted with leadership and control, you cannot transfer you status in the party you were coming from into APC because when you come, you are meeting people who are occupying the leadership positions.

On constitution of partys BOT

There is no issue surrounding that, its just that there has been so much to do and the president wants to personally participate in it, a date has been scheduled for all organs of the party to meet.

On alleged selective anti-corruption fight

I dont know where to start, but I feel its a judicial matter and the party absolutely has no role on the matter. People give this impression that this government does nothing other than probe of corrupt officials but as I said earlier, a lot is happening that will bring cheers to Nigerians in the next few months. People say it is only PDP that this government is probing but for sixteen years, PDP was in control, are you going to come and arrest me in Benin over contract issues when I was not in any way near government? Let me say this clearly, if we want to clean this country, then we must be serious about it, wherever the train goes, we must be ready to go there, all these attempt to divert attention from the reality will not just work. The mere fact that the current leader is investigating what happened before his time is a clear indication that he is unlikely to repeat the same mistake as the next government will investigate the current administration too. We must be ready to put up with the inconveniences and moral decadence this administration is trying to get the country out of. When people start to make diversionary statements, I just laugh because this is not the time for this, we are investigating yesterday, let tomorrow investigate us, that is how this country will get out of this rots.

On whether ex-president Goodluck Jonathan should be called for questioning

It is not my job, it is the job of EFCC, wherever the train leads to, so be it.
There have been reports about Nigeria joining the Saudi Arabia created Islamic Military Alliance Against Terrorism (ISMAT). Such a decision has serious implications for peace and security in our country and should not be taken without proper and transparent consultations and considerations.

We recall the national stress triggered by the non-transparent way in which we joined the Organisation of Islami States, OIC, so many years ago. The ISMAT question could have much more serious implications for Nigeria than the OIC.

PREMIUM TIMES believes that Nigeria should not join ISMAT, created specifically under pressure to fight ISIS. The national interests of Saudi Arabia are not Nigerias national interests. On the sound and legitimate issue of fighting terrorism locally, regionally and globally, Saudi Arabia has shown that her interests come first before any commitment to fight terrorism.

It is expected that countries advance and defend their national interests. But there is a problem when such interests collide with global interests, and Nigeria should not be made to simply be the vehicle with which another country advances its national interests. Nigeria must maintain its independence and sovereignty at all times.

The second reason is the ambiguity surrounding the formation of the ISMAT itself. Initially, Saudi Arabia called its initiative a coordination centre and later transformed it to an Islamic Military Alliance without consultations. Indonesia, for example, did not know that Saudis coordination centre was going to be a military alliance. Pakistan also has indicated its surprise at the change. The global community only heard of the change when Saudi Arabias Deputy Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, announced the new group at a midnight press conference that members comprised countries genuinely interested in fighting all forms of terrorism  both Islamic and non-Islamic.

In clarifying Saudis initiative, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said the coalition is a group that would allow member states to request or offer assistance among themselves in fighting groups they designate as terrorists. Such assistance could include military force, financial aid, and material or security expertise. The centre coalition alliance (whichever name we use), according to Adel al-Jubeir, would have a permanent base in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

Following this clarification, the question is: Is Saudi Arabia-created ISMAT a knee-jerk response to her narrow national interests? Is there anything to learn from the Nigerian massacre of the Shiites as Nigeria considers joining ISMAT?

The Nigerian Army, for example, officially designated its massacre of Shiites in Zaria, between December 12-15, 2015, as a war apparently because the Nigerian Shiites, which barricaded the highway wanted to assassinate the Chief of Army Staff (General Tukur Buratai). So if the Nigerian state or the Nigerian army decides to designate the Shiites who barricaded the road on December 12, 2015 as terrorists, it means they can get assistance such as military force, financial aid, material or security expertise from Saudi Arabia and her ISMAT to combat the Shiites.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran have been very engaged in the Shiite/army clash in Nigeria and are clearly eager to join the fray. This would be in line with their national interests, but Nigeria would certainly have no interest engaging in such a proxy war between the national interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Apart from the ambiguous nature of Saudis ISMAT, the third reason Nigeria should be critical of ISMAT is the cultural and theological roots of the terrorism ISMAT is supposed to fight. Some have argued with good reasons that the roots of some of the more contemporary forms of terrorism associated with Islam is located in the Salafi/Wahhabi movement upon which the Saudi Arabian theocracy rests. The Salafi movement claims to be the real Islam, and their adherents claim to be the real Muslims. Such claims imply that other Muslims who are not Salafi or Wahhabi are not real Muslims. Nigeria has different forms of Islam co-existing and PREMIUM TIMES believes that it is dangerous for us to officially promote a sectarian Islamic agenda.

In todays Global Islam, two forces are aligning supporters for a major confrontation  the Shiite forces under Irans leadership and the Salafi-Wahhabi forces under the leadership of Saudi Arabia. Both of them have been known to sponsor forms of terrorism. We have, for example followed the activities of Iranian backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi Insurgency in Yemen. It is also known that the Shiites have empirically proven to be in an organised sense disrespectful of constituted authorities and governments. Given the Saudi/Iranian rivalry, Iran is not at the table at ISMAT! As the rivalry and proxy wars between the Iranians and the Saudi deepen and widen, Nigeria should beware of being a partisan on one side.

Despite the Shiites/army clash, Nigeria must not allow itself to become a pawn in the Saudi/Iran high-stakes bid for Islamic supremacy. Most of the worlds Muslims, along with the majority in Nigeria, peacefully practice their Sunni doctrine without confrontation with others. We must stand for religious freedom and tolerance, something that may be lacking in the various alliances being whipped up in the promotion of divergent national interests, all under the cover of religion.

For the past seven years, Nigeria has been engaged in a war against Boko Haram, which has announced its allegiance to the Islamic State. Boko Haram has also announced that it considers Shiites to be non-Muslim and enemies. There have been reports of Boko Haram suicide bombers attacking a Shiite (Islamic Movement of Nigeria) procession in Nigeria.

The confrontation between the Nigerian army and the Shiites in Zaria is a strong indicator that we stand the risk of opening a second front of Islamist-based terrorism in Nigeria. Nigeria must not allow herself to be turned into a battleground for religious proxy wars.
A former minister of petroleum, Jibril Aminu, has expressed concern over what he described as state governors unlimited access to spending of public funds.

Mr. Aminu made the statement on Saturday in Yola in his speech at the third edition of Adamawa Community Dialogue, organised by an NGO, Adamawa Community Advancement Initiative (ACAI).

He said that a situation where a governor could collect and spend state resources at will without recourse to due process needed to be checked if the country must progress.

Mr. Aminu, a former senator, decried the situation in the country where governors handle state and local government resources like their personal property.

A governor just sends for the Accountant-General, who very often is his best friend; maybe his cousin too to bring money, he said.

Mr. Aminu noted that he had had cause in the past to comment on the excesses of governors, who he said, hijacked council funds and even attempted to control the federal government through the governors forum.

He lauded ACAI for its effort to promote unity and good governance in Adamawa. He urged the organisation not to relent in its efforts to ensure that the state and nations resources were judiciously utilised for the benefit of the people.

He condemned politics of sentiments, saying that those promoting such sentiments use it as screen to cover up their failure.

Ethnicity, religion and other pettiness are all symptoms of non-performance; people who fail use ethnicity and religion as something to hang on, he said.

Mr. Aminu urged Nigerians not to be discouraged by the current challenges facing the nation but remain resolute and determined to reject negative thinking and work towards nation building.

We are rich, our people are intelligent and we have all the potentials, Mr. Aminu said. (NAN)
The senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, on Sunday kicked off distribution of 100,000 radio sets to communities in seven local government areas under his zone.

While presenting the radio sets to representatives of communities in the seven LGAs namely: Kaduna North, Kaduna South, Birnin Gwari, Chikun, Giwa, Igabi and Kajuru in Kaduna, Mr. Sani described radio as the major source of enlightenment and access to information especially to the grassroot in the northern part of the country.

He said, Radio is the major source of information dissemination in the region with or without electricity. So, I am sharing this radio to contribute towards political consciousness within the people of my own senatorial district, he said.

On his alleged suspension from the All Progressives Congress, APC, Mr. Sani said the national secretariat of the party had advised that all sides cease all forms of attacks on the pages newspapers and I have instructed all my supporters and followers to abide by this.

Mr. Sani, who is the chairman, senate committee on foreign and domestic debt, blamed the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, and his supporters for the crisis.

But it is unfortunate that some persons within the circle of the governor have made crisis a source of their own monetary gains, he said.

So, as far as I am concerned, we will abide by what the national secretariat advised. It is shameful and disgraceful that individuals within the so-called state level are insulting reputable personalities at the national level.

Mr. Sani warned of a looming crisis in the Kaduna APC, and said without both sides accepting to remain in peace, the party will continue to face problems.

He called on Nigerians to continue to support and pray for President Muhammadu Buhari.

The president has two categories of enemies, those who like the president by mere words and those who hate him in their hearts, he said.

APC is Buhari and Buhari is APC and we are in APC if Buhari is in APC. Therefore, no amount of blackmail, propaganda against me will discourage me or the people of Kaduna State because our people have become more aware and enlightened about the political developments around them.

Whoever does not want Buhari to continue beyond 2019 is enemy of Buhari and Nigerians, he said.

Abdulkareem Akarami, who spoke on behalf of the beneficiaries, thanked the senator and urged other political leaders to emulate him.

Radio is our live and we thank the senator for the distribution which will help most of us who cannot afford their own because of our economic status, he said.
Police in Bayelsa State said a man was on Sunday abducted by unknown gunmen at Igbedi Community in Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area of the state.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Bayelsa, Asinim Butswat, said in an email to PREMIUM TIMES that Dunkan Eke, an engineer, was kidnapped at about 12.40pm.

Mr. Ekes abductors also shot and wounded one Ezekiel Obata, said to be a clergy, police said.

Details of the attack were not immediately clear.

Mr. Butswat said the wounded clergy was taken to a clinic in Polaku where he was responding to treatment, while the police were intensifying effort to rescue the abducted engineer and arrest his abductors.
The European Union says it will support Delta State with $17 million (about N3.3 billion) out of its $80 million grant to four states in the Niger-Delta region.

The money is part of the World Bank, EU and Delta-sponsored State Employment and Expenditure for Results (SEEFOR) project.

The World Banks Task Team Leader, Ismaila Sessay, disclosed this during a visit to the State Commissioner for Economic Planning, Kingsley Emu, on Monday in Asaba. He named the four states benefiting from the grant as Bayelsa, Edo, Delta and Rivers.

The five-year programme which started in 2013 is being financed by the World Bank to the tune of $200 million with Delta receiving $39.7 million(N7.9billion) in total.

With the additional $80 million financial support from EU, Sessay said Delta was expected to receive $17 million (N3.3 billion) grant. Sessay, also Head of Financial Management, World Bank, said the EUs grant might create room for two years extension of the programme thereby attracting more relevant projects.

He said the team would be in Delta for few days to assess and review the mid-term implementation of the SEEFOR. According to him, with the EU coming into the project with its grant, there is need to widen the scope of SEEFOR and scale up the process.

With this grant we should start looking at the whole platform of those people who are helping to create jobs, and by that, we are talking about the informal sector.

We are talking about those people who are trying their best in improving the employment climate of the state, Sessay said.

He lauded the state government, particularly the Project Coordinator, Benson Ojoko, for the smooth implementation of SEEFOR.

Sessay said the World Bank would continue to partner with the state to improve on the progress so far made.

We are also looking forward to strengthening this relationship between the World Bank, the EU and of course, the Federal Government.

As a team, we want to see Delta become one of the prime states in terms of project implementation.

This project is one of the flagship projects in this state and we use it to pride ourselves that the project in Delta is indeed doing well, the World Bank official said.

Responding, Emu lauded the World Bank for the initiative and assured that the state would continue to strengthen its partnership with the agencies, especially in driving SEEFOR.

He noted that SEEFOR programme had been able to impact positively on the socio-economic lives of the people. Emu said the objective of SEEFOR was in line with the SMART agenda of Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa, who, he noted, was committed to the socio-economic well-being of the people. (NAN)
The Environmental Health Officers Association of Nigeria, Lagos State Chapter, on Monday said that it had killed no fewer than 4,400 rats at six major markets in the state under its de-rat market programme.

Its president, Samuel Akingbehin, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that his association carried out the exercise at Onigongbo, Oshodi, Oke-Odo, Ikotun Idanwo, Ojuwoye and Mile 12 Markets.

He said that de-rating the markets was part of the associations efforts to curb the spread of Lassa fever in the state.

The exercise is strategic in our effort toward the prevention of communicable diseases, he said.

The disease, since its outbreak, has killed no fewer than 76 of its victims, and over 200 cases across 17 states are quarantined and under observations.

Mr. Akingbehin appealed to traders from across the state to show an understanding towards the efforts of the association to rid the markets of rodents.

He said the plan was to de-rat markets in one local government area per day starting from 5pm.

According to him, the association decided on this time to allow traders and buyers transact their legitimate businesses.

We also decided to put the exercise in the evening due to the nocturnal nature of rodents and our members had recorded successes in the markets visited till date.

It took us about three hours to cover the Oshodi market when our members went there for the exercise.

Today, Monday, we will be visiting Suru-Alaba Market in Orile-Ifelodun LCDA by 5pm with about 400 EHOs to de-rat it.

We are still calling on all other executive secretaries of the local government areas to assist us toward the elimination of rodents in our markets and our environments, he said.

(NAN)
( Read 5801 Times)

Mera Bharat Vysan Mukt (My India be addiction free),Sankalp Apka,Sahyog Hamara,( Decision yours help ours)With these key note words a campaign which was started last year in Government school where the students were shown the CD of Lab Top by Dr P.C.Jain & his associate Mrs Minaxi Bhargava in now continuing .The Students were given questionnaire on addiction which they solved .Prize distribution was organized in Govt.Girls School ,Sunderwas ,where girls were given Momento,certificate,motivation money for first Rs.500-,second Rs 300/-third Rs.200/-.Prize were given by Dr P.C. Jain M.B.B.S who is doing awareness from last two decades on De-Addiction & Roof Top Rain water harvesting.Deepika Gurjar stood,First,Meena Rawat second,Harshita Chobisa Third.All the student recited a poem on de addiction with dr jainSchool principal mrs madu Purohit thanked & Mrs Saroj Kothari welcomed Dr Jain.
Sunday was all about the cleanup.

Whether digging out from deep snow, or drying out from heavy floods, many residents were dealing with the wet remnants of the weekend storm.

Cumberland County got more than 13 inches of snow in some areas. But for Atlantic Countys shore communities and much of Cape May County, historic flooding was the real culprit.

The winter storm dubbed Jonas brought higher tides than 2012s Hurricane Sandy.

Some of the highest tides were from Sandy, North Wildwood Mayor Patrick Rosenello said Sunday afternoon, but we didnt get the damage that Monmouth and Ocean counties did. This storm put the bulls-eye on Cape May County. Theres a lot more damage from this storm than there was from Sandy.

Rosenello said hundreds of homes on the citys west side appeared to have been breached by floodwaters, which at Saturday mornings highest tide hit 9.44 feet. Sandys highest tide reached 8.9 feet. Cape May and Stone Harbor also experienced record high tides Saturday morning.

A lot of homes that didnt get water in Sandy will find this time they did, the mayor said.

Ocean Citys high tide of 8.04 feet passed the 2009 Veterans Day mark by just .02.

Many residents spent Sunday learning the extent of damages.

Atlantic Citys South Inlet section was smaller than usual, as sand took over a chunk of the street. Parts of the bulkhead were broken as still rough waves struck it. In one area, a fire hydrant was almost completely buried.

More than 100,000 Atlantic City Electric customers lost power, spokesman Frank Tedesco said. The bulk in the region were in Cape May County. By Sunday night, just 780 remained without service.

Brigantine firefighters were busy overnight with lots of flooding and calls.

Saturday morning brought the worst of the waters, said Fire Capt. Joe Maguire. Then the high tides Saturday evening brought flooding as well.

The major coastal flooding that affected much of Cape May County along with Margate in Atlantic County and Ocean Countys Tuckerton Beach and Beach Haven West prevented Atlantic City Electrics crews from accessing those areas to start repairs, Tedesco said.

Stone Harbor Mayor Suzanne Walters was one of about 30 residents who moved to The Reeds at Shelter Haven due to the storm  mostly due to the power loss.

I was outside sitting in my car charging my phone and I thought, This is ridiculous, Walters said. Why was I at home without power when I could be somewhere else? So between high tides, I moved to The Reeds.

She said she had not been out to assess the damage, but was told businesses along the boroughs 96th Street shopping district had water enter their buildings.

We have a massive cleanup ahead of us, Rosenello said of the aftermath to North Wildwoods record flood. Our dunes took a severe beating. They did their job, and in doing so, they were severely damaged. Our seawall may have been undermined. Were going to ask the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers to take a look at it.

In Ocean County, the Harvey Cedars Police Department on Long Beach Island warned Sunday that people should avoid checking the beach or surf, citing a significant dropoff due to beach erosion. Police posted photos to social media of roped-off cliffs at 68th Street.

Kim Wood, of the Cumberland County Department of Planning and Economic Development, said early Sunday that the Cumberland County bayshore did experience flooding during Saturday mornings high tide, but Sunday mornings high tide was not expected to be as significant.

Cumberland County had more than 30 trucks out plowing snow Sunday, including county crews and private contractors, Wood said.

Most of the major roads in Atlantic County had been cleared of snow by Sunday afternoon. But even though it was less messy than the floods, the underlying layer of ice made cleanup a little tougher.

You cant just plow it away, said Jim Massaro, of Ultimate Construction.

The Egg Harbor Township resident plowed neighbors driveways for free before setting out to tend to paying customers.

Atlantic Citys David Alexander was heading to Ventnor to try to make some money digging people out when he came across a worker at Hi-Five on Atlantic Avenue having shovel trouble.

I stopped to help him out, said the lifelong resident who recently moved back to the area after three years in Las Vegas.

Staff Writer Thomas Barlas contributed to this report.

Contact: 609-463-6719

Twitter @ACPress_Nevitt

Contact: 609-272-7257
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.




University continues commitment to open source software and communities through OSI Membership.

By: The Open Source Initiative

Indiana University joins OSI

Media Contact

Ed Schauweker

ed@agilepr.net Ed Schauweker

End

-- The Open Source Initiative(OSI) announced today the Affiliate Membership of Indiana University (IU), a long time champion for the use of open source software as a means for greater efficiency in higher education. The partnership highlights the OSI's recent efforts to extend support to higher education: helping colleges and universities across the globe realize the benefits of open source software, develpoment models and communities.IU has long been committed to the development and adoption of open source software as well as the cultivation of open communities of practice. Under the leadership of Brad Wheeler, IUs vice president for IT/CIO and interim dean of the IU School of Informatics and Computing, the university has co-founded some of higher education's most transformative open source software and service collaborations including the Sakai Project for teaching and learning software, and Kuali for financial and other administrative systems.IU joins other higher education Affiliates, the University of Southern Queensland, Marist College, and the Apereo Foundation--a consortium of over 100 colleges and universities working to co-develop open source software for education. Affiliate membership is the ideal way for institutions of higher education to support the mission of the OSI and contribute to the continued awareness and adoption of open source software, while growing their own local open source software initiatives, portfolios and communities on campus and across higher education.Patrick Masson, OSI General Manager and Director, welcomed IU and acknowledged the universitiy's impact, "Indiana University's investment, and especially the work of thier CIO Brad Wheeler, is arguably one of the greatest factors for the growth and success of open source in higher education." Masson added, "With IU's lead, open source software moved out of the narrow confines of the data center, to broad adoption across the entire enterprise supporting user-facing systems for both academic and administrative services."In 2009, the IU Office of the Vice President for Information Technology was recognized among the nations top 100 organizations by CIO magazine for its leadership in developing open source software with dozens of colleges, universities and commercial partners."By becoming one of the first higher education institutions to join the Open Source Initiative, Indiana University shows its continued commitment to open source," said Daniel Calarco, Chief of Staff for the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology at Indiana University. Calarco will serve as the universitys affiliate member representative to OSI.The OSI Affiliate Member Program, available at no-cost, invites non-profit and not-for-profit organizations to directly participate in the direction and development of the OSI through Board of Directors elections as well as incubator projects and working groups that support the open source movement. Affiliate members engage with some of the world's most successful open source software leaders, projects, businesses and communities through member driven initiatives to, not only raise awareness and adoption of open source software, but also to extend and improve their own open source efforts through co-creation, collaboration and community. Campuses interested in learning more about the expanded Affiliate Member Program can visit the OSI website at http://opensource.org/ affiliates or contact the OSI directly via http://opensource.org/ contact Founded in 1820, Indiana University is a major public research institution more than 114,000 students across eight campuses. Digital textbooks, virtual software delivery, and flexible learning environments support IU's mobile community and place the university at the cutting edge of IT for higher education. As part of this culture of innovation, Indiana University manages the nation's leading research networks, heads research initiatives supported by the National Science Foundation, partners with other universities on open source software development, and provides leadership in cybersecurity. For more about IT at IU, see http://it.iu.edu.Founded in 1998, the Open Source Initiative (http://opensource.org)protects and promotes open source by providing a foundation for community success. It champions open source in society through education, infrastructure and collaboration. As the steward of the Open Source Definition, the OSI is recognized internationally as the sole standards body for certifying open source licenses and preventing abuse of the open source concept by bad actors. The (OSI) is a California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
By: Agriya

Agriya's Extended Deal 2016

Contact

Agriya

***@agriya.com

+914440101717 Agriya+914440101717

End

-- Agriyas tradition of website as well as mobile apps creation is marked by a series of repeated discounts, and price slashes, as demanded by its renowned clients all over the world. Sticking to the convention, Agriya is offering another price slash, namely Extended Deal in the final days of the first month of 2016.This offer begins from 25th of Jan, and concludes on 29th Jan 2016. Consumers can grab this special opportunity to purchase any product, module or mobile application from Agriya, and access a flat 20% off on regular prices under the applicable terms, and conditions. It happens to be an effective deal, and consumers can grab it at the earliest.Agriyas products encompass influential clone scripts that assist clients in the making of purposeful smart-phone applications and websites in an instant. As a website development company initiated before 15 years ago, Agriya has a widespread client-base in many parts of the world. New consumers together with our existing clients can seek out wonderful business benefits from this Extended Deal 2016.Adding to the happiness of customers, Agriya never keeps any hidden charges with the deals. Clients will have to perform only fundamental activities to avail the offer. Just visit any of our web page which details on relative product or mobile app, and enter thein the required space before proceeding to the payment page for availing this offer. Agriya ensures finest products, best deals, and full-time customer support for providing 100% value for what customers spend for.For more information about our Extended Deal, Visit: https://www.agriya.com/ products
A true account of a war vet and police officer Chris Dorner who was ultimately burned alive in the end by the LAPD. It's a controversial case. Of course it would be when the players are, a frustrated black Cop who killed because of racism, over-zealous LAPD with a bad history, and trigger-happy cops shooting innocent civilians.

By: RJ Parker Publishing

1 2 Kindle eBook Edition Print Edition

Contact

RJ Parker, acclaimed True Crime Author of 20 books

agent@rjparkerpublishing.com



Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/ 12527422/1

https://www.prlog.org/ 12527422/2 RJ Parker, acclaimed True Crime Author of 20 books

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--was a cop with the LAPD who was fired after reporting that his training officer beat up a suspect. He appealed. Lost. Then snapped. In his manifesto that he posted on Facebook he vowed to kill those associated with him being fired, and their families.His first victim, was the daughter of the LAPD lawyer who represented him, and her fiance. This case is most recent, 2013, and includes the all-out manhunt for Dorner, and his controversial death.Available January 28, 2015 on Amazon inand. Coming in Audiobook in February.View all True Crime and Crime Fiction books byon, is ranked in the Top 100 authors list on Amazon.He has written 20 true crime books which are available in eBook, paperback and audiobook editions and have sold in over 100 countries. He holds Certifications in Serial Crime and Criminal Profiling." -- John Douglas (Retired FBI Agent - Behavioral Science)Besides gifting books to his cause, Wounded Warriors, and donating to Victims of Violent Crimes, RJ has regular contests on Facebook where he gifts eBooks and autographed books.RJ Parker Publishing represents several authors in the genres of True Crime and Crime Fiction.
W3in1web Pvt ltd announced today it has partnered with software developer SmarterTools Inc., allowing it to [resell/lease] the SmarterMail mail server , SmarterStats Web log analytics and SEO software , and SmarterTrack customer service software

Contact

Parinda Dissanayake

***@w3in1web.com Parinda Dissanayake

End

--W3in1web Pvt ltd announced today it has partnered with software developer SmarterTools Inc., allowing it to [resell/lease]the SmarterMail mail server (https://www.smartertools.com/smartermail/business-email-server.html), SmarterStats Web log analytics and SEO software (https://www.smartertools.com/smarterstats/website-analytics.html), and SmarterTrack customer service software (https://www.smartertools.com/smartertrack/online-help-desk.html)to customers.SmarterMail is a cost effective Microsoft Exchange alternative, bringing enterprise level functionality to businesses, ISPs, and Web hosting environments. SmarterTrack is a powerful help desk application built for tracking, managing, and reporting on customer service and communications, including sales and support issues. SmarterStats allows businesses to manage website statistics and SEO efforts in a single application, providing them with the tools needed to make informed decisions and run their online business at maximum efficiency.SmarterTools products are used in more than 100 countries by businesses of all sizes to collaborate, manage, and track business performance. All SmarterTools products are designed to be accessible via popular Web browsers and are thoroughly tested and optimized for the Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera browsers, allowing end users to access their mission critical software from any computer or mobile device from anywhere in the world.Founded in 2003, SmarterTools Inc. is an information technology management software company based in Phoenix,Arizona. SmarterTools builds a Windows mail server, customer service software, and Web log analytics and SEO software that simplify and automate the day today IT operations of businesses and hosting environments in over 100 countries. Additional information aboutSmarterTools Inc. and the SmarterTools product line is available at the company website: http://www.smartertools.com W3in1Web ( http://www.w3in1web.com ) (W/A 1007010) is an Sri Lanka based Web Solution provider that provide a variety of personal, business and corporate web solutions to entities of all sizes.Founded in 2010, w3in1web connects hundreds of Sri Lankan and international businesses to the internet, with our services ranging from shared web hosting to virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and Enterprise Cloud Solutions. With all our servers and network based in COLOGIX  US and IOMART - UK, W3in1Web provides a reliable local alternative to your online business needs.Whether you are just getting started with your first website or are an IT Professional, you'll appreciate the speed and features we offer with our range of plans with the ability to manage all aspects of your web hosting and web designing from the popular and user friendly cPanel Hosting Control Panel and sentora hosting panel.Our website hosting solutions are targeted specially to the Sri Lankan online market and our US and UK servers provide the fastest connection speeds possible, whilst our 99.9% uptime guarantee provides peace of mind.To learn more about W3in1web Pvt Ltd please visit: www.w3in1web.com
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-- Elizabeth & Lace Bridal released images from their fairytale themed bridal shoot, to offer a sneak peek into its 2016 bridal collection.The shoot was done in a serene park, tucked away amidst the hustle and bustle of the busy city of Lagos. The overall theme was soft and romantic, with a mixture of the beautiful elements of nature and bridal fashion.Four beautiful dresses from Elizabeth & Lace Bridal were featured in the shoot, including the beaded sweetheart mermaid organza strapless gown, the off shoulder tiered mermaid lace gown, the long-sleeved beaded lace ball gown, and the A-lined lace cap sleeved gown with satin button details.Elizabeth & Lace Bridal Boutique is a chic wedding dress store in Lagos, dedicated to modern, sophisticated, elegant and stylish brides. The Elizabeth & Lace Bride wants a dress that is the perfect blend of modern chic and traditional values, yet stylish and unique. Our dresses are carefully handpicked with love, and each bride to be is given a dedicated service to ensure a personal and memorable experience.Click on the Link below to view images from the shoot;https://www.facebook.com/elizabethandlacebridal/To find out more about Elizabeth & Lace Bridal Boutique, visit our website; www.elizabethandlacebridal.com , or send us an email atInstagram:@elizabethandlacebridalTwitter: @elizabethlacengModels: Chinenye Edigbue for Few Models, Anouk PretoriaMakeup: Joanne SanniPhotography:IdeasNG
By: PR-BS Inc.

End

-- DCOTA Invites Design Professionals & Design Enthusiasts to WINTERMARKET 2016 on February 3-4Showroom Presentations by Designers Stephen Burks, Nancy Corzine, John Sacchetti Donis, Mary Fisher, Adriana Hoyos, Jaime Perczek, Cortney Novogratz & More(Dania Beach, FL  January 20, 2016) Concluding its yearlong 30th anniversary schedule of special events for design professionals, students and design enthusiasts, DCOTA today announced WINTERMARKET 2016, two days of showroom presentations and discussions featuring legendary designers and industry icons. The event will be held on Wednesday and Thursday, February 3 & 4. Admission is complimentary, though RSVP is requested at dcotawintermarket2016.eventbrite.com.The Design Center of the Americas is proud to present this annual two-day event that showcasing the latest design trends for the new year, said Leia Bosco, DCOTAs Director of Marketing. This is the perfect opportunity for design professionals and enthusiasts to visit our extraordinary showrooms and learn from leading designers and influential industry insiders.WINTERMARKET 2016Showroom PresentationsWednesday, February 3:+ 10 to 11 am / Suite C-172Jaime Perczek DesignNeo-Deco Style by Jaime PerczekThis special workshop will focus on the style, finishes, techniques and design personalities of the celebrated Art Deco period.+ 11 am to noon / Suite C-150Lee Jofa / Brunschwig & FillsPresentation by Mary Fisher+ Noon to 1 pm / Suite C-158The Shade StoreDiscussing Collaborative Design with Courtney Novogratz+ 1 to 2 pm / Suite B-240Ammon HicksonPrivate Tour with Designer Nancy Corzine+ 2 to 3 pm / Suite C-120DedonStephen Burks Man MadeCrafting Industry+ 3 to 4 pm / Suite A-128John Rosselli & AssociatesCloth, Color and Scale:Creating Personalized Environments+ 4 to 6 pm / Suite C-332Inside the Art of CraftsmanshipGrand Opening CelebrationThursday, February 4:+ 10 to 11 am / Suite A-108SchumacherThe Past. The Present The Future.An Historical Journey with SchmacherThis will be a lively presentation about the past, present, and future of Schumacher.+ 11 am to noon / Suite A-128John Rosselli & AssociatesCelebrate the Arrival of Waterhouse Wallhangings & Fabrics+ Noon to 1 pm / Suite B-112FLORENSEGaggenau & Florense:The Ultimate Cooking ExperienceDue to limited seating an RSVP is required for this VIP cooking demonstration.+ 1 to 2 pm / Suite C-262Eggersmann Kitchens / Home LivingChocolate IndulgenceA special gourmet chocolate tasting.+ 2 to 3 pm / Suite C-350ADRIANA HOYOSAH: TEN BY TENAdriana Hoyos will introduce her TENTH collection, TEN, including a product demonstration and a video of the collection. A light lunch will be served.+ 3 to 4 pm / Suite A-124Vivarini Florida MuranoJoin us in the DCOTA Resource Center for a glass (or two) of Prosecco and Parmesan cheese to view Vivarini Floridas Collection from Murano, Venice. A guest speaker from Italy will talk about the centuries old techniques used in the art of glass blowing. Please RSVP at murano@vivariniflorida.com.WINTERMARKET 2016Open House ShowroomsWednesday, February 3 Only:+ 10 am to 4 pm / Suite C-332Inside the Art of CraftsmanshipExperience the all new showroom and enjoy light refreshments.+ 11 am to 4 pm / Suite C-250DonghiaTrunk Show featuring the 2016 Sahco/Rubelli CollectionsCarolyn Reed, VP and Chief Brand Officer of Sahco and Rubelli, will introduce the alchemy and splendor of their new 2016 collection debuted at Paris Deco Office. Light refreshments will be served.Both Days, Wednesday, February 3 & 4:+ 10 am to 4 pm / Suite C-126Andrew Martin InternationalA showcase of their latest fabric collection Anthem and Remix. Wine and cheese will be served.+ 10 am to 5 pm / Suite B-254Cowtan & Tout 2016 European CollectionVisit www.cowtan.com for more information. Refreshments will be served throughout the day.+ 10 am to 5 pm / Suite C-100DuraleeSee whats new with hardware and furniture. Refreshments will be available.+ 10 am to 5 pm / Suite C-272Edelman Leather+ 9 am to 5 pm / Suite C-123JANUS et CieView the 2016 collections and preview chic indoor and outdoor furnishings, textiles and accessories.+ 10 am to 5 pm / Suite C-230PindlerSee their current assortment of fabrics. Light refreshments will be available.+ 9 am to 5 pm / Suite C-330Quadrille / China SeasView the new Winter Collection and participate in a raffle for a beautiful large-sized tote. Wine and light snacks will be served.+ 9 am to 5 pm / Suite C-124Viviani Florida MuranoPreview the brand new installations featuring Vivarini Murano, the most exquisite luxury glassware made exclusively in the island of Murano in Venice, Italy.About DCOTA:Now celebrating its 30th anniversary as the hub of South Floridas design industry, DCOTAs prestigious tenant mix includes VERSACE Home at Abitare, AbitareMinotti, Andrew Martin, Baker Knapp & Tubbs, Lamborghini Tonino Casa at FORMITALIA d David Sutherland, Donghia, Judith Norman Collection, Jeffrey Michaels, Eggersmann Kitchens, Florense, Janus et Cie, Kravet, Lee Jofa, Poggenpohl, ROMO, Wired Custom Lighting, Aston Martin Interiors, The Shade Store, Roberto Cavalli Home and more, collectively representing more than a thousand premier manufacturers from around the world. Based in Dania Beach, DCOTA is conveniently located at 1855 Griffin Road in Dania Beach, right off I-95 and just minutes from the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. For more information, please visit www.DCOTA.com.Media Contact:Gary SchweikhartPR-BS, Inc.561.756.4298gary@pr-bs.net
Win a $1,000,000 trading account with AxiTrader. AxiTrader, in partnership with AxiSelect, is giving talented traders the chance to win a trading account of one million dollars.

Contact

Marketing

***@axitrader.com Marketing

End

-- Win a $1,000,000 trading account with AxiTrader AxiTrader , in partnership with AxiSelect, is giving talented traders the chance to win a trading account of one million dollars.Thecompetition will see Forex traders from around the world compete over a three-month period with the winner being fast-tracked into the AxiSelect program and allocated a trading account of US$1,000,000.The competition now is open for registrations , with trading commencing from February 2016.Says Alex MacKinnon, General Manager at AxiTrader, Needless to say, with such a substantial prize up for grabs, we expect the competition to be popular. There are some very talented traders out there and we look forward to seeing how they perform.For the duration of the competition, traders will be able to track their performance against other traders via an online leaderboard compatible with the MT4 trading platform We want this to be a very open competition,says MacKinnon, so were welcoming all kinds of traders and trading styles. Accordingly, as well as the main prize which will be won based on the overall percentage return on investment capital, were offering further prize accounts of US$250,000 and US$100,000.Ultimately were not expecting people to change the way they trade.is more of a chance for the next generation of talented traders to show what theyve got, measure their performance against their fellow traders and, if theyre a top performer, get access to external funds that can help take their trading to a higher level.Thecompetition opens in February 2016 and is open to anyone with a live AxiTrader trading account that meets the minimum opening balance requirement. Entry to the competition is not automatic, and any current AxiTrader clients wanting to be a part of the competition will need to opt in.For more information and to stay up to date with competition news, register your interest now through the AxiTrader website About AxiTraderFounded in 2007 and headquartered in Sydney, AxiTrader has grown to become one of Australias largest and leading Forex brokers. We now have offices in four regions, providing local service to a global client base in more than 150 countries. With multi award-winning support and high performance trading technology, AxiTrader delivers the complete end to end trading experience.About AxiSelectAxiSelect is a structured pathway to becoming a professional trader. Through performance monitoring, we identify traders with the potential to succeed and provide funding and professional development to help them build a trading career.
Wuayra Peruvian Silver Jewelry Opens for 3 Days Only, January 27 through 29, at 13th and U Streets NW in Rosies and Rockers Boutique

By: Wuayra Peruvian Silver Jewelry

1 2 3 Sterling Silver Filigree Heart Bracelet Sterling Silver Bangles Sterling Silver Crystal Quartz Pendant and Omega

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-- For three days only, January 27through 29, Wuayra Peruvian Silver Jewelry will pop up in Rosies and Rockers Boutique located at 2001 13th ST NW (13th & U), Washington, DC. Wuayra imports handcrafted silver jewelry with semiprecious stones, pearls, coral and shells directly from Peruvian silver jewelry artisans.Dating back to before the Incas, Peru is known for artisans that make bold, unique silver jewelry . Wuayra is a woman-owned enterprise that was born from a passion for Peruvian jewelry and culture. Wuayra seeks out the finest producers and artisans of silver jewelry and fashion products from Peru for sale in the United States. The goal of Wuayra is to provide a sustainable business where customers can afford to own a piece of Peruvian culture while at the same time supporting the producers and artisans with a fair price for their work.Featured artisans at the pop-up include Rosario Julca and Rider Fernandez. Rosario is from Northern Peru and began designing jewelry after a successful public service career. Her styles are dominated with 950 sterling silver and semiprecious stones. Rider Fernandez of Lima, Peru began as an apprentice at age 16. After 30 plus years, he has his own shop of trained artisans specializing in sterling silver filigree fine jewelry. At the pop-up, Wuayra will have sterling silver jewelry including womens bracelets, earrings, rings, and necklaces as well as mens cufflinks available for sale.Wuayra is committed to representing Peruvian culture responsibly and ethically by offering customers the finest Peruvian silver jewelry and artisan products. Popping up at Rosies and Rockers, customers gain the opportunity to see and purchase a distinct style of fine jewelry from Peru for Valentines Day.The pop-up will be open inside Rosies and Rockers Boutique from noon to 8:00 PM Wednesday, January 27 through Friday, January 29at 2001 13Street NW, Washington, DC. Visit https://www.wuayra.com/ contact-us/ for more information.
EFSOL PR for Business Arabian

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-- Australias fastest growing financial solutions provider Equitable Financial Solutions (EFSOL), announced today the signing of an agreement with Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB) as it seeks to expand its Islamic financing portfolios. The agreement will allow EFSOL to expand its footprint in the Sharia compliant market, and is expected to add $100 million of new investments to its current portfolio.EFSOL always welcomes new opportunities to illustrate how it can help Australian customers realize their dreams and aspirations with its innovative products, says Usman Siddiqui, Managing Director, EFSOL. Our market surveys and client feedback programs show us that the market is looking for Islamic financial services in particular those that have a commitment to excellence.In fact, our Islamic offerings are another milestone in our longstanding dedication to meeting the Islamic financial requirements of our customers. We consider our company as one of the few standalone, genuinely Sharia-compliant financial solutions providers in Australia. By engaging SRB, a globally-renowned Sharia advisory firm, to provide ongoing auditing and accreditation services we are stepping into the global Islamic finance sphere. Through this assignment we will also be maintaining dedicated Sharia quality assurance personnel to ensure continuous Sharia-compliance of our offerings. He also adds, through our deep knowledge of the country, its people, culture and its economic environment we shall continue to unlock a wealth of potential for Australian individuals and businesses to the rapidly expanding Islamic financial market of the future."Today, EFSOL serves more than 100 customers with distinction in Australia", says Hisham Fakhir, Director, Funds Management of EFSOL. In the next 5 years, we estimate that the companies sales and growth will be fueled by a next-generation of tech-savvy Islamic financial solution seekers and asset management establishments. To support this, EFSOL is looking at effectively building its administration and strategically managing the Islamic financial infrastructure so as to respond quickly to rapidly growing individual needs and continue to deliver innovative products and services in the coming years. He added: Australia is not only a fascinating country with the worlds most robust financial economy. We have been doing business in the country for approximately 5 years and are well known as the most reliable and trustworthy solutions pioneer in the country.On the assignment of SRB to oversee its Sharia compliant plans, Hisham states: We are excited to have a Sharia advisory firm like SRB lead our efforts in delivering EFSOLs global capabilities to customers into the region". SRB's institutional experience in the international Islamic financial markets and deep understanding of the evolving needs of ultra-high-net-worth customers will allow us to build safe, reliable, innovative and quality-based Sharia-compliant solutions to clients in Australia.SRB is one of the leading Sharia advisory firms in the region involved in developing and supervising Islamic financial institutions and has acted as Sharia Supervisor to various organizations and financial establishments around the world. Their business model of providing efficient Sharia advisory services is increasingly key to success in the new Sharia Supervisory Board landscape. More and more firms are recognizing the huge advantages institutional bodies like SRB are offering  reducing their cost base while providing direct scholarly access, and a quality Sharia audit service.Times are changing in the world of Islamic financial markets. Operating in an increasingly demanding marketplace, more and more firms are looking to outsource Sharia Advisory solutions says Yasser S. Dahlawi, Chief Executive Officer, SRB. Commenting on the assignment he adds, We are always on the lookout to deliver value-added solutions for clients like EFSOL and will continue to enrich our services to provide faster and efficient suite of solutions for their Sharia supervisory needs.
By: ROPARDO

ROPARDO MOBILE

Contact

Ciprian Candea

***@ropardo.ro

+40 (269) 231037 Ciprian Candea+40 (269) 231037

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-- ROPARDO S.R.L., a software engineering company located in Sibiu, Romania, announces its presence at the worlds greatest mobile event Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (February 22-25) with new mobile apps resulted from the extraordinary work and effort of a committed team, innovative ideas and better shaped processes of the company.In an ever expanding and fast-paced world, enterprises need Mobile Applications to keep up to evolution and competitive markets. Concentrating with full strengths on innovative solutions to meet the most complex business requirements, ROPARDO is a resourceful partner for businesses to go social and open, to be on the market, to go mobile.On the occasion of the MWC event, ROPARDO introduces successful mobile apps for businesses operating in a range of areas including logistic industry, distribution, medical applications, information services, community portals, mobile web, social network integration. The new end to end solutions cover all needs but can be easily tailored on customers specifications.As we speak, we take great pride on latest releases following the IoT model, like ZivaCare or RobotHMI.ZivaCare provides a secure Cloud environment to gather, store, and exploit body/health data in a variety of purposes: be prepared for emergencies, stay fit, manage specific health conditions.RobotHMI on the other hand offers an improved human-robot experience with easy control, personalization and monitoring of the exoskeleton ultimately to enhance industrial production.Each system in turn integrates mobile applications, web portals (including user profiles, Document Management System) and wearable devices serving its specific purposes: for example, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors or weight scales for health; and exoskeleton, a smartphone and interactive glasses for heavy industry.Ultimate technologies and high performance API development are mandatory in order to handle Big Data content in the systems in the safest manner possible.ROPARDO is one of the leading and growing IT companies in Romania with a 20-year tradition in delivering offshore, near-shore and on site projects. We specialize in software engineering covering the full and continuous process: development and implementation of complex software solutions, maintenance of software/IT systems, and full Oracle EBS and SAP consultancy for worldwide customers operating in a wide range of industries.We have flexible business models, but our main objectives have always been steady: provide solutions for the future, optimized and innovative, while staying committed to customers needs. Quality, transparency, fairness are values we believe in and key differentiators that make us a long-term partner on the highway to success.Team members are our most valuable asset. We gathered together a crew of creative and enthusiastic people and, to keep them so, we make sure they work in a healthy and flexible environment and invest in their training and certification. This ensures a low employee turnover and continuous development.They are responsible for our achievements:hundreds of projects completed, 10+ years as IBM partner, 10+ years as Microsoft business partner, 8 years as Oracle Gold Partner, prizes awarded by the Trade Register Office, member of ANIS and ARIES, nominee at the European ICT prize, best software product awarded by the Romanian National Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.The innovation that defines our services and products is a direct result of our permanent involvement in European co-funded Research & Development projects. So far, ROPARDOs R&I Center has gathered a number of 12 projects in various industries: health, automotive, production, education.For more information, please visit our websiteor contact us ator e-mail us ator, why not, pay us a visit:
A new studio album from the legendary band The Syn is scheduled for release in March. Trustworks is a collaboration that features Syn founder Steve Nardelli along with the Swedish progressive rock band Moon Safari.

The Syn

Contact

Gary Hill

***@musicstreetjournal.com Gary Hill

End

-- A new studio album from the legendary band The Syn is scheduled for release in March. Trustworks is a collaboration that features Syn founder Steve Nardelli along with the Swedish progressive rock band Moon Safari. The album is scheduled for release on March 25with Japanese release one week earlier.The band The Syn has a rich and extensive history in music. That is showcased in an upcoming film, titled Melody Makers, Should've Been There. Coming out this year, it is based on the acclaimed photographs of Barrie Wentzell. He was the house photographer for the classic magazine Melody Maker. Steve Nardelli is featured in the film, and The Syn song Groundedis also included.Formed in 1965, The Syn was a precursor of the band Yes, with that bands former bassist (the late great Chris Squire) as one of the founding members. At various times The Syn has also included Yes alums Peter Banks and Alan White in their lineup. Other acclaimed musicians like Francis Dunnery, Brett Kull and Tom Brislin are also Syn alum. The 1967 incarnation of The Syn opened Jimi Hendrixs legendary first ever European show at the Marquee Club in London. The audience included The Beatles, members of Cream and The Rolling Stones and more rock royalty. The Syn did an exceptional job playing support to the genius that was Jimi Hendrix at his hottest. At the same time they made themselves known to a wide swath of British rock music royalty.The 2016 version of The Syn features band founder Steve Nardelli joined by renowned Swedish prog rockers Moon Safari. Jonas Reingold of The Flower Kings produced the album and Trustworks is already being anticipated as a master work. The mastering engineer at the illustrious Precision Mastering in Cropredy, Jeremy Paul Carroll (one of the very few people to have heard it finished) described it as a beautiful album, the best prog album of the last decade.can be pre-ordered from Amazon.comThe disc comes less than a year after the critically acclaimedCD/DVD combo. Of that, The Progmeister (Progmeister.com)said, This album gets a whole hearted recommendation and is well worth checking out. Its a great listen, well packaged and deserves some attention. Jerry Lucky (The Progressive Rock Files) said, It all makes for something that will have great appeal not only to fans in tune with the history of the band but also those who enjoy the more melodic song-based side of prog. At Progarchy (progarchy.com), Paul Watson said, The Syn were one of the pebbles thrown into the pool that would become Progressive Rock. The music of their time has become the sound of our times and well worth exploring as the band once again moves forward in the 21st century. From Robert Silverstein of MWE3 (mwe3.com): Yet another sonic bolt out of the blue by the mercurial Steve Nardelli, The Syn Live Rosfest will do quite nicely untilreveals the next chapter in the ongoing story of The Syn.Please contact Gary Hill at pr@musicstreetjournal.com for review copies, photos or any additional information. Please use the same contact information to set up interviews.
TireStamp to Sell TomTom Telematics Solutions and Integrate Its TireVigilTPMS 2.0 Products with TomTom WEBFLEET

Contact

Scott Feagan, CEO

scott.feagan@ tirestamp.com

1-877-878-4445 Ext. 224 Scott Feagan, CEO1-877-878-4445 Ext. 224

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-- TireStamp Inc. announced today that it has entered into a Reseller Agreement to represent all of TomTomTelematics vehicle and fleet management solutions. The company will also integrate TireStamps TireVigil TPMS 2.0 products to operate with TomTom Telematics products.We are thrilled to partner with a global leader like TomTom Telematics. TomTom solutions for navigation, route planning, real-time fuel consumption, vehicle maintenance and CO2 emissions complement the benefits derived from our intelligent TireVigil TPMS 2.0 products that also drive reduced labor, tire and fuel costs to every fleet," said Peggy Fisher, TireStamp President.This business relationship enables TireStamps TPMS products to be sold through TomTom Telematics partner network of hardware and software resellers, and allows their sales forces to introduce their fleet accounts to the features and benefits of TireStamps line of TireVigil TPMS products which meet the commercial vehicle TPMS 2.0 standards. TPMS 2.0 products improve fleets tire maintenance and safety and reduce tire costs, emergency breakdowns, tire-related labor, and fuel consumption.TomTom Telematics is dedicated to working with best-in-class solution providers to deliver value to our mutual customers, said Matt Gunzenhaeuser, North American Sales Director at TomTom Telematics. We are pleased to partner with TireStamp to bring TireVigil TPMS to our customers who want to optimize uptime as well as tire performance, said Barry Lee, TomTom Telematics Canadian Sales Manager.TireStamp is the leading TPMS 2.0 tire monitoring and tire maintenance systems supplier to commercial fleets, telematics, tire and commercial vehicle OEMs. Its TireVigil TPMS products provide complete 24/7 tire monitoring, management and the only bundled tire maintenance software product, called TireWATCH, designed and integrated by tire professionals utilizing the latest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model. The company provides expertise on tires and their effects on commercial fleet operational costs, tire program management, asset management and other critical performance data that enable fleets to reduce tire and fuel costs in addition to improving productivity and safety. TireVigil TPMS is available directly through TireStamp or through leading commercial tire dealers and resellers and now through TomTom. For additional information visit www.tirestamp.com
Investing.co.uk Announces New Trader Counsel Services By: www.investing.co.uk LONDON - Jan. 25, 2016 - PRLog -- British financial news source Investing.co.uk has announced that it will now be offering the benefit of its legal counsel and account advisers at no cost to traders dealing with disreputable brokers. This move is made to help traders with the best industry support, as well as to discourage brokerages that seek to defraud the traders they work with.



It is no secret that Forex and binary options trading have become two of the most popular and lucrative methods of making money in the markets. The power of the internet now allows investors to execute trades from the comfort of their homes with only a few keystrokes. For this reason, more and more people are now getting into the world of online trading, and brokerages for Forex and binary trading have sprung up rapidly to meet the demand.



Unfortunately, while the majority of brokers are perfectly legitimate businesses aiming to help their traders, there are always a small handful that give online trading a bad reputation. These few brokers usually operate under legal loopholes or in countries with a pronounced lack of financial regulation, allowing them to take advantage of traders who have opened accounts with them. Traders on their own can have a very difficult time taking the proper steps to reclaim the money that is rightfully theirs. Many of these fake brokers also make it very complex to find and properly communicate with them, further compounding the problem of resolving such issues.



For these reasons, Investing.co.uk, a leading source of news and information about the Forex and binary options markets and the brokerage services available to traders, is now offering in-house support to traders struggling with illegitimate brokers. The online firm has been providing traders with the latest news and market data since 1996, and is committed to maintaining high standards of quality within the Forex and binary trading markets. Support services for traders who feel that they have been taken advantage of by a particular broker include legal input from Investing's own counsel and mediation between traders and the brokerages in question. These services are available to any trader with a legitimate complaint, regardless of whether or not the trader became aware of the brokerage through Investing.co.uk. Traders seeking these services need only register their complaint on the firm's



"As a part of the network that provides traders with information, we are firmly committed to holding brokers to the highest possible standards of quality and customer service. Illicit brokers negatively affect this entire market, and hold people back from trading who might otherwise be able to achieve their financial goals through these market vehicles," commented David Jones, Head of Account Management.



About Investing:



is a leading online source of market news and brokerage reviews for Forex and binary options traders. The firm specializes in keeping traders up to date with the latest innovations and improvements in the online trading world in order to give them the edge in these evolving markets.



Media Contact Details:



support@investing.co.uk

Fulham Island

Farm Lane

SW6 1DP End -- British financial news source Investing.co.uk has announced that it will now be offering the benefit of its legal counsel and account advisers at no cost to traders dealing with disreputable brokers. This move is made to help traders with the best industry support, as well as to discourage brokerages that seek to defraud the traders they work with.It is no secret that Forex and binary options trading have become two of the most popular and lucrative methods of making money in the markets. The power of the internet now allows investors to execute trades from the comfort of their homes with only a few keystrokes. For this reason, more and more people are now getting into the world of online trading, and brokerages for Forex and binary trading have sprung up rapidly to meet the demand.Unfortunately, while the majority of brokers are perfectly legitimate businesses aiming to help their traders, there are always a small handful that give online trading a bad reputation. These few brokers usually operate under legal loopholes or in countries with a pronounced lack of financial regulation, allowing them to take advantage of traders who have opened accounts with them. Traders on their own can have a very difficult time taking the proper steps to reclaim the money that is rightfully theirs. Many of these fake brokers also make it very complex to find and properly communicate with them, further compounding the problem of resolving such issues.For these reasons, Investing.co.uk, a leading source of news and information about the Forex and binary options markets and the brokerage services available to traders, is now offering in-house support to traders struggling with illegitimate brokers. The online firm has been providing traders with the latest news and market data since 1996, and is committed to maintaining high standards of quality within the Forex and binary trading markets. Support services for traders who feel that they have been taken advantage of by a particular broker include legal input from Investing's own counsel and mediation between traders and the brokerages in question. These services are available to any trader with a legitimate complaint, regardless of whether or not the trader became aware of the brokerage through Investing.co.uk. Traders seeking these services need only register their complaint on the firm's complaint page to receive Investing.co.uk's assistance at no cost to themselves."As a part of the network that provides traders with information, we are firmly committed to holding brokers to the highest possible standards of quality and customer service. Illicit brokers negatively affect this entire market, and hold people back from trading who might otherwise be able to achieve their financial goals through these market vehicles," commented David Jones, Head of Account Management. Investing.co.uk is a leading online source of market news and brokerage reviews for Forex and binary options traders. The firm specializes in keeping traders up to date with the latest innovations and improvements in the online trading world in order to give them the edge in these evolving markets.Media Contact Details:Fulham IslandFarm LaneSW6 1DP Email : ***@investing.co.uk Posted By : ***@investing.co.uk Tags : Investing , Binary Options , Forex Trading , Brokers Industry : Financial , Home business , Investment Location : London City - London, Greater - England Subject : Features Account Phone Number Disclaimer Report Abuse Account Email AddressAccount Phone Number


ezW2 tax preparation software has been released for employer to quickly print W2, W3, 1099 and 1096 forms this 2016 tax season. New customers can test drive it at www.halfpricesoft.com

By: halfpricesoft.com

4- up- w2- form- ezW2- software

Contact

Casey Yang

***@halfpricesoft.com Casey Yang

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-- ezW2 is now available for business owners to print W2, W3, 1099 MISC and 1096 forms for this 2016 tax season. said Halfpricesoft.com Founder, Dr. Ge.W2 and 1099 form return should not be headache for small business employers this 2016 tax season! ezW2 is now available from Halfpricesoft.com for customers to download and begin printing W2 and W3 forms on white paper for 2016 tax season. With the 30 day no obligation trial, customers can test the compatibility of the application before making a purchase. All data entered in the trial version will remain once you purchase and add the license key.ezW2 software is easy-to-install, easy-to-setup and easy-to-use. Priced from only $39, it is affordable for any small employers. ezW2 is compatible with Windows 10 systems. It can also run on Windows XP, Me, 2003, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 systems.ezW2 2015 can be downloaded at no cost or obligation for compatibility for up to 30 days at http://halfpricesoft.com/ w2-software- free-download.asp . The trial version will print forms with TRIAL watermark and limit e-filing. Once customers register their downloaded software and enter a purchased license key the software unlocks for unlimited use.The main features included in the latest version include:- This new white paper printing function can print all W2 forms (copy A, B, C, D, 1 and 2) and W3 on white paper. The black and white substitute forms of W2 Copy A and W3 are SSA-approved. So no pre-printed forms are needed for SSA copies and recipient copies.- EzW2 can print 1099-misc recipient copies on white paper. Since IRS does not certifythe substitute forms right now, ezW2 will fill data on the red-ink forms for 1099 MISC copy Aand 1096.- EzW2 can print W2 and 1099 recipient copies into digital PDF files and customers can emailforms easily, saving on mailing costs- EzW2 can generate efile documents that customers can upload to SSA and IRS sites.- EzW2 saves customers valuable time by importing W2 and 1099 data from csv file - no needfor customers to enter the data one by one.- EzW2 new edition can support unlimited companies, recipients and forms with no extra charge, making it perfect for accountants, tax preparers and multi-business entrepreneurs as well as individual businesses- Easily rolls over data from previous years- Comes with free customer support in email, live chat and remote access for software- Supports demo version for compatibility purposes- Supports data import feature- Environmentally friendly with efile feature to save on paperDesigned with simplicity in mind, ezW2 2015 is easy, flexible, inexpensive and reliable. The Halfpricesoft.com developing team is confident that this tax software is easy enough for new users who have only basic computer skills and little accounting know-how.W2 1099 tax reporting is a breeze for new and seasoned customers. Download ezW2 2015 software today at: http://www.halfpricesoft.com/ w2_software.asp About halfpricesoft.comFounded in 2003, Halfpricesoft.com has established itself as a leader in meeting the software needs of small businesses around the world with its payroll software, employee attendance tracking software, check printing software, W2 software, 1099 software and ezACH Deposit software. It continues to grow with its philosophy that small business owners need affordable, user friendly, super simple, and totally risk-free software.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_mErjN3Ew
HR Expert Laura MacLeod Provides Insight on the No Office Workspace

By: From The Inside Out Project

Contact

Beautiful Planning Marketing & PR/Eliza Osborn

***@beautifulplanning.com Beautiful Planning Marketing & PR/Eliza Osborn

End

-- Communication and connection allows employees to feel a sense of belonging within the company. An open office space can emulate these functions and improve the overall company culture. According to LMSW Laura MacLeod, HR Guru and founder of From the Inside Out Project(www.fromtheinsideoutproject.com), open office space is a great opportunity to promote community and foster healthy employee-employer relationships. With desks out in the open and nontraditional office doors, interaction is encouraged among employees of all levels and departments. Quite different from traditional physical layouts where top floors are filled with top level executives, the new concept allows no separation between positions which offers employees a sense of importance and value.Although the concept of an open office space is an excellent way to implement team building and improve workplace comradery, it is a major change for all workers that can be difficult and uncomfortable.States Laura MacLeod, founder of From The Inside Out Project. Navigating a culture change, even if positive, can elicit all kinds of responses from employees. Thats why its important to help employees adjust and embrace the new way of life at the office.More organizations have been following the trend of utilizing open office space format, led by companies like Facebook. But with any change comes questions. In order to help employees adapt to a new office environment, it is important that the companys higher ups fully explain how the new layout will work. Addressing questions and concerns, listening to feedback (both positive and negative), and collaborating on findingsolutions to issues raised will help employees embrace the new culture.The issue of office hoteling (no set permanent desk space) can be problematic. Determining where to sit and then changing that spot every day may be uncomfortable for many. Leadership needs to work out a system that gives employees some control and narrows down choices; for example, specific areas for particular departments, a weekly or monthly choice, or perhaps a valid reason to sit somewhere such as a set team location for work ona specific project. Privacy can also come into play especially when socializing occurs. Its important that companies have separate rooms for meetings, group space for lunch, and a location for a private phone call, as we all enjoy and need privacy.With new change must come new discussions, Continues MacLeod. Leadership needs to initiate and guide those discussions to make a smooth transition. Open office space can certainly enhance company culture if concerns and expectations are addressed and employee feedback is welcome.For more information on From the Inside Out Projector Laura MacLeod visit http://fromtheinsideoutproject.com/ . To interview MacLeod on her techniques or gain media access to her photos please email eosborn@beautifulplanning.com or call 1.877.841.7244.With a background in social work and 2 decades of experience as a union worker, Laura MacLeod created From The Inside Out Project (http://fromtheinsideoutproject.com/), with all levels of employment in mind to assist in maintaining a harmonious workplace. She is an adjunct professor in graduate studies at the Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work and leads training sessions for social work professionals at The Coalition for Behavioral Health and Institute for Community Living in New York City. MacLeod speaks on conflict resolution, problem solving, and listening skills at conferences across the country.
Local author, Bonner Joy, will be available to sign copies of book

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--Anna Maria Island was once inhabited by Native Americans, but as the beauty became known to its first homesteader, George L. Bean, the islands destiny was to be a beacon to paradise. In spite of mangrove forests and throngs of mosquitoes, people came by boat to enjoy the white sand beaches and the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with their cool onshore breezes and blazing sunsets. The Islander newspaper of the 1950s heralded, Where life is good and the fishing is great. Anglers came from afar to test their skills against tarpon, the worlds greatest game fish, and to hunt goliath grouper in the depths of Tampa Bay. Two modern bridges connected the island to the mainland in 1957, and with that the seven-mile-long island was on its way to becoming the jewel of Manatee County.has resided on Anna Maria Island since 1975. In 1992, Joy started a new weekly Islander newspaper dedicated to the island, often highlighting historical happenings. Images for this work were compiled largely from the newspapers archive, the Manatee County Central Library, and the Anna Maria Island Historical Society.Barnes & Noble4010 South Tamiami Tr.Sarasota, FL 34231Saturday, February 6th, 2016 at 10:00 a.m.Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or online ( https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/ Products/9781467115070 ).The combination of Arcadia Publishing & The History Press creates the largest and most comprehensive publisher of local and regional content in the USA. By empowering local history and culture enthusiasts to write local stories for local audiences, we create exceptional books that are relevant on a local and personal level, enrich lives, and bring readers closer - to their community, their neighbors, and their past. Have we done a book on your town? Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com
Innovator in Cut Sheet Inkjet Printing, Digital Duplicating Celebrates Anniversary of Incorporation

Contact

Jesse Heindl, Mktg. Comm. Specialist

RISO, Inc.

***@riso.com Jesse Heindl, Mktg. Comm. SpecialistRISO, Inc.

End

-- RISO, Inc. is celebrating the 30anniversary of its incorporation on January 21of this month. Since its establishment in 1986, the companys mission has been to introduce fundamentally unique solutions in paper-based communication to the North American market. During that time, RISO has introduced four series of ComColor high-speed, cut sheet inkjet printers, and a total of eleven series of Risograph Digital Duplicators to the North American market.This is a significant achievement,said Kentaro Harada, President and CEO of the Massachusetts-based supplier, during his remarks. But we believe it is also a stepping stone for further expansion and development, leading to new innovations and new possibilities.A luncheon was held with a retrospective presentation, showcasing the advances in printing and duplicating technology.Plans were also announced to hold a special meeting in Las Vegas, NV on May 19, 2016 for dealers of RISO products.About RISO, Inc.:RISO, Inc., headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, is a wholly owned subsidiary of RISO Kagaku Corporation, Japan's leading manufacturer and distributor of high-speed inkjet printers and digital duplicators. RISOs ComColor printers offer fast, affordable, environmentally friendly digital color at speeds of up to 150 pages per minute. Its line of digital duplicators includes one- and two-color systems that reliably produce millions of copies, are environmentally friendly, and are easy and inexpensive to use. To learn more about RISOs ComColor series, visit http://us.riso.com or call 1-800-663-3031 x2.
Metamorph Publishing welcomes a debut author to our Publishing family: author Cynthia Ruby!

Contact

Markie Madden

***@metamorphpublishing.com Markie Madden

End

-- Independent publisher Metamorph Publishing is proud to welcome author Cynthia Ruby to our family! Cynthia is a resident of West Texas, and her book of poetry,will be released at all retailers on March 21. Cynthia has won Awards in local competitions, notablyin the 100,000 Poets for Change contest, where she placed 3rd in the Slam Poetry division and won in the Haiku division. You can findfor pre-order in e-format now, at all major retailers. The paperback edition is expected to release on our before March 21, 2016.This book is an eclectic collection of various poetry and haiku from award-winning author Cynthia Ruby. From patriotic statements to the life of a mother rearing a video game-addicted child, this book provides a little something for everyone. The professional appearance allows for a seamless transition from poem to poem, and a pleasing reading experience for the reader. Be sure to check this out, and save if you pre-order now!
By: Law Office of Robert E. Wisniewski, P.C.

Contact

Dawn White

It's All About the Marketing

***@itsallaboutthemarketing.biz Dawn WhiteIt's All About the Marketing

End

-- Attorney Robert E. Wisniewski, a Fellow of the College of Workers Compensation Lawyers, will present his twenty-first lecture, Lien On Me  Workers Compensationat the Trial Lawyers 2016 Annual Liens Seminar, sponsored by the Arizona Association for Justice/Arizona Trial Lawyers Association.Liens are complicated,said Bob Wisniewski, Esq. Workers can and will get hurt, we prefer this didnt happen, but it does. It is important educate young attorneys on this critical subject and provide seasoned attorneys with the latest information. I feel obligated to give back to the profession through education.Robert E. Wisniewski is a Certified Specialist, Arizona State Bar, Workers Compensation. Mr. Wisniewski is one of the premier workers compensation attorneys in Arizona. He has been practicing workers compensation law for 40 years in the Greater Phoenix area and his law firm is dedicated to providing justice for injured workers throughout Arizona.Mr. Wisniewski is AV-rated, and actively writes and lectures on all aspects of Workers Compensation law. Additionally, he is an active member of the Arizona Trial Lawyers Association, the Arizona Association for Justice, Arizonas Finest Lawyers, and chosen a Super Lawyer. Mr. Wisniewski serves on the Board of Directors for Kids Chance of Arizona, an organization dedicated to providing scholarships to the children of Arizonas injured workers.To find out more about Trial Lawyers Annual Liens Seminar and the Arizona Association for Justice ( https://www.azaj.org/ ), visit www.azaj.org.Law Office of Robert E. Wisniewski is recognized as a leader in workers compensation in Arizona since 1976. Mr. Wisniewski has litigated over 10,000 work related injury cases at Industrial Commission of Arizona hearings all across Arizona, representing thousands of Arizona injured workers. The firm seeks. www.azhurtonthejob.com
Executive Chef Gregory Torrech and Co-Owner and Sommelier Bertil Jean-Chronberg of The Beehive, Bostons South End hotspot, will representing the city of Boston at the 17thannual MONTREAL EN LUMIERE in Montreal, Quebec.

By: The Beehive

Contact

Image Unlimited Communications

***@iucboston.com Image Unlimited Communications

End

--, Bostons South End hotspot, will be one of eight local chefs and restaurateurs representing the city of Boston at thein. Presented by RBC in collaboration with Bell, the two week-long celebration of all things culinary brings together over 900,000 fans eager to savor the Montreal lifestyle to its fullest through a unique program that combines performing arts, gastronomy, free outdoor activities and more.The gastronomy program, the only event of its kind in the world, brings passionate foodies together in both the kitchen and dining room and offers a full slate of unforgettable dinners and activities for all the senses. As this years featured American city, Boston will be represented throughout the opening weekend as Executive Chef Gregory Torrech joinsof the acclaimed. Both chefs will come together in Alexandres kitchen on February 18, 19, 2016 to cook and serve a special prix fixe menu that combines the culinary artistry of both. The chefs will serve a sea shell soup, warm cod pave, seafood pot-au-feu, duck au poivre, venison with truffle sauce, and a selection of desserts. On February 20, 2016 the chefs will be joined by a young aspiring chef as part of the La Tablee des Chefs Brigades Culinaires program which develops culinary skills and food knowledge in school-aged children, leading them toward their own food autonomy.for the festival where hell pair Chef Torrech and Pellions special multi-course menu with exquisite wines. Jean-Chronberg spent many years running restaurants and hospitality programs in Montreal and worked closely with important industry leaders including: Gaston Lenotre (Maitre Patissier), Jean Paul Grappe (Maitre cuisinier-Cuisine evolutive ITHQ), Les Freres Gros, Alain Chappel, Nicolas Jongleux, Daniel Vezina and Robert Gagnon (V.P. Relais & Chateaux-Auberge Hatley). Bertil has also taught courses on hospitality and restaurant management at the Institute dhotelerie du Quebec (ITHQ) and College LaSalle to name a few.said Executive Chef Gregory Torrech.Since 2000, some 500 renowned chefs across five continents have taken part, offering unforgettable experiences. Other Boston chefs attending the festival include: Tim Cushman, O Ya Restaurant (hosted by Maison Boulud), Tru Lang, Journeyman (Laurie Raphael), Barbara Lynch, Menton (Pullman), Tim Maslow, Ribelle (Etat-Major), Jeremy Sewall, ROW34 (Verses), Lydia Shire, Scampo (Le Saint-Gabriel), and Ana Sortun, Oleana Restaurant (Graziella).For more information on MONTREAL EN LUMIERE please visit, www.montrealenlumiere.com/en. For more information on The Beehive, please visit: www.beehiveboston.com.
By: APX Auto Parts

End

-- APX Auto Parts (APX), one of the nations largest online retailers of automotive parts, will kick off 2016 with adding to their store several, new complete strut assemblies.The new strut assemblies are available now, and will add to APXs ever-growing inventory. The description(s) and part number(s) are as follows: front right speedy strut complete strut assembly (part no. 9214-0212) front left speedy strut complete strut assembly (part no. 9214-0213) front right speedy strut complete strut assembly (part no. 9214-0222) front left speedy strut complete strut assembly (part no. 9214-0223)For convenience purposes, APX will offer both the front right complete strut assemblies and front left complete strut assemblies, as a set.The speedy struts will be compatible with the following year(s), make(s) and model(s): 2003-2008 Honda Pilot 2006-2011 Ford FocusTo view the new struts, and a lot more, please visit www.apxautoparts.com , while supplies last.About APX Auto PartsAPX Auto Parts is one of the nations largest online retailers of automotive parts.For eight years, APX has offered its customers a wide selection of SenSen Shocks and Struts, Speedy Struts, KYB, Monroe and many more quality productsat affordable prices.Today, APX is leaving its mark on the industry and customers alike, with quality products, great prices and solid people.To find out more information about APX Auto Parts, please visit www.apxautoparts.com, or check out APX on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ apxautoparts
Yacht Named 'Clueless' Was Owned by George G. Levin Valued in Millions

By: Michael Moecker & Associates

Media Contact

Jeanne Becker

***@beckerpublicrelations.com Jeanne Becker

End

-- Fort Lauderdale, FL  January 25, 2016  Bankruptcy Plan Administrator, Philip J. Von Kahle, of Michael Moecker & Associates, Inc. will hold a preview/inspection of the 1993 Palmer Johnson 80 Express luxury yacht previously owned by convicted Fort Lauderdale businessman George G. Levin who was involved with investors of millions of dollars in the Scott Rothstein ponzi scheme.Strong interest is expected from buyers and yacht brokers attending the Miami International Boat Show being held February 11-15, 2016 at the Miami Marine Stadium Park & Basin.Valued in the millions, the Palmer Johnson Cruiser Express, designed by Tom Fexas, is a high performance vessel with twin inboard diesel 1150 HP engines producing an incredible top speed of 30 knots (34.5 mph). The main salon is all leather upholstery with imported hand-crated African wood. The five-beam master stateroom has large viewing windows behind sliding wood panels. Accommodations include three (3) staterooms, five (5) heads, (2) helm stations, a guest cabin forward and a separate Captain's Cabin with its own galley and shower. Extensive post survey work and maintenance have been completed including upgrades in October of 2009.Von Kahle and Moecker & Associates have extensive experience in handling insolvency and bankruptcy matters in a variety of industries including manufacturing, marine, distribution, services and retail. His diverse case experience enables him to effectively navigate the management of assets across a variety of industries. For more information, visit www.moecker.com
End

-- Locally-owned On-Call Restaurant Accounting (OCRA) announced today that it has opened a sales and support office in Orlando, FL, located at 618 E South Street in the heart of Orlando. OCRAs expansion into Florida means restaurants in cities throughout Florida and the rest of the Southeast now have a regional strategic accounting partner they can rely on for their business needs.OCRA anticipates that having a representative in Florida will provide restaurants personalized accounting management that will help owners thrive in todays competitive marketplace. While OCRAs systems and software are cloud-based platforms and are designed to enable seamless workflow from anywhere in the country, having a physical presence in the Southeast is important to OCRAs commitment to personalized solutions and a partnership approach. Jesse Newton will serve as the Regional Vice President for OCRAs Southeastern territory. Mr. Newton has over two decades of experience in the restaurant and hospitality industry throughout the southeast where he has proven his ability to manage, build, and expand restaurant concepts and events.Bringing Jesse on will allow OCRA to expand our high-touch, personalized service as hes on the ground in Florida working with our clients face-to-face, while the day-to-day accounting, bookkeeping and payroll services are executed out of our corporate headquarters in Denver. This is the next step in OCRAs growth plan as we continue to branch out into new markets, opening offices in multiple states over the coming months, says CEO Mark Rubinstein.OCRA began partnering with clients throughout the Colorado Front Range in 2009. Since then, OCRA has grown to serve over 125 restaurants in seven states with plans for continued expansion. Throughout its growth, OCRA has always made delivering a premier level of service to its customers a priority through meaningful relationship building, technology advancements and strategic hires.To learn more about On-Call Restaurant Accounting, contact:Mark Rubinstein1660 Gilpin Street; Denver, CO 80218Office: (855)-USE-OCRA
The Antique Piano Shop, a restorer and retailer of antique pianos located in Friendsville, TN (20 miles from Knoxville) has recently released a fully restored, custom designed John Broadwood & Sons Concert Grand Piano.

Contact

Craig Bates

***@antiquepianoshop.com Craig Bates

End

-- The Antique Piano Shop, a restorer and retailer of antique pianos located in Friendsville, TN (located 20 miles from Knoxville) has recently released a historic, custom designed John Broadwood & Sons Antique Concert Grand Piano.This John Broadwood & Sons Antique Concert Grand Piano dates to 1877, is 7 feet, 6 inches long and features a Satinwood and Mahogany finish with exquisite inlay, marquetry and painting on this unique, one of a kind museum quality piano.The history of this piano from Broadwoods records show that this piano left the Broadwood factory July 12th, 1877. It was sent to a small firm of artists known as "Monblond & Coiffier" of 27 Castle Street East at Oxford St., London. The artists of Monblond & Coiffier carried out the decorative painted work of floral garlands and dancing figurines on the satinwood case. The newly decorated piano was then returned to Broadwoods showrooms on September 22, 1877. Broadwood then delivered the piano to the showrooms of "Trollpe & Sons, Museum of Decorative Art", on October 12th, 1877.Trollpe & Sons was situated in Halkin Street West, Belgravia, a very expensive and exclusive district of London close to Buckingham Palace. The instrument was sent to Trollpe & Sons on approval for ten days at no charge, during which time Trollope & Sons sold the instrument to a Mr. G.W. Willet of Brighton. This piano sold new for over 300 British Pounds in 1877.For more information on this antique piano available from the Antique Piano Shop, please visit the Antique Piano Shop website at www.antiquepianoshop.com.
The Angie's List Super Service Award reflects a companys consistently high level of customer service and A.W.E. is recognized for this achievement once again.

By: Air.Water.Energy.

Owner Ray Grimm leads the award-winning team at Air.Water.Energy.

Contact

Wisecarver Public Relations

***@wisecarverpr.com Wisecarver Public Relations

End

-- Air.Water.Energy.the one-call solution for your homes key systems: heating, air conditioning, plumbing and electric, has earned the service industrys coveted Angies List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of service provided to members of the local services marketplace and consumer review site in 2015.We work incredibly hard to provide exceptional service and equipment for all of our customers and were honored to be recognized with this award for the second consecutive year, says Ray Grimm, CEO of the company boasting a 100-year history serving the greater DuPage County region. We want A.W.E. to be the company residents count on to ensure their home is as healthy and comfortable as it can be, he adds.Only about 5 percent of the heating and air conditioning, plumbing and water heater companies in DuPage County area have performed so consistently and well enough to earn our Super Service Award, said Angies List Founder Angie Hicks. Its a really high standard.Angies List Super Service Award 2015 winners have met strict eligibility requirements, which include an A rating in overall grade, recent grade, and review period grade; the company must be in good standing with Angies List, pass a background check and abide by Angies List operational guidelines.Service company ratings are updated daily on Angies List. Companies are graded on an A through F scale in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality.For service or information, contact Air.Water.Energy. at 630-AWESOME or visit https://www.theAWEfactor.com Air. Water. Energy., A.W.E., is a breath of fresh air for the homeowner. The Carol Stream, Illinois-based company provides one trusted source for all of a homes vital systems: air conditioning, heating, plumbing, electrical and renewable energy. A.W.E.s expert team works with homeowners to create the healthiest in-home environment and the most efficient levels of systems operation. Their philosophy embodies The AWE Factor. From consultation, customer education, and installation to maintenance and ongoing evaluations provided by the experts, A.W.E. helps homeowners create and maintain the healthiest home possible. The companys 100% money-back guarantee, A.W.E.s Member Value Plan (MVP) which offers customers an ability to stay ahead of costly repairs, and many other value-added benefits exist within the business offerings. For more information, visit www.theAWEfactor.com or call 630-AWESOME.Angie's List helps facilitate happy transactions between more than three million consumers nationwide and its collection of highly rated service providers in more than 720 categories of service, ranging from home improvement to health care. Built on a foundation of more than 10 million verified reviews of local service, Angie's List connects consumers directly to its online marketplace of services from member-reviewed providers, and offers unique tools and support designed to improve the local service experience for both consumers and service professionals.
Contact

Andrea Szabo

***@americanconference.com Andrea Szabo

End

-- Senior officials from the U.S. Department of Commerce, European Commission and French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI) will be addressing industry at, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, Special Agent in Charge, San Jose Field Office, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, DG Trade, European Commission, Domestic and Export Control Unit, French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI)In addition to the distinguished government presenters, speakers include experts from, a leading IT industry trade association, is the 2016 Association Partner for this highly anticipated forum.Once again for this March, participants will have a unique opportunity to meet and learn from experts across a number of key jurisdictions, including the U.S., China, Hong Kong, Singapore and France.Interested parties can call 888-224-2480 or visit AmericanConference.com/Encryption for further details and to register. Advance pricing and group rates are available.
By: Pooch Party Packs

Pooch Party Packs

Contact

Dog Bone Marketing Solutions

***@dogbonemarketing.com Dog Bone Marketing Solutions

End

-- Pooch Party Packs, curator of the party in a box for your dog is launching their first holiday specific gift box just in time for Valentines Day. The box will feature a variety of high quality treats and toys themed specifically for the holiday.Pooch Party Packs strives to bring the party experience to dogs everywhere, providing only the highest quality canine products. Founded by a couple whose veteran-based background has taken them to new assignments all over the United States, Steve and Deborah focus on bringing comfort and familiarity to every dog. Whether your pooch plays on the sandy beaches of Hawaii or hikes up the snow-packed mountains of Montana, every pup loves to be flooded with toys and treats!We understand the hectic rush of the work week, which is why we take care of hand-selecting and delivering quality toys and treats for your beloved pooch, stated Steve Kalfman, Co-Founder of Pooch Party Packs. Your only job is to open the box and enjoy the wonderful party together!Our business aims to not only create the best party experience your dog can imagine, but also to support the many small pet businesses across the country, explained Deborah Kalfman. At Pooch Party Packs we understand there are amazingly innovative entrepreneurs across the United States that create some of the most exciting toys and treats for pets everywhere.The custom Valentines Day box is a great gift option for the holidays for both dogs and the people that love them. You can receive 10% off the purchase of your box by visiting http://poochpartypacks.webflow.io/ and using the code: VALENTINE10at checkout.Founded by Steve and Deborah Kalfman, both US Army veterans, Pooch Party Packs, brought their values to their business and are dedicated to supporting American businesses by selecting products from one small United States business each month to place in each box. Each product is carefully selected, and every month there is a different theme for the box. Pooch Party Packs offers special discounts to military personnel and those who have adopted pets! For further information, www.poochpartypacks.com on contact us by emailing support@poochpartypacks.com
Elliott Broidy continues to support the charity and their focus on the four pillars of the healing process.

Contact

Elliott Broidy

***@elliottbroidy.com Elliott Broidy

End

-- From a military family, Elliott Broidy is dedicated to charities that give back to American Veterans. Elliott Broidy has been an avid supporter of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP,) the not-for-profit organization that honors and empowers Wounded Warriors.WWP has recently taken injured service members on the three-day hike to increase camaraderie with their fellow wounded veterans. WWP sees Engagement as one of four pillars, along with Mind, Body and Economic Empowerment, in the healing process for injured servicemen and women. The goal is to encourage camaraderie through events like this weekend's hike and camp, so wounded veterans can build and expand their support structure. Between dealing with rough terrain and the weather, wounded veterans learned about WWP programs and bonded over their shared adventure.Wounded Warrior Project listens to the needs of all our more than 81,000 registered Alumni. More than 80 cents of every dollar raised, goes to support wounded veterans. Through the 2015 annual Alumni Survey, WWP can adjust programs and services to meet the needs of wounded veterans. See the results or download the executive summary at woundedwarriorproject.org/survey.Since 2003, WWP has grown its lifesaving programs and services to meet the growing needs of the constituency it serves. Currently WWP provides support to more than 80,000 injured service members and over 13,000 caregivers and family support members through 20, free programs and services. These programs and services are uniquely structured to engage warriors, nurture their minds and bodies, and encourage economic empowerment. Through a high-touch and interactive approach, WWP's vision is to foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history.Elliott Broidy graduated with an MBA from the USC Marshall School Business. He went on to start Broidy Capital Management in 1991. The success of his investment firm has helped Elliott Broidy become a leading philanthropist with numerous projects. Elliott Broidy was appointed by Secretary Michael Chertoff to serve on the United States Homeland Security Advisory Council and was a member of the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Police Foundation. Elliott Broidy was also appointed by the President to serve on the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Visit here: https://twitter.com/ elliott_broidy
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, January 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The ninth annual Global Competitiveness Forum opened last night at a ceremony attended by government dignitaries, business experts and leading academics from Saudi Arabia and abroad.

In his opening remarks, HE Abdullatif Al-Othman, the Governor and Chairman of the Saudi Arabia General Investment Authority (SAGIA) welcomed guests, remarking that this year's Forum came at a crucial juncture for Saudi Arabia, which has announced plans to accelerate economic reforms in order to diversify its economy, and reduce its reliance on oil revenue.

"Although the region has experienced turmoil in recent times, the Kingdom continues to be an oasis of stability while continuing to accelerate developmental progress. A wide range of decisions have been made to adopt progressive policies and implement procedures aimed at achieving wide structural economic reform," said Al-Othman.

According to the Governor, these include the establishment of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, which is tasked with overseeing all economic issues; the reorganization of the housing sector; the introduction of fees on undeveloped lands; and strengthening of the role of the private sector. Further initiatives being implemented in early 2016 include partial privatization of some state assets, removing bureaucratic obstacles to foreign direct investment (FDI), and improving accountability and transparency in the public sector.

However, Saudi Arabia is in a comparatively positive position to profit from the initiatives being made, stressed the Governor. At USD653 billion dollars, the Saudi GDP (2015) is the largest in the Middle East; it is the fourth fastest-growing in the G-20, and public debt of just 5.8 percent of GDP compares favorably with the three fastest growing G-20 economies (China, India and Indonesia) which average 34 percent of GDP. Furthermore, the Kingdom's income from non-oil revenues has increased 29 percent over the course of 2015.

The Forum continues with a further two-day agenda discussing economic competitiveness focusing on the sectors that can best deliver economic diversification, with the participation of business luminaries including Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo; business magnate Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico; and Marillyn Hewson, chair of Lockheed Martin.

Notes

Inaugurated in 2006 by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the GCF has grown into one of the largest and most important annual gatherings of academics, business leaders, politicians and journalists in the region.

The theme of GCF 2016 is ' Competitive Sectors ' discussing strategies of developing a sustainable mixed economy not overly reliant on oil

Past keynote speakers have included former US president Bill Clinton , Microsoft founder Bill Gates , and former premiers, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore , FW de Klerk of South Africa , and Tony Blair of the UK.

Each year, some 2,000 people participate in the GCF's various activities, making it the world's largest conference on competitiveness.

For more information, go to: http://www.gcf.org.sa

For further inquiries, please contact:

Justin King

International Relations Adviser

Jking@sagia.gov.sa

+966-(0)56-724-2379



SOURCE Global Competitiveness Forum
MUMBAI, India, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vedanta Ltd's Lisheen Mine marked its final shipment of zinc on Thursday 21 January 2015. Mining activity at the Lisheen Mine was concluded in November 2015, whilst milling ceased in December 2015, after 17 years of operation.

Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150422/740375

"Lisheen has made a hugely valuable contribution to Vedanta and has also made a very positive impact to the local and national economy, bringing significant employment opportunities to the area," said Ms. Deshnee Naidoo, CEO, Vedanta Zinc International. "Over the life of the mine, Vedanta has remained committed to optimising its continuous development objective, aided by a strong and dedicated team of workers and stakeholders. I would like to thank our employees - past and present, the community, the Government and all our other stakeholders. They have supported our commitment to closing the mine in line with 'best in class' environmental standards in a safe, responsible and sustainable manner, with active community participation," she added.

"Our priority is not just the physical closure of the mine, but also the aftercare of the site to ensure that it is a long-term success. We made a commitment to our stakeholders to leave the site in a safe condition that will allow productive use of the land, and a detailed and fully-costed Closure, Restoration and Aftercare Management Plan is already underway," said Mr. Alan Buckley, General Manager at Lisheen. "Wherever possible, we will strive to build a sustaining economy in the surrounding region to ensure that a positive legacy remains now that the mine's operations have ceased," he added.

"I would like to commend the genuine commitment of Vedanta and the Lisheen Management to the workforce and the wider local community. This support was evident not only during the life of the mine but over the last two years. Intensive efforts have been made to plan for post closure investment and employment at the site, by harnessing the support of local and national government," said Ms. Liz O'Donnell, former government minister and the Chairman of the Lisheen Mine Task Force. The Task Force was established in 2013 and comprises internal and external advisors and members of the Irish Industrial Development Authority. Its aim is to facilitate and promote post closure opportunities and it is actively pursuing a number of initiatives, such as the establishment of a Green Energy Hub/Bio economy Campus at the site.

The Lisheen Mine is located in County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, and it produced zinc and lead in concentrate which was shipped overseas through the port of Cork. It consisted of an underground mine, concentrator and backfill plant, and typically produced 300,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate and 38,000 tonnes of lead concentrate every year. Operations at Lisheen began in 1999 following a successful development partnership between Minorco, which merged with Anglo American in 1999, and Ivernia West. In 2011, Vedanta Limited, a listed subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, acquired the mine from Anglo American, which had taken full ownership of the site in 2003. Over its life, 22.4 million tonnes of ore was mined at Lisheen, at an average grade of 11.63% zinc and 1.96% lead.

Committed to a positive legacy with Best-in-Class practices:

Since the start, Lisheen has operated under an Integration Pollution Control licence from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which sets out stringent controls and monitoring of all aspects of how the Mine interacts with the environment. This is done within a strict European Union regulatory framework.

The closure of the site represents a significant milestone for Vedanta and the company will now focus on a world-class closure, including its Biodiversity Action Plan, to ensure the mine's positive legacy. The main element of the Closure Plan is the capping of the Tailings Management Facility (TMF) in a safe and environmentally-friendly manner. All plans have been approved by the regulators, and progressive restoration of the TMF began in 2009. Vedanta made a commitment to the local community that 60% of the TMF would be capped by the time mine production ceased; this target has been achieved and costs associated with the physical closure and rehabilitation of the site are fully pre-funded. The rehabilitated part of the TMF has now been turned back into productive agricultural land and successful animal trials have been approved by the Irish Department of Agriculture. Environmental compliance is in accordance with the company's EPA-issued Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Licence, and an Aftercare Fund has also been established to cover the required 6 year monitoring and 30 year aftercare period. Furthermore, as part of its Outplacement Training Programme, Vedanta has actively supported employees to find new employment opportunities or pursue further education and training. Lisheen's management team has been actively exploring further business opportunities and ways to utilise the considerable resources and skills available at Lisheen following the closure.

About Vedanta Limited (Formerly Sesa Sterlite Ltd.)

Vedanta Limited is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc - lead - silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, Ireland, Liberia and Sri Lanka.

Vedanta Limited, formerly Sesa Sterlite Limited is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company. Governance and Sustainable Development are at the core of Vedanta's strategy, with a strong focus on health, safety and environment and on enhancing the lives of local communities. Vedanta Limited is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange in India and has ADRs listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information please log on to www.vedantalimited.com

Vedanta Limited

(Formerly known as Sesa Sterlite Limited)

Vedanta, 75, Nehru Road,

Vile Parle (East), Mumbai - 400 099

www.vedantalimited.com

Registered Office:

Sesa Ghor, 20 EDC Complex,

Patto, Panaji (Goa) - 403 001

CIN: L13209GA1965PLC000044

Disclaimer

This press release contains "forward-looking statements"  that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "should" or "will." Forwardlooking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. For us, uncertainties arise from the behaviour of financial and metals markets including the London Metal Exchange, fluctuations in interest and or exchange rates and metal prices; from future integration of acquired businesses; and from numerous other matters of national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different that those expressed in our forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements.

For further information, please contact:

Communications

Roma Balwani

President  Group Communications, Sustainability & CSR

Tel: +91-22-6646-1000

gc@vedanta.co.in



Investor Relations

Ashwin Bajaj

Director  Investor Relations

Sunila Martis

Manager  Investor Relations

Vishesh Pachnanda

Manager  Investor Relations

Tel: +91-22-6646-1531

vedantaltd.ir@vedanta.co.in

Related Links

http://www.vedantalimited.com



SOURCE Vedanta Limited
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Comerica Bank today announced that Joseph P. Yurosek has been named Regional Market President for the Orange County region.

Yurosek will continue his role as a Senior Vice President responsible for the Middle Market groups in Orange County, the South Bay and San Diego. Yurosek has been with Comerica since 1996 and previously served as Regional Group Manager for Middle Market Los Angeles.

Joseph Yurosek has been named Comerica Bank's Regional Market President for the Orange County region in California.

As Regional Market President, Yurosek's new responsibilities will include supporting the bank's customer initiatives and overall business and community development efforts across its Business Bank, Retail Bank and Wealth Management businesses.

"Joe has an in depth knowledge of the Orange County market and many years of experience building strong relationships with customers as well as his fellow colleagues," said Judy Love, Comerica's California Market President. "With his commitment to working across business lines, I'm confident Joe will be very effective in leading our growth strategies."

About Comerica Bank

Comerica Bank, with 103 banking centers in the key California markets of San Francisco and the East Bay, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Cruz/Monterey, and the Inland Empire, is a subsidiary of Comerica Incorporated (NYSE: CMA). Comerica is a financial services company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and strategically aligned into three major business segments: the Business Bank, the Retail Bank, and Wealth Management. Comerica focuses on relationships and helping businesses and people be successful. To find Comerica on Facebook, please visit www.facebook.com/ComericaCares. Follow us on Twitter: @ComericaCares.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325687

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20010807/CMALOGO

SOURCE Comerica Bank
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Comerica Bank today announced that Michael A. Silva has been named Regional Market President for the San Francisco and North Bay regions.

Michael Silva has been named Comerica Bank's Regional Market President for its San Francisco and North Bay regions

Silva will continue in his role as an Executive Vice President responsible for managing all Middle Market teams in Northern California, including San Francisco, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Sacramento and Fresno in addition to overseeing Comerica's Wine Industry Specialty Group. Silva joined the bank in 1998 and previously served as a Senior Vice President and Group Manager for the San Francisco Middle Market office.

As Regional Market President, Silva's new responsibilities will include supporting the bank's customer initiatives and overall business and community development efforts across its Business Bank, Retail Bank and Wealth Management businesses.

"We've experienced significant growth in areas where our colleagues have worked closely across business lines," said Judy Love, Comerica's California Market President. "It makes sense to have a Regional Market President to oversee that collaboration in this important market. Mike has worked tirelessly to build and manage relationships with customers and colleagues. With his leadership, I'm confident we'll continue to make great strides."

About Comerica Bank

Comerica Bank, with 103 banking centers in the key California markets of San Francisco and the East Bay, San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Cruz/Monterey, and the Inland Empire, is a subsidiary of Comerica Incorporated (NYSE: CMA). Comerica is a financial services company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and strategically aligned into three major business segments: the Business Bank, the Retail Bank, and Wealth Management. Comerica focuses on relationships and helping businesses and people be successful. To find Comerica on Facebook, please visit www.facebook.com/ComericaCares. Follow us on Twitter: @ComericaCares.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325685

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20010807/CMALOGO

SOURCE Comerica Bank

Related Links

http://www.comerica.com


SANTIAGO, Chile, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ecela's 2016 summer program in Cusco, Peru is designed for pre-med students who want to broaden their skill set to include mastery of conversational Spanish, including the technical vocabulary of medical fields. The immersive program lasts six weeks, during which students travel throughout the nation and volunteer alongside working health care professionals. Participants earn six Spanish language credits, all while experiencing the best Peru has to offer.

Derek Spath (right), 2013 alumnus of Ecela in Cusco, with his homestay brother (left). Ecela pre-med students volunteer alongside working health care professionals

Limited to 35 participants, the Cusco program is quite intense  meaning it's not for everyone. Students must be fully committed and passionate about learning the language and absorbing the local culture. An adventurous spirit is a distinct advantage. For successful graduates, the rewards are tremendous and enduring. Ecela offers more than a line on a resume; the program is a total experience that is never forgotten.

Derek Spath, a 2013 alumnus of Ecela in Cusco, has this to say about his time in Cusco: "Learning Spanish and volunteering in Peruvian hospitals has been incredibly rewarding. Developing vocabulary knowledge and interacting with real patients opened my eyes to the possibilities of being a doctor with Spanish language proficiency. I'm so much more marketable, both as a student and worker, thanks to my six weeks in Cusco."

The value of Spanish mastery is increasing rapidly. According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, the language has seen strong growth in the U.S. Since 1980, the number of Spanish speakers has grown by over 200%. At the current pace, the U.S. will be home to more Spanish speakers than any other nation within 35 years. These and other statistics underscore the need for health care industry professionals to move toward bilingual capabilities. At least one staff person should be able to communicate fluently with Spanish-speaking patients. Ecela is therefore well positioned to prepare a new generation of doctors and nurses to be of great service to their communities.

The Cusco program also equips students with knowledge of health care systems from a policy perspective. Participants observe how a developing nation's medical professionals are able to meet the needs of patients with sometimes limited resources. Equipped with this experience, pre-med summer program graduates can adopt a more holistic view of the business and practice of health care in the U.S.

Ecela is an acronym for "Espanol y Cultura en Latino America." The program has no language prerequisites. Even those with zero prior experience will see significant improvements in their knowledge, thanks to small class sizes and a focus on real conversations rather than lectures and rote memorization. The goal of the program is to provide a complete experience  education, travel and relationship building  that will pay dividends for the rest of one's career and life.

"Anyone interested in enhancing their Spanish, especially Spanish in medicine, should put Ecela in Cusco at the top of their list," concludes Spath. "Peru is fantastically beautiful, and there's so much to learn and enjoy. Every day at work I'm reminded that my decision to attend the program was the right one."

About Ecela

Ecela is a Spanish language-learning program with six sites in Peru, Chile and Argentina. Thousands of students from across the globe have taken advantage of the small classes and affordable tuition to learn Spanish while enjoying everything the local culture has to offer.

Contact:

Corey Ann Seldon

615-260-1926

Email

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325042

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160122/325043

SOURCE Ecela
TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Products of America (FPOA), the brand of the American inventor, has just welcomed the MycroMat to its family of products. Created by American inventor, Aaron Hechtman, the MycroMat is an innovative all-in-one kitchen gadget that functions as two pot holders and one trivet for handling hot dishes.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325397

"The MycroMat all started with a dream," says, inventor Aaron Hechtman. "One day back in 2007, I burnt myself on something I was removing from the microwave. Later that night before falling fast asleep, I thought, how could I take a hot bowl from the microwave to the table without 3rd degree burns? Once I was asleep, I had an incredible dream where I was buying the MycroMat and using it! I was so excited after I woke up I instantly began searching everywhere for a product similar to the one in my dream."

After realizing nothing like this existed, Aaron immediately started designing a prototype and when he'd perfected his design, began manufacturing. With tens of thousands of dollars in inventory, Aaron travelled the country, meeting with industry experts to develop a business strategy that would put a MycroMat in front of every microwave in the world. In 2015, Aaron was still looking for the opportunity of a lifetime, for both the MycroMat and himself professionally. When he heard about Future Products of America, and the opportunity to license his product, he knew he'd stumbled upon something great.

By licensing a product to FPOA, an inventor assumes no financial risk, which is a leading factor in why so many inventions never make it to market. "Most often, by the time an inventor gets a patent and designs a prototype, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more, he or she is already out of money and cannot move forward with the idea," Rick Valderrama, CEO of FPOA, states. To prevent said stagnancy FPOA will take on the responsibility of design and development, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution of the product and all costs associated with this process. In return, the inventor will earn a percentage of all sales and will have realized the dream of getting a product onto store shelves and into the American home, which is really what FPOA is all about.

But Aaron's relationship with FPOA does not stop with the MycroMat. His charismatic demeanor and energetic spirit were impossible to ignore, resulting in FPOA eagerly welcoming him to the FPOA family as the pitchman of FPOA products.

About Inventor/Pitchman Aaron Hechtman

Aaron Hechtman was born on December 12, 1983. Growing up in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove, IL. Aaron had two major influences in his early life. One was his grandfather and actor, Robert Hackman, who co-starred in shows like Love Boat, Sanford & Son, Charlies Angels, CHiPs and the movies Hooper, Falling in Love Again and The Longest Mile. His second idol was pitchman Billy Mays, who Aaron would often emulate, pretending to pitch and sell products that were on TV. Born a natural salesman, Aaron dreamt of one day following in Billy Mays footsteps.

After high school, Aaron attended and graduated from the Illinois Center for Broadcasting and began working as a video editor for the United Center's Chicago Bulls & Blackhawks. After gaining invaluable experience and learning the in's and out's of production and business marketing, Aaron then started his own video production company, Crystal Ball Creations.

In 2007, after burning his hands taking a boiling bowl of soup out of the microwave, Aaron dreamt up the next big thingthe MycroMat, which is now available for purchase through Future Products of America.

About Future Products of America

Future Products of America gives American inventors the opportunity to manufacture and distribute their products to major retailers across the United States. The goal of FPOA is to ensure the success of the American inventor by providing access to an arsenal of resources otherwise unobtainable to the average inventor. Currently FPOA is seeking a broad range of everyday household products that can be used in every home throughout the United States.

If you would like more information on this topic or to schedule an interview with Rick Valderrama, contact Karen Meister at 813.867.7500 or [email protected].

SOURCE Future Products of America

Related Links

http://www.futureproductsofamerica.com


LAHAINA, Hawaii, Jan. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dude, Jeff Bridges, and The Crooner, Brian Evans, rocked Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, January 23rd, to a packed crowd at The Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa. Singer/Songwriter Dayle Tejada opened the show with a rousing performance.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160125/325384

The Oscar winning actor joined the singer's concert series for the event. Stars ranging from Bob Saget to Mos Def have performed the dozens of monthly concerts put on by Evans, who also serves as the opening act.

Evans, who will soon release a new CD and music video, sang several songs from the upcoming release. His new single "Here You Come Again," is being supported by a music video that will be released in March, and features William Shatner, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Beth Chapman, Leland Chapman and comedian Paul Rodriguez.

Other singles on Evans upcoming release include "Maui Moon," "Croonerman," "This Town," and "Planet Blue," which will also be supported by a music video to be directed by William Shatner. Shatner recently performed a concert on Maui last month, performing a duet with the singer.

"It is a privilege to be doing this," says Evans, who also produces the increasingly popular "Maui Celebrity Series," and has been working on numerous other projects, including his two books "Horrorscope" and "The Funny Robbers," both released in the past several months. "It had been a difficult few years prior to this past year, which has brought a lot of things together for me."

Bridges mentioned from the stage his support for The American Sleep Apnea Association while embracing Evans, who lost his mother in 2012 from the condition following what was supposed to be a routine knee surgery. "Jeff Bridges is a class act all the way, and one of the nicest people that I have ever met. Everyone from his agent to his publicist were awesome people that let us do our thing, and then Jeff just blew everybody away."

Evans YouTube videos "At Fenway," which co-stars Shatner, has been added to the library of The National Baseball Hall of Fame. It has received close to 12 million views to date. His last video "Creature," which co-stars comedian Carrot Top, is the first full length music video ever to be filmed at The Bates Motel, the actual film locations of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, "Psycho."

Evans videos tend to target landmarks, providing the material continuous relevance.

"Halloween and baseball won't go away," says Evans. The Netflix show "BoJack Horseman" use his music on the popular animated show, as does "So You Think You Can Dance," among others. His live performance of "Witchcraft" has received over 6 million views and counting.

Evans will next present Cheech & Chong on Maui on April 30th, 2016. Dayle Tejada, whose single "Nothing But Love" is now available on iTunes, will also appear.

"The venue is about to get much bigger for what I'm doing," says Evans. "And other things as well. It wasn't easy to get here."

Partial proceeds also benefit Mental Health Kokua, a charity that seeks to assist the adult homeless of Hawaii. In December, the Governor of Hawaii issued Evans a Commendation for creating The Maui Celebrity Series. For more information on the charities mentioned in this article, visit www.mentalhealthkokua.org and sleepapnea.org.

SOURCE Maui Celebrity Series

Related Links

http://www.mauicelebrityseries.com


AcctTwo's team had the church knowledge needed to make the project a success.

AcctTwo, a leading consulting firm and provider of cloud-based financial management solutions, announced that Westgate Church has implemented Intacct's best-in-class ERP and accounting software to improve visibilty and insight as well as to provide integration with other key systems. With two locations in San Jose, WestGate Church is a community of people who are learning to love Jesus and live Jesus. It's a different kind of church, concerned with more than just hanging out with each other on Sunday. At WestGate, members are experiencing Gods presence, engaging deeply within their community, and serving their neighbors. After a rigorous software evaluation, Westgate Church chose Intacct over other on-premises and cloud solutions as the best fit to meet the unique needs presented by its ongoing expansion.

Previous Business Challenges Faced by Westgate Church:



WestGate Church has experienced rapid growth and expansion to a second location.

The church finance team had outgrown the capabilities of ACS and QuickBooks.

Westgate Church leaders were unable to get the reporting they need using their legacy software, especially struggling to report by location.

Purchasing, both by check and credit card, was becoming unmanageable.

Reasons for Selecting Intacct:

Intacct's dimensional reporting will allow WestGate's finance team to provide relevant reports by location, ministry, and other dimensions.

Intacct's ability to integrate with credit card automation systems will allow them to better manage credit card purchasing.

Intacct's ability to integrate with with other best-in-class budgeting solutions will allow them to compare budget versus actual and allow for better forecasting.

Highlighted Comments from Westgate Church's Operations Director:

"We've been impressed with how powerful Intacct is as well as its reporting flexibility," said Laura Holmbeck, Operations Director at Westgate Church. "Intacct will help us grow and easily add more locations. AcctTwo's team had the church knowledge needed to make the project a success."

Additional resources:

Visit Westgate Church on the web

Visit AcctTwo.com

Follow the AcctTwo Blog

About AcctTwo:

AcctTwo is a leading consulting firm and reseller of cloud-based accounting and ERP software. Our sophisticated systems solve the issues growing churches and nonprofits face today. AcctTwo also provides Business-Process-as-a-Service solutions, allowing clients to focus on their mission. We provide the people, processes, technology, and office facilities to perform these functions, while allowing clients to collaborate interactively through an on-line portal.

AcctTwo is headquartered in Houston, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.accttwo.com or call 713-744-8400.

Contacts:

Peter Wagner

Director of Marketing

AcctTwo

Cell: 512.415.6846

Email: pwagner(at)accttwo.com

Chris Wailes

VP, National Media Relations

Pierpont Communications

Direct: 713.627.2223

Email: cwailes(at)piercom.com
Relative Home Systems of Houston and Austin has won Best Of Design on Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The full-service residential and commercial custom electronics design and installation company was chosen by the more than 35 million monthly unique users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than one million active home building, remodeling and design industry professionals.

The Best of Houzz is awarded annually in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. Design award winners work was the most popular among the more than 35 million monthly users on Houzz. Customer Service honors are based on several factors, including the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in the past year. Relative Home Systems was also recognized with Best of Design and Best of Service awards in 2015.

Architecture and interior design photographers whose images were most popular are recognized with the Photography award. A Best Of Houzz 2016 badge will appear on winners profiles, as a sign of their commitment to excellence. These badges help homeowners identify popular and top-rated construction, design and technology experts in every metro area on Houzz.

We created Relative Home Systems with the hope of changing the traditional stereotype of the residential and commercial integrator and so far it has proven successful, said Wayne Getschman, COO of Relative Home Systems. When you have a company filled with some of the industrys top professionals and you work as a team, its easy to gain recognition.

The Best of Houzz awards recognize the companies that have inspired its users to discover new products or take on new projects. They have done this by encouraging a collaborative relationship between homeowners and the architects, designers or contractors they work with.

Anyone building, remodeling or decorating looks to Houzz for the most talented and service-oriented professionals, said Liza Hausman, Vice President of Industry Marketing for Houzz. Were so pleased to recognize Relative Home Systems, voted one of our Best of Houzz professionals by our enormous community of homeowners and design enthusiasts actively remodeling and decorating their homes.

Follow Relative Home Systems on Houzz or visit them online to learn more about their distinctive services, from home theater design to full home automation.

About Relative Home Systems

Relative Home Systems, located in Houston and Austin, TX, is a full-service residential and commercial custom electronics design and integration firm. Our technology solutions transform the way you interact with your home, making it safer, easier to use, and enhancing your lifestyle. With our commercial solutions, youll see operational efficiency improvements and enhanced productivity in the workplace.

Our team is comprised of seasoned professionals whose number-one priority is providing clients with the best products and services the industry has to offer. For more information visit http://www.relativehomesystems.com.

About Houzz

Houzz is the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish  online or from a mobile device. From decorating a small room to building a custom home and everything in between, Houzz connects millions of homeowners, home design enthusiasts and home improvement professionals across the country and around the world.

With the largest residential design database in the world and a vibrant community empowered by technology, Houzz is the easiest way for people to find inspiration, get advice, buy products and hire the professionals they need to help turn their ideas into reality. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Houzz also has international offices in London, Berlin, Sydney, Moscow and Tokyo. Houzz and the Houzz logo are registered trademarks of Houzz Inc. worldwide. For more information, visit houzz.com.
Caden, Age 6, Grand Prize Winner in Imagination Playground Build-A-Thon We are amazed by the creativity and effort put forth by all the children who entered our Build-A-Thon, and are encouraged by the future builders, engineers, and architects supported by enthusiastic parents and caregivers...

Imagination Playground, LLC, http://www.imaginationplayground.com, creators of the breakthrough play space concept that encourages child-directed, unstructured free play, announced today the winners in the Imagination Playground Build-A-Thon contest that ended on December 18, 2015. The nationwide contest asked children ages 2 to 10 years of age to physically build with their Big Blue Blocks at area schools, family centers, parks or digitally on their 3D Builder app.

Parents and caregivers were encouraged to take a photograph or screen shot and submit photos of the builds to enter to win one of over 500 prizes, including a grand prize trip to New York City and customized Big Blue Block sets.

The winners of the contest (with hundreds of entries), were notified of their win on Friday, January 22, 2016.

The Grand Prize winner was Caden, Age 6, from Columbus, OH. Caden and a parent or caregiver will be offered the chance to travel to New York City this summer to build at the legendary Imagination Playground Park all expenses paid. Caden is also the recipient of a customized 105-piece Imagination Playground Big Blue Blocks set and Play Associates Training (valued at over $7500.00).

The First Place winners were Bella, age 4 from San Jose, CA (physical build) and Henry, age 8, from Olathe, KS (digital build). Both Bella and Henry won a customized 105-piece Imagination Playground Big Blue Blocks set.

The Second Place winners were Jaycob, age 8 from Jacksonville, AK (physical build) and Eliana, age 7, from Denver, CO (digital build). Both Jaycob and Eliana won a customized 55-piece Imagination Playground Big Blue Blocks set.

All entrants will receive the Third Place prize of a 50-piece mini pop-out playground, just for participating. All winning build photographs will be available on the Imagination Playground website, which can be found at http://www.imaginationplayground.com.

Dave Krishock, President & CEO of Imagination Playground shared the following, We were amazed by the creativity and effort put forth by all the children who entered our Build-A-Thon, and are encouraged by all the future builders, engineers, and architects supported by enthusiastic parents and caregivers to use their imaginations in this way.

Krishock went on to announce, Because of the overwhelming support for the contest by children, parents, and our Partners in Play, wed like to announce a new Imagination Playground Build-A-Thon contest for 2016 that will begin on February 1st! Stay tuned for more contest information as we open up the program session.

To learn more about the Imagination Playground Build-A-Thon and to watch for updates on the 2016 session, visit http://www.imaginationplayground.com/promotions/build-a-thon/index.html.

To learn more about Imagination Playground Big Blue Blocks, reach out to contactus(at)imaginationplayground(dot)com.

About Imagination Playground, LLC

Imagination Playground is a breakthrough play space concept developed to encourage child-directed, creative free play. The kind of play that experts say is critical to childrens intellectual, social, physical and emotional development. Created by architect and designer David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group, Imagination Playground enables children to play, dream, build and explore endless possibilities. Imagination Playground finds its home in daycare centers, kindergartens, elementary schools, childrens museums  and science, nature, discovery centers, camps, community centers, childrens hospitals, hotels, public parks and more  in North America and over 65 countries overseas. For more information, visit http://www.imaginationplayground.com.
Crescent Harbor (http://www.crescentharbor.com) is offering free shipping to Canadian clients.

Our new free shipping policy for Canada applies to orders over US$250, explained Tim Fossett, President. It is the pleasure of Crescent Harbor to extend our free shipping policy to our valued clients north of the border. We appreciate their loyalty and enjoy providing Canadian households, renovation companies and design firms with the best lighting products in the industry and from the finest manufactures on the planet.

Conditions of the policy include the following:



Packages must meet the post offices size requirements

Packages will be shipped via UPS unless otherwise requested

Brokerage, duty and taxes may be applicable and if so, will be charged by the shipper at the time of delivery

Packages will not be delivered to PO boxes

An authorized person over the age of 18 must sign to receive the shipment

You are not required to sign for incomplete or damaged goods (contact Crescent Harbor right away in this case)

Shipments that are refused for reasons other than incomplete/damage may be subject to a restocking fee

The shipping policy pairs nicely with the companys easy return policy. Crescent Harbor also has a solid privacy policy to make sure all customers feel confident in all interactions with the company.

We want all Crescent Harbor customers to feel comfortable shopping with us online, Fossett pointed out. We understand that the online experience differs from brick-and-mortar shopping, so we strive to make each interaction as easy, efficient and enjoyable as possible. Offering free shipping to Canadian clients is just of the ways this company excels at customer service.

To view the shipping policy in full, visit http://www.crescentharbor.com/shipping.html. To learn more about the company and/or to purchase high-quality lighting and fixtures at affordable pricing, visit http://blog.crescentharbor.com/.

About Crescent Harbor Lighting

Crescent Harbor Lighting is the online arm of The Lighthouse, a family-owned lighting company founded in 1972.

The company specializes in a high-touch customer service approach to retailing lighting fixtures, ceiling fans and other related items.

Contact Details:

Tim Fossett

President

88 York Street

US Route One

Kennebunk, Maine, 04043

Toll Free Phone: 1-888-355-9525

Local Phone: 1-207-985-3535

Fax: 1-207-985-4569

Source: Crescent Harbor Lighting

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As a leading provider of professional working capital, United Funding Capital Corp has provided funding and credit related tools to businesses that wish to grow. Since they began helping businesses in 1997, they have recorded an excellent level of customer retention and have consistently ranked above industry peer groups and their competitors. This shows their exceptional level of service and dedication to ensuring their clients get results.

The independently performed Client Survey provided valuable information to United Funding Capital Corp regarding their performance. The survey showed 93 percent of their clients rank their work as excellent with a 95 percent excellent rating for a professional approach and level of service. They also received a 97 percent excellent rating for a willingness to help, a 93 percent rating for excellent ability to return communications and 91 percent of their clients felt they were confident in the services provided.

Anyone interested in learning about these ratings and what they mean can find out more by visiting the United Funding Capital Corp website or by calling 1-877-894-8232.

About United Funding Capital Corp: United Funding Capital Corp provides professional working capital and credit tools and resources to help their clients achieve their business goals. Their professional team has provided services to businesses since 1997 and continues to perform at or above the standards for their industry. Applications are free, giving businesses peace of mind they are making the right decision.
Being open to making new friends, whether on social media or offline, is only the first step. The real issue for people over the age of 30 is whether room has been made in their life for new relationships.

It is no secret Americans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, life expectancy is estimated to be 83 by 2050. People are living longer, plus according to the Stanford Center on Longevity, the rates of disability and poverty are lower today than in previous generations. These remarkable developments are having a dramatic impact on all areas of society, specifically in how those over the age of 30 are making new friends.

Hollywood actress, best-selling author and Baby Boomer advocate, Joanie Marx is determined to change the misconceptions people have of living a fulfilling life as they grow older. During research for her #1 Amazon bestselling book, Facelifts, Money & Prince Charming: Break Baby Boomer Myths and Live Your Best Life", she began to see how the skills from acting could be applied to not only breaking many of the Baby Boomer myths she writes about, such as Baby Boomer dating, aging and how the Baby Boomer generation are portrayed in the media, but also how these skills play a role in making new friends after the age of 30.

Calling upon her vast experience from three decades of acting in Hollywood, along with her timely insight as a Baby Boomer Advocate, Marx, says: Being open to making new friends, whether on social media or offline, is only the first step. The real issue for people over the age of 30 is whether room has been made in their life for new relationships. If so, what is the most effective and enjoyable way to make the most of new connections?

When she discovered the answer to this question was in five specific skills she had honed during her career as an actress, Marx knew they needed to be reinterpreted and shared with those who could apply them in their lives, when and where it mattered most.

1  Know who you are: When preparing for a role the skill of knowing your character is rarely overlooked by actors, but the importance of knowing who you are is not always clear to people seeking someone to have a mutually fulfilling relationship with. Marx goes on to explain that, The experiences we go through in life change who we are, so by the time we are in our thirties, or even older, we are not the same people we used to be. In later stages of life, when meeting someone for the first time, knowing who we are carries more significance because we bring a lot more personal history to the encounter than we did when we were younger.

2  Know what you want to accomplish: This isnt just something actors require for a scene, it is vital to making new friends, says Marx. What our relationship needs are and what we want to accomplish with new connections carries more weight later in life than it did when we were younger. Being clear on our intentions can make all the difference.

3  Know when to speak and when to listen: This is all about being present, which is a crucial skill for actors and anyone seeking to make new friends. Marx goes on to say that, The #1 thing in a friendship is mutual amount of talking and listening. Not every interaction needs to be 50/50, but to establish a good balance between talking and listening is key.

4  Know what motivates you and others: Actors are notorious for asking, What is my characters motivation? but often get themselves into trouble when they overlook the motivation of the other characters in their scene, explains Marx. Whatever our motivation is for meeting new people, there is something motivating-the person we are interacting with. Its our job to understand-what that-is-and determine if it is in alignment-with ours.

5  Know what is at stake: This is a fundamental skill for actors in their scenes just as it is for people making new friends. Marx points out that, With longer and more abundant lifestyles, being aware of how and where new friends affect our life takes on a higher level of importance after the age of 30 than it did in our 20s.

About Joanie Marx:

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Psychology, the multi-faceted career of Joanie Marx spans both the world of Hollywood and business. With thirty years as a full-time actress, she has appeared in several national commercials, and co-starred in dozens of television shows, films and stage plays. Along the way, she also founded and sold a multi-million dollar business. Her recent #1 Amazon bestselling book, Facelifts, Money and Prince Charming: Break Baby Boomer Myths & Live Your Best Life, boldly addresses 7 Baby Boomer Myths, and how to break them to create a new path for living ones best life. For more information on Joanie visit http://www.JoanieMarx.com and http://www.facebook.com/McGrannySecret.

Schedule Interview: To arrange a candid and eye-opening interview with Joanie Marx call

818-317-4415 or email joaniemarx(at)earthlink(dot)net.
Richard Steece, PhD - Director, Public Health Laboratory, State of Tennessee Department of Health

Serology testing is an essential means for managing various disease states, most notably for the qualitative determination of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies to Herpes simplex virus Type 1 (HSV-1) or Herpes simplex virus Type 2 (HSV-2) in human serum.

DiaSorin is sponsoring a new, free educational webinar, Herpes Serology: HSV-1 and HSV-2 Type-Specific Diagnosis from the Public Health Perspective, which will discuss vital objectives in HSV-1 and HSV-2 type-specific diagnosis. Attendees will discover how serology assays may be indicated in specific clinical instances (eg, in sexually active adults, or for pregnant women to aid in the presumptive diagnosis of HSV-1 or HSV-2 type-specific infection). The speaker will review US clinical guidelines pertaining to why HSV-1 and HSV-2 type-specific screening is not indicated in the general US population as it is for other sexually transmitted diseases, and detail diagnostic techniques for diagnosing HSV-1 or HSV-2 type-specific infection, noting the differences between virologic and serologic assays and their advantages in herpes diagnosis.

The speaker is Richard Steece, PhD, director of the Public Health Laboratory, State of Tennessee Department of Health. Dr. Steece has more than 30 years of experience and is one of the top public health laboratory experts in the United States, having worked with every city, county, and state public health laboratory in the country. He has recently served as the National Chlamydia Laboratory Coordinator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as Science Advisor to the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), and as the chair of the 2015 STD subcommittee for APHL, which he is continuing into 2016. Dr. Steece received a PhD in biology/microbiology.

The free webinar, hosted by LabRoots, will be presented on March 17, 2016, at 10 am PST/12 pm CST/1 pm EST.

For full details about the event and free registration, click here.

About DiaSorin:

DiaSorin, based in Italy, is a global leader in the field of biotechnologies. The company has been developing, producing, and marketing reagent kits for in vitro diagnostics worldwide for more than four decades. Its line of products used by diagnostic laboratories that are part of hospital facilities or operate independently meet the needs of clinical areas such as infectious diseases, hypertension, bone metabolism, and endocrinology.

About LabRoots:

LabRoots is the leading scientific social networking website and producer of educational virtual events and webinars. Contributing to the advancement of science through content sharing capabilities, LabRoots is a powerful advocate in amplifying global networks and communities. Founded in 2008, LabRoots emphasizes digital innovation in scientific collaboration and learning, and is a primary source for current scientific news, webinars, virtual conferences, and more. LabRoots is the owner and producer of BioConference Live  which has grown into the worlds largest series of virtual events within the Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics community.
This year, the public can look forward to a range of pop up exhibitions from this class of artists including mining town interventions, an earthwork, a neon tumbleweed sculpture, and an immersive ceramic installation.

Black Cube, a nomadic contemporary art museum, announced its 2016 class of artist fellows which includes Jon P. Geiger, Stephanie Kantor, Molly Berger, Eric Stewart, and artist duo, SANGREE. Black Cubes fellowship program is a unique fellowship program for contemporary artists which focuses on producing a site-specific exhibition, Art Objects for its museum shop, as well as broadly supporting the artists professional practice through individualized career support catered to each artists goals and needs.

Without a permanent exhibition space, Black Cube is defined by the art and artist fellows it presents and supports. All projects begin with the artists ideas and build from there to form the basis of Black Cubes presence throughout the community. Black Cubes Artist Fellow program provides a platform for the participating artists work while simultaneously guiding them through a process of reflection and analysis of their art practice. By bringing these critical elements together and nurturing them in tandem, it aims to position them for a successful, longstanding career as an artist.

We are very excited to be working with another extremely talented group of emerging artists who are already in the process of developing their pop up exhibitions, said Black Cube executive director and chief curator, Cortney L. Stell. This year, the public can look forward to a range of pop up exhibitions from this class of artists including mining town interventions, an earthwork, a neon tumbleweed sculpture, and an immersive ceramic installation, Cortney added.

2016 Black Cube Artist Fellows:

Molly Berger lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Berger was Artist-in-Residence at the Carbondale Clay Center where she had her first solo show titled A Thing Like Home which confronted the ways in which we form identity through objects, memory, and the domestic space. Recently, Berger was awarded an Artist-in-Residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. She has exhibited her work across Colorado and nationally.

Jon P. Geiger currently resides in the Detroit area, and his work centers on the mysticism of the American West, the power of the land, and the frontier spirit; often challenging their origins and place in the imagination. Geiger's work, The Exit, was acquired as part of the permanent collection of the Cranbrook Art Museum. His work has been exhibited most recently with his solo show Nothing that Gleams at Three Walls in Chicago, IL, along with the group show Read Image, and See Text at the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

Stephanie Kantor's work explores the paradoxical aspects of culture, both expansive and local. Kantor makes large scale, sculptural ceramic pots and places them within created environments, transporting the viewer to an alternate reality and creating a facade of culture, where her objects speak to multiplicity, cultural diversity, and artifice. Kantor has shown nationally at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Pargraph Gallery, The Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art, Belger Crane Yard Studios, and Leedy Voulkous.

SANGREE is an artistic collaboration between Rene Godinez Pozas and Carlos Lara, both of Mexico City. Between iconoclasm and minimal aesthetics, anthropology and Land Art, the work of SANGREE investigates human's traces in nature. Through performance, sculpture, photography, video, and large-scale interventions in public space, the artists have established themselves as emerging artists on the international art scene. Notably, the duo has recently produced a solo exhibition at the University Museum del Chopo in Mexico City and has participated in group exhibitions in Germany and the U.S. SANGREE is represented by Yautepec Gallery in Mexico City.

Eric Stewart is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist and educator. Working predominantly with 16mm film, his artistic practice invokes photochemical and darkroom processes to investigate landscape, place and cultural identity in the American West. He was awarded the 2015 Mono No Aware Award for Excellence in Filmmaking and his films have shown at The Yerba Buena Center for Fine Arts, Yale University, Crossroads Film Festival, 25fps, and The Florida Experimental Film Festival.

About Black Cube

Black Cube is a nonprofit, nomadic contemporary art museum. At Black Cube, we see ourselves as an unconventional museum pursuing the most effective ways to engage new audiences while supporting artists sustainability. Without the traditional boundaries of a physical building, Black Cube is experienced primarily through pop-up art exhibitions and shops conceived by our artist fellows. Black Cube was founded by artist and philanthropist, Laura Merage. Find out more at http://www.blackcubeart.org.
This is a record unlike any other, not just of our companys history but also of the whole limestone-quarrying region.

Some 26,000 vintage photographs discovered in a disused Indiana house provide a unique look at the history of the states limestone industry. The pictures, donated by Indiana Limestone Company to the Indiana Geological Survey (IGS) at Indiana University, are currently being catalogued and preserved through a short-term project managed by the survey. The IGS is actively seeking funding to support this important work.

The collection dates from the early to mid-1900s. It illustrates Indiana limestone quarries, mills, and building sites across the country. The photographs showcase the prized stones legacy in building some of the nations most iconic buildings, as well as many structures in southern Indiana.

The photos were originally shot as part of the companys marketing program. When rediscovered, they were beginning to deteriorate in a structure without heat or air conditioning near the firms Oolitic, Ind., quarry. To preserve them, IGS undertook the process of cleaning, scanning, and creating digital copies and metadata.

The survey brought the photos to a stable environment and began to sort and catalogue them with the goal of creating high-resolution digital images to archive and make available to scholars, researchers, and the general public. said Licia Weber, IGS project director.

Photographs in the collection document the extraordinary place of Indiana limestone in North American architecture and U.S. history. Including skyscrapers, residences, cathedrals, schools, banks and librarieswith examples from nearly every statethe collection demonstrates the importance of the stone in creating Americas built environment.

Roughly 1,250 images, mostly of Indiana and Chicago subjects, have been inventoried, catalogued, and scanned so far. They may be viewed at Indiana Universitys Image Collections Online site.

An exhibit featuring selected photographs was held last year at the Wylie House Museum on the universitys Bloomington campus. Exhibit sponsors were the IGS, the museum, and Visit Bloomington.

Duffe Elkins, chief operating officer at Indiana Limestone Company, expressed the firms pride in the heritage illustrated by the photographs. This is a record unlike any other, not just of our companys history but also of the whole limestone-quarrying region, he said. A find like this comes along very rarely.

For more on Indiana Limestone Company and its products, visit http://www.indianalimestonecompany.com .

For additional information on the Indiana Geological Survey, visit https://igs.indiana.edu/ .

About Indiana Limestone Company

Indiana Limestone Company is unmatched as the premier supplier of Indiana Limestone in a range of beautiful and lasting building products. Founded in 1926 (with predecessor firms that had been quarrying limestone since the mid-1800s), ILCO today remains the provider of choice for this internationally renowned natural stone. Throughout an illustrious history in which its stone has made such iconic structures as the Empire State Building, National Cathedral, and the Pentagon, ILCO has reliably provided the highest quality products and services carefully tailored to the needs of the market with an environmental, natural focus.
AAA Home LLC Become a member of AAA Home LLC to start LEGALLY reducing your homeowners deductible by $300 per year.

Houston-based business, AAA Home LLC, this month officially launched their company website, making it easier for homeowners to legally reduce their homeowners deductible. Dedicated to helping homeowners combat rising costs today, AAA Home offers the only legal option to reducing deductibles in the event of a disaster.

People have to jump through so many hoops to financially repair their homes today, said Scott Huckabee. I wanted to create a business that protected homeowners against rising costs and hidden deductibles. Ive met people who pay over 25% interest on their credit cards for home repairs. AAA Home is here to ensure you are able to handle expensive disaster deductibles.

AAA Home assists with disaster deductibles for fire, flood, hurricane, windstorm, tornado, earthquake, hailstorm, and more. The company offers a Residential membership for homeowners who live in their homes, as well as a Landlord membership for homeowners who rent/ lease their properties to others.

By becoming an AAA Home member, you can reduce your homeowners deductible by $300 a year, said Huckabee. We will also provide an annual inspection of your property for any damages, as well as discounted repairs for minor projects.

Huckabee stresses that AAA Home is a company that cares about the homeowner above all else, opposite of insurance company mindsets. AAA Home is dedicated to knowing you and the specific needs of your home. Profit is not what drives this company forward; lending a helping hand to blindsided homeowners is whats most important.

Insurers are changing how they calculate deductibles, and it is destroying homeowners, said Huckabee. This is especially true for weather and other disaster damages. Insurance companies are now calculating deductibles based on the insured value of your home. With home prices soaring in many areas around the country, deductibles are rising at an alarming rate.

The Wall Street Journal and other publications have written on this expensive homeowner loophole Huckabee is referring to. By tying the deductibles to insured values of homes, homeowners are subject to constant price changes, often unbeknownst to them.

We are offering the only legal route to managing your homeowner deductible, said Huckabee. It is illegal in all 50 states to have contractors waive or reduce your deductible. At AAA Home, for only $25 a month, you receive a $300 credit towards your homeowners deductible per year you are a member. Plus, we have an extensive network of professional contractors that will carefully and efficiently complete any homeowner repairs upon request.

Huckabee has built up a far-reaching, quality network of talent and contractors through his many years in the homeowner industry. AAA Home only charges customers once their repairs are fully completed, not a moment sooner. Some minor repairs they will fix for incredibly low rates exclusively to AAA Home members.

AAA Home strives to build long-term relationships with clients, neighborhoods, and communities. A business consumers can trust, AAA Home nationally serves homeowners through repairs and disaster deductibles.

For more information, or to signup with AAA Home today, visit:http://joinaaahome.com/.
Savills Studley has appointed Aditi Sant as Senior Managing Director of Occupier Services in its Tampa office, to help grow and expand the firms Occupier Services platform. Aditi brings unique end-user experience to Savill Studleys Occupier Services platform and we are confident she will make phenomenal contributions to our team.

Savills Studley has appointed Aditi Sant as Senior Managing Director of Occupier Services in its Tampa office, as part of an aggressive recruiting effort designed to continue the growth and expansion of the firms Occupier Services platform.

Aditi is a true ace in the industry. Her expertise, drive and commitment to excellence is second-to-none, said Ann Duncan, Executive Vice President and Head of Savills Studleys Occupier Services group. She brings unique end-user experience to the platform and we are confident she will make phenomenal contributions to our team.

Savills Studley Occupier Services provides a full range of integrated real estate services and can consistently deliver strategic results on a worldwide basis. Sant will play an important role in providing portfolio optimization and strategic consulting services to clients regionally, nationally, and internationally, as well as lead the team in workplace solutions.

Savills Studleys solid brand identity as a tenant advocate and its stellar reputation amongst end-users was really what drew me to this opportunity. The strong niche that Occupier Services offers in conjunction with the firms brokerage platform was very appealing to me as no other firm is offering such specialized, comprehensive and analytical services, said Sant. Savills Studley Occupier Services provides tremendous growth potential for me and I look forward to contributing to the success of the Occupier Services group and the firm overall.

Prior to joining Savills Studley, Sant served as Senior Vice President of corporate workplace strategy for Bank of America, where she drove long term strategic portfolio plans exceeding eighteen million square feet of the banks office space, in addition to developing optimization plans that resulted in the elimination of 38 percent of excess space through 2019.

Sant earned a Bachelor of Arts in architecture from the University of Pune in India and a Master of Science degree from Cornell University, which focused on the human interactions with the physical environment, specifically organizational culture and understanding the role of the workplace in employee recruiting.

About Savills Studley

Savills Studley is the leading commercial real estate services firm specializing in tenant representation. Founded in 1954, the firm pioneered the conflict-free business model of representing only tenants in their commercial real estate transactions. Today, supported by high quality market research and in-depth analysis, Savills Studley provides strategic real estate solutions to organizations across all industries. The firms comprehensive commercial real estate platform includes brokerage, project management, capital markets, consulting and corporate services. With 27 offices in the U.S. and Canada, and a heritage of innovation, Savills Studley is well known for tenacious client advocacy and exceptional service.

The firm is part of London-headquartered Savills plc, the premier global real estate service provider with over 30,000 professionals and over 600 locations around the world. Savills plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (SVS.L).

For more information, please visit http://www.savills-studley.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @SavillsStudley.

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Cartika IaaS Cloud Server Platform Client Area APIs were mentioned in our last update in mid-December and we wanted to start 2016 off by providing our clients and partners this exciting new level of flexibility.

Cartika, a leading Canadian provider of managed application and cloud hosting services, announced today significant new functionality to its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloud Server Platform. These added extensions to Cartikas IaaS cloud offering are called Client Area APIs.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are a set of routines and protocols used as building blocks for software development and communication between programs. The purpose of APIs in the context of managing infrastructure is to allow users to see, change and even automate key components of their systems.

This added functionality gives users visibility and control over their hosted IT environments from within their own systems, bypassing the need to use an external portal. By using this integration, customers save time by using tools they are familiar with. This is of particular importance for partners who resell Cartikas services to many end-clients and prefer to use existing in-house control panels.

According to Cartika CEO Andrew Rouchotas, we have worked exceedingly hard this past year to make our IaaS Cloud Server Platform easier to consume, operate and manage. The Client Area APIs were mentioned in our last update in mid-December and we wanted to start 2016 off by providing our clients and partners this exciting new level of flexibility. Andrew continues to say we will remain tightly focused on providing cloud solutions that work seamlessly within our clients' existing IT frameworks. This has been a vision at Cartika from the beginning.

Over the past few months, Cartika has restructured the way it offers and sells and its IaaS cloud services. The company has also launched a series of major enhancements that let clients better manage their ISOs on Virtual Machines (VMs); customize Bare Metal Restore (BMR) processes; and take advantage of integrated SSH key support. Currently on the product roadmap, Cartika plans to further enhance its Backup-as-a-Service offering, expand their storage infrastructure tiers, and add functionality to perform replication between facilities.

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About Cartika Inc.

Founded in Toronto in May 2000, Cartika Inc. has established itself as a leader in application hosting and advanced clustering technologies. Cartikas unique offering has made them a popular choice for cloud users across North America. The company's broad range of infrastructure solutions and modular add-ons include proactive management services, 24x7 technical support for all hosting clients, powerful load balancing options, and Cartika's industry-leading Bacula4 Backup-as-a-Service platform.

For more information, visit cartika.com or follow us on social media.

Media Contact:

Randy Fougere

rfougere(at)cartika(dot)com
Add an animated title to your video. More and more people are editing their videos on-the-go. However, there are no apps offering effects, filters and motion graphics comparable to what you can do with professional desktop software. We are changing that today with FilmoraGo, Cole Vineyard.

Filmora Video Editor has recently launched FilmoraGo for Android -- a mobile video editing app that allows users to edit on the go. With this app, Android users can add filters, eye-catching motion graphics, and gorgeous overlays to their videos. There are even one-touch themes for making great looking videos quickly. FilmoraGo is available for free on Google Play for a limited time,.

FilmoraGo has all the quality and ease of Filmora Video Editor in a mobile format. Now users can make beautiful, professional-looking, videos with one tap. It is many people's New Year's resolution to become more social and start express themselves artistically. FilmoraGo has made it much easier to keep their resolution.

More and more people are editing their videos on-the-go. However, there are no apps offering effects, filters and motion graphics comparable to what you can do with professional desktop software. We are changing that today with FilmoraGo, Cole Vineyard, Filmoras Senior Marketing Manager said. These incredible effects are only available in our app. With FilmoraGos themes, users will be able to instantly apply these effects -- music, motion graphics, titles and filters-- all at once with just one touch.

People use social media to share photos and videos with family and friends every day, and FilmoraGo has made that easier. Photos and videos can be imported to the editing program directly from Facebook and Instagram, so theres no need to have them saved on a computer. Once the editing is done sharing the finished product on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or other social media sites can be done instantly.

FilmoraGo is free and available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wondershare.filmorago.

Discover more about FilmoraGo video editing app at http://filmorago.com

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About Wondershare

Wondershare, an IDG INVESTED company, is an innovative software developer dedicated to delivering the very best in software products and services to the consumer and business markets worldwide. Wondershare has branch offices in Canada, China and Japan. Wondershare has been honored as Deloitte Tech Fast 500 Asia Pacific and China 50 for three consecutive years and Forbes Business Potential of China for two consecutive years. For more information about Wondershare and its entire lineup of award winning mobile, multi-media, business productivity, PDF and system utility software products, please visit http://www.wondershare.com. Wondershare is a REGISTERED trademark of Wondershare Software Co. Ltd. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Pasadena Recovery Center is proud to welcome Dr. Lauren Costine to their groundbreaking speaker series on Wednesday, January 27 at 12 P.M. Dr. Costine is a clinical psychologist, executive, author, and activist. She works with both individuals and couples and plays a key role in the feminist and LGBTQ communities. Dr. Costine will be addressing the critical issues outlined in her first book, Lesbian Love Addiction: Understanding the Urge to Merge and How to Heal When Things Go Wrong.

We are so very honored to have Dr. Lauren D. Costine as our featured guest for this month's speaker series," says actress and Pasadena Recovery Center's Treatment and Recovery Advocate, Mackenzie Phillips. "We are all looking forward to hearing what this incredible woman has to say and the lessons she will share."

Dr. Costine's, Lesbian Love Addiction: Understanding the Urge to Merge and How to Heal When Things Go Wrong, encourages readers to develop an understanding of why lesbians merge and how to view traditional psychotherapy through a lesbian-affirmative lens in order to help themselves or their lesbian clients towards recovery from love addiction.

Dr. Costine received her M.A. in Psychology at Antioch University Los Angeles in 2001 and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2007. Dr. Costine believes in utilizing integrative psychotherapy to help her clients reach their treatment goals. Costine focuses on addiction, trauma, co-dependence, co-occurring issues, LGBT-affirmative psychotherapy, depth psychology and family systems.

Pasadena Recovery Center Speaker Series hosts amazing authors, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and experts to talk about their personal experiences with addiction and the way it has affected both themselves and the people around them.

Pasadena Recovery Center: Located in the charming historic district of Pasadena, the Pasadena Recovery Center was co-founded in 2000 by renowned psychiatrist Dr. Lee Bloom, his daughter Alison Triessl, and his son Michael Bloom. The 98-bed drug and alcohol treatment center is nationally known for its 12-step based comprehensive treatment program and highly skilled, licensed and certified staff. Pasadena Recovery Center is dedicated to providing compassionate, comprehensive care to those suffering from chemical dependency and is proud to offer lifesaving and life-changing treatment at an affordable cost. The Pasadena Recovery Centers goal is to reintroduce sober individuals into society with the skills necessary to lead meaningful, productive lives.
Wednesday evening, February 3, 2016, NJOP (http://www.njop.org) will hold its Annual Dinner at the Grand Hyatt New York. The dinner will celebrate the organizations twenty-eight year history and honor community leaders for their outstanding contributions to the organization and their unwavering commitment to supporting Jewish life. The festivities also celebrate the 70th birthday of NJOP Founder and Director, Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald, who has been the driving force behind the organizations decades of achievements.

This years honorees embody our commitment to spreading the joy of Jewish life and enriching Jewish communities, said Rabbi Buchwald. Our programs would not be possible without the support of these passionate and committed individuals.

Longtime NJOP supporters Ellen and Mordecai (Mordy) Lipkis will receive the Elli and Israel Krakowski Memorial Award. Both Ellen and Mordecai were personally inspired by Rabbi Buchwald and NJOPs programs: Mordecai studied directly under Rabbi Buchwald at Ramaz High School and Ellen was a member of the Lincoln Square Synagogue Beginners Service. As a couple, they have made it their mission to support Jewish engagement activities and foster community involvement. In addition to being ardent supporters of Israel and active members of AIPAC, the Lipkises have become an integral part of the Upper West Sides Carlebach Shul, where they are known especially for Hachnasat Orchim (providing hospitality).

Known throughout Manhattans Jewish community as leaders and innovators, Rachel and Rabbi Daniel Kraus play a dynamic role in local Jewish education in Manhattan. Rabbi Kraus outreach/engagement work at Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (KJ), and KJ Beginners has been widely lauded. Additionally, he recently began working as the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Birthright Israel Foundation where he will be able to play a role in furthering Jewish education on a national scale. Rachel Kraus is also a highly sought-after Jewish educator who has worked side-by-side with her husband at MJE and KJ. They maintain an open home, hosting weekly Shabbat meals together with their three beautiful children, and their table has become the center of a vibrant community of young Jewish professionals, first in Midtown Manhattan and now on the Upper East Side. NJOP is thrilled to give the Carl and Sylvia Freyer Young Leadership Award to this outstanding couple.

Receiving the Leslie Nelkin Special Service Award is NJOPs Publications Coordinator, Sarah Rochel Hewitt. Upon joining the staff in 1999, Sarah Rochel quickly assessed the need for NJOP to produce more original material--particularly on its website. Her NJOP projects have included a series of companion guides to the Crash Courses in Basic Judaism and Jewish History, supplemental Shabbat programming for SHABBAT ACROSS AMERICA AND CANADA, holiday workshops, and 4 Spirituality at Your Fingertips guides for Shabbat celebrations. Sarah Rochel is also the writer and editor of NJOPs Jewish Treats: Juicy Bits of Judaism Daily emails. In this capacity, Sarah Rochel produces original Treats five days a week and over 200 original Treats each year! In her 16 years at NJOP, Sarah Rochel has become an integral part of the team whose true passion for Judaism and writing shines through in all of her work. With her help, NJOP has been able to greatly widen its reach and provide positive, joyous Jewish experiences for people across the internet and across the globe.

About NJOP

NJOP*, an independent, non-denominational, non-profit organization, was established in 1987 by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald in response to the spiraling losses of Jews from Jewish life due to assimilation and lack of Jewish knowledge. Through its highly innovative and stimulating educational programming and influential social media platforms, NJOP conveys the relevance and vibrancy of Judaism to contemporary Jews by providing a greater understanding and knowledge of the basics of Judaism and Jewish life. Over the last 28 years, more than 1,520,504** North American Jews have been engaged Jewishly through NJOPs positive, joyous Jewish programs and experiences.

NJOP's renowned programs, such as READ HEBREW AMERICA AND CANADA, SHABBAT ACROSS AMERICA AND CANADA, Shabbat and High Holiday Beginners Services and Crash Courses in Basic Judaism and Jewish History, have been offered at nearly 5,000 synagogues and Jewish organizations across North America and in 40 additional countries around the globe. NJOP's ever-expanding efforts, and its keen ability to recognize the most current cultural trends, have allowed it to become an acclaimed leader in Jewish social media. Every day, tens of thousands of fans and followers are presented with a means to positively and joyously participate in Jewish life through @JewishTweets on Twitter, NJOP's Jewish Treats daily email and Facebook fan page. NJOP's Jewish Treats YouTube channel boasts more than 1.7 million views.

Since its founding, NJOP has become one of the largest and most successful organizations, impacting broadly on Jewish engagement throughout the world .

NJOP extends special thanks to Mr. Sam Domb for his extraordinary efforts on behalf of NJOP and the Jewish People.

*National Jewish Outreach Program is now NJOP.

**As of December 2015

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Duke Kentucky Straight Bourbon, crafted after John Waynes own Bourbon collection and tasting notes dating back to the 1960s, hosted the first ever Meeting of the Masters on January 19 and 20 in Las Vegas. The worlds of spirits, wine and food came together for an epic two-day series of challenges involving a master from each industry including Master Sommelier Fred Dame, Top Chef Master Rick Moonen and internationally renowned and celebrated mixologist Francesco Lafranconi.

What an unforgettable experience to bring together some of the most influential people from the wine, food and spirits industries, says Chris Radomski, Founder Duke Spirits/Owner, Hundred Acre Wine Group. Never before have these three worlds come together to collaborate. Over the course of two days the masters and six of the top mixologists and chefs from around the country participated in a variety of challenges and got to show off their skills in pairing dishes with not only wine but spirits.

The chosen mixologists, bartenders and chefs from around the country included Kurtis Williams, Bartender at The Gladly in Phoenix; Dane Nakamura, Beverage Director and Head Mixologist of Bryan Voltaggio Restaurants; Greg Richie, Executive Chef of Soco Restaurant in Orlando; Jeremy Hawn of Seamstress in New York; Mackenzie Cavanagh of The Hawthorne in Boston; and Will Benedetto of William Colliers, Nashville. They competed in challenges ranging from mixology to food and drink pairings and even a John Wayne lifestyle challenge. Chris Radomski and Ethan Wayne, who is the son of John Wayne and a partner of Duke Bourbon, oversaw all of the challenges along with a series of judges.



Challenge one: The kick-off challenge was at Southern Wine & Spirits and was hosted by Francesco Lafranconi. Contestants were tasked to create three cocktails inspired by John Waynes movies and life.

Challenge two: Yardbird Restaurant hosted the second challenge where owner John Kunkel served up two dishes to the contestants. The contestants in turn paired one wine with each dish which was judged by Fred Dame.

Challenge three: To fully experience the John Wayne lifestyle, the third challenge was on a shooting range. Contestants received a training session and then shots were fired!

Challenge four: Hosted by Rick Moonen at his restaurant RX Boiler Room, Moonen prepared both a seafood and meat dish for the contestants to create both a specialty drink using DUKE Bourbon and wine pairing with each dish.

The winner of the Meeting with the Masters challenge is Greg Richie, Executive Chef of Soco Restaurant.

About Duke Spirits

Monument Valley Distillers is an artisan distiller crafting small batches of superior Bourbon, Whiskey and Brandy. Monument Valley was born in Calistoga, California, many years ago, over an epic dinner featuring wine, shared memories and laughter between founders Ethan Wayne, son of John Wayne, renowned vintners of Hundred Acre Wines, Jayson Woodbridge and Chris Radomski, and great friend Richard Howell. Creator of DUKE Spirits, Monument Valley Distillers is committed to preserving the legacy of John Wayne by creating authentic products bearing his name. For more information visit http://www.dukespirits.com. Please enjoy all Monument Valley Distillers products responsibly.
David Johnson Chinas marketplace lending industry is growing at an astounding rate, but entering the market successfully requires an in-depth understanding of the risks.

David Johnson, chief executive officer of First Associates Loan Servicing, will discuss challenges and opportunities in loan servicing in Chinas high-growth lending environment at an international conference to be held later this month in San Francisco.

The 2016 Continuum SF Innovation & Credit Conference, presented by SyncUS International on January 27 and 28, is the only industry event dedicated to China/U.S. collaboration in the non-banking financial sector. SyncUS is a business service company that specializes in the Internet finance industry from its offices in Shanghai and San Francisco. Industry leaders, officials, and investors from both countries are expected to attend the conference.

Johnson, who will speak on the second day of the conference, will address key considerations regarding loan servicing in a high-growth market. These considerations include technology, security, compliance, operations, and infrastructure.

Chinas marketplace lending industry is growing at an astounding rate, Johnson said. But entering the market successfully requires an in-depth understanding of the risks.

According to the conferences industry reports, Chinas P2P market is growing fast. Chinas P2P transaction volume has exploded from around $1.3 billion in 2011 to $40 billion in 2014. Since only a small number of institutional investors have joined the industry, that amount comes mostly from 2.3 million individual investors.

David Johnsons insight and reflections will be invaluable to the conference, said Gabriel Hai, Partner at SyncUS International. His extensive experience servicing loans and working with leading marketplace lenders gives him a one-of-a-kind perspective.

Before being named CEO of First Associates, Johnson was senior vice president of corporate development at Memec, LLC and, at McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company, worked with Global 500 clients in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.

About First Associates Loan Servicing, LLC

First Associates Loan Servicing is the fastest-growing third-party loan and lease servicer in the United States. With experience in the consumer finance industry since 1986, First Associates is the countrys leading marketplace lending loan servicer. The company, based in San Diego, works with a wide range of asset classes, including solar, automotive, student loan, and marketplace lending. In addition to servicing, the company offers a variety of support solutions, including backup servicing and custodial functions. For more information, visit http://1stassociates.com/.
We are very pleased to be working with CH-IV on this project. Their knowledge and expertise in working with FERC is invaluable.

Jeffrey P. Beale, President of CH-IV International (CH-IV) is pleased to announce that CH-IV International has been selected as Owners Engineer for Eagle LNG Partners (Eagle LNG) previously announced liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export facility on Zoo Parkway in Jacksonville, FL. As Owners Engineer, CHIV is responsible for the engineering necessary for completion of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Application.

The Eagle LNG facility will consist of three LNG production units at full build-out, with each unit capable of producing up to 500,000 gallons/day (0.33 mtpa each). The facility will include one LNG storage tank, a marine load-out facility and dock that would accommodate small to mid-size LNG vessels as well as bunker barges (for domestic ship fueling at the Port of Jacksonville) and an LNG truck-out facility.

The new state-of-the-art facility will be located along the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida. LNG produced at the Eagle LNG, Zoo Parkway facility will serve markets in the Caribbean and Atlantic basins. The project is currently in the pre-filing process with the FERC.

Mr. Beale stated, CH-IV is extremely proud that Eagle LNG has chosen us for such an important energy project. Clearly our experience in designing LNG facilities requiring FERC regulatory permit approval will help Eagle LNG progress this project toward providing a new source of clean-burning natural gas for the island nations in the Caribbean.

We are very pleased to be working with CH-IV on this project. Their knowledge and expertise in working with FERC is invaluable. We share a common vision of providing clean burning, affordable, US LNG to the Caribbean to improve emissions and combat volatile energy costs, said Sean Lalani, President of Eagle LNG.

Dr. Mona Setoodeh, of CH-IVs Houston Office, will manage this project.

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About CHIV International

CHIV, with offices near Baltimore, Maryland and in Houston, Texas, provides consulting services to LNG asset developers, regulators, facility owners, operators and lenders to ensure assets are designed, developed, constructed and operated safely and in accordance with codes, regulations, and project specific technical and commercial specifications.

The Company specializes in the provision of LNG engineering and consulting services to the global LNG sector including North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, the Pacific Rim and South America.

CHIV has provided engineering and consulting services to the majority of US LNG export projects that sit before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and is a technical leader in the design of bunkering systems for ships using LNG for engine fuel.

http://www.ch-iv.com

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About Eagle LNG Partners

Eagle LNG Partners (Eagle LNG) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ferus Natural Gas Fuels LP, building LNG infrastructure across the United States to supply clean-burning, competitively-priced fuel for the marine, remote power, rail, oil and gas, and trucking industries. In addition to this project, Eagle LNG is currently developing a second LNG project in Jacksonville, Florida to predominately serve domestic maritime LNG fueling markets. The company also owns LNG logistics assets that are currently supporting LNG piloting activities in other high horsepower industries throughout the country. Eagle LNG is based in Houston, Texas.

http://www.eaglelng.com

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Follow activities in the LNG industry and CH-IV by clicking on http://twitter.com/LNGSpecialists

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SMC has unveiled CzarLite XL, an advanced pricing system solution that gives shippers, logistics service providers and carriers a new neutral benchmark choice when negotiating LTL shipping rates. As a new alternative to the most widely used tariff in the transportation industry, SMCs CzarLite, CzarLite XL gives customer an adjusted baseline that reflects modern market conditions.

Among other things, the re-indexed base rate addresses the pervasive industry issue of rampant discounting by reducing the numbers involved in the entire pricing system in order to shrink the level of discounting required. Shippers, carriers and third-party logistics providers will pay relatively the same net rate as before re-indexing while minimizing their negotiated discounts. These smaller numbers will streamline operations and lessen the growing burden on overworked TMS solutions.

The backbone of CzarLite XL is SMCs innovative market model that provides a complete picture of the LTL marketplace. SMC data scientists created this metric by conducting a blind analysis of 116.8 million freight bills from 33 of the largest LTL carriers.

By using CzarLite XL, customers can achieve a better understanding of how the pricing system relates to modern economic factors and the LTL pricing market.

While our signature CzarLite product continues to be the most reliable and trusted base rating tool in the industry, SMC continues to innovate as the industry changes and shippers and carriers demand new rating tools. CzarLite XL is just one way SMC is bringing value and options to the industry, said Jack Middleton, CEO of SMC.

Due to the repeatable methodology behind CzarLite XL, SMC will be able to repeat the analysis process as freight flows change and the marketplace shifts, making adjustments as needed. CzarLite XL also features rating in both classification and density standards, 139 high-cost areas and a reduction of allowed minimum charges to one per shipment.

For more about the features of CzarLite XL, read the white paper, The Case for a Re-Indexed Benchmark Pricing System, and the CzarLite XL data sheet. Both can be found at http://www.smc3.com

About SMC

SMC is the leading provider of data, technology and education as an integrated solution to the freight transportation community. SMC delivers its core competency - LTL pricing expertise  through collaborative pricing technology that supports end-to-end, ongoing predictability in shipper/3PL-carrier relationships. Best known for its CzarLite, Bid$ense and RateWare solutions, the company serves more than 4,000 customers throughout North America, including shippers, carriers, logistics service providers and freight payment companies. The company also partners with leading transportation software developers for complete interoperability. For more information about SMC, visit http://www.smc3.com
The Community Kitchen at Eva's Village Serving at Evas allows our employees to connect with the community that they work in while providing a necessary service to those less fortunate.

On January 26th Evas Village, New Jerseys most comprehensive anti-poverty organization will welcome a volunteer team from Machinery Services Corp., a local Paterson business owned by Rich Taylor, to serve the noon meal in its Community Kitchen program. The Taylors have proudly operated their successful business in Paterson, NJ since 1978 and have always believed in giving back to the community. Machinery Services Corp. and the Taylor family have been community partners with Evas Village for many years and look forward to our day of service helping those most in need, stated Mr. Taylor. Serving at Evas allows our employees to connect with the community that they work in while providing a necessary service to those less fortunate.

Many corporations have corporate giving programs, donating some of their profits or resources to charity. The Fund-A-Meal (FAM) program at Evas Village is a corporate sponsorship opportunity, which assists the organization in feeding the men, women, and children in Evas Community Kitchen and sheltering programs for one day. Corporate sponsorships allow sponsors to directly touch the organizations mission and advance its goals to combat hunger and homelessness. In addition to sponsoring the kitchen program, corporate volunteers serve the noon meal on the day of their sponsorship.

In return, Fund-A-Meal sponsors are entitled to receive various benefits including, but not limited to, signage in Evas Community Kitchen, visibility on Evas social network sites, honorable mention in the organizations quarterly news publication and press exposure. Many businesses are looking for ways to truly give back to the communities they serve, stated Marie Reger. Our FAM program gives them the opportunity to get their brand recognized in a positive way, while helping hundreds of impoverished individuals receive the care they need for at least one day. FAM is one of those great opportunities that corporations can put their signature on that will reach thousands and formidably demonstrate their commitment to being a socially responsible business!

For more information on the Fund-A-Meal Program, contact Jason Patterson, Government & Community Relations Specialist at (973) 523-6220 Ext. 226 or Jason(dot)Patterson(at)evasvillage(dot)org.

About Evas Village

Founded by Msgr. Vincent E. Puma in 1982 as a response to the poor and homeless in Paterson, NJ, Evas Village (http://www.evasvillage.org) is a non-profit comprehensive social service organization with a mission to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, treat the addicted and provide free medical and dental care to the poor. Through almost three decades of service, Evas Village has established a unique record in facing community challenges and changing the lives of the hungry, homeless and addicted. It has grown from a simple soup kitchen to become the most respected anti-poverty program in New Jersey. Evas Village now includes twenty integrated programs.

About Rapid Pump & Meter Service Co., Inc. and Machinery Services Corp.

Machinery Services Corp. and Rapid Pump & Meter Service Co., Inc. are uniquely qualified and diverse service and construction companies providing a wide range of electrical/electronic and mechanical services to the industrial, commercial, municipal and transportation industries. With a long history in Paterson, the companies provide 24 hour service, 7 days a week. Their motto is - The Answer is Yes.Whats the Question? Many employees have spent decades of service with their companies, and their depth of expertise ensures positive results in all aspects of their projects. Whether it is a simple repair or a complex construction project, their people are committed to 100% customer satisfaction.

For more information about Machinery Services Corp., call 973.345.5600, go to http://www.servicer.com/ or write to: Machinery Services Corp., 285 Straight Street, Paterson, NJ, 07509
Springboard Auto Logo The insight and expertise Steve and John bring will be invaluable as we focus on improving the auto finance process for the consumer of today and tomorrow, said SpringboardAuto.com CEO Jim Landy

SpringboardAuto.com, a new direct-to-consumer auto loan platform that completely reinvents the auto lending experience, today announced that Steve Linehan and John Noone have joined its Board of Directors. Linehan is a former EVP and treasurer of Capital One Finance Corporation and Noone is a former president of Ford Motor Credit Company.

Our mission is to bring significant and positive change to the auto loan space. The insight and expertise Steve and John bring from their decades as leaders in highly respected finance companies will be invaluable as we focus on improving the auto finance process for the consumer of today and tomorrow, said SpringboardAuto.com CEO Jim Landy.

SpringboardAuto.com is creating a trusted brand enabling consumers to finance the purchase of a new or used car online from a dealer or a private party, as well as reducing their existing monthly payment through refinancing.

Linehan recently retired from Capital One Financial Corporation, a $300 billion diversified financial services company, where he served as EVP and Treasurer for twelve years. He joined Capital One in 1997 after eight years with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Noone served for 40 years at Ford Motor Credit Company where he covered virtually every aspect of automotive financial services on a global basis, including serving as President of Ford Motor Credit 2006-2012. Noone is also a past Chairman of the American Financial Services Association (AFSA) and currently is the principal and founder of Noone Consulting Group, LLC.

About SpringboardAuto.com

SpringboardAuto.com is a financial technology company whose direct-to-consumer auto loan platform puts the consumer in the center of the loan process. Founded by industry veterans, and staffed with an experienced team of automotive finance experts and technologists, SpringboardAuto.com facilitates and educates consumers during the loan process, offering faster decisions, transparency, personalized loan terms and support resulting in a better consumer experience and outcome. SpringboardAuto.com, consumers are in control as they refinance auto loans or finance and purchase new or used vehicles directly online or via their smartphone. Uniquely leveraging data and analytics, SpringboardAuto.com empowers consumers, while offering benefits to auto dealers, credit unions and other lenders.

Media Relations:

Melanie Webber (melanie(at)mwebbcom(dot)com), mWEBB Communications, 949.307.1723
We are very excited about the grand prize winner and are very appreciative for all of the referrals we have received!

All Year Cooling, a South Florida air conditioner repair and maintenance company, has given away a 7-day Eastern Caribbean Cruise to the Grand Prize winner of their customer referral club, The Cool Cash Rewards Club. The winner of the year-long contest, Milton Caban, referred 4 new customers to All Year Cooling, making him eligible for the grand prize.

The Cool Cash Rewards Club was initiated by All Year Cooling to further involve their customers in their business, and thank them for the referrals they receive. The Rewards Club provides members with incentives such as monthly prizes, a $100.00 cash reward on each completed installation, and a chance to win a 7-day cruise. In order to become a member of the Cool Cash Rewards Club, interested parties can simply sign up on the website and submit their referrals through the custom built application.

The year-long contest for the 7-day cruise was tracked through a Leaderboard that was displayed on the Cool Cash Rewards site. The Leaderboard was updated weekly and kept a count of each member and the number of referrals that they provided to All Year Cooling.

Previous months prizes from the Cool Cash Rewards Club have included tickets to events such as sporting events, comedy shows, concerts, amusement parks, and more. Over the past year that the Rewards Club has been in place, All Year Cooling has spent thousands of dollars on these prizes. The 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise is the largest prize that the Rewards Club has given away thus far. All Year Coolings President, Tommy Smith was quoted: We created our Cool Cash Rewards Club as a way to stay in touch and continually thank our customers for their business. We are very excited about the grand prize winner and are very appreciative for all of the referrals we have received!

All Year Cooling is a family-owned air conditioning company that has been in business for the past 43 years. Their Cool Cash Rewards Club is a customer referral program that continuously gives to their valued customers. Learn more about the All Year Cooling Cool Cash Rewards Club today.
WillowTree, Inc. a leading mobile strategy, UX design, and development company, today announced the opening of a new office in Durham, NC. The new office, located on Durhams historic American Tobacco Campus, will accommodate WillowTrees expanding team and client base, and allow the company to focus on hiring top mobile talent in the greater Durham and Research Triangle area.

WillowTree started with the simple goal of designing and developing the best mobile applications possiblewhere incredible UX design meets cutting-edge software development, said WillowTree CEO, Tobias Dengel. We did this by building a team of smart, passionate, fiercely independent people that are excited about our work and continuously challenge themselves to be better every day. Durham is a perfect fit for WillowTree's culture with its outstanding tech community and vibrant city life. We are excited to continue growing a world-class mobile team here as we have in Charlottesville.

WillowTree will celebrate the launch of its second office with a grand-opening ceremony, ribbon cutting, and check presentation to its partners at the Kramden Institute on January 26th beginning at 11:30 AM on the American Tobacco Campus. Guests will hear remarks from Durham Mayor, Bill Bell; the Kramden Institutes Executive Director, Michael Abensour; American Undergrounds Chief Strategist, Adam Kline; the Durham Chambers Senior VP for Economic Development, Ted Conner; WillowTrees CTO and Founder, Michael Prichard; and WillowTrees CEO, Tobias Dengel. A free luncheon, sponsored by WillowTree, will be held at the conclusion of the event for attendees.

One of the nations fastest-growing companies has decided to grow in North Carolina, said Governor McCrory. The sky is the limit for companies like WillowTree as mobile apps become increasingly central to the way businesses communicate with consumers.

WillowTree will be an excellent fit in Durhams evolving and dynamic economy that will continue to drive our economy forward, said Ted Conner, Durham Chambers Senior VP for Economic Development. Not only is WillowTree a cutting-edge company in its industry, its a company truly committed to corporate responsibility. Its been heartening to witness that commitment as shown through WillowTrees involvement and support of the communities it operates in; whether in Charlottesville or here in Durham.

"Recruiting a company like WillowTree to Durham is the type of economic development that will have several positive impacts on our city for years to come, said Kevin Dick, Director of Durhams Office of Economic and Workforce Development. The pedigrees of WillowTrees clients like GE, Johnson & Johnson, Time Warner, and the Durham Performing Arts Center reflect the fact that they are an excellent company with a proven track record for delivering first-rate mobile and web-based applications to their customers. They are also an extremely civic-minded company that believes in nurturing high-quality talent. All of these facts make us confident WillowTree is not only a company with great business potential but also a company that will be a great corporate citizen in Durham. We are extremely excited to welcome them to our city.

About WillowTree, Inc.

WillowTree, Inc. is a mobile strategy, UX design, and development company whose focus is to bridge the highest level of consumer user experience with enterprise-grade deployments and security. WillowTree is an industry leader in field solutions, media delivery, loyalty programs and payments, and connected devices. Companies such as GE, Johnson & Johnson, Time Warner, AOL, American Express, and Harvard Business Publishing trust WillowTree to guide and execute their mobile initiatives. We Take Mobile Personally

WillowTree Media Contacts

Angela Batten

angela.batten(at)willowtreeapps.com

Dayne Mauney

dayne.mauney(at)willowtreeapps.com
Paula McDonald Design Build & Interiors of New York has won Best Of Customer Service on Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The successful full service residential design, build and interiors firm was chosen by the more than 35 million monthly unique users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than one million active home building, remodeling and design industry professionals.

The Best Of Houzz is awarded annually in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. Design award winners work was the most popular among the more than 35 million monthly users on Houzz. Customer Service honors are based on several factors, including the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in 2015. Architecture and interior design photographers whose images were most popular are recognized with the Photography award. A Best Of Houzz 2016 badge will appear on winners profiles, as a sign of their commitment to excellence. These badges help homeowners identify popular and top-rated home professionals in every metro area on Houzz.

We are delighted to be recognized as one of the best professionals by the Houzz community! said Paula McDonald, Owner and Managing Director of Paula McDonald Design Build & Interiors. This third consecutive award is simply tremendous for us, and a true mark of distinction from our peers, since Houzz is the destination platform for anyone seeking Design and Renovation services in our metro area. This testimonial is invaluable and integral to our success, especially as we expand our services to include finished Interiors. Houzz is our proven new business resource and we hope to achieve the same in our Residential Design efforts!

Anyone building, remodeling or decorating looks to Houzz for the most talented and service-oriented professionals said Liza Hausman, vice president of Industry Marketing for Houzz. Were so pleased to recognize Paula McDonald Design Build & Interiors, voted one of our Best Of Houzz professionals by our enormous community of homeowners and design enthusiasts actively remodeling and decorating their homes.

Follow Paula McDonald Design Build & Interiors on Houzz http://www.houzz.com/pro/pmddllc/paula-mcdonald-design-build-and-interiors

About Paula McDonald Design Build & Interiors

Paula McDonalds Design Build practice brings New York City homeowners visions to life through her ultimate full service Residential Design & Construction firm since 2008. This one stop shop enables a faster, seamless and easier way for homeowners to approach remodeling any type of residential space. From the first meeting to final finished project, Paulas approach to delivering each clients dream residence is through both innovation in design and a holistic delivery of each clients vision and lifestyle. This award-winning firm, recognized in prestigious design and consumer venues, is located in the heart of the Flatiron District at 27 West 20th St., Suite 706, 7th floor, New York, NY.

For more information, visit http://www.pmddllc.com

About Houzz

Houzz is the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish  online or from a mobile device. From decorating a small room to building a custom home and everything in between, Houzz connects millions of homeowners, home design enthusiasts and home improvement professionals across the country and around the world. With the largest residential design database in the world and a vibrant community empowered by technology, Houzz is the easiest way for people to find inspiration, get advice, buy products and hire the professionals they need to help turn their ideas into reality. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Houzz also has international offices in London, Berlin, Sydney, Moscow and Tokyo. Houzz and the Houzz logo are registered trademarks of Houzz Inc. worldwide. For more information, visit houzz.com.
2015 was a year of positive change, numerous awards, and dramatic growth for Ava Anderson (AANT), a 6-year-old start-up, family-owned and operated from its new headquarters in a renovated mill building in Warren. Over this past year, the company doubled its Consultant count and nearly tripled its sales. In addition, Ava Anderson was named Inc. Magazines Coolest College Start-Up for 2015 and founder and CEO Ava Anderson was included among the Boston Globes BetaBoston list of 25 Under 25 Young Innovators to Watch. This banner year also afforded AANT the opportunity to increase its philanthropic efforts. Giving back to the local community, the state of RI and the world is one of the companys key values  and 2015 showcased this commitment to helping others.

A total of more than $1,350,000 in AANT products was donated to non profit organizations, including Crossroads Homeless Shelter, Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation, Womens Resource Center (helping domestic abuse survivors), Amos House Shelter, We Share Hope (serving the poor), local veterans and Rhode Island foster children.

For two years running, AANT has partnered with Edesia, a global nutrition non profit, which supplies nutritional packets to malnourished children worldwide. In 2015, with the help and support of thousands of AANT Consultants throughout the U.S., the company donated 50,000 PlumpyNut Nutritional Packets to this important cause.

We are a company for and about people  helping people live happier and healthier lives through the best and safest products as well as a business opportunity that has no limitations, explained AANT president, Kim Anderson. We live and breathe this mission every day  and we do everything we can to pay it forward. We have been blessed beyond measure  and its our responsibility to never take that for granted.

About Ava Anderson Non Toxic

Ava Anderson Non Toxic is solely focused on the mission of its founder, Ava Anderson, to share important information about harmful chemicals in products used daily and to provide a solution in the form of the safest full line of personal care and home products on the market today. The company offers over 90 products in 17 categories, including home cleaning products, baby care, cosmetics, sunscreen, hair care, pet care, and more through the direct selling business model. Independent business owners are empowered to share the companys mission and, as a result, are able to enjoy personal, professional and financial rewards.
The Credit Union was recently awarded Best of Bauer Status for having earned Bauer Financials 5-Star Rating for 25 straight years! We created our reward programs to get our members further engaged with the Credit Union, so they could truly benefit from UECUs affordable loan rates and competitive savings rates.

Utilities Employees Credit Union (UECU) members celebrated the New Year with a bonus totaling $775, 000, which was distributed to members at the end of 2015. As a virtual credit union that does not have shareholders or branches to maintain, UECUs operating expenses are lower than those of a typical bank or credit union, allowing the Credit Union to return a greater share of profits to its member-owners.

Since the Credit Union reward program began in 2011, UECU has awarded over $4.7 million to members to thank them for making UECU their first choice and trusted partner for all of their financial needs. UECU makes it very easy for members to receive a year-end bonus. Members are not required to enroll in the reward program; all they have to do is use the Credit Unions savings and loan products. A members individual bonus is calculated by multiplying the bonus percentage (4% for 2015) by the amount of interest they paid on loans and earned on their savings accounts. Members can earn an additional $100 through the reward program by financing a new mortgage with UECU.

The Member Loyalty Bonus program is one of three Credit Union reward programs available to UECU members. Pat Zyma, President/CEO explained, We created our reward programs to get our members further engaged with the Credit Union, so they could truly benefit from UECUs affordable loan rates and competitive savings rates. In addition to the reward programs, we help members financially succeed with low to non-existent fees, free checking account options and ATM surcharge rebates. During 2015, the average UECU member household enjoyed an annual return of $237 in deposit earnings and loan interest savings, as well as $63 in fee savings, figures that are much higher than the average credit union household as measured by Raddon Financial Group.

UECU members also benefit from the Credit Unions virtual business model; members from across the country can access their accounts anytime, anywhere with online and mobile banking tools. Members also have access to financial education resources through the News You Can Use articles and videos, and the online Fraud and Identity Theft Protection program. The Credit Union also hosts seminars and webinars on topics such as retirement and budgeting to help members prepare short-term and long-term savings plans.

UECU has been providing superior financial products and services to employees working in the utility industries since 1934. The Credit Union was recently awarded Best of Bauer Status for having earned Bauer Financials 5-Star Rating for 25 straight years! Fewer than 5% of the nations credit unions have earned Best of Bauer Status; it indicates extreme financial strength.

About Utilities Employees Credit Union

UECU was formed in 1934 to fulfill the financial needs of Americas utility workers and their families. Today, UECU is a billion dollar financial institution that serves its 44,000 nationwide member clientele as a virtual-service, branchless credit union from a single headquarters in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Without shareholders or branches to maintain, UECU returns profits to its member-owners through financial rewards and exceptional rates on loan, credit card, savings and checking products. Members have access to a wide array of mobile and online banking services and exclusive benefits including financial education, wealth management, insurance services and scholarships. UECU is among the five percent of U.S. credit unions to receive an Excellent Weiss Rating for financial soundness and one of the few financial institutions to reward members with a year-end bonus dividend. Visit http://www.uecu.org for more information.

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Having worked with these agencies for many years, we understand the importance of streamlining the procurement process while instilling confidence in what is being delivered, which this designation signifies.

Green Beacon, a leading provider of software solutions built on Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) that help federal, state, and local governments operationalize their strategies, announced that it has been selected to the IT Contingent Labor (ITCL) Vendor Network by Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI). Green Beacon is now approved as a CAI business partner to provide SOW and staff augmentation services to the Commonwealth of Virginia under the ITCL contract (VA-130620-CAI).

As part of the IT Contingent Labor (ITCL) contract with the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA), CAI annually performs an in-depth evaluation of suppliers to determine which firms can be relied upon to successfully complete SOW projects through the Contract. CAIs selection process includes an extensive questionnaire that evaluates candidates based on criteria including number of years in business, certifications, financial Information, and staff training and experience in deliverables.

Green Beacon is now a fully authorized SOW and staff augmentation supplier in the areas of Application Development, Enterprise Architecture, and Project Management.

Green Beacon has a successful track record of working collaboratively with federal, state, and local governments to leverage the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Since 2011, Green Beacon has worked with government entities, including Fairfax County, Virginia, HHS Administration for Children and Families (ACF), and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, to architect solutions that operationalize those initiatives. Green Beacon has been repeatedly recognized by Microsoft, partners, and customers for its innovative solutions in Case Management, Citizens Service (311) Request, Grants Management, and other vital areas.

The ITCL SOW designation is very exciting for both Green Beacon and government agencies in the Commonwealth looking for technology solutions that will help them operate and deliver services to their consumers and constituents more effectively, said Matthew Beaumont, Green Beacons Vice President of Public Sector. Having worked with these agencies for many years, we understand the importance of streamlining the procurement process while instilling confidence in what is being delivered, which this designation signifies.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the worlds leading customer relationship management (CRM) suite. However, Green Beacon and Microsoft Dynamics has expanded the traditional view of CRM by leveraging the concept of xRMthe ability to encompass everything (x) Relationship Managementin government applications. Government agencies of all types and at all levels can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to better serve citizens and constituents with entirely new solutions that integrate into virtually any existing line of business application.

About Green Beacon

Since 2001, Green Beacon has been implementing and supporting business solutions built on leading customer relationship management (CRM) software platforms, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Green Beacon specializes in large-scale implementations that put clients strategies into operation. By combining deep technical expertise with years of experience in a range of industriesfrom the public sector to financial servicesGreen Beacon works closely with companies to transform the way they do business or address challenges putting their success at risk. This highly collaborative approach has earned us an unmatched reputation for delivering ongoing return on investment. The company is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts with offices throughout the United States. To learn more, visit https://www.greenbeacon.com/what-we-do/crm-for-the-public-sector/
2016 StraighterLine Guide to Getting Your College Degree

StraighterLine, the low-cost online college course provider, today released the guide "Going Back to School: 2016 Guide to Getting Your College Degree" to provide adult learners with everything they need to know to affordably earn a college degree in the modern era.

Going back to school is a big decision, and how to get started can seem overwhelming. The Going Back to School guide walks the future graduate through a successful decision-making process that includes weighing the benefits and costs of college, creating a personal inventory, evaluating online programs, choosing the right mix of college courses, and how to maximize transfer credits.

Key takeaways from the guide include:



The benefits of getting a college degree.

Where the jobs are and what to study to get them.

Top ways to save on your college degree before enrolling.

How an online education can make a flexible and affordable degree possible.

StraighterLine solves the #1 issue facing students today  the skyrocketing cost of college  with low-cost, low risk online courses that prepare students for success, said Burck Smith, StraighterLine CEO and founder.

Read a guide preview here: http://www.straighterline.com/blog/getting-your-college-degree-2016-straighterline-guide/

Download the guide "Going Back to School: 2016 Guide to Getting Your College Degree" here: http://www.straighterline.com/landing/how-to-go-back-to-college-guide/

About StraighterLine

StraighterLine combines a $99 a month course subscription with guaranteed credit pathways to accredited degree programs to save students up to 60% on the total cost of their degree.

StraighterLine takes the worry out of credit transfer with a College Savings Network of nearly 100 accredited colleges that guarantee acceptance of StraighterLine courses.

Having been evaluated and recommended by the American Council on Educations College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT), StraighterLine courses will also be considered by more than 2,000 other colleges and universities for transfer to their degree programs upon request.

Media Contact

Beth Dumbauld

bdumbauld(at)straighterline(dot)com

443.712.7132
Gold &Treasure Show attendees pan for real gold! This years Gold & Treasure Shows will feature hands-on instruction of gold panning techniques for those looking to hone their skills, and one-of-a-kind lectures from industry professionals on a wide range of topics.

The Gold Prospectors Association of America is ready to roll for its Spring 2016 Gold & Treasure Shows. The first show is slated for Pomona, Calif. Feb. 20-21 and the second is Las Vegas, Nev. Feb. 27-28, so be sure to mark your calendar.

The Gold & Treasure Shows, were first introduced to the public by GPAA founder George Massie to spread gold fever across the country.

GPAA President Brandon Johnson has continued this tradition and made it a more hands-on experience for newcomers to the world of gold prospecting. Each event presents an opportunity for local GPAA chapters and state directors, mining rights advocates, leading industry manufacturers, dealers and experts to come together and welcome the public.

This years Gold & Treasure Shows will feature hands-on instruction of gold panning techniques for those looking to hone their skills, and one-of-a-kind lectures from industry professionals on a wide range of topics, Johnson said.

The shows also feature product demonstrations from the best gold prospecting and small-scale mining equipment manufacturers.

The Gold & Treasure Shows would not be possible without the support and involvement from manufacturers and vendors in the prospecting industry, Johnson said. This year, supporters of our events will contribute tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment for each show to be raffled off for the benefit of the local prospecting community and land rights efforts. Select manufacturers will take part in lectures offering education and instruction on fine gold recovery, local prospecting, geology, filing and maintaining your mining claims, metal detecting basics and techniques to name a few.

The grand prize to be awarded each day of each show is a one-week stay at Roaring Camp in California Mother Lode country.

GPAA Gold & Treasure Shows offer a great opportunity to broaden your understanding of gold prospecting and panning techniques. Each show will feature multiple manufacturers of gold pans, sluice boxes, highbankers or power sluices, drywashers, recirculating prospecting and clean-up equipment, gold refinery kits, rock crushers, gold dredges and multi-use metal detecting technology.

Fans of the popular GPAA-produced TV series Gold Trails will get a chance to meet host Kevin Hoagland, who will be at each event signing autographs, posing for pictures and conducting technical lectures covering geology and advanced metal detecting techniques.

To receive updates for each gold show, please log on to our website at http://www.goldprospectors.org and sign up for an account or go to http://www.Facebook.com/GPAAGoldShows. Advance tickets will be available at half the cost of the regular $10 admission at the door. Children 12 and younger are admitted free of charge.

Come out and help your son or daughter learn to pan for real gold to take home as a souvenir of their experience, Johnson said.

The GPAA continues to strive to help you find more gold. Keeping public lands open for mineral entry lies at the heart of that effort, and we would not have our public lands without the efforts of our active military and honorable veterans.

To show our appreciation, members of our military receive free admission with a copy of an active military or veteran identification. The Gold Prospectors Association of America would like to thank you for your service, and welcome you to our events and the prospecting community, Johnson said.

Updates to hosting chapters, daily activities, manufacturers and vendors who will be in attendance, show sponsors who will donate equipment to major prize raffles, and industry professionals who will conduct

lectures will be featured on our website: http://www.goldprospectors.org/goldshows, and http://www.facebook.com/GPAAGoldShows

We look forward to seeing you, your family and your friends at one of this years shows, Johnson said.

Also, stay tuned for the announcement of the GPAAs East Coast Gold & Treasure Shows.

2016 Gold & Treasure Show Schedule:



Pomona, California

Feb. 20-21

Fairplex, CA

1101 W. McKinley Ave.

Pomona, CA 91768

Las Vegas, Nevada

Feb. 27-28

Cashman Center

850 N Las Vegas Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89101

NOTE: Hotel room discounts are available at the Golden Nugget with the promo code: GSGPAA. For reservations, call 800-331-5731 or go to http://www.goldennugget.com/lasvegas.

Phoenix, Arizona

March 12-13

Arizona State Fairgrounds

1826 W. McDowell Rd.

Phoenix, AZ 85007

San Francisco, California

April 2-3

Solano County Fairgrounds

900 Fairgrounds Dr.

Vallejo, CA 94589

Portland, Oregon

April 9-10

Portland Expo Center

2060 North Marine Dr.

Portland, OR 97217

Seattle, Washington

April 16-17

Evergreen State Fairgrounds

14405 179th Ave. SE

Monroe, WA 98272

Boise, Idaho

June 11-12

Expo Idaho

5610 Glenwood

Boise, ID 83714

Denver, Colorado

June 18-19

Adams County Fair

9755 Henderson Road

Brighton, CO 80601
This will further enhance the foundation of 791 Technologies strategy of modular approach and help develop client solutions with cognitive capabilities by design, bringing added simplicity to complex solutions

Geoff Davidson, CEO of 791 Technologies Limited, and Ray Ganong and Don Waugh, co-CEOs of Applied Recognition Inc., are pleased to announce the recent signing of a collaboration agreement between their two Canadian companies.

With this agreement in place, 791 Tech will create, develop, and market innovative digital products using Applied Recognitions face authentication technology built into 791 Tech applications and platforms. Ultimately, the goal of the collaboration agreement is to improve solutions for customers of both companies.

Michael Iseyemi, 791 Chief Security and Information Officer commented, This will further enhance the foundation of 791 Technologies strategy of modular approach and help develop client solutions with cognitive capabilities by design, bringing added simplicity to complex solutions. This has the potential to open up other partnership opportunities, create significant business growth and further enhance the competitiveness of 791 Technologies products and solution stacks. The demand for digital identity and authentication solutions is constantly expanding and there has been, over the last several years, a resurgence in the quest to find better and more robust solutions in that very specific space.

Studies show that we typically log into 10 sites a day. These sites hold our most important data and yet we are left on our own to generate secure and unique passwords across 40 to 50 sites in total. Who can remember all of these passwords? The model is clearly broken and Applied Recognition has been working for years on solutions utilizing face authentication that will increase security, and streamline the login process while at the same time reducing the reliance on passwords, says Ray Ganong, co-CEO of Applied Recognition. We love the fact that 791 Technologies has designed security into the building blocks of their software stack, and we look forward to working with them to enhance their identity management and maintain their leading technology edge.

About Applied Recognition Inc.

Applied Recognition Inc. specializes in the development of face detection, recognition and authentication technology. The company offers licensing for a variety of software development kits on Windows, Apple, Android and iOS platforms, as well as server and API services. Their smart-indexing software opens an array of opportunities for businesses and consumers alike; for instance, Applied Recognition authentication software provides multi-level biometric security, equipped with anti-spoofing and continuous verification. Its solutions reduce the cost, time and risk of product development with access to technology that we have been perfecting for over ten years.

About 791 Technologies Limited

791 Technologies Limited, headquartered in Victoria, BC, creates secure, enterprise content management systems, and leading-edge online applications, supported by enhanced data security products, website and database conversion utilities, enhanced search modules, and quality management of information tools for business and consumer use.

For more information :

791 Technologies Limited

http://www.791Tech.com

Mr. Jean Hervieux, Chief Business Development Officer at jhervieux(at)791tech(dot)com.

Applied Recognition Inc

http://www.appliedrec.com

Mr. Ray Ganong, President at ray.ganong(at)appliedrec(dot)com
January 25, 2016 (PRWEB) January 25, 2016 -- AGNITY Global, Inc. is pleased to announce that they will be exhibiting at the Cantech Investment Conference in Toronto on January 26th.

The Cantech Investment Conference is the largest technology investor conference in Canada that brings together the top thought leaders, fastest growing companies and most influential investors for a full day exposition at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This is the ultimate showcase for Canadian technology development and investment opportunities.

AGNITY Global is a leading global provider of intelligent business communication applications and infrastructure to organizations in the telecommunications and healthcare sectors. AGNITYs products leverage the Cloud, mobility and real time communication technologies to help enterprise customers adapt communications tools to improve their business processes, which helps Service Providers become more competitive and capitalize on new market opportunities. AGNITY anchors its solutions on its Communication Application Server (CAS)  a market leading platform that supports secured mobile contextual communication and collaboration.

Sanjeev Chawla, CEO of AGNITY Global will be presenting on the Innovation Stage at 2:40 p.m. and the company will have an exhibition booth at the conference, where attendees can get a preview of its flagship healthcare offering: MobileCare. Sanjeev will also be participating in a panel discussion on Listing on the Canadian Markets: Challenges and Rewards for 2016.

We are excited to be showcasing our technologies to the Canadian market said Sanjeev Chawla, as this gives us excellent exposure to the business and investment community of Canada.

About AGNITY Global, Inc

AGNITY Global is a leading global provider of intelligent business communication applications and infrastructure to organizations in the telecommunication and healthcare industry verticals. It is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, with Development and Support Operations in Richardson (Texas), and Noida (India). The Communications business of AGNITY Global is branded as AGNITY Communications and powers the networks of global Tier 1 Service providers. The Healthcare business of AGNITY Global is branded as AGNITY Healthcare and offers a comprehensive mobile contextual communication and collaboration solutions for Healthcare service providers.

AGNITY Global Contact:

Media Relations Team

media_relations(at)agnity(dot)com

(510) 270-5412

http://www.agnity.com
2016 Scarf Collection The difference between our brand and other luxury brands is that we do not use psychological marketing tactics to overprice our products.

DragonWolf Designs, Inc., an eCommerce luxury brand provider of women accessory products, announces the debut of their new 2016 Silk Scarf Collection. The collection features 14 authentic designs inspired by simple to elaborate word creations, light pastel color coordination, and conspicuously dark, antiquated and homogeneous attributes.

DragonWolf Designs' 2016 Silk Scarf Collection is composed of 14 designs in multiple colors providing 28 different choices. The 14 designs have been carefully chosen to fit a diverse female customer base ranging from the ages of 25-54 years old. Juel Mendez, DragonWolf Designs president and CEO said, The difference between our brand and other luxury brands is that we do not use psychological marketing tactics to overprice our products.

Each square scarf is manufactured with the utmost craftsmanship which classifies them as luxurious products; in which each scarf offers a true 100% Mulberry Silk, weighing between 12 to 16 momme, and are finished with a hand rolled hem, said Lorrie Santana, DragonWolf Designs Co-founder and vice-president. These specifications provide the highest quality for a silk scarf.

DragonWolf Designs, Inc., founded in 2013, headquartered in Gurabo, PR, and operated from Phoenix, AZ provides accessory products within the luxurious fashion industry. Their goal is to provide products for the aspirational shopper, decrease the burden of saving for a specific item, increase the opportunity for financially constraint shoppers, and expand on the possibility for a true luxe.
ProSys SLM has redefined the way organizations approach safety lifecycle management.

Mangan Software Solutions (MSS), featuring its innovative safety lifecycle software ProSys SLM, will sponsor the Instrumentation and Automation Symposium at Texas A&M University January 26-28th, 2016 in College Station, TX. Now in its 71st year, the symposium educates professionals and students in the instrumentation and automation industries. The symposium features a three-day program of technical papers and workshops on topics such as: Management Systems, Safety Instrumented Systems, Technology, and Instrument Reliability.

ProSys SLMs core database functionality and automated workflows enable single source management of the entire safety lifecycle. ProSys SLM seamlessly merges Process Safety Management (PSM) and Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) engineering processes into a single, user-friendly cloud-based software platform. It offers standardization and automation to varied safety lifecycle stakeholders. Designed by industry PSM and SIS Subject Matter Experts, the software reduces pressure on engineering teams while giving management the tools to ensure alignment with corporate risk mitigation strategies.

MSS was selected as one of the 20 Most Promising Oil & Gas Technology Solution Providers for 2015 by CIO Review, a technology and business magazine for corporate decision makers. Additionally, ProSys SLM has been named finalist for Control Engineering 2016 Engineers Choice Awards for the best new control, instrumentation, and automation products.

ProSys SLM has redefined the way organizations approach safety lifecycle management. Our software platform breaks down the barriers that typically exist around process safety, engineering specification, and operations management. This novel approach dramatically increases collaboration and participation across the safety lifecycle management spectrum and fosters a proactive approach around process and functional safety management disciplines.  Chief Technical Officer Jeremy Lucas

ABOUT Mangan Software Solutions: MSS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mangan, Inc. that leverages technology and software services to standardize and automate business processes for the energy industry. Based out of Houston, Atlanta, and London, MSS engineers and programmers are experts in the fields of Safety Lifecycle Management and Safety Instrumented Systems, and deploy their industry best practice flagship ProSys SLM software suite to industries that require reliable high-performance automation solutions. For further information, visit http://www.mangansoftware.com.
This is a transformative technology that is going to disrupt the market. I am excited about working with plastic surgeons globally on Motiva, and also about bringing these new technologies and implants to the community of plastic surgeons and patients.

Establishment Labs, a global next generation breast implant and medical technology company, announced today that Dr. Scott L.Spear has joined its Medical Advisory Board.

"We are partnering with the best minds in plastic surgery to bring the latest technological innovations in breast implants to the United States market. The appointment of Dr. Spear is a clear indication of this strategy. We are honored to have a plastic surgeon of his stature joining our Medical Advisory Board," said Juan Jose Chacon Quiros, CEO of Establishment Labs.

Dr. Spears leadership and expertise will be instrumental in working with doctors in the 46 countries where surgeons currently use or are switching to Motiva. With best practices and Motiva next generation technologies, we can improve patient outcomes and vastly reduce complication rates.

Between 1992 and 2015, Dr. Scott Spear served, at different times, as Director, Chief and Chairman of the Department of Plastic Surgery at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Dr. Scott Spear is the author of more than 130 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and has collaborated on over 200 chapters and 3 books on Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Before resigning in December 2015, Dr. Spear also served as the Chairman of the Plastic Surgery Executive Council at Allergan Inc.

Dr. Spear commented, "For some time, I have been thinking about the high rates of some complications associated with breast implants, and how we should endeavor to radically reduce these rates. Establishment Labs shares that goal, and it is a pleasure for me to support their work and help them to continue their culture of innovation.

Today, the vast majority of implants sold are based on our 1992 understanding of how the body reacts to breast implants and silicone. Motiva products are truly innovative, designed with the latest understanding of materials sciences, surface technology, and physiology. This is a transformative technology that is going to disrupt the market. I am excited about working with plastic surgeons globally on Motiva, and also about bringing these new technologies and implants to the community of plastic surgeons and patients in the United States.

Dr. Spear concluded, I believe that the safety profile of the Generation 3 Motiva implant is superior to any other breast implant on the market today and that our continued innovation will change how both doctors and women think about implants and improve the health of women worldwide.

Rudy Mazzocchi, Executive Chairman of Establishment Labs added, "The support of distinguished medical leaders such as Dr. Spear is a testament to the importance of what Establishment Labs is accomplishing with innovations that improve the health and safety standards for women around the world.

Establishment Labs is currently building a second, state of the art manufacturing facility to support increased demand for its products and the beginning of the approval process in the United States for its innovative line of Motiva silicone breast implants in 2016.

About Establishment Labs:

Establishment Labs is a global, privately held, surgical aesthetics company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets an innovative product portfolio consisting of advanced silicone-filled breast (http://www.motivaimplants.com) and body shaping implants. Utilizing only the highest quality of medical grade silicones, the CE-marked Motiva Implant Matrix line is rigorously scrutinized by professional Quality Engineers throughout the entire manufacturing process. All of its products are manufactured in full compliance with ISO and EU requirements, and are certified under the Medical Device Directive 93/42/EEC.
ProMIS Neurosciences Inc. (the Corporation) (PMN: TSX) announces that its board of directors (Board) has adopted a shareholder rights plan (the Rights Plan).

The Rights Plan is intended to ensure that, to the extent possible, the Corporation's Board and shareholders have adequate time to consider and evaluate any unsolicited takeover bid and to identify, solicit, develop and negotiate any value enhancing alternatives that would be considered appropriate. This will encourage fair treatment of the Corporation's shareholders in connection with any unsolicited takeover bid. The Rights Plan was not adopted in response to, or in anticipation of, any acquisition or take-over offer and is not intended to prevent a take-over of the Corporation, to secure continuance of current management or the directors in office or to deter fair offers for the common shares of the Corporation.

The Board authorized the issuance of one right in respect of each common share of the Corporation outstanding at 5:00 p.m. (Toronto time) on January 22, 2016 and each share issued thereafter. The rights will become exercisable if a person, together with their affiliates, associates and joint actors, acquires or announces an intention to acquire beneficial ownership of common shares which, when aggregated with its holdings, total 20% or more of the outstanding common shares of the Corporation (determined in the manner set out in the Rights Plan). Following the acquisition of 20% or more of the outstanding common shares, each right held by a person other than the acquiring person and its affiliates, associates and joint actors would, upon exercise, entitle the holder to purchase that number of common shares at a substantial discount to the market price of the common shares at that time.

The Rights Plan permits the acquisition of control of the Corporation through a "permitted bid", a "competing permitted bid" or a negotiated transaction. A "permitted bid" is one that, among other things, is made to all holders of common shares, is open for a minimum of 120 days and is subject to an irrevocable minimum tender condition of at least 50% of the common shares held by independent shareholders. The Board has the discretion to defer the time at which the rights become exercisable and to waive the application of the Rights Plan.

Although the Rights Plan is effective, it remains subject to acceptance by the TSX and ratification by shareholders. The Rights Plan will be submitted to the shareholders for ratification at the annual meeting in 2016. If it is not ratified within six months, the Rights Plan and any rights issued thereunder will terminate. If it is ratified, the Rights Plan will continue in effect until the third annual meeting of shareholders thereafter. A copy of the plan is available on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com.

New Company office opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts

On a separate note, the Company is pleased to announce that it has opened today an office in the United States at Cambridge Innovation Center, 14th floor,1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. With this new office the company now has direct access to the vibrant biotechnology and medical science community in the Boston area.

About ProMIS Neurosciences, Inc.

The mission of ProMIS Neurosciences is to discover and develop precision medicine therapeutics for the early detection and effective treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimers disease and ALS. ProMIS Neurosciences proprietary target discovery engine is based on the use of two, complementary techniques. The Company applies its two computational, thermodynamic discovery platformsProMIS and Collective Coordinates  to predict novel targets known as Disease Specific Epitopes (DSEs) on the molecular surface of misfolded proteins. Using this unique "precision medicine" approach, ProMIS Neurosciences aims to develop novel antibody therapeutics and specific companion diagnostics for Alzheimers disease and ALS. The company has also developed two proprietary technologies to specifically identify very low levels of misfolded proteins in a biological sample. In addition, ProMIS Neurosciences owns the exclusive rights to the genus patent relating to misfolded SOD1 in ALS, and currently has a preclinical monoclonal antibody therapeutic against this target.

The TSX has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This information release may contain certain forward-looking information. Such information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by statements herein, and therefore these statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. All forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to it as well as other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Due to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties identified by the Company in its public securities filings, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information please consult the Company's website at:

http://www.promisneurosciences.com, or contact

Dr. Elliot Goldstein

President and Chief Executive Officer, ProMIS Neurosciences Inc.

Tel. 415 341-5783

Elliot(dot)goldstein(at)promisneurosciences(dot)com
Jan Strohmeyer Brien, Ph. D

East Jefferson General Hospital welcomes Jan Strohmeyer Brien, Ph. D., as the institutions Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Human Resources Officer, overseeing all HR management and human capital strategies at EJGH.

Jan brings a wealth of experience and expertise to East Jefferson General Hospital, said Dr. Mark Peters, EJGH President and CEO. She will continue to move us forward as a high quality, stand-alone healthcare organization. 

The New Orleans native most recently served as Vice President of Human Resources at Ochsner Health System. Prior to her time at Ochsner, Brien also spent time as the Director of Client Services for Press Ganey, a global company in patient experience measurement and performance improvement solutions. Earlier in her career, she served as Director of Human Resources, Clients Services and Research at Advocate Health Care, located in Chicago, Ill.

Brien holds a bachelors degree in psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi, a masters degree in organizational psychology from Illinois State University and a doctorate in Social Psychology from Loyola University-Chicago.

About East Jefferson General Hospital

East Jefferson General Hospital is a publicly-owned, not-for-profit community hospital. This service district hospital, formed in 1965, receives no tax support from Jefferson Parish. The 420-bed hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and is Louisiana's first Nurse Magnet hospital. For more information on East Jefferson General Hospital, visit online at http://www.ejgh.org

Contact: Brandon Scardigli, EJGH Public Information Officer

bjscardigli(at)ejgh(dot)org

Office: 504-503-7110

Cell: 504-339-4279
This figure shows an example of fueling in the laboratory (at Powertech in Canada) and in the field at a Shell Station with H2Logic Technology in Denmark. The data confirms that the fueling does This SAE technical paper was an industry-led effort evaluating the safety and performance of hydrogen fueling for Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles.

During the SAE 2016 Government/Industry Meeting at the Washington, DC Convention Center today, authors of the SAE World Congress Technical Paper on Hydrogen Fueling, were honored for this years Ralph H. Isbrandt Automotive Safety Engineering Award. The technical paper being honored is titled: Validation and Sensitivity Studies for SAE J2601, the Light Duty Vehicle Hydrogen Fueling Standard (SAE 2014-01-1990)

This SAE technical paper was an industry-led effort evaluating the safety and performance of hydrogen fueling for Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles. For the first time multiple automakers collaborated together for hydrogen fueling and released their onboard and lab data into one report in order to support international standardization. The testing ranged from the laboratory to real public hydrogen fueling stations and was done in three continents. In addition, extreme case simulations or sensitivity studies evaluated the limits of hydrogen fueling with vehicle and station designs. The simulations were combined with real fueling data from onboard the vehicle in the field to extreme laboratory trials in order to give the confidence to implementation of the SAE J2601 standard.

The lead author, Mr. Jesse Schneider, of BMW was recognized along with co-authors Jihyun Shim (Hyundai), Graham Meadows (IMPCO), Steven R. Mathison (Honda), Michael J. Veenstra (Ford), Rainer Immel (Opel), Morten Wistoft-Ibsen (H2 Logic), Manfred Greisel (Wenger Engineering), Spencer Quong (SQI), Timothy McGuire (MB RDNA), and Peter Potzel (Daimler).

The SAE J2601 standard enables commercial fueling which gives a same-as-todays duration of 3-5 minutes and enables a range driving, similar to conventional vehicles at 300 miles (500km). This technical paper (SAE 2014-01-1990) documents the more than a decade worth of testing and simulation to confirm the hydrogen fueling protocols targets and limits. Validating safety for commercial hydrogen fueling protocol is a high priority as well as confirming its performance and that is what was documented in this report. stated Mr. Schneider.

Obtaining extended driving ranges in FCEVs with hydrogen fueling is accomplished by compressing hydrogen to 70MPa (or H70). The speed of hydrogen fueling is directly related to the amount of cooling that the dispenser allows, to offset the heat of compression. Therefore, a H70-T40 fueling dispenser enables this fast-fueling by providing hydrogen fuel at -40C to the fuel cell vehicle.

The figures below show an example of fueling in the laboratory (at Powertech in Canada) and in the field at a Shell Station with H2Logic Technology in Denmark. The data confirms that the fueling does not exceed the temperature, pressure or density limits under extreme and ambient conditions.

SAE J2601 -utilizing this report- is reference in the upcoming international Standard ISO TS 19880-1 as well as the North American CSA 4.3 Standard. This data (documented and evaluated in the SAE report 2014-01-1990) has also been posted on the http://www.h2protocols.com website so that all can downloaded for free in the public domain.

The Isbrandt Award (http://awards.sae.org/isbrandt/) recognizes individuals for their outstanding contribution to SAE literature, which advances the field of automotive safety engineering. Established in 1972, this award is funded through an endowment established by several automotive companies and honors the memory of Ralph H. Isbrandt and the enormous impact he had on automotive safety engineering as well as inspiring young engineers to seek and follow a mobility engineering career.

SAE International is a global association committed to being the ultimate knowledge source for the engineering profession. By uniting over 137,000 engineers and technical experts, we drive knowledge and expertise across a broad spectrum of industries. We act on two priorities: encouraging a lifetime of learning for mobility engineering professionals and setting the standards for industry engineering. We strive for a better world through the work of our philanthropic SAE Foundation, including programs like A World in Motion and the Collegiate Design Series.

http://www.sae.org
Alpha Software As the only RMAD technology represented on the list, it shows that Alpha Software continues to be a pioneer in the mobile app development sector.

Alpha Software Corporation, accelerating how developers build and deploy full mobile and web business apps, received this week an InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award for its Alpha Anywhere platform. Alpha Software is the only Rapid Mobile App Development (RMAD) technology included among the recipients.

In the official announcement, IDG InfoWorld called out Alpha Anywhere as a database-oriented, rapid app development tool that shines at creating Web and hybrid mobile apps that work offline. It allows developers to build good apps quickly, with surprisingly good performance and nativelike look and feel.

The article goes on to give Alpha Anywhere kudos for its database and data integration capabilities, robust offline capability, and media and image handling. The publication also recognizes the massive impact that Alpha Anywheres mobile optimized forms stand to have on the market.

We are ecstatic to be included among top technology companies and developers with this award from InfoWorld, said Alpha Softwares Chief Executive Officer, Richard Rabins. As the only RMAD technology represented on the list, it shows that Alpha Software continues to be a pioneer in the mobile app development sector. We have seen significant growth in the demand for our products, due in part to their offline capabilities, and it is great to be recognized for the work that we have put into creating the most comprehensive tools for our enterprise customers.

Selected by InfoWorld editors and reviewers, the annual awards identify the best and most innovative products on the IT landscape. Winners are drawn from all of the products tested during the past year, with the final selections made by InfoWorlds Reviews staff.

Like InfoWorld itself, InfoWorlds Technology of the Year Awards are all about change, said Doug Dineley, executive editor of InfoWorld Reviews. Our Technology of the Year Award winners are the platforms and tools that point the way to the data centers, clouds, and applications of tomorrow. They're the innovations that are changing the way we work and do business.

To see a full list of winners, please click here.

To learn more about Alpha Software, please go to: http://www.alphasoftware.com.

About InfoWorld

InfoWorld is the leading resource for content and tools on modernizing enterprise IT. The InfoWorld Expert Contributor Network provides a unique perspective in the market; our editors provide first-hand experience from testing, deploying, and managing implementation of emerging enterprise technologies. InfoWorlds website (InfoWorld.com) and custom solutions provide a deep dive into specific technologies to help IT decision-makers excel in their roles and provide opportunities for IT vendors to reach this audience. InfoWorld is published by IDG Enterprise, a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the worlds leading media, events, and research company. Company information is available at http://www.idgenterprise.com.

About IDG Enterprise

IDG Enterprise, an International Data Group (IDG) company, brings together the leading editorial brands (CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, ITworld, and Network World) to serve the information needs of our technology and security-focused audiences. As the premier hi-tech B2B media company, we leverage the strengths of our premium owned and operated brands, while simultaneously harnessing their collective reach and audience affinity. We provide market leadership and converged marketing solutions for our customers to engage IT and security decision-makers across our portfolio of award-winning websites, events, magazines, products, and services. IDGs DEMO conferences provide a platform for today's most innovative and eye-opening technologies to publically launch their solutions. Company information is available at http://www.idgenterprise.com.

About Alpha Software Corporation

Alpha Software products deliver significant productivity gains to developers of all levels building cross-platform mobile and web business apps. Alpha Anywhere is a front-end and back-end, low-code, rapid mobile application development and deployment environment. Alpha Anywhere applications showcase built-in offline capability, easy integration with existing data and applications, and advanced security. Developers and business leaders in thousands of organizations across one hundred countries have used Alpha Software products to cost-effectively deploy enterprise applications with outstanding user experiences. For more information, visit http://www.AlphaSoftware.com, or follow us on Twitter at @AlphaSoftware.

# # #

Alpha Anywhere is a trademark of Alpha Software Corporation, Burlington, Massachusetts. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Bureau of Automotive Repair Attorneys We have seen an uptick in concern over possible criminal liability by California Brake and Lamp station owners as well as technicians.

Automotive Defense Specialists, a California law firm of attorneys with expertise in Bureau of Automotive Repair criminal cases, is proud to announce new coverage on its blog concerning both braking and brake light systems for California SMOG check stations and participants in its STAR program who may be concerned about undercover car activity.

We have seen an uptick in concern over possible criminal liability by California Brake and Lamp station owners as well as technicians," explained William Ferreira of the Specialized Law Firm of Automotive Defense Specialists. Our blog is meant to make commentary on industry issues, and among the newer issues is a possible expansion by the Bureau into brake and lamp inspection prosecutions.

To read the first blog posts in the series, visitors are encouraged to visit the company's blog. There, in chronological order, are posts to the blog. To go directly to a post discussing braking system issues vis-a-vis possible criminal liability please visit http://automotivedefense.com/?p=1533. To view the post concerning brake light issues, please visit http://automotivedefense.com/?p=1530.

More than SMOG is a Concern to those Regulated by the Bureau of Automotive Repair

With the Bureau of Automotive Repair stepping up enforcement of California's complex regulations regarding SMOG check stations, including those participating in the so-called STAR program, there is increasing interest in both administrative and criminal potential actions. While most of the attention is on a) the SMOG Check issues as well as related STAR program issues, and b) on administrative law problems, the blog series touches on possible growing concern on brake and lamp inspections. The reality is that both brake and lamp technicians and stations may be required (and thus face either administrative or possibly even criminal action) with respect to testing the brake and lamp systems of vehicles that come into their shop. In addition to reading the firm's blog, interested parties are urged to reach out directly to the firm's attorneys for information.

About Automotive Repair Specialists

Automotive Repair Specialists is a top law firm representing auto repair facilities, SMOG check stations, and technicians in every facet of their legal needs including accusations from the Bureau of Auto Repair. The company offers free phone consultations to auto shops, mechanics, technicians and others who are facing disciplinary actions from the California Bureau of Automotive Repair.

Web. http://automotivedefense.com/

Tel. (415) 392-2886
Global Stem Cells Group Recent technological and scientific advances in anti-aging medicine are becoming indispensible in the prevention, prediction, detection, treatment and rehabilitation of diseases that occur with advancing age.

Global Stem Cells Group, a world leader in regenerative medicine, has announced that two members of its Advisory Board, Joseph Purita, M.D. and Gilberto Hernandez Falcon, M.D., will be keynote speakers at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) Latin American Chapter of the VII World Congress Feb. 12, 13 and 14 2016.

The conference will focus on recent technological and scientific advances in anti-aging medicine that are becoming indispensible in the prevention, prediction, detection, treatment and rehabilitation of diseases that occur with advancing age. This conference will focus on new treatments and protocols to extend years and improve patient quality of life.

Conference topics include recent protocols in weight control and obesity, platelet rich plasma therapies, menopause, sexual health and hormonal balance, alternative medicine for stress and sleep disorders, LED laser and thermal heat treatments, biodentical hormone replacement therapy and its clinical applications, oxygen and ozone therapies, recent advances in cellular therapies for cosmetic applications and much more.

Purita, who heads the Global Stem Cells Group Advisory Board, is a pioneer in the use of stem cell therapies in orthopedics. He will speak on the latest advances in evidence-based, best-practice protocols for the early detection, prevention and treatment of medical problems associated with aging.

Hernandez Falcon, M.D., Director and CEO of the Global Stem Cells Group Mexico Sur clinic in Villahermosa Tabasco, specializes in cosmetic and anti-aging medicine as well as obstetrics and gynecology, will discuss the most recent applications of stem cell therapies to treat a variety of age-related issues.

The conference will be held at the Hotel Fiesta Americana Reforma in Mexico City.

For more information, visit the Global Stem Cells Group website, email info(at)stemcelltraining(dot)net, or call (305) 560-5337.

About Global Stem Cell Group:

Global Stem Cells Group is the parent company of six wholly owned operating companies dedicated entirely to stem cell research, training, products and solutions. Founded in 2012, the company combines dedicated researchers, physician and patient educators and solution providers with the shared goal of meeting the growing worldwide need for leading edge stem cell treatments and solutions. With a singular focus on this exciting new area of medical research, Global Stem Cells Group and its subsidiaries are uniquely positioned to become global leaders in cellular medicine.

Global Stem Cells Groups corporate mission is to make the promise of stem cell medicine a reality for patients around the world. With each of GSCGs six operating companies focused on a separate research-based mission, the result is a global network of state-of-the-art stem cell treatments.

###
Live Innovations This one-on-one connection with consumers often encourages long-lasting and personal business relationships

Live Innovations have recently undergone several changes so that they can relaunch a new, even more personalised direct marketing service on behalf of their clients brands. The firm have revealed that they will be specialising in event marketing only, which makes them stand out from other direct marketing firms. As Live Innovations will be focusing all of their attention on event marketing campaigns this means they are able to deliver a truly unique and personalised service to consumers, which is something the firm prides itself on.

About Live Innovations: http://liveinnovations.co.uk/company-info-2/

Live Innovations have re-opened in London, Waterloo, an exciting area surrounded by huge industry professionals which the firm can work alongside and gain advice from. Waterloo is in central London and benefits from huge crowds all year round, perfect for Live Innovations unique events. The area is also close to several London Universities which means the firm has access to talented graduates and aspiring business owners to join their business development opportunity and create talented sales representatives.

Live Innovations have a unique event marketing process where they work closely alongside their clients to test their market reach and to decide on ideal candidates and potential prospects. The firm then develop personalised event marketing campaigns which allow them to connect directly with consumers on behalf of their clients brands. This one-on-one connection with consumers often encourages long-lasting and personal business relationships between brand and consumer. In turn, this often leads to increased customer acquisition, brand awareness and brand loyalty for their clients.

As specialists in event marketing and personalised marketing processes, the firm have been chosen by a prestigious finance client to represent their business and products. Live Innovations were honoured to be hand-picked by the client and this has made the relaunch even more exciting for the brand. Live Innovations are excited to be back representing their clients and expanding their market reach and are particularly excited about their upcoming events.

The firms Managing Director, Tom Harris, originally from Australia, travelled to the UK several years ago where he was able to pursue a career in sales and entrepreneurship. The business owner launched Live Innovations in 2011 and has managed the business in several locations including Leicester and London. Tom Harris has expressed his plans to expand the firms market reach internationally to America and then back to his roots in Australia. We are extremely excited by our re-launch in Waterloo and we cant wait to start generating some great leads for our clients, stated business owner Tom Harris.
The Maryland Soybean Board administers soybean checkoff funds for soybean research, marketing and education programs in the state. Were pleased to welcome Ellen Davis. Her experience in the agricultural community is well suited to lead the organization through its start-up process.

Looking to leverage soybean checkoff funds, reduce redundancy and prioritize local research, soybean farmer leaders from Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Virginia have agreed to create a regional research consortium.

Ellen Matthews Davis of West Point, Va., was recently hired to lead the new regional consortium.

Davis had served as executive director of the Virginia Small Grains and Corn Growers Associations and as an ex officio member of the Small Grains and Corn Checkoff Boards until 2006. She currently serves as chairman of the Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, is the representative from New Kent County to the Board of Directors for Rappahannock Community College and serves on the Virginia Small Grains Checkoff Board. She and her husband, Ray, are partners in 2,800-acre grain farm operation in central Virginia.

Davis was appointed State Director of Rural Development in 2006 by President George W. Bush and reappointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama. An agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, Rural Development forges partnership with rural communities and helps provide funding for housing, community facilities, rural businesses, utilities and other services to improve the quality of life and economic opportunity in these communities. She retired from that position in January 2014.

I am very excited to be working again with the agricultural community in the Mid-Atlantic area, said Davis. It is especially gratifying to be working with innovative farmer leadership who recognize the importance of regional alliances.

Development of the consortium is supported by the soybean checkoff, which assesses one-half of one percent of the net market value of soybeans at their first point of sale to support soybean research, marketing and education programs.

One-half of the checkoff funds stay in Maryland for programs; the other half is sent to the United Soybean Board. Both the United Soybean Board and the regions state soybean boards are financially supporting the project, led by the Maryland Soybean Board.

Were pleased to welcome Ellen Davis, says William Layton, a Dorchester County, Md., farmer and chairman of the Maryland Soybean Board. Her experience in the agricultural community is well suited to lead the organization through its start-up process.

About Maryland Soybean Board: The Maryland Soybean Board administers soybean checkoff funds for soybean research, marketing and education programs in the state. One-half of the checkoff funds stay in Maryland for programs; the other half is sent to the United Soybean Board. To learn more about the Maryland Soybean Board, visit http://www.mdsoy.com.
Micro optics from Ross Optical allow shorter focal lengths, improving performance in compact medical devices and other critical systems.

Ross Optical Industries, a provider of precision OEM lenses and engineering services, will discuss micro optics applications, including a smartphone diagnostics case study, at the 2016 Photonics West exhibition, Feb. 16-18 in San Francisco.

The growing use of compact, portable and disposable optical devices challenges suppliers to maintain quality and performance while cutting size, weight and cost. Micro optic components from Ross Optical allow shorter focal lengths, improving performance in compact medical devices, hand-held communication devices and other critical systems.

Ross Optical is currently working with healthcare companies to provide micro optics for innovative otoscopes and ophthalmoscopes that attach to smartphones. The portable design allows for field use by general practitioners, nurses and parents, cutting healthcare costs and allowing more rapid remote access to specialists.

Ross Optical offers plano-concave lenses down to 1.0 mm and other micro optic lenses at diameters below 5.0 mm, including:



Bi-convex and plano-convex lenses, designed to form and shape light beams

Achromat lenses, precision-fabricated to reduce chromatic aberration

Ball lenses, used in many types of coupling devices

Prisms, shaped to redirect and repurpose light energy

Micro optics from Ross Optical are competitively priced and backed by in-house expertise in design, coating, test, inspection and QA. The company provides a variety of coatings that drastically reduce reflection and improve light transmission over the full 200-2200 nm range. Coating is a common challenge in micro optics; however, Ross Optical is able to coat lenses to the edge.

To learn more, visit booth 316 at Photonics West or http://www.rossoptical.com.

About Ross Optical Industries

Ross Optical Industries, Inc. (http://www.rossoptical.com) provides custom, precision engineered solutions for OEM applications, specialty standard lenses, micro optics and other hard-to-find optics. Customers in R&D, electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, biomedical or military applications look to Ross Optical for their expertise in custom optical and mechanical design, prototyping, coating and manufacturing. Ross Optical is known for cost-effective solutions, and offers overseas sourcing, inventory and inspection to reduce supply chain risk for its customers. Ross Optical Industries is ITAR registered and ISO 9001:2008 certified.
Scranton Products will award schools with $80,000 worth of lockers and scholarships in the Unlocker Challenge! We are thrilled to be able to contribute Duralife lockers and scholarship funds to the winners, as well as help spread the inclusivity message throughout schools nationwide.-- David Casal, Scranton Products

Scranton Products, a leading manufacturer of school hallway and gym lockers, has launched The Duralife Unlocker Challenge, a national video competition open to high school and middle school students. The challenge gives students and their budget-strapped schools a chance to win up to $80,000 in exceptional quality Duralife hallway lockers as well as college scholarships. The program runs from January to March 2016, with details on how to submit the video at http://www.unlockerchallenge.com

Beyond beautifying and upgrading their schools and providing funds for college, the competition has another lofty goal: students are asked to explore the theme of inclusivity in their original videos. Using the theme Through the Locker Door, the videos asks why inclusivity is important to a more positive school environment and how it applies later in life.

We know the issues facing schools today, said David Casal, Director of Sales Administration, Scranton Products. The goal is to empower students to think inclusively, and help unlock their potential for collaboration, creativity and social interaction.

In addition to creating an enriching team building experience for students, the Duralife Unlocker Challenge video competition provides schools with the opportunity to win free lockers and scholarships in three prize levels, including:



1st Prize: $50,000 worth of lockers and $7,500 in scholarships

2nd Prize: $10,000 worth of lockers and $5,000 in scholarships

3rd Prize: $5,000 worth of lockers and $2,500 in scholarships

In January, student teams are encouraged to work with a teacher/adviser to begin planning and producing the video. The video file and required release forms can then be uploaded to the contest video submission page. Once the video is posted, the general public, including students, friends, family, and the school community can vote on the videos, which are then narrowed down to three finalists.

We are committed to education and know that lockers are very personalized spaces for students, adds Casal. We are thrilled to be able to contribute Duralife lockers and scholarship funds to the winners, as well as help spread the inclusivity message throughout schools nationwide.

About Scranton Products

For more than 25 years Scranton Products premium brands have led the plastic partition and locker market, setting new benchmarks for the industry in quality and innovation. The companys well-known brands, including Hiny Hiders, Resistall, Tufftec and Duralife, are engineered for strength and durability, offering superior performance, longer service life, minimal maintenance, and lower life-cycle cost. Manufactured from American-made solid HDPE, these products will never rust, corrode or delaminate, are impermeable to moisture, and never need painting.

The only HDPE plastic locker that is fully fire-rated for school corridors, Scranton Products Duralife Lockers are GREENGUARD Gold Certified and meet strict criteria for products intended for use in schools and other environments where children spend significant periods of time. Learn more at http://www.scrantonproducts.com.
Trip of a Lifetime Executive Director, Stan Rosenberg, surrounded by the (clearly) thrilled winners of the 2014 Trip of a Lifetime summer travel adventure

For the past six years Trip of a Lifetime has endeavored to send deserving middle and high school students from the New York City area on summer trips to the western United States. Last year applications from over 130 students were received, of which 16 were accepted. This year Trip of a Lifetime hopes to send 20 to 25 students on these exceptional travel experiences. The trips are run by the organizations partners at Rein Teen Tours, a preeminent student travel company that has sent over 50,000 students on trips to date .

Trip of a Lifetime works to provide life-changing opportunities that students could not otherwise access. Perhaps this is best explained by Harleigh, a trip alumna from 2013. It was amazing to see the natural beauty of Zion, Bryce, Sedona and the Grand Canyon, as well as the man-made beauty in the enchanting lights and architecture of Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I was also shown the value of volunteering, as I participated at different environment related volunteer locations, and the beauty in people as I got to know people more and more on the trip.

Applications for Summer 2016 are available at http://www.projecttoal.org/apply. Interested students should download and complete the application, then email it to applications(at)projecttoal(dot)org before the March 1st deadline.
Yooz Logo Customers tell us that, on average, they see an improvement of 0.5 percent to their bottom line. Services like Yooz that automate the accounts payable process let employees focus on their key task.

As more and more enterprises embrace sophisticated, easy-to-use and affordable cloud services, they will see tangible bottom line benefits from injecting real-time intelligence into their financial workflow. Thats the prediction of Laurent Charpentier, Chief Innovation Officer of Yooz Inc. North America, one of the pioneers in end-to-end accounts payable (AP) automation in the cloud.

Based on success stories and feedback from midsize to large enterprise customers in verticals from hospitality, automotive and multi-unit franchising to healthcare, Charpentier foresees three key developments in accounting and managing financial workflows for the new year.

1. Financial intelligence to improve the bottom line

Enriching the financial workflow of a company with real-time intelligence will yield tangible benefits for enterprises in 2016. Customers tell us that, on average, they see an improvement of 0.5 percent to their bottom line. With a company that has a 5-6 percent profit margin, simply automating their financial workflow in the cloud has a significant impact on profitability, says Charpentier.

The continuing uptake of easy-to-implement cloud services indicates that more and more enterprises will no longer leave this money on the table. Instead, theyll opt for affordable cloud services that can be up and running without investments in hardware or software and pay for themselves almost instantly.

2. AP Automation lets employees focus on supply chain costs

Combining business intelligence with AP intelligence will become a standard experience for accounting departments and many other parts of an organization. Services like Yooz that automate the accounts payable process let employees focus on their key task: reducing supply chain costs, explains Charpentier.

When invoices are ingested into a seamless workflow that reaches all the way to initiating payments, humans are empowered to keep track of cash flow, locking in discounts and rebates. Its the year well move from shuffling paper to seeing larger processes and understanding how a business really performs.

3. Connecting with vendors and partners through an end-to-end solution

Third, enterprises will demand and seek out end-to-end solutions instead of stitching together piecemeal answers to their financial workflow problems. Decentralized enterprises in particular will discover how it lets them get new locations and franchise partners online fast. That way, a company can tie CRM, accounting, billing and payments into a central ERP system.

The result will be building a live network with partners, vendors and suppliers that grows and strengthens relationships one purchase order or invoice at a time. Now, even a small team has the tools and the ability to generate insights from their daily routines. In turn, vendors and suppliers will become part of a companys value chain, getting a live view into orders, approvals and payments.

About Yooz:

Yooz brings intelligence to AP automation. It is designed and built for the era of cloud computing, empowering medium-sized and large businesses to streamline their financial workflow in order to save time and money. Yooz was initially developed and launched by ITESOFT, a European company that has for more than 30 years been a leader in intelligent document capture and process automation. Yooz is now an independent company within ITESOFT-Yooz Group and has more than 1,300 customers. For more information, visit http://www.justyoozit.com and follow us @justyoozit.
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When Vina Castillo, Natalie Noboa, and Holly Nikodem worked at the Barnes & Noble in the Forest Hills section of Queens, N.Y., they often joked about opening a bookstore. Since that B&N closed, their idea for a Queens bookstore has begun to take shape, with the three projecting it may be another 18 months before the store is open.

When the [Forest Hills B&N] announced that it was closing [at the end of 2015], Noboa recalled, we said, Maybe, we should start our own store. Since then, momentum for the project has built.

Earlier this month Astoria Bookshop, the boroughs only general independent bookstore, hit social media to support the idea of new store in the borough. Astoria Bookshop tweeted: Best news of the day, if not the year: former B&N booksellers are planning to open @bookshopqueens in Forest Hills! Since that time the three Queens booksellers have been gathering a following on social media, and their recently upgraded website has close to 400 names on the mailing list.

That Queens is hungry for more bookstores comes as little surprise, given the intensity of the petition drive launched last May to keep the Forest Hills B&N open. At one time Barnes & Noble had three stores in Queens; it closed its store in Fresh Meadows at the end of 2014, and a location in Bayside at the end of 2015.

Until Castillo, Noboa, and Nikodem find a space and choose the Queens neighborhood where theyd like to open the store, they have decided not to hold any community meetings. Instead theyve asked residents to e-mail them at thequeensbookshop@gmail.com with requests about their ideal bookstore.

The friends have also reached out to those on their e-mail list about what perks they would like for a Kickstarter launch campaign. They plan to open a store between 1,000 to 2,000 sq. ft., which would sell new and used books and feature a large children's book section.

As part of preparing for opening the store, both Castillo and Nikodem plan to attend BookExpo, and all three will take part in this summers inaugural Queens Book Festival.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - This year's Purdue Extension Indiana Small Farm Conference begins with a series of preconference workshops on direct marketing, woodland management, hops cultivation and other topics.

The daylong workshops will be offered March 3, a day before the conference opens at the Hendricks County Fairgrounds in Danville. Extension and industry experts will lead each workshop.

Workshop topics:

* "Producing Meat for the Local Communities on a Small Farm." Owners Erick and Jessica Smith will lead a tour of This Old Farm, 9572 W. County Road 650 S in Colfax, 40 miles northwest of Danville. The Smiths will discuss how they process and market locally sourced meats from a network of 20 farms. The tour begins at 9:30 a.m. Participants provide their own transportation to the farm. Cost is $60, or $50 for those who register before Feb. 14. Lunch is included.

* "Making Markets Work for Your Farming Enterprise." Participants will learn how to increase sales at farmers markets and food stands as well as online and through wholesale arrangements with restaurants, schools and other institutions. Workshop presenters are small business development specialist Maria Marshall and Extension educator Heather Strohm. Cost is $60, or $50 for those who register before Feb. 14. Lunch is included.

* "Getting the Most Out of Your Woods." Forestry specialist Lenny Farlee and wildlife specialist Brian MacGowan will discuss strategies for managing woodlands to maximize income and biodiversity. Participants will learn how to identify and control invasive species, land management practices that benefit wildlife, techniques to control wildlife damage, and income opportunities for rural land. Cost is $25.

* "Starting and Sustaining a Small Acre Farm in Indiana." Experienced and beginning farmers will explain business planning for small and mid-sized farms, including how to boost production and profitability. Representatives from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program will discuss farmer/rancher grant opportunities. Cost is $60, or $50 for those who register before Feb. 14. Lunch is included.

* "Gaining New Knowledge to be Successful on Your Hop Farm." Sessions will focus on hop production systems and marketing. Participants will learn about hop varieties and trellis systems, as well as the costs and benefits of growing hops and collaborative marketing opportunities among Indiana brewers and consumers. Cost is $60, or $50 for those who register before Feb. 14. Lunch is included.

The 2016 Indiana Small Farm Conference will be March 4-5 at the Hendricks County Fairgrounds, 1900 E. Main St., Danville. Cost of the conference is $120, or $100 by Feb. 14. Keynote speaker is Mary Dee Berry, founder of the Berry Center, an organization focused on land use, farm policy, farmer education, urban agriculture education and local foods.

For more information, or to register for the workshops or conference, go to https://ag.purdue.edu/extension/smallfarms/Pages/default.aspx.

Writer: Darrin Pack, 765-494-8415, dpack@purdue.edu

Source: James Wolff, 260-481-6434, jmwolff@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-2722;

Keith Robinson, robins89@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
Senate President John Cullerton told the City Club of Chicago on Monday the current calculation is unfair for penalizing high poverty districts.

He says there's little disagreement Illinois' roughly 20-year-old formula needs an overhaul. However, timing is an issue, especially with a months-long budget gridlock.

Republican legislators have said they want to shelve the issue for now. But Cullerton says it's part of a "turnaround" Illinois needs, which is a reference to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who calls his priorities the Turnaround Agenda.

Currently, schools receive state aid to offset basic education costs through a formula factoring in poverty. However, districts also get grants based on the number of students in certain programs.
Press release submitted by QCAWC

The Quad City Animal Welfare Center (QCAWC) Casual for a Cause

(Milan, IL)  Are you looking for a fun way to boost morale and foster a sense of community with no cost to your company or business? Ditch you duds for a day, and join The Quad City Animal Welfare Center by participating in The Quad City Animal Welfare Center Casual for a Cause on Friday, February 12, 2016 (or any day your business chooses). All donations will directly benefit the Quad City Animal Welfare Center Low Cost Spay & Neuter Fund.

Its simple; employees will make a donation of $5 to dress casual on Friday, February 12, 2016. Companies or businesses that participate will receive:

 A Quad City Animal Welfare Center Casual for a Cause poster to display at your company/business.

 A QCAWC window cling for your company/business

 Recognition of your company/business on the QCAWC Facebook page

To participate please contact Stacey Teager at stacey@qcawc.org 309-787-6830 ext.12 or Patti McRae at patti@qcawc.org or 309-787-6830 ext.13. We look forward to your partnership in our cooperative efforts.

The Quad City Animal Welfare Center is the only full service no-kill animal shelter located in the Quad Cities. Our mission is a shelter for homeless animals, to support a spay and a neuter program and to provide humane education. QCAWC Adoption Center is open Monday-Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Wednesday until 6 p.m. and closed on Sunday. Our low cost, high quality walk-in vaccination clinic is open every Wednesday from 1 to 3:30 p.m. and the first Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to noon with no appointment necessary. Low cost, high quality spaying and neutering is offered by calling 309-787-6830 for an appointment.

QCAWC is located at 724 W. 2nd Ave. Milan, IL 61264. Visit our website at www.qcawc.org.
Press release submitted by American Red Cross

American Red Cross to Offer Zero2Hero Volunteer Training Program in the Quad Cities

MOLINE, IL, January 25, 2016  The American Red Cross Central and Southern Illinois Region will offer a special Zero2Hero event in the Quad Cities on March 4 - 6, 2016. Zero2Hero is a unique opportunity for people who would like to fast track becoming a Red Cross disaster volunteer. In just one weekend, Zero2Hero participants will go through the entire process of becoming a trained Red Cross disaster volunteer. The Red Cross encourages anyone who has considered becoming a Red Cross disaster volunteer to attend the Zero2Hero event. In addition to the training, participants will learn more about Red Cross disaster response and volunteer opportunities.

Red Cross disaster volunteers are trained to respond to all types of disasters and the Zero2Hero event is a great opportunity for new volunteers to fast track that training into one weekend, said Alyssa Pollock, Regional Disaster Officer for the American Red Cross Central and Southern Illinois Region. Zero2Hero participants will also have a chance to interact with Red Cross staff and other volunteers to learn more about the Red Cross.

Last year, Red Cross volunteers in the Central and Southern Illinois Region responded to 856 disasters and assisted more than 1,100 families. Disaster response in the Central and Southern Illinois Region included tornadoes, flooding, severe storms and home fires. Trained volunteers provided feeding, opened and staffed shelters, offered health and mental health services, assisted with long-term recovery planning and advocacy for disaster victims. Red Cross volunteers truly are heroes because they offer help and hope to those in need.

The Zero2Hero event is free, but advance registration is requested. To register or learn more about Zero2Hero or other Red Cross volunteer opportunities, email Samuel.Evans@redcross.org or call (217) 222-2477 ext. 7304.
I have covered much of this ground earlier, yet the dysfunctional state of our state is so dire that I feel compelled to rant yet again, to add my ever-so-faint voice to the chorus calling for action on the stalled state budget.

There is now widespread speculation that the budget impasse wont be addressed until the November elections are in lawmakers rear-view mirrors, more than 18 months after the fiasco began. This is sickening irresponsibility.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's strategy is to hold out support for a tax increase until Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan caves to the governors turn-around agenda.

The strategy apparently rests on the premise that the speaker needs a budget to provide funding for the poor and dispossessed, who comprise much of Madigans political base.

The flaws in this strategy are, first, that every close observer knows Rauner will have to support a tax increase regardless, as there is no other way to balance the states budget. So where is the leverage in his threat?

Second, Madigan cares less for the poor than for his power as speaker, so he will wait until the cows come home before knuckling under to the first-term governor.

Nor does the larger public care much. I chatted recently with Eddie Webster, of Toulon.

Observed Eddie, a good citizen farmer,  Whats the big deal?

Yet it affects students at Black Hawk College, which serves Eddie and me. The college announced it wont honor the state scholarships students would otherwise use this semester to pay their tuition. In this and scores of other ways, thousands of what we might call the little people are being hurt.

Rauners approach is to bludgeon, somehow, Madigan into submission. It isnt working.

I have seen Madigan grow from a young man to an old man in the legislature, most of those four decades as speaker.

He has been characterized as the most powerful politician in the state, though its basically a negative power. He dangles a noose that strangles any legislation not to his liking.

During most of that period, pension obligations grew rapidly, largely unfunded. And in the past decade or so the state has spun into what many of my friends think is a death spiral (I dont think its that bad) of debt and toxic business climate.

Thus, in the twilight of his career, Madigan is likely to be amenable to grand political bargains that might reverse the course of our state over time and brighten his legacy.

But he is too proud to be humiliated.

The most embarrassed players in this tragedy are the 176 other state legislators. Like a Greek chorus, they stand observing, yet voiceless, muted by their impotency and cowardice.

We didnt elect our lawmakers to preserve their reelection, after which they will take action to increase taxes, as observers all know they will do. We are compensating them well to build a better state, now.

The short- and long-term costs are much greater than the likely benefits to be achieved by Rauner's agenda.

I do appreciate that tweaking of workers compensation policies might improve the states business climate marginally. And I commend the governor for standing firm in contract talks against AFSCME, the largest state employee union.

Over recent sweetheart contracts, this union has largely taken over day-to-day operations of state agencies. Interestingly, as we are not talking legislation here, this matter is outside Madigans control.

An important constitutional amendment proposal to reform legislative redistricting is proceeding nicely in the citizen sector and doesnt need the turn-around agenda.

Constraints on collective bargaining, another key element in Rauners demands, will likely be accomplished in a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that would in effect make Illinois a right-to-work state.

Meanwhile, the states budget dysfunction has been larded onto our national reputation for unseemly public corruption. We are close to a laughingstock.

These perceptions mean Illinois rarely makes it out of the starting gate in competition for business investment, even with our immense strengths in transportation logistics and location.

Rauner, Madigan and the legislature must back away from the acrimony. We must draw the curtains on this Greek, or is it Shakespearean, tragedy.

All must come together to stabilize our fiscal situation, make plans to invest in our unrivaled infrastructure, and point our state in a direction of which we can again be proud.
Some years ago, the City of Rock Island embraced as its motto, Preserving the past and dedicated to the future.

As the oldest of the Quad-Cities and birthplace of such venerable institutions as the Rock Island Lines, Weyerhauser Lumber Company and central site of the Black Hawk War and first Mississippi railroad bridge, Rock Islands history is rich and storied. That history gave rise to the first half of the motto.

As for preserving of our past, Rock Island adopted one of the first state-certified preservation ordinances in the State of Illinois nearly 30 years ago. Over the years, weve also seen city support for such neighborhood initiatives as those in the Broadway, Keystone and Highland Park areas. Working with Renaissance Rock Island, the city has in recent years preserved the fabric of historic buildings in the downtown and elsewhere throughout Rock Island.

That is what made so surprising and troubling the recent city staff recommendation to declare as surplus property one of the citys most important historic homes -- the Hauberg home and grounds off of 24th Street -- with an eye toward selling it to an interested business.

This house was donated to the city nearly 60 years ago and has served the city well since as a civic center and site for innumerable weddings, receptions, community meetings and other social and cultural gatherings.

Not only is the home itself historic, having been designed by a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright, but its association with two of our communitys most remarkable citizens makes it even more so. Susanne Denkmann Hauberg was daughter of one of the founders of Weyerhauser Lumber who used her fortune to advance many noteworthy institutions in the community, including the YWCA downtown which still bears her name.

John Hauberg led efforts in Illinois to acquire what is now the Black Hawk State Historic Site, one of Illinois premier tourist attractions. He also endowed the Native American museum there and, just as important, recorded the history of Native Americans and the earliest white settlers to the area in words and photographs. Along the way, he also founded the Rock Island County Historical Society.

The second half the of the Citys motto -- dedicated to the future -- is entirely consistent with preserving our history. For not only does history serve as the foundation on which the future is built, but it provides a strong economic impetus as well.

One of our areas greatest tourist draws is the Mississippi River and the history evolved around it, from the Native Americans to the present. By preserving our history, including the home of two of our citys leading citizens, we likewise preserve a valuable tool in promoting our area as a great place to live, work and play.

The mayor and city council at their Jan. 18 meeting wisely postponed any action on the staff recommendation. The details of the proposed private development were not made public, the outcry against selling an important part of our Citys heritage prompted a closer look at other ways to cover what staff identified as a $40,000 shortfall in revenues at Hauberg.

With a proposed 2016 city budget after reductions of almost $107 million, if there is a $40,000 shortfall, it clearly represents a modest challenge to overcome.

At the meeting on Jan. 18, one of the aldermen, Steve Tollenaer, constructively suggested possibly leasing part of the site, such as the carriage house, to the interested business while retaining the home primarily for public functions. A long-term lease could generate revenues and cover any shortfall and needed repairs, while preserving city control and access to the home for the community.

Other ideas were also raised. These should fuel a more deliberate discussion going forward than any hasty action to declare Hauberg as surplus on Jan. 8 would have allowed.

We in Rock Island have long believed that preserving the past and planning for the future are entirely compatible. They reinforce and strengthen each other. Hopefully the ongoing council deliberations with public input will assure that we can maintain the Hauberg Civic Center as a continued vital part of our Citys rich history well into the future.
In this piece by Radio Today Director Brad March, the former CEO and Group Program Director of Austereo, asks:

'How is 2DayFM going?"

"Can it survive and win the Sydney FM war?"

Here are his thoughts:

The patients heart is beating again.

Its been given mouth to mouth, has been hit with the defibrillator and its now breathing again, which is good news.

Southern Cross Austereo programmers are in the process of rebuilding 2DayFM after ratings declines this year.

This weeks increase of 0.5% would be some relief for SCA, but they would be disappointed with breakfast dropping. 2Days drive and 25-39s both showed some gains.

It looks like it's heading for a KIIS/Nova CHR battle, with those stations neck and neck, for a while, while 2Days new direction takes shape.

This leaves WSFM on its own as the clear FM leader for quite some time. WS now being virtually the CHR for over 40s. It may play classic hits but its CHR in attitude, mechanics, positioning, production/imaging and its superstar breakfast show . Even more so now with the new Pure Gold positioning.

Much improvement has been made at 2Day. Its music has changed and improved, its working to regain lost ground, trying to reclaim its former hit music position.

Hit music is now a three-way contest in Sydney between Nova, KIIS and 2Day. Strategically ARNs KIIS now clearly owns the hit music position, Nova is number 2 and 2Day number 3.

It's quite a challenge to be the number 3 in a CHR music battle.

Traditionally, there have been three types of contemporary hit radio  adult top 40, which is broader and older; rhythm/dance /urban; and mainstream top 40. The lines are blurred between the last 2. There are less extremes in the music cycle right now.

KIIS could almost be defined as a Hot AC or could move further in that direction in the future. 2Days music is currently hotter than KIIS. KIISs music is broader, and can afford to be, because of a superior, older demo, successful breakfast show. 2Day and Novas music is now sounding almost the same.

KIIS are the leaders, Nova is flanking KIIS and now 2Day clearly needs to flank the market. This is as much about strategic warfare as it is about content.

2DayFM needs to have a stronger point of difference (flanking strategy rule # 1) with not only its music but, importantly, also its breakfast show. The SCA programmers, producers and talent have done a great job in a short amount of time and full credit to them.

The new breakfast team of Jules, Merrick and Sophie are sounding good and delivering strong content. Whilst the new breakfast show has improved, the big question is: Does it fit the strategic opportunity in the market? Given the strength of Kyle and Jackie O, it seems the opportunity for 2Day music and breakfast is 18-24 females. Does the current breakfast show appeal to that demographic? Will they unfortunately become the sacrificial lambs?

The saying you cant be better, you have to be different very much applies to 2Days current situation. So will 2Day make another breakfast change before the years out? Dan and Maz or Will and Woody are possibles and would be a good fit.

Will they make further shifts to the music, appealing to an even younger demo than it is currently? KIIS and Nova will maintain, defend and want to build on the key 25-39 demographic, the most important to advertisers.

Certainly both Nova and KIIS will have strong defence plans already in place.

Will SCA go so far as to re brand the station?

2Day, for a long time, has meant Kyle and Jackie to its listeners. Its now clearly lost that position. Can 2Day be young, cool and hip again? Maybe they could re brand as Beat 104.1, Fox, Hot104.1, Virgin, X104.1, SeaFM or you might have some other ideas for a name change?

Personally I wouldn't change the 2Day brand. Its not in the same position as say the Ten television network or MySpace! Any move to rebrand the station at this stage would be premature.

2Days music, production/imaging, breakfast, marketing, drive and other talent will re create the brand over time. In the same way Beats will make Apple hip again, new talent and music can make 2Day hip again.

SCA programmers, management and board could have some hard decisions to make on 2Days future before the end of this year. A lot will depend on the ratings results mid year.

The reality is, programmers and executives never get it right every time. Just look at the failed radio (re)launches like Vega, Mix Melbourne, Triple M Sydney and others in the past.

Its always a lot easier watching from the sidelines, when youre not under pressure, in the heat of the battle. It will be interesting to watch 104.1.

Brad March is a Director of Radio Today, is a former CEO and Group Program Director of Austereo and has been named Media Executive of the Year

**Thanks to Scott Muller at MBOS for his comments on WSFM.
Wendy Harmer is an author, journalist, and editor-in-chief of The Hoopla website and has sent Radio Today the following piece, expressing her opinions on the SCA internal award to Michael Christian.

The article was originally published here at The Hoopla.

Are they complete morons? Have they had an empathy bypass? Are they morally bankrupt? Its so disrespectful to the family! This is corporate cowboy thinking. Why the hell would they do it? WTF?

This is the feedback Im getting from my radio insiders today about the decision by Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) to give Michael Christian their national radio award as Next Top Jock.

You will remember, of course, from December that Christian was one half of the radio team who made THAT prank phone call to inquire after the health of the Duchess of Cambridge and her hospitalization for acute morning sickness.

It was followed by the suicide of the British nurse, Jacintha Saldana, (46, mother of two).

Only weeks ago the content of Saldanas suicide note was made public and in her handwritten note, addressed to her managers at the Edward VII hospital, she said: Please accept my apologies. I am truly sorry. Thank you for all your support.

I hold the Radio Australians Mel Greig and Michael Christian responsible for this act. Please make them pay my mortgage. I am sorry. Jacintha.

That was April, now its June and whatever you think of the ethics of the call and its subsequent tragic outcome  and youll remember plenty of people (me included) had plenty to say  the decision to award Christian anything shows how out of touch with public mores the management of Southern Cross Austereo truly is.

It has now confirmed them as having a tin ear for common decency. Thats how Id call this latest effort. Many radio people feel the same. Today they are bewildered and embarrassed.

Even on a corporate level, its stupid said one of my contacts. Why would you inflame an issue thats been so damaging?

I lay the blame directly at the feet of SCA Chairman Rhys Holleran. Id also say come on down, Guy Dobson  chief content officer for the network.

Heres a classic boys own corporate structure that just Does. Not. Get. It.

regardless of all thats happened in the past few months Im still at the top of my game, said Christian. So it felt good to see my name at the top of the final leaderboard.

Apparently Christian was to be flown to L.A. as part of his prize as best in the land.

Ive never laid the blame on Christian and his offsider, Mel Greig. Instead I have always asked wheres the leadership?

What a slap in the face for Saldanas family. What an appalling message to send to staff. Did they mean to say: Get your face out there. Do anything. Whatever it takes. Because thats how this is being read. And to say its not a good look is a wild understatement.

Would more women in this bastion of the boys club thats radio in Australia have made a difference?

Hmmmm Let me think about that

In my contribution to the Destroy The Joint book, I lamented the lack of women in management in radio, let alone leading voices on air.

I was lucky to have as a mentor the brilliant Brad March in the 11 years I was on air for Austereo at 2Day FM. Hes the one who also made Tracy Bartram Queen of Breakfast at Fox FM in Melbourne. He championed the career of Jane Kennedy. He also appointed women to general manager positions in four out of six metro FM outfits his contribution has now been utterly trashed.

By way of contrast  lets look at the corporate structure of DMG radio. (Theyre the ones who bring us strong females: Kate Langbroek, Meshel Laurie et al.)

Three of DMGs key roles are taken by women: CEO, Cath OConnor; board member and executive director, the brilliant Siobhan McKenna and group general manager, Louise Higgins.

There are no women in the higher echelons of SCA.

As for ARN- who bring us Amanda Keller, Chrissie Swan, Yumi Stynes and Brigitte Duclos? Heres a network that is, at least, listening.

Female duos on air are bringing in an audience. They know it makes sense to make shows that appeal to more than half of the population and the advertisers they bring.

Then theres Southern Cross Austereo.

Theres a cowboy mentality there.

How long till they get with the program?

This article is written by, and expresses the opinions of, Wendy Harmer who is an author, journalist, and editor-in-chief of The Hoopla website, which you can see here.
Mel Greig and new Hot 30 host MC prank called Kate Middletons nurse last night, with Mel pretending to be the Queen and MC as Prince Charles.

Althought the accents were terrible, the very nervous nurse seemed to believe them and had a chat, revealing a little too much information.

Shes sleeping at the moment and she has had an uneventful night, shes been given some fluids, shes stable at the moment. I would suggest that any time after 9 o'clock will be suitable to visit well be getting her freshened up Will went home at about 9 o'clock last night. Shes quite stable she hasnt had any retching with me and shes been sleeping on and off

Listen to the prank call

https://radiotoday.com.au/music/RoyalPrank.mp3

or hear it here

UPDATED 5/12

It is now close to midnight in Australia and this story has taken the UK media by storm. With articles in every publication you can imagine with many people very irate over the prank.

The Summer 30 (Hot 30) has taken to Twitter to say:

2Day FM sincerely apologises for any inconvenience caused by the enquiry to Kates hospital, the radio segment was done with the best intentions and we wish Kate and her family all the best.

MC and Mel have also said on the BBC website: "We were very surprised that our call was put through, we thought we'd be hung up on as soon as they heard our terrible accents. We're very sorry if we've caused any issues and we're glad to hear that Kate is doing well."

UPDATED 6/12

The ACMA have released a statement saying:

"The Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) has received complaints overnight regarding the 2Day FM prank call to the King Edward VII Hospital in London.

Under the co-regulatory model, code complaints should first go to the licensee. If a complainant is dissatisfied with the response, then a complaint can be made to the ACMA.

The 'privacy' provisions of the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice apply to news and current affairs programs.

The ACMA has no further comment to make on the matter at this time."

UPDATED 8/12

In what is a very sad turn of events, one of the hospital staff who took the Hot 30's prank call earlier this week, has died in a suspected suicide. Read about it here
The first contract is worth 51m and covers the 1.7km two-station extension from Tafourah Grande Poste to Place des Martyrs, which is due to open in late 2017 The second 117m contract covers the 3.6km three-station Hai El Badr - Ain Naadja 2 branch south of the city, which is also due to be completed in October 2017.

Colas Rail's share of the two contracts is worth 89m and covers the installation of railway infrastructure, power supplies, ventilation and smoke extraction, fare collection, together with project coordination and system integration.
Strukton Rail will pay 32m for the shares, which are due to be transferred at the end of June. The transaction will be completed by June 2017 and a bank guarantee for the full purchase price will be provided as security.

CLF generated turnover of 150m last year, providing construction, renewal and maintenance services for heavy rail and light rail customers in Italy, Algeria, Bulgaria, Morocco, and Venezuela. The company employs around 600 staff covering a range of engineering disciplines including civil engineering, trackwork, electrification, signalling, and telecommunications.
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When the social impact bond at Peterborough Prison was announced in 2010, it was the first of its kind in the world. Social impact bonds are payment-by-results initiativeswhere a social intervention is financed up-front by private investors who stand to achieve a return on their investment if the intervention works.

The potential benefits from this way of financing social service provision include the ability for government commissioners to redistribute financial risk when trying a new initiative, and the provision of new forms of capital to be activated to finance public services and achieve social good.

Since the Peterborough social impact bond initiative began, at least 44 social impact bond programmes have been put in operation, with more in development. While these are mostly in the UK, they have also taken root elsewhere, primarily in the United States. The approach represents an innovation in financial mechanisms used to fund social services.

The development of social impact bonds has been accompanied by claims that they would encourage innovation in the social interventions that they pay for. However, whether social impact bonds themselves encourage innovation remains unclear. A recent Brookings Institute report highlighted that social impact bonds have not generally encouraged innovation in service delivery, and our own research into the Peterborough initiative raises questions about the role of social impact bonds in creating innovative services.

The Peterborough social impact bond financed a pilot initiative to reduce reoffending. This involved individualised through the gate support for prisoners before, during and after their release from prison. The initiative provided help with housing, substance misuse, finance and employment, among other issues. Many aspects of the Peterborough initiative were innovative, or new and different compared to what was previously available. The pilot introduced a new servicethere was previously no such support for short-sentenced prisoners in the area. Another innovative feature was that the social intervention was adapted and changed in response to local conditions and the needs of prisoners, for example, by adding a job-training initiative.

However, providing individualised and responsive services and encouraging flexibility in the implementation of programmes are not unique to social impact bond initiatives. Indeed, virtually all of the innovations identified at Peterborough (other than the social impact bond financing mechanism) can be found in other traditionally funded initiativesnot financed with social impact bondscurrently or previously in place in the UK. Our findings suggest that innovation might be more likely to be present within initiatives that are novel (such as pilot programs), involve dedicated and enthusiastic partners and a focus on outcomes. Social impact bonds are one tool that can encourage these sorts of initiatives.

Based on our research for a RAND Europe evaluation of the Peterborough pilot, there is no strong reason to believe that social impact bond financing was essential to these innovations being realised in Peterborough. These new practices would have been possible whether the funds had come from a social impact bond, another social or impact investment vehicle, another kind of payment-by-results contract, or direct funding from government. Additionally, social impact bonds are not used only to finance innovative interventionsa number are supporting programmes that have an established evidence base or have been tested elsewhere.

The important questions arising from our findings in Peterborough are:

How can the fresh-thinking evidenced in some social impact bonds be replicated in interventions financed or funded in other ways?

What can service commissioners and delivery organisations learn from social impact bond environments?

How can these lessons be put into place as part of different approaches to commissioning and funding public services?

Another key message stemming from our research is the need to evaluate the social impact bond financing approach separately from the impacts of the interventions they finance. This would test whether the same interventions under a different financing or funding approach might bring similar results.

Social impact bonds are one of many potential vehicles available to finance or fund public services, and have emerged at a time when government finances are stretched. However, there is limited supporting evidence to support the assumption made by some proponents that social impact bonds offer a particularly effective way to spur innovation in service provision and will only have beneficial effects. Those involved in the development and delivery of social impact bonds should challenge such assumptions, and seek to generate and use robust evidence about the impacts of social impact bond financing on service delivery and outcomes.

Moreover, the innovations and social interventions developed in social impact bond-financed initiatives may be applied to other service delivery contexts. The learning and innovations identified in the Peterborough pilot can therefore inform future policy initiatives aimed at reducing reoffendingregardless of how they are funded.

Emma Disley is a research leader and Chris Giacomantonio is a senior analyst in RAND Europe's Communities, Safety and Justice programme. They are also contributing to an ongoing evaluation of social impact bonds in health and social care in the UK.

Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Russia is a great power whose reach now exceeds its grasp. Although capable of bold moves, it is beset by strains.

In 2016, Moscow will face pressures to align ambitions with means, but this will require reforms, a doubtful prospect. The West has a stake in Russia's course, but can influence it only at the margin.

Russia's current policies put at risk three key ambitionsmaterial well-being, political stability and the ability to exercise power and influence abroad.

In the first year after he came to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin oversaw a steady rise in Russia's standard of living, fueled by higher prices for raw materials exports and accumulated economic reforms.

Since he returned to the Russian presidency in 2011, the economy has moved into crisis. Politics are driving too much economic policy and wasteful state enterprises squeeze the private sector. The oil-price drop and Ukraine-related sanctions weaken the commodity-driven economy, already sapped by policy rigidity, corruption and criminality. GDP in 2015 declined by four percent.

The outlook for 2016 might improve slightly, but downward risks will remain. Oil prices may stay low. Western sanctions are likely to persist. Perceiving high risk, investors on whom Russia depends to spur growth are reluctant. Proposed gas projects with China and Turkey are foundering, and the planned Nordstream 2 gas pipeline to Germany is controversial.

Except for terrorism and insurgency in parts of the North Caucasus, Russia appears outwardly stable. The anti-Putin demonstrations by tens of thousands of peaceful protesters in 201112 are no more.

After Russia's intervention in Syria, an official poll claimed that Putin's popularity had risen to almost 90 percent, though propagandistic state media can affect public attitudes and the results may have been influenced by respondents' concerns with expressing a negative opinion.

Hints of discontent, however, are evident. A recent trucker strike over a new tax sparked the largest public protest in recent years; a poll showed a majority of respondents backing the drivers.

Though little publicized, social protests around the country have risen. The government is preparing the security forces in case of disturbances again around Duma elections, set for later this year. At an elite level, the war in Ukraine and the economic downturn have caused unease, but those dissatisfied are disorganized or intimidated.

Russia's influence abroad is ebbing. An imperial mindset and insensitivity explain why. In 2005, Putin claimed the collapse of the Soviet empire was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

In 2008 he told then-President George W. Bush, "Ukraine is not even a country." Last year Putin said Kazakhstan had never been a state until President Nursultan Nazarbayev assumed power. Such attitudes stir resentment.

Moscow's biggest stumble is in Ukraine. After the surprise, bloodless takeover of Crimea two years ago, the Kremlin became over-confident. It attacked eastern Ukraine with proxies and then its own forces, but Ukrainian defenders fought them to a standstill.

Russia has now lost much of its influence in Ukraine. A Pew poll last spring found that even in Ukraine's east, 61 percent of respondents viewed Russia unfavorably.

Despite Russian occupation forces in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, all three have Association Agreements that bring them closer to the European Union. One reward is visa-free access. Other neighbors oppose some of Moscow's wishes.

Belarus is resisting a Russian air base; Kazakhstan is stymying Putin's aim to expand the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) into a political and currency union; a new Lithuanian terminal for liquefied natural gas frees the Baltic states from Russia's gas monopoly; and a million ethnic Russians live in the Baltics, but show no interest in joining Russia.

Moscow's hopes have been frustrated elsewhere. In the wake of sanctions Russia turned to the East, but China is exploiting its isolation and offering little financing. Meanwhile, Beijing is investing billions of dollars in Central Asia, displacing Russia's influence.

When Bashar al-Assad's legions in Syria were reeling, Russian forces intervened. Together, however, they have not regained much lost territory. Iran may be drawing down its fighters, leaving Moscow more exposed. Russia is not powerful enough to succeed in Syria unless it works with the international community to find a political settlement that moves beyond the Assad era.

In all three contextsdomestic politics, economics and foreign policyRussia is losing ground, but some of its leaders may not recognize this. Moscow has made some concessions to reality, such as floating the overvalued ruble, cutting the state budget and dialing down attacks in eastern Ukraine.

Russia can take other steps to strengthen its position, such as withdrawing from Ukraine, privatizing inefficient state enterprises, improving the investment climate and nurturing an EEU that lowers trade barriers and treats all members fairly.

This will not be easy for the Kremlin. It has replaced the earlier social contract, which promised people a rising standard of living in exchange for staying out of politics, with one based on rebuilding Russia as a great power. To back down could put at risk the current leadership, but policy stasis will hasten decline.

In an interview with the German magazine Bild on January 12, Putin indicated that he wanted to improve relations with the West, but that it first must acknowledge the injustice of its approach to Russia and remove sanctions.

This will not fly. The West will not sacrifice its values, but may be willing to accommodate legitimate interests. For example, the West is likely to maintain sanctions related to aggression in Ukraine, but seems ready to end them if and when Russia withdraws.

Russia will have a difficult year, but can take a number of steps to make it better.

If Moscow is willing to cooperate on Syria, the West should allow it a key role in the peace process. With effort and with bona fide, legitimate intent to solve the problem on both sides, it's possible in these next months to find those Minsk agreements implemented.

William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, and a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia. Donald Jensen is a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

This commentary originally appeared on Newsweek on January 24, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
The forthcoming European Council meeting (EU Summit) on 1819 February will present a final opportunity for UK Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss a programme of reforms within the European Union (EU), as the UK heads towards a stay-leave referendum likely to be held later this year.

At the top of the list of reforms is the UK's call for a ban on EU migrants receiving in-work benefits in the UK until they have been in the country for four years. Some within the UK government argue that this would act as a disincentive for EU citizens considering coming to the UK, but others argue that it unfairly discriminates.

It looks likely that Cameron will have to be flexible on his demands or drop them altogether, amid warnings from Brussels that resistance to the plan is being voiced from all the other EU member states. Nevertheless the UK Prime Minister is expected to make a final push at the EU summit with a number of Europe's leaders.

Cameron's position on EU migrants coming to the UK raises a number of questions. Can the access to welfare benefits be negotiated within the EU? What are the EU migrants' rights and how are they exercised? Do EU migrants move to the UK and other member states to claim social benefits? If so, then is it the main motive behind their move?

What are EU migrants' rights?

The freedom of movement is one of four fundamental EU freedoms and a core element of the EU citizenship concept. It gives rights to EU nationals to move and reside freely within the territory of the EU and European Economic Area member states. However, as defined in the EU Directive 2004/38/EC, Freedom of Movement cuts opportunities for welfare tourism by stating that member states are not obliged to grant social assistance to economically non-active citizens during their first three months of residence in the host country. Furthermore, a recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union states that EU member states can block jobless immigrants from receiving specific welfare benefits. The ruling stressed that freedom of movement is not an unrestricted right to use the welfare systems and claim benefits in host countries.

The ruling could make it more difficult for the UK to negotiate tougher rules to exclude EU migrants from parts of its benefit system. The UK has already tightened the rules on benefit access so EU migrants have to wait three months after their arrival before they can claim child benefit and child tax credits. Of more significance could be the ethical issue of blocking EU migrant access to the UK's safety nets, even when they do pay into the economy through income taxes.

Are EU migrants really coming to drain the UK's welfare system?

RAND Europe's recent study on the socioeconomic inclusion of migrant EU workers in the UK concluded that access to social benefits is not the key factor for migration decisions.

As part of our study, we surveyed EU migrants in Leeds with the majority (84.1 per cent) of respondents reporting that the availability and level of social services had no influence on their decisions to live in the UK. Only a very small proportion (5.7 per cent) of respondents agreed that social benefits had a very strong impact on their migration decision. An additional 10.2 per cent reported that social benefits were a factor, but not a major one.

Our study also found a relatively low uptake of social benefits among EU migrants. The majority (67 per cent) of respondents did not receive any benefits in the UK. Among those who received benefits, the largest share (26.1 per cent) were recipients of child benefit, which is available to all UK adults with a parental responsibility if their individual annual income is below 50,000. Only a small number of respondents received any other social benefits in the UK.

A potential explanation for the low benefit uptake, as suggested by stakeholders interviewed for our study, is that the changes in the national legislation create additional incentives for migrant EU workers to find jobs. Secondly, our study found that those EU migrants who abused the system and used social benefits were stigmatised by their own compatriots, which discouraged such behaviour.

These results are in line with other studies looking at the impact of EU migrants on the UK's welfare system. Dustmann & Frattini (PDF) (2014) noted the strong positive contribution to the UK's economy made by migrants from Central and Eastern European countries; a European Commission report showed that the majority of EU migrants move to other member states for employment purposes; and a NORFACE research report (PDF) showed that migrants from Central and Eastern European member states have, on average, a greater probability of employment than similar natives in the UK.

Can a deal on access to in-work benefits for EU migrants be reached?

Likely opposition from EU member states and a lack of evidence over EU migrants coming to the UK to access benefits could put Cameron in a difficult negotiating position in seeking to change the rules on welfare benefits. However, it could be argued that, based on evidence, EU migrants receive fewer benefits than the indigenous population, so the new reforms being pursued by Cameron will not make much of a difference. This might make it more likely for the UK Prime Minister to secure some sort of deal on the issue.

No doubt talks will continue in the run-up to the forthcoming EU Summit, but the discussions should be based on the best evidence available rather than political rhetoric.

Barbara Janta is a senior analyst at RAND Europe. She has been involved in a number of studies for the European Commission and other European organisations on employment, migration, childcare and family policies. Janta is currently completing a doctoral study at the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research focusing on the integration of EU migrants in the UK.

Emma Harte is an associate analyst at RAND Europe. She has been involved in a number of studies focused on higher education, migration and innovation since joining RAND Europe. Harte holds a M.Sc. in comparative European politics with a focus on EU policy-making and pre-election pledges.

This commentary originally appeared on E!Sharp on January 25, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Singapore will cease analogue television broadcasts by the end of 2017, the Ministry of Communications and Information has said.



National broadcaster Mediacorp converted all seven of its free-to-air (FTA) TV channels to the digital terrestrial transmission ( DTT ) format in December 2013, but has also continued to broadcast in analogue. This will end next year.The freed-up spectrum will provide more capacity for mobile broadband and better support our Smart Nation development, said Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim.Until now, the ministry has said that analogue broadcasting in Singapore could be turned off before 2020.To continue watching FTA television channels after digital migration, viewers will need to buy either a new TV set with a built-in digital tuner or connect a digital set-top box (STB) and an indoor antenna to their existing TV sets.A label issued by the Media Development Authority (MDA) indicates whether the TV set or STB is compliant with Singapore's digital format.MDA also offers free digital STBs to low-income households, and claims to have installed digital TV receivers to almost half of the 77,000 homes that automatically qualified for assistance. Those eligible who have not yet received an STB are urged to apply to the MDA.According to Mediacorp, 21 housing estates, or 65% of all households in Singapore, can already receive digital TV transmissions.Subscribers to Singtel or StarHubs existing digital pay-TV services comprise about 60% of the island population.
Trial of alleged organizer of 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis set for February

MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul)  The Moscow District Military Court has scheduled for February 19 the hearing of a case against Khasan Zakayev, the alleged mastermind of the hostage seizure at the Dubrovka theater in southeast Moscow in 2002 that left 130 dead, victims lawyer Igor Trunov told RAPSI on Monday.

Zakayevs detention was earlier extended until March 18.

A group of terrorists led by Movsar Barayev took hostage the audience and participants of the Nord-Ost musical on October 23, 2002.

40 attackers were killed. Zakayev is the only one who was arrested, Trunov said earlier.

The majority of hostages were released in an operation planned by Russian security services.

Chechen separatist leader Shamil Basayev who was reportedly killed in 2006 and Gerikhan Dudayev who is still at large are among the organizers of the attack, according to investigators.
State Duma Committee approves bill adjusting Russian Criminal Code

Context Putin proposes to increase threshold for grave economic crimes

MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI)  The State Duma Committee on Civil, Criminal, Commercial and Procedural Law has recommended that the lower house pass in the first reading a bill adjusting Russian Criminal Code aimed at decriminalizing a number of offences, RIA Novosti reported Monday.

Under the bill, administrative sanctions instead of criminal penalties are proposed in particular for such offences as battery, threat of homicide or injury, malicious evasion from payment of alimony, use of forged documents.

President Vladimir Putin in his annual address to members of the parliament on December 3 asked lawmakers to endorse the Supreme Courts initiative to decriminalize some articles of the Criminal Code. Putin said that the law must be harsh to those who committed heavy crimes as well as be humane to those who made a false step.
At this years Insurtech Connect conference, Insider Engage spoke to Pranav Pasricha, Swiss Re's global head property and casualty solutions, Reinsurance, to discuss why the protection gap is the biggest challenge the reinsurance industry faces today and how Swiss Re is using technology to support clients to respond to new and emerging threats.
Despite calling the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century, Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently considers the process that gave birth to the USSR as containing the reason for its eventual demise.

It turns out Putin dislikes the idea of autonomy that was at the core of the creation of the 15 Soviet republics and numerous administrative units that eventually made up the Soviet Union. Many such autonomous regions were formed in accordance with ethnicity and nationality; non-Russian populations formed official republics such as Armenia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine, and many regions across Soviet Russia, such as Tatarstan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, and many others, followed the same principle. Speaking at the Council on Science and Education a few days ago, Putin was surprisingly critical of the role of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of Soviet Revolution and the Soviet Union's creator. Responding to a comment that Russian leadership should attempt to control the direction of "national thought" - i.e. public opinion - Putin said it is indeed necessary to control the flow of ideas, but only so that such measures can lead to correct results, "and not as happened under Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin's leadership]."

Said Putin: "Ultimately, many such ideas led to the collapse of the Soviet Union - thoughts like autonomy and so on. This laid an atomic bomb under the foundation of the Russian state that blew up later on."

Perhaps Putin is having second thoughts about the independence shown, in actions and in public statements, by leaders of certain autonomous regions across Russia - Chechnya especially. Under Putin's leadership, Russia crushed Chechen military opposition in the war of 1999-2000. Moscow then forged a strongly pro-Russia region by giving almost complete autonomy to Chechen leadership under its president, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Today, Kadyrov is one of the most staunchly pro-Putin and pro-Russian politicians in the country, even as his increasing prominence and closeness to Putin is making many Russians uncomfortable. Last week, Kadyrov organized a massive rally in Grozny, Chechnya's capital. According to official press release by Chechen administration, "the demonstrators are going to express their unconditional support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the head of the Chechen Republic, Hero of Russia Ramzan Kadyrov, in an effort to counter the hostility against our country by hostile forces and to encourage all to rally around the leadership of Russia and present a united front against representatives of destructive forces that recently launched a full-scale information war against the Russian Federation."

It is worth noting that as similar demonstrations across the Russian Federation support Putin and the Russian state, this rally takes place in the very city that was nearly razed to the ground in the First Chechen War and was seriously damaged in the second confrontation. Ethnic Chechens and the Russian military could hardly have been further apart, in that stretch of history, in their feelings toward the Russian state.

Fast forward to 2016, and Kadyrov is acting as one of the sole safeguards of the country that previous Chechen leaders wanted to leave by all means necessary. His administration spared no words to name those who "harm the Russian state:"

"These political imbeciles with the names Shenderovich, Navalny, Khodorkovsky [the last two are in the liberal opposition], and other traitors decided to recast our country into the abyss of bloody ethnic and religious strife. These people decided to sweep away our statehood and our sovereignty. They opened their mouth against our national leaders, President Vladimir Putin, and the national and spiritual leader of the people of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. No coup will pass in Russia! We have a national leader!"

Its worth noting that Putin was not quizzed on his antipathy towards autonomies in his speech at the Council on Science and Education - otherwise the issue of Chechnya would probably have to be discussed openly. On one hand, this autonomous region and its leadership are now part of Russia and are pro-Putin - but only two decades ago they fought for independence in one of the bloodiest modern conflicts. Go figure...

(AP photo)
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Wealthy Brazilians reportedly have found a new place they consider "the safest place to invest": Miami, South Florida. Due to the unstable economy at home, they have discovered that Florida is a viable place to pour in their money for real estate investment.

According to STL Today, the Miami market has exploded since last year, as Brazil market worsened. Brazilians have bought real estate properties even if they cost them 50 percent more in dollars.

In line to this real estate phenomenon, Anthony Graziano, executive director at Integra Realty Resources, explained that, "There really is no other place to put money. Stocks are getting hammered. Bonds are getting high. What is the equity play if there's an ultra-high-net-worth investor? Buy one-of-a-kind luxury real estate."

This explains why wealthy Brazilians consider South Florida, or Miami in particular, as the safest place to put their money in for business investment. The equity-based profit can be higher in this place than in their home country. South Florida is profitable to make money grow through real estate.

Meanwhile, CNBC reported that not only Brazilians but also wealthy people from other countries consider this place as the best for investment. According to the report, more Colombians, Argentinians, Mexicans, Venezuelans, French and Turks are fleeing their home countries and booking a direct flight to Miami.

On the contrary, Ned Murray, associate director of Florida International University's Metropolitan Center, said: "We're not seeing the benefits of that income being disposed of in the local economy. That impacts local businesses, and we're losing opportunities to create year-round housing for our workers. They're moving out," he said.

The influx of wealthy people from other countries can cause the local Miamians to lose grip on house cost. There would be fewer housing options for the local folks, as a result.
A holiday weekend worth $30 million in a Mexican villa is really amazing. The six-bedroom seaside Airbnb villa rents for $40,000 a week.The pad comes with a home theater, two outdoor infinity pools, and a chef who cooks for them farm-to-table meals.

The Oscar winner Paltrow and her beau Falchuk, the co-creator of "American Horror Story," were spotted romping on the beach as Paltrow took some sunset shots with her daughter, Apple.

Wearing a skimpy white bikini, Paltrow and Falchuk have managed to soak up the high temperatures of a beach in Mexico.

The Mirror reports that the 43-year-old award-winning actress showed off her toned body while relaxing in a Mexican villa with her producer boyfriend.

Beautifully located 40 miles north of Puerto Vallarta, the villa, which has six bedrooms and seven baths, is listed from $5,000 to $12,000 a night. Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk were all smiles as they spent a wonderful day at the beach cuddling together on a lounge chair, and even shared kisses, as reported by Web India.

Last April, Paltrow was spotted at her favourite destination in Mexico with former husband Chris Martin, along with their children, Apple and Moses.

Actually, Gwyneth Paltrow was not only vacationing in Mexico with her beau Brad Falchuk, but she also brought along her children and enjoyed a wonderful stay in a gorgeous lodge right on the ocean.

According to Wonder Wall, throughout the weekend, the 'Iron Man' actress shared snaps of the luxurious vacation villa in Mexico with her children, including a shoutout to the rental service, Airbnb. On one snap, it showed her daughter Apple being embraced by Gwyneth as they watched a sunset.

Photos of the seaside Mexican estate show the luxurious interiors, ornate decor and beautiful views of the Mexican palace. The luxurious Mexican villa can be rented out via Airbnb for the price of just $40,000 a week.
A year ago, 1.1 million migrants from Syria-essentially Arabs, Afghans and Africans-came to Germany to escape war and the harsh living conditions, a large number of them taking a chance with their lives to make the unsafe voyage. Powers have mixed to cater to the convergence and Chancellor Angela Merkel is confronting developing public discontent from the migrants, especially after the alleged part of foreign-born men in the mass strikes in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

However, a number of those who arrived discovered that the nation doesn't meet their unrealistic expectations. The migrants dismiss humble benefits, poor employment prospects, and brutal treatment at migration offices, and voice different complaints against mediocre food and the Germans' open dispositions about sex.

Some late arrivals are currently mulling over leaving, aggravating the heavy burden laid on the nation in taking in the overwhelming and ongoing influx of war migrants.

Financial analysts have cautioned that transients with low working skills stand minimal possibility of successfully finding employments. While some political leaders say the new migrants will balance a deficiency of German skilled workers later on, but critics say they could pose a great burden to German taxpayers too.

As it occurs to some fresh migrants that it could take months for them to leave their relocation camps and perhaps years before they are permitted to bring over their families or at least learn the language, some surrender and prefer to go back to Syria instead.
Protesters gathered at the Arch to mourn the lives lost as a result of the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.
The chaos that broke loose in Paris on Nov. 13 killed more than 120 people, but the effects have been ringing worldwide and hit students at the University of Georgia.
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Sierra Pacific disputes findings by environmental group

By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight

A Shasta County environmental group has issued a new report claiming clear-cut logging in the Battle Creek area is hurting water quality in streams.

Marily Woodhouse, one of the founders of the Manton-based Battle Creek Alliance, said the report highlights the need for more water-quality monitoring in the entire watershed. Also, the amount of sediment in the creek is rising "a little bit at least," she said.

Cajun James, Sierra Pacific Industries' manager of research and monitoring, ripped the alliance report, saying it was not based on actual field work and research.

"I don't think it's anything new. I think most of it's theoretical and modeling and not spending a lot of time out there," James said. "I actually view this report as pretty counter-productive."

The Battle Creek Alliance has been taking water samples from creeks in the watershed for nearly three years, and tests on those samples show clear-cut logging in the watershed has caused sediment levels in streams to rise, which hurts salmon and steelhead, Woodhouse said.

State agencies and Sierra Pacific of Anderson, which has logged the area for many years, are not adequately monitoring the quality of water in streams to see if logging and logging roads are leaching sediment into creeks, she said.

"It's geared so it shows as little effect as possible," Woodhouse said Thursday of the stream monitoring in the area. Battle Creek marks the boundary between Shasta and Tehama counties, in the southeast part of Shasta County.

The alliance hired Reno hydrologist Tom Myers to write the report, which Woodhouse said she plans to send to state officials to continue to put pressure on them to protect Battle Creek.

"We want the cumulative impacts (of logging) to be honestly assessed for once," Woodhouse said.

But officials at Sierra Pacific said they do monitor water quality in the Battle Creek watershed and that a report written by four state agencies in November backs up SPI's claim that logging is not sending sediment into creeks in the area at high levels.

James said Page 12 in the report backed up her assertion that the report is based only on modeling and theory.

"I also visited the watershed on April 11, 2012, during a light rainstorm, to see the sites at which the Battle Creek Alliance had been collecting turbidity data," Page 12 says.

"The visit was a windshield survey of the watershed to look at hydrologic features and sediment transport visible from the county roads. The streams were lightly turbid due to the rainfall. No water samples were collected for use in this study," the report says.

The report also echoes Woodhouse's claim there is little data on water quality, saying "there is not sufficient detail in the measurements of either flow or precipitation to detect changes due to management."

A report written by state officials last fall concluded dirt roads and tractor crossings were contributing to sediment making its way into streams. But the report did not point to clear-cut logging as the cause of stream sedimentation.

State Natural Resources Agency Secretary John Laird called for that report in the summer of 2011 after a story and editorial in the Sacramento Bee raised concerns that clear-cut logging was harming water quality in the Battle Creek watershed.

The report was written by officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, state Department of Fish and Game, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California Geological Survey.

The report says high sediment levels could hurt salmon and steelhead in streams. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has plans to spend about $128 million removing dams and installing fish ladders on Battle Creek to bring salmon and steelhead back into the watershed.

The task force spent five days in September 2011 assessing "the potential for water-quality impacts at 135 sites they determined to have a high risk for sediment delivery to waters of the state," the state report says.

The report says the task force found only one instance of "low magnitude sediment delivery" into a creek from clear-cutting.

Woodhouse criticized the state report because it was done in September, when the amount of water in streams is lowest, and officials spent only five days in the area and didn't collect information from the streams most affected by logging.

State officials need to do more monitoring to take into account the cumulative effects of logging on the entire watershed, Woodhouse said. She said the current monitoring is piecemeal and incomplete.

Robert Crandall, the regional water quality control board's assistant executive, said Thursday he couldn't comment on the Battle Creek Alliance report because no one in his office had read it yet. They received the report about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, he said.

Officials with Cal Fire could not be reached for comment.
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After reading the article "Occupied refuge has ranchers' respect," it's clearer than ever to me that the Oregon refuge occupation has nothing to do with federal overreach or the management of public lands. As the Jan. 17 article attests, the Oregon ranchers have been working with the federal government for a long time and apparently to the satisfaction, if not complete jubilation, of all concerned.

Here's my take on public land: It's mine and yours. And we rely on the people we elect to manage the land for the benefit of all, for generations to come.

And according to the article, that is exactly what our public servants have been doing. Grazing is not prohibited; it's allowed and encouraged in areas where it will benefit the land.

Let's also remember that the land that is now wildlife refuge was owned by ranchers whose cattle devastated the landscape through overgrazing, and was then purchased by the government as a bailout. Ranchers were rescued, not ripped off  unlike the Paiute.

Please folks, if you haven't, read this article. Who would have thought that you could protect a threatened bird and keep it off the Endangered Species Act with the help of ranchers who are more than willing to improve sage grouse habitat because it also improves grazing pasture.

"What's good for the bird is good for the herd."

Amen.

But of course the ranchers have to pay for the privilege to use, not abuse  by lighting it on fire  public land. I don't think that's unreasonable. I mean, I would never dream of asking, but I'm pretty sure the government would not buy my cows a free lunch.

I'm also pretty sure that most ranchers don't object to the idea of buying their cattle feed, unless of course their name is Bundy.

So why is Ammon Bundy really in Oregon? The Bundys are convicted criminals. Remember they still owe us, the public, for feeding their cows. Could it be that Ammon Bundy is really rallying troops to fight with him against his families' looming criminal consequences? I don't believe the idea is at all far-fetched.

The Bundys and their cowboy thugs somehow got the notion that liberty is "telling it like you think it is" while you wave a gun in the air. Our founding fathers, who these so-called patriots supposedly love and admire so much, gave us a system to address our grievances in our pursuits of happiness. I'm pretty sure that system doesn't allow for policy by armed demand.

So militia men, please, enough with the "tyranny" and "no this or that without representation." You get to vote just like me, right? And when the Bundys are in jail, we can all bring them cookies.

Mike Withers lives in Redding.
'Now with social media opening up the frontiers of the world, everything good or bad you do or say travels.'

'We don't have any code of conduct for brand ambassadors. . . but overseas, lawyers on both sides would ensure that there is a certain code of conduct that needs to be followed.'

'The problem with all the Incredible India advertising, on which we spend an incredible amount of money, is that we don't have focus.'

Defending the government's decision to replace Aamir Khan as the face of the Incredible India campaign, Amitabh Kant, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion, recently said that Khan had damaged India's brand identity by describing the country as intolerant.

"The brand diplomat must be the best brand envoy for advancing India; he can't be the destroyer of the brand," Kant said.

Sandeep Goyal (below, left), owner-promoter of the Mogae Group and founder and former chairman of Dentsu India, speaks with Veenu Sandhu on Khan's exit from the campaign and the logic of replacing him with another celebrity.

Excerpts:

Do you think Aamir Khan (left) harmed India's image through his statements and should be replaced?

Replacing him because he has said something that has hurt the image of India is correct from a political standpoint.

He is, after all, the ambassador for India who is standing up and saying this is an intolerant country.

Till yesterday, these things didn't really matter because what you said or did was largely confined to a newspaper or TV.

But now with social media opening up the frontiers of the world, everything good or bad you do or say travels.

The damage has certainly been done because your own brand ambassador is running you down.

If he doesn't stand by the brand he endorses, then he does not have any right to continue.

The problem is that we don't have any code of conduct for brand ambassadors, not that the world over anywhere they have it.

But overseas, lawyers on both sides would ensure that there is a certain code of conduct that needs to be followed.

What thought goes into selecting a country's brand ambassador?

When he (Khan) was selected, they would have gone through some kind of a decision-making process.

Yet, I would say that 99.99 per cent of the people overseas (the target audience of the campaign) wouldn't know who Aamir Khan is.

To a layman overseas, whether it is Aamir Khan or Shah Rukh Khan doesn't really matter.

They wouldn't know whether the guy is a celebrity or has phenomenal brand value.

So, the choice of Khan might have been for reasons other than brand value.

Often, people are selected because they are a convenient solution.

My PhD thesis is on human brands and I can tell you that the decision-making around brand ambassadors is not always scientific or based on any concrete research or empirical feedback.

In that case, would replacing Khan with another celebrity help?

Khan is just one part of the whole discussion and what does it matter if he gets replaced by Amitabh Bachchan (whose name is doing the rounds, along with Priyanka Chopra's).

I frankly don't understand what Bachchan will do.

Maybe I am too irreverent, but that's the way it is.

The simple and credible way to go about it is to have high-quality PR agencies in countries we hope to tap putting out relevant articles.

When it comes to country branding, where we are going wrong?

When you globally promote a brand, you need to focus on the four pillars of building a brand: differentiation, relevance, knowledge and esteem.

What is India's biggest differentiator: it's the Taj Mahal.

Yet, only 23 per cent of the people today who visit India actually go to the Taj.

I went to Machu Picchu in Peru last year.

It's just an abandoned ruin on the top of a mountain. I am being uncharitable, but let's be honest, that's all it is. Yet, Machu Picchu draws probably a hundred times as much money as the Taj does.

An NRI friend who was visiting recently told me that getting into the Taj was the biggest nightmare of his life.

The people tasked with assisting tourists were brusque and unhelpful.

So, the single most important differentiation we have is the Taj and look at the way we treat people who come to see it.

It's pathetic.

Whether you run a campaign or not, at the end of the day it is the experience, feedback and word of mouth that eventually carries.

The problem with all the Incredible India advertising, on which we spend an incredible amount of money, is that we don't have focus.

It's just a lot of money spent without enough strategy on how and why we are doing it.

So, whether you use a brand ambassador or don't, it doesn't matter.

If you want to get the average Joe on the streets of, say, New York to come to your country, you have to look at what his options are and where India stacks up on that -- in terms of differentiation and relevance.
India has been spearheading the campaign at international fora for automatic exchange of information with a view to check tax evasion.

India and France on Monday pledged to explore new avenues for cooperation to strengthen exchange of information to prevent off-shore tax evasion.

"Recognising the shared commitment of India and France to cooperate in preventing off-shore tax evasion and the steps taken by both countries to strengthen exchange of information in recent years, the two leaders agreed to explore further avenues for joint co-operation, especially in capacity building and sharing of best practices, in line with G20 commitments," said the joint statement.

India-France joint statement was issued on the occasion of the state visit of French President Francois Hollande in New Delhi.

India has been spearheading the campaign at international fora for automatic exchange of information with a view to check tax evasion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hollande expressed their commitment to carry forward the dialogue on the EU-India Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA).

Recently, the chief negotiators of India and EU took stock of the outstanding issues, including duty cut on automobiles and movement of professionals, that have held up talks on the proposed pact.

"France and India are committed to bring about a resumption of the negotiations as soon as possible," it said.

The statement also underlined the need for increasing bilateral economic engagement.

The two leaders welcomed the conclusion of a MoU on cooperation in urban development between Telangana and the Bordeaux Metropole.

The two leaders emphasised that more such initiatives should be taken to enhance the economic ties.

Recalling the commitments made in the Indo-French Joint Statement issued in April 2015 for closer economic engagement, the leaders noted with satisfaction, the involvement of French companies in several new and ongoing projects in India in keeping with the 'Make in India' initiative.

They highlighted the attractiveness of France for Indian investors, especially in terms of leveraging French technological expertise and competencies.

Reaffirming their commitment to facilitating a conducive environment for enhancing bilateral trade and investment, the two countries appreciated the convening of a dialogue on economic and financial issues at a higher level on cooperation in economy and finance.

"This framework will be the forum to discuss, on an annual basis, global and financial governance issues as well as bilateral economic and financial matters, to promote exchanges and cross investments between our two countries and address any hurdles between French and Indian businesses and industries," it said.

Further, both the sides called for increasing investments in preventive healthcare, research and exchange of technical knowledge in the field of food safety.
Keep your virginity and get awarded.

Students protest over planned increases in tuition fees in Stellenbosch University, South Africa, October 23, 2015. Photograph: Mike Hutchings / Reuters

There's a new scheme that awards scholarships to virgin women in South Africa.

Under the scheme a South African mayor has awarded scholarships to 16 young women for remaining virgin till they complete their studies.

The scholarship has been introduced this year to encourage others to be "pure and focus on school", and has been awarded to young women from the Uthukela district in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, reports News.com.au.

The young women, who applied for the scholarships voluntarily, stayed virgins and agreed to have regular virginity tests to keep their funding, Uthukela Mayor Dudu Mazibuko told in an interview.

South Africa's department of basic education recorded about 20,000 pregnancies among girls and young women in schools in 2014, with 223 pregnant girls still in primary school, according to the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Though some activists have called for the banning of virginity testing in South Africa, the mayor said that it is constitutional if tested with consent.

Those defending the cultural practice say that it preserves tradition and has been modernised to teach girls about their reproductive health and HIV and AIDS.

Lead image used for representational purposes only.
It's time you included Tamil Nadu in your 2016 travel list!

The New York Times (NYT) recently published a list of '52 Places to Go in 2016'.

And guess what!

India's 'cultural core' Tamil Nadu is at number 24 -- it is the only Indian state to make it to the list!

According to NYT, Tamil Nadu has a 'rich and undiscovered history' and is a 'state where India's major temples and cultural complexes are -- some so large that they're considered mini-cities'.

Wondering what they're hinting at?

We give you 20 reasons why Tamil Nadu should be on your bucket list this year.

1. Meenakshi Amman temple

Photograph: Courtesy Ashok Prabhakaran/Creative Commons

The Meenakshi Amman temple at Madurai is special for many reasons.

First: It is one of the few temples that has received the International Organisation for Standardisation 9001:2008 certification.

Second: It has a 3,600 year old history.

Third: It features a museum that houses 1,000 pillars. Yes, you heard that right.

If you visiting Madurai, a temple crawl is a must.

And when your tired feet give way, try Madurai's favourite roadside drink, Jigarthanda.

2. Mahabalipuram

Photograph: Courtesy Jean-Pierre Dalbera/Creative Commons

The town of Mahabalipuram is known for its stone architecture -- you can call it the 'stone-sculpturing capital of India'.

Take a tour of the temples while you are at Mahabalipuram, but don't miss the Five Rathas, a set of temples, which are craved out of a single slab of granite.

3. Thanjavur's Brihadeeswarar Temple

Photograph: Courtesy Hafiz Issadeen/Creative Commons

Once upon a time, Thanjavur was the capital of the Chola Dynasty.

Thanjavur's Brihadeeswarar Temple, which is dedicated to Lord Shiva, boasts of stone carvings painstakingly done by the mighty Cholas.

From traditional dance forms to paintings, here, you can experience the magnificence of arts and culture at its peak.

Tanjavur, for the lesser known is also the birth place of naadi astrology.

4. The world's best idlis and dosas

Photograph: Courtesy Meghan Wilker/Creative Commons

What's a visit to Tamil Nadu without tasting idlis and dosas.

Eat an idli in Tamil Nadu and you'll never want to try the idlis available anywhere else in the country.

Soft and fluffy, the idlis at Ratna Cafe in Triplicane are served with delicious sambar and coconut chutney.

When in Chennai, don't forget to try Amma's Idlis. Amma's canteen charges Rs 1 for an idli, Rs 3 for curd-rice and Rs 5 for sambar-rice.

You must try the Gunpowder Idli at Murugan Idli shop in T Nagar. Served on a banana leaf, this idli is accompanied with gunpowder and ghee! Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

If you're a foodie, the makkan peda available at Tamil Nadu should be on your list.

The Nawab of Arcot was a huge fan of makkan pedas, and with time the sweet has found its place in Arcot's tradition.

5. Filter kaapi (coffee)

Photograph: Courtesy Charles Haynes/Creative Commons

Forget the Baristas and Cafe Coffee Day, if you want to taste authentic filter kaapi, then Chennai is the place to head to.

It's all about the right amount of coffee and chicory, and somehow the traditional coffee shops in Chennai always seem to get it right.

6. Chettinad cuisine

Photograph: Courtesy Your Hauness/Creative Commons

According to NYT, 'temples aren't the only cultural hit: the region of Chettinad has more than 50 villages filled with 18th century mansions of carved Burma teak. It also boasts of cuisine that is among the spiciest and most aromatic in the country and often served on banana leaves.'

Well, they're talking of the Chettinad cuisine of the Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu.

Anjappar Chettinad Restaurant in Adyar doles out original Chettinad food.

Popular dishes include Chettinad Chicken, Chettinad Fish Fry, Palikattu Chettionadu, Pepper Chicken and Nandu Varuval.

7. Rameshwaram

Photograph: Courtesy Pablo Necochea/Creative Commons

Here's the place to head to if you want to go on a Ramayana trail.

From here Lord Ram is believed to have built a bridge to Lanka to rescue Sita with the help of floating stones which never sank in water.

There are plenty of tanks and wells called Theerthams that surround the town.

You can also visit Dhanushkodi -- situated just 15 km from Rameshwaram -- which is believed to be a ghost town.

ALSO READ: Dhanushkodi: A ghost town hopes to come alive

8. Dindigul Biryani at Thalappakatti

Photograph: Courtesy nav in al/Creative Commons

Dindigul Thalappakatti Biryani -- the name is enough to tease your taste buds.

It is ranked among the most popular and best biryanis in Indianeed we say more?

9. Non-veg food at Military Cafes

Photograph: Courtesy CCFoodTravel.com/Creative Commons

There was a time -- probably during the Second World War -- when military hotels sprung up here.

Tasty non-vegetarian food was served at these hotels, which have made a place for themselves in Tamil Nadu's history.

The food available at some of these hotels bears a strong Chettinad stamp.

10. Agraharams

Photograph: Courtesy Ravichandar84/Wikimedia Commons

Chennai has managed to retain the charm of agraharams.

Never heard of them? Well you can call them Brahmin settlements or streets that house Brahmins.

Distinct features include a common wall and thinnai -- an open verandah on the outside of the house, and a temple around the corner. They served as a common colony for temple priests and their families.

11. Hogenakal Falls

Photograph: Courtesy Pankaj Sinha

Touted as the 'Niagara Falls of India', Hogenakkal is considered to be a sacred bathing place and its waters are known to have magical curing powers.

ALSO READ: Hogenakal: The waterfall spa

12. Kanchipuram saris

Photograph: Courtesy McKay Savage/Creative Commons

Silk sarees and Kanchipuram can be said in the same breath. The latter is the land of silk saris.

It was the capital of the Pallava Dynasty during the 6th to 8th Centuries.

Back in 1757, the city was burned down, but the art survived.

The saris available here are woven on hand-looms by the local families.

13. Pichavaram Mangrove Forest

Photograph: Courtesy Aleksandr Zykov/Creative Commons

It is the world's second largest mangrove jungle.

Not on the regular tourist trail, it is a fascinating place spread over nearly 3,000 acres of land.

14. Pondicherry

Photograph: Courtesy Rahul Nair/Creative Commons

It's here that you'll witness a mix of Tamil and French culture -- thanks to its French colonial roots.

This town was a French colony for over 250 years and the French culture and influence is still very alive here.

A beach town and a union territory, its a lovely nugget on the Bay of Bengal.

When you're here, do visit Auroville, the Utopian community founded in the 1960s by Sri Aurobindo Society.

ALSO READ: Puducherry, a walker's delight

15. Kanyakumari

Photograph: Courtesy Hari Prasad Sridhar

Tourists come here just to see the sunset. It is the only district in India which has both an east and west coast.

The Thiraparappu Falls at Kanyakumari is a must visit.

ALSO SEE: DON'T MISS: Incredible images of Kanyakumari

16. Ooty, Coonoor, Kotagiri and Kodaikanal

Photograph: Courtesy Patrik M. Loeff/Creative Commons

Tamil Nadu is home to some of the most popular hill-stations.

You'll lose count of the hill stations in Tamil Nadu.

But one of the more popular hill stations is Ooty, which is known for its toy train, tea plantations, cups of coffee and of course, the lovely weather.

17. Kumbakonam

Photograph: Courtesy Arian Zwegers/Creative Commons

It is touted as the land of temples, as in a radius of 20 km there are over 47 places!

Kumbakonam was once a seat of medieval South Indian power.

18. Annai Velankanni Church

Photograph: Courtesy Koshy Koshy/Creative Commons

Situated in the town of Velankanni on the Coromodel Coast, this church has followers all across India.

People from all faiths visit this church and followers have testified to witnessing miracles happening.

19. Vellore

Photograph: Courtesy C/N N/G /Creative Commons

A dusty bazaar town, Vellore is home to the mighty Vijayanagar Fort and the golden Sripuram Temple.

Vijayanagar Fort -- a jewel in Vellore, the 'city of spears' -- sits at the heart of the town, and is a must-see for its grand ramparts.

20. A movie date with Rajnikanth

Photograph: A still from Sivaji

In Tamil Nadu, there is only Boss -- Rajinikanth! Mind it!

There is no better experience than watching a Rajnikanth movie in a theatre in Tamil Nadu surrounded by his fans, who will keep you entertained with their constant cheering and loud whistles.

The experience gets better if you watch his film in the cheapest theatres in Chennai.

Think we missed something? Please share your reasons in the messageboard below. We'd like to hear from you!

ALSO SEE

DON'T MISS! Incredible images of Kanyakumari

This couple is travelling the world on their BIKE

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The latest updates from the film industry.

The Thalaiva of Indian cinema Rajinikanth will be honoured with the second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, for his contribution to the Indian cinema.

The 65-year-old actor has not only worked in Tamil films, but also acted in Bollywood, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hollywood and Bengali films.

He began acting in plays, while working in the Bangalore Transport Service as a bus conductor and has turned to an iconic figure today.

His mannerisms and stylised delivery of dialogue in films contribute to his mass popularity and appeal.

'Proud daughter !!!!! Appa is now Padma vibhushan shri Rajinikanth,' tweeted his younger daughter Soundarya.

'PADMA VIBHUSHAN RAJINIKANTH super proud daughter,' tweeted his older daughter Aishwarya R Dhanush.

Other Padma Vibhushan awardees this year include -- Yamini Krishnamurthi, Girija Devi, Ramoji Rao, Shri Shri Ravi Shankar and Dr Viswanathan Shanta.

Ajay Devgn and Priyanka Chopra will be conferred with Padma Shri this year.

On being bestowed with the prestigious honour, Devgn released an official statement, saying: 'I feel deeply humbled yet elated to receive such honor from my own country. This announcement today makes it special for me when I'm filming abroad for my new film Shivaay.'

'I'd like to acknowledge that Padma Samman puts an extra responsibility on me and I promise to serve my country for as long as I can.'

***

Dhanush to make Hollywood debut with Uma Thurman

Meanwhile, Rajinikanth's son-in-law Dhanush also has reason to celebrate.

He is all set to make his Hollywood debut with the Uma Thurman-starrer, The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir.

Directed by Iranian-French director Marjane Satrapi, the film also stars Alexandra Daddario, Barkhad Abdi and Laurent Lafitte.

Bandit Queen actress Seema Biswas is also part of the stellar cast, touted as Satrapi's most ambitious project till date.

With the project, the 32-year-old Raanjhanaa actor has joined the likes of Indian exports to Hollywood like Irrfan Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Om Puri, Anil Kapoor and Deepika Padukone.

His filmmaker wife Aishwarya has re-tweeted articles that mention the actor's Hollywood debut.

Marjane Satrapi, 46, made her English language debut with The Voices, starring Ryan Reynolds.

The comedy adventure movie is based on Romain Puertolas' bestselling debut novel The Extraordinary Journey of The Fakir Who Got Trapped In An Ikea Wardrobe.

The novel, which came out in 2014, has been translated into 35 languages. It tells the pilgrimage of a con man from India to IKEA in Paris which turns into a philosophical odyssey.

The film follows a wild storyteller from New Delhi who falls in love with a woman when he reaches Paris, but accidentally gets deported along with a group of African refugees against his choice.

Source: ANI, PTI
IMAGE: Army tanks roll out at a rehearsal for Republic Day. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI

'Even if the national security framework is to be threat-based, then the division of security threats between Pakistan and China is absurd. The two threats are one,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).

Greetings to all fellow Indians on the happy occasion of Republic Day.

Republic Day and Independence Day are occasions not just for celebration, but also introspection. As India celebrates its 67th Republic Day, concerns over security of the country are uppermost in everyone's mind.

For the last several years, the occasion has been marked by heightened security. The whole nation heaves a collective sigh of relief once the day passes off peacefully.

India's security problem is institutional, ideological and managerial. We can certainly do with a dose of realism, which has been lacking in the national psyche of Indians.

Republic Day is an occasion when our armed forces showcase their might in a spectacular parade every year. One rather dismaying feature of this parade has been the fact that more than 70 per cent of our critical armaments on display are imported. The roots of this go back to the 1920s and 1930s, the formative years of our first post-Independence leadership.

Most historians agree that the First World War was a seminal conflict. It was the first world conflagration post the Industrial Revolution. The Second World War is seen mostly as an extension of the First World War, often called the Great War.

WWI was often called the war to end all wars and the hope of 'peace in our times' was the dominant theme of intellectual debates of the period as the world was horrified at the human slaughter.

Peace researchers in Europe and America found that a nexus of arms manufacturers and banks had fuelled the war and prolonged it. Companies like Vickers-Armstrong and Krupps were found to have been supplying armaments to both sides through their global linkages.

Many came to the conclusion that the war was deliberately provoked by private industries for the sake of profit. A worldwide movement started to wrest the control of the arms industry from private hands.

President Dwight D Eisenhower, himself a distinguished soldier, gave further impetus to this unease in his final presidential address in 1960 when he warned Americans of the dangers of the military industrial complex. I quote: 'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.'

It was therefore no wonder that the Indian post-Independence leadership, pacifist in nature, decided to keep the entire gamut of defence-related industry in government hands.

Thus, we created a public sector monopoly in defence. Like all monopolies, this suffered from inefficiency and cost overruns since it was a virtual 'holy cow' and unaccountable. The Indian public sector defence industry consistently failed to provide the requisite armaments in a timely manner.

In 1962, we paid a heavy price for our lack of preparedness and modern arms. In subsequent years the defence needs came to be met by the import of arms and ammunition.

We compounded the folly by creating a separate and isolated Leviathan in shape of the Defence Research and Development Organisation. Thus, we not only separated other industry from defence, we also created another apartheid of 'defence research.'

The result of this misguided ideological hang-up was that India is critically dependent on the import of vital arms and equipment. Instead of our defence being hostage to our own private industry (over which we can at least exercise some control) we are today held to ransom by international private companies like Boeing, Westinghouse etc.

It is actually our inability to come to terms with past history and its baggage. We have indeed began to take first baby steps towards introducing competition and the entry of private players in the production of armaments.

The process needs to be not only strengthened, but accelerated notwithstanding the vocal leftist and trade union lobbies.

The artificial distinction between defence and other research needs to end soonest and defence should be a national endeavour and not a DRDO monopoly.

Today it is not defence research that drives technology, but civilian research in diverse fields that finds applications in the defence field. The world over, the automobile industry has metamorphosed into aviation and space. It is time India's large auto industry is similarly given a chance to grow into other fields.

But all the armaments and even nuclear weapons cannot secure India unless we clear the ideological fog that clouds our thinking.

Indian national security planning is trapped in twin mindsets. The very nomenclature 'defence ministry' presupposes a defensive approach and mentality. Defence is just one operation of war with offence being another. It is also a truism that no victory can ever be achieved by purely defensive operations.

It is time to consider a change of nomenclature to the ministry of national security or war ministry instead of the defence ministry. The wider definition also takes care of the fact that increasingly internal security has become as important as external security. The armed forces have a legitimate role and responsibility in matters of internal security.

Secondly, the Indian thinking is still stuck in the bygone Cold War era simplistic binary with India playing a role of 'balancer.' This ignores the reality that 21st century India is on the verge of becoming an economic superpower and a major regional military power.

The global role for India is not an option, but a compulsion based on its size and economic prowess.

The policy framework of national security must deal with 'coercive threats to national interests' in order to maintain focus.

If the framework is based only on 'threats', it ignores the opportunities of use of coercive force to achieve national objectives.

It is concentration on 'threats' in 1971 that deprived us of a golden opportunity to acquire territory in Jammu and Kashmir to strengthen our hold there. The decision at Simla to keep territory acquired in war in J&K was an afterthought and no planning towards this took place before the conflict with the aim limited to solving the Bangladesh crisis.

Even the solution of the Bangladesh crisis was possible only because of 'surplus of power' available to us, thanks to a military build-up post 1962. It was that power which could be used against Pakistan since diplomacy had neutralised China -- with the Soviets massing 44 divisions on the Amur river border.

Even if the national security framework is to be threat-based, then the division of security threats between Pakistan and China is absurd. The two threats are one.

China has outsourced conventional and sub-conventional threats to Pakistan and even a Pakistan first strike strategy is part of China's overall strategy against India.

It should not be forgotten that China has done permanent damage to the subcontinent by helping Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons.

A better alternative in national security planning is to have a broad framework defined as 'acquisition of coercive force capability to prevent, pre-empt and neutralise coercive threats to national interests.'

Our national security framework ought to be an independent and autonomous power drive commensurate with potential rather than based on threats.

India can only be secure once we discard our ideological and managerial baggage of history.

Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian and strategic thinker.
There's little doubt she will be CM; then why the delay in forming the govt with alliance partner BJP? The PDP's political heir isn't flustered. She wants a congenial political atmosphere and everybody's support before taking the reins of power. Aditi Phadnis opines.

Mehbooba Mufti is delaying taking over a CM to improve relations with the BJP thus ensuring a stable governance during her term. Photograph: Reuters

A dense fog has descended over Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir.

It could continue for the next three to four days, the meteorological department has said. The fog is not just to the detriment of flights to Jammu, delayed by up to three hours; it is also a metaphor for the political situation in the state.

"There is an inexplicable delay in government formation," wrote former chief minister Omar Abdullah on his Facebook page, as Mehbooba Mufti, political heir to the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, dithered over forming a government with the Peoples Democratic Party's alliance partner the Bharatiya Janata Party .

The two parties had formed the government in the state after assembly elections in 2014.

Nearly a week has gone by since the meeting of the PDP during which it deliberated for more than five hours, the pros and cons of forming a government with the BJP.

"From the statement issued to the media after Sunday's meeting by the PDP, it has become evident that its alliance with the BJP stands, that no conditions have been set by the PDP, that no negotiations are being conducted and the formation of the new PDP-BJP government is a foregone conclusion," Abdullah, a National Conference leader said, in effect asking, "Why the delay?"

The delay is because of politics -- and also economics.

At the centre of the dissonance is the commonest cause for the breakdown of a marriage: money.

Jammu and Kashmir contends that funds from the Centre for relief and rehabilitation following the devastating floods of 2014 are yet to be remitted to the state in full. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sanctioned Rs 2,000 crore in November 2015.

This included Rs 1,200 crore for the reconstruction of damaged houses and Rs 800 crore for traders hit by the deluge.

The state government was not satisfied, both with the quantum of the money and the pace at which it was being disbursed.

One of the reasons Finance Secretary Ratan Watal was dispatched to the state was to ensure the right optics -- that although Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not visit the state, the finance secretary did, to ensure the state got its rightful share, all because of the efforts of the PDP.

Union ministers -- among them Nitin Gadkari, Najma Heptullah -- have made a beeline to the state to meet Mehbooba Mufti.

Despite Abdullah's questions about when the government would be formed, the delay is doing no harm to Mehbooba Mufti's image: She knows the chief minister's post is not going anywhere.

The reason for the delay is obvious to those who understand the politics of the state. Throughout her political career, Mehbooba Mufti has been a votary of taking everyone along in the state, including those who question the Constitution.

If she has managed to take the PDP to victory, it is because she enjoys a degree of support among such groups. Indians outside the state would be deluding themselves if they believed it was fully integrated into India: it is not.

The fact of its separateness has given rise to a kind of politics that exists because it reaches out to the separatist discourse offering itself as a bridge between India and the separatists.

It is this group that Mehbooba Mufti is trying to reassure: that doing a deal with the BJP doesn't mean selling out the interests of the state; on the contrary, it means strengthening them.

It is clear to the BJP that sudden moves could break its delicate relations with the PDP -- that would lead to early elections, which would be in no one's interest.

"Neither the BJP nor the PDP wants elections," says a bureaucrat from the state.

"The PDP does not want to appear as if it is ready to do a deal with just anyone to acquire power. Mehbooba Mufti will make up her mind in good time -- when she thinks it is psychologically the right time to announce that she is ready to take the BJP's help."

The BJP cannot be taken for granted either.

In fact, Heptullah, during her visit, spent more time listening to BJP cadres and counselling them than she did with the PDP. She was sent to the state on the express instructions of the prime minister.

This suggests the PM doesn't want the BJP to get restive -- especially crucial if his Pakistan policy is to succeed and not be seen as a betrayal by the state.

When the Centre announces a financial package that is in tune with the state government's expectations; when Mehbooba Mufti believes that the few challengers she faces in her own party have been defanged and will not carry more credibility with the separatists than she herself would; when she judges the BJP is virtually begging her to become chief minister so that the two can return to power then and only then will the government be formed in Jammu and Kashmir.

Not a day sooner.
'Indian science was perhaps more rational than the European science of the time.'

'Nobody tried or convicted Aryabhata just because he said Rahu-Ketu is nonsense.'

'Some Indians take the extreme view that everything was known to our ancients, but others go to the opposite extreme and consider everything Indian was superstition and rubbish.'

Professor Roddam Narasimha was closely associated with aerospace technology development in India, at both technical and policy-making levels.

Between 1977 and 1979, he was the Chief Project Coordinator at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and led a joint HAL-NAL-IISc team carrying out early conceptual studies of the Light Combat Aircraft.

Under his leadership, the National Aerospace Laboratories made the first parallel computer in the country in 1986 and fabricated and flew the first fibre glass aircraft in the country.

As a member of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's Scientific Advisory Council he was instrumental in establishing a major parallel computing initiative in the country.

Dr Narasimha, below, left, was widely honoured for his research work as well as his scientific leadership.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of both the US National Academy of Engineering and the US National Academy of Sciences. He was also an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

In India his distinctions include the Bhatnagar Prize, the Gujarmal Modi Award, the Ramanujan Award, the Aryabhata Award, and the Padma Bhushan.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg as far as his many achievements are concerned.

In this interview with Shivanand Kanavi for Rediff.com, Professor Narasimha, who pased into the ages on December 14, 2020, discusses how India once led the world in the fields of science and maths and how the West overtook India on these fronts.

Part I of the interview: 'Why and how did science in India stagnate?'

This interview was first published on January 25, 2016.

Was all Indic science rational?

No, we have already talked about Brahmagupta, for example.

However, I gradually came to the conclusion that classical Indic science was indeed generally rational, but it was rationality of a different kind; and it did have conflicts with mythology.

We must however remember that, although Newton is generally seen as rational about his science, he did not consider it as important as what he secretly wrote about theology. Not many know or remember that.

Around that time and later in Europe, the possible existence of great ancient civilisations in Asia and Africa became a serious issue as estimates of their age were approaching the Biblical date of Creation.

If you compared the views expressed in Europe during the so called Dark Ages there (before the Renaissance), Indian science was perhaps more rational than the European science of the time.

Nobody tried or convicted Aryabhata just because he said Rahu-Ketu is nonsense. At the same time Brahmagupta's criticism did not affect his reputation as a brilliant scientist.

Both of them, I believe, were computational positivists, so their other views seem to have been seen as secondary, lost in the indifference of traditional Indic tolerance of different views.

So how long did this classical science last, and when and why did it end?

Some 20 years ago, I came across Joseph Needham, a distinguished British scientist who had studied Chinese science and technology in great depth and also wrote a bit on the side about Indic science.

He concluded that as the West got to know more about Eastern science, the question that demanded an answer was why neither China nor India gave birth to modern science, despite the fact that they were ahead of the West in science and technology for 1,400 years (say 200 CE to 1600 CE).

Why was modern science born in Pisa and not in Patna or Peking, Needham asked.

It was the first time that I had seen a distinguished Western scholar acknowledge so readily that India and China had earlier been ahead for 1,400 years. This question is not much discussed in India.

Some Indians take the extreme view that everything was known to our ancients, but others go to the opposite extreme and consider everything Indian was superstition and rubbish (an imperial British view typified by Macaulay's comment about how one shelf of good European books was worth the whole literature of India and Arabia).

It slowly became clear to me that both sides were wrong: The history of science is not linear -- it is chequered.

The European Dark Ages were anything but dark in India. Our Dark Ages have been the last several centuries.

A study of European opinion in the 15th, 16th centuries leads to the conclusion that Europe was becoming aware at that time that the East had been ahead of them. They had encountered the more advanced Arabs during the crusades, Indian numerals and algebra in the 16th, 17th centuries, Chinese technologies in between and they began to see advances in Asia which they did not know about.

If you read Francis Bacon, you will see that he recognised the power of new inventions like the printing press, the nautical compass and gun powder (all from China, as we now know) -- inventions that had changed the world more than any empire, sect or star, he said, and then there was sugar, which came from India.

He was dazzled by them, just as I was dazzled by all the things that the West had done when I first went to the US.

Bacon blamed the Greeks for the sad state of European knowledge. He called them a set of quacks and charlatans; his criticisms of Plato and Aristotle were scathing. Europe had taken the wrong path and had to change.

It is almost like what some Indians began to say in the 19th and 20th centuries as our classical epistemology collapsed: 'All that we have learnt is worthless.'

As one begins to analyse classical Indic and European texts, it becomes clear that, deep down, at a fundamental level, it is all really about how one acquires reliable new knowledge, ie about epistemology.

In the 17th century, Newton almost implemented what Bacon had said. What changed at that time? The standard Western answer is mathematicisation of science, but that characterisation is misleading. It depends on what you mean by mathematicisation. Surely one cannot say that ancient Greeks and Indians were not mathematical?

Actually, what happened in the 16th, 17th centuries was that the meaning of mathematics changed. Till then, it was geometry and Euclid in Europe (borrowed back, incidentally, from the Arabs and their Arabic translations from the Greek a few centuries earlier).

After the 16th century it began to include numbers and algebra, both of which had come from India. Algebra or beeja-ganita had developed into a 'new maths' and was transmitted to Europe through creative Arabs and Persians; and the trajectory of that diffusion can now be traced fairly well.

The word algebra started getting used in Europe in the 15th, 16th centuries and slowly grew in usage, even as the use of the word geometry declined. Indeed, the new mathematics even affected geometry, leading to what we now call analytical geometry.

Thus what really happened in Europe then was the algebraisation of mathematics and (a little later) of the exact sciences like physics.

As renowned mathematical physicist Hermann Weyl said, Europe moved away from Greek ideas to follow a path that had originated in India, where the concept of number had been considered logically prior to the concept of geometry.

I believe this was a strong factor in the revival of science in Europe.

Bacon's formula of knowledge = power (in contrast to the Indic equation knowledge = salvation) translated to growing power over the East. The European languages did not have a word for algebra at the time so they took over the Arabic word al jabr, just as we too have taken over television, radio, etc, from English.

Descartes once referred to algebra as 'barbarous': It was clearly not a direct Greek or European legacy. Francis Bacon realised that much new knowledge had come from outside the European culture area -- presumably the East.

What is the concept of beeja and ganita, which you have spoken of recently as 'Indic concepts that changed the world'?

Ganita is literally reckoning, counting and manipulating numbers; gan is 'to count' in Sanskrit. In the West a mathematician was, and was called, a 'geometer' for long; and in India a mathematician was a gan aka, a numerist.

India was number-centric.

Bhaskara said beeja-ganita (algebra) is avyakta-ganita, ie ganita with unmanifest (unknown) quantities which need to be found out from the data available and so made to become vyakta, 'known.'

That unknown, the hidden, is beeja.

Thus computing with the unknown so that it becomes known is beeja ganita, which went as algebra to Europe through the Arabs (who made their own creative contributions).

It appears as if the modern scientific revolution in Europe was a response to the inventions, both mathematical and technological, that went from the East through the Arabs. These inventions dazzled the Europeans, just as their inventions in turn dazzled us 200 or 300 years later.

So what was the difference between Europe and India in the way science was done?

Neelakantha, a 15th-16th century mathematician-philosopher from Kerala, explicitly tells us how to do science. I had been trying to infer from Aryabhata and Bhaskara what their attitude towards science and mathematics might have been and then I came to know about the Kerala school and Neelakantha's Jyotirmimamsa (which unfortunately has not yet been translated into English).

He actually talks about epistemology, ie the science of knowledge-making, and describes what methods lead to the generation of valid, reliable and belief-worthy knowledge. Neelakantha's views throw light on where Indians and Westerners differed in their epistemology.

Indic methodology was primarily based on observation, experience (pratyaksha, anubhava), inference and skill (anumana, yukti). The Greek conception was based on deductive two-valued (yes or no type) Aristotelian logic, often following from stated axioms considered 'true' or self-evident (typified by Euclid).

In the 15th-6th centuries, a fusion seems to have started taking place between the two in Europe. Though Indians were in touch with the Greeks, at least since the times of Alexander, they only borrowed some tools from them, but did not accept their philosophy or ideology.

After having rubbished Greek philosophy, Francis Bacon went on to invent a kind of hybrid that combined experience, observation (in particular through experimentation) with inference of axioms. Axioms thus ceased to be self-evident truths and became instead tentative inferences.

This method began to be used with Newton and led to what has spectacularly become the global enterprise of 'modern' science.

In his great work Principia Mathematica Philosphiae Naturalis (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) -- perhaps the biggest ever game-changer in the world of science -- Newton starts like Euclid in the first book, stating and discussing three 'axiom' (his three laws of motion); the rest is full of theorems, lemmas, QED, etc.

In the third book he changes gear, introduces numbers from observations and inferences from them in the light of the axioms and results of Books I and II.

Book III (of Principia-Ed) seems to me, partly Indic in style, because of the use of inference: QIE (what may be inferred) often replaces the Euclidean QED (what had to be demonstrated).

Newton presumably realised that the third book is not in the Greek spirit, so he inserts a short prefatory note on 'The Rules of Philosophical Reasoning' before embarking on Book III, where he justifies his new procedure.

He sets out and explains four (new) rules, which have very little to do with the Greeks. But there are also curious commonalities between India and Europe.

Calculus was thought to be a purely European invention (as we are taught at school even now) associated with the names of Newton and Leibnitz, but it was not. Many important parts of it, at least, were known in Indian ganita centuries earlier. This included the infinite series, for example, of the Taylor-Mclaurin type, second-order difference schemes, the idea of limits and so on.

Correspondingly, it cannot be said that Archimedes (or some other Greek) started science (compare Bacon); nor did it all start in India, for some little science must have been there even at very early times.

There were different contributions from different cultures. Ideas did travel (both ways), but not all of them were accepted along their way by local cultures.

For example Indians borrowed the idea of epicycles from the Greeks, but used it very differently: The smaller circle moving along the circumference of the bigger one could keep changing its diameter.

This would have shocked the Greeks because for them it would spoil the symmetry and beauty of a model based on just circles.

To the Indians, however, the resulting kinky ellipse-like curve was computationally simpler and more efficient.

It was the sort of thing that Bhaskara said would bring aananda to the ganakas!

Indians never really took to Euclid till it came out of Macaulay's bookshelf into the educational system he prescribed for India in the 19th century. In the Indic Nyaya system of knowledge creation (although it makes no reference to the Greeks), the method of hypothesis to conclusion based on (deductive) logic is frowned upon, because the basis for taking the hypothesis as a given truth could not be justified.

You have to compare it with or base it on observation. This is where Bacon made his leap, coupling hypothesis and inference.

Pratyaksha (observation, including experiment) was the number one pramaana (source of valid knowledge) in all schools of Indian philosophy; it was universally accepted. This must have been one of the few things that all of them agreed on!

The second was anumaana (inference), accepted by every school except the Lokaayatas. As Neelakantha says, knowledge arises pratyakshena anumaanena -- from observation and from inference.

What about the aagamic pramaana?

After getting an interesting mathematical result, Neelakantha says etatsarvamyukti-moolam, natuaagama-moolam: all of this (comes) from intelligent reasoning, not from the aagamas. Such a statement could not have been safely made in the Europe of his time (1500 CE).

Aagama can also be taken as existing accumulated knowledge rather than scriptural, an important if not decisive source of knowledge.

The aagamas were indeed accepted as a third pramaana in some Indic philosophical systems.

What you mention is close to what the Saamkhya philosophers call aapta vacana (the word of the trustworthy), which they accept as the third pramaana after pratyaksha and anumaana, but they make it clear that Vedic knowledge is not privileged, because it is also essentially human in origin, so potentially fallible like any human work.

In Nireeshwara Saamkhya they say there is no evidence (pramaana-abhaava) for God. Of course, they don't say that there is no God, only that there is no evidence for it.

Classical Indic scientists rarely appealed to scriptural knowledge in their science; however many of them, including Neelakantha, were also very accomplished Vedic scholars.

In general, the great scientists (Charaka, Bhaaskara) had respect for Saamkhya thinking. How can you say all this was not rational?

The history of ideas, it seems to me, is chequered, and that makes it fascinating -- more fascinating than that of kings and battles.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

Author and journalist Shivanand Kanavi, former VP, Tata Consultancy Services, tweets @shivanandkanavi and blogs at www.reflections-shivanand.blogspot.com
'The India-France relationship has been that of the elites of two countries, who appreciate each other's philosophical traditions -- whether it is ancient Indian civilisation and Sanskrit texts or the French tradition of Rene Descartes, Albert Camus, (Jean-Paul) Sartre... This is a drawback. It doesn't create the buzz, the excitement necessary for a relationship. We need more people-to-people contact, especially among students,' says former Ambassador to Paris, Rakesh Sood.

With French President Francois Hollande in India as chief guest at the Republic Day Parade, all eyes on the long-pending Rafale deal between the two nations.

Rakesh Sood, India's ambassador to France from 2011-13, tells Archis Mohan why the French are looking at India to understand how to deal with its minorities and de-radicalise its youth.

What is the current state of play in India-France relations?



Let me first talk about the uniqueness of India-France relations. The most important aspect is cultural affinity. Indians and French have common characteristics. Intellectual arrogance -- "don't come and teach us, we are unique" -- is something both the Indians and the French possess. We are both argumentative people. We love debating things.

The third characteristic is fierce individualism. The French have maintained their autonomy, which is also something that we (Indians) have tried to do.

How does it translate into foreign policy? After World War II, the French were never comfortable with the United States dominating the world order. This was unlike the United Kingdom, which found its power much diminished and played second fiddle to the US. The British gave away their strategic interests in the Gulf and West Asia to the US when they couldn't afford to maintain these. The French never did that. They retained their little pockets of influence, particularly in Africa which had a large number of French colonies.

The French have never been comfortable with the US-led and British-helped Anglo-Saxon world order. They were the only country to openly oppose the US invasion of Iraq.

After the Cold War, the French worked towards shaping a multi-polar world order. They have been highly supportive of India's role in the region and its strategic autonomy. In the aftermath of the Pokhran nuclear tests of May 1998, (then National Security Advisor) Brajesh Mishra and I went to France. We were told that none other than French President Jacques Chirac would receive us. Mind you, Mishra and I travelled to Paris even before the end of May. We met Chirac. He listened to what we had to say carefully and appointed senior diplomat Gerard Errera as his special representative for the strategic dialogue with India.



We didn't have to do any convincing about why we did the nuclear test. We articulated our perception and regional worldview. The French shared their perception and concerns. That was the key to India-France strategic dialogue -- and it was a strategic dialogue in the real sense, which involved four to five components, each with lots of content, more than what India had at the time with any other country.



Can you elaborate on the cooperation between India and France in the areas of nuclear energy, space and defence?



Nuclear energy was a major sector of cooperation. The first discussions were between Areva (French multinational company and global leader in nuclear energy) and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited. When the US cut off fuel supply to Tarapur nuclear power plant in 1982, the French stepped in to provide us with enriched uranium. France and India are really the only two countries that were interested in the fast breeder reactor technology. The two countries have also worked together on thermonuclear power projects.



India and France have had a long-standing cooperation in the space sector. When we started the Indian Space Research Organisation our sounding rockets were French. All our satellites that weigh two tonnes and above have been launched by Arianespace (French multinational company and commercial launch service provider). The French, in turn, use our PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) to launch their smaller satellites. We are also doing joint fabrication of satellites. It's a solid relationship of equals in the space sector.



On the defence side, our air force has had the longest of linkages with France. The French Alouette helicopters were used by the Indian Air Force and made in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited as Chetak; the IAF flew the French fighter jets Ouragan, named Toofani, in the 1950s and 1960s. Then the Mirages, the Jaguars. Now discussions are on for Rafale jets. India and France are jointly building submarines at the Mazagaon docks. Cooperation in the fields of counterterrorism and cyber security have been added.



What are the likely deliverables during Hollande's visit to India?



The Rafale deal will go through. Accompanying the Rafale deal is the 50 per cent offset clause. Dassault (the manufacturer of Rafale) will have to invest much more in India to support related industries. The French TGV or Train a Grande Vitesse, that is, high-speed train, which runs at 300 to 320 km per hour and has been used across Europe, could be another sector of cooperation.



The third sector could be smart cities. The French have been one of the most efficient in building cities. There is likely to be India-France cooperation in developing Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur as smart cities. The solar energy sector is an area for close cooperation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the International Solar Alliance when he was in Paris for the climate change talks last December.



What about economic and commercial cooperation?



The economic and commercial relationship has not picked up. India-France bilateral trade, excluding the defence sector, is worth only $10 billion. Language has been bit of a hurdle. But it shouldn't be. Around 2,500 students from India go to France every year to pursue higher education. Increasingly, given the cooperation across sectors, there will be the need to hire people, who know both French and Indian systems and languages. It is a good time to send a large number of Indian students to France. The Chinese send about 25,000 students a year to France. However, the French still do not grant long-term visas, while students like to work for two-three years. These issues need to be resolved.



The India-France relationship has been that of the elites of two countries, who appreciate each other's philosophical traditions -- whether it is ancient Indian civilisation and Sanskrit texts or the French tradition of Rene Descartes, Albert Camus, (Jean-Paul) Sartre... This is a drawback. It doesn't create the buzz, the excitement necessary for a relationship. We need more people-to-people contact, especially among students.



What are France's geo-strategic concerns in the AfPak region? How effective an ally is India against the backdrop of the terror attacks in France last year?



There is a solid strategic basis to where India fits into the French geo-strategic vision. What imparts balance to India-France ties is that it's a relationship of equals.



As much as 10 per cent of the 60-million population of France is Muslim, largely from the French old colonies in Africa. The French have always prided themselves on their approach to secularism, which is different from the "melting pot" approach of the UK where migrant communities congregate in specific areas like Southall.

In France, religion is strictly the private affair of an individual. There has been a strict separation between the Church and the State for over a century now. The French have pursued a policy of assimilation. Whatever their colour or religion, as long as migrants speak French and adopt the French way of life, they will be integrated into French society. That is why France is introspecting why despite its best efforts to integrate minority youth, they have become radicalised.

The French are also quite clear that we, in India, have dealt better with radicalisation and want to learn from us.

Some of their youth, including those involved in the terror attacks, had been to the AfPak region. France cannot ban its people from travelling to that region, but it does wish to have our understanding of that region. The French are also strong votaries of individual rights and freedoms and want to learn from us about how to enforce laws without affecting the basic values of "equality, liberty, fraternity" of French society.



The French have legitimate interests in the Indian Ocean. Reunion Islands, still administered by France, has a large Indian-origin population. The French Navy is not seen as an outsider in the Indian Ocean.



Its presence there doesn't create nervousness. There is scope for cooperation in oceanography and strengthening of the maritime relationship.
The Supreme Court on Monday decided to hear on January 27 a plea challenging the Union Cabinets recommendation to impose Presidents Rule in crisis-hit Arunachal Pradesh moved by the Congress, which alleged that illegal attempts have been made by the Centre and the governor to topple the Nabam Tuki government in the state.

The petition seeking urgent hearing was mentioned before Chief Justice T S Thakur, at his residence, who directed the matter to be listed for hearing on Wednesday.

"The matter was placed before the CJI. He has listed for hearing on January 27," Virendra Kumar, deputy registrar, said.

He said listing branch of Registry will allocate the matter before an appropriate bench.

Already, a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Justice J S Khehar is examining the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor under constitution, vis-a-vis the authority to convene assembly session with or without the aid and advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers.

The fresh plea, filed by Rajesh Tacho, chief whip of Congress Legislature Party, alleged that illegal and unlawful attempts have been made by the Centre and Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa to topple the Nabam Tuki government.

The governor's recommendation in the present case is to promote political interests of party in power at the Centre, the Congress petition finally settled by noted jurist Fali S Nariman said.

After the Union Cabinet on Sunday decided to recommend imposition of central rule in the state, a battery of senior lawyers including Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha swung into action to challenge the recommendation in the apex court.

Since the apex court is closed on Tuesday due to Republic Day, the petition through the deputy registrar was placed at 6 pm before the CJI, who preferred to get it listed on Wednesday.

The Congress has sought a direction for the Centre and the governor to furnish records pertaining to his recommendation for Presidents Rule in the state.

"There is absolutely no material justifying the action under Article 356 of the Constitution of India except the personal ipse dixit (unsupported assertion) of the Respondent No.2 (Rajkhowa) who has abused the Office of the Governor by acting as an agent and the mouth piece of the central government," it said.

It has sought restoration of the Nabam Tuki government along with his Council of Ministers to office by 'reviving and reactivating' the 6th Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly.

The Congress, in its plea, has further sought a direction to declare as 'illegal and void-ab-initio' any decision which may be taken during the period of central rule.

'The action of the governor is not only illegal and unconstitutional but also suffers from malice in fact and in law from bias. The respondents (The Centre and the governor) are under a constitutional mandate to act in a just and fair manner and their actions are amenable to the writ jurisdiction of this court,' the petition said.

The plea said the governor should place the 'report and material' leading to the Cabinets January 24 recommendation for imposition of Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.

It said that if the report and the recommendation become the basis of proclamation and notification of President's Rule in the state, the same should be quashed.

'Actions/inactions on the part of the Centre and the governor directly and inevitably impact on the fundamental right of the Petitioner herein under Article 14 of the Constitution herein read with Article 21 of the Constitution, apart from encroaching upon the democratic principles of governance,' the plea said.

It also said the decision to impose central rule cannot be justified as 'there was no such immediate urgency or break down of the state machinery justifying the emergent meeting of the Cabinet on a Sunday to recommend imposition of President's Rule in the state'.

The Congress party, which has 47 MLAs in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The governor then advanced the assembly session and convened it on December 16 in which the deputy speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of speaker. This sitting was held in a community hall in Itanagar.

Various decisions of the governor and the deputy speaker were challenged by Rebia in Gauhati high court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance these decisions till February 1.
The Congress on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Union Cabinet's recommendation for imposition of Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, which has been witnessing a political crisis.

"We have filed the petition before the apex court registry," Congress leader and senior advocate Vivek Tankha said.

He said the petition has been filed by the state Congress chief whip Bamang Felix and an urgent hearing has been sought.

"We are waiting to hear from the deputy registrar who will place the petition before the Chief Justice of India," another lawyer said.

In the petition, there has been a challenge to the report and the recommendation of the Union Cabinet for promulgation of President's Rule in the state.

Earlier in the day, the Congress party decided to urge President Pranab Mukherjee to thwart any attempt to impose central rule in the state.

The filing of the fresh plea assumes significance as the five-judge bench is examining constitutional provisions on the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor, amid continuing month-long impasse over Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.

In an earlier plea filed by Nabam Rebia, who was allegedly removed from the post of Speaker by rebel Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in an assembly session held at a community hall in Itanagar on December 16, has listed out legal questions, including the Governors power to convene the assembly session without the aid and advice of the government for adjudication by the apex court.

It was also alleged that the Governor had advanced the assembly sitting from January 14 to December 16 without the aid and advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers.

Congress party, which has 47 MLAs seats in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.

The Governor then called assembly session on December 16 in which the deputy speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of Speaker. This sitting was held in a community hall in Itanagar.

Various decisions of the Governor and the Deputy Speaker were challenged by Rebia in Guwahati high court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance these decisions till February one.
Never in his long political career has the Union labour minister attracted such attention as he has in the matter of the Hyderabad students suicide case, reports B Dasarath Reddy.

Congress workers protest and burn posters of Union Labout Minister Bandaru Dattatreya in the Hyderabad student's suicide case. Photograph: PTI

University of Hyderabad research scholar Rohith Vemulas suicide has reignited the opposition campaign against the alleged political interference in university affairs, with Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreyas letter being presented as evidence.

Street protests in Delhi, Hyderabad and elsewhere have led a stream of political leaders to Hyderabad, many demanding the resignation of Dattatreya. Hed written to the ministry of human resource development asking that action be taken against Rohith and four others for allegedly assaulting a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a body close to his political party. The rustication of these four and Rohith, and their expulsion from the hostel and suspension of Rohiths fellowship, it is alleged, led him to take the extreme step.

University authorities received five letters from the HRD ministry in a matter of two and half months starting September 3, 2015, all seeking to know what action had been taken on the issue raised by Dattatreya.



Never in his long political career, twice as Union minister, would Dattatreya, 70, have received this kind of attention. In Andhra Pradesh, he is better known for his simplicity and easy access to people and party cadre.

Dattatreya started as a pracharak (full-time worker) in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh during his younger days. While working as state joint secretary of the Loka Sangarsha Samiti, he was jailed during the 1975-77 emergency period. He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980 and has held various senior positions in it, including the state president, beside being a four-time MP.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Secunderabad constituency for the first time in 1991. He was re-elected in 1998 and served as Union minister of state for urban development. He won the election a third time from Secunderabad in 1999 and was again inducted in the Vajpayee government, first as MoS for urban development till 2001 and then as MoS for railways (2001-2003).



In the 2014 elections, he again won from Secunderabad and was inducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as minister of labour and employment, an MoS but with independent charge. The sole representative in the Union Cabinet from Telangana, he has preferred to spend most of his time in Hyderabad, taking part in local activities.



His elevation in the party was largely on account of cordial relations with senior colleagues from the state, such as Venkaiah Naidu. He also maintained good relations with leaders of other parties, particularly with N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party, which was and continues to be a BJP ally.



As the controversy grew, Dattatreya put out his side of the story -- that all he had done was forward complaints he had got from locals about the behaviour of Rohith and others. The subtext is the need for the BJP to grow its political capital, both through the party structure and via student politics. The move is seen as having backfired, as Dalits are now questioning the BJPs commitment to their empowerment.
A Kathmandu-bound Jet Airways flight with 111 people on board was on Monday halted minutes before take-off from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi after a bomb threat and the plane was grounded and being searched thoroughly.

The bomb scare arose at a time when security is at an all-time high in view of the Republic Day celebrations on Tuesday across the country and especially in Delhi.

This is the second incident in the last two days as on Saturday a GoAir flight from Bhubaneshwar for Mumbai was diverted to Nagpur for similar reasons.

The bomb threat call was received at the airport terminal just before the scheduled departure of the Kathmandu-bound Jet Airways flight 9W 260 at 1.25 pm, officials said.

Officials said the plane has been taken to the isolation bay at the IGIA and all passengers de-boarded for a thorough anti-sabotage check.

The bomb threat assessment committee has been activated, they said, and a final clearance for the flight is awaited.

Jet Airways, later in a statement, said that its Kathamandu flight from here has been delayed due to a security alert.

All 104 guests and seven crew have been disembarked from the aircraft and taken to the departures waiting area at the Delhi airport, the airline said in a statement adding security agencies are conducting a search of the aircraft.

"We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our guests. Security of our guests and crew is always our number one priority," Jet Airways said in the statement.

Image for representation only.
An indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch seven students over suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula continued in the Hyderabad Central University in Hyderabad for the second day even as agitators called for a 'Chalo HCU' protest march to press their demands.

The stir resumed on Sunday after the previous group of seven fasting students were shifted to the hospital on Saturday following deterioration in their health condition after three days of hunger strike.

A health check will be conducted for the fasting students on Monday, Dr Ravindra Kumar, a senior doctor at the health centre in the university said.

The agitating students have called for a 'Chalo HCU' on Monday and students from different universities in the country would gather in the campus in Hyderabad, their representative L S Biakani said.

The main demands includes removal of Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has gone on indefinite leave, and passing a "Rohith Act" to prevent suicides of scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, backward castes and minority students in universities, he said.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital on Sunday after she complained of chest pain, Ravindra Kumar said.

She has been kept under observation in the ICU.

On Sunday, the university put a notice on its website saying the vice-chancellor will be on leave and that Vipin Srivastava, the senior most professor, shall perform the duties of the vice-chancellor. It did not mention the period of leave.

However, the SC/ST Faculty Forum and SC/ST Officers Forum expressed "shock" over the decision to appoint Srivastava as officiating vice-chancellor and alleged that he headed the executive council sub-committee "which has been responsible for the death of Rohith" and was one of the "accused" in the suicide of another Dalit student, Senthil, in 2008.
Elaborate security arrangements were in place across the country for the Republic Day celebrations on Tuesday with police in the national capital and neighbouring states keeping an eye out on drones, which have been perceived as a major threat.

The national capital is already on high alert ahead of the official celebrations -- where French President Francois Hollande is the chief guest -- after inputs were received about the presence of key members of several terror outfits in Delhi.

In the national capital, as many as 71 high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Rajpath will be shut down either partially or completely on Tuesday in view of the Republic Day parade.

Delhi Police Chief B S Bassi had 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, according to a senior police official.

The matter attained priority after a UAV was spotted near IGIAirport 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.

State capitals and major cities across the country have seen security being beefed up at vulnerable places and key installations.

In Punjab, which was recently shaken by the strike at the Pathankot air force base, additional personnel have been posted at bus stands, railway stations and government buildings, officials said.

Similar arrangements are in place in Haryana and Chandigarh. Both states and Chandigarh are on high alert following the terror attack at Pathankot.

In Jammu and Kashmir, security has been stepped up across the Valley to thwart any plan by militants to disrupt the celebrations.

Police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force personnel have been deployed in Srinagar and at entry points to the summer capital of the state, police said, adding that barricades have been erected for carrying out random searches of vehicles entering the city.

Police personnel have been carrying out area domination exercises in the areas around Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar, where the Valleys main parade will be held on Tuesday, and around the venues at district headquarters, they said.

All check-posts along the inter-state borders of Punjab and Haryana have been put on maximum alert, officials said.

Dog and bomb squads have been deployed at vulnerable spots across the two states.

In Kolkata, security has been increased at Victoria Memorial, Kalighat temple, Indian Museum and other iconic structures as well as at buildings housing government and non-governmental offices, shopping malls, etc.

Security has been increased at entry and exit points to the city. There will be 93 police pickets all over Kolkata and 13 QRTs at strategic locations for fast response, an officer said.

Leaves of all senior officers have been cancelled and they would be on duty during this period and would continue till this weekend, he added.

The National Investigation Agency and other central security agencies arrested 14 persons last week for allegedly planning to carry out attacks in the country ahead of Republic Day.

The arrests were made following simultaneous searches and raids at 12 locations in six cities -- Bengaluru, Tumkur, Mangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Lucknow -- on January 22 with the support of local police.

Image: Security personnel keep watch at Rajpath ahead of the Republic Day parade. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/PTI
Amid tight security and special prayers, Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan on Monday briefly reopened before closing down indefinitely, days after it was attacked by the Taliban, killing 21 people, mostly students.

Police said that Bacha Khan University (BKU) was reopened and additional security personnel have been deployed to take care of the university's security.

Classes started on Monday with special prayers for the victims. Other educational institutions in Charsadda, which closed in the wake of the attack, also reopened.

The university, however, was closed indefinitely later.

A university spokesman cited harsh weather conditions, repair and cleaning work for the closure.

The decision was taken at a meeting of faculty members that was chaired by the university's vice chancellor, he said.

It was also decided that the university should remain closed until a police check-post is setup on campus and teachers are provided licensed weapons, the spokesman said.

Several people held a peace march in Charsadda in the memory of the victims and to express the resolve not to be cowed down by the militants.

On Wednesday, four heavily-armed terrorists attacked BKU named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province which is located about 50 kilometres from Peshawar.

Authorities have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan city. They had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan via the Torkhum border.

However, the main facilitator, "terrorist A", who received and made arrangements for the attackers at Torkhum border checkpost is still at large.

Officials have said that the attack on BKU was planned and controlled from Afghanistan as the phone call of commander Omer Mansoor, who later claimed responsibility, was made from Afghanistan.

The BKU assault came about an year after terrorists attacked an army-run school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 people, most of them students.

The Pakistani military intensified an ongoing offensive, named operation Zarb-e-Azb, against extremists in the tribal areas after the 2014 attack.

Image: A soldier stands guard at the entrance to a dormitory where the militant attack took place at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan. Photograph: Caren Firouz/Reuters
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday said India has given fresh leads relating to the Pathankot terror attack and Pakistan is verifying the facts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"I have received fresh leads from India on the Pathankot attack and we will look and examine those evidences given by India. We could have hidden it or forgotten it but we asserted that we have received the evidences," Sharif said on a day when US President Barack Obama termed the Pathankot terror strike as "another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long".

"Pakistan has an opportunity to show that it is serious about delegitimising, disrupting and dismantling terror networks," Obama told PTI in an interview.

"We are probing and verifying that. Once we are done with that we would definitely bring the facts forward. Along with that, we have also formed a special investigating team, they would go to India and collect more evidence," Sharif said in London on his arrival from Davos after attending the World Economic Forum.

"I had a word with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he had offered every help possible from their side in bringing the perpetrators to justice. We are going on the right lines and I hope the perpetrators will be brought to justice soon," said Sharif who promised further Pakistani action to combat militants but conceded that progress had often been slow.

India gave "specific and actionable information" to Pakistan soon after the Pathankot attack reportedly carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists on the intervening night of January 1 and 2 that killed seven Indian soldiers.

Sharif said a Pakistani investigation team will also visit India to collect further information on the attack.

He also said Pakistan and India should not interfere in each other's affairs. He said Pakistan believes in non-interference in internal affairs of other countries and wants others to follow suit.

Pakistani National Security Advisor Lt Gen Naseer Khan Janjua on January 5 had called up his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval during which they discussed "specific and actionable information" related to the Pathankot terror strike.

Doval and Janjua talked about various information and leads, like the Pakistani numbers which the attackers had called and their intercepts with India asserting that an effective action on part of Pakistan was important.

Sharif was speaking days after a deadly attack by heavily armed gunmen on a university near Peshawar killed 21 people.

The attack bore a chilling resemblance to the December, 2014 Peshawar school attack in which over 150 people, mostly children, were killed, prompting the government to launch a National Action Plan cracking down on militancy.

Sharif said Pakistan would continue the fight against militants. "We will fulfil this responsibility," he said.

Sharif said Pakistan and Afghanistan have an agreement not to allow their respective soil for terrorist activities, adding that Pakistan is fully abiding by this understanding.

However, some elements are active in Afghanistan, who carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Sharif said.

He said Pakistan has always supported an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process in Afghanistan as a peaceful and stable Afghanistan is in the best interest of not only Pakistan, but also the entire region.

Sharif said a committee comprising Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, and the US is working for peace in Afghanistan.

Regarding the National Action Plan to eliminate terrorism, he said the government is fully determined to expedite its implementation and assured that all steps will be taken to root out the menace of terrorism.

Sharif said the army and all other institutions are on the same page in fight against terrorism.

He also said Pakistan's reconciliatory efforts to mitigate tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran were aimed at peacefully resolving differences between both the Islamic countries.
India and France on Monday inked an Inter-Governmental Agreement on the sale of 36 French fighter jets, Rafale, but were unable to sign the final deal due to some financial aspects, which are expected to be sorted out in couple of days.

This agreement was among the 14 pacts signed between the two countries after extensive talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande which focused ways to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism, security and civil nuclear energy.

Leaving out financial aspect, India and France have signed Inter-Governmental Agreement on purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets. We expect that even the financial aspects pertaining to purchase of Rafale jets will be resolved as soon as possible, Modi said at a joint press event with Hollande.

Terming the signing of the IGA as a decisive step, the French president said there are some financial issues that will be sorted out in couple of days.

The two countries are in negotiations for 36 Rafale fighter jets in fly away conditions since the announcement for the deal was made by Modi in April during his visit to France.

However, the final deal is yet to be sealed as both sides are still negotiating the price which is estimated to be about Rs 60,000 crore. A high-level team from France is here and carrying out last minute negotiations.

Apart from defence cooperation, the talks between the two leaders primarily focused on ways to boost counter-terrorism cooperation in the aftermath of attack in Paris in November last and Pathankot terror strikes earlier this month.

From Paris to Pathankot, we saw the gruesome face of the common challenge of terrorism... I also commend the strength of your resolve and action these terrorist attacks. President Hollande and I have agreed to scale up the range of our counter-terrorism cooperation in a manner that helps us to tangibly mitigate and reduce the threat of extremism and terrorism to our societies.

We are also of the view that the global community needs to act decisively against those who provide safe havens to terrorists, who nurture them through finances, training and infrastructure support, Modi said.

The two countries reiterated their call for Pakistan to bring to justice their perpetrators and the perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which also caused the demise of two French citizens, and to ensure that such attacks do not recur in the future, a joint statement issued after the talks said.

Daesh has attacked us. The Islamic State is provoking us but we are determined to take the right decision. We will strike them time and again those who kill our children. I would like to thank you for the support in dire circumstances. France will never forget. We have decided to strengthen our cooperation against terror, Hollande said.

The two sides resolved to step up their joint effort to counter violent extremism and radicalisation, disrupt recruitment, terrorist movements and flow of Foreign Terrorist Fighters, stop sources of terrorist financing, dismantle terrorist infrastructure and prevent supply of arms to terrorists.

To this end, they committed to further develop exchanges in the fields of intelligence, finance, justice and police. They welcomed the strengthening of the cooperation between Indian and French counter terrorism authorities and units, in particular between their cybersecurity experts, the joint statement said.

Stressing that terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstance, regardless of its motivation, wherever and by whomsoever it is committed, Modi and Hollande pitched for decisive actions to be taken against Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

They also condemned the recent terror attacks in Pathankot and Gurdaspur in India.

On other issues which were discussed, Modi said, From smart cities, locomotives, railway tracks and nuclear power. These are all foundations for building a new commercial partnership.

On his part, Hollande asserted that There is no better trust than sharing civil nuclear technology and hoped that the issues pertaining to the six reactors at Jaitapur nuclear plant will be settled in one year.

In pursuance of the 2008 civil nuclear pact, the two leaders encouraged their industrial companies to conclude techno-commercial negotiations by the end of 2016 for the construction of six nuclear power reactor units at Jaitapur the statement said.

The negotiations will consider cost viability of the project, economical financing from the French side, collaboration on transfer of technology and cost-effective localisation of manufacturing in India for large and critical components in accord with Government of Indias Make in India initiative.

France acknowledged the need for India to have lifetime guarantee of fuel supply and renewed its commitment to reliable, uninterrupted and continued access to nuclear fuel supply throughout the entire lifetime of the plants, as stated in the 2008 bilateral IGA on nuclear cooperation.

The two leaders agreed on a roadmap of cooperation to speed up discussions on the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in 2016. Their shared aim is to start the implementation of the project in early 2017.

Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to responsible and sustainable development of civil nuclear energy with highest consideration to safety, security, non-proliferation and environmental protection, it said.

France and India underscored the contribution of nuclear energy to their energy security and to the fight against climate change.

France reaffirmed its strong and long standing support for Indias candidacy to the international export control regimes, particularly to the National Security Guard and welcomed Indias decision to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the statement said.

Describing his visit as outstanding and exceptional, Hollande said it was an honour for France and him to be chief guest at the Republic Day. I commend the action of Modi at the climate change conference. I am aware Modi had potential reluctance at the COP21. He wanted the innovation technology for developing countries to be spread. We owe it to, including Modi for what was achieved at the climate conference, the French president added.

Apart from inking IGA for purchase of Rafale jets, the two countries signed 13 agreements cutting across a wide variety of sectors including railways, culture, space, science and technology.
Students from the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad protest at Hyderabad Central University in response to the 'Chalo HCU' call given by the Joint Action Committee heading the agitation over Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide. Photograph: @jacuoh/Twitter

Protests escalated on Monday at the HyderabadCentralUniversity with several students from other universities and some social groups coming out in support of the agitating students over the alleged suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula.

The protesters converged at the campus, responding to the 'Chalo HCU' call by the Joint Action Committee spearheading the stir.

"Students and others have come in from different parts of the country. There are more than a thousand gathered here. Situation is under control," HCU chief security officer T V Rao said.

Security was beefed up with a large number of police personnel being deployed around the campus as a precautionary measure.

Joint Commissioner of Police Cyberabad T V Shashidhar Reddy said, "We are verifying all those who are entering the HCU campus. There is no such restriction on the 'Chalo HCU' programme."

Earlier, some students and their supporters had complained that the police were not allowing them to enter the campus.

Their demands include outster of Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao, who has proceeded on a long leave, and passing a 'Rohith Act' to prevent suicide of Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, Backward Classes and minority students in universities, the protesting students said.

The students and SC/ST faculty and officers' forums had objected to the choice of Vipin Srivastava, the senior-most professor, to perform the duties of the vice chancellor alleging that he headed the Executive Council Sub-Committee which is responsible for the death of Rohith and was one of the 'accused' in the suicide of another Dalit student Senthil in 2008.

Meanwhile, Dr B R Ambedkar's grandson Prakash Ambedkar visited the campus and interacted with the students, whose agitation has received strong support from parties other than the Bharatiya Janata Party and several top leaders including Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi were on the campus last week.

The students who gathered on the campus included those from CalicutUniversity in Kerala, PondicherryUniversity, OsmaniaUniversity and MaulanaAzadNationalUrduUniversity.

As part of the 'Chalo HCU' programme, the agitating students marched from HCU shopping complex area, the hub of the protest, to the main gate and administrative building and back.

The indefinite fast launched by a fresh batch of seven students continued in the university for the second day.

The previous batch of seven fasting students was shifted to the hospital on Saturday after their health deteriorated.

A health check will be conducted on the fasting students on Monday, Dr Ravindra Kumar, said a senior doctor at the health centre in the University.

Meanwhile, Rohith's mother Radhika was admitted to a private hospital on Sunday after she complained of chest pain, Kumar said, adding, she has been kept under observation in the Intensive Care Unit.

The university had on Sunday put a notice on its website saying the vice chancellor will be on leave and that Srivastava shall perform the duties of the VC. It did not mention the period of leave.
Twelve suspects, arrested from across the country for their alleged links with terror group ISIS, were on Monday remanded in the National Investigation Agency's custody till February 5 by a special court in New Delhi.

The accused, who had their faces muffled, were produced amidst tight security before District Judge Amar Nath during an in-camera proceeding.

According to the court sources, the NIA sought their custodial interrogation saying that they were required to be quizzed to unearth the conspiracy of ISIS to spread its reach in India.

The sources said that the probe agency informed the court that the accused were arrested for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day.

The 12 accused produced before the court were Abdul Ahad, Imran, Mohd Afzal, Mohd Sharif, Mubabiir Mushtaq Sheikh, Mohd Alim, Syed Mujahid, Suhail Ahmed, Asif Ali, Njmul Huda, Mohd Obaidullah Khan and Mohd Hussain Khan, the sources said.

These arrested accused were allegedly regularly in touch with active members of IS in Syria through internet chatting via Skype and other social networking apps, they said.

Many of these accused were allegedly assigned the work of recruiting operatives for the terror group, the sources said, adding that the accused were arrested from various places, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Aurangabad.

Two suspected terrorists -- Abu Anas and Nafees Khan, both aged 24 years -- were on Sunday remanded in the custody of the central terror probe agency by the court for 13 days on the allegations that they had Islamic State links.

NIA and other central agencies had arrested 14 people on Friday and Saturday for allegedly planning to carry out attacks ahead of the Republic Day.

They were arrested under several sections, those under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Two Al Qaeda operatives, believed to be members of its sleeper cell and motivating youths to join the terror group, were arrested from steel city Jamshedpur on the eve of Republic Day.

East Singhbhum district police arrested Ahmed Masood Akram Sheikh alias Masood alias Monu from Dhatkidih, while Nasim Akhtar alias Raju was nabbed from Road No 6, Zakirnagar, Old Purulia Road, Senior Superintendent of Police Anoop T Mathew said.

The two are members of Al Qaeda's sleeper cell and motivate youths of the steel city as well as other parts of Jharkhand to join and expand the organisation, he said.

The police picked up 35-year-old Masood following inputs provided by Jamshedpur-based Abdul Sami, who was arrested by the Delhi police special cell from Mewat in Haryana last week.

Masood confessed that he had been linked with the terrorist group since 2003 after he was motivated to join it by Abdul Rehman Katki, who had been arrested by the Delhi police from Cuttack in December.

He told the police that he had first met Rehman, a frequent visitor to Jamshedpur, at the Jama Masjid at Sakchi in 2003 and was influenced by him to join the terrorist organisation.

Masood had visited Saudi Arab in 2011 and met Sami on his return and convinced him (Sami) to join the group. He also played a crucial role in sending Sami to Pakistan for terrorist training, Mathew said.

Masood, he said, had also confessed to the police that he had one more operative in his cell but claimed knew him only by face and that he too had received terrorist training in Pakistan.

Search is on for the operative, Mathew added.

Mathew said Masood has disclosed the names of few others persons, who were motivated and were in constant link with him and the police is investigating into it.

The SSP said Akhtar was a criminal-cum-arms supplier who was influenced by Masood and agreed to deliver a consignment of arms procured from Munger in Bihar to a man in Bengaluru.

Mathew said he told the police that he was not known to the person he delivered the arms and ammunition at Bengaluru station a few months ago. He claimed that after delivering the arms he had immediately taken a bus to Chennai.

Further interrogation was on and if necessary the district police will seek remand of Sami for joint questioning with the two operatives arrested on Monday.

Police has registered a case against Masood under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, Arms act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and 7 Criminal Law Amendment Act.

Mathew said a special team led by deputy superintendent of police Jacinta Kerketta seized a 9 mm pistol, five live cartridges of 9mm bore, one mobile phone, Jehadi literature in English and Urdu, memory card and newspaper clippings related to terrorism from Masood's house at Dhatkidih.

A country-made pistol, one live cartridge and mobile phone were seized from Akhtars possession.

Police seized Sami's passport from his residence at Kapali in adjoining Seraikela-Kharswan district.

The passport was made here in the address of the Kapali house in 2009 and per the per entry in it Sami had visited Saudi Arab in 2014 and Malayasisa ten months later but no mention of his visit to Pakistan, Mathew added.

Image: Two suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda arrested by the police in Jamshedpur on Monday. Photograph: PTI Photo
Nitin Gokhale, founder, BharatShakti.in, reveals what is holding up the Rafale deal.

IMAGE: India won't pay more than $7 billion for 36 Rafale aircraft. The French want $11 billion.

Major differences over price has held up the much anticipated contract worth at least more than $7 billion that India was to sign with French aviation major Dassault to buy 36 Rafale multi-role combat jets for the Indian Air Force, even as visiting French President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi both said their governments had signed an inter-government agreement in New Delhi on Monday, January 25.

Indian government sources now indicate that it will take at least another month plus to hammer out a consensus between the two sides on how much each plane should cost.

Prime Minister Modi had announced in Paris last year that his government was scaling down the contract from the originally planned purchase of 126 fighter jets to a modest 36 planes.

Since then the two sides have been consistently trying to hammer out a solution to many contentious issues left behind by the original deal.

One of the initial hurdles was on the quantum of offsets.

While France was willing to agree to reinvest 30 per cent of the value of its contract in Indian entities to meet the offset obligations, India insisted on a 50 per cent offset clause to be met.

The French side finally agreed to invest 50 per cent of the value of its Rafale contract in India to boost the Make in India programme.

Two other tricky issues, however, needed to be sorted out before the actual contract document was ready to be signed.

One, India wanted a sovereign guarantee from the French government as collateral. Paris was, however, reportedly willing to give only a letter of guarantee from President Hollande.

After initial hesitation, New Delhi has apparently agreed to accept this as a concession since the letter is being treated as part of the Inter-Government Agreement signed on Monday.

The second and most important aspect -- that of the actual cost of the aircraft, including weapons systems and avionics -- is, however, proving to be the most difficult to resolve.

While the French have been insisting that the cost of the aircraft will invariably be higher given the lower numbers that India is willing to buy now, New Delhi insists that it must get a competitive price given the fact that it did not walk out of the original tender when it could easily have done so.

While no one is officially willing to give the exact figure each side is firm on, BharatShakti.in has learnt that India is firm on not paying more than around $7 billion for the 36 aircraft, the French are quoting a much higher figure of about $11 billion.

Given the wide gap in the figures, both sides may have to walk halfway to meet each other to resolve the issue and take the contract on the threshold of its final signing in the next few weeks.

Both Hollande and Modi have invested a great deal of their own political capital in re-configuring the original unwieldy tender, and government sources insist that the contract will be signed sooner than later.

Once that happens, it will bring the curtain down on one of the world's longest running competitions to sell fighter aircraft for any air force anywhere in the world.
'Teachers discriminate among students based on caste, religion and gender,' says Dr Rajesh Paswan, an associate professor at JNU.

Rohith Vemula became a victim of politics.

In all educational institutes there is some sort of discrimination against Dalit students. They don't get their fellowships on time or their guides/research supervisors create problems or they are unwilling to be guides for Dalit research scholars.

For the fellowship received by SC/ST students, many guides misuse the authority bestowed upon them. Some teachers take a bribe from students, at other times for want of a professor's signature or because the professors don't send the progress report on time -- an SC/ST student doesn't get her/his fellowship on time.

At times Dalit students are admitted and stopped from appearing in the exam. They are told that they didn't get the fellowship/scholarship. They do get it later, but because it is not given on time they have to face a lot of problems.

Rohith had not received his fellowship for seven months. In spite of the money being sent to the university from the University Grants Commission or the social justice ministry.

Some Dalit students are hardy enough to rough it out through the system, but some get beaten by the system like Rohith.

In a university system, the administrative department has a very small SC/ST representation. The hostel warden, proctorial board -- which constitute the disciplinarian boards -- have negligible SC/ST representation.

There are also not many SC/ST professors in universities. Therefore, SC/ST students don't have moral support when it comes to discussing their problems. If there is any discrimination faced by a student, the university does not provide a proper solution.

All universities have students that face discrimination. A Dalit student often comes from a difficult background. When he comes for higher education s/he needs a healing touch which the staff and administrators are unable to provide.

Up till now reservations in totality haven't been followed in the university system. In many universities reservation in higher education started 4, 5 years back. Prior to this, even if it existed as a principle, it wasn't implemented.

The social boycott that the Dalit students at University of Hyderabad were subjected to was very wrong. A lot of discussion is needed on the casteist outlook of the society which is reflected in the education system.

(Union Human Resources Development Minister) Smiti Irani is not understanding her responsibility. She defended Rohith's suicide instead of announcing a special inquiry at the press conference itself (The Centre announced a judicial inquiry five days after his death) and gone there herself as HRD minister.

An attempt is being made to protect the ABVP student when it is the duty of the ministry to support the victim. This has turned it into a political battle between the BJP and Congress.

Since the NDA government has come to power, merit is being continuously challenged in higher education. Appointments have been made not so much for academic record, but for the appointees' political leaning. Look at FTII and other universities. Many directors and vice-chancellors are now from the RSS background.

There used to be a non-National Eligibility Test fellowship for those students who hadn't qualified NET. These students used to receive a Rs 5,000 fellowship meant for those who did not have any fellowship, but this HRD ministry has discontinued the fellowship. While they will overwrite the loans of thousands of crores for corporate houses, they did away with a fellowship that is helping a student to pursue her/his studies.

The students have been protesting against that ruling under 'Occupy UGC' outside the UGC for months. They are lathi-charged and driven away which shows this government's callous attitude towards higher education.

A meritorious group of students who are the future of the nation are being ignored by this government while importance is being given to those belonging to the RSS.

This government is trying to harass the intellectual class of this country.

Rohith's suicide has brought Dalit discrimination on campuses to the limelight, but there are many students who are not being heard.

At JNU there is no such discrimination. Here, all students live together in the hostels. In many universities there are separate hostels for SC/ST hostels and general category students. This is wrong because students are unable to mingle with each other.

In many universities SC/ST hostels are constructed from the SC/ST welfare fund. A few years ago the social justice ministry gave funds for building four hostels so that SC/ST students get hostel accommodation quickly in JNU.

We were students in JNU at that time, we protested that hostels should be constructed but they should have all students living in it. We said let SC/ST get accommodation first, but don't make it only for them. The administration took cognisance of this and all JNU hostels have a mix of students.

When you live together the feeling of discrimination is less, people understand each other.

The situation is different in Hyderabad University. Dalit and Muslims are united for the student union election. This Dalit-Muslim unity is also the case in Hyderabad town.

Some students celebrated the beef festival at Osmania University in Hyderabad. Many a times, things are done to instigate others. Whether you eat beef, chicken or mutton is a personal choice, it shouldn't have been celebrated as a festival with the attitude that since you are protesting we are eating it.

Student politics happens at all universities, but it remains within the campus -- here a minister and HRD minister got involved and exerted pressure on the administration. This could have been solved at the university level itself. The students could have been suspended for six months and re-instated. The situation worsened due to interference.

The gap betweens student and teachers that has come to exist on university campuses needs to be bridged. Teachers should be also be ready to hear the personal problems of students.

In this country, a student will always like and respect a good teacher who is honest and has command over her/his subject. There has been deterioration in the teaching community too. Teachers discriminate among their students based on caste, religion and gender.

Teachers should also introspect and rise above caste. The entire academic community is sad about Rohith's death. A meritorious student has died. That letter is heart-breaking. I hope attitudes change.

IMAGE: A students' protest over Rohith Vemula's suicide. Photograph: PTI

Professor Paswan says there are around 10% to 15% Dalit teachers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. An associate professor of Hindi at JNU's School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, he spoke to Archana Masih/Rediff.com
Nigeria: reintegrating women and children liberated from Boko Haram 'essential' to peace, say UN experts

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 January 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Nigeria: reintegrating women and children liberated from Boko Haram 'essential' to peace, say UN experts, 22 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5d11d269.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.

22 January 2016 - Three United Nations human rights experts today called on the Government of Nigeria to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of women and children who escaped or were liberated from Boko Haram captivity.

"As the region transits from relief to recovery, it is important to ensure that rehabilitation and reintegration measures are grounded in human rights norms and take into consideration the impact of the regional conflict on women and children," said the UN Special Rapporteurs on sale of children, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio; on contemporary forms of slavery, Urmila Bhoola; and on right to health, Dainius Puras, at the end of an official visit to Nigeria.

"These measures must aim to fundamentally transform society for the better while addressing the immediate needs of women and girls," the experts stressed. "They must also address root causes especially discrimination, deprivation, exclusion and gender inequality."

The Special Rapporteurs commended the initiatives taken so far by the Government, but cautioned that "gaps remain in implementing policies and enforcing laws in a manner that makes a real difference in the lives of all, especially women and children affected by the insecurity and violence in the Northeast."

Noting the progress made in the management of internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps, they called for further efforts to ensure that reintegration and rehabilitation programmes leave no one behind, wherever they may have settled. "In particular, health systems must be strengthened, so as to meet the physical and mental health needs of both the displaced and the host communities," the experts stated.

"During our visits to camps in Maiduguri, we witnessed first-hand the health and social impacts of the conflict. We met with women and girls who reported limited access to services including adequate nutritious food, psychosocial support, education, and health including sexual and reproductive services," they said.

The Special Rapporteurs called on the Government and international partners to provide skills development and livelihood opportunities in order to ensure economic empowerment and secure access to decent work. "This will go a long way in ensuring IDPs have the necessary skills and the opportunities to re-build their lives as well as integrate in their former or new communities," they noted.

"A protection gap is evident especially in the service delivery and access to justice for women and girls victims of Boko Haram," the experts stated. "Real and concerted efforts are needed at the Federal and State levels to secure accountability and address impunity for sexual violence, including child and forced marriage."

"We would also welcome more information, at an appropriate time and bearing in mind security considerations, on the steps taken to locate and rescue all victims of abduction by Boko Haram, in particular the schoolgirls from Chibok," they said.

Meanwhile, they stressed the urgent and pressing need for effective measures to address stigma, ostracism and rejection of women and children associated with Boko Haram by their families and communities. "Efforts at community cohesion, peacebuilding and reconciliation must start now and accelerate as people begin to return from displacement," they warned.

The Special Rapporteurs also noted that "the current comprehensive approach to addressing challenges in the North East provides a good opportunity not only to reintegrate women and children affected by Boko Haram but also to strengthen the health and educational sectors which are crucial for peace, security and sustainable development in Nigeria."

During their five-day official visit to Nigeria, the human rights experts met with representatives from various Ministries, the Parliament and other public bodies, as well as civil society and relevant UN agencies. They also visited IDP camps and the De-radicalization Programme, and met with some of the parents of the missing Chibok girls.

The Special Rapporteurs will present a report on this visit to the UN Human Rights Council in the course of 2016.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
Haiti: UN chief concerned at postponement of polls; calls on all sides to refrain from violence

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 23 January 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Haiti: UN chief concerned at postponement of polls; calls on all sides to refrain from violence, 23 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5d20440d.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.

23 January 2016 - Voicing concern at the postponement of tomorrow's already delayed presidential elections in Haiti, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today called on all political actors to refrain from violence and complete the electoral process peacefully without further delay.

The Secretary-General urges all political actors to reject all forms of violence and intimidation and refrain from any action that can further disrupt the democratic process and stability in the country, a statement issued by his spokesman said, reaffirming the UN's commitment to continue supporting the consolidation of democracy and stabilisation in Haiti.

He strongly urges all stakeholders to work towards the peaceful completion of the electoral process without delay, through the forging of a consensual solution that will allow the people of Haiti to exercise their right to vote for the election of a new President and the remaining representatives of the new Parliament.

Tensions have been simmering since the first round of the elections in October, and Jovenel Moise from the governing party and former government executive Jude Celestin, the two top vote getters then, were set to face each other in the run-off, originally set for 27 December.

According to press reports, this second round was again postponed on Friday amid violent protests and the opposition's refusal to participate.The transfer of power to a new president is constitutionally mandated to take place on 7 February.

The UN has maintained a peacekeeping operation, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), since 2004. With more than 4,500 troops and police deployed currently deployed in Haiti, its mandate has evolved over the years from supporting a transitional government to embracing earthquake recovery and facilitating the political process.
UN and partners in Haiti reiterate support for conclusion of electoral process

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 January 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN and partners in Haiti reiterate support for conclusion of electoral process, 22 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5d2f740c.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.

22 January 2016 - The United Nations and its partners in Haiti reiterated today their support for the outcome of the electoral process in the country, where political tensions have simmered ahead of the second round of presidential polls, which was set for Sunday, but which reportedly has been postponed.

In a joint press release, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Haiti, Sandra Honore, and other members of the international community represented in the Core Group (Brazil, Canada, Spain, France, United States, European Union and the Organization of American States) reiterated their "continued support for the conclusion of an inclusive and fair electoral process while supporting efforts to find a solution that ensures the democratic renewal of State institutions."

The UN and its partners maintained their "full support to the efforts aimed at identifying consensual and constructive solutions to the current challenges of governance of Haiti through elections and dialogue between stakeholders."

Further, they deplored the recent acts of electoral violence and called on national authorities, political parties, candidates and their supporters and the electorate in general, "to participate responsibly and with restraint in the electoral process so that the Haitian people can express their will in a climate free of intimidation and violence."

In early January, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern at political developments related to the electoral process and urged the Haitian authorities and political actors to ensure that the process would be concluded as soon as possible. In addition, he recalled that the Haitian Parliament has not functioned since January 2015.

According to press reports, the second round of the scheduled Sunday, January 24 presidential election was postponed again Friday amid violent protests and refusal to participate in the opposition. The second round was originally scheduled to take place December 27, 2015.
Security Council delegation visits Burundi in diplomatic push to end months of political tension

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 January 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council delegation visits Burundi in diplomatic push to end months of political tension, 22 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5d31840d.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.

22 January 2016 - Diplomats from the United Nations Security Council are wrapping up a visit to crisis-torn Burundi, after meetings with top Government officials in the capital, Bujumbura, where they encouraged all parties to pursue an inclusive dialogue process that would help end months of political turmoil.

During the visit, the delegation met with Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, and was also expected to meet the Foreign Minister, the President of the National Assembly and representatives of political parties, civil society and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Speaking to UN Radio after talks with the President Nkurunziza, Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola  who co-led the visit alongside United States Ambassador Samantha Power and deputy French Ambassador, Alexis Lamek  said the delegation had reviewed the security situation in the county as well as the proposal for mediation by the East African Community (EAC), led by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

We also agreed that the Council should look at how it could support this mediation in order to produce the results that would lower current tensions in Burundi, said Ambassador Gaspar Martins, adding that the Council delegation will next head to the African Union's headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to brief officials there on the discussions that had been held in Bujumbura.

Security Council delegation meets former Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye. Photo: UNIC Bujumbura

US Ambassador Samantha Power is greeted by Burundian officials upon arrival at Bujumbura airport. Photo: UNIC Bujumbura

Ambassador Ismael A. Gaspar Martins of Angola is greeted by Burundian officials upon arrival at Bujumbura airport. Photo: UNIC Bujumbura





This Security Council's diplomatic push comes as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) last week warned that alarming new trends are emerging in Burundi, including cases of sexual violence by security forces and a sharp increase in enforced disappearances and torture cases. He also called for an urgent investigation into the events that took place in Bujumbura on 11 and 12 December, including the reported existence of at least nine mass graves.

The 11 December attacks against three military camps and the large-scale human rights violations that occurred in their immediate aftermath appear to have triggered new and extremely disturbing patterns of violations, said Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in a news release.

Burundi faced a serious political crisis since President Nkurunziza took the controversial decision to seek a third presidential term last year. Since then, hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. Some 220,000 people have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and thousands more have been displaced within the country.
'Imperative to pursue criminal accountability of the DPR Korea leadership'  UN rights expert

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 22 January 2016 Cite as UN News Service, 'Imperative to pursue criminal accountability of the DPR Korea leadership'  UN rights expert, 22 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5d35340d.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.

22 January 2016 - The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today called on the international community to further all efforts to improve the human rights situation in the country.

"In addition to continuing political pressure to exhort the DPRK to improve human rights, it is also now imperative to pursue criminal responsibility of the DPRK leadership," said Marzuki Darusman in Tokyo at the end of his last official visit as a UN Human Rights Council's independent expert.

"Not much has changed in the country almost two years after the report of the Commission of Inquiry," the Special Rapporteur, whose mandate ends in July 2016, added.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), since his appointment in 2010, Mr. Darusman has made several requests to visit DPRK; however, access was never granted. He has been visiting other countries in the region such as Japan, Thailand and the Republic of Korea.

"I regret to say that any act that can be construed as violence against the international community has negative implications on the human rights situation in the DPRK," the expert stressed, noting that his visit to Japan took place following the latest nuclear test by the North Korean Government.

"Such an act immediately overshadows the continuous efforts by the international community to improve the human rights situation in the DPRK," he stated, adding that it was all the more important for the international community to step up efforts to engage the DPRK in human rights dialogue while seeking to ensure accountability.

During his five-day mission, Mr. Darusman met with family members of victims of abduction and representatives of civil society organizations. He also met with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister in charge of the Abduction Issue, high-level officials from the Cabinet Intelligence, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cabinet Headquarters on the Abduction Issues and parliamentarians, as well as officials of the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court and the National Police Agency.

"I am disappointed that there has been no concrete progress since Japan and the DPRK signed a bilateral agreement almost two years ago to work towards a resolution of this issue," he stressed. "I urge the DPRK to meet their commitment to the agreement and resume actively steps to restore the confidence between Japan and the DPRK."

During his discussion with family members of victims of abduction and the Minister in charge of the Abduction Issue, the expert recalled that the former Supreme Leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-il, acknowledged that the country had been involved in abductions of Japanese citizens.

"Such an acknowledgement, without concrete and comprehensive solutions, naturally raises suspicion that the country continues to be involved and implicated in the abductions," he said. "We are therefore on a clear path and engaged in a just cause to pursue a final settlement of abduction of Japanese nationals, but also possibly of other nationals."

"Abduction, as a form of enforced disappearance, is a continuous crime, which does not end until the victim's family learns of the whereabouts of their loved one and, where possible, the survivors are immediately returned to their families," the expert noted. "Resolving the abduction issue is a matter of urgency. The families of victims are advancing in age."

The Special Rapporteur underscored that the issue also affects the international community. "Progress on the abduction issue will contribute to the beginning of building trust and good will. Failure to act will undermine any good will that any future engagement might be undertaken with reasonable measures of trust," he said.

Mr. Darusman also underlined that the issue of trust goes to the heart of the obligations of every United Nations Member State to observe the Charter of the United Nations. "The DPRK has an obligation to uphold and respect the Charter and international human rights law, exemplary of any full member of the United Nations," he concluded.

The Special Rapporteur will report his findings and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2016.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
No Refuge: Central American Children on the Run in Mexico

Publisher IRIN Author Amy Stillman Publication Date 20 January 2016 Cite as IRIN, No Refuge: Central American Children on the Run in Mexico, 20 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5da7e4.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.

Mexico is ill-equipped to deal with increasing numbers of children fleeing gang violence in Central America's "Northern Triangle".

Behind an unmarked brown door sandwiched between a rundown motel and a fried chicken joint in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, lunch is being prepared on an outdoor stove, while children sit around dusty picnic tables scrawling in school notebooks.

"If they don't study, they can't stay here," said Jose Ramon Verdugo Sanchez.

Verdugo, a member of the Evangelical Church, founded Todos por Ellos ("All for Them"), a children's shelter, in 2009 in response to the growing number of Central American minors arriving in Tapachula - a sleepy, tropical city about 40 kilometres from Mexico's border with Guatemala.

In a bid to keep them off the streets, he struck a deal with a local primary school to allow the children staying at the shelter to attend classes. "Kids in school are less likely to be recruited by gangs," he reasoned.

Six years ago, most of these forgotten youths were Guatemalan. But as gang violence has spread across the so-called "Northern Triangle" region, many more children from El Salvador and Honduras are also crossing Mexico's southern border.

In recent years, these tiny Central American nations have competed for the unwanted title of global murder capital. Last year, violent deaths in El Salvador shot up by 70 percent, putting the country ahead of Honduras as the most dangerous place in the world outside of warzones. In 2015, there were 6,657 murders, a level of violence not seen since the country's bloody civil war three decades ago.

One of the victims was Norma Alicia Martinez's 16-year-old son Carlos, a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang (also known as MS-13), who was gunned down last May on the streets of Usulutan, El Salvador.

Hoping to save her two youngest children from a similar fate, Martinez, 41, bundled her eight-year-old son Wilber and 10-year daughter Liliana into a taxi and headed to the capital, San Salvador. From there, they took a bus to the northern border of Guatemala, where locals instructed them on how to reach a migrant shelter in Tapachula. "My only concern is getting my remaining children as far away from the gangs as humanly possible," said the tearful Salvadoran mother, from the stoop of the All for Them building.

In another nearby shelter, Jesus el Buen Pastor ("Jesus the Good Shepherd"), Digna Hernandez Turcios, 13, sits on the cement floor, her knees pulled up to her chest, staring listlessly at a TV screen. On Christmas Day, she watched as three men stormed into her family's home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and sprayed her uncle with bullets. Her mother, Damaris Yamileth Turcios Lara, 30, told IRIN he'd been murdered because he refused to join Barrio 18, the deadly Central American street gang. Fearing further reprisals, the family fled to Mexico. "There are no human rights in my country," said Turcios. "It is useless to go to the police; the only thing you can do is run."

As the violence shows no signs of abating, experts warn that the United States can expect to see a rising number of Central American children arriving on its doorstep.

"What we are seeing is that the deteriorating situation in the Northern Triangle is fuelling a looming refugee crisis, with people fleeing anywhere they can to find safety," said Alice Farmer, a protection officer at the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, in Washington.

According to US Borders and Customs Protection data, as many as 21,469 people in family units were apprehended at Mexico's northern border in the last three months of 2015, almost triple the number compared to the same period the previous year.

At the same time, the number of unaccompanied children or youths travelling without an adult family member more than doubled to 17,370. In December alone, which is usually a slow month for undocumented crossings because of the cold weather, 6,782 unaccompanied minors were apprehended.

Under pressure from the US, Mexico has attempted to stem these flows by beefing up border security in the south of the country through its "Southern Border Plan", launched in mid-2014. The initiative has come under heavy criticism by human rights groups who say it has increased the unlawful detention of asylum seekers, including children, and is forcing them to use more dangerous routes to avoid detection.

Undocumented migrants are now finding it more difficult to ride on top of "La Bestia", the cargo trains commonly used to travel north to the Mexico-US border. Instead, they are taking buses and walking through the jungles and mountains, leaving them more exposed to the elements and to bandits, said Andremar Galvan Serrano, chief coordinator of the migrant support group Coami in Mexico City.

"Of course I'm worried," said Jose Campos when asked about his plan to cross Mexico by bus and on foot, skirting around border security checkpoints by detouring through jungle. "But not for me," added the 43-year-old Salvadoran, indicating the slim teenage girl perched on a rock outside the Belen migrant shelter in Tapachula. "I'm worried for my niece."

Children and women face additional risks from Mexican criminal organisations and Central American gangs (whose reach extends well into Mexico) who seek to recruit them or sell them into sexual slavery. Local police and migration authorities are sometimes complicit in the abuse.

"The risks of the journey are enormous," said Farmer. "I think people worry a great deal about bringing their young children with them, but they feel they have no option."

Increasing numbers of Central American children are also being detained in Mexico. In the first 11 months of 2015, authorities apprehended 31,625 Central American children, including those traveling with adult relatives, a 50-percent rise compared to the same period a year ago, according to official statistics.

While some unaccompanied minors are returned by plane to their home countries, others are brought to child shelters run by the Mexican family welfare agency, DIF. In spite of a 2014 law that prohibits child detention, some are also sent to detention facilities run by the National Institute of Migration, INM, due to a lack of space at the DIF shelters.

"In many cases, children are waiting in detention because there are not sufficient alternatives," said Mark Manly, a UNHCR representative in Mexico City. "Many Mexican states do not have DIF shelters, and implementing the law requires additional human resources, financial resources, and infrastructure."

At Tapachula's two DIF shelters, which cater to unaccompanied minors and those travelling with female relatives, "children spend all day long doing nothing," said Perrine Leclerc, head of UNHCR's field office in the city. "They don't have enough staff to look after the children or to organise activities. It is only the basics," she told IRIN. "They give you a bed and they give you food."

Detention can last for as long as three months if children make asylum claims while in government custody. Only those who manage to apply for asylum at the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, Comar, before being apprehended by migration authorities can avoid detention and legally stay in the Mexican state where the claim has been made for the duration of the process.

According to Leclerc, the Byzantine system has acted as a deterrent for children to apply for asylum. "What we are witnessing is that they prefer to be deported and re-enter Mexico, where they can apply for asylum directly at Comar and avoid being detained."

Between January and October last year, more than five times as many unaccompanied minors were apprehended in Mexico than applied for asylum. Moreover, 60 percent of the applications that were made ended in rejection.

The number of asylum applications made on behalf of unaccompanied minors is nevertheless rising. In the first 10 months of 2015, Comar received 2,745 such applications, up from 2,137 cases for the full year of 2014, and only 1,296 in 2013.

Mexico has limited resources to accommodate the growing numbers of child asylum seekers. The few civil society-run shelters were mainly designed to provide brief respite for migrants transiting through Mexico and are ill-equipped to take in asylum seekers whose accommodation needs span months rather than days.

The dilemma led Milagro Del Socorro Romero Aguilar, a cook at one of the Tapachula shelters, to offer Damaris Yamileth Turcios Lara and her children a room in her two-bedroom flat. "What could I do? The two girls are my daughter's age," said the bubbly Romero, stroking a pet Chihuahua in the tiny living room she now shares with the family of five.

Once an undocumented migrant herself, the Nicaraguan moved to Tapachula in 2003, where she met and married her Mexican husband. "It was very different back then; things were easier for migrants," she told IRIN. "Now there is nowhere for them to go. There is no place for children."
Tunisia: The Right to protest must be protected

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 22 January 2016 Cite as Article 19, Tunisia: The Right to protest must be protected, 22 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56a5dbc64.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.

Demonstrations in favour of dignity and employment were held in Kasserine after an unemployed man - Ridha Yahyaoui - had taken his own life there. These protests then spread to a further 15 states. Some protest actions were met with a police reaction, which the authorities claimed was necessary to quell violent attacks.

A curfew has also been re-imposed, as of today, 22 January.

ARTICLE 19 calls for the protection of the right of the individuals to express their opinions and demands through demonstrations and protest actions.

"The reimposition of the curfew announced today by the government is a step in the wrong direction, which limits the right to protest, protected by the Constitution and international human rights standards,"affirmed Saloua Ghazouani, Director of ARTICLE 19 - Tunisia.

The Tunisian government is under a positive obligation to ensure that people are able to exercise their right to protest. Protection of public order may only be invoked as a reason to restrict this right when protesters threaten the very functioning of society, or the fundamental principles on which society is based, such as respect for human rights or the rule of law.

"Non-violent protests, including spontaneous, simultaneous and counter-protests, must be considered an essential characteristic of public order and not as a de facto danger to it, even when a protest causes inconvenience or disturbance," Ghazouani stated. "The authorities must respect and ensure the people's right to protest, and any security force intervention must be limited to what is strictly necessary to maintain public order."

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Morgan County to look into water resources for future development
COLLEGE STATION  The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has hired four viticulture program specialists to assist grape growers with challenges and educational information, officials said.

The positions, strategically located across the state, were funded by the Texas Legislature in acknowledging that Texas is the fifth-leading wine producing state in the nation with more than 350 licensed wineries, and vineyard acreage has more than doubled over the past decade, according to Dr. Justin Scheiner, AgriLife Extension state viticulturist in College Station.

The new viticulturists and their locations are: Piere Helwi, High Plains and West Texas regions; Andrew Labay, Texas Hill Country; Fran Pontasch, Gulf Coast region; and, Michael Cook, North Texas region.

"The Texas wine industry has great potential," said Dan Lineberger, head of the horticultural sciences department at Texas A&M University where the four will be academically connected. "We're anxious to get this team in place, and we're excited about the opportunities to work closer with new growers, current growers and members of the Texas wine industry."

Lineberger said AgriLife Extension has had "an excellent relationship with the grape growing and wine industry since its inception," and these specialists will help the industry continue to grow toward the future.

Pontasch, who is based in College Station, previously served as a viticulture adviser with AgriLife Extension in the North Texas region. She has worked as a vineyard manager and vineyard consultant. Pontasch earned a bachelor's in horticulture at Texas A&M and a master's in biology from Sul Ross University where she studied Pierce's Disease in grapes in the Davis Mountains.

Cook, who is based in Denton, has a bachelor's in horticulture from Texas A&M and a master's in viticulture from Fresno State University in California where he studied the effects of fruit zone light management and applied water on grapevine productivity and phenolic composition.

Helwi comes from Bordeaux, France, where he recently completed a doctoral degree in oenology from the University of Bordeaux. His dissertation research focused on the effects of nitrogen nutrition on aroma compounds in grapes and wine. He will assume his duties based in Lubbock on Feb. 15.

Labay has been working as an AgriLife Extension associate since 2010 in the viticulture program at the Fredericksburg Viticulture and Fruit Lab. He holds a master's in functional plant biology from the University of Montpellier II in France and is pursuing a doctoral degree in horticulture at Texas A&M. He will be based in Fredericksburg beginning in June.
Fighting flu starts with a shot, and it's time for Texans to get one
Snyder Police have arrested two people following an alleged break-in early Sunday morning which left two men dead, according to a news release from the police department Monday.

Police arrested 24-year-old Juan Barron of Arizona and 28-year-old Nicole Dabney of Snyder and charged each with tampering with evidence.

According to the news release, at 8:55 a.m. Sunday police were dispatched to the 2000 block of Avenue Z to investigate a report of a suspicious vehicle parked on the side of the road. Officers at the scene found a parked vehicle with its engine running.

A few minutes later, at 9:13 a.m., a man and woman went into the Law Enforcement Center and reported that at 4 a.m. two people broke into their house in the 2100 block of Avenue Z, the release stated. The woman told police 'an assault had taken place at that location and two male subjects had been killed.'

Officers sent to the scene found the two deceased men, whose names are withheld pending positive identification and notification of their families.

The bodies were sent to Lubbock for autopsies.

The ongoing investigation is being led by Sgt. Mike Counts.
ROSCOE, Texas  Kim Alexander, Superintendent of Roscoe Collegiate ISD, is passionate about a couple of things  quality education for his students and agricultural leaders and researchers for the future.

Alexander is known to think outside the box and create some remarkable things in the Roscoe schools.

While pursuing a doctoral degree, Alexander researched the needs of socioeconomically diverse students in the rural regions of Texas. With the cooperation of several universities, industry and individuals, the model of an early college was formulated. Students attending the Roscoe schools are given the opportunity for dual credit in pursuit of a collegiate degree. The program has been in place for seven years.

Completion rates for associate degrees have grown from one student in 2011 to 90 percent of the class of 2015 receiving associate degrees at time of high school graduation.

STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. Its purpose is to develop students who demonstrate high levels of aptitude in these fields, giving them the ability and mindset to pursue advance degrees thus making a positive contribution to their chosen field.

To enhance this, a new $3.5 million agricultural research center has been opened, which houses Collegiate Edu-Vet, as well as an engineering center. Built through a bond package that passed with a 3-to-1 margin, it shows the support of these innovative educational programs.

The facility contains a state-of-the-art veterinary clinic designed for both large animal and small animal care.

"While the district cannot own and operate a vet clinic, we can enlist a practicing veterinarian in the facility while teaching students through apprenticeships," Alexander said.

With the projection that by 2020 more than 60 percent of all employment opportunities will require a college education, the educational model at Roscoe is preparing students from as early as the third grade.

Working with the Nolan County AgriLife Extension Office and having resources from both the district and state levels of Extension, a Roscoe-Collegiate Schoolwide 4-H program is used to stimulate student interest. A major part of the 4-H program is the development of research projects. The specific topics are designed by a advisory committee consisting of AgriLife Extension specialists, instructors and people from the agricultural industry in the region.

"They include topics such has cotton insect control, wildlife enhancements, animal health and even feed requirements for poultry production," said Zac Wilcox, Extension Agent for Nolan County.

At the conclusion of the research project, students are required to prepare a poster and orally present the findings of their specific research. The posters are placed on all campuses of the Roscoe school system for review by all students and facility

"One of the major factors that students do not advance to graduate school after the completion of a bachelor of science is the fear of research," according to Alexander.

These students have been exposed to research methodology early in their educational process, giving them a strong background. These research projects follow the standard approved methods of research. Under the guidance of Roxanna Reyna-Islas, 4-H Program specialist assigned to the program, many of the projects are presented at 4-H district and state, expanding the experience of the students even more.

Anderson said there are nearly 60,000 high-skilled agricultural job openings in the U.S. annually, yet there are only 35,000 ag graduates available to fill them. Those receiving advanced degrees in agricultural fields can expect to have ample career opportunities. These jobs will only become more important as we continue to develop solutions to feed more than 9 billion people worldwide by 2050, he said.

This small West-Texas School District is doing its part.
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Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller (L), Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd L) and Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhang Gaoli (R) attend Siberian gas pipeline near Yakutsk, Sept. 1, 2014.

Russia's biggest energy deal with China faces delays as economic pressures mount in both countries, raising risks for the plan to link Siberian gas fields with China's industrial northeast.

On Dec. 29, Russia's monopoly Gazprom said it had cancelled a tender for a major portion of its mammoth Power of Siberia pipeline project after regulators objected to anti-competitive terms.

Gazprom's record tender for an 822-kilometer (510-mile) section of the pipeline was set to award 156 billion rubles (12.8 billion yuan) to "a single contractor for the entire set of works required for gas transportation" in order to "optimize costs," Interfax reported.

But on Dec. 7, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) cited faulty documentation and "bidding criteria that were not measurable," the news agency said.

The regulatory roadblock came one week after Gazprom awarded 197.7 billion rubles (16.3 billion yuan) in pipeline contracts without competition to a construction firm owned by Arkady Rotenberg, a friend of President Vladimir Putin and a target of Western sanctions over Russia's conflict with Ukraine.

It was unclear whether the FAS action was meant solely to head off higher costs from limited competitive bidding. But cost is one of several problems for the gas deal that was valued at U.S. $400 billion (2.6 trillion yuan) when it was signed with China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) in 2014 after a decade of talks.

Technical challenges

Murky contracting, bureaucracy and technical challenges have all hindered progress on the plan to meet China's demand for cleaner-burning fuel, according to a year-end Interfax report.

"'The project is on schedule,' Gazprom officials intone.

Meanwhile, the available information suggests that although Power of Siberia may be a future hero, it is currently facing a struggle just to stand up," Interfax said.

The entire project stretches 3,968 kilometers (2,465 miles) to the Chinese border at an estimated cost of U.S. $21.3 billion (140.1 billion yuan), according to the TASS news agency. So far, 80 kilometers (50 miles) of pipeline have been completed, Interfax said.

The normally well-connected news agency voiced frustration with Gazprom over unanswered questions about the project. The company has been reorganized into numbered departments without clear responsibilities, it said.

"Thus, Power of Siberia's image is being shaped by tender flip-flops, postponements, cancelled purchases, new purchases and single-tender purchases," said the report.

Delays have caused contractors to miss much of the winter construction season in the Siberian wilderness, when the terrain is frozen and more stable. Construction costs per kilometer are several times higher than in western Russia, it said.

But external conditions facing the project may be even more challenging.

Export gas prices have plunged nearly 50 percent since the 30-year export deal was signed, making it unlikely to still be worth U.S. $400 billion. Peak volumes under the contract would reach 38 billion cubic meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet) a year.

Reports of the start-up date for deliveries have gradually slipped from 2018 to 2019 to 2021 and beyond.

Anticipated profits shrinking

While the anticipated profits for Russia are shrinking, an expected prepayment from China of U.S. $25 billion (164.5 billion yuan) never materialized. Reports suggest that Chinese banks have been wary about lending to Russia, which is bearing dual-burdens of sanctions and recession.

Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) fell 3.7 percent last year, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Monday.

China's reluctance to finance the pipeline has hindered Gazprom's strategic shift to focus on Asia, which was meant to send a message to Western critics and spur competition for Russia's resources.

In early December, Interfax said Gazprom would return to its previous practice of holding its annual investment meetings in New York and London after moving them to Hong Kong and Singapore last year.

The report cited "the indecisiveness and conservativeness of Asian investors, and also the limited size of the Asian financial market."

Russia-China trade fell nearly 28 percent last year due in part to the oil slump, China's General Administration of Customs (GAC) reported. Russian exports to China were down 19 percent to U.S. $31.4 billion (206.5 billion yuan).

While conditions in Russia threaten delays, weakening economic growth in China has created little pressure for speed, despite the push to replace more high-polluting coal with cleaner gas.

The growth of China's gas consumption dropped from 17.4 percent in 2013 to 8.9 percent in 2014, according to CNPC.

Last year, the growth rate over 11 months dipped to 3.7 percent, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said.

The major market for Power of Siberia gas in China's industrial northeast has been struggling with the slowest GDP growth rates in the country and extreme production overcapacity.

Some plants that once may have been counted as potential gas consumers are now more likely to be shut down.

The combination of factors appears to be working against the gas deal on both sides.

On Jan. 16, Ulyukayev denied that terms of the deal would change due to weaker Chinese demand after Reuters quoted a Gazprom source as saying that volumes could be cut back.

Too important to abandon

Over the past year, Russian officials have periodically pushed for additional pipelines to China, including a western route through Xinjiang, but reports of progress have been few and far between.

In November, an intergovernmental commission concluded that a "new model of cooperation" would be needed to pursue the western route in light of lower energy prices, Interfax reported at the time.

In December, Gazprom and CNPC signed an agreement on design and construction of the Amur River border crossing for the Power of Siberia project, but that work could be years away.

Despite rising problems, Moscow remains committed to the costly project, which has been seen as a key to unlocking the resource wealth of Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, said Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"Since the agreement was signed, oil and gas prices have collapsed, projected Chinese energy demand is softer than expected, Russian country risks have gone up and its ability to finance expensive projects has deteriorated," said Chow.

"So, delay is to be expected. The question is for how long. It would not surprise me if the project does not flow significant gas volumes until 2025 or beyond," he said.

Chow sees the expected prepayment from China as an indicator of progress, and this has been missing. But the stakes may be too high to give up on the project.

"Since this is a strategically and politically important project for both Russia and China, it will not be abandoned.

There are always things that state-controlled companies can do to appear to make progress," he said.

But Russia may face even tougher challenges in developing Siberia's giant Kovykta and Chayanda gas fields that are planned to supply the pipeline.

"The pipeline itself should be the simplest part of the project," Chow said.
Sophie Choi, wife of Hong Kong publisher Lee Bo, who is believed to have been abducted by Chinese authorities along with other colleagues, in undated screen shot from local television.

A prominent pan-democratic politician in Hong Kong on Monday called on the city's chief executive to travel to Beijing to seek clarification over the "disappearance" of five men connected to a bookstore selling political books banned in mainland China.

Labour Party lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, said the the city's leader Leung Chun-ying should go to Beijing and speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping over the apparent detentions, which have sent shockwaves through the semiautonomous city.

"The Chief Executive has the responsibility to protect the people of Hong Kong from any cross-border arrests and so he should go to Beijing and demand for an answer," Lee told Hong Kong government broadcaster RTHK.

"It's really, really a blow to one country, two systems if there can be cross-border arrests and [if] we are not safe in Hong Kong from China's public security authorities", he said, in a reference to Hong Kong's maintenance of a separate political system and legal jurisdiction since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.

Causeway Bay Books store manager Lee Bo, 65, was last seen at work on Dec. 30, while four of his associates, publisher Gui Minhai, general manager Lui Bo, and colleagues Cheung Jiping and Lam Wing-kei have gone missing since October.

There is no record of Lee Bo leaving Hong Kong, prompting fears that he was spirited across the internal immigration border by Chinese police, while Gui holds a Swedish passport and was apparently detained while on vacation in Thailand.

Televised confession

Gui was paraded on state-run CCTV earlier this month, "confessing" to having killed a woman in a hit-and-run car accident some years earlier.

Meanwhile, Lee Bo's wife Sophie Choi met with him on Saturday in mainland China, reporting him to be "healthy and in good spirits," Hong Kong police said on Saturday.

Lee has repeatedly said he is "assisting in an investigation" as a witness, and Choi has declined to reveal his location, but many fear the couple are being manipulated by police to avoid harsher reprisals.

Lee wrote a letter to Hong Kong police, which was quoted by The Standard newspaper in English after being seen by a sister publication.

"First of all, I thank Hong Kong police for paying attention and spending effort on my case," he wrote. "I was not abducted, nor was I arrested by mainland authorities for vice-related activities ... It involves my privacy and internal affairs of my company."

Veteran political commentator Poon Siu-to said Beijing had likely run into more public opposition over the booksellers than it expected, and had probably responded by orchestrating Gui's TV appearance and Lee Bo's meeting with his wife.

"Actually, there are also three more Hong Kong residents who are missing, apart from Gui Minhai and Lee Bo," Poon said. "Why are they not being treated in the same way?"

Concerns for Hong Kong's once-freewheeling publishing industry have been growing following a report in London's Sunday Times newspaper that the ruling Chinese Communist Party is explicitly targeting "forbidden books" from Hong Kong, which has traditionally enjoyed freedom of the press and of publication.

The report cited a leaked Communist Party document as saying that officials should aim to "wipe out banned publications at source." It said banned publications included pornographic material and "illegal" books.

Extermination hit list

Citing a leaked copy of a "Guangdong Action Plan," the article said China had identified 14 publishing houses and 21 publications in Hong Kong as targets for "extermination," apparently authorizing cross-border operations.

According to Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post, none of the legislators or publishers it had interviewed had seen the document, nor heard of the "Guangdong Action Plan," however.

Jin Zhong, editor of Hong Kong's Open Magazine and a veteran publisher of books on China, said he hadn't heard of the document.

"We have no way of confirming the existence of this document at the moment," said Jin, who also confirmed he is moving his entire family to the United States soon.

"I made the arrangements to go to the U.S. a while ago, so it has nothing to do with these latest developments," Jin said.

Some lawmakers said they already believe that Beijing fully intends to suppress "banned books" coming out of the city insofar as it can, however.

"[The disappearances] ... show to other publication houses a warning that 'you are not safe in Hong Kong. We can get at you, even though you try to hide away from China and stay in Hong Kong,'" Lee Cheuk-yan told RTHK.

And Democratic Party legislator, James To told the station that the document could explain why Chinese law enforcement officers felt able to detain someone in Hong Kong and take them back to China.

According to veteran journalist and political commentator Ching Cheong, the document, if verified, shows a much more aggressive approach from Beijing.

"If the central government has designated as targets 14 publishing houses and 21 publications, then that is very clearly a target [for law enforcement]," Ching said.

"And if they are calling on governments at every level to take responsibility for meeting these targets, saying they are subversive, then they are more likely to act on them," he said. "And when they do act, they won't care about the consequences; they will just want to get the job done."

Hong Kong-based Bao Pu, the son of a top former party official who now runs the New Century publishing house, said he had never heard of the Guangdong Action Plan, however.

He said he didn't expect to make any changes to his life or work, even if it is verified.

"I knew about the risks involved when I started this publishing company," Bao told RFA. "So I won't bother myself with it, as long as I'm in Hong Kong, and I'm not breaking Hong Kong law."

Chinese officials on Monday declined to comment when asked by Hong Kong media how Lee Bo could have got to mainland China in spite of leaving his entry permit at home.

Reported by Hai Nan and Dai Weisen for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
A U.S. military official says Afghan forces fighting the Taliban in southern Helmand Province are being "rebuilt," with key commanders being replaced.

U.S. Army Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner said the reasons for the changes in the 215 Maiwand Corps in Helmand "are a combination of incompetence, corruption, and ineffectiveness."

Speaking to AP on January 25, he said the corps' commander had been replaced, along with "some brigade commanders and some key corps staff up to full colonel level."

The Afghan Defense Ministry confirmed the changes.

Helmand Province has been a fierce battleground in recent months.

On January 20, an Afghan official said national troops were fighting the Taliban across most of Helmand Province and were in desperate need of reinforcements.

Government forces are also facing serious challenges in Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, said General Abdul Rahman Sarjang, the provincial police chief.

Based on reporting by AP
Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has promised to "bury" the Islamic State (IS) group, whose Afghan offshoot has clashed with government forces and Taliban militants.

Speaking in a BBC interview during a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ghani said the IS group was "not an Afghan phenomenon" and its atrocities had "alienated the people."

"Afghans are now motivated by revenge," he added. IS militants "have confronted the wrong people."

Ghani called for action against the group at regional and international level, saying, "We are dealing with very significant risks."

The president also warned that if peace talks with the Taliban did not start in the coming weeks the conflict would intensify, with consequences across the region.

And he called on neighboring Pakistan to take action against Taliban groups that did not agree to negotiations.

Based on reporting by the BBC
British regulators are considering whether to allow two Iranian banks in London to resume operations after years of sanctions.

Melli Bank and Persia International Bank will only be able to operate in the United Kingdom once they have met Bank of England criteria for financial firms.

Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers, implemented in early January, removed European Union sanctions on Iranian banks.

That could mean the return to Britain of Iranian banks, which less than 10 years ago boasted surging profits and growing European ties.

Iran is set to reengage with the banking world within weeks as international lenders link up with Iranian banks using a global transaction network known as SWIFT.

Melli Bank and Persia International have been in talks with UK regulators and the Treasury about restarting operations in Britain for months.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
Police in Daghestan intervened on January 24 to prevent a planned large-scale auto-rally from Kizlyar, in the north of the republic, via the Chechen town of Gudermes, to the southern coastal town of Derbent.

The event was said to have been organized spontaneously by supporters of Sagid Murtazaliyev, an influential Avar politician who was removed last year from his post as head of the Daghestan subsidiary of the federal Pension Fund and charged in absentia with contract killings and financing terrorism. His current whereabouts are not known.

It is conceivable, however, that the initiative originated with Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, a close associate of Murtazaliyev. When the criminal case against Murtazaliyev was announced, Kadyrov publicly implied that the charges brought against him were unfounded. Kadyrov characterized Murtazaliyev as a genuine patriot and a true son of Russia, and as his brother and loyal friend.

The stated rationale for the planned motor rally was to demonstrate support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and for Kadyrov, who launched a series of vicious verbal attacks two weeks ago on Russias extra-parliamentary opposition. Kadyrov has said the attacks constituted a legitimate response to what he called efforts by traitors and enemies of the people to use the current unfavorable economic situation to undermine stability in Russia.

Kadyrov followed up on his controversial statements by convening a mass meeting in Grozny on January 22 intended to demonstrate widespread popular support for his position and, by extension, for any measures Putin considers appropriate to counter the alleged threat to national unity posed by the political activists in question. He claimed that the estimated 800,000 participants at that meeting included some who had travelled in a column of some 500 vehicles from Daghestan.

The planned rally in Daghestan was envisaged as the continuation of the Grozny rally, one of its organizers, Akhmedpasha Amirilayev, told the website kavpolit.com. We wanted to show that not only the Chechen, but also the Daghestani people show solidarity with the course of countrys president and with the patriotic pronouncements of Ramzan Kadyrov, Amirilayev was quoted as saying.

Amirilayev suggested that if anyone except Murtazaliyevs supporters had come up with the idea of the spontaneous motor rally, the police would not have intervened to thwart it. The organizers had failed to obtain official police permission for the undertaking.

Instead of proceeding south from Kizlyar with additional participants joining the convoy in the towns of Kizilyurt, Makhachkala, Kaspiisk and Izberbash, Murtazaliyevs backers had to content themselves with isolated rallies. Some 500 vehicles participated in a rally in Makhachkala, including some from Chechnya representing Kadyrov. Photos of the Makhachkala rally show cars displaying posters of Kadyrov together with Murtazaliyev, or of Kadyrov and Putin. Some vehicles reportedly displayed pictures of Republic of Daghestan head Ramazan Abdulatipov.

As noted above, it is not impossible that Kadyrov himself, convinced by the Kremlins failure to distance itself from, let alone condemn his most egregious pronouncements that he can act, speak, and behave as he pleases with impunity, was behind a PR stunt intended to present his disgraced buddy Murtazaliyev in a favorable light. Analyst Abbas Gallyamov observed that Kadyrov has succeeded in persuading the Russian leadership to side with him against the marginalized opposition, and that consequently, he now has carte blanchewhatever he does in the next few months, no one will touch him.

At the same time, it is worth noting that the Daghestani police who intervened to prevent the planned motor rally take their orders from the federal Interior Ministry, which seemingly is still prepared to stand up to Kadyrov.
A Georgian Islamist militant has been killed in Syria, Georgian media report, quoting the State Security Service.

Officials gave no details on Khvicha Gobadze's death, while his father, Ilia Gobadze, said he learned of his son's death through the Internet, adding that he spoke to him by phone only two weeks ago.

According to reports, Gobadze had appeared in a video showing Georgian-speaking militants of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, threatening to behead "infidels" across Georgia.

The video that circulated on the Internet in November, showed four Georgian-speaking men, holding AK-47 rifles and an RPG grenade launcher, who called on Muslims in Georgia to join the "caliphate."

Georgian officials have said that dozens of Georgian nationals have joined Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq.

Based on reporting by Newsgeorgia.ge, Apsny.ge, and Onkavkaz.com
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said after meeting in Rome with Iranian President Hassan Rohani that a series of business agreements they signed is "just the beginning" for their countries.

Deals being signed during Rohanis 48-hour stay in Italy are valued at up to 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion).

Rohani arrived in Rome earlier on January 25 for his first state visit to Europe, and the first by an Iranian president in almost two decades.

He is looking for foreign investments following the lifting of international sanctions against Iran on January 16 under its nuclear accord with world powers.

The trip originally was planned for November but was postponed following the terrorist attacks by Islamic State militants in Paris on November 13.

Rohani is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on January 27 before traveling on to Paris for talks with French President Francois Hollande on January 28.

Easing Sanctions

The Iranian president is being accompanied by Iranian entrepreneurs as well as the oil and gas minister and other government officials during the five-day visit to Rome and Paris.

Iran is emerging from international isolation after the easing of economic sanctions under the nuclear deal.

The move opens the door for Tehran to reach deals with companies in Europe and Asia.

"This is a very important visit," an Iranian official was quoted as saying. "It's time to turn the page and open the door to cooperation between our countries in different areas."

"Trust needs to be built. It's like love. It is only the proof of love that counts," said a French diplomat.

Ahead of the trip, Iranian officials said Tehran plans to buy 114 aircraft from the French-based Airbus consortium.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoondi told journalists on January 24 that Tehran would discuss details with Airbus this week.

Tehran has long said it will need to revamp an aging fleet, hit by a shortage of parts.

The Iranian president has said Iran needs up to $50 billion a year in foreign investment to meet its economic growth target of 8 percent.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and Bloomberg
Iranian President Hassan Rohani has arrived in Rome on the first leg of a European tour, his first trip abroad since a nuclear deal with world powers took effect.

Rohani is being accompanied by Iranian entrepreneurs as well as the oil and gas minister and other government officials during the five-day visit to Rome and Paris.

The Islamic republic is emerging from international isolation after the easing of economic sanctions on January 16 under a deal between Tehran and global powers to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The move opens the door for Tehran to reach deals with companies in Europe and Asia.

"This is a very important visit," an Iranian official was quoted as saying. "It's time to turn the page and open the door to cooperation between our countries in different areas."

"Trust needs to be built. It's like love. It is only the proof of love that counts," a French diplomat said.

In the Italian capital on January 25, the Iranian president is scheduled to hold talks with his Italian counterpart, Sergio Mattarella, and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

He will also speak to a business group and meet Pope Francis during the visit.

On January 28, Rohani will travel to Paris for talks with President Francois Hollande.

Ahead of the trip, Iranian officials said Tehran planned to buy 114 aircraft from the French-based Airbus consortium.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoondi told journalists on January 24 that Tehran would discuss details with Airbus this week.

Tehran has long said it will need to revamp an aging fleet, hit by a shortage of parts.

During a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran on January 23, Rohani said Iran and China agreed to expand bilateral relations and boost trade to $600 billion over the next 10 years.

The sides signed 17 documents and letters of intent, including on nuclear cooperation and reviving the ancient Silk Road trade route.

The Iranian president has said Iran needs up to $50 billion a year in foreign investment to meet its economic growth target of 8 percent.

With reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg
Iran's deputy foreign minister has said Iran and Saudi Arabia should do whatever is needed to de-escalate tensions between the two countries.

Tensions between the regional rivals rose this month after Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric triggered an attack by Iranian protesters on its Tehran embassy, leading the kingdom to cut diplomatic ties.

"We are prepared to consider any initiative which can help this region become more stable and, of course, safer, so we can combat the real challenge and the real threat in the region, which is terrorism, extremism, and, of course, sectarianism, which is a big threat to all of us in the region," Abbas Araqchi told reporters at an aviation conference in Tehran on January 25.

Araqchi added that it was important to fight "extremist terrorist elements" who are a threat to the whole world.

Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni Muslim power, and Iran, the main Shi'ite one, accuse each other of fomenting instability across the Middle East.

Based on reporting by Reuters
QOSTANAI, Kazakhstan -- Another former official has gone on trial in Kazakhstan on corruption charges.

A court in the northern city of Qostanai started proceedings into the case against Akhmedbek Akhmetzhanov, the former mayor of the city, on January 25.

Akhmetzhanov was arrested in November and charged with abuse of office and illegal interference in business activities.

He was appointed mayor of Qostanai in 2014 and "voluntarily" left office in September.

Several former Kazakh officials have faced prosecution on suspicion of graft in recent years, with some sentenced to long prison terms.

The latest high-profile case ended in December with a 10-year prison term handed down to former Kazakh Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov, who was found guilty of embezzlement and misuse of state funds.
Central Asian presidents have already carved out a reputation for longevity.

With a combined 90 years in power among the five of them, they have proven amazingly adept at clinging to office in their post-Soviet republics. (Kyrgyzstan's head of state is a notable exception, at just five years and the only reasonably competitive election victory in the bunch.)

But that has not discouraged some of the region's more autocratic leaders from creatively padding their resumes.

Take the latest effort by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, in office since 1989.

The veteran president's official website recently posted four songs that it claims were "authored" by Nazarbaev.

It is unclear whether, between gigs dissolving a rubberstamp legislature, ducking selfies, or bracing for economic crisis, Nazarbaev wrote the lyrics, composed the music, or both.

The playlist includes two cloyingly patriotic songs, My Land (Zherim Menin) and My Nation (Elim Menin). Two others, Spotted Horse (Shubar At) and Ushqonur, the latter named after a place in Kazakhstan, are nostalgic songs that describe the author's longings for his or her childhood, parents, and native village.

The website has also uploaded a separate playlist of Nazarbaev's "Favorite Songs" comprising popular Kazakh patriotic and folk tunes.

The Kazakh presidency's website, Akorda.kz, and its Facebook account claim that Nararbaev also co-authored Kazakhstan's national anthem. 

The 75-year-old head of state has previously been seen singing and playing the national musical instrument, the lute-like dombra (here and here).

Nazarbaev isn't Central Asia's only singing president.

In energy-rich neighbor Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov debuted as a singer-songwriter in Ashgabat back in 2011.

In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon has been known to grab the microphone and sing along with performers during concerts.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov hasn't been seen singing in public, but he often bursts into dance at public events.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will hold a special meeting to discuss ways to balance this years federal budget, the government press service says.

"The dramatic movement of oil prices that we have seen in the past weeks, especially in the last few days, creates rather serious risks for the budget," Medvedev warned on January 15.

Oil prices have plunged 70 percent in the past 15 months to $32 a barrel.

The government, which approved its 2016 budget based on oil at $50, needs to raise additional revenue and cut costs.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said this month that Russia's Reserve Fund could be exhausted by the end of 2016 if no measures are taken.

The budget shortfall for 2015 is expected to be $41 billion, he also said.

Oil and natural gas contribute nearly half of Russia's budget revenue.

Based on reporting by TASS and Bloomberg
Lawmakers in Montenegro are debating a confidence motion in the government of the Adriatic state after an invitation to join NATO sparked pressure from pro-Russian opposition.

Addressing parliament deputies on January 25, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, who is in a dispute with one of the seven parties in the coalition, said that "those who want to be both in power and in opposition" should be excluded from the cabinet.

Meanwhile, several hundred opposition supporters have rallied outside the parliament building chanting antigovernment slogans.

Djukanovic's move to call a confidence vote is viewed as a political maneuver ahead of parliamentary elections this year.

The country of 650,000 people is due anyway to hold regular parliamentary elections late this year. The confidence debate may last several days.

Some parts of the opposition oppose Montenegro entering NATO and accuse Djukanovic of allowing organized crime and corruption to thrive in the years since the collapse of federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s, a charge he denies.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
Britain says nearly 60 investigations into British soldiers accused of unlawful killings in Iraq have been dropped.

The Ministry of Defense said on January 24 that the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) had decided not to proceed in 57 cases. The military's prosecuting authority stopped a further case.

It comes after a call by Prime Minister David Cameron to "stamp out" what he called "spurious" legal claims against British troops returning from action overseas.

Cameron said on January 22 he had asked ministers to draw up plans to curb claims, including by curtailing so-called "no win, no fee" arrangements by which lawyers are only paid if the lawsuit is successful.

IHAT was set up to review and investigate allegations of abuse made by Iraqi civilians against British armed forces personnel between 2003 and 2009.

It currently lists more than 1,300 allegations under investigation, including allegations of ill-treatment while in detention, unlawful killings, and accusations of assault.

Based on reporting by AFP and the BBC
Pakistan's powerful army chief has said that he will step down at the end of his three-year term in November.

General Raheel Sharif is considered by many to be Pakistan's most powerful man, and he has led a military campaign against some Islamist militants.

The general has pledged that efforts to combat terrorism "will continue with full vigor and resolve" after he retires, a tweet on January 25 by the army spokesman said.

Under his watch, the military has been given authority to try civilians suspected of terrorism in secret military courts.

General Sharif is said to have been personally involved in efforts to bring the Afghan Taliban into peace talks with Afghanistan, though those efforts have stalled.

Pakistan's past two military chiefs had sought extensions of their terms instead of stepping down, with General Pervez Musharraf staging a coup to topple Nawaz Sharif during a previous term as prime minister.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, accusing him of placing a "time bomb" under the state, and sharply denouncing brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government.

In the past, Putin has carefully weighed his comments about the nation's history to avoid alienating communists and other Russian voters who still revere Lenin.

But Putin's assessment of Lenin during a January 25 meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in the southern city of Stavropol seemed markedly more negative than before.

Putin was particularly critical of what he said was Lenin's idea that Soviet republics should be equal and have the right to secede, suggesting it strongly contributed to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Putin's criticism of Lenin could be part of his attempts to justify Moscow's policy in the Ukrainian crisis.

It also may reflect the Kremlin's concern about possible separatist sentiment in some Russian provinces.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
President Vladimir Putin has praised Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia's Chechnya region, who has been widely accused of human rights abuses and recently unleashed a series of verbal attacks on liberals and Kremlin opponents.

Speaking at a conference of his loyal All-Russia People's Front movement in the southern city of Stavropol on January 25, Putin expressed his "thanks to Chechnya, to its people...and the current leader." Without actually uttering Kadyrov's name, Putin said: "He is working effectively."

The brief remark was Putin's first public comment on Kadyrov since the regional strongman and his allies began branding liberal opposition politicians, activists, and journalists as "enemies of the people" and Western-backed "jackals."

Those remarks were echoed by demonstrators at a huge rally organized by Kadyrov on January 22 in Chechnya's capital, Grozny.

The verbal attacks have provoked calls for Putin to dismiss Kadyrov, whom one lawmaker called a "disgrace" to Russia.

International rights groups have said the attacks constitute a serious threat to their targets, and have also urged Putin to take action.

Putin installed Kadyorov as head of Chechnya in 2007.

Kremlin critics say Putin tolerates or encourages Kadyrov's words and actions because he relies on him to maintain control of Chechnya, the site of two post-Soviet separatists wars and an ongoing Islamist insurgency.

Based on reporting by RIA and Interfax
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend a session of the Interregional Forum of the Russian National Front in the southern city of Stavropol.

Addressing the two-day forum in the Stavropol State Agrarian University on January 24, the head of the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, Igor Barinov, said Russia had developed a computer program for quickly responding to ethnic conflicts, Interfax news agency reported.

Putin created the All-Russia People's Front in 2011. It brings together nongovernmental organizations, youth groups, and business associations along with the ruling party.

The Kremlin says Putin will also meet on January 25 with students and teachers at the North Caucasus Federal University to mark St. Tatiana's Day, which is celebrated in Russian as Students Day.

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS
The speaker of the State Duma says Russia is ready to resume ties with Egypt in tourism and in civil aviation.

Sergei Naryshkin said he did not rule out talks on the resumption of flights between the two countries during his visit to Egypt this week.

"But this will be possible only in case the safety of our citizens is fully guaranteed," Interfax quoted him as saying on January 25.

Russia stopped all civilian flights to Egypt, a popular destination of Russian vacationers, after a bomb brought down a Russian airplane over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, killing all 224 passengers and crew on board.

Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the explosion.

Based on reporting by Interfax and 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
Tajik authorities say up to 1,000 nationals have joined Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria and Iraq, doubling the figure that officials previously provided.

Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda told reporters on January 25 that 61 Tajik nationals had returned from Syria and Iraq, while 148 had been killed in fighting there.

Earlier, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon said 21 university students were among Tajiks who joined IS.

Rahmon said mosques and other religious institutions both at home and abroad play a role in recruiting people to extremist groups.

The interior minister also said Tajik Colonel Gulmurod Halimov, who had joined the IS extremist group last year, has since been seriously injured twice.

The minister claimed IS was now paying Halimov $100 a month as a "pension." That claim cannot be independently confirmed.

Halimov, the former commander of the Interior Ministry's special forces, known as OMON, had confirmed in a YouTube video that he joined the militant group.

The interior minister said Tajik authorities were continuing efforts to capture Halimov.

Rahimzoda also sought to explain increased security measures in the Tajik capital over the weekend, saying "it was an ordinary drill."

Local residents said there was an increased police presence across Dushanbe and additional security checkpoints on highways leading to the capital.
The Richmond City Council is looking to adjust a city affordable housing program that gave $2 million in real estate tax breaks to a luxury apartment development in Manchester.

Once we realized there was a loophole, we decided to revise the legislation to make it more restrictive, said Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, 6th District. It was unfortunate that we did have a developer that didnt operate in the true spirit of the law, but it gave us an opportunity to strengthen the legislation.

The Terraces at Manchester is a 148-unit luxury apartment building that opened in August. Its lowest advertised rent in the building is $1,200 for a one-bedroom unit. The building advertises sweeping city views, a rooftop dog park, a sky lounge and a club room.

The ordinance adopted in 2014 to encourage developers to incorporate affordable housing units into new developments by offering substantial real estate tax breaks over the course of 10 years. But because of the way the ordinance creating the program was written, the developers only needed to rent 15 percent of their units to individuals who make $41,000 a year or less and arent required to offer tenants in that income category reduced rates in order to receive tax breaks.

On the whole, the Terraces actually pushed up the average rent in Manchester by about 10 percent, according to a realty-tracking company.

Robertson, the original measures author, said her proposed changes tighten eligibility requirements for developers seeking to qualify. Among the changes the City Council will consider: requiring developers to charge rent proportional to a qualifying tenants income and lowering the maximum salary that a qualifying low-income tenant can make up to $31,200, which is 60 percent of the areas median income.

If the program changes are adopted, the most an individual tenant could be charged is $780 monthly.

The Manchester project was developed by Robin Miller with business partner Daniel A. Gecker and Mark Purcell of Purcell Construction. Miller said he hasnt had an opportunity to review the proposed changes, but defended his use of the program for the Terraces.

We fully complied with the ordinance, he said, adding that since the Richmond Times-Dispatch first reported in December about the luxury developments use of the program, his staff has reduced rents for some tenants.

Weve gone through it more carefully and rents for the appropriate individuals, they are getting substantial rent reduction, he said. Were complying with both the letter and spirit of the law.

Robertson said she has met with other members of the development community and has been told that although it would be more stringent, the revised program still would provide incentive for builders to work affordable housing into their projects.
The National Weather service says the Richmond area should see considerable melting today as temperatures reach into the low to mid 40s, but there could be a wintry mix in the area later this week.
Alexis Gil finished training at Fort Lee last week and headed to Richmond International Airport, ready to see his family in Arizona for the first time since completing basic training in July.

But canceled flights piled up with the snow this weekend, leaving the 19-year-old Gil stranded. He and dozens of other soldiers have eaten, slept and tried not to watch the clock in the lounge where volunteers typically greet military personnel and send them on their way within a couple of hours.

This past weekend, however, the lounges 20 or so recliners became temporary beds as volunteers decided to keep the USO open around the clock to accommodate travelers like Gil, whose planned time at home for his 15-day leave has basically been cut in half.

I try to think positive, said Gil, who as of Monday afternoon was expecting to fly out Wednesday. Ive been through worse.

Phil Ferrante was busy cooking sandwiches and hot dogs for the few dozen soldiers stuck at the USO while waiting to go to destinations all over the country. Ferrante, the organizations volunteer coordinator, said 50 to 60 soldiers have spent the night in the USO area since Thursday, while many more have been sleeping in hotel rooms and returning during the day.

Piles of packed bags filled every corner of the USO, which features computers, flat-screen TVs and Xbox video game systems to help military personnel pass the time.

I cant change the weather, Ferrante said, but at least I can make their stay a little more comfortable.

A few thousand service members pass through the USO every month, Ferrante said, but its open overnight only in emergencies.

About a quarter of the 150 scheduled flights were canceled Monday at Richmond International Airport, bringing the total scrubbed for the weather to nearly 350.

Nationwide, more than 1,800 flights were delayed or canceled Monday.

Were not back to normal, but its starting to feel like our schedule is recovering, said Troy Bell, a Richmond airport spokesman. The main runway and taxiway route is at least as good as the interstates, which are pretty good. ... Theres still a lot of cleanup to be done.

With most main roads cleared, Greyhound in Richmond reported no cancellations of service.

Amtrak had no service between Washington and points in Virginia including Richmond, Norfolk and Newport News. Other canceled routes over the weekend and Monday included the Auto Train to Florida along with trains to New York, Chicago, Charlotte and Savannah, Ga.
Even for homeless people who take pride in being able to withstand just about any conditions, this weekends storm was too much. By Saturday afternoon, of the two dozen people living in a small tent community behind a Target store in Chester, only two had stayed behind, braving brutal wind gusts, piles of heavy snow and freezing temperatures.

Tents arent built to sustain this kind of weather, said Chris Lane, founder of the charity group Guardians.

While the biggest winter storm to hit the Richmond area in about 15 years did not sink the region into total chaos, the conditions posed an immense challenge for the citizens most in need.

Throughout Saturday, Lane and his group of volunteers had moved dozens of people who stay in the tent community to motels in the area. For some of them, it was the first time in years with a roof over their head.

We were able to negotiate with a couple of managers who gave us a flat rate. It was a win-win for everybody, Lane said.

In Richmond, fewer than a dozen people in need checked into the citys two storm-relief shelters, located at Linwood Holton Elementary School on Laburnum Avenue and at J.H. Blackwell Elementary School on 14th Street.

The citys day warming center at 505 N. Ninth St., which opens every year beginning Oct. 1 on days when temperatures are below 35 degrees, also remained open throughout the weekend. And more than 100 people sat out the storm at the citys homeless shelter at the Public Safety Building.

This was average compared to previous winter events, said city spokesman Michael Wallace.

In Chesterfield County, storm relief shelters remained closed during the storm.

Prior to the storm, Chesterfield County distributed a great deal of information to residents about winter storm preparedness. The county also reached out to its Community Emergency Response Team graduates to link resources to those in need, said county spokeswoman Susan Pollard.

Additionally, we worked with our regional partners to assist our residents, making it unnecessary to open emergency shelters, Pollard said.

Localities were assisted by groups including the American Red Cross, which had about 100 volunteers on standby in the Richmond area.

Richmond asked us for support, and we were able to provide meals, blankets and snacks to both of their shelters, said Christy Carneal, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross Virginia Region, which responds to disasters and emergencies in 118 cities and counties statewide.

Despite the heavy snowfall, the situation was relatively calm, Carneal said.

This event was not as bad as anticipated, especially because there were few power outages. We were all lucky in this one, she said.

The blizzard still made for a rough weekend for many of the poor living in the Richmond areas mobile home parks or underserviced apartments and houses.

Kathy Davis, a resident of Bermuda Estates Mobile Home Park on Jefferson Davis Highway in Chesterfield, said she endured the storm covered under three blankets in a small back room of a trailer with inadequate heat and an icy draft.

It was horrible. I have a small heater in my room, but there is wind going through there, Davis said. It was an absolutely rough experience. It was fighting like the devil to stay warm.

Davis said she set aside money from her most recent paycheck to buy gloves and a scarf, and others had provided food to make it through the weekend.

I did prepare as best as I could on a low income, Davis said. But there are a lot of people who are in worse positions, and I worry about them. Im just glad its over.

Bobby Pillow, who lives in the same mobile home park, said he had electric heat and propane backup to keep him warm.

But it was pretty rough these last few days. The wind kind of cuts right through the building, Pillow said. Im just lucky that I have good neighbors around me.

For Lane and his group of volunteers, the storm was a first big test in the face of a natural disaster.
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Reminders of dearly departed continue to trickle in after recent reporting here about old Norwich Cemetery.

Mike Bowles, 67, recently provided anecdotal information about the cemetery.

Bowles grew up in Norwich and later had a career with Oakeys Funeral Service and Crematory, which long ago handled some of the burials there.

That was before Bowles time with the funeral home, but he is something of an authority on what he calls the Hickey Hill Cemetery.

Thats what they called it when I was growing up in Norwich.

Hickey was the name of the original owners of the land that ran to the north of Roanoke Avenue.

Bowles recalled stories that had been told to him by neighbors and others he knew when growing up in Norwich.

According to research by Doris Neal and another historian, former Mayor Nelson Harris, many of the graves on Hickey Hill held children and infants, victims of hard lives and times on both sides of the turn of the 20th century.

Many graves were marked with nothing more than a specific rock or other geographic marker. At least one grave was marked with nothing but a rose bush, Neal said.

That suggests many if not most of the deceased came from poor families. Norwich was the Roanoke areas oldest industrial neighborhood and was part of the county until the 1920s. The neighborhood housed industries such as Roanoke Cotton Mill  the twine mill as neighborhood people called it  and Walker Machine & Foundry Co., which is still in business.

The cemetery is on land now owned by the foundry.

There are still reminders of the types of lives experienced by the people who once lived in Norwich. One is through the work of turn-of-the-century photographer Lewis Hine. A Progressive Movement crusader, Hine sought to document the horrors and abuses of child labor.

He traveled the country shooting pictures of children as young as 5 and 6 working as field laborers, coal miners, oyster shuckers, shrimp pickers, newsboys and -girls, cigar and cigarette rollers and heavy industry workers.

One group of pictures shot in 1911 was of children working in Roanoke Cotton Mill. A picture found on the National Archive Website is particularly haunting.

It is of a pretty little girl in a broad-brimmed straw hat standing alone in front of a giant spinning machine. Thread spools line up behind her in stacks of single-file rows like white-uniformed soldiers. Cotton tufts, spindles and other debris litter the floor at her feet.

The picture caption identified her as a young spinner in Roanoke Cotton Mills. Said 14 years old, but it is doubtful.

Some of Hines work, including pictures from Norwich, is on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond through April 10. Admission is free, and more information is available at vamfa.museum.

One of the Norwich stories Bowles recalled was of a man named Ramsey, who lived on Roanoke Avenue across from the old Norwich School, the building of which is still standing.

He worked as a carpenter for the twine mill and patched up the mill or something when it needed it, Bowles said. As I understood it  now this was all hearsay  but as I understood it, he would make little caskets for those babies. There wasnt any funeral home or anything involved.

Oakeys did handle some of the burials. Bowles recalls hearing late President John Oakey talk about arrangements in the Norwich Cemetery the funeral home handled on behalf of the Salvation Army.

That is further evidence that at least some of the burials there were for people who had scant resources. It appears the last burial in Norwich Cemetery was in the 1930s.

Neal, Harris and others have done much painstaking research through such sources as death records and newspaper obituaries. The problem is not so much about discovering who is in the cemetery but where the graves are.

If we buried them, we have the records, said company President Sam Oakey. But our records go by name and not where they are buried.

The original question to the newspaper from Thomas Wimmer of Roanoke sought information about the interment of a lost sibling that previously to him had been only a rumor.

The answer that emerged was that there were not just one but two siblings buried there on a rocky hill overlooking the foundry.

Neal has records of almost 100 additional graves not mentioned in an earlier inventory compiled in 1999 by historian and archaeologist Thomas Klatka of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Neal said there are considerably more graves there than the ones she has already accounted for.

Meanwhile, queries still come in about the cemetery. One was from Kristen Brown of Clifton Forge.

I have family buried there, two great aunts, and my grandparents and great grandparents were all from Norwich, she wrote. I have been doing a lot of research on my family this past year and I am hoping to get in contact with anyone that may have any information at all about anything having to do with them.

As more information emerges, Bowles may have a story to accompany it. He has plenty. One he received from one of the freelance sextons who once worked the rocky ground of the hillside for the graves there.

The story was about a man who went by the name of Conrad but was better known as Coon.

Everybody had a nickname in Norwich, Bowles said.

It seems that Coon was sort of a professional mourner who would accompany burial parties to the cemetery. Coon would invariably decline to lay hand on either pick or shovel but instead assumed the role of a one-man choir.

At one burial, he chastised the sexton for shoveling rocks and dirt too vigorously onto the plain wood casket to finish their work on the final resting place. Apparently, all the racket didnt suit him.

People cant hear my singing, he said.

If youve been wondering about, call Whats on Your Mind at 777-6476 or send an email to whatsonyourmind@roanoke.com. Dont forget to provide your full name (and its proper spelling when calling) and your hometown.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  A discovery by two University of Virginia neurology researchers has been hailed as one of the top scientific breakthroughs of the past year.

The finding of a link between the immune system and the brain by Jonathan Kipnis, a professor of neuroscience, and his doctoral student Antoine Louveau made several year-in-review lists as a top scientific discovery.

Kipnis and Louveau found that the brain has vessels that are part of the lymphatic system, which carries white blood cells throughout the body to fight infection. Scientists previously thought the brains immune responses were separate from the rest of the system.

If you open any neuroscience textbook, its going to say that the brain doesnt have any lymphatic system, Louveau said. That changed the way we think of the brain as an organism.

These vessels, found in protective membranes known as the meninges, may help scientists better understand a range of neurological disorders, including Alzheimers disease and multiple sclerosis.

For example, scientists have long suspected that Alzheimers has something to do with the buildup of beta-amyloid, a type of protein in the brain.

Louveau said he thinks the lymphatic system removes these proteins, and that the disease may be connected to some problem with the system.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system. Kipnis and Louveau said they hope to find out what, if any, connection it might have to the lymphatic vessels in the brain.

Theres no way to know for sure that there is any connection, Kipnis said. The researchers are setting their sights on Alzheimers and MS first, he said. They will have to see whether the vessels are involved in the pathology, and whether its possible to target them therapeutically.

It will likely be years before scientists can apply this knowledge to any treatment, Kipnis said.

Right now, this is all speculation because we are not sure what role these vessels play in disease, he said.

But the discovery has many observers excited. Science magazine featured the finding in its Top 10 Science Stories of 2015, noting that several neurological disorders are linked to inflammation in the brain, a possible immune response.

The National Institutes of Health included the story in a year-end list titled Noteworthy Advances in Basic Research, while The Huffington Post cited the discovery in its article 8 Fascinating Things We Learned About the Mind in 2015.

Some say the finding could have implications for the treatment of meningitis, severe depression and autism.

Kipnis is not that bold, but he said hes hopeful it could lead to big things down the road.

I would hope these vessels are the central storyboard for the disease, he said. I believe the potential is great.
RICHMOND  Radford University President Penelope Kyle, who is retiring this summer, was honored in a rare center-aisle presentation in the House of Delegates on Monday.

Kyle was invited onto the House floor during the daily session to receive a resolution honoring her years of service. The statement, passed by both the House and Senate, commended Kyle for helping the university achieve record-setting enrollment, establish a doctoral degree program and regularly earn recognition as one of the best colleges in the Southeast.

The resolution was presented by Del. Joseph Yost, R-Pearisburg, a Radford alum who carried the honorary resolution.

President Kyle has created a lasting legacy on Radford Universitys campus, Yost said, adding her accomplishments are a testament to the colleges creed, which urges people to etch their legacies  not in brass or marble  but in the minds of others.

Kyle joined Radford in 2005 as its sixth president and first female president. She plans to retire June 30.

Mondays presentation was made in the center aisle of the House chambers, an honor the body traditionally reserves for only a few.

Mondays ceremony was a double recognition honoring Kyle and retiring University of Mary Washington President Richard Hurley.

Groups push for protections for opponents of same-sex marriage

The Virginia Catholic Conference and other groups are calling on lawmakers to support legislation they say would protect businesses and individuals that oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds.

The bills introduced by Republican Sen. Bill Carrico and Del. Todd Gilbert face long odds in the General Assembly, where Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has already vowed to veto them.

The legislation aims to prevent government entities from denying things such as grants, contracts and licenses to individuals and businesses that oppose same-sex marriage.

Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, said the state must ensure that groups can put their beliefs into practice, without being punished for them.

The ACLU of Virginia has said the measure would give such individuals and businesses a license to discriminate against LGBT residents.

 Associated Press

Head of legislative agency resigns

The head of the state agency that drafts laws and conducts research for the General Assembly resigned Monday.

Robert Tavenner, the director of the Division of Legislative Services since 2011, submitted his resignation in a one-page letter that was accepted by the legislatures Joint Rules Committee in a brief meeting Monday afternoon.

Lawmakers appointed Mark Vucci, a senior attorney who works with the budget committees, to serve as acting director until a search for a permanent replacement is completed.

The Rules Committee did not discuss details of what led to Tavenners resignation, which comes a few weeks into the legislative session.

We appreciate Mr. Tavenners service to the Division of Legislative Services, House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, and Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover County, said in a joint statement.

 Graham Moomaw, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Hans Joachim Erdmann, 82, died Monday, January 18, 2016, following a long battle with Alzheimer's at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.He goes to be at peace with his already departed wife, Marilyn Erdmann. He leaves behind his son, Hans Eric Erdmann; daughter-in-law, Janine Erdmann; and daughter, Karen Nicholson; along with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren; as well as his sister, Karin Paul and husband, Norbert.Hans lead an interesting life. Being born in New York City September 1933, he left to visit family relatives in Germany shortly before the outbreak of World War II. At the start of the war he was unable to leave Germany and lived through the war with family there, until American troops liberated him in 1945. Upon returning to the Unoted States, he had to relearn English and start High School in Greenville, N.Y. Graduating top of his class, he enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1952. Shortly after his enlistment he was given the opportunity to become a Commissioned Officer, first as a Flight Engineer on B36 bombers, then as a Navigator/Bombardier on B52s, serving three tours flying bombing operations in Vietnam. Upon his retirement from the USAF in 1973 he retired to Cassia, Fla., and worked for the State as a Health Inspector until 1986. At that time he and Marilyn would spend their summers in beautiful Eagle Rock and played snow birds until their health would no longer allow them to travel back and forth.His casual nature and strength of will shall be remembered by all who had the chance to know and love him. According to his wishes there will be no formal service but all that knew him are welcome to stop by and pay their respects.
Re: "City must allow Confederate flag in the Christmas parade," Jan. 17 commentary by Bill Bestpitch:

Be proud of your Southern heritage when talking about your ancestor who fought under the Southern Cross. I am a Sons of Confederate Veterans member who is very proud of my ancestor. His name was Pvt. William Wilson Pollard, he was mustered into service in Bedford and was assigned to Allen's 10th Virginia heavy artillery battalion, was wounded in battle, was healed in Richmond and was at the surrender at Appomattox and walked home to Bedford after the war. I am very proud of him defending his homeland from a northern invader.

Now for a history lesson.Tthe war was not fought over slavery, let's get that straight. It was an economic war. It had nothing to do with slavery. Slavery would have died out. The battle flag is a Christian flag based on the Scottish flag of Scotland and the St. Andrew's cross. The flag represents the Christian ideals that Southerners hold dear to them

Please don't take away my heritage because it is very important to me, I don't want the left-wing liberals, Democrats, progressives to take away my family history. Look at the black race. They have Kwanzaa, Black History Month and who knows what else. We white southerners don't have much except our proud Southern heritage.

Bestpitch, read a real history book on Southern history and you might just learn something. Don't read a book that is slanted from a northern point of view. These men fought to maintain the ideals from the first revolution 100 years earlier such as states' rights, limited government. The South wanted to be left alone. The South was a very wealthy nation and the North knew if the South left the economy in the North would crumple.

By the way your ancestor was not a traitor.

JEFF WILLARD

ROANOKE
YOUNG people from across Rotherham have been getting involved in marking this year's Holocaust Memorial Day.



On the day itself, which falls this year on the coming Wednesday, young people from Oakwood School and pupils from St Anns Primary will be taking part in a public event at All Saints Square, hosted by the Mayor of Rotherham, Cllr Maggi Clark, with songs and readings.



The following evening around 25 young people from Rotherham will be holding their own Dont Stand By event at Rotherham Town Hall, to share stories of those past and present of those prepared to bear witness to hate crime and discrimination through presentations, drama and artwork.



Rotherhams Early Help Support Services based at the myplace youth centre, were also commissioned to create an artwork honouring asylum seeker Abdulsalam Abdullah as part of a national initiative marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27.



The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the charity responsible for marking Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, has commissioned 12 groups from each region and nation of the UK to create artworks that share the stories of people who did not stand by in the face of hatred, persecution or genocide.



Rotherhams young people have created a series of masks, demonstrating the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, and the story of Abdulsalam Abdullah, and their artwork can be viewed on the Trusts website at

http://heroes.hmd.org.uk/portfolio/items/abdulsalam-abdullahs-journey-of-hope/



All 12 artworks will be displayed in an exhibition at the UK Commemorative Event for Holocaust Memorial Day in London on January 27, to an audience of Holocaust and genocide survivors, MPs and dignitaries.



The artwork will also be displayed publicly on city centre big screens across the UK.



Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: I want to thank and congratulate the young people from Rotherham Early Help for their hard work in creating this artwork, which is a fitting tribute to Abdulsalam Abdullah, helping to remind us all of our responsibilities not to stand by to hatred and persecution.



Cllr Clark added: Congratulations to our young people who were chosen to take part in this national exhibition  they have really done Rotherham proud.




Den Islamesche Staat hatt d'Moyenen, fir weltwait eng Rei grouss ugeluechten Terrorattacken ze maachen, sou dei europaesch Police-Agence um Meindegmetteg.

Europol warnt dann och viru greisseren Attentater vun der Dschihadistemiliz.

Den Direkter Rob Wainwright praziseiert, datt besonnesch Europa am Viseier vum IS ass.

Et geif een natierlech enk zesummeschaffen, fir esou Attentater z'eviteieren.

AUDIO: JAI-Conseil/Reportage Dany Rasque

Virun allem Frankraich wier a Gefor, sot Europol zu Amsterdam, wou dei europaesch Justiz- an Inneminister zesumme waren. Letzebuerg gouf vum Minister fir bannenzeg Secherheet an der hollannescher Haaptstad vertrueden an den Etienne Schneider huet drun erennert, datt schonn enner Letzebuerger Presidence eng Rei Initiative geholl goufen, fir den Terror ze bekampfen. Trotz deenen Initiativen fonctionneiert dee ganze System awer nach net richteg. Dei national Police fidderen d'Base de donnees nach net genuch mat hiren Informatiounen. Et wier een nach emmer net genuch ennerenee verlinkt. Et huet net jiddereen Zougank op alles.

Alles dat geif dozou feieren, datt Terroristen nach emmer keinten an Europa kommen, Attacke plangen an och realiseieren.

Nei Moyenen geint den Terrorismus wiere keng neideg, esou den Etienne Schneider, ma dei eenzel Lanner misste mei coordineiert virgoen. Firwat de System den Ament net geif fonctionneieren, hatt eigentlech eng historesch Ursaach. Zu der Zait vum Schengenaccord wier virop vu Frankraich emmer op dei national Souveraniteit gepocht ginn. Dat wier haut ee Problem. Et misst op d'mannst festgeluecht sinn, wat fir Saachen mussen weider gi ginn.

Wann Europa dat net geif faerdeg brengen, da kinnt een och net efficace geint den Terrorismus virgoen. Den Etienne Schneider ass awer dovunner iwwerzeegt, datt dat an Teschenzait och deem Leschten ageliicht huet. D'Minister hunn um JAI Conseil awer och ennerstrach, datt d'Baussegrenzen vun der EU besser musse geschutzt ginn. Dei grouss Majoriteit war awer net waarm dofir, fir Lanner wei Griichenland fir eng gewessen Zait aus dem Schengenraum auszeschleissen, sou wei dei eistraichesch Inneministesch dat de Weekend an engem Interview proposeiert hat.

An engem Video huet den IS jo och nei Attentater annonceiert.

Dee Video, dee vum IS am Internet publizeiert gouf, beweist och, datt d'Attentater vu Parais laang virun den Attacken am November aktiv waren.

Am Video gesait een d'Auteuren, wei se a Syrien Geisele maltraiteieren an embrengen. Dernieft ass op de grujelege Biller ze gesinn, wei di 4 Belsch, 3 Fransousen an 2 Iraker d'Attacke vu Parais plangen.

D'Auteuren annonceieren op Franseisch an Arabesch, datt hire Message sech un alleguerten dei Lanner riicht, dei an der anti-dschihadistescher Koalitioun vun den USA matmaachen. An deem Kontext gett konkret de britesche Premier David Cameron genannt an och gewisen. "Zil vun eise Schwaerter ass jiddereen, dee sech op d'Sait vun den Ongleewegen schleit", heescht et am Message. Dei 9 Attentater wiere "Leiwen", dei Frankraich "an d'Kneie gezwongen hunn".

A Frankraich goufen d'lescht Joer iwwerdeems 11 Attacke verhennert, dei ee vun der Envergure hir hatt kinnte mat Parais verglaichen. Dat huet den franseischen Inneminister Bernard Cazeneuve e Sonndeg an engem Interview mat France 5 verroden.

An engem Fall wier eng Attack op ee Concertssall geplangt gewiescht, bei aneren Attacken hatten d'Auteuren op d'Leit op der Strooss scheisse wellen. Weider Detailer goufen awer keng genannt.

Schreiwes vun Europol



Europols European Counter Terrorism Centre strengthens the EUs response to terror

Europe is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over 10 years. The Paris attacks on 13 November 2015 indicate a shift towards a clear international dimension of Islamic State to carry out special forces style attacks in the international environment. This and the growing number of foreign fighters are posing new challenges for EU Member States.

More attacks in the EU may happen in the future. Therefore there is a great need within the European Union to strengthen our response to terror, to suspected terrorist networks and foreign fighters, and have an improved strategic understanding of threats.

EU institutions responded swiftly and strongly to the terrorist attacks of last year and moved to augment the European Unions capacity to deal with terrorist threat. As foreseen in the European Agenda on Security put forward by the European Commission, the establishment of the European Counter Terrorism Centre is a major strategic opportunity for the EU to make our collective efforts to fight terrorism more effective. I call on EU Member States to trust and support the European Counter Terrorism Centre to help it succeed in its important mission, said Dimitris Avramopoulos, European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship.

The launch of the ECTC as of January 2016 followed a decision from the EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers last November. ECTC will be an enhanced central information hub by which the Member States can increase information sharing and operational coordination. The ECTC will improve the exchange of information between law enforcement agencies. This is the kind of cooperation Europe needs in the fight against organized crime and terrorism, said Ard van der Steur, Minister of Security and Justice of the Netherlands, currently holding the presidency of the Council of the EU.

The new ECTC has been set up within the current organisational structure of Europol that is already playing an important part in the European response to terrorist threats.

For example, after the Paris attacks Europol assigned up to 60 officers to support the French and Belgian investigations in Taskforce Fraternite. Up to now, 2.7 terabytes of information has been received from these two countries, resulting in 800 intelligence leads and more than 1600 leads on suspicious financial transactions.

Our ambition is for the European Counter Terrorism Centre to become a central information hub in the fight against terrorism in the EU, providing analysis for ongoing investigations and contributing to a coordinated reaction in the event of major terrorist attacks. Europol is grateful for the support of the Member States, the European Parliament and the European Commission in the establishment of the ECTC. It will lie at the heart of a stronger EU standing up to the threat of terrorism, said Europols Director Rob Wainwright.

Europol has used this trend of increased information sharing to upgrade its counter terrorism capabilities. The aim is to raise trust and awareness among the different counter terrorism authorities in the EU and maximise existing capabilities. By serving as a centre of expertise, ECTC will focus on tackling foreign fighters, sharing intelligence and expertise on terrorism financing (TFTP and support by the FIU.net[1]), online terrorist propaganda and extremism (Internet Referral Unit[2]), illegal arms trafficking and international cooperation to increase effectiveness and prevention.

Europol will provide the Member States, and its key partners like Interpol and Eurojust, with new possibilities to ensure the most effective management of counter terrorism intelligence:

- upgraded information exchange for sensitive counter terrorism intelligence (CT SIENA[3] and EIS[4])

- the possibility to second experts to the ECTC to support enhanced cross-border investigations, capable of providing quick and comprehensive response to major terrorist incidents in the EU.

The ECTC will be led by Mr Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, a high ranking officer of the Spanish Guardia Civil with extensive practical counter terrorism experience. He was already the head of the counter terrorism unit at Europol. Currently, 39 staff members and 5 seconded national experts work in the ECTC. Working alongside other operational centres at Europol, such as the European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3), the ECTC will be a constituent part of Europol, under the general command of its Director, and will serve to augment the organisations capabilities as the EUs law enforcement agency.

Review: Changes in modus operandi of Islamic State terrorist attacks

Infographic: European Counter Terrorism Centre

[1] TFTP = Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, FIU.net = Financial Intelligence Units.

Since 1 January 2016, Europols financial intelligence and counter terrorism capabilities have been substantially strengthened by the integration of a decentralised computer network of the European Union Member States Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), known as FIU.net. Under the auspices of the EU FIU platform and the renewed provisions set out in the IV anti-money laundering Directive, the embedment of FIU.net into Europol aims to create more synergy between financial and criminal intelligence, ultimately boosting efforts to fight organised crime and terrorism in the EU.

FIU.net became operational in 2002 and was co-financed until 2015 by the European Commission. It supports relevant EU Member States authorities in their fight against money laundering and terrorist financing by allowing the exchange of information between FIUs on financial transactions with a cross-border nature. It is a decentralised network, involving no central storage of information: when sending information from one FIU to another, the exchanged data is only, and securely, stored on the FIU.net databases at the premises of the FIUs involved in the exchange.

[2] The European Union Internet Referral Units main tasks are to:

- coordinate and share the identification tasks (flagging) of terrorist and violent extremist online content with relevant partners;

- carry out and support referrals quickly, efficiently and effectively, in close cooperation with the industry;

- support competent authorities by providing strategic and operational analysis.

These tasks are carried out by receiving requests from the European Union Member States or through the research for content online and are performed in accordance with the data processing rules set up in the Europol Council Decision.

[3] SIENA = Secure Information Exchange Network Application

[4] EIS = Europol Information System
Japan posted a merchandise trade surplus of 140.277 billion yen in December, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday.

That beat forecasts for a surplus of 117.0 billion yen following the 381.3 billion yen deficit in November.

Exports were down 8.0 percent on year to 6.337 trillion yen, missing forecasts for a decline of 7.0 percent following the 3.3 percent contraction in the previous month.

Exports to all of Asia fell 10.3 percent on year to 3.338 trillion yen, while exports to China alone dropped 8.6 percent to 1.157 trillion yen.

Exports to the United States dipped an annual 3.4 percent to 1.351 trillion yen, while exports to the European Union gained 3.1 percent to 740.324 billion yen.

Imports tumbled an annual 18.0 percent to 6.197 trillion yen versus expectations for a fall of 16.4 percent following the 10.2 percent drop a month earlier.

Imports from the rest of Asia fell 11.7 percent on year to 3.071 trillion yen, while imports from just China fell 8.9 percent to 1.559 trillion yen.

Imports from the United States tumbled an annual 10.1 percent to 593,000 billion yen, while imports from the European Union jumped an annual 9.9 percent to 752.010 billion yen.

The adjusted trade surplus was 36.6 billion yen - beneath expectations for 84.2 billion yen but up from 22.4 billion yen a month earlier.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Forex News
Cabinet office is set to release Japan's final leading economic indicator data for November at 12:00 am ET Monday. The preliminary reading for leading index was 103.9 in November.

Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals.

As of 11:55 pm ET in the Asian deals, the yen was trading at 128.37 against the euro, 169.86 against the pound, 117.09 against the Swiss franc and 118.73 against the U.S. dollar.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Forex News
SBM Offshore (SBFFY.PK) said that its CEO, Bruno Chabas, and a member of the Company's Supervisory Board, Sietze Hepkema have considered the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's proposal for an out-of-court settlement and decided to accept it. This results in the payment of 250,000 Brazilian Reals or approximately US$60,000 each, which the Company will pay.

The Company emphasized that the settlement did not involve an admission of guilt and remains of the opinion that the accusations are without merit. However, SBM Offshore also believes that accepting the settlement offers a pragmatic opportunity to expeditiously resolve this matter that avoids long and costly legal proceedings and allows the Company's management team to concentrate on the .

The Supervisory Board of the Company affirmed its earlier statement of support of Messrs. Chabas and Hepkema.

The settlement with the Public Prosecutor reached on January 22, 2016 is subject to confirmation by the judge handling the case. The timing of the confirmation has yet to be established.

On December 17, 2015, allegations was made by the Brazilian Public Prosecutor's Office regarding Bruno Chabas, and Sietze Hepkema.

On January 15, 2016, the Company was informed that the judge in Brazil referred the accusations with regard to Chabas and Hepkema back to the Public Prosecutor to propose an out-of-court settlement, on a no admission of guilt basis, as is common for misdemeanors of the kind alleged.

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Business News
The United States potentially will make recommendations to position U.S. troops with Iraqi security forces in northern Iraq to support the next phase of isolating the key city of Mosul, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who met in Paris with his French counterpart for talks focusing on the multinational effort against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. troops would be placed where they can best support the Iraqi forces in the fight.

"We're about winning. ... We want to have the Iraqis win," he said.

The details are still being worked out, noted Dunford, who said he will make the recommendations to President Barack Obama based on what U.S. commanders and Iraqi security forces identify as the type of support the United States can provide in a plan to retake Mosul.

Mosul is the largest city captured by the ISIL terrorists.

Discussions with Iraqi officials will determine what support they need, whether in an advise-and-assist role at the operations center level, the division level, or the brigade level, Dunford said.

Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, is working with the Iraqi security forces to develop the concept of operations, Dunford said.

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Political News
India has agreed with France to purchase 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft, valued at around $8.8 billion. French President Francois Hollande, who is on a state visit to India, also signed 12 other agreements with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The leaders in a joint press conference in New Delhi said France and India will cooperate in areas such as nuclear energy, space science and renewable energy.

Rafale is a twin-jet combat aircraft with capabilities for a wide range of short and long-range missions. It has high accuracy and can be used for sea and ground attacks. France has been using Rafale in its Navy since 2004.

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Business News
US authorities have hunted for three California prisoners, including a man charged with murder, who staged a brazen jailbreak that reportedly involved rappelling from the roof of a maximum-security facility using bed sheets.

Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong and Hossein Nayeri went missing from the Orange County Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana, in southern California on Friday, officials said. The three escapees are dangerous criminals, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said in a statement Sunday. She said her investigations team is working around the clock with the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the Orange County Probation Office, the US Marshals and the FBI.

The FBI and US Marshals Service have offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of the fugitive trio.

The Los Angeles Times, quoting Hutchens, reported that the inmates got away by managing to get past security points in at least three areas. They apparently accessed the jail's plumbing system, used tools to cut through metal bars and made a makeshift rope using bed sheets to rappel from the facility's roof. Tieu, 20, is charged with murder, Duong, 43, with attempted murder and Nayeri, 37, with kidnapping and torture, authorities said.

The jail currently houses more than 900 men, the Orange County Sheriff's Department tweeted, specifying on its website that these include both sentenced and pre-trial maximum-security inmates.

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Political News
Canadian stocks are set for early losses Monday due to falling crude oil prices and lingering concerns about the global .

Bargain hunting helped the S&P/TSX Composite Index jump 353.72 points, or 2.9 percent to 12,389.58 in the previous session, but a sustained rebound is unlikely on either side of the border today.

March crude oil was down 1 dollar at 31.21 a barrel, edging back near 12-year lows from earlier this month.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (VRX, VRX.TO) announced the U.S. FDA has accepted for review the Biologics License Application for brodalumab injection.

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Business News
The World Health Organization has warned that the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which had a devastating outbreak in Latin America, is likely to spread across nearly all of the Americas.

Only Canada and Chile are expected to be free of the deadly disease, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional office of the WHO, said in a statement.

CDC had warned that because the Aedes species mosquitoes that spread Zika virus are found throughout the world, it is likely that outbreaks will spread to new countries, and it will be difficult to determine how the virus will spread over time.

WHO also confirmed that the virus had been detected in semen and there was one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission, but more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission.

Around 80 percent of infections do not result in symptoms.

But the biggest concern is the potential impact on babies developing in the womb. Nearly 4000 suspected cases of microcephaly - babies born with tiny brains - has been reported in Brazil alone since October.

A woman who fell ill with the virus in Brazil later gave birth to a brain-damaged baby in Hawaii, which was confirmed by the officials as the first case in the US.

PAHO warned pregnant women to be "especially careful" and to see their doctor before and after visiting areas affected by the virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a yellow travel alert Friday, advising pregnant women to consider postponing travel to Mexico, Puerto Rico and more than a dozen other countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean where outbreaks of Zika have been registered. The agency warned all travelers to these areas to take precautions and avoid mosquito bites.

The virus has quickly spread across 21 countries in South America and the Caribbean in recent weeks.

Zika virus is spread to people through mosquito bites. It cannot spread between humans. However, for pregnant women, it can be transmitted to the fetus which can cause microcephaly in which the brain and skull are abnormally small.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the insect that transmits the viruses that can spread zika fever, dengue fever, chikungunya, and yellow fever. The Aedes Aegypti mosquito is common in warm climates, and the Zika virus often produces flu-like symptoms like fever, headaches and joint pain as well as skin rashes and conjunctivitis (red eyes).

There is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat Zika. When traveling to countries where Zika virus or other viruses spread by mosquitoes have been reported, people are advised to use insect repellent, wear long sleeves and pants, and stay in places with air conditioning or use window and door screens.

The WHO Director General, Margaret Chan, told the organisation's executive board that she had asked Carissa Etienne, head of the WHO in the Americas, to brief the board later this week on its response to the outbreak.

"An increased occurrence of neurological symptoms, noted in some countries coincident with arrival of the virus, adds to the concern," Chan said.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
President Barack Obama has largely steered clear of the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination but offered some observations on the race between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in an interview published Monday.

In an interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush, Obama suggested the surge in support for Sanders is partly due to his role as the underdog.

"I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose," Obama said. "I think Hillary came in with the  both privilege and burden of being perceived as the frontrunner."

He added, "As a consequence, you know, where they stood at the beginning probably helps to explain why the language sometimes is different."

However, Obama rejected the notion that the campaign is similar to 2008, when he managed to beat Clinton in Iowa and subsequently for the nomination.

Thrush noted Obama didn't utter an unkind word about Sanders but said the president couldn't hide his obvious affection for Clinton or the feeling she best understands the demands of the White House.

"I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you're going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you," Obama said.

He added, "The one thing everybody understands is that [with] this job right here, you don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing."

Obama also chimed in on the Republican presidential candidates, highlighting the wide gap between the visions the GOP and the Democrats are offering for the country.

The president acknowledged he had sharp differences with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but noted his 2008 opponent did not deny climate science or call for banning Muslims from the country.

"You know, John McCain was a conservative, but he was well within, you know, the mainstream of not just the Republican Party but within our political dialogue," Obama said.

He added, "That's where, ultimately, any voter is going to have to pay attention is the degree to which the Republican rhetoric and Republican vision has moved not just to the right but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable."

Reiterating a theme from his State of the Union address, Obama also said he is proud of what he has accomplished as president but expressed regret about the increased polarization in .

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Business News
The European ended the first session of the new trading week in the red. The markets swung back and forth between gains and losses over the course of the trading session. Ultimately, the pull back in crude oil prices and weakness in financial stocks proved too strong to overcome.

Crude oil prices slipped back to around $31 per barrel Monday. A two day recovery in crude prices brought prices from their lowest level in 12 years, back to around $32 per barrel at the end of the previous trading week.

Profit taking also contributed to the weak performance in Europe Monday. The markets staged a two-day rally at the end of the prior trading week. Investors are also looking forward to Wednesday's announcement from the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services upgraded its sovereign rating for Greece as it expects the nation to meet the conditions attached to EUR 86 billion bailout package.

The agency lifted the ratings to 'B-' from 'CCC+' with stable outlook.

The Greek government has recapitalized the country's systemic banks, and put into place budgetary consolidation measures since last summer, the rating agency noted.

Moreover, the proved more resilient than previously expected despite multiple shocks.

The rating agency expects Greece to meet the conditionality attached to the bailout package, opening the way for discussions on official debt relief.

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone blue chip stocks decreased 0.71 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, lost 0.93 percent.

The DAX of Germany dropped 0.29 percent and the CAC 40 of France fell 0.58 percent. The FTSE of the U.K. declined 0.39 percent and the SMI of Switzerland finished lower by 0.21 percent.

In Frankfurt, Wincor Nixdorf climbed 1.91 percent after the automated teller machines maker upgraded its earnings guidance for the current fiscal year 2015/2016.

Siemens rose 0.08 percent, after it has agreed to buy CD-adapco, a privately-held U.S. engineering software firm.

BMW decreased 0.99 percent and Daimler weakened by 1.60 percent. Volkswagen also declined 1.50 percent. U.S. regulators announced a new recall of about 5 million vehicles with potentially defective Takata Corp air bags.

Deutsche Bank sank 5.60 percent and Commerzbank dropped 3.55 percent.

In Paris, Technip tumbled 4.49 percent and Total surrendered 1.87 percent.

Societe Generale decreased 2.72 percent and Credit Agricole weakened by 2.58 percent. BNP Paribas also finished lower by 2.87 percent.

In London, Kingfisher dropped 6.12 percent, after the home improvement retailer announced five-year transformation to deliver 500 million pounds sustainable annual profit uplift.

BT Group fell 3.34 percent after a report into broadband investment from cross-party MPs urged the company to spin off its Openreach access network .

Royal Bank of Scotland declined 4.12 percent and Lloyds Banking Group lost 5.56 percent. Barclays fell 4.67 percent and Standard Chartered surrendered 2.12 percent.

German business confidence eased sharply at the start of the year to its weakest level in eleven months, as global concerns such as market volatility and slowdown in the emerging economies hurt expectations significantly.

The Ifo business climate index dropped to 107.3 from 108.6 in December, which was revised from 108.7, the Munich-based Ifo Institute said Monday. Economists had forecast a 108.4 score.

The total value of construction orders received by the German construction sector grew notably in November, figures from Destatis showed Monday.

Orders in the construction industry rose sharply by a seasonally, working-day and price-adjusted 15.0 percent month-on-month in November. This was the highest growth rate in November since the beginning of the time series in 1991, the agency said.

Italy's retail sales decreased for the first time in eight months in November, though slightly, figures from the statistical office Istat showed Monday. Retail sales edged down 0.1 percent year-over-year in November, reversing a 1.8 percent rise in the preceding month.

Italy's industrial orders grew for the second straight month in November, data from the statistical office Istat showed Monday. Industrial orders rose 1.6 percent month-over-month in November, but slower than the 4.6 percent gain in the preceding month.

British manufacturers reported a decline in orders at the start of the year on weaker demand for exports, the Industrial Trends Survey of the Confederation of British Industry showed Monday. The order book balance of the survey dropped to -15 percent in January from -7 percent in the previous month. Economists had forecast a -10 reading.

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Market Analysis
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
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Jan-24-2016 22:38 TweetFollow @OregonNews Former Al Jazeera English Bureau Chief Reveals Doha's Domestic Troubles New York Times article sheds light on severe and flagrant violations of law.

Mohamed Fahmy

Photo courtesy: Wikipedia

(SALEM, Ore.) - Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist who was the Cairo bureau chief for Al Jazeera English revealed new aspects of Doha's Domestic Troubles representing oppression in political freedom and divisions within al-Thani family itself, in a New York Times Opinion Pages article titled, Doha's Domestic Troubles. The following is an excerpt from Mohamed Fahmy's article: Qataris who seek greater freedom of expression and more democracy in their oil-rich nation face disappointment, and perhaps worse. In what may presage a wider crackdown on dissent in Qatar, Sheikh Fahad bin Abdullah al-Thani  a cousin of the ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani  was last month sentenced to seven years in prison. Sheikh Fahad was accused of shooting three officers as he stormed a police station in a bid to free his two sons, but the Qatari governments version of events conflicts with other witnesses. According to family members and others to whom Ive spoken, it was state security forces that did the storming, using armored vehicles against the sheikhs palace in Doha, the capital, last January. The sheikh and his sons, they say, were severely beaten during the confrontation. Sheikh Fahad had a longtime dispute with the government over its seizure of some of his inherited land, according to his family. But opposition activists also believe that the arrest was in retaliation for the sheikhs political activities. According to the lawyer and human rights advocate Najeeb al-Nauimi, who is in contact with the sheikhs family, he is in prison in Doha. A former justice minister who has become an outspoken critic of the government, Mr. Nauimi represents dozens of Qataris who have suffered under the absolute monarchys silencing of opposition voices. One of his clients is the poet Muhammad al-Ajami, who is serving a 15-year sentence, after a secret trial in 2012, for criticizing the emir in a poem that praised the Arab Spring. After the verdict, Mr. Nauimi said, Our judicial system cannot be trusted. For the full article Doha's Domestic Troubles in the New York Times Opinion Pages, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/opinion/mohamed-fahmy-doha-qatar.html?_r=0

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Saudi Arabia Continues Beating Drums of War in Yemen

Political analysts say recent statements illustrate divisions in the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.



Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed

Photo courtesy: United Nations



(SALEM, Ore.) - Arabic coalition forces spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri recently said that control of the city of Taiz will return to the pro-Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi forces, adding that it would happen within two months.

Asiri's remarks were considered irresponsible by political insiders in Yemen who say his words show lack of political will in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to resolve the crisis in Yemen by peaceful means and through peace talks.

Saudi Arabia duality reveals itself as Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed considers proposals through the United Nations to end the invasion of Yemen through negotiations and bilateral talks. Yemeni political parties, including the Ansar Allah movement, accepted UN proposals.

Saudi Arabia rejected Ould Cheikhs calls for negation. Observers say Saudi Arabia's decision to reject the talks proves that House of Saudi is not interested in peaceful resolution and has made Yemenis hostages of its war.

These statements were made in spite of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud's earlier remarks stressing the importance of adhering to any peaceful means to resolve the crisis in Yemen.

The obvious conflict with those statements raised many questions from political analysts and they illustrate the divisions in the ruling family in Saudi Arabia.

_________________________________________
Alpine, UT -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.



As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.



Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all webmasters needed to do was to submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.



Alpine, UTAH G3 Development Social Media (Twitter.com) News: Accredited Website (Blog) Source and Creative Lab Announces New Google Indexing Tools



By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions. Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.



In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users. In 2008, Bruce Clay said that "ranking is dead" because of personalized search. He opined that it would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search.



In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.



Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.



In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice, however Google implemented a new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique. In April 2012, Google launched the Google Penguin update the goal of which was to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.



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Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- 2015 Global Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Industry Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).



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The report includes six parts, dealing with: 1.) basic information; 2.) the Asia Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles industry; 3.) the North American Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles industry; 4.) the European Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles industry; 5.) market entry and investment feasibility; and 6.) the report conclusion.



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Table of Content



Part I Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Industry Overview



Chapter One Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Industry Overview

1.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Definition

1.2 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Classification Analysis

1.2.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Main Classification Analysis

1.2.2 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Main Classification Share Analysis

1.3 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Application Analysis

1.3.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Main Application Analysis

1.3.2 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Main Application Share Analysis

1.4 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Industry Chain Structure Analysis

1.5 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Industry Development Overview

1.5.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Product History Development Overview

1.5.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Product Market Development Overview

1.6 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Market Comparison Analysis

1.6.1 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Import Market Analysis

1.6.2 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Export Market Analysis

1.6.3 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Main Region Market Analysis

1.6.4 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Market Comparison Analysis

1.6.5 Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Global Market Development Trend Analysis



Chapter Two Automotive Natural Gas Vehicle for Commercial Vehicles Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis

2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis

2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis

2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis

2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend

2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis

2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis

2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis

2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend Analysis



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Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- The report "Eco Fibers Market by Type (Organic Fibers, Recycled Fibers, Regenerated Fibers, and Others), by Application (Clothing/Textile, Household & Furnishings, Industrial, Medical, and Others), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World) - Global Forecast to 2020",

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The global eco fibers market size, in terms of value, is projected to reach USD 74.65 Billion by 2020, and is projected to record a CAGR of 11.46% between 2015 and 2020.



Clothing/Textile - major market for eco fibers



Clothing/textile is a major application for the eco fibers market. Eco fibers are becoming the most popular type of fibers used in the clothing and apparel industry for properties similar to non-organic fibers. The two main functions performed by eco fibers in clothing are strength and comfort. Major fibers used in the clothing/textile application are organic cotton fibers, recycled fibers such as polyester, and regenerated fiber such as lyocell, viscose. Among these, organic fibers are the most preferred fibers for clothing as they provide an optimum level of comfort and are best suited for maintaining a person's health and well-being. Variations of fibers are also implemented to provide strength and color consistency to the fabric manufactured such as recycled cotton fibers along with rPET, cotton fibers along with virgin acrylic fibers, and so on.



The U.S. and India cumulatively accounted for more than 40% of the global eco fiber market in terms of value in 2014



The U.S. is the biggest market in the North American region as well as in global scenario with around 53% regional share. India is the biggest end user and producer of eco fiber with about 35% share in the Asia-Pacific region and is the second largest globally. The U.S. and India together accounted for around 40.0% of the global eco fibers market size in terms of value in 2014. The U.S. and India are the largest markets in their respective regions, and are expected to compete with each other to dominate the global market by 2020, with advanced eco fiber materials for end users.



In 2014, Asia-Pacific was estimated to be largest market for eco fibers that accounted for around 37% of the overall eco fiber market in terms of value. North America and Europe, together accounted for more than 40% of the global eco fibers market in terms of value in 2014. The eco fibers market in these regions is expected to increase substantially between 2015 and 2020, as the acceptance for these fibers is increasing in these regions.



Lenzing AG (Austria), Grasim Industries Limited (India), Teijin Ltd. (Japan), and US Fibers (U.S.) are the dominant market players in the global eco fibers market.



This report covers the market by value and volume for eco fibers and forecasts the market size till 2020. It includes the market segmentation by type, application, and region. It also provides company profiles and competitive strategies adopted by the major market players in the global eco fibers market. Companies such as Lenzing AG (Austria), Grasim Industries Limited (India), Teijin Ltd. (Japan), and US Fibers (U.S.) are the dominant market players in the global eco fibers market.



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Natural Fiber Composites Market by Applications (Automotive, Building and Construction, Electrical and Electronics & Others) by Manufacturing Processes (Compression Molding, Injection Molding & Others) and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2019

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Vancouver, BC -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- Real estate is the wide business that includes multiple functions and entities participating to help the industry grow and expand wit time. The development in the Canada's, Vancouver have been considered progressive but the Vancouver real estate sales soar by 30% in July last year and have not been improved significantly in the year time. The categories of the real estate like building and construction are separate industries as well that have control and progress score in the market. The consumers usually ask themselves the question like what's right for you: townhouse or condo. The differences of the housing styles and the recent development are somewhat clashing. For instance the Vancouver heritage house tour a cosy living room while the latest designs on the stylish houses and apartments are more space efficient and help consumers use their space in multiple ways during the day time and night time. Going back to the prices the manufacturing and construction industry is being promised to further develop and grow in future since there have been multiple agreements drawn between Algeria and Canada though the leaders who are working to create mutual interest for both markets and industries of pace of new home price growth quickens in vancouver. There have been routes developed for possible positive investments and expansion of the industry functions across borders.



The prices in Vancouver are issues as well that suggest that Vancouver seeing Canada's most "asymmetrical" home price. The prices are too inconsiderate or too high and sometimes too low depending in the sit-upon that the local market consumers are getting lower in number. There are less market opportunities for the industry to grow within the same consumer market structure. The overall industry has been facing multiple development projects that will accelerate the industry but will also demand proper management of investment in the long run.



The agreements between Algeria and Canada will assure investments projects in the long run and there are many business in Canada related to the industry of manufacturing, services, development and construction that can seek value opportunities in the markets of Algeria proving the agreements between Canada and Algeria a win situation for investors interested in development of their businesses and eventually a strong and stable industry through Canadian market onto the international level. The current state so the Canada markets and industries are drawing the traders, companies and people to invest in the real estate and other business that will eventually relocate and resettle new communities in the country. For more information: http://www.finances-algeria.org



State and country : Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Thessaloniki, Greece -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- Gone are those days, when almost all the tourists traveling abroad used the services of travel agencies. Nowadays, millions of tourists prefer to travel through Europe using their Schengen visas on their own, which frequently makes their trips more organized, independent and comfortable. Those people, who are right about to plan their vacation in Greece, now have a great chance to use the apartment booking services offered by Holiday Greece.



Holiday Greece is the division of the Greece Invest Company, which focuses on selling and constructing resort real estate objects in the country. The company was founded in 2002 and has become quite popular since that time. Currently, they have the head office in Thessaloniki (Greece) and several other offices in Moscow, Kiev, St. Petersburg. Apart from that, they have partners in the CIS and Europe.



The company is a team of professionals, who are the local residents and, thus, know Greece pretty well. This means that they can provide any information concerning the country, its history and places of interest to any tourist, who needs these facts. The experts working for the company are eager to help anyone rent holiday home in Greece with minimum effort. They are dedicated to their clients' comfort and satisfaction and try to do everything possible to help each tourist enjoy the beauty of this magnificent country, which is frequently hidden from the eyes of visitors who decide to stay in hotels. This is what the Holiday Greece experts tell about the company: "Our mission is to show travelers a completely new type of holiday that has long been popular in Europe: a holiday that is not only a great value for money, but also a good opportunity to display his or her identity in an atmosphere of privacy, comfort and five-star service."



Holiday Greece provides a long list of services a tourist may need to make the vacation unforgettable. These include renting villas in Greece, transfers and taxi services, car rent, yachting service, professional housekeeping staff assistance, escorted tours and interpreters, organization and planning of individual excursions and trips as well as other individual services. For those tourists, who wish to rent a villa in Crete, Peloponnese, Halkidiki, Athens, the managers of the company are ready to select only the best property that meets individual requirements and needs of a client. Most of the villas and apartments they offer for rent and sale are carefully inspected by the company's experts.



For more information, please, visit http://www.holidaygreece.eu/



About Holiday Greece

Holiday Greece is one of the most reputable companies, which offer online booking of cottages, villas and apartments in Greece. They provide a long list of property objects available for sale and rent on the website. The service is the department of the Greece Invest Company  a popular and trusted corporation that builds and sells resort real estate objects throughout Greece. The company employs professionals, who know everything about the country and are the local residents.



Contact Info:

Head office in Thessaloniki: 37, I. Polemi Street., P.O. 54248, Thessaloniki, Greece

Office in Athens: 7, Kunduriotu str., P.O. 17122, Athens, Greece

Tel. (Greece): +30 (697) 818-13-19

Moscow office: (495) 651-61-75

St. Petersburg office: (812) 309-05-45

Kiev office: (044) 393-42-40

Greek office: +30 (231) 220-53-90

Skype: holidaygreece

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/holiday.greece.ru

VK: http://vk.com/holiday.greece

Odnoklassniki: http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/group/52250712014941

Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/100507647588975982841/+HolidaygreeceRu/posts

Website: http://www.holidaygreece.eu/
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- 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.



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.



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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.



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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.



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Moscow, Russia -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/25/2016 -- Systems of education differ from one country to another, which makes the awareness of their basic principles highly important both for the residents of the country and the foreigners who live on its territory. This is where the corresponding laws regulating the principles of the education system in this or that country generally come in handy. For those people, who are interested in the basics and regulations of the system of education in the Russian Federation, Zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru offers the amended education act.



Zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru is an important website, where the education law of the Russian Federation is published. The law contains all the changes that have been made in the text by the end of 2015. The law was adopted in 2009, while the latest changes were introduced last year. The decision to publish the amendments was triggered by the insufficient regulatory basis observed in the act during the previous years and the necessity to improve the existing system of education in general. This especially concerned the regulations and education basics for the foreigners who live on the territory of Russia.



Currently, the document lists and describes all the positions and basic principles concerning the system of education in the Russian Federation. It focuses both on the general and practical aspects of the system as well as the existing nuances. The new law also identifies the official status of a teacher in the country and describes the list of special facilities these specialists are provided with nowadays.



Apart from that, special attention is devoted to the rights and responsibilities of foreigners, who wish to get education in Russia and use all the benefits provided by the system. It is stated that "the new amended federal education law should be used to make all the relationships between the participants of the educational process clear and distinct." With this purpose, all the regulations stated in the law comply with the basics of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the whole world community that takes part in the international educational process. This is highly important when it comes to defining the principles of education for the foreigners.



It should also be mentioned that all the regulations provided in the new amended law were developed with regard to the national peculiarities and traditions that have existed in the educational system of Russia for years. This resulted in the development of the effective and informative legislative instrument that can be used to regulate the relationships and any issues observed in one of the most important spheres of the modern society.



For more information, please, feel free to visit http://zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru/



About Zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru

Zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru is one of the most important and useful online resources, where the education law of the Russian Federation is provided. Published in 2009, the law offers information regarding the system of education in the country. Apart from the general points, it also contains all the changes that have been made in the text by the end of 2015. All the amendments that have been added to the text of the law and the system itself were triggered by the necessity to improve the existing system of education. This especially concerned the regulations and education basics for the foreigners who live on the territory of Russia.



Contact Info:

Address: 15 Bolshaja Spasskaja, Building 1, 129090 Moscow, Russia

Tel.: (495) 366-70-94

E-mail: info@zakon.ru

Website: http://zakon-ob-obrazovanii.ru/
Researchers have raised the alarm about an overlooked bacterial disease that they say killed 89,000 people in 79 countries in 2015.

In a paper published in Nature Microbiology last week (11 January), researchers say that melioidosis is likely to be present in most of the tropics, including 34 countries where it has never been reported.

The disease is transmitted by Burkholderia pseudomallei, a bacterium that is known to be commonly found in the soil in South-East Asia and Australia, especially in rural areas. It results in a wide range of symptoms including shortness of breath and fever, and kills half those it infects.

The disease is mostly misdiagnosed [as tuberculosis] and treated with inappropriate antibiotics. Chiranjay Mukhopadhyay, Manipal University, India

The researchers say the disease is poorly known, hard to diagnose and resistant to most antibiotics.

There had never been a case of melioidosis reported in Laos until 1999, when a laboratory was set up, says David Dance, a clinical microbiologist at the Lao-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital Wellcome Trust Research Unit in Laos. Since then, 934 cases of the disease have been diagnosed in the country, adds Dance, who cowrote the paper.

Chiranjay Mukhopadhyay, a microbiologist at Manipal University in India, says: The disease is mostly misdiagnosed [as tuberculosis] and treated with inappropriate antibiotics.

India has recently set up lab facilities to identify cases, the paper says. But the country urgently needs a national policy to estimate the disease burden, and also a guideline to diagnose the cases and treat them, according to Mukhopadhyay.

To estimate the number of melioidosis cases worldwide, the scientists compiled all confirmed cases in humans and animals, and mapped places where the bacteria is found. They modelled the most favourable conditions for B. pseudomallei  such as specific soils and high rainfall and temperature  to establish everywhere it is likely to be found.

Countries where melioidosis is known or likely

The evidence provided in the paper is comprehensive and the projections realistic, says Natkunam Ketheesan, a microbiologist and immunologist at James Cook University in Australia, who edited a 2012 book on melioidosis to mark the 100th anniversary of its discovery.

Type 2 diabetes, a major risk factor for melioidosis, is also increasing globally and will impact on the burden of melioidosis, he says. He wants policymakers to make the disease a health priority.

Anastacio Sousa, an infectious disease researcher at the Federal University of Ceara in Brazil, agrees the estimates are convincing.

In places where the disease is studied rigorously, the figures are much higher. Does Australia have lots more cases than Brazil? Probably not, but they detect, diagnose and register melioidosis there. I hope this paper will help healthcare professionals and the health authorities take the disease more seriously.

This article was produced by SciDev.Net's Global Edition.
[MANILA] An element that is less radioactive and produces less nuclear waste than uranium is inching closer towards becoming an alternative fuel for nuclear energy.

Carlo Rubbia, one of the worlds top nuclear experts, said that one of the main reasons why the United States cut research on thorium in the 1970s is part of what makes it so attractive today  thorium is difficult to turn into a bomb. It is also about three or four times more abundant than uranium and produces roughly 200 times more energy than its cousin.

Thorium is not for tomorrow but unless you do any development, it will not get there. By Carlo Rubbia, nuclear expert

Rubbia, a Nobel prize-winning particle physicist and former director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), cited heightened research efforts particularly in China and India on the naturally occurring metal named after the Norse god of thunder.

He spoke at the recently concluded fourth Global Young Scientists Summit held in Singapore (17-22 January). The event, which was organised by the Singapore National Research Foundation, gathered some 280 young scientists and 20 internationally respected science and technology leaders who have won several of the most distinguished awards in the field, such as the Millennium Technology Prize and Fields Medal. Topics discussed ranged from the speakers scientific adventures to the future of computing.

Rubbia, however, thinks that it is still a long way from forming part of South-East Asias energy mix during an interview with SciDev.Net.

Thorium is not for tomorrow but unless you do any development, it will not get there, Rubbia says.

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which represents nearly 30 countries, South-East Asias energy demands are predicted to grow by 80 per cent from 2015 to 2040. South-East Asian leaders are increasingly looking into the potential of renewables to help meet their energy demands, which will rise to almost 1,100 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the next 25 years.

Aside from thorium, another much discussed energy source at the conference was solar.

Michael Gratzel, chairman of the scientific advisory board of the energy research centre at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and one of the speakers at the summit, discussed artificial photosynthesis, how the natural photosynthetic process can be mimicked in the laboratory, and how it can be scaled up to industrial levels.

Gratzel, who won the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize, which promotes life-enhancing technological innovation, tells SciDev.Net that his laboratory invented a new type of solar cell based on dye sensitized mesoscopic oxide particles that could be used to power hybrid cars in South-East Asia.

Solar is a particularly attractive field in the region because you have a lot of sunshine and large land areas that can be used, Gratzel says.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
[CAPE TOWN] Reduced primary food production by microscopic plants in the Indian Ocean resulting from rising sea surface temperatures is contributing to a drop in marine life, according to a modelling study.



Researchers from France, India, South Africa and United States say that a decreasing trend in phytoplankton blooms  a component of ocean food webs  could be impacting the greater ocean ecosystem and food security.



In the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this week (19 January, the researchers identify a 20 per cent decrease in marine phytoplankton, microscopic plants, in the Indian Ocean over the past 60 years.

If this goes on, the availability of nutrients, biomass and then primary production of fish will decrease. Marchello Vichi, University of Cape Town, South Africa

These trends are driven by atmospheric warming captured by the ocean and inhibiting natural mixing from vertical upwelling [rising of seawater], says a co-author of the study, Marchello Vichi, an associate professor at the Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, South Africa.



Using climate projection modelling, supplemented with satellite observations of ocean chlorophyll concentrations and dating back to 1997, Vichi and the research team were able to analyse data from over 50 years in the western Indian Ocean.



They found historical simulations indicating that marine phytoplankton has decreased 20 per cent in the past six decades. Additionally, recent satellite data showed that the decline was up to 30 per cent over the past 16 years.



Marine phytoplankton are microscopic plants in the ocean that sustain the aquatic food web. They help drive the marine ecosystem and impact the global fisheries catch.



Phytoplankton bloom with the benefit of monsoons, which drive ocean water away from the surface, and recall nutrient-rich water from below. These nutrients then get to the most illuminated area of the water column, allowing for phytoplankton to grow and feed the marine ecosystem, Vichi explains.



Despite an increase in monsoon circulation, ocean warming is creating conditions that are not favourable to upwelling, says Vichi. If this goes on, the availability of nutrients, biomass and then primary production of fish will decrease.



According to the researchers, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimates that 20 per cent of the global tuna catch occurs in the Indian Ocean, with a previous study showing that over the past 50 years, tuna catch rates have declined by 50 to 90 per cent in the region.



Any decline in the marine ecosystem could affect food security in the Indian Ocean Rim countries [including India, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Tanzania], and will have an effect on economies and markets, says the studys corresponding author, Mathew Koll Roxy, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.



Our modelling should provide a framework to develop policies to limit both over-fishing and greenhouse warming, Roxy says.

In South Africa, such policies are on the government agenda, says Sean ODonoghue, acting manager of the climate protection branch of the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department in Durban, South Africa.While South Africas Indian Ocean coastline is different from the western region in the study, ODonoghue says climate change impacts a number of global industries.Our strategy is to put communities and ecosystems at the centre of our climate change response, ODonoghue explains, asserting: With strong political leadership, a new mandate in the COP 21 Paris agreement, national legislation on the horizon and partnerships with local governments, the potential for implementing effective adaptation measures is good.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Collapsed cave systems are a new type of reservoir in the Barents Sea that can accommodate significant petroleum resources. "Characterizing the reservoir properties of such systems is quite a challenge," says researcher Jan Tveranger at Uni Research CIPR in Bergen, Norway.

In 2013 and 2014 Lundin Petroleum discovered significant amounts of oil and gas in the prospects Gohta and Alta on Loppa high, north of the Snhvit field.

The reservoir type encountered represent something new on the Norwegian shelf: carbonate and gypsum formations with evidence of pervasive dissolution and cave formation (commonly known as "karst") followed by infilling and collapse during subsequent burial.

Similar reservoirs are known from the Middle East, China and the US.

"Such "paleokarst reservoirs" are quite intriguing from a scientific point of view, but far more difficult to characterize than the reservoirs we are familiar with from elsewhere on the Norwegian shelf. The processes acting during their formation produce extreme contrasts in porosity and permeability over short distance," says Tveranger. A detailed understanding Drill holes and seismic surveys provide only limited information in this context.

"Thus forecasts of spatial distribution of formation properties, a prerequisite for successful well placement and production planning, have to employ other means. A detailed understanding of the processes these reservoirs are subjected to during their formation is the key to their successful development," Tveranger says.

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"Predictable reservoir behaviour ensures that optimal recovery with a minimum number of wells. This cuts both installation cost and risk for operators. The need for fewer wells and prolonged operational life for individual fields is also less environmentally disruptive," he adds.

The size of the Alta discovery is promising. Preliminary resource estimates based on wells drilled by the Island Innovator rig in the autumn of 2015 suggest reserves of between 14-50 million standard cubic metres of oil and 5-17 billion cubic metres of gas, according to offshore.no.

Lundin will continue the evaluation of the reservoir with two new assessment wells planned for 2016.

Could the neighbouring prospect on Loppa High, Lakselv, Brselv and Neiden contain similar reservoirs? According to Tveranger, an exploration well is in progress on the latter.

Unique combination

Unusual reservoirs require unusual solutions. This also extends to team composition.

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Uni Research CIPR, the Department of Earth Science at the University of Bergen (UoB) and NORSAR have joined some of their competences in an effort to improve characterization of paleokarst reservoirs.

This includes Norway's premier research environment on karst processes, extensive experience in reservoir modelling and simulation and a suite of new tools for seismic forward modelling.

"Simply explained, we start out by establishing what different karst systems look like. This is linked to the initial properties of the rock as well as local tectonics and climate. Knowledge of the processes acting during subsequent collapse, infill and burial can be used to forecast property distributions in the subsurface. This is followed by seismic forward modelling to see what a given system will look like in seismic data from real reservoirs," says Tveranger.

A long-lived research effort

Uni Research CIPR is one of small number of Norwegian research institutions who have worked on this type of reservoirs for a long time through field studies in Texas, Wyoming and Billefjorden on Svalbard.

"Students and researchers at CIPR have built reservoir models and conducted fluid flow simulation studies based on these field studies since 2008," Tveranger points out.

Lundins discoveries in the southern Barents Sea have been described as a potential game changer for the petroleum production in the region.

Although the company in November 2015 expressed their intention to develop the two discoveries, falling oil prices emphasize the need for reliable forecasts to lower investment risks.

Composing a team

Norway's foremost karst expert, Professor Stein-Erik Lauritzen from the University of Bergen is part of the research team.

"Cooperation with UoB is a key element. The link between modern karst and paleokarst reservoirs is well known, but the disciplines working in these two fields (karst research and petroleum reservoir characterization) traditionally don't mix much," says Tveranger.

"However, our close collaboration with UoB allows us to set up untraditional teams in a targeted manner to handle specific problems, or simply explore the vast scientific ground between normally compartmentalized disciplines," Tveranger points out.

Seismic forward modelling

Seismic interpretation of paleokarst reservoirs is challenging. The processes forming them give rise to geometrically complex structures and substantial heterogeneity.

It is difficult to identify and interpret these structures if one doesn't know what to look for.

Here seismic forward modelling of modelled structures from known paleokarst reservoirs can aid interpretation.

"Our collaborators at NORSAR have developed a tool for seismic forward modelling of the reservoir models we build. This will make it possible to identify what different structures look like in the seismic data and thus give the interpreter an idea of what he or she should look for."
Antibiotic-resistance in hospital grows an increasing concern among those from the medical field. But an emerging study, which is being hailed as a major discovery, found that breast milk contains an antibiotic capable of treating drug-resistant bacteria.

A protein medically known as lactoferrin, a component that keeps babies healthy in their first few months could be effective in killing bacteria, viruses and fungi. According to British Scientists, lactoferrin can rewrite the DNA of a cell and eradicate bacteria in less than a second, thereby inhibiting them to regenerate or evolve defense, as the new drug reportedly attacks the bacteria's basic biology.

The study published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Chemical Science, revealed that the newly discovered antibiotic can identify and target specific bacteria without causing damage to its neighboring cells. After its discovery, scientists re-engineered the smaller than a nanometre width fragments into a virus-like capsule.

Then the scientists used atomic force microscopy to devise a high-speed measurement platform to keep track of the capsules' real-time activities. The major challenge of monitoring is not on tracking down the capsule but on following their invasion into the bacterial membranes.

In addition, the drugs can also purportedly cure sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disease where mutated hemoglobin at low oxygen levels results to distorted red blood cells, as claimed by the researchers from the National Physical Laboratory.

Recently, Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer, had given warning to the public about overusing antibiotics. She said that overconsumption could result to bacteria to gain resistance against commonly used drugs.

However, it seems that the world is not prepared to antibiotic free, as health ministers continue to seek for potent new drugs. "And we did disinvest as a world in this sort of research, so we need to make an investment and sustain it," she said.

On the other hand, David Cameron also gave caution about the fight against these superbugs, warning it could bring back modern medicine into the Dark Ages. Antibiotic-resistant superbugs account for nearly 700,000 people annually across the globe.

According to the panel formed by the prime minister, it predicted that if the problem remains unresolved, it would claim 10 million lives and 700 billion every year by 2050.
Statistics show that people are living longer and longer. And now, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that more Americans are living to their 100th birthdays and beyond.

The report, Mortality Among Centenarians in the United States, 2000-2014, shows that the number of American centenarians--or those who are at least 100--has spiked to almost 44 percent from 2000 to 2014. Researchers also note that close to 80 percent of these individuals are female.

"In the early 1900s and before, people could count on losing about a quarter of their children to infectious diseases and other public health problems," Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Boston Medical Center, told Reuters.

Lifestyle and advancing medical treatments may explain some of the report. However, researchers also noted that the causes of death differed between men and women. For instance, in 2014, centarian women typically died of heart disease and then (respectively) Alzheimer's disease (AD), stroke, influenza, pneumonia, and cancer. While the top cause of death for men at the time was also heart disease, it was then followed by cancer, influenza, pneumnia, stroke and AD.

"People who are physically fit enough to survive over 100 years ultimately succumb to diseases afflicting the mind and cognitive dysfunction... in other words, it appears that their minds give out before their bodies do," said geriatrics professor Holly Prigerson, via LiveScience regarding the dangers of AD.

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How long have pet cats been around? That's a good question and now, researchers may have an answer. It turns out that small cats may have been domesticated in China earlier than 3000 BC, which is comparable to what took place in the Near East and Egypt.

In 2001, researchers discovered cat bones in agricultural settlements in northern China dating from around 3500 BC. However, researchers weren't sure whether this was evidence of a relationship between small Chinese cats and humans, or the result of the first domestic cats arriving in China from the Near East.

In order to find out, the researchers conducted a geometric morphometric analysis, which is the only way to differentiate the bones of such small cats, which have very similar morphologies. The scientists analyzed the mandibles of five cats from Shaanxi and Henan dating from 3500 to 2900 BC.

So what did they find? It turns out that the bones clearly belonged to the leopard cat, Prionailurus bengalensis. This species is still very widespread in Eastern Asia today. The wildcat is actually a distant relation of the western wildcat, and is well-known for its propensity to frequent areas with a strong human presence. It's likely that leopard cats were attracted into Chinese settlements by the proliferation of rodents.

So what does this mean? It shows that these leopard cats were present and may have started being domesticated. However, these were replaced by its relation, F. silvestris lybica over time as it arrived from other areas.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.

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Researchers at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health & Society have found that unhealthy food advertising negatively influences children's food choices--increasing their risk of forming life-long bad habits.

Researchers reviewed and analyzed 22 separate studies that examined the impact of acute, experimental unhealthy food advertising exposure via food consumption. The studies included had exposed children and/or adults to unhealthy food advertising on television or the Internet, took into account how much the participant ate and then compared this amount to how much controls consumed who were not exposed to advertisements.

"Through our analysis of these published studies I have shown that food advertising doesn't just affect brand preference - it drives consumption. Given that almost all children in Westernised societies are exposed to large amounts of unhealthy food advertising on a daily basis this is a real concern," said study author Dr. Emma Boyland of the University of Liverpool, in a news release. "Small, but cumulative increases in energy intake have resulted in the current global childhood obesity epidemic and food marketing plays a critical role in this. We have also shown that the effects are not confined to TV advertising; online marketing by food and beverage brands is now well established and has a similar impact."

The analysis showed that unhealthy food advertising exposure significantly increased food consumption in children, but not adults. Television and Internet advertising were equally impactful.

Researchers noted that based on the findings, they hope to push for enacting both environmental strategies and policy options that would help reduce exposure to food advertising.

The study is published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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FLORENCE, S.C. - Should politics coincide with ones faith? Some Pee Dee leaders believe so.

Florence County Councilman Mitchell Kirby said faith is believing in what God says, and people either have faith in it and act upon it or they dont.

If youre a believer, its hard to separate (faith and politics), and its really no use to separating those two, said Kirby, who has served as chaplain on the council for several years.

He said God helps people make tough decisions both in everyday life and the political field. Faith in Gods word helps people stay on the straight and narrow path, he said.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, Kirby said he would rather people know where he stands in faith than for them to wonder.

Were going to be held accountable for what we do on this earth, Kirby said. I just thank the Lord and pray He gives me the decision to make the right choice.

South Carolina Rep. Terry Alexander, D-Florence, serves as a politician and a Florence pastor. He said his faith dictates his politics, but his politics do not dictate his faith.

He said he tends to promote political issues that are relevant to his congregation from the pulpit.

I try to say, These are the issues. This is how I see them, Alexander said. I want to give the folks the information and let them manage the information I give them.

Alexander said people must have a tolerance for other peoples beliefs and their right to believe. Just because Christianity and Jesus is his way, it might not be the way for someone else, he said.

Biblical values should be presented in all political decisions for all people who believe in the Bible, Alexander said.

Darlington Mayor Gloria Hines feels similarly.

"I don't care what the politics says, I can't leave God out of anything," Hines said.

The issue with faith and politics is ones level of faith and what they actually believe in, according to Alexander.

We have a lot of Christians doing a lot of un-Christian things even in this country, he said. This country has a tradition of doing un-Christian things.

Alexander said he would hope that faith is represented in political decisions. He said it is all right even if the faith is different from his.

It seems like its just certain issues that we choose to promote and not promote when it comes to the relationship (faith and politics), Alexander said.

Florence County Councilman and pastor Waymon Mumford has served on council for several years and is also a retired chief of police for the city of Florence. Although his law enforcement experience and government work is important, his passion is doing the Lords work in the pulpit and community, Mumford said.

Faith plays a part (in politics), Mumford said. And Im speaking for myself, because faith is so important to me.

As a Christian, Mumford said if people pray and ask God for direction, hell give direction, even politically.

During this years presidential race, Mumford said the field is crowded. Now is when people really need to pray and rely on God. He said people should have values.

Sometimes you can be brainwashed on conservative values. You should have values, Mumford said. Sometimes people put conservative to make you go another way. Sometimes you have people so conservative theyre not concerned about health care, poor people.

South Carolina presidential primaries will be held next month, and Mumford said it is important to study the candidates, pray and listen. He said looking at why elected officials support certain things also is important. It could be what the candidate believes in his or her heart, or it could be an opportunity to try to gain votes, according to Mumford.

As a pastor, it compels us to not only preach the Gospel but involve, encourage our members on how important it is to be a part of the election process and what so many of our people when through to give us the right to vote, Mumford said.

Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela said if the political change a person is trying achieve is grounded in the principles of his or her faith, then it would be appropriate for politics and religion to coincide. He said the political change that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was advancing was one grounded in morality, spirituality and brotherly love.

On the other hand, if you are using differences in religion to divide people for political advantage, as some may argue Donald Trump has been doing, then I would say not only is that interaction between religion and politics unacceptable, I would say that those who engage in it would have to answer for it at some point, Wukela said.
Due to a lack of business at the shipyard amid the severe shipbuilding downturn, Crown Ocean Shipbuilding has owed more than 180 workers in wages amounting to RMB6.7m ($1m), as well as other benefits totalling RMB1.1m, up until end-August 2015, according to a local media report.

Lin Cailong, chairman of the Chinese shipbuilder, was reported saying that the company hopes to pay out part of the owed wages before Chinese New Year on 8 February.

We aim to gradually pay all our workers within this year, Lin told reporters. We hope the government will lend us financial support and implement the right policies to help development shipbuilding business.

In response to Lins request, a local government source said the shipyards case has been alerted to the relevant authorities. In cases where companies are unable to pay their staff, the government can allocate the companies to pay security deposits which will be used to cover wage arrears, the government source was quoted saying.

In its heyday in 2008, Crown Ocean Shipbuilding sat on an orderbook of 36 newbuildings worth a total of RMB7bn.

In 2011, the shipbuilder started to face financial instability, leading to a 2012 protest by yard workers over unpaid salaries. In October 2013, the shipbuilder ceased operations but it did not file for bankruptcy.

The company struggled along and in July 2014 it leased part of its shipbuilding facilities to Mawei Shipbuilding to construct ship blocks and in September 2015 leased another part of its facilities to a subsidiary of China Railway Engineering to build steel structures.
Privatisation of commercial operations at Limassol and Larnaca ports is an obligation stemming from the bailout deal between Cyprus and international creditors.

We are very satisfied both by the number of participants and the quality of operators that submitted bids, said Transport Ministry permanent secretary, Alecos Michaelides. He added: They are financially sound companies, internationally recognised for their experience in operating similar terminals and services.

The 14 bidders emerged after a successful round of due diligence and two rounds of consultations with the pre-qualified bidders said the ministry.

Six proposals were received for the container terminal, three for the marine services and five for the multipurpose terminal, the ministry said. The process now enters the stage of detailed review and evaluation of the submissions, which is expected to take a few weeks. Until then, no further announcements should be expected.

The plan is to have the preferred bidders before the end of March, in line with the process so far, and to pursue thereafter final approval of parliament and the signing of the agreement to operate the islands biggest port and home of the countrys ship management cluster, one of the largest third-party management clusters in the world.

Meanwhile, Cyprus port workers continue to demand a say in the running of the ports and have in recent weeks staged work stoppages in Limassol and the countrys second port, Larnaca.

Some employees are expected to be made redundant once the ports commercial operations are handed over to private operators and Cyprus Ports Authority (CPA) employees union chairman, Demetris Patsalos said, 12 January, the government needed to take their request more seriously. He said: On 14 December last year, we had sent a letter to the ministry in which we had offered our services  as workers of the port  to undertake the operations of the ports once the ownership changes hands. The government had told us it was not possible because it would violate competition laws.
Press Release

January 25, 2016 Transcript of Media Interview with Senate President Franklin M. Drilon Q: Sir ano po yung napag-usapan ninyo ni Miss Pia Wurtzbach? SPFMD: You'll be surprised. She intimated to me that she wants to join politics. You know, given her politically conscious responses to the questions, I am not surprised. You know the question was very political - the presence of the American bases, the presence of American troops, the matter of the HIV, her views on a number of critical issues. I have advised her that if she's really interested in joining government, she would be a very strong advocate of issues that she has expressed her opinions on. And, I advised her to first try her hand in some appointed position where she can push her advocacy, rather than join the politics in an election. That's my advise to her, she is very politically aware, to seek an appointed position in areas where she can push her advocacy, but she indeed expressed interest in joining politics. Q: After her reign? SPFMD: Of course, after her stint. And you know, that's very admirable, for her to have stated that. Given the political divide that we see today, for her to express her interest in politics is something that is admirable for a young woman. Q: Did you invite her to join the Liberal Party? SPFMD: She is interested in her advocacy, in pushing her advocacies. That should not be necessarily equated with joining a political party. Q: Why did you advice her to first seek an appointed position? SPFMD: So that at that point she can really push her advocacies, rather than get involved in the very nasty business of politics, especially local politics. Q: What do you think are the positions will be good for her? SPFMD: I would not know. I am just saying that those positions where she can push her advocacies. She has expressed her advocacies on HIV, on gender equality. Q: Si retired PNP Superintendent Valeroso, mayroon daw pong audio recording ng conversation between a top government official and a legislator regarding the Mamasapano incident. SPFMD: There was something that came out April of last year, I don't know if this is the same thing, on an alleged conversation between Secretary Deles and Senator Bongbong Marcos, that came out. Now is this the same audiovisual recording? I don't know, but if it is maybe it is an old issue. But let me just remind Valeroso that under Republic Act 4200 the unauthorized recording of conversations is unlawful, and may be punishable by 6 months to 1 year. Not only the unauthorized recording, but also the possession of such an authorized recording is also unlawful. Not only possession, but also communicating these unauthorized recordings is also unlawful. And the evidence of such a conversation is also inadmissible as evidence under the Anti- Wiretapping Act, this is the Republic Act 4200. But you know, it's really up to the committee whether or not this will be allowed. I am just stating the law, lest they say again that we are suppressing the evidence, we are not. We are just stating the present law. Now if the committee chooses to disregard this, and play whatever that recording is, then that is a decision that the committee will have to make. But I would have to repeat, under Section 1 of the Republic Act 4200, the Anti-Wiretapping Law, it is unlawful to tape any conversation without any authority, it is unlawful to have in possession of such unauthorized taping, and it is unlawful to communicate or furnish transcriptions of such unlawful recording. It also falls under Section 4 of Republic Act 4200 that such a recording cannot be admitted in any legislative investigation. But that is now up to the committee to decide, given all these legal restrictions, the illegality of the alleged tape recording. Q: Ang assumption, illegal po yung tape recording? SPFMD: That is the assumption. Q: Even in an executive session, hindi pwede gawing evidence o iplay? SPFMD: No, it can not be. Q: Just to find out if the recording, unauthorized siya or hindi. SPFMD: I have been describing to you Sections 1 and 4 of Republic 4200, it is unlawful to record without authority, it is unlawful to even possess that recording, it is unlawful to communicate to another person such a recording, and the evidence is inadmissible in court. But as I said, again, charges will be made saying we are suppressing these evidence, we are just stating the law. It is up to the committee to decide. Q: How about senators listening? SPFMD: We are not above the law. The law provides no exemption. Q: Sir do you believe may political agenda dito sa audio recording? SPFMD: I am just stating the facts. If this is the same audio recording in April na lumabas, it is obviously political gimmickry. We do not know if this is the recording. Q: Si Senator Trillanes said he wants to release the transcripts of the executive sessions, ano po yung procedure? SPFMD: There is a process under our rules when we release the transcripts of testimonies during the executive session. There are requirements, I can't exactly remember now, you can check the rules. But there is a process, so this must be decided by the committee. The request for the release of the transcript of notes taken during the executive sessions, it can be done, there is a process. Q: Kung may maglalabas po ng recording, haharangin mo po ba? SPFMD: I have already described what the law is. I will just state what the law is. It is up to the committee to decide. I have already stated my position. Q: Si Comelec chair Bautista, may positive response na ba doon sa request ninyo? SPFMD: I have not received any positive response, but in the interest of an orderly election, I reiterate my request that the printing of the ballots will be done after the Supreme Court has decided. It does not require much thinking. If there are ten printers to print the ballots in three months, then hire twenty printers to print the ballots in less than three months. For an orderly process I would strongly recommend this. Wala namang matatalo doon. Q: Are senators now trying to recall their conversations with any certain government official during the Mamasapano incident? SPFMD: Ako I am not trying to recall, because to me, it is completely illegal for anyone punishable with imprisonment to record my conversation without my knowledge.
Press Release

January 25, 2016 MARCOS CAUTIONS DOJ: MAMASAPANO PROBE MAY GO IN THE WAY OF MAGUINDANAO MASSACRE CASE Justice delayed is justice denied. This was the message of Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. who cautioned the Department of Justice (DoJ) that if it fails to fast-track the preliminary investigation on the Mamasapano encounter, the death of the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) personnel will go the way of other controversial cases that are still pending before the courts. The senator cited in particular the case of the Maguindanao massacre, which resulted in the death of 58 victims including 34 journalists who were part of a convoy that was set to cover a routine story on the filing of the certificate of candidacy of Toto Mangudadatu in 2009. "The fact that this controversial case, which has been declared as single deadliest event for journalists, has not been resolved until now does not bode well in terms of gauging the justice system in the country. I remain hopeful that the case will finally be resolved and that those responsible will finally be held accountable, and this is my same hope for the SAF 44 case," he said. Marcos also expressed fear that if charges are not filed at the soonest possible time, justice will further elude the families of the SAF men since it will be overtaken by the heat of the election campaign and the subsequent change of administration. The senator also called on the government to look into allegations of the families that they are not receiving the benefits and support promised to them by the administration after the Mamasapano clash despite Malacanang's claim of having given them millions of pesos as aid. "Objectively speaking, I think the least that the government could do is sincerely look into these complaints by the families because they would not be simply making these allegations without any basis. Their loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice of offering their lives to complete their mission, their commitment to their country. It is only right to honor their memories by making sure that their loved ones are properly cared for," he added.
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San Franciscos public transit agency plans to purchase up to 150 cameras marketed for their ability to find and focus on human faces, although city officials insist the devices will monitor only traffic  not people.

The Municipal Transportation Agency is seeking a vendor that will sell cameras equipped with face detection technology, according to bidding documents posted online. Those cameras will scan streets from traffic-light poles, most of them on Van Ness Avenue and Franklin and Gough streets.

The planned purchase is meant to upgrade the major thoroughfares around the citys Van Ness Avenue Bus Rapid Transit project, which will be done sometime in 2019, said Paul Rose, a spokesman for the transportation agency.

The Samsung Techwin security cameras that the agency is seeking can detect multiple faces at a time, notice changes in scenery and alert viewers when people cross a designated line, according to company marketing materials.

Those technical specifications could make the cameras a useful surveillance tool  making the devices a cause for concern among privacy activists who worry they could facilitate mass government snooping.

Appealing resolution

But spying isnt the citys intention in soliciting bids for the contract, Rose said.

We were bidding for a specific Samsung camera, specifically for the resolution, he said.

The term face detection appeared in the bid only because its common for the agency to list all the specifications of a product it hopes to obtain when it alerts companies that the city is in the market. The idea is to ensure the agency gets the exact equipment it wants, he said.

The cameras, which will be purchased as part of the citys SF Go traffic improvement program, will be used to make real-time adjustments to traffic signals along city streets, Rose said.

Employees will be able to pull up video feeds to monitor specific intersections when the cameras are installed after hearing about reports of, say, an accident, Rose said.

Tracking major corridors

The cameras will allow us to have a visual of major corridors throughout the city and make adjustments based on congestion or major events or incidents, such as collisions, that we should route around, Rose said.

The cameras will join roughly 30 others within the same program that already dot San Francisco streets, he said.

Although the cameras themselves are sophisticated enough to track specific individuals as they move through the city, the transportation agency lacks the software needed to perform such facial recognition, Rose said. And it has no intention of buying that technology, he added.

The cameras wont even record, offering only a live view of the streets where they are deployed, Rose said.

Transportation agency employees will be the only ones allowed to monitor the feeds. That means that no outsiders, law enforcement included, will get access to them without special permission, Rose said.

Changes to those policies probably would require approval from the transportation agencys directors and the Board of Supervisors, Rose said.

The potential for abuse still worries privacy advocates, who fear the cameras could easily be converted into a surveillance tool.

These cameras would be trained on traffic, potentially picking up license plate data, which would allow for location tracking from law enforcement and others, said Rebecca Jeschke, a digital rights analyst and media relations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Just because the agency said it will not retain camera footage doesnt mean that digital forensics experts couldnt seek a judges permission to retrieve the data if they felt it was necessary, said Davi Ottenheimer, a security consultant who runs the San Francisco firm Flyingpenguin.

Video that was not meant to be actively stored may still leave a residue or be found if not securely erased, Ottenheimer said.

Scrutiny over cameras

Surveillance camera programs have faced scrutiny in the Bay Area.

After a killing on a BART train this month, the agency was derided for posting replica cameras in some train cars instead of working ones. BART said Wednesday that it will replace its decoy cameras with real ones.

Researchers found that a San Francisco Police Department camera program launched in 2005 failed in its goal of curbing violent crime.

The bid for the Municipal Transportation Agencys new cameras was made in November. The agency will pick a vendor by mid-February, Rose said. The cost of the program will be determined by the bids the agency receives.
Police seek help in mystery death of Jane Doe on Bay Area trail

Three young men who had gone missing during a day hike in Big Sur on Saturday were found safe Sunday afternoon, according to the Stockton Police Department.

David Betteridge, 23, Tyler Betteridge, 20, and Robert Garcia, 22, left Stockton for Big Sur at 6 a.m. Saturday and said they would return that evening, according to the Stockton Police Department. When they didnt, authorities spotted their vehicle in the Big Sur area but found it unoccupied.

Local authorities located the men Sunday, according to an update from the Stockton police. The police did not specify where the men had been found or which trail they had been hiking.

David and Tyler Betteridge both originally hail from Los Banos (Merced County), although Davids Facebook page indicates that he now lives in Stockton.

David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavidBakerSF
Here's a way to measure San Francisco's hyper-boom besides protests over tech buses: the number of architectural rock stars at work on downtown towers.

Three Pritzker Prize-winning architects and two with cult appeal are designing buildings that would climb as high as 850 feet. Four have arrived on the scene in the past six months.

This isn't the first time that the Bay Area has attracted such figures, especially during a hot economy. But they haven't before descended in such numbers - evidence both of San Francisco's current cachet and of the global allure of branding of all sorts.

"The starchitects have arrived; no question," said John Rahaim, the city's planning director. "They can bring excitement and a certain amount of experimentation that is welcome. The challenge is whether the buildings they propose work in the city, or if they're not anything more than stand-alone concepts to look at."

The high-profile procession includes England's Lord Norman Foster, whose Foster + Partners is the lead designer for a project at First and Mission streets that could match the Transamerica Pyramid in height. The firm OMA, led by Rem Koolhaas, is the leading contender to design a 50-story tower two blocks to the south at Folsom Street. Both Koolhaas and Foster have received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious honor.

Farther east on Folsom, one block from the Embarcadero, a tower is being crafted by Chicago's Jeanne Gang, whose 82-story Aqua in that city is one of the most acclaimed high-rises of the past decade. On the long-forlorn 900 block of Market Street, the Danish firm BIG is at work on a mixed-use complex with the slashing forms for which founder Bjarke Ingels is known.

Getty Center designer

The fifth celebrity architect is another Pritzker winner, Richard Meier, designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His firm has worked off and on since 2008 on a 34-story residential tower proposed for Van Ness Avenue and Market Street.

Only Meier's plan has been fleshed out in detail, and the projects associated with Foster and Gang are so new that the details of the initial proposals haven't been released. Based on the evidence at hand, what the quintet shares is a contemporary sensibility that goes beyond the interchangeable glass forms sprouting on skylines here and elsewhere.

The most provocative - and in some ways problematic - is the mix of housing, a hotel and arts spaces at 950-974 Market St. conceived by Ingels for developer Group I.

With a pair of angled folding towers of roughly 18 and 16 stories, the first batch of designs released in February by Group I radiates the brash vibe that has made Ingels, a relatively young 39, a controversial newcomer on the international architectural scene.

The east edge is a triangular prow that slices above a small plaza and jabs toward Market's more prosperous blocks. Windows puncture the walls in asymmetrical patterns. The blunt towers lean away from each other to allow a funnel-shaped space in the center of the block, where there will be a shared atrium for the different activities.

It's an arresting concept. It's also an attention-seeking counterpart to the more traditional, broad buildings along Market, presenting instead jagged walls that loom above the Tenderloin along Turk Street.

While Group I officials stress that the details are sure to change as the project goes through city reviews, firm President Joy Ou said last week that BIG's visual flair - Ingels has described his work as a quest for "hedonistic sustainability" - is a part of the allure: "It's good to shift people's minds a bit. That's how an interesting city comes about."

If BIG plays up the flash, the initial OMA design for the block at the northeast corner of First and Folsom streets sets a tone of crisp elegance.

The city-owned lot is being sold to raise funds for construction of the Transbay Transit Center, and developers were asked to submit bids earlier this year for a project with low buildings around a tapered tower of up to 550 feet. The block must include substantial amounts of housing for low- and middle-income residents, as well as market-rate housing.

Three developers competed; the review panel has recommended the selection of Related California. Related's $72 million bid topped its rivals', but the jury also stressed its preference for the design concept by OMA, where the tower's northeast edge is softened by notched setbacks that seem to spill downward. At the base, a la Ingels' approach on Market Street, there's a busy central courtyard (here an outdoor "paseo") with walls that lean back to let in sun.

"Having a fresh look and fresh ideas is viewed positively," said William Witte, president of Related California. "We had to be (financially) efficient. We also wanted to be different."

Above the ground

Foster + Partners is working on a 600-foot tower on Mission Street and an 850-foot tower on First Street, leaving room in between for three existing buildings at the corner. The idea is to begin the lower floors of the First Street tower as much as 70 feet above ground level, allowing the current network of alleys to remain in at least a symbolic form.

"There aren't many people who do 850-foot buildings - that's what got us thinking world-class," said Matt Field, the managing director of TMG Partners, which is developing the First and Mission sites.

As for Gang's possible tower, on Folsom between Spear and Main streets, she and representatives of developer Tishman Speyer have met with planners, but no proposal has been filed.

It's impossible to say how many of these visions will come to pass. Koolhaas is remembered in San Francisco for an avant-garde Prada boutique near Union Square that was approved in 2001 but never built. Meier's glass-veiled tower for Market and Van Ness was moribund for years, although an environmental impact report is now expected in the summer.

Another catch is that for all the buzz around "starchitects," nobody designs a building on his or her own.

Foster is 78, with 18 senior partners and 36 partners in a firm of 15 offices on four continents: "Clearly he isn't going to be the design leader," Field said. Even so, Foster visited the site in January and is "personally interested," said Jeffrey Heller of Heller Manus Architects, the local firm collaborating with Foster + Partners.

Koolhaas, 69, is based in the Netherlands. The project at First and Folsom is being handled by OMA's New York office, which is led by Shohei Shigematsu. San Francisco's Fougeron Architecture is focused on the lower buildings surrounding the courtyard alongside which the OMA tower climbs. The team also includes CMG Landscape Architecture.

For Planning Director Rahaim, the benefits of big-name outsiders working in San Francisco outweigh the risks.

"It's healthy to experiment, and good to have buildings that push the envelope," Rahaim said. "Even where, in parts, they don't work."
Courtesy of San Jose PD

A San Jose man missing since Friday was presumed dead and police arrested one of his co-workers over the weekend on suspicion of killing him  despite not having found the victims body, officials said.

Police went to a motorcycle dealer in the 2000 block of Camden Avenue in San Jose for a welfare check about 6:20 p.m Friday, where they learned that Kyle Myrick, 28, who worked at the store, had been missing for a few hours, said Officer Albert Morales, a police spokesman.
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New York

After a weekend of sledding, snowboarding and staying put, the blizzard-blanketed Eastern U.S. will confront a Monday commute slowed by slick roads, damaged transit lines and endless mounds of snow.

Authorities cautioned against unnecessary driving, airline schedules were in disarray and commuter trains will be delayed or canceled for many as the work week begins after a storm that dumped near record snows on the densely populated Washington, D.C.-to-New York City corridor.

The last flakes fell just before midnight Saturday, but crews raced the clock all day Sunday to clear streets and sidewalks devoid of their usual bustle.

Ice chunks plunging from the roofs of tall buildings menaced people who ventured out in Philadelphia and New York. High winds on Manhattan's Upper West Side kept the snow from entirely swallowing the tiny Mini Cooper of Daniel Bardman, who nervously watched for falling icicles as he dug out.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged people to leave their plowed-in cars covered with snow all week after a 1-day record of 26.6 inches fell in Central Park.

That advice came too late for Bob Raldiris, who tried shoveling his Nissan Maxima out of a spot in Ridgewood, Queens, before passing plows and trucks spoiled his labor. "This is terrible," he said, pointing to a pile of snow three feet high.

Sunday's brilliant sunshine and gently rising temperatures provided a respite from the blizzard that paralyzed Washington and dropped a record 29.2 inches on Baltimore. The weekend timing could not have been better, enabling many to enjoy a gorgeous winter day.

It was just right for a huge snowball fight in Baltimore, where more than 600 people responded to organizer Aaron Brazell's invite on Facebook.

"I knew people would be cooped up in their houses and wanting to come outside," said Brazell, who was beaned by multiple blasts of perfectly soft but firm snow.

But treacherous conditions remained: Of at least 29 deaths blamed on the weather, shoveling snow and breathing carbon monoxide claimed more lives than car crashes as people recovered from a storm that dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on Sunday evening that almost all mass transit services will be running in time for the morning rush hour, including nearly 80 percent of the Long Island Rail Road.

Broadway reopened after going dark at the last minute during the snowstorm, but museums remained closed in Washington, and the House of Representatives postponed votes until February, citing the storm's impact on travel.

Flying remained particularly messy after nearly 12,000 weekend flights were canceled. Airports resumed very limited service in New York City, Baltimore and Philadelphia, which said it got an entire winter's snow in two days. Washington-area airports remained closed Sunday after the punishing blizzard.

Major airlines also canceled hundreds of flights for Monday. Along with clearing snow and ice from facilities and equipment, the operators of airlines, train and transit systems had to figure out how to get snowbound employees to work.

Amtrak operated a reduced number of trains on all its routes, serving many people who couldn't get around otherwise, spokesman Marc Magliari said. But bus and rail service was expected to be limited around the region into Monday.

Overall snowfall of 26.8 inches in Central Park made it New York's second biggest winter storm since records began in 1869, and Saturday's 26.6 inches made for a single-day record in the city.

Some of the blizzard's heaviest snow bands wound up over New York City and Long Island, sending snow totals spiking higher than the 12-18 inches forecasters predicted Thursday.

"Just about everybody was expecting a strong storm system," National Weather Service meteorologist Peter Wichrowski said Sunday. "The question always was, just how heavy was the precipitation going to be?"

Washington's records were less clear. The official 3-day total of 17.8 inches measured at Reagan National Airport was impossibly short of accumulations recorded elsewhere in the city. An official total of 22.4 inches landed at the National Zoo, for example.
LANSING, Mich.  A former prosecutor and a retired head of the Detroit FBI will play key roles in an investigation into Flints lead-tainted water as part of the effort to seek answers while also preventing conflicts of interest, Michigans attorney general announced Monday.

Republican Bill Schuette said Todd Flood, a former assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, which includes Detroit, will spearhead the investigation and serve as special counsel. He will be joined by Andy Arena, who led Detroits FBI office from 2007 until 2012.

Schuette, who had declined to investigate in December but later reversed course, gave no timetable for the investigation. It could focus on whether environmental laws were broken or if there was official misconduct in the process that left Flints drinking water contaminated.

Flood mostly declined to discuss which laws may have been broken, except to note there are prohibitions against misconduct by public officials. He said a plethora of laws potentially could be used to charge someone.

Both Flood and Arena will report to Schuette, who promised they would provide an experienced and independent review of all the facts and circumstances.

Flint switched from Detroits municipal water system while under emergency state management and began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money, but the water was not properly treated. Residents have been urged to use bottled water and to put filters on faucets.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has been a focus of criticism, but Schuette said political affiliations would not be a factor.

I dont care what political stripe you might be. If laws have been broken and violations have occurred, then you pay the price, Schuette said Monday.

Schuette announced the inquiry Jan. 15, more than four months after a Virginia Tech researcher said the Flint River was leaching lead from pipes into peoples homes because the water was not treated for corrosion.

Because the attorney generals office represents both the people of Michigan and the state government, Schuette said having the special counsel will help prevent conflicts between Schuette and his investigation team and those defending the governor and state departments against water-related lawsuits.

Lawsuits against Snyder and the state will be supervised by Chief Deputy Attorney General Carol Isaacs and Chief Legal Counsel Matthew Schneider. Schuette noted there was a similar effort during Detroits bankruptcy case to avoid conflicts of interest.

Flood is currently in private law practice. Arena heads the Detroit Crime Commission, a nonprofit aimed at reducing criminal activity.

Flint families and Michigan families will receive a full and independent report of our investigation, Arena said in a statement.
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NEW MILFORD  Cecilia Buck-Taylor is coming home.

The state representative announced Monday she will not seek a third term representing the 67th General Assembly District and will instead spend more time in New Milford, focusing on her legal practice, her 10-month-old grandson and may even consider running again for a local board or commission.

Serving as a voice in Hartford for our community as its state representative is a tremendous honor and I am indebted to my community for having given me this great opportunity, Buck-Taylor said. I came to the realization that I cant run a law practice and do everything that needs to be done in Hartford. I thought it would be better to have someone in the seat who can do it full time.

Buck-Taylor previously served on the New Milford Board of Education and was vice chairwoman of the Town Council when elected to the General Assembly in November 2012.

Im still up for serving the town, she said. Im just not up to the 90-minute drive each way and the 3 a.m. meetings.

Buck-Taylor easily won her first bid for the 67th District seat against Democrat Andrew Grossman and Green Party candidate Nicholas Payne. She then won a second term as the GOP incumbent against Democratic challenger Gale Alexander.

Four years ago, residents of the 67th District who were concerned about the direction this state was taking put their faith in me, Buck-Taylor said. I will continue my service to them for the remainder of this term and encourage them to continue to contact me with their issues and concerns.

During her time in the state Legislature, Buck-Taylor served on the Judiciary Committee supporting legislation to protect veterans, senior citizens and children and opposed legislation that sought to decrease the drug-free safety zones around schools and day care facilities. She has also supported preventing sexual violence on college campuses and also fought to protect the rights of legal Connecticut gun owners.

State Sen. Clark Chapin, R-30, was saddened to hear of Buck-Taylors decision.

I was saddened to hear that Cecilia has decided to not seek re-election, Chapin said. During her time in the House, she has represented her constituents well, reminding those she serves with that New Milford residents are already paying more than their fair share in taxes to the state. It has been a pleasure working with her and I wish her nothing but the very best in the future.

Pete Bass, chairman of the New Milford Republican Town Committee, thanked Buck-Taylor for her service.

Were very thankful for her time and efforts representing the town, Bass said. We want to express our thanks to her for the work she has done on behalf of the town. We are looking for a candidate to fill her shoes.

Bass said that while a few people have expressed interest in the state House seat, the Republicans do not yet have a candidate for the position.

Town Council Vice Chairwoman Mary Jane Lundgren expressed interest last week in running as the Democratic candidate for the 67th District seat.

stuz@newstimes.com; 203-731-3352
Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo

Funeral services have been set later this week for Cody Thomas, the 27-year-old Staples High School teacher who died last Saturday. His death was a suicide, according to the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner.

Thomas, whose death prompted an outpouring of tributes from present and former Staples students and staff, also was an adviser to Inklings, the high schools award-winning student newspaper. He previously had been a freelance writer for the Stamford Advocate and editor of the rock journal, Revolver. Inklings received a gold medal at a scholastic press convention while Thomas was the newspapers co-adviser.
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A Liberty County constable lied under oath about helping a man previously convicted of impersonating a police officer obtain an off-duty security job, Jefferson County prosecutors said Monday.

John Joslin, 47, Liberty County's Precinct 6 constable, was arrested and arraigned Monday afternoon. He is the second commissioned police officer to be arrested in connection with a wide-ranging investigation into a man who has been jailed since September on charges that he impersonated police for at least the third time.

Joslin is charged with perjury in connection to the Michael Gelagotis investigation, which prosecutors say was impeded by Joslin's false statements to detectives.

Gelagotis, who faces two felony charges of impersonating a police officer, worked an extra job with the constable's office for a pipeline company, according to prosecutors.

When Joslin gave his sworn statement on Oct. 27 of last year, he said Gelagotis never worked any extra jobs for his office, the Jan. 20 indictment states.

Joslin arrived at the Jefferson County Courthouse Monday afternoon in handcuffs, dressed in his constable's uniform. His bond was set at $5,000.

The perjury charge is a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to one year in the county jail and a $4,000 fine.

Chris Tritico, an attorney representing Joslin, said he received an email Monday morning from the district attorney's office with no information about the charges.

"The next thing I knew, Mr. Joslin was under arrest," Tritico said. "There's no need for intrigue. There was no need to go and arrest him. All they had to do was call me and he would have happily gone down there and posted bond."

Gelagotis, 43, is accused of using a fake badge to impersonate a lawman and buy gear intended for police.

Some of the purchases were stamped with his name and the seal of a Liberty County constable's office, according to a signed Beaumont police affidavit supporting the arrest.

Gelagotis previously was convicted of impersonating police locally in 2009 and in Ohio eight years earlier.

Joslin told The Enterprise in November that he believed Gelagotis worked at a small Louisiana police department, and he made Gelagotis an "honorary" deputy for one night at a Houston Rockets game only because of the event.

The designation is mostly meaningless, not like "reserve deputy" status constables can offer through their commissioners courts, which allows people without official certification the authority of a police officer while they're on duty.

The pair had a relationship that included Gelagotis doing work on his office's cars free of charge, Joslin said.

Gelagotis, Joslin said, was never given access to badges, guns or other equipment - other than the vehicles he worked on.

Joslin said he was not aware Gelagotis bought shirts, badges and gear bags with his office's patch, as the arrest affidavit alleges.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
With the East Coast recovering from the snowstorm this weekend, another surprise might be waiting in the wings: many could be welcoming a bundle of joy this fall.

The myth of an increase in births following snowstorms or hurricanes that require people to (ahem) shelter in place is not so much an urban legend, but an observed phenomenon, NPR reported.
Featured Post PARIS: Jean Roach tells the True Story of Leonard Peltier: From Jumping Bull Camp to Life in Prison Jean Roach and Celine Planchou photo by CSIA JEAN ROACH TELLS ABOUT THE EVENTS SHE WITNESSED WHEN SHE WAS 14, EVENTS THAT LED TO LEONARD P...

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About Censored News Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell. Since 2006, Censored News has received more than 20 million pageviews. As a collective of writers, photographers and broadcasters, we publish news of Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Contact publisher Brenda Norrell: brendanorrell@gmail.com

From the publisher Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell, a journalist in Indian country for 40 years. Norrell created Censored News after she was censored and terminated as a staff reporter at Indian Country Today in 2006. She began as a reporter at Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a stringer for AP and USA Today and later traveled with the Zapatistas through Mexico. She has been blacklisted by all the mainstream media for 14 years. Contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

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Entertainment / Music

by DJ-Sticha

Even in 2016, unsigned musicians are still releasing their music and asking, "Where's my money?" right out of the gate. It's extremely important that every artist look deeply into this question. First of all, in my view, the expectation is flawed. If you have fewer than 10,000 genuine fans and you're hoarding your music waiting for those iTunes sales to save you, you're shooting yourself in both feet.Build your audience first. Then you can sell to that audience. Not before they're "on board."That's easy to say, and most would nod in agreement with that statement. But it's the method that many balk at. In order to get the popularity, chances are, unless you have a rich uncle or an investor who really believes in your cause, you'll need to invest in yourself... and invest, and invest, and invest again, before you see any return. This is a fact. Musicians who believe that they deserve a return just because "they spent so much for their studio time" or "they put their blood, sweat, and tears into the new album" are getting left in the dust every single day. And they're not usually missed either, because people have a tough time empathizing with self-righteous ideas.What you put your blood, sweat, and tears into is your music  your product. Let's find a parallel. The passionate Italian restaurant owner puts his blood, sweat, and tears into his product as well, which is his food. So you have your high-quality CD and he has his high-quality food. Now, forgetting the hundreds of thousands the restaurant owner has already invested in order to get a location, supplies, staff, and decor, you're both in roughly the same situation  you have a product and you want a return on your investment. However, the restaurant owner knows from the get-go that popularity is the highest of all currencies, so he expects a loss initially.Have you ever bought anything from deal websites such as Gumtree or Olx? Did you know that many of the companies advertising on those websites don't make any money? Many of them take a severe hit, as the deal websites typically request a 50 percent discount for the public, and then take 50 percent of the remainder for themselves. So next time you assume that just because you see a heavily distributed advertisement the business is raking it in, keep in mind they're probably investing, investing, and investing some more, paying their dues so that you, slowly but surely, begin to recognize their name.This is exactly the kind of scenario that unsigned musicians in 2016 tend to protest against when it happens to them. "How many sales will it get me?" is the common question when they are recommended advertising via Facebook, Twitter, Google AdWords, or anywhere else.Forget about the sales. Take a hit. Stick your neck out. Your currency should be new fans and new fans only. Even hobbyists of all persuasions invest consistently, and a lot, into their craft, whether it's coin collectors or mountain climbers. There's no need to be stagnant because of a cliche idea that you deserve payment for merely creating something.Do you think that Hip-Hop star Cassper Nyovest focused on money while he was building his name? No. He gave away his music  extremely high-quality EPs released within a year's time all for free with no email address required from his official website. He invested and built his audience. Now he plays from R100k+ per show and sells merchandise to his loyal fanbase.Trademark(of shumaya) went about things in a similar way, focusing only on popularity until they could engage their fanbase.Popularity thinking is long-term thinking, something not everyone is capable of. Pretty much every artist you read about or see on a festival lineup today has sacrificed and focused on building their name above all else, and the smartest ones treat it like a startup business, which it is. Think of yourself as a startup and options will open up for you. You're not just a musician who doesn't know your way around. Building popularity often means giving away your music for free  but did you know you can leverage free music?You run your own startup company, and you're free to employ any tactics you like. Advertise locally and in your favorite publications. Team up with viral content companies for contests and campaigns to engage your audience and spread the word to new fans. Outsource duties you don't excel at, such as tour booking, publicity, or securing licensing deals. Hire freelancers around the world to push your music through sites such as Bulawayo 24 and Data file host. Learn how to set up hyper-targeted advertising campaigns through Facebook, Twitter, and Google AdWords. Try targeting your favorite sites through Blogads.com. Experiment with celebrity tweets. Create incentives for those who spread your message. Offer exclusive content to quality publications  often. Give your product away. Expect to invest over and over again.Asabelane ngolwaziAsikhule kwezomculoFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/keith.phakathi Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeejayStichaListen and download my deep house song here: https://soundcloud.com/backdoor-recordz/dj-sticha-inspirations-original-mix-cd
It has never been easy to be Hillary Clinton.

Evidence for that proposition is already in the minds of many who are reading this: What do you mean Hillary hasnt had it easy? Would she even be in this race if she hadnt been married to Bill Clinton? Would she have been elected to the Senate from New York? Would she have received all those speaking fees?

See what I mean?

Few people are as assiduous as she in learning lessons from past failures. In 2008, her staff was a jumble of conflicts. So for this campaign, she has put together a relatively harmonious operation. The last time around, she was outmaneuvered by a Barack Obama campaign that understood the delegate selection rules cold. So Clinton hired on many Obama 08 veterans and is as hip to the small things as to the big things.

And if you like policy, she sure as heck is giving you a lot of it. Her proposals on issue after issue are detailed, plausible and progressive. Its said that she has moved left in response to the challenge from Bernie Sanders. Of course she knew where the danger to her would come from in the primaries. But because everything she does is assumed to be about politics  and not in the best sense of that word  the actual substance of what shes saying is usually swept aside.

If you gather from this that I have a more favorable view of her than the current conventional wisdom prescribes, youd be right. As a friend said recently, there is the Methodist-youth-group side of Hillary Clinton that people dont pay much attention to, the moralist who was moved by Christian social justice concerns away from the conservatism of her family. (I may empathize with her conversion because a similar thing happened to me as a Catholic.) Her earliest work was on behalf of poor kids and migrant workers.

Yes, she eventually wanted to make some money and, yes, that desire caused her a variety of public embarrassments (see: cattle futures and speaking fees). But all this seems to be held against her far more than it is against other politicians who did very similar things. The big upside to being named Clinton has a steep downside: Everything she does arouses automatic suspicion and controversy.

And in Sanders, she has an opponent whom every progressive (myself included) instinctively likes. Sanders willingness to declare himself a democratic socialist helps him more than it hurts him among Democrats: His boldness plays well against Clintons reputation for political calculation. Hearing Sanders, you just know that he means exactly what he says.

The first two states to vote, Iowa and New Hampshire, are demographically well set up for him, and his strength in both is entirely predictable. (For what its worth, I said last October  and it took no genius to see this  that he could win both.)

Moreover, after seven years in which Democrats felt constantly on the defensive against waves of Republican attacks, Sanders Here I stand, I can do no other approach is a tonic.

Its the Obama Paradox. The president has a 91 percent favorable rating among Iowa Democrats (which is why Clinton is hugging him so closely). But many Democrats who admire him still wish he had been more aggressive in sticking it to the GOP. They identify with the Sanders who told me (and anyone else whod listen) back in 2010: While Obama and the Democrats have a large number of achievements, it was not enough. We needed to be bolder. Most Democrats want to be bolder now.

My hunch is that Clintons stock is being undersold. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the contest moves to ground far more favorable to her. Her standing in most national polls of Democrats remains strong, and large numbers of Sanders sympathizers also have a positive view of her.

But Sanders new ad built around Simon & Garfunkels song America is a warning to Clinton: It brilliantly captures how his campaign, like Obamas, feels like a movement. It is a cathartic expression of Democratic frustration with prudent pragmatism in the face of Republican intransigence.

The quietly rational Methodist who observed in 2008 that the celestial choirs rarely sing in politics and that she is under no illusions about how hard this will be was quite right about governing these days. But someone for whom nothing will ever be easy still needs to find her own brand of inspiration.

 2016, Washington Post Writers Group

E-mail: ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.
Some choreographers content themselves with making dancers look beautiful. William Forsythe also believes in making them look eloquent, and 15 of the San Francisco Ballets finest dancers rose to the challenge when the company opened its subscription series Sunday afternoon, Jan. 24, at the War Memorial Opera House. The North American premiere of Forsythes Pas/Parts 2016 (as it is officially known), plus a couple of finely chosen and smartly dispatched revivals set the 2016 season ablaze.

Pas/Parts (I suspect a play on words here) was a while in arriving. Originally made for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1999, the ballet was 75 percent rechoreographed for San Francisco. Sunday it seemed dense in detail, yet airy in effect, classical in its language, pointe work and epaulement, yet resolutely contemporary in its sensibility and exploratory in the Forsythe manner.

The work is structured in 21 sections. Forsythe has juxtaposed solos with small ensembles, reserving the entire complement, briefly, for the fourth episode and for the finale. The scenic apparatus, although attractive, keeps us focused on the dancing. The dancers world is Forsythes off-white, three-sided environment, evocatively lit, and it spins on its axis for 37 minutes.

Again, the choreographer has called on composer Thom Willems to furnish an electronic score, which, to these ears, is among his most varied. What sounds like the upstairs plumbing evolves into high-pitched whistling and spare chords; there are hints, too, of cha-cha and even human vocalizations.Forsythe uses the music to build contrapuntal structures, even in solos, as arms and legs move in directions theyre not supposed to go, but the effect is oddly harmonious.

Sofiane Sylve launches the piece, and her high extensions mark this as Forsythe territory. Then Yuan Yuan Tan and Wei Wang meet in a duet of skewed balances, arms reaching impossible distances. Later Sylve returns for a meeting with the extraordinary Carlo Di Lanno in which the shifting of weight assumes a major role. They yield to an exuberant solo for Frances Chung.

In a pre-curtain talk Sunday, Forsythe revealed that he had been unhappy with the transitions in the Paris version. Here, they are smooth, almost imperceptible. And the result is that Pas/Parts starts to look like a pageant, showcasing the San Francisco Ballets indecent dancing riches. Near the end comes a trio for men, each spotlighting a particular aspect of their technique. Joseph Walsh spins in place, as his remarkable wrists and speed in turns suggest a creature of air. James Sofranko revels in his expressive torso. Francisco Mungamba displays his rhythmic acuity.

Forsythe has drawn the casting from all over the roster, so its not unusual to find a corps dancer like Mungamba in a duet with a principal like Maria Kochetkova. Sensibility is the equalizer here. You feel that all the performers inhabit the same world and their contributions are among the factors that make Pas/Parts a major acquisition for the company.

Earlier in the afternoon, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson restored his exceptionally musical Bach essay, 7 for Eight (2004), with Mathilde Froustey (role debut) sensitively partnering Tiit Helimets in the slow, spare opening movement. The women (Vanessa Zahorian, Elizabeth Powell and Koto Ishihara were the others) looked wonderful in Sandra Woodalls exquisitely cut black dresses. Taras Domitro soared through the fifth movement harpsichord solo. Martin West conducted.

To mark his 10th anniversary as resident choreographer, Yuri Possokhov revived Magrittomania, his daring first work for the company. This vaudeville tribute to the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte abounds in allusions to his paintings, with Davit Karapetyan navigating his way through a fantasy landscape. Tan assumed her original role and proved as enchanting as she was in 2000. However, composer Yuri Krasavins mashups of Beethoven classics do not wear well. Why Beethoven, anyway?

Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicles dance correspondent.

San Francisco Ballet, Program 1: Ballets by Tomasson, Possokhov, Forsythe. Through 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 5. $25-$355. War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F. (415) 865-2000. www.sfballet.org.
News / Africa

by Renee Street and Christa Rautenbach

South African traditional healers play a significant role for people that follow African cultural beliefs.There are more than 200 000 traditional healers across the country.Until recently, traditional healers have operated relatively freely from government interference, though many work under governing structures such as the Traditional Healers Organisation, which has more than 29 000 members.In 2014, the Traditional Health Practitioners Act was passed to standardise and regulate the affairs of all traditional healers.Late last year additional regulations were published to give effect to the act. The government has invited public comment on the regulations.Both the act and the proposed regulations have been criticised by some traditional healers who believe they are unrealistic and unworkable.Protection for practitioners and usersThe act has established an interim council to provide a regulatory framework. This allows for traditional healers to be registered and categorised according to their different healing specialities. These include:Diviner (those who have a calling from ancestral spirits);Herbalist (someone practising herbalism);Student (someone training to be a traditional healer);Traditional birth attendant (a midwife);Traditional tutor (a traditional healer trainer); andTraditional surgeon (someone performing cultural operations such as circumcision).The proposed regulations would require all traditional healers to register before being able to practise. This means all traditional healers will have to apply to the council to be registered.They will also have to pay R200 for a practising certificate.This will only be issued if the registrar, who is appointed by the health minister after consulting with the council, is satisfied that they meet the requirements. These include:Being a South African citizen;Providing character references from people unrelated to the applicant; andProof of qualifications.There are several advantages to registering traditional healers.Aside from the government being able to exercise greater control over the quality of the profession, the public will also be protected from swindlers.Although legislation is not always the best way to address problems, it might be the only way to provide protection to both the profession and its users.Regulations need to be realisticThe regulations place several additional responsibilities on traditional healers, which could be costly and time-consuming.As a start, the proposed regulations will require traditional healers to undergo education or training at an accredited training institution or educational authority.This is to ensure that the profession complies with universally accepted health care norms. But the practicalities of how, when or where this training will take place remains indeterminate.This will be particularly challenging as there are currently no accredited training institutions.A prospective trainer will have to register at a cost of R500.They would need to provide a list of their qualifications and details of the course modules, practical skill that would be acquired and duration.But the minimum skills or qualifications are not defined in the regulations.One of the most bizarre requests is for trainers to produce copies of their teaching or learning materials. This may have serious implications for intellectual property rights.The tutors or training institutions will also need to keep in mind that there are different categories of traditional healers that are recognised in terms of the Act. Each category has different training needs.For students to be considered, they would need an Adult Basic Education Training certificate level 1. This amounts to basic numeracy and literacy skills.The regulations also propose an age restriction of at least 18 years for student diviners and herbalists. Traditional birth attendants and traditional surgeons would need to be 25 years old before they can be registered to practice.Diviners, herbalists and traditional birth attendants need to train for a minimum of one year while traditional surgeons need to train for at least five years.The onus will be on trainers to ensure that their students are registered with the council.At the end of their training, students need to submit a log book to the council, providing details of the observations and procedures they undertook during their training.Better cover for employeesEmployment laws in South Africa require employees absent for more than two consecutive days to provide a valid medical certificate.This certificate must be issued and signed by a medical practitioner, registered with a professional council.If this does not happen, the employer has the right not to pay the employee.As none of the traditional healers associations in the past were registered with a professional council, employers were not obligated to accept medical certificates from traditional healers.The introduction of the act means that traditional healers would be registered by a professional council and employers would no longer be able to refuse a valid medical certificate issued by the traditional healer. The ConversationRenee Street is a Project Manager, South African Medical Research Council. Christa Rautenbach is Professor of Law, North-West University
Sen. Marco Rubio dismissed Michael Bloomberg as just a private citizen who owns a big company. Hillary Clinton said she would relieve Bloomberg of any need to enter the presidential race. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was uncharacteristically charitable, calling Bloomberg a good mayor of New York City.

The Republican and Democratic presidential fields Sunday reacted with deliberate nonchalance, ideological objections and grudging admiration to the specter of Bloomberg entering the 2016 campaign for the White House.

After learning that Bloomberg had ordered his advisers to draw up a possible plan to seek the presidency, the candidates uniformly sought to project a lack of anxiety, despite the former mayors immense wealth and willingness to spend $1 billion on a third-party candidacy that would bypass their partys primaries.

Clinton, who remains close with Bloomberg, was the most pointed. She seized on comments from Bloombergs team that the former mayor would be less likely to run if she won the Democratic nomination.

The way I read what he said is, if I didnt get the nomination we might consider it, she said on NBCs Meet the Press. Well, Im going to relieve him of that and get the nomination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose campaign bemoans the influence of the super rich, quickly engaged Bloombergs flirtation.

My reaction is, if Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in, youre going to have two multibillionaires running for president of the United States against me, Sanders said on Meet the Press. And I think the American people do not want to see our nation move toward an oligarchy.

Trump gamely encouraged Bloomberg to enter the race. Id love to compete against Michael, he told CBS Face the Nation.
AMSTERDAM  European Union nations took a step Monday toward isolating Greece amid acrimony over Athens failure to stem the flow of migrants at its Mediterranean island borders.

Despite choppy seas and wintry conditions, more than 2,000 people are arriving in Greece daily, according to EU figures. Several EU nations have said they could isolate Greece by closing off their borders so that incoming refugees would have to remain there.

The member states gave a clear signal that if they cant stop the migrants reaching Greece, they would consider helping Greeces neighbor Macedonia to better seal its border to slow the movement of migrants into other European countries, said Dutch State Secretary Klaas Dijkhoff.

Greek Immigration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas conceded his country was struggling to cope with the flow, but blamed EU member states for failing to provide enough manpower and boats to patrol Aegean Sea islands just a few miles from Turkeys coast and not honoring pledges to relocate migrants.

Mouzalas told reporters Athens wanted 1,800 officers from the EU border patrol force known as Frontex, but got only 800. Of the 28 coast guard ships requested by Greece, only six have arrived, he added.

Mouzalas called the idea of sending Frontex officers to the Greek-Macedonian border to halt migrants there illegal and insisted more Frontex officers should be sent to his country instead.

Ministers arriving for the meeting at Amsterdams Maritime Museum were met by protesters in two boats, one full of mannequins wearing red life vests similar to those worn by migrants crossing from Turkey and another with a large sign saying: Leaders of Europe, its not the polls you should worry about. Its the history books.

The meeting comes only days after European Council President Donald Tusk warned that Europes passport-free travel area, known as Schengen, could break apart if the migrant strategy isnt resolved within two months.

Meanwhile in Brussels, Denmarks foreign and immigration ministers sought to ease tensions over government plans to seize some of the assets of asylum-seekers to pay for their food and lodging.

The plan, which has been criticized by rights and refugee groups as well as migrants themselves, is to be debated in the Danish parliament on Tuesday.
Reading Test Questioned

Dan Boyd reports Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, who has repeatedly sponsored legislation aimed at ending the practice of social promotion in New Mexico public schools,

about requiring students to pass a state-sponsored standardized reading assessment to advance to third grade.

Oklahoma and Florida have already relaxed student reading requirements.

Gas Prices Plunge

The average price of gasoline has plunged 14 cents over the past two weeks,

. Its good news for consumers, but low crude prices continue to impact the states budget.

Republican Legislative Priorities

House Speaker Don Tripp, R-Socorro, has

, including the budget, education reform and tougher public safety laws.

Money for Early Childhood Education

Senate Majority Whip Michael Padilla wants lawmakers to allow voters to decide whether funds from the states permanent fund should be used to help

, before its too late.

New Mexico Truth

Allen Sanchez, the president of Chi St. Josephs Children, and the sponsor of those New Mexico Truth ads, says it is time to

of the trust's money.

New Mexico Truth is about the barriers to success our children face. It is an awareness-raising and educational campaign in this year of mercy called for by Pope Francis. We should all be taking inventory of ourselves and our community as an act of compassion.

...

The truth is that we are number one in childhood poverty and 49th in child well-being. We also have a solution. We believe New Mexico must invest in early childhood programs to end our cycle of poverty.

Papal Visit

Speaking of the pope, planning is almost complete for his trip to Juarez next month. Lauren Villagran plans to cover it for the Albuquerque Journal and has

for people planning to cross the border for the historic papal visit.

Nuclear Pit Production

It looks like

is taking steps to resume production of about 50 to 80 plutonium pits by 2030 and increasing its overall plutonium capacity. A nuclear watchdog group contends its not needed, since there are enough pits to last until 2080.

More Jobs Lost

Luring jobs to New Mexico and developing the local workforce may be a top priority, but the economy is going to take a hit after

and terminate 394 jobs.

Madrid Still Hip

Madrid, NM (south of Santa Fe), is listed as one of the

for stressed-out progressives to visit and relax in.

Dark Skies

Cosmic Campground (located in the Gila National Forest) is the first spot in the country to earn an

.

International Dark Sky Sanctuaries are public or private lands possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights. Their dark nighttime conditions are specifically protected for their scientific, natural, educational or cultural value, and are often located in some of the most remote and undeveloped parts of the world. Sanctuary designations are made by IDA to increase awareness of these fragile sites and promote their long-term conservation.

Outdated Laws

Owners of electric cars want lawmakers to start thinking about

that prohibits car manufacturers like Tesla from offering direct service to their customers. Sen. Peter Wirth, D- Santa Fe, said he will back changing the laws.

It was shocking to me to learn that these Tesla owners in New Mexico have to have their cars towed out of state for service. That was was eye-opening, he said.

Wirth said the dealership restriction is another example of how legislation has not kept up with technology. These are the types of changes happening, and the laws need to adjust, he said. I hope we can have a constructive discussion.

Holms and Politics

TMZ published a web story last week claiming

is endorsing Donald Trump for president, but once you watch the video, its not exactly clear that shes jumped into the Republican front-runners camp.

World Champs Defeated

Super Bowl 50 is set after Denver and the Carolina Panthers, both number one seeds, won their conference championships on Sunday.

The Patriots and Cardinals head home.

Santa Fe Reporter
News / Africa

by Stephen Jakes

Botswana court authorities are struggling to establish;ish the true identity of a Zimbabwean man who was arrested for illegal possession of fire arm.Mmegi reported that the man in court for illegal possession of arms and ammunition of war, Michael Graduate Mutizwa, has decried delays in prosecuting his case.When appearing in court yesterday, Mutizwa expressed disappointment at the slow pace of the proceedings, as he believes he is incarcerated for nothing."It has been three months now since I have been behind bars and there is no progress," he said. "I want to get done with this matter and continue with my life." Mutizwa told the court that following an order granted in his favour to collect some documents he wanted to use in court, he was taken to his house. At the house he found papers scattered all over his house with the documents he wanted to fetch missing.The magistrate, Nthabiseng Tladi, however told Mutizwa that the process could not be swift as the prosecution was yet to complete investigations. She said trial dates would be set as soon as investigations are complete.The prosecution had pleaded with the court to extend Mutizwa's stay behind bars, as investigations are still ongoing. Investigators were also trying to establish Mutizwa's true identity.In a previous court appearance, it was revealed that Mutizwa might not be aformer air lieutenant with the Zimbabwean army, as originally thought. In fact, a Zimbabwean Interpol report ensured that he was denied bail, as the neighbouring country has no record of him. Interpol established that the name appearing on the accused's passport, Michael Graduate Mutizwa, was not in the Zimbabwean name database.The investigating officer in the matter, detective superintendent Sergeant Marapo, said during one of the accused's previous court appearances, there was another Graduate Mutizwa whose fingerprints did not match those submitted to Interpol.Prosecutors say the accused was caught with the weapons and in possession of Botswana Defence Force trousers and sticks of honour, which he was not entitled to. The court also learnt that Mutizwa was arrested with seven walkie-talkies, 12 walkie-talkie chargers, three walkie-talkie batteries, five handcuffs, one baton and two sticks of honour. He was also found in possession of a ceremonial uniform suspected to be that of the Zimbabwe National Army, shorthand notebook with written notes for safety precautions and handling of a 9mm pistol in his possession.
News / Health

by Paidamoyo Chipunza

The government has banned door-to-door and street-selling of herbal medicines and put in place stringent measures to ensure people are not exposed to dangerous products.The selling of herbal medicines is on the rise in the country.Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) spokesperson Richard Rukwata said distribution of the medicines without authorisation from the authority constituted a criminal offence.Rukwata said anyone selling complementary medicines should submit an application for authorisation before March 12, 2016.Section 18 (1) of Statutory Instrument 97 of 2015 on medicines and allied substances control reads: "No person shall sell any complementary medicine unless he or she is authorised to do so by the authority."Any person who contravenes subsections (1) and (2) shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level seven or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or both such fine and such imprisonment," reads the SI.The SI exempt people who dispense or administer complementary medicines in the practice of their profession at their premises."No person shall sell any complementary medicine unless the sale is effected on premises licensed in terms of part V1 of the Act or from premises authorised by the Authority or authorised by a general dealer's licence issued in terms of the Shop Licences Act (Chapter 14:17)," further reads the SI."It's very clear that medicines can only be sold from premises  not from the streets, or from door-to-door," said Rukwata.All medicines approved in terms of these regulations are now also required to bear the words, "no approved therapeutic claims" on the label, unless otherwise exempt by the authority from complying with this requirement.Every package of a complementary medicine shall contain a leaflet with names of active ingredients in the medicine, quality and strength of the ingredients, strength of the medicine itself where applicable, recommended dosage and side-effects, among other requirements.Rukwata said selling medicines that are not labelled appropriately was an offence.Distributors of the medicines are also now banned from advertising their products without written approval from MCAZ. Any person who contravenes that provision is also liable to prosecution.MCAZ head of evaluation and registration Dr William Wekwete said according to WHO, about 80 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa use complementary medicines.He said although there were no studies done yet in Zimbabwe, increased usage of complementary medicines was evident."It's therefore essential to ensure that the public have access to complementary medicines that conform to some form of standard," he saidHe said although the notion worldwide is that complementary medicine were natural therefore safe, there was risk of drug interactions, toxicities, contamination and other dangers.These side effects include allergic reactions, liver failure and interaction with conventional medicines.Before gazetting of S1 97 of 2015, Dr Wekwete said complementary medicines were governed by SI of 1991 but it was no longer relevant to strictly monitor distribution of the medicines in Zimbabwe, hence the new regulations.A consultation nutritionist with green world Ngoni Chandiwana said in conformity with the new regulations, they were in the process of coming up with an association of network marketers to assist with monitoring each other.
BENGALURU: French companies will invest $10 billion in India over the next five years, chiefly in the industrial sector, finance minister Michel Sapin said during a visit by President Francois Hollande to India.



"Over the last five years, French companies have invested more than $1 billion per year in India," Sapin said in a speech to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi.

"We estimate that they will continue to invest at least $10 billion over the next five years."

Hollande, invited as guest of honour for India's Republic Day celebrations, hopes to seal an intergovernmental deal that would pave the way for the sale of 36 Rafale combat jets made by Dassault Aviation.

As part of that deal, there would be significant "offsets", or related French investments that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes will support his "Make in India" initiative to develop the manufacturing sector.

"The majority of these investments are meant for the industrial sector, which makes France the major player in Prime Minister Modi's 'Make in India' programme," Sapin said.

READ ALSO: U.S. To 'Look At' Export Controls To Help Indian Firms: Barack Obama

India, France United in Fight against Enemies of Humanity: PM Modi
News / Local

by Mashudu Netsianda

A student at a Bulawayo college was arrested for terminating her pregnancy after her friend spilled the beans following a misunderstanding.Rumbidzai Phiri, 18, of North End committed the crime while she was on industrial attachment at a Bulawayo lodge on December 15 last year.An unidentified United Bulawayo Hospitals nurse who assisted her to terminate the pregnancy is on the run.Phiri told her friend Melissa Kazai via WhatsApp that she had terminated her pregnancy and when they had an argument, Kazai spilled the beans. This led to Phiri's arrest and the nurse who assisted her to terminate the pregnancy immediately disappeared.Phiri, whose college was not named, was convicted on her own plea by Tinashe Tashaya.She was fined $80 or 40 days in jail.In passing the sentence, Tashaya said although Phiri committed a serious crime, she was a youthful offender who deserved a second chance to reform."You're a first youthful offender and as such you deserve a second chance. A sentence of imprisonment will not reform the offender. I also took into account that imprisonment will disrupt your studies," said Tashaya.Prosecuting, Nkathazo Dlodlo said on December 15 last year, Phiri went to UBH in the company of her boyfriend Onias Mutengwa after having connived to terminate her pregnancy with the assistance of a nurse who is now on the run.The court heard that when they got to UBH, Phiri and Mutengwa engaged the unidentified nurse to administer an abortion pill. "After the pill was administered to Phiri, she went home where she started bleeding and she confided in her friend, Melissa Kazai through a WhatsApp message," said Dlodlo.The matter came to light when Phiri had an argument with Kazai who is also her neighbour.Kazai, out of anger, informed Phiri's mother about the abortion and on being quizzed Phiri admitted to terminating her pregnancy. A report was made to the police and Phiri was arrested.In mitigation, Phiri said she committed the crime because she didn't have the means to take care of her baby since she is still a student.
KOLKATA: Firm over not taking back her Sahitya Akademi award, noted writer Nayantara Sahgal on Sunday said the Award Wapasi campaign has been a big success and that the writers protest against intolerance continues.

In a letter to Sahitya Akademi secretary K Sreenivasarao, Sahgal said, Let me make it clear that I have in no way reconsidered my decision (to take back the award). My protest and that of other writers continues against the continuing attacks on freedom of expression.

The 88-year-old niece of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had spearheaded the Award Wapasi campaign in October, 2015. Asked by PTI about how successful the writers have been in getting their voices heard, Sahgal said, It has already yielded huge results because the whole country is responding  not only writers. Historians, scientists, sociologists, filmstars, filmmakers, everybody is responding.

It is only the government which is not responding. Because the government is a Hindutva government which has banned all disagreement. They (government) cant ban it (free speech) because we will speak, but they will punish us, said the author who spoke on intolerance at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet (TSKLM).

In the letter she reminded the literary body that she had returned the award in protest against the Akademis silence over the murder of Kannada writer M M Kalburgi and earlier of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare in Maharashtra. She said it is Sahitya Akademi which seems to have done some reconsidering since its letter says that the Akademi has no policy of accepting returned awards.

It is a pity that the Akademi has taken so many months to make this statement of policy. The cheque I sent you in October is in any case no longer valid, the letter reads. The author said if they are returning the now invalid cheque the decision was theirs and not hers.

The Akademi had earlier said they are returning the cheques as there was no provision in its constitution to take back any honour once conferred upon a writer. Asked about the timing of the decision, she said, I think it has a lot to do with Rohiths suicide (in Hyderabad Central University) which I call murder. It is as good as murder. Technically suicide, but he was driven to murder.

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India Makes Entry Permits Mandatory
CHANDIGARH: French President Francois Hollande began the economic leg of his three-day visit to India, offering his country's assistance in the development of at least three smart cities Chandigarh, Puducherry and Nagpur.

The announcement came during two back-to-back meetings which the visiting head of state, along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held here with the corporate leaderships of the two countries. The first meeting was with the Indo-French CEOs Forum.

Following the first economic engagement, the two leaders then attended the larger India-France Business Summit hosted by India's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Industry.

The businesses of the two sides also signed 16 pacts mainly in urban development and clean energy, but also covering one agreement on aerospace between the French giant Airbus and India's Mahindras.

Addressing the meeting with the Indo-French CEO's Forum, Prime Minister Modi said India today presented immense opportunities to the global investing community both as a market and a hub for manufacturing.

"India is the fastest growing economy in the world. We have the labour and the market for your products," Modi said. "India is also a source of hope and confidence for the entire world community," he said adding that the investment climate had also improved considerably.

Modi, who recalled having met the French president five times last year, also said that France's greatest strength has been innovation, which can fit well with India's talent. "This kind of partnership can achieve a lot."

Hollande, on his part, said his visit here had two main goals -- consolidating the strategic partnership with India in a host of areas, including security, and implementing the climate change goals that were set forth in the global conference in Paris last year.

"Without the intervention of Prime Minister Modi on climate justice, there would have been no agreement," the French president said referring to what is formally called a meeting of the Conference of Parties under UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"France will contribute in the development of Indian smart cities of Chandigarh, Nagpur and Puducherry," the French president said. He had already declared a $2.25-billion line of credit for the "Smart Cities" project of Prime Minister Modi.

Chandigargh already has a French connection, having been planned by noted French architect Le Corbusier. Puducherry has been a former French enclave. And in Nagpur, the French are also interested in the city's metro and the upcoming strategic industry in its vicinity.

Big French firms like Alstom, Dassault, Egis, Lumiplan, RATP Transdev and Schneider are interested in the Smart Cities Mission. High-profile visits have already been made last year to Puducherry (September 10), Chandigarh (October 12) and Nagpur (December 16-17).

Some 30 business leaders from the two sides attended the half-hour meeting of the Indo-French CEO's Forum, which was formed in 2009 to identify new avenues to push bilateral economic ties between the two countries.

The agenda for discussions included defence, green economy, smart cities, infrastructure, transportation, water and financial sector. Hollande is in India as this year's chief guest for its Republic Day on January 26.

Besides talks with the Indian leadership, his engagement includes the inauguration of the International Solar Alliance secretariat at National Institute of Solar Energy at Gwal Pahari, on the Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, along with Modi.

The alliance of 122 nations was announced by Modi and Hollande in Paris on November 30.

According to the available data, French investments in India total around $19 billion, giving jobs to 280,000 jobs, while the stock of Indian investments in France is some $700 million with 7,000 jobs. The bilateral trade is around $8 billion, skewed in India's favour.

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SINGAPORE: Over 20,000 Hindus in Singapore on Sunday celebrated the colourful Thai Poosam festival, thronging the streets for an annual religious procession to fulfil vows and offer prayers to the deity Murugan, with live music being allowed throughout the route for the first time in 40 years.

The Tamil Hindus in Singapore, who have maintained the tradition of observing Thai Poosam, were joined by a number of Chinese on a four-kilometre journey from Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Little India precinct to Sri Thendayuthapani Temple on Tank Road on the outskirts of central business district.

Kavadis, milk pots

The devotees, with leads bearing elaborately decorated home-made frames called kavadis and milk pots, formed part of the procession batches in the day-long event to mark the festival when Goddess Parvati gave her son Murugan  the Hindu God of War  a Vel spear to vanquish evil demon Soorapadman.

Kavadi, meaning sacrifice at every step, can weigh as much as 100 kilogramme and are typically affixed to a persons body using sharp metal spikes.

The Kavadi Attam (Burden Dance), is a ceremonial sacrifice and offering performed by devotees to worship Murugan.

Chinese too join

Singapores Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam, who attended the event, observed that a number of non-Indians participating in the procession.

You look at the number of Chinese who are involved  it is quite amazing, Mr. Shanmugam told reporters.

Live religious music

A live religious music by temple musicians at dedicated places and loudspeakers in other public places created an atmosphere of carnival as devotees along with tourists and foreign workers watched the colourful procession.

Live music at Thai Poosam processions had been banned due to concerns over unruly behaviour in the past, but regulations were relaxed this year with three live music points and seven music-transmission points being allowed along the route for the first time in 40 years.

Biggest religious procession event

The Hindu Endowment Board, which manages the temples, has spent SGD2,50,000 and nine months to organise Singapores biggest religious procession event.

Meanwhile, more than a million Hindus in Malaysia celebrated the colourful Thai Poosam festival on Sunday, thronging temples to offer prayers to Lord Murugan as Prime Minister Najib Razak greeted the devotees saying the festival showcases the true spirit of the mult-ethnic country. Although religious in nature, the Thai Poosam celebration in Malaysia showcases to the world our diversity with Malaysians respecting and accepting each others culture, religion and beliefs, Mr. Najib wrote on his official website.

We must continue to uphold these noble principles to further strengthen our solidarity and national unity in the true spirit of Malaysia, he said.

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Create Opportunity-Filled Environs for Girl Child: Modi
KATHMANDU: Beginning from Monday, Nepali vehicles wishing to enter Indian territory will be required to obtain a permit, an Indian official said citing security considerations for the development.

Talking to journalists in Birgunj, Kamalesh Kumar, additional commissioner at the Indian customs office, said those who enter India without a permit will have to pay a fine or his/her vehicle may be confiscated.

This new provision will be implemented at the Raxaul-Birgunj border entry point -- which sees 70 percent of the total business between the two countries -- and 23 other trading points.

As per the new rule, Nepali drivers would be required to obtain a one-day pass to enter India.

They would be allowed to travel up to three km, while specified entry points would be assigned for them.

Anyone wishing to stay longer in India can obtain permits from the Consulate General in Birgunj or the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.

Under various bilateral treaties, Nepali vehicles could earlier move freely through all Nepal-India border entry points and needed no permission.

The Indian decision has already been communicated to the Nepali authorities.

Kamalesh Kumar said all one-day passes will be issued free of cost and they will display information about the vehicles.

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BENGALURU: India was ranked 22nd on an inaugural list of the world's best countries, which was released here on the sidelines of WEF Annual Meeting and is topped by Germany.

China is ranked 17th on the list, which ranked 60 countries on the basis of sustainability, adventure, cultural influence, entrepreneurship and economic influence.

The survey was conducted among 16,200 business leaders and other high-fliers.

Apart from Germany being in the first position, other countries in the top five are Canada (2), the UK (3), the U.S. (4) and Sweden (5).

The report has been prepared by US News and World Report and New York-based brand consultancy BAV Consulting and Wharton School of Business.

About India, the report said the country faces its fair share of international and domestic challenges.

"India has a fast-growing, diverse economy with a large, skilled workforce. But because of its population, it's also one of the poorest countries in the world based on income and gross national product per capita.

"Although agriculture employs the most workers, services are the major source of economic growth. Due to its educated, English-speaking workforce, India has become an important center of information technology services, business outsourcing services and software workers," it noted.

READ ALSO: India Gears Up to Launch Satellite Every Month

Bengaluru Airport Served 18 Mn Passengers In 2015
BENGALURU: As part of the Swach Bharat Abhiyanor Clean India Campaign launched by the Government of India in 2014, Mysuru has topped the list of being the cleanest city in the country. The rankings were updated on the parameters of open defecation, solid waste management, septic tank sludge, waste water treatment, drinking water quality, surface water quality of water bodies and mortality due to water born diseases, according to the Ministry of Urban Development.

The mission launched on 2nd October, 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the aim of achieving Clean India by 2019, the year when the country would celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary in 2019, said PM Modi during the launch of the mission.

Among the 476 class-1 cities in 31 states and Union Territories, each with a population of above one lakh, Mysure scored 18.50 out of 20 points on the parameters of minimizing open defecation and solid waste management practices.

As many as four cities from the state of Karnataka feature in the top ten with Bengaluru adjudged the cleanest capital in the country, featuring the seventh position of the top ten list.

Apart from Mysure and Bengaluru, the top ten list features Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), Navi Mumbai, Kochi (Kerala), Hassan and Mandya (Karnataka), Thiruvananthapuram, Halisahar (West Bengal) and Gangtok (Sikkim).

Top 100 cities includes thirty nine from South India, twenty seven from East, fifteen from West, twelve from North and seven from North East. Damoh, a place in Madhya Pradesh was ranked at the bottom of the list, preceded by Bhind (Madhya Pradesh), Palwal and Bhiwani - both in Haryana, Chittaurgarh (Rajasthan), Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), Neemuch (Madhya Pradesh), Rewari (Haryana), Hindaun (Rajasthan) and Sambalpur in Odisha at 467th rank.

Cities from North India figured prominently in the bottom 100 with as many as seventy four named in that list while there were twenty one from East, three from West and two from South.



Mysuru



Mysuru, the third populous city in the state of Karnataka is the cleanest city. The place is known for its art and culture, palaces and the festivities during the Dasara festival. Mysore Civic Corporation is responsible for the civic administration of the city.



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CHANDIGARH: Against the backdrop of major terror strikes in France and India recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Francois Hollande today shared concern over the menace, with the Indian leader pitching for a collective fight to defeat the global challenge.

Addressing India-France Business Summit here after Hollande spoke, Modi said the French President "is correct" in saying that terrorism is a challenge just like global warming.

"Fighting against challenge of terrorism is the work for humanity. All those who believe in humanity, they will have to collectively fight against terrorism. India and France believe in humankind. We together along with other countries will eliminate terror forces and terrorism," Modi said.

He assured Hollande that India is will stand with France in fight against terrorism.

The comments came against the backdrop of two major terror attacks in India and France in the recent times. While Paris was attacked by ISIS in November, Pathankot in India was struck by Pakistani terrorists on January one.

Modi used the occasion to hail the French government, people and media of that country for continuing their development agenda even after the dastardly terror attack in Paris last November.

"France has shown the way to the world...Just few days after the attack, France hosted leaders of all countries (for climate summit). This is a brave act. I congratulate the citizens of France, especially the media there, that they supported the their government during the time of crisis," he said, adding said India needs to learn lessons from it.

About 130 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in a coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015.

The Prime Minister also said the "trust and friendship" with France is an asset for India.

Modi, while addressing the business forum meet, said he had decided to invite Hollande as Republic Day Chief Guest the day terrorists attacked Paris.

"We want to work with France for development. The day terrorists attacked Paris, that day I decided that the Chief Guest on our Republic day would be from France. He has come here and I am very thankful to him," he said.

He also told the CEOs of two nations who participated in Business Summit here that development was his only 'mantra'.

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Create Opportunity-Filled Environs for Girl Child: Modi
NEW YORK: Ten doctors at CHI Health Centre in the Omaha city of Nebraska state in the U.S. are using Google Glass - personal assistant tool to help them take better care of patients by reducing the cumbersome paperwork.

Google Glass allows a remote scribe to take detailed notes for the physician - allowing the doctor to provide more direct patient care, ketv.com reported on Saturday.

The scribe delivers vital information like weight, lab work and blood pressure to the doctor through a projector, the report added.

"I had a hard time with the typing in the room," a doctor said, adding, "For me, if I don't look at a patients face, I would miss a lot of emotions. Now, I don't even have to turn on the computer in the room.

The doctor said she just asks her helper scribe to put information and she gets it in no time.

According to the report, although the patients or the doctors cannot see or hear the scribe, they can see and hear what is going on during the appointment through a projector.

The health centre would soon be give away more devices to 10 more doctors, the report added.

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WASHINGTON: U.S. President Barack Obama promised to look at export controls to make sure Indian firms have the same access to American technologies as its closest allies and expressed the hope that 2016 will see U.S. companies build nuclear reactors in India.

Welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modis efforts to cut red tape and make it easier for doing business in India, he told PTI in an interview that both countries can do even more to increase trade and investment that create jobs in both nations.

He said bilateral tradenow around $100 billionis still just a fraction of what it could be. Obama and Modi have set a goal of taking it to $500 billion in the next few years. Under our civil nuclear agreement, were hopeful that this year will see deals for U.S. companies to build new reactors, which will mean more reliable electricity for Indians... For our part, the United States continues to look at our export controls to make sure Indian companies have the same access to American technology as our closest allies, Obama said.

Obama said there is much more that the two countries can do as global partners. As leaders in science and technology, we can expand our efforts to combat disease and promote public health in Africa and beyond. With collaborations like Mission Innovation, we can be leaders in clean energy and spare our people the worst effects of climate change. As members of the G-20, we can work together to boost global growth. By moving ahead with our joint vision, we can ensure the security, prosperity and dignity of people across the Asia Pacific, he said.

Obama also said that civil society groups that strengthen communities need to be supported and not stifled.

The U.S. has been critical of the Indias action against NGOs, particularly Greenpeace, which was barred from receiving foreign funds and whose registration was cancelled in September last.

India can be a strong voice in support of the universal rights and dignity of all people, regardless of background or religion. We need to support, not stifle, the civil society groups that strengthen communities, Obama said.

Terming the Pathankot terror strike as another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long, Obama demanded that Pakistan delegitimize, disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks that operate from its territory. Pakistan can and must take more effective action against terrorist groups, he said, emphasizing that there must be zero tolerance for safe havens and terrorists must be brought to justice.

READ ALSO: Trump Gets Indirect Backing Of Key Republican

Rajat Gupta to Finish Sentence at New York Home

Source: IANS
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

A group of commercial sex workers from Ngundu Business Center in Chivi, Masvingo reportedly left the country to South Africa recently where they spent a week on an exchange programme with their counterparts in that country.Masvingo Mirror reported that Batanai HIV and Aids Service Organisation (BHASO) field officer for Chivi District, Kumbirai Mahaso confirmed the trip to Pretoria saying it was intended to see the sex workers sharing information with their counterparts in South Africa.Mahaso said the sex workers shared information on HIV and Aids, sexual reproductive rights, how they do advocacy platforms and their problems with the law particularly the arrests they face from the Police.The trip was sponsored by SAFAIDS and organised by South Africa's Centre for Positive Care.Critical to the trip were their rights as workers and they concluded their workshop by writing important messages to the members of the public.A total of 10 sex workers left the country by road on .....and they joined 30 others from different parts of South Africa. Ngundu has a Sex Work Advocacy Group that has 31 members.The workshop was held under the theme; Give me a voice and I will do it myself which meant that educate me on my rights and supply me with the right information and I will stand up for myself.In South Africa, the sex workers went on field visits during the night where they saw sex workers in that country at work. They also managed to come across mobile night clinics where various services including testing for various diseases are done on both the sex workers and their clients.In Zimbabwe night clinics are already operating in Gutu and these are sponsored by Medicines Sans Frontier (MSF).Also included in the programme were people of transgenda and drug addicts.Notable features about the South African sex work are that the girls operate from either the roads at night or from brothels. In the brothels, they pay R400 per session and the brothels are safer than the roads because in the brothels they are not arrested by the Police.Mahaso said Ngundu was chosen for this exchange programme because it is estimated to have about 114 sex workers who get most of their business from truck drivers who ply the road between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Ngundu is 100km away from Masvingo along Masvingo-Beitbridge Highway.Ngundu also has one of the highest rates of STI in the country.
News / National

by Fungai Jachi

A TWENTY-SIX-year-old woman appeared at Mbare magistrates' court recently accused of dumping her new-born baby at a cemetery.Mercy Madziwa from Waterfalls, Harare, tied the baby's neck with her T-shirt and thought she had killed the infant.She wrapped the baby in a plastic and dumped it at St John's Cemetery.Appearing before the magistrate Ms Gladys Moyo, Madziwa told the court that she got scared after giving birth and thought of dumping the baby.Madziwa is charged with exposing an infant as defined in section 108 of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act.She was remanded in custody pending sentence.Circumstances are that on January 8 this year, Madziwa gave birth alone at home.She then tied the baby's neck using her T-shirt.The court heard that she went on to wrap the baby in a plastic bag and dumped it at St John's cemetery.A passer-by heard the baby crying in the cemetery and took it to the police.The baby was taken to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals where he is receiving medical attention. Madziwa was arrested following investigations.
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News / National

by Staff reporter

Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday consoled the Chiwenga family following the death of Francis Manyowa Chiwenga, uncle to Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander General Constantine Chiwenga.Manyowa Chiwenga succumbed to diabetes at the age of 74 on Thursday.Speaking at a church service held at One Commando Barracks for Manyowa Chiwenga, Acting President Mnangagwa said the Chiwenga family should look ahead as God had made his decision. "I saw that he was suffering when I visited him in hospital," he said."He was not able to talk and when I introduced myself, he opened his eyes and closed them again. We wanted to take him into the intensive care unit since he was suffering from several ailments. We did not know that God had other plans. If you want God to laugh at you, show God your plans because he is the one who knows what the future holds for all of us."Gen Chiwenga said his uncle was raised by his parents and he used to call him brother since they shared everything."I used to call him brother," he said."We shared everything, but he was my uncle and I did not know that until I grew up. He attended Mount St Mary's and St Paul's Musami schools."He learnt building at Musami, specialising in stone work. He was a specialist in stone work."Gen Chiwenga said upon completion of his education, Manyowa Chiwenga ventured into politics, joining Zapu.He said Manyowa Chiwenga was sentenced to six years in prison for stealing a firearm from a British policeman, but he served three years.Gen Chiwenga said upon his release, Manyowa Chiwenga continued with revolutionary activities and became logistics leader in the Wedza area responsible for providing food to fighters of the liberation struggle."At one time he served me food, but he did not recognise me," he said."That is when I realised that people were afraid to look at the faces of guerillas during the liberation struggle."Manyowa Chiwenga is survived by four children, several grandchildren and great grandchildren.
News / National

by Ivan Zhakata

A man gave his wife a thorough hiding for allegedly practising witchcraft and possessing goblins, a Harare Civil Court has heard.Fiona Murisa yesterday told magistrate Mrs Marehwanazvo Gofa that her husband, Callisto Mujera, who is a police officer, accuses her of possessing goblins which are hindering his success.Murisa, who was seeking a protection order, said Mujera has barred her relatives from visiting their matrimonial home, accusing them of being witches out to hurt him."He is my husband and he assaults me saying that I am a witch," she said."He also rebukes me calling me all types of derogatory names such that I had to leave our matrimonial house because I could no longer stand his abuse. I want him to be barred from coming to my house because he will assault me again," Murisa said.Mujera denied the allegations and told the court that Murisa was the one who abused him."She is lying before the court and I wish the court to grant a reciprocal protection order because she also abuses me," he said."She tells our children that I am a promiscuous man. I cannot be banned from going to her house as she has told the court because she is living at a college where I am doing my studies," Mujera said.Mrs Gofa ordered Mujera to stop abusing his wife and accusing her of witchcraft and possessing goblins without any evidence.In a separate case, a Harare woman is seeking peace with her husband's girlfriend whom she accuses of assaulting her with fists and open hands over her husband.Nyaradzo Bhibhi alleges that her husband's girlfriend, Catherine Marozhi, beats her saying she should leave the husband for her.Bhibhi, who was seeking a peace order against Marozhi, yesterday told Mrs Gofa that Marozhi boasted that she was a Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operative and nothing would happen to her even if she reported to the police.She said Marozhi also bragged that the husband also pays her for sexual favours."She is my husband's girlfriend and she comes to my house assaulting me saying that I should vacate the house for her to move in," Bhibhi said."She said that even if I come to court nothing will happen to her since she is a CIO operative and a relative to top Government officials. She is taking advantage that she works for the Government and abuses me.Marozhi refuted the allegations. She told the court that she was married to the man after he divorced Bhibhi."The man is mine and she is the former wife," Marozhi said. "I got married to the man after they divorced and I have never abused her as she is alleging."Mrs Gofa dismissed Bhibhi's application for a peace order and advised her to apply for a protection order since both of them were married to one man.A peace order is issued when the applicant and the respondent are not related or have no any relationship of any sort whereas a protection order is issued between related parties.
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News / National

by Fungai Lupande

A 21-year-old man was yesterday sentenced to 14 years in prison for raping his 13-year-old cousin.Harare magistrate Mr Hoseah Mujaya sentenced the man to 17 years but suspended three years for four years on condition of good behaviour.The court heard that man stayed with his grandmother, the 13-year-old, her sister and their brother in Overspill, Epworth.The 13-year-old, her sister and brother slept in the same room.The court heard that the girl was in the habit of removing her clothes as well as panties when she retired to bed.The sleeping arrangement was that the brother slept between the girls.One day in September last year around 9pm the siblings went to sleep.The court heard that around midnight the 13-year-old tried to turn over while asleep but felt pinned down.She woke up and saw her cousin in the middle of sexually assaulting her.The girl remained quiet and was afraid to scream after being warned by their grandmother not to say anything if the 21-year-old touched her body or entered their bedroom.After the abuse the 21-year-old left the room.The following morning the girl told her grandmother what had happened.The grandmother called the 21-year-old and warned him not to repeat the offence.She gave the man $10 to leave Epworth and go to their rural home in Mount Darwin.When the 13-year-old returned home from school she found her cousin already gone.At the end of October last year the girl told her other grandmother of the abuse and the matter was reported to the police.Meanwhile, a father allegedly locked his nine-year-old son in the toilet and defecated before forcing him to wipe his backside, the court heard on Wednesday, writes Prosper Dembedza.Farai Mutyambizi of Highlands, Harare, was charged with ill-treatment or neglect of children and young persons when he appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Tendai Rusinahama.He was granted free bail.Allegations are that on December 21 last year, Mutyambizi proceeded to where the minor was playing with his friend.He grabbed the minor and told him that since he was good at wiping other people's faeces off their backsides, he should do the same to him.The State alleged that Mutyambizi dragged the minor into the toilet and locked the door. He defecated as the child watched.He forced the boy to wipe him but the minor refused.It is alleged that their tenant only identified as Mai Evelyn, who was listening to the conversation, shouted at Mutyambizi to stop what he was doing and he immediately opened the door and took to his heels.Mutyambizi's sister-in-law, Petronella Gomane, proceeded to Highlands Police Station where she reported the alleged abuse, leading to Mutyambizi's arrest.
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612eb99d6a0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e80)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612eb99d6a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e80)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe1f530)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e80)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e80)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee5143b8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee75e908)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee75e908)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0297d40)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f019dac0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0297d40)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f019dac0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f02c14b0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f019dac0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f019dac0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612efbe33b0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f019d970)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f019d970)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe3a700)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee514160)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe3a700)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee514160)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe3b0a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee514160)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee514160)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee5150a0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee517018)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee517018)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
It said a lot that three of the key players in the military's long, hard look at itself over its treatment of women were nominated for Australian of the Year.

Former Army Chief David Morrison has emerged as the winner. But Elizabeth Broderick kept Defence on its toes with regular reports on its gender progress as Sex Discrimination Commissioner. Catherine McGregor connected with the nation by crafting searing words as Mr Morrison's speech-writer, while also embodying the value of diversity as the military's highest-ranking transgender officer.

It all shows what a watershed period this has been for the Australian Defence Force.
Maureen Hartung remembers trying to navigate the school system with her two children Katherine and Michael, now in their 30s.

When she voiced her concerns about certain issues, tried to make change or asked too many questions, more than one principal suggested "if you don't like how my school works why don't you go set up your own".

Maureen Hartung has run an independent child-focused school in Canberra, The Blue Gum School, for 18 years and will be receiving an OAM for her services to education and the community. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

So that is exactly what she did.
The Cavendish variety was developed from a single plant that was imported to England from Mauritius in the 1830s. Nurtured in a hot house at Derbyshire, its descendants grew to become the ubiquitous variety of banana on our supermarket shelves.

The fungus, which was discovered on plants in Tully Valley, in north Queensland, in March 2015 is threatening the existence of Cavendish banana crops across the globe.

Mr Day grows bananas on five hectares along the Gascoyne River near Carnarvon in Western Australia  5300 kilometres from where the fungus, known as "Panama disease" or more formally TR4, has been detected in Australia.

Tom Day might not get much rain on his farm but that might help him stave off a deadly fungus that is threatening the world's most popular banana variety.

Mr Day said the only way the deadly fungus, which can remain dormant in soil for more than 30 years, could reach Australia's west was on shipping pallets.

"The biggest problem for us is probably pallets that are moved around Australia. If they came out of the affected area with soil on them, for instance, and ended up in one of our properties. But it's highly unlikely."

Mr Day praised the biosecurity efforts of government agencies and other banana growers for helping limit the disease's spread.

"From our point of view we are pretty lucky. We are quite isolated. In Queensland they're in valleys where they get a lot of rain and water, and water is one of the major movers of the disease, because it's in the ground and water can move it around," he said.

"In the Tully Valley there are creeks running past almost every property, so they've got a problem, whereas we are on the river delta here on the Gascoyne River and because we are subtropical we don't have anywhere near the water movements that they have. Here we have a bit of rain about once a year, not all that often."
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

REMNANT CHUCRH's Pastor Patrick Mugadza who was arrested to demonstrating against President Robert Mugabe has made sensational claims that the president and his government are being used by the devil to clamp down on dissenting voices.Mugadza came to prominence after he was arrested for demonstrating against President Robert Mugabe at the annual Zanu PF party conference which was held in Victoria Falls last December.He spent the Christmas holidays in detention and came out defiant, saying it was high time Zimbabweans started demanding the safe return of missing journalist Itai Dzamara.On Wednesday last week, Mugadza visited the Dzamara family in Glen View and prayed for them before touring the barbershop from where the activist was abducted. Dzamara was abducted by state security agents in March last year after he had held a series of peaceful protests against Mugabe's "misrule".Magadza said government was responsible for Dzamara's disappearance."It is not a mermaid which took him, because he was nowhere near a river, neither was he mentally ill to the extent that we might believe that he just went into the forest," he said."He was taken by someone to wherever he is and we are saying the state should value human life."Speaking to Journalists at the barbershop, Pastor Mugadza said Mugabe was being "used" by the "devil"."What is going on at the moment is that somebody is so much at work and that somebody is the devil," said the pastor."For example, you may have a hammer and a nail; they can stay together very well inside a tools box but the moment a carpenter comes in then there is war between the hammer and the nail and this is the reason we should pray for the nation."In his prayer, Pastor Magadza said for Zimbabwe to move forward there should have an interim government which will restore the lost glory."That government (interim) Lord will unite us and restore peace and bring us together because we are so divided," he prayed.
Trucking giant Toll will defend its decision to sack a worker for allegedly making offensive comments about Islamic State and the Taliban to a colleague of Middle Eastern heritage, after his unfair dismissal ruling was quashed.

The employee was fired last year over "racist, sectarian and inappropriate" remarks to his Afghan co-worker.

Toll appealed the unfair dismissal ruling to the full bench of the Fair Work Commission. Credit:Andrew Quilty

"Are you from the Taliban?" the employee allegedly asked the co-worker.

"Does Islam say to kill? ... I enjoy seeing people having their heads cut off, do you enjoy it too?"
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Menzies' resignation was not so much the fact that it happened but rather that it did not happen sooner. Having narrowly escaped electoral defeat by a single seat in 1961, he called an early election in 1963, rebounding with a handsome majority of 22. Speculation before that election that he might retire proved groundless.

To many people, especially key figures in the Liberal Party, a post-Menzies Australia was simply unthinkable. No matter that the grand old man had become a walking anachronism, stuck in his quaintly old-fashioned double-breasted suits and clinging to the trappings of a British colonial empire that had vanished, there were serious attempts to persuade him to stay on. The Liberals' federal president, Jock Pagan, and his immediate predecessor, Sir Philip McBride, both pleaded with him, arguing that without his leadership it could be a "rocky year" ahead.

To a whole generation of Australians, the writer among them, there had only ever been one prime minister in memory, Bob Menzies, and on this day a fresh face would take his place.

Liberal Party historian Ian Hancock poses the question of whether Menzies, elected in 1949, bequeathed "a poisoned chalice" with the party relying solely on someone like himself. One possible successor, Paul Hasluck, later governor-general, speculated in his diary that Menzies had entertained doubts about Holt, his deputy since 1956. He recorded that Menzies hoped another serious contender would emerge, once telling Hasluck and another colleague, Athol Townley, that one of them would one day be prime minister. As it was, Townley died in 1963 and Hasluck did not want the job.

There was more than just sentiment behind the moves to have Menzies stay on. By the mid-1960s, the Liberal Party was beginning to worry and senior officials were talking of the need for rejuvenation  but as Hancock points out, Menzies the septuagenarian who was being pressed to remain, was "hardly the right person  to revive or replace the spirit of 1949". Recounting a description by Holt of how Menzies regaled his discreetly amused cabinet colleagues in late 1965 about details of "his uniform, accoutrements of establishment, etc" of the historic honour and title of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth, Hancock observes Menzies' delight with this "relic of another country and another past" as an indication of how demonstrably out of touch he was with the Australia of the mid-1960s. It did not augur well for the Liberal Party.

In contrast to the suspense, uncertainty and high drama of his first departure from office in 1941, almost a quarter of a century earlier, this exit was utterly devoid of any element of excitement or conflict. There was not even a contest for succession. The only public question being asked was when, in what his biographer Allan Martin called "the resignation charade". It was the least dramatic of all prime ministerial exits.

And just as he returned to political life on his own terms  at the head of a new party built to his specifications  so he would leave it, at a time and under circumstances of his own choosing. Only Edmund Barton (1903) and Andrew Fisher (1915) before him had relinquished the prime ministership voluntarily, but in Barton's case he was being gently persuaded to go amid fears of electoral setback if he stayed in office. Fisher, tired and frustrated by having to manage a nation at war as well as an increasingly fractious party, saw the high commissionership in London as a welcome escape. He also had the hot and urgent breath of Billy Hughes on his neck.

When Menzies addressed the nation, he explained simply that he was 71, and weary. An election was due later that year and he could not promise to serve another term if he won it. He was conscious of having become a fixture. "In short, I am tired: my pace has slowed down; I could not properly continue in office for very much longer and at the same time do justice to the growing problems of the nation," he said.
A protege of John Gielgud  and a theatre-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole  Brian Bedford shared their artistic gifts but not their celebrity, probably because he performed only occasionally in movies and on TV. A dapper, handsome man with a comfortingly resonant speaking voice, British-born Bedford was an understated and perhaps undersung star. However on stage, he became a stellar portrayer of the princes, kings, fops and faded aristocrats of Shakespeare, Moliere and Chekhov.

His stage career  in England, in the United States (off-Broadway as well as on) and in Canada, where he was a mainstay at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival for nearly four decades  had few equals. Playing comedy or tragedy, pathos or hilarity, Bedford was known for controlled and layered performances, and for finding the depth and subtlety in monumental characters, from King Lear to Tartuffe.

He won only one Tony Award, in 1971, for playing Arnolphe in Moliere's School for Wives but he did it against formidable competition  Gielgud and Ralph Richardson were among the other nominees. Bedford, who has died of cancer at age 80, appeared in 18 Broadway productions, earning his seventh Tony nomination in 2011 for his drag performance as Lady Bracknell, Oscar Wilde's social arbiter in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Bedford was also a director, staging more than 20 shows at Stratford, but he craved performing most of all. "I'm most alive when I'm acting," he said. "I can't deny it, it's where I belong." A student of theatre history, Bedford played not just the roles that the great writers wrote, but performed one-man shows about the writers themselves. And for an actor known for interpreting classic works, his background might be considered surprising. Bedford was born in the mill town of Morley, near Leeds and Bradford, in Yorkshire  "a pretty awful place," he recalled in 1971, comparing it to Lawrence, Massachusetts, another city that played a grim role in his family history. "Only much dirtier. Chimneys belching smoke night and day."

His father, Arthur, was a postal worker; his mother, the former Eleanor O'Donnell, was a factory weaver. Two of his three older brothers died of tuberculosis. Some time after Bedford left home and began his acting career, his father took his own life. "Suicide runs in the family," said Bedford. "My father's brother also committed suicide. He got a girl into trouble when he was 22, and in order to save face for both families, he emigrated to America, took a boat to Boston, went to a tiny place  Lawrence, Massachusetts  booked into a hotel and shot himself."
Australia Day is a good reflection of the way this country, 228 years after European settlement, 115 years after Federation, remains baffled by its own history.

Our national day should be a celebration, for Australia today  a wealthy nation, free, with boundless opportunities and irrepressible optimism  has a great deal to celebrate.

This is a country of realists  down-to-earth people who have little time for polite falsehoods and marketing ploys. Credit:Peter Braig

Yet there is an obvious difficulty. For a significant group within our community  Indigenous Australians  today can be celebrated only as a day of mourning.

For the first Australians it commemorates invasion, dispossession and cultural near-annihilation.
For better or worse, Australians tend not to be interested in questions of principle and don't like being told what to do, which is why they've put up with the British monarchy for so long: it has no principles and can't tell anyone what to do. John Sexton Petersham It must be that time of year again. Like overseas-sourced souvenirs, it's predictable and tiresomely uncreative. Most Australians want a republic by any other name; the word has too much baggage, including Paul Keating and bananas. And Indigenous people feel alienated by the commemoration of Invasion Day. So let's try a distinctly Australian solution: sever all constitutional links with the British Crown (it really won't mind and won't be offended); keep the official name The Commonwealth of Australia (it already says what we want it to say); keep the head of state as the Governor-General, but reserve this position for an Indigenous person elected by Indigenous Australians (keep the politicians out of it, and get a truly independent person); sign a treaty with the Indigenous people of Australia on January 26 (the undeclared war started here and it ends here); keep Australia Day as it is (the signature day of the modern nation). Adrian Hale Castle Hill On every Australia Day we are sure to hear political leaders and newspaper leaders sounding forth on "the republic" and often on "the flag" and "the invasion". However, the voices of many ordinary people who support our constitutional monarchy, not least those in our "ethnic" communities and young people, a large number judging by polls, are far less likely to be heard.

With regard to constitutional monarchy, New Zealand, and Canada especially, seem far more content, mature and self-confident, less given to navel-gazing than Australia  about sharing an institution that does not in any way limit our freedom but one that reminds us we are not just an island or two and, to use the words of Edith Cavell in World War I, that "patriotism is not enough". On Australia Day, my 80th birthday, my own constitution is old and my bones (and brain some would say) due for replacement. Australia's Constitution is older but its heart is as strong and healthy as ever. John Bunyan Campbelltown I feel we can reconcile both republicans and monarchists this Australia Day by gently retiring Her Majesty QEII and declaring Sir Lynton Keith Crosby AO as the first President of Australia. Jeffrey Mellefont Coogee

Innovation is great, but needs a social element too The one thing glaringly absent from Malcolm Turnbull's rhetoric about the importance of agile entrepreneurship and innovation is any mention of its application to the social element of the triple bottom line: social entrepreneurship and social innovation ("Social enterprise making a difference", January 25). As evidenced in the nominees for Australian of the Year Awards, creating profit for social purpose is starting to thrive in Australia, innovatively addressing long-term market failure; supplying meaningful jobs for those previously marginalised, better health and inclusion for the homeless and doing so far more successfully than all versions of the Job Network and Work for the Dole. Another venture not nominated (Infoxchange) uses digital innovation for a social purpose, creating platforms matching available beds for crisis accommodation to those seeking one on any particular night. Yet another (HomeGround Real Estate) invests all the profits of its social enterprise into rental opportunities for those struggling to find affordable accommodation. Not all entrepreneurship and innovation seeks to make exploitative levels of profit for individuals, although it still needs to be financially sustainable.

So come on Prime Minister and Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy, let's see some agility from you and an extension of your rhetoric to regularly acknowledge the contribution and potential of innovation for a social purpose. Many of our big companies and social impact investors are way ahead of you. Cheryl Kernot Social Business Fellow, The Centre for Social Impact, UNSW Abbott's defiance a blessing for Labor I trust Bill Shorten won't mind if I speak on his behalf and offer his sincerest hope that Tony Abbott is successful in retaining his seat in the next election ("Defiant Abbott vows to stay in Parliament", smh.com.au, January 25). Abbott's return would be a great asset to the Labor Party and add significant weight to Shorten's quest to become Prime Minister one day. I expect that was on Abbott's mind when he decided he still had a contribution to make to Australian life. Graham Lum North Rocks

I can't buy the "Tony has a lot to offer Australia" line. We've already seen what he offers and patently don't want any more of it. I suspect the real story is that he can't get a job elsewhere. Charles Kent Hunters Hill Where in the rule book does it state that former prime ministers should retire from politics? Why all the hubbub around Tony Abbott unless it's irrational, politically motivated hatred? George Fishman Vaucluse Senator Abetz is beginning to remind me of Joe the Gadget Man, noisily flogging a product few people want ("Tony Abbott is no Kevin Rudd", smh.com.au, January 25).

Janet Simpson Glebe Rail accident repeat Not only was the existence of a "black spot" in the communication system at Waterfall a factor in that accident, it was also a major factor in the Glenbrook accident where the same number of passengers were killed, two of whom were members of our family ("Rail safety program misses deadline", January 25). Does this mean we are still not safe after all these years ? Tony and Julie Hillman Oatley Cancel the contract

I find it difficult to believe Lloyd Adams was truly "remorseful" about his destruction of heritage interiors of the 1840s Rocks terrace ("Gutting of terrace forces trust to act", January 25). I also wonder if fines of less than $100,000 would be considered chickenfeed to many such purchasers. I do think I have the solution. One can lose a much-loved home to the government to widen a road, build a tunnel vent, etc. so why not to protect our heritage? How about a binding clause in all future sale contracts advising that failure to properly conserve a heritage property will cause it to be immediately resumed. No ifs or buts. Janet Armsworth Newport Sad East Timor tale I remember marching in the streets of Sydney with 20,000 other Australians for East Timor's independence and John Howard pressuring Indonesia to change its policy because he saw middle Australia marching and stirred ("Turnbull insightful yet breathtakingly hypocritical with foreign affairs stance", January 25). Yet, one of the first things we do when that nation obtains its independence is rip it off. What is it that we stand for? Whatever we can get away with? If Malcolm Turnbull wants to be a statesman then he must lead with some vision. To quote Thucydides again: "We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them."

Peter Stavropoulos Dundas Menzies wanted war Brian Pymont (Letters, January 25) is accurate except in one respect: Menzies did not take Australia into the Vietnam War "at the behest of the United States". Quite the reverse; in 1974, prime minister Gough Whitlam arranged for the Foreign Affairs Department to brief a Fairfax newspaper, The National Times, on how we got into the war. The briefing, confirmed in Washington by the late Adele Horin, showed that Menzies pushed the US into the war, and so was directly responsible for the deaths of millions. Menzies lied about an invitation from Vietnam, and said Australia had to take part to prevent the "downward thrust" of China. He was afflicted with ignorance of Asian history; Vietnam had been fighting China for the best part of 2000 years. Evan Whitton Glebe

Lesson in Macquarie Planners to plan Sydney ("New hope for Sydney's future shape", January 25)? The last great planner this city had was Governor Macquarie and his work was almost destroyed by political interference. Ian Stevenson Gladesville Trump trigger-happy So the Trump could stand in New York's Fifth Avenue and shoot people ("Trump happy to shoot his mouth off", January 25). Reckon he'd need to watch out someone didn't plug him first.

David Thomson Port Macquarie Pensioners targeted Once again the Coalition government is targeting pensioners to save its budget bottom line ("Pensioners rail against travel limit plan", January 25). This time it's migrant pensioners, in particular, women migrants. The "35 years in the workforce" limit proposed on pensioners' travel will affect more women than men. Most women from that generation worked at home raising children, limiting their time in the workforce. These valued migrants (Aussies now) may have to visit sick or elderly relatives, or grandchildren for a couple of months. Why should they be discriminated against in this way? Kathy Kyle Camden

World of options for our top Australian If Lynton Crosby can be knighted and be UK Australian of the Year for his services to the Conservative Party (Letters, January 25), then I can only imagine what honours await Jeremy Corbyn. Paul Jones Glebe Who is the Australian of the Year (Poland) this year? Graham English Eastwood

The wine that dared not speak its name No, Rob Wills (Letters, January 25), Richard Glover is correct, he probably was buying shiraz 40 years ago. In the earlier years Australian winemakers were not confident enough to use local names so used European wine names. A lot of the red being sold in Australia under the names claret and burgundy was in fact shiraz or a shiraz blend. This didn't stop until 1994 when Australia signed an agreement with the European Union. Ian Davis Bella Vista Lucky Robb Wills to have had such a wide choice of wines to buy. The pub on Abercrombie Street, Chippendale, near the home I shared with other students, offered only McWilliams moselle. Confronted with this "choice" I asked the publican if it was OK. "Well it must be," she said, "everyone buys it!" Judith Fleming Sawtell
I am the product of public schools. I know they need more support and funding. However, one immediate thing a principal can take away from the Senate's report is the importance of not underestimating students with disability.

Only now, as a law graduate on the autism spectrum with my own company that employs 20 autistic professionals to mentor autistic students, do I realise how much of a difference my principals made to me.

The report calls out the system's "entrenched culture of low expectations" towards students with disabilities. If parents score a school that has an enabling culture towards disability, you have won the "lottery". I know this first-hand because my feisty mother managed just that.

As school goes back for the year, the Senate report into the systemic failings of the education system for students with disability is very timely. In the myriad emails principals will see in their inbox, I hope mention of this report is one of them.

The difference between my schooling and the overwhelmingly negative experience described in the Senate's report is that my principals did not change their expectations of me, simply because I was connected to the label "autism".

This difference is one of the reasons why I am neither one of the overwhelming 81 per cent of young Australians on the spectrum who are without a post-secondary qualification, nor one of the 58 per cent of autistics who are unemployed. Australia's economy is senselessly missing out on the strengths of my peers.

There are countless strengths. I had a big imagination as a kid. When I spoke with you, I was typically imitating a character I had either read or watched on TV. My diagnostic report perceived I was "isolated and lonely". If you had asked me, my world was bliss. In class I was a gun at spelling, but slow with maths. These things combined, meant I loved writing stories. Hilariously, at age nine I tried to write the sequel to Gone With The Wind. Sadly, it remains unpublished.

This is what my primary school principal and his staff seized. No matter how tense I could be, no matter how frequently they had to walk on egg-shells around my obsession of the day, they all knew to leverage my story-writing as a way of getting me to engage and be considerate. It was this strengths-based approach and positive profiling that kept me open to learning.

I know this is easier said than done. My company takes me into schools every week where I see three things. I see students who have been made to feel as though they "can't" do things. I see teachers and principals who are trying to go the extra mile, but are harangued by so many pressures. But the inexpensive circuit-breaker I see time and time again is a school culture that is open to the possibilities of students with disabilities.
In my address to the National Press Club in August of last year I stated that, "Never before have the stars of the Southern Cross been so aligned as now, pointing to the dawn of the Australian republic."

The fact that Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister shortly afterwards only lined those stars up even better, and that alignment has continued at astonishing pace since. This Australia Day, the Australian Republican Movement has quadruple the number of members as last year. Donations, which used to sound, for very good reason, like a 20 cent piece landing in an otherwise empty 44 gallon drum, are now pouring in as never before. Business leaders like Alan Joyce, Ken Henry and Tony Shepherd have been as proud to stand with us, as we are to have them by our side, begging only they don't step on the toes of Julia Gillard, Anna Bligh, Senator Nova Peris-Kneebone and Hugh Jackman.

And then, the true breakthrough: Monday's "Declaration of Desired Independence", as I call it, whereby seven out of eight of the premiers and chief ministers signed up in honour of Australia Day, affirming their desire that we get on with it. The upshot is that that dawn is now close. We can do this, and we can do it soon. As the Prime Minister  the most passionate republican in the land  surveys the chances of getting up a referendum "with a majority of people in a majority of states", it is a hell of a start to have all the leaders of those states with him! (Particularly when, the only one who didn't sign, WA Premier Colin Barnett, is also a strong republican.)

The euphoric response to the release of that declaration  expressed on talkback, twitter, emails and on the street  was nothing less than thrilling and historic. It included myriad front pages around the country applauding the move. I am a Fairfax man from the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin to the marrow of my bones, but the positive front page of the Daily Telegraph, with a headline hailing the "United States of Australia," and a supportive editorial to boot, was of enormous significance  as is the fact this column is jointly published by Fairfax Media and News Corporation.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political commentator Livingstone Masamba has expressed concerns as to why and how would 13 million Zimbabweans allow President Robert Mugabe to hold them captive for the past 35 years."Sometimes I just lough and wonder at the situation that we Zimbabweans find ourselves in. It boggles the mind how 13 million people have been made slaves and held captive by a decrepit and tired nonagerian without raising their heads,"' he said. "Are the people that foolish or they are enjoying Mugabe's misrule, wanton destruction of their sources of livelihood and continued hold to the reigns of power by the ancestor."He said probably the 13 million people are waiting for the promised Messiah to come and rescue them from the claws of the predator tormenting them."Surely 13 million people living in fear and oppression by such an old man for more than 35 years, its unbelievable indeed," he said.
The cinematography is grand and cosmic, as the turns of the radar beneath the geometric hood mimic the rotation of the earth, surveying the periphery of the world from its own mechanical axis. Like a giant astronomical telescope, this scientific dome is an observatory  a military observatory not for extreme distance but extreme malevolence.

We know about the station thanks to a gripping video by Murray Fredericks and Tom Schutzinger. In three channels, we get inside the spectacular geodesic dome of 18 metres diameter, where the camera moves around the giant radar dish as if the ocular robot were still active, scanning the freezing air for supersonic bombs.

In Greenland there's an early-warning detection facility which has been abandoned for 20 years. It was one of three long-range radar stations set up in 1957, and served throughout the Cold War. Its radar monitored airspace activity to sound the alarm over any Soviet missiles headed for North America.

Schutzinger's composition begins with a kind of pulse every second, giving way to a rolling melody in sumptuous string sonorities, a bit like Sibelius. However, the texture of the sound  which includes the expansion and contraction groans of the dome itself  remains uncertain and sinister.

With a reassuring relish in landscape, the camera takes us to the pristine snowy outside of the station where we watch the sun and the moon transit over the horizon in time-lapse photography. In later scenes we hear the voices of American and Soviet leaders.

Without any irony, the station was known as DYE 2, which (if you say it rather than spell it) makes you think that you will "die too". The early-warning system may have been devised to enable the population to dive into bunkers  like hell!  but it was more likely conceived to add to the deterrent-value of the arsenal of bombs pointed at Moscow.

The moment you throw one of those do-dahs our way, we'll detonate ours and they'll reach you only seconds after yours reach us. This system of speedy reciprocal aggression was known at the time as MAD, mutually assured destruction.

Thankfully, it didn't happen and we're now great friends with Russia, joining them in bombing people who mostly carry their own bombs on foot.
But even Abosch, better known for taking portraits of celebrities including Johnny Depp, Bob Geldoff and Steven Spielberg, acknowledges that some might find the price tag for the photograph, entitled Potato #345, a little "absurd".

It should be noted that it's an organic spud, from the spiritual home of the potato, Ireland, so you'd expect it to be a bit pricier per kilogram than the dirt-cheap variety.

He recently sold this photograph of a potato for 750,000 ($1.5 million). Really.

The chips certainly aren't down for photographer Kevin Abosch.

The Kevin Abosch photo Potato #345 which has sold for $1.5 million. Credit:Kevin Abosch

Abosch's explanation of how the sale came about suggests wine might have had something to do with the transaction.

Abosch, who is based in France and Ireland, was having dinner with an unnamed European businessman at his home when his guest saw the photograph hanging on the wall, The Sunday Times in London reported.

Abosch had photographed the potato in 2010, after it was delivered to his home in a batch of organic vegetables.

"We had two glasses of wine and he [the businessman] said, 'I really like that.' Two more glasses of wine and he said: 'I really want that,' " Abosch said
"He basically becomes a loser," Taylor says. "The play is about his attempts to rediscover his purpose in life and find his true vocation. And find love."

Taylor and Reucassel are about to make their stage debuts in Jack of Hearts at the Ensemble Theatre. Taylor plays Jack, a disillusioned man who quits his high-flying job with a big law firm.

"That or David wrote a play, got drunk one night and mistakenly put our names in an email," Reucassel jokes. "But we held him to it."

When The Chaser's Chris Taylor and Craig Reucassel received an email from playwright David Williamson asking them to act in his next play, they thought they were being pranked.

Reucassel plays a sleazy, two-timing real estate agent. "He's a guy with a lot of love interests," he says. "I get to talk about sex a lot but I have very little sex in the play. I'll have to talk to David about that."

Williamson says he originally wrote the play without any particular casting in mind. But as the characters formed he started to see Taylor and Reucassel in the roles.

"I have been a fan of The Chaser for years," he says. "The performance skills needed to deliver scripts on television are very similar to the skills theatre actors use, so I was confident they could do the roles and I haven't been disappointed. I knew these guys had it."

But Taylor and Reucassel were less confident in their ability to cross over. "It's fair to say when we do a sketch on The Chaser's War on Everything, and I play a waiter offering cracked pepper to people, I do not spend a week talking about my character's back story," Taylor says. "But it's really lovely to be in a room with proper actors and to see how they work. We're learning a lot of craft."

Taylor is also learning how to perform a stage kiss. "It was so far outside of my comfort zone or knowledge area I had to ask another actor to show me how to do it," he says. "Like, where do I put my foot? Where do I put my hand? I naively thought it all had to be choreographed. But the actors say, 'no, you just kiss'."
Labor leader Bill Shorten has urged the Prime Minister to break the shackles of monarchists in his government and lead the push for Australia to become a republic.

The call comes after all of the state and territory leaders expressed support for a republic amid a push for a plebiscite for an Australian head of state by 2020.

Mr Shorten is expected to use his Australia Day address in Melbourne on Tuesday to call for Malcolm Turnbull to drop his insistence that constitutional change is only possible after the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
Embattled businessman and politician Clive Palmer is facing increasing calls for him to resign from Parliament amid anger over the fate of his company Queensland Nickel.

Queensland Liberal MP and Assistant Minister for Science Karen Andrews called on Mr Palmer to step down, saying he had a responsibility to the 550 remaining employees of the nickel refinery just outside Townsville as well as the 237 recently made redundant.

"I think he should resign and he should resign before Parliament resumes next week," she told Sky News on Monday. "He has major responsibilities at Queensland Nickel."

Queensland Nickel, understood to be $70 million in debt, was placed in voluntary administration last week and Mr Palmer has been forced to defend more than $20 million in political donations from the company to his Palmer United Party.
Confirmation that Tony Abbott will stay in Parliament within hours of the release of a declaration by state and territory leaders backing an Australian head of state says much about why Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is in no hurry for a republic.

The timing of the two announcements was coincidental but it reinforces why Turnbull won't open another front in his battle with the conservative wing of his government and party.

Turnbull, with a mixture of public forbearance of internal dissent and his ability to maintain huge public support, has thus far skilfully repelled the challenge of aggrieved right wingers.
Shortly before a mini-series on his life screens, Molly Meldrum is recovering from a fall in Thailand.

The former Countdown host slipped while getting out of a taxi at a Bangkok hotel.

"I'm a walking disaster," he reportedly said.

"I'm with the doctors now, they're trying to put everything back together."
Senior academics have raised concerns cheating at major Australian universities may be easier than many supervisors realise.

The concerns come as the Australian National University continues to investigate an essay farm selling completed assignments to Chinese students in Canberra.

The service, Assignment King, advertises its services in Mandarin on a community website and promises to deliver original assignments that cannot be detected by anti-plagiarism software.

Only two of the 51 ANU students caught plagiarising last year were suspended with the remainder either failing their subjects or being forced to resubmit and attend counselling services.
A police pursuit has ended with officers diving into a backyard swimming pool to rescue a woman and her six-year-old daughter after their car plunged into the water in Sydney's north-west.

Police said they pursued the 37-year-old woman's Hyundai through Penrith and St Marys on Monday afternoon, before the chase was called off due to concerns for the welfare of the driver.

Later that night, at about 6.20pm, an unmarked police car again tried to stop the Hyundai, which was travelling east along the Great Western Highway with the girl in the passenger seat.

Police allege the car was being driven erratically, although at the posted speed limit, as it travelled onto the M4.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Harare West MP Jessie Majome has said he started visiting some schools in his constituency after some concerns were raised over the state of swimming polls."I started the school year in the constituency by visiting 2 new private schools after a concerned constituent informed me of an unprotected swimming pool at Melbourne School in Tynwald Harare West Constituency. I therefore went to investigate the situation when schools opened this January," Majome said."This was my first visit to the school which opened in 2015 is in the heart of Tynwald North Suburb. I got to see the incomplete swimming pool bordered by a chilling death trap of steel spikes which was not secured by either a fence of the school premises or the pool site area itself and which all the more hazardous because the site is less than 6 meters from houses with no fences themselves and whose residents have open access to a tap at the school."She said as the Headmaster a Musara was way away she telephoned him to raise her concern and he made an undertaking to put banting and assign a security guard within a week, which is clearly not enough as a physical barrier is vital."I urged him to fence off the area or to place a barricade around the pool site crater. Any residents of the area please tell me if he has kept his promise," she said."I then went to nearby Acacia Junior School which is another new school and is in Madokero suburb. I was impressed by the arc layout of school. The school has in contrast a well secured swimming pool which is the way to go, and which I was shown by a Mabvutsa the Acting School Headmistress."Majome said the mushrooming of private schools in Harare West is a symptom of government's failure in running the education system i.e. failing to build a single school in the constituency since the 1970s."In Parliament I took the Minister of Education Lazarus Dokora to task on the lack of new government schools to cater to the ballooning population and demanded that he does so. In Harare West, there has been no new school in Post independent Zimbabwe. Now parents who can afford to have to pay a fortune for their children to get education," she said."I also paid a courtesy call to the Exodus and Co. office at Madokero. I met the Administration Manager who shared with me the plans for this plush suburb, which once it's completed will have 1700 homes, 198 apartments, 48 Flats, 3 pre schools, 3 primary schools, 2 secondary schools, 5 churches, 2 medical centres and a shopping complex. Unfortunately the residents of this suburb were denied the right to vote in the recent Ward 16 council by elections as no new voter registration was conducted.
A gun has been found at a high school in Queanbeyan and police believe it might be connected to a shot fired at a home in Fergus Road last week.

Police were called to a property on Fergus Road about 2am on Wednesday last week, after receiving reports a gun had been fired at a house. The occupants, a 31-year-old man, an 18-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl, were uninjured.

A shot was allegedly fired at the window of a Fergus Street home. Credit:Karleen Minney

Paul John Barnes, 46, was remanded in custody when he appeared in Queanbeyan Local Court on Monday charged with 10 offences, including stalking and assault, some of which relate to the incident at Fergus Road.

In court, police prosecutor Anthony Strik told Magistrate Mark Douglass a gun had been found at a Queanbeyan high school, which was not identified, about 9am on Monday.
There will be a restricted airspace over Sydney Harbour for the first time on Australia Day with police asking those thinking about taking drones to the celebrations to keep them grounded.

"Keep your drones grounded, look skywards and enjoy the display that is going to be there for your benefit," said acting Assistant Commissioner Kyle Stewart, from the NSW Police Force major events group.

Police ask revellers to drink sensibly on Australia Day. Credit:Peter Braig

"If you are inclined to deploy your drone into that airspace, know that you pose a real risk to those that are taking in the aerial displays."

Hundreds of additional police officers will be on duty across the state tomorrow to ensure that Australia Day celebrations are enjoyed safely, in a family-friendly environment.
Pressure is mounting on the state government to release a consultants' report that found its policy on amalgamations is going to bring NSW $2 billion in economic benefits. In the past week, protesters, the opposition and academics have called for the release of the modelling by KPMG.

But it can be revealed that they're likely not the only ones complaining about being left in the dark. The Office of Local Government (OLG), a freedom-of-information request shows, doesn't have a copy of the modelling either.

KPMG's amalgamations report has drawn flak for its alleged inaccuracies. Credit:KPMG website

"The OLG does not hold the information sought," a representative from the department told Greens MLC and local government spokesman David Shoebridge in response to a freedom-of-information request.

The OLG, based on the NSW south coast, is the bureaucratic body responsible for legalisation enabling the council amalgamation policy and performance management of council governments generally. But it appears to have been sidelined from the analysis, which was commissioned by the Premier's department.
The Federal Government has approved a new instrument landing system for the Gold Coast, opening up a flight path over the homes of 60,000 residents.

Gold Coast Airport applied for permission to use the instrument landing system (ILS) to allow planes to land at the airport in bad weather.

A controversial flight path has been approved for the Gold Coast. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Around 50 flights a year are diverted from the Gold Coast to other airports at a cost of $50,000 per flight.

The system allows pilots to fly lower on approach before making the decision whether a flight should be diverted.
A man has been charged after allegedly attacking a woman with an axe during a domestic dispute in Brisbane's south-east on Sunday night.

The 38-year-old woman suffered a deep cut to her arm and was taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital for treatment after allegedly being attacked by a 51-year-old man.

A man will appear in court on Monday morning, charged over an axe attack on a 38-year-old woman in a domestic dispute.

Police were called to the pair's home at Marina Place in Wishart, about 14 kilometres south-east of Brisbane's CBD, about 9.15pm, where they found the wounded woman.

They will allege a fight erupted between the pair and the man left the house briefly, before returning with the axe, which he allegedly then used to attack the woman.
Court orders to protect victims of domestic violence in Queensland were breached almost as many times as police applied for them in 2015.

Statistics obtained by AAP show police made 19,708 applications for domestic violence protection orders last year.

Since January 2013, the number of both applications and violations of protection orders has climbed steadily by thousands each year.

But in the same period, there were almost as many breaches of orders sought by police and private applicants granted by the courts - a total of 19,405 contraventions.

Since January 2013, the number of both applications and violations of protection orders has climbed steadily by thousands each year.
A 19-year-old Brisbane man is feared drowned after being dragged out to sea in treacherous surf on the Sunshine Coast on Sunday.

Water police and rescue helicopters have resumed their search for the teenager, who was swimming with a friend when he got caught in a rip at Noosa North Shore about 2.30pm on Sunday.

Lifesavers search for Josh Carter, who went missing off a beach north of Noosa. Credit:Surf Life Saving Queensland

A search was launched immediately but failed to find him before light faded on Sunday night.
A man accused of booking a bogus concert while pretending to represent English DJ Mark Ronson has pleaded not guilty in a Perth court.

Hundreds of fans were disappointed when Ronson, famous for the chart-topping hit Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars, was advertised to appear at Matisse Beach Club on July 25 but never showed because he was actually playing at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay.

British DJ Mark Ronson was actually playing music festival Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay at the time.

Peter Jing Zu Lessnau, 34, appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Monday, charged with three counts of fraud totalling $4250, and had his bail renewed to appear in court again for a one-day trial on May 16.

- AAP
A British explorer attempting the first unassisted solo crossing of Antarctica has died 71 days after setting out and possibly within a week of his goal, his wife said.

Henry Worsley, 55, had been suffering from increasing exhaustion and dehydration during the voyage, posting updates by satellite phone.

The former army officer was just 48 kilometres from the end of the almost 1600-kilometre trek when he called for help and was airlifted off the ice on Friday.

Worsley died "following complete organ failure" at a clinic in Punta Arenas, Chile, his wife Joanna said in a statement on Monday.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

The state media reports that some churches have expressed support for the 21st of February to be declared a national holiday in honour of the role played by President Robert Mugabe in liberating the country and safeguarding its independence.Christian leaders paid a courtesy call on Zanu PF Secretary for Youth Affairs, Pupurai Togarepi where they said the future generations must always be aware of the role played by President Mugabe particularly during times when the odds were heavily stacked against him.Reverend Sam Malunga of Tehillah Christian Ministries and House of Refuge International Ministries' Apostle Partson Machengete, said they want Zimbabweans to honour President Mugabe by declaring his birthday, the 21st of February, a public holiday.Togarepi underscored the contribution Mugabe has made to Zimbabwe's liberation and how he still continues to fight for the rights of the downtrodden on the African continent and the globe.This year's 21st February Movement celebrations are set for the Great Zimbabwe monuments in Masvingo with preparations on course.
Berlin: Europe needs to make a greater contribution to stabilising the Middle East and should think about developing a joint strategy with Russia to reduce tensions between regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble believes.

Mr Schaeuble, an experienced member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Europe could not have a strategy in the Middle East or Africa without working with the United States and Russia.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's Finance Minister, says Europe should work with Russia to help stabilise the Middle East. Credit:Krisztian Bocsi

"If I correctly understand Russia's security interests with regard to Islamist terror, it rather has problems with Sunni-based aspirations," he wrote in an opinion piece to run in the newspaper's Monday edition.

"Why then shouldn't we be able to develop a joint strategy with Russia to reduce differences between a Saudi-led Sunni coalition and an Iran-led Shiite coalition?" he asked.
Kalimantan, Indonesia: A so-called "deviant sect" living in a remote farming community are besieged by a mob who burn their settlement to the ground. Hundreds of suspected members are taken to transit centres. The government deploys warships to transport them back to their home villages, where they will be "re-educated" by religious leaders.

It may sound like a B-movie script but these extraordinary scenes have played out over the past week in Indonesia, in a country still jumpy after the Jakarta terror attacks.

A little-known religious minority group called the Fajar Nusantara Movement, or Gafatar, recently came to public attention when a doctor and her six-month-old son disappeared from Yogyakarta in December. She was found two weeks later, living in a Gafatar community in West Kalimantan that had been established four months ago.
New Jersey: A family in New Jersey, trapped over the weekend in the massive East Coast snowstorm, was trying to dig its way out when the chill became too much to handle. The mother and her children - ages one and three - huddled in the car with the engine running to keep warm. The kids' father tried to clear the snow outside.

Authorities said no one seemed to realise that the tailpipe was clogged with snow, pushing deadly carbon monoxide gas into the car. When the father went to check on them, police said, he could not wake them up.

The father, Felix Bonilla, started "crying and jumping," Isabel Carmona, a neighbour, told NBC New York.

Bonilla called 911. Neighbours tried to help, performing CPR until paramedics arrived, according to news reports. But, police said, when EMTs got there, they could not find a pulse for the mother or her son.
Recruiting as a Strategic Business Partner: Greenhouse to Explore in Upcoming Webinar

NEW YORK, NY  (Marketwired)  01/25/16 

, a leading recruiting optimization platform, and , an all-in-one dashboard for HR software

Will present the complimentary webinar, .

Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. EST (12:00 p.m. CST / 11:00 a.m. MST / 10:00 a.m. PST)

Registration for the webinar is available at:

Oftentimes, hiring departments are reactive in their recruiting processes. Recruiters and hiring managers wait for requisitions to open before reaching out to attractive candidates, all the while missing out on the opportunity to engage with the best and brightest. Rather than stay caught in a constant cycle of catch-up, hiring departments should consider the benefits of developing their role as a strategic business partner in order to demonstrate value and stay one step ahead.

During this webinar, hosted by , Michelle Delcambre, senior recruiting manager for , will explain exactly what this partnership entails, making the case that recruiting should be a top business priority. In addition, Delcambre will share the steps it takes to forecast headcount and budget plus how to make the recruiting process more data driven. Attendees will learn to implement new methods to change recruiting from a reactive function to a proactive, business-critical function. Human resource professionals, recruiters and hiring managers interested in learning how to improve recruiting processes and forge a more strategic position within their organization are encouraged to attend this webinar.

More information can be accessed at: .

is an all-in-one HR software that connects all your HR systems into one dashboard, making it easier to manage your day-to-day tasks.

Greenhouse Software is a that helps companies source, interview and hire the best talent. Located in San Francisco and New York City, Greenhouse was founded by Daniel Chait and Jon Stross. Recognized as a 2015 Best Place to Work in New York City by Crains New York Business, the Greenhouse team supports clients such as Airbnb, Slack, Oscar Health and more. To learn more or request a demo, visit .
FACT.direct: Factoring with a Mouse Click

Posted by Publisher Software

Kaarst. Selling factoring agreements is complex and time consuming: the credit rating needs to be reviewed, haircuts determined, and several versions of the agreements prepared. Each mistake can have serious repercussions. For that reason, previously, only consultants at banks, savings banks (Sparkassen) and financial brokers who are experts in the field of factoring products were able to sell these products. All that is about to change now with a new IT tool. FACT.direct almost entirely automates the bidding process using parameters already fed into the system. New factoring agreements can be generated with a few clicks. If once concluding a factoring agreement would take up to three months, the agreements are now ready for signature already while the consultation is underway. fidis GmbH has developed an online IT solution in collaboration with S-Factoring GmbH, a company of the group of saving banks (Sparkassen) in Germany.

FACT.direct allows us to considerably simplify and accelerate our processes, underscores Uwe Sablotny, CEO of S-Factoring GmbH. Now almost all Sparkassen consultants can offer and sell factoring products to their customers. For that, they only need a computer with internet connectivity. Until now, factoring was being offered only to selected key customers. The sales process was too onerous for bulk transactions to be conducted at the point of sale. At the same time, FACT.direct opens up very new target groups. FACT.direct allows banks and savings banks to also approach small and medium-sized companies with high efficiency, explains Reiner Hirschberg, CTO of fidis GmbH. That opens up entirely new marketing prospects for the institutions.

Consultants now only need to enter the company information and the industry affiliation of their customers into the input screen. The system checks the credit rating and the admissibility of the sector. If the result is positive, information concerning the acquisition volumes, factoring parameters and the larger debtor are retrieved. At the push of a button, FACT.direct automatically computes the offer with the fees and the security deposit. Following a few further clicks, the agreements can be retrieved in PDF format, which are available for print and ready to be signed immediately.

The parameters in the system concerning approved industrial sectors, credit rating criteria and limit conditions are determined by the factoring company. This security matrix allows the institute to regulate the processes and control the risks, explains Reiner Hirschberg. Whoever wants can also set individual parameters for each partner institute. At the same time, the factoring provider can monitor all the processes via the portal for affiliated sales partners. They thereby secure 100 percent transparency. Reports listing information on the closing rates and the duration of the conversations also allow sustained optimisation of the whole sales cycle.

S-Factoring GmbH has already automated the processing of its existing factoring mandates with FACT.pilot. As the next step, FACT.direct now offers a form of high performing sales support.
Commerce of Caring Podcast Series Highlights the Untold Stories of Children in Need, and the People of Retail Answering the Call

ATLANTA, GA  (Marketwired)  01/25/16  A young woman from New Jersey rushes headlong into the Liberian Ebola crisis when most westerners are racing to get out. A Congolese wife and mother has the chance to leave one of the most impoverished and dangerous communities in the world, to join her family in the U.S., but stays to build a future for orphaned children. These are just two of the remarkable stories of courage and commitment profiled in a new podcast series from , being launched today on .

Commerce of Caring explores the power and possibilities of positive change, and the unsung heroes who are using it to create real opportunities for children in need. Through exclusive interviews and first-hand accounts, these humble agents of progress explain what led them to get involved, the choices they made to help, and how those same choices are available to everyone  through organizations that are connected directly to local needs and solutions.

For people within the retail industry, that organization is the As an established charitable group funded by dozens of companies, RetailROI channels financial support, material resources and hands-on assistance from retailers, analysts, and technology providers such as Aptos into a wide range of education, health and social projects that are making a real and often dramatic difference in the lives of orphans and vulnerable children around the world.

Commerce of Caring brings you their stories. Each episode in the series will showcase a different country and community, the context of their crises, and the impact they have had on children. But the focus is on transformation: on how, with the collective support of people half a world away, dedicated local leaders are succeeding against great odds to turn heartbreak into hope.

Episode one of Commerce of Caring tells the compelling story of people who have come together on the front lines in Liberia, West Africa to deliver children from the legacies of civil war and Ebola. They include Katie Meyler, a Time magazine in 2014. In her own words, Meyler explains how she went to Liberia to help build a school for children, and why, instead of fleeing from the Ebola crisis, she went back in. Her organization, More than Me, has been a life-changing force for the communitys children and the future of young girls. The first episode also features the experiences of Bishop Emmanuel and Ramona Jones of , an organization providing education, security and a future for children without parents, and of the people of RetailROI and Aptos who are supporting Lifesongs work.

The second episode in the series introduces listeners to the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest and most dangerous countries the world. It is a story of pure commitment by the people of to build schools and opportunities for children while overcoming tremendous obstacles, including a legacy of poverty and oppression that has adversely affected not just how they live but also how they view themselves. This episode also showcases the Congo Animal Traction Initiative, another RetailROI-sponsored program that highlights how truly great changes can sometimes come from the most humble resources  such as an ox in a field.

The first season of Commerce of Caring will include six additional episodes. They will be produced by Aptos and released regularly on the website, .

At Aptos, we believe that success is defined by more than financial results; success means being an active part of a larger community and an agent of change, said Noel Goggin, Aptos CEO and culture leader. We see ourselves as part of a larger community responsible for supporting not only those who enjoy the rewards of education and good work, but also those who aspire to those same privileges, especially children who lack basic foundational resources such as education, clean water and secure home environments. This is why we are proud to support RetailROI.

Through our Commerce of Caring podcast series, we hope to share these important and amazing stories of the people of retail as they expand their focus beyond the challenges of omni-channel commerce to make a difference in the world. Because when people hear these stories, we hope they will get involved  that they will donate, volunteer and take action, he said.

RetailROI is a charitable foundation that sits under the umbrella of the Giving Back Fund a 501c3 charity organization, and is supported by close to 50 leading retailers, technology suppliers, consultants and media organizations, as well as countless individuals who contribute to its fundraising initiatives. Its mission is to provide real solutions for vulnerable children worldwide by raising awareness; by leveraging their skills and networks to make a difference; and by channeling resources to proven, local organizations delivering frontline support directly to those in need.

Since its inception, RetailROI has raised millions of dollars for a diverse range of projects in 19countries around the world helping over 185,000 children in need. These include programs to educate and empower girls in Liberia; to acquire cattle for farming in rural Congo; to provide education for orphans in Honduras; to combat child trafficking in Nepal and India; to establish computer labs for schools in many locations; and to deliver support and resources for foster families in the U.S. More than 94% of the funds raised go directly to the programs they are intended to support. For additional information, visit .

To learn more about the Commerce of Caring podcast series and to listen to the latest episodes, visit .

In an era of virtually limitless choice, sustained competitive advantage only comes to retailers who engage customers differently  by truly understanding who they are, what they want and why they buy. At Aptos, we too, believe that engaging customers differently is critical to our success. We are committed to a deep understanding of each of our clients, to fulfilling their needs with the retail industrys most comprehensive omni-channel solutions, and to fostering long-term relationships built on tangible value and trust. More than 500 retail brands rely upon our Singular Commerce platform to deliver every shopper a personalized, empowered and seamless experience no matter when, where or how they shop. Learn more: .

Follow Aptos on Twitter

Aptos, the Aptos logo and Singular Commerce. Seamless Experiences are trademarks of Aptos, Inc. All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners. The product and service offerings depicted in this document are produced by Aptos, Inc.

Audio-Link Available:

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Tila Pacheco

Lutz PR for Aptos

+1 714 256 8452
News / National

by Ivan Zhakata

A man took used condoms and his wife's spoiled undergarments to her workplace, accusing her of bed-hopping, in front of her colleagues, the Harare Civil Court heard.Tabudirira Mawonera reportedly took the panties in a bid to fix his wife, Nester Chimedza whom he suspected was having sexual relations with other men during his absence.Chimedza, who was seeking a protection order against Mawonera, told the magistrate Ms Gamuchirai Siwardi that she discovered that he was HIV positive after they got married, resulting in her denying him unprotected sex.She said Mawonera started accusing her of having sexual relations with other men and would assault her on different occasions."He is my former husband and he abuses me physically and verbally," Chimedza said."I discovered that he was HIV positive after we got married and told him to use protection, but he became violent and started accusing me of having extra-marital affairs."When I refused to have unprotected sex with him, he took my panties and used condoms to my workplace and started shouting in front of my colleagues calling me a prostitute with an unsatisfied sexual appetite."He took my academic certificates and threatened to burn them."Each time he meets me in public, he shouts at me, insulting me calling me all sorts of derogatory names," she said.Mawonera did not deny the allegations.He told the court that he found used condoms in their bedroom when he returned from South Africa."I found used condoms and I asked her who she was having sex with during my absence," Mawonera said."She told me that I had no right to question her since she lived at her workplace. I then took her spoiled panties and the used condoms to her workplace because I wanted her to tell me the man she was bedding," he said.Ms Siwardi ordered Mawonera to stop abusing Chimedza in any way and to keep peace with her at all times.
'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown' won't be on TV this year: How to see it
News / Regional

by Staff reporter

Elton Nyathi (23) from Victoria Falls, who last June won a Nissan NP300 at the OK Grand Challenge valued at around $30 000, has been arrested for driving it without a licence.A former Mosi-oa-Tunya High School pupil, Nyathi faces charges of driving without a licence and escaping from lawful custody.Nyathi was handcuffed, but he outpaced cops and was only re-arrested the following day.He pleaded guilty to driving without a licence but denied charges of escaping from lawful custody when he appeared before Victoria Falls resident magistrate Lindiwe Maphosa last Friday.Maphosa remanded him out of custody to January 29.The prosecutor Mr Takunda Ndovorwi told the court that on January 10, 2016, at around 6pm Nyathi was driving the car towards Mkhosana suburb."The accused was stopped by traffic police who requested a driver's licence. When he failed to produce one, he was arrested and while being escorted to the police station, Nyathi escaped," Mr Ndovorwi said.A manhunt was launched and Nyathi was later arrested at Lupinyu Business Centre the following day.The Grand Challenge winner said last year that he had no driver's licence but was planning to start driving lessons.
News / Regional

by Leonard Ncube

A BINGA shebeen queen who was recently sentenced to community service for pummelling a patron with a log for stealing a bottle of tototo, has once again appeared in court, this time for possessing the illicit brew.Letina Mudenda, 45, from Chisamba Village under Chief Saba, was arrested after police discovered a 1,5 litres of the illicit potent brew at her homestead.Mudenda, 45, who was yet to complete the 105 hours of unpaid work at Tinde Clinic for the previous crime, was this time charged alongside her husband, Yamba Aleck Mudimba, 59.The two appeared before senior Hwange magistrate Rose Dube charged with possessing a harmful substance.The couple pleaded guilty to the charge.The magistrate warned, cautioned and discharged them.Prosecutor Charlene Gorerino said on October 6 last year, Constable Mathias Mpande recovered 1.5 litres of tototo at the couple's homestead and immediately arrested the two accused.
A star with an unusual history is racing through the galaxy at breakneck speed  most likely blasted away by a supernova and carrying traces of the exploded star.

The strange runaway star, which is rocketing along at more than 960,000 miles per hour (1.54 million kilometers per hour), is stained in carbon even though it's too immature to have created the stuff itself, scientists said.

Kathryn Plant, a senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), presented the new observations earlier this month at the American Astronomical Society's 227th meeting in Kissimee, Florida. She and her co-authors said the star's tremendous speed and its carbon signal could be linked. [The Top 10 Strangest Things in Space]

"You're looking at this very, very, very rare star that's moving at cannonball velocity," study co-author Bruce Margon, an astronomer at UCSC, told Space.com. "That got us thinking  maybe there's something about it being a dwarf carbon star that has to do with it having this crazy-high speed."

Their top guess is that the speedy star was in a binary system with another star that imbued it with carbon before dying in a massive supernova explosion, shooting the first star out and away. The situation may be similar for several other "cannonball" candidates the researchers have identified.

That unusual carbon content is the key "extra clue" to the speedy stars' origin, said Plant, the new work's lead author.

"For many stars, we can look at them and see how they're moving now, but we often don't have a lot of clues to what they might have been doing in the distant past," she told Space.com. "Since [the star] carries this material mark, we have a clue to what it was doing in the past."

Perplexing stars

The star in question, called SDSS J112801.67+004034.6 (SDSS J1128 for "short"), was originally measured through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in March 2000. Along with about 500 others found so far, it seems to fall into the strange stellar category of "dwarf carbon stars." Different than a "white dwarf," the super-dense remnant left at the end of a star's life cycle, a dwarf carbon star appears to be in an early stage of evolution but contains a high level of carbon. That's odd, because carbon is usually found shrouding red giants, which are in a much later stage.

An image of the newly measured "cannonball" star SDSS J1128, as taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. (Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

"The mere existence of these stars is kind of perplexing, because they are adolescent stars  they are stars at about the same evolutionary stage as our sun," Margon said. "There shouldn't be such a thing as a dwarf carbon star, because there's no way for that star to have created carbon given where it is in its life cycle."

Instead, researchers theorize that each of these stars once orbited together with another star, a companion, which was in a later part of its life cycle and had already produced carbon. If the binary stars orbited closely enough, one star's carbon could transfer to the other.

The transfer of mass could happen peacefully over time  "a gentle wind puffed off for millions of years," Margon said  but the two stars' association might end on much more violent terms when the more mature star explodes into a supernova.

Smoking guns

SDSS J1128 first came to the researchers' attention because of how quickly it was speeding away from Earth, which researchers calculated based on distortion in the wavelengths of light it put out in that first measurement. They followed up by measuring the star with Hawaii's Keck Observatory in April 2015, and found that it was still moving away at about the same speed.

But not only that: After looking at the star's location from surveys over many years (the earliest was in 1955), the research team realized that it was visibly sweeping across the sky as well, not just fleeing from Earth. That implied that the star was dimmer and close, rather than far away and very bright.

Incorporating images from 1955 to 2009, researchers calculated how the star SDSS J1128 was moving with respect to the backdrop of stars behind it, and combined that with its velocity away from Earth to estimate its total 3D motion through the Milky Way. The red circle shows the star's expected position if there was no motion. (Image credit: University of California, Santa Cruz)

Researchers know stars can pick up incredible speed by whipping around the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way's center, so this was one of the first possible explanations for this star's great velocity. But once the collaborators calculated its approximate location  between 3,000 and 10,000 light-years away  and its speed compared with the center of the galaxy, it became clear that the star was not on that type of trajectory.

"Even though we don't have one exact number, we can understand what it's most likely doing," Plant said. "We can rule out [] certain motions that are not possible, and that lets us conclude that it's not coming from the center of the galaxy, which is one of the main questions we wanted to answer, and also lets us conclude that it is bound to the galaxy but it's on an extremely eccentric orbit."

So they turned to the supernova possibility. Other stars' speeds have occasionally been attributed to the driving force of a supernova, the researchers said, but evidence has not been conclusive.

"This thing has a different set of smoking guns that are pointing towards that evidence," Margon said. "It's the thing science fiction emerges from: You have a peaceful star minding its own business, its companion goes 'kerblooie' and completely demolishes itself and shoots this thing off like a cannonball," he added. "We're advancing this as a candidate for that [scenario]." [Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions]

Not so alone

To find out more about the high-speed star, researchers can take follow-up measurements to check for tiny variations in the speed at which it's moving away from Earth, as well as more about its chemical composition. Ultimately, projects like Europe's galaxy-mapping Gaia mission could provide even more precise data about the star's location, if it falls within the satellite's view, the researchers said.

The star is one of a few candidates the researchers found for this extreme motion  it had the fastest velocity of the bunch relative to Earth, but the others could prove even faster when measured in the context of the entire galaxy. Comparing the traits of all those "cannonball" stars could help solidify the supernova explanation or suggest another mechanism.

"The fact that this is a super-high-velocity star isn't going to go away," Margon said. "The interpretation might change."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The space shuttle Challenger launches on Jan. 28, 1986. The mission would end in tragedy just 73 seconds into the flight.

A new documentary about the space shuttle Challenger accident airs tonight (Jan. 25), three days before the 30th anniversary of the tragic event.

On Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, killing all seven astronauts aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, whom NASA had chosen to become America's first teacher in space.

The new documentary, called "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes," re-examines the disaster using contemporary audio recordings and rare video footage, including interviews with McAuliffe and clips of the New Hampshire social-studies teacher practicing some of the lessons she had planned to send down to kids on Earth from orbit. [Challenger Remembered: Photos from NASA's Tragic Shuttle Disaster]

"Christa was just a wonderful teacher, a wonderful human being and a wonderful representative of our profession," former NASA astronaut Barbara Morgan told Space.com. Morgan, an educator herself, served as McAuliffe's backup on the Challenger mission and eventually made it to space aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2007.

"Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. CT on the National Geographic Channel. The film will also air on National Geographic Channels in 171 countries in 45 languages, and in Spanish on Nat Geo Mundo, network representatives said. You can watch a teaser trailer for the documentary here.

McAuliffe was a payload specialist on the doomed Challenger mission, which is known as STS-51-L. The other astronauts who lost their lives that day were mission commander Dick Scobee; pilot Mike Smith; mission specialists Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ron McNair; and payload specialist Greg Jarvis.

Investigators later determined that a rubber seal called an O-ring in one of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters failed during launch, partly as a result of unusually cold weather (which caused the O-ring to harden).

This failure allowed hot, high-pressure gas to escape and damage Challenger's huge external fuel tank, as well as the equipment that attached the solid rocket booster to the tank.

The space shuttle fleet was grounded for 32 months in the wake of the Challenger disaster, finally taking to the skies again in September 1988 on Discovery's STS-26 mission. The program suffered another disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia broke apartupon re-entering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

The shuttles stopped flying for good in July 2011, and the surviving orbiters are now museum pieces. NASA currently relies on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to and from orbit, though the space agency is encouraging privately developed American spaceships to perform this taxi service. Indeed, NASA awarded a total of $6.8 billion to Boeing and SpaceX in September 2014 to finish work on their crew capsules, which the agency hopes will be up and running by the end of next year.

"Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" airs tonight on the National Geographic Channel at 9 p.m. (check local listings).

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Opinion / Columnist

Joice Mujuru and her People First pose a real serious political threat to President Mugabe and Zanu PF's no-regime-change mantra; more serious that Tsvangirai and MDC ever posed in 2008 and 2013.In 2008 President Mugabe was able to brush aside Tsvangirai and his MDC by blatantly cooking the March results to deny Tsvangirai victory and then using brute force to ensure people voted for him in the July run-off. He "declared war", as Tsvangirai aptly put it, on the nation with his operation "Mavhotera papi!" (Whom did you vote for!)Zimbabwe has had a checked history of vote rigging and election violence but the 2008 presidential run-off saw the worse wanton violence ever; millions were harassed, beaten and forced to flee their homes, hundreds and thousands were rape and over 500 were murdered by Zanu PF operatives and security services personal recruited from Army, Police and CIO. SADC and the AU had turned a blind eye to Mugabe's vote rigging and election violence in the past but even they could not pretend the 2008 presidential run-off was free and fair.SADC would grant President Mugabe legitimacy on condition he signed the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) and share power with Tsvangirai and MDC in a Government of National Unity (GNU). The main task of the GNU was to implement democratic reforms necessary to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship, a pre-requisite for free, fair and credible elections.The primary purpose of the GPA was to ensure Zimbabwe's next elections were free, fair and credible and thus end the country's political culture of vote rigging and violence. SADC was the guarantor of the GPA objective is met.How President Mugabe managed to bamboozle Tsvangirai and his entire MDC party into doing nothing to implement the GPA reforms is a measure of the tyrant's as cunning as a fox reputation, the MDC leaders' notoriety as breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent or both. With not even one reform implemented, President Mugabe was able to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections.He could not use violence, not with GPA still valid and SADC watching him; he had no choice to complete rely of a very elaborate vote rigging scheme in which he had to bribe lots and lots of people. It must have costed President Mugabe billions; fortunately for him he had a treasure trough from the $2 billion a year he, alone, looted from Marange but even this was not enough. He looted public funds in terms of cash and materials; the country's public finances have been a mess ever since."We in the MDC were wrong in participating in that (2013 general) election," MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has since sheepishly admitted, "on the assumption and belief that the sheer numbers of Zimbabweans would overwhelm whatever shenanigans Zanu PF had planned to subvert the will of the people"Have wasted the golden opportunity to implement the GPA reforms during the GNU and lost all political credibility; MDC has since the rigged July 2013 elections been trying to claw back its lost political standing by promising the nation it will force Zanu PF, "kicking and screaming" to implement electoral law reform BEFORE the next elections. MDC said they would do this by "the end of the year", said MDC Secretary General, Douglas Mwonzora, last year. Zanu PF completely ignore MDC and said so publicly too!Even if all the electoral law reforms MDC are calling for were implemented, no one worth his salt would suggest this would be enough to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC leaders and supporters alike have grudgingly admitted that they would never get Zanu PF to implement the GPA reforms now because it would be "political suicide" of Zanu PF, Vince Musewe said. In other words MDC are demanding of Zanu PF the implementation of electoral reform because MDC wants to be seen to be doing something reforms even if it is total ineffective.MDC has made heavy weather of its National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) and even collared 15 other opposition parties to back its reforms. By backing MDC-T's call for totally ineffective reforms one can immediately see these 15 opposition parties have a lot in common with MDC-T; they are just as corrupt and incompetent, for a start. Zanu PF has benefited from MDC-T's foolish recall of breakaway MDC MPs and Senators and complete ignored the NERA noise from MDC-T with the arrogance of a honey badger that has broken into the hive of stingless honey bees!So if everything was left to corrupt and incompetent MDC-T and their friends, the Meliponini (Scientific name for the stingless honey bees) of Zimbabwe politics, we will never have free and fair elections. They will issue the usual ultimate and "kicking and scream" threats but will never implement not even one democratic reform. The only real political threat to Zanu PF's, the mean Mellivora capensis (Scientific name for honey badger) of Zimbabwe politics with a matching insatiable appetite for power and wealth, tyrannical strangle will be Joice Mujuru and her People First.Mujuru, Mutasa, Gumbo, Sibanda and the rest of People First (PF) members can win the next elections even with not one democratic reform implemented! Unlike Tsvangirai and MDC, Mujuru and PF will have inside information (Mujuru will still have many supporters and sympathisers masquerading as Zanu PF members) on how President Mugabe plans to rig the elections to take counter measures. Even exposing vote rigging details after the elections will be fatally damaging to Zanu PF.So regardless of Zanu PF's clear electoral advantage of having a treasure trough from the looting and plundering in Marange and the continued total control of all the country's institutions to implement it's vote rigging plans; the party's electoral victory is still not assured. Rigging the vote is only the half of it; making sure Mujuru and her supporters imbedded in Zanu PF are all kept in the dark of the plans throughout will be a real tough call.http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/deadliestbeasts/images/a/af/Honey_badger.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111009060008No messing around with a honey badger with its tail up!But President Mugabe, the Mellivora capensis he is, has one more card up his sleeve or up his Mellivora capensis arse! The honey badger not only looks like a skunk but is similarly equipped; cornered, its kneejerk response is to lift its tail and let rip! President Mugabe let rip in 2014 and Mujuru and her friends all stopped dead in their tracks, he will do it again!President Mugabe has managed to keep top-dog position in Zanu PF by making sure got a share of the spoils of power and wealth even when this meant destroying the nation's economy as was the case with the seizure of the white owned farms to give his cronies. But by far his cleverest tactic was to push his party members into soiling their hands be it through corruption or worse still political murders; he has carefully documented their criminal activities, he has then use it to blackmail those who dare oppose him. When it was decided to "baby dump" Joice Mujuru, Grace Mugabe accused her of being corrupt and released details Mai Mujuru's diamond dealing and how she had been demanding a 10% cut from business operators. Mai Mujuru knew President Mugabe's multi-layered spying networks has volumes of information on her and her late husband's corrupt dealings and worse; daring it was futile.So if the PF should become a real serious political threat then Mujuru and her fellow PF leaders will find themselves fighting a damaging rear guard offensive as details of their dirty past is made public. Leaders like Didymus Mutasa and Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, for example, have shed innocent blood during their Zanu PF days; Mugabe will released the full details of what happened at the most opportune moment to bury the individuals politically and take PF into their grave with them.Mujuru and her PF are nothing more than a foolish general whose army fought bravely to occupy the enemy's castle only to find the man on the throne has a grenade in his hand and the safety pin was pulled out. The whole castle was bubby trapped and grenade would blow the whole castle, the general and his whole army to smatterings! Anyone who thinks that when push comes to shove Mujuru and her followers would risk all to force President Mugabe out of office clearly live in cloud-cuckoo-land.Look what has happened to Syria; President Assad has systematically bombed any part of that country as soon as it fell into rebel hands. President Mugabe would do the same given half the chance!The only real chance of forcing President Mugabe to give up power peacefully is by demanding the implementation of the GPA reforms. President Mugabe is feeling the pressure to accept political change from the worsening economic meltdown and the infighting in his own party. He should not be allowed to think he can extend his rule by choosing to implement the ineffective electoral law reforms or worse still, resist reforms and he will have another chance to rig the next elections. He can rig the next elections but that will land him back where he is right now but with the pressure for change even greater than ever.Free, fair and credible elections are the basis of good government and the only way out of Zimbabwe's political and economic mess!
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The reboot of the iconic action series has cast Straight Outta Compton breakout Corey Hawkins in the leading role.Taking over for previous series star Kiefer Sutherland, Hawkins will play an entirely new character named Eric Carter in 24: Legacy. Strong and smart, Eric came from a very rough background and turned his life around in the Army Rangers, reads the official description. Now back home in Virginia with his wife Nicole, hes pulled back into action as his past comes looking for him. Carter will join forces with the Counter Terrorist Unit to try and prevent an attack on American soil.None of the original 24 cast is expected to appear in the new version, which Fox ordered to pilot earlier this month. Unlike the first version of the series, where Jack Bauer (Sutherland) was basically a lone wolf protagonist for nine seasons, the new 24 also has strong features a female co-lead role (not yet cast). If given a series order, 24: Legacy will also play looser with the original shows distinctive real time format, with a 12-episode order instead of 24 episodes.Hawkins had an arc on AMCs The Walking Dead last year (as one of Alexandrias residents, Heath) and a part in the action film Non-Stop. He also played Dr. Dre in the recent acclaimed biodoc Straight Outta Compton. Hawkins has also has been cast in the upcoming film Kong: Skull Island.
Opinion / Letters

Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a community activist, communications specialist, journalist, and writer. He writes in his personal capacity, and welcomes any feedback. Please call/WhatsApp: +263782283975, or email: tendaiandtinta.mbofana@gmail.com

YOUR EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE, ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE, It is with a heavily bleeding heart that I humbly write this letter to you, as the nation and people of this great nation of Zimbabwe have hit a brick wall, through untold despair and suffering, that we have decided to cry to the Father of the nation, in the hope that finally someone may hear us, and extinguish the fire that is burning us alive.All the nation's hope is now on your personal intervention, as we have cried for so long - dripping tears of blood - and yet no one hears; and as abandoned children, we have been left in the cold night to be drenched by the unkind and cruel rains of poverty, whilst the little dignity we have left is devoured by merciless government and corporate monsters.YOUR EXCELLENCY, it is not easy to come before the Head of State and Government to cry for a morsel of food, but we are hungry and we are left desperate and with no hope.The people of Zimbabwe are jobless and without any means of survival - as most are now living from hand to mouth, as we scavenge for food in the most undignified and dehumanising ways.Millions of Zimbabweans are wallowing in abject poverty, without any hope for the future.The people of Zimbabwe are a hardworking and educated lot, but there are no opportunities for us.The so-called empowerment has largely benefited those who already have, and the have-nots, still have nothing.As we scrounge around for a semblance of decency, we are only met by scorn by corporate sector that has lost all morality.The vast majority of workers in Zimbabwe have not been paid for months, if not years, leaving them with nothing to buy food for their families.Employees of such companies as Greenfuel Ethanol Plant in Chisumbanje, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (Ziscosteel), and endless others, are now leaving like beggars, yet they have sacrificed their lives for the very survival of this country through their hard work at these companies.These companies have ensured that there is enough fuel, food, industrial products, you name it - for the country to survive - and yet the workers do not even know where they will get their next meal.Employers are firing workers without any just cause, and most of these workers are not even being given their terminal benefits that they would have contributed to these companies for all those years of hard work.After being used to earn these corporate sharks the wealth they now possess, these workers are simply thrown to the kerb, as if they were dispensable dippers.Most workers are being summarily dismissed without any due process, and without payment of outstanding salaries and benefits, and yet those workers are being replaced the very next day.The employers lament their inability in paying employee salaries, so where do they get the money to pay the ones they readily employ as replacements?Whilst these corporate bosses complain of their businesses' viability problems, they still manage to send their children to the most expensive schools, stay in upmarket houses, and dine at the finest hotels - yet their workers can not afford to pay fees at the cheapest schools for their children, at the same time they are being evicted from their homes because they can not afford the rentals, and their families go to bed hungry as they can not afford even one decent meal a day.In fact, some of the most abusive and heartless employers are ranked in the top 50 of the wealthiest people in Zimbabwe - and they have the audacity not to pay their workers the measly salaries that they were supposed to pay them.Those that were staying in company houses are told to vacate, or else pay commercial rates, yet these companies have not been paying them for months. Where are they supposed to get the money from?Are these employers who whine and whinge everyday about the poor economic situation in Zimbabwe sincere in their cries?If they were seriously suffering in the same way as the workers are suffering, then should they not be more empathetic to the plight of their employers?Who will hear the genuine cries of these workers? Does anyone in government really care? Are these not the same people that the government says it wants to empower?Who cares about the hundreds, if not thousands of children who could not go to school this year?Can the government not see those children of school going age roaming about the streets during school hours?Mr. President, sir, a whole new uneducated generation is being created, and a ticking time-bomb, as these children will easily be drawn into a world of crime, and hopelessness - which can easily lead them to rebellion and civil strife.This hopelessness has already led to numerous children delving into drugs and alcohol, and girls as young as 12 years old prostituting themselves.An uneducated generation will also lead to further economic disintegration in the future.What type of nation is this leading to Mr. President, sir?Is this the type of nation you and others so gallantly fought for?Is this the type of livelihood that you sacrificed your own freedom and family life for?Is this the type of life you dreamt that Zimbabweans would have?Is this what you envisaged an independent Zimbabwe to be like, when you were in Mozambique, planning the liberation struggle?When I watch the video that was usually shown on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) television of the unrestrained joy and jubilation of the people of Zimbabwe on 17/18 April 1980 at Rufaro Stadium on the event of our independence, I can not help but shed a tear.The radiant hope on those faces was undescribable and nothing short of awe-inspiring.The men, women, and even children, singing and dancing with such zeal, genuineness and shining eyes full of hope for finally getting a decent livelihood worthy of a respectable human being.They could just picture the future - where they would no longer be oppressed, no longer fail to go to school, and no longer be limited in their opportunities in life.The unsurpassed joy and hope on those people's faces in that video is forever engrained in my mind, and I will never forget it.My own late father and mother travelled all the way from Redcliff to attend those celebrations - he even lost a shoe in the massive jubilant crowd, but that did not matter, as the joy of a new Zimbabwe and new hope overshadowed everything.I remember how emotional you also were, Mr. President, on that day.Who can forget when you came forward to take your oath of office as the new Prime Minister of an independent Zimbabwe?The way you said that oath, and the way you were so emotional that you even took off your spectacles was so touching and infectious.That was a great moment indeed - inspiring millions across the world.However, what has become of that joy and hope?I wish my father was still alive to ask him how he felt now - as we even hosted Cde. Chinx and the ZANU PF choir at our house when they came to sing in Torwood, Redcliff in the early 1980s.Actually, I plead to anyone who was in that video to contact me and tell me how they feel in today's Zimbabwe.Mr. President, sir, please hear the cries of your nation. Please restore that hope of 1980.We plead with you to intervene in the plight of these abused workers and the unemployed, so that their dignity may be restored.We plead with your good office to ensure they these workers receive what is due to them, and that the government and corporate sector are more responsive to the needs of the people.Please protect them from the malice of government officials and employers who are only concerned about their own stomachs and would not care less even if these workers who served them faithfully and diligently, and the generality of Zimbabweans, were to rot on the streets.Our hope now lies with you Mr. President.Please take charge of the nation and put this house back in other, for at the moment it is huge mess.A humble plea to you Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, from the suffering and desperate people of Zimbabwe.
STAMFORD  The Zoning Board will continue its public hearing on the controversial plan to build a new boatyard on Southfield Avenue on Monday night.

At its meeting, the board will hear from Reed Super, attorney for Soundkeeper, a Norwalk-based nonprofit. The organization in November filed a notice of intervention with the city, which makes Soundkeeper a party in the appeal that will likely be filed should the board reject developer Building and Land Technologys boatyard plan.

The nonprofit, which is against the boatyard plan, also has to be personally notified of any meetings or court proceedings related to the matter.

The public hearing on the boatyard began in October. After several nights of hearing from the public, the Zoning Board has spent several months listening to developer BLT argue its proposal is the best idea for replacing a 14-acre boatyard it illegally tore down in 2011.

The boards meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the fourth floor cafeteria at the Government Center, 888 Washington Blvd.

 Keila Torres Ocasio

Planning Board to meet

STAMFORD  The Planning Board will meet Tuesday night to discuss several zoning referrals.

The Zoning Board of Appeals has referred eight items to the Planning Board, including a request for a variance for construction of an in-ground pool on Rock Rimmon Road and the conversion of a day care center to a two-family home on Richmond Hill Avenue.

The Planning Board will meet at 6 p.m. in the fourth floor cafeteria in the Government Center.

 Keila Torres Ocasio

Board of Representatives committee meetings

STAMFORD  Five Board of Representative committees will meet this week.

Perhaps the most controversial issue is on the Appointments Committees Tuesday agenda. The group will debate whether to allow Zoning Board member Barry Michelson to cast his vote on the controversial Southfield Avenue boatyard application by denying Mayor David Martins request to replace him on that board.

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, the full board is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Among the items on the agenda are the approval of the contract for food service vendor Chartwells and the acceptance of a $75,000 Department of Children and Families mental health grant.

That committee meets at 7 p.m. in the Democratic Caucus Room on the fourth floor of the Government Center.

The Fiscal Committee, meanwhile, will meet Monday at 7 p.m. in the Democratic Caucus Room on the fourth floor of the Government Center.

That group will discuss items including a $100,000 request for asbestos removal in the police department headquarters and funding toward the citys 375th anniversary.

On Wednesday, both the Personnel Committee and the Land Use-Urban Redevelopment Committee will meet on the fourth floor of the Government Center. The former will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Democratic Caucus Room, while the latter will meet at 7:30 p.m. in the Republican Caucus Room.

And finally, the Operations Committee will meet Thursday to discuss conditions at the police headquarters. That meeting will take place at 7 p.m. in the legislative chambers on the fourth floor of the Government Center.

 Keila Torres Ocasio

Ed board to meet on Valentine termination

The Board of Education will meet in special session Monday night to discuss the termination of former Stamford High School Principal Donna Valentine. Valentine was suspended in 2014 for failing to report a teachers sexual misconduct.

The meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. on the fifth floor of the Stamford Government Center, but the public session is expected to begin at 8 p.m.

The full board is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 7 p.m. Among the items on the agenda is the approval of a contract for food-service contractor Chartwells and the acceptance of a $75,000 grant for mental health training from the state Department of Children and Families. It will be interim Superintendent James Connellys first meeting.

A meeting of the boards Operations Committee is also scheduled for that evening at 6 p.m.

The committee will vote on a revised plan for the Rogers Magnet Expansion at 200 Strawberry Hill Ave. The revision formally updates the plan to include grades K-8.

The Fiscal Committee also has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday night at 8 p.m. The committee is scheduled to continue its review of the superintendents recommended 2016-17 operating budget.

All meetings will be held on the fifth floor of the Stamford Government Center

 Evan Simko-Bednarski
S mall business agony aunt Jo Malone on when to expand your workforce and what you need to know before you do.

Dear Jo

I own a business designing and making homewares, selling through independent retailers and at fairs.

I run it from home and am doing well, largely making the products during the week and selling at weekends.

However, Ive received some large orders and am struggling to keep up with demand. Im keen to take on a member of staff but am worried I will have to jump through lots of legal hoops to make my home an office and will pay more tax than its worth.

What should I do?

I vividly remember starting my first business from home and using every bit of available space to create products, from mixing face oils in the kitchen to scenting seashells in the bath.

"Be disciplined in keeping the day-to-day running of work and home completely separate."

Everything either tasted or smelt of fragrance and that, teamed with the amount of packaging I needed, meant my flat soon resembled a warehouse.

Its such a big leap to go from working solo at home to employing a member of staff and you need to ensure that you are aware of the extra costs and responsibilities before you commit.

Start by looking at your current orders and projections. If it looks likely that demand for your products is set to continue, it might be worth considering moving to a larger space that allows you to separate work and home.

Look at short-term office space  officegenie.co.uk is specifically geared to help start-ups get more established  as generally the rent is lower and lease terms shorter, meaning its not such a scary commitment.

If you decide to continue growing your business from home, be disciplined in keeping the day-to-day running of work and home completely separate. While its not always possible to have an office, you should install a business phone, have an area set aside for equipment and make sure you keep all of your receipts and documents safe.

Its a big responsibility employing people, whether full- or part-time, and there are lots of legal requirements to accompany the process but in order to grow you will need more hands on deck.

Finally, dont forget to consider people looking for work experience to take with you on your journey.

...and Jo asks

Chris Bliss of chartered accountants Rawlinson & Hunter says: There should be no reason not to employ someone to operate from your home.

However, by doing so, you may need to pay business rates in addition to your council tax and you should contact your local council to confirm this. You will also need to ensure a safe working environment and train them to use equipment.

In order to employ anyone, there are several key actions you will need to take: pay them the National Minimum Wage; ensure they can legally work in the UK; purchase employers liability insurance; register with HMRC as an employer, and provide a written statement of terms and conditions of employment to your employee.
C ould the City chief executives of the future swap pinstripe suits for jeans and a hoodie?

You cant imagine Tesco supremo Dave Lewis or Gavin Patterson, BTs suave boss, rocking up in their weekend clobber or installing ping-pong tables in the office as is compulsory in start-up digs.

But thats the future for FTSE 100 companies imagined by Sam Gordon and Sophie Eden, the entrepreneurs behind boutique headhunting firm Gordon & Eden, who spot top-end technology talent for big multinationals.

This future boardroom attire may be a little off the mark but the pair are convinced the next generation of blue-chip bosses will come from the current crop of budding digital start-ups.

Todays bootstrap start-up CEO could well be a chief digital officer at a major corporate in their next move, Gordon explains. And we could start seeing chief digital officers becoming chief executives soon.

In a world now obsessed with the online and mobile, jumping aboard the digital revolution is no longer an option for businesses, it is a necessity  just ask any of the High Street retailers.

Shunning headhuntings traditional Mayfair home turf, the duo set up shop in Shoreditch (next door to the Cargo nightclub), and is the only digital executive search firm in the area.

But dont let that fool you  you couldnt rock up in flip-flops to an interview for these jobs. The company recruits for executive positions that pay up to seven-figure salaries, so hardly your average roles.

The pair believe that cosying up with some of Londons best young tech talent gives them the edge over more established rivals.

We bring innovation by connecting start-up pools of talent other businesses dont, Gordon explains. The recruitment industry has low barriers to entry but there are very few people who I think really have depth in digital. There arent many people who offer real innovation to find the talent a client couldnt just do themselves.

"We could start seeing chief digital officers becoming chief executives soon."

Eden says that finding the best person for a role is about looking in places you wouldnt normally. We always try to think creatively, which sounds obvious but youd be amazed how many people are fairly complacent, she says. Were trying to offer a challenger brand in the market place  all too often the executive search world is set in its ways.

So, to steal a phrase that is overused by the new breed of executives, the company is disrupting the traditional headhunting model.

Unusually in the often sterile world of recruitment, former drum n bass music producer Gordon, who was born and bred round the corner from the companys office, says there is always music playing at Gordon & Eden  although not the house tracks he still creates in his spare time.

Eden, a North Londoner, went straight into recruitment after studying politics at Birmingham University, but she admits to a musical background too  she even auditioned for S Club Juniors.

GORDON & EDEN Founded: 2014 Staff: Five Turnover: 1.5 million Business idol: Wikipedias Jimmy Wales  He has stayed true to his mission and not put profit before purpose.

The business certainly does things differently. For example, all the documents charting the progress of their work are available online for clients to delve into at their leisure.

Blue-chip names including HSBC, Deloitte, Facebook and Betfair have all used the company, and many have come back for more. Fortunately for the pair, these bigger clients, which can afford to pay larger finders fees, are often the repeat customers.

With cash flying around Silicon Roundabout, start-ups too have the funds to splash out on top people who could give them the direction to take an exciting product to market.

The pair met at IT recruitment firm La Fosse Associates in 2010 and it was there they spotted the gap in the market.

We started to develop an expertise in taking people from start-ups to the corporate world and vice versa, Gordon says.

They decided to go it alone in February 2014 and, after less than two years, their five-strong team has annual revenues of 1.5 million and, unlike most of its Shoreditch neighbours, turns a profit.

Gordon & Edens rise up the ranks has not gone unnoticed. They admit to having already rejected five takeover approaches from recruitment firms fearful of the business worlds increasingly digital focus  and their lack of it  but they stress they have no plans to sell out.

They are working hard to keep the hot streak going, but insist they still make time for a life outside work.

Which is lucky because Eden is currently on maternity leave  although she admits shes keeping an eye on her emails.

To read more news about London-based entrepreneurs and to get their top tips on how to make a business a success, join the Evening Standard's small business community, Business Connections.
S ay what you will about the unsavoury Ukrainian duo besieging JKX Oil and Gas, theyre a gift for City lawyers.

Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov, whom JKX suspects of secretly working together to grab the company on the cheap, have already successfully chased the company to the Supreme Court and back.

Today, JKX has barred them from voting at its EGM on yet another round of destabilising actions from unwelcome Eastern investors  a group called Proxima.

On past performance, the tycoons are sure to take to the courts again. Belgravia-based Bogolyubov is so used to London litigation he was even sued by his own rabbi.

But JKX might take heart from the duos most recent courtroom drama. Late on Friday, they settled in a separate case brought against them in London by Tony Blairs oligarch chum, Viktor Pinchuk.

The cost to Bogolyubov and Kolomoisky, according to legal analysts? North of $1 billion.

And thats before the lawyers fees. Kerching!
T he Duke of Westminster is bringing the luxury Italian brand that supplies linen to Claridges and the Orient Express to London for its UK store debut, his property company revealed.

Landlord Grosvenor, which owns swathes of Mayfair and Belgravia, said Frette  which counts There's Something About Mary actress Cameron Diaz as a fan  will open on South Audley Street in the summer.

Its 2200 duvet cover sets can be found in Harrods, but until this year the Milan-headquartered company has never had a standalone shop in Britain.

Herve Martin, chief executive of Frette, said: We strongly believed that the UK flagship store had to open in London.

The city is indisputably the ideal place to reach our target customers.

The deal comes nearly 18 months after private-equity group Change Capital Partners bought a majority stake in the business and said it would inject cash to help it grow.
A chain of Thai restaurants which aims to combine modern London with modern Bangkok is to expand this year.

Rosas Thai Cafe plans to open three new branches after securing 1.8 million in funding from banking giant Santander.

Husband and wife founders Alex and Saiphin Moore  profiled in the Standards Entrepreneurs section in 2014  set up the business in 2006.

Initially trading from a market stall in Brick Lane, the duo took over a greasy spoon cafe in Spitalfields called Rosas and revamped it into a Thai restaurant serving recipes Saiphin brought from the Far East.

Over the past five years, they have opened sites in Soho, Westfield Stratford, Carnaby Street, Chelsea and Islington and will spend the funds on opening in Victoria in April before possible launches in Shoreditch and Brixton.

The opening of these new sites will create 100 jobs over the next two years.

Alex Moore said: The success of Rosas remains Saiphins traditional cooking: we still offer many of her original dishes.

To read more news about London-based entrepreneurs and to get their top tips on how to make a business a success, join the Evening Standard's small business community, Business Connections.
O ne of the worlds biggest investors has built up a huge 47 million bet against Sainsburys in the wake of its shock bid for Homebase and Argos owner Home Retail Group, it has emerged.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which invests more than a quarter of a trillion dollars for Canadian pensioners, hiked its bet against the grocer just days after Sainsburys chief executive Mike Coupe went public on a takeover of the retailer, Financial Conduct Authority records show.

As doubts in the City grow over a deal a week ahead of Sainsburys put-up-or-shut-up Takeover Panel deadline to make an offer, the FCAs short-selling register also reveals that Citadel, the hedge giant founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, has also opened up a 25 million short position in recent days.

The FCAs short-selling register shows CPPIB began shorting Sainsburys on 25 November by borrowing 9.8 million shares, selling them in the market in the hope of buying them back more cheaply and banking the difference as profit.

But it rapidly increased the attack during December before raising it again days after Sainsburys approach was revealed, leaving it with a bet against the grocer equivalent to 1.03% of the companys shares.

Concerns about the future of troubled chain Homebase, seen as a major stumbling block to the deal, were put to rest when Home Retail sold the group to Australian chain Wesfarmers for 340 million.

But concerns remain over the difficulties of integrating Sainsburys and Argos, as well as a potentially dilutative right issue, which has led to doubts among investors who are keen for Sainsburys not to overpay.

CPPIB has a host of property assets in the UK, including a 50% stake in Victorias Nova office development with Land Securities and a 25% stake in Westfields Stratford City shopping centre.

But the fund, which had C$272 billion (135 billion) in assets last year, rarely shorts UK stocks and has only ever held three positions in total, according to FCA filings.

Sainsbury's made a bid after it trialled Argos concessions in its stores (Picture: Home Retail Group) / Home Retail Group

Alongside Sainsburys, CPPIB has previously shorted Drax and Tate & Lyle.

A CPPIB spokesman said: As one of the largest funds in the world, we could be trading securities at any point in time and so we do not provide comments on our positions in any one security.

While CPPIB has increased its short against Sainsburys, other funds, such as Lone Pine and Odey Asset Management, have cut their short positions against the grocer.
I n a letter published in this paper today a group of more than 50 distinguished women prominent in business and public life make a case for Britain to remain in the EU. The arguments vary from the standard business case that companies benefit when regulations are streamlined for a single market to the suggestion that parental leave is underpinned by the EU. Ruth Rogers of the River Cafe says that many of her staff come from the EU and enjoy freedom of movement, while theatre owner Sally Greene argues that actors benefit from their work experience across Europe. These are cogent advocates, with an interesting range of perspectives, including those of parents and grandparents.

Of course there will be many prominent female Eurosceptics who take a very different view. Some may argue that social benefits such as maternity leave would be protected by the Westminster Parliament and others that they benefit from a global, not just an EU, workforce.

Yet it is clear from this letter and from the intervention today of Stuart Rose, chair of the Britain Stronger in Europe group, that the EU debate is starting to take a more lively and combative turn. If the referendum is indeed to be held at the end of June, as some observers suggest, then between now and then we need a sharp and focused debate that will concentrate our minds.

This paper intends fully to explore the arguments for and against Britains membership of the EU and will be hospitable to representatives of both sides and many perspectives. The referendum will be an opportunity to engage with one of the most critical issues affecting our future; this letter from an impressive list of women gets the next phase of the debate off to a cracking start.

Child migrants at risk

Last summer this paper called for the Government to admit to Britain child migrants who arrive alone in Europe, as Save the Children argued. Now the Prime Minister is said to be considering taking in 3,000 children from the estimated 26,000 unaccompanied minors who have come to Europe. Many of them, as our report last summer made clear, have endured dreadful hardship at home and on their journey; alone, they are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

It would be excellent if this campaign were successful and we admitted the children. Many will not in fact be fleeing Syria; they come, like other migrants, from a number of countries. But Frank Field MP is right to warn of the dangers of setting a precedent here. If it becomes accepted policy to give asylum to lone minors then many more families will send their children on the perilous journey to Europe alone in the hope that they will be able to join them later. If we do admit the children it should be on the clear basis that this is a one-off concession, not a licence for parents to use their children as a way to gain entry to Britain. Childrens services in areas such as Kent are already under enormous pressure in dealing with the problem; this should be a finite, humanitarian gesture but it should be made.

Bring on electric cars

Zac Goldsmith today pledges to bring the capital into the electric car revolution if he is elected Mayor in May. He wants to promote existing proposals for a point-to-point electric car hire scheme  based on the successful Autolib model in Paris  and promises to expand the public charging network, which is vital if electric vehicles are to be a viable option for private ownership. These measures are a useful way to tackle emissions and thus air pollution  in London, electric cars make sense.
E ver heard of the Bohemian-Gay Index? I know it sounds silly but its actually a serious measurement, created by the influential academic Richard Florida to help explain why some cities have higher levels of economic growth and innovation than others.

Floridas insight is that urban areas that are attractive to creative people, and welcoming of diverse communities such as gay and bisexual people, tend to grow more quickly and create more jobs. In other words, places that score highly in the Bohemian-Gay Index are likely to prosper, and those that rank poorly typically lose out.

Florida argues that theres a global creative class of educated people who are highly mobile and choose to move to cities they find attractive, starting businesses and sparking regeneration wherever they go. Places such as San Francisco and Seattle have done well on this front, for example, and its no surprise that these two cities have grown rapidly in recent years, as well as spawning world-leading companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.

The reason this index seems to be such a good predictor of a citys prosperity is that the creative industries are a massive driver of economic growth today. According to the Greater London Authority, creative and tech companies employ more people than financial services and banking, and contribute 35 billion to the capitals economy every year.

London has clearly done well in the past couple of decades when it comes to attracting the global creative class  our openness, diversity and cultural energy are all magnets for the brightest and best. However, as the Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan points out, the latest statistics show more young people are moving out of London than at any time since records began.

Whats going wrong? The big issue is (obviously) the cost of housing, where the failure to reform the planning system and break the cartel of volume housebuilders has seen rents rise much faster than salaries. But weve also seen 40 per cent of Londons music venues close in recent years, in addition to poorly defined immigration rules that make it harder for talented creative people to come here.

Meanwhile, other cities are rapidly becoming more attractive to the global creative class. In the US, New York creatives and San Francisco tech entrepreneurs are moving in droves to Los Angeles, where its cheaper to live well, and in a city with a thriving art and music scene.

'In the US, creatives and entrepreneurs are moving in droves to LA, where its cheaper to live well'

Here in Europe, Berlin continues to exert a pull but its Lisbon thats really on the up. With abundant cheap space, great galleries and bars where you can stay out late without any hassle, Portugals capital has become the place to be. This year, for example, Europes largest technology conference, the Dublin Web Summit, is moving from Ireland to Lisbon. My company Second Home is following suit, and were launching a building in Lisbon in a few months  our first outside London.

London continues to be one of the most attractive places in the world for talented, creative people. But we cant take that for granted  unless we take the right steps, places such as LA and Lisbon will do well at our expense. If the global creative class starts to move to other cities, it wont just be our cultural life that gets poorer, itll be our economy too.
W hisk(e)y induces many things: stories, dancing, hangovers.

A good glass is fiery fuel for long nights. Whether neat to toast the end of the night, or over ice to kick things off, a glass is rarely out of place  and try swapping it in for the gin in a Negroni, or lengthening it with tonic water.

London has long celebrated whisky from across the world; Scottish, Irish and American drams are found everywhere, and Japanese drinks get a good showing now, too  funny to think that six or seven years ago, it was something of a speciality serve. But the markets making whisky are on the up too: now there are glasses from India, Taiwan, Australia, Denmark and more hiding on bar shelves across town.

Its only meeting demand, after all: more and more of us are drinking the stuff and now any decent cocktail bar will have its fair share stacked up behind the bar top. Still, there are a few places priding themselves on their rarities. Heres where to find something new.

Milroys  Soho and Spitalfields

At the back of Londons oldest whisky shop is a bookcase: push, and down the curled staircase is hidden a bar. Theyve more than 300 bottles going. Plenty is Scotch, but theyve also plenty from across the globe; America, Australia, South Africa, Sweden and more all get a look in. Despite its long-standing history and despite the hard-to-find offerings on the shelves, Milroys is fun, relaxed, unpretentious. Last year, they opened up a second, much larger site in Spitalfields. Over four flights in a townhouse, theyve more than 1000 drams. The most anywhere? Arguably. Its all overseen by Simo Simpson  he has a knack of keeping things down to earth. Somewhere to come in for just a drink, but if you want to learn something, you will, and without the risk of turning into a whisky w****er.

3 Greek St, Soho, W1D 4NX, shop.milroys.co.uk

76 Commercial St, Spitalfields, E1 6LY, shop.milroys.co.uk

The Berkeley Bar & Terrace

Whisky has its reputation, but theres no reason to hole up somewhere ancient and stuffy and sad. This new spot in the Berkeley is really quite beautiful, one of the best looking bars in London. On the backlit shelves, theyve fine and rare whiskies alongside plenty else thats good, including lots of vintage Champagne. Not much more needs to be said: it's a place to experience. Londons lucky.

Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, SW1X 7RL, the-berkeley.co.uk

The Sun Tavern

This upmarket Bethnal Green cocktail bar is rightly proud of its Irish whiskey and Poitin offerings: since its re-opening in 2014, the pub has amassed around 40 different expressions of the good stuff, including small batch serves and cask strength selections. Their cocktail list is short and finely-considered. Just dont take a wine-loving friend: their wine list is as short as the whiskey list is long.

441 Bethnal Green Road, Bethnal Green, E2 0AN, thesuntavern.co.uk

The Connaught Bar

The effortlessly stylish Connaught Bar seems to have a steady, expert hand on all the major spirits, largely thanks to their top man, Agostino Perrone. Perrones love of the stuff is evident in his selection, and while youll be drinking the well known brands, they serve up rare and desirable offerings as well, and the surroundings are hard to beat. They also offer their very own Connaught Cask whisky, made in partnership with Dalmores top man, the exuberant, ice-throwing Richard Patterson. Its pricey here, without question, but the cocktails are up there with the best in London.

Carlos Place, Mayfair, W1K 2AL, the-connaught.co.uk

Boisdale Canary Wharf

Perhaps Londons most famous whisky bar  and probably rightly so  the staggering menu at Boisdale has yet to be surpassed, with only the Spitalfields Milroys rivalling it for sheer number of bottles. Alongside the unrivalled Scotch menu, which is up there as one of the finest in the world, they serve English, Japanese, Welsh and Indian whiskies too. Sit in the bar: the amber glow from the library of bottles is a light that never fails to light up an evening. Staff show an impressive knowledge and, should you wish, there is an excellent heated cigar terrace to relax in.

Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, E14 4QT, boisdale.co.uk

The Britannia

Whisky stiffs may be disappointed to find the Britannia doesnt offer proper nosing glasses or anything of that sort, but for those that just want something damned good to drink and a decent place to do it, the Britannia does the job admirably. It does away with the usual trappings of whisky bars: there is no faux-antique furniture, no stuffy rules and all snobbishness should be left on the mat with the mud from your boots. The unpretentious atmosphere, choice of more than 100 whiskies and decent prices mean this backstreet boozer deservedly gets very busy.

44 Kipling St, Kipling Estate, SE1 3RU, 020 7378 8162

Bull In A China Shop

A few year back, the Mizuwari bar left a sad Japanese whisky shaped hole when it closed. Fortunately, Bull in a China Shop soon opened, offering a selection of more than 30 rare and premium whiskies, leaning heavily into the Japanese offerings. One of our favourite east London hangouts, cocktails are still terrific  the charcoal Old Fashioned and Wabi/Sabi are highlights  and they serve up every drink with care. They have some gorgeous high-end scotches too, so be sure to ask for them. One thing thats changed since opening is the food  they care far more about it now than they did then, which is wonderful news. Its difficult for bars to stick around these days, so its very good news that they have.

196 Shoreditch High St, Hackney, E1 6LG, bullinachinashop.london

The Pine Bar

Jason Athertons Betterment restaurant in the Biltmore hotel might have wobbled through its opening, but his bar was spot on from the beginning. While the cocktails are decent, its better suited to something simple: theyve more than 100 whiskies, with some seriously high-end American offerings in there. The wine list is excellent as well.

44 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, W1K 2HP, lxrhotels3.hilton.com
S aul Leiter: Retrospective 

Easter Rising 

The emergence of colour in photography has echoes of that moment when Bob Dylan went electric. For some, colour betrayed the very essence of the medium. One of the greatest photographers, Walker Evans, even suggested it corrupted the discipline; colour photography is vulgar, he added.

Debates rage about who pioneered colour most. William Egglestons 1976 exhibition at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art is often seen as the landmark moment. But 20 years before that, Saul Leiter had begun using colour in his street photographs. Leiter was a quiet member of the New York School of street photography in the Fifties, and knew and admired more celebrated photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. But only towards the end of his life (he died in 2013) did he receive due attention for his work. This show proves that hes one of the greats.

Striking colour: Saul Leiters Postmen (1952) Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

For Leiter, black and white would never be enough: the history of art is the history of colour, he said, and as a painter himself, he was steeped in that lineage. He even owned canvases by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, painters whose poetic renderings of rooms and landscapes are revivified in Leiters work. Hes the most painterly of all photographers.

Leiters New York is a liquid city, constantly shifting, glimpsed in blurs and reflections, seen from behind condensation-clouded windows, as in Snow (1960), or through a blizzard, as with a wonderful image of postmen caught through a veil of snowflakes. Theres a natural ease of abstraction in his compositions, a brilliantly inventive approach to framing the incidental moments in city life. Even his fashion photographs of the Sixties, though necessarily more commercial, are fresh and unorthodox compared to the stiff, posed images that came before them.

A city glimpsed in blurs and reflections: Snow (1960) Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Only when he combines painting and photography does the show fail to transfix: its as if Leiter painted with the camera, so any embellishment seems superfluous.

After the pure, exhilarating visual pleasure of Leiters world, the solemn archival display downstairs marking the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Ireland takes some adjustment, but its worth persevering with. Nothing is revelatory, but it shows how photography played a crucial role in documenting the events before and after the rising (though none actually documenting the uprising itself). It also reflects how photography was a political tool, used to justify British rule and to stoke the nationalist fervour that would ultimately lead to Irish independence.

Until April 3, Photographers' Gallery (020 7087 9300, thephotographersgallery.org.uk)

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
A ward-winning playwright Sir David Hare has lambasted Donald Trump and said his latest film - a true-life legal drama starring Rachel Weisz - is partly a response to the US presidential hopefuls politics.

Sir David has scripted Denial, which stars Weisz as American academic Deborah Lipstadt, who was sued for libel by British historian David Irving after she wrote a book labelling him as a Holocaust denier.

Professor Lipstadt won the case, with the judge ruling that Irving was an anti-Semite and racist who associated with Right-wing extremists.

Hare said: The reason I was so drawn to [the story] is this idea that in this internet age, this democratic age, we are all entitled to our own opinion and one persons opinion is as good as anyone elses.

Truth teller: in Denial, Rachel Weisz will play Deborah Lipstadt, who took on historian David Irving / Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Occasionally it is necessary to remind people that there are facts, there is scientific evidence and there is such a thing as proof. That was true with this court case and its important to say it now.

Donald Trumps politics ignore evidence, says Sir David / AP Photo/Willis Glassgow

The other day Donald Trump said Obama was bringing in 40,000 Syrian refugees and the administration said that is nonsense, its actually a few thousand. Donald Trump just said, Well I believe its 40,000 and so do my millions of Twitter followers.

Its a non-evidence-based approach to politics, what you might call Trumpery. Its terribly dangerous.

To script the movie, Sir David read 40 days worth of court reports and documents from the 2000 trial. It is directed by Mick Jackson and also features Tom Wilkinson and Sherlock star Andrew Scott.

Sir David is also adapting Ibsens The Master Builder for The Old Vic, which will star Ralph Fiennes, and will be discussing his recent memoirs at Hampstead Theatre Festival.

Meera Syal, Darcey Bussell and Imogen Stubbs will also be at the event, which runs from March 18 to 20. Sir David said: Its one of the problems with theatres that they are empty most of the day. This is a great idea and will hopefully bring people through the doors and persuade them to come back.
 Urgh! Isnt that the Scottish thing made from sheeps intestines?! is the first thing people usually say when you suggest they might enjoy eating haggis. And if youve never had it before, it is indeed that Scottish thing, only it tastes much better than it sounds.

Haggis is a Scottish dish or pudding traditionally made using a casing of sheep's stomach stuffed with a mixture of oatmeal, suet, seasoning, onion and sheeps bits (namely lungs, liver and heart). Having a Scottish father I've grown up eating it, and adore its robustness and pepperiness, and its softened mince-like texture; there's nothing else like it. But if youre feeling queasy already, please read on, because its also the basis for a well known Scottish party known as Burns Night which takes place on January 25 every year.

Its so weird that people hate it, because often as soon as they taste it they go: oh, wow, its delicious," says Andy Waugh, chef and owner of the Scottish restaurant Mac and Wild in Fitzrovia. "I think its about expectation management. But I do think its funny that Scotland is synonymous with a bits-of-a-stomach, sausage-type thing.

Burns Night Whisky - FINAL.mp4

I dont have a first haggis memory. But I know we used to have lots of venison haggis, which is unbelievably good. There is a very long story attached to why we no longer use that particular product, but I do remember having haggis from my local butcher up north and thinking it was absolutely epic. The stuff we use now in the restaurant is from the same butcher.

Haggis Pops at Mac and Wild

What makes this 'stuff' so great, he explains, is its simplicity: Its just simple haggis, the pepperiness is just right, the texture is just right, and its got a nice saltiness about it, and I know where its come from.

Growing up in an area of Scotland called Ardgay, there were occasions where Waugh and his family invited lots of people round to share haggis together  and not always on Burns Night.

Sometimes we would just have it in June. I always say that Burns Night isnt like Christmas where you have to celebrate it at the same time every year. I mean, it always falls on January 25, but theres a bit of flexibility as to when you can celebrate your Burns. And because my family is a little bit eccentric anyway, we would just sometimes have it at the wrong time of year.

Every family does haggis differently, as you might expect, but the rule in the Waugh household is to put an inch of water in a roasting dish, and then put the haggis in that at about 180 degrees for as long as it takes to heat through. That way the bottom stays really mushy and then when you take it out, the top will usually have split open and youll get this kind of crispy layer on top. So youve got nice textures in there.

"With 'neeps 'n' tatties'" (the Scottish nickname for haggis traditional accompaniments, parsnips and potatoes) is how this guy eats his. Yeah, everythings mashed. Ive been to so many dinners where theyve tried to tart it up and get cheffy but I think its just one of those things thats got to be done family-style as otherwise it never looks good. Its better when youve got a third of each of haggis, neeps and tatties on your plate.

Rather than have a traditional Scottish berry dish, Waugh remembers that his mum was obsessed with making jams and things, so afterwards wed have some sort of meringue cream thing with jam in it. But ice cream works too. We were never big on puddings - Burns Night was about stuffing as many mains into your mouth as possible!

Meanwhile, when not celebrating haggis in the expected fashion, Waugh and his father would occasionally enjoy a secret feast: when I was about 15 years old, most of the haggis I would eat would actually be at the chip shop with dad. Back home they have battered haggis, which is literally about half a pound of haggis deep-fried. It wasnt a regular thing, but it was when dad and I might be on a journey without mum and wed get stuff like that  some classic Scottish cuisine!

One of his favourite ways of eating this famous Scottish foodstuff is to make something I call clapshop. So you get one part haggis, one part potato, one part onion, and it goes amazingly well with steak - so venison fillet or something. Then you have a nice gravy jus-type thing, and its just delicious. Haggis toasties are nice too. Ah, haggis is just so good!

Where to celebrate Burns Night in London 1 /2 Where to celebrate Burns Night in London Make the most of Burns Night Make the most of Burns Night Burns Night Robert Burns has a night dedicated to him

Tonight, Waugh will be celebrating Burns Night in his restaurant, having also hosted a special sell-out dinner last weekend:

Were doing it traditionally and then were serving a Scottish macaroon, which is not like a French macaron but instead made with coconut and potato, and has a chocolate coating on top. So thatll be a little bit cheffy but still pretty Scottish, and then well have some whisky with the meal too

I hate to say it but Burns Supper is actually celebrated more by the English than in Scotland, but the best thing about it is that they celebrate it so well Up there, not everyone celebrates. My mum and dad do because theyre mad, but everywhere else its kind of behind closed doors  its not like a huge St Patricks Day party or anything. Whereas in London you guys have really picked up the Burns Night thing, and its a real celebration here.

Mac and Wild, 65 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7PS; macandwild.co.uk
C harlie Parker is talking about a recent debate at the LSE student union. A woman asked the union officers if they would ban something like a colour if it offended students and the welfare executive said yes, says Parker, 21, a second-year philosophy student, sitting down on a blue beanbag at one of the campus cafes. That stuck out for me as being absolutely crazy.

Parker and his friends Chiara Cappellini, 19, and Christian Benson, 20, have set up a speakeasy society to bring free speech back to their university in a nationwide climate of safe spaces and bans  sombreros were recently banned at the University of East Anglia in the name of preventing racial stereo-typing, and Parker tells me that at Edinburgh clapping and laughing are banned if motions are rejected at union meetings.

Our society is emerging from this growing sense of censorship that seems to be a problem on loads of campuses in universities across the country, says Parker, whose father is Sun journalist Nick Parker and whose mother campaigned against The Sun being sold when she was at university in Manchester. We want to encourage discussion of difficult ideas as opposed to closing down debate and undermining students ability to make up their own mind. The Speakeasy is planning three campaigns: inviting people who have been no-platformed (prevented from speaking) to talk, another recounting the history of free speech and the third, called Expose Yourself, debating ideas that people might be uncomfortable with.

When Parker started at LSE last year the union had suspended the rugby club for a year because it gave out sexist and homophobic leaflets. More recently, The Sun was temporarily banned in union shops and the student paper refused to publish an article about upcoming elections because it was too political. Trigger warnings have been placed in front of the Palestine societys stall, saying their content may be upsetting, and the atheist society was prevented from wearing T-shirts showing Jesus and the prophet Mohammed holding hands.

Charlie Parker and his friends have set up a speakeasy society to bring free speech back to their university / Daniel Hambury

According to Spiked, an online current affairs magazine where Parker worked, LSE is among the most ban- heavy universities in the country. Thats when I thought something needed to be done, he says. Universities ban things under the name of safe-space policies or no-platform policies but its counter-productive.

These students describe their campus as a place where people can feel intimidated about speaking lest they say something that is offensive. Capellini, who is studying international relations, says there is a veil of hypocrisy where people pretend they agree so as not to disrupt the safe space, and she says that one of her lecturers has commented that we are being treated like kids by this paternalistic approach.

She continues: They banned the rugby club because it was sexist, but if you believe that women are strong, surely they can expose people as misogynists rather than completely banning people who are offensive and have patriarchal attitudes.

For Benson there has been confusion between debating topics and agreeing with them. The student union here and others in the UK operate in such a way that if they dont agree with something, that becomes an excuse to stop anyone else from deciding it for themselves. When Blurred Lines was banned from being played at university, few students agreed with the song or wanted it played, but what led to the establishment of our society was a sense that we want to feel able to come to our own opinions and we dont need the student unions heavy hand to tell us what we can and cant hear in the name of trying to protect us.

At the bottom of it is a lack of trust, says Benson. We fail as students and as adults if we arent trusted by our student union.

An MA student interrupts from an adjacent beanbag: Surely the union executives are democratically elected by students, so dont you think if they decide to ban something it is their right as representatives?

Parker is happy that she has joined in. Debate like this is exactly what we want to encourage. Benson points out that Parliament is elected but that doesnt give a mandate to every one of the Governments policies. If they are allowed to make decisions just because we elected them all year round that means everyone else is only treated as an adult one day a year when we vote for them. Parker states: We are opposed to any form of restriction that treats students as not capable of making up their own minds.

Why is it so intense at LSE? Benson says that groupthink comes into it. Everyone in the union tends to be like-minded. Also, LSE students tend to want to prove themselves and bans can be a way for student unions to show theyve done something  perhaps the ban culture is a manifestation of that.

Cappellini adds: Students will be in a safe bubble at LSE. Then when they go into the outside world they are confronted with controversial opinions but dont know how to face it with debate. University should prepare us for the real world instead of putting us in the safe-space bubble. Benson has found that critical discussion is being undermined time and time again.

The Speakeasy is yet to have its first formal meeting but a lot of people have already volunteered to join and Parker says the guy I spoke to about setting up societies was excited. Meanwhile, the student union general secretary, Nona Buckley-Irvine, says she wholeheartedly disagrees that there is a culture against free speech at LSE. Decisions that can be polarising are taken to democratic vote where students decide what union policy is. Decisions we have taken that are claimed to restrict free speech have been taken to ensure that discrimination does not persist on campus, as we do not tolerate it. She says the union prioritises campus being a safe space for students and we are pleased to have moved forwards in promoting greater inclusivity and diversity in recent years.

Designer student pads 1 /13 Designer student pads Pure Aldgate A CGI of the lobby area in the London block Pure Aldgate The exterior is as stylish as the interior Vita Student First Street, Manchester Vita Student The communal resembles a hotel lobby Vita Student The cinema rooms are kitted out with cool interiors Vita Student Five-star student digs Vita Student Some bedrooms have their own kitchenettes Edinburgh Gateway Apartments The plush rooms ooze comfort Edinburgh Gateway Apartments The building has scooped architecture awards Edinburgh Gateway Apartments Seeing purple in the studios

Do the Speakeasy founders think bans are ever necessary? Benson says: The line is where it goes into physical violence. Parker adds in the abstract manner of a philosophy student: That would be like John Stuart Mill and the harm principle. But free speech is for me and for the people I dont agree with. It is a necessary democratic tool, to confront sexist or homophobic people.

Too often, there is an automatic link between free speech and being offensive for the sake of it, says Benson. There is a misunderstanding that being for free speech means you are a xenophobic lad who wants to go around offending people. That is not in our interests. He uses the rugby club as an example of when bans lead to more trouble and people retreating. It fuels hatred and the student population becomes divided.

Safe space culture extends online. Benson says that someone with an ambiguously gendered name was criticised by the Feminist Society on Facebook and called a white, privileged man who didnt understand feminism. That person turned out to be a woman. Another online group called LSE Memes mocked this, and the Feminist Society asked for their jokes to be taken down. LSE Memes refused.

Parker says: These are bans which have little weight compared with the socially progressive movements of civil rights or womens rights movements. Benson points out that people are creating problems for themselves. Its a shame that society has gone from supporting good causes to the absurdity we have now. Arguing about whether the colour yellow is offensive is not on the same level as important free speech debates that happened in the past, such as whether black students could sit next to white students in lectures in America. We hope to prove the values of free speech by encouraging debate.

Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter
T he first thing that catches my eye at Faena Miami Beach is not its cool, modernist architecture but a blue-and-gold mosaic on the floor with a swirly F at its centre. F stands for Faena; more specifically, Alan Faena, the Argentinian cultural impresario and real estate wizard behind the hotel and wider Faena district, a luxurious arts-centric neighbourhood between the Atlantic Ocean beachfront and Indian Creek river.

The Faena project is the latest and most imposing phase in the renaissance of a resort town previously renowned as a haven for retirees, Cuban exiles and tourists. It started with the arrival of Art Basel in South Beach in 2002 and was cemented with the launch of Design Miami three years later. Recent big-name hotel openings (such as the Edition and Thompson) have shifted the beachs centre of gravity northwards but its the Faena districts gleaming new towers, fine mid-century building revamps and clever cultural programming that its charismatic mastermind believes will put this previously sleepy and neglected section of Mid-Beach on the map.

I am ushered inside the hotels double-height atrium, lined with gold-leafed columns and wall frescos by Argentinian artist Juan Gatti. The space, known as the Cathedral, is suitably contemplative and airy (the reception is tucked away around a corner). On closer inspection its eight murals are dedicated to intoxicating pursuits such as love, war and knowledge and contain wild, tropical scenes filled with brilliant pink flamingos, muscular golden tigers and lush foliage. A long, Hollywood-style, ruby-red carpet is embellished with graphic symbols.

Its colourful, bold and makes no excuse for its opulence. The minimalism-be-damned mantra continues in the guest rooms. Red, the colour of intensity and of Buenos Aires, BA native Faena tells me later, is everywhere: in the graphic floral carpets, the velvet sofas, red leather seats and even the slippers and bedside pencils. Often it is coupled with an electric turquoise. Its hardly subtle but it works; partly because the detailing and finishes are remarkable and partly because the decor is tempered by folky artisan blankets and Mexican throws that add cultural depth to the spectacle.

Place-making and creating neighbourhoods are tiresome, overused buzzwords. Mostly they are not much more than wishful thinking or overblown marketing speak. In the case of Alan Faena and his billionaire business partner Len Blavatnik, its actually close to what they do. The first time they took a rundown swathe of town and transformed it into high-end cultural and residential quarter was with a dilapidated post-industrial docklands area of Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. Now they are at it again in this previously no-mans- land section of Miami Beach.

Faena is the master of hyperbole (we are building the future of America), philosophies (when you are a creator you are the son of your dreams, never the father) and new-age aphorisms (to do this you need to understand time without time). Yet behind this blend of mysticism and magic lies a shrewd mind. Real estate is a commercial business after all. One penthouse in the Faena districts Foster-designed Residence recently sold for $60 million, a record for Miami.

Faenas exterior / HayesDavidson

As we sit around a desk strewn with architectural drawings, Faena tells me more about his burgeoning district. Faena Forum, a not-for-profit arts centre in a dazzling circular building by starchitects OMA, will be overseen by his curator wife Ximena Caminos and is due to be unveiled in the early autumn. It will open with some fanfare  a symphony composed by Michael Nyman and a processional street performance involving Cuban percussionists, Haitian Rara bands and Miamis New World Symphony. Next door, a shopping bazaar that Faena promises will eschew the usual luxury brands is taking shape and close by another residential tower.

Aside from the Faena hotel (formerly the Saxony) there are other existing heritage buildings on site: the Art Deco former Versailles hotel (due to become the Faena Versailles Classic residential complex) and the Spanish-colonial style Casa Claridges that now offers charming boutique lodgings.

Lush setting: a suite at the hotel

Faena understands the appeal of star names (film director Baz Luhrmann and his set designer wife Catherine Martin helped design the hotel) while fostering up-and-coming talent. The hotels bedrooms feature the black or red charcoal drawings of emerging Miami-based artist Gonzalo Fuenmayor, for instance, while the spa is lifted into another realm by an enormous fish-float chandelier by Dutch twin sister design duo Tweelink.

In the living room and restaurant there are dramatic, naked-bulb chandeliers by Italian artist Alberto Garutti which are programmed to flicker when lightning strikes 4,500 miles away in the Argentinian Pampas. However, the tour-de-force piece is arguably Damien Hirsts Gone But Not Forgotten. A 24-carat gilded, 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton, it stands in a glass-and-steel cage near the pool and is visible from all the oceanfront rooms.

Until the cultural and retail amenities open, theres plenty to soak up. When not lounging by the glamorous Art Deco pool or being served fruit-infused water, sun cream and scented flannels oceanside, guests can take Aeroga classes (a blend of yoga and aerobics offered by cult local wellness duo Chris and Trace of V Art of Wellness) on the beach or restore mind and body at the spa with treatments that use sound bowls selected by the hotels resident shaman or warmed herbal indigo poultices.

There are two restaurants in which to spend time (and money). Los Fuegos is dedicated to open-fire cooking and Argentinian cuisine; Pao at the Dome combines Spanish-Filipino-French-and-Japanese flavours guided by the 34-year- old Paul Qui.

In a nod to its early hedonistic days the hotel also houses seven bars and a 160-seat theatre. Designed in cabaret style, the latter will soon debut a twice-nightly show created by Paris-based Argentinian theatre producer Alfredo Arias and featuring set designs and costumes by Juan Gatti.

The Faena district is high-end but it has ambitions to create a sort of urban alchemy of culture and street life that is open to all. Whether it will achieve this remains to be seen  but what it already has in spades is character and vision.

Faena Hotel Miami Beach (001 305 534 4697; faena.com). Double rooms start at $745 (530) room only.

British Airways operates two direct flights a day from Heathrow to Miami with the first flight on a 747 and the second on an A380. Fares from 432 return. Four nights at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach from 1,349pp including BA flights (ba.com/Miami)
F ormer Dragons' Den star Doug Richard is to go on trial accused of paying a 13-year-old girl for sex after meeting her on a "Sugar Daddy" website.

The 57-year-old allegedly spanked the girl's bottom and engaged in other sexual activity after she travelled to London to meet him.

The former adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron is charged with three counts of sexual activity with a child, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and a charge of paying a child for sexual services.

His five-day trial begins today and will be heard at the Old Bailey.

All the charges relate to one girl who was aged 13 at the time of the alleged offences on January 2 last year.

The US-born businessman, of Islington, north London, has denied wrongdoing and is on unconditional bail.

The millionaire, who appeared on BBC's Dragons' Den in the first two series, reportedly travelled with the Prime Minister on an official government trip to Africa and advised on policy.

He founded a business loans initiative called School For Startups, alongside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
A former Dragons Den star spanked a 13-year-old girl he met on a Sugar Daddy website, the Old Bailey heard today.

Doug Richard, 57, paid for an apartment in the City for the schoolgirl and her 15-year-old friend, the jury was told.

He paid 480 to the two girls, including their train fares from Norwich, and 149 to use the apartment in Bishopsgate, the court heard.

Richard, an ex-advisor to David Cameron, had met the girls through an American website called Seeking Arrangements, said prosecutor Gino Connor.

This is a website where profiles are created for sugar daddies, sugar mummies or sugar babies, he said.

Richard described himself as a sugar daddy and the 13-year-old described herself as a sugar baby.

He was then 56 and she was only 155cms tall and weighed just 38kgs, the court heard.

Referring in iChat between them to photos she would send him, he asked the more sexy the better, less clothing more revealing positions  your first task for your new daddy, get it wrong and I will have to spank you.

She replied: You are my new daddy I will do anything to make you happy.

When she asked about punishments, he told her: I want to paddle your a*** until it was bright red, said Mr Connor.

Richard added: I am now officially horny.

Richard, of Islington, faces three charges of sexual activity with a child, one of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and a charge of paying for sexual services.

The court head he admits having sexual activity with the 13-year-old but says it was consensual and he believed she was 16 or over.

He also says that the money he paid them was to help them travel to London and was not for having sex with either of them.

The two girls, who cannot be named because of their age, arrived at Liverpool Street station in January last year.

According to the older girl, Richard took them to a cafe and the younger one told him she was 17 and that her friend was 16, the jury was told.

When they went to the apartment Richard and the younger girl stripped naked and he spanked her on about seven occasions.

He then ordered her to perform a sex act on him and he took her to the bedroom and asked the older girl if she wanted to watch, which she declined.

Afterwards he gave both girls 60 cash and they asked to go shopping in American Apparel.

Three hours after arriving in London they caught a train home.

Later the older girl tried to obtain more money from Richard and a 120 was transferred by PayPal, the court heard.

Richard asked her if she would come to London for sex, she replied: Im not in for sex but money.

Police were called in after the older girls mother noticed unexplained money in her daughters bank account.

The court heard there was one billion to one DNA evidence linking Richard to the younger girl.

When arrested Richard is said to have told officers: As you can see I am in a lot of trouble.

He added: Can I ask you a hypothetical question? What if I thought she was over 16 but she was in fact under 16?

The court heard that when told he should ask his lawyer, Richard replied: Under 16, wow.

The US-born millionaire, who appeared on BBC's Dragons' Den in the first two series, travelled with the Prime Minister on an official government trip to Africa and advised on policy.

He founded a business loans initiative called School For Startups, alongside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The case continues.
P olice searched a west London home in connection with the disappearance of an elderly woman who has not been seen for 15 years.

Forensics officers carried out the search at a dilapidated house in Tunis Road, Shepherds Bush, today.

Police said that, although the woman had not been seen for 15 years, she was only reported missing by Hammersmith and Fulham Council on December 8 last year.

A Met Police spokesman said: At this stage theres no evidence that any criminal offence has been committed.

Police, who warned the search could take some time, are not revealing the identity of the woman, who would have been 75 when last seen.
A flamboyant Hong Kong billionaire who spent 50 million on diamonds for his daughter is poised to make a dramatic new swoop on the London property market.

A company controlled by Joseph Lau, Hong Kongs fifth richest man, is favourite to buy Richard Rogers-designed office block 88 Wood Street in the heart of the City, according to industry sources.

Mr Laus Chinese Estates is expected to pay about 270 million for the building, adding to a London portfolio that includes Goldman Sachs headquarters in Fleet Street. He formerly owned a Belgravia home that had a gold-lined swimming pool and was put on the market for 70 million two years ago.

Mr Lau, 64, is said to be worth more than 8 billion. In November he paid 32 million at auction for the 12-carat Blue Moon diamond  the worlds most valuable gemstone  for his seven-year-old daughter Josephine. He renamed it the Blue Moon of Josephine.

88 Wood Street / Rebecca Reid

A day earlier he spent 19 million on a 16-carat pink diamond which he named Sweet Josephine.

Mr Lau also owns a cellar of more than 10,000 bottles of fine red wine, artworks including Paul Gauguins Te Poipoi and Andy Warhols portraits of Chairman Mao, and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Wood Street building, near the Barbican, was put on the market last year by its owner, Malaysian pension fund KWAP. Tenants include Hewlett Packard and National Australia Bank.

Mr Lau has money to spend after selling the Chinese Estates headquarters for $HK12.5 billion (1.2 billion). His company, KWAP and advisers Cushman & Wakefield refused to comment. But an industry source said: Hes in the market at the moment and hes lost out on a couple of recent deals.

Chinese Estates is one of several buyers from the region active in the market, as the falling value of the yuan makes London property a priority destination. Among well over 1 billion worth of deals, a China Life/Brook joint venture is poised to buy the Aldgate Tower for about 350 million. China Overseas Land and Investment is to pay 140 million on the Citys Helicon Building.
W ould-be art thieves tried to rip a new work by elusive street-artist Banksy from the wall just hours after it appeared opposite the French Embassy.

Armed with screwdrivers and torches, the gang spent spent several hours furtively attempting to prise away the mural painted on a boarded-up shopfront in Knightsbridge.

The work depicts the iconic poster girl from Les Miserables in a cloud of CS gas, in an apparent reference to the treatment of migrants at the Jungle refugee camp in Calais.

It appeared overnight on Saturday and became an immediate attraction drawing hundreds of fans to take photographs and pose for selfies.

Cover-up: Builders abandon attempts to remove the artwork / Yui Mok/PA

But with Banksy pieces selling for more than 550,000 at auction, the creation drew some unwelcome attention when darkness fell.

Police were called by a concerned member of the public at 8.45pm, but the gang scattered before officers arrived - only to return once the coast was clear.

An onlooker said: When I arrived there was a group of dodgy-looking men close to the graffiti and they stared at me. They were a pretty intimidating group, not the kind of people you usually see in Knightsbridge.

Developers board up new Banksy criticising Calais 'Jungle' teargas treatment

They were trying to yank the board away from the shop front. It was clear they were trying to steal it but it was well nailed in.

They were hitting it, shaking it and trying anything they could to yank it off.

Whenever people arrived to take photographs theyd wander off and hang about nearby  but they kept coming back to have another go.

I thought it was disgusting  that artwork should be preserved so everyone can see it  it shouldnt end up on the black market.

Boarded up: The Banksy mural has now been covered up / Yui Mok/PA

Builders made an attempt to remove the artwork this morning, taking a crowbar to the piece of wood it is drawn on.

But amid fears they would damage the art, they instead covered it up with another piece of wood.

The graffiti is the latest in a series of pieces by the world-famous artist criticising Europes handling of the current refugee crisis.

Banksy vox pops LL

A mural of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the son of Syrian migrants, carrying a computer and his belongings appeared on a wall in the Jungle in December last year.

The Knightsbridge stencil includes a QR code so when viewers hold their phone over the stencil it links them to an online video of a police raid on the Jungle earlier this month.

British anarchists were among 35 people arrested in Calais yesterday for leading 500 migrants in a ferry invasion in an attempt to reach the UK.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the government to allow thousands of migrants living in camps in Calais to come to Britain.

A spokeswoman for the Met Police said: Police were called at 8.45pm on Sunday, 24 January to reports of a number of men attempting to remove a piece of artwork from the wall of a disused premises in Knightsbridge at the junction with William Street.

Officers attended but the men had fled the scene. No arrests have been made.
A Conservative councillor has been ordered to pay more than 30,000 after being taken to court by his own council for falling short as a landlord.

Jonny Bucknell was prosecuted over the state of one of his flats by Camden council in north London, where he has been a councillor for many years in the Belsize constituency.

Mr Bucknell had been ordered to improve the flat in Primrose Hill but failed to do so in time.

The tenant reportedly suffered health problems after living in the cold flat, which did not have central heating.

Mr Bucknell was fined 20,000 and ordered to pay 5,000 compensation to the tenant, costs of 4,783.50 and a 2,000 victim surcharge  totalling 31,783.50  after admitting breaching the improvement order at Highbury Corner magistrates court.

He offered his apologies to the tenant and said he deeply regretted that the situation went "badly wrong".

He also said in a statement he had been going through a difficult time as his wife was being treated for cancer.

Mr Bucknell said: My family have been renting out flats for the best part of 100 years. We have always been hands on and have been proud to have had a very good relationship with our tenants.

"My experience in building matters has also meant that as a councillor, I've been able to help local residents and council tenants on numerous occasions too.

"Last year was a difficult time for my family, as I've been supporting my wife while she undergoes treatment for cancer. I deeply regret this tenancy went badly wrong and I have already apologised to the tenant.

"In essence, I've been taken to court for failing to complete works to an empty property on time, while the tenant is living in another very well appointed flat. I'm working hard now to get the work done to the property and will ensure that this will never happen again.

A Camden Council spokesman said: "Camden only takes criminal proceedings after it has carefully considered the facts of each case and determines that it is in the public interest to do so.

"This is a decision which is ultimately taken by the councils borough solicitor  in this particular case having taken specialist external advice.

"Mr Bucknell entered a plea of guilty and the court were informed of the relevant facts and heard full mitigation before passing sentence.

"It is hoped that the required improvement works on the property will be completed as soon as possible.
T wo London 99p shops have been fined a total of 416,114, after significant mouse and rat infestations were discovered.

The two stores, in Kingston-Upon-Thames and Ealing, were found guilty of 13 health and safety offences in total.

At the Kingston store Environmental Health Officers found a mouse infestation in the warehouse, with a strong smell of urine and evidence of gnawed pet food.

Other offences included excessive temperatures, unsafe step stools, a dirty staff kitchen, leaking pipe work and no hot water throughout.

Enforcement Officers who visited the Ealing store also discovered a significant rat infestation, which included a dead rat found on a rack in the store room.

99p Stores LTD were found to be very slow to act following a number of visits by Environmental Health Officers.

The shops have since been bought by Poundland, and that company will now have to pay the fines.

Councillor Cathy Roberts, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Environmental Health at Kingston Council, said: ''Our Regulatory Enforcement Team are here to protect residents and staff who work in the Borough and to ensure all businesses in the borough comply with food and safety legal requirements to trade safely. This is an essential part of Kingstons growth agenda.

When one business ignores basic standards and puts residents, visitors and their staff at risk, it is our duty to make sure they are brought to account.
F irst there was the cold war in the West between Momentum and Progress as they both scheduled events on the same night in Ealing, but now the Labour battle is moving east.

John McDonnell first poured oil onto the fires of Walthamstow in November by addressing a Momentum meeting there, without telling local MP Stella Creasy about it. Creasy presumably felt uneasy about the Shadow Chancellors appearance, as there had been rumours of Momentum in her constituency trying to deselect her.

Keen not to repeat his etiquette mistake, McDonnell extended an invitation to Creasy when he was invited to a curry dinner organised by her local party branch, which has turned a brighter shade of red since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader.

Bad timing, though: Creasy will be in Edinburgh on Friday, when the event is due to take place, for a Burns Dinner fundraiser.

Nothing to see here, then? The Londoner hears that McDonnell, in an olive branch gesture, tried to push back the date of the curry night so that she could attend as well. Creasy showed little interest in a rescheduling, says our E17 source, though the Shadow Chancellors team says rather politely that both have both been trying to re-arrange, but as yet weve been able to find a suitable alternative date.

Despite McDonnell, the local Labour Party branch continue to rock the boat. Both of Stellas parents have been part of the Walthamstow CLP for years. While her father is still membership secretary, her mother lost her role as fundraising co-ordinator to a Corbynista at the last AGM, in what was seen as a Corbynista coup. No wonder curry seems unpalatable.

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It was rumoured that he could become a Lord but then he didnt, and he was said to be on Labours defence review, until he wasnt  so what will Ken Livingstone do now? Becoming an MP again would be an option. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said hed be tempted to make a comeback on the green benches. But where would he go? If Sadiq Khan wins in May, Labour will need a candidate in the Tooting by-election, wont it?

New job lets Peston climb off the fence

New job, new him. Robert Peston is clearly anxious not to lose his following now that hes moved to ITV. Hes broadcasting his thoughts via a Facebook fan page, which he set up in October while economics editor at the Beeb but only started posting on in January when he became ITVs political editor.

This weekend he covered Googles tax deal. [George] Osborne may have done as well as any Chancellor could, he writes, given the power of global companies to move their homes to minimise their tax liabilities.

Now that Peston doesnt have BBC pressure to be non-partisan, should we expect George the Google Slayer as his next guest?

Turning 51 is a piece of cake

When youve thrown a lavish party at The Troxy for your 50th birthday, its no wonder you want to have something a little smaller at your brothers house for your 51st.

But socialite Lisa Tchenguiz has never been one for a quiet night in, so her property developer brother Robert threw her a spirited bash at his pile in Kensington Gore on Saturday.

Guests included fashion entrepreneur Noelle Reno, former model Caprice Bourret, pictured right, and businessman Arun Nayar, who enjoyed a multi-tiered cake, from which a model of Lisa jumped.

One wouldnt want to get ones dress covered in icing by doing it for real, after all.

Stephen Fry / Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images

A lively (and free) litfest in Jaipur

The Jaipur Literature Festival, organised by Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, was in full swing this weekend, with a crowd of Londoners jetting over to enjoy milder climes. Actress and comedy writer Meera Syal called for a re-evaluation of the non-British sense of humour. The comedic nature of Asian people is so missed, she said. British people have become so used to Indian people as waiters serving them food and doing menial jobs they dont realise their full potential.

Also cutting a dash was MP Tristram Hunt, who bemoaned a lack of language skills in our schools, and Hideous Kinky author Esther Freud, who toasted the festival as the future of literary roadshows. If all festivals could be free and embrace this diversity it would be amazing, she said.

Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, meanwhile, was enamoured simply by the company. This has been an amazing time here in India, he said. I am here with my husband, and Stephen Fry [pictured above with moderator Anindita Ghose] is with his husband. We meet in the hotel lobby and it is frankly just like a Noel Coward play.

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It was a long way down the A10. Wind howled, a blizzard raged. The endless vista of ice tundra was broken only by Enfield CineWorld rising on the horizon. The Londoner crawled inside and slid into a chair only slightly more comfortable than a horses corpse. And then looked around. Who else was sheltering at a screening of The Revenant? Another refugee from the wars, Alistair Darling.

A new tune for Ed Balls

It's good to know Ed Balls is keeping busy. On Classic FM yesterday the ex-shadow chancellor revealed that he is making good progress on the piano, which he took up in office four years ago.

But Balls, right, said he hadnt played as much as hed hoped after losing his Morley constituency in May. I probably [thought] after the election Ill have more time to practise the piano, he said, but actually I found that hard because it was so associated with the old job.

And he added that most Londoners dont ask him about the new Labour regime. If I get into a black cab now [you would think most] people will ask So what do you think of Jeremy Corbyn? or Whats going on with the Labour Party? but most black cab drivers ask me So hows the piano going, Ed?

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Scottish invasion of the day: Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson have made it onto this years Debretts 500  and David Cameron hasnt. Happy Burns Night to them.
M inisters were urged to ease visa rules for tech workers today amid warnings that nine out of 10 of Londons new digital businesses are being held back by skills shortages.

A plea to open the gates to talented migrants such as software writers was at the heart of a Mayoral Tech Manifesto issued to rival candidates in the battle for City Hall.

Ask a London technology entrepreneur what keeps them awake at night, and a shortage of available talent will often be the answer, said the document.

A survey of more than 300 digital executives in the capital found shortage of talent was listed by 43 per cent as their biggest concern.

A separate survey conducted by techUK found that 93 per cent of tech firms felt a skills gap was having a negative impact on their business.

Maggie Philbin, the former Tomorrows World presenter and head of Teen Tech, writes in the manifesto: Technology has transformed the employment landscape of the capital, creating job opportunities for all ages, backgrounds and specialisms. However, the industry is generating jobs faster than we can fill them.

Research from O2 suggests the UK will need to fill 766,000 new digital jobs by 2020, and to train almost 2.3 million people to meet the demand for digital skills.

The manifesto, issued jointly by Tech London Advocates, techUK and Centre for London, called for the next mayor to lobby government to keep visas for skilled workers and help the private sector lobby for sponsorship visas and a trial reinstatement of the Post-Study Work Visa for occupations where there are clear skills shortages.

Charlotte Holloway, associate director at techUK, said firms needed a mayor who would stick up for London on the need for skilled migration as well as open up banks of City Hall data to developers.

Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates, said: Over the past five years, the technology industry has become a community it is impossible for City Hall to ignore.

Ben Rogers, director of Centre for London, added: The responsibility of the next Mayor is to make ensure that London gets the best of the digital revolution.
A spiring dramatists could learn the art of playwriting in just 10 weeks thanks to a new course from the Bush Theatre and Central Saint Martins, which can be downloaded for free onto smartphones and tablets.

The Student Guide to Writing features lessons from experienced playwrights on topics including structure, characterisation and staging.

Tamasha theatre company artistic director Fin Kennedy and Royal Court Theatre associate director Ola Animashawun are among the writers who have contributed lessons, which can be completed in an hour.

Students should end up with a finished play, which they can enter into a competition to be performed at London Writers Week  a festival at Saint Martins in July that hopes to become the literary equivalent of London Fashion Week.

The five winning entries will also be published by Oberon Books.

Jennifer Tuckett, course leader for the MA Dramatic Writing at Saint Martins, and the Bushs artistic director Madani Younis created the course to attract people from different walks of life into the field.

Ms Tuckett said: Its a very simple and clear guide to creating a play. Theres no minimum or maximum age limit for students and your play can be a minute or 120 minutes long.

The whole idea is to open it up to everyone across the UK. If writing is about explaining how we live and how to live then everybody should be reflected in that.

The first two lessons are available at thestudentguidetowriting.com
O ne of three huge sperm whales that washed up on a Lincolnshire beach has "exploded" during a grisly autopsy.

Marine biologists from the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, who investigate all whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings in the UK, examined the corpses today.

Scientists cut open the whale using a chainsaw, and were using a probe to look at the carcass when there was a "huge blast of air", according to the BBC.

Members of the public who had gathered to watch also said they witnessed the whale's body "explode."

The whale, which weighs 30-tonnes was found on Central Beach in Skegness on Sunday, two smaller calves were discovered the same day on another beach in the area.

On Saturday another 50ft sperm whale, thought to belong to the same pod, died after becoming stranded on a Norfolk beach.

The body of a fifth whale washed up on Monday afternoon on another Lincolnshire beach.

The whale, which is also believed to be from the same pod, was found at Wainfleet, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency reported.
By Rory J. Thompson, Web Editor

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Weve all seen the reports and heard the word: Omnichannel is the new way to go in the call center. Yet there seems to be one important point that everyone, in their rush to embrace the latest and greatest, is missing: Customers LIKE using the phone.





Thats the position of Joshua Feast, CEO and co-founder of Cogito Corp., manufacturers of software that empowers phone professionals to deliver a more engaging and caring customer experience. In a recent piece posted on CustomerThink.com, Feast spelled out his case as to why the telephone should still hold a prominent place in a companys efforts to make the customer experience the best it can be.

Companies are looking to text, Web self-service, instant messaging and just about any other method they can find to deliver a better customer experience, Feast noted. But while all of those channels can be useful in retaining customers and building loyalty, too many brands are not paying enough attention to the most important customer channel they have: the telephone.

He goes on to cite research from Forrester (News - Alert) that said the phone is still the most widely used customer contact tool. Among the Forrester findings was the revelation that customers want companies to value their time, with some 71 percent of consumers saying that doing so is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service.

Companies that fail in this area do so at their peril. Feast points to an Arizona State University study that said Despite the rise of the Internet, people are still 11 times more likely to complain via phone than Web. And if theyre going to complain, wouldnt you like the chance to respond directly and immediately?

Omni-channel strategies can produce results to a point, but there is still no replacement for a call center that provides superior customer service, Feast adds. Agents with excellent communications skills, who can build genuine connections with customers, are more valuable than ever in what Accenture (News - Alert) calls the switching economy.

So whats holding them back?

Call-center agents become disengaged over time and often feel powerless to help customers, Feast says. They fail to build the kind of strong rapport with customers that will ultimately provide a more rewarding experience for the customer and the agent alike. Further, Supervisors and call center executives face significant measurement challenges. They currently lack an objective, automated and comprehensive means by which to measure and teach the communication skills that are at the heart of a phone call, he believes.

Still, all is not lost. The biggest takeaway from Feasts observation is that the problem is solvable; it just takes savvy management to recognize the issue and do something about it.

Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
F ormer Tory minister Cecil Parkinson has died at the age of 84 after battling cancer, his family have announced.

Lord Parkinson was responsible for managing the Conservative Party's 1983 election campaign which saw Margaret Thatcher sweep to victory with a huge majority.

He was then made secretary of state for trade and industry but quit soon afterwards when it emerged his former secretary, Sara Keays, was pregnant with his child.

The politician later served as secretary of state for energy and transport, before leaving office at the same time as Thatcher in 1990.

He was made a peer in 1992 and retired from the House of Lords last September.

A family spokesman said: "Cecil passed away on January 22 after a long battle with cancer.

"We shall miss him enormously. As a family, we should like to pay tribute to him as a beloved husband to Ann and brother to Norma, and a supportive and loving father to Mary, Emma and Joanna and grandfather to their children.

Cecil Parkinson 1 /6 Cecil Parkinson Cecil Parkinson after his by-election victory, arriving at the House of Commons with his family, prior to taking his seat in Parliament in 1970 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with Cecil Parkinson (right) during one of the daily press conferences at Conservative Party Central Office during the run up to the elections in 1983 PA Energy Secretary Cecil Parkinson in 1988 Tony Harris/PA Election night 1987 at Conservative Party Head Office: Norman Tebbit And Cecil Parkinson Steve Back/Daily Mail Cecil Parkinson with his wife Ann in 1998 Ben Curti/PA

"We also salute his extraordinary commitment to British public life as a member of parliament, cabinet minister and peer - together with a distinguished career in business."

He added: "There will be a private family funeral. The family requests that their privacy be respected in this matter. Details about a memorial service will be announced later."

Chancellor George Osborne led tributes to the peer, tweeting: "Sad to hear of death of Cecil Parkinson. I worked with him when he was Party Chairman in 1997-8 - he was there in our hour of greatest need."

William Hague, who selected Lord Parkinson as party chairman when he became Tory leader, wrote: "Very sad to hear about the death of my friend Cecil Parkinson. An exceptional talent and an extraordinarily nice man to work with."

This page is being updated.
O rganised crime gangs across Europe are increasingly linking up with terrorists, a police chief warned today.

Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, highlighted the significant growth in the faking of ID documents which Islamists plotting bloodshed have used to return to Europe from Syria.

He said police forces across the Continent needed to work more closely together to track firearms, terrorist finance and returning jihadis.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said the growing involvement of crime gangs opened up a new front in the fight against terror.

These type of criminal networks have never previously been linked in this way, he added. It will pose a huge challenge and will need careful monitoring and immediate action.

The warnings came after Islamic State put out a new video purporting to show some of the Paris attackers in Syria before Novembers massacre. Some are shown beheading hostages.

The film also threatened Britain, with footage of David Cameron pledging solidarity to France following the Paris massacre and pictures of London including St Pauls and Tower Bridge.

Mr Wainwright said: What the attacks in Paris of course showed us all was just the gravity of the terrorist threat that we are now facing in Europe in terms of how it moves and operates on the international level in particular.

He urged nations to step up efforts to counter the terror threat through a new European intelligence sharing centre, at Europols HQ in the Hague, by connecting hundreds of police agencies around Europe.

The latest Islamic State video appeared to confirm that many of the Paris attackers, including ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, travelled undetected from Syria into France.

It also features Bilal Hadfi, who attacked the Stade de France, and Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up at the Bataclan music hall.

British intelligence officials are scrutinising the video.
T he mother of a Briton feared to have joined the Islamic State in Syria today denied he was a terrorist - and insisted he was just doing humanitarian work.

Jack Letts, 20, has been dubbed Jihadi Jack after leaving his home in Oxford to travel to the war-torn country a year ago.

But today his mother Sally angrily defended her son, saying it was absolutely ridiculous to suggest he had become the first white British youth to join IS in Syria.

She said the family were in regular contact with their son, who yesterday told them he was bemused by reports which claimed he now went by the name of Ibrahim or Abu Muhammed.

He was also reported to be living with his Iraqi wife and son Muhammed after moving to the Iraqi city of Fallujah from Raqqa.

Sally, a former books editor, told the Standard: He is not a member of IS, he is very probably not the first white convert that has gone out there. He does not have a son and is not known as Abu Mohammed.

We spoke to him yesterday and he said he had never had a weapon in his life.

He went out there for humanitarian purposes to help kids in Syrian refugee camps.

It is not as if he is hiding anything - he tells us what he has for breakfast.

All this is absolutely ridiculous, it is shocking.

The family conceded they were hugely concerned for their sons wellbeing, particularly now he had been identified.

They added that police, who have been investigating them for over a year, have told them there is no evidence he has done anything wrong.

Sally said: We are worried sick. He is in danger every single moment of the day.

He is very naive, very misguided. He wanted to do good in the world and wanted to see for himself. The fact is he did not see the danger or think about his own safety.

We wake every single morning not knowing whether he is alive or dead.

Jack attended Cherwell School in Oxford, where peers said he was a keen sportsman and supporter of Liverpool FC.

It is thought he began to take an interest in the Middle East during the Arab Spring in 2011.

Sally added they did not oppose Jack converting to Islam, despite being pretty well secular themselves.

We were not against it. He is entitled to choose his religion.

Jack told his mother and father John - a leading organic farmer who has appeared on BBCs Countryfile - he was planning to travel to Kuwait to study Arabic.

He only informed them he had subsequently gone to Syria once he arrived, they said.

We were in utter shock. We have been trying to convince him to come back, said his mother.

He initially worked with refugees and most recently has been helping in a hospital.

They said they were aware he may have got married - but had not asked him directly - although he categorically denied being a member of IS when quizzed.

Sally said: He repeatedly said he is not with IS, and he does not lie. He believes it is un-Islamic to lie and if he does he will go straight to hell, so there is no doubt whatsoever.

He has worked in a hospital, done some teaching, done some translating...He is integrated with the population.

She added: There are civilians out there despite great risk to themselves and are just assumed to be terrorists. They (the media) have lost Jihadi John so Jihadi Jack fits perfectly.

We want him (Jack) to go to a safe place.

He is bemused by all the inaccuracies...The fact he has a son? He just laughed.

Somehow he is supposed to be a global jihadi? It is absolutely ridiculous.

The family have been raided by anti-terror police repeatedly since Jack left in 2014, Sally said, seizing computers and mobile phones.

They have said there is no evidence he has done anything wrong, but they have to follow the legislation requirements, so anyone who has been in contact with Jack is suspected of being a terrorist, added Sally.

Scotland Yard said it could not comment on an active case, but said in virtually all counter-terrorism investigations there will be a strategy to investigate the finances of those involved, which may also extend to any person suspected of funding the activities of a suspected terrorist.

A spokesman added: What is important, and would be expected, is that we do all we can to keep people safe and investigate everyone who returns to the UK to establish if any crimes have been committed and if they are a threat to the UK.
M ore than 50 of the countrys most successful women today united in a plea to Britons to choose to stay in the European Union.

Women from the pinnacles of business, the arts and science signed a letter to the Evening Standard declaring that staying in the EU will strengthen families and the nations prosperity.

They include lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox; designer Kelly Hoppen, chef Ruth Rogers, fertility expert Professor Geeta Nargund, scientist Dame Anne Glover, actress Sharon Maughan and theatre producer Sally Greene.

We are drawn from all walks of life, they write. We work in medicine, retail, health, financial services, the creative industries, trade unions, interior design and fashion. And we have all benefited from our membership of the EU.

Urging women across the United Kingdom to join them, they add: Too often, womens voices arent front and centre of political debate. But this referendum is going to be different.

The letter was organised by businesswoman Jenny Halpern Prince, chair of Women IN, which is part of the campaign for an in-vote in the historic referendum expected to be staged this summer.

She said: This is the biggest choice facing Britain for a generation  and womens views must be central.

"Our membership of the EU helps create jobs, helps our economy to thrive and provides really important employment safeguards, like maternity and paternity leave. Wed be putting so much at risk by leaving  it just isnt worth it.

Baroness Lane-Fox said: Leaving the EU would be a disaster for the next generation of Britains entrepreneurs.

Being in Europe means we can trade without tariffs and there are a common set of regulations across 28 countries. And as a mammoth market of 500 million consumers, we can negotiate free trade agreements with countries like the US, China and Australia.

British businesses get a real boost from our membership. Ms Greene, owner of The Old Vic, said: British theatre is able to attract top talent from right across Europe. Actors, directors and producers come to our theatres because they are among the best in the world.

And many British people also spend time learning from others across the continent. It would be disastrous if it was made more difficult to travel to great cities in Europe  and if Britain pulled up the drawbridge to talent from elsewhere.

Lady Rogers, of the Michelin-starred River Cafe, said: At River Cafe we rely on the quality of the wine, olive oils, cheeses, vegetables and fruits from all over Italy.

Many of our staff are from Europe  chefs, waiters, wine experts, managers, who have the freedom to work in this country, bringing their knowledge and creativity  making the River Cafe a better restaurant.

Baroness Brady, vice-chairman of West Ham United, said: For women in particular, there are things we take for granted like paid maternity leave and rules on equal pay that exist thanks to Britains place in the EU. For my children and future generations, I want Britain to be stronger, safer and better off, so Im proud to be part of the campaign to stay in Europe.

Today Lord Rose, the former M&S chief who chairs the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, visited Brompton Bicycles in west London to promote the importance of the EU for exports and trade.

He said the EU was worth an average 670,000 in extra trade for each business that does deals within the 28-nation bloc.

But the rival Vote Leave campaign seized on a study that claims the single market has had no discernible benefit for UK exports and has proved not far short of a disaster for Britain.

Research from think tank Civitas found UK export growth in the single market area was 22.3 per cent lower following the creation of the European Union in 1993 than it would have been had it continued at its trend rate during the Common Market years of 1973-92.

David Cameron hopes for a deal at an EU summit next month to open the door to a referendum in June, July or September.
P rince William today paid tribute to explorer Henry Worsley who died on the brink of making a historic Antarctic solo crossing.

Former Army officer Mr Worsley, 55, from Fulham, west London died yesterday in hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile.

He undertook the expedition as a tribute to his idol Sir Ernest Shackleton and exceeded his goal of raising a 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, a charity founded to help the recovery of injured servicemen and women

Today The Duke of Cambridge, Patron of the Shackleton Solo Expedition, said:Harry and I are very sad to hear of the loss of Henry Worsley. He was a man who showed great courage and determination and we are incredibly proud to be associated with him.

Henry Worsley meets the Duke of Cambridge ahead of solo Antarctic expedition

Even after retiring from the Army, Henry continued to show selfless commitment to his fellow servicemen and women, by undertaking this extraordinary Shackleton solo expedition on their behalf.

We have lost a friend, but he will remain a source of inspiration to us all, especially those who will benefit from his support to the Endeavour Fund.

We will now make sure that his family receive the support they need at this terribly difficult time.

Mr Worsley leaves behind his wife Joanna, 56, and children Max, 21, and Alicia, 19.

His widow said: It is with heartbroken sadness I let you know that my husband Henry Worsley has died following complete organ failure.

Henry achieved his Shackleton Solo goals: of raising over 100,000 for the Endeavour Fund, to help his wounded colleagues, and so nearly completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic landmass. A crossing made, under exceptionally difficult weather conditions, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackletons Endurance expedition  his lifelong hero.

On behalf of myself and family I wish to thank the many hundreds of you who have shown unfailing support to Henry throughout his courageous final challenge and great generosity to the Endeavour Fund.

The amount raised stands at 107,293.
J eremy Clarkson has been criticised for making controversial comments about trans children, saying that parents can "poison" their minds.

Clarkson, 55, slammed parents for indulging [children's] whims in his Sunday Times column titled, Transgender issues are driving me nuts.

As far as I was concerned, men who want to be women were only really to be found on the internet or in the seedier bits of Bangkok, the former Top Gear presenter wrote.

They were called lady boys, and in my mind they were nothing more than the punch line in a stag night anecdote.

Top Gear Live Tour - in pictures 1 /6 Top Gear Live Tour - in pictures Back behind the wheel Clarkson behind the wheel of a van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty Back in action Jeremy Clarkson makes a gesture as he arrives at the Ticketpro Dome for the Clarkson, Hammond and May Live Show in Johannesburg (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty Dummy run Clarkson manoeuvring a dummy out of the van (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty Open up James May filming for the live show (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty Onwards and upwards Richard Hammond in South Africa (Picture: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty) STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP/Getty

Recalling a friend whose child was born with male genitalia but identifies as female, he said: "She had been born a boy but had insisted from the age of three that she had a girl's name and wore girls' clothes and, later, that she went to a girls' school. And her parents had simply indulged this whim.

"I was horrified. I wanted to seek them out and explain that they were free to live a lunatic life, washing their armpits with charcoal and liking Jeremy Corbyn's thoughts on how ballistic nuclear submarines must be built by the comrades and then used as flower pots. But they must not, and I was going to emphasise this with spittle, be allowed to poison the mind of a child."

He continued: "Its what kids do: dream impossible dreams. You dont actually take them seriously. You dont take them to a hospital when theyre 10 and say, He wants to be a girl, so can you lop his todger off?

Because whats going to happen five years later when hes decided that being a man isnt so bad after all and hes in the showers at the rugby club?

Readers, including Wayne Dhesi of LGBT rights charity Stonewall, took to Twitter to express their disgust at the comments.

Regarding Jeremy Clarkson's Times article about trans people... pic.twitter.com/8SeMEc7oDn  WayneDavid (@WayneDavid81) January 24, 2016

Wow, a new low, even for @JeremyClarkson -they say with age comes wisdom, but there's always an exception! idiotic comments on #trans issues  Dr Christian Jessen (@DoctorChristian) January 25, 2016

@JeremyClarkson Did you really write that trans people are only really to be found on the internet or in the seedier bits of Bangkok?  Sarah Jones (@SarahJonestoo) January 25, 2016

Why publish that drivel from Jeremy Clarkson? He knows about cars. He clearly doesn't know about trans issues. His opinion is irrelevant.  Leonard Solms (@LeonSolms) January 25, 2016

I'm angry about that Clarkson piece as much as I don't want to waste air on him. But he's the reason why I find the tube terrifying.  Juno Dawson (@junodawson) January 24, 2016

Clarkson's comments come weeks after Ricky Gervais was accused of being "transphobic" after he made a joke about Caitlyn Jenner's transition at the Golden Globes.

Defending his joke, Gervais tweeted: "Suggesting a joke about Caitlyn Jenner is automatically transphobic is like suggesting a joke about Bill Cosby is automatically racist."

Jeremy Clarkson's Most Controversial Quotes

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